RTHK: Assange guilty of bail breach, faces US charges

A London court on Thursday found WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange guilty of breaching his bail conditions in 2012 and remanded him into custody pending sentencing.

Assange faces up to 12 months in prison on the charge.

He will face another court hearing on May 2 on a US request for his extradition for alleged computer hacking.

Earlier, the US Justice Department said Assange was arrested in London on a US warrant charging him over his alleged role in a massive leak of military and diplomatic documents in 2010.

Assange faces up to five years in jail on a federal charge of "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified US government computer," according to a statement.

The indictment alleges Assange conspired in March 2010 with Chelsea Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers.

Though it was unclear if the password was ever broken, the Justice Department said the effort was part of Assange's role in "one of the largest compromises of classified information in the history of the United States."

Assange's US lawyer Barry Pollack said that his arrest constitutes "an unprecedented effort by the United States seeking to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information." (AFP)

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: Disney reveals title of ninth Star Wars movie

Disney has pulled the wraps off the title of its next Star Wars film, which is due for release in December.

It will be called Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and will make the ninth and last film in the four-decade saga, although Disney will continue making films set in the Star Wars universe.

The title and the film's first trailer were unveiled at an even in Chicago featuring director JJ Abrams and the film's cast.

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Entrusted by the leaders, Vietnamese Ambassador to Laos Nguyen Ba Hung on April 11 conveyed the flowers and greetings to Lao Party General Secretary and President Bounhang Volachith, Prime Minister Thongloun Sisulith and National Assembly Chairwoman Pany Yathotou.

NA Chairwoman Pany Yathotou took the occasion to express thanks to the Party, State and people of Vietnam for their valuable and timely support, citing as an example the gift of a new building for the Lao legislative body.

She said the NAs of the two countries have maintained close cooperation and reaped many encouraging results, contributing to promote the Vietnam-Laos bilateral economic, trade and investment partnerships.

Ambassador Hung highlighted the effective and substantive development of the great friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos, adding that the ties between the two NAs are important to the relations between the two countries.

He pledged that the Vietnamese Embassy in Laos will work closely with Lao agencies for the effective implementation of agreements reached by their leaders.
The blaze broke out around 12:34 a.m. in a townhouse in the 300 block of South Pitt Street. When firefighters arrived, they found smoke coming from the second floor. A 76-year-old man inside was rescued, but the woman was found dead in a bedroom, fire officials said.
The resident called 911 to report he had shot someone who broke in, police said. About 20 minutes later, officers were called to a hospital in Lanham after someone dropped off Mbeng, who was suffering from a gunshot wound, police said. Mbeng died at the hospital.
It opened in 1934 as a tuberculosis sanatorium for patients who could not be treated in the Districts crowded hospitals. It next became a nursing home for the chronically ill, which closed in 1981. Since then, Glenn Dale Hospital in Prince Georges County has been vacant  the 210 acres in suburban Maryland the subject of ghost stories and a target for trespassers.
Police reopened the road, which had been blocked between North Road and Cathedral Avenue, around 8 p.m. Residents said that a short time later they were permitted to reenter the Parkwest apartment building in the 2900 block of Connecticut Avenue NW, which had been evacuated. Residents said they were told there was no longer any threat; police did not immediately provide additional details.
Everett, the owner of a barbershop in the District, near Howard, met his victims through parties or social media to arrange dates with them before he would drug them and then sexually assault them, police and prosecutors said. Many of the women reported waking up feeling groggy during or right before he assaulted them, prosecutors said.
The Secret Service said uniformed officers gave the man medical attention. Part of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed for the investigation. It was not immediately clear if the man was protesting something.
Police said Ramirez-Lara and Reyes Carbajal were previously in a relationship. They both met at the shooting location in Adelphi where Garcia Constancia was waiting before he shot the victim, police said.


Construction continues on Metros Silver Line at Dulles International Airport on March 6. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

The contractor building Phase 2 of the Silver Line has identified another problem with the beleaguered project. This time its at the Dulles Airport station, where concrete pedestals designed to support the two-story structures glass walls and windscreens are cracking because they were built without proper internal reinforcement.

The pedestals, which sit atop 20 concrete columns, are critical because they serve a dual purpose: They help anchor the glass walls on the stations first level, as well as the glass windscreens that will be installed on its second level.

This latest development adds to a lengthy list of problems the contractor, Capital Rail Constructors, must resolve before it can complete work on the $5.8 billion project. CRC was expected to wrap up its work in August, but the company said it is unlikely it will make that deadline.

In its most recent monthly progress report, CRC told the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, which is managing the project, that it expects to finish its work in February. The project is already 13 months behind schedule.

Once complete, MWAA will turn the project over to Metro, which will manage and operate the rail line. The first phase of the project, which included five stations, opened in 2014.

CRC continues to evaluate the project to identify opportunities to improve the schedule and to minimize impact of unforeseen changes, company officials said in a statement.

[New problems for the Silver Line: rail ties are flawed]

Under its agreement with the airports authority, CRC, a joint venture between Bethesda-based Clark Construction Group and Kiewit Infrastructure, would face financial penalties starting in October for failing to complete the project by August.



A rendering of the Silver Line Dulles Airport Metro station now under construction. (Dulles Rail Project)

Meanwhile, the company is still trying to find an acceptable fix for a problem that surfaced in September when a review found that more than 400 concrete rail ties failed to meet project standards.

Keith Couch, project director for CRC, played down the problems at the Dulles station, saying that officials are working to find a solution. He said the fact that the problems were discovered before the project was completed is a sign that the companys quality control program is working. CRCs inspections and quality control have come under criticism as the projects problems have mounted.

Project executive director Charles Stark characterized the issues at the Dulles station as a workmanship problem.

CRC, which designed and built the pedestals, will be responsible for paying for whatever repairs are ultimately decided on.

Cracks in the concrete pedestals were discovered in April 2018, but it wasnt until November, when CRC began to remove the concrete to make repairs, that the extent of the problem was discovered, Stark said.

Crews found that the pedestals were not properly reinforced, leaving them vulnerable to cracking. Studs designed to secure the steel plates that would sit on top of the pedestals were bent.

[Delay will add $95M to the cost of the Silver Lines second phase]

A letter sent to CRC by the airports authority in December characterized the issues as significantly more serious than initially thought.

Documents obtained by The Washington Post through a public records request include a root cause analysis prepared by CRC, which determined both the design and instructions workers received in the field were confusing.

The root cause analysis performed by our quality control team identified multiple contributing factors, including field installation and design details that were misinterpreted, Couch said.

The analysis also recommended the projects engineer of record and quality inspectors provide more oversight when construction involves critical connections between project elements, as was the case with the structures that included the pedestals.

CRC officials said they are working with MWAA and Metro on a possible solution.

We are aware of the situation and monitoring progress as MWAA and the contractor work to resolve the issue, Metro said in a statement.

The Silver Line is the first extension of the Metro system that is not being built by the transit agency. Instead, the work is being done by a private contractor hired by the airports authority.

The rail lines second phase includes six stations and will provide direct Metro service for travelers headed to Dulles International Airport. Travelers wanting to take Metro to the airport now can take the Silver Line as far as Wiehle-Reston East station and then take a bus or other mode of transportation the remainder of the way. Phase 2 will also extend Metro into eastern Loudoun County.



Metros Silver Line at Dulles International Airport under construction on March 6. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

CRC also remains at odds with MWAA and Metro over how to deal with hundreds of flawed concrete rail ties installed at crossovers, where trains move from one track to another. The ties are higher in the middle than on the ends, which is problematic because they can cause trains to lean when they move over those areas.

CRC proposed at least two solutions, both of which included the use of shims to even out the tracks. Both were rejected by MWAA and Metro.

In a letter sent to CRC last month, Metro officials wrote that the companys proposed remedies were unacceptable and will result in increased maintenance costs, increased maintenance cycles and a reduction in the useful life cycle of trackwork components, all of which is not acceptable to [the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority].

However, the airports authority, which commissioned its own review of the concrete ties, said its analysis indicates that while some of the ties are problematic, the number of flawed ties could be far fewer than originally thought, according to Stark, the projects executive director.

Even before the latest problems surfaced, CRC was already under scrutiny for its quality control in the wake of a whistleblower lawsuit that said a subcontractor had fabricated reports about the quality of the concrete panels it provided for the project.



Construction on Metros Silver Line at Dulles Airport on March 6. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)

The panels were used to construct the exterior walls at five of the six stations being built as part of Phase 2. (The panels were not installed at the Dulles Airport station; those panels were manufactured by a different contractor.) One person, the nephew of the companys owner, pleaded guilty in connection with the suit. The company, Pennsylvania-based Universal Concrete, and its president and co-owner, Donald Faust Jr., reached a million-dollar settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the state of Virginia but admitted no wrongdoing.

As a result, CRC agreed to treat the panels with a special sealant to ensure they dont deteriorate.

The first phase of the Silver Line opened in July 2014, seven months late and more than $150 million over budget. It included five stations  four in Tysons and one in Reston. Although ridership on the line has not met expectations, Virginia officials maintain that it is an important catalyst for development in Tysons and the Dulles Corridor.

Read more:

Silver Line contractor pleads guilty to falsifying concrete quality tests

Officials are investigating why a Silver Line parking garage is sinking

Capital Rail Constructors wins contract to build Silver Line phase 2

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That money, in addition to a $1.5 million boost that the General Assembly ordered this year, increases the state funding for the trust fund to $9.5 million at least for the fiscal year, which ends June 30. The fund is essentially a revolving low-interest loan program that can be used to help communities and developers fill gaps in financing their projects.
I have concluded that, while my faith may lead me to a particular decision for myself, as a public official I cannot deny this alternative to those who may reach a different conclusion, Murphy wrote. I believe this choice is a personal one and, therefore, signing this legislation is the decision that best respects the freedom and humanity of all New Jersey residents.
Kathleen Collins KC Becker, who got her start on the Boulder City Council, is the third woman in a row to serve as House speaker. We very diligently recruit women, and train women to run, and hire women as campaign managers, she said in an interview in her offices just off the chamber. And so, all of this is intentional. It didnt just happen that way.
Even more interesting is the question of how the rest of Germany grapples with the Frohnmaier story. Inside the Bundestag, one leading Social Democrat has called for a parliamentary investigation; the Christian Democrats have demanded that Frohnmaier resign. But Germany is still profoundly resistant to the idea of a Russian threat to German democracy, preferring to downplay it as some kind of Cold War throwback idea, and to suspect those who discuss it of warmongering. The belief that German business depends on a good relationship with Moscow runs very deep, even though Germanys trade with Poland is now larger than its trade with Russia. One German friend laughingly described to me the psychological battle the Frohnmaier story must present to many mainstream Germans, who will have to decide whether their instinctive desire to downplay stories about Russian influence trumps their instinctive dislike of the AfD.
These expert opinions show that the Chinese government cannot force Huawei to implant back doors or spyware in telecommunications equipment. No government has ever asked Huawei to do this; if any did, we would refuse. Huawei will never violate our customers trust, nor will we harm any country, organization or individual by compromising security or user privacy.
The volume of work can be overwhelming. Some of our judges carry caseloads of 5,000 cases or more, usually with limited support staff. Because we work for the Justice Department, we are directed how to arrange our dockets and micromanaged about how much time we spend on cases. Beginning in October of last year, judges were ordered to complete 700 cases each year or risk a less-than-satisfactory performance evaluation, which can cost a judge his or her job. This is not how a court should be run. Attorney General William P. Barr told Congress this week that he is hoping to boost the number of judges in our courtrooms from around 425 to 535 over the next few years and for a commensurate boost in lawyers and clerks. We desperately need the help.
When you read the indictment, it doesnt look like anything that turns on whether Assange is or is not a journalist, said Bruce D. Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, in an interview Thursday. No newsroom lawyer would tell a reporter its okay to do whats alleged in the complaint  to help a source break a password and hack a computer.
While the government seems to want to avoid a battle over the First Amendment, focusing mostly on conspiracy, it can later charge Assange with something more. Meanwhile, media talk has turned to whether Assange is really a journalist and if free-speech protections ought to apply to someone who is (allegedly) a criminal first? Despite the recent surge in citizen journalists, saying youre a journalist doesnt make you one. (Granted, some are better than the real ones.)
The result for the District is a dangerous legal limbo. While some use of marijuana is legal, selling it is not, and our city has no way to regulate its production, distribution and use to guard against negative consequences. Residents are confused about what is legal and what is not, entrepreneurs cannot establish legitimate businesses, and the underground market continues to operate without oversight or regulation, posing a potential threat to public safety. From a fiscal standpoint, this lack of regulation prevents the District from reaping the benefits of marijuana taxation. According to a 2014 study, taxing marijuana could generate upward of $20 million in revenue for the District. Unable to regulate or tax, we are operating with one hand tied behind our back.
Virginians are accustomed to impact fees and taxes: gasoline taxes, tire disposal fees, etc. Virginia requires no permit to purchase firearms, even assault weapons. A permit to carry a concealed handgun costs only $50, though handguns flood communities of color  causing most neighborhood crime and putting many residents at risk. Introducing permits to purchase and licenses to possess firearms, as seven states do, and adding impact fees would help offset the astonishing cost of gun bloodshed in our commonwealth.
Lowering the discount rate increases the projections of how much money government policymakers must add to pension plans today to pay for pensions tomorrow. The lower the rate, the more carefully the pension plans are funded. Not surprisingly, politicians rarely reduce these rates, because not doing so frees up spending for more conspicuous programs that could help them get reelected. Maryland lawmakers need to admit they have a perennial problem keeping pensions properly funded.
Now that Benedict, born Joseph Ratzinger, has broken his six-year official silence to quibble with his successor on the topic of sex abuse in the church, confusion is no longer a hypothesis. Its murky indeed when Pope A offers veiled criticism of Pope B in the pages of a Bavarian periodical. As anyone who has co-parented children knows, authority figures who are not on the same page will be played against one another. So it is with Roman Catholic leaders today: Conservatives who dont like the tendencies of Pope Francis are looking to their preferred pope for the doctrinal equivalent of ice cream and a later bedtime.
North Carolina law still allows schools to inflict physical pain upon the body of a student, but school boards have the final say. Just 12 years ago  when the legislature last voted to maintain corporal punishment statewide  about 70 percent of North Carolinas 115 school districts allowed instructors to hit their students. Since that time, however, in a triumph of local activism, all of those districts have reversed course. Graham County was the last holdout. Yet when the end came, it was uncontroversial  the board voted unanimously to end the practice with little public debate. Now, a bipartisan group of legislators is seeking to change state law to ban it for good.
Some custodial staff, particularly those who work overnight, said they have observed or been subject to harassing behavior, but said they would not report it for fear of losing their jobs, according to the report. They also reported feeling unprotected and disadvantaged. One employee told investigators that no one at AOC could tell them what happens if the harasser is a member of Congress.
The conservatives also recently rejected an appeal from a Missouri inmate who said that lethal injection in his case could cause excruciating pain because of a rare medical condition that could cause him to choke on his own blood during the process. The court ruled, 5 to 4, that Russell Bucklew had not proved that lethal injection would choke him or that another manner of execution would alleviate the problem.
The eventual nominee will go up against a foe who has been aggressively fundraising for two years, with no primary to spend on so far. By the end of last year, Trumps campaign had raised more than $129 million for his reelection  an enormous sum that gives him a formidable head start that has likely widened in the first quarter of this year.
Craig is the first prominent Democrat to be charged as part of an investigation spun out from Muellers probe. Trump and his allies have seized on the fact that the special counsel investigation has led to an indictment against a figure closely tied to both Obama and the Clintons. On Friday, the president tweeted that Craig was facing very serious charges and he called on the media to give the case more coverage.
There is little immediate likelihood that a major increase will be signed into law as long as Republicans, who argue that a higher minimum wage would reduce employment, remain in control of the Senate and the White House. But for Democrats who are now in the House majority for the first time in eight years, a hike is an obvious item on their legislative checklist  one that headlined their last successful national campaign to retake the majority in 2006  and it would set the stage for future action if Democrats do well in the 2020 elections.
Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that one of his campaign workers figured out what was going on, alerted Clinton campaign officials and told them, I think these guys are Russians. But Sanders said he never knew, and he later backed off his suggestion that his staff did. A spokesman referred questions to 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who said in an interview that Sanders misspoke a little bit and conflated a few of the facts . . . He did not know, I did not know, none of us knew that Russia was behind the efforts.
Buttigieg, who will officially announce his candidacy for president in South Bend on Sunday, is polling at 9 percent in Iowa, according to a recent Monmouth University poll. That puts him behind former vice president Joe Biden, who has 27 percent of Iowa Democrats support, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has 16 percent, but ahead of everyone else in the crowded field. Similarly, a poll by the New Hampshire Institute of Politics found that in that state, Biden had 23 percent, Sanders 16 percent and Buttigieg 11 percent.
I think the president always, as you and the media do, always welcomes information, Pence said in an interview with CNN. But that was in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information by the United States of America.
Barron is young, but hes got wonderful potential, Trump said. And Tiffanys doing extremely well. Don is, uh, hes enjoying politics; actually, its very good. And Eric is running the business along with Don, and also very much into politics. I mean, the children  the children have been very, very good.
According to a four-page summary of top-line findings of Muellers report provided to Congress on March 24 by Attorney General William P. Barr, Trump and his campaign did not illegally coordinate with Russia, but Mueller left open the question of whether Trump obstructed justice. Barr announced that he had concluded that Trump did not commit obstruction. The attorney generals brief account also quoted the Mueller report as saying, While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.
The Georgian-style house is one of the homes in the Tudor Walk subdivision that was created after a pair of two-story apartment buildings were razed. Built in 1922, Mammoth Court Apartments and Tudor Place Apartments housed World War II heroes to government workers throughout the years. But by the early 1970s, the buildings decline prompted a story in The Post about their unsafe conditions. Before the end of the decade, the landlord sold the buildings to a developer. Because the buildings were outside the boundaries of the historic district, the Old Georgetown Board did not object to their demolition.
The action in Brunei serves as the most recent example of the fallout from some of Trumps earliest decisions in corners of the world far from Washington. Some diplomats and experts argue that leaving the TPP has hampered the United States ability to rein in countries such as Brunei on potential human rights violations. The Trump administration, meanwhile, has been criticized as being softer on these issues than previous administrations were.
Moreover, the solicitor who represented McKinnon, Karen Todner, said May moved to limit the discretion of the home secretary to refuse to carry out extradition orders at the very same time that she refused to hand over Todners client, meaning Assanges fate is likely to rest entirely with the courts. Todner also represented Lauri Love, a British hacker whose extradition was blocked last year by the High Court of Justice, which found that conditions in a U.S. prison would be oppressive and that Britain was the rightful forum for his prosecution.
But many protesters remain suspicious of the army, believing it is seeking to exert full political control. Salah was instrumental in bringing down Bouteflika when he declared the president unfit for office. But now many fear Salahs ambitions are greater, and they think that his support for Bensalah as the countrys interim leader is a sign that the army does not want to change the ruling order.
On Friday, Ibn Auf announced Bashir would not be handed over to the International Criminal Court, where he is charged with committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Sudans western region of Darfur more than a decade ago. Instead, he said, Bashir might be tried within Sudan. Most analysts say the military establishments ties to the atrocities in Darfur mean a fair prosecution of Bashir in Sudan is improbable.
The Chileans are in a tough place, said a former U.S. administration official familiar with the process, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations with U.S. and foreign officials. They are committed to the Lima Group approach, and do not want any light to open between countries in that group. . . . However, they are beginning to feel the heat at home as the Venezuelan crisis drags on and as fears rise that we might turn to intervention and military action  something which would ignite the left.
Thats part of the reason why folks were afraid to work on this issue for a very long time, said Shawn Powers, a former head of the Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy, which has recommended the merger in every annual report since 2014. The Smith-Mundt statute is ingrained in State Department employees heads from early training. They said, Theres no way we can do this. 
The judges decision appeared to end the quest for accountability for victims of abuses following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. The prosecutor was particularly interested in looking at the alleged abuse of detainees taken in by U.S. forces and the CIA. Although the judges said there was a basis to believe crimes had been committed, a lack of cooperation from the United States, Afghan authorities and the Taliban made the chances of a successful prosecution remote.
Some worry that overseas leaders may perceive they are dealing with a Pentagon leader with reduced status because of the absence of the Senates imprimatur. The situation has threatened Shanahans stature in Congress, where he is trying to get a defense budget passed to recalibrate the military and establish the Space Force. It also could complicate his ability to fill jobs at the Pentagon and manage an extensive bureaucracy that often seeks to wait out or slow-roll political appointees.
So far this year, 1,712 individuals have been detained, and of those, 1,214 were held for at least 48 hours  the threshold researchers use to classify a detainee as a political prisoner. Foro Penal data shows that the number of arrests in the first three months of this year accounts for nearly half of all the political detentions carried out since Maduros rise to power in 2014.
Software company Zoho, which boasts clients such as Qantas and BHP, is facing delays to its launch in Australia due to government red tape despite the global tech giant announcing its entry into the region in February.

Zoho digitises businesses with apps that handle tasks ranging from customer acquisition and management to sales and customer support and has 45 million users across 180 countries but the tech company has struggled to get an Australian Business Number.

Timothy Kasbe is the managing director for Australia and New Zealand of Zoho.

Zoho has already gained traction in Australia with "tens of thousands" of users in the country on the back of purely organic growth, however the tech company wants to expand its footprint and has announced an investment of more than $40 million in the country.

Zoho is opening an office in Byron Bay for which it is hiring about 20 staff and building two servers in Tullamarine and Albury.
After a legal struggle described as a David versus Goliath battle, two Australian surfers have helped halt a Chinese development accused of causing extensive environmental damage to a tropical island.

In 2015, Navrin Fox and Woody Jack bought a 99-year lease on an acre of land on Fijis Malolo Island with plans to turn the site into a small eco-friendly resort or Airbnb.

Navrin Fox and Woody Jack on one of many trips to Fiji Credit:Navrin Fox

"We just had a crazy dream when we saw the land and thought that looks awesome," Mr Fox said.

However, in late 2017 a Chinese developer leased the neighbouring piece of land and proceeded to trespass on their property, to cut down a third of the propertys trees and to dump construction equipment onto the property.
Malcolm Turnbull's son has orchestrated donations for Liberal Party defector Julia Banks' campaign to unseat Health Minister Greg Hunt at the federal election, as the "unusual" funding structure behind four high-profile independents sparks a formal complaint.

The Liberal Party has asked the Australian Electoral Commission to urgently investigate whether the creation of near-identical financial vehicles for Ms Banks, Kerryn Phelps, Tony Abbott opponent Zali Steggall and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's rival Oliver Yates "circumvents" donation laws.

Julia Banks, Kerryn Phelps, Zali Steggall and Oliver Yates are running in the May 18 election as independents. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen, Edwina Pickles, Eddie Jim

Ms Banks told Nine News, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age she has been soliciting advice from Alex Turnbull over the phone, and he helped put her in contact with one person who provided $8000 worth of in-kind support to set up her website.

Alex helped me with the set-up of my campaign, the website and set-up but this is a grassroots campaign, she said.
At the visit, Deputy PM Minh expressed his delight at thriving Vietnam  Laos ties and regular visits between their high-ranking leaders. He mentioned the recent visit to Laos by General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Nguyen Phu Trong, saying it helped boost bilateral cooperation.

He affirmed Vietnam considers Laos traditional New Year festival as its own and vice versa, and their exchanges of greetings reflect friendship, solidarity and partnership.

The Deputy PM said Vietnam is working to realise agreements obtained between the two leaders to push relations toward effectiveness and practical outcomes.

The Foreign Ministry will continue collaborating with the Lao embassy on such efforts and further extend cooperation opportunities for both nations, he added.

Congratulating Laos on its achievements after three years implementing the Resolution of the 10th National Congress of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party, FM Minh said he believes the country, under its Partys leadership, will continue its gains in the future.

For his part, Lao Ambassador Thongsavanh Phomvihane said the Deputy PM and Foreign Ministry officials always create favourable conditions for the embassy to fulfill its mission.

He stated the embassy will continue working closely with the ministry on monitoring and boosting the implementation of the two nations cooperation agreements.

Expressing his appreciation for Vietnams assistance toward his country, the diplomat said Laos will step up its education on the bilateral relations and celebration of the two nations major events, particularly the 70th traditional day of Vietnamese soldiers in Laos (October 30, 1949).

Bupimay festival takes place in Laos on April 14  16 annually, with locals splashing water on each other to wish for good luck in the year ahead.
Labor's star candidate for Julie Bishop's seat of Curtin quit on Friday night after the party entered into crisis talks over remarks she made about the Israel and Palestine conflict.

It is understood Melissa Parke withdrew her candidacy after reports she told a group of pro-Palestinian activists last month that Australia should recognise a Palestinian state and that Israel's settlements were akin to China's island building activity in the South China Sea.

Labor's candidate for Curtin Melissa Parke has raised the ire of the Jewish community with her strident support for Palestine. Credit:Marina Neil

In the speech she also took aim at Israel's influence in Australian politics and said there was no doubt Palestinian rocket attacks on Israel, while illegal under international law, were "a reaction to and a consequence of decades of brutal occupation".

Ms Parke made unverified claims about incidents of cruelty she said had been perpetrated by Israelis at checkpoints.
Depression is no laughing matter.

But a group of Melbourne researchers believe nitrous oxide, commonly known as laughing gas, may hold the key to treating severe depression in people who have not responded to standard therapies.

Carolyn Deng, Professor Paul Myles and Professor Jayashri Kulkarni at The Alfred hospital. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

In the first study of its kind in Australia people with depression will inhale about the same amount of nitrous oxide as someone getting a filling at the dentist.

"A patient can effectively come in and sit in a chair and relax and listen to nice music and breathe in the gas and they'll start to feel, perhaps, slightly woozy and a bit better in their mood almost immediately," says Associate Professor Paul Myles, who is leading the study at The Alfred hospital.
It's hard to imagine what it must be like to sit through legal evidence about your own breasts. The lawyers used another term, of course - "inappropriate touching" was deployed a lot, and there was discussion of cupping versus squeezing.

That is what Eryn Jean Norvill, the actress who (privately) made allegations of inappropriate conduct against Geoffrey Rush, sat through during the defamation proceedings brought by Mr Rush against The Daily Telegraph.

She never wanted her report against Mr Rush to be made public, but it found its way to the front page of the tabloid, in the febrile context of the #metoo movement, and she became collateral damage in the ensuing dogfight.

On Thursday, as the judge awarded $850,000 in damages to Mr Rush (with further consideration of economic damages to be decided later), the damage to Ms Norvill's reputation became clear too.
An Irish ex-bikie who has lived in Australia since he was six years old, but has spent time behind bars, will be deported after his visa was cancelled and his appeal rejected in the Federal Court.

John Paul Pennie, who moved to Australia with his parents in 1980, was sentenced in July 2015 to four-and-a-half years in a West Australian prison for charges including possessing methylamphetamine with intent to sell or supply and wilful destruction of evidence.

In January 2016, a delegate of the home affairs minister cancelled Pennie's visa, ruling he did not pass the character test due to his criminal record which included being a former vice president of the Bandidos bikies.

The man is a former Bandidos bikie.

After the minister refused to revoke the cancellation, Pennie took his case to the Federal Court but on Thursday his application was rejected.
A Dutch man will face a Perth court on Friday charged with allegedly assaulting passengers and crew on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Perth at the weekend.

The man was arrested on Sunday morning after police received reports of a disruptive passenger on the incoming flight.

The man has been charged with seven offences. Credit:Rob Homer

Police will allege the 26-year-old Dutch man left his seat three hours into the flight and moved to the rear of the plane where he began talking and shouting to himself.

"Cabin crew attempted to calm the man, but he started banging on the walls and overhead compartments," the AFP said in a statement.
A Perth to Kalgoorlie flight has been forced to return back to Perth Airport after aborting a landing attempt in the Goldfields town due to low cloud cover.

The Virgin Australia flight took off from Perth just after 7am, and was due to arrive at Kalgoorlie-Boulder Airport about 8.10am.

The Virgin flight was forced to turn back to Perth on Friday morning. Credit:6PR

Instead, the Fokker 100 descended to 1500 feet, before ascending again to about 3000 feet and circling the airport twice. It then returned to Perth.

WAtoday understands all flights in and out of Kalgoorlie-Boulder Airport have been cancelled due to thunderstorms and low cloud cover.
It was only last Friday that Scott Morrison stood in his private courtyard at Parliament House and declared Australia had to lift its game in its treatment of people with disabilities.

"We have to establish a culture of respect for people living with disabilities and the families who support, love and care for them," the Prime Minister said after announcing a royal commission into the abuse of the most vulnerable in our community.

Just one week later one of the government's most senior figures, Peter Dutton, is hardly leading by example.

The Home Affairs Minister has launched a grubby overnight attack on Ali France, his Labor opponent in the marginal Queensland seat of Dickson, accusing the amputee of "using her disability as an excuse" for not yet buying a home in the seat she wants to win at the May 18 election.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has confirmed Australia is providing consular assistance to Julian Assange following his arrest in London but the Wikileaks founder will receive "no special treatment", even in the wake of a US extradition request.

An Australian citizen, Assange had been living in the Ecuadorian embassy for more than six years until that country ended his political asylum on Thursday for "discourteous and aggressive behaviour" and WikiLeaks' "hostile and threatening declarations" against Ecuador.

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. Credit:PA

He was charged with skipping bail by entering the embassy in 2012. Appearing in Westminster Magistrates' Court four hours later, he pleaded not guilty, claiming he had a reasonable excuse for seeking asylum as his arrest would end in his extradition to the US.

That extradition request, on charges related to the publication of vast quantities of classified information by Wikileaks, is forthcoming but will be fought by Assange's lawyers.
Environment officials say a Labor government could disrupt the proposed Adani coal mine by applying tough new scrutiny to the company's plan to pump billions of litres of water from a river in drought-stricken Queensland, as the issue flared on the first day of the federal election campaign.

The divisive Adani project threatens to plague Labor until election day as the party walks a delicate line between appeasing unions and voters in central Queensland, who want more coal jobs, and not angering inner-city voters who consider the mine incompatible with serious climate action.

Labor will be under pressure to further clarify its position on Adani during the election campaign. Credit:AAP

Environment Minister Melissa Price approved Adani's groundwater plan this week, meaning the mine proposal has now cleared its last federal hurdle. However, Adani is still awaiting federal sign-off on a separate plan to pump billions of litres of water from the Suttor River in drought-stricken central Queensland to feed the mine, known as the North Galilee Water Scheme.

Large coal mines must undergo strict federal environmental assessment and independent scientific scrutiny if they are likely to significantly impact a water resource, in a rule known as the water trigger.
London: Julian Assange is likely to face extra criminal charges and potentially decades in jail in the US in addition to the computer hacking allegation revealed on Thursday, according to media reports in the US and UK.

Assange spent Thursday night in an English jail after his dramatic arrest at Ecuadors London embassy, ending six and a half years of political asylum in the cramped apartment behind Harrods.

He has been found guilty and faces a sentence of up to a years jail for skipping bail by entering the embassy in 2012 when he had exhausted his appeals against extradition to Sweden to face rape and sexual assault allegations.

Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. Credit:PA

Ecuadors ambassador had sent a written invitation allowing the police to come in and arrest Assange, after it revoked his political asylum for discourteous and aggressive behaviour and hostile and threatening declarations against Ecuador, President Lenin Moreno said.
Philadelphia: For decades, scientists have studied twins and triplets to measure how human characteristics are influenced by heredity and to what degree they can be altered by the surrounding environment.

But never have they tested an environment so unusual as the one described in a new study published on Thursday: 340 days aboard the International Space Station.

Astronaut Scott Kelly was subjected to a battery of biological tests before, during, and after his voyage while his identical twin, Mark, a retired astronaut, underwent the same tests on Earth.

Ten teams of researchers detected a variety of subtle changes in the physiology of the space-bound twin, they reported in the journal Science. Most of Scott Kelly's test results returned to the level of his twin brother after the mission ended in March 2016, and he remains in good health - offering hope that astronauts someday could endure a much longer mission to Mars.
"You can't arrive at a house that welcomes you warmly, that gives you food, and takes care of you, and start to denounce the owner of the house," Moreno said. "We've removed the asylum for this spoiled brat and, fortunately, we've gotten rid of a thorn in our side." US President Donald Trump. Credit:Bloomberg "When you're given shelter, cared for and provided food you don't denounce the owner of the house," said Moreno to applause at an event outside Quito. He added that Ecuador will "be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments." In his words, "We are tolerant, calm people but we're not stupid."

Lenin's predecessor, former ex-President Rafael Correa criticised what he considered a "double standard" by Western media and governments who he said have been quick to condemn Assange for publishing sensitive information about US national security interests. Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno. Credit:AP Correa, who granted Assange asylum in 2012, in an interview with The Associated Press was harshly critical of his successor's decision to expel the Wikileaks founder from Ecuador's embassy in London. "Although Julian Assange denounced war crimes, he's only the person supplying the information. It's the New York Times, the Guardian and El Pais publishing it. Why aren't those journalists and media owners thrown in jail?" he said in an interview in Brussels. "It's because they're attacking at the weakest link." He said that if Assange had been Chinese dissident exposing Russian secrets "he'd be receiving awards right now in the UK and US" instead of facing arrest and extradition.

While he said that Assange had violated the terms of his asylum "that's no excuse for throwing him to the lions." Ecuador's ex-president Rafael Correa. Credit:AP He said President Lenin Moreno was acting out of selfish political interests to the detriment of Latin America's tradition of asylum after WikiLeaks published information about an offshore bank account allegedly used by the president and his family to buy up properties and furniture in Europe. Still, he said he was surprised Moreno went so far as to expel Assange. "I knew they were trying to break him and were treating him like a piece of merchandise," he said. "But I didn't think they would dare to go so far."

Russia has criticised the way in which London police arrested Assange at the foreign embassy where he took asylum in 2012 and since remained in hiding. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday the way Assange was treated gave "the full impression of an open and rude disregard for the human dignity of the arrested." She said: Russia hopes "all the rights of Julian Assange will be respected." Ecuador's president says his government withdrew Assange's asylum status almost seven years after he sought refuge in the country's embassy in London, alleging "repeated violations of international conventions and daily-life protocols."

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state weighed in on Assange while at a speaking event with her husband, former President Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton said on Thursday, "The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it has been charged." International reaction came as an Ecuadorian official saying that a Swedish software developer who is allegedly close to Assange had been arrested as authorities try to dismantle a blackmail ring that threatened to retaliate against President Lenin Moreno. The official said Ola Bini was arrested on Thursday at Quito's airport as he was preparing to board a flight for Japan. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity and didn't provide any additional details about Bini.
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Case Involves Alleged Child Abuse Resulting In Death

An arrest was made last week, April 2, regarding a child abuse case that occurred Sunday, March 31, in Kimball, according to Kimball Police Chief Andy Bremer.

A man identified as Alexander Romero has been placed in custody and is currently charged with child abuse resulting in death, a class 1B felony that carries a minimum sentence of 25 years with a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Romero will have his preliminary hearing at the end of April.

According to Kimball County Attorney Dave Wilson, the Nebraska Attorney Generals Office has appointed Attorney Doug Warner as the special deputy county attorney to assist on this case.

Bremer added that the Nebraska State Patrol also is involved with the investigation of this case.

No further details have been released. The Attorney Generals Office declined to give a statement, restating that no additional information was available.

More information to come in the Observer as it is made available.
A senior engineering project at the University of Connecticut has turned into a post-grad job with Stratford-based Sikorsky.

Weve hired several students whove worked on our projects for a couple of different reasons, said Paul Inguanti, who helps lead the Senior Design Program between UConn and the Lockheed Martin subsidiary.

Electrical engineering majors Kerry Jones and Joshua Steil are the latest recruits for Sikorsky and its parent company, after they developed an autonomous firefighting drone, with fellow classmate Ryan Heilemann.

Jones has accepted an offer with Sikorsky after she graduates in the companys autonomy lab, as part of its Rotary and Mission Systems department. Steil will work for Lockheed Martin in Massachusetts after graduation.

Sikorsky sponsors several UConn Engineering Senior Design projects annually. These projects tackle real-life problems and questions and connect engineers at companies with the next generation of innovators.

We have a fair number of students who, when they finish up, have become very interested in working in aerospace problems and working at Sikorsky, Inguanti said.

Heilemann also decided to go into the aerospace industry, and has found a job doing control and diagnostics at another company.

The trio took a store-bought drone and modified it with sensors and a thermal imaging camera to help the aircraft seek out and extinguish fires.

Its going to drop a water balloon on the fire once the thermal imager sees that the drone is over the fire, Jones said, adding that the goal is to make the drone fully autonomous through programming.

The project was aimed at combatting increasingly large forest fires like those in California.

A helicopter is used to fight fires, but if its dangerous for people to be there, then the idea would be to do the same thing, just without people being involved, Jones said. It would definitely be a tool if this could be scaled up to a full-sized helicopter.

Teams in previous years have worked on similar projects with Sikorsky, which provided some guidance on what has worked before, and what has not.

This gives you an opportunity to work with students one-on-one weekly and find out really what they are made of, said Sikorsky spokesperson Catherine Sneed. And these senior design projects are really a driving force to see what they can do with little to nothing  with an idea.
Soft Surroundings is adding a second Connecticut store on May 3 at Danbury Fair mall, with the company selling womens apparel, shoes, skin care products, makeup and home goods.

The St. Louis, Mo.-based company launched its debut catalog in 1999 and since has expanded to more than 75 locations, including in 2007 when it opened its first Connecticut location in South Windsor at the Promenade Shops at Evergreen Walk.
STAMFORD  Schools Superintendent Earl Kim, with two years remaining on his contract, is stepping down, according to an email sent to district employees by Board of Education President Andy George.

In order to ensure that the rumors, which have been circulating regarding Mr. Kims role as superintendent are not a distraction to the district, Mr. Kim has disclosed this morning to his senior leadership team, including building principals, that it is his intention to step down prior to the end of his current contract, the Friday afternoon email said. The Board, along with SPS executive leadership team including Mr. Kim, are working together on a transition plan with the best interest of the school district in mind. When the transition plans are finalized, a formal announcement will be made.

Mayor David Martin praised Kim, who has been superintendent for almost three years, in a brief emailed comment later Friday afternoon.

Earl Kim has been a professional and committed superintendent to our school district, he wrote. His work in Stamford Public Schools has been guided by consideration and respect for our students. I trust he will provide the same guidance during this transition as he has throughout his tenure as the leader of our phenomenal school district.

Sharon Beadle, public affairs officer for Stamford Public Schools, said Kim would not release a statement Friday.

It was unclear this week why Kim is leaving, or if the decision was all his own.

The board has generally praised Kims performance during his tenure in Stamford, but there has been friction including over communication and his handling of school buildings.

Kims contract was extended for three years in August, when board members gave him a 1 percent raise on his $225,000 annual salary.

With one of the nine board members absent, the vote to extend the contract was 7-1. George, who was not board president at the time, voted against it but would not say why.

A month after the vote, The Stamford Advocate obtained a copy of the boards one-page evaluation of Kim, the first since he became superintendent in July 2016. Board members were critical of Kims request for a $509,000 budget transfer to reorganize Central Office, saying they wanted him to be more transparent about finances. They also, however, praised Kim for his design to improve efficiency in Central Office without increasing the staff or budget. Furthermore, they commended his strategic plan and new mission statement for the district.

In January, the board once again evaluated the superintendent. In an email to Kim leading up to his evaluation, George brought up the boards concerns over ABM Industries, the facilities management firm for Stamford Public Schools.

The Board is generally displeased with facilities management, especially during the past several months, George wrote. ABM appears to be derelict in their oversight of personnel, their response to the mold conditions experienced since August and the lack of management reporting to the Board.

Mold was discovered in a number of schools late last summer. The problem was so bad at Westover Magnet Elementary School on Stillwater Avenue that it had to be closed. Students and staff were moved to an office building at 1 Elmcroft Road that the city renovated and has leased through June 2020.

The mold infestation revealed that years of poor maintenance in multiple school buildings has resulted in water infiltration that will require tens of millions of dollars of repairs district-wide. To date, nearly $6.5 million has been spent on cleanup and reconstruction.

Staff writers Angela Carella, Ignacio Laguarda and Barry Lytton contributed to this report, which includes prior reporting by Erin Kayata.
Friday is Day 9 of the Stop & Shop workers strike.

Heres what you need to know.

Are the two sides talking?

Yes.

Both sides said they exchanged proposals, but there was no agreement.

Stop & Shop President Mark McGowan said as negotiations on a new contract continue, I know we are all united in our hope that this situation is resolved soon and that we can all get our energies back to being fully focused on our customers

The UFCW union said Stop & Shop still havent moved from their wage proposal and other substantial issues that matter to you and your coworkers. We will be back at the table tomorrow (Thursday) to continue to work towards an agreement that will make Stop & Shop better for workers and shoppers.

For the unions update on negotiations, click here.

For Stop & Shops updates on negotiations, click here

Whats new?

More for you Stop & Shop workers go on strike in CT

Former Vice President Joe Biden attended a rally in Boston on Thurday in support of striking workers.

Stop & Shop president said to the striking workers, I deeply respect your right to picket. It is part of the civil discourse that is so central to our democracy. On several occasions, however, protests have gone far beyond civil - and customers and employees have been threatened, intimidated or put in situations that felt dangerous or disrespectful. That and illegal actions are things that we will - and I will - absolutely not stand for.

Are Stop & Shop stores open?

The only Stop & Shop closed is on Whalley Avenue in New Haven.

Store hours may be different and some services may not be available.

Stop & Shop pharmacies and Peoples United Bank branches are open.

It has posted the stores operating hours here.

How many stores are there?

The grocery giant employs more than 31,000 associates throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The company operates 92 stores in Connecticut alone.

Quincy, Massachusetts-based Stop & Shop, a division of Dutch supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize, has 415 stores across the Northeast but the strike affects 240 stores in the three states.

Should I cross the picket line?

Thats your decision.

Nearly empty parking lots show that many customers have chosen to go to other stores.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 919 asked its members to remain courteous to those who need items from the pharmacies inside the stores. Many of these members of the communities may not have any other options and we know all too well what its like when access to health care is under threat.

Can I support strikers?

Yes.

Check out the GoFundMe page devoted to raising funds for those workers out of jobs. Find the fundraising page by clicking here.
Contributed photo

The Pequot Library in Fairfield is hosting a free family program with the Greater Bridgeport Symphonys Maestro Eric Jacobsen Saturday, April 13, prior to the GBS 8 p.m. concert at The Klein Memorial Auditorium in Bridgport.

Billed as Close Encounters with the Conductor of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony, echoing the GBS current A Season In Space theme, the event will take place at 4 p.m. in the librarys auditorium at 720 Pequot Ave., in the towns Southport section.
WESTPORT  A strong front of opposition met the application for the Hiawatha Lane 8-30g affordable housing development Thursday night at the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, with commissioners themselves sharing high levels of concern.

The hearing for the five-building, 187-unit multifamily project was continued to April 25 at the request of attorney Timothy Hollister of Shipman & Goodwin, LLC, on behalf of Summit Development. A vote is likely to take place that night.

Two items related to the approval puzzle raised particular concern  pedestrian safety in the neighborhood and an emergency access road via Norwalk.

Hollister stated that in order to assuage concerns of Fire Marshal Nate Gibbons about fire department access, the intention was to get the city of Norwalk to approve an access road to the complex via the adjacent Avalon East Norwalk development, which lies to the west of the 9-acre parcel.

They said to us, When you know the position of the Westport Planning and Zoning Commission, we will be ready to hear,  Hollister said of Norwalks officials.

This project has been in the works for years (so) its kind of troubling to get to this point and not have our sister towns approvals in line, Commissioner Chip Stevens said.

But Matthew Mandell, Representative Town Meeting member for District 1, which includes this neighborhood, said Norwalk would never sanction the access road because of a previous agreement with Westport.

Citing a 2006 mutual restrictive covenant he said was put in place with the previous owners of the land prior to the construction of Avalon East Norwalk development, the agreement was an access road would never be opened that could create additional traffic in and out of Westport.

No way is Norwalk going to approve it (because) Norwalk has already agreed to not have that happen because they were looking to protect Westport, Mandell said.

He also said the applicant has known all along that the road could never be built, but chose to deflect attention from it.

I see a whole bunch of ghosts over here, he said, indicating the team of specialists appearing for the applicant. This project is dead. ... Theyre not existing in reality any longer. Theyre in some other world where they havent come to understand that this project is gone.

I guess my response to Mr. Mandell is, Beam me up, Scotty,  Hollister said, calling his comments and tone disconcerting.

Construction of a sidewalk  or a lined walkway  out to Saugatuck Avenue to abet pedestrian traffic to the train station was, likewise, presented as being contingent on another entity, in this case the town of Westport.

While site engineer Mark Shogren said there was room in the towns right of way, it would require doing away with on-street parking on at least one side of Davenport Avenue, something thats been a regular feature in the neighborhood for a long time.

Youre asking the town to affirmatively take an action so that you can build a property, Commissioner Jon Olefson said. Is that what youre asking?

Yes, Shogren said.

Hollister, who noted that people are now parking illegally, said it amounted to a positive amenity and safety improvement opportunity for the town, but commissioners didnt concur.

I do think you have an ethical dilemma in representing your client against the town, Olefson told him.

Im a little annoyed that were in April and youre just now getting around to pedestrian safety, Chairman Paul Lebowitz said.

Asked to speak to fire safety issues, Gibbons said the proposal to have a dry hydrant that accesses water through an on-site 52,000-gallon cistern was questionable, given the Westport departments inexperience in using one, as well as potential issues of equipment reliability.

Former Fire Chief Andrew Kingsbury, who appeared as a peer review consultant, said two or three cisterns should be used, especially as the one would still necessitate around 250 yards of fire hose to reach the far side of the complex in an emergency.

He said the neighborhood, once the complex is built, becomes a target hazard as far as fire safety is concerned.

Were talking about tripling the size of the neighborhood, Gibbons said.
People are rising up against the robots.

My column last week about the army of mechanical creepy creatures called Marty now invading Stop & Shop supermarkets drew many emails from readers expressing outrage and even vows of resistance.

Meanwhile, thousands of Stop & Shop workers across New England went on strike Thursday after protracted negotiations between their union and management did not produce a new contract agreement. Maybe if you cross the picket line (I wouldnt do that myself nor recommend it), you will have Marty standing there to assist you.

This week, there was more news on the robot front: Walmart announced it will be sending into its stores thousands of these automatons to clean floors, scan shelves to check inventory and unload trucks.

If you believe these corporations are doing this to improve customer service, consider this statement from Michael Dastague, chief financial officer for Walmart U.S.: As we evolve, there are certain jobs that will go away.

Walmart has been a leader in installing self-checkout stations monitored by self-service checkout supervisors who watch customers do what store employees used to do for those customers. Stop & Shop has those, too, as you must have noticed. I have refused to use them because they are an obvious tool to cut back on workers.

The leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which represents the striking Stop & Shop workers, have no doubt that the robots, like the self-service checkout stations, are a way for the company to hire fewer employees.

The union representatives also point out that customers enjoy having human interaction: a smiling cashier who will say hello and thank you and answer your questions about your product selections and assist you.

Felicity Medinger asked me in an email: Whatever happened to good customer service and the friendly hi? And the box stores wonder why they are losing business to the internet. The more they cut back, the more people flee to their computers.

Medinger said she is so irritated by the robot in Stop & Shop that I call it names when I go by it. It doesnt care but it sure makes me feel better.

Medinger, who clearly likes to interact with other humans, said she has had many conversations with Stop & Shop workers about the robots. One of them told me that because the robot is so tall, its really creepy when it seems to be watching with those googly eyes as it peers at him from over the onions or potatoes from the next aisle.

Medinger added: Another worker told me that once it takes a picture of a spill and calls it out over the intercom, it times the workers to see how fast they come and clean it up, then takes another picture for proof that it is done. Maybe its secretly a member of the Nazi party?

Medinger also wrote: If I was a worker there, I know Id be pretty resentful being at the beck and call of a rolling machine with googly eyes.

Candy Grana reported in an email to me: Those stupid robots are the most inconvenient convenience I have ever encountered. The one in the Wallingford Stop & Shop travels right down the middle of the aisles, which are already too narrow, so you cannot possibly get past him, or her, or it. This is just another way to eliminate employees.

Grana added, For the most part, I have stopped shopping there.

Paula Notarino told me: I shop in the West Haven Stop & Shop and I am really considering not shopping there anymore. Marty gets in the way of customers. The other day I saw two elderly women trying to get around that stupid robot and it also was in my way while I tried to navigate around it in the aisle.

Notarino noted people need to realize that Marty and those self-checkout machines dont pay into Social Security and Medicare. That fund has to be replenished, not cut. Someone, somewhere has to pay into Medicare so we can continue to replenish the fund, and to do that we need well-paying jobs, not robots or self-checkout.

Heather Carrano emailed me to say: I protest Marty the robot! Last weekend I was shopping on a Saturday during the afternoon, and not only did I have to avoid the robot in the aisles, the check-out lanes were almost exclusively self-checkout.

Carrano noted, The grocery stores used to have a cashier and bagger at every lane on weekends. They employed the elderly, high school students, college students, disabled people, moms who only wanted to work while their kids were in school, etc. Every time you use a self-checkout lane, you eliminate a job for a person who needs one.

Carrano concluded, We need to protest this increased elimination of jobs by refusing to use self-checkout lanes at stores, and insisting that stores provide cashiers and baggers during peak hours for shoppers. Otherwise the day will soon come where you only have one person supervising the self-checkout lanes and no alternatives for checking out at stores.

Jo-Anne Consiglio had a similar prediction: I believe the time is coming where we will walk into most stores and there will only be one human on hand in the entire store, because all of the jobs will be computer or robot-run.

Certainly Ive noticed the lines are getting longer at the Stop & Shop I have patronized in Hamden for many years. But recently, my wife and I have begun to drive farther north up Whitney Avenue to Cheshire to buy our groceries at another supermarket chain in order to avoid what we call Flop & Drop.

Imagine this: when we had completed our shopping at that Cheshire market and were approaching the checkout area, a smiling employee came out from the cash register (there was nobody on line, even though it was a weekend) and said: All set? I can take you here!

I felt as if I had entered the Twilight Zone, had gone back in time to a simpler era.

Its worth the trip.

Call Randall Beach at 203-680-9345 or randall.beach@hearstmediact.com.
Addressing the event, Deputy Foreign Minister Le Hoai Trung, head of the Vietnamese delegation, said women play an active role in UN peacekeeping, especially in addressing gender-related issues, protecting and promoting women and girls rights, creating momentum for women and girls in the areas they are working in to participate in peacekeeping and positively impacting the settlement of sexual abuse and violence in UN peacekeeping operations.

He said to improve womens participation, the UN should promote the implementation of the UNSCs Resolution 2242. He asked UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to look into barriers to womens engagement in peacekeeping and propose solutions on the basis of the Gender Parity Strategy.

He called on developed countries to boost their support for the Elsie Initiative for Women in Peace Operations to increase womens presence in security and defence forces.

The diplomat also emphasised that UN peacekeeping operations need to ensure basic principles of non-intervention, neutrality and relevant parties consensus.

Since 2014, Vietnam has sent army officers to UN peacekeeping missions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic. The first Vietnamese female officer arrived in South Sudan in 2017.

Vietnam currently has 10 female army officers at its level-two field hospital in South Sudan and will continue promoting womens participation in UN peacekeeping forces, Trung said.

In his speech, Secretary-General Guterres reaffirmed the UNs efforts to enhance womens representation in peacekeeping by rolling out the Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy 2018-2028.

He said the UN is stepping up the implementation of Resolution 2242 on women, peace and security, adopted in 2015. He also applauded the promotion of the Elsie Initiative that aims to raise womens participation.

Guterres called for assistance from member states in sending more female officers and focusing more on women in battalions and police units at peacekeeping missions.

At the debate, UN member states stated their support to the UNSCs resolutions on womens role in all stages of the peace process as well as peacekeeping operations.

Many said it is necessary to ensure gender balance in peacekeeping forces by increasing the number of women officers and creating fair opportunities for women to be appointed to all positions, especially leadership, in UN peacekeeping operations and the security-defence system of countries. They noted that ensuring gender balance in UN peacekeeping forces will have positive impacts on the settlement of sexual exploitation, abuse and violence.

On the sidelines of the debate, Deputy Foreign Minister Trung met with several ambassadors and heads of other UN member states missions to call for their support for Vietnams candidacy for a non-permanent seat in the UNSC for 2020-2021. Vietnam is currently the only candidate representing Asia-Pacific.
STAMFORD  After deeming a Bridgeport man convicted of armed robberies, attempted murder and arson unable to be rehabilitated, a Stamford judge on Thursday sentenced Onaje Smith to 35 years in prison.

In a fourth-floor courtroom 10 weeks after he was convicted by a jury of an extended crime spree in Stamford and Norwalk punishable by up to 206 combined years in prison, Judge John Blawie, who presided over his January jury trial, did not mince words.

Blawie said Smith, who is facing a separate murder charge in Bridgeport for the 2016 killing of Stamford resident Shane Slinsky, was likely to commit serious crimes again, was beyond control and could not be expected to hew to the norms of society, ever.

Blawie said he searched in vain for any factors that would mitigate Smiths sentence, but was unable to find any.

Blawie said Smiths life had been lived in a state of perpetual corruption, and with his thug life the rest of society cannot be made to live with him.

When asked if he had anything to say, Smith, 20, declined and sat down.

Assistant States Attorney Michelle Manning asked for a 35- to 40-year sentence, saying that with all the damage he did while shooting two people and nearly killing one of them he deserved the entire 40.

Manning said the sentence was an appropriate one and it was clear to her that Blawie put a lot of thought into it.

She also thanked all the officers who worked on the case.

There were so many police departments and agencies that worked on this case like state police, Norwalk, Stamford, Bridgeport and state fire marshals, Manning said. Everybody worked together during this crime spree trying to protect the community and get these guys off the street. And they did a phenomenal job and it is because of their hard work that we were were able to get him off the streets.

John Thygerson, the attorney for Smiths co-defendant Tyreik Gantt, 21, of Stamford, who was supposed to go to trial with Smith before he folded and pleaded guilty to the same dozen felonies Smith was found guilty of, questioned Smiths determination to take his case to trial.

Gantt was sentenced earlier this year to 20 years in prison.

Todays sentencing further underscores my clients prudence in evaluating the evidence and electing to take a plea and not test the strength of the states case at trial, Thygerson said.

Smiths attorney Miles Gerety said he and his client did not agree with the jurys verdict in the case. He said that while it can be tempting to throw away the key, Gerety said studies show that in 17 years Smith will be as likely to commit a serious felony as a 13-year-old.

He said young men in their late teens and early 20s were more likely than at any other time in their lives to commit violent crimes and by letting the years roll by they will change.

Considering the circumstances Gerety said he agreed that Smith deserved a substantial sentence. But he still held out hope for Smith in the future.

At the time Smith and Gantt were involved in their crime spree in 2017, Stamford police said the two had been wreaking holy hell on lower Fairfield County.

The duo robbed two Chinese food delivery drivers in Norwalk in January 2017, shooting one in the leg and arm and stealing his car. Minutes after one of those robberies, Gantt was seen on a surveillance camera at a Stamford gas station pumping gasoline into the back seat of the car, which moments later was found engulfed in flames on Oakwood Place in Stamford.

The two also shot at a rival gang member during a drive-by that same month, Manning said, and both were involved in following that same 19-year-old man into a West Main Street convenience store in Stamford and shooting him in the left temple and abdomen. The man survived.

jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com
The federal government announced Thursday that it is adding more strength to the National Housing Strategy.

The right to adequate housing for all Canadians will be supported by several key initiatives:

Requiring the adoption and maintenance of a National Housing Strategy (NHS), that prioritizes the housing needs of the most vulnerable and requires regular reporting to Parliament on progress toward the Strategy's goals and outcomes.

Establishing a National Housing Council with diverse representation, including persons with lived experience of housing need and homelessness. The Council, supported by CMHC, will provide advice to the Minister on questions related to the NHS with the aim of improving housing outcomes.

Creating a Federal Housing Advocate, supported by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, to identify systemic housing issues facing individuals and households belonging to vulnerable groups, and provide an annual report to the Minister with recommended measures, which will be tabled in Parliament.

"Through the National Housing Strategy, more middle-class Canadians - and people working hard to join it - will find safe, accessible and affordable homes. Our proposed human rights-based approach to housing, as well as the resource centre, will help strengthen the National Housing Strategy, ensuring that it delivers concrete results for the benefit of all Canadians," said Jean-Yves Duclos, Minister of Families, Children and Social Development and Minister Responsible for Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Resource centre

Also announced, is a new resource centre from CMHC which will be managed by the Community Housing Transformation Centre to build a strong and resilient community housing sector.

CHTC will receive $68.6 million for administering the resource centre and two important initiatives under the NHS:

A Sector Transformation Fund to provide non-repayable contributions that support building a strong and resilient community housing sector.

A Community-Based Tenant Initiative to provide contributions to local organizations whose purpose is to assist people in housing need, support tenants in accessing information on housing options, and encourage better participation in housing decisions that affect them.

"When CMHC held public consultations to develop the Strategy, we heard that Canadians believe everyone deserves to have the dignity of a home. The most promising way to sustain this approach for future generations is to protect it through legislation. Enshrining the need for a National Housing Strategy in law inherently acknowledges the value of a coordinated approach, a shared vision and real accountability. It is a way to bring housing and "rights" closer together. This idea really is central to our thinking at CMHC: housing matters," said Evan Siddall, President and Chief Executive Officer Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
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,
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SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah filmmaker who co-founded the Sundance Film Festival and produced an Oscar-winning movie in the mid-1980s has been charged with sexual abuse of a young girl.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SALT LAKE CITY - A Utah filmmaker who co-founded the Sundance Film Festival and produced an Oscar-winning movie in the mid-1980s has been charged with sexual abuse of a young girl.

Sterling Van Wagenen, 71, is accused of inappropriately touching a girl on two occasions between 2013 and 2015, according to a probable cause statement filed with the charges on April 4. The alleged abuse occurred in two northern Utah cities when the girl was between the ages of 7 and 9, online court records show.

Van Wagenen's attorney, Steven Shapiro, declined to comment. Van Wagenen didn't return an email and phone call. He has not yet entered a plea to one count of felony sexual abuse of a child.

Van Wagenen co-founded a Utah film festival that came to be known as Sundance Film Festival with Robert Redford and was the Sundance Institute's founding executive director, according to his biography page on the University of Utah website, where he was a part-time instructor until his recent resignation.

Sundance Film Festival officials didn't immediately return an email and phone message seeking comment. His affiliation with the organization ended in 1993 when he left the advisory board, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Van Wagenen, who posted $75,000 bail, is scheduled to be in court on May 2 for a scheduling hearing. The case was reported to police by child protective services after the girl told her parents about the alleged abuse.

Van Wagenen produced the 1985 film, "The Trip to Bountiful," a story of an elderly woman who longs to return to her home that earned the late actress Geraldine Page an Oscar for her starring performance.

He also directed the 1992 film "Alan & Naomi" about the trauma of the Holocaust on children and was a producer of the 1991 move "Convicts" starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones.

More recently, he was a director of the 2009 documentary called "Learning from the Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei" about a well-known architect and an executive director of the 2018 historical tale "Jane and Emma" about a black woman's friendship with the wife of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints.

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Van Wagenen resigned from his part-time instructor position at the University of Utah's Film and Media Arts Department on Feb. 15 after being put on administrative leave on Feb. 5, university spokesman Chris Nelson said. He said the university can't provide any more details other than to say he had worked at the university since October 2012.

Van Wagenen's resignation came after a man came forward to accuse Van Wagenen of molesting him as a boy in 1993. No charges have been filed in that case, which was made public by a website that serves as a watchdog for The Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church.

The church-owned Brigham Young University in Utah employed Van Wagenen as a film instructor from 1993 to 1999, and he was director of content for its broadcasting arm, BYUtv, from 2007-2010, university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. The school received no reports of sexual misconduct from his time there, Jenkins said.

Van Wagenen also periodically worked for the church as a producer and director for many years on a variety of projects, including temple videos, said church spokesman Eric Hawkins said. The church wasn't aware of any of Van Wagenen's alleged behaviours until recently and reported them to authorities, Hawkins said.

He declined to say if Van Wagenen has been kicked out of the faith, citing church policy to keep personal matters private.

The church considers child abuse to be among the most serious sins and that anyone who commits the act should be held accountable, Hawkins said.
HOUSTON - The actor who has become something of a sex symbol as the scruffy-faced, somewhat rumpled star of ads for the travel booking site Trivago has been arrested in Texas on a misdemeanour driving while intoxicated charge.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HOUSTON - The actor who has become something of a sex symbol as the scruffy-faced, somewhat rumpled star of ads for the travel booking site Trivago has been arrested in Texas on a misdemeanour driving while intoxicated charge.

Court records show 52-year-old Timothy Williams was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Houston and freed on $100 bond.

This undated photo provided by the Houston Police Department shows Timothy Williams. The actor and spokesman for the discount hotel website Trivago.com has been arrested in Texas on a misdemeanor driving while intoxicated charge. Court records show 52-year-old Williams was arrested Wednesday, April 10, 2019, in Houston and freed on $100 bond. (Houston Police Department via AP)

Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said Friday that Williams was stopped in traffic and passed out with his foot on the brake. Silva says Williams, who's from Houston, failed a field sobriety test and agreed to having blood drawn for alcohol testing. Results weren't immediately available.

A Trivago statement Friday says the company didn't have full details on the situation but treats such incidents very seriously and strongly condemns drinking and driving as a risk to others and against the Trivago culture.

Court records didn't list an attorney representing Williams.
Most of us have some go-to liqueurs and spirits at home in a cupboard or liquor cabinet for our favourite highballs, cocktails or drams.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Most of us have some go-to liqueurs and spirits at home in a cupboard or liquor cabinet for our favourite highballs, cocktails or drams.

But every once in a while, an oddball bottle of something or other ends up sneaking its way in. Maybe a party guest brought something strange, or perhaps a recipe required a specific spirit and youve been stuck with leftovers.

With that in mind, a handful of Free Press staffers scoured their collections for these bottles of oddball booze. A dozen different bottles of varying origins and provenance (and shape, size and colour) and potential use were questionable at best.

To help figure out what to do with the stuff  be it sipping on its own, crafting cocktails or dumping it down the drain  the expertise of bartender Nicole Cote was called upon. Cote has worked as a bartender in Winnipeg for eight years, the last five of which have had a cocktail focus at spots such as Albert Street Cocktail Co., and Langside Grocery. These days she can be found mixing all manner of drinks at Pizzeria Gusto and Forth.

Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press Bartender Nicole Cote works on a cocktail featuring leftover liqueurs and spirits from Free Press writers.

I enlisted Free Press arts/food/etc. writer (and cocktail enthusiast) Jill Wilson to come with me to meet Cote at Forth, oddball booze in tow, to see what she could whip up with our drinkable dregs. Here are the winners, losers and everything in between...

THE GOOD

Chambord (France), 23 per cent alcohol by volume (ABV)

What it is: A fruit-based liqueur produced in Frances Loire Valley and modelled after a drink made during the late 17th century, Chambord is made from raspberries and blackberries, Madagascar vanilla, Moroccan citrus peel, honey and cognac.

Source/age: Was passed along to Free Press music writer Erin Lebar by her nana; the bottle is least 10 years old.

The verdict: "Normally its a bit more vibrant colour-wise," Cote says of the Chambord, which has faded from a deep red to a more brownish hue. "But as long as theres no crystallization it should be fine." I concur with Jill that the Chambord tastes a bit "port-y" on its own.

Cote opts to make a Kir Royale; she pours a teaspoon of Chambord into a coupe glass, tops it with sparkling wine and garnishes with lemon zest. (Those who dont like fizz could do a straight-up Kir using still a lighter, fresh white wine.) Its simple and delicious, and some subtle raspberry notes come through. "The colour is a bit disappointing, but its not bad," Cote says.

A freshly made Kir Royale using a teaspoon of Chambord, topped with sparkling wine and lemon zest. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

Bols Blue (The Netherlands), 21 per cent ABV

Nicole Cotes Corpse Reviver Number Blue. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

What it is: A web search indicates Bols Blue is distilled from a blend of herbs as well as sweet red oranges, curacao oranges and kinnow oranges. Yet... it looks like windshield-washer fluid or barbicide.

Source/age: Purchased by Free Press associate editor Stacey Thidrickson in 2013 to make Breaking Bad-themed cocktails to drink while watching the series finale.

The verdict: "Everyone seems to have some version of this," Cote says. Wilson can confirm: "My parents had two giant bottles of it and I dont know why; I cant recall either of them ever drinking anything with it."

Cote decides to riff on the Corpse Reviver #2 cocktail, instead making the cleverly named Corpse Reviver Number Blue. She combines 1 ounce of gin, 1 oz Bols Blue (in place of Cointreau), 1 oz of Lillet Blanc (white vermouth can also be used), 1 oz of lemon juice, then shakes things up and serves in a coupe glass  with an absinthe rinse, no less.

The result is the best cocktail of the day. Its a beautiful blue colour, smells like cherry blossoms and fresh oranges, and retains that fruity Curacao flavour.

F.X. de Beukelaer Elixir dAnvers (Belgium), 37 per cent ABV

What it is: A mixture of 32 plants and herbs mixed with pure alcohol and soaked in copper pot still, slow distilled, mixed with alcohol, soft water and sugar. It was originally used as a digestive.

Source/age: Wilson purchased this small bottle of bright yellow liquid in Belgium in 2016 after a night of "merrymaking."

The verdict: Cote and I arent familiar with the Elixir dAnvers before tasting it on its own  heck, Wilson barely remembers much about it. "Thats really nice," says Cote. "It would be great in a stirred cocktail with gin or genever, or maybe a rye would be nice too. Its the right amount of botanicals and sweetness that you could go either way."

For our purposes Cote goes in the gin direction, mixing a half-ounce of the Elixir dAnvers with 1 oz gin,  oz aperol and some orange bitters. It ramps up the lovely botanical notes while adding a nice underlying sweet citrus note.

Sauval V.S.O.P. Armagnac (France), 40 per cent ABV

What it is: A spirit distilled in the Armagnac region in Gascony in southwest France. Similar to Cognac, its distilled from Baco, Colombard, Folle Blanche and Ugni Blanc grapes.

Source/age: I bought this bottle at Fentons Wine Merchants when they first opened their second-floor cognac/grape-based spirits many years ago.

The verdict: This wasnt the best Armagnac when it was purchased, and its not gotten any better, meaning I wont be pouring it into a snifter and savouring it on its own. "Its kind of oxidized  the flavours have become slightly compromised," says Cote. "Think sherry notes: dates, raisins, a bit of nuttiness. Theres a bit of sourness to it as well."

Generally speaking, Armagnac can be subbed into any cocktail featuring Cognac. "If this was in better shape, Id say a classic Sazerac would be great," says Cote. "With something like this Id probably suggest doing something like a vieux carre or a Manhattan."

Cote goes for the vieux carre, which consists of rye, vermouth, Benedictine, bitters and Cognac  or in this case Armagnac. And the result was completely delicious.

Nicole Cote (right) , bartender at Forth and Pizzeria Gusto, mixes cocktails for Free Press writers Jill Wilson (left) and Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson at Forth bar. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

THE NOT-TOO-BAD

DuBleuet (Quebec), 15.5 per cent ABV

What it is: A "blueberry alcoholic beverage," says the label on the unopened bottle, made from fermented wild blueberries, herbs and spices. Practically nothing shows up in online searches. The name suggests its inspired by Dubonnet.

Source/age: "I got the bottle about seven years ago from a friend of mine that quit drinking and cleaned out his liquor cabinet," says Wilson. "I have no idea how long it had been in his hands before that."

The verdict: On its own, Cote says the DuBleuet "also reminds me a bit of sherry, like an amontillado but without all the nuttiness and with no finish." Adds Wilson, "Theres an herbal, kind of weird thing going on... and then it just goes away."

Cote attempts a drink with rye and bitters, but the DuBleuets flavours disappear completely. Her next idea: mix it to taste with Graces Island Soda ginger beer and serve it on the rocks. "I love the colour of this," says Wilson. "And you can still taste the DuBleuet. I dont mind that at all." The spice and fruity contrast with the herbal notes keep things fresh and fun. "Its a nice patio drink," says Cote.

Glayva liqueur (Scotland), 35 per cent ABV

What it is: A blend of Scottish whiskies as well as select spices including cinnamon, honey, almonds and tangerines.

Source/age: I got this as a sample about eight or nine years ago.

The verdict: "Its soapy, more floral than I expected it to be," Cote says, adding that it reminds her of a Drambuie. I pick up quite a bit of sweetness; Cote suggests using it in something like a Manhattan in place of sweet vermouth: 1 oz rye,  oz Glayva, with "maybe some lemon, maybe some bitters... whatever you have kicking around."

THE UGLY

Potters Creme de Menthe (Canada), 28 per cent ABV

What it is: Grain alcohol, mint and some sort of colouring that makes it bright green.

Source/age: Passed along to Thidrickson by her parents; the age of the bottle is unknown, although Potter Distilleries in Langley, B.C., hasnt existed since 2005.

The verdict: "This smells like nothing; its probably not something you want to be drinking," Cote notes. Smelling and tasting a newer version of creme de menthe from behind the bar confirms the Potters is way over the hill.

However, Cote suggests making a branca menta with the fresh stuff, going half-and-half with creme de menthe and Fernet Branca, an Italian digestive (herbaceous, slightly bitter amaros such as Montenegro or Cynar could be used instead). Served over ice, the bitter and minty notes of the concoction are deliciously vibrant.

McGuinness Cherry Whisky liquor (Canada), 15 per cent ABV

What it is: The internet says "sweet cherry flavour blended with whisky," the back label says "water, sugar/glucose-fructose, alcohol, whisky, natural/artificial flavours, citric acid and colour."

Source/age: Thidrickson purchased this a few years ago for soaking cherries to go in old fashioneds.

The verdict: A cursory sniff of the product is less than positive. "It smells like the fluoride my dentist uses," Wilson notes. "You get dark fruits, but it also smells so synthetic," says Cote. I add that it smells like an old black forest cake.

Tasting it on its own confirms that if it were ever a decent product, that time has come and gone. Cote passes on making a cocktail with the McGuinness, noting that it could be incorporated it into a Manhattan or a blood and sand (with blood orange juice, sweet vermouth and scotch). A recipe on the bottles back label, meanwhile, suggests the "cherry pop" featuring 1 oz of the McGuinness with 4 oz of cola or ginger ale.

Bols Creme de Bananes (the Netherlands), 17 per cent ABV

Storing your stash Click to Expand While many higher-alcohol spirits will do fine stored in a cupboard or cabinet, those bottles with lower alcohol levels (15-20-ish range) such as sherry, vermouth or port should be refrigerated after opening or used sooner rather than later. These types of products tend to last for weeks after theyre opened (rather than indefinitely like a gin, whisky or rum), and flavours will either start mellowing or taking on an oxidative note. Cream liqueurs such as Baileys are shelf stable before theyre opened, but once opened should be refrigerated and used within 6-10 months of opening. When deciding where to store your stash, make sure you pick a cupboard, closet or cabinet thats dark, relatively cool and free from excess vibration.

What it is: A bright, clear yellow banana-flavoured liqueur that brings flavours of the titular fruit as well as vanilla and almond notes as well as a few herbs and spices.

Source/age: Passed along to Thidrickson by her parents, age unknown.

The verdict: The bottle nearly empty, what liquid remains is deep yellow in colour, but brings virtually no banana notes aromatically. Wilson says the smell is "like cough medicine;" I picked up some cotton-candy aromas.

Flavour-wise it just tastes like sugar water  even the alcohol isnt really discernable. "If the flavour is essentially gone, dump it," Cote says, adding, "I was going to make you rock stars  half rye, and half banana liqueur. Theyre disgusting, but people love them  you just shoot them back."

Cream liqueurs, 17 per cent ABV each

What they are: Some sort of alcohol mixed with cream and some other flavours or ingredients. We had two on hand  Amarula, a product from South Africa made using the distillate of the marula fruit and aged in oak for two years before being blended with cream; and the Vermeer Dutch chocolate cream liqueur from the Netherlands, made from cream, vodka and Dutch chocolate.

Source/age: I supplied the Amarula, which arrived at the Free Press as a sample in late 2018; Thidrickson supplied the Vermeer, another bottle passed along to her by her parents.

The verdict: Cote skips making cocktails with both of them. "The general rule with cream liqueurs is to use them six to 10 months after theyve been opened," she explains, "and once theyve been opened they should be refrigerated." Oops.

Cote notes that cream liqueurs can be used fairly interchangeably in paralyzer-type cocktails, in an espresso-type martini or just sipped on over ice  provided theyve been properly stored (read: refrigerated) after opening. Which, again, these hadnt.

Berentzen Plum Schnapps (Germany), 20 per cent ABV

What it is: Schnapps made from plums, of course.

Source/age: Wilsons liquor cabinet, also passed on from her friend who quit drinking (who is now drinking again); age of bottle unknown.

The clear bottle shows a creepy brownish liquid. The dried, crusty brown goop around the cap of the bottle had sealed the cap shut, which meant we couldnt get the thing open. Nobody was disappointed.

uncorked@mts.net

Twitter: @bensigurdson
After four decades of opening their hearts and home to neighbours, the Roman Catholic Sisters of Sion are reluctantly packing up their belongings and leaving Winnipeg at the end of the month.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After four decades of opening their hearts and home to neighbours, the Roman Catholic Sisters of Sion are reluctantly packing up their belongings and leaving Winnipeg at the end of the month.

Sister Bernadette OReilly and Sister Margaret Hughes, the last two local members of the Sisters of Sion, are moving to Saskatoon to live with more than a dozen other members of their religious community.

"Its going to be very hard to leave," the Toronto-born OReilly said of their 40 years in the Centennial neighbourhood  38 of them in a 2-storey house on Elgin Avenue, which was once home to eight women.

"Its been a blessing to be here. We found ourselves doing things we never imagined ourselves doing."

Some of those things included opposing city halls proposed Sherbrook-McGregor overpass and teaching teenagers how to knit, recalled Sister Lesley Sacouman, former co-director at Rossbrook House, a neighbourhood drop-in centre founded in 1976.

She said funds only stretched to pay for OReilly to work as an educational assistant instead of a teacher at Rossbrooks Eagles Circle alternative school, so they were forced to be creative in programming.

"I asked her if she had any other skills than teaching," said Sacouman, now director of the Holy Names House of Peace on Edmonton Street. "She had all these street kids knitting these crazy socks."

The Sisters of Sion leave Winnipeg less than a year after the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary moved from their Ross Avenue home to retirement housing in St. Boniface, marking the end of an era of nuns involvement at Rossbrook House, executive director Phil Chiappetta said.

Both groups of nuns were actively involved in the community drop-in centre for children and youth located in a former church at the corner of Sherbrook and Ross, with OReilly serving as co-director for more than 20 years and Hughes teaching at its Indigenous alternative schools.

"Their presence was never overtly religious," Chiappetta said of the nuns. "They were dealing with everyone respectfully and on an equal basis."

He said OReilly and Hughes leave a huge legacy, including the establishment of an annual powwow and mentoring of thousands of children.

"There was always a crowd of children and youth around them when they were actively involved at Rossbrook House or at Wi Wabigooni school, because they reflected all the preciousness of each child back at them," he wrote in an email message.

Wi Wabigooni is an off-site program of Victoria-Albert School, supporting Indigenous students in grades 4 to 6 who are disengaged from school.

As those children grew up, some stayed as volunteers or staff and worked alongside the sisters, said property co-ordinator Lloyd Michaud, who studied with OReilly at Rising Sun, the alternative high school associated with Rossbrook House.

"If it wasnt for them, I dont know where I would be today," said Michaud, first hired at Rossbrook at 15.

"They were pretty visible in the neighbourhood, in being available and connected to people, not only socially, but in a crisis," said operations manager Warren Goulet, on staff since 1976.

Reilly said her order decided to move to Winnipeg from Toronto, after an earlier sojourn in Fort Garry, because they wanted to live and work in solidarity with people deprived of basic human rights. They met with the Sisters of the Holy Names to discuss joining the work at Rossbrook House, and moved to a rented house on Elgin Avenue in 1979, buying their own property down the street two years later.

"We would see kids at the grocery store and we would see the kids on the street," said Hughes, 70, of how their work and lives intersected.

"Kids knew we were here and they knew they could come if they needed to," said OReilly, 75, who entered religious life in 1973 after the sudden death of her husband of only nine months.

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"Our houses were really an extension of Rossbrook House."

After a half-lifetime at one place, both OReilly and Hughes are convinced their legacy wont be the programs and schools they started, but the relationships theyve nurtured. Theyre confident the work at Rossbrook will continue in its own way.

"I think the thing that makes (leaving) easy is nothing weve started is going to end when we leave," OReilly said. "Things have gone a different direction, but the spirit remains."

Neither Hughes nor OReilly are retiring, saying they will look for new opportunities to work for justice and reconciliation in Saskatoon.

"We love what we do," OReilly said. "As long as we can, we will."

They plan to return to Winnipeg to attend the annual powwow in May, as well as the fall open house at Rossbrook.
TOKYO - A Tokyo court on Friday approved the detention of Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn through April 22, allowing prosecutors to interrogate him daily on fresh allegations of financial misconduct.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this image made from video released by Carlos Ghosn via his lawyer Tuesday, April 9, 2019, former Nissan chairman Ghosn speaks on camera in Tokyo. Ghosn, who was arrested in Japan on financial misconduct charges, gets his say in a video shown by his legal team. (Carlos Ghosn via AP)

TOKYO - A Tokyo court on Friday approved the detention of Nissan's former Chairman Carlos Ghosn through April 22, allowing prosecutors to interrogate him daily on fresh allegations of financial misconduct.

Ghosn was arrested in November, released on bail last month but rearrested last week and is being held at Tokyo Detention Center. It is unclear when he might be released.

The new board of Nissan's alliance with Renault SA of France and Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp. met Friday in Paris for the first time to plot out the group's future without Ghosn.

The alliance board is led by Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard. It also includes Nissan Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa and Mitsubishi CEO Osamu Masuko. It will oversee shared projects such as developing batteries and more autonomous driving functions in their cars.

Without the hard-driving, attention-getting Ghosn at the helm, some have expressed concern about the viability of the alliance. The scandal also remains a troubling distraction.

Ghosn has been charged with falsifying financial documents in underreporting his compensation, and with breach of trust in using Nissan money for dubious payments.

His latest arrest is over breach of trust suspicions that payments by a Nissan subsidiary to an Oman dealership went to a company effectively run by Ghosn. Formal charges involving those allegations have not been filed.

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On Thursday, Ghosn's wife Carole, who had left for France after Ghosn's latest arrest, returned for questioning in a Tokyo court. Details have not been disclosed.

Ghosn, who led the Japanese automaker for two decades, says he is innocent of all charges. He says the compensation was never decided and the payments were for legitimate services.

Long detention and multiple arrests are routine in Japan, but rearresting a person who already cleared bail as Ghosn did before is unusual.

His lawyers, who have protested the detention as unfair, filed a new appeal with the court on the latest detention extension, but the court rejected it late Friday.

___

This story has been corrected to show the meeting in Paris was held Friday.
NEW YORK - Many job-seekers would no longer face tests for marijuana use under legislation that New York City is likely to enact, taking a novel step as lawmakers and employers around the U.S. grapple with workplace policies about pot.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

FILE- In this March 29, 2019 file photo, a man rolls a joint at a Spleef NYC canna-cocktail party in New York. Many employers in New York City could no longer require job applicants to be tested for marijuana use under legislation approved this week. The Democrat-led City Council passed a measure Tuesday, April 9, 2019, that would ban pre-employment testing for the drug, with certain exceptions. The law has the support of Democratic Mayor Bill de BlasioAos administration. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

NEW YORK - Many job-seekers would no longer face tests for marijuana use under legislation that New York City is likely to enact, taking a novel step as lawmakers and employers around the U.S. grapple with workplace policies about pot.

The Democrat-led City Council passed a measure Tuesday that would ban pre-employment testing for the drug, with certain exceptions.

Supporters say the measure , which if enacted may be the first of its breadth, would knock down a barrier that blocks people from jobs because of private behaviour, not professional ability. And they note that marijuana can show up on a drug test days, or sometimes longer, after the high wears off.

"If you ingest weed in whatever manner a month ago, I'm not sure how that prevents you from doing your job now," Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a Democrat who sponsored the proposal, told the council.

But some council members and business groups object to what they see as municipal meddling with a valid employment concern.

"Private businesses should have the power to determine their own hiring practices  not just in deciding what skills and experience are relevant to certain positions, but also whether the use of a specific drug could have an adverse impact on a prospective employee's ability to perform," Council Republican Leader Steven Matteo said in a statement.

FILE - In this March 29, 2019, file photo, a man smokes marijuana at a Spleef NYC canna-cocktail party in New York. Many employers in New York City could no longer require job applicants to be tested for marijuana use under legislation approved this week. The Democrat-led City Council passed a measure Tuesday, April 9, 2019, that would ban pre-employment testing for the drug, with certain exceptions. The law has the support of Democratic Mayor Bill de BlasioAos administration. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

The measure is awaiting action from Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat. A spokeswoman told The New York Times that City Hall supports the legislation; The Associated Press sent an inquiry Friday seeking to confirm the mayor's position.

Drug-testing job applicants became common in the U.S. in the late 1980s, but marijuana screening is getting some reconsideration as the drug has gained legal ground. Most states, including New York, now have legal medicinal marijuana programs, and 10 states and the District of Columbia allow recreational pot use. New York is considering it.

Medical marijuana users in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island have won lawsuits in recent years against companies that rescinded job offers or fired workers because of positive tests for pot. A number of businesses around the country have simply stopped marijuana-testing applicants .

"In this environment where unemployment is pretty low and where marijuana is becoming ever more socially acceptable ... employers are either philosophically or practically having to take a long, hard look at whether they're even going to screen for pot," said Michael Clarkson, a Boston-based employment lawyer who specializes in drug-testing issues.

Some officials also have taken a look at whether businesses should do so.

Washington, D.C. prohibits marijuana testing before a job offer is extended (some states apply this standard to all drug testing). Lawmakers in Nevada, where recreational marijuana use is legal, have been considering a proposal that would ban companies from disqualifying job candidates for testing positive for pot.

The New York City measure appears to go further by barring businesses from making applicants take marijuana tests at any point before hiring. There are exceptions for police, construction workers, commercial drivers, child care workers and certain others.

It doesn't stop employers from testing current workers, or from firing them if they fail.

Some civil rights advocates suggest the legislation is too narrow but still commend it.

"Overall, it was a good start for prospective employees," said Anthony Posada of the Legal Aid Society's Community Justice Unit.

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Major testing lab Quest Diagnostics says a small proportion of workforce tests nationally come back positive for marijuana or any other drugs, but the number has been growing in recent years.

Including job applicants and hired workers, the positive-test rate for marijuana was 2.8% last year, up from 2.4% in 2014, the Secaucus, New Jersey-based company said Thursday.

___

Jennifer Peltz is a member of AP's marijuana beat team. Follow AP's complete marijuana coverage: https://apnews.com/Marijuana.

___

Information from: The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com
With the ongoing speculation that Premier Brian Pallister will call an early election, his government may get its promised new economic development strategy in place just under the wire.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

With the ongoing speculation that Premier Brian Pallister will call an early election, his government may get its promised new economic development strategy in place just under the wire.

Mandate letters were sent out last week to the seven organizations that were identified four months ago to partner with the province in its Economic Growth Action Plan, which is primarily an effort to streamline delivery of economic development policy and support, and to do it on a lower budget.

Industry Minister Blaine Pedersen said hes happy with progress so far. An Economic Development Office is up and running, headed up by the premiers former chief of staff, Philip Houde, and Pedersen said the economic development committee cabinet is meeting on a regular basis now.

It should not surprise anyone that there is no magic solution to Manitobas slow-growth economy hidden in the seven two-page letters to the agencies  four entities representing the city, capital region, rural and the North and three strategic organizations: World Trade Centre Winnipeg, North Forge and Travel Manitoba.

To give the province the benefit of the doubt, it is more than just an off-loading of responsibilities to already established organizations that have existed for some time with a mandate to deliver support to their constituents.

In fairness, they all receive provincial funding support in one form or another, but with enhanced responsibilities  and pressure to deliver  there is an expectation from them all that greater resources will be required.

For instance, the province has already shuttered Manitoba Trade and the entirety of provincial trade support services is now being borne by World Trade Centre Winnipeg.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Mariette Mulaire, CEO of the World Trade Centre Winnipeg, says WTC will partner with existing sector councils.

Manitoba Trade typically participated in 70 trade missions per year, and Mariette Mulaire, the CEO of World Trade Centre (WTC) Winnipeg, said her organization would not be taking part in nearly that much foreign travel.

"We have limited resources," she said. "There is no way we could do 70 of them. The government is trying to find savings and avoid duplication."

Thats probably a good thing, because there was a reason Manitoba Trade was wound down.

Mulaire believes WTC will be able to avail itself of her organizations global network or more than 300 offices around the world. As well, rather than establishing its own in-house sector experts  Manitoba Trade had individual staffers dedicated to aerospace, agricultural equipment and manufacturing, etc.  Mulaire said WTC will partner with existing sector councils like the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters and Manitoba Aerospace Association who are already experts in their fields with close ties on the ground.

The province has tiptoed into its commitment to devising its own economic development strategy. It commissioned studies from Deloitte as well as taking advantage of the goodwill of business leaders Dave Angus and Barb Gamey who spent weeks meeting with about 500 business people across the province  for free  to get the lay of the land.

The centrepiece of its "Team Manitoba" approach is that is should emphasize co-ordination, avoid duplication and set up a structure so there will be clear pathways for businesses, entrepreneurs and investors.

"There is more to this than just trying to land the next big fish. For instance, we have industries looking to expand and there are always lots of issues that go around that," Pedersen said.

"This office will co-ordinate those things and make sure we can move ahead."

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Teresa Dukes, president of North Forge on McDermot Ave.

But crucial funding contribution agreements are not expected to be done until June, which means all those organizations are forced to continue operating frugally, perhaps by design.

While its hardly a surprise the funding uncertainty is discomforting, there is a fair amount of goodwill that positive outcomes are going to be produced.

"There is huge potential in the structure of the plan," said Teresa Dukes, the CEO of North Forge Technology Exchange, which is now charged with delivering business development support not just to small businesses and startups but to all sizes of enterprises across the whole province.

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"There are a lot of opportunities for us to do things in a more focused, co-ordinated way by working together," she said.

Economic Development Winnipegs (EDW) new mandate with the provinces is really not much different than it always has been  to provide market data, assistance and support to "grow Winnipegs economy by helping to make business success in Winnipeg easier and more attractive and encouraging more people to come and see what Winnipeg has to offer."

Dayna Spiring, Economic Development Winnipegs CEO, said the organization has purposefully changed its focus to target specific companies and specific projects, including trying to attract talent to the city  a key piece in its new mandate.

"There has been a long history in Winnipeg and across the province of a spray and pray philosophy where you try to do and be everything to everybody," she said.

"At EDW, we are not doing that anymore. Our job now is to figure out exactly where we have a competitive advantage."

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
Transcona Coun. Shawn Nason admits his time as special assistant to two cabinet ministers in the Pallister government may have coloured his perception of the recent funding dispute with city hall.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Transcona Coun. Shawn Nason admits his time as special assistant to two cabinet ministers in the Pallister government may have coloured his perception of the recent funding dispute with city hall.

Nason told reporters Thursday hes not convinced the Manitoba government has been withholding $40 million from the City of Winnipegs 2018 road renewal program, adding hes seen nothing from civic officials to support that claim.

"Maybe I do lean to some of my recent employment history," Nason said. "I dont feel Ive seen all the information to make a well-informed, reasonable decision as to whos at fault."

Before claiming his council seat in the Oct. 24, 2018, civic election, Nason worked closely with the government led by Premier Brian Pallister since it took office in 2016. He was hired as MLA Scott Fieldings special assistant in May 2016, and reassigned in January 2018 as special assistant to MLA Eileen Clarke.

On Thursday, chief financial officer Mike Ruta told the finance committee that in addition to the $40 million in dispute, the Pallister government still owes city hall another $12.6 million from other capital projects from last year and $3.6 million from 2017.

The City of Winnipeg has said the province has reneged on a deal set in place by the previous NDP government promising $50 million a year over a five-year period (2014-18) for city local and regional roads.

City officials said the Pallister government agreed to fulfil the commitment, continuing the payments in 2016 and 2017, but surprised officials in January 2019 with news its contribution for 2018 would be limited to $10 million, as the full $250 million had been allocated.

The city was relying on the remaining $40 million to pay for road renewal work completed in 2018. Without it, city hall initially decided to use the $40 million it had planned to spend in 2019 to fill the hole.

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The Pallister government has ignored a request from city hall to produce an accounting of how its portion of the $250 million had been allocated, a request also made by the Free Press. The province has only distributed to the media copies of letters it had sent to Mayor Brian Bowman repeating the governments claim, without any supporting documents.

Nason wouldnt comment on the provinces refusal to supply the data as requested, adding despite his close ties to two powerful cabinet ministers for more than two years, he no longer has any influence with them.

"I have a (PC) membership. Thats my tie" to the provincial government, Nason said. "Now, I have as much access as any other council colleagues."

Finance committee chairman Coun. Scott Gillingham said he cant account for Nasons uncertainty, but hes satisfied the Tory government has shortchanged city hall.

"I believe that city staff have been as forthright as possible with the information available, and I personally find it convincing. That information is available to all councillors," Gillingham said. "While I appreciate that one of my colleagues may not be as confident, in my view, the city has been the only party disclosing detailed information regarding provincial funding to the City of Winnipeg."

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
The snow may be melting, but students at Weston School won't be allowed to play on their grass field.

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The snow may be melting, but students at Weston School won't be allowed to play on their grass field.

The Winnipeg School Division said Friday that because of high levels of lead in the soil, it will erect fencing around the field, which was taken down in November when the ground froze.

The division said it is "taking a position of abundant caution" by putting up the fencing next week.

WSD spokeswoman Radean Carter said "although levels are above the recommended levels, and you can only get lead poisoning if you ingest (it), we don't want to take a chance with students as young as Kindergarten there."

Carter said students will go to nearby parks that have tested below lead guidelines. She said the students can also play on the hardtop areas outside the school during recess.

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The division said the fencing was taken down in November because Manitoba Public Health said "the risk of exposure to lead in soil was very small" due to the snow cover and frozen ground.

The province has soil reports dating back to 1976, and continuing to 2011, that show elevated lead levels in soil around the Weston area.

Last year, the provincial government commissioned testing that found lead concentrations higher than 140 parts per million, the accepted guideline set by the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment.

When the report was tabled in the legislature last month, it recommended further analysis of lead levels to determine if there are risks to human health.

The province later confirmed no money is earmarked in this year's budget for soil remediation in Weston.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA  A train carrying more than 100 cars of grain careened down a hill uncontrolled through the southwestern Manitoba town of Minnedosa last year, the Free Press has learned.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  A train carrying more than 100 cars of grain careened down a hill uncontrolled through the southwestern Manitoba town of Minnedosa last year, the Free Press has learned.

The federal watchdog investigated the runaway train and said the incident showed that Canadian Pacific railway staff had been improperly trained. The railway said it has rectified the issue.

"In this occurrence, a number of operational actions and decisions were not consistent with regulatory requirements and railway standard operating procedures," reads a report obtained through an access-to-information request.

The Minnedosa incident involved a grain train, but occurred on a rail line that is increasingly moving petroleum products, as railways make up for stalled pipeline projects.

That increase has been matched by growing scrutiny of rail safety, after a large CN oil-train spill in western Manitoba in February, the same month three CP employees died in a derailment in the Rockies.

On Jan. 1, 2018, a CP train was heading up a hill in Minnedosa, a town of 2,500 people located 50 kilometres north of Brandon, when the crew encountered difficulty.

A knuckle connector that links cars had broken, initiating the trains emergency brakes. The crew fixed the issue, and tried charging the air brakes, but the Transportation Safety Board said they didnt allow enough time.

The train moved for one second before pulling apart, possibly because the throttle wasnt correctly set.

The crew went to inspect another broken knuckle, without putting on the handbrakes or retainers, which the safety board said was required under the situation.

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The crew had gotten off the train, standing beside it, despite a rule requiring them to secure the train if theyre not physically at the control panel.

"The crew members believe that, as they were in close proximity to the train, the train was attended, in compliance with" federal rules.

After fixing the knuckle link, "the locomotive engineer noted that the remainder of the train was starting to roll uncontrolled downhill (i.e., in the reverse direction)."

He "attempted unsuccessfully to catch up with (and couple onto) the uncontrolled portion of the train."

Some 112 loaded grain cars and a mid-train locomotive, rolled uncontrolled for almost a mile, speeding through a flashing-light crossing as well as one that uses standard railway crossing signs. (Darryl Dyck / The Canadian Press files)

Some 112 loaded grain cars and a mid-train locomotive, "rolled uncontrolled for almost a mile," speeding through a flashing-light crossing as well as one that uses standard railway crossing signs.

Its unclear how fast the train was going. The safety board censored that information under a confidentiality clause, which the Free Press has appealed. CP officials refused to reveal the train's speed. The train stopped on its own.

Trains inspected on only one side: whistleblower OTTAWA  Transport Canada also looked into an issue with Canadian Pacific railways inspection of trains leaving its Winnipeg yard a year ago, which the company said its rectified.



In a March 22, 2018, information letter  which is less serious than an advisory  the Transportation Safety Board passed along a whistleblowers claims trains have been departing the terminal after having only one side of the train inspected. click to read more OTTAWA  Transport Canada also looked into an issue with Canadian Pacific railways inspection of trains leaving its Winnipeg yard a year ago, which the company said its rectified. In a March 22, 2018, information letter  which is less serious than an advisory  the Transportation Safety Board passed along a whistleblowers claims trains have been departing the terminal after having only one side of the train inspected. At the railyard under the Arlington Street bridge, a train asked for a pull by-inspection before leaving the yard, but was told the train was already inspected when it arrived along one side, so staff would only inspect the other side. The whistleblower was concerned that train inspection from one side may not always be sufficient to identify potential equipment issues and load-securement issues on the train. CP spokesman Jeremy Berry said the incident occurred March 15, 2018. He said his company acted swiftly to educate employees, chalking the issue up to human error. But Transport Canada said there wasnt much of a problem. The regulator determined these operations were in compliance with rail safety regulations, wrote spokesman John Cottreau. No pull-by inspection was required because the train passed three sites equipped with automated bearing detectors, which are usually affixed to tracks. Between Portage la Prairie and Winnipeg, the train encountered a detector every 40 miles or less, meaning federal laws did not require the railyard inspection to take place. Dylan Robertson Close

Prior to the incident, the crew had failed to contact a supervisor to let them know theyd used the emergency brakes, despite that being standard protocol. Staff made the wrong decisions despite CP dispatching a senior officer to oversee the repairs.

In March 2018, the safety board reported the incident to the federal regulator, Transport Canada, though a Rail Safety Advisory letter, which is only issued after serious safety breaches.

The safety board flagged six issues, from improperly securing the train, to not using handbrakes, to not radioing in that the crew had initiated the emergency brakes. It asked Transport Canada to review CPs training program and make sure staff understand the rules.

The regulator followed up "and verified the railway was in compliance with rail-safety regulations," wrote spokesman John Cottreau.

"Transport Canada also reviewed and accepted CPs response to the (safety board) that outlined actions taken by the railway to address concerns raised in the Rail Safety Advisory letter."

Download Minnedosa runaway train and Winnipeg yard inspection letters

CP spokesman Jeremy Berry said the incident was "the result of human error and CP took immediate action to educate its employees."

Its unclear if staff members were punished.

The Minnedosa Civic Centre in the community's downtown. "Our community was built around the railroad," said Mayor Pat Skatch. (Tim Smith / The Brandon Sun files)

Berry said the firm "meets or exceeds all Transport Canada regulations," noting its been ranked as the continents safest large railroad.

"Safety is an ongoing journey; it's not about a single destination. Its a foundational principle, engrained in everything we do, and we recognize that we must remain vigilant with these efforts and commitments to safety."

Minnedosa Mayor Pat Skatch said CP had promptly reported the incident, and no one was harmed.

"It wasnt an alarming thing that caused people to panic," said Skatch.

"Our community was built around the railroad, and I know theres lots of dangerous goods, but I have full faith in the railroad, that they are looking at all situations, and keeping that safety is the utmost in their minds."

The safety board has flagged insufficient training in several rail incidents, including one in which a runaway CN train carrying gasoline reached speeds of up to 48 km/h for nearly five kilometres north of Toronto in June 2016.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Despite a rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world, a research study of Canadas Jewish population found Winnipeggers feel safer and more secure than is the case in other cities.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite a rising tide of anti-Semitism around the world, a research study of Canadas Jewish population found Winnipeggers feel safer and more secure than is the case in other cities.

Bridges built with other faith groups and the wider community may have something to do with that, says Belle Jarniewski, director of the Jewish Heritage Centre of Western Canada.

SASHA SEFTER / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Les Harley waits in line at Shaarey Zedek Synagogue on Wednesday for the interfaith Passover seder. Shaarey Zedek has been trying to boost attendance, including running shorter services.

"This has led to friendships and understanding across faith communities," she said, adding it bodes well for the future.

"Winnipeg is a very special place in terms of the relationships we have built with each other."

The Environics Institute, the University of Toronto and York University, in partnership with organizations such as the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba, conducted the study in 2018.

The results released last month revealed one-third of Jewish community members in Toronto and Montreal reported having experienced discrimination, compared with 23 per cent in Winnipeg.

The citys Jewish population, however, continues to shrink; there are about 12,000 members of the community now, compared with 18,000 in 1950.

"I expect it to drop to 9,000 to 10,000 in a decade," University of Toronto researcher Robert Brym said, adding about 10 per cent of survey respondents from Winnipeg indicated they plan to leave in the next five years.

"Thats pretty alarming."

However, Brym said he believes the provinces stable economy and lower cost of living could help reverse the trend by attracting more Jewish immigrants.

And while the numbers are a concern, Jewish Federation of Winnipeg CEO Elaine Goldstine has noticed there is a bit of traffic in the opposite direction.

"I see people moving back," she said of younger families returning from places such as Vancouver and Toronto to be closer to family and because of the lower cost of living.

Goldstine said Winnipegs Jewish community is no different than other faith groups in the city.

"Our goal is to leave a vibrant community for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren," she said, adding the study results indicate Jewish identity, practices and upbringing are important here.

Of particular interest, she said, are results showing what Winnipeg Jews want most is more Jewish education and schools, and programs that "promote an active Jewish life."

"We punch above our weight in Winnipeg," she said. "People here want to be involved."

The study found that to be the case nationally: two-thirds of Canadian Jews said being Jewish is very important in their lives; one-third said religion is an important part of being Jewish, although a majority say they believe in God or a universal spirit.

Only one in five lists attending synagogue services or observing Jewish law as important.

Rabbi Matthew Leibl of Shaarey Zedek Synagogue wonders if a generational divide might be having an effect.

"Synagogues attract an older demographic," he said, noting young families and individuals dont have time in their lives for services that run two or three hours long.

In response, Shaarey Zedek is trying new things to attract younger people, such as shorter services, a more user-friendly prayer book and family-friendly services.

For a long time, Leibl said, "synagogues were stuck in a pattern of not making big changes. Youre always worried about messing with something thats been around a long time. But I think the changes in society, and the changes in the mentality of people we are preaching to, thats what dictates what we do."

He notes this isnt just a Jewish problem: other faith groups are also dealing with declining attendance at worship services.

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"I cant convince someone not to move away," he said. "But I can focus on those who are here."

Benchmarked against comparable research in the U.S., the data show Canadian Jews are distinct from their American counterparts by being more connected to Jewish life through education, membership in organizations, friendships and connections to Israel.

"Knowing how Canadian Jews define their Jewishness and what they need and want from Jewish organizations can help shape community policy and programming," Brym said, adding the survey shows "the Canadian Jewish community is substantially more cohesive than its American counterpart."

The survey is beneficial for planning by Winnipegs Jewish community, said Zachary Minuk, director of marketing and communications for the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba.

"It helps us understand what our community is going to look like in the next 10 to 15 years," he said. "It will help us plan for the future, making sure we have the right services going forward."

faith@freepress.mb.ca
In a province where news about child neglect and an overwhelmed foster care system is not uncommon, Louise-Marie Akiki's story is enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In a province where news about child neglect and an overwhelmed foster care system is not uncommon, Louise-Marie Akiki's story is enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

The St. Boniface woman cared for 23 children in a 12-square-foot room for eight years on her own  without a social safety net while in a strange country.

"What can I do?" recalled Akiki, who was a clinic administrator at an orphanage in northern Congo before her mother, husband, inlaws and 17 of the youngest orphan children were killed in a massacre in late 2003.

Akiki was bludgeoned to unconsciousness during the attack on her community and left for dead. When she came to, she was surrounded by 23 terrorized orphans and bloody carnage. Everyone in Akiki's family  except her daughter who was away at university  was slaughtered.

Akiki had to get the children to safety in case the enemy tribe returned. A group of African pygmies who worked on the orphanage's farm led her and the children to safety, through the bush and to the border with Uganda, where they became refugees.

"I knew nobody in Uganda," Akiki said.

They made it to the capital, Kampala, and a Congolese church congregation gave them temporary shelter. Someone showed Akiki how to make beaded jewelry that she and the children could sell on the street. She and the 23 kids moved into a one-room hovel that was less than 150 square feet. At night, they were packed like sardines when they went to sleep, Steven Bigasaki recalled.

He's now 22 and works as a roofer by day and goes to school at night in Winnipeg where he helps take care of Akiki, who is in her 60s, and translates for her during an interview with the Free Press.

"It was a lot of stress," Akiki said. On top of the trauma, grief and horror of the massacre, she and the kids were scraping by day to day in a crowded city where they had no legal status or rights. There was barely enough money to feed the children, never mind send them to school.

"The kids were crying. I was crying." Akiki applied for refugee status for her and all 23 children. In 2011, she received news that Canada would accept them as government-assisted refugees.

"I felt happy, like I'm going to heaven," she said.

The euphoria didn't last.

Only eight of the children could come to Canada with her, for reasons that were been made clear. Akiki said she was anguished that 15 children would be left behind. She had to choose between bringing eight kids to Canada or them all staying in Uganda with no hope for a better life. She chose to pick eight of the kids and come to Canada. She made plans to help those left behind and hoped to bring them all to Canada one day.

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The older kids looked out for the younger kids and  five years later in 2016  the federal government allowed nine of the children to join Akaki, leaving six behind  for now. The Fort Garry Mennonite Church, which Akiki attended until she was sidelined by poor health, is sponsoring the six young adults and is anxious to bring them to safety in Canada soon.

"It is dangerous for the kids there," said Shanon Wieler, who sits on the church's refugee sponsorship committee. The young adults range in age from 19 to 24.

"Because they're refugees, people can take advantage of them," Wieler said. "It's very dangerous for the girls to be there."

The church is sending them enough money to get by and take turns attending English language lessons. The young people are eager to learn, Wieler said. They want to join the rest of their orphan siblings, their "mother" Akiki and get on with their lives without having to fear for their safety and survival.

"There's a sense of urgency," Wieler said.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
SELKIRK  Nothing to see here, says Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson, as the bridge connecting Selkirk and East Selkirk is closed for the umpteenth time due to Red River flooding.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SELKIRK  Nothing to see here, says Selkirk Mayor Larry Johannson, as the bridge connecting Selkirk and East Selkirk is closed for the umpteenth time due to Red River flooding.

Johannson said Thursday it's about as sure robins in spring the bridge is temporarily closed due to rising water levels, but how long it stays shuttered is more indicative of the severity of flooding.

Ice jamming causes the annual flooding. The road accessing the bridge on the east side has become submerged, not the bridge itself.

Residents are using alternative routes, either the bridge on Highway 4 or at Lockport, to cross the Red River.

Johannson said he hopes to see the ice move out to Netley Creek before all the water comes up from North Dakota. "If the ice is past Netley Creek, then we're in great shape."

However, north winds Thursday and forecast for Friday aren't favourable, as they can stall movement of ice and even push it back.

Meanwhile, Manitoba's Hydrologic Forecast Centre is monitoring a storm system in central-northern United States that could bring heavy precipitation as far as Fargo, N.D. The blizzard was forecast to deliver up to two feet of snow in northwestern Minnesota before it ends around noon Friday.

However, the province is still downgrading peak flooding, thanks to a cool spring that has slowed runoff and reduced projected crests for the length of the Red River. In Fargo, the river crested at 35 feet instead of the 41 feet projected.

"Thank you, Lord, for cool weather," Infrastructure Minister Ron Schuler said at a news conference Thursday.

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The province said it now expects Red River flood waters to reach 2011 levels or slightly higher. The river is expected to crest April 21-24 at Emerson.

"Although we are still planning for the worst, as we should, we're hoping for the best," Schuler said. That includes laying over 300 "super sandbags" along the river at Ste. Agathe, 40 km south of Winnipeg, to protect against high water or strong winds.

The Red River Floodway is now expected to begin operations early next week, but may be delayed until ice is flowing freely at the control structure.

Meanwhile, the city has reduced the number of properties it expects will need dike protection. It previously identified 123 properties; it now projects only 18 will need a dike, requiring a total of 14,400 sandbags.

 with files from Geralyn Wichers

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
The Manitoba government has made good on its 2016 promise to funnel revenue from provincial nominee program application fees back into settlement services, by announcing $3 million in funding for 17 organizations that help newcomers.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba government has made good on its 2016 promise to funnel revenue from provincial nominee program application fees back into settlement services, by announcing $3 million in funding for 17 organizations that help newcomers.

"Today we're announcing that $3 million raised through those fees are going back into many organizations, including Welcome Place," Manitoba Education and Training Minister Kelvin Goertzen said Friday at Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council's Welcome Place.

CAROL SANDERS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Ismail and Hulya Gallu and their sons 10-year-old Ugur and 6-year-old Baris at Welcome Place, Friday. The refugee claimants from Turkey are staying in transitional housing at Welcome Place where Education and Training Min. Kelvin Goertzen announced $3.1 million in funding for 17 organizations that provide newcomer settlement supports and services.

"Around the province, those funds are now going to be used to benefit those who are coming to Canada or looking to make a new life here in Manitoba." Getting the right help to people at the right time can be pivotal for their success, he said.

His department held consultations with settlement service providers to decide where to spend the extra money, the minister said.

"The department was determining where there was the greatest need and what was having the greatest impact," Goertzen said. "We knew there were gaps in the system, we knew that wait times were too long," he said. To get funding to fill the gaps, Manitoba started charging skilled-worker applicants a $500 fee in addition to the $2,500 application fees for businesses. It's the first time that the fees have been reinvested, a spokeswoman for Goertzen's office said. With as many as 6,000 nominee program applicants per year, the money adds up.

Now it's going back to newcomers, targeting those who need support, said Goertzen.

"A lot of organizations were already doing good work. Let's see if we can do more of it," said Goertzen. Newcomers Employment and Education Development Services (NEEDS) Inc. is eligible for up to $513,000 for its services, which include psycho-social, education and employment supports for immigrant and refugee youth, executive director Margaret von Lau said Friday.

Council executive director Rita Chahal said Welcome Place is eligible for as much as $648,000 in funding for services to clients, including inland refugee claimants such as the Gallu family.

They arrived in Winnipeg from Turkey last September. Ismail Gallu, a Turkish Airlines flight engineer and his wife, Hulya Gallu, a German language teacher, said they were increasingly worried about the hardline politics and religion of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and how it was affecting the secular Istanbul couple and their sons, ages six and 10.

After a failed military coup in 2016, Erdogan eliminated his opponents by firing tens of thousands of government workers, gutting public institutions, jailing critics, and clamping down on the media. His government has ratcheted up religious strictures on everyday life, said Hulya, who has felt it personally.

"Women have to cover up," she said. "You feel the pressure everywhere."

She said she was drawn to Manitoba because of its German-speaking population. Her husband, Ismail, was drawn to Canada because of its religious freedom. In Turkey, the parents, who don't practise any religion, were told that their children would have compulsory Islam classes starting in Grade 4.

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"It was brainwashing," said Ismail.

He is going to aviation school and volunteering with his wife at Welcome Place where they live in a transitional housing unit. The refugee claimants appreciate the services they receive  from having a place to stay and help filing their refugee claim to getting their kids in school.

"The people here, they always treated us with their hearts," said Ismail "You can feel it," he said at Friday's news conference.

"This family is some of our best volunteers," said Chahal. "They're already starting to contribute to the community."

Supporting settlement services so newcomers can succeed isn't just kind, its smart, she said. "There's an investment, but there's also a payoff."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Manitoba is taking the federal government to court over the carbon tax, but with a challenge substantially different from Saskatchewan and Ontario (Province to take Ottawa to court, April 4).

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

Manitoba is taking the federal government to court over the carbon tax, but with a challenge substantially different from Saskatchewan and Ontario (Province to take Ottawa to court, April 4).

It focuses on equivalency, a constitution-related principle described by Bryan Schwartz, who earlier provided Manitoba with a legal opinion. Manitoba has been an environmental leader, as our record shows, but our leadership seems perpetually ignored, even including where significant carbon-pricing equivalent values can be shown. The importance of the court challenge is elevated, given that under the federal Liberal scheme, Manitobans will be overtaxed, facing an unnecessarily large penalty.

In the fall 2018 edition of the local Eco-Journal, an article by MBA students from the Asper School of Business showed Manitoba has long been a leader in renewable biofuels. Further, it was estimated that higher biofuels in Manitoba are worth at least $25 per tonne in terms of carbon-pricing equivalent, likely much more. On this basis alone, it should have been easy for the prime minister to agree to Manitobas original proposal.

More recently, MBA students studying sustainability economics put a dollar value on the emission-reduction contribution of Manitobas electricity exports to the U.S. Midwest. This analysis stemmed from an opinion article by Scott Forbes of the University of Winnipeg, who suggested that through our exports, Manitobans already pay for reductions (We already pay for carbon reduction, Nov. 29, 2018, Winnipeg Free Press).

Public data from the National Energy Board show Manitobas U.S. electricity exports have averaged just over nine billion kWh annually. Using average Midwest grid-intensity, current carbon price and a reasonable estimate of Manitobas taxable carbon-emissions means our electricity exports are worth the equivalent of $11 per tonne. Some might object to this proposition, but it can be legitimately justified. Adding the two offsets together means Manitobans already contribute the equivalent of almost double the current carbon tax, yet are still obliged to pay more.

On the carbon tax itself, federal Liberal emphasis, unfortunately, has been overwhelmingly on touting rebates, not discussing tax efficacy or details of how much will be raised, from where and going where. The numbers literally do not add up. A major problem is that rebate levels are fixed, whereas carbon taxation is variable, depending on fuels consumed. Federal sources consistently note an average Manitoba household of four will face a tax burden of $232 during the first year, and at the same time receive a rebate of $336. A positive outcome is implied, but questionable. More realistically, an average household will face a tax burden of $375 over the period, but only receive a rebate of $276. This is very different, and demonstrably negative for Manitobans.

Regarding the stated rebate, 2016 census data show the average Manitoba household size is actually 2 people.

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From the suggested tax burden of $232, it is possible to back-calculate, based on average household size and Manitoba population, estimating a total tax-take of $121 million over the first year. Considering the carbon price, this translates to annual taxable emissions of only six million tonnes, an unrealistically low estimate. It becomes apparent the federal government may be lowballing emissions to downplay the effects and lessen refund payments.

A more reasonable estimate of taxable emissions is about 9.3 million tonnes annually, i.e., much higher. This is based on the National Inventory Report of annual emissions for our province, but somewhat lower than the Government of Manitobas own projection under its earlier scheme. Federal GST will be further charged on the carbon tax. As such, Manitobans will be paying more for carbon tax than intimated.

How the carbon tax burden affects households will vary. Using reasonable emissions, the cost over the first year, including GST, is about $150 per capita. This is lower than the rebate of $170 for a single person, which is positive. However, for families, the rebate for a second individual is only $85, and for each additional child is only $42. Families end up losing out, with larger families disproportionately affected, especially those at lower income levels.

Adding insult to injury, Manitobans are being charged carbon tax on elevated renewable biofuels, a move that appears in part motivated by spite.

None of this needed to happen, if the federal Liberal government had actually thought through the carbon tax, and was open and transparent about implementation. We can all look forward to the court case and the restoration of fairness for Manitobans.

Robert Parsons, MBA, PhD, teaches sustainability economics in the MBA program at the Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba.
MINNEAPOLIS - A 5-year-old boy plummeted three floors Friday after being pushed or thrown from a balcony at the Mall of America, according to witnesses, and a 24-year-old man with a history of causing disturbances at the mall was in custody.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MINNEAPOLIS - A 5-year-old boy plummeted three floors Friday after being pushed or thrown from a balcony at the Mall of America, according to witnesses, and a 24-year-old man with a history of causing disturbances at the mall was in custody.

Bloomington Police Chief Jeffrey Potts said police don't think there is any relationship between the man and the family of the child, who suffered life-threatening injuries. He was being treated at a hospital, but no details on his condition were immediately available.

This undated photo provided by the Bloomington, Minn., Police Department, shows Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, who was arrested in connection with an incident at the Mall of America where a 5-year-old boy plummeted three floors Friday, April 12, 2019, after being pushed or thrown from a balcony. (Bloomington Police Department via AP)

Witnesses told police that the child may have been pushed or thrown from the mall's third level to the first floor, Potts said. He said the suspect immediately took off running but was quickly found and arrested at the mall.

A witness said a woman screamed that her child was thrown from the balcony.

Brian Johnson told WCCO-TV the woman was screaming, "Everybody pray, everybody pray. Oh my God, my baby, someone threw him over the edge."

Police said Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, of Minneapolis, was being held on suspicion of attempted homicide.

Aranda's criminal record includes two convictions in 2015 for obstruction of the legal process/interfering with a peace officer, as well as convictions for fifth-degree assault, trespassing and damage to property.

Court records show Aranda was arrested on July 4, 2015, after police said he matched the description of a man throwing things off the upper level of the Mall of America to the lower level. Police say Aranda refused to give his name and resisted arrest. Aranda also was accused of walking into a mall store and sweeping his hand across a display table, breaking glasses.

In October 2015, Aranda was accused of throwing glasses in Twin Cities Grill in the mall. The complaint says Aranda approached a woman who was waiting for the restaurant to open and asked her to buy him something. The woman refused, and Aranda allegedly threw a glass of water in her face and a glass of tea that struck her leg. Aranda was under a trespass notice at the time banning him from the mall until July 4, 2016.

It wasn't immediately clear if Aranda had an attorney.

Police don't have an idea about possible motive, Potts said.

"At this point we believe this is an isolated incident," the chief said. "We're actively trying to figure out why this occurred."

No details were immediately available about the child's condition.

The 4.2-million-square-foot Mall of America is in Bloomington, about 10 miles south of Minneapolis. The mall, which opened in 1992, has more than 520 stores and is visited by 40 million visitors annually, according to its website . Attractions include Nickelodeon Universe indoor amusement park and Sea Life Minnesota Aquarium .

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It has occasionally been the scene of crimes or disruptive protests, and the mall's website touts extensive security training for its officers.

In 2015, the al-Shabab extremist group called for an attack on the Mall of America and other shopping centres in a video. Al-Shabab fighters attacked an upscale Kenyan mall in 2013 in a siege that left 67 people dead. In response, the Mall of America said it was tightening security, and that some of the extra precautions would be noticeable to guests and others would not be.

A Minneapolis man was sentenced to 15 years in prison last year for attacking two brothers at the Macy's department store at the mall. The man said he was inspired by the Islamic State when he stabbed the brothers in a dressing room area in November 2017.

A teenage brawl erupted at the mall the day after Christmas in 2011. The melee was caught on YouTube, but police concluded the brawl  the worst case of violence at the mall in more than 15 years  was not organized through social media as initially feared. Ten people were arrested for disorderly conduct, including four juveniles.

___

Associated Press writers Amy Forliti and Doug Glass contributed. News researcher Jennifer Farrar contributed to this report from New York.
QUETTA, Pakistan - A suicide bomber targeted an open-air market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens of others, police and hospital officials said.

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This article was published 11/4/2019 (979 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Family members of the blast victims comfort each other outside a mortuary in Quetta, Pakistan, Friday, April 12, 2019. A powerful bomb went off at an open-air market in the southwestern city of Quetta on Friday, police and hospital officials said. (AP Photo/Arshad Butt)

QUETTA, Pakistan - A suicide bomber targeted an open-air market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens of others, police and hospital officials said.

Shortly after the bombing, struck near a Shiite residential area, dozens of angry Shiite youths rallied in Quetta, demanding more security from the authorities and the arrest of those behind the attacks.

They also denounced the violence by Sunni extremists who have killed hundreds in similar attacks over the past years in Baluchistan province, where Quetta is the capital.

"It seems people from the (Shiite) Hazara community were the target," said senior police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema, adding that some of the victims were in critical condition.

Mir Ziaullah Langau, the provincial home minister, said the suicide bomber had walked up to the marketplace and killed both Shiites and Sunnis.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in the Hazarganji neighbourhood, but Sunni militant groups have claimed similar bombings in the past against Shiites, whom they view as apostates deserving of death.

Cheema, the police chief said at least eight Shiites were among the dead, as well as a paramilitary soldier and seven other people. Four paramilitary troops, who were guarding the open-air fruit and vegetable market, were among the wounded.

Local TV footage showed several damaged shops and at least one paramilitary vehicle. A wounded man told reporters from his hospital bed how he had heard a loud explosion before he was struck down.

Qadir Nayil, a leader of the Hazara community, asked the government to provide better protection for the Shiites.

"Once again our people were the target and once again we will have to bury our dear ones," he said. "We demand more security from the government and all those involved in today's act of terrorism should be found and punished."

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Arif Alvi issued statements condemning the attack and adding that it would not weaken "the resolve of the nation in the fight against terrorism."

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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed shock at the Quetta attack and strongly condemned "this cowardly act," U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. "The United Nations expresses its fully solidarity with the Government of Pakistan in its fight against terrorism and violent extremism," Dujarric said.

Jam Kamal Khan, the chief minister of Baluchistan province, also condemned the attack, saying "the enemy of humanity" is to blame.

Hours after the attack in Quetta, a roadside bomb exploded outside a shop in the southwestern border town of Chama, killing one person and wounding 10 others, police and hospitals officials said.

Several militant groups operate in Baluchistan, which is also the scene of a low-level insurgency by separatists demanding more autonomy and a greater share in the region's natural resources such as gas and oil.

___

Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed
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The New Year festival, called Chol Chnam Thmay in Cambodia and Bunpimay in Laos, takes place in April every year, attracting tourists with traditional culture, a festive atmosphere and water splashing traditions to wash away bad luck and pray for a good new year.

Chol Chnam Thmay is one of the most important festivals for Khmer people in Cambodia. It usually lasts three days and is celebrated mostly in pagodas.

Quang extended his wishes for a warm and happy New Year to them.

He voiced his belief that they will work for stronger friendship and solidarity among Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian peoples, thus helping build an ASEAN community of peace, cooperation and development.

Lao and Cambodian students at the get-together.



At the meeting, Lao and Cambodian students presented traditional art performances of their nations.

Earlier on April 6-7, the municipal Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union organised an exchange programme for the three countries students in the southern coastal province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau.

The event aimed at helping participants understand more about each countrys culture as well as the friendship and solidarity between the three nations.

At present, there are 805 Lao and Cambodian students learning at 25 universities and academies in Ho Chi Minh City.
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You have been redirected here from Hemscott.com as we are merging our websites to provide you with a one-stop shop for all your investment research needs.To search for a security, type the name or ticker in the search box at the top of the page and select from the dropdown results.Registered Hemscott users can log in to Morningstar using the same login details. Similarly, if you are a Hemscott Premium user, you now have a Morningstar Premium account which you can access using the same login details.
The Toronto-Dominion Bank, together with its subsidiaries, provides various personal and commercial banking products and services in Canada and the United States. It operates through three segments: Canadian Retail, U.S. Retail, and Wholesale Banking. The company offers personal deposits, such as chequing, savings, and investment products; financing, investment, cash management, international trade, and day-to-day banking services to businesses; and financing options to customers at point of sale for automotive and recreational vehicle purchases through auto dealer network. It also provides credit cards; real estate secured lending; auto finance; consumer lending; point-of-sale payment solutions for large and small businesses; wealth and asset management products, private banking, investment advisory, and trust services to retail and institutional clients; and property and casualty insurance, as well as life and health insurance products. The company also provides capital markets, and corporate and investment banking services, including underwriting and distribution of new debt and equity issues; advice on strategic acquisitions and divestitures; and trading, funding, and investment services to companies, governments, and institutions. It offers its products and services under the TD Bank and America's Most Convenient Bank brand names. The company operates through a network of 1,085 branches, 3,440 automated teller machines, and 1,223 stores, as well as offers telephone, digital, and mobile banking services. The Toronto-Dominion Bank was founded in 1855 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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Myanmar public urges gas sanctions to stop military funding

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP)  The young woman in Myanmar decided to speak out when she realized that money from the company she loved was now in the hands of the military leaders she hated. She and her parents had long worked for Total Energies, the French company that operates a lucrative gas field off the coast of southern Myanmar with a state-owned enterprise.

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American Electric Power Co., Inc. engages in the business of generation, transmission and distribution of electricity. It operates through the following segments: Vertically Integrated Utilities, Transmission & Distribution Utilities, AEP Transmission Holdco and Generation & Marketing. The Vertically Integrated Utilities segment engages in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity for sale to retail and wholesale customers through assets owned and operated by its subsidiaries. The Transmission & Distribution Utilities segment engages in the business of transmission and distribution of electricity for sale to retail and wholesale customers through assets owned and operated by its subsidiaries. The AEP Transmission Holdco segment engages in the development, construction and operation of transmission facilities through investments in its wholly-owned transmission subsidiaries and joint ventures. The Generation & Marketing segment engages in non-regulated generation and marketing, risk management and retail activities. The company was founded on December 20, 1906 and is headquartered in Columbus, OH.

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The following companies are subsidiares of American Tower: 10 Presidential Way Associates LLC, 3267351 Nova Scotia Company, 3286208 Nova Scotia Company, 3298099 Nova Scotia Company, 52 Eighty LLC, 52 Eighty Partners LLC, 52 Eighty Tower Partners I LLC, ACC Tower Sub LLC, AT Kenya C.V., AT Netherlands C.V., AT Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., AT Sao Paulo C.V., AT Sher Netherlands Cooperatief U.A., AT South America C.V., ATC Africa Holding B.V., ATC Africa Shared Services (Pty) Ltd, ATC Antennas Holding LLC, ATC Antennas LLC, ATC Argentina C.V., ATC Argentina Cooperatief U.A., ATC Argentina Holding LLC, ATC Asia Pacific Pte. Ltd., ATC Atlantic C.V., ATC Atlantic II B.V., ATC Atlantic III B.V., ATC Backhaul LLC, ATC Brasil  Servicos de Conectividades Ltda., ATC Brazil Holding LLC, ATC Brazil I LLC, ATC Brazil II LLC, ATC Burkina Faso S.A., ATC CSR Foundation India, ATC Chile Holding LLC, ATC Colombia B.V., ATC Colombia Holding I LLC, ATC Colombia Holding LLC, ATC Colombia I LLC, ATC EH GmbH & Co. KG, ATC Ecuador Holding LLC, ATC Edge LLC, ATC Ethiopia Infrastructure Development Private Limited Company, ATC Europe B.V., ATC Europe LLC, ATC European Holdings Inc., ATC Fibra de Colombia S.A.S., ATC France Cooperatief U.A., ATC France Holding II SAS, ATC France Holding SAS, ATC France Reseaux SAS, ATC France SAS, ATC France Services SAS, ATC GP GmbH, ATC Germany Holdings GmbH, ATC Germany Services GmbH, ATC Ghana ServiceCo Limited, ATC Global Employment B.V., ATC Heston B.V., ATC Holding Fibra Mexico S. de R.L. DE C.V., ATC IP LLC, ATC India Infrastructure Private Limited, ATC Indoor DAS Holding LLC, ATC Indoor DAS LLC, ATC International Cooperatief U.A., ATC International Financing B.V., ATC International Financing II B.V., ATC International Financing II Holding LLC, ATC International Holding Corp., ATC Iris I LLC, ATC Kenya Operations Limited, ATC Kenya Services Limited, ATC Latin America S.A. de C.V. SOFOM E.N.R., ATC MIP III REIT Iron Holdings LLC, ATC Managed Sites Holding LLC, ATC Managed Sites LLC, ATC MexHold LLC, ATC Mexico Holding LLC, ATC Niger Wireless Infrastructure S.A., ATC Nigeria C.V., ATC Nigeria Cooperatief U.A., ATC Nigeria Holding LLC, ATC Nigeria Wireless Infrastructure Limited, ATC On Air + LLC, ATC Operations LLC, ATC Outdoor DAS LLC, ATC Paraguay Holding LLC, ATC Paraguay S.R.L., ATC Peru Holding LLC, ATC Polska sp. z o.o., ATC Ponderosa B-I LLC, ATC Ponderosa B-II LLC, ATC Ponderosa K LLC, ATC Ponderosa K-R LLC, ATC Sequoia LLC, ATC Sitios Infraco S.A.S., ATC Sitios de Chile S.A., ATC Sitios de Colombia S.A.S., ATC Sitios del Peru S.R.L., ATC South Africa Investment Holdings (Proprietary) Limited, ATC South Africa Services Pty Ltd, ATC South Africa Wireless Infrastructure (Pty) Ltd, ATC South Africa Wireless Infrastructure II (Pty) Ltd, ATC South America Holding LLC, ATC South LLC, ATC Spain LLC, ATC TRS I LLC, ATC TRS II LLC, ATC TRS III LLC, ATC TRS IV LLC, ATC Tanzania Holding LLC, ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited, ATC Tower (Ghana) Limited, ATC Tower Services LLC, ATC Uganda Limited, ATC Uganda ServiceCo (SMC) Limited, ATC Watertown LLC, ATC WiFi LLC, ATS-Needham LLC, ActiveX Telebroadband Services Private Limited, Adquisiciones y Proyectos Inalambricos S. de R. L. de C.V., Agile Airband Ohio LLC, Agile Connect LLC, Agile IWG Holdings LLC, Agile Network Builders LLC, Agile Networks Indiana LLC, Agile Networks Site Development LLC, Agile Towers LLC, Alternative Networking LLC, American Tower Asset Sub II LLC, American Tower Asset Sub LLC, American Tower Charitable Foundation Inc., American Tower Delaware Corporation, American Tower Depositor Sub LLC, American Tower Guarantor Sub LLC, American Tower Holding Sub II LLC, American Tower Holding Sub LLC, American Tower International Holding I LLC, American Tower International Holding II LLC, American Tower International Inc., American Tower Investments LLC, American Tower LLC, American Tower Management LLC, American Tower Mauritius, American Tower Servicios Fibra S. de R.L. de C.V., American Tower Tanzania Operations Limited, American Tower do Brasil - Cessao de Infraestruturas Ltda., American Tower do Brasil  Communicacao Multimidia Ltda., American Towers LLC, BR Towers, Blue Sky Towers Pty Ltd, Blue Transfer Sociedad Anonima, Broadcast Towers LLC, CNC2 Associates LLC, California Tower Inc., Cell Site NewCo II LLC, Cell Tower Lease Acquisition LLC, Central States Tower Holdings LLC, Colo ATL LLC, Colo Atl, Communications Properties Inc., Comunicaciones y Consumos S.A., Connectivity Infrastructure Services Limited, DCS Tower Sub LLC, Eaton, Eaton Towers (Lilongwe) Limited, Eaton Towers Ghana (M) Limited, Eaton Towers Ghana Limited, Eaton Towers Holdings Limited, Eaton Towers Kenya Limited, Eaton Towers Limited, Eaton Towers Niger S.A., Eaton Towers Uganda Limited, Essar Telecom Infrastructure, Eure-et-Loir Reseaux Mobiles SAS, GTP Acquisition Partners I LLC, GTP Acquisition Partners II LLC, GTP Acquisition Partners III LLC, GTP Costa Rica Finance LLC, GTP Infrastructure I LLC, GTP Infrastructure II LLC, GTP Infrastructure III LLC, GTP Investments LLC, GTP LATAM Holdings B.V., GTP LatAm Holdings Cooperatieve U.A., GTP Operations CR S.R.L., GTP South Acquisitions II LLC, GTP Structures I LLC, GTP Structures II LLC, GTP TRS I LLC, GTP Torres CR S.R.L., GTP Towers I LLC, GTP Towers II LLC, GTP Towers III LLC, GTP Towers IV LLC, GTP Towers IX LLC, GTP Towers V LLC, GTP Towers VII LLC, GTP Towers VIII LLC, GTPI HoldCo LLC, Ghana Tower InterCo B.V., Global Tower Assets III LLC, Global Tower Assets LLC, Global Tower Holdings LLC, Global Tower LLC, Global Tower Partners, Global Tower Services LLC, Gondola Tower Holdings LLC, Grain HoldCo LLC, Grain HoldCo Parent LLC, GrainComm I LLC, GrainComm II LLC, GrainComm III LLC, GrainComm LLC, GrainComm Marketing LLC, GrainComm V LLC, Haysville Towers LLC, IW Equipment LLC, IWD Equipment LLC, IWG Holdings LLC, IWG II Holdings LLC, IWG II LLC, IWG Miami LLC, IWG Towers Assets I LLC, IWG Towers Assets II LLC, IWG-TLA Australia Pty Ltd., IWG-TLA Canada Corp., IWG-TLA Encanto 1 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto 2 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto 3 LLC, IWG-TLA Encanto LLC, IWG-TLA Holdings LLC, IWG-TLA Media 2 LLC, IWG-TLA Media LLC, IWG-TLA Telecom LLC, IWL-TLA Telecom 2 LLC, Idaho Tower Company LLC, InSite (BCEC) LLC, InSite (MBTA) LLC, InSite Borrower LLC, InSite Co-Issuer Corp., InSite Guarantor LLC, InSite Hawaii LLC, InSite Issuer LLC, InSite Licensing LLC, InSite Towers Development 2 LLC, InSite Towers Development LLC, InSite Towers International 2 LLC, InSite Towers International Development LLC, InSite Towers International LLC, InSite Towers LLC, InSite Towers of Puerto Rico LLC, InSite Wireless Development LLC, InSite Wireless Group, InSite Wireless Group LLC, Insite Wireless LLC, Invisible IWG Holdings LLC, Invisible Towers LLC, JT Communications LLC, LAP Inmobiliaria Limitada, LAP Inmobiliaria S.R.L., LL B Sheet 1 LLC, Lap do Brasil Empreendimentos Imobiliarios Ltda, Lease Advisors-AU PTY LTD, Loxel SAS, MATC Digital S. de R.L. de C.V., MATC Infraestructura S. de R.L. de C.V., MATC Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., MC New Macland Properties LLC, MCSU Properties LLC, MHB Tower Rentals of America LLC, MIP III Iron Holdings LLC, MIP III U.S. Iron LLC, Microwave Inc., Municipal Bay LLC, Municipal-Bay Holdings LLC, New Towers LLC, PCS Structures Towers LLC, R-CAL I LLC, RSA Media Inc., Repeater Communications Group I LLC, Repeater Communications Group II LLC, Repeater Communications Group III LLC, Repeater Communications Group IV LLC, Repeater Communications Group LLC, Repeater Communications Group V LLC, Repeater Communications Group VI LLC, Repeater Communications Group of New York LLC, Repeater IWG Holdings LLC, Richland Towers LLC, Signum/IWG Tower Corp., Southeast Network Access Point LLC, SpectraSite Communications, SpectraSite Communications LLC, SpectraSite LLC, T8 Ulysses Site Management LLC, TLA PR-1 LLC, TLA PR-2 LLC, Telecom Lease Advisors Management 2 LLC, Tower Management Inc., Towers of America L.L.L.P., Transcend Infrastructure Holdings Pte. Ltd., Transcend Towers Infrastructure (Philippines) Inc., Turris Sites Development Corp., Turris Sites IWG Corp, Tysons II DAS LLC, UNIsite, Uganda Tower Interco B.V., Ulysses Asset Sub I LLC, Ulysses Asset Sub II LLC, UniSite LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint FL Tower Venture LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint NE Tower Venture LLC, UniSite/Omnipoint PA Tower Venture LLC, Vangard Wireless LLC, Verus Management One LLC, Viom Networks, and Virdi IWG Holdings LLC.
Brookdale Senior Living, Inc. engages in the operation of senior living communities. The firm manages independent living, assisted living and dementia-care communities and continuing care retirement centers. It operates through the following segments: Independent Living Assisted Living & Memory Care, CCRCs, Health Care Services and Management Services. The Independent Living segment is primarily designed for middle to upper income seniors who desire an upscale residential environment providing the highest quality of service. The Assisted Living & Memory Care segment offer housing and 24-hour assistance with ADLs to mid-acuity frail and elderly residents. The CCRCs segment offers a variety of living arrangements and services to accommodate all levels of physical ability and health. The Healthcare Services segment provides home health, hospice and outpatient therapy services, as well as education and wellness programs, to residents of many communities and to seniors living outside communities. The Management Services segment composes of communities operated by the company pursuant to management agreements. The company was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Brentwood, TN.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen Coding GmbH, Allen France SAS, Alpine Automation Limited, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Holdings Inc., Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Arylux Hungary Elektromechanikus Alkatreszgyarto Kft, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix (Suzhou) Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Holdings Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel (Ireland) Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Buell Industries Inc., CAPMAX Logistica S.A. de C.V., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS (Australia) Pty Limited, CS (Finance) Europe S.a.r.l., CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, CSMTS LLC, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures (Australasia) S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur (Shanghai) Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Dorbyl U.K. (Holdings) Limited, Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO (Holding) AG, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elga Skandinavian AS, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, FEG Investments L.L.C., Fasver, Filtertek, Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech (Taicang) Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart (Japan) K.K., Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart Foster Belgium, Hobart International (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW (China) Investment Company Limited, ITW (Deutschland) GmbH, ITW (EU) Holdings Ltd., ITW (European) Finance Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW (European) Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW (Ningbo) Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Alpha Sarl, ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components (Chongqing) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components (Langfang) Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium, ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS (UK) Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Contamination Control (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Delta Sarl, ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.A., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Finance Designated Activity Company, ITW Finance Europe S.A., ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW France Finance Alpha S.A.S., ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments II Inc., ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics (Thailand) Ltd., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Italy S.R.L. in liquidazione, ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France (Luxembourg) S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings UK, ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW Hungary Finance Beta Kft, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Finance Srl, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lombard Holdings Inc., ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW M FILMS II LLC, ITW MH LLC, ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology (China) Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Plastic (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers (Wujiang) Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Philippines Holdings LLC, ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Real Estate Germany GmbH, ITW Residuals III L.L.C., ITW Residuals IV L.L.C., ITW Rivex, ITW SMPI, ITW SPG Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Simco-Ion (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., ITW Slovakia s.r.o., ITW Spain Holdings S.L., ITW Specialty Film LLC, ITW Specialty Films France, ITW Specialty Materials (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., ITW Spraytec, ITW Sverige AB, ITW Sweden Holding AB, ITW Test & Measurement Equipment (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, ITW Test & Measurement GmbH, ITW Test and Measurement Italia Srl, ITW Test and Measurement Services Industry and Trade Ltd., ITW Texwipe Philippines Inc., ITW Thermal Films (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., ITW UK, ITW UK Finance Beta Limited, ITW UK Finance Delta Limited, ITW UK Finance Gamma Limited, ITW UK Finance Limited, ITW UK Finance Zeta Ltd., ITW UK II Limited, ITW Universal II LLC, ITW Welding, ITW Welding AB, ITW Welding GmbH, ITW Welding Products B.V., ITW Welding Products Group FZE, ITW Welding Products Group S. DE R.L. De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Servicios Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Ideal Molding Technologies LLC, Illinois Tool Works (Chile) Limitada, Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Norway AS, Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron (Shanghai) Ltd., Instron (Thailand) Limited, Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Holdings Limited, Instron International Limited, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, International Leasing Company LLC, International Truss Systems Proprietary Limited, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kester Components (M) Sdn. Bhd., Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems (Canada) Inc., Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MOA Enterprises Inc, Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, Norden Olje AB, North Star Imaging Europe, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited (Enping), Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Penta Dnepr LLC, Penta Sever OOO, Penta Volga OOO, Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., Ramset Fasteners (Hong Kong) Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco (Nederland) B.V., Simco Japan Inc., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Hong Kong) Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Taiwan) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes BVBA, Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek (China) Limited, Teknek (Japan) Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode (Kunshan) Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V.B.A., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta (Guangzhou) Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Vesta Global Limited, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, ZF TRW (Engineered Fasteners and Components), and Zip-Pak International B.V..
The following companies are subsidiares of Accenture: (Accenture Endustriyel Yazlm Cozumleri Limited Sirketi), 2nd Road, ?What If!, ?What If! China Holdings Limited, ?What If! Holdings Limited, ?What If! Limited, ACN Consulting Co Ltd, AD.Dialeto (Digital Agency acquired by Accenture), AGS Business and Technology Services Limited, AIG Shared Services Business Processing Inc, ASM Research Inc., ASM Research LLC, ATAN, Accenture (Botswana) (Proprietary) Limited, Accenture (China) Co. Ltd., Accenture (Shenzhen) Technology Co. Ltd., Accenture (South Africa) Pty Ltd, Accenture (UK) Limited, Accenture 2 Business Process Services S.A., Accenture 2 LLC, Accenture A/S, Accenture AB, Accenture AG, Accenture AS, Accenture Africa Pty Ltd, Accenture Agencia Interativa Ltda, Accenture Australia Holding B.V., Accenture Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, Accenture Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture B.V., Accenture BPM Operations Support Services S.A., Accenture BPM S.C.R.L., Accenture BPS Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Branch Holdings B.V., Accenture Bulgaria EOOD, Accenture Business Services for Utilities Inc, Accenture Business Services of British Columbia Limited Partnership, Accenture Business and Technology Services LLC, Accenture C.A., Accenture Canada Holdings Inc, Accenture Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Capital Inc, Accenture Central Europe B.V., Accenture Chile Asesorias y Servicios Ltda, Accenture Cloud Services GmbH, Accenture Cloud Software Solutions Limited, Accenture Cloud Solutions Australia Pty Ltd, Accenture Cloud Solutions LLC, Accenture Cloud Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Co Ltd, Accenture Co. Ltd, Accenture Communications Infrastructure Solutions Ltd, Accenture Company Ltd, Accenture Consulting Pty Ltd, Accenture Consulting Services Ltd Tanzania, Accenture Consultores de Gestao S.A., Accenture Consultoria de Industria e Consumo Ltda, Accenture Consultoria de Recursos Naturais Ltda, Accenture Credit Services LLC, Accenture Customer Services Distribution SASU, Accenture Customer Services Ltd, Accenture Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, Accenture Defined Benefit Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Defined Contribution Pension Plan Trustees Limited, Accenture Delivery Poland S.p. z o.o., Accenture Dienstleistungen GmbH, Accenture Digital Holdings GmbH, Accenture East Africa Limited, Accenture Ecuador S.A., Accenture Egypt LLC, Accenture Enterprise Development (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Accenture Federal Services LLC, Accenture Finance II Limited, Accenture Finance Limited, Accenture Finance and Accounting BPO Services S.p.A., Accenture Finance and Accounting Services S.r.l., Accenture Financial Advanced Solution & Technology S.r.l., Accenture Flex LLC, Accenture GP LLC, Accenture Global Capital Designated Activity Company, Accenture Global Engagements Limited, Accenture Global Holdings Limited, Accenture Global Services Limited, Accenture Global Solutions Limited, Accenture GmbH, Accenture HR Services S.p.A., Accenture Healthcare Processing Inc, Accenture Holding Brasil Ltda, Accenture Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Accenture Holdings (Iberia) S.L., Accenture Holdings B.V., Accenture Holdings France SASU, Accenture Hungary Holdings Kft, Accenture Inc, Accenture Industrial Software Limited Liability Company, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions Kft, Accenture Industrial Software Solutions SA, Accenture Insurance Services B.V., Accenture Insurance Services LLC, Accenture International B.V., Accenture International LLC, Accenture International Limited, Accenture Japan Ltd, Accenture Korea B.V., Accenture LLC, Accenture LLP, Accenture Lanka (Private) Ltd, Accenture Limited, Accenture Lithuania UAB, Accenture Ltd, Accenture Ltda, Accenture Maghreb S.a.r.l., Accenture Managed Services SRL, Accenture Management GmbH, Accenture Marketing Services LLC, Accenture Marketing Services Limited, Accenture Middle East B.V., Accenture Minority I B.V., Accenture Mozambique Limitada, Accenture Mzansi Pty Ltd, Accenture NV/SA, Accenture NZ Limited, Accenture Nova Scotia Unlimited Liability Co., Accenture OOO, Accenture Operations GmbH, Accenture Operations S.p. z o.o., Accenture Operations Services Private Limited, Accenture Operations Services Sdn Bhd, Accenture Outsourcing S.r.l., Accenture Outsourcing Services S.A., Accenture Oy, Accenture Panama Inc, Accenture Participations B.V., Accenture Participations II Limited, Accenture Peru SRL, Accenture Post Trade Processing SASU, Accenture Post-Trade Processing Limited, Accenture Process (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Pte Ltd, Accenture Puerto Rico LLC, Accenture Qiyun Technology (Hangzhou) Co. Ltd, Accenture S.C., Accenture S.L., Accenture S.R.L., Accenture S.p. z o.o., Accenture S.p.A., Accenture SASU, Accenture SG Services Pte Ltd, Accenture SRL, Accenture Saudi Arabia Limited, Accenture Sdn Bhd, Accenture Service Center SRL, Accenture Services (Mauritius) Ltd, Accenture Services AB, Accenture Services AG, Accenture Services AS, Accenture Services GmbH, Accenture Services Morocco SA, Accenture Services Oy, Accenture Services Pty Ltd, Accenture Services S.p. z o.o., Accenture Services SRL, Accenture Services and Technology S.r.l., Accenture Services s.r.o., Accenture Single Member S.A. Organization Information Technology & Business Development, Accenture Solutions Co. Ltd, Accenture Solutions Private Limited, Accenture Solutions Pte Ltd, Accenture Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Solutions S.p. z o.o, Accenture Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture State Healthcare Services LLC, Accenture Sub II Inc, Accenture Sub III Inc, Accenture Sub LLC, Accenture Systems Integration Limited, Accenture Sarl, Accenture Tanacsado Kolatolt Felelossegu Tarsasag, Accenture Technology Solutions (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (HK) Co. Ltd., Accenture Technology Solutions (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions - Solucoes Informaticas Integradas S.A., Accenture Technology Solutions GmbH, Accenture Technology Solutions Oy, Accenture Technology Solutions Pty Ltd, Accenture Technology Solutions S.A. de C.V., Accenture Technology Solutions S.r.l., Accenture Technology Solutions SASU, Accenture Technology Solutions SRL, Accenture Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, Accenture Technology Solutions Slovakia s.r.o., Accenture Technology Ventures B.V., Accenture Technology Ventures SPRL, Accenture Tecnologia Consultoria y Outsourcing S.A., Accenture Uruguay SRL, Accenture Vietnam Co. Limited, Accenture Zambia Limited, Accenture do Brasil Ltda, Accenture plc, Accenture s.r.o., Acceria, Acquity Group, Adaptly LLC, Adaptly UK Limited, AddVal Technology, Adqptly, Advantium Inc., Advoco, Agilex Technologies Inc., Allen International, AlphaBeta Advisors, Altevie Technologies S.r.l., Altima, Altima (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Altima Asia Ltd, Altitude, Altitude LLC, Altius Consulting Limited, Altius Data Solutions Private Limited, Analytics 8 LP, Analytics 8 Pty Ltd, Analytics8, Aorui Advertising (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Apis, Apis Group Pty Ltd, Appaloosa Technology SASU, AppsPro, Arca, Arca Ingenieros y Consultoria S.L., Arca Telecom S.L., Ariba - BPO, Arismore, Artio People (Payroll) Pty Ltd, Artio People Pty Ltd, Aspiro Solutions (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Automation Partners Pty Ltd, Avanade (Guangzhou) Computer Technology Development Co. Ltd., Avanade Asia Pte Ltd, Avanade Australia Pty Ltd, Avanade Belgium SPRL, Avanade Canada Inc, Avanade Consulting Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Denmark A/S, Avanade Deutschland GmbH, Avanade Europe Holdings Limited, Avanade Europe Services Limited, Avanade Finland Oy, Avanade France SASU, Avanade Holdings LLC, Avanade Hong Kong Ltd, Avanade Inc, Avanade International Corporation, Avanade Ireland Limited, Avanade Italy S.r.l., Avanade Japan KK, Avanade Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avanade Middle East Limited, Avanade Netherlands B.V., Avanade Norway AS, Avanade Poland S.p. z o.o., Avanade Schweiz GmbH, Avanade South Africa Pty Ltd, Avanade Spain S.L., Avanade Sweden AB, Avanade UK Limited, Avanade do Brasil Ltda, Avanade Osterreich GmbH, Avenai, Axia Ltd., BABCN LLC, BCS Consulting, BCT Solutions, BCT Solutions Pty Ltd, BENEXT, BPO Servicos Administrativos Ltda, BRIDGE Energy Group, Beacon Consulting Group Inc., Beijing Genesis Interactive Technology Co. Ltd., Beijing Zhidao Future Consulting Co. Ltd, Benext, Berico Technologies LLC, Bionic, Bionic Solution LLC, Blue Horseshoe, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Bow & Arrow, Bow & Arrow Limited, Brand Learning, Brand Learning Group Limited, Brightstep AB, Byte Prophecy, Byte Prophecy Private Limited, CAS, CRMWaypoint, CS Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, CS Technology (UK) Limited, CS Technology Group LLC, CS Technology LLC, CadenceQuest Inc., Callisto Integration Europe B.V., Callisto Integration Europe Limited, Callisto Integration LLC, Callisto Integration Ltd, Capgemini - North American health practice, Capital Consultancy Services Inc, Certus Solutions Consulting Services Limited, Certus Solutions Ltd, ChangeTrack Research Pty Ltd., Chaotic Moon Studios, Chengdu Mensa Advertising Co. Ltd., Cimation, Cirrus Connect Australia Pty Ltd, Cirrus Connect Limited, Cirruseo, Clarity Insights, Clearhead, Clearhead Group LLC, ClientHouse GmbH, Cloud Sherpas, Cloud Sherpas (GA) LLC, Cloud Sherpas Japan G.K., Cloud Sherpas New Zealand Limited, Cloudeasier SAS, Cloudpoint Limited, Cloudsherpas Inc, Cloudworks, Cloudworks Consulting Services Inc, Cloudworks Technology LLC, Computer Research and Telecommunications LLC, Concrete Desenvolvimento de Sistemas Ltda, Concrete Solutions, Concrete Solutions Ltda, Context Information Security, Context Information Security LLC, Context Information Security Limited, CoreCompete LLC, CoreCompete Limited, CoreCompete Private Limited, Corliant Inc., Creative Drive LLC, Creative Drive US LLC, CreativeDrive, CreativeDrive Digital Content Services (Shenzhen) Co Ltd., CreativeDrive EMEA Limited, CreativeDrive Singapore Pte Ltd, CreativeDrive UK Group Limited, Cutting Edge Solutions Limited, Cygni AB, Cygni Norrsken AB, Cygni Stockholm AB, Cygni Syd AB, Cygni Vast AB, Cygni Ost AB, Cygni Ostersund AB, DAZ Systems Inc, DAZ Systems LLC, DAZSI Systems (India) Pvt. Limited, DI Futures Corporation, Data Essential SARL, Davies Consulting, DayNine Consulting, DayNine Consulting (New Zealand) Limited, DayNine Consulting LLC, Declarative Holdings LLC, Decora Marketplace LLC, Decorado Marketplace Ltda-EPP, Defense Point Security, Deja vu Security, Design Strategy and Research de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Designaffairs LLC, Digiplug S.A.S., Digital Results Group LLC, Double Digit Limitada, Double Digit Pty SA, Droga5, Droga5 LLC, Droga5 Studios LLC, Droga5 UK Limited, Duck Creek Technologies, ESR Labs, ESR Labs AG, EdenOne Solutions Limited, Edenhouse ERP Holdings Limited, Edenhouse Solutions Limited, Enaxis Consulting, Enaxis Consulting LP, End to End Analytics LLC, End-to-End Analytics, Endorphin Medici (M) Sdn Bhd, Energuia Web S.A., Energy Management Brokers Limited, EnergyQuote JHA, Enimbos, Enimbos Global Services S.L., Enkitec, Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions LLC, Enterprise System Partners, Enterprise System Partners B.V., Enterprise System Partners Bilisim Danismanlik Ticaret Anonim Sirketi, Enterprise System Partners Global Corporation, Enterprise System Partners Limited, Enthusian Pty Ltd, Entropia, Entropia (M) Sdn Bhd, Entropia Holdings Pte Ltd, Entropia Intercraft Sdn Bhd, Epylon, Espedia S.r.l., Ethica Consulting Group, Ethica Consulting S.p.A., Evopro Group, Exactside Limited, Experity, Exton Consulting, Exton Consulting Spain Strategy&Management S.L., Exton Germany GmbH, Exton International SAS, Exton Italia S.r.l., Exton SAS, FGM LLC, Fairway Technologies Inc, Farah BidCo Limited, Farah MidCo Limited, Farah Topco Limited, Filmproduction ApS, First Annapolis Consulting Inc., First Annapolis Consulting LLC, Fjord, Focus Group Europe, Formicary, Fruendo S.r.l., FusionX, Future State Consulting LLC, FutureMove (Beijing) Automotive Technology Co. Ltd., FutureMove Automotive, FutureMove Automotive Co. Ltd., GRA Supply Chain Pty Ltd, Gagel Group S de R.L. de C.V., Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda, Gapso Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Genfour, George Group Consulting L.P., Gestalt LLC, Gevity, Gren utvikling AS, H.B. Maynard and Co. Inc., HRC Retail Advisory, Hagberg Consulting Group, Hahntel Ltda, Halo Partners LLC, Hamilton Holding Company S.A, Hangzhou Aiyunzhe Technology Co. Ltd., Happen, Happen GP Limited, Happen Limited, Hjaltelin Stahl, Hjaltelin Stahl A/S, Hjaltelin Stahl K/S, Hytracc Consulting AS, Hytracc Consulting Malaysia Sdn Bhd, IBB Consulting, ICM.S S.r.l., IMJ Corp, IMJ Corporation, INSITUM, IQSP Consulting LLC, IT One Company Limited, ITBS Servicios Bancarios de Tecnologia de la Informacion SL, Icon Integration, Icon Integration (NZ) Limited, Icon Integration Pty Ltd, Imagine Broadband (USA) Limited, Imagine Broadband USA LLC, Imaginea Inc, Imaginea Technologies LLC, Industrie IT (Hong Kong) Ltd, Industrie IT (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Industrie IT Group Pty Ltd, Industrie IT Pty Ltd, Industrie&Co, Infinity Works Consulting Limited, Infinity Works Holdings Limited, Infinity Works Management Limited, Infinity Works Midco Limited, Informatica de Euskadi S.L., Innotec International EAD, Innotec International S.p. z.o.o., Innotec Marketing GmbH, Innotec Marketing International Ireland Limited, Innotec- Marketing Spain S.L, Insitum Consultoria Argentina SRL, Insitum Consultoria S.A. de C.V., International Biometric Group LLC, International Biometric Group UK Limited, Intrepid, Intrepid Futureworks Sdn Bhd, Intrigo Systems Inc, Intrigo Systems India Pvt. Limited, Intrigo Systems LLC, Inventor Technology Ltd, InvestTech, Investtech Systems Consulting LLC, ItSafer Continuity Services S.L., JKD Consulting LLC, Javelin Group, K Comms Group Limited, KSC Studio LLC, Kaper Communications Limited, Karma Communications Debtco Limited, Karma Communications Group Limited, Karma Communications Holdings Limited, Karmarama, Karmarama Comms Limited, Karmarama Limited, Knowledge Rules Inc., Knowledgent, Knowledgent Group LLC, Kogentix, Kogentix LLC, Kogentix Limited, Kogentix Singapore Pte Ltd, Kogentix Technologies Private Limited, Kolle Rebbe, Kolle Rebbe GmbH, Kream Comms Limited, Kunstmaan, Kurt Salmon, Kurt Salmon Canada LTD, Kurt Salmon US LLC, LEXTA, LINKBYNET, LINKBYNET Indian Ocean (L.I.O) Ltd, LabAnswer, Lexta GmbH, Lexta UK Limited, Lien par le reseau Inc, Lien par le reseau infrastructures Inc, Lin Bo (Shanghai) Network Technology Co. Ltd., Link By Net SAS, Link By Net SRL, Link By Net Vietnam Company Limited, Linkbynet East Asia Ltd, Linkbynet Singapore Pte Ltd., Loud & Clear Creative Pty Ltd, Lumenup S.A., MAXIM Systems Inc., MCG US Holdings LLC, Mackevision CG Technology and Service (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Mackevision Japan Co. Ltd., Mackevision Korea Ltd, Mackevision Medien Design, Mackevision Medien Design GmbH, Mackevision Singapore Pte Ltd, Mackevision UK Limited, Maglan, Maglan Information Defense Technologies Research Ltd, Maihiro, Matter, Maud Corp Pty Ltd, Maxamine International, Measuretek LLC, Media Audits Ltd., Media Hive, Mediasenz Pty Ltd., Meredith Specialty LLC, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing, Meredith Xcelerated Marketing LLC, Meridian Informed Purchasing Ltd., Mindtribe, Mistral Wind Operations  Servicos Empresariais Unipessoal Lda., MobGen, Mortgage Cadence LLC, Mortgage Cadence an Accenture Company, Most Champion Ltd, Mudano, Mudano Limited, Myrtle Consulting Group LLC, N3 (Dalian) Business Consulting Co. Ltd., N3 Brazil Consultoria em Marketing Ltda, N3 Germany GmbH, N3 LLC, N3 North America LLC, N3 Results Australia Pty Ltd, N3 Results Ireland Limited, N3 Results Japan G.K., N3 Results Limited, N3 Results Malaysia Sdn Bhd, N3 Results Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., N3 Results S.A.S., N3 Results Singapore Pte Ltd, N3 Results Unipessoal Lda, NYTEC, Nanjing Demeng Advertising Co. Ltd., Nashco Consulting, NaviSys Inc., Nell'Armonia Israel Ltd, Nell'Armonia SAS, Nell'Participation SAS, NellArmonia, Neo Metrics Analytics S.L., Neo Metrics Chile S.A., New Content, New Content Editora e Produtora Ltda, New Energy Group, News Imaging LLC, NewsPage, NewsPage (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, NewsPage Pte Ltd, Northstream, Novetta Holdings LLC, Novetta LLC, Novetta Solutions LLC, Novetta Topco LLC, OCTO Technology, OPS Rules Management Consultants, Octagon Research Solutions Inc., Octo Technology Pty Ltd, Octo Technology SA, Odgaard ApS, Olikka, Olikka Pty Ltd, Openmind, Openmind S.r..l., Openminded, Openminded SAS, Operaciones Accenture S.A. de C.V., OpusLine, Orbium, Orbium AG, Orbium Consulting Limited, Orbium Inc., Orbium Ltd, Orbium Pte Ltd, Orbium Pty Ltd, Origin Digital, PCO Innovation, PLM Systems S.r.l, PRION GmbH, PT Accenture, PT Asta Catur Indra, PT Kogentix Teknologi Indonesia, PacificLink Group, Paja Finanssipalvelut Oy, Parker Fitzgerald Inc, Parker Fitzgerald International Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Limited, Parker Fitzgerald PTY Ltd, Parker Fitzgerald Services Limited, Parker Fitzgerald Solutions Limited, Pecaso Ltd., Pegasus Production A/S, Pegasus Production K/S, Phase One Consulting Group, Pillar Technology, Pollux, Pollux Automation Mexico S.A. de C.V., Pollux Canada Inc, Pollux S.A.S., Pollux USA LLC, Pragsis Bidoop, Pragsis Bidoop UK Limited, Pramati Technologies Europe Limited, Pramati Technologies Private Limited, Presence of IT Workforce Management North America LLC, PrimeQ, PrimeQ Australia Pty Ltd, PrimeQ Ltd, PrimeQ NZ Pty Limited, Procurian Inc., Prof. Homburg GmbH, Proquire LLC, PureApps Ltd., Qi Jie Beijing Information Technologies Co. Ltd., RBCP Fund 1-A Vapor Blocker LLC, RBCP Platform Vapor Blocker I LLC, REPL Consulting LLC, REPL Consulting Limited, REPL Digital Limited, REPL Group K.K., REPL Group Pty Ltd, REPL Group Worldwide Limited, REPL Pte Ltd, REPL Software Limited, REPL Technology Limited, Radiant Services LLC, Random Walk Computing Inc., Reactive Media Pty Ltd., Real Protect, Realworld OO Systems Ltd., Redcore, Redcore (New Zealand) Limited, Redcore Group Holdings Pty Ltd, Redcore Pty Ltd, Revolutionary Security, RiskControl, Root LLC, Rothco, Rothco Limited, S3 TV Technology Ltd., SALT Solutions GmbH, SEC Servizi, SOPIA Corp., Sagacious Consultants, Salt Solutions, Sandbox Studio LLC, Sapling Bidco Limited, Sapling Midco Limited, Sapling Topco Limited, Schlumberger Business Consulting, Seabury Aviation & Aerospace (UK) Limited, Seabury Consulting, Seabury Corporate Advisors LLC, Seabury Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Search Technologies BPO Inc, Search Technologies International LLC, Search Technologies LLC, Search Technologies Limited, Securiview SAS, Sentelis, Sentor Managed Secuirty Services AB, Servicios Tecnicos de Programacion Accenture S.C., Seven Seas Business Ventures LLC, Shackleton, Shackleton Chile S.A., Shackleton S.L.U., Shanghai Baiyue Advertising Co. Ltd., Shun Zhe Technology Development Co. 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.
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..
There is not enough analysis data for BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Trust.

3.9 Community Rank

Outperform Votes BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Trust has received 137 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Trust has received 98 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Trust has received 58.30% outperform votes from our community.

MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about BlackRock Credit Allocation Income Trust and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe BTZ will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe BTZ will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days.

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GlaxoSmithKline Plc is a healthcare company, which engages in the research, development, and manufacture of pharmaceutical medicines, vaccines, and consumer healthcare products. It operates through the following segments: Pharmaceuticals; Pharmaceuticals R&D; Vaccines and Consumer Healthcare. The Pharmaceuticals segment focuses on developing medicines in respiratory and infectious diseases, oncology, and immuno-inflammation. The Pharmaceuticals R&D segment focuses on science related to the immune system, the use of human genetics and advanced technologies, and is driven by the multiplier effect of Science x Technology x Culture. The Vaccines segment produces pediatric and adult vaccines to prevent a range of infectious diseases including, hepatitis A and B, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella, polio, typhoid, influenza, and bacterial meningitis. The Consumer Healthcare segment develops and markets brands in the oral health, pain relief, respiratory, nutrition and gastro intestinal, and skin health categories. The company was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Middlesex, the United Kingdom.

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The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. is an insurance and financial services company. The company provides life insurance, group and employee benefits, automobile and homeowners insurance and business insurance, as well as investment products, annuities, mutual funds, and college savings plans. It operates through the following segments: Commercial Lines, Personal Lines, Property & Casualty Other Operations, Group Benefits and Hartford Funds. The Commercial Lines segment provides workers compensation, property, automobile, liability and umbrella coverage under several different products, primarily throughout the U.S., within its standard commercial lines, which consists of The Hartford's small commercial and middle market lines of business. The Personal Lines segment includes automobile, homeowners and home-based business coverage to individuals across the U.S. The Property & Casualty Other Operations segment includes certain property and casualty operations, currently managed by the company, that have discontinued writing new business and substantially all of the company's asbestos and environmental exposures. The Group Benefits segment offers group life, accident and disabi

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The following companies are subsidiares of UnitedHealth Group: 1031387 B.C. Unlimited Liability Company, 1070715 B.C. Unlimited Liability Company, 1st Avenue Pharmacy Inc., 310 Canyon Medical, 310 Canyon Medical LLC, 4C MSO LLC, 4C Medical Group PLC, 5995 Minnetonka LLC, ABCO International Holdings LLC, ACN Group IPA of New York, ACN Group IPA of New York Inc., ACN Group of California, ACN Group of California Inc., AHJV, AHJV MSO, AHN Accontable Care Organization LLC, AHN Central Services LLC, AHN Target Holdings LLC, AMIL International, AMIL International S.a.r.l., APS  Assistencia Personalizada a Saude Ltda., ARC Infusion, ASC Holdings of New Jersey LLC, ASC Network LLC, ASI Global, ASI Global LLC, Access Administrators Inc., Access HealthSource Administrators Inc., Access HealthSource Inc., Access I.V., Administradora Clinica La Colina S.A.S., Administradora Country S.A., Administradora Medica Centromed S.A., Advanced Care, Advanced Care Pharmacy, Advanced Pharma Inc., Advanced Surgery Center of Clifton LLC, Advanced Surgical Hospital LLC, Advantage Care Network Inc., Advocate Condell Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Advocate Sherman Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Advocate Southwest Ambulatory Surgery Center LLC, Advocate-SCA Partners LLC, Alere Health, Alere Health Improvement Company, Alere Healthcare of Illinois, Alere Wellbeing, Alere Wellology, Alere of New York, Aliansalud Entidad Promotora de Salud S.A., All Savers Insurance Company, All Savers Life Insurance Company of California, Alliance Surgical Center LLC, Aloha Surgical Center LLC, Ambient Healthcare, Ambient Healthcare Inc., Ambient Healthcare of Central Florida, Ambient Healthcare of Georgia, Ambient Healthcare of Northeast Florida, Ambient Healthcare of S. Florida, Ambient Healthcare of West Florida, Ambient Holdings, Ambient Holdings Inc., Ambient Nursing Services, AmeriChoice, AmeriChoice Corporation, AmeriChoice Health Services, AmeriChoice of Connecticut, AmeriChoice of New Jersey, AmeriChoice of New Jersey Inc., American Health Network of Indiana Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Indiana II LLC, American Health Network of Indiana LLC, American Health Network of Ohio Care Organization LLC, American Health Network of Ohio II LLC, American Health Network of Ohio LLC, Amico Saude Ltda., Amil, Amil Assistencia Medica Internacional S.A., Amil Lifesciences Participacoes Ltda., Antelope Valley Surgery Center L.P., Analisis Clinicos ML S.A.C., Apothecary Holdings Inc., Apothecary Shop of Phoenix Inc., AppleCare Medical Management, AppleCare Medical Management LLC, Aquitania Chilean Holding SpA, Arise Physician Group, Arizona Physicians IPA, Arizona Physicians IPA Inc., AssuranceRx, AssuranceRx LLC, Athens ASC Holdings LLC, Audax Health Solutions, Audax Health Solutions LLC, Austin Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., Avella Patient Access Program Inc., Avella Specialty Pharmacy, Avella of Austin Inc., Avella of Columbus Inc., Avella of Deer Valley Inc., Avella of Denver Inc., Avella of Gilbert Inc., Avella of Las Vegas II Inc., Avella of Orlando Inc., Avella of Phoenix III Inc., Avella of Sacramento Inc., Avella of Scottsdale Inc., Avella of St. Louis Inc., Avella of Tampa LLC, Avella of Tucson II Inc., Avella of Tucson Inc., Aveta Arizona, Aveta Health Solutions Inc., Aveta Inc., Aveta Kansas City, Aveta Tennessee, AxelaCare Health Solutions, AxelaCare Intermediate Holdings, AxelaCare Intermediate Holdings LLC, AxelaCare LLC, B.R.A.S.S. Partnership in Commendam, Banmedica Colombia SpA, Banmedica Internacional SpA, Banmedica S.A., Beach Surgical Holdings III LLC, Behavioral Healthcare Options, Behavioral Healthcare Options Inc., Belleville Surgical Center Ltd. an Illinois Limited Partnership, Benefit Administration for the Self Employed L.L.C., Benefitter Insurance Solutions Inc., Birmingham Outpatient Surgical Center LLC, Blackstone Valley Surgicare GP LLC, Blue Ridge GP LLC, Bordeaux (Barbados) Holdings I SRL, Bordeaux (Barbados) Holdings II SRL, Bordeaux (Barbados) Holdings III SRL, Bordeaux Holding SpA, Bordeaux International Holdings Inc., Bordeaux UK Holdings I Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings II Limited, Bordeaux UK Holdings III Limited, Bosque Medical Center Ltda., Brandon Ambulatory Surgery Center LC, BriovaRx, BriovaRx, BriovaRx Infusion Services, BriovaRx Infusion Services 102 LLC, BriovaRx Infusion Services 200 Inc., BriovaRx Infusion Services 204 Inc., BriovaRx Infusion Services 209 Inc., BriovaRx Infusion Services 305 LLC, BriovaRx Infusion Services 402 LLC, BriovaRx Infusion Services Inc., BriovaRx Specialty LLC, BriovaRx of California, BriovaRx of California Inc., BriovaRx of Florida, BriovaRx of Florida Inc., BriovaRx of Georgia, BriovaRx of Georgia LLC, BriovaRx of Hawaii, BriovaRx of Indiana, BriovaRx of Louisiana, BriovaRx of Louisiana L.L.C., BriovaRx of Maine, BriovaRx of Maine Inc., BriovaRx of Massachusetts, BriovaRx of Massachusetts LLC, BriovaRx of Nevada, BriovaRx of New York, BriovaRx of New York Inc., BriovaRx of Texas, BriovaRx of Texas Inc., CDC Holdings Colombia S.A.S., CLISA  Clinica de Santo Antonio S.A., CMO  Centro Medico de Oftalmologia S/S Ltda., CMS  Central de Manipulacao e Servicos Farmaceuticos S.A., CNIC Health Solutions Inc., COI Participacoes S.A., COI  Clinicas Oncologicas Integradas S.A., Cabin Enterprises LLC, Cabin Holdings LLC, California MedTrans Network IPA LLC, California MedTrans Network MSO LLC, California Medical Group Insurance Company Risk Retention Group, Camp Hill-SCA Centers LLC, Capital City Medical Group L.L.C., Cardio Management, Cardio Management Inc., Care Improvement Plus Group Management, Care Improvement Plus Group Management LLC, Care Improvement Plus South Central Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus Wisconsin Insurance Company, Care Improvement Plus of Texas Insurance Company, Casa de Saude Santa Therezinha Ltda., Casa de Saude Santa Therezinha S.A., Castle Rock SurgiCenter LLC, Catalyst360, Catalyst360 LLC, Catamaran Finance (Ireland) Unlimited Company, Catamaran Health Solutions, Catamaran Holdings I, Catamaran IPA III, Catamaran Mail, Catamaran PBM of Illinois II, Catamaran PBM of Puerto Rico, Catamaran PD of Pennsylvania, Catamaran PD of Puerto Rico, Catamaran Rebate Management, Catamaran S.a.r.l., Catamaran Senior Services, Catamaran of Pennsylvania, Cedar Park Surgery Center LLC, Cemed Care - Empressa de Atendimento Clinico Geral Ltda., Cemed Care  Empresa de Atendimento Clinico Geral Ltda., Central Indiana Care Organization LLC, Central Ohio Care Organization LLC, Central de Compras SpA, CentriHealth Corporation, CentriHealth UK Limited, CentrifyHealth LLC, Centro Medico Hospitalar Pitangueiras Ltda., Centro Medico Odontologico Americano S.A.C., Centro Medico PJ Ltda., Centro de Entrenamiento en Reanimacion y Prevencion Limitada (CERP), Centro de Servicios Compartidos Banmedica S.A., Centromed Quilpue S.A., Centros Medicos y Dentales Multimed Ltda., Centurion Casualty Company, Channel Islands Surgicenter L.P., Channel Islands Surgicenter Properties LLC, Charleston Surgery Properties LLC, Charlotte-SC LLC, Childrens Surgery Center LLC, ChinaGate (Hong Kong) Limited, ChinaGate Company Limited, Citrus Regional Surgery Center L.P., Clinica Oftalmologica Danilo de Castro Sociedade Simples, Clinical Partners of Colorado Springs LLC, Clinica Alameda S.A., Clinica Bio Bio S.A., Clinica Ciudad del Mar S.A., Clinica Davila y Servicios Medicos S.A., Clinica Medico Cirurgica de Santa Tecla S.A., Clinica San Borja (La Esperanza del Peru S.A.), Clinica San Felipe S.A., Clinica Santa Maria S.A., Clinica Sanchez Ferrer S.A., Clinica Vespucio S.A., Clinica del Country S.A., Coachella Valley Physicians of PrimeCare, Coachella Valley Physicians of PrimeCare Inc., Coalition For Advanced Pharmacy Services, Coalition for Advanced Pharmacy Services Inc., Coastal Physicians Management Inc., Collaborative Care Holdings, Collaborative Care Holdings LLC, Collaborative Care Services, Collaborative Care Services Inc., Collaborative Care Solutions, Collaborative Realty, Collaborative Realty LLC, Colmedica Medicina Prepagada, Colonial Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Colorado Innovative Physician Solutions Inc., Colorado Springs Surgery Center Ltd., Comfort Care Transportation, Comfort Care Transportation LLC, Commonwealth Administrators, Connecticut Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Connecticut Surgery Properties LLC, Connecticut Surgical Center LLC, Connextions, Connextions HCI, Constructora e Inmobiliaria Magapoq S.A., Consumer Wellness Solutions Inc., Country Scan Ltda., Crescent Drug Corp., Cypress Care, Cypress Care Inc., DBP Services of New York IPA, DBP Services of New York IPA Inc., DTC Surgery Center LLC, DWIC of Tampa Bay, DWIC of Tampa Bay Inc., DaVita Magan Management Inc., Danbury Surgical Center L.P., Day-Op Surgery Consulting Company, Day-Op Surgery Consulting Company LLC, Definity Health, Dental Benefit Providers, Dental Benefit Providers Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of California, Dental Benefit Providers of California Inc., Dental Benefit Providers of Illinois, Dental Benefit Providers of Illinois Inc., Derry Surgical Center LLC, Diagnostico Ecotomografico Centromed Ltda., Diasnostico por Imagenes Centromed Ltda., Dilab Medicina Nuclear Ltda., Diplomat Pharmacy, Distance Learning Network, Distance Learning Network Inc., Doctor + S.A.C., Dry Creek Surgery Center LLC, Dublin Surgery Center LLC, Duncan Printing Services, Duncan Printing Services LLC, E Street Endoscopy LLC, ELG FZE, EP Campus I, EP Campus I LLC, East Brunswick Surgery Center LLC, Electronic Network Systems, Electronic Network Systems Inc., Elual Participacoes S.A., Empire Physician Management Company, Empire Physician Management Company LLC, Employers Health Choice PPO Inc., Empremedica S. A., Endoscopy Center Affiliates Inc., Enterprise Life Insurance Company, Equian, Equian LLC, Equian Parent Corp., Esho  Empresa de Servicos Hospitalares S.A., Etho  Empresa de Tecnologia Hospitalar Ltda., Evercare Collaborative Solutions, Evercare Collaborative Solutions Inc., Everett MSO Inc., Excellion Servicos Biomedicos Ltda., Excellion Servicos Biomedicos S.A., Excelsior Insurance Brokerage Inc., Executive Health Resources, Executive Health Resources Inc., Executive Surgery Center LLC, Eye Clinic Oftalmologia Clinico Cirurgica e Diagnostico Ltda., FMG Holdings, FMG Holdings LLC, FOR HEALTH OF ARIZONA, Family Health Care Services, Family Home Hospice, Family Home Hospice Inc., First Rx Specialty & Mail Services, Florida MedTrans Network LLC, Florida MedTrans Network MSO LLC, For Health, For Health Inc., For Health of Arizona Inc., Fortified Provider Network Inc., Fortify Technologies Asia LLC, Fortify Technologies LLC, Foundation Financial Services Inc., Franklin Surgical Center LLC, Freedom Life Insurance Company of America, Freeway Surgicenter of Houston LLC, Frontier MEDEX Limited, Frontier Medex Tanzania Limited, FrontierMEDEX, FrontierMEDEX (RMS), FrontierMEDEX (RMS) Inc., FrontierMEDEX Government Services, FrontierMEDEX Government Services LLC, FrontierMEDEX Inc., FrontierMEDEX Kenya Limited, FrontierMEDEX US, FrontierMEDEX US Inc., Fundacion Banmedica, GRANTS PASS SURGERY CENTER LLC, Gadsden Surgery Center LLC, Gadsden Surgery Center Ltd., Gainesville Surgery Center L.P., Gainesville Surgery Properties LLC, Genoa, Genoa Healthcare Inc., Genoa Healthcare LLC, Genoa QoL Wholesale LLC, Genoa Technology (Canada) Inc., Genoa Technology Inc., Genoa Telepsychiatry Inc., Genoa of Arkansas LLC, Glenwood Surgical Center L.P., Glenwood-SC Inc., Golden Outlook, Golden Outlook Inc., Golden Rule Financial Corporation, Golden Rule Insurance Company, Golden Triangle Surgicenter L.P., Grapevine Finance LLC, Greater Hartford ASC LLC, Grove Place Surgery Center L.L.C., Guardian Health Systems Limited Partnership, H&W Indemnity (SPC), H&W Indemnity (SPC) Ltd., H.I. Investments Holding Company LLC, HCP ACO California LLC, HCP ACO Nevada LLC, HCentive Technology India Private Limited, HMI NewCo LLC, Harken Health Insurance Company, Hayes-Strub LLC, Health Business Systems, Health Care-ONE Insurance Agency Inc., Health Inventures Employment Solutions LLC, Health Inventures LLC, Health Net Insurance of New York, Health Net Services (Bermuda) Ltd., Health Plan of Nevada, Health Plan of Nevada Inc., Health Technology Analysts Pty Limited, HealthAllies, HealthAllies Inc., HealthCare Partners ASC-LB LLC, HealthCare Partners Management Services California LLC, HealthCare Partners RE LLC, HealthFirst IPA Inc., HealthMarkets Group Inc., HealthMarkets Inc., HealthMarkets Insurance Agency Inc., HealthMarkets LLC, HealthMarkets NewCo Inc., HealthMarkets Services Inc., HealthSCOPE Holdings Inc., HealthScope Benefits Inc., Healthcare Partners Plan of Nevada Inc., Healthcare Solutions Inc., Heartland Heart and Vascular LLC, Help S.A., Help Service S.A., Highlands Ranch Healthcare, Highlands Ranch Healthcare LLC, Home Care I.V. of Bend, Home Infusion With Heart, Home Medical S.A., Hospice Inspiris Holdings, Hospice Inspiris Holdings Inc., Hospitais Associados de Pernambuco Ltda., Hospital Alvorada de Taguatinga Ltda., Hospital Ana Costa S.A., Hospital Maternidade Promater Ltda., Hospital Samaritano de Sao Paulo Ltda., Hospital Santa Helena S.A., Hospital de Clinicas de Jacarepagua Ltda., Humedica, Humedica Inc., Hygeia Corporation, Hygeia Corporation (Canada), Hygeia Corporation (DE), Hygeia Corporation (Ontario), INOV8 Surgical at Memorial City LLC, INSPIRIS of New York IPA, INSPIRIS of New York Management, INSPIRIS of New York Management Inc., INSPIRIS of Texas Physician Group, IRX Financing I LLC, Illinois Independent Care Network, Imed Star  Servicos de Desempenho Organizacional Ltda., Impel Consulting Experts, Impel Consulting Experts L.L.C., Impel Management Services L.L.C., Indian River Surgery Center Ltd., Indian River Surgery Properties LLC, Indiana Care Organization LLC, Infusource, Ingram & Associates, Ingram & Associates LLC, Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3001 S.A., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo 3600 Ltda., Inmobiliaria Apoquindo S.A., Inmobiliaria Clinica Santa Maria S.A., Inmobiliaria Vinamed Ltda., Inmobiliaria e Inversiones Alameda S.A., Inspiris, Inspiris Inc., Inspiris Services Company, Inspiris of Tennessee, Instituto do Radium de Cammpinas Ltda, International Psychological Services Pty Limited, Inversiones Clinicas Santa Maria S.A., Isapre Banmedica S.A., Isapre Vida Tres S.A., Johnston Surgicare L.P., Joliet Surgery Center Limited Partnership, LHI, Laboratorio ROE S.A., Laboratorios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., LifePrint Health, LifePrint Health Inc., LifeStyles Marketing Group Inc., LifeWell Ltd. Co., Lifeprint Accountable Care Organization, Lifeprint Accountable Care Organization LLC, Lifeprint East, Lifeprint East Inc., Logistics Health Inc., Lotten-Eyes Oftalmologia Clinica e Cirurgica Ltda., Louisville S.C. Ltd., Louisville-SC Properties Inc., Loyola Ambulatory Surgery Center at Oakbrook Inc., Lusiadas - Parcerias Cascais S.A., Lusiadas A.C.E., Lusiadas S.A., Lusiadas SGPS S.A., MAMSI Insurance Resources, MAMSI Life and Health Insurance Company, MD Ops, MD Ops Inc., MD-Individual Practice Association, MD-Individual Practice Association Inc., ME AHS UC LLC, MEDEX Insurance Services, MEDEX Insurance Services Inc., MGH/SCA LLC, MHC Real Estate Holdings, MHC Real Estate Holdings LLC, MIAMI SURGERY CENTER LLC, MSLA Management LLC, MXMD Centros De Cancer, Mamoeco  Mamografia e Ecografia Centro de Diagnostico, Managed Physical Network, Managed Physical Network Inc., March Holdings, March Holdings Inc., March Vision Care, March Vision Care Inc., Marin Surgery Holdings Inc., Maryland Ambulatory Centers, Maryland-SCA Centers LLC, Massachusetts Assurance Company Ltd. PIC, Massachusetts Avenue Surgery Center LLC, Mat-Rx Development, Mat-Rx Fort Worth GP, MedExpress Development, MedExpress Development LLC, MedExpress Urgent Care Alabama LLC, MedExpress Urgent Care Inc. - Ohio, MedExpress Urgent Care Maine Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care New Hampshire Inc., MedExpress Urgent Care of Boynton Beach, MedExpress Urgent Care of Boynton Beach LLC, MedSynergies, MedSynergies LLC, MedSynergies North Texas, Medalliance Net Ltda, Medalliance Net Ltda., Medica Health Plans of Florida, Medica Health Plans of Florida Inc., Medica HealthCare Plans, Medica HealthCare Plans Inc., Medical Clinic of North Texas PLLC, Medical Hilfe S.A., Medical Preparatory School of Allied Health, Medical Support Los Angeles Inc., Medical Surgical Centers of America Inc., Medical Transportation Services, Medical Transportation Services LLC, Medication Management Systems Inc., Melbourne Surgery Center LLC, Memorial City Holdings LLC, Memorial City Partners LLC, Memphis-SC LLC, Memphis-SP LLC, Mesquite Liberty LLC, Metro I Stone Management, Metropolitan Medical Partners LLC, Metropolitan Medical Transportation IPA LLC, Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Mid-West National Life Insurance Company of Tennessee, Midwest Center for Day Surgery LLC, Mile High SurgiCenter LLC, Mississippi Surgery Holdings LLC, Mississippi Surgical Center Limited Partnership, Mobile Medical Professionals, Modern Medical Inc., Monarch Management Services, Monarch Management Services Inc., Montgomery Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Mountain View Medical Group LLC, Mt. Pleasant Surgery Center L.P., Multiangio Ltda., Muskogee Surgical Investors LLC, Mustang Razorback Holdings, Mustang Razorback Holdings Inc., My Wellness Solutions LLC, NAMM Holdings, NAMM Holdings Inc., NSC Fayetteville LLC, NSC Greensboro LLC, NSC Lancaster LLC, NSC Seattle Inc., NSC Upland LLC, Nashville-SCA Surgery Centers Inc., National Foundation Life Insurance Company, National MedTrans LLC, National Pacific Dental, National Pacific Dental Inc., National Surgery Centers LLC, Neighborhood Health Partnership, Neighborhood Health Partnership Inc., Netwerkes, Netwerkes LLC, Nevada Medical Services LLC, Nevada Pacific Dental, New Orleans Regional Physician Hospital Organization L.L.C., New West Physicians Inc., Newton Holdings LLC, North American Medical Management - Illinois, North American Medical Management California, North American Medical Management California Inc., North Puget Sound Center for Sleep Disorders LLC, North Puget Sound Oncology Equipment Leasing Company LLC, Northern Nevada Health Network, Northern Nevada Health Network Inc., Northern Rockies Surgicenter Inc., Northwest Surgicare LLC, Northwest Surgicare Ltd., Nutritional/Parenteral Home Care, Nutritional/Parenteral Home Care of Huntsville, OC Cardiology Practice Partners LLC, OSB  Tecnologia e Servicos de Suporte Ltda., Omesa S.A., OmniClaim LLC, Oncocare S.A.C., OneNet PPO, OneNet PPO LLC, Optimum Choice, Optimum Choice Inc., Optum, Optum Bank, Optum Bank Inc., Optum Biometrics, Optum Biometrics Inc., Optum Care Inc., Optum Care Services Company, Optum Clinical Services, Optum Clinics Holdings, Optum Clinics Holdings Inc., Optum Clinics Intermediate Holdings, Optum Clinics Intermediate Holdings Inc., Optum Digital Health Holdings LLC, Optum Finance (Ireland) Unlimited Company, Optum Global Finance (Ireland) Unlimited Company, Optum Global Solutions (India) Private Limited, Optum Global Solutions (Philippines), Optum Global Solutions (Philippines) Inc., Optum Global Solutions International B.V., Optum Government Solutions, Optum Government Solutions Inc., Optum Growth Partners LLC, Optum Health & Technology (Australia) Pty Ltd, Optum Health & Technology (Hong Kong) Limited, Optum Health & Technology (India) Private Limited, Optum Health & Technology (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Optum Health & Technology (UK) Limited, Optum Health & Technology (US), Optum Health & Technology (US) LLC, Optum Health & Technology FZ-LLC, Optum Health & Technology Holdings (US), Optum Health & Technology Holdings (US) Inc., Optum Health & Technology Servicos do Brasil Ltda., Optum Health Services (Canada) Ltd., Optum Health Solutions (Australia) Pty Ltd, Optum Health Solutions (UK) Limited, Optum Health and Technology FZ-LLC, Optum Healthcare of Illinois, Optum Healthcare of Illinois Inc., Optum Hospice Pharmacy Services, Optum Hospice Pharmacy Services LLC, Optum Inc., Optum Infusion Services 100 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 101 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 103 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 201 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 202 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 203 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 205 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 206 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 207 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 208 Inc., Optum Infusion Services 301 LP, Optum Infusion Services 302 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 308 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 401 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 403 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 404 LLC, Optum Infusion Services 501 Inc., Optum Insurance of Ohio, Optum Insurance of Ohio Inc., Optum Labs, Optum Labs Dimensions, Optum Labs Dimensions Inc., Optum Labs Inc., Optum Labs International (UK) Ltd., Optum Life Sciences (Canada) Inc., Optum Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co., Optum Management Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Optum Networks of New Jersey Inc., Optum Nevada Accountable Care Organization LLC, Optum Operations (Ireland) Unlimited Company, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care Inc., Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Pennsylvania, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Pennsylvania Inc., Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Texas, Optum Palliative and Hospice Care of Texas Inc., Optum Perks LLC, Optum Pharmacy 701 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 702 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 703 LLC, Optum Pharmacy 705 LLC, Optum Public Sector Solutions, Optum Public Sector Solutions Inc., Optum Rocket, Optum Rocket Inc., Optum Senior Services LLC, Optum Services, Optum Services (Ireland) Limited, Optum Services (Puerto Rico) LLC, Optum Services Inc., Optum Solutions UK Holdings Limited, Optum Solutions do Brasil  Tecnologia e Servicos de Suporte Ltda., Optum Technology, Optum Technology LLC, Optum UK Solutions Group Limited, Optum Women's and Children's Health, Optum Women's and Children's Health LLC, Optum of New York Inc., Optum360, Optum360 LLC, Optum360 Services, Optum360 Services Inc., Optum360 Solutions LLC, OptumCare ACO Florida LLC, OptumCare ACO Holdings LLC, OptumCare ACO New Mexico LLC, OptumCare Clinical Trials LLC, OptumCare Colorado ASC LLC, OptumCare Colorado LLC, OptumCare Colorado Springs LLC, OptumCare Endoscopy Center New Mexico LLC, OptumCare Florida CI LLC, OptumCare Florida LLC, OptumCare Health Plan of California Inc., OptumCare Holdings Colorado LLC, OptumCare Holdings LLC, OptumCare Holdings New Mexico LLC, OptumCare Management LLC, OptumCare New Mexico LLC, OptumCare New York IPA Inc., OptumCare South Florida LLC, OptumHealth Care Solutions, OptumHealth Care Solutions LLC, OptumHealth Financial Services, OptumHealth Financial Services Inc., OptumHealth Holdings, OptumHealth Holdings LLC, OptumHealth International B.V., OptumInsight, OptumInsight Holdings, OptumInsight Holdings LLC, OptumInsight Inc., OptumInsight India Private Limited, OptumInsight Life Sciences, OptumInsight Life Sciences Inc., OptumRx, OptumRx Administrative Services, OptumRx Administrative Services LLC, OptumRx Discount Card Services, OptumRx Discount Card Services LLC, OptumRx Group Holdings, OptumRx Group Holdings Inc., OptumRx Health Solutions LLC, OptumRx Holdings, OptumRx Holdings I LLC, OptumRx Holdings LLC, OptumRx Home Delivery of Illinois, OptumRx Home Delivery of Ohio, OptumRx Home Delivery of Ohio LLC, OptumRx IPA III Inc., OptumRx Inc., OptumRx NY IPA, OptumRx NY IPA Inc., OptumRx PBM of Illinois, OptumRx PBM of Illinois Inc., OptumRx PBM of Maryland, OptumRx PBM of Maryland LLC, OptumRx PBM of Pennsylvania, OptumRx PBM of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx PBM of Puerto Rico LLC, OptumRx PBM of Wisconsin, OptumRx PBM of Wisconsin LLC, OptumRx PD of Maryland, OptumRx PD of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumRx Pharmacy, OptumRx Pharmacy Inc., OptumRx Pharmacy of Nevada, OptumRx Pharmacy of Nevada Inc., OptumRx of Pennsylvania LLC, OptumServe Technology Services Inc., Orlando Center for Outpatient Surgery L.P., OrthoNet Holdings, OrthoNet Holdings Inc., OrthoNet LLC, OrthoNet New York IPA, OrthoNet New York IPA Inc., OrthoNet Services, OrthoNet Services Inc., OrthoNet West, OrthoNet West Inc., OrthoNet of the Mid-Atlantic, OrthoNet of the South, OrthoNet of the South Inc., Ovations, Ovations Inc., Oxford Benefit Management, Oxford Benefit Management Inc., Oxford Health Insurance, Oxford Health Insurance Inc., Oxford Health Plans (CT), Oxford Health Plans (CT) Inc., Oxford Health Plans (NJ), Oxford Health Plans (NJ) Inc., Oxford Health Plans (NY), Oxford Health Plans (NY) Inc., Oxford Health Plans LLC, P2 Lower Acquisition, P2P Link LLC, PCCCV, PCCCV Inc., PCN DE Corp., PHC Subsidiary Holdings, PHC Subsidiary Holdings LLC, PHYS Holding Corp., PHYSICIANS DAY SURGERY CENTER LLC, PMI Acquisition, PMI Acquisition LLC, PMSI, PMSI Holdco II, PMSI Holdings, PMSI Holdings LLC, PMSI LLC, PMSI Settlement Solutions, PMSI Settlement Solutions LLC, POMCO Inc., POMCO Network Inc., PPH Holdings LLC, PacifiCare Health Systems, PacifiCare Life Assurance Company, PacifiCare Life and Health Insurance Company, PacifiCare of Arizona, PacifiCare of Arizona Inc., PacifiCare of Colorado, PacifiCare of Colorado Inc., PacifiCare of Nevada, PacifiCare of Nevada Inc., Pacific Casualty Company Inc., Pacifico S.A. Entidad Prestadora de Salud, Paoli Ambulatory Surgery Center, Paoli Surgery Center L.P., Parkway Surgery Center LLC, Pasteur Plaza Surgery Center GP Inc., PatientsLikeMe, PatientsLikeMe LLC, Patrimonio Autonomo Nueva Clinica - PANC., Payment Resolution Services, Payment Resolution Services LLC, Peoples Health, Peoples Health Inc., Pharmaceutical Care Network, Pharmacy Review Services, Pharmacy Software Holdco Inc., PhyServe Holdings, Physician Alliance of the Rockies LLC, Physician Care Partners, Physicians Health Choice of Texas, Physicians Health Choice of Texas LLC, Physicians Health Plan of Maryland, Physicians Health Plan of Maryland Inc., Physicians Plaza Holdings LLC, Plano de Saude Ana Costa Ltda., Plus One Health Management Puerto Rico, Plus One Health Management Puerto Rico Inc., Plus One Holdings, Plus One Holdings Inc., Polar II Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes, Polar II Fundo de Investimento em Participacoes Multiestrategia, Polo Holdco, Polo Holdco LLC, Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center Inc., Pomerado Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Precision Dialing Services Inc., Preferred Care Partners, Preferred Care Partners Holding, Preferred Care Partners Holding Corp., Preferred Care Partners Inc., Preferred Care Partners Medical Group, Preferred Care Partners Medical Group Inc., Premier Choice ACO, Premier Choice ACO Inc., Premier Surgery Center of Louisville L.P., Prime Health, Prime Health Inc., PrimeCare Medical Network, PrimeCare Medical Network Inc., PrimeCare of Citrus Valley, PrimeCare of Citrus Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Corona, PrimeCare of Corona Inc., PrimeCare of Hemet Valley, PrimeCare of Hemet Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Inland Valley, PrimeCare of Inland Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Moreno Valley, PrimeCare of Moreno Valley Inc., PrimeCare of Redlands, PrimeCare of Redlands Inc., PrimeCare of Riverside, PrimeCare of Riverside Inc., PrimeCare of San Bernardino, PrimeCare of San Bernardino Inc., PrimeCare of Sun City, PrimeCare of Sun City Inc., PrimeCare of Temecula, PrimeCare of Temecula Inc., ProHEALTH Fitness of Lake Success, ProHEALTH Fitness of Lake Success LLC, ProHEALTH Medical Management LLC, ProHealth Medical Management, ProHealth Physicians, ProHealth Physicians ACO, ProHealth Physicians ACO LLC, ProHealth Physicians Inc., ProHealth Proton Center Management, ProHealth Proton Center Management LLC, Procura Management, Procura Management Inc., Progressive Enterprises Holdings, Progressive Enterprises Holdings Inc., Progressive Medical, Progressive Medical LLC, Progressive Solutions, Promotora Country S.A., Pronetics Health Care Group, Pronounced Health Solutions Inc., Prosemedic S.A.C., Prospero Management Services LLC, Pueblo-SCA Surgery Center LLC, Pulse Platform LLC, QoL Acquisition Holdings Corp., Quality Software Services, QuarterMaster Newco LLC, R&H Family Fitness Unlimited LLC, Rally Health, Rally Health Inc., Real Appeal Inc., Recaudacion y Cobranzas Honodav Ltda., Redlands Ambulatory Surgery Center, Redlands-SCA Surgery Centers Inc., Reliant MSO LLC, Research Surgical Center LLC, River Valley ASC LLC, Riverside Electronic Healthcare Resources Inc., Riverside Medical Management, Riverside Medical Management LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Meadowlands LLC, Riverside Surgical Center of Newark LLC, Rocky Mountain Health Maintenance Organization Incorporated, Rocky Mountain HealthCare Options Inc., SC Affiliates LLC, SCA Alaska Surgery Center inc., SCA Athens LLC, SCA Austin Holdings LLC, SCA BOSC Holdings LLC, SCA California Surgical Holdings LLC, SCA Capital LLC, SCA Cedar Park Holdings LLC, SCA Clifton LLC, SCA Danbury Surgical Center LLC, SCA Development LLC, SCA EHSC Holdings LLC, SCA EWASC Holdings LLC, SCA Hays Holdings LLC, SCA Heartland Holdings LLC, SCA HoldCo Inc., SCA Holding Company Inc., SCA Holdings Inc., SCA IEC Holdings LLC, SCA Indiana Holdings LLC, SCA Nashville ASC LLC, SCA Pacific Holdings Inc., SCA Pennsylvania Holdings LLC, SCA Premier Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, SCA ROCS Holdings LLC, SCA Rockledge JV LLC, SCA SSC Holdings LLC, SCA SSSC Holdings LLC, SCA Sage Medical LLC, SCA Sage Medical MSO LLC, SCA Southwestern PA LLC, SCA Specialists of Florida LLC, SCA Stonegate Holdings LLC, SCA Surgery Center of Cullman LLC, SCA Surgery Holdings LLC, SCA Surgery Partners LLC, SCA Surgicare of Laguna Hills LLC, SCA Teammate Support Network, SCA eCode Solutions Private Limited, SCA of Clarksville Inc., SCA-Albuquerque Surgery Properties Inc., SCA-Alliance LLC, SCA-Anne Arundel LLC, SCA-Applecare Partners LLC, SCA-Bethesda LLC, SCA-Blue Ridge LLC, SCA-Bonita Springs LLC, SCA-Brandon LLC, SCA-Castle Rock LLC, SCA-Central Florida LLC, SCA-Charleston LLC, SCA-Chatham LLC, SCA-Chevy Chase LLC, SCA-Citrus Inc., SCA-Colorado Springs LLC, SCA-Connecticut Partners LLC, SCA-DRY CREEK LLC, SCA-Davenport LLC, SCA-Denver LLC, SCA-Denver Physicians Holdings LLC, SCA-Derry LLC, SCA-Doral LLC, SCA-Downey LLC, SCA-Dublin LLC, SCA-Encinitas Inc., SCA-Eugene Inc., SCA-First Coast LLC, SCA-Florence LLC, SCA-Fort Collins Inc., SCA-Fort Walton Inc., SCA-Franklin LLC, SCA-Frederick LLC, SCA-Freeway Holdings LLC, SCA-Ft. Myers LLC, SCA-GRANTS PASS LLC, SCA-Gainesville LLC, SCA-Gladiolus LLC, SCA-Grove Place LLC, SCA-Hagerstown LLC, SCA-Hamden LLC, SCA-Hilton Head LLC, SCA-Honolulu LLC, SCA-Houston Executive LLC, SCA-IT Holdings LLC, SCA-Illinois LLC, SCA-JPM Holdings LLC, SCA-Kissing Camels Holdings LLC, SCA-MC VBP Inc., SCA-Main Street LLC, SCA-Marina del Rey LLC, SCA-Mecklenburg Development Corp., SCA-Memorial City LLC, SCA-Merritt LLC, SCA-Midlands LLC, SCA-Midway Management LLC, SCA-Mobile LLC, SCA-Mokena LLC, SCA-Mokena Properties LLC, SCA-Morris County LLC, SCA-Mt. Pleasant LLC, SCA-ND VBP Inc., SCA-Naperville LLC, SCA-Naples LLC, SCA-New Jersey LLC, SCA-Newport Beach LLC, SCA-Northeast Georgia Health LLC, SCA-PORTLAND LLC, SCA-Palm Beach LLC, SCA-Palm Beach MSO Holdings LLC, SCA-Paoli LLC, SCA-Phoenix LLC, SCA-Pocono LLC, SCA-Practice Partners Holdings LLC, SCA-River Valley LLC, SCA-Riverside LLC, SCA-Riverside Partners LLC, SCA-Rockville LLC, SCA-Sacred Heart Holdings LLC, SCA-San Diego Inc., SCA-San Luis Obispo LLC, SCA-Sand Lake LLC, SCA-Santa Rosa Inc., SCA-Shelby Development Corp., SCA-Somerset LLC, SCA-South Jersey LLC, SCA-Sparta LLC, SCA-Spartanburg Holdings LLC, SCA-St. Louis LLC, SCA-St. Lucie LLC, SCA-SurgiCare LLC, SCA-Swiftpath LLC, SCA-VERTA LLC, SCA-Wake Forest LLC, SCA-Western Connecticut LLC, SCA-Westover Hills LLC, SCA-Wilmington LLC, SCA-Wilson LLC, SCA-Winchester LLC, SCA-Winter Park Inc., SCA-Woodlands Holdings LLC, SCAI Holdings LLC, SCP Specialty Infusion, SCP Specialty Infusion LLC, SHC Atlanta LLC, SHC Austin Inc., SHC Hawthorn Inc., SHC Melbourne Inc., SPINETRACK 20/20 Inc., SRPS LLC, SXC Comet, Sacred Heart ASC LLC, Saden S.A., Salem Surgery Center LLC, Salveo Specialty Pharmacy, Salveo Specialty Pharmacy Inc., Sand Lake SurgiCenter LLC, Santa Cruz Endoscopy Center LLC, Santa Helena Assistencia Medica S.A., Santos Administracao e Participacoes S.A., Savvysherpa Administrative Services LLC, Savvysherpa Asia Inc., Savvysherpa LLC, Scanner Centromed S.A., ScripNet, ScriptSwitch Limited, Seisa Servicos Integrados de Saude Ltda., Senate Street Surgery Center LLC, Senior Benefits L.L.C., Senior Care Partners, Serquinox Holdings LLC, Serquinox LLC, Servicios Integrados de Salud Ltda., Servicios Medicos Amed Quilpue S.A., Servicios Medicos Bio Bio Limitada, Servicios Medicos Ciudad del Mar Ltda., Servicios Medicos Santa Maria Limitada, Servicios Medicos Vespucio Ltda., Servicios de Entrenamiento en Competencias Clinicas Ltda., SharedClarity LLC, Shelby Surgery Properties Inc., Sierra Health Services, Sierra Health Services Inc, Sierra Health Services Inc., Sierra Health and Life Insurance Company, Sierra Health and Life Insurance Company Inc., Sierra Health-Care Options, Sierra Health-Care Options Inc., Sierra Home Medical Products, Sierra Home Medical Products Inc., Sierra Nevada Administrators, Sierra Nevada Administrators Inc., Sirona Infusion, Sistema de Administracion Hospitalaria S.A.C., Small Business Insurance Advisors Inc., Sobam  Centro Medico Hospitalar S.A., Sociedad Editorial para la Ciencia Limitada., Sociedad de Inversiones Santa Maria S.A., Somerset Outpatient Surgery L.L.C., Southwest Medical Associates, Southwest Medical Associates Inc., Southwest Michigan Health Network Inc., Southwest Surgery Center LLC, Southwest Surgical Center of Bakersfield L.P., Space Coast Surgical Center Ltd., Specialists in Urology Surgery Center LLC, Specialized Pharmaceuticals Inc., Specialty Benefits, Specialty Benefits LLC, Spectera, Spectera Inc., Spectera of New York IPA, Spectera of New York IPA Inc., Spotlite, Spotlite Inc., St. Cloud Surgical Center LLC, StoneRiver P2P Link, StoneRiver Pharmacy Solutions, Stonegate Surgery Center L.P., Streamlines Health LLC, Summit Home Infusion, SunSurgery LLC, Surgery Center Holding LLC, Surgery Center at Cherry Creek LLC, Surgery Center at Kissing Camels LLC, Surgery Center of Boca Raton Inc., Surgery Center of Clarksville L.P., Surgery Center of Colorado Springs LLC, Surgery Center of Des Moines LLC, Surgery Center of Easton LLC, Surgery Center of Ellicott City Inc., Surgery Center of Louisville LLC, Surgery Center of Maui LLC, Surgery Center of Muskogee LLC, Surgery Center of Rockville L.L.C., Surgery Center of Southern Pines LLC, Surgery Center of Spokane LLC, Surgery Center of Summerlin LLC, Surgery Center of The Woodlands LLC, Surgery Center of Vero Beach Inc., Surgery Center of Wilmington LLC, Surgery Center of Wilmington Properties LLC, Surgery Centers of Des Moines Ltd. an Iowa Limited Partnership, Surgery Centers-West Holdings LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates, Surgical Care Affiliates LLC, Surgical Care Affiliates Political Action Committee, Surgical Care Partners of Melbourne LLC, Surgical Center of South Jersey Limited Partnership, Surgical Center of Tuscaloosa Holdings LLC, Surgical Health LLC, Surgical Health of Orlando LLC, Surgical Hospital Holdings of Oklahoma LLC, Surgicare LLC, Surgicare of Belleville LLC, Surgicare of Jackson LLC, Surgicare of Joliet Inc., Surgicare of La Veta Inc., Surgicare of Minneapolis LLC, Surgicare of Mobile LLC, Surgicare of Oceanside Inc., Surgicare of Owensboro LLC, Surgicare of Salem LLC, Surgicenters of Southern California Inc., Symphonix Health Holdings, Symphonix Health Holdings LLC, Symphonix Health Insurance, Symphonix Health Insurance Inc., THE SURGICAL CENTER OF THE TREASURE COAST L.L.C., TeamMD Holdings Inc., TeamMD Iowa Inc., TeamMD Physicians of Texas Inc., TeamUP Insurance Services Inc., Tecnologias de Informacion en Salud S.A., The Advisory Board (Chile) SpA, The Chesapeake Life Insurance Company, The Lewin Group, The Lewin Group Inc., The Magan Medical Group, The Outpatient Surgery Center of Hilton Head LLC, The Polyclinic MSO LLC, Thomas Johnson Surgery Center LLC, Thousand Oaks Endoscopy Center LLC, Three Rivers Holdings, Three Rivers Holdings Inc., Three Rivers Surgical Care L.P., Tmesys, Tmesys LLC, Topimagem Diagnostico por Imagem Ltda., Touchpoint Health Plan, Trails Edge Surgery Center LLC, Travel Express Incorporated, TriMed LLC, Trinity Infusion, Trio Motion LLC, Tucson Arizona Surgical Center LLC, U.S. Behavioral Health Plan, U.S. Behavioral Health Plan California, UHC Finance (Ireland) Unlimited Company, UHC Global Health Services BC Ltd., UHC International Services, UHC International Services Inc., UHC of California, UHCG Holdings (Ireland) Limited, UHCG Services (Ireland) Limited, UHCG  FZE, UHG Brasil Participacoes S.A., UHIC Holdings, UHIC Holdings Inc., UICI Funding Corp. 2, UMR, UMR Inc., USHEALTH Academy Inc., USHEALTH Administrators LLC, USHEALTH Advisors L.L.C., USHEALTH Career Agency Inc., USHEALTH Funding Inc., USHEALTH Group Inc., USMD Administrative Services, USMD Administrative Services L.L.C., USMD Affiliated Services, USMD CT (Mo), USMD Cancer Treatment Centers, USMD Cancer Treatment Centers GP, USMD Diagnostic Services, USMD Holdings, USMD Holdings Inc., USMD Inc., USMD PPM, USMD PPM LLC, USMD of Arlington GP, Ultima Rx, Unidad Medica Diagnostico S.A., Unimerica Insurance Company, Unimerica Life Insurance Company of New York, Unison Administrative Services, Unison Health Plan of Delaware, Unison Health Plan of Delaware Inc., United Behavioral Health, United Behavioral Health of New York I.P.A., United Behavioral Health of New York I.P.A. Inc., United Group Reinsurance Inc., United Health Foundation, United HealthCare, United HealthCare Services Inc., United Management Services Inc., United Resource Networks IPA of New York, United Resource Networks IPA of New York Inc., UnitedHealth Advisors, UnitedHealth Advisors LLC, UnitedHealth Group Finance Inc., UnitedHealth Group Global Healthcare Services Limited, UnitedHealth Group Global Services, UnitedHealth Group Incorporated, UnitedHealth Group Information Services Private Limited, UnitedHealth Group International Finance (Ireland) Unlimited Company, UnitedHealth Group International GP, UnitedHealth Group International L.P., UnitedHealth International, UnitedHealth International Inc., UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services, UnitedHealth Military & Veterans Services LLC, UnitedHealth UK Limited, UnitedHealthcare, UnitedHealthcare Benefits Plan of California, UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas, UnitedHealthcare Benefits of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare Children's Foundation Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of California, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of California Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Georgia, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Ohio, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Texas, UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Texas L.L.C., UnitedHealthcare Consulting & Assistance Service (Beijing) Co., UnitedHealthcare Consulting & Assistance Service (Beijing) Co. Ltd., UnitedHealthcare Europe S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare Europe S.a.r.l., UnitedHealthcare Global Canada Limited, UnitedHealthcare Global Medical (UK) Limited, UnitedHealthcare Inc., UnitedHealthcare India Private Limited, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of Illinois, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of New York, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company of the River Valley, UnitedHealthcare Insurance Designated Activity Company, UnitedHealthcare Integrated Services, UnitedHealthcare Integrated Services Inc., UnitedHealthcare International Asia, UnitedHealthcare International Asia LLC, UnitedHealthcare International I B.V., UnitedHealthcare International I S.a.r.l., UnitedHealthcare International II B.V., UnitedHealthcare International II S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International II S.a.r.l., UnitedHealthcare International III B.V., UnitedHealthcare International III S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International III S.a.r.l., UnitedHealthcare International IV S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International IV S.a.r.l., UnitedHealthcare International V S.a.r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VI S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VII S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International VIII S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare International X S.a r.l., UnitedHealthcare Life Insurance Company, UnitedHealthcare Plan of the River Valley, UnitedHealthcare Plan of the River Valley Inc., UnitedHealthcare Service LLC, UnitedHealthcare Services Company of the River Valley, UnitedHealthcare Specialty Benefits, UnitedHealthcare Specialty Benefits LLC, UnitedHealthcare of Alabama, UnitedHealthcare of Alabama Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Arizona, UnitedHealthcare of Arizona Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Arkansas, UnitedHealthcare of Arkansas Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Colorado, UnitedHealthcare of Colorado Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Florida, UnitedHealthcare of Florida Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Georgia, UnitedHealthcare of Georgia Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Illinois, UnitedHealthcare of Illinois Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Kentucky, UnitedHealthcare of Kentucky Ltd., UnitedHealthcare of Louisiana, UnitedHealthcare of Louisiana Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Mississippi, UnitedHealthcare of Mississippi Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New England, UnitedHealthcare of New England Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New Mexico, UnitedHealthcare of New Mexico Inc., UnitedHealthcare of New York, UnitedHealthcare of New York Inc., UnitedHealthcare of North Carolina, UnitedHealthcare of North Carolina Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Ohio, UnitedHealthcare of Ohio Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Oklahoma, UnitedHealthcare of Oklahoma Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Oregon, UnitedHealthcare of Oregon Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Pennsylvania, UnitedHealthcare of Pennsylvania Inc., UnitedHealthcare of South Carolina Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Texas, UnitedHealthcare of Texas Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Utah, UnitedHealthcare of Utah Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Washington, UnitedHealthcare of Washington Inc., UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin, UnitedHealthcare of Wisconsin Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Mid-Atlantic, UnitedHealthcare of the Mid-Atlantic Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands, UnitedHealthcare of the Midlands Inc., UnitedHealthcare of the Midwest, UnitedHealthcare of the Midwest Inc., UpFront Insurance Agency LLC, Upland Holdings LLC, Upland Outpatient Surgical Center L.P., Urgent Care Holdings, Urgent Care Holdings Inc., Urgent Care MSO, Urgent Care MSO LLC, Urology Associates of North Texas, Urology Associates of North Texas P.L.L.C., VERTA MANAGEMENT SERVICES LLC, Valley Hospital L.L.C., Valley Physicians Network, Valley Physicians Network Inc., Vida Tres Internacional S.A., Vidaintegra S.A., Vivify Health Canada Inc., Vivify Health Inc., WESTMED Practice Partners LLC, Wauwatosa Outpatient Surgery Center LLC, Wauwatosa Surgery Center Limited Partnership, Wayland Square Surgicare Acquisition L.P., Wayland Square Surgicare GP Inc., WebInsure Benefits LLC, WellMed Medical Management, WellMed Medical Management Inc., WellMed Medical Management of Florida, WellMed Medical Management of Florida Inc., WellMed Networks  DFW, West Coast Endoscopy Holdings LLC, Western Connecticut Orthopedic Surgical Center LLC, WillowB Labs LLC, Wilmington ASC LLC, Winchester Endoscopy LLC, Winter Park LLC, XLHealth Corporation, XLHealth Corporation India Private Limited, Your Health Options Insurance Services, Your Health Options Insurance Services Inc., Your Partner in Health Services, divvyDOSE, eCode Solutions LLC, gethealthinsurance.com Agency Inc., hCentive Inc., inPharmative, inPharmative Inc., and ppoONE.
Vanguard ESG U.S. Stock ETF's stock was trading at $48.46 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, ESGV stock has increased by 79.6% and is now trading at $87.05.

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Unite Students is the UK's largest owner, manager and developer of purpose-built student accommodation serving the country's world-leading Higher Education sector. Following our successful A1.4bn acquisition of Liberty Living's UK assets in November 2019, we now provide homes to 76,000 students across 177 properties in 27 leading university towns and cities. Our people are driven by a common purpose: to provide a 'Home for Success' for the students who live with us and to be the most trusted brand in the sector. We do this through quality service, quality people and quality properties, all designed on the basis of an excellent insight into students' needs and preferences. Unite's accommodation is high quality, affordable, safe and secure, and located where students want to live. Students live predominantly in en-suite study bedrooms with rents covering all bills, insurance, 24-hour security and high-speed Wi-Fi. MyUnite, our mobile app, provides practical support such as instant messaging and maintenance requests. We hold a five-star British Safety Council audit rating (out of five) following an Occupational Health and Safety audit. The audit measured our performance against a number of key safety management indicators, providing an international benchmark for safety management systems and indicating best practice for continual improvement. Our commitment to customer service is powered by an innovative, in-house operating platform. It provides a wide range of benefits to our students, such as an optimised online booking process, as well as providing us with a unique ability to drive value from our portfolio through scale efficiencies and revenue management. Our other strategic priority is delivering growing and sustainable earnings, underpinned by a strong capital structure. A key part of this strategy is growing the number of beds let through partnerships with the strongest UK universities which are experiencing record levels of student demand. We currently partner with 60 universities across the UK, guaranteeing that 52% of our rooms are let under 'nomination agreements' providing high visibility of forward occupancy and rental growth. Unite Students has spent years helping young people thrive in new situations and help them manage the big A'Leap' to university life. Our insight has identified a significant gap between student expectations and reality. To support this leap, we have developed the Leapskills programme, helping to prepare prospective students for independent living. The programme introduces students to a number of student life scenarios to provoke group discussion on conflict resolution, problem solving and gives a general insight into shared living to help closer match expectations to reality. Unite is the founder of and major donor to the Unite Foundation, a charitable trust established to support talented students facing challenging financial circumstances through the provision of free accommodation scholarships. The Foundation has so far provided scholarships for 434 young people working in close collaboration with 27 partner universities. Unite is invested in and operates two specialist funds and joint ventures with institutional investment partners: the A3 billion Unite UK Student Accommodation Fund (USAF), and the A1 billion London Student Accommodation Vehicle (LSAV). Founded in 1991 in Bristol, Unite Group is an award-winning Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), listed on the London Stock Exchange and a member of the FTSE 250 Index.

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Maxar Technologies Inc. provides earth intelligence and space infrastructure solutions in the United States, Asia, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Canada, and internationally. It operates through Earth Intelligence and Space Infrastructure segments. The Earth Intelligence segment offers earth imagery products, including orthorectified imagery, imagery basemap, 3D and elevation, and information products; and SecureWatch, a subscription offering that provides online access to imagery and geospatial intelligence platform. This segment also offers geospatial information, application, and analytic services. It serves U.S. and other international government agencies, such as defense and intelligence agencies, as well as commercial customers in various markets. The Space Infrastructure segment provides space based infrastructure, robotics, sub-systems, and information solutions, including communication and imaging satellites and payloads; platforms for space exploration and hosting instruments for earth science; space subsystems for power, propulsion, and communication; satellite ground systems and support services; space-based remote sensory solutions; space robotics; and defense systems. This segment serves government agencies and satellite operators. Maxar Technologies Inc. was founded in 1969 and is headquartered in Westminster, Colorado.

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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.

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There is not enough analysis data for MFS Intermediate Income Trust.

4.3 Community Rank

Outperform Votes MFS Intermediate Income Trust has received 147 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes MFS Intermediate Income Trust has received 80 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment MFS Intermediate Income Trust has received 64.76% outperform votes from our community.

MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about MFS Intermediate Income Trust and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe MIN will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe MIN will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days.

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iShares MSCI EAFE Value ETF's stock was trading at $38.50 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 (Coronavirus) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, EFV stock has increased by 28.5% and is now trading at $49.46.

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There is not enough analysis data for Revolution Bars Group.

5.0 Community Rank

Outperform Votes Revolution Bars Group has received 285 outperform votes. (Add your outperform vote.)

Underperform Votes Revolution Bars Group has received 83 underperform votes. (Add your underperform vote.)

Community Sentiment Revolution Bars Group has received 77.45% outperform votes from our community.

MarketBeat's community ratings are surveys of what our community members think about Revolution Bars Group and other stocks. Vote Outperform if you believe RBG will outperform the S&P 500 over the long term. Vote Underperform if you believe RBG will underperform the S&P 500 over the long term. You may vote once every thirty days.

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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.
Pimco Total Return ETF's stock was trading at $110.14 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, BOND shares have decreased by 0.3% and is now trading at $109.80.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
Oasis Petroleum Inc., an independent exploration and production company, focuses on the acquisition and development of onshore unconventional oil and natural gas resources in the United States. It operates through Exploration and Production(E&P), and Midstream segments. The E&P segment engages in the acquisition and development of oil and gas properties. The Midstream segment offers midstream services, such as natural gas gathering, compression, processing and, gas lift supply; crude oil gathering, terminaling, and transportation; produced and flowback water gathering, and disposal; and water distribution. As of December 31, 2020, the company had 401,766 net leasehold acres in the Williston Basin; and 24,396 net leasehold acres in the Permian Basin, as well as approximately 152.2 million barrels of oil equivalent of estimated net proved reserves. The company sells its crude oil and natural gas to refiners, marketers, and other purchasers that have access to pipeline and rail facilities. Oasis Petroleum Inc. was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

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Royal Dutch Shell plc operates as an energy and petrochemical company worldwide. The company operates through Integrated Gas, Upstream, Oil Products, Chemicals segments. It explores for and extracts crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids; markets and transports oil and gas; produces gas-to-liquids fuels and other products; and operates upstream and midstream infrastructure necessary to deliver gas to market. The company also markets and trades natural gas, liquefied natural gas (LNG), crude oil, electricity, carbon-emission rights; and markets and sells LNG as a fuel for heavy-duty vehicles and marine vessels. In addition, it trades in and refines crude oil and other feed stocks, such as gasoline, diesel, heating oil, aviation fuel, marine fuel, biofuel, lubricants, bitumen, and sulphur; produces and sells petrochemicals for industrial use; and manages oil sands activities. Further, the company produces base chemicals comprising ethylene, propylene, and aromatics, as well as intermediate chemicals, such as styrene monomer, propylene oxide, solvents, detergent alcohols, ethylene oxide, and ethylene glycol. Royal Dutch Shell plc was founded in 1907 and is headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands.

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Suncor Energy Inc. operates as an integrated energy company. The company primarily focuses on developing petroleum resource basins in Canada's Athabasca oil sands; explores, acquires, develops, produces, transports, refines, and markets crude oil in Canada and internationally; markets petroleum and petrochemical products under the Petro-Canada name primarily in Canada. It operates in Oil Sands; Exploration and Production; Refining and Marketing; and Corporate and Eliminations segments. The Oil Sands segment recovers bitumen from mining and in situ operations, and upgrades it into refinery feedstock and diesel fuel, or blends the bitumen with diluent for direct sale to market. The Exploration and Production segment is involved in offshore operations off the east coast of Canada and in the North Sea; and operating onshore assets in Libya and Syria. The Refining and Marketing segment refines crude oil and intermediate feedstock into various petroleum and petrochemical products; and markets refined petroleum products to retail, commercial, and industrial customers through its other retail sellers. The Corporate and Eliminations segment operates four wind farm operations in Ontario and Western Canada. The company also markets and trades in crude oil, natural gas, byproducts, refined products, and power. The company was formerly known as Suncor Inc. and changed its name to Suncor Energy Inc. in April 1997. Suncor Energy Inc. was founded in 1917 and is headquartered in Calgary, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of SYNNEX: 2117974 Ontario Inc., Afina Peru S.A.C., Afina S.R.L., Afina Sistemas Informaticos Limitada, Afina Sistemas Informaticos S.L, Afina Sistemas Sociedade Ltda., Afina Venezuela C.A., Afinasis S.A. de C.V., Asset Ohio Fourth Street LLC, BPO Holdco Cooperatief U.A., Beijing Jumeng Technology Development Ltd., Brazil HoldCo Limited, CNX Services Jamaica Limited, Chongqing Jumeng Technologies Development Ltd., ComputerLand Corporation, Comstor Colombia S.A.S., Concentrix (Canada) Limited, Concentrix (Suzhou) Information Consulting Co. Limited, Concentrix Beteiligungen GmbH, Concentrix Brazil Outsourcing of Processes Administrative Services and Technologies to Enterprises Ltda., Concentrix Business Services UK Limited, Concentrix CMG Canada ULC, Concentrix CRM Services Germany GmbH, Concentrix CRM Services Hungary Kft, Concentrix CRM Services RO S.R.L., Concentrix CRM Services UK Limited, Concentrix CVG (Mauritius) Ltd, Concentrix CVG Brite Voice Systems LLC, Concentrix CVG CMG Insurance Services LLC, Concentrix CVG CMG UK Limited, Concentrix CVG Contact Tunisie S.A.R.L., Concentrix CVG Corporation, Concentrix CVG Customer Management Australia Pty. Ltd., Concentrix CVG Customer Management Colombia S.A.S., Concentrix CVG Customer Management Delaware LLC, Concentrix CVG Customer Management Group Inc., Concentrix CVG Delaware Inc., Concentrix CVG Delaware International Inc., Concentrix CVG Egypt Limited Liability Company, Concentrix CVG France S.A.R.L., Concentrix CVG Funding Inc., Concentrix CVG Global Services AZ Inc., Concentrix CVG Global Services El Salvador S.A. de C.V., Concentrix CVG Global Services Honduras S.A., Concentrix CVG Global Services Hong Kong Limited, Concentrix CVG Government Solutions LLC, Concentrix CVG Group Limited, Concentrix CVG Holding LLC, Concentrix CVG Intelligent Contact Limited, Concentrix CVG International Bulgaria EOOD, Concentrix CVG International Holding Ltd., Concentrix CVG International Sp. Z.o.o., Concentrix CVG Ireland Contact Services Limited, Concentrix CVG Ireland Limited, Concentrix CVG Italy S.R.L., Concentrix CVG LLC, Concentrix CVG Learning Solutions LLC, Concentrix CVG Malaysia (Phillipines) Sdn. Bhd., Concentrix CVG Malaysia Sdn. Bhd., Concentrix CVG Philippines Inc., Concentrix CVG Pte. Ltd., Concentrix CVG Services Singapore Pte. Ltd., Concentrix CVG Servicios Informaticos S.L, Concentrix CVG Singapore Holdings Pte. Ltd., Concentrix CVG Tunisie BPO S.A.R.L., Concentrix CVG Tunisie S.A.R.L., Concentrix Corporation, Concentrix Costa Rica S.A., Concentrix Daksh Services India Private Limited, Concentrix Daksh Services Philippines Corporation, Concentrix Digital Services Limited, Concentrix Duisburg GmbH, Concentrix Dusseldorf GmbH, Concentrix Europe Limited, Concentrix Frankfurt a. M. GmbH, Concentrix Free Trade Zone S.A., Concentrix Gera GmbH, Concentrix Global Services GmbH, Concentrix Gmbh, Concentrix HK Limited, Concentrix Halle GmbH, Concentrix Insurance Administration Solutions Corporation, Concentrix International Europe B.V., Concentrix International GmbH, Concentrix International Services Europe B.V., Concentrix Investment Holdings Corporation, Concentrix Investment Holdings Singapore 1 Pte. Ltd, Concentrix Investment Holdings Singapore 2 Pte. Ltd, Concentrix Investment Holdings Singapore 3 Pte. Ltd, Concentrix Investments Europe B.V., Concentrix Legal Services Company Limited, Concentrix Leipzig GmbH, Concentrix Logistics Corporation, Concentrix Management Holding GmbH & Co. KG, Concentrix Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V, Concentrix Munster GmbH, Concentrix New (BVI) Corporation, Concentrix NewHK Limited, Concentrix Nicaragua S.A., Concentrix Osnabruck GmbH, Concentrix Receivables Inc, Concentrix Rechenzentrum GmbH, Concentrix Romania S.R.L., Concentrix Schwerin GmbH, Concentrix Services (Colombia) S.A.S., Concentrix Services (Dalian) Co. Ltd., Concentrix Services (Germany) GmbH, Concentrix Services (Ireland) Limited, Concentrix Services (Netherlands) B.V., Concentrix Services (New Zealand) Limited, Concentrix Services (Poland) spolka z o.o., Concentrix Services (Saudi Arabia) Corporation LLC, Concentrix Services (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Concentrix Services (Thailand) Co. Ltd, Concentrix Services (Uruguay) S.A., Concentrix Services Bulgaria EOOD, Concentrix Services Corporation, Concentrix Services GmbH, Concentrix Services Holdco (Netherlands) B.V., Concentrix Services Hungary KFT, Concentrix Services India Private Limited, Concentrix Services Korea Limited, Concentrix Services Mexico S.A. de C.V., Concentrix Services Philippines Inc., Concentrix Services Portugal Sociedade Unipessoal LDA, Concentrix Services Pty Ltd, Concentrix Services Slovakia s.r.o., Concentrix Services Spain S.L.U., Concentrix Services UK Limited, Concentrix Services US Inc., Concentrix Software Technologies (HK) Limited, Concentrix Solutions Corporation, Concentrix Technologies (India) Private Limited, Concentrix Technologies Limited, Concentrix Technologies Services (Canada) Limited, Concentrix Tigerspike Technology FZ-LLC, Concentrix VN Technologies Services Company Limited, Concentrix Verwaltungs GmbH, Concentrix Wismar GmbH, Concentrix Wuppertal GmbH, Convergys, Convergys Customer Management Group Canada Holding Inc., Convergys Customer Management International Inc., Convergys Customer Management Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Convergys Holdings (GB) Limited, Convergys Holdings (UK) Limited, Convergys India Services Private Limited, Convergys International Inc., Convergys International Nordic AB, Convergys Services Denmark ApS, Convergys South Africa (Pty) Ltd., CyberLogistics Corporation, Dalian Jumeng Information Services Ltd., Dalian Jumeng Technology Development Ltd., EMJ America Inc., Encore Receivable Management Inc., Foshan Jumeng Information Technology Service Co. Ltd, GLS Software S. de R.L., Guiyang Jumeng Technology Development Ltd., Hyve Design Solutions (Taiwan) Corporation, Hyve Design Solutions Corporation, Hyve IT Solutions Israel Ltd, Hyve IT Solutions South Africa (PTY) Ltd., Hyve SNX Solutions Ireland Limited, Hyve Solutions (Taiwan) Corporation, Hyve Solutions Canada Limited, Hyve Solutions China Limited, Hyve Solutions Corporation, Hyve Solutions Europe Limited, Hyve Solutions HK Limited, Hyve Solutions Holding Company Limited, Hyve Solutions India Private Limited, Hyve Solutions Japan K.K., Hyve Solutions Korea Limited, Hyve Solutions Malaysia SDN.BHD., Hyve Solutions New Zealand Limited, Hyve Solutions Singapore Pte. Ltd, Hyve Solutions US Global Holding Corporation, IBM World Wide Customer Care, Intervoice Acquisition Subsidiary Inc., Intervoice Colombia Ltda., Intervoice GP Inc., Intervoice GmbH, Intervoice LP Inc., Intervoice Limited, Intervoice Limited Partnership, Intervoice do Brasil Comercio Servicos e Participacoes Ltda., Jack Of All Games Inc., Japan Concentrix KK, LATAM HoldCo Limited, Lasting Holdings Corporation, License Online Inc, Minacs, Minacs Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., PT Concentrix Services Indonesia, PT Convergys Customer Management Indonesia, Pegasus Telecom LLC, SCGS (Malaysia) SDN. BHD., SGS Holdings Inc., SIT Funding Corporation, SYNNEX Canada Limited, SYNNEX Finance Hybrid II LLC, SYNNEX Holdco Inc., SYNNEX Information Technologies (Beijing) Ltd., SYNNEX Information Technologies (Chengdu) Ltd., SYNNEX Information Technologies (China) Ltd., SYNNEX Japan Corporation, SYNNEX Japan Holdings K.K., SYNNEX Servicios S.A. de C.V., SYNNEX de Mexico S.A. de C.V., SYNNEX-Concentrix UK Limited, Sennex Enterprises Limited, Servicios Afinasis S.A. de C.V., Shenzhen Shunrong Telecommunication Technologies Ltd., Sichuan 86Bridge Information Technology Ltd., Stream Business Process Outsourcing South Africa (Proprietary) Ltd., Stream Florida Inc., Stream Global Services - US Inc., Stream Global Services Inc., Stream Holdings Corporation, Suzhou Ke Wei Xun Information Services Co. Ltd., Tech Data, The Global Email Trustee Limited, Tigerspike Co. Ltd, Tigerspike FZ-LLC, Tigerspike Holdings Pty Ltd, Tigerspike Inc., Tigerspike Ltd, Tigerspike Products Pte. Ltd., Tigerspike Pte. Ltd., Tigerspike Pty Ltd, Velami Holdings Corporation, Vietnam Concentrix Services Company Limited, VisionMAX, WG-UK Holding Company Limited, WG-US HoldCo Inc, Westcon Brasil Ltda., Westcon CALA Inc., Westcon Canada Systems (WCSI) Inc., Westcon Corporation Ecuador WCE Cia. Ltda, Westcon GDS LLC, Westcon Group Colombia Limitada, Westcon Group Costa Rica S.A., Westcon Group Inc., Westcon Group North America Inc., Westcon Group Panama S.A., Westcon Mexico S.A. de C.V., Westcon-Comstor Americas, Xi'an Jumeng Technologies Development Ltd, and eTelecare Philippines Inc..
iShares MSCI France ETF's stock was trading at $25.23 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EWQ stock has increased by 50.5% and is now trading at $37.96.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
iShares S&P 500 ETF's stock was trading at $275.41 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, IVV stock has increased by 71.0% and is now trading at $471.06.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
Lawmakers tensed with frustration, some clenching their jaws, while grilling a panel of pharmacy and pharmaceutical company executives about the soaring cost of insulin during a congressional hearing on Wednesday. The tension could be felt as some executives fidgeted in their chairs while answering lawmakers' questions.

The hearing, held by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee on Capitol Hill, was the second this month to examine how fast-rising insulin costs affect diabetes patients across the United States.

The average price of insulin tripled over the course of a decade, from $4.34 per milliliter in 2002 to $12.92 per milliliter in 2013, according to a study published in the medical journal JAMA in 2016.

Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky vehemently said during the hearing that prices of insulin are "curiously close" between manufacturers and "way too high."

"I don't know how you people sleep at night," she told the panel of executives.

"We have the names of people who have died because they couldn't get their insulin," she said. "This is a commitment on the part of the Congress to get drug prices -- particularly life-saving life necessities -- to get those prices under control. ... Your days are numbered."

In response, several executives -- including Doug Langa of Novo Nordisk and Kathleen Tregoning of Sanofi -- pointed to how the health care system is "broken," and they all agreed it was unacceptable that some patients are struggling to afford medications.

As the hearing adjourned, lawmakers made clear that an investigation into the rising cost of insulin and what can be done about the issue will continue.

Companies aim to lower costs; lawmakers argue it's not enough

People with diabetes are prescribed insulin because their bodies either do not produce it (as with Type 1 diabetes) or do not use it properly (as with Type 2 diabetes). There are more than 20 types of insulin sold in the United States, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Ahead of Wednesday's hearing, pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced plans to reduce the price of insulin for qualifying patients to $99 a month for up to 10 boxes of pens or 10-milliliter vials.

The new monthly price for qualifying patients will start in June, according to the company.

"It is unacceptable to Sanofi that some people living with diabetes are struggling to pay for their insulin, so we have moved to act creatively and aggressively to help address affordability and access needs," Michelle Carnahan, head of North America Primary Care at Sanofi, said in the announcement.

"By giving those who require both long-acting and/or mealtime insulins or use more than one box of pens or one vial per month access to their insulins for one flat price, we aim to help limit the burden on the individuals who have high out-of-pocket costs at the pharmacy counter," she said.

US Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who helped launch a bipartisan investigation into insulin prices in February, called the move "a step in the right direction" in a written statement Wednesday.

"But like Cigna's announcement on insulin prices last week, this raises a lot of questions. Why was Sanofi charging so much more before this announcement? What took them so long to offer the price reduction?" he added. "It shouldn't take months of bad press, persistent public outcry and increasing congressional scrutiny to get a company to charge a fair price. That's not how a functioning marketplace works."

Health insurer Cigna said last week that it's launching a program that will cap out-of-pocket expenses at $25 for a 30-day supply of insulin. Last year, patients paid an average of $41.50 a month out of pocket, including deductibles, copays or coinsurance, for the lifesaving diabetes drug, according to the company.

Its Patient Assurance Program will be available to members of participating nongovernment-funded pharmacy plans managed by Express Scripts, including Cigna and other plans. Cigna acquired Express Scripts, the largest US pharmacy benefit management company, in December.

"In most cases, people who use insulin will see lower out-of-pocket costs without any increased cost to the plan," the company said.

'A matter of life and death'

Also last week, the US Food and Drug Administration announced that it intends to bring competition to the insulin market as a way to lower prices. Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb said the agency would change how insulin is regulated in order to enable products that are biosimilar to, or interchangeable with, insulin to come to market.

"Access to affordable insulin can be a matter of life and death for Americans with diabetes. Insulin is a critical hormone that regulates sugar metabolism," Gottlieb said in the announcement.

"But access to this critical drug can be increasingly difficult for these Americans. Insulin list prices regularly increase by double digits annually," he said. "Driving down drug prices requires a comprehensive approach. But one impactful route is through competition. This is particularly true following the introductions of generics, especially when there are three or more generic competitors -- which has been shown to bring down prices more sharply than with only one or two generic competitors."

In March, pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced plans to sell a cheaper generic version of its rapid-acting insulin Humalog. At half the price of Humalog, the generic insulin lispro will carry a list price of $137.35 per vial, the company said, or $265.20 for a pack of five pens. Brand-name Humalog will remain on the market.

Colorado Rep. Diana DeGette, chairwoman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, said at Wednesday's hearing that Humalog cost only $35 a vial in 2001 and that the price increased even though the drug formulary remained the same.

"Let's not kid ourselves that the generic equivalent of this is really any cheaper," she said shortly before the hearing adjourned.
MIAMI, FL -- It took 42 years, but a Clayville family now has the justice they were seeking.

A jury Friday in Miami, Florida found 77-year-old retired real estate developer Allen Bregman guilty of the murder of Debra Pantola Clark.

Debra grew up in Utica and after divorcing her husband, she moved to South Florida in the 70s, where she met Bregman, who was married.

The two had an affair and in 1977, Debra was murdered in the condo that Bregman purchased so they two could continue their affair while he was still with his wife.

Debra was shot and brutally beaten with a pistol.

Her family members from Clayville have been in court for the trial this past week, and told NEWSChannel 2 they are relieved this is finally over.

WKTV will meet up with them and share much more of their story when they return home.
MARCY, N.Y. - New York State Police said a preliminary investigation indicates the student found badly injured in her SUNY Polytechnic Institute dorm room experienced a medical event that led to her injuries.

State Police and University Police also said they have determined the student is not a victim of a crime, but while there is no indication of any criminality, the investigation is ongoing.

The student, who's name is not being released, was found Monday in her Adirondack Residence Hall dorm room. Fellow students brought her to the emergency room. Officials said they believe she suffered the medical event on Saturday night.

The incident left students on campus on edge. The general student body was informed of the incident on Wednesday in a campus-wide email sent out by college officials.

"It's a very sad situation that happened on our campus and there's definetly the feeling throughout the campus community and everyones kind of feeling a little sad about it," Tucker Mogren, SUNY Poly senior said. "In a situation like this, its very nice to see the wildcat family bonding together."

The student is currently listed in critical condition at a local hospital.
Covid-19: This is not the right ...
We recieved reports of a few power outages overnight & a few trees downed in Tippecanoe & Clinton counties. One tree fell & blocked the intersection of Bennett & Teal Roads near Central Catholic High School on the southwest side of Lafayette.

These are the preliminary storm reports from the Storm Prediction Center. You can see what higher dew points do in regards to severe weather.

The higher dew points over Georgia, Carolinas began to be slowly pulled northward. Once some of our dynamics & shear 7 the trigger got to the plume, note the number of damaging wind & even 1 tornado report from late lastnight & this morning from far southeastern Indiana, northern Kentucky to Ohio.

NWS storm surveys are underway in a few counties around Cincinnati & other counties in west-central Ohio for possible tornado damage in multiple locations.

Also, note the hail reports that occurred with the BLIZZARD in Minnesota! This is a testament to the EXTREME rising motion & dynamics of this Plains storm.

Today will see a lot of sun, but it will be windy with southwest to west gusts 40-45 mph at times. Highs will run 56-62.

After lows tonight 32-37 with wind diminishing, they will crank up to 10-15 mph from the west tomorrow morning & into the afternoon.

High/mid clouds will be on the increase Saturday with highs 57-61.

Dress warmly for The Challenge 5K at Purdue! It will be in the 30s with wind chills in the 20s to around 30.

In the afternoon, even with a 57-61, which is nice, it may feel cool due to the breeze.

Widespread moderate to heavy rainfall comes in Saturday overnight & lasts through Sunday morning. A few embedded t'storms are possible.

Winds will be howling from the northeast to 42 mph with temperatures in the 30s & 40s & wind chills in the 20s & 30s. It will be a nasty, nasty Sunday morning & midday!

Note the severe weather Arkansas, southeastern Missouri, headed for western Kentucky & into Tennessee along & south of the warm front.

This will be part of a severe weather outbreak that will begin today in Texas, really ramp up in Texas, Arkansas & Louisiana Saturday & then March east & northeastward. A few strong to violent tornadoes cannot be ruled out.

Watch the snow develop as cold air filters in & dynamic cooling occurs. Also note how the solid, heavier rain becomes more periodic & lighter here around midday.

It you are prone to pain from low air pressure, Sunday won't be great. Note the 996 mb surface pressure with the surface low just south of us at midday.

As storm moves northeastward, warm front will be pulled northward, bringing severe weather risk all the way to Indianapolis, northeastward to Toledo, Ohio.

Note the severe t'storms from southern & eastern Indiana to nothern Ohio, Pennsylvania, event southward through Kentucky, West Virginia, etc.

Temperatures will be in the 70s to even lower 80s from southern/southeastern Indiana & eastward.

Our temperatures Sunday will run near 40 to the mid 40s. Only exception in eastern Howard County, which might see a quick boost to around 51. I am going for a high of only 45 in Greater Lafayette.

Our temperatures may even fall some in the late afternoon-evening to the 30s.

Winds will be strong from the northeast (then north late) all day, though they look the strongest in the morning & evening.

Our wind-driven lighter rain will mix with & may end as some snow in the evening & into the night time hours of Sunday, especially in our northwestern & northern counties.

If there is any light accumulation it would be confined to elevated surfaces.

Total rainfall from this system looks to run 0.80-1.40" for our area.

How cold it gets by Monday morning will be determined by how quickly the skies clear. I was trending 28-32. I went with a 29-36 last night. The Canadian model has 24-31, which seems a bit too cold.

I think 28-34 is a good middle road with a mention of frost & freezing.

After highs of 49-56 Monday & 30s Monday night, 69-75 returns Tuesday.

Warmth, strong southerly winds, showers & t'storms & then risk of severe weather by Thursday, returns.
LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI/WHIO)  The investigation into a homicide and arson in Lafayette Sunday has led LPD to Dayton, Ohio. Police said investigators are working with Dayton Police as the investigation proceeds.

Through the ongoing investigation, Lafayette detectives were able to determine that Andrew Alcorns was a person of interest in the homicide investigation that occurred on April 7.

However, CBS affiliate WHIO in Dayton is reporting that a suspect in the Lafayette homicide shot himself in the head to end a 9-hour SWAT standoff Thursday. That's according to police Maj. Christopher Malson.

WHIO reports that Alcorns is in the Miami Valley Hospital. His condition is not known, Malson said.

Medics removed a man from an apartment building on Arnold Place late Thursday afternoon to end an hours long standoff. (Jim Noelker/ WHIO Staff)

A woman who was in the apartment building with the man was taken from the building and placed under arrest, WHIO reports. She has been taken to the Montgomery County (OH) Jail, but she is not believed to be connected with the homicide, Malson said. She is believed to have ties to the Dayton area. Malson did not release her name.

The standoff came to an end about 6:43 p.m. when medics entered the apartment building with wheeled stretcher in tow and came out with the man strapped to it.

As we previously reported, Lafayette police responded to a call that a man had been stabbed in the 800 Block of South 31st Street around 6 a.m. Sunday. The caller, identified as Thomas Day, told police he was stabbed and that the home was on fire. The Lafayette Fire Department found a person dead inside the home upon arrival. Coroner Donna Avolt identifed the body as Ronald L. Whiles. Preliminary results of his autopsy reveal Whiles died from multiple gunshot wounds

LPD said the suspect(s) should be considered armed and dangerous.

Anyone with any information about this incident is encouraged to contact the Lafayette Police Department at 765-807-1200 or through the anonymous WeTIP hotline at 800-78-CRIME.
Since the political upheaval to overthrow former leader Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has hardly undergone a day without gunfire. The country has fallen into a political split, with the existence of two governments which have their own armed forces. Although the Government of National Accord (GNA) has been established and backed by the UN, its position and power are not strong enough to maintain security control throughout the country. The self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), loyal to General Khalifa Haftar, supports another government with its stronghold in the eastern region. Libya has been polarised with two governments possessing two separate forces, while many other armed groups are still operating sparsely in various areas. A divided Libya has become a fertile ground for terrorist and extremist organisations to operate, and loose management has also led the North African nation to become a transit stop for ships carrying illegal migrants across the Mediterranean to Europe.

The UN efforts in the roadmap of seeking peace for Libya, which have inherently faced numerous difficulties, are now at risk of collapsing completely. The situation in Libya escalated dangerously after Gen. Haftar launched a military campaign aimed at taking over the capital, Tripoli, together with its only working airport. Haftars attacks are threatening to push Libya into a new spiral of violence, possibly even the worst scenario since the outbreak of the civil war in 2011.

The GNA forces accused Haftar of betrayal and pledged to retaliate with every effort. The risk of conflict increased after the Prime Minister of the internationally recognised government in Libya issued a warning that it was a war without victory. Violence over the past few days has left nearly 50 people dead, hundreds of others wounded and thousands of people dislocated, triggering the risk of a serious humanitarian disaster if health service supplies become exhausted.

Given the particularly serious developments in Libya, the international community raised a warning about the tragic consequences, and called on the parties to cease fire and sit at the negotiating table. However, in reality, the conflicting parties in Libya have received backing from outside nations, stemming from their own interest calculations, so it is difficult and complicated for the problems to be solved through dialogue. That is also the reason why, for many years, the conflicting parties in Libya have not been able to reach a consensus in sharing interests to obtain a peace agreement. In the current situation, the African Union (AU) reiterated the need for a process implemented by Libya itself towards creating a new political regime in the war-torn North African country.

A political solution to the crisis in Libya supported by the UN includes organising a national dialogue conference and then holding elections. However, the current situation in the country is putting the UN-sponsored peace plan into a state of fragility. Although the UN special envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, affirmed that the Libyan National Conference will still take place as planned from April 14, but the conflict reality is hindering the efforts to organise peace dialogues. The risk of uncertainties in Libya has forced its neighbouring nations in the region to increase their forces in order to control the border and prevent the fire of violence from spreading on a wide scale.

The deep division between the political factions in a country with many tribes is one of the key issues leading to violence and confrontation in Libya. Despite the UNs efforts to bring the conflicting parties to the negotiating table, conflicts of interest have made the situation more complicated and chaotic. A government of national accord has already been established, but Libya is still swept into a spiral of conflict and peace still remains a dream far beyond reach.
Union employees picket after walking off the job on Thursday at the Stop & Shop in North Smithfield. The store was temporarily closed after workers walked out at 1:30 p.m.
Many countries around the world have historically had harsh penalties for homosexuality. Today a small number of countries or regions in those countries still have laws allowing the death penalty. However, this law is not always necessarily carried out. However, sometimes death penalties are executed by militia groups in countries such as Iraq. In Europe, Adolf Hitler outlawed groups accused of homosexuality with the support of the National Socialist German Workers Parties. Those suspected of homosexuality were sent to concentration camps where between 3,000 and 9,000 people died between 1933 and 1945.

Although several Muslim nations incorporate Sharia law in their legal systems, only a small number carry out harsh punishment for homosexuality. Below is a list of countries who have laws that punish homosexuality with capital punishment.

Brunei

Brunies move to impose a death sentence for homosexuality has led to widespread international condemnation. The new Islamic laws makes same-sex relationships punishable by stoning to death. Before the introduction of the rules, homosexuality was still illegal and was punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabias law takes after Sharia law, and until recently the carrying out of harsh and extreme punishment was common in public. Homosexuality is not only illegal by also comes with punishment by execution.

Sudan

Sudan adopted sharia law in 1983 but is seen to implement it randomly. Death by stoning remains legal but has not been carried out in decades. Activists, however, note that women are still flogged for immorality.

Nigeria

In twelve out of the 36 states in Nigeria, Sharia law extends to matters of criminal law. The courts in those states can order amputations.

Somalia

The penal code in the country stipulates imprisonment for homosexuality, but the Islamic courts in the southern region impose strict sharia law which allows the death penalty.

Mauritania

According to a 1984 law, Muslim men engaging in homosexuality can be stoned to death in Mauritania. However, the law has not been actively practiced.

Yemen

In Yemen, the 1994 penal code allows the stoning of married men who engage in homosexuality. Unmarried men face one year in prison or whipping while women face imprisonment for up to seven years.

Acceptance in the world

While homosexuality is legal in most of the world, the acceptance and equality of the LGBT community is not universal, and there are still great strides to be made. Some of the first countries to legalize gay marriage include the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, and Spain.
In Sierra County, New Mexico, United States, there is a small town known as Truth or Consequences. The town, which was once known as Hot Spring, is a small resort town with a population of about 6,000 people. Truth or Consequences is an isolated town located about 120 miles north of El Paso and about 150 miles to the south of Albuquerque. The town has consistently featured in lists of unusual place names. But how did the name Truth or Consequences come about? The name change is due to a radio show in the 1950s.

Town History

The place where the town is currently located was an isolated area with little activities and very few people. In the late 1800s, the first pool was constructed over the Geronimo Spring. However, there were no major settlements until the Elephant Butte Dam and Reservoir was constructed and completed in 1916. This dam was included in the Rio Grande project, an extensive irrigation project under the 1902 Reclamation Act. The area soon became busy, and the town was named Hot Spring in 1916. In 1937, Hot Spring became the seat of Sierra County. The town was known as Hot Spring because of the presence of hot springs there. The springs produce about 100 liters of hot water per second at about 110 degrees, making it a popular destination for people who want to benefit from healing spa treatment.

Name Change

The change of name from Hot Spring to Truth or Consequences is credited to Ralph Edwards who hosted a radio quiz program on NBC Radio named Truth or Consequences. In March 1950, Ralph promised to air this show from a town that would change its name to match the name of the program. Several towns, including Hot Spring, sent in their applications and Hot Springs was selected. The residents of the town held a vote and unanimously agreed to change the name to Truth or Consequences. The name was effectively changed on March 31, 1950, and the show was aired from the town the next evening on April 1, 1950. Every year for the next 50 years, Ralph Edwards visited the city for an event called Fiesta which is still held every year on the first weekend of May. The event features parades, dances, and beauty contest. Edwards has a park and auditorium in the town named after him.

Geography of the Town

As per the US Census Bureau, the City of Truth or Consequences has an area of approximately 12.8 square miles of which only 0.1 square mile is water and the rest is land. The town is situated on the Rio Grande, just nest to the Elephant Butte Reservoir. The citys climate is a cool desert with three seasons; summer, monsoon, and winter seasons.
Regional

Over 62% voters cast ballots in Mizoram

Aizawl, Apr 11 (IANS) | Publish Date: 4/11/2019 1:05:01 PM IST

Over 62 per cent of the 7,87,777 electorate cast their votes on Thursday for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Mizoram under heavy security cover, a top official said.

The states Chief Electoral Officer Ashish Kundra said that over 62 per cent voters had cast their votes by the end of polling at 5 p.m. since voting began at 7 a.m. across 1,175 polling stations.

Voting has been absolutely peaceful and smooth. Conducive weather helped people to exercise their franchise without any trouble, Kundra told the media.

The voters will decide the electoral fortunes of six candidates, including independent aspirant Lalthlamuani, who is the first woman candidate contesting parliamentary polls in the northeastern state.

Besides polling for the lone Lok Sabha seat, a by-election for the Aizawl West-1 Assembly seat was also underway on Thursday.

The by-election was necessitated after the legislator of Zoram Peoples Movement (ZPM), Lalduhoma vacated the seat to retain his Serchhip constituency.

The parliamentary constituency in Mizoram, reserved for Scheduled Tribes, is set for a multi-cornered contest.

However, according to political analysts, the main contest is between the ruling Mizo National Front (MNF) candidate C. Lalrosanga and Lalnghingolva Hmar, jointly fielded by the opposition Congress and the ZPM.

BJP has fielded veteran tribal leader Nirupam Chakma, a former Congress minister who joined the BJP a few years ago.

Peoples Representation for Identity and Status of Mizoram (Prism) -- an anti-corruption watchdog-turned-political party -- has fielded T.B.C. Lalvenchhunga, a young retired Naval officer.

Lal Hriatrenga Chhangte, another independent, makes it a six-cornered contest.

Abeda Nanda Baidya, Sub-Divisional Magistrate of northern Tripuras Kanchanpur sub-division where some of the refugee camps are located, told IANS over phone that around 3,000 of the 12,081 Reang tribal refugee voters went to Kanhmun in Mizoram to cast their votes while others were reluctant to do so.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault has intervened in the 15-month lockout of 1,030 workers at the Aluminerie de Becancour (ABI) smelter, owned by global aluminum giants Alcoa and Rio Tinto Alcan. Following meetings with company executives and union leaders, the right-wing populist Premier sided unequivocally with ABI and demanded that the locked-out workers cede to managements demands for sweeping concessions.

After meetings on Monday, April 1, the leader of the CAQ (Coalition Avenir Quebec), the right-wing populist party that has formed the provincial government since last fall, wrote on his Twitter account that "the union must compromise. Legault added to this the following day with fresh tweets, denouncing "a union that asks for too much and the supposedly exorbitant salaries paid the ABI workers, although wage rollbacks do not even figure in managements concession demands.

Legault's virulent pro-management bullying was quite predictable, coming from a multimillionaire who is himself a former CEO of Air Transat. The premier was also a Parti Quebecois minister in the 1990s during the partys sharp shift to the right, and is a strong proponent of privatization, deregulation and ruthless capitalist austerity.

What this reveals above all is the utter bankruptcy of the strategy of the United Steelworkers (USW) and the Quebec Federation of Labour (QFL), which have systematically isolated the ABI workers, while exhorting them to expend their energies in appealing to Legault to pressure the company to adopt a more reasonable bargaining position.

Even after their meeting with Legault, senior USW and Local 9700 officials said they were pleased to have had "a good hearing from the Premier" and wished he would throw his weight into the talks. After Legault's anti-worker statements, the union leaders feigned surprise and disappointment, saying they were "betrayed" and finding the situation difficult to understand.

Legault's open support for ABI's management has emboldened it to press ahead with its class-war assault. Following a meeting with a government mediator April 3, the company announced that it had rejected the counteroffer submitted last month by the union and is maintaining its own concessions-laden March 4 offer, which was rejected by 82 per cent of rank-and-file workers in a secret ballot vote.

In an attempt to intimidate workers, ABI is threatening to stop the limited operations management personnel have maintained at the smelter since the lockout began on January 11, 2018. This will make it more expensive and time-consuming to resume smelting operations and is an implicit threat that the smelter could be closed permanently.

The union's counterproposal, which included major concessions across the board, amounted to a stab in the back for the locked-out workers. It included the adoption of a fully worker-funded pension plan, the elimination of 103 jobs or 10 percent of the workforce, and other changes demanded by the company relating to seniority rights and the organization of work. However, these unprecedented concessions are insufficient for ABI, which is determined to extend the lockout indefinitely to impose its dictates.

The attack on ABI workers is part of an offensive by the ruling elite against the working class on an international scale. In the context of the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s and increased competition in global markets, big businesswith the complicity of governments of all political stripesis seeking to eliminate what remains of the working class's social gains in order to swell the profits of a handful of super-rich oligarchs.

The trade union apparatuses, entirely controlled by privileged bureaucrats who have developed interests that are opposed to the workers they claim to represent, have no intention of challenging the domination of big business and the banks over society. These organizations long ago renounced any meaningful association with the militant class struggles out of which they were born, and function as employer agencies that work with big business and government to stifle worker opposition and impose wage and job cuts.

In the case of ABI, the United Steelworkers and its Local 9700 have repeatedly expressed their willingness to make more concessions as soon as management is ready to resume negotiations. At a press briefing following the April 3 mediation meeting, Dominic Lemieux, assistant to the Quebec Director of the United Steelworkers, revealed the union's cowardice and submission by stating without any embarrassment: "The union has no demands, it has already opened the door to several givebacks and even a reduction of more than a hundred positions.

Despite Legault's intervention, union leaders are pursuing the same ruinous strategy of appealing to the class enemies of the workers: the government and company shareholders and management. The Steelworkers continue to isolate the locked-out ABI workers, and, as their March counteroffer shows, they are prepared to impose sweeping concessions.

The struggle against ABI, which is also the first direct confrontation between a large group of workers and the CAQ government, indicates what is being prepared for the entire working class. Like the Parti Quebecois and the Liberal Party, the CAQ serves the interests of big business and the banks and will mobilize the full power of the capitalist state to maintain their domination over society. On the other hand, the attitude of the unions, which continue to work hand in hand with this anti-worker government, shows that they will turn even more to the right and do everything possible to block a mobilization of the working class against employer attacks and capitalist austerity.

Despite the campaign of lies and slanders by the government and the media, the ABI workers have powerful allies. There is strong popular support for their struggle among workers who have suffered the same employer attacks on their jobs and working conditions for decades. In opposition to the United Steelworkers and the QFL, which are plotting with management and government against them, ABI workers must establish a rank-and-file committee, democratically controlled by the workers themselves, to take the leadership of their struggle in their own hands.

Only such a rank-and-file committee can break the isolation in which the USW and QFL have straitjacketed the ABI workers struggle and spearhead a campaign to reach other sections of the working classnot only in Quebec but in the rest of Canada and internationally, including the tens of thousands of Alcoa and Rio Tinto workers in Australia and in more than a dozen other countries.

A broad workers' mobilization to defend jobs, wages and public services must be combined with a political struggle for a workers government that would fundamentally reorganize the economy to meet the social needs of the majority, not further enrich a tiny bloated elite.
Last week, after nearly six weeks of protests by millions of workers and youth, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflikas office issued a resignation letter ending his 20-year rule. The National Liberation Front (FLN) dictatorship chopped off its own figureheada president paralyzed by a 2013 stroke, who had overseen the FLNs plundering of Algerias oil wealth and the carnage of the final years of Algerias 19922002 civil warin a desperate bid to avert revolution.

A new upsurge of the international class struggle is underway, eight years after revolutionary uprisings of the working class toppled imperialist-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. Africa is seeing mass protests to overthrow the Sudanese regime and teachers strikes in Tunisia, Morocco and across the continent. Internationally, strikes by US teachers, Mexican maquiladora workers and European workers opposing EU austerity have proceeded amid yellow vest protests demanding the ouster of President Emmanuel Macron in France, Algerias former colonial overlord.

The revolutionary struggles of 2019 are not unfolding, however, as a repetition of those of 2011, but on a higher level. Workers have seen the bloody example of Egypt, where three years of heroic struggle ended in a 2013 coup led by General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. This is a bitter and unforgettable lesson, paid for with thousands of lives, that mass militant protests alone are not enough to triumph over an entrenched ruling class.

The armys ouster of Bouteflika has only intensified the conflict between the working class and the dictatorship. This week, as Algerian workers protested to demand the ouster of officials named by military strongman General Ahmed Gaid Salah, they chanted the Egyptian slogan The people want the fall of the regime, and carried signs saying Gaid Salah, the people are not fooled and No repeat of the Egyptian scenario.

The only viable perspective is for the working class to take power in a struggle to overthrow capitalism, in Algeria and internationally. The key questions facing workers are organization and, above all, revolutionary perspective and leadership. Workers need committees of action, independent of bourgeois governments and their allied trade unions, to coordinate opposition to military-police repression and austerity. Ultimately, only the transfer of state power to these bodies, functioning in workplaces and working class neighborhoods as organs of workers power, can eliminate the danger of bloody counterrevolution.

Such committees will not be forged, however, let alone carry out the revolutionary tasks they face, without a struggle for revolutionary perspective in the working class by a Marxist vanguard party, like the Bolshevik Party that led the October 1917 revolution in Russia.

False promises that the Algerian dictatorship will simply grant democratic reforms are now on every bourgeois politicians lips. Questions about how to navigate this transition in Algeria, that is for the Algerian people to decide, declared US State Department spokesman Robert Palladino, while French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian hailed the capacity of all Algerians to pursue this democratic transition.

The entire Algerian ruling elite, from the generals down to their lackeys in the union bureaucracies and the universities, is trying to lull workers to sleep with promises of a democratic capitalist future, to keep workers from fighting for power. Gaid Salah is, for now, sending into retirement the most notorious torturers, like intelligence chief General Athmane Tartag.

The Socialist Workers Party (PST), affiliated to Frances Pabloite New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA), bluntly declared: Despite appearances, we are not in a revolutionary situation. Instead, it hailed the army, whose role is to defend the people, its social rights and welfare, its national sovereignty, its borders and its political sovereignty, and the Algerian regimes General Union of Algerian Labor (UGTA) as a strategic tool to defend workers interests. On this basis, it calls for convening a Constituent Assembly to rewrite the constitution of the Algerian capitalist dictatorship.

This is a fraud, echoing petty-bourgeois groups like Egypts Revolutionary Socialists (RS) that strangled the Egyptian revolution. Workers in Egypt rose up time and again, defeating the security forces in the streets. But they could not improvise a leadership and perspective to oppose the RS, which worked to disband popular committees formed in battles with riot police. Above all, the RS claimed that whatever faction of the ruling class was ascendantthe army, then the Muslim Brotherhood, finally the Tamarod movement backing Sisi before his coupwould grant democracy. This blocked a workers seizure of power in Egypt and allowed the Sisi dictatorship to take power via a bloody massacre of protesters in the streets and mass resort to torture.

The PST reprises the role of the RS in Egypt, playing on protesters chants appealing to soldiers not to shootThe people and the army are brothersto try to paint the dictatorship in bright colors. Of course, many soldiers oppose the prospect of being ordered to shoot workers. The task that flows from this is not to prop up the army and the unions, but to mobilize the working class to take power before the officers find a way, as Sisi did, to turn a critical mass of troops against the workers.

The revolutionary leadership that must be built in the working class against parties like the RS and the PST is the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It alone opposed the role of the RS, based on its decades-long struggle for Trotskyism against Stalinist and Pabloite descendants of petty-bourgeois renegades from Trotskyism. These forces claimed that the coming to power of bourgeois nationalist regimes like the FLN in Algeria in 1962 showed the revolutionary nature of democratic sections of the capitalist class in colonial countries.

Experience confirmed Trotskys theory of Permanent Revolution, which states that in countries of belated capitalist development, the bourgeoisie, tied to imperialism, is incapable of establishing a democratic regime. The struggle for democratic demands can proceed only if it grows into a socialist revolution led by the working class, unfolding on the international arena, that can place in the hands of workers of the ex-colonial countries the resources in the world economy that are needed to build a truly socialist and democratic society.

The 19541962 Algerian war was a mighty struggle of workers and peasants that ended French colonial rule. But the FLN, to which the French handed power, was a capitalist regime that became an overt military dictatorship after Houari Boumedienes 1965 coup.

Algerias 19922002 Civil War emerged from the last failed attempt to democratize the regime in the face of mass protests, the 1988 transition to a multiparty system. The regime suspended the Islamic Salvation Fronts (FIS) 1991 electoral victory, triggering a war costing 200,000 lives. Working in coordination with Paris, the FLN used torture and murder against both workers and Islamist groupsas French imperialism had against independence fighters in 19541962 war. Today, officers guilty of these atrocities, such as Tartag, are desperate to escape the wrath of their victims families. They will prove determined opponents of democracy.

There will be no democratic reform in Algeria above all because capitalism internationally is rotting on its feet. After a decade of economic crisis and mounting social anger, the bourgeoisie is scrapping democratic forms of rule in the face of the threat from beloweven in countries with long bourgeois-democratic traditions. Macron, whose foreign minister promises a democratic transition in Algeria, is furiously arming Sisis bloody dictatorship with billions of euros in weapons while authorizing the French army to shoot yellow vest protesters in Paris.

The way forward against the Algerian dictatorship is the struggle to give revolutionary leadership to the developing international movement of the working class. This means the fight to build sections of the ICFI in Algeria and in countries around the world.
International

Pakistan Minister asks Britain to return Koh-i-Noor

Islamabad, Apr 11 (IANS) | Publish Date: 4/11/2019 1:15:00 PM IST

Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday asked Britain to return to Islamabad the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, which is claimed by India, Afghanistan, Pakistan and also Iran.

The 105-carat diamond has been part of the British crown jewels for the past 150 years.

Chaudhry also endorsed the demand that the British empire must apologise to Pakistan, India and Bangladesh for the Bengal famine and the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in which British forces led by Brigadier General Reginald Dyer opened fire on thousands of unarmed and peaceful protesters, including women and children, killing scores of them on April 13, 1919. Fully endorse the demand that the British empire must apologize to the nations of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh on Jallianwala massacre and Bengal famine. These tragedies are the scar on the face of Britain, the Minister tweeted. ... Also KohENoor must be returned to Lahore museum where it belongs.
On March 17, the CEOs of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, Christian Sewing and Martin Zielke, announced the start of negotiations on a merger of the two banks.

Speculation about a possible merger have surfaced a number of times following the financial crisis of 2008, but the economic rationality of such a decision was repeatedly called into question. The vehemence with which the German government in particular is now pushing for the merger of the two banks can only be explained by political motives: it is part of the effort to establish Germany and Europe as world powers capable of competing with the US and China.

This is made clear by the National Industrial Strategy 2030, which the German Economics Minister Peter Altmaier presented to the press in February 2019. The strategy calls for the formation of national champions, big and strong players on a level playing field with competitors from the US or China.

As justification, the paper states: The emergence of a comprehensive world market in more and more regions increasingly raises the question of the critical size required for an industrial player to compete successfully in international competition. The examples given include various industries and spheres in finance and banking.

The driving force behind the merger plans of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank is German finance minister Olaf Scholz (SPD), who has been holding talks at an international level for months with rival international banks to explore the opportunities for German institutions on the world market. One year ago, Scholz appointed a finance industry insider, Jorg Kukies, as secretary of state at the finance ministry. Kukies is the former head of the German branch of the US investment bank Goldman Sachs, which also acts as adviser for Commerzbank.

While Germany is a major industrial powerhouse and third in terms of exports worldwide, behind China and the US, it lacks a major bank to match those of its main rivals. In terms of total assets, Deutsche Bank ranks 15th in the world, behind four Chinese, four American, three Japanese, two French and one British bank. Ranking second among German banks is the DZ-Bank, which is placed 51st in world rankings. Commerzbank is Germanys third-largest bank (54th place in world rankings).

After a merger, the Deutsche Commerzbank, with total assets of over 1,800 billion euros would rank ninth in the world and third in Europe, behind the British HSBC (2,350 billion euros) and the French BNP Paribas (2,000 billion euros).

As long as goods and capital circulated relatively freely internationally, the weakness of its banking sector was not a fundamental problem for the German bourgeoisie. The international financial crisis of 2008, however, ushered in merciless rivalry on the global financial markets. The conflicts between the imperialist powers are coming to a head. Free trade is being replaced by the trade war, championed by the US.

The efforts of the German government to create national champions are directly related to its striving to once again become a world power, which requires a corresponding build-up of the countrys military forces. The German army has undergone a process of permanent rearmament following the announcement by former foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2014 that Germany was too big to comment on world politics only from the outside.

In order to become a world power, however, German imperialism needs not only a powerful army, but also a globally active bank to finance trade, domestic and foreign investment and its defence industry. The Achilles heel of the German economy is its financial dependence on the USmost recently confirmed by the billions in fines lodged by the US against major German players such as Siemens, VW and Deutsche Bank. Other examples are the US sanctions against Iran and other countries. China's growing financial power is also being followed in Berlin with concern.

Deutsche Bank played a major role in the First and Second World Wars. Already at its founding in 1870, it set itself the goal of finally conquering for Germany a place on the table of financial mediation... This policy then laid the foundation for financing German imperialist expansion in Asia, Africa and South America.

Some economists and financial experts have questioned the viability of the merger project. They fear that the two troubled banks will pull each other into the abyss. Two sick patients do not make a single healthy one, some commented, with reference to the low profitability and the relatively high cost overheads of the two institutions.

Commerzbank's share price has fallen 42 percent and Deutsche Bank's 71 percent during the past five years. Between 2015 and 2017, Deutsche Bank reported billions in losses, largely resulting from criminal charges for speculation lodged in the US. In the last ten years alone, Deutsche Bank has had to pay up 17 billion euros in fines.

For the German government, however, the merger of the two banks is a political project not an economic one. It is to be financed by massive job losses and drastic cost reductions. The Verdi trade union anticipates that 60 percent of bank branches will close. At present, Deutsche Bank has 2,064 branches, (1,409 in Germany) and Commerzbank about 1,000. Together, the two banks employ 140,000 people. Estimates of expected job losses vary between 30,000 and 40,000 jobs.

The business magazine Capital speculates whether the current management of Deutsche Bank really has the strength and ruthlessness necessary to dismantle tens of thousands of jobs. In this respect the bank management can rely on the support of the SPD and Verdi, which are both determined to create a national bank champion.

Harald Christ, an executive member of the SPDs economic forum and former holder of a leading position at Postbank and Deutsche Bank, told the broadcaster n-tv that Germany confronted a fatal dependency should it lack its own powerful major bank. For a merger, of course, the focus is on lowering costs, he explained, which means costs of material and staff.

The Verdi union, whose representatives sit on the boards of both banks, have announced temporary protest strikes against the feared job cuts to begin on March 28. These, however, serve merely to let off steam, while Verdi and its works council officials work behind the scenes to develop the plans for job cuts.
Theresa Mays Conservative government was granted a six-month Brexit extension by the European Union (EU), following late night talks Wednesday in Brussels.

With a previous extension set to expire at 11 p.m. on Friday, a new extension until October 31 was agreed. Seeking to pacify the hard Brexit wing of her ruling Conservatives, prior to the EU Council summit May called for a shorter extension to June 30with the option of bringing this forward if her Withdrawal Agreement with the EU is ratified by the British parliament.

On Tuesday, May met separately with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, in an effort to win their backing for a shorter extension.

Paris insisted it would not permit a 12-month flextension, as proposed by European Council President Donald Tusk prior to the summit.

Ahead of the meeting, Tusk stuck to his proposal stating, [N]either side should be allowed to feel humiliated. The plea fell on deaf ears. May was permitted to make a statement for an hour outlining her position to the EU ministers, before leaving the room as the remaining 27 ministers discussed her proposals.

Well into the nearly nine-hour meeting, Macron was still refusing to allow the UK any extension beyond June 30. Reuters reported, EU diplomats and officials said the mood in the room was in favour of a long extension before Macron took the floor and highlighted the risks he thought it posed to the bloc. One diplomat commented, Macron just made a powerful statement. (He) said anything beyond June 30 would jeopardise the EU and we shouldnt go there.

With Germany and its backers concerned about a no-deal Brexit resulting in further economic, social and political turmoil, the Financial Times reported, As midnight approached and prime ministers and presidents huddled around the apparently intransigent Mr. Macron, the exchanges became more pointed, with Mr Macron tartly reminding the others that you need unanimity for an EU Council decision on Brexit.

France and the main EU powers had already agreed before the summit that any extension had to come with strict conditions so that Britain could not use its right of veto as a member to jeopardise the EUs immediate and long-term plans.

Macron eventually agreed to the October 31 extension with a June review of the situation, because it is the day before the new European Commissionthe executive arm of the EUtakes office.

After the meeting concluded, Tusk issued a warning to the May government, This extension is as flexible as I expected, and a little bit shorter than I expected, but its still enough to find the best possible solution. Please do not waste this time.

Maybe we can avoid the UK leaving the EU.  This is obviously not my rolebut its my personal, quiet dream, he added.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte put a more hard-line position, warning, At the end of October we are six months down the road. It will be increasingly difficult to grant an extension.  Most likely by the end of October, its signing of the withdrawal agreement or a no-deal.

With no alternative to accepting the EUs extension offer, May told the press that she would continue to insist that the UK parliament accept her deal: I continue to believe we need to leave the EU, with a deal, as soon as possible.  Vitally, the EU have agreed the extension can be terminated when the Withdrawal Agreement has been ratified  The choices we now face are stark, and the timetable is clear. We must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus.

With the extension the UK is legally obliged to participate in Mays EU elections, but May said she still planned to receive the backing of parliament for the EU deal by May 22just one day before the date of the European Elections ballot in the UKin order that the Britain does not participate and can leave the EU by June 1.

At best the EU have kicked the can down the road for another six months, with no guarantees of a resolution. But more likely it will be six months of continuing factional struggle in which events can precipitate a worsening crisis.

Britains parliament is deeply divided, with the extension inflaming tensions even further within the Tories. Those most opposed to May in the hard-Brexit wing stepped up calls for her resignation. Referring to the pledge she made earlier this month to step down and trigger a leadership contest if MPs accepted her deal, David Davis said, She said, and No 10 put the date of 22 May on it. When PMs put a date on their own departure, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  The pressure on her to go will increase dramatically, I suspect now.

While a substantial section of the euro-sceptics want May gone, they are hamstrung by the fact that she won a vote of no-confidence last December. Under party rules this means that May cannot be challenged again for a year. But Where theres a will, then possibly theres a way.

The deal was also seized on by parliaments Remain faction as the opportunity to press forward their preferred option of a second referendum to reverse the 2016 leave decision.

Financial Time s columnist Philip Stephens wrote, Britain can now change its mind about Brexit  MPs can and should agree to put any proposed settlement with the EU27 to a confirmatory referendum. The country could then be presented with the vote it was denied in 2016a choice between Remain and the best deal that parliament considers available to Britain outside the union.

Making a statement to parliament Thursday, May said that MPs should use parliaments Easter recess to do their national duty and then return and pass the withdrawal deal So that we can avoid having to hold those European parliamentary elections.

Her talks with the Labour Party to secure an acceptable alternative Brexit plan are proof that Jeremy Corbyn is more than ready to do his national duty. His performance in parliament was a caricature of even his normal levels of obsequious fawning before the ruling class. After complaining that the extension was a diplomatic failure, he said his talks with May were serious, detailed and ongoing. No longer is there any talk of no-confidence votes, or general elections to put in place a government of the many, not the few.

In the interests of national unity, his sole appeal is that May accept a form of customs union with the EU and that access to its Single Market is appended to the Withdrawal Agreements Political Declaration, as sought by Britains business leaders.

Corbyn was careful to placate the majority Blairite wing in his own party by adding that if no agreement could be secured with May, We believe all options should remain on the table, including the option of a public vote.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer said the cross-party talks were being held in good faith, with the need for a customs union remaining a sticking point. However, May was keen to assure Blairite Yvette Copper that on the issue of a customs union, there is more agreement [between the Tories and Labour] than is often given credit for.

Further talks were held on Thursday afternoon, with a Labour Party spokesman commenting, Both sides agreed to continue talks in an effort to make substantive progress towards finding a compromise plan.
The decision by the Ecuadorian government of President Lenin Moreno to invite the British police into its London embassy to drag out Julian Assange, opening the way to the extradition of the WikiLeaks founder to the US, is a flagrant violation of international law and a shameful new chapter in the cowardice and submission of Latin Americas national bourgeoisie to US imperialism.

Not only did the Ecuadorian government throw open the doors of its embassy to the British police snatch squad, it announced on Thursday that the day before, without any notification to Assange or his attorneys, the countrys foreign ministry had summarily stripped the journalist of his Ecuadorian citizenship, which he had been granted in 2017 as part of an attempt to secure his release from the embassy under diplomatic cover.

Government officials claimed that there had been unspecified irregularities in the decision to grant Assange citizenship. The motive for abrogating the decision was clear: the Ecuadorian constitution prohibits the extradition of the countrys citizens and requires that they be tried for any crime under the countrys laws.

President Lenin Moreno announced his filthy deal with US and British imperialism in a video posted on his Twitter account, in which he claimed that he had secured guarantees from London that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty. This lie was exposed immediately, as the US Justice Department released an indictment, and UK authorities made it clear they were awaiting proceedings for extradition to a country where the death penalty is in use and that has practiced torture on an international scale.

Assanges Ecuadorian lawyer, Carlos Poveda, denounced the governments arbitrary, antidemocratic and extralegal actions. At the minimum, we should have been notified so that we could exercise the right of defense, he said. He insisted that the law establishes that any termination of asylum must be first reviewed with the asylee, who has the right to argue his case.

Ecuadors Foreign Minister Jose Valencia went before the countrys National Assembly on Thursday to justify the illegal act carried out by the government in summarily stripping Assange of his asylum.

Valencias presentation, which was interrupted by shouts of traitor and  vendepatria  from opposition legislators, consisted of nine points, comprised of lies and absurdities.

He claimed that Assange, who has been held under increasingly draconian conditions in the embassy, largely cut off from the outside world, had engaged in countless acts of interference in the internal affairs of other states, had behaved badly toward embassy officials, and had made insulting threats against the Ecuadorian government, including the infamous and slanderous charge that it was acting under pressure from foreign countries.

The same Valencia had last week denounced the insulting warning by WikiLeaks that his government had reached an agreement with UK authorities to turn Assange over to the British police.

Valencia went so far as to claim that the handing over of Assange was done in part out of concern for his health, and then went on to complain about how much the embassy had spent on his food, medical expenses and laundry.

The immediate context for the Ecuadorian governments action is a raging corruption scandal implicating President Moreno and his family. The so-called INA Papers, an extensive set of documents, emails and other social media communications, have implicated Moreno in crimes ranging from official corruption to perjury and money laundering.

At the center of the scandal is a scheme in which the Chinese company Sinohydro, which built a hydroelectric dam in Ecuador, deposited $18 million in payoffs in an offshore company, which in turn transferred the money to a set of 10 shell companies that included INA Investments Corp, owned by Edwin Moreno, the presidents brother. The companys name was taken from the common syllable in the names of the presidents three daughters, Irina, Cristina and Karina.

An opposition legislator, Ronny Aleaga, who said he received the dossier anonymously, has insisted that the documents establish that the company was placed under the directorship of figureheads to conceal the presidents connection to the scheme.

The documents were first published in February 2019, prompting a congressional investigation. On March 26, WikiLeaks Twitter account called attention to the investigation, while citing a New York Times report that Moreno had been in discussion with the Trump administrationvia a May 2017 trip to Quito by Trumps former campaign chairman Paul Manaforton handing over Assange in return for debt relief.

Foreign Minister Valencia responded immediately to the tweet, calling it an absurd lie to harm the dignity of our country and vowed the Ecuadorian government would take action.

Subsequently, Moreno and his subordinates tried to twist the WikiLeaks tweet of news already reported and well known in Ecuador into proof that Assange, held virtually incommunicado in the London embassy, was personally responsible for hacking the presidents phone and emails.

Within two days of the WikiLeaks tweet, the Ecuadorian national assembly, in which Morenos party and other right-wing parties hold the majority, passed a resolution calling on the Foreign Ministry to retaliate against Assange over the leak of the INA Papers.

The Ecuadorian president mounted a cynical campaign, claiming that he was the victim of an invasion of privacy and that the INA Papers had included private photos of himself and his family, all for the purpose of distracting public attention from the extensive evidence of his wholesale corruption.

With the expulsion of Assange from the London embassy, Morenos government has escalated this campaign. Maria Paula Romo, Ecuadors interior minister, stated that Assange and WikiLeaks were involved in a plot to destabilize the Moreno government, which allegedly involved two Russian hackers working inside Ecuador, Ricardo Patino, a former Ecuadorian foreign minister, and, possibly, the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro. She claimed that evidence of this plot would be turned over to Ecuadorian prosecutors imminently.

All of this is a geyser of mud aimed at diverting attention from the corruption charges against Moreno and deflecting the growing popular anger against his right-wing government. Recent opinion polls have placed his favorable rating at barely 17 percent.

Moreno made clear his intention to betray Assange from the moment he took office in 2017. He referred to the Australian-born journalist as a hacker, an inherited problem and a stone our shoe.

The previous government of President Rafael Correa had granted asylum to Assange in 2012 because of the clear evidence that he faced political persecution for exposing imperialist war crimes of the US government, mass surveillance and antidemocratic conspiracies carried out by Washington, other governments and transnational corporations.

When the government in Quito decided to grant Assange asylum in its London embassy, its then-foreign affairs minister, Ricardo Patino, declared that Washingtons vendetta against the journalist could endanger his safety, integrity and even his life." He continued: "The evidence shows that if Mr. Assange is extradited to the United States, he wouldnt have a fair trial. It is not at all impossible that he could be subjected to cruel and degrading treatment and sentenced to life imprisonment or even capital punishment.

What has changed in the nearly seven years that Assange has spent trapped in the Ecuadorian embassy? The Trump administration has only made the threats against the journalist more explicit, with former CIA director and now Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declaring WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service, whose activities are not protected by the First Amendment. Former attorney general Jeff Sessions insisted that bringing Assange back to the US in chains to face a rigged trial was a priority for the US Justice Department.

The change is not in the threat to Assange, but rather in the sharp turn to the right by the government of Lenin Moreno, part of a wave of reaction that has accompanied the ebbing of the so-called Pink Tide throughout Latin America.

Nowhere has this been more evident than in the policies pursued by Moreno, who was the handpicked successor of the former president, Correa, who had declared himself a supporter of Bolivarian revolution and 21st century socialism.

Moreno has pursued a policy aimed at subordinating Ecuador to the international banks and financial institutions economically and to US imperialism politically. Earlier this year, he concluded deals with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions for $10 billion in credit in exchange for implementing draconian austerity measures that have seen the axing of over 10,000 public-sector jobs, along with half of the governments ministries, as well as the slashing of taxes on the rich, the gutting of labor laws and the scrapping of subsidies for fuel prices.

These policies have provoked mass protests and a general strike against the Moreno government.

At the same time, Moreno has courted the approval of the State Department and the Pentagon, becoming one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the US-instigated coup in Venezuela and the so-called interim president Juan Guaido.

Correa, Ecuadors former president, condemned the action of the Moreno government. The biggest traitor in Ecuadorian and Latin American history, Lenin Moreno, allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange, he said. Moreno, he added, has demonstrated his lack of humanity to the world, turning in Julian Assangenot only an asylee, but also an Ecuadorian citizento the British police, which both placed his life at risk and humiliates Ecuador.

Similarly, former Ecuadorian foreign minister Guillaume Long issued a statement Thursday denouncing the arrest. The surrender of Julian Assange, dragged by the British police after entering our diplomatic mission to remove him, is a national shame and a historical error that will leave a deep mark on Ecuador for a long time, he said.

Long added that the governments decision violated rulings of the United Nation and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and will be remembered by future generations of Ecuadorians as an act of servility, vileness and ethical degradation.

The betrayal of Assange is part and parcel of the Moreno governments turn to the right and accommodation to US imperialism, which have spelled a frontal attack on the Ecuadorian working class. The defense of Assange and of basic democratic rights depends upon the struggle to unite the working class in Ecuador, Britain, the US and internationally in struggle against the capitalist system.
Three historically black churches in St. Landry Parish, in south-central Louisiana, have been set on fire in a span of ten days. On Wednesday, April 10, Holden Matthews, the 21-year-old son of a St. Landry sheriffs deputy, was arrested as the suspected arsonist behind the fires.

The string of arsons began on March 26 in the town of Port Barre, where the St. Mary Baptist Church burned down under suspicious circumstances. One week later, in nearby Opelousas, two more churches caught fire, the Greater Union Baptist Church on April 2 and the Mount Pleasant Baptist Church two days later.

The churches were empty at the time of the fires and no injuries have been reported, but given the regions dark history of racist attacks by whites against black churches local parishioners were concerned about a possible racial motivation behind the burnings.

The Democratic governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, gave a press conference laying out the tone of the investigation: I dont know what this young mans motive was, I dont know what was in his heart, but I can say it cannot be justified or rationalized, Edwards said, It has been especially painful because it reminds us of a very dark past of intimidation and fear.

According to the latest Census data, St. Landry Parish, west of Baton Rouge, is home to over 83,000 people. Located in the heart of Louisianas Cajun and Creole community St. Landrys population is about 56 percent white and 42 percent black. Holden Matthews is white.

Given that the churches targeted were historically blackSt. Marys in particular has been around for 126 years as an African American Baptist Churchthe Southern Poverty Law Center is classifying these burnings as a hate crime. The sheriffs department has not explicitly declared the burnings a hate crime and prosecutors have not yet brought hate crime charges, which carry with them harsher sentences.

According to authorities, Matthews truck was caught on camera leaving one of the churches and a specifically branded gas can used in the burnings was found in his possession.

While it is unclear if racial hatred was a major motivating factor, Matthews, a musician in a local metal band, has made comments on Facebook praising black metal artists known for burning churches in Norway in the early 90s. According to his profile Matthews is a fan of black metal, a subgenre of hard rock, which in some areas has attracted advocates of white nationalism and neo-Nazi ideologies.

Matthews father Roy Matthews is a deputy at the local sheriffs department but was not involved in the investigation. He claimed he was unaware of his sons activities and did not know of any racist bias his son may have had.

The New Orleans division of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms led the investigation into the attacks, claiming to advocate a zero tolerance approach to the case. These were evil acts, Governor Edwards said at the news conference.

The NAACP called the burnings domestic terrorism and part of a supposed upsurge in racist sentiment across the country, although there is no indication of any widespread support for either Matthews racist views or his actions.

Whatever his motives in the church burnings, and their connection to far-right, neo-Nazi ideology, Matthews actions are a warning sign of a greater social crisis in a region which is impoverished and has had public education virtually gutted in recent decades under both Republican and Democratic leadership.

The Lafayette area has itself seen a steady decline in good paying manufacturing and oil jobs over the years. In St. Landry Parish the most common job available is custodian, at extremely low pay.
Outside Westminster Magistrates court in central London supporters of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange rallied to his defence. Assange appeared at the court Thursday afternoon after he was arrested and dragged from his place of political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Judge Michael Snow found Assange guilty of bail charges that date back to 2012, ordering him to appear at Southwark Crown Court at an unknown date. He could face a sentence of 12 months.

Supporters of WikiLeaks demanded that the UK government reject US demands for Assanges extradition.

Protest outside Assange trial at Westminster Magistrates Court

The UK government has confirmed Assange was arrested on behalf of US law enforcement authorities. The US has charged Assange with computer crime over documents published by WikiLeaks. If Assange is extradited to the US, he will undoubtedly face more serious charges under the Espionage Act, threatening life in prison or the death penalty.

During a brief hearing Judge Snow gave voice to the state vendetta against Assange, attacking the award-winning journalist as a narcissist, telling him to get over the US and get on with your life and describing as laughable his claim he had not received a fair hearing.

Among the supporters of Assange outside the court was former British diplomat, whistle-blower and human rights activist Craig Murray. A long-time supporter and friend of Assange, Murray spoke to the World Socialist Web Site after witnessing proceedings inside the court.

***

What we have seen today is extraordinary. Its amazing that you can be dragged out of somewhere by armed police and within three hours brought up before a judge and found guilty of a crime involving a serious jail sentence. There was no jury and no chance to mount a proper defence or have a proper hearing.

It is clear the judge was extremely prejudiced. It was very short hearing today and he cannot possibly have formed during that time his judgement that Julian Assange is a narcissistic personality.

Craig Murray

That plainly shows that he must have formed his judgement from what he had read in the media before he ever came into the court. That judgement could not possibly be formed in the few minutes in the court. There are serious reasons to question Judge Snow and about the quality of justice that has gone on here. It is a case of extreme prejudice. There is no way anyone could call what has happened a fair trial.

Julian Assange has provided an important service. There is no evidence of anybodys life being in danger. If there had been, we would have told about it by now.

Then there is the truly appalling behaviour of Ecuadors dreadful President Moreno. He has not only curried favour with the United States and UK but sold Julian out.

One good thing, if you wish, that has come out of this is that now we are talking about extradition. We can now see what all of this is really about. It is about freedom of the press, about Julian being charged with publishing the revelations made by Chelsea Manning. From day one this has been about the United States wishing to lock Julian up for the Chelsea Manning leak exposing serious American war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The whole Sweden case has been a charade. It has always been about whether a journalist should be punished for publishing leaked documents showing a government offending against international law.

I am hoping, maybe a long-shot, that the media pundits of a liberal disposition will realise that this is a fundamental threat to press freedom. If anyone who publishes a US leaked document wherever they are in the world can be dragged to the US and imprisoned, then the American government is going to have impunity for its crimes for ever more. All journalists must decide where they stand on this fundamental test of media freedom.
The World Socialist Web Site emphatically condemns the forcible seizure and arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. We call for an all-out campaign in the UK and internationally to defend Assange, oppose his extradition to the United States, and secure his freedom and return to Australia, with guarantees against any future prosecution.

Assange is in grave peril. The US Justice Department has issued a statement claiming that Assange only faces charges that could lead to a prison sentence of up to five years if he has been found guilty. This is a transparent lie, the purpose of which is to facilitate Assanges extradition and provide the Ecuadorean and British governments with a pretext that they are not turning Assange over to a government that might subject him to torture and execution.

If he is transferred to the custody of the United States, anything is possible, including charges of espionage that carry a death penalty or indefinite detention as an enemy combatant.

Julian Assange was arrested Thursday morning at the Ecuadorian embassy in London

Assange has become a target because he did what journalists are supposed to doexpose the truth. Along with Chelsea Manning, who remains in prison for refusing to testify against the WikiLeaks publisher, Assange exposed the crimes that emerged out of wars launched on the basis of lies, which have led to the deaths of more than one million people.

New crimes are now being prepared. Even as the conspiracy against Assange was unfolding, Trump was meeting with el-Sisi, the butcher of Cairo, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was issuing threats against Iran.

Everyone involved in this crime stands guilty of a monstrous attack on fundamental democratic rights, without even the pretense of due process.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, beset by a domestic crisis provoked by popular opposition to his corrupt administration, and desirous of economic aid offered by the White House, broke Ecuadors own asylum laws to force Assange out. His actions are a violation of the honor of Ecuadorean workers, who overwhelmingly support Assange.

The UK government, headed by Theresa May, is gloating over Assanges arrest, issuing statements that are clearly prejudicial to any legal proceedings. When May, speaking to parliament, declared the whole house will welcome the news this morning that the Metropolitan police have arrested Julian Assange, Tory MPs and many Labourites cheered in approval.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn issued a pro-forma statement declaring that the extradition of Assange should be opposed by the British government, but he kept his mouth shut when May issued her denunciation before parliament and has maintained a silence on Assange during his forced asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy.

As for the United States, while the Trump administration is now leading the campaign against Assange, the Democratic Party is solidly behind his persecution, blaming Assange for contributing to the exposure of the crimes for which Hillary Clinton was justly and massively hated. One of the central aims of the Democrats anti-Russia campaign has been to justify the attack on WikiLeaks as part of a broader campaign for internet censorship.

Added to the list of those responsible is the pseudo-left, the organizations of the upper-middle class in the US and internationally, which seized on the initial fraudulent and trumped-up rape allegations against Assange to justify his persecution and their own cowardly abandonment of Assange to American imperialism.

For its part, the establishment media, which functions as an arm of the state, has jumped in to support the attack on Assange.

On Thursday evening, the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post issued statements supporting Assanges extradition. The government charged Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, not with publishing classified government information, but with stealing it, declared the New York Times, adding, The administration has begun well by charging Mr. Assange with an indisputable crime.

The Washington Post was even more open in its support of the Trump administrations campaign against Assange, declaring, Mr. Assanges case could conclude as a victory for the rule of law, not the defeat for civil liberties of which his defenders mistakenly warn.

Mr. Assange is not a free-press hero, declares the Post. Unlike real journalists, WikiLeaks dumped material into the public domain. By the Posts definition, the only real journalists are those who self-censor at the behest of the Pentagon.

These newspapers, which once published the Pentagon Papers, are nothing but apologists for US imperialism. One can only imagine the howls of outrage that would issue from the media if it was the Russian government that had carried out the forcible seizure and arrest of a journalist and critic of its foreign policy!

In the seven years of Assanges confinement in the Ecuadorean embassy, much has changed. Most significant is the eruption of class struggle internationally. It is the fear of the emergence of the class struggle, combined with growing opposition to capitalism, that is compelling the ruling elites to destroy all democratic rights, including the freedom of expression, of which Assange's persecution is the most grotesque example.

In the working class there is overwhelming sympathy for Assange. A dividing line has opened up in social, economic and political life. The ruling elites are shedding their democratic pretenses. Their media and the pseudo-socialist oppositionthe representatives of the politics of the affluent upper-middle classfunction as defenders of the state and the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy.

It is the working class, the broad mass of the population, that must be mobilized to defend Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and all class war prisoners. The demand for their freedom must be a rallying cry for the global working class.

The World Socialist Web Site calls on all workers and young people, and all those who uphold democratic rights, to come forward and take an unequivocal stand in defense of Julian Assange. Organize meetings, protests and demonstrations to demand his immediate release and his safe return to Australia!
A recently published report by the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF), a London-based charity, further exposes the harsh exploitation of Sri Lankan estate workers.

The TRF research highlights, in particular, illegal income deductions imposed by Regional Plantation Companies (RPCs). It confirms the ongoing exposures by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the Socialist Equality Party of the poverty-level wages and harsh conditions facing plantation workers and their families.

Estate workers have demanded a 100 percent increase in their daily basic wage of 500 rupees ($US2.86). They held a nine-day national strike last December before the trade unions shut it down.

The workers demands, made in order to secure minimum living conditions, were rejected by the RPCs, which granted a 40 percent wage rise but slashed attendance and incentive allowances. In effect, the increase amounted to just 20 rupees or 11 US cents a day. The government fully endorsed the deal, and the unions are enforcing it.

The TRF report says unlawful deductions and high workloads are the main factors in the social misery facing plantation workers. Some workers at tea estates certified by Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade take home as little as 26 Sri Lankan rupees ($US14 cents) a day after fees and deductions levied without consent, it states.

The Rainforest Alliance is a New York-based non-government organisation, working to conserve biodiversity. Fairtrade says it is an institutional arrangement designed to help producers in developing countries.

Many plantation companies, including at Watawala, Bogawantalwa, Kelani Valley, Maskeliya and Balangoda, enjoy Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade certification and use it to gain favourable consumer publicity and higher prices in the world market.

The research notes: Wage slips from 17 workers at nine Rainforest-certified tea estatessix of which were also backed by Fairtradeshowed daily earnings widely being cut by more than three-quarters for debt repayments, salary advances and a laundry list of fees

[W]orkers at Fairtrade-certified estates were subject to 74 percent wage deductions on average, while those at Rainforest Alliance-backed estates saw 65 percent [of their income] taken away.

The report also cites the monthly pay sheets of Nuwara Eliya estate workers, showing that their wages were halved if they failed to meet daily targets or arrived late for work.

The deductions are illegal. The companies have violated Sri Lankas limited labour laws, including the Industrial Disputes Act, Wages Board Ordinance and Allowances to Plantation Workers Act.

A Fairtrade spokeswoman insisted that if the TRFs allegations were confirmed it represent serious violations of the Fairtrade Standards, which include the right to organise, no forced or child labor, equal working conditions, salaries to be equal or higher than minimum wage, and good safety and health measures.

Workers told TRF researchers that their estates only abided by the ethical standards of certifiers during audits and that plantation employees were afraid to complain to auditors because they feared management victimisation.

Plantation Industries Minister Naveen Dissanayake rejected the TRFs findings that plantation workers wages were being halved by deductions. Dissanayake hypocritically acknowledged, however, that estate workers are one of the most impoverished communities with the highest rate of malnourishment.

The Plantation Association (PA), which represents RPCs, issued a statement claiming that the TRF report was misleading. The TRF answered the PAs allegations this week, producing evidence to prove that its report was accurate.

The PA claimed that the RPCs always remained sensitive to medical requirements of workers, and that workers received guaranteed lifetime family employment with a mandatory 300 days work per year from 18 to 60 years of age, 20 fully-paid holidays, and 14 days medical leave.

In an attempt to deny endemic malnutrition among plantation workers, the PA quoted a census and statistics department report and claimed that workers daily calories intake was 2,307higher than the recommended 2,030 calories.

These claims are highly selective and unreal. Even if the collective average monthly income of a family of four is 34,000 rupees, according to the government figures, monthly family expenditure consumes over 100 percent of that income.

Government statistics show that about 9 percent of children in plantations are severely stunted, while in the Nuwara-Eliya district 29.5 percent are underweight. The infant mortality rate in the estates13 percentis the highest of any sector in Sri Lanka.

The PAs claim about the number of holidays workers receive with full pay full is false. Workers, in fact, only receive three paid holidays.

The PA statement claimed that the recent collective wage agreement gave estate workers an attractive salary to enable workers to earn the desired 1,000 rupees per day.

This is a lie. Under the agreement workers receive a 730-rupee, all-inclusive daily wage. In an attempt to deflect the workers anger, the government added 50 rupees as a temporary allowance for one year. To receive additional income, workers must meet higher productivity targets.

The PA further claimed that RPCs provide workers with free milk powder, flour and rice for babies up to the age of five years. Workers consistently deny that they receive this assistance.

As for the RPCs sensitivity to medical requirements most plantation hospitals have no qualified doctors or related staff, let alone basic medicine.

A Theresa Estate worker told the WSWS: We only have a dispensary with a nurse and an attendant and there are only very few medicines. We have to buy other drugs from outside.

Annfield and Dickoya estates workers reported that management cut wages if workers did not meet the 18-kilo daily tea-plucking target.

Unilever claimed it was deeply concerned by the TRF report, while Tetley, a subsidiary of Indian-owned Tata Global Beverages, hypocritically said it was in touch with the findings.

These giant corporations, the largest tea trading companies, have not the slightest concern about plantation workers. Instead, they derive massive profits through brutal exploitation of the plantation workforce.

The net profit of Unilevers refreshment business, which includes tea, in 2017 was 6,486 million ($US8,466 million), with a profit margin of 11.3 percent. This was an increase on the previous years 5,547 million, with a profit margin of 9.8 percent. Tetleys net profit for the 20172018 financial year was 5,670 million Indian rupees ($US80 million), up from 4,640 million rupees the previous year (see: Sri Lankan plantation companies reap huge profits while attacking workers wages and conditions).

A recent University of Sheffield study noted: [E]xploitation, including forced labour, is endemic at the base of the global tea and cocoa supply chains. Employers were under-paying wages and under-providing legally-mandated essential services such as drinking water and toilets.

The latest collective wage agreement included clauses to introduce a revenue share system, which would abolish the wage system and limited social benefits and transform workers and their families into virtual share-croppers.

An unnamed manager from Robgill estate in Bogawantalwa told the TRF that companies used deductions from wages to help ease workers lives. This is a gross lie. Estate workers are deprived of the most basic social rights, such as housing, health and education. Most still live in small, overcrowded and unsafe line rooms built during British colonial rule.

Devastating fires in line rooms or estate houses occur regularly. On January 29, 12 line rooms at the Robgill estate were destroyed by fire, leaving 16 families homeless. On December 29 last year, a fire gutted about 20 homes at the Fordyce Estate near Hatton.

The authors also recommend:

Sri Lankan plantation workers protest unions sellout wage deal

[29 January 2019]

The international significance of the Sri Lankan plantation workers strike

[17 December 2018]
Amid an almost complete blackout by the international media, the strike by more than 300,000 Polish educators is entering its fifth day, with students across the country spontaneously protesting in support of their teachers.

Like hundreds of thousands of teachers before them in the US, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Mexico and many other countries, Polish educators are striking against poverty wages. Their monthly net earnings range from 1,800 zlotys to 3,000 zlotys ($470 to $780). One teacher of 13 years from Warsaw told a German newspaper that she and her husband, who is also working as a teacher, still need to live with their children at her parents house because they cannot afford to rent their own apartment on their teacher salaries.

Anger is also widespread over the right-wing governments nationalist and historically revisionist agenda, which history teachers are obliged to comply with. It involves a ban on mentioning any of the crimes of Polish anti-Semites against the countrys Jewish population, as well as a crossing out of the term communism from Polish history before 1948.

According to Polish media reports, roughly three-quarters of the countrys schools and pre-schools remain closed. In Central Poland, where several of the biggest industrial cities, including the capital city of Warsaw, are located, over 85 percent of the schools and pre-schools are shut down.

The extreme right Law and Justice Party (PiS) government has refused to make any concessions to teachers.

In a press conference on Wednesday, deputy prime minister Beata Szydo, restated the governments intransigence. The only offer on the table for the teachers was the contract signed on Sunday night by the union Solidarity over the heads of its membership. The contract provides for a pitiful gradual wage increase of 15 percent and an increase of the numbers of lessons that teachers must give a week from 18 to 24.

Government officials are trying to rally public opinion against the teachers by accusing them of selfishly hurting their students. Middle school exams necessary for eighth graders to graduate were supposed to be given this week.

Szydo insisted that quiet must be maintained and repeatedly emphasized that the exams were being held as planned and in a calm manner. However, local news media report that many middle school students will nevertheless be unable to complete their degrees, because grades cannot be entered.

While the unions leading the strike, the Polish Teachers Union (ZNP) and the Trade Unions Forum (FZZ), have refused to mobilize students and broader sections of the working class in support of the teachers, spontaneous demonstrations by students to support their teachers have taken place across the country.

In Sosnowiec, some 50 students, among them several who cannot complete their school year because of the strike, staged a spontaneous demonstration in support of their teachers. The head of the students self-government at the school, Zuzanna Karcz, told a local newspaper, The school community is our family, and the teachers also belong to it. Family members support each other. We dont want them to give up. We owe them too much.

Students held signs, saying [like] a wall behind the teachers, [Murem za nauczycielami], We are with you and We support the teachers strike. One of the school teachers who came out to the demonstration to thank the students said, It is my biggest dream to again stand in front of the blackboard and teach you. But I simply must strike.

Student protests also took place in Lublin and several other cities.

Donations have been raised to support the teachers, and they have received public support from many of Polands best-known intellectuals, artists and journalists, including the Academy Award winning director Pawe Pawlikowski, writer Olga Tokarczuk as well as Wanda Traczyk-Stawska, a well-known survivor of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against the Nazi occupation of Poland in World War II.

Fearing that the struggle of teachers could spark joint action by other sections of Polands impoverished working class and beyond, the PiS government has systematically worked to portray the teachers as demanding more than their fair share and is mobilizing other sections of the population against them.

Jarosaw Kaczynski, widely recognized as the partys de facto leader, has also made a point of campaigning among the rural population, promising modest increases in child pay. About 40 percent of Polands population of 40 million still lives in the countryside, where PiS enjoys significantly more support than in the industrial cities. Far from seeking to unite teachers with the oppressed rural population, the unions have provided ammunition to the right-wing government by suggesting that government money should pay for teachers raises instead of benefits for the rural poor.

Youth and teachers must be warned: to rely on the trade unions, which have betrayed and sold out every struggle for decades, is a recipe for disaster and defeat. The teachers are confronting major political and historical questions. Their strike brings them in confrontation with the entire political and economic set-up that was put in place through the restoration of capitalism in Poland, carried out by the Stalinist bureaucracy in conjunction with the leadership of the Solidarity trade union, which worked to disorient and suppress a mass movement of the working class against the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The leadership of the extreme right-wing ruling PiS party, including its head Jarosaw Kaczynski and the anti-Semitic and fascistic defense minister Antoni Morawiecki, all emerged out of the KOR (Workers Defense committee), which played a central role in advocating for a pro-capitalist program, and the Solidarity movement. The main opposition party Civic Platform (PO), which advocates for a closer alliance of Poland with German imperialism, was founded by former members of Solidarity, such as Donald Tusk and Maciej Pazynski, who also advocated for the restoration of capitalism . Today, the Solidarity union works closely with the PiS-government and is widely hated and despised in the working class.

The other unions too have supported capitalist restoration and decades of austerity. The ZNP emerged directly out the Stalinist government-controlled union of the same name, and supported capitalist restoration as well. For decades, the ZNP was aligned with the Left Democratic Alliance (SLD) party, whose policies of austerity led to its complete loss of parliamentary representation in 2015.

Now, ZNP is oriented to the main bourgeois opposition party PO. When it was in government until 2015, the PO enacted savage austerity measures, including large-scale school privatizations, which in no small part account for the social disaster confronting teachers today. This allowed PiS to capitalize on social discontent within sections of the population. Just like PiS, the PO supports the military build-up against Russia, which has cost tens of billions of dollars in the past few years alone.

The strike of Polish teachers can only be successful if they appeal for support to the entire Polish and international working class. They must connect their struggle for decent wages with the struggle against war and social inequality. This step requires a political and organizational break from the pro-capitalist trade unions and parties, and a turn toward the struggle for socialism, that is based on the lessons of the Trotskyist struggle against Stalinism and the restoration of capitalism.

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[April 11, 2019]
Written and directed by Emilio Estevez

The Public is preoccupied with the problem of homelessness in America. Written and directed by veteran actor and director Emilio Estevez ( Bobby, 2006), the movie is thoughtful and heartfelt.

Libraries are community and cultural resources and, according to Estevez, should be a sanctuary and safe haven for the homeless.

According to the American Library Association, libraries promote equal access to information for all persons, and recognizes the urgent need to respond to the increasing number of poor children, adults, and families in America  Therefore it is crucial that libraries recognize their role in enabling poor people to participate fully in a democratic society, by utilizing a wide variety of available resources and strategies.

It is this sentiment that informs Estevezs movie.

In The Public, set in Cincinnati, every morning the public library opens its doors to a waiting group of homeless men and women who avail themselves of computers and books, even performing their ablutions in the librarys bathrooms. The giant posters of Frederick Douglass and Percy Shelley adorning its walls are a reminder of the great literary and historical battlers of the past.

Estevez plays Stuart Goodson, the chief librarian destined to lose his job because of his empathy for the librarys homeless patrons. His co-worker Myra (Jena Malone) is sweet, but more concerned about the environment than she is about these human outcasts.

During a frigid cold front, Cincinnatis emergency shelters are filled to capacity and several homeless people die in the streets. On a particularly bitter night, some 100 homeless people refuse to leave the library at closing time, barricading themselves on the third floor. At first resistant, Stuart eventually joins the occupation.

Police set up a war room in the library, manned by their expert negotiator, Detective Ramstead (Alec Baldwin), whose drug-addicted son has gone missing and is undoubtedly homeless himself. A crude and careerist public prosecutor (Christian Slater) wants to take a law and order hard line, while the library administrator (Jeffrey Wright) works to avoid a confrontation.

The media joins the fray, with a reporter (Gabrielle Union) on hand to lie about and distort the situation and blackguard Stuart and the occupiers, who are led by the sly and sharp Jackson (Michael K. Williams). When the SWAT team arrives, the protesters find a provocative, innovative way to forestall police violence and a potential bloodbath.

Somewhat light-hearted in its tone, The Publicis clearly a labor of love for its extraordinary cast. But while Estevez offers a rational outcome to the crisis in his movie, how such situations actually end in America is generally not so pleasant. Estevez hints at this in his portrayal of the politicians and police who want to resolve the homeless occupation by arrests, guns and cracking skulls. The director also makes a pointed comment about the role of the media, which has no compunction about inventing a narrative for its own various dirty purposes, whatever the human cost.

Meanwhile, as Estevezs movie shows, it is ordinary people who are the true allies of the homeless.

In a Hollywood Reporter interview about The Public, Estevez explained that he saw an article in 2007 in the Los Angeles Times about how libraries have become de facto homeless shelters and how librarians were no longer doing the work of librarians. These guys were now first responders, and thats gone to a whole other level just in the last 10 years. Librarians are now trained to carry Narcan [a medication used to counteract the effects of opioids] because there are so many overdoses in urban libraries.

Indeed, the opioid crisis has become so desperate for librarians that in October 2018, Emergent BioSolutions, which had recently completed its acquisition of Narcan maker Adapt Pharma, announcedaccording to Time magazinethat it would provide a free kit including two doses of the nasal spray, as well as educational materials, to each of the 16,568 public libraries and 2,700 YMCAs in the U.S.

The Illinois Library Association, in July 2018, posted an article, How the Opiate Epidemic Came to the Library, which noted that the epidemic was not an issue libraries can ignore. Across the country, from New York to Denver to San Francisco and in hundreds of small towns, libraries are sites of overdoses.  In April 2016, a man died from a heroin overdose in an Oak Park Public Library restroom. At Decatur Public Library, a library staff member administered NARCAN until emergency services responded to an overdose at the library.

In the Hollywood Reporter interview, Estevez continued: Sadly, its more relevant now than when I started on this in 2007. The homelessness crisis has been with us for some time, but it does seem that there are more people falling through the cracks. Its an issue that is especially pressing with the new tax cuts and with Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block.

During the 2018 Toronto film festivals question-and-answer session, several of The Publics cast members spoke convincingly about their commitment to exposing the ever-growing problem of homelessness. Estevez credited his father, actor Martin Sheen, as his inspiration for the new film. Sheen has been arrested some 68 times for protesting against homelessness, nuclear proliferation and other social ills.

Estevez: The core issue is homelessness. Close to 1 billion people15 percent of the worlds population live in slums. Five hundred fifty thousand Americans and 230,000 Canadians have been homeless at some point this year.

Christian Slater talked about the veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder, adding, If we can bail out Wall Street, we can deal with the homeless. Alec Baldwin noted that homelessness is really back in New York City  One missed rent payment and youre out on the streets.

Michael K. Williams added: Drug addiction, mental issues, joblessness, working homeless. How did people get there? I was becoming desensitized to people laying on concrete on the street.

Tellingly, however, Estevez explained that the films ending was going to be darker under George W. Bush, but as The Public was finished under the Obama administration, its ending became more hopeful. This left-liberal perspective no doubt accounts for some of the films softened focus.
Yesterday afternoon, in a rigorous and carefully worded judgment, Federal Court Justice Michael Wigney upheld Australian actor Geoffrey Rushs defamation action against Rupert Murdochs tabloid Daily Telegraph, published by Nationwide News, and its celebrity gossip columnist Jonathon Moran.

Justice Wigney read from a 20-page summary of his exhaustive 200-page judgement, which he strongly advised journalists covering the case to carefully read.

Rush was awarded aggravated compensatory damages of $850,000, with a further, still to be calculated, amount for economic loss due to special damages. This was to compensate for the monetary loss caused by the defamatory articles, including the loss of earning capacity, for some period of time into the future.

Speaking in the Federal Court before a television camera and a packed audience, Justice Wigney described the case, which had ended up pitting Rush against his former close friend and acting colleague, Eryn Jean Norvill, as sad and unfortunate.

It plainly would have been better for all concerned if the issues that arose in the saga that played out in this courtroom in October and November last year had been allowed to be dealt with in a different way and in a different place to the harsh adversarial world of a defamation proceeding, he said, at the start of his judgment.

But they were not. And so it has come to this.

Rush and Norvill had played the roles of King Lear and his youngest daughter Cordelia, in an acclaimed Sydney Theatre Company (STC) production of King Lear in late 2015 and early 2016. For a significant period of time the two had enjoyed a close and playful relationship, involving word games, texting and occasional outings.

Well over a year later, however, Justice Wigney explained, in the midst of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the worldwide explosion of the phenomenon which later became known as the #MeToo movement, Sydneys The Daily Telegraph newspaper published what was said to be a world exclusive story concerning the behaviour of Mr Rush during the STC production. That story ran on 30 November 2017.

While the #MeToo movement was not formally on trial in the case, it was the key motivation behind the outrageous and vindictive slanders against Rush contained in the Daily Telegraphs articles.

The actor claimed he had been portrayed as a pervert and sexual predator, engaged in inappropriate behaviour of a sexual nature, among other defamatory accusations, during the STCs production of King Lear. The allegations were made in Telegraph articles and a poster on 30 November and in further articles on 1 December, 2017, accompanied by lurid headlines and photographs, and alleged corroboration by two witnesses.

Moreover, as Justice Wigney pointed out, the articles appeared to link the Rush accusations to those made in other cases where prominent movie executives, actors and show business personalities, both overseas and in Australia, had been accused of sexual harassment or misconduct.

In defending their actions, the Daily Telegraph and Moran claimed that their publications did not convey the alleged imputations. Justice Wigney found, to the contrary, that all but two of them certainly did.

Under Australian defamation law, if defamatory imputations are found to be, on the balance of probabilities, substantially true, then that constitutes a defence. However, the onus of proof lay with the respondent, Nationwide News and Moran, not with the applicant, Geoffrey Rush to establish the truth.

To support its case, Nationwide News approached Eryn Jean Norvill to act as its primary witness. While she initially refused to participate in the case, she eventually agreed, likely under significant pressure given the importance of her evidence to the Murdoch medias case. As Justice Wigney emphasised, Norvill was not a party to the proceeding, had no vested interest in it, and had essentially been dragged in to the spotlight by the actions of Nationwide and Mr Moran.

In the event, Norvill submitted herself to two days of examination and cross-examination on the witness stand.

In their articles and poster, the respondents made a total of eight imputations against Rush. These were primarily the result of Norvills allegations of inappropriate behaviour by Rush toward her during rehearsals and performances of King Lear. They included making groping actions with his hands over her body as she lay, as Cordelia, dead on the stage; making comments to her containing sexual innuendo; touching her back lightly; tracing his finger above her right breast, and making lewd gestures towards her with his hands and face.

Justice Wigney declared that, on the balance of probabilities, none of these was proven to be true.

Moreover, only one witness, co-actor Mark Winter, gave evidence during the trial to corroborate any of Norvills testimony, and his evidence contradicted what Norvill herself had alleged. As for the rest of the cast and crew, whom Norvill testified would have seen Rushs inappropriate behaviour, none supported her version of events. They constituted, in the words of Rushs barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, a sea of absent witnesses. The only witnesses who did testify were Neil Armfield, the plays highly experienced director, and seasoned actors Robyn Nevin and Helen Buday, all of whom testified that they had seen none of the events described by Norvill.

Toward the conclusion of his remarks, Justice Wigney delivered a damning indictment of Nationwide News and Mr Moran. Referring to the allegations in the Daily Telegraph, he declared, This was, in all the circumstances, a recklessly irresponsible piece of sensationalist journalism of the worst kind. The very worst kind.

Following the hearing, Rush made a brief statement to the assembled media outside the court.

I am pleased to acknowledge the decisions made this afternoon by the Federal Court of Australia, he said. There are no winners in this caseit has been extremely distressing for everyone involved.

I want to thank my wife, Jane, and our children for their support during this harrowing time. I have no further comment.

Following Rush, Eryn Jean Norvill told the media: I stand by everything I said at trial. I told the truth, I know what happened, I was there.

I never wanted these issues dealt with by a court. This case has caused hurt for everyone. There are no winners, only losers. And I would've been content to receive a simple apology and a promise to do better.

In the course of his 200-page judgment, Justice Wigney made a thorough examination of the issue of lying, which had clearly emerged in the proceedings.

He wrote:  the issue concerning Ms Norvills credibility as a witness, and the reliability of her evidence, is not simply a matter of determining whether or not she has told lies, or has a motive to lie. An otherwise honest witness may give unreliable evidence for all manner of reasons. The witnesss memory of the event may be poor or defective. The witnesss memory of an event may become distorted or polluted over time because of other intervening events or circumstances. The witness might, in such circumstances, convince himself or herself that something occurred, and genuinely believe that it did, even though it did not.

In all the circumstances I do not think that it is possible to reduce the factual issues and inconsistent evidence in this case to the simple question of whether or not Ms Norvill is a liar, or has told lies. The issue is not as black and white as that. Life is not that simple.

Moreover, as has already been noted, many of the disputed allegations do not simply involve Ms Norvills word against Mr Rushs word. Many of the allegations were, on Ms Norvills version of events, witnessed by others, including Mr Armfield, Ms Nevin and Ms Buday. Yet, as will be seen, her version of events was not supported by, and in most respects was disputed by, those witnesses.

Wigney also rasied that, in the course of her evidence on the witness stand, Norvill had a tendency to "embellish" and "exaggerate" her claims. It appears that she came under the influence of the subjective and damaging methodology of #MeToo, in which virtually any accusation against a man of inappropriate behaviour is immediately accepted as grounds for major and ongoing attacks, potentially leading to the loss of a job, a relationship, a marriage and even a life. And there is now ample evidence to demonstrate that the beneficiaries of this process, in terms of jobs, status and financial remuneration, are #MeToo's affluent upper middle class representatives and devotees.

Justice Wigneys judgment has served to deliver a powerful blow against the anti-democratic methods and activities of the #MeToo movement, including its rejection of due process and of the presumption of innocence.

Authorised by James Cogan for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000

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[15 November 2018]
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A few hours after the March 15 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch which killed 50 people and injured more, New Zealands police commissioner Mike Bush was asked in a press conference: Why were these people [initially there was more than one suspect] not on a security watch list? Were they completely unknown to police?

He replied: No agency had any information about these people... Ive been in contact with my Australian colleagues, they have no information on them at all either.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the media that the shooter, Australian fascist Brenton Tarrant, was on nobodys radar, anywhere. New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern made a similar statement.

In fact, it is now clear that the gunman had come to the attention of Australian police more than two years before the attack. On Wednesday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported that in September 2016, a man went to police in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham after receiving a death threat from Tarrant via Facebook.

The man had criticised the United Patriots Front (UPF), an extreme-right group that was planning an anti-refugee rally in Melbourne. In response, Tarrant said: The UPF is the leading ethno-nationalist group within Australia When you speak against the UPF you speak against my right to a home for my people and my culture. This marks you.

Tarrant warned the man to choose your words carefully and think of who you insult. He then added: If you are a nationalist I hope you one day see the light, and if you are a Marxist I hope you one day meet the rope.

The man made a screenshot of Tarrants Facebook message and took it to police, who dismissed the death threat and told him to block Tarrant on Facebook. Police did not take an official statement.

Victoria Police told the ABC yesterday they had no record of the 2016 complaint, adding that they had strong arrangements in place for monitoring and tracking people who pose a threat to the community.

There is no innocent explanation for police refusing to investigate or even, apparently, make a record of Tarrants death threat. The episode raises extremely disturbing questions about the relationship between the police and Australias anti-immigrant and fascist groups.

The death threat was not an isolated incident. Tarrant made numerous public comments on Facebook in 2016 hailing the UPF and its neo-Nazi leader, Blair Cottrell, and threatening globalists and Marxists.

In one instance, when members of the UPF violently clashed with counter-protesters in Coburg, Tarrant wrote: Communists will get what communists get, I would love to be there holding one end of the rope when you get yours traitor. All of this was apparently ignored by police and intelligence agencies.

In New Zealand, police similarly dismissed a complaint made in late 2017 by Peter Briedhal, who was concerned about the racist, anti-Muslim comments expressed by members of the Bruce Rifle Club, which Tarrant had joined after moving to New Zealand that year. When Briedhal went to police he was told not to worry, and his complaint was not recorded.

If authorities had no information on the Christchurch terrorist, this is because police in Australia and New Zealand had deliberately shielded him. For several years he was allowed to travel the world, donate to fascist groups in Europe, amass a stockpile of weapons and prepare his atrocity, all while making public comments on Facebook and 8chan expressing his murderous hatred of Marxists and Muslims.

The reason Tarrant was not stopped is suggested in his fascist manifesto, which expresses support for the military and police and states that he did not want to shoot any police officers in the course of his attack. He estimated that in Europe hundreds of thousands of far-right nationalists were employed in the armed forces.

The manifesto has been banned by New Zealands chief censor in order to prevent public discussion of Tarrants political motivations. The ruling elite do not want any questions raised about whether members of the police and intelligence agencies in New Zealand and Australia share Tarrants fascist views.

The document shows the similarity of the gunmans anti-immigrant and anti-Marxist politics to those of the political establishment throughout the world, including the administration of US President Donald Trump.

In Australia and New Zealand, anti-Muslim racism has been cultivated for decades to justify the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have killed more than a million people. Xenophobia has also been whipped up, including by the NZ Labour Party and trade unions, to scapegoat immigrants for the worsening social crisis, especially following the 2008 financial crash. New Zealand First, which is part of the Labour-led government, has frequently demonised Muslims and Chinese people, using language similar to that of the Christchurch shooter.

The entire Australian political establishment and media have viciously attacked refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East and elsewhere, creating an environment in which right-wing nationalist groups have flourished. The UPF and True Blue Crew have received significant promotion on TV and radio programs. One Channel 7 report in January 2018 described these fascist organisations, led by admirers of Adolf Hitler, as concerned patriots seeking to help average Australians deal with what they are calling an immigrant crime crisis.

The working class must draw the necessary political lessons from the systematic promotion of the extreme right by capitalist parties and the media, and the protection given to fascists like Tarrant by the police. The official response to the Christchurch shootings is to cover up the political roots of the attack and push for censorship of the internet and other police-state powers. These will be used, not against fascists, but against workers and young people who are moving to the left and seeking to fight against austerity and militarism.

The historic function of fascism, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1934, is to smash the working class, destroy its organisations, and stifle political liberties when the capitalists find themselves unable to govern and dominate with the help of democratic machinery. He warned workers that it was fatal to rely on the police or bourgeois parliaments to oppose fascism.

Today, while fascism is not a mass movement, it presents a growing danger to working people throughout the world, amid the most severe crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s. The working class must respond by building a socialist movement to unite workers around the world in a political fight to abolish capitalism, which is the source of nationalism and fascism as well as social inequality and war.

Authorised by James Cogan for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000

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[27 March 2019]

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[26 March 2019]

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[18 March 2019]
Outrage is mounting after the arrest Thursday morning of journalist and WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Assange was dragged from the embassy by a mob of British police officers and thrown into a jail cell after his political asylum was illegally cancelled by Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno.

After nearly seven years of confinement to the embassy Assange now faces the possibility of a year in a UK prison and extradition to the US. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, Agnes Callamard, warned that the move to expel Assange and his possible extradition to the United States put him at risk of serious human rights violations.

Protests called by the Socialist Equality Party in Assanges home country of Australia were attended by hundreds of people in Sydney and Melbourne to denounce Assanges arrest and demand his freedom. The Socialist Equality Partys rallies were live-streamed via Facebook, and had been watched by thousands of people within hours. A protest was also held outside the British embassy in Washington, D.C.

Socialist Equality Party Australia rally in defence of Julian Assange

Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, cautioned that, Any prosecution by the United States of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest.

Independent American journalist Chris Hedges wrote that the publishers arrest eviscerates all pretense of the rule of law and the rights of a free press. Australian journalist and documentarian John Pilger declared that Assanges forced expulsion from the embassy and the Ecuadorian government's complicity were crimes against the most basic natural justice, and marked a warning to all journalists.

Assange was first convicted by a British magistrate judge Thursday of violating bail conditions that were set over trumped-up sexual assault allegations in Sweden, which have long since been dropped by prosecutors. His sentencing date has not yet been set.

Then, in a move which confirmed the fears that drove Assange to seek refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, his arrest on bail charges was followed by the unsealing of a criminal indictment against him by the Trump administration. The indictment was filed by prosecutors more than a year ago, on March 6, 2018.

Since 2010, weve warned that Julian Assange would face prosecution and extradition to the United States... unfortunately, today, weve been proven right, Assanges lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, told reporters at a press conference after meeting with him in police custody Thursday afternoon. Ive just been with Mr. Assange in the police cells. He wants to thank all of his supporters for their ongoing supportand he said, I told you so.

Assange will now have to wait in jail until May 2 for an extradition hearing, which will determine if he can be flown to the United States to stand trial.

He has been charged by the US Department of Justice with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion in violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, alleging that the publisher tried, but failed, to assist whistleblower Chelsea Manning in cracking a password that would have allowed her to obscure her identity when accessing secret information on a Department of Defense computer network.

The charge stems from unpublished webchat logs allegedly in the possession of the US government between Manning and an individual within WikiLeaks who went under the pseudonym Ox and preassociation, which the government alleges was Assange. On the basis of the conversations in these secret logs, the government claims Assange sought to enter in to a criminal conspiracy with Manning to collaborate on the acquisition and dissemination of the classified records.

Part of the SEP Melbourne rally in defence of Assange

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a statement declaring that Assanges indictment was at root, an attack on the publication of leaked material and the most recent act in an almost decade-long effort to punish a whistleblower and the publisher of her leaked material if Assange is indeed extradited, the government can issue superseding indictments. It should not do so. Leaks are a vital part of the free flow of information that is essential to our democracy. Reporting on leaked materials, including reporting on classified information, is an essential role of American journalism.

Manning leaked a massive trove of secret information exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan to WikiLeaks in 2010, including the infamous Collateral Murder video, which shows a helicopter gunship attack in Baghdad that killed at least 12 civilians, including 2 Reuters journalists. The documents WikiLeaks published were published by news outlets all over the world, including the New York Times and the Guardian.

Massimo Moratti, Amnesty Internationals deputy director for research in Europe, released a statement demanding that the UK refuse to extradite or send in any other manner Assange to the United States, as he confronts a very real risk that he could face human rights violations, including detention conditions that would violate the absolute prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment and an unfair trial followed by possible execution, due to his work with WikiLeaks.

The UK governments assurance to the Moreno government that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could be tortured or face the death penalty is worthless.

While the conspiracy charge could bring a maximum five-year prison sentence, it cannot be ruled out that the US government has additional indictments waiting to be unsealed once Assange is in US custody, including on espionage charges that carry the death penalty. The Obama administration subjected Manning to torture through solitary confinement, driving her to attempt suicide on multiple occasions.

Manning has been in jail since March 8 in Alexandria, Virginia after she refused to testify before a grand jury convened to bring trumped-up charges against Assange. Her imprisonment has included 28 days in solitary confinement. Her attorneys filed an appeal Thursday based on the unsealing of the charge against Assange, arguing that compelling her to testify would have been duplicative of evidence already in the possession of the grand jury. Furthermore, this proved that her continued detention was not coercive but purely punitive, in violation of the law.
Este resumen ha sido preparado por la Division de Informacion y Relaciones Exteriores de la Secretaria de la OMC para ayudar al publico a comprender la evolucion de las diferencias en la OMC. Este resumen no tiene por objeto ofrecer una interpretacion juridica de las cuestiones, ni rendir un informe completo sobre las mismas, pues esa informacion se puede encontrar en los propios informes y actas de las reuniones del Organo de Solucion de Diferencias.

DS573: Turquia - Derechos adicionales sobre las importaciones de maquinas y aparatos para acondicionamiento de aire procedentes de Tailandia

Tailandia presento su segunda solicitud de establecimiento de un grupo especial de solucion de diferencias en la OMC para que se pronunciase sobre un derecho adicional del 9,27% establecido por Turquia sobre las importaciones de acondicionadores de aire tailandeses. La primera solicitud de Tailandia fue bloqueada por Turquia en una reunion del OSD celebrada el 25 de febrero. Los aranceles se impusieron en respuesta a la decision anterior de Tailandia de prorrogar los derechos de salvaguardia sobre las importaciones de productos planos de acero sin alear, laminados en caliente, durante tres anos mas. Tailandia dijo que le preocupa que los derechos adicionales impuestos por Turquia sean incompatibles con las obligaciones que incumben a ese pais en virtud del Acuerdo General sobre Aranceles Aduaneros y Comercio (GATT) de 1994 y el Acuerdo sobre Salvaguardias de la OMC.

Turquia dijo que lamentaba la decision de Tailandia de volver a solicitar el establecimiento de un grupo especial y reitero que la solicitud era prematura, ya que Turquia esperaba que ambas partes pudieran proseguir las conversaciones para resolver el asunto. Turquia dijo que seguia a disposicion de Tailandia para proseguir los debates.

El OSD acordo establecer un grupo especial. El Brasil, el Canada, China, Corea, los Estados Unidos, la Federacion de Rusia, la India, el Japon, Singapur, Ucrania y la Union Europea se reservaron su derecho a participar en calidad de terceros en las actuaciones del grupo especial.

DS521: Union Europea - Medidas antidumping sobre determinados productos planos de acero laminados en frio procedentes de Rusia

La Federacion de Rusia presento su primera solicitud de establecimiento de un grupo especial para que se pronunciase sobre las medidas antidumping impuestas por la Union Europea sobre las importaciones de determinados productos planos de acero laminados en frio originarios de Rusia. Los derechos antidumping, que oscilan entre el 18,7% y el 36,1%, fueron impuestos a las importaciones de acero rusas a partir de agosto de 2016. Rusia dijo al OSD que habia celebrado consultas con la UE el 8 de junio de 2017 con miras a lograr una solucion satisfactoria del asunto, pero que las conversaciones no habian logrado resolver la diferencia, lo que habia llevado a Rusia a presentar su solicitud de establecimiento de un grupo especial.

La Union Europea dijo que seguia dispuesta a facilitar explicaciones adicionales a Rusia despues de haber mantenido consultas constructivas. La UE estaba convencida de que sus medidas en litigio en esta diferencia eran conformes con los Acuerdos de la OMC. Por consiguiente, la UE no estaba dispuesta a convenir en el establecimiento de un grupo especial en esta reunion.

El OSD tomo nota de las declaraciones y acordo volver a ocuparse del asunto.

DS353: Estados Unidos - Medidas que afectan al comercio de grandes aeronaves civiles - Segunda reclamacion

La Union Europea dijo que acogia con satisfaccion la resolucion del Organo de Apelacion en el procedimiento sobre el cumplimiento para el asunto DS353 hecha publica el 28 de marzo, indicando que confirmaba la mayoria de las alegaciones formuladas por la UE. La resolucion del Organo de Apelacion confirma que los Estados Unidos no se han puesto en conformidad con resoluciones anteriores, ya que sigue subvencionando de manera ilicita al fabricante de aeronaves estadounidense Boeing, lo que causa un dano importante a su competidor europeo, Airbus; la resolucion tambien confirma que los Estados Unidos no han adoptado ninguna medida adecuada para cumplir su obligacion de retirar las subvenciones declaradas ilicitas por la OMC ya en 2012, o de eliminar sus efectos desfavorables, segun dijo la UE. La UE indico que lamentaba que, aunque en varios puntos, el Organo de Apelacion revoco las conclusiones del Grupo Especial sobre el cumplimiento, en particular la descripcion de determinadas medidas estadounidenses y su especificidad, en ausencia de suficientes constataciones facticas en el informe del Grupo Especial, no estaba en condiciones de completar el analisis a este respecto. La UE dijo que espera que los Estados Unidos cumplan con prontitud esta resolucion definitiva.

Los Estados Unidos dijeron que la resolucion que se examina hoy se ha producido porque, hace 14 anos, los Estados Unidos iniciaron una impugnacion de la "ayuda para emprender proyectos" de la UE, que permitia a los Estados miembros de la UE pagar por el desarrollo de aeronaves de Airbus y que esta empresa no tuviera que reembolsar la ayuda si la aeronave no tiene exito. Un Grupo Especial de la OMC y el Organo de Apelacion constataron que, como afirmaban los Estados Unidos, las subvenciones de ayuda para emprender proyectos eran responsables del desarrollo de todas y cada una de las aeronaves de Airbus y causaban efectos desfavorables enormes para el comercio estadounidense. La UE respondio planteando su propia diferencia en 2005, en la que alegaba que las subvenciones estadounidenses para Boeing eran mayores y distorsionaban mas el comercio. Las resoluciones en este procedimiento han confirmado la postura de los Estados Unidos de que las considerablemente grandes subvenciones proporcionadas por la UE a Airbus sobrepasan notablemente las constataciones de subvencion estadounidense en esta diferencia, afirmaron los Estados Unidos.

La UE alego inicialmente subvenciones por valor de 19.000 millones de dolares para Boeing, y una amplia gama de efectos desfavorables en tres segmentos del mercado, segun los Estados Unidos. En definitiva, el Grupo Especial sobre el cumplimiento solo constato que una medida, una moratoria fiscal del estado de Washington por valor de entre 100 y 110 millones de dolares al ano, seguia siendo incompatible con las normas de la OMC, constatacion confirmada por la resolucion del Organo de Apelacion del 28 de marzo. Por el contrario, en las resoluciones del Grupo Especial sobre el cumplimiento y del Organo de Apelacion en el asunto planteado por los Estados Unidos contra Airbus se constato que la UE otorgaba financiacion subvencionada por valor de aproximadamente 18.000 millones de dolares a Airbus, lo que causa a Boeing una perdida de ventas de mas de 300 aeronaves en todo el mundo. Los Estados Unidos afirmaron que, si bien la UE alega haber eliminado esas subvenciones, en realidad la UE unicamente suprimio dos subvenciones de poca importancia y dejo las demas inalteradas, ademas de otorgar a Airbus nueva ayuda para emprender proyectos por valor de 5.000 millones de dolares para financiar su nueva aeronave, el A350XWB. Estas subvenciones han causado, y continuan causando, un perjuicio grave a los intereses de los Estados Unidos, lo que ha llevado a estos a solicitar a la OMC autorizacion para imponer contramedidas contra la UE por valor de 11.200 millones de dolares anuales.

El Canada dijo que el Organo de Apelacion habia afirmado una vez mas que habia dos opciones de cumplimiento distintas a las que se podia recurrir en el marco del parrafo 8 del articulo 7 del Acuerdo sobre Subvenciones y Medidas Compensatorias de la OMC: el Miembro al que incumbe la aplicacion puede o bien retirar una subvencion que causara efectos desfavorables o eliminar los efectos desfavorables causados por esa subvencion.

El OSD adopto el informe del Organo de Apelacion y el informe del Grupo Especial sobre el cumplimiento, modificado por el Organo de Apelacion.

Nombramiento del nuevo Presidente del OSD

El OSD eligio Presidente, por aclamacion, al Embajador David Walker (Nueva Zelandia). Las delegaciones agradecieron a la Presidenta saliente, Embajadora Sunanta Kangvalkulkij (Tailandia) su ardua labor, su dedicacion y su liderazgo. Tambien le desearon al Embajador Walker la mejor de las suertes en su nueva funcion y le garantizaron todo su apoyo.

El 10 de abril, la Embajadora Kangvalkulkij pronuncio un discurso sobre los acontecimientos ocurridos en el OSD en 2018 ante el Instituto Universitario de Ginebra. Aqui puede consultarse una copia de su discurso.

Proxima reunion

La proxima reunion del OSD esta prevista para el 26 de abril.

Puede consultarse mas informacion sobre el sistema de solucion de diferencias de la OMC aqui.
Desde hace varios anos, un grupo de estudiantes de diversos paises viene a Suiza para participar en un ejercicio intensivo de negociacion de seis dias. Cada estudiante actua como representante de un Miembro de la OMC en distintos comites de negociacion y trabaja con el resto del grupo en la elaboracion de una declaracion ministerial final.

En la edicion de 2019 de Model WTO, los estudiantes centraron la atencion en la manera de reformar la OMC, abordando los desafios reales de la OMC, como las obligaciones sobre transparencia, la utilidad de la labor de los comites, los procedimientos para evitar las diferencias, la clasificacion de los Miembros de la OMC segun su condicion, la mejora de las funciones de negociacion de la OMC y el examen de los procedimientos de trabajo del Organo de Apelacion. A lo largo de las negociaciones, los participantes pudieron contar con el apoyo de la Secretaria de la OMC y de las delegaciones de los Miembros de la OMC que representaban.

En la ceremonia de clausura, los oradores en representacion de los Miembros de la OMC, la Secretaria y el mundo academico elogiaron a los participantes, procedentes de 23 paises, y la gran calidad de su aportacion.

En su discurso de clausura, el Director General Adjunto de la OMC Xiaozhun Yi puso de relieve hasta que punto era importante experimentar lo dificil que resulta llegar a un acuerdo cuando se trata de asuntos de suma complejidad. Agradecio a los estudiantes que se hubieran tomado tiempo de sus cursos para asistir a esta simulacion y anadio: "Esperamos volver a ver a algunos de ustedes en el futuro como colegas de la Secretaria de la OMC o como delegados ante la Organizacion".

La OMC respalda firmemente Model WTO, porque brinda a la proxima generacion de responsables de la toma de decisiones la oportunidad de comprender mejor el sistema multilateral de comercio y experimentar la dinamica de las negociaciones comerciales.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Public sector giant National Mineral Development Corporations (NMDC) proposed $2.2 billion integrated steel manufacturing plant is undergoing a price revision. The 3 million tonne per annum (mtpa) plant at Nagarnar, Chhattisgarh, was first proposed in the financial year 2010-11 and has since seen cost escalation at least once.

NMDC, in its investor presentation, confirmed that investment for the plant was under revision. The plant, to be commissioned between October 2019 and March 2020, is expected to contribute $1.7 billion to the companys top line.

At 100 per cent capacity, the steel plant will contribute $1.7 billion (Rs 11,750 crore) to the companys top line with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of 25 per cent, NMDC noted.

The proposed plant, for which construction work is in advanced stages, will produce flat products like hot-rolled plates, sheets, coils, automotive steel and API grade steel.

Targeted increase in steel capacity by more than double at 300 mtpa requires raw material of about 437 mtpa and provides fillip to iron ore industry.

NMDC with a current market share of 15-18% has great opportunity to ramp up its production, NMDC said, adding that the company, being the largest iron ore player with integrated mining solutions, was better positioned to capitalise on the opportunities in iron and steel industry, which is expected to grow with 7.4 per cent CAGR.

Likewise, the companys slurry pipeline plant being set up with a cost of $415 million is currently in the first phase and is intended for the transportation of pellet feed concentrate from Bailadila to Jagadalpur; it will likely be commissioned in the first half of FY22. Cost of evacuation from Bailadila sector to Vizag port to reduce by about 55 per cent from current cost of $17 to $8, it noted.

Meanwhile, NMDC is planning to enhance its mining capacity to 67 mtpa by FY22 from the current 43 mtpa. Much of the increase is from existing operational mines  Kirandul, Bacheli and Donimalai Kumarswamy  whose output will be increased to 52 mtpa from 43 mtpa.
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By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on a contempt plea filed by Japanese pharmaceutical firm Daiichi Sankyo against former Ranbaxy promoters Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh over non-payment of an over Rs 3,500 crore arbitration award. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, who heard both the sides before reserving the order, clarified that the court is only deciding on the issue of contempt of court.

During the hearing, senior advocate Fali S Nariman, representing Daiichi, told the bench that former Malvinder Singh had given an undertaking in the Delhi High Court and that the value of their unencumbered assets was only Rs 452 crore.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Malvinder Singh (elder of the two brothers), told the bench that since the enforcement proceedings against the brothers were pending before the High Court, all the bank accounts belonging to Malvinder have been frozen by the court. The Japanese firms contempt plea against the Singh brothers seeks recovery of around Rs 4,000 crore from them as directed by the Singapore arbitration tribunal.

Daiichi Sankyo had bought Ranbaxy in 2008.

Later, the drug-maker had moved the Singapore arbitration tribunal, accusing that while selling the shares, the Singh brothers had concealed information that Ranbaxy was facing a probe by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: SpiceJet on Friday announced it will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease to bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline's international and domestic presence.

The announcement comes at a time when airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of around 90 per cent of cash-strapped Jet Airways' 119-aircraft fleet.

The availability of flights was also hit by pulling out of SpiceJet's 12 "737 Max" aircraft in March over safety concerns following an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on March 10.

"SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft," the airline said.

"Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet fleet in the next ten days," it added.

The airline said the new inductions will not just bring down flight cancellations to nil but also help in SpiceJet's aggressive international and domestic expansion plans.

Under dry lease, the lessor provides the airline with the aircraft but without any crew member, while under wet lease, the lessor provides the aircraft along with complete crew.

Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, SpiceJet said this is the first lot of Boeing 737s that the airline is inducting in its fleet.

"The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience," he said.

Earlier this week, Indian aviation watchdog DGCA had asked all airlines to come out with an individual medium-term plan by Wednesday on enhancing the availability of domestic flights, a move aimed at curbing rising airfares.

In its fleet, SpiceJet had 12 "737 Max" aircraft.

On March 12, the DGCA announced its decision to "immediately" ground the Boeing 737 Max aircraft that were being used by airlines in India.

A 737 Max aircraft operated by the Ethiopian Airlines crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10, killing 157 people, including four Indians.

This was the second such crash involving the 737 Max aircraft in less than five months.
By PTI

SAN FRANSICO: Nearly 200 million people who had sensitive information snatched from their Yahoo accounts will receive two years of free credit-monitoring services and other potential restitution in a legal settlement valued at USD 117.5 million.

The deal revises an earlier agreement struck last October, only to be rejected by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California.

The value of that settlement had been pegged at USD 50 million, but Koh questioned the calculations.

A more detailed breakdown used in the revised settlement drove up the estimated cost.

The money will be paid by Yahoo's current owner, Verizon, and Altaba, a holdover from Yahoo's past that still owns a stake in Chinese internet company Alibaba Group worth billions of dollars.

If approved, the settlement will become part of the financial fallout from digital burglaries that stole personal information from about 3 billion Yahoo accounts in 2013 and 2014 - believed to be the biggest data breach ever.

And now the USD 117.5 million settlement could become the largest amount ever doled out for a data breach, a recurring problem in an increasingly digitally driven world.

It eclipses a USD 115 million settlement that Koh approved last year to cover 79 million people who had personal information stolen in a 2015 breach at health insurer Anthem Inc.

Yahoo didn't begin to disclose the extent of its security breakdown until 2016 amid an FBI investigation that eventually linked some of the hacking to Russia.

The revelations brought a mortifying end to the reign of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, eventually prompting the company to reduce its selling price to Verizon by USD 350 million.

Verizon has since written off much of the nearly USD 4.5 billion price for the Yahoo acquisition in a sign of the eroding value of that business.

Lawyers representing the Yahoo accountholders estimate about 194 million people in the US and Israel will be eligible to make claims, according to court documents.

Those people collectively may have had about 896 million of the Yahoo accounts hit in the break-ins.

The biggest piece of the revised Yahoo settlement disclosed in documents filed Tuesday consists of the free credit-monitoring services that will be offered to everyone covered by the deal to protect them from identity theft and other potential problems.

The service from AllClear usually costs USD 14.95 per month, or USD 359 for two years.

People who already have a credit-monitoring service will be eligible for cash payments instead.

Yahoo accountholders who paid anywhere for USD 20 to USD 50 annually for premium email accounts will be eligible for refunds of up to 25%.

People who had to spend time protecting their identities or dealing with other issues caused by the breach can be seek to be paid at a rate of USD 25 per hour for up to 15 hours.

The settlement will also pay up to USD 32.5 million in fees and other expenses to the lawyers representing Yahoo accountholders, down from the USD 37.5 million sought in the earlier agreement  another sticking point for Koh.

A hearing on the revised settlement is scheduled for June 27.
Laszlo Papp, the man sentenced to life imprisonment for detonating a bomb on Terez korut in 2016, has been released from a psychiatric institute and taken back to the Vac prison where he was serving his term.

Papp is in solitary confinement, under constant observation from a camera.

He is well and is not giving his jailers any problems.

Papp could be released on parole in 30 years at the earliest.

The court of appeals that convicted him classified his crime as a terrorist act.

He was also obliged to pay Ft 40 million of the Ft 110 million court costs.
Marton Nagy (pictured on top left), deputy governor of the National Bank of Hungary, urged Hungarian banks to improve their efficiency and embrace innovation while boosting lending.

Speaking at a conference organised by portfolio.hu, Nagy said the banking market in Hungary is oversaturated and it would be sufficient to have five large universal banks.

Bank products continue to be very expensive, he said. He called on the bank sector to support sustainable economic growth, which would require a 12 to 14% increase a year in long-term lending volume.

He said Hungarian banks would need fewer but more modern branches, and they should also progress in digitalisation in order to be able to adapt to new fintech solutions.



MTI Photo: Koszticsak Szilard
Those who follow the Hungarian media cannot escape the impression that Hungary is not such a safe country as its prime minister wants the world and Hungarian citizens to believe.

Almost a year ago Hungarian Spectrum had a post about the country having a high murder rate with no supporting statistics. As examples, there were a few cases from 2017.

Articles appeared here and there about the problem, but not too often. In 2017 Index wrote a short report on crime in general and noted that, in the previous year, 226 people had been murdered in the country. But it didnt attempt to compare this figure to murders in other European countries.

In January 2018 Nepszava published an article with the misleading title We are more afraid than four years agoWhat do statistics show?

It was misleading because the conclusion of the article was that, although the crime rate is actually quite low, in comparison, for example, to Mexico (!), only half of the population feels safe while the other half is afraid to go out after dark. The author believed that this heightened fear was the result of government propaganda.

In contrast, in November 2018 a blogger wrote an article titled Hungary is one of the most dangerous places in Europe, in which the truth at last emerged.

Citing international statistics for the year 2016, he showed that the number of intentional homicides, in comparison to other European countries, was very high.

After Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Belgium, Hungary was the fifth worst out of the 28 member states of the European Union. (The high murder rate in Belgium was most likely due to the terrorist attacks in that country in 2016.)

The author criticized the opposition for not taking advantage of this information to counter the governments cheap lies about the west, which is drowned in migrant terror. The blogger, by the way, was right. The opposition definitely missed an opportunity since the statistics were already available in 2017.

In the last few days, however, we have seen article after article about the dreadful situation in Hungary as far as homicides are concerned.

It was an opinion piece by Gyula Hegyiin Nepszava on April 5 that prompted this avalanche of articles. Hegyi is a former MSZP member of parliament (1994-2002) and former member of the European Parliament (2004-2009). After 2009, he became a member of the Hungarian European Commissioners staff. Therefore, Hegyi has a great deal of knowledge about the workings of the EU, and he also closely follows EU-wide developments.

The title of his opinion piece was We are leading in murders too. From the article we learn that in the last nine years the number of homicides has grown by roughly 50%.

Currently, the ratio is 2.07 per 100,000 inhabitants; in 2010 it was only 1.38. By contrast, the number of homicides has been decreasing overall in the European Union.

Gyula Hegyis conclusion is that the reason for these horrific statistics is the shameful social policy, the poverty, and the cult of violence. Citing homicide ratios from East-Central European countries (Slovakia 1.5, Czech Republic 0.61, Slovenia 0.8), Hegyi argues that the dismal Hungarian numbers are not the result of some kind of curse in our region.

He suggests that, instead of abstract concepts that are difficult for the average citizen to grasp, the opposition should confront Hungarian society with these shocking facts.

Shortly after the publication of Hegyis opinion piece, Indexs Eurologus, a blog that concentrates on news from Brussels, published an article titled Where do most murders occur in the EU?

The article looked at murder rates in European countries. In addition, the author examined annual Hungarian suicide statistics and claims that, until 2015, the number of suicides was decreasing. But then it suddenly shot up and has remained high ever since.

After comparing the available figures, the author concludes that the safest countries are Slovenia, Austria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Poland. By the way, Eurologus took a quick look at the suicide rates in the EU and found that homicide rates and rates of suicide show similar tendencies.

Finally, a glimpse into how the government media manipulates statistics.

A couple of days ago a news item appeared in Origo, commenting on the fact that until now New York had the highest number of homicide cases but that London just surpassed it. It is a first. Indeed, that is the case, as several American and British publications reported.

In February, 15 murders took place in London and 14 in New York. Since both cities have approximately 9 million people, the comparison is valid. What Origo failed to report, however, is that the populations of London and New York are approximately the same as the whole of Hungary.

The annual ratio in Hungary is 2.0 per 100,000 inhabitants, or 180 per 9 million. In an average month, there would thus be 15 murders in Hungary, the same as in London.

In brief, the high numbers Origo is rejoicing over are basically the same as Hungarys. As a whole, Great Britain is considerably safer than Hungary and the United States is, as those of us who live in the U.S. are only too aware, much less safe.

It doesnt matter how you slice it, the presence of migrants doesnt seem to make any difference as far as murder rates are concerned. Italy, for example, is full of immigrants and yet the countrys murder rate is exceptionally low (0.67).

Greece, Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Sweden, all of which have large numbers of migrants, have a great deal fewer homicide cases than Hungary does.

But such facts are irrelevant to the Hungarian government propaganda machine. It will continue to equate immigration with crime, regardless of what the statistics say.



MTI Photo: Koszticsak Szilard
Fine porcelain, slim glasses and a sophisticated flair  Zsolnay Kavehaz reopened its doors a year ago on the ground floor of the Budapest Radisson Blu Beke Hotel, and has been radiating new life and design-awareness ever since.

Its transformation from a rather dusty hotel restaurant to a renowned gastro meeting point makes the place the Cinderella of Budapest cafes. Surely even Prince Charming would not refuse to have a piece of cake and a grey beef filet here.

Many people will remember the Radisson Blu Beke Hotel primarily due to the unusual mosaic decorating its facade, which depicts the life and deeds of Gyorgy Szondi, the heroic knight captain who fought the Ottomans in the 16th century.

However, almost nobody knows that this hotel is one of the oldest in the Hungarian capital. It opened in 1913  as Hotel Gellert, for example, was still under construction  under the name Hotel Britannia, operated by coffee tycoon Henrik Fabri.

It was considered the flagship of modern hospitality for a long time, offering running hot and cold water in all its rooms and central heating. Britannia was treasured among others by Ferenc Mora, one of the most popular writers of the era.

The hotel building survived World War II with many scars and was reopened as Hotel Beke (meaning peace in English) after a renovation. However, the house did not return to its full glamour until it was modernised again in 1985.



Reopening on the ground floor

The Zsolnay Kavehaz was established around the same time. Its trademark, the same as today, was serving the meals and drinks in filigree Zsolnay dishes.

The world-famous Hungarian porcelain manufacturer created a very own flowery pattern for the cafe, and thus this cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

About a year ago Zsolnay Kavehaz was still located temporarily on the hotels first floor while a full renovation was being carried out, after which it reopened in its former location on the ground floor in April 2018.

A Spanish designer, Nathalie Rottenburg, helped with the rebirth of the traditional cafe, which brought permanent changes. The cooperation was a success: with its fireplace, grand piano and open bar, the place radiates a welcoming homeliness.

The modern interior is organically divided into different functional zones and leaves nothing to yearn for in terms of comfort. All in all, this is a place where it feels good to stay.

A special highlight of its design is the glass dome decorating the entrance area, prepared by Jeno Haranghy, an Art Nouveau artist of the 19th century. It used to decorate the hotels ballroom, but during the course of the renovation they took apart the decorative element into a hundred or so pieces and reassembled it on the ground floor.



Cafe, bistro and bar

Even if the name does not imply it, Zsolnay Kavehaz offers far more than only coffee and cakes. The restaurant combines a cafe, bistro and bar with a balanced and seasonally changing drink and menu card.

Chef Jozsef Jaksics offers international extravagancies besides the Hungarian classics, such as veal stew, pike perch filet and grey beef filet.

For instance, you can order a Japanese salad with soya cheese and spicy umami sauce. If you are looking for a more down-to-earth but still exciting appetiser, try the cauliflower cream soup with bourbon vanilla. One of the Hungarian specialties, the foie gras, is also recommendable.

The so-called brinner is a culinary specialty at the Zsolnay Kavehaz. Just like the more common brunch, this term describes a meal that combines the best of breakfast and dinner.

Brinner is served throughout the whole day and you can choose from sweet and piquant compositions with eggs and butter croissants, and a selection of salads and sandwiches.

The true strength of the cafe is of course its artistically arranged pastries, cakes and desserts. Gyorgy Bechmann, the chief pastry chef, always creates new sweet specialties for the cafe guests.

He also takes special nutritional needs into account  some of his creations are sugar-, lactose- or gluten-free.

Ludlab is one of the mouth-watering eye-catchers  a chocolate cake, based on the original Hungarian recipe and recreated by Bechmann in a new shape.

The peach-cottage cheese slice, the colourful Maladipe cake and the Somloi dumplings (or Hungarian trifle) that you can mix yourself are all high-quality culinary delights.

Zsolnay Kavehaz has a special offer  which is almost too good to be true  for its guests every Sunday around lunchtime.

Diners can receive a discount of 50% from the whole menu between 12.00 and 15.00 that day, which is valid for appetisers, main dishes, brinner and desserts. You had better reserve a table in advance.



Evaluation

Zsolnay Kavehaz used to be a hidden pearl in the ocean of the Budapest gastronomy scene. One reason was that perhaps many people have a certain unwarranted reservation about restaurants seated in hotels, plus the cafe was not really visible.

Making a separate entrance to the Grand Boulevard is a great step to opening it up towards the metropolitan public.

Its central location and good connections make the Zsolnay Kavahaz a well-placed meeting point. The artistic yet professional atmosphere is especially recommended for business lunches and business meetings.

However, the restaurant is also absolutely right for family dinners and having a coffee with close friends.

By the way, they are dog-friendly and guests can park in the hotels underground car park for free.



Prices

Appetisers: HUF 1600-3790

Main dishes: HUF 1500-8500

Brinner: HUF 1290-2900

Cakes and pastries: HUF 400-900

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3-Year-Old S.C. Girl Who Loved Peppa Pig Killed Along with Mom in Triple-Shooting: 'Always Smiling' 3-Year-Old Who Loved Peppa Pig and Mom Among 3 Killed

A stay-at-home mom and her 3-year-old daughter were among three people fatally shot at her home in South Carolina on Tuesday, say authorities.

Hailey Brown, 29, and her daughter, Sadie Grace Linton, were found dead inside the home in Cheraw, the Chesterfield County Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

Cordarious Foster, 27, was also found dead inside the house, the sheriffs office says.

Police have not yet said how Foster knew Brown, who was the mother of two girls  Sadie and her 5-year-old sister, Browns mother Sheila told WMBF.

Hailey Brown, 29, with her daughter, Sadie Grace Linton, 3 | Facebook

Sheila Brown said that she and her family had known Foster since he was a child and that he often played at their house growing up.

She said her family hadnt been in contact with him for several years after he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, with his family, WMBF reports.

 Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

She says she and her family have speculations of what happened but are waiting for officials to comment, local station WBTV reports.

For it to end like this, its just, it aint natural, Sheila Brown told WBTV.

The sheriffs office hasnt made any arrests in the case but said there is no threat to the community after the violence.

Authorities are still investigating what led to the shootings.

In the meantime, Browns family and the community remain stunned by the deaths of Brown and her little girl, whose obituary on the website of the Miller-Rivers-Caulder Funeral Home states she loved Peppa Pig and building sand castles.

Hailey Brown, 29, and Sadie Grace Linton, 3.

The obituary describes Sadie as a beautiful gift from God who was always smiling, showing love to everyone she met. An active little girl who loved Minnie Mouse, L.O.L. dolls and baby dolls. Sadies favorite playtime activities included building with Legos and jumping on her trampoline.

Sheila Brown told WBTV that Hailey was the best daughter in the world. She added, She was loving, she was dependable, she was kind. And she was a good mamma.

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In her funeral home obituary, Hailey Brown was remembered as a proud and loving mother to her children whose family was of utmost importance.

She loved spending time with her children and giving all the girls manicures and pedicures. She loved the Lord and enjoyed attending Forest Pine Church growing up.

Funerals for Sadie and Hailey Brown will be held on Saturday.
Its the last place youd expect to see kids smiling, and yet the youngsters were all grinning as they walked into KinderMourn on Feb. 18.

The non-profit organization in Charlotte, North Carolina, works with families who have lost a child, and on that day veteran police officer Chad Webster and his pigs Sgt. Snuggles (Sarge for short) and Frank were waiting for the kids as they arrived.

They never smile and there they were, just laughing at the pigs, recalls Webster.

And thats the point. The 44-year-old father of four started what he calls the Bacon Response Team about eight months ago. He and the pigs have visited schools, the cancer ward at the hospital and community events, trying to spread joy and help kids and adults get comfortable with police. A former patrol officer and domestic violence detective, he now works as a community officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.

Chad Webster | Courtesy Chad Webster

Sgt. Snuggles and Frank | Courtesy Chad Webster

How many times do you see a pig on a leash? Thats an instant ice breaker, says Webster. Its just a done deal once the pig comes out. It took me two months to convince my wife to agree to get a pig, but now she and everyone else are totally on board.

They brought home Sarge, an American mini pig, when he was 8 weeks old. A month later, the breeder called and said hed seen what Webster was doing and he had a special needs pig that needed a home.

He said the pigs leg didnt work right, says Webster. My wife went to see him and of course she came home with him.

RELATED: Therapy Pigs Bring Holiday Cheer, Back Scratchers and a Whole Lot of Cute to Florida Hospital

Courtesy Chad Webster

The pigs, who now have a dedicated Instagram account and their own room in the already crowded Webster household, are in training to be certified as official therapy pigs.

Webster wears his police uniform when he takes the pigs out, while Sarge walks on a harness and Frank has his own stroller. This unique threesome gets a lot of laughs and inspires many jokes.

Its a pig with a pig, says Webster. I get that and I take that head-on!

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Webster jokes about it, but he also acknowledges the more serious meaning behind it all. He works with a number of programs in Charlotte that started after a police officer shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott in 2016, prompting protests and two days of riots in the city.

Investigators determined Scott had a gun and the officer was not charged with a crime, but police and community relations were strained for a time.

RELATED VIDEO: Therapy Pigs Thunder and Bolt Are Happy to Trade Belly Scratches and Hugs for Smiles



Webster also helped start Bears Behind the Badge, which provides donated books and stuffed animals to elementary school kids, and recently launched the podcast Please Pass The Bacon with Websters friend and fellow officer, Jason Peetz.

A 48-year-old father of three and former SWAT team sniper who now works as a community officer for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Peetz works with Webster to humanize police officers on the podcast.

None of us want to see an unjustified shooting, and thats why we dont really get into that in the podcast, says Peetz. We try to stay on good news. We dont get political or controversial  just the opposite. We try to let people see who we are. Were both dads. I own a cheerleading gym, Chad is a childrens book author. Were more than just people in a uniform.

That week when the riots happened, it made it hard to put on the uniform, and doing these programs is helping, Peetz adds. I know its helping me. Youre getting connected again when you felt so disconnected for a time.

RELATED: 13-Year-Old Boy with Cancer Gets Sweet Surprise After Beloved Bike Is Stolen from Family Porch

Jason Peetz and Chad Webster | Courtesy Chad Webster

Webster says, I wanted to get back to letting people know that were people  that we care about the public were serving. Its not just about tickets and making arrests.

Peetz adds, We wanted to find different ways to make connections with the community to build that trust and open up a dialogue and not be so focused on all the negative, and so far it seems to be working.
Photo credit: AAron Ontiveroz - Getty Images

From Esquire

(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what's goin' down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin' gets done, and where your mother sends back all your invitation.

There is no place to start our tour except Texas, where, if the rest of us are lucky, they've finished rubberizing the walls of the state legislature chambers. From CNN:

House Bill 896, introduced in the Texas House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee, would remove the exception in the penal code for criminal homicide that applies to women and medical professionals and allow them to be charged with murder of an unborn child. The measure would be a blanket ban on abortion procedures in the state, allowing the state to enforce the bill "regardless of any contrary federal law, executive order, or court decision." The landmark 1973 US Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade affirmed the legality of a woman's right to have an abortion under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

For years, the anti-choice movement would fumble and foozle around if you pressed them on their loose employment of words like "murder" by asking them what should happen to the doctor and/or the woman involved in the procedure. They seem to be losing that convenient ambivalence, at least in Texas.

Texas state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican who introduced the bill, argued that the legislation does "not specifically target women" nor is he "specifically criminalizing women," but "equalizing the law so that everyone that is culpable or takes part in what I call murder ... can be punished." The hours-long hearing remained largely civil until the committee heard from its first panel opposed to the bill. "The bill authors know that this legislation is unconstitutional because of federal judicial precedent set by Roe v Wade," NARAL Pro-Choice legislative intern Jasmine Wang said. "So even giving this bill a hearing is both a waste of time and resources." Leach took issue with Wang's testimony and went on to grill Wang on her stances on abortion. He also accused NARAL's witnesses of "sniggering" and "laughing" during others' testimonies.

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They're feeling very emboldened these days, probably because of the ongoing stacking of the federal judiciary. "Fetal heartbeat" bills are advancing in eight states, including both Georgia and Ohio. In the latter, the bill is already on the desk of Governor Mike DeWine. From NBC News.

Ohio's closely divided politics have slowed the progress of the so-called heartbeat bill as it has caught momentum elsewhere, forcing years of debate in the state where the movement originated. Five other states have now passed similar bans, two of which have been blocked by the courts. Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who took office in January, has said he will sign the bill, after former GOP Gov. John Kasich vetoed it twice. State Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan, a Democrat from a storied Youngstown political family, shed tears during the debate, exasperated at a bill she said would harm Ohio and its future.

"I'm concerned that we will have companies that will choose not to locate here due to our oppressive laws. I'm concerned that doctors will leave the state of Ohio," she said. "I'm concerned that our kids are going to leave, that we're going to lose a large amount of young people who don't want to live in an oppressive atmosphere."

It's here where I usually make a wisecrack about how these laws guarantee nothing but expensive and futile lawsuits that the state in question is bound to lose. However, looking at the current Supreme Court, I'm not sure those are very funny any more.

Photo credit: Justin Merriman - Getty Images

And now, a Very Special Episode of our semi-regular weekly survey. For years, we've all been following the shenanigans of ALEC, the all-purpose wingnut legislation mill that provides identical bills for identical causes in different states at the same time. Now, thanks to USA Today and the Arizona Republic, we have a way to track precisely how widespread this underground legislative fungus really is.

A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation. USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.

The investigation examined nearly 1 million bills in all 50 states and Congress using a computer algorithm developed to detect similarities in language. That search  powered by the equivalent of 150 computers that ran nonstop for months  compared known model legislation with bills introduced by lawmakers. The phenomenon of copycat legislation is far larger. In a separate analysis, the Center for Public Integrity identified tens of thousands of bills with identical phrases, then traced the origins of that language in dozens of those bills across the country.

This is an extraordinary exercise in data journalism. I'd start engraving that Enterprise Reporting Pulitzer right now and avoid the last-minute rush. The basic dynamic in all the bills is fraud, with nasty real-world consequences. Read the whole thing.

The Asbestos Transparency Act sounds like the kind of boring, good-government policy voters expect their representatives to hammer out on their behalf to safeguard public health. Better transparency was one reason Colorado state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg said he introduced the bill in 2017, and again last year, at the urging of a tort reform group called the Colorado Civil Justice League and backed by insurance companies, including Nationwide Insurance. Whenever you add transparency to the mix, it helps all consumers, said Sonnenberg, a Republican.

But the bill had nothing to do with requiring companies to disclose to consumers what products contained asbestos or informing those who had been exposed to the cancer-causing mineral how to get help. It, in effect, cast corporations as victims of litigation filed by people harmed by asbestos. The model bill requires people battling the asbestos-triggered disease mesothelioma to seek money from an asbestos trust, set up to compensate victims, before they can sue a company whose product might have caused their cancer.

Democracy cannot stand for long when it's this kind of puppet show.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Chuck Wagon Semolina Inspector Friedman of the Plains brings us a better idea than it sounds. From Fox 23 News:

Rather than relying on a traditional landscaping crew, Bixby is using the goats to clear the grass and other vegetation along the banks of the lake. The city installed fencing and cattle guards to keep the goats in a designated area. They also brought in several donkeys to keep a watchful eye on the animals. Officials said the idea for the goats started at a recent City Council meeting.

The city also installed a shed to provide shelter for the goats during bad weather. FOX23 learned Oklahoma City also uses goats for vegetation management.

Once the goats unionize, however, a new plan likely will be prepared. Robot Goats: Threat or Menace?

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

Respond to this post on the Esquire Politics Facebook page here.

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More than 2,500 students at Georgetown University made their voices heard to create a reparations fund.

On Thursday, Georgetown undergraduates voted to raise their tuition by $27.20 per student, per semester to create a fund benefitting descendants of the slaves sold in 1838 by the Georgetown Jesuits, who ran the school when it was known as Georgetown College, ABC News reported. The proposal passed with two-thirds of the vote, according to the GUSA Election Commission, with 2,541 students voting yes and 1,304 voting no.

If the universitys board of directors approves the nonbinding referendum, Georgetown would become the first college in the U.S. to mandate a fee to benefit descendants of slaves sold by a university.

The fund would support education and health care programs in Louisiana and Maryland, where many of 4,000 known living descendants of the 272 enslaved people now live, according to the New York Times, which also reported that, at the time, the college relied on Jesuit-owned plantations in Maryland that were no longer producing a reliable income to support it.

The Jesuit priests decided to raise cash by selling all its slaves, receiving the equivalent of about $3.3 million in todays money.

The Jesuits sold my family and 40 other families so you could be here, sophomore Melisande Short-Colomb said during a recent town hall to discuss the issue, according to ABC News. No one in this room was here in 1838 when this happened.

Short-Colomb is one of four students currently attending Georgetown under an admissions policy that recognizes the descendants of the 272 slaves as legacy students.

RELATED: Amid the College Admissions Scandal, Here Are 8 Organizations Helping Disadvantaged Students

Todd Olson, vice president for student affairs at Georgetown, said the university has been working to address its historical relationship to slavery since 2015.

The Descendant Community, the Society of Jesus, and Georgetown are working together towards reconciliation and transformation regarding the legacy of slavery, Olson said in a statement.

Story continues

The process is anchored in the practice of trust-building, truth-telling, racial healing, and transformation. We have committed to finding ways that members of the Georgetown and Descendant communities can be engaged together in efforts that advance racial justice and enable every member of our Georgetown community to confront and engage with Georgetowns history with slavery, Olson said.

Any student referendum provides a sense of the student bodys views on an issue. Student referendums help to express important student perspectives but do not create university policy and are not binding on the university, he continued. We remain committed to working with students  regardless of the outcome of the referendum  to develop education and programming that will enable all students to meaningfully engage with Georgetowns history of slavery and support opportunities for collaboration between students and Descendants.

In 2016, Georgetown agreed to give admissions preference to the descendants of 272 slaves. In addition, the school formally apologized for its role in slavery and renamed two buildings on campus to acknowledge the lives of slaves, the Times reported.
Former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello recruited another guitar hero, Gary Clark Jr., for his new song, Cant Stop the Bleeding, which hes releasing ahead of his upcoming tour. The track, which also features electronic music producer Gramatik, starts off like a fairly straightforward blues rocker. Clark sings about trouble and feeling overwhelmed, until swooshes of EDM effects begin a surprising trance breakdown.

Cant Stop The Bleeding is the latest Marshall stack bass drop banger from Gary Clark Jr., Gramatik and myself, Morello said in a statement. Influenced by W.B. Yeats, Jimi Hendrix and terrified Ultra fans, this latest salvo of Shred Step just erupted from the Atlas Underground.' (Late last year, Morello released a new album titled The Atlas Underground, though Cant Stop the Bleeding was not featured on it.)

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A video for the song presents a fairly literal metaphor for the song, as a person patches up a wall that has depressing internet-style missives projected on it to keep it from bleeding. Eventually it turns into something that looks like an animated outtake from The Shining.

Morello will launch his tour in May with an appearance at Jacksonville, Floridas Welcome to Rockville festival. The North American dates are scheduled to run through May 19th, after which hell play a run of dates supporting Muse in the U.K. and return for a June 15th appearance at the 101WKQX Piqniq in Tinley Park, Illinois.

Last year, Morello told Rolling Stone hed been secretly toiling away on The Atlas Underground. It features appearances by Bassnectar, Big Boi, Killer Mike, Vic Mensa, K.Flay, GZA, RZA and many others. The notion from the very start was to forge this sonic conspiracy of these artists from wide-ranging genres who are like-minded, and then curate all of it into a powerful and cohesive whole, he said.

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Sarec, who is here to attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said here Thursday that China is willing to better align the Belt and Road Initiative with the development strategy of Slovenia.

Li made the remarks while meeting with Slovenian Prime Minister Marjan Sarec, who is here to attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik.

As important cooperation partners, China and Slovenia enjoy sound and stable development in bilateral ties and cooperation, Li said, adding that the two countries enjoy complementary advantages and have achieved a series of cooperation results in various fields.

China is willing to further deepen cooperation in such areas as innovation, technology and small and medium-sized enterprises, the premier said.

For his part, Sarec said Slovenia and China are important partners, and have maintained frequent high-level exchanges, adding that bilateral ties and cooperation in various areas have seen smooth development.

Slovenia is an active participant in the Belt and Road construction and China-CEEC cooperation, and is willing to expand cooperation with China in trade, investment, technology and pharmacy so as to promote new progress in bilateral relations, Sarec said.
HM Chaithanya Swamy By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: When Saravana J, a resident of Vijinapura in Ramamurthy Nagar, lit up a cigarette on the terrace of his friends house in Horamavu on Monday, little did he know that he would be fighting for his life just moments later.

The 38-year-old victim was meeting his friend Shankar after four months at his house on ninth cross, Banjara layout. According to his complaint with the police, he was on the terrace, smoking and talking on the phone and there were two women on the terrace of the opposite house.

On seeing him moving about, the women called out to someone and within minutes, a man appeared, yelling at Saravana to stop smoking and to smoke inside the house, Saravana said. I immediately put of the cigarette and told the man I will not smoke. Since he was shouting I asked him to stop shouting and carry on with his work. The neighbour asked me to come down. I thought he was calling me to talk, but when I got down he was already carrying tiles and started hitting me, he said.

Shankar tried to intervene but was pinned by the two women who asked the man to continue hitting Saravana. Residents gathered around and stopped him. We went to the police station immediately to file a complaint but they said that I should first get treatment and return, Saravana said. Saravana then went to a hospital in KR Puram and got himself treated and filed a complaint the next day.

According to an investigating officer, the attacker and his family members were on the run after the incident. We are making efforts to search for them. None of the residents know their details, so we have got in touch with the house owner. A case of assault causing grievous injuries has been taken against the attacker, a police officer said.

Local residents told police that the man and his family members would often fight with many people. The attacker always scolded the neighbours claiming that they were staring at his wife and making gestures at her. He had also fought with another resident over a parking issue in the past.
A University of Missouri-Kansas City student has been charged with assault after interrupting a speech Thursday by Daily Wires conservative commentator Michael Knowles and spraying him with a substance.A UMKC student identified as Gerard G. Dabu has been charged with peace disturbance  disturbing schools or lawful assemblies; assault on law enforcement; and property damage. Dabu was arrested Thursday night and released on bond. Today, Dabu also has been charged with assault and resisting arrest of law enforcement and in the discharge of their duties, a university spokesperson said in a statement to TheWrap on Friday.In a note to students, university chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal added more detail.Also Read: Fox News, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire Dominate Facebook's Most Popular Stories of 2019Police had no choice but to react as if the substance was an immediate danger. Tests later revealed the substance to be lavender oil and some other non-toxic household liquids, he said. A campus disciplinary investigation is under way.Agrawal also dinged Knowles, saying the hosts professed opinions do not align with our commitment to diversity and inclusion and our goal of providing a welcoming environment to all people, particularly to our LGBT community.In a statement to TheWrap, Knowles called Agrawal a disgrace to higher education, and said the broader incident was a warning to conservatives on campus.I was invited to give a speech on a fairly innocuous topic: Men Are Not Women. From the very beginning, a loud contingent of leftist students shouted relentlessly in an attempt to drown out my speech. After some time, they stood up to leave. At that point, a masked assailant approached out of my periphery and shot an odorous, strangely colored liquid at me, at which point the police tackled and arrested him. At first I thought this liquid might be some sort of paint. I was later told it was bleach, then later still told it was a non-toxic concoction that merely resembled a dangerous chemical. In any case, the message was clear: what happened last night was a warning to conservatives on campus that unless they shut up and kowtow to leftist orthodoxy, they will be silenced, intimidated, and assaulted. This morning, the chancellor of the university sent out an email in which he not only did not apologize but in fact smeared me as some for of bigot. He then described the topic of my discussioni.e., that men are not womenas an extreme point of view. Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal is a disgrace to higher education. The assailant as well as the students who screamed throughout the lecture should be expelled from the university, and the assaillant should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Enough is enough.Knowles had been on campus Thursday for a speech to a chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student group. A teaser of the event on Daily Wires YouTube channel forewarned, hes bound to trigger some Leftist tears while delivering a revolutionary message on gender and science.Knowles is a rising and eclectic voice in the conservative movement. In addition to his regular show on the Daily Wire, he is also a frequent writer for FoxNews.com. Knowles, a trained actor, also occasionally still appears in ads as well  most recently for McDonalds last month.Read original story Missouri College Student Charged With Assault on Conservative Speaker Michael Knowles (Video) At TheWrap

A University of Missouri-Kansas City student has been charged with assault after interrupting a speech Thursday by Daily Wires conservative commentator Michael Knowles and spraying him with a substance.

A UMKC student identified as Gerard G. Dabu has been charged with peace disturbance  disturbing schools or lawful assemblies; assault on law enforcement; and property damage. Dabu was arrested Thursday night and released on bond. Today, Dabu also has been charged with assault and resisting arrest of law enforcement and in the discharge of their duties, a university spokesperson said in a statement to TheWrap on Friday.

In a note to students, university chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal added more detail.

Also Read: Fox News, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire Dominate Facebook's Most Popular Stories of 2019

Police had no choice but to react as if the substance was an immediate danger. Tests later revealed the substance to be lavender oil and some other non-toxic household liquids, he said. A campus disciplinary investigation is under way.

Agrawal also dinged Knowles, saying the hosts professed opinions do not align with our commitment to diversity and inclusion and our goal of providing a welcoming environment to all people, particularly to our LGBT community.

In a statement to TheWrap, Knowles called Agrawal a disgrace to higher education, and said the broader incident was a warning to conservatives on campus.

I was invited to give a speech on a fairly innocuous topic: Men Are Not Women. From the very beginning, a loud contingent of leftist students shouted relentlessly in an attempt to drown out my speech. After some time, they stood up to leave. At that point, a masked assailant approached out of my periphery and shot an odorous, strangely colored liquid at me, at which point the police tackled and arrested him. At first I thought this liquid might be some sort of paint. I was later told it was bleach, then later still told it was a non-toxic concoction that merely resembled a dangerous chemical. In any case, the message was clear: what happened last night was a warning to conservatives on campus that unless they shut up and kowtow to leftist orthodoxy, they will be silenced, intimidated, and assaulted. This morning, the chancellor of the university sent out an email in which he not only did not apologize but in fact smeared me as some for of bigot. He then described the topic of my discussioni.e., that men are not womenas an extreme point of view. Chancellor C. Mauli Agrawal is a disgrace to higher education. The assailant as well as the students who screamed throughout the lecture should be expelled from the university, and the assaillant should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Enough is enough.

Story continues

Knowles had been on campus Thursday for a speech to a chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative student group. A teaser of the event on Daily Wires YouTube channel forewarned, hes bound to trigger some Leftist tears while delivering a revolutionary message on gender and science.

Knowles is a rising and eclectic voice in the conservative movement. In addition to his regular show on the Daily Wire, he is also a frequent writer for FoxNews.com. Knowles, a trained actor, also occasionally still appears in ads as well  most recently for McDonalds last month.

Read original story Missouri College Student Charged With Assault on Conservative Speaker Michael Knowles (Video) At TheWrap
Activist group Moving Animals has shared alarming footage and photos of a baby elephant at Thailands Phuket Zoo, in hopes of getting the young animal moved to a sanctuary.

According to the group, their investigators found that the baby elephant, who they nicknamed Dumbo, was forced to dance to rave music, play musical instruments, pose for photos and perform tricks for laughing tourists. Additionally, Moving Animals says, the baby elephant appeared skeletal and was seen sucking his trunk, which is a sign of distress. The group has photos and videos of Dumbo performing at the zoo, which has numerous negative reviews on TripAdvisor for their treatment of animals.

Performances like the one documented by investigators occur three times a day at the zoo, reports Moving Animals, all under the threat of the sharp bullhook. Moving Animals worries that the baby elephant will spend his entire life in captivity forced to perform for tourists, who also pay to take selfies with the ailing animal.

The Phuket Zoo did not respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.

RELATED: Shocking Footage from Thai Zoo Shows Gorilla Stuck in Tiny Cage with No Access to the Outdoors

In an effort to change Dumbos future, Moving Animals launched a petition on Care2 demanding the animals release into a sanctuary, where he can feel happiness and peace, without the threat of abuse or being forced to perform.

The petition already has over 66,000 signatures and is hoping to reach 100,000. Moving Animals heartbreaking eyewitness accounts of what this baby elephant endures every day has prompted Phuket Provincial Office of the Department of Livestock Development (DLD) to investigate the Phuket Zoo, reports The Phuket News.

After checking in on the baby elephant, officially named Ping Pong, officers found the animal is in poor health and ordered the zoo to pull the 2-year-old elephant from performances until he is fully healed.

Our officers found that Ping Pong is underweight, so we have to make sure he is not suffering from an infection or a digestive problem, DLD Chief Manas Thepparuk told The Phuket News.

Story continues

RELATED: Saddest Polar Bear on Earth Dies at Argentina Zoo

His weight loss might be a consequence of diarrhea. Plus he has new teeth coming up. This might make him want to eat less than normal, he added.

Moving Animals

According to the DLD official, the Phuket Zoo offers adequate shelter, care and food for the baby elephant. DLD plans to check in on the animal again in a month to see how his health is doing.

If the Phuket Zoo uses the little animal in any performances before the DLD deems he is back at full health, the zoo will be charged for breaching the Cruelty Prevention and Welfare of Animal Act, under which they shall be liable to a fine not exceeding for 40,000 [Thai bhat], Chief Manas Thepparuk said.

To learn more about Moving Animals investigation and work to help this baby elephant, visit their website and read their petition.
Stormzy has pulled out of his appearance tonight (April 11) at this weekends Snowbombing Festival in Mayrhofen, Austria, claiming that festival security racially targeted and aggressively handled his team in an incident yesterday.

My manager and all my friends who were at the festival were racially profiled, targeted and aggressively handled because they had reason to believe someone was carrying a weapon, Stormzy wrote in a long statement on his Instagram stories. The security targeted them (despite no one fitting the description), were physically aggressive when handling them and theres been no effort from the festival to actually deal and adress [sic] the problem.

Elsewhere in the note, he issued an apology to his fans who were expecting to see him at the festival. Im genuinely upset that youve wasted your time and money and that burns me more than youd know... However if these are the drastic steps that I need to take to make a point against racism and racial profiling then trust me Im taking it. Pitchfork has reached out to Stormzys representatives for further comment.

In a statement, Snowbombing confirmed Stormzys set cancellation. Read it below.
The Sundance Institute denounces behavior by Sundance Film Festival co-founder Sterling Van Wagenen after Utah authorities said he had been charged with felony aggravated sexual abuse.Recent reports in the press have made us aware of allegations of sexual abuse by Sterling Van Wagenen, who played a role in founding both the Festival and the Institute, a Sundance Institute spokesperson told TheWrap. He has no current connection to either entity, and hasnt since he left our Utah Advisory Board in 1993. Sundance Institute categorically denounces his behavior as described in recent reports, and we stand in solidarity with those whose brave truth-telling shines light on abusive behavior.A spokesperson for the Salt Lake County District Attorneys Office told TheWrap that Van Wagenen was charged April 2 with felony aggravated sexual abuse, but was released on $75,000 bail.See Video: 'Leaving Neverland' Director: 'This Isn't a Film About Michael Jackson'Van Wagenen has not yet responded to TheWraps request for comment.Van Wagenen co-founded the prestigious film festival with Robert Redford in 1978. A spokesperson for Redford has not yet responded to TheWraps request for comment.Van Wagenen produced the 1985 drama The Trip to Bountiful and directed the 1992 film Alan & Naomi. His other credits include 2006s The Work and the Glory III: A House Divided, The Work and the Glory II: American Zion and Learning from Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei. He also served as executive producer on various projects like 2008s Jane and Emma, 2015s Peace Officer and 2011s Berlin.Also Read: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda to Receive Honor at Venice Film FestivalIn March, The Daily Utah Chronicle reported that Van Wagenen resigned from the University of Utahs College of Fine Arts following the release of a recording on which he is heard admitting to molesting a minor in 1993. It said that the assault occurred when the child was between the age of 10 and 13 and was sleeping over at Van Wagenens house after spending time with his son. The recording was released to the public by the Truth and Transparency Foundation, and Van Wagenen confirmed to ABC4 that it was his voice on the recording, adding I only hope all this publicity helps the victim heal.According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the Salt Lake Film Society also severed all ties with the filmmaker.Read original story Sundance Institute Denounces Festival Co-Founder Sterling Van Wagenens Alleged Abuse At TheWrap

The Sundance Institute denounces behavior by Sundance Film Festival co-founder Sterling Van Wagenen after Utah authorities said he had been charged with felony aggravated sexual abuse.

Recent reports in the press have made us aware of allegations of sexual abuse by Sterling Van Wagenen, who played a role in founding both the Festival and the Institute, a Sundance Institute spokesperson told TheWrap. He has no current connection to either entity, and hasnt since he left our Utah Advisory Board in 1993. Sundance Institute categorically denounces his behavior as described in recent reports, and we stand in solidarity with those whose brave truth-telling shines light on abusive behavior.

A spokesperson for the Salt Lake County District Attorneys Office told TheWrap that Van Wagenen was charged April 2 with felony aggravated sexual abuse, but was released on $75,000 bail.

See Video: 'Leaving Neverland' Director: 'This Isn't a Film About Michael Jackson'

Van Wagenen has not yet responded to TheWraps request for comment.

Van Wagenen co-founded the prestigious film festival with Robert Redford in 1978. A spokesperson for Redford has not yet responded to TheWraps request for comment.

Van Wagenen produced the 1985 drama The Trip to Bountiful and directed the 1992 film Alan & Naomi. His other credits include 2006s The Work and the Glory III: A House Divided, The Work and the Glory II: American Zion and Learning from Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei. He also served as executive producer on various projects like 2008s Jane and Emma, 2015s Peace Officer and 2011s Berlin.

Also Read: Robert Redford, Jane Fonda to Receive Honor at Venice Film Festival

In March, The Daily Utah Chronicle reported that Van Wagenen resigned from the University of Utahs College of Fine Arts following the release of a recording on which he is heard admitting to molesting a minor in 1993. It said that the assault occurred when the child was between the age of 10 and 13 and was sleeping over at Van Wagenens house after spending time with his son. The recording was released to the public by the Truth and Transparency Foundation, and Van Wagenen confirmed to ABC4 that it was his voice on the recording, adding I only hope all this publicity helps the victim heal.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the Salt Lake Film Society also severed all ties with the filmmaker.

Read original story Sundance Institute Denounces Festival Co-Founder Sterling Van Wagenens Alleged Abuse At TheWrap
A Texas mother who went to her daughters high school to register her for class says she wasnt allowed on the property because she was wearing a headscarf and a Marilyn Monroe t-shirt dress.

Joselyn Lewis told Houston NBC affiliate KPRC that she thought an administrator at Madison High School mistook her for a student, so she explained who she was.

She went on to say that she still couldnt let me on the premises because I was not in dress code and I still didnt understand what that meant, Lewis told the news outlet. She said that my headscarf was out of dress code and my dress was too short.

Madison High School and the Houston Independent School District did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.

Lewis explained to KPRC that she was in the middle of getting her hair done, so she decided to keep it up. Her dress also passed the finger-length test and wasnt shorter than her finger, she added.

Lewis decided on Monday morning to enroll her 15-year-old daughter at Madison High School because she had been previously bullied at Lamar High School. Lamar did not immediately return PEOPLEs request for comment.

When I went to Lamar, I had no problems, but when I got to Madison High School, they refused me access to the premises because of what I had on, she told KPRC. I mean, I didnt understand why my headscarf and my dress would conflict with me enrolling someone in school.

RELATED: Tennessee Lawmaker Proposes Dress Code for Parents After He Says a Mom Came to School in Lingerie

When she asked to see if there was any documentation of the parent dress code, the school wouldnt show her anything, the mom says. And when she refused to leave, the school called the police department.

They called them on me and I guess he was coming to tell me to leave, but I was already on the phone with the school board, she said.

Speaking with KPRC, Lewis remained firm on her stance that I can wear what I want to wear.

She added: I dont have to get all dolled up to enroll her to school. My childs education, anyones childs education, should be more important than what someone has on. That shouldnt matter.
Assange fears being beaten up in US prison, called Trump crowd 'clowns': Visitor originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

After nearly seven years holed up inside the cramped Ecuadorian Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is dreading the prospect of violent attacks on him in an American prison, one of his regular visitors told ABC News' The Investigation podcast on Thursday.

In an interview for ABC News The Investigation podcast conducted one day after Assange's long-anticipated arrest by London police and court appearance on a 2012 bail jumping warrant and U.S. extradition request, one of his most frequent visitors described Assanges fears of being sent to a US prison and subjected to violence inside.

"He did say he was worried that, if he was in a normal American prison, being beaten up, war documentary filmmaker and former Taliban hostage Sean Langan, who has spent more than 50 hours with Assange in the past year, told ABC News. Langans last visit to Assange at the embassy was on March 22, he said.

(MORE: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested after 7 years of hiding out; indicted in US)

PHOTO: Film maker and former hostage Sean Langan sits in the audience during a WikiLeaks discussion at The Front Line Club in London, Dec. 1, 2010. (REX/Shutterstock, FILE)

And then I said, 'Well, the chances are you're most likely -- slightly gallows humor, it didn't make him feel better  you're most likely going to be put into one of those federal Supermax prisons where you won't see a soul," said Langan, an ABC News contributor.

Perhaps most surprising to many who saw his leaks of embarrassing Democratic party emails during the 2016 campaign -- which Special Counsel Robert Mueller has alleged were hacked by Russian spies in an effort to hurt rival Hillary Clinton's chances -- Assange was often sharply critical of Trump in casual conversation with a handful of visitors.

(MORE: After praising WikiLeaks on campaign trail, Trump now says 'I know nothing' about it)

Langan says Assange described longtime Trump friend and political adviser Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. as intellectually incapable of a conspiracy, much less one that included WikiLeaks or him, and he rejoiced when Special Counsel Robert Mueller recently closed his investigation without indicting him for conspiring with Russian military intelligence to tilt the U.S. election.

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"'Those bunch of clowns' -- that was the exact quote -- 'those bunch of clowns couldn't conspire and organize this kind of thing'," Langan recalled Assange telling him. "He certainly did not hold [President Trump] in high regard. He was quite dismissive."

PHOTO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures as he leaves the Westminster Magistrates Court in the police van, after he was arrested in London, April 11, 2019. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)

Langan and Vaughan Smith, an Assange confidant and owner of London's Frontline Club, began making "social visits" -- as the Ecuadorian Embassy called them -- with Assange in early November. The pair was among the first people summoned by the controversial publisher of sensitive secrets after Ecuador lifted a ban on his visitors and most of his communications, a loosening of restrictions on Assange that lasted six months in 2018.

Inside, they didn't find an apartment littered with cat dropping or feces on the wall -- as alleged by his Ecuadorian hosts who over time turned against their notorious asylee -- but instead the "claustrophobic" quarters of a man in poor health toughing out intense surveillance of the tiny rooms he has occupied since entering the embassy in August, 2012.

(MORE: Julian Assange arrested after lengthy record of controversial disclosures)

That year, fearing he would extradited to the United States, Assange skipped out on his bail during a rape inquiry in Sweden. The rape inquiry was dropped two years ago but reopened today in the wake of Assanges removal from the embassy in London, Swedish prosecutors said. Assange has denied the rape allegation.

Assange shared his recollections with Langan in five-hour rolling conversations at a table between two speakers meant to deter electronic surveillance by Ecuador or other countries. One speaker blared symphony music and the other David Bowie's "Space Oddity," Langan told ABC News.

Asked about a controversial November, 2018 report in the Guardian newspaper that Assange had met with Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort -- since convicted on financial crimes related to lobbying in Virginia and in Washington -- he was adamant it never happened. "He said, 'That's [bull]. Never met him.' So he strongly denied that," Langan said.

PHOTO: President Donald Trump gestures as he speaks speaks to the press during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, April 11, 2019. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

The Guardian report has not been matched by any other major news organization or corroborated since it was published.

Langan said that Assange seemed to acknowledge that he had communicated with Guccifer2.0, an online persona Mueller has said in a U.S. indictment was really an amalgam of Russian spies who stole the Democratic party emails and coordinated with WikiLeaks to leak them, but said that he believes Assange was unaware of Guccifer 2.0s true identity.

Langan said that Assange complained to him that other news outlets were communicating with Guccifer2.0 too but the U.S. government was unfairly picking on him.

"I took it to be a non-denial denial," Langan said.

With his arrest and the prospect of a trial in the U.S. for computer intrusion relating to WikiLeaks document dumps of military and intelligence secrets almost a decade ago, Langan said Assange now realizes "that he could face the rest of his life in isolation."

The idea of further confinement weighs on Assange, he said.

(MORE: Assange's Ecuador Embassy life: 'discourteous and aggressive' behavior and bad hygiene reports)

"You can see the toll it is taking on him, Langan added. "It's an unpleasant thing to see in any man."

He is no doubt glad to be out of the embassy, however, Langan added.

"It's like a gilded cage. But a cage is a cage is a cage," said Langan.

Smith always brought lunch from the club and Assange would fetch plates to serve the food on, then step back into his tidy galley to wash each plate after they dined.

Langan said Assange expressed frustration with what he described as false news reports that claimed Assange wore smelly socks and did not care for the cat his kids gave to him as a gift.

"That really hurt him," Langan recounted.
One of America's smallest babies, born weighing less than 11 ounces, heads home from New York hospital originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com

A baby born weighing less than 11 ounces, about the size of a human heart, has been sent home after spending 270 days in the hospital.

Connor Florio, now 8 months, was discharged from Blythedale Childrens Hospital in Valhalla, New York, on April 9, 2019. Now, parents John and Jamie Florio are thrilled to have their family all in one place.

"He's going really well," dad John Florio told "Good Morning America." "He's still on a couple of medications and oxygen. He's very playful, calm -- he doesn't cry very much. He loves people watching and so far he doesn't mind getting licked by the dog."

Connor arrived via emergency caesarean section on July 13, 2018, at 26 weeks at Westchester Medical Center. He was then transferred to the NICU at Maria Fareri Childrens Hospital and was diagnosed with with chronic lung disease, bronchopulmonary dysplasia and SGA (small for gestational age), among various other medical conditions.

PHOTO: Connor Florio was born at 26 weeks on July 13, 2018 weighing less than 11 ounces. That's about the size of a human heart. (Jamie and John Florio)

When he was born, doctors told Connor's parents that their son may not survive.

"We knew that was definetely a possibilty with his size," John Florio said. "I was cautiously optimistic."

PHOTO: Connor Florio of Danbury, Connecticut, born weighing less than 11 ounces, was discharged from Blythedale Children's Hospital in New York, April 9, 2019. (Jamie and John Florio)

PHOTO: From the NICU, Connor Florio, now 8 months, was admitted to Blythedale Hospital in New York, where he gained weight. (Jamie and John Florio)

Dr. Dennis Davidson, unit chief for the Infant & Toddler Unit at Blythedale Childrens Hospital, said a 26-week-old baby born at normal weight would normally have an 80 to 90 percent chance of survival.

"However, Connor was less than half of the appropriate weight for a 26-week baby," Davidson said in a statement released to "GMA." "He was 310 grams which is about 11 ounces, roughly. And his father could literally hold him in his hand. Babies who are that small barely have a chance for survival but he made it through."

PHOTO: Connor Florio, now 8 months old, survived a life-threatening situation at birth to the point where he could start rehabilitation at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Valhalla, NY. (Jamie and John Florio)

"The work at the neonatal ICU at Westchester County Medical Center, Maria Fareri , brought him from a life-threatening situation at birth to the point where we could start his rehabilitation at Blythedale," Davidson added.

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Besides medical care, Connor received physical therapy, occupational therapy, as well as speech and feeding therapy, Davidson noted.

PHOTO: Connor's parents Jamie and John Florio Danbury, Connecticut, were told that he may not survive when first born via emergency caesarean section, July 13, 2018. (Jamie and John Florio)

"He attended infant school," Davidson said. "There he became much more interactive, starting to play with toys. So he got a lot of developmental care. Partly from us, but his family was here all the time and you can't beat that."

To keep their spirits up, Jamie and John Florio dressed Connor in adorable outfits for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, among other holidays.

PHOTO: Eight-month-old Connor Florio of Danbury, Connecticut, a former 26-week micro preemie born less than 11 ounces in New York. (Jamie and John Florio)

Today, Now, Connor weighs 10 pounds, 10 ounces, and is happy to be home.

"It's really nice to be our own little family in almost 9 months," mom Jamie Florio told "GMA" of her son's homecoming. "I don't know if Connor would've survived today if it wasn't for the doctors and nurses. They really are superheroes in the NICU."
By all accounts, having a baby in Sweden  or any Scandinavian country for that matter  sounds pretty damn great. They have a government-funded universal health care system. They offer a ridiculous amount of parental leave. They even send parents-to-be gift bags  gift bags!  full of items they might need before the baby arrives. Whats more: The general culture around parenting is very positive too. We spoke to Stephen*, an father of one, who grew up in America but now lives in Stockholm, about what it was like to have his child abroad. As it turns out, its even better than one might think.

I grew up in America. I was born in Los Angeles, went to school on the east coast, and spent a lot of time in Boston in my twenties. While there, I met and fell in love with my wife, who is from a small town north of Stockholm. We spent a few more years in Boston and enjoyed our life there. But as we thought about starting a family and settling down we knew we wanted to go to Sweden. So we moved to Stockholm. It was the best decision we ever made. Let me tell you: Everyone having babies in the U.S. are suckers in comparison.

Im joking. But honestly, I love living here. I love the people, the outdoors. Ive even learned to love the cold. Most of all is the government support. We wouldnt have our daughter right now if we still lived in America. My wife and I literally wouldnt have been able to afford the cost of a regular birth, let alone the procedures she needed to undergo when we had trouble conceiving.

My wife got pregnant with help from in-vitro fertilization. In the U.S., one cycle wouldve cost me, oh, $12,000? And thats $12,000 we definitely didnt have. Plus thats only for one cycle. Most people need at least two or three for it to take. So that costs $36,000? That wouldve crippled us.

Get this: We did a year-and-a-half of IVF cycles, which was considerable. I dont remember the actual number but it was greater than three. Those cycles, all-in cost us at most, $700. Seven-hundred dollars. Thats it.

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Now, there are certainly issues with the healthcare system. There are lines for certain procedures and not enough doctors. And we are all heavily taxed for it. But its far better than the alternative in the U.S.

During the pregnancy itself, nearly everything was covered. All the standard doctors visits and checkups, all of the tests and sonograms and whatnot. We did do some pre-natal genetic testing, which wasnt covered. But the cost was minimal. My wife had a few complications along the way; everything was taken care of.

When we delivered the baby, it was kind of funny. Very low-key. Sweden is all about mid-wives during birth. A mid-wife manage the entire process. Our mid-wife basically caught the baby, put it on my wifes chest, and left us alone. She came back to weigh the baby and take measurements and all that. I dont have anything else to compare it to but the process was very smooth and casual.

Part of me was expecting a baby box like they get in Finland, which comes with clothes, a nice snow suit, and all sorts of other stuff in addition to the crate for a newborn to sleep in. But thats not really a Swedish thing and we didnt get anything like that at the hospital. They did, however, send us a nice tote before we had our baby, which was cool. We got a little tote bag during the third trimester, which contains a bunch of pamphlets, coupons, sample diapers, wipes, and a plush toy or two. They really make you feel like theyre on your side during the entire process.

Now, I dont remember all the costs of the hospital stay. But it was far, far, cheaper than anything we were anticipating. I checked my bank statement and saw that our delivery stay, which included hotel room and food and all that, was 1,200 kr. Thats about $130. All I cared about was that my wife and daughter were both happy and healthy. They were. When I realized that the average birth in America costs nearly $10,000, I was pretty happy with what we paid.

The best part about my situation right now, however, started after my daughter was born. Living in Sweden, my wife and I receive combined 480 days of parental leave per child at 80 percent of our salaries. It can be divvied up until the kid turns eight. So, right now, Im enjoying five months off with my little girl. My wife took six. So the only transition we have to worry about was the transition to parenthood.

Its been fantastic. We found our rhythm. We have a community of other parents around us, too. I get to spend five months  five months!  just being with my wife and my baby and watching her grow. Theres no stress about work or making ends meet. And its not the exception. Its the rule. I talk to friends in America and they tell me about going back to work after just two weeks. I cant even imagine that. Two weeks? Thats not even enough time to know what the hell is happening, let alone develop a relationship with your child and learn about the new relationship with your wife.

The parent culture here is incredible. No one bats an eye or wonders why Im not at work. Thats not something that crosses my mind. My brother, who lives in South Carolina and is a stay at home dad, talks about the weird looks he gets when hes out with his kids. He says he feels like an outlier. Here, dads are seen as co-parents in the strictest sense of it. I go out with my daughter in the stroller for a walk or to get a coffee  coffee and coffee breaks are an ingrained part of culture; theres something called fika which is a regular break for coffee and a sweet pastry  and there are just other dads hanging out with kids in strollers or strapped to their chest. Theyre very stylish too. They call the dads who meet at coffee shops are known as latte papas and theyre all well dressed and doing a lot to change the way parents are perceived. Im not that well dressed. But Im a a latte papa for sure.

Related Articles:

The post What It Was Like to Have a Baby in Sweden appeared first on Fatherly.
First responders with Knox County Rural Metro stopped immediately to pray with a woman who needed comfort. (Photo: Facebook)

Two first responders with Knox County Rural Metro in Tennessee recently learned that it's not just their knowledge of medical issues and trauma treatment that help their community  it's also their compassion.

Justin Pratt, a senior pastor at Clear Springs Baptist Church in Corryton, Tenn., had just grabbed a bite to eat after church on Sunday when he noticed a van speeding out of a shopping center's parking lot. Left behind was a woman clearly in distress, sitting on a curb and sobbing.

Initially, he thought to let her be, but it had nagged at him. "Something in my spirit told me to go back," Pratt wrote in a Facebook post. "She shared that she had been verbally abused and kicked out of her home. I asked her if we could call the police or anything and she begged me not to."

That's when Pratt noticed two first responders at the nearby Rural Metro Fire Station No. 34. He was concerned for her health, he told Knoxville news station WBIR, and asked if Firefighter/EMTs Blake Sexton and Grant Hickman, who had just returned from a busy call day, if they could make sure she was okay.

The woman said she did not need to go to the hospital, but the men didn't want to just leave her. "Is there anything we can do for you before we leave, and she said 'I just need some prayer,'" Hickman told the outlet.

"What happened next stirred me and lit my fire. These [two firefighters] instantly, at that very moment, in the middle of a crowded parking lot followed her requests and prayed for her on the spot... just stopped and done it immediately," Pratt shared.

"I led us in a word of prayer, and from her emotional expressions... you could tell that doing that for her was more than anything medically we could have given her," Hickman told the outlet. "You could tell that doing that for her was more than anything medically we could have given her."

Pratt said that the woman was hoping to stay with her brother until she could get back on her feet. The woman, he said, believes God put those first responders there for her.

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To Pratt, the men's response was "compassion at its finest."

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For Jessamyn Stanley, yoga is more than just a health and wellness practice; its a political statement.

I want for everyone who believes that they do not have agency, who believes they are not free or they dont have power, to understand that every bit of power they are trying to look for outside of themselves you dont have to do that, she tells Brit + Co from her office in Durham, North Carolina. Because every bit of power, every bit of compassion, every bit of love is already inside of you.

The self-described fat femme yoga instructor has already begun to change how people see yoga through her popular Instagram account and her book, Every Body Yoga. Now, shes hoping to spread her intention further with a new yoga app called The Underbelly, which she named in honor of the parts of ourselves that we dont show everyone.

To me, it just represents what yoga actually is, Stanley explains. Which is just, for just a few breaths, be yourself, and see what happens then.

The drive to be yourself is something that Stanley has championed throughout her career. But she also makes clear that yoga, as it is often practiced in Western cultures, is informed by a capitalist mindset as well as by the drive for holistic wellbeing, which can sometimes make being yourself a bit awkward. Stanley tells us that the framework of what she calls the yogi-industrial-complex means she often gets centered as a token Black, fat woman in the industry, and not necessarily as the dynamic teacher she strives to be.

Tokenizing [me] is a huge part of what birthed The Underbelly, Stanley tells us.

She used to host her remote yoga classes on a different app. When the app was bought out by another company whose owners were up-front about how they intended to monetize her presence, Stanley started to understand exactly what she had to offer  and what she represented to certain higher-ups  as a teacher, as a Black woman, and as a fat yoga instructor.

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I recognized during this process with them just how much my worth is and was to a white-owned company who is really hungry for a more diverse audience, she says. But in order to have a more diverse audience, you need more diverse teachers. And I realized just how much I was being used and the extent to which my yoga teaching practice, I felt, was suffering as a result.

While shes on good terms with the app companys leadership today, she also understands, deeply, that most digital yoga resources are not created from a foundation of anti-oppression and body positivity. That realization  combined with the growing acceptance that as long as people who look like her are an anomaly in yoga, yoga communities will continue to tokenize her  has become a pretty substantial part of Stanleys life. But she says this newfound perspective has helped birth many things.

The Underbelly is just one of those things. The app and accompanying website offer users a chance to follow one of three tracks for yoga practice: Air, Earth, and Fire. In each, Stanley guides users through everything yogic, from simple breathing asanas to guided centering exercises.

She explains that the app is structured in a way that closely mirrors her own yoga journey. After starting in Bikram (a style of yoga practiced in hot rooms), Stanley found that flow-focused Vinyasa style yoga was a big challenge for her. (Downward dog took me out! she jokes.)

While watching YouTube yoga videos, she noticed that she tended to watch the instructors and focus on breathing. She realized that, in a sense, she was only beginning to learn to breathe mindfully. That realization has helped shape her app, her practice, and the way she hopes to introduce more and more people to yoga.

Sometimes in life, youve got time to really give a f*ck about [yoga], but then theres points in life where youre like, Im just trying to hit this down dog before breakfast and were gonna call it a day. Its gotta flow with you, she says.

And I feel like making the space for that truth makes the practice accessible to so many more people, she goes on. And if were talking about, like, why should everybody practice yoga, well, everybody should not practice yoga so that they can have toned arms and a bubble butt and practice scorpion pose. Everybody needs to practice yoga so that we can live in a world in which compassion is what we lead with, and not fear.

Stanley sees yoga as a way for us to be compassionate with ourselves so that, in the long term, we can push that compassion outward and make a stronger, more compassionate world.

Its like taking the time for yourself as a service to others, she explains.

And with The Underbelly serving as a yoga portal for the rest of us, as Stanley calls it, she sees her community growing to include health and wellness support for individuals who may feel underserved in those growing markets.

Were trying to bring yoga to the people who need it the most, she says of her future plans. And to me, thats young people who are trying to figure out how to just be in this world, particularly a world that is dominated by so much negative social media sh*t, and also, people who are incarcerated and who need to be reminded that their humanity is of value, and that they dont need to be stripped of that.

Stanley recognizes, too, that even the way yoga is practiced needs to be reimagined, which is why she wants to spread yoga her own way. I feel like a lot of yoga programming, in general, comes from [a teacher saying] Im standing on high looking down on everyone else, and I think we need to get away from that, she says. Maybe I dont want to be like you, maybe I want to be like me.

RELATED: This Plus-Size Badass Is Demonstrating That You Can Do Yoga at Any Size

(Photo by Donald Bowers/Getty Images for Ford Motor Company)
Binita Jaiswal By

Express News Service

CHENNAI : A state-of-the art climate studio will be set up in Anna Universitys Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research soon. The studio equipped with the latest technology to boost research in climate change sector will come up at a cost of Rs 2.5 crore, said an official of the centre.The climate studio project has been funded by the German Agency for International Cooperation or GIZ. It will help in assessment of risks from climate change. A supercomputer has already been procured for the hi-tech studio while a building in the university campus is being renovated, from where the studio will function.

A team of GIZ officials will visit the Anna University on Friday to discuss the project in detail. After meeting the team, we will get a clear picture about when we can make the studio fully functional, said K Palanivelu, director of Centre for Climate Change and Adaptation Research, Anna University.

The authorities will also procure software like SimCLIM and the software used by UK MET Office to create its weather forecasts. The specially designed software will simulate the behaviour of weather using complex mathematical models. Using information about the past weather, the software can forecast future weather, said Palanivelu. The supercomputer will be used to run the hi-end software.

The studio will help researchers make a complete long-term study of the possible natural calamities that Tamil Nadu and other States are likely to face in future. Also, a better forecast of rainfall status, climate profile of Tamil Nadu will be done in the studio.Apart from research activities, the studio will be used as a training centre for different stakeholders like government officials, policy-makers in dealing with natural disasters effectively, added Palanivelu.
Is Labor Coming Once You Lose Your Mucus Plug? Get ready, mama: If you've popped your cork, labor could be on its way. Experts explain what to expect.

Odua Images/Shutterstock

This is one of those gross-sounding but totally normal parts of pregnancy: the mucus plug. As the name implies, it's basically a big blob of mucus blocking the top of your cervix to keep your baby safe from germs from the outside world.

"The mucus plug seals the opening of the cervix during pregnancy, similar to a cork, forming a protective barrier along with the amniotic sac," says Clara Ward, M.D., a maternal-fetal medicine physician with McGovern Medical School at UTHealth/UT Physicians in Houston, Texas. "Antibodies present in the mucus neutralize bacteria, viruses, and other causes of disease." The hormone progesterone, she says, makes the mucus nice and thick.

As you near the end of pregnancy and your body starts getting ready to push everything out during labor, your mucus plug is the first thing to go. "In the last days to weeks of pregnancy the mucus plug is lost as the cervix starts to soften, shorten, and even dilate in the process of preparing the cervix for labor," says Amy VanBlaricom, M.D., medical director of operations at Ob Hospitalist Group, a nationwide ob-gyn hospitalist employer. "These preparations of the cervix essentially push out the plug of mucus that has accumulated there."

For some women, the mucus plug comes out all at once. "It looks like a stretchy glob, similar to what may come out of your nose," Dr. Ward says. "It can be clear, yellowish white, beige, brown or pink, or tinged with red or brown streaks of blood."

For other women, it comes out gradually, and you may not even know it's happened; or you may only see it when wiping after going to the bathroom. "Not all women notice they have lost it, as it can blend in with the other increased secretions that lubricate the vagina in the late stages of pregnancy," says Dr. VanBlaricom, who is based in Seattle, Washington.

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Does it mean labor is near?

If you do notice it happening, does this mean labor is on its way? Yes, eventually, but don't rush out of the house just yet: You could be waiting for weeks.

"Losing the mucus plug can occur days to even weeks before labor begins and is not predictive of when that will start," Dr. VanBlaricom says. So you also don't need to worry about not noticing it coming out, as it doesn't really tell you anything about how far from labor your are.

And unless your water has broken, your baby is still protected even after the mucus plug falls out. "If you lose your mucus plug but don't go into labor for a while it doesn't mean that baby is in danger of infection," Dr. Ward says. "Your cervix continues to produce mucus to replenish what is lost, and the amniotic fluid has many immunological agents that continue to protect baby against infection."

Losing the mucus plug sometimes gets confused with the unpleasantly-named "bloody show," which sounds like a horror movie but is also a totally normal early labor sign. "Bloody show refers to the passage of blood at the end of pregnancy; the cervix has many blood vessels that may bleed easily once the cervix starts to dilate," Dr. Ward says. "Bloody show can occur in conjunction with losing the mucus plug, but not always. It can sometimes mean that labor is closer, compared to if you are only seeing mucus."

Bloody show may also be more blood than mucus, Dr. VanBlaricom says, and even have a flow like a period. And because bloody show can represent more advanced changes in your cervix, she recommends calling your doctor, especially if you are preterm or have other pregnancy-related complications.

Look out for more labor signs

Once you lose your mucus plug (if you notice it happening), you might want to look out for some other early signs of labor. "Other signs include 'lightening,' or the sensation that the baby has 'dropped'while this may result in more pressure in the pelvic region, breathing may be easier," Dr. Ward says.

It's possible to also feel more cramping, back pain or even contractions. Changes in your activity level, including tiredness or nesting, may also occur, as well as a feeling of looser joints. "Your doctor may also let you know that your cervix has started to dilate or thin out, also signs of impending labor," adds Dr. Ward.

Both doctors agree there's no reason to worry when you lose your mucus plug, as long as you're near the end of pregnancy and no other changes have occurred. "If you are full termmore than 37 weeksthere is probably no need to call your doctor unless you are bleeding heavily, contracting regularly, the mucus is particularly foul-smelling or you are concerned that you may have broken your water," Dr. Ward says. But "although there is likely no need for concern, if you are ever uncertain as to whether or not to call your doctor, you should always call to be on the safe side."
One afternoon when I was in fifth grade, I returned home from school to an empty house. Instead of getting a snack or turning on the television, I set down my backpack and walked back into the spare room where my stepfather had a gym-style weight machine. I stood up on the bench, pulled some slack into the plastic-sheathed steel cord that lifted the weights and wrapped it around my neck. Then, I stepped off the bench and let myself hang. My heartbeat quickened and my vision narrowed to a bright spot.

Just before I lost consciousness, I kicked a foot back and pulled myself onto my feet.

I survived childhood depression because the rubber soles of my sneakers caught on the vinyl of my stepfathers weight bench. I got lucky. Other kids didnt. An increasing number of kids dont. Data from the Centers for Disease Control shows that in 2016, over 6,100 Americans between the age of 10 and 24 died by their own hand. And according to a study published this week in the Journal of American Medicine-Pediatrics, over a nine-year period ending in 2016 the number of children sent to hospital emergency departments for suicide attempts and suicidal ideation doubled.

Children who kill themselves are children who adults have failed. This is a harsh claim because it seems to lay the blame at the feet of mourning parents. But its much broader than that. We raise kids together and funnel them into the same education system, where mental healthcare is rarely available and almost never a priority. Kids die because their needs were not prioritized; childrens access to mental healthcare rarely is. But those who shrug off the term Suicide Epidemic as breathless fearmongering arent fully engaged with the numbers. Though epidemic might be too strong a word, data doesnt lie. Kids are killing themselves in record numbers.

When we look broadly, at all the reasons children go to a hospital, visits for suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts have increased by 60 percent. They represent about 3.5 percent of all visits to pediatric emergency departments, explains researcher Dr. Brett Burstein, a Pediatric Emergency Medicine specialist Montreal Childrens Hospital. What makes this unique and important is that its a broad, generalizable, nationally represented data set of emergency department visits across the U.S. maintained by the Centers for Disease Control.

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Its not uncommon for the incidence of mental health issues to trend upwards as medical professionals improve their ability to diagnose a problem. But Burstein says his data suggests that suicidal ideation is a multifactorial phenomenon. Considering that 88 percent of suicide-related pediatric emergency visits follow attempts, increased recognition isnt driving hospital admittances. And it definitely isnt driving up the death count.

More kids are trying to kill themselves. And, in particular, more young kids are trying to kill themselves. Childrens Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, saw a 39 percent increase in suicide assessments from July 2017 to June 2018. Doctors admitted a 3-year-old after a failed attempt.

Suicidal ideation remained a major extracurricular activity for me into my late 20s. I exacerbated the issues by self-medicating through alcohol and drugs. I was a blackout drunk by 16. Thats when it all became visible  not that the adults in my life responded to my cry for help. My depression was not adequately managed until I finally started taking medication at age 38. Its easy, given that not-unusual narrative, to lose sight of the fact that several of my attempts came before puberty. Now, as a parent of two beautiful, strange, and sensitive boys, I keep a weather eye. I believe they could succeed where I failed. Young kids do all the time.

There has been a common perception that suicidal ideation and suicidal behavior is a teen and preteen problem, says Burstein. But when you look broadly among those presenting with mental health problems and suicidal behavior, 43 percent are aged 5 to 11.

Compare that finding with data that suggests suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 10 and 34, and it becomes clear that many people dont grow out of depression. They die from it. In essence, this means that children are dying en masse from a treatable illness.

Due to budgetary clawbacks that start with the Department of Education and reach all the way down into kindergarten classes, overburdened school nurses, therapists, and counselors are responsible for dozens of schools at a time. A National Association of School Psychologists report recently found that, on average, a single school psychologist is responsible for overseeing 2,700 students. Across the United States, theres just one nurse for every 4,000 students on average. That means struggling students may have to be flagged by overworked and underpaid teachers.

School counselors dont have it any better. Every school counselor is responsible for about 480 students. For the most part, these professionals are focused primarily on getting students into college, not out of high school or on to a medication.

This current reality is not much different from the one I faced when I was flirting with death in the late 1980s. We know more now, but there is a disconnect between the scholarship and action. America has seen the consequence of not investing in mental healthcare for kids: There have been 288 school shootings since 2009, and while over 2.6 million U.S. children aged 617 years are diagnosed with anxiety or depression, only one in five are being treated. The programs that do exist are either overburdened, difficult to access, or not covered by insurance and prohibitively expensive. That means Im on constant watch, managing my own mental health while I worry about my family.

The data points to the fact that half the people who need treatment dont end up getting it for a host of access reasons, says psychiatrist Dr. Neil Leibowitz, Chief Medical Officer for online therapy start-up Talkspace. Thats either because clinics are full, or people dont know how to access the system. A lot of providers arent in network, so theres that payer issue, too.

Leibowitz notes that all of these issues are exacerbated for children with mental health issues because there are even fewer pediatric providers. Wait times to see a doctor can become dangerously long. If you dont have connections or unlimited wallet and call five clinics for a routine appointment, youre looking at six to eight weeks before you can get an appointment, Leibowitz explains.

And all of that is dependent on a parent or an adult even recognizing that theres an issue. This suggests that solutions likely lie along two different tracks: more and better mental health options for kids and more resources for parents to know how and when to access them.

Unfortunately, we are unlikely to see policies rolled out in the next few years and likely to see child suicide rates continue to climb.

There is about a three-year lag, says Burstein. If we look at those as drivers for the data, I dont think our data is the peak of this upslope. I worry we havent seen it.

The first time I tried to kill myself, I climbed down from my stepfathers weight bench with a mean red stripe across my throat. I cried and punched, throwing an existential tantrum. I did not know then that I could feel better or that I would feel better. I did not know that Id have a family of my own. I didnt understand that someday I would care not only about my own life but, even more immediately, about the lives of my boys.

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The post As More Kids Kill Themselves, Parenting Becomes Suicide Watch appeared first on Fatherly.
Photo credit: Instagram / @therock

From Delish

UPDATE: October 30, 2019 at 11:00 a.m.

If you follow The Rock on Instagram, you know he's been working on his own tequila brand for quite some time. Now, finally, it's almost here. In a recent Instagram post in front of his distillery, The Rock announced the name of the line, Teremana Tequila. "TERA means of the earth and MANA is our powerful Polynesian spirit that guides us. Spirit of the earth," he wrote.

"After years of hard work, this blessing is truly a dream come truebut its just the beginning and there's much work to be done," he continued. "I'm committed with my team to bring you the best tequila, because quality and legacy are what matter most."

He ended the post with the hashtags #Q12020 and #ItsAlmostReady, so we should be seeing Teremana in stores in the next five months. We'll have our margarita glass ready!

ORIGINAL POST: April 12, 2019 at 11:02 a.m.



Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will soon join George Clooney, Ryan Reynolds, and John Legend in the celebs-in-the-alcohol-game club. He's been developing a tequila brand for years and per his latest update, it looks like it's nearly ready to go.

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Earlier this month, The Rock shared this update to his (casual) 138 million followers:

"Cheers  (again & again;) Spent all weekend taste testing every batch of my new tequila fresh out of our barrels from Mexico. Im very passionate about my new tequila were developing. Its been years in the making and every road has led here. Lots of growing excitement. Mana, passion, positivity, hard work and fun. This ones for you world, lets have a drink. #tequila #innovation #2019."

Based on his hashtags, and an Instagram post from last month when he wrote, "We're almost there," it seems like the drink could be coming sometime this year. TBD if he'll be starting with one tequila or severalhe's seen tasting Anejo, silver, and Reposado varieties.

Around this time last year, he applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with the brand name "Mana." While it was rejected for being too similar to other products, according to The Blast, he's clearly still moving forward with the project.

In case you have any hesitation about The Rock's love of tequila, know that he likes to put it in his oatmeal with brown sugar. If that's not commitment, I don't know what is.

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In Doing The Work, a three-part series from HG contributor Tiffany Lashai Curtis, three Black women who work in different industries tell us their stories. During Black Womens History Month, we hope this series uplifts and amplifies the work of Black women in spaces where they are underrepresented or rendered invisible.

The sex and wellness industry has expanded in recent years as more and more conversations take place highlighting womens pleasure and undoing sex-negative messages. But as in other industries, the work of Black women in the realm of sex and wellness isnt always highlighted or celebrated.

Historically, Black women have had a tumultuous relationship with sexual pleasure. As we continue to reclaim our bodies and our sexuality, we are still forced to navigate centuries-old stereotypes of either being hypersexualized deviants (the jezebel) or homely figures devoid of sex lives (the mammy).

So when it comes to our sexual health and pleasure, the conversation extends beyond trying a new sex toy or exploring a kink. Its about healing and finding bodily autonomy as Black women and their bodies continue to be disproportionately subjected to violence and scrutiny.

Thats why the work of Black woman sex educators, therapists, and wellness practitioners is so important, and Jimanekia Eborn is a Black woman sex educator, trauma specialist, and podcaster who is out here doing the work to help Black women and femmes achieve sexual liberation. One example of this is Eborns recent collaboration with The KinkKit, a sexual wellness and education company founded by Candice Smith, on a pleasure-positive healing kit for survivors of sexual assault.

Mark Dektor

For the first profile in this series, I spoke with Eborn about her work around pleasure and trauma, as well as the importance of Black women in the sex education and wellness space. Read our conversation below.

HelloGiggles (HG): Youve been doing work around mental health for the last 10 years. What moved you to begin incorporating sex ed and sexual trauma support into your work?

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Jimanekia Eborn (JE): Funny you ask that. I actually started focusing on sexual trauma pretty early on. After I was assaulted during my third year of college and [my experience was] dismissed, the first thing I did was become a rape crisis counselor and open an online vintage clothing store. I am a Gemini with a Cancer Stelliumwhen I say that, it suddenly makes sense to folks. I was drawn to helping and supporting survivors, which for me just felt natural and easy.

As for the combination of sex ed and trauma, working in the intensity of mental health was a lot. I wanted to work in a space that was ever evolving and never boring. I told my mom one day, I think I wanna work in sex. Her response was Oh, hell. I dont know about you,, but when I tell my momma stuff, it is official for me. When I started really exploring sexual education, I realized that not a lot of people were talking about trauma So many of us are connected to trauma and need to deal with the trauma to get to the pleasure aspect. So when I realized that most werent, I started to [explore that]. I found my niche in sex ed doing something that I truly loved and was really good at: supporting survivors.

HG: How has your identity impacted your work in the sex education and wellness space?

JE: I have many identities that I think have been helpful in many ways. Im queer and polyamorous. A lot of people in sex ed are as well, or just understand these identities, so that has been coolalthough there is only one [identity] that is visible. Being a Black woman is interesting in any space. I still feel like I have to fight and break doors down. Im constantly calling people out. As for being queer and polyamorous, those arent things you have to fight for as much in these particular spaces. But the more I evolve in the field, the more comfortable I am; Ive become louder when calling people out and holding them accountable.

Mark Dektor

HG: Whose voices do you think are centered the most in the sex education and wellness space? Whose stories need to be amplified?

JE: I mean, any voice without melanin is centered. I will be honest; sex ed is no different from any other field. There are levels to this game, and at the top is white men, down to white women, then the rest of [us]. As long as I grew up hearing about sex ed, it was never from the voice or work of those who had melanin within their skin. I will say that within the last two years, things have been changing quickly and aggressively, and its somewhat beautiful. Sadly, the voices that need to be amplified are having to show up and show out to get their voices heardwhich are POC folks, trans folks, and folks with disabilities. But we are tired of being pushed to the side. So we are amplifying each other and calling others out. We are quick to back each other because other folks have not.

HG: April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. What are some ways that the sex and wellness industry can better support survivors of sexual assault, especially those who are people of color?

JE: That is easy. The same thing that I tell anyone that asks how they can support survivors: Listen to them and ask them what they need! It is so exhausting constantly reminding people that they do not know better than the survivor. Ask them what they need versus telling them what they need. Listen to hear them, do not listen to respond. It is not helpful to either party.

HG: How can sex ed curriculums do better at addressing topics like consent and sexual trauma?

JE: I am still wrestling with the fear that people have about talking about consent and sexual trauma. Like, do they think if they do not talk about it, it will stop or go away? These are things that we are all affected by. We all have known someone that has had their consent [violated] or has had some sexual trauma. The only way that we can evolve to safer spaces is to actually talk about them. Be honest about what is going on in the world. I think we need to start talking to kids pretty young. If we give them the tools while theyre young, I believe it can help them to better navigate the world.

Art by Zoie Loves

HG: Your podcast Trauma Queen aims to normalize talking about assault and healing. Season 3 of Trauma Queen is specifically focused on the experiences of Black femmes. Why is it important that Black femmes be given the opportunity to tell their own experiences of surviving and healing from trauma of all kinds?

JE: For me, Black femmes are everything. We carry the world on our shoulders and no one gives a damn about us. Honestly, Black femmes raise themselves, their kids, their partners, and other people, and other peoples damn kids. Yet we are constantly overlooked and thrown under the bus. I wanted to recognize different types of femmes as well; that was really important to me. Because there is no one way that a Black femme looks. I wanted someone to hear a story that resonated within them, that they could say, Chile, me too. I also really and truly believe that there is so much healing in storytelling, which is something that is very important and strong in Black culture in general. I also think this season was healthy for me to spend time emerged in the energy of Black femmes. I am so thankful.

HG: Black women have historically never held autonomy over their own bodies or sexuality. How can pleasure positive experiences help us to collectively heal and reclaim our bodies?

JE: Sadly, this is so real! There is something about being told that you matter. We as Black women do not get told that outside of from other women. And even then, there are some women who do not support others. That is a whole nother conversation. But having pleasure positive experiences strengthens us. And teaches and reminds us that we are so much more than what others have pushed upon us or attempted to force us to believe. There is strength in numbers; there is strength within beautiful and positive experiences. I have been and will continue to say, this is our year! This is not temporary; this is the START of the breakdown because as Black women, we are tired and taking what is already ours back.

Mark Dektor

HG: Why is having Black women as practitioners and experts in the sex education and wellness space essential?

JE: Black women to me are traditionally natural healers. It is just embedded within us and passed down through us. We have a way of reading you down and also picking you up in the same breath. Making you feel seen and supported, knowing that we mean business. We are a force to be reckoned with and I honestly think it makes people nervous and keeps them on their toes. I believe that is why we are also held back, because we are truly walking beings of magic. Black women are also not just focused on themselves as some others may bewe are about uplifting and doing things together, unlike others.

HG: Black women are chronically underrepresented, undervalued, and under-recognized across many industries. Whats one thing you want people to know about the work of Black women in the sex ed and wellness industry?

JE: Whew chile, one thing? We have been doing this work in our own communities and homes for years. Why are you so afraid to share the space, and give us our roses now? GIVE US OUR ROSES WHEN WE ARE STILL HERE!

See more entries in this series:

How this cafe owner is creating space for Black women in the coffee business

How this culture writers work celebrates Black women and challenges misogynoir in media
A photograph of a woman leading a protest chant has come to symbolise the Sudan Uprising.

The photo, taken by photographer Lana Haroun, is said to summarise this moment we have been waiting for for the past 30 years.

Several news outlets have identified the woman as Alaa Salah, a 22-year-old engineering and architecture student.

The image features Salah standing on top of a car with her finger pointed towards the sky, surrounded by dozens of people recording on their phones.

This image from the Sudan Uprising has gone viral. [Photo: Twitter/Lana Haroun]

Accompanying video footage shows her chanting a poem that translates to: The bullet doesnt kill. What kills is the silence of people, according to a tweet from Africa Digest.

It has achieved viral status, gaining tens of thousands of likes and retweets since it was posted earlier this week.

People on Twitter have praised the image for its powerful depiction of the woman.

Its glorious and full of power  Angela Moore (@CopyContentCo) April 9, 2019

Beautiful spirit, great photo capture.  thanks for sharing this lovely image.  FashionDollMuse    (@FashionDollMuse) April 9, 2019

wow. I dont think any of us realise the bravery of this. its a stunning photo; heres to it being the image used to sum up a very important moment  I love this  tamora (@tamora63202944) April 9, 2019

Others have suggested the now-iconic image will make history books one day.

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This will be a statute one day. Beautiful.  Oui (@JacobLawless3) April 9, 2019

This image from Sudan will be in the history books pic.twitter.com/z1w23yofW3  Mohamed Hassan (@MHassan_1) April 9, 2019

Im very glad that my photo let people around the world know about the revolution in Sudan, Salah told The Guardian about her viral fame.

Since the beginning of the uprising I have been going out every day and participating in the demonstrations because my parents raised me to love our home.

The day they took the photo, I went to 10 different gatherings and read a revolutionary poem. It makes people very enthusiastic. In the beginning I found a group of about six women and I started singing, and they started singing with me, then the gathering became really big.

Hind Makki, an interfaith educator, has revealed theres even more than meets the eye to this image in a Twitter thread, where she spoke about the rich symbolism of her outfit.

Shes wearing a white tobe (outer garment) and gold moon earrings. The white tobe is worn by working women in offices and can be linked w/cotton (a major export of Sudan), so it represents women working as professionals in cities or in the agricultural sector in rural areas.  Hind Makki (@HindMakki) April 8, 2019

Her earrings are the gold moons of traditional bridal jewelry (Sudanese, like many Arabic speakers, often use moon-based metaphors to describe feminine beauty)  Hind Makki (@HindMakki) April 8, 2019

Her entire outfit is also a callback to the clothing worn by our mothers & grandmothers in the 60s, 70s, & 80s who dressed like this during while they marched the streets demonstrating against previous military dictatorships.  Hind Makki (@HindMakki) April 8, 2019

Footage of the woman from that iconic photo shows that she also chose a classic hair style that all our grandmothers had: a low bun with a middle part. Symbolism galore. https://t.co/rCumBPRrbE  Hind Makki (@HindMakki) April 9, 2019

She also spoke of the significance of women-led protests in the country.

Sudanese everywhere are referring to female protestors as Kandaka, which is the title given to the Nubian queens of ancient Sudan whose gift to their descendents is a legacy of empowered women who fight hard for their country and their rights.   Hind Makki (@HindMakki) April 8, 2019

Last Saturday, tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the street in Kartoum, Sudan, to mark the 100th day of the protest movement against President Omar al-Bashirs 30-year-long regime.

More than 3,000 people have been arrested since the protests began last December, according to CNN. While estimates vary, it is believed there have been between 32 and 78 fatalities during this period, according to the broadcaster.

Salahs symbolic status is reminiscent of how a video of Neda-Aghar Soltan, who was shot dead at the age of 26 during the Iranian election protests, became iconic among protestors.
Photo credit: .

From House Beautiful

Update: 4/11/2019:

Over the past few decades, it's become expected for royal babies to be photographed in their mothers' arms just hours after birth. But Meghan and Harry are breaking from that tradition, and will not have a photocall directly outside the hospital.



According to a statement today from the royal family, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, "have taken a personal decision to keep plans around the arrival of their new baby quiet. The Duke and Duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family."

Original: 4/4/2019: Shortly after Prince Louis was born last spring, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge exited the iconic doors of the Lindo Wing at St. Mary's Hospital Paddington to introduce their newborn son to the world's media for the first time. They posed for a few minutes, as a sea of photographers, reporters, and news crews captured history in the making.

But as the royals smiled and waved for the cameras, William pointed out one photographer in particular, Arthur Edwards, the royal photographer for The Sun, saying "There's Arthur, there he is."

Edwards has been photographing the royal family for more than four decades, and Prince William grew up seeing him on a regular basis. His familiarity with the royal family is well known: "Other photographers always want to stand next to me because they always think that might happen," Edwards sheepishly tells T&C over the phone.

Edwards, in fact, was there for Prince William's first Lindo Wing portrait-the one he took with his parents. "Ive been covering him all his life, from when he started nursery school all through, right to when he got married," Edwards says. "I photographed William when he came out of hospital in his mothers arms."

He has photographed eight royal births, and watched as the tradition of posing for photos outside the hospital took root. While Princess Diana wasn't the first royal to give birth in a hospital-and she wasn't even the first royal to be photographed leaving a hospital with a newborn-she was the first royal to deliver an heir in the hospital, and that changed everything in the 1980s.

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Photo credit: Tim Graham - Getty Images

"There was fascination, and so of course hoards of photographers and the media were all outside waiting for her to leave with William," explains royal commentator Victoria Arbiter. "It really offered an opportunity to capture a moment in history. There is the future heir Prince Charles with his wife walking out with the future, future heir."

From there, it became a modern tradition for new royal mothers to give the world a glimpse of their babies right outside the hospital doors. "It's interesting when you think about thousand years of royal history, this is only two generations that have done this," Arbiter muses. "In this media-dominated world, its definitely something weve come to expect."

But over the past 36 years, the magnitude with which these moments are captured and broadcast around the world has changed enormously.

"With [Prince William's birth], there were two TV crews, the BBC and ITV, about 20 photographers, and about five or six reporters. When Harry came out of the hospital two years later, there were about another five more photographers," Edwards recalls. "When William carried out his eldest son George, there was 300 yards of media."

Photo credit: JUSTIN TALLIS - Getty Images

Those reporters represented outlets from around the world.

"There was a massive, massive media crowd. All the television networks were there, with an easy way to distribute news," Edwards says. "Every American network there; every Australian network there; there were New Zealand networks there; there were Mexican networks; there were Greek networks there. Everybody was there."

As the crowd of reporters grew, so did the number of photographs they were taking.

"As soon as those press pens were introduced, there were a lot of photographers there, but of course, theyre shooting film, so you only have thirty-six exposures," explains Bob Ahern, the director of archive for Getty Images. "When youre talking about today, youre talking about thousands of pictures."

And as technology advances, it's changing the type of images photographers try to capture.

Edwards's ideal picture is still "both the Duke and the Duchess holding the baby, looking straight at me," but there's also a desire for close-ups of the newborn, along with style-focused shots of the Duchess's outfit, and images of the royals as they get into the car.

Photo credit: Max Mumby/Indigo - Getty Images

"You have to get that great shot thats going to be on the front cover of the worlds papers the next day, but I think in and around that, theres just as much interest in scrolling through galleries of how the day unfolded," Ahern says.

"We want to know every detail, right? We want to know who makes the car seat that William uses. We want to know how Kate styled her hair. We want to know what the baby was wrapped in, all those little details. Its an exponential interest. Its kind of incredible, really."

And of course, now that everyone has a camera in their pocket at all times, royal fans are known to camp out outside the hospital, hoping to capture their own photos of the special day.

"I think the desire to participate is at its kind of peak. I think its a wonderful thing, but I don't think it changes what a professional photographer does," Ahern says.

Photo credit: Peter Macdiarmid - Getty Images

As the Duchess of Sussex's due date draws near, it's unclear which hospital she will give birth in (or indeed, if she will opt for a home birth). Whether Meghan, Harry, and their new baby will pose for a portrait on their way out the door is an unknown factor as well.

Victoria Arbiter thinks they will, if only to quell the rabid interest in unsanctioned pictures. "If I were a betting person, I would think Meghan and Harry would stop for a photograph because by standing and giving the press what they need in that photograph and in that moment, it reduces the value of any kind of paparazzi pictures," she says. "That first photograph has the potential to be incredibly valuable. Which is when you see royals take control of the narrative. And they say, 'Well give you this picture but in exchange youve got to leave us alone and respect our privacy.'"

But she says there's still a chance they might want to protect their newborn from scrutiny.

Photo credit: Neil Mockford - Getty Images

"Bless this babys little heart because its a huge historical burden to carry, but the child happens to be the first mixed race heritage baby in the royal family. That is very exciting, thats reflecting society as it is today. But as I say, that is also a tremendous historical burden for that little baby to have on his or her shoulders," she says. "Harry and Meghan are going to be keen to protect that baby."

Edwards is hoping for a photograph as well, but Harry and Meghan are known to break tradition. "Ive asked the question and Ive got no answers, so I dont know," he says, when asked if he thinks Harry and Meghan will pose for a few snaps with their newborn outside the hospital.

"I photographed Harry coming out of that hospital in his mothers arms, and I hope to photograph Harrys baby when coming out in Harrys arms," Edwards says. "But Harry might do it differently. He may have his own plans. Well know soon enough."

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* EU no longer mentions Haftar by name after French objections

* France and Italy side with rival parties in Libya

* (Adds detail)

BRUSSELS, April 11 (Reuters) - The European Union urged the Libyan National Army (LNA) forces of General Khalifa Haftar on Thursday to stop their offensive on the Libyan capital Tripoli, in a statement issued by the bloc's top diplomat.

The statement had been held up for a day as France and Italy sparred over how to handle the fighting, which has pitted the LNA against forces of the U.N.-recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj in Tripoli.

"The military attack launched by the LNA on Tripoli and the subsequent escalation in and around the capital are endangering civilians, including migrants and refugees, and disrupting the U.N.-led political process, with the risk of serious consequences for Libya and the wider region, including the terrorist threat," top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini said.

The statement no longer mentioned Haftar directly by name and shifted away from blaming his offensive exclusively for the escalation, compared to a draft version seen by Reuters on Wednesday before it was blocked by France.

While Rome supports Serraj, Paris has relations with Haftar - an example of how the EU's internal divisions sometimes undercut its sway on the global scene.

"The European Union and its Member States call on all parties to immediately cease all military operations. The LNA and all the forces that have moved into Tripoli or its vicinity must withdraw and the humanitarian truces called by the U.N. must be heeded," the statement said.

At the request of France, the statement was amended from its draft version to include mentions of the plight of refugees and migrants in Libya, and the presence among the anti-Haftar forces of Islamist militants designated as terrorists by the United Nations.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska Editing by Kevin Liffey and Frances Kerry)
MOSCOW (AP)  Russia's anti-terrorism agency says two supporters of the Islamic State group have been killed in a shootout with security forces in the Siberian city of Tyumen.

In a statement reported by Russian news agencies, the National Anti-terrorism Committee said officers of the Federal Security Service on Friday received information about two armed people in a private residence who were planning a terrorist attack.

The suspects refused orders to surrender, began shooting at the officers and were killed in the return fire, the committee said.

Tyumen is about 1700 kilometers (1100 miles) east of Moscow.
By Express News Service

NOIDA: Rural areas saw brisk voting on Thursday, the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, in Gautam Buddh Nagar where the total voter turnout was recorded at 62.2 per cent. A total of 22.97 lakh voters were eligible to cast votes in the seat for which 13 candidates, including two Independents, are in contention. While rural areas of Jewar and Dadri reported 68.4 per cent and 64.6 per cent voter turnout respectively, the urban Noida saw only 53.6% votes of its electorate exercise their franchise.

Union Minister and BJP candidate Mahesh Sharma, who trounced his nearest rival by over 2.8 lakh votes in 2014, will be hoping to come out victorious against BSPs Satveer Nagar and Congress Arvind Kumar Singh. Voting was largely fair and peaceful manner barring minor hiccups reported from a few areas. According to officials, an FIR was registered against a resident of Greater Noida for violating the secrecy of voting, which is fundamental to free and fair elections.

FOLLOW OUR ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

The accused allegedly clicked a photograph of the EVM while casting his ballot and then loaded the picture on social media, the police said. In a first, one pink booth was set up in each of the five Assembly segments (Noida, Dadri, Jewar, Sikandrabad and Khurja) of Gautam Buddh Nagar for the polling on Thursday. The booth at every centre was distinguished by its entirely pink decor, including pink walls and table covers. The aim was to encourage female participation in the entire polling process. These booths were managed entirely by female staff.

Nearly 12,000 security forces, including CRPF and PAC personnel, were deployed across the district. Thirteen drone cameras also kept watch on the polling process. A delegation of Election Commission of Uganda had a first-hand experience of observing the polling process in Noida and visited several booths on Thursday with their Indian counterparts. The visiting delegation was seemingly impressed by the enthusiasm surrounding the elections.

More vote this time

Polling percentage in Gautam Buddh Nagar was substantially up in terms of percentage as well as numbers than the previous elections. In 2014, the constituency saw 60.39 per cent voting. This time, the fight is tougher for Mahesh Sharma as Satveer Nagar is a joint candidate of the SP-BSP-RLD combine. Nagar, a Gurjar leader, is looking to consolidate his communitys votes. He is also banking on Dalits. The constituency is home district of BSP chief Mayawati
Tuxtla Gutierrez (Mexico) (AFP) - A group of 350 Central American migrants forced their way into Mexico Friday, authorities said, as a new caravan of around 2,500 people arrived -- news sure to draw the attention of US President Donald Trump.

Mexico's National Migration Institute said some members of the caravan had a "hostile attitude" and had attacked local police in the southern town of Metapa de Dominguez after crossing the border from Guatemala.

The migrants were later being escorted by Mexican federal police and the civil protection service in the southern state of Chiapas, an AFP correspondent said.

"Today at 3:30 am (0830 GMT) a group of approximately 350 people broke violently across the Mexican border from Guatemala," the National Migration Institute said in a statement.

"With an aggressive attitude, (the migrants) broke the padlock on the border gate and entered the country."

The caravan set out Wednesday from the city of San Pedro Sula, in Honduras, and has picked up Guatemalans and some Nicaraguans along the way.

The migrants are mostly fleeing poverty and brutal violence in their home countries.

"We can't live (in Honduras) anymore. We're heading for the border, for the United States," said Jorge, a young Honduran migrant who declined to give his last name.

Some of the migrants crossed the bridge over the Suchiate River, which divides Mexico from Guatemala. Others jumped into the river -- whose water is low this time of year -- and forded across, or paid raft operators to ferry them.

They then took to a local highway and began the long trek across Mexico -- some 4,000 kilometers (2,500 miles), depending what route they take.

It is the latest in a series of caravans to try to reach the US-Mexican border, seeking safety in numbers against the criminal gangs that extort, kidnap and even murder migrants along the way.

Highlighting the dangers of the journey, Mexican prosecutors said they had detained two smugglers who were trafficking 22 migrants in Chiapas state in a separate incident.

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On Wednesday, officials said they had rescued 143 Honduran migrants, including 71 minors, who had been kidnapped in the violent state of Veracruz. The kidnappers were demanding up to $10,000 ransom per migrant, an investigation source said.

- Echoes of October caravan -

Trump, who says there is a crisis on the US-Mexican border, has declared a national emergency over the flow of undocumented migrants and illegal drugs into the United States, deployed troops to the border and repeatedly threatened to close it.

The biggest migrant caravan to date also forced its way into Mexico last October, when migrants broke down a series of border barriers, then took to the river when Mexican riot police pushed them back.

That caravan, which grew to more than 7,000 people, also tried to force its way into the United States when it reached Mexico's northern border. But US border patrol agents forced the migrants back with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Since then, Mexico has had a change of government. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, an anti-establishment leftist, has vowed to safeguard migrants' human rights, and urged Trump to address the root causes of the exodus by investing in development projects in Mexico and Central America.

But his government faces huge pressure from the Trump administration to wage a more aggressive crackdown.

The US president has accused Mexico of doing nothing to stop undocumented migrants from crossing its territory, and threatened to impose 25-percent tariffs on Mexican auto exports -- a crucial industry -- or close the border if that fails to produce results.
Julian Assange has appeared in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court after being arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy this morning.

The WikiLeaks founder pleaded not guilty to a charge at Westminster Magistrates Court that he failed to surrender to custody as required for an extradition order to Sweden.

Assange will not give evidence but his lawyer Jennifer Robinson will argue he had a reasonable excuse for not surrendering to custody.

Assange has been further arrested over an alleged conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to break a password to a classified US government computer, the US Department of Justice said.

In a statement, the department said: Julian P. Assange, 47, the founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested today in the United Kingdom pursuant to the U.S./UK Extradition Treaty, in connection with a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer.

Assange gives a thumbs up to photographers following his arrest (PA)

Assange was further arrested over an alleged US government hack (PA)

The Justice Department said if found guilty, Assange could face five years in prison.

The basis of Assanges defence of reasonable excuse is that he could never expect a fair trial in the UK as its purpose was to secure his delivery to the US.

A packed public gallery and a full press bench watched as he walked into court wearing a black suit and polo shirt.

With grey hair tied into a pony tail and long beard, Assange saluted the public gallery before giving a thumbs up.

Members of the public were warned they would be in contempt of court if they recorded proceedings.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested this morning (Grab)

Officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy this morning where Assange has been holed up since 2012 after he failed to surrender to court.

Assange, was shouting and gesticulating as he was carried out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in handcuffs by seven men and put into a waiting Met Police van, video footage showed.

A witness said: He was screaming. He was struggling, I think he felt a bit weak. He was surrounded by police.

Nearly 7yrs after entering the Ecuadorean Embassy, I can confirm Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK. I would like to thank Ecuador for its cooperation & @metpoliceuk for its professionalism. No one is above the law  Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) April 11, 2019

Police vans outside the Ecuadorian embassy as Assange was arrested this morning (PA)

The arrest followed the Ecuadorian governments withdrawal of asylum.

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In a statement, Scotland Yard said: Julian Assange, 47, has today, Thursday 11 April, been arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) at the Embassy of Ecuador, Hans Crescent, SW1 on a warrant issued by Westminster Magistrates Court on 29 June 2012, for failing to surrender to the court.

He has been taken into custody at a central London police station where he will remain, before being presented before Westminster Magistrates Court as soon as is possible.

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The MPS had a duty to execute the warrant, on behalf of Westminster Magistrates Court, and was invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorian governments withdrawal of asylum.

Assange has spent almost seven years at the embassy after seeking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid tweeted: Nearly 7yrs after entering the Ecuadorean Embassy, I can confirm Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK. I would like to thank Ecuador for its cooperation & @metpoliceuk for its professionalism. No one is above the law.

URGENT: Ecuador has illigally terminated Assange political asylum in violation of international law. He was arrested by the British police inside the Ecuadorian embassy minutes ago.https://t.co/6Ukjh2rMKD  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2019

URGENT Julian Assange did not walk out of the embassy. The Ecuadorian ambassador invited British police into the embassy and he was immediately arrested.  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2019

Lenin Moreno, President of Ecuador, launched a scathing attack on Assange, listing how violated the conventions on diplomatic asylum.

He said in a statement: Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behaviour of Mr Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declaration of its allied organisation, against Ecuador, and especially the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable.

He added: Mr Assange violated, repeatedly, clear cut provisions of the conventions on diplomatic asylum of Havana and Caracas; despite the fact that he was requested on several occasions to respect and abide by these rules.

Mr Moreno added of Assange: He particularly violated the norm of not intervening in the internal affairs of other states.

Assange had refused to leave the embassy, claiming he would be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he did so (Getty)

Assange has spent almost seven years at the embassy after seeking refuge there to avoid extradition to Sweden (Getty)

The most recent incident occurred in January 2019, when WikiLeaks leaked Vatican documents. Key members of that organisation visited Mr Assange before and after such illegal acts.

This and other publications have confirmed the worlds suspicion that Mr Assange is still linked to WikiLeaks and therefore involved in interfering in internal affairs of other states

Finally, two days ago, WikiLeaks, Mr Assanges allied organisation, threatened the government of Ecuador.

My government has nothing to fear and does not act under threats.

Julian Assange is no hero and no one is above the law. He has hidden from the truth for years. Thank you Ecuador and President @Lenin Moreno for your cooperation with @foreignoffice to ensure Assange faces justice  Jeremy Hunt (@Jeremy_Hunt) April 11, 2019

Very welcome news to see that Assange is out of the Ecuador Embassy. My thanks to President @Lenin Moreno and his government for their cooperation and tireless diplomacy in making this happen.  Sir Alan Duncan MP (@AlanDuncanMP) April 11, 2019

Mr Moreno also claimed Assange:

Installed electronic and distortion equipment not allowed

Blocked the security cameras of the Ecuadorian Mission in London

Confronted and mistreated guards

Accessed the security files of the embassy without permission

Claimed to be isolated and rejected the internet connection offered by the Embassy, yet had a mobile phone with which he communicated with the outside world

But WikiLeaks said Mr Moreno had acted illegally in terminating Assanges political asylum in violation of international law.

His arrest comes a day after Wikileaks accused the Ecuadorean Government of an extensive spying operation against Assange.

Kyle Ferran, a Julian Assange supporter, outside the Ecuadorian embassy after Assanges arrest (PA)

WikiLeaks claims meetings with lawyers and a doctor inside the embassy over the past year were secretly filmed.

Assange had refused to leave the embassy, claiming he would be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he did so.

Supporters of Assange reported increased police activity at the embassy last weekend.

Two armed officers went into the building on Saturday and people taking part in a vigil said teams of plainclothes officers were outside the embassy throughout the weekend.

A number of surveillance cameras have been positioned opposite the embassy.

Assange, pictured here in 2010 leaving the City of Westminster Magistrates Court after Swedish prosecutors appealed against a decision to grant him bail (PA)

Australian Assange came to prominence after WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of thousands classified US diplomatic cables.

But in 2010 an arrest warrant was issued for him for two separate allegations  one of rape and one of molestation  after he visited Sweden for a speaking trip.

Assange launched a legal battle against extradition to Sweden from the UK but when that failed he entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London, requesting political asylum.

He refused to leave the embassy, claiming he would be extradited to the United States for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he did so.

The Ecuadorian government at the time was sympathetic to his cause but a regime change in 2017 heralded a less supportive approach.

Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK
(adds postponement of meeting)

* Protest crowds swell into the hundreds of thousands

* Wary protesters demand quick handover to civilians

* Sudan's military says it's not greedy for power

* Military says post-Bashir transition could be short

By Khalid Abdelaziz

KHARTOUM, April 12 (Reuters) - Sudan's ruling military council on Friday promised a new civilian government, a day after the armed forces overthrew President Omar al-Bashir, but mistrustful protest leaders immediately rejected the gesture.

The council, which is now running Sudan under Defence Minister Awad Ibn Auf, said it expected a pre-election transition to last two years at most or much less if chaos can be avoided.

The head of the military council's political committee, Omar Zain al-Abideen, also said the council would hold a dialog with political entities.

However, later on Friday, the council said the meeting would be delayed until a later unspecified date, state news agency SUNA reported.

The council also announced that it would not extradite Bashir to face accusations of genocide at the international war crimes court. Instead he might go on trial in Sudan.

Friday's announcement of a future civilian government by the head of the military council's political committee, General Omar Zain al-Abideen, appeared aimed at reassuring wary demonstrators who went back into the streets to warn against imposing army rule after Bashir's ouster.

But the main protest group dismissed the pledge, saying the military council was "not capable of creating change." In a statement, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) restated its demand for power to be handed immediately to "a transitional civilian government."

Bashir, 75, himself seized power in a 1989 military coup. He had faced 16 weeks of demonstrations sparked by rising food costs, high unemployment and increasing repression during his three decades of autocratic rule.

Worshippers packed the streets around the Defence Ministry for Friday prayers, heeding a call by the SPA to challenge the military council.

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The numbers swelled in the afternoon and a Reuters witness estimated hundreds of thousands of protesters thronged areas around the ministry, which was guarded by soldiers.

"We do not reject a military council in principle, but we reject these people because they are from Bashir's regime," said Abdelhamid Ahmed, a 24-year-old doctor.

Sudan's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Yasir Abdalla Abdelsalam Ahmed told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that any democratic process in the country required time and called on the international community to support a peaceful transition.

"No party will be excluded from the political process, including armed groups," he told the council during a meeting on Abyei, a contested border region claimed by Sudan and South Sudan. The 15-member council convened later on Friday behind closed doors to be briefed on the latest developments in Sudan.

"Moreover, the suspension of the constitution could be lifted at any point and the transitional period could be shortened depending on developments on the ground and agreements reached between stakeholders," the Sudanese envoy said.

Zain al-Abideen said the military council would not interfere with a civilian government. However he said the defense and interior ministries would be under its control.

The military council is headed by Ibn Auf, who was Bashir's vice president and defense minister and is among a handful of Sudanese commanders sanctioned by Washington for his alleged role during the atrocities committed in the Darfur conflict.

For a FACTBOX on key players in Sudan, click on

For BREAKING VIEWS-Africa uprisings carry stark oil-addiction warning, click on

"NOT GREEDY FOR POWER"

Zain al-Abideen said the military council itself had no solutions to Sudan's crisis and these would come from the protesters.

"We are the protectors of the demands of the people," he said. "We are not greedy for power."

"We will not dictate anything to the people. We want to create an atmosphere to manage a peaceful dialog," he said.

He said the council would meet on Friday with political entities to prepare a "climate for dialog." But this was later postponed.

The council said it did not invite Bashir's National Congress Party to join the dialog because "it is responsible for what happened."

It pledged to work with the new government to solve Sudan's economic problems but warned protesters that the army would not tolerate unrest.

"Protest is guaranteed, but it is forbidden to infringe on the freedom of others. We will be very decisive with whoever closes a road or a bridge," Zain al-Abideen said.

In the early hours of Friday, thousands of demonstrators sat themselves down outside the Defence Ministry to push for a civilian government, defying a curfew.

At the Defence Ministry compound, large tents were put up and people brought food and handed out water as the crowd grew. Ahmed al-Sadek, a 39-year-old trader, said he had not slept at his home since the sit-in began on April 6.

Activists wearing yellow vests controlled traffic around the compound on Friday morning and managed foot traffic to and from the sit-in, a Reuters witness said. They also blocked a major bridge in central Khartoum.

WORLD POWERS BACK DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION

World powers, including the United States and Britain, said they supported a peaceful and democratic transition sooner than two years. China said it would continue to seek cooperation with Sudan regardless of the political situation.

Ibn Auf said on Thursday that Bashir was being detained in a "safe place." Sudanese sources told Reuters that Bashir was at the presidential residence under heavy guard.

Ibn Auf also announced a state of emergency, a nationwide ceasefire and the suspension of the constitution. He further said there would be a curfew from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

But the council affirmed on Friday it would not extradite Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Bashir is facing an arrest warrant over accusations of genocide in Sudan's Darfur region during an insurgency that began in 2003 and led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people. He denies the allegations.

The military council will not hand him over for trial abroad, Zain al-Abideen said. "We may try him, but we will not hand him over."

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations Writing by Yousef Saba and Sami Aboudi Editing by Mark Heinrich)
President Donald Trump sought to distance himself from Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, after his arrest in London.

I know nothing about WikiLeaks  its not my thing, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Assange was arrested Thursday after Ecuador expelled him from its embassy in London. The 47-year-old has been in the embassy there since 2012, when he sought to escape questioning in a Swedish sexual-assault case. The U.S. later unsealed a year-old indictment accusing Assange of a hacking conspiracy with ex-U.S. Army analyst Chelsea Manning to disclose classified government material.

Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign after the website published Democratic Party emails hacked by Russians before the 2016 election.

Trump campaign officials directed a Trump ally, Roger Stone, to contact WikiLeaks during the period when the activist website was publishing the emails, which embarrassed top Democratic officials, including Trumps opponent, Hillary Clinton, according to an indictment against Stone.

The matter was a central part of Special Counsel Robert Muellers now-completed investigation into Russian election meddling.
Tripoli (AFP) - Forces answering to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar battled units that back Tripoli's unity government on the edge of the capital Friday, days into a new round of conflict that has killed dozens and displaced thousands.

Gunfire and blasts rang out and smoke rose as forces backing the fragile UN-backed government of Fayez al-Sarraj attempted to block an offensive by Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA).

Dozens of people have been killed and more than 300 wounded over the last eight days, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

The United Nations said the fighting had driven 8,000 people from their homes and that "displacements from areas affected by the clashes in and around Tripoli continue to surge".

"Many families remain stranded inside conflict-affected areas," with supplies running short, UN spokesman Rheal Leblanc told reporters in Geneva.

French authorities said Friday they were in touch with all parties to Libya's conflict.

But they did not confirm a report in Italy's La Repubblica, citing a source at the French presidency, saying Haftar had sent envoys to Paris several hours before he launched his offensive on Tripoli on April 4.

"Like our partners, we talk to all parties in the Libya conflict, in order to obtain a ceasefire", said Agnes von der Muhll, a spokesperson for France's foreign ministry.

"We were not warned about the offensive on Tripoli, which we condemned when it was launched," she said.

The Tripoli-based Government of National Accord on Friday expressed "hope" that the UN will act to halt Haftar's offensive.

"We hope that the UN Security Council succeeds in stopping the force that is attacking the capital and convinces countries that are supporting it to change their positions", the GNA's foreign minister Tahar Siala told reporters on Friday.

"We want a political, not a military, intervention," he added.

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- Air raids, black smoke -

The LNA and Haftar refuse to recognise the authority of Sarraj's Government of National Accord (GNA).

Haftar, a former military commander under toppled dictator Moamer Kadhafi who later lived in the United States, has the support of key Gulf Arab states, Egypt and Russia.

His forces swept from their eastern stronghold through Libya's sparsely populated desert, including parts of the south, before announcing their assault on to Tripoli.

Haftar's men were fighting GNA troops in the southern suburbs of the capital Friday, particularly in Ain Zara, Wadi Rabi and al-Swani, about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city centre.

AFP journalists saw an air raid in Wadi Rabi, while other witnesses reported another air strike in Tajoura, in the eastern suburbs of the capital, apparently targeting a military academy.

"A column of smoke was rising from this site into the sky," witnesses said.

Anti-aircraft fire was also heard in the region, near the capital's Mitiga airport which was hit by the LNA in an air strike on Tuesday.

An air strike Friday targeted an "empty and unused" barracks south of Zouara, near the Tunisian border, about 100 kilometre west of Tripoli, a security source said.

The strike did not cause casualties, the source said, attributing the attack to Haftar.

- Migrants repatriated -

The United Nations had vowed to push on with a planned national conference set to begin Sunday to draw up a roadmap to elections, but has postponed it as the fighting escalated.

The long-mooted polls are meant to turn the page on years of turmoil that have engulfed the north African country since Kadhafi was deposed in 2011.

World powers, the UN and NATO have called for calm in Libya, but the clashes have shown no sign of abating.

Libya has long been a major transit country for migrants desperate to reach Europe via the Mediterranean, with many held under abject conditions in detention centres.

International aid groups have warned migrants could be used as human shields or forcibly recruited to fight.

The International Organization for Migration said Friday it had flown 160 migrants to Mali -- with some destined to return to the Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso -- late Thursday.

"We continue to support a safe and dignified return for migrants to their home countries," said Othman Belbeisi, IOM Libya chief of mission, in a statement.

"Our teams are working around the clock to provide much needed humanitarian support in Tripoli and across Libya."
London (AFP) - Hundreds of bikers rode through central London on Friday in solidarity with a former British soldier accused of two murders in the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings.

The ex-paratrooper, identified only as Soldier F, was charged earlier this year over one of the darkest chapters in the Northern Ireland conflict.

The protesters, many of them veterans, wore leather jackets decorated with military insignia and waved flags -- some of them from their former regiments.

"They've given amnesty to the terrorists. What about Soldier F? Why are they locking him up? It's so wrong," Terry Coffey, a former soldier, said at the protest.

Fellow ex-soldier Mark Hastings pointed at parliament and said that under the current government "anybody who went to Northern Ireland could be accused of murder".

British troops opened fire on a civil rights demonstration in Derry, Northern Ireland's second city, killing 13 people on January 30, 1972.

A 14th victim later died of his wounds.

A photograph of a Catholic priest waving a bloodstained handkerchief as he tried to help 17-year-old victim Jackie Duddy to safety became a defining image of the incident.

Soldier F was one of 17 British veterans who had faced investigation, plus two alleged Irish Republican Army (IRA) paramilitaries, but he was the only one charged.

Following the findings of a long-running public inquiry in 2010, Britain's then-prime minister David Cameron issued a formal state apology for the killings, calling them "unjustified and unjustifiable".
A Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane being built for India-based Jet Airways lands following a test flight, Wednesday, April 10, 2019, at Boeing Field in Seattle. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

The worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft will weigh on Air Canada and WestJet Airlines Ltd.s earnings results for the first half of the year  and could extend further, the longer the jets are kept on the ground.

Both Canadian airlines will face cost headwinds and decreased capacity growth in the first and second quarters as a result of the grounding of the aircraft following the Ethiopian Airlines crash in March that left 159 dead, National Bank analyst Cameron Doerksen wrote in a note to clients this week.

National Bank lowered its first quarter financial forecasts for both airlines on Thursday.

This comes as some airlines in the United States cancel more 737 MAX flights through the busy summer season. Southwest Airlines and American Airlines both extended the length of the grounding, to August 5 and June 5, respectively.

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Both Air Canada and WestJet have removed the aircraft from their fleets and adjusted flight schedules accordingly. Air Canada, which had to ground 24 737 MAX 8s, said its new schedule will cover 98 per cent of the flying originally planned with the grounded aircraft. The 737 MAX has been removed from the airlines schedule until at least July 1.

WestJet said it would be able to rebook 86 per cent of passengers that were scheduled to fly on their 13 MAX 8s, and that the airline was able to cover 75 per cent of flights that were supposed to use the jet.

Both airlines have also suspended its 2019 financial guidance, citing uncertainty related to the Boeing 737 MAX jets.

Whether the grounding decision will be lifted by the busy  and typically very profitable  summer season remains to be seen.

Given the uncertainty surrounding when the 737 MAX may be cleared to to return to service by regulators, we have taken the prudent step of assuming the plane remains grounded through Q3 with some residual impact in Q4 due to the push out of previously planned new aircraft deliveries, Doerksen wrote in a note to clients.

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WOW Air collapse a small positive

Last month also saw the collapse of Icelandic low-cost carrier WOW Air, which abruptly announced its closure, leaving passengers stranded after all flights were cancelled.

Doerksen said the collapse of the trans-Atlantic competitor was a small positive for Canadian airlines, as WOW represented about 1.2 per cent of the total seats between Canada and Europe in the summer season, a popular route for Canadian carriers.

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By Online Desk

The Congress announced on Friday that it will go solo in all the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. PC Chacko, the party in-charge in Delhi, said the Congress has decided to contest alone since the AAP failed to form an alliance with it to fight against the BJP in the national capital.

FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

However, Chacko said that the party is still open to an alliance with the AAP with a seat-sharing arrangement of 3 seats for the former and four for the latter.
As soon as the indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was unsealed today by the Justice Department, Chelsea Manning's name was trending, too.

On Thursday, Assange was dramatically removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living since 2012, by British authorities "on behalf of the United States, according to Londons Metropolitan Police, after Ecuador decided to rescind his asylum. A few hours later, an unsealed indictment filed by the Justice Department revealed that the U.S. sought to extradite Assange to face one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusionthe conspiracy, court filings now publicly allege, was with Manning.

According to the indictment, Assange allegedly agreed to help Manning "crack a password that would provide access to Defense Department network used to store classified documents and communications," as described by Gizmodo, during the period in which she was disclosing classified government documents to Wikileaks as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in 2010. The charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion carries only up to five years in prison; reports say Assange fears that he will be charged with additional (and much more serious) counts of espionage related to other disclosures when he reaches U.S. soil.

But it is Chelsea Manning who has already been in the custody of authorities for over a month. On March 8, Manning was held in contempt of court for refusing to answer questions in front of a federal grand jury in a sealed case, what today's indictment now seems to show is that of the government's against Assange. Prosecutors likely wanted to compel Manning to testify to their online conversations; when she refused to answer any of their questions, citing the lack of transparency in grand jury proceedings, which occur behind closed doors, she was detained, first in what her team said was solitary confinement (called "administrative segregation" by the Truesdale Detention Center) for 28 days, and now in general population.

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In a statement they released earlier today, Manning's lawyers argue that the indictment "strengthens their claims of grand jury abuse." They say that the fact that it was obtained more than a year ago shows that prosecutors wanted Manning to testify to information she had already extensively detailed in her 2013 court martial proceedingsbefore she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, serving sevenand that her testimony was not needed to obtain an indictment of Assange. Therefore, because any evidence Manning could give "can no longer contribute to a grand jury investigation, Chelseas ongoing detention can no longer be seriously alleged to constitute an attempt to coerce her testimony," and is "purely punitive."

Janus Rose, a friend and representative of Manning's support committee Chelsea Resists in communication with her legal team, told Vogue that Manning's "continued imprisonment is detrimental to her health." Though Manning's move from "administrative congregation" to general population on April 4th has made it easier to communicate with her, the trauma of adapting back to civilian life after her sentence was commuted by former President Barack Obama in 2017 only to be detained again is taking its toll. The last time Rose spoke to Manning, when Manning returned to general population, she seemed "disoriented," though she is "tough as hell."

In isolation, where she was confined for 22 hours a day, Manning, who is working on a book, could only keep pen and paper in her cellshe could make phone calls, read letters, and complete daily hygiene tasks between the hours of 1am and 3am according to Rose. (Dana Lawhorne, the Alexandria, VA sheriff has refuted the characterization of Manning's condition as "solitary," saying, Our facility does not have solitary confinement and inmates housed in administrative segregation for safety and security reasons still have access to social visits, books, recreation, and break time outside their cells.") The letters from supporters in particular have been helpful, Rose says, "because the entire carceral system is designed to isolate and break the spirit."

Manning and her lawyers are in touch on today's developments regarding Assange's indictment, Rose confirmed; they have already announced that they will be filing a reply brief in their appeal asking that the contempt finding be vacated. "The only real way this will stop disrupting her life," Rose says, "is for her to be set free and left alone."
Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and early Bitcoin advocate, has been arrested by Londons Metropolitan Police.

Mr Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London seven years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.

URGENT: Julian Assange has been arrested by UK police. DONATE:https://t.co/vvbZBOgCwL  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2019

The London Met said: Julian Assange, 47, (03.07.71) has today, Thursday 11 April, been arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) at the Embassy of Ecuador, Hans Crescent, SW1 on a warrant issued by Westminster Magistrates Court on 29 June 2012, for failing to surrender to the court.

Assange has long been known as one of the original founding members of the privacy-focused cypherpunk movement that gave rise to Bitcoin and subsequent other platforms to deliver on the promise of creating both unstoppable money and code.

By Ross Chalmers  April 11, 2019

It has been reported that he has now been taken into custody at a central London police station, where he will remain until being presented before Westminster Magistrates Court as soon as possible.

The MPS had a duty to execute the warrant on behalf of Westminster Magistrates Court and was invited into the embassy by the Ambassador following the Ecuadorian governments withdrawal of asylum.

There were suggestions over the past few days that his asylum would be withdrawn following the publication of a number of documents.

However, Ecuadors Vice President, Otto Sonnenholzner, has even suggested that Assange could be prosecuted over what he described as a WikiLeaks hack, alluding to the rigid protocol that Ecuador has imposed on Assange to maintain a constant threat of expulsion.

As of now, Mr Assange will initially face UK legal proceedings but could be extradited to the US to stand trial over the WikiLeaks revelations.

The post Cypherpunk and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested by UK police appeared first on Coin Rivet.
By Khalid Abdelaziz KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan's defense minister stepped down abruptly on Friday as head of the country's transitional ruling military council after only a day in the post, as protesters demanded quicker political change following President Omar al-Bashir's ouster by the armed forces. Hours after the military council sought to calm public anger by promising a new civilian government, Defence Minister Awad Ibn Auf said in a televised speech he was quitting as head of the council. Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman will be the new head of the council, Ibn Auf said. He also said Chief of Staff Kamal Abdelmarouf al-Mahi was relieved of his position as deputy head of the transitional military council. "In order to ensure the cohesion of the security system, and the armed forces in particular, from cracks and strife, and relying on God, let us begin this path of change," Ibn Auf said. News of the change sparked joyful celebrations in the streets of Khartoum as people chanted, "The second has fallen!" in reference to Bashir, witnesses said. "What happened is a step in the right direction and is a bow to the will of the masses, and we have become closer to victory," Rashid Saeed, a spokesman for the main protest group, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), told Reuters. "We are committed to our demands that we submitted to the army," he said. "We call on the masses to stay on the streets until all the demands are met." The military council said earlier that it expected a pre-election transition to last two years at most or much less if chaos can be avoided. The head of the military council's political committee, Omar Zain al-Abideen, said the council would hold a dialogue with political entities. The announcement of a future civilian government appeared aimed at reassuring demonstrators who had pressed for months for Bashir's departure and quickly resumed protests against army rule after his ouster on Thursday, calling for quicker and more substantial change. But the SPA said the military council was "not capable of creating change." In a statement, the group restated its demand for power to be handed immediately to "a transitional civilian government." Bashir, 75, himself seized power in a 1989 military coup. He had faced 16 weeks of demonstrations sparked by rising food costs, high unemployment and increasing repression during his three decades of autocratic rule. Worshippers packed the streets around the Defence Ministry for Friday prayers, heeding a call by the SPA to challenge the military council. The numbers swelled in the afternoon, and a Reuters witness estimated hundreds of thousands of protesters thronged areas around the ministry, which was guarded by soldiers. "We do not reject a military council in principle, but we reject these people because they are from Bashir's regime," said Abdelhamid Ahmed, a 24-year-old doctor. Ibn Auf was Bashir's vice president and defense minister and is among a handful of Sudanese commanders whom Washington imposed sanctions on over their alleged role during atrocities committed in the Darfur conflict that began in 2003. Announcing Bashir's ouster on Thursday and the creation of the military council, Ibn Auf also announced a state of emergency, a nationwide ceasefire and the suspension of the constitution, as well as a nighttime curfew. Those steps were criticized as heavy-handed by rights groups. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman was the third most senior general in the Sudanese armed forces and is not known in public life. He was the head of Sudans ground forces, a role in which he oversaw Sudanese troops that fought in the Saudi-led Yemen war. INCLUSIVE POLITICAL PROCESS Sudan's deputy U.N. ambassador, Yasir Abdalla Abdelsalam Ahmed, told the U.N. Security Council on Friday that any democratic process in the country required time, and he urged the international community to support a peaceful transition. "No party will be excluded from the political process, including armed groups," he told the council during a meeting on Abyei, a contested border region claimed by Sudan and South Sudan. The 15-member council convened later on Friday behind closed doors to be briefed on the latest developments in Sudan. "Moreover, the suspension of the constitution could be lifted at any point and the transitional period could be shortened depending on developments on the ground and agreements reached between stakeholders," the Sudanese envoy said. World powers, including the United States and Britain, said they supported a peaceful and democratic transition sooner than two years. China said it would continue to seek cooperation with Sudan regardless of the political situation. Zain al-Abideen said the military council would not interfere with a civilian government. However, he said the defense and interior ministries would be under its control. "NOT GREEDY FOR POWER" Zain al-Abideen said the military council itself had no solutions to Sudan's crisis and these would come from the protesters. "We are not greedy for power," he said. "We will not dictate anything to the people. We want to create an atmosphere to manage a peaceful dialogue". He said the council would meet on Friday with political entities to prepare a "climate for dialogue," but that was later postponed. The council said it did not invite Bashir's National Congress Party to join the dialogue because "it is responsible for what happened." It warned protesters that the army would not tolerate unrest. Ibn Auf said on Thursday that Bashir was being detained in a "safe place." Sudanese sources told Reuters he was at the presidential residence under heavy guard. The council said on Friday it would not extradite Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Bashir is facing an arrest warrant over accusations of genocide in Sudan's Darfur region during an insurgency that began in 2003 and led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people. He denies the allegations. (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Hesham Hajali and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Yousef Saba and Sami Aboudi; Editing by Frances Kerry, Hugh Lawson and Leslie Adler)
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. (Photos: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

When Republicans confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court by doing away with the legislative filibuster, critics of the move warned it would harm the institutional integrity of the U.S. Senate.

The Senate has been damaged to a degree that it hasnt been in its history, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Yahoo News at the time. Over in the House of Representatives, when youre in the majority, you control everything. We are now headed in that direction. And that is not democracy.

Now some Democratic presidential candidates are calling to eliminate the filibuster for legislation, a measure that would allow the Senate to pass laws with a simple 51-vote majority, rather than the current requirement of a 60-vote supermajority. The tepid resistance from opponents and the lack of general outcry is an indication that such a move is possible, even likely, in the near future.

The political cost of using the nuclear option is going down. A party does it and theres not that much explosive pushback. We expect the minority to burn up every bridge in opposition, but they dont. Its making it more plausible that a future majority would go all the way and eliminate the legislative filibuster, Sarah Binder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Yahoo News.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., last weekend became the second major Democratic 2020 candidate to argue in favor of abolishing the filibuster, though she placed her comments in the context of future obstruction by Senate Republicans.

When the Democrats have the White House again, if Mitch McConnell tries to do what he did to President Obama and put small-minded partisanship ahead of solving the massive problems in this country, then we should get rid of the filibuster, she said.

Former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who burst onto the national scene recently, has advocated for a number of procedural reforms, including scrapping the filibuster. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, another less prominent 2020 candidate, also called for eliminating the filibuster.

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However, Democratic field is far from united on this issue. Last weekend, Sen. Bernie Sanders explained his reasons for wanting to keep the filibuster.

I think you have to protect minority rights. I dont think you can just simply shove everything through. Theres an argument for that, by the way, but thats not where I am right now, Sanders  who has supported eliminating the filibuster in the past  told The Huffington Post. Sanders also said that because President Trump has repeatedly called for eliminating the legislative filibuster, thats another reason to be a little bit nervous about the idea.

Bernie Sanders (Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The concern is that strict majority rule would weaken the Senates role as a place for deliberation and compromise, by allowing the party in control to do whatever it wanted without consulting the minority. Sanders is not the only Democratic presidential candidate to oppose filibuster reform. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Sen. Kamala Harris of California have all expressed either outright opposition or discomfort with the idea.

New York magazines Jonathan Chait wrote that Sanderss opposition to filibuster reform may be the single most baffling position any candidate has taken, because Sanders is generally one of the more progressive candidates in the race but opposition to filibuster reform is thought of as a conservative position.

And in fact the most strenuous objections to filibuster reform have come from conservatives. The Wall Street Journal editorial page framed Warrens proposal as part of a procedural radicalism that is endemic to the Democratic primary. They want to blow up the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, rewrite voting laws and limit political speech, among other startling projects, the Journal wrote.

And part of Buttigiegs ability to stand out in a crowded field has been his eager embrace of these changes. Increasingly, it is becoming a mantra among progressive writers and thinkers that any Democrat who talks about what they want to do but not how they plan to do it, is not credible. And filibuster reform is a key part of how they think a Democratic agenda gets implemented.

As to the argument about the Senates institutional integrity, Binder and co-author Steven S. Smith argued in their 1997 book Politics or Principle? Filibustering in the United States Senate that senators make high-minded arguments about keeping the filibuster but dont do so sincerely. They appeal to concerns about democracy, but really are motivated their desire to keep the power that the filibuster gives to individual senators, elevating their status and leverage.

The minoritys rights must be protected  but neither should a vexatious minority be able to thwart the will of the majority and not even permit legislation to come up for a meaningful vote, Binder wrote in 1997. Twenty-two years ago, she said, the filibuster had become an epidemic.

And since then, the use of the tactic to prevent moving to a vote has escalated with each year. Binder says this allows lawmakers to avoid taking hard votes and working on solving hard problems.

Its hard to hold lawmakers accountable if they dont vote, Binder told Yahoo News. They never get to the point where they take actual positions.

And, she said, the Senate will remain distinct from the House due to several factors even without the filibuster, in particular the fact that members have six-year terms rather than two-year terms.

But the worry remains that getting rid of the filibuster would create more instability, politically and economically. Major laws would be passed by one party, but then undone a few years later by the other. The ability to plan long term in business, in the military and elsewhere would be greatly challenged.

That is a recipe for making our problems worse, wrote Yuval Levin in National Review. The filibuster could certainly be made more meaningful and harder to deploy  for instance, by requiring that senators actually fill floor time, as the filibuster was traditionally understood to require. The ease of filibustering, Levin wrote, has allowed it to become a pure partisan weapon deployed

Reforming its use with that purpose in mind would be helpful, he wrote.

The one thing that most people agree on is that the status quo is neither desirable nor durable.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Tallinn (AFP) - EU states Estonia and Poland said Friday they had blocked a Russian training ship from entering their waters because some on board are cadets from Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014.

Estonia's foreign ministry had denied the STS Sedov sailing vessel permission on Wednesday after learning that it was carrying students from a maritime university based in Crimea.

Poland's foreign ministry said Friday Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki had decided to follow suit for the same reason.

"The prime minister's decision is to refuse" entry to the vessel to the port of Gdynia, foreign ministry spokeswoman Ewa Suwara said.

Earlier, Estonian foreign ministry spokeswoman Sandra Kamilova told AFP: "Estonia does not recognise the illegal annexation of Crimea and, in our estimation, issuing a permission to the training ship would have contradicted the Crimea annexation non-recognition policy."

The EU considers Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea to be illegal and demands that it be reversed.

After Estonia's statement, Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took to Twitter to describe the move as an "unfriendly and provocative step".

Russian media then said the ship was headed towards Gdynia.

The diplomatic spat comes just days before a planned Moscow visit by Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid to open the renovated Estonian embassy there and to meet counterpart Vladimir Putin.

Relations between Moscow and Tallinn have been fraught since Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, joining both the EU and NATO in 2004.

More recently Estonia and fellow Baltic states Latvia and Lithuania have been spooked by their Soviet-era master's annexation of Crimea and its more aggressive stance in what Moscow considers to be its own backyard.
Stockholm (AFP) - Survivors and families of the victims of the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster that claimed 852 lives hope the shipbuilder and certification agency will finally be held accountable when a French court hears their lawsuit on Friday.

But, weary and disillusioned after 25 years of legal to-and-fros, they say they have low expectations.

"When I heard about it I was surprised because I thought the case had been dropped a long time ago," said 66-year-old Elisabet Nilsson, who lost her husband in the tragedy.

The 155-meter ferry MS Estonia, carrying 989 passengers and crew, sank in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Finland on the night of September 27-28, 1994.

An international probe concluded in 1997 that the retractable bow visor had opened in heavy seas, allowing water to flow onto the car deck and destabilise the vessel.

But neither the German shipbuilder Meyer-Werft nor the French agency Bureau Veritas that deemed the ship seaworthy were ever held responsible for the accident.

Now, almost 25 years on, 1,116 survivors and beneficiaries are seeking 40.8 million euros ($46 million) in damages from the two.

Their lawsuit is to be heard by a French court in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris where Bureau Veritas is based, and is scheduled to last two days, Friday and Monday.

Nilsson, who with her two sons is among the claimants, said the survivors and families of the victims had been repeatedly let down over the years, and didn't think the Nanterre proceedings would be any different.

"Since Estonia has never been properly investigated, I don't have much hope for this hearing either," she said.

- 23 years of proceedings -

Shortly after the accident, Swedish authorities opposed a refloating of the ship and designated the area a sea grave, prohibiting any exploration of the wreckage -- and helping conspiracy theories flourish.

Survivors and relatives, who have previously called for new independent probes into the cause of the accident, were swiftly compensated for material damages from the now-bankrupt Estonian shipowner Estline.

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But this is the first time a court will decide the question of accountability.

The lawsuit was first filed in 1996, making it hard for some families and survivors to follow the drawn-out legal proceedings, said Mart Raudsepp, a representative of the Memento Mare organisation that acts to preserve the memory of the victims.

"I don't have any expectations from these proceedings. The wheels of justice turn so slowly, I doubt the court will be able to find out who is responsible for this tragedy," he told AFP.

Raudsepp, whose 17-year-old son died on the ferry, said it had been so hard to keep up with the case that he wasn't even sure if he was still among the claimants.

"We have received no information about what is going on in France, what the court meetings will be like, who the claimants are and who the defendants are," he said.

"No-one has told us anything. I can't even say if the families of the shipwreck victims are participating in the process at the moment," said Raudsepp.

While a majority of the victims, 501 people, were Swedish, Friday's hearing has not received any media attention in their country.

When contacted by AFP on April 10, one of the Swedish survivors, 54-year-old Kent Harstedt who is now a member of parliament, said he was not even aware the hearing was taking place.

He said he was not a claimant in the suit, but only because he was never asked to participate when it was originally filed and only found out about it years later.

As he was not involved, he said it was difficult to know what to expect, but said he hoped the court would get to the bottom of the question of accountability.

"I hope it isn't just quickly brushed aside but given a proper trial, like it deserves," he told AFP.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Countries in the western Balkans aspiring to join the European Union, such as Serbia and Kosovo, should be given a clear pathway to membership provided they solve their differences, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Friday.

At a conference of foreign ministers of the so-called Berlin Process, which brings together those aspiring states and some EU members, Maas said it was "very important to offer the countries in that region a clear perspective of membership." provided any differences including any lingering from the wars of the 1990s are resolved.

The meeting in Warsaw was held in preparation for a summit on EU enlargement scheduled in Poland in July.

"Our hand remains extended and that means that offering a European perspective to western Balkans is meant not only as a promise to the countries in the region, but it is also in the interest of the European Union," Maas told a news conference later.

The Berlin Process, initiated by Germany, is a platform for bringing closer to the EU the aspiring states: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia.

On an invitation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, Berlin is also to host a meeting of western Balkan and EU high representatives April 29.

Maas encouraged western Balkan nations to find solutions to difficult issues in the region and pointed to the example of North Macedonia, which recently changed its name to settle a conflict with Greece, as a case of "good will that brings success."

He said those who do not seek reconciliation with neighbors will remain stuck in their past, also in the area of economy and social welfare.

Internal conflicts in the Balkans and a split between those supporting ties with the EU and those opting for Russian links have stalled the EU enlargement process.
(Updates with draft EU statement on Libya)

By Gabriela Baczynska and Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS, April 10 (Reuters) - European Union states will call on Khalifa Haftar to halt his eastern forces' offensive in Libya, according to a draft statement, amid disagreements between France and Italy over policy towards the north African state.

Thousands of residents fled on Wednesday as Haftar's forces - called the Libyan National Army (LNA) - and troops loyal to the Tripoli government battled on the outskirts of Libya's capital.

The military attack launched by Haftar on Tripoli "is endangering the civilian population, disrupting the political process and risks further escalation with serious consequences for Libya and the wider region, including the terrorist threat", the EU will say in a joint statement, a draft of which was seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

EU member states have until 2100 GMT on Wednesday to object to the draft, or it will become the official position of the bloc.

Speaking on the sidelines of an EU summit focused on Britain's exit from the bloc, European Parliament head Antonio Tajani, who is Italian, said Paris and Rome had "diverging interests" in Libya.

France, which has oil assets in eastern Libya, has provided military assistance in past years to Haftar in his eastern stronghold, Libyan and French officials say..

Italy, the former colonial power and a big player in Libya's oil sector, has supported the U.N.-backed Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.

"We need more unity, we need to speak with only one voice as Europeans, but unfortunately Europeans are divided on this," Tajani told reporters.

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said on Monday the bloc was united in calling for a truce and a return to diplomacy in Libya.

The EU has supported al-Serraj's government in recent years to have it crack down on refugees and migrants leaving for Europe from the shores of Libya. The country descended into a civil war after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, allowing people smugglers to operate with impunity.

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The EU draft statement says "hostilities must cease immediately, the LNA must withdraw and the humanitarian truces called by the U.N. must be heeded".

"The European Union... call on their international and regional partners to exert their influence and send an unequivocal message to the aggressors that there is no military solution to the crisis, only a political one," it says.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska Editing by Angus MacSwan and Frances Kerry)
QUITO, Ecuador (AP)  Did Western media and government hypocrisy bring about Julian Assange's arrest, or was it his bad manners?

The dramatic end to Julian Assange's asylum has sparked curiosity about his seven-year stay inside Ecuador's embassy in London that officials there say was marked by his late-night skateboarding, the physical harassment of his caretakers and even the smearing of his own fecal matter on the walls of the diplomatic mission.

It would've tested the patience of any host. But for tiny Ecuador, which prides itself on its hospitality and spent almost $1 million a year protecting Assange, it was also seen as a national insult.

"We've ended the asylum of this spoiled brat," a visibly flustered President Lenin Moreno said Thursday in a fiery speech explaining his decision to withdraw protection of Assange and hand him over to British police. "From now on we'll be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it, and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments."

Others, including former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum in 2012, said that while Assange violated the terms of his asylum and was a burden on Ecuador "that's no excuse for throwing him to the lions."

Ecuador emerged as a safe haven for the WikiLeaks founder in 2012 as his legal options to evade extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations dried up in the United Kingdom. On a June day, he moved into the country's embassy near the upscale Harrods department store for what most thought would be a short stay.

Instead, the cramped quarters, where a small office was converted into a bedroom, became a permanent address that some likened to a de facto jail.

As the asylum dragged on, his relations with his hosts soured and his behavior became more erratic. Embassy staff complained of him skateboarding at night, playing loud music and walking around in his underwear with no apparent concern for others in the tiny embassy.

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One senior Ecuadorian official described his room as a "sovereign territory within a sovereign territory" that none of the staff at No. 3 Hans Crescent could enter. But the stench from going weeks without a shower, and dental problem born of poor hygiene, was a constant nuisance, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he isn't authorized to discuss details of Assange's behavior.

Then there was the issue of Assange's poop, which authorities said he spread across embassy walls on at least one occasion in an act of open defiance showing how little he thought of his hosts.

"When you're given shelter, cared for and provided food, you don't denounce the owner of the house," Moreno said Thursday to applause.

Within months of taking office in 2017, Moreno's government scolded Assange again for meddling in international affairs by voicing his support for Catalan secessionists from the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Relations grew so prickly that last year Ecuador increased its restrictions on his Internet access and required him to clean up after his cat James. The rules said that if the feline wasn't properly fed and cleaned up after, it would be sent to the pound.

Assange tried challenging the restrictions in Ecuadorian court, to no avail.

More recently, as the feuding became more public, Ecuadorian officials say he started physically and verbally harassing his caretakers, accusing them of being U.S. spies looking to exchange information on WikiLeaks in exchange for debt relief for Ecuador.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said audio recording a few months ago captured a moment when Assange threatened Ambassador Jaime Merchan with pressing some sort of panic button that he said would bring devastating consequences for the embassy in the event of his arrest. Although it wasn't clear what he meant by the threat, authorities shared their concerns with British authorities and in carrying out the raid Thursday were careful to prevent Assange from returning to his room to execute any possible emergency plans.

The final straw for Moreno was WikiLeaks' decision to spread information about a purported offshore account controlled by the president's brother. Personal photographs of Moreno lying in bed, as well as images of close family members dancing, were also leaked, further incensing him.

Correa, however, criticized a "double standard" by Western media and governments who he said have been quick to condemn Assange for publishing sensitive information about U.S. national security interests.

"Although Julian Assange denounced war crimes, he's only the person supplying the information. It's The New York Times, the Guardian and El Pais publishing it. Why aren't those journalists and media owners thrown in jail?" he said in an interview in Brussels.

He said that if Assange had been a Chinese dissident exposing Russian secrets instead of facing arrest and extradition "he'd be receiving awards right now in the U.K. and U.S."

___

Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia, and Goodman from Caracas, Venezuela. AP writer Mike Corder contributed to this report from Brussels.

Follow AP's coverage of the arrest of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange here: https://www.apnews.com/WikiLeaks
By David Shepardson and Tracy Rucinski

WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration met for three hours on Friday with representatives from the three major U.S. airlines that own now grounded Boeing 737 MAX jets and their pilots' unions to discuss two fatal crashes and the path forward.

More than 300 Boeing 737 MAXs have been grounded worldwide after a total of 346 people died in a Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October and in an Ethiopian Airlines crash outside Addis Ababa last month.

American Airlines Group Inc, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co officials attended the meeting, where FAA Acting Administrator Dan Elwell said he wanted to know operators' and pilots' thoughts before the agency decides to return the 737 MAX to service.

Elwell said the meeting participants' "operational perspective is critical input as the agency welcomes scrutiny on how it can do better."

American said in a statement it was "confident in the direction the FAA is heading" and would continue to work collaboratively in this process.

Pilots from American and Southwest, the two largest U.S. MAX operators, said they welcomed the meeting but noted that many issues still needed to be discussed and debated before the MAX flies again.

"We have to unground the confidence in this airplane," Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association which represents American's pilots, told reporters outside FAA headquarters.

"We take off our watches and put the calendars in the drawer," he added, suggesting that rebuilding confidence in the aircraft could take some time.

American and United have removed the 737 MAX from their schedules through early June, while Southwest on Thursday extended the removal of its 34 MAX jets through Aug. 5, leading to around 160 daily flight cancellations during the revised summer schedule.

Boeing is reprogramming software on the 737 MAX to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system known as MCAS that is under mounting scrutiny following the two deadly nose-down crashes.

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The FAA said the meeting covered a review of the preliminary findings of the two crash investigations and an overview of Boeing's anticipated software enhancements and pilot training.

The plane's certification and training have been questioned following a 2004 decision by Congress to allow manufacturers an expanded role in the FAA's aircraft oversight.

Captain Jon Weaks, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said in a letter he was concerned that this concept "may be too ingrained to reverse" and complicated by federal budget and personnel shortfalls, but called for continued scrutiny of Boeing.

The FAA has convened a joint review with aviation regulators from China, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other countries.

Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector generals office and a blue-ribbon panel are also reviewing the planes certification.

"The first and most important goal of all of the entire process should be to protect the lives of our passengers and the travelling public in general," said Weaks.

(Reporting by David Shepardson and Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Alistair Bell and Tom Brown)
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Union Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday called on the Indian Air Force to renew its focus on the Indian Ocean Region while presiding over the inaugural session of the two-day Commanders Conference at the Vayu Sena Bhawan (IAF Headquarters) in the national capital. While addressing the conference, Sitharaman stressed, on a proactive role of the IAF in the Indian Ocean Region and developing relationships through military interaction and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR).

The IAF has been maintaining a constant vigil on the countrys western border with Pakistan and the northern and north-eastern borders shared with China. She also asked the aerial force to envisage a future where it is equipped with the latest technology from across the world as well as those developed within India, in order to meet its needs. The defence production industry must utilise these assets to the fullest, she stressed.

She also praised the IAF for its flawless execution of the Balakot strikes and the subsequent thwarting of the Pakistani response. She mentioned Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman  the IAF pilot who was shot down and landed behind enemy lines on February 27  and praised his bravery.

For his part, Chief of the Air Staff Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa, while addressing the convention, emphasised on enhancing the forces capabilities in the fields such as Space, Cyberspace, Information, Artificial Intelligence and Drone technologies.

During the conference, deliberations will take place in line with the theme of the conference of Enhancing our operational capability in the short and long term. All senior commanders of the force will be attending the event.
Protesters in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum held Friday prayers outside the military headquarters on April 12. The protesters took place a day after the military deposed President Omar al-Bashir and took control of the country.

Leading protest group the Sudanese Professionals Association called for people to go to the sit-in on April 11 to prepare for prayers on Friday.

On the same day, the military council held a press conference where Omar Zein al-Abideen, a member of the council, said, We will fulfill the desires of the people, and we have no other ambitions, local media reported. He also said former president Omar al-Bashir would not be extradited to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face charges of genocide, Al Jazeera reported. Credit: Hassabo M. Hassan via Storyful
Gregory Craig, a prominent corporate lawyer and former adviser to Democratic presidents, was indicted by a U.S. grand jury in Washington, accused of making false statements and concealing information about his firms work on behalf of Ukraine.

Craigs former firm, Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom, in January paid $4.6 million and agreed to register as a lobbyist for a foreign government after admitting that it should have done so earlier for work it did with Paul Manafort to benefit Ukraine.

The charges are the first against a high-profile Democrat to emerge from Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Craig defended President Bill Clinton against impeachment and was the first White House counsel under President Barack Obama.

Craig made his false statements to a Justice Department unit investigating lobbyists work for foreign governments, prosecutors said. He faces as long as five years in prison for each of the two counts against him.

Late Thursday, after reports that Craig would be charged, his lawyer released a statement saying that U.S. prosecutors in New York had looked at Craigs overseas work and that office decided not to pursue charges.

Craig, 74 years old, may be the most well-known white-collar professional to be charged under a lobbying disclosure law that was used heavily by Muellers team, but hes unlikely to be the last.

At the time of Skaddens settlement, prosecutors said Skaddens partner on the project made false and misleading statements to the Justice Department. The partner was separately identified as Craig, leaving the prospect of charges against him. Craig left the firm in April 2018.

Muellers investigation turned a spotlight on the Foreign Agent Registration Act, known as FARA, a law that previously had been lightly enforced.

As part of his probe, Mueller brought FARA charges against Manafort, President Donald Trumps former campaign chairman, for his work on behalf of President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine and his pro-Russia Party of Regions. Mueller also brought FARA charges against former Manafort deputy Rick Gates as he sought to turn investigative targets into cooperators.

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The Justice Department has signaled its intention to push ahead with similar cases. Before Mueller wrapped up his investigation, a prosecutor from his team, Brandon Van Grack, shifted to a unit thats pursuing FARA matters, people familiar with the situation said at the time.

Mueller has completed his 22-month investigation, but the full extent of his findings arent publicly known. A summary of his report by the attorney general said that Mueller had concluded that interactions between Trump campaign staffers and Russians didnt amount to a conspiracy. Attorney General William Barr told Congress that a more complete summary would come next week.

Manafort arranged for the Ukrainian government to hire Skadden Arps to produce a report in 2012 examining the legitimacy of the prosecution of a Yanukovych rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, according to a court filing.

Craig oversaw Skaddens review, which largely defended the prosecution and conviction of Tymoshenko, contradicting the view held by the U.S. and the European Union that the case against her was politically motivated.

The law firms $12,000 fee for the report was modest, just below the amount that required public bidding under Ukrainian law. But according to U.S. prosecutors, Skadden was paid more than $4.6 million for the work, largely through third-party payments.

Details about the Skadden report emerged as part of the investigation of Manafort. Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who worked at Skadden, admitted that he lied to prosecutors about his conversations with Gates. Van der Zwaan, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to 30 days in prison.
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Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged Greg Craig, a former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, with making false statements to the Justice Department in connection with his work for Ukraine as a partner at Skadden, Arps, Meagher, Slate & Flom.



Prosecutors said Craig made false statements and concealed information about his work on a report prepared in 2012 for the Russia-aligned government of Ukraine, on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and political rival of the countrys president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych.



Craig's arraignment is scheduled for Friday afternoon before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. The case has been assigned to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has handled several cases brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. That includes the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on charges related to his own past lobbying for Ukraine, and former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to congressional investigators, obstructing justice and tampering with a witness.



With Thursdays indictment, Craig becomes the first prominent Democrat to face charges linked to Mueller's investigation. The case also is the first Mueller-related prosecution to come after the conclusion of the special counsels investigation.



The Justice Department had previously identified Manafort as the lobbyist who helped Ukraine retain Skadden.



Muellers office referred the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, which did not bring charges. The charges entered Thursday came from federal prosecutors in Washington on the recommendation of the Justice Departments National Security Division.



The charges come just months after Skadden agreed in January to pay $4.6 millionthe equivalent of what the firm received from Ukraineto resolve claims that it violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to properly report and disclose that work to the U.S. Justice Department. Without identifying Craig specifically, the Justice Department said in announcing the settlement that a partner at Skadden had made false and misleading statements to the agencys national security division, causing the U.S. government to conclude the law firm was not obligated to register under FARA.



Craig has maintained his innocence, even as his former law firm registered retroactively as a foreign agent as part of its January settlement with the Justice Department. Craig retired from Skadden in April 2018.



"This indictment accuses Mr. Craig of misleading the FARA Unit of the Department of Justice in order to avoid registration," his defense lawyers William Taylor III and William Murphy of Zuckerman Spaeder said in a statement Wednesday. "It is itself unfair and misleading. It ignores uncontroverted evidence to the contrary. Mr. Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA Unit because he had not done anything that required his registration. That is what this trial will be all about."



In the settlement with Skadden, the Justice Department suggested that Craig misled the national security divisions FARA unit about his contacts with news media ahead of the release of the Tymoshenko report. The Justice Department said Skadden, in reliance on the lead partner, made false and misleading statements including, among other things, that Skadden provided a copy of the Report only in response to requests from the media and spoke to the media to correct misinformation about the report that the media was already reporting.



The firm also submitted documents to the FARA unit that were false, the Justice Department added.



Craigs lawyers on Wednesday said he had, in fact, refused Ukraines requests to participate in the media and lobbying campaign to release the Tymoshenko report. That report, they said, was critical of Tymoshenkos prosecution and caused unhappiness in Ukraines Ministry of Justice.



In their Wednesday statement, Craigs lawyers acknowledged he spoke to reporters at The New York Times but said he did so on his own volition.



He did this not at the direction or on behalf of Ukraine but to make certain that the Times would accurately summarize the report's criticisms of the Tymoshenko trial and not rely on misinformation from Ukraine and its representatives, Craigs defense team said in a separate statement Wednesday. He did not lie to his former firm or the government about these conversations. Furthermore, he was told by the FARA unit on Jan. 16, 2014, that he was not required to register under the statute.



Craigs attorneys said his underlying role in examining the Tymoshenko prosecution was as an independent expert on the rule of law, not as an advocate for the client. They said he and Skadden agreed to work on the report on the condition that their report would be independent.



According to Skaddens FARA registration, Craig was joined on the Ukraine work by Skadden partner Cliff Sloan, whose hourly rate was identified as $1,050. Craigs rate, according to documents filed in connection with the registration, was $1,150 per hour.



Among the other Skadden lawyers listed in the disclosure was Alexander van der Zwaan, a former associate in the firms London office, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to investigators in the special counsels office. He was sentenced in April 2018 to 30 days in prison and has since been deported.





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The indictment is posted below:







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By Gustavo Palencia and Sofia Menchu TEGUCIGALPA/GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - A Guatemalan presidential hopeful known for taking on high-profile corruption cases as attorney general said on Thursday she was detained at an airport in Honduras before abruptly leaving the country shortly afterward. Thelma Aldana, Guatemala's former chief prosecutor, is among the front-runners in next month's election but faces an arrest warrant back home that she dismisses as the work of her political opponents. Aldana said in a post on her Twitter page she was "arbitrarily detained" in Honduras and lashed out at what she dubbed a "pact of the corrupt" in which she included Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez. The Honduran migration institute confirmed in a statement that Aldana landed at the main airport in the capital on Thursday morning on a flight from neighboring El Salvador, was processed, and "voluntarily" left the country nearly three hours later and returned to El Salvador. The statement noted twice that Aldana was traveling in a private plane. The Honduran national police said in a separate statement Aldana was never detained and that there are no restrictions on her travel in the country. A senior campaign aide said security officials questioned Aldana without identifying themselves. "Thelma was taken to an office where she was interrogated several times and questioned about personal matters and security issues that put her at risk due to the information they were seeking," campaign strategist Jose Carlos Marroquin told Reuters. Aldana, 63, served as attorney general from 2014 to 2018 and helped topple a former president on corruption charges. She also investigated current President Jimmy Morales. A Guatemalan judge issued a warrant for Aldana's arrest last month on charges including embezzlement and tax fraud. She has dismissed the order as politically motivated, along with a separate ruling last week by Guatemala's electoral tribunal that revoked her candidacy citing irregularities during her tenure as attorney general. She has appealed against the electoral tribunal's ruling to the constitutional court, Guatemala's top court. Aldana led the field of presidential candidates with 28 percent in a recent poll before the June 16 election, ahead of Zury Rios, the daughter of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, and former First Lady Sandra Torres. Running on a platform of efficient and transparent government, Aldana has pledged to expand the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG. Morales' government announced in January it would not renew the CICIG's mandate and expelled the anti-corruption body's leader. (Reporting by Gustavo Palencia in Tegucigalpa and Sofia Menchu in Guatemala City; Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Paul Tait)
The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could face extradition to the United States after being arrested twice in London on Thursday.

Assange had spent seven years holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had diplomatic asylum to prevent being extradited to Sweden to face sexual molestation and rape inquiries. On Thursday, Ecuador finally gave him up to the police, who arrested him for bail-jumping. He was then re-arrested. Shortly afterwards, the U.S. Department of Justice unveiled hacking-conspiracy charges against him.

Heres what you need to know about Julian Assange and what might happen to him next.

Who is Julian Assange?

Assange is an Australian hacker who set up WikiLeaks in 2006 as a service for publishing confidential information that, the organization believes, should be in the public domain.

WikiLeakss first major publication was that of U.S. Defense footage showing a 2007 American bomb strike in Iraq, which killed civilians including two Reuters correspondents. WikiLeaks released the gunsight footage under the name Collateral Murder. The footage was leaked to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning, a military intelligence analyst who went on to serve seven years in prisonshe was sentenced to 35 years but President Barack Obama commuted her sentence. Manning has for the last month been back in jail for refusing to testify about WikiLeaks before a grand jury.

Collateral Murder came out in April 2010. Later that year, WikiLeaks released tens of thousands of classified Pentagon documents, and then began publishing a vast tranche of classified U.S. diplomatic cables. The organization initially released the cables piecemeal and in redacted form, in conjunction with established media outlets such as the Guardian and the New York Times, but an accidental release of the passphrase for the encrypted cable archive meant all the cables became exposed, and Assange ended up publishing them without masking the names of U.S. informants.

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WikiLeaks made its next big splash with the 2016 publication of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, which revealed how the party top brass had been biased against then-primary candidate Bernie Sanders. The U.S. intelligence community subsequently asserted that the emails had been stolen by Russia hackers, then laundered through WikiLeaks.

But at this point, Assange was already a longstanding resident of the Ecuadorian embassy basement in Knightsbridge, London.

Why was Assange hiding?

Now rewind to 2010, when two WikiLeaks volunteers went to the police in Sweden to ask them to track Assange down so he could be tested for sexually-transmitted diseasesboth women had had sex with him. Based on their statements, the police ordered his arrest for sexual molestation and rape. Assange submitted to questioning by the Stockholm police, but then, having not been charged by the Swedes, he left for the U.K.

The Swedish police still wanted to talk to him, though, and the country made an extradition request to the U.K. He fought the warrant but lost in successive U.K. court cases, all the way up to the Supreme Court. Then, fearing that Sweden would extradite him to the U.S. to face trial over the 2010 leaksand, he claimed, possibly the death penaltyAssange asked Ecuador for asylum.

Ecuadors center-left government granted his request, and in June 2012 he took refuge in the countrys London embassy. In doing so, he broke his bail conditions. He did not emerge until today.

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said in a video address that Assange had displayed discourteous and aggressive behavior against Ecuador and violated international treaties, leading to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable.

Moreno, who took office in 2017, said he had inherited the situation from his predecessor, Rafael Correa, and had set protocols for Assange to follow, which Assange then flouted. He particularly violated the norm of not intervening in the internal affairs of other states, Moreno said, citing WikiLeaks recent publication of Vatican documents. He accused the hacker of installing equipment that blocked the embassys security cameras, mistreating embassy guards and accessing embassy security files without permission.

Ecuador decidio soberanamente retirar el asilo diplomatico a Julian Assange por violar reiteradamente convenciones internacionales y protocolo de convivencia. #EcuadorSoberano pic.twitter.com/V02pvvtPY0  Lenin Moreno (@Lenin) April 11, 2019

What happens now?

If Assange was simply facing the U.K. charge of skipping bail, hed only be looking at a sentence of up to a year in British jail. But thats not all. After the Ecuadorians invited Londons Metropolitan Police to come and get him, Assange was taken to a police station where he was then re-arrested on behalf of the U.S. authorities.

It emerged late last year that, much as Assange feared, American prosecutors had a sealed indictment ready and waiting for himits existence was revealed by a filing error. On Thursday, the U.S. Justice Department unveiled its charge against Assange, for conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer.

Assange stands accused of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to crack a Defense Department computer system password, so she could log into the system under someone elses name and take the documents she then transmitted to WikiLeaks.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of five years. President Moreno had said in his video address that he had received a guarantee from the U.K. government that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he might face the death sentence.

The Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ) issued a statement after Assanges initial arrest to say any charges relating to the Manning leaks would be an attack on all investigative journalists. However, the actual charge here is over alleged computer intrusion, not the publication of the documents that were subsequently taken from the DoD systems.

In a statement, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May hailed the arrest and said this is now a legal matter for the courts. U.K. Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt also praised Moreno for his courageous decision.

Were not making any judgement about Julian Assanges innocence or guilt, that is for the courts to decide. But what is not acceptable is for someone to escape facing justice and he has tried to do that for a very long time and that is why he is no hero, said Hunt.

But what about Sweden?

The Swedish investigation into Assange was discontinued in mid-2017, and the statute of limitations on most of his suspected crimes means those avenues are now permanently closed. However, the statute of limitations on one suspected rape crime will only expire in mid-August 2020.

That means the Swedes could now reopen that investigation and again request Assanges extradition to Sweden to face further questioning. However, the Swedish chief prosecutors office said Thursday that Assanges arrest had taken it by surprise, and it had not yet been able to take a position on what should happen next.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)  White House hopeful Kamala Harris has nabbed her first Iowa endorsement from a major state Democratic activist.

Jean Hessburg, a former Iowa Democratic Party executive director and the current chair of the party's Women's Caucus, told The Associated Press that she's endorsing Harris because "she's tough, she's got heart. She's quick on her feet, she's sharp as they come and great on all the issues."

The senator from California said in a statement she was proud of the endorsement.

"Women will be a deciding voice in the 2020 Iowa Caucuses and I will do all I can to earn their support," Harris said.

Hessburg hadn't spoken to Harris before she endorsed her  she saw the senator during a televised town hall and was impressed that she seemed "quite at ease with her positions ... and unflappable, which I think someone has to be against Donald Trump." She reached out to the Harris campaign and offered her support, which turned into an endorsement.

Hessburg also works as a public relations specialist for the Iowa State Education Association, one of the state's biggest teachers unions, though she's not endorsing in her capacity with the union.

She'll appear with Harris at a house party on Thursday hosted by Emerge Iowa, a group focused on recruiting and training Democratic women to run for office. Iowa made history last year by electing women to Congress and to the governorship for the first time ever. The state also elected a record number of women to the Iowa state legislature.

And female voters are a significant force in Iowa: They made up more than 52% of the electorate during the midterm general election  and nearly 59 percent of the Democrats who voted were women, according to the Iowa secretary of state.

Hessburg could be a key advocate for Harris among those voters. She said she'll do "whatever it is they need me to do" to support her campaign.
By Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland GENEVA/LONDON (Reuters) - An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that has killed more than 700 people and is continuing to spread does not constitute an international emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Declaring the epidemic a "public health emergency of international concern" would have signaled that greater resources and international coordination are needed. The WHO's independent Emergency Committee, which analyzed the latest data, said the disease was entrenched in several epicenters in the northeast and was being transmitted in health care settings. It had not spread across borders to Uganda, Rwanda or South Sudan, but neighboring countries should shore up their preparedness, the experts said. "It was an almost unanimous vote that this would not constitute a PHEIC (public health emergency of international concern) because we are moderately optimistic that this outbreak can be brought into control - not immediately, but still within a foreseeable time," panel chairman Professor Robert Steffen told a news conference. Dozens of new cases reported this week have been mainly in the epicenters of Butembe, Katwe and Vuhovi, said Mike Ryan, head of the WHO's health emergencies program. "It's quite a focused amplification of disease in a very specific geographic area," Ryan said. "But the disease there has risen because of lack of access to that community, we've fallen behind in starting vaccination rings," he said, referring to attacks on health centers by armed groups in February that cut-off hotspot areas. "Vaccine is proving to be a highly effective way of stopping this virus but if we can't vaccinate people we cannot protect them," he added, noting that nearly 100,000 people have been vaccinated. Experts have declared four emergencies in the past decade: the H1N1 virus that caused an influenza pandemic (2009), a major Ebola outbreak in West Africa (2014), polio (2014) and Zika virus (2016). Some experts expressed concern that the Emergency Committee was too narrowly interpreting WHO guidelines. "This is a deeply concerning event, due to the pathogen itself, the total number of cases, the increase in cases just this week, and the difficulty of coordinating the response due to conflict - that needs to receive the appropriate level of attention," health experts Rebecca Katz and Alexandra Phelan of Georgetown University in Washington D.C. said in a statement. The Ebola outbreak - by far the biggest Congo has seen, and the world's second largest in history - was declared by national authorities in August. It is concentrated in Congo's North Kivu and Ituri provinces. It has already infected at least 1,206 people, of whom 764 have died - giving a death rate of 63 percent. They include 20 new cases reported by the health ministry on Thursday, another one-day record after 18 on Wednesday. Two workers at the Butembo airport tested positive, it said. (Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Kate Kelland Additional reporting by Aaron Ross in Dakar; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Frances Kerry)
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon's Hezbollah raised the prospect of retaliation by Iran and its allies over U.S. sanctions, saying on Wednesday that all options were on the table were Washington to take steps that "threaten our nation".

Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the heavily armed Iranian-backed Shi'ite group, said the United States' move this week to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards as a terrorist organization reflected a failure of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

Iran and its allies, which include Hezbollah, had so far made do with condemnation in response to the U.S. sanctions, said Nasrallah, before adding that this was "not a permanent and fixed policy".

"There are measures which, if taken by the Americans ... who said they will remain without response?" he said in a televised speech delivered to an event for Hezbollah's wounded fighters.

"There will be an appropriate response for sure," he said. Iran and its allies held "many strong cards", he added.

Hezbollah was founded by the Revolutionary Guards in 1982 and has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has tightened sanctions against Hezbollah as part of its wider regional policy to counter Iran.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday that Trump would continue to increase pressure on Iran.

(Reporting by Beirut bureau; Editing by Giles Elgood)
By Toby Sterling and Stephanie van den Berg AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Just days after the United States' government revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, judges at the ICC on Friday rejected her request to open an investigation into alleged atrocities in the war in Afghanistan, citing practical reasons. The decision, which prosecutor Fatou Bensouda may appeal, angered human rights groups and means that the Taliban, the Afghan government and the United States will not face any investigation at the ICC for their alleged crimes, which dated mostly from 2003-04. U.S. President Donald Trump called the decision "a major international victory," and denounced the international court for its "broad, unaccountable, prosecutorial powers," as well as for what he considers its threat to American sovereignty. "Any attempt to target American, Israeli or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response," Trump said. White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, a sharp critic of the ICC, called the ruling a "vindication" of the U.S.' tough policy against the court that he has engineered and a "stinging defeat" for the prosecutors. He told reporters that even the cases of ousted Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who Washington wants to step down, should fall under the jurisdiction of their home countries, and not the ICC. "Fundamentally, political maturation and responsibility requires that people be held responsible by their own societies," Bolton said. In an unusual ruling, the ICC judges said Bensouda's case seemed to have met the court's criteria for jurisdiction and admissibility, but given an array of practical considerations that made chances of success remote, it did not make sense to pursue it further. They cited a failure to gather evidence at an early stage, a lack of cooperation from governments involved, and the likely costs as prohibitive. In addition, "the current circumstances of the situation in Afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited," the judges said in a 2-1 ruling. "An investigation into the situation in Afghanistan at this stage would not serve the interests of justice and (the chamber) accordingly rejects the request," the judges said. Bensouda said her office would "consider all available legal remedies" against the decision. International legal experts saw the ruling in part as a recognition of the realities the court faces in conducting prosecutions. Human rights groups were incensed. The decision "is insane and politically charged," Karine Bonneau, director of international justice at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said in a tweet. The ruling was "an affirmation of double standards. This situation was exactly why the court was created," she added. Kevin Jon Heller, associate professor of International Criminal law at Amsterdam University, said the decision appeared to impose significant hurdles on any case before the ICC in terms of the chances of a successful prosecution. "If these are the criteria they are never going to open an investigation", he said. COURT WAS 'LAST HOPE' In 2006, Bensouda's predecessor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, opened an examination into alleged war crimes by all parties in the conflict in Afghanistan, including the possible role of U.S. personnel in relation to the detention of suspects. Bensouda took over the dossier in 2010, but did not request a formal investigation until November 2017. The United States revoked Bensouda's entry visa earlier this month, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in March that Washington would withdraw or deny visas to any ICC staff investigating possible war crimes by U.S. forces or allies in Afghanistan. ICC prosecutors said in 2015 they had evidence suggesting international forces in Afghanistan had caused serious harm to detainees by subjecting them to physical and psychological abuse. They also noted that there was evidence of violations committed by Taliban and forces that supported the Afghan government. U.S.-backed forces drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 at the start of a war that has dragged on for 17 years. Human rights and victims' organizations in Kabul called the ICC ruling "absolutely shocking". "We the Afghan people have suffered so much and the court was a last hope for all of us in a country which is completely lacking justice," Hadi Marifat of the human rights group AHRDO told Reuters. The ICC is a court of last resort with 122 member states. It acts only when countries within its jurisdiction are found to be unable or unwilling to seriously investigate war crimes, genocide or other serious atrocities. The court has convicted three men for war crimes and crimes against humanity since it was set up in 2002: Congolese warlords Germain Katanga and Thomas Lubanga and a former Islamist rebel who admitted wrecking holy shrines during Mali's 2012 conflict. There have been repeated negotiations in recent months between the Taliban and U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to try to broker a deal to end the Afghan conflict. So far the Taliban has refused to meet directly with the Afghan government, which they dismiss as a U.S. puppet regime. (Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; additional reporting by Toby Sterling, Anthony Deutsch, Bart Meijer and Steve Holland; editing by Alison Williams, Frances Kerry and G Crosse)
Donita Jose By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: The argumentative Hyderabadi, who is most vocal on social media platforms, has lost a golden opportunity to hold his lawmakers accountable. Going by the dismal voter turnout, it is evident most Hyderabadis decided to stay indoors, comfortably away from the scorching heat.

Despite several voter awareness campaigns, and continuous appeals from politicians asking them to come out and exercise their franchise, it appears these Hyderabadis preferred a holiday at home over their fundamental right.

Give them free Biryani, then they will vote. The below-par voter turnout in the four urban constituencies of Hyderabad has opened a barrage of jokes on social media, writing off the average Hyderabadi voter as a Nawaab who chooses to sit at home and relish biryani than come out and chose his leaders.

The jokes, perhaps, are not so harsh. After all, the four constituencies of Chevella, Hyderabad, Secunderabad and Malkajgiri recorded the worst voter turnouts in the last 15 years at 53.80 per cent, 39.49 per cent, 39.20 per cent and 42.75 per cent respectively.

Take for instance Secunderabad, which had one of the most exciting contests between BJPs Kishan Reddy and TRS Talasani Sai Kiran. Many hoped the voter turnout would be good this time. Who would lose the chance to participate in such a juicy fight? However, from the 22,20,104 electors, merely 8.70 lakh voters turned up on Thursday.

FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

A similar shocker came from Hyderabad, where the turnout fell from 53.29 per cent in 2014 to 39.49 per cent in 2019.

Even in the largest constituency of Malkajgiri, with such a diverse voter base and an intense battle between Congress Revanth Reddy and TRS Marri Rajashekar Reddy, the news was just as disappointing. The candidates had done everything under the sun to woo voter. But in the end, nothing mattered. Only 42.75 per cent of registered voters made the trip to polling booths, less than the 51.46 per cent in 2014.

In Serilingampally, where tech-savvy voters make up a good portion of Chevellas 60per cent urban voter-base, it was the same.

This said, these elections were also one of the most engaging one for the urban voters. There were several voter awareness programs conducted across the city as part of the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation. ECI had conducted mock voting drills, flash mobs and VVPAT awareness drives, all of which cost the exchequer lakhs of rupees. This was also an election that was technologically far more advance, something that should have played in favour of the urban voter. They indeed have greater access to mobile phones, that could have helped them seek assistance to reach polling booths and so on.

In such a scenario, TRS leader KT Rama Raos comment from two days ago seems to have come true.

At an interaction with techies, he was about to leave when someone asked him to stay for another question to which he retorted, You have to let me go, because I have to hit the streets; and I really have to go to people who I believe will actually vote. Indeed, the responsible voters in the State are anywhere but its urban centres. KTR had urged urban voters in general, to prove him wrong by coming out to vote in large numbers. One wonders not whether these voters are up for the challenge, but whether they even care about it at all.

Awareness campaigns fall on deaf ears

The Election Commission had conducted several voter awareness campaigns in the past few months, spending crores of rupees in the process. However, it seems, none of them worked. Hyderabadis stayed away from polling booths on Thursday, overshadowed by rural voters of constituencies such as Medak, which recorded a 68 per cent turnout
Democratic presidential candidate Jay Inslee wants his party to scrap any thoughts of impeaching President Donald Trump and instead focus on voting him out of office.

"We should have a dramatic, engaged, concerted, energetic and successful effort in November 2020 to make Donald Trump a blip in history," Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said during a CNN town hall Wednesday.

He said damning details still could emerge about Trump's 2016 campaign and business dealings but added that a Republican-led Senate would never remove the president.

Inslee, an underdog in the crowded 2020 Democratic field, faces pressure to raise his profile in a campaign dominated by other better-known figures such as former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Inslee, 68, used the spotlight to emphasize his focus on combating climate change while noting his record as a liberal governor and his generally sunny approach to politics  a package that, he argued, makes him an ideal foil to the Republican president.

"I believe that I'm a perfect matchup against him because I'm a very optimistic person, and he's a very pessimistic person," Inslee said. "I believe in the ability of America to do big things. He thinks he wants to crawl down and just put a wall around us."

Inslee praised his fellow Democrats for pushing the Green New Deal, but he carefully avoided an absolute endorsement of specific provisions in the resolution that envisions reordering the U.S. economy to make the nation carbon neutral in a decade. Inslee offered a timeline that would "decarbonize our entire economy in the next several decades."

A former congressman, Inslee said in response to a question that he regrets voting for a 1994 crime bill that he now sees as exacerbating the mass incarceration of poor and nonwhite Americans, especially young black men. "If I knew then what I know now, I would not have cast that vote," he said.

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But Inslee also touted his vote in the same Congress for a ban on certain military-style weapons. He said that helped cost him his seat in a GOP-leaning central Washington district.

"I have never regretted that vote," Inslee said, "because I do not believe that any congressman's or politician's seat is more important than any child's life."

And he noted that after initially opposing Washington state's move to legalize marijuana, he now realizes that fears of rising crime and rampant use were overblown. He has since pardoned about 3,000 nonviolent marijuana offenders and said he wants the drug legalized nationally.

About six weeks into his campaign, Inslee acknowledged the stakes he faces as the contest shifts into the next phase. He tacitly admitted he's yet to reach the grassroots fundraising threshold that would qualify him for the Democratic National Committee's June and July debates  key opportunities for longshot candidates to gain attention and catch fire.

Inslee will follow his appearance with a multiday campaign swing through Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, three of the first four states to cast caucus and primary ballots next winter.

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Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP .
By Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and Costas Pitas LONDON (Reuters) - British police dragged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of Ecuador's embassy on Thursday after his seven-year asylum was revoked, paving the way for his extradition to the United States for one of the biggest ever leaks of classified information. Hours after the frail-looking Assange, with white hair and a long beard, was carried head-first by at least seven men out of the London embassy and into a waiting police van, U.S. officials announced he had been charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. As he was being hauled out of the embassy in a dramatic scene shortly after 0900 GMT after Ecuador terminated his asylum, the Australian-born Assange was heard shouting, "This is unlawful, I'm not leaving." British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed the news in parliament, to cheers and cries of "Hear, hear!" from lawmakers. But in Washington, President Donald Trump, who in 2016 said "I love WikiLeaks" after the website released emails that U.S. authorities have said were hacked by Russia to harm his election opponent Hillary Clinton, told reporters he had no opinion on the charges against Assange. "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing," Trump said. Assange gave a thumbs up in handcuffs as he was taken from a police station to a London court, where he pronounced himself not guilty of failing to surrender in 2012. Judge Michael Snow called Assange, wearing a black jacket and black shirt, a "narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests" and convicted him of skipping bail. Sentencing will be at a later date. Police said they arrested Assange, 47, after being invited into the embassy following Ecuador's withdrawal of asylum. He took refuge there in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was later dropped. Assange was carried out of the building - located behind the luxury department store Harrods - carrying a copy of Gore Vidal's "History of The National Security State", which he continued reading in court. In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department said Assange was charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American diplomatic communications. Legal experts said more U.S. charges could be coming. The indictment was made secretly in March 2018 and unsealed on Thursday. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted, with legal experts saying more charges were possible. Ecuador suspended Julian Assange's citizenship and accused him and others at WikiLeaks of collaborating in attempts to destabilize the Andean nation's government. FRICTION WITH ECUADOR Assange was offered refuge in 2012 by Ecuador's then-president Rafael Correa, but his relationship with Ecuador soured under Correa's successor Lenin Moreno, who has said Assange violated the terms of his asylum. Ecuador accused Assange of leaking information about Moreno's personal life. Lawyers for Assange said he may risk torture and his life would be in danger if he were to be extradited to the United States. The arrest, after years holed up in a few cramped rooms at the embassy, represented one of the most sensational turns in a tumultuous life that has transformed the computer programmer into a fugitive wanted by the United States. "The whole House will welcome the news this morning that the Metropolitan Police have arrested Julian Assange, arrested for breach of bail after nearly seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy," May said. Ecuador's foreign minister said his country was not aware of any active extradition requests for Assange before it terminated his asylum. Supporters of Assange said Ecuador had betrayed him at the behest of Washington, illegally ended his asylum and engineered a dark moment for press freedom. "Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges," Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said in a statement reacting to the U.S. indictment. His admirers have hailed Assange as a hero for exposing what they describe as abuse of power by modern states and for championing free speech. His detractors have painted him as a dangerous figure complicit in Russian efforts to undermine the West and U.S. security, and dispute that he is a journalist. "Under the guise of transparency, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have effectively acted as an arm of the Russian intelligence services for years," U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, said. "Hopefully, he will now face justice." The Kremlin said it hoped Assange's rights would not be violated. WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that laid bare critical U.S. appraisals of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family. Assange made international headlines in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff. U.S. INVESTIGATION Assange's U.S. indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to the administration of former President Barack Obama. It was triggered in part by WikiLeaks' publication in 2010 of U.S. military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the diplomatic communications - disclosures that embarrassed the United States and strained relations with allies. The Justice Department said Assange was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain. The indictment said Assange in March 2010 engaged in a conspiracy to assist Manning, formerly named Bradley Manning, in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications. Manning's lawyers demanded the release of the former intelligence analyst, jailed last month after being held in contempt by a judge in Virginia for refusing to testify before a grand jury, and said "continued detention would be purely punitive." A Swedish lawyer representing the alleged rape victim said she would push to have prosecutors reopen the case, but a retired senior prosecutor and chairman of NGO Victim Support Sweden said that may be difficult. Britain said no person was above the law. "Julian Assange is no hero, he has hidden from the truth for years and years," British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said. "It's not so much Julian Assange being held hostage in the Ecuadorean embassy, it's actually Julian Assange holding the Ecuadorean embassy hostage in a situation that was absolutely intolerable for them." Friends of Assange said his solitary existence in the embassy was tough on him. "It was a miserable existence and I could see it was a strain on him, but a strain he managed rather well," said Vaughan Smith, a friend who had visited Assange. "The thing that was most difficult for Julian was the solitude." "He was very tough, but the last year in particular was very difficult. He was constantly being surveilled and spied upon. There was no privacy for him," Smith said. Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. The website published secret official information, infuriating the United States and other countries. WikiLeaks said Ecuador had illegally terminated his political asylum in violation of international law. "Assange's critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom," said Edward Snowden, a former U.S. National Security Agency contractor who fled to Moscow after revealing massive U.S. intelligence gathering. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and Costas Pitas; Additional reporting by Alistair Smout, Andrew MacAskill, Henry Nicholls, Peter Nicholls, Dylan Martinez in London; Anna Ringstrom, Simon Johnson and Niklas Pollard in Stockholm; Mark Hosenball, Sarah N. Lynch and Makini Brice in Washington; Nathan Layne in New York; Sabela Ojea in Madrid; Alexandra Valencia in Quito; and Julia Cobb and Helen Murphy in Bogota; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge, Kate Holton and Will Dunham; Editing by Hugh Lawson,; Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  The Latest on an Arkansas bill that would ban "sanctuary cities" in the state (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

Arkansas' Republican governor says he will sign a bill cutting off funding to "sanctuary cities" that don't cooperate with federal immigration authorities despite his objections that the measure could open the door to racial profiling.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday he'll sign the bill approved by the majority-Republican Legislature. The measure also prohibits cities from preventing local law enforcement from asking about a person's citizenship or immigration status.

Hutchinson had asked lawmakers to change the bill after he said he was concerned it would open the door to racial profiling. But the bill's sponsors rebuffed the request and lawmakers gave the bill final approval Wednesday.

The Arkansas Municipal League, which opposes the measure, says it doesn't know of any cities in the state with sanctuary policies.

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11 a.m.

Arkansas lawmakers have sent Gov. Asa Hutchinson legislation Wednesday cutting off funding to "sanctuary cities" that don't cooperate with federal immigration authorities over the Republican's objections that the measure could open the door to racial profiling.

The House vote was 71-24 in favor of the measure, which would also prevent cities from blocking local law enforcement from asking about a person's citizenship or immigration status. Any cities found to be in violation would be ineligible to receive discretionary funds administered by the state.

Hutchinson, a former federal Homeland Security official who oversaw border security efforts, had asked lawmakers to change the measure, but the bill's sponsors rebuffed his request. Hutchinson has said he's generally supportive of the bill, but hasn't said what he would do if it reached him without that amendment.

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Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Reuters) - In a White House where no secret is safe for long, one development has remained stubbornly confidential - the contents of a Middle East peace plan authored by President Donald Trump's advisers Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt.

With Trump having delighted Israelis and angered Palestinians by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017 and moving the American Embassy to the holy city last May, a U.S.-brokered peace deal may seem farther away now than when talks collapsed five years ago.

Then on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a clear path to re-election, only days after proposing to annex Jewish West Bank settlements, traditionally viewed as illegal by much of the world. The Trump administration has yet to comment on the election-eve remarks.

Aides expect Trump to release the plan once Netanyahu forms a government coalition, and officials say that despite criticism of the administration's moves to date, the plan will demand compromises from both sides.

That the peace plan has remained a secret is remarkable in a White House where drafts of executive orders, confidential conversations and internal deliberations all find their way to the front pages.

Kushner and Greenblatt have limited the plan's distribution over the two years they have been crafting it. It has been kept secret "to ensure people approach it with an open mind" when it is released, a senior administration official said.

Only four people have regular access - Kushner, Greenblatt, U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and Kushner aide Avi Berkowitz, the official said.

Trump is briefed regularly on the contents but is not believed to have read the entire document of dozens of pages.

"He is briefed if something interesting is happening or there is an idea they want to run by him," the official said.

Kushner, a New York real estate developer and husband of Trump's daughter Ivanka, and Greenblatt, a former lawyer for Trump, joined the process knowing little about the tortured, decades-long path in search of Arab-Israeli peace.

Story continues

Their proposal addresses such core political issues as the status of Jerusalem, and separately aims at helping the Palestinians strengthen their economy.

Cloaked in secrecy is whether the plan will propose outright the creation of a Palestinian state, the Palestinians core demand.

On Wednesday, Trump's secretary of state Mike Pompeo said the plan would be presented before too long but, when asked, declined to say whether the administration favored a two-state solution, long the basis of Middle East peacemaking.

Not even Trump, who is known to blurt out news whenever he feels like it, has dribbled out details of the peace plan because of the sensitivity.

He tells his Middle East envoys, "If you guys can get this done youre going to be the greatest negotiators in history," said a senior White House official.

'YOUR CHILDREN'S FUTURE'

When Kushner and Greenblatt began developing their plan in 2017, they asked the parties to look to the future and describe an outcome on each issue that they could accept rather than get locked into historical stances, two officials said.

"You can't let your grandfather's conflict hold back your children's future" was their message to both sides, one official said.

Palestinians reject Trump's pro-Israel policies.

"The extremist and militaristic agenda, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has been emboldened by the Trump administrations reckless policies and blind support," said PLO Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Pompeo and White House national security adviser John Bolton are all kept up to date on the peace plan, but have kept a hands-off approach to it, deferring to Kushner, two other officials said.

The secrecy maintained by Kushner and Greenblatt, even as they refine and polish the plan, has posed something of a challenge for Gulf governments, who want to know the details before committing resources to a Palestinian fund.

Kushner and Greenblatt toured Gulf states in February to promote the economic part of the plan and get opinions about it, without providing a detailed view of the contents of the more crucial political section.

One of their stops was in Qatar.

Qatari Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Lolwah Al Khater, speaking to a small group of reporters in Washington recently, gave no indication that Kushner and Greenblatt provided much in the way of details on the political plan when they visited.

"I don't think its still set in stone," she said.

Dennis Ross, a longtime Middle East envoy and now a distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the U.S. team still has "a lot of work to do to make sure that Arab leaders aren't surprised by what's going to be presented, and they need to see it in writing, not verbally."

But he said secrecy at this point is understandable.

"Holding something very close makes sense and its not taken as a negative by the parties, because in the end, if the content isnt leaking out, it also makes sure that what would be controversial doesnt create an immediate firestorm. Theres a logic to that," Ross said. (Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Arshad Mohammed Editing by Mary Milliken and Howard Goller)
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Photo by Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM



Updated at 11:19 a.m.



Sam Patten, a Washington lobbyist and onetime associate of Paul Manafort, avoided prison time Friday on a charge that he failed to disclose past consulting work for a Ukrainian political party, as a federal judge in Washington sentenced him to three years of probation and ordered him to pay a $5,000 fine.



His sentencing before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson came eight months after he pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, an 80-year-old law requiring the disclosure of U.S.-based lobbying for foreign governments and other interests. After decades of lax enforcement, the law returned to prominence in the prosecution of Manafort, who pleaded guilty last year to charges related to his own lobbying for Ukraine.



Patten pleaded guilty to communicating with U.S. lawmakers on behalf of the Opposition Bloc, a Russia-aligned political party in Ukraine, without disclosing that work to the Justice Department as required under FARA. Prosecutors alleged Patten sought to arrange for his Russian business partner and a member of the Opposition Bloc, identified in court papers as a prominent Ukrainian oligarch, to meet with members of Congress and their staffs.



As part of the plea deal, Patten also admitted that he brokered access to Trumps inauguration for a pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarch. The scheme, in which he arranged for a U.S. citizen to serve as a straw donor and give $50,000 to Trumps inaugural committee for four tickets to the event, was designed to circumvent the federal prohibition on foreigners contributing funds to such ceremonies.



The special counsels office referred Pattens case to career federal prosecutors in Washington, who backed the longtime lobbyists bid for leniency.



On Friday, Pattens defense attorney, Schertler & Onorato partner Stuart Sears, said his client had faced a choice along the way in this case between his career and assisting the government.



And he chose his country, Sears said, adding that Patten had likely sacrificed his career in doing so.



I think thats an important consideration for the court to take in this case, he added.



Patten, whod written a letter to Jackson in advance of Fridays hearing, said he fully appreciated the seriousness of the offense with which Im charged.



I pled guilty. I recognize the serious of my conduct and crimes I committed. I behaved as if the law did not apply to me, and that was wrong, he said.



Jackson appeared struck by Pattens cooperation but said he had been accused of a number of offenses. None of them were minor, she said.



Echoing statements she made at Manaforts sentencing in March, Jackson stressed what she saw as the value of FARA in bringing transparency to the American political process. The whole point and the only pt of the FARA statute is to ensure transparency in the political process and the legislative process and put people on notice of when a foreign government is seeking to influence U.S. policy, she said.



People need the facts for democracy to work, she said.



But, noting his cooperation with prosecutors and other factors, Jackson said, there are reasons your sentence is not going to be like Manaforts sentence.



Days before sentencing, prosecutors said Patten should be credited for his cooperation with the Russia investigation, noting that he had been prepared to testify against Manafort in Washington. After he was found guilty of financial fraud in Alexandria, Virginia, Manafort pleaded guilty in Washington federal court to a pair of conspiracy charges connected to his past work for the pro-Russian government of Ukraine.



Patten met with government investigators, either in person or over the phone, on nine separate occasions. And his experience as an overseas political consultant made him a valuable resource for the government in a number of other criminal investigations, prosecutors said.



At Fridays sentencing, Jackson appeared miffed by the decision of prosecutors to not recommend a specific sentence for Patten. Prosecutors had declined to provide that specific recommendation, citing in a court filing the practice of the special counsels office.



"I have to say, I'm not exactly sure where the new tradition of demurring instead of making a recommendation comes from. I believe the culprit may be in the courtroom, she said, in an apparent reference to Andrew Weissmann, a top prosecutor on Muellers team, who attended the sentencing.



Still, she described the prosecutors court filing earlier in the week as extremely supportive of Pattens request for leniency.



It is, said prosecutor Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez.







Read more:



Greg Craig, Former Skadden Partner, Charged With Lying About Ukraine Work



Prosecutors Back Lobbyist Sam Patten's Push for Leniency in Mueller Case



Manafort Judge Says Foreign Lobbying Law Is No 'Pesky Regulation'



Charge Against DC Lobbyist Boosts Focus on Foreign-Agent Registration
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange



Doughty Street Chambers has been retained to act as the principal legal team defending Julian Assange, who was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday (April 11) on breach of bail charges. He now faces extradition to the U.S. to answer computer-hacking charges.



Assange was represented at a preliminary hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court by Doughty Street barrister Liam Walker, with barrister Ben Cooper advising specifically on issues relating to Assanges potential U.S. extradition.



Doughty Street barrister Jennifer Robinson, who has represented Assange for almost a decade, will continue to act as the WikiLeaks founder's principal legal adviser. No solicitors are involved in Assanges defence, according to the chambers. Former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon is coordinating the Assange global legal team from Madrid.



Legal Week first reported Robinson's involvement with the WikiLeaks founder in 2010, when she was at City media firm Finers Stephens, and Assange was first made the subject of a U.S. investigation.



Robinson focuses on free speech and civil liberties issues, and has also represented clients including The New York Times and Bloomberg.



According to a Doughty Street chambers spokesperson, the average time to complete an extradition case to the U.S. is 10 months. However, because Assanges case has already been litigated quite extensively, it could take less time.



In a press statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday (April 11), Assange is subject to a U.S./U.K. extradition treaty in connection to agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer, and for engaging in a conspiracy with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.



After Assanges arrest in London, the U.S. Government reactivated a provisional warrant for his arrest, first issued in December 2017. The U.S. Government now has 45 days to deliver a full request to the U.K for Assanges extradition.
By Anthony Esposito

MERIDA, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican government and business leaders met with U.S. counterparts for a second straight day on Friday, seeking to resolve border delays hurting commerce, hasten ratification of a trade deal, and address metals tariffs.

The talks coincide with renewed tensions over trade and the U.S.-Mexico border after two years of uncertainty sparked by President Donald Trump's demand to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Officials including U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Mexican Economy Minister Graciela Marquez are meeting on the sidelines of the so-called U.S.-Mexico CEO Dialogue in the Mexican city of Merida in the Yucatan peninsula.

Discussions are centering on ratification of the deal agreed to replace NAFTA, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), as well as a dispute over tomato trade and the steel and aluminum tariffs the Trump administration imposed on Mexico nearly a year ago under the "Section 232," Marquez told Reuters.

Marquez will be able to tout a workers' rights bill that Mexico's lower house of Congress approved late on Thursday, legislation that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called key to winning over Democrats wary of USMCA.

Officials are also discussing delays at the border which have cost businesses on both sides millions of dollars.

Slowdowns began late last month after Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not halt a surge of people, mostly Central Americans, seeking asylum in the United States. In the end, his administration reassigned several hundred border agents to handle the influx of migrants, creating staffing shortages that triggered long delays.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said at his regular morning news conference in anticipation of the talks in Merida, "And I expect if there's a problem with the time it's taking for goods to be transported and pass customs, that things will gradually return to normal."

Story continues

U.S. Customs and Border Protection will send about 100 agents to the border to speed up crossing times, a Democratic U.S. representative said on Thursday.

REFINERY

U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette met Mexico's Energy Minister Rocio Nahle and later told reporters that she had indicated to him that her government did not plan to roll back an energy overhaul passed by the previous administration.

The 2013-14 reform opened up oil production and exploration to private capital, drawing significant interest from U.S. investors. At the time, Lopez Obrador roundly attacked the reform. However, he has since said he will give private operators time to show that they can increase output.

Lopez Obrador wants to revive state oil company Pemex and plans to build an $8 billion refinery in his home state of Tabasco. A U.S. embassy spokesman said that Mexican officials hoped to help fund the project by reducing tax evasion.

Mexico is eager to drum up investor interest in strategic projects in its southeastern states and allay any fears about how Lopez Obrador has been managing the Mexican economy, Latin America's second largest, since taking office in December.

Lopez Obrador is scheduled to give closing remarks at the event later in the day.

Economy Minister Marquez said fabricated structured steel would also be discussed after the U.S. International Trade Commission said last month that domestic producers were being harmed by imports of the product from Canada, China and Mexico.

(Reporting by Anthony Esposito; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)
Washington (AFP) - The United States initially cheered on the Arab Spring but as fresh popular uprisings sweep through Sudan and Algeria, President Donald Trump has taken a more passive role, convinced that strongmen can be his best partners.

The State Department on Thursday hailed the "historic moment" as Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir was toppled after 30 years in power but appeared to be taken by surprise, with a senior official just days earlier declining to describe the mounting protests as a "crisis."

In both Sudan and Algeria, where veteran president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was pushed out last week, the United States has only gently encouraged the two countries' new military leaders to support democracy, voicing support for "the people."

The reticence contrasts with former president Barack Obama who in his speeches allied himself with the aspirations of street protesters, even if he also turned hesitant as the region became engulfed in bloodshed.

Trump sent a powerful, if unstated, message on protests Tuesday at the White House when he welcomed and hailed Egypt's military ruler turned president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who in 2013 deposed the leader elected after the Arab Spring, with authorities shortly afterward killing 700 protesters in two Cairo squares.

Testifying later Tuesday before a Senate subcommittee, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointedly refused to call Sisi a "tyrant."

"There's no doubt that it's a mean, nasty world out there. But not every one of these leaders is the same," said Pompeo, who liberally denounces the leaders of Venezuela and Iran as tyrants.

"Some of them are trying to wipe entire nations off the face of the Earth and others are actually partnering with us to help keep Americans safe," he said.

Trump has praised Sisi's crackdown on Islamic State extremists and forged a close bond with Saudi leaders despite the killing of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The US leader has even said he is "in love" with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, described by human rights groups as perhaps the world's most repressive leader, as Trump seeks to negotiate a landmark nuclear accord.

Story continues

- America 'on the sidelines' -

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said that Trump "seems to have a personal affinity for dictators and autocrats of all stripes around the world" and has also stripped down US diplomatic resources.

"For more than two years, the Trump administration has gutted America's diplomatic tools to respond to the complicated political transitions unfolding in Sudan and Algeria, and his team has made freedom and democracy a much lower priority in America's foreign policy agenda than any other US administration in recent memory," Katulis said.

"So in a very real sense, America is sitting on the sidelines and not doing much but watching events unfold," he said.

Katulis called the absence "a missed opportunity," as the United States has a strong interest in encouraging reforms -- and as the Arab world could still see more uprisings.

While Trump is unequivocal in backing US-friendly authoritarian rulers, Obama was more conflicted.

In 2011, he made the fateful decision to encourage Egypt's Hosni Mubarak to bow to protesters and exit, despite the longtime president's alliance with Washington and Israel's continued support for him.

Obama balked at intervening in Syria's brutal conflict and only reluctantly backed a campaign to oust Moamer Kadhafi in Libya, which eight years later remains a war zone.

- Encouraging changes? -

And it was the Obama administration that opened a dialogue offering to ease sanctions and mend ties with Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes in Darfur.

Robert Malley, a former aide to Obama who is now president of the International Crisis Group, said the Trump administration was "playing it much more carefully" on backing protesters.

But the critical question is how the administration supports the countries' transitions, he said.

Sudan's demonstrators, he said, are unlikely to be satisfied by coup leaders' decision to stay in power for two years.

"It will be important for the new leadership in Khartoum, whatever it is, to understand that sanctions are still there and won't be lifted until certain steps are taken," Malley said.

"In both Sudan and Algeria, the big questions start now," he said.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has struck a defiant note over his failed summit with US President Donald Trump in Hanoi and insisted Pyongyang would overcome the effect of sanctions, state media reported Thursday.

The remarks were Kim's first official comment on the North's position since talks on denuclearisation with Washington broke down in Vietnam in February, in part over Pyongyang's demands for immediate sanctions relief.

Trump is set to host South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House later on Thursday, seeking to rekindle dialogue with the North.

Kim told top officials of the ruling Workers' Party on Wednesday to push ahead with "self-reliance" to undermine the sanctions, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

He said developing the socialist economy would "deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring the DPRK to its knees," the report said, using the acronym for the North's official name.

Kim made no mention of nuclear weapons, nor did he criticise his US counterpart, according to KCNA.

Trump and Kim held their first landmark summit in Singapore last June, where the pair signed a vaguely-worded agreement on the "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula".

But the failure to reach agreement at their second summit in Hanoi -- which broke up without even a joint statement -- has raised questions over the future of the wider process.

Both sides expressed willingness to talk further and Trump has repeatedly said since that he maintains good relations with his North Korean counterpart, boasting he had blocked new sanctions planned for Pyongyang.

North Korea has also been careful not to criticise Trump personally, while saying last month that sanctions against it were an "action against humanity to destroy modern civilisation and turn the society back in a mediaeval dark age".
Toby Antony By

Express News Service

KOCHI: After the arrest of two persons who fired at a beauty parlour in Panampilly Nagar, the Crime Branch investigating the case is on the lookout for a close aide of Ravi Pujari based in Kasargod who provided the revolver to the assailants. The Crime Branch on Friday evening arrested the person who provided a motorbike to the hitmen.

It was on December 15, 2018, the arrested persons Bilal, 25, of Kombara near Aluva and Vipin Varghese, 30, of Kochu Kadavanthra fired two gunshots at Nail Artistry owned by actor Leena Maria Paul. Masking their face, they left a piece of paper claiming the involvement of Pujaris gang behind the act before fleeing from the spot. Later, Pujari openly took responsibility. He allegedly demanded Rs 25 crore from Leena and as a threat the gunshots were fired.

The case was initially investigated by the Kochi City Police and it was later handed over to the Crime Branch. We have arrested two persons who fired at the beauty parlour. Both are from Ernakulam. They were arrested from Kalamassery area. Two pistols have been seized from the arrested persons. Helmets and jackets worn by the accused were also recovered, Sreejith said.

The Crime Branch arrested a person identified as Altaf from a lodge in Aluva. He had provided the motorbike used by the hitmen. He was later brought to Aluva Police Club where his arrest was recorded.

According to sources, it was a person known as Monayi - suspected to be a close aide of Pujari - who hired Bilal and Vipin. Monayi is a member of Pujaris gang involved in criminal and extortion activities in Mangaluru and Kasargod. Bilal and Vipin were chosen through another criminal gang based in Perumbavoor. They were selected due to their familiarity with Kochi city and to divert police investigation after the firing. They were promised Rs 50 lakh for completing the task. The revolver was given by Monayi to the assailants. The weapons and motorcycle to be used for the act were given two days before the firing, an officer said.

On December 15, the duo riding the motorcycle started from a house near Kalamassery Medical College. Through Seaport-Airport Road and Chilavanoor Road, they reached the beauty parlour. They waited there for a few hours as a security guard was standing outside the building. At 2.30 pm, when the security guard moved out, they entered the beauty parlour and fired gunshots before fleeing.

After completing the assigned task, Bilal and Vipin were staying at a hideout known as America located near NAD Aluva. From there, they travelled to Kasargod to receive the promised money. However, only Rs 45,000 was given instead of the Rs 50 lakh. Following a tip-off, Vipin was first interrogated by the Crime Branch team. Based on his confession, Bilal was taken into custody from his residence.

Pujari is currently detained by the agencies at Senegal following the request of Interpol a few months ago. The Crime Branch had filed a charge sheet in the case last month. Attempts are being made by the Government of India to bring Pujari back to India. The Crime Branch carried out checking at the residences of the accused. They were later taken to the beauty parlour as part of evidence collection.

Guns for hire didnt know how to use a pistol

KOCHI: Though they were hired to fire gunshots, Bilal and Vipin Varghese had no experience in using a pistol. Prior to December 15, when the shooting took place, they learnt to use the pistols. Sources said there are seven criminal cases pending against Bilal and four cases pending against Vipin. Bilal had worked with criminal gangs in Kasargod. Firing the gunshot was tasked to Bilal while Vipin was asked only accompany him. After receiving the pistols a few days before the incident, for the practice purpose they fired some rounds at an open field near NAD Aluva, an officer said.

Though Bilal was tasked to fire rounds, seeing the security guard in front of the parlour, he hesitated to use the pistol initially. Seeing this, Vipin fired the first shot followed by gunshots by Bilal.

Though the Crime Branch recovered two pistols after arresting them, one of the pistols from which rounds were fired is yet to be recovered.

Similarly, after Ravi Pujari took responsibility of the shootout, the investigation team was sure local goons were hired for the purpose. So we were looking for local goons who maintained connections with Kasargod and Mangaluru-based gangs. We shortlisted several names and interrogated such persons. This provided us some information about Bilal and his aide Vipin, an officer said.
By Joyce Lee SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country needs to deliver a "telling blow" to those imposing sanctions by ensuring its economy is more self-reliant, state media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said on Thursday. It was the first time Kim stated North Korea's position on the second U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi that collapsed in February, and signaled a continued focus on economic development, a strategic direction officially declared a priority last April. On North Korea's position on the summit, Kim said he would double down on efforts to create a self-supporting national economy "so as to deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring (North Korea) to its knees," according to KCNA. U.S.-North Korean engagement has appeared to be in limbo since the Feb. 27-28 summit in Hanoi, which collapsed over differences about how far North Korea was willing to limit its nuclear program and the degree of U.S. willingness to ease economic sanctions. Kim has continued to highlight his economic push in recent weeks despite the lack of sanctions relief. State media have published images and reports of Kim's visits to at least four economic projects in five days over the past week, including a remodeled department store, tourist resorts, and an economic hub near the border with China. At a similar plenary session last year, Kim formally announced a "new strategic line" that focused on economic progress and improving North Koreans' lives, rather than the previous two-pronged approach of economic and nuclear weapons development. North Korea is expected to convene a session of its rubber-stamp legislature, the Supreme People's Assembly, on Thursday. In its Wednesday meeting, the ruling party also elevated Choe Son Hui, one of North Korea's leading negotiators with the United States, to a position as member of the party's Central Committee. Despite not explicitly naming the "hostile forces" that imposed sanctions, Kim is displaying a more hardened stance toward Washington than was recently in state media, analysts said. The comments were reported hours ahead of a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Washington on Thursday to discuss North Korea and other alliance issues. Moon has suggested that sanctions could be eased to allow inter-Korean economic engagement in return for some nuclear concessions by North Korea, but so far Washington has not agreed. "It did not directly mention the U.S., but linked sanctions with hostile forces," said Shin Beom-chul, a senior fellow at the Asian Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul. "He's saying North Korea would take an independent course unless the U.S. offered to lift sanctions. You maintain sanctions, you're a hostile force; if you ease sanctions, you're not." U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a congressional committee on Wednesday that he would like to leave "a little room" in the sanctions in case North Korea makes "substantial" progress toward giving up its nuclear weapons. In Hanoi, Kim sought relief from major U.N. sanctions, but Pompeo said those must stay in effect until North Korea completely denuclearizes. "The enforcement regime, the core U.N. Security Council resolutions, need to remain in place until the verification of denuclearization has been completed," he said. (Reporting by Joyce Lee and Josh Smith; Editing by Leslie Adler, Kim Coghill and Michael Perry)
By Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil prices fell on Thursday after sources said OPEC may raise output from July if Venezuelan and Iranian supplies fall further and prices keep rallying.

Rising U.S. crude stockpiles also dragged U.S. futures down by more than $1 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell $1.03 to settle at $63.58 a barrel.

Global benchmark Brent settled at $70.83 a barrel, down 90 cents.

"Now there is a suggestion that OPEC may surprise us and raise production pre-emptively if we get a price spike," said Phil Flynn, an analyst at Price Futures Group in Chicago.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries may raise oil output from July if Venezuelan and Iranian supply drops further and prices keep rallying, because extending production cuts with Russia and other allies could overtighten the market, sources familiar with the matter said.

Venezuelan crude production has dropped below 1 million barrels per day (bpd) due to U.S. sanctions, the International Energy Agency said on Thursday, even below the 960,000 bpd OPEC reported on Wednesday.

Iranian supply could fall further after May if, as many expect, Washington tightens its sanctions against Tehran.

OPEC and its allies led by Russia are due to meet in Vienna on June 25-26 to set their policy.

Overall output from OPEC, which has agreed with allies to withhold 1.2 million bpd of crude from the market since the start of 2019, fell 550,000 bpd in March to 30.1 million bpd, the IEA said.

The agency, which coordinates the energy policies of developed nations, saw oil stocks in industrialised countries fall in February by 21.7 million barrels, putting inventories 16 million barrels above their five-year average.

(Graphic: U.S. oil production, storage & drilling levels - https://tmsnrt.rs/2HWNIqK)

Market concerns that OPEC could increase output compounded worries that U.S. crude production is rising.

U.S. crude inventories surged by 7 million barrels to a 17-month high of 456.6 million barrels last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

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U.S. crude oil production remained at a record 12.2 million bpd, making the United States the world's biggest oil producer ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

The surging production and regional refinery outages have depressed prices of cash grades, putting more pressure on U.S. crude, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude at Midland on Thursday traded at the biggest discount to futures in almost four months after Phillips 66 closed a unit for maintenance at its Borger, Texas refinery, adding to a backlog of barrels as production climbs.

(Graphic: Venezuelan oil output - https://tmsnrt.rs/2IcnfW8)

Selling accelerated Thursday morning as U.S. crude dropped below $63.71 a barrel, a technically significant level at which some funds had stops in place, triggering automatic sales, Yawger said.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Marguerita Choy, Kirsten Donovan and Richard Chang)
Julian Assange

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, holds up a fist before speaking to media and supporters from a balcony at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on May 19, 2017. Photo: Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg



White-collar defense lawyer Barry Pollack confirmed Thursday that hebut not his 40-lawyer law firmwill be defending Julian Assange against U.S. computer hacking charges.



Pollack, a partner at Washington, D.C.'s Robbins, Russell, Englert, Orseck, Untereiner & Sauber since last spring, is representing the detained Wikileaks founder through a solo shop, the Law Offices of Barry J. Pollack.



When Pollack joined Robbins Russell last March from Miller & Chevalier, he said he would be representing Assange through his own shop because his new partnership wasn't willing to take the matter on for a variety of client and other reasons. Asked Thursday whether he still represented Assange independently and if he had any other solo clients, Pollack said in a short email that the original arrangement remained in place.





Barry Pollack

Barry Pollack



Ecuador on Thursday rescinded asylum for Assange, who had been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He was arrested by British authorities in connection with a newly unsealed U.S. charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The U.S. government accuses Assange of conspiring with Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to share classified information.



Stephen Gillers, New York University School of Law professor, said Pollacks representation of Assange though his own solo firm was unusual but not improper.



Lawyers sometimes have affiliations with more than one law firm. Pollack is in his own firm and he is also in a partnership, Gillers said in an email. This is unusual, indeed rare, because each firms conflicts are then imputed to the other firm and may require either firm to turn away business because of the other firms clients. That prospect is unattractive. But sometimes the risk is low because of the distinct areas of practice.



Robbins Russell had no immediate comment, referring questions to Pollack's assistant.



Robbins Russell recently parted ways with one of its lawyers over a different representation: Former senior counsel Michael Bromwichs 2018 exit from the firm was expedited due to his desire to represent Christine Blasey Ford, who accused then-U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. In a letter to the firm at the time, Bromwich said he was leaving because objections have been raised within the partnership to his representation of Ford, but Robbins Russell said Bromwich wasn't forced out because of Ford specifically, but separated by mutual agreement to ensure that his efforts would not be colored by or in conflict with the firm's appellate practice.



Bromwich has worked at his eponymous consulting firm, The Bromwich Group, since leaving Robbins Russell.



Pollack on Thursday issued a statement assailing the case against Assange. While the indictment against Julian Assange disclosed today charges a conspiracy to commit computer crimes, the factual allegations against Mr. Assange boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source," he said. "Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.
New York (AFP) - Anonymous to the public just days ago, a US computer scientist named Katie Bouman has become an overnight sensation due to her role in developing a computer algorithm that allowed researchers to take the world's first image of a black hole.

"I'm so excited that we finally get to share what we have been working on for the past year!" the 29 year-old Bouman, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, gushed on her Facebook account Wednesday after the image was published.

The term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed that it creates a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. The massive black hole in the photo released Wednesday is 55 million light years away at the center of a galaxy known as M87.

While the existence of black holes have been long known, the phenomenon proved impossible to witness.

In 2016, Bouman developed an algorithm named CHIRP to sift through a true mountain of data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope project from telescopes around the world to create an image.

The volume of data -- several petabytes (several million billion bytes) -- was contained in a mountain of computer hard drives weighing several hundred pounds that had to be physically transported to the Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts, operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

To guarantee the accuracy of the image, the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center, operated by Harvard University, gave the data to four different teams. Each team independently used the algorithm to obtain an image.

After a month of work, the four groups presented their results to the other teams.

"That was the happiest moment I've ever had [when] I saw all the other teams had images that were very similar, with the lower half brighter than the top half. It was amazing to see everyone got that," Bouman told The Wall Street Journal.

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"No one algorithm or person made this image," wrote Bouman, who in the fall will begin work as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).

"It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat," she said on Facebook.

"It has been truly an honor, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all."
The first picture of a black hole has been unveiled. (European Commission)

Scientists have unveiled the landmark first image of a black hole from the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) programme in a bid to test Albert Einsteins theory of general relativity.

The project, which relied on data from a global network of telescopes, targeted two supermassive black holes at the centre of different galaxies.

Before unveiling the picture, the European commissioner for research, Carlos Moedas, said we are about to experience a first for humanity.

He said: The history of man and of science will be divided into the time before the image and the time after the image.

The Black Hole picture has been seen as a breakthrough for scientists. (EHT)

The much anticipated image shows a bright ring formed as light bends in the intense gravity around a black hole.

Scientists have said that this image provides the strongest evidence so far that supermassive black holes exist.

German astronomer, Professor Falcke said at the press conference: It feels like looking at the gates of Hell, at the end of Space and Time.

The event horizon, the point of no return. That is awe inspiring to me at least, but it is also important for physics.

Physicist and black hole expert Lia Medeiros, from the University of Arizona, told ScienceNews magazine: If general relativity buckles at a black holes boundary, it may point the way forward for theorists.

Scientists across the world are very excited about the breakthrough picture. (PA)

Black holes are formed when huge stars collapse at the end of their life cycle, but because they do not allow light to escape, it can be difficult to see them.

US National Science Foundation Director France Cardova said: This is a huge day in astrophysics.

Were seeing the unseeable.

Scientists say that the black hole image findings support Einsteins theory of general relativity.

However astronomers have said they will do more work and look more at black holes to learn more.

Astronomers believe that images of Sagittarius A, which is a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, will show a lopsided ring of brightness due to the gravity bending light closer to the black hole.

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Scientists are hoping that the image will help them to understand Einsteins theory of general relativity and quantum mechanics.

Read More

Scientists expected to release landmark image of black hole

Black holes  picturing the heart of darkness

Einsteins theory relates to laws of nature on cosmic scales and quantum mechanics is linked to the world of subatomic particles where it is possible to be in two places at once.

Telescopes have been located across the globe to get the breakthrough picture. (PA)

New conferences have taken place across the world today, Wednesday March 10, to disclose the groundbreaking result from the EHT project.

The project first launched in April 2017.
Protesters outside the military headquarters in Khartoum saluted soldiers as they marched on April 10, Reuters reported.

Soldiers were deployed around the sit-in outside the military headquarters on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Some soldiers protected protesters against attempts by security forces to disperse the sit-in on Tuesday, local media reported. As of Tuesday, at least 22 people were killed, including five members of the Sudanese army, since the start of the sit-in on April 6, the Sudan Doctors Committee said. Credit: @ThawragySD via Storyful
Khartoum (AFP) - The uprising that resulted in the army's removal of president Omar al-Bashir from power on Thursday started with protests in December over a hike in bread prices.

Here is a timeline:

- Bread protests -

Hundreds take to the streets in central Atbara and other cities on December 19 to protest the government's tripling of bread prices.

The protests erupt the same day as the main opposition leader -- ex-prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi who was driven out in Bashir's 1989 coup -- returns from exile.

Some protesters chant "No to hunger". In Atbara, they set fire to the headquarters of Bashir's National Congress Party (NCP).

- First deadly clashes -

The protests spread to Khartoum and other cities on December 20, demonstrators chanting "freedom, peace, justice" and calling for "the fall of the regime".

Clashes break out as police try to disperse the crowds and eight demonstrators are killed. Other NCP offices are torched.

Troops are deployed in Khartoum and other cities.

On the sixth day of demonstrations, Bashir breaks his silence on December 24 and vows "real reforms".

- Bashir resists -

With no let-up in the near-daily demonstrations, 22 political groups issue a joint call on January 1 for a "new regime".

Bashir sacks the health minister on January 5 over rising costs of medicine.

Four days later, thousands chant support for Bashir at a rally in Khartoum. But in the capital's twin city of Omdurman there are more deaths in anti-government protests.

On January 13, protests spread to the war-torn region of Darfur. Bashir tells supporters there: "Demonstrations will not change the government."

- Emergency rule declared -

On February 11, Human Rights Watch releases videos documenting violence by security forces against protesters including live fire, tear gas and beatings.

Ten days later, security agents arrest several opposition activists as protesters try to march on the presidential palace.

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Bashir declares a nationwide year-long state of emergency on February 22, also dissolving the federal and provincial governments and appointing army and intelligence officers as provincial governors.

Two days later, he swears in a new prime minister as riot police confront hundreds calling for him to resign.

On March 1, Bashir hands his powers as chief of the ruling NCP to his deputy.

- Sit-in at army HQ -

The protests become less regular after the state of emergency and Bashir on April 4 acknowledges that demonstrators had "legitimate" economic concerns, calling for dialogue.

But on April 6, thousands march again in Khartoum, gathering for the first time outside the military headquarters and chanting "One Army, One People".

They set up camp at the complex, which also houses the president's residence, defying attempts by police and security agents to dislodge their sit-in with tear gas and gunshots into the air.

On April 9, police follow the policy of non-intervention by the military and order their forces not to take action against the demonstrators.

State media report that 11 people including six members of the security forces have been killed in one day, raising the overall official death toll in the demonstrations to 49.

- Bashir ousted -

On April 11, as state media announce the military is preparing an "important" statement, Khartoum residents flood the area around army headquarters, some chanting "the regime has fallen".

Hours later, in an statement on state television Defence Minister Awad Ibnouf announces Bashir has been removed from power and detained by the army.

"I announce as minister of defence the toppling of the regime and detaining its chief in a secure place," Ibnouf says.

A transitional military council would replace Bashir for two years, he adds.
Best Life

Over 37 million Americans are living with kidney disease, also known as renal disease, a progressive condition that causes a gradual loss of normal kidney function over time. However, experts warn that the vast majority of those with the condition are unaware of their diagnosis. In fact, according to Joseph Vassalotti, MD, Chief Medical Officer at the National Kidney Foundation (NKF), just "10 percent of people with chronic kidney disease know that they have it."That's because symptoms tend to b
By Express News Service

Saif Ali Khan, Fatima Sana Shaikh, and Ali Fazal are set to star in Indias first 3D horror-comedy film Bhoot Police. Directed by Pavan Kripalani (Ragini MMS, Phobia) and produced by Fox Star Studios, Bhoot Police is ready to go on floors in August. The films first look features Saif and Ali sporting dark shades and carrying a torch in their pockets, while Fatima sits between them.

Fatima shared a picture of herself along with her co-stars on her Instagram profile and she captioned it: "Ghost hunting is a hilariously spooky business! Presenting the cast of Bhoot Police."

Speaking about the film, Pavan said, This is a story Ive been living with for a very long time. Couldnt have found better collaborators than Saif, Ali, Fatima and most importantly Fox Star to bring this to life. This is going to be a fun, spooky ride!

Rucha Pathak, Chief Creative Officer, Fox Star Studios, said, We are excited to delve into a new world of technology and storytelling with Bhoot Police. We are looking forward to this collaboration with Pavan and the brilliant star cast and having a great time ahead with this movie!

Saif Ali Khan was last seen in Baazaar. His upcoming projects include Sacred Games Season 2, Taanaji: The Unsung Warrior and Dil Bechara. Ali Fazal recently starred in Tigmanshu Dhulias Milan Talkies. Fatima Sana Shaikhs last appearance was in Thugs of Hindostan.
Nairobi (AFP) - Suspected Somali Al-Shabaab jihadis kidnapped two Cuban doctors in northeastern Kenya on Friday and killed their police escort officer, officials said.

Kenya and Somalia are working together to pursue the abductors, they said.

The operation happened as the two doctors -- a general practitioner and a surgeon -- were going to work in the town of Mandera, near the border with Somalia.

"Today at around 9:00 am, suspected Al-Shabaab militants abducted the two Cuban doctors stationed at the Mandera County Referral Hospital," the county's governor, Ali Roba said in a statement.

Kenyan police spokesman Charles Owino said the assailants used two Toyota Probox cars to block the vehicle that the doctors were travelling in.

One of two police officers escorting them "was shot by the attackers and died on the spot. The attackers succeeded to abduct the two doctors and crossed the border with them," said Owino.

The driver of the doctors' vehicle was arrested and is being questioned, he said.

A senior police officer, who asked not to be named, told AFP: "From the modus operandi and the fact that they went towards the Somalia border, we have reasons to believe that the kidnappers are Al-Shabaab."

"Our security agencies are working with Somalia Government Security agencies to pursue the abductors into Somalia with the objective of rescuing the victims," Kenyan police chief Hillary Mutyambai said in a statement.

The two doctors, whose names have not been released, are part of a group of about 100 Cubans who came to Kenya last year to help boost health services.

In Cuba a health ministry statement read on television said: "Channels of communication have been established immediately with the Kenyan authorities to address this situation, while keeping the collaborators' family members here in Cuba informed. Likewise, a government working group has been set up to follow up on this sensitive issue.

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Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants have been waging an insurgency against Somalia's foreign-backed government for over a decade.

Last November, an armed gang seized Silvia Romano, 23, an Italian charity worker, in the southeastern town of Chakama. Her whereabouts are unknown.

Police at the time warned against any speculation that the Shabaab may have been involved in her abduction.

- Jihadist attacks -

The Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, have been fighting since 2007 to topple Somalia's fragile government, which is backed by a 20,000-strong African Union force, Amisom.

The Shabaab fled fixed positions they once held in Mogadishu in 2011, and have since lost many of their strongholds.

But they retain control of large rural swathes of the country, and continue to wage a guerrilla war against the authorities, striking at the heart of Somalia's government.

The group has carried out a number of attacks in Kenya in reprisal for the country's participation in Amisom.

Kidnappings in Kenya are relatively rare but can have a devastating impact on tourism, a major income-earner.

In 2011, a British man, David Tebbutt, was killed and his wife, Judith, was kidnapped by gunmen who took her into Somalia and held her for ransom for six months.

That attack, and the kidnapping weeks later of a Frenchwoman on the Lamu archipelago and two Spanish aid workers from a refugee camp in northeast Kenya, were seen as a trigger for Kenya's invasion of southern Somalia to attack Islamist bases there.
By Brendan O'Brien and Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled early Friday that Alabama can proceed with the execution of a death row inmate whose lawyers argued that lethal injections had been botched in the past, causing a painful death and that execution by nitrogen hypoxia was a better alternative.

But the order came too late, as the death warrant expired at midnight Thursday and Alabama prison officials called off the execution for that night.

A three-sentence order, released by the court shortly before 3 a.m. ET, vacated lower court rulings that delayed the execution of Christopher Price, 46, for 60 days.

Four of the nine-member Supreme Court dissented, breaking along conservative and liberal lines. The four judges considered liberals dissented, arguing for the stay of execution.

It was unclear early Friday how quickly Alabama can proceed, and an Alabama Department of Corrections representative could not immediately be reached by Reuters.

On Thursday, a U.S. appeals court temporarily halted the execution earlier on Thursday of Price, convicted of killing a minister and wounding his wife with a sword and dagger while robbing their home three days before Christmas in 1991.

A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a delay of 60 days that a district judge in Mobile, Alabama, had granted in the case of Price.

On Thursday night, the Alabama Attorney General's Office filed an emergency motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to overturn the stay of execution.

But without word from the Supreme Court before the warrant expired, prison officials called off the execution shortly after 11:30 p.m. local time, a prison spokeswoman said.

Price was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 in the killing of William Lynn, a minister, in his home in Bazemore, Alabama, on Dec. 22, 1991.

CHRISTMAS PRESENTS

Lynn was assembling Christmas presents for his grandchildren after he and his wife, Bessie, returned home from church when two men shut off electricity in the home and attacked the couple with a sword and dagger, according to court documents.

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Lynn died of his injuries, while his wife survived wounds to her head, hands and chest.

Price was captured seven days later and admitted that he took part in the robbery, but said he did not hurt the couple, according to court documents.

Kelvin Coleman, who was accused of being Price's accomplice, pleaded guilty to murder and robbery and is serving a life sentence without parole, authorities said.

Price's attorneys have argued the three-drug cocktail to be used in the execution is inhumane and he should be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, a "virtually painless" method, a court brief showed.

On Thursday, Chief U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose granted Price's attorneys the 60-day stay and gave the state until May 10 to respond to their arguments that the three-drug protocol risked causing Price significant pain and that nitrogen hypnoxia would reduce that risk.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution did not guarantee a prisoner sentenced to capital punishment "a painless death," paving the way for the execution of convicted murderer Russell Bucklew, who sought to die by lethal gas rather than lethal injection because of a rare medical condition.

Six executions in the United States scheduled during the first three months of 2019 have been stayed or rescheduled.

(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Milwaukee and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Bill Tarrant, Peter Cooney, Darren Schuettler and Giles Elgood)
By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors have just under two months to present British authorities with a final and detailed criminal case to justify the possible extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, a U.S. government official said on Friday. The official, who asked for anonymity when discussing the case, said U.S. authorities had already sent Britain a provisional arrest warrant regarding Assange's extradition to the United States. But within 60 days from Thursday, when British police bundled Assange out of the Ecuadorean embassy in London where he had taken refuge seven years ago, U.S. authorities must submit a formal request outlining all the legal charges Assange would face if he is transferred into U.S. custody. According to a criminal indictment against Assange which prosecutors in Virginia secretly obtained more than a year ago but only unsealed after Assange's arrest, Assange is charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain unauthorized access to a government computer. The U.S. indictment filed in March 2018 said Assange, in March 2010, engaged in a conspiracy to help Manning crack a password stored on Defense Department computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRNet), a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications. Assange's contacts with Manning led to one of the biggest ever leaks of classified information as WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of U.S. military reports and diplomatic communications. The U.S. official said that within the 60-day period, U.S. authorities could modify or add to the current charges they have filed against Assange. The official declined to say whether further charges were likely, but legal experts have said they are certainly possible. A witness who prosecutors were seeking to interview and an associate of Assange based in Europe who also requested anonymity said that before his arrest Assange had expressed concern that U.S. prosecutors would also bring charges against him related to WikiLeaks' publication of CIA computer hacking tools, which the website described as its "Vault 7" cache. U.S. officials have said that as far leaks go, the disclosure of details about the U.S. spy agency's abilities to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare was potentially far more damaging to U.S. government activities than anything Manning made available to WikiLeaks. In a Friday interview with CNN, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said the United States was "going to bring Julian Assange to justice." Pence denied that statements by President Donald Trump, in which he praised WikiLeaks during the 2016 U.S. election campaign, were in any way "an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information." (Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by Mary Milliken and Tom Brown)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The UN envoy for Colombia on Friday warned the Bogota government against reopening key provisions of the 2016 historic peace deal reached with FARC rebels.

Carlos Ruiz Massieu told the Security Council that such a move would bring "the greatest uncertainty" to the peace accord that ended five decades of conflict in the South American country.

Colombian President Ivan Duque was elected last year on a pledge to roll back some aspects of the peace deal including the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) set up to try former combatants accused of atrocities.

"In a climate of uncertainty - for victims, for those subject to the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, for FARC members awaiting funding for social and economic reintegration and for communities who have suffered from the conflict- the greatest uncertainty would be to reopen core elements of the underlying peace agreement itself," said Ruiz Massieu.

Under the JEP, ex-rebels or soldiers would receive alternative sentences to prison time if they confess their crimes, compensate victims and pledge never to resort to violence again.

Transformed into a political party since the peace deal, FARC has hit out repeatedly at the lack of security guarantees for its members.

While some 7,000 ex-fighters laid down their weapons, Colombia's peace and reconciliation commission estimates 1,600 dissident rebels remain active.

Colombian Foreign Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo told the council that his government will respect the decision taken by lawmakers on the JEP.

The Colombian lower house of congress this week rejected proposed changes to the JEP and the Senate is now expected to take a position.
Photo credit: New Belgium

From Popular Mechanics

Checking into the hotel is a restful end to a stressful travel experience-or, at least, it should be. But rarely is it the highlight of the trip. That could change with a new project by New Belgium brewery, makers of the beloved Fat Tire and other delectable brews.

New Belgium just opened up the Pilot Brewery at the Source Hotel in Denver. When guests check in, theyll get tasters of experimental New Belgium beer brewed at Pilot, which just so happens to be located on the other side of the hotel lobbys glass wall. But building a brewery in a hotel creates its own challenges that you might not consider as you bury your nose in some sweet aromatic foam.

Photo credit: New Belgium

New Belgium wanted a way to stand out, especially in a crowded beer market like Denver, which is how the idea of a hotel brewery was born. Josh Nabours, New Belgium senior plant engineer, dealt with many of the odd issues that arose from this unusual project.

The Fire Department was concerned about dust caused by milling making a dangerous environment, he said, and indeed, a fire hazard in a hotel is a recipe for a Netflix tragedy documentary. To respond to this we upgraded the mill to a dust-proof mill and added a dust collection system. The sewer department was also concerned with the amount of wastewater coming out of the facility, so New Belgium created dedicated sewage equipment underground.

And then there was the process of getting the brewing equipment into the space without disrupting the hotel operations, We kept communication channels open to coordinate any heavy equipment or loud constructions impact to a minimum, either working off hours or having the hotel book rooms that werent near the area, Nabours says.

On the day of the installation, the team set up three semi trucks' worth of equipment across the street from the brewery, and started at 6 a.m. They shut down the sidewalk and part of the street, then used a fork truck to navigate the equipment through the garage door walls of the brewery. Every piece of equipment was in the space by 2 p.m. that afternoon. With the space set, New Belgium Pilot Brewerys Head Brewer, Geoff Wenzel was free to go wild.

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Working in this space makes Wenzel feel like hes working in a bit of a fishbowl. Guests and others who walk past the brewery can watch the process from every side. Its a little cumbersome having people stare at you but thats something you get used to pretty quickly.

To improve the experience for curious onlookers, the brewers brew on weekends to fill the hotel and its attached marketplace with the smells of brewing when the area is busiest. The brewery is like a test kitchen, giving brewers the ability to experiment and produce beers on a production schedule that the full-scale facility in Fort Collins couldnt keep up with. That means leaning into any trend, like rye barrel aging and wild yeast fermentation, that strikes the brewers fancy. And they now have the flexibility to go from idea to beer glass in just a few weeks.

So while guests may tap on the windows, Wenzel is happy to make whatever beer he thinks of. From a brewing perspective its amazing. It is a really good outlet for us to try new crazy things. I can do whatever I want-within reason. For Wenzel that means dipping his toe into experimental beers to attract the adventurous beer drinker, as well as those more accustomed to wine and cocktails. The freedom is fun, and lets Wenzel push the limits of what beer can be , Its like mom and dad are away.

In addition to tasters at check-in, the brewerys beer is available at the hotels rooftop restaurant, in hotel room minibars, and at other restaurants in the marketplace attached to the hotel. The facility doesnt do any bottling or canning currently, so youll need to head there if you want a taste. But itll be worth it, it was just voted best new brewery in Denver.

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Update 9:31a.m.: Hours after he was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, U.S. authorities announced they have charged Julian Assange with one count of conspiracy to hack a government computer. The charge stems from Assanges role in hacking a confidential computer in 2010 in an effort to release classified documents.

Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who has made enemies of governments around the world by releasing confidential, and often embarrassing, intelligence documents to the public, was arrested Thursday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London by the British police.

The British metropolitan police explained in a statement released Thursday that Assange was arrested partly in connection with an extradition warrant filed by the U.S., which suggests he may be sent to the U.S. to stand trial.

The Department of Justice has charged Assange in connection with his publication of thousands of classified government documents, a fact they accidentally revealed in an unrelated court filing in February.

Assange was expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has lived for seven years, after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols led Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno to rescind his countrys protection.

Wikileaks announced last Friday that Ecuador already has an agreement with the UK for his arrest.

A video of Assanges arrest shows him being carried down the steps of the embassy while shouting the U.K. must resist.

Assange arrest video: "The UK must resist this attempt by the Trump administration"https://t.co/fq1JGfw40u  WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 11, 2019

President Moreno, citing a recent Wikileaks expose on the Vatican, explained in a video statement that Assange was being expelled from the embassy for failing to uphold his pledge to stop meddling in the affairs of foreign nations. Assange first moved into the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he was facing sexual assault charges.

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Wikileaks rose to prominence in 2010 by releasing a cache of classified U.S. intelligence documents and diplomatic cables pertaining to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman formerly known as Bradley, was arrested for leaking those documents and was sentenced to 35 years in prison but was released after serving just seven.

Assange, 47, is also suspected of aiding Russia in their efforts to disrupt the 2016 election by publishing confidential and damaging Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign documents. He has explicitly stated his desire to damage Hillary Clintons presidential campaign but has long denied receiving the hacked documents from Russian agents, as American intelligence agencies allege.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested on Thursday in London and pulled from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he has been living in asylum for seven years, PEOPLE confirms.

U.K. authorities said he faces extradition to the United States for alleged computer related offences. The U.S. Department of Justice said he is suspected of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and, if found guilty, faces up to five years in prison.

While Assange was set to appear in a London court on Thursday, a timeline for his handover to American law enforcement was not immediately clear.

His arrest was made possible after Ecuadors government withdrew its asylum and invited in Londons Metropolitan Police.

Assange was initially taken into custody on a minor warrant related to a 2012 failure to surrender to the court, Metropolitan Police said. Almost immediately, however, they announced that American authorities had moved to seize him for extradition.

He appeared in court in London not long after being arrested where he was reportedly found guilty on a more minor charge of violating his bail conditions in that earlier case.

Assanges attorney Jennifer Robinson did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment, but she has cast Assanges case in terms of press freedom.

Assange is being sought for prosecution in the United States  for publishing truthful information, Robinson said earlier this week.

This is a very serious matter, she said. People have children who are 6, 7, years old [and] for their entire lives, he has been living inside that embassy, within a room, without access to medical treatment, without access to the outside world.

In a statement via WikiLeaks, another Assange lawyer described his arrest as bitterly disappointing and raised the specter of a court battle over what appears to be unprecedented effort by the United States seeking to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information.

Story continues

RELATED: Pamela Anderson Begs Kanye West to Help WikiLeaks Julian Assange

Julian Assange after being taken into custody in London on Thursday | Rob Pinney/LNP/REX/Shutterstock

From left: Pamela Anderson and Julian Assange | Pascal Le Segretain/Getty; John Stillwell/PA Wire

While leading WikiLeaks, Assange, 47, has published a vast amount of classified or otherwise secret material from the American government and other high-powered officials around the world  in the name of utter transparency.

The U.S. crime of which he is accused is connected to the 2010 release of classified information facilitated by Chelsea Manning, then working as an intelligence analyst for the Army.

WikiLeaks methods are also extremely controversial. While some of its revelations of hypocrisy or government misbehavior have been praised, WikiLeaks has been severely criticized for releasing damaging emails about Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign which American authorities believe were first stolen by Russians. (Assange has disputed Russia was his source.)

I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator, Clinton said in 2017.

Video of his Thursday arrest shows Assange  now with a long grey beard  being pulled by police down the steps of the embassy and put into a police van outside. Assange could be heard saying, You must resist, the U.K. must resist!

Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno said on Twitter that his government had withdrawn Assanges asylum for repeatedly violating international conventions.

Actress Pamela Anderson, a friend who has long defended Assange, shared her shock on Twitter Thursday.

He looks very bad, she wrote. How could you Equador?  How could you U.K.?

The scene outside the Ecaudorian Embassy in London where Julian Assange was arrested on Thursday. Inset: Assange. | ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock; Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Assanges Embassy Life Before Arrest

After living in a single room for seven years with no access to the outdoors or medical treatment, Assange left the embassy as a haunted, almost ghostly figure.

Julian has become increasingly depressed and his health is very poor due to the deficiencies of living inside for so long, a close friend who saw Assange a couple of weeks ago, tells PEOPLE.

The friend says: Previously, he had someone shopping and cooking but the new government decided to withdraw that service, so Julian had to organize something with whoever was available to bring him food, whenever they could.

In 2016, Assange adopted a cat, who he showed off via social media. Reports have conflicted about the cats whereabouts now, but an Assange friend says the pet will be taken in by others close to him.

Some of those closest to him are now actually more scared for health than his freedom.

Hes a very strong character but obviously it has a toll, a source says of Assange It has a physical toll, it has a mental toll, it has an emotional toll and because people think that he is strong they dont always see that.

One time I was on the phone to him and he could hear seagulls in the background, says a source. I wasnt even paying attention to it, but he was like, Oh, seagulls! He sounded so wistful because he hadnt seen or heard seagulls for so long.

Assange is next due to appear at Southwark Crown Court in London on May 2.

The U.S. government must bring forward extradition papers by June 12.
By IANS

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that secrecy of information through electoral bonds is essential to curb black money in political funding.

Making its submission in this regard to the apex court, the Centre justified why anonymity is a positive step in countering the flow of black money in the system.

Attorney General (AG) K.K. Venugopal in his submission said: "Electoral bonds are meant to eradicate black money in political funding...as we have no State funding of elections. Political parties get funds from supporters, affluent persons, etc. The funders all want their political party to come to power. But if their party does not, then there could be repurcurssions....so secrecy is required."

The government informed the Supreme Court that many companies prefer anonymity for various reasons. For example, if a particular company funds a political party and it does not come power, the company could be punished by their own shareholders.

CLICK HERE FOR OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE

The donations made through electoral bonds are actually from white money, the AG said, adding that if agencies are willing to ascertain the source of money, they can scrutinize it through banking channels.

Though the government is in favour of anonymity in electoral bonds, the Election Commission of India (EC) has an opposite view, the EC's counsel said.

"We are not against electoral bonds. We are only opposed to the anonymity associated with it", he said.

The EC emphasized that it wants transparency in political funding, while the disclosure of the identity of the funders as well as the recipients of funding is essential for democracy.

"People have the right to know about the antecedents of their representatives and the political party that candidate represents" said the ECI counsel.

The hearing will continue later in the day.
By UNI

LUCKNOW: The Election Commission has served show-cause notices to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) president Mayawati, for violating the Election Model Code of Conduct (MCC) during their speeches.

The notices were served to both the leaders on Thursday night and they have been given 24 hours to submit their replies.

Mr Adityanath made remarks on "Ali" and "Bajrang Bali," while addressing a rally in Meerut. Ms Mayawati too was given the notice over appealing to the Muslims community to back the grand alliance candidate in Deoband, during a joint rally on April 7.

The Chief Minister's statement came after Mayawati appealed to Muslims not to support the Congress, as they were the only party fighting the BJP. Earlier, the EC had warned Mr Adityanath, after he was found violating the MCC, when he said ' Modiji ki sena,' during a rally in Ghaziabad.
The newly completed election campaign in Israel was so reminiscent of the recent presidential elections in the United States, and raises questions of what, if any lessons have been learned both by voters and by those aspiring to be elected.

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Netanyahu invented Trumpism long before Donald Trump even made his entry on the political stage, and in 2019 he was fighting not only for his office, but for his very freedom. That made him a dangerous opponent.

Benjamin Netanyahu on the campaign trail in Tel Aviv (Photo: AP)

His target was the so-called "French law" (named for a maneuver by former French president Jacques Chirac), which would stop the legal system from indicting Netanyahu while in office, and for which he was willing to annex the West Bank and bring about apartheid proper in Israel.

It seems, meanwhile, that this frantic bid to dodge legal consequences is not only the similarity between Netanyahu and Trump, for the Israeli leader's rivals failed to learn from errors made by the opponents of the US president.

Even if members of the Blue and White Party are not spotless, they did at least create an opportunity for political change. But since they took center stage, they failed to understood that a bully must be confronted by another bully. This was no time to be on the defensive - to win an election war you must be sleazy and willing to fight, to deliver blows and take them too.

Barack Obama in 2008 - a message of hope and change (Photo: AP)

To beat Netanyahu they had to do one of the two things. The first option was to turn his own tricks on him, use his own words to tear off his mask, not with a trembling hand but with one long hard pull.

The second option was to conduct an inspiring campaign like Barack Obama did in 2008, when he used a simple message of "Yes we can" to mobilize the masses.

True, Gantz lacks Obama's charisma, but he is better known to the public than the near-anonymous senator from Illinois who managed to make history to become the first black American president. Obama achieved this because he imbued the hearts of the people with the sense that hope and change were in reach.

Clinton and Trum,p in 2016 - an elegant campaign against a wild man (Photo: Reuters)

In the final days of the campaign, it seemed that members of the Blue and White Party were more like Hillary Clinton, who decided to run an elegant campaign against a wild man who cursed her, gave her a derogatory name, and used his rallies to demand her imprisonment. She failed to realize that the era of elegant election campaigns was over, so she went on the defensive against the bully who just ran over her.

Blue and White, except for one successful brief attack on Netanyahu's involvement in the submarine affair, was mostly on the defensive as the Netanyahu camp trotted out claims that Iran hacked Benny Gantz's cell phone and were about to blackmail him, or that he was insane. Gantz, Lapid and co. refused to enter the arena, and like Hillary refused to dirty their hands in the murky waters of politics. However, nor did they succeed in doing what Obama did in building a campaign of hope and the sense that not only was it possible, but also necessary, to dream.

Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote that folly is a child of power. Netanyahu had too much of the parent as well as the offspring. If he had lost, and he should have done, it would have been because he defeated himself, and not because giants stood against him.
Israel's Arabs, early analysis shows, did not vote this year. They rarely do. But still it seems this time, they stayed away in even greater numbers.

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This is a reaction to Benjamin Netanyahu and his campaign to delegitimize Arab citizens of Israel. It is also a reaction to Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Avi Gabbay and other political leaders who adopted Netanyahu's ideology while managing to stay clear of his rhetoric.

Campaigning in the Arab sector 2019 (Photo: Reuters)

Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid denied making any "deal" with the Arab parties, as if the mere suggestion they may join forces in government with Arabs is reason enough to disqualify them.

Gabbay remembered his Arab members, as well as his Mizrahi roots only after polls showed the Labor Party was set to crash and burn.

What unites these three leaders and the big names they've signed on to their parties, is that all of them, with no exception fear the term "Arab" and are not inclined to join their own reputations to it.

This contempt reached a peak on Election Day, but it was clearly evident at every turn leading up to the vote - starting with Netanyahu's clip posted during the 2015 elections warning of Arabs flocking to the polls, through to the Nation-State Law stripping Arabic of its official language status.

Arabs have been consistently driven away from the political discourse for years, their elected representatives demonized and their language marginalized.

Hadash-Ta'al leaders Ayman Odeh (L) and Ahmad Tibi

The Arab citizens of Israel reacted by rejecting Netanyahu and his ideology, which has spread beyond his Likud party.

While Netanyahu invoked a cry of panic to mobilize his voters, it was a day of panic for the Arab parties as well.

Long-time political parties shed their 13 seats and disappeared around the minimum threshold mark. Arab voters can be blamed for that and for the few Arab members of Knesset who will serve, but their protest was not aimed at their leaders.

This election campaign in its entirety, treated Arab voters with disdain and contempt and on Election Day those Arab voters threw their own disdain right back, pehaps perpetuating their inability to Influence the election of a prime minister.

Netanyahu's most fierce opponents during this election cycle were clones of himself, and I think they too would agree, that if we are to be left with a Netanyahu figure in charge, it may as well be the original
Saudi Arabia is preparing for the launch of the so-called Arab NATO  the Middle East Strategic Alliance (MESA)  in an effort to combat Iranian hegomony in the region.

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The kingdom on April 8 hosted a meeting with the high-level participation of Saudi Arabia, the United States, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Jordan. According to the Saudi WAS news agency, the meeting was an important step to launching the alliance, which aims to strengthen the security and stability of the region and the world.

Donald Trump with the Egyptian and Saudi leaders in Riyadh in May 2017

Sulaiman al-Oqaily, a Saudi political analyst, says there must be one strategy among the Arab nations that form the alliance, as well as a clear target in order for such an endeavor to succeed.

First, al-Oqaily points out that there must be one united Arab bloc that has agreed that the Arab NATO would protect the Arab world from all kind of threats and security challenges. Its members motives and determinants have to be the same, he says.

Al-Oqaily says that the sectarianism with which Iran targets the Middle East is more dangerous than Israel.

Iran is taking advantage of its culture and religious links to the Arab world to expand there and destroy it, he says. Israel cant violate the Arab society like Iran, but through its intelligence services.

He also speculates that if Iran werent involved in Iraq, the latter would have peace by now.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and his Syrian counterpart Bashar Assad in Tehran, February 2019 (Photo: EPA)

The US administration has since last year been exploring the creation of a new security body comprising Sunni Middle Eastern countries that would be geared toward countering Shiite Irans regional adventurism. Reportedly, MESA member-states would seek deeper cooperation in the realms of missile defense, military training and counter-terrorism, while strengthening broader political and economic ties.

It would serve as a bulwark against Iranian aggression, terrorism, extremism and will bring stability, a spokesperson for the White Houses National Security Council asserted in reference to the potential association last year.

Its not a new project. However, its implementation is what matters, says Qassem Qaseer, a Lebanese political analyst. He confirms that the US has been working with Arab states for a while now to form such a body, noting that the issue remains with the different agendas and political approach of its member of states.

For example, Qaseer says that the Arab countries dont agree on more than one critical issue, pointing out that the Arab NATO is still an idea with no structure.

They aim to pressure Iran on the ground by such initiative, although, they need to make it a reality first, Qaseer says. It is noteworthy that the Idea of an Arab NATO coalition is one of the results of the Arab-Islamic summit hosted by Riyadh in May 2017.

Jared Kushner with Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: Reuters)

Over the past year, senior American officials, including President Donald Trumps adviser Jared Kushner and international negotiator Jason Greenblatt, have conducted shuttle diplomacy among Middle East capitals. Several analysts who spoke to The Media Line confirmed the visits laid the foundation for MESA, although the notion reportedly was first raised by Saudi Arabia.

Regarding Israel, its relations with regional Muslim nations are by most accounts improving, primarily the result of a shared interest in curbing Irans potential nuclearization. However, the conflict with the Palestinians remains a major, if not insurmountable, obstacle to the establishment of full diplomatic ties between Israel and more of its neighbors.
The IDF Spokesman said that a 17-year old boy, trying out for the Paratroopers unit, was killed Thursday evening when a bus slipped down a hill near a military base in the south. Five others were injured.
RIO DE JANEIRO -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro believes the crimes of the Holocaust can be forgiven, but shouldn't be forgotten.

The far-right leader made the comments Thursday night at a meeting with evangelical pastors in Rio de Janeiro. He was applauded by those who attended.

"We can forgive, but we cannot forget. That quote is mine. Those that forget their past are sentenced not to have a future," Bolsonaro said, adding that actions are needed for the Holocaust not to be repeated.

On April 2, Bolsonaro visited the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During that visit, the Brazilian leader labelled Nazism a leftist ideology, a claim rejected by historians.
By P.J. GLISSON

[email protected]

BESSEMER  Members of Bessemers Downtown Development Authority learned Thursday that they received an $8,000 grant from the Western Upper Peninsula Planning and Development Region.

City manager Charly Loper said the funds, which include an additional $2,000 required match from the DDA, will be applied to creating videos aimed at marketing the city as a great place in which to work and live.

We are going to be focusing on six short videos of people who work here, said Loper, who added that attention will be on the DDAs pop-up shop progra...
Property industry confidence dropped to its lowest level since March 2013, marking its fourth consecutive quarterly decline, according to The ANZ Property Council industry confidence index for the June quarter.

The result underscores Treasurys budget warnings about the risks to the economic outlook from a further deterioration in the housing sector.

Industry confidence fell by eight points to 115 index points. A score of 100 index points is considered neutral, according to the Property Council of Australia. Confidence levels were down in all states except the Australian Capital Territory.

Over the past 12 months, industry sentiment has slid by 28 index points, with the biggest falls in Victoria (-33), NSW (-32) and Queensland (-26). The ACT recorded the smallest decline during the period (-7) followed by South Australia (-11).

This is a significant further drop in confidence in one of the big engines of the economy, just one week after Treasury flagged the risks of a declining housing sector in the budget papers, said Ken Morrison, chief executive of the Property Council of Australia.

He said that the downturn in residential markets, together with expectations around national economic growth, construction and capital growth across some property types, is driving this confidence slump.

The key message for policy-makers is to keep a sharp focus on the property industry and be prepared to step up with a housing contingency plan if thats what the economy needs. It is certainly a bad time to be risking changes to policy settings such as negative gearing and capital gains tax which may lead to a further drop in confidence across the industry, Morrison said.

The ANZ Property Council Survey for the June 2019 quarter measured sentiment across the property industry from March 11 to 26.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang(R) meets with Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, who is here to attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 11 (Xinhua) -- China supports its enterprises to invest in Serbia and participate in Serbia's infrastructure construction in accordance with market rules and business principles, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday.

Li made the remarks when meeting with Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic, who is here to attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik.

The Chinese premier said that in recent years practical cooperation between China and Serbia has been walking in steady steps, and the development of bilateral ties has seen sound momentum.

China is ready to continue cooperating with the Serbian side in trade and economy, and infrastructure construction, said Li.

He also called on the two countries to enhance personnel and people-to-people exchanges, and jointly push forward bilateral relations and cooperation for greater achievements.

Li added that he hoped Serbia can play an active role in promoting Chinese exports to Europe.

Brnabic hailed the progress in bilateral cooperation in politics, economy and trade, culture, education, tourism and the frequent personnel exchanges.

The Serbian leader said the major cooperation projects including the Serbian section of the Budapest-Belgrade Railway are progressing smoothly, which is conducive to bilateral ties.

She welcomed Chinese enterprises to invest in Serbia and expressed the hope to join China in further enhancing bilateral cooperation in infrastructure, mineral resources, energy, automobile, finance, culture and tourism to take bilateral relations to a new level.
Mayank Singh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: A controversy has broken out over a letter purportedly written by 156 Armed Forces veterans, including nine retired chiefs, to the President, against the politicisation of the armed forces.

The letter, which hit the social media on Friday morning, included names of nine former chiefs, besides several veterans.

However, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri and General SF Rodrigues denied they ever endorsed it, while other signatories said they had given their individual consent.

Sources in Rashtrapati Bhawan say they have not recieved this letter that is going around in social media. However, the President's office said it has received one letter from former air chief Marshal NC Suri who has denied having written anything on the issue @NewIndianXpress pic.twitter.com/oHZsmU7NtL  Sana Shakil (@sanashakil_TNIE) April 12, 2019

Sources in Rashtrapati Bhavan, too, said the Presidents office had not received the letter in question.

#WATCH Goa: General SF Rodrigues who is mentioned as the first signatory in the purported letter written by armed forces veterans to President, denies signing it. pic.twitter.com/h1PNBCV909  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

We have received only one letter which is from former service chief N C Suri who has conveyed to us that he has not signed any letter on the issue. We have not received any other letter, the sources said.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharam said, It is worrying if peoples consent is being taken and fake letters with fake allegations are being signed by some vested interest groups. It is absolutely condemnable.

#WATCH Nirmala Sitharaman on purported letter to Pres signed by Armed Forces veterans: 2 senior officers said they haven't given consent,worrying that fake letters being signed by vested groups.Condemnable. Rashtrapati Bhawan has also said that they have not received the letter. pic.twitter.com/VQdWhbgKh5  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019



The issue got confounded with Admiral Suresh Mehta, Lt gen ML Naidu, Air Vice Marshal Kapil Kak, and few others, accepting they had consented to the text the letter contained.

The letter addressed to President said, We refer to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be Modi ji ki Sena.

The letter appealed the President to ensure the secular and apolitical character of the Forces is preserved.
Latest News

Washington, DC - "When it comes to the future of Americas energy needs, we will find it, we will dream it, and we will build it." ~ President Donald J. Trump

DEVELOPING ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE: President Trump is signing two Executive Orders to streamline Federal processes surrounding energy infrastructure development.

The President is signing an Executive Order to address regional and local energy supply constraints and to promote an efficient energy market. The Environmental Protection Agency will review and update the outdated guidance regarding certification under section 401 of the Clean Water Act. The Department of Transportation will update its regulations to reflect the modern Liquefied Natural Gas development ongoing in the United States. The Executive Order addresses regulatory and permitting barriers to financing new energy infrastructure and prioritizes the safe operation of existing infrastructure on Federal lands.

President Trump is also signing an Executive Order to improve the process for issuing Presidential permits for certain cross-border infrastructure projects. The Executive Order clarifies that any decision to issue or deny a permit shall be made solely by the President. The Secretary of State will continue to receive permit applications and provide advice to the President on whether a project would serve United States foreign policy interests.



UNLEASHING AMERICAN ENERGY: President Trump is promoting an efficient domestic energy market that creates jobs and provides affordable, reliable energy to consumers.

The Presidents Executive Orders will strengthen Americas energy security by improving our ability to efficiently, reliably, and cost-effectively transport energy resources. Inefficient energy infrastructure forces Americans to depend on energy that is more expensive and less reliable.

Improving permitting processes and increasing regulatory certainty will support American ingenuity and create more jobs for American workers. Outdated and burdensome Federal guidance and regulations cause confusion and uncertainty, leading to project delays, lost jobs, and reduced economic performance.

A more efficient cross-border permitting process is good for the American economy. Important cross-border projects will generate significant State and local tax revenues that can be invested into American communities.



ACHIEVING ENERGY DOMINANCE: President Trump is committed to responsibly developing our Nations abundant resources and advancing American energy dominance.
Latest News

Phoenix, Arizona - Governor Doug Ducey yesterday, joined by Representative Warren Petersen, Arizona legislators, members of the business community and many more, signed H.B. 2569, making Arizona the first state in the country to recognize occupational licenses for new residents. The signing represents the fulfillment of a top policy priority announced in Governor Duceys State of the State address.

Arizona is ranked a top-three state for economic momentum and the fourth-fastest growing state in the country. Yet as new residents move here, they often face daunting and unnecessary hurdles imposed by state government to start a job, even though they were licensed, trained and qualified for the same job in another state.

To help these new Arizonans get to work faster, Arizonas licensing boards and commissions will now be required to recognize occupational licenses granted in other states during the licensing process, something already done for spouses of military personnel deployed to Arizona. The bill ensures public health and safety protections for jobs that require background checks or other safety requirements.

With this bill, Arizonas sending a clear message to people across the country: if youre moving to Arizona, there's opportunity waiting for you here, said Governor Ducey. Theres dignity in all work. And we know that whether you make your living as a plumber, a barber, a nurse or anything else, you dont lose your skills simply because you moved here. The bill we signed today protects public health and safety while eliminating unnecessary and costly red tape. Its an Arizona original and should be a model for other states for how to work together and do the things that matter. My thanks to Representative Petersen for sponsoring this important legislation and to the many people who helped make this first-in-the-nation reform possible.

Arizona leads the nation with this common sense legislation to get rid of unnecessary burdens keeping people from employment, said Representative Petersen. Im proud to have introduced this bill to get government out of the way and let qualified individuals moving to our state get to work. Thank you to my fellow members of the House and Senate from both parties for their support, and a big thank you to Governor Ducey for signing this bill and making it a reality.

Governor Ducey made passing universal recognition of occupational licenses a top priority in his State of the State address, saying, 100,000 people will move here this year. Theres a job available for every one of them. Lots of them are trained and certified in other states Lets stop this foolishness. Pass Warren Petersens bill to grant universal recognition for all occupational licenses  and let them work.
Yuma News

Phoenix, Arizona - House Bill 2569, introduced by Representative Warren Petersen, was signed into law yesterday by Governor Doug Ducey, making Arizona the first state in the nation to allow universal recognition for occupational licenses.

The signing represents the fulfillment of a top policy priority announced in Governor Duceys State of the State address.

Heres what others are saying about this historic legislation:

Arizona Republic: Plumbers, Barbers, Nurses And Other Licensed Professionals Won't Need A New License If They Move To Arizona. "Ducey signed a bill reducing licensing requirements for many jobs in Arizona and plans to sign another soon that reduces licensing for hair stylists. Ducey said... reducing occupational licensing has been a major focus of his administration." (4/10/19)

AP: Arizona Becomes 1st To Match Out-Of-State Work Licenses. "Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation Wednesday making the state the first in the nation to automatically grant occupational licenses to anyone who moves there with an unblemished credential from another state. The action removes a barrier for doctors, manicurists, home inspectors and just about anyone else who needs a license to do their job." (4/10/19)

Arizona Mirror: Ducey Signs Bill Recognizing Out-Of-State Occupational Licenses. "House Bill 2569, sponsored by Rep. Warren Petersen, a Gilbert Republican, allows people with occupational licenses from other states to practice their trades in Arizona without obtaining new license after moving here." (4/10/19)

KTAR: Arizona Will Now Recognize Out-Of-State Occupational Licenses. "House Bill 2569 provides universal recognition for occupational licenses in an effort to remove barriers for employment. Arizona is the first state in the nation to allow for the broad recognition, according to the governors office." (4/10/19)

ABC15: One License For All. "Arizona is the first state in the nation to automatically grant occupational licenses...Business leaders see it as a boom for the economy because it will help fill employment demands in fields like nursing and building trades." (4/10/19)

Phoenix Business Journal: Arizona Now Allows Workers To Use Out-Of-State Occupational Licenses. "Arizona is the first state in the nation to grant such automatic reciprocity for occupational licenses... Since first being elected in 2014, Ducey has pushed to streamline business regulations including licensing requirements as a way to spur economic development in a state with one of the fastest-growing populations in the country." (4/10/19)

Cronkite News: Arizona Becomes The First State To Recognize All Out-Of-State Occupational Licenses. "Ducey, who has long championed deregulation, contends that a persons skills are not diminished just by crossing state lines. The change will allow those who move from other states to 'work faster and without all the red tape,' he said." (4/10/19)

3TV: Arizona Will Recognize Licenses From Other States. "Arizona made history today by becoming the first state to recognize professional licenses which were issued in other states... State officials hope this will make Arizona more enticing for skilled professionals." (4/10/19)

Chamber Business News: Arizona Becomes First State To Recognize Out-Of-State Occupational Licenses. "Governor Doug Ducey (R-AZ) on Wednesday signed House Bill 2569 into law after it passed with bipartisan support through both the Arizona House of Representatives and Senate. H.B. 2569... will allow anyone with an out-of-state occupational license or certificate in good standing for at least one year to obtain an equivalent license in Arizona without taking an exam." (4/10/19)

Goldwater Institute: Arizona Is Now The First State To Recognize Occupational Licenses From Other States. "...if you hold an occupational license in one state and then move to a new state, youre required to put in more time and spend more money on trainingjust to practice your profession in your new home. That was true in every stateuntil today. Governor Doug Ducey has signed HB 2569 into law, which makes Arizona the first state to adopt universal recognition for occupational licenses." (4/10/19)

Institute For Justice: Arizona Becomes First State To Broadly Recognize Out-of-State Licenses. "Thanks to a major reform signed earlier today by Gov. Doug Ducey, Arizona became the first state in the nation to universally recognize out-of-state licenses. Under the new law, Arizona will generally issue a license to new residents who were licensed for at least one year in another state, so long as their credentials havent been revoked, theyre not the subject of any pending investigation, and they dont have a disqualifying criminal record." (4/10/19)

ASUNow: License To Thrive: Arizona Bill Would Allow Reciprocity For Regulated Professions. "The main advantage of license reciprocity is increased competition in licensed service sectors and, therefore, more choices and lower prices for consumers. It also makes Arizona instantly more attractive to workers and entrepreneurs already looking to relocate to Arizona to take advantage of our other competitive advantages, like climate and cost of living." (4/9/19)

Washington Examiner: Gov. Doug Ducey Set To Sign Bill To Make Arizona The First State To Reciprocate Job Licensing. "Arizona, like most states, requires substantial training to grant licenses for a wide variety of jobs. Now, though, Gov. Doug Ducey is poised to sign legislation that would lower the barrier for entry for workers who already earned a license for their profession in a different state. The bill just passed by the legislature would give workers reciprocity if they were licensed for at least a year and in good standing with their home state licensing body or board." (4/9/19)

Arizona House Of Representatives: Representative Petersen Applauds Governor Ducey For Signing Universal Licensing Bill Into Law. "HB 2569, which was sponsored by Representative Petersen... received bipartisan support in the Legislature. 'Im grateful to Governor Ducey and my colleagues in the Legislature for making Arizona the first state in the country to offer universal occupational licensing recognition,' said Representative Petersen. 'By getting government out of the way and letting qualified professionals get right to work, HB 2569 will increase economic opportunity, create jobs, and grow Arizonas economy.' (4/10/19)

Americans For Prosperity Arizona: Occupational Licensing Is Often Harmful And Unnecessary. Heres How Arizona Eased This Burden. "As we work with everyone to prioritize reducing the remaining occupational licensing barriers that long-time Arizona residents continue to face, we applaud Arizona legislators and Gov. Ducey for taking a step forward in helping people come to Arizona and earn a living more easily." (4/10/19)

Ivanka Trump: "Awesome leadership by Gov Doug Ducey and state lawmakers for passing a bill that grants universal recognition for all occupational licenses in the state of Arizona. Excessive occupational licensing harms economic mobility and hurts low-income workers. I hope other states follow!" (4/5/19)

Jeb Bush: "Governor @dougducey continues to lead the way" (4/11/19)

Steven Greenhut, R Street Institute: "Legislators in capitols across the country should emulate this new bill" (4/11/19)

USAA: "Arizona Gov. @dougducey, surrounded by military spouses and USAA employees, signs the states new law allowing military spouses to carry over occupational licenses and certificates. USAA is proud to have helped shepherd the law through to todays signing." (4/10/19)

Chandler Chamber: "Thank you, Governor @dougducey for continuing to ease the burden on businesses and ensuring Arizona is #OpenForOpportunity!" (4/10/19)

Arizona Zanjeros: "As the first state in the nation to grant universal licensing recognition, #Arizona continues to solidify its reputation as THE place to move or expand your business. #LetThemWork #OpenForOpportunity" (4/10/19)

Arizona Lodging & Tourism Association: "We applaud this innovative leadership of Governor Doug Ducey that will drive all industry and jobs for a stronger #AZ economy." (4/10/19)

NFIB Arizona: "NFIB applauds Gov. Doug Ducey signing of Universal Licensing bill. Arizonas first-in-nation law will help licensed individuals get to work as they flock to the state. #azleg" (4/10/19)

Greater Phoenix Economic Council: "#NEWS: @dougducey signed legislation making #Arizona 1st state to automatically grant occupational licenses to people who move here w/ an unblemished credential, removing barriers for those needing a license to do their job." (4/11/19)

Arizona-Mexico Commission: "Big news for #AZ! Were now the first state to grant universal licensing recognition" (4/10/19)

Arizona Commerce Authority: "Under Governor @dougducey's leadership, #Arizona continues to be a national model for providing residents opportunities to succeed and helping businesses grow! #OpenForBusiness #AZAwesome" (4/10/19)
Yuma News

Yuma, Arizona - This evening, at about 7:42 p.m., Yuma Police officers responded to a vehicle versus pedestrian collision that occurred in the 1000 block of S. Avenue C.

The pedestrian, a 54 year old female, was pushing a stroller with a 3 year old child and crossing Avenue C headed west when she was struck by a Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck that was heading south. The pedestrian was pronounced deceased on scene. The child was thrown clear of the vehicle and sustained only a minor injury.

The Yuma Police Department encourages anyone with any information about this case to please call the Yuma Police Department at (928) 373-4700 or 78-Crime at (928) 782-7463 to remain anonymous.
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Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: Despite Election Commissions strict norms in place against communal campaign, politicians are crossing the Lakshman Rekha on a daily basis. Even the EC notice to BSP chief Mayawati for issuing community specific vote appeal and Yogi Adityanath for retorting it with the same tenor, the latest to join is Modi minister and BJPs Sultanpur candidate Maneka Gandhi.

She came under attack by the opposition on Friday for her alleged remark that she wouldnt give jobs to Muslims if they failed to vote for her.

While addressing a rally in Turabkhani village in her parliamentary constituency, the Union Minister said that she was winning by peoples support. If this victory will come to me without the support of Muslims, I will not like it. I will be hurt, she stated.

 If Muslims come to me asking for work, then I will think let it be, how does it matter? After all, a giving job is also a deal, she said, adding that voters from the minority community needed to understand that she was not among those who would continue to work for everyone and getting befooled in election.

Maneka said: I will win with or without your (Muslims) support. In Pilibhit I worked for everyone without any discrimination. You have to decided if you want to support or not. If you need my services, do vote for me else no need of that. Maneka has been staying put in Sultanpur since March 30.

The three-minute speech has gone viral on social media and sparked outrage for its blatant communal content.
New Delhi: Customs officials have seized 4.33 kg gold worth Rs 1.43 crore at the Anna International Airport from more than a dozen persons between Thursday night and Friday morning.

On Friday morning, eleven different persons who had come from Colombo and Kualumpur and Dubai were intercepted by the officials of the Air Intelligence unit at the exit gate of the arrival hall.

"On examination, they were found to have concealed gold in rubbery materials in their rectum. On extraction, 3.15 kg gold of 24 Karat purity valued at Rs 1.04 crore was recovered and seized," said the Customs department in a press release.

On Thursday night, on specific intelligence inputs, Customs officials intercepted four passengers who had arrived from Colombo and were found carrying gold in rubbery material concealed in their rectum.

The Customs informed that on extraction, 1.18 kg gold of 24 Karat purity valued at Rs Rs 39.15 lakh were seized.

Further investigation is under progress.
New Delhi: Cash-strapped Jet Airways will fly six to seven aircraft on both days this weekend on domestic routes, Aviation Secretary P S Kharola said Friday. He also said the airline has been told to ensure that passenger issues are taken into consideration while it deals with the situation.

It has also been told to alert passengers about flight cancellations 48 hours in advance, Kharola said. "Jet had a meeting with bankers. It has put forth demand of funds. It is currently flying 11 aircraft and will fly six to seven aircraft domestically on both days this weekend. We have asked it to take into consideration issues of passengers," the aviation secretary said.

Currently, Jet Airways is operating less than 50 domestic flights per day. The official said the airline has suspended its international operations till Monday.

As the crisis in the private airline deepened, the Prime Minister's Office called an urgent meeting to discuss the situation, an official source said. According to sources, the meeting has been called after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked the secretary of the department to review issues concerning Jet Airways.

Airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of around 90 per cent of the 119-aircraft fleet of the cash-strapped Jet Airways.

Amid this, SpiceJet Friday announced it will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease to bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline's international and domestic presence.

The availability of flights was also hit by pulling out of SpiceJet's 12 "737 Max" aircraft in March over safety concerns following an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on March 10.

"SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a no objection certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft," the airline said. "Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet fleet in the next 10 days," it added.
In another blow to crisis-hit Jet Airways, the employee union, representing the staff and officers of the company, on Friday sought to register FIRs against airlines' founder Naresh Goyal, chief executive Vinay Dube and SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar for non-payment of March salary.

They registered their complaints to the police over non-payment of dues and non-resolution of grievances. The union wrote a letter informing that Jet has not paid salaries to its employees, adding that it is a gross violation of the law.

They urged the police to investigate the matter on an urgent basis. They also warned that the employees will be forced to take steps, including calling a strike.

"Our Association represents staff and officers of Jet Airways (India) Limited and has been in existence for the last nineteen years. We are a recognised union of the employees. We have to inform you that the Company has not paid salaries to its employees as of date which is in gross violation of the law of the land. This violation apart from being a legal violation under labour law is also a serious offence under the breach of trust as the company has been handed over last month by the former Chairman Mr Naresh Goyal to the State Bank of India under the Resolution Plan," read the letter.

"We call upon you to register to offences under cheating, criminal breach of trust. misappropriation and other offences against the Chairman, the CEO, the representatives of the State Bank of India (Bankers) as per specific provisions of Section 405 and 409 and other related sections including 420 of the IPC," added the letter.

"Kindly investigate the said matter in an urgent basis since the employees are feeling extremely uncomfortable and will be forced to express their solidarity through constitutional means available including calling for a strike under the provisions of Industrial Disputes Act. Please note that the law provides for criminal action as stated above against employers and given the fact that Jet Airways has been taken over by the bankers these provisions will automatically apply," said the letter.

The airline passengers continue to bear the brunt of last minute cancellations and missing refunds.

Earlier in the day, the airline said its international operations would stand suspended till April 15, after it suspended all its overseas operations Thursday.

The PMO had also called for an urgent meeting to resolve the crisis at the airline, which is currently operating only 11 of its 123 strong fleets as lessors have grounded close to 90 planes so far since February. This forced the airline to ground its entire operations across the Eastern and Northeastern regions since Thursday.
NEW DELHI: Union Minister Suresh Prabhu Friday directed the Civil Aviation Ministry to review issues related to the debt-ridden airline Jet Airways, which has been operating with just 14 flights, and take required steps to minimise passenger inconvenience.

The development comes a day after the airline suspended all its international flights scheduled for Thursday after more than 10 of planes were grounded due to non-payment of outstanding dues to lessors. It also shelved its services to and from the East and Northeast regions.

Suresh Prabhu tweeted, "I have directed the Secretary of Ministry of Civil Aviation to review issues related to Jet Airways. I have asked him to take the necessary steps to minimise passenger inconvenience and ensure their safety."

Directed Secretary @MoCA_GoI to review issues related to #JetAirways. Asked him to take necessary steps to minimise passenger inconvenience and ensure their safety.  Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) April 12, 2019

Cash-strapped Jet Airways on Thursday suspended all its international flights scheduled for Thursday after its 10 aircraft were grounded due to non-payment of outstanding dues to lessors.

"Jet is operating only nine planes on Friday," a source told news agency PTI.

Following Jet Airways grounding its planes, many passengers were left stranded at the airports, who took to social media to complain.

The sources added the airline now owes more than Rs 3,500 crore to passengers on account of flight cancellations alone.

As of Thursday noon, the airline operated just 14 planes -- way down from 123 planes in operations at the peak.
NEW DELHI: A fire broke out at a clothes showroom in national capitals' Uttam Nagar in the early hours of Friday. Twenty-five fire tenders have rushed to the spot.

The blaze broke out in the wee hours of Friday. Attempts to douse the fire is currently underway.

More details awaited. (With ANI inputs)
Chandigarh: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) Thursday forged an alliance with the BJP in Haryana and announced that it would not contest any of the 10 Lok Sabha seats in the state and instead extend support to the saffron party on all.

The parties, who are allies in the neighbouring Punjab, will also fight the Haryana Assembly elections, scheduled to take place later this year, together.

The development comes hours after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the fledgling Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) announced their alliance in the state for the May 12 Lok Sabha polls.

Last year, SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal had said the party would contest the parliamentary polls alone in Haryana.

Senior SAD leader and party in-charge for Haryana affairs, Balwinder Singh Bhunder said the decision to ally with the BJP in Haryana was taken keeping in view the "need of the present circumstances".

"The common goal of the two parties is to see the return of the NDA government at the Centre with a majority," Bhunder told PTI.

"Our party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal held a meeting with BJP president Amit Shah in Delhi a few days back wherein it was decided that our party would extend support to them in parliamentary elections," he said.

Bhunder, also SAD's national vice president and a Rajya Sabha MP, said his party decided to not contest any seat as the BJP had already announced its candidates for some.

"We wanted to contest a seat or two but the BJP said they have already announced candidates on eight seats. Therefore, we decided to extend support to them instead of contesting any Lok Sabha seat ourselves," he said.

"However, in Haryana Assembly polls, which are due in October, the BJP will leave a few seats for us to contest, modalities for which will be worked out later," he added.

Addressing a press conference in Narwana earlier in the day, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar described SAD as a natural ally of the BJP.

Bhunder, Haryana BJP president Subhash Barala, Haryana SAD president Sharan Jeet Singh Sauntha and SAD MLA Balkaur Singh were also present at the press conference.

"The SAD will support the BJP's candidates in the Lok Sabha elections. It will play a significant role in ensuring the victory of BJP candidates," Khattar said.

"Narendra Modi will be the prime minister for a second term," he asserted.

Asked about the AAP-JJP alliance, Khattar said, "It won't affect our prospects."
Vadodara: A total of 100 Indian fishermen, who were released by Pakistan earlier this week, arrived in Vadodara on Thursday. They were brought to Vadodara via a train from Amritsar.

The fishermen were released through Attari-Wagah border on April 8. They were kept in Karachi jail for over one and a half year. Upon the arrival, V Babu, one of the fishermen, shared his ordeal of staying with news agency ANI and said, "We were kept in a room and not allowed to move freely during the recent period of tension between the two nations."

Gujarat: 100 Indian fishermen that were released by Pakistan on 8th April arrive in Vadodara from Amritsar on train. V Babu, one of the released fishermen says "We were kept in a room & not allowed to move freely during recent period of tension between the two nations," (11.4.19) pic.twitter.com/RYvbIhoNv1  ANI (@ANI) April 11, 2019

They belong to Gujarat's Veraval region and were caught by Pakistan coast guard for crossing the international sea borders.

Speaking to ANI, another fisherman said, "Many of us accidentally cross the border while some go to that side knowingly for catching fishes. I was in Pakistan for about 17 months. We were always confined in a particular cell and were never allowed to venture out. We were clearly told to stay in the definite cell for our own safety."

On April 5, Pakistan announced that it will release 360 Indian prisoners as a 'goodwill gesture' amidst tensions between the two countries after the Pulwama terror attack. The prisoners are mostly fishermen and they will eventually be released in four phases.

(With ANI inputs)
New Delhi: In a veiled reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan on Friday called him a 'Pakistani agent' and accused the BJP of speaking Pakistan's language.

"Earlier, you were Nawaz Sharif's friend and now current Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan is waiting for you to become the Prime Minister again. Now, the public will tell me that who is the agent of Pakistan here? Me or....?" Khan said while addressing a public gathering here.

Pakistan PM Imran Khan recently stated that he sees a better chance of Kashmir issue being resolved if PM Modi is re-elected. Following Imran Khan's statement on PM Modi, the Opposition has been accusing BJP and PM Modi of 'speaking Pakistan language'.

Earlier, opposition leaders Arvind Kejriwal, Omar Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and others had criticised the BJP saying 'their secret agreement with Pakistan is out in the open'.

"Pakistan has officially allied with Modi! A vote for Modi is a vote for Pakistan," tweeted Congress spokesperson Randeep Sing Surjewala. "Modi-ji, first Nawaz Sharif, now Imran Khan is your friend. The secret is out, Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala had tweeted.

"Why does Pakistan want Modi-ji to win? PM Modi, please tell the nation how deep your relationship is with Pakitan? All Indians should know that if PM Modi wins then crackers will be burst in Pakistan," Arvind Kejriwal had tweeted.

PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti took a dig at the development saying that BJP supporters are left confused as to whether praise Imran or criticise him. "Bhakts scratching their heads & at wit ends wondering if they should praise Imran Khan or not," Mehbooba Mufti tweeted. She also said that the Prime Minister had 'frittered away' the chance to hold dialogue with Pakistan.
New Delhi: The Army Commanders Conference, an apex level biannual event, which formulates important policy decisions, is being held in New Delhi from April 8-13, 2019. Army Commanders' Conference is an important event in the planning and execution process of the Indian Army. To ensure due diligence, decisions are taken through the collegiate system comprising Army Commanders and Senior Officers.

The Army Commanders' Conference has comprehensively deliberated all aspects of extant security dynamics, emerging security scenarios, enhancing operational capability in the near and long term and enhancement of combat edge over potential adversaries.

It has been emphasized in the conference that the Indian Army is committed to a peaceful security environment and shall holistically address emerging threats, challenges and ensure no room for terror. Reviews during the Conference included readiness, tri-services synergy, military diplomacy, joint exercises that have created capacity and environment and supporting operational plans that have evolved. Defence cooperation has facilitated new vistas and these shall provide excellent opportunities for enhancing strategic engagements.

The sessions of Commands was followed by Principal Staff Officers providing an update on contemporary issues. To mitigate the cyber threats, management and streamlining of communication and data security, were emphasised. Live issues pertaining to administration and human resources development were deliberated in detail.

All future conflicts would be planned and executed jointly by the three services. For developing a deeper understanding and enhancing jointness, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, Chief of Air Staff addressed Army Commanders and Staff wherein he conveyed the vision and high credibility of IAF missions and ideas for synergised application. Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of Naval Staff and Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee has also addressed the Army Commanders and focused on jointness and challenges in the maritime domain.

Additionally, to promote indigenisation through Make in India, an exhibition of emerging and future defence technological innovations was held. A total of 53 domestic companies participated in this event. This interaction of industry representatives with the senior leadership of the Army facilitated in obtaining direct feedback regarding product development and enhancement keeping in view the requirements of Army.

With a focus on the welfare of the families of brave soldiers who made supreme sacrifice in the services of the Nation, the Year 2019 has been declared as the year of Next of Kin.

The deliberations in Army Commanders' Conference validated the current course set by the military hierarchy, as merited by the dynamics of emerging security and operational events.

The key highlights of the conference are as given below:-

Optimum force readiness to be ensured.

Re-prioritising the existing requirements to ensure that the resources allocated for force modernisation and capacity building be ensured by optimising allotted budget.



Increase the content of indigenisation in force modernisation.



The state of existing infrastructure along Northern Borders and it has been decided to pursue these projects on higher priority. Ensure speedy move and all-weather connectivity to Northern Borders are the focus areas.



As the Indian Army was becoming a more networked and digitised force, the COAS emphasised on the need to enhance the technological threshold of all ranks so as to imbibe state of art technology and exploit the same.

The need to appreciate the role of women officers in view of their permanent commission and align their employment gainfully with organisational requirements has been concurred by all. Avenues for making the lady officers experts in foreign languages, artificial intelligence, data management, cyber and space domains are being examined.


NEW DELHI: Several Indian Naval Ships participated in AUSINDEX  the ongoing joint maritime exercise between India and Australia  in Andhra Pradesh's Visakhapatnam.

The Indian Navy was represented by INS Sahyadri, INS Ranvijay, INS Kora, INS Kiltan and submarines INS Sindhukirti.

BridgesofFriendship #AUSINDEX19 As a part of Sea Phase of ongoing Australia - India Bilateral Maritime Exercise AUSINDEX-19, IN Ships Sahyadri, Ranvijay, Kora, Kiltan and Her Majesty's Australian Ships Canberra, Newcastle, Parramatta, Success conducted exercises with submarines INS Sindhukirti and HMAS Collins along with P-8I and P8A long-range maritime reconnaissance aircraft of respective navies. Integral helicopters MH-60R Romeo Seahawk, MHR 90 and Seaking 42B undertook cross deck flying to enhance interoperability and to share best practices, said the Indian Navy on Instagram.

Australian Navy Ship (HMAS) Canberra, a landing helicopter dock, Newcastle and Paramatta, both frigates, a Durance-class multi-product replenishment oiler along with HMAS Collins, a conventional submarine, also participated in the maritime exercise.

The bilateral maritime exercise is aimed to strengthen mutual cooperation and enhance interoperability between the Royal Australia Navy (RAN) and Indian Navy by providing opportunities for interaction and exchange of professional views between the personnel of the two navies, the Navy said in a statement.

AUSINDEX began on April 2 and will continue till April 14.

"The third edition of AUSINDEX scheduled from April 2 to 14 would involve exercises in all three dimensions with focus on Anti Submarine Warfare (ASW) and shall be held in three phases," the statement said.

The sea phase was held between April 7-11 shall be held in the Bay of Bengal.

The second harbour phase will begin on April 12 and continue till April 14 during which debrief and setting up of goals for the next edition of AUSINDEX, which is likely to be hosted by Australia in 2021, would be discussed.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: Two powerful women of Indian politics  UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Union Minister Smriti Zubin Irani of the BJP  filed their nominations in adjacent constituencies of UP, setting off a ripple effect in north-central regions on Thursday. The two road shows, thereafter just 65 km apart  were infectious, with thousands joining the cheering groups.

They waded through the streets packed with people like sardines making movement slow  traversing just about a km in hours. The synergy the two struck with their constituents was electric, as they marked their entry for the fifth phase of polls, which will end in ballots on May 6.

READ MORE | Battleground Amethi: Smriti Irani rakes up MP I-T raids, questions Rahul Gandhi's silence

They had more than one thing in common.

Both-coincidentally were draped in maroonish red cotton sarees and accompanied by families. Both drove through the roads as the skies above filled with showers of rose petals. Sonia travelled in a tight security convoy; Smriti in an SUV with her husband Zubin Irani and Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath flanking her.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, accompanied by family members, offers prayers in Rae Bareli | PTI

Both threw garlands back into the jubilant crowd of supporters, while hundreds lined the roads and rooftops to see them.Abki baar panch lakh paar, and panchvi baar panch lakh paar (Fifth tenure for Sonia with a difference of 5 lakh votes), cried out the crowd in Rae Bareli, while at Amethi, supporters shouted Abki Baar Amethi hamaar (Amethi will be ours this time). Smriti is taking on Rahul Gandhi.

READ MORE: 'Modi not invincible, Don't forget 2004', says Sonia Gandhi after filing nomination from Rae Bareli

The two rivals in either constituencies showed they were joined in faith too. Sonia with her two children Rahul and Priyanka and son-in-law Robert, invoked all Gods and Goddesses through a sacrificial ritual before proceeding on her road show, while Smriti and family visited two local temples  Lodhi Baba and Boodhan Mai  before holding a hawan to seek the Goddess divine intervention.

While Sonia is seeking re-election from Rae Bareli for the fifth time in a row, since 1999, it is the second attempt by Smriti to breach the Gandhi bastion in Amethi. In 2014, Smriti had lost to Rahul Gandhi by a margin of one lakh votes.Interacting with media persons outside the collectorate, Sonia rejected the notion that PM Narendra Modi was invincible. Not at all, not at all. Dont forget 2004. Vajpayee Ji was invincible, but we won.

However, standing beside his mother, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said, There have been many people in Indian history who had the arrogance to believe that they were invincible and bigger than the people of India. His invincibility will be for everyone to see on May 23.Drawing a parallel between 2004 and 2019, Sonia Gandhis reminder came at a time when the BJP is depending a lot on Modi magic to sail through just as in 2014.

Smriti, meanwhile, targeted Rahul by questioning his silence on the money trail in Madhya Pradesh involving CM Kamal Naths kin. She asked who was being supplied that cash at Tughlaq Road in New Delhi. Repeating her Missing MP jibe, Smriti claimed, Rahul Gandhi has himself accepted his defeat by moving to Wayanad, while promising all-round development of Amethi with her in the saddle.

She criticised the Congress president for failing to address the rural distress in the constituency, women issues and infrastructure requirements of Amethi.In fact, didi, as Smriti is referred to in Amethi, has managed to create a space for the BJP. She has paid 21 visits to Amethi and spent around a month in the constituency during last five years. Broadening of the railway line, Pipri dam, a new unit of HAL, ops for farmers, SHGs for women, besides roads and schools are a few initiatives to her name, claimed Govind Singh, BJP Amethi unit in charge.

what the numbers say!

 Sonia Gandhi has earlier won Rae Bareli in 2004, 2006 bypolls, 2009 and 2014 general elections

 Since 1957, the Congress has lost this seat only three times in 1977, 1996 and 1998

 In the previous 2014 election, Smriti Irani had lost Amethi to Rahul Gandhi by a margin of one lakh votes
Shimla: Upset over remarks by Himachal Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur, his Cabinet Minister Anil Sharma on Friday tendered his resignation from the cabinet.

However, he has not resigned either from the BJP party or from the state assembly.

"Jai Ram Thakur gave some statements against me in my constituency yesterday (Thursday) and I am upset. This morning I decided to quit from his cabinet and submitted my resignation to his office," Sharma, who holds the Power portfolio, told reporters here.

However, he clarified that he has not resigned from the Legislative Assembly.

"I am still a member of the BJP but I would not campaign for any party candidate," he added. "If the BJP desires it can sack me from the party," he said.
A day after the first phase of Lok Sabha election, the Jammu and Kashmir Police on Friday sanctioned welfare relief for police personnel injured during duty in the poll-bound areas of different districts in the state.

Dilbag Singh, Jammu and Kashmir DGP, also sanctioned a reward of Rs 10,000 for an ASI of CRPF for his alertness to foil a weapon snatching attempt by miscreants at Warpora in Baramulla district of the state.

Singh also visited Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences (SKIMS) in Srinagar's Soura to meet the injured personnel admitted there.
Dantewada: Maoists have claimed the responsibility of the death of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Bhima Mandavi killed in a major IED blast in Chhattisgarhs Dantewada earlier this week. The Maoists have written a letter to Secretary of Darbha Divisional Committee Sainath.

Mandavi and four others were killed in the Maoist attack on Tuesday, two days ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in the constituency.

The attack took place between Kuakonta and Syamgiri in Dantewada after the escort vehicle of State Police came under the blast. The attack was carried out by an improvised explosive device (IED) buried in the road on which the convoy was travelling.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel strongly condemned the attack.

Baghel, while interacting at a press conference, said that the Naxals would have to pay a high price for carrying out the attack.

Mandavi, the politician who died in the dastardly attack, was the only BJP MLA from Bastar region which has 12 Assembly seats.
Washington: India is concerned about the "threats" it faces in space, the Pentagon has said, defending the country for acquiring anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test capabilities.

On March 27, India achieved a historic feat by shooting down its own low-orbit satellite with a ground-to-space missile, making the country a space power.

The test made India the fourth country in the world after the US, Russia and China to have the ASAT capabilities.

"The first lesson from the Indian ASAT is just the simple question of why did they do that. And the answer should be, I think to all the committee looking at it, is that they did that because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space," US Strategic Command Commander General John E Hyten told members of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

"And therefore, they feel they have to have a capability to defend themselves in space," Hyten told Senate Armed Services Committee while responding to a question from Senators on the need for India to do anti-satellite missile test, and the debris it generated in the space.

After India's test, NASA termed as a "terrible thing" the country's shooting down of one of its satellites, saying it created about 400 pieces of orbital debris, endangering the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had said about 60 pieces were tracked and out of which 24 are going above the apogee of the ISS.

Hyten advocated for the development of some kind of international norms of behaviour in space.

"And where those norms of behaviour should begin, from my opinion, is with debris, because as the combatant commander responsible for space today, I don't want more debris," said the top Pentagon commander.

Raising the issue, Senator Tim Kaine said India announced last month that it had successfully conducted a test of an anti-satellite weapon.

"So, they had something in low earth orbit. They used an anti-satellite weapon to down, and it resulted in - the estimate's right now 400 pieces of debris, 24 which are large enough to potentially pose a threat to the International Space Station," he said.

"There have been other instances like this. There was a Chinese - a similar effort in 2007 that led to the catalogued 100,000 pieces of debris, many of which are still observing in debris fields that pose danger to other assets in space," he said.

There was a collision in '09 between a working US satellite and a sort of defunct Soviet era satellite that -kind of a fender bender that produced debris. Then this debris causes challenges, he added.

"If we think that space is going to be more of a traffic jam, more satellites for all kinds of purposes up there, what should we be thinking about as a Senate in this committee or in Foreign Relations about sort of the rules?" he asked.

"What should the rules environment be, and what should we be doing to try to promote rules? India is an ally. We're not talking about an adversary doing something. We're talking about them testing some capacity, but then that creates challenges for all kinds of uses of space. How should we be solving problems like that?" Kaine asked.
Hours after Russia honoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the 'Order of St Andrew the Apostle', the PM late on Friday night expressed gratitude thanking Russian President Vladimir Putin. The honour is the highest decoration of the country.

Taking to Twitter, PM Modi asserted that the foundations of the friendship between the two nations are deep and the future of the partnership is bright. He added that extensive cooperation between India and Russia has led to extraordinary outcomes for the citizens.

Praising Putin, PM Modi said that the former remains a source of great strength for the India-Russia friendship. He added that under Putin's visionary leadership, bilateral and multilateral cooperation between the two nations has scaled new heights.

"Honoured to receive this prestigious award. I thank President Putin and the people of Russia. Foundations of India-Russia friendship are deep & the future of our partnership is bright. Extensive cooperation between our nations has led to extraordinary outcomes for our citizens," tweeted PM Modi.

"President Putin remains a source of great strength for the India-Russia friendship. Under his visionary leadership, bilateral and multilateral cooperation between our nations has scaled new heights," further tweeted PM Modi.

The Russian Embassy said that the decoration was bestowed for PM Modi's exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between the two nations.

Earlier on April 4, United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan had honoured PM Modi with the Zayed Medal. The award is the highest civil decoration of the country which is awarded to presidents, kings, and heads of states.

The honour was bestowed on PM Modi for his contribution towards boosting the relations between the two nations. UAE had said that the two nations have historical and comprehensive strategic ties which have been reinforced by the pivotal role of PM Modi.

Taking to Twitter, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed had conveyed the message.

"We have historical and comprehensive strategic ties with India, reinforced by the pivotal role of my dear friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who gave these relations a big boost. In appreciation of his efforts, the UAE President grants him the Zayed Medal," the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi had tweeted.
Kolkata: The Supreme Court on Thursday slapped a fine of Rs 20 lakh on the West Bengal government for restricting the screening of "Bhobishyoter Bhoot", a political satire directed by Anik Dutta.

The court termed the action of the Trinamool Congress government a threat to the artistic freedom and a mark of intolerance.

An SC bench comprising Justice DY Chandrachud said the incident was a grim example of government methodology silencing discontent and directed the West Bengal government to compensate the theatre owners who were largely affected by its adverse decision.

The West Bengal government had imposed a shadow ban on the screening of the film "Bhobishyoter Bhoot" in theatres, just a day after its release in February this year. The state police in a drive to stop the release of the film issued orders to the theatre owners, asking them to refrain from screening the film.

The apex court said: "There is a real danger that art and literature would become victims of intolerance. In the present case, we are of the view that there has been an unconstitutional attempt to invade the fundamental rights of the producers, the actors and the audience."

The judgement came on a writ petition filed by Indibily Creative Pvt Ltd, challenging the validity of the police officers` letter to stop the screening of the film.

The court observed that the state cannot look askance when organised interests threaten the existence of freedom. "The state is duty-bound to ensure the prevalence of conditions in which of those freedoms can be exercised," said the court.

The court also observed that such police action on theatre owners was a major threat to democracy. The police had issued letters to the theatre owners to not screen the film.

The court categorically questioned the authority of the police to issue directions to stop the screening of a film. The court asked that how was it possible that a film which was critical of the political system would hurt public sentiments.

Appearing for Indibily Creative Pvt Ltd, senior advocate Sanjay Parikh contended that such interference of the police in the state would set a wrong trend. He told the court that the police stopped the screening of the film without invoking any legal provision.

The court noted that the state of West Bengal told the court that it had not taken recourse to its statutory powers either under state or Union legislation. "If that be so, there has to be some explanation forthcoming before the court why the film was simultaneously removed from the theatres at one stroke shortly after release," the court said.

It further said: "The state of West Bengal is duty bound, once the film has been certified by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), to take necessary measures to protect the fundamental right to free speech and expression of the producer and the director."

The state government counsel informed the court that the letter sent by the Joint Commissioner of Police to the producer of the film on February 11, 2019, was withdrawn.
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday gave four weeks time to the CBI to file a reply in the Mulayam Singh Yadav disproportionate assets (DA) case.

Following the apex court`s direction, a preliminary enquiry was instituted into the Samajwadi Party patriarch`s alleged disproportionate assets. The enquiry was closed in 2013.

The Solicitor General told the court that the agency closed the preliminary inquiry in 2013 as it did not find any conclusive evidence.

The Supreme Court asked the Central Bureau of Investigation to file a detailed response in the DA case against Mulayam Singh Yadav and his son. The next hearing in the matter will come up in July.

The elections will already be over then. Mulayam Singh Yadav had complained to the Supreme Court that the petition filed on election-eve was politically motivated.
New Delhi: The West Bengal government on Friday denied the permission for landing of Rahul Gandhi's helicopter in Siliguri. With this, the uncertainty glooms over the Congress chief's public meeting in Siliguri, which was scheduled to take place on April 14.

According to Congress, which said that it submitted an application seeking permission for the chopper landing, said that no positive response came from the West Bengal government on the application. Although, the Bengal government allowed the Congress leaders to take the road routes to Siliguri, after denying their direct landing in the area.

Meanwhile, confirming the same, senior Congress leader and the party's Darjeeling Lok Sabha candidate Shankar Malakar said he had sought permission for Gandhi's chopper to land at the police ground on April 14 but it was denied by the police. "We had to cancel the rally as we didn't get the permission," Malakar said.

Siliguri Police Commissioner BL Meena confirmed that the Congress had sought permission for landing a helicopter at police ground which was denied. We had denied permission for that specific ground. There are some rules due to which it was not allowed. But they didn't come up with any alternative venue," Meena said."

In the midst of this, the infighting in Bengal Congress came out in open as state Congress president Somen Mitra said he was not aware of the rally of Rahul Gandhi. "I can't say whether or not a rally is going to be held. Please don't ask me this question," Mitra said.

According to another senior state Congress leader, Mitra was apparently miffed as Malakar, without informing him, had sought permission for Gandhi's rally, on his own.

The development comes months after the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal blocked BJP chief Amit Shah's chopper from landing at Jhargram. Earlier this year in January, the West Bengal government had denied permission to Shah's chopper to land in Malda district, just ahead of his key rally in the region.

For the upcoming Lok Sabha election, Mamata is seen maintaining a distance with the Congress in the opposition camp. In fact, she has been demonstrating bonhomie with regional satraps like TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal among others.

The TMC supremo, in recent time, on a number of occasions, has claimed that Bengal will play the most important role in the formation of the new government

West Bengal has a total of 42 Lok Sabha seats, third highest after Uttar Pradesh's 80 and Maharashtra 48.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy has claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has posted an edited video to project him in poor light by highlighting his alleged statement on defence forces. In the video tweeted by BJP's Karnataka unit, Kumaraswamy is allegedly heard saying that those who cannot afford to have proper food and are very poor join the armed forces.

But the Karnataka CM accused the BJP of editing the video. I never said that the jawans are in the army just for livelihood, Kumaraswamy tweeted, quoting the video of BJP.

BJP is up to their old tricks again. They posted another edited video with false interpretation to malign me. I had said that not all who join defence forces are rich. The PM should not play with the lives of jawans to get votes. I never said that jawans are in the army just for livelihood, reads the Karnataka CMs tweet.

#BJP is upto their old tricks again.They posted another edited video with false interpretation to malign me.I had said that not all who join defence forces are rich.The PM shuldnot play with d lives of jawans to get votes.I never said tat jawans are inthe army just for livelihood https://t.co/Xzwkk7Vxya  H D Kumaraswamy (@hd_kumaraswamy) April 11, 2019

As per the post shared by BJP Karnataka, Kumaraswamy while addressing an election rally allegedly said, People who don't have food to eat join defence.

BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa, also a former Karnataka CM, strongly condemned Kumaraswamys alleged remarks on the army personnel.

The incident comes days after Kumaraswamy accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using makeup and wax to grab attention.

"Modi wakes up every morning, applies makeup or wax to get a shine on his face and sits in front of cameras," news agency ANI quoted him as saying at an election rally. He further added, "But we take bath once in the morning and wash our face only the next day. Our faces dont look good on cameras. Thats why even media shows only Modi."

Kumaraswamy had also 'pleaded' with people to not trust PM Modi and his 'colourful words.'

Karnataka will vote in the second and third phases of Lok Sabha election, scheduled on April 18 and 23, respectively.
Unnao: BJP leader Sakshi Maharaj, who is a Member of Parliament from Unnao, on Friday came up with a bizarre message to the voters. Addressing a gathering in Uttar Pradesh's Unnao, Sakshi threatened voters and warned them saying that they will be cursed if they don't cast their votes in his favour.

"I am a saint. It is written in Shastras that when a Sanyasi asks for something and is not provided with, then he takes away all the good deeds and gives sins in return," Maharaj said during his address today.

Known for making a controversial speech, Maharaj added that he is not demanding properties from the voters but is seeking their votes which will decide the fate of 125 crore Indians.

"Maharaj courted controversy last month by saying that there no elections would be required after the 2019 elections owing to 'Modi Tsunami'.

In March this year, Sakshi, in a veiled threat to Uttar Pradesh BJP chief, demanded the Lok Sabha ticket from Unnao, by writing a letter, stating that the 'consequences otherwise may not be positive if he is not given a ticket to fight in the upcoming election'.

Sakshi Maharaj's controversial remarks in the past have often invited political ire as well as scathing criticism from people at large. From inaugurating a nightclub in Lucknow and defending UP government for its delayed action in Unnao rape case, Sakshi Maharaj has often been in the news for the wrong reasons.

The seven-phased Lok Sabha elections have begun with the first phase of polling taking place on April 11. It will conclude on May 19. Uttar Pradesh will undergo polling in all the seven phases.

The counting of votes will take place on May 23.
By IANS

SOLAPUR: For a change, in the Solapur Lok Sabha constituency, traditional rivals - Sushilkumar Shinde (Congress) and Mahaswami Jaisiddheshwar Shivacharya (Bharatiya Janata Party) - are worried about an unexpected common political enemy in Prakash Ambedkar, the common candidate of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi and the AIMIM.

Shinde, a former Union Home Minister and Maharashtra Chief Minister, is making his fourth bid for the Lok Sabha from his home turf, while the BJP's Mahaswami Siddheshwar is hoping to sail on the huge chunk of around 3.60 lakh Lingayat votes.

But, this time the going promises to be a Clash of Titans with the going tough for both with the entry of the formidable Ambedkar - who's eyeing the three lakh Dhangar, three lakhs Muslim and 2.50 lakhs Dalit votes, besides over 3.50 lakh Marathas.

ALSO READ | Lok Sabha elections 2019: Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar to contest from Akola, Solapur seats

Once a Congress bastion - it held the seat in 12 out of 16 parliamentary elections - the constituency has a total of 17,02,755 voters consisting of 893,736 males and 809,019 females.

For Shinde, the challenge is to retain the traditional Congress voters, plus ensure that the Dalit, Muslim, Dhangar votes don't sway too much in favour of Ambedkar or the Lingayats vote en masse for Mahaswami Siddheshwar.

The sole consolation for Shinde would be that the BJP dropped its sitting candidate Sharad Bansode, who had vanquished Shinde by a margin of 1.50 lakh votes at the height of the Modi wave in 2014, and the goodwill enjoyed by his legislator daughter, Praniti Shinde, MLA from Solapur City Central.

The BJP opted for Mahaswami Siddheshwar in place of Bansode - whose chances for a repeat performance were now considered bleak in the changed circumstances.

While Bansode's supporters playing spoilsport are not entirely ruled out, the entry of Ambedkar - who is also contesting from Akola - has made existing calculations go haywire for the two major parties ahead of the voting in Solapur on April 18 (Phase II), along with nine other constituencies in the state.

Ambedkar has the backing of the Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh-All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, but Shinde boasts of the support of the 56-party Mahagathbandhan in the state, and Mahaswami Siddheshwar banks on his own Lingayat support base plus the ruling BJP-Shiv Sena combine.

Though Shinde - who belongs to a Scheduled Caste - may lose out in the urban centres which comprise Lingayats-Muslims-Dalits population - he is expected to score big among the rural folk with a large dollop of Maratha votes who are likely to side with Congress this time.

Among the major issues, local VBA-Congress leaders say that a drought leading to severe shortage of water for drinking and agriculture, the never-ending farmland crises, the growing unemployment among rural-urban youth, an anti-incumbency factor coupled with disenchantment towards the Prime Minsiter Narendra Modi's government post-demonetisation and GST, and more, would be prominently exploited during the campaign for Solapur.

The Solapur Lok Sabha constituency comprises six assembly segments with sitting party legislators: Solapur South (BJP), Solapur City North (BJP), Solapur City Central (Congress), Pandharpur (Congress), Mohol (NCP) and Akkalkot (Congress).
The Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli is situated in Western India and is represented by single parliamentary constituency in the Lok Sabha.

The Dadra And Nagar Haveli Lok Sabha Constituency (constituency number 1) is reserved for candidates belonging to the scheduled tribes.

The election here will be conducted on April 23, 2019, as per the Phase III schedule.

Dadra and Nagar Haveli Lok Sabha constituency: Full list of candidates, polling dates

Having been merged into the Union of India only in 1961, this parliamentary constituency fought its first Lok Sabha elections in 1967 with the Congress making a clean sweep.

This constituency remained an important seat of the Congress which it won till the elections in 1996 before the Dadra and Nagar Haveli constituency became a prominent stronghold of the Bharatiya Janata Party alternatively.

Mohanbhai Sanjibhai Delkar, initially a member of the Congress before he became a leader of BJP and finally forming his own Bharatiya Navshakti Party, has been returned to this constituency for a continuous six terms, from the Lok Sabha elections in 1989 to the elections in 2004, owing to the immense popularity he has in the Union Territory.

Gomanbhai Natubhai Patel of the BJP is the incumbent MP from this constituency.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Gomanbhai Natubhai Patel of the BJP bagged 80790 votes and defeated INC candidate Delkar Mohanbhai Sanjibhai who got 74576 votes.

The election was also contested by Nationalist Congress Party and Shiv Sena.

The primary electoral contest for the seat is between the BJP and INC. Though several other regional parties and independent candidates would also contest for the seat.

Lok Sabha elections will take place in seven phases across the state  on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19.

The results would be declared on May 23.
NEW DELHI: Some veterans of Indian Armed Forces denied writing to President Ram Nath Kovind, day after reports of a purported letter to the Rashtrapati Bhavan on "politicisation of the military" went viral. A source in the Rashtrapati Bhavan also denied receiving any such letter, reported news agency ANI.

Various sections of the media on Thursday reported that more than 150 veterans, including former service chiefs, have written to the President of India against the politicisation of the armed forces in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

Former General Sunith Francis Rodrigues, who is mentioned as the first signatory in the purported letter, denies signing it.

Calling the letter a product of fake news, he says, Dont know what it (purported letter) is all about. All my life, we've been apolitical. After, 42 years as officer, it's a little late to change. Always put India first. Dont know who these people are, classic manifestation of fake news.

Air Chief Marshal Nirmal Chandra Suri says his statements were misquoted.

This is not Admiral Ramdas letter and it has been done by some Major Chaudhary. He has written this and it was coming on WhatsApp and emails. To put an end to it, I wrote that armed forces are apolitical and support the politically elected govt. And no, my consent has not been taken for any such letter. I dont agree with whatever has been written in that letter. We have been misquoted, he said.

Reacting to the letter, Major General Harsha Kakkar asserted that the letter includes his name, adding that it has been endorsed and supported by him.

"This letter has my support too. It also has my name, endorsed by me. Every political party is asking for votes using armed forces, by taking their names - be it Yogi, Urmila, Kejriwal, Kumaraswamy or Farooq Abdullah. Their comments are only for votes. The armed forces are apolitical, it doesn't belong to a govt or an individual, it belongs to the country," said Major General Kakkar.

The following letter, purportedly signed by 150 veterans, went viral on social media.

...we write to bring to your attention, as the Supreme Commander of India's Armed Forces, some concerns which have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the refired personnel of our Forces. We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be 'Modi ji ki Sena'," states the purported letter.

"This is in addition to media pictures of election platforms and campaigns in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms; and posters and images with pictures of soldiers and especially of Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, displayed. We do appreciate that complaints by some senior retired personnel, including a written submission from a former Chief of the Naval Staff to the Chief Election Commissioner, have elicited a prompt response," it added.
Amaravati: Polling was going on in over 300 booths late into Thursday night in different districts of Andhra Pradesh as faulty EVMs hampered voting in the day.

Though the scheduled polling time ended at 6.00 pm, voters in the queue waiting outside the booths were being allowed to exercise their franchise.

"Even if it is midnight, those in the queue by 6.00 pm can cast their votes," state Chief Electoral Officer Gopal Krishna Dwivedi said.

Till 6.00 pm, over 74 per cent voting was recorded for 175 assembly and 25 LoK Sabha seats in the state

In more than 380 booths, technical glitches in EVMs hampered polling during the days. As a result scores of voters returned home after a long wait.

After the authorities rectified the defects and replaced some of the faulty EVMs, the poll process resumed.

The voters who reached respective polling stations before the scheduled close were being allowed to fulfil their obligation.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's son Nara Lokesh, who is contesting the Mangalagiri Assembly seat, staged a protest at a polling station in Tadepalli town late Thursday night alleging lack of provision of basic facilities for the voters.

"Voters are made to wait in queue for hours because the EVMs and VVPATs did not function. Not even drinking water was available for them," Lokesh said.

The minister was, however, jeered by opposition YSR Congress workers. They raised slogans asking Lokesh to "go back" and not disturb the poll process.

Tension prevailed at the polling station as TDP workers tried to hit back.

Guntur Urban SP Vijaya Rao reached the spot and asked Lokesh to leave. The TDP leader, however, remained adamant and picked up an argument with the officials.

"I am a minister, remember. I have every right to be here," he said. However, the police managed to disperse the two sides soon.
Hyderabad: Confident of winning the state assembly elections, YSR Congress party chief YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Thursday claimed that the huge voter turnout showed, people want to get rid of Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu-led TDP government.

Addressing the media at the end of polling day, Reddy said, "YSRCP will get a landslide victory in Andhra Pradesh. Huge polling is evidence of how people are against the TDP government and Chandrababu Naidu".

"High per cent of voting is a good sign. Chandrababu Naidu has threatened the Election Commission as he may lose his CM status. TDP leaders have attacked YSRC party leaders in many areas and created violence on the polling day", said Reddy.

He also alleged that state`s IT Minister Nara Lokesh violated the election rules in Mangalagiri and entered the polling booths.

"Chandrababu Naidu has done many conspiracies for the electoral victory. All the women are in favor of YSRCP as he has stopped the zero interest scheme for ladies in May 2016," he said.

Andhra Pradesh, went to polls on Thursday to elect 25 members of the Lok Sabha and 175 members of the State Legislative Assembly. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.
Jalgaon Parliamentary Constituency is one of the 48 constituencies of Maharashtra. It was formed before the 1951 elections. It has 11 Vidhan Sabha segments.

The Assembly Constituencies that fall in Jalgaon parliamentary constituency are Jalgaon City, Jalgaon Rural, Amalner, Erandol, Chalisgaon and Pachora.

The election here will be conducted on April 23, 2019, as per the Phase III schedule announced by the ECI.

AT (Nana) Patil of BJP is the incumbent MP from this constituency.

Jalgaon Lok Sabha Constituency of Maharashtra: Full list of candidates, polling dates

Maharashtra Lok Sabha constituencies: All you need to know

In the 2014 polls, AT (Nana) Patil secured 647773 votes and decimated NCP candidate Annasaheb Dr Satish Bhaskarrao Patil.

However, the BJP has denied Patil a ticket for the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

In its bid to retain Jalgaon Lok Sabha seat, the BJP has fielded Smita Uday Wagh.

As per the seat-sharing agreement between the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the parliamentary seat is with the latter.

NCP nominated Gulabrao Deokar as its candidate from here.

In Maharashtra, the main electoral contest is between the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance and the Congress-NCP alliance.

Maharashtra is the second largest state in the country in terms of Lok Sabha seats. Uttar Pradesh has 80 seats and Maharashtra 48. So, it is important for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as the Opposition to win more and more seats in the state.

As per the seat-sharing formula, the BJP and its ally Shiv Sena are contesting on 25 and 23 seats respectively of the total 48 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra.

After several months of deliberations, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have formed an alliance in Maharashtra for the general elections 2019. As per the deal, Congress will contest on 26 seats, whereas the NCP will contest on 22 seats. The two senior partners will part with two seats each for their smaller allies.

Some key smaller parties like Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathana, Bahujan Vikash Aghadi, Peasant and Workers Party, factions of Republican group leaders, like Jogendra Kawade and RG Gavai, independent leader Ravi Rana have also joined hands with the opposition ranks.

In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the alliance of the BJP, Shiv Sena and Swabhiman Paksha together registered a victory on 42 seats in Maharashtra.

The Congress bagged twos eats, while the NCP four.

Lok Sabha elections will take place in seven phases across the state  on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19.

The results would be declared on May 23.
Lucknow: Union Minister Maneka Gandhi on Friday sparked a major row when she was captured on camera asking a gathering of Muslims in Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh to vote for her or else she may not be inclined to be responsive to their requests.

"I am winning and I am winning with the love and support of people. However, if my victory is without Muslim votes, I won't feel good about it. Later, if a Muslims comes to me for work, I won't be inclined to be responsive and will let it be. However, a job is also a negotiation. After all, we are not Mahatma Gandhi's sons that we keep on giving and still lose elections," Maneka said during a rally in Sultanpur today.

Maneka further said that Muslim voters need to understand that it is a give and take relation. "It is not that I will keep on giving without getting your support in return in elections. We are not children of Mahatma Gandhi," she said.

She further added that she has already won the elections, but told the gathering that if they need her, then this is their chance to lay the foundation. "When the election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work we will see. I don`t see any divide, I see only pain, sadness and love. So it is up to you...," she said.

Maneka's today speech at Saharanpur went viral on social media and led to an immense outrage for its blatant communal content with Congress terming her statement as 'scandalous'.

Maneka is contesting from Sultanpur, a seat won by her son Varun Gandhi in 2014. Varun, on the other hand, is contesting from his mother's seat Pilibhit.
Rajnandgaon: BJP president Amit Shah on Friday described the recent Naxal attack in Dantewada, wherein a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed, as a "political conspiracy" and sought a CBI probe into it.

Addressing an election rally in Dongargaon town in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, he also sought to know whether Congress chief Rahul Gandhi supported National Conference leader Omar Abdullah's demand for having a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir.

"Our MLA Bheema Mandavi was killed in the Naxal attack. I pay my tribute to him and pray that the departed soul rests in peace. It was not a normal incident and it seems to be a political conspiracy," Shah said.

"Mandavi's wife has demanded a CBI probe into the attack. If the chief minister (Bhupesh Baghel) does not want to hide anything, then he should get the incident probed by the central agency. A neutral probe should be carried out into the attack," he said.

On April 9, Mandavi, an MLA from Dantewada, and four police personnel were killed when Naxals blew up their vehicle with an IED near Shyamgiri village in the district. Shah also targeted Baghel for banning the CBI from investigating any fresh cases in the state without seeking the state government's consent.

"Why is Bhupesh Baghel so afraid of the CBI? The Raman Singh government had never banned the CBI," he said.

The BJP chief also alleged that Naxals are rising after the Congress government was formed in the state and said Congress government has decided to practice politics along with Naxals in future.

Slamming Omar Abdullah over his demand for a separate PM for Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP chief said Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker was alive. "Omar Abdullah has advocated for a prime minister in Kashmir. Do you think it is possible that a country can have two PMs? They wanted to separate Kashmir from India. Rahul Gandhi is silent over it. He should clarify whether he supports or opposes Abdullah's statement," Shah said, adding, "Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive."

Taking a dig at the Congress, the BJP leader claimed that sadness gripped the grand old party and Pakistan following the air strikes over terror camps in Balakot in retaliation to the Pulwama terror attack.

During the 10 years of UPA rule, when terror attacks happened, no reply was given. But when Pulwama terror attack took place, the Indian Air Force carried out an air strike and demolished the terror camps inside Pakistan," he said.

"At a time when the entire country celebrated the air strike, there was grief in Pakistan and in the office of Congress," Shah claimed.

"Guru of Rahul Gandhi, Sam Pitroda, says talks should be held with them (Pakistan)...But reply of bullets will be given with shells. Votebank cannot be bigger than the nation's security," he said.

Highlighting Modi government's various welfare schemes, Shah said, "What the Modi government has done in 55 months, was not done even in the 55 years of the Congress rule. The 10-year-rule of the UPA was dipped in corruption and scams to the tune of 12 lakh crore was committed during that time.

"Now, Congress is claiming that it will carry out the development of the country. Although their (Gandhi family's) four generations ruled the country, no development took place. In five years, the Modi government worked to uplift poor," he said.

Growth does not take place by raising development slogans, but when there is compassion for the poor in the heart, he said.

The BJP had won 10 seats of the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Shah said, and exuded confidence that the party would emerge victorious in all the 11 seats this time. In the last three Lok Sabha polls, in 2004, 2009 and 2014, after the formation of Chhattisgarh, the BJP had fared well by winning 10 out of 11 seats all the three times.

BJP denied tickets to all its all 10 sitting MPs in the state this time after suffering a massive defeat in last assembly polls. The saffron party has fielded its state general secretary Santosh Pandey in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency which will go to polls in the second phase on April 18.
New Delhi: Abhinandan Pathak  who closely resembles Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday filed his nomination papers as an independent candidate from Lucknow Lok Sabha seat where he will contest against Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

After filing his nomination papers from the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, Pathak said that he will also file his nomination from Modi's Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi on April 26.

"I will also file nomination from Varanasi on April 26. I am not a dummy candidate. I am not against anyone but 'jumla' (fake promises). After winning, I will support Rahul Gandhi's prime ministerial candidature," he said.

PM Modi's doppelganger files nomination as Independent from Lucknow

Speaking to ANI, Pathak said that he had supported Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. However, he had defected from BJP-led NDA constituent Republican Party of India in October 2018 to join Congress in the presence of Rahul Gandhi.

Pathak had campaigned for the Congress party in the recently held legislative elections in three states. However, he reportedly got miffed with the party over the denial of ticket for the upcoming Lok Sabha election and filed his nomination as an independent candidate from Lucknow.

In the meantime, Rajnath is expected to file his nomination from Lucknow on April 16. Lucknow, which has been a bastion of BJP since 1991, will go to polls in the fifth phase of election on May 6. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.
Pune Lok Sabha Constituency is one of the 48 constituencies of Maharashtra.

The Pune Parliamentary constituency (constituency number 34) was formed prior to the 1951 elections.

It comprises of six Vidhan Sabha segments.

The Assembly Constituencies that fall in Pune parliamentary constituency are Vadgaon Sheri, Shivajinagar, Kothrud, Parvati, Pune Cantonment (SC) and Kasba Peth.

Pune is the eighth largest city in the country and the second largest city in the state.

Pune Lok Sabha Constituency of Maharashtra: Full list of candidates, polling dates

Maharashtra Lok Sabha constituencies: All you need to know

The election here will be conducted on April 23, 2019, as per the Phase III schedule announced by the ECI.

Anil Shirole of the BJP is the incumbent MP from this constituency.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Gulabrao got 569825 votes and defeated Dr Vishwajeet Patangrao Kadam of the INC.

The prestigious seat will see a direct electoral fight between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress.

However, the BJP has denied ticket to Shirole in the upcoming Lok Sabha election and nominated Girish Bapat from Pune. The INC has nominated Mohan Joshi from this seat.

Maharashtra is the second largest state in the country in terms of Lok Sabha seats. Uttar Pradesh has 80 seats and Maharashtra 48. So, it is important for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as the Opposition to win more and more seats in the state.

As per the seat-sharing formula, the BJP and its ally Shiv Sena are contesting on 25 and 23 seats respectively of the total 48 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra.

After several months of deliberations, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have formed an alliance in Maharashtra for the general elections 2019. As per the deal, Congress will contest on 26 seats, whereas the NCP will contest on 22 seats. The two senior partners will part with two seats each for their smaller allies.

Some key smaller parties like Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathana, Bahujan Vikash Aghadi, Peasant and Workers Party, factions of Republican group leaders, like Jogendra Kawade and RG Gavai, independent leader Ravi Rana have also joined hands with the opposition ranks.

In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the alliance of the BJP, Shiv Sena and Swabhiman Paksha together registered a victory on 42 seats in Maharashtra. The Congress bagged twos eats, while the NCP four.

Lok Sabha elections will take place in seven phases across the state  on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19.

The results would be declared on May 23.
Raigad Lok Sabha Constituency is one of the 48 parliamentary constituencies of the state of Maharashtra. The Raigad Lok Sabha constituency came into existence after the delimitation of constituencies in 2008. It is composed of six Vidhan Sabha segments.

The Assembly Constituencies that fall in Raigad parliamentary constituency are Pen, Alibag, Shrivardhan, Mahad, Dapoli and Guhagar.

The election here will be conducted on April 23, 2019, as per the Phase III schedule announced by the ECI.

Raigad Lok Sabha Constituency of Maharashtra: Full list of candidates, polling dates

Maharashtra Lok Sabha constituencies: All you need to know

Anant Gangaram Geete of the Shiv Sena is the incumbent MP from this constituency.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Anant Geete got 396178 votes and defeated Tatkare Sunil Dattatreya of the NCP.

The prestigious seat will see a direct electoral fight between the Shiv Sena (BJP) and the NCP.

Shiv Sena has renominated Annat Geete from Raigad Lok Sabha seat.

He will contest against Sunil Tatkare of the NCP.

Maharashtra is the second largest state in the country in terms of Lok Sabha seats. Uttar Pradesh has 80 seats and Maharashtra 48. So, it is important for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as well as the Opposition to win more and more seats in the state.

As per the seat-sharing formula, the BJP and its ally Shiv Sena are contesting on 25 and 23 seats respectively of the total 48 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra.

After several months of deliberations, Congress and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) have formed an alliance in Maharashtra for the general elections 2019. As per the deal, Congress will contest on 26 seats, whereas the NCP will contest on 22 seats. The two senior partners will part with two seats each for their smaller allies.

Some key smaller parties like Swabhimani Shetkari Sangathana, Bahujan Vikash Aghadi, Peasant and Workers Party, factions of Republican group leaders, like Jogendra Kawade and RG Gavai, independent leader Ravi Rana have also joined hands with the opposition ranks.

In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the alliance of the BJP, Shiv Sena and Swabhiman Paksha together registered a victory on 42 seats in Maharashtra. The Congress bagged twos eats, while the NCP four.

Lok Sabha elections will take place in seven phases across the state  on April 11, April 18, April 23, April 29, May 6, May 12 and May 19.

The results would be declared on May 23.
Harpreet Bajwa By

Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: After Punjab, Delhi and Uttrakhand now Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) will have an alliance in Haryana also. Both the parties will together fight the upcoming

parliamentary polls in the state.

Describing the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) as a natural ally of the BJP, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said that the party will support the candidates of the saffron party in Haryana in the May 12 Lok Sabha elections.

Khattar along with Haryana BJP President Subhash Barala, SAD National Vice President and Rajya Sabha MP Balwinder Singh, Haryana SAD President Sharan Jeet Singh Sauntha said that SAD will support the candidates of the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections. The SAD will play a significant role in ensuring the victory of BJP candidates, he added.

He said the strong cadre of BJP and its supporters will ensure the win of the BJP candidates so that Narendra Modi returns as the Prime Minister for a second term at the Centre.

He said that since decades SAD had been an ally of the BJP not only at the Centre but in various states including Punjab, Delhi and Uttarakhand.

Answering a question Balwinder Singh said that SADs supreme Parkash Singh Badal, BJP President Amit Shah, SAD President Sukhbir Badal and Khttar have already held a meeting in connection with the Lok Sabha polls in the state.

He said that the SAD will work for the success of the BJP candidates. As far as assembly elections in Haryana, which are due later, are concerned the two parties will decide seat sharing when the time comes for it.

In 2017 the alliance between the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and SAD broke as in the past both these parties used to contest all elections in Haryana in alliance with each other. Despite the fact that the SAD had an alliance with BJP in Punjab and at national level thereby drawing flak from the saffron party.
New Delhi: Union Minister Smriti Irani, who came under attack from Opposition for furnishing 'contradictory information' about her educational qualifications in the affidavits filed for the upcoming Lok Sabha election, hit back at Congress saying that the more they attack her, the harder she will work against the grand-old party.

"In the last five years, they have attacked me in every which way possible. I only have one message for them, the more you will insult me, the more you will attack me, the harder I will work against Congress in Amethi," Smriti was quoted as saying by news agency ANI today.

#WATCH Union Minister Smriti Irani: In the last 5 years, they have attacked me in every which way possible. I only have one message for them, the more you will insult me, the more you will attack me, the harder I will work against Congress in Amethi. pic.twitter.com/ag3R9JV4yL  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 12, 2019

The attack on Smriti came a day after the Union Textile Minister, who is contesting against Congress President Rahul Gandhi from Amethi in Uttar Pradesh, declared in her affidavit that she was not a graduate.

"Smriti Irani has proved one thing that how one can be a Class 12 pass from being a graduate. It is possible in only under Modi government," Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturdevi said.

In her affidavit on Thursday, Irani said that she passed the secondary school examination in 1991 and the senior secondary school examination in 1993.

In the category of highest educational qualification, Irani`s form says "Bachelor of Commerce Part-1" from the School of Open Learning (Correspondence), University of Delhi, with "three year degree course not completed" in brackets.

Congress also released Irani`s affidavits she had submitted during different elections she fought. The affidavits showed that she had "not completed" her three-year degree course.

In 2004, Irani`s nomination for the Chandni Chowk constituency in Delhi claimed she completed a Bachelors degree in Arts in 1996 through correspondence. In 2014, Irani`s document mentioned her qualification as Bachelor of Commerce Part-1, School of Open Learning (Correspondence), University of Delhi, 1994. At an event in 2014, Irani had also claimed that she had a degree from Yale University, the Congress said.

Opposition leaders have been targeting Irani over her qualifications.
Ajmer: Two groups of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers clashed during a public rally in Ajmer's Masuda on Thursday. A video shared by news agency ANI shows there was total chaos at the rally as the two groups fought.

The incident appears to have taken place on stage and the party workers also tried to slap each other.

Here's the video.

#WATCH Rajasthan: Two groups of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers clash during a rally in Masuda, Ajmer. (11/4/19) pic.twitter.com/AMrJXTKlbg  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Several major clashes were also reported on Thursday across Andhra Pradesh as the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections took place simultaneously.

Clashes broke out between workers of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) across various places in the state. A TDP worker and the other of the YSR Congress died after during a clash in Anantapur. Meanwhile, at a polling station in Srinivasapuram village in Guntur district, another clash broke out between the TDP and YSRCP workers.

#WATCH Andhra Pradesh: A clash broke out between workers of TDP and YSRCP at a polling station in Srinivasapuram Village of Gurajala assembly constituency in Guntur district. #IndiaElections2019 #AndhraPradeshElections2019 pic.twitter.com/lF0edCFuFf  ANI (@ANI) April 11, 2019

Former Speaker and TDP leader Kodela Siva Prasad Rao was attacked by YSRCP supporters at in Guntur district, where he went to see the polling.

Clashes were also reported from Kolla Vari Palle and Savana Vari Palle villages.

91 seats out of the 545 seats in Lok Sabha, went to polls on April 11 in 18 states. The voting will happen in seven phases and the counting of votes will take place on May 23.
The Indian Army on Friday released a video of soldiers casting their votes at the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, braving the severe weather conditions and undeterred by ceasefire violations.

The soldiers, who are deployed at the icy peaks of Siachen, on Thursday cast their votes as service voters.

The video shows soldiers gathered outside a booth in snow-covered Siachen dressed in white snowsuits. One by one the soldiers enter the booth and systematically cast their votes.

Taking to social media platform, Instagram, the Indian Army posted a video saying, "Soldiers are exercising their constitutional rights as sincerely they as they do in their operational mission. Brave soldiers of #IndianArmy are casting their votes in the Siachen, the highest battlefield in the world and also in the remotest areas of the country."

In Jammu and Kashmir, the soldiers who are posted even along the Line of Control (LoC) cast their vote.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, the EC provided the facility to the troops deployed in far-flung, remote and inhospitable terrain to download their ballot papers online, vote and forward the ballot papers to their respective electoral returning officers through post.

Soldiers on active duty at Siachen & LOC enthusiastically participate in the democratic process of election and cast their votes as Service Voters through a first-of-its-kind facility by Election Commission of India in such remote areas of the Union pic.twitter.com/3CY6jH5fcy  Defence Spokesperson (@SpokespersonMoD) April 11, 2019

On Thursday the Army had said, "Soldiers on active duty at Siachen & LOC enthusiastically participate in the democratic process of election and cast their votes as Service Voters through a first-of-its-kind facility by Election Commission of India in such remote areas of the Union."

The temperature may have been freezing but the soldiers showcased a burning desire to participate in a democratic process which is their right as well as duty as Indian citizens.

Over 90 crore Indians are eligible to vote in the Lok Sabha election over the course of seven phases. While the EC has repeatedly urged more and more voters to come out and exercise their democratic right, it is the will and spirit of Indian soldiers - especially those in remote locations - that ought to inspire countrymen to make the election a success.
Bhopal: A 23-year-old woman from Madhya Pradesh has filed for divorce, claiming that her husband shuns shaving and bathing for almost a week at a stretch.

The couple, who married last year, was directed by Bhopal family court to stay separately for six months, after which they will be granted divorce decree, a counsellor said.

"Bhopal family court judge R N Chand has directed the couple to stay separately for six months," court counsellor Shail Awasthi told PTI Friday.

The woman and her 25-year-old husband filed a mutual consent plea for divorce, Awasthi said.

She said in her complaint that her husband doesn't shave his beard and bathe for 7-8 days at a stretch.

"Women now-a-days are separating from their husband over petty issues. This woman, who hails from Barigarh near Bhopal, complained that her husband stinks and when she asks him to bathe, he wears perfume to beat the odour," Awasthi said.

The man is from Sindhi community and runs a shop and the woman is a Brahmin, Awasthi said, adding they don't have a child. The woman's family members requested her not to walk out of the martial bond but she did not agree, the counsellor said.

It was an arranged marriage and the mans family opted for the inter-community wedding as they did not find a suitable bride in their community, Awasthi said.

In 2016, a 36-six-year-old cleric from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh had claimed that his wife demanded that he should shave or else she would commit suicide.
New Delhi: The Chief Electoral Officer of Meghalaya on Friday recommended re-polling at Konarchar polling station under Selsella constituency to the Election Commission.

"Perhaps because of simultaneous polls (Lok Sabha and by-polls), there was a human error, a mismatch of figures and crisscrossing of machines. Have recommended re-poll at Konarchar polling station under Selsella constituency to EC," said Meghalaya CEO FR Kharkongor.

He said that the EC's instructions on the same are still awaited.

He said that female voter turnout was higher than the male voters while the final voting percentage was recorded at 71.37 per cent.

"71.37 per cent is the final voting percentage, which is second highest in the state so far in the Lok Sabha polls. Female turnout was higher than the male turnout," he said.

Lok Sabha election on two seats in Meghalaya was held on April 11. The result will be announced on May 23.
Mumbai: Superstar Shah Rukh Khan has paid tributes to director Colonel Raj Kumar Kapoor, the man who gave the actor his first break on television in "Fauji".

The family of Kapoor announced on Thursday that the veteran director died earlier this week. His last rites were performed at Lodhi Crematorium in Delhi.

Kapoor was best known for the 1989 show "Fauji" which chronicled the training of an Indian Army commando regiment.

Sharing a throwback photo with Kapoor on Twitter, Shah Rukh said the director played an important role in making a "Fauji out of a boy".

"He loved me so much. Encouraged me. And today if I am used to being mollycoddled on sets it's because of this man who made a 'Fauji' out of a boy, like his own. Will miss you Sir...Always. May you find peace in your new mission," he said.

In reply to Shah Rukh's tweet, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur recalled that Kapoor had introduced the actor to him.

"Yes, I remember well the day the ?Colonel' brought you to my house during 'Fauji'. ?Watch this young man,' he said. And he was so right. What a wonderful compassionate man," Kapur wrote.

To this, Shah Rukh said Kapoor was always very "jovial" and "full of life".

"Somehow in the midst of all stresses he had a way that could make you smile away your troubles. One of those people you assumed will never leave your side cos he was so full of life," he wrote.

According to reports, Kapoor passed away due to age-related issues. He was 87.
Amritsar: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday termed as 'inadequate' the expression of regret by British Prime Minister Theresa May on Jallianwala Bagh massacre and said that nothing short of a formal apology from Britain will do.

On the eve of the centenary of the gruesome incident, Singh and Punjab Governor V P S Badnore led hundreds of people from all walks of life who took out a candle march to pay homage to the martyrs.

The march started from the historic Townhall and culminated at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial as slogans like `Inquilab Zindabad' rent the air.

Amarinder Singh said that Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a heart-wrenching moment in India's history and the people of country want an "unequivocal apology from Britain for the atrocity".

Nothing short of a formal apology will do, the chief minister said.

The Punjab Assembly had passed a resolution in this regard, he pointed out, adding that the tragedy was one of the most horrific examples of colonial excesses and a moral blot on the face of Britain.

Theresa May had on Wednesday described the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar as a "shameful scar" on British Indian history as she marked the 100th anniversary of the tragic incident, but she stopped short of a formal apology.

The massacre took place in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on Baisakhi in April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of Colonel Dyer opened fire on a crowd of people holding a pro-independence meeting, leaving hundreds of people dead and scores injured.

"The candles that were lit on Friday evening here have rekindled memories of the sad day and would serve as a reminder of the sacrifice which has inspired patriotism and nationalism among generations of Indians," Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said.

Amarinder, who will pay floral tributes on Saturday at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial along with Congress President Rahul Gandhi, also met the families and descendants of some of the martyrs.

Several eminent personalities, political leaders and members of various social, religious and voluntary organisations also took part in the candle light march.

Prominent among those present on the occasion were AICC Punjab Incharge Asha Kumari, president PPCC Sunil Jakhar, Cabinet Ministers Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, O P Soni, MLAs Raj Kumar Verka and Inderbir Singh Bolaria.
New Delhi: Game of Thrones season 8 is about to hit the television screens soon and the excitement around the series is palpable. Most GOT fans are gearing up for the big day, that is April 14th when the first episode of the final season will air. This season is expected to be full of battles and it is being said that the very first episode will show the much-aniticipated 'Battle of Winterfell'.

While most of us are up-to-date about the super-hit television series, there are some who are still unaware, or partially aware of the epic!

Ahead of Game of Thrones final season, google search is full of questions about the series. While we can't answer the much asked about question of 'Who will sit on the Iron Throne', there are other questions being asked that we have answers to!

Here are answers to the top five questions asked on the internet about Game of Thrones season 8! (Don't worry, you can safely read on as we will not be giving out any spoilers)

When does Game of Thrones start?

The final season of Game of Thrones airs on April 14, 2019, at 9:00 PM eastern time. This means that it will air at around 6:30 am on Monday (April 15) in India!

How to watch Game of Thrones?

The show will air on HBO in countries like US and UK. For other countries, it will be available for streaming online.

How many seasons are there of Game of Thrones?

The show has a total of 8 seasons. 7 have been aired already and this will be the 8th and last season (sobs).

Where is Game of Thrones filmed?

Most of the show is filmed in Northern Ireland. However, there are many European and African locations reported to have been used to Game of Thrones filming.

What is Game of Thrones about?

Game of Thrones is a fantasy series about majorly two fights, one is for the throne of the seven kingdoms of Westeros and the other is between the living and the dead (Whitewalkers).

Now that we answered your questions, feel free to ask more in comments!
New Delhi: Naxals on Thursday night blew up two under construction buildings and a guest house in Singhbhum, police said on Friday.

There were posters put up by the Naxals near the site, suggesting a boycott of elections.

Jharkhand: Naxals blew up portions of 2 under construction buildings&a guest house of Forest Dept in Koira village of West Singhbhum dist last night. SP says, "Paramilitary forces, Dist Police, Security Forces are on alert. We'll see that election procedure doesn't get affected". pic.twitter.com/8gHVEj7gZm  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Superintendent of Police Chandan Jha and CRPF Commandant PC Gupta reached the spot with heavy police force, tracker dogs, and bomb disposal squads.

Terming the Naxals' act as "cowardly", SP Chandan Jha said that this will not impact the Lok Sabha polls.

"There is an adequate police force in the district and additional forces, too, have already arrived," he said.

In 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Naxals had blown up two vehicles in an attempt to appeal voters to boycott polls. This had happened on the same day when Narendra Modi, then the prime ministerial candidate of BJP, was to address an election rally there.
QUITO: Ecuador has suspended Julian Assange`s citizenship and accused him and people connected to his WikiLeaks group of collaborating in attempts to destabilise the Andean nation`s government, after years of offering him shelter.

A bearded and frail-looking Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after Ecuador terminated his asylum at its London embassy, where he had lived since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation. Assange`s Ecuadorean citizenship was suspended on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Jose Valencia told reporters.

To some, Australian-born Assange is a hero for exposing what supporters cast as abuse of power and for championing free speech. To others, he is a dangerous figure who has undermined the security of the United States and has too many ties to Russia. WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables that laid bare often highly critical US appraisals of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.

Assange`s lawyer in Quito, Carlos Poveda, told reporters asylum was terminated in reprisal for corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno and that his life will be in danger if he is extradited to the United States. Assange was offered refuge in 2012 by Ecuador`s then-president Rafael Correa, but his relationship with Ecuador has soured under Moreno, who has said Assange violated the terms of his asylum.

Assange received Ecuadorean citizenship in January 2018. Moreno was angered after years-old private photographs of him and his family taken when they lived in Europe circulated on social media. His government said it believed the photos were shared by WikiLeaks.

Ecuador was not aware of any active extradition requests for Assange before it terminated his asylum, Valencia told the national assembly. "At the time the decision to finalise his asylum was made, there was only a case in the United Kingdom for violating the conditions of his bail in 2012," Valencia told lawmakers.

US prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange on Thursday, accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history. Assange faces up to five years in prison on the American charge, the US Justice Department said in a statement.

Assange and WikiLeaks have intervened in Ecuadorean affairs, Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo told reporters in Quito, and at least one Russian hacker involved with the organisation is living in the country. She would not confirm whether the hacker was involved in the creation of web pages that accuse Moreno of corruption, but said they had participated in the creation of a page later spread by WikiLeaks.

"We hope it will be the Ecuadorean justice system which will confirm the exact relationship," Romo said. Romo on Thursday night said Ecuador had detained a person "very close" to WikiLeaks who is associated with former Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Patino.

"(The person) was detained this afternoon while attempting to travel to Japan," said Romo, without providing the person`s name or nationality.

Earlier she had said that Patino, who was serving under Correa when Assange was granted asylum, was seeking to destabilise the government.

Patino denied the allegations.

Romo "just invented a story about a supposed relationship of mine with Russian hackers," Patino said on Twitter. "The only thing left is for her to say where we left Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty."
Abhijit Mulye By

Express News Service

LATUR: The Marathwada region in the heart of Maharashtra, which is scheduled to vote in the second phase, has been with the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance since the first National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in the state in 1995. The reason: Wrong policies of the Congress party that deprived the region of development. Yet the region elected two Congress MPs to the Lok Sabha during the Modi wave of 2014.

Voting will take place on April 18 in the six constituencies of Nanded, Beed, Parbhani, Hingoli, Osmanabad, and Latur.The remaining two constituenciesAurangabad and Jalnawill go to polls in the third phase. Rajiv Satav, one of the two Congress MPs from the state, has decided to stay away from the fray, while Shiv Sena and the BJP have changed their contenders for the Osmanabad and Latur constituencies, respectively.

The region was a Congress bastion till the emergency. In 1977, it witnessed a violent agitation over the renaming of Marathwada University after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. The stir exposed the casteist, feudal face of the region and triggered the decline of the Congress, whih has lost its grip here due to infighting. The BJP made inroads in the region in the early 80s, but then the Shiv Senas fiery brand of Hindutva cast its spell here.

Though the Congress represented the entire cross section of society, its leadership remained with the Marathas. The BJP, on the other hand, tried to nurture new leaders from prominent OBC castes like Mali, Dhangar and Vanjari. Former Union minister Gopinath Munde was the outcome of this MADHAV policy, said Latur-based Umakant Honrao, who is now aloof from politics and runs an educational institute.

Mundes presence in 2014 had made the election easy for the BJP, and Beed remains Mundes bastion even after his death. His daughter Pritam Munde will take on the NCPs Bajrang Sonawane for the seat. Though her cousin Dhananjay Munde is leading the NCP attack against her, infighting has seen many switchovers from the NCP to the BJP. This will make the polls a cakewalk for Pritam Munde.

The other BJP seats going to polls in the second phase are Nanded and Latur.

Instead of sitting MP Sunil Gaikwad, the BJP is fielding construction professional Sudhakar Shringare for the Latur SC seat. The Congress has given a ticket to former journalist Machhlindra Kamant, who is known for his scholarly pursuits and serious approach. Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent rally at Ausa appears to have enthused grassroots BJP workers, while that enthusiasm was lacking at Rajasthan Deputy CM Sachin Pilots rally in the city the same day.

In Nanded, the BJP has pitted Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Chikhlikar against former CM, state Congress president and sitting MP Ashok Chavan. Availability for people in the constituency is Chikhlikars poll pitch against Chavan, who he says is rarely found in Nanded. But people appear to be least bothered about it.We are happy that after his father Shankarrao, Ashok Chavan is going to the Lok Sabha. He will make his mark there, said Ganesh Kamble, an autorikshaw driver.
Russia on Friday honoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the 'Order of St Andrew the Apostle', the highest decoration of the country.

The Russian Embassy said that the decoration was bestowed for PM Modi's exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between the two nations.

Earlier on April 4, United Arab Emirates (UAE) President Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan had honoured PM Modi with the Zayed Medal. The award is the highest civil decoration of the country which is awarded to presidents, kings, and heads of states.

The honour was bestowed on PM Modi for his contribution towards boosting the relations between the two nations. UAE had said that the two nations have historical and comprehensive strategic ties which have been reinforced by the pivotal role of PM Modi.

Taking to Twitter, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces, Shaikh Mohammed bin Zayed had conveyed the message.

"We have historical and comprehensive strategic ties with India, reinforced by the pivotal role of my dear friend, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who gave these relations a big boost. In appreciation of his efforts, the UAE President grants him the Zayed Medal," the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi had tweeted.
The most powerful operational rocket in the world, SpaceXs Falcon Heavy, launched its first commercial mission on Thursday from Florida in a key demonstration for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk`s space company in the race to grasp lucrative military launch contracts.

The 23-story-tall Heavy, which previously launched Musks cherry red Tesla roadster to space in a 2018 debut test flight, blasted off from Floridas Kennedy Space Center carrying its first customer payload.

"T plus 33 seconds into flight, under the power of 5.1 million pounds of thrust, Falcon Heavy is headed to space," SpaceX launch commentator John Insprucker said on a livestream.

Roughly three minutes after clearing the pad, Heavys two side boosters separated from the core rocket for a synchronized landing at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

The middle booster, after pushing the payload into space, returned nearly 10 minutes later for a successful landing on SpaceX`s seafaring drone ship 400 miles (645 km) off the Florida coast. In the 2018 test mission, Heavy`s core booster missed the vessel and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Liftoff with Heavys new military-certified Falcon 9 boosters was crucial in the race with Boeing-Lockheed venture United Launch Alliance and Jeff Bezos Blue Origin as Musks SpaceX, working to flight-prove its rocket fleet one mission at a time, aims to clinch a third of all U.S. National Security Space missions - coveted military contracts worth billions.

The U.S. Air Force tapped SpaceX in 2018 to launch for $130 million a classified military satellite and in February added three more missions in a $297 million contract.

Falcon Heavy carried a communications satellite for Saudi-based telecom firm Arabsat, which will beam internet and television services over Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Electoral Bonds, which enable anonymous donations to political parties, will be permitted during the election season, according to the Supreme Court which passed an interim order on the issue on Friday. The top court, however, ensured some transparency as it ordered all political parties to disclose the donations they have received through electoral bonds to the Election Commission in sealed covers by May 30.

The court was hearing petitions that challenge the validity of the electoral bonds. The political parties have been asked to disclose names of donors, banks from which the donor credited, and the amount against each donor. The sealed cover will remain in "safe custody" of the Election Commission till further orders are passed by the Supreme Court.

In its order, the Supreme Court also directed the Finance Ministry to reduce the window of purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days in April-May.

A petition had asked for the system of electoral bonds to be stopped for the sake of transparency in the poll process. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said, "We have considered the matter. We examined the stand by the Election Commission. For the present, it needs hearing and it can't be concluded in a short span of time. The court has to ensure interim arrangement and should not tilt favour of any party."

The government had notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018 on January 2, 2018. According to the provisions of the scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person, who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India. A person can buy electoral bonds, either individually or jointly with other individuals. Only political parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than one per cent of votes polled in last General elections or Assembly Elections, shall be eligible to receive electoral bonds.
Pranab Mondal By

Express News Service

KOLKATA: BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday hit out at the West Bengal government for encouraging infiltrators to settle in the state, saying infiltrators are termites and we will weed them out when we come back to power. Speaking at Raiganj, Shah said, The BJP would introduce NRC across the country and grant citizenship to each and every Hindu refugee in the country, while accusing Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee of misleading the people on the NRC.

He modulated his message for the Gurkha community at Kalimpong in North Bengal, saying, Modiji has always been with the Gurkha community in the Hills and they should not be worried on the NRC issue. Gurkhas living in the Darjeeling areaclose to the Bhutan and Nepal borders and going to polls in the second phasehad voted for the BJP in 2014, and a huge chunk of the communitys leadership has aligned with the BJP again as the party eyes a third win under the Shah-driven mission to win at least 23 seats in the state .

READ MORE | AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi slams Amit Shah over NRC

The BJP national president said West Bengal Chief Minister Banerjee would have to say whether she too wanted a prime minister in Kashmir like her ally and National Conference leader Omar Abdullah. Come clean on the issue, he advised. Abdullahs comment on a separate prime minister for J&K, made a few days ago, had triggered a controversy and the BJP found in the statement a tool to sharpen its attack on opposition leaders joining hands to form a grand alliance against Modis government.

Castigating Banerjee for questioning the airstrike in Pakistans Balakot, Shah said, She and opposition leaders are unhappy with the airstrikes. They are demanding proof. But I want to say it loud and clear, that we will not allow such forces to win.

READ MORE | Lok Sabha elections 2019: BJP promises NRC replication across India in poll manifesto

He said the party was determined to abrogate Articles 370 and 35(A), which grant special status to Jammu and Kashmir, after forming the next government at the Centre. He also criticised Banerjee for driving out industries from Bengal and encouraging syndicate rackets to operate. Syndicates in Bengal are cartels allegedly backed by ruling party leaders that force contractors to buy inferior building materials at high prices.

Manifesto creates buzz

Darjeeling is abuzz with the BJPs election manifesto mentioning a permanent solution to the problems that have roiled the hills, and with a week to go to the polls, the saffron brigade appears to be a step ahead of Trinamool Congress. The party has also promised to ensure that the 11-lakh strong Gurkha community gets Scheduled Tribe status. The Trinamool is banking on a split among the Gurkhas. People in the hills and plains as well have experienced the benefits of a slew of development projects and schemes initiated by the state government, said a Trinamool leader in Kolkata.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Voting in the first phase for 91 parliamentary constituencies across 20 states on Thursday was largely peaceful, though three persons were killed in stray violence in Andhra Pradesh, which witnessed simultaneous Assembly elections as well. There was some violence in West Bengal, too, but the polling percentage was a healthy 80. Reports of malfunctioning Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) upset voters in Andhra Pradesh. There were a few incidents of goons smashing EVMs in both Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal.

READ MORE | Lok Sabha elections 2019: Violence, 'EVM glitches' and missing names mar phase I

Chief Election Commissioner Sushil Chandra later said 0.63 per cent EVMs, 0.61 per cent control units and 1.7 per cent malfunctioning VVPATs were replaced. In Andhra Pradesh, one YSR Congress and one TDP worker were killed in clashes at Veerapuram in Anantapur district, while another YSRC worker was beaten to death at T Sadum village in Chittoor district.

Clashes between the two sides were also reported from several other places, such as Sattenapalli, Narasaraopeta, Allagadda and Chinakudama. However, people turned up in large numbers, particularly women and first-time voters, to exercise their franchise. The overall voting percentage in the state is expected to be around 80 per cent, two per cent higher than in 2014.

In the big battleground of Uttar Pradesh, polling in eight Lok Sabha seats recorded 63.69 per cent turnout, with Saharanpur topping the list at 70.68%. Muzaffarnagar, which was at the centre of a raging communal strife in the run-up to 2014 general elections, recorded 66.66%. Ghaziabad was at the bottom with 57.60 per cent.

Four constituencies of Bihar averaged 53.06 per cent where police recovered two bombs and defused them, while Maharashtra (7 seats) witnessed 56 per cent polling, Odisha (4) 68% per cent, Assam (5) 68 per cent and J&K (2) 55 per cent. While Jammu recorded 72.16 per cent polling, Baramulla polled 35.01 per cent.

With 77 per cent turnout, polling in Maoist-affected Dantewada of Bastar district in Chhattisgarh was peaceful. Maoists exploded bombs at Narayangarh in Chhattisgarh and at two places in Waghezari of Gadchiroli. Stray cases of the indelible ink put on voters fingers coming off, were also reported.

NaMO TV gag order

The EC on Thursday directed Delhis chief electoral officer to remove all political publicity content that are being aired on NaMo TV without pre-certification. The CEO had approved the logo of NaMo TV, but not its content, which comprises old speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Shah on termites

Illegal migrants from Bangladesh are termites, says BJP chief Amit Shah at rally in West Bengals Raiganj, promises to throw them out of India after getting a fresh mandate
By IANS

KRISHNAGIRI: Tamil Nadu should be ruled by the people of Tamil Nadu and DMK President M.K. Stalin will become its next Chief Minister, Congress President Rahul Gandhi declared on Friday.

Addressing an election rally here, about 260 km from Chennai, Gandhi said: "Tamil Nadu should be ruled from Tamil Nadu. Stalin will be the Chief Minister." The opposition parties in Tamil Nadu charge the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) with remote-controlling the AIADMK government in the state.

ALSO READ: Curious case of letter on Rahuls security breach

According to Gandhi, the state should not be ruled from Nagpur -- where the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's political mentor, is headquartered. "We will not let the people of Tamil Nadu to be led by Nagpur," Gandhi said, adding that the DMK-Congress combine will defend the spirit of the Tamil people.

According to Gandhi, when the Congress comes to power at the Centre, farmers will not be jailed for non-repayment of bank loans. "It is not fair that rich businessmen are not jailed for non-repayment of bank loans while poor farmers go to jail for defaulting on bank loans. After 2019, no farmer will be put in jail for non-repayment of loan," Gandhi said.

READ MORE: Laser beamed by camera, not sniper gun, says MHA after Congress complains of 'threat' to Rahul

He said the Congress government will tell the farmers in advance the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other things so that they can plan their crops accordingly. The Congress chief said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not find time to speak with the Tamil Nadu farmers who had protested in New Delhi demanding farm loan waiver.

Gandhi said the Congress party has decided to carry out a surgical strike on poverty and promised to identity 20 per cent of the poorest in the country and transfer Rs 72,000 every year into the bank account of women head of the poor family under the proposed Nyay scheme. "Once the money gets paid into the bank account, poor people will start consuming and the economy will kickstart again."

He said the textile industry in Tiruppur and the silk industry in Kancheepuram will start booming again after being affected by the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

FOLLOW OUR ELECTIONS COVERAGE HERE

Gandhi also promised a simple and single rate tax regime once the Congress comes to power.According to him, the Congress, once if it comes to power, will fill up the 24 lakh vacant jobs in the government and 10 lakh vacancies in Panchayats.

Gandhi said the Congress will bring in reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and state assemblies for women. "Thirty-three per cent of central government jobs will also be reserved for women," he added.

The Congress is fighting the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu as part of the DMK-led alliance. He alleged that PM Modi can be seen only with rich businessmen and not with poor farmer or small entrepreneurs.
F-35A fighter sent no distress call before crashing in Pacific: ASDF

TOKYO, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The Japanese Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF) said on Thursday that the F-35A fighter jet that crashed in the Pacific on Tuesday did not send an emergency call.

The ASDF said the fighter jet was equipped with an ejector system that would have sent distress alerts if the pilot had escaped from the jet with a parachute.

Joint search operations for the pilot, a major in his 40s, are still underway by the Self-Defense Forces, the Japan Coast Guard and U.S. forces.

The fighter jet, deployed at Misawa Air Base in northeastern Japan, lost contact over the Pacific at about 7:27 p.m. local time Tuesday on a training mission, according to the ASDF.

When the stealth fighter disappeared, it was flying with three other jets off the coast of Japan's Aomori Prefecture about 135 km east of the base.

The pilot radioed the other three to inform them he was about to abort the drill shortly before it disappeared from radar, but none of the three jets saw the plane crash, the Japanese Defense Ministry said.

Based on wreckage from the jet's tails recovered in the sea, the ministry has confirmed that the fighter had crashed.

Japan began deploying the F-35As, which cost more than 10 billion yen (90 million U.S. dollars) each, in January 2018 to replace the F-4 fighter jets.
By Express News Service

PATNA/GUWAHATI: Railing against the homegrown forces of terror, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said he will find out places that serve as the breeding ground of terror in Jammu and Kashmir and jail those who take money from Pakistan to destabilise the country. Addressing a rally in Bihars Bhagalpur, which will poll in the second phase on April 18, Modi said there could be bad days ahead for the Tukde-Tukde (anti-India) gang if his government is voted for a second term. Your chowkidar will find out all terror hotbeds in J&K and destroy them.

Those who are on Pakistans payroll to destabilise the country will be put behind bars, the PM said.

Taking a swipe at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, he said those born with a silver spoon cant feel the pain and plight of the poor. The country will vote us back, putting an end to dynastic politics, Modi said.

He said that if voted back, he will put together a National Merchants Commission, the first such panel in the country, which will provide assistance and cater to the interests of traders. All GST-compliant traders will be made eligible to a national accidental insurance of Rs 10 lakh. Small and marginal traders, as well as shopkeepers will get pension after attaining 60 years of age.

Speaking at another rally in Assams Kendukona later in the day, the PM went hammer and tongs at the Congress, accusing it of corruption and saying a new scam  Tughlaq Road Chunav Ghotala  has come to the fore.He claimed theres evidence that the party, which calls Chowkidar a Chor, is involved in looting public funds.
By PTI

AHMEDABAD: An American tourist staying in a hotel here with 14 pets, including a goat, had called the police after the hotel management asked her to leave, said an official Friday.

The incident took place on April 10 when the woman tourist from the United States called the police following an altercation with the hotel manager.

According to the police, the women arrived at the hotel with six cats, seven dogs and a goat on the night of April 9.

"Upon reaching the hotel, situated in Shah-e-Alam area, we learnt that the hotel owner was upset after knowing that the US citizen had landed with 14 of her pets."

Ahemdabad: US tourist calls police after hotel asks her to leave with her 14 pets.Manager,Silver Spring hotel,says,"She arrived on Apr9 with 6 cats, 7 dogs & a goat.We asked her to leave as we don't allow pets.She said she won't leave as her booking was till Apr11&called police". pic.twitter.com/5tDnDDk4h1  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

"When the hotel owner asked her to leave, she called us. Since no complaint was filed, we could not do much except pacifying both the parties," said S S Modi, inspector of the Kagadapith police station here.

According to hotel manager Ramesh Panchal, the woman, who is in her 50s, left Friday afternoon.

"On April 9, two persons came to our hotel and booked a room for a US citizen. At that time, we were not told that she would come with so many animals.

"On the night of April 9, when only a watchman was present, she came with 14 of her pets, which were kept in the passage of the hotel," said Panchal.

"The next day morning, we along with other guests were shocked to see so many animals in the hotel. When we asked her to leave, she got very angry and called the police. Then, we did not say anything to her," he said.

The hotel management heaved a sigh of relief when she vacated the premises. "Luckily, she left on Friday afternoon with all her pets. She told us that she was going to Kerala," said Panchal.
By IANS

PATNA: RJD chief Lalu Prasad's wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi on Friday made an emotional appeal to her elder son Tej Pratap Yadav to return home.

A day after voting for the first of the seven-phased Lok Sabha polls in Bihar, Rabri Devi, who is pained by Tej Pratap's decision to stay separately in the state capital, instead of living with the family, said in Hindi: "Bahut hua, laut aao beta" (Enough son, please return home).

Tej Pratap Yadav has not returned home since he visited his father Lalu Prasad in Ranchi last year, after filing a petition in court seeking divorce from his newly-wedded wife, family sources said. Tej Pratap Yadav got married in May last year to Aishwariya Rai, the daughter of a senior RJD leader.

Rabri Devi told media here that there is no truth in the reports of differences between her two sons Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav.

"It is all a creation of vested interests," she said.

She said there have been attempts made to divide her family.

"Some people have been trying to instigate and mislead my son. It is possible that our rivals', BJP and JD-U, people may be behind it," Rabri said in a reference to Tej Pratap Yadav.

She also revealed that she telephoned her son daily to talk to him.

Tej Pratap has, however, repeatedly expressed his displeasure over younger brother Tejashwi's refusal to field a candidate of his choice from the Sheohar Lok Sabha constituency.

Rabri also expressed her serious concern about the absence of her husband, who has been undergoing treatment at a Ranchi hospital after being convicted in the fodder scam case.

"I miss Laluji...his absence is really painful. Without him everything is useless. Hope,he will come back soon," she said.
Namita Bajpai By

Express News Service

LUCKNOW: The educational qualification of Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani remained in the spotlight yet again on Friday as the main opposition party Congress accused her falsifying records and submitting contradictory affidavits to the ECI. The party by submitting a memorandum to Election Commission sought Smritis disqualification from contesting election.

However, Union Minister Smriti Irani hit back at the Congress over its allegations saying she would continue to work hard for Amethi no matter what its leaders said.

The jinn of degrees came back to haunt Smriti Irani as she submitted her affidavit while filing her nomination papers in Amethi on Thursday. Smriti is challenging Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in

his bastion for the second time in these elections. She had contested previous 2014 polls from the same seat.

While filing papers on Thursday, Smriti Irani had claimed she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993. She also mentioned she did not complete her

Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I)  a three-year degree course  from DUs School of Open Learning in 1994.

READ | In poll affidavit, Smriti Irani says not graduate

In her affidavit this year, Irani has stated that she appeared for the All India Senior School Certificate Examination from Holy Child Auxilium School through the Central Board of Secondary Education

(CBSE) in 1993.

The reason for Friday brouhaha was the discrepancy in her educational qualification

mentioned by her in the affidavit she had filed at the time of 2004 Lok Sabha polls while contesting from Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Then Irani had claimed that she had done her from Delhi University (School of Correspondence) in 1996.

In 2004, she reputedly differed from her present stance. Then she had not only claimed that she had completed her degree in 1996 but also that her subject was arts.

Meanwhile, in her affidavit for 2014 polls, she had stated that her educational qualification as Bachelor of Commerce Part-1, School of Open Learning (Correspondence), University of Delhi  1994.

As she took over Modis youngest minister in 2014, she came under fire from Congress

and other opposition parties for not even a being a graduate and taking care of education under HRD ministry.

FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

Row over Irani's educational qualification stretched as far as a case was filed against her over her contrarian claims in her poll affidavits of 2004 and 2014 in 2014. However, she was shifted out of HRD

ministry after a two-year tenure replete with controversies.

Though her lack of a degree does not disqualify her from being an MP or a minister as election norms do not set any educational qualifications to hold office. The opposition, however, flagging out

the misleading claims in poll affidavits.

Mocking at the BJP leader, while Congress dubbed her as the serial liar saying: A new serial is coming Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi, taking a dig at Iranis popular TV soap opera in

which she acted before joining politics.

However, retorting to Congresss spoof on her TV serial, Smriti Irani claimed: "In the past five years, there has not been any disgraceful attack which has not been made against me by the Congress

and its 'chele chapate' (stooges), nor is there any bad word or disrespect which has not been hurled at me."

"I have a message for them... as much as you try, I will work for Amethi against the Congress. No matter what you say, the more you harass me, the harder I'll work," she said, adding that the Congress

supporters were targeting her because she was taking on the 'Namdar' (dynast), referring to Rahul Gandhi.
Santwana Bhattacharya By

Speaking generally, the Election Commission of India has really got its job cut out. The sheer numbers it has to handle boggle the mind - a 900-million-strong electorate in 2019, up from 830 million, of which 550 million had cast their votes in 2014. Enough to demand coverage on just about every prominent international media platform. The first phase itself saw action in 91 Lok Sabha constituencies, across 20 states and UTs as far-flung as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Uttarakhand and Arunachal Pradesh, where polling personnel have to be sturdy trekkers.

No motorable roads means a 20-25 km walk per day, hauling EVM machines on the back. Well, democracy can be hard work too! Physical labour, however, is the least of the Commissions problems. There are life risks too, like in strife-torn Bastar and Dantewada. Violent clashes were witnessed in 175 constituencies in Andhra Pradesh! That was largely due to EVM malfunctioning. Ditto in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, where a voter in a minority-dominated seat found his votes were going to the rival camp!

So forget inhospitable terrain and such like. When the very reliability of the machine on which the sacred act of democracy is performed appears (or is perceived to have become) compromised, what the EC battles is something far more profound: a credibility crisis. And that injures all of India.The initial steps towards introducing the electronic voting machine were taken by the independent-minded R V S Peri Sastri in 1989 - the same man who, as CEC, reduced the voting age to 18. The EVM infused Indian elections with a kind of technological prowess that even Western democracies did not have. It certainly rendered old-style rigging - thugs capturing booths and stuffing ballot papers into the box - a thing of the past. Things have, unfortunately, come a full circle.

The infallibility of an EVM, despite protestations to the contrary, is no longer taken as automatically granted by the common Indian voter. And when voters raise doubts about EVMs, its not the same as a losing sides churlish complaints. Not merely a slugfest between political opponents. Its a no-confidence vote cast by a common Indian on the Election Commission, which is mandated to be a neutral custodian of free and fair elections (the motto written in bold at Nirvachan Sadan).

The EC, obviously, has come a long way since Peri Sastri, V S Ramadevi (the first woman CEC) and her voluble successor T N Seshan (who was often called Al Seshan behind his back). Perception, indeed, is vital. Be it EVMs or the voting age, it was Peri Sastri who inaugurated big electoral reforms, but its Seshan who is seen to be the transformational man.

Look again at the record, its an interesting one. Peri Sastri, not adequately famously, had run-ins with the then PM Rajiv Gandhi - this phase is recounted in then CAG C G Somiahs book The Honest Always Stand Alone. The EC got expanded to a three-member panel as a consequence of that rift. S S Dhanoa, appointed by Rajiv Gandhi as one of the two ECs, later wrote about Peri Sastris surprise at his appointment which happened without his knowledge.

Also about a sharp altercation between then principal secretary B G Deshmukh and the CEC, at the latters office, regarding the 1989 elections. Rajiv Gandhi had pre-empted the EC in announcing November 22 as the date, creating a constitutional crisis of sorts. (Not that it helped.)So, governments having run-ins with the EC is nothing new. In fact, the EC came into its own as an institution to reckon with through these turf wars. What has changed now is that the EC seems to be having its tug-of-war with the voting public rather than the political establishment.

If newspaper editorials are anything to go by, there was a collective sigh of relief when the EC finally rose up to act by banning the release (in the midst of elections, that is) of hagiographic biopics of political leaders, past and present, including that of a powerful Prime Minister Modi, and cracking down on a newly-minted channel called NaMo TV. It was seen more as life support for the EC as an institution, whose credibility is a long-term investment for India. Such was the disaffection with its current workings that Seshan was remembered and re-evaluated all over again.

Seshan, undoubtedly, shook the dust off the EC rulebook with vehemence and started implementing it with the force of his personality and that quip: I have the power. He was, of course, the only CEC to have taken to mass-countermanding of elections, five at a go in UP and Bihar - including the suave foreign minister (later PM) I K Gujrals Patna polls against Yashwant Sinha - citing large-scale rigging. Seshan did have a thing against Lalu Prasad Yadav and Bihars law and order under him. But elections had been countermanded before him, in 1977 and 1982, in two constituencies of undivided UP. In Tamil Nadu too.

But the trope of the CEC as a hero fighting the system that began with Seshan has died. Its been replaced by a poll panel headed by a faceless (or worse-less) official. The clouds of doubt around the EVM, which led to the machine being supplemented by VVPATs and a verifiable paper trail, or the suspicion that current voting schedules favour the ruling dispensation, has taken the shine out of the EC.

Not that it has an easy job.

The polar extremes are, well, extreme. If a Kanhaiya Kumar is working the crowds in Begusarai chanting azadi with drumbeats, next door a CM routinely drums up religious passions. Yogi Adityanath is pitching himself unabashedly as a devotee of Bajrangbali and his opponents as that of Ali. Not far away, Mayawati is appealing directly to Muslims to not vote Congress. To top it all, the PM is routinely invoking the armed forces to ask for votes. Not to mention the I-T raiders running selectively amok. What the ECs actions concede is that democracy, at its very least, still needs to be a vertebrate animal.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA/VISAKHAPATNAM/ELURU: The hands of Lochana, a B Pharmacy student from GITAM Institute of Pharmacy, were trembling as she entered the polling booth to cast her vote on Thursday. Understandably so, as she was exercising her franchise for the first time. My hands shivered when I was pressing the button in the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). Maybe because my vote could be the one which would help bring a change in the society, a visibly excited Lochana says after getting inked.

It wasnt just Lochana who experienced the rush of voting for the first time though. There are over 10 lakh newly enrolled voters between the age 18-25 in AP, according to the electoral rolls. While the exact number of the first-time voters would be released in the due course, Thursdays polls, which set off the first phase of Lok Sabha elections -- and Assembly too for AP -- across the State, have seen a considerable rise in the number of first-timers who got the indelible ink on their fingers.

ALSO READ | Andhra Pradesh records over 80 per cent voting despite violence, EVM glitches

This potentially could lead to the change in the political equations as the fresh voters decision could very well reflect the changing aspirations. These aspirations, the youth point out, include creation of new jobs, a transparent and corruption-free governance, and the right mix of development and welfare.

But, was election day an occasion for the youngsters to just click selfie and post on social media platforms? The answer is an emphatic no, they say. It is a responsibility. Yes, the excitement of voting for the first time calls for a photo, but that is not our only objective. We want to be a part of the democratic process of selecting the people who make legislations on our behalf. If not now, when (will we vote), and if not us, who (will vote)? reasons C Vamsi Krishna, an IT professional, who travelled to Vijayawada from Chennai.

For M Prathyusha, a student from Gayatri Vidya Parishad, Visakhapatnam, it was only after the count down for the polling began that she got glued into the happenings in politics to decide to whom she would cast her vote.

ALSO READ | Andhra Pradesh CEO brushes aside complaints, says voting is satisfactory

I couldnt stop but discuss politics with my friends and family. Now that polling is done, the tension continues till the results are out, she quips. Several others too agree that they took the help of their friends, parents, teachers and others to decide on whom to vote.

The first-timers from Eluru were careful in choosing the candidates. A group of youngsters -- Bindu Madhavi, Swati, Swamy and Kumar -- from Venkatapuram village note that their decision was based on who they thought would provide them a secured future.

Hinduja, another first-time voter from Gajuwaka constituency in Visakhapatnam, however, adds that it isnt just about the winning horses. I feel that my first vote would help at least one good person become a leader when the opportunity presents itself, if not immediately. I felt so proud to come home from Hyderabad to participate in the largest festival of democracy, she signs off.
Ramkrishna Badseshi By

Express News Service

KALABURAGI: Gulbarga is warmer than most parts of Karnataka and is rightly called Bisilu Nadu (sunshine land). Incidentally, the pre-poll temperature here is just as hot, if not hotter.One of the most important Congress leaders in the fray, Mallikarjun Kharge, is contesting from here. Kharge has a track record of 11 straight wins - nine Assembly and two Lok Sabha - and this time he is facing one of the toughest battles of his nearly five decade political career. He is up against Congress rebel-turned-BJP candidate Dr Umesh Jadhav, who is banking on votes from Banjara community, which is in significant numbers in the constituency. Jadhav is also backed by a number of senior Congress leaders who left the party to join BJP.

While Kharge dismisses any threat from Jadhav and says that he is confident of winning for the work he has done, Jadhav, on the other hand, blames Kharge of dynasty politics and said, Mallikarjun insisted the Congress high command not give any MLA from Kalaburagi and Yadgir districts ministers posts, expect for his son Priyank.Gulbarga has so far been a safe seat for Congress. Of the 17 Lok Sabha polls, Congress tasted victory 15 times here.

Kharge first contested the LS polls in 2009 and beat BJPs strongman Revu Naik Belamagi twice. Interestingly, today, Belamagi is a Kharge loyalist. He switched sides from BJP and joined JD(S).Ironically, Kharges opponent Jadhav, who is a surgeon by qualification, was a Congress MLA from Chincholi until a few months ago.

However, Kharges worry is not that his colleague has turned a foe but the fact that many of his friends are now in the enemy zone. Former ministers Malikaiah Guttedar, Babu Rao Chinchansoor, AB Malaka Reddy, they all backed Kharge during the previous elections but have now moved to BJP. All of them are influential in their respective communities.But ever the strategist, Kharge has roped in some influential vote magnets from the BJP camp. They are former minister Babu Rao Chauhan, former Rajya Sabha member KB Shanappa and Subhash Rathod, who was the state unit convener of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme. Miffed over not being given tickets, they all quit the BJP to join Congress. They now call BJP a communal and anti-poor party.

While Kharge enjoys the support of dalits, backward classes and minorities, Jadhav is banking a lot on the Modi factor and the discontentment among Congress leaders who accuse Kharge of promoting his son and not other leaders. The BJP is also counting on votes from backward communities like Ediga and Koli due to the support of Guttedar and Chinchansoor. The saffron party is also dependent on Lingayat votes, who constitute around 7 lakh voters - the largest community.

Political analyst Prof Chandrakant Yatnoor said development issues have been sidelined this poll and BJP is luring voters with national security and nationalism. Congress has failed in its narrative to remind voters of the agony the NDA government has caused such as demonetisation and GST. This time the challenge is so onerous for Kharge that he started poll preparations two-months ago.

FOLLOW OUR FULL ELECTION COVERAGE HERE

INTERVIEW

Anti-Kharge wave in Gulbarga will help me win: Umesh Jadhav (BJP)

What made you contest against Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge?

He has not tasted defeat in the last 11 General Elections.For me, self respect is supreme. These people, especially senior and junior Kharge, tried to disrespect me and so I decided to quit the Congress and contest against Kharge senior.

How did they hurt your self respect?

The coalition government has not bothered to implement the works suggested by me in Chincholi constituency. In fact, they neglected me because I was loyal to late chief minister Dharam Singh and former chief minister Sidharamaiah. Ever since Priyank Kharge became the minister in-charge of Kalaburagi district, he has not visited Chincholi taluk even once.

How confident are you about winning?

I dont doubt me winning with a comfortable margin. The achievements of the Modi government, my commitment towards my work, my sincerity and the anti-Kharge wave, will certainly help me win the elections.

You think there is an anti-Kharge wave in the constituency?

Certainly. His blind love for his son will cost senior Kharge. Bidar got three cabinet berths in Kumaraswamys government. Though there were many Congress MLAs in Kalaburagi and Yadgir constituencies, such as Dr Ajay Singh, MY Patil, Kaneez Fatima, Sharanabasappa Darshanapur from Shahapur, and myself, only Priyank Kharge was given a cabinet portfolio. According to my sources, Mallikarjun insisted the Congress high command not give any MLA from Kalaburagi and Yadgir districts ministers posts, except for his son Priyank.

Will senior BJP leaders such as Subhash Rathod, Babu Rao Chauhan and K B Shanappa joining Congress, after you joined BJP, harm your prospects?

Go ask those leaders how the people have responded to them quitting BJP and joining Congress. As per talk and clippings, which have become viral, people have been asking these leaders why they took this step. People asked them how, after hurling insults at the Congress for so many years, could they switch loyalties. They are being called opportunists.

Congress never used Army for votes: Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress)

You have successfully contested 11 general elections. Do you feel there an anti-Kharge wave this time?

Not at all. In the previous elections we used to request people to come for election campaigns. This time, however, people voluntarily came to my meetings and waited for hours together to listen to me and other leaders.

You are accused of promoting your son Priyank Kharge and making him a minister while ignoring other leaders in the district. Do you think that will have any impact?

These are all baseless allegations. Neither am I a member of the coordination committee, nor have I recommended the committee to accommodate my son in the Cabinet. The committee verified factors such as caste combination and party equation and selected candidates for cabinet posts. I am not the kind of man who crosses his limits to get things done.

What are the factors you are highlighting while seeking votes?

In 47 years of my political life, I have done a lot for the Hyderabad-Karnataka region in general and Kalaburagi in particular. Because of my sincere efforts, Article 371J was amended. Also, it is due to the efforts of my colleagues and I that a High Court bench was established in Kalaburagi and the place also got Central University of Karnataka and ESIC Medical complex. Let BJP give its progress card to the public. Let the BJP tell people what it has done for the country.

Why do you think people will vote for you?

Let people compare my achievements with any of the BJP candidates contesting from Karnataka and decide who will be the best candidate to serve them in future.

Do you think the surgical strike, air strike and Kisan Samman Yojana are helping the BJP gain popularity?

People cannot be fooled all the time. People knew about the contribution of the Congress in safeguarding the country and making it prosperous. Surgical strikes took place even during the Congress regime and India even won the war with Pakistan when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister. We gave credit to the Indian Army and did not use it to gain political mileage.
By Express News Service

BELAGAVI: Khanapur MLA, Anjali Nimbalkar sustained head injuries in a road accident that she met with on her way to Nanded, Maharashtra from Kolhapur on Friday afternoon. According to her family sources, she was rushed to a private hospital in Solapur, Maharashtra, soon after the incident and that her condition is out of danger at present.

Wife of senior IPS officer Hemant Nimbalkar, Anjali was on her way for an election campaign in Nanded from Kolhapur, her hometown, when the accident occurred near Solapur. A chauffeur-driver Innova car in which she was travelling collided with another car coming from the opposite direction. Before the Innova overturned, it hit another car.

According to sources, the Innova overturned twice before it fell off the road near Solapur leaving Anjali injured. She has sustained injuries on her head and hand while the driver of Innova sustained injuries on the chest and her gunman an injury on his head.

Soon after the car collided with another car, both the airbags of Innova opened due to the impact providing a protective cover to all the inmates. According to sources, the doctors attending to Anjali said the nature of her head injuries was not serious and her condition is out of danger.

The condition of Innova driver, Mahadev and gunman Sayyad also is said to be out of danger and all the injured are expected to be discharged from a private hospital in Solapur tomorrow.
SV Krishna Chaitanya By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: In a major development, Vedanta Limited and ONGC have proposed to drill 341 wells to hunt for hydrocarbon reserves in and around Tamil Nadu (offshore and onshore). Large tracts of lands in the Cauvery delta region is likely to come under the pump if the proposals are approved.

In the last two months, four sets of separate applications have been filed with the Union Environment Ministry, seeking Terms of Reference (ToR) for conducting Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) studies. Of the 341 wells, 67 are proposed by public sector oil major ONGC while the remaining 274 are by Cairn Oil and Gas, a vertical of Vedanta.

As per records available with Express, Vedanta has sought an exemption from holding public hearings. The hearings, where general public are allowed to express their views on such projects, is a statutory requirement under EIA Notification, 2006. The company is planning to invest a whopping Rs 13,538 crore in the project.Last year, Vedanta was allotted two hydrocarbon blocks in Tamil Nadu as part of Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP). One block covers an area of 2,574 sq.km consisting of 142 sq.km of Nagapattinam (Tamil Nadu), 39 sq.km of Karaikal (Puducherry) and 2,393 sq. km of the Bay of Bengal sea.

The second block measures 1,794 Sq.km consisting of 139 sq km of Villupuram, two sq.km of Puducherry and 1,654 sq.km of sea portion of Bay of Bengal. The total command area to carry out necessary studies will be 4.37 lakh hectares.Ecologists have expressed concerns over environmental impacts of such a project. The Vendantas block where drilling will happen, according to records, is just 0.49 km away from the ecologically sensitive Pichavaram Mangrove Forest. Also, four important rivers including the Cauvery and several canals flow within the block.

The Bay of Bengal, where blocks are located, is prone to cyclones. The coastal stretch between Marakkanam and Nagapattinam, where the two offshore blocks of Vedanta are situated, is a popular fishing ground for local communities as it has shallow waters with depth varying between 200-500 metres, says researcher K Ayyanathan, who has written a book on hydrocarbons.

Drilling activity will drive away fish. It will also affect the soil substrata and change the characteristics of the coastline as there will be leaks. The subterranean water bodies or aquifers will get contaminated, claims Ayyanathan. As per the Revenue Sharing Contract, Vedanta proposes to carry out oil and gas exploration (including seismic surveys, exploratory and appraisal drilling) over the next 10-12 years. In case commercial quantities of hydrocarbon reserves are established, then development and production of oil and gas will be carried out in Phase-II.

When contacted, a Vedanta Cairn spokesperson told Express via e-mail, Cairn believes in protecting the environment in its areas of operation. All environmental safeguards are taken in line with applicable statutory requirements. We are currently in planning phase for carrying out exploration activities, and the drilling of Exploratory & Appraisal wells in the OALP blocks in Cauvery basin. The well-drilling execution is dependent on the assessment of subsurface data.

The environment ministry has also been swift in granting approvals for ONGC. An application for onshore development and production of oil and gas from 27 wells in two fields (Bhuvanagiri & Periyakudi fields) and expansion in Cauvery Basin (in Cuddalore and Tiruvarur districts) was submitted by ONGC on February 27 and ToR was granted by March 31.

ONGC proposes to invest Rs 5,150 crore in the project. A total of 40 wells are proposed to be drilled in this block, of which 35 wells will be located in Cuddalore and five in Nagapattinam. As per ONGC officials estimate, 1.82 hectares per well is to be acquired on short term lease/rent.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Vedanta Ltd Wednesday said legal processes are in progress through state courts for reopening Sterlite Copper plant in Tuticorin.

The Tamil Nadu government had in May last year ordered the state pollution control board to seal and "permanently" close the mining group's copper plant following violent protests over pollution concerns.

"At Sterlite Copper, legal processes are underway through the state courts to re-open this plant," the company said in an investor's brief.

ALSO READ: Mining giant Vedanta appoints Ajay Kapur as CEO of aluminium, power business

In the alumina vertical, the company said, it has seen increase in volumes, decrease in costs and margin improvements as a result.

"In fact, several new performance records have been set," it said.

Within six months of acquisition, Electrosteels Ltd has turned around to achieve a run rate of 1.5 million tonne per annum (MTPA) with healthy EBITDA margins, largely as a result of cost and volume improvements, Vedanta said.

"Hindustan Zinc is on track to achieve a design capacity of 1.2 MTPA ...by commissioning a new concentrator and paste fill plants and ramping up development," it said.

In the oil and gas business, the development projects are progressing well, it said, adding that "additional rigs have been deployed and more wells have been drilled and hooked up. The gas discovery at KG offshore basin was encouraging, and "we are progressing this find with a second well being drilled there," it said.
Photo taken on Nov 23, 2016 shows an aerial view of Kongdang village, Dulongjiang township, which is home to people of Derung ethnic group, in Southwest China's Yunnan province. [Photo/Xinhua]

President encourages Derung people in Yunnan to further improve livelihoods

President Xi Jinping has called on an ethnic minority group living in the remote mountains of Southwest China to continue to work for a better life, and he congratulated them on their progress so far.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks when answering a letter from the Derung ethnic group in Dulongjiang township, Gongshan county, Yunnan province, on Wednesday.

"Poverty eradication is only the first step, better days are yet to come," Xi said in the letter.

Saying he was glad to learn that the Derung people had been lifted out of poverty as a whole group last year, Xi wrote that "letting the people of all ethnic groups have a good life has been my aspiration as well as our common goal".

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, Xi has made poverty alleviation a leading task and the country aims to eradicate absolute poverty in China by 2020, lifting roughly 10 million from poverty each year.

By the end of last year, a total of over 82 million impoverished people in rural areas had been lifted out of poverty.

The improved lives among the Derung people vividly demonstrate that people's dreams of living happy lives will surely come true with the strong leadership of the Party and the concerted efforts of the broad masses of the people, Xi said, encouraging them to build a good homeland and create a better future.

The Derung, one of the smallest ethnic groups in China, number around 7,000. Most of the Derung people live in the deep gorges of the Dulongjiang River in Yunnan, an area listed as one of the least developed regions in the country.

Locals lived in rather primitive conditions until the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. They have now shaken off long-standing hardship thanks to the nation's poverty reduction campaign.

Xi's connections with the Derung people can be traced to 2014, when he received a letter from them reporting on local developments. Answering that letter, Xi encouraged them to step up efforts to fight against poverty in order to live well-off lives along with people of other ethnic groups across the country.

In January 2015, during an inspection tour of Yunnan, Xi met the seven Derung people who wrote to him in 2014, in Kunming.

He told them during the meeting that "no single ethnic minority group will be left behind when the whole country is working for a moderately prosperous society".

Ma Zhengshan, one of the seven, said, "The happy life we live today is inseparable from the Party's leadership and the nation's policy on ethnic groups."

Gao Derong, who served as head of Gongshan county between 2001 and 2006, told Nujiang Daily that Xi's letter is filled with care and support from the Chinese leader and the Party for the Derung ethnic group.

By the end of last year, 1,089 new houses were built in the six administrative villages in Dulongjiang township and villagers have been provided with improved transport conditions. They also have access to electricity and safe drinking water as well as a 4G network, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Yu Jincheng, Party secretary of Dulongjiang township, Gongshan county, Yunnan province, reads to local Derung residents on Thursday a letter from President Xi Jinping.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi dismissed that there was a Modi wave in the Lok Sabha elections this time and said that the contest is open and anyone can win it. Speaking to the media after casting his vote in Rajendranagar Assembly constituency on Thursday, the Hyderabad MP said: In 2014, there was a Modi wave, I accept that.

But it is not there now. This election is an open election and we hope that people will fight elections on main issues and not on issues that Modi has been bringing up.

He also slammed Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for saying that there would better chance for peace talks if Narendra Modis BJP wins the elections again.

Owaisi said: It is completely wrong on part of Imran Khan to say that he wants Narendra Modi as Prime Minister of India so that Kashmir issue can be solved. I would like to remind him that Kashmir is not anybodys private property.

Imran Khan is himself saying that the Pakistan establishment, that is ISI, wants Modi as Prime Minister. I request the proud people of India to ensure that we do not allow Imran Khans wish to get fulfilled. People will come out and decide who should lead our great nation, he added.

On ECs notice against CM K Chandrasekhar Rao, the AIMIM chief said: I am very surprised that ECI did not send PM a notice for his speech in Wardha where he equated terrorism with one religion. As far as KCR is concerned, I am sure he will give a satisfactory response to the Election Commission.
By PTI

QUITO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrested in London on Thursday after Quito withdrew his political asylum, will not be extradited to any country where he could face "torture or the death penalty," Ecuador's president said.

"I asked Great Britain the guarantee that Mr Assange will not be extradited to any country in which he could suffer torture or face the death penalty," President Lenin Moreno said in a video message posted on social media.

READ MORE | Quito withdraws Assange's Ecuador citizenship

"The British government has confirmed this in writing," that they will meet this requirement, Moreno said.

Assange has been living at Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 when he sought refuge there after being accused of sexual assault in Sweden.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: China is trying to create its own globally decisive naval force through the ambitious multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative, the Pentagon has told the US Congress, warning that Beijing's "unfavourable deals" strangle a nation's sovereignty like an Anaconda enwrapping its next meal.

Touted as President Xi Jinping's pet project, China is vigorously pursuing the Belt and Road initiative (BRI), offering billions of dollars of loans for infrastructure projects to different countries as it looks to expand global influence.

"China's Belt and Road Initiative in particular is blending diplomatic, economic, military, and social elements of its national power in an attempt to create its own globally decisive naval force," John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations, told members of House Armed Services Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

ALSO READ | China's construction binge spreads to Americas, rattles US

"China's modus operandi preys off nations' financial vulnerabilities. They contract to build commercial ports, promise to upgrade domestic facilities, and invest in national infrastructure projects," he said.

The BRI focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among Asian countries, Africa, China and Europe.

The project has become a major stumbling block in India-China relations as the controversial USD 60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been listed as its "flagship project".

India has objected to the CPEC as it is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and boycotted a high-profile Belt and Road Forum organised by China last year.

"Slowly, as the belt tightens, these commercial ports transition to dual uses, doubling as military bases that dot strategic waterways.

Then, the belt is cinched as China leverages debt to gain control and access," Richardson said.

In the final analysis, these unfavourable deals strangle a nation's sovereignty -like an Anaconda enwrapping its next meal.

Scenes like this are expanding westward from China through Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Djibouti and now to our NATO treaty allies, Greece and Italy," he told members of the House Armed Services Committee.

In his testimony, the top naval official said despite the United States' persistent work over two centuries to keep the seas open to every nation and every mariner, there are those who seek to upend this free and open order and stem the tide that has steadily lifted all boats.

"As discussed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), China and Russia are deploying all elements of their national power to achieve their global ambitions," he said.

China and Russia seek to accumulate power at America's expense and may imperil the diplomatic, economic, and military bonds that link the United States to its allies and partners, Richardson added.

"These actions are not only directed at the United States: China and Russia are working to redefine the norms of the entire international system on terms more favourable to themselves," he said.

China and Russia are determined to replace the current free and open world order with an insular system, Richardson asserted.

"They are attempting to impose unilateral rules, re-draw territorial boundaries, and redefine exclusive economic zones so they can regulate who comes and who goes, who sails through and who sails around.

"These countries' actions are undermining international security. This behaviour breeds distrust and harms our most vital national interests," he told the lawmakers.
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: It was a far cry from "I love WikiLeaks!"

President Donald Trump declared that "I know nothing about WikiLeaks" after its disheveled founder Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to face charges, a stark contrast to how candidate Trump showered praise on Assange's hacking organization night after night during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Asked about Thursday's arrest, Trump said at the White House, "It's not my thing. I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I've been seeing what's happened with Assange and that will be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, who's doing an excellent job. So, he'll be making a determination . I know nothing really about him."

"It's not my deal in life."

But WikiLeaks was Trump's deal in 2016 as he welcomed the political boost his campaign got and cheered on the release of Clinton campaign emails.

On the same October day that the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, revealing that Trump had bragged in 2005 about groping women, WikiLeaks began releasing damaging emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Trump and his allies, facing a tough battle in the campaign's final month, seized on the illegal dumps and weaponized them.

"WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks," Trump said in Pennsylvania.

"This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove," Trump said in Michigan.

"Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks," Trump said in Ohio.

READ HERE | Julian Assange may not be extradited to US

All told, Trump extolled WikiLeaks more than 100 times, and a poster of Assange hung backstage at the Republican's debate war room. At no point from a rally stage did Trump express any misgivings about how WikiLeaks obtained the emails from the Clinton campaign or about the accusations of stealing sensitive U.S. government information, which led to the charges against Assange on Thursday.

Assange for years has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for WikiLeaks' role in publishing thousands of government secrets. He was an important figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Democratic groups.

When asked about Assange in 2017, Trump said he did not "support or unsupport" WikiLeaks' move to release hacked emails and that he would not be involved in any decision for the U.S. government to arrest Assange.

"I am not involved in that decision," whether or not to arrest Assange, Trump told The Associated Press then, "but if they want to do it, it's OK with me."

The Justice Department now has charged Assange with taking part in a computer hacking conspiracy, accusing him of scheming with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to break a password for a classified government computer.

The single charge of computer intrusion conspiracy carries up to five years in prison, though the Justice Department can add additional charges depending on the evidence it gathers. Manning was ordered jailed last month for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, suggesting that prosecutors are still at work.

READ HERE | Snowden says Assange arrest 'dark moment for press freedom'

It was unclear why the Assange charge, which was brought under seal last year, was made public at this time and why he was taken into custody now  weeks after Mueller's investigation had concluded. None of the allegations in the case relate to Russian election interference or WikiLeaks' role in publishing emails stolen from Democrats by Russian intelligence operatives.

An indictment against 12 Russians last year described WikiLeaks' role in publishing hacked emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Though the indictment said WikiLeaks had worked to coordinate the release of information, there was no allegation that the organization solicited the hacking of Democratic email accounts or worked with Russians.

Assange's arrest provoked passionate responses overseas, and from some who had expressed concern about whistleblower protections, but the initial bipartisan reaction in Washington was relief.

"I'm glad to see the wheels of justice are finally turning when it comes to Julian Assange," tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally. "In my book, he has NEVER been a hero. His actions - releasing classified information - put our troops at risk and jeopardized the lives of those who helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan."

READ HERE | Hillary Clinton: Assange must 'answer for what he has done'

And Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, said he hoped the British courts would quickly transfer Assange to U.S. custody "so he can finally get the justice he deserves."

Assange's lawyer has previously said he planned to fight any U.S. charges against him. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped. British police said Assange had been arrested Thursday for breaching his bail conditions and in relation to the U.S. arrest request.
By PTI

YEHUD: An Israeli spacecraft has lost contact with Earth and crashed just moments before it was to land on the moon, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately funded lunar mission.

The spacecraft lost communication with ground control late Thursday as it was making its final descent to the moon.

Moments later, the mission was declared a failure.

"We definitely crashed on surface of moon," said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division of Israel Aerospace Industries.

He said the spacecraft was in pieces scattered at the planned landing site. Doron said that the spacecraft's engine turned off shortly before landing.

By the time power was restored, he said the craft was moving too fast to land safely. Scientists were still trying to figure out the cause of the failure.

"One of the inertial measurement units failed. And that caused an unfortunate chain of events we're not sure about. Also the engine was turned off. The engine was stopped and the spacecraft crashed. That's all we know.," he said.

The mishap occurred in front of a packed audience that included Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was broadcast live on national television.

The small robotic spacecraft, built by the non-profit SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, had hoped to match a feat that has only been achieved by the national space agencies of three countries: US, Russia and China.

"If at first you don't succeed, try try again," Netanyahu said.

He vowed to put an Israeli spacecraft on the moon "intact" in the next two years.

Scientists, who were giddy with excitement only second earlier, were visibly distraught, and celebrations at viewing centers across the country were dashed.

President Reuven Rivlin hosted dozens of youngsters at his official residence. The children, some wearing white spacesuits, appeared confused as the crash unfolded.

"We are full of admiration for the wonderful people who brought the spacecraft to the moon," Rivlin said.

True, not as we had hoped, but we will succeed in the end.

The failure was a disappointing ending to a 6.5 million kilometer (4 million mile) lunar voyage, almost unprecedented in length, that was designed to conserve fuel and reduce price.

The spacecraft hitched a ride on the SpaceX Falcon rocket, launched from Florida in February.

For the past two months, Beresheet travelled around the Earth several times before entering lunar orbit in hopes of joining the exclusive club of countries that have made it to the moon.

The US space agency NASA broadcast the landing attempt live on its dedicated TV channels, as well as online.

While NASA regrets the end of the SpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing of the Beresheet lander, we congratulate SpaceIL, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the incredible accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.

"Every attempt to reach new milestones holds opportunities for us to learn, adjust and progress," he added.

I have no doubt that Israel and SpaceIL will continue to explore and I look forward to celebrating their future achievements.
By AFP

BEIJING: Microsoft has been collaborating with researchers linked to a Chinese military-backed university on artificial intelligence, elevating concerns that US firms are contributing to China's high-tech surveillance and censorship apparatus.

Over the past year, researchers at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing have co-authored at least three papers with scholars affiliated with China's National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), which is overseen by the Central Military Commission.

The research covers a number of AI topics, such as face analysis and machine reading, which enables computers to parse and understand online text.

While it is not unusual for US and Chinese scholars to conduct joint research, Microsoft's work with the military-backed NUDT comes amid increasing scrutiny around China-US academic partnerships, as well as China's high-tech surveillance drive in the northwest region of Xinjiang.

"The new methods and technologies described in their joint papers could very well be contributing to China's crackdown on minorities in Xinjiang, for which they are using facial recognition technology," said Helena Legarda, a research associate at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, who focuses on China's foreign and security policies.

"Many of these advanced technologies are dual-use, so they could also contribute to the PLA's (People's Liberation Army's) modernisation and informatisation drive, helping the Chinese military move closer to the 2049 goal of being a world-class military," she added.

In an email, a Microsoft spokesman told AFP that the company's researchers "conduct fundamental research with leading scholars and experts from around the world to advance our understanding of technology."

In each case, the research "fully complies with US and local laws" and is published to "ensure transparency so everyone can benefit from our work," he said Thursday.

READ HERE | US officials blast Google for 'helping' Chinese military, pulling out of state defence contracts

'Raw material'

The growing concerns around human rights violations in Xinjiang have also added pressure to US firms with business in the region, where some one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic language-speaking minorities are held in re-education camps, according to a UN panel of experts.

In February, US biotechnology manufacturer Thermo Fisher announced it would stop selling equipment used to create a DNA database of the Uighur minority to China.

That same month, a security researcher exposed a massive database compiled by Chinese tech firm SenseNets, which stored the personal information and tracked the locations of 2.6 million people in Xinjiang.

At the time of the data leak, Microsoft was listed as one of SenseNets' partners. The company declined to comment.

But experts have also stressed that, in the case of NUDT, Microsoft's co-published work is open and publicly accessible.

"The authors are basically sharing with the rest of the world how to replicate their approaches, models, and results," said Andy Chun, an adjunct computer science professor at City University of Hong Kong.

That allows others to potentially "build upon, enhance and expand this research," he said.

Microsoft Research Asia also tends to focus on long-term research or projects that are not immediately transferable to applications, such as those that could be used to monitor or suppress a population of people, pointed out Yu Zhou, a professor at Vassar College, who studies globalisation and China's high-tech industry.

And while such concerns are certainly valid, it may be difficult for AI researchers to avoid China, she told AFP.

"It's a field where Chinese researchers have made quite a lot of advancements, and they are generating data which is the raw material for this industry - so how are you going to avoid that?"
By UNI

NEW DELHI: Russia on Friday announced conferring of its highest civilian award 'Order of Saint Andrew The Apostle' on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A decree from the Russian President Vladimir Putin's office said the prestigious award has been given to Mr Modi for "distinguished achievement in the development of the Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership between Russian Federation and the Republic of India".

This is the third such high ranking international award conferred to Prime Minister after South Korea and earlier this month the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced awarding its highest civilian award 'Order of Zayed' on the Prime Minister.

In October, Mr Modi was honoured with Seoul Peace Prize by South Korea.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has said he is considering a potential third nuclear summit with North Korea's leader.

"We will be discussing that and potential meetings, further meetings with North Korea and Kim Jong Un," Trump said in the Oval Office at the start of talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday.

A third summit would follow on Trump's historic breakthrough last year, when he met Kim in Singapore, and a follow-up this February in Hanoi that ended without progress in getting North Korea to give up nuclear weapons.

Both Trump and Moon are heavily invested in bringing North Korea out of the cold. But the unsuccessful summit in Vietnam was a setback for the two allies that has yet to be resolved.

At the White House, Trump insisted that a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff remains within reach, and that he continues to place considerable hope in his personal brand of diplomacy.

"I enjoy the summits, I enjoy being with the chairman," he said.

Kim is "a person I've gotten to know very well, and respect and hopefully, and I really believe over a period of time, a lot of tremendous things will happen.

I think North Korea has a tremendous potential," Trump said.

The Vietnam summit ended without Trump being able to extract major concessions from Kim on the country's nuclear arsenal or Kim getting the reduction he wanted in heavy economic sanctions brought to pressure him into cooperating.

ALSO READ | Trump, South Korea's Moon look for way to curb North Korea nukes

Despite the sanctions, Trump said Thursday that he supports unspecified South Korean moves to bring humanitarian relief.

"We are discussing certain humanitarian things right now. I'm OK with that, to be honest," he said.

Although the broader sanctions should "remain in place," he said he opposes any further tightening and noted that he had stopped planned new measures.

There was "the option of significantly increasing them, but I didn't want to do that," he said.

Trump has emerged as an unlikely peacemaker in the Korean peninsula, reversing his initially bellicose approach with a determined effort to put Washington and Pyongyang on a historic path to reconciliation.

But the Hanoi meeting was a letdown. The two leaders cut their talks short, skipping a scheduled final lunch and the expected issuing of a joint statement.

In Washington, that outcome brought Trump praise from Republican legislators who'd worried he would give too much away in pursuit of big headlines.

Trump continues to face criticism that he is out of his depth in talks with Kim, and that sitting down with the dictator has yet to bring much benefit.

But he insists that while he retains an unusually good personal relationship with Kim, he will maintain a tough negotiating line.

"Sometimes, you have to walk," Trump said, slipping into his real estate dealer's lingo, after the Hanoi meeting.

For Moon, the aftermath has been even more complicated.

In his talks with Trump, he insisted that the summits have produced important results, especially "the dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean peninsula.

In this sense, I believe that the Hanoi summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement.

" But Moon has staked his presidency on concrete engagement with isolated North Korea, pushing for a resumption of South Korean tourism to the North's Mount Kumgang and operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where companies from the South used to be staffed by workers from the North.

Plans to unveil details of such projects on March 1, right after the Hanoi summit, had to be shelved and he is under pressure from opponents on the right.

One lawmaker branded him the North Korean's "top spokesman.Kim himself has used the impasse to speak out against international sanctions and warn in colorful, defiant terms that his country will not bow to pressure.

The state-led economy will "deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring the DPRK to its knees," a state media report quoted him as saying on Thursday, using the acronym for the North's official name.

Shortly after the Hanoi summit, a series of satellite images emerged suggesting increased activity at the North's Sohae rocket site, triggering international alarm that the nuclear-armed state might be preparing a long-range or space launch.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump's meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in comes amid uncertainty over whether the leader of North Korea is considering backing out of nuclear negotiations or restarting nuclear and missile tests.

Trump, in his first meeting with Moon since the unsuccessful US summit with Kim in Hanoi, said the US wants to keep economic sanctions in place to pressure Kim to denuclearize.

But Trump said he retains good relations with Kim and didn't rule out a third summit or taking steps to ease food or other shortages in the repressive nation.

"We want sanctions to remain in place," Trump said Thursday at the White House.

"I think that sanctions right now are at a level that's a fair level", he added.

Moon, for his part, has called for an easing of sanctions, including those holding back joint economic projects between North and South Korea.

But he didn't speak to the sanctions issue as he and Trump spoke with reporters at the start of their talks.

Trump said he would favor easing those sanctions at the right time but added: "This isn't the right time.

He said he was open to discussing smaller steps, such as helping to ease North Korea's humanitarian problems, but that, in general, the U.S.wants sanctions to remain.

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen," Trump said.

You could work out step-by-step pieces, but at this moment, we're talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," he added.

ALSO READ | China and North Korea open new border crossing

" Negotiations on Pyongyang's nuclear program appear to be stalled, and there is uncertainty over whether Kim is considering backing out of talks or restarting nuclear and missile tests.

The Korean Central News Agency on Thursday said that at a party meeting on Wednesday, Kim stressed "self-reliance" in his country to "deal a telling blow to the hostile forces" that "go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring" North Korea "to its knees.

" Moon said it's important to maintain the "momentum of dialogue" and express a positive outlook to the international community that a "third US-North Korea summit" will be held.

"I'd like to express my high regard for how you have continued to express your trust towards Chairman Kim," Moon said.

"And also, you have made sure that North Korea does not deviate from the dialogue track.

ALSO READ | South Korea considering sending special envoy to North Korea

"Moon did not directly address the issue of sanctions. But several North Korea watchers, including Sue Mi Terry, a North Korean expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Asia analyst at the CIA, said Moon was expected to try to persuade Trump  perhaps only privately  to agree to ease some sanctions to keep the talks alive.

While Trump didn't rule out a third summit with Kim following his earlier two meetings with him in Singapore and Hanoi, Victor Cha, a North Korea expert from the Bush administration, wasn't as hopeful.

With Trump already campaigning for re-election, Cha said, "It's hard for me to think Trump will risk a third summit.

" Trump walked away from making a deal with Kim at their meeting in late February.

Trump said Kim was asking for sanctions relief without wanting to fully dismantle all his nuclear weapons programs.

There is ongoing debate over whether harsh sanctions can pressure Kim to denuclearize or will keep him away from the negotiating table.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the administration was fully engaged in efforts to negotiate a resolution to the nuclear standoff.

"We are going to keep at it," he said.

Sen.Jeff Merkley, D-Ore , assessed the denuclearization talks as "stuck on first base.

" Merkley said the North Koreans had continued developing their missile program and were finding ways to circumvent economic sanctions strangling its economy.

He cited a UN panel of experts that warned on March 5 that there has been a "massive increase in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products and coal" rendering the latest U.N sanctions "ineffective.

" A senior administration official said Thursday that the US and the international community had "clearly defined the scope" of North Korea's weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, have a shared understanding of what final, fully verified denuclearization entails and what meaningful progress toward that goal looks like.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said the North Korean position, so far, has fallen short of that understanding.

North Korea's Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said last month that Kim would soon make clear his post-Hanoi position.

She said her country might pull out of the nuclear negotiations with the United States, citing a lack of corresponding steps to some disarmament measures North Korea took last year.

She also hinted that Kim was considering whether to continue the talks and his moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.
By AFP

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump's controversial ban on transgender Americans in the military comes into force on Friday following a protracted legal battle.

Trump's administration has insisted that there is "too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality" to allow transgender people to serve -- reversing a policy enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama.

The Pentagon says the restrictions are not a blanket ban, but they would bar many if not most people who identify as transgender from enlisting in America's armed forces.

The policy -- which has undergone various iterations since Trump first announced it on Twitter in July 2017 -- has been widely criticized by rights activists and has been repeatedly challenged in court.

The US Supreme Court ultimately ruled in January that the policy could take effect pending the outcome of ongoing litigation.

Under the latest version of Trump's policy, no one who has transitioned to another gender, been diagnosed with "gender dysphoria" or who requires hormone treatment will be able to enlist.

But currently enlisted troops who have already transitioned or have requested gender reassignment surgery prior to Friday will be allowed to remain in the military.

For Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a research institute focusing on sexual minorities in the military, the policy amounts to a transgender ban.

"When (the Department of Defense) disqualifies all applicants with a history of gender dysphoria (unless they renounce transgender identity for years) and all applicants who have ever received treatment for gender dysphoria, that is a ban," Belkin said.

READ HERE | 'Our country is full': Donald Trump says migrants straining system

The policy "depends on directly banning the transgender people who are immediately identifiable and threatening the rest, forcing them to remain silent and invisible," he said.

"It is 'don't ask, don't tell' all over again," said Belkin, referring to the policy under which gay service members had to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal from the military.

Under the Obama-era policy, transgender recruits were to start being accepted by July 1, 2017.

The Trump administration postponed that date to January 1, 2018, before deciding to reverse the policy entirely.

The Pentagon estimates that 9,000 people who identify as transgender are currently serving in the military, out of a total of 1.3 million active-duty personnel.

Of this figure, a thousand say they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or want to do so.

But according to transgender rights activists, the figure is higher.

"As many as 15,000 transgender service members stand to lose their jobs," Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King, who is transgender, told ABC News this week.

"For those of us who are grandfathered in because we've already come out and we already have a diagnosis, there's the possibility for systematic discrimination," King said.

The new policy is "indefensible," Meghan McCain, daughter of the late senator John McCain, wrote on Twitter.

"This discriminatory policy will lead Transgender service members, patriots who have decided to serve their nation, to live in the shadows," she wrote.
Shen Zhiqiang, head of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO), presides over a press conference to release the first-ever image of a supermassive black hole at the heart of the distant galaxy M87, in east China's Shanghai, April 10, 2019.. (Xinhua/Fang Zhe)

The ongoing China-led international collaboration project Tianqin, a space-based gravitational wave detection system scheduled to be completed by 2035, is expected to significantly improve understanding of major cosmic phenomena, including black holes, scientists said.

Tianqin uses the Chinese words tian, meaning sky or heavens, and qin, meaning stringed musical instrument.

It will consist of three satellites forming an equilateral triangle around Earth at an orbit of 100,000 kilometers.

Tianqin will work to detect gravitational waves, which scientists theorize are ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by violent cosmic events, such as colliding black holes, supernovas and even the birth of the universe.

"Once completed, Tianqin will become an important tool to search for and detect black holes of all sizes and wavelengths in the next two decades," Wu Qingwen, a professor at the School of Physics of Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei province, said on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the Event Horizon Telescope, a global array of eight ground-based radio telescopes, revealed the first-ever image of a black hole.

Wu was one of the more than 200 astronomers worldwide involved in the EHT collaboration, which captured the first visible representation of what are considered the most extreme objects in the universe.

International collaboration is vital for astronomical observations, Wu said.

Besides the successful capture of the first black hole image, two earlier detections of gravitational waves from black hole mergers also were products of international collaboration.

In February 2016, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in the United States announced the first observation of gravitational waves generated by a black hole merger. The following June, it announced the second detection of a gravitational wave event from colliding black holes.

Wu said Tianqin has potential for even greater discoveries.

"LIGO used interferometers on the ground with an arm length of 4 km. But with satellites, the arm length will increase to 170,000 km. So the space-based probes (enabled by Tianqin) will be able to detect gravitational waves at much lower frequencies generated by the merging of massive or supermassive black holes," he said.

"It will also enable us to see the smaller black holes during the infancy of the universe, as well as understand the history of black hole growth and the evolution of galaxies," he said.

Tu Liangcheng and two other researchers discusses the project at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei province, March 27, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]

Tu Liangcheng, one of the leading scientists of the Tianqin project, said that the project has been going smoothly.

"So far nearly 200 Chinese scientists from more than 30 domestic research institutions and universities and about 30 researchers from at least eight other countriesincluding Russia, Italy, Germany and Francehave participated in the project," said Tu, who is also director of the gravitation center at the Wuhan university.

Shen Zhiqiang, head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, and a member of the EHT team, said the success of the first black hole image has encouraged Chinese scientists to engage in more international collaboration and boost the country's ability in studying deep space.

Chinese scientists participated in Hawaii and Spain in the observations that yielded the black hole image. They were highly involved in follow-up data analysis and theoretical explanation throughout the two years that followed the five-day observations in April 2017.

Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, which leads the country in very-long-baseline interferometry, the technique the telescope array used for the black hole image, took the lead in organizing and coordinating Chinese researchers participation in the EHT observations and studies, Shen said. That allowed Shanghai to be one of the six cities worldwide involved in the simultaneous news conferences on Wednesday.

No Chinese telescopeincluding the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, the world's largest filled-aperture radio telescope, in Guizhou provincewas involved in the EHT observations.

Yuan Yefei, a professor in the University of Science and Technology of China's astronomy department, also an EHT team member, said the Guizhou telescope did not take part mainly because its wavelength band was not what EHT needed for this observation.
Champaign, IL (61820)

Today

Windy with a few showers this evening. A steady, soaking rain developing overnight. Low 48F. Winds SSW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..

Tonight

Windy with a few showers this evening. A steady, soaking rain developing overnight. Low 48F. Winds SSW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.
Amazon(SEATTLE) -- More than 5,000 Amazon workers called on founder and CEO Jeff Bezos to tackle climate change in the latest example of tech workers rallying to change company policies from within.



Within a day of posting an open letter to Bezos and the company's board of directors to implement a company-wide plan to combat climate change, 5,237 Amazon employees signed the document, which was posted to Medium on Wednesday.



"Amazon has the resources and scale to spark the worlds imagination and redefine what is possible and necessary to address the climate crisis. We believe this is a historic opportunity for Amazon to stand with employees and signal to the world that were ready to be a climate leader," the letter stated.



In an emailed statement to ABC News, an Amazon spokesperson wrote: Earlier this year, we announced that we will share our company-wide carbon footprint, along with related goals and programs. We also announced Shipment Zero, our vision to make all Amazon shipments net zero carbon, with 50% of all shipments net zero by 2030. Amazons sustainability team is using a science-based approach to develop data and strategies to ensure a rigorous approach to our sustainability work."



However, the letter appeared to take issue with the publicly announced Amazon initiatives.



The company has not "disclosed a company-wide plan to reach zero carbon emissions within the timeline required by science," the letter said. "Our goal to reach 100% renewable energy does not have a date for completion. In addition, Shipment Zero does not commit to a decrease in emissions compared to current levels. Given Amazons rate of growth, reaching 50% net-zero shipments by 2030 could still be an increase in emissions compared to today."



The employees also took issue with the Amazon Web Services arm, which they said has an initiative devoted to helping fossil fuel companies accelerate and expand oil and gas extraction. The company also donates "to climate-delaying legislators" including 68 members of Congress in 2018 who voted against climate legislation 100 percent of the time, the letter states.



The authors also underscored the social justice aspect of climate change.



"The pollution we generate is not equally distributed, and climate impact will be felt first and hardest by Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, particularly in the Global South. We must prioritize our pollution reduction in these communities," the letter said.



Amazon employees are following their tech colleagues in protesting company policies publicly.



In November, Google employees around the world walked out of their offices to protest how the company handles sexual misconduct allegations.



A week later, the company dropped its mandatory requirement for sexual harassment and assault cases, allowing for employees to file lawsuits.



Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Photo taken on March 22, 2019 shows an aerial view of the construction site of Peleshaz bridge in Komarna. [Photo/Xinhua]

Li, Croatian PM say project demonstrates potential, benefits of stronger relations

Premier Li Keqiang and his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic visited the construction site of the Peljesac Bridge on Thursday. The bridge will connect two parts of the European Union member's territory and is being built by Chinese companies.

The leaders spoke highly of the progress made in the bridge's construction, calling it a good example of what can be accomplished with stronger ties between the two countries.

Speaking at a news conference after their visit, Li said the bridge offers peace and security by connecting two places in Croatia that have no land links. Currently, Croatians have to go through two customs clearances in Neum, a town in Croatia's neighboring country Bosnia and Herzegovina, to reach the famous tourist destination of Dubrovnik.

The bridge, when completed, will be beneficial to regional peace and development, as well as to the livelihoods of people living around it, the premier said.

Li called the bridge a landmark project for China's cooperation with the EU and 16 Central and Eastern European countries, using EU financing and standards. Chinese companies competed for the project during fair and transparent bidding and will fulfill all conditions in the contract to make it a good facility that can stand all tests, he said.

It will strengthen logistics, the interaction among Croatian people, and the development of southern Croatia, Li said. "I hope Croatian people will enjoy the convenience the bridge will bring as soon as possible," he added.

Peljesac Bridge, at 2,440 meters in length, will connect the mainland part of Croatia with the nation's Peljesac Peninsula. The structure is estimated to cost 420 million euros ($473 million), 85 percent of which will be paid by the EU.

In April of last year, a combination of Chinese companies signed a contract with the Croatian government to start construction of the first phase of the bridge at a cost of around 280 million euros. The phase is to be completed in three years.

Hu Zhaoming, Chinese ambassador to Croatia, said the bridge is Croatia's biggest infrastructure project and also the largest project Chinese companies have undertaken in the CEE nation.

At the news conference, Plenkovic said Croatia has wanted to build such a bridge for two decades, and Chinese companies and their local partners have demonstrated excellent performance.

"We adhere to the principle of fairness and transparency in the bidding process and the project will promote Croatia's cooperation with China in diverse fields, such as trade and tourism," Plenkovic said.
Secretary for Security John Lee said the Government will solicit legislators support for the proposed extradition law changes.

Speaking to the media today, Mr Lee said he understands there are different views about the suggested revisions to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance.

My colleagues and also colleagues in the Department of Justice have been working hard to prepare for the Bills Committee which is likely to be convened very soon.

All these views, of course, are being examined by us to see how our eventual government proposal will be discussed and explained in the Bills Committee.

Mr Lee reiterated the proposed legal changes are necessary as there is a pressing need to deal with the suspect involved in the Taiwan murder case.

We must do these things to ensure that people who have committed serious offences do face the justice they deserve, and also at the same time to ensure citizens of Hong Kong are protected from people who have committed serious crimes.

People who may be subject to surrender will have all their legal and human rights safeguarded, Mr Lee added.
"Having said all that, both Algeria and Sudan are in the early phases of political dynamics that may yet have many twists and turns. These are hugely sophisticated countries with well-educated urban populations. It is too soon to say what the military authorities will to do," he said.




President Mnangagwa has said his leadership will never allow mafia-style handling of Zanu-PF issues and urged party members to follow laid down procedures when settling grievances. The Zanu-PF First Secretary also warned youths to be wary of party cadres with unbridled ambitions who may want to cause disunity in the revolutionary organisation.





President Mnangagwa made the remarks while addressing the Zanu-PF National Youth Assembly in Harare on Thursday.





If any members or structures of the party have any grievances, the laid-out rules, regulations and procedures must be followed, he said.





I know of some comrades who have been suspended or expelled, but no procedures were followed. That is not proper. When we are dealing with party issues you put aside your personal differences with the persons concerned. You must obey and follow the rules and procedures of the constitution, otherwise you will find yourselves in the wrong. Divisive, opportunistic or mafia-style handing of party affairs will never be accepted. You may feel that you are smart, but let me tell you this party, Zanu-PF, is always smarter.





Votes of no confidence have been passed against some officials of the partys national youth league executive recently and reports of similar actions were being initiated in other provinces.





The Zanu-PF Politburo put a stop to the unprocedural acts which had affected the youths leader Cde Pupurai Togarepi, deputy secretary Cde Lewis Matutu, administration secretary Cde Tendai Chirau, Cde Admire Mahachi and Cde Mercy Mugomo





On those with intemperate ambitions, President Mnangagwa said: As you carry out both your political and development programmes you must be wary of those with brute, unbridled ambition and political gladiators. Be vigilant and alert as they may seek to sow seeds of disunity amongst yourselves, within the party and ultimately in the nation, for their own selfish ends. You must always foster loyalty, respect, honesty and integrity. Guard against silo mentality and self-centred behaviour. Continue to fight against corruption by exposing any suspected acts in every sphere of society.





He said mobilisation of party members should continue at all levels. The party is a party only if we have members, the President said.





As you are aware, the party has embarked on the restructuring of Harare and Bulawayo provinces. Dont think the other eight are immune. This is an opportune time for you as the Youth League leaders to mobilise the youths of appropriate ages and skills mix to join your structures. Our desire is to see a vibrant Youth League that has a young, energetic, entrepreneurial, professional and patriotic members which encapsulates the Zimbabwe we all want.





He went on: I challenge you to be aggressive in inviting new members and retaining the old ones. Furthermore you should use unconventional strategies and platforms to draw young people of diverse backgrounds to join your League. I insist that you must study and draw lessons from other progressive parties who have transformed and modernised both the parties and countries. This will undoubtedly help in the development of more vibrant programmes and initiatives in the future.





He said party members should be ready to move on as their positions were not permanent.




Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng (R), also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets with former U.S. treasury secretary Henry Paulson in Beijing, capital of China, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Vice Premier Han Zheng on Thursday met with former U.S. treasury secretary Henry Paulson, calling for advancing healthy and stable development of bilateral ties between China and the United States.

Han, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said that bilateral ties have achieved historical development after going through various challenges since the two countries established diplomatic ties 40 years ago.

China and the United States share wide interests and shoulder important responsibilities in safeguarding world peace and stability and promoting global development and prosperity, he said.

It is imperative to advance economic and trade cooperation and work for sound and steady development of bilateral ties, with the guidance of the important consensus reached by the two heads of state.

"It is the inevitable requirement for China to strengthen eco-environmental protection so as to achieve high-quality development," Han said. "China stands ready to carry out international cooperation of different forms and work with the Paulson Institute to make concerted efforts and further expand fields of cooperation in eco-environmental protection."

For his part, Paulson said the U.S.-China relationship is one of the most important ties in the world. He added that the Paulson Institute is willing to advance cooperation between the United States and China in areas such as trade and investment, environmental protection, clean energy, and green finance.
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low -32F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low -32F. Winds light and variable.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, who is here to attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said on Thursday the China-Bulgaria relationship will embrace new development opportunities as this year marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of bilateral diplomatic ties.

Li made the remarks at a meeting with Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, who is here for the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC).

Li said China is willing to take the anniversary as an opportunity to hold a series of celebration activities, enhance bilateral cooperation in areas including infrastructure construction and agricultural technologies.

China encourages more competent Chinese enterprises to participate in infrastructure projects in Bulgaria, and welcomes more exports of Bulgaria's high-quality agricultural products to China, he said.

Noting that China is willing to enhance people-to-people and cultural exchanges with Bulgaria, the Chinese premier said that the Sofia China Cultural Center will start operation this year, which will help further consolidate public support for stronger bilateral relations.

Li stressed that last year's China-CEEC leaders' meeting in Sofia, capital of Bulgaria, saw an important consensus on setting up in Bulgaria the Global Partnership Center of CEECs and China.

He noted that during this year's China-CEEC meeting, there will be an inauguration ceremony of the center, saying that he believes the center will provide strong intelligent support for China-CEEC cooperation.

For his part, Borissov said Li's successful visit to Bulgaria in July last year has promoted new progress in bilateral relations, and the two sides have produced fruitful results in areas including agriculture, tourism, and infrastructure construction.

Bulgaria is willing to join China in further deepening connectivity for more practical outcomes, and to build the Global Partnership Center of CEECs and China into a provider of useful policy consultation and support for all parties in practical cooperation, he said.
The Benue State Livestock Guards have arrested a Fulani herdsman identified as Amandu Wakili suspected to be responsible for the recen...





The Benue State Livestock Guards have arrested a Fulani herdsman identified as Amandu Wakili suspected to be responsible for the recent attacks on some communities in the state.





Wakili, who was arrested in company of other herdsmen, disclosed that they were working for one Alhaji Aliyu Tershaku.





Addressing journalists on Thursday in Makurdi, the state capital, Mallam Wakili claimed that Tershaku asked herdsmen, including him to return to the state and continue with grazing of cattle in defiance of the Benue State Open Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law.





The herder, who was arrested in one of the communities bordering University of Agriculture Makurdi yesterday while openly grazing his cattle, said they were instructed to move to Benue but be watchful to resist cattle rustling while also avoiding destruction of farms.





Speaking in Hausa, Wakili said two of his fellow herders who were with him ran away with their cattle while he was arrested and taken to Makurdi by operatives of the Livestock Guards.





The herder disclosed that they came to the state from Awe Local Government Area of Nasarawa State, adding that more of their members were billed to relocate to Benue on the instructions of their leaders.





Also speaking, the State Commandant of Livestock Guards, Mr. Linus Zaki, said they received intelligence reports that herders were grazing openly around University of Agriculture Makurdi communities and swiftly sent his patrol men who arrested Mallam Wakili for contravening the states Ranching Law.





He said the herder was arrested with a cutlass with which he used to resist arrest but was later overpowered by men of the Livestock Guards and taken away to the state office of the agency.




JAMB candidates assigned to write the JAMB CBT-based examination in Flourish Computer Centre, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State have lamented over th...

JAMB candidates assigned to write the JAMB CBT-based examination in Flourish Computer Centre, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State have lamented over the inability of the centre to conduct the exams for the candidates.









Affected candidates thronged the gate of Flourish Computer Centre located on 101 Goodluck Jonathan Boulevard along Nung Oku junction, Uyo, appealing to the management of the centre to address the situation to no avail.









It was gathered that since Thursday when the exams commenced, no single candidate successfully completed the exams in the centre, and as at 8pm they were still waiting to write the exams.









The candidates who were lucky to be called in to write the exams said the computer logged them out 20 minutes after the exams commenced, adding that after the inability of the management to rectify the situation, the candidates were asked to leave the hall.









They explained that when the candidates became rowdy at 8pm, the management of the centre called in the Police Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to disperse them.









One of the candidates, Moses Okokon with seat number 144 said he was at the venue of the exams by 6am on Thursday but the computer logged him and other candidates out after answering about 20 questions.









They asked us to thumbprint for the exams and as we started, the system logged us out. They asked us to log in again and the system had the same problem. They asked us to wait as the exams will be rescheduled. The second batch had the same problem so I dont know if the exams will be rescheduled or cancelled, he said.









Another candidate, Miss Emediong Eyo who was supposed to write the exams by 1pm said she arrived the venue of the exams by 12noon and noticed that the candidates in the first batch came out crying, saying that could not write their exams as they could only answer two or three questions before the system logged them out.









At 1.30pm, we were asked to thumbprint and we waited outside till 7pm and nothing happened. We were about to leave when they said we should wait as they want to fix the computer. We waited till 8.30pm and we told to enter the computer room. My computer did not even open at all but those who sat near me logged into the computer but it was blank.









We could not write the exams and was later asked to leave the hall. We were angry and started protesting. Before long, SARS came in and threatened to shoot us if we do not leave the exams hall after writing the exams. We want JAMB to cancel this centre and give us another centre to write exams or reschedule it for us, she added.
Chelsea say they have banned three fans for their part in an abusive video directed at striker Mohamed Salah from Premier League rivals ...

Chelsea say they have banned three fans for their part in an abusive video directed at striker Mohamed Salah from Premier League rivals Liverpool, local media reported on Friday.









Six men were seen on a video posted on social media on Thursday abusing Salah, calling the Egypt international a bomber.









Both clubs roundly condemned the video, each issuing a statement in which they pledged to work together to find the people responsible.









Chelsea said that they had stopped three fans at the gates for their Europa League clash with Slavia Prague in the Czech Republic.









Chelsea striker Olivier Giroud said the whole Chelsea sides were disgusted at the video.









I think these people shouldnt belong to Chelsea.









I think the club and everybody condemn these kinds of things, and we are 100 per cent behind Mo Salah. I think nowadays it shouldnt happen, Giroud said.









Salah played 13 times for Chelsea before joining Roma and eventually signing for Liverpool in the summer of 2017.








Congolese troops killed 36 Burundian rebels in clashes with two armed groups in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo and three ...

Congolese troops killed 36 Burundian rebels in clashes with two armed groups in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo and three soldiers were also killed, the DRC Army said on Friday.









The Congolese army mounted a series of operations between April 6 and April 8 in the eastern province of South Kivu aimed at regaining territory against the Burundian rebel groups National Liberation Forces (FNL) and the Burundian Republican Forces (FOREBU)









During the three days of combat, 36 of those rebels have been neutralised, an army spokesman, Dieudonne Kasereka, said.









FNL leader, Gen. Aloyse Zabampema, was seriously wounded, he said.









Several areas formerly under the control of rebels have been recovered by Congolese soldiers, he added.









The FNL is among several ethnic Hutu rebel groups that rose up to fight Burundis Tutsi-led military government in the 1993 to 2005 civil war.









Though it officially disarmed in 2009, pockets of FNL fighters remained active in eastern Congo.









Millions were killed in the civil war in Congo from 1998 to 2003 when foreign armies and allied rebel groups clashed over territory and mineral concessions, mostly in the east.









Congos President, Felix Tshisekedi, who took office in January, has pledged to address the militia violence that persists in the region.












A high court in the federal capital territory (FCT) has fixed May 23 for hearing of a case by Ali Konduga, a former spokesman of Boko ...





A high court in the federal capital territory (FCT) has fixed May 23 for hearing of a case by Ali Konduga, a former spokesman of Boko Haram, against Department of State Services (DSS).





Kodunga is seeking N500,000 in damages for alleged breach of his fundamental rights.





Abubakar Malami, attorney-general of the federation (AGF), is also named as a defendant in the suit.





According to processes filed Mohammed Tola, his counsel, the ex-spokesman of Boko Haram alleged that he was kept in detention for extra three years after serving his three-year jail term before he was released in 2016.





Konduga claimed that he was kept in the custody of the DSS instead of the conventional prison to serve his term because the government wanted him to serve as a key witness to prove a terrorism charge against Ali Ndume, a senator.





He said till the time of his release, he was never called to testify in the matter or any other matter.





The ex-insurgent claimed that the DSS offered his family N700,000 when he was released and informed his family that the money was meant for his medical treatment.





Konduga said the gesture of the secret police was an indication that he was entitled to compensation for his illegal and unlawful detention.





He said the DSS refused to pay him any other compensation except the N700,000.





He said some individuals attacked him after he was released in 2016 and that he sustained a head injury from the attack.




Rep Muhammad Monguno on Thursday withdrew from the race for Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives. He also threw his weight be...

Rep Muhammad Monguno on Thursday withdrew from the race for Speaker of the 9th House of Representatives.

He also threw his weight behind Majority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila.





Monguno, who is Chairman Committee on Agricultural Productions and Services, said the decision of the All Progressives Congress (APC) superseded personal ambitions.





Monguno, who represents Marte/Monguno/Nganzai Federal Constituency of Borno State, said Gbajabiamila was the most qualified among all contenders.





The Nation quoted him as saying: I believe we should all rally round the party and give them the necessary support. I cant continue with my ambition because the party has zoned the Senate Presidents seat to my zone.





Im a loyal party man and I should be the one to be calling on my colleagues to support the party on this. I decided to drop my ambition and support Femi to emerge.





If well tell ourselves the truth, Femi is the most ranking among us, and he knows the job. He has been a Principal officer since 2007. You can see that he has all it takes.




The Federal Government on Friday said that drugs were hidden on the body of Kudirat Afolabi, who was executed in Saudi Arabia on April...





The Federal Government on Friday said that drugs were hidden on the body of Kudirat Afolabi, who was executed in Saudi Arabia on April 1.





It said Afolabi was among the 20 persons arrested with drugs hidden in their body parts.





The Senior Special Assistant to the President on Foreign Relations and the Diaspora, Mrs Abike Dabiri-Erewa, disclosed this on Friday to News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.





She said the clarification became necessary in a bid to clear the air regarding the circumstances leading to the execution of the Nigerian.





Afolabi was executed alongside two Pakistani men and one Yemeni man, bringing the total number of people killed by Saudi Arabia this year to 53.





There had been attempts, especially in the social media, to link Afolabis fate with the activities of alleged syndicates operating at Malam Aminu Kano International Airport, Kano.





The syndicate allegedly specialises in planting drugs in the baggage of unsuspecting travelers.





Abike-Dabiri, however, said Afolabi did not belong to the list of seven who were suspected to have fallen victim of the four-man gang hard drugs planting syndicate.





There are some people caught in Kano, but those they allegedly gave the drugs to are yet to face trials in Saudi.





What we can now do is to prevail on the Saudi authority that those people awaiting trials in their country are among the victims of the Kano syndicate.





If Nigeria can do this, through National Drugs and Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) and the Nigerian mission in Saudi Arabia, they might not even be charged to court.





Ms Afolabi was one of those drugs were found on their bodies. They were 20 in number. They are the ones on the death roll, as drugs were found on their bodies, including their private parts.





In their case, the Saudis do not appear to waste so much time on them. What is on social media that the lady could have been saved was incorrect.





There was no way we could have done that. She was found with drugs on her body; just like the other 20, the presidential aide said.





She, however, pointed out that in the case of those awaiting trials, the NDLEA can work with the Nigerian mission in Saudi to save them.





Who knows, maybe if the NDLEA forward their information to the Saudis that some of these people might be innocent of the crime, they might not even go on trial.




In his words: When I say this I really mean it, the day these type of individuals run into me I might end up dying that day.

Truth is how much humility and calm are u supposed to have? Even if we want to believe that God is using the situation to test us, will he test us to our death and demise?

For what reason is such an individual wearing the uniform of one who is supposed to protect and serve the same person he is bludgeoning and raping of his rights in broad daylight so bold and so arrogant with slaps to follow and insults. Then more planking.

My God, I beg u please cos I will disarm that fool and shoot him with his own gun. I swear on it. If u powers that be cant do what is necessary then step the fuck outta office and outta the way and allow people who are about change and fairness and rules and regulations and proper protocols and due process take ur place, he wrote in parts.




The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has called on anyone with evidence that innocent civilians were targeted by the NAF during its recent air s...

The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has called on anyone with evidence that innocent civilians were targeted by the NAF during its recent air strikes in Zamfara, to produce such evidence.









Air Commodore Ibikunle Daramola, NAF Director of Public Relations and Information, made the request in a statement on Friday in Abuja.









He urged anyone with such evidence to produce it.









Daramola said the NAF finds it mischievous that anyone would spread such deliberate misinformation whilst the Service is doing its best to effectively respond to the challenges facing the good people of Zamfara and its environs.









The NAF was reacting to some media reports insinuating that the recent air strikes conducted by its Air Task Force for Operation DIRAN MIKIYA killed only innocent civilians in the areas attacked and not bandits.









The attention of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has been drawn to some media reports insinuating that the recent air strikes conducted by its Air Task Force for Operation DIRAN MIKIYA killed only innocent civilians in the areas attacked and not bandits.









The NAF finds such reports rather ridiculous because most of the locations attacked are within the Rugu, Sububu and Kagara Forests general area, which are known bandits hideouts that have been attacked in the past, without any outcry.









Besides, the NAF target selection process for air operations is particularly rigorous and methodical in order to ensure proper target identification and thereby prevent strikes on wrong locations, he said.









According to him, the locations attacked from April 8 to 11 are selected based on human intelligence (HUMINT) reports obtained from security agencies and other government sources, traditional and community leaders as well as reliable, vetted informants.









In addition, NAF also has Special Forces (SF) personnel operating in some of the areas attacked, who provided additional intelligence.









These were all further confirmed by days of detailed day and night Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) missions to ensure proper targeting for the avoidance of collateral damage, he said.









The spokesman said to further ensure this, as standard practice, NAF attack aircraft on air interdiction missions were accompanied by ISR platforms that guided them to designated targets.









According to him, NAF pilots, by training and in line with extant Rules of Engagement (ROEs) for the operation, do not attack any location if it is observed that non-combatants, especially women and children, are present.









In such cases, the pilots would rather return to Base with their munitions unexpended.









Consequently, it is inconceivable that the NAF would attack locations where innocent civilians reside.









In view of the foregoing, the NAF finds it rather mischievous that anyone would spread such deliberate misinformation whilst the Service is doing its best to effectively respond to the challenges facing the good people of Zamfara and its environs.









Rather than making such spurious and unsubstantiated allegations, NAF requests that anyone with evidence to the effect that innocent civilians were targeted by the NAF air strikes should produce such evidence, he said.













Daramola said the NAF, as a professional Service, would not want to join issues with any group of individuals, including traditional rulers, but will rather remain committed to ensuring the safety and security of all Nigerians.









Accordingly, he said NAF would continue to work assiduously, in synergy with sister Services and other security agencies, to rid the North West of all criminal elements.









He assured the general public that the NAF would not be deterred but would sustain its air operations to facilitate a return to normalcy that would enable Nigerians in the area to pursue their legitimate aspirations.









In this regard, the NAF hereby advocates public support, and not distracting and unsubstantiated allegations, as its personnel continue to sacrifice towards eliminating all threats to the security and, indeed, the development of our beloved Country, he said.








A mother has been caught in a viral video kicking her child model daughter because she was allegedly "too tired to perform". [Photo/Sina Weibo]

Footage of a mother kicking her three-year-old daughter has gone viral on Chinese social media, sparking outcry online.

The video was shot on Monday in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, and began going viral Wednesday.

The daughter has been revealed to be Niuniu, a well-known child model, who was kicked because she was allegedly "too tired to perform".

The video has been viewed tens of millions of times, with many leaving comments criticizing Niunius mother for "abusing" her daughter and using her "as a tool to make money".

The mother on Monday afternoon issued an apology on Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo and defended herself in several media interviews.

Her post on Sina Weibo said that Niuniu is her beloved daughter and that she had absolutely no intention of hurting or abusing her.

She also told Beijing News: "My husband has a job; our family does not rely on Niuniu to make a living."

Niuniu's mother posted an apology on Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo on April 10. [Photo/Sina Weibo]

"It was getting dark at that time and Niuniu was about to run out to the street, so my actions were out of worry for her," she said.

Most netizens however were not convinced, with one saying, "There is no street in front of Niuniu but just a wall."

Two more clips later circulated online and exacerbated the situation.

One shot in March shows Niuniu's mum beating her with a hanger and shouting, "Concentrate your energy".

This video was allegedly filmed at around 10 pm, when Niuniu had already worked for most of the day.

Another clip shows Niuniu shocked by her mothers sudden strike to her hand.

Many netizens have said that the viral videos show the harmful conditions that child models experience, and have asked for more care for the girl's psychical and mental health.

More than 110 childrens clothing shops on Taobao, a Chinese online shopping platform, have united together to call for better regulation of the child modeling industry and greater protection for child models.
The Director-General, National Youth Service Corp (NYSC), Brig.-Gen. Suleiman Kazaure has urged corps members to be security conscious ...

The Director-General, National Youth Service Corp (NYSC), Brig.-Gen. Suleiman Kazaure has urged corps members to be security conscious in view of the security challenges in the country and be wary of their association.









Kazaure made the call when he visited 2019 batch A corp members undergoing orientation exercise at NYSC Permanent Orientation Camp Wamakko, in Sokoto state.









He also urged the corps members to strive for national development in all aspects and be part of change agents in society.









Put the nations development first; promote virtues and downplay sentiments in the interest of national unity, he asserted.









Kazaure who was represented by Director Skill Acquisition Department, Mr Nuhu Kwaghe, he advised the corps members to actively participate in skills acquisition trainings towards self-reliance.









According to him, more than eight skills acquisition programmes were designed for corps members in collaboration with some agencies to facilitate the training programmers.








A Federal High Court Lagos, Friday, took oral evidences in a suit seeking final forfeiture of about 8.4 million dollars, and N7.4 billio...

A Federal High Court Lagos, Friday, took oral evidences in a suit seeking final forfeiture of about 8.4 million dollars, and N7.4 billion found in accounts linked to a former first Lady, Patience Jonathan.









The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) had secured an interim order for forefeture of the sums on April 20, 2018, before Justice Mojisola Olatoregun, following a motion exparte it filed.









Joined as respondents in the suit are: Patience Jonathan, Globus Integrated Services Ltd, Finchley Top Homes Ltd., Am-Pm Global Network Ltd, Pagmat Oil and Gas Ltd and Magel Resort Ltd and Esther Oba.









On Oct. 29, 2018, EFCC counsel, Mr Rotimi Oyedepo, had moved his motion for final forfeiture of the sums, urging that same be finally forfeited to the Federal Government.









Meanwhile, defence counsel, Messrs Ifedayo Adedipe, SAN, Chief Mike Ozekhome, SAN, and Mr Ige Asemudara had respectively moved their processes in opposition to the motion for final forfeiture.









On Jan. 15, the court had admitted electronic evidences presented by respondent counsel, which depicted video exhibits showing various business outfits of the third and sixth respondents









The court had then adjourned until Feb. 28, for judgment.









On Feb. 28, the judge had first dismissed an application by counsel to the respondents, seeking to set aside the interim forfeiture orders made on April 20, 2018.









Meanwhile, giving its ratio on the motion for final forfeiture, the court held that it finds the affidavit evidences conflicting, adding that same can only be resolved if the parties concerned are called upon to give oral evidences.









When the trial resumed on Friday, EFCC counsel (Oyedepo) called a witness, Mr Chukwuma Orji, who deposed to some of the affidavits, and he made adoptions before the court.









Referring to his role in the course of an investigation into the case, Orji told the court that he was Head of EFCC task force in Lagos, and named some of his team members as Ogare Ogbore, Idris Adamu. Abdullahi Tukur, Shehu, among others.









He said that he came across the account of Global Integrated Services Ltd, A. M P. M Global Network, Pagmat Oil and Gas Ltd, and Margel Resort Ltd, adding that he also came across an account name captured as Patience J.









Orji also adopted an affidavit deposed to by one of the team members, (Ogare Ogbore), and an objection by defence counsel was overruled by the court.









The witness confirmed sums of money lodged into a First Bank account and also confirmed that the first respondent was a public officer, who worked with the Bayelsa State government, adding that he annexed documents to exhibit same.









He confirmed that the monies sought to be forfeited by the EFCC, are in dollars, whereas, the receipts of sale of proceeds were in Naira.









According to him, the money being transferred by Bola Shagaya was in dollars and converted to Naira, which emanated from Aso rock, adding that same was from unlawful activities of the first respondent.









Under cross-examination by first defence counsel (Adedipe), the witness reiterated that he was part of the team of investigators in the case.









When asked if he was aware that the first respondent was Nigerias First Lady under President Goodluck Jonathan, he replied Yes.









On whether he was aware that the former First Lady had a pet programme known as Women for Change at the time, the witness replied that his investigations revealed that the programme was used to receive and conceal proceeds of crime.









On if that was the provision of the programmes constitution, the witness replied that while the constitution says something different, its purpose was different.









When asked if the government of Bayelsa and Edo had complained to the commission, that the funds volunteered to the Women for Change was by force, the witness replied I didnt investigate to know if it was paid by force,









On whether he knew if Bola Shagaya was a friend to the former First Lady, the witness replied that he only discovered from investigations that they were co-conspirators.









Have they been charged to court,  Witness replied It is not my duty, 









Adedipe then said I suggest to you that you are not a witness of the truth,  and the witness replied You are wrong, 









On whether the commission received any complaints from the Aso Villa about missing funds, he replied that he would not know as that was beyond his level, adding that he had seniors.









When asked if all the donors to the Women for Change Initiative ever complained of missing funds, the witness replied that he was not aware.









On whether he received any foreign intelligence against the respondent, he said I dont know  and when asked if the first respondent was ever interviewed at any time, he said No.









Under cross-examination by counsel to the third to sixth respondent, (Ozekhome) the witness confirmed that he is aware that deposing to an affidavit is a solemn oath.









I take it that you are not Ogare Ogbore whose affidavit you also adopted,  the witness replied No.









When asked if the said Ogare Ogbore is sick or bedridden, the witness replied that he was not a doctor to know that and when asked if the person was dead or alive, he replied she is alive.









On whether he had stated that he was a team leader in his affidavit, the witness replied that a team leader can also be one of the operatives.









On whether in a statement obtained from Waripamo Owei-Dudafa, an ex-aide to former President Goodluck Jonathan, or any other person, they had said they paid money into the account of third to the sixth respondent, the witness replied No, to the best of my knowledge, 









When asked if it is his grouse that monies were moved into the account of the women for a change, the witness replied that the concept was used to conceal proceeds of crime.









On whether he had interviewed any official of the third to the sixth respondent to know why funds were paid to them by the NGO, the witness replied No, adding that the account did not lead to any of those officials.









The witness also told the court that he did not visit any of the companies in the course of the investigation because it was not necessary.









When asked if he was aware that Bola Shagaya wrote a letter to the EFCC and if he saw it, the witness replied that he was not aware of the document.








The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has reacted to reports that its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, paid $30,000 to a United St...





The Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, has reacted to reports that its presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, paid $30,000 to a United States, US, lobby group to assist in the quest to reclaim his mandate.





A research group based in the US, Centre for Responsive Politics, CRP had claimed that Abubakar was lobbying the United States government not to recognise anyone but him as Nigerias president-elect.





CRP, in a report released last week, alleged that Abubakar was making this effort through some Washington DC lawyers engaged in a 90-day contract worth $30,000.





However, the former ruling party described the report as tissues of lies.





In a statement by its spokesperson, Kola Ologbondiyan, on Thursday, PDP insisted that agents of the All Progressives Congress, APC-led government were behind the allegation.





According to Ologbondiyan: The motive is to use lies, fabrications, threats and sponsoring of Atiku campaign posters to portray Atiku Abubakar and the PDP as being desperate and ready to subvert the rules in the pursuit of our mandate; and by so doing discredit our candidate in the eyes of the judiciary and the public in general.





This explains why agents of the APC-led government fabricated and pushed into the public space, bogus and laughable claims that Atiku Abubakar paid $30,000 to a US lobby group to assist in the quest to reclaim our mandate only for the Federal Government and the Presidency to turn around to feast on the fabrications with threats against Atiku Abubakar.





PDP also urged Nigerians to hold Buharis Personal Assistant on Social Media, Lauretta Onochie responsible should anything happen to Abubakar.





Moreover, it is instructive to state that the PDP and Atiku Abubakar do not need any foreign lobby group to prove our case before the tribunal as Nigerians themselves have been at the forefront of this pursuit, especially with our overwhelming evidence before the court.




Pope Francis has kissed the feet of the South Sudans previous warring leaders, imploring them to maintain the fragile peace that ex...





Pope Francis has kissed the feet of the South Sudans previous warring leaders, imploring them to maintain the fragile peace that exists between them.





On Thursday, during a two-day spiritual retreat at the Vatican, the pope pleaded with President Salva Kiir and Riek Machar, his former deputy turned rebel leader, and three other vice presidents to honour the armistice they signed and commit to forming a unity government in May.





I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward. There will be many problems but they will not overcome us. Resolve your problems, the pope said after he performed the rare gesture.





The pontiff who spoke in Italian  which was translated by an aide into English  added that but in front of the people, hold hands united. So, as simple citizens, you will become fathers of the nation.

The leaders were apparently shocked to see the 82-year-old pontiff  who was helped by aides  got on his knees with difficulty to kiss the shoes of the two main opposing leaders and several other people in the room.





Kiir and Machar had clashed in 2013, leading to a civil war that left roughly 400,000 people in South Sudan dead. The duo however signed a peace agreement in 2018 that brought the war to an end.





The pontiffs dramatic and unprecedented gesture is coming barely hours after the military in neighboring Sudan ousted President Omar al-Bashir, its longtime leader, after 30 years of authoritarian rule.




The senate appropriations committee failed to lay the 2019 budget on Thursday despite the deadline set by Senate President Bukola Sara...





The senate appropriations committee failed to lay the 2019 budget on Thursday despite the deadline set by Senate President Bukola Saraki.





Saraki had given the target after which he announced that that the budget would be passed on April 16.





He had asked the appropriations committee to ensure that the report was laid on Thursday and also directed other other committees to turn in their report to the appropriations committee to enable it tidy its own report.





The presentation of the report was not listed on the order paper on Thursday and no explanation was given.

On Tuesday, Sunday Ogbuoji, vice-chairman of appropriations committee, lamented that only 24 committees had submitted their reports to his committee.





We are still having some challenges with the sub-committees on appropriations because out of the 61 committees that we have, only about 24 committees have submitted their reports and we are unable to go ahead and write the appropriation report unless we get further directive from here, Ogbuoji had said.




Yobe Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has advised Sen. Ali Ndume (Borno-APC), to respect the supremacy of the party and...





Yobe Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has advised Sen. Ali Ndume (Borno-APC), to respect the supremacy of the party and avoid placing personal interest above collective interest.





Alhaji Abubakar Bakabe, the states secretary of the party, disclosed this while speaking with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday in Damaturu.





The interest of the party supersedes all other interests, Bakabe said.





He cautioned the lawmaker against working with the opposition to ridicule the party.





Ndume should avoid the pitfalls of the Bukola Sarakis Senate presidency, this must not be repeated in the interest of the party, Nigeria and democracy, he said.





Bakabe commended returning and newly elected senators for identifying with the position of the party and presidency on the proposed leadership of the National Assembly.





The state chapter of APC expresses optimism that the Borno senator will remain loyal to the party, its leadership and President Muhammadu Buhari.





As a party, we can not afford to accommodate any sabotage and a divided house after the bitter experience of the last four years.





The endorsement of Senate Leader, Ahmad Lawan, for Senate President will provide the required leadership and coordination for the APC led administration to effectively execute its policies and programmes for the benefit of Nigerians.




The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it arrested a third-year medical student and another undergraduate for attempt...

The Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) says it arrested a third-year medical student and another undergraduate for attempting to write the ongoing Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) for candidates.









The boards Head of Media and Information, Dr Fabian Benjamin, disclosed this in an interview with the newsmen on Friday in Lagos.









It was gathered that the 2019 UTME commenced on April 11 in 678 centres across Nigeria.









According to Benjamin, in spite of the measures put in place to stamp out impersonation and other forms of examination malpractice, desperate individuals still attempted to commit the offence.









It has come to our notice that a lady, was caught at the Rainbow Digital Tech centre, one of the centres for the examination in Kano, trying to impersonate by way of trying to sit for the examination for a candidate.









On interrogation, it was discovered that the said lady is a medical student of the Usman Dan Fodio University, Sokoto.









Another case of impersonation was also reported in Benin, he said.









According to him, the second suspect is an undergraduate of the University of Benin.









We will like to state in clear terms that the board has zero tolerance for such an offence and related crimes aimed at undermining the integrity of its examination and its processes.









We have been briefed about these developments; at the appropriate time, they will face the full wrath of the law, he said.









According to Benjamin, so far, the board has recorded much success in the conduct of the examination.









He told newsmen that few cases of technical hitches in some of the centres had, however, been recorded.









I must say that we have recorded a huge success so far in the conduct of the examination.









Having said that, I will also like to mention that some centres have, however, fallen short of the standards of the board in terms of facilities and other logistics.









The board is doing everything possible to ensure that candidates in such centres are not short-changed by any means.









They should not panic as they will be relocated to new centres by the board in due course.









The board will relocate them to new centres for the examination, with new dates.









He advised the affected candidates to check their profiles from time to time for the new centres and dates for their examination.









The board is not happy with this development as it has been discovered that most of such centres are mainly those situated in secondary schools, with their owners claiming to have perfect facilities on the ground before the commencement of the examination.









Others involved themselves in one infraction or the other.









We are not going to take these issues lightly with defaulting centres and their owners. At the appropriate time, they will be sanctioned, Benjamin said.









He said that candidates who thought their centres were shut out from the examination should not panic, as it meant they had been relocated.









With the complaints, we got from such centres without the capacity to meet the boards examination standards, we quickly swung into action to relocate the candidates, as we do not want them to feel cheated or get confused.









So these candidates might arrive at such centres to discover that nothing is happening there.









They should not panic, they should just know that they have been relocated from such centres to a new one.









All they have to do is to continue to check their profiles for information on their new centres and dates for the examination, he said.









He said that JAMB would continue to deploy resources within powers to ensure that no candidate would be left behind.








Nigerian journalist, Kadaria Ahmed has reacted after a Twitter user, Amb. Abdulrahman Yahaya threatened her for converting to Christiani...

Nigerian journalist, Kadaria Ahmed has reacted after a Twitter user, Amb. Abdulrahman Yahaya threatened her for converting to Christianity in London before coming back to Nigeria.





Yahaya described her as a walking corpse already because he believed people like her are a disgrace to Islam and should been killed as an apostate.





Ahmed wrote: Kadaria, you converted to Christianity in London. I was appalled when I heard her describing herself as a passionate citizen of Zamfara. By Islamic tenets, Kadaria is a walking corps, shes supposed to have been killed as an apostate. Shes a condemned soul.





His tweet didn't go down well, and has prompted angry reactions from people.

Kadaria had to cry out by saying,  I have reported he believed for threatening my life even as I refused to dignify his allegation with a response. No one should have the right to call for anyones death. If anything happens to me, this is the man to hold.
















Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, says the federal government will implement fuel subsidy removal gradually. Addressing the...





Zainab Ahmed, the minister of finance, says the federal government will implement fuel subsidy removal gradually.





Addressing the press on the sidelines of the ongoing spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group, Ahmed said fuel subsidy cannot be removed at once.





In her address on Thursday, Christine Lagarde had advised Nigeria and other countries to remove fuel subsidy saying the money spent on subsidy can be redirected to health and education.





The advice from the IMF on fuel subsidy removal was good advice but also we have to implement it in a manner that is both successful and sustainable. We are not in a situation to wake up one day and just remove subsidy, she told journalists.





We have to educate the people, we have to show Nigerians what the replacement for those subsidies will be so we have a lot of work to do.





We also need to understand that you dont remove large amounts of subsidy in one go, it has to be graduated and the public has to be well-informed on what you are trying to do.





Speaking on the mission to the meetings, Ahmed said Nigeria will ask the World Bank to review some of the criteria provided for infrastructure funding.





What we found in Nigeria is that the Environmental and Social Standards (ESS) that they have put in place is causing significant delays in the rollout of infrastructure.





We understand that it is well intended but weve informed them that they need to review how they implement it so that we are not overtly slowed down because of the new proceedings.





The minister also said that the National Sovereign Investment Authority (NSIA) has made progress with investments.




Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R, front) talks with technicians at the construction site of Peljesac Bridge being built by a Chinese consortium, during a visit with his Croatian counterpart Andrej Plenkovic on the Peljesac Peninsula in southern Croatia, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 11 (Xinhua) -- In heavy rain, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his Croatian counterpart, Andrej Plenkovic, jointly pressed a glass-ball button to start the piling of the main pier of a long-awaited Croatian bridge being built by a Chinese consortium.

"I hope the Peljesac Bridge will be an excellent high-quality project that can withstand all rains and winds," said Li after pressing the button.

Li made the remarks while visiting the construction site of the bridge on the Peljesac Peninsula in southern Croatia with Plenkovic Thursday morning.

The Peljesac Bridge, 2.4-km long and 55-meter high, is designed to link the mainland of Croatia with its southernmost Dubrovnik-Neretva County, crossing the Mali Ston Bay over the Adriatic Sea and bypassing foreign territory.

In January 2018, a Chinese consortium led by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) won the bid for the first phase of the Peljesac Bridge and its access roads.

It is the biggest transportation infrastructural project between the two countries since they forged diplomatic ties 27 years ago. Once completed, the bridge can potentially cut a three-hour journey to just two to three minutes.

Li said the Peljesac Bridge project, acquired by Chinese enterprises through fair competition and public bidding, follows market principles and abides by rules of the European Union (EU).

He called the bridge "a bridge of friendship" as it embodies the friendship of Chinese and Croatian peoples and is conducive to regional peace, stability and prosperity.

The bridge is also "a bridge of welfare" as it will help facilitate logistics, personnel exchanges and life of local residents so as to improve the country's social and economic development, the premier said.

The bridge is "a model of tripartite cooperation among China, Croatia and the EU," Li said, adding that Chinese enterprises will build the bridge with the best equipment and technology and build a high-quality project.

He also asked the Chinese consortium to make all efforts to ensure the completion of the project as scheduled so as to benefit the Croatian people at an early date.

The total value of the project is about 420 million euros (about 472 million U.S. dollars), of which 85 percent will be covered by the EU funds.

Hailing the bridge "a symbol of friendship and cooperation between Croatia and China," Plenkovic said it was Chinese friends that helped the Croatian people to turn their long-desired dream into reality.

Plenkovic said that the bidding process was open, fair and transparent and the Chinese consortium won the bid with the most reliable capability.

When completed, the bridge will not only greatly facilitate the travel of the Croatian people and improve local development, but also provide market opportunities for Chinese companies and set a good example for China-EU practical cooperation, said Plenkovic.

Li arrived in Dubrovnik Wednesday from Zagreb to continue his official visit to Croatia. He will attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the coastal city on Friday.
This file photo taken on May 19, 2017 shows Wikileaks founder Julian Assange speaking to a crowd of reporters and supporters from the balcony of the Ecuadorean embassy in London, Britain. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he was granted refuge in 2012 while on bail in Britain over sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden, police said on April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Han Yan)

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. prosecutors said Thursday they have charged Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with conspiracy to commit computer hacking.

The indictment alleges that Assange engaged in a conspiracy with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 to access a classified U.S. government computer, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

If convicted, Assange, 47, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

He was arrested by British police in London and carried out of the Ecuadorean embassy there on Thursday pursuant to an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain.

Assange is alleged to have assisted Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications.

Manning, who had access to the computers in connection with her duties as an intelligence analyst, was using the computers to download classified records to transmit to WikiLeaks, according to the DOJ.

Manning was convicted of espionage in 2013. Her prison sentence was commuted by then U.S. President Barack Obama in 2017.

Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012 while on bail in Britain over sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden and had remained in the Ecuadorean embassy in London until his arrest on Thursday.
LANZHOU, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Zhang Qingping, general manager of a bioscience company in northwest China's Gansu Province, is thrilled to see that the first batch of wheat he ordered from Kazakhstan has arrived.

The 600 tonnes of wheat reached the bonded zone of the provincial capital of Lanzhou on Wednesday by train. It is the first time for the zone to receive grain imported from Central Asia.

Zhang, with Lanzhou Haixiang bio technology company, ordered 9,000 tonnes of wheat from Kazakhstan.

One week ago, the first batch of 600 tonnes of goods arrived at the Alataw Pass in Xinjiang. Due to the difference in the width of railways in China and Kazakhstan, inbound freight trains need to be reloaded at the Alataw Pass.

Ding Dashuai, field manager of Alataw Pass Zhengmao international freight agent company, said the number of freight trains carrying Kazakh wheat to various parts of China has increased in recent years.

Kazakhstan is sparsely populated, with abundant sunshine and large temperature variation between day and night. The country produces high quality wheat, corn, oats and other crops.

Just a few years ago, high-quality wheat from Kazakhstan was mainly exported to Europe, Central Asia and other places, while China received only 2 million tonnes every year, less than 20 percent of the total export.

"Due to limited transport capacity and high logistics costs, many Kazakh companies would not give priority to export to China," said Chen Dehong with Kazakh grain company TOO Polaris Grain.

The expansion of the China-Europe international freight train service boosted grain trade and agricultural cooperation among Belt and Road countries.

At the same time, many places around China are constructing designated ports and processing trade bases for imported grain.

In 2017, Lanzhou began to prepare for the grain and oil imports from Kazakhstan. In 2019, the designated inspection field of imported grain in Lanzhou passed the acceptance of the General Administration of Customs.

Thanks to the improved convenience, a growing number of Kazakh grain enterprises began to pay attention to the huge Chinese market.

Chen Dehong said that in 2016 alone, 600,000 tons of Kazakh wheat were exported to China through his company, the number is expected to reach 1 million tonnes in 2019.

"Some Russian and Ukrainian companies have also contacted me," Zhang said, looking forward to more cooperation with countries along the Belt and Road.
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LONDON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- China's further opening-up augurs well for Europe and their trade and cultural exchanges bear growing importance, a British scholar has said.

Cambridge University professor Alan Barrell made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua following the 21st China-European Union (EU) leaders' meeting in Brussels.

In a joint statement issued on Tuesday, China and the EU reiterated their shared commitment to further cementing their partnership and safeguarding free trade and multilateralism.

Noting that China and the EU are two great traders in the world, Barrell hailed the two sides' commitment to building a mutually beneficial economic relationship on openness, non-discrimination and fair competition, saying their cooperation has a bright prospect.

"China's recent focus on increasing imports has further encouraged European nations and businesses to seek long-term trading connections and arrangements with China," the professor said.

With Europe unsettled by Brexit, more trading arrangements with China are welcome, he added.

In particular, he pointed to the potential of China-EU innovation cooperation, noting that China's growing leadership in such areas as artificial intelligence and machine learning and Europe's expertise in scientific and medical research are highly complementary.

"In an age of technological convergence, synergy can cross continents and boost the efforts of all participants," he added.

Given the headwind and uncertainty on the landscape of international trade, "increased trade and cultural exchanges between China and Europe become even more important," he stressed.

History tells that trade wars are never won, said the scholar.

Barrell spoke highly of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), calling it "the most ambitious and courageous program of international outreach since the launch centuries ago of the old Silk Road."

The initiative "offers individual nations within the EU specific opportunities to benefit from infrastructure development," said the professor, noting that the BRI, as Chinese leaders have said repeatedly, is not exclusive but for everyone.

"We should be hopeful that strong and warm trade winds can now blow east to west and west to east, and give power to all those working to build a better world for all by developing trade and cultural links," he said.
Photo provided by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) shows the first image of a black hole. (Xinhua/EHT)

Astronomers revealed Wednesday that they had captured the first image of a black hole, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of the previously invisible astronomical object and its shadow.

At a recent press conference, scientists revealed a donut-like structure with a dark central region and a bright ring, showing the black hole's shadow against a disc of glowing gas.

Black holes are extremely compressed cosmic objects, as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. A black hole has a gravitational pull that is so intense that nothing, not even light, can escape it once inside a specific region, known as the event horizon.

However, with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a virtual telescope linking eight ground-based radio telescopes around the world, the image was captured for the first time in history. The black hole is at the center of massive galaxy M87, 55 million light-years from Earth, with a mass 6.5-billion times that of the sun.

The landmark result offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the universe predicted by Albert Einstein's rule of general relativity.

Upon the release of the incredible image, Chinese netizens took an active part in the global event with their light-hearted improvisations.

Some create a link between the black hole and a donut:

(Photo/pixabay.com)

Their imaginations extended further to an empty wallet, an electric heater, honeycomb briquettes, a fire, and for fans of Tolkien, the Eye of Sauron.

Weibo account @ : "The black hole faraway VS the 'black hole' by your side."

A netizen puts the black hole alongside an electric heater.

"Nine black holes burning", writes one WeChat user, comparing the black hole with honeycomb briquettes.

(Photo/ Weibo account @)

Weibo account @ comments that wherever there is a fire emergency, the firefighters will be there.

"After seeing the photo, I gripped my own ring", says one WeChat user in Moments.

Apart from connecting the image with their daily life, Chinese netizens also welcomed the black hole with all kinds of memes.

Some want the black hole to help them lose some weight.

Apart from the punsters, some netizens also predicted that the black hole would make an appearance in this year's Gaokao.

The picture is a fantastic feat of science and technology, and has been welcomed around the world.

"It is a surprising find, an astonishment and wonder," said Harvard astrophysicist Sheperd Doeleman, EHT's project director.

"This is the first direct visual evidence of black holes obtained by humans, confirming that Einstein's theory of general relativity still holds in extreme conditions," said Shen Zhiqiang, head of Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SAO).
Vitor Gaspar, director of the fiscal affairs department of International Monetary Fund (IMF), speaks during an interview in Washington D.C., the United States, on April 2, 2019. As China makes its transition to a new growth model prioritizing the quality of growth, fiscal policy should "as much as possible" facilitate this transition and have a long-term view, Vitor Gaspar told Xinhua in a recent interview. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)

WASHINGTON, April 10 (Xinhua) -- As China makes its transition to a new growth model prioritizing the quality of growth, fiscal policy should "as much as possible" facilitate this transition and have a long-term view, said an official of the International Monetary Fund.

The transformation of China's fiscal policy in the past decades is "truly remarkable," Vitor Gaspar, director of the IMF's fiscal affairs department told Xinhua in a recent interview, highlighting the "tremendous" development on tax policy and budget system.

In the context of the global financial crisis, China resorted to fiscal stimulus which helped sustain its growth and contributed to the prosperity of the global economy, Gaspar said.

As the credit goes up, "China has rightly been emphasizing the need to ensure financial stability and slow down credit," Gaspar said, adding that the IMF's analysis shows that de-leveraging is progressing "at a good pace" in China.

However, in recent years, things have become more "complicated" because of the challenges having to do with the transition in the growth model, which demands adjustment in fiscal policy, he said.

Gaspar suggested China enhance fiscal transparency, utilize fiscal policy to foster inclusive growth, and reinforce the financial robustness of sub-national levels of government.

In its newly released biannual Fiscal Monitor, the IMF said policy response should be on budget to ensure transparency and avoid risks from excessive leverage incurred by borrowing entities.

Gaspar said that budget transparency issue has already been identified in China and progress is being made, with one example being China's local government bond.

Local governments issued a total of 782.1 billion yuan (117 billion U.S. dollars) of bonds in the January-February period, according to the Ministry of Finance. Last year, local authorities raised a total of 4.17 trillion yuan (620 billion dollars) via bond issuance, down from 4.36 trillion yuan in 2017.

Commenting on China's recently announced personal income tax cuts, the IMF said in its Fiscal Monitor that such measures would support consumption temporarily, and should be accompanied by medium-term reforms to broaden the overall tax base, improve the progressivity of the tax system, and introduce a recurrent property tax.

A recurrent property tax, Gaspar said, could give more resources to the sub-national levels of government, which will enable their public finances to be more robust.

On the expenditure side, the Fiscal Monitor suggested China facilitate macroeconomic re-balancing of the Chinese economy by re-prioritizing spending toward education, healthcare and social security.

At the global level, fiscal policy should prepare for "possible downturns," balancing growth and sustainability objectives, the Fiscal Monitor said, underscoring high public debt levels and downside risks to the global economy.

"Our analytical, and empirical work has shown repeatedly that countries that build up public finance resilience in good times are in a much better position to manage future challenges as they may occur," Gaspar said.

Governments should also be well advised to pursue "smarter and more agile" fiscal policies to facilitate change in face of technological transformation, globalization and demographics, Gaspar said.

Gaspar, who served as minister of State and Finance of Portugal, also called for international cooperation on global issues such as corporate taxation and corruption. "We have lots of interdependencies in the world," he said.

In wake of new challenges to international cooperation, Gaspar said it is crucial that countries avoid resorting to unilateral or bilateral action. "Multilateralism is a much more robust way of approaching problems that countries have in common."
Jamie and John Florio(VALHALLA, N.Y.) -- A baby born weighing less than 11 ounces, about the size of a human heart, has been sent home after spending 270 days in the hospital.



Connor Florio, now 8 months, was discharged from Blythedale Childrens Hospital in Valhalla, New York, on April 9, 2019. Now, parents John and Jamie Florio are thrilled to have their family all in one place.



"He's going really well," dad John Florio told ABC News' Good Morning America. "He's still on a couple of medications and oxygen. He's very playful, calm -- he doesn't cry very much. He loves people watching and so far he doesn't mind getting licked by the dog."



Connor arrived via emergency caesarean section on July 13, 2018, at 26 weeks at Westchester Medical Center. He was then transferred to the NICU at Maria Fareri Childrens Hospital and was diagnosed with with chronic lung disease, bronchopulmonary dysplasia and SGA (small for gestational age), among various other medical conditions.



When he was born, doctors told Connor's parents that their son may not survive.



"We knew that was definetely a possibilty with his size," John Florio said. "I was cautiously optimistic."



Dr. Dennis Davidson, unit chief for the Infant & Toddler Unit at Blythedale Childrens Hospital, said a 26-week-old baby born at normal weight would normally have an 80 to 90 percent chance of survival.



"However, Connor was less than half of the appropriate weight for a 26-week baby," Davidson said in a statement released to GMA. "He was 310 grams which is about 11 ounces, roughly. And his father could literally hold him in his hand. Babies who are that small barely have a chance for survival but he made it through."



"The work at the neonatal ICU at Westchester County Medical Center, Maria Fareri, brought him from a life-threatening situation at birth to the point where we could start his rehabilitation at Blythedale," Davidson added.



Besides medical care, Connor received physical therapy, occupational therapy, as well as speech and feeding therapy, Davidson noted.



"He attended infant school," Davidson said. "There he became much more interactive, starting to play with toys. So he got a lot of developmental care. Partly from us, but his family was here all the time and you can't beat that."



To keep their spirits up, Jamie and John Florio dressed Connor in outfits for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, among other holidays.



Today, Connor weighs 10 pounds, 10 ounces, and is happy to be home.



"It's really nice to be our own little family in almost 9 months," mom Jamie Florio told GMA of her son's homecoming. "I don't know if Connor would've survived today if it wasn't for the doctors and nurses. They really are superheroes in the NICU."

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
ST. PETERSBURG, April 9 (Xinhua) -- China's government and business are involved in the development of the Arctic region, where a new transport corridor is being formed, the President of Iceland Gudni Johannesson said at the International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg on Tuesday.

According to Johannesson, the transport corridor begins with the countries of Southeast Asia and ends with Europe. There is nothing wrong with the approach and initiatives of China in the Arctic region.

Russia is hosting the "Territory of Dialogue" 5th International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg, which is a platform for discussing topical issues of the socio-economic development of the Arctic territories.
WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would remain in place, but he deemed it unnecessary to further increase them.

According to the accounts of White House journalists sent to media via email, Trump said while speaking to the media with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the White House that "we want sanctions to remain in place."

Saying the existing sanctions against the DPRK are on a "fair" level, Trump added that "I really believe something very significant is going to happen. We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that."

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Wednesday that sanctions against the DPRK should not impact humanitarian aid to the country as per relevant Security Council resolutions.

For dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearization and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronized steps as a package solution, he added.

The second summit between Trump and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi ended without an agreement.

Trump told a press conference after the summit that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.
A total of 796 pieces of lost Chinese cultural relics have been returned to China from Italy, marking the largest transfer of cultural and historical artifacts in the past 20 years, which is also expected to serve as an example for future transfers of lost treasures from China.

The relics arrived on Apr. 10 in Beijing from Italy, ending their hundred-year time away from home. The group of Chinese artifacts were first noticed by a unit of Carabinieri, or the national gendarmerie of Italy, on the local auction market for relics in 2007, which was followed by a domestic judicial trial. Chinas National Cultural Heritage Administration then contacted its Italian counterpart after hearing the news and started a decade-long repatriation process, Xinhua reported.

This is the largest transfer of Chinese cultural relics in the past 20 year, and is a big event in Chinas cultural relics community, said Wang Wei, director of the Department of History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

It also marked the latest in recent years. China has successfully repatriated multiple cultural relics, while many others remain lost overseas, after signing bilateral agreements on the prevention of theft and illegal entry and exit of cultural property with 21 countries, including the US, Italy, and India.

The US, for example, has thrice returned Chinese historical artifacts since the two sides signed a MOU in 2009. The latest transfer took place this February, when 361 pieces were sent back to China, including a stone product dated back to the Neolithic age.

As of March this year, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage has successfully contributed to the return of more than 30 batches of nearly 4,000 pieces of lost cultural relics through international conventions, intergovernmental diplomatic negotiations, donations, and commercial auctions.
BUCHAREST, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Romania and China should enhance cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially through academic exchanges in such areas as economy, sociology and public policies, Romanian academics said here Thursday.

"We fully agree that Romania and China can cooperate at global level, taking into consideration the specificity of our economies," Professor Gheorghe Zaman, director of the National Institute of Economy of the Romanian Academy, said at a roundtable on the BRI and the cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC).

The BRI is a platform for development opened by China to all countries, said Zaman and other Romanian attendants.

"The Belt and Road Initiative aims to make the world economy more stable and more resilient to crises in a sustainable environment. We believe that a new system of cooperation between countries is needed in order to sustain development," said Professor Gao Peiyong, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, at the roundtable.

There is no doubt that the globalization can enhance not only world trade, but also global development, Gao said.

Gao's remarks were echoed by Professor Ilie Badescu, director of the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy, who said that the BRI, which promotes globalization, is also based on cooperation between different economies.

Given the importance of the China-CEEC cooperation and the BRI in a wider context, Romanian and Chinese researchers should find ways to cooperate in all fields, covering not only economic topics, but also social and legal issues, as well as public policies, Zaman said.

The two countries should encourage more academic exchanges, such as jointly publishing books, special magazines and studies, co-organizing sociological and economic researches as well as academic meetings on topics of common interest, the Romanian academics proposed.
The first-ever image of a black hole has sucked a Chinese image provider Visual China Group into a "black hole" of its own, after some "we media" players complained that the company put its copyright logo on the image.

Just after the black hole image was released on Wednesday, some found the Visual China Group website carried the image with its logo, which means payment is required to use the image.

The company released a statement Thursday afternoon that the company gained the image copyright from the Event Horizon Telescope teams for use in media, not for commercial use such as advertisements.

Materials from the official websites of scientific authorities such as the European Southern Observatory and NASA are available free, so long as users clearly credit the source.

The ESO has said Visual China has not made contact about the black hole image and it is illegal for it to claim copyright.

Visual China Group faced further complaints Thursday after the official account of the Communist Youth League Central Committee questioned the company's right to sell images of the national flag and national emblem on its website.

Some companies and organizations have found the image company also sells products with their logos.

On Thursday evening, the company published an apology, saying some of the images were provided by contracted contributors and the company did not fulfill its responsibility to carefully check them.

The Tianjin cyberspace affairs authority has made an appointment to meet the company's manager Thursday evening and requested the company stop illegal behavior and carry out thorough rectification.

The company's website has been closed since Thursday evening and a statement was seen on the front page, saying the company had problems in management and closed the website for rectification.

The National Copyright Administration issued a statement Friday morning saying a campaign will be launched to regulate the image copyright market.

The administration said it attaches importance to copyright protection and protects owners' legal rights, and companies should establish a mechanism to safeguard rights appropriately according to laws, not abusing them.

The image company was founded in June 2000 and in 2014 it was listed on China's A-share market. In the first three quarters of 2018, the company achieved revenue of 700 million yuan ($104.18 million).

Some have questioned the company's use of copyright lawsuits. One company faced more than 4,200 lawsuits from Visual China Group, and more than 3,900 cases were decided.

According to a plan, the company would release 388 million restricted shares on Friday, equal to 10.33 billion yuan. The share price has plunged sharply on Friday.
Cascades Extends Its Transportation Electrification Program to Employees in Ontario In addition to its 4,400 Quebec-based employees, the company will now offer its 2,200 employees in Ontario access to the program that encourages individuals to transition from gas to electric or hybrid vehicles. April 12, 2019 - Cascades Inc. yesterday announced that it is extending its transportation electrification program to all its employees in Ontario. In addition to its 4,400 Quebec-based employees, the company will now offer its 2,200 employees in Ontario access to the program that encourages individuals to transition from gas to electric or hybrid vehicles. To support its employees to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, the company will also install 30 new 240-volt charging stations at its Ontario facilities, extending the network of the 80 that have already been installed in Quebec. It will also provide a financial contribution of up to $2,000 for each employee who purchases an electric vehicle. This is in addition to any government grants that may be in effect. The announcement was made at the Company's Ottawa sorting centre, in anticipation of Earth Day, and in the presence of the environmental leader Dr. David Suzuki and students representing Ontario EcoSchools. "From our beginnings 55 years ago, Cascades has always been committed to reducing its footprint by using recycled materials in its manufacturing and through environmentally friendly processes. After reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by close to 50% since 1990, Cascades is now giving our employees a hand to take action. Knowing that a change in transportation habits is required to make a substantial dent in GHG reductions, we took concrete measures for the future through this unique program," commented Mario Plourde, President and CEO of Cascades. Since its launch in Quebec in November 2017, more than one Cascades employee per week has joined the program. Today, 80 employees have made the choice to ride electric, up from only five before the program was launched. With today's announcement, more than 6,600 out of Cascades' 10,000 employees across North America now have access to the program. Founded in 1964, Cascades produces, converts and markets packaging and tissue products that are composed mainly of recycled fibres. To learn more, please visit: www.cascades.com . SOURCE: Cascades, Inc.
A few days ago, legendary actress and perennial hair goals Julia Roberts uploaded a black and white video onto her Instagram, saying nothing. Gazing off with just the sound of the breeze in the background, Roberts' post, while completely silent, speaks to her support of the LGBTQ students who face daily harassment for their orientation or gender expression.

The actress is just one of many public figures supporting the nearly 8 out of every 10 students experiencing verbal harassment in schools nationwide. She joins the ranks of people like Ellen Degeneres, Rosario Dawson, Kerry Washington and the ladies at The View posting their silent videos to raise awareness, the cause is one that GLSEN has been sponsoring since 2001.

While #DayOfSilence is now a hashtag and an initiative that over 10,000 students register for in schools annually, it was started at the University of Virginia in 1996 in response to a class assignment on non-violent protesting. In the following year, it drew participation from 100 institutions and has since become the largest student-led national protest in support of safe and inclusive schools.

Taking a vow of silence commemorates the erasure of LGBTQ people in schools and lack of representation in curriculums while raising awareness for the organization that combats these issues year-round.

You can show your support for the cause and keep schools safe for LGBTQ youth by going to glsen.org/silence or raise awareness by uploading your own silence in solidarity with the official #DayOfSilence tag on social media.

Check out some famous supporters of the cause, below.
Photo via Pixabay

The worlds first international standard on AI collaboration and security is expected to be published by 2020, which will further protect big data privacy in the rapidly-developing era of AI, a Chinese scientist revealed Thursday.

The standard, full named IEEE P3652.1 Guide for Architectural Framework and Application of Federated Machine Learning, has set up its working group committee under the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a standard consensus has been reached, according to Feng Ji, the newly-elected vice chairman of the working group committee, at an online press conference on Thursday.

The second committee meeting will be held on June 15 in the US state of California for further discussions, Feng noted, adding that the official standard is expected to be issued by IEEE within two years.

A systematic guideline is needed as international organizations are developing AI systems on big data privacy. The standard, using federated learning, will serve as the guideline for both institutes and governments, as more legislature bodies issue data protection-related laws, said Feng, also deputy dean of Nanjing Research Center, Sinovation Ventures.

Federated learning defines a machine learning framework that allows a collective model to be constructed from data that is distributed across data owners. This guide provides a blueprint for data usage and model building across organizations while meeting applicable privacy, security, and regulatory requirements, according to the working groups official website.

Wang Yonggang, CTO of Sinovation Ventures, Dean of AI Institute, explained that federal learning is like a safe and friendly bridge that guarantees the smooth exchange of data between different data owners without compromising data security and personal privacy.

Led by Chinese scientist Yang Qiang, the working group for the standard has seen many other participating efforts from China. Of more than 30 international giants, government institutes, and universities involved in the working group, over a dozen of them are from China, including China Telecom, Tencent, JD.com, Xiaomi, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Chinese researchers have also made key contributions in key technology studies in the process, such as encryption technology in data sharing, according to Wang.
Iranian University Student to be Flogged, Imprisoned for Insulting Supreme Leader

04/12/19

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

Iranian university student Mojtaba Dadashi, 23, has been sentenced to three years in prison and 74 lashes for sharing a video on social media criticizing the Islamic Republic as "un-Islamic," the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) has learned.



Mojtaba Dadashi's Supporters Barred from Court Room

"This young man was condemned on three charges in a closed trial just for publishing a video in which he said some critical things for a few minutes," said a source with detailed knowledge about Dadashi's case on April 9. "This is completely unfair. The court was obviously taking poetical revenge."

The source continued: "Mojtaba did not have a lawyer because he thought for sure he was going to be acquitted. He only prepared a comprehensive statement in his own defense and appeared in court with some of his professors. But they were told the trial is closed to the public and the professors were not allowed inside."

Dadashi was in the last semester of his undergraduate studies in political science at Hakim Sabzevari University in Sabzevar, Khorasan Razavi Province, when he was arrested on February 13, 2019, nine days after he posted the video on Twitter (later removed) and then on the Telegram messaging app.

He was released on bail four days later.

"This regime is neither Islamic, nor a republic, nor revolutionary," Dadashi said in the video addressing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, an elite branch of the Iranian military, and members of the Basij paramilitary force. "This regime is ruled by a minority that has sucked the blood out of this country for 40 years."

Dadashi was charged with "insulting the leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]," "propaganda against the state" and "insulting the heads of the three branches of state."

Held behind closed doors in Sabzevar on March 16, 2019, Dadashi's trial was presided by Judge Mohammad Gholami.

"They had shaved his head and brought him into the courtroom with cuffs on his wrists and ankles," the source, who requested anonymity for security reasons, told CHRI. "All he did was criticize. He didn't commit a crime."

"To protest against the unjust judicial process in his case he is not going to lodge an appeal," added the source. "If he does ask for an appeal, it means he approves of the judicial process."

On April 3, the day he was informed of the verdict, Dadashi posted another video condemning his sentence as a move against "freedom and justice."

"I am being treated in the worst way even though in [the supreme leader's] speech in Mashhad on March 21 [2019], Mr. Khamenei said opponents of the state are free to speak and no one will bother them," Dadashi said.

He added: "I invite Mr. Khamenei and all the other top officials of the country to an open debate... I'm certain that the people will run out of patience. My back is ready for your whip."

During a speech in March 2018, Khamenei falsely claimed, "no one under the Islamic Republic is pursued or put under pressure for being opposed to the government."

CHRI has released a video about some of the most well-known cases of people being sentenced to prison in Iran for peacefully opposing state policies.
350 volunteer groups offering services in flood-affected areas of Iran

04/12/19

Source: Tehran Times

More than 350 volunteer groups of people are providing services to the provinces haunted by flood across the country, deputy director for social affairs organization affiliated to the Ministry of Interior has said. Many NGOs and volunteer organizations made great efforts to help flood victims in Mazandaran, Golestan and Lorestan provinces, IRNA quoted Kamal Akbari as saying on Wednesday.



Volunteers collecting donations for flood victims

(photo by IRIB News)



Currently, 35 volunteer groups in Golestan province, and 125 teams are offering help in flood-hit areas nationwide, he added.



Akbari went on to say that these public associations are active in four fields of health care, monitoring and identifying the needs, informing locals and producing content, while supporting the residents.



It is planned to hold meetings on the rehabilitation of flood victims in Khuzestan province in cooperation with NGOs, aiming to provide rehab in emphasizing on mental health issues, he further explained.



Volunteers preparing food for flood victims in Pol-e Dokhtar, Lorestan

(photo by Mehr News Agency)

The volunteer teams provided necessary facilities for those affected by flood through the first phase of the plan, while they will work on rehabilitation issues through the second phase, he added.



He further expressed appreciation toward the volunteer groups for their cooperation with the Red Crescent Society and the other responsible organizations, which accelerated relief operations.
Iran to retaliate any US move against IRGC in Persian Gulf: Envoy

04/12/19

Source: Press TV

Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran's envoy to the United Kingdom, has warned the United States that Tehran will "forcefully retaliate" any moves by the US military against the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), which was designated as a terrorist organization by US President Donald Trump earlier this week.



IRGC speedboats in Persian Gulf

(file photo)



Baeidinejad told CNN's Christian Amanpour on Thursday that American military forces in the Persian Gulf region were in a volatile situation and it wouldn't be wise if they decided to take action against the Iranian elite force.



"The reality is the US forces are now in the region, so logically now there are concerns even within the US establishment for naming the IRGC as a terrorist organization because now it can have a very immediate impact over the situation the US forces have in the region," he said.



Following Trump's declaration on Monday, Iran reciprocated by designating the US Central Command (CENTCOM), the portion of the US military responsible for protecting American security interests in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, as a terrorist organization.



Baeidinejad said the announcement by Trump was only rhetorical and that he did not believe Washington would ever instruct US forces to really confront the IRGC and treat it as a terrorist force.



"If they dare to implement those instructions that the IRGC is a terrorist organization... if they move to counter the IRGC, they would see how forcefully they would be retaliated on the ground," the Iranian envoy asserted. "So I imagine that these are just rhetorics."

JUST IN: Top Iran diplomat tells me he thinks U.S. designation of the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization is empty rhetoric.



"If they dare to implement those instructions," e.g. in Persian Gulf, "they would see how forcefully they would be retaliated on the ground." pic.twitter.com/FkFzGIPLuS  Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) April 11, 2019

The US Navy has announced that it will not change its rules of engagement in the wake of Trump's decision.



Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson told the US Naval Institute (USNI) News that while a change of rules of engagement was not likely, he was worried about possible encounters in future following Iran's reciprocal move.



"Now add the new designations to the context... Both sides will be seen by the other as terrorist organizations outside the bounds of international laws and norms," the admiral argued.



Aircraft carriers, guided-missile destroyers and amphibious assault ships assigned to the 5th Fleet of the US Navy have been frequenting Persian Gulf waters over the past years.



The IRGC Navy has on several occasions intercepted some of those vessels, warning them to stay away from Iranian territorial waters. The IRGC has also detained several US Marines for crossing the maritime borders.



President Rohani defends IRGC

'IRGC should be rewarded not sanctioned'

Elsewhere, Baeidinejad told Amanpour that the IRGC needed to be rewarded for its efforts in eradicating Daesh and other terrorist groups in the Middle East region.



"The IRGC has been very effectively fighting ISIS in Iraq and Syria," he said, using another acronym of the terror group. "They have been very effective in helping those two countries in fighting ISIS."

The Revolutionary Guard "should be rewarded rather than sanctioned" for its role in fighting ISIS, Iran's Ambassador in the UK tells me.



He calls the terrorist designation instituted by the US a "pre-election gift to Netanyahu." pic.twitter.com/6SiUfCgTCD  Christiane Amanpour (@camanpour) April 11, 2019

The Iranian envoy said Trump's move was a "pre-election gift" to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and American officials never really thought about the possible consequences.

Zarif: US responsible for adventurism against IRGC

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned the United Nations that Washington and its "puppet regimes" bear full responsibility for Trump's "dangerous" decision.



In a letter, drafted to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Zarif said the move violated all sorts of international boundaries.



"This provocative move takes tensions to a confrontational and uncontrollable level, and increases the risk of incidents in a region that was already facing endless challenges," he wrote.



"It goes without saying that the US regime along with those who are openly involved in this move and have accepted its effectiveness, as well as the two or three puppet regimes that have supported it, will be fully responsible for the perilous consequences of this adventurist move," Zarif added.



Saudi Arabia has openly lauded Trump's decision. The United Arab Emirates, a close ally of both the US and Saudi Arabia, has been known to take hostile actions against the IRGC in the past. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also thanked Trump for his move against the IRGC.
The Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has stated that government will continue to create a conducive environment and atmosphere for Ghanaians abroad to invest in Ghana.



He urged businesses world over to take advantage of the buoyant Ghanaian economy and invest accordingly.



Vice President Dr. Bawumia was addressing Ghanaian business owners at New York, United States as part of this tour of the USA. The event was organized by Ghana Chamber of Commerce, USA in conjunction with the Ghana Embassy in USA.



Dr.Bawumia reiterated Ghana's position as an oasis of peace in the sub-region and will, therefore, continue to showcase to the world that it is a peaceful nation to woe investors to achieving the most business-friendly country in Africa.



The Vice President also indicated the resolve of the Nana Akufo-Addo government to transform Ghana through the implementation of policies and programmes designed to make Ghana a modern economy and the toast of investors globally.



"Our government has implemented policies and programmes designed to formalize the economy and make life easier for Ghanaians and the business community. For instance, through the use of technology, getting a drivers licence has been made easier by making the service available online thereby cutting out the need to pay a middleman before accessing such an essential service," he disclosed.



On Processes of registering businesses, Dr. Bawumia said, Government has digitized the whole process which has taken away the long delays one had to take to get documentation to start up a business in Ghana.



"The paperless Port system at the ports, reduction of benchmark values at ports by 50% and 30% for all businesses and vehicle importers respectively are all measures put in place to reduce the cost of doing business," according to the Vice President.



"Certainly these measures are good for the ordinary Ghanaian and businesses" he added.



He also enumerated a number of critical building blocks for formalization of the Ghanaian economy such as ensuring unique identification (Ghana Card expected to be completed nationwide by next year) for every Ghanaian, location (National Digital Property Addressing System-GhanaPostGPS), seamless payment system (Mobile Payments Interoperability), justice delivery (E-case tracking, ongoing) among others.



The Vice-President maintained that the Nana Addo Addo led government is committed to moving Ghana beyond aid while creating the enabling environment for the growth of the private sector.



He assured the Diasporan community of government's readiness to ensuring fiscal discipline so that the economic fundamentals do not slip back to uncontrollable levels.



To be able to stay on track, the Vice President said, the Government has put in place, the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Financial Stability Council to help check government spending.

Source: From Nana Yaw Kesseh/New York/USA (Peacefmonline.com)









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The office of Representative of the Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel has commended Ghana government for the implementation of flagship program; Planting for Food and Jobs.



According to Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, despite teething problems Ghana government is facing in the implementation, it is still highly possible for government to overcome it.



He made the observation when he paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Food and Jobs, Hon. Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, while commending the Minister for spearheading a number of policy initiatives which he said had completely changed the face of Agriculture in the country.



Dr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas explains the production of rice and soyabean, which constitute the biggest import of food commodities in the country, will significantly cut down on the importation of rice and other food commodities into the country.



He revealed his office is ever ready to provide all necessary support and assistance to Ghana to achieve its aim especially in the area of agriculture.



Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto said, Ghana in an interim, is looking at cutting down on the importation of rice by 50% by the end of 2020 and also ensure its total ban within the next four years.



According to the Agric Minister, farmers are being empowered with the provision of quality improved seeds, fertilizers, as well as extension services under the programme.



He also indicated that other challenges such as processing, quality and post-harvest losses were being addressed through the mechanization being implemented by the Ministry.

Source: Ghanaweb.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.

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Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunication, says Ghana is not doing well to prevent assault on journalists.



He said many reported cases of assault on journalists to the police had been left uninvestigated.



Mr Ashigbey said this at the Maiden Ahmed Hussein-Suale Memorial Lecture, organised by the United Press for Development Network in Accra. The lecture was part of activities to mark the World Press Freedom Day, scheduled for May 3, 2019, to be hosted by Ethiopia.



It was attended by media personnel, stakeholders in the media, students and family members of the slain journalist.



The theme for this years World Press Freedom Day is: Media for Democracy: Journalists and Elections in terms of Disinformation.



The local theme is Media for Democracy: Ghana's Rights to Information Law, Catalyst for Change.



Mr Ashigbey said journalists, themselves, did not take their own issues seriously, adding that, Journalists promote the activities of other institutions and individuals but left their own cases to rot.



He said this stemmed from the lack of unity among media houses and journalists, lack of appetite to seeking justice at law courts for journalists, lack of safety training and poor treatment of journalists by media houses.



He said many journalists, in an attempt to seek justice after suffering in the hands of individuals and institutions, mostly had those cases negotiated for out of court settlements.



This, Mr Ashigbey said, was not right and that cases of that nature must be left to go through the remits of the law.



He, however, suggested to the Ghana Journalists Association to set-up a complaint desk at all the regional offices, publish all assault cases on journalists and track the monthly progress and online system of reporting, among other things.



Mr Mustapha Iddrisu, the Spokesperson for Hussein-Suales Family, said the Family had been in constant touch with the Police Criminal Investigation Department to arrest and bring the perpetrators to book.



Mr Hussein-Suale, on January 11, 2019, was shot by unknown assailants at Madina, in Accra, on his way home.

Source: GNA









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U.S. President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during their meeting at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on April 11, 2019. Trump said on Thursday that it was possible for him to hold a third meeting with the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Un. Trump made the remarks while speaking to the media together with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting at the White House. (Xinhua/Ting Shen)

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that it was possible for him to hold a third meeting with the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Un.

Trump made the remarks while speaking to the media together with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting at the White House.

According to the full transcript provided by the White House, when asked by reporters if he plans to meet Kim for a third summit, Trump said that "it could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step."

"It's not a fast process; I've never said it would be. It's step by step," he said. "I enjoy the summits. I enjoy being with the Chairman. I think it's been very productive."

When asked if a three-way summit with Kim and Moon is also possible, Trump said "that could happen also."

For his part, Moon said that the personal diplomacy between Trump and Kim has brought "dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean Peninsula."

"Now peace has prevailed," he said. "Now we believe that you will be able to solve this problem through a dialogue."

Noting that "the Hanoi Summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement," Moon said that efforts need to be made so as to "maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook, regarding the third U.S.-North Korea Summit, to the international community that this will be held in the near future."

After ending the summit in Vietnam's Hanoi on Feb. 28 without an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that the DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Wednesday that for dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearization and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronized steps as a package solution.
The Chief of Sankore, in the Ahafo Region, Nana Ogyedom Appiah Kubi Pabo Katakye IV, has applauded the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, for visiting Sankore not by air but by road.



According to the Chief of Sankore, it is rare for a sitting President to defy the terrible conditions of our roads to be here with us. The President could have decided to end his tour in Goaso, but for his love and fervent regard for the people of Sankore, he decided to begin his tour of Ahafo here.



Nana Ogyedom Appiah Kubi Pabo Katakye IV made this known at a durbar held in honour of President Akufo-Addo, on Friday, 12th April, 2019, in Sankore, at the commencement of the Presidents 2-day tour of the Ahafo Region.



In his remarks, the Sankore Chief told the President that You have done a lot in only two years. We have heard and have seen. Even if we are blind, we are not deaf. Continue on this path.



He assured President Akufo-Addo that the Chiefs and people of Sankore are solidly behind you on whatever you will do to ensure progress and development for Ghana. Pay no heed to petty gossip. It takes courage to run a government, and you have it. Sankore is behind you.



Touching on the creation of the Ahafo Region, he expressed the gratitude of the people of the newly created Region to President Akufo-Addo for bringing this to fruition.



We said we wanted our own region, we had knocked on all doors, sent petitions to wherever it is required, way before I was born. But President came, checked the books and agreed with us that, indeed, we needed our own region. Only Akufo-Addo will do this for us. We are grateful, he added.



With Sankore having produced seven of the nations best cocoa farmers over the years, the Sankore Chief deplored the terrible nature of the road network, stressing that if the roads, especially those for the transportation of cocoa, are fixed, I can guarantee that no matter the number of years you wish to be President, we will help you to achieve that.

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.

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The Minister of Education, Hon. Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has dismissed news making rounds on social media claiming he has awarded a $350m contract to supply the new school uniforms for Junior High School students which was launched by the Ghana Education Service.



In a statement signed by the Deputy Communications Director Kwasi Obeng-Fosu, has dismissed the publication describing it as false which has no merit but rather the figment of someones imagination designed to cause disaffection towards the Hon. Minister.



The Minister wishes to state emphatically, for the avoidance of doubt, that the story is false, without merit and the figment of someones imagination, designed to cause disaffection towards him.



Read Full Statement Below



The attention of the Minister of Education, Hon. Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has been drawn to a news item circulating on social media, claiming that a relative of his, has been awarded a $350m contract to supply the new school uniforms for Junior High School students launched by the Ghana Education Service earlier today.



The Minister wishes to state emphatically, for the avoidance of doubt, that the story is false, without merit and the figment of someones imagination, designed to cause disaffection towards him. Indeed, it will be noted that at various points in the story, the so-called relative, said to be Ebenezer Opoku Prempeh, is variously referred to as his brother, son and nephew. The Minister wishes to emphasize that he has no relative by that name.



The general public is therefore invited to disregard this story and treat it with the contempt it deserves.



KWASI OBENG-FOSU



DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR



MINISTRY OF EDUCATION

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.

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Tumpale Mwakibinga, a Malawian man who was arrested following the upload of a meme likening first Lady Gertrude Mutharika to cartoon character Rango, has been granted bail by the Blantyre First Grade Magistrate Court.



First Grade Magistrate Tsoka Banda, has granted bail on the following conditions:



1. Payment of a non-cash bond of $140



2. The accused shall not post anything on social media relating to madam Gertrude Mutharika



3. The accused is to report to Southern Region Police offices once a month.



4. The provision of one person as a surety



He has been charged with insulting the modesty of a woman, cyber violation and offensive communication but he denied all the charges.



State Prosecutors asked for seven more days for them to complete investigations but the defence argued successfully that all the alleged offences were bailable.



The trial is to be heard on 31 May 2019, at 10 am.

Source: Graphic.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.

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A 23-year-old Nigerian national has been sentenced to seven years imprisonment by a circuit court in Accra for trafficking minors from Nigeria to Ghana for commercial sex work.



The convict, Ella Peter, was also accused of recruiting women from Nigeria to Ghana and forcing them into prostitution.



Upon intelligence last June, she was arrested by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit at Adenta.



The court presided over by Mrs. Rita Abrokwa Doku, later found the accused guilty of the offence and sentenced her to seven years of hard labour in prison.



Her case brings to two the number of Nigerians jailed for human trafficking in Ghana, this year, after Angel Chizoba.



The director in charge of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, Superintendent Mike Baah, told DAILY GUIDE that on June 22, 2018, his unit, in collaboration with the Adenta Police, arrested suspect Ella Peter for recruiting two minors from Nigeria to Ghana for sexual exploitation.



He said on arrival, the two  16 years old Esther Adi from Abarikpo, River State, and Precious Benjamin, aged 17, were taken through some rituals by the accused and warned not to run away or they would get mad.



A razor blade was also used to inflict wounds on the victims foreheads by the accused, who took their blood and warned them that she would take their blood to one Baba  a fetish priest  for rituals if they disobeyed her orders, he narrated.



He averred that further investigations by the police revealed that Ella Peter was a hairdresser residing in Nigeria, while the two victims were a student and a seamstress respectively.



Somewhere in May 2018, our investigations revealed that the accused recruited and transported the victims to Ghana under the pretext of employing them to man her boutique and tailoring shops, he added.



He noted that on arrival, the underage girls were forced into prostitution and charged to make daily sales of GH150 to the accused.



At a point, the police officer said Esther Adi failed to meet her daily target and was tortured with a knife by the accused which left a visible deep cut and burnt wounds on her shoulders and right ankle.



After investigations, the accused was charged with the offence of human trafficking and taken to court for trial where she was found guilty.

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.

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Member of Parliament for Adentan Constituency and Communications Director for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Hon Yaw Buabeng Asamoah has disclosed that former President John Dramani Mahama will collapse Ghana if he is voted into power again.



He says his government is taking the country to another level and a new paradigm shift so it will be inaccurate to vote for the former Head of State again.



Speaking to Kwame Nkrumah Tikese on Okay FM's 'Ade Akye Abia' programme, the Adentan MP explained that the NPP government with little resources and good governance policies is carrying out massive infrasctructure across the length and breadth of the country.



"Ghanaians are feeling the change they voted for and more and more, the NPP government having assess the needs of Ghanaians will continue to implement policies that will improve the lives and working conditions of Ghanaians," he said.



"Look at what the 2 billion dollars Sinohydro deal is bringing on board, more roads network infrastructure, other projects being carried in other sectors of the economy amongst others."



"All these things attest to the fact it will be dangerous and very suicidal to vote for the incompetent one again," he said.



He has asked Ghanaians to exercise patience and restraint as the NPP government is gradually fulfilling all it campaign promises and they will certainly do so before the next general elections.







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.

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The National Tescon Deputy Coordinator of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Madam Rosemond Obeng has commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addos government for the Synohydro Master Project Support Agreement.



According to People's Mother as affectionately called, the barter arrangement will have 2 billion US dollars worth of priority infrastructure projects delivered across the country.



"Per the compact, Ghana will benefit from two billion dollars worth of priority projects in return for a commensurate value of refined bauxite from Ghanas rich mineral deposits",she recounted.



She added that each of the 16 regions will benefit from roads, buildings for judicial service, industrial parks, and landfill sites among other key infrastructure within the next 30 calendar months.



Speaking on Power FMs Dwabo Ase talk show, she reiterated that through the barter arrangement, our bauxite resources will be developed and manufactured into aluminum products and delivered to Synohydro for the benefit of the 16 regions in Ghana to see massive facelift in infrastructure as well as road networks in the country which would meet international standard.



She however lambasted the NDC government for allegedly giving close to 60% of Ghana's bauxite reserves to the younger brother of the former President John Dramani Mahama (Ibrahim Mahama) during his administration.



She therefore maintained that the infrastructural projects through bartering of bauxite under Akufo-Addo's administration for the benefit of every Ghanaian is better than NDCs Era of offering bauxite to one single individual.



Meanwhile The Director of Research for the opposition National Democratic Congress has described as hypocritical President Nana Akufo-Addos excitement over projects expected to be funded with the two billion dollar Sinohydro deal.



Dr Ahadzie made this comment on the Ultimate FM's breakfast Show, recounting moments when the former president Mahama had to deal with critics from the then opposition NPP who claimed that infrastructure did not put food on the tables of Ghanaians.



It only exposes them and their hypocrisy because they campaigned on the message that we dont eat infrastructure and our argument has always been that infrastructure actually stimulates development and therefore we need that.



They must make an admission that we were on the right path in trying to build infrastructure for Ghana to increase their earning capabilities and so why are they going to build that? he quizzed.









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.

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For some years now, the decline in the movie industrys fortunes has been blamed on the telenovelas, which have taken over our screens. Do a survey across the many television channels and you are sure to find a Mexican, Indian or Brazilian soap airing.



The worst part, for some stakeholders in the movie industry, is the translation of these telenovelas into local languages such as Akan to cater to the masses, which have caused people to lose interest in our local movies.



However, TV presenter, Adwoa Yeboah Adjei, who has become very popular for handling the discussion segments of telenovelas such as Passion and Power, Ask God For Forgiveness Not Me, Wild At Heart, Tomorrow Is A New Day and My Sweet Curse on UTV, has a different opinion.



According to Adwoa Yeboah Adjei, its about time movie producers upped their game instead of blaming telenovelas for their decline.



The opinion that telenovelas are killing Ghanaian movies is very wrong. Movie producers are not putting in as much as we expect from them hence peoples love for telenovelas. If the storyline is good and acting is on point who wouldnt watch Ghanaian movies? she asked.



Adwoa Yeboah Adjei said every TV station wanted to make money through its sponsors and UTV has succeeded in getting the attention of viewers through such telenovelas, earning them a lot of sponsors.



No one should blame television stations because its not our fault viewers love them, besides we make a lot of money from sponsors.



"If the movie industry does great, why wont TV stations get closer to the producers and work with them? The movie industry is not encouraging at the moment and we need to revive it with all seriousness, she said.



Away from telenovelas, Adwoa Yeboah Adjei advised celebrities to keep their lives private to avoid controversy.



It saddens me that a lot of celebrities are not able to control their private lives and give room for anyone to say anything to them. If you respect yourself and keep certain things away from the public, no one will get the chance to talk to you anyhow.



No one has heard anything negative about me because I want to keep my private life from the public. I have a lot of people including my four children looking up to me, she stated.



According to her, no one can disrespect her because she has branded herself well. I wont go out and get drunk for anyone to do a video and post on social media. I wont wear any skimpy clothes for anyone to insult me, she said.



Adwoa Yeboah Adjei has been with the Despite Group for nearly 20 years. She is a newscaster on Peace FM in addition to hosting the telenovela segments on UTV.

Source: Graphic Showbiz









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.

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The President of the Republic of Ghana, His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo has accepted a request to host Comedian DKB at the Jubilee House. The comedian who performed to the president and other dignitaries at the just ended MUSIGA Presidential Grand Ball held at the Accra International Conference Centre threw his request at the president and it got granted.



It was a wonderful night for the comedian as he cracked the ribs of the President and his Vice Dr Mahamudu Bawumia with his jokes. The comedian used the opportunity to request a sitting with the first Gentleman of the nation to discuss the future of the comedy industry.



The Comedian who has asked to be now called The Presidential Joker wants to take comedy to the next level and he believes meeting with the highest office in the land and sharing his plans with the President, Ghcomedy can make a good headway for the future.



After meeting influential entertainers for discussions such as Shatta Wale and Stonebwoy, I believe it is time for me to meet with the President on behalf of comedy. Comedy has come a long way but we are struggling to stand on our feet now. We have over the years hosted sold-out shows and it is time to move to the next level DKB Said.



The President gladly shook his hands and assured him of the decision to welcome him to the presidential palace. There were also amazing performances by Patience Nyarko, Adina and Tic Tac. Pinodo, Asabea Cropper, Naa Amanua, Pat Thomas and Daddy Lumba who invited the Maestro Kojo Antwi on stage.

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.

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Yu's sculpture depicting the Potala Palace in Lhasa. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Craftsman Yu Shihua recently donated 35 cement sculptures to museums in Chongqing, southwest China, Chongqing Evening News reported on April 11.

Yu was a master of cement sculpture and dedicated himself to this form of folk art. Over the last 25 years of his life, he created over 1,000 pieces in both Chinese and western styles.

The artist's late wife, Xu Haizhen, said that he often collected litter and made it a part of his sculptures. For example, he turned old ice cream sticks and single-use chopsticks into handrails and outer walls of a cement castle.

In July 2009, Yus technique of making sculptures out of cement was listed among the second batch of intangible cultural heritages by Dadukou district of Chongqing.

Eight years later, the folk artist passed away, leaving behind an unfulfilled wish of donating all his art to society.

Now his final wish has come true, as, during the recent Qingming Festival, his family donated the sculptures to the China Three Gorges Museum and Dadukou Museum based in Chongqing.

Yu's sculpture depicting the Chongqing People's Grand Hall. (Photo/Chinanews.com)

Cement sculpture is an art form that combines the techniques of clay sculpture and bonsai, said Chen Bo from Dadukou Museum.

Yus sculptures boast local features, with some depicting the landscape of mountainous Chongqing, he told Chongqing Evening News.

A special exhibition featuring Yus art is ongoing at the museum and is scheduled to end on June 28, said Li Guohong, curator of the museum, adding that when the exhibition ends, the pieces will go on a tour around middle schools in the Dadukou district.
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KAMPALA  Kyaddondo East Member of Parliament Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine has detailed a plan to end long time serving President, Gen Yoweri Museveni who he accuses of presiding over a-three decade of iron-fisted rule.

Bobi Wine has also responded to critics against his get your national ID campaign dissecting several issues and offering alternative views to how to perceive present socioeconomic and political state of affairs in the country.

Bobi Wine in a detailed dossier says much as President Museveni and his NRM party are planning to stop him from running for presidency in the 2021 elections, he and other democratic forces, are determined to end a-three decade of iron-fisted rule.

We are even aware of plans by [President] Museveni and his regime to amend laws so as to block our participation in the next election, he says in a lengthy statement titled: UNDERSTANDING OUR GET YOUR NATIONAL ID CAMPAIGN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SUDAN AND ALGERIA UPRISINGS.

In an April 12, dossier on social media, Bobi Wine has also tackled a wide range of issues on the economy, state of affairs among others including re-emphasising his get your national ID campaign.

On the opposition strategy, Bobi Wine says; Firstly, we believe that the citizens of Uganda have a right and duty AT ALL TIMES to defend the Constitution of Uganda which Museveni has violated, abrogated with impunity and amended contrary to its provisions. It will be remembered that Article 3(4) of the Constitution bestows upon us, as citizens, the right and duty to do everything within our power to restore the constitutional order which has been violated- at all times.

He adds that if President Museveni fell today, the next step would be to demand free and fair elections within six months.

If Museveni fell today, what would be the next step? The proper thing to do would be to demand free and fair elections within six months as required by Article 109(2) of the Constitution, he added.

Bobi Wine has also responded Dr. Kizza Besigye, a four-time presidential candidate; after comments that former president of the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change, is an obstacle to change.

I am persuaded beyond doubt that comrade Dr Kizza Besigye has won at least two elections in the past and was rigged. But I also know that the win was not as decisive as it ought to be if we confronted the despot as a more united and prepared front, he said.

But writing on his Facebook page, Bobi Wine, a musician turned  politician whose methods have been criticized by FDC, left Dr. Besigye and more FDC leaders embarrassed than bemused, dissected the FDC concerns on get your national ID issue by issue, greeting with some points raised while differing from others lecturing opposition on what ought to be.

If there were any doubts that Bobi Wine has arrived on the political scene, then this statement put them all to bed, in effect, saying a boy who has washed his hands can eat with the longtime opposition leaders.

See Bobi Wines full letter below

======================================================

UNDERSTANDING OUR GET YOUR NATIONAL ID CAMPAIGN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE SUDAN AND ALGERIA UPRISINGS.

(Long post but please read it)

Dear friends,

I have seen a few comments on social media seemingly wondering how our call on the people to register as voters will rid Uganda of dictator Yoweri Kaguta Museveni. Some have raised doubts that an election, organized by Musevenis controlled Electoral Commission can rid our nation of Museveni and Musevenism. Indeed, there are some comrades who have suggested that we should forget about 2021 and kick Museveni out of power before the end of 2019- Algeria or Sudan style.

These are legitimate voices and we completely respect the viewpoints. I am happy that despite the real or perceived differences in strategy, there is one constant- all of us acknowledge that it is time for Museveni to go, like all the other despots before him. To me, agreeing on this fundamental point is very important.

Let me use this opportunity to clarify a few things.

To begin with, we are not naive. We are fully cognizant that Museveni has rigged the past elections with impunity. There is no doubt whatsoever that similar attempts will be made during the next election. Only a few days ago, Kahinda Otafiire expressed a clear lack of commitment on the part of government to implement electoral reforms as recommended by the Supreme Court after the 2016 election.

We are even aware of plans by Museveni and his regime to amend laws so as to block

our participation in the next election. Those who have cast doubt that an election will take place at all in 2021 also have a point. As we know, ever since we massively defeated Museveni in Kyadondo East, Jinja-East, Bugiri, Rukungiri and Arua, he decided to illegally halt all by-elections in the new constituencies, because he could not contain the pressure caused by the wave. As we speak, because of the massive victories in the key guild elections in favor of People Power, several universities have been directed to disqualify People Power candidates. Where they have been nominated, the regime has deployed its cadres to bribe voters and interfere with the voting process. We are therefore mindful of all these factors- even as we call on you all to register as voters.

WHAT THEN IS OUR STRATEGY?

Firstly, we believe that the citizens of Uganda have a right and duty AT ALL TIMES to defend the Constitution of Uganda which Museveni has violated, abrogated with impunity and amended contrary to its provisions. It will be remembered that Article 3(4) of the Constitution bestows upon us, as citizens, the right and duty to do everything within our power to restore the constitutional order which has been violated- at all times. That is why we called upon you, the people of Uganda, to defend the Constitution when it was raped in 2017. That is why we have persistently mobilized peaceful assemblies to rally the masses against several violations. At a personal level, I have supported and continue to support any cause that is intended to bring down dictatorship in Uganda! That is why our team works every day to put an end to all injustices against our people- from extortionist taxes, unemployment, etc. Putting an end to bad governance is our business  first and foremost.

In this regard, we are encouraged by the people of Algeria who in the past weeks forced a dictator to resign; and the people of Sudan who through peaceful protests forced a powerful despot to give way. While we are aware that our brothers and sisters in those countries are yet to achieve full freedom after their efforts are being hijacked by those who wield guns, we celebrate with them the victory of removing the biggest stumbling blocks in their path to freedom. We are encouraged by their example that it is possible for the most powerful of despots to come tumbling down in the face of People Power. On this point, we are in agreement with our comrades in the struggle who believe that action should be taken now. That is why we do not tire in strategizing, mobilizing our people through various activities, and making partnerships. These are all necessary steps towards empowering and readying the people to do all in their power to defend the Constitution. We are on course.

But then the intelligent question to ask becomes- WHAT NEXT?

If Museveni fell today, what would be the next step? The proper thing to do would be to demand for free and fair elections within six months as required by Article 109(2) of the Constitution. If you do not do this, you end up with the revolution being hijacked like has happened in many cases- and as we see presently in Sudan. But then, how would we participate in those elections within six months if the citizens did not register to vote? Even if we want to set up a transitional government, it should be born out of a democratic process. Those who followed the last election in Zimbabwe understand what we are talking about. Therefore this is the first point.

The second point requires that we reflect on a few past happenings. We should all recall that dictators fall in different ways. The constant is that all of them eventually fall. I am sure that President Museveni, (seeing what has happened to his counterparts who were even stronger, more manipulative and wiser than him), is aware of the catastrophe that awaits him if he does not restrain himself. Dictators do not fall the same way. What we have learnt in the past is that some fall through popular uprisings before elections (Algeria, Sudan, Burkina Faso, etc), during or after elections (Ivory Coast, Gambia, etc), coups detat (Mali, Zimbabwe, etc), foreign intervention (Libya, etc), natural causes (Guinea Bissau, etc) or even through conventional warfare. A few who are wise enough read the signs and hand over power peacefully (Angola, etc). The sparks are usually different. The means and circumstances are usually different. The aftermath is usually different. The constant is only one- EVERY DICTATOR WILL CERTAINLY FALL.

We have taken time to study what has gone on in the past. We have many times focused on taking Museveni out before the election period. Several campaigns have been made in this regard. I will not list all of them here, but they have only been successful in exposing Museveni and building momentum for his imminent fall. However, for one reason or another, we have not yet succeeded in the major objective- we shall discuss these reasons another time. (And Museveni should never take our past failures as a source of comfort for himself- every day is not a Sunday!)

When we have not succeeded, we then go for elections. THE SAME LEADERS WHO HAVE DISCOURAGED ELECTIONS DECIDED TO PARTICIPATE IN THOSE ELECTIONS.

The same leaders who have made it clear that Museveni cannot go by the ballot actually nominate as candidates and appear on the ballot! Many in the population which has been told that an election cannot work decide to shun the election process- thus explaining the millions who stay away on election day.

Moreover, we go into these elections when we are not fully prepared for them. We participate in them as a ritual. For the past elections, the forces of change have failed to achieve UNITY which we all agree would do magic. We end up without a clear strategy to protect the votes. The population is not prepared enough to reject a rigged election- IN ANY CASE ELECTIONS WERE DISCOURAGED IN THE FIRST PLACE. Therefore, this is our point of departure from our friends who are discouraging our campaign to have our citizens register as voters, even as we work with other measures.

I am persuaded beyond doubt that comrade Dr. Kizza Besigye has won at least two elections in the past and was rigged. But I also know that the win was not as decisive as it ought to be if we confronted the despot as a more united and prepared front. Because of the weaknesses I have highlighted, the citizens have not been able to come out and assert their sovereignty and claim their victory. For example, Dr. Besigye has indicated several times that he won with 52% in the last election according to the tally he put in place. I believe however that if a lot more had been done two or three years prior to the election (to unite the opposition, call upon citizens to register and rally them to vote, etc) the victory would have been much higher and therefore more difficult to tamper with. For example, in the 2016 election, close to 5 million registered voters stayed away from the polls. Many more adult Ugandans did not even bother to register in the first place. Why? Probably because they have been discouraged by the forces of change from having any confidence in the process.

We must remember that dictators are better dealt with if defeated by a knock-out!

Comrades, we should do everything possible to defend the Constitution and restore constitutional governance in our country. Adding to what we have been doing, we shall intensify our efforts- working with all forces of change. If we succeed before the next election like Algeria or Sudan have, the better for our country. But let us not lose sight of the constitutional and internationally recognized opportunity that we shall have in 2021. We cannot afford not to prepare for an election and then decide to participate when the population has been turned away from the process. THE LESSONS OF THE PAST 20 YEARS SHOULD HAVE MADE THIS CLEAR TO US. We can overwhelm Museveni in an election organized by his own Electoral Commission  it happened in Ivory Coast, it happened in the Gambia and many other examples.

Should Museveni manipulate the laws and try to stop or extend the elections or even to prevent us from participating, that will be another conversation and we shall awaken the people of Uganda to do the needful. For now, I call upon all of you to REGISTER and get your National-IDs. Power to the millions of you who have responded to our call. We are making this case to all comrades in the struggle. We hope to persuade them to see our viewpoint because we believe that we are stronger when all of us are on the same page. A PEOPLE UNITED SHALL NEVER BE DEFEATED.

Your brother and comrade in the struggle,

Hon.Kyagulanyi Ssentamu  Bobi Wine

#PeoplePower_OurPower

Related
(Photo/Chinanews.com)

Chinas marine economy contributed over 8 trillion yuan ($1.19 trillion) to national GDP in 2018, rising 6.7 percent from the year before, according to a report released by the Ministry of Natural Resources on Thursday.

He Guangshun, head of the China Oceanic Information Network, said that on average, the total production value of Chinas marine economy had doubled every six years between 2001 and 2018, and that the proportion of the marine economy within national GDP has remained at over 9 percent for more than 10 consecutive years.

The marine tertiary sector has already become the main driving force behind the marine economy, and its added-value has accounted for 58.6 percent of the total production value of the marine economy, He disclosed.

Coastal tourism has remained the dominant growth point of the tertiary sector, contributing 23.5 percent to the growth of the marine economy, he added.

At the same time, China has also fostered new growth engines in marine power generation, marine biomedicine, and seawater utilization, seeing the added value of these industries grow by 12.8 percent, 9.6 percent, and 7.9 percent on a year-on-year basis.
If you were looking for the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee website and ended up here, try this





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Migrant birds fly over the wetland in Momoge National Nature Reserve in Zhenlai County, Baicheng City of northeast China's Jilin Province, April 11, 2019. In recent days, the nature reserve greets its peak season for migrant birds to return to the north. The number of white cranes which rest here every spring and autumn increases from 200 plus to over 3000 in recent years. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)
This article originally appeared in RECOIL Issue 42

Photos by Tom Marshall and U.S. Army Cadet Command

Students Trade Backpacks for Rucksacks During Army ROTC Cadet Summer Training

In the summer of 1915, Major General Leonard Wood (a familiar name to readers in central Missouri) instituted a military training program called the Citizens Military Training Corps  colloquially known as the Plattsburg Idea for the programs pilot location in Plattsburg, New York. The CMTC provided a four-week course of military education to civilians who, upon completion, would be commissioned as reserve officers. Two years later, on the brink of our nations entry into World War I, the program had produced more than 17,000 trained military officers. In fact, one of the earliest graduates from the original Plattsburgh program was Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

This baptism by fire proved the need to maintain a well-trained, well-educated corps of military officers that could be drawn from the nations universities. That small summer training camp would go on to take shape as the Reserve Officer Training Corps  ROTC, in common vernacular. ROTC is a comprehensive two- to four-year program that includes academic courses in military science and extracurricular training led by professors of military science and other on-campus cadre. This training and education is in addition to the students regular academic schedule throughout the school year.

While their peers are enjoying beach parties and menial seasonal jobs, students in the Armys ROTC program continue their training in true homage to the Plattsburgh Idea, during Cadet Summer Training (CST). CST is a comprehensive term, encompassing several different programs that allow ROTC cadets to shadow lieutenants in active-duty units, attend advanced qualification training like airborne or air assault schools, travel overseas for immersive cultural learning, or even complete internships with other local, state, and federal agencies. But the backbone of CST, and of the ROTC experience as a whole, are two 31-day training programs held annually at Fort Knox, Kentucky  Basic Camp and Advanced Camp.

While advanced camp is a requirement for successful completion of ROTC, basic camp is a sort of booster program for those cadets without any prior exposure to military life. As stated, both programs are built around a 31-day format. RECOIL was given the chance to observe and participate in some of the training that basic and advanced camp cadets go through. We also had an opportunity to speak with several of the training cadre and the head honcho of the entire U.S. Army Cadet Command.

Faculty and Staff

At time of writing, the 2018 Basic and Advanced camp programs pushed a total of 8,441 cadets through their respective monthlong curricula. These cadets, and their trainers, hailed from each and every one of the Armys 274 separate ROTC programs spread out across colleges and universities in all 50 states. The trainers are pulled from their school-year jobs as military science professors to go out in the fields of Fort Knox as teachers and mentors. They single-handedly simulate multiple layers of military command structure, assess cadets performance of assigned leadership tasks, and guide the opposing force (OPFOR) soldiers on how to best provide simulated enemy resistance thats realistic, while still affording the cadets a chance to struggle through mistakes and growing pains.

Those OPFOR soldiers are active-duty enlisted soldiers from around the Army, most of whom have experienced actual combat against real-world enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. They take the same insurgent tactics used against them and put them to work against the young leaders-in-training. What was particularly astonishing to us was that these teams of trainers and planners, known as committees, have a whopping 10 days to fly to Fort Knox from their home station, meet each other, write the framework for all the training missions, develop the learning objectives and grading criteria for each mission, and proof the missions to a panel of colonels and generals who decide if the committee has put together a training package thats effective and repeatable across the multiple iterations of basic and advanced camp cadets whom theyll train throughout the summer. By the numbers, CST is the single largest training event in the entire U.S. Army.

Schools Out(side) for Summer

We tagged along on a couple of different events: a field training exercise mission, a 6-mile ruck march, and a visit to branch orientation day. Of the 31 day program, 21 are spent in the field. If youve never had the pleasure of military field training, imagine living in the woods with no electricity, running water, or hard shelter. All your meals come from vacuum-sealed bags. Your only protection from the elements is a poncho strung over a length of rope. You have one, maybe two, sets of clean clothes to get you through a week. Showering consists of wiping yourself down with baby wipes in the dark. Then theres the mosquitos and the guys hunting you

The field training exercise, typically abbreviated as FTX, is probably what most people imagine when they think of military training  a bunch of trainees covered in camouflage greasepaint, burdened with loaded rucksacks and rifles or belt-felt machine guns, creeping through the woods waiting to shoot or get shot  by blanks, of course. There are six separate scenarios that cadets must be graded on. Missions such as area defense, ambush, movement-to-contact, and target reconnaissance reinforce the various tactical skillsets that are required of Army leaders.

The FTX we witnessed was a defense of a hilltop clearing against insurgent forces. The observer/controllers on the ground alongside the cadets have the flexibility to change the scenario along the way by, say, designating casualties among the cadets as the mission unfolds. They can scale up or down the opposing force response. They can also deny or delay requests for assets like indirect fire or air support. We witnessed the cadet platoon take a casualty and work their way through a standard call-for-medevac procedure. Each cadet must rotate through a leadership position within the platoon at some point during the multiple FTX missions. When in one of these positions, theyre graded on things like tactical proficiency, leadership ability, communications and reporting, and poise under pressure.

But even when not living in the field, that doesnt mean they get to sit inside. In fact, we accompanied a Regiment of Basic Camp cadets on a 6-mile road march that stepped off bright and early (or, at least early ) at 0100 hours sharp. Advanced Camp cadets complete 4-, 6-, 8-, and 12-mile marches with time standards during their month-long training. The Basic Camp march we joined was a pass/fail endurance event. Cadets march with a 35-pound rucksack plus their weapon. In addition to the physical conditioning component, marches are a way for cadets to practice proper spacing intervals, which translates directly to dismounted combat patrols. It also gives them a chance to speak with cadre members who march with them about life in the Army, potential career paths, and leadership lessons.

After a quick shower and short nap back at the hotel, we were back on post for branch orientation. Much like choosing a major in their academic lives, these cadets must decide which branch, or career field, they wish to pursue in the Army. Orientation provides the opportunity for students to speak with officers who serve in every community in the Army, from quartermaster to chemical corps to special operations. Cadets can hear first-hand what a full-life career path would look like in that particular field, as well as what their actual day-to-day duties would be as a young lieutenant. Despite some popular misconceptions, the life of a junior officer in aviation isnt the same as for one in the infantry.

Its also a chance for cadets to learn how the Army is changing, and how those changes may impact their lives and careers. For example, we learned that air defense artillery, a branch we long knew to be a slowly dying dinosaur, is in the process of its largest ramp-up in decades, with a goal to recruit more ADA soldiers in the next 12 to 24 months than are currently serving in the entire Army. Branch orientation, by the way, isnt in an air-conditioned auditorium with mind-numbing slide shows. This was a thoroughly hands-on event with cadets walking up and down rows of tents, climbing up and down armored vehicles and artillery pieces, and even peeking inside the cockpit of an MH-6 Little Bird helicopter.

A Trip to the Principals Office

As a capstone on our time at CST, we were given the opportunity to speak with Major General John Evans, the Commanding General of Cadet Command. We had a brief but poignant conversation with the general about summer training, and about the future generations that hes now responsible for molding into effective military leaders.

RECOIL: Whats the most rewarding thing about leading Cadet Command? Whats the most challenging?

MG Evans: I believe the most rewarding thing is working with the future leadership of the Army. As you navigate your career in the Army, you get to work with different sub-groups of people. Here at Cadet Command, I get to see our future lieutenants in their training environment. As these young cadets are maturing, you get to see the excitement in what they do  I think the most challenging portion of it is trying to stay relevant with the new generation of youngsters that are out there. Im 52, so most of these kids could easily be my own. My kids are younger than them, so I dont really have a good reference point for what todays college student is thinking about, other than what they teach me  and Im impressed with them. The millenials get a bit of a bad rap, I think.

What do you see as the most daunting obstacle for prospective officers to overcome as they begin to finalize their transition from college student to Army lieutenant?

MG Evans: I dont believe the nature of warfare has changed. I think its still very much basically a human endeavor. But the aspects, the technology, the speed of warfare has changed perceptibly  the speed of information, the way that technology has enabled and empowered everyone. Weve taken our relative position of advantage from a technological perspective, and were now starting to see people reaching parity or near-parity with us  Weve relied on technological overmatch and superior leadership. I think we still have superior leadership. Thats our business here at Cadet Command. But that technology overmatch is starting to be closed. So we have got to continue to find ways to make sure our officer corps is prepared to be more agile, more responsive, more flexible, and really better equipped than my generation was as we came up.

What place does CST have in the overall development of a prospective officer? For example, is the goal to teach individual tactical skills, small-unit command and control, unit administration/logistics, pre-branch preparation, etc.?

MG Evans: What were trying to achieve with CST is the tactical competency piece. What were trying to do in all instances across the Army, not just here at Cadet Command, but also at the academy and certainly at basic combat training for our new enlistees, is were trying to set a rigorous baseline of what combat will be like on the battlefield if you find yourself there. Whereas in the past as we dealt with very linear battlefields where you could stack things in depth, maybe you didnt have to worry about people who were in the rear area being the best shooters or the best communicators or even in the best physical shape. On the future battlefield, those linear boundaries are going to be mixed and matched, and its very possible that someone who might otherwise be considered in the rear area in a support function could find themselves very quickly in a combat situation.

Has the intense presence of social media in college life presented any challenges to the command and how it deals with cadets? Is OPSEC/PERSEC/INFOSEC or digital footprint management addressed at all before these students go out into the force?

MG Evans: Todays cadets are much more knowledgeable and agile in that space. So they tend to have a better awareness than those of us who experienced it in its nascent phase, as it was growing. But theres still risk there for them. They still have to understand that some of the things they can do in the social space right now as a college student, they will not be able to do as an Army officer  If theres anything I think we can say with certainty, it is we will only see a refinement of our enemies ability to target us based on our social presence. So the more social presence you build in the here and now, and the less responsible you are with that social presence, the easier you will be to target down the road. So theyve got to think ahead as theyre out there. People are finding ways to aggregate that data and draw out trends, draw out things that will lead them to operational weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Weve got to educate our force about that  our chief of staff is very fond of saying, particularly on the battlefield, if youre pushing power or emitting, you can be seen. If you can be seen, you can be targeted. If you can be targeted, you can be hit and killed. So weve got to think in those terms. Even when were not in an open warfare contested domain 

Do you have a message for our readers?

MG Evans: We still need people who want to serve selflessly in our nation  we need young men and women of integrity to serve in the United States Army. Were looking for them every day. There are people out there who dont believe that service is important. Frankly, I think thats misguided. There are people out there who choose to serve differently. First responders or people in the Peace Corps, whatever the case may be, and I think thats admirable. But at the end of the day we certainly need people to serve in our nations defense. So I would say to your readers, pass the message along. Ask them to ask the question about ROTC at their colleges and universities.

In a world that shows no signs of becoming safer or more secure, we couldnt agree more.
Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for Celebrity Fight NightShelea's resume speaks for itself.

Aside from being the protegee of legendary producer Quincy Jones, the California-born vocalist has toured with the likes of Stevie Wonder and David Foster, recorded with Brian McKnight and Take 6, and has contributed to the soundtracks for several major motion pictures.

Now, Shelea is set to star in Lifetime's upcoming biopic, The Clark Sisters: The First Ladies of Gospel, based on the lives and careers of the iconic gospel group The Clark Sisters. She'll portray Dorinda Clark Cole.

But if you ask Shelea, her biggest career highlight was when she received praise from Bobbi Kristina for Shelea's her Whitney Houston tribute performance at the Grammy Museum in 2013.

"Bobbi Kristina reached out to me and found me. And said: 'When I hear you sing, I feel my mom's spirit with me and if she were here she would be so proud of you.' And, that's something I carry with me," Shelea told ABC Radio.

The songstress often cites the late Houston as one of her many musical influences. "And, so when I get that kind of response it makes me feel like I'm doing a good thing by keeping their memory alive and honoring them in the small way I can," Shelea says.

Prior to her riveting tribute to Houston at the Grammy Museum, Shelea became a viral sensation on YouTube after sharing a clip of herself singing a medley of the stars hits following her death in February 2012.

Shelea's since gone on to release a string of albums, including her critically-acclaimed debut Love Fell On Me, as well as this year's Pretty World.

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
SYDNEY, April. 9 (Peoples Daily Online/ Yunxin Bao) Chinese investment in Australia fell by 36.3 percent in AUD terms in 2018, to its second-lowest level, according to a new report by KPMG and the University of Sydney Business School.

The jointly produced report says that Chinese investment in the Australian market has plunged from AUD 13 billion (USD 10 billion) in 2017 to AUD 8.2 billion (USD 6.2 billion) in 2018.

According to the Chinese investors in Australia Survey, Chinese executives still see Australia as a relatively attractive place to invest with an improving political climate and there has been a slight increase in their sense of feeling welcome.

Healthcare industry jumped to become the most popular sector for Chinese investment, with a total of AUD 3.4 billion, representing a 111 percent increase over 2017. Meanwhile, commercial real estate investment fell to second place.

As the report points out, while global foreign direct investment in 2018 declined by 19 percent to USD 1.2 trillion, Chinese global outbound direct investment still increased by 4.2 percent in 2018 to reach USD $129.8 billion.

Geographically, Chinese investment was again focused on NSW in 2018 with AUD 4.4 billion or 53 percent of the total value. Victoria remained in second position with 27 percent of the total investment value in 2018.

Professor Hans Hendrischke, the co-author of the report, said that large strategic investments in resources, energy, and infrastructure have given way to smaller investments and in projects that are tactical and directly linked to Chinese consumer market demand.

2018 need not define a trend of lower Chinese investment in Australia into the future but it is a moment to reflect upon, Doug Ferguson, the Head of Asia & International Markets for KPMG Australia, stated, there are a great many opportunities for Chinese companies to contribute towards the development and internationalization of Australian industries in the coming years.

As the report suggests, Australian governments, corporations and professional advisers must continue to assist Chinese executives to better understand community attitudes around corporate social responsibility standards and ways to better integrate their companys operations and brands in local economies and communities.
Hong Kong, China -- (ReleaseWire) -- 04/11/2019 --Amidst the stiff competition among magazine creators, FlipHTML5 remained to be on top of the list of today's outstanding solutions provider for magazine creator needs. The CEO of FlipHTML5, Winston Zhang, admitted that many magazine creators are arising today, which leads to tougher competition in the industry. However, he committed to integrating necessary improvements for FlipHTML5. He said, "The reason why FlipHTML5 magazine creator continues to be on top of this competition is because of the company's efforts to let FlipHTML5 evolve along with the ever-changing demands and needs of its clients. Added to this, the minds behind FlipHTML5 always dare to innovate to better serve businesses."



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SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Stanford University held a photo exhibition Thursday to honor Chinese immigrant workers who built the First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad in the 19th century and the 150th anniversary of the completion of the landmark U.S. infrastructure project.

The exhibition featured historical photographs, oral histories, lesson plans, artifacts, digital documents and other materials of a seven-year-long Stanford research program, the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project, which revealed for the first time many findings of the Chinese railroad workers whose contributions to one of the most ambitious American engineering projects had long been left forgotten in U.S. history.

The Stanford research project unveiled the untold history of thousands of Chinese migrants who toiled at a grueling pace to help construct, under perilous working conditions, the transcontinental railway between 1864 and 1869.

The railroad (originally known as the Pacific Railroad), which ran about 3,077 km from the U.S. east to west, was officially completed on May 10, 1869, connecting the existing eastern U.S. rail network at Omaha, Nebraska with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay.

Gordon Chang, co-director of the project and professor of history of the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford, disclosed one of the details that broke the myth by some American skeptics about Chinese workers who hung off steep mountain cliffs in woven reed baskets to carve out holes for explosives.

Chang said the solid evidence of their extensive research from field trips and visits to families of the descendants of the Chinese immigrants showed that the Chinese railway workers endured incredible hardships during the construction process. They did use the baskets when they hung down from the side of mountains to put dynamite into black powder to blow up the rocks.

"They deposited tons and tons of rocks down into the American river 1,200 feet (about 366 meters) below. So baskets (were used). No myth," Chang told hundreds in attendance at his presentation about the disputed point in the past.

There were many more other discoveries from the massive Stanford research project, whose latest findings were published in two books -- The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, which was edited by Chang and Professor Shelley Fisher Fishkin of the Department of English at Stanford; and Chang's Ghosts of Gold Mountain: The Epic Story of the Chinese Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad.

Another purpose of the exhibition was to honor the Chinese immigrant workers who were treated unfairly and suffered prejudice even when they made huge contributions to the transcontinental railroad, Chang said.

At the peak time, about 25,000 Chinese laborers were working at the construction site of the railway, and their sweat and hard-work even played a role in the creation of Stanford University, Chang said, referring to Leland Stanford, the founder of one of the world's most renowned universities.

Stanford was an American tycoon, one of the Big Four businessmen who formed the Central Pacific Railroad company, and made a huge fortune from the construction of the transcontinental railway. He spent much of the wealth to create Stanford University in 1885.

"Without the Chinese migrants, the Transcontinental Railroad would not have been possible," Chang told Xinhua. "If it weren't for their work, Stanford University may not even exist."

Nancy Barrett, a retired healthcare worker, said she was attending the exhibition to learn more about hidden history of Chinese workers.

"I'm very glad to be here today and be part of the celebration of history coming out real history," she said.

"When you're thinking of the railroads, you think of the Chinese workers that built the railroad and nailed those final spikes and brought about the transcontinental transportation (in the United States). It was a phenomenal achievement," Barrett said.

Persis Drell, provost of Stanford University, called the exhibition "a really important and even a momentous occasion marking the culmination of project at Stanford."

"It's the story of hard-working individuals whose strength, skills and above all resilience in the face of danger, discrimination and hardship, paved the way in uniting our country from the Atlantic to the Pacific," Drell said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping recently warmed the hearts of millions when he attended a tree-planting activity in Tongzhou district, Beijing, on April 8.

In a video released by China Central Television (CCTV), Xi showed his care for local students who were watering trees with him. A girls hand was placed between the rim and the handle of her bucket, which looked like it could hurt when the bucket was lifted. Noticing this, the Chinese president reminded her, telling her to move her hand.

This scene warmed the hearts of many Chinese viewers, with many saying that Xis smile in the video reminded them of an old photo of the Chinese president 30 years ago.

The photo was taken in 1989, when Xi, as the then Party head in Ningde, southeastern Chinas Fujian Province, joined a voluntary labor activity with local cadres. In the picture, he walks confidently in the field, with a hoe on his shoulder.

30 years have passed, but Xi's gestures and aspirations have remained unchanged.

Let's take a look at some of the Chinese president's warmest moments.

In Moscow, Xi met 18 Russian veterans who once fought bravely in the battlefield of Northeast China in the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Great Patriotic War. When seeing that one of the representatives had difficulties walking, Xi immediately walked to him and hung the medal around his neck.

When meeting with the 600 representatives attending an award ceremony on ethical role models and pioneers in Beijing on Nov. 17, 2017, Xi took the hands of two senior citizens who had dedicated their lives to building the nation, and invited them to sit with him for a group picture to show his respect.

Local children welcomed Xi on an inspection tour of Guangdong province between Oct. 22 and 25, 2018.

On Feb. 1, 2019, on his way back from visiting residents in Qianmen, Beijing, Xi stopped to meet the couriers at a local service station to learn more about their work and living conditions.

Example is always better than doctrine. Xis natural behavior carries the traditional merits of the Chinese nation, and showcases his caring attitude towards the people.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday again nudged NCP President Sharad Pawar to denounce a proposal to make two "Prime Ministers" - one for Jammu and Kashmir and another for India as propounded by some Congress allies.

Modi's comments came again at a public meeting in Ahmednagar in western Maharashtra - Pawar's home turf - after his remarks on similar lines at his previous political rallies in the state.



"We have no expectations on this from Congress, they are reaping what they sowed. But what's wrong with you, Sharadrao? For how long will you keep quiet on this demand for two Prime Ministers? Your party's name has 'nationalist' in it, but is it only to defraud the people of the country?" Modi asked.



Needling Pawar, Modi asked why the Maratha strongman - who had left the Congress in 1999 - was keeping mum and accused both Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party of joining hands with those who want to separate Jammu and Kashmir from India.



Modi questioned how, with Pawar around, could people speak of two Prime Ministers in one country, and also wondered how the NCP chief could tolerate such blatant separatist talk when he hails from the "land of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj" and had served as a former Union Defence Minister as well.



Vowing to safeguard the country's security and integrity, Modi asked whether the youth wanted "an honest Chowkidar" or a "corrupt naamdar" (Gandhis), would they choose India's heroes or those who are heroes in Pakistan.



He urged that it was up to the people to decide what direction the country will take.





One the one side, he said, were the Congress' hollow promises and on the other the BJP's firm commitments.



Modi said that during the Congress-NCP rule in Maharashtra, there were only terror strikes in Mumbai. However, nothing like this was witnessed during the BJP rule which he said had tackled terror with a firm hand.



"Compared to the previous Congress-led government, the world has now witnessed a strong and decisive government in the past five years. The global community views us as a major power," he said, recounting the government's achievements since 2014.



This was Modi's first rally in western Maharashtra region, the home turf of some of the most powerful Maratha clans.


Polling for two Lok Sabha seats in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday reflected the state's regional divide, with the Jammu parliamentary constituency witnessing an over 72 per cent turnout, while Baramulla in the Kashmir Valley only saw 35 per cent voting.

Though the Election Commission said that the poll process ended peacefully, stray incidents of violence were reported and a class 7 student was killed in firing by security forces in Kupwara district in the Kashmir Valley after a mob attacked a polling party after voting ended.



Addressing a media conference in Jammu, Chief Electoral Officer Shailendra Kumar said that 72.16 turnout was recorded in Jammu and 35.01 per cent in Baramulla. He said polling was peaceful.





Apart the violence, some incidents of EVM malfunction and alleged misconduct by a security man at a polling station were reported.



The National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) told poll officials that a voter was beaten up by a security man deployed in a polling station in Poonch district after the voter refused to vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party.



A video showing voters protesting outside the polling station against the high-handedness of the security man was posted by PDP President and former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti on her Twitter page.



In another incident, the Congress said the party's EVM button was not working in a polling station in Poonch district. It has lodged a complaint with poll officials.



In Palhalan area of Baramulla Lok Sabha seat, a woman was injured when some youth pelted stones to disrupt polling in the area.



Police immediately intervened and brought the situation under control. The injured woman was shifted to Srinagar for treatment.



After the polling ended in Baramulla constituency, a mob attacked the polling party as it was leaving a polling station in Mandigam village of Kupwara's Handwara tehsil.



Security forces opened fire, fatally injuring the Class 7 student, identified as Owais Ahmed, police sources said.



Polling in both constituencies otherwise remained peaceful, due to heavy deployment of security forces.



Contrary to fears that there could be violence during polling in Baramulla constituency, which spans Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora districts, voting went on peacefully with voters coming out in large or small numbers at different places as they wished.



There were no reports of coercion to force people out of their homes to join the poll process.



Very low voter turnout was seen in Sopore and Baramulla towns and a few other places where the separatist-called boycott appeal influenced local residents.



Polling started in Jammu and Baramulla at 7 a.m. While queues of enthusiastic voters were seen in rural and border areas of Jammu Lok Sabha seat, polling was relatively muted in Baramulla.



However, reports of voters turning out in good numbers came in from the border areas of Gurez, Karnah and Uri in Baramulla, while small queues were also seen in Sonawari, Shadipora and a few other places in the morning.



The main electoral battle in the Jammu Lok Sabha seat is between the BJP's Jugal Kishore Sharma and Raman Bhalla of the Congress, while in Baramulla, it is likely to be four-cornered between Muhammad Akbar Lone of the National Conference, Raja Aijaz Ali of the Peoples Conference, Abdul Qayoom Wani of the Peoples Democratic Party and Independent candidate, Engineer Rashid.



Counting of votes will be taken up on May 23.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Disposable medical device sensors are portable scanning devices, which are mainly used for patient monitoring and diagnosis of diseases. These sensors are used to measure breathing rates, heart rates, and body temperature. Moreover, disposable medical device sensors play a vital role in the identification of disease causing microbes such as virus, bacteria, and fungi.



The global disposable medical device sensors market is categorized based on various types of sensors, sensor technologies, and applications. Based on products, the report covers strip sensors, invasive sensors, ingestible sensors, implantable sensors, and wearable sensors. Strip sensors hold the largest market share in the global disposable medical device sensors market. This is due to the increasing usage of strip sensors in glucose monitoring tests and disease diagnostic technologies. However, ingestible medical sensors are the fastest growing sub-segment in the global disposable medical device sensors market.



Based on sensor technologies, the report covers biosensor technology, image sensor technology, pressure sensor technology, accelerometer sensor technology, and temperature sensor technology. On the basis of medical applications, the report covers patient monitoring, and diagnostic and therapeutic applications of medical sensors.



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In terms of geography, North America dominates the global disposable medical device sensors market. This is due to the improved health care infrastructure and increasing demand for medical sensors in the region. In addition, technological advancements in medical device sensor technology have propelled the growth of the market in North America. The U.S. represents the largest market for disposable medical device sensors in North America, followed by Canada. In Europe, Germany, France, and the U.K. account for a major share of the disposable medical device sensors market. The disposable medical device sensors market in Asia is also expected to witness a high growth rate in the next five years. This is due to the innovative applications of medical device sensors and rising awareness about therapeutic applications of medical sensors in the region. Rising demographics and economies in the developing countries, such as India and China, are expected to lead to the growth of the human disposable medical device sensors market in Asia. Besides, India, China, and Japan, are expected to be the fastest growing markets for disposable medical device sensors in the region.



Increasing incidences of Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) and rising awareness about therapeutic applications of medical sensors are some of the major driving factors for the global disposable medical device sensors market. Also, technological advancements in sensor technologies and increasing government support in the form of funding for the development of sensor based medical devices have propelled the growth of the global disposable medical device sensors market. In addition, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and rising demand for medical sensors in home treatment has further fueled the growth of the market.



Stringent regulations for the approval of sensor based medical devices and inadequate reimbursement policies for sensor devices are some of the major restraints for the global disposable medical device sensors market. Rapid product launches and increasing numbers of mergers and acquisitions between medical device manufacturing companies are some of the major trends observed in the global human disposable medical device sensors market.



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The major companies operating in this market are Sensirion AG, STMicroelectronics N.V., Smiths Group plc, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Medtronic plc, Measurement Specialties, Inc, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Jant Pharmacal Corporation, Honeywell International, Inc., Given Imaging Ltd., Gentag, Inc., GE Healthcare, Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., and Analog Devices, Inc.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- Transparency Market Research (TMR) has published a new report titled, "Albumin (as Excipient) Market  Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 20182026". According to the report, the global albumin (as excipient) market was valued at US$ 750 Mn in 2017 and is anticipated to reach US$ 1200 Mn by 2026 at a CAGR of over 5.0% from 2018 to 2026. Grant of regulatory approvals coupled with subsequent launch of albumin based products is the key factor expected to propel the market during the forecast period.



Albumin is a water soluble globular protein produced in the liver. It accounts for 50% of blood plasma proteins. These play a vital role in regulating blood volume and act as transporters for molecules such as few hormones, bile salts, and ions. Albumin is commonly used as blood volumizer in rare diseases, burns, shocks, liver conditions, and other blood loss trauma and surgeries. However, usage of albumin as multifunctional excipient is increasing due to rise in consumption of albumin for applications such as drug formulation, vaccines, drug discovery, culture medium, stabilizing agent, and diagnostics. Albumin has been widely used as a versatile drug carrier in systems such as albumin fusion protein, albumin-drug nanoparticles, and pro-drugs. It is used as a drug carrier for the treatment of various diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, cancer, and hepatitis. It also has the ability to bind to extraordinarily diverse range of molecules, as it provides depository for a wide variety of compounds. These factors make albumin most suitable to be used as an excipient in vaccine and drug production.



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High Initial Investment for Plant Setup to Restrict Growth



High cost and expertise required to set up a production plant and stringent regulatory criteria hamper the growth of the global albumin (as excipient) market. Extraction of recombinant human serum albumin and processing incurs significant cost. Additionally, expert staff is required to handle operations, as recombinant technology attracts stringent laws and regulations. Moreover, cost associated with refinement of recombinant albumin to attain high purity is a major concern among the industry players. This acts as a major restraint of the market.



Recombinant Albumin Product Segment to Grow at a Rapid Pace



Recombinant human serum albumin is an advanced form of HSA, which is produced on large scale through gene sequence modification. Manufacture of rHSA is carried out using vectors. The recombinant albumin segment is anticipated to grow at the highest CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period from 2018 to 2026. Demand for recombinant proteins is rising across the globe, due to less chance of infections. Recombinant human serum albumin has insignificant immunogenicity in a patient's body which reduces the chances of antibody formation against it and the drug candidate. rHSA acts as a multifunctional excipient to stabilize the drug product by reducing oxidation, aggregation, and surface adsorption. These features make rHSA a preferred choice as an excipient in drug formulations. Several vaccines are produced using recombinant albumin as an excipient such as MMR, MMRV, and rotavirus vaccine live.



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Drug Delivery to be Most Promising Application Segment



The drug delivery segment accounted for 25.0% market share in 2017 and the trend is expected to continue in the near future. Usage of human serum albumin nanoparticles as drug delivery systems with applications in various diseases such as cancer is likely to boost the growth of the segment. The drug delivery sub-segment held leading share of the recombinant albumin segment. Ongoing collaborations between biopharmaceutical companies for recombinant albumin-based drug delivery systems are anticipated to fuel the growth of the segment during the forecast period. For instance, in May 2015, Serendex Pharmaceutical initiated phase I trials of Molgradex, a drug candidate for treating rare pulmonary diseases. The drug candidate uses Novozymes's Recombumin, a recombinant human albumin for the effective delivery of the biologic to lungs.



Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology Industry to be Key End-user



The pharmacy and biotechnology industry segment is expected to dominate the market. The segment was valued at US$ 500 Mn in 2017. Rise in research and developmental activities for development of technologically advanced products and increase in government funding have led the growth of the segment. Recombinant human serum albumin is used in the life sciences industry for a wide range of applications, including component of cell and microbial culture media, blocking agent in blotting, growth supporter in recombinant DNA, and hybridoma technology. This is likely to boost the growth of the segment.



Asia Pacific to Grow at a Rapid Pace



Demand for albumin is high in countries such as India and China. However, uptake of these therapeutics is low due to lack of awareness about these products and their therapeutic uses. Hence, awareness programs conducted by organizations such as PPTA, which include International Plasma Awareness Week, to help increase awareness about plasma donation and the different plasma protein therapies available along with their potential uses are expected to increase the uptake of these therapeutics in treating various conditions. The albumin market in Asia Pacific is projected to witness exponential growth during the forecast period. The region is anticipated to gain market share to capture around 26.0% in terms of revenue by 2026.



CSL Behring LLC, Grifols International, S.A., Inc., and Baxter to Lead Market



The albumin market witnesses moderate competition, as only a few players dominate the market. Key players operating in the market include CSL Behring LLC, Grifols International, S.A., Baxter, and Octapharma AG. New entrants refer to new companies that are interested in manufacturing and developing albumin as an excipient. Existing players have substantially large sales, marketing, financial, manufacturing, and other resources, which could pose a major challenge for new entrants. Additionally, stringent government regulations set by the U.S. FDA to monitor the quality of albumin could pose a barrier for new entrants. Players with strong financial and R&D background are anticipated to survive in this competitive market. Other players in the market include InVitria, Novozyme A/S, Sigma-Aldrich Co., HiMedia Laboratories Pvt. Ltd., Albumin Therapeutics, LLC, Medxbio Pte Ltd., RayBiotech, Inc., and SeraCare Life Sciences etc.



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Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Barbituric acid or malonylurea or 6-hydroxyuracil is an organic compound based on a pyrimidine heterocyclic skeleton. It is an odorless powder soluble in water. Barbituric acid is the parent compound of barbiturate drugs, although barbituric acid itself is not pharmacologically active.



China is the world's largest exporting country. Netherlands, Germany, India, USA and Japan need to import from China to meet the needs of the downstream vitamin or pharmaceutical industry. BASF and DSM are the world's largest consumers of barbituric acid due to their vitamin synthesis business.



Today's industrial marketplace is increasingly competitive and requires the ability to reduce costs, raise production and increase accuracy for any business that is going to survive. For businesses that will truly thrive, the ability to lead development and get products to market faster is also critical.



The global Barbituric Acid market was 16 million US$ in 2018 and is expected to 23 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 5.2% between 2019 and 2025.



This report studies the Barbituric Acid 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.



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Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share and growth Rate of Barbituric Acid 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



Zhengzhou Lifeng Chemical



Hebei Chengxin



By the product type, the market is primarily split into



Pharmaceutical Grade



Industrial Grade



By the end users/application, this report covers the following segments



VB2



Barbiturate



Dye Intermediates



Others



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- The bio vanillin market is majorly utilized in pharmaceuticals, food and beverages and it is safer and healthier substitute when compared to synthetic vanillin. The bio vanillin is also used in perfumes, personal care products and medicine. This is other factor positively stimulating demand for global bio vanillin market over the course of forecast period. The food regulatory authorities in Europe and U.S. have majorly contributed towards growth of the global bio vanillin market in the coming years. In addition to this, bio vanillin have utilized as premium ingredient and this is another factor propelling overall growth of this market.



According to Transparency Market Research, the global bio vanillin market is anticipated to rise with a strong CAGR of 7.4% within the forecast period from 2017 to 2025.



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Favorable Government Regulation to Boost Global Bio Vanillin Market



The favorable government regulation pertaining to the usage of bio based products in U.S. and Europe to boost demand for global bio vanillin market. Bio vanillin provides an amusing fragrance and cause minimal and it has no impact on human health. Extensive acceptance of bio vanillin due to its natural label over synthetic vanillin products has been the major factor supporting overall growth of this market in the coming years. Increase in number of food and beverages industry has fueled demand for global bio vanillin market over the forecast years.



High Expense Associated with Bio Vanillin to Hamper Overall Growth



On the other hand, high expense associated with the bio vanillin along with supply shortfall are some of the factor negatively impacting overall growth of the global bio vanillin market over the forthcoming years. Moreover, the bio vanillin market is under emerging state and this likely to create more opportunities in the coming years.



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From a geographical standpoint, Europe is likely to lead global bio vanillin market, and expected to account for massive share in the global bio vanillin market. The growth in the food and beverages industry is other driver propelling demand for global bio vanillin market. Other factor such as rising demand from emerging economies like India, China and Indonesia is one of the driver propelling overall demand in the global bio vanillin market.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- The Biogas Power Plant Market is expected to grow from USD 12.24 Billion in 2018 to USD 24.40 Billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 5.6%. The market is expected to be driven by an increasingly enhanced support shown by government and private bodies to the owners of biogas plants in terms of financial incentives and the favorable nature of regulations being established.



The market is also driven by purely positive air surrounding the establishment of successful biogas plants in terms of reducing the volume of waste disposed into landfills and thus becoming a strong alternative fuel source that is environmentally friendly.



The major players covered in this Biogas Power Plants market report are Agrinz Technologies GmbH (Austria), Scandinavian Biogas (Sweden), Beijing Sanyi Green Energy Development (China), Biofrigas Sweden AB (Sweden), IES BIOGAS (Italy), PlanET Biogas Global GmbH (Germany), CEZ Group (Czech Republic), Hangzhou Environmental Group (China), Wartsila (Finland), EnviTec Biogas AG (Germany) and others



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However, lack of implementation of processes and equipment to create a feasible waste segregation system is stifling the current rate of growth. This restricts the overall supply of feedstock to biogas plants, preventing the emergence of several new entrants into the competitive landscape.



Knowing the trends influencing the Biogas Power Plants industry performance

Stakeholders, marketing executives and business owners planning to refer Biogas Power Plants 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.



Market split by Type, can be divided into:

- Livestock Farms

- Industry Wastewater

- Municipal Sewage



Market split by End-Users, can be divided into:

- Household Electricity

- Commercial Electricity



Market split by Distribution, can be divided into:

- Direct

- Indirect



Geographically, this Biogas Power Plants market 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 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



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Further key findings from the report suggest:

- The Biogas Power Plant Market is expected to grow from USD 12.24 Billion in 2018 to USD 24.40 Billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 5.6%. The market is expected to be driven by an increasingly enhanced support shown by government and private bodies to the owners of biogas plants in terms of financial incentives and the favorable nature of regulations being established.

- On the basis of type, the livestock farms market is expected to hold the largest market and is estimated to reach USD 8.74 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period. This is mainly due to the support from the Ministry of Agriculture and the increasing demand of farm lands to install biogas power plant in Europe and Asia Pacific.

- On the basis of end-users, the commercial electricity segment is expected to hold the largest market and is estimated to reach USD 13.32 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 15.6% share during the forecast period. The wastage from the biogas plant is used as organic manure / fertilizer directly or after drying to improve soil fertility and reduce the use of chemical fertilizers. It is also non - polluting as it is free of weeds, foul smell and pathogens.

- Based on distribution, the indirect channel is expected to hold a larger market share and is estimated to grow the highest at a CAGR of 11.1% during the forecast period. In case, the point of consumption is relatively close (e.g. less than 1 mile) to the point of production, the gas would typically be distributed via dedicated pipelines (buried or aboveground). This is usually the most cost - effective method for short distances over private property where easements are not required. Costs for laying dedicated pipelines can vary greatly per mile. Note that gas distributed via dedicated bio methane pipelines must compete with natural gas prices in the marketplace.

- Europe is forecasted to grow the largest and is estimated to reach USD 9.02 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast year and is expected to maintain its dominance over the forecast period. In Europe there is a strong development of on-farm and centralized biogas plants and for landfills to recover biogas in electricity production. Most biogas plants were built in Germany within Europe.



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Key Points from TOC:

Chapter 10. Company Profiles

10.1. Agrinz Technologies GmbH

10.1.1. Company Overview

10.1.2. Financial Performance

10.1.3. Type Insights

10.1.4. Strategic Initiatives

10.2. Scandinavian Biogas

10.2.1. Company Overview

10.2.2. Financial Performance

10.2.3. Type Insights

10.2.4. Strategic Initiatives

10.3. Beijing Sanyi Green Energy Development

10.3.1. Company Overview

10.3.2. Financial Performance

10.3.3. Type Insights

10.3.4. Strategic Initiatives

Continued



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Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Cold Plate is aluminum or other plate containing internal tubing through which a liquid coolant is forced, to absorb heat transferred to the plate by transistors and other components mounted on it. It is one of the most common liquid cooling solutions that make use of direct contact between the Cold Plate and the object to be cooled. This direct contact allows the heat to be efficiently conducted. Cold Plate offers many advantages over forced air cooled heat sinks such as performance, noise level and reliability.



China is the world's largest exporting country. Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia and the United States need to import cold plate from China. In addition, many companies set up production bases in China. At the same time, China can also produce OEM cold plate. It should be noted that some of Aavid's products come from China or India (OEM form). Today's industrial marketplace is increasingly competitive and requires the ability to reduce costs, raise production and increase accuracy for any business that is going to survive. For businesses that will truly thrive, the ability to lead development and get products to market faster is also critical.



The global Cold Plate market was 250 million US$ in 2018 and is expected to 420 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 7.4% between 2019 and 2025. This report studies the Cold Plate 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.



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Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share and growth Rate of Cold Plate 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



Aavid



Lytron



Asia Vital Components



Wakefield-Vette



Wolverine Tube



Xenbo Electric



Columbia-Staver



TAT Technologies



Ellediesse



DAU



TE Technology



Wenxuan Hardware



Kawaso Texcel



Hitachi



Suzhou Wint Electric



Tucker Engineering



Shanghai Kissthermal



MaxQ Technology



Mikros



HS Marston



By the product type, the market is primarily split into



Formed Tube Cold Plate



Deep Drilled Cold Plate



Machined Channel Cold Plate



Pocketed Folded-fin Cold Plate



By the end users/application, this report covers the following segments



High Power Electronic Equipment



Laser Device



Power Conversion Equipment



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- The Constant Current LED Driver Market was valued at USD 9.65 Billion in 2018 and is expected to reach USD 27.54 Billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 12.7% during the forecast period. The government policies and economic development owing to rapid urbanization in the developing countries have led to the growth in usage of LED lighting.



Increasing industrial development and population growth have in recent years led to an increase in global energy demand. The decreasing amount of resources and rising demand for energy have resulted in a worldwide energy crisis.



The major players covered in this Constant Current LED Drivers market report are Atmel Corp. (US), General Electric (US), Macroblock, Inc. (Taiwan), On Semiconductor (US), Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Netherlands), Atmel Corporation (US), Texas Instruments, Inc. (US), Cree Inc. (US), AC Electronics (US), Maxim Integrated, Inc. (US), Osram Gmbh (Germany), Rohm Semiconductors (Japan), Harvard Engineering (US) and others



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Development of LEDs as a cost effective lighting technology for general lighting applications, is rising, especially for residential, commercial, and industrial lighting. This is mainly attributed due to superior features offered by LED bulbs over conventional lighting sources such as incandescent, and fluorescent lamps, such as in product life cycle, lumen outputs, and low energy costs.



Knowing the trends influencing the Constant Current LED Drivers industry performance

Stakeholders, marketing executives and business owners planning to refer Constant Current LED Drivers 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.



Market split by Power, can be divided into:

- 0-10W

- 10-60W

- 60-100W

- >100W



Market split by AC Input Voltage, can be divided into:

- Less than 120 V

- 120-299V

- 300 and above



Market split by Dimming Type, can be divided into:

- No Dimming

- 0-10V (1-100%)

- 0-10V

- 10-100%

- 01-100%

- 1-100%

- Bluetooth 1-100%

- For/Rev Phase

- Others



Market split by Driver Type, can be divided into:

- External

- Internal



Market split by Technology, can be divided into:

- Smart

- Conventional



Market split by End Use, can be divided into:

- Architecture

- Commercial Lighting

- Airports and Dockyard

- Healthcare

- Office

- Horticulture

- Retail

- Others



Market split by Application, can be divided into:

- Accent Light

- Area Lighting

- Cove Lights

- LED Displays

- Linear

- Portable PCs

- Others



Geographically, this Constant Current LED Drivers market 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 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



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Further key findings from the report suggest:

- The Constant Current LED Driver market was valued at USD 9.65 Billion in 2018 and is expected to reach USD 27.54 Billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 12.7% during the forecast period. The government policies and economic development owing to rapid urbanization in the developing countries have led to the growth in usage of LED lighting.

- The market for LED Displays is estimated to hold the largest market share to reach USD 7.16 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 13.3% during the forecast period. The market for portable PCs is estimated to reach USD 2.48 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 11.2% during the forecast period.

- The market for smart technologies is expected to reach USD 16.03 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 13.5% during the forecast period. Smart lighting systems are designed to ensure energy efficiency and include automated controls and highly efficient

- The rapid urbanization and changing people's lifestyles have installations that can make adjustments, such as occupancy, depending on conditions.

- Based on end user, the market for architecture is estimated to reach USD 4.35 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 13.4% during the forecast period. Companies offer solutions based on accepted international and national standards for architectural lighting. Manufacturers currently offer smart architectural lighting solutions that, with the help of sensors that observe people, provide safe and efficient on-demand lighting and set the lighting intensity to the required levels automatically.

- The market for Asia Pacific (APAC) is expected to grow the largest and highest to reach USD 10.19 Billion in 2026, at a CAGR of 13.1%. Because of rapid urbanization in the emerging countries, economic development and government policies have led to high use of LED lighting. Due to increased investment by companies in expanding production facilities, the fall in LED prices has resulted in a significant growth of the Asia-Pacific LED driver market. Countries such as India, Japan, South Korea, and China make a major contribution to the region.



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Key Points from TOC:

Chapter 14. Company Profiles

14.1. Atmel Corp.

14.1.1. Company Overview

14.1.2. Financial Performance

14.1.3. Technology Insights

14.1.4. Strategic Initiatives

14.2. Cree Inc.

14.2.1. Company Overview

14.2.2. Financial Performance

14.2.3. Technology Insights

14.2.4. Strategic Initiatives

14.3. General Electric Co.

14.3.1. Company Overview

14.3.2. Financial Performance

14.3.3. Technology Insights

14.3.4. Strategic Initiatives

Continued



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he banking system and operations of credit institutions are crucial to the nation's economy, according to an official.

The statement was made by Nguyen Kim Anh, Deputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam during a conference, held in Hanoi on April 11, to implement the banking sector's action programme and development strategy.

All the viewpoints, objectives, missions and solutions mentioned in the strategy will be the guideline for all activities, both State management and business activities of credit institutions, ensuring comprehensive development, opening a new fruitful development period for the banking industry, Anh said.

Under the strategy, the overall objective of the banking industry by 2025 is to modernise the State Bank and develop the credit institutions system.

For commercial banks, initially the goal of the banking sector is to restructure the credit institutions system, handle bad debts, ensure depositors' rights and maintain system stability.

By 2020, at least 12-15 commercial banks will be required to have successfully adopted Basel II, a set of banking laws and regulations issued by the Basel Committee on banking supervision to enhance competition and transparency and make banks more resistant to market changes. At least one or two banks are hoped to be named in Asia's list of top 100 largest banks in terms of assets by the year.

In terms of operation, the first stage, the banking sector aims to increase the proportion of non-credit service income in total earnings to 12-13 percent, and gradually raise it to 16-17 percent. The sector also expects to complete the listing of commercial banks on the stock market and to cut the bad debt ratio to below 3 percent.

Vietnam aims to have at least two or three banks in Asia's top 100 largest banks in terms of assets by 2025.

In the second stage, the goal of the sector is to improve competitiveness, transparency and compliance with international standards and practices.

By the end of 2025, the banking sector targets to have at least three to five banks listed on foreign stock markets.

Also in the second stage, all commercial banks will have to apply Basel II. Basel II is also expected to be piloted at State-owned banks and some joint stock banks.

At the conference, Nghiem Xuan Thanh, Chairman of Vietcombank Board of Directors, said that to accomplish these goals, the management agencies must develop support solutions, with increasing capital being the biggest issue.

The need to increase charter capital is "extremely urgent", Thanh said.

To ensure the operation according to international practices and maintain the momentum of growth, raising capital is crucial to commercial banks, especially banks backed by the State, he said.

Regarding piloting Basel II, he said that the central bank should provide clear guidance for banks to help them apply Basel II standards quicker. - VNA
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- According to a new market research report on the construction robots market, published by Transparency Market Research the global construction robots market is expected to reach value of US$ 470.61 Mn by 2026, expanding at a CAGR of 10.4% from 2018 to 2026. Asia Pacific is likely to continue to lead the global market, with the market in the region expanding at a CAGR of 12.4% between 2018 and 2026.



Construction companies welcoming their new robot workers are driving the global construction robots market



Earlier, the construction industry was one of the most unfamiliar R&D fields for the robotics & automation community, despite the fact that the industry is one of the oldest and the largest economic sectors. However, in recent years, the construction industry has become one of the most important research areas in the field of service robotics.



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The key difficulty with robotics & automation in construction (RAC) is related to nature of the work environment, which is highly unstructured. Automation is changing the face of nearly every industry across the world, whereas the construction industry may pave the way for robots. In the construction industry, robots can carry out 80% of the work, which is more repetitive, more dangerous, and more monotonous.



Global Construction Robots Market: Scope of Report



The global construction robots market has been broadly segmented in terms of automation, function, application, and geography. In terms of automation, the market has been classified into fully autonomous robots and semi-autonomous robots. Among these, the semi-autonomous robots segment accounted for a major market share of around 74% in 2017. The segment is expected to expand at a significant CAGR of 11.0% during the forecast period. The need for broader and more efficient infrastructure and improved monitoring of infrastructure for predictive and corrective maintenance are factors driving the segment.



Based on function, the construction robots market has been divided into 3D-printing robots, demolition robots, bricklaying robot, and others. The combination of 3D-printing and industrial robots is some of the most promising automation technologies in the construction industry. In terms of application, the construction robots market has been classified into commercial buildings, residential buildings, public infrastructure, and others. In 2017, the public infrastructure segment accounted for a prominent market share. The segment is estimated to expand at a significant CAGR of 10.9% during the forecast period.



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Based on region, the global construction robots market has been segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and South America. Asia Pacific dominated the global market in 2017. The region has abundant natural reserves distributed across various countries. Mining and construction are among the top industries in Australia, China, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam. With growing urbanization and wide availability of natural resources in the region, mining and construction companies have started using automated equipment, operating software, and communication systems to connect and operate on site. Europe held a major share of the global construction robots market in 2017. This can be attributed to extensive facilities of various companies for the development and production of construction and demolition robots, and increasing need for residential and non-residential construction projects in the region.
Pune, Maharashtra -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- The global demand for oil refining pumps is expected to surpass 3 million tons by 2018 end, according to a latest Fact.MR report on oil refining pumps market. Rising oil and gas production, and increase in petroleum-based power generation are driving oil refining pumps demand. The oil supply has sharply increased from Russia, Middle East, and the US, compensating for fall in oil production in Iran and Venezuela.



The demand for centrifugal pumps is constantly rising in upstream oil and gas industry in multiphase or tri-phase pumping application. With the increasing demand for oil, especially in developing regions, transporting a large amount of liquid has become necessary to ensure operational efficiency. This is driving the demand for centrifugal pumps to transport a significant amount of liquid in a short period.



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APAC to Continue Strong Position in Oil Refining Pumps Market



The Fact.MR study projects that APAC continues to register significant growth in the oil refining pumps market and is likely to account for over 40% of total demand by 2018 end. The positive outlook in the region can be attributed to the growing demand for diesel and gasoline in emerging nations like India and China.



The upgradation of existing oil refineries and robust investment in the construction of new oil refineries is fueling the growth in the oil refining pumps market in the region. Rising oil demand and faced with strict emission regulations, India is also moving towards development of new and modern refineries.



According to the International Energy Agency (IEA's) latest World Outlook Projection, India's refining capacity is likely to grow by two-thirds in the next 25 years. This is expected to make India world's third largest refining center by 2040, following the US and China.



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Major oil companies in Southeast Asia are also investing in increasing their refining capacity. Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand are likely to see growth in new refining capacity in the coming years. The development of new and advanced oil refineries in APAC is expected to create growth opportunities for oil refining pumps manufacturers.



Energy Transition Emerging as Serious Challenge for Oil Companies and Oil Exporting Countries



Global oil companies and oil exporting countries are likely to face a challenge with the rise in energy transition. The biggest challenge for oil companies make changes in their business model and integrating low-carbon assets in their portfolios. With the growing trend of renewable energy sources, oil exporting countries with good reserves-to-production ration are facing the risk of loss in export revenues and monetizing their large reserve base.



Penetration of renewables has increased in Europe to meet the energy demand, resulting in reduced oil demand. Moreover, regulation by national governments and European Union is likely to further reduce refined oil demand in the region. Oil refineries in Europe are unable to find buyers, resulting in constant drop in profit margins. Inability to find buyers and drop in profit margins is forcing oil refinery operators to shut down the plants.



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More refinery plants shutdown expected in the coming years in Europe is likely to impact the oil refining pumps market in the region. Moreover, key oil companies across various regions are also planning to invest more in low-carbon energy sources with aim to reduce carbon footprints.



The Fact.MR report tracks the oil refining pumps market for the period 2018-2028. According to the report, the oil refining pumps market is expected to reach 2.9% CAGR during 2018-2028.



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- The global Endoscopy Ultrasound Market was valued at approximately US$ 650.0 Mn in 2017 and is projected to expand at a cumulative annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 5.0% from 2018 to 2026, according to a new report published by Transparency Market Research (TMR) titled 'Endoscopy Ultrasound Market  Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 20182026.'



The report suggests that increase in incidence of gastrointestinal cancers, rise in applications of endoscopy ultrasound as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool for gastrointestinal cancers and other pancreatic conditions, and increase in number of new and advanced products introduced in the global market are factors propelling the expansion of the market. Implementation of training and education programs regarding endoscopy ultrasound procedures in countries in Asia Pacific countries and rise in demand for new diagnostic tools for cancer are likely to lead to rise in adoption of endoscopy ultrasound techniques in the region. This is projected to drive the comparatively higher growth of the market in Asia Pacific in the coming years.



Endoscopy ultrasound techniques require skilled professionals in terms of performing the procedures and trained professionals for disinfection and delicate handling of the endoscopes and other equipment during the process. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and other health care agencies have laid down policies and regulations regarding proficiency of health care providers for performing endoscopy ultrasound procedures in any health care setting. For instance, a working group mandated by the British Society of Gastroenterology recommended that trainees should complete 250 EUS procedures, including 80 luminal cancers, 20 sub-epithelial lesions, and 150 pancreato-biliary cases. However, there is a lack of training and educational programs conducted and implemented globally, leading to a lack of adequately trained professionals adept at performing endoscopy ultrasound techniques. This has led to an increase in the gap between demand for and supply of endoscopy ultrasound procedures globally. This is restraining the growth of the global endoscopy ultrasound market.



The report offers detailed segmentation of the global endoscopy ultrasound market based on product, procedure, technology, application, end-user, and geography. In terms of product, the endoscopes and needles segments are projected to gain market share between 2018 and 2026. Constant innovations by market players in the endoscopes and EUS needles segments; diverse applications of endoscopy ultrasound techniques demanding new and ergonomically designed endoscopes and needles for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes; and technological advances in endoscopy ultrasound techniques, including elastography endoscopy ultrasound (EG-EUS), contrast-enhanced endoscopy ultrasound (CE-EUS), and other techniques are boosting demand for innovative product offerings. Market players are offering new endoscope and needle products to cater to these demands. These factors are projected to drive the expansion and market share of the endoscopes and needles segments in the coming years.



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In terms of technology, the linear scanning segment is projected to dominate the global market during the forecast period. Radial scanning technology is mostly suitable for screening of esophageal cancer, and the use of this technology is limited to diagnostic procedures and does not allow health care providers to perform therapeutic procedures, including fine-needle aspiration and biopsy. New technological advances in EUS have led to an increase in adoption of linear scanning technology for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures for various GI cancers and pancreatic conditions.



Based on application, oncology is projected to be a prominent segment of the endoscopy ultrasound market, owing to higher specificity and accuracy of endoscopy ultrasound in the diagnosis of gastrointestinal cancers and the therapeutic role of endoscopy ultrasound in fine-needle aspiration and biopsy of cancer tissues. Moreover, new technologies, including elastography, have widened the applications of endoscopy ultrasound techniques in oncology. This is anticipated to propel the oncology segment between 2018 and 2026.



In terms of value, North America was a leading contributor to the global endoscopy ultrasound market in 2017. The market in Asia Pacific is expected to expand at a prominent CAGR in the coming years. This is due to rapid adoption of endoscopy ultrasound techniques as a diagnostic and therapeutic tool in cancer and other pancreatic conditions in emerging countries, including China and India. Moreover, implementation of training facilities and adequate educational programs leading to an increase in the number of skilled professionals able to perform endoscopy ultrasound procedures is likely to boost demand for them. Furthermore, rise in incidence of gastric cancers in countries in Asia Pacific is projected to drive the market in the region from 2018 to 2026. Developing health care infrastructure in Brazil and improving reimbursement policies for endoscopy ultrasound procedures in the country are propelling the endoscopy ultrasound market in Latin America.



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The report also provide profiles of leading players operating in global endoscopy ultrasound market. Key players include Olympus Corporation, PENTAX Medical, FUJIFILM Corporation, CONMED Corporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Esaote SpA, Cook, Medtronic, and Medi-Globe Corporation. Strong product offerings, innovative technologies, and strong and diverse global presence were some of the major factors responsible for the prominent share of these companies in the global endoscopy ultrasound market in 2017.
Northbrook, IL -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- According to the new market research report "Europe VFDs Market by Application (Pump, Fan, Compressor, Conveyor, Extruder), Power Rating (00.5, 0.520, 2050, 50200, >200kW), Voltage (Low and Medium) And Countries (Germany, Russia, UK, France, Italy, Spain) - Global Forecast to 2024", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Europe Variable Frequency Drives Market is projected to grow from an estimated USD 5.2 billion in 2019 to USD 6.4 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 4.13% during the forecast period. The growth of this market is driven by the increasing investments in the energy and construction industries.



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The pump segment, by application, is expected to be the fastest growing market during the forecast period



The pump segment is the largest market at a CAGR of 4.61% from 2019 to 2024. The increasing pump exports and its use in various industries are likely to drive the pump segment of the Europe Variable Frequency Drives Market.



The 0.520 kW segment, by power rating, is expected to be the largest market from 2019 to 2024



The 0.5-20 kW segment is expected to reach USD 755.3 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 4.90% from 2019 to 2024. The high energy savings at a low capital cost increases the demand for the 0.520 kW segment. The 2050 kW segment is the second largest segment. It is expected to reach USD 1,346.8 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 4.28% from 2019 to 2024.



Browse and in-depth TOC on "Europe VFDs Market"

65 - Tables

33 - Figures

116 - Pages



The low voltage segment, by voltage, is expected to be the largest market from 2019 to 2024



The low voltage segment is expected to reach USD 4,245.5 million by 2019, at a CAGR of 4.21% from 2019 to 2024. It is the largest European variable frequency drives market, by voltage, as the usage of variable frequency drives in mining, pulp & paper, water & wastewater, and oil & gas industries is increasing.



Germany: The largest market for Europe variable frequency drives during the forecast period



In this report, the Europe Variable Frequency Drives Market has been analyzed with respect to 6 major countries, namely, Germany, Russia, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. Germany is estimated to dominate the Europe Variable Frequency Drives Market in 2018, owing to increasing investments in the energy and construction industries. Other countries in this region are also investing in energy. Increasing demand for renewable power generation inhemical and food & beverage industries is expected to boost the Europe Variable Frequency Drives Market in this region. The Government in this region is focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Such initiatives are the major drivers for this market.



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To enable an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes the profiles of some of the top players in the Europe VFDs Market. Some of the key players are ABB (Switzerland), Eaton (Ireland), Schneider (France), Siemens (Germany), Danfoss (Denmark), Fuji (Japan), Rockwell (US), Yaskawa (Japan), CG Power and Industrial Solutions (India), Hitachi (Japan), WEG SA (Brazil), and TMEIC (Japan). The leading players are adopting various organic and inorganic strategies to increase their share in the Europe Variable Frequency Drives Market.



Please Explore Relevant Reports:



Variable Frequency Drive (VFD) Market by Type (AC, DC, and Servo), End-Users (Industrial, Infrastructure, Oil & Gas, and Power Generation), Application (Pumps, Fans, Compressors, and Conveyors), Power Range, Voltage, and Region - Global Forecast to 2023



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- An up to date business intelligence report compiled at Persistence Market Research (PMR) notifies that the shares in the global automotive composites market are moderately consolidated among a handful of players who have the technological expertise to cater to diverse demands. In the automotive industry, the current trend is to develop vehicles that are fuel efficient, and a number of players are transforming their business to meet these changing requirements. For instance, Toray Industries has inaugurated a new production facility in Japan that is expected to starting churning out electrode sheets for nearly 100,000 fuel cell vehicles each year from 2018 onwards. Toray's new carbon fiber composite is expected to be stronger and lighter with complex shapes.



Toho Tenax is another reputed name in the global automotive composites market, providing customized products from lightweight electric hybrids to high-performance racing cars. Some of the popular products from the company are Tenax Filament Yarn, Tenax ThermoPlastics, Tenax Short Fibers, Tenax Dry Reinforcements, Tenax Part via Preform, and Tenax Prepreg. Solvay S.A. is another key holding a strong position in the global automotive composites market, offering its DForm component technology that serves the high and medium volume automobile market, providing high deposition rates and ease of processing with its continuous fiber advanced molding system.



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Global Automotive Composites Market to Attain Valuation of US$7,019.7 million by 2022



As per the projections of the PMR report, the demand in the global automotive composites market will swell at an impressive CAGR of 8.9% over the course of the forecast period of 2017 to 2022. In terms of revenue, the scopes in this market are estimated to be worth US$7,019.7 by the end of 2022, considerably more than the market's evaluated worth of US$4,589.7 million in 2017. The analysts of the report have identified SGL Group from Germany, Mitsubishi Chemical Company from Japan, and Owens Corning and Plasan Carbon Composites from the U.S. as some of the other companies currently ahead of the curve in the global automotive composites market.



Based on composite materials, the PMR report segments the market for automotive composites into polymer matrix, ceramic matrix, and metal matrix. On the basis of manufacturing process, the market has been bifurcated into injection and continuous process, compression process, and manual process. The market has also been categorized on the basis of composite components, into engine and drivetrain components, exterior, and interior. Geographically, Asia Pacific has been picked out as the region with maximum opportunities. By the end of 2022, this region is anticipated to provide for more than half of the total demand in the global automotive composites market.



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Government Regulations to Reduce Carbon Emission Driving Demand



A number of factors have been detected that are expected to drive the automotive composites market in the near future, such as growing demand for lightweight passenger vehicles that offer higher fuel efficiency and government regulations to adopt ways to reduce carbon emission from vehicles. In addition to that, the automotive industry is currently flourishing in the region of Asia Pacific, finding strong demand the emerging economies of China and India. These two countries are vastly populated and increased per capita vehicle ownership is expected to reflect positively on this market. On the other hand, high cost of raw materials is the most prominent restraint over the prosperity of the automotive composites market. The technology needs to be harnessed further for it to be more affordable for larger masses across the world.



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Growth factors are group of proteins, which play an important role in the stimulation of cellular differentiation and cell division in the human body. There are different kinds of growth factors present in the human body. Some of the major growth factors include insulin-like growth factors, platelet-derived growth factors, epidermal growth factors, and nerve growth factor. Moreover, some cytokines, such as small proteins secreted by one cell to regulate the function of another cell, also act as growth factors.



Growth factors are mainly used in the treatment of chronic diseases, such as anemia, renal disorders, cancer, etc. For instance, erythropoietin, which stimulates the growth of Red Blood Cells (RBCs), is used to treat anemia. Granulocyte-Macrophage Colony-Stimulating Factor (GM-CSF) and Granulocyte Colony-Stimulating Factor (G-CSF) are involved in the stimulation of White Blood Cells (WBCs) in cancer patients. However, abnormal production of growth factors causes several diseases. For instance, vascular endothelial growth factor provokes endothelial cells to penetrate tumor in blood capillaries.



The global growth factors market covers various blood growth factors and tissue growth factors. Blood growth factors include colony stimulating factors, erythropoietins, interferons, and interleukins.



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In terms of geography, North America dominates the global growth factors market. This is due to improved health care infrastructure and increasing prevalence of chronic diseases in the region. In addition, growing demand for recombinant growth factors has also propelled the growth of the market in North America. The U.S. represents the largest market for growth factors in North America, followed by Canada. In Europe, Germany, France, and the U.K. account for the major share of the growth factors market. The growth factors market in Asia is also expected to expand at a higher rate in the next five years. This is due to the rising awareness about therapeutic applications of growth factors in the treatment of chronic diseases in the region. In addition, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and growing aging population are driving the expansion of the growth factors market in the region. Growing demographics and economies in developing countries, such as India and China, are expected to lead to the rise in the growth factors market in Asia. Moreover, India, China, and Japan, are expected to be the fastest growing markets for growth factors in the region.



Increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and rising awareness about therapeutic applications of growth factors in treatment of various diseases are among the major driving factors for the global growth factors market. Also, increasing research in the field of synthetic blood growth factor has propelled the growth of the global growth factors market.



Risk and complications associated with synthetic growth factors in treatment of diseases is a key restraint for the global growth factors market. In addition, the imposition of stringent regulations for the approval of synthetic growth factors inhibits the growth of the market. Rapid product launches and increasing number of mergers and acquisitions between growth factors manufacturing companies are some of the major trends observed in the market.



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The major companies operating in this market are Wockhardt Ltd., F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Alseres Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc., Amgen Inc., BioMimetic Therapeutics Inc., Ceregene, Inc., FibroGen, Inc., Novo Nordisk A/S, Johnson & Johnson Limited, Merck Serono International S.A., PeproTech Inc., NsGene A/S, Insmed Inc., Reliance GeneMedix Plc., and Lonza Group.
Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- A mask is an original master for transferring IC patterns to the semiconductor wafers. Defects during lithography that exceed expected size must be identified and corrected. Semiconductor devices are manufactured using photomasks, which serve as the source of original patterns for integrated circuits.

2019 is expected to be a challenging year for the semiconductor industry mainly due to macroeconomic factors such as a slowdown in the Chinese economy, falling average selling prices of smartphones, and declining tablets and PC segments. However, the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), automation in automobiles, and the concept of a connected environment are expected to create substantial demand for semiconductor devices during the forecast period.



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Intense market competition, rapid technological advances, and cyclical nature of the semiconductor industry pose significant challenges to market vendors. The market has significant entry barriers such as high capital investments which challenge the entry of new players in the market. The competition among the vendors is expected to intensify due to the emergence of new technology milestones like IoT and wearable technology.

In terms of geography, the APAC region led the global mask inspection equipment and the four countries including China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, have reached close to $400.82 million in 2018, due to the existence of manufacturing industries in Asian countries. China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have a very rich environment for manufacturing companies. The economic growth in China and India is also driving the strong demand for electronic products in the semiconductor inspection system market.



The global Mask Inspection Equipment market was 540 million US$ in 2018 and is expected to 870 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 7.0% between 2019 and 2025.



This report studies the Mask Inspection Equipment 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.



Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share and growth Rate of Mask Inspection Equipment 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

KLA-Tencor

Applied Materials

Lasertec

Carl Zeiss

ASML(HMI)

Vision Technology

By the product type, the market is primarily split into

Die to Die (DD) Method

Die to Database (DB) Method

By the end users/application, this report covers the following segments

Semiconductor Device Manufacturers

Mask Shops



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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



The study objectives of this report are:

To study and analyze the global Mask Inspection Equipment market size (value & volume) by company, key regions/countries, products and application, history data from 2014 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.

To understand the structure of Mask Inspection Equipment market by identifying its various subsegments.

To share detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (growth potential, opportunities, drivers, industry-specific challenges and risks).

Focuses on the key global Mask Inspection Equipment manufacturers, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape, SWOT analysis and development plans in next few years.

To analyze the Mask Inspection Equipment with respect to individual growth trends, future prospects, and their contribution to the total market.

To project the value and volume of Mask Inspection Equipment submarkets, with respect to key regions (along with their respective key countries).

To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.

To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their growth strategies.



In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Mask Inspection Equipment are as follows:

History Year: 2014-2018

Base Year: 2018

Estimated Year: 2019

Forecast Year 2019 to 2025



Click to view Tables, Charts, Figures, TOC, and Companies Mentioned in the global GaN Devices market Report: https://www.qyresearch.com/index/detail/1057162/global-mask-inspection-equipment-market



This report includes the estimation of market size for value (million USD) and volume (K sqm). Both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to estimate and validate the market size of Mask Inspection Equipment market, to estimate the size of various other dependent submarkets in the overall market. Key players in the market have been identified through secondary research, and their market shares have been determined through primary and secondary research. All percentage shares, splits, and breakdowns have been determined using secondary sources and verified primary sources.



For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2018 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.



Key Stakeholders

Raw material suppliers

Distributors/traders/wholesalers/suppliers

Regulatory bodies, including government agencies and NGO

Commercial research & development (R&D) institutions

Importers and exporters

Government organizations, research organizations, and consulting firms

Trade associations and industry bodies

End-use industries



Available Customizations

With the given market data, QYResearch offers customizations according to the company's specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:

Further breakdown of Mask Inspection Equipment market on basis of the key contributing countries.

Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players.



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 a brand of quality assurance in the consulting industry.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Nitric acid, also known as spirit of niter or aqua fortis, is a corrosive mineral acid. Nitric acid in pure form is colorless and becomes pale yellow due to decomposition of oxides. Commercially sold nitric acid has concentration of around 70%. Nitric acid with more than 85% concentration is known as fuming nitric acid. Depending upon the concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, nitric acid is further classified as red fuming and white fuming depending upon the color of the solution. Nitric acid is used as a reagent in nitration reactions. Few of the nitric acid based compounds are unstable and are generally sued in explosives while the stable compounds are used in manufacturing of paints, dyes and pigments. Commercially, nitric acid is manufactured through Ostwald's process in which there is catalytic oxidation of anhydrous ammonia. The process gives nitric oxide which is again treated with water and then reoxidized to get nitric acid. The aqueous solutions will have concentration of around 65% while further concentration of more than 95% is achieved through dehydration with 98% sulfuric acid.



The market for nitric acid was mainly driven by fertilizer industry. Nitric acid is used in manufacturing of ammonium nitrate and calcium ammonium nitrate which finds application in fertilizers. Ammonium nitrate is also used in manufacturing of urea ammonium nitrate (UAN) which is used as fertilizer solution and in explosives. Ammonium nitrate is also used as blasting and explosives agent in various applications. Calcium ammonium nitrate is used in manufacturing of fertilizers solutions. Adipic acid is one of the applications which use nitric acid during manufacturing process. Adipic acid is used in manufacturing of nylon 6,6. Nylon 6,6 is used in various end-user industries such as automotive, textiles and tire among others. Nitric acid is also used as an intermediate in manufacturing of toluene diisocyanate (TDI). Toluene diisocyanate is used in manufacturing of polyurethane foams which are used in automotive, transpiration, carpet and furniture industry. Nitric acid is used as an intermediate in manufacturing of nitrobenzene and nitrochlorobenzenes among others. Nitric acid is also used as oxidizer in rocket propellants. However, the market is likely to hinder in near future owing to environmental and health hazards associated with the nitric acid industry.



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In terms of demand, Europe was the leading region in nitric acid market in 2013. The demand in the Europe is mainly driven by fertilizer and explosives industry. Western and Eastern Europe had the highest demand for nitric acid in this region. However, central Europe is likely to offer better opportunity for the market in near future. Europe was followed by Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is considered to be one of the fastest growing regions for the nitric acid market. China had the highest demand for nitric acid in this region. India, Japan and Taiwan are expected to positive outlook for the nitric acid market in upcoming years. North America had the third-largest demand for nitric acid market in 2013. Increasing demand for nitric acid from fertilizer industry coupled other end-user such as explosives, TDI and adipic acid has been driving the market for nitric acid. U.S. had the highest demand for nitric acid in North America. Rest of the World market is anticipated to demonstrate optimistic future for the nitric acid market. Latin America and the Middle East will exhibit higher demand for nitric acid over the forecast period.



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Some of the key manufacturers in the nitric acid market are Agrium Inc., BASF SE, Bayer AG, LyondellBasell Industries and The Dow Chemical Company among others.
Pune, Maharashtra -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- The oil & gas pumps market is likely to witness sluggish growth, with global demand surpassing 9 million units by the end of 2018, according to a latest report by Fact.MR. Rising demand for oil and gas is resulting in the growing demand for equipment such as oil & gas pumps. End-users in oil and gas industries are demanding efficient oil & gas pumps to ensure smooth operation and to meet stringent emission standards.



End-users of oil & gas pumps are using centrifugal pumps on a large scale owing to its low product and maintenance cost, and better load and pressure handling capabilities. The demand for centrifugal pumps is healthy in the upstream oil & gas industry as the part of multiphase pumping application.



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As per the report, the demand for submersible pumps is also likely to grow in the near future. Electric submersible pumps are being used on a large scale as water and oil separators. The centrifugal pumps are also expected to witness increasing demand for crude oil transportation. Manufacturers in oil & gas pumps market are focusing on pump modification to save significant amount of energy and improve performance.



Onshore Oil & Gas Pumps to Find Large Application in Projects across Countries



The Fact.MR study opines that the onshore oil & gas pumps are likely to witness a rapid growth in the coming years. Demand for onshore oil & gas pumps is expected to exceed 4.8 million units in 2018. With rise in energy demand from various sectors and growth in the transportation industry, many countries, especially in Asia Pacific, are moving towards development of new oil & gas projects.



India, China, and Indonesia are expected to significantly contribute to the growth of oil and gas industry in the region. With the signs of recovery in oil prices, many state-owned oil companies in the Asia Pacific region are spending on onshore oil and gas production to ensure energy security.



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Upgradation of existing onshore oil and gas facilities and development of new facilities is also accelerating in Southeast Asia. Moreover, in recent years, regulation in the UK has removed legal hurdles in the development of onshore petroleum resources. Moreover, in terms of gas transportation by the onshore gas producers in the UK, the government has removed requirement to hold a gas transporter license, and a class exemption has been introduced to cover all types of onshore gas production.



MEA to Continue its Dominance in Oil & Gas Pumps Market, Followed by APAC



Fact.MR study estimates that the Middle East and Africa will be the most lucrative market for oil & gas pumps market, with demand surpassing 3 million units towards 2018 end. UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have emerged as the major natural gas producing countries.



Major oil and gas companies in Middle East are focusing on increasing oil and gas production to meet the growing demand. Middle East and North Africa are expected to emerge as the global suppliers of oil and gas. Moreover, gas is likely to surpass oil as the largest energy source in the near future.



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The leading oil and gas companies in the region are also focusing on using advanced technologies and equipment to ensure faster and cost-effective oil and gas production. In the APAC region, China, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia are expected to witness significant growth in the oil and natural gas projects.



The oil & gas pumps market is expected to witness sluggish growth, with the demand expected to reach 3.2% CAGR in terms of volume during 2018-2028, according to the Fact.MR report.



About Fact.MR

Fact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Polyamideimide fibers are one of the most essential fibers in aramid family. Polyamideimide fibers are thermoplastic or thermosetting polymers which have excellent chemical, thermal and mechanical resistance properties. Polyamideimide fibers have properties of both polyamides and polyimides. Polyamideimide fibers are non flammable due to higher double bonds and aromatic structures. Polyamideimide fibers offer higher resistance to abrasion and fire. Polyamideimide fibers have lower thermal conductivity as compared to other aramid fibers. Due to excellent chemical resistance polyamideimide fibers finds applications in chemical plants where there is regular spillage of chemicals. Polyamideimide fibers offer excellent protection against flame and radiant heat. Polyamideimide fibers will not melt and will not form molten droplets. Polyamideimide fibers can be either manufactured through diisocyantes or acid chloride method.



The market for polyamideimide fibers was mainly driven by coatings and molded applications. In coatings industry, polyamideimide fibers are in powder form and half imidized. Polyamideimide fibers are used in magnetic enamels. The wire enamel is manufactured by dissolving it in polyamideimide fibers with solvents. polyamideimide fibers enamel have thermal stability and offer resistance against heat and chemicals. Polyamideimide fibers are used in corrosion resistance and decorative coatings used in industrial applications. Polyamideimide fibers are used in non-stick utensils. In molding industry, polyamideimide fibers are used in manufacturing of gears, bushings, fasteners and seals among others. In gas separation industry, polyamideimide fibers are used in membrane separation technology for gas separation due to its ability to sustain higher temperature levels. In electronics industry, polyamideimide fibers are used in manufacturing of electric motor components and semiconductor fabrications. However, higher prices and environmental regulations is anticipated to hinder the growth of the market in next few years to come.



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In terms of demand, Asia Pacific was the leading region in polyamideimide fibers market in past few years. Asia Pacific is considered to be one of the fastest growing markets for polyamideimide fibers due to huge demand from molding and coatings industry. China had the highest demand and production for polyamideimide fibers in Asia Pacific region. Southeast Asian countries and Indian subcontinent is expected to have higher demand for polyamideimide fibers in next few years. Asia Pacific was followed by North America. Growing demand from aerospace, electronics and coatings industry has been major factor behind driving the demand for polyamideimide fibers in this region. U.S. had the largest demand and production for polyamideimide fibers in North America. The demand was huge owing to increased molding activities and manufacturing of industrial and water borne coatings. However, regulations regarding polyamideimide fibers are anticipated to hinder the growth in this region. In 2013, Europe had the third largest demand for polyamideimide fibers market. Western European countries such as Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK are one of the largest consumers of polyamideimide fibers in this region. Central Europe and Russia is expected to show positive outlook for the polyamideimide fibers market in near future. Rest of the World market is projected to show encouraging view for the polyamideimide fibers market in foreseeable future. Countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Argentina and the Middle East region is expected to exhibit higher demand for polyamideimide fibers in near future.



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The market for polyamideimide fibers is highly oligopolistic in nature and is dominated by two or three major players. Some of the key manufacturers in the polyamideimide fibers market are Swicofil and Solvay S.A. among others.
Many foreign investors, including the UKs Savills Estate Agents, have regarded Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh City in particular as a promising market in the property sector, Savills Group CEO Mark Ridley has said.

Mark Ridley told Vice Chairman of the HCM City Peoples Committee Le Thanh Liem on April 11 that the group hopes for more opportunities to lure potential investors to Vietnam and its southern metropolis, contributing to the citys development in the future.

In the over two decades since it first stepped foot in Vietnam, Savills has always received support from the Vietnamese Governments policies, he said, lauding the country for its efforts in perfecting mechanisms and investment environment.

Mark Ridley called for further support from HCM Citys leaders and relevant departments and agencies in order to create more opportunities for foreign investors in the local real estate market.

For his part, Liem highlighted Savills Groups potential, as well as its contributions to Vietnams development over the years.

The official briefed his guest on the citys infrastructure development, stressing that HCM City stands ready to welcome both domestic and foreign investors and consultants to cooperate with the locality in urban infrastructure development.

HCM City will always improve its investment environment and create the best possible conditions for foreign investors to operate for a long term in the city, he pledged.

Founded in the UK in 1855, Savills is one of the worlds leading property agents. It spans across the globe, with 600 offices across the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East.

Savills Vietnam operates in the spheres of property consultancy and management; as well as housing, hotel, and resort business, among others. VNA
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Pyrite also known as iron pyrite or fool's gold is an iron sulfide mineral. Pyrite is pale brass yellow colored and has metallic luster thus having resemblance with gold. Pyrite is found with other oxides and sulfide in rocks and coal beds. Some of the countries such as Peru, the U.S., Russia, Spain and South Africa have commercially important deposits of pyrite. The flat radial disks of pyrites are also known as dollars or sun. Pyrite is used in various applications such as production of sulfur compounds such as sulfur dioxide and sulfuric acid, cathode material, semiconductor material and marcasite jewelry items. In addition, pyrite is used as filler in wheels and brake pads. Moreover, the pyrites are used as an ore for gold, as both forms under similar conditions and are available in same rocks. Pyrite is also used as gemstone and is considered as a stone of warmth and power.



The market for pyrite was mainly driven by jewelry and sulfur compounds market. Huge demand of pyrite for manufacturing of sulfuric acid and sulfur dioxide has been driving the market in past few years. Pyrite is used in jewelry items such as necklace with beads and cabochons. In grinding industry, pyrite is used as filler in grinding wheels and brake linings. Pyrite is also used in friction markets to increase the thermal conductivity. Pyrite also helps in adjusting the friction coefficient in brake pads. In electronics industry, pyrite is used as a semiconductor material and as an electrode in lithium ion batteries. In paper and pulp industry, pyrite is used in manufacturing of paper. Pyrite as an iron ore is one of the biggest opportunity for the market if the current iron ore becomes scarce. Moreover, pyrite is also considered as probable substitute in photovoltaic solar panels as it is inexpensive and abundant in nature. However, health and environmental hazards associated with pyrite are anticipated to hider the growth of the market in next few years to come.



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In terms of demand, North America was the leading region for pyrite market in 2013. Increasing demand from sulfur compounds, electronics and jewelry has been major drivers for the market in past few years. The U.S. had the largest demand for pyrite owing to huge demand from sulfur compounds and grinding industry. However, Mexico is considered to be the fastest growing country in this region owing to increasing demand for pyrite in jewelry. Europe had the second-largest demand for pyrite market in 2013. Increasing demand for pyrite from sulfur compounds and in paper industry has been driving the market for pyrite in Europe. Germany is one of the largest consumers of pyrite in this region owing to the huge demand from grinding and electronics industry. Other countries such as Spain, Italy, and the U.K. are likely to show stable demand in next few years to come. Asia Pacific was the fastest growing region in pyrite market in 2013. The demand is huge owing to rise in markets such as gemstones, fabricated jewelry and grinding industry. India, China and Japan are anticipated to be the fastest growing markets for pyrite in this region. Rest of the World market is anticipated to be potential market for the pyrite in near future.



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Some of the key manufacturers in the pyrite market are Hickman, Williams & Company, Iron Duke Pyrites, Turkish Minerals and Washington Mills among others.
Pune, Maharashtra -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Fact.MR conveys vital insights on the hydraulic hose market in its report, entitled "Hydraulic Hose Market: Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast, 2018-2027". In terms of revenue share, the global hydraulic hose market is projected to increase at the CAGR of 5.2% over the forecast period (2018-2027), owing to abundant factors, about which FMR offers precise insights and forecast in our report.



The global market for hydraulic hose can be segmented as per different product type, material type, end-use industry type, pressure and by region.



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Hydraulic hose is the replacement of the rigid pipes specially designed to transfer fluid to or among different hydraulic components such as actuators, valves, and tools. The industrial hydraulic system usually operates at high pressure, and therefore, the hydraulic hose is often reinforced with several construction layers and remains flexible while operating in high pressure. The parameters such as dimensions, manufacturing process, performance specifications, and other features are varied as per the end-use industry. The key dimensional parameter for hydraulic hose selection are internal and external diameter and minimum bend radius.



The growth of the agriculture industry, which is upgrading from traditional agriculture methods to mechanized agriculture in various countries, is likely to create a significant growth opportunity for the hydraulic hose market. The hydraulic hoses are widely used for various agriculture equipment such as irrigation equipment. The agriculture industry growth in countries such as the US, China, India, and Australia with a significant pace is likely to drive the growth of the hydraulic hose market in the forecast period. The requirement of hydraulic hose for high-pressure hydraulic oil lines in agriculture, machine tool, and construction industry is likely to contribute to the growth of the market.



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In the mining industry, the hydraulic hose is used in different equipment such as dozers, hydraulic shovel, scrappers, drill rigs, haul trucks, and hydraulic shovels among others. The hydraulic hose provides the required working pressure to different machines. The hydraulic hose is used for both surface mining and underground mining processes. The growing mining industry is anticipated to contribute to the significant growth of the hydraulic hose market.



The main application of the hydraulic hose is to surge pressure as required according to the work conditions. The hydraulic hose is used by hydraulic machines to create low-speed torque and maintain speed and movement of the machines. Hydraulic hoses are used for different purposes including reducing the effects of vibration or providing the movement gap between two port locations. Moreover, the hydraulic hose can also be used for ease of installation or availability of hose manufacturing equipment.



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In the report, FMR suggests that increasing use and demand for the hydraulic machine in different industries such as construction, mining, transportation, and others subsequently boost the demand for the hydraulic hose in the global market. Moreover, the pressure variation requirement in heavy industrial machinery used in oil industry for transfer of the fluid also enhance the demand for hydraulic hose. The aforementioned factors are anticipated to drive the growth of the global hydraulic hose market during the forecast period.



The growing construction industry equipment also inclines for the use of hydraulic hose in machines such as bulldozers, backhoes, wheel loader, and excavators among others. The demand for the hydraulic hose is estimated to grow at a substantial rate from the construction industry owing to the requirement of high operating pressure and maximum abrasion resistance to the equipment. Moreover, the demand driven from the other end-use industries such as transportation industry is likely to boost the market growth in the forecast period.



Among the different end-use application industry of the hydraulic hose market agriculture industry end use application have quite more share than the construction and mining end use application which is probably growing with modest growth rate during the forecast period, however transportation industry shows considerable growth rate over the forecast period in hydraulic hose market by the end of 2027.



Regional Overview



The Asia Pacific region dominates the hydraulic hose market throughout the forecast period. The global market of hydraulic hose is growing due to the subsequent growth in regional demand from North America and the APEJ market. The increase in the local order and presence of key manufacturers is expected to contribute to the growth of the global market.



In APEJ region, the increase in the demand for mechanization in different industries which has promoted the use of various equipment including hydraulic machines, this is expected to lead the market growth with a significant growth rate over the forecast period.



The hydraulic hose market in Europe is expected to show growth opportunities due to the rising demand supported by growing mining and transportation industry.



Key Players



The manufacturers operating in the global hydraulic hose market include Bridgestone Corporation, Parker Hannifin Corporation, Alfagomma Spa, Eaton Corporation, Gates Corporation, Ryco Hydraulics, Manuli Hydraulics, Hansa-Flex Ag and others located across the globe. The prominent market players in hydraulic hose market are concentrating on the extension of their production abilities and vertical integration for business development. Moreover, the players are investing to expand the distribution network and empower the business relationship. The marketing strategy by manufacturers is expected to contribute for the growth of hydraulic hose market in the forecast period, 2018-2027.



About Fact.MR

Fact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.



Contact Us

Rohit Bhisey

Fact.MR

11140 Rockville Pike

Suite 400

Rockville, MD 20852

United States

Email: sales@factmr.com



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Pune, India -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- The global Metal Stamping Market size was valued at 225.10 billion at 2018 and is expected to reach 303.67 billion by the end of the year 2026. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 4.37% over the forecast period.



Expanding utilization of sheet metal crosswise over buyer automotive and electronics sectors are projected to emphatically affect the growth of the metal stamping market. Low crude material costs have been seen to compliment utilization of light-weight consumption resistive metal stamping for improving the soundness of electrical and electronic and consumer electronics goods. Mechanically propelled metal stamping has been observing expanded usage across other commercial sectors since the ongoing past. Key players and producers in metal stamping market are taking enormous efforts in creating maintainability systems with respect to stamping inferable from rising administrative approaches.



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Metal stamping market has been fundamentally impacted by the utilization designs crosswise over segments, for instance, media communications, consumer goods, automotive, etc. Also, the moving pattern of substituting metals with composites and polymers for diminishing load of vehicles brought about expanded eco-friendliness and is probably going to hamper the development of metal stamping market.



The global metal stamping market is divided into process, material, application, and region. On the basis of process segment, the worldwide metal stamping market is divided into blanking, embossing, bending, coining, flanging, and others. On the basis of material, the worldwide metal stamping market is segmented into steel, aluminum, and copper. On the basis of application, the worldwide metal stamping market is segmented into automotive, industrial machinery, consumer electronics, aerospace, electrical & electronics, telecommunications, and others. Based on the region, the worldwide metal stamping market is divided into North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and the Asia Pacific.



Based on the process, blanking segment captured the biggest revenue share of the worldwide metal stamping market in 2018. On the other hand, metal bending market is estimated to grow at the quickest CAGR during the expected time frame, attributable to increasing adoption of bending procedure across numerous industry verticals for improving the quality, strength, and steadiness of produced parts. In addition, deep drawing stamping market is additionally expected to observe huge growth through 2025, as the selection of the process for the generation of the complex component across different enterprises is expanding with rising complex nature in the item design, structure, technical progressions, and item advancements.



Based on application, metal stamping market for automobile application captured the biggest revenue share of worldwide market in 2018 with growing and huge vehicle production in some emerging economies, particularly India, China etc., innovative advancements in automotive sector, and presence of substantial number of car metal stamping organizations, for instance, Kenmode Precision Metal Stamping, Aro Metal Stamping Company, Inc., American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings, Inc., among others. Nonetheless, the utilization of metal stamping for aviation and aerospace industry is estimated to observe huge growth owing to the developing focus on the need to satisfy stringent quality guidelines, safety, and rising usage of lightweight and flexible parts to keep fuel costs and light weight of aircrafts.



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Manufacturers of the automobile in the Asia Pacific region are focusing on the growth of their production limits. Government strategies with respect to venture progression are anticipated to have a great effect on the region's automotive sector. Standards and policies to help encourage the presence of key players in India and China are additionally helping the regional market growth.



Metal stamping market in North America and Europe regions is foreseen to develop at a decent pace because of the developing demand in the automotive sector. The worldwide metal stamping market is assessed to develop with a significant CAGR in the North America market over the forecasted time period. This sector is supplanting ferrous materials with non-ferrous materials so as to lessen the vehicle weight. In the creating regions, Asia and Latin America markets are projected to be the emerging market because of the extension of capacity utilization.



Major companies contributing the global metal stamping market are Alcoa, Inc.; Manor Tool & Manufacturing Company; Acro Metal Stamping; D&H Industries; Klesk Metal Stamping, Inc.; Kenmode Precision Metal Stamping; Clow Stamping Company, Inc.; Lindy Manufacturing Co.; and Aro Metal Stamping Company, Inc.



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TABLE OF CONTENT



CHAPTER 1. INDUSTRY OVERVIEW



1.1. Definition and Scope

1.1.1. Definition of Metal Stamping

1.1.2. Market Segmentation

1.1.3. List of Abbreviations

1.2. Summary

1.2.1. Market Snapshot

1.2.2. Metal Stamping Market By Process

1.2.2.1. Global Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate Comparison By Process (2015-2026)

1.2.2.2. Global Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share By Process in 2017

1.2.2.3. Blanking

1.2.2.4. Embossing

1.2.2.5. Bending

1.2.2.6. Coining

1.2.2.7. Flanging

1.2.2.8. Others

1.2.3. Metal Stamping Market By Material

1.2.3.1. Global Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate Comparison By Material (2015-2026)

1.2.3.2. Steel

1.2.3.3. Aluminum

1.2.3.4. Copper

1.2.3.5. Others

1.2.4. Metal Stamping Market By Application

1.2.4.1. Global Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate Comparison By Application (2015-2026)

1.2.4.2. Automotive

1.2.4.3. Industrial Machinery

1.2.4.4. Consumer Electronics

1.2.4.5. Aerospace

1.2.4.6. Electrical & Electronics

1.2.4.7. Telecommunications

1.2.4.8. Others

1.2.5. Metal Stamping Market by Geography

1.2.5.1. Global Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate Comparison by Geography (2015-2026)

1.2.5.2. North America Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2026)

1.2.5.3. Europe Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2026)

1.2.5.4. Asia-Pacific Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2026)

1.2.5.5. Latin America Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2026)

1.2.5.6. Middle East and Africa (MEA) Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate (2015-2026)



CHAPTER 2. MARKET DYNAMICS AND COMPETITION ANALYSIS



2.1. Market Drivers

2.2. Restraints and Challenges

2.3. Growth Opportunities

2.4. Porter's Five Forces Analysis

2.4.1. Bargaining Power of Suppliers

2.4.2. Bargaining Power of Buyers

2.4.3. Threat of Substitute

2.4.4. Threat of New Entrants

2.4.5. Degree of Competition

2.5. Value Chain Analysis

2.6. Cost Structure Analysis

2.6.1. Raw Material and Suppliers

2.6.2. Manufacturing Process Analysis

2.7. Regulatory Compliance

2.8. Competitive Landscape, 2017

2.8.1. Player Positioning Analysis

2.8.2. Key Strategies Adopted By Leading Players



CHAPTER 3. MANUFACTURING PLANTS ANALYSIS



3.1. Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Metal Stamping Major Manufacturers in 2017

3.2. Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Metal Stamping Major Manufacturers in 2017

3.3. R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Metal Stamping Major Manufacturers in 2017

3.4. Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Metal Stamping Major Manufacturers in 2017



CHAPTER 4. METAL STAMPING MARKET BY PROCESS



4.1. Global Metal Stamping Revenue By Process

4.2. Blanking

4.2.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.2.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.3. Embossing

4.3.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.4. Bending

4.4.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.5. Coining

4.5.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.6. Flanging

4.6.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.6.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.7. Other

4.7.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

4.7.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 5. METAL STAMPING MARKET BY MATERIAL



5.1. Global Metal Stamping Revenue By Material

5.2. Steel

5.2.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.2.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.3. Aluminum

5.3.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.4. Copper

5.4.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.5. Others

5.5.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

5.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 6. METAL STAMPING MARKET BY APPLICATION



6.1. Global Metal Stamping Revenue By Application

6.2. Automotive

6.2.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.2.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.3. Industrial Machinery

6.3.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.4. Consumer Electronics

6.4.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.5. Aerospace

6.5.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.6. Electrical & Electronics

6.6.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.6.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.7. Telecommunications

6.7.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.7.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.8. Others

6.8.1. Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

6.8.2. Market Revenue and Forecast, By Region, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 7. NORTH AMERICA METAL STAMPING MARKET BY COUNTRY



7.1. North America Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.2. North America Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share Comparison, 2015 & 2026 (%)

7.3. U.S.

7.3.1. U.S. Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.3.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.4. Canada

7.4.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.4.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.5. Mexico

7.5.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

7.5.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 8. EUROPE METAL STAMPING MARKET BY COUNTRY



8.1. Europe Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.2. Europe Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share Comparison, 2015 & 2026 (%)

8.3. UK

8.3.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.3.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.4. Germany

8.4.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.4.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.5. France

8.5.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.5.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.6. Spain

8.6.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.6.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.6.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.7. Rest of Europe

8.7.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.7.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

8.7.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 9. ASIA-PACIFIC METAL STAMPING MARKET BY COUNTRY



9.1. Asia-Pacific Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.2. Asia-Pacific Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share Comparison, 2015 & 2026 (%)

9.3. China

9.3.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.3.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.4. Japan

9.4.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.4.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.5. India

9.5.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.5.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.6. Australia

9.6.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.6.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.6.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.7. South Korea

9.7.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.7.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.7.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.8. Rest of Asia-Pacific

9.8.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.8.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

9.8.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 10. LATIN AMERICA METAL STAMPING MARKET BY COUNTRY



10.1. Latin America Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.2. Latin America Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share Comparison, 2015 & 2026 (%)

10.3. Brazil

10.3.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.3.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.4. Argentina

10.4.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.4.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.5. Rest of Latin America

10.5.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

10.5.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 11. MIDDLE EAST METAL STAMPING MARKET BY COUNTRY



11.1. Middle East Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.2. Middle East Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share Comparison, 2015 & 2026 (%)

11.3. Saudi Arabia

11.3.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.3.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.4. UAE

11.4.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.4.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.5. Rest of Middle East

11.5.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

11.5.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 12. AFRICA METAL STAMPING MARKET BY COUNTRY



12.1. Africa Metal Stamping Market Revenue and Growth Rate, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.2. Africa Metal Stamping Market Revenue Share Comparison, 2015 & 2026 (%)

12.3. South Africa

12.3.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.3.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.3.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.4. Egypt

12.4.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.4.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.4.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.5. Rest of Africa

12.5.1. Market Revenue and Forecast By Process, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.5.2. Market Revenue and Forecast By Material, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)

12.5.3. Market Revenue and Forecast By Application, 2015 - 2026 ($Million)



CHAPTER 13. COMPANY PROFILE



13.1. Alcoa, Inc.

13.1.1. Company Snapshot

13.1.2. Overview

13.1.3. Financial Overview

13.1.4. Type Portfolio

13.1.5. Key Developments

13.1.6. Strategies

13.2. Manor Tool & Manufacturing Company

13.2.1. Company Snapshot

13.2.2. Overview

13.2.3. Financial Overview

13.2.4. Type Portfolio

13.2.5. Key Developments

13.2.6. Strategies

13.3. Acro Metal Stamping

13.3.1. Company Snapshot

13.3.2. Overview

13.3.3. Financial Overview

13.3.4. Type Portfolio

13.3.5. Key Developments

13.3.6. Strategies

13.4. D&H Industries

13.4.1. Company Snapshot

13.4.2. Overview

13.4.3. Financial Overview

13.4.4. Type Portfolio

13.4.5. Key Developments

13.4.6. Strategies

13.5. Klesk Metal Stamping, Inc.

13.5.1. Company Snapshot

13.5.2. Overview

13.5.3. Financial Overview

13.5.4. Type Portfolio

13.5.5. Key Developments

13.5.6. Strategies

13.6. Kenmode Precision Metal Stamping

13.6.1. Company Snapshot

13.6.2. Overview

13.6.3. Financial Overview

13.6.4. Type Portfolio

13.6.5. Key Developments

13.6.6. Strategies

13.7. Clow Stamping Company, Inc.

13.7.1. Company Snapshot

13.7.2. Overview

13.7.3. Financial Overview

13.7.4. Type Portfolio

13.7.5. Key Developments

13.7.6. Strategies

13.8. Lindy Manufacturing Co.

13.8.1. Company Snapshot

13.8.2. Overview

13.8.3. Financial Overview

13.8.4. Type Portfolio

13.8.5. Key Developments

13.8.6. Strategies

13.9. Aro Metal Stamping Company, Inc.

13.9.1. Company Snapshot

13.9.2. Overview

13.9.3. Financial Overview

13.9.4. Type Portfolio

13.9.5. Key Developments

13.9.6. Strategies

13.10. Others

13.10.1. Company Snapshot

13.10.2. Overview

13.10.3. Financial Overview

13.10.4. Type Portfolio

13.10.5. Key Developments

13.10.6. Strategies



CHAPTER 14. RESEARCH APPROACH



14.1. Research Methodology

14.1.1. Initial Data Search

14.1.2. Secondary Research

14.1.3. Primary Research

14.2. Assumptions and Scope



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Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Nanotechnology drug delivery is a growing field and is witnessing increasing acceptance in health care applications. Nanotechnology drug delivery is widely used in the health care industry in applications such as neurology, anti-infective, cardiovascular disorders, and others. One important and active application area of nanotechnology drug delivery systems is to transport drugs to the final location of therapeutic intervention within the body. The nanotechnology drug delivery market is witnessing rapid growth due to increase in research and development activities in nanotechnology to develop novel nano-medicine. According to Eurostat comprehensive data, the nano-medicine industry in the EU includes 97 startups, 64 SMEs, and 38 large pharmaceutical or medical device companies. Furthermore, technological advancements and rising interest of key companies to invest in nanotechnology boost market growth. For instance, in 20112012, Pfizer, Inc., Amgen, Inc., and AstraZeneca signed agreements to collaborate with BIND Therapeutics to develop nano-medicines. These initiatives are expected to fuel the growth of the nanotechnology drug delivery market in the near future. However, stringent regulatory scenario and high development cost of medicines through nanotechnology are likely to hamper market growth during the forecast period. The global nanotechnology drug delivery market was valued at US$ 41,062.5 Mn in 2014 and is projected to reach US$ 118,527.2 Mn by 2023, expanding at a CAGR of 12.5% from 2015 to 2023.



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Based on technology, the global nanotechnology drug delivery market has been segmented into nanocrystals, nanoparticles, liposomes, micelles, nanotubes, and others. The nanoparticles segment dominated the global nanotechnology drug delivery market in 2014. The segment dominated the market as key nanoparticles such as dendrimers, gold nanoparticles, and fullerenes are used in pharmaceutical drug delivery. The nanotubes segment is expected to expand at the highest CAGR during the forecast period from 2015 to 2023.



Based on application, the market has been segmented into neurology, oncology, cardiovascular/physiology, anti-inflammatory/immunology, anti-infective, and others. Anti-infective was the largest application segment of the nanotechnology drug delivery market due to rising prevalence of community-based and hospital-based infections.



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Geographically, North America dominated the global nanotechnology drug delivery market in 2014. Rising incidence of chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes in the region fueled the growth of the nanotechnology drug delivery market in North America. Europe accounted for the second largest share of the market in 2014 owing to the favorable growth conditions for pharmaceutical and biotechnology manufacturers due to affordability for branded nanotechnology products by consumers. However, the market in Latin America is estimated to expand at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. High market growth in this region is due to increasing interest of leading companies such as Novartis and Johnson & Johnson to establish their presence in countries in Latin America such as Brazil and Mexico.



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Key players having presence in the global nanotechnology drug delivery market are AbbVie, Inc., Amgen, Inc., Celgene Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Merck & Co., Inc., and Novartis International AG, among others.



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Los Angeles, CA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- Plant protein refers to the proteins extracted from plants like soybean, wheat, rice, pea, etc. The protein is an important component of human cells, consisting of monomers called amino acids. Vegetable protein is an alternative to animal protein and it can be absorbed easily. Protein is important to human body. Most people require about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight, or about 58 grams of protein per day for a 160-pound adult.



United States is still one of the major suppliers of plant protein. There are enough raw materials like soybean, wheat and corn in United States. The biggest companies like Du Pont and ADM are located in United Stated and they have established many branches around the world.



With the huge amount of population, the demand of plant protein is with large potential in China. After decades of development, Chinese plant protein manufacturers have got mature technology. But the performance of product is still has a gap with foreign products.



The plant protein production in China is estimated to surpass United States in future, due to the large investment of Chinese enterprises in recent years. But the utilization in China is still low than USA and Europe. It is clear that Chinese manufacturers will provide more products to the world.



The global Plant Protein market was 4530 million US$ in 2018 and is expected to 6950 million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of 6.3% between 2019 and 2025.



This report studies the Plant Protein 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.



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Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share and growth Rate of Plant Protein 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



ADM



Cargill



DuPont



Kerry Group



Manildra



Roquette



Tereos



Axiom Foods



Cosucra



CHS



Glanbia Nutritionals



Glico Nutrition



Gushen Group



By the product type, the market is primarily split into



Soy Protein



Wheat Protein



Pea Protein



Others



By the end users/application, this report covers the following segments



Food & Beverages



Pharmaceuticals & Personal Care



Animal Feed



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New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- Worldwide Process Oil 2019 Research Report presents a professional and complete analysis of Global Process Oil Market on the current situation.



Study papers on Process Oil Market and regional forecast. Process Oil Market top players including are Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Chevron Corporation, Nynas AB, Repsol S.A., Exxonmobil, Total, Phillips 66 Company, Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd., Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd., Sunoco LP (Sunoco Lubricants Europe), Orgkhim Biochemical Holding, Iranol Company, Paramo A.S., Behran Oil Company, Petronas Lubricants Belgium Nv, OAO Lukoil, Avista Oil AG, Paras Lubricants Limited, Petrochina Lubricant Company



Download FREE Sample Brochure of Process Oil Market @ https://www.marketgrowthinsight.com/sample/23370



The recent report, Process Oil Market fundamentally discovers insights that enable stakeholders, business owners and field marketing executives to make effective investment decisions driven by facts  rather than guesswork. The study aims at listening, analyzing and delivering actionable data on the competitive landscape to meet the unique requirements of the companies and individuals operating in the Process Oil Market for the forecast period, 2019 to 2025. To enable firms to understand the Process Oil industry in various ways the report thoroughly assesses the share, size and growth rate of the business worldwide.



The study explores what the future Process Oil Market will look like. Most importantly, the research familiarizes product owners with whom the immediate competitors are and what buyers expect and what are the effective business strategies adopted by prominent leaders. To help both established companies and new entrants not only see the disruption but also see opportunities. In-depth exploration of how the industry behaves, including assessment of government bodies, financial organization and other regulatory bodies. Beginning with a macroeconomic outlook, the study drills deep into the sub-categories of the industry and evaluation of the trends influencing the business.



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Global Process Oil Market Analysis by Application



1 Global Process Oil Consumption and Market Share by Application (2012-2019)

2 Global Process Oil Consumption Growth Rate by Application (2012-2019)

3 Market Drivers and Opportunities

3.1 Potential Applications

3.2 Emerging Markets/Countries



The extensive documentation of the Process Oil industry gives access to all the factors expected to influence the growth prospect of the business worldwide. Nobel effort to capture the factors that impede the growth of the market is clearly visible in the report. These factors result in an effective and reliable branding and promotion and marketing plan. In addition, comprehensive coverage of recent advancements, product nearing development stage, project pipeline, and major industrial players offer all the confidence a business owner needs to design a business strategy that will drive company's success.



Discount on this Process Oil Market Report Click @ https://www.marketgrowthinsight.com/discount/23370



Understanding what the audience is looking for in a report the researchers behind this attunes deliverables according to their needs such as product price, demand and supply status, end-use, profit and others. By operating in close alignment with the major vendors, the researchers have customized the literature  based on universal perspective as well as comprehensive knowledge of the local business owners. The document further aims at addressing the different challenges and opportunities of carrying out business operations in North America and beyond.



The Research Provides Answers to the Following Key Questions:



- What is the size of occupied by the prominent leaders for the forecast period, 2019 to 2025? What will be the share and the growth rate of the Process Oil Market during the forecast period?

- Which companies are dominating the competitive landscape across different region and what strategies have they applied to gain a competitive edge?

- What are the major factors responsible for the growth of the Process Oil Market across the different regions?

- What are the challenges faced by the companies operating in the Process Oil Market?

- What are the future prospects for the Process Oil Market industry in the coming years?

- Which trends are likely to contribute to the development rate of the Process Oil industry during the forecast period, 2019 to 2025?

- What are the future prospects of the Process Oil industry for the forecast period, 2019 to 2025?



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Phoenix, AZ -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- VoiceAmerica, the leader in online media broadcasting and the largest producer and distributor of live internet talk radio, today announced the upcoming show "THANK YOU: To Harmonize And Network Kindness" interview with Barry Shore, and Relationship authority Kody Bateman as they discuss relationships, relationship marketing, and how to deeply engage with new and existing relationships at the highest levels. The episode was live on VoiceAmerica.com on Tuesday, April 9th and found at www.barryshore.com, on VoiceAmerica at https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/3826 and www.VoiceAmerica.com.



The JOY of LIVING with Barry Shore is dedicated to YOU. It's all about enabling YOU to be the best YOU possible. Today Barry brings YOU the insights of the world's Premier Authority On Relationship Marketing: Kody Bateman. Kody started, nurtured, and grew the largest most in demand process of staying in close touch with everyone YOU want to maintain a relationship with: Send Out Cards.



Barry Shore, Ambassador of JOY and VoiceAmerica Host commented, "This is all about the power of human connection and utilizing the ability to say THANK YOU."



Barry, as YOU know, is the most vocal proponent of using positive powerful purposeful words to motivate oneself and as a result others. Kody has incorporated these techniques in a system that enables people to do all this from your computer or phone. And the best part: it works! Well! - You will not want to miss this episode



Barry Shore commented "YOU will be pleased with the upbeat and insightful useful information. and You'll gladly share this episode with 5 friends, family, and especially Your not yet friends. Great show."



About Kody Bateman

Kody Bateman is the Founder and CVO of a successful online relationship marketing company and is the premier authority on relationship marketing in the world today. Kody received a bachelor's degree in marketing and started his career working for an advertising agency in New York. He returned to Utah after taking an executive marketing position. He has been an entrepreneur and worked in the network marketing industry for over 20 years.



As of 2019, his online relationship marketing system is used by over 700,000 people, has sent over 150 million greeting cards and 10 million gifts to friends, customers, clients and family members all at the perfect time. Kody has conducted live relationship marketing and personal development training events around the world. He trains people on the concepts of "finding and building the best version of you, so you can give that away to the people you meet and serve".



Kody is a visionary leader who is living his dream and teaching others to do the same. To learn more about Kody please visit: https://kodybateman.com/



About Barry Shore

Barry Shore is The Ambassador of JOY. Barry is focused on transforming the giving space with his mission to make every day giving effortless and his big hairy audacious goal to facilitate the giving of one billion dollars without costing any giver a penny. A successful serial entrepreneur he had a brief retirement at age 33, and then returned to business and built an innovative process in 1999 that enabled faxes to be sent and received via email to 17 countries for FREE. Barry had two patents and built a company that sold for more than $10 million dollars and the acquirer is today a $4 Billion company. On September 17, 2004, Barry became a quadriplegic overnight from a rare neurological disease (GBS). His journey since to regain mobility caused him to GO MAD: Go Make A Difference and build the system that enables giving at no cost. He is the Founder of the KEEP SMILING Movement which has distributed more than 1.2 MILLION KEEP SMILING Cards throughout the world.



Visit him for many FREE Beneficial things at WWW.barryshore.com



Barry is also the Founder of the MOL (Minute of Love) Podcast and his show The JOY of LIVING can also be heard on iHeartRadio. With intensive therapy he has become an avid swimmer (2 miles per day, 6 times per week) and has accumulated enough miles over 9 years to swim from his home in Venice, California to Shanghai, China. https://www.voiceamerica.com/show/3826



About VoiceAmerica

VoiceAmerica is the original digital broadcast company for the production and delivery of Live Internet Talk Radio programming and continues to be the industry leader in digital media, marketing, and distribution. We are the pioneers of digital radio programming and have been since 1999. We create and distribute over 500 unique and innovative radio programs for our millions of engaged listeners worldwide. Our network channels distribute live programs daily that reach a growing domestic and international audience who connect through all devices via our mobile, desktop, and tablet VoiceAmerica destinations. Learn more at http://www.voiceamerica.com . Download the VoiceAmerica App now to listen live on Apple and Android. follow us on Facebook and Twitter . Call us any time to find out how VoiceAmerica can help you reach your audience, 1-855-877-4666.
New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- Polymerization inhibitors are also known as polymerization retardants, polymerization controllers, polymerization suppressors and polymerization terminators among others. Polymerization inhibitors are specialty chemicals which are required to stabilize reactive monomers and prevent is from spontaneous polymerization process. Polymerization inhibitor slows down or stops the polymerization process by reacting with the growing-chain radicals or initiators. Polymerization inhibitors should be added in controlled amount to the reaction. Polymerization inhibitor is smaller quantities to reaction will lead to polymerization vessels and pipes. The polymerization in pipes and vessels require mechanical removal. In case, the polymerization inhibitor is added in excess amount, there will be difficulty in polymerization stage. Polymerization inhibitors are used for monomers of acrylic and styrene such as methyl methacrylate and styrene monomers among others. Polymerization inhibitors prevents temperature excursion due to exothermic polymerization. In addition, polymerization inhibitors prevent fouling as well as the upsurge of large amounts of polymer in the reaction. Polymerization inhibitors thus enable manufacturing and purification process to run easily. Polymerization inhibitors are classified on the basis of their efficiency and protection length. Compounds such as, hydroquinones, quinines, aromatic nitro compounds, amines, aromatic are used as polymerization inhibitors in the market.



The market for polymerization inhibitors was mainly driven by huge demand from manufacturing industries. Uncontrolled polymerization reactions has been major issue in the industry and polymerization inhibitors plays key role in the process. Polymerization inhibitors are used in various end-user industries such as petrochemical, resins, chemical intermediates among others. Polymerization inhibitors are used in manufacturing process of unsaturated polyester resin and epoxy resins in order to control the polymerization reaction. Polymerization inhibitors are used in distillation process with lower vapor pressure. In composites industry, polymerization inhibitors are used for controlling the polymerization process. In chemical industry, polymerization inhibitors are used to suppress monomer reactions of vinyl acetate, ethylene and other chemicals. In spite of several applications, environmental regulations are anticipated to hamper the growth of the market in next few years to come.



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Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing market for polymerization inhibitors in the next six years. The major reason for the growth is the increasing demand for polymerization inhibitors from emerging countries such as India, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. China had the highest demand for polymerization inhibitors in Asia Pacific region due to higher demand from unsaturated polyester resin industry. Asia Pacific region was followed by North America. Growing demand from composites and petrochemical industry was the major factor behind driving the demand for polymerization inhibitors in this region. U.S. had the highest production and demand for polymerization inhibitors in North America. Europe had the third largest demand for polymerization inhibitors market in 2013. Countries from Western Europe region such as Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK are considered amongst the largest consumers of polymerization inhibitors in this region. Other European countries such as Russia, Sweden and Netherlands are likely to demonstrate optimistic future for the polymerization inhibitors market in foreseeable future. Rest of the World market is estimated to illustrate encouraging outlook for the polymerization inhibitors market in future. Latin America and the Middle East region are anticipated to show signs of higher demand for polymerization inhibitors in near future.



Request For Report Table of Content (TOC): https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/4523



Some of the key manufacturers in the polymerization inhibitors market are Addivant, Chemtura Corporation, Nufarm Limited, Nalco Company, Kawasaki Kasei Chemicals Co. Ltd., among others.
Rockville, MD -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/11/2019 -- Rising awareness in health concern is expected to amplify the overall demand of Rubidium Bromide



Water pollution is one of the main causes of illnesses across the world and several countries use rubidium bromide as a disinfectant to treat water. Industrial and factory discharges contaminate water leaving them inconsumable. Rubidium bromide is, thus, used to purify water and destroy bacteria, allowing it to be used for personal, industrial and agricultural purposes. Rubidium bromide is also used in the cooling tower where there are a lot of microorganisms. Rubidium bromide also has a massive demand in the pharmaceutical industry as it is used as an ingredient to manufacture medicines.



China is currently the largest producer of rubidium bromide. The market is growing at a fast rate due to the rising population leading to an increase in the consumption of water. Rubidium bromide market in North America and Europe is also growing at a constant rate.



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Government initiative to increase demand for rubidium bromide



Due to an increase in the population, the Indian government has taken different actions for water treatment. According to the National Water resource council, to reduce the water crisis caused due to overpopulation the water treatment is necessary as to satisfy the daily needs of the people thus this has increased the demand of Rubidium bromide. Rubidium bromide is also used for agriculture and personal use as it purifies the contaminated water.



Rubidium bromide is expected to register high growth in pharmaceutical industries during forecasted period



Rubidium bromide is one of the many ingredients used in the medicines to treat AIDS and heart diseases. The Rubidium bromide market across developed and developing countries are expected to register high growth in the pharmaceutical industry during the forecasted period 2018-2028 according to the recent research analysis of the market.



Increasing awareness of cleanliness is aiding the demand for rubidium bromide



Nowadays, people are more conscious about their health. Rubidium bromide purifies the water and reduces the chances of illnesses. Rubidium bromide is also used as a cleaning agent in swimming pools. Rubidium bromide is best for spa purpose. Rubidium bromide rejuvenates the skin by clearing all the dead cells. Also it is very beneficial for hair spa.



High cost hampering the demand for rubidium bromide



Rubidium bromide is expensive, which is reducing its sales across the world. The substitute for rubidium bromide, which is available in the market is less expensive and kills germs. Duplicate rubidium bromide is available which is hampering the market of rubidium bromide.



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Rubidium Bromide Market Segmentation:



On the basis of purity, rubidium bromide can be segmented as:



Research

Industry

On the basis of end use application, rubidium bromide can be segmented as:



Agricultural purpose

Household purpose

Cleaning swimming pool

Cosmetics

Cooling tower

Pharmaceutical purpose

Fire resistance

On the basis of geography, rubidium bromide can be segmented as:



North America

Latin America

Europe

South Asia

East Asia

Oceania

The Middle East and Africa

Rubidium Bromide Market Regional Overview:



Rubidium bromide has a broad market base in Asian countries, such as India and China. The rising population in these countries is leading to more water consumption, thereby aiding in the market growth of rubidium bromide. The Rubidium bromide market in developing countries of South Asia is likely to register average single digit growth rate over the forecasted period from 2018-2028 according to the recent research analysis.



Among other countries, North America, Latin America and Europe is also using rubidium bromide for treating water and for making medicines.



Rubidium Bromide Market Key Players:



American Elements

Hangzhou DayangChem Co.ltd

Henan Tianfu Chemical Co.ltd

Haihang Industry Co.ltd.

Share chemical company LT

The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the Rubidium Bromide market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also includes projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to Rubidium Bromide market segments such as purity, end use applications and geographies.



The Rubidium Bromide market report covers exhaustive analysis on:



Rubidium Bromide Market Segments

Rubidium Bromide Market Dynamics

Rubidium Bromine Market Size

Supply & Demand

Current Trends/Issues/Challenges

Competition & Companies involved

Technology

Value Chain

Regional analysis for Rubidium Bromide Market includes:



North America (U.S., Canada)

Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Rest of Latin America)

Europe (Germany, Italy, France, U.K, Spain, BENELUX, Nordics, Eastern Europe, Rest of Europe)

East Asia (Japan, China, South Korea)

South Asia (India, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Rest of South Asia)

Oceania (Australia, New Zealand)

The Middle East and Africa (GCC Countries, South Africa, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Rest of MEA)

The report is a compilation of first-hand information, qualitative and quantitative assessment by industry analysts, inputs from industry experts and industry participants across the value chain. The report provides an in-depth analysis of parent market trends, macro-economic indicators, and governing factors along with market attractiveness as per segments of Rubidium Bromide. The report also maps the qualitative impact of various market factors on market segments and geographies.



Report Highlights:



A detailed overview of the parent market

Changing market dynamics in the industry

In-depth market segmentation of Rubidium Bromide.

Historical, current and projected market size of Rubidium Bromide in terms of volume and value

Recent industry trends and developments

Competitive landscape

Strategies of key players and products offered

Potential and niche segments, geographical regions exhibiting promising growth

A neutral perspective on market performance

Must-have information for market players to sustain and enhance their market footprint



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Read Industry News at - http://theguardiantribune.com
AmCham wrapped up its annual door-knock mission in Washington earlier this week after holding 89 meetings with US administration officials, members of Congress, international financial institutions and think tanks.

AmCham President Tarek Tawfik described the mission as the easiest of all the past years.

The mission carried key messages to the US, relaying Egypts growing political role in the region, its soft power and influence, and success stories  a successful economic reform programme, the emergence of the country as a regional gas hub and the maintenance of friendly relations with Israel.

Other messages were sent from the US to Egypt. It was made clear Egypts human rights record and the proposed constitutional amendments remain a concern for Democrats in Congress, though not so much for the Trump administration. Critics of the changes to the constitution expressed concern that the judiciarys independence would be undermined.

Corporate America also welcomed a US-Egypt trade agreement which Egypt-US Business Council Chairman Omar Mohanna said could come to fruition under the current US administration.

Republican Congressman Jeff Fortenberry told reporters during the mission that Egypt needs to retell its story to improve its image in Washington. Egyptian-US relations have been outsourced to military brass on both sides at the expense of other aspects, including cultural and media cooperation, said Fortenberry.

He argued Egypt must do a better job of highlighting its efforts to create conditions for stability and promote healthy nationalism. Everyone should be made aware of the incalculable consequences of Egypts stability being shaken, though Egypt has to get over its entitlement mindset that it deserves to be the leader of the Arab world and must instead go re-earn that position, he said.

Alternate Executive at the Board of the World Bank Ragui Al-Etrebi told reporters that Egypts position in the Doing Business Report is expected to improve this year on the back of the first reform programme that Egypt completes successfully.

Risk conditions are improving but the ballooning population remains a point of concern, Al-Etrebi said. Executive Director Merza Hassan was also full of praise for Egypts smart use of debt to build infrastructure and improve the business environment.

The door-knock mission comprised a delegation of 35 top-level executives representing US companies and businesses that operate in Egypt. They visited Washington between 31 March and 5 April.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 7 April, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: The easiest mission

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Springfield, VA -- (SBWIRE) -- 04/12/2019 -- DNA Pro Cleaning & Restoration prides itself on customer service and satisfaction.To support these two goals, Dragan Krstic is pleased to announce the launch of a new redesigned website.



The website features all the services the company offers, but there is also a greater focus on commercial floor care and water damage restoration. Additionally, the site will feature a blog with monthly updates on how to help maintain your carpet between carpet cleanings.



"Customers who read the blogs will find handy information on how to keep carpets looking pristine at all times. There will be something to learn about carpet care each month.I want my customers and potential customers to come back each month to read, learn and use the tips to keep carpet looking its best," said Dragan Krstic, owner of DNA Pro Cleaning & Restoration.



The updated website provides a faster and easier navigation for customers looking for the best in carpet care and maintenance. Customers will be able to schedule appointments and find special deals under a tab at the top of the website.



Now in its second decade of service to people in and around northern Virginia, Maryland and the metro D.C. areas, DNA Pro Cleaning & Restoration prides itself on being a family-owned carpet cleaning and water damage restoration company with a focus on using non-toxic, green cleaning products for the best and safest cleaned carpets.



One of the other reasons for the updated website is the addition of water damage restoration.Living in the northern Virginia, Maryland and D.C. areas, snow is an annual possibility, and with snow, there comes the potential for water damage.



"Water damage can come at any time. This is why we started offering the service to our customers. Water damage is not only disheartening, it can be very dangerous if not dealt with swiftly and professionally," said Krstic.



DNA Pro Cleaning & Restoration offers a free, no obligation quote to new customers. Schedule an appointment through the website or use the contact information below.



Media Contact

DNA Pro Cleaning & Restoration

Dragan Krstic, Owner

7702 Backlick Rd

Springfield, Va., 22150

703-520-5060

www.dnaproclean.com

info@dnaproclean.com
According to a new study published in the journal Cell, modern Papuans carry hundreds of gene variants from two Denisovan lineages  distinct from Altai Denisovans  that separated over 350,000 years ago; one of those lineages is so different from the other that they really should be considered as an entirely new species of archaic hominin.

People used to think that Denisovans lived on the Asian mainland and far to the north, said study senior author Dr. Murray Cox, a researcher in the School of Fundamental Sciences at Massey University, New Zealand.

Our work instead shows that the center of archaic diversity was not in Europe or the frozen north, but instead in tropical Asia.

It had already been clear that Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea was a special place, with individuals there carrying more archaic hominin DNA than anywhere else on Earth.

The region also was recognized as key to the early evolution of Homo sapiens outside Africa.

But there were gaps in the story.

To help fill those gaps, Dr. Cox and colleagues excavated archaic haplotypes from 161 genomes spanning 14 island groups in Island Southeast Asia and New Guinea.

Their analyses uncovered large stretches of DNA that didnt jibe with a single introgression of genes from Denisovans into humans in the region. Instead, modern Papuans carry gene variants from two deeply divergent Denisovan lineages.

In fact, the team estimates that those two groups of Denisovans had been separated from one another for 350,000 years.

Taken together with previous work  which has pointed to a third Denisovan lineage in the genomes of modern Siberians, Native Americans, and East Asians  the evidence suggests that modern humans interbred with multiple Denisovan populations, which were geographically isolated from each other over deep evolutionary time, the researchers said.

Our findings show that modern humans making their way out of Africa for the first time were entering a new world that looked entirely different from the one we see today.

_____

Guy S. Jacobs et al. Multiple Deeply Divergent Denisovan Ancestries in Papuans. Cell, published online April 11, 2019; doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2019.02.035
Egypts Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement on Thursday it has halted air flights to all Sudanese airports until further notice.

The Ministry said it has informed all flight operators with the decision after the recent developments in Sudan and until conducting risk analysis procedures to ensure the safety of operation and obtain official approval before the resumption of flights.

The statement confirmed that the countrys national airline EgyptAir has stopped its flights to Khartoum starting Thursday until further notice, following the Sudanese authorities decision to close airspace on Thursday afternoon.

Earlier on Thursday President Omar Al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan for 30 years, was overthrown by the armed forces amid mass protests against his 30-year-old rule.

Sudan's Defence Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf said Al-Bashir, 75, was under arrest and in a "safe place," and that a military council was now running the country.

A statement by Egypts Foreign Ministry on Thursday said Cairo backs the Sudanese people's choices in determining the future of their country.

"Egypt is following closely and with great concern the current and accelerating developments the brotherly Sudan is passing through at this decisive moment in its modern historyand affirms its full support for the choices of the brotherly Sudanese people and their free will to shape the future of their country," the foreign ministry said.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi received the National Order of Merit from Ivory Coast on Friday, on his second day in the country.

Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara held a luncheon in honour of El-Sisi during his historic visit to Abidjan, El-Sisis spokesman Bassam Radi said.

El-Sisis visit, which began on Thursday, was the first by an Egyptian president to the West African country.

The Ivorian president hailed good relations between his country and Egypt, praising Cairos prestigious position in the continent, Radi said.

El-Sisi lauded the mutual efforts of the two countries to achieve development and integration in Africa, Radi added.

The Egyptian president also invited his Ivorian counterpart to visit Cairo.

Ivory Coast is the third leg in the Egyptian presidents current foreign tour, which has already taken him to Guinea and the United States. The next stop will be enegal.

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The 169,000gt ship stretches 347.1 meters/1,139 feet and has 4,246 lower berths, with total capacity for 4,284 passengers plus 1,551 crew.

North Star, enhanced Ultimate Family Suite, karaoke venue

Like Quantum of the Seas, Anthem of the Seas and Ovation of the Seas, Spectrum has a North Star viewing capsule, FlowRider surf simulator and a Rip Cord skydiving simulator. A new feature for the Quantum series is Sky Pad, a virtual reality bungee trampoline experience.

An enhanced Ultimate Family Suite, 20% larger Windjammer Buffet, new specialty restaurant Sichuan Red and karaoke venue Star Moment are further elements. SeaPlex, the largest indoor sports and entertainment complex at sea, offers bumper cars, roller skating, basketball and new augmented reality walls and floors.

Spectrum has two 12V and two 16V Wartsila engines for total power of 67,200 kW and propulsion power of 41,000 kW.

Energy-efficient systems

The ship is fitted with the latest emission control systems and a 'hybrid' scrubber. Highly energy-efficient technical systems, optimized hydrodynamics, heat recovery and what the shipyard called 'exceedingly effective' hull coating, together with LED lighting, should provide considerable energy savings. A diesel/electric pod drive, extensive alarm and safety systems, interactive communication systems and the latest stage equipment are other features.

Spectrum of the Seas is registered to the Bahamas and the classification society is DNV GL.

The maiden voyage to Asia is set to embark April 18 in Barcelona. Spectrum will become the largest and most expensive ship in Asia upon arriving at its Shanghai home on June 3.
New Zealand's $41 billion Superannuation Fund will invest up to US$115 million in North American data centres as it seeks to capitalise on the growing demand for data infrastructure.

The investment is being made alongside vehicles managed by CIM Group, a North American real estate and infrastructure owner and operator, the fund said. The investment will be operated by CIM on behalf of the NZ Super Fund and includes potential access to some of CIMs pipeline of future data centre transactions and the six data centres it already has at various stages of development and operation.

Data centres offer strong infrastructure-like returns underpinned by exponential growth in digital data," said NZ Super Fund head of external investments and partnerships Del Hart.

"We are seeing increasing customer demand for offsite data centres as enterprises either shift data management to third-party providers or move to the cloud. Furthermore, by 2021, data volumes are expected to be nearly three times 2016 levels."

The fund's investment is in the provision and leasing of data centre facilities and infrastructure and not in data centre operation, it added.

CIM's data centres are located across North America in San Francisco, California; Toronto, Ontario; Orangeburg, New York; Chicago, Illinois; and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The fund also has a 39 percent investment in New Zealand information technology company Datacom, which has a network of data centres in New Zealand and Australia.

The NZ Super Fund is a sovereign wealth fund owned by the government to partially pre-fund the cost of national superannuation. It has returned 10.1 percent per annum since inception in 2003.

(BusinessDesk)

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Sify.com Movies Reviews Hollywood Pet Sematary

Pet Sematary review: Slowly gnaws at your nerves

Pet Sematary is a standard fare but is engaging too.

Source: SIFY By: Troy Ribeiro/IANS Critic's Rating: 2.5/5 Tuesday 04 June 2019

Movie Title Pet Sematary review: Slowly gnaws at your nerves Director Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer

Star Cast Jason Clarke, Amy Seimetz, Jete Laurence, Hugo Lavoie, Lucas Lavoie, John Lithgow

Pet Sematary, a horror fantasy, is a remake of the 1989 film of the same name. The story is based on a horror novel authored by Stephen King, which in fact was inspired by the short story, The Monkey's Paw, written by W.W. Jacobs in 1902.

The narrative explores the ramifications of grief, the choices people make when they are hurting and the irony of good intentions.

Gangs of Madras review: A watchable female centric gangster film | Five Feet Apart review: Watch it if you like teary-eyed romance drama | Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai? review: As a satire, it fails to make an impact | Tashkent Files review: Well-researched, potent in nature

The film begins this way: In search for a quieter life, Doctor Louis (Jason Clarke) from Boston moves into a large house at the edge of the woods in rural Maine. He is accompanied by his family which includes his wife Rachel (Amy Seimetz), daughter Ellie (Jete Laurence), son Gage and his daughter's pet cat Church.

After the family moves into their new home, Ellie finds a way down a path behind their house, which leads to a strange cemetery which is named Pet Sematary. Also, during the course of the day she befriends an elderly man Jud (John Lithgow) who later becomes a close family friend.

Jud is well-versed with the area and is aware of a burial ground beyond the cemetery, where the dead can be brought back to life.

So when Ellie's cat Church is killed in a fatal accident, Jud who is, by now, very fond of Ellie and does not want to see her sad, directs Doctor Louis to this mystical burial ground. Naturally the cat is back, but not the same. The scares are few but standard which are dramatically forced and rarely effective.

This is all part of the first act. From here, the film just becomes creepier. Yet the film lacks those important tension building moments.

Then, on Ellie's ninth birthday, she too meets with an accident and her father then decides to bury her, where he had buried Church. And from thence, reminding us that Ellie is not the same, the narrative gathers momentum, albeit a short termed one.

While the film is engaging, the directors do not seem to have invested any time in making these characters believable, likeable or sympathetic. The entire narrative simply progresses perfunctorily at a snail's pace. The last act simply feels rushed. But nevertheless, while this film slowly gnaws at your nerves, the end scene clearly ignites an appetite for a sequel, which I am so looking forward to.
Investments worth EGP 18 billion have been allocated to drinking water and sanitation projects in the upcoming 2019/2020 fiscal year, Egypts Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform Hala El-Saeed said on Friday.

The ministers remarks came after a delegation from the ministry and the National Investment Bank made a two-day tour of the three Suez Canal governorates of Suez, Port Said and Ismailia, to inspect drinking water and sanitation projects, the ministry said in a statement.

The investments include about EGP 4.6 billion for drinking water projects with the aim of providing full access to potable water, El-Saeed said, adding that a sum of EGP 13.4 billion will be allocated to sanitation projects.

The tour comes within the framework of the planning ministrys keenness to monitor projects of a social and environmental dimension, in addition to those having a direct effect on the peoples health.

The statement noted that those endeavours are among the main targets of Egypts Vision 2030.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi discussed the means to combat terrorism and to strengthen cooperation with Senegalese President Macky Sall in Dakar on Friday, El-Sisis spokesman Bassam Rady said.

El-Sisi arrived in the Senegalese capital on Thursday, where he was received by Sall and a number of officials at the airport, the statement by Rady read.

The pair discussed the means of fighting Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya in different areas in Africa, as well as the means of spreading enlightened Islamic thought in the region of West Africa.

The Senegalese president also praised the role of Al-Azhar in fighting extremist ideology and propagating the central approach of Islam in Senegal, through the strengthening of the mission of the Azhar mission, the preparation of imams, and scholarships for Senegalese students to study in Egypt.

The talks saw a consensus on the necessity of holding an Egyptian-Senegalese Joint Committee in Dakar, to serve as a starting point for further cooperation between the two countries and to enable them to review all aspects of bilateral relations.

El-Sisi accordingly extended an invitation to Sall to visit Egypt in the near future.

The two presidents also witnessed the signing of two memorandums of understanding on cooperation in the areas of media and diplomatic consultation.

During the meetings, the Senegalese president hailed El-Sisi's role as the current chairman of the African Union, praising the Egyptian role in defending African issues on the ground, especially those related to peace, security and development.

The Senegalese president also noted the deep historical relations between the two countries and the need to work in this regard to develop various frameworks of joint cooperation, especially the economic and trade aspects, as well as benefiting from the Egyptian capabilities, broad experience and successful experiences in the fields of infrastructure development, mega-projects, roads, energy and tourism, in support of Senegal's "emerging development plan" for economic development.

El-Sisi affirmed Egypt's keenness to continue political consultation with Senegal on various peace and security issues in the continent, believing in the important role played by Senegal in this regard.

The president also expressed Egypt's pride in supporting Senegal's development efforts by providing technical support and capacity-building programmes to prepare Senegalese cadres.

He praised Senegal's ambitious economic development plan and Senegal's economic growth as one of the most successful models on the African continent.

He pointed out Egypt's interest in increasing the volume of trade exchange and investments between the two countries and enhancing the role of the Egyptian business sector in the Senegalese market during the coming period, especially in the fields of construction of infrastructure projects, agriculture, health, science, culture, and information technology.

El-Sisi's visit to Senegal is the fourth leg of his current foreign tour that has seen him visit Guinea, the US and Ivory Coast.

Egypt's

Egypt's

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I was invited to review brunch at Aqua Nueva and our food and drink was complimentary. I was not paid to attend and was not under contractual obligation to write this blog post or create content on any platform.

My mum recently said to me I dont really like brunch to which I had to explain to her that brunch was no longer that late breakfast that you have at around 11.30, waiting hungry all morning nor is it kind of a combo of two meals that must somehow involve eggs in some form now brunch is conceptual, you can eat it in when ever you what (probably around 2pm meaning you still have breakfast too) and you can eat whatever you want, though usually alcohol in some form is involved.

You can brunch in all different forms around London but the new Saturday Spanish Feasting Brunch at Aqua Nueva is certainly the first Spanish themed brunch Ive tried. Youve heard me talk about Aqua group on this blog before, having visited Aqua Shard several times for breakfast, afternoon tea and cocktails plus trying various set menus at Aqua Kyoto. Aqua Nueva actually shares a building with Aqua Kyoto so visitors can choose between Spanish or Japanese food in this gorgeous restaurant space with a view over London.

This time I was turning down the Spanish side and welcomed by a giant blue bull!

Theres no mistaking which side of the restaurant is Aqua Kyoto and which Aqua Nueva as both are individually decorated to reflect their style. The Saturday Spanish Feasting Brunch is a set menu created by Head Chef Yahir Gonzalez, and at 35 each its quite a bargain. Guests can also choose from two drinks packages.



You can either have a glass of Cava, a glass of wine and a glass of Sangria for an extra 18, or glass of Cava, three glasses of wine and a glass of Sangria for 28.

Brunch begins with pan con tomate  toasted crystal tomato bread  something I always personally order in tapas restaurants, especially in Spain itself. I dont think you can have a Spanish feast without it. Bread comes with a selection of croquettes both ham and seafood which are perfect for popping in the mouth to enjoy a delicious smoky flavour.

An avocado salad with bitter leaf salad is a really refreshing accompaniment and has a lovely crunch from the bitter leaves.

Next comes the classic Spanish tortilla served with an aioli sauce along with a skewer of marinated rump of beef with a green sauce of coriander, olive oil, sea salt, garlic and cumin. Both are delicious and perfectly cooked.

Finally, you simply cant have a Spanish feast without a paella honestly though it was tasty, I thought it was a little meagre with only two prawns and four mussels. Also the prawns hadnt been deveined, not necessarily a huge problem but something that I personally find a little off-putting.

Finally dessert stuck with our Spanish theme with pistachio churros with mango and passionfruit sauce  totally morish.

The brunch will be available every Saturday from 12.00-4.00pm for 35, with the additional drinks costs mentioned above. If youre a big fan of Spanish food and the concept of brunch, I think youre in for a treat!

Aqua Nueva

240 Regent Street

London

W1B 3BR

020 7478 0540
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Recently, while attending a meeting on Sint Maarten, Jaime Saleh in his current capacity as Minister of State for Curacao and board member of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance paid a brief courtesy visit to Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin at the Government Building. Mr. Saleh and Prime Minister Romeo Marlin discussed the ongoing recovery process and the current state of affairs on Sint Maarten.





Before accepting his current role as Minister of State for Curacao, from September 1979 to February 1990, Mr. Saleh was President of the Common Court of Justice of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba and from 1990 to 2002, he served as Governor General of the Netherlands Antilles.





Photo caption L to R Prime Minister Leona Romeo Marlin & Minister of State for Curacao Jaime Sale




There is no shortage of commentators about the predicament of Theresa May. She has always played for time.





by Victor Cherubim





What was meant to be a great crossroads in the history of the United Kingdom has turned into a quagmire. For all intents and purposes, Britain should have once again become a sovereign nation on 29 March 2019, but we now seem to be shrouded in the fog of uncertainty, getting nowhere fast. Manyvoicesare silent but in fact, they are all sick to death of Brexit.





The question on peoples minds is: has it been three years of wasted effort negotiating with the European Union?. Prime Minister Theresa May has exhausted every possibility to secure a deal with Parliament having voted thrice to reject it. Even her offer to work with the Opposition Labour Partys leader, Jeremy Corbyn to seek a compromise has not materialised.The cross-party talks were described as productive and wide-ranging, but Labour were more downbeat. Tony Blairs Chief of Staff, Jonathan Powell has stated to shift the blame on Labour at a future General Election for the mess we are in, is not on.





Lets face it: its all over now, for now, said Rod Liddle in last Sunday Times, as little

if anything, can be done now with just48 hours to go for the European deadline. If the EU does not agree to an extension, or if a single member state among the 27 vetoes it, the UK will leave without a deal on Friday 8 April 2019.





Whitehall ramps up response to a feared no-deal mayhem despite expectations that the EU may grant a delay to Brexit but with tough conditions that Britain will not use its veto over EU budgets, or senior appointments or to frustrate further integration.





The Home Office has stated what the new Dark Blue coveron British Passports will look like from October 2019, replacing the current maroon passport omitting the words European Union.





At what cost Brexit?





Thecountry is paying the price for all this indecision. The damage is not only to the country, said Camilla Cavendish recently in the FT. The reputation for competence of the Conservative Party lies in tatters, except to keep Jeremy Corbyn out. But the most recent poll over the last few days,give the Labour Party a small lead over the Conservatives.





There is no shortage of commentators about the predicament of Theresa May. She has always played for time. On that score she has kept her party and the country guessing. Anyone else would have thrown in the towel and quit. To be like Margaret Thatcher, whose motto was: a Woman is not for turning, Theresa May, has never given up.





What else in Britain is reeling?





Three years seem to have been wasted on uniting political opinion in Britain, which is and has been divided on the issue of Europe for nearly 45 years.





While Brexit continues, there is the NHS staffing crisis. Observers at Kings Fund, Nuffield Trust & Health Foundation, consider it is so critical it cannot be fixed by training more doctors and nurses alone.





Besides, Housing is also needing much attention from the uncertainty of Brexit. Almost two thirds of London Boroughs are failing to build even half the houses their residents need, according to the latest Residential Development Research from Estate Agents and Developers. Knight Frank.





To add to all this the Mayor of London has put up the cost of driving into London to curtail pollution. His Clean Air Emissions programme has come into operation in the last few days. What are your thoughts of paying 24 every time you drive to the heart of London?





Nothing is ever simple in Brexit?





Minutes ago, the EU leaders late on 10 April 2019 agreed to delay Art 50 until 31 October 2019. Understandably, it is longer than what Theresa May wanted (30 June) but shorter than she expected? Could there be a General Election by then?





Life in Britain carries on for now. Will we be back again before 31 October 2019 asking for a further extension? Who knows?
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Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images(CHICAGO) -- Kim Foxx, the embattled Chicago state's attorney whose office has come under fire for its handling of the Jussie Smollett case, has asked the local inspector general to look conduct an "independent review" of their investigation, she confirmed in a statement.

The news comes the day after the city's law department announced that they are suing Smollett to recoup the amount that they had to spend in order to cover the overtime of police officers during the investigation.

Smollett's case has sparked a firestorm ever since news broke of the Jan. 29 alleged attack. Controversy was further stoked when police alleged the incident was a hoax and ultimately when prosecutors dropped the charges against the actor.

Foxx said that she "invited" the inspector general, Patrick Blanchard, to look into her office's handling of the case, which involved the "Empire" actor's claims of being a victim of a hate crime that police alleged was a hoax.

"A former prosecutor, Inspector General Blanchard has been conducting independent inquiries for Cook County for over a decade," Foxx wrote in her statement.

"Ensuring that I and my office have the communitys trust and confidence is paramount to me, which is why I invited an independent review of this matter. I welcome this investigation and pledge my full cooperation and the cooperation of my office as IG Blanchard conducts his review."

For her part, Chicago's Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot suggested that the city's attention should be on other issues.

"We've got a lot of things on our plate, a lot of pressing issues that are truly effecting peoples' lives," Lightfoot said Friday. "This doesn't rank as a matter of any importance to me."

The decision to review the case comes after the decision by the state's attorney's office to drop all 16 felony disorderly conduct charges against Smollett.

Foxx said she recused herself about a week before Smollett was formally charged after consulting her office's chief ethics officer about a phone call she received from Tina Tchen, the one-time chief of staff for former first lady Michelle Obama, asking on behalf of Smollett's family about the status of the case. She said she later spoke to a relative of Smollett's whom she would not identify.

So the final decision to dismiss charges against Smollett fell on Cook County First Assistant State's Attorney Joe Magats.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson have blasted the decision to dismiss the charges.

The FBI is reviewing the circumstances surrounding the dismissal of the criminal charges against Smollett, two law enforcement sources briefed on the matter told ABC News. The sources insisted it is not an investigation, but a "review."

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Preparations are underway for a final parliamentary vote on changes to the 2014 constitution

A report on the final draft of the amendments, prepared by parliaments Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee, will be debated ahead of next weeks parliamentary vote on amendments to the constitution.

The report contains the final draft of the amended articles, together with remarks on the changes, either submitted in written form or during the series of consultative sessions held between 20 and 28 March. The commentary was compiled by a 13-member sub-committee.

Bahaaeddin Abu Shokka, head of the Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee, told reporters this week that it was not the job of the sub-committee to offer any opinions but simply collect and classify the opinions of others.

"It is important that ahead of the final vote in parliament next week MPs take note of all the remarks and comments made on each article. The Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee received no directions from anyone on how the changed articles should be drafted. And in presenting the final drafts all the comments and remarks we received will be appended to the relevant articles. It will be up to MPs whether or not they approve our text or change it during the debate."

The committee received comments from various state authorities, MPs, civil society organizations and public figures. We want MPs and the media to take note of these, and to know who said what in the national dialogue. Transparency is essential. We have nothing to hide.

Legislative and Constitutional Affairs Committee member Kamal Ahmed told Al-Ahram Weekly that the drafting process had been thorough and the process will ensure the amendments serve the national interests of Egypt, helping to reinforce stability and widen the scope of participation in political and parliamentary life.

Leftist and liberal political parties have sharply criticised the amendments, saying not only do they concentrate too much power in the hands of the president but will allow him to remain in power at the expense of the principle of the rotation of power.

It is as yet unclear whether the amendments will allow President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi to run for two additional terms of six years  remaining in post until 2034  or extend his current term to 2024 instead of 2022 and then allow him to stand for a single six-year term, ending in 2030.

The proposals submitted by parliaments majority Support Egypt coalition states only that a transitional article will be added to the constitution allowing the sitting president to run in line with the amended text of Article 140 on presidential terms.

Observers expect the final draft of the amendments to be discussed on Sunday and Monday with a final vote held on Tuesday.

Sayed Abdel-Aal, appointed MP and Tagammu Party head, told the partys mouthpiece Al-Ahali that he expects the final vote to be held on 17 April.

There will be a discussion of the report on the amendments on 14 and 15 April followed the next day by the vote. He says it is still not known whether the articles will be put up for vote individually or as a package.

Abdel-Aal anticipates a public referendum on the amendments between 22 and 24 April.

Three days will be needed to allow citizens to participate and ensure a large turnout, said Abdel-Aal. In ruling circles the referendum is being seen as a vote of confidence in President Al-Sisi and his regime.

The Tagammu has argued the transitional article should allow President El-Sisis current term be extended to six years and then allow a single additional six-year term rather than two. Should its recommendations not be incorporated in the final draft then Abdel-Aal says the partys MPs will vote against the changes.

In response, speaker Ali Abdel-Aal indicated that there are two points of view among MPs and political groups on the amendment of Article 140 and the related transitional article.

"All I can say is that the two points of view on President El-Sisi's office will be taken into account and that the final draft will be presented to MPs when the final debate on the total amendments in parliament comes on 16 and 17 April," said Abdel-Aal.

On 3 February the majority Support Egypt coalition submitted its proposals to change the 2014 constitution and received provisional approval during a plenary session on 14 February, opening the door for the series of national dialogue hearing sessions.

Regarding the timetable, parliamentary officials have said only that the proposed amendments are expected to be voted on by mid-April and a public referendum held before Ramadan begins on 6 May.

In addition to increasing the presidential term from four to six years the amendments include a provision to allocate 25 per cent of parliamentary seats to female candidates, reinstate the post of vice president and establish a second chamber.

Several political parties have begun campaigning in support of the amendments. The Future of Homeland Party  with 60 MPs  has been actively drumming up support for the proposals, organising public rallies across Egypt.

We are keen that citizens discuss the amendments and know that they serve the political and economic future of Egypt, says Essam Hilal, the partys secretary for organisational affairs.

There will be a door-to-door campaign urging citizens to vote in the referendum. The aim of our campaign is to refute rumours and foreign reports claiming the amendments will militarise Egypt.

We are keen to bring constitutional law professors and political analysts on board to explain how the amendments will boost economic and political stability. Already citizens can see how Egypt has regained stability in a volatile region, and they realise the importance of boosting this stability in the long run.

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Egypt's interior ministry announced on Friday that it had killed two terrorists while foiling an attack targeting a police checkpoint in Egypt's South Sinai, a statement read.

The statement said that police forces confronted armed terrorist elements who attempted to attack the Oyoun Moussa security checkpoint in the early hours of Friday."

The exchange of fire resulted in the death of two of the terrorists.

Forces from the interior ministry found an explosive belt among the terrorists' possessions.

According to the statement, a bomb expert was immediately deployed to the scene to defuse it.

Tight security were also deployed around the site of the attack and the surrounding area.

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Indian IT giants Infosys, TCS see profits soar



Mumbai, April 12 (AFP) Apr 12, 2019



India's biggest software exporters reported a surge in net profits on Friday thanks to strong revenue growth and a slew of big new deals.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest IT outsourcing firm, said profits for the quarter ending March 2019 rose 17.7 percent from the same period a year ago.

The Mumbai-based company notched 81.26 billion rupees ($1.18 billion) in consolidated net profits for Q4 of financial year 2018-19, up from 69.04 billion rupees on-year.

TCS said its revenues has grown 18.5 percent for the quarter year-on-year.

"This is the strongest revenue growth that we have had in the last fifteen quarters," said CEO Rajesh Gopinathan in a statement.

"Our order book is bigger than in the prior three quarters, and the deal pipeline is also robust," he added.

TCS's rival Infosys, India's second-largest IT outsourcing firm, reported a more than ten percent rise in its quarterly profits.

The Bangalore-headquartered company said consolidated net profit for the quarter ended March 2019 notched 40.78 billion rupees ($589.1 million).

That was up from the 36.90 billion rupees recorded in the same period the previous year, a rise of 10.5 percent.

Infosys said revenues soared 19.1 percent to 215.54 billion rupees.

It added that 101 new clients were added during the quarter, bringing their total client count to 1,279.

"We have completed the first year of our transformation journey with strong results on multiple dimensions including revenue growth, performance of our digital portfolio, large deal wins, and client metrics," chief executive Salil Parekh said in a statement.

"This is a reflection of our increased client relevance stemming from our focus on digital, positioning, and longstanding client relationships," he added.

India's $150 billion IT sector has long been one of the country's flagship industries as companies around the world take advantage of its skilled English-speaking workforce.

Indian IT firms are undergoing a period of change in the face of automation and new technologies but continue to boast healthy balance sheets.

pdh/rox
To get to the Moon in 2024, the rocket is just NASA's first headache







Colorado Springs (AFP) April 11, 2019





In the shadow of the Rocky Mountains, Alan Campbell, a project manager for space systems at the famed Draper Laboratory that built the computer which took astronauts to the Moon 50 years ago, is waiting for news from NASA. His firm has continued to specialize in the advanced technology required for space travel and is a natural candidate to help the US space agency in its quest to return to the Moon by 2024 - once final requests for proposals go out. "We don't know when those are going to be be ... read more
Sudans ruling military council on Friday promised the country would have a new civilian government, a day after the armed forces overthrew President Omar al-Bashir after 30 years in power.

The council, which is now running Sudan under Defence Minister Mohammed Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, said it expects a pre-election transition period it announced on Thursday to last two years at most or much less if chaos can be avoided.

The council also announced that it would not extradite Bashir to face allegations of genocide at the international war crimes court. Instead he would go on trial in Sudan.

Fridays announcement of a civilian government by the head of the military councils political committee, General Omar Zain al-Abideen, appeared aimed at reassuring demonstrators who took to the streets to warn against imposing army rule after Bashirs overthrow.

Abideen pledged that the military council would not interfere with the civilian government. However he said the defense and interior ministries would be under the councils control.

Not Greedy For Power

He said the military council had no solutions to Sudans crisis and these would come from the protesters.

We are the protectors of the demands of the people, he said. We are not greedy for power.

Earlier on Friday, thousands of Sudanese demonstrators camped outside the defense ministry to push for a civilian government, defying a curfew and calling for mass prayers.

Demonstrators who have been holding almost daily anti-Bashir protests have rejected the decision to set up a transitional military council and vowed to continue protests until a civilian government is established.

Activists called for mass Friday prayers outside the defense ministry compound, a focal point for protests.

At the compound, large tents were put up and people brought in food and handed out water as the crowd swelled, a Reuters witness said. Ahmed al-Sadek, a 39-year-old trader, said he had not slept at his home since the sit-in began on Saturday.

Activists wearing yellow vests controlled traffic around the compound on Friday morning and managed foot traffic to and from the sit-in, a Reuters witness said. They also blocked a major bridge in central Khartoum.

Bashir, 75, had faced 16 weeks of demonstrations against him.

The political committee will meet political parties and foreign diplomats during the course of Friday, state media reported.

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Trump's controversial transgender troop ban takes effect



Washington, April 12 (AFP) Apr 12, 2019



US President Donald Trump's controversial ban on transgender Americans in the military came into force on Friday following a protracted legal battle that went all the way to the nation's top court.

Trump's administration has insisted that there is "too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality" to allow transgender people to serve -- reversing a policy enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama.

The Pentagon says the restrictions are not a blanket ban, but they would bar many if not most people who identify as transgender from enlisting, and could also impact currently serving personnel.

"This policy will ensure that the US military maintains the highest standards necessary to achieve maximum readiness, deployability, and lethality to fight and win on the battlefield," the Department of Defense says on its website.

The policy -- which has undergone various iterations since Trump first announced it on Twitter in July 2017 -- has been widely criticized by rights activists and has been repeatedly challenged in court.

The US Supreme Court ruled in January that the policy could take effect pending the outcome of ongoing litigation.

Under the latest version, no one who has transitioned to another gender or who requires hormone treatment will be able to enlist.

Those who have been diagnosed with "gender dysphoria" are also "presumptively disqualified" from enlisting unless they have been "stable for 36 months and (are) willing and able to serve in (their) biological sex," according to the Department of Defense.

Gender dysphoria, according to the American Psychiatric Association, "involves a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify."

Serving troops who transitioned or requested gender reassignment surgery before Friday are allowed to remain in the military.

But starting on Friday, those who are newly diagnosed with gender dysphoria may be discharged if they are "unable or unwilling to serve in (their) biological sex," the Department of Defense says.



- Repeating 'don't ask, don't tell' -



Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a research institute focusing on sexual minorities in the military, said the policy amounts to a ban that will force transgender troops to remain "silent and invisible."

"It is 'don't ask, don't tell' all over again," said Belkin, referring to the policy under which gay service members had to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal from the military.

Sarah McBride of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for the LGBT community, described the policy as a national security threat.

"The Trump-Pence transgender troop ban is dangerous for both transgender people and our national security," McBride said in a statement.

"The fact that a service member who came out on Thursday can continue to serve openly while a service member who comes out on Monday can't only reinforces the cruel and arbitrary nature of this ban," she said.

Under the Obama-era policy, transgender recruits were to start being accepted by July 1, 2017. The Trump administration postponed that date to January 1, 2018, before deciding to reverse the policy entirely.

The Pentagon estimates that 9,000 out of a total of 1.3 million active-duty personnel identify as transgender. Of those, 1,000 say they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or want to.

Transgender rights activists say the figure is higher.

"As many as 15,000 transgender service members stand to lose their jobs," Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King, who is transgender, told ABC News this week.

"For those of us who are grandfathered in because we've already come out and we already have a diagnosis, there's the possibility for systematic discrimination," King said.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump in 2016, described the new rules as "abhorrent."

"Every American should be able to serve their country, and I can't believe we're still debating that in 2019," she tweeted.

"We have to reverse this as soon as we can."
Sudan military council chief to address the nation: state TV



Khartoum, April 12 (AFP) Apr 12, 2019



The chief of Sudan's new ruling military council, General Awad Ibn Ouf, will deliver a speech to the nation "soon", state television said Friday.

Ibn Ouf was sworn in as de facto ruler late Thursday after leading the ouster of veteran leader Omar al-Bashir following months of protests.

Separately, the military council's political committee chief, Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin, told diplomats Bashir's toppling after 30 years in power was "not a military coup".

"The role of the military council is to protect the security and stability of the country," Abdin said.

"This is not a military coup but taking the side of the people."

"We will open a dialogue with political parties to examine how to manage Sudan," he added.

"There will be a civilian government and we will not intervene in its composition or business."

Sudanese protestors have vowed to chase out the country's new military rulers as the council offered talks on forming a civilian government.
S.Sudan peace accord progress falling 'way short': monitor



Nairobi, April 12 (AFP) Apr 12, 2019



Progress in implementing the peace agreement in South Sudan has been "way short" of expectations, the body responsible for monitoring it said on Friday, a day after Pope Francis urged the warring factions to achieve a lasting peace.

"It is clear that achievements have fallen way short of what was intended for the Pre-Transitional Period," said Augostino Njoroge, interim chairman of the monitoring and evaluation commission (RJMEC), in an opening statement to a meeting of the body in Juba.

Njoroge said "critical pending tasks" included steps towards forming a national army as well as determining the state boundaries.

The pope on Thursday told President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar at the Vatican he hoped "hostilities will finally cease, that the armistice will be respected".

The arch-rivals last saw each other in October, shortly after the signing of a power-sharing deal, when Machar made a brief return to Juba for the first time since fleeing on foot in a hail of gunfire in July 2016.

The pontiff said he hoped "that political and ethnic divisions will be surmounted, and that there will be a lasting peace for the common good of all those citizens who dream of beginning to build the nation".

Machar was Kiir's vice president until a falling out in 2013 which kickstarted a civil war just two years after independence from Sudan.

Battles between those from Machar's Nuer community and Kiir's Dinka people were characterised by brutal violence, rape and UN warnings about "ethnic cleansing".

Njoroge also expressed concern over continued access problems faced by the personnel of another monitoring body -- the CTSAMM -- adding that "it is disappointing to note that this is a persistent problem".

"I call on the commanders in Juba to hold their field commanders to account and allow free and unfettered access," he said.

Several ceasefire agreements and peace pacts have failed to end the fighting, which has led to the death of an estimated 380,000 people, uprooted a third of the population, forced nearly two-and-a-half million into exile and triggered bouts of deadly famine.
US, German defense chiefs discuss Islamic State foreign fighter issue



Washington, April 12 (AFP) Apr 12, 2019



German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan discussed Friday the need to repatriate Islamic State foreign fighters from Syria or fund detention centers to hold them long-term.

Washington wants European allies to take back hundreds of IS fighters from their countries who were captured in recent months in Syria.

The alternative is to hold them long-term in camps or prisons in Syria or Iraq, but that would need financing.

"We have assured once more that we will take care individually of every single case," von der Leyen told reporters after meeting Shanahan, the acting secretary of defense.

"But we were both also convinced of the fact that the challenge consists mostly in collecting the evidence in the region as regards to the terrorist activity of the terrorist fighters," she added.

Some European countries are refusing to repatriate and put on trial their nationals given the absence of any investigation on the ground in Syria showing what they might have done with Islamic State.

In addition, the fighters are being held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, who do not have the status of a sovereign government.

But Washington fears that if they are not repatriated, the fighters could rejoin jihadist operations. The US wants the Europeans to finance the building of detention centers, which could be in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

Baghdad has said it could put on trial the alleged jihadists, but that it would need funding to support that.

That would solve the problem for their home countries, but human rights groups are uncomfortable with that path.

Von der Leyen meanwhile expressed satisfaction with the assurances she received that US forces will maintain a presence in Syria "with the required number of troops," after Trump said in December that the Pentagon would pull out following the defeat of Islamic State.

"The next weeks will show how everybody can bear their fair share of the burden," she said.
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The head of Sudan's ruling military council General Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf has announced his resignation in a statement broadcast on state television on late Friday.

He also named the Army Chief of Staff Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman as the new head of a transitional military council.

Protesters in Khartoum were celebrating Ibn Aufo's uster in the streets.

On Thursday, Ahmed Ibn Auf announced the establishment of a military council that would govern the country for two years.

Earlier on Friday, Sudans ruling military council promised the country would have a new civilian government, and that the transition period announced on Thursday to last two years at most or much less if chaos can be avoided.

But Sudans main protest organizing group on Friday rejected the transitional military council promise to set up a civilian government and hand over power to an elected president within two years.

Our demands are clear, just and legitimate, but the coupists (the regimes security committee)... are not capable of creating change, and they do not have the safety and stability to stay in power, the Sudanese Professionals Association said in a statement.

This is not to mention the peaceful demands of handing over power to a transitional civilian government as one of the conditions that needs to be implemented.

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English11/04/2019

SERB CAUCUS: WE WILL NOT OBEY BLACKMAILS OR ORDERS

SARAJEVO, April 11 /SRNA/ - The Serb caucus in the BiH House of Representatives reports it cannot participate in the Thursday extraordinary session of the House as that would mean it obeys blackmails and orders.



The caucus points out it is high time the parliamentary committee in charge of the appointment of the Council of Ministers started working so that the parliaments working bodies could be formed in a legal and lawful manner and so the piled-up problems of citizens could finally be resolved.



"We wont accept any made up problems or imposed solutions so that we from Republika Srpska can be falsely accused of obstruction and inactivity, because the root of this obstruction and inactivity is exactly the deadlock in the formation of the Council of Ministers, and the consequence of this is a potential paralysis of institutions with unforeseeable ramifications for both the European agenda and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which the EU has already objected against and criticised, reads the Serb caucus press release.



The Serb caucus points out no one from the Republika Srpska winning coalition bears a modicum of responsibility for these obstructions.



"We once again call on everyone to reach an agreement and act upon the peoples will expressed in elections so the political crisis and tense situation in BiH does not get out of control, reads the press release of the Houses Serb caucus.



The Serb caucus are Nenad Stevandic, Nenad Nesic and Jakov Galic.



Head of the SNSD /Alliance of Independent Social Democrats/ caucus Stasa Kosarac stated on Wednesday that his partys members were not going to take part in the Thursday session of the House.



The BiH Parliamentary Assembly House of Representatives is expected to hold an urgent session Thursday in Sarajevo and its agenda includes information from the Council of Ministers in a caretaking capacity about the control and management of a massive inflow of migrants and refugees into the country with the emphasis on the current state of security and humanitarian affairs in the Una-Sana Canton.



Another point on the agenda of the first urgent session in this term is information from the House of Representatives Advisory Board about the reasons for failing to appoint members to the BiH parliamentary delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe /PACE/ and possible consequences.



Calling the urgent session was backed by members of the SDP, Our Party, SBB /Party for a Better Future of BiH/ and A-SDA /a breakaway from the Party of Democratic Action/.



Due to the failure to form its parliamentary committees, the BiH Parliamentary Assembly missed the deadline for appointing a delegation to PACE for this year.



The House session is set to begin at 11:00 a.m. /end/ds
With the agricultural industry contributing more than 24 billion to the UK economy, the role of our British farmers, families and rural businesses has never been so paramount.

Amid ongoing Brexit battles and daily political grappling, the British Farming Awards 2019 offers a timely reminder there are certainties in the countrys provision of food and drink through our dynamic and innovative farmers and producers.

Organised by AgriBriefing and supported by Morrisons, there are 14 categories in total.

Alongside farmings core sectors  dairy, beef, sheep, arable and machinery  there is also a celebration of talented youngsters coming into the industry and a reminder of the contribution rural businesses are making to the UKs tourism, textile, wedding, retail and wildlife sectors  just to name a few.

Ben Briggs, editor of Farmers Guardian, said:

"With so much change and uncertainty characterising the current era of agriculture, the British Farming Awards are a timely celebration of the innovation and skill at the heart of the farming industry.

"Whether it is about boosting the profile of your business, acknowledging the hard work of your staff, or celebrating great on-farm ideas, the British Farming Awards provides an unrivalled platform to shout about our fantastic farming industry."

Andrew Thornber, Trading Director at Morrisons said:

"Morrisons is the single biggest supermarket customer for British farmers, so we are proud to support the British Farming Awards. Our business model is based on buying direct from British farmers wherever possible and we believe this approach strengthens British agriculture and supports farming communities."

To enter or nominate an individual who is doing an exceptional job and deserves recognition for their efforts, simply visit the British Farming Awards website to nominate or enter.

Entries close on Friday, July 12, 2019.
Joyce Campbell, who farms at Armadale Farm in the Highlands, is known to many for her love of sheep, her dogs and the Scottish landscape. Active on social media platforms, as well as appearances on TV and radio, Joyce is determined to show the wider public why the UK sheep industry leads the world in quality and welfare standards.

Commenting on the need for a voice in the changing world, Joyce says,

For a sustainable future, its not only important to ensure we are doing the best job possible, but also ensure our consumers know about it.

Joyces passion for the industry is clear, but so also is the sense of responsibility she has to the 5,500-acre farm that has been passed through her family since her grandparents and Dad took over in 1962. She took on the full running of the farm in 1990, aged 20, having returned from Auchencruive College. The farm carries a flock of around 830 pure-bred North Country Cheviot Hill ewes in addition to around 50 tups, 255 ewe hogg replacements and 25 suckler cows.

For most of the year our sheep are out on the hills, grazing on the heather. This is a very extensive, sustainable system of farming that has been practiced in the region for generations. It has formed what is a magnificent landscape that is appreciated around the world  which is a selling point for our products, she adds.

Lambing starts in mid-April for around 5 weeks and scanning in the middle of February ensures Joyce can make informed management decisions on nutrition.

Its vital to provide the correct energy in late pregnancy nutrition to avoid any deficiency and risk of twin lamb disease. Getting a healthy ewe and lambs is critical for business performance. Its so important to focus on the quality of feed you are offering.

A measure of success of the nutrition is the amount of calcium you use at lambing time. If you arent using any, you know they have been fed adequately. Ive been using extra high energy blocks for years; and swear by them. Animals can self-regulate their intakes according to their requirements. This little and often process benefits forage digestion, which can be seen in animal performance. We have healthy and growing lambs with mothers that produce milk.
Egypts Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Sahar Nasr called on the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to support developing countries in terms of regional trade, investment attraction and achieving economic development, amid the current tensions affecting the global economy.

The remarks were part of a speech the minister delivered at the Group of 24's ministerial meeting in Washington, held on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The meeting was attended by CEO of the World Bank Kristalina Georgieva and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde.

The minister underscored the importance of the efforts made by strong international financial organisations and all development partners to help reform and diversify economies of the Group of 24, a bloc of emerging and developing market nations.

Nasr noted that strong economic reforms have been implemented in Egypt and contributed to developing its economy.

She added that concrete steps have been taken to provide a climate attracting investments, which she said has led the private sector to direct its investments to Egypt.

The minister said job opportunities can be provided through the empowerment of women and youth, improving the business climate, and promoting the private sectors participation in investment in the neediest areas.

These are among the Egyptian governments key targets of its economic reform programme, she added.

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Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

Shares puts on free Investor Events throughout the year across the country. They provide an opportunity for investors to learn more about companies on the stock market and hear from a range of investment experts including fund managers and Shares journalists.
Mona El-Fiqi discovers the rationale behind the governments decision to increase the amount of land growing rice

Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation Ezzeddin Abu Steit recently announced that an increase of 50 per cent would be allowed in the land allocated for rice cultivation this season. 1,074000 feddans will be cultivated with rice this year instead of 724,000 feddans last year, he said (one feddan is 1.038 acres).

The decision aimed to increase production and reduce the countrys imports bill in order to save foreign currency, he said. A ministerial plan is currently being applied targeting the increased productivity of agricultural land by promoting new kinds of high-quality rice with low water consumption.

Abu Steit said that according to Ministerial Decree 65/2019, the area of land available for rice cultivation this year would be divided into three.

The first 724,000 feddans will be irrigated by Nile water, while the second 200,000 feddans will be cultivated with new kinds of rice able to tolerate less water.

A third area of 150,000 feddans will be irrigated with recycled water. The rice cultivation season runs from May to September.

Ragab Shehata, head of the Rice Division at the Federation of Egyptian Industries, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the decision was a positive one and a step towards achieving a balance between rice production and consumption.

The area allocated for rice cultivation has been a controversial issue over the past few years. The government has said that owing to water shortages a reduction in rice production has been required. However, there have been concerns that rice shortages in local markets as a result could lead to the increase in price of an important food staple.

In 2017, Egypts rice production stood at four million tons, while local consumption was three million tons. Egypt exported the one million tons of rice that exceeded consumption.

However, experts say that exporting rice is like exporting water because it is a crop that requires a great deal of water at a time when Egypt faces an annual water deficit of around seven billion cubic metres, according to the UN.

To rationalise water consumption and balance the production and consumption of rice, the government decided in 2018 to reduce the area available for rice cultivation from 1.7 million to 724,000 feddans.

The Ministry of Agriculture has started to apply strict regulations on growing rice. Farmers are no longer able to cultivate rice unless their land is located in an area designated by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Rice cultivation is allowed in the Delta governorates but is prohibited in Upper Egypt, South Sinai, Marsa Matrouh, Qalioubiya, Menoufiya, Cairo and Giza.

Farmers who violate the rules are subject to penalties under Law 12/1984. Mohamed Abdel-Kader, a farmer who lives in Meet Ghamr in the Daqahliya governorate, cultivated rice although it was forbidden in his area and he had to pay a fine as a result.

Abdel-Kader said that this year the fines had doubled, so the farmers in his village had decided to stop growing rice.

Due to the governments decision to cut rice cultivation, production decreased to 2.6 million tons while consumption remained at three million tons in 2018. The gap between consumption and production was covered by increasing imports of rice.

However, rice prices also increased. A ton of rice sold at LE6,000 at the beginning of 2018 has now surged to LE8,000, according to Abdel-Kader.

Ali Abdel-Rahman, head of the International Union for the Environment and Development, said it was the governments fault that prices had jumped. It was now spending foreign currency importing rice that was lower in quality than the local produce and did not suit Egyptian tastes, he said.

The government announced that the aim of cutting rice production last year was to rationalise the use of Nile water, yet 80 per cent of rice cultivation depends on salt water from the Mediterranean Sea or reused agricultural water, Abdel-Rahman said.

He doubted whether an increase in rice production would help reduce prices because traders would not permit the prices to drop, stockpiling rice at the first signs of trouble, he said.

Shehata said that rice was currently available at between LE8 and LE10 for an unpacked kg. Imported rice from India, China and Russia, in addition to around 500,000 tons of surplus from the previous season, had helped to stabilise prices, he said.

However, Mohamed Ismail, the owner of a supermarket in New Cairo, said that rice prices varied from LE14 to LE20 per packed kg. During the past six months, sales of rice had been down by 50 per cent due to increases in prices, he said.

Most consumers preferred to buy unpacked rice at LE11 per kg or eat pasta and bread instead, Ismail said.

Shehata explained that prices could differ according to a districts standard of living and that some well-known brands sold rice at higher prices. Consumers were free to select products according to their needs, he said.

The Daqahliya, Kafr Al-Sheikh, Sharqiya, Beheira and Gharbiya governorates have the largest areas given over to rice. The highest rice production over the past 10 years was in 2008, when it reached 7.3 million tons

* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 April, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Towards security in rice

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The International Finance Corporation, a World Bank Group member, has said it is willing to expand its activities in Egypt in the coming period to back the transport, renewable energy and entrepreneurship sectors.

IFC chief operating officer Stephanie von Friedberg made the remarks at a meeting with Egypts Minister of Investment and International Cooperation Sahar Nasr, on the fringe of the Spring Meetings of the World Bank Group in Washington.

The two sides discussed beefing up the IFC's support to Egypt's private sector, mainly in the transport, renewable energy and entrepreneurship sectors, with regard to the country's portfolio in the international corporation which is worth $2 billion.

It is the IFC's largest investment portfolio in the Middle East and North Africa region, the Egyptian investment ministry said in a statement on Friday.

Nasr underscored the IFC's major role in supporting several mega-projects in Egypt, noting that the corporation's investments in the country hit a record high in 2017-2018 fiscal year after reaching $1.2 billion.

For her part, Friedberg pointed out that the IFC has pumped more than $165 million as investments into Africa and the Middle East over the past few years.

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National minimum wage to be increased View(s):

Sri Lankas national minimum wage per month for private sector workers is to be increased to Rs.12,500 from the current Rs. 10,000 with effect from May 1.

This assurance was given by Labour Minister Ravindra Samaraweera at a special meeting on Tuesday of the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC). Thus, once the gazette is issued giving legal effect to the proposal, private sector workers will be entitled to a minimum monthly wage of Rs. 12,500 plus Rs. 3,500 currently given as a compulsory budgetary relief allowance, making it a total of Rs. 16,000.

Trade union leader Palitha Athukorala, present at the discussion, said that this move will mostly benefit the informal sector while formal sector salaries are normally higher than this level.

The Minister said he hopes to set up in future a tripartite Wages Commission for the private sector.
A bumper paddy harvest brightens the New Year View(s):

Today is a day of celebration. It is a day when presents are exchanged, sweetmeats are prepared and games are played while raban playing captures the joyful mood of the people. It is a time to rejoice as a bountiful harvest is reaped after three consecutive years. It is a time when economic difficulties are forgotten.

Harvest celebration

The national New Year is essentially the celebration of the harvest and a rural-centric festival. People from the cities flock to their rural roots to celebrate reunion with their families. Animosities are forgotten as the New Year dawns. It is time of social harmony and socialising with relatives, friends and neighbours.

High spirits

Despite the exhortation of the President, alcohol consumption will be at a peak during the festivities this week. Illicit liquor consumption would be higher because of the Governments high taxation of alcoholic beverages of the poor. Illicit brews that are affordable to the poor will be consumed in larger measure.

Reason to celebrate

In spite of the economys slow progress, rural Sri Lanka has reasons to celebrate. The bad weather that afflicted the country for three years ended and last years Yala harvest and this years Maha harvest are bumper ones.

This years festivities are in the backdrop of this bumper Maha rice crop, which was preceded by a good Yala crop last year. This years national New Year is brightened by the record Maha bumper paddy harvest. This is certainly good reason for rural Sri Lanka and the nation as a whole to celebrate.

Paddy production

The Maha 2018-19 paddy crop is estimated at 3.3 million metric tonnes. It is the highest ever Maha paddy harvest surpassing by 27 percent the previous highest production of 2.4 million metric tonnes in 2014. This is a significant achievement to celebrate during this years New Year.

Maha crop

The countrys rice production has been improving with normalisation of weather since the end of last year. The 2018/19 Maha crop is a 40.2 percent increase from that of the last Maha (2017-18). Prior to that, paddy production decreased in six consecutive seasons due to adverse weather conditions. The highest previous Maha harvest was of 2.7 million tons in 2015.

It must be the hope of all that the monsoon rains would pour down to enable this years Yala cultivation and fill the reservoirs to generate hydroelectricity at its maximum capacity.

Yala

The 2018 Yala harvest of 1.9 million metric tons and the estimated Maha paddy crop of over 3 million tons is more than double the last harvest. It is the highest ever paddy harvest. The bumper Maha harvest that comes on top of a bumper Yala harvest means that the country is self-sufficient in rice this year.

The Maha crop of 3.3 million metric tonnes alone would feed the nation for 10 months. Then the Yala crop should be able to meet the requirements of the remaining two months. In fact, there may be a surplus that could enhance the countrys rice stocks.

Depressed prices

This good news has a tinge of disappointment, though. The benefits of the increased rice crop have not been reaped by the farmers owing to the depressed prices. Part of this fall in price is inevitable owing to the iron law in economics that when supply increases with no commensurate increase in demand, price falls.

However the depressed prices are also owing to the monopolistic grip on the market by rice millers and the ineffective implementation of the governments programme of purchasing paddy at the announced guaranteed price. Inefficiencies, corruption and the powerful vested interests of millers, especially in the North Central Province, and particularly in Polonnaruwa, account for the low prices to farmers.

The Government has admitted the incapacity of the Paddy Marketing Board (PMB) to purchase the paddy and is adopting alternative means for buying paddy ay guaranteed prices. District Secretariats have been asked to purchase the paddy at the guaranteed prices. Hopefully this will alleviate the plight of the farmers.

Perennial problem

The inability of the Government to purchase adequate quantities of paddy at the guaranteed price has been a perennial problem. Despite many budget proposals to increase storage capacity and resolve this problem, there has hardly been any progress. Increased harvests depress prices and increase millers profits.

Political importance

In spite of the declining importance of agriculture in a diversified economy, the political salience of the rural voter is recognised. Yet, the rural economy remains underdeveloped. Successive governments have wax eloquent in promises to develop rural infrastructure, enhance support for agriculture, provide storage facilities, purchase paddy at reasonable prices, improve marketing facilities, enhance credit, compensate crop losses and provide fertilizer and other subsidies in their manifestos, policy statements and budgets.

Widespread protests by farmer are ample evidence that these promises have not been fulfilled. This state of affairs is, in spite of a large allocation of finances, whose impact is inadequate. The Gam Medda programme on MTV, as well as the frequent mass demonstrations are ample evidence of the ineffectiveness of the rural development programme of governments. The governments Gamperaliya programme, too, may be another case of government expenditure gaining political support rather than an effective uplift of rural Sri Lanka. The road to rural development is paved with promises unfulfilled and a large amount of finances spent.

Finally

The uplift of the rural economy and the poor people can will be realised only when we have a government that puts country before party and good economics before politics. Nevertheless let all of us celebrate the New Year and hope for rains in May.

A Suba Aluth Avurudak to the readers of this column and all Sri Lankans!
Egypt says it is backing the Sudanese people's choices in determining the future of their country soon after 30-year President Omar Al-Bashir was overthrown in a coup by the armed forces following months of protests.

"Egypt is following closely and with great concern the current and accelerating developments the brotherly Sudan is passing through at this decisive moment in its modern historyand affirms its full support for the choices of the brotherly Sudanese people and their free will to shape the future of their country," the foreign ministry said in a statement on Thursday.

Egypt called on the international community to back decisions made by the Sudanese people in what it said is a "critical historic phase" and to provide support for a peaceful political transition in its southern neighbour, the statement added.

It also affirmed its "firm determination to preserve the deep ties" between the peoples of the two countries.

Earlier on Thursday, Sudanese Defence Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf said in an address on state television that Bashir, 75, was under arrest in a safe place and that a military council was now running the country.

Al-Bashir had been in power for nearly 30 years and had ruled with an iron fist.

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Sirisena, Ranil in air war over Rupavahini chief View(s):

Some bureaucrats are calling it the air wars  the tussle between the Presidents Office and the Prime Ministers Office  over Rupavahini, the national television broadcaster.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe wants Chairman Inoka Sathyangani replaced. They now want to appoint journalist and Sri Lanka College of Journalisms Chief Executive Officer Shan Wijetunga in her place. However, President Maithripala Sirisena has sought reasons for the removal of Ms. Sathyangani and has said that he would not make a change.

It was only last week, as the Sunday Times reported, that the Rupavahini extended an apology to the Premiers Office after complaints that Premier Wickremesinghe was not shown adequately in its video footage on the day of the launching of the national campaign against drugs. The event was headed by President Sirisena.

Last Tuesday, after the end of the weekly ministerial meeting, both Premier Wickremesinghe and Minister and UNP Chairman Kabir Hashim met President Sirisena over the same issue. When they went to see him in the Presidents upstairs office, President Sirisena was engaged in a conversation with United National Party (UNP) deputy leader Sajith Premadasa. Thereafter, the Prime Minister and UNP Chairman raised issue with the President.

This week, President Sirisena also met all heads of state media. It has been reported to him that a revenue drop at Rupavahini was causing financial issue with difficulties in paying salaries.

Ms. Sathyangani was appointed Rupavahini Chairman when Mangala Samaraweera was the Media Minister. As President Sirisena has publicly declared, the media portfolio was removed from Minister Samaraweera after a request from Prime Minister Wickremesinghe.

Aava cracks whip on ragging

At a time when ragging in universities seem to have gone out of control, the controversial Aava Group members are trying to step in to control the menace.

This week posters claiming to be from the group have appeared on the walls of the Jaffna University, warning senior students to immediately stop ragging freshers.

The posters had been pasted on Tuesday night outside a building of the Universitys Arts Faculty. They claimed to be from the Anti-Ragging Committee (ARC) of Aava Group. The posters had noted that there were disturbing reports of university freshers being subjected to severe verbal and physical harassment due to ragging and that there were also reports that students were being subjected to ragging based on their caste.

The posters said ragging activities must immediately cease and warned that any students found to be engaging in ragging freshers in defiance of these warnings would suffer severe consequences. Ragging is a crime, the posters stressed in English.

On Wednesday morning, student unions at both the Jaffna and South Eastern Universities issued statements, insisting that ragging did not take place inside the universities, but also assuring that steps would be taken to prevent any such incidents. The Jaffna University students union had also taken steps to paste posters at the Arts Faculty building reiterating this assurance.

The poster campaign by the Aava Group and the students union is reminiscent of those campaigns carried out by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) in the late 1980s.

Did our New Year grease pole tradition come from New York?

When the National New Year is celebrated in our villages over the weekend and continues next week, one of the highlights will be the traditional games, including climbing the grease pole.

Did we follow in the footsteps of New Yorkers, going back to 1783 when British colonial troops finally left the island of Manhattan in New York City, two months after the end of the American Revolution?

That morning, according to the New York Times, George Washington and his troops marched triumphantly south from Harlem to reclaim the Battery, located at the far southern end of New York City, where they would replace the impeccably dressed redcoats with their own ragtag crew of citizen-soldiers.

When they finally reached Fort George, at the tip of Manhattan, they discovered the British had committed one last act of defiance: they had nailed the Union Jack atop the flagpole, which they had afterward stripped and greased, preventing an easy removal.

Sure, the Americans could have cut the greasy pole down  but then, where would they fly their own flag?

An enterprising sailor named John Jacob van Arsdale had a solution. After failing three times to climb the greasy pole the traditional way, he and a couple of his friends ran to a hardware store to get supplies. With his pockets filled with nails and the rope for a new halyard over his shoulder, he made his way slowly up the greasy pole, hammering in footholds as he ascended, the Times said. According to legend, the American Star-Spangled Banner was aloft before the British were out of sight, meaning they had seen the failure of their ploy  and the end of their presence in America.

And every year, on Evacuation Day, New Yorkers recreated their act of defiance against the British by climbing a grease pole.

Later on, climbing the greasy pole became a synonym associated in politics with having to climb the greasy pole of politics to the top.

And thereby hangs a tale.

New Year games: Be sensitive to disabled people

Disability rights advocates have appealed to the people to be mindful of the sensitivities of disabled individuals when organising certain folk games during the National New Year festivals.

Issuing a statement, the Disability Sensitisation Advocacy Team pointed out that the names of certain popular games played during Avurudu celebrations insult disabled individuals and demean them in the eyes of the public.

They have singled out two particular popular games; Kana Muttiya Bindeema and Andayata Kiri Keweema, as games that are insulting to the disabled owing to their names.

The statement points out these names are demeaning to over one million Sri Lankans who are vision impaired, while also noting that 8.7% of the countrys population is suffering from some form of disability.

While acknowledging that these games have been part of Avurudu celebrations for generations, the group stresses that it is time for society to move with the times and change the names of these games so as not to hurt the sensitivities of disabled persons.

They have suggested using Vasana Muttiya Bindeema and Daes Benda Kiri Keweema to replace the original names of these games.

Rajapaksa: Nothing but the tooth

Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapaksa developed tooth problems whilst on a visit to Polonnaruwa this week.

He was compelled to go to the Polonnaruwa government hospital where dentists attended to his problem.

Rajapaksa later told onlookers that the service at the hospital was excellent and the staff was very polite.

It was some credit for President Maithripala Sirisena. As a onetime Minister of Health, he had improved medical facilities at this hospital, which is in the constituency he represented as a Member of Parliament.

President cancels trip to Tirupathi

President Maithripala Sirisena had planned a visit to Tirupathi in South India on a pilgrimage.

Presidential sources now say that he has called off the trip and will be in Sri Lanka.

Is the brother a bother?

Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the bother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa

This is how Londons The Independent newspaper referred to the former Defence Secretary in a story about law suits against him in the United States.

Was it a Freudian slip?

Chunnakam power plant: Thawarasa challenges Wigneswaran for a debate

The Northern Provincial Councils former Opposition Leader S. Thawarasa has challenged ex-chief minister C. Wigneswaran for an open debate over a disputed committee report produced during his tenure.

The ex-chief minister appointed a committee to investigate allegations that the residue oil used for the Northern Power station in Chunnakam had polluted the water in the area and hundreds of residents were affected.

The four-member committee gave a clean sheet for the project during the chief ministers period.

However, two weeks ago, the Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, directed the Northern Power Company (Pvt) Ltd to pay Rs 20 million to residents of Chunnakam, Jaffna, for contaminating groundwater through waste discharges from its thermal power station.

The ex-opposition leader is challenging the former chief minister to explain as to how he allowed a committee to clear the company from any wrongdoing.
India votes; Modi vs. the Rest View(s):

The worlds largest democracy has begun voting this week for a new Parliament. The process will go on for some weeks till the dust settles and final results are known.

The slanging match between the ruling BJP and the Opposition Congress and its allies has reached a crescendo. PM Narendra Modi has referred to himself as the Chowkidar, an Urdu phrase coming from British India when the police stations were known as Chowki and the lower ranker on duty were known as the Chowkidar (the Watchman). Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has called him Chowkidar Chorhai (the Watchman thief). Both Messrs. Modi and Gandhi have pledged to put the other in jail after the elections  such is the intensity of the campaign.

The elections should be of some interest here, though this time, Sri Lanka is not on the Indian political agenda as it was some years back. Even in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, where the issue of the minority Tamils in Sri Lanka was an emotive albeit politically motivated issue, the deaths of its leaders Karunanidhi, MGR and Jayalalitha who would feed on the situation in Sri Lanka, have seen Sri Lanka-bashing fade into the dustbin of history. The reverberations of Tamil Nadu sentiments of yesteryear had a visible impact on New Delhis Sri Lanka policy due to coalition compulsions, but not any more. The BJP Government did not need the support of regional parties when it won in 2014, but political analysts predict the party will be returned to office this time round only with a lesser majority, which then might witness the rise of regional parties exerting their influence on New Delhis policy.

Narendra Modis BJP Government has been flayed for not delivering on its promises of 2014. This, in turn, has made them fall back on their comfort zone of drumming nationalism as their primary platform for re-election. The recent skirmish with Pakistan has come as a Godsend to whip up patriotic zeal among the masses and add some masala to their Hindutva policy. Mr. Modi keeps referring to the surgical strikes he ordered on Pakistan and his opponents complain that he is now implementing surgical strikes on his opponents at home. His acolytes say that it is the BJP that gives bombs and bullets to the Pakistani terrorists, while the Congress gives them biriyani.

The use of the Pakistan bogey and external adventures for electioneering purposes are not new in India, and the Congress cannot complain when its past leaders have done the same. The best example is when India under Indira Gandhi intervened in the creation of Bangladesh, called elections soon thereafter, and won easily. Similarities between the BJP and Sri Lankas Joint Opposition extend beyond the commonality of their party symbol  the lotus bud.

The Congress and its allies, on the other hand, have launched a NYAY scheme  a minimum income guarantee and targeted the farmers, once the base of the BJP to see them home.This coalition has taken a more secular line and is expected to win the votes of the minorities in India. The similarities with Sri Lankas ruling UNP cannot be missed.

 And lessons for Lanka

In the midst of the noise and chaos of electioneering in a democracy like India, there seems to be some sanity prevailing. At least there is in place, a Model Code of Conduct (MCC) that provides some guidelines that keep the campaigns within its tracks.The MCC is implemented by the independent Elections Commission (EC), and though it has lost its once powerful image under the former Commissioner T.N. Seshan when it not only implemented the guidelines but was seen to implement them, its edicts are taken seriously by competing parties even today.

Last week, the EC transferred the Chief Secretary of Andhra Pradesh, much to the chagrin of the Chief Minister. Senior police officers in another state who were doing the bidding of the ruling party politicians rather than their duty to the nation were sent to another state. The police have been given the greenlight to search vehicles that transport bundles of cash meant to buy up voters, and many have been remanded for their inability to explain the source of these funds.

On Wednesday, EC banned the release of Modis biopic, saying the film had the potential to disturb level playing field during elections. The BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh was cautioned by the EC when he referred to the Indian Armed Forces as Modis Sena or Modis Army, and the Prime Ministers own address on Mission Shakti, (Mission Strength) an Indian satellite that was launched deftly named after a BJP poverty alleviation programme, was subject to scrutiny by the EC.

The ECs writ extends to SMC voice-messages on phone during campaigning, the broadcast of which needs pre-certification from the concerned authority  the Media Certification and Monitoring Committee. The EC has looked into the funding of private television stations, one of which is believed to be a BJP funded outfit.

The controversial social media giant Facebook already under fire worldwide as an unregulated Knight of Slander and user data breach, recently removed 687 pages and accounts linked to individuals in an IT cell of the Congress Party as it tries to crack down on false accounts and inauthentic behaviour. It is also keeping a close watch on political ads on its platforms and adding more teams to flag fake news, as the Indian Government itself is concerned that social media platforms may be used by external elements to influence the countrys elections through undesirable means.

Despite all these checks and balances, the Indian political and electioneering juggernaut continues to roll. All parties have a bagful of goodies on offer  both by way of promises in their election manifesto, and in their secret accounts of undeclared funds. In Tamil Nadu, voters have been showered with washing machines, cookers and TV sets  even gold. Party workers are given local brews and lunch at a Dharba before they go to mass rallies. There is no way an EC can stop all of this which is part and parcel of elections in this part of the world.

With this being in all likelihood an election year in Sri Lanka, there may well be lessons to be learnt from the worlds biggest democracy. Firstly, a look at the MCC of the Indian EC to see that a free and fair election that reflects the will of the majority is eventually delivered. Sri Lanka is among the oldest of the modern democracies in the world, and its elections have only recently come into question with computer gilmarts and an Elections Commissioner going missing for some hours during the counting. With old tricks and new treats up the sleeves of contending parties, and undeclared funds raining down at election time, Sri Lankas proud history of elections will be tested to the core come its turn.
Fishing industry rogues blowing up marine habitat By Asiri Fernando View(s): View(s):

Blast fishing, commonly referred to as dynamite fishing, an illegal and destructive form of fishing, is on the rise in Sri Lanka and is a serious cause for concern, experts warn.

So far this year, the Sri Lanka Navy and the Police Special Task Force have seized 700 sticks of gelignite and similar explosives from suspects engaging in fishing, or in transporting the explosives.

The Navy has also taken into custody 63 kilograms of water gel explosives in the first three months of this year, a significant rise considering that in 2017, the overall haul was 52 kilos.

Last week, the Navy arrested two individuals who are suspected to have used dynamite to harvest nearly 250 kilos of fish off the popular tourist destination Marble Beach in China Bay, Trincomalee.

Also last week, a joint raid by wildlife conservation officers and the Navy saw the arrest of eight suspects who were cutting mangroves in Udeiadi lagoon, Wankalai. The Navy suspects that the mangrove branches are used to create small breeding grounds in shallow waters offshore. Once the the new habitat attracts a shoal of fish, dynamite is used to harvest the fish.

Dr. Sisira Haputhantri, the head of the marine biological resources division at the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), said dynamite fishing is increasing in some areas.

He claimed that measures are being taken to address the issue and pointed out that such fishing practices are not only destructive to the marine eco-environment but also hazardous to those who practise it.

Sometimes the fishermen target a school of tuna and end up killing dolphins that feed on the tuna and also damage the reefs, he said.

A task force made up of key stakeholders, including the Fisheries Ministry, NARA, the Police Department, the Navy, state intelligence agencies, and the controller of explosives, has been established to share information and coordinate on maritime crime, Illegal Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing, and dynamite fishing, Mr. Ginige Kumara, the director general, Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources told the Sunday Times.

Mannar, Kalpitiya, Puttalam, Kinniya, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara are hotspots for dynamite fishing.

The Fisheries Department warns that fish caught with dynamite fishing is not fit for human consumption. The department, with the assistance of NARA and the police, routinely check fish markets. Several programmes to educate fishing communities are also underway.

The Navy has stepped up coastal and sea patrols to identify and apprehend those involved in dynamite fishing, said Lt. Cmdr Isuru Suriyabandara, the Navy spokesman.

He said explosives on board fishing vessels and their unregulated proliferation, posed a security concern.

The Navy is working closely with government agencies to identify possible sources of the explosives, he added.

Dynamite is mostly used in shallow waters by fishermen to gain a large catch in a short time. But the explosive blast shock wave kills and destroys all marine life within its radius.

Usually, gelignite, or since recently water gel (a form of explosives introduced to Sri Lanka in 2011 as a substitute for dynamite) explosives are packed in a waterproof container, or packaged and set off with a length of safety fuse cord (a slow-burning fuse) before being thrown into the water near a pool of fish.

Occasionally, high explosives such as TNT and C4 are also used by perpetrators. However, statistics show that water gel type explosives are used widely.

Police sources suspect that gelignite and water gel explosives may come from leakages in explosives issued to quarries.

The matter is under investigation. Quarries are a big business with all the construction and development work. There are significant stocks of explosives issued to them, a source said.

Explosives and detonators are also smuggled across the Palk Strait frequently, a police officer claimed.

However, registered stocks of explosives, especially ones at quarries are closely monitored, claimed Mr K.P.R. Pathirana, deputy controller, explosives.

According to Mr Pathirana, officials in each district visit quarry sites and audit the stock of explosives and report to the Ministry of Defence Regularly.

He said there are those who erase or cut out the serial numbers on the water gel sticks to steal them. The explosives have a unique serial number which can be traced to each box that was delivered.

We take leakage of explosives, no matter how small the quantity, seriously and have advised changes to be made to the serial numbering process and changes will be made in the near future, which will make it hard to remove the serial numbers, he said.

Marine biologist Nishan Perera, said there is physical damage of coral reefs, including the destruction of coral structures, and a loss of fish biomass and biodiversity.

Some of the physical damage is irreversible and once the habitat is destroyed, biodiversity and fish stocks do not easily recover, he said.

There is a high amount of by-catch, or non target species killed, including juveniles of many species. Habitat degradation also destroys breeding grounds.

The damage to coral reefs and breeding grounds can be long lasting.

Sri Lanka benefits from seafood exports, especially to the United States and the European Union. In 2018, Sri Lanka exported a record US$268 million worth of seafood, according to the Sri Lanka Export Development Board.

On several instances, fishermen who use dynamite have themselves become victims when the explosives detonate prematurely or fall into the boat when being thrown out. They can suffer severe injuries and may require amputation of limbs. In spite of risks and the marine damage, some fishermen are bent on making a quick profit.

Dynamite fishing has been illegal for a long time and there are adequate laws to deal with it, Mr Perera pointed out.

Dynamite fishing is one of five methods of sea fishing proscribed under the Fishery and Aquatic Resources Act of 1996 and its amendments. The laws are adequate; possession or use of dynamite to harvest fish is illegal, arrests are made regularly and when evidence supports the arrests, prosecutions and conviction follow, said Dr Steve Creech, a fisheries expert.

Laws have been revised to increase fines and punishments.

However, punishments imposed by the courts are at times lenient and are not a deterrent, a senior police officer said.

Mr Perera said most fishermen are aware of the damage to fish stocks and the marine ecology from dynamite use.
More buses, more trains for the holiday season View(s):

Additional buses and trains have been deployed for the convenience of commuters travelling to and from their homes during and after the Sinhala and Tamil New Year. The Road Development Authority (RDA) is also taking measures to minimise traffic congestion at entry and exit points along the Southern Expressway.

Special transport arrangements made for the convenience of commuters will be in effect until April 22, officials stated.

Sri Lanka Railways has deployed an additional 62 long distance special trains, Railways General Manager Dilanth Fernando told the Sunday Times. These trains will run until April 22.

A Transport Ministry official meanwhile, said an additional 1500 Sri Lanka Transport Board (SLTB) buses and 600 private buses have been deployed,

Over 120, 000 vehicles used the Southern Expressway on Thursday (11) alone, with most vehicles going south. Authorities were expecting even more vehicles on Friday and Saturday.

RDA Chairman Nihal Sooriyaarachchi said they expect a similar number of vehicles to return to Colombo along the Southern Expressway from tomorrow. During this period last year, there were occasions where vehicles spent as much as 45 minutes at toll gates to exit the expressway due to long queues. Mr Sooriyaarachchi said measures are being taken to minimise delays and ensure there is no repeat of what occurred last year.

Accordingly, instead of system generated tickets, officers at toll gates will be issuing printed tickets by hand to minimise delays.

Authorities will also increase the number of toll gates at exit points depending on the level of traffic with some of the entry gates to be used as exit points where possible, the RDA chairman explained.

If long queues are still forming at an exit point, measures will be taken to alert motorists through the electronic notice boards along the expressway. However, there may be occasions where the authorities will divert traffic to exit along the next closest exit point if there is congestion at a particular exit point, Mr Sooriyaarachchi further said.

Motorists can do their part to help the authorities to minimise delays by bringing change with them to hand at the toll gate. The public can also call the expressway hotline on 1969 to check about traffic congestion along exit points, he said.

There were 127 fatal accidents during the period from April 11 to April 20, last year, according to police. A total of 135 people lost their lives in these accidents. In order to minimise the number of fatal road accidents during this period, police are hoping to launch a special operation covering all police stations in the island, Police Headquarters stated.

With the Sinhala and Tamil New Year dawning today, fire crackers are once again in demand. Here fire cracker makers are seen at work in Kimbulapitiya.

Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
Multiple moves end blackout for Avurudu By Sandun Jayawardana Power crisis not yet over; experts shed light on urgent and long-term measures View(s): View(s):

A combination of emergency power purchases, repairs to existing power plants and low demand during the Sinhala and Hindu New Year enabled the authorities to lift countrywide power cuts from Wednesday. The power crisis, however is not yet over, as demand will start peaking again after about April 22, according to officials.

Though power cuts were announced from March 25, the public experienced lengthy power interruptions from March 18, after the Lakvijaya Coal Power Plants second unit malfunctioned in the face of high demand. In the wake of the breakdown at Unit 2, the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) was forced to impose unannounced power cuts to prevent the system from crashing and plunging the entire country into darkness. The Power and Energy Ministry had earlier turned down a CEB request to announce scheduled power cuts.

The Ministry relented a few days later. Consumers experienced daily four-hour power cuts  three hours during the day and one hour at night  for almost three weeks, leading to severe inconvenience. The economic cost of more than two weeks of scheduled power cuts is yet to be assessed.

Lakvijaya is now fully operational while the CEB was also able to repair its barge-mounted power plant at Colombo Port by this week. The 60 Megawatts (MW) of this barge-mounted plant were successfully connected to the national grid on Wednesday, the CEB said.

It said an additional 71MW of emergency power purchased from two Independent Power Producers (IPPs)  Asia Power in Sapugaskanda and ACE Power in Matara  had also been connected to the national grid.

This week, the Cabinet also approved a proposal by Power and Energy Minister Ravi Karunanayake to award contracts to three foreign companies to supply a further 100MW of supplementary power to the national grid for six months to ensure continuous power supply.

The approval was given to award the contracts based on recommendations made by the Standing Cabinet Appointed Procurement Committee, the Government said.

As per the proposal that was approved, electricity will be purchased from these companies at unit prices ranging from Rs. 28.43 to Rs. 30.63.

The contracts have been awarded to the UK-based Aggreko International Projects Ltd., the UAE-based Altaaqa Alternative Solutions Global FZE and Hong Kong-based V Power Holdings Ltd.

The CEB also expects a significant reduction in power demand during the New Year season, as most workplaces and factories shut down and people leave for the holidays.

Meanwhile, the Mahaweli Authority has also thrown a lifeline to the CEB by agreeing to release water for it to generate electricity from the Rantembe, Randenigala and Victoria reservoirs for the time being.

A Mahaweli Authority official told the Sunday Times that the amount of water to be released would be decided on a week-by-week basis at the weekly operational meeting attended by officials from various agencies, including the CEB and the Department of Irrigation.

A good sign for the CEB, though, is that much of the water needed for the upcoming Yala cultivation season will be released by April 20.

CEB Engineers Union President Saumya Kumarawadu warned that electricity demand would once again rise beginning from April 22. If we are able to get the hydropower going and if all the power plants are running without a hitch, we should be able to provide uninterrupted power till the rains come. If they dont come in time or if there is a breakdown at a major power plant, in the meanwhile, we may have to impose power cuts again, he warned.

CEB spokesman and Power and Energy Ministry Directory Sulakshana Jayawardena also acknowledged that the CEB still faced a challenge to provide uninterrupted power. This is why we are working hard on the demand side management aspect and are urging consumers to continue using electricity sparingly, he noted.

Mr Jayawardena said the CEB had tried convincing the private sector to contribute to a self-generation scheme whereby companies and institutions would use generators to produce their own power, but this had only met with moderate success. Most such places that keep their generators on standby for emergencies have balked at the CEBs suggestion that they use the generators full-time, even though the Board is paying them for it. Nevertheless, about 50MW had been released to the national grid as a result of the scheme, the CEB spokesman added.

The power generated from the self-generation scheme, along with those from the barge mounted plant, IPPs and emergency power, should be enough for the CEB to provide uninterrupted power even in the post-Avurudu season, Mr Jayawardena said.

The Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka (PUCSL), the countrys power sector regulator, claimed that it had foreseen this situation and had been warning the licensee  the CEB  for several years now. PUCSLs Corporate Communications Director Jayanat Herat told the Sunday Times the regulator had warned as far back as March 2016 about the power shortage expected in 2018/2019 and that the CEB itself had acknowledged this.

The crisis could indeed have been avoided. The plans were there (to avoid a shortage), but the problem lay with the delays in implementing them, he said.

Mr Herat recalled that the PUCSL had approved a competitive bidding process for the Kerawalapitiya 300MW combined cycle plant in November 2016. Though the plant was supposed to be commissioned in January, this year, even the tender is yet to be awarded following various controversies, he pointed out. Various other power plants approved by the PUCSL, including the 100MW wind power plant in Mannar and the 100MW barge mounted power plant in Galle, were also yet to be built, he noted. Meanwhile, in September last year, the PUCSL had recommended connecting generators owned by state institutions, but no action was taken on this front too, he lamented, adding that if such measures had been taken on time, they would have easily met the 200-300MW shortfall of electricity the country was currently experiencing.

The PUCSL is reluctant to approve emergency power purchases on principle due to their high cost, but conditionally approved the recent purchase of 100MW of emergency power considering the inconvenience borne by the public, he said.
An evening of many gems This years Gratiaen Prize shortlist was announced at an event at the British Council that also saw lively conversations with the long-listed authors View(s): View(s):

This year, the lot of the Gratiaen judges was more unenviable than it had been in years past (though it must at the same time have been highly rewarding and thrilling). It was quite a large haul- in fact 42 entries- but even more overwhelming has been the quality of the work. From the moment three boxes of books and manuscripts found their way onto the three judges doorsteps, it has been much hard work- reading, debating, discussing, analyzing, reviewing- a feverish round.

A glance at the longlist suffices to affirm that this years yield is indeed ripe and rich- with, as Gill Caldicott said, many gems. Included in the longlist were some of our most celebrated homegrown writers, while the lesser known few have packed a punch with really powerful stuff: life after death for three different people, being gay in Colombo, the world viewed by a crow living in its own condominium and a layered discussion of abortion and disability and its impact on women.

So it was with much careful consideration that the judges had proceeded to make a shortlist of the longlisted eight- whittling it down to four: Chats with the Dead by Shehan Karunatilaka, Youthful Escapades by Upali Mahaliyana, The One Who Loves You So by Arun Welandawe-Prematilleke and They Failed to Kill Her by Zeneefa Zaneer.

The shortlist was announced on Monday, April 8 at an evening event at the British Council with a lively discussion with the longlisted authors moderated by Ruhanie Perera, followed by the shortlist and readings of the work of the shortlisted authors by readers Purnima Pilapitiya, Dino Corera and Chalana Wijesuriya.

This year, the judges were Gill Caldicott, Director, British Council, Sri Lanka; Ramya Jirasinghe, creative writer and researcher; and Andi Schubert, university academic and social researcher.

Said Andi of the shortlist, speaking for his co-judges as well:

The books that stood out to us as judges all seemed to share certain characteristics. For one, all these books shared a commitment to bearing witness, to speaking out about concerns that require courage, empathy, nuance, honesty, respect, and care. Their stories stood out to us for the use of their craft, talent, and creativity as a medium to explore those issues that are often hidden from view in way that welcomes and engenders conversations and dialogue.

We also felt that all these books are perhaps somewhat readier to transcend the narrow confines of what is usually classed as Sri Lankan Literature and reach out to a more global audience of readers and literary critics.

Finally, and perhaps for us most critically, these are all books that are going to endure with us long after we have completed our task as judges. These stories seeped into our dreams, percolated in our consciousness and then shook us out of our quiet reveries, confronted us with our privileges, and demanded that we take notice of them in ways that we could not afford to ignore. They reminded us once again of the ways that creative writing can speak to our deepest capacities for forgiveness, for beauty, for love, and perhaps most of all, for hope.

It is wonderful that the Gratiaen has grown to attract such exceptional talent- seeing as the prize had had a long journey with the countrys literature in English- fostering it carefully for 26 years. Named after Doris Gratiaen, the prize- given to the best submitted creative work in English by a resident in Sri Lanka- was established in 1993 by her son Michael Ondaatje with the money he won for the Booker Prize of 1992 for The English Patient.

This years longlist comprised Seneka Abeyratnes collection of short stories, The Beast and Other Stories; Elmo Jayawardenas novel, Kakiyan: The Story of a Crow; Chamali Kariyawasams poetry collection Catharsis; Shehan Karunatilakas novel, Chats with the Dead; Upali Mahaliyanas novel, Youthful Escapades;

Ayathurai Santhans novel in two parts, Every Journey Ends; Arun Welandawe-Prematillekes drama, The One Who Loves You So; and Zeneefa Zaneers novel, They Failed to Kill Her.

The Gratiaen Prize 2018 will be awarded at a final awards ceremony, sponsored by Sarasavi Bookshop Private Limited, on June 9.

The Gratiaen Trust will also award the H. A. I. Goonetileke Prize for Translations this year. The judges are Sumathy Sivamohan, filmmaker and academic; Saumya Liyanage, dramatist, actor and academic; Charulatha Thewarathanthri, writer; and Esther Surenthiraraj, university academic.
Seasonal colours By Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne View(s): View(s):

During the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in April and continuing to May, cities such as Colombo witness a great flowering of trees, with roads literally carpeted with flowers. When I grew up in Colombo, I took it for granted that these were local trees. Why else would they be in Colombo? However, as I grew more interested in natural history I realised that almost all of the trees with a spectacular flowering in Sri Lankan cities come from overseas. In fact, this is especially true of Asian cities with many of the most showy flowering trees having come at times as far afield as the American tropics (the neotropics).

The ornamental trees found in many Asian cities date to the European colonial period. Just as the British introduced foreign trees to their colonial possessions so did the other European powers to their overseas territories. All over Asia we see this influence.

Here are some of the beautiful trees that grace Colombo, providing shade, carbon sequestration and colour.

Pink Tabeubia or Pink Tecoma -Tabebuia rosea

A popular decorative tree planted widely in the tropics, this is a tall tree with a greyish bark. In mature trees the bark is cleft into deep furrows. Small buttress roots develop. The showy trumpet-shaped flowers have five petalled lobes. The petals fall off easily leaving behind a long style. The leaves have two to five lance-shaped leaflets each with a distinct stalk. In a leaf with say five lobes, the two leaflets on the sides will be stalkless and the three central leaflets will have long stalks. The seed pods split to release seeds with thin, papery wings. The tree is native to Central and Northern South America.

The scientific name Tabeubia is derived from a local Brazilian name and rosea refers to the pink flowers.

Yellow Flame Tree Peltophorum pterocarpum

A tall tree with upward sloping main branches with the smaller branches inclined to droop, the foliage has a feathery look overall. Numerous yellow flowers are borne in panicles. There are five roundish petals. The inflorescences are rather showy but are often too high up above the flow of traffic in cities like Colombo for people to see them.The leaf is a compound leaf with lateral branches arranged on opposite pairs (i.e. pinnate) to a midrib and these in turn having opposite pairs of leaflets or more technically pinnae. The leaf is what is termed a bipinnate (or twice innate) leaf. There is no terminal leaflet. The fruit is reddish-brown pods which is flat and shows the outline of the one to four seeds they contain. The seeds are winged. It is widely planted in towns and roadsides as a shade tree and as an ornamental for its flowers.

The scientific name Peltophorum comes from the Greek peltophoros meaning shield-bearer. Pterocarpum means winged seed.

Flamboyant- Delonix regia

A large tree which can be sprawling and many branched if it is allowed room to grow. The trunk and branches are pale. A common roadside tree in towns and villages, it is instantly recognisable when it is in bloom.The large red or orange flowers are in clusters. There are 10 stamens which extend beyond the petals. The upper petal has a white or yellow stripe.The leaf midrib has opposite lateral branches (pinnate) which in turn have opposite pairs of leaflets (bi-pinnate or twice pinnate). The leaflets are small and the leaves overall give the tree a feathery appearance. The pod is around 30 cm long, flat, with numerous seeds. It is believed to have originated in Madagascar although it is no longer found anywhere in a wild state. It is widely planted in the moist tropical belt around the world as an ornamental.

The generic name Delonix means evidently or obviously clawed from the Greek delos meaning evident and onux for claw. Regia is Latin for royal.

Queens Flower -Lagerstroemia

speciosa

It can grow into a large tree, although the trees in Colombo for example are never very big. But that does not prevent them from flowering. Guildford Crescent in Colombo is a good place to find this tree, also the car park of the Beddegana Wetland Park. In flower it is a beautiful tree which is planted widely as an ornamental. In North-eastern India it is a very important timber tree.The purple or lilac flowers are borne on terminal panicles. The flowers have six purple petals and are wrinkled. Each flower has many stamens. The purple stamens have yellow anthers.The leaves are arranged in pairs opposite or nearly opposite each other. The margins are smooth, described as entire in botanical terms. The leaves have prominent veins. The fruits are brown and round. The leathery skin splits open from three to six valves to release the winged seeds.

The scientific genus honours M. Lagerstroem (1691-1759), a Swedish patron of science. Speciosa is Latin for beautiful, a reference to the flowers.

Indian Laburnum  Cassia fistula

A common roadside tree and a popular choice in parks and public spaces, this is a medium-sized tree with a light brown trunk. It begins to branch very close to the ground and can have the appearance of a tall shrub. In flower it is one of the most attractive flowering trees to be seen in Asia. The bark is greenish-grey and smooth when young and brown and rough when old.

The yellow flowers are in long pendulous racemes and are very showy. The flowering often peaks to coincide with leaf fall which makes the flowers even more prominent. The flowers have five petals with three stamens with long, upward curving filaments. The leaves have oppositely arranged pair of leaflets along the midrib of the leaf. The leaves can be around 30 cm long with around eight pairs of leaflets. The tree has long, cylindrical pods up to a metre long. The pods can be brown or black, with between 40-100 seeds within a pulp. Sloth Bears, jackals and monkeys eat the pods and play a role in dispersal.

The derivation of the Latin fistula has two explanations. One relates to the bark of the tree being exported to Europe. It was rolled up into tubes and this may have given rise to fistula a Latin reference to pipe. An alternative explanation is that fistula refers to the pods. Cassia comes from the Greek name Kassia.

Rain Tree Samanea saman

Many majestic examples of this large tree can be encountered on road-sides. In Colombo, Bauddhaloka Mawatha ( Bullers Road) has some especially fine examples lining the roadside creating a shaded canopy to the road. The bark is a dark brown. During wet weather and at night, the leaflets fold down giving a wilted appearance.There is some seasonal leaf fall but in Sri Lanka it is not so pronounced as to see the trees devoid of leaves.The flowers are in solitary circular heads. The flower stalk (peduncle) is long; around 12 cm. The petals are yellowish. Packed into the centre are 20 red stamens which extend well beyond the petals. The leaves are twice pinnate and have a feathery appearance. The pod lacks a stalk and is straight and smooth and around 20 cm long. The tree is a native of Brazil which has been widely introduced into Tropical Asia in humid areas where it is a fast growing tree.

Saman refers to a local American name. The English name Rain Tree comes from a discharge of water droplets from the tree. This happens when the tree is infested by cicadas who discharge small droplets.

(Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratnes portable, field guide to common trees of Sri Lanka will be published by John Beaufoy Publishing in September 2019)
The humble leaf that reigns this season By Kaveesha Fernando Today as Sri Lankans celebrate the Sinhala and Tamil New Year, the betel leaf will play an important role in many households View(s): View(s):

In Buddhist mythology, it is believed that after Lord Sakra painted a hare on the moon, he threw away the brush, which fell on the Naga (snake) world below the Earth, where it grew into a betel creeper. Anantha, the lord of the Naga world who had protective powers later brought it back from the Naga world to Earth.

In Hindu mythology, the Ramayana mentions how when Hanuman the monkey god reached Sri Lanka to convey a message from Rama to his wife Sitadevi who had been abducted by Ravana, the king of Lanka, Sita in gratitude, offered Hanuman a garland made with betel leaves. In the Mahabharatha, Arjuna, one of the Pandava princes requested betel leaves from the queen of the Naga world so that the priests could begin their devotions.

Both Buddhists and Hindus thus refer to betel leaves as nagavalli/ nagvelli and the leaves are considered sacred as they represent a link between the human world, the Naga world and the heavens above.

As Sri Lankans celebrate the dawn of Avurudu/Puththandu today, customs and traditions such as the offering of betel leaves by Buddhists and Hindus continue to play a significant role, despite the incremental changes which have taken place over the years.

The customary offering of a sheaf of betel leaves (both Buddhists and Hindus use 40 leaves) to parents, grandparents, older family members, teachers and other elders as well as to religious leaders is a mark of ones respect and obeisance. Betel leaves are also used for ganudenu or transactions during the New Year and children receive a coin enclosed in betel leaves. Cash gifts are also wrapped in betel leaves while the leaves are used in other Avurudu customs such as oil anointing, cooking the first meal and in setting off for work in the New Year.

Similarly, Hindus also use betel leaves for worship and auspicious transactions. They also arrange three betel leaves with two plantains or  a coconut as a special religious offering.

The giving of a sheaf of betel can also be a peace offering where old wrongs are forgiven and forgotten and relationships mended with this symbolic gesture.

Have the customs dwindled or changed over the years? Professor J.B. Disanayaka, Professor Emeritus of the University of Colombo feels that while the Western influence has certainly left many convinced that they need not follow old customs, it is mainly upto parents to decide if they want to instil such values in their children. I insist that my daughter worships me for the New Year, but some parents do not and then their children will not learn. Others still feel that independent people should not bow down to anyone, and that is their right to believe in what they wish, he says philosophically.

The time-honoured customs are still practised today says a senior priest at the Mayurapathy Sri Bathrakali Amman Kovil, Havelock Town. Betel leaves are a vital part of our New Year and other religious and cultural celebrations and we still use them frequently, he stated.

How do young people feel about keeping to such traditions? At first when I was asked how we use betel leaves for the New Year I was confused because I cannot imagine a household which doesnt use them, says Nethmee Goonesekara, 23, a marketing professional. She says that in her family they worship their older relatives with betel leaves.

Young humanitarian worker Anusha Nadaraja, 27, feels that the customs which the Hindus and Buddhists follow with regards to betel are fairly similar. We give betel as an honour to our parents and older relatives when we worship them and we treat the betel leaf as auspicious, she explains. She also goes to the kovil and worships the gods with betel, and remembers worshipping her teachers with betel when she was a student.

Business is good for the betel sellers who have been quite busy during this season. Pathma Abeysekara has been selling betel leaves every morning at the Pettah market for the past 25 years and says no matter what difficulties she faces sourcing the leaves, she somehow brings them to be sold. When we visited Pettah last week the leaves (a bundle of 40) were selling between Rs. 80 and 150 depending on the size of the leaves. The current drought this year has driven prices up. Aluth avurudda lang wenakota aniwarayen rupiyal desiiya wenakan wathwadiwei (the price will definitely increase at least upto Rs. 200 closer to the New Year), she says. When there is an ample supply of betel leaves she can sell them between Rs. 60 and 80, she says.

Pathma remembers a time, 25 years ago when the price was between Rs. 20 and 40. She feels that the custom of offering betel leaves and worshipping has decreased with time and remarks with dismay that some people do not even know how many leaves make an atha, or hand of betel.

A.B. Rathnayake sells betel at Mallawarachchi stores in Maradana. Prices have increased drastically from the time when he was young, where they were sold for a few cents or just a single rupee, we learn. He also says that some parents buy just a few leaves for schoolchildren as they cannot afford the customary sheaf of 40 due to the high price.

J.K. Nandadasa, who sells betel at the Kirulapone market feels that the export of leaves to Pakistan and the demand from the North has driven prices up. Sourcing his leaves from Gampola and Kurunegala, he says even though he is 63 years old he still worships his elders with the traditional betel for the New Year.

While no tradition has remained exactly the same through the years, the use of betel leaves as an integral part of the New Year continues, a symbol of good fortune and a blessing for prosperity.
The Popes recent visit to Morocco is filled with significance at a time the world needs a reminder of the fundamental lessons of tolerance and coexistence

While the Arab Summit in Tunisia was in progress, Morocco witnessed another summit. It was between the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis II, and the Moroccan monarch, King Mohamed VI.

Although the king had extended his invitation to the pontiff before the horrific attacks against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, as it turned out the visit could not have been more appropriately timed.

Today, there is an urgent need to reaffirm the spirit of fraternity and interfaith tolerance in the face of the rise of extremist ultra-right movements and their hate mongering.

The popes visit to Morocco was important in many other respects, not least of which was the Jerusalem declaration Francis II signed during this visit.

Francis IIs reaffirmation of the Holy Citys status as a symbol of peaceful coexistence for Christians, Jews and Muslims is a response to Israels relentless attempts to Judaicise the city.

True, the statement made no reference to international resolutions pertaining to the political status of Jerusalem or to the US presidents disregard for these resolutions when he ordered the relocation of his countrys embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Such references would have made the statement much more powerful given that King Mohamed VI chairs the Jerusalem Committee, a committee created by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to protect and promote Jerusalems religious, cultural and architectural heritage.

Nevertheless, the Vaticans position on the question of Jerusalem is well known. Francis II has taken many occasions to urge respect for Jerusalems status quo in keeping with UN resolutions and the statement he signed in Morocco is an important reaffirmation of this.

Secondly, the papal visit boosts the Moroccan governments policy of promoting plurality at diverse levels. Politically, Morocco and Lebanon are the only two Arab countries that have never experienced the phenomenon of a one-party system.

Ethnically and linguistically, Morocco accords a special status to the Amazigh and Amazigh culture: Tamazight is an official language alongside Arabic in the Moroccan constitution as amended in 2011.

The government also promotes religious plurality and peaceful coexistence between the three divinely revealed faiths.

Although the numbers of Jews and Christians in the country have declined for various reasons, and although most Christians now residing in Morocco come from sub-Saharan Africa and are there in order to study or to prepare for migrating to Europe, the Moroccan government is keen to preserve religious diversity and has adopted many initiatives towards this end.

A third level of significance relates to one of the popes remarks when presiding over a mass held in a sporting arena in Rabat. The church grows not through proselytism but by attraction, he said and then reiterated his call to followers to resist trying to convert others.

Pope Franciss appeal reflects a high degree of intellectual maturity. No religion discourages proselytising, because every religion believes that it possesses the truth.

However, the popes appeal is extremely crucial in this age of intense friction between faiths and sects which can gravely jeopardise social peace and political stability, to which testify the innumerable cases of sectarian strife and violence around the world.

Francis IIs meeting with Christian migrants added a fourth level of significance. The meeting was a manifestation of the communal bond that binds the Catholic Church with its adherents who constitute the majority of Christians.

However, the meeting had an important political dimension as it focussed attention on the migration question and, above all, on the humanitarian needs of the migrants themselves.

The popes commendation of the role played by Catholic associations in offering migrants accommodation and other forms of assistance, and his opposition to all forms of collective expulsion, should be understood in this context.

My final observation pertains to the criticisms levelled by influential Islamic circles against the celebration held at the Mohamed VI institute for training imams and preachers and attended by both Pope Francis II and King Mohamed VI.

The critics were riled by the fusion of sounds from the call to prayer with Christian hymns during a concert inspired by the three faiths. They held that while peaceful coexistence, tolerance and dialogue are among the basic principles of Islam this should not be read as license to undermine the cardinal tenets of the faith.

In fact, the performance was exquisite. The voices of the soloists (a man and two women) interwove to form a single braid from which we can derive several lofty messages, most notably: all religions stem from the same origin; humanity stems from the same man and woman; and art has the power to challenge extremism. Technically, the piece included only a portion of a call to prayer which I doubt anyone in the audience interpreted as an actual call to prayer.

Moreover, after reciting the declaration of faith, the chanter shifted to verses expressing his love for the Prophet which would have certainly clarified any confusion among audience members, had it existed.

That criticism gave me considerable pause for thought. I contrasted it to the widespread welcome the Islamic world accorded to the broadcast of the call to prayer on television in New Zealand.

Why is it that some Muslims refuse to treat others as they want others to treat them? I also thought about the contradiction between that criticism and the purpose for which the Mohamed VI institute for training imams and preachers was established, which is to rectify doctrinal misconceptions among clergy and proselytisers.

I could not help but to wonder how those critics can expect to fight Islamophobia abroad when they reject the meeting with other faiths even at the level of musical composition.

We still need to translate the many documents calling for interfaith coexistence into genuine practice. We need to confront strident insistence on drawing divides between people with strong reaffirmation of humanitys common roots. We need to be inspired by the noble significances of Pope Francis IIs visits to our Arab countries.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 April, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: Pope Francis II in Morocco

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Francisco Barrionuevo, CEO of Novaschool and economics teacher: Last summer, a substantial investment meant that the buildings and grounds at Novaschool Sunland were significantly improved. The results speak for themselves! We now provide Novaschool Sunland students, and our staff, with first-class facilities.

Novaschool Sunland International is a private British school on the Costa del Sol. It welcomes students from Foundation to Key Stage 5 giving students the possibility to obtain both Spanish and British qualification.

Founded in 2001, Novaschool Sunland International, has grown to become the number one British private school in the Malaga area. Mr. Francisco Barrionuevo, the owner and president of Novaschool, and Ms. Rachel Evans, the Principal of the school, with the support and enthusiasm of the schools staff, have led this incredible transformation.

Rachel Evans has talked to us about how success is achieved in Novaschool Education Groups most international school.

Over the last few years, the number of students attending Novaschool Sunland has increased. More and more families are looking to British schools for the education of their children. Ms. Evans, what do you see as the main differences between Spanish and British curriculum schools?

The main difference between a British curriculum school and a bilingual Spanish school is what we call language immersion. When a student chooses to study in Novaschool Sunland, they arent in a school where they will learn English, it goes much further than that. They are in an environment that is 100% British, taught by native Englishteachers who fully understand the English National Curriculum and have the pedagogical expertise to implement it successfully.

Rachel Evans

At Novaschool Sunland our British curriculum is designed to meet the needs of all students, stretching brighter children and supporting those who need it through differentiated teaching and learning activities. Students are taught to learn by questioning, problem-solving and creative thinking rather than by the mere retention of facts, hence giving them analytical and creative thinking skills that they will need in the working world.

English is our students main language for learning. They use this language on a day to day basis with their teachers, and to socialise with their classmates in and out of the classroom. Students are expected to speak in English at all times apart from in their Spanish, French and German lessons.

Another essential aspect which sets Novaschool Sunland apart from other schools is the quality of the schools facilities and environment. Novaschool Sunland benefits from a wonderful and secure 40,000 square meters campus which is surrounded by nature, as well as wonderful facilities which provide the atmosphere needed for teaching and learning of the very highest standard.

There are many private schools in the Malaga area, what do you believe are the main differences between these and Novaschool Sunland?

It is true that there are many private schools in the area that, on paper, offer the same thing. It is not until you visit Novaschool Sunland for yourself that you realise we are different to other private schools in the Malaga area, in fact based on the beautiful location, the exceptional education we offer and first-rate facilities I would go as far as to say we are unique.

Another key factor is the care we give to our students. British education is renowned for concerning itself with the development of the whole personality. Learning is important, but not enough in itself. Young people need to develop their potential to explore and discover the world around them, to think for themselves and form opinions, to relate to others, to develop their bodies through sport and physical education, and to gain experience in taking responsibility and risks. We want our students to become independent and responsible young people with a global awareness. For this purpose, we deliver a rounded education so that our students acquire these essential life skills.

Finally, because Novaschool Sunland is part of dynamic and cohesive team of schools, we can achieve anything we set our mind to. This team is the Novaschool Education Group whose core value is the personalised attention given to each one of its students for both academic and personal development matters. Novaschool is focused on enabling each student to develop their full potential in a positive and caring environment.We strive to excite all students, whatever their interests or ability; to identify, celebrate and nurture the talents and intelligences of our students.

One of the main aspects of concern for families looking for schools and interested in a British school, is the qualifications awarded at the end of the different stages of education. Ms. Evans, once students have finished their studies, which qualifications are they awarded at the end of Year 11 and Year 13?

This is definitely one of the most frequent question we are asked as it is very important, for most of our families, that the qualifications have an equivalent in the Spanish educational system. In Novaschool Sunland, we have implemented a system so that once our students finish Year 11 and their IGCSEs, we start the procedure to homologate their qualification with the Spanish system. Upon completion of year 13 and once the AS and A Levels results are out, we repeat this process so that students can be awarded the equivalent Spanish secondary qualification (Bachillerato).

Novaschool Sunland Novaschool Sunland also welcomes its youngest students in the Baby Sunland nursery, for children from 0 to 3 years old, located in the heart of the Andalucian Technology Park.

In the school, we also complete all the administrative paperwork for access to Spanish universities and provide our students with all the documents required by the university of their choice. Our aim is always to make life easy for our families and students. We believe that by obtaining globally recognised British qualifications (Cambridge and Edexcel) and their Spanish equivalent, our students have greater opportunities, and this opensmore doors for them.

In a globalised world, that gives young people the opportunity to study in any international university, the majority of students who go to school in Spain will choose a Spanish university to complete their education. Ms. Evans, is it difficult for students from a British school to be admitted on demanding courses such as Medicine or Nursing?

Our students are lucky to be able to study wherever they please once they finish their secondary studies: in a Spanish or international university. Therefore, in Novaschool Sunland, we guarantee our students access to any Spanish university. Very recently, we were visited by two Sunland alumni who have just completed their studies in the University of Cadiz and will soon qualify as nurses.

To ensure that our British qualification can be homologated by the Spanish Government, we have implemented our EBAU project. We give students the opportunity to prepare the special Spanish exams they will need to sit in order to obtain those extra points required for the most demanding university courses, and therefore ensure that they have a competitive grade. This year we have taught five specific subjects adapted to the curricular needs of our students. All this has been possible thanks to the support of Novaschool Anoreta and the expertise of these teachers who enabled our pre-university students to be examined in these subjects. These extra lessons are all taught in our school for the convenience of our students on a weekly basis and has been one of the most successful projects we have launched. Spanish families need reassurance their children can enter a Spanish university and with Novaschool Sunlands EBAU project they have that guarantee.
The programme of events for the Spring Festival, which runs from 1 May to 20 June, has now been announced. A full run-down can be obtained from the Cultural Department, but in the meantime these are a few of the many highlights coming up soon.

The busy schedule of events kicks off on May Day with music and dance performances in Casemates Square between 11am and 7pm, and 'Art Dance 2019' will be taking place on Saturday 4th in John Mackintosh Square from 8.30 to 10.30 pm, where international artists will be exhibiting their works and local dancers are being invited to participate.

On 8 and 9 May at 8pm at the John Mackintosh Hall there will be a Zarzuela, 'La del Manojo de Rosas', and tickets - which cost 5 - can be purchased from the John Mackintosh Hall from Tuesday 23 April between 9am and 4pm.

On Saturday 11 May from 10am to 3pm there will be a public display of Field Gun Crew in Casemates Square, and on 15 May the Arts Society Gibraltar will be hosting a talk on The Great Velazquez at Court in Madrid at the Garrison Library.
A round table talk about investigative journalism, entitled "Is investigative journalism a dying dinosaur?" was the format for the April meeting of the Costa Press Club. At a time when anyone with a smartphone can instantly publish their version of "news" to the world, what is the future for professionals trained to sift information and contrast sources?

This was the topic discussed by local journalists Agustin Rivero, Malaga correspondent for El Confidencial; Damian Ruiz Fajula, freelance journalist (former correspondent for El Mundo); and Mats Bjorkman, chief editor of Sydkusten, in a discussion led by the Costa Press Club president, Jesper Sander Pedersen. The panellists agreed that professional investigative journalism is essential and must be fostered, to avoid political censorship or the pressure of big businesses.

Mats Bjorkman spoke of the recent trend in Spain towards more independent media, funded by subscribers or systems like crowdfunding rather than advertising.

Dutch journalist Elsa Beckman also spoke from the floor about the danger of public opinion being polarised by uncontrasted opinions and "reports" on social media. The consensus was that there will always be a role for the professional media as an impartial watchdog, and to ensure the accountability of decision-makers.

The event, which was hosted by the Mijas Foreigners' Department in La Cala, was followed by dinner at the Restaurante El Torreon.
Calle Heroe de Sostoa is one of the main arteries into the city from the western side and has provoked a lot of debate among locals over the years: who is the 'hero of Sostoa'? Was there just one or several? From which battle was it?

Related news City bus careers out of control into parked cars as driver suffers heart attack

The truth is there was one, called Tomas, and he was known for his bravery in the face of Napoleonic troops. However now, we must add four more: Antonio, Francisco, Clara and an anonymous passenger on the number 1 bus which crashed into 12 vehicles, mostly cars, after the driver suffered a heart attack.

These heroes, not known to one another, came together like a well-drilled rescue team, removing the driver's foot from the pedal, calling on the radio to find out how to switch off the engine, opening the doors to evacuate the passengers, and performing lifesaving cardiopulmonary resuscitation manoeuvres to bring him back to life.

At the Carlos Haya hospital, where he is recovering from heart failure, the driver was told that his passengers had saved his life.

Fate

Antonio Guzman shouldn't have been on that bus, "although now I'm glad I was there, because I was able to help," he says. He normally took the earlier one but on Friday he just missed it.

Just like Tomas de Sostoa, who was born in Uruguay, Antonio is also from the other side of the pond. This 39-year-old from the Dominican Republic, said: "After the first impact I saw that the driver was convulsing and then the cars started piling up. The screams of the people and the panic will stay with me forever."

Francisco Luis Guzman always goes to work by car but he had a dinner with friends and didn't want to drive. "My wife offered to take me but I told her I didn't mind taking the bus." Francisco, from Malaga, was sat in the seat closest to the driver doing a sudoku on his phone when he heard "a loud crash". After finding a way, with the help of another man, to get him out of his seat, he made it known he was a doctor. As did Clara. The pair of them carried out cardiopulmonary resuscitation manoeuvres and his pulse returned. However, it went once more at which point the emergency services took over. "I was very dejected because he had suffered a massive heart attack," said the paediatrician.

While this was all going on, Antonio was looking out for the safety of the passengers on board, on the radio trying to work out how to shut down the engine and open the doors.

With everyone finally off the bus, attention turned back to the driver. The anxious wait continued until from the ambulance came a thumbs up. "That made us all smile," he said.
Few people will remember her (she used to go tothe Encarna Cantero centre, but that was years ago), but many are now grateful to her for a gesture which has provided no less than one million euros to modernise and equip the new Active Participation Centres in Marbella.

This is the money that the council obtained from the sale of a house in the prestigious Los Monteros area, which had belonged to Margit Selzer, an Austrian lady who was born in 1929 in Reichenberg and lived for several years in Marbella. She left the property to the local council in her will. She wanted the money raised from its sale to be spent on improving the day centres for the elderly.

In recent weeks the users of these centres have been watching the arrival of deliveries of all types of domestic appliances, sound systems, air conditioning units, deep fryers and a long list of other equipment, and minor works being carried out on soundproofing and modernising kitchens.

"We are delighted. We never thought anything like this would happen. We're getting everything now," says a longstanding user, Encarna Cantero, after whom one of the centres has been named.

"We're very happy about all this. It has changed everything. We even have more light now. One of our companions here says people can see all our wrinkles now that there is more light," jokes Maria Romero, of the Plaza de Toros centre. "This woman has done something wonderful for elderly people in Marbella, and we should all be grateful to her."

At the Santa Marta centre, very little remains to be done now. "Everything is different. It really needed this, and we are over the moon," says Ana Naranjo.

Before drawing up the list of what was needed, a team from the council arranged meetings with users of each centre to learn what their priorities were, and then organised an equal allocation of funds.

The lists were sent to Andrew Gonzalez, the executor of Margit Selzer's estate, who approved the council's plans and has been keeping a close eye on everything. He agreed that a reputable company such as El Corte Ingles would be ideal for providing what was wanted.

Now that the works are about to come to an end, the centres are visibly improved. They all have defilibrators, wall clocks, comfortable and practical new furniture, audiovisual and sound equipment with the facility for screenings, air conditioning, new kitchens, professional cooking equipment and LED lighting.

In addition to the general equipment, each centre has requested its own improvements, which range from a billiards table to static bicycles and treadmills, and IT facilities including computers.

Courses

The council will provide the staff to teach the courses once all the equipment has been installed. Sinks, tables, chairs, curtains, bookshelves, freezers, fridges, ceiling fans, armchairs, coat stands, sewing machines, parquet flooring, mirrors... the list is very long for the nine Active Participation Centres for Elderly People in Marbella (Encarna Cantero, Las Chapas, Los Paisajes, Miraflores, Nueva Andalucia, Plaza de Toros, San Pedro Alcantara I and II, and Santa Marta). Altogether it has cost about one million euros.

"The idea was, as she stated in her will, that everything had to be spent on improving the centres for the elderly. We provided the executor with the list of needs. Once everything is done and he has seen the accounts, he will know whether there is anything left to spend or not. If there is, we will buy more items for the centres," says the councillor for Social Rights, Isabel Cintado.

She is also very grateful to Margit. "She has enabled us to carry out major improvements at all the centres for the elderly, with a sum of money which would have been very difficult for the council to have obtained otherwise, all at once and immediately," she says. "What is important is that we comply with this lady's wishes, and she wanted a major improvement of the facilities. It was wonderful news for us when we returned to government in 2017. That's when we discovered that the file about this inheritance had been kept in a drawer since 2015," she says.
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, was in Brussels this week for the emergency meeting of EU leaders to decide upon an extension for the UK's departure.

Sanchez supported the move to give Britain until 31 October, saying the ball was now in the UK's court.

"Nobody wants a hard Brexit but nobody is ruling it out," he added.
According to Popular Party (PP) leader Pablo Casado, Spain's prime minister Pedro Sanchez represents a "public danger" to his country. Ciudadanos' Albert Rivera is in agreement, saying this week that it has become a "national emergency" that Sanchez be removed from office. Ahead of what is going to be a general election of incredibly fine margins on April 28th, such hyperbole is to be expected. But Casado's and Rivera's rhetoric paints a misleading picture of a prime minister who has achieved a lot during during his stint in the top job.

On the day that the UK's second attempt to leave the EU was supposed to succeed, it's apt to remember that Sanchez's government has worked hard to secure the rights of Britons in Spain and Spaniards in Britain after Brexit. Sanchez passed a royal decree early in March that enshrined in law his plans to preserve British expatriates' access to healthcare and voting rights in the case of a no-deal departure from the EU. Amid all the hysteria, Spain thus emerges as the most progressive country in Europe when it comes to preparing for a worst case scenario - namely, one in which the UK divorces Brussels without any kind of plan in place (although the latest extension granted by the EU, to October 31st, is designed to ensure that that doesn't happen).

When it comes to economics, the minority status of Sanchez's administration has proved a real barrier to progress (the PSOE holds just 84 seats in the 350-seat congress). The government's inability to pass its proposed 2019 budget was, after all, the failure that triggered the upcoming election. Despite that, the Socialist leader managed to increase Spain's minimum wage by a substantial 22% as of January this year, from 736 to 900 - a raise that will make an enormous difference to many Spanish households.

The same could be said of a decree for which Sanchez secured the approval of a parliamentary panel two weeks ago, and which aims to protect tenants from mercurial and profit-hungry landlords. Such legislation goes a long way towards showing that, when the Socialist leader says that his priority is the lot of average Spaniards, it's not just political posturing (or not entirely, anyway).

What Casado and Rivera really have in mind when they brand Sanchez "Public Enemy Number 1", though, is Catalonia. Both the PP and Ciudadanos leaders are ramping up their criticism of his attempt to start a dialogue with the region's separatists, saying that it undermines Spanish unity; yet they seem to forget - or choose to ignore - that the PSOE leader is as fundamentally opposed to Catalan secession as they are. Far from being a "public danger" to his country, then, Sanchez will prove a hard act to follow if someone new moves into Moncloa after April 28th.
The Gibraltar Philharmonic Society welcomes cellist Steven Isserlis and pianist Connie Shih for a recital on 18 April at the Convent Ballroom at 8pm. The concert is sponsored by the Parasol Foundation.

Worldwide acclaimed musician, British cellist Steven Isserlis has had a varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, educator, author and broadcaster. He has appeared with the world's leading orchestras and conductors, including the Leipzig, Berlin, Vienna, London, and Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestras. He works with many period instrument orchestras and gives recitals with harpsichord and forte piano. He is also a keen exponent of contemporary music and has premiered many new works, including John Tavener's The Protecting Veil, Thomas Ades's Lieux retrouves, and Gyorgy Kurtag's 'For Steven'.

DETAILS When. 18 April, 8pm. Where. Convent Ballroom What. A recital of cello and piano including works by Beethoven, Schumann, Faure and Brahms. Tickets. 20 are available from Sacarello's coffee shop and The Silver Shop. www.buytickets.gi Information. + 35020072134 or www.philharmonic.gi

The recipient of many awards, Steven Isserlis's honours include a CBE in recognition of his services to music, the Schumann and the Piatigorsky Prize.

He gives most of his concerts on the Marquis de Corberon (Nelsova) Stradivarius of 1726, kindly loaned to him by the Royal Academy of Music.

The Canadian pianist, Connie Shih, is considered to be one of Canada's most outstanding artists. In 1993 she was awarded the Sylva Gelber Award for most outstanding classical artist under age 30. At the age of nine, she made her orchestral debut with Mendelssohn's first Piano Concerto with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. At the age of 12, she was the youngest ever protege of Gyorgy Sebok at Indiana University and then continued her studies at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia with Claude Frank, himself a protege of Arthur Schnabel.

The programme will feature compositions for cello and piano by Beethoven, Schumann, Faure and Brahms.

A limited number of tickets at 10 are available to senior citizens and students from the John Mackintosh Hall.
Hundreds of local people and actors will be taking part in Riogordo's giant Passion play, El Paso, on Good Friday and Easter Saturday. The Easter story has been performed in the village in this way since 1951; in recent years however the cast has included a a handful of foreign residents who are keen to get involved.

INFORMATION What. El Paso (Passion Play) Recreation of the life and death of Jesus Christ. Where. Riogordo. When. Friday 19 and Saturday 20 April, 5pm. Further information. Facebook: El Paso de Riogordo / www.elpasoderiogordo.es www.malagaentradas.com

This year, the British-German Burke family, who moved to the village in January, have got parts as "woman, man and children of the village". Raaland, his wife Claudia and their two boys, aged nine and six, had "originally thought of being spectators this year". However, having spoken to long-term Riogordo resident, Leila Lawson, who is heavily involved in El Paso and other village activities, the whole family decided to get involved.

Raaland says that from day one it has been important for the family to participate in village activities and they made sure they were at the recent olive oil tour and talk.

Leila herself always participates in El Paso and describes her role as "Woman of Jerusalem, third from the left".

Other Passion plays in the province The towns and villages of Istan, Benalmadena, Alhaurin el Grande, Igualeja, Casarabonela and Carratraca also hold their own Passion plays. In Istan, the story is split into three acts, performed over three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Saturday at the municipal sports centre. The village of Igualeja will be recreating its El Paso on Plaza de Andalucia, starting at 12pm on Saturday 20 April. The Pasion of Casarabonela takes place in the church of Santiago on Palm Sunday, Monday and Tuesday at 9pm. See town hall websites for further information and timings of all of the Passion plays.

Raaland and Claudia are taking Spanish lessons and the boys attend the local primary school, although Raaland confesses that he doesn't think they ready for speaking parts yet. This is probably a good thing, though, as the bigger parts are said to be highly coveted by Riogordo residents.

Other newcomers to the village are Heather Fish, 69, and Sammi Dennard, 44, who are both ballet teachers and originally from London. They have been in Riogordo since last November and, like the Burke family, are keen to embrace the events that take place throughout the year in what they have found to be a "friendly" village. Their role this year, however, will be to photograph the impressive event as they run their own film and photography company.

El Paso tells the story of the life and crucifixion of Jesus Christ in around 17 scenes and has been declared a festival of national tourist interest.

Tickets are 10 euros for adults and 7 euros for children and can be bought on the day outside the ground or in advance from: Rural-Andalus, Tienda Cofrade Nazareno, Cereria Zalo in Malaga. In Torre del Mar from the Pasatiempos bookshop of from Riogordo town hall.
In recent years, populism appeared to gain the upper hand, sending the world into isolationist mode. But its ascendancy proved short-lived

The world and its ideas are changing faster than anyone could ever have imagined. From the Cold War we plunged straight into the age of globalisation.

As much as the latter disseminated, it did not prevent the tides of this decade: the reassertion of nationalisms as a parting cry of the longing for national permanence and immutability. Now that cry appears to be receding and there are signs of its immanent failure.

As to what will come next, no one can predict that with any degree of certainty. The result is a new great debate in global thought.

They say that what is gone is gone, never to return. But perhaps what they say has gone never really left or, at least, parts of it remained. No one can deny that the mechanisms of globalisation are still in place and that technology has not stopped progressing with the speed of light, covering distances that know no borders or national sovereignties.

The change is essentially dialectical. The old and the new are combined in mechanisms that force contradictions to interact like cells: constantly dividing, recombining and producing new shapes and original substances.

The process can be observed, above all, in academic periodicals concerned with international affairs and developments in the world order.

Until just last year, Foreign Affairs magazine published by the US Council on Foreign Relations focused on three phenomena: convulsions afflicting the liberal world order; how these convulsions were giving rise to anti-globalisation and anti-liberal political movements and to autocratic trends in government; and thirdly, the new authoritarianism with its essentially ultranationalist, xenophobic and isolationist outlook.

The latter has expressed itself in such rubric as our country first, which presumes that the country in question had never sunk so low and that this nadir occurred because the governments concern for regional or global interests failed to realise the nations interests.

The outlook also presumes a form of political treachery against the motherland perpetrated by a horde of liberals whose incessant search for freedom led them to scorn all sorts of patriotic values and traditions.

Perhaps the most explicit manifestations of this outlook are Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US president. Both are cases of the rise and coalescence of the complete antithesis in global politics. Brexit is not just about the departure from a conventional alliance or a consensus among a group of nations.

It is a break with an unprecedented process of political engineering that was designed to bring together nations that had warred with each other for centuries into a single political, economic, social and ethical entity. The Trump election had even broader and more profound ramifications and repercussions.

If Brexit sent tremors through Europe, Trump sent tremors across the planet. His first decision was to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, his next was to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership that sought to overcome longstanding contradictions between countries on both sides of the Pacific by gathering them into a single economic project.

The trend has not only manifested itself in the West. The success of Narendra Modis ultra-right Bharatiya Janata party is a sign of the rise of the ultranationalist authoritarian trend in the worlds largest democracy.

The new authoritarian movements are hoisting nationalist flags everywhere and at their forefront are leaderships which, in their own ways, hark back to the fascist movements of the past.

Jarosaw Kaczynski in Poland, Viktor Urban in Hungary, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey are the stars of the current phase. Ivan Krastevs article in the May/June 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs, Eastern Europes Illiberal Revolution: The long road to democratic decline, could not have been more appropriate. The trend is certainly a departure from Samuel Huntingtons third wave of democracy.

Huntington depicted a linear process, with the first wave occurring from 1820-1920, the second in the post-World War II period from 1945 to 1960 and the third following the end of the Cold War in 1990.

The last wave broke on the shoals of rejection of international institutions and the issues they engendered. Hence, the opposition to immigration and migrants and immigrants, the antagonism to cultural and religious diversity, the hatred of open borders, in general, and the calls for insularism and isolationism.

Nevertheless, in the latest Foreign Affairs edition (March/April 2019), Jan-Werner Muller rejects the prevalent reading of the strident political movements that characterise the decade that will soon expire.

Beneath the headline, False Flags: The myth of the nationalist resurgence, he writes that what we have seen during the past few years is not the rise of nationalism per se, but the rise of populism using nationalist rhetoric. He observes that nationalism and populism are frequently conflated and stresses the need to distinguish between them.

The former concerns a set of interests and affiliations that bind a particular political group and that define its domestic and foreign outlooks, whereas populism involves playing on peoples emotions and fuelling hatred towards foreigners, international cooperation, political elites and anything that this brand of populist rhetoric calls the enemy.

Populism, in general, plays on fear and, specifically, fear of the other or anything different. It cultivates suspicion of the press and the media, the judiciary and the security institutions that are crucial to maintaining the balances of power in the state.

As this decade draws to a close, the dangerous nationalist concepts and populist politics that have prevailed are not just in retreat, they are facing failure and defeat.

Today, three years after the British referendum on withdrawal from the EU, the UK not only failed to exit the EU at the scheduled time (29 March 2019) but, also, the House of Commons continues to fail to reach agreement on a Brexit deal.

As I write this, Prime Minister Theresa May has gone over the heads of the Eurosceptics in her own party in order to meet with Labour Party opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn in order to work out a formula for a very soft exit that would keep the UK in the EU customs union.

It also looks like the British people could be called back to a new referendum which would mean the end of the coup in British politics of populist agendas.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Donald Trump has not yet succeeded in building that isolationist wall between the US and Mexico, the wall that embodies his nationalist policies.

True, the Mueller report may not have found Trump directly implicated in Russian electoral tampering in 2016, giving Trump a stab at re-election for a second term. However, as a whole, his America First policies have not been particularly successful.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Asia and Latin America, the new nationalism, albeit still in the trial phase, faces various types of setbacks and defeats in the face of new waves of globalisation.

* The writer is chairman of the board, CEO and director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 7 April, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly under the headline: The new great debate

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April 4-11, 2019

Weve got jewels galore to enjoy this week! Dont forget to vote for your favorites in the poll below!

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25. Queen Letizia of Spain wore modern earrings from Gold and Roses to attend a memorial service for Jose Pedro Perez-Llorca in Madrid last Thursday.





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24. Modern climber earrings were Queen Letizias choice for Mondays visit to the School of Engraving and Design of Spains Mint in Madrid.

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23. On Thursday, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark wore classic stud earrings for a visit to the new Panda House at the Copenhagen Zoo.

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22. Crown Princess Mary wore more elaborate quatrefoil stud earrings on Wednesday for the official inauguration of the zoo enclosure, which houses two pandas recently arrived from China.

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21. Queen Letizia wore gorgeous diamond-shaped (and diamond-studded!) drop earrings for a visit to an exhibition in Burgos on Thursday.

20. On Thursday, Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden wore feather earrings for a tour of the Baltic Sea Science Center in Stockholm.

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19. Princess Margriet of the Netherlands wore bold statement earrings on Tuesday as she arrived at the Royal Palace ahead of the annual gala diner for the Diplomatic Corps.

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18. On Tuesday, Queen Sonja of Norway gleamed in modern silver jewelry for the opening of a new Edvard Munch exhibition at the British Museum in London.

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17. Empress Michiko of Japan wore modern, silver-toned jewels as she strolled through the grounds of the Imperial Palace with Emperor Akihito on Sunday.

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16. Golden jewels gleamed on Princess Margriet at the gala dinner of The Netherlands-America Foundation in Leiden last Thursday.

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15. Theyre hidden a bit in her hair here, but Queen Rania of Jordan wore a pair of ultra-modern earrings set with emeralds and diamonds at the 2019 World Economic Forum on Saturday. ( See them here!

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14. Ursula of Bavaria sparkled in pearly button earrings and a major necklace at Circus Krone in Munich last Thursday.

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13. The Princess Akishino was elegant in pearls and a modern brooch as she accompanied her son, Prince Hisahito, to Ochanomizu Universitys junior high school for his entrance ceremony on Monday.

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12. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands glittered in bracelets set with diamonds, sapphires, and rubies as she arrived for the annual diplomatic gala at the Royal Palace on Tuesday.

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11. Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands wore a gorgeous and fun pair of floral earrings for her arrival to the Royal Palace ahead of Tuesdays diplomatic gala.

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10. Queen Margrethe II of Denmark gleamed in gold and blue jewels to congratulate film director Lars Von Trier as he received the Rungstedlund Prize on Tuesday.

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9. The Duchess of Cornwall wore her silvery off-set pearl necklace with her diamond and turquoise shamrock brooch in Belfast on Tuesday for the reopening of Hillsborough Castle. ( All about the brooch here! FADEL SENNA/AFP/Getty Images 8. On Tuesday, Princess Lalla Hasna of Morocco wore a stunning pair of diamond earrings as she inaugurated an art exhibition in Rabat.

7. On Wednesday, Crown Princess Masako of Japan wore elegant pearls with a golden brooch to celebrate the imperial couples diamond wedding anniversary.

6. Empress Michiko also wore gorgeous pearl and diamond jewelry to receive congratulations from her family on the occasion of the imperial wedding anniversary. ( More on her wedding over here!

5. On Monday, Empress Michiko wore pearls and a beautiful brooch to attend the Japan Prize Award banquet.

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4. On Sunday, the Duchess of Cornwall dazzled in diamonds at the Olivier Awards in London. ( Much more over here!

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3. For Tuesdays diplomatic gala, Princess Beatrix sparkled in diamonds, including Queen Emmas Diamond Tiara. ( More here!

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2. Pearls and diamonds, including the Pearl Button Tiara, adorned Princess Margriet at the diplomatic gala. ( More of her jewels here!

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1. Queen Maxima stole the show at the diplomatic gala in the Antique Pearl Tiara and an astonishing diamond and pearl devant de corsage. ( More on the jewels, including close-ups, over here!
Apr 12 2019 12:22 pm

As reported on TLS, lawyers for Oros Bais Yaakov filed a lawsuit against Jackson Township for knowingly and illegally destroying evidence pertaining to matters of litigation.

On Friday morning, Agudath Israel of America filed their own lawsuit before federal judge Douglas E. Arpert over Jacksons destroying of records relating to ongoing litigation over Jacksons legally questionable ban on eruvs.

Agudath Israels suit requests of the federal judge the same as that of Oros Bais Yaakovs state lawsuit  that Jackson Township be prevented from continuing to destroy evidence and to be penalized for the records they have already destroyed.

Jackson Townships attempt to hide crucial evidence from the public eye has now landed them in both State and Federal court, with serious consequences possible for any officials involved in the matter.

Judge Arpert, before whom this new lawsuit has been filed, is the judge that has been presiding over Agudath Israels lawsuit over eruvs for the past 18 months.

Did Jackson Mayor Mike Reinas gloves off comment refer partially to destroying evidence regarding the lawsuit? This new suit may uncover further details relating to those comments.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
From the early days back in the mid-00s to more recently slaying the red carpet at the Oscars, on her 25th birthday we take a look back through her style evolution.

Image credit: Disney | ABC Television Group, via Flickr

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By Shabana Gupta

guptasha@grinnell.edu

Weeks of preparation will come to fruition this Saturday as queens and kings take the stage at the Harris Center for Grinnell Colleges semesterly Drag Show. The glitter and glamour on stage is the result of a lot of sweat and hard work on behalf of the performers and organizers.

The student organization Queer People of Color (QPoC) has spent weeks working to secure the budget, find items for the set, get a rehearsal area and pick the best of the best groups to perform. This semester, all proceeds from the performance will go to the Emma Goldman Clinic in Iowa City, a non-profit feminist healthcare organization.

After performing in previous Drag Shows, QPoC members Errol Blackstone 21 and Tucker Haddock 21 have taken the lead in organizing this years Drag Show. Older QPoC members usually run the show, and younger members learn the ropes from these soon-to-graduate leaders.

[Former] QPoC leaders kinda showed me what they expect out of the organization, Blackstone said.

Blackstone said that its only right for groups like QPoC to be in charge of the show.

Blackstone highlighted the larger history behind the art of drag performance, and especially the role of people of color in drag.

Queer people of color have a stake in drag, and really influence drag culture in general. Its fun and cis [gendered] people come, and straight people come, but its a way to celebrate the history of people who have fought for queer rights, trans rights, especially people of color, Blackstone said.

This semester marks the debut of the drag group Coochie Gang. Rande Nieto 21 and Juliet Torres 21, members of the Student Organization for Latinx (SOL), founded the group to keep the focus of Drag Show on people of color and the empowerment of women.

Nieto wants to help student groups, especially SOL, integrate more into the LGBT community. We do have members from the LGBT community in our groups and we really want to represent that in our performance, he said.

This is the first Drag Show performance for the members of Coochie Gang. The groups background in drag culture comes from Nietos drag queen friends in Miami and Torres knowledge of Ru Pauls Drag Race.

We are trying to be conscious that we are participating in a drag show, Torres said. In line with this intentionality, Coochie Gang will perform to a variety of hip hop songs by women of color. Torres and Niteo acknowledged that there was a steep learning curve in the rehearsal process, as only two of the group members had previous experience in hip hop, but the group has found its footing.

We havent done anything this complicated, Nieto said. We want to really accentuate that with a lot of fast movements and a lot of fast transitions.

Coochie Gang will be performing alongside the long running Nasty Gals group, membership within which has been passed down for years. Emily Gold 19, drag name Emily This Kittys Gold, is one of the current members and the groups choreographer. Gold introduced a more androgynous style of dance into Nasty Gals numbers when she took over from previous upperclassmen.

 I realized that I wanted to do more of a [masculine] element, she said.

Some members of the group are new to dance when they first start, while others have been dancing their entire lives. Vincent Noh 19, drag name Vincent No-means Noh, was involved in other dance groups on campus but had never tried drag before being asked to join Nasty Gals by an upper classman.

Doing it for the first short while is kind of uncomfortable, he said. It is a different kind of dance and its a different kind of gender expression.

Throughout his semesters with Nasty Gals, Noh has been gradually embracing more and more of drag culture. He will be wearing heels while dancing for the first time this Saturday.

[Drag] was definitely pushing myself into things that I definitely wasnt comfortable with before, No said. Each semester I hope that it can push it a little further.
By Montserrat Castro-Gomez

castromo@grinnell.edu

For the past week, Ania Chamberlin 19 has greeted visitors to her Smith Gallery show with an unexpected art experience: homemade bread. Chamberlain served the bread to Smith Gallery-goers this week in the first segment of her two-week show, Live Feed.

For this first week of the exhibit, Chamberlin baked 12 loaves of sourdough bread per day and was present inside the gallery space from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.. The Gallery had five wooden benches built by Chamberlin, four aligned in a rectangle with one in the center to hold the loaves of bread, butter and occasionally jam.

From April 8 to 12, Chamberlin sat on the bench across from the entrance to the gallery and drew anyone who came in to eat a slice of her bread. She used a mixture of flour and water for ink, which she used to draw the figures on white paper. This weekend, Chamberlin will bake the pieces of paper in the oven, a process which will caramelize the mixture and reveal the drawings.

For the second week of her show, April 15 to 19, Chamberlain will display the drawings in the Smith Gallery.

Her main influence for the exhibition is Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovic, specifically Abromovics piece The Artist is Present, performed at MoMA in 2010.

After I saw [the piece], I wanted to do that, the idea of devoting yourself so much to one thing without having so many distractions and feeling like my attention is fractured by a million notifications on my phone or my email or whatever, said Chamberlin. And then [I] thought, Well, what do I want to do? I want to give bread to people.

Live Feed is, for Chamberlin, a way of discovering different facets of productivity outside the normal expectancy of what being productive might be.

I wanted to see how I feel doing something drastically different for a week than what Im made to believe that Im supposed to do, Chamberlin said.

You know, like the feeling that if you dont go to class, and if you dont put your energy toward doing this very specific kind of work then like, youre lazy or youre not being productive? Well, I want to do this. I want to see how I feel when I am productive  literally producing food and art, in a different way.

She added that the show presents an important opportunity for her to give herself permission to deal with consequences of not doing some things and instead do something with the sole reason that she wants to and she can.

With Live Feed, Chamberlin wants to see how people interact with each other after she gives them a space to gather and something for them to eat together.

She said that, apart from loving to bake bread and cook, she grew up socializing around food and a table. Chamberlin lived in the Grinnell College Food House for a year and a half, a project house centered around communal cooking and eating, and that experience was a major influence on her interest in food and social dynamics.

As for the drawing portion of the exhibit, she took a drawing class last semester for which she drew portraits of students who were studying at Burling as a final project. Chamberlin explained how that specific project also led her to the idea for the exhibit.

Heres a bunch of students at Grinnell doing this thing, but Im documenting them. By drawing everybody who comes to the show, Im documenting them being a part of it, and that Ive given them bread, she said.What I want is for people to consider why I would do it and think about it for a second. Just like, stop for a moment. I want them to feel like they could do something that they want to do.

Students reacted very positively to Live Feed, complimenting Chamberlin on the uniqueness of the exhibit.

I think it is a good project to create a space for people to slow down for a second in their day and enjoy. Enjoy handmade crafts, which I feel is nice to get that around Grinnell, said Nick Raphaelson 21 after attending the exhibit on Wednesday.

Its entirely interactive. I think its a new take on installation art, almost, in that youre part of it. Its a lot of fun, said Tucker Haddock 21, who also attended. Its a really excellent exhibit  totally different from everything else Ive seen in the gallery.
Julia Anderson

anderson14@grinnell.edu

The student-run activist group Million Hoodies had their first action on Wednesday, April 10, inside of the JRC. The group is one chapter of a national organization, Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, which advocates for the rights of people of color, with a special focus on ending gun violence and reimagining safety and justice.

Grinnell Colleges chapter of Million Hoodies launched their prison divestment campaign this week and spoke outside of the Spencer Grill on Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m. about their goals. Malcolm Davis 21, president of Million Hoodies Grinnell, wrote an open letter on behalf of the activist group, addressed to President Raynard Kington, as well as the trustees, faculty, staff and students of Grinnell College.

We are kicking off our prison divestment campaign, the first step being todays revealing of our open letter to Raynard Kington, the trustees and administrators of Grinnell College, and were doing this in conjunction with Freedom Campuses nationally of action, so 15 other campuses are having actions centered around creating safety on campuses, pushing for abolition and divestment from prisons and the prison industrial complex as a whole, Davis said.

The letter begins with a statistic reported in the Des Moines Register in 2016: in Iowa, black people are imprisoned at 11 times the rate of white people, making Iowa one of the worst states in the nation for disproportionate incarceration by race. The letter then details that the College purchases labor and furniture from Iowa Prison Industries, which made $4.9 million in sales in 2013 while paying prisoners less than $1 per hour.

Disproportionate incarceration in Iowa is incredibly high, and because we are in Iowa, it is more than likely that we are using a labor force that is black and brown and paid between 28 and 88 cents an hour, Davis said.

And when you consider things like the fact that they have to pay like $3 to submit a health request.  Thats like a days work, added Jelani McCray 21, vice-president of Million Hoodies Grinnell.

Million Hoodies open letter ends with a call to end the Colleges relationship with Iowa Prison Industries and to instead reinvest in assisting black and brown communities affected by the prison industrial complex.

The connection, the proximity of Grinnell to prison industries as business partners is not something that we like at all, so we are pushing the administration to recognize this, Davis said.

Million Hoodies Grinnell hopes to gain as much student interest and support as possible for the prison divestment campaign. The petition does not have a set goal number of signatures, but rather exists to demonstrate overall student interest in the campaign.

Were just trying to indicate that there is support in the greater population of Grinnell. It is not just a student group doing this, but all students feel that this is an unjust connection, Davis said.

An important part of the campaign involves a reinvestment aspect in addition to divestment from prison labor. Million Hoodies has a plan to reinvest the money currently given to Iowa Prison Industries into efforts to rebuild and support black and brown communities devastated by the prison industrial complex.

Our original plan was just to try and force [the College] to divest, but then like divest and then what? So thats where we bring in the reinvestment piece within the communities, McCray said.

Million Hoodies Grinnell hopes to meet with Kington and trustees or members of the College administration as the next step in their campaign.
By Jonathan Gomez

gomezjon@grinnell.edu

This past week the Office of Development and Department of Alumni Relations (DAR), hosted the fifth annual Scarlet and Give Back Day in collaboration with other groups on campus. Unlike in past years, when the event lasted for 24 hours, DAR extended the 2019 challenge to 36 hours, starting Wednesday at 5 a.m. and concluding on Thursday at 5 p.m. The goal for this year was greatly assisted by one anonymous donor, who pledged to match every $1 donated with $2 for up to $500,00. The College managed to raise $846,238 with the total of 1,904 gifts donated.

According to Mae Parker, the Director of Annual Giving, That donor had already specified giving and where those dollars were going and thats to the new humanities and social studies center (HSSC), but anyone can designate their gift wherever they want and then still qualify for the matching money to be counted, and we want to collect every dollar.

In addition to the big donation pledge by that anonymous donor, specific alumni class years also created projects that were displayed on the Scarlet and Give Back Day website. Parker said, The four alumni classes that have funds on the page are actually celebrating a reunion this May and specifically had funds they are working to endow so the funds will continue to be there forever. For example, the class of 2005 is doing a scholarship in memory of beloved classmate Daniel Samen Follmer 05, and they are trying to reach a $15,000 threshold so it will endow the scholarship and be given out every year in his memory. In this case, this scholarship would go to a Chicago student who is high need and wants to come to Grinnell.

Many scholarships, programs and projects have all been generously supported by funds from Scarlet & Give Back Day throughout the past years, and Parker wanted to make sure that all Grinnellian know that. The funding that you could apply for an internship, course-embedded travel, those things are all provided because someone else made a gift, Parker said.

Another big recipient of the donations received on Scarlet and Give Back day is the Office of Financial Aid, which is passed directly on to students in the form of institutional grant assistance to support their education at Grinnell. According to Joe Bagnoli, the Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Among our peers nationally that are need-blind in admission and meet 100% of every students financial need, Grinnell awards financial aid to the highest percentage of enrolled students and we spend more of our operating budget on financial aid than any other need-blind college or university. Gifts received through Scarlet and Give Back Day are an essential component of the financial aid program and help us meet the demand for financial aid.

One of the planned challenges for the student body is the Chipotle challenge, which will give a Chipotle lunch to the class year with the most donations. The class of 2019 won this challenge. A new challenge this year that was specific to Residence halls was the Dari Barn challenge, which will be rewarding the residence hall which had the most participation in a Human Laurel Leaf photo.

According to Mae Parker, We want people to be connected on this day and feel good about knowing your gift matters, whether you gave $5 or $500 or $500,000  your gift really matters at Grinnell and its causing impact immediately for our students.
By Kelly Page

pagekell@grinnell.edu

Recently, many students and faculty have pointed out the lack of a Jewish studies curriculum at the College, and some have been taking steps to introduce more opportunities to study Judaism and the Jewish people at Grinnell.

Vance Byrd, German, said, It was really this academic year after Pittsburgh, where students and some faculty and staff started asking more active questions about what is the place of Jewish studies within the academic program of Grinnell, what is the history, like why dont we have it, and what are the possibilities of introducing programming.  I think there is more of an awareness of the absence that was maybe exacerbated by the absence of a rabbi on campus.

Since 1990, there has never been a year at Grinnell without a rabbi on campus. Harold Kasimow, who was a religious studies professor at Grinnell from 1972 to 2001, remembers a time when, in the absence of a rabbi, he became, in his words, the unofficial advisor to the Jewish students for about 10 years.

Kasimow specialized in teaching Judaism, along with major Asian religions and Islam. He taught many courses that have no surviving equivalent in the Colleges catalog, such as Modern Jewish Thought, The Golden Tradition: Jews of Eastern Europe, and a seminar entitled Abraham Joshua Heschel: A Jewish Saint of the Twentieth Century.

Because I was qualified to teach Judaism, Islam and also Asian religions to some degree, they said they needed two people to replace me, and that gets really political, but they decided to replace me with an Asian studies person, Kasimow said. He now has professor emeritus status.

However, he has always assumed that there would eventually be a new professor to take his place.

He said, There was a tradition here where these Jewish courses were being offered. I dont know of any college of Grinnells standing  every other college has someone who is teaching Judaica. Macalester, they had two rabbis who were teaching.

Professors and students feel the absence of Jewish studies in other departments as well, including German.

Byrd said that when he went to graduate school for German in Germany, German Jewish studies was somehow part of the departmental fabric. In my department we had Yiddish studies, we had poets, we had people doing Hebrew, we had people doing Jewish writers, we had several graduate students writing dissertations on Jewish studies topics, and before I came to Grinnell I just thought that this is how things were, and when I came to Grinnell I was struck by the absence of academic Jewish studies coursework.

Dan Reynolds, German, said that, although the German department already teaches many Jewish authors in classes, the question is, where do you find that in the catalog?  Its kind of dispersed in the curriculum and I think the challenge for us right now is to make visible those components of it that we already have but also to advocate for something a little more robust.

Currently, due to leave schedules, the German department is able to search for a two-year visiting professor who could teach upper-level classes, some in English, which would focus on the study of German Jews.

Another route for introducing a more robust Jewish studies curriculum to Grinnell is through an endowed professorship, which would be sponsored by a donor. Although professors in these departments have made it clear to Development and Alumni Relations that this is an area they would love to see an endowed professorship in, it could take years, or never happen.

Reynolds said, I think there are several places on campus that have expressed interest in getting a chair endowed in the area of Jewish studies, and that could be located in a number of places. It could be in the German department, it could be in the religious studies department, it could be in anthropology. Those are probably the places where we are most frequently talking about it. I think the field of Jewish studies is interdisciplinary in nature.  I hope that we continue to develop extracurricular programming to address the absence of curricular programming.

Reynolds academic specialty is Holocaust remembrance, although as he points out, I wouldnt want to reduce Jewish studies to the study of the Holocaust. The two have major overlap, but they are not identical. He helped bring the exhibition Architecture of Murder to Burling, which, centers around the documentation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Other programming which addresses this absence includes speakers brought to Grinnell. Additionally, Byrd and others are working on setting up a roundtable discussion next year on Jewish studies topics with the Rosenfield program.

Professor Katya Gibel Mevorach, anthropology, is teaching a class about antisemitism for the second semester in a row, though she adds that antisemitism does not define the Jewish people and more comprehensive coursework in Jewish studies is necessary at the College.

Mevorach said, What is outstanding is that for the most part there is no discussion of Jewish history, Jewish philosophy, Jews as a global population in the whole world, so that Jewish history does not begin with the Nazis and Jewish history does not begin in Europe, it actually begins in the Middle East.  One can talk about the Jewish presence throughout the curriculum, and in that context we need to get the discussion started.  All of these are questions that can arise in political science, in history, in philosophy, in religious studies.

Mevorach is currently advising Dylan Caine 21, who is designing an independent major in Jewish studies.

Caine said he chose to undertake this independent major after he realized Jewish studies was an important framework for understanding the world. He said, I dont think anyone that goes into college thinking they want to do Jewish studies would come to Grinnell, just because there is no curricular representation here and I certainly didnt know I wanted to do that. It started a lot from Mevorachs seminar on antisemitism. I just realized, in so many of my other subjects Ive been reading Jewish authors, reading texts that touch on Jewish life, and I just realized that theres a whole side of academia and a side of Jewish thinking that I wasnt exposed to, and that was something that kind of bothered me.

Jewish students have especially felt the lack of Jewish subjects in their classes. Caine described the experience of a Jewish student who read Shakespeares The Merchant of Venice in an English class which did not discuss any of the antisemitism in the play. The student felt uncomfortable as the only Jewish student in the class, and did not feel they had the academic background and language to point out their professors oversight. Caine said that it is important to make the Jewish presence felt in academics and to arm students with the academic framework to talk about Jewish topics in class so that this situation does not happen again.

Another way for students to gain this type of experience with Jewish studies could be by establishing a Jewish studies concentration. Amelia Geser 19, a member of Chalutzim, wrote in a document shared by email with The S&B, There is NO WAY there will ever be a Jewish studies concentration unless students create traction and work together to build this program from the ground up.

She wrote, The goal for the immediate future is to create and generate VISIBILITY  by creating a list of existing courses that highlight Jewish content and discussion, students who are interested in Jewish studies can engage in these topics in the semesters before a fully-formed Jewish studies program comes into existence. We also plan to speak to faculty about engaging with Jewish topics in their classes. Many faculty have peripheral knowledge (such as knowledge of Ladino language, etc) which they can choose to bring into their classes. However, it is up to STUDENTS to start the discussion and encourage faculty to share knowledge that usually remains on the sidelines. To do so, she wrote, please reach out to myself, (geserame@grinnell.edu) Professor Katya or Dan Reynolds if you are interested!

She also added that, in the meantime, Chalutzim plans on attempting to create a new Jewish Studies area in the library, a Jewish and Hebrew Film collection, and a one-credit study group for students to talk and brainstorm, so that students have opportunities to learn about Jewish studies before a concentration is hopefully created.
By Abraham Teuber

teuberab@grinnell.edu

At Grinnell College, the education department offers a variety of opportunities for students looking to explore education through an academic lens. For students looking to pursue education as a career, a popular path is the Practitioner Preparation Education Program, a licensure track that equips students with a secondary teaching license following its completion.

To attain a license, students must complete several courses within the education department, in-class observation hours and special distribution requirements, which are atypical for Grinnells open curriculum. Students with a variety of academic interests can earn their license in addition to their major and specialize their certification with an endorsement from the subject area of their department.

Moya Roarty 19, a political science major who is receiving an endorsement for teaching government, elaborated on the ways in which her major has influenced her desire to pursue education.

I am a poli-sci major and have definitely taken a really strong interest in policy, especially community and local types of policy too.  The more I got into that, and the more I learned about the policy making process,  I was starting to think about what ways I can be there enacting these policies.  Whats a deeper way to be involved in policy-making? Roarty said.

The capstone component of the teaching licensure program is a semester of student teaching taken alongside a final seminar course that incorporates experiences from students in-class teaching into the curriculum. Students in the program are matched with secondary schools in the Grinnell, Marshalltown, Iowa City or Des Moines area, and occasionally the Twin Cities. Once there, they spend their time in a single classroom with a cooperating teacher who they observe and teach alongside.

Student teaching is typically completed the semester following commencement for fourth-year students. Anna Bell Hines 20 is student teaching in a biology class at Grinnell Middle School in the first half of her fourth year and then returning to campus to finish up the rest of her remaining credits.

I think that kids are really uniquely smart, and working with middle schoolers, teaching them how to be good people, which I think is more important than being a good scientist, is a way to develop a community of adults that are more compassionate, and thats really important to me, Hines said.

While the student teaching program is a requirement to receive a license, the semester is unpaid and actually requires students to pay for their own housing, transportation and other living accommodations. Henry Jantzen 19, who will be teaching in a biology classroom at Marshalltown High School this fall, also highlighted the adjustment that goes into experiencing a school environment that is often completely unknown to the student teachers, as well as the challenges that an unpaid, full-time job presents.

Its an entire semester in which I really will not have the opportunity to get paid work, and so I have to make a choice.  Either I have to have savings, or on top of my full time job and the seminar, find other work.  I would really love to not be working an extra job on top of student teaching. If I could avoid that, that would be fantastic, he said.

Jantzen also described the importance of training teachers who come from a variety of backgrounds that arent often represented, such as men of color, women science teachers and gender nonconforming people.

Theres a lot of ink spilled about what we need in education  but one of the things we need are teachers who A, know their content area, B, can create understanding well and C, can be role models for their students in different ways, Jantzen said.

While student teaching certainly comes with its challenges, Hines praised the opportunity to be able to pursue teaching as a career through a formal training program as opposed to more informal, fast-track prep programs or opportunities such as Teach for America.

Being a teacher is really important to me.  [Student teaching] is a time commitment, but it really only helps you, and its so much better than fast teacher-prep programs where they assume that just because you graduate from a prestigious college, youre qualified to teach in a classroom.  Thats just not the case, especially when those programs are majority white and are being placed in classrooms that are majority students of color, and its a disservice to students of color, Hines said.

Roarty also pointed out her eagerness to explore the challenges as well as the unique rewards student teaching will provide.

As I tell teachers and former teachers that Im doing this, they always  talk about how its a challenging experience but also a really rewarding one, and I think whenever people talk about that, its always in a vague  type of way. Im really looking forward to finding out, honestly, what do they mean, what is that feeling of teaching being rewarding?
By Brendan Hyatt

hyattbre@grinnell.edu

On Tuesday, April 16, the grand opening of the Edith Renfrow Smith Black Womens Library will take place in its new designated space in the Black Cultural Center. This intersectional Black womens library is named after Edith Renfrow 37, the first Black woman to graduate from Grinnell College. According to Tuesdays campus memo, the library is aimed to cultivate a creative, communal, and academic resource for Black women on campus. Students will not be able to remove books from the library, but all texts in it will be additionally available for rental at Burling Library. The library will also regularly host a Well Read Black Girls Book Club.

Rayyon Robinson 19, who led the project to found the library, worked to build a library that included a wide range of Black women authors. Funded by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, she found a wide variety of authors across the Black diaspora in genres ranging from fiction to academic text, centering on feminist and queer literature. She sent surveys to various multicultural leadership groups, consulted knowledgeable faculty members and conducted online research in order to find texts suited to the librarys direction. The library will also feature a number of texts written by Black women alumni and faculty of the College.

Robinson said that she was personally driven to start the library due to her experiences with librarianship as a political profession. Her first-year externship shadowing with university archivist Melissa Torres 02 changed her perspective on librarianship. That externship got [me] thinking about librarians as agents of social change who have a role in history, she said.

That and subsequent experiences looking at the role of Black women within literary movements pulled me into librarianship as a way to radicalize the profession, Robinson said.

She was particularly inspired by the librarians in Ferguson, Missouri, who kept the public library open as a space for members of the community to organize and take refuge amid the citys 2015 unrest.

Robinson said that she thought that the library was an important addition to the college due to a lack of adequate scholarship in terms of centering Black bodies, lives and experiences. She added that she hoped that Black women scholars and other women scholars of color can find their space and see themselves reflected in the literature.

Robinson said she is optimistic about the future of the library, stating that she hopes it expands into whatever [future students] want it to be, depending on the books that they put into the catalog.

Although students will not be able to check books out of the library, they are encouraged to sit and read in the space. The reception will take place on Tuesday at 4 p.m. Refreshments will be served, and book donations from students are welcomed.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Freezing rain early...changing to light rain overnight. Low -1C. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precip 100%..

Tonight

Freezing rain early...changing to light rain overnight. Low -3C. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of precip 100%.
MBABANE  The SADC market continues to be dominated by surplus sugar producers who traditionally supplied the EU market and the EU diverted their exports to the region.



This submission was made by Eswatini Sugar Association (ESA) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr. Phil Mnisi during the 9th Africa Sugar 2019 conference, which brought together African and international sugar market leaders, in Nairobi Kenya. Mnisi spoke at the conference on behalf of the Eswatini sugar industry and the ESA.



Conference



The conference concurrently ran with the AgTech Africa 2019 conference and the Sustainable Agriculture Summit which had over 300 participants, more than 60 speakers and 60 market case studies all in one joint networking and exhibition area.



On COMESA, Mnisi said Eswatini had access to the market by derogation and the country was able to supply Kenya under the Kenya sugar safeguard, which put limits on the imports of sugar.



The ESA CEO said the EU market was still a market for raw sugar for refiners though the industry had experienced a drop in prices due to the increased domestic production. The strategy the Eswatini sugar industry employed was to reduce sales in this market and use other alternative markets.

He said the Eswatini sugar industrys marketing strategy included offering low world market prices, change in the traditional export markets, exploring market opportunities within the region and dealing with the non-tariff barriers and other trade facilitation issues.



He said, There were some new market opportunities to explore. These included the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa; Eastern Africa Community and the Southern African Development Community (COMESA-EAC-SADC) Tripartite, which had 26 member countries and a population of 625 million. The African Free Trade Area was another market opportunity, which thrives to create one large and integrated market for Africa. It had 54 member states and a population of 1.3 billion people.



Lastly, the United Kingdom (UK) as a stand-alone market outside of the EU. Mnisi mentioned the value addition component for consumption purposes of the industry which included packaging for table top use, sweets, confectionery, beverages.

The non-consumptive value added component produced products such as ethanol made from molasses, cogeneration of electricity, blended fuels and fertiliser from vinasse. He explained that some of the nagging challenges the industry faced were the subdued economic growth, cyclical markets, sustainability issues, water levels and value addition and diversification.



AgTech Summit, the first of its kind, addressed implementations in the farm, field and supply chain. They also showcased cases from investors, agribusiness companies, plantation owners, start-ups and innovative technology developers.



They discussed infrastructure challenges and government plans to improve farm connectivity, vertical farming, smart farms, smart irrigation, satellite imagery for weather forecasts, drone technology and its application in planting and crop maintenance, among other topics.



Mnisis speech also covered strategic sugar industry insights, pricing and supply chain, sugar technology case studies, regional markets and trade, sustainable sugar and new market opportunities.



He said ration, temperature, water, agronomic factors and institutional support were the key drivers of the yield. Mnisi mentioned the European Union (EU), the United States of America, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) as the trade dynamics of the Eswatini sugar industry.
PIGGS PEAK  A man claims he turned down an offer for free sexual intercourse as payment for a job.

Ankery Dlamini alleged that he had worked for a certain businesswoman who instead of paying him, allegedly offered him sexual intercourse but he refused.

I wanted the money, he alleged.



Dlamini alleged that he had done some manual work for the businesswoman whose name will not be mentioned for ethical reasons.

He said the woman owns a business around eBuhleni and that he had worked there in September 2018.



promised



Dlamini alleged that he had done the manual work and that he was promised E180 for the day.

He said he was not a fulltime employee and had hoped that he would at least acquire some fast cash but this did not happen.



Dlamini said he approached the woman on several occasions to request the payment but that she did not pay him.

Instead, he alleged that the woman said she could pay him through sexual intercourse.



declined



Asked why he declined the offer, Dlamini said this was because the woman was older than him.

He is 34-years old while the woman is said to be in her late 50s, according to Dlamini.



Dlamini said his other concern was that he also knew that she was a married woman and that he knew her husband.

What if her husband finds out, asked Dlamini.



He said it was for this reason that he eventually approached the Buhleni Police post to help resolve the matter.

helpful

Dlamini said though the officers were helpful, they found his story humorous and probed him for more information to how this came about.

They advised me to take the matter up with Ndabazabantu, said Dlamini.



Yesterday, Dlamini eventually reported the matter to the Piggs Peak Ndabazantu where he was given a letter to hand to the woman so that she could also appear before the same structure.

Dlamini said all he needed was the money he had worked for and that he was not interested in anything else.



reported



Acting Chief Police Information and Communications Officer Inspector Nosipho Mnguni said the matter had been reported to the Buhleni Police post.

She however said it was referred to Ndabazantu because there was no criminal element yet.



Mnguni said she was also aware that the woman had been summoned to appear before Ndabazabantu.

Attempts were also made to reach the alleged boss in the matter but the cellphone number said to belong to her was not reachable.
LOBAMBA - No one is immune from the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). As a result, the Eswati Revenue Authority (SRA) is expected to appear before the PAC to account for about E332 535 660, which does not appear in the government systems yet it was declared as recovered.



The Accountant General, Dumisile Ngwenya, reported that since 2017, they had been making requests to the SRA to provide the necessary documents showing where the revenue was collected from, but nothing had been forthcoming.



Ngwenya informed the PAC that the latest excuse from SRA came as early as December 2018, when the tax company allegedly said it could not furnish the information because it was moving offices. At some point Ngwenya alleged that SRA sent them some computer documents of the money, but it was not a breakdown of where it was collected from, but just a printout of the figure.



Lubombo Region MP Lorraine Nxumalo, who is a member of the PAC, said it was unacceptable that an organisation like the SRA, which was very strict on demanding documents from businesses, was not complying.

When you are a businessperson the SRA insists on producing of documents from businesspeople and if that doesnt happen, they make their own estimates, said Nxumalo.



She further said the SRA would also make the companies pay penalties.

MP Nxumalo said SRA, by failing to produce these documents, maybe rubbed off some debts. Its very unprofessional, she said. Mbabane West MP Musa Zwane said it was not good that the accountant generals office accepted the excuse from SRA that they were moving office. He said they must pick up the pace because the documents dated as far back as 2017.



Similar sentiments were shared by Lobamba MP Allen Stewart.

Manzini Region MP Busisiwe Mavimbela said it did not make sense that the AGs office would receive money from SRA without knowing where it came from. SRA is a very strict organisation when it comes to their customers so I do not understand what is happening, she said.

Deputy Chairperson of the PAC and Gege MP Musa Kunene wondered why the AG had not come with the officers from SRA to give an explanation on the money, which was later reported to have been an oversight in the accounting system. We need the officers from SRA to explain this mess, said Kunene.



He was supported by Mtfongwaneni MP Roy Fanourakis. We cant just move past this matter without interrogating them, he said.

The PAC resolved that the SRA would appear before them when the Ministry of Finance held its sitting because the tax company was a parastatal of the latter.



Unsupported



Meanwhile, the auditor general in the 2017 report, had submitted that there was an unsupported transaction from the SRA. The auditor general reported that according to the statement of outstanding revenue, income amounting to about E332 million was declared as recovered by SRA as at March 31, 2017.

The recovered amount is partial repayment of accumulated outstanding revenue from the authority, amounting to E3 519 802 140 leaving the balance of E3 187 266 480, reported the AG.



The auditor general submitted that the concern was that the recovered revenue did not have supporting documents from SRA, which was responsible for collecting and reporting to the Ministry of Finance on taxes collected.

The AG said Financial and Accounting Instruction 0508 stated that full particulars of the purpose of payment should be provided and when the payment was made, a receipt showing the name of the person who made the payment should be issued. However, in her response, Ngwenya, the Accountant General, reported that the statement of outstanding revenue (the amount of E332 million) was declared as recovered, which was a partial recovery from a reported outstanding amount of E2 165 480 690 as at March 31, 2016.

She said a request was sent to SRA through a letter dated August 7, 2017 requesting for submission of documents as they were the custodian of these documents. However, they were unable to obtain the supporting documents.

She also reported that an error of overstatement amounting to E546 282 358.46 had been identified on the outstanding revenue balance for the year 2016/2017 where SRA financial statement declared E2 640 984 121 against the reported E3 187 266 480.
William Bill Logan was honored as Citizen of the Year at the 130th Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce Banquet Thursday night, at Cross Creek Resort. Logan was recognized for his long history of service to the community and involvement in the lives of area children.
By Azernews





By Rashid Shirinov

A book entitled Azerbaijan and the United Kingdom 100 Years of Partnership was presented on April 12.

Speaking at the event, Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov underlined that relations between Azerbaijan and the UK serve as an example for European countries.

The presidential aide noted that the history of cooperation, which covers all areas, ranging from diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and the United Kingdom to economic, political and trade relations, is measured in a century.

If we are talking about systemic links, then we can celebrate the 100th anniversary of these ties. However, the ties between Azerbaijan and the UK go back to ancient times, according to historical data, these links are recorded in the annals of approximately 16-17 centuries. The history testifies that the Queen of Great Britain Elizabeth Tudor sent with her envoy a letter to the Safavid Shah Tahmasib. Thus, diplomatic and economic relations were established between Britain and the Safavids, Hasanov said.

The Assistant to the President noted that during the years of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), the Governor-General of Great Britain often came from Tbilisi to Baku, regulated further political and economic relations with Azerbaijan, and Britain actually recognized the ADR.

In the subsequent period, as a result of the fall of the ADR, not Azerbaijani-British relations, but relations between Great Britain and the USSR were established. The period of independence of Azerbaijan covers a wide range of relations between the two countries. The first ambassador received by national leader Heydar Aliyev, who came back at the insistence of the people to power in Azerbaijan in June 1993, was the British ambassador. At the end of July of the same year, an expanded meeting was held between the British ambassador and national leader Heydar Aliyev, he said.

Hasanov added that the United Kingdom then chaired the UN Security Council, and the adoption of the 853th Security Council resolution took place at the direct initiative of the United Kingdom during its chairmanship.

If you look at four UN Security Council resolutions to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, you can see that the 853rd resolution, in the most precise formulations, requires the unconditional withdrawal of Armenian invading troops from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, he said.

The Presidents Assistant noted that following this, in Azerbaijan, in the true sense of the word, a period of creation of a new history began.

BP is a foreign company that has invested the largest amount of investments in the energy sector of Azerbaijan. BP played an important role in raising relations between Azerbaijan and Great Britain to a strategic level. And today, the United Kingdom is the largest partner of Azerbaijan in Europe. The two countries have established strategic relations in all spheres, and today's relations in the economic, political, social and other spheres serve as an example and standard for European countries, he stated.

We believe that the UK will continue to play the role that it has played before in the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, will provide its support to the recognition of the fair position of Azerbaijan in the international arena, the liberation of the occupied territories, return to their native lands more than one million refugees and internally displaced persons of Azerbaijan, Hasanov concluded.

The author of the book, SOCAR Vice President Rafiga Huseynzade, informed about the work released by the British Senate Publishing.

Huseynzade noted that the book contains information on all spheres of relations between Azerbaijan and Great Britain.

In his speech, Deputy Foreign Minister Ramiz Hasanov spoke about the history of Azerbaijani-British relations. Hasanov said that these ties are deeply rooted.

Great Britain is one of the first western countries that recognized the independence of Azerbaijan. After the visit of great leader Heydar Aliyev to the UK in 1994, relations between the two countries deepened, and this activity on the development of relations is being continued today by President Ilham Aliyev, he said.

The head of the Senate Publishing, a member of the House of Lords, David Evans, in his speech stressed that there are about 500 British companies operating in Azerbaijan. I am confident that this relationship, based on sincere friendship, will be continued, he said.
Shell said it will invest $300 million in a three-year programme as part of its strategy to act on global climate change, including addressing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions generated by customers when using its products.



This programme will contribute to Shells three-year target, beginning in 2019, to reduce its Net Carbon Footprint by 2 per cent  3 per cent.



There is no single solution to tackling climate change. A transformation of the global energy system is needed, from electricity generation to industry and transport, said Ben van Beurden, chief executive officer of Royal Dutch Shell.



Shell will play its part. Our focus on natural ecosystems is one step we are taking today to support the transition towards a low-carbon future. This comes in addition to our existing efforts, from reducing the carbon intensity of oil and gas operations to investments in renewable sources of energy.



Mark Tercek, CEO of The Nature Conservancy, said: Last years IPCC report was a wake-up call on climate: reducing emissions starts with fossil fuels. Shells announcement signals that one of the worlds biggest energy companies is pursuing a decarbonisation strategy with a broad set of solutions, including by investing in nature.

"By doing so, it is helping to curb global deforestation, restore vital ecosystems, and help communities develop sustainably. Shell is the first in the industry to set near-term targets for the emissions of both its operations and its products; this is clear progress, but it also illustrates how much work remains to achieve Paris climate targets. We look forward to seeing further investment from Shell in these areas.



For customers who drive internal combustion engine vehicles, Shell is making it simpler for them to reduce their carbon footprint through low-carbon biofuels and carbon neutral driving.



From April 17, customers who fill up at a Shell service station in the Netherlands will be able to drive carbon neutral through the use of nature-based carbon credits. This will be done at no extra cost for customers who choose Shell V-Power petrol or diesel, while those who fill up with regular Shell petrol or diesel can participate for an additional 1 cent a litre.



Shell will roll out similar choices to customers in other countries, starting with the UK later this year. This complements Shells existing programme to help business customers avoid or reduce emissions, including supplying lower emission fuels and electric vehicle charging. Shell also offers businesses the opportunity to drive carbon neutral by compensating the CO2 emitted from driving their fleet.



At the same time, Shell also plans to invest at scale in forests, wetlands and other natural ecosystems around the world, to reduce emissions and capture more CO2 while benefitting biodiversity and local communities.



In addition, in Queensland, Australia, Shell has established an 800-hectare endangered native forest regeneration project. In Malaysia, Shell and the Sarawak state government are jointly studying the potential for a nature conservation, restoration and enhancement venture for Sarawaks natural landscape.  TradeArabia News Service
(April 11, 2019)  The UTSA Main Campus transforms into a vibrant array of food, flowers and fun on Friday for Fiesta UTSA, the universitys oldest and largest Fiesta celebration. The UTSA and San Antonio communities are invited to join in the festivities and enjoy food, drink, music and, of course, lots of cascarones. The free, family-friendly event will take place from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, April 12 in the Sombrilla Plaza on the Main Campus. The campus tradition, which began in 1978, continues to grow each year.

This is going to be our largest event to date, with over a hundred booths, said Analicia Gonzales, associate director of UTSA student activities. There will be a great variety of food and beverages for people to partake in.

Fiesta UTSA carries special significance this year with the theme Happy Birthday to UTSA! One of the booth will be selling Fiesta UTSA medals and t-shirts, both of which feature Rowdy the Roadrunner with a birthday cake.

The e7 Band returns to play everyones favorite hits. Nuevo Estilo Mariachi will also perform. Fiesta royalty will stop by to join in the fun at 1:05 p.m.

>> Learn about other UTSA-related Fiesta events.

The purpose of Fiesta UTSA is to support the students and mission of the university. Students from numerous student groups will be selling food and drinks to raise money for their organizations. Some booths will be accepting credit cards, while others will be cash-only. Students from the College of Business will be operating booths as an experiential learning project. The event is also organized by students through Roadrunner Productions.

The event is a great opportunity for the whole community to experience UTSA, adds Gonzales. This is a chance for everyone to come celebrate in the heart of campus.
Two to Receive UW Honorary Degrees

The University of Wyoming will confer its highest award, the honorary doctoral degree, upon two individuals who will be recognized during UW commencement ceremonies May 18.

They are Judy Catchpole, former Wyoming superintendent of public instruction, education advocate and community volunteer; and Judy Shepard, president of the Matthew Shepard Foundation Board of Directors and renowned civil rights advocate.

They each will receive the Doctor of Humane Letters degree.

UW alumni, current or former trustees and faculty members are eligible to nominate individuals for honorary degrees who embody the universitys high ideals; exemplify the values of excellence, service and integrity; and possess distinguished accomplishments in their professions, public service or service to humanity. Submissions are referred to a joint committee of trustees and faculty members, which forwards recommendations to the full Board of Trustees for approval.

Catchpole, who received a bachelors degree in elementary education from UW in 1966, served as Wyomings chief education officer from 1995-2003, elected to two terms by Wyoming voters. She ushered in major school reforms including student assessments, academic content standards, teacher certification standards, educational technology and charter school policy. At the national level, she was a member of the Education Commission of the States and the National Assessment of Educational Progress Board.

A longtime Casper resident, Catchpole began her career as a preschool teacher and director. She served on the Natrona County School Board and has been an active community volunteer, with activities ranging from church service to leadership in numerous youth organizations.

Since leaving statewide office in 2013, Catchpole has remained active in education issues, chairing the Wyoming Department of Educations Advisory Committee for School Accountability and serving as founding co-chair of UWs Literacy Research Center and Clinic Outreach Board. She was a member of the UW College of Educations advisory and advocacy boards for many years, and she was elected as a lifetime member of Raising Readers in Wyoming by that organizations board of directors. She has been recognized with the UW College of Educations Distinguished Alumni Award.

Judys contributions to education and politics in Wyoming and nationwide are unparalleled, wrote current state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow. Few women, and perhaps no teachers in our states history, have gone from the classroom to lead a state political party and serve as one of our five statewide elected officials.

Judy Catchpole is inspiring in her enthusiasm and dedication, wrote former Wyoming first lady Carol Mead. And her long career, deep knowledge and wide-ranging experience are admirable and have touched countless efforts and programs -- big and small -- in impactful and tangible ways.

Judy represents the very best the state of Wyoming has to offer as a lifetime engaged citizen, exemplary public servant, generous benefactor of time, talents and financial means, and loyal UW alumnus, wrote College of Education Dean Ray Reutzel. Judys lifetime of service is reflected in the quantity and quality of her outstanding contributions to the lives of the people of Wyoming, ranging from school-aged students and youth to past governors, trustees and Wyoming legislators.

Shepard originally was trained as a teacher as well, holding a bachelors degree in secondary education from UW. Also a longtime Casper resident, she channeled the anger and grief related to the high-profile 1998 murder of her son, UW student Matthew Shepard, into a two-decades-long focus on civil rights advocacy for lesbian, bisexual, gay, transgender and queer individuals.

Shepard has traveled the globe to raise awareness and promote human dignity for all people by engaging schools, corporations and individuals in constructive dialogue to promote positive change. In all, she has spoken at more than 900 events in 25 countries. She also wrote a 2009 memoir, The Meaning of Matthew, exploring her familys journey through the prosecution of her sons assailants, ensuing media coverage and the familys continuing work to advance civil rights.

The Matthew Shepard Foundation -- for which she served as executive director from 1999-2009 and continues to serve as board president -- is recognized as one of the worlds foremost LGBTQ advocacy organizations. Her advocacy played a significant role in the passage of the Matthew Shepard/James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, and she is the recipient of many national and international awards.

What Judy has done in the 20 years since her world was forever changed is nothing short of extraordinary, wrote Philip Dubois, chancellor of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, who was UWs president at the time of Matthew Shepards murder. Rather than allowing her grief and (others) hate to consume her, she drew strength from it and emerged as a true modern-day civil rights leader. Her tireless work on behalf of the LGBTQ community has brought about important change and has inspired and encouraged countless individuals.

Judy Shepard never sought notoriety, noted retired U.S. District Judge William Downes. Yet, for 20 years -- in loving memory of Matthew -- she has carried on her quest for justice with quiet dignity, humility and love. Our country, Wyoming and humanity are the beneficiaries of her selfless service.

Judys contributions to the lives of the people of Wyoming, especially our youth, are difficult to measure, wrote Jim Osborn, UWs Title IX coordinator and manager of Equal Opportunity Report and Response. Nonetheless, she has brought a message of hope, determination, acceptance and love to countless people in Wyoming and beyond that has changed lives and made the world a better place.
UW Students Engage Wyoming K-12 Students in Science Roadshow

University of Wyoming student Jess Oldham, from Lander, helps Moorcroft second-graders form a food web with a ball of string. Students received hands-on science lessons from UW students and educators in a series of visits around the state this school year. (Rachel Watson Photo)

Elementary school, middle school and high school students in five Wyoming communities have received hands-on science lessons from University of Wyoming students and educators in a series of visits around the state this school year.

The latest was April 5 at Riverton Middle School (RMS), where seventh-graders in Christina Bekken and Nanna Fraziers classes learned about liquid chromatography with ground-up red cabbage and spinach, nail polish remover and coffee filters; about proportions by using string, a whiteboard and thumbtacks; and calculated the height of a light pole using their own shadows, among other activities.

The science roadshow -- a project of the UW Science Initiatives Learning Actively Mentoring Program (LAMP) and Wyoming Research Scholars Program -- aims to engage Wyoming K-12 students in activities to stimulate interest and excitement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The roadshow positively impacts all who are involved with the activities. It is great for younger students to get a taste of the scientific method and work through problems as a group, says Joshua Walmsley, a UW chemistry major from Douglas who helped lead the Riverton activities along with fellow UW student Ella DeWolf, a microbiology and molecular biology double major from Laramie; physics and astronomy Ph.D. student Jessica Sutter, from Portland, Ore.; and LAMP Director Rachel Watson. Working on problems that can be applied to the real world helps the students understand why science is important. As the roadshow team, it is very rewarding to see the younger students excited about science and to see their minds come together to solve problems.

The roadshow provided a new opportunity for the students and staff at RMS to work on applying cross-curricular concepts, Frazier says.

It was educationally beneficial, exciting and fun for the kids and staff. Students participated in hands-on activities, while combining math and science standards, Frazier says. They learned a lot from interacting with Rachel, Josh, Jessica and Ella. Also, it created further interest for the students in how they could specialize in science when they go to college, and it widened their perspective on how they can apply science and mathematics.

One RMS student appreciated UWs efforts to reach out to Wyoming school-age students.

The college students that came to RMS explained what they studied or majored in to show us what we could study when we go to college, one RMS student wrote. It was nice that they drove all the way here just to work with us.

The roadshows other visits this school year have included:

-- Douglas, where 66 students in grades K-8 learned about the chemistry of ocean acidification, the ecosystems of plant rhizospheres and adaptations of the Asian longhorn beetle.

-- Gillette, where students in two elementary schools learned about root communities in the soil and their potential to mitigate erosion, among other topics.

-- Moorcroft, where second-graders learned about snails and antibiotic resistance in Wyoming waterways.

-- Rock Springs High School, where nearly 240 students in 12 science classrooms took part in active-learning exercises on topics ranging from the biochemistry of oil spills to replication of human papillomavirus.

Watching students discovering the world is awe inspiring, says Olivia Croft, a UW biology and secondary science education major from Sundance who helped lead the lessons in Rock Springs, Moorcroft and Gillette. Whether its looking in a microscope for the first time to observe a microbial community, or creating a model ecosystem, the enthusiasm that students have for exploring their world is incredible. We have an amazing group of future scientists in Wyoming.

DeWolf says working with younger students has been rewarding.

For me, there is very little more rewarding than seeing the look on a kids face when something clicks, and they understand a new idea, or when they see bacteria under the microscope for the first time, says DeWolf, who participated in all of the visits. I felt like I was able to open the door to a microscopic world for these students and, in return, their curiosity and excitement inspired me.

Other UW undergraduate students who have been part of this years roadshows, listed by hometown and majors, are:

Cheyenne -- Mercedes Fermelia, microbiology; and Chayse Rowley, microbiology.

Encampment -- Brett Ralston, microbiology.

Lander -- Jess Oldham, microbiology.

Laramie -- Brenna Lindsey, microbiology.

Sheridan -- Tyler Myers, chemistry.

Also participating were Ph.D. students Michelle Mason, physics, from Clayton, Calif.; and Rebecca Upjohn, ecosystem science, from Sacramento, Calif.
Wyoming Business Tips for April 15-21

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 Jake Dixon, marketing manager, Wyoming SBDC Network

You have a product or service to sell, and youve identified your target audience, but now you need to create an effective message that leads to sales. Marketing personas are composite sketches of key customer segments of your audience, according to the Content Marketing Institute. These sketches help deliver content that will be most relevant and useful to your audience.

To build a marketing persona that targets your key customer segments, youll need to identify who the likely recipients are for this specific message; why they would or wouldnt use your services; what their primary goals and challenges are; and how your business can provide a solution. Make sure each marketing persona includes the following elements about your client segment:

-- Background information (such as common career paths and family compositions).

-- Demographics.

-- Communication preferences (Where do they get their news?).

-- Their goals and challenges.

-- What you can offer to help them.

-- A detailed marketing message (one to two paragraphs).

So, how many marketing personas should you create? Three to five is a good place to start. As your marketing efforts expand, you may find it beneficial to have one for each product or service you offer. Just make sure each persona is distinct, and the information is backed up with data -- either from demographic research or insight of your current clientele.

If youre ready to get started on building marketing personas for your business, the Wyoming SBDC Network is here to help. Our no-cost advising and market research will help you to create accurate, useful personas to tailor your messaging to the appropriate audience. To contact your local adviser and get started today, visit www.wyomingsbdc.org.

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.
Alex Wong/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- President Donald Trump confirmed on Friday that his administration engaged in conversations about a plan to transfer immigrants detained at the southern border onto the streets of "sanctuary cities."

"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!" the president said in a series of tweets on Friday.

....The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

At an event discussing 5G technology later on Friday, President Trump doubled down on his earlier tweets.

The president pointed to California in particular as a target destination and referred to California Governor Jerry Brown, saying "California certainly is always saying, 'oh we want more people' ...well we'll give them more people. We can give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply and let's see if they're so happy. They say 'we have open arms.' They're always saying they have open arms, let's see if they have open arms."

The alternative, Trump said, is for Democrats to change immigration law.

Senior-level sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that the proposal was aimed, in part, to punish political rivals by placing immigrants in their respective districts.

Prior to the president's tweet, a White House official told ABC News "This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion."

An official at the Department of Homeland Security had released a nearly identical statement asserting that the discussion is now over.

Sanctuary cities, such as San Francisco and New York City, do not cooperate with the federal government in complying with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requests.

The proposal, first reported by The Washington Post, would have targeted House Speaker Nancy Pelosis district in San Francisco, among other Democratic strongholds, according to these officials.

"The extent of this Administrations cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," said Ashley Etienne, Pelosis communications director.

"Using human beings  including little children  as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable, and in some cases, criminal," she added. "The American people have resoundingly rejected this Administrations toxic anti-immigrant policies, and Democrats will continue to advance immigration policies that keep us safe and honor our values."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented on the reporting Friday saying the plan was "unworthy of the presidency."

Well, I don't know anything about it but again it's just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful to the challenges that we face as a country as the people to address who we are as a nation of immigrants," Pelosi said.

The proposal was under discussion in November and February, according to these officials. During both of those months, President Donald Trump was aggressively seeking a political win on border issues. In November, a migrant caravan was approaching the border in the heat of the midterm elections. In February, he was involved in budget negotiations with Democrats over the border wall.

The November email contained the subject line "Sanctuary City Proposal," according to the Washington Post who reviewed the emails. The idea has been raised by 1-2 principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bussed to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities, read the email, sent by May Davis, the White House deputy policy coordinator. There is NOT a White House decision on this. Sources familiar with the email confirmed the Post's account of this email, but it has not been reviewed by ABC News.

A senior DHS official told ABC News that the president himself raised this directly with then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Nielsen asked the legal team to review the idea and they flatly rejected it saying it is illegal.

Trump has described sanctuary cities as crime infested, repeatedly asserting that these areas become hotbeds of criminal activity after employing "sanctuary" policies.

But a 2016 study from researchers at the University of Riverside disputes this broad claim.

We find no statistically discernible difference in violent crime rate, rape, or property crime across the cities, the study found.

Immigrants are less likely to get deported living in sanctuary cities compared with cities that dont have limits on local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, according to a recent study out of Syracuse University.

The study suggests that the potential White House plan could put a burden on these localities, if implemented, it could also make it harder to deport people.

News of the White House proposal comes the same week Trump appeared to lament the loss of his child separation policy. While he refuted reports that there were discussions about bringing the policy back, he blamed the recent surge in border crossings on the fact that the policy was ended.

Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Minister of National Defense Wei Fenghe met with Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security Teo Chee Hean in Beijing Thursday.

Hailing the bilateral ties as a model of win-win cooperation between China and its neighboring countries, Wei said China is ready to work with Singapore to implement the consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries, deepen strategic mutual trust, strengthen practical cooperation and make new contributions to regional peace and stability.

Teo Chee Hean said Singapore attaches great importance to its relations with China and is willing to make joint efforts with China to further improve the relations between the two countries and their armed forces.
April 10 marks the 40th anniversary of the US' Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which both the US and the island of Taiwan place great emphasis on.

This act, a US domestic law, took effect a few months after China and the US established diplomatic relations in 1979. The act has served as the "legal basis" for the US to interfere in China's internal affairs and make moves in the Taiwan Straits, including arms sales to the island.

"Taiwan independence" forces have regarded the TRA as their spiritual prop and also a stabilizer of ties between the island and the US.

The act is actually a sign of the US' declining ability to contain the Chinese mainland. Taiwan was once a public US ally. In the late Cold War, however, the US had to turn to Chinese mainland as its ability to contain the Soviet Union was not equal to its ambition. The TRA provided pivot for the US' retreat.

Superficially, the TRA is taken seriously by Washington. The US even enacted the Taiwan Travel Act and the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act of 2018 on the basis of the TRA to interfere in China. But, overall, the TRA's actual impact on the situation in the Taiwan Straits is declining. The US has not only lost its dominance in the Straits, but also faces an irreversible decline in its coercive power politically and militarily in this region.

An act can only be effective with strong implementation power. In 1979, the US enjoyed overwhelming military and economic advantages in the Western Pacific region. But now, the Chinese mainland's strength in the Straits and its surrounding areas has grown extraordinarily. The TRA has historically lost its power.

The mainland was once not powerful enough to project its influence on the island. It was Taiwan's military strength and the TRA that emboldened "Taiwan independence" forces. At that time, the Chinese mainland defense of the one-China principle mainly depended on the US' adherence to the three joint communiques between China and the US. Even the tiniest move of the US was given importance.

The Chinese central government passed the Anti-Secession Law in 2005. The mainland's growing comprehensive strength and military power have provided more ability to enforce this law. Today's mainland has increasing capabilities to ensure that the one-China principle is widely recognized.

When China-US relations were better, the US placed particular emphasis on the three joint communiques. Now it stresses the TRA more often. The TRA is bound to collapse if the US uses it to confront the China's Anti-Secession Law.

Should Taiwan authorities believe the TRA's vague commitment of protecting the island, or should they fear the Anti-Secession Law's warning of employing non-peaceful means to suppress "Taiwan independence?" The latter's deterrence is obviously more credible.

The future of the cross-Straits situation does not depend on Washington's explanation of the TRA, or on how much it will enhance its relations with the island. It depends on how fast the mainland's attraction for Taiwan grows, and on support of the one-China principle provided by the mainland's increasing military strength.

People's Liberation Army fighter jets crossed the "middle-line" of the Taiwan Straits recently, and this is only a warning. The mainland can take further military action much more powerful than the political show performed by the US and the island. The two should view the TRA realistically, or else they will be dragged into an unaffordable cross-Straits situation.
Worker said she risked discipline if she left job amid storm
UNITED NATIONS, April 11 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Thursday asked for more efforts from the international community to boost women's participation in peacekeeping.

Efforts must be made to create conditions for women's wider participation in peacekeeping, Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told the Security Council.

The international community should strengthen communication to increase support for women's participation in peacekeeping. A favorable environment should be created for women's participation in terms of training, deployment and field operations, he told the council in an open debate on women in peacekeeping.

Ma asked for attention to the national conditions of troop-contributing countries in efforts to gradually increase women's participation in peacekeeping. Such efforts can start on trial basis before they become general practice, said Ma.

Expanding women's participation in peacekeeping requires concerted efforts of all parties, he said.

Developed countries should increase their participation in UN peacekeeping and demonstrate their support for women's participation with real action. The UN Secretariat should increase cooperation with troop-contributing countries, draw up targeted training plans to help them with capacity building, said the Chinese ambassador.

The main goal of UN peacekeeping is to promote the political settlement of conflicts and to achieve peace and stability in the mission areas. All activities must serve this purpose, said Ma.

Strengthening the effectiveness of UN peacekeeping requires joint efforts from the Security Council, the UN Secretariat, troop- and police-contributing countries and host countries at the guidance of the UN Charter and the basic principles of peacekeeping, he said.

The Chinese ambassador also asked for a holistic approach that involves efforts in various fields, such as political settlement, logistical support, personnel safety, and partnerships.

China supports UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' initiative of Action for Peacekeeping, said Ma, noting that China is an important supporter of and participant in UN peacekeeping as well as a main troop and financial contributor.

At present, Chinese female peacekeepers serve in six of the eight missions that China participates. China is not only working to expand Chinese women's participation in peacekeeping, but also trying to help other countries to do so. In recent years, the Chinese Defense Ministry and UN Women have jointly organized international training for female peacekeeping officers in Beijing to help increase women's participation in peacekeeping, said Ma.

China will continue its active participation in UN peacekeeping so as to make an even bigger contribution to world peace, he said.
Pianist Lang Lang performs pieces of his new album "Piano Book" during a press conference in New York, the United States, April 9, 2019. Lang Lang held a press conference here on Tuesday to promote his new album "Piano Book", which was released on March 29 this year. As the first new album in three years from the globally celebrated piano virtuoso, "Piano Book" aims to bring classical music to a global audience and spread the message that classical music is universal, according to a press release. [Xinhua/Wang Ying]
Ju Ping {Photo provided to Women of China]

The second season of Thanks My Family, a talk show, has been broadcast on the International Channel of China Central Television (CCTV) weekly since January 5. Descendants of eminent families have been invited to talk about their family traditions, and about their inheritance of family culture. To viewers' surprise, the host of the program is Ju Ping, well-known for hosting children's programs for 35 years, and commonly referred to as "Sister Ju Ping."

Modest, Responsible

Ju became the first host of CCTV children's programs in 1984. Known for her short hair, warm smile and sweet voice, Ju has long been regarded as an intimate sister by generations of Chinese children.

Thanks My Family marks the first time Ju has hosted a cultural talk show. "My major is early childhood education. Facing the well- learned guests from various fields, I was afraid that I failed to communicate smoothly with them during the program," Ju says.

To adapt to her new role, Ju has tried her best to enrich her knowledge. "After I received the name list of the guests, I searched information online and communicated in advance with the director of the program," she says.

Ju is modest and amiable, and she never pretends to know professional knowledge for which she is unfamiliar. Each time guests arrive, she meets them and says, "If I say something wrong when we record the program, please forgive me. I will try again in a correct way."

Ju may be a beginner, in terms of academic and historical knowledge, in the fields in which the guests excel, but she is good at telling and listening to stories. "I think I am a dedicated listener. I listen to the stories of the guests, and I feel the stories with my heart. I laugh, and I also shed tears when I am touched. I don't care whether I am good looking or not in the camera," Ju says.

For example, Ju shed tears when she was touched by the story of artist and educator Chang Shana and her father, Chang Shuhong, in protecting and promoting Dunhuang culture. "The development of Dunhuang culture cannot do without their devotion," Ju says.

She helps take care of the guests during recording of the program. "If the senior guests' long underwear pants appear when they are seated on the stage, I will squat down to adjust it for them. If some guests are not familiar with where they should go and stand on the stage, I will help them find their correct positions," Ju says.

Before the recording of one episode, Ju caught a cold and lost her voice, but she finished the recording on schedule. She dubbed the episode after she recovered. It was a piece of cake for her. "I have dubbed many animations. That is one of my skills," she says.

It takes two hours to record an interview. Ju usually interviews five to six guests a day. "Having good physical strength is important for a host. I feel honored that I have found another possibility in my life through hosting this program," the 53-year-old hostess says.

Parents' Love Makes Life 'Wealthy'

Ju is kind, modest, diligent and easy-going in the eyes of her viewers and colleagues. Her family has had a positive impact on her, especially in terms of the formation of her personality. Her father, Ju Hong'en, has had the greatest influence on her.

Ju Hong'en used to be a solider. In 1964, he participated in the construction of Jingxi Hotel, in Beijing. He was in charge of the catering and financial management work at the hotel. Her father taught her to be disciplined, and to keep a low profile.

Her family was not well -off when she was young. Her parents taught her and her brother, who was eight years her senior, to live a frugal life, and have a do-it-yourself mindset. She and her brother learned how to cook and sew when they were young. Influenced by her family, Ju Ping has been living a thrifty life.

Her parents' love made her feel "wealthy." Her father was humorous and open -minded. Her mother, Wang Yuefen, always gives her children unconditional love. Ju Ping still remembers how her mother bought cloth and made a beautiful dress for her before she went to Manila, the Philippines, to attend an international chorus festival. Ju Ping was 17 at that time.

Ju Ping got married in 1989. After that, her family developed the tradition of taking family photos each year. "My father passed away five years ago. We get together regularly to accompany our mother. The family tradition of taking family photos will continue," Ju Ping says.

Under her influence, her son, Jiang Yiyao, has grown into a good, young man. "Accompanying my family members is the most important thing in my life." Ju Ping says.

Spreading Patriotism, Warmth of Family

Ju Ping has a deep understanding of family tradition, and of family education. "A person's personality shapes who he/she is in the future, and his/her personality is shaped in the family atmosphere. Parents' words and behavior will influence their children. In the majority of Chinese families, mothers generally spend more time accompanying children than fathers do, so mothers have more impact on their children. People hope their children can live a happy life and have a good mindset. Mothers should set a good example for children," Ju Ping says.

"Fathers also play an indispensable role in family education. A smart mother pursues her own career and respects the way that the father helps raise the child. Parents should be good friends of their children, and let their children be proud of them," Ju Ping says.

The family stories of the guests of the program impress Ju Ping. Coloratura soprano and playwright Wu Shuang says her father, Wu Zuguang (1917-2003, a famous playwright), was optimistic, and he liked saying "that was lovely." Actor Qin Pei says people should speak out their love, so their family members can feel their love. Shen Weining, grandson of Mao Dun (1896-1981, a famous writer), says Mao never spanked him. Philanthropist Yuesai Kan says her father encouraged her to do her best to make achievements. Wang Shihua says the first sentence of her husband, Wang Jicai (1960-2018, border guard of an island in East China's Jiangsu Province), in the morning was "getting up and raising the national flag." Ju Ping hopes patriotism and family traditions will influence more people, especially the younger generations.

Ju Ping used to receive numerous letters from children, and the letters filled up more than 60 bags. At present, she has fans of a broader age range. "So, I must be stricter with myself. The viewers like me and recognize me, and they give me so much love," Ju Ping says.

Ju Ping was honored as one of the National March 8th Red-banner Holders in 2016. She attended the 12th National Women's Congress in 2018, as the only representative of Central Radio and Television Station, and she was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the All-China Women's Federation. "It is really my honor to receive such an honorary title and identity. In the future, I will pay more attention to women's requirements, and I will help them solve practical difficulties, and I will also do my part to promote family education and family virtues," Ju Ping says.

Poster for the program, Thanks My Family. [Photo provided to Women of China]

Ju Ping (second from left) and her colleagues. [Photo provided to Women of China]

Letters received by Ju Ping [Photo provided to Women of China]

(Women of China English Monthly March 2019 issue)
Members of staff join in a tug-of-war in Congjiang county, Guizhou province. [Luo Jinglai / For China Daily]

Schools are taking measures to reduce teachers' paperwork and help them deal with work pressures.

Tian Bingbing, principal of Chunhui Primary School in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang Province, said piles of paperwork have created problems for schools when it comes to recruiting and retaining teachers, because many candidates are wary of the toll that the paperwork burden will take on them.

To tackle the problem, the school has introduced policies to free teachers from excessive paperwork, she said.

The school has sought to identify tasks that are unnecessary, overly complex or duplicative, with the aim of redesigning its processes and reducing the workload, thereby easing the burden of compliance and administration on teachers, Tian said.

She added that teachers at the school do not have to fill out unnecessary forms or take notes and write reports after training sessions.

Teachers should keep their notices on parent-teacher WeChat groups short and informative, and they do not need to reply to parents' messages in the group between 9 pm and 8 am, Tian said.

The school has also made sure that teachers have at least one hour of physical exercise and one hour in reading groups every week, and it has also organized online and offline training classes to allow teachers to learn from the best educators in the country.

"We encourage teachers to submit short course plans and work together for course design so that they each need only handle a small part of the course preparation," Tian said.

Zhou Xi, a middle school teacher in Yueyang, Hunan province, said his school now accepts both digital and handwritten course plans, which has greatly reduced his workload.

In addition to efforts by the schools, students can also be of great help in alleviating the pressures on their teachers, he said.

"On my birthday last year, the class held a surprise party for me. Listening to dozens of students sing Happy Birthday and receiving handmade gifts from them made all the hard work worthwhile," he said.

"We became teachers to make a difference to children, who are the future of the country. Our time should be spent helping the students grow into better people, not on useless paperwork."

Teachers at a school in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, take part in communal activities. [Jia Minjie / For China Daily]

(Source: China Daily)
The Ministry of Education said Thursday that after-school training institutions are not to offer full-time Sinology classes or woman virtue classes to primary and middle school students.

Woman virtue classes refer to lessons that teach young women and girls that women are inferior and should be obedient to their husbands at all times.

The ministry further said that educational institutions are not to teach full-time divination, fortune telling, and fengshui, or hinder students from receiving compulsory education in the name of religion.

Students should attend regular schools for compulsory education from first to ninth grade and their parents have the obligation to ensure they do so, the ministry said in its statement.

Local education authorities should conduct thorough inspections of students who attend private training institutions full-time in lieu of normal compulsory education by the first half of this year and hold violators accountable, it said, adding that they should ensure these students return to regular schools.

Woman virtue classes, which claim to promote traditional Chinese values and customs and encourage women to defer to male power unconditionally, have been found in a number of cities across China.

Concepts taught in the class include: Women should remain in the bottom of the social class and, The best dowry for a girl is her virginity.

(Source: China Daily)
China's Ministry of Education on Thursday vowed to target any action that hindered school-age children from receiving compulsory education.

Local education authorities were ordered to conduct a comprehensive investigation as soon as possible in the first half of 2019, according to a directive issued by the ministry.

The ministry stressed that practices in which school-age children failed to get compulsory education due to violations of laws and regulations by institutions or individuals should be rectified and the violators will be held accountable and dealt with in accordance with the law.

The regulation stipulates that extracurricular training organizations shall not illegally enroll school-age children for full-time training programs that are used as an alternative to compulsory education.

No false enrollment advertisements shall be issued to induce parents to send school-age children to training institutions instead of schools of compulsory education, it says.

There shall be no teaching of feudal dross, such as "three obediences and four virtues" that were imposed on women in ancient China, divination, geomancy and fortune-telling, in the name of "studies of Chinese culture," and no use of religion to conduct activities impeding the country's educational system, according to the directive.

Legal guardians of school-age children are asked to earnestly perform their duties as guardians and should not organize study in place of compulsory education.

If school-age children are unable to attend school for compulsory education because of disabilities or medical reasons, their legal guardians shall report to local education authorities, which may commission a committee of experts to assess the children's physical conditions, abilities to receive education and adapt to school life and to determine the educational and placement methods suitable for them.

(Source: Xinhua)
A woman looks at a painting on the exhibition "Meditation of Dao" in the center of Athens, Greece, on April 10, 2019. Five Chinese contemporary artists co-worked to introduce the Chinese philosophy "Dao" to Greek audience in an art exhibition in the center of Athens on Wednesday evening. [Xinhua/Marios Lolos]

Five Chinese contemporary artists co-worked to introduce the Chinese philosophy "Dao" to Greek audience in an art exhibition in the center of Athens on Wednesday evening.

Entitled "Meditation of Dao," the exhibition is the brainchild of Ioanna Lin, who has been living and working in Greece for nine years. She invited Guan Hong Chen, Li Xiang, Wang Jieshan and Zhang Peng to co-exhibit some samples of their works in Greece for the first time, and help strengthening the cultural understanding between the two countries as well as West and East.

The artists received a warm welcome by Greek art lovers who flocked to Art Gallery Ziller to seek the meaning of The Dao.

"The Dao is the ultimate existence, the origin of everything in heaven and earth. The landscapes, architecture, ancient relics and figures depicted by the artists reflect their understanding of nature regarding the laws of the universe... The scenery in Chinese paintings is no longer a realistic landscape, but the image of the artist's thoughts and feelings," Lin explained to visitors.

"The Dao is a situation between yes and no. Each person can find his or her own answer based on what he or she feels and understands from the art work which depicts a familiar and yet strange image, making people wondering. There is not one answer," Zhang Peng said.

Both Zhang and Guan who attended the opening event on Wednesday expressed their respect for Greece's ancient civilization and contemporary art.

They have cultivated ties with Greek artists and planned more exhibitions in China to introduce Greek contemporary art to Chinese audience under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

"Cultural exchanges will bring people closer," Zhang said.

Guan plans to visit every country participating in the BRI with a traveling exhibition in the next 20 years, to promote deeper cooperation among peoples via art, he said.

Greek artist Dean Copa said that art has no boundaries and the dialogue between artists coming from different backgrounds, traditions and experiences can bring much to the world.

After strolling through the art gallery, Copa gave his own answer to the meaning of The Dao.

"It is an invisible essence connecting everything, a call to spirituality and the journey each one of us has to take in life," he said.

Errin Gie, an artist from Indonesia also believed that artists can act as conduits bridging the East with the West. She plans to organize a similar exhibition bringing Indonesian artists to Greece in autumn following in Lin's footsteps.

"Everybody is looking at China. Besides the economic strength, China has diplomacy of art," she said.

The exhibition will run until April 24.

Visitors are seen at the exhibition "Meditation of Dao" in the center of Athens, Greece, on April 10, 2019. Five Chinese contemporary artists co-worked to introduce the Chinese philosophy "Dao" to Greek audience in an art exhibition in the center of Athens on Wednesday evening. [Xinhua/Marios Lolos]

A woman visits the exhibition "Meditation of Dao" in the center of Athens, Greece, on April 10, 2019. Five Chinese contemporary artists co-worked to introduce the Chinese philosophy "Dao" to Greek audience in an art exhibition in the center of Athens on Wednesday evening. [Xinhua/Marios Lolos]

A man visits the exhibition "Meditation of Dao" in the center of Athens, Greece, on April 10, 2019. Five Chinese contemporary artists co-worked to introduce the Chinese philosophy "Dao" to Greek audience in an art exhibition in the center of Athens on Wednesday evening. [Xinhua/Marios Lolos]

(Source: Xinhua)
Students take photos during Guo Moruo Cultural Week in Ismailia, Egypt on April 10, 2019. "Guo Moruo Cultural Week" kicked off on Wednesday at the Confucius Institute of Suez Canal University in Ismailia in northeastern Egypt. The second "Guo Moruo" Chinese Modern Poetry Reading Competition, which is the highlight of the event, was held right after the opening ceremony. [Xinhua/Wu Huiwo]

"Guo Moruo Cultural Week" kicked off on Wednesday at the Confucius Institute of Suez Canal University in Ismailia in northeastern Egypt.

The second "Guo Moruo" Chinese Modern Poetry Reading Competition, which is the highlight of the event, was held right after the opening ceremony.

The contesting students came from the Chinese Cultural Center in Cairo and the Confucius institutes and language colleges of nine universities nationwide, including the universities of Cairo, Ain Shams, Al-Azhar, Suez Canal and Fayoum.

The contestants recited modern Chinese poems written by famous Chinese poets like Gu Cheng, Xi Murong, and Shu Ting, winning applause and cheers.

After nearly two hours of intense competition, Rowan Ahmad and Rana Adel, third-year students of the Chinese Department of Language School of Suez Canal University, and Kholoud Khalid, a third-year student of the Chinese Department of School of Literature of Cairo University, won the first prize.

"During the preparation of the competition, I got a better understanding of Chinese culture and Chinese history," Kholoud Khalid told Xinhua after the competition, noting that she is preparing for Level 5 of Chinese Proficiency Test.

She expected further study in Peking University after her graduation, adding that she hopes to become a Chinese teacher when she returns to Egypt.

Zhang Bojiang, one of the judges, also senior official of Institute of Literature of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the contestants' amazing performances totally surprised him and he was deeply impressed by their love about Chinese culture and appreciation on cultural exchange between China and Egypt.

Zhu Tingting, the Chinese dean of the Confucius Institute at Suez Canal University, told Xinhua that Guo Moruo had visited Egypt twice and expressed his solidarity with the Egyptian people.

"The Egyptian people have deep love for Guo Moruo, so we decided to promote Guo Moruo's research first and then extend our cultural reach," Zhu said.

Besides the competition, there will also be an exhibition and a forum about Chinese culture and works of Guo Moruo, a renowned Chinese author and historian who died in 1978.

Photo taken on April 10, 2019 shows the site of an exhibition during Guo Moruo Cultural Week in Ismailia, Egypt. "Guo Moruo Cultural Week" kicked off on Wednesday at the Confucius Institute of Suez Canal University in Ismailia in northeastern Egypt. The second "Guo Moruo" Chinese Modern Poetry Reading Competition, which is the highlight of the event, was held right after the opening ceremony. [Xinhua/Wu Huiwo]

Students take group photos in an exhibition during Guo Moruo Cultural Week in Ismailia, Egypt on April 10, 2019. "Guo Moruo Cultural Week" kicked off on Wednesday at the Confucius Institute of Suez Canal University in Ismailia in northeastern Egypt. The second "Guo Moruo" Chinese Modern Poetry Reading Competition, which is the highlight of the event, was held right after the opening ceremony. [Xinhua/Wu Huiwo]

Contestants perform during the second "Guo Moruo" Chinese Modern Poetry Reading Competition in Ismailia, Egypt, on April 10, 2019. "Guo Moruo Cultural Week" kicked off on Wednesday at the Confucius Institute of Suez Canal University in Ismailia in northeastern Egypt. The second "Guo Moruo" Chinese Modern Poetry Reading Competition, which is the highlight of the event, was held right after the opening ceremony. [Xinhua/Wu Huiwo]

(Source: Xinhua)
Ma Xu, China's first female paratrooper, wires a donation of over 5 million yuan from a bank in Wuhan, Hubei Province to her hometown in Mulan county, Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, on April 8, 2019. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ma Xu, an 85-year-old veteran and China's first female paratrooper, wired the remaining 7 million yuan ($1.04 million) on Monday of a 10 million yuan donation she promised to her hometown in Mulan county of Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, ifeng.com reported.

Ma promised to donate her life savings in September 2018 to support education and cultural affairs in her hometown, and 3 million yuan of the donation was made on Sept 13, 2018.

In recent, Ma made her second transfer of 7 million to complete her dream. "I had an important thing to do today, so I got up early at six," Ma said on Monday.

At around 2 pm, huge applause welcomed the arrival of Ma and her husband Yan Xueyong at the Jichanghe sub-branch of China Merchants Bank in Wuhan, Hubei province, where the retired couple lives.

In the presence of officials from Mulan county, Ma transferred her savings of 5.5 million yuan to the government's official bank account. About half an hour later, Ma went to another bank to send another 1.4 million yuan, completing the donation.

After finishing the transfer, Ma said she would be more than satisfied if the donation could play a useful role in her hometown's education and cultural affairs.

The donation has been used to build a 4,000-square-meter arts and cultural center named after the veteran. Construction is projected to be completed at the end of October, and Ma will be invited to its opening ceremony.

Ma was born to a doctor's family in Mulan County in 1932 and joined the People's Liberation Army as a military doctor in 1947. In 1961, she turned from medical service to become China's first female paratrooper.

After retirement, Ma, who has no children, missed her hometown so much she finally decided to donate her familys savings, including royalties on publications and patents, to the county.

Today, the couple lives a frugal life in a small house in the Huangpo district of Wuhan. They still use their same hard bed from the 1970s, and their sofas date back 50 years. They also habitually wear their military uniforms.

Ma Xu, accompanied by her husband Yan Xueyong, wires a donation of over 5 million yuan from a bank in Wuhan, Hubei province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A rendering of the 4,000-square-meter arts and cultural center that will be built with a 10 million yuan donation from Ma Xu, a Chinese veteran. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

A file photo of Ma Xu when she was 27 years old, taken Dec 6, 1959. Ma, China's first female paratrooper, donated 10 million yuan to her hometown in Mulan county, Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang province. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

(Source: China Daily)
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(Melville, NY ) - JLL has completed a new transaction for Newsday at 6-8 Corporate Center Drive in Melville with building owner We're Group. The multimedia organization signed a lease for 128,446 square feet of office space at the two-building, Class A, 205,000-square-foot complex.



Newsday was represented by Ray Ruiz, executive vice president, and Doug Omstrom, senior vice president, both with JLL. Building owner We're Group was represented in-house.



"Newsday was looking for new headquarters space that would meet the current needs of the organization and its staff," said Ruiz. "We were able for find an ideal opportunity for the company at 6-8 Corporate Center Drive. The buildings provided the right amount of office space within two very well-located, quality office buildings."



Newsday inked a 15-year lease for 128,446 square feet of office space and will occupy the entire 6 Corporate Center Drive and the entire third floor at 8 Corporate Center Drive. The company is relocating to the property from 235 Pinelawn Road, also located in Melville.



"There were many factors that played a role in the search for our new building, including space, size, and of course, location. The talented professionals at JLL helped to make that happen," said Matthew Catania, vice president of finance at Newsday.



The three-story 6-8 Corporate Center Drive totals approximately 205,000 square feet of Class A office space. The buildings offer a full-service cafeteria and ample parking. The properties are located in the heart of Melville's corporate hub between Route 110 and Pinelawn Road.



JLL is a leader in the New York tri-state commercial real estate market, with more than 2,600 of the most recognized industry experts offering brokerage, capital markets, property/facilities management, consulting, and project and development services. In 2017, the New York tri-state team completed approximately 40.9 million square feet of lease transactions; arranged investment sales, notes, debt and equity transactions valued at more than $1.6 billion; managed projects valued at $7.9 billion; and oversaw a property management, facilities management and agency leasing portfolio exceeding 147.8 million square feet.







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Coleg Cambria and international agricultural company unite to train future engineers

This article is old - Published: Saturday, Apr 13th, 2019

A Coleg Cambria campus has joined forces with a top international agricultural machinery company to train future workers in land-based engineering.

The colleges Llysfasi site has signed-up to a new partnership with Kubota, the Japanese tractor and heavy equipment manufacturer.

Together they have launched the Kubota Apprenticeship Scheme, a three-year block release programme which will blend education at the innovative Denbighshire facility with on-the-job experience.

Simon Parker, an Agricultural Engineering lecturer at the campus, says teaming-up with one of the giants of agricultural and construction equipment manufacturing will give their learners a head-start on entering a career in the sector.

We are very proud to be working with Kubota on this new venture, offering a fantastic training programme for their dealership technicians throughout the whole of the UK and Ireland, said Mr Parker.

The three-year block release programme will allow the trainees to enjoy full time employment with their local Kubota dealership as well as formal specialist training during their time in college.

The qualification they will be studying for is the new City and Guilds Level 3 Advanced Technical Extended Diploma, so this is an excellent opportunity for any young person starting their career in land-based engineering.

Established in 1890, Kubota produces elite-level products from tractors, engines and vending machines to valves and pumps for water purification and sewage treatment.

Michael Bywater, Group Training Manager of Kubota (UK) Limited, believes the union will have a major impact on the future of the industry.

We are extremely pleased to be working in partnership with Coleg Cambria Llysfasi, he said.

This partnership will enable us to train the next generation of dealership technicians to the highest levels, with a view to providing the highest of standards of service to the end user.

We are proud to support Llysfasi, at the forefront of inspiring the future of the land-based industries.

For more information on the new partnership, visit the Coleg Cambria website. Visit www.kubota-eu.com for more on Kubota- For Earth, For Life.



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By Sun Chenghao

The crackdown on Iran has continued to escalate the tensions between the United States and Iran recently. On April 8, the U.S. government designated Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO). This designation is the first time that the U.S. has ever labeled the armed forces of another government as an FTO. Iran responded soon after by announcing the U.S. Central Command and its affiliated forces in West Asia as a terrorist group and the U.S. government as the sponsor of terrorism.

The United States is blamed for the mutual blacklisting. This triggered different opinions among its domestic parties: U.S. Presidents National Security Affairs Assistant John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who take tough line against Iran have voiced support for Mr. Trumps decision, while senior military officials including Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, together with government agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), have opposed this move, fearing such a move may not hit Iran economically but incurring retaliation. To ensure the maximum economic and political pressure on Iran, the Trump administration has finally determined to adopt the move. From the U.S. perspective, Irans IRGC is not only a military force, but also plays an important role in the political and economic fields. Mr. Pompeo claimed that the IRGC controls 20 percent of Irans economy.

TheTrump administrations move will further isolate Iran. And it also implies that the U.S. will take a series of measures against Iran, including prohibiting companies and individuals both in the U.S. and other countries from providing any funding and resources for the IRGC, and freezing any assets of the IRGC in the U.S. If any member of the IRGC intends to go abroad, the destination country also has the right to arrest and extradite him/her to the U.S.

From a diplomatic perspective, the core strategy of the Trump administration in the Middle East is to follow a pro-Israel but anti-Iran. The new designation will significantly expand the scope and scale of the U.S.maximum pressure on the Iranian regime in an effort to change the regional military situation, as well as present alavish gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who prepares for the national election.

From Mr. Trumpsperspective, the move also serves the 2020 United States presidential election. Since 2016, Mr. Trump has always regarded the Iranian nuclear issue as the touchstone of demonstrating that he is as good as his word. He has announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear deal and proposed a very harsh12-point requirements for Iran.

If the United States continues to challenge Irans bottom line, the outcome will be the elevation of their disputes in the Middle East and will exacerbate instability in the Middle East. This is especially true for the Iranian nuclear issue: the U.S. has always believed that Iran was on the way of time for space, did not recognize the efforts made by Iran, and demanded other allies to work together to exert pressure on Iran. On regional issues, the United States has shown great dissatisfaction with Irans support for the Syrian government and has been trying to curb Irans expansion of regional influence. However, Iran believed that the Gulf countries should pursue collective security and reject military intervention from external great powers.

Now, the United States has raised a difficult question for itself. Since other countries have maintained normal diplomatic relations with Iran, their military exchanges are also part of inter-state exchanges. If they continue to contact with the IRGC, the U.S. may be caught in a dilemma: whether the sanctions would trigger opposition from other countries? If not, it may potentially set a precedent for other countries and even the allies to arbitrarily violate the U.S. ban on terrorism. Such a dilemma may be a bitter pill for the U.S. to swallow.

(The author is an assistant researcher at the American Institute of China Institute of Contemporary International Relations)
Countess of Chester decision not to accept some patients from Wales branded totally unacceptable

This article is old - Published: Saturday, Apr 13th, 2019

An English hospital refusing referrals from Wales for urgent suspected cancer due to a funding row is completely unacceptable, says Plaid Cymrus North Wales AM.

The Countess of Chester Hospital (CoCH) stopped taking new outpatient referrals from Wales on April 1st due to a dispute over funding from NHS Wales.

It is estimated that as many as 700 people a month living in Wales  many from Flintshire  will be affected by the decision not to accept any new elective referrals.

The move does not impact maternity patients, those attending the Accident and Emergency Department and patients from North Wales who are already waiting for treatment at the CoCH.

It does however relate to referrals in to all specialties, including urgent suspected cancer and both urgent and routine planned  known as elective  referrals.

Last week Welsh Government Health Secretary, Vaughan Gething, said it was unacceptable for the Countess of Chester hospital not to accept certain patients living in Wales.

He said: Funding from treating patients from Wales has always been and continues to be essential to the viability of CoCH.

The Countess of Chester hospital action relates to a significant change to the structure of the tariff system and rates that determine the amounts payable to provider trusts in England for treatment of patients.

This tariff system technically does not apply to cross-border healthcare but has previously been used as the basis for payment to provide consistency.

The tariff rate changes agreed for 2019/20 by NHS England agencies include additional costs from staff pay deals that should not be chargeable to NHS Wales organisations.

To agree the financial impact for Wales, my officials have agreed a process of direct engagement with the Department for Health and Social Care officials, along with representatives from NHS Wales and the NHS England.

Funding from treating patients from Wales has always been and continues to be essential to the viability of CoCH.

However Plaid Cymru AM, Llyr Gruffydd said the situation was unacceptable and called for the situation to be resolved immediately.

Its taken 10 days to get a Welsh Government statement and that only flags up greater concerns, said Mr Gruffydd.

It strikes me that refusing treatment on the basis of ability to pay goes against the entire ethos of the NHS and must be making many doctors feel very uncomfortable.

So why has the Welsh Government only woken up now that the Countess of Chester has refused to accept patients for Wales? This is a long-running issue and was flagged up by CoCHs chair six months ago.

Vaughan Gethings statement is a masterpiece of complacency  his government is in direct charge of Betsi Cadwaladr health board and has failed to resolve this issue before CoCH pressed the nuclear button.

I think CoCHs decision to use patients as bargaining chips in this funding dispute is shocking but Im equally appalled at the Welsh Governments failure to resolve the matter in good time.

Stating that a meeting will take place later in April smacks of a government thats asleep at the wheel.



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Inspectors praise familial and inclusive community at Wrexham primary school

This article is old - Published: Friday, Apr 12th, 2019

A primary school in Wrexham has been praised for its familial and inclusive community by inspectors.

Estyn, Her Majestys Inspectorate for Education and Training Wales, visited Ysgol Bodhyfryd on Range Road, at the start of 2019.

During its inspection Estyn found that the school, which has 410 pupils on roll, was good in all five inspection areas. This includes the schools standards, wellbeing and attitudes to learning; teaching and learning experiences, care, support and guidance and its leadership and management.

As part of its findings the inspectorate states: Ysgol Bodhyfryd is a familial and inclusive community that provides effective care and support for its pupils. During their time there, most pupils make sound progress and achieve well.

Nearly all pupils show enthusiasm towards their work and a desire to learn, and they treat each other and visitors politely. Pupils with additional learning needs are valued members of the school community and receive effective support from staff.

The effective working relationship between staff and pupils is an excellent feature of the schools work.

This contributes soundly towards creating a lively learning environment where pupils and their parents contribute effectively to what is learned. As a result, stimulating and creative activities are provided for pupils, which develop them as curious and confident learners.

The report also highlights the teaching and learning experiences, describing the schools atmosphere as exciting, lively and diligent.

It adds: One of the schools strengths is the way in which teachers nurture and maintain a productive working relationship with pupils, which has a positive effect on their standards and wellbeing.

The inclusion co-ordinator, for example, is active and arranges for the few pupils who need specific wellbeing support to receive it in a timely and effective manner.

Teachers create a stimulating and supportive learning environment in lessons, and assistants provide effective assistance to support pupils to improve their skills, particularly in literacy and numeracy.

Three recommendations for the school to take forward have been put forward by inspectors, including:

 Ensure that teaching provides appropriate challenge for pupils

 Improve the extended writing skills of pupils in the foundation phase

 Ensure that teachers feedback enables pupils to improve the standard of their work

The school will now produce an action plan to address the recommendations from the inspection



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MP claims systematic cover-up involving North Wales Police, probation service, CRC, IPCC and IOPC over Nicolas Churton murder

This article is old - Published: Friday, Apr 12th, 2019

Wrexhams MP has spoken in Parliament about grave errors made before the brutal murder of a Wrexham resident  while heavily criticising subsequent attempts by the authorities to establish what went wrong.

Ian Lucas led an adjournment debate in the main Commons chamber yesterday on police complaints, accountability and the case of Nicholas Churton.

Mr Churton was murdered in his Wrexham home in March 2017 by a dangerous offender, Jordan Davidson, who was on licence from prison at the time. Davidson had been arrested and taken into custody four days before the murder for possession of a knife, only to be released rather than being sent back to prison. Mr Lucas read out an account of a second threat to life in Wrexham town centre when Davidson pulled a machete on a man trying to intervene on a robbery in the period after he had murdered Mr Churton.

Mr Lucas has spent two years trying to find out why Davidson was freed to murder Mr Churton, and commit a series of other serious offences, but says several key questions remain unanswered.

In yesterdays speech he praised the commendable bravery of the officers who arrested Davidson. However, he was heavily critical of North Wales Police, the probation service and the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) over their failure to give him answers in relation to the case.

Speaking in the Chamber, Mr Lucas said: Davidson is responsible for this horrific crime and for other attacks for which he is now serving a 30-year prison sentence. However, the events leading to those crimes revealed grave errors by the police and by the probation services in Wrexham and North Wales.

Mr Lucas added: I have secured knowledge of the detail of those errors only with the assistance of Jez Hemming of the Daily Post newspaper in north Wales. For the bulk of this case, I have secured no co-operation whatever from North Wales police.

Indeed, I now believe that I, along with the public, was misled deliberately about the facts of the case to conceal those errors, and that there has been a systematic cover-up involving North Wales police, the probation service, the community rehabilitation company, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the Independent Office for Police Conduct.

Davidson was known to Mr Churton and had approached him in the days before the murder.

An IOPC investigation into Mr Churtons contact with the police was launched in the days following his death  yet Mr Lucas was not informed of this important development. It is IOPC protocol for local MPs to be told.

Mr Lucas contacted North Wales Police later that year after learning of Davidsons arrest and release for possession of an offensive weapon, days before the murder. But the then Chief Constable, Mark Polin, said he could not comment because the IOPC was investigating all contact the police had with Davidson prior to Mr Churtons death. Mr Lucas says this was, in fact, not true as the IOPC was only investigating police contact with Mr Churton, not the contact with Davidson.

Following pressure from Mr Lucas, a second IOPC investigation was opened  this time focusing on police contact with Davidson  but it only began in April 2018, more than a year on from the crime. The first IOPC investigation has finished, resulting in misconduct cases for two officers, but the second inquiry is ongoing.

Mr Lucas this week wrote to North Wales Police & Crime Commissioner Arfon Jones to ask him to look into the statements made to him by Mr Polin, who has since left the force.

Mr Lucas posed several questions in the House of Commons yesterday to the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd):

 Why did North Wales police and the IPCC fail to tell me of a police conduct inquiry involving a murder and additional serious assaults in the middle of my constituency?

 Secondly, who decided to exclude the police decision to release Davidson on bail after his arrest for possession of an offensive weapon from the terms of reference of the IPCC inquiry, and why was that done?

 Thirdly, why did the then chief constable of North Wales, Mark Polin, tell me that there was an inquiry into Davidsons release when there was not?

 Fourthly, was the North Wales police and crime commissioner notified of the inquiry by the IPCC in 2017, and of its terms of reference? Is there an obligation to notify PCCs of such inquiries? If a notification was made in this case, when was it made?

-Fifthly, was the family of Nicholas Churton notified of the inquiry, and the fact of the release of Davidson four days before his murder?

 Sixthly, why did the probation service and the CRC fail to highlight the fact that the release of Davidson was not included in the IPCC inquiry? Should they have done so?

Mr Lucas added: It is now over two years since Nicholas Churton was brutally murdered. We need an independent investigation into how this happened. I have no confidence in the various bodies and organisations that I have referred to because none of them and none of the systems worked to reveal the errors in this case, which had catastrophic consequences. What we need above all is some transparency and honesty from the organisations involved. The family of Nicholas Churton, with whom I have been working, deserve that honesty.

The Minister replied, I know the hon. Gentleman to be a man of common sense and experience in this place. When I hear him articulate his feeling that he has been personally misled and talk about a systematic cover-up, I know that he will not be using that language lightly. I take that seriously and congratulate him on his persistence and his campaign on this.

I heard clearly the hon. Gentlemans frustration about his engagement with the police and the system and the degree to which he feels misleda powerful word in this context. I understand that he has been in correspondence with and met senior members of North Wales police to discuss its organisational learning, its response to date and intended actions. If he feels that contact has not been substantive or that there are issues that continue to need to be addressed, he and I should discuss that. I can certainly help him to make that point directly to North Wales polices leadership.

Mr Lucas noted It is fair to say that North Wales police now has a new chief constable and that this case relates to the previous regime, so to speak with the Minister replying under new leadership, the engagement with the hon. Gentleman is more forthcoming, and I welcome that.

After a lengthy reply (here) from the Minister Mr Lucas said, My key concern is that Davidsons release from custody was not made subject to IPCC investigation by North Wales police or by the IPCC, and no one outside the force knew of that fact. It was only when I highlighted it that the investigation commenced. My concern is that the systems are still not in place to make sure it cannot happen again.

The Minister said: I understand that message very clearly, and it will be heard by the IOPC. I undertake to make sure that the IOPC has absorbed the message. My understanding is that the first investigation looked at the polices dealings and contact with Nicholas Churton and the second is looking specifically at their contact and dealings with Jordan Davidson, but the hon. Gentlemans point is well made. Through the mechanism of this debate and the follow-up, I undertake to make sure that the message is clearly understood by the IOPC as it finalises its work for publication, hopefully this summer.

Speaking outside the chamber, Mr Lucas said: This case raises serious concerns about the criminal justice system and the safety of my constituents. It is why I have been so determined to find out what went wrong, yet I have been met with a great many obstacles which have been a cause of huge concern to me. The family of Mr Churton also deserve answers but, sadly, we are still waiting more than two years on from this terrible crime.

Top picture: Ian Lucas MP speaking yesterday during the adjournment debate.



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Three Wrexham GP surgeries run by health board to be handed over to community interest company

This article is old - Published: Friday, Apr 12th, 2019

Three Wrexham GP surgeries currently managed by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board are to be handed over to a community interest company (CIC).

The health board has confirmed that the contract for Hillcrest practice, Forge Road and Borras Park has been awarded to Dr Karen Sankey and Dr Gayle Knights of the community interest company (CIC), the Community Care Collaborative.

Back in January 2019 at a meeting between health board representatives and members of the councils safeguarding communities and wellbeing scrutiny committee it was explained that talks about transferring the three surgeries over to a CIC were underway.

At the time it was explained that a CIC is a non for profit organisation, but has ability to access funding which otherwise would not be available to normal GMS (General Medical Services) practices.

The three surgeries have been under the management of Betsi Cadwaladr since 2017 either due to GPs retiring from or terminating their GMS contracts with the health board.

Over the next few months ownership of the three practices will be transferred to the Community Care Collaborative, starting with Hillcrest in July.

This will be followed by Forge Road in September and Borras Park in November.

Patients registered at these practices do not need to take any action.

The health board will be working with the Dr Sankey and Dr Knights to complete the contractual arrangements over the coming months.

East Area Director for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, Rob Smith said: We are delighted that we have been able to award the GMS contracts to Dr Karen Sankey and Dr Gayle Knight for three of our Wrexham practices.

We look forward to working them over the coming months to ensure a smooth transition and supporting them in the future. Their new model of delivering care to patients is such an exciting development in healthcare in Wrexham.

The Community Care Collaborative is also known locally for its innovative and person-centred support to Wrexhams homeless.

Earlier this year the CIC was awarded 88,000 to continue providing support for rough sleepers.

Dr Karen Sankey said: We are delighted to have this opportunity.

Our vision is to work collaboratively with agencies, voluntary and community groups and patients themselves to deliver a model of primary care that provides for the social, emotional and medical care of patients at the point of need.

We will build on the best of General Practice enhanced by new and innovative ways of working.

We will focus on early intervention and preventative work and identifying and meeting the needs of vulnerable and socially isolated groups.



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Wrexham entrepreneurs share their experiences at towns new business hub

This article is old - Published: Friday, Apr 12th, 2019

The Welsh Government minister for economy and North Wales joined a start-up surgery for local entrepreneurs at the Wrexham Enterprise Hub today to hear about their experiences and activities.

Delivered through Business Wales, The Hub aims to create 100 new businesses over a two year period. The Welsh Government has provided 1m for the pilot project.

Based in the former Iceland supermarket on Queens Square, The Hub provides a community for entrepreneurs linking with other organisations including Wrexham Glyndwr University, Coleg Cambria, industry and support agencies in the region.

Ken Skates, who also represents the Clwyd South constituency, said: Its been good to visit the Hub today and hear directly from the entrepreneurs who are using the facilities, and to hear about their experiences.

Its great to see that there is so much enthusiasm and entrepreneurial talent in the region.

The Welsh Governments Economic Action Plan is clear that supporting and encouraging entrepreneurship across Wales is absolutely crucial if we are to succeed in growing Wales economy

Now more than ever, with the challenges presented by Brexit, we need to support and encourage new businesses and innovation.

These are vital drivers for the economy and Wrexham Enterprise Hub will help inform our future economic priorities.

Carl Turner, community manager at the Wrexham Enterprise Hub said: Since launching just under a year ago, weve held more than 30 events and supported over 170 individuals.

It was Mr Skates himself who cut the ribbon that day, so its fitting that he was able to come and speak with some of our members at this impromptu round table.

Our members got their chance to chat with the minister and discuss their successes and their stumbling blocks, and I know they got a lot out of it.

Opportunities like this allow ministers and businesses to mutually benefit from immediate access, and that helps both sides gain further insight into how we can support each other and grow our local economies.



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Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-09 04:10:11|Editor: yan

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ADEN, Yemen, April 8 (Xinhua) -- Fighters of the Houthi group launched an intensified shelling against areas controlled by the Yemeni government in the southern province of al-Dhalea on Monday night, causing several explosions, a security official told Xinhua.

The security source based in the province said on condition of anonymity that "Katyusha rockets fired by the Houthi rebels landed in the government-controlled district of Qa'atabah District and in the nearby area of Snah."

A number of local residents confirmed hearing various huge explosions in different parts of the government-controlled province of al-Dhalea.

For the first time in years of the ongoing military conflict, the Houthi-fired missiles have managed to target these areas controlled by the government, according to the local residents.

An official of the local government authority in al-Dhalea told Xinhua that the Iranian-backed Houthis fired two ballistic missiles that landed in non-residential areas in the province, causing no casualties.

On Saturday, ferocious battles took place in the country's southern province of al-Dhalea and resulted in the killing of some 80 fighters belonging to the Iranian-allied Houthi group, including key leaders, said the pro-government Giants Brigades in a statement.

Last week, the Houthis launched a series of intensive attacks on positions of the government forces in the northern part of al-Dhalea and managed to control key mountainous hills overlooking government-controlled areas in the province.

The areas in the north and west of al-Dhalea have been witnessing continuous fighting between government forces and Houthi fighters for nearly four years.

Yemen has been plagued by a civil war since late 2014 after Houthi rebels revolted against the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

The rebels advanced from their far northern stronghold of Saada Province toward the south, and seized control over much of the country's north including Sanaa, thus triggering the civil war.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-11 03:54:33|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, April 10 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Wednesday pledged continued cooperation with Venezuela.

"China will continue its cooperation with Venezuela based on the principles of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit for the greater well-being of the two peoples," Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told a UN Security Council meeting on situation in Venezuela.

To help its people overcome temporary difficulties, China has decided to provide emergency supplies for livelihood to Venezuela, said Ma.

The relevant supplies are on their way to Venezuela in batches. On March 29, the first batch of medicines and medical supplies were delivered to the Venezuelan government, he said.

China's assistance to Venezuela is in keeping with its long-held principles for foreign aid. It is intended to help Venezuelan people overcome negative impacts caused by external interferences and sanctions with no political conditions attached, said the Chinese ambassador.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-11 22:08:17|Editor: zh

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Zhao Leji (R), a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, meets with Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean in Beijing, capital of China, April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

BEIJING, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Zhao Leji, secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, met with Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean Thursday in Beijing.

Zhao, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, said the two sides have continuously deepened cooperation in various fields, actively promoted the construction of three platforms including interconnection, financial support and tripartite cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The two countries have created two highlights of cooperation including a new land-sea freight route and the third-party market, as well as enriching their all-around cooperation, said Zhao.

The Belt and Road Initiative has brought great opportunities to China-Singapore ties, Zhao said, adding that China is willing to work with the Singapore side to deepen pragmatic cooperation in areas of economy and trade, finance, law enforcement and security, social governance, talent training and anti-corruption and push the bilateral ties to achieve greater development.

Teo Chee Hean said Singapore is willing to further dock with the Belt and Road Initiative and other development initiatives under the guidance of the leaders of the two countries and push the bilateral pragmatic cooperation to continuously make new progress.

Yang Jiechi, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, and Guo Shengkun, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee, also met with Teo Chee Hean Thursday.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-11 22:13:27|Editor: Xiaoxia

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British Prime Minister Theresa May (Front) speaks in the House of Commons in London, Britain, on April 11, 2019. Theresa May on Thursday faced tough questioning from lawmakers about the latest Brexit developments, including a call to resign, after she returned from Brussels with a new Brexit extension. (Xinhua/UK Parliament/Jessica Taylor)

LONDON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday faced tough questioning from lawmakers about the latest Brexit developments, including a call to resign, after she returned from Brussels with a new Brexit extension.

May, who returned in the early hours of Thursday after lengthy and difficult talks with EU leaders in Brussels, addressed a crowded chamber in the Houses of Parliament to report on the outcome of her talks with the EU Council.

The European Council agreed to a six-month extension of the Brexit process early on Thursday morning, setting a new deadline for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union on Oct. 31, 2019.

May had wanted an extension until June 30 in the hope Britain could avoid taking part in European Parliament elections.

Instead, a compromise was reached giving Britain until the end of October, though some EU member states wanted Britain to stay in the bloc until 2020.

May told MPs she deeply regretted having to accept the six-month extension from the EU, which she never wanted to seek.

She said Britain has now been provided with the time necessary to finally break the Brexit impasse, telling MPs: "The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear."

May said she was still pursuing an orderly departure from the EU, insisting there was still time for MPs to agree a deal to avoid Britain taking part in the EU elections.

She said the deal would allow Britain to leave earlier than October if parliament backed a deal.

May told MPs the whole Brexit debate was causing uncertainty across the country and needed to be resolved.

Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, said the latest extension represented not only a "diplomatic failure" but also another milestone in the government's handling of the entire Brexit process.

"The clock has run down and Britain has been left in limbo," he said.

Later Thursday, May's government was scheduled to have more bilateral talks with the Labour party in renewed attempts to break the deadlock.

Veteran Conservative politician Bill Cash asked May if she will resign, saying the new delay to Brexit is an abject surrender.

Rebuffing the resign call, May said she had voted three times in favor of the Brexit deal, but the House of Commons had voted against it.

The leader of the minority Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable asked May to put forward a timetable for when a second EU referendum, the so-called People's Vote, could take place, if MPs voted for it.

May, who has always insisted the result of the 2016 referendum decided the issue, said the government's position on another vote hasn't changed.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-11 23:24:45|Editor: zh

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Visitors are seen during the exhibition "Better Life, Dream Come True -- Poverty Alleviation in China" in the Atrium of the City Hall in The Hague, the Netherlands, April 11, 2019. Through photos and texts, the exhibition tells the story of China's poverty relief efforts. (Xinhua/Ding Yan)

THE HAGUE, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The exhibition "Better Life, Dream Come True -- Poverty Alleviation in China" opened Thursday in the Atrium of the City Hall in The Hague.

"There is a saying that the goal of the Chinese is to create a better life and they like to do it quietly without drawing much attention to themselves," said Mayor of The Hague Pauline Krikke at the opening ceremony. "This exhibition however put the results China has achieved in combating poverty firmly in spotlight. And rightly so. Because the results are indeed very impressive, something to be very proud of."

Through photos and texts, the exhibition tells the story of China's poverty relief efforts. "It is remarkable to see how China is working on reducing of poverty in that immense country that China is. Tremendous progress has been achieved in just a very short period of time," said the mayor.

Peter Potman, Director of the Asia-Pacific Department at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, noted that "China has reached the Millennium Development Goal target of reducing extreme poverty rates by half -- contributing to poverty reduction globally, and setting an example for developing countries worldwide".

Among visitors was a teacher from German International School in The Hague who guided his Chinese-learning teenager students during the exhibition. "I enjoyed it," one of the students, Bianco Marcu, a 14-year-old Romanian girl told Xinhua, "it is a great experience to see what the Chinese have done and what their stance is over the issues of combating poverty and sustainability."

"Fight poverty is an important issue of sustainability. If you want to make a better life for our future, it is good to take students to have a look at this exhibition," explained Markus Rudolph, the German teacher who speaks fluently Chinese.

Sponsored by the State Council Information Office (SCIO) and Jilin, a province in northern China, the exhibition was held at the headquarters of European parliament earlier this week.
By Gao Shangtao

On April 1, the Pentagon suspended the delivery of parts and program materials to Turkey that it needs for standing up the F-35 jet fighter program there. Deliveries would not resume until Turkey forgoes the planned purchase of the Russian-made S-400 antiaircraft system. This marked the beginning of the U.S. to put warnings into practical actions which would trigger strong dissatisfaction from Turkey and deepen the cracks in their bilateral relations.

The U.S. finally made this decision directly because of its frustration against Turkeys insistence on buying the Russian S-400 antiaircraft system. In December 2017, Turkey and Russia signed a loan agreement for purchase of S-400 systems, making Turkey the first NATO country to buy and deploy the Russian anti-aircraft missile system. The U.S. had voiced concern that it might provide Russia with the opportunity to learn how to track and discover the F-35 fighter jet, and compromise the security of NATOs air defense system. Therefore, the U.S. was firmly against Turkeys purchase of S-400 system from Russia.

In fact, U.S. President Trump had signed a defense authorization act to prohibit the delivery of F-35 fighter jets to Turkey in 2018. However, it was not scrupulously implemented by the F-35 Joint Program Office (JPO). In March, four U.S. senators introduced a bipartisan bill to prohibit the delivery of F-35 fighter aircraft to Turkey until the U.S. government certifies that Ankara gives up the purchase of a Russian S-400 air defense system. However, the Turkish government responded that the purchase of the most advanced fighter aircraft was a done deal and Ankara could not go back on its word.

Despite U.S. strong objections, Turkeys obstinate stance embodied deep-seated contradictions between the U.S. and Turkey. Turkey wants to use its cooperation with Russia, especially in the highly sensitive military field, to demonstrate to and counter the United States, seeking to become a more independent presence.

The relationship between the U.S. and Turkey has continued to face drawback since the Turkeys attempted military coup in 2016. Turkey accused the U.S. of supporting the Gulen movement, which attempted to launch a coup in Turkey. Turkeys requests to extradite Fethullah Gulen were rejected by the U.S.. In October 2016, the Turkish government arrested American pastor Andrew Brunson and charged him with aiding an attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The U.S. had repeatedly urged Turkey to release the pastor and Turkey did not agree. The subsequently imposed personnel and economic sanctions by the U.S. resulted in a sharp depreciation of the Turkish Lira, the currency of Turkey, and had a serious impact on Turkeys economic development. Since then, bilateral relations have gradually soured.

In addition to the Gulen incident, the U.S. has repeatedly challenged Turkeys core interests on issues such as the Kurdish forces in Syria, leading to intensified contradictions between the U.S. and Turkey. Turkey regards the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), a mostly Kurdish militia in Syria, as a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a domestic terrorist organization. For Turkey, the Peoples Protection Units must be removed. So despite the massive pressure from public opinion, it launched the Olive Branch Operation and entered Syria to fight against Kurdish forces in January 2018. Seeing the Kurdish forces in Syrian as representatives of the Syrian moderate opposition, the U.S. government has always supported Kurdish forces to fight against the Islamic State and protected them from the Turkish armed forces. Such confrontational attitude and behavior have made both sides much vexing.

Under such conditions, in order to increase its bargaining chip and weight with the United States, Turkey is gradually moving closer to Russia, who has a major strategic interests to compete with the U.S.. For example, Turkey is working with Russia to launch the Astana process on Syrian peace, in opposition to the United States-led Geneva process. At the same time, Turkey has continued to strengthen its cooperation with Iran, the opponent of the U.S. in the Middle East, to contain the U.S. in exchange for its respect and concessions. Countries such as Russia and Iran also took the opportunity to disturb NATO and continued to deepen strategic cooperation with Turkey. For example, Russia aggressively sold advanced S-400 systems to Turkey and promised localized production. The U.S. responded by further increasing sanctions and pressure on Turkey to force Turkey to change its mind.

But the wheel that does the squeaking is the one that gets the grease. Wishing to force the U.S. to meet Turkeys security claims on issues such as the Kurdish forces in Syria and gain a bigger say in the Middle East, Turkey may not easily surrender to U.S. pressure. Turkey previously indicated that it would receive the S-400 system in July. If Turkey and the U.S. still cannot reach a satisfactory agreement, the deployment of the S-400 system in Turkey would become a reality. This open antagonism between the U.S. and Turkey has put their fragile friendship in danger and may even deepen the cracks among NATO members.

(The original article was published on PLA Daily on April 11, 2019. It was edited and translated into English by China Military Online)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 04:58:38|Editor: Xiaoxia

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Sudanese people celebrate on the street as they are waiting for an important statement from the army in Khartoum, Sudan, April 11, 2019. The Sudanese army has ousted Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his government, Sudan's Defence Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf said in a long awaited statement aired live on official Sudan TV Thursday. (Xinhua/Mohamed Khidir)

KHARTOUM, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Sudan's Defense Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf on Thursday was sworn in as head of the transitional council in Sudan, official Sudan TV reported.

"Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf took the constitutional oath as chairman of the Transitional Military Council and Kamal Abdul-Marouf Al-Mahi as his deputy," the report said.

Earlier on Thursday, Ibn Auf announced the ousting of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his government.

He further declared a state of emergency for three months and a curfew for one month.

The defense minister said that a military council would be formed to run the country during a transitional period of two years.

He also announced suspension of the interim constitution of the Republic of Sudan, and closure of the Sudanese air space for 24 hours together with border passages all over Sudan until further notice.

Since Dec. 19 last year, Sudan has been witnessing popular protests over the deteriorating economic conditions and price hikes of basic commodities.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 05:03:40|Editor: yan

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LONDON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- More than 600 Members of Parliament politicians returned to the constituencies across Britain Thursday as Brexit was put on hold.

They started their Easter recess with a message from British Prime Minister Theresa May to return to Westminster on April 23.

Addressing MPs, May told them: "Let us use the opportunity of the recess to reflect on the decisions that will have to be made swiftly on our return after Easter. And let us then resolve to find a way through this impasse so that we can leave the European Union with a deal as soon as possible."

It may be a case of politicians being "de-mob" happy or just political fatigue, but many have admitted to feeling the strains of long, late night sittings and intensive debates about Britain's long-drawn out withdrawal from the EU.

Some MPs have even resorted to counselling to help them through the political maze created by Brexit.

May has won a delay from the EU which means politicians now have until October 31 to reach a withdrawal deal with Brussels.

But the prime minister remains committed to ending Britain's membership of the bloc long before then.

As MPs were packing their bags to head to train stations and airports for the journeys to their homes, stay-behind teams from May's Conservative government and the main opposition Labour Party were locked in their fourth round of private talks.

May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn are trying to find a way out of what has become an impasse in the search for an elusive Brexit deal.

Following the latest talks late Thursday between their two teams, May and Corbyn held a short meeting.

A spokesperson for the Labour leader said later: "Both sides agreed to continue talks in an effort to make substantive progress towards finding a compromise plan."

So far there are no clear signs that a breakthrough is close.

May's official spokesperson refused to say at a media briefing Thursday whether the prime minister plans to resign if she cannot get a deal through past MPs.

May had indicated, when her deadline was a June 30 departure date, that she would quit 10 Downing Street if a deal was agreed by the British parliament.

After agreeing to the extended deadline until October, May has faced renewed calls to quit from Conservative politicians angered by the delay to Britain's departure.

There were gasps in the chamber of the House of Commons when veteran Conservative MP Bill Cash asked May whether she was going to resign.

May responded: "I think he knows the answer", taken by politicians as a No.

Unless the parliament agrees on a withdrawal before May 22, Britain will have to take part in elections for British members of the European Parliament, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars.

The elected MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) would only serve until Britain ended its membership.

Conservative party managers across the country have said there is little mood for party workers to campaign for candidates, particularly as weeks earlier they will have been campaigning for council candidates in town and city local elections.

And although the front pages of Britain's national newspaper are likely to be virtual Brexit free zones for the coming days, the future of Britain's destination, in or out of the EU, will not be off the agenda for long.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 07:42:15|Editor: zh

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Workers sew clothes at a poverty alleviation workshop near a settlement for poverty relief relocation in Sansui County, southwest China's Guizhou Province, April 11, 2019. Since January, households have, one after another, moved into a settlement for poverty relief relocation in Sansui County. Many service facilities, including poverty alleviation workshop, health center, nursery and skill training center, are accessible to residents in the settlement. (Xinhua/Yang Wenbin)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 09:05:12|Editor: Xiaoxia

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TOKYO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Tokyo stocks opened mixed on Friday as a weaker yen against the U.S. dollar gave exporter issues a boost amid a circumspect mood after U.S. shares slipped overnight.

As of 9:15 a.m., the 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average edged 26.62 points, or 0.12 percent higher, from Thursday to 21,738.00.

The broader Topix index of all First Section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, meanwhile, lost 3.65 points, or 0.23 percent, at 1,602.87.

Bank, textile and apparel as well as insurance-oriented issues comprised notable gainers in early trade.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 10:05:42|Editor: Xiaoxia

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WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said at the White House that he would not remove the U.S. sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Speaking to the media here with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting, Trump also said that he is possible to have a third meeting with top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un.

NOT TO REMOVE SANCTIONS NOW

Trump said that "we want sanctions to remain in place" and the sanctions are now at "a fair level."

"And I really believe something very significant is going to happen. We could always increase them (the sanctions), but I didn't want to do that at this time," he added.

However, the U.S. president refused to support Moon's push for economic concessions, which include the resumption of the joint inter-Korean industrial complex, saying "this isn't the right time."

When the right time comes, "a lot of countries will be helping," he said. "When the right deal is made, and when the nuclear weapons are gone, I just think that North Korea has potential as great as anything I've ever seen in terms of potential."

Nevertheless, he said that Washington and Seoul "are discussing certain humanitarian things right now."

"South Korea is doing certain things to help out with food and various other things for North Korea," Trump added.

3RD TRUMP-KIM MEETING POSSIBLE

When asked if he has the third summit with DPRK's Kim in mind, Trump said that "it could happen ... And it's step by step. It's not a fast process."

He also left possibility open that a three-way summit with Kim and Moon "could happen also," but admitting that would largely depend on Chairman Kim.

For his part, Moon said that the personal diplomacy between Trump and Kim has created "dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean Peninsula."

On the Hanoi meeting between Trump and Kim, Moon said that it "was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement."

The South Korean president said his "important task" now is to "maintain the momentum of dialogue" and "express the positive outlook, regarding the third U.S.-North Korea Summit, to the international community that this will be held in the near future."

Referring to the Hanoi meeting, Trump said "certain things were agreed to" and he felt good with the previous summits and enjoyed "being with" Kim.

"I think the relationship has become far different and far better than it was when I first took office," he added.

Regarding Moon's visit, Trump said that the United States and South Korea will discuss the possibility of the DPRK submitting a roadmap regarding its complete denuclearization. "That's a very prime topic for our meeting today," he said.

TRUMP STILL EXPECTS "BIG DEAL"

The U.S.-DPRK summit in Vietnam's Hanoi on Feb. 28 failed to reach an agreement as Trump said that Kim demanded an entire relief of sanctions against Pyongyang in exchange for partly denuclearizing of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that the DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

When asked if he would accept smaller deals to "keep the process going" as Moon wishes, Trump said on Thursday that "I'd have to see what the deal is."

"There are various smaller deals that could happen," he said. "But at this moment, we're talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons."

In a statement regarding Trump's meeting with Moon, the White House said that Trump noted "that the door remains open to dialogue."

Trump and Moon discussed "the goals of achieving the final, fully verified denuclearization" of the DPRK and "establishing a permanent peace on the Korean Peninsula," according to the statement.

For dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearization and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronized steps as a package solution, said Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, earlier on Wednesday.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 10:31:09|Editor: Xiaoxia

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CANBERRA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has ruled out any "special treatment" for Julian Assange after his arrest in London.

As an Australian citizen, Assange was arrested on Thursday in London's Ecuadorian embassy after the country ended his political asylum over "discourteous and aggressive behavior" after seven years.

The founder of WikiLeaks was found guilty of breaching bail at Westminster Magistrates Court and will face up to 12 months' imprisonment, according to the report of The Australian.

The United States has also lodged an extradition request for Assange, alleging that he engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning to leak classified data.

Morrison said that the government has received a request for consular assistance from Assange, who also stands accused of sexual assault in Sweden -- the charge that initially prompted him to seek asylum.

"He will get the consular assistance as you would expect him to but he will have to make his way through whatever has come his way in terms of the justice system there," the prime minister told reporters on Friday.

"He won't be getting special treatment from Australia. He will be getting the same treatment that any other Australian would get in circumstances," Morrison said.

"When Australians travel overseas and the find themselves in difficulties with the law, they face the judicial systems of those countries," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

"It doesn't matter what particular crime it is that they're alleged to have committed, that's the way the system works," Morrison said.

Sweden is reportedly considering re-opening the sexual assault charges.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 10:36:12|Editor: zh

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BUCHAREST, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Romania and China should enhance cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially through academic exchanges in such areas as economy, sociology and public policies, Romanian academics said here Thursday.

"We fully agree that Romania and China can cooperate at global level, taking into consideration the specificity of our economies," Professor Gheorghe Zaman, director of the National Institute of Economy of the Romanian Academy, said at a roundtable on the BRI and the cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC).

The BRI is a platform for development opened by China to all countries, said Zaman and other Romanian attendants.

"The Belt and Road Initiative aims to make the world economy more stable and more resilient to crises in a sustainable environment. We believe that a new system of cooperation between countries is needed in order to sustain development," said Professor Gao Peiyong, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, at the roundtable.

There is no doubt that the globalization can enhance not only world trade, but also global development, Gao said.

Gao's remarks were echoed by Professor Ilie Badescu, director of the Institute of Sociology of the Romanian Academy, who said that the BRI, which promotes globalization, is also based on cooperation between different economies.

Given the importance of the China-CEEC cooperation and the BRI in a wider context, Romanian and Chinese researchers should find ways to cooperate in all fields, covering not only economic topics, but also social and legal issues, as well as public policies, Zaman said.

The two countries should encourage more academic exchanges, such as jointly publishing books, special magazines and studies, co-organizing sociological and economic researches as well as academic meetings on topics of common interest, the Romanian academics proposed.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 10:46:16|Editor: Xiaoxia

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YANGON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar and Sri Lanka have vowed to further strengthen bilateral relations and deepen bilateral cooperation in various sectors, according to Myanmar's Foreign Ministry on Friday.

The pledge was made at the third meeting of Myanmar-Sri Lanka Joint Commission of Bilateral Cooperation in the capital Nay Pyi Taw on Thursday, co-chaired by Myanmar's Minister of International Cooperation U Kyaw Tin and visiting Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Tilak Marapana.

The bilateral cooperation to be deepened between the two countries include the exchange of high-level visits, trade, investment, tourism, religions cultural affairs, among others.

The two sides also exchanged views on regional and global issues of mutual interests as well as closer cooperation in the multilateral context.

Prior to the joint commission meeting, Marapana met with Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and they discussed on enhancing cooperation between Myanmar and Sri Lanka at the regional and multilateral fora including the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sector Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) and the United Nations.

The Sri Lankan foreign minister planned to visit cultural and religious areas of Myanmar, Yangon and the ancient city of Bagan during Myanmar's traditional Thingyan water festival period until next Monday before concluding his Myanmar visit.

Myanmar and Sri Lanka have long been engaged in economic, social and cultural exchanges.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 10:56:21|Editor: zh

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By Xinhua Writers Pei Jianrong and Edna Alcantara

MERIDA, Mexico, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The southeastern Mexican city of Merida, capital of Yucatan state, is looking to draw more Chinese tourists and investment, according to its mayor, Renan Alberto Barrera.

"Merida is a city that has all the conditions" to become a leading tourism and investment destination for China, Barrera told Xinhua in an interview.

To promote Mexico's "White City", as Merida is known, Barrera is considering opening up a special office to cater exclusively to Chinese visitors and investors, and strengthen existing ties of friendship between the two peoples.

The mayor is set to travel in June to Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan Province, to attend a gathering of mayors and begin promoting Merida to Chinese.

Meanwhile, city officials are studying Mandarin to better attend to visiting Chinese tourists, as well as exchange students, so "they feel comfortable," the mayor said.

The Yucatan Peninsula Chinese Language Center, founded in 2015 by the Yucatan Peninsula Chinese Association, has taught hundreds of students, from local government officials to hotel receptionists, travel agents and Mexicans of Chinese descent.

Learning Mandarin helps "bring China under the focus" of city officials, and makes it easier to spur cultural and artistic exchanges, said Barrera.

"We are very clear about the weight, the importance of what cultural and artistic exchange means, that's why we are trying to generate more conditions" for it, the mayor said.

Merida is a safe city in many respects, including in legal aspects, he said, noting "there is legal certainty and confidence."

Geographically speaking, the city is also well positioned to access Asian and European markets, a key convenience for trade, he said.

The mayor also invited Chinese investors to explore the state's investment potential in such sectors as technology, automobiles, aerospace and others.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 10:56:23|Editor: zh

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The following is a summary of recent science and technology news of China.

SHANGHAI TECHNOLOGY FAIR

Companies from the United States and Canada will participate in the 7th China (Shanghai) International Technology Fair (CSITF) for the first time.

About 100 foreign companies and research institutions from countries including Hungary, Germany and the Republic of Korea will attend the fair, to be held from April 18 to 20 in Shanghai.

NEW FUNDS TARGETING SCI-TECH BOARD

The first batch of funds for China's new science and technology innovation board are likely to be approved soon.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission had processed the applications from 77 new-tech-board-themed funds, consisting of 26 closed-ended funds and 51 open-ended funds.

WATER SAVING IRRIGATION

Chinese researchers have disclosed that over 94 percent of the country's rice fields are suitable for water saving irrigation (WSI).

Soil structure deterioration and low soil fertility made 5.81 percent of the rice fields unsuitable for WSI.


The picture shows the Japanese destroyer Suzutsuki.

By Cui Tianye

BEIJING, Apr. 12 (ChinaMil) -- Japan's Defense Ministry said on Thursday that the Chief of Staff of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) will visit China again after five years and the destroyer Suzutsuki will be sent to participate in a multinational fleet review held in China.

Quoting the news report released by the Defense Ministry on the same day, Japans Sankei Shimbun, a daily newspaper in Japan, reported that the JMSDF Chief of Staff Hiroshi Yamamura will visit Qingdao, Shandong Province, and participate in the multinational fleet review marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) Navy from April 22 to 25.

In addition, the destroyer Suzutsuki of the JMSDF will also set sail on April 21 to take part in the fleet review. According to the report, this is the first time in five years that the JMSDFs Chief of Staff will visit China since the visit made by his predecessor Katsutoshi Kawano in April 2014. Also, it will be the first visit made by JMSDFs ships to China after seven and a half years.

Japans Ministry of Defense said in last October that it hopes to promote multi-level dialogue and exchanges between Japanese and Chinese defense departments, enhance mutual understanding and strengthen mutual trust. In December 2018, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying also stressed that defense relations play an important role in China-Japan relations. The year 2018 marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between China and Japan. The defense departments of both sides enhancing exchanges and communication is conducive to properly managing differences, strengthening security and mutual trust, and building a constructive bilateral security relationship, thus injecting positive energy into the sustained improvement and long-term, sound and steady development of China-Japan relations, Hua said, We welcome greater exchanges and communication between the defense departments of the two sides.

The Suzutsuki destroyer is an Akizuki-class destroyer. It is a new advanced surface combat ship of JMSDF. Suzutsuki has a full displacement of 6,800 tons and is fitted with a state of art combat system with the Japanese-made FCS-3A active phased array radar. It is also known as the Japanese Aegis-class since its performance is close to the AN/SPY-1 phased array radar of the U.S. Aegis combat system. Its main weapon is the 32-unit U.S. MK-41 vertical weapon launching system capable of launching Sea Sparrow anti-aircraft missiles and rocket-assisted anti-submarine torpedoes.
Red Bull's driver Daniel Ricciardo of Australia competes during the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai on April 15, 2018. (Xinhua/Fan Jun)

By sportswriter Michael Butterworth

SHANGHAI, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Ahead of this weekend's 2019 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix, several drivers took time to discuss the characteristics of the Shanghai International Circuit, with many praising the unique challenges the 16-turn, 5.451km track presents.

Speaking exclusively to Xinhua, 2018 Chinese Grand Prix winner Daniel Ricciardo noted the difficulty inherent in the circuit's very first turn, a 270-degree double right-hander that tightens considerably towards the corner exit.

"There's no corner like it on the calendar," Ricciardo told Xinhua. "It's probably the longest corner on the F1 calendar, and it goes up and then comes back down, all at the same time. It's also really hard on the left-front tyres, so that's just a challenge in itself trying to figure out how that goes."

At the drivers' pre-event press conference on Thursday, 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen also talked up a circuit at which he tasted victory in his title-winning year.

"I think it's a nice track," enthused the Alfa Romeo driver. "It's been the same since I came here the first time, but there are some good overtaking opportunities and it's good fun to drive on."

Racing Point's Sergio Perez was another who spoke favorably on Thursday about the challenges posed by the Shanghai International Circuit.

"It's definitely a circuit I enjoy," said Perez. "Turn One is quite hard when you first get here. It's always very hard to reach the apex because it's so late in the corner that it [catches you out]. The wind is also very difficult here. So it's quite a unique place, and a nice feeling over one lap."

And for Haas driver Romain Grosjean, tyre conservation forms a key element of securing a good result at Shanghai.

"In the race, the challenge is to look after your tyres, especially the front ones, with those long corners," explained the Frenchman. "That can really make a huge difference if you've used your tyres too much or not. Then you can have some really good racing. It's a good circuit and a good place to come."

The 2019 Chinese Grand Prix weekend runs from April 12 to 14 at the Shanghai International Circuit. Xinhua will be there to keep you updated of all the happenings across practise, qualifying and, of course, Sunday's race.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 11:01:25|Editor: Xiaoxia

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YANGON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Myanmar security forces have exposed a hide-out of ethnic insurgent group, the Arakan Army (AA), in Mrauk U, Rakhine state where donated food for some refugee camps were hidden, according to the Office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense Services Friday.

The AA hide-out was exposed northeast of Mrauk U and the dried food and clothings were suspected of being collected by the AA from some camps of internally displaced persons (IDP).

The finding came after the AA insurgents attacked a police headquarters in Mrauk U on Tuesday, in which two police and one police family member were killed with seven other police members being missing.

In the clash, seven family members of the security forces including three children were also taken away by the AA.

Meanwhile, 23 AA insurgents, who fled to the nearby villages, were captured by the military column after the clash.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 11:41:50|Editor: zh

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China's prestigious Tsinghua University will intensify punishment for academic misconduct by expelling students who plagiarize in their graduation dissertations, China Daily reported Friday.

Students who plagiarize, fabricate, falsify, hire ghostwriters, or write for others in bachelor's, master's or doctoral dissertations will be expelled, according to the university's new disciplinary regulations. Previously, cheaters would only get demerits.

Their academic honors and awards will be revoked and they will not be eligible to apply for scholarships or to be recommended for postgraduate studies without taking the national postgraduate entrance exam, the school said.

The newspaper quoted Chu Zhaohui, a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences, as saying that academic integrity should be a top priority for Chinese university students, yet its importance has not been stressed enough.

Teachers should give students more guidance in academic writing, and universities should hand down serious punishments to students who cheat in their writing, he said.

Other universities such as Peking University and Renmin University also announced expulsion regulations on student plagiarism, said the paper.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 11:57:03|Editor: zh

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TOKYO, April 12 (Xinhua) --Tokyo stocks were mixed Friday morning as a weaker yen against the U.S. dollar lifted exporter issues, but gains were capped by some investors looking to secure profits.

The 225-issue Nikkei Stock Average rose 130.52 points, or 0.60 percent, from Thursday to 21,841.90.

The broader Topix index of all First Section issues on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, meanwhile, shed 1.13 points, or 0.07 percent, at 1,605.39.

Insurance and securities house issues led notable gainers, while mining, and oil and coal product issues comprised those that declined the most by the morning break.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 12:52:22|Editor: zh

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HANOI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The 44th Meeting of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) Executive Board will take place in Vietnam's capital Hanoi on April 18-20, under the theme of "For Professional and Innovative Journalism."

The 44th OANA Executive Board Meeting will focus on three main contents, including strategies of news agencies in response to changes in information use behaviors, which focus on video clips and the YouTube platform; fake news and fact-checking; and regaining trust for mainstream news, Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday.

Since its establishment in 1961 in Thailand, as an initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), OANA has brought together 44 news agencies from 35 countries, Vietnam News Agency said, noting that OANA members are responsible for two-thirds of information circulated throughout the world.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 12:52:24|Editor: Lu Hui

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KHARTOUM, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese Defense Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf on Thursday was sworn in as head of the transitional military council which he said will rule the country during a two-year transiational period, official Sudan TV reported.

"Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf took the constitutional oath as chairman of the Transitional Military Council and Kamal Abdul-Marouf Al-Mahi as his deputy," the report said.

On Thursday, Ibn Auf announced the ousting of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and the government, and declared a state of emergency for three months and a curfew from 10:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. local time for one month, which becomes effective as of Thursday.

He also announced suspension of the interim constitution of the Republic of Sudan, and closure of the Sudanese air space for 24 hours together with border passages all over Sudan until further notice.

The Sudanese Armed Forces issued a statement warning against non-compliance with the declared curfew, urging the citizens not to violate the curfew for their safety concern.

It also called on the citizens to cooperate to enable the armed forces and the security committee to perform their duty in keeping security, public safety and properties.

Some Sudanese protesters disagreed with the measures announced by Ibn Auf and the army. The Sudanese Professionals Association, an opposition organization, stressed in a statement its decision to continue the sit-in in front of army's general headquarters until power is handed over to a civil authority.

The Freedom and Change Alliance, also an opposition group, rejected the army's statement, urging its supporters to continue the sit-in.

"Our demands are clear that the entire regime and its figures must go and hand over the power to a civil government," said Omer Yousif Al-Digair, leader of the opposition Sudanese Congress Party, in a statement.

One day before the ousting of Bashir, Khartoum State's security committee refused to give permission to a mass rally that was planned on Thursday in support of Bashir, who was scheduled to address the rally.

The international community called for dialogue and reconciliation during the transition process in Sudan.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres reiterated his call for "calm and utmost restraint by all" in Sudan, a UN spokesman said Thursday.

Guterres said that the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people will be realized through an appropriate and inclusive transition process, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

He reaffirmed that the United Nations stands ready to support the Sudanese people as they chart a new way forward, Dujarric said.

UN's Central Emergency Response Fund released emergency funds of 26.5 million U.S. dollars to provide life-saving assistance in Sudan over the next six months.

The allocation will provide food, livelihood, nutrition, health, water and sanitation to over 800,000 people affected by a worsening economic crisis and food insecurity across seven states in Sudan, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in a press release.

Russia has called on all political forces in Sudan to return order to the country, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday.

"We are closely monitoring the situation, and we hope that there will not be an escalation of the situation that could lead to human sacrifice," Peskov told reporters.

He said that the developments in Sudan were exclusively an internal affair of the Sudanese. But the Kremlin hoped that Russia and Sudan would maintain their relations in any outcome, he added.

Egypt expressed its full support for the choice of the Sudanese people and their free will to determine the future of Sudan, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Egypt also urged the international community to support what the Sudanese people will agree on "in this decisive historical stage."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for national reconciliation in Sudan and managing the transition process peacefully.

"I hope that Sudan gets through its current process in national reconciliation and peace, and I believe the country should work towards a normal democratic process," Erdogan said.

He stressed that Turkey supports the continuation of the "deep-rooted" relations with Sudan.

Since Dec. 19 last year, Sudan has been witnessing popular protests over deteriorating economic conditions and price hikes of basic commodities, with 1.9 million people displaced in the country and 1.2 million refugees, mainly from South Sudan.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 13:27:38|Editor: Yamei

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HOUSTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- The future of Chinese film industry is promising, Lisa Lu, a Chinese-born American actress, said Thursday during the 52nd WorldFest-Houston Annual International Independent Film Festival.

Lu, who won the Golden Horse Awards three times in the 1970s, said the presence of Chinese elements in Hollywood has been increasing these years.

"When you watch this year's Oscar best picture winner Green Book, you can find the Chinese investor's name. The feeling is great. Actually, I'm quite happy these days, because I have found that all Hollywood blockbusters I've seen recently comes with the Chinese investor's name," she said.

Green Book, a period drama about race relations in the American South, has resonated strongly in China. The film made its debut in China just three days after winning the 91st Academy Awards, far sooner than any past Oscar best picture winner. Its connections to China played a huge role.

Alibaba Pictures, the film studio arm of Chinese tech tycoon Jack Ma's e-commerce giant Alibaba, participated in Green Book as an investor alongside Participant Media, DreamWorks Pictures and Stephen Spielberg's Amblin Partners.

Lu suggested that Chinese investors should help arrange young Chinese talents to work in Hollywood. "When they go back to China, they can help produce world class films," she said.

Lu was born in Beijing, China in 1927. she was active in Chinese opera, or Kunqu, before immigrating to the United States.

In the 1950s, she enjoyed a long career in television in the United States. Her film career took off in the 1970s and received three Best Actress Golden Horse Awards for her Chinese-language films.

She may be best known by English-speaking audiences for her roles in the 1988 TV miniseries Noble House and the films The Last Emperor (1987), The Joy Luck Club (1993), and Crazy Rich Asians (2018).

This year, the competitive WorldFest-Houston international film festival opened on Friday and will run through April 14.

During the period, 10 major categories of competition, including over 60 new independent feature films and 108 award-winning shorts as well as documentaries and student projects from around the world, will be screened.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 13:37:41|Editor: xuxin

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A rescuer inspects the blast site in southwest Pakistan's Quetta on April 12, 2019. At least 16 people, including one security personnel and two children, were killed and 30 others injured when a bomb ripped through an open-air market in Pakistan's southwest city of Quetta on Friday morning, officials and local reports said. (Xinhua)

ISLAMABAD, April 12 (Xinhua) -- At least 16 people, including one security personnel and two children, were killed and 30 others injured when a bomb ripped through an open-air market in Pakistan's southwest city of Quetta on Friday morning, officials and local reports said.

Deputy Inspector General of police Abdul Razzaq Cheema confirmed the death toll, saying that the blast targeted the market area frequented by Shiite Muslims in Hazarganji area of Quetta, the provincial capital of southwest Balochistan province.

Local residents said large numbers of shoppers were present in the market when a loud explosion was heard in the center of the market.

The blast triggered severe panic among the shoppers who run for their safety, according to local reports.

Buildings located nearby were damaged in the powerful blast, police said, adding that several vehicles were also partially destroyed.

Police, rescue teams and additional contingents of security forces rushed to the site following the blast and shifted the bodies and injured to the Bolan Medical Complex and Civil Hospital in the city for medical treatment.

Death toll may further rise and six among the injured are in critical condition. Four paramilitary soldiers personnel were also among the injured, according to the hospital sources.

A state of emergency has been declared in all the hospitals in the city following the blast.

No group immediately claimed the attack. Pakistani Taliban militants have often struck at Shiites communities on religious grounds.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and sought a report from the concerned authorities. He also directed the hospital administrations to provide best medical treatment to the injured people.

Chief Minister of Balochistan Jam Kamal Khan also condemned the attack and expressed solidarity with the victims. He promised swift action against perpetrators of the incident.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 13:47:44|Editor: Xiaoxia

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MANILA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A total of nine Abu Sayyaf militants have been killed and 19 others have been wounded in a series of clashes in the southern Philippine Sulu province, the military said on Friday.

The military said that the initial clash erupted at 10:37 a.m. local time on Thursday, when government security forces engaged about 120 Abu Sayyaf militants led by Abu Sayyaf leader Radulan Sahiron and sub-leader Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan in a remote village in Patikul, Sulu. The military said a militant was killed in the initial fighting.

The militants broke into smaller groups after the initial fighting in an attempt to escape from the pursuing troops, the military added.

Three other succeeding clashes occurred from 3:45 p.m. local time to 5:45 p.m. local time as the troops caught up with the fleeing militants, killing eight other militants and wounding 19 others, the military said.

Brig. Gen. Divino Rey Pabayo, the commander of the Joint Task Force Sulu, said the support and cooperation of the local community led to the success of the military operation.

Abu Sayyaf gained notice in the southern Philippines in the early 1990s. It acquired a worldwide notoriety with a series of kidnappings and beheadings.

Philippine authorities referred to the Abu Sayyaf group as nothing more than a collection of bandits.

The Philippine government has formed an entire army division to hunt down the militants blamed for a series of kidnapping and bombings in the southern region, including the twin bombings on Jan. 27 in a church in Jolo, Sulu, which killed 23 and injured more than 100.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 13:52:48|Editor: Xiaoxia

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SUVA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The revitalization of the rice industry in Fiji is a priority for the Ministry of Agriculture in its effort to improve efficient production through continued research for a self-sufficient and sustainable industry.

Fiji's Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development, Waterways and Environment Mahendra Reddy made the comment while addressing the Naselai Rice Farmers Group in Tailevu, one of Fiji's 14 provinces during his tour around farms on Friday.

Reddy said strategies to ensure a revived and strengthened rice industry is in progress by the Ministry.

He added that some of this included the introduction of high yielding improved rice varieties in Fiji, increasing the capacity of the ministry's Research Division and continued production and supply of more certified seed and planting materials to farmers.

Reddy also highlighted planned strategies for the commercialization of the rice industry, which would require close collaboration between the Ministry, rice farmers and stakeholders.

"Rice farming can be labor intensive so the ministry continues to mechanize many of the husbandry practices, including providing access to various types of rice machines which were available to farmers on subsidized rates and the formation of rice clusters where it is possible to achieve economies of scale which ensures machine optimization," said Reddy.

"The ministry will also consolidate rice development in areas where land improvement and irrigation work is carried out and will focus on rice breeding and promotion programs which involves research and seed production of quality rice seeds which will be supplied to the farmers for better yields."

A total of over 30,000 tonnes with a total value of around 40 million Fiji dollars (about 18 million U.S. dollars) is imported annually by Fiji as rice is now considered a staple food on the islands like cassava and taro.
On April 12 last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for building a first-class navy that has never been more urgent than today after the largest military review in China since its founding in 1949.

China's People's Liberation Army Navy will hold its 70th anniversary celebration on April 23. The parade of military vessels will be joined by navies from around the world in the Yellow Sea off the coast of Qingdao in east China's Shandong Province.

The naval demonstration is to signify China's coming of age as a maritime power. The country held its first naval parade in 1957, less than a decade after its founding. As a developing country that had to catch up with more developed maritime powers at the outset, China underwent a series of reforms to modernize its military in recent decades. The demonstration is a signal of China's rise coupled with the need to take on greater responsibility in the realm of domestic security.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, reviews the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy in the South China Sea on April 12, 2018. Xi made a speech after the review. /Xinhua Photo

The parade is intended to demonstrate that naval development is to protect the overseas interests and its sovereignty of the surrounding waters, said Chen Xiangmiao, a research fellow at the Hainan-based National Institute for the South China Sea, told CGTN. He said that as global powers compete in Asian waters, the need for the navy to protect China's maritime sovereignty and security increases.

A strong navy is not only intended to deter attempts at encroaching on Chinese sovereignty but also plays an important role in foreign diplomacy as more countries establish naval cooperation with China.

Naval strength will also contribute to China's trade interests as it further expands and integrates countries within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Since a core component of the initiative relies on maritime trade, ensuring that channels for shipping remain free and safe from bad actors such as pirates are important to fostering regional prosperity. A strong Chinese navy can act as a deterrent in preventing these negative elements from even considering sabotaging shipping lanes and the wider logistical network.

This economic incentive to project power not only pertains to trade but also human capital. With significant increases in the number of Chinese working overseas as well as foreign investment, the Chinese navy serves in the vital capacity of protecting its citizens and economic interests, according to Shi Hong, executive chief editor of Chinese military magazine Shipborne Weapons.

This means that the navy is needed, from shallow waters to deep waters, as China's overseas interests have expanded, with its net assets overseas reaching trillions of dollars and millions of its citizens stationed abroad especially since China's accession into the World Trade Organization, Shi told CGTN.

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) navy soldiers march at Tiananmen Square during the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two in Beijing, China, September 3, 2015. /Reuters

China's navy has completed its transformation from a brown-water force to a green-water fleet, and now it's going blue, taking a proactive part in humanitarian missions and security operations.

Last but not least, the naval demonstration shows that China's military modernization has culminated in impressive results.

The country commissioned its first aircraft carrier now known as Liaoning in 2012, after extensive modernization of an unfinished Soviet Navy hull it had purchased back in 1998. Now, the country's first domestically built carrier is awaiting commission, possibly as soon as next year.

From fighter jets to the latest radar technology, the Chinese navy has strengthened its technological base and desires to further do so in the course of assuming increased responsibilities in protecting the interests of its people and sovereignty.

Seventy years on, China's PLA Navy is still growing, but its reforms and rising technological prowess have made it ready for the challenges of an increasingly divided world.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:02:50|Editor: Xiaoxia

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WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- As U.S. President Donald Trump finished his meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in here on Thursday, U.S. experts said that to realize denuclearization on the Korea Peninsula, parties concerned should focus on reaching "smaller deals" in the short term, which can help set stage for "bigger deals" in the future.

DIVERGENCE REMAINSDESPITE PROGRESS

Before their bilateral meeting, Trump told the media that "smaller deals" could happen "step by step," but both the United States and South Korea are focusing on "the big deal."

"The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," Trump added.

U.S. experts pointed out that both Washington and Seoul have been politically invested much in making sure their dialogues with Pyongyang could continue, despite the current impasse.

"Moon is very invested in making sure that neither side gets frustrated at the lack of progress and decides to give up on the negotiation process," Jenna Gibson, a Korea expert at the University of Chicago, told Xinhua.

"Moon Jae-in in particular has put a lot of time, energy, and personal reputation into making an agreement work, so he will certainly not give up easily and will keep trying to make sure the U.S. is on board with continued negotiations," she said.

Noting that Washington and South Korea both want to denuclearize the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Gibson said that yet their biggest difference is "how likely the two countries think that goal is - and how much leeway they're willing to give the North Koreans as they work toward that goal."

While Moon called for offering Pyongyang economic concession, Trump said it isn't "the right time" to do so.

Troy Stangarone, senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Washington-based non-profit Korea Economic Institute, also told Xinhua that "what the United States and South Korea would like to see is a roadmap that lays out how the dismantlement of North Korea's weapons programs would take place."

"Within that roadmap there is space for sanctions relief as dismantlement activities take place, which should address North Korea's concern for corresponding measures," he added.

As Trump has clearly denied the possibility of removing now the sanctions against Pyongyang, Gibson said, "It is heartening to hear that Trump is still willing to pursue smaller deals that could be more achievable in the short term and will help set the stage for that important bigger deal."

The experts also argued that the reopening of major inter-Korean economic projects should come after more concrete progress is made in the U.S.-DPRK negotiations, even if just on smaller issues.

"The problem is that there hasn't been enough progress on those smaller negotiations, so it's natural to propose something like economic projects that could possibly jump start further positive movement," said Gibson.

NEW TRUMP-KIM MEETING PENDING SUBSTANTIAL CHANGES

Trump said it is possible to have a third meeting with the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un, while Moon said that it is his important task "to maintain the momentum of dialogue" and "express the positive outlook" of a new Trump-Kim meeting to the international community.

However, U.S. experts said such a meeting is unlikely to happen before all parties concerned display greater caution and substantial agreement is made between Washington and Pyongyang.

"I honestly hope the two sides take time to work through these thorny issues rather than just falling back into another summit meeting," Gibson said.

"Without actually taking the time to make sure they were ready to actually agree on anything once the two leaders got to the table, I can't imagine a third summit would turn out any different at this point," she said.

For his part, Stangarone pointed out that "Trump was always unlikely to make a full down payment on North Korea's nuclear program without the promise of North Korea fully dismantling the program."

"Unless something substantively changes, a third summit in the near future seems unlikely," he said, adding that it need to "begin bridging the gaps" between the United States and the DPRK.

"They don't need to solve everything, but they need to narrow the space to give Trump and Kim an opportunity to find a resolution," the expert added, otherwise, "a third summit would risk repeating the outcome from Hanoi."

Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also told Xinhua that a third Trump-Kim meeting "would be unwise in the absence of significant new developments."

Washington and Pyongyang "are not on the same page and have not been for quite a while," Paal noted.

Nevertheless, Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institution's senior fellow, told Xinhua that "the big question is in fact whether Moon will stay tough enough on sanctions to make the strategy viable and send Kim Jong Un clear messages -- and will Trump be flexible enough on the scale and scope of any deal to make something short of complete denuclearization possible, should reasonable terms be offered?"

Holding a view that a full denuclearization is not possible, O'Hanlon said, "I don't expect today's summit to resolve that for good but am glad they are talking!"

(Matthew Rusling also contributed to the story.)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:02:52|Editor: Xiaoxia

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SUVA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Fiji's Ministry of Agriculture's Research Stations will increase production of selected planting materials with contracted farmers to ensure consistent supply of planting materials.

Fiji's Minister for Agriculture, Rural and Maritime Development, Waterways and Environment Mahendra Reddy gave this assurance during his visit to the Naduruloulou Research Station in Nausori, a 30-minute drive away from Suva, the capital of Fiji, on Friday.

"We will continue our agricultural research to release high yielding varieties. Farm-level productivity is quite low and one of the factors is low yielding traditional varieties. We will continue to do this over time, given a particular variety builds susceptibility to pests and diseases thus needing replacement."

Reddy said the ministry was also organizing farm land to raise seeds and seedlings to improve their production, with the development of an integrated production system focusing on promotion of cover crops, green manure, nitrogen fixing plants and pulses; fruit tree orchard package of practices; and fertilizer/pesticide management.

Plans are also in place for the implementation of management practices to control the outbreak of pests and diseases which would be coordinated by the Ministry of Agriculture's Research Division through the use of recommended integrated pest management to reduce its population to a more manageable level.

Reddy said farmers' training would also be conducted in all geographical divisions by the Ministry of Agriculture Research officers to help familiarize farmers with the best practices.

Reddy is currently on a two-day tour around Viti Levu, the main island in Fiji, meeting with livestock and crop farmers while also resolving agricultural and waterways issues.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:12:58|Editor: zh

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QINGDAO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China's unmanned submersible "Hailong III" has collected various biological and geological samples in the southwest Indian Ocean.

The First Institute of Oceanography said Thursday that Hailong III, carried by its mothership Dayang Yihao (Ocean No.1), is executing its 52nd voyage in the southwest India Ocean.

The submersible recently completed three dive operations in a hydrothermal area of the mid-ocean ridge in four days, with the longest near-bottom observation lasting six hours.

The institute said samples including macrobenthos, clean seawater, deep-sea fish and deep-sea sediments had been collected. A variety of parameter measurements have also been carried out.

Scientists on board said that the submersible had a stable performance, and samples collected during the voyage could help study the ecosystem of the mid-ocean ridge of Indian Ocean.

The remote operated vehicle was developed by Shanghai Jiaotong University.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:18:01|Editor: Xiaoxia

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CANBERRA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned Friday that Australians face a 387 billion Australian dollars (275.8 billion U.S. dollar) tax burden over the decade if he loses May's election.

According to figures released by the Treasury on Friday, the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP)'s tax plan would result in Australians paying 387 billion Australian dollars more in taxes over a decade than the plan put forward by the incumbent Liberal-National party coalition (LNP).

The ALP has ruled out supporting 230 billion Australian dollars (163.9 billion U.S. dollars) worth of personal tax cuts proposed by the LNP if elected in May while other proposed changes will cost Australians about 157 billion Australian dollars (111.9 billion U.S. dollars), according to the Treasury.

"They want to put 387 billion dollars worth of higher taxes on the economy which will just bring us down, hold every Australian back, in every job, in every home right across the country," Morrison said in an appearance on Network Nine television on Friday.

"That much tax slows the economy and holds us all back."

"That's why the strong economy we have been running is what the choice is for, going forward. To keep that strong economy or have a weaker economy under (ALP leader) Bill Shorten."

The LNP's campaign in the lead-up to the election on May 18 has been based on delivering economic stability and personal tax cuts while the ALP is promising greater investment in education, healthcare and infrastructure.

However, Treasury's analysis of Labor's economic agenda was dismissed by Shorten.

"They are not correct," he said. "That's a bucket of lies. Whenever Labor closes a tax loophole the Liberals call it a tax increase."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:18:03|Editor: Li Xia

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A visitor takes photos at the booth of Zhejiang Dahua Technology at the International Security Conference and Exposition (ISC West) in Las Vegas, the United States, April 10, 2019. Chinese security companies are seeking more trade opportunities in the American market at the ongoing International Security Conference and Exposition here. A total of 154 Chinese companies, from sectors including surveillance, smart homes, access control and border security, are participating in the annual show from Wednesday to Friday, the largest security industry trade show in the United States. (Xinhua/Li Ying)

LAS VEGAS, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese security companies are seeking more trade opportunities in the American market at the ongoing International Security Conference and Exposition, or ISC West, here.

A total of 154 Chinese companies, from sectors including surveillance, smart homes, access control and border security, are participating in the annual show from Wednesday to Friday, the largest security industry trade show in the United States.

Liu Chun, vice president of China Chamber of Commerce for Import and Export of Machinery and Electronic Products (CCCME), told Xinhua it is the 18th time that the organization has organized such event.

"We value the huge security market in the United States, and hope to take the opportunity of the ISC West to help Chinese enterprises to explore more businesses with American partners," Liu said.

Through face-to-face exchanges, the Chinese companies could better understand the requirements of their American clients, and improve their products accordingly, she added.

During the exhibition, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the CCCME held a China Brand Show to introduce the latest Chinese security products and technology to foreign purchasers, which serves as a platform for Chinese companies to negotiate business with U.S. partners.

Jack Mao, CEO of Hisource, a high-tech manufacturer of PoE Switch from China, told Xinhua the company has cooperated with some U.S. enterprises in the areas of smart homes, smart cities and the Internet of Things since 2018. Hisource expects to further explore global markets, and improve international competitiveness of its products.

George Bonnett, CEO of Alarm Men, a company based in Visalia, California, told Xinhua the company is interested in buying Chinese security products, and has contacted two Chinese companies during the trade show.

The Chinese products have good quality, good techniques and good prices, and are very competitive, he said.

The ISC West 2019 attracted over 1,000 global exhibitors and brands in the security industry and over 30,000 security professionals. They focused on best practices, new technologies, and innovations on security and safety.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:23:07|Editor: zh

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CHANGSHA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A new air route will be launched between the city of Changsha in central China's Hunan Province and Bandar Seri Begawan, capital of Brunei, on April 16.

The route will use an Airbus A320 aircraft and be operated by Royal Brunei Airlines.

One round trip flight is scheduled from April 16 to June 28. The outbound flight leaves Changsha at 00:30 a.m. Beijing time and arrives in Bandar Seri Begawan at 4:30 a.m. local time on Wednesday. The return flight departs Bandar Seri Begawan at 7:40 p.m. local time and arrives in Changsha at 11:30 p.m. Beijing time on Tuesday. Another round trip flight will be added from June 29.

With the opening of the new route, Changsha will have direct flights to 27 cities in all ASEAN countries. The flights will serve as a bridge for cooperation between central China and ASEAN countries in trade and investment, cultural exchanges, tourism and other fields.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:23:09|Editor: zh

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ZHENGZHOU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A new air route will be launched between the city of Zhengzhou in central China's Henan Province and Mandalay in Myanmar on April 30.

The route will be operated by China Express Airlines with round-trip flights scheduled every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, using an Airbus A320 aircraft.

The outbound flight leaves Zhengzhou at 8:55 p.m. Beijing time and arrives in Mandalay at 11:05 p.m. local time. The return flight departs Mandalay at 1 a.m. local time and arrives in Zhengzhou at 6 a.m. Beijing time.

The new route will make it more convenient for passengers in central China to travel to Myanmar and expand Zhengzhou's flight destinations along the Belt and Road.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:28:15|Editor: zh

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GUIYANG, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Enrollment has started for the 2019 Self-Driving Global Challenge to be held in May in southwest China's Guizhou Province, according to the organizing committee.

The finals of the challenge will be held during the China International Big Data Industry Expo from May 26 to 29 in Guiyang, the provincial capital.

Driverless vehicles provided by the organizers will be loaded with algorithms developed by the candidates to compete with human drivers in 16 tasks such as pedestrian avoidance, S-turn driving, car following and automatic parking.

Top players and teams will receive venture capital support and awards from enterprises, according to the official website of the Expo.

At last year's competition, more than 100 of the world's top engineers took part in the driverless challenge, including students from world-renowned institutions, as well as members of the world's top driverless vehicle teams and innovation centers.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:33:24|Editor: Xiang Bo

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A logistics robot is on display during the 5th China (Beijing) International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing, capital of China, May 28, 2018. (Xinhua/Zhang Chenlin)

BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- At the Beijing Capital International Airport, maintenance workers were busy conducting a thorough check on the tires, engines and body of an Air France airplane, before giving it a go-ahead for a flight to Paris two hours later.

They are employees of Beijing Line Maintenance International, China's first foreign-controlled joint venture in aircraft maintenance, which was launched by Air France Industries KLM Engineering and Maintenance and Beijing General Aviation Co Ltd (BGAC) in 2017.

"The key technology, personnel and management of the joint venture all come from the European side," said Li Wei, vice general-manager of the joint venture. "A foreign-controlled joint venture has given full play to foreign expertise in management and technology."

Air France-KLM, a major global air transport player, entered the Chinese market after establishing a repair workshop in the 1990s. But over the years, it has struggled to find a local partner to expand its business in the country, partly due to China's restrictions on foreign capital.

After the central government allowed Beijing to pilot policies of opening the service industry wider in 2015, Air France-KLM jumped on the opportunity and partnered with BGAC to found the joint venture two years later.

Last year, the joint venture provided 1,400 maintenance services for four foreign airliners, compared with more than 600 in 2017.

"We enjoy the same policy on taxes and talent recruitment as domestic firms, which helped the growth of our business," Li said. "This year, we plan to start business in the new airport in Daxing district."

In recent years, a growing number of foreign-funded firms have benefited from the pilot program to settle in Beijing. In 2018, the world's three major rating agencies -- Fitch Ratings, S&P Global and Moody's -- registered wholly-owned subsidiaries in the capital.

"The service industry has become more open, attractive and competitive," said Sun Yao, deputy director with the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau.

With the widening opening-up measures, Beijing's service sector has been contributing more to the capital's economic growth.

In 2018, the sector's value-added output accounted for 81 percent of local GDP, up 3.1 percentage points on 2014. Last year, Beijing's service trade grew about 10 percent year on year.

Building on the experience from the pilot program starting in 2015, Beijing is well-positioned to pursuit all-round opening up and high-quality economic development.

In January this year, the central government approved another three-year pilot program for Beijing to continue opening up its service sector wider to the world.

The capital should intensify efforts to streamline administration, delegate power to lower levels and improve regulation and services, seek to open the service sector wider, and create a sound business environment, the State Council said in a statement.

According to the pilot program, market access to the Beijing's service sector will be relaxed in fields including leasing and business services, information technology services and financial services.

The municipal government is encouraged to take bold measures to gain a more replicable experience for opening up the service sector and developing an open economy.

The new round of opening-up policy and widening market entry in the service sector has encouraged more foreign firms to invest in Beijing.

In March, Bank of Beijing said it planned to join hands with ING Bank N.V. to invest 3 billion yuan (447 million U.S. dollars) in setting up a banking joint venture, in which ING Bank would hold a 51 percent stake.

The joint venture will gain experience from ING Bank's direct banking service and take advantage of financial technology to build itself into a new digital banking brand.

Bank of Beijing said it would strive to make the joint venture a model in implementing China's major opening-up policies for the financial sector.

Similar efforts in major Chinese cities to relax market entry rules for foreign capital in the service sector have made the country an increasingly attractive destination for foreign investment.

In 2018, China advanced to a global ranking of 46 in terms of ease of doing business, up from 78 in 2017, according to a World Bank Group report.

(Video editor: Liu Xiaorui)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:43:32|Editor: zh

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China's foreign trade of goods climbed 3.7 percent year on year in the first quarter to 7.01 trillion yuan (1.04 trillion U.S. dollars), customs data showed Friday.

Exports increased by 6.7 percent year on year to 3.77 trillion yuan in the first three months, while imports went up by 0.3 percent to 3.24 trillion yuan, the General Administration of Customs said.
London Metropolitan police said they had a duty to execute a warrant for his breach of bail conditions more than seven years ago, and they were "invited into the embassy by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum." A police statement said he was "further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities."

Assange, who took refuge in the embassy in 2012 while on bail in Britain over sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden, had become an increasingly unwelcome guest. Last month, Assange's internet access was cut off and he was forbidden from receiving visitors.

Britain's Home Secretary, Sajid Javid tweeted shorty after the arrest, "Nearly seven years after entering the Ecuadorian embassy, I can confirm Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK." He added, "No one is above the law."

British officials say the United States submitted a formal extradition request for Julian Assange, who was arrested in London by British police after officers were invited into the embassy of Ecuador to detain the WikiLeaks founder.

The 47-year-old Assange, sporting a unkempt white beard, waving a finger and shouting, was seen being carried out of the embassy by seven plain-clothes police officers and hauled into a police van.

Assange fled to the Ecuadorian Embassy while he was on bail as his lawyers mounted a legal action aimed at preventing him from being extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations. He claimed if deported to Sweden, the United States would seek his extradition to face charges relating to WikiLeaks's publication of hundreds of thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and other classified documents.

U.S. State and Justice Department officials have never officially confirmed Assange has been charged with any offenses. But in November a clerical error in the court filing of a document in a case unrelated to his suggested criminal charges may have have been prepared. Legal analysts said the error was likely caused by prosecutors copying and pasting from sealed documents.

Rumors of Ecuador's likely withdrawal of asylum circulated last week. WikiLeaks claimed a senior source in Ecuador's state department had warned the hacking organization Assange would be evicted from the embassy. Ecuador's minister of foreign affairs Jose Valencia denied the claim.

Behind the scenes, British, U.S. and Ecuadorian diplomats have been in negotiations. Britain and Ecuador sought assurances from Washington that if Assange stands trial in the United States he won't face the death penalty, says an official privy to the discussions.

Following Assange's arrest, Britain's Europe minister Alan Duncan said, "It is absolutely right that Assange will face justice" Duncan acknowledged there had been "extensive dialogue" about Assange's fate leading up to the arrest.

Ecuador President Lenin Moreno tweeted, "In a sovereign decision Ecuador withdrew the asylum status to Julian Assange after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols."

The Ecuadorian leader had been deeply offended, say his aides, by WikiLeaks posting leaked Vatican documents. Key people in WikiLeaks visited Assange before and after the posting of the Vatican documents, Moreno complained.

Last October, Ecuador's leader ordered Assange to refrain from making "political statements" that jeopardized Ecuador's relations with other countries. Assange then sued in the Ecuadorian courts for a breach of his human rights, but his legal action failed. In December, he was required pay for his food, medical care, and laundry.

In a formal statement the Ecuadorian leader said, "I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable."

WikiLeaks complained on Twitter, "Ecuador has illegally [sic] terminated Assange political asylum in violation of international law."

Assange arrest will likely trigger weeks and possibly months of court action, if the United States pursues his extradition. Two years ago Sweden rescinded its arrest warrant, but Swedish prosecutors have said that the case remained open.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 14:48:41|Editor: Xiaoxia

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CANBERRA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Peak groups representing Australia's doctors have called for a 1-billion-Australian dollar (712.5 million U.S. dollar) investment in general practice (GP) care.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) and Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) have both issued their demands from both major parties for May's general election, topped by greater investment in Medicare, Australia's publicly-funded universal healthcare system.

"Right at the top of the list is the call for significant investment in general practice," Tony Bartone, president of the AMA, told News Corp Australia on Friday.

Harry Nespolon, president of the RACGP, said, "The last thing I ever want to do is turn away a patient because they cannot afford it, but if something doesn't change soon, that is going to become a reality."

Bill Shorten, leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), has been critical of the incumbent Liberal-National party coalition (LNP)'s handling of Medicare.

The ALP has not announced its broad Medicare policy for this election but has promised to inject 2.3 billion Australian dollars into the scheme to fund cancer treatment for Australians.

"We want to make sure that our frontline of healthcare services, our GPs, are properly resourced," Shorten said while launching his campaign on Thursday.

Australians will head to the polls for the election on May 18.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:03:48|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Angang Steel Co., Ltd., or Ansteel, a listed arm of major Chinese steel producer Anshan Iron and Steel Group, predicted an annual net profit decline of 78.22 percent for the first quarter of 2019.

In a filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, Ansteel, listed both in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, said it expected to make a net profit of 417 million yuan (62.1 million U.S. dollars) in the first three months of the year.

The Liaoning-based company said the profit decline was due to the decreasing steel product price and the rising prices of coal and iron ore.

In its annual financial results released in March, the company said its net profit attributable to shareholders reached 7.95 billion yuan in 2018, up 19.8 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, the company's revenue increased by 14.7 percent year-on-year to around 105.16 billion yuan last year.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:08:50|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Listed companies in China saw robust growth in research and development (R&D) investment in 2018, according to financial data analyzer Wind.

A total of 1,178 listed companies disclosed their 2018 R&D information by Thursday, spending 384.7 billion yuan (about 57.2 billion U. S. dollars) last year, up 23.72 percent year on year.

About 81 percent of the companies invested more in R&D than in 2017, and 85 companies doubled their R&D expenditures.

Companies in oil exploration, infrastructure and electronics manufacturing led R&D spending, while investment in emerging industries like computers, semiconductors and biomedicine accounted for a relatively larger proportion of revenue.

Increases in R&D personnel became one of the main drivers for the substantial increase in R&D investment, with the number of R&D professionals in 728 listed companies taking up more than 10 percent of their total employees.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:08:52|Editor: Li Xia

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SAN JOSE, April 11 (Xinhua) -- Construction of a China-sponsored drinking water project is underway in Costa Rica and will help meet the needs of over 26,000 residents in the cities of Canas and Bebedero.

During the project's inauguration with the laying of the first pipeline on Wednesday in Canas, some 120 km away from the capital San Jose, Costa Rica's presidential chief of staff Rodolfo Piza stressed the significance of local access to clean, safe drinking water after years of severe drought.

"This project has been highly anticipated by an important community in our country, Canas and Bebedero, which has for many years been awaiting development projects, but above all, better health via potable water," Piza told Xinhua.

Piza thanked the Chinese government and people, saying the project will not only improve the well being of the local people, but also strengthen bilateral ties.

"Without a doubt, this is very important for the Costa Rican government," he added.

Chinese Ambassador to Costa Rica, Tang Heng, said, "I think that with this project we are going to promote even further the friendly ties between China and Costa Rica."

Yamileth Astorga, head of the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers (AYA), said a drought since 2015 has aggravated the pressure on the local water supply network which relies mainly on digging wells. Local wells are often abandoned due to a high arsenic content in the water, he added.

"The project is expected to take 18 months (but) at the last meeting we had with the head of the company a few days ago, they told us they believe they can do it in less time," said Astorga.

With an estimated cost of 16 million U.S. dollars, the project is set to channel water from a reservoir in Sandillal de Canas. It involves building a water intake pumping station, a treatment plant and 14 km-long water pipelines, said Jiang Zhe, general manger of the municipal engineering branch of the China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group, the project contractor.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:14:01|Editor: xuxin

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KABUL, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A total of 18 Taliban militants have been killed in a special operation in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province, the country's intelligence agency National Directorate of Security (NDS) said on Friday.

"Up to 18 members of Taliban terrorist group had been killed in an operation by the National Security Directorate (NDS) Special Operations Forces in Uruzgan," the agency said in a statement.

Huge amount of heavy and light weapons, ammunition and military uniform were seized in the raid, said the statement.

The Taliban militant group has yet to respond to the report.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:24:06|Editor: xuxin

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MANDERA, Kenya, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Suspected al-Shabab militants on Friday morning abducted two Cuban doctors in Mandera town near Kenyan borders with Somalia and Ethiopia, the police said.

Security officers and local government officials confirmed the incident, saying the militants also shot dead a police officer during an ambush as he was guarding the two Cuban doctors.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:34:08|Editor: xuxin

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CANBERRA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Large quantities of carfentanil, a drug 10,000 times more powerful than morphine, is being sold to Australians on dark websites, a study commissioned by the government has found.

The report, released on Friday, was compiled by Australian National University (ANU) researchers on behalf of the Australian Institute of Criminology.

It found that the substance was being used by criminals to lace other illicit substances such as heroin and methamphetamine to increase their potency.

Carfentanil was initially developed for use in large animals such as elephants because of its potency.

News Corp Australia reported on Friday that Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has been briefed on the rise of the substance and is considering a policy response.

Roderic Broadhurst, director of the ANU Cybercrime Observatory, said his team was "shocked" by the prevalence of carfentanil in Australia.

"We believe Australians are buying this and we believe some Australian vendors are active in these darknet markets," he told News Corp.

"There is a lot of concern within government about how the drug markets are changing and the darknet is playing a larger role ... they understand the gravity of this."

According to a report released by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) in October 2018, 11 percent of Australians aged 14 and over had used opioids for illicit or non-medical purposes as of 2016.

The number of hospitalizations due to opioid poisoning rose 25 percent between 2007-08 and 2016-17.

Tony Bartone, president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), described the data as "extremely alarming and extremely concerning."

"Opioid addiction is a significant problem. It is on the rise and these increased darknet sales will only make things exceedingly worse. Measures that can dry up or block this route of entry need to be looked as a matter of expediency," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:54:58|Editor: Li Xia

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Migrant birds fly over the wetland in Momoge National Nature Reserve in Zhenlai County, Baicheng City of northeast China's Jilin Province, April 11, 2019. In recent days, the nature reserve greets its peak season for migrant birds to return to the north. The number of white cranes which rest here every spring and autumn increases from 200 plus to over 3000 in recent years. (Xinhua/Zhang Nan)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 15:44:18|Editor: Li Xia

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NEW YORK, April 12 (Xinhua) -- More countries should take China's lead in transitioning toward cleaner sources of energy, experts have said at a U.S. energy summit here.

China's efforts in energy transition "are commendable," Sunita Narain, director general of the Center for Science and Environment, an India-based public interest research and advocacy organization, told Xinhua Wednesday on the sidelines of the 2019 Columbia Global Energy Summit hosted by Columbia University in New York City.

"China is showing the kind of leadership" needed on this front, Narain added.

While praising China for its commitment to energy transition -- a long-term structural change in energy systems mainly from fossil-based to zero-carbon -- experts also called on the international community to work together to address climate change and foster sustainable development.

SIGNIFICANT MOVES

"China is looking ahead. China is doing all it can, even though it is still a developing country with its per capita emissions on carbon dioxide lower than other parts of the world," said Narain.

Her remarks were echoed by other experts, who applauded China for its significant efforts in developing clean energy and tapping sources of renewable energy.

"China has played a very important role in that by concentrating a lot of investment and developing its expertise in the manufacturing of solar panels, which has resulted in solar-generated electricity becoming much cheaper," Theodore Roosevelt IV, managing director at New York-based Barclays Investment Bank, told Xinhua.

In addition to China's immense progress on low carbon technologies, Roosevelt IV also spoke highly of its policies on emissions reduction.

"China is willing to look at different policy options" instead of seeking growth at the expense of the environment, he said.

Thanks to increased investment in green energy, China's carbon intensity, or the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic products (GDP), declined by 46 percent in 2017 from 2005 levels, meeting the target ahead of schedule for a 40-45 percent drop by 2020, according to the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

The country is also a leader in new energy vehicles (NEVs), with many regions across the country moving to replace their traditional gasoline-powered buses and taxis with green-energy vehicles.

It has encouraged the use of NEVs to ease pressure on the environment by offering tax exemptions and purchase subsidies.

For years, the country has remained the world's largest NEV market, with around 1.26 million cars sold in 2018.

GLOBAL COLLABORATION

China's policy shift from energy security to environmental security is helping to change the world's energy landscape in a more sustainable way, Xavier Chen, president of the Beijing Energy Club and chief strategy officer of Chinese private energy company the ENN Group, said during the summit.

Chen called on countries to work together to accelerate a global transition in energy for the greater common good.

In the eyes of Roosevelt IV, China's green efforts showed an "extensive and profound knowledge about climate change" from a policy perspective.

He also called on other major countries including the United States to "take the threat of climate change seriously."

In 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed on the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change, to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a way to keep the rise in the average temperature no higher than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

In 2017, the United States announced its decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.

Narain urged joint efforts of the international community to tackle climate change, adding that she expects to see more U.S. engagement on the issue.

Development, energy security and environmental sustainability are all "imperative," she said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 16:35:06|Editor: Li Xia

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XINING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- More than 1,000 domestic and foreign companies are attending a tourism festival, which opened Friday in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

The Qinghai culture and tourism festival will last from April to July. The Northwest China Tourism Marketing Conference, lasting from Friday to Sunday, is a major part of the festival.

With an exhibition hall covering 28,000 square meters, the conference has attracted participation of 1,268 companies in cultural and tourism sectors from across China and nearly 30 countries and regions.

More than 5,000 people are expected to join the conference, and over 10,000 contracts will be signed, according to the organizers.

Besides the conference, a series of forums will also be held during the festival.

The festival is jointly hosted by departments including Qinghai culture and tourism department, Qinghai provincial bureau of press, publication, radio, film and television and Qinghai provincial bureau of sport.

Qinghai boasts a broad nature reserve including pastures, snow mountains and Gobi desert. Qinghai Lake, the largest inland saltwater lake in China, is a major tourist attraction.

The province also has a number of Tibetan-inhabited areas, attracting tourists with their ethnic culture.
Dutch ASML said on Thursday it had been the victim of corporate espionage in 2015 involving employees from countries including China but said it had not been the target of any "national conspiracy."

ASML said the perpetrators took "large files" on memory sticks from its Silicon Valley software subsidiary that develops software for machine optimization. It said it had since taken action to make such theft much more difficult.

Following publication of a story in Dutch daily newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) that said ASML had been struck by Chinese espionage, the company took issue with that label. "The suggestion that we were somehow victim of a national conspiracy is wrong," CEO Peter Wennink said in a statement.

"We resent any suggestion that this event should have any implication for ASML conducting business in China. Some of the individuals (involved) happened to be Chinese nationals," he added.

The Dutch company welcomed a Sino-European agreement earlier this week, which promised that Beijing would no longer force foreign companies to share sensitive know-how when operating in China.

"Can we prudently do business in China? Yes of course. This was a rotten apple," ASML said in an earlier statement.

ASML is the dominant maker of lithography systems, used to trace out the circuitry of semiconductor chips. Its sales to China more than doubled to 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in 2018 as Beijing drives growth of its domestic semiconductor industry, now accounting for about a sixth of ASML's total sales.


Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 16:40:10|Editor: xuxin

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ULAN BATOR, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia has opened a training and information center at the headquarters of the country's National Police Agency (NPA), in an effort to combat drug-related crimes, local media reported Friday.

The center aims to improve people's knowledge of drug risks, reduce drug-related crimes, and prevent drug addiction in youth by organizing related trainings and providing people with information they need, Mongolian state television quoted the NPA as saying.

The number of drug-related crimes has been increasing significantly in Mongolia in recent years, the NPA said, noting that the Mongolian police have arrested 130 people linked to 67 drug-related crimes so far this year. More than 80 percent of the offenders are young people aged 18-35.

A total of 199 drug-related criminal cases were registered across Mongolia in 2018, up more than 30 percent from the previous year.

A lack of knowledge about drugs, curiosity, an attempt to make easy money and weak law enforcement are the main factors in the growth of drug-related crimes, the NPA said.

According to Mongolian law, a person who is found guilty of trafficking drugs faces at least two years in prison.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 16:55:28|Editor: Li Xia

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A visitor (C) learns the art of rubbing during the Yinshan Rock Carving Art exhibition in Athens, Greece on April 11, 2019. The Yinshan Rock Carving Art exhibition from China was launched at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation here on Thursday to introduce the primitive art of petroglyph to Greek audience. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

ATHENS, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Yinshan Rock Carving Art exhibition from China was launched at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation here on Thursday to introduce the primitive art of petroglyph to a Greek audience.

The global exhibition, supported by the China National Arts Fund and organized by Shenyang Normal University, traveled to Greece from Italy to present a gem of China's prehistoric civilization.

Traced back to 30,000 years ago, Yinshan Rock Art demonstrates how the ancestors of various ethnic groups began to record their lives, express themselves and communicate feelings through rock carving.

In the Yin Mountains, which stretch from Inner Mongolia to northern Hebei province, the rock's surface has been incised, carved or abraded with over 10,000 ancient cliff rock paintings.

The exhibition includes more than 20 sets of rock carving fossil replicas and more than 20 rock carving fossil rubbings.

According to the Chinese delegation, the carving art pieces are dominated by scenes of hunting and feature a wide range of animals. Many of these species have disappeared from the region, but these paintings act as a testament to their presence.

"We hope to cooperate more in the long term with Greek culture experts and use this opportunity for more cultural exchange," said Zhang Peng from Shenyang Normal University in his opening speech.

Wang Chao, cultural attache of the Chinese Embassy in Greece, said that these paintings serve as a reminder of humankind's beginnings. "It's a treasure of ancient Chinese civilization that would bring the two nations closer," he said.

During the exhibition, visitors will have the opportunity to participate in workshops on rock carving and Chinese rubber stamps.

"We see works of art from the first artists who created engravings, which are among the best in the world," Mary Schina, painter and printmaker and distinguished professor emeritus at the Athens School of Fine Arts. "Humans first carved in the cliffs and then painted."

The exhibition runs through April 17.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 16:55:32|Editor: Li Xia

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GUIYANG, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in southwest China's Guizhou Province will relocate 480,000 people to more hospitable places by the end of June as part of its poverty-relief campaign.

The province plans to relocate a total of 1.88 million poor people living in harsh natural environment during the 13th five-year plan period (2016-2020).

By the end of March, 1.4 million people have already been relocated. Authorities have built 439,000 houses at 925 sites.

The province plans to finish the relocation target by the first half of the year.

As a mountainous and less developed province, Guizhou has undertaken to relocate one third of its poverty-stricken population, which represents about one-sixth of the disadvantaged people in China that need to be relocated.

China has set 2020 as the deadline to eradicate poverty. Guizhou lifted 1.2 million people out of poverty in 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 17:05:40|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono will pay an official visit to China from April 13 to 15, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang announced Friday in Beijing.

Lu said Kono's visit is at the invitation of the Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

During the visit, the two foreign ministers will hold the fifth high-level economic dialogue, Lu said.

The two sides will also jointly attend the opening ceremony of the "China-Japan Youth Exchange Promotion Year," according to the spokesperson.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 17:05:42|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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TOKYO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Tokyo District Court on Friday extended the detention of former Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn to April 22 to allow prosecutors to further investigate allegations of his financial misconduct.

Ghosn was arrested for a fourth time on April 4 on suspicion of aggravated breach of trust connected to the misuse of Nissan funds causing a 5-million-U.S. dollar loss to the automaker.

He was supposed to be held until Sunday, prior to the court extending his detention.

Ghosn's legal team on Friday appealed the Tokyo court's decision to extend his detention, with his lawyer Junichiro Hironaka previous likening the judicial system in Japan, which allows for the lengthy detention of suspects, to "hostage justice."

The Brazilian-born businessman who also has French and Lebanese nationality, was first arrested on Nov. 19 on charges of under-reporting his remuneration for years in Nissan's securities reports, and went on to spent 108 days in detention.

He has also been indicted on another charge of aggravated breach of trust connected to allegations he transferred private investment losses to Nissan.

On Thursday, Ghosn's wife Carole was questioned by prosecutors in the Tokyo court, in connection to the latest allegations of the misuse of Nissan's funds, which may have been sent to a company she owns and used for personal reasons.

Her company, based in the British Virgin Islands, a known tax haven, is thought to have possibly received the funds which were used in part to purchase a luxury yacht worth 1.6 billion yen (14 million U.S. dollars) for use by the Ghosn family.

Ghosn served as the automaker's chief executive officer following Nissan's capital alliance made with Renault and as Nissan president from 2000 and its chief executive officer from 2001 to 2017.

Nissan Motor Co. shareholders on Monday removed Ghosn from its board, severing a near two-decade relationship with the once-feted auto executive who is widely credit for rescuing Nissan from near-bankruptcy in 1999.

He was also dismissed as chairman of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. and replaced as chairman of Renault SA after he tendered his resignation while in detention in Tokyo.

Renault SA and Mitsubishi Motors Corp., who comprise the Ghost-created alliance with Nissan, have said that Ghosn will step down as a director in June.

In a video message released Tuesday by his lawyers, Ghosn maintained his innocence and claimed that he had been the victim of a conspiracy at Nissan involving other executives.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 17:10:46|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China's express delivery industry saw rapid growth last year, with double-digit increases in business revenue and volume, data from the State Post Bureau (SPB) showed.

Chinese delivery firms handled a total of 50.71 billion parcels in 2018, up 26.6 percent from the previous year, while total business revenue grew 21.8 percent year-on-year to 603.84 billion yuan (around 89.83 billion U.S. dollars), according to the SPB.

The country has remained the world's largest express delivery market for five consecutive years, accounting for more than half of the global express delivery market, the bureau said.

Meanwhile, the industry injected impetus into the growth of the Chinese economy, making more contributions to GDP and employment last year.

Express delivery services have become an inseparable part of Chinese life, with one in five people in China enjoying the services every day, SPB data showed.

China's express delivery market maintains speedy growth, with its structure and quality being continuously improved, said Liu Jiang, a researcher with the Development & Research Center of the SPB, adding that it provides momentum for the stable and positive development of the macro economy.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 17:25:55|Editor: Shi Yinglun

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VIENTIANE, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The development of Laos' power transmission grid will receive boost from private investment after the Lao Ministry of Energy and Mines and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) signed a cooperation agreement.

The agreement was inked on Thursday by Lao Deputy Minister of Energy and Mines Thongphat Inthavong, and IFC manager for Infrastructure and Natural Resources, East Asia and the Pacific Lubomir Varbanov, local daily Vientiane Times reported on Friday.

The memorandum of understanding (MoU) aims to strengthen and extend the country's energy sector by mobilizing private investment in transmission infrastructure. This will also help to improve the domestic grid to enhance electricity service provision as well as promote power exports, contributing to the country's economic growth and shared prosperity.

To reduce the burden on limited public finances, which could be deployed into other critical sectors of Lao economy, the IFC will assist Lao ministry to assess a range of transmission projects, identify a suitable pilot project, and help structure and attract private sector investment in the project.

As part of the MoU, the IFC, in partnership with state-run Electricite du Laos (EDL), will conduct a pre-feasibility study on a 500 kV transmission line to export power from Laos to Vietnam. It will also help the Lao ministry identify and assess other suitable lines for private investment.

It is hoped that if this project is successfully implemented, it could be a model for other essential transmission projects needed to upgrade and extend the country's power system.

Speaking at the MoU signing ceremony, Thongphat said, "To use our country's abundant energy supply, we need to develop good quality transmission infrastructure."

He said the ministry was keen to partner with the private sector to deliver this, especially when the government is focusing on exporting electricity to boost economic growth.

Varbanov said the project is expected to help the government attract private sector investment in transmission infrastructure, enabling EDL to save its budget for other development purposes.

The IFC has successfully partnered with many countries around the world and the same could be done in Laos with the project to begin in a couple of months after the MoU signing, Varbanov added.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 18:31:28|Editor: Li Xia

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JINAN, April 12 (Xinhua) -- An international peony conference began Friday in east China's Shandong Province.

The World Peony's Conference 2019 is being held in the city of Heze, with hundreds of varieties of peony flowers on display. Thousands of tourists, business people and flower experts have arrived in Heze to enjoy the event.

A major forum and four sub-forums will be held during the event, scheduled to last until Sunday. A peony industry expo will also be held.

It is the first international peony conference on such a big scale, and 17 famous experts from a variety of countries are in attendance, said Liu Hong, with the China Flower Association.

"The experts and authorities of related companies will discuss about peony growth and peony-related products at the conference," Liu said.

Heze was named by the China Flower Association as "capital of peony in China" in 2012. Currently, the city has 32,400 hectares of peony plantation, and churns out 25,000 tonnes of peony seed oil annually. Last year, output value of the peony industry exceeded 8 billon yuan (1.2 billion U.S. dollars) in the city.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 18:51:49|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday respectively sent congratulatory letters to the China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park on its 25th anniversary.

The Suzhou Industrial Park has introduced and absorbed international advanced technology and management experiences, implemented innovation-driven strategy and achieved a leap forward in development. It has played an important role in promoting mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Singapore, Li said in the letter.

The park should further optimize its business environment, do a greater job in advancing international economic and technical cooperation, continuously enhance its scientific and technological innovation capability to build a first class high-tech industrial park, Li said.

Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in the letter that the successful development of the Suzhou Industrial Park reflected close cooperation between China and Singapore at all levels, and he hoped the park would continue to play a pioneering role in promoting bilateral cooperation.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 18:51:51|Editor: xuxin

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NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Kenya's flag carrier airline Kenya Airways said Friday it has reached an agreement with American airline Delta Air Lines to activate its codeshare with Delta in the United States and Canada.

Kenya Airways chief executive officer Sebastian Mikosz said the partnership will enable both the business and leisure travelers to enjoy greater connectivity and efficiency in 11 U.S. cities and four Canadian cities.

"As part of our commitment to the New York route, we are proud to be a part of this partnership that will open up opportunities for our customers to access more destinations in North America through the John F. Kennedy airport," Mikosz said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

He said the Kenyan carrier will increase its frequency to New York from five days a week to seven days a week from June.

Kenya Airways in October 2018 launched direct flights between Nairobi and New York.
ANNECORDON/iStock(NEW YORK) -- Nearly 20 candidates are now crisscrossing the country to court voters in early primary states, including Rep. Eric Swalwell who declared that he was running for president this week. But despite being one of the early-poll front-runners, former Vice President Joe Biden is still sitting on the sidelines for now, while the party embraces some of the lesser-known contenders.



South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, for instance, out-raised several well-known Democratic candidates, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, according to an ABC News analysis of candidates' preliminary fundraising numbers from the first quarter of 2019.

A new Quinnipiac poll of California voters put Buttigieg in a tie for fourth place with Warren, with each earning 7 percent of the vote. It's early yet, though, so whether Buttigieg's bump in the polls will continue, or if another candidate will edge him out, remains to be seen.



Here's the weekly candidate roundup:

April 5-11, 2019

Stacey Abrams (D)



The Georgia Democrat continues to hover on the periphery of the 2020 field as she decides whether to run for president or Senate (or neither). When asked during an interview with CNN whether there are too many Democrats running for office, she said, "No, I think that's a false narrative."



"The point of a primary is to winnow down the number of people who are actually going to be viewed by the public and go through the fisticuffs of debate," she said.

Michael Bennet (D)



Days after announcing his prostate cancer diagnosis, the Colorado senator hit the campaign trail with back-to-back stops in early-voting states. The potential 2020 candidate returned to New Hampshire for his second visit over the weekend. He then jetted to Iowa on Monday for a meet and greet with the Polk County Democrats.

Joe Biden (D)



Despite capturing headlines last week over claims that he made several women uncomfortable by inappropriately touching them, Biden avoided controversy during a speech to accept a lifetime achievement award for his work supporting cancer access and affordability, particularly for African Americans.



At the close of his remarks, he told the crowd in Washington, "I am convinced, as we make significant progress in cancer, the only truly nonpartisan issue facing the country, that the rest of the nation is going to say, 'Dammit we can do anything. This is the United States of America.'"



With an announcement expected in the coming weeks, according to CNBC, Biden stopped at the University of Pennsylvania on Thursday for a panel discussion on the opioid epidemic. He will also deliver the eulogy for late U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings in Charleston, South Carolina, on Tuesday.



Cory Booker (D)



Booker, who formally announced his entry into the 2020 race in February, is hosting a hometown official kickoff on Saturday to launch his "Justice for All Tour" that will take him on a two-week trip across the country.



At the onset of the week, the New Jersey senator introduced a bill in the U.S. Senate to form a commission to study reparations. Booker told The Root that he "unequivocally supports" reparations for black people. His bill is a companion to HR 40, introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in the U.S. House.



"Since slavery in this country, we have had overt policies fueled by white supremacy and racism that have oppressed African Americans economically for generations," he said. "[The bill] will bring together the best minds to study the issue and propose solutions that will finally begin to right the economic scales of past harms and make sure we are a country where all dignity and humanity is affirmed."

Pete Buttigieg (D)



Earlier this week, Buttigieg traded barbs with Vice President Mike Pence after he criticized the former Indiana governor for his views on LGBTQ issues.



"If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade," he told a crowd at the LGBTQ Victory Fund National Champagne Brunch. "That's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand. That if you got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me -- your quarrel, sir, is with my creator."



Pence's press secretary responded to Buttigieg's comments, writing in a tweet, "The last time we recall Pence even mentioned @PeteButtigieg was in 2015, after news that Pete came out, Pence said: 'I hold Mayor Buttigieg in the highest personal regard. I see him as a dedicated public servant and a patriot.'"



The 37-year-old South Bend mayor, who announced his exploratory committee in January, is poised to officially launch his candidacy on Sunday at a rally in his hometown.

Julian Castro (D)



In the hours after President Donald Trump touched down in San Antonio for a fundraiser, Castro held an opposing rally in the city, according to the Corpus Christi Caller Times. Admonishing the president's hardline immigration policies, the former San Antonio mayor said: "People in San Antonio understand the value of immigrants. This is a city that has been built up by immigrants, and it's one of the most successful cities in the United States. It's a testament to the power of immigration over the generations."



The former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development travels to Iowa on Sunday for his third trip to the first-in-the-nation caucus state since announcing his candidacy.

John Delaney (D)



Delaney, one of the first candidates in the field, emphasized his centrist platform on the trail in Pennsylvania to cast himself as a "different kind" of Democrat, according to the The Daily Pennsylvanian.



On Sunday, Delaney makes his 17th trip to New Hampshire, meeting with voters in Bedford, Nashua, Laconia, Meredith, Conway, Lancaster and Deerfield.



Tulsi Gabbard (D)



Gabbard, who launched her campaign in January, hit a significant milestone on Wednesday: reaching the 65,000 donor threshold needed to qualify for the first Democratic debate.



"For a small campaign like ours without a big dollar donor network and a campaign that refuses PAC contributions, we knew we had to rely fully on the power of the people," she said in a video posted on her Twitter account. "We've been blown away."

Kirsten Gillibrand (D)



The New York senator contended with past congressional votes this week as she addressed her controversial record on immigration during her tenure in the U.S. House while also embracing her relationship with former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.



"When I was a member of Congress from upstate New York, I was really focused on the priorities of my district. When I became senator of the entire state, I recognized that some of my views really did need to change," Gillibrand said during a CNN town hall Tuesday. "They were not thoughtful enough and didn't care enough about people outside of the original upstate New York district that I represented. So, I learned."



GIllibrand also said in the town hall that Clinton has given her advice about her presidential campaign and is a "role model for all of us."



Hillary Clinton put that 65 million cracks in that highest and hardest glass ceiling. She's inspired the world by her bravery and courage," Gillibrand said. "Secretary Clinton is still a role model for all of us."

But despite her admiration for Clinton, Gillibrand said that she believes former President Bill Clinton should have resigned after the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

Kamala Harris (D)



Harris landed in third place in a new Quinnpiac University poll of her home state of California. The poll found that Harris had the support of 17 percent of Democrats and voters who lean Democratic, putting her behind Biden (26 percent) and Sanders (18 percent).



She also made her third trip to Iowa earlier this week -- focusing on the issue of raising teacher pay -- according to her campaign.

John Hickenlooper (D)



The former Colorado governor took the stage at the Building Trades Conference in Washington to court the pro-union crowd, urging that the country "needs a president" that supports unions.



In his speech, Hickenlooper focused on his private sector experience as a business owner, saying that it will complement his ambitions in the public sector.



"I didn't check off how many times I said you're fired," he told the audience, an apparent jab at President Trump. "I said you're hired.  That's why I am running for president."



Hickenlooper will also make six stops in Iowa starting Friday, during his second trip to the state.

Jay Inslee (D)



Inslee, who has staked his 2020 candidacy on climate change, reinforced his focus on the issue Wednesday while seeking to show his broader record beyond climate.



"We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are the last generation, literally, who can do something about it," the Washington governor said at a CNN town hall.



He also took aim at one key debate playing out across the 2020 field -- reforming Senate rules and the filibuster.

"We're not going to be able to get health care done, or anything else for that matter, unless we get rid of the filibuster," he said. "If the filibuster is still in Mitch McConnell's hand come 2021, all hope is sort of down the tubes to be able to do real significant reform."



Inslee travels to Iowa on Friday to visit community members who have been affected by recent flooding, according to his campaign.



Amy Klobuchar (D)



After announcing earlier this week that her campaign committee, Amy for America, raked in $5.2 million in the seven weeks after the launch of her campaign, Klobuchar stopped at a union conference in Washington to deliver a pitch to voters.



Politico reported that the Minnesota senator spoke about her grandfather saving money in a coffee can to send her father to college and her father's struggle with alcoholism later in life.



"I saw him sink to the lowest valleys because of his struggles. He got three DWIs, and it was on the third DWI that he finally had to go and get treatment," she said. "Because of his work, because of people that worked with him  just like people work with you, he was pursued by grace, and his life changed."



Terry McAuliffe (D)



Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who is still considering a run for the White House, signaled that he is closer to making a final decision.

"I have not made my decision yet. I am very close," he said at the Building Trades Conference in Washington. "If I do decide, I'll make a decision in a couple of weeks."



McAuliffe spent most of his speech Wednesday touting his record as governor of Virginia -- before underscoring his willingness to take on Trump.



"I think when you're looking for your next president, you have to look at the governors because they are CEOs," he said. "I just want you to remember one thing -- of all the candidates running, how many have actually wrestled a 280-pound, 8-foot alligator for a political contribution for $15,000."



"If I can wrestle an alligator, I can sure as hell wrestle Donald Trump," he said.



Wayne Messam (D)



After announcing his long-shot bid for president, Messam traveled to both South Carolina and Nevada, before heading to California on Thursday. The Democratic mayor of Miramar, Florida, kicked off a two-day visit in the state with a stop at the University of Southern California's College Democrats meeting.

Seth Moulton (D)



The Massachusetts Democrat embarked on a tour through the early primary states of New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa and, most recently, Nevada.



The former Marine, who is considering a 2020 bid, sought to bill himself as an "outsider" in his pitch to a core group of Nevada voters: veterans.



"I've always been an outsider," Moulton said, according to the Nevada Independent. "I've always been willing to take on the Washington establishment. That's been true in almost everything I've done, and I'm someone who doesn't have a long political history. But I am someone who believes in this country."



As Moulton inches closer to a decision, Politico reported that he is asking voters if he should run for higher office in digital advertisements running on social media.



Beto O'Rourke (D)



The presidential hopeful recently told the Texas Tribune that he had a change of heart about a controversial vote he cast in 2016 on offshore drilling.



His campaign spokesperson told the news outlet that his vote to allow federal dollars to fund oil and gas exploration studies in the eastern Gulf was about trying to "get off of our foreign reliance on resources in oil and gas that has caused so much foreign wars and American lives and troops and resources." But after speaking with voters on the campaign trail, the spokesperson said, O'Rourke "wouldn't cast the same vote today."



The former Texas congressman has been crisscrossing early voting states, bringing the style of his unsuccessful 2018 Senate bid against Ted Cruz to the rest of the country. After an 843-mile drive through Iowa, O'Rourke returns to South Carolina on Friday for his second trip since announcing his candidacy, for a three-day drive through Charleston, Clemson, Denmark, Beaufort and other communities.



Tim Ryan (D)



In a pro-worker pitch to a union audience at the Building Trade Conference, the newly announced 2020 candidate anchored his speech to his roots in the Midwest, pushing a populist message to the predominantly blue collar audience.



"The national emergency in the United States today is that the American dream for millions of Americans is on life support," he began. He also took a swipe at Trump, without mentioning him by name: "Put the phone down, let's get to work."



But the native Ohioan then turned his criticism inward, to his own party, suggesting that Democrats don't need a "savior" but someone who can "grind it." He also added that the party should "not be so hostile to the free enterprise system, not be hostile to business."



Bernie Sanders (D)



All eyes were on the two-time White House hopeful's tax returns this week. Sanders, a millionaire, told The New York Times he would release 10 years of tax returns by April 15. He refused to do so in 2016, which brought comparisons to President Trump.



Sanders also introduced a signature piece of legislation Wednesday: the Medicare for All Act. The bill, which he has introduced several times in the past decade, is far more sweeping than previous versions; it would provide government-run, Medicare-style health insurance for all Americans.



"Health care is a human right not a privilege," Sanders said. "Together, we are going to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America -- our great country being the only major nation on earth not to guarantee health care to all as a right. That is going to end."



Earlier this month, Sanders reported that his first-quarter fundraising numbers show that he pulled in an impressive $18.2 million. Sanders heads to several Midwest battleground states this weekend, holding rallies in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.



Howard Schultz (I)



The former Starbucks CEO, who has not formally entered the race, stopped in Johnson County, Kansas, this week to pitch running as an independent to voters.



Schultz said he plans to make a decision over the summer on running, according to the Kansas City Star. During his trip through Kansas, before continuing on to Arizona and Utah, he told a crowd at a local community college that "the extreme ideology of the Republicans and the extreme ideology of the Democrats do not represent the vast majority of Americans who are at the center of this country, and we have to unleash them."

Eric Swalwell (D)



The U.S. House member from California officially announced his candidacy on Monday on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.



"It's official," Swalwell said. "Boy, did it feel good to say that."



Swalwell also unveiled that gun control and student loan debt will be the centerpiece of his 2020 agenda on ABC's Good Morning America on Tuesday.



"I'm telling folks, keep your rifles, keep your shotguns, keep your pistols, we just want the most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the most dangerous people," Swalwell said. "Most gun owners believe that."



At his first event as a presidential candidate, Swalwell visited Broward County -- the site of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that killed 17 students and teachers.

"Throughout this campaign, there will be other issues that I talk about  health care, education and climate change," he said. "But my pledge to you tonight is that this issue comes first."



Elizabeth Warren (D)



Warren announced a $6 million fundraising haul in the first quarter from 135,000 donors. The average donation was $28.



While the Massachusetts senator bested two of her colleagues in the Senate -- outraising both Klobuchar and Booker by $1 million -- she still fell short of others like Sanders and Harris.



The announcement came on the heels of Warren releasing her 2018 federal tax returns, which revealed that she and her husband together made nearly $850,000 and paid about $231,000 in federal taxes after deductions on that income.



"I've put out 11 years of my tax returns because no one should ever have to guess who their elected officials are working for. Doing this should be law," Warren said in a statement.



Andrew Yang (D)



Yang told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos on This Week that his cornerstone universal basic income proposal -- which would provide every U.S. adult with a $1,000 guaranteed monthly income -- will prepare the U.S. economy for the 21st century.



"We have to solve the problems that got Donald Trump elected in 2016," Yang said. "And to me, the main driver of his victory was that we automated away 4 million manufacturing jobs in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the swing states he needed to win."



Yang said he's running to prepare the country for a future in which new technologies could cause a third of the nation's jobs to disappear.



Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The National Assembly has until next year to revise the law, so with all necessary procedures abortion will probably become legal in Korea in 2021.

The case was brought by a woman who had an abortion and the doctor who performed it after they were punished in a rare instance of the law being enforced.

The Constitutional Court on Thursday finally overturned Korea's widely ignored abortion ban. The bench ruled by a majority of 7:2 that the current law, which dates from 1953 and bans abortion at any stage of pregnancy, is unconstitutional because it violates the rights of pregnant women.

The Constitutional Court last upheld the ban in 2012. At the time the main sticking points were the right of a fetus to life and the right of a pregnant women to choose, and the court ruled that the fetus' right to life takes precedence.

But this time the court accepted the argument that a fetus' right to life is an "abstract" principle while the danger of violating a woman's right to choose is concrete.

The court also ruled that the law is outdated because in reality some 170,000 abortions are performed in Korea every year and the ban could prompt pregnant women to seek unsafe abortions.

The court said women are paying exorbitant fees for abortions and are unable to claim compensation for problems after surgery. The law has also caused many teens and impoverished women to abandon their babies after giving birth to them.

At present, the only cases where abortion is legal is when fetuses have genetic abnormalities or were conceived as a result of rape. But the court capped abortion at the 22nd week of pregnancy, which is more or less the international standard. A court spokesman said the reason is that babies born prematurely after that time have been known to survive.

Even under current law the cutoff point for legal abortions is 24 weeks. The National Assembly will decide the exact timeframe.

The ruling is expected to lead to many people who were found guilty of violating the abortion law to be absolved or pardoned. Women's rights groups cheered the court's decision, calling it a "landmark ruling," but some religious groups expressed "deep regret."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 18:56:57|Editor: xuxin

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GARDEZ, Afghanistan, April 12 (Xinhua) -- At least four Haqqani militants were killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan's eastern Paktia province on Friday, according to a statement issued by the provincial government.

"Based on a confirmed tip-off, the airstrike was launched on outskirts of provincial capital Gardez on Friday morning. The sortie killed four militants of Haqqani terrorist group," the statement said.

Security forces and civilians have not suffered any damage in the strike which was launched by the NATO-led coalition forces in coordination with Afghan security forces, according to the statement.

A number of heavy and light weapons and ammunition were also destroyed in the raid, said the statement.

Haqqani network, a Taliban-linked militant group, mostly operates in eastern provinces and capital Kabul, and has been responsible for high-profile attacks on security forces.

The network, which was named as a terrorist group by the United States in 2012, has yet to make comments.

The Afghan security forces, backed by the NATO-led coalition troops, have increased ground and air offensives against militants within the past a few months as spring and summer known as the fighting season is drawing near in the country.

Earlier on Friday, the Taliban militant group has announced the launch of a yearly rebel offensive against Afghan and coalition forces codenamed al-Fath.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 19:12:16|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Japan on Friday said that undersea search operations are underway for an F-35A stealth fighter that crashed Tuesday triggering concerns about the jets safety and presenting a conundrum for the government about its future air defense program.

Japanese Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya told a press briefing on the matter that Self-Defense Force (SDF) and Coast Guard vessels and aircraft are continuing their search, along with the U.S. military.

He also said a submarine rescue vessel was deployed by the Maritime SDF on Friday morning to assist with the search for the plane.

The plane, some wreckage of which has already been found, crashed into the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of Japan in waters thought to be as deep as 1,500 meters, leaving the pilot unaccounted for.

On Wednesday, Japans defense ministry officially confirmed that the crash of the locally-assembled jet was the first for an F-35A anywhere in the world.

The crash has also sparked concerns over the Japanese governments plans to buy 105 more of the 100-million-dollar fighters as it seeks to overhaul its aged fleet of mainstay jets, as part of its controversial national defense guidelines.

Military experts have questioned Japanese pilots ability to fly the 5th generation multi-role stealth fighter, intimating that the cutting-edge aircraft requires a significant amount of knowledge and expertise to fly.

General Toshimichi Nagaiwa, a former Air Self-Defense Force Lieutenant, told Japans public broadcaster NHK that the crash poses a significant problem to the deployment of the jets in Japan and for them to become Japans mainstay fighters.

The Air Self-Defense Force began deploying F-35A jets at its Misawa base in Aomori Prefecture, northern Japan, in January last year.

A new F-35 squadron has been formed at the base with 80 personnel and the Japanese government plans to bolster its fleet of F-35s with the acquisition of a total of 105 F-35As and 42 of the short take-off variant F-35B stealth fighters.

The jets, the Pentagons most sophisticated 5th generation multi-role stealth fighters and most expensive weapons system, are supposed to replace Japans fleet of F-15 and aging F-4 fighter planes.

But Nagaiwa asserted that Japanese pilots need greater skills and more knowledge to be able to fly the ultra-advanced jets and that it had yet to be determined whether the crashed jet, which had made two emergency landings in the last two years, was itself faulty, or if human error was the cause of the crash.

The jet, the first to be assembled in Japan at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.s plant in Aichi Prefecture, was forced to abort a test flight after a cooling system malfunction, Japan's Defense Ministry has said.

It also said that a position indicator malfunction also occurred in the jet when it was flying in bad weather.

Underscoring rising concerns about the jets safety, a Japanese ASDF team looking into the cause of the accident said it suspects the pilot, a major in his 40s who had logged 3,200 hours of flying time including around 60 hours specifically flying F-35As, may have noticed some kind of "abnormality" before the plane crashed.

The Defense Ministry has since said that the plane likely crashed before the pilot had time to eject, as its ejection system sends out an alert when a pilot ejects, although he had radioed three other F-35A pilots also taking part in the combat drill saying he was aborting the mission.

The other pilots could not see the majors plane as it was dark, Defense Ministry officials said, and the planes were not flying close to each other during the combat drill.

The jet was flying off the coast of Aomori Prefecture about 135 km east of the Misawa base when radar contact was lost less than 30 minutes after takeoff, the ministry said.

Following the crash, a world first for an F-35A, the remaining 12 F-35As currently deployed at the Misawa base in Japan have been grounded.

The 5th generation jets are co-developed by nine countries including the United States, Britain and Italy and are produced by U.S. defense company Lockheed Martin Corp.

The crash of the jet, which has a price tag of between 80 and more than 100 million U.S. dollars and costs around 50,000 U.S. dollars per hour to fly, has presented a conundrum for the Japanese governments future defense plans, as laid out in its contentious guidelines.

The quandary lies not just in the F-35s potential safety issues amid a heavily checkered global developmental phase, but also owing to increasingly blurred lines between Japans constitutionally regulated defense allowance and its constant push to acquire military assets designed primarily for their offensive capabilities.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 19:12:18|Editor: Li Xia

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HANGZHOU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Cainiao Network, Alibaba's delivery arm, announced Thursday that they have added the ability to send packages through facial recognition technology to their courier services.

Senders in China are required to show their ID cards when sending packages. However, the facial recognition technology will scan the face of senders in one to two seconds, and senders can have their packages or letters delivered without giving their personal information, according to Cainiao.

Senders need to upload information of addressee and mailing addresses via various mobile apps of Alibaba, such as Taobao and Alipay, in advance.

The Zhejiang-based company said the technology, which has received advice and support from local postal sectors and public security departments, can better protect senders' individual privacy, and the whole process of sending packages will be simplified.

Cainiao said the pilot scheme has started in more than 300 logistics stations in eight cities across China, including the cities of Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Fuzhou, Xiamen and Jinan.

The facial recognition technology is expected to be promoted across the country.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 19:27:29|Editor: xuxin

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NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Kenya is planning to develop a policy that will boost motor vehicle exports to East Africa, an official said on Friday.

Stephen Odua, director of private sector development at the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Cooperatives told journalists in Nairobi that all relevant stakeholders are currently reviewing the national automotive policy.

"When in place the new policy will help Kenya to scale up local production of vehicles so that the country's exports of automotive products to the East African Community bloc can increase from the current five percent of local production to 15 percent by 2022," Odua said during the national automotive policy validation workshop.

Odua said that the growth of the local automotive industry was slowed by the liberalization of the economy which allowed cheaper imported second-hand vehicles, noting that over 85 percent of all cars registered annually are imports.

He revealed that a robust local vehicle assembly sector will enable Kenya to increase exports to Africa by taking advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

Odua added that currently Kenya has over two million vehicles, which comprise of both imports and local assembled automobiles, saying that Kenya is keen to discourage importation of vehicles in order to spur the manufacturing sector.

According to government data, Kenya assembled locally approximately 5,100 vehicles in 2018.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 19:27:34|Editor: xuxin

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NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan police said Friday they are interrogating one suspect in connection with the abduction of two Cuban doctors in Mandera town in northeast Kenya near the Somali border by suspected al-Shabab militants.

Charles Owino, spokesman for Kenya's National Police Service said the suspect who is a driver of the two medics will be questioned on the incident in which a police officer who was guarding the two foreigners was killed.

"They were abducted on their way to work and the vehicle that was ferrying the doctors has been recovered. We have arrested the driver who is currently being interrogated," he told journalists in Nairobi.

Owino said the two, Assel Herera Correa and Landy Rodriguez, were heading to Mandera County Referral Hospital which is their work station before the ambush at around 9 am.

Meanwhile, security has been beefed up in Mandera following the abduction. There are reports of gunshots being heard in the border area as the military moved to the scene in search of the victims.

The two medics are among 100 Cuban specialists who arrived in the country in June 2018 as a bilateral arrangement between Kenya and Cuban governments.

Ali Roba, Mandera County governor said the assailants blocked their vehicle with a saloon car before alighting and opening fire on their bodyguards, killing one instantly.

"The officer lost his life in line of duty protecting the lives of our Cuban doctors. While I believe that all efforts are being done by our government to pursue the attackers, we would like to appeal to them to do whatever it takes to save the lives of our Cuban doctors and bring them back from captivity," Roba said.

The fate of the two doctors remains unknown but security agencies led by the military are inside Somalia pursuing the attackers and victims.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 19:32:36|Editor: Li Xia

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NANJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park has attracted about 5,000 foreign companies since it was established in 1994, according to a meeting celebrating the 25 anniversary of the park in eastern China's Jiangsu Province on Friday.

The park has actually received foreign investment worth of 31.5 billion U.S. dollars, created more than 800 billion yuan (119 billion U.S. dollars) in tax revenue and realized a total import and export volume of over one trillion U.S. dollars over the past 25 years.

Nearly 5,000 foreign-funded enterprises from more than 70 countries and regions have registered and operated in the industrial park, and more than 500 enterprises from home and abroad have set up research and development centers in the park.

Suzhou Industrial Park has supported 309 Chinese enterprises to invest in 53 countries and regions, and participated in the establishment of 12 sino-foreign industrial parks, playing a pioneering role in the Belt and Road Initiative and the integration of the Yangtze River Delta.

Zhou Naixiang, Communist Party chief of Suzhou city, said the industrial park has continuously boosted the cooperation between China and Singapore. So far, more than 350 Singapore enterprises have participated in the construction and development of the industrial park.
File photo shows the dam of Kariba hydropower station in Zambia. The Zambian Kariba North Bank Power expansion project was constructed by China's Sinohydro Corporation, and included two 180 megawatt generators. (Xinhua/Peng Lijun)

LUSAKA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Zambia needs to keep focused in cementing its relations with China because the Asian nation offers valuable lessons for accelerating development, a Zambian expert said on Thursday.

Caesar Cheelo, Senior Research Fellow at the Zambia Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (ZIPAR), a local think-tank involved in conducting research and policy analysis, said Zambia stands to benefit from maintaining its relations with China which has impressive long-term development planning.

In a paper presented during a discussion on "Unfinished Business in China-Zambia Relations: Policy Ideas for Promoting Development" at the University of Zambia (UNZA), the expert said China offers important economic lessons for Zambia to tap into at both macro and micro level.

File photo shows the outdoor scene of China-aided Zambia agricultural technology demonstration center in Lusaka, Zambia. (Xinhua)

China, he said, has already shown its global interests and intention through various measures such as the opening up, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which Zambian needs to tap into to spur development.

"Zambia needs to understand China, and plan and strategize for it," he said.

According to the expert, it was evident that China's influence in the global economy offers Zambia an opportunity to tap into the benefits which it offers as the Asian nation was the second biggest economy in the world and offers the largest territory in trade after the European Union (EU).
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 19:47:44|Editor: Li Xia

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TAIPEI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Four out of five respondents to an employment survey in Taiwan said they plan to change jobs in the second quarter mainly due to their dissatisfaction with current salaries, the highest percentage for the same period in six years.

Among those who want to seek a new job, about 30 percent said they have already sent out their resumes to potential employers asking for new jobs, according to a survey by job website Yes123, which conducted an online survey of 1,370 workers and collected 1,008 questionnaires from enterprises between March 20 and April 8.

For those who plan to change jobs, 53.2 percent cited low salary levels as the main reason, 44.6 percent saw no prospect for the company to develop, 40.1 percent felt lack of a possible salary increase, 33.3 percent disliked long working hours, and 26.5 percent had no interest in their current jobs.

Other reasons that prompted workers to leave also included plans to transfer to another industry or start their own business, worries about the prospect of the current industry, excess workload, overburden and sour office relations.

In seeking a new job, respondents expected to ask for an average monthly salary of 41,788 new Taiwan dollars (about 1,350 U.S. dollars), the highest expectation in 19 quarters.

However, employers only wanted to offer an average of monthly salary of 36,574 new Taiwan dollars for their vacancies, or 12.5 percent less than what job seekers asked for.

Companies in the science and information technology sector and traditional manufacturing were the two most popular potential employers for job hoppers, according to the survey.
Hua Ning (L), Chinese Ambassador to South Sudan and Baak Valentino Wol, undersecretary at South Sudan's Foreign Ministry signed agreement documents in Juba, capital of South Sudan, April 10, 2019. The two countries signed two infrastructure development pacts for building a new bridge and modernization of health facilities in the east African country. (Xinhua/Gale Julius)

JUBA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- South Sudan and China have signed two infrastructure development pacts for the renovation of a new bridge and the modernization of a health facility in the East African country.

Under the first agreement, the Chinese government will provide a grant for the renovation of Jur River Bridge, and building a 1.48km road linking the bridge to Wau city, northwestern South Sudan.

The second pact kicks off phase two of the China-aided project for the expansion and modernization of South Sudan's biggest public health facility, the Juba Teaching Hospital.

The value of the two pacts is yet to be determined upon completion of feasibility studies on the two projects.

Meanwhile, phase one of the 33 million dollars Chinese health aid for the modernization of health infrastructure in conflict-torn South Sudan is nearing completion.

Baak Valentino Wol, undersecretary of the ministry of foreign affairs and international cooperation appreciated the Chinese government for the support to South Sudan.

"We are really happy that China is among the very few countries that are still supporting the socioeconomic development of South Sudan. China has supported our people when others are shying away. I thank you for the support you are giving to our people," Wol said Wednesday when the agreements were signed.

Hua Ning, Chinese Ambassador to South Sudan, said the infrastructure projects would be essential for people's livelihoods and the development of the world's youngest country.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:13:09|Editor: xuxin

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MOGADISHU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Somalia said on Friday it has signed a 60,000 U.S. dollars technical assistance agreement with the Universal Postal Union (UPU) as the Horn of Africa nation seeks to start sending and receiving international mail services.

Abdi Ashur Hassan, minister for post, telecom and technology, said in a statement that the agreement will facilitate UPU missions to Somalia that will help determine priority needs, develop policy framework for the service, organize training programs and provide basic solutions needed to carry out postal operations.

Bishar Hussein, UPU director-general, said that this project of 60,000 U.S. dollars is just "a drop in the ocean" considering the reconstruction needs of Somali Postal Service.

"But this is in line with the technical assistance provided to least developed countries," said Hussein.

"As you are starting from zero, you are in a better position to establish a future post, using postal technology to provide latest postal services," said Hussein, adding "UPU is ready to support you in that direction."

"The technical assistance we received from UPU meets our priorities as we build a modern postal service," said the minister, adding that the project is a positive gesture from UPU.

The latest move came after Somalia rejoined the world postal service governing body after more than two decade-long sanctions were lifted.
North Korea is preparing a military parade to mark either regime founder Kim Il-sung's birthday on April 15 or People's Army foundation day on April 25, a U.S. think tank speculates.

Victor Cha and Joseph Bermudez of the Center for Strategic and International Studies on the website Beyond Parallel on Wednesday said satellite images from last Sunday suggest that a parade is in the offing.

The imagery shows 217 vehicles gathered at Mirim Airport east of Pyongyang, which is often used for parade rehearsals, though the authors admit this is not "conclusive."


Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:28:18|Editor: xuxin

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A girl is seen at a village in Khuzestan province, Iran, on April 12, 2019. The Iranian authorities ordered this week nearly 70,000 people to flee their homes as floodwater poured into Ahvaz, capital city of the southwestern province of Khuzestan. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

RIYADH, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Friday a joint initiative to provide aid for flood victims in Iran, Saudi Press Agency reported.

The initiative, to be carried out by Saudi and UAE Red Crescent Authorities, aims to ease the suffering of the Iranians affected by the recent destructive and unprecedented floods, comes as part of the Islamic ties and humanitarian solidarity with Iranians, the two organizations said in a joint statement.

The Iranian authorities ordered this week nearly 70,000 people to flee their homes as floodwater poured into Ahvaz, capital city of the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:38:29|Editor: xuxin

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CAIRO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Arab League (AL) Friday called on the Sudanese people to achieve their aspirations through political dialogue, a day after the armed forces overthrew Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

"The AL follows up closely the ongoing rapid developments related to the political transition in Sudan," the AL said in a statement.

The Cairo-based pan-Arab organization expressed hopes that the Sudanese people will reach a consensus for the interest of their country.

"The AL calls on the people to adhere to political dialogue to achieve their aspirations for honorable, free, secure and stable life," the statement noted.

It also reiterated that the AL will continue to make an effort to solve the political issues in Sudan.

"The AL will continue its endeavors for promoting peace, stability and development in Sudan, a central country in the Arab world," the statement said.
Villagers wait for rescue at a flood-hit village in Khuzestan province, southwestern Iran, on April 6, 2019. (Xinhua/Ahmad Halabisaz)

RIYADH, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced on Friday a joint initiative to provide aid for flood victims in Iran, Saudi Press Agency reported.

The initiative, to be carried out by Saudi and UAE Red Crescent Authorities, aims to ease the suffering of the Iranians affected by the recent destructive and unprecedented floods, comes as part of the Islamic ties and humanitarian solidarity with Iranians, the two organizations said in a joint statement.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:48:37|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The inspiring news of a remote Chinese ethnic minority group being lifted out of poverty as a whole has proved the advantages of the socialist system in pooling resources for a certain cause.

Dulong people, with a population of several thousand, is one of China's smallest ethnic groups. They have endured long-standing poverty living along the isolated deep gorges of the Dulongjiang River in Gongshan County of Yunnan Province, southwest China.

In just seven decades since they bade farewell to primitive life after the founding of the New China in 1949, Dulong people have now all moved into newly-built houses, and all of the six administrative villages have access to roads with hard surfaces, 4G and radio and TV signals.

Thanks to a highway tunnel through the Gaoligong Mountain, which was completed in 2014, the group's isolation in the deep mountains due to heavy snowfall has ended.

Household incomes have also grown as they now earn money from growing a local specialty spice, harvesting honey and raising cattle. Their children enjoy 14 years of free education.

This big leap forward did not just happen overnight. It was hard won with attention and care from the country's top leadership, consistent efforts by provincial and local authorities and aid from developed regions.

Over the years, the Communist Party of China leaders have written letters of encouragement to Dulong people, visited their hometown and met with their representatives during inspection tours to Yunnan.

Provincial authorities of Yunnan offered help to the whole Dulong group over the years with projects focused on infrastructure construction, housing and food.

Developed regions in the country's east, including the metropolis of Shanghai, have also provided targeted aid for the group in construction projects, industrial development and personnel training.

All this showed China has a unique and efficient governance system that can concentrate resources and accomplish big things such as poverty reduction.

Poverty alleviation is only the first step. Dulong people have every reason to believe that better days are yet to come.

Letting people of all ethnic groups have a good life is the goal of China's poverty alleviation cause.

When China accomplish its goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and eradicates extreme poverty in 2020, it is the common aspiration of all people in the country that no ethnic group will be left behind.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:48:42|Editor: xuxin

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SAN FRANCISCO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A photo exhibition at Stanford University celebrating the 150th anniversary of the First U.S. Transcontinental Railroad in the 19th century has unveiled many hidden historical details of tens of thousands of Chinese immigrant workers that built the milestone American infrastructure project.

The show, which was held Thursday to honor the Chinese migrant rail workers, featured historical photographs, oral histories, lesson plans, artifacts, digital documents and other materials of a seven-year-long Stanford research program, the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project.

The Stanford research project unveiled the untold history of the Chinese migrants who toiled at a grueling pace to help construct, under perilous working conditions, the transcontinental railway between 1864 and 1869.

UNKNOWN HISTORY OF CHINESE MIGRANT WORKERS AT CONSTRUCTION SITE

The study revealed for the first time many findings of the Chinese railroad workers whose contributions to one of the most ambitious American engineering projects had long been left forgotten in U.S. history.

Gordon Chang, co-director of the project and professor of history of the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford, told Xinhua that many Americans don't know about the role of the Chinese immigrants in America.

"I think it's important for Americans, white Americans to know the Chinese helped build America and are part of America from the very beginning, so that we can be a more diverse and understanding society," Chang said.

He said many people have paid little attention to how many Chinese workers were employed at the construction site, and the number has arguably varied from time to time because of the turnover. "They don't work all the way through," he added.

"Our research indicated that there were always thousands of Chinese migrant laborers working to build the railroad, and at the peak time, about 25,000 Chinese laborers were at the construction site," he said.

"They constituted 90 percent of the workforce on the western portion of the railroad. They completed the railroad and they made Leland Stanford very wealthy. So Stanford University would not have been possible without the Chinese," said Chang, referring to the creator of Stanford who spent much of the wealth from the rail project to establish one of the world's most renowned universities in 1885.

SOLID EVIDENCE HIGHLIGHTS UNBEARABLE HARDSHIP SUFFERED BY CHINESE WORKERS

Chang said the Chinese workers did much incredible work during the construction, including tunneling through hard granite, 15 tunnels through the ground.

He pointed out that one of the big controversies is about the skepticism surrounding the Chinese workers hanging down in mountain cliffs in baskets to carve out the rail line around Promontory Summit, a high ground area in Utah State, where the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was officially completed on May 10, 1869.

Chang said the solid evidence of their extensive research from field trips and visits to families of the descendants of the Chinese immigrants showed that the Chinese railway workers endured incredible hardships during the construction process. They did use the baskets when they hung down from the side of mountains to put dynamite into black powder to blow up the rocks.

"They deposited tons and tons of rocks down into the American river 1,200 feet (about 366 meters) below. So baskets (were used). No myth," Chang told hundreds in attendance at his presentation about the disputed point in the past.

CHINESE WORKERS ON MASS STRIKE FOR PAY HIKES

Chang said the Stanford researchers have known more about the 1867 mass strikes called by the Chinese railroad workers.

In the summer of 1867, the rail workers became unsettled with their poor working conditions, low wages and abusive treatment from their supervisors.

About 3,000 Chinese workers up at the Promontory Summit and spreading out over miles of their work area all at once went on strike, which was the largest strike in American history to that date, he said.

Given the organization and communication among these workers spreading out over miles, as well as the courage it took to stand up to the railroad company, way up in the high Sierra mountain range, Chang said, the work stoppage was not purely out of desperation and weakness, but out of strength and courage.

CHINESE WORKERS HAVING MATURE BUSINESS TALENT

New findings of the Stanford research program broke a stereotyped negative concept of the Chinese laborers and cast light on their mature business talent that surprised their white bosses, said Roland Hsu, director of research of the seven-year-long Stanford program.

He told Xinhua during the photo exhibition that their research has changed the way people have thought about the Chinese who came to the United States in the 19th century.

"Traditionally, much of the research results, which are well intentioned, identify the Chinese as victims as sort of (being) more passive for their suffering," he said.

"What we find is indeed they endured many hardships, but they were also very enterprising. And the Chinese who came are also very experienced on how to profit from their labor," Hsu explained.

During the railway's construction, Hsu said, the Big Four investors of the Central Pacific Railroad, including Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Mark Hopkins and Charles Crocker, could not find 10,000 to 12,000 Chinese workers to build the railroad.

Therefore, they asked some Chinese to find other Chinese as additional labor force for the transcontinental railway project, Hsu said.

"Those were sort of sub-contracting that showed real business skill, or business acumen that changes. That's an impact on our understanding of who were the Chinese," he said.

"In my opinion, the most important discovery is the business talent the Chinese came with, and they were not all menial laborers who were exploited. There were many who actually ... controlled quite a large labor force, and in that way changed the reputation of the Chinese in the white business leaders' eyes," said the Stanford scholar.

He said the researchers found the payroll records of railroad construction companies to support their views.

"We were able to find the payroll records. The big journals with all of the paid, we find Chinese names. We did the math. And that's where we find the sub contractors," he explained.

"We find the Chinese sub-subcontractors sub-contracting other Chinese workers," he said. A few of them even partnered with white locals for business and made a big business, which demonstrated their leadership on construction project.

CHINESE WORKERS SHAPED AMERICA'S LANDSCAPE

Shelley Fisher Fishkin, co-director of the research program and director of American Studies at Stanford, said the Chinese migrant railroad workers is a crucial part of American history, of Western history and of Chinese history.

"There are many discoveries that were fascinating, but I my own research taught me that when the railroad, when the First Transcontinental Railroad was completed, the Chinese workers went on to build more than 70 rail lines all over the United States, and then into Canada," she said.

"I was fascinated by that. I even found that 300 Chinese workers had been rebuilding the rail line near my grandmother's home in Long Island, New York," added Fishkin.

These Chinese workers had shaped America's landscape beyond the first transcontinental line, she noted.

With the exhibition, "by reminding everyone that our two nation's fates were intertwined from this early moment, it would lay the groundwork for future good relations between the two cultures," Fishkin said of the vast and extensive relations between the United States and China.

STANFORD PROJECT FOSTERS CLOSER BOND BETWEEN U.S. AND CHINA

Hsu also said Thursday's exhibition is meant to make it available to all the public that is interested in learning about Chinese heritage, the history of the American West, and really the story of the first moment of globalization where North America connected with Asia in labor, economy and culture.

Persis Drell, provost of Stanford University, called the exhibition "a really important and even a momentous occasion marking the culmination of the project at Stanford."

"It's the story of hard-working individuals whose strength, skills and above all resilience in the face of danger, discrimination and hardship, paved the way in uniting our country from the Atlantic to the Pacific," Drell said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:53:49|Editor: xuxin

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MALE, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Maldives Elections Commission on Friday announced that the ruling Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) had won the recently concluded Parliamentary Elections by securing 65 seats in the 87-member Parliament.

Elections Commission Spokesperson Ahmed Akram told Xinhua that the MDP had secured the highest win for a single party in Maldivian history which now gave them a majority in Parliament.

Former President Abdulla Yameen's Progressive Party of Maldives and the People's National Congress together won eight seats while the Jumhooree Party had secured five seats.

The Maldives Development Alliance won two seats while Independent candidates won seven seats.

According to the Elections Commission results, 212,079 people out of 264,442 cast their vote in the parliamentary election held last Saturday.

Election observers said the poll was conducted peacefully.

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih who is leading the MDP, following the announcement of the preliminary results earlier this week, congratulated all the winners, especially in his party.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:53:54|Editor: xuxin

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NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Increasing soil acidity is complicating Kenya's goal of achieving food security by lowering farmer's yields, a government official said on Friday.

Hamadi Boga, principal secretary of the state department of agricultural research in the Ministry of Agriculture, told journalists in Nairobi that most of the agricultural land especially in the country's breadbasket region is affected by high acidity levels.

"Increasing soil acidity as result of overusing incorrect fertilizers is the greatest limitation on crop production," Boga said.

He added that there is widespread lack of awareness about soil needs as most farmers have not conducted soil tests to find out the health of their soil.

Boga said that Kenya is keen to the agriculture sector because it contributes about 33 percent of the country's GDP and most of the workforce and exports rely on agriculture.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, about 70 percent to 80 percent of farmers are small holders and face numerous challenges such as lack of access to high quality seeds.

Boga said that significant investment is required to improve the ability of small-scale farmers to invest in superior inputs so that they increase their yields and, ultimately, incomes.

The government official noted that over reliance on maize as a staple crop is also affecting food security in the country.

Boga said that most farmers prefer growing maize despite only five percent of the country's land being suitable for the crop.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 20:58:57|Editor: Li Xia

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Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presides over a chairpersons' meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature will convene its bi-monthly session from April 20 to 23, according to a statement issued after a chairpersons' meeting Friday.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over the meeting.

Attendees of the meeting suggested that legislators would deliberate bills on draft revisions to laws on judges and prosecutors, securities and the country's drug administration.

The legislators are expected to review the draft law on vaccine administration. Two new draft sections on property and personality rights of the civil code will also be reviewed.

They are also expected to review draft revisions suggested by the State Council concerning nine laws including construction law.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 21:08:59|Editor: zh

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ULAN BATOR, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Sino-Mongolian Foundation of Culture, Education and Social Development here on Friday offered scholarships to 37 Mongolian students.

"China-Mongolia relations and cooperation have been expanding rapidly in a wide range of areas, including education," Yang Qingdong, minister counsellor of the Chinese Embassy in Mongolia, said at the awarding ceremony.

"I am confident that (the) Mongolian students who have won Chinese scholarships will greatly contribute to the further development of bilateral relations and cooperation," Yang said.

The "Dream Star" and "Future Star" scholarship programs sponsored by the foundation and backed by the Chinese embassy in Mongolia and other Chinese institutions and enterprises are meant for secondary school students. Around 280 Mongolian students participated in a competition for the programs on March 10.

Under the "Dream Star", seven low-income students with good academic performance each received 2,000 yuan (298.5 U.S. dollars).

Within the framework of the "Future Star" scholarship program, a total of 30 outstanding students each received 3,000 yuan (447.8 dollars).

"I have been studying Chinese for 10 years. I have a dream to study business economics in a Chinese university," said Dariimaa Barkhasbaatar, a 10th-grade student of Ui Tsai school in Ulan Bator, who received Chinese scholarship for the first time.

The foundation has been extending scholarships to Mongolian students since 2014. A total of 412 secondary school students in the country have benefited from the two scholarship programs.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 21:14:04|Editor: xuxin

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LUSAKA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Zambian President Edgar Lungu has signed into law a bill that sets into motion national dialogue led by his government despite opposition from stakeholders, his office said on Friday.

Lungu has signed the National Dialogue Bill into law after it was passed by parliament last month, setting a stage for national dialogue meant to tackle various contentious issues in the country.

Presidential Spokesperson Amos Chanda told reporters that Lungu assented to the bill on April 9, 2019.

He said other processes for the dialogue process will be finalized by the justice minister.

Recently, Lungu said he will not hesitate to assent to the bill once it was presented to him.

Opposition political parties have rejected the national dialogue process led by the government as they prefer the church to lead the dialogue process.

They have accused the government of attempting to force its demands in the dialogue process and have since vowed to shun the dialogue process.

The law seeks to provide a forum to facilitate the amendment of the country's constitution as well as other laws such the electoral law and a controversial law that manages public gatherings and processions.
Samsung launched its new mid-range Galaxy A80 smartphone in Bangkok on Wednesday.

The phone has no bezel and the camera has been moved to the back. In selfie mode, the top of the back comes up and turns around 180 degrees. The price has not been confirmed, and it will be released around the world in stages from May 29.

This is the 14th smartphone Samsung has launched in the last 100 days this year, compared to 14 throughout the whole of 2018. This year's total is expected to be around 20.

Meanwhile, the company is debating whether to make the Galaxy Note 10, which is scheduled for release in the second half of this year, in two sizes. "European customers don't like big phones, and there are demands for an option to use the stylus on a smaller screen," a Samsung staffer said.

Samsung is desperate to stay ahead in the market now China's Huawei has declared its ambition to dislodge it from the global top spot. That is why the Korean giant is putting cutting-edge technologies usually only seen in premium handsets into the mid-range Galaxy A series.

It also released three models in the new budget Galaxy M series, which sells for under W200,000 and only online (US$1=W1,141).
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 21:44:19|Editor: xuxin

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BEIRUT, April 12 (Xinhua) -- EU Ambassador to Lebanon Christina Lassen said on Friday that the EU will actively cooperate with Lebanon in the fight against cyberterrorism, the National News Agency (NNA) reported.

"We are currently working with all security agencies in Lebanon to boost their capabilities in fighting against cybercrimes," Lassen said during a conference on cybersecurity.

She called upon the Lebanese government to adopt a national cybersecurity strategy to ensure the rule of law in the cyber space.

Meanwhile, Lebanese Interior Minister Raya El Hassan said the government will take the needed measures to protect Lebanon's cyber space and information technology infrastructure as well as the personal information of the Lebanese people.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 21:44:23|Editor: Li Xia

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GUIYANG, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for concrete actions to strengthen support to people relocated amid the country's efforts to win the battle against poverty.

Li, who is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the requirements in his instruction on the follow-up work of alleviating poverty through relocation.

Government departments should learn about relocated people's expectations, coordinate all kinds of poverty alleviation funds and resources, strengthen follow-up support for them, push forward development of industries and facilitate employment, so as to significantly improve their sense of fulfillment and security.

Government departments should ensure the impoverished people can be relocated, are willing to live in new homes and are able to shake off poverty, making sure that the project of alleviating poverty through relocation could stand the test of history and the people, Li said.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during their meeting at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on April 11, 2019. (Xinhua/Ting Shen)

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- As U.S. President Donald Trump finished his meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in here on Thursday, U.S. experts said that to realize denuclearization on the Korea Peninsula, parties concerned should focus on reaching "smaller deals" in the short term, which can help set stage for "bigger deals" in the future.

DIVERGENCE REMAINSDESPITE PROGRESS

Before their bilateral meeting, Trump told the media that "smaller deals" could happen "step by step," but both the United States and South Korea are focusing on "the big deal."

"The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," Trump added.

U.S. experts pointed out that both Washington and Seoul have been politically invested much in making sure their dialogues with Pyongyang could continue, despite the current impasse.

"Moon is very invested in making sure that neither side gets frustrated at the lack of progress and decides to give up on the negotiation process," Jenna Gibson, a Korea expert at the University of Chicago, told Xinhua.

"Moon Jae-in in particular has put a lot of time, energy, and personal reputation into making an agreement work, so he will certainly not give up easily and will keep trying to make sure the U.S. is on board with continued negotiations," she said.

Noting that Washington and South Korea both want to denuclearize the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Gibson said that yet their biggest difference is "how likely the two countries think that goal is - and how much leeway they're willing to give the North Koreans as they work toward that goal."

While Moon called for offering Pyongyang economic concession, Trump said it isn't "the right time" to do so.

Troy Stangarone, senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Washington-based non-profit Korea Economic Institute, also told Xinhua that "what the United States and South Korea would like to see is a roadmap that lays out how the dismantlement of North Korea's weapons programs would take place."

"Within that roadmap there is space for sanctions relief as dismantlement activities take place, which should address North Korea's concern for corresponding measures," he added.

As Trump has clearly denied the possibility of removing now the sanctions against Pyongyang, Gibson said, "It is heartening to hear that Trump is still willing to pursue smaller deals that could be more achievable in the short term and will help set the stage for that important bigger deal."

The experts also argued that the reopening of major inter-Korean economic projects should come after more concrete progress is made in the U.S.-DPRK negotiations, even if just on smaller issues.

"The problem is that there hasn't been enough progress on those smaller negotiations, so it's natural to propose something like economic projects that could possibly jump start further positive movement," said Gibson.

NEW TRUMP-KIM MEETING PENDING SUBSTANTIAL CHANGES

Trump said it is possible to have a third meeting with the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong Un, while Moon said that it is his important task "to maintain the momentum of dialogue" and "express the positive outlook" of a new Trump-Kim meeting to the international community.

However, U.S. experts said such a meeting is unlikely to happen before all parties concerned display greater caution and substantial agreement is made between Washington and Pyongyang.

"I honestly hope the two sides take time to work through these thorny issues rather than just falling back into another summit meeting," Gibson said.

"Without actually taking the time to make sure they were ready to actually agree on anything once the two leaders got to the table, I can't imagine a third summit would turn out any different at this point," she said.

For his part, Stangarone pointed out that "Trump was always unlikely to make a full down payment on North Korea's nuclear program without the promise of North Korea fully dismantling the program."

"Unless something substantively changes, a third summit in the near future seems unlikely," he said, adding that it need to "begin bridging the gaps" between the United States and the DPRK.

"They don't need to solve everything, but they need to narrow the space to give Trump and Kim an opportunity to find a resolution," the expert added, otherwise, "a third summit would risk repeating the outcome from Hanoi."

Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also told Xinhua that a third Trump-Kim meeting "would be unwise in the absence of significant new developments."

Washington and Pyongyang "are not on the same page and have not been for quite a while," Paal noted.

Nevertheless, Michael O'Hanlon, Brookings Institution's senior fellow, told Xinhua that "the big question is in fact whether Moon will stay tough enough on sanctions to make the strategy viable and send Kim Jong Un clear messages -- and will Trump be flexible enough on the scale and scope of any deal to make something short of complete denuclearization possible, should reasonable terms be offered?"

Holding a view that a full denuclearization is not possible, O'Hanlon said, "I don't expect today's summit to resolve that for good but am glad they are talking!"
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 21:59:43|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities have issued a revised syllabus for military theory and training courses in universities, according to the Ministry of Education (MOE) on Friday.

The document, which was jointly released by the MOE and the national defense mobilization department under the Central Military Commission, asked colleges to add military courses into their training and teaching programs, set specific credit for such courses, and record performance results into students' archives.

Military courses are compulsory for college students, it said, adding that the courses should be included into the national education supervision system and inspection on the development of such courses should be conducted on a regular basis.

The new syllabus adds courses on defense skills and protection training in wartime in addition to previous courses, such as military technologies and war information.

The revision was made to remove out-dated training projects and improve the training quality monitoring system amid the country's deepened education reform, said an official with the MOE.

The establishment of such courses is helpful for raising college students' awareness of national defense and improving their all-round quality, the official said.

Chinese authorities rolled out a syllabus for military courses at colleges in 2006.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 21:59:47|Editor: xuxin

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KHARTOUM, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The commander of Sudan's Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an affiliate of the Sudanese army, announced on Friday his refusal to join the Transitional Military Council, which will rule the country after ousting President Omar al-Bashir.

"I would like to announce to all Sudanese people that, I, as RSF commander, have declined to participate in the military council," Mohamed Hamdan Daqlu, commander of the RSF, said in a statement released by the RSF's official website.

"We will remain part of the Armed Forces and will work for the unity of the country, respect of human rights and protection of the Sudanese people," Daqlu added.

The country is now fragile and needs joint work under the umbrella of the armed forces and other regular forces, he noted.

On Thursday, Sudan's Defense Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf announced the ouster of al-Bashir and his government.

Auf assumed the chairmanship of a transitional military council to rule the country for an expected period of two years.

The council was supposed to include representatives from the armed forces, the RSF, the national intelligence and security service and the police forces.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:04:49|Editor: Li Xia

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese National Radio and Television Administration has issued an immediate ban on illegal fund-raising advertising.

Nationwide radio and TV broadcasters and online service providers should remove illegal fund-raising advertising that disguises itself as investing in films or TV dramas, said the administration.

Some institutions have been suspected of illegally raising funds from the public under the guise of a film or TV drama investment by advertising on the Internet or TV, seriously affecting the economic and financial order and social stability, it said.

Radio and TV administrative departments at all levels should intensify regular supervision and severely punish those who violate the regulations.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:14:56|Editor: xuxin

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TRIPOLI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The International Organization for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency, said on Friday that 160 illegal immigrants were voluntarily repatriated from Libya's capital Tripoli which is witnessing military action between the UN-backed government forces and the eastern-based army.

"Amid the ongoing clashes, IOM staff in Libya coordinated very closely with Libyan authorities to ensure the safe arrival of all migrants coming from different detention centers and different urban areas in Tripoli at Mitiga airport," the IOM said in a statement.

Last week, the Libyan army launched a military campaign to take over Tripoli where the UN-backed government is based.

A day earlier, the World Health Organization said the fighting had killed 56 and injured 226 others.

The army is allied with the eastern-based government, as the North African country is politically divided between two governments in the east and west.

So far this year, 3,175 migrants from Libya's detention centers and urban settings have managed to return to their countries of origin as part of IOM's Voluntary Humanitarian Return.

"We continue to support a safe and dignified return for migrants to their home countries. Our teams are working around the clock to provide much needed humanitarian support in Tripoli and across Libya," said Othman Belbeisi, IOM's chief of mission in Libya.

The IOM is running a voluntary return program with an aim to arrange the return of illegal immigrants stranded in Libya to their countries of origin.

Migrant shelters in Libya are crowded with thousands of migrants who have been rescued at sea or arrested by Libyan security services.

Libya has become a preferred point of departure for illegal immigrants hoping to cross the Mediterranean Sea into Europe because of insecurity and chaos in the country after the 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:14:57|Editor: zh

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Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, presides over a biweekly session on stepping up the cultivation of preschool teachers, in Beijing, capital of China, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese political advisors during a consultation session Friday offered proposals on stepping up the cultivation of preschool teachers.

The biweekly session held by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, was presided over by Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the CPPCC National Committee.

Wang stressed the importance of stepping up the cultivation of preschool teachers, who assume the dual functions of child care and education and play an important role in promoting the healthy growth of children and sound development of preschool education.

While hailing achievements China has made in preschool education since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, political advisors at Friday's event said preschool education is still a weak point in China's education system. Its development remains unbalanced and inadequate and still lacks of quality preschool teachers as well as easily accessible, affordable kindergartens.

Some political advisors proposed that the government should fulfill its responsibility in promoting preschool education development, and meanwhile, give full play to the role of the market.

They called for a substantial increase of funds to be allocated by the government for preschool education as well as innovating the mechanism of funding for preschool education, and encouraging running of kindergartens with social resources.

China should increase the number of university students who are enrolled to free preschool education programs and foster more quality professional kindergarten teachers, according to the political advisors.

They said a system for preschool teachers to receive regular training should be established, and the systems governing their qualification, promotion and pay should be reformed, among the country's efforts to create an atmosphere where preschool teachers are well respected.

They also called for stepping up legislation regarding preschool education, to provide legal guarantee for preschool teachers.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:20:02|Editor: Li Xia

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CHENGDU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chengdu, a major city in southwest China, showed its attraction to investors as it signed 22 investment contracts with overseas companies on Friday.

The investment projects involve manufacturing such as electronics, aviation, automobiles and equipment, and services including financing, logistics, elderly care and vocational training. The total value of these deals is around 3.39 billion U.S. dollars.

The signing foreign companies include Slovakian aircraft producer Aerospool, French company AREP with expertise in city planning and construction, Germany's BMW, and U.S. firm Baxter.

Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province, is a major economic powerhouse in China's western region. The city has attracted investment projects from 285 of the world's top 500 companies.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:40:20|Editor: yan

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on the sidelines of the eighth leaders' meeting between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC), in Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki here Friday, calling on both countries to step up economic cooperation.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the eighth leaders' meeting between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) held at the southern Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik.

Calling Poland an influential country in Central and Eastern Europe, Li said China attaches great importance to developing its ties with Poland.

China stands ready to enhance political mutual trust, strategic communication and pragmatic cooperation with Poland, said Li.

He called on both sides to strengthen communication and coordination of the inter-governmental committee to intensify cooperation in areas of economy and trade, agriculture, aviation and infrastructure construction.

China is willing to expand import of good-quality Polish products, said Li, adding that China welcomes Polish enterprises to explore the Chinese market.

Li said the China-EU leaders' meeting held earlier this week in Brussels agreed that China and EU countries treat each other's enterprises under the principles of fair competition, impartiality and non-discrimination.

China pays high attention to the cooperation between China and Poland under the China-EU and China-CEEC frameworks, said the premier, encouraging Poland to further contribute wisdom and strength to the China-EU ties and China-CEEC cooperation.

Speaking highly of the rapid development of Poland-China ties, Morawiecki said Poland has always treated foreign enterprises in line with the principles of fairness and non-discrimination.

He said Poland welcomes Chinese enterprises to come and invest, expressing the hope that enterprises from both countries can establish in-depth cooperation so as to open a new chapter of bilateral economic ties.

Poland is ready to cooperate with China in areas of agriculture, furniture, cosmetics, infrastructure construction, maritime industry and culture, said Morawiecki.

He added that Poland hopes to explore third-party cooperation with China under the China-CEEC framework.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:45:22|Editor: yan

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MOGADISHU, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States army said on Friday that it conducted an airstrike in southern Somalia on Thursday, killing two al-Shabab terrorists and destroyed a motorcycle.

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) said in a statement the strike which was carried out near Garowle in Lower Shabelle Region did not kill or injure any civilians.

"We continue to target and strike various levels of leadership within the al-Shabab network," Gregg Olson, AFRICOM's director of operations said in the statement.

The strike is the latest in a series of similar missions by the U.S. forces in Somalia in collaboration with Somali and African Union forces in the Horn of Africa country.

The strikes have largely targeted al-Shabab figureheads based in southern Somalia where the group still maintains a strong grip in some regions.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:50:28|Editor: Yamei

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A teacher (1st L) from the University of the Philippines Confucius Institute teaches Mandarin words to staff members from the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) of the Philippines in the Presidential Palace in Manila, the Philippines, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Yuan Mengchen)

MANILA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- "Feilvbin" (the Philippines); "Zongtongfu" (presidential palace); "Xinwenbu" (communications operations office).

For the first time on Friday, some 15 staff members from the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) of the Philippines read aloud with zest the three white bond papers that Ms. Meng Guangjie flashed in front of a "special class" at the Presidential Palace in Manila.

After practices, the "students" erupted into laughter when they were told about the meaning of the Mandarin words on flash cards that they repeatedly read aloud -- the Philippine presidential communications operations office, which they are working for.

Glenn Albert Ocampo, the head executive assistant of Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) Secretary Martin Andanar, told Xinhua how eager he is to learn basic Mandarin. He said he had been with PCOO for three years and was quite delighted to learn about the meaning of PCOO in Mandarin.

"Language is the first part in establishing relations with people in other countries and understanding their culture. It's very important for us to learn at least the basic Mandarin for us to fully understand our counterparts in China," Ocampo said.

Around 30 PCOO staff have signed up to attend the formal Mandarin language course at the Malacanang presidential palace, Ocampo said.

Meng, a teacher from the University of the Philippines Confucius Institute, will teach the staff more conversational Mandarin words and phrases, including the four main tones, and more about modern Chinese culture and society in the coming weeks.

After the 90-hour Mandarin course, "you would be able to introduce yourself, your family and your job," Meng told the Philippine staff.

Lourdes Nepomuceno, the director of the University of the Philippines Confucius Institute, said the institute has been conducting Mandarin classes in government offices like the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Bureau of Immigration (BI).

She said the institute decided to expand its coverage to the PCOO to provide more opportunities to different sectors.

"We want to cover PCOO because we realize that it is an important avenue to learn more about China and understand China through language and culture," Nepomuceno told the Chinese media.

The curriculum is 80 hours of Chinese language and 10 hours of Chinese culture. "That has been our model for the past three years when we conduct classes at the Foreign Service Institute of the DFA and the BI.

"We already graduated the first batch and we now have the second batch. Same is true with BI. We graduated the first batch and we started the second batch already," Nepomuceno said.

The institute "customize the program" to cater to the needs of the government sector or staff, she added.

In conducting classes for the immigration staff, she said the institute teaches the Chinese words or phrases needed in engaging with Chinese tourists.

"What they do is they give us a list of frequently asked questions when tourists enter the airport, and they will try to memorize and study words and the greetings, and they concentrate on the tones of the words," Nepomuceno said.

"The first batch did a good job, the first batch that graduated, and they are now on the second level," she added.

As a window of showing the Chinese language and a platform for cultural exchanges, the Confucius Institutes are becoming more and more popular in the Philippines.

Except for the University of the Philippines, now there are three other Confucius Institutes in the Ateneo de Manila University, Angeles University and Bulacan State University, respectively. Thousands of local people are learning Mandarin through the courses of Confucius Institutes.

Nepomuceno, who has been working for Confucius Institute for 11 years, said more and more Filipinos have shown interest to study Mandarin.

She said the institute has signed an agreement with the league of cities of the Philippines to cater to the 145 city colleges and universities around the Philippines. Moreover, the institute also holds language courses for University of the Philippines alumni and students for free to help more Filipinos to learn Mandarin. "We create a special class for them," she said.

It is the mission of the institute "to serve and help Filipinos learn Mandarin and to provide more opportunities for them," Nepomuceno explained.

"If they have a second language, specifically Chinese, they will go to other places, they will earn more, and they will create more opportunities for them, not only in the Philippines but around the world," Nepomuceno said.

Meng said she is looking forward to the PCOO classes to start. Meng has been teaching Mandarin in the Philippines for nearly two years. Before her stint in the Philippines, Meng taught Mandarin for 15 years in China.

In the two years that she has been teaching the language course in the Philippines, Meng said she noticed that Filipinos are fast learners and have "a strong desire" to learn more about China.

"They learn very quickly, and their pronunciation is good. They want to know a lot of things about China, economics, politics and so on," Meng said, adding she is proud that her students have "graduated" and made use of what they learned from the course.

"They want more communications with China, and we can introduce the Chinese culture," Meng said, adding that the course is a bridge that connects the Philippines and China.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 22:55:33|Editor: yan

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GUIYANG, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for concrete actions to strengthen support to people relocated amid the country's efforts to win the battle against poverty.

Li, who is also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the requirements in his instruction on the follow-up work of alleviating poverty through relocation.

Government departments should learn about relocated people's expectations, coordinate all kinds of poverty alleviation funds and resources, strengthen follow-up support for them, push forward the development of industries and facilitate employment, so as to significantly improve their sense of fulfillment and security.

Government departments should ensure the impoverished people can be relocated, are willing to live in new homes and are able to shake off poverty, making sure that the project of alleviating poverty through relocation could stand the test of history and the people, Li said.

A national meeting on offering follow-up support for poverty relief through relocation was held in Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture of Guizhou Province on Thursday and Friday.

Hu Chunhua, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and head of the State Council Leading Group of Poverty Alleviation and Development, attended the meeting, and called for tailored support for different types of relocation and different areas.

"We must ensure the continuity of support policies and earnestly safeguard the reasonable rights and interests of the relocated people," Hu said.
Photo courtesy of the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory

by Xinhua writers Xia Lin, Wu Xiaoling, Zhang Mocheng

SAN FRANCISCO, April 11 (Xinhua) -- It is not a cookie shop, but a workshop, museum and club all combined into one. Some 15,000 cookie products are baked on three antique machines and then folded and packed by hand on a daily basis.

The walls are decorated by family murals, congratulation letters, trophies and fame certificates. Shoppers and fans come in from all over the United States and even overseas to taste its fortune cookies, marveling at the words of wisdom wrapped within.

Moreover, they waste no time talking to co-owner Kevin Chan about the history of his beloved small trade which was inducted to San Francisco's Legacy Business Program three years ago.

"The customers make it all worth. My goal is to serve people, offer them Chinese hospitality, teach them Chinese culture, and eventually make the culture known to a wider, younger audience," said Chan, who was born in China, emigrated to America when he was eight, and did odd jobs before joining the legendary family business founded in 1962, currently the sole of its kind in the area.

Photo courtesy of the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory

The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory, located at 56 Ross Alley in the heartland of the bustling Chinatown of San Francisco, is where Kevin found his life's true calling.





CULTURAL ROOT

Oct. 1 this year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, for which he plans to send 70 fortune cookies with messages wishing China better and stronger folded within to Beijing and his hometown in Guangdong Province for people there to share.

"This is the way for us overseas Chinese to express our feelings on such a special occasion," he said, talking with Xinhua about how to stream live the process on its social media accounts for viewers to catch the exciting moments.

Half a dozen people circled Chan, proposing to enrich his idea by submitting either their own calligraphy or classic paintings. He recently registered a mini association in the basement of the factory for local writers, poets, painters and caricaturists of Chinese descent to meet and discuss plans to enlighten the Chinese community in perspectives of culture and history.

"We keep moving everyday. The slower you move, the faster you die," he quipped.

Photo courtesy of the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory

Chan is also a co-founder of the nonprofit organization BeChinatown, which has sponsored for lines of red lanterns to hang over two lanes nearby, adding more Chinese elements to the Edwardian-style buildings and theatrical facades of the local community. In 2019, they want to hang red lanterns above another two alleys.

"Let us contribute to our community, little by little, year by year," he told Xinhua.





WORD OF MOUTH

Besides the pursuit of cultural root and heritage, Chan is widely recognized for sustaining the handmade cookie business by switching from wholesale to retail.

Such a strategy has helped the small business outsmart large manufacturers. The family entity is no longer a production factory alone, but a sightseeing spot as well as a location for lovers or families to meet.

"We depend on steady flow of foot traffic to stay popular and afloat. Word of mouth and online reviews and pictures also help bring customers here," said Chan, who with his mother Nancy Chan work into late night to process order - many hours in the day are spent greeting droves of customers and sightseers organized by school camps and tour companies.

Photo courtesy of the Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Factory

Chan has boycotted online sale and insists that fans and gourmets come to his factory to see, feel, taste and buy, thus transforming the business pattern from serving customers through restaurants and hotels to serving them directly by himself at the factory.

"Now, we are not only a food business. We also provide service, from where one can learn about the legend and folklore of the Chinese community," said Chan, who persuaded Nancy to agree that he hung his photos with celebrities and drew her large portrait on the walls.

Though revered as one of the emerging community leaders in Chinatown, Chan still frets about the future of his factory. The city legacy program gives registered businesses grants of 500 U.S. dollars per full-time employee each year, but he had only three part-time staff members.

Prices of ingredients like flour, sesame, butter, sugar and eggs climb up steadily. To make it worse, rent has been rising by large margins, forcing him to consider relocating.

Besides, none of his children is willing to inherit the family business. "But I won't give up, for this is where I come and where I go," said Chan.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:20:50|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislature will convene its bi-monthly session from April 20 to 23, according to a statement issued after a chairpersons' meeting Friday.

Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, presided over the meeting.

Attendees of the meeting suggested that legislators review draft revisions to the laws on judges, procurators, securities, and drug administration at the session.

A draft law on vaccine administration and two draft sections on property and personality rights of the civil code will also be reviewed.

The top legislature is also expected to review draft revisions suggested by the State Council concerning nine laws including the construction law.

At the session, the legislators will decide whether to ratify a treaty between China and Barbados on criminal judicial assistance as well as one between China and Azerbaijan on the transfer of sentenced persons.

They will consider reports on environmental protection and rural industrial development, among others.

The legislators will deliberate on a report on deputy qualifications and review official appointments and dismissals.

The chairpersons' meeting approved a plan on the NPC Standing Committee's major tasks, legislation and supervision work for 2019, the statement said.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:20:51|Editor: yan

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ISLAMABAD, April 12 (Xinhua) -- At least one child was killed and eight others were injured Friday evening in a blast in Chaman city of Pakistan's southwest Balochistan province, an official said.

Deputy Commissioner of Chaman Shafqat Anwar Shahwani told media that the blast took place at the busy market area located at the Mall Road in Chaman, the country's southwest city bordering Afghanistan.

Police and rescue teams rushed to the site and shifted the body and injured to a hospital.

The official said that an explosive device was planted in a motorcycle and it was detonated with a remote-controlled device, adding that the death toll might further rise as three of the injured are in critical condition.

Local media reported that at least five security personnel were among the wounded. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

Earlier in the day, at least 20 people were killed and over 40 others injured in a blast that hit a fruit and vegetable market in the country's southwestern city of Quetta.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:20:53|Editor: yan

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WUHAN, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor Wang Yong has called for all-out efforts of flood control by screening for hidden dangers and improving areas of weakness.

Wang, also head of the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters, made the remarks during his inspection in central China's Hunan and Hubei provinces on Thursday and Friday.

Local authorities should revise and improve flood control plans, refine the preparation for emergencies, keep a close eye on important facilities and weak links, and conduct an in-depth investigation of hidden dangers for flood control, Wang said.

They should also strengthen patrols and emergency response, ensure the safety of important dikes and key facilities during the flood season, and reduce the risks of flooding, mountain torrents and waterlogging in cities, he said.

Wang added that it is necessary to closely monitor the changes in weather and flood conditions, issue forecasts and warning information as early as possible, organize relocations in a timely manner, and prevent secondary disasters such as landslides.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:25:57|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A large majority of German consumers, 79 percent, supported the European Union's ban on many disposable plastic products, according to a YouGov study published on Friday.

Only 29 percent of Germans believed that there is already sufficient environmentally-friendly packaging available in supermarkets and shops.

The purchasing behavior of Germans reflected this sentiment, with 72 percent preferring to buy products that generate as little packaging waste as possible.

"German consumers are sensitized to the subject of packaging waste and are already actively trying to avoid packaging waste when purchasing," said Daniela Loeck, senior consultant at YouGov.

Some 46 percent of Germans had avoided purchasing a product because of plastic packaging and more than half said they would even change their main shopping location if another supermarket nearby offered environmentally-friendly packaging.

"Retailers and companies across all product categories should take consumers' demands seriously and improve their offers in terms of environmental friendliness," added Loeck.

In particular, older German consumers were more attentive to packaging waste, with 81 percent of respondents aged 60 and over saying they want to avoid waste when selecting products in supermarkets.

As the age of respondents decreased, however, German consumers paid comparatively less attention to avoiding plastic waste when choosing products in the shops.

According to a recent EU decision, from 2021 onwards, there will be a plastic ban in place on all products for which non-plastic alternatives already exist.

These include disposable plastic plates and cutlery as well as straws and plastic cotton swabs. Containers and cups made of foamed polystyrene will also be banned.

In February, German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze met with representatives of large retailers and manufacturers as well as environmental and consumer associations to discuss the avoidance of superfluous plastic packaging in Germany.

Schulze said she had "no patience at all with cucumbers shrink-wrapped in foil, fruit and vegetables packed in plastic trays, more and more sausage and cheese pre-portioned in packaging".

The German environment minister said she expected "retailers and manufacturers to commit themselves to using alternatives to plastic across the board" by the time the next meeting takes place in fall.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:31:06|Editor: yan

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CAPE TOWN, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chaos reigned in Cape Town as violent protests over poor service delivery continued in many parts of the city on Friday.

Police said they have detained dozens of people suspected of involvement in acts of violence since protests erupted on Thursday.

In the township of Lwandle alone, 20 protesters were arrested following an alleged land invasion.

During the protests, some people attempted to invade land belonging to the City of Cape Town, the city said in a statement.

The protests came as the country is preparing to hold its sixth general election on May 8 after the end of apartheid in 1994.

Protesters apparently took advantage of the election to outpour their grievances in relation to various issues ranging from high water bills, lack of electricity, poor sanitation and the slow pace of land reform.

A number of townships were under complete lock-down as roads leading to them were blocked.

Violent protests have led to the disruption of many schools across the city, said Debbie Schafer, member of the executive council (MEC) in the Western Cape provincial government.

Eight more schools were closed on Friday following the closure of 21 on Thursday, Schafer said.

At many other schools there has been low attendance. In some cases, learners who attend schools in other areas were unable to get out of their communities to their schools, according to Schafer.

Education is essential, and teaching and learning time should not be interrupted by people for their own agendas, he said.

"People have the right to protest peacefully but the violent nature of these recent actions is both concerning and unacceptable," Schafer said.

He urged the South African Police Service to act swiftly and decisively to restore order in affected communities so that teaching and learning can resume as soon as possible.

"It is high time that people destroying the opportunities of others are held accountable for their thuggish behavior," Schafer said.

The City of Cape Town said the protests were putting the lives of the public at risk and negatively affecting the city's ability to deliver services.

In some communities, rubbish disposal and health facilities have been affected, and the rail service was also disrupted because of the protests, according to the city.

"The violence, destruction of infrastructure, risk to public safety and the closure of major routes which in turn impacts the economy, can not be condoned," said JP Smith, Cape Town's mayoral committee member for safety and security.

Alan Winde, MEC for community safety in the Western Cape, said the protests were politically motivated and police should act swiftly to arrest the ringleaders.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:41:14|Editor: yan

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TOKYO, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Japan's working population further dwindled last year while the number of foreign labor increased, government statistics showed Friday.

According to the annual data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, the working population from the age of 15 to 64 amounted to 75.45 million in 2018, shrinking 512,000 from 2017, hitting a record low level since comparable data became available.

The overall population as of last October decreased 263,000 to reach 126.44 million, falling for the eighth straight year, according to the ministry.

The number of foreigners, the ministry said, increased 167,000 to reach 2.23 million, growing for the sixth straight year.

The statistics reflect Japan's pressing issue of labor shortage, prompting the government to start a new visa system in April to introduce more foreign labor to fill in the gaps mainly as blue-collar workers.

According to the government, Japan is expected to accept up to 345,150 foreign workers under the new visa scheme over a five-year period starting April 1, including 60,000 in nursing care.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:51:17|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A senior official of the State Council has called for more efforts to boost transparency of government services.

Xiao Jie, state councilor and secretary-general of the State Council, made the remarks during a research tour from Wednesday to Thursday in eastern China's Anhui Province.

Authorities were asked to strengthen the disclosure of information in improving the business environment, major construction projects, and key areas affecting people's wellbeing.

He stressed the construction of a national online platform of government service and called for efforts to better utilize government websites and new media to provide more convenience to the public and enterprises.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-12 23:56:20|Editor: yan

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BEIJING, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in China more than doubled in the first quarter of 2019 on the back of government support measures, data showed Friday.

The country sold roughly 299,000 NEVs in Q1, up 109.7 percent year on year, while NEV production surged 102.7 percent to 304,000 units, the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said in a statement.

Sales of pure electric vehicles rose 121.4 percent in the period to 227,000 units, and sales of plug-in hybrid vehicles rose 79.1 percent to 72,000 in the same period, the association said.

The strong NEV sales can be mainly attributed to government measures including subsidies, easier access to license plates and tax preferences.

China's total auto sales dropped 11.3 percent to 6.37 million units, and output dropped 9.8 percent to 6.34 million units in the first quarter. The declines both narrowed from the first two months, the data showed.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 00:11:26|Editor: Xiaoxia

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A Palestinian protester holds a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops in his mouth during clashes on the Gaza-Israel border, east of al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, on April 12, 2019. The Israeli army shot dead a Palestinian boy on Friday and wounded dozens during clashes with hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israeli, according to medics. (Xinhua/Yasser Qudih)

GAZA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Israeli soldiers shot dead on Friday a Palestinian teen and wounded 10 others during clashes with Palestinian demonstrators in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel, medics said.

Ashraf al Qedra, health ministry spokesman, said in an emailed press statement that Maysara Abu Shaloof, 15 years old from Jabalia refugee camp, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers' gunfire.

He added that ten others were injured in clashes with Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip that broke out in the weekly protests better known as the Great March of Return.

Al Qedra said that since the start of the marches of return and breaking the Israeli siege, 272 Palestinians have been killed and 16,665 injured by Israeli soldiers' gunfire.

Leaders of the High Commission of the Great March of Return insist that the weekly protests will go on until the Israeli blockade that has been imposed on the Gaza Strip since 2007 is completely lifted.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 00:26:31|Editor: yan

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BERLIN, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Neighbors cannot forbid an individual flat owner from renting out an apartment, for example via online services such as Airbnb, in the short-term, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled on Friday.

The concrete case came from a city in Lower Saxony where a woman, who owned a flat in a building with several owner-occupied flats, wanted to rent out her apartment to holiday guests.

The other owners in the building were opposed to this and decided two years ago that short-term rentals should no longer be permitted. Following the other owners' decision, the woman went to court.

On Friday, Germany's highest court BGH ruled that the decision of the owners was unlawful and thus ineffective. Each individual apartment owner must be able to rely on the fact that the use of their dwelling "is not simply restricted without their agreement", said the presiding judge Christina Stresemann.

The BGH made clear that the ruling concerned a very strongly protected right in Germany, namely the right of ownership, which is protected by the German Constitution.

For this reason, a majority of the owners could not "simply impose their will on an individual", according to judge Stresemann.

"A letting prohibition requires therefore the agreement of all owners of flats. Likewise, renting for short periods or of a specific type, for instance renting out as holiday or company flats, can only be prohibited with the consent of all flat owners," said BGH judge Streseman.

Back in 2010, the German Federal Court of Justice had ruled that flat owners generally have the right to let their apartments to holiday guests.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 00:26:33|Editor: yan

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ARUSHA, Tanzania, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in Tanzania on Friday launched its office in Dodoma in an effort to support the initiatives of the Tanzanian government to shift to the capital city.

Speaking at the launching event, Chinese Ambassador Wang Ke noted that the Tanzanian government has put in place initiatives that have generated new trend and provided a strong impetus to economic and social development.

She noted that among the initiatives is shifting the capital to Dodoma, a long-cherished wish first proposed by the father of the nation, Julius Nyerere in 1973.

"It is significant for the central government to maintain closer ties with regions in the country and can also strengthen the linkages between the coastal areas and inland regions to promote common development," she said.

She added that President John Magufuli is committed to realizing this wish within his term of office, for he has shown extraordinary courage and resolve by overcoming various difficulties and making remarkable progress.

According to the ambassador, the launch of the office is not only to respond to President Magufuli's proposal but to show China's firm support to the implementation of major development initiatives and strategies of Tanzania.

While officiating at the event, Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Palamagamba Kabudi said "China is one among the very first embassies to open a consulate here in Dodoma."

"This is a testimony to the importance of diplomatic relations between the United Republic of Tanzania and the People's Republic of China and it reflects the close relations that exist between our two countries," said the minister.

"From the outset of our bilateral relations, China has assisted Tanzania with a variety of generous economic aid programs," he said. "The most notable being the TAZARA Railway built from 1970 to 1976 with Chinese funding, labour, and technical assistance."

"To date, the Tanzania-Zambia Railway remains one of the biggest projects China has ever undertaken overseas and one of its largest aid endowments," he said.

He added that in recent years, Sino-Tanzania ties have evolved into more modern and pragmatic relations with greater and diversified engagements in the fields of trade, infrastructural project development and investments.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 00:51:43|Editor: yan

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NAIROBI, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Kenyan police have intensified search for two Cuban doctors who were kidnapped by suspected al-Shabab militants in Mandera town in northeast Kenya near the Somali border on Friday morning.

Kenya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs assured the Cuban government and the international community that Kenya is doing everything within its capability to rescue Assel Herera Correa and Landy Rodriguez, according to a statement issued in Nairobi.

"All security apparatus have been activated and are tracking down the abductors to ensure the safe return of the two doctors," the ministry said in the statement.

The two medics were heading to Mandera County Referral Hospital which is their work station before the ambush at around 9 a.m. local time.

The attackers shot dead one of the two police officers who were guarding the medics during the attack.

The ministry called on the global concerted effort in combating transnational crimes and eliminating elements disruptive to peaceful existence.

The two medics are among 100 Cuban specialists who arrived in the country in June 2018 under a bilateral arrangement between Kenya and Cuban governments.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 02:42:23|Editor: yan

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (front) attends the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday proposed a series of measures to promote cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs).

Li made the proposal when addressing the eighth China-CEEC leaders' meeting in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik.

Li noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping recently made successful visits to three European countries, injecting new impetus into deepening development of the China-European Union (EU) comprehensive strategic partnership.

As part of the China-EU relations, the China-CEEC cooperation mechanism has been conducive to promoting European integration process and advancing the China-EU ties, the premier said.

Members of the mechanism stick to the principles of mutual respect and equal treatment, uphold the spirit of openness and inclusiveness, follow international rules and EU laws and regulations, and respect the responsibilities and obligations that EU members among the 16 CEECs need to fulfill, Li said.

The cooperation mechanism attaches equal importance to trade and investment, and combines economic cooperation with people-to-people exchanges, having not only promoted common development but also facilitated Europe's balanced development, said Li.

The mechanism has become a major pillar for China-EU comprehensive cooperation, he added.

Noting that the leaders' meeting takes "Building new bridges through openness, innovation and partnership" as its theme, Li called for making the bridge of openness broader, the bridge of innovation clearer, and the bridge of partnership more solid.

On future development of the China-CEEC cooperation, Li called for jointly defending multilateral trade system, upholding such basic principle as openness, transparency, inclusiveness and non-discrimination, and sticking to the direction of trade liberalization.

On expanding trade volume, Li said China is willing to import more high-quality agricultural products from the CEECs and make it easier for such products to be exported to China.

Calling for joint efforts to build the Belt and Road, the premier said China is willing to enhance the alignment between its development strategies and those of the CEECs, stick to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, and better draw on complementary advantages, so as to achieve win-win results and common prosperity.

Urging greater efforts to boost innovation cooperation, Li said China is willing to work with the 16 countries to conduct joint research, expand scientific and technological exchanges, and cultivate growth points through innovation cooperation.

The premier also stressed the importance of jointly safeguarding a fair, just and non-discriminatory market environment.

Li also called for continued efforts to promote cooperation in the fields of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and industrial park building, adding that China and the CEECs have held cross-border matching events of SMEs, and launched a website for the SMEs coordination mechanism.

Calling for stepped-up efforts to conduct people-to-people exchanges, Li said China and the CEECs should take the Year of Education and Youth Exchange as an opportunity to enhance exchanges and cooperation among universities and colleges and promote mutual understanding and friendship between young people.

Announcing that China will host the ninth China-CEEC leaders' meeting in 2020, Li said he expects CEEC leaders to attend the meeting and jointly sketch out a new blueprint for the China-CEEC cooperation.

On their part, CEEC leaders said, after the launch of the cooperation mechanism, the CEECs and China have seen their pragmatic cooperation bearing remarkable fruits, political mutual trust continuously strengthened, trade and investment rapidly growing, and cooperation in fields including education, tourism and culture continuously deepened.

The cooperation mechanism has continuously shown new vigor and vitality and become an important cross-region cooperation platform featuring openness, inclusiveness, mutual benefits and win-win results, they said.

The mechanism has not only boosted economic growth of each country and enhanced the wellbeing of their people, but also effectively promoted the overall EU-China relations, they said.

All sides are ready to take this meeting as an opportunity to fully support the implementation of CEEC-China cooperation projects, further promote connectivity and infrastructure building, actively participate in the joint building of the Belt and Road, continuously expand trade volume, jointly safeguard multilateralism and free trade, increase personnel exchanges, and expand exchanges and cooperation at local levels and in fields including tourism, health, sports, and think tanks, the CEEC leaders said.

After the meeting, China and the CEECs jointly published The Dubrovnik Guidelines for Cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European Countries, and the leaders witnessed the signing of more than 10 cooperation agreements.

Greece was accepted as a full member of the China-CEEC cooperation mechanism, according to a decision made by the meeting.

Later on Friday, Li and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic met the press after the leaders' meeting.

Both leaders spoke highly of the new progress made in the China-CEEC cooperation and called the meeting efficient, pragmatic, fruitful and successful.

Speaking to reporters, Li said, faced with the current complicated international situations, all sides should work to safeguard multilateralism and free trade.

As a cross-regional cooperation platform, the China-CEEC cooperation mechanism now serves as an important part of and a beneficial supplement to the China-EU cooperation, Li said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the 5th International Arctic Forum in St. Petersburg, Russia, April 9, 2019. (Xinhua/Evgeny Sinitsyn)

MOSCOW, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin earned 8.648 million rubles (some 134,400 U.S. dollars) in 2018, his income declaration showed on Friday, much less than in 2017 when he earned 18.7 million rubles.

Putin owns a 77-square-meter apartment with an 18-square-meter garage, according to the declaration posted on the Kremlin website.

The president also uses a 153.7-square-meter apartment with an 18-square-meter parking lot. All the real estate declared by Putin is in Russia.

Putin has three vehicles and a trailer.

His declared annual income was 8.86 million rubles in 2016, 8.89 million in 2015 and 7.65 million in 2014.

A separate statement showed that Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev earned 9.917 million rubles in 2018, up from 8.565 million a year earlier. (1 U.S. dollar equals 64.35 Russian rubles)
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 03:48:02|Editor: Li Xia

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Lithuania's Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis in Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Lithuania's Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis here Friday, calling for more practical cooperation between the two countries.

The meeting was held on the sidelines of the eighth leaders' meeting between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) at the southern Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik.

Commending the solid political mutual trust and the broad cooperation prospect between the two countries, Li said China and Lithuania are friendly nations and that the bilateral ties have maintained positive development momentum since the establishment of diplomatic relations.

He said China and Lithuania have deepened the alignment between the two countries' development strategies within the China-CEEC cooperation framework, and that the bilateral practical cooperation has yielded abundant achievements.

China is willing to keep promoting bilateral cooperation in accordance with market principles and European Union (EU) rules, and import more of the European country's competitive products, so as to push forward bilateral ties to a new stage, said the premier.

Skvernelis said Lithuania attaches great importance to its relations with China, adding that the two sides enjoy sound cooperation within the frameworks of the China-CEEC cooperation and the China-EU relations.

Lithuania stands ready to join China in deepening their practical cooperation, and exploring cooperation in finance and infrastructure, as well as cultural and people-to-people exchanges, he said.

He also said that Lithuania wants to export to China more of its competitive agricultural and livestock products for greater achievements in bilateral ties.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 04:03:16|Editor: Xiaoxia

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A Palestinian protester uses a slingshot to hurl stones at Israeli troops during clashes on the Gaza-Israel border, east of al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, on April 12, 2019. The Israeli army shot dead a Palestinian boy on Friday and wounded dozens during clashes with hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israeli, according to medics. (Xinhua/Yasser Qudih)

GAZA, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army shot dead a Palestinian boy on Friday and wounded dozens during clashes with hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israeli, according to medics.

Ashraf al-Qedra, spokesman of the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave, told reporters that Maysara Abu Shaloof, 15 years old from Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza Strip, immediately died of an Israeli gunshot in his abdomen.

Al-Qedra added that 66 demonstrators were injured, including 15 children and two paramedics.

Friday's clashes were part of the weekly anti-Israel protests that have been going on in eastern Gaza Strip, close to the border with Israel, since the start of the rallies and protests, better known as the Great March of Return on March 30, last year.

Al-Qedra said that 272 Palestinian demonstrators were killed and more than 30,000 injured.

The High Commission of the Great March of Return and Breaking the Israeli Siege had earlier on Friday called on the populations to join the weekly protests in eastern Gaza.

The demonstrators gathered in the area close to the border with Israel and clashed with the Israeli soldiers stationed on the borderline area. The soldiers fired tear gas and live gunfire at the demonstrators.

Israel Radio reported that several demonstrators threw homemade hand-grenades at the soldiers, adding that the soldiers dispersed dozens who tried to cut the fence of the border and infiltrate into Israel.

The Great March of Return is calling on Israel to end 12 years of blockade that had been imposed on the Gaza Strip right after Hamas movement had violently seized control of the territory in 2007.

Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas leader, who joined on Friday rallies in eastern Gaza City, told the crowds of participants in the rallies that the march of return will go on until the marches meet the demands of the demonstrators in ending the siege.

Over the past few months, Egypt, the United Nations and Qatar have been mediating a calm understanding between Hamas and Israel to defuse tension on the border with the Gaza Strip.

"The occupation (Israel) has no choice but to abide by the understandings, which were mediated by Egypt on achieving calm in the Gaza Strip," said al-Hayya, adding that "understandings still exist and we observe the occupation's behavior."

Israel began last week to ease some of the security measures that had been imposed on the Gaza Strip, where it reopened the close crossing points and expanded the fishing zone off the Gaza Strip's cost to 15 nautical miles instead of six.

The commission of the march of return called later in a statement on the populations to join the upcoming Friday rally, April 17 which is the annual Palestinian Prisoner's Day anniversary.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 04:18:26|Editor: yan

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BAGHDAD, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi security forces on Friday killed three Islamic State (IS) militants and arrested two others in separate operations in Iraq's western province of Anbar, a security source said.

The provincial police commandos backed by the Iraqi army's gunships conducted an airdrop operation on an IS hideout in a desert area in the western part of Anbar province, killing three IS suicide bombers, the provincial police chief Hadi Erzeij told Xinhua.

During the operation, the troops seized different weapons, motorcycles and a truck at the scene, Erzeij said.

Also in the province, the troops conducted another airdrop operation on an IS hideout and arrested two IS militants in the desert of Anbar.

IS militants are still active in the vast Anbar desert which stretches to the border with neighboring countries of Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, as many civilians have been kidnapped or killed by the extremist group recently.

The security situation in Iraq has been dramatically improved after Iraqi security forces declared full defeat of the IS across the country late in 2017.

However, IS remnants have since melted or regrouped in cities or fled to desert and rugged areas, carrying out attacks against the security forces and civilians despite operations from time to time to hunt them down.
Libyan protesters attend a demonstration to demand an end to the Khalifa Haftar's offensive against Tripoli, in Martyrs Square in central Tripoli, Libya April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/REUTERS)

UNITED NATIONS, April 12 (Xinhua) -- An increasing artillery barrage on the outskirts of Tripoli, Libya has forced nearly 10,000 people to flee their homes and seven civilians have been killed since the siege began last week, a UN spokesman said on Friday.

"What is clear is that those who have their fingers on the trigger need to stop the shooting," said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"There's been no letup in the fighting," Dujarric said. "There's, in fact, been increased use of heavy artillery which one can only imagine the devastating impact it can have, especially in urban areas."

Beginning last week, rebel Gen. Khalifa Haftar led the Libyan National Army (LNA) into an assault on the capital city region.

"We are continuing to closely monitor developments on the ground ... in the outskirts of Tripoli," Dujarric said. "We are concerned about the impact of these clashes on already difficult living conditions of ordinary Libyans."

"Almost 10,000 people have now fled their homes in areas affected," the spokesman said, adding that evacuation teams had received requests to move out about 3,800 people to safer areas, but only 550 people were able to be evacuated due to access restrictions.

He said UN health partners have verified 17 civilian casualties, with seven fatalities, including three medical staff. At least five ambulances were hit.

"We've seen the targeting or at least the hitting of medical personnel, of ambulances, which is completely unacceptable," Dujarric told reporters at a regular briefing. "We continue to be on the ground in touch with the parties and continue to plea for at least humanitarian pause so people can flee safely and aid can come in."

The secretary-general's special representative in Libya, Ghassan Salame, and his team continue to work in Tripoli.

"They are having intensive outreach to national and international actors to seek to urgently de-escalate the situation," the spokesman said. "The special representative and his team also met today with mayors from conflict-affected areas to discuss humanitarian situation, including ways in which the UN can assist civilians trapped in those areas."

"What is essential for us, but also all those countries that may have influence over the parties, is to push them to a humanitarian pause and further along, push them toward a political agreement," Dujarric said.

The fighting also is impacting the economic situation with "increasing cash withdrawals from banks and the hoarding of goods anticipated to exacerbate liquidity shortages and high commodity prices," he said.

"We continue to call for humanitarian pause to allow people to safely evacuate and emergency services to get through and for all parties to abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law," the spokesman said. "Medical facilities, medical personnel and medical transport must be respected and protected at all times."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 05:44:22|Editor: yan

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KHARTOUM, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Sixteen people were killed and 20 others injured during gatherings in Sudan's capital city Khartoum on Thursday and Friday, Sudanese police announced Friday.

"Criminal police investigations indicated that 16 people were killed and 20 injured by stray bullets," Hashim Abdel-Rahim, Sudanese police spokesman, said in a statement.

He further said that the sit-ins and gatherings have affected the traffic and caused a big traffic jam in central Khartoum.

Since Dec. 19 last year, Sudan has been witnessing popular protests over the deteriorating economic conditions and price hikes of basic commodities.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 05:49:26|Editor: yan

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LONDON, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Despite the UK entering into the European Union (EU) exit process more than two years ago, no plan has yet achieved consensus, and all the various options from a no-deal Brexit to no Brexit could still happen.

With its two deadlines, the first on March 29 and the second on April 12, being rolled back, Brexit is now scheduled to take place by Oct. 31.

This delay of slightly more than six months gives an opportunity for a variety of events to happen, including more discussions between various UK political leaders and a possible general election in the UK.

The prospect of a no-deal Brexit, one where the UK leaves the EU without a deal and moves to a trading arrangement with the EU under the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, has already been rejected by British House of Commons.

However, governor of the Bank of England (BoE) Mark Carney on Thursday on the fringes of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) spring meetings in Washington outlined that the UK could still choose to go for a no-deal Brexit.

Carney argued that a Brexit on March 29 or on April 12 without a deal agreed would have been an accident, leaving "financial markets... not positioned for the chance of no deal so there would have been quite a substantial repricing."

"It's different to decide to move to WTO terms in an orderly fashion, as well prepared as possible -- we can debate the advisability of doing that -- but to stumble into something accidentally, particularly when financial markets aren't positioned for it... would have been substantial," the Financial Times quoted Carney as saying.

While Carney was careful not to endorse a particular Brexit ending, his evaluation that a managed no-deal Brexit would be less costly for the UK than crashing out of the EU, will be welcomed by pro-Brexit supporters.

Dr Alan Wager, a research associate at King's College London, told Xinhua in an exclusive interview that Carney's assessment came against a six-month period in which UK politicians could evaluate how they wanted Brexit to play out and to remould the political landscape, and his statement was a nod to one of many possible future directions.

"Although the Bank of England which Carney runs is independent, it is also a branch of government," he added, "his position is based on the fact that he has to balance all the competing interests."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 06:09:33|Editor: zh

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UNITED NATIONS, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-five years after the Rwanda genocide, a candle-lit commemoration was held at the UN headquarters on Friday, with caution against xenophobia, racism and denial of the tragedy dominating the theme.

After lights were dimmed in the UN General Assembly hall, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Rwandan President Paul Kagame, among other UN and Rwandan representatives, lit up the candles near the podium. Delegates of UN member states switched "ablaze" the imitation candles in front of their seats.

April 7 marks the start of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda which lasted for about 100 days to mid-July 1994 and killed more than one million people, overwhelmingly Tutsi.

In 2003, the UN General Assembly designated April 7 as the International Day of Reflection on the Genocide in Rwanda.

In 2018, the assembly amended the title of the annual observance to the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, recalling also that Hutu and others who opposed it were killed.

"On this Day, we honor those who were murdered and reflect on the suffering and resilience of those who survived," Guterres said. "Today we stand in solidarity with the people of Rwanda."

He warned: "As we renew our resolve to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again, we are seeing dangerous trends of rising xenophobia, racism and intolerance in many parts of the world."

Particularly, he pointed to the current widespread proliferation of hate speech and incitement to violence, things that were very clearly present in Rwanda immediately before the genocide.

The UN chief called on political, religious and civil society leaders to reject hate speech and discrimination, and to work vigorously to address and mitigate the root causes that undermine social cohesion and create conditions for hatred and intolerance.

Kagame, on his part, stressed "remembrance is an act of honor," and that honor should go to the victims, the courage of the survivors, and the manner in which the Rwandans have come to rebuild their nation.

Remembrance is also an act of prevention, he said. "When genocide is dormant, it takes the form of denial and trivialization... Countering denial is essential for breaking the cycle and preventing any recurrence."

In the same vein, UN General Assembly President Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces recalled when "hundreds and thousands of people were orphaned, widowed, raped, injured or forcibly displaced," the international community watched in horror but did not prevent the atrocities.

She said while the international community is discussing what should have been done to prevent the genocide, "let us condemn all forms and manifestations of the denial of genocide."

"Let us invest in education to enshrine the lessons of our past in future generations," Espinosa added. "Let us redouble our efforts to fight hate speech, and call out those who dehumanize others."

After an interlude performed by a quintet of musicians from the UN Staff Recreation Council symphony orchestra, two survivors of the genocide shared their personal experiences of horror, trauma and recovery, as well as vision and hope.

Both the survivors thanked Kagame, who controlled an army back then, for contributing to the cessation of the killings.

Esther Mujawayo-Keiner, a therapist and co-founder of Association of Widows of April's Genocide, said: "You (Kagame) saved our lives. You saved my life along with my daughters. You saved the lives of many widows and orphans."

She lamented the fact that the United Nations could have made a difference 25 years ago, "if the Tutsi had been considered human beings with value, and if the Geneva convention had been taken seriously."

Recounting her own story, she said: "I hope that no one will ever have to flee again with a baby on their back. That is the mission of the United Nations. We must act so that this never happens again."

At the beginning of the ceremony, a video was played showing other survivors telling their pain and hope. It also talked about the recovery and reconstruction of the African country from the trauma left by the genocide.

Guterres spotlighted Rwanda's achievements since the tragedy, saying its path is "a rightful source of pride and comfort for the people and Government of Rwanda."

He noted Rwanda is now the fourth largest contributor to UN peacekeeping operations and leads in woman leadership with 60 percent of its parliamentary seats held by female lawmakers.

As a pioneer in banning single-use plastic bags, the country is now one of the cleanest nations on Earth, he said.

"In all, Rwanda's experience holds so many lessons for humanity," he said. "From the darkest depths, the country has risen in a quarter century as a pioneer for the sustainable future we all strive for."

For several years, Rwanda has been among the top five troop contributors of the UN peacekeeping operations, said Kagame.

He pledged: "We intend to maintain this commitment, but one that does not only contribute soldiers and police. We come to the task with the values instilled by our tragic history."
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 06:09:35|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, April 12 (Xinhua) -- A Sudanese envoy said Friday that transition after the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir requires time and that the international community should not try to push it.

"Any democratic process requires time and that should not be threatened. We do not wish to see the nascent, gradual, democratic process unravel in the name of democracy," Yasir Abdelsalam, charge d'affaires of the Sudanese mission to the United Nations, told the Security Council.

"We, therefore, call on our partners in the international community to support a peaceful transition in the country in a way that would help build on gains and open up the path to stability, development, and prosperity, and allow us to move away from the scourge of violence," he said after the Security Council voted to extend the UN peacekeeping mission for Abyei, a territory contested between Sudan and South Sudan.

"I would like to reaffirm here that what is happening in Sudan is a domestic matter. It is up to the will of the Sudanese people. It is a delicate situation that Sudan is currently facing," said Abdelsalam.

Sudanese Defense Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf on Thursday announced the ouster of President al-Bashir.

Ibn Auf, who assumed the chairmanship of a transitional military council and said he would rule the country during a two-year transitional period, stepped down Friday and named Lt. Gen. Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan as his successor.

Abdelsalam said the transitional military council would be "the guarantor of a civilian government." No party will be excluded from the political process, including armed groups, he said.

The suspension of the constitution could be lifted at any point, and the transitional period could be shortened depending on developments on the ground and agreements reached between stakeholders, he said.

Abdelsalam said the military council is responding to the Sudanese people's aspirations for change and works to protect the lives of its citizens, as well as their well-being.

Street protesters in Khartoum who had demanded al-Bashir's departure have continued their protests against the military takeover.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 06:39:45|Editor: yan

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UNITED NATIONS, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The UN envoy for Colombia, Carlos Ruiz Massieu, on Friday stressed the importance of transitional justice in a country that saw more than five decades of civil war between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Recent weeks have been dominated by divisive debates in Colombia regarding the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), an extrajudicial court system for the sake of reconciliation, Massieu told the Security Council.

Last month, President Ivan Duque objected to six articles of the draft statutory law of the JEP. Following a vote against these objections in the Chamber of Representatives earlier this week, consideration of the objections is pending in the Senate, said Massieu.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for prompt action by all parties concerned to ensure that a statutory law consistent with the peace agreement between the government and FARC is put in place as soon as possible, he noted.

This statutory law is the last missing element of the legal framework for the JEP and a necessary one to ensure that this institution can operate with the necessary independence and autonomy, said Massieu.

The JEP continues to advance its work with impressive results, he said. It has now initiated seven large cases that are examining significant violations affecting 820,000 victims. Moreover, close to 9,700 former FARC members and almost 2,000 individuals from government forces have subjected themselves to its authority.

President Duque has also announced his intention to propose three reforms to the articles of the Constitution underpinning the transitional justice framework of the peace agreement, said Massieu.

Any such initiatives should not be applied in a retroactive manner to those who laid down their arms in good faith and on the strength of commitments made under the peace agreement, he said.

In a climate of uncertainty for victims, for those subject to the JEP, for FARC members awaiting funding for social and economic reintegration, and for communities who have suffered from the conflict, the greatest uncertainty would be to reopen core elements of the underlying peace agreement itself, he warned.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 06:44:48|Editor: zh

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Li Xiaolin (2nd L), chairperson of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, shakes hands with Veroljub Arsic, deputy speaker of the Serbian parliament, in Belgrade, Serbia on April 12, 2019. Li Xiaolin arrived here Friday together with a delegation of 18 representatives of Chinese cities and provinces. (Xinhua/Nemanja Cabric)

BELGRADE, April 12 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road initiative made the traditional friendship between Serbia and China prosper, not only in economy and trade, but also in science and education, a Serbian government official said at a meeting with Li Xiaolin, Chairperson of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, in Belgrade on Friday.

Speaking at the meeting, Sokovic said that the Belt and Road initiative harvested the potentials of the historical friendship between Serbia and China, which resulted in increased cultural exchange, scientific cooperation, and Chinese language learning in Serbia.

She said that the scientific cooperation which was established with an agreement between Serbia and China in 2009 has since improved immensely, enabling numerous bilateral projects in the different fields of science, such as discovering new pharmaceuticals.

"Our ministry is very satisfied with our cooperation with China in the field of science and education and we hope that the cooperation between our countries will intensify further and bring mutual benefits to all of us," she said.

Li Xiaolin, who arrived here Friday together with a delegation of 18 representatives of Chinese cities and provinces, agreed that the friendly ties between Serbia and China are a good foundation for mutually beneficial cooperation within the Belt and Road initiative in future.

"Our friendly relations are a platform that creates further preconditions for the deepening of cooperation and exchange in different fields, such as culture, economy and industry," Li said.

On the upcoming second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be held in Beijing later this month, she said she hoped the Serbian government will achieve even more active economic cooperation and trade exchange within the Belt and Road initiative, which has so far been supported by more than 120 countries worldwide.

The Chinese delegation headed by Li also met with the head of Serbian Parliamentary Friendship Group with China Zarko Obradovic and the deputy speaker of the Serbian parliament Veroljub Arsic.
Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-13 06:44:49|Editor: Li Xia

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev in Dubrovnik, Croatia, April 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen)

DUBROVNIK, Croatia, April 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with North Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev on Friday, calling on the two countries to enhance infrastructure cooperation.

The meeting was held on the sidelines of the eighth leaders' meeting between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) at the southern Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik.

Commending the bilateral relations, Li said China and North Macedonia respect and trust each other, and that practical cooperation between the two countries has yielded fruitful achievements.

China stands ready to dovetail the Belt and Road Initiative with North Macedonia's development strategy, said Li, adding that highway projects are a landmark for bilateral cooperation, which is of great significance to North Macedonia's socio-economic development and regional connectivity.

The premier said China is willing to work in close coordination with North Macedonia to promote transport infrastructure cooperation for greater achievements, voicing his hope for facilitation by the country to the highway construction.

Applauding the relations and cooperation between the two countries, Zaev said his country has benefited from the China-CEEC cooperation and the connectivity projects.

North Macedonia stands ready to work with China to enhance cooperation in trade, investment, energy, agriculture and infrastructure to boost bilateral relations, he said.
Florin Roman explica plecarea sa din Guvern: Au fost doua tipuri de atacuri, cel politic si al fortelor OCULTE

In cazul meu au fost doua tipuri de atacuri, cel politic, iar regizorul acestui atac politic la adresa mea a si recunoscut, de altfel, ca a dorit sa se impauneze [citeste mai departe]
Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- The chairman of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Marcel Ciolacu, when asked about the statements of National Liberal Party (PNL) chair, Florin Citu, according to which the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) cannot be optimized, nor modified, answered ironically: "It means the European

- The Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) deputy Rozalia Biro stated on Thursday that in a large coalition formed by the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and UDMR, a new priority of UDMR will be the proposal to discuss revising and reforming the Constitution,

- Social Democratic Party (PSD) first deputy chairman Sorin Grindeanu said on Friday that the proposal of the Social Democrats for the position of prime minister should be Marcel Ciolacu. Asked at the PSD headquarters, what the proposal of the PSD for prime minister should be, Grindeanu answered:

- The Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected, on Thursday, as unfounded, a request in which the former chairman of Social Democratic Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea requested the transfer to a provincial court of the case in which he is tried for trafficking in influence in connection with his presence at the

- The chairman of Social Democratic Party (PSD), Marcel Ciolacu, declared on Thursday that he will go to the PNL negotiations with the measures that the Social Democrats consider as urgent, reiterating that PSD will have a proposal for PM when they will go to the Cotroceni Presidential Palace for consultations.

- Social Democratic Party (PSD) Chairman Marcel Ciolacu said on Thursday that political leaders had already "stretched" Romanians' patience too much and that a decision had to be made on the political crisis. "Regarding the political crisis, I appeal to all political leaders with parliamentary

- PNL (National Liberal Party) Deputy Ionel Danca on Thursday left the parliamentary group of this party to become a non-affiliated Deputy from now on. According to him, "the new leadership of PNL is humiliating itself, begging for help from the PSD, heads down" while, "and this is the maximum humiliation"

- Postul nostru de televiziune a fost lider de piata pe tronsonul in care a fost difuzata emisiunea moderata de Anca Alexandrescu, Marinela Mititelu si Dorin Iacob, la mare distanta de celelalte statii de stiri. De la ora 21 pana la miezul noptii, Realitatea Plus a avut o medie a audientei de 3,4%. Pe
Stiri pe aceeasi tema

- Social Democratic Party (PSD) Chairman Marcel Ciolacu said at the end of the negotiations with the National Liberal Party (PNL) on Sunday that the country's President is entitled, according to the Constitution, to designate the prime minister, and that the President would be proposed two options.

- President Klaus Iohannis announced on Thursday that he will call the parties to consultations when a parliamentary majority crystallises, agerpres reports. "I will wait for formal consultations after discussions in the parties lead to a majority owned by the parties that will want to propose a government

- The Bucharest Court of Appeal rejected, on Thursday, as unfounded, a request in which the former chairman of Social Democratic Party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea requested the transfer to a provincial court of the case in which he is tried for trafficking in influence in connection with his presence at the

- Prime Minister-designate Dacian Ciolos, chairman of the Save Romania Union (USR), stated, on Wednesday, after meeting the leaders of the National Liberal Party (PNL), Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) and the national minorities, that no conclusion was reached. "No conclusion was

- President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday at Cernavoda, Constanta County, that in reality it is almost impossible to trigger early elections. In his opinion, the fact that "a party is still parading" with that type of election seems to him "a form of avoidance rather than something else."

- The "Generation Z" project, carried out by a group of students from the "Mihai Viteazul" National College in Bucharest, participates in the final competition for the European Charlemagne Youth Prize, offered by thea European Parliament, informs a press release of the educational institution, agerpres

- Codrin Stefanescu pune stampila pe liderii politici de prima linie, intr-o postare pe facebook. Sunt complici, ca sa stiti asta! Adica Iohannis, Citu, Barna, Ciolos si Ciolacu! Toti intr-o echipa, toti pe blat, toti controlati de catre sistem! Nepasatori si imuni la suferintele romanilor, lipsiti de

- Prime Minister Florin Citu commented, on Thursday, in Ramnicu Valcea, the result of the USR PLUS (Save Romania Union, Freedom, Unity, Solidarity Party) elections, stating that it was a "penalty" given for those who removed this party from government, agerpres reports. "As far as the USR PLUS elections
Multiple investigations into two accidents of Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft will inevitably focus on a much misunderstood FAA program called ODA for organization designation authorization. And Pete Bunce, president of the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, says that may ultimately be a good thing for both the aerospace industry and general aviation manufacturing specifically.

We were concerned that the political apparatus would react before they have the facts, Bunce said in this exclusive podcast recorded at the Aero exhibition in Friedrichshafen, Germany, this week. What Im sensing, at least over the last week, is that everyone is calming down. Weve had preliminary accident investigations and were going to get more data in and let Secretary Chaos process work, Bunce added. (Elaine Chao is U.S. Secretary of Transportation.)

ODA is under scrutiny because some political leaders and even aerospace industry veterans are asking if Boeings use of the program allowed flaws in the MAX 8s design to slip through the certification process. ODA allows manufacturers to designate in-house staff to serve as FAA oversight. In GA, designated engineering and airworthiness representatives are common, given that the FAA is short-staffed, both on expertise and budget.

The expertise for modern aerospace resides with the industry primarily. We use designees for operations all the time. I had my folks do the numbers. Last year, 48,000 certifications were given on the ops side; the FAA did 2700 of those. Government has to rely on that expertise, otherwise the industry would stop, Bunce said. With electric propulsion and air mobility on the horizon, the FAA will rely on designees more than ever, Bunce said.

Although no major delays have been reported, we learned at the Aircraft Electronics Association show last month that at least one manufacturer, TruTrak, experienced a minor hitch in a certification review apparently sparked by the Boeing certification mess. The FAA wanted to review the paperwork before issuing approvals.
Cosmonautics Day or International Day of Human Space Flight is celebrated on April 12 annually. Exactly this day, in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first person in the world, who completed one orbit of the Earth. The lunar exploration has not finished at this point: the spacewalks, the mission to the moon took place, while the active study of Mars takes place now.

The history of holiday

In August 1960, Soviet spacecraft with dogs Belka and Strelka on the board completed 24 hours flight and returned to the Earth. And already on April 12, 1961, Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin started his flight at Vostok 1 from Baikonur Cosmodrome and became the first human, who went to space. The launch of the spacecraft took place successfully and he completed the free flight around the Earth planet after the separation of the last stage of the launch vehicle.

The flight over the globe lasted for 108 minutes and then the spacecraft landed at the planned site at 10:55 a.m. at Moscow time near Smelovka village, Saratov Oblast (currently the Russian territory).

Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space wikipedia.org

The name of Yuri Gagarin became widely known in the whole world and the cosmonaut got the rank of Major and title Hero of the Soviet Union in advance.

By the way, the second name of the holiday International Day of Human Space Flight was approved in 2011. The proper decision was made during the 65th session of the UN General Assembly and was dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the first flight of the human to space. Over 60 states became the co-authors of this resolution.

Achievements in exploration of space

The humanity reached important successes during the exploitation of the outer space since the launch of the first satellite to space. There are a few significant achievements in this sphere:

June 16, 1963  first flight of woman-cosmonaut to space (Valentina Tereshkova).

March 18, 1965  first spacewalk of a human ever. Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov entered the outer space from Vostok 2 spaceship.

March 1, 1966  Venera 3 space probe reached the surface of Venus first time ever, delivering the pennant of the Soviet Union. It was the worlds first flight of the spacecraft from the Earth to another planet.

July 21, 1969  the first moon landing of a human (Neil Armstrong) within the lunar expedition of Apollo 11 spacecraft, which brought the first samples of moon rocks to the Earth.

Neil Armstrong, the first human on Moon Open source

April 19, 1971  the first space station Salyut 1 is launched.

November 27, 1971 - Mars 2 space stations reached the surface of Mars first time ever.

December 7, 1995 - Galileo spacecraft became the first artificial satellite of Jupiter.

June 24, 2000  Near Shoemaker space probe became the first artificial satellite of an asteroid (Eros 433).

January 25, 2004  Opportunity Mars rover landed on the surface of March. It passed 45 km and sent 217,000 of photos to the Earth. Thanks to it, the signs of water, mysterious meteorite were detected. Besides, the temperature profile of the atmosphere of the Red planet was made.

June 30, 2004 - Cassini space probe became the first artificial satellite of Saturn.

January 15, 2006 - Stardust space probe brought the samples of comet Wild 2.

March 7, 2009  the launch of the Kepler space telescope to space. It could detect over 3,500 potential exoplanets in the first three years of work. The cousin of our planet Earth 2.0 is one of the most interesting findings of the telescope. If we could live on this exoplanet, then we would weight twice more.

October 2009  LCROSS moonwalker found water on the surface of Moon.

March 17, 2011  MESSENGER spacecraft became the first artificial satellite of Mercury.

At the beginning of 2017, within TRAPPIST-1 system, the scientists opened seven planets, where life can exist.

Open source

In 2017, the astronomers reported about the discovering of exoplanet LHS 1140b. People say that it is the most suitable place for life out of the Earth.

February 6, 2018, the American company Space X successfully performed the first trial launch of Falcon Heavy carrier rocket from the spaceport at Cape Canaveral, Florida state (the U.S.). Tesla Roadster, the private car of Elon Musk with David Bowies song Space Oddity stays in the cargo bay of Falcon Heavy. The successful launch of the rocket approached humanity to the understanding of the space tourism and colonization of Mars. NASA also states that probably, a woman will be the first human, who is going to land on Mars.

Space and Ukraine

Not long ago Ukraine entered TOP 5 states on the number of space launches but today, mostly due to the lack of funds, loses earlier gained positions. Leonid Kadenyuk was the first cosmonaut of independent Ukraine. He was trained for the space flight at the NASA at the American spaceship of the multiple use as the specialist of payload capacity. He performed the flight at American Space Shuttle Columbia, STS-87 mission from November 19 up to December 5, 1997. During the flight, he completed the number of the biological experiments with the use of the Ukrainian-American experience with three types of the plants: turnip, soya and moss.

In Soviet time, the Ukrainian scientists and industrial enterprises were involved in many most important space victories of the Soviet Union. Now, the international cooperation and participation of the international projects are the most prioritized directions of the Ukrainian cosmonautics.

For example, on November 12, 2017, the carrier rocket Antares was successfully launched from the U.S. spaceport. It was developed and created in Ukraine. The construction of the first stage of the carrier rocket was designed by the Ukrainian state enterprise Yuzhne and produced by YuzhMash.
On April 11, pro-Kremlin armed gangs opened fire 20 times. One Ukrainian defender lost his life in combat; another eight were wounded. The Joint Forces Operation HQ reported that on Facebook.

All attacks except one occurred in Donetsk region; the enemy opened fire in Lebedynske, Pavlopol, Novotroitske, Hnutove, Vodyane and Avdiivka. A wide range of weaponry was used, including anti-tank missile launchers, mortars, IFVs, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms.

In Luhansk region, the enemy used 82 mm mortars to shell Katerynivka. On April 11, nine militants were killed, another eight wounded.

Since the beginning of the day, Russian mercenaries opened fire in Pyshchevyk and Chermalyk, Donetsk region.

The enemy lost nine fighters; another eight were wounded in action.

On April 9, an officer of Ukraine's State Emergency Serice deceased during the mine clearance works. Besides, Russian forces used brand new guided artillery shells to attack positions of Ukrainian warriors.
Open source

The Pro-Kremlin militants violated the ceasefire regime nine times using the Minsk-banned weaponry in the Donbas combat zone on April 10. The Joint Forces Operation (JFO) HQ reported this on Facebook.

The enemy opened fire seven times in Donetsk region. They fired with 82 mm mortar near Hnutove settlement, three times with mounted anti-tank grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms near Novoselivka-2, Verkhnyotoretske and Chermalyk villages, twice with manual anti-tank grenade launchers, and heavy machine guns and small arms near Pyshchevyk and Lebedynske settlement, and with small arms near Opytne village.

The Russia-backed militants fired the positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Luhansk region twice: with 120 mm mortar near Troitske settlement and with 82 mm mortar near Zytseve village.

No casualties among the Joint Forces operation servicemen have been spotted.

Earlier, on April 11, pro-Kremlin armed gangs opened fire 20 times. One Ukrainian defender lost his life in combat; another eight were wounded.

Since the beginning of the day, Russian mercenaries opened fire in Pyshchevyk and Chermalyk, Donetsk region.

The enemy lost nine fighters; another eight were wounded in action.
As brand-new infrastructure comes online, the U.S. output is increasing and exports are set to jump later in 2019, yet, it is not an alternative as it is light and sweet

Crude oil Reuters

The European refiners pay the price for the U.S. oil sanctions on Iran and Venezuela as they are trying to replace the sour crude America blocked from the global market with Russian oil, as Reuters reported.

Compounding the impact of sanctions, OPEC members have mainly cut sour crude output as part of their deal with allied producers to boost oil prices while a large, new refinery, designed to run on sour oil, has just started up in Turkey, the message reads.

As brand-new infrastructure comes online, the U.S. output is increasing and exports are set to jump later in 2019, yet, it is not an alternative as it is light and sweet.

As a result, European refiners have been left competing to secure as much medium, sour Russian Urals as they can, pushing the differential of that oil to levels not seen since 2013, the news agency reports.

Urals is anchored in a positive zone versus dated Brent and there is no indication it will fall to a discount any time soon, a trading source at a European oil major informed.
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Assange may have begun believing global data transparency exposes enough wrongdoing that his ends justify his means. Wherever he began, he now stands before a magistrate as a presumed accomplice of the Russian government in undermining the integrity of the 2016 US presidential election

The founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange Associated Press

The arrest of Julian Assange in London on April 11 is a victory for the rule of law. Whatever one believes of the purported nobility of his ideology that governments and persons he does not like should be subject to information warfare under the guise of targeted transparency, Assange and his allies and enablers have done far more harm than good.

Individuals, businesses, and governments have the right to live within digital rules and laws. Anything else is a crime, espionage or information warfare. Respect for protected and private information, whether it be for individuals or nations, is essential for societal function. Individuals who take it upon themselves to decide who deserves data respect and who does not are dangerous for all. Whos next?

Assange may have begun believing global data transparency exposes enough wrongdoing that his ends justify his means. Wherever he began, he now stands before a magistrate as a presumed accomplice of the Russian government in undermining the integrity of the 2016 US presidential election.

Assange may have begun as one of many opposing the US intervention in Iraq and ouster of the Taliban in Afghanistan, but now stands before a magistrate charged with trying to undermine the safety of US military personnel abroad, helping expose the United States most sensitive signals intelligence gathering tools (but not Russias), and as someone believed to be working to undermine the United States diplomatic standing around the world. He stands before a magistrate as a probable tool and partner of Russia against the West, Europe, democracy, the rule of law, and the United States.

We are just beginning to understand how the international community convinced the government of Ecuador to withdraw its diplomatic immunity and turn Assange over to British law enforcement authorities. What we do know is that Ecuador wanted out of its 2012 decision to take Assange into its embassy in London, that multiple countries filed formal extradition requests for him to stand trial, and that the process of international law enforcement and diplomatic cooperation appears to have carried the day. (Londons parallel response to Assanges unilateral actions would have been to mass forces and overrun the Ecuadorean Embassy simply because it could.)

In perhaps the irony of ironies in his selective notion of when rules should apply and when they should not, Assange asserts British law enforcement is acting unlawfully.

The US, Swedish, and British governments are to be commended for showing patience and respect for international legal institutions over seven years. For US law enforcement, it must have been awkward working with the White House, given Assanges work tainting the 2016 election and US President Donald J. Trumps professed love for WikiLeaks.

The actions of Assange exemplify the leveling power of individuals adept at exploiting the many crevices in our digital security. Nations are more vulnerable now than perhaps any time in modern history to individuals, relatively weak states and non-state criminal organizations having the capacity to cause strategic harm inside the homeland of other nations. Heretofore, states held aggregate power. Industry could lead in technological breakthroughs and produced ships, tanks, and planes, but governments owned and operated them and amassed the aggregate power. Governments decided when and how to apply force. Today, individuals and technology companies are far ahead of governments in their capacity and aggregate technological prowess. Criminals are now first adapters and technology companies are on equal footing with governments in their ability to work with or against governments in cyber security.

The New York Times reported in an insightful expose on March 21 titled A New Age of Warfare: How Internet Mercenaries Do Battle for Authoritarian Governments that some of the worlds best cyber warriors are legally selling their skills on the open market to commercial companies to enable relatively weak states to act as highly advanced cyber players on the world stage. Some of these individuals inevitably will take up with persons like the next Julian Assange to make digital exposers even more powerful adversaries.

Whatever various national and international legal institutions determine in charges against Assange, his actions to date have been antithetical to the rule of law and the democratic system of governance. It is vital that he be afforded all the legal protections he has flouted. The best outcome is for his admirers to conclude he had his day in court. Anything short of that will encourage some to believe the international system is rigged and his way is the only way to voice grievances.

Read the full article here.
According to him, we are often in such a situation, when two sides of the conflict are our friends

Nikol Pashinyan, the MP of Armenia did not answer directly question whose Crimea is and why Armenia always votes against anti-Russian resolutions on the occupied peninsula during the speech at the PACE as Hromadske reported.

According to him, we are often in such a situation, when two sides of the conflict are our friends.

It is very difficult to choose between friend and friend. Sometimes, you have to make a choice but our vector is peace, dialogue, stability and development, he said not answering the question.

In May 2018, Nikol Pashinyan became the Prime Minister of Armenia.

Crimea was annexed by Russia after the illegal referendum held on the peninsula in March 2014. Earlier, the Russian military captured all strategic military objects and buildings of the key authoritative bodies. Neither Ukraine nor the rest of the civilized countries recognized the results of the referendum. A number of the European and the world countries, including Ukraine, imposed the economic sanctions against Russia.

As we reported Google corporation began to show occupied Crimea as a part of Russia for Russian users.
Ecuador has expelled the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange from its embassy in the United Kingdom, thereby returning a bit forgotten story about espionage and thousands of secret documents to the front pages

Arrest of WikiLeaks Assange Open source

After a seven-year hideout at the British Embassy in Ecuador Julian Assange was detained by British policemen.

The WikiLeaks founder was detained at the central police station in London.

President of Ecuador Lenin Moreno in his address on Assange's arrest said he had received a guarantee from Britain that the founder of WikiLeaks would not be extradited to a country where he might face torture or death.

Thus, the seven-year history Ecuador Embassy and Julian Assange has come to an end. Now all is left to find out only what fate awaits the founder of WikiLeaks, since claims from the United States to him are still there. And not only from the United States.

What did it all begin with?

In 2006, the Australian journalist Julian Assange founded the WikiLeaks site. The Internet resource began to publish classified information from anonymous sources around the world.

The purpose of the project was to publish and analyze documents that became available due to information leakage.

At the very beginning, the creators of the website said they have an information base with 1.2 million documents they collected during the first year of the website's existence.

The first material on the website was about the decision of Islamic court of Somalia on the executions of officials, which, according to the creators, was received from a serious source in US intelligence.

Later, Assange sent around 100,000 secret documents to a number of well-known media (including The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times). They concerned the course of the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In particular, it was about shooting of local residents. Following the publication of some evidence, an international scandal broke out.

It was not over. Assange also claimed that he had about 15,000 secret documents from the Pentagon. In July 2012, Assange claimed that WikiLeaks would publish about 2.4 million documents related to the war in Syria.

By that time, the law enforcers were already investigating the founder of WiliLeaks.

Prosecution of Assange

It began in 2010. In August, this year Assange's arrest warrant was issued in Sweden, where WikiLeaks servers were housed.

He was accused of sexual harassment and rape. Assange denied all accusations saying it was because of publishing of secret documents from the so-called Afghan dossier.

The charges of rape were lifted, but on September 1, the case was reopened.

In November 2010, an arrest warrant was issued and Assange moved to London.

In December 2010, Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest, and founder of WikiLeaks was announced wanted internationally.

On December 7, 2010, Assange was arrested after voluntarily appearing at the police station. A week later, on December 14, he was released on bail and stayed in the UK under travel restrictions.

In February 2011, the court ruled to extradite Assange to Sweden, later denied the appeal and reaffirmed this decision in November of that year.

Assange appealed this decision to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which in February 2012 retained the decision to extradite him. In June, another appeal was declined.

An interim solution came on June 19th. Assange, who was under the travel restrictions, hid himself at the Embassy of Ecuador in London and asked the country's authorities for political asylum.

At the same time

In summer 2015, the limitation period for three of the four charges against Assange run off. The term of the charges for rape ends in August 2020.

     .    ,    .

But these were not the only accusations. And it was not just one country that accused Assange of something.

Staying at Ecuadors Embassy

Assange got the political asylum from Ecuador on August 16, 2012. Since that time he lived on the territory of the embassy.

The United Kingdom considered it to be the violation of the house arrest, which meant the arrest of Assange as soon as he lives the building of the embassy.

Of course, Assange was not going to leave it.

The U.S. strived for the extradition of Assange as he accused of conspiracy with informatory of WikiLeaks Chelsea Manning for the stealing and publishing of the secret government documents. Assange faces imprisonment in America (according to his lawyers, his life is also endangered).

Ecuador spent at least $5 million for maintaining and protection of Assange. Since summer 2018, the embassy decreased the payments step by step, forcing WikiLeaks founder to leave the building. However, Assange stayed there until he was caught.

Meanwhile, the mass media supposed on the eve that Assange would be asked to leave the embassy soon.

Arrest and possible future

Assange was arrested on the request of the U.S. and he was afraid of the extradition to this country most of all. Lawyer of WikiLeaks founder Jen Robinson confirmed this information.

London Court left Assange under arrest until June 12 as the consideration of his case will be renewed on this date.

The first session on the extradition issue will take place on May 2.
Court of Tartu, Estonia sentenced Dmitry Kozlov, the agent of Russias FSB, to 3,5 years in jail as ERR reported.

Thus, Kozlov was notified about the suspicion in November 2018 and the verdict was delivered on March 20, 2019. By the way, Kozlov has Russian and Estonian citizenships.

According to the indictment, the FSB recruited Kozlov for secret cooperation to get information about buildings, workers, vehicles, equipment and regime of the border guard units situated in the area of responsibility of Liunask prefecture and tied with the protection of the border.

As we reported a group of people suspected in the espionage in the interests of Russia was detained in Lithuania; ex-chairman of the Socialist Peoples Front and ex-vice mayor of Vilnius Algidras Paletskis, who is under arrest since October, is among them.

Besides, Slovakia expelled one of the Russian diplomats. The military intelligence defined that the Russian conducted espionage against Bratislava and NATO member states.
Remigijus Motuzas was questioned in the case of the illegal visa issue, and thus he is dangerously exposed, so it would be better for him not to go to this country for some time, Lithuanian government says

Lithuanian Foreign Ministry announced that Remigijus Motuzas, the ambassador in Russia will be withdrawn for consultations.

According to Delfi , the official will be withdrawn because of his exposure, which the Embassy received after the interview, in which he is considered a 'special witness'.

On April 10, Remigijus Motuzas was questioned as a witness in the case of the illegal visa issue.

' (...) Lithuania's ambassador in Russia R. Motuzas becomes vulnerable and casts a shadow on the diplomatic service', said President Dalia Gribauskaite.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius added that the status of the 'special witness' makes the official even more vulnerable.

This status is provided if a person is interviewed but cannot yet be charged due to the lack of legal grounds.

'Perhaps, it's even best for him not to go to Russia for some time', Linkevicius said.
Crimean peninsula Open source

Prosecutors Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has established personal data of over 21,000 people, who worked at the law enforcement bodies of Crimea and Sevastopol during the occupation of the peninsula as the office reported.

The pretrial investigation takes place against these people, during which all necessary measures are assumed to get the evidence of their possible involvement in the state treason and other crimes and adoption of the legal decision toward each worker of the mentioned law enforcement bodies, the prosecutors office noted.

It is also noted that the Prosecutors Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea holds the pretrial investigation in the number of the opened criminal proceedings against the commitment of the state treason by the officers of 16 law enforcement bodies of Crimea and Sevastopol.

Crimea was annexed by Russia after the illegal referendum held on the peninsula in March 2014. Earlier, the Russian military captured all strategic military objects and buildings of the key authoritative bodies. Neither Ukraine nor the rest of the civilized countries recognized the results of the referendum. A number of the European and the world countries, including Ukraine, imposed the economic sanctions against Russia.

As we reported, Google corporation began to show occupied Crimea as part of Russia (for Russian users).
Vasyl Soroka, one of the 24 seamen illegally captured by Russia had a birthday on April 11

Vasyl Soroka, detained Ukrainian sailor 24tv.ua

Ukrainian sailor Vasyl Soroka has been recovering slowly, even after the surgery on his wounded hand. The seaman's lawyer Serhiy Badamshyn reported that on Facebook.

'Vasyl is struggling for recovery, which lasts hard and slow. One minor swelling left on his arm, and it's painful. When the cast is removed, we'll see how much the arm and fingers have healed. So far, it's all bounded by the bandage', the lawyer wrote.

According to him, he congratulated his defendant on his birthday, which was April 11.

Vasyl Soroka is one of the 24 seamen illegally held by Russia; the sailors and the three vessels of the Ukrainian Navy were captured in Kerch Strait in November 2018. Russia claims they 'breached the naval border' and opened fire on the Ukrainian ships. Soroka and another two sailors were wounded in this firing incident.
The meeting between Macron and Poroshenko will take place today as well

Open source

Presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky met with French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, April 12. The press service of Zelensky posted the video of their meeting.

The leader of the French Republic accepted the candidate for the presidency in Ukraine in his residence at Elysee Palace in Paris, the report said.

Earlier, the press office of French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that the meeting with Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky would take place in Paris. On April 12, the French leader will meet both competitors for the presidential office.

The first meeting, the one with Zelensky, was slated for 3 p.m. Then, at 6 p.m. the two presidents were supposed to meet.

It was the second top-level meeting for Poroshenko on that day; before meeting with Macron, he was supposed to visit Berlin for negotiations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Hrytsenko is accused of public calls for terrorist activity in Russia

Anatoliy Hrytsenko Open source

Russias Investigation Committee put ex-Minister of Defence of Ukraine Anatoliy Hrytsenko on a wanted list, as TASS reported.

Grytsenko is accused of public calls for terrorist activity in Russia. The Investigation Committee asks Moscow Basmanny District Court to decide on arrest in absentia for Hrytsenko.

Moscow Basmanny District Court received a motion from the investigation bodies concerning the restrictive measure in absentia in a form of detention for Hrytsenko. He is on an international wanted list, the press secretary of the court Yunona Tsareva stated.

According to the Investigation Committee, Hrytsenko issued a public call for terrorist activity in Russia on air of 1+1 TV channel by exploding rail trains.

He also called for terrorist activity in Moscow and Tahanroh on air of 112 Ukraine TV channel on July 2, 2017.

Anatoliy Hrytsenko held the post of Ukraines Defence Minister in 2005-2007. He is the leader of "Civil Position" political party. He ran for the presidency three times.

In 2019, he got 6,91% of votes in the first round of the presidential elections.
The French leader will meet the candidates for the presidency on April 12

Open source

The press office of French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that the meeting with Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky will take place in Paris. On April 12, the French leader will meet both competitors for the presidential office. The meeting is to occur at Elysee Palace.

The first meeting, the one with Zelensky, is slated for 3 p.m. Then, at 6 p.m. the two presidents will meet.

It will be the second top-level meeting for Poroshenko on that day; before meeting with Macron, he will visit Berlin for negotiations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Recently, a criminal proceeding was opened over spreading video on which a truck hits presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky. This was reported by the press service of the National Police of Ukraine.

The police reported that upon monitoring of social networks, they revealed facts of spreading a video in which one of Ukraines presidential candidate Zelensky is shown as if he got rammed by the truck.
Jack Taylor/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- After nearly seven years holed up inside the cramped Ecuadorian Embassy in London, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is dreading the prospect of violent attacks on him in an American prison, one of his regular visitors told ABC News' "The Investigation" podcast on Thursday.



The interview was conducted one day after Assange's long-anticipated arrest by London police and court appearance on a 2012 bail jumping warrant and U.S. extradition request.



"He did say he was worried that, if he was in a normal American prison, being beaten up, war documentary filmmaker and former Taliban hostage Sean Langan, who has spent more than 50 hours with Assange in the past year, told ABC News. Langans last visit to Assange at the embassy was on March 22, he said.



And then I said, 'Well, the chances are you're most likely -- slightly gallows humor, it didn't make him feel better  you're most likely going to be put into one of those federal Supermax prisons where you won't see a soul," said Langan, an ABC News contributor.

[ READ THE TRANSCRIPT OF LANGAN'S FULL INTERVIEW ON "THE INVESTIGATION" ]

Perhaps most surprising to many who saw his leaks of embarrassing Democratic party emails during the 2016 campaign -- which special counsel Robert Mueller has alleged were hacked by Russian spies in an effort to hurt rival Hillary Clinton's chances -- Assange was often sharply critical of President Donald Trump in casual conversation with a handful of visitors.



Langan says Assange described longtime Trump friend and political adviser Roger Stone and Donald Trump Jr. as intellectually incapable of a conspiracy, much less one that included WikiLeaks or him, and he rejoiced when Mueller recently closed his investigation without indicting him for conspiring with Russian military intelligence to tilt the U.S. election.



"'Those bunch of clowns' -- that was the exact quote -- 'those bunch of clowns couldn't conspire and organize this kind of thing'," Langan recalled Assange telling him. "He certainly did not hold [President Trump] in high regard. He was quite dismissive."



Langan and Vaughan Smith, an Assange confidant and owner of London's Frontline Club, began making "social visits" -- as the Ecuadorian Embassy called them -- with Assange in early November. The pair was among the first people summoned by the controversial publisher of sensitive secrets after Ecuador lifted a ban on his visitors and most of his communications, a loosening of restrictions on Assange that lasted six months in 2018.



Inside, they didn't find an apartment littered with cat droppings or feces on the wall -- as alleged by his Ecuadorian hosts who over time turned against their notorious asylee -- but instead the "claustrophobic" quarters of a man in poor health toughing out intense surveillance of the tiny rooms he has occupied since entering the embassy in August, 2012.



That year, fearing he would extradited to the United States, Assange skipped out on his bail during a rape inquiry in Sweden. The rape inquiry was dropped two years ago but reopened Thursday in the wake of Assanges removal from the embassy in London, Swedish prosecutors said. Assange has denied the rape allegation.



Assange shared his recollections with Langan in five-hour rolling conversations at a table between two speakers meant to deter electronic surveillance by Ecuador or other countries. One speaker blared symphony music and the other David Bowie's "Space Oddity," Langan told ABC News.



Asked about a controversial November, 2018 report in the Guardian newspaper that Assange had met with Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort -- since convicted on financial crimes related to lobbying in Virginia and in Washington -- he was adamant it never happened.

"He said, 'That's [bull]. Never met him.' So he strongly denied that," Langan said.



The Guardian report has not been matched by any other major news organization or corroborated since it was published.



Langan said that Assange seemed to acknowledge that he had communicated with Guccifer2.0, an online persona Mueller has said in a U.S. indictment was really an amalgam of Russian spies who stole the Democratic party emails and coordinated with WikiLeaks to leak them, but said that he believes Assange was unaware of Guccifer 2.0s true identity.



Langan said that Assange complained to him that other news outlets were communicating with Guccifer2.0 too but the U.S. government was unfairly picking on him.



"I took it to be a non-denial denial," Langan said.



With his arrest and the prospect of a trial in the U.S. for computer intrusion relating to WikiLeaks document dumps of military and intelligence secrets almost a decade ago, Langan said Assange now realizes "that he could face the rest of his life in isolation."



The idea of further confinement weighs on Assange, he said.



"You can see the toll it is taking on him, Langan added. "It's an unpleasant thing to see in any man."



He is no doubt glad to be out of the embassy, however, Langan added.



"It's like a gilded cage. But a cage is a cage is a cage," said Langan.



Langan said Assange expressed frustration with what he described as false news reports that claimed Assange wore smelly socks and did not care for the cat his kids gave to him as a gift.



"That really hurt him," Langan recounted.



Copyright  2019, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel explained why she decided to invite current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko to Berlin and his opponent in the second round of elections Volodymyr Zelensky. Merkel stated this during the session, responding to the question of a journalist, broadcasted by 112.Ukraine.

The journalist also reminded the German Chancellor that French President Emmanuel Macron would meet both competitors for the presidential office in Paris on April 12.

I have decided to invite Mr. President (Poroshenko  red.), as I constantly keep in touch with him, we met at the Munich security conference, we often meet with other, we always exchange thoughts. During the elections I decided to invite him because the communication with him is very important to me, Merkel said.

Earlier, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel during their meeting supported the implementation of the Easter armistice in Donbas from April 18.
The President of Ukraine and the Chancellor of Germany had a meeting on April 12

Open source

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Federal Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel during their meeting supported the implementation of the Easter armistice in Donbas from April 18, broadcasted by the 112.Ukraine.

Despite the election campaign, the challenges from outside never end. The Russian aggressor would be very pleased to exclude Ukraine from the other countries. I as the President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will do my best in order to prevent this to happen, Poroshenko said.

Yes, we all are fighting for bringing peace to Ukrainian territories. Yes, we have to count casualties today. That is why I am very grateful to the Chancellor that during our discussion we supported the Easter ceasefire regime, which will come into force on April 18, provided Russia abides by these conditions, the President said.

As it was reported, on April 11, pro-Kremlin armed gangs opened fire 20 times. One Ukrainian defender lost his life in combat; another eight were wounded.
According to Oleksandr Tkachenko, he will file a lawsuit for breaking into the air of the private company and for previous accusations towards the TV channel

1+1 studio CEO Oleksandr Tkachenko Open source

1+1 studio CEO Oleksandr Tkachenko claimed readiness to sue President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko for breaking into the air of the private company and for previous accusations towards the TV channel, as he wrote on Facebook.

According to Tkachenko, the lawsuit will be sent to the court on Monday.

After you failure on the air of the private company without invitations, using the status of the Head of the state and you didnt want to leave despite polite hints of the host to take a seat in the studio Wait for the lawsuit on Monday. Including the past accusations towards 1+1, Tkachenko wrote.

He also stated that earlier Poroshenko was invited to Right for power political talk show but allegedly he did not respond to that and prohibited his representatives from coming to 1+1.

As it was reported earlier, on April 11 the presidential candidates Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky had their first mutual conversation on air.

Poroshenko was in the studio of 1+1, Zelensky was on the phone.

Related video:
The court made this decision after Gorbenko did not come to the courtroom again

Volodymyr Gorbenko Open source

On April 12, Kyiv Obolonsky District Court ruled to put the captain of the arrested Nord vessel Volodymyr Gorbenko on a wanted list, as Krym.Realii reported.

The court made this decision after Gorbenko did not come to the courtroom again. The representative of the Crimean Prosecutors Office asked to suspend the case and put the captain on the wanted list.

The prosecutor provided the reply of Ukraines Security Service (SBU) to the request of the Crimean Prosecutors Office which says that Gorbenko could not be forcefully taken to the courtroom as he is in the occupied Crimea.

In his turn, the lawyer of the defendant Dmytro Shcherbina stood against the motion of the prosecution, said that there is no precise information on Horbenkos location.

The judge of Kyiv Obolonsky District Court Sergiy Rodionov supported the defence, he put Volodymyr Horbenko on a wanted list, the message says.

Earlier, the Ukrainian border guards arrested fishing vessel-violator under the Russian flag in the Sea of Azov on March 25, 2019. The Nord vessel was stopped 15 miles from the Obytichna sandspit. The inspection defined that the vessel was registered in the temporarily occupied Crimea.

Besides, the members of the crew violated the order of the exit from the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. All of them had the so-called 'Russian passports', issued in Kerch. The court arrested the vessel. Ukrainian border guards detained Volodymyr Horbenko on April 4.

The seaman is currently on the wanted list in Ukraine.
Read about Donbas conflict, presidential elections in Ukraine, Azov crisis and other news for this week

About Donbas conflict

Yaroslav Chemny was one of the Ukrainian soldiers who deceased in combat zone in Donbas this week. The Ukrainian serviceman, the native of western region of Ivano-Frankivsk was 31 years old.

On April 11, another Ukrainian defender lost his life in combat; another eight were wounded. The Joint Forces Operation HQ reported that.

On April 9, Hnutove checkpoint in Donetsk region resumed work after reconstruction, as Ukraines State Border Guard Service reported.

Mariinka checkpoint in Donbas was unblocked after the recent attack that took place on April 5; a Ukrainian border guard serviceman was wounded in that firing incident.

Russian forces used the cutting-edge kind of ammunition against the Ukrainian military in Donbas; these were 152 mm guided artillery shells.

An employee of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine died during the mine clearance of the territory near the water pipe of the pumping station in Donetsk region due to the explosion. Another two workers of the Civil Protection Service sustained injuries.

The International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) sent 14 trucks with humanitarian aid to the uncontrolled territory of Donbas, as Ukraines State Border Guard Service reported.

Trilateral Contact Group on settlement of the conflict in Ukraine stands for the necessity of the Easter ceasefire as Belta reported citing OSCE Representative Martin Sajdik.

***

About presidential elections in Ukraine

Ukraine is on the eve of the second round of presidential elections. Two candidates enter the round  Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky.

The whole country is watching the presidential saga. What happened this week?

Zelensky wants to hold debates at Olimpiyskiy on April 19, while Poroshenko proposed April 14 and April 19. Later, it was reported that the current President of Ukraine will wait for his opponent at Olimpiyskiy stadium on April 14, at 14:14 (Kyiv time).

It should be mentioned that such political debates will cost $220 000.

Another side of the story concerns blood tests for drug and alcohol use. Wladimir Klitschko, the Ukrainian boxer, called on the presidential candidates to once again pass the tests and hand them over to VADA experts. ZeTeam informed that Zelensky would not do that, while Poroshenko underwent tests again.

Another thing which struck Ukrainians this week  billboards with Poroshenko and Putin on the streets of the country.

April 12, a video with Zelensky appears on the Internet  a bus hits the presidential candidate.

'He's just fine because he's stoned', the line in the video says. It is a reference to Zelensky's recent evasive actions in terms of passing a drug test. Later, criminal proceedings were opened over spreading this video.

This week, Poroshenko and Zelensky had their first conversation on air of 1+1 TV channel. It was rather tense  ZeTeam explained that Zelensky got too emotional. 1+1 CEO stated he would sue Poorshenko for breaking into the air of the private company and for previous accusations towards the TV channel.

***

About Azov crisis

Another so-called court session in the trial of 24 Ukrainian sailors will be held in Moscow next week, Ukrainian ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova posted on Facebook.

The psychological and psychiatric judicial expertise against 20 captured Ukrainian sailors took place in Russia, where they are illegally held under trumped-up charges. Nikolai Polozov, the lawyer who protects their interests posted that on Facebook. 'The expertise against the remaining four will take place by the end of the next week', Polozov wrote. He admitted that the defense team protested, but the expertise still occurred.

The U.S., Canada and the EU condemned the inspection regime imposed by Russian in the Kerch Strait and navigation obstacles which appeared after the construction of the bridge, as it was announced at the International Maritime Organization (IMO) session on April 10, said the press office of Ukraines Embassy to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Ukrainian sailor Vasyl Soroka has been recovering slowly, even after the surgery on his wounded hand. The seaman's lawyer Serhiy Badamshyn reported that on Facebook.

***

About arrest of WikiLeaks founder

This week, the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange was expelled from the territory of Ecuadors Embassy in London, local police reported on his detention.

He was taken into custody in the central police office in London.

Read more about Assange here.

***

About sports

Ukrainian boxing champion Vasyl Lomachenko and Anthony Crolla held a media training session in Los Angeles on April 10 before their fight appointed for April 12. Earlier Lomachenko stated that he feels comfortable in the ring and it is like home for him.
The participants of the rally Who ordered Katya Handziuk? demanded that Hordeev and his deputy Ryshchuk are fired

The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko Presidential Administration press office

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko agreed on the resignation of Andry Hordeev from the post of the Chairman of Kherson Region State Administration, as the Presidents decree No.141/2019 says.

To release Andry Hordeev from the duty of the Chairman of Kherson Region State Administration in compliance with the statement he has filed, the document reads.

On April 6, Kherson region governor Andriy Hordeev wrote a statement of resignation to Poroshenko.

Earlier, the participants of the rally Who ordered Katya Handziuk? demanded that Hordeev and his deputy Ryshchuk are fired.

It should be noted that till 2015, the President was appointing and firing the governors on the submission of the government.

In 2015, the Verkhovna Rada has introduced the appointment of the heads of the local administrations on a competitive basis  within the fulfillment of the commitments to the EU in exchange for financial aid in the amount of $112,742. The order of appointment and dismissal of the officials was provided by the law On public service.

Yet, the innovation did not last for long. In November 2017 a law which cancels the officials' dependence upon the law on public service. Since then, according to the article No. 8 of the law On local state administrations, the chairmen of the region state administrations are appointed by the president on the submission of the Cabinet of Ministers for the term of office of the Head of the State.
The volunteers of Poroshenkos election headquarter will coordinate the guests at the entrance to the stadium

The HQ of candidate for the presidency and current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko offered to allow all willing to visit the debates appointed on April 14 at Olympic Stadium, as TheBabel reported.

It is expected that the volunteers of Poroshenkos election headquarter will coordinate the guests at the entry to the stadium.

Separate accreditation is appointed for the journalists. It will be opened on April 13 at 9:00 a.m.

Representatives of the stadium stated that they do not know how the passage for people will be organized. Besides, they refused to comment on the preparation for the event.

On April 3, Zelensky replied to Poroshenko's invitation to participate in debates and put forward his conditions. He wanted to hold debates at Olympic Stadium. Poroshenkos team said, the President does not perform at stadiums. A few hours later Poroshenko changed his mind and agreed to participate in the debates.

On April 7, Poroshenko stated that he waits for Volodymyr Zelensky on April 14 at Olympic Stadium.

In his turn, Zelensky reported that he wants to hold the debates with Poroshenko on April 19 at Olympic Stadium.

On April 10, Olympic Stadium reported that it got two applications for holding debates from two presidential candidates Volodymyr Zelensky and Petro Poroshenko.
Anatoliy Hrytsenko is accused of public calls to the terrorist activity on the territory of the Russian Federation

Anatoliy Hrytsenko Open source

Moscow Court has arrested Anatoly Hrytsenko in absentia for his calls to the terrorist activity on the territory of the Russian Federation. TASS news agency reported that, citing spokesperson of the court Yunona Tsareva.

Basmanny Court of Moscow made such decision.

The order of Basmanny Court of Moscow has granted the application of the investigative bodies on the choosing of the restrictive measures against accused Hrytsenko in the form of the arrest in absentiaThe restrictive measure will begin from the moment of his extradition to Russia or from the moment of his detention on the territory of the Russian Federation, Yunona Tsareva said.

Earlier Russias Investigation Committee put ex-Minister of Defence of Ukraine Anatoliy Hrytsenko on a wanted list. According to the Investigation Committee, Hrytsenko issued a public call for terrorist activity in Russia on air of 1+1 TV channel by exploding rail trains.

He also called for terrorist activity in Moscow and Tahanroh on air of 112 Ukraine TV channel on July 2, 2017.

Anatoliy Hrytsenko held the post of Ukraines Defence Minister in 2005-2007. He is the leader of "Civil Position" political party. He ran for the presidency three times.

In 2019, he got 6,91% of votes in the first round of the presidential elections.
Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office denies accusations of ordering to delete the name of Gladkovsky from the case materials

Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office (SAP) Open source

Ukraines Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office (SAP) denied allegations of Ukraines National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) of sabotage of the investigation of embezzlement in Ukraines army. Besides, the representatives of SAP deny that they demanded to delete the name of Oleg Gladkovsky from the case. SAP press office revealed the relevant statement on Facebook.

When NABU is trying to find some gaps in the work, their personnel is seeking for a famous daughter-in-law (related to Ukrainian proverb, meaning scapegoat - ed.), as a rule, such role belongs to SAP prosecutors, judges of all levels, SBU workers, police, MPs, Ukrainians and others who dont support NABUs position, the establishment reported.

SAP informed that 50 motions of NABU investigators on searches at Oleg and Igor Gladkovskys, Ukroboronprom board and supervisors of the supplying enterprises within the investigation. Besides, SAP reported on satisfying of 21 motions on access to property and documents, three motions of the seizure of property and one request for discovery of documents from another law enforcement agency.

While deciding on these motions, the prosecutor realized that after the episode of Denys Bihus was released, nine days later, it is unlikely to find any information important for the criminal proceeding. Yet, he agreed to use them for a complete and objective examination of the case, SAP representatives stressed.

As it was reported, the detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) sabotage the investigation on the embezzlement in the defense sphere.

On April 3, SAP accused NABU of the intentional prolonging of the investigation of embezzlement in the defense sector.

February 25, journalist investigations Bihus.Info, Nashi Hroshi program alleged that Igor Gladkovsky, the son of close Poroshenko ally Oleh Gladkovsky, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, organized a corruption scheme to smuggle spare military-equipment parts from Russia in 2015. State defense facilities purchased the smuggled spare parts from private companies linked to Hladkovsky and his friends at highly inflated prices. Ukroboronprom state concern knew the origin of the smuggled parts but agreed to purchase them.

Igor Gladkovsky, along with Vitaliy Zhukov and Andriy Rogoza were supplying smuggled Russian components and components from the Ukrainian military units through straw companies at prices 2-4 times higher than market ones.

On March 4, President Petro Poroshenko dismissed Oleh Gladkovsky, deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council from his post. he replaced his close associate with Maksym Kryvonos, one of the presidential nominees, who withdrew his candidacy in favor of Poroshenko and was soon appointed NSDC high-ranker.

As it was reported earlier, the investigators of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutors Office detained the acting and former directors of the State Foreign Trade Enterprise SpetsTechnoExport on suspicion of embezzling $2,225 million, according to NABU.

According to the investigation, Poroshenko's enterprise Kuznia na Rybalskomu was one of the straw companies, which participated in the embezzlement.
That the ban was repealed due to the fact that the consequences which led to the ban disappeared.

Christian Wehrschutz, the Austrian journalist Social networks

Ukraines Security Service (SBU) canceled the entry ban for the Austrian journalist Christian Wehrschutz, as he himself reported on Facebook.

Ban on entering Ukraine lifted! Thanks to all official and not official supporters, he wrote.

He attached the picture of the document to his post. SBU Press Secretary Olena Hitlyanska signed the document, which says that the ban was repealed due to the fact that the consequences which led to the ban disappeared.

Earlier, Austrian journalist Christian Wehrschutz has filed the lawsuit to the District Administrative Court of Kyiv due to the decision of the Security Service of Ukraine to ban him from visiting Ukraine for a year.

As we reported, Austrian journalist Christian Wehrschutz was banned from entering Ukraine for one year due to his work for Kremlin press.

The authorities of Austria have sharply criticized the decision of Ukraine to ban the journalist from the entry to the state. Moreover, Olexandr Shcherba, the Ukrainian ambassador was summoned to the Austrian Foreign Ministry.

Related video:
PLEASE NOTE!

Due to the March 23, 2020 NM DOH Public Health Order, These Event Listings Are Not Accurate!

All non-essential businesses are closed, public gatherings are prohibited!

(One day some of these events will be rescheduled or will resume, but they are not happening now!)
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South Africa: SA celebrates 25 years of democracy

Government has urged South Africans to join in on this years national Freedom Month celebration that coincides with the countrys 25 years of Freedom and Democracy.

The celebration is a month before South Africans take to the polls on 8 May. The theme for this year is Celebrating 25 Years of Democracy.

Freedom Month affords South Africans the opportunity to make a pledge towards fighting the legacy of racism and economic inequality as well as renewing loyalty to the country and commitment to its future, government said in a statement issued on Thursday.

During this Freedom Month we celebrate our achievements and reflect on our successes during the 25 years of Freedom and Democracy, said Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) Acting Director-General Phumla Williams.

She said the countrys vibrant democracy is anchored in the Constitution which guarantees equal rights for all.

Since the dawn of democracy, government has consistently worked on improving the lives of all South Africans, said Williams.

Government has encouraged South Africans to work together to encourage a socially integrated and inclusive South Africa.

All sectors of society must play their part in building an inclusive economy and work together to remove all obstacles which still divide society and strive to build on the many ties that bind it together, Williams said.

Government added that nation building is a process that should be nurtured and defended and South Africans should continue forging a national identity which binds everyone together around the values including mutual respect, tolerance and acceptance.

Members of the public are urged to join the conversation on social media and share their messages, memories or reflections of these 25 Years of Freedom and Democracy using the hashtags #FreedomMonth and the #MyFreedomSA Facebook profile picture frame found on this link: http://www.facebook.com/profilepicframes/?selected_overlay_id=2379355118744298.

To get the latest updates on Freedom Month activities you can follow @GovernmentZA @SAGovNews @GCISMedia.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Presidente @MartinVizcarraC: Hoy entregamos a los ciudadanos la nueva comisaria de Ayabaca que cuenta con un Centro de Emergencia Mujer, una buena infraestructura y los equipos necesarios. La seguridad ciudadana tiene prioridad en todo el pais. pic.twitter.com/tRNdVJILS1




President Martin Vizcarra has asked for Peruvian citizens' company and support in his firm determination to continue implementing reforms , which benefit the country and affect "a few powerful people."Published: 4/12/2019
Within this framework, the Head of State urged Congress to maintain in force the regulation (Legislative Decree 1421), enabling the State to collect disputed tax debts amounting to S/11 billion (around US$3.33 billion).

Likewise, the top official indicated the country welcomes private investments . Yet, the enterprises must pay taxes for the benefit of the Peruvian population, especially for the ones most in need

"Money that ends up in tax havens or improperly increases the profit of some businesspeople and big corporations," he expressed in a televised address to the nation on Thursday night

Furthermore, President Vizcarra stressed his administration encourages the approval of Regulation XVI or anti-evasion law's legal framework, which will demand businesspeople to fully comply with tax payments.

Economic concentrations

On the other hand, the Head of State pointed out the Government works on the initiative "Prior Control of Economic Concentrations Law" in order to prevent companies from merging and controlling the productive chains and holding consumers captive, as they would fix the prices.

"I urge Parliament to work for the benefit of consumers and to approve this project as soon as possible," the top official said.

"Our work is firm to fight corruption , rely on solid institutions, and issue regulations on taxes so private companies contribute what they truly should ," he added.
The extension which includes his accomplices was submitted by Prosecutor Elber Rivas.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, the probe names Hinostroza as the author, as he fled the Inca country despite a travel ban previously imposed on him by the Judiciary with the help of a former Migrations Office employee.
Speaking at The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue 5th International Arctic Forum, Prime Minister of Norway Erna Solberg said Norway and Russia need to develop a pilot plan for cooperation in the Barents Sea because this type of cooperation has been successful for decades.

Ms Solberg urged Russia to co-develop a pilot plan on Barents Sea cooperation. Over decades of cooperation, Norway and Russia have amassed unique knowledge of the eco-system. This will help reduce the threats we are facing today, she said.

Ms Solberg said bilateral cooperation in preserving the northern seas' resources has been going on for over 50 years, and has helped improve the condition of the marine eco-system in the past few decades.

Russia and Norway are also cooperating in exploring marine resources. This cooperation has also justified itself in recent decades. The amassed joint experience in the Barents Sea is of the highest quality, Ms Solberg said.



She also said that a reduction in hothouse emissions and the use of low-carbon technology would help meet the challenges in the Arctic. Countries that use the resources should develop joint strategies of ocean management. The law of the sea creates a natural foundation for close cooperation in the Arctic, Ms Solberg said.

The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue 5th International Arctic Forum was held in St. Petersburg on April 9 and 10. The State Commission for the Development of the Arctic convened for a meeting on April 9.
Russia is confident that Iceland will succeed in its role as president of the Arctic Council, giving the program a positive review, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced, speaking at The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue 5th International Arctic Forum on Tuesday.

"We assess positively the results of Finland's two years as Arctic Council chairman. A month from now, a new captain, Iceland, will control the bridge of the "Arctic ship." I am confident that our Icelandic partners will be successful in this responsible mission. We support the Icelandic chairmanship program which has a justifiable emphasis on marine issues," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at the fifth International Arctic Forum, The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue.

He said that in 2021 the presidency in the Arctic Council will pass to Russia. "The Arctic is, above all, people, including the indigenous peoples of the North. During the Russian chairmanship, we will promote their interests as much as we can while drawing up development programs for our common region in three dimensions: economic, social and environmental," Lavrov stressed.

The Arctic: Territory of Dialogue 5th International Arctic Forum was held in St. Petersburg on April 9 and 10. The State Commission for the Development of the Arctic convened for a meeting on April 9.
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. A Yerevan court has denied former President Robert Kocharyans appeal requesting immunity from prosecution.

The court hearing was presided over by Judge Gagik Poghosyan.

The jailed ex-president had filed a complaint arguing that criminal prosecution against him should be halted due to his immunity from prosecution.

Second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, who ruled the country from 1998 to 2008, spent two weeks in jail in summer of 2018, but was eventually freed. But on December 7, a higher court overruled the release and ordered him to be remanded into custody pending trial again.

At the time the court announced the verdict, Kocharyan turned himself in to authorities.

Kocharyan is charged with overthrowing constitutional order during the 2008 post-election unrest, when clashes between security forces and protesters left 10 people dead, including two security officers, during his final days as president.

Criminal charges of bribery were also added later on in the investigation.

Kocharyan vehemently denies wrongdoing.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
YA'AN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. Ya'an Tea Factory, one of the largest and oldest Tibetan tea companies operating in the Ya'an city of the Chinese province of Sichuan, is ready to cooperate with the CIS countries, including Armenia if these states refuse from tea packages containing chemical components, company CEO Chao Gui Li told ARMENPRESS.

We are ready to cooperate with the CIS countries and export the product at local prices. We really hope to move on one path and closely cooperate with all countries, as well as to produce high-quality Tibetan tea guided by the latest developments so that the traditional Tibetan tea will be introduced all over the world enabling the consumer to use alternative product for health, the director of the company said.

The company CEO is against the tea packages which are quite known in the CIS states and contain chemical components.

It harms health, that is the reason that our cooperation is not so large-scale. If the markets of these countries are ready to accept our tea, we will cooperate with a great pleasure, Chao Gui Li said.

The company produces over 20.000 tons of tea annually. The CEO said currently the company exports the Tibetan tea with 35 healing properties to Russia, EU, US, France, Czech Republic and other countries.

The Tibetan tea is one of the most favorite teas of French President Emmanuel Macron, and he sent a letter and a gift as a sign of gratitude, Chao Gui Li said, adding that leaders of several states like and drink their tea.

The Ya'an Tea Factory has been established in 1564. The company is engaged in the production, selling and study of tea.

Interview by Karen Khachatryan

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. Gazprom Armenia CJSC is holding working discussions on reducing the expenditures of the system, Gazprom Armenia CJSC press service told Armenpress.

In connection with the change of the gas price supplied to Armenia, currently working discussions are being held on complex issues, including considering the issues of cutting the expenditures, reconsidering the number of employees, the statement said.

Gazprom CJSC increased the gas price supplied to Armenia from 150 USD to 165 USD starting from January 1, 2019. Following this Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that the gas tariff for the domestic consumer will not increase, noting that the Armenian government will continue the talks with the Gazprom Armenia CJSC to reach a final agreement.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. Ucom offers watching the final season of the most awaited scandalous TV series of spring 2019 Game of Thrones in its TV network, attaching importance to being the first to make global media novelties available to the Armenian TV viewers in a timely manner, Ucom told Armenpress.

Ucom has been working on providing and developing quality media content since its foundation. Ucom was the first in Armenia to offer local consumers the opportunity to watch in interactive mode the international channels of world famous brands in its network, being the first to familiarize the Armenian TV viewer with Catch-up, time-shift and other interactive features. Besides, Ucom was the first to implement video-in-demand (VoD) service in Armenia in its classic model only now offered by other market players.

Ucom also was the first Armenian company to officially present the channels of Discovery, National Geographic, MTV, Fashion TV and other distinguished media families in its network. Today, Ucom is the leading partner of Discovery Communications, as well as the official and exclusive representative of Viasat in Armenia. I am confident that our TV lovers will join the global family of movie lovers and will watch the most awaited TV content of the year on FOX TV channel. As they say in Valirian: Valar lis emagon Ucom [Everyone must have Ucom], noted Hayk Yesayan, the Co-founder and Director General at Ucom.

It should be added that Ucom TV viewers will enjoy the premiere of the first part of the final season of Game of Thrones on FOX TV channel on April 15, 11pm.
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. President Armen Sarkissian on April 12 held a farewell meeting with Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Armenia Petr Mikyska, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

President Sarkissian thanked the Ambassador for his efforts and dedicated work aimed at strengthening the Armenian-Czech relations, noting that during those years the relations of the two countries have developed dynamically.

Ambassador Petr Mikyska emphasized President Sarkissians role on the peaceful resolution of the events that were taking place in Armenia last year.

Both sides touched upon the bilateral cooperation prospects in economic, scientific-educational and research sectors. It was stated that the bilateral high-level mutual visits will contribute to deepening the ties between Armenia and the Czech Republic.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Prime Minister of Armenia Tigran Avinyan held a meeting on April 12 with United States Ambassador Lynne Tracy.

Wishing good luck to the new ambassador, Avinyan highly appreciated the current level of the friendly Armenian-American relations and expressed conviction that mutually beneficial cooperation in most various sectors will be able to be deepened through joint efforts, Avinyans office said in a readout of the meeting.

Ambassador Tracy thanked for the reception and noted that the ongoing reforms in Armenia are a good foundation for further deepening the trade-economic relations between the two countries.

Avinyan briefed the ambassador on the Work Armenia project, as well as the ongoing actions of the government for modernizing and strengthening capabilities of the public administration system and improvement of the business climate. The sides also exchanged views around possibilities of enhancing American participation in these initiatives.

Cooperation possibilities in trade-economic, agricultural and high-tech sectors were also addressed.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. Political expert Ruben Mehrabyan says Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyans visit to Strasbourg and speech at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) prove that Armenia is developing its relations at different directions.

PM Pashinyans visit to Strasbourg is more important in a sense that Armenia is developing its relations at all directions, and this also derives from the countrys security interests. Here there is not only the human rights, democratic measurement, but also that of the security, the political scientist said.

He noted that Armenia has stated long ago that it will develop its relations in all directions. The political scientist added that no direction will be at the expense of or against another. In other words, each direction is valued separately.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan paid a working visit to Strasbourg on April 11 where he participated in the PACE spring session and delivered remarks.

Edited and translated by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, APRIL 12, ARMENPRESS. Author, human rights advocate and Baku refugee, Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte, spearheaded a fundraiser to plant a Memorial Forest for the upcoming 30th anniversary of the Baku atrocities, reports Armenpress. The Memorial Forest will be planted in Talin, Armenia.

In the 30 years since the last massacres of Armenians in Azerbaijan, all traces of the Armenian community of Azerbaijan and its contributions to the history and culture of the region have been systematically erased by the current ruling regime of Azerbaijan. The forest will memorialize the lost and the survival of a vibrant and talented Armenian community from Azerbaijan.

This initiative is made possible by the support of donors worldwide and the expertise of the Armenia Tree Project located in Yerevan and Woburn, Massachusetts (www.armeniatree.org). The planting of the forest will provide a place in Armenia to mourn the killed innocents, the bulldozed-over graves of loved ones, and lost cultural sites of the Armenian community in Azerbaijan. The initiative and its presence will celebrate the survivors of these heinous crimes who fled, scattering around the world, building successful lives for themselves in all corners of the earth. Armenians who fled Azerbaijan and Armenia Tree Project look to the future, as will this project, which is an investment in the health and well-being of Armenias next generation.

Over 200 Armenians and non-Armenians worldwide raised $15,000 (US) to plant this Memorial Forest in Talin. The idea between Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte and ATP came about in the spring of 2018 during the 30th anniversary of Sumgait massacres of Armenians. They have been working and planning of the project for one year.

The Talin Memorial Forest is being planted on 2 hectares of land located on the outskirts of Talin. Of the 2000 trees, 500 are fruit trees to supply food to Talin and the surrounding community. The planting site is the location of an old forest that was planted during Soviet times and cut in the 1990's during the crisis created by the energy blockade by Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In addition to the forest planting, ATP will also expand its environmental education programs in Talin in 2019-2020. ATP's environmental education team will visit the town for a series of lessons on reducing plastic use and why environmental protections are important locally, nationally, and globally.



ATP and the Talin community have planted the majority of the trees in November and April. Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte will visit Talin on 7 May at 11:00 when the last 100 trees will be planted. A blessing of the Memorial Forest and a Khachkar at the entrance of the forest will be blessed by the Church.
Until Thursday this week, James Marape was one of the top men in the prime ministers inner circle. As finance minister, he was a major player in the formulation of six national budgets and oversaw various finance related policies by the ONeill-Abel government.

Marape said he was leaving because prime minister Peter ONeill had lost trust him and that the prime ministers associates contributed to it.

Before James Marape, announced his resignation, very few people expected a crack that high up in the Peoples National Congress ranks.

LAE -The last 48 hours has had Papua New Guinean social media forums buzzing with excitement.

James Marape - the 'glasman' (forecasters) seek to interpret his motives, and what his next step will be

While on the surface things appeared smooth, there was a turbulent undercurrent largely kept under wraps until this week.

Marapes exit has also given a glimpse into the inner workings of PNG politics. The open secret of cultural ties and the non-elected political influencers that remain hidden from the public eye.

He revealed publicly what many other members of parliament had previously expressed  that the faceless political hangers-on had a hand in affecting and influencing political decisions in the country.

Marape said he had lost trust of the prime minister and part of it was because associates of the government contributed to that distrust.

The decision is not easy to make and despite the culture and personal ties, the level of trust between the prime minister and myself is at the lowest after his office and associates continue to send negative signals on the lack of trust on me, Marape said.

With talk of a vote of no confidence, the political glasman peering into the murky crystal balls of Waigani attempting to interpret Marapes resignation are coming up with different results. Marapes resignation is certainly a blow, but how damaging is it?

Behind the scenes, insiders say the numbers on the fringes of the coalition appear fluid while the core remains largely intact.

The prime minister was in New Ireland on Thursday when James Marape announced his resignation in Port Moresby. Attempts to get a response from the PM were delayed by a few hours.

A close aide sent a text message saying ONeill would release a statement after meeting with other members present in New Ireland.

Just before 6pm, his office send a short statement in which ONeill acknowledged Marapes resignation.

I have not heard from the minister today. As a matter of protocol I expect that he will be in contact soon to convey his intentions.

Like many political statements, Marapes has to be also read between the lines. He said his disagreements with the PM stemmed from various work related matters including concerns over the participation Papua New Guineans had in the resource sector.

He went on to echo what other ministers like planning minister Richard Maru have repeatedly raised that agreements and legislation governing the resource sector are not configured to allow the people and the country to generate wealth.

Marapes resignation comes days after the signing of the Papua LNG project  a deal that fanned more dissatisfaction when the media reported that landowners would get just two percent of the $US13 billion project.

Whether that contributed directly to his resignation is a question Marape is yet to answer.

Like most political situations involving numbers on the floor of parliament, its best to read between the lines, study the undercurrents and listen to what politicians are not saying.
(Source: Getty)

The Finance Sector Union (FSU) has demanded answers from Australias biggest bank over whether it has plans to reportedly slash as many as 10,000 jobs and shutting 300 branches.

In a bid to provide certainty to employees, the FSU has called for CBA CEO Matt Comyn to confirm or deny reports that the organisation would sack 20 percent of its workforce and save $2 billion, as first reported by The Australian.

It is appropriate that you confirm or deny these reports to ensure workers know where they stand, FSU national secretary Julia Angrisano said in her letter to Comyn.

Can you confirm if the CBA is currently making such plans as reported?

In a statement to media, Angrisano said: Unconfirmed speculation of this size can only lead to uncertainty and has far-reaching negative impacts on employees.

A reduction in such a high staff count would have a devastating impact on bank workers and families across the country, she said.

Not only that, but CBA customers would be severely affected by the closure of 300 branches.

CBA needs to come clean and tell workers what their plans are, the FSU said.

Ive read with mounting dismay reports that @CommBank are planning 10,000 job cuts. Thats 25% of their workforce and 300 branches are tipped to close, 1/3 of their branch network. Finding out about this via the media is deplorable. Im available to take a call Matt Comyn  julia angrisano (@julia_angrisano) April 12, 2019

The major bank revealed its strategy to become a simpler, better bank following explosive unfavourable revelations from the banking Royal Commission.

But the rumoured staff and branch cuts would not aid the banks bruised public image, Angrisano argued.

Matt Comyn is on the wrong track if he thinks shutting down branches and sacking staff will enhance the banks reputation in the community and increase profits, she said.

Story continues

Misleading and unnecessarily alarming

In a statement provided to Yahoo Finance, the major bank described the media speculation as misleading and unnecessarily alarming.

CBA is committed to our people and are disappointed that speculation may be repeated as fact, the statement said.

The bank had indicated a need to manage costs where it makes sense in terms of efficiency and as part of good business discipline in its half-year results announcement in February, it said.

With respect to our branch network, the suggestion that 300 of the banks network of branches is under consideration is incorrect and misleading.

We remain committed to our decision to limit our review of branches in regional and rural towns during this financial year, given the conditions currently experienced by rural NSW and Queensland.

We have also told the FSU that we will continue to consult with the union regarding changes that have implications for our employees and will be open and transparent as soon as any decisions have been made, CBAs statement said.

Simpler, better bank

CBA had originally planned a spin-off its wealth management and mortgage broking arm, but announced last month that was on hold to focus in implementing the recommendations of the banking Royal Commission.

CBA has suspended preparations for the demerger in order to support the focus on these priorities, the bank said in a statement to the ASX in March.

In November 2017, NAB announced it would be shedding 6,000 jobs and create 2,000 new digital-focused jobs by 2020.

But the cuts didnt stop there  in February this year, NAB confirmed that up to 180 customer service roles would be cut.

More to come.

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Chinese artist Ai Weiwei unveiled a series of portraits Thursday made with around one million Lego blocks, depicting 43 Mexican students who were abducted and apparently massacred in 2014. The dissident artist, who was detained by China's communist government in 2011, said he made the piece as a commentary on the students' case, an unsolved crime that triggered an international outcry and continues to haunt Mexico. "Forget about being an artist, I am a human being, just like you, and if you hear someone being hurt, you hear that your neighbors' boy can't ever come back, and four years pass and the government cannot come to a conclusion, what kind of government is that? What kind of society we are living in?" he said in Mexico City. The work, entitled "Reestablecer memorias," or "Reestablishing Memories," is part of Ai's new show at the University Museum of Contemporary Art in the Mexican capital. The multicolored, pop-art portraits are displayed above a timeline that chronicles the case of the missing students. The timeline starts on September 26, 2014, the night the student protesters -- who were enrolled at the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College, in the southern state of Guerrero -- were attacked by corrupt police in the nearby city of Iguala. It then jumps to January 27, 2015, the day the chief prosecutor in the case presented the authorities' version of events, saying the students had been handed over to drug-gang hitmen, who killed them and incinerated their bodies at a garbage dump. Then it turns to September 6, 2015, the day a team of independent international experts who had studied the supposed crime scene said that the official version of events was impossible. The experts, who were sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, urged the Mexican authorities to reopen the investigation. But the government at the time said it considered the case closed, and did not renew the experts' mandate. Ai, 63, said he saw Legos as a "democratic" medium for the piece. "Everybody can use it, everybody recognizes it, and you can reconstruct it. It is such an efficient way, and I just love the pixel feeling," he said. Chinese contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei poses in front of his new exhibition at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) in Mexico City Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei unveiled portraits of the 43 Mexican missing students of Ayotzinapa made with one million Lego pieces
The Amazon-Walmart battle for retail supremacy veered into a trash-talk phase on Thursday over worker pay and alleged tax shirking. Amazon was the provocateur of the latest dustup, which comes as the two companies battle increasingly hard for retail market share. In his annual shareholder letter, Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos baited his rivals -- who were not named -- to match a minimum wage hike to $15 an hour. "We had always offered competitive wages. But we decided it was time to lead -- to offer wages that went beyond competitive," Bezos said. "Today I challenge our top retail competitors (you know who you are!) to match our employee benefits and our $15 minimum wage. Do it! Better yet, go to $16 and throw the gauntlet back at us. It's a kind of competition that will benefit everyone." Walmart's retort came from Executive Vice President Dan Bartlett, who was somewhat less coy about target of his dig. Bartlett tweeted a link to a Yahoo Finance article picturing Bezos that cited a report from an NGO that said Amazon paid no taxes on its 2018 profit of $11.2 billion. "Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?" Bartlett wrote, adding in a separate tweet that most Walmart warehouse associates have made more than $15 "for a long time." The tiff highlights how the two companies have taken to picking on each other's weaknesses and conveniently ignoring nuance as they compete for consumers. Walmart has enacted a number of wage hikes in the last few years, most recently in January 2018 when it boosted its minimum wage for starting US workers to $11 an hour from $9 an hour. Walmart has more than 1.5 million workers in the US compared with just 350,000 at Amazon, so boosting wages would have more of an impact on the bottom line. Amazon, for its part, has said it pays all required taxes. The online retailer has also thus far refrained from pointing out copious NGO criticism of Walmart, including for its alleged use of tax havens. Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos traded barbs with Walmart as the companies battle for retail supremacy Walmart has been embroiled in a fight for retail supremacy with Amazon
At least 20 people were killed and 48 wounded Friday by a powerful suicide blast apparently targeting the Shia Hazara ethnic minority at a crowded fruit market in Pakistan's Quetta city, officials said. Body parts littered the scene and injured people screamed for help as black smoke cloaked the market after the explosion. A faction of the Pakistani Taliban claimed the attack, which occurred in the capital of southwestern Balochistan province. The group said it collaborated with Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has been behind numerous bloody attacks on Shiite Muslims in Pakistan. There was no immediate confirmation from LeJ. Balochistan -- which borders Afghanistan and Iran -- is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. Balochistan home minister Zia Ullah Langu gave the toll and confirmed it was a suicide blast, adding that two of the dead were children. Provincial police chief Mohsin Butt said eight Hazara were among the victims. The Hazara, whose Central Asian features make them easily recognisable, are a soft target for Sunni militants, who consider them heretics. They are so frequently targeted that they are forced to live in two protected enclaves in the city and are given a daily police escort to the market to stock up on supplies. Police chief Butt said this had happened Friday. The bomb detonated near a site where produce was being loaded for distribution around the market. "I was loading a small truck and I heard a huge bang and it seemed as if the earth beneath me had shaken and I fell down," said Irfan Khan, a labourer, from his hospital bed. "The atmosphere was filled with black smoke and I could not see anything, I could hear people screaming for help and I was also screaming for help." He said the air was "filled with the stinging smell of burnt human flesh". Senior police official Abdul Razaq Cheema said the blast targeted the Hazarganji neighbourhood of Quetta. Hazara make up roughly 500,000 of the city's 2.3 million people. Amnesty International said the blast was a "painful reminder" of the many attacks suffered by the Hazara community in Quetta over the years, and called for the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan to give them better protection. "Each time, there are promises that more will be done to protect them, and each time those promises have failed to materialize," wrote Omar Waraich, Amnesty's deputy director for South Asia. Violence in Pakistan has dropped significantly since the country's deadliest-ever militant attack, an assault on a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar in 2014 that killed more than 150 people, most of them children. Pakistani security officials inspect the site of a bomb blast at a fruit market in Quetta Map of Pakistan locating a deadly bomb attack in Quetta on Friday.
Immersed up to her neck in a dark viscous liquid, Sulfiya smiles in delight, confident that the fetid substance will cure her painful condition. Sulfiya, a Russian woman in her 60s, has travelled to Azerbaijan's north-western city of Naftalan in the hope that crude oil baths at a local sanatorium will end her years of suffering from polyarthritis, a disease affecting the joints. "This is so pleasant," she enthuses, despite the reek of engine oil. Her naked dip in oil heated to just above body temperature lasts 10 minutes, after which an attendant scrapes the brown oil off her skin and sends her into a shower. The native of Russia's Tatarstan region said she and her friends "have long dreamed of coming" for treatment in Naftalan. The petroleum spa resort in the oil-rich Caucasus country is a draw for visitors despite its proximity to Nagorny Karabakh, a region disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in a long-running armed conflict. After 10 days of bathing in crude oil Sulfiya says she now feels "much better" and has even reduced her medication for the polyarthritis that she has had for 12 years. "It is a gift from God," agrees 48-year-old Rufat, an Azerbaijani journalist and opposition party member who is undergoing treatment in the sanatorium called Sehirli, or "magic" in Azerbaijani. Azerbaijan's vast oil deposits were discovered in the mid-19th century, making what was at the time part of the Russian Empire one of the first places in the world to start commercial oil production. Oil exports to markets all over the world are the largest sector of Azerbaijan's economy, but the crude that comes from subsoil reservoirs in Naftalan is not suitable for commercial use. Instead the local oil is used to treat muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynaecological and neurological problems. According to a legend, which spa staff readily tell clients, the healing properties of Naftalan's "miraculous oil" were discovered by accident when a camel left to die near a pool of oil was cured. The small town of Naftalan some 300 kilometres (185 miles) from the capital Baku became a popular health resort for Soviet citizens in the 1920s. "In the past, when there weren't any hotels or sanatoriums, people would come to Naftalan and stay with locals," said one of the doctors at the Sehirli sanatorium, Fabil Azizov, sitting in her office under a portrait of strongman President Ilham Aliyev. "But as time passed, sanatoriums were built and treatment methods developed." - Controversial benefits ? Some specialists warn the method has dangerous side effects. "Despite the stories of past cures, the use of crude oil for medicinal purposes has been condemned by Western doctors as potentially carcinogenic," former journalist Maryam Omidi wrote in a 2017 book published in Britain about Soviet-era sanatoriums. In fact, the oil at Naftalan is almost 50 percent naphthalene, a carcinogenic substance found in cigarette smoke and mothballs that in large amounts can damage or destroy red blood cells. But doctors and patients at Naftalan brush aside any misgivings and the sanatorium even has a small museum displaying crutches that once belonged to patients who have recovered from their illnesses. - 'We heard gunshots' - During its heyday in the 1980s, Naftalan would host more than 70,000 visitors a year. But in 1988, a bloody war began with neighbouring Armenia for the control of Azerbaijan's separatist Nagorny Karabakh region, which unilaterally proclaimed independence from Baku in 1991. The conflict claimed the lives of some 30,000 people from both sides and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. A 1994 ceasefire agreement ended hostilities, but the arch foes have yet to reach a definitive peace deal and there are frequent skirmishes along the volatile frontline. During the war, the sanatoriums in Naftalan -- a few kilometres from the frontline -- were converted into hospitals for wounded soldiers and temporary accommodation for refugees. Over the last two decades, the Azerbaijani authorities have worked hard to re-establish Naftalan's reputation as a health resort. They resettled refugees in other regions, demolished decrepit Soviet-era sanatoriums and built brand-new tourist facilities. Modern Naftalan is a blend of kitsch-looking high-end spas where a week's treatment costs some 1,000 euros, and modest sanatoriums where a week's treatment costs around 100 euros. The simmering Karabakh conflict may be out of sight, but guests can still feel uncomfortably close to the military action. During one of the deadliest recent bouts of fighting in April 2016, "we heard gunshots," said a member of staff at Naftalan's luxurious Garabag spa, adding quickly that "everyone stayed on." Oil is used to treat muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynaecological and neurological problems Modern Naftalan is a blend of kitsch-looking high-end spas and more modest sanatoriums Some specialists warn the method has dangerous side-effects and may be carcinogenic Doctors and patients at Naftalan brush aside any misgivings over side effects, and the sanatorium even has a small museum displaying crutches that once belonged to patients who have recovered from their illnesses
Survivors and families of the victims of the 1994 Estonia ferry disaster that claimed 852 lives hope the shipbuilder and certification agency will finally be held accountable when a French court hears their lawsuit on Friday. But, weary and disillusioned after 25 years of legal to-and-fros, they say they have low expectations. "When I heard about it I was surprised because I thought the case had been dropped a long time ago," said 66-year-old Elisabet Nilsson, who lost her husband in the tragedy. The 155-meter ferry MS Estonia, carrying 989 passengers and crew, sank in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Finland on the night of September 27-28, 1994. An international probe concluded in 1997 that the retractable bow visor had opened in heavy seas, allowing water to flow onto the car deck and destabilise the vessel. But neither the German shipbuilder Meyer-Werft nor the French agency Bureau Veritas that deemed the ship seaworthy were ever held responsible for the accident. Now, almost 25 years on, 1,116 survivors and beneficiaries are seeking 40.8 million euros ($46 million) in damages from the two. Their lawsuit is to be heard by a French court in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris where Bureau Veritas is based, and is scheduled to last two days, Friday and Monday. Nilsson, who with her two sons is among the claimants, said the survivors and families of the victims had been repeatedly let down over the years, and didn't think the Nanterre proceedings would be any different. "Since Estonia has never been properly investigated, I don't have much hope for this hearing either," she said. - 23 years of proceedings - Shortly after the accident, Swedish authorities opposed a refloating of the ship and designated the area a sea grave, prohibiting any exploration of the wreckage -- and helping conspiracy theories flourish. Survivors and relatives, who have previously called for new independent probes into the cause of the accident, were swiftly compensated for material damages from the now-bankrupt Estonian shipowner Estline. But this is the first time a court will decide the question of accountability. The lawsuit was first filed in 1996, making it hard for some families and survivors to follow the drawn-out legal proceedings, said Mart Raudsepp, a representative of the Memento Mare organisation that acts to preserve the memory of the victims. "I don't have any expectations from these proceedings. The wheels of justice turn so slowly, I doubt the court will be able to find out who is responsible for this tragedy," he told AFP. Raudsepp, whose 17-year-old son died on the ferry, said it had been so hard to keep up with the case that he wasn't even sure if he was still among the claimants. "We have received no information about what is going on in France, what the court meetings will be like, who the claimants are and who the defendants are," he said. "No-one has told us anything. I can't even say if the families of the shipwreck victims are participating in the process at the moment," said Raudsepp. While a majority of the victims, 501 people, were Swedish, Friday's hearing has not received any media attention in their country. When contacted by AFP on April 10, one of the Swedish survivors, 54-year-old Kent Harstedt who is now a member of parliament, said he was not even aware the hearing was taking place. He said he was not a claimant in the suit, but only because he was never asked to participate when it was originally filed and only found out about it years later. As he was not involved, he said it was difficult to know what to expect, but said he hoped the court would get to the bottom of the question of accountability. "I hope it isn't just quickly brushed aside but given a proper trial, like it deserves," he told AFP. The bow door of the ferry M/S Estonia was lifted from the bottom of the sea after it sank in the Baltic Sea in 1994 Objets such as the heavy weather manual lock from the ferry will be presented as evidence in the Nanterre courthouse Pieces of evidence were displayed in the courtroom ahead of the MS Estonia hearings A granite wall in Stockholm bears the names of the victims of the 1994 sinking of the "Estonia" ferry
Image: Getty

The Fair Work Ombudsman ran surprise audits of a popular Korean fried chicken franchise network on Thursday, responding to complaints from staff about underpayment of wages.

Ombudsman inspectors visited 19 Gami Chicken and Beer stores in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth to check that they were paying their workers legally.

The operation was triggered after more than 20 enquiries and complaints from Gami Chicken staff were reported to the Ombudsman. Issues included getting short-changed on wages, not receiving penalty rates and not having pay slips issued.

Like many people working in the fast food sector, Gami Chicken and Beer staff are potentially vulnerable due to their age, cultural background or visa status, said Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker.

It is important for us to talk with these workers on the ground so they are aware of their workplace rights and that we can help them.

According to the ombudsmans office, the hospitality sector is overrepresented among complaints from employees. Even though the industry only employs 7 percent of the workforce, almost 40 percent of anonymous tip-offs and one-third of legal action involved that sector.

Australias minimum pay rates are not negotiable and employers in the fast food, restaurant and cafe sector should actively check that they are paying their staff correctly.

The Fair Work Ombudsman has recovered $4 million last financial year on behalf of workers from fast food and cafe employers.

Gami Chicken and Beer was founded 2006 but started franchising in 2015. The chain now has eateries in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Canberra, while it is currently advertising for new outlets in Brisbane and Adelaide.

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A toddler has been rushed to hospital after being hit by a truck in northwest Sydney.

The three-year-old was waiting with her mum to cross Windsor Road at Northmead when the pram she was in was hit by a truck and pushed forward about 15 metres on Friday about 10am, CareFlight said.

A toddler has been dragged 15 metres by a truck while in her pram at Northmead. Source: CareFlight

The girl was unconscious and treated by an ICU doctor and a fireman who were bystanders to the accident.

CareFlights specialist doctor Fay Balian praised the work of the bystanders.

The people who were treating the patient prior to us arriving were really great and helped to maintain her condition, she said.

Shes been transported to The Childrens Hospital at Westmead in a stable condition.

CareFlight attended the incident. Shes been transported to hospital in a stable condition. Source: CareFlight

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Footage captures the emotional moment an isolated tribe in the Amazon jungle was reunited with relatives they thought had been killed, after eight years apart, ending a war with a nearby tribe.

The incredible video shows the group in tears before launching into a tribal dance to celebrate the return of their long-lost relatives.

Footage captures the emotional moment an isolated tribe in the Amazon jungle was reunited with relatives they thought had been killed, after eight years apart, ending a war with a nearby tribe. Source: FUNAI

A team of two dozen from FUNAI, Brazils agency for indigenous peoples, reached 34 members of the Korubo tribe in the Brazilian state of Amazonas.

They filmed the landmark reunion during the high-risk expedition, near the border with Peru.

The Matis tribe repeatedly requested FUNAIs intervention in the case because they believed the isolated Korubos wanted revenge, mistakenly believing their relatives had been killed by the Matis.

The main concern of FUNAI analysts was that the isolated group would not believe that the Korubos in the expedition were in fact their relatives, which made them label the mission as high risk.

The high-risk expedition has reconnected a group of 34 indigenous who live isolated in the Brazilian Amazonia, calming the tension between the Korubo and the Matis tribes. Source: FUNAI

It was actually quite moving. We soon found one of the two Korubos we saw first was a brother of one of the members of the expedition, said FUNAI coordinator Bruno Pereira.

There was a lot of emotion and tears.

The trip lasted 32 days in the Javari Valley, an area of more than 8 million hectares, or larger than Hungary.

A Korubo man smiles as a FUNAI member checks his heart rate during an expedition to the Javari Valley, in Brazil. Source: FUNAI via AP

Brazilian law states that contact with isolated tribes can be used only as a last resort to preserve the lives of indigenous peoples and the expedition was FUNAIs biggest since 1996.

It is also the agencys first major operation during the administration of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

Brazils new leader has often criticised bodies that handle indigenous issues. He has also promised to stop demarcation of indigenous lands and allow miners and farmers to operate in their lands.

Story continues

FUNAIs chairman Franklinberg de Freitas, appointed by Bolsonaro, called the expedition a landmark.

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Indonesia is probing vote-rigging claims after the discovery of thousands of stray election ballots in neighbouring Malaysia, officials said, as the opposition threatens to challenge next week's poll results over separate voter list irregularities. The General Elections Commission (KPU) has sent a team to Malaysia to investigate as many as 20,000 ballots, including many marked in favour of Indonesian President Joko Widodo, that were found in two locations near the capital Kuala Lumpur. "This concerns a very sensitive issue and since it happened in another country, we're doing a very careful investigation," KPU chief Arief Budiman told a press conference late Thursday. Recent polls suggest Widodo, 57, has a double-digit lead over challenger Prabowo Subianto, an ex-military general, setting up a repeat of the pair's contest in 2014, which Widodo narrowly won. Indonesia's opposition has already warned of court challenges and street protests over irregularities, including errors in dates of birth and duplicate identity card numbers, for some 17.5 million registered voters -- nearly 10 percent of the electorate. More than 190 million Indonesians are set to cast a ballot Wednesday in one of the world's biggest one-day elections, with some two million living overseas also registered to vote, including in Malaysia. Indonesia's Elections Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) confirmed that stray ballots marked in Widodo's favour were found in Malaysia after videos surfaced online that showed people raiding an empty store in Selangor state and unpacking several bags containing marked ballots. Another video, apparently from another location in Malaysia, showed two women punching holes in ballots, which is how a vote is marked in Indonesia's elections. But the agency said the ballots' authenticity had yet to be confirmed. "Were those ballots really printed by the KPU? Who did this?" Bawaslu's Mochammad Afifuddin said in a joint statement with the elections commission. "We will clarify this and investigate," he added. Selangor state police chief Noor Azam Jamaludin said Malaysian authorities were also probing the case. There are reportedly one million registered Indonesian voters living in Malaysia who are set to cast an early ballot at more than 200 ballot stations on Sunday. Presidential challenger Subianto's camp demanded the recall of Rusdi Kirana -- a Widodo ally who is Indonesia's ambassador to Malaysia and co-founder of budget carrier Lion Air -- for failing to prevent ballots from going astray. "It's embarrassing," Subianto's spokesman Irawan Ronodipuro said. "This breaches the code of ethics and violates the ambassador's primary role and function. It has defamed the country." Widodo gave his thumbs up to the probe, but called on opponents to wait for the investigation's results before "spreading unfounded rumours". An official prepares ballot boxes and other voting materials in Jakarta ahead of elections next week. Indonesia is investigating vote-rigging claims after thousands of ballot papers were disovered in neighbouring Malaysia
North Korea has replaced its long-serving head of state with a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un, promoting a man who was placed on a US sanctions list last year for alleged human rights abuses, state media said Friday. The move came as part of a top-ranking reshuffle that analysts said further cemented Kim's already unshakeable grip on power. Kim also acquired a new title, and now becomes "the supreme representative of all the Korean people" -- a newly-created role that observers say makes him more like a modern national leader, on a par with other country's presidents and prime ministers. Kim Yong Nam, the now-91-year-old who held the position of the North's head of state -- an almost entirely ceremonial role -- for almost 20 years, was replaced by Choe Ryong Hae, the state-run KCNA said. As the new president of the Supreme People's Assembly, Choe is technically head of state, although real power in North Korea is wielded by Kim and his immediate family. The reshuffle comes at a time of heightened diplomatic activity that has seen Kim Jong Un hold landmark summits with the leaders of the US, China and South Korea. Born in 1950, Choe is considered Kim Jong Un's right-hand man -- frequently referred to as the regime's "virtual number two official", having been key to the party's hierarchy since the 1980s. Some reports have even suggested that one of Choe's sons is married to Kim Jong Un's powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong. Choe is also one of the three North Korean officials placed under sanctions by the US last year over human rights abuse allegations. Analysts said, however, the existing strictures on Choe will have little impact on his future diplomatic endeavours, as long as its nuclear dialogue with the US continues. "Kim Yong Chol, the North's top nuclear negotiator, also has been sanctioned by Washington since 2010," Ahn Chan-il, the president of the World Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul, told AFP. "But he visited Washington without a problem earlier this year. Washington will always make exceptions -- as long as Pyongyang has something to offer." - New title - Kim's new job adds to a growing list of titles he has accrued since he took power after the 2011 death of his father. Analysts say it may also indicate a change in the country's constitution that concentrates more authority in the young leader. "If Pyongyang indeed revised its constitution, then it just means Kim Jong Un now has more power than ever,"" said analyst Ahn. "If that's the case, Kim will be the one who will be officially representing Pyongyang both at home and abroad". Unlike his father, Kim Jong-Il, the young Kim has increasingly greeted foreign heads of state and visiting dignatories, performing the functions of a modern head of state. Jeong Young-tae, an analyst at the Institute of North Korean Studies in Seoul, says the new title is part of Pyongyang's efforts to "secularise" Kim and his power. "Kim Jong Un wants to re-brand North Korea as a 'normal' socialist country in the world stage," he told AFP. "The new title 'representative' is a break from some of his previous titles that are redolent of a religious cult." Under a reshuffle of the North Korean leadership, Kim Jong Un (R) is now 'the supreme representative of the Korean people' and his close aide Choe Ryong Hae (L) is the new head of state, an almost entirely ceremonial role
A hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend: Donald J. Trump has a long-lost Chinese friend. Dressed in a black suit, an unmistakable blonde wig and an extra-long red tie, "Trump" is leading a Cantonese opera troupe during a rehearsal in Hong Kong. In this absurdist drama dubbed "Trump on Show", audiences watch a mish-mash of current and imagined events including the US president's meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. A 26-year-old Trump also looks for his twin brother "Chuan Pu", a transliteration of his name in Chinese, during a fantastical trip to China alongside former American president Richard Nixon, who plays ping-pong with Mao Zedong. It begins with the current first family moving into the White House. Ivanka Trump finds Mao's "Little Red Book" -- a collection of the late communist leader's quotes and ideology -- full of her father's handwritten notes, triggering a flashback to Nixon's famous diplomatic tour of China in 1972. The sold-out show opens Friday and runs for four days at the Sunbeam Theatre, Hong Kong's famous Cantonese opera house. The centuries-old art form usually features ancient Chinese stories and legends, but the latest show gives the genre a modern twist. - Narcissistic characters - "Donald Trump is the most topical person in the world, while Cantonese opera is a forgotten and waning art form. If we can write about him in a play, it will definitely help attract people's attention to the culture of Cantonese opera," said Edward Li, the opera's playwright. He believes the tweeter-in-chief's fame will rescue the traditional musical theatre. Li said Mao and Trump share similar traits, namely narcissism. "Seventy-two-year-old Mao Zedong started the Cultural Revolution. Seventy-two-year-old Donald Trump is also creating a US cultural revolution. What's a cultural revolution? That's when one person overturns all the political systems," Li told AFP. The feng shui master-turned-playwright revealed he rewrote the script at least 10 times to keep it fresh. The US-China trade war and the controversial arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou were both worked into the plot. The story also pokes fun at the leaders -- Trump orders take-out every day and drinks 12 bottles of Coke, while Kim knows how to make Swiss cheese fondue. Trump is played by Loong Koon-tin, who also handles the roles of Mao and Trump's fictional Chinese twin brother. Backstage, "Ivanka" helped her father with make-up and hairstyling. Within 15 minutes, "Mao" was transformed into "Trump". "The division of different characters is a challenge. You have to let them (the audience) know who you're playing when you appear on stage," said Loong. Li released "Chairman Mao" three years ago, the first installation of his Mao trilogy. After Trump, the second play, he plans to conclude the series with a story about Mao and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. He said he has big ambitions for the Trump opera. "My future goal is to perform in front of Trump and have Trump applaud." Loong Koon-tin plays the US President in the absurdist Cantonese opera "Trump on Show" Late Chinese leader Mao Zedong plays ping-pong with former president Richard Nixon in the opera's dream sequence In the opera, Trump's daughter Ivanka discovers a copy of Mao Zedong's "Little Red Book" which triggers a flashback to the 1970s Playwright Edward Li hopes Trump's fame will fame will rescue traditional Cantonese musical theatre
The Ukrainian comedian tipped to become president and his incumbent rival travelled to Paris and Berlin on Friday to seek international backing nine days before the run-off in a high-stakes vote. French President Emmanuel Macron first hosted the comic and actor Volodymyr Zelensky, a political novice, for talks in Paris before meeting later with current President Petro Poroshenko. For 41-year-old Zelensky, a consummate showman who has managed to tap into frustration with mainstream politics five years after Ukraine's 2014 revolution, winning an audience with Macron, also aged 41, was a coup. "Very cool," Zelensky said of his meeting with Macron. "We spoke about life, we spoke about the main things," he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. "We spoke about stopping the war in Donbass," he said, referring to the pro-Russia insurgency in eastern Ukraine. Polls show Zelensky, whose only political experience involves playing a president on TV, easily defeating Poroshenko for the leadership of a country seen as a buffer between Europe and Russia in a second round of voting on April 21. Zelensky's campaign chief said that corruption, economic reforms and "of course, the second-round run-off" were also on the agenda. "It was a very positive meeting. A meeting during which the two men got to meet each other, heard opinions on the development of both bilateral ties and the country," campaign chief Ivan Bakanov told AFP. - 'Dream team' - After the meeting Zelensky posted on Facebook a picture of himself and his aides -- including former finance minister Oleksandr Danylyuk -- laughing happily in Paris. "Dream team," said the caption. Poroshenko, who was massively outshone by Zelensky in the first round and is anxious to make up lost ground, made much of his meetings with both Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin earlier the day, imploring Ukrainians to re-elect him. "We received an absolutely clear confirmation that right after my re-election -- we are convinced that there will be a window of opportunity -- a meeting at the highest level of the Normandy format will be convened," Poroshenko told reporters, referring to peace talks to end Ukraine's five-year war with Russian-backed rebels.. "I expect Petro Poroshenko to win," he added. The 53-year-old tycoon who made his fortune in chocolate has positioned himself as the only candidate able to stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of fuelling the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed some 13,000 people since 2014. The Ukrainian leader also released pictures on social media of himself and a smiling Macron looking comfortable and close together on the steps of the Elysee Palace. "Happy to meet with Ukraine's sincere friend," Poroshenko wrote. Macron's decision to welcome frontrunner Zelensky -- breaking with tradition whereby leaders usually only receive foreign politicians of their ranking -- caused some annoyance in Kiev. - 'Strange situation' - "This is a very unpleasant and strange situation," a Ukrainian diplomatic source told AFP ahead of the visit, while another source compared the meetings to a "bride show." Sources in the French presidency linked the decision to Zelensky's success in the first round of voting on March 31, when he won 30 percent of the vote, nearly double that of Poroshenko. The Ukrainian leader also praised his talks with Merkel in Berlin earlier in the day. Merkel told a news conference with Poroshenko that she had invited him to Berlin to continue their "constant exchange" on security. "I think it's important that we continue to discuss, even at a time when the elections are under way," she said. Poroshenko downplayed the significance of Zelensky's outsider status, telling reporters in Berlin: "We have politicians who are not part of the political system but that also exists in other parts of Europe. Ukraine is not an exception." A poll released Thursday showed the entertainer winning 61 percent of the vote in the second round, compared with just 24 percent for Poroshenko. While the campaign has descended into farce at times, with both men undergoing drugs tests at Zelensky's insistence, the stakes are high for Ukraine, a country of 45 million that is one of Europe's poorest. Zelensky has shunned traditional rallies, instead performing satirical shows and capitalising on frustration over corruption and economic trouble. Critics argue his programme is vague and doubt his ability to lead the crisis-wracked country. Poroshenko backers credit him with binding Ukraine to the West, rebuilding the nation's army and securing an Orthodox Church independent of Russia. ant-cb-os-as/boc Ukrainian presidential candidate, actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelensky (2nd L), meets with French President Emmanuel Macron (2nd R) at the Elysee Palace in Paris Ukrainian President and Petro Poroshenko (L), who is trailing in polls for re-election, met with President Emmanuel Macron in Paris after his rival did Ukraine has been locked in conflict since 2014 with Moscow-backed rebels in its east
Using cryptography and virtual drop boxes, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks created a revolutionary new model for media to lure massive digitized leaks from whistleblowers, exposing everything from US military secrets to wealthy tax-dodgers' illicit offshore accounts. Assange's arrest in London Thursday on a US extradition request to face charges of computer crimes could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks. But his legacy will live long in the world's media. News outlets and journalists everywhere can now offer to potential sources encrypted apps and secure virtual mailboxes to receive secrets that were once divulged by discreet whispers, furtive phone calls and unmarked manila envelopes. Skilled at hacking and cryptography -- and motivated by a deep distrust of traditional institutions -- Australia-born Assange took a cypherpunk's libertarian streak to the challenge of government secrecy. In 2006 he built an online platform that offered an anonymous, encrypted path to leak computerized files without fear of exposure. - 'We liberated cryptography' - Leaks have forever been crucial currency in journalism. But no one had before created a convenient, relatively easy-to-use electronic drop box that could almost instantly, with absolute secrecy, take delivery of gigabytes of documents. And he did it at a ripe time, as the connected world emerged and social media took off. For Assange, it was the democratization of powers that had before belonged to governments alone. "Cryptography was then the exclusive property of states," he wrote in 2013. "By writing our own software and disseminating it far and wide we liberated cryptography, democratized it and spread it through the frontiers of the new internet." WikiLeaks' first release in December 2006 was an apparent assassination order by a Somali rebel leader that may or may not have been authentic. But it drew attention. Over the next year, WikiLeaks obtained documents baring the Kenyan leader's corruption, the secret operating rules for the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and offshore banking records from a Swiss bank. It began scooping mainstream media on stories from secret climate discussions to Iran's nuclear activities and Icelandic banking fraud. - The Manning files - In 2010 US army intelligence official Chelsea Manning -- a transgender woman then known as Bradley -- began secretly feeding hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks. They showed possible war crimes by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a never-before-seen video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 18 people, including civilians and two Reuters journalists. The stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream. Assange partnered with The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and others to help sort through and make sense of the Manning material. WikiLeaks won awards and Assange was put on the cover of Time magazine. "What WikiLeaks demonstrated was the potential for a stateless transparency organization to get around the ability of the most powerful governments in the world to suppress information," said Micah Sifry, author of a 2011 book on WikiLeaks. - WikiLeaks copycats - Almost as soon as he hit that peak, Assange's star began to fade. Political pressure to counter WikiLeaks was huge. A multi-country effort got major credit card and payment firms to cut WikiLeaks' financial lifeline of donations. And he began to fall out with collaborators, a victim of his domineering personality that made WikiLeaks a one-man show, and his insistence that leaked material be published unedited, including that information that could harm people -- soldiers in the field, human rights activists and others. But by 2012 others were already adopting his model of setting up encrypted, anonymous paths for leakers to hand over documents. WikiLeaks copycat sites opened in different countries. Journalists became trained in the use of encryption and secret file transfers. "Exposing the secrets of the US government was a powerful signal that nobody could keep information under control in the internet age," said Sifry. US whistleblower Edward Snowden did not deliver his trove of hundreds of thousands of top-secret intelligence and military documents to a media drop-box in 2013. But he used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize to communicate with the journalists he collaborated with. In 2013 the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had aided WikiLeaks with financing, developed a new anonymous drop box free for anyone to use: SecureDrop. The New Yorker, an early adopter, explained its value to leakers: "As it's set up, even we won't be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won't be able to tell them." SecureDrop is important to the most successful WikiLeaks-like operation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. In recent years it has obtained from leakers millions of financial account files detailing money laundering and tax avoidance from offshore banking centers -- the "Panama Papers" and "Paradise Papers." The top of the ICIJ's web page offers links to SecureDrop and other encrypted tools for sharing information. And it has one simple invitation for its users: "Leak to us." Julian Assange's arrest could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks Assange's legacy will live long in the world's media Chelsea Manning's stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream US whistleblower Edward Snowden used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize
In addition to the fact that limousine travel is very glamorous, it is also the most comfortable trip you can...
Audrey was a lifelong community member of Moravia. She was an active volunteer for more than 20 years with Four Town Ambulance where she served as Captain and Car 1 for 10 years. During those years she was awarded several recognitions for outstanding achievements, including the W.E. Killbourne Life Saving award in 1979, 89 and 90. A proclamation by the town of Moravia was created for Audrey Jean Sharpsteen Day dated Dec. 6, 2002, in recognition of her service to her community. She put many hours into Four Town and was one of the last volunteer medics to respond 24/7. Audrey was a great asset to the organization, following her parents legacy as Charter Members. Her legacy will live on forever in our hearts and never be forgotten. When she was not volunteering, Audrey was working at Auburn Community Hospital. To her it was not merely a job; the time spent was an extension of her passion to care for others in need. She loved her job, and her life as a volunteer. She was a wonderful mother to her family, volunteer squad, and her night shift ED.
HIT: To a drug sweep that came up empty.

Law enforcement personnel  including six sharp-nosed canines  checked out lockers, classrooms and other areas of Auburn High School and Auburn Junior High School Monday morning but found no drugs and made no arrests. The sweeps are coordinated with the school district but come as a surprise to students, parents and staff.

Police said that they are not naive enough to believe that drugs are absent in the community but it's good that they don't seem to be a particular problem in Auburn's schools.

MISS: Some fish caught in Owasco Lake may not be safe to consume.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation recently issued an advisory for fish that may contain high levels of mercury. The DEC said that yellow perch, smallmouth bass, walleye and rainbow trout may contain unsafe levels of mercury, and people are advised to limit their consumption. Older fish tend to have higher levels than younger and smaller fish. The DEC notes that drinking water from the lake serviced by the city of Auburn and town of Owasco remains safe to drink.

HIT: To a new spot for an old favorite.

Iginio Labaro, of Locke, is no stranger to the pizza business, having opened his first restaurant 50 years ago and running similar businesses in Cato, Weedsport and Moravia. Next week, he will open up shop in Auburn Plaza on Grant Avenue.

Mamma Maria New York Pizzeria will seat about 35 and employ 10. It is expected to be opened by Tuesday, April 16.

The Citizen editorial board includes interim publisher Thomas Salvo, executive editor Jeremy Boyer and managing editor Mike Dowd.

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The nearly five-decade tradition of British tabloids publishing nude or semi-nude photos of women on page 3, started in 1970 by The Sun newspaper, appears to be coming to an end. The Sun ceased the practice in 2015, and on Friday its tabloid competitor The Daily Star also said that it would swap its topless models for a new covered-up version of the iconic Page 3 Girlat least for a while.

But just because the models will no longer bare their breasts for the perusing pleasure of morning commuters doesnt mean that The Star will cease featuring its trademark risque content. A quick look at the papers headlines for Friday reveals stories about, Worlds 1st Human Sex Robot, Instagram Model Strips to Thong Bikini Inside Airport, and Olivia Atwood Jiggles Boobs to Celebrate Joining TOWIE, among other highlights.

(TOWIE refers to The Only Way is Essex, a British reality show focusing on the nightlife and relationships of a group of millennials in the working-class London suburb of Essex.)

The move marks what The Guardian newspaper called a U-Turn for the idiosyncratic Star tabloid, which had reacted to the end of nude Page 3 Girls in The Sun by increasing on its own commitment to the feature.

The Daily Star is proud to continue the great British page 3 tradition, the newspaper announced in 2015. It brightens the day for our readers during tough times and has launched many successful careers.

But when Star owner Richard Desmonda major financial backer of Britians far-right UKIP party, and proprietor of such soft-core porn magazines as Asian Babes, among otherssold the paper to the company that owns the left-leaning Mirror tabloid, change on Page 3 appeared inevitable.

The Daily Star is always looking to try new things and improve, said the Stars newest editor  and former Mirror associate editor  Jonathan Clark. In that spirit, weve listened to reader feedback and are currently trialing a covered-up version of Page 3.

Women featured in the Page 3 slot will now be at least scantily clad in lingerie or swimwear, according to a report by The Independent newspaper.

The weekly Sunday Sport tabloid, however, reportedly will continue to publish topless photos of women throughout its paperbut the Sport makes few pretensions to report actual news, and self-consciously styles itself as a parody of the tabloid genre, running stories claiming that a statue of Elvis Presley has been discovered on Mars, and that Aliens Turned Our Son into A Fish Finger, according to an Independent report.

Photo by Daily Star Online
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Mark Zuckerberg has finally admitted he needs help. From the government. After years of shady dealing, data collection, and intentionally designing addictive technologies, Zuckerberg has asked the government to regulate tech.

And who do you think will help write all the regulation that regulates all these tech firms? Bureaucrats in Washington wont have enough knowledge, of course, so theyll have to get it from experts in the tech industry. Lucky tech industry. Now that Facebook and Google, et al., have such huge marketshare, its time to create barriers to entry and costly regulations that only big existing firms can afford.

One of the critiques of capitalism from progressives to traditionalist Catholics is that despite all the talk of free markets, capitalism always ends up in crony capitalism. Supporters of the market economy claim that this is a distortion of capitalism, and that it is government intervention that is the culprit, but this can often sound like the socialist who tells us despite the evidence from the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela that real socialism hasnt been tried.

How should we think about the relationship between capitalism and crony capitalism? Is it the case that capitalism always becomes captured by special interests, or can we create and maintain what Luigi Zingales has called capitalism for the peoplea capitalism that doesnt simply favor the wealthy and well-connected at the expense of everyone else?

The Road to Serfdom or The Road to Crony Capitalism?

Mike Munger and Mario Villareal-Diaz wrote an interesting piece on this topic in the Independent Review.

(There is a pay wall but there is much more to this article than I am highlighting; it is worth the money. They ask whether capitalism can be sustained in a democracy and use the work of Smith and the Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gassets book The Revolt of the Masses, which has some profound insights. I use Gassets work, especially his idea of the spoiled child of history, in my lectures on cultural critiques of capitalism and the victory of socialism.)

You can also listen to Mungers EconTalk interview with Russ Roberts.

Munger and Villarreal-Diaz ask, If real capitalism exists, is it sustainable? Or does capitalism in a democracy always devolve into corporatist cronyism?

The reality is that companies benefit when they go to the government for help and protection.

At some point, rational companies cut back on hiring engineers and shift their focus to lawyers and lobbyists. The use of patents, lawsuits, professional licensing, and other regulatory barriers to competitive entry into your industry or product line can produce enormous revenues, even though it adds nothing to the value of the product and does nothing to benefit consumers.

Its not just companies that benefit. So does the state. Munger summarizes the tendency toward crony capitalism in a follow-up piece for the American Institute for Economic Research: Corporate leaders benefit, monetarily and in the short run, from negotiating favorable legislation and protection from politicians.

Even if business leaders behave irrationally and leave that money on the tableremember, its legal to lobby, even if its immoralits still true that politicians benefit from making businesses dependent on taxpayer handouts. Businesses that dont play along will be singled out for special attention, either extra taxes or unwelcome regulation.

Capitalism for the People

They are not alone in addressing this problem. There are number of interesting books on the problems of crony capitalism. Luigi Zingaless 2012 book Capitalism for the People, Jonathan Teppers The Myth of Capitalism, Tim Wus The Curse of Bigness, and Hunter Lewiss Crony Capitalism in America are worth reading. They have different perspectives. Some make the case for anti-trust legislation, some think that will make the problem worse.

As Munger and others have noted, the problem of crony capitalism was identified by the father of modern economics, Adam Smith himself.

Smith wrote: People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.

Smith argues that it would be a violation of liberty to prohibit such meetings, but that law should at least be careful not to facilitate such assemblies.

Collusion among businessmen is bad enough. It becomes even worse when business and government collude together. This, unfortunately, is the essence of todays political economygovernment and business working together for their own interests, what Ive called Davos Capitalism.

Munger and Villareal-Diaz are right that the road to cronyism leads through capitalism. But must it always be so? And is there any solution to it? I think the answer to both questions is yes and no.

There is no way to create a perfect economy with perfect justice. As long as there are men and women involved, there will be collusion, cheating, and attempts at dishonest gainincluding legal dishonest gain that excludes competition. There is no perfect solution. The best we can do is create a system and solutions that help minimize cronyism and give the widest amount of opportunity to people. This requires rule of law, personal virtue, long-term thinking, and a culture that helps foster these things.

Munger argues that along with other institutional changes we need to empower entrepreneurs not to want to become rent seekers and to constrain state actors not to sell off rents in the first place.

This is right, but this requires a radically different concept of the the state-market relationship that we have now, not to mention a profound cultural and moral shift that would include among other things:

a shift away from the faulty thinking that as long as something is legal, then it must be moral

a restructuring of the current regulatory regimes and the revolving door between business and government

a reduction in the power and size of the state

a reduction in the political power, access, and influence of business

a new vision of a commercial society that promotes real competition and access

a reconnection of economics and moral philosophy

The Economy is Embedded in Culture

Part of the problem is that we have unhinged market economies from any real consideration of morality. This applies to the legal, but unfair and unjust practice of crony capitalism in the regulated sectors of the economy. It also applies to some of the practices in the freer, less regulated sectors, notably tech. Those of us who support free and competitive market economies may not like to admit it, but alongside a highly regulated economy, we do have some radical free-market ideology in parts of big tech. When you combine the Silicon Valley ethos of radical autonomy, Berkley Buddhism, and morally and socially unhinged techno-utopians with a free market economy, you get, well, Google, Facebook, and what Shoshanna Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism. To be clear, I am not suggesting that regulation is the best answeras I note above it will, like most other regulation, get captured and only institutionalize the corruption.

This is complicated topic with no immediate or simple solution. The commercial society grew out of a certain culture with certain beliefs and standards. A lot of what we need to do is to reframe how we think about the economy in the light of human flourishing and the common good. We also need to take seriously the effects of culture on the economy.

As I wrote 10 years ago in a piece called Davos Capitalism: Adam Smiths Nightmare:

The goal of economic liberty is not a society of producers and consumers in equilibrium. Economic liberty is important because it creates space for people to live out their freedom, take care of their families, and fulfill their responsibilities. Economic freedom is necessary because it allows people to take risks and create material prosperity for a flourishing life. Economic liberty is needed because without it there can be no political liberty. Both require individual virtue and a moral culture for sustenance. Neither an adolescent culture following its whims, nor a soulless culture severed from its historical roots, from the sacrifices and struggles of our fathers whose spirit and dedication to freedom made it possible, is adequate. Lord Acton wrote, Liberty is the delicate fruit of a mature civilization. We must begin anew the work of rebuilding the moral cultureone committed to truth, responsibility and a spiritual depth that the Davos Man cannot provide.

Image source: JD Lasica on Flickr License: (CC BY 2.0)
Prime Minister Theresa May has extended the date the UK will leave the European Union yet again, this time to October 31. The eight-and-a-half month delay inspired some cheeky Brits to give the interminable process anthropomorphic qualities: the Halloween Brexit monster.

The endless stalling is slowly destroying the opportunity of liberty which leaving the EU offers, writes Rev. Richard Turnbull in a new essay for Actons Religion & Liberty Transatlantic.

Rev. Turnbull, who is the director of the Centre for Enterprise, Markets, and Ethics (CEME) based in Oxford, first forecasts the likely political outcome:

The prime minister will attempt to force through her Brexit deal against the wishes of the majority of her own party and potentially with the support of the opposition socialist parties. She has promised to step down after this deal is complete, so May might indeed be the end of May. The deal which the Prime Minister will cobble together will be some version of her own withdrawal agreement (which Parliament has already voted down three times) and a customs union favoured by the opposition parties. The outcome will be messy and contain little to encourage proponents of economic liberty.

After he assesses the latest Brexit bungle, Rev. Turnbull lays out a vision of a politically and economically free society that charts its own course, embraces the growth and dynamism of trade, and upholds its own religiously informed culture. The result prospers, not just citizens of the UK, but all who follow their example.

You can read his full essay here.

(Photo credit: Christoph Scholz. CC BY-SA 2.0.)
I always find there's a surreal quality to footage of SpaceX's self-landing rockets. It's the "living in the future" moment for my reptile brain, irrespective of what it really means for mankind or where it truly sits in the spectrum of discovery and progress.

Three at once:
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About Censored News Censored News is published by Brenda Norrell. Since 2006, Censored News has received more than 20 million pageviews. As a collective of writers, photographers and broadcasters, we publish news of Indigenous Peoples and human rights. Contact publisher Brenda Norrell: brendanorrell@gmail.com

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News / National

by Peacemaker Zano

On 18 April every year, Zimbabweans join hands in celebrating the gains of independence that was brought by the country's freedom fighters.This year, Zimbabwe will be celebrating 39 years of self-rule, under the theme, 'Zimbabwe at 39, embracing devolution for vision 2030.'In commemorating Independence Day, the nation recalls how gallant sons and daughters sacrificed their precious lives to free Zimbabwe from the shackles of colonial bondage. Their selfless and unwavering commitment to set the nation free is what Zimbabwe celebrates today. Unlike other countries, the nation enjoys freedom of speech, association, worship and expression among others. As the nation celebrates Uhuru Day this year, it is imperative to appreciate the crucial role that was played by the fallen and living heroes and heroines in liberating the country.The revolutionary party, Zanu-PF, which was founded in 1963, led the nation in the attainment of its independence. Many of the founding fathers of the ruling party were active participants in the liberation struggle. Its cadres remain the backbone of the party, in periods of either contraction or expansion. It is pleasing that this year's Independence Day will be commemorated with the bouncing back of former Zanu-PF secretary for Administration, Cde Didymus Mutasa and former Mashonaland East Minister of State for Provincial Affairs, Cde Ambrose Mutinhiri.The return of Cdes Mutasa and Mutinhiri reveals the unifying agenda that the revolutionary party is pursuing under the leadership of President Mnangagwa. They say, once you become a war veteran, you will remain a war veteran. Their dedication and sacrifice in the struggle for independence cannot be ignored. The fact that the two veterans are now back into the revolutionary party, means their contribution will further strengthen the unity that exists in Zanu-PF.As a party that brought independence, Zanu-PF continues to be attuned to the needs of the electorate. To show that it's indeed a people's party, the recently held by-election in Cowdray Park, Bulawayo revealed that Zanu-PF still continues to be a darling of the electorate. ZANU-PF candidate Cde Kidwell Mujuru won the by-election with 1 899 votes, against Ms Nomagugu Mloyi of MDC-Alliance who scored only 670 votes. The electorate are aware that the gains of independence that the ordinary Zimbabweans are enjoying are as a result of the struggles that the revolutionary party went through.Under the new dispensation, led by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zanu-PF continues to represent the interests of its people. In the previous administration led by former President, Robert Mugabe, the strength of the party was disturbed as members witnessed a lot of purges of senior Zanu-PF officials. The expulsion of the senior officials, for no apparent reasons caused divisions within the ruling party, and this was affecting its party activities and programmes.This year's independence theme resonates well with President Mnangagwa's vision, of making Zimbabwe a middle income economy by 2030. President Mnangagwa has been advocating for a united Zimbabwe. If Zimbabweans embrace President Mnangagwa's ideology of peace and unity, the rebuilding and developing agenda will be simplified. A country can develop and remain independent, if there is peace and unity among its citizens.As an independent State, Zimbabwe is free to trade and associate with other neighbouring countries. When he assumed office in November 2017, President Mnangagwa made a proclamation that Zimbabwe is open for business, and investors who may want to do business with it, are free to do so. Also, the nation has vast natural resources such as minerals and fertile soils that it can independently utilise to build a better Zimbabwe for the future generations.Long live Zimbabwe.
News / National

by Thembani Dube

The 1893 Mthwakazi Human Rights Restoration Movement (1893 MHRRM) notes with grave concern the recent developments regarding the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide and the way the state crime of this magnitude is being handled in Zimbabwe. There seems a clear and well-designed attempt to fudge the handling of the Genocide by leading perpetrators and their co-conspirators.What must be clear to all and sundry is that the resolution of the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide state crime cannot be led by perpetrators and co-conspirators of the said crime. At the centre of the resolution of the Genocide of Matebeleland are 4 key issues that the people of Matebeleland deserve. These are the Right to Truth, the Right to Justice, the Right to Reparations and the Right to Healing regarding this genocide. These Rights are sacrosanct and cannot be swapped for anything except the Right to Self Determination of our people.The Movement notes with grave concern attempts being made by perpetrators and co-conspirators of the Matebeleland Genocide to evade the 4 above mentioned key Rights that need to be addressed by an independent and competent body that is not led by the accused. We therefore decry a rat race being made by the perpetrators and co-conspirators to interfere with crime evidence at mass grave burial sites of the victims of the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide.A few days ago, a perpetrator designed and driven programme was announced in Zimbabwe to the effect that there will be exhumations of victims of the genocide for reburials in Matebeleland. This announced programme is clearly meant to interfere with a solid, unshaken and unadulterated programme of seeking Truth, Justice, Reparations and Healing for the Matebeleland genocide.It is simply no rocket science to come to a conclusion that there is a clear agenda on the part of the perpetrators and co-conspirators of the genocide to fudge their crime and ensure that Matebeleland people are short-changed of their Rights to Truth, Justice, Reparations and Healing for the genocide 38 years after the gross state crime was committed.The seeking of the Truth can only be achieved by having an independent investigation of the Genocide. Tampering with evidence at mass grave burial sites by engaging in burial site exhumations of those killed during the genocide will destroy much needed evidence and therefore the Truth. An independent and competent investigation at these sites by a UN assembled Matebeleland International Commission of Inquiry into the Genocide is the way to go. Any avoidance of such a Commission would be an evasion of Truth and Accountability for these crimes. But none should be surprised that the perpetrators would want this to be so and therefore the observance of a rat race to destroy evidence found in mass graves dotted around Matebeleland.The Movement therefore strongly calls for the setting up of a UN Matebeleland Genocide Commission of Inquiry as a matter of urgency. This Commission of Inquiry on the Genocide must be set up through the UN's Human Rights Council (UNHRC), an arm of the United Nations responsible for such matters. There is an urgent need for all the people of Matebeleland to meet in Bulawayo to chart the course and openly and publicly set up a blueprint for the resolution of the matter on their terms and not on the terms of perpetrators and co-conspirators.The request from the United Nations for the setting up of such a Commission must be led by eminent persons from Matebeleland such as Dumiso Dabengwa, Moses Mzila, uncompromised lawyers, uncompromised clerics, uncompromised organizations and uncompromised Chiefs from Matebeleland. It must be noted that uMkhonto WeSizwe were casualties of this Genocide and therefore it is critical that representatives of uMkhonto WeSizwe be involved in the set up Matebeleland Genocide Committee that will make a formal submission request to the UNHRC for the setting up of a Matebeleland International Commission of Inquiry into the Matebeleland Gukurahundi Genocide.It is the Movement's considered and strongly held view that no exhumations should be carried out before any investigations by the set up UNHRC Matebeleland International Commission of Inquiry. Such a Commission, it is hoped, will deploy expertise of international forensic experts to do investigations and collate evidence at these mass grave burial sites using investigative methodologies of international standards underpinned by international law. It is also this Movement's considered and strongly held view that no people of Matebeleland should accede to the exhumations of these mass grave burial sites without the work of an international commission of inquiry doing its work. Acceding to such machinations will be a gross betrayal of the people of Matebeleland and a great betrayal of the memory of thousands who perished at the hands of the 5th Brigade of Zimbabwe, a North Korean trained crack unit that was formed specifically to carry out a this genocide by Robert Gabriel Mugabe and his co-conspirators who remain in power today.The position of the Movement is very clear. None in Matebeleland should be talking of compensation without the establishment of the Truth, the nature, degree and extent of that Truth. For us this is critical. The Truth cannot be established by perpetrator and co-conspirator designed and driven programmes meant to sanitize their gross crimes against humanity. The establishment of Truth will indeed speak to the United Nation's Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General assembly 71 years ago, no matter how long it may take. There must be no short-cuts to the resolution of this issue and neither should anyone be used as a cog wheel towards such the destruction of evidence for this crime.Our clarion call is for Matebeleland people to recover their consciences and in unity stand together in one corner on this matter and refuse to stand in the corner of perpetrators and co-conspirators of the Matebeleland Genocide or allow perpetrators and co-conspirators to be at the driving seat of cleansing themselves of their crimes.To the international community we say that this issue, of such great magnitude and a gross crime against humanity, need not be fudged or any efforts made to support the fudging of this issue for economic interests or expediency. Doing so will delay the resolution of this issue with possible dire consequences for the future. Matebeleland deserves better.Released by the 1893 MHRRM Information and Publicity Department
News / National

by ZimLive

Nelson Chamisa was still unopposed after Midlands province became the fourth of the Movement for Democratic Change's (MDC) 13 administrative provinces to make its nominations ahead of the party's congress at the end of May.The party's secretary general Douglas Mwonzora and one of Chamisa's three deputies Elias Mudzuri are reportedly angling to challenge the 41-year-old, but they must get at least one nomination each.Midlands on Wednesday voted to have Chamisa as president, to be deputised by Harare East MP Tendai Biti and Lilian Timveous, an MDC senator from Midlands province.The results were announced on Thursday morning.Thabitha Khumalo was nominated for the position of chairperson, to be deputised by Happymore Chidziva.Charlton Hwende picked up a nomination for secretary general, with Nyasha Chikwinya proposed as his deputy.Tapiwa Mashakada picked up a nomination for treasurer, with Gift Banda nominated to deputise him.
News / National

by ZimLive

Compensation for Gukurahurahundi victims and their families whilst a welcome development must be accompanied by a comprehensive program of truth telling. We thank some chiefs in Matabeleland and other progressives who remained resolute on this issue.  Douglas Mwonzora (@DMwonzora) April 10, 2019

The Movement for Democratic Change says bringing closure to victims of the Gukurahundi genocide must involve a "comprehensive programme of truth-telling."The Gukurahundi was a series of atrocious massacres of over 20,000 Ndebele civilians carried out by the Zimbabwe National Army from early 1983 to late 1987. It derives from a Shona language term which loosely translates to "the early rain which washes away the chaff before the spring rains".President Emmerson Mnangagwa who was a key cog in the operation, then as Defence Minister, with former president Robert Mugabe in overall charge, okayed reburials and announced steps to help surviving children and spouses to obtain birth and death records.More than two decades later, victims and their families are still crying out for justice and reparations, while the government had hitherto almost totally refused to acknowledge the genocide and key participants are yet to publicly show contrition for their role in the massacre of the mainly Ndebele minority. Mugabe once described the period as a moment of madness."Compensation for Gukurahundi victims and their families, whilst a welcome development, must be accompanied by a comprehensive programme of truth telling," MDC secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora said on Twitter.Ibhetshu LikaZulu, one of the organisations in the 'Matabeleland Collective', said it was pleased by the "acknowledgement by the government that Gukurahundi genocide took place in our history as a country after so much denial and unnecessary violation of the rights of those that brought it to their attention."But the group, which has been at the forefront of campaigning for justice for victims, said for the healing process to begin, the government must "acknowledge that this was genocide and encourage truth telling."
News / National

by Staff reporter

THE 18th Zanu-PF National's People's Conference will be held in Mashonaland East Province in December this year, the party's national spokesperson, Simon Khaya Moyo, said yesterday. He said the early announcement of the venue is meant to ensure timeous preparations."The Zanu-PF national chairman, Oppah Muchinguri Kashiri, wishes to advise all party structures that the party's 18th National People's Conference will be held in Mashonaland East Province in December 2019."The early announcement is meant to allow timeous preparations for the conference," said Khaya Moyo in a statement.The 17th annual indaba was held at Mzingwane High School, Esigodini, in Matabeleland South province in December last year under the theme: "Zimbabwe Is Open For Business: Peace, Unity Towards An Upper Middle-Income Economy By 2030".More than 5 000 delegates from all provinces attended the conference. The conference consolidated national efforts towards reviving Zimbabwe's economy with President Mnangagwa aggressively pursuing quick economic recovery through implementation of the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (20182020). The TSP is premised on fiscal consolidation, economic stabilisation, and stimulation of growth and creation of employment.The party came up with a number of resolutions which included that President Mnangagwa was the sole Zanu-PF Presidential candidate in the 2023 elections. The party also reaffirmed its position on zero tolerance to corruption.
News / National

by Nduduzo Tshuma

MDC ALLIANCE leader Mr Nelson Chamisa on Monday laid bare his dictatorial traits as he read the riot act to the party's Bulawayo structures to the point of threatening to shut them out of the party's congress scheduled for next month. Bulawayo province, insiders say, has provided Mr Chamisa a headache on many fronts, the most prominent of them being the recent defeat at the hands of Zanu-PF at the Cowdray Park Ward 28 by-election.In a rant during a crisis meeting between Mr Chamisa and members of the Bulawayo provincial executive on Monday, he reportedly said that the loss to Zanu-PF was "treasonous" accusing the structure of lacking order.Mr Chamisa also labelled Bulawayo province as the most violent structure in the party, a label received by members with both shock and a sense of irony after a number of violent incidents in the party including the savage attacks on Dr Thokozani Khupe last year were all traced back to the office of the opposition leader.Again violence, a main feature in the opposition party's political interaction, has reared its ugly head in the run up to the MDC Alliance congress. At the beginning of the month, party supporters linked to Mr Chamisa reportedly unleashed an orgy of violence targeting secretary general, Mr Douglas Mwonzora's supporters.Mr Mwonzora is set to challenge Mr Chamisa for the party presidency at the MDC Alliance congress while Engineer Elias Mudzuri is a dark horse. The running battles between the two groups in Chitungwiza resulted in former deputy mayor Jabulani Mtunzi and other party activists sustaining varying degrees of injury.However, it is the threat of excluding Bulawayo from the party's congress that brings out or rather reaffirms Mr Chamisa's dictatorial nature. In the Monday meeting, Mr Chamisa is said to have told the provincial party leaders of the futility in seeking relief in the courts after he decrees the exclusion of Bulawayo from the congress as his word is final.In the so-called Movement for Democratic Change, it is Mr Chamisa's word and not the party's constitution that matters and in the event that some members are not happy with his decisions, the courts cannot help because the only institution recognised and has absolute power is the person of Mr Nelson Chamisa. It is clear therefore that Mr Chamisa does not represent the principles that he purports to champion but is a dictatorial leader who has personalised the MDC Alliance where his word is now the law.Mr Chamisa is also battling an internal revolt in the province with a faction reportedly bitterly opposed to Professor Welshman Ncube's vice presidency or any leadership position in the party. In the Monday meeting, Mr Chamisa reportedly told the meeting that Prof Ncube is the most senior leader in the region and should be respected.Prof Ncube, insiders say, faces resistance from a faction linked to party chairperson, Ms Thabitha Khumalo, which has openly defied him on a number of issues including the election of Ward 3 Councillor Tinashe Kambarami and the fielding of Mr Collet Ndlovu in the recent Cowdray Park by election. However, on both instances the faction linked to Ms Khumalo prevailed over Prof Ncube much to the chagrin of Mr Chamisa as expressed in his Monday rant.Mr Chamisa's defence of Prof Ncube comes at a time the party is going for a congress where the MDC leader is facing a possible challenge from Mr Mwonzora while vice president Engineer Mudzuri is a dark horse. Prof Ncube is on record in an interview with this paper that contesting Mr Chamisa for the party's presidency would be a "political miscalculation.""At this particular historical juncture to me, it appears unwise for anyone if they are nominated to accept that nomination given the credentials I've already summarised for you, for the incumbent Nelson Chamisa. Anyone who accepts nomination will probably be guilty of a serious political miscalculation, given where we are," said Prof Ncube."We are all individuals, using all the objective criteria that I have in mind, I really have a difficulty in finding any rationale for anyone to accept any nomination. I will be surprised if anyone other than Chamisa is nominated given the momentum that we have had with him, given the inspirational advantage that he has."It is common cause therefore that the defence of Prof Ncube by Mr Chamisa is largely for purposes of self preservation by the MDC Alliance leader in the face of a revolt. Mr Chamisa has also threatened to purged party structures to smoke out members opposed to him on the pretext of "dealing" with elements responsible for the party's loss in Cowdray Park.Posting on his Twitter account after the party's loss to Zanu-PF, he alleged that there was an "invisible hand" that contributed to their poor show saying that the so called hand had since been discovered and would soon be "cut off." After being rejected in the 2018 elections, Mr Chamisa has turned his Chamisa Chete Chete mantra within his party, meaning that he and no one else is the "heart and soul" of the MDC Alliance.
News / National

by Staff reporter

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) says the country's forex situation will improve as the year progresses on the back of increased confidence and growing exports.RBZ deputy director for economic research division, Nebson Mupunga, yesterday told delegates at the retailers' indaba that the bank was committed to the liquidity of the interbank market."As RBZ we see the forex situation improving with exports and foreign earnings. We hope that foreign currency in the interbank will improve as confidence creeps and exports grow. Last year we did well with exports netting $5 billion, so we hope this year will be better,"Mupunga said."The bank is committed to the efficient and orderly management of the interbank foreign exchange market and will intervene only in case of market failures and other malpractices that may harm price and financial stability."Mupunga decried arbitrage, rent seeking and speculative behaviour prevailing on the market."You are killing the economy, you are putting pressure on the foreign currency; you find that it becomes a self-inflicting system bench-marking prices in US dollars and putting a premium far above the rate of the black market rate," he saidConfederation of Zimbabwe Retailers president Denford Mutashu bemoaned the failure by the interbank market to quench the huge forex demand by traders."There are more buyers than sellers. A lot of players are trooping to the interbank, but it's not working, forcing retailers to go back to the alternative markets where rates are high. This has exposed consumers because premiums are high," Mutashu said.He added that the retail sector's performance for the first quarter of 2019 was characterised by falling capacity utilisation, constrained demand due to low disposable incomes."It is increasingly becoming more and more difficult to operate retail businesses in the wake of price instability, supply constraints, continued wage demands and rising costs against declining revenue as demand is constrained. The threat of price controls only works to decimate the remaining confidence in the economy. Government should not use threats, but engage sectors while critically examining value chain challenges with a view to craft long-term economic strategies," Mutashu said.Speaking at the same event, Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries president Sifelani Jabangwe said there was need to improve policies and foreign currency inflows, adding that a lot of players felt that the interbank exchange rate was too low."For the exchange rate to move upwards at a time we are having a tobacco season does not make sense. What justifies the movement of the rate? Business is concerned with the movement of prices, we fear that we may be suffering because of lack of working capital," he said.Industry deputy minister Raj Modi said government will work to ensure that the pricing regime is competitive."I hope that the industry players in all sectors of the economy will work closely with the commission in their work. My ministry is also looking at how the National Competitiveness Commission can, together with suppliers, wholesalers and retailers, engage to come up with best practices on pertinent issues of pricing standards and service delivery," Modi said.
News / National

by Staff reporter

THE wife of killed Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) boss Peter Munetsi (pictured), who died in military detention during the November 2017 coup which ousted former president Robert Mugabe, Rossie, is demanding her late husband's post-mortem report and US$600 000.Rossie has filed an application at the High Court seeking an order to compel the government, police and the Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals to release her late husband's post-mortem report.She is demanding US$610 000 from the Ministry of Defence arguing army personnel detained and killed her husband.Rossie filed the application on Wednesday through her lawyer, Denford Halimani of Wintertons Legal Practitioners.Munetsi died on November 15 2017 at the age of 55 at the height of the military coup that toppled Mugabe after 37 years in power.In her application, Rossie says she was forced to approach the courts for recourse after exhausting all other avenues.She also argues she was running out of time to get the post-mortem in her quest to get her husband's insurance, pension as well as other benefits.Rossie says she has suffered trauma as a result of her husband's brutal killing and believes the post-mortem, which establishes how her husband died, will bring closure to her and help her resolve benefits access problems.Commissioner-General of Police Godwin Matanga, Home Affairs and Culture minister Cain Mathema, Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals and pathologist Tsungai Jabangwe are cited as the first, second, third and fourth respondents respectively.While government claimed the coup was bloodless, Rossie claims in her founding affidavit that the concerned post-mortem, which is being withheld from the Munetsi family, indicates that the former spy agency's district divisional intelligence officer died as a result of brutal assault."On 1 October 2018, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) wrote another letter to the third respondent (Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals) advising them of our intention to meet the Officer-in-Charge of the Parirenyatwa Police Post in relation to the post-mortem report. The meeting took place as scheduled and my legal practitioners managed to go through the post-mortem report. The post-mortem revealed that my husband's death was caused by intra muscular bleeding and blunt force trauma as a result of assault.Regrettably the investigating officer was not able to attend the meeting and hence the report was not actually collected from the police post," reads part of the application."I require the post-mortem report so as to ascertain the official cause of my husband's death and to forward the report to insurers who require it as a pre-condition to redeem my late husband's EcoSure funeral insurance policy. I also require it as evidence in the civil claim that I intend to institute against the wrong-doers. Thus I require the post-mortem report for the exercise or protection of a right as contemplated in Section 62(2) of the constitution," she says."A notice of intention to sue was sent to the Ministry of Defence on 23 April 2018 and a response was received on 8 May 2018 in which the Ministry denied liability and attributed my husband's death to a chronic illness. I am also entitled to death-on-duty benefit from my husband's employers as he died in the line of duty and for this to be processed; the official cause of his death is also required. Due to the circumstances surrounding my husband's death, his employers have made it clear that will only act upon receipt of his post-mortem report as they said that the matter was sensitive'."According to the application, Munetsi died at One Commando Barracks after "unlawful assault", whilst in military detention on November 15, 2017. He was attended to and certified dead by Jabangwe.Rossie says the Zimbabwe Republic Police are holding the post-mortem report and have been evasive when asked to produce it."Depending on who you are talking to the responses from police have ranged from feigning ignorance about the post-mortem report to confusion about its whereabouts or discomfort expressed in murmurings about the nature of the case," she says.Munetsi's death is being investigated by CID Homicide at Harare Central Police Station, but Rossie says "no meaningful investigations have taken place to arrest the perpetrators as the second anniversary of my husband's death draws nearer".She says police's inaction has forced her to approach the court in desperation."I have exhausted all reasonable non-litigious avenues to obtain the post-mortem report without resorting to this honourable Court. However, time is running out for me. I could lose the right to sue if three years pass by without taking any legal action. At the same time, I cannot take legal action without being in possession of the post-mortem report," she says."Further, without the post-mortem report, I cannot redeem my husband's insurance policy, death on duty benefit and pension. I am stuck. The post-mortem report is crucial in my endeavours. I need closure as well. The longer this drags on the more I continue to relive and be haunted by my husband's wrongful death. The economic down-turn is eating into the value of whatever amount I am entitled to. I am suffering irreparable prejudice."The delay in the release of the post-mortem report by the respondents is unlawful, unreasonable and unfair. As time ebbs away I reasonably fear that I might permanently lose my right to sue the perpetrators of my husband's vicious assault as well as fail to redeem the insurance policy and death benefit due to the lapse of time. Furthermore the value of the benefit is decreasing by the day due to the prevailing hyper-inflation. Whereas at the time my husband died, he was earning in proper United States dollars, this is not the case anymore."According to a letter dated April 23, 2018 to then Defence minister, Vice-President Constantino Chiwenga, ZLHR laid a claim for loss of support as well as compensation for trauma to the tune of US$610 955,20"During his lifetime, Peter Munetsi owed a legal duty to his wife and his gross monthly income was US$4 797,64 calculated as follows: Monthly pension of US$1 734.80 in terms of section 5 (7) (a) of the State Service (Pensions) (Ununiformed Forces) Regulations 1976.Salary form the Central intelligence organisation of US$3 059,84 per month from a yearly renewable contract, tenable for 10 years," the letter which is attached to the High Court application reads."It follows that the late Peter Munetsi's wife is entitled to damage for loss of support in the amount of US$605 955,20, being the total of his gross income over a 10-year period. Additionally our client was severely traumatised by the death of her husband and currently requires medical care and attention to deal with the emotional shock of losing her loved one in such a brutal manner."She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic disorder. A condition which will require future psychological and medical interventions. For this US$5 000 damages for emotional shock and psychological trauma is needed."In a response to the correspondents by ZHLR dated, May 8 2018, the Defence Forces of Zimbabwe denied having a hand in Munetsi's death."Whilst we acknowledge that the late Peter Munetsi died whilst in custody, the cause of death is disputable. What we know is that he was on several medications for chronic illness. In respect of support to the family, we are reliably informed that he is on full pension from his then employer. No liability for compensation can be apportioned as circumstances of the death of Peter Munetsi cannot be other than illness," the letter signed by Judge Advocate General Charles Tarumbwa reads.Rossie says she has locus standi to make the application as Munetsi's surviving spouse and beneficiary of the deceased's estate."Further, I am advised that in terms of Section 85(1)(a) of the constitution any person acting in their own interests is entitled to approach the court, alleging that a fundamental right has been, is being or is likely to be infringed. This application is being made to compel the respondents to produce a post-mortem report which provides requisite information as to the cause of death of my husband," she says. "I am advised that this type of application is also known as mandamus. This remedy can be used to require an administrative authority to perform a mandatory statutory (in the present case constitutional) duty imposed upon it that it is wrongly refusing to perform, or to require the authority to correct the effects of its unlawful administrative action."
News / National

by Staff reporter

PRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa is seeking to co-opt sections of civil society organisations, the church, business and some political parties in a mollifying move meant to silence growing dissent.Government officials told the Zimbabwe Independent that the strategy involves co-opting political parties under the guise of national dialogue, while civil society and churches will be pacified under the engagement drive.Business leaders, officials said, have been largely co-opted through the Presidential Advisory Council (Pac). Officials say Mnangagwa's strategy came after the realisation that his administration's over-reliance on brute force is unsustainable. During its short eight-month life, Mnangagwa's government has twice unleashed the military on civilians, resulting in several deaths. The first incident occurred on August 1 2018 when the army opened fire on fleeing protesters in central Harare, killing six.This was followed by even deadlier incidents which took place between January 14-17 this year when the army and police killed 17 people during demonstrations over fuel price increases.The incidents saw Mnangagwa's popularity significantly waning. This has been worsened by the government's failure to address the country's mounting economic challenges. But since then, the 76-year-old, who rose to power in a military coup which toppled former president Robert Mugabe in November 2017, has been on a charm offensive. The co-option of all dissenting voices is viewed as a move to maintain hegemony over sections of society with the ability to influence public opinion.In his latest move, Mnangagwa resourcefully extended an olive branch to the Matabeleland civil society which has over the years taken him to task over the 1980s Gukurahundi atrocities.Mnangagwa's Bulawayo visit three weeks ago has left the city's civil society sharply divided with some of his toughest critics - like Women of Zimbabwe Alliance (Woza) founder Jennifer Williams - waxing lyrical about the President. Williams showered praises on Mnangagwa after the meeting, describing him as a considerate and listening leader.Williams, however, told the Zimbabwe Independent her stance had not changed."My stance has not changed and it would be foolhardy in the extreme for anyone to think that use of dialogue and engagement as a strategy means an end to all other strategies. Nothing has changed in our lives, we are still in crisis. What has changed and is positive and must be acknowledged as such is that there is now recognition that all parties, no matter how diverse in opinion and view, have a role to play in addressing the crisis," Williams said. "It is a credit to Matabeleland Collective and the President that opposing views could be respectfully exchanged for the betterment of our nation. Myself and Woza, as part of the Matabeleland Collective, will continue to hold him accountable as the head of state and especially the promises he so openly committed to in the meeting on 21 March 2019."Habakkuk Trust chief executive Dumisani Nkomo, who attended Mnangagwa's Bulawayo meeting, said: "National dialogue is critical as it is the highest form of political maturity. This is what we need as a country. We need to solve the economic crisis, the political questions of the day and the collective vision of the nation. Dialogue needs to be inclusive and issue-focussed."We stand for the truth whatever happens and our meeting the President is the highest form of national advocacy we can do to articulate the issues affecting the common man and, in this case, Matabeleland. Engagement is the most sophisticated form of advocacy and epitomises statecraft and craft competence in championing causes."Political analyst Pedzisai Ruhanya said: "Mnangagwa is co-opting fringe opposition parties. He is not dealing with the real political parties and civic groups. Those that are being co-opted are surrogates. So Mnangagwa is wasting his time."He needs to address the political decomposition of the state. He needs to identify serious actors in the state who have the capacity to solve the current crisis, political parties that can be listened to. It doesn't make any sense to engage politicians like Bryn Mteki. If he wants to redeem the state, he needs to engage the MDC led by Nelson Chamisa on the basis of his ability to influence international relations. Zimbabwe is a two-party state. So he must not waste his time engaging insignificant losers."Civil society commentator Takura Zhangazha said while the initial dialogue may be well-intended, its success was dependent on how it is structured to be carried forward beyond the meeting's occurrence as an event."Charming Matabeleland is always important for any national political leader all the time. ED (Mnangagwa), however, probably wants to attempt to shake off the Gukurahundi tag but, more significantly, wants to make political support inroads for Zanu-PF in opposition strongholds in the province, especially Bulawayo. I wouldn't call the meeting co-option, but an initial engagement. We will wait and see what it becomes on the basis of their next steps," he said.Activist George Mkhwanazi, who has been involved with different pressure groups activities in the region, said the Matabeleland Collective convened by Pastor Trevor Masuku is a puppet outfit of the state pushing a sinister hegemonic agenda."The Matabeleland Collective and their sellout agenda are an insult to Bekithemba Sibindi, Mthandazo Ndema Ngwenya, Qhubekani Dube and Ndabezinhle Edwin Mkhwanazi's revolutionary memories," Mkhwanazi said. "These organisations are a bunch of clueless opportunists who have no idea of the amount of damage they are inflicting on the Matabeleland struggle by helping Mnangangwa cleanse himself from the Gukurahundi stigma.They are dispossessing Matabele nationalist agitators of their vital ammunition against Zanu-PF hegemony which could have resulted in ultimate freedom and independence. They are doing this in exchange for trivial and transient gratification."
News / Press Release

by City Council

The City of Bulawayo would like to advise members of the public that there will be an emergency re-introduction of a 48 hour water shedding programme to areas that are supplied by both Criterion and Magwegwe Reservoirs as and when need arises. This will be done to protect the two Reservoirs from reaching critical levels and has been necessitated by;1. Erratic pumping from both Mtshabezi and Nyamandlovu2. Low water levels in both Upper Ncema and Umzingwane dams.This has impacted on the availability of raw water for treatment at Criterion Waterworks and also the levels of Magwegwe Reservoir. The water shedding programme is subject to change if the reservoir level improves or deteriorates beyond the critical level. All the areas that are likely to be affected for more than 48hrs will have water supply by bowsers. Residents are urged to conserve water until further notice.Bulawayo City Council would like to urge all residents to conserve and use water sparingly. The City of Bulawayo wishes to apologise to its valued consumers for the inconvenience likely to be caused.
A Men's Prison Group In California Is Learning About bell hooks

Theres a group program in the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, California thats not your typical mens prison group. Success Stories is a group with the goal of understanding the patriarchy, and more specifically, how it affects the lives of the inmates. The group was founded by Richie Reseda and Charles Berry in 2013. Many of the materials were largely based on bell hooks The Will to Change and We Real Cool. Richie, who has since been released, had been involved in intersectional feminist activism before his incarceration, training with Patrisse Cullors, an activist noted for her work with the Black Lives Matter movement. In a recent interview with MEL Magazine, Richie notes his dissatisfaction with the run-of-the-mill programs usually being offered, saying: I realized the programs challenged illegal activity, but not the root of these problems, which is patriarchy. In fact, all of these self-help groups reinforced it. Their answer to everything was traditional American patriarchal values: Run your house and run your woman. They acted like if we had all done that, we wouldnt have been in jail right then, and thats the only perspective they were offering.

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This past week, Richie launched Success Stories as an official non-profit with the help of his wife Taina, who has also been running a non-profit called Initiate Justice. While incarcerated, Richie even helped to draft a proposal that would eventually become a law. Prop 57 incentivizes attending these group sessions in exchange for reduced sentencing. According to Next City, [the] proposal earned the attention of then-Governor Jerry Brown, and Californias Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act passed in 2016 with an amendment that tied group participation to reduced prison time.

Last year, CNN released a documentary entitled The Feminist on Cellblock Y about Richie and his work. A good chunk of the documentary consists of watching an actual group meeting take place, where we hear from the inmates themselves and see how they work through difficult concepts. The inmates also show remorse for the crimes theyve committed, and they try to come to terms with the circumstances that led them to commit those crimes:

We harm people because we dont see them as people: we objectify them, said James, one of the inmates.

When that idea of objectification gets linked to the ways that toxic masculinity objectifies women, it allows us a more holistic view of why crimes are committed.

Though the words are never mentioned, something that I kept thinking about as I watched was the concept of restorative justice. At its core, [r]estorative justice views crime as more than breaking the law  it also causes harm to people, relationships, and the community. As reported by the Centre for Justice and Reconciliation, restorative justice takes the approach that healing can come through mediation, and it is supported by these tenets: Inclusion of all parties, encountering the other side, making amends for the harm, reintegration of the parties into their communities.

What would our world look like if we looked for why crime occurs, instead of just locking people up and throwing away the key? What if we gave communities the resources and space to heal? As one inmate, Benjamin, says in the film: I didnt just wake up one day and say I wanna be violent.

The United States has 5% of the worlds population, yet 25% of its prison population. That's over 2 million inmates. We do not have 2 million irredeemably bad people who are incapable of change and growth, yet that's what we are saying when we lock people up for an arbitrary amount of time and not provide them with any resources or skills for life upon release.

If youd like to read a more personalized account of the brutal effects that mass incarceration can have on an individual (and especially why the death penalty should be abolished), I highly encourage you to read Bryan Stevensons Just Mercy.

Top credit: still from The Feminist on Cellblock Y (CNN Films)

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Emma Davey is a blog editor for BUST. She recently earned a B.A. in politics and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies from Oberlin College. She is originally from Houston and worships Beyonce accordingly. You can follow her on Twitter @navel_gazerr if you want to hear her rant about things.
Associated Press

U.N. humanitarian aid delivery from Turkey to rebel-held northwestern Syria is tightly monitored and remains critical, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says in a report that could be key to keeping the effort going. Despite challenges, humanitarian aid is delivered, and services are provided, in a principled and transparent manner throughout the country, Guterres said in the report, which was circulated internally within the United Nations and obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday. The report follows tense Security Council negotiations last summer over continuing the cross-border aid deliveries through the sole route where they are currently allowed  the Bab al-Hawa crossing to Idlib province, which is home to 3 million people and Syria's last major rebel stronghold after a decade of civil war.
Her breast implants made her so sick, Carlyn Gould thought she might die.

"I could barely function day to day or care for myself or my children and I was fearful that I was going to go to sleep and never wake up," said Gould, from Okotoks, south of Calgary.

"I was deteriorating at such a rapid rate that I thought I was going to die."

Gould and other Alberta women are working together to bring attention to breast implant illness, which they say caused them severe autoimmune disease symptoms.

They're demanding better recognition of the illness within the medical profession.

"My medical doctors never connected that it could have been my breast implants until after the fact," Gould said.

Dr. Jan Willem Cohen Tervaert, who heads the division of rheumatology in the University of Alberta's faculty of medicine and dentistry, said a growing body of science is linking breast implants and autoimmune diseases.

"There are new kinds of studies that now convincingly show that there is something happening," Cohen Tervaert said, adding that women can experience symptoms with either textured or smooth breast implants.

Cohen Tervaert has studied breast implant illness in the Netherlands, comparing 100 women with implants to 100 of their friends, who were healthy controls. About one-quarter of the women with implants had autoimmune disease symptoms, compared to five per cent of the healthy control population.

Studies have also shown that 60 per cent of women with breast implant illness see their symptoms disappear after having the implants removed, Cohen Tervaert said.

"They're nearly completely cured, and the remaining patients generally do much better."

Anaphylaxis, other symptoms

Gould's numerous symptoms included severe anaphylaxis that restricted her breathing and swallowing. Her health deteriorated to the point where her cognitive abilities were affected.

Driving eventually became too dangerous, said the 33-year-old mother of two.

Story continues

"I distinctly remember looking at a red light and not remembering what it meant."

Gould started suspecting that her breast implants were making her sick after speaking with women with similar stories, and doing her own research.

She had her implants removed 15 months ago, and since then has tracked her recovery. Her cognitive impairment is gone, as are most of her symptoms.

David Bajer/CBC

'I must be going crazy'

Gould's improving health brings hope to Shandra Maciver, a mother of four from Bruderheim, northeast of Edmonton.

Maciver, 34, had been searching for years for the cause of her autoimmune problems.

Her symptoms began shortly after she got breast implants in 2010. She has had recurring urinary tract infections, sinus infections, poor circulation, back pain, migraines and fatigue.

"My kids have only known me with some sort of illness," she said. "Their mom is too ill, or too agitated at the noise to spend time with them."

But finding a doctor that believed her worsening symptoms were real was a difficult process, Maciver said.

"I started to believe that I must be going crazy. My anxiety increased because of that, my depression increased because of that."

After finally finding a supportive surgeon, Maciver made the decision to have her implants removed. Her surgery is scheduled for April 17.

'Women need to know'

Maciver said her breast implant surgeon didn't warn her of risks associated with autoimmune diseases, or breast implant-associated anaplastic large cell lymphoma (BIA-ALCL).

The cancer is a rare but serious type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma that affects the immune system and may develop many months or years after a breast implant procedure.

"I don't have faith in my medical system anymore," Maciver said. "Women need to know."

Plastic surgeons are more aware now of the emerging science around breast implant risk than they were a decade ago, said Dr. Rob Harrop, president of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons.

"Those discussions should be happening," Harrop said.

The Calgary-based pediatric surgeon expects the information to be given in person and in writing.

The association is working closely with Health Canada, which recently announced it was considering taking Allergan's Biocell textured breast implant off the market.

As issues related to textured implants became better known in the last two years, many surgeons voluntarily stopped using the products, Harrop said.

"There are very few plastic surgeons using these implants for cosmetic breast augmentations at this point, as a result of this very issue."

The risk of developing BIA-ALCL is about one in 3,000 for women who have received a textured implant, like Allergan's Biocell, said Harrop.

Allergan's textured implants have been linked to 24 of the 28 confirmed cases of BIA-ALCL in Canada.

Carlyn Gould

'Something had to be done'

Dawn Criss, who lives in Parkland County, west of Edmonton, is one of the 28 Canadian women with a confirmed case of BIA-ALCL.

Diagnosed in 2017, her medical problems started three years earlier with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disease of the digestive tract.

"It nearly killed me," Criss said. "I ended up in hospital basically on my deathbed."

Criss, 49, didn't suspect that her breast implants were the cause until her cancer diagnosis.

"I started putting two and two together because lymphoma is actually a cancer of the immune system, and here I was. I'd had this autoimmune disease for the last four years," she said.

She estimates that about 90 per cent of her colitis symptoms went away after her implants were removed in January 2018.

"That's when I realized that something had to be done."

Criss embarked on an international campaign to inform other women and health authorities of the risks associated with breast implants. Through Facebook support groups, she has met thousands of women who suspect they have breast implant illness, but aren't able to receive care.

"They're being lost in the system," Criss said. "They're having to search for surgeons on their own. I think they're very abandoned."

Criss is also pushing for a national registry of women who have breast implants and side-effects.

Harrop, of the of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons, agrees that a tracking system is needed. The association is working with Health Canada to create one, he said.

"I think that's the best way for us to get good evidence on this topic."
Getty Images

An 18-year-old man in India has died after doctors found parasites in his brain.

The unnamed teen, who lived in Faridabad, had been complaining of pain in the groin for about a week when he began experiencing seizures, according to a recent case study in the New England Journal of Medicine. His parents took him to the emergency department, where he showed signs of confusion as well as swelling over his right eye.

An MRI of his head revealed multiple lesions in his brain and brain stem and cysts in his right eye and testicle. Those lesions were Taenia solium parasites, the cysts were larvae.

Cysticercosis is an infection that occurs after a person swallows tapeworm eggs. The larvae get into tissues such as muscle and brain, and form cysts there. When cysts are found in the brain, the condition is called neurocysticercosis (NCC).

The teen was diagnosed with neurocysticercosis, the most common parasitic disease of the central nervous system. Its linked to accidental ingestion of pork tapeworm eggs, often from raw or undercooked pork.

Despite treatment with corticosteroid and antiepileptic medication, the teen died two weeks later.

New England Journal of Medicine

ALSO SEE: What The Health?! Mom with rare double uterus gives birth twice in one month

Neurocysticercosis accounts for about 50,000 deaths per year and is the leading cause of epilepsy worldwide, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Its becoming increasingly prevalent in industrialized countries, with increased travel to disease-endemic areas and the migration of tapeworm carriers or people infected with the disease, the CMAJ reports.

Heres how you can get it: in some areas of the world, particularly those with insufficient sanitation systems, pigs serve as scavengers, consuming human feces that often contain T. solium eggs. Pigs become the intermediate hosts in the life cycle of the tapeworm, and infection in humans can occur from the consumption of improperly cooked meat.

Once in the brain, the parasite can remain almost undisturbed for many years.

Story continues

The condition often shows no symptoms, but signs can include headache, vision problems, abdominal pain, dementia, and seizures. Its not clear why some people experience late-onset epilepsy and others do not.

Dr. Jan Hajek, a clinical assistant professor in the division of infectious disease at the University of British Columbias faculty of medicine, says it is important to know that you dont have to eat raw or undercooked pork to get neurocysticercosis.

People can also become infected by consuming water contaminated with tapeworm eggs or through poor hygiene practices  say, if someone who is infected doesnt wash their hands then handles your food.

People who eat infected measly pork, which contains the cysts in the meat, get pork tapeworm in their intestine, says Hajek, whos currently working on a volunteer basis at a hospital in Gulu, Uganda. The pork tapeworm lives asymptomatically in our intestines and doesnt bother us. But we can spread the eggs from the tapeworm in our stool, contaminate food, and infect others, including people and pigs.

ALSO SEE: What The Health?! Man contracts nasty fungal infection while gardening  but what's the risk?

People and pigs who eat the eggs that may have contaminated their food get cysts, which can occur throughout the body, especially in muscles and brain, he explains. These cysts are surprisingly usually asymptomatic, and hide away from the immune system. They usually grow slowly to about one centimetre, the size of a marble, and then they die after a few years, and the person may never know they were infected.

Because the infection is often asymptomatic and needs a brain scan like a CT or MRI to diagnose it, the true prevalence isnt known, particularly in developing nations, Hajek says. However, studies suggest that in lower income countries with limited sanitation and inadequate separation of human waste from environments where pigs roam, about 30 percent of people with seizure disorder have NCC. Other research in endemic countries has shown that about two to 10 per cent of otherwise healthy adults have evidence of prior pork tapeworm infection.

Although rare, other cases have been reported in North America.

The CMAJ reported a case of a 51-year-old man who was diagnosed in 2009 with NCC after returning to Canada from a trip to Mexico. A farmer, he was originally from Mexico and had worked with pigs but had lived in Canada for several years. He sought medical attention after having a seizure.

He didnt have any other symptoms. One of his lesions was surgically removed and he was treated successfully with medication.

In 2015, a California man had a live tapeworm removed from his brain during emergency surgery after he went to hospital for what he called the worst headache of his life.

ALSO SEE: What The Health?! How a Q-Tip caused this man's severe brain infection

A scan showed that the parasite in Luis Ortizs brain was cutting off circulation and water flow to the rest of his brain, the BBC reported.

Hajek, whos vegan, says that although the risk is low even among meat-eaters, hes still cautious about what he eats.

I cant say I worry about getting NCC while here in Uganda, he says. It could happen, but even with the number of pigs around and the less than perfect sanitation systems, it is very unlikely that I will get infected and sick as a result of NCC.

That said, I do generally try to be careful with what I eat, and try to eat foods that have been cleanly prepared by people who had washed their hands, he continues. Cooked food is safest.

Hajek says that improving sanitation worldwide can help break the cycle and eliminate the disease.

Canadians dont generally have to worry about getting NCC at home, Hajek says. The rates of cysticercosis in pigs in Canada is probably zero or close to zero, and if you cook meat from pigs you kill the cysts and wont get intestinal tapeworm or spread the infection.

Although it is possible that someone can immigrate from an endemic country, be completely asymptomatic but have intestinal pork tapeworm, and shed eggs in their stool without knowing, this risk is low, he adds. And its even lower that their hygiene and food preparation practices are so low that they would contaminate food that you will eat. Perhaps its a good reminder of why we are careful with hygiene and sanitation.

Let us know what you think by commenting below and tweeting @YahooStyleCA!Follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Check out Yahoo Canadas podcast, Make It Reign  our hot takes on all things royals in a non-stuffy way  onApple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
...Saeb Erekat, who I was sure

resigned about 20 years ago

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh. blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work.

.

..MiDA..11 April '19..Something funny happened the other day. Something kind of silly, somewhat bizarre and highly amusing. Palestinian Authority spokesman, Saeb Erekat, who I was sure resigned about 20 years ago, condemned the results of the Israeli elections, saying it was a vote against peace and for the occupation.I always find it amusing when a representative of a fascist dictatorship comments on the results of a democratic election. Because when was the last time there were any elections under the Palestinian authority  an authority that represents a nation that didnt exist until a few decades ago when a strategic decision was made to create the Palestinian nation as a way to destroy the Jewish one  creating Palestine in order to destroy Israel.
NOTE and DeLaval enters into an extensive cooperation in electronics production Published: 12 April 2019 by Chelsey Drysdale by Chelsey Drysdale

NOTE and DeLaval have established a complete supply chain for electronics production. As of 2019, NOTE will become a strategic partner to DeLaval for industrialisation and manufacturing of PCBAs.

For a long time, we have invested heavily in the collaboration with DeLaval and it is extremely gratifying that such a prominent company such as DeLaval now chooses NOTE as a strategic manufacturing partner for electronics. Through our global customer team, we will provide industrialisation services from Norrtalje in Sweden as well as both industrialisation services and volume production from Parnu in Estonia and Tangxia in China," says Fredrik Schultz, Chief Sales Officer.

DeLaval will hereby become one of NOTE's most important customers and the production is currently ramping up and will reach approximately SEK 60 million on an annual basis. The fact that we get this confidence shows that we have a complete and competitive customer offering," says Johannes Lind-Widestam, NOTE's President and CEO.

We are incredibly pleased with the choice of NOTE as a strategic partner for volume production and industrialisation of new products. NOTE is a great fit to our requirements, both in terms of competence and geography. We see a very good match between the companies and look forward to a long and successful cooperation, says John-Erik Hermansson, EVP Supply Chain DeLaval.




1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.
Metro West, the provider of ambulance services in Washington County, has achieved 100% vaccination rates. Nearly 300 miles to the south, the Medford Fire iDepartment is at 56%. Medford approved exemptions for all of 29 holdouts who refused to get the shots. When it comes to the vaccine, the urban-rural divide is real.
Toyota team members honored with national award for excellence in their careers

WASHINGTON (April 12, 2019)  Three Toyota team members were honored last night in Washington, D.C. with Women in Manufacturing STEP (Science, Technology, Engineering and Production) Ahead Awards from The Manufacturing Institute.

The STEP Ahead Awards honor women who have demonstrated excellence and leadership in their careers. Award winners represent all levels of the manufacturing industry, from the factory floor to executive leadership. Toyotas award winners come from multiple operations across North America.

Renee Robertson, General Manager Production Control, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky

Shamaya Morris, Production Engineering Specialist, Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia

Marie Kendrick, Powertrain Engineer, Toyotas Bodine Aluminum, Troy, Mo. (Posthumous)

The women who we are celebrating represent the exciting career opportunities available in manufacturing, said Michelle Kumbier, 2019 chair of STEP Ahead and chief operating officer at Harley-Davidson Motor Company. The STEP Ahead Award honors successful women in this industry for their significant achievements and the positive impact they have made on their companies, their communities and the industry as a whole.

Women totaled 47 percent of the U.S. labor force in 2016, but only 29 percent of the manufacturing workforce  constituting one of manufacturings largest pools of untapped talent.

We are thrilled to see our amazing team members recognized for the excellent work they are doing at Toyota, said Leah Curry, president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing West Virginia and a 2013 STEP Ahead Award winner. At this time, when our industry sees a significant lack of women entering manufacturing careers, it is critical that we continue to encourage, empower and elevate todays female leaders to inspire future generations. That is a mission that we take very seriously at Toyota.

The STEP Ahead Awards are part of the larger STEP Ahead initiative, launched to examine and promote the role of women in the manufacturing industry through recognition, research and leadership.

Fifteen Toyota team members have previously received this prestigious award.

For more information on women in manufacturing at Toyota, please click here.
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The Torch is a weekly newsletter from the Committee to Protect Journalists that brings you the latest press freedom and journalist safety news from around the world. Subscribe here.

CPJ expressed concern about the potential press freedom implications of the U.S. prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. UK authorities arrested Assange April 11 at the Ecuadoran Embassy as part of an extradition agreement with the U.S., according to a statement by the U.S. Department of Justice. The statement said Assange faces a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion relating to his interactions with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who was convicted under the Espionage Act for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

In Saudi Arabia, authorities detained journalists Thumar al-Marzouqi, Bader al-Ibrahim, Mohammed al-Sadiq, and Abdullah al-Duhailan. The journalists are being held in an undisclosed location and no charges against them have been announced. They were among at least 12 activists and writers detained by Saudi authorities on April 4.

Global press freedom updates

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Art: Jack Forbes

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After a seven-year standoff at the Ecuadoran embassy in London, British police yesterday arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assangea development press freedom advocates had long feared.

For years, journalists and press freedom advocates worried the U.S. would prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act for the publication of classified information, a scenario that potentially would have set a devastating legal precedent for U.S. news organizations that regularly publish such material. During the Obama administration, officials ultimately said they would not prosecute because of the possible consequences for press freedom.

It was unclear whether the Trump administration would have the same compunction: while Trump praised WikiLeaks, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo labeled it a non-state hostile intelligence service. Trump has shown little concern for freedom of the press, once allegedly urging then-FBI Director James Comey to jail journalists. (In response to news of Assanges arrest, Trump said he would leave it to the Justice Department).

In this context, the charge on which Assange was arrested seemed modest: A single count of conspiracy (with former Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning) to commit computer intrusion under the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, with a maximum penalty of five years.

Unlike the publication of classified information, hacking computers is not a tool for reporters. Some journalists were quick to point this out. [The] charge here is attempting to help crack a password to steal classified material. Didnt work but would news orgs do that? (Not in my experience.), Greg Miller, a national security reporter at The Washington Post, said on Twitter.

But press freedom advocates, and some journalists, have not expressed relief based on the indictment. A host of organizations, including CPJ, spoke out against the prosecution. Heres why:

(1) The indictment is flimsy and could simply be a pretext to punish Assange for publishing classified information.

The diplomatic time and resources expended between three countries to detain Assange strikes some observers as disproportionate to the single computer misuse charge. The indictment is vague about the exact nature of the aid Assange allegedly provided Manning in the course of their interaction, but it does not appear that Assange successfully hacked any password. Even if his attempts were successful, they would have helped Manning cover her tracks, but not let her break into a system to which she didnt already have access.

Prosecutors have wide range of latitude; its worth remembering that the Obama administration likely had all the same information, but declined to pursue an indictment. Matthew Miller, a former Justice Department spokesperson in the Obama administration, told The New York Times that he thought the charge was justified but This is not the worlds strongest case.

So is it just a pretext on the part of the U.S. government to punish Assange for the publication of classified information  a practice that should be constitutionally protected? The issue comes in a time of heightened concern for investigative journalists and national security reporters. Since the September 11 attacks, the government has increasingly classified large amounts of material and punished those who share it with the press. CPJ has written extensively about the chilling effect of this crackdown on reporting in the public interest.

Given the nature of the charge  a discussion 9 years ago about an unsuccessful attempt to figure out a password  I think its fair to debate whether this is a figleaf for the government punishing someone for publishing stuff it doesnt want published, tweeted Scott Shane, a national security reporter for The New York Times.

If it wasnt Julian Assange, it would be very unlikely youd see this prosecution, Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CPJ. This is what over-broad discretion in prosecution does, it gives them a pretext for going after people they dont like.

(2) The charge could be a placeholder, with more to come.

Another reason why the charge may seem so modest: It could be the first of several. Yesterday, CNN cited U.S. officials promising additional charges against Assange. The press freedom implications of any future charges could be significantespecially if they involve the Espionage Act.

It may be part of a larger case, Ben Wizner the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, told CPJ. The current indictment already cites the Espionage Act and describes the cracking of a password as part of a conspiracy to violate it.

The DOJs legal strategy could be to pile on more charges after Assange is extradited. The extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. says an individual can only be charged for the offense for which extradition was granted or similar offenses, but it also stipulates how governments can waive this rule. Assange has an extradition hearing on May 2, which gives the U.S. government time to develop new charges.

(3) The language of the case seems to criminalize normal journalistic activities.

While the charge against Assange relates to the alleged conspiracy to hack a password, the language of the indictment sweeps in a broad range of legally protected and common journalistic activity.

Count 20 of the indictment states, It was part of the conspiracy that Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States. The indictment goes on to characterize a number of journalistic practices as part of a criminal conspiracy, including use of a secure message service, use of a cloud-based drop box, and efforts to cover Mannings tracks.

The cultivation of sources and the use of encryption and other means to protect those sources are essential to investigative journalism. While the government may include these details to show intent or to describe the means and context for the alleged criminal action, they seem to go beyond what is necessary. Barton Gellman, who led The Washington Posts Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting on the Snowden documents, told CPJ, If asking questions and protecting a source are cast as circumstantial evidence of guilt, well be crossing a dangerous line.

A lot of the way the crime is described here could be applied to other journalists, Wizner, at the ACLU, told CPJ. If the government wanted to just target the attempted intrusion, they could have written a very different complaint.

(4) The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is incredibly broad.

In all of the concern over the Espionage Act, journalists may not have sufficiently raised alarm over the law under which the U.S. charged Assange: the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Thinking we should breathe a sigh of relief because it was the CFAA instead of the Espionage act is premature. Cohn, of Electronic Frontier Foundation, told CPJ.

The CFAA carries its own set of free expression issues. While it encompasses clearly illegal behavior like hacking, it also criminalizes unauthorized access to a computer. Manning was prosecuted under the CFAA in addition to the Espionage Act, but prosecuting a publisher under the CFAA for conspiracy in obtaining the classified information could potentially create a dangerous legal model.

While reporters do not conspire to decrypt passwords, they are often aware of, and might actively discuss with sources, activities that could fall under the broad frame of unauthorized access. As the Cato Institutes Julian Sanchez wrote on Twitter, The way helping to hack is being charged is as a conspiracy to violate 18 USC 1030 (a)(1) [of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act]. And good reporters conspire with their sources to do that constantly.

For almost every reporter working with a source, the source is providing information in digital form. Anyone who is working with a source who obtained that info in a way that they werent supposed to has a CFAA risk, Cohn said. She added that any journalists who dont think there are broader press freedom implications to the Assange prosecution are whistling past the graveyard.

(5) Ecuadors withdrawal of asylum raises questions.

Assanges arrest came after Ecuador withdrew his asylum protection. In a tweet on April 11, Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno said the decision came after Assanges repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols. In a video statement accompanying the tweet, he cited Assanges repeated intervening in the internal affairs of other states via WikiLeaks publications.

Ecuador had previously restricted Assanges access to the internet based on allegations that he was interfering in U.S. elections and in the referendum for Catalan independence from Spain. While Assanges unusual presence in a diplomatic mission created tensionsboth inside the embassy and in Ecuadors broader international relationswithdrawing asylum is an extreme measure, and one that could have troubling implications if it was done in response to publishing.

Alexandra Ellerbeck, CPJs North America program coordinator, previously worked at Freedom House and was a Fulbright teaching fellow at the State University of Para in Brazil. She has lived in Chile, Bolivia, and Brazil. Avi Asher-Schapiro is CPJs research associate for North America. He is a former staffer at VICE News, International Business Times, and Tribune Media, and an independent investigative reporter who has published in outlets including The Atlantic, The Intercept, and The New York Times.
Getting an image of a black hole is one of those things that seem impossibly challenging, but with the efforts of astronomers all around the world, humanity is finally getting a direct glimpse of this cosmic object.With the Event Horizon Telescope, scientists capture a supermassive black hole in a historic photograph. More than 200 researchers were involved in the accomplishment.Since it's an ultra-dense object from which no light can escape, black holes can't actually be seen, much less captured on camera.So how did scientists manage to achieve this incredible feat? In a series of papers in TheAstrophysical Journal Letters,the international team explains how.Network Of Telescopes Work In Tandem To Capture Black Hole's ShadowBlack holesmay be more or less invisible, but they can be spotted by a distinct disk of hot material shining around it brightly."If immersed in a bright region, like a disc of glowing gas, we expect a black hole to create a dark region similar to a shadow  something predicted by Einstein's general relativity that we've never seen before," Heino Falcke, the chair of the EHT Science Council of Radboud University, explainsin a statement from EHT. "This shadow, caused by the gravitational bending and capture of light by the event horizon, reveals a lot about the nature of these fascinating objects and allowed us to measure the enormous mass of M87's black hole."Scientists used the EHT, an international network of radio telescopes, to hone in on the supermassive black hole that's about 6.5 billion times the mass of the sun.It is located about 55 million light-years away from Earth in the center of elliptical galaxy Messier 87.Accordingto NASA, eight ground-based radio telescopes all over the world worked in tandem to capture the shadow of this black hole. These telescopes operated as if they were one giant instrument that's the size of Earth.With a technique known as very-long-baseline interferometry, the astronomers used the telescopes and the rotation of the planet to form a massive telescope powerful enough to read a newspaper in New York from the opposite end of the world in Paris.A number of NASA spacecraft also contributed to the efforts, collecting data on the black hole with different wavelengths of light. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, and Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory space telescope missions all participated as well as NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope."Years ago, we thought we would have to build a very large space telescope to image a black hole," Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division at NASA Headquarters, says. "By getting radio telescopes around the world to work in concert like one instrument, the EHT team achieved this, decades ahead of time."The Significance Of A PhotoMore than just historical value, the photo of the black hole is an important step forward in continuing to study space. It confirms the existence and properties of black holes, which until now, have been entirely based on indirect observations.All the data, technology, and coordinated efforts involved in capturing the image of this supermassive black hole may answer many of the mysteries that scientists still have not solved about black holesIn a report from The Harvard Gazette, EHT Director Sheperd Doeleman points outthat the event opens up an entirely new door to scientists."We are now entering the era of precision, horizon-scale observations of black holes," Doeleman explains. "We've never had that before, so we're now able to ask a bunch of questions we couldn't even conceive of before. We can start teasing apart physical processes at the black hole boundary, so [the significance] is in what we saw, but also in the promise this holds for the future."
Israeli spacecraft Beresheet fails to successfully land on the moon with a crash. The supposed historic moment fails to come through during its scheduled mission on the afternoon of April 11.The robotic vehicle, produced by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, aims to be the first privately funded spacecraft to land softly on the moon.Opher Doron, the general manager of IAI said they encountered a failure in the spacecraft and had not managed to land successfully. He added that it was a huge accomplishment until now.With the failure, Israel has to continue dreaming of being ranked among the Soviet Union, China, and the United States, which have all completed moon-landing missionsStarted As Planned, Ended With A CrashOn April 11, the planned day of the moon landing, more than 2,500 spectators sat on the plastic chairs outside of the command center to witness history. The online world was also engaged as websites such as Space and Universeorganizeda live telecast.The landing was supposed to happen near an area called the Sea of Serenity. This place was chosen mainly due to its flat surface and minimal craters.Everything looked well and according to plan, it even made the lunar orbit, sent back a photo taken near the surface of the moon, and almost made a lunar landing. What's more impressive is that all these achievements cost a total of about $100 million only.No matter how promising it looks, success still boils down to how it ends. Unfortunately for Beresheet, the end game was not as good as the world hoped for. The landing sequence went smooth, but at around 3:25 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, the little robot crashed into the dirt. Communication controls went berserk as the spacecraft reached about 489 feet above the lunar surface.Staying Positive Amid The CrashA number of science and space personalitiesshared their sentiments on the failed mission.Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, said if success does not come the first time, you try again. He watched the landing attempt from SpaceIL's command center in Yehud, Israel.Morris Kahn, an Israeli entrepreneur, who helped found Beresheet, said that even if the spacecraft did not make it, at least the effort to try was there, and that is something to be proud of."Condolences to the Beresheet lander @TeamSpaceIL for what almost was!" Buzz Aldrin, astronaut at the Apollo 11 mission, tweetsThe Berseheet mission is more than just a space exploration endeavor. It hopes to inspire young kids to develop interest on science and space. The team had met with over 1 million Israeli school-aged children over the last eight years. Some of these kids will become scientists one day, and maybe help build, design and operate the spacecraft."Don't stop believing! We came close but unfortunately didn't succeed with the landing process," SpaceIL tweets
Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging think tanker, aspiring novelist, hanger on of academia, parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, Speedboat, proudly banned from Twitter so officially more dangerous than the Taliban, eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Bangladesh: Blue economy makes no waves

by AKM Zakaria

April 12,2019 | Source: Prothom Alo

Bangladesh normally is unwilling to take bilateral disputes with neighbouring countries to any international forum. However, the maritime boundary dispute with India and Myanmar was a significant exception. Bangladesh opted for arbitration with the international court as it could not resolve the issue through bilateral negotiations with either of the countries. This was a bold step by the Awami League led mahajote ('grand alliance') government elected in 2008.



It came as quite a surprise to India and Myanmar that Bangladesh took up such an initiative. The two countries were both shocked and taken aback by Bangladeshs action at the time. The international Courts decision, in both cases, went in favour of Bangladesh. We celebrated this success as a great maritime victory.



Bangladeshs settlement of the maritime boundary dispute with Myanmar was finalised by the international court in 2012 and that with India in 2014. Bangladesh gained absolute rights over about 118,000 square kilometres of 'blue space'. Years have passed since then and now the question is, how did we benefit from this victory?



In recent times, globally, governments of coastal countries and islands perceive maritime territory as the new economic frontier, according to a report of the Economic Intelligence Unit in 2015.



Many countries adopt policies for growth based on blue economy. Take Indonesia for instance. They have increased their dependence on the sea for the source of food, minerals, energy and and medicines. Experts are researching on how seas and maritime resources can be utilised. There are naturally the ocean-based traditional trades such as ports and shipping, sea transport and tourism.



It is a matter of concern that maritime resources are not unlimited. These are related to the environment, nature and climate change. As a result, planned, coordinated, and vigilant initiatives are imperative. The World Bank Group released a survey titled 'Towards a Blue Economy: A Pathway for Sustainable Growth in Bangladesh' in 2018. It stated that Bangladesh has not taken any comprehensive policy plan as yet regarding its blue economy. There is a stark lack of data and information regarding blue economy in Bangladesh. The World Bank drew up its survey based on information from various sources.



According to the World Bank, the contribution of blue economy (or Gross Value Added) to the economy of Bangladesh in the 2014-15 fiscal was 6.2 billion dollars, that is, 3 per cent of the total economy. There is also an account of each sectors contribution to the blue economy. The contribution of the tourism sector was 25 per cent, fishing and aquaculture 22 per cent and oil and gas resources 19 per cent. This calculation was based on the data available from 2010 to 2014. After gas extraction from Bangladesh's only offshore gas field Sangu ended in 2013, the oil and gas sector's contribution to the blue economy dwindled to zero.



The settlement of the maritime boundary dispute may have gone in favour of Bangladesh, but it failed to speed up the blue economy as had been hoped. No major progress has been noted except for the formation of a small administrative cell called Blue Economy Cell in 2017 under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources.



The cell, however, does not hold any legal authority. There is no obligation to accept their decisions either. Therefore, the concerned parliamentary committee in October 2017 recommended that this cell be replaced by an authority vested with legal powers. One and a half years have passed since then. The foreign ministry organised two workshops at the national level in 2014 and 2017, identifying 26 potential sectors of blue economy. And that is about it.



After the maritime boundary dispute was settled, the most discussed issue was offshore oil and gas field exploration. It is assumed that there are huge reserves of oil and gas under the sea of this part of the world. And yet, ironically, while we celebrated the maritime victory with such fanfare, it has been Myanmar that is active in raking in the benefits of the blue economy. They not only discovered gas reserves within two years of the dispute being settled in 2012, but also have started extracting gas from a block near the Bangladesh boundary.



Myanmar has been using that gas domestically and exporting it to China. At the same time, they have been exploring in most of the other blocks. They readied themselves even before the settlement of the dispute. India is not sitting idly either. State and private oil and gas companies of India have been conducting surveys meticulously in hope of finding huge reserves.



Yet we remain impassive, not taking minimum preparation even after settlement of the dispute. Twenty six blocks -- 11 shallow and 15 deep shore ones -- have been identified after the settlement of the dispute. A long time has passed since then. As of 2019, agreements have been signed with foreign companies for survey in four blocks but we could not drill a single well till now.



There is not activity whatsoever regarding the remaining 22 blocks. We still cannot make up our minds whether or not to have a multi-client survey before production and sharing agreements with foreign companies. The initiative for multi-client survey has been taken in 2014 and work started accordingly. This was supposed to have been completed by now. Had there been a culture of accountability in the country, the energy ministry and Petrobangla would have been forced to explain these lapses.



Danger looms large over the countrys industrial sector in face of energy shortage, whereas initiatives to explore for fuel reserves in the deep sea blocks have been stalled for years. Myanmar is exporting gas while we are importing liquefied natural gas (LNG) and have set up costly LNG plants to process this gas, costing us four to five times more than the local gas price.



The maritime boundary dispute settlement opened up the seas to us for extensive fishing, but we have failed to exploit that opportunity too. Our trawlers are not capable to fishing beyond 70 kilometres offshore. There are over 600 more kilometres of open sea for fishing which we fail to explore. Recently several initiatives and proposals have been approved for deep sea fishing, but why has this taken so long?



The 26 sectors identified for blue economy include tourism, ports, shipping, renewable energy in sea (current and wind), minerals and other sea resources including oil and gas. A feasibility study is necessary to plan on prioritising these sectors. But the concerned ministries and agencies embroiled in squabbles over who will have control on the blue economy sector. It has been proved time and again that such conflicts simply stall work with no outcome.



The insignificant blue economy cell of the ministry of power, energy and mineral resources will not do. There needs to be an authority endowed with legal powers to reap benefits of the blue economy. Many deem a separate ministry is also necessary. We must advance in that direction if we want the blue economy to play a strong role in boosting and sustaining our economic growth.
Kerala: Ajanur fishers in Kerala threaten to boycott polls in Kasaragod

April 12,2019 | Source: The New Indian Express

The fishing community of Ajanur coastal area near Kanhangad has threatened to boycott the Lok Sabha election to protest against the snails pace progress of Ajanur Fishing Harbour. The fisherfolk said they are behind the government to build a harbour for the past 12 years. There is absolutely no political will (to build the harbour). That is why we have decided to boycott the election, K Rajan, convenor of Ajanur-Chittari Fishing Harbour Action Committee, which was formed 12 years ago, told Express.



The lack of a fishing harbour keeps around 1,000 families in utter poverty, said Bindu Kunjikrishnan, 44, a member of Ajanur Kadapuram Fishermen Cooperative Society. The choppy waves prevent our men from going to sea almost throughout the year. They are able to go to sea only for around two months in a year when the sea is calm. And our women are forced to travel a long distance to get fish to sell, she said. The last time the fishermen of Ajanur hit the sea was in November.



On Thursday evening, a small group of men and women gathered near the office of Ajanur Kadapuram Fishermen Cooperative Society to discuss the mode of protest. They belong to a group called Theeradesha Thanal Kutaimma, a collective of fisherfolks started two years ago to provide financial support to poor patients of the community. Now, we have joined the struggle for the fishing harbour, said Sumesh AP, 35. The group has 50 members and 500 supporters.



Rajan said the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy initiated the project and commissioned a study by the Pune-based Central Water and Power Research Station (CWPRS). The study was completed in 2016 and the report submitted to the government. When the LDF came to power, Revenue Minister E Chandrasekharan took some interest in the project. But after 2017, there is no movement, he said. He said he had taken up the matter with Fisheries Minister J Mercykutty Amma. When I met her two years ago, she said Ajanur harbour was top of the governments priority. Today, she may not even remember Ajanur, he said.



June to September is the windfall season. But fishermen from Ajanur stand as spectators as fishing boats from the southern districts make a killing off their coast. The sea will be rough and we cannot take our boats inside. We helplessly watch as they take away our catch, said Sumesh. The fishermen are also hurt by the tightening of kerosene ration.



Red-tape



In a letter to Rajan, the Department of Fishing Harbour said the CWPRS report-2016 did not take into account the change of course of Chittari River at the estuary. We have asked CWPRS for a new report taking into account the change in course of the river. We are waiting for it, said the reply sent to Rajan in the first week of April.
Kerala: Fishing in polluted waters

by SHAM MOHAMMED

April 12,2019 | Source: Deccan Chronicle

The marine products exporters in Kerala are in troubled waters with discouraging trends on the export front due to various reasons, including the central government's policies and the poor quality of the products exported. The processed marine products export from the state has dipped by nearly 40 per cent making it one of the worst -performing in the country, say exporters. The exports suffer due to the wrongly-implemented export codes for finished products as well as the strict sanitation checks employed at ports which lead to rejection of export consignments, they say.



According to the statistics with the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA), the total value of exports from Kochi port during 2017-18 was Rs. 5805.11 crore, a slight improvement from the previous Rs. 4860.98 crore. However, as per unofficial records, the exports dipped by over 25 per cent in the last quarter in Kerala region. "The official records published might not reflect the actual picture as this is a seasonal business. The published values are average while the reality is a stark decline in our business," an exporter told DC. The consignments shipped to the European Union (EU) are rejected during sanitation checks as the inspection process was recently intensified to cover over 50 per cent of the consignment from an earlier 10 per cent. This is owing to India's recent policy of hundred per cent sanitation check employed for the products imported from the EU.



The EU has intensified the sanitation checks apparently as a tit for tat to the Indian government's attitude of denying relaxation for imports from the EU. The free trade agreement between the EU and India has not come through either. The balance of trade in this case is favourable, but has not yet evolved into a complete form. This has adversely affected the marine products exports from the country with high rejection rates of products, including shrimp, which used to earn the highest foreign exchange earlier.



"We have no control over what we get from the sea. We export the products after certifying them in government laboratories and the approved labs. These are getting rejected in foreign shores due to diehard standards imposed, though sanitation checks are done batch-wise and code-wise by us," a top exporter told DC. The government is not ready to take the responsibility for these consignments being rejected. In foreign countries, they have research teams to identify spots in the sea where the concentration of heavy metals, including lead, is on a high. This is not done by the authorities here as they blame exporters for the flaws in sanitation checks instead of tackling it at the source. In aquaculture, use of antibiotics has turned out to be a menace due to lack of proper monitoring.



In marine exports, the cephalochordates sent to EU should get the clearance on the presence of heavy metals in its meat. The exporters demand that the government agencies conduct inspections at the source of these marine products, including the harbours, taking responsibility for the quality of marine products. Instead, they confine inspections to the processing centres, the exporters say. "The brunt of rejection is faced by the exporters with zero support from the government," they say.



Sea pollution a reason?



Kerala is experiencing a dip in exports due to the policy change and the strict sanitation checks abroad. If a consignment is once rejected, the company is listed in the internal chart and it cannot continue the exports further. Another reason cited is an obvious increase in the presence of heavy metals in the seas due to pollution, which cannot be prevented by the exporters. In foreign countries, the quality of water is checked at the source which is reflected on the marine products. Identifying pollution-free zones in the sea could improve the quality of products which help exporters avoid rejection of their consignments.



The major cause for this rejection is the 50 per cent sanitation check on the export products in the EU, which is due to the wrong approach of the Indian government, according to the exporters. The marine products, including squid and octopus, are exported from India to countries like China, Thailand and Vietnam. These are then reprocessed and exported to the EU without any rejection. Here, we have issues in exports of finished products from the country only due to diplomatic issues of the government.



Policy change also to blame

Until 2015, the marine exports were based on the foreign trade policy 'Vishesh Krishi and Gram Udyog Yojana' (VKGUY) which was replaced by the Merchandise Exports Incentive Scheme (MEIS). During the pre- MEIS period, the exporters were given incentives as subsidies based on the chapter-wise criteria in the VKGUY. With the MEIS, the exports of marine items were made code-specific. This has unsubsidised a considerable number of marine products affecting the income generation of the exporters.



Ironically, after the introduction of MEIS, the exporters were even asked to repay the entire subsidy received by them for certain products like 'conch' under the VKGUY during pre-2015 period. The exporters or the authorities are not yet clear on the ITC-HS codes or the Indian Trade Clarification based on Harmonized System of Coding adopted for import-export operations, the exporters say. With all these, the government, from its position of a facilitator, has become a dictator over foreign trade.
Sri Lanka: Ten arrested for engaging in illegal fishing

April 12,2019 | Source: Adaderana

Ten individuals, who had engaged in illegal fishing activities in Karativu, Periyaarachchal and Uchchamunai sea areas, were apprehended yesterday (10), Sri Lanka Navy said. A group of naval personnel attached to an inshore patrol craft had observed 4 dinghy boats and 2 canoes carrying ten persons who were engaged in fishing activities in a suspicious manner. Upon searching the boats and canoes, the naval personnel had identified the persons on board as illegal fishermen.



The suspects, aged between 20 to 51 years, are residents of Negombo and Kalpitiya areas, the Navy said. They have been handed over to the Fisheries Inspector in Puttalam along with the intercepted dinghies and canoes for further investigations.
I asked Great Britain the guarantee that Mr Assange will not be extradited to any country in which he could suffer torture or face the death penalty, President Lenin Moreno said.





QUITO: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrested in London on Thursday after Quito withdrew his political asylum, will not be extradited to any country where he could face "torture or the death penalty," Ecuador's president said.





"I asked Great Britain the guarantee that Mr Assange will not be extradited to any country in which he could suffer torture or face the death penalty," President Lenin Moreno said in a video message posted on social media.





READ MORE | Quito withdraws Assange's Ecuador citizenship





"The British government has confirmed this in writing," that they will meet this requirement, Moreno said.









RELATED | Julian Assange Versus the Trump Administration Assange has been living at Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 when he sought refuge there after being accused of sexual assault in Sweden.





Australia's Foreign Minister Marise Payne says Australia remains "completely opposed" to the death penalty amid fears that Australian native Julian Assange could be exposed to such punishment if he is extradited to the United States.





Australian consular officials plan to visit the WikiLeaks founder in a London jail today a day after he was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy where he'd been holed up nearly seven years.





For now, he faces a single computer conspiracy charge in the US that does not carry the death penalty, but his supporters fear more serious charges may be brought later.

 | 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



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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,

but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Iran Human Rights (IHR) -- April 11, 2019: A prisoner was executed in the Iranian northern city of Gorgan for murder charges last Sunday.





According to HRANA website, prisoner Davoud Mohebzadeh, 36, was hanged on Sunday, April 7, at Gorgan prison.





He was sentenced to death for murdering a person during a fight three years ago.





The aforementioned execution has not been reported by Iranian media so far.





According to the Iran Human Rights statistic department, the majority of executions in 2017 and 2018 in Iran was for murder charges.





At least 188 prisoners were executed for murder charges in 2018.





Only 33% of executions were announced by Iranian authorities in 2018.





There is a lack of a classification of murder by degree in Iran which results in issuing a death sentence for any kind of murder regardless of intensity and intent.

 | 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
FOCUS ON DEFENSE CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA AND OCEANIA
I am a retired newspaperman. I live in Poca, WV, with my wife of 44 years, Lou Ann. I grew up in Cleveland. Three kids. Grandfather.



Report all errors to DonSurber@GMail.com
Washington Post and he mentioned the harsh Trump's former top economic adviser, Gary Cohen, was interviewed in yesterday'sand he mentioned the harsh $26 billion cuts to Social Security would be "political suicide ... even in a bunch of red states." He went even further, predicting that if Trump is seen by voters as trying to cut Social Security it will be a political disaster for the Republican Party as a whole. One of those red states where Republicans could lose seats in the House is going to be Texas, where Trump's approval is continuing to crumble in some areas.





Bad enough for Texas Republicans running for office next year, right? How about this? Texas Republicans are trying to push a bill through the state legislature-- House Bill 896-- that not only criminalizes abortion but that subjects a woman who gets an abortion to the death penalty. Sponsor state Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington): "I think its important to remember that if a drunk driver kills a pregnant woman, they get charged twice. If you murder a pregnant woman, you get charged twice. So Im not specifically criminalizing women. What Im doing is equalizing the law."





Now there's a GOP civil brewing in Texas . Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano), the chairman of the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence, said he "cannot and will not support nor will I let come out of this committee any bill on [abortion] which targets the woman with either civil or criminal liability... that targets a woman who is facing that difficult decision and who might make that decision."

On Monday, Todd Bullis of Little Elm was at the Capitol with a group of young people carrying placards in favor of the ban.



Bullis, a member of Abolish Abortion Texas, described himself as a Republican precinct chairman who is mindful that the state party platform adopted last year calls on lawmakers to enact legislation stopping the murder of unborn children and to ignore and refuse to enforce any and all federal statutes, regulations, executive orders, and court rulings that would deprive an unborn child of the right to life.



He claimed that his state representative, Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco, committed to support the ban before the election last year but failed to sign up as a sponsor of Tinderholts legislation. A Patterson aide, Jordan Long, responded to a request for comment with an email stating that Patterson has signed up to sponsor several abortion-related measures, including Leach's "Born Alive" bill and a proposal that would outlaw an abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected.



Bullis said: Representatives dont really want to move on" the proposed ban because theyre moderate liberals.



Another ban backer, Starr Finn, said shes a GOP precinct chairwoman from Whitney.



Of Leach, she said, this [ban] is a priority of the Republican Party of Texas. If you dont like the bill, write your own.



Finn elaborated: We work hard to put these people in office. We thought he was one of our own." Leach squeaked out a narrow 2-percentage-point win over Democrat Sarah Depew in his Collin County district last year.



Leach, Finn said, should let the proposed ban win House consideration. If not, she speculated, Leach's resistance could amount to a first foul toward the three fouls needed for the party to censure Leach-- as party leaders did to then-House Speaker Joe Straus in 2018.



Hes behaving like a king" if he keeps the proposed ban bottled up, Finn said.



...Earlier, Finn also said she won't be voting again for Gov. Greg Abbott, already described by a consultant as likely to seek a third term in 2022. Abbott devoted much of his early-session State of the State speech to lawmakers to his desires for a surge in targeted public school funding and a leash on property-tax increases. His speech did not mention any need for abortion-related changes in law.

McCain won Texas' 34 electoral votes with 55.45% and Romney won them with 57.17%. Trump won them too, but he was down significantly-- just 52.23%. Two years later that translated to Democrats flipping two previously safe red seats-- TX-07, where John Culberson was replaced by Lizzie Fletcher and TX-32, where Colin Allred defeated GOP heavy-hitter Pete Sessions-- and too-close-for comfort wins in TX-10 where Michael McCaul scraped by with 51.1%, TX-21, where Chip Roy was elected with just 50.2%, TX-22, where Pete Olson wound up with 51.4%, TX-23, where Will Hurd margin of victory was 0.5%, TX-24, where Kenny Marchant won with just 50.6% and TX-31, where John Carter's win was with 50.6%. Alarm bells are ringing... loudly!





Fort Worth Star-Telegram published a piece by Andrea Drusch, On Wednesday morning, as Trump was flying to Houston and San Antonio, thepublished a piece by Andrea Drusch, Democratic polls show Trump struggling in three GOP-held Texas districts , that indicates the GOP challenges in Texas are growing, not diminishing. Trump's approval rating is underwater in districts that are already key battlegrounds for 2020, suburban districts Trump won in 2016 but would likely lose today.

Surveys the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently conducted found that 41 percent of voters approved of Trumps job performance in Texas 24th congressional district, where Rep. Kenny Marchant serves, while 44 percent disapproved.



In Rep. Mike McCauls 10th district, 44 percent approved and 45 percent disapproved of the job Trump is doing. And in Rep. Chip Roys 21st district, 45 percent approved and 48 percent disapproved.



...After flipping two seats in Texas in 2018, Democrats are plotting a much bigger investment to go after six more in 2020. But the targets are much tougher this time around, running through much more conservative territory.



While Hillary Clinton won both of the Texas districts Democrats took control of last year, Trump carried all of the partys 2020 targets except the 23rd district, represented by Rep. Will Hurd. Democrats are also targeting Texas GOP Reps. John Carter and Pete Olson.



To flip these traditionally GOP seats, Democrats say they are relying on moderate Republicans who have soured on the Trump-led party, as well as minority voters who have become a larger share of the electorate.



The DCCCs polling, for example, showed Marchants district has increased its African American population by 26 percent between 2010 and 2016 among citizens of voting age. The Hispanic population rose by 29 percent, and the Asian population by 42 percent.

So far Blue America has one horse in this race, stalwart progressive Democrat Mike Siegel, who's running for the 10th district seat Michael McCaul holds. McCaul was the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee and was a Trump partner in formulating the babies in cages family separation agenda. Siegel gave him the shock of his political career last November when he only managed to garner 51.1% of the vote. Travis County, the part of the district with the most voters, wound up giving Siegel an astounding D+44 win margin. Siegel also made inroads in Bastrop and Waller counties and has been working to cut into traditional GOP margins in western Harris County. The thermometer on the right is the Blue America "Take Back Texas" page. We expect that page to expand over the next six months. But only for progressives, not for the kinds of conservative Democrats who vote like Republicans.





Mike sent this out to his supporters as Trump ws wining his way towards Harris County yesterday: "Our 'representative' is complicit in every atrocity of the Trump Administration. He is trying to separate himself on domestic and foreign policy, but its too late. On family separation, attacks on healthcare, attacks on human dignity, McCaul has voted lockstep with the President. So in 2020, when we vote Trump out of office, well also vote for real representation here in Texas. And Ill be fighting for the people of the Texas 10th: to secure universal healthcare and reopen rural hospitals; to protect Social Security and strengthen public schools; to prevent climate change and ensure that our government respects human rights and common decency."
Kreol Retail FZE has been appointed as a travel retail distributor of Rhum Clement for select Middle East countries.

Kreol Retail FZE is a major travel retail distributor that works with Dufry and Dubai and Qatar Duty Free outlets among others.

We are bringing an exotic lifestyle and a bit of Caribbean history to our customers, said Lal Arakulath, CEO of Kreol Group.

This particular rum has been made on the French island of Martinique for more than 130 years. Listed among the Top 10 Trending Rum Brands in 2019, it has got numerous global awards and is present in more than 80 countries.

Habitation Clement, the birthplace of Rhum Clement, releases aged rhum agricole every year as part of its Grand Reserve portfolio.

Matthieu de Lassus, export director, Rhum Clement said: We are confident that the unique Rhum Clement will be the ideal choice for travellers looking for an exotic new thrill.

Since 1887, our products have been crafted according to the purest traditions inherited from Homere and Charles Clement. Our rum is produced in strict compliance with the guidelines of the Appellation d'Origine Controlee.
Thousands of people wait at the South Korea Embassy in Hanoi to get their visas. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

Vietnamese tour agencies are reporting losses as they are unable to get visas in time for customers to travel to South Korea.

Trang, owner of a travel agency specialized in South Korea tours, said that she has just canceled a tour of 26 customers because the South Korean embassy in Hanoi didnt give them visas in time.

Her company suffered a loss of VND200 million ($8,620) from that tour alone as they have to compensate customers, she said.

The sudden surge in demand for South Korean visas in recent days has overloaded the countrys consular sections.

In recent days, thousands of people have been lining up as early as 3 a.m. at the embassy to get their visas, after rumors began circulating that a relaxed visa policy for Vietnamese citizens is going to be changed.

Dao Nguyen Xuan, representative of a Hanoi-based tour agency, said that her company has to pay in advance 30 percent of every ticket to South Korea, which is about VND6-7 million ($259-300). If visa approval gets delayed, her company will have to cancel the tours and lose its deposits, she said.

The embassy earlier this year increased the time for issuing visas for tour agencies from 6 days to 10 days, but companies say they are having have to wait even longer.

C-3 visa holders can stay in South Korea for up to 30 days, with no restrictions on number of visits for five years. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy

Some companies have even taken a chance and transported their customers to the airport in the hope that their visas will come in time, but this attempt has failed, forcing it to send customers back home.

With most customers booking South Korea tours in the summer, tour agencies said that if the current situation persists, their reputation will be damaged and they will lose customers.

These days, the consular department at the South Korean Embassy in downtown Hanoi gives out 300 tokens a day, but the number of people queuing up is estimated at around 3,000.

The South Korean government started issuing C-3 visas to permanent residents of Vietnam's three biggest cities Hanoi, Saigon and Da Nang, without insisting on occupational priority, as part of its "New Southern Policy."

C-3 visa holders can stay in South Korea for up to 30 days with no restrictions on the number of visits during the validity period of five years.

Park Jong Sun, head of the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) office in Vietnam, said over 100,000 Vietnamese visited South Korea in the first three months this year, up 30 percent from the same period last year, with the relaxed visa policy for Vietnamese having an effect.

South Korea is one of the largest labor export markets for Vietnam. There were around 45,400 Vietnamese migrant workers in South Korea by the end of June 2018, the majority of them registered under the Employment Permit System, according to official labor reports.
Singaporean man Chang Koon Yuen was not able to prove that he bought eight properties in Vietnam with his own money. Photo by Shutterstock/Elnur

A HCMC court is considering an appeal by a Singaporean man who lost properties to his Vietnamese ex.

The Ho Chi Minh City District 2 Court last year ruled that Singaporean man Chang Koon Yuen, 65, did not have any legal documents to prove that he was the owner of the eight properties he had with Chau Hong Loan, 58, his wife.

Yuen and Loan, lived together for seven years before they got married in 2003. They have three daughters. After 20 years of being together, in April 2016, they got divorced.

As they could not settle on dividing their assets, Yuen last year asked the court to divide the eight properties they have, worth VND400 billion ($17.2 million). Yuen wanted the asset to be divided 80:20 in his favor, saying that he had contributed the most to acquiring them.

As Vietnams laws before 2015 did not allow foreigners to own property, all asset documents were signed and managed by Loan. Yuen told the court that he had bought the properties with his own money.

However, the court said that notarized documents that Loan provided showed that Yuen confirmed that the properties belonged to Loan.

There was no proof that Yuen had given Loan the money for the properties, the court said.

It ruled that Loan was the legitimate owner of six properties in southern provinces.

The other two, in the north, were divided 50:50, as neither side was able to prove that they own these properties, the court said. Loan said that she had borrowed VND6.6 billion ($284,800) from a friend to buy these properties.

The court ruled then that Loan would still manage the two properties and pay Yuen in cash.

Yuen got VND6.35 billion ($274,000) from Loan. But as they have to pay the debt for the two properties plus interest over a few years, Yuen had to use all that money plus VND1 billion ($43,100) to repay Loans friend.

Yuen filed his appeal with the Ho Chi Minh Citys Peoples Court on Wednesday, which will resume hearing the case next week.
Vietnamese women doing well at beauty pageants can significantly boost their modeling incomes to $5,000-$15,000 for a single show.

Miss Vietnam 2014 Ky Duyen has said that she can earn more than $5,000 for participating in a fashion show.

Vu Khac Tiep, manager of famous model Ngoc Trinh, known for modeling lingerie, love scandals and brazen outspokenness, said she can get contracts worth $10,000-20,000 to catwalk in a show.

Other beauty queens who do well at international beauty pageants, like Top 5 Miss Universe finisher H'Hen Nie, can see their paycheck go up a dozen times their previous earnings.

Top 5 Miss Universe finisher H'Hen Nie can see her paycheck go up a dozen times her previous earnings. Photo acquired by VnExpress

Before she was crowned Miss Universe Vietnam 2017 and competed in Miss Universe 2018, the highest pay H'Hen Nie got was lower than $1,000.

Nam Em, another beauty queen, is also able to earn up to $10,000 for a show after earning a Top 8 spot at Miss Earth 2016.

"Fashion brands can accept a model's pay package ranging from $5,000-15,000, which would include wearing branded clothes on the red carpet, modeling as a vedette, and engaging and posting on social media.

"A vedettes paycheck depends on various factors like title, reputation and experience. It can also vary based on the relationship between beauty queens and designers," a media representative of IVY Moda, a domestic brand, told VnExpress iOne.

"Beauty contest runners up may get lower payments of $2,000-$5,000. Such earnings, though higher than professional models, are common."

Ky Duyen said that she can earn more than $5,000 for participating in a fashion show. Photo acquired by VnExpress

Well-known fashion designers Do Manh Cuong and Ha Duy also said that a $10,000 paycheck for a model is not rare if it was not an individual fashion show, and a brand wanting to cast beauty queen as a vedette can certainly pay that much.

Some beauty queens can accept a lower payments because of their close relationships with designers.

Fashion designer Ha Duy said: "Normally, I invite beauty queens who are on good terms with me and have modeled in my shows as a vedette several times, so the pay can't be that high.

"Sometimes, they are even willing to be on the catwalk show for free."

Model Ha Kino, a contestant at Vietnam's Next Top Model 2012, said the average paycheck for other models at the show was just VND2 million, or $86.41.
Da Nang City, the central hub of Vietnam, wants to become a smart city. Photo by VnExpress/Ong Van Sinh

Vietnams central city says it will spend VND2 trillion ($86 million) on becoming a smart city by 2030.

At a conference organized by the municipal administration to announce the plan, the city's leaders said they wants to make Da Nang smart in six major areas: administration, economics, traffic, environment, life-quality and citizens.

The city will also develop smart systems for education, healthcare, food safety, tourism, agriculture, trading, drainage, waste management, traffic and security.

It will build a center for operational monitoring, smart public services and open data whereby it is freely available to everyone to use and republish as they wish, without copyright restrictions patents or other mechanisms of control.

Investments for this smart city project will come from private investors and public private partnerships, officials said at the conference.

Once it achieves its target in 2030, the city can synchronize itself with the smart city network in Vietnam and beyond, in Southeast Asia, they added.

A city of around 1.2 million, Da Nang has been preparing the smart city project for several years.

Last month, it opened the first phase of its information technology (IT) park modeled on the U.S.s Silicon Valley.

Aiming to become one of the most developed IT communities in Asia, the park has already attracted some big names in the global IT industry like IBM, Cisco, Intel, KDDI and Mitsui.

In February, it was announced that the city would sign contracts with Singapores Sakae Corporate Advisory and Surbana Jurong to make adjustments to its urban planning.

It said the plans would have to include solutions to tackle key problems like infrastructure overload, climate change response and environmental protection.

In April last year, the city inked deal with Vietnamese tech giant FPT to build websites and systems digitalize basic services like healthcare and traffic management for local residents.

Da Nang is the urban hub in central Vietnam and is considered the country's third most important city, after Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The city licensed 135 foreign direct investment projects worth almost $286 million last year.
Eight die as blaze guts four workshops in Hanoi

A corner of a workshop complex in Hanoi was burned down in a fire on early Friday morning. Photo by VnExpress/Nam Nguyen

At least eight people died as a fire destroyed a 1,000-sqm workshop complex in Hanois Nam Tu Liem District on Friday.

The fire broke out at around 2 a.m. in a small alley in Trung Van Ward, a 30-minute drive from downtown Hanoi.

More than 300 firefighters were dispatched to the scene to put the fire under control. However, the complex contained flammable materials like wood and plastic products that fueled the fire and hindered the firefighters.

It took them around two hours to douse the blaze.

Local authorities have confirmed that at least eight people have been killed and four workshops destroyed. Police and rescue workers are still searching the complex for missing people.

The four facilities destroyed included a warehouse, a workshop producing moisture grains, a storage space for wooden products, and a plastic bin making facility.

A warehouse built with iron sheets is damaged after the fire. Photo by VnExpress

An investigation has been launched to determine the cause of the fire.

Vietnam reported more than 4,075 fire incidents last year, which killed 122 people and caused damage worth around VND1.7 trillion ($73.2 million), according to official figures.

In July 2017, a huge blaze destroyed a confectionery making facility in Hanois outlying district of Hoai Duc, killing eight and seriously injuring two others.
Workers pick up trash from the blackish To Lich River in Hanoi. Photo by VnExpress/Quoc Vuong

Japanese experts have promised the Vietnamese government their bionanotechnology could quickly reduce pollution in Hanois To Lich River.

At a meeting with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi on Thursday, water pollution was among the topics a visiting delegation of Japanese environmental experts discussed.

With a length of about 14 kilometers (8.7 miles), the To Lich runs through the downtown Thanh Xuan, Hoang Mai and Thanh Tri districts. It has been heavily polluted for years and is now infamous for its black water and stench.

Dr Tadashi Yamamura, a U.N. environmental specialist, chairman of Japan's Trade-Environment Promotion Organization and head of the delegation, offered to provide Vietnam bionanotechnology equipment for free to tackle pollution in a section of the river and the capital's largest freshwater body West Lake, which received 4,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater every day.

The equipment, which includes an aerator that employs nanotechnology to quickly treat water using natural materials, will be installed on the bed of the river.

The Japanese experts said the river's stench would reduce significantly within just three days.

Yamamura said Japanese experts had done investigations and surveys for two years to come up with the proposal.

Phuc hailed the proposal as "a good idea, very practical for Vietnam" and appreciated the Japanese side for mobilizing funds for the project from private sources.

He told the visitors to work with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Hanoi government to decide on a plan to clean up the To Lich.

The PM expressed trust that the new technology would be successful in treating wastewater and the polluted water sources in Hanoi as well as elsewhere in the country.

In October 2016, Hanoi started work on a $726 million sewage treatment plant which is expected to finish in three years and be capable of treating 270,000 cubic meters of sewage collected from the Lu, To Lich and Nhue rivers every day.
Two women probed for running surrogacy ring to sell newborns to China

Pham Thi Hue (L) and Ninh Thi Hai Yen at a police office in Ha Long, Quang Ninh Province for running illegal surrogacy ring to sell newborns in China. Photos by VnExpress/N.K.

Police in northern Vietnam are investigating two women who allegedly ran an illegal surrogacy ring which took Vietnamese women to China to deliver babies.

Pham Thi Hue, 35, and Ninh Thi Hai Yen, 31, are being questioned for "organizing surrogacy for commercial purposes."

Hue told investigators that when she was working in China in 2017 she met a man who identified himself only as Yang and as the director of a hospital.

Hue agreed to his proposal to bring women from Vietnam to act as surrogate mothers for VND50-60 million ($2,100-2,500) each plus a VND3-4 million a month to take care of them.

She returned to Vietnam and through social media found 11 women who agreed to go to China with her, including Yen.

It turned out that Yen was incapable of having a baby, but she found five others for Hue.

Between March and October last year Hue took the 15 women to a hospital in Guangzhou Province in China.

In November last year, Yang sent Hue back to Vietnam along with some of the women, who were pregnant by then.

Hue rented a three-story house in Ha Long town in the border province of Quang Ninh for them to stay.

Last month the police raided the apartment and discovered the women. No information has been revealed on how the police tracked them down.

Hue told them she had received VND260 million ($11,216) for the 15 women and had given Yen VND30 million.

It had been agreed that each of the surrogate mothers would get VND300-400 million after delivering the babies.

Police also found out that Yen was involved with another ring and had found five other woman for surrogacy in China and got VND150 million for it.

Vietnam legalized surrogacy since 2015 to benefit infertile couples, but not on a commercial basis and couples can seek help only from family members. Commercial surrogacy is punishable by up to five years in prison.

The countrys first baby born to a surrogate mother was in 2016 in Hanoi. The mother of the girl was unable to conceive after 18 years of marriage due to congenital abnormalities.

Cases of Vietnamese pregnant women being lured to China to sell their newborns are not rare.

China, the worlds most populous country, suffers from one of the most skewed gender rates in the world due to its one-child policy and illegal abortion of female fetuses. This has been a major reason for the trafficking of Vietnamese women and girls over the border, and now, surrogacy.
Trinh Vinh Binh (front) filed a second lawsuit against the Vietnamese government, demanding $1.25 billion in compensation. Photo acquired by VnExpress

The Ministry of Justice says reports about the verdict in a case filed by a Vietnamese-Dutch citizen against the government are inaccurate.

In a release issued Friday, the ministry stated that an arbitration council founded in line with the United Nations Commission on International Trade and Law's (UNCITRAL) arbitration rules had issued a verdict in Trinh Vinh Binh's lawsuit against the Vietnamese government.

However, in accordance with the rules, both parties "have the responsibility to keep the verdict a secret," it said. The ministry also asserted that information on the verdict published on some news sites and social networks "inaccurately reflects the content and includes subjective interpretations and speculation, causing misunderstandings."

To maximally safeguard the interests of the Vietnamese government, the justice ministry is working closely with competent agencies and the representative law firm to take the next steps.

Since Wednesday, a number of online news sites and social networks have been circulating information that Binh had won the lawsuit and that the Vietnamese government would have to pay a large amount of money in compensation.

According to police in the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau, Trinh Vinh Binh and a number of relatives left the country in 1976 and moved to the Netherlands. Between 1981 and August 1996, he returned to Vietnam 63 times, bringing with him a total of over $2.3 million and nearly 100 kilograms of gold.

At this time, Vietnamese law did not allow overseas Vietnamese to own, buy or sell real estate in the country. However, in 1992, Binh and his employees bribed two state officials VND510 million ($44,000 at the time) so his mother and his wife's siblings could receive over 500 hectares (1,200 acres) of forest land.

By the end of 1996, he had acquired nearly 2.5 million square meters (620 acres) of land and 11 houses in Ho Chi Minh City, Vung Tau Town and along National Highway 51.

In 1998, a trial court sentenced Binh to 13 years in prison for "violating regulations on land management and protection" and "offering bribes." The court also voided all of Binh's illegal land transactions and transferred the real estate to local authorities.

An appeals court also upheld the trial court's conclusion that "Binh's illegal land sales and purchases were not considered investments." However it commuted his sentence to 11 years.

Binh, however, did not serve his sentence and returned to the Netherlands.

In 2003, Binh sued the Vietnamese government as an investor and demanded compensation, using provisions of the Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that Vietnam had signed with the Netherlands in 1994 as basis for the lawsuit.

The Vietnamese government in 2006 exempted Binh from serving his jail sentence, allowed him to return to the country and considered returning his legitimate assets to him. However, this task has yet to be carried out due to violations committed by a number of individuals at the judgment enforcement agency that impacted on Binh's assets.

In January 2015, Binh filed a second lawsuit against the Vietnamese government, demanding $1.25 billion in compensation.
Right upper teeth of an individual of the newly identified species Homo luzonensis, found in Callao Cave on Luzon Island, the Philippines, are seen in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters April 10, 2019. Photo handed out via Reuters

13 fossil bones and teeth excavated in a cave in the Philippines represent an enigmatic previously unknown human species.

The species was probably small in stature and possessing an unexpected mix of archaic and modern traits, scientists said on Wednesday.

The discovery of remains of at least three individuals from this species, named Homo luzonensis, in Callao Cave on the northern part of the island of Luzon marked the second time in the 21st century that a bygone member of the human family has been found on southeast Asian islands.

The researchers were unable to extract DNA but did determine that one of the individuals lived 67,000 years ago and the other 50,000 years ago.

In 2003, fossils of another island-dwelling species - Homo floresiensis, dubbed the "Hobbit" due to its diminutive size - were unearthed in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, some 1,800 miles (3,000 km) from the Luzon site. There is no indication the two species interacted or were closely related.

Homo luzonensis was a contemporary not only of the Hobbit but of our own species, Homo sapiens, which emerged in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago.

The scientists said they could not rule out the possibility that the arrival of our species in the region contributed to the demise of Homo luzonensis. The Hobbit also disappeared about 50,000 years ago at the same time Homo sapiens was spreading through the region.

The Luzon and Flores discoveries demonstrate that the story of human evolution is more complicated than previously understood, with Asia offering up surprises, potentially with more to come, the researchers said.

How big were they?

The researchers were circumspect in describing the physical appearance and lifestyle of Homo luzonensis, known only from a sparse assemblage of hand and foot bones, and teeth from two adults and one juvenile, with no skull fossils. Based on tooth size in particular, it appears it might have been much smaller than Homo sapiens, but it is unclear whether it was as little as the Hobbit, which was roughly 3-1/2 feet (1 meter) tall.

"We have to stay cautious about it, especially because people will immediately have Homo floresiensis in mind as a 'model' for the physical appearance of Homo luzonensis, which was certainly not the case," said paleoanthropologist Florent Detroit of the Musee de l'Homme-Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

"We can only speculate but it might be only in the range of a pygmy Homo sapiens," added archaeologist Armand Mijares, leader of the Callao Archaeological Project.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

Based on animal bones with butchering marks found at the site, it appears these people ate meat and may have used stone tools, Detroit said.

The fossils from the seven-chamber cave, situated in the foothills of Luzon's northern Sierra Madre mountains, boasted a combination of anatomical features setting it apart from other human species.

Some characteristics were similar to Homo sapiens as well as the Hobbit. Other traits were so archaic that they resembled Australopithecus, an earlier member of the human evolutionary lineage that died out roughly 2 million years ago, as well as the ancient human species Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

"For years - and until less than 20 years ago - human evolution in Asia was seen as very simple, with Homo erectus going out of Africa, settling in east and southeastAsia, and then nothing happened until the arrival of Homo sapiens at around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and its 'conquest' of every region on Earth," Detroit said.

"With the discoveries made on the field - fossils - and in the lab, for instance genetics, we now know that it was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events, extinctions, et cetera," Detroit added. "Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth."
A Malaysian flag flutters next to a Chinese flag as Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad visits China, at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, August 19, 2018. Photo by Reuters/Stringer

Malaysia and China agreed on Friday to resume construction of a multi-billion dollar rail project, shaving nearly a third of the cost, after months of negotiations.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power after a stunning election victory in May, has vowed to renegotiate or cancel what he calls "unfair" Chinese projects authorised by his predecessor, Najib Razak.

The two sides have agreed to cut the cost of the 688-km (430-mile) rail project to 44 billion ringgit ($10.7 billion) from the original 65.5 billion ($16 billion), Mahathir's office said in a statement.

"This reduction will surely benefit Malaysia and lighten the burden on the country's financial position," it said, adding that more details would be revealed on Monday.

In January, Reuters reported, citing sources, that contractor China Communications Construction Co Ltd (CCCC) had offered to nearly halve the cost to save the project, known as the East Coast Rail Line (ECRL).

In March, Malaysia's representative in the talks, Daim Zainuddin, said they could include commercial elements that would benefit the southeast Asian nation, but he did not elaborate.

Launched in 2017, the project to link Malaysia's east coast on the South China Sea with the busy waterway of the Malacca Strait on the west, has seen costs balloon amid a lack of transparency, threatening to saddle the country with uncomfortably large debt.
Both President Donald Trump and South Korean Moon Jae-in are heavily invested in bringing North Korea out of the cold but the unsuccessful summit in Vietnam was a setback for the two allies that has yet to be resolved. Photo by AFP/Nicholas Kamm

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he is considering a potential third nuclear summit with North Korea's leader.

"We will be discussing that and potential meetings, further meetings with North Korea and Kim Jong-un," Trump said in the Oval Office at the start of talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

A third summit would follow on Trump's historic breakthrough last year, when he met Kim in Singapore, and a follow-up this February in Hanoi that ended without progress in getting North Korea to give up nuclear weapons.

Both Trump and Moon are heavily invested in bringing North Korea out of the cold. But the unsuccessful summit in Vietnam was a setback for the two allies that has yet to be resolved.

At the White House, Trump insisted that a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff remains within reach, and that he continues to place considerable hope in his personal brand of diplomacy.

"I enjoy the summits, I enjoy being with the chairman," he said.

Kim is "a person I've gotten to know very well, and respect and hopefully, and I really believe over a period of time, a lot of tremendous things will happen. I think North Korea has a tremendous potential," Trump said.

The Vietnam summit ended without Trump being able to extract major concessions from Kim on the country's nuclear arsenal or Kim getting the reduction he wanted in heavy economic sanctions brought to pressure him into cooperating.

Despite the sanctions, Trump said Thursday that he supports unspecified South Korean moves to bring humanitarian relief.

"We are discussing certain humanitarian things right now. I'm OK with that, to be honest," he said.

Although the broader sanctions should "remain in place," he said he opposes any further tightening and noted that he had stopped planned new measures.

There was "the option of significantly increasing them..., but I didn't want to do that," he said.

Vietnam fallout

Trump has emerged as an unlikely peacemaker in the Korean peninsula, reversing his initially bellicose approach with a determined effort to put Washington and Pyongyang on a historic path to reconciliation.

But the Hanoi meeting was a letdown. The two leaders cut their talks short, skipping a scheduled final lunch and the expected issuing of a joint statement.

In Washington, that outcome brought Trump praise from Republican legislators who'd worried he would give too much away in pursuit of big headlines.

Trump continues to face criticism that he is out of his depth in talks with Kim, and that sitting down with the dictator has yet to bring much benefit.

But he insists that while he retains an unusually good personal relationship with Kim, he will maintain a tough negotiating line.

"Sometimes, you have to walk," Trump said, slipping into his real estate dealer's lingo, after the Hanoi meeting.

Moon optimistic, Kim unbowed

For Moon, the aftermath has been even more complicated.

In his talks with Trump, he insisted that the summits have produced important results, especially "the dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean peninsula."

"In this sense, I believe that the Hanoi summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement."

But Moon has staked his presidency on concrete engagement with isolated North Korea, pushing for a resumption of South Korean tourism to the North's Mount Kumgang and operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where companies from the South used to be staffed by workers from the North.

Plans to unveil details of such projects on March 1, right after the Hanoi summit, had to be shelved and he is under pressure from opponents on the right. One lawmaker branded him the North Korean's "top spokesman."

Kim himself has used the impasse to speak out against international sanctions and warn in colorful, defiant terms that his country will not bow to pressure.

The state-led economy will "deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring the DPRK to its knees," a state media report quoted him as saying on Thursday, using the acronym for the North's official name.

Shortly after the Hanoi summit, a series of satellite images emerged suggesting increased activity at the North's Sohae rocket site, triggering international alarm that the nuclear-armed state might be preparing a long-range or space launch.
A U.S. V-22 Osprey takes off from the USS Wasp suring amphibious landing exercises as part of the annual joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise. Photo by AFP

A U.S. warship laden with hi-tech fighter planes took center stage at key war games in the Philippines Thursday, brandishing military might as fresh tensions bubble in the contentious South China Sea.

The amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, with at least 10 F-35B stealth jets on deck, stood guard as amphibious tanks rolled onto a Philippine beach located a short sail from islands also claimed by China.

The vessel was in the area for long-running U.S.-Philippine military drills, which come as Manila pushes back against the recent presence of hundreds of Chinese ships near its Pag-asa (Thitu) island.

"We can't disclose the official movements of the USS Wasp for security reasons, but they have been operating in the South China Sea region... as part of the exercise," US spokeswoman Second Lieutenant Tori Sharpe told reporters.

President Rodrigo Duterte had largely set aside the once-tense dispute over China's expansive claims to the resource-rich waterway, but told Beijing last week to back off over the "swarming" Chinese boats.

The Philippines called the boats' presence "illegal" and Duterte threatened China with possible military action if it touches the island.

China claims most of the sea, including waters and islands close to the shores of its neighbours. It has built artificial islands and military installations that the U.S. warned could curtail right of passage by non-Chinese vessels.

The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan have also all staked claims to various islands and reefs in the sea that is thought to have rich petroleum reserves deep beneath its waters. Vietnam has repeatedly asserted its sovereinty rights over the Paracel and Spratly Islands in the region.

The Wasp's participation in the exercises represents "an increase in military capability committed to a free and open Indo-Pacific region," the U.S. navy said in a press release on its arrival last week.

The two-week Balikatan (Shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises, which opened April 1, include some 4,000 Philippine, 3,500 American, and 50 Australian troops.

Duterte had threatened to quit the drills as part of his pivot away from former colonial master the US and toward China, but they have carried on after being toned down for a few years.

As Duterte has adopted a friendlier stance with China, the U.S. has moved to shore up its ties with Manila and assert its presence in the South China Sea.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged in March to come to the Philippines' defence in case of an "armed attack" in the sea, a clear assurance Philippines leaders had long sought.

On Thursday a spokesman from China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs re-asserted Chinas claim to the island chain that includes Pag-asa, and said they had "consistently advocated the settlement of disputes in the South China Sea through negotiations with countries directly involved."

The spokesman added that China-Philippine relations had "undergone transformation, consolidation, improvement, and entered comprehensive strategic cooperative relations."

Duterte has been criticised at home as being too eager to grow ties with Beijing, and giving up too much leverage on the South China Sea issue.

China has been reserved in its comments regarding Manila's recent uptick in assertiveness over the Pag-asa island, saying that it was working with the Philippines and looking into the reports regarding Chinese ships.
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.
Enel X, the Enel Group business line that develops innovative products and digital solutions, has signed an agreement with Bird Rides Italy to promote new solutions for e-scooter sharing in the Italian market.

The partnership will be launched in conjunction with the Rome Formula E race on April 12th and 13th, of which Enel X is Official Smart Charging Partner and Official Power Partner. The first shared electric scooter will arrive in the Eternal City and, on Friday April 12th, thanks to Bird, it will be possible to test the vehicle on the Grand Prix course.

Enel X and Bird have joined forces to bring a sustainable transportation solution to Italy, from the beginning to the end of the journey: all of the public charging points of Enel X will also become "nests" for the Bird scooters, enabling those driving an electric vehicle to park and charge it while continuing their trip on an electric scooter.

To make the system even easier to use, Bird's electric scooters will also be visible on the Enel X Recharge app.

Thanks to an amendment approved in the last Budget Act, Bird's scooters will soon be available in Italy. The rapid expansion of electric scooter sharing services is a response to two very current challenges that cities around the world are facing: traffic and pollution.

Bird is an American company that offers an e-scooter sharing service with the aim of providing an economic and ecological transport alternative for the last mile. Founded in 2017, Bird already operates in over 100 cities in the United States and Europe.

By providing a sustainable solution for the first/last mile of a trip, while improving pedestrian safety and increasing mobility options in areas poorly served by public transport, Bird has all the features to become an integral part of the mobility system of Italian cities, in close collaboration with local governments.

This partnership will create a first- and last-mile transport ecosystem, demonstrating that another way to get around is possible.

How Bird works

Bird is a simple, practical and above all intuitive urban mobility system. To use it you download the free application from the Apple Store or Google Play, locate the nearest electric scooter, scan the code on the handlebar to unlock it and drive it where you want to go.

Once the trip is over, the vehicle should be parked in a safe place that does not obstruct pedestrian or vehicular traffic, like a bicycle parking lot for example. The estimated cost is 1 euro to unlock the scooter and plus a rate per minute. The application can be downloaded by registering at www.bird.co.
The Kathu Solar Park constructed as an EPC project by the engineering and technology group SENER and ACCIONA, was officially inaugurated in the Northern Cape Region, in South Africa. The opening ceremony was hosted by the Northern Cape's Premier, Sylvia Lucas. From SENER, they were present the Group's CEO, Jorge Unda, the Country Manager of SENER in South Africa, Siyabonga Mbanjwa, among other representatives, and, from ACCIONA, the Managing Director of ACCIONA Industrial, Ramon Jimenez, among others.

Kathu Solar Park is a Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Independent Power Producer project currently on commercial operation. Cutting-edge energy generation and storage technology is pumping 100MW into the national grid and providing 179,000 households in the Northern Cape with constant power. Thanks to this dispatchable supply, the plant will prevent the emission of six million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere over the next 20 years.

SENER CEO, Jorge Unda, declared during the inauguration: "We are proud to have contributed to make this clean energy project a reality in South Africa. From SENER, we have contributed with our knowledge in engineering, construction and commissioning, from the experience of our engineers in about thirty solar power plants developed in different parts of the world and, thus, with the best of our technology. Our leadership position in solar thermal power installations, with world-renowned pioneer projects, is a guarantee for the efficiency and profitability of Kathu Solar Park. We have left our mark not only in this project, but also in the local community, through social projects that have benefited nearly 17,000 people."



Ramon Jimenez, Managing Director of ACCIONA Industrial, said, "The Kathu Solar Park project is another example of ACCIONA's commitment to renewable energy.



Construction of this plant has had and will have a major impact on the economy and residents of the Northern Cape region in South Africa. Kathu Solar Park provides the local community with a safe and manageable power supply, helping to offset the effects of climate change. Its construction has been a complete success thanks to the team that worked on the project, as well as the excellent relationship with the local administration, the business sector and with our client Kathu Solar Park."



Kathu Solar Park was one of the projects awarded - on December 15th, 2014 - during bid window 3.5 of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP) by the South African Department of Energy (DoE). The joint venture between SENER and ACCIONA -led by this last company- was appointed by the consortium Kathu Solar Park (led by ENGIE and including a group of South African investors comprising SIOC Community Development Trust, Investec Bank, Lereko Metier Sustainable Capital Fund, its co-investors FMO, the Dutch development bank and DEG, the German investment and development company and the Public Investment Corporation) to provide the engineering, procurement and construction services for the project.
Scatec Solar and partners have grid connected and reached commercial operation for 65 MW of their 400 MW Benban project in Egypt. The Benban solar power plant is Scatec Solar's largest project under construction, and the Company is the largest contributor to the 1.5 GW Benban site - the world's largest solar park.

"We have been a pioneer in Egypt since 2013 and have worked closely with the Government to support implementation of large-scale solar to increase the country's share of renewable energy. Grid connecting our first solar power plant marks a major milestone for us. This is also our first power plant with bi-facial solar panels, capturing the sun from both sides of the panels to increase the total clean energy generation", says Raymond Carlsen, CEO of Scatec Solar.

In April 2017, Scatec Solar with its partners KLP Norfund and Africa 50 signed a 25-year Power Purchase Agreements with the Government of Egypt for delivery of electricity from six solar plants, equal in size, totaling 400 MW. The estimated annual 870 GWh of electricity produced from Scatec Solar's plants in Benban will avoid about 350,000 tons of CO2 emissions per year and provide energy for more than 420,000 households in Egypt. Scatec Solar expects to have completed all six power plants during second half of 2019.

About Scatec Solar

Scatec Solar is an integrated independent solar power producer, delivering affordable, rapidly deployable and sustainable clean energy worldwide. A long- term player, Scatec Solar develops, builds, owns, operates and maintains solar power plants and has an installation track record of more than 1 GW. The company has a total of 1.7 GW in operation and under construction in Argentina, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Jordan, Malaysia, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa and Ukraine.

With an established global presence and a significant project pipeline, the company is targeting a capacity of 3.5 GW in operation and under construction by end of 2021. Scatec Solar is headquartered in Oslo, Norway and listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol 'SSO'. To learn more, visit www.scatecsolar.com.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 the Norwegian Securities Trading Act

Contact:

Mikkel Trud, CFO

Tel: +47 976 99 144
In 1923, a bricklayer named Manuel Guijarro, who was building a cabin for the guard on Marquis Armando de Sotos La Lobita estate, discovered huge, rare stones in an area known as Zancarron, in the municipality of Trigueros (Huelva) in southwestern Spain. After examining the stones for himself, De Soto ordered the site to be excavated and sent a report with the findings to the Royal Academy of History in Madrid.

If it had been located in the United Kingdom, it would already be one of the most-visited tourist sites Mimi Bueno-Ramirez, prehistorian at Alcala de Henares University

Nearly a century later, with the help of modern technology, experts from five Spanish universities and an American one have shed light on the mysterious finding. According to the experts, the stones belong to a 6,000-year-old dolmen that was buried beneath a mound 60 meters in diameter. The stones are decorated with more than 60 drawings of figures carrying axes, staffs and daggers. Many of the figures are represented by geometric red-and-black drawings, set against a white background.

If it had been located in the United Kingdom, for example, it would already be one of the most visited tourist sites. It is simply spectacular, says Mimi Bueno-Ramirez, a professor of prehistory at Alcala de Henares University in Madrid.

The discovery of the prehistoric Altamira cave paintings in Spain, which were only internationally recognized in 1902, drew the attention of some of Europes best archaeologists in the early 20th century. Among the number of experts drawn to Spain in the hopes of finding their own El Dorado was the German prehistorian Hugo Obermaier, who was asked by the Spanish Royal Academy of History to study the stones found on De Sotos property. In 1924, Obermaier published a book that quickly became a benchmark text on one of the most well-known megalithic monuments in European specialized literature, even though it remained largely unknown to the general public.

A drawing of an armed figure with a sword from the Late Bronze Age. Bueno y otros

Three years ago, the universities of Alcala, Huelva, Sevilla, Castilla-La Mancha, UNED (Spains long-distance learning university) and the University of Texas in Austin decided to collaborate together and use more advanced technologies on the monument.

The results indicate that the megalithic complex is covered by a large mound about 60 meters in diameter, and is surrounded by a circle of stones with a diameter of 65 meters. Inside there is gallery made up of 63 stone pillars, a frontal slab and 30 other stones that cover it. An underground passage, measuring 21.5 meters, starts off narrow then widens to three meters in width and height as it reaches the back of the monument. All of the stones are engraved, carved or painted, according to a study in the book Symbols of death in the recent prehistory of southern Europe: the dolmen of Soto, published by the regional government of Andalusia.

They dismantled a previous circle [as happened with Stonehenge in England] and transported it to the interior of the mound. We dont know their reasons, but the most plausible one is that it [the dolmen] was the center of a large necropolis, explains Bueno-Ramirez.

The stones, which were taller than the mound, were broken and chiselled down so they could fit underground. The most striking case is the head stone. It appeared very fragmented near the top, some of the ancient drawings were even cut off. We managed to show that this stone must have been around six meters tall, says Bueno-Ramirez. The dolmen is surrounded by a circle of fragmented stones, and excavations have confirmed that this ring is older than the actual dolmen. Stone supports were extracted from this circle for the underground construction.

Aerial image of the mound over the dolmen. Jose Antonio Linares

Using carbon dating, experts have dated the monument back to the 4th millennium BC. The stones that form the underground passage are decorated with striking red paint, which dates back to the period in which the first stone circle was made. However, when the new dolmen was created, the Neolithic population repainted them and started to draw armed figures.

There is not a single megalithic monument in Europe that has so many armed figures on its walls, says Bueno-Ramirez. Indeed the complex features two rows of painted figures that, according to the prehistorian, are a unique exhibition of drawn weapons. Inside the mound, experts have found a metalworking workshop dating back to 3,000 BC, which indicates that the drawings of the weapons coincided with the discovery of metallurgy.

Another exceptional discovery is the presence of a figure holding a Carps Tongue sword, a type of weapon typical of the Late Bronze Age and of the Tartessos culture. Bueno-Ramirez believes that the more recent inhabitants of the complex were interested in putting their mark on the ancient monument to reinforce their prestige.

Experts have also found human remains. Obermaier discovered eight bodies and their belongings, which he handed over to Marquis De Soto, who took them to the United Kingdom. It is not known where they went from there. It is a pity because they were never able to be analyzed, says Bueno-Ramirez.

English version by Asia London Palomba.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in Seville. alejandro Ruesga

The two-week campaign ahead of the general election of April 28 that began today is going to be an atypical one, with many Spaniards away on their Easter vacation. Everything will come down to the last week, and the candidate debate scheduled for April 23, five days before voters go to the polls, will be a crucial moment in the race.

When Socialist Party (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez decided on Thursday to agree to one single five-way debate  rather than four ways, excluding the far-right Vox  it confirmed what his strategy is going to be.

Only the PSOE can stop these three rights. If they return, the cuts will return

Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez

After much internal discussion, the socialist leader is opting to bring together the heads of the Popular Party (PP), Ciudadanos (Citizens) and Vox, to convince undecided leftist voters that these three right-of-center parties will govern Spain unless there is a strong turnout on April 28. Sanchez wants a new photo of Colon, alluding to a mass protest against his government held in February at Madrids Colon square, and which marked the first and up until now only time that PP and Ciudadanos leaders were pictured together with representatives from the far-right Vox.

Sanchez also wants the political right to be as fractured as possible ahead of the vote. The idea is that if all three parties have similar levels of support, it will be harder for their leader  presumably the PP  to fight the PSOE over key seats in Congress.

Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, who kicked off the campaign in Segovia, showed up in hologram form in Madrid. JuanJo Martin (EFE)

But in a campaign such as this one, with five main contenders  the leftist Podemos being the fifth  and two evenly balanced blocs, nobody can play this game alone. Not even the governing PSOE, which is the favorite in the polls.

The PP has clearly understood this strategy, but its leaders feel that it could ultimately work against the PSOE. They note that giving Vox airtime at the debate could be a fatal mistake. When the left conjures up monsters, the monsters end up devouring the left, said one conservative source about Vox. The PP feels that the Socialists actually helped the far right win 12 seats at the Andalusian elections in December through their rhetoric of fear, and that this five-way debate could do the very same thing at the national level. The PSOE, meanwhile, thinks that Vox is an offshoot of the PP and that the socialists cannot be held responsible for its success.

When the left produces monsters, the monsters end up eating it

PP source

Its clear that the PSOE is seeking to divide our vote to minimize the number of seats that we win. That is why our message to the center-right electorate is that they should optimize their vote, said a source close to PP leader Pablo Casado. In order to be an alternative, we need to concentrate the vote so it will truly mean more seats.

The decision to include Vox in the debate was ultimately taken by Sanchez despite misgivings among some of his top aides. One of the reasons was that it is hard to leave out a party that polls predict will win more than 10% of the vote. Another reason is that PSOE strategists now believe it was a mistake to leave Vox out of the debate during the Andalusian election campaign. Vox won the Andalusian debate without being there, because everyone was talking about them. It was going to be the same here. Better to have them there, and for all Spaniards to see what they say and how the PM responds, said sources close to Sanchez.

PP leader Pablo Casado greeting supporters during his first campaign rally in Madrid. Pablo Blazquez Dominguez (Getty Images)

Only the PSOE can stop these three rights. If they return, the [budget] cuts will return, said Sanchez on Thursday at his first campaign rally in Dos Hermanas (Seville).

Meanwhile, Podemoss recent public statements regarding the cesspit of the State  a reference to an alleged dirty tricks campaign against the left-wing party waged from inside the police force  evidences that the group needs to attack the PSOE in order to reclaim some political ground. Party strategists are still getting their head around the news that Vox will be present at the debate, but what doesnt change is that Pablo Iglesias tone will be increasingly critical against all his rivals, the Socialists included.

Vox leader Santiago Abascal speaks at a rally in Toledo. SERGIO PEREZ (REUTERS)

As for Ciudadanos, they seem to find solace in the blunders made by PP leader Pablo Casado, including his views on the need for more restrictive laws on abortion. The PP has argued that Casado is a newcomer to the frontlines of politics  he became party president in July of last year  and that he is suffering from an overexposure that has pushed him toward excessive risk-taking. But history shows that the PP nearly always catches up in the final stretch of campaigning. They and the other parties have two weeks to take the PSOE out of its comfort zone. No campaign is ever neutral or possible to control  this one least of all.

English version by Susana Urra.
The German government has decided to issue an additional EUR85 million for the construction of premises for internally displaced persons (IDP) and the development of social projects in Donbas, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said.

"The signal in support of our country was the decision of the German government to issue an additional almost EUR 85 million, which, in particular, will be used for the construction of premises for internally displaced persons and the development of social infrastructure in the east of Ukraine!" Poroshenko wrote on Twitter, following a joint briefing with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.
Ukrainian presidential candidates, Volodymyr Zelensky and Petro Poroshenko, have argued about election debates in a phone call aired by the Pravo na Vladu program of the television channel 1+1.

Poroshenko invited Zelensky to the channel's studio. Zelensky called the studio and said he was visiting France at the moment, and Poroshenko was aware of that.

"Petro Oleksiyovych is perfectly aware that I am visiting Paris, France, considering that fine cars of the Ukrainian Security Service have escorted me to the airport. I am meeting with the French president at 3 p.m. tomorrow [on April 12]. So, Mr. Poroshenko knows that I am not in Kyiv, and I am surprised that the esteemed presidential candidate [Petro Oleksiyovych] is inviting me to the 1+1 studio," Zelensky said.

Zelensky reminded the audience that he had invited Poroshenko to attend election debates at the Olympiyskiy Stadium on April 19. "He [Poroshenko] said he was okay with the stadium and accepted the terms. I would like to be called Volodymyr Oleksandrovych or Volodymyr, instead of 'scum', 'addict', etc. Let's say this is still being done, but that's alright, we are ordinary people and do not mind. I am happy to invite [Poroshenko] to the April 19 debates at the Olympiyskiy Stadium," he said.

Poroshenko said he had no interest in Zelensky's travels, and the opponents started talking simultaneously and interrupting each other.

Then, Poroshenko said the Zelensky team was told on Thursday that "it is still possible to hold the debates" on April 14 and he would be waiting for Zelensky at the Olympiyskiy Stadium.

"First of all, no one will be telling our team to do anything. I am finished: [we will meet] at the Olympiyskiy Stadium on the 19th. That's all, goodbye," Zelensky said and ended the call.
Russia's hybrid military forces mounted 20 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas in past 24 hours, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action (KIA) and another eight as wounded in action (WIA), the press service of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) has reported.

"One Ukrainian defender has been killed amid hostilities, eight others have been injured. Not a single enemy shelling was left without an adequate response from the Ukrainian forces," the JFO staff said on Facebook on Friday morning.

In the action zone of the operational-tactical grouping Vostok (East) and Sever (North), Russian occupation forces opened fire from 120mm and 82mm mortars, anti-tank missile systems, weapons installed on infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, and small arms. Under attack were Ukrainian positions near Lebedynske, Pavlopil, Novotroyitske, Novoselivka, Hnutove, Vodiane, Avdiyivka, and Katerynivka.

Nine invaders were killed and another eight were wounded, intelligence report says.

"Since Friday midnight, Russia-led forces have attacked Ukrainian positions near the villages of Pyshchevyk and Chermalyk, using grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns and small arms," the report said.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, during his working visit to Germany, met with chairman of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, and discussed issues on the bilateral agenda.

"The dynamic development of the political dialogue between Ukraine and Germany was noted. Kramp-Karrenbauer praised the transparency of the first round of presidential elections in Ukraine and their compliance with high democratic standards. The two discussed issues on the bilateral agenda, including the situation in the Russia-occupied Donbas and Crimea," the presidential press service said on Friday.

The information indicates that special attention during the meeting was paid to the issue of the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners of war-Ukrainian sailors and political prisoners illegally detained by Russia.
President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, by his decree, dismissed head of the Kherson Regional State Administration Andryi Hordeyev from his post.

"To dismiss Hordeyev Andriy Anatoliyovytch from the post of head of the Kherson Regional State Administration according to the application he submitted," text of decree No. 141/2019, published on the website of the head of state on Friday, says.

By another decree, Poroshenko appointed first deputy head of the Kherson Regional State Administration Dmytro Butriy as acting head of the regional state administration.

"To temporarily entrust the duties of the head of the Kherson Regional State Administration to Butriy Dmytro Stefanovych," text of decree No. 142/2019 of April 12 reads.
Germany wants fair elections in Ukraine, will support Kyiv regardless of result

Germany hopes that the second round of the presidential election in Ukraine will be fair and transparent, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said, adding Berlin will continue supporting Kyiv regardless of who becomes the next president.

"We want and wish a fair, transparent vote in the second round. This is what concerns the presidential elections," she said at a joint briefing with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Berlin on Friday.

Merkel said Germany would help Ukraine develop, regardless of who becomes the next Ukrainian president.

"Regardless of the election result, I want to say that we will work for the positive development of Ukraine," she said.

Merkel said Germany has always supported Ukraine on the path of transformation financially, and also provided support in the process of decentralization.

She said introducing democratic changes, reacting anti-corruption institutions is a difficult process and Ukraine has done a lot, but "this is not the end of the road."

Merkel said recognition by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) of the first round of the presidential elections as fair and transparent was a big step on the path to implementing reforms, adding that the criticism regarding the election should be taken seriously.
The future of Ukraine is as a country governed by parliamentary-presidential rule, where parliament with the government will be responsible for everything that happens in the country, second president of independent Ukraine Leonid Kuchma has said.

"I don't quite understand why the Fundamental Law of Ukraine  the Constitution  is not being followed today. According to the Constitution, we have a parliamentary-presidential model. Do you probably remember our latest Maidan? One of the slogans was "Down with the 1996 Constitution," which Yanukovych returned to in an incomplete legal way. So, we went back to the parliamentary-presidential model. Why are we not following it? The future is the parliamentary-presidential model, according to which parliament and government are responsible for what happens in Ukraine. So, you see today: there is a parliament, but it's not there," Kuchma told reporters in Dnipro on Friday, answering a question about whether parliament will become more influential after the elections in Ukraine.

Commenting on the issue of the second round of the presidential election, Kuchma said that everyone should make a decision personally.

"We see what is happening in Ukraine today. We can objectively analyze the previous five years. And most importantly, we hope that tomorrow will be much better than today. I think that tomorrow will really be better. I am looking at the sociological [survey] results you are putting out today. Probably, that's the way things will turn out in the second round of the presidential election," he said.
On Tuesday, April 16, at 11.30, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference entitled "Noosphere Space Summit: the international conference on trends in the space industry, Ukraine's place in this field and the problems of 'space' legislation." Participants: the co-founder, the head of the public organization Noosphere association, organizer of the conference Mykhailo Riabokon, cosmonaut of the National Space Agency of Ukraine Yaroslav Pustovoy, director for legal affairs at the Noosphere association Yuriy Zabiyaka, business development director at Firefly Aerospace John Isella (8/5a Reitarska Street). Registration requires press accreditation. For exclusive interviews and additional information about Noosphere Space Summit, please call by phone: +38 097 551 2039 (Hanna).
The unprecedented floods that have devastated large parts of Iran since March 19 have finally affected its oil production.

The oil-producing Khuzestan province in the southwest has seen waves of floods, with the latest inundation the result of maximum outflows from two large dams that have reached full capacity.

Karim Zobaydi a member of Irans National Oil Company told the governments official news agency IRNA that oil production in some fields has come to a halt due to flooding.

Zobaydi said that oil wells have been flooded in Ab Teymour, Mansouri and Azadegan fields and in area 3 of Ahvaz some oil delivery pipes and wells have also been damaged by floods.

Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan province and has seen late floods in recent days due to excess water let out of dams further north.

The areas mentioned by the oil company official generally lie to the west of Karoon River. The area produces 350,000 barrels of oil per day.

Although the reduction in oil production is a significant setback, especially if the flooding leaves a long-term impact, Iran currently is unable to export at full capacity due to U.S. sanctions and can use its excess production capacity to satisfy domestic needs.
Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has refuted reports that allege the Oil Ministry has diverted flood water in Khuzestan province to protect oil wells in the area, causing damages to cities and villages.

Meanwhile, a board member of the National Iranian oil company previously told the official news agency IRNA that production has come to a halt at some oil fields in the province. But the oil minister said on Friday that oil production continues as usual and Iran will meet all its commitments to the market. But Zanganeh admitted some oil pipelines have been emptied to prevent spillage.

From the totality of fragmented reports it is clear that a measure of disruption has taken place in Irans oil production.

Entekhab news website, close to the Rouhani administration, on its Twitter page quoted Zanganeh as saying, "We won't endanger people's lives for a few barrels of oil. No decent individual would cause damages to the people, even for thousands of barrels of oil."

He added: "All of our oil installations in the Hour al-Azim wetlands have been encircled by flood water. There is no place in the area where there is no water."

The area in question normally produces more than 300,000 barrels per day.

Meanwhile, IRNA reported on Friday April 12 that "oil output has been reduced in some regions in order to protect the lives of flood-hit people" in the heavily affected oil-rich Khuzestan Province in southwestern Iran.

IRNA quoted Zanganeh as having said during his visit to Khuzestan that "Counter-revolutionaries have been spreading the rumor alleging that the Oil Ministry has prevented the flow of water into the oil installations" by diverting flood water into residential areas.

He stressed that all parts of the province are flooded and that the Oil Ministry and its officials have never meant to do any harm to the people.

He also emphasized that the Oil Ministry has tried to prevent contamination of flood water with oil as that would cause even more problems for the people and the environment.

Social media as well as some traditional media including newspapers reported during the week that people living near Hour al-Azim wetlands have been complaining that private oil companies have diverted flood water from the wetland into residential areas to protect their installations in the area.

Sharq newspaper reported that "Social media users have been talking about the National Iranian Oil Company's attempts to prevent the flow of water into the oil fields in Hour al-Azim wetlands, but officials say they did not divert the flow of floodwater"

Sharq quoted several officials of the oil companies as having denied the rumors about diverting floodwater from Hour al-Azim. They also denied the reports that say oil installations have been damaged.

The officials said floodwater has damaged the roads to the oil wells and reservoirs. The roads are submerged and some of the wells have been shut down for safety reasons. "Three wells in the Southern Azadegan and Northern Yaran areas have also been shut down for the same reason. They can currently be reached only by boat," said one official.

"Access routes to the wells and dikes have been extensively damaged because of overflow of water and high winds that have been creating waves in the Hour al-Azim," he added. Khouzestan Province Governor-General Gholamreza Shariati confirmed the same in his interview with IRNA on Friday, adding that a dike was broken to divert the excess water toward Iraq.

Other officials told Sharq, "All of the branches of river Karkheh that were coming from highlands are running into the Hour al-Azim in their full capacity as usual."

The problem, according to Iranian media, is caused by the overflowing of Karkheh Dam and the running of floodwater toward the cities and the Hour al-Azim, a vast wetland that hosts oil fields shared by Iran and Iraq.

The extent of denials about the Iranian Oil Ministry not being involved in diverting water to save its installations is unusual. The officials however, have been trying to do at least two things: Telling the oil market and the rest of the world that it is business as usual in the Oil Ministry and oil output is not affected by floods, and trying to avert the hostile attitude of local people who blame the Oil Ministry and the Iranian government in general for losses and damages they have sustained during three weeks of torrential rains and floods.

The governor-general said, "in an unusual occurrence, the water from Karkheh joined the flood coming from the river Dez, causing massive floods in Ahwaz."

In the absence of reliable news on domestic media, most people, nearly half the population, turn to social media for news according to official estimates. Iranian government, which is used to controlling media, has virtually no control over the content of social media.

The governments blocking efforts are easily circumvented by using anti-filter software. Subsequently, when the news on social media do not concur with the party line and official media, regime insiders such as Zanganeh call them counter-revolutionary; an outdated jargon that is not likely to change the minds of the people about the unreliability of state-controlled media.
The enraged flood-stricken residents in Ain 2 district of Ahvaz, the capital city of the oil-rich Khuzestan province poured into the street on Friday, April 12, to protest government's handling of floods and its failure to divert water into Hour Al-Azim marshes, reports on social media say.

Footage and images circulated on social media show hundreds of anti-riot forces deployed in the district. It is not clear if there were any incidents or not. The residents are calling for the diversion of the threatening floods toward the marshes, away from towns and villages.

In the past two days, many on social media have accused the Islamic Republic's Ministry of Oil of blocking the flood from flowing into Hour al-Azim marshes to protect oil facilities and installations from damage.

However, the Minister of Oil, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh has categorically denied the charges.

In this tweet the first video shows a large crowd in Ain 2 district of Ahvaz protesting.

Days earlier, images on social media showed violent clashes between the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Special units and people who either refuse to evacuate or protest diversion of water to farmlands.

IRGC's spokesman, Ramazan Sharif dismissed these reports as baseless, asserting that the Special Unit forces only use verbal persuasion to urge people to evacuate their homes.

One resident was reported killed and other injured.

Fars said authorities tried to persuade the villagers to evacuate their homes and allow the destruction of a flood barrier in return for compensation. It also said the barrier was removed later in the day.
Radio Farda, Brussels - The era of the U.S.-Europe dispute over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers is over, says an American diplomat, adding, "EU's new proposal (Special Purpose Vehicle or SPV) for trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran is nothing, but a paper tiger."

In a meeting on Thursday, April 11, in Brussels, the U.S. Representative to the EU, Gordon Sondland, described Washington-EU talks in recent months as "highly constructive."

The talks, regardless of the U.S. presence or absence in JCPOA, were focused on what (the West) really wants from Tehran.

"We are working constructively with Europe on the substance of what it is we want from Iran not the form of whether we're in an agreement or out of an agreement," Gordon Sondland asserted.

Washington has set several conditions for re-joining JCPOA, including a halt to Tehran's missile program, ending its interference in the Syrian conflict and Yemen civil war, as well as terminating its support for the Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas.

Although Europe is insisting on keeping JCPOA alive, it has repeatedly raised its concerns over the Islamic Republic's missile program, as well as Tehran's role in the Middle East.

As recently as last January France's Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Iran needed to address international concerns over its ballistic missile program, or risk new sanctions.

"We are ready, if the talks don't yield results, to apply sanctions firmly, and they know it," Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters January 25.

Furthermore, Britain, France and Germany "accused Iran" on April 4, of "developing missile technology in violation of UN resolution," and called for a full UN report in a letter delivered to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The EU trio, that are a party to JCPOA, also said that Irans launch of a space vehicle and unveiling of two new ballistic missiles in February are part of a "trend of increased activity inconsistent" with UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which was adopted just after the signing of the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Resolution 2231 calls on Iran "not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons."

Britain, France, and Germany, who remain a party to the nuclear deal, asked Guterres to "report fully and thoroughly on Iranian ballistic missile activity" during his next June report.

In the meantime, the EU trio is still working on an SPV to assist Tehran to continue its trade deals, despite the U.S. sanctions.

Nevertheless, Sondland, believes that the trio's new proposal is nothing, but a paper tiger.

" The SPVs are Europe's attempt to appease Iran by showing that they are still trying their very best to facilitate proper transfers of payments to Iran. We believe that those SPVs are really nothing more than, and I've said it before, a paper tiger."

In the meantime, Gordon Sondlant stressed, "Any business that is doing business with Iran can do business with Iran, and they can also do business with the United States, but they can't do business with both. So, they have to pick."

Moreover, according to Sondalnd, most small and large European companies, he has talked to, have pointed out that they are not interested in using the new EU SPV, labeled as INSTEX.

France, Germany and the UK set up INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges) on January 31, 2019, following the U.S. withdrawal from the deal with Iran in 2018, to help Tehran with limited trade despite U.S. sanctions. Iran has also set up its own parallel mechanism, the Special Trade, and Finance Institute (STFI). The two trade vehicles are planned to work in tandem, avoiding the use of the U.S. dollar and traditional banking transactions.

However, the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly called INSTEX a "meaningless" measure and "a bitter joke," adding that "Europeans should have stood up to the U.S. after it left the JCPOA and should have lifted all sanctions against Iran."

Khamenei characterized Western politicians as "savages in the real sense of the word."

Dismissing the new EU initiative, Khamenei, who has the last word in all political affairs in the country, insisted that Europe has practically pulled out of the nuclear agreement with Iran, and he expects only "backstabbing and treason" from Western European countries.
The foreign and Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom has updated its travel advice for UK citizens and dual nationals traveling to Iran.

The update includes information and advice about current period of heavy rainfall and flooding across Iran.

The FCO advised all British nationals against all travel to areas within 100km of the entire Iran/Afghanistan border, those within 10km of the entire Iran/Iraq border, as well as the province of Sistan-Baluchistan and the area east of the line running from Bam to Jask, including the city of Bam.

The FCO in its update, advised British-Iranian dual nationals against all but essential travel to the rest of Iran.

The FCO warned: " There is a risk that British nationals, and a higher risk that British/Iranian dual nationals, could be arbitrarily detained in Iran. All British nationals should consider carefully the risks of traveling to Iran. The Iranian authorities dont recognize dual nationality for Iranian citizens and therefore dont grant consular access for FCO officials to visit them in detention. If youre a British-Iranian dual national and are subsequently detained in Iran, the FCOs ability to provide consular support is extremely limited."

Travelers to Iran have also been warned about the consequences of recent extreme weather across Iran and have been advised to continue to monitor local and international weather updates .

Additionally,

Travelers and dual nationals are also advised "to exercise caution and avoid any protests or rallies and follow the instructions of the local authorities."

Several dual nationals including some with British-Iranian nationality are in jail in Iran for reasons that have not convinced the international community and the media.

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a dual national, was jailed for five years in 2016 on spying charges, which she denies.

The FCO travel advice reminds travelers to Iran, "You should respect local traditions, customs, laws and religions at all times and be aware of your actions to ensure that they do not offend."
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 24 times, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry said April 12, 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, April 12

Trend:

Azerbaijan is a peace-loving country, a country where stability has been restored, but it will never reconcile with occupation, Culture Minister Abulfas Garayev said in an interview with Bouziane Ahmed Khodja, director and host of the Medina En TVE program of Spains state TV, who is on a visit to Azerbaijan, Trend reports with reference to Azerbaijans Culture Ministry.

In the interview, the minister spoke about the Armenian military aggression against Azerbaijan, the essence of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, occupation of 20 percent of the Azerbaijani territories, adding that the cultural and historical monuments of Azerbaijan were destroyed and looted.

The minister stressed that Azerbaijan is a tolerant country, where nations belonging to different religions live in peace and harmony, and Azerbaijans model of tolerance is considered an example for the Muslim world.

Garayev reminded that numerous international conferences and forums on this topic are held in Azerbaijan, and the 5th World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue will be held in Baku on May 2-3 this year, and the 43rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee will be held June 30-July 10.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

Trend:

A working meeting dedicated to Exchange of experience in financial support of the armed forces was held in Baku according to the plan of cooperation for 2019 between the Azerbaijani and Russian Defense Ministries, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry on April 12.

During the event, officials and specialists of the Defense Ministries of both countries responsible for finance and budget delivered speeches, as well as exchanged views and made proposals for the application of best practices.
Details added (first version posted on 14:21)

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

Trend:

Relations between Azerbaijan and the UK serve as an example for European countries, Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov said,Trend reports.

He was speaking at the presentation of a book titled Azerbaijan and the United Kingdom 100 Years of Partnership.

He noted that the history of cooperation, which covers all areas, ranging from diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and the UK, to economic, political and trade relations, is measured in a century.

If systemic ties are concerned, we can celebrate the 100th anniversary of these relations, he said. However, relations between Azerbaijan and the UK, according to historical data, are recorded in the annals of about 16-17th centuries. History shows that Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, sent a letter with her envoy to Shah Tahmasp I of the Safavid dynasty. Thus, diplomatic and economic relations were established between England and the Safavids.

Hasanov noted that during the years of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), the governor-general of the UK often came from Tbilisi to Baku and regulated further political, economic relations with Azerbaijan, and the UK actually recognized the ADR.

In the subsequent period, not Azerbaijani-British relations, but the relations between the UK and the USSR were established in the subsequent period following the fall of the ADR, Hasanov said. The period of Azerbaijans independence covers a wide range of relations between the two countries.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Matanat Nasibova  Trend:

A round table discussion on the security problems of the South Caucasus and the countries of the Caspian region was held at the press center of Trend News Agency.

The event was organized by the North-South political center under moderation of Anzhelika Trapeznikova, the executive director of North-South, and Gulnara Mammadzade, the head of the Caspian Expert Club.

In a welcoming speech, the moderators of the round table noted the importance of holding a meeting for forming an expert dialogue of Caspian littoral states, as well as the prospects for further cooperation, particularly in the field of security.

Speaking at the event, Azerbaijani MP Rasim Musabayov drew the attention of the round table participants to the qualitative changes that occurred in the context of regional security, including that of the Caspian Sea.

According to him, cooperation going beyond the frames of the partnership of the littoral states and beyond the Caspian region is necessary for neutralizing risks and threats in the region and in the Caspian Sea.

Musabayov noted that, as of today, this kind of a tight cooperation exists between Russia and Azerbaijan. The two countries hold joint military exercises aimed at neutralizing terrorist threats, exchange experience and information, and law enforcement agencies of the two countries closely cooperate in the area of security  all of which allow for the preservation of security.

Touching on the issues of Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation in the context of the new challenges for the Caspian region, the roundtable participant Stanislav Chernyavsky, Director of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, noted certain positive trends with regards to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Chernyavsky spoke positively about the past meeting of the parties in Vienna in March of this year, noting that there was an intensification of regular contacts between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, including the participation of the Russian side.

While breaking down the topic of the development of North-South, East-West and South-West transport corridors, stating that they are a condition for ensuring the security of the Caspian region, Azerbaijani political scientist Ilgar Velizade said that the economic aspect is one of the foundations that motivates the security of the Caspian region today.

Thanks to the implemented projects, a new logistic map of the region is being formed, and all regional players show great interest in making use of these logistics, which is an incentive for security, according to him.

Velizade noted that the southern regions of Russia are actively using the infrastructure that is being built in the South Caucasus, which ensures the development of economic ties between Russia and Azerbaijan.

According to him, some experts often misinterpret the events occurring in the region, while comprehending the interdependence of the countries  in this case, Russia and Azerbaijan depends on correct assessment and analysis by experts and the media.

Touching on the signing of the Constitution of the Caspian Sea in the context of ensuring regional security in the South Caucasus, Konstantin Kurylev, Doctor of History at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations of Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, said that this convention is of serious importance not only from a regional, but also from a global standpoint, as it creates conditions for ensuring stability and security in the Caspian.

According to the Russian expert, this will significantly strengthen the position of Azerbaijan in the region, as it provides an opportunity for increasing the volume of international cargo transportation, as well as increasing interest in the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport corridor.

According to Kurylev, the Caspian Convention is important for Baku not only from an economic, but also from a political standpoint.

While addressing the issue of regional conflicts and security in the South Caucasus, Elkhan Alasgarov, PhD, head of the Expert Council of the Baku Network, said that the most important condition for ensuring stability and security in the South Caucasus is the settlement of the years-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

According to the political analyst, two blocs formed in the South Caucasus that influence the situation in the region - these are the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and NATO.

NATOs presence in the South Caucasus is gradually expanding, and this became obvious after the CSTOs prestige decreased in connection with the scandal over Secretary-General Khachaturovs resignation. As for the situation in Armenia, the pro-Western element clearly strengthened with the rise of a new government in the country. Nevertheless, a favorable situation is emerging today for the resolution of the conflict, since the level of external threats and risks has been reduced. For example, the spread of terrorism in Syria has been prevented, the level of risks and threats with respect to Iran has been reduced, and I believe that, in this situation, the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should become a priority in the South Caucasus. In my opinion, the future of the South Caucasus without a resolution of this problem seems obscure, Alasgarov said.

Furthermore, in the context of deepening economic relations between Azerbaijan and Russia in light of the formation of a new technological structure in the world economy and economic security, deputy director of the Russian School of Economics Professor Elshad Mammadov emphasized that there has been a fairly high level of volatility in the world economy in recent years. At present, the world economy is moving to the stage of forming a new, sixth technological order, and the geography of centers of activity and the structural component of economic development are changing.

Mammadov noted that one of the key points in the sphere of cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan is the positive dynamics in trade, and  from the point of view of the development of the Azerbaijani non-oil sector, and taking into account the fact that Azerbaijan is implementing a policy of diversification of the economy  Russia is deemed a priority direction.

In the near future, it is necessary for Russia and Azerbaijan to implement investment programs, switch to mutual settlements in national currencies, and also increase the degree of technological cooperation between business entities, according to him.

Issues regarding information security were raised by Tofig Abbasov, Senior Advisor of the Baku International Multiculturalism Center, who noted that Azerbaijan and Russia need to work out mechanisms of complementarity so that there are no problems in this direction.

In conclusion, the roundtable participants discussed the problem of terrorist threats in the Caspian and South Caucasus, as well as the risks associated with the transport of narcotic drugs to the Caspian states.

Speaking on this topic, expert on national security issues Kamil Salimov noted that the threat of drugs in the South Caucasus and in the Caspian countries tends to grow.

According to him, this is largely due to the fact that the tactics, strategy and methods of delivering drugs by land and sea are changing.

Salimov emphasized the fact that terrorist threats against the region have become more frequent since the beginning of Armenias occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

Summing up the event, Gulnara Mammadzade, moderator of the round table and head of the Caspian Expert Club, noted the importance of holding such expert meetings, which create a platform for discussions on global issues and issues of the international agenda.

The expert noted that all these pressing issues need to be discussed and analyzed in order to transmit an objective and competent opinion to the public.

Follow the author on Twitter: @MatanatNasibova
Details added (first version posted on 14:21)

Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:

Relations between Azerbaijan and the UK serve as an example for European countries, Azerbaijani President`s Assistant for Public and Political Affairs Ali Hasanov said, Trend reports.

He was speaking at the presentation of a book titled Azerbaijan and the United Kingdom 100 Years of Partnership.

He noted that the history of cooperation, which covers all areas, ranging from diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and the UK, to economic, political and trade relations, is measured in a century.

If systemic ties are concerned, we can celebrate the 100th anniversary of these relations, he said. However, relations between Azerbaijan and the UK, according to historical data, are recorded in the annals of about 16-17th centuries. History shows that Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Ireland, sent a letter with her envoy to Shah Tahmasp I of the Safavid dynasty. Thus, diplomatic and economic relations were established between England and the Safavids.

Hasanov noted that during the years of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), the governor-general of the UK often came from Tbilisi to Baku and regulated further political, economic relations with Azerbaijan, and the UK actually recognized the ADR.

In the subsequent period, not Azerbaijani-British relations, but the relations between the UK and the USSR were established in the subsequent period following the fall of the ADR, Hasanov said. The period of Azerbaijans independence covers a wide range of relations between the two countries.

The UK ambassador was the first ambassador accepted by national leader Heydar Aliyev, who returned to power in Azerbaijan in June 1993, Hasanov noted. At the end of July of the same year, an extended meeting took place between the British ambassador and Heydar Aliyev.

Hasanov added that the UK then chaired the UN Security Council, and the adoption of the UN Security Council Resolution No. 853 took place at the direct initiative of the UK during its chairmanship.

When looking at the four resolutions of the UN Security Council on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, one can see that the resolution No. 853 in the most precise formulations requires the unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian occupying forces from the occupied Azerbaijani territories, he said.

Hasanov noted that after this, in the true sense of this word, a period of creating a new history started in Azerbaijan.

BP is a foreign company that has invested the greatest amount of investments in the energy sector of Azerbaijan, he said. BP played an important role in raising relations between Azerbaijan and the UK to a strategic level. Today, the UK is the biggest partner of Azerbaijan in Europe. The two countries established strategic relations in all spheres, and todays relations in the economy, political, social and other spheres serve as an example and standard for the European countries.

We think that the UK will continue to play the role that it has played before in the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, will support the recognition of Azerbaijans fair position in the international arena, the liberation of the occupied territories, the return of more than one million Azerbaijani refugees and IDPs to their native lands, he added.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

Trend:

Russian-Azerbaijani relations are mutually beneficial, built on mutual respect, friendship and mutual consideration of interests, Chairperson of Federation Council of Russias Federal Assembly Valentina Matviyenko told reporters in Baku April 12, Trend reports.

Last September, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made an official visit to Russia, she said. This is an important event in our bilateral relations. During this visit, 15 important documents were signed, which created the prospect for expanding our cooperation until 2024. It is important that the Russian-Azerbaijani ties are mutually beneficial, based on mutual respect, friendship and mutual consideration of interests. This creates exemplary mutually beneficial partnership relations for other states that have reached the level of strategic partners.

Speaking about the development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia in the humanitarian sphere, Matviyenko noted that First Vice-President of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation led by her make huge contribution to the development of relations in this sphere.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

Trend:

Germanys AS+P company will develop the general plan of Baku, Trend reports referring to the State Committee for City Building and Architecture of Azerbaijan.

The company became the winner of a tender announced in late 2018. More than 20 major international urban planning firms participated in the tender along with AS+P.

Established in 1964, AS+P is located in Frankfurt, and to this day has developed over 2,000 projects in various parts of the world.

Thus, the State Committee for City Building and Architecture, together with the German partner, proceeds to the second stage of development, during which the project preparation process will be coordinated with the Baku City Development Concept, developed by the State Committee at the first stage, together with the Boston Consulting Group, a leading international company.

The final general plan will be submitted for approval to the government of Azerbaijan in late 2020. According to the legislation, the general plan is a document which defines the types and norms of the usage of all the land within the city limits, and all structures that will take part in the development of Baku will be obliged to strictly follow its provisions in the next 20 years.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Kheyraddin Nasirzade - Trend:

Azerbaijans Sumgait Technologies Park (STP) LLC has started exporting a big cargo of high-capacity power cables to Kazakhstan, Trend reports with reference to the companys message.

Six tent semi-trailers with cargo are already on their way, according to the message. Also, under the contract, 77 tent semi-trailers containing reinforced and other types of cables worth $5 million will be sent to Kazakhstan.

The contract was concluded with Aktogay mining and processing plant, which is expanding its production.

By the end of the year, the STP will conclude additional 3 contracts with the Kazakh plant worth $7 million.

Export contracts have been also signed for the supply of cable products to Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

STP produces high-voltage cables, designed for voltage of 220, 330 and 500 kilovolts. STP is the biggest company implementing new infrastructure projects in the electric power industry of Azerbaijan.

STP, on the basis of modern technologies, manufactures products of the electric power industry and mechanical engineering, in particular, a wide range of different types of cables, transformers, high-voltage equipment, hydroturbines, water pumps, electric motors, pipes and technical gases is produced.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Kheyraddin Nasirzade - Trend:

Since the beginning of 2019, Azerbaijans Entrepreneurship Development Fund has provided businessmen with preferential loans worth 24.7 million manats to finance 183 investment projects worth 88 million manats, Deputy Chairman of the Board of the Fund Samir Humbatov said.

He was speaking at a business meeting as part of the business forum held in Masalli city, Trend reports with reference to the Economy Ministry.

He noted that the implementation of these investment projects will create conditions for the opening of more than 870 jobs.

Further, speaking of the work done, he added noted that on the whole, 3,400 entrepreneurs of the Lankaran economic region have so far received preferential loans worth 123.6 million manats for the implementation of various investment projects.

During the meeting as part of the forum, 31 entrepreneurs of the Lankaran economic region received preferential loans worth 719,000 manats. The loans will be used to finance such industries as livestock, poultry, agriculture, bread production, tourism and other sectors of the economy.

For the development of tea production, in general, preferential loans worth 10.3 million manats have been allocated so far.

Azerbaijans Entrepreneurship Development Fund was established under the Ministry of Economy of Azerbaijan in 1992.

(1.7 manats = 1 USD on April 12)
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Matanat Nasibova - Trend:

Azerbaijani construction company AzVIRT will begin road construction in Ukraine in May 2019, a source at the company told Trend.

The project costs 130 million euros and will be implemented in three phases, the source noted.

"All earthwork will be completed by the end of April, after which there will be full readiness for laying the road with a total length of 80 km," the source said.

AzVirt company is one of the well-known road construction contractors in Azerbaijan and is engaged in the construction of roads, runways, airports.

Besides the construction and design of roads and big facilities, the company is engaged in the production of building materials, including asphalt concrete mixtures, activated mineral powder.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Azerbaijan and China have still more to do to promote bilateral trade, Hikmat Hajiyev, head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration told China Daily, Trend reports.

"Bilateral relations of the two countries, from high-level political dialogue, economic and trade cooperation, to energy, education, culture and humanitarian spheres are developing," Hajiyev said

The country has had extensive discussions about exporting Azerbaijan agricultural products to China, Hajiyev said, adding Azerbaijani companies are actively taking part in food and agricultural exhibitions in China to promote their products, as the Chinese market is the one of the biggest markets in the world with immense opportunities.

Azerbaijan sent a delegation to the first China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November. "This kind of expo is extremely important, and provides a chance for Azerbaijan to reach out to the Chinese market and establish contact with Chinese companies," Hajiyev said, adding last year's event was extremely helpful to Azerbaijan and helped traders to understand the requirements and demands of the Chinese market.

Hajiyev believes there is still more to do to promote bilateral trade, as the two countries have very good relations.

Companies from the two countries are engaged in projects for the petrochemical industry, and the two countries can touch upon other strategic areas such as energy and communication, he added.

Hajiyev also noted multilateralism should be further promoted in free trade. Good governance, trust, peace and cooperation should be promoted at an international level, he said.

"Data from 2018 shows 15,000 Chinese tourists visited Azerbaijan last year, which is not enough of course, and we aim to do more to attract more visitors in the coming years," Hajiyev said.

He also highlighted education exchanges between the two countries, as China has sent students to study language in Azerbaijan and vice-versa. "We are looking forward to increase the number of (students) because we see they can play the role of a humanitarian bridge between our countries."

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Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Fakhri Vakilov  Trend:

President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev will visit Uzbekistan on a two-day state visit on April 14, Trend reports with reference to the press service of president of Uzbekistan.

This will be the first meeting of the two heads of state after Kasym-Zhomart Tokayev took office as president.

"In the course of the planned negotiations in narrow and extended formats, prospects for further strengthening bilateral relations of friendship, good neighborliness and strategic partnership will be discussed. Furthermore, priority areas for cooperation in the political, trade-economic, investment, transport and communication, cultural, humanitarian and other fields will be discussed as well," press service of the head of Uzbekistan noted.

The trade turnover for 2018 between two countries increased by more than 40 percent compared to 2017 and amounted to $2,1 billion.

The presidents will exchange views on deepening regional cooperation and key international issues.

It is planned to adopt a Joint Statement of the Heads of State, as well as to sign a package of bilateral documents aimed at developing multidimensional relations between the two countries.

The presidents will also take part in the official opening of the Year of Kazakhstan in Uzbekistan, which will begin with a concert of Kazakhstani artists and will be a logical continuation of the successfully completed Year of Uzbekistan in the fraternal neighboring country.

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Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Matanat Nasibova  Trend:

Azerbaijani producer of alcoholic beverages, Naiqin-K Tovuz-Baltiya LLC, intends to export the products to China in the second half of 2019, the company told Trend.

"On average, one consignment of the products intended for export reached 20 tons of alcoholic beverages, the company said. The biggest volume of export accounts for the markets of Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic countries. The company intends to establish stable supplies to the Polish and German markets. The corresponding negotiations with European partners have intensified."

The grape and fruit wines, brandy and fruit liqueurs are produced in the company.

The products have a certificate of conformity issued by the Azerbaijani State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patents.

The company is using Italian, French and German equipment.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Fakhri Vakilov  Trend:

The aviation authorities of Georgia and Uzbekistan have successfully completed negotiations on the start of air links between the countries, Trend reports via Uzbek media.

From July 16, Uzbekistan Airways will launch Tashkent-Tbilisi flights to Tbilisi International Airport.

In the summer season, flights will be operated twice a week: on Tuesday and on Sunday.

Regular flights will be operated by the Airbus A320 airliner.

Back in early February, Tashkent hosted the 11th round of political consultations between the Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan and Georgia.

Direct flights between the two countries have been absent after the collapse of the USSR.

Today, flights are carried out through third countries and the minimum travel time from Tashkent to Tbilisi is more than eight hours.

In this regard, the Uzbek side raised with the Georgian delegation the question of the possible provision of the Fifth Air Freedom to the Uzbek airline.

The fifth degree of freedom gives airlines flying between two countries the right to take on board new passengers and cargo to be transported to a third country.

In the first quarter of this year, the increase in number of visits from Uzbekistan to Georgia broke a record.

From January to March, the citizens of Uzbekistan visited Georgia more than 4,500 times, which is 279.4 percent more compared to the same figures for 2018.

Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

UK EXPRO international oilfield service company is looking at expanding its core services within three key areas in Azerbaijan, the company told Trend.

These are the well test and appraisal services, subsea, completion and intervention services and production services, said EXPRO.

"We are in regular contact with our existing and potential clients on ways that we can support their future business activities in Azerbaijan," said the UK company.

EXPRO said it continues to maintain its LTI ( lost time incident) free record which currently stands at 11 years.

EXPRO has had a presence in the Caspian region since 2007, when it was awarded a contract to supply completion landing strings for Azerbaijan's Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli block of fields.

In 2014, EXPRO was awarded the contract to build landing strings for Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2. These are designed to ensure the highest standards of safety and reliability for the most challenging deepwater market conditions.

In November 2018, EXPRO won a four-year contract extension for BPs Shah Deniz Stage 2 project.

The Shah Deniz Stage 2 project is set to bring gas directly from Azerbaijan to Europe for the first time, opening up the Southern Gas Corridor.

In total 16 billion cubic meters a year of Shah Deniz Stage 2 gas will be delivered through more than 3500 kilometers of pipelines through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Albania and under the Adriatic Sea to Italy.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

SOCAR Trading, the trading house of the Azerbaijans state oil company SOCAR, will ink a long-term contact, envisaging supply of more than 1 million tons of oil products per year to Pakistan, SOCAR spokesperson Ibrahim Ahmadov told Trend.

A credit line will be provided for the initial batch of products worth $100 million. As a result, SOCAR becomes the second long-term supplier of oil and oil products to Pakistan, he said.

Earlier, Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet of Pakistan approved the fuel supply agreement with SOCAR.

Committee accorded approval to a proposal of Ministry of Petroleum regarding Fuel Supply Agreement between Pakistan State Oil (PSO) and State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), Pakistani media reported.

Federal Minister for Petroleum of Pakistan Ghulam Sarwar Khan has earlier said that Petroleum Division will try its best to get this agreement ratified from Cabinet so that mutual relation between both countries can be strengthened.

Moreover, he noted that Pakistan and Azerbaijan will constitute a joint working group on energy,

Pakistan and Azerbaijan had entered into an inter-governmental agreement (IGA) in February 2017 for supply of a number of oil and gas products, including furnace oil, petrol, diesel and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Azerbaijan is interested in investing in LNG sector through State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Fakhri Vakilov  Trend:

Starting from today, a new order for the export of petroleum products from Russia to Kazakhstan comes into force, Trend reports via Russian media.

The new procedure for the export of petroleum products will make changes to the intergovernmental agreement concluded in 2010 between Russia and Kazakhstan.

The energy ministries of both countries will determine the lists of petroleum products that are prohibited for export from Russia to Kazakhstan and for export from the territory of Kazakhstan outside the customs territory of the Eurasian Economic Union.

Such a list has already been compiled in Russia and is undergoing inter-departmental approval.

Ministry of Energy of Russia states that the agreement will help simplifying the regulation of the oil and oil products market between Russia and Kazakhstan and will remove a number of restrictions for Russian companies.

Moreover, it is specifically stipulated that the implementation of the agreement should not hamper the activities of the Baikonur complex and the supply for humanitarian purposes from the territory of Kazakhstan.

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Follow author on Twitter:@vakilovfaxri
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

Around 98 percent of pipes of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) are back-filled in Albania, Trend reports citing TAP AG consortium.

In April 2016, the first TAP pipes arrived in Albania shipments of steel pipes, equipment and machinery were being offloaded in the port of Durres. Three years later, around 98 percent of pipes are in the ground (back-filled), said the consortium.

TAP project, worth 4.5 billion euros, is one of the priority energy projects for the European Union (EU). The project envisages transportation of gas from Azerbaijan's Shah Deniz Stage 2 to the EU countries.

Connecting with the Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP) at the Greek-Turkish border, TAP will cross Northern Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before coming ashore in Southern Italy to connect to the Italian natural gas network.

The project is currently in its construction phase, which started in 2016.

Once built, TAP will offer a direct and cost-effective transportation route opening up the vital Southern Gas Corridor, a 3,500-kilometer long gas value chain stretching from the Caspian Sea to Europe.

TAP shareholders include BP (20 percent), SOCAR (20 percent), Snam S.p.A. (20 percent), Fluxys (19 percent), Enagas (16 percent) and Axpo (5 percent).

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Follow the author on Twitter: @Lyaman_Zeyn
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Kheyraddin Nasirzade - Trend:

The Financial Market Supervisory Authority of Azerbaijan (FIMSA) will publish the list of all persons who will receive compensation for problem loans in Azerbaijan after April 15, FIMSA told Trend April 12.

The informaiton will be posted on the FIMSA website. Also, the information on problem loans will be transferred to the appropriate banks, the clients of which took loans.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev earlier signed a decree on additional measures in connection with solving the issue of the individuals problem loans. The decree envisages the payment of compensation to citizens whose loan burden increased as a result of the devaluation of the manat in February and December 2015.

According to the decree, opportunities are created for restructuring on concessional terms of both US dollar loans and manat loans with a delay of more than 360 days.

If the amount of compensation exceeds 500 manats, then these funds will be transferred to the account of the individual; if less, the payment will be made via money transfer.

The corresponding plastic cards which will be received by individuals are issued for a period of 1 year and are free of charge. Banks and postal operator are not entitled to charge a fee for issuing or conducting operations with these cards or for making money transfers.
Defence Minister of Tajikistan General Sherali Mirzo on Thursday called on Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa and expressed his appreciation for Pakistan Armys efforts towards regional stability, reports Trend citing to tribune.com.pk

The Tajik defence minister also praised the armys professionalism as both senior defense officials discussed the regional security situation and matters of mutual interest including enhancement of bilateral defence and security cooperation.

COAS said that Tajikistan is a brotherly country and cooperation between both countries will help improve peace and stability in the region, added the ISPR statement.

Earlier this week Bahrains Foreign Minister H E Shaikh Khalid bin Ahmed bin Mohamed Al-Khalifa acknowledged and appreciated Pakistans contributions for conflict prevention in the region during a meeting with the COAS.
Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov will pay an official visit to Germany on April 15-16, reports Trend with reference to kabar.kg.

He noted that the head of state will visit Germany at the invitation of German Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The first official visit of the President to Germany will begin with a visit to the capital of Bavaria - Munich. During his stay in Munich, a meeting with the leadership of Bavaria, a business forum will be held, and the head of state will address the Hans Seidel Foundation are. Meetings of the Kyrgyz President with compatriots are also planned, he said.

Further, the main political meetings of Sooronbay Jeenbekov with President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and also with President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schauble will take place on April 16 in Berlin, Sydykov said.

A good political foundation has been created for the upcoming visit of the Kyrgyz president. Kyrgyzstan as a democratic country in Central Asia is respected and supported by both the Chancellor and the President of Germany. As a result of Angela Merkels visit to Kyrgyzstan, certain advances have been made in building up bilateral economic ties. As a result of the visit to Kyrgyzstan in 2017, the second days of the German economy were held, in which a solid delegation from the Federal Republic of Germany took part. The presidents visit should serve as a breakthrough in bilateral trade and economic ties, he said.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, April 12

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

A meeting of the Turkmen-Russian intergovernmental commission is scheduled for May 7 in Ashgabat, Trend reports referring to the Turkmen government.

Russia and Turkmenistan have recently expressed readiness to expand cooperation in the Caspian Sea. A ferry service is planned to be launched between Russias Makhachkala and Turkmenistans Turkmenbashi port to transport cargo in 2019.

About 190 companies with the Russian capital operate in Turkmenistan. ARETI International Group (formerly Itera Group) has been operating in the Turkmen sector of the Caspian Sea on the basis of the signed production sharing agreement (PSA) since 2009.

At the same time, the Russian Gazprom PJSC, a traditional trading partner, completely stopped to buy Turkmen gas in 2016. At this stage, the negotiations on the conditions for the resumption of the gas deal are underway.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, April 12

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

Ishanguly Amanlyev was appointed Turkmen Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Tunisia, Trend reports referring to the Turkmen presidential decree on April 12.

Amanlyev heads the diplomatic mission in Turkey and supervises the diplomatic mission in Morocco.

Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov was received by Tunisian President Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi in early 2019. During the meeting, special attention was paid to the development of relations in the trade and economic sphere.

The Tunisian president initiated the creation of a joint working group to expand bilateral cooperation.

The Turkmen delegation also met with Tunisian Minister of Development, Investment and International Cooperation Ziad Al-Azari.

The sides stressed that there are ample opportunities for establishing ties in such spheres as investment activity, industrialization, trade and agriculture.

An agreement on the development of a legal framework governing the relations between the two countries in the investment and tax spheres was reached.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, April 12

By Huseyn Hasanov  Trend:

A regular meeting of the Turkmen-Afghan water coordination group is taking place in the Turkmen capital of Ashgabat, Trend reports referring to the local Altyn Asyr TV channel.

The event is attended by representatives of Turkmenistans State Committee for Water Management and the Ministry of Agriculture and Environmental Protection, as well as the representatives of the Afghan Ministry of Energy and Water, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Afghanistan Geodesy and Cartographic High Office (AGCHO) under the Ministry of Urban Development and Land.

Turkmenistan attaches particular importance to the interaction with the relevant structures of Afghanistan, on the territory of which up to 20 percent of Amu Daryas runoff is formed, and where the sources of Murgab and Tejen rivers are located, as noted by Turkmen Dovlet Khabarlary state news agency.

This is the third meeting of this kind, held with the support of the regional program titled Transboundary Water Management in Central Asia of the German Society for International Cooperation (Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH).

In Central Asia, rivers are the main source of water resources used for agriculture and industry, the production of electricity, and the supply of drinking water to the population, and almost all of them are transboundary, as stated by the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper.

The Interstate Commission for Water Coordination was established within the framework of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS), which deals with determining water withdrawal limits in the basins of the largest rivers of the region, taking into account and protecting water resources, and controlling their rational use.

Turkmenistan borders Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Afghanistan and uses water resources coming in accordance with agreed quotas from four trans-boundary rivers, namely the Amu Darya, Tejen, Atrek and Murgab rivers. Turkmenistan is affected by the problem of the ecology of the Aral Sea, which is most noticeable in the countrys northern Dashoguz Region, where problems have arisen with the provision of drinking water, the fight against salinization of cultivation lands, land desertification.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Azer Ahmadbayli  Trend:

The US decision to put Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) into the list of terrorist organizations may increase possibility of armed clashes in the region.

The Trump administration on Monday labeled IRGC as a terrorist group. Later in the day, Irans Supreme National Security Council in turn took a reciprocal action designating US forces in West Asia, known as CENTCOM, as a terrorist organization.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi commenting the US decision said that from now on, the American forces stationed in the region are not soldiers any longer and will be regarded as terrorists.

So far, in Syria, Iraq or other place, where the US and Iranian or pro-Iranian forces are simultaneously present, there have been no cases of direct contact with a threat to use force. Now this threat is becoming real.

The risks for the US military have much increased, especially in Iraq and the Persian Gulf.

Americans need to ensure enhanced vigilance and expect sudden surprises. In Iraq, for example, the aggressive behavior of Hashd al-Shaabi militants against the American G.I.-s can trigger an armed clash. Hashd al-Shaabi is a paramilitary group of Iraqs origin, and the Americans, knowing about their close ties with IRGC, however, will fail to put direct responsibility upon Iran for possible consequences.

Moreover, the US possible retaliatory actions can be a good opportunity to turn many Iraqis against the presence of American troops in this country followed by the mass protests with blocking the US bases and demanding their immediate withdrawal.

One of the most dangerous courses of events may occur in the Persian Gulf, as, different from other regions, there is a possibility of a direct contact between US warships and IRGC speedboats. From now on, Americans should expect growing frequency of aggressive actions with unpredictable consequences.

Also, the IRGCs war-like behavior and the US possible response might threaten the safe supply of hydrocarbons flowing from the Gulf to global markets.

The thing is that the US decision, mostly, suggests measures of purely sanction character, meaning tracking and disruption of financial and intelligence activities of IRGC, doing business with IRGC affiliated companies, its activeness in Irans shipping industry etc., that is, without direct physical contact, while Iran has no other option but to interpret its reciprocal decision literally.

In January 2016 two US Navy combat boats with ten servicemen onboard were captured by IRGC marine forces after they entered Iranian territorial waters. Back then, the Iranian side admitted the Americans crossed the border by mistake. Iranians treated them as detainees providing them with safe conditions and hot meal and releasing them the day after.

If similar incident occurs now, its most likely that US military will be called terrorists and accordingly sentenced to heavy term of imprisonment, provoking, in turn, harsh response of Washington leading to an armed conflict.
French food group Danone said on Friday it had signed a definitive agreement for the sale of Earthbound Farms, its U.S. organic salad business, to California-based Taylor Farms, reports Trend with reference to Reuters

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The sale of Earthbound Farms, which had 2018 sales of about $400 million, is part of Danones portfolio management and capital allocation optimization strategy, the company statement said.

Danone Chief Executive Emmanuel Faber said in February the loss-making Earthbound Farms was under intense strategic scrutiny.
Sudans ruling military council on Friday promised the country would have a new civilian government, a day after the armed forces overthrew President Omar al-Bashir, but the proposal was immediately rejected by the main protest group, reports Trend with reference to Reuters

The council, which is now running Sudan under Defence Minister Mohammed Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, said it expects a pre-election transition period it announced on Thursday to last two years at most or much less if chaos can be avoided.

The council also announced that it would not extradite Bashir to face allegations of genocide at the international war crimes court. Instead he may go on trial in Sudan.

Fridays announcement of a civilian government by the head of the military councils political committee, General Omar Zain al-Abideen, appeared aimed at reassuring angry demonstrators who took to the streets to warn against imposing army rule after Bashirs overthrow.

But the main protest group rejected the proposal, saying the military council was not capable of creating change.

In a statement, the Sudanese Professionals Association restated its demand for power to be handed immediately to a transitional civilian government.

Abideen pledged that the military council would not interfere with a civilian government. However he said the defense and interior ministries would be under the councils control.

The military council is headed by Ibn Auf, who was Bashirs vice president and defense minister and is among a handful of Sudanese commanders sanctioned by Washington for his role during the atrocities committed in the Darfur conflict.

NOT GREEDY FOR POWER

Abideen said the military council had no solutions to Sudans crisis and these would come from the protesters, adding that it plans to hold a dialogue with them.

We are the protectors of the demands of the people, he said. We are not greedy for power.

We will not dictate anything to the people. We want to create an atmosphere to manage a peaceful dialogue, Abideen said. Today, we will hold a dialogue with the political entities to prepare a climate for dialogue.

The council said it did not invite Bashirs National Congress Party to join the dialogue because it is responsible for what happened.

It pledged to work with the new government to solve Sudans massive economic problems but warned protesters that the army would not tolerate unrest.

Protest is guaranteed, but it is forbidden to infringe on the freedom of others. We will be very decisive with whoever closes a road or a bridge, Abideen said.

Earlier on Friday, thousands of demonstrators camped outside the defense ministry to push for a civilian government, defying a curfew and calling for mass Friday prayers.

The demonstrators oppose the decision to set up a transitional military council and have vowed to continue protests until a civilian government is established.

At the defense ministry compound, large tents were put up and people brought food and handed out water as the crowd swelled. Ahmed al-Sadek, a 39-year-old trader, said he had not slept at his home since the sit-in began on Saturday.

Activists wearing yellow vests controlled traffic around the compound on Friday morning and managed foot traffic to and from the sit-in, a Reuters witness said. They also blocked a major bridge in central Khartoum.

Bashir, 75, had faced 16 weeks of demonstrations sparked by rising food costs, high unemployment and growing repression during his three decades of autocratic rule.

WORLD POWERS

World powers, including the United States and Britain, said they supported a peaceful and democratic transition sooner than two years. China said it would continue to seek cooperation with Sudan regardless of the political situation.

Ibn Auf said on Thursday that Bashir was being detained in a safe place and the military council - which he is heading - would run the country. Sudanese sources told Reuters that Bashir was at the presidential residence under heavy guard.

Ibn Auf also announced a state of emergency, a nationwide ceasefire and the suspension of the constitution. He also said there would be a curfew from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

But the council affirmed on Friday it would not extradite Bashir, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Bashir is facing an arrest warrant over allegations of genocide in Sudans Darfur region during an insurgency that began in 2003 and led to the death of an estimated 300,000 people. He denies the allegations.

The military council would not hand the president over for trial abroad, Abideen said. We may try him, but we will not hand him over.

Bashirs downfall was the second time this month that a leader in the region has been forced out after mass demonstrations. Algerias Abdelaziz Bouteflika, in power since 1999, stepped down on April 2 after six weeks of protests.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki here Friday, calling on both countries to step up economic cooperation, Trend reported citing Xinhua.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the eighth leaders' meeting between China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) held at the southern Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik.

Calling Poland an influential country in Central and Eastern Europe, Li said China attaches great importance to developing its ties with Poland.

China stands ready to enhance political mutual trust, strategic communication and pragmatic cooperation with Poland, said Li.

He called on both sides to strengthen communication and coordination of the inter-governmental committee to intensify cooperation in areas of economy and trade, agriculture, aviation and infrastructure construction.

China is willing to expand import of good-quality Polish products, said Li, adding that China welcomes Polish enterprises to explore the Chinese market.

Li said the China-EU leaders' meeting held earlier this week in Brussels agreed that China and EU countries treat each other's enterprises under the principles of fair competition, impartiality and non-discrimination.

China pays high attention to the cooperation between China and Poland under the China-EU and China-CEEC frameworks, said the premier, encouraging Poland to further contribute wisdom and strength to the China-EU ties and China-CEEC cooperation.

Speaking highly of the rapid development of Poland-China ties, Morawiecki said Poland has always treated foreign enterprises in line with the principles of fairness and non-discrimination.

He said Poland welcomes Chinese enterprises to come and invest, expressing the hope that enterprises from both countries can establish in-depth cooperation so as to open a new chapter of bilateral economic ties.

Poland is ready to cooperate with China in areas of agriculture, furniture, cosmetics, infrastructure construction, maritime industry and culture, said Morawiecki.

He added that Poland hopes to explore third-party cooperation with China under the China-CEEC framework.
Sudans Defence Minister Awad Ibn Auf said on Friday that he is stepping down as head of the countrys transitional military council, a day after former president Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in a coup, Trend reports citing Reuters.

Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan will be the new head of the transitional military council, Ibn Auf said in a speech broadcast on state television on Friday.
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Twenty-nine illegal immigrants from Palestine were detained in Turkeys western Aydin province, Trend reports referring to the Turkish media on April 12.

Among the detainees are nine children. Illegal immigrants from Palestine intended to penetrate Greece. All detainees will be deported from Turkey.

Earlier, 700 illegal immigrants were detained in Turkeys northwestern Tekirdag province during a day.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard of Aydin province detained 118 illegal immigrants in the Turkish sector of the Aegean Sea. Some 223 illegal migrants were detained in Edirne province on the border with Greece.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
Baku, Azerbaijan, April 12

By Rufiz Hafizoglu - Trend:

Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) presented new facts about falsification of the municipal election results in Istanbul to the Turkish Supreme Electoral Council (YSK), Trend reports April 12 with reference to the Turkish media.

At the municipal elections in Istanbul, names of the deceased were found in the lists of voters for the candidate of the opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) Ekrem Imamoglu, according to the report.

On April 10, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the results of the municipal elections in Istanbul may be annulled.

This is while deputy chairman of Turkeys ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Ali Ihsan Yavuz said that the party demands holding of repeated municipal elections in Istanbul.

He said that the AKP has all facts proving that the election results were rigged.

The AKP will very soon present all the facts of falsification of the election results in Istanbul, he added.

The municipal election results in Istanbul were almost completely rigged, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said earlier.

He noted that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) appealed to the Turkish Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) to identify the perpetrators.

Meanwhile, the Justice and Development Party presented facts of falsification of 11,000 votes in Istanbul in favour of the candidate of the opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP) Ekrem Imamoglu.

Earlier, Bayram Senocak, head of the Istanbul branch of the Turkish ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), stated that the ruling party has evidence of the election results in Istanbul being falsified in favor of candidate of the opposition Republican People's Party Ekrem Imamoglu.

Imamoglu gained 4.159 million votes, while Yildirim got 4.131 million votes in Istanbul.

The coalition of the ruling party and the Nationalist Movement Party gained 51.67 percent of votes in the municipal elections throughout the country.

Following the elections, candidate of the Republican Peoples Party Mansur Yavas became mayor of Ankara.

Thirteen political parties took part in the municipal elections held March 31. These included the Felicity Party (SP), the Independent Turkey Party (Bagmsz Turkiye Partisi), the Communist Party of Turkey (Turkiye Komunist Partisi), the Patriotic Party (Vatan Partisi), the Great Unity Party (Buyuk Birlik Partisi), Free Cause Party (Hur Dava Partisi), Republican Peoples Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalknma Partisi), Democratic Party (Demokrat Parti), Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetci Hareket Partisi), Iyi Party (IYI Parti), Peoples Democratic Party (Halklarn Demokratik Partisi) and Democratic Left Party (Demokratik Sol Parti).

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The US Treasury Department announced Friday that it had issued a new batch of anti-Venezuelan sanctions, targeting four companies and nine ships, Trend reported citing Sputnik.

The sanctions targeted three companies in Liberia  Jennifer Navigation Limited, Large Range Limited and Lima Shipping Corporation  and a fourth firm in Italy, PBS Tankers. Nine ships linked to the four firms were also included in the new designations, the Treasury said.

Meanwhile, the total damages from sanctions against Venezuela have already exceeded $100 billion, according to reports.
KYODO NEWS - Apr 12, 2019 - 11:13 | World, All, Japan

The South Korean government said Friday it will maintain the current import ban on fishery products from Japan's Fukushima Prefecture and surrounding areas after winning a World Trade Organization appeal overnight.

South Korea praised the decision by the WTO's appellate body for dispute settlement, which overturned an earlier panel ruling against the import restrictions imposed in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

The ban will remain in place unless it is officially proven that there is no problem with importing fishery products from the areas concerned, Yoon Chang Ryeol, head of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said during a press briefing.



(Fish unloaded at a port in Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, on April 12)

The government also said it will continue doing its utmost to ensure the safety of imported food so only products deemed safe would appear on the plates of its citizens.

The decision by the highest judicial entity of the WTO dispute settlement mechanism was received with surprise in South Korea. Speculation had grown there that the appellate body would uphold the decision of a dispute settlement panel that ruled in favor of Japan.

After a powerful earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in March 2011, South Korea imposed a partial ban on fishery products from Fukushima and seven other prefectures due to fears of radioactive contamination.

In September 2013, South Korea expanded the restrictions to include all fishery products from the eight prefectures and tightened testing requirements.

While dozens of countries imposed some sort of import restrictions on Japanese food products following the Fukushima crisis, Japan had argued that the South Korean restrictions were far too strict.

Related coverage:

Village aims to restore Fukushima reputation with "ultra-spicy" chili ice cream

Fukushima tour draws foreigners to areas devastated by nuclear accident

Taiwan votes to maintain ban on food from Fukushima disaster areas
Vadodara: On Thursday, a total of 100 Indian fishermen, who were released by Pakistan earlier this week, arrived in Vadodara. They were brought to Vadodara via a train from Amritsar. It is to be noted that the fishermen were released through Attari-Wagah border on April 8. They were kept in Karachi jail for over one and a half year. To be noted that upon the arrival, V Babu, one of the fishermen, shared his ordeal of staying said, "We were kept in a room and not allowed to move freely during the recent period of tension between the two nations.".

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Here it is to be noted that they belong to Gujarat's Veraval region and were caught by Pakistan coast guard for crossing the international sea borders. Speaking to Source report, another fisherman said, "Many of us accidentally cross the border while some go to that side knowingly for catching fishes. I was in Pakistan for about 17 months. We were always confined in a particular cell and were never allowed to venture out. We were clearly told to stay in the definite cell for our own safety."

However, it is worth mention here that on April 5, Pakistan announced that it will release 360 Indian prisoners as a 'goodwill gesture' amidst tensions between the two countries after the Pulwama terror attack. To be noted that the prisoners are mostly fishermen and they will eventually be released in four phases. And after Indian government strict pressure on them Pakistan coordinated on this step.

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Bollywood actress Katrina kaid just returned from a vacay with her team from the Maldives and as soon as she returned, she dived back into work but in a pretty chill way. Speaking of lazing around,Katrina Kaif shared a photo on Instagram which revealed her weekend plans.

The Tiger Zinda Hai actress shared a photo on Instagram in which she is seen chilling on a couch in her pj's. While her caption revealed that she wasnt really chilling, her look made her fans think otherwise. Katrina was shooting for Anaita Shroff Adjanias show and for that, Katrina had donned a chill and lazy look. The photo of Katrina on Instagram was before the talk show was being shot.

Katrinas hairstylist also took to Instagram to share some more pictures of the gorgeous actress for her fans. In the photo, we can see Katrina sporting a lazy look

in a white zipper and a white pyjama. Katrina teamed it up with white sneakers to keep it sporty. Her hair was left open with soft curls in them and she looked absolutely fresh and beautiful in the photos.

On the work front, Katrina will be seen in Ali Abbas Zafars Bharat which stars Salman Khan. The film is based on a South Korean film, An Ode to my Father. Bharat also stars Disha Patani, Jackie Shroff, Tabu, Sunil Grover and Nora Fatehi. Bharat is slated to release on Eid, i.e June 5, 2019.
The news of Milind Soman getting married to his longtime girlfriend, Ankita Konwar came across as a sweet surprise to everyone (besides breaking million hearts!). As soon as pictures of their fun-filled haldi ceremony started doing rounds on the internet, netizens and media went bonkers as the couple didnt leave any possible hints of their wedding. The only hint that marriage was likely to happen, was their engagement rings. The couple got married on April 22, 2018 in Alibaug, in the presence of family members and close friends from the industry. This was followed by their dreamy waterfall, barefoot wedding on July 11, 2018, at Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

Milind Soman and Ankita Konwar are often seen going on runs, swims together and displaying their love for each other openly. Hence, their oomph factor would not come as a surprise to you. But what will surely take your breath away is Ankita Konwar, adding on to the heat by posting her oh-so-hot bikini pictures. Ankita took to Instagram and shared a picture of herself in a red floral bikini, which surely added to the beach vibe. The star wife captioned the picture as, Summer? Yes please !!!! Also checkout a few other pictures of Ankita, with her hot-hot husband, Milind Soman in their gorgeous beach pictures:

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Ankita Konwar is completely in awe of her equally gorgeous husband, Milind Soman. On February 19, 2019, Ankita took to Instagram and posting a nerdy picture of Milind Soman, wrote a heartfelt poem for him. Sharing how blessed she is to have him and how proud is she of him, Ankita wrote, Just 2 years ago, on this very day, you became an Ultraman!! You are a true inspiration, my love. A deserving existence in the universe. With such ease you Swam 10kms, Cycled 423kms and Ran 84 kms, tested your endurance hours after hours. Perhaps its the endurance that taught you to be so humble, so patient, so kind, so wise, so realistic, so loving. I learn from you, everyday and theres not a single moment that I dont thank the universe for the man you turned out to be. Theres no darkness in you, you are that ever glowing content light, which glows from within. You are a blessing! May you shine brighter everyday and spread light over as many lives as you can.

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Pune: The police tracked and busted two prostitution rackets and successfully rescued four women. Out of the four women, three hail from Thailand and one is from Maharashtra. The police also rescued a minor during the operation

A man brutally beaten till death, on suspicion of did the crime



According to the report, the crackdown was performed by the Social Security Cell of the Crime Branch of the Pune Police. The rackets were operational in two different areas of Pune. The operation took place on Wednesday. The police also received a tip-off about a prostitution racket operational at an apartment complex in Pune. A minor and another woman were rescued from the apartment.

Husband Involved in adultery did this brutal crime with wifes private parts

As per the report of Indian Express, the police team raided a spa situated in eastern Pune. The police had received information that a racket that was operational in the spa. Three women from Thailand were rescued from the spa.

After killing Husband accused did dreadful act with his wife

The spa owner and his ally were arrested and booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sections of the Prevention of Immortal Trafficking Act (PITA). Three other people who were arrested by the police were also booked under relevant sections of the IPC and PITA.
On the 12th April, 1961 cosmonautics history as well as the whole world science saw the upmost event: for the first time a human dared to travel outside the atmosphere. Yuriy Gagarin, an astronaut who manned the Vostok spacecraft with his famous Lets go! started the era of space flights. He discovered a way to other worlds for the humanity. This event needed years and even centuries of scientific search, numerous scientific works on the realization of human age-old dream to conquer the sky. Among them, there is a great work of Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky, who as far back as 1903 designed the first rocket for interplanetary communications.; productive activity of Sergey Pavlovich Korolev, the author of the first intercontinental ballistic missile R-7, which launched the first satellite into orbit; and long hard work of many other researchers, without whom Vostok would not have been launched.

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And, at 9:07 am Moscow time, on 12th April, 1961, the dream of many people came true  in several tens kilometers to the north of Tyuratam village in Kazakhstan, from Baikonur Cosmodrome, the sputnik rocket, which put into orbit a Soviet spacecraft Vostok with a human aboard, was launched. The flight lasted 1 hour 48 minutes (108 minutes). During the time on the orbit, Gagarin stayed in touch with the Earth, observed through luminaires, controlled the spacecraft system functioning. After one circle around the orbit, the reentry module landed in the Saratov region, on the USSR territory. According to the set program, when Vostok was several km from the ground, the astronaut was ejected and landed via parachute near the reentry module.

108 minutes are almost nothing in time, but what an importance had this first flight for the science development. Just in a month, the first suborbital flight of an American astronaut Alan Shepard and the first day-long manned space flight occurred. Several years after, the first multiple person spaceflight of Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 and the first American orbital flight of John Glenn, who flew around the Earth three times, took place. Just 20 years after the first manned space flight, on 12th April, 1981, the first piloted flight from Space Shuttle program started The space exploration continued its fast development, and nowadays scientists are working on the first spacecraft launch to the Mars.

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Since 1962, April 12th became a national holiday in the USSR. In November, 1968 at FAI congress it was decided to celebrate the 12th of April as an International Aviation and Cosmonautics Day. On April 8, 2011, on the eve of 50th Anniversary, General Assembly of the UN adopted a resolution, which declared 12 April a Space Probe Day. In this memorable day, we appreciate those, who discovered the great space of the Universe for us and continue doing it. We wish good luck to those, who are now on the orbit. So, just look up at the infinite starry sky and imagine yourself as a part of still unexplored Universe.
A new report finds that Arkansas PROMISE -- a University of Arkansas project aimed at improving the education and career outcomes of low-income teenagers with disabilities -- has succeeded in increasing services, training, employment and income for participants.

Mathematica Policy Research will present the results of its report in a webinar at 11 a.m. central time on April 11. Brent Williams, associate professor of counselor education, along with representatives from the five other PROMISE projects across the United States, will also make a presentation at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on April 24. The presentation will be available to the public via webcast.

Arkansas PROMISE, which was funded with a total award of close to $36 million award from the U.S. Department of Education, is part of a federal initiative called "Promoting Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income." The initiative has the goal of promoting positive changes in the lives of youth receiving Supplemental Security Income by providing training and paid work experiences.

"Adolescents who receive Social Security disability benefits typically do not have a first job or internship experience, and so they remain cut off from the world of work," said Williams. "PROMISE has demonstrated an intervention model that has proven to be highly successful in initiating a career trajectory and thereby facilitating increased independence and community inclusion as well as a long-term reduction in reliance on Social Security disability benefits."

Mathematica Policy Research, which evaluated the first 18 months of the PROMISE projects, found that Arkansas PROMISE expanded the share of Arkansas youth who receive guidance in the transition from school to work and increased the likelihood that their parents would also receive these kinds of services. Arkansas PROMISE has had a positive impact on the number of youth enaged in job training, and it increased the likelihood that participating youth had a paid job. The program also increased the total annual earnings of these youth by 164 percent, while decreasing participants' reliance on Social Security payments.

In addition to Arkansas PROMISE, the federal PROMISE initiative includes five other research sites that, combined, cover a total of 11 states. The projects lasted six years, from 2013-2019. Mathematica compared outcomes of youth in PROMISE with a similar group of youth who received typical services. The full report on the 18-month evaluation will be published later this summer, and Mathematica is currently collecting and analyzing data for an upcoming five-year report.

Arkansas PROMISE partners include the Arkansas Department of Education, the University of Arkansas, Arkansas Rehabilitation Services, Arkansas Department of Workforce Services, Arkansas Workforce Investment Boards, Arkansas Department of Human Services, Arkansas Department of Health, Arkansas Sources for Community Independent Living, Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance, Clinton Foundation Health Matters Initiative, Partners for Inclusive Communities and the U of A Center for the Utilization of Rehabilitation Resources for Education, Networking, Training and Service.

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About the University of Arkansas: The University of Arkansas provides an internationally competitive education for undergraduate and graduate students in more than 200 academic programs. The university contributes new knowledge, economic development, basic and applied research, and creative activity while also providing service to academic and professional disciplines. The Carnegie Foundation classifies the University of Arkansas among fewer than 2.7 percent of universities in America that have the highest level of research activity. U.S. News & World Report ranks the University of Arkansas among its top American public research universities. Founded in 1871, the University of Arkansas comprises 10 colleges and schools and maintains a low student-to-faculty ratio that promotes personal attention and close mentoring.

CONTACTS:

Camilla Shumaker, director of science and research communications

University Relations

479-575-7422, camillas@uark.edu

Brent T. Williams, associate professor of counselor education



College of Education and Health Professions 479-575-8696, btwilli@uark.edu
Melding computing, chemistry, biotech, anatomy, human behavior, electronics and design, A UC Davis design professor has caught the attention of Johnson and Johnson as one of six researchers in the country to receive from the company financial support and mentoring for her work.

The Johnson & Johnson Women in STEM2D (WiSTEM2D) Scholars Award provides $150,000 and three years of mentorship from Johnson & Johnson leaders. Katia Vega, an assistant professor in the Department of Design in the College of Letters and Science, and her collaborators integrate technology into wearable cosmetics. Vega's goal is to transform the body's surface into an interactive platform with cosmetics and beauty accessories applied directly to skin, fingernails and hair.

The award supports outstanding women researchers in the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, manufacturing and design.

Launched in June 2017, the Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Scholars Award aims to fuel development of female STEM2D leaders and feed the STEM2D talent pipeline by awarding and sponsoring women at critical points in their careers, in each of the STEM2D disciplines: Science, technology, engineering, math, manufacturing and design. "Through this Award and other programs, Johnson & Johnson is hoping to increase the participation of women in STEM2D fields worldwide," said Cat Oyler, vice president, Global Public Health, Tuberculosis, Johnson & Johnson and WiSTEM2D university sponsor. "We want to nourish the development of women leaders building a larger pool of highly trained, female researchers so that they can lead STEM2D breakthroughs in the future." Human and device symbiosis

With a background in computer science, Vega brings an interdisciplinary approach to her work in "beauty technology."

In one recent project, "The Dermal Abyss," Vega wielded a tattoo gun to apply color-changing ink that responds to health markers present in skin. "In this way, the skin is a bio-display that reveals information that is inside the body, such as pH, sodium and glucose levels," she said.

"Winning the Johnson & Johnson WiSTEM2D Scholars Award is a significant milestone in my research career and strongly motivates me to continue my efforts in bridging the body and technology," Vega said.

Vega's work has also been honored by MIT Technology Review, which named her one of the Five Innovators Under 35 in Peru in 2016. CNET recognized her as one of the Top 20 Most Influential Latinos in Tech in 2017. In 2018, she earned an Interactive Innovation Award in SciFi No Longer at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference. Vega earned a doctorate in computer science at PUC-Rio in Brazil and was a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Media Lab. She joined UC Davis as an assistant professor in 2017.

"Katia's ability to integrate art and technology is bold and brilliant," said Elizabeth Spiller, dean of the College of Letters and Science. "One of the more than 200 new faculty recruited to the No. 1 one ranking for launching women into STEM careers and our long tradition of groundbreaking excellence in the arts. I am very pleased to congratulate her on this achievement."

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With warmer weather right around the corner, many outdoor enthusiasts are preparing to hit the trails in regional, state, and national parks.

All across the country, search and rescue organizations are preparing, too.

In 2017 alone, the United States National Park Service deployed almost 3,500 search and rescue missions in national parks. And while search and rescue personnel tend to be highly effective and skillfully trained, they still face a daunting task dominated by a ticking clock - a lost person's chances for survival drop dramatically after the first 18 hours.

Thanks to a $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, a group of Virginia Tech engineers hopes to redefine these search and rescue protocols by teaming up human searchers with unmanned aerial robots, or drones.

In efforts led by Ryan Williams, an assistant professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering within the College of Engineering, these drones will use autonomous algorithms and machine learning to complement search and rescue efforts from the air. The drones will also suggest tasks and send updated information to human searchers on the ground.

Using mathematical models based on historical data that reflect what lost people actually do combined with typical searcher behavior, the researchers hope this novel approach of balancing autonomy with human collaboration can make searches more effective. The team has received support from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management and will work closely with the local Black Diamond Search and Rescue Council throughout the project.

"Human searchers are excellent at what they do," said Williams. "Drones are unlikely to replace people on the ground because searchers are too good at their jobs. However, what drones can do is address these niche problems of the search process by providing large-scale data that can help a search team make better decisions."

For example, drones may explore treacherous terrain that's difficult for human searchers to reach, or they could save time by gathering information about areas of the search environment that are relatively unknown.

Nicole Abaid, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics, is using historical data gathered from more than 50,000 documented lost person scenarios to build the mathematical model that will help the drones decide where to go and how to search. The data comes from the work of famed search and rescue expert Robert Koester, who will consult on the project.

"From the historical search data, we know that certain types of people tend to do certain things when they're lost," said Abaid. "For example, people with cell phones tend to move up in elevation as they try to get service, while an elderly person might not travel very far."

Abaid plans to build over 30 lost person profiles into the model that incorporate information like age, mental status, and activity (hiking, horseback riding, hunting, etc.). She'll also use topographical data from ArcGIS maps that can shed light on how people typically move through terrain.

"The overall goal is to create an autonomous, scalable system that can make search and rescue processes here and elsewhere more effective simply by intelligently incorporating existing technology," said Abaid.

Williams, whose family has been involved with the Black Diamond Search and Rescue Council since its founding over 30 years ago, stressed the importance of making the system as unobtrusive as possible to searchers on the ground.

"Most of the data a drone will pick up from sensors, whether it be from cameras, thermal imaging, or Lidar surveys, will be really uninteresting," said Williams. "We don't want to interrupt human searchers to show them video feed of a piece of trash on the ground, for instance. That wastes precious time."

To address that problem of when and how the drones will interrupt searchers to provide new information, the team includes Nathan Lau, an assistant professor in the Grado Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering who specializes in human-computer interaction.

James McClure, a computational scientist in Advanced Research Computing, rounds out the team and will provide on-the-ground processing and communications support by designing a wearable, backpack-based server.

The researchers agree that improving an already effective system implemented by human teams will be challenging. However, they hope their close collaboration with human searchers throughout the process will produce meaningful results for real-world search and rescue practitioners.

"Our group is very driven," said Amanda Hashimoto, an engineering mechanics doctoral student who assists with modeling aspects of the project. "The idea of being able to help save people's lives is pretty motivating."

###
29-year-old Katie Bouman 'didn't know anything about black holes'then she helped capture the first photo of one

On Wednesday, after 10 years of planning and scientific investments totaling over $50 million , researchers released the first-ever image of a black hole. The image is a feat of modern science  experts say it's the equivalent of taking a photo of an orange on the moon with a smartphone  and international collaboration. Over 200 scientists across the globe contributed to the project.

One of those scientists is Katie Bouman, a 29-year-old computer scientist who began working on the project when she was a graduate student at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT.

Bouman earned her bachelor's in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon, she'll begin working as an assistant professor in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department at the California Institute of Technology.

But when she became involved in the project almost six years ago, she had no experience studying black holes.

"I go after problems that excite me. When I started this project, I didn't know anything about black holes and honestly, it was a risky project," Bouman tells CNBC Make It . "But my heart was in this project. I love this project, and I think that that's what makes it a success. When you get really smart people together, who are super motivated by the problem that they're working on, I think people will figure out the answers."

Bouman has gained recognition on social media from a number of public figures including Senator Kamala Harris, who wrote on Twitter, "Katie Bouman proved women in STEM don't just make the impossible, possible, but make history while doing it."

"So incredibly excited for Dr. Katie Bouman and her work to get the first picture of a black hole that was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope and rendered by HER algorithm," tweeted Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code.

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But Bouman was just one of many scientists working on the project. Of the more than 200 researchers working on the project, roughly 40 were women, according to The New York Times. "There were lots of people on these teams," says Bouman. "I don't want to call out any person as the leader."

Nonetheless, Bouman's research led to the creation of a new algorithm that allowed scientists to bring the black hole image to life, a task with a level of difficulty that cannot be overstated.

"The black hole is really, really far away from us. The one we showed a picture of is 55 million light years away. That means that image is what the black hole was like 55 million years ago," explains Bouman. "The law of diffraction tells us that given the wavelength that we need in order to see that event horizon, which is about one millimeter, and the resolution we need to see a ring of that size, we would need to build an earth-sized telescope."

That is where computer scientists like Bouman came in.

"Obviously, we can't build an earth-sized telescope. So instead, what we did is we built a computational earth-sized telescope," she says. "We took telescopes that were already built around the world and were able to observe at the wavelength we needed, and we connected them together into a network that would work together."

That computational telescope is the Event Horizon Telescope , a constellation of telescopes in the South Pole, Chile, Spain, Mexico and the United States.

After researchers coordinated the super-powerful telescopes, scientists like Bouman were tasked with interpreting a massive amount of data.

"The team collected about five petabytes of data, and one petabyte is a thousand terabytes," explains Bouman. "Your typical computer has maybe one terabyte or so. So that would be like 5,000 typical laptops of data. It's just a huge. I mean, we basically had to freeze light onto these hard drives."

The data was so large that researchers had to transport the data by plane from around the world.

According to MIT, Bouman led one of four teams responsible for turning this mind-numbing amount of data into one verifiable image. If their team was going to claim to have produced the world's first-ever image of a black hole, they needed to be certain.

"We spent years developing methods, many different types of methods  I don't think any one method should be highlighted  because most of all, we were afraid of shared human bias," says Bouman. "If I made an image with my method and and it looks like a ring, I don't want someone to look at my picture and then subconsciously make their image look like a ring too."

For this reason, the computer scientists broke into four teams and did not communicate while they were analyzing the data. After months of the teams working independently, they all converged in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and ran their algorithms in the same room, at the same time.

The resulting image is one we now recognize as a black hole: a bright ring that's slightly brighter on the bottom.

The researchers spent the next several months trying to find flaws in their approach. When they were unable to "break" the image, they knew they had made a discovery.

This scientific necessity to eliminate bias and approach problems from several points of view is one reason experts stress that the sciences need a wide-range of diverse young people to enter the field, and Bouman agrees. She says she wishes that young people, especially girls and women, understood that pursuing a career in a field like computer science can lead to opportunities beyond sitting in front of a screen.

"If you study things like computer science and electrical engineering, it's not just building circuits in your lab," she says. "You can go out to a telescope at 15,000 feet above sea level, and you can use those skills to do something that no one's ever done before."

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Yes, there are many types of creditors from which you can get funding for your business. But here's why good bank credit is one of the most important.

Bank credit is the full amount of borrowing capacity that a business can get solely from the banking system. It is a subset of business credit. Business credit represents the full and complete amount of money which a business can get from creditors of all sorts. That means the banking system, but it also means credit card companies, credit unions, suppliers (under whats called trade credit or vendor credit or trade lines), and leasing companies.

Here is a brief explanation of how this is all intertwined, and what you can do to make sure you maximize your bank credit.

How bank credit works.

A business can get more business credit fast, if it has at least one bank reference and an average daily account balance of at least $10,000 for the most recent three month time period. This setup will yield a bank rating of a "low-5." This means it is an Adjusted Debt Balance of from $5,000 to $30,000. A lower rating, such as a "high-4," or balance of $7,000 to $9,999 will slow down the approval process and could even mean automatic rejection.

Related: What Does It Really Take to Get a Small-Business Loan?

A bank credit rating is the average minimum balance a business maintains in a business bank account over a three-month-long period. A $10,000 balance will rate as a low-5, a $5,000 balance will rate as a mid-4, and a $999 balance will rate as a high-3, etc.

A businesss main goal should always be to maintain a minimum low-5 bank rating for at least three months. That is, on average, a balance of $10,000. This is because, without at least a low-5 rating, the majority of banks will operate under the assumption that a business has little to no ability to repay a loan or a business line of credit.

Keep in mind, you will never actually see these rating numbers, but they manifest in practice as five mistakes business owners commonly make that damage their company's bank credit score and hurt its chances for funding.

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1.) You arent reaching a minimum balance or keeping it long enough.

The idea behind bank credit scores is to show proof that a business can pay back its financial obligations quickly. Therefore, a business will need to maintain a minimum balance for at least three months. Every cycle is based on the balance rating during the previous three-month period, and $10,000 or more should be every entrepreneurs goal.

2.) Your business isnt consistent in its accounts, address, or phone number.

It is imperative that a business owner makes sure their business bank accounts are reported exactly the same way all of their business records are. This means with the exact same physical address (no post office box) and phone number. Consistency is a necessity here.

It is imperative that each and every credit agency and trade credit vendor also lists the business name and address the exact same way. This includes every keeper of financial records, income and sales taxes, web addresses and e-mail addresses, directory assistance, etc.

Related: Which Address Should You Use for Your Business?

No lender is going to stop to consider the myriad ways that a business might be listed, when they look into the business creditworthiness. Hence, if they are unable to find what they need easily, they will either deny an application or it wont be reported to a business credit reporting agency such as Equifax or Dun & Bradstreet.

3.) Your business isn't demonstrating responsible account management.

A business must manage its bank account responsibly. This means that the company should avoid writing non-sufficient funds (NSF) checks at all costs. That decimates bank ratings.

Because non-sufficient-funds checks are something which no business can afford to let happen, it a doubly good idea for the business to add overdraft protection to a business bank account as soon as possible. This is avoids NSFs as well as bank charges.

4.) Your business isnt maintaining a positive cash flow.

To have a good bank credit score, any business will have to show a positive cash flow. The monies coming into and leaving a companys bank account should result in more funds coming in than leaving. This is a positive free cash flow.

A positive free cash flow is the amount of revenue left over after a company has paid all of its expenses. According to Investopedia, it represents the cash a company can generate after required investment to maintain or expand its asset base. It is a measurement of a company's financial performance and health.

Related: Never Worry About Cash Flow Again by Using These 5 Strategies

When an account shows a positive cash flow it means that the business is generating more revenue than is used to run the company. And in turn, that means a bank will conclude that it can pay its bills and can pay back any loan.

5.) Your business isnt making regular, consistent deposits.

Finally, keep in mind that banks are highly motivated to lend to a business which has consistent deposits. A business owner must therefore make regular deposits in order to maintain a positive bank rating.

The business owner is going to have to make a lot of consistent deposits. And they have to be more than the withdrawals they are making, in order to have and maintain a good bank rating. If they can do these things, then the business will have a good bank credit score. And, in turn, a good bank credit score means a company is far more likely to get business loans.
(Bloomberg) -- Almost three years on, Uber is still waiting to sell out in China.

The landmark deal that sealed Uber Technologies Inc.s retreat from China, in which it agreed to fold its business into local ride-hailing leader Didi Chuxing in exchange for a stake in the other company, was never approved by Chinas State Administration for Market Regulation, according to the U.S. companys initial public offering filing.

It is not clear how or when that proceeding will be resolved, Uber said in its filing with the New York Stock Exchange, adding that an eventual ruling could alter the way it does business and lead to cost increases. If regulators nullify the deal, the roughly 20 percent stake Uber and its backers received in Didi could be voided.

Didi declined to comment in an emailed statement. Uber didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Chinese regulators initiated an antitrust investigation shortly after the announcement of the Uber-Didi deal, but there have been few developments on the case in the years since. Ubers ongoing limbo highlights the uncertainty of doing business in China, where even prominent private entrepreneurs can find it difficult to navigate amorphous regulations.

Uber and Didis merger was a culmination of more than a year of a take-no-prisoners war between the worlds two largest ride-hailing companies. Combined, the two spent at least $2 billion during that time to subsidize rides in their battle for market share.

Other Chinese technology-industry mergers have passed without incident: Meituan and Dianping were able to combine in group buying and food, while Ganji.com and 58.com Inc. got together in the classified ads business. But regulators there have little precedent for refereeing deals like the Uber-Didi agreement. While both companies have operated in the country for years, ride-hailing services only received official legal status from the government relatively recently.

The governments ruling is likely to depend on how it defines Didis business. If the company is deemed just a small part of Chinas transport system, antitrust concerns will likely be minimal. If the regulator defines the market more narrowly as ride-hailing, however, it would be much tougher to argue that Didi has any other real competitors left.

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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, Jeff Muskus

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
By Fergal Smith TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian dollar strengthened against its U.S. counterpart on Friday, adding to this week's gains as oil prices rose and U.S. stocks climbed back to near record highs. The S&P 500 moved within a percent of September's record closing high after the largest U.S. bank soothed worries that the first-quarter earnings season would pour cold water on Wall Street's big rally back from last year's slump. Canada is a major exporter of commodities, including oil, so its currency tends to benefit from the positive signal higher stock prices send about the outlook for the global economy. "On the back of (U.S.) dollar weakness and a better risk tone, the loonie is getting a little bit of a bid," said Erik Nelson, a currency strategist at Wells Fargo. The U.S. dollar declined against a basket of major currencies, while oil prices rose as involuntary supply cuts from Venezuela, Libya and Iran supported perceptions of a tightening market. U.S. crude oil futures settled 0.5% higher at $63.89 a barrel. [O/R] At 3:58 p.m. (1958 GMT), the Canadian dollar was trading 0.4% higher at 1.3329 to the greenback, or 75.02 U.S. cents. The currency, which was up 0.5% for the week, traded in a range of 1.3313 to 1.3386. The loonie made ground despite data showing Canadian home prices fell in March for the sixth straight month. Data from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and Reuters calculations showed that speculators have cut their bearish bets on the Canadian dollar. As of April 9, net short positions had dipped to 43,202 contracts from 44,323 in the prior week. Canadian government bond prices were lower across a steeper yield curve in sympathy with U.S. Treasuries. The two-year fell 8.5 Canadian cents to yield 1.633% and the 10-year was down 54 Canadian cents to yield 1.784%, its highest yield since March 12. (Reporting by Fergal Smith; editing by Grant McCool)
Carnival Cruise Ship





A federal judge has threatened to temporarily stop Carnival Corp. ships from docking at U.S. ports for a possible probation violation.



Carnival has been on probation since 2017 as part of a $40 million settlement, according to The Miami Herald. Princess Cruises, owned by Carnival, was charged by federal prosecutors with seven felonies, stemming from a years-long investigation that revealed ships were illegally dumping oil into the ocean and falsifying their logs to hide it from authorities. The U.S. Department of Justice said it was the largest fine ever imposed for vessel pollution crimes.



Federal prosecutors say Carnival has since violated that probation. According to court filings, Carnival and its subsidiary cruise lines have dumped both gray water into Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska and garbage into the ocean. The company has falsified records and prepared ships in advance of court-ordered audits to circumvent unfavorable findings. Carnival has also attempted lobbying the U.S. Coast Guard through a back channel to change the terms of the settlement, prosecutors say.



The company has acknowledged these incidents in court filings.



U.S. District Senior Judge Patricia Seitz of the Southern District of Florida had ordered the company to cease its court-ordered audit preparation program in December 2017, and Carnival said it stopped at that time. Prosecutors allege the company continued the practice well into 2018, citing internal emails that discussed how to prepare for the audits.



During a Wednesday hearing, Seitz said she will make a decision in June about revoking Carnival's probation and punishing the company by preventing its ships from docking in U.S. ports. She also said she wanted Carnival chairman Mickey Arison and president Donald Arnold to be at that hearing. Both were absent on Wednesday.



The people at the top are treating this as a gnat, the judge said. If I could, I would give all the members of the executive committee a visit to the detention center for a couple of days. Its amazing how that helps people come to focus on reality.



After the Wednesday hearing, Carnival chief communications officer Roger Frizzell delivered a statement in which he lamented "some mischaracterizations made by others to the court. We intend to fully address the issues raised at todays court conference."



"Our environmental responsibility has been and continues to be a top priority for the company," Frizzell said. "Our aspiration is to leave the places we touch even better than when we first arrived. This is only in the best interest of our guests, our company and the oceans upon which we travel."
KANSAS CITY, Mo., April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cerner Corporation (CERN) today announced it will release its first quarter 2019 earnings results after the market closes Thursday, April 25. Following the release, the company will hold a conference call at 3:30 p.m. CT that can be accessed via dial-in or webcast. On the call, Cerner will discuss its results and outlook and answer questions from the investment community. The call may also include discussion of Cerner developments and other material and forward-looking information about business and financial matters.



The dial-in number for the conference call is (678) 509-7542; the passcode is Cerner. The company recommends joining the call 15 minutes early for registration. An audio webcast will be available live and archived on Cerners website in the Investor Relations section.

About Cerner

Cerners health technologies connect people and information systems at more than 27,500 contracted provider facilities worldwide dedicated to creating smarter and better care for individuals and communities. Recognized globally for innovation, Cerner assists clinicians in making care decisions and assists organizations in managing the health of their populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial systems to help manage day-to-day revenue functions, as well as a wide range of services to support clinical, financial and operational needs, focused on people. For more information, visit Cerner.com , The Cerner Blog , The Cerner Podcast or connect on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn or Twitter . Nasdaq: CERN. Smarter Care. Better Outcomes. Healthier You.

Media Contact: Misti Preston, Public Relations, (816) 299-2037

Investor Contact: Allan Kells, Investor Relations, (816) 201-2445
* Demand for safe haven bonds dented by improving risk appetite

* German 10-yr yield set for biggest rise since last June

* Greek 10-year bond yields extend falls to 13-year lows

* Euro zone periphery govt bond yields http://tmsnrt.rs/2ii2Bqr (Rewrites lede to reflect German Bund landmark, updates prices)

By Virginia Furness

LONDON, April 12 (Reuters) - German 10-year yields were set for their biggest daily rise since last June after a rebound in Chinese exports gave investors hope that the global economic outlook is not as bad as expected.

Investors are hoping for signs of economic recovery in China to temper worries about slowing global growth, after the IMF this week downgraded its 2019 world outlook for the third time.

But even there the picture was mixed. Exports rebounded in March but imports shrank for a fourth straight month. Nevertheless, bond investors took heart and dialled up their appetite for risk.

After a slow trading start, Germany's 10-year government bond yields rose to three-week highs, crossing decisively into positive territory, and were last up 6.5 basis points on the day to 0.058 percent.

U.S. 10-year Treasury yields rose to near three-week highs, and were last up over four basis points to 2.55 percent .

Other 10-year bond yields were also about six-seven basis points higher.,.

Antoine Bouvet, rates strategist at Mizuho, said the trade data from China was the trigger for the yield rise as it added weight to the view that activity is stabilising globally, but he noted that the move was oversized.

"China is a large contributor to global growth, and while in itself it is a fairly decent data print..., the reason why it has had such an oversized market impact is that we have heard from the IMF and two central banks that there is cause for concern," Bouvet said.

"This creates a connotative dissonance; investors are positioned for weaker economy and we are seeing better data."

The move comes despite reports of a further downgrade to German growth in 2019 by Der Spiegel news magazine, adding to evidence of a widespread economic slowdown in Europe.

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The German government is expected to halve its economic growth forecast for 2019 to 0.5 percent from 1.0 percent due to weaker exports in the wake of global trade tensions, Der Spiegel reported late on Thursday.

This is more pessimistic than the 0.8 percent estimate Germany's leading economic institutes gave for German growth, down from a previous estimate of 1.9 percent.

Worries about European growth prompted the European Central Bank to maintain its dovish stance at its April meeting on Wednesday. The anticipation of continued accommodative monetary policy in both the euro zone and in the United States kept downward pressure on core yields.

However, European Central Bank policymakers are increasingly leaning towards rewarding banks for lending to households and businesses but are mostly sceptical about giving lenders a reprieve from a charge on their idle cash, four sources told Reuters on Thursday.

"This report should go some way to help dampen market expectations for another rate reduction by the ECB," UniCredit analysts wrote in a note. "Rate-cut expectations have built up modestly since the tiering discussion started in late March."

GREECE LEADS PERIPHERAL CHARGE

Peripheral government bond yields continued to benefit from the ECB's dovish signals.

Greek government bond yields remained at 13-year lows on Friday, having fallen 19 basis points this week and 21 basis points last week.

The Greek 10-year yield was at 3.29 percent, down almost eight basis points on the day.

(Reporting by Virginia Furness Editing by Mark Heinrich)
ASML Holding logo is seen at company's headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands, Januari 23, 2019. REUTERS/Eva Plevier/File Photo

By Toby Sterling and Anthony Deutsch

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch ASML said on Thursday it had been the victim of corporate espionage in 2015 involving employees from countries including China but said it had not been the target of any "national conspiracy".

ASML said the perpetrators took "large files" on memory sticks from its Silicon Valley software subsidiary that develops software for machine optimisation. It said it had since taken action to make such theft much more difficult.

Following publication of a story in Dutch daily newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) that said ASML had been struck by Chinese espionage, the company took issue with that label.

"The suggestion that we were somehow victim of a national conspiracy is wrong," CEO Peter Wennink said in a statement.

"We resent any suggestion that this event should have any implication for ASML conducting business in China. Some of the individuals (involved) happened to be Chinese nationals," he added.

The Dutch company welcomed a Sino-European agreement earlier this week, which promised that Beijing would no longer force foreign companies to share sensitive know-how when operating in China.

"Can we prudently do business in China? Yes of course. This was a rotten apple," ASML said in an earlier statement.

ASML is the dominant maker of lithography systems, used to trace out the circuitry of semiconductor chips.

Its sales to China more than doubled to 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in 2018 as Beijing drives growth of its domestic semiconductor industry, now accounting for about a sixth of ASML's total sales.

CALIFORNIA CASE

The FD story was based in part on ASML sources and in part on documents from the Santa Clara, California Superior Court that showed six former ASML employees, all with Chinese names, breached their employment contract by sharing information on ASML software processes with a company called XTAL Inc.

The FD reported that XTAL, which makes electrical design automation for semiconductor systems, is a subsidiary of a China-based company called Dongfang Jingyuan, which it said in turn has ties to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

In its reaction, ASML said XTAL's funding came from "South Korea and China". It said the aim of the theft was to create a competing product and sell it to an existing ASML customer in South Korea.

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The company confirmed the FD's report that the court had awarded ASML $223 million in damages.

"It is unclear to what extent these damages can be collected from the now bankrupt company XTAL," ASML said.

ASML shares slipped 1.5 percent by 1210 GMT to the bottom of a flat European technology index.

ASML's major customers include Samsung of South Korea, TSMC of Taiwan and Intel of the United States.

The Dutch intelligence agency has included warnings in its annual threat assessments for the past several years, saying that China is targeting tech companies in the Netherlands, as it does in other countries, for intellectual property theft.

In a reaction, the intelligence agency AIVD said it could not comment on individual cases.

"In a broader sense, the greatest threat of economic espionage comes from China," it said in an email to Reuters.

"The Netherlands is an attractive target, other countries are interested in our information in science and technical expertise."

($1 = 0.8868 euros)

(Reporting by Anthony Deutsch and Toby Sterling; Editing by Georgina Prodhan and Keith Weir)
By Imani Moise

NEW YORK (Reuters) - James Forese, president and chief executive officer of Citigroup Inc's institutional clients business, which contributed two-third's of the bank's profits last year, is retiring, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters.

This would be the biggest departure from the executive team at the third largest U.S. bank since consumer banking head Manuel Medina-Mora left three years ago.

The division fell short of some annual targets in 2018 and Forese was the only executive on the operating committee not to receive a raise for the year, according a recent filing.

Citi said Forese, 56, decided to retire after 34 years at the company. He has told acquaintances he was frustrated and unhappy, sources told Reuters.

Forese was the second highest earner at Citi after CEO Michael Corbat. His unit, which includes treasury services, the investment bank, corporate lending and capital markets, delivered 50 percent of revenues and more than two-thirds of profits to the bank last year.

Forese, who began overseeing the business in 2011, will be replaced by Paco Ybarra, global head of markets and securities services.

"Jamie has played a critical role in cultivating a client-centric mindset across the firm and driving tangible changes to make it easier for our clients to do business with us, Chief Executive Mike Corbat said in the memo.

Ybarra will take over the division on May 1. Forese will stay through the summer to help with the transition.

Forese spent his entire career at Citi. He came to the bank through Salomon Brothers, which he joined in 1985, and cut his teeth in the securities trading business, eventually working his way up to become head of the markets division.

Forese sought to make the business more efficient by focussing on clients who benefited most from Citi's global structure and expertise, reducing the group's client total to under 14,000 from over 32,000. He also allocated more resources to emerging markets, which became a source of rapid, steady growth.

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Ybarra joined Citi in Spain as a management associate. He rose through the ranks, with stints in Mexico, New York, and Singapore where he focussed on emerging markets. In his most recent role, Ybarra was based out of London.

As deputy, Ybarra was focussed on capital allocation and technology.

He will oversee a recently restructured investment bank. In September, Citi merged its investment banking operations with its capital markets origination unit.

The CEO of its Asia Pacific region, Francisco Aristeguieta, will leave the company later this month to pursue an external opportunity, Citi said.

Chief Operating Officer for Citibank NA, Carey Lathrop, and the global head of G10 rates, markets, treasury and finance, Andy Morton, become co-heads of markets and securities services, filling Ybarras spot.

(Reporting by Imani Moise and Aparajita Saxena; Editing by Shailesh Kuber and Jeffrey Benkoe)
(Repeats without change. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters)

* FACTBOX-LME sets out warehousing proposals

By Andy Home

LONDON, April 11 (Reuters) - The London Metal Exchange (LME) is returning once again to the vexatious issue of its warehousing function.

It has been five years since the exchange initiated a multi-pronged reform process to deal with the problem of long load-out queues in its physical delivery network.

The last structurally embedded queue at the Dutch port of Vlissingen disappeared in July 2017. There are still occasional flash queues, such as the 121-day waiting time for aluminium at Malaysia's Port Klang, but accelerated load-out requirements prevent them from becoming embedded.

The question now facing the LME and its users is whether the exchange's reforms have been too successful.

By facilitating faster load-out of metal, have the reforms also served to inhibit inflow? Are LME stocks now too low relative to the amount of metal sitting in off-market storage?

This conundrum lies at the heart of the LME's "Discussion Paper on LME Warehouse Reform" released last month.

It includes some nuts-and-bolts suggestions from the exchange's own warehousing committee, but equally significant may be the LME executive's own thoughts on the transparency of its daily stocks reports.

TOO LITTLE STOCK?

Total LME-registered stocks have fallen steadily from more than 7 million tonnes in 2013 to 1.7 million tonnes at the end of March.

Part of this decline may be explained by market fundamentals, such as the current broader squeeze on metal availability in the zinc market. But the LME also recognizes that its rules may have a material impact on the attractiveness of LME warehousing compared with alternatives such as off-warrant storage), the exchange notes.

Low inventories for on-exchange metal are a cause for concern for warehouse operators, consumers and traders - a rare consensus, albeit for differing reasons, in a historically fractious debate.

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The LME's own warehousing committee has come up with some proposals.

QUEUES, INCENTIVES AND COSTS

The one that has grabbed the headlines is a recommendation to relax the rule that warehouse operators can't charge rent for metal in a queue after 50 days. The proposal is that the cut-off period be extended to 80 days.

Warehouse operators have assured the LME that the "structural queue" revenue model is no longer part of their business and that 80-day queues would not become a new "business target", according to the LME.

Others may be wary of taking them at their word and the LME notes with a degree of understatement that "there are likely to be differing opinions in the market regarding this".

Perhaps more interesting is the warehouse operators' apparent acknowledgement that some of their own practices may need to change.

LME warehouse operators have always offered incentives to attract more metal. Incentives, indeed, are probably the key determinant of how much metal is stored with which LME operator.

One type of incentive, the so-called "evergreen rent deal", has become ever more popular and ever more controversial.

Rather than receiving a cash incentive, someone delivering metal onto LME warrant gets a share of the rent collected by the subsequent owner or owners of that metal.

For the new owner, the only way of breaking that lock-in under the current rules is to physically move the metal out of the rent-share warehouse.

The LME's warehousing committee has suggested that an "evergreen" deal could be terminated by simply cancelling the metal and then rewarranting it. That does, however, normally come at a cost for the owner of the metal.

The LME itself adds a suggestion that such a deal could be terminated even more simply by, for example, the new owner submitting a written request to the warehouse operator.

Underpinning such questions of queues and incentives is the still-yawning gap between the cost of storing metal in an exchange-registered warehouse and in off-market storage.

A shadow LME warehousing function has evolved to bridge this gap, with LME operators offering relatively cheap off-warrant storage in or near LME-registered sheds with a "standby" commitment to warrant whenever required.

Even some LME warehouse operators now think headline rental rates may have to be reduced. Unsurprisingly, however, the LME notes that there is "a broad spectrum of opinions" on what still remains the thorniest of LME physical delivery issues.

STOCKS TRANSPARENCY

The LME executive has thrown a couple of its own extra suggestions into the mix, the most interesting of which address the transparency, or lack of it, in the exchange's daily stock reports.

When a large amount of metal shows up as an "arrival" in the LME report, such as the 31,000 tonnes of copper that hit the system on April 3, it hasn't "arrived" at all but has rather been building in the shadow LME storage system.

Only the owner knows when the stock will be warranted and therefore only the owner is in a position to take advantage of any impact on price.

Other exchanges don't work this way. COMEX warehouses, for example, report both on-warrant stocks and "eligible" stocks, meaning metal stored in exchange sheds but not on warrant.

This eliminates the surprise effect of large amounts of metal mysteriously showing up in a single day and the LME is interested in what its users think about moving to a similar system.

There are similar concerns about how the "out" side of the stocks reports work - specifically the way the LME currently breaks down registered tonnage between on-warrant "live" stocks and "cancelled" stocks.

The latter implies that the metal has been cancelled in preparation for physical load-out, but this is not always the case and such metal can often be bulk re-warranted, confusing any price signal.

The stocks reports in their current format, in other words, can be actively gamed by traders shifting metal between reporting categories.

One solution, the LME notes, might be to finesse the way it reports its stocks to split out metal that has been both cancelled and scheduled for physical load-out. Metal that has been cancelled without any load-out schedule would be aggregated with "live" stocks.

The result would be that cancelled metal would no longer be reported to the market, which the LME says would curtail the potential for abusive behaviour on the basis of such distinctions.

The broader market would certainly welcome such enhanced transparency, but how long would it be before the ever-inventive trading community comes up with a new ruse to game the system?

Answers to that and all other questions in the Discussion Paper can be sent to the LME by the end of May.

(Editing by David Goodman)
By Teis Jensen

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Accountant EY's audit of scandal-hit Danske Bank came under scrutiny on Friday as Danish authorities asked the state prosecutor for financial fraud to investigate the matter.

Danske Bank is under investigation in the United States, Denmark, Estonia, France and Britain over payments from Russia, ex-Soviet states and elsewhere. It has admitted that 200 billion euros ($226 billion) of suspicious transactions flowed through its Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015.

"In connection with the audit of Danske Bank's financial statements for 2014, EY became aware of information that should have prompted it to carry out further investigations and notified the Money Laundering Secretariat," the Danish Business Authority (DBA) said on Friday.

It did not give any further detail.

The DBA had in October launched an investigation into the external audit of Danske Bank's financial statements for 2014, as well as the auditor's duties in relation to suspected money laundering up until 2015.

The years named reflect the fact that 2014 is the furthest back money laundering can be punished under legislation that was in place until recent tightening by Danish lawmakers.

EY, which was external auditor for Danske Bank until Deloitte took over the job in 2015, said it was cooperating with the authorities.

"EY Denmark has reported as required by the then-applicable regulation and we will fully cooperate with the State Prosecutor," it said.

Danish and Estonian authorities have been heavily criticised for reacting too slowly and inadequately to the scandal that has also spread to other banks such as Deutsche Bank and Swedbank.

The head of the fraud squad, Morten Jacobsen, told Reuters the squad had received the report from the business authority and would look thoroughly into it before deciding whether there was a basis for raising a court case.

(Reporting by Teis Jensen; Editing by Susan Fenton and David Holmes)
By Tom Sims

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank investor Riebeck-Brauerei plans to file a motion seeking a vote to oust the bank's chairman Paul Achleitner at this year's annual general meeting, a lawyer for the shareholder said on Thursday.

Jan Bayer, Riebeck-Brauerei's lawyer, said the justification to oust Achleitner was for his "dismal performance" and for pursuing a "value-destructive" merger with Commerzbank.

Bayer said that he planned to file the motion for his client in the next week. Riebeck-Brauerei is an investment company which has a small shareholding in Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank, which is due to hold its annual general meeting on May 23, declined to comment.

The disaffection with Achleitner comes as Germany's largest bank has begun talks to merge with Commerzbank.

If successful, the tie-up will bring together Germany's two biggest banks to create one of Europe's largest financial services groups.

German government officials, led by Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, have pushed for a merger to create a national banking champion and end questions over the future of the two banks, which have struggled to recover from the 2008 financial crisis.

Last year, Riebeck-Brauerei filed a similar motion to oust Achleitner, prompting Deutsche to issue a statement supporting the chairman for his "comprehensive personal and professional skills and integrity".

At the annual meeting last year a small shareholder group led by Riebeck-Brauerei failed to oust Achleitner, garnering 9.05 percent of the vote.

Bayer also said Riebeck-Brauerei would file other motions, including one to not ratify the actions of the management and supervisory boards over the past year.

Also, the investor plans to file motions for votes of no confidence against several management board members related to the bank's failure to prevent money laundering and to pass stress tests.

Senior management at Commerzbank has come under pressure from employees, prompting its supervisory board chairman on Thursday to dismiss reports of board dissatisfaction with its chief executive as irresponsible and unfounded.

(Reporting by Tom Sims, additional reporting by Hans Seidenstuecker; Editing by Edward Taylor and Jane Merriman)
The index traversed a lackluster trading week as investors looked toward first-quarter earnings numbers for direction. Developments on the trade war front continued to determine investor sentiment to some extent. The latest Fed minutes reaffirmed its recent dovish stance, providing some respite to investors. Meanwhile, crude oil prices surged to record highs.

Last Weeks Performance

The index gained 0.2% last Friday following strong U.S. job data for March and investors optimism about a possible solution to trade tensions. The U.S. economy added 196,000 in March, above the consensus estimate of 184,000. This was a tremendous improvement from Februarys data, which was revised upward to 33,000 from 20,000 reported earlier.

The index increased 1.9% over last week. Strong jobs data, positive developments on U.S.-China trade conflict and a less volatile yield curve for government bonds negated recessionary fears and strengthened investors confidence in risky assets like equities.

The Dow This Week

The index lost 0.3% on Monday as investors waited for first-quarter earnings to commence. Lack of news on the trade front was another reason for the lackluster stock price movement. However, crude oil prices posted impressive gains.

On Apr 8, crude oil prices reached the highest level in five months. The U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude gained $1.32 or 2.1% to close at $64.40 a barrel, its highest since Nov 1, 2018. The global benchmark Brent crude rose 76 cents or 1.1% to $71.10 a barrel, its highest since Nov 7, 2018.

The index declined 0.7% on Tuesday after trade tensions between the United States and European Union escalated. Moreover, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reduced global growth forecast for 2019, which also dented investors confidence.

This was the third reduction in the last six months. The new estimate for the year is 3.3% compared with 3.5% projected in January and the forecast of 3.7% released in October. Global growth rate forecast for 2020 remained flat at 3.6%.

Story continues

The index gained 6.58 points on Wednesday after the Fed reaffirmed its dovish monetary stance in the minutes of its latest meeting. Moreover, positive news on the trade war front also strengthened investors confidence.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States and China are making progress on a trade deal. Progress has been made on a key sticking point: full protection for U.S. intellectual property.

The index lost 0.1% on Thursday, primarily due to a 0.8% decline in shares of Apple Inc. AAPL. Investors keenly awaited first-quarter earnings numbers. Financial bellwethers J.P. Morgan Chase JPM and Wells Fargo WFC are among the companies that are expected to kick off this round of earnings.

Components Moving the Index

The Boeing Company BA reported first-quarter 2019 commercial deliveries of 149 airplanes, down year over year on a sharp decline in demand for 737 jets. Delivery of the single-aisle 737 jets declined to 89 in the first quarter of 2019 from 132 a year ago. Boeing has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Shipments of the 777 and 787 Dreamliners totaled 10 and 36 compared with 12 and 34 in the year-ago period, respectively. The company delivered two jets of the 747 variant, which remained flat year over year. For 767 jets, the company delivered 12 jets in the quarter, up from four in the year-ago quarter. (Read: Boeing Q1 Commercial Deliveries Down on Low 737 Jet Demand)

Pfizer, Inc.s PFE blockbuster medicine Ibrance gained FDA approval for the treatment of breast cancer in men, thereby expanding the drugs eligible patient population. Pfizer has a Zacks Rank #3.

Ibrance, CDK 4/6 inhibitor, can now be prescribed in combination with an aromatase inhibitor or AstraZenecas AZN Faslodex (fulvestrant) for the treatment of men with HR+, HER2- metastatic breast cancer. The approval for the expanded indication is based predominately on real-world data, a new approach to expanding the use of already approved innovative medicines. (Read: Pfizer's Ibrance Gets FDA Approval for Breast Cancer in Men)

Apple recently lowered prices of different tiers of Apple Music in India, according to Verge. A monthly plan for individuals now costs $1.43 compared with $1.73 earlier. Apple also lowered the prices of its family and student plans. This apart, Apple recently lowered prices of its products globally to fight competition and boost market share.

The company slashed prices of iPhone XR in India, lowered prices (roughly 6% on average) of many of its products including iPhones, iPads, Macs, and AirPods in China and cut HomePod prices by almost 15% globally. The stock has a Zacks Rank #3. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

The Procter & Gamble Company PG announced a 4% hike in the quarterly cash dividend rate to 74.59 cents per share ($2.98 annually) from 42 cents in a bid to impress investors. The new dividend is payable on May 15, 2019, to shareholders of record as of Apr 19, 2019. This dividend increase is also applicable to the companys Series A and Series B ESOP Convertible Class A Preferred Stock.

This consumer goods giant has consistently increased the dividend and has been paying out dividends for 128 years ever since its incorporation in 1890. In fact, the latest increase marks Zacks Rank #3 P&Gs 63rd consecutive year of dividend hike that reflects its commitment to add value to shareholders and confidence in business growth. (Read: Procter & Gamble Boosts Shareholder Value, Hikes Dividend)

Walmart Inc. WMT plans to undertake remodeling efforts in 54, 19, 15 and 34 stores in Texas, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Florida, respectively. In Florida, the company will construct a new Neighborhood Market. Accordingly, it will be making investments to ramp up these stores with advanced features, directed toward simplifying the consumer's shopping experience.

The store remodeling will include building capabilities such as grocery pickups, wherein customers can easily pick their online orders from stores. To make pickup services convenient, Zacks Rank #3 Walmart will be installing more pick up towers.

Moreover, customers can avail Walmarts recently introduced Voice Order technology in partnership with Alphabet's GOOG Google. This technology enables consumers to directly add items to the shopping cart by simply talking to the Google Assistant. (Read: Walmart's Store Remodel Plans to Drive Omnichannel Growth)

UnitedHealth Group Incorporateds UNH arm UnitedHealthcare is expanding its partnership with care providers and the government to offer top-quality medical care through its UnitedHealthcare Care Bundles Program. UnitedHealth has a Zacks Rank #3.

By virtue of this alliance, care providers across more than 30 states will be able to take part in the bundled payment models under certain UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans, such as hip and knee replacements, coronary bypasses and spinal fusions.

This program is part of the companys commitment to provide its members with enriched, value-based care. UnitedHealth projects that by the end of 2020, it will have $75 billion in care provider reimbursements attached to value-based arrangements on a yearly basis.

In the current scenario, more than 3 million people under the UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plans have access to avail of treatment per value-based models. (Read: UnitedHealth's Unit to Upgrade Care Bundles Program)

Performance of the Top 10 Dow Companies

The table given below shows the price movements of the 10 largest components of the Dow, which is a price-weighted index, over the last five days and during the past six months. Over the last five trading days, the Dow has declined 0.5%.

Next Weeks Outlook

Trade negotiations are progressing well and the latest Fed minutes have served to reemphasize the central banks dovish stance. Under such circumstances, the focus will shift squarely to first-quarter earnings.

Additionally, several important economic metrics are scheduled for release next week. This includes data on industrial production and retail sales. If most of them are encouraging, markets would find a stable catalyst for gains in the days ahead.

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Polls show that some of the Democratic Partys most progressive policy proposals  including Medicare for All, free college tuition and a new tax on wealthy households  are broadly popular with American voters. But according to a report from Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman of The New York Times, many Democratic voters are worried that these proposals could turn into political liabilities in the 2020 election.The fear, voters told Tankersley and Casselman, is that in the current polarized political environment, opponents of those policies will succeed in portraying them as too far to the left, alienating moderate voters and boosting the chances of re-election for President Trump.In terms of progressive policy, one of the big things were finding is its not opposition were fighting, its cynicism. People dont think it can happen, Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said.The numbers: Support for the policies is pretty clear. In a new poll, the Times found that 66% of voters supported a 2% tax on households with a net worth over $50 million, a proposal that has been floated by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). Even a majority of Republicans expressed their support for this idea.Medicare for All and free college tuition also received majority support  58% and 59% respectively  though neither proposal is backed by a majority of Republicans.The reasons why: Some poll respondents said it was becoming increasingly obvious to voters that at a time of rising economic inequality, the countrys wealthiest citizens need to pay higher taxes. More cynically, Republican strategists said Americans approve of tax-the-rich proposals because they see it is as something of a free lunch, gaining benefits paid for by someone else.Whats next: Democratic voters seem torn about their priorities. Many are attracted to progressive proposals, but that hasnt given liberal stalwarts like Warren an advantage over frontrunner Joe Biden. The reason, Tankersley and Casselman say, is that so many Democrats are worried about successful attacks from the right, which could cost them the White House next year.I would like someone more radical, but because the situation is so dire, I think Joe [Biden] is our safest bet to beat Trump, one Florida Democrat said. I used to think that policy was more important, but because of the stinging defeat that we had, I dont trust that anymore.Like what you're reading? Sign up for our free newsletter.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is proposing a new tax on corporate profits above $100 million.

The presidential candidate says her Real Corporate Profits Tax would prevent corporate giants like Amazon from exploiting tax laws to avoid paying federal taxes. Because of relentless lobbying, our corporate income tax rules are filled with so many loopholes and exemptions and deductions that even companies that tell shareholders they have made more than a billion dollars in profits can end up paying no corporate income taxes, she wrote in a post on Medium Thursday.

Her plan, the latest in a string of policy proposals, would apply an additional 7% surtax to global profits companies report to their investors rather than those they file with the IRS. It would affect the 1,200 or so most profitable companies in the country and raise more than $1 trillion in revenue over 10 years, Warren says, citing estimates from economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman of the University of California, Berkeley. It will make our biggest and most profitable corporations pay more and ensure that none of them can ever make billions and pay zero taxes again, she wrote.

The senator argues that companies seek to minimize the profits they report to the IRS, but they want to maximize the profits they report to shareholders in order to boost their stock prices (and the executive compensation thats tied to those prices). Companies will be hesitant to under-report their profits to investors  which means they wont be able to game the tax system as much as they can now, she said.

Warren cites the examples of Amazon and Occidental Petroleum, which reported profits of more than $10 billion and $4.1 billion, respectively, in 2018 but paid no federal corporate income taxes. Under her proposal, Amazon would have paid $698 million and Occidental would have paid $380 million, she said.

An Amazon spokesperson provided a statement in response: Amazon pays all the taxes we are required to pay in the U.S. and every country where we operate, including paying $2.6 billion in corporate tax and reporting $3.4 billion in tax expense over the last three years.

Story continues

Why it matters: Warrens plan is essentially undoing the $1 trillion in business tax cuts that Trump signed into law, but with the impact concentrated on a smallish number of very profitable companies, Voxs Matthew Yglesias says. Federal corporate tax receipts fell by $92 billion in fiscal 2018, a 31% drop, after the GOP tax law cut the corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%.

Warrens proposal has no chance of being enacted before the 2020 elections. But, as with Warrens proposed wealth tax, it allows her to contrast her agenda with the tax cuts passed by Republicans in 2017  and it will add to the perception that shes leading the Democratic field in setting an economic policy agenda for 2020.

This article has been updated to add a response from Amazon.

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EPA headquarters. Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM



The U.S. Supreme Courts 2012 decision in Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, a landmark in the conservative campaign to weaken the administrative state, could soon make its way back to the high court.



The court ruled that the Sackett family, blocked by the EPA from building a house on their Idaho half-acre lot, had the right to challenge the agencys Clean Water Act enforcement order in court. In a 2017 Federalist Society speech, then-White House Counsel Donald McGahn praised the ruling as a win in the war against regulatory despotism.



But now, seven years after the courts decision, the ruling has turned out to be a loss for plaintiffs Chantell and Mike Sackett.



On March 31, a federal district judge in Idaho who handled the Sacketts challenge ruled that the EPA was correct in asserting that the Sacketts property was a wetland protected by the Clean Water Act. The ruling by senior Judge Edward Dodge made no mention of the Supreme Court case.



The EPAs determination that plaintiffs property is a wetland is reasonable and supported by the materials in the Administrative Record, said Lodge, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush.



The Sackett saga is not over, and may yet become another, even stronger milestone for opponents of regulatory power, now that Trump administration appointees have joined lower courts, the Supreme Court, and regulatory agencies.



The Sacketts are clearly disappointed. They still own the property and they want to have a house built there, said Tony Francois, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation, which carried the Sacketts cause to the Supreme Court and back. We are going to file an appeal. There were significant errors in the decision.



But Francois indicated that the second round of the Sackett case could have broader impact than ultimately allowing the Sacketts to build their house.



Lodge's ruling cites the 2006 Supreme Court decision Rapanos v. United States in asserting that the EPA had jurisdiction over the Sackett property, because it meets the significant nexus test established in Rapanos.



Because Rapanos was invoked, Francois said, we do think the Sackett case would provide a vehicle to reconsider Rapanos.



Conservatives have long criticized the significant nexus standard as a vague rule that could apply to most of the nations acreage. The court was split 4-1-4 in Rapanos, with Justice Anthony Kennedys solo opinion carrying the day with his significant nexus formulation.



Now that Kennedy has retired, his successor, Brett Kavanaugh, may have a different view, perhaps more akin to Scalias opinion in Rapanos. Scalia said the act only covers relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water and wetlands with a continuous surface connection to such water bodies.



Any new developments on Rapanos could, in turn, affect the Trump administrations efforts to erase Obama-era definitions of waters of the United States and replace them with a rule that adopts Scalias view.









Story continues

Read the Idaho judge's newest order in Sackett v. EPA:

































Read more:





Roberts Straddles the Middle as Gorsuch Questions Federal Regulatory Power



Don't Overturn Key Regulatory Rulings, US Solicitor Tells Supreme Court



Justices Thomas and Gorsuch Call for Curbs on Federal Agency Power



Supreme Court Tees Up Major Challenge to Power of Federal Regulators
(This April 4 story has been refilled to correctly say victim was Ralph Nader's grand-niece, not niece) By Jason Neely ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Ethiopia Airlines' doomed 737 MAX jet hit excessive speed and was forced downwards by a wrongly-triggered automation system as pilots wrestled to regain control, a preliminary report into the crash that has shaken the aviation world showed on Thursday. Three times the captain Yared Getachew cried "pull up", before the Boeing plane plunged into a field six minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa last month, killing all 157 passengers and crew, said the report by Ethiopian investigators. The disaster - and parallels with another 737 MAX crash in Indonesia where 189 people died last October - has led to the grounding of Boeing's flagship model. It has also brought uncomfortable scrutiny over new software, pilot training and regulatory rigor. While the Ethiopian Civil Aviation Authority's Accident Prevention and Investigation Bureau had a remit to investigate rather than blame, it implicitly pointed the finger at Boeing by defending the pilots, recommending the U.S. company fix its control systems, and saying regulators must be certain before allowing the MAX back in the air. "The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft," Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges told a news conference. "Since repetitive uncommanded aircraft nose down conditions are noticed ... it is recommended that the aircraft control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer." Boeing, the world's biggest planemaker and one of the United States' most important exporters with a $500 billion order book for the MAX, says a new software fix for its anti-stall system will enable pilots to always override if necessary. According to the report by the Ethiopian investigators, an alarm indicating excess speed was heard on the cockpit voice reporter as the jet reached 500 knots (575 miles per hour) - well above operational limits. FRAGMENTS IN A CRATER The plane had faulty "angle of attack" sensor readings, its nose was pushed down automatically, and the crew lost control despite following recommended instructions, it said. "Most of the wreckage was found buried in the ground," the report said, indicating the strength of the impact on an arid field in an agricultural zone. No bodies were recovered, only charred fragments among the debris in a crater. Boeing has seen billions wiped off its market value since the crash, but its shares actually rose 2.4 percent on Thursday. Morgan Stanley said the report of flight control problems, which Boeing was already trying to fix, meant a "worst case scenario" of a new cause was probably off the table. Families of the victims, regulators and travelers around the world have been waiting to find out to what extent Boeing technology or the pilots' actions played a role. A final report is due within a year. The preliminary report into the Lion Air disaster in Indonesia suggested pilots also lost control after grappling with so-called MCAS software, a new automated anti-stall feature that repeatedly lowered the nose based on faulty sensor data. "It had to take a second disaster to wake up the major players to pay attention to something that could've been resolved after the first disaster," said one woman, who lost her father in the Ethiopian crash, asking not to be named. "Whatever the issues were, they better be 110 percent sure about their resolution, otherwise the 157 lives lost would have been for nothing if something like this happens again. This is a lesson to not take shortcuts in order to try and save bucks." "PROFITS OVER SAFETY"? U.S. regulator the Federal Aviation Administration, under fire for its certification of the MAX, cautioned the inquiry was not over. "As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action," it said. Boeing may press to know how crew members responded to problems triggered by the faulty data. Questions on whether the pilots had leveled out the plane before disengaging MCAS and how many times MCAS activated were not answered at the news conference in Addis Ababa that lasted about 40 minutes. The New York Times quoted Dagmawit as saying pilots turned MCAS off and on, which is not the step recommended in published Boeing procedures telling crew to leave it off once disabled. With bereaved families angry and confused, relatives of one woman killed in the Ethiopian crash filed the first lawsuit on behalf of a U.S. victim in Chicago. The complaint accused Boeing of putting "profits over safety" and also targeted Rosemount Aerospace, the manufacturer of the angle of attack sensor. U.S. consumer activist Ralph Nader, whose grand-niece died in Ethiopia, called for consumers to boycott the MAX. Pilots around the world were watching closely too. "If the preliminary report from the Ethiopian authorities is accurate, the pilots quickly identified the malfunction and applied the manufacturer's checklist," said Captain Jason Goldberg, spokesman for Allied Pilots Association, which represents American Airlines pilots. "Following this checklist did not appear to allow the pilots to regain control of the aircraft." (Reporting by Jason Neely in Addis Ababa, Eric Johnson in Seattle, Katharine Houreld and Maggie Fick in Nairobi, Tim Hepher in Paris, Jamie Freed in Singapore, Tracy Rusinski in Chicago, David Shepardson in Washington; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, April 12 (Reuters) - EU countries are set to agree an overhaul of the bloc's two-decade old copyright rules next week, requiring Google to pay publishers for news snippets and Facebook to filter out protected content, despite increasing opposition from some governments.

EU lawmakers at the European Parliament gave the European Commission's proposal a thumbs up last month, wanting to protect Europe's creative industry which is worth 915 billion euros ($1 trillion) annually and employs 11.65 million people.

The revamp has been marked by intense lobbying from tech companies worried about the administrative burden and the hit to their revenues and by artists, publishers and performers seeking fair compensation.

The new rules would force Google and other online platforms to sign licensing agreements with musicians, performers, authors, news publishers and journalists to use their work online.

Google's YouTube, Facebook's Instagram and other sharing platforms will also have to install filters to prevent users from uploading copyrighted materials. Critics say this could hit cash-strapped small companies rather than the tech giants.

Finland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland and Sweden have said they will vote against the reforms on Monday, a move unlikely to derail the proposal unless a major EU country weighs in to form a blocking minority.

"We regret that the directive does not strike the right balance between the protection of rights holders and the interests of EU citizens and companies," the countries, with the exception of Sweden, said in a statement.

Belgium and Slovenia will abstain while Estonia said it was not able to have a view because its government had only just come to power.

($1 = 0.8855 euros) (Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
BRUSSELS, April 11 (Reuters) - The following are mergers under review by the European Commission and a brief guide to the EU merger process:

APPROVALS AND WITHDRAWALS

-- French nursing home operator Financiere Colisee to acquire sole control over Belgian nursing home operator Armonea Group (approved April 10)

NEW LISTINGS

-- Czech energy company EPH to indirectly acquire sole control over energy company Uniper France through a purchase of shares(notified April 9/deadline May 21/simplified)

-- Abu Dhabi's government investor ADIA and Triton Fund V to acquire joint control over food transportation packager IFCO group (notified April 9/deadline May 21/simplified)

-- Bregal Unternehmenkapital to acquire sole control over MEDIA Central (notified April 9/deadline May 21/simplified)

EXTENSIONS AND OTHER CHANGES

None

FIRST-STAGE REVIEWS BY DEADLINE

APRIL 24

-- Swedish telecoms provider Telia Company to acquire Bonnier Broadcasting which includes brands such as Swedish TV4 and streaming service C More and Finnish MTV (notified March 15/deadline April 24)

APRIL 26

-- Liberty House Group to acquire sole control over steel companies Galati/Skopje HoldCo, Paloma S.r.l., ArcelorMittal Ostrava a.s., Liege Steel Industry SA and ArcelorMittal Dudelange S.A. (notified March 19/deadline April 26/simplified)

APRIL 30

-- Italy's doBank S.p.A. to acquire sole control over Altamira Asset Management S.A. and its affiliates with the exception of Altamira Asset Management Cyprus which will remain under joint control with Cyprus Cooperative Bank (notified March 21/deadline April 30/simplified)

-- France's Engie S.A. and Canada's Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec to obtain joint control over Brazil's Transportadora Associada de Gas S.A. (notified March 21/deadline April 30/simplified)

MAY 2

-- International power plant supplier Ansaldo Energia and Russia's REP Holding to create REPH Ansaldo Gas Turbine joint venture (notified March 22/deadline May 2/simplified)

-- U.S.-based private equity companies TA Associates Management and Vista Equity Partners Management to acquire joint control over Aptean Inc. and Yaletown Acquiror (notified March 22/deadline May 2/simplified)

Story continues

MAY 3

-- Gemany's Daimler and China's Geely Technology Group to create a ride-hailing joint venture in China (notified March 25/deadline May 3/simplified)

MAY 6

-- Electricity company Sev.en Energy Group and Chinese peer China Huaneng Group to acquire joint control of electricity provider InterGen B.V. (notified March 26/deadline May 6/simplified)

MAY 7

-- U.S. plastics maker Berry Global Group to acquire British packager RPC (notified March 27/deadline May 7/simplified)

MAY 8
The logo of British life insurer Prudential is seen on their building in London The logo of British life insurer Prudential is seen on their building in London, Britain March 17, 2019. REUTERS/Simon Dawson

By Sumeet Chatterjee and Alun John

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Foreign insurers including Generali and Prudential Plc are in early talks with authorities to enter China's private pensions sector, people with knowledge of the matter said, as Beijing opens up to overseas companies.

Hong Kong-based AIA Group and Manulife Financial are also considering similar moves, they said.

Beijing gave approval to the first foreign joint-venture firm to establish a pensions insurance business last month and two of the people said China has been running pilot projects in three provinces involving foreign firms. Those projects end later this year.

Foreign insurers would compete with eight established Chinese pension insurance firms that dominate the potentially lucrative market, where the fast-greying population is set to produce 250 million people older than 60 by 2020.

"The average longevity of people in China is increasing but the pension market remains under-penetrated," Prudential Asia Chief Executive Nic Nicandrou told Reuters.

Some of the foreign companies are expected to submit applications in the second half of this year to set up pensions businesses, the people said. They declined to be identified as the plans are not firm yet and also are not public.

"POISED"

Last month, Heng An Standard Life, a joint venture between Standard Life Aberdeen and Tianjin TEDA International, became the first foreign joint-venture entity to receive regulatory approval by China to establish a pensions insurance company.

China's pensions assets, including those managed by the state, grew by 20 percent in 2017 to 11 trillion yuan ($1.64 trillion) and are expected to more than quadruple by 2025, consultancy KPMG said in a report this year.

Underlining the potential, consultant Willis Towers Watson said China has one of the lowest ratios of private-employee annuity pension assets to GDP among major economies at 1.5 percent. That compares with 120.5 percent of GDP in the United States and more than 130 percent in Australia.

Story continues

Prudential has a 50-50 life-insurance venture with China's CITIC Group. Nicandrou said the venture is "well poised" to participate in the pension market but he did not elaborate on any specific plans.

Rob Leonardi, Asia regional officer for Italy's top insurer Generali, said the firm was seeing progress in pensions reform in China.

"If this trend continues, we can expect more foreign funded companies to express further interest in the coming months," he said. The company declined to give details about its plans for the market.

AIA, which operates the only wholly owned foreign life insurance business in China, declined to comment.

"MATTER OF TIME"

Global asset managers have been lobbying Beijing to offer tax benefits and other incentives to encourage investment in mutual funds for retirement.

Manulife, which signed a pact with Agricultural Bank of China in 2017 to jointly explore opportunities in China's pension and retirement market, is looking to establish a joint-venture pension management company.

It plans to draw upon its life insurance and asset management joint ventures in China to launch retirement solutions and products, said Calvin Chiu, head of Asia retirement at Manulife Asset Management.

"The government has expressed willingness to open up the financial services sectors in the country, it's just a matter of time and priority. They do recognize the value that foreign players can add in the pension space," he said.

China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.

"All countries are trying to shift pensions away from the iron rice bowl concept," Gerry Grimstone, chairman of Heng An Standard Life said.

"There have been some attempts at this in China, but, the fact is, there is technology in the west, and an approach to this which the Chinese were keen to bring into their market."

(Reporting by Sumeet Chatterjee and Alun John; Editing by Neil Fullick)
FILE PHOTO: John Elkann, Chairman of the Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Group attends the presentation of the Science Gateway, a new facility dedicated to scientific education and outreach, by architet Renzo Piano at the CERN in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, April 8, 2019. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

By Giulio Piovaccari

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Fiat Chrysler gave an upbeat forecast for 2019 after a tricky end to last year and a slow start to this one, confirming the carmaker was on track to meet its targets and easing fears of a slowdown on the North American market.

Speaking at a time when deal talk is bubbling again in the industry, Chairman John Elkann told investors the Italo-American group was ready to play a part in the "new and exciting" era for the auto industry.

He also struck a positive tone on the short-term outlook.

"Despite the (fact that the) second part of 2018 included trade difficulties in some areas that persisted in the first part of this year, we forecast a significative improvement in the second half of 2019," Elkann said.

Chief Executive Michael Manley, who took up his post last July, said the group's operating performance this year would exceed the record results posted in 2018.

In February weaker-than-expected guidance for 2019 profits and industrial free cash flow raised doubts about longer-term targets.

Manley has sought to persuade investors that the 2020 goals -- set by late boss Sergio Marchionne -- were still achievable.

"I am confident that we will successfully deliver on our guidance for this year," he said.

He added that he expected a continued strong performance in North America, the carmaker's main profit engine which accounts of almost 80 percent of core earnings, with higher margins compared to last year.

Weaker margins in North America in the last quarter of 2018 had raised concerns about a potential slowing demand in the United States, where FCA also faces stiff competition in the vital SUV and truck segments.

"BOLD AND CREATIVE"

Manley said industrial free cash flow this year was expected to be more than 1.5 billion euros, down on last year due to higher capital expenditure.

Manley also said he aimed to make dividends at FCA a regular feature after the group paid 0.65 euros a share to investors on 2018 results, its first dividend in 10 years.

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At 1330 GMT Fiat Chrysler shares were up 2.4 percent, giving it a valuation of more than 21.5 billion euros ($24.3 billion).

Elkann - a scion of Italy's Agnelli family that is Fiat Chrysler's biggest shareholder - reiterated the family was prepared to take "bold and creative decisions" to help build a solid and attractive future.

Recent media reports have said France's Renault could be eyeing a bid for Fiat while in March the president of Peugeot family holding company FFP said he would support a new deal and suggested Fiat Chrysler was among the options.

After the sudden death of Marchionne last year, speculation about the future of Fiat Chrysler has intensified.

Marchionne, who had created the group by merging a troubled Fiat with Chrysler of the U.S., had advocated industry mergers to share the cost of building electric and self-driving cars.

Carmakers around the world are looking to tie-ups to cope with rising competition, the rise of electrification and the threat of a trade war between the United States and China.

(Reporting by Giulio Piovaccari; writing by Stephen Jewkes; editing by Keith Weir)
Hertz_sign

Photo: Flickr



In an exceptionally rare clawback case, The Hertz Corp. is suing its former general counsel and two other top executives to recover over $70 million the company says it paid them in incentive pay and a golden parachute severance package, plus over $200 million in legal fees and other costs due to misstated financial reports.



Hertz, which is headquartered in Estero, was forced to restate three years worth of income. All three defendants resigned under pressure and received multimillion-dollar severance packages.



Hertz does not accuse ex-GC Jeffrey Zimmerman of doing anything illegal, but the complaint alleges he failed to stop, effectively counterbalance, or otherwise offset or report to Hertzs board of directors about actions of former CEO Mark Frissora, which led to serious accounting misconduct. Frissora is a co-defendant in the lawsuit along with then-chief financial officer Elyse Douglas.



Frissora demanded paradigm-busting accounting, the suit said. As General Counsel and chief compliance officer, Zimmerman was responsible for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of disclosures to stockholders and the public,



Zimmermans failure to stop or report Frissora was a breach of his duty owed to Hertz, the complaint said. Zimmermans attorney, Vincent Connelly of the Chicago office of Mayer Brown, declined comment. Zimmerman, who served as general counsel for seven years ending in December 2014, couldnt be reached for comment by deadline.



While the Securities and Exchange Commission has brought a few clawback cases against executives, one filed by a corporation is very rare. In fact, Hertz attorney Herbert Beigel said he knows of no other case quite like it. Beyond that, Beigel of Herbert Beigel & Associates in Tucson, Arizona, said the complaint speaks for itself.



The lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Jersey by Gordon & Rees attorney Douglas E. Motzenbecker of Florham Park, New Jersey. Robert Viducich of the Law Office of Robert R. Viducich in New York also represents Hertz.



The facts of the case stretch back to 2011-2013 when then CEO-Frissora allegedly displayed a management style and temperament that created a pressurized operating environment at the company ... which led to inappropriate accounting decisions and the failure to disclose information critical to an effective review of Hertzs finances, the suit states.



As an example of Zimmermans knowledge, the suit said, During the January 2013 close, Frissora urged Zimmerman to conduct a granular review of the legal reserves to help the company bridge the gap for year-end results. Then, in September 2013, Frissora again urged Zimmerman to review legal reserves.



The suit said the defendants "wrongful tone at the top was a form of misconduct and gross negligence," led to inadequate internal controls and a plethora of accounting errors.



According to the suit, Zimmermans golden parachute included, among other things, a series of lump-sum payments, the retention of certain incentive-based equity awards, eligibility for 92.9 percent of his 2014 bonus and the continued use of certain perquisites, such as insurance coverage.



Last December the company agreed to pay $16 million to settle a case brought by SEC for materially misstating its income by some $235 million.



In February, after an internal investigation and settlement with the SEC, Hertz sent letters to the defendants demanding they return their incentive and severance payments, totaling $70 million. When they did not do so, Hertz brought suit March 25 in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleging they were in breach of the companys clawback policy.



Hertz also accused them of breaching their severance agreements by saying they had not engaged in willful gross neglect or willful gross misconduct.



The suit said Frissora and Zimmerman also represented in those agreements that they had not facilitated" or knew of "any financial or accounting improprieties or irregularities within Hertz.



Hertz cites as damages the $70 million in incentive and severance pay, and over $200 million in investigative, legal and remediation costs, including the SEC penalty. The legal costs include defending the company against several lawsuits brought after the income restatement.



Hertz also seeks a declaratory judgment saying the defendants are not entitled to have their attorney fees paid by the company for this litigation.



Meanwhile, the defendants have filed their own action in Delaware Chancery Court, asking that the court order Hertz to pay their attorney fees. That action is expected to be heard first in May.
NEW YORK, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gainey McKenna & Egleston announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against comScore, Inc. (comScore or the Company) (SCOR) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of those who purchased or acquired the securities of comScore between November 8, 2018 and March 29, 2019, 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.



The Complaint alleges that Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that the Company was experiencing difficulties implementing its business strategy; (2) that, as a result, the Companys financial results would be materially impacted; and (3) that, as a result of the foregoing, Defendants positive statements about the Companys business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

On March 31, 2019, the Company announced the resignations of its Chief Executive Officer, Bryan Wiener, and President, Sarah Hofstetter, both of whom had been appointed to their positions less than one year ago. The Company also stated that it expects first quarter 2019 revenue to be between $100 million and $104 million, but analysts had estimated approximately $106 million in revenue. On this news, the Companys share price fell $6.01 per share, or nearly 30%, to close at $14.24 per share on April 1, 2019, thereby injuring investors.

Investors who purchased or otherwise acquired shares during the Class Period should contact the Firm prior to the June 10, 2019 lead plaintiff motion deadline. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. If you wish to discuss your rights or interests regarding this class action, please contact Thomas J. McKenna, Esq. or Gregory M. Egleston, Esq. of Gainey McKenna & Egleston at (212) 983-1300, or via e-mail at tjmckenna@gme-law.com or gegleston@gme-law.com.

Please visit our website at http://www.gme-law.com for more information about the firm.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / April 12, 2019 / Gaucho Group Holdings, Inc (VINO), a collection of luxury assets, real estate holdings and premium wines based in Argentina, today announced that its emerging fashion brand, Gaucho - Buenos Aires, has been featured in Vogue Italia. Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine covering many topics including fashion, beauty, culture, living, and runway.

The news article highlights Gaucho's three talented designers that stood out with their original concepts at Designers Buenos Aires fashion week, one of Argentina's most important fashion showcases, which took please at Tattersall De Palermo, on March 18, 2019. Gaucho - Buenos Aires debuted its Fall/Winter Collection to fashion industry media at the event. Gaucho - Buenos Aires serves as a platform for talented young designers in an overarching effort to support the imaginative expression of previously stifled Argentine youth. The brand has handpicked some of the best upcoming talent in Buenos Aires to serve on its fashion design team, including Santiago Gallo (Creative Director), Carmen Vils (Pret a Porte Design Assistant), and Guido Spangenberg (Leather Accessories Designer).

Gaucho - Buenos Aires embodies the spirit of Argentina -- its grand history, its folklore and its revival as a global center of luxury. Inspired by the sophisticated elegance of the great European maisons, Gaucho - Buenos Aires is also rooted in the traditions of native, nomadic culture. With its ambitious couture, ready-to-wear and high-street fashion offering, this is the brand in which Argentine luxury finds its contemporary expression. (www.GauchoBuenosAires.com)

"The press surrounding Gaucho - Buenos Aires in these early stages of development has been quite special," said Scott Mathis, CEO and Founder of Gaucho Group Holdings, Inc. "After hearing the news of our appearance in Vogue Italia, as well as our recent appearance on the cover of the first ever edition of Marie Claire Argentina, we couldn't be more excited about the early press we are receiving. In the months leading up to our international debut, we hope to be able to leverage all things positive in regards to press, social media presence, and fashion reviews like the one in Vogue Italia in order to better position ourselves for success."

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Please visit GauchoBuenosAires.com and follow us on Instagram @gauchobuenosaires today to sign up for insider fashion news, behind-the-brand stories, exclusive invitations, and special access to wait lists and pre-ordering.

About Gaucho Group Holdings, Inc.

For more than ten years, Gaucho Group Holdings' (formerly Algodon Group) mission has been to source and develop opportunities in Argentina's undervalued luxury real estate and consumer marketplace. With our proprietary collection of wine, hospitality, fashion brands, and real estate holdings as a foundation, we seek to build our luxury brands of Gaucho - Buenos Aires and ALGODON, brands of prestige, distinction and elegance. We begin with a focus on the quality and reputation of Algodon's award-wining wines, which serve as our ambassador for our luxury lifestyle properties and other real estate assets. As we continue to produce the ultra-fine wines for which we have become recognized, we expect that our reputation for quality will continue to grow and accordingly increase the value of our brand and real estate holdings. Algodon's luxury assets are currently concentrated in Argentina, which we believe represents one of the most undervalued investment sectors in the world today. For more information, please visit www.gauchogroupholdings.com .

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

The information discussed in this press release includes "forward looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 (the "Securities Act") and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the "Exchange Act"). All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included herein concerning, among other things, planned capital expenditures, future cash flows and borrowings, pursuit of potential acquisition opportunities, our financial position, business strategy and other plans and objectives for future operations, are forward looking statements. These forward-looking statements are identified by their use of terms and phrases such as "may," "expect," "estimate," "project," "plan," "believe," "intend," "achievable," "anticipate," " will," "continue," "potential," "should," "could," and similar terms and phrases. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do involve certain assumptions, risks and uncertainties and are not (and should not be considered to be) guarantees of future performance. Among these risks are those set forth in a Form 10-K filed on March 30, 2018. It is important that each person reviewing this release understand the significant risks attendant to the operations of Gaucho Group Holdings. Gaucho Group Holdings disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement made herein.

CONTACT:

Media and Investor Relations:

Gaucho Group Holdings, INC.

Rick Stear

Director of Marketing

212.739.7669

rstear@algodongroup.com

SOURCE: Gaucho Group Holdings, Inc.





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/541759/Gaucho--Buenos-Aires-Receives-First-International-Press-After-Being-Highlighted-in-Vogue-Italia




BERLIN (Reuters) - Frankfurt prosecutors searched apartments and offices across Germany as part of a broader investigation into a fraudulent share-trading scheme, they said on Thursday.

The practice, known as cum-ex, involves cross-border trading of company shares around a syndicate of banks, investors and hedge funds to create the impression of numerous owners, with each entitled to a tax rebate.

There are seven suspects - six men and one woman - aged 46 to 55, the prosecution office said in a statement. The searches were conducted on Tuesday.

The investigation into the scheme began as far back as 2013. Prosecutors have said it misled the German government into paying tax refunds that have cost the country billions of euros.

The Frankfurt prosecutors said they searched apartments and offices in the states of Hesse, Lower Saxony, Baden-Wuerttemberg and Bavaria in connection with three cases in which cum-ex trades led to suspected tax reclaims of over 50 million euros (43 million).

Around 170 tax investigation officials and 11 prosecutors were involved in the raids, the prosecutors said.

(Reporting by Thomas Seythal and Caroline Copley; editing by Tassilo Hummel and John Stonestreet)
Globalization has become an unstoppable force. The Asia Internship Program welcomes the dawn of international enterprise.

BANGKOK, THAILAND / ACCESSWIRE / April 11, 2019 / The Asia Internship Program offers opportunities for young people who want to take advantage of worldwide cultural opportunities to take part in the Internship in Thailand program. As the world becomes more interconnected, a culturally aware workforce is a necessity. Asia is becoming increasingly sought-after as an attempt to contend with employer demand. Foreign countries welcomed over 336,000 US-based university students to partake in various work experience programs, which is a 350% increase from 1990. Companies have articulated a growing notice in young professionals who not only studied abroad but those who have had experience overseas as it is a beneficial asset to enhance career perspectives.

Having international work experience can bring a substantial advantage on students' curriculum vitae, as prominent credentials, considering not everyone has a window of opportunity to do so. Businesses pine for exceptional candidates that have the ability to set themselves apart from others. Asia is currently the world's fastest-growing economic region, and is predicted to maintain this position for the next decade.

Find out more about the Internship Program here https://internsinasia.com/

Daniele Cosentino, Managing Director for Asia Internship Program (AIP), believes that an internship within Asia is a great way for Western graduates to take advantage of this current climate, ''If graduates are looking to elevate the chances of working within global enterprises, an internship abroad is an indubious way to achieve this.''

Businesses in China and ASEAN countries have expanded and become more competitive; which has resulted in the global economy to move towards the east. Take China, for example, the country alone has the second-largest economy in the world. This means that there are greater prospects of job creation, showing a greater demand for high-skilled workers. At the same time, the growth of businesses not only creates more job opportunities but also often brings with it rising salaries and better benefits for employees.

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Aside from improved financial advantages, businesses in Asia allow international professionals to work on building their key cross-cultural skills, which is another trait highly valued by employers from all around the globe. In other words, having an appreciation of foreign cultures, beliefs and practices and thus knowing how to conduct businesses abroad are perceived as invaluable skills for any career paths as businesses around the world are becoming more and more borderless to one another.

A study curated by Willaim Maddux, associate professor of organizational behaviour at INSEAD, affirms that students who embraced a flexible approach to foreign cultures are able to form connections among contrasting ideologies. He goes on to state, "people who have international experience or identify with more than one nationality are better problem solvers and display more creativity, our research suggests." Simply put, the advantages gained by those who lived abroad out-performed those who did not, as they have a tendency to be creative thinkers.

A notable factor to keep into account while gaining experience for young aspiring entrepreneurs is how preferred skills in the workplace are quite demanding, and is always expected without request. In addition to possessing an international mindset, one must have the necessary capabilities to go hand in hand with their broadened minds. Core highlights of 21st-century skills are collaboration, information literacy, and having the initiative to take charge in leadership roles. According to this list alone, one who has studied or worked in a foreign country would have undeniably already been exposed to conditions that require these skills. These skills are highlighted to ensure young adults would be able to keep up with the ever-shifting nature of today's modern markets.

Taking all of this into consideration, it is clear that hiring employees who have gained insight into different cultural settings will become a requisite for companies who want to advance their business globally. Partaking in an internship abroad in a setting like Asia, will without a doubt keep interns one step ahead of the competition.

Location information can be found at https://internsinasia.com/

Contact Info:

Name: Daniele CosentinoDaniele CosentinoDaniele CosentinoDaniele Cosentino

Organization: Asia Internship Program

Address: 5th Floor C-5, 153/3 Goldenland Bldg, Soi Mahadlek Luang 1, Ratchadamri Rd, Lumpini, Pathumwan Bangkok 10330

Phone: +66 (0) 97 073 4590

Website: https://internsinasia.com

SOURCE: Asia Internship Program





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/541783/Globalization-Opens-More-Job-Opportunities-In-Asia




Agreement with Leading Beauty And Personal Care Brand In Brazil Represents Companys First Contract in Emerging CBD Cosmetics and Beauty Market

BALTIMORE, MD, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greater Cannabis Company (GCAN) , a market leader and innovator in the development and commercialization of cannabinoid delivery systems, today announced a letter of agreement (LOI) with leading Brazilian beauty and personal care company Allume Cosmeticos . Under the terms of the agreement, Greater Cannabis Company will customize formulations and incorporate its proprietary technology to infuse pharmaceutical-grade cannabidiol (CBD) into Allumes new line of CBD-based cosmetic products, empowering Allume to market and distribute CBD-infused beauty and personal care for its retail partners, distributors and millions of customers.

CBD has shown multiple beauty and personal care benefits, ranging from antioxidants for anti-aging to anti-inflammatory for acne and other treatments. Its effectiveness in these applications requires excellent product bioavailability and reliable stability. Greater Cannabis Companys patented technology platform has demonstrated this in the delivery of cannabis actives across different mediums in lab studies, including beauty and personal care. The company combines this with expertise and innovation in concept development to full-scale commercialization to assist its retail and manufacturing clients in bringing CBD products to market.

The Brazilian cosmetics market, the fifth largest in the world, has long been a global leader in beauty and personal care products, with Allume on the forefront of product concept and innovation for over 40 years, said Aitan Zacharin, Chief Executive Officer of Greater Cannabis Company. We are honored to have been selected by Allume Cosmeticos to develop its CBD products, which we believe is a testament of the strength and efficacy of our proprietary CBD formulation technology and the industrys increasing demand for it..

Story continues

Todays announcement of its relationship with Allume Cosmeticos continues The Greater Cannabis Companys growth and position as a leading innovator in the global CBD industry, and is just one of many dynamic partnership and customer announcements it will share in the coming year. For additional information about The Greater Cannabis Company, please visit www.gcanrx.com .

About The Greater Cannabis Company:

The Greater Cannabis (GCAN) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialization of innovative cannabinoid delivery systems. Greater Cannabis deploys its patented technology platform for use in the cannabis industry. The Companys conveyance platform can be utilized to deliver cannabinoids without the harmful side effects found with other routes of cannabinoid administration. The delivery system is versatile in that consumers and patients can receive lower dosing, enhanced bioavailability, and controlled rapid and delayed release. Greater Cannabis mission is to bring its technology to the global market through partnerships with leading cannabis, consumer products, and pharmaceutical companies, for the benefit of patients and consumers. More information on the Greater Cannabis Company and its technology can be found on the Companys website, www.gcanrx.com .

Disclaimer: GCANRx relies upon the Safe Harbor Laws of 1933, 1934 and 1995 for all public news releases. Statements, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements. The company, through its management, makes forward-looking public statements concerning its expected future operations, performance and other developments. Such forward-looking statements are necessarily estimates reflecting the companys best judgment based upon current information and involve several risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that other factors will not affect the accuracy of such forward-looking statements. It is impossible to identify all such factors. Factors which could cause actual results to differ materially from those estimated by the company include, but are not limited to, government regulation; managing and maintaining growth; the effect of adverse publicity; litigation; competition; and other factors which may be identified from time to time in the companys public announcements.

###



Contact:

The Greater Cannabis Company, Inc.

443-738-4051

info@gcanrx.com

www.gcanrx.com

Attachment










Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged Greg Craig, a former White House counsel for President Barack Obama, with making false statements to the Justice Department in connection with his work for Ukraine as a partner at Skadden, Arps, Meagher, Slate & Flom.



Prosecutors said Craig made false statements and concealed information about his work on a report prepared in 2012 for the Russia-aligned government of Ukraine, on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and political rival of the countrys president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych.



Craig's arraignment is scheduled for Friday afternoon before Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson. The case has been assigned to Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who has handled several cases brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. That includes the conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on charges related to his own past lobbying for Ukraine, and former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who has pleaded not guilty to charges of lying to congressional investigators, obstructing justice and tampering with a witness.



With Thursdays indictment, Craig becomes the first prominent Democrat to face charges linked to Mueller's investigation. The case also is the first Mueller-related prosecution to come after the conclusion of the special counsels investigation.



The Justice Department had previously identified Manafort as the lobbyist who helped Ukraine retain Skadden.



Muellers office referred the case to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, which did not bring charges. The charges entered Thursday came from federal prosecutors in Washington on the recommendation of the Justice Departments National Security Division.



The charges come just months after Skadden agreed in January to pay $4.6 millionthe equivalent of what the firm received from Ukraineto resolve claims that it violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to properly report and disclose that work to the U.S. Justice Department. Without identifying Craig specifically, the Justice Department said in announcing the settlement that a partner at Skadden had made false and misleading statements to the agencys national security division, causing the U.S. government to conclude the law firm was not obligated to register under FARA.



Craig has maintained his innocence, even as his former law firm registered retroactively as a foreign agent as part of its January settlement with the Justice Department. Craig retired from Skadden in April 2018.



"This indictment accuses Mr. Craig of misleading the FARA Unit of the Department of Justice in order to avoid registration," his defense lawyers William Taylor III and William Murphy of Zuckerman Spaeder said in a statement Wednesday. "It is itself unfair and misleading. It ignores uncontroverted evidence to the contrary. Mr. Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA Unit because he had not done anything that required his registration. That is what this trial will be all about."



In the settlement with Skadden, the Justice Department suggested that Craig misled the national security divisions FARA unit about his contacts with news media ahead of the release of the Tymoshenko report. The Justice Department said Skadden, in reliance on the lead partner, made false and misleading statements including, among other things, that Skadden provided a copy of the Report only in response to requests from the media and spoke to the media to correct misinformation about the report that the media was already reporting.



The firm also submitted documents to the FARA unit that were false, the Justice Department added.



Craigs lawyers on Wednesday said he had, in fact, refused Ukraines requests to participate in the media and lobbying campaign to release the Tymoshenko report. That report, they said, was critical of Tymoshenkos prosecution and caused unhappiness in Ukraines Ministry of Justice.



In their Wednesday statement, Craigs lawyers acknowledged he spoke to reporters at The New York Times but said he did so on his own volition.



He did this not at the direction or on behalf of Ukraine but to make certain that the Times would accurately summarize the report's criticisms of the Tymoshenko trial and not rely on misinformation from Ukraine and its representatives, Craigs defense team said in a separate statement Wednesday. He did not lie to his former firm or the government about these conversations. Furthermore, he was told by the FARA unit on Jan. 16, 2014, that he was not required to register under the statute.



Craigs attorneys said his underlying role in examining the Tymoshenko prosecution was as an independent expert on the rule of law, not as an advocate for the client. They said he and Skadden agreed to work on the report on the condition that their report would be independent.



According to Skaddens FARA registration, Craig was joined on the Ukraine work by Skadden partner Cliff Sloan, whose hourly rate was identified as $1,050. Craigs rate, according to documents filed in connection with the registration, was $1,150 per hour.



Among the other Skadden lawyers listed in the disclosure was Alexander van der Zwaan, a former associate in the firms London office, who pleaded guilty last year to lying to investigators in the special counsels office. He was sentenced in April 2018 to 30 days in prison and has since been deported.





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The indictment is posted below:





























Read more:





Registering as a 'Foreign Agent'? Why Law Firms Might Demur



Muellers Interest in Skadden Presents Unique Crisis Management Challenge



Skadden Registers Ukraine Advocacy After Settling DOJ's Lobbying Case



Manafort Judge Says Foreign Lobbying Law Is No 'Pesky Regulation'



Ex-Skadden Associate Gets 30-Day Jail Sentence for Lying to Mueller's Team
Accuray Incorporated ARAY is gaining prominence in the MedTech space, courtesy of a strong presence in China and solid demand for its flagship Radixact & CyberKnife platforms.

Notably, the company received regulatory approval from India to sell its flagship Radixact X9 system in the recent past. Management is optimistic about this development as it will expand Accurays precision treatment solutions worldwide.

However, Accuray faces cutthroat competition in the radiation-oncology space. In a years time, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) stock has lost 7.4% against the industrys 11% growth.

You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

So here we take a quick look at the major headwinds confronting the company and discuss the factors that ensure near-term recovery.

Cutthroat Competition in the Niche Markets

Accuray is exposed to significant competition in the radiation oncology market, which is characterized by rapid technological changes.

The company competes head-to-head with Varian Medical VAR, Elekta, ViewRay and BrainLAB AG in this market. While the CyberKnife System faces challenges from Varians Trilogy system, TomoTherapy systems are challenged by Varians RapidArc technology and the TrueBeam systems.

Strength in China

Accuray enjoys a strong presence in China.

Earlier this year, the companys subsidiary, Accuray Asia, formed a joint venture with CNNC High Energy Equipment Co., a subsidiary of China Isotope and Radiation Corporation. Management feels that this represents a significant opportunity for the company in the country. (Read More: Accuray & China Isotope Collaborate to Sell Radiation Devices)

In fact, the companys last reported quarter saw strong orders from China for its CyberKnife platform.

Additionally, management anticipates the recent China Ministry of Health quota announcement to drive Accurays revenues in fiscal 2020. In fact, for the fiscal third quarter, management expects gross orders from China to surge.

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Accuray Incorporated Price and Consensus

Accuray Incorporated Price and Consensus | Accuray Incorporated Quote

Which Way Are Estimates Trending?

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for third-quarter fiscal 2019 is pegged at a loss of 4 cents. The same for revenues stands at $104 million, mirroring a 4.2% improvement year over year.

For fiscal 2019, the Zacks Consensus Estimate is pinned at a loss of 16 cents. The same for revenues is pegged at $420.4 million, reflecting a 3.8% improvement year over year.

Key Picks

A few better-ranked stocks in the broader medical space are Stryker Corporation SYK and Masimo Corporation MASI, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Strykers long-term earnings are expected to grow 10%.

Masimos long-term earnings are estimated to rise 15.60%.

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WUHAN, China, April 12 (Reuters) - Honda's sales in China are likely to catch up with its sales in the United States within two to three years and the firm would like them to eventually overtake U.S. sales, the company's chief executive said on Friday.

Takahiro Hachigo made the comments to a small group of reporters after the official opening of a new plant in Wuhan.

Hachigo said that the catch-up could happen "soon", later clarifying to Reuters that he was referring to a two-to-three-year time period.

"We would like China sales to overtake the U.S.," he said, adding that the company did not expect U.S. sales to increase significantly.

Honda's manufacturing capacity in China could be expanded if necessary, he added.

Honda last year sold roughly 1.7 million vehicles in the United States and 1.4 million in China. (Reporting by Norihiko Shirouzu in Wuhan; writing by Yilei Sun in Shanghai; editing by Richard Pullin)
Vera M. Kachnowski and Peter J. Sluka

Vera M. Kachnowski and Peter J. Sluka



The recent indictments of Chinese technology giant Huawei and the requested extradition of its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, have put discussions of U.S.-China relations at center stage. Huaweis indictment in the Western District of Washington for alleged trade secret theft came on the heels of the Department of Justices November announcement of a China Initiative focused on Chinese economic espionage. Meanwhile, in the Eastern District of New York, Huawei, Meng and others face charges surrounding another sensitive area of U.S. policy: its relationship with Iran. Grounded in part in the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (ITSR), the 13-count EDNY indictment alleges bank fraud, wire fraud, a conspiracy to defraud the United States, and violations of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Although the EDNY action is still in its infancy, the Second Circuit has been called to consider potential limitations on several of these charges in another pending case.





The IEEPA and ITSR





Enacted under authority from the IEEPA, which also provides the authority to prosecute its violations, the ITSR prohibits, inter alia, the exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly, from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of any goods, technology, or services to Iran or the Government of Iran, including financial services. 31 C.F.R. 560.204, 560.427. The prohibition on providing services to Iran has been interpreted broadly. For example, the Second Circuit has held that execution of money transfers from the United States to Iran on behalf of another, whether or not performed for a fee, constitutes the exportation of a service, United States v. Banki, 685 F.3d 99, 107 (2d Cir. 2012), and a SDNY district court has held that even intermediary clearing services performed by U.S. banks (i.e., where both the originator and recipient are foreign banks) are prohibited, United States v. Zarrab, No. 15-CR-867, 2016 WL 6820737, at *6-7 (S.D.N.Y. Oct. 17, 2016). The prohibitions of the ITSR are supplemented by a secondary sanctions regime, whereby the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) can impose penalties on foreign individuals and entities who deal with Iran, including restricted access to U.S. financial institutions.





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Huawei





The EDNY indictment, which was partially unsealed in January, alleges that Huawei Technology Co. Ltd., Skycom Tech. Co. Ltd., Meng and others concealed from both U.S. financial institutions and the government details about Huaweis relationship with Skycom, a company alleged to be indirectly owned by Huawei that did business in Iran. The indictment alleges that the defendants concealed Huaweis true relationship with Skycom in order to maintain relationships with U.S. financial institutions that cleared millions of dollars in transactions for them.





Atilla





Huaweiand other companies seeking to protect their access to U.S. financial serviceswill see a preview of the Second Circuits take on such questions in United States v. Atilla, No. 18-1589 (2d. Cir.).



Convicted with the cooperation of Turkish banker Reza Zarrab, Atilla was a deputy general manager of Turkiye Halk Bankasi A.S. (Halkbank), who had been charged, inter alia, with conspiring defraud the United States by obstructing the Treasury Departments enforcement of economic sanctions and conspiring to violate the IEEPA. According to evidence at trial, Zarrab used Halkbank to transfer oil and gas sales proceeds owned by a national Iranian oil company to Dubai. Atilla helped structure those transfersfrom Halkbank to Dubaiso that they looked like permissible transactions, such as gold transactions with nongovernmental Iranian individuals or sanctions-exempt food sales. From Dubai, Zarrab could transfer the funds anywhere in the world, resulting in certain downstream transfers that occurred in U.S. dollars and were cleared by U.S financial institutions.



At trial, the government advanced two theories for Atillas liability under the conspiracy to violate the IEEPA count. First, that Atilla conspired to directly violate an existing sanctions prohibition by permitting sanctioned entities to conduct U.S.-dollar transactions through U.S.-based correspondent bank accounts. Second, that Atilla conspired to design transactions to avoid the imposition on Halkbank of secondary sanctions, such as being prohibited by from accessing the U.S. financial system, based on the banks facilitation of sanctionable transactions.



On appeal, Atilla argues that the evidence showing he directly violated the ITSR was insufficient because he had no idea that U.S. banks would provide dollar-clearing services after the proceeds (which Halkbank transferred in Turkish liras and euros, never dollars) reached Dubai. On the secondary sanctions theory, Atilla contends that the governments position is legally erroneous, and the jury was thus improperly charged, for several reasons. First, the text of the IEEPA does not prohibit avoiding conduct that could provide a basis for secondary sanctions, but is not yet the subject of such sanctions. Appeal Br. at 32. Atilla further argues that the government itself acknowledged that OFAC has historically taken the position that the prohibitions contemplated by the secondary sanctionsincluding implementing enforcement actions, levying fines, or taking other punitive measures for violating the prohibitionsattach only after a foreign financial institution has been sanctioned by the Secretary of the Treasury. Id. at 34 (citing government letter). Atilla further contends that the governments novel theory raises due process questions of notice and vagueness and represents an overreach to foreign financial institutions not contemplated by the statute and contrary to the presumption against extraterritoriality. Id. at 36-39.



Moreover, Atilla challenges his 371 conviction, which was based on the governments theory that he made it more difficult for the Treasury Department to enforce U.S. sanctions against Iran, by allegedly lying to Treasury so that they would not be able to investigate the sanctions evasion that they were concerned about. Id. at 55 (quotations and citations omitted). Assuming this meant that Atillas allegedly deceptive conduct impeded the Treasury Departments ability to designate Halkbank for the imposition of secondary sanctions, Atilla argues that because attempts to avoid the imposition of secondary sanctions are not prohibited, 371 should not be used to prosecute what the IEEPA does not itself proscribe. Id. at 56-57. He further argues that there is no justification for a vague, expansive interpretation of 371 to protect the Executive from conduct the Executive has refrained from using its broad regulatory authority under the IEEPA to proscribe.



The government responds that the relevant regulations and executive orders unambiguously ban transactions designed to avoid prohibitions, the ordinary meaning of which is to prevent the imposition of prohibitions, and that the novel factual circumstances here reduce the weight to be given to OFACs historical position. In any case, it contends that the IEEPA conspiracy conviction was properly made on the alternate theory. Govt Br. at 35, 44. It further maintains that the presumption against extraterritoriality does not apply both because the sanctions are part of a national security effort and because Atilla reached into the United States to commit his crime, executing transactions for Iran through unwitting U.S. banks and lying to U.S. government officials about those transactions. Id. at 43-44.



As to the adequacy of the 371 conviction, the government maintains that impeding the operation of the Treasury Department is a crime under the plain text of the statute. To Atillas argument that prosecution under 371 usurps the judgment of the Executive branch when it enacted the IEEPA, the government counters that the DOJ is part of the Executive branch, and the court should decline Attilas invitation to hobble one executive department (Justice) in the name of protecting another executive department (Treasury). Id. at 55.





Conclusion





Whether prosecutors adopt a secondary sanctions theory in the Huawei indictment and the success of Atillas appeal will help to clarify the reach of the Iranian sanctions regime and whether 371 may be used to prosecute conduct that the ITSR itself does not directly reach. Whatever their outcome, these cases should remain on defense counsels radar when advising foreign clients whose business dealings overlap with Iran.



Vera M. Kachnowski is of counsel and Peter J. Sluka is an associate at Schlam Stone & Dolan, where they specialize in white-collar defense and complex civil litigation.
By Agustinus Beo Da Costa and Kanupriya Kapoor

GARUT, Indonesia, April 12 (Reuters) - When Wawan Setiawan, a volunteer for Indonesian President Joko Widodo's re-election campaign, goes door-to-door in this conservative part of Java, his opening line is: "If you hear he is anti-Islam or a communist, remember, it's all lies."

The 41-year-old is one of thousands of volunteers - armed with T-shirts, stickers, pins, and other giveaways - seeking to bolster support for Widodo in the teeming villages of West Java, the most populous province and a key battleground in the April 17 vote in the world's largest Muslim-majority country.

Widodo's aides say such mobilising of grassroots support and canvassing of thousands of Islamic boarding schools in this and other conservative provinces is crucial to prevent a repeat of 2014, when a smear campaign accusing Widodo of being a bad Muslim beholden to Chinese interests nearly cost him the presidency, with the heaviest losses in West Java.

As in 2014, Widodo is running against retired general Prabowo Subianto, whose military background and strong ties with hardline Islamist groups make him a popular choice in West Java, with a voting population of 32.5 million, or about 17 percent of the electorate.

On a national level most opinion surveys give Widodo a double-digit lead, but he trails in West Java, which is known to be among the country's most conservative regions.

As conservative Islam gains greater traction in Indonesia, many politicians including Widodo have taken pains to appear "more Islamic" to appeal to Muslim voters. The worry for many investors is whether this appeal for conservative votes will translate into populist policy.

Around the hilly city of Garut, which favoured Prabowo in 2014, gigantic banners show the president dressed in a peci cap and sarong - traditional garb worn in Islamic boarding schools - saying, "let's pray".

To the disappointment of some of his more moderate and progressive supporters, Widodo also picked 76-year-old Islamic cleric Ma'ruf Amin as his running mate - part of a deliberate strategy to enhance his ticket's appeal among Muslims.

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"The one thing that I really like about the Jokowi campaign is that they understand where they failed in 2014," said Achmad Sukarsono, a senior analyst at Control Risks in Singapore, using the president's nickname.

"They made a mathematical calculation that Jokowi lost in areas where the Muslim population was above 97 percent," he said.

FORGING TIES

Religious leaders say Widodo's most effective strategy has been forging closer ties with Islamic boarding schools - which hold huge cultural and social sway in many parts of Indonesia - and his decision to choose Amin as running mate, a respected Islamic scholar from the country's biggest moderate Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama.

"The key difference now is Jokowi has systematically shown his appreciation for pesantrens and santri," said a young cleric, Hilman Uman Basori, using the Indonesian words for Islamic boarding schools and their students.

Basori, who runs nine pesantrens in Garut, said Widodo has visited regularly, channelled funding, and introduced much-needed vocational training programs to complement religious education and allow graduates to find jobs.

"Picking Ma'ruf Amin as vice presidential nominee made the choice final for us...We have mobilised all the resources in our pesantrens to make sure they win," Basori added.

Aides say Widodo has also sought to appeal to more voters in opposition strongholds by making public appearances with his family and subtly drawing a contrast with his rival Prabowo, who is divorced.

DEEP SUSPICIONS

But not everyone is convinced. West Java, which has a history of bloodshed between Muslims and leftists, remains a stronghold for conservative Islamists who harbour suspicions about Widodo, a moderate Muslim hailing from Central Java whose government has sought to crack down on some hardline groups.

"Jokowi has criminalised clerics and that has been very hurtful for the Muslim public," said cleric Cecep Abdul Halim.

Authorities have launched investigations into prominent Muslim figures on charges of violating pornography laws or defamation. The government also banned the hardline Hizb-ut Tahrir Indonesia group, which advocates a caliphate to replace Indonesia's secular ideology.

Halim says he also suspects that Widodo, who is the first leader to come from outside Indonesia's military and political elite, may have links to communist groups - which are illegal in Indonesia - and is allowing "millions" of Chinese workers into the country.

The president has repeatedly denied such claims and urged voters not to be taken in by such falsehoods.

In late 2016, Widodo scrambled to distance himself from a one-time ally, the popular ethnic Chinese, Christian governor of Jakarta who was accused by hardline groups of insulting Islam. As hundreds of thousands of Muslims took to the streets to oust the governor, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, Widodo sought to reassure Islamists and the broader public that his government was not anti-Islam.

Purnama eventually lost the next election for governorship, was jailed for blasphemy and released earlier this year.

Prabowo's provincial campaign team say voter dissatisfaction over these issues and Widodo's performance on the economy are swaying voters.

"We're not just optimistic, we are sure we will win," said Yusuf Supriadi, at a campaign post piled high with banners and t-shirts, as well as a poster of Prabowo calling to "Make Indonesia Great Again".

"MORE ISLAMIC"

Surveys show that although Widodo trails in West Java, his focused campaign has narrowed a gap that in 2014 stood at 20 points. His support rose from 39 percent at the start of the campaign in September to 42 percent last month, while Prabowo's numbers have slipped from 50 to 47 percent.

"The hardest part has been changing public perception of Jokowi at the very grassroots level," said Yuda Puja Turnawan, a member of Widodo's party, the Indonesia Democratic Party of Struggle. "Our volunteers spend most of their time countering hoaxes."

According to his national campaign manager, Erick Thohir, the president's choice to reside in the presidential palace in the West Java city of Bogor, rather than in Jakarta, had also boosted his visibility in the region.

Since taking office, Widodo has also made efforts to bring religious parties into his coalition - something analysts say has provided more "tools in his arsenal to approach voters not reached in 2014".

PANDERING

Liberal supporters of Widodo have criticised him for pandering to conservatives, raising concerns over the erosion of Indonesia's reputation for religious tolerance and pluralism.

Analysts say Widodo's overtures to Islamic groups and voters point to a potential populist turn in policymaking if he wins a second term.

"There's a space opening for Islamic identity politics," political analyst Sukarsono said.

"What we will have is Jokowi having to accommodate the interests of the majority, the mainstream Muslim groups and the Islamic parties that backed him, in policymaking, so he is likely to become more populist."

(Additional reporting by Yerica Lai and Ed Davies; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
New innovations designed to help advance patient care

PLAINSBORO, N.J., April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Integra LifeSciences Holdings Corporation (IART), a leading global medical technology company, announced today that it will feature its latest innovations at the American Association of Neurological Surgeons (AANS) Annual Scientific Meeting, April 1317, 2019 in San Diego, California.



Neurosurgery is a dynamic and challenging area where improvement to our tools is a critical enabler to optimizing patient care, said Dr. Uzma Samadani, a neurosurgeon and Ph.D. researcher in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Integras CereLink Intracranial Pressure Monitor introduces new ways to capture and share important information I need to manage patients with serious, life-threatening conditions, such as traumatic brain injuries.

Integras Codman Specialty Surgical division will exhibit its new innovations at AANS (Booth #917), including:

CereLink Intracranial Pressure (ICP) Monitoring System: This advanced technology provides neurocritical care teams with more accuracy in terms of less drift over time, more protection due to MR conditional capability, more choice due to durable, flexible ICP sensors, and more information due to its advanced data presentation than current ICP monitoring technologies. 1 ,[2],[3]

CUSA Clarity Tough Tissue Technology : Integras latest handpiece with new surgical tips enables surgeons to remove fibrous tissue and bone swiftly and safely. These are important additions to Integras CUSA Clarity Ultrasonic Tissue Ablation platform, which has been adopted by 30 percent of the top neurosurgery and neuro pediatric hospital programs in the U.S. 4

Certas Plus Portfolio Expansion : Continuing to build on a strong legacy in cerebral spinal fluid management, Integras Certas Plus Programmable Valve portfolio provides surgeons a wide range of options for managing hydrocephalus patients. Also, the new Certas Plus Electronic Tool Kit limits uncertainty for surgeons, enabling them to efficiently change and confirm the settings of these programmable valves. 5

Integra Duo LED Surgical Headlight: Integras new innovation in surgical headlights offers surgeons superior comfort and brighter visualization compared to current surgical headlight technology.6

Were excited to share a range of new solutions to address surgeons specialty and neurosurgical needs at this years AANS annual meeting, said Dan Reuvers, corporate vice president and president, Codman Specialty Surgical, Integra LifeSciences. The successful integration of the U.S. Codman business has yielded a host of new products that enrich our extensive portfolio and reinforce Integras commitment to supporting the surgeon and patient throughout the continuum of care.

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Integra continues to support surgeons with hands-on clinical courses at the AANS including: Update on Techniques and Equipment for Neurosurgical Patient Positioning, Deep Brain Stimulation - Update and New Directions and Case-based Management of Traumatic Brain Injury.

About Integra

Integra LifeSciences is a global leader in regenerative technologies, neurosurgical and extremity orthopedic solutions dedicated to limiting uncertainty for clinicians, so they can focus on providing the best patient care. Integra offers a comprehensive portfolio of high quality, leadership brands that include AmnioExcel, Bactiseal, Cadence, Certas, Codman, CUSA, DuraGen, DuraSeal, ICP Express, Integra, MediHoney, MicroFrance, PriMatrix, Salto Talaris, SurgiMend, TCC-EZ, Titan and VersaTru. For the latest news and information about Integra and its brands, please visit www.integralife.com .

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning the products and services provided by Integra. Such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from predicted or expected results. Among other things, the willingness of surgical professionals to use Integra products may affect the prospects for their use in surgical procedures. In addition, the economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors, identified under the heading "Risk Factors" included in Item IA of Integra's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018 and information contained in subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, could affect actual results.

Investor Relations Contacts:

Sravan Emany

Senior Vice President, Strategy, Treasury & Investor Relations

(609) 936-2488

sravan.emany@integralife.com

Michael Beaulieu

Director, Investor Relations

(609) 750-2827

michael.beaulieu@integralife.com

Media Contact:

Laurene Isip

Senior Director, Global Corporate Communications

(609) 750-7984

laurene.isip@integralife.com





1 Camino system IFUs and CereLink IFUs.

2 Crutchfield JS, Narayan RK, Robertson CS, Michael LH. Evaluation of a fiberoptic intracranial pressure monitor. J Neurosurg. 1990;72(3):482-487.

3 Camino IFU data states max draft 6 mmHg over 5 days; CereLink bench test shows max (2stdev) of 2.2mmHg over 7 days.

4 Based on U.S. News and World Report rankings of Best Neuro and Neuro Pediatric Hospitals.

5 Design validation and summative usability evaluation of the CERTAS Plus System. Integra Lifesciences, Plainsboro, NJ, USA.

6 All comparisons based on bench testing vs. Sunoptic Surgical SSL-9500. Data on file. Integra LifeSciences, Plainsboro, NJ USA.



Photos accompanying this announcement are available at

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/22f55c2b-42b4-41f9-bb7c-00774d530806

http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0b28b4d4-bfdc-4684-aaa3-857cc93da0d1
Italy's finance minister says there is no backlash from the US after signing agreement with China

Rome was the first major G-7 economy to sign a deal with Beijing to be part of its massive infrastructure plan  a move that has raised eyebrows in the United States and in some other European countries.

The Belt and Road scheme is meant to create a vast global network of land, sea and digital connections.

Critics say the unprecedented infrastructure plan will favor Chinese firms, boost Beijing's international influence and force developing nations to take on high debt burdens.

Italy hasn't suffered any negative reaction from U.S. authorities after having agreed to be part of China's Belt and Road initiative, the country's finance minister told CNBC Friday.

Rome was the first major G-7 economy to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Beijing to be part of its massive infrastructure plan  a move that has raised eyebrows in the United States and in some other European countries.

However, Giovanni Tria, an economist in charge of Italy's finances, said: "We have not (had) any backlash."

"We have a strategic partnership, an alliance with the United States and the other countries allied in NATO and this doesn't change," he told CNBC's Joummana Bercetche at the IMF's Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C.

The Belt and Road scheme is meant to create a vast global network of land, sea and digital connections linking China with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa. Critics say the unprecedented infrastructure plan will favor Chinese firms, boost Beijing's international influence and force developing nations to take on high debt burdens.

The White House has previously said Italy's involvement in China's grand plan could hurt its international reputation, according to the Financial Times.

Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio told CNBC last month that his country's participation in the Belt and Road initiative is "nothing to worry about."

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"We are maximizing all precautionary measures, and I want to tell the U.S., and I will tell them as well in next week's visit, that they are our allies, and that we understand their concerns," Di Maio said.

On Friday, Tria told CNBC that the agreement with China was "just a memorandum of understanding" which looks at invitations to develop potential activities, developments and frameworks of international cooperation.





More From CNBC


U.S. attorneys requesting that a British court extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may have to wait behind Swedish authorities who, along with UK authorities, could block the U.S. from gaining custody.

Assange, arrested Thursday in London after six years of confinement to the Ecuadorian embassy, was detained on two separate warrants from the U.S. and Sweden after Ecuadors president revoked his asylum protection.

The first warrant stemmed from allegations that Assange disregarded bail conditions in a 2010 case in Sweden involving rape and sexual assault claims. The second warrant, issued at the request of U.S. attorneys, stemmed from a federal indictment unsealed Thursday claiming Assange conspired to hack into a U.S. Defense Department computer.

Assange would not be handed over to the U.S.

The U.S. Justice Department issued a provisional request for Assanges extradition based on an indictment filed under seal in March. In March 2010, the indictment alleged, Assange agreed to help former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning gain unauthorized access to a U.S. Defense Department computer that stored a password to a network housing classified information.

WESTMINSTER MAGISTRATES COURT, WESTMINSTER, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - 2019/04/11: Placard saying, Free Speech, of Julian Assange seen outside Westminster Magistrates Court after Julian Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy after his asylum was terminated. (Photo by Ben Booth/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Swedish authorities dropped criminal allegations against Assange in 2017 and on Thursday announced a request to resume their nearly decade-old investigation, which could mean a second request for Assanges extradition if prosecutors refile charges.

Gary Botting, a Canadian attorney with expertise in extradition laws, said under that scenario, Sweden would have the upper hand.

Under its treaties and the European Arrest Warrant system, Sweden takes priority, if it chooses to make an extradition request, Botting said.

Botting said Sweden is unlikely to resurrect its case because of a statute of limitations deadline that would require it to refile charges against Assange by 2020. However, the possibility is not out of the question.

There could be an agreement between any two of the three nations as to how they would proceed, but if the UK were to say no to the U.S. and yes to Sweden, Assange would not be handed over to the U.S. by the Swedes when they were through with him, Botting explained. Such a handover, he said, would legally constitute double jeopardy.

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Since it is likely that Sweden will let sleeping dogs lie, the real question is whether the UK will indulge the U.S. by sending Assange directly to America.

Requesting him is political

Under UK law, and laws regarded by other Western countries including the U.S., extradition may not be granted if the motive is deemed political. Assanges organization, WikiLeaks, was deeply tied to the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. because it released emails from the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clintons campaign manager.

It has a huge political impact, Botting said, especially since [President] Trump referenced WikiLeaks at least 140 times in his political campaign.

I do expect that Assange will be protected from extradition to the U.S. on the grounds that motive for requesting him is political, Botting said.

He added, referring to former National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden, Except for Snowden, I cant think of an non-politician more politicized than Assange.

Botting said even if U.S. attorneys give assurances to the UK that the conspiracy charge is not politically motivated, a UK extradition judge may not agree.

Under traditional extradition rules, the rule of specialty or doctrine of specialty limits the prosecution of extradited defendants. The rule mandates that defendants may be prosecuted by the requesting country only for offense(s) for which the foreign country agreed to surrender the defendant.

Its a fundamental feature of extradition law, Duncan Levin, a criminal law attorney and former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department told Yahoo Finance.

In theory, the rule would protect Assange from being charged with additional crimes, once handed over to U.S. authorities, though Botting said Assange and other defendants facing extradition cannot rely on the rules protection.

[T]he rule of specialty has morphed from protection of the individual to an agreement between states, he said. Thus if the United States wishes to pursue other charges than those identified in the extradition request, it merely has to negotiate that with the UK.

Duncan said the rule is not always enforced because its inclusion in treaties is custom, rather than codified law.

Judges from the United States and judges internationally disagree often about what can be prosecuted pursuant to an extradition, Levin said. And while the doctrine of specialty is widely recognized, it may very well be that a US judge will allow a broader prosecution on more offenses. It happens a lot and it may very well happen here with Julian Assange.

If extradited to the U.S. on the charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, Duncan said Assanges case is likely to go to trial.

Its the kind of case that is very likely to go to trial because the issues are not necessarily so clear about whether this is protected press freedom or something much more illegal, Duncan said.

In Assanges case, two issues may be whether WikiLeaks  a nonprofit that publishes news leaks  is considered a news organization, and whether Assange is considered a journalist. On some measure the question presented is whether journalists can encourage sources to commit illegal acts, and whether that is a criminal violation to work in concert with a source. Is it normal journalistic encouragement of a sourceor has it crossed over to a conspiracy to hack computers and break laws?

According to the Justice Departments indictment, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to...a U.S. network used for classified documents and communications, and Manning provided to Assange part of a password stored on U.S. Defense Department computers. The indictment did not explain whether the alleged partial password was tied to access to specific documents, though referenced a March 2010 communication from Assange to Manning in which Assange stated he had been trying to crack the password with no luck so far.

At the time of his arrest Thursday, Assange had already spent more time confined to the Ecuadorian embassy than the maximum allowable sentence permitted under his current U.S. charges.

Alexis Keenan is a former litigation attorney and previously produced live news for CNN. Follow Alexis on Twitter at @alexiskweed.

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(Bloomberg) -- Dar es Salaam, Lagos and Addis Ababa could be the next stop for a Kenyan fresh-produce distribution platform in its quest to disrupt food-supply chains in Africa.

Twiga Foods Ltd. aggregates farm produce and distributes it to vendors at street corners or market stalls in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, through a mobile phone-based supply platform. In the countrys fragmented retail market, where 90 percent of food is sold through informal outlets, the tech startup is trying to create efficiency to lower food prices.

A banana in a Nairobi supermarket costs more than a banana in London, while the average income of a consumer in the U.K. is 30 times compared to Kenya, Peter Njonjo, Twigas co-founder, said in an interview in Nairobi. This is true for many African cities and our vision is to leverage technology and organize a more efficient value chain that lowers food prices.

Many Kenyans in the Nairobi metropolitan area, which has about 6.5 million people, spend an average of 45 percent of their disposable income on food, Njonjo said. Many cities on the continent face similar challenges - urbanization outpacing infrastructure development, inefficient agriculture and a fragmented retail industry, he said.

If it works here, the key thing is we would want to find a way to scale and get into those cities and offer the same products and services, he said.

Nairobi is growing into a tech hub creating solutions for problems common in the developing world. In the past six years, Kenya received 58 percent of reported investment deals in East Africa, according to the Africa Private Equity Venture Capital Association.

Big Cities

Twiga is first eyeing other East African cities, such as Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa. It plans to then move on to Africas most populous city, Lagos, where Njonjo worked for three years as Coca-Cola Co.s regional head for West and Central Africa before becoming Twigas chief executive officer.

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For us the icing would be Lagos, he said. We will remain very centric to big urban cities, because thats where the problem is biggest.

Twiga sources the fruits and vegetables from 17,000 farmers and delivers directly to 180,000 informal retailers daily in Nairobi and its environs, creating a predictable market for growers and reducing transport costs for the vendors.

To beat Nairobis notorious traffic, the firm dispatches its trucks early in the morning so they are at its neighborhood depots where it distributes to kiosks.

Twiga will face a formidable challenge integrating logistics systems in the other African countries they target, and uptake may be slow in markets that dont embrace change quickly, said Gerald Muriuki, a technology analyst at Nairobi-based investment bank Genghis Capital.

In Nigeria, theyll have to contend with perennial power shortages, according to Eric Musau, head of research at Standard Investment Bank in Nairobi. It boils down to cost and how soon they can turn profitable, he said.

Funding Expansion

Other than distribution, Twiga is also working with selected farmers to modernize food production and expects dispatches to increase to 200-300 metric tons per day by the end of the year from about 120 tons currently, he said.

The company has raised $35 million from venture capital and convertible notes since inception in 2013. This year, Twiga will conduct a second round of financing to fund expansion in Nairobi and another round in 2020 for growth outside of Kenya, Njonjo said.

Existing investors include Wamda Capital, which had invested in the Middle Eastern ride-hailing company Careem Networks FZ that Uber Technologies Inc. bought for $3.1 billion in a cash and stock deal last month.

We have a good captive audience of investors we can walk this journey with, Njonjo said.

(Updates with analyst comment in 12th paragraph.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Bella Genga in Nairobi at bgenga2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Malingha at dmalingha@bloomberg.net, Helen Nyambura, Ana Monteiro

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Levi Strauss CEO says China is a top priority for the jean giant's growth

China is only about 3% of the company's business today.

CEO Chip Bergh said he looks at competitors like Nike, with 20% of its business in China, and wants to turn the country into a growth engine for Levi's.

Europe has been a bright spot for Levi's, growing more than 20% over the past two years, despite headwinds like Brexit uncertainly and slowing global growth.

Levi Strauss shares were up more than 5% on Wednesday and have gained 25% since the stock's IPO.

China is a top priority for the world's biggest jean maker's future growth Levi Strauss & Co. NULL President and CEO Chip Bergh said Wednesday.

"China is one of my top priorities," said Berg, in an interview on CNBC's "Squawk Alley."

China is only about 3% of the company's business today. Bergh said he looks at competitors like Nike NKE , with 20% of its business in China, and wants to turn China into Levi's growth engine.

On Tuesday, Levi Strauss reported its first quarterly earnings since its initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange last month. For the first quarter, Levi said it earned 37 cents per share, helped by a 7% gain in revenue. On a constant currency basis, revenue rose 11%.

Levi's doesn't report same-store sales but said on the company's earnings call that sales were positive on a comparable basis.

Following the earnings report, Levi Strauss shares rose more than 5% in trading Wednesday and were up more than 25% since the stock's debut.

In the latest period, Levi's growth was really broad based as both its men's and woman's tops and bottoms businesses grew, Bergh said. This marked the sixth quarter in a row of double-digit top-line growth for Levi.

Levi's direct-to-consumer business has been growing in the double digits for the past 12 quarters and its e-commerce business was up more than 20% last quarter.

Amazon AMZN is one of Levi's top 10 customers online. However, Bergh said he knows that with every pair of jeans Amazon sells, it is "collecting a lot of data on our consumer that they could at some point turn and use against us."

Story continues

Europe has been a bright spot for Levi's, growing more than 20% over the past two years, despite headwinds like Brexit uncertainly and slowing global growth.

"We're really defying gravity over there when you consider all the headwinds," said Bergh. However, he said China tariffs are another uncertainty the company has to watch.

Bergh emphasized that in terms of marketing, the best strategy for the brand is by word of mouth.

"The best thing we can do is just have the brand show up organically worn by people of all different backgrounds," said Bergh. "You wear other jeans but you live in Levi's."

However, Levi's has and will continue to work with celebrities, including Alicia Keys and Hailey Bieber.





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The world was mesmerized this week by the first-ever image of a black hole , captured by a network of eight linked telescopes known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration.

But in the days since, attention has turned to a second image: That of the 29-year-old woman who made it all possible.

Computer scientist Dr. Katie Bouman has been credited with leading the creation of an algorithm that successfully photographed the halo of dust and gas situated 500 million trillion kilometers from Earth.

A photo of Bouman bracing herself for the groundbreaking release has been widely shared on social media.

In a post on her Facebook account , the young scientist wrote: "Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed."

Bouman started work on the computer program three years ago, while she was a graduate student in computer science and artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

While there, she was responsible for leading the project, with assistance from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the MIT Haystack Observatory.

The algorithm was then used to render data captured by the EHT to render the millions of gigabytes of data it has collected during its decade-long mission to photograph the black hole.

"When we saw it for the first time, we were all in disbelief. It was quite spectacular," Bouman told BBC Radio 5 live.

Following the release of the image, Bouman has received international plaudit for her years-long work  including from celebrities and politicians.

U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a vocal proponent of women in leadership, praised Bouman's "enormous contribution to the advancements of science and mankind."

Cortez tweet: Take your rightful seat in history, Dr, Bouman!

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump's daughter and White House advisor Ivanka Trump tweeted: "Big congrats! Hooray for #WomenInSTEM like Bouman!"

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Ivanka tweet: Today, the world saw the 1st-ever image of a #BlackHole - an amazing accomplishment made possible by Scientist Katie Bouman.

Bouman, who is now an assistant professor of computing and mathematical sciences at the California Institute of Technology, was keen to point out the shared input of her colleagues.

"No one of us could do it alone," she told CNN.

The efforts to capture the image involved a team of more than 200 scientists in locations across the globe. Bouman's was one of a number of algorithms used to piece together the images captured by the network of telescopes.

Yet her method of processing the data  which involved multiple algorithms with "different assumptions build into them"  was said to be instrumental.

"(Bouman) was a major part of one of the imaging subteams," said Vincent Fish, a research scientist at MIT's Haystack Observatory.

Her contribution was also hailed by MIT and the Smithsonian on social media.

"3 years ago MIT grad student Katie Bouman led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole," MIT's Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab wrote.

In a separate video on her Instagram page, Bouman noted: "This is ... the beginning of being able to have another window into what black holes can tell us about our laws and physics."

Don't miss: Meet the woman who won over Google, Apple and Intel to get more girls into tech

Like this story? Subscribe to CNBC Make It on YouTube!





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(Adds Kim Jong Un quotes, context, Trump's consideration of third summit)

By Josh Smith and Joyce Lee

SEOUL, April 13 (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the breakdown in talks with the United States has raised the risks of returning to past tensions, but he is only interested in meeting President Donald Trump again if the United States comes with the right attitude, state media KCNA said on Saturday.

Kim said that he will wait "until the end of this year" for the United States to decide, according to KCNA.

"What is needed is for the U.S. to stop its current way of calculation, and come to us with a new calculation," Kim said in a speech to the Supreme People's Assembly on Friday, KCNA said.

Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore in June, building good will but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

Trump said on Thursday he is open to meeting Kim again, but in his speech on Friday, the North Korean leader said the outcome in Hanoi has forced him to question the strategy he embraced last year of international engagement and economic development.

"The second DPRK-U.S. summit in Hanoi in February raised strong questions about whether the steps we took under our strategic decision were right, and gave us a sense of caution about whether the U.S. is even really trying to improve the DPRK-U.S. relationship," Kim said, using the initials of North Korea's full name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In Hanoi, the United States came with "completely unrealizable plans" and was "not really ready to sit with us face-to-face and solve the problem," Kim said.

"By that sort of thinking, the U.S. will not be able to move us one iota even if they sat with us a hundred, thousand times, and will not be able to get what it wants at all," he said.

Kim said his personal relationship with Trump is still good, but that he had no interest in a third summit if it is a repeat of Hanoi.

Story continues

"The U.S. said recently that it is thinking again of a third DPRK-U.S. summit and have been strongly implying problem-solving through dialogue," Kim continued. "But they continue to ignore the basic way of the new DPRK-U.S. relations, including withdrawing hostile policies, and mistakenly believe that if they pressure us to the maximum, they can subdue us."

At a summit with South Korean President Moon in Washington on Thursday, Trump expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with Kim but said that Washington would leave sanctions in place on Pyongyang.

Last month, a senior North Korean official warned that Kim might rethink a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests in place since 2017 unless Washington makes concessions such as easing sanctions. (Additional reporting by Heekyong YangEditing by Sandra Maler and Cynthia Osterman)
The American Museum of Natural History is facing an internal insurrection  and the threat of staff resignations and boycotts  over its refusal to cancel a gala next month celebrating Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

As Gothamist reported yesterday, the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce intends to honor the far-right leader as "Person of the Year" on May 14th, during a ceremony held in the museum's Hall of Ocean Life. The $30,000-a-seat tickets to the event have already sold out, and attendees include a range of business leaders with financial interests before Bolsonaro.

The revelation of AMNH's role in the event sparked confusion and swift condemnation from Brazilians and New Yorkers. Earlier this morning, Mayor Bill de Blasio urged the museum  which received more than $16 million in city funds this year  to cancel, calling the event and venue "a shocking contradiction.

This guys a very dangerous human being, de Blasio said during an interview today with WNYC's Brian Lehrer. "Hes dangerous not just because of his overt racism and homophobia, but because he is unfortunately the person with the most ability to be able to impact what happens in the Amazon going forward."

Count this oceanographer in! Unbelivable!  Julius Busecke (@JuliusBusecke) April 12, 2019

But perhaps nowhere has the anger been as visceral and organized as inside the museum, where staff members say they were blindsided by the news, and are now furious with the institutions leadership.

"My jaw dropped when I found out," said Dr. Susan Perkins, a curator and professor of microbiology at the museum. "Anything that happens in the museum reflects on us, and Bolsonaro represents just about everything we oppose: His treatment of indigenous people, his disrespect for the environment, his views and recent actions to defund scientific research. We find it appalling that he would be in our space."

While several employees have registered their outrage over the event, the AMNH isn't budging for the time being. In a statement to Gothamist, a spokesperson described the gala as a "external, private event" that should not be seen as an endorsement of the leader's views. That spokesperson has refused to say whether the event might be cancelled, though the museum tweeted on Thursday that they were exploring our options."

A person who answered the phone at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce said they hadnt heard from the museum about the controversy. The group declined to provide a comment on the record.

As a Brazilian researcher, it is outrageous that an individual that despises science as much as him gets honored by a scientific institution. You must cancel for the sake of Brazilian researchers. He is literally driving us out of the country.  Alexandre V Palaoro (@avpalaoro) April 12, 2019

Meanwhile, museum leaders are privately scrambling to distance themselves from the association, and pleading ignorance to the details of the fete. In a staff-wide memo sent on Thursday afternoon, Provost Michael Novacek and VP of Human Resources Daniel Scheiner said they "share a deep concern" about the Chamber of Commerce gala, noting that it "was booked before the specific honoree was secured."

In response, some employees pointed out that Bolsonaro's selection was announced months ago  it was covered in the Brazilian press in February  and suggested that the museum's upper management had to have been aware of the choice.

"It would be hard for me to imagine that they're not just covering it up now," said one employee, who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their job. Noting past controversies at the museum, including the handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Neil deGrasse Tyson, the employee said they'd found "the museum only responds when put in a corner."

So that agribusinesses and mining interests can raze the Amazon. AMNH claims to care about biodiversity and climate change - they certainly employ scientists who study these things - but they'll take the money of people who would see the whole world burn to line their pockets.  Bolsonaro Out of AMNH! (@maenads_dance) April 11, 2019

Other staff members did say it was possible the nature of the gala was only known to the Events and Conferences department, which handles both internal and external events at the museum. That doesn't excuse the museum's involvement, they noted, and instead points to the need for codified prohibition on renting out the space for events that violate the institution's values. (The AMNH spokesperson wouldn't say whether such guidelines already exist.)

As of Friday afternoon, staff members across the museums scientific, library, and education departments were in the process of coordinating multiple initiatives that they hoped would force the museum to back out of the event. Those include a potential protest during the museums 150th anniversary party later this month, as well as a letter sent by graduate students  in conjunction with the Democratic Socialists of America  demanding the gala be called off. At least one research associate has publicly threatened to resign and "organize a boycott of your institution by every single person I know in anthropology."

And if those threats don't work, activists with the organization Decolonize This Place tell Gothamist that they have no intention of allowing the event to take place without disruption. "They either cancel or we shut it down," said organizer Amin Husein. "It's that simple."

UPDATE: In an open letter addressed to AMNHs senior administration, museum scientists and graduate students from the Richard Gilder Graduate Center are demanding the event be cancelled, describing it as a stain on the Museums reputation which negates the nominal efforts it has recently made to grapple with its legacy of colonial violence and racism.

The letter goes on to quote AMNH President Ellen Futter, who previously wrote that it was the job of natural history museums to document, protect, and celebrate the natural world and to offer clues into how we can protect it in the future."

The open letter concludes: One of the ways that we can protect the future for Brazilian Indigenous populations, scientists, citizens and bioconservation efforts is in the refusing access to our collective institutional home to the fascist president who would see these peoples and efforts actively harmed and destroyed.

You can read  and sign  the full letter here.
Per media reports, Nokia Corporation NOK and ANTEL  Uruguay's government-owned telecommunications company  have successfully completed the installation of the first 5G commercial network in Latin America.



The rollout began in the Barra de Manantiales area, Maldonado Department, where the first 5G base stations are currently operational. The Finnish telecom equipment maker is committed to helping communications service providers in the seamless migration to the future of connectivity, with its end-to-end portfolio of network equipment, software and services.



Notably, Nokia has a long-standing technological partnership with ANTEL in delivering mobile, IP and optical services to the Uruguayan market. They are progressively working to deliver commercial deployment of the 5G radio network. Nokia is providing ANTEL with 5G radio network, optical transport and support services. The companies made the first 5G call in Uruguay using the 28 GHz frequency band.



Further, the technology companys 5G portfolio is likely to provide ANTELs customers with high bandwidth and low latency services, alongside new applications in areas such as virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence. Enterprises will also gain from various IoT vertical use cases enabled by 5G as it will help improve operational efficiency and user experiences while providing new revenue streams.



In this context, Nokias deal-win rate appears encouraging with remarkable success in the key 5G markets of the United States and China. It is continually expanding business into targeted, high-growth and high-margin vertical markets to address opportunities beyond its traditional markets. Rollout of next-generation 5G networks are expected to improve market conditions considerably through 2019 and beyond, auguring well for Nokias business development.



To stoke its competitive position, Nokia helps its customers to move away from an economy-of-scale network operating model to demand-driven operations by offering easy programmability and flexible automation needed to support dynamic operations, reduce complexity and increase efficiency.



Nokia continues to execute its strategy with progress in Nokia Software and expansion to select enterprise vertical markets. The company is also working to accelerate strategy execution, sharpen customer focus and reduce long-term costs. This, in turn, should help the company position itself for long-term 5G leadership and reaffirm commitment to 2020 non-IFRS operating margin between 12% and 16% and non-IFRS EPS in the range of 0.37-0.42.



Backed by expanding technological collaborations with industry frontrunners, shares of Nokia have recorded an average return of 11.4% against the industrys 1% decline in the past six months.





Story continues





Currently, Nokia has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). A few better-ranked stocks in the broader industry are T-Mobile US, Inc. TMUS, CenturyLink, Inc. CTL and Juniper Networks, Inc. JNPR, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



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Investing.com - Oil prices gained on Friday in Asia as the International Energy Agencys (IEA) said there are signs of tightening supply.

U.S. Crude Oil WTI Futures rose 0.4% to $63.84 by 1:30 AM ET (05:30 GMT). International Brent Oil Futures also gained 0.4% to $71.08.

Supply has been tightened thanks to production curbs led by the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and U.S. sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, the IEA said,

OPECs supply cuts and U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela have helped push up oil prices by more than a third so far in 2019.

Venezuela pumped 960,000 bpd in March, a drop of almost 500,000 bpd from February, OPEC's April report on Wednesday said.

OPEC and other non-member producers have been reducing output by 1.2 million bpd since the beginning of the year. The producers are due to meet on June 25-26 to decide whether to extend the pact.

However, the IEA also warned that the demand side is also a very important piece of the equation for oil market rebalancing, and it was facing a wall of uncertainty given the outlook for global growth.

As far as 2019 is concerned, amongst the analyst community there is an extraordinarily wide divergence of view as to how strong growth will be, the IEA said. We maintain our forecast of 1.4 million barrels per day, but accept that there are mixed signals about the health of the global economy, and differing views about the likely level of oil prices.

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11 April 2019

Philips to provide turnkey hospital solution to newly-built Hong Duc General Hospital II, including the latest medical imaging and healthcare IT solutions as well as design, consulting and financing services

Starting in early 2020, Hong Duc General Hospital II will provide a full range of general healthcare services to serve the growing healthcare needs of Ho Chi Minh City

Amsterdam, the Netherlands and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam  Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA), a global leader in health technology, and Hong Duc General Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam today announced a seven-year partnership agreement covering a comprehensive turnkey solution for high quality general healthcare services. Philips will provide the newly-built Hong Duc General Hospital II with the latest medical imaging, patient monitoring and healthcare IT solutions. In addition, Philips will deliver comprehensive training programs to strengthen the hospitals clinical capabilities and design services to optimize workflows and enhance the patient/staff experience, with the aim of delivering better clinical outcomes.

Hong Duc General Hospital is one of the most trusted healthcare providers in Ho Chi Minh City, with hundreds of thousands of admissions annually. Scheduled to open in early 2020 to cope with increasing patient demands, the newly-built Hong Duc General Hospital II will provide high quality general healthcare services, especially focused on cardiology, oncology, orthopedics and pediatrics.

Minimally-invasive heart valve replacement

The hospitals hybrid operating room will be equipped with Philips advanced Azurion image-guided therapy platform for both routine and complex interventional procedures such as transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI) and spine surgery. The hospital will also be provided with connected patient monitoring and integrated analytics solutions from Philips, enabling the continuous monitoring of patients wherever they are in the system  from the ambulance and functional examination departments to the ICU and general wards  providing a comprehensive solution during the entire treatment and recovery process.



As a leading health technology company, Philips provides meaningful innovations in collaboration with medical partners to deliver value-based healthcare, said Hugo Luik, General Manager, Philips Vietnam. By providing advanced, well-maintained medical technology and solutions, Philips aims to improve health outcomes for people in Vietnam, enhancing the patient experience, improving staff satisfaction, reducing stress among care providers, and lowering the cost of care.

Story continues

Hong Duc General Hospitals objective has always been to provide patients with the best quality of healthcare, with the support of the most advanced medical technology, said Huynh Thi Kim Loan, President of Hong Duc General Hospital. Our partnership with Philips is aimed at building Hong Duc General Hospital II as a smart hospital, where our experts and doctors are more confident to make clinical decisions supported by Philips latest health technologies. Patients can be assured that the most advanced quality of healthcare is delivered at Hong Duc General Hospital.



Other solutions provided to the hospital by Philips include Philips Digital Ingenia 3.0T MRI with High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound (MR-HIFU), and advanced CT technology with high resolution and low-dose scanning. The MR-HIFU solution at Hong Duc General Hospital II will provide a non-invasive alternative to the traditional surgical treatment of uterine fibroids and enable non-invasive palliative pain treatment for bone metastases.

For further information, please contact:

Joost Maltha

Philips Group Press Office

Tel: +31 6 10 55 8116

E-mail: joost.maltha@philips.com



Elaine Ng

Philips ASEAN Pacific

Tel.: +65 620 68 200

E-mail: elaine.ng@philips.com



About Royal Philips

Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG, AEX: PHIA) is a leading health technology company focused on improving people's health and enabling better outcomes across the health continuum from healthy living and prevention, to diagnosis, treatment and home care. Philips leverages advanced technology and deep clinical and consumer insights to deliver integrated solutions. Headquartered in the Netherlands, the company is a leader in diagnostic imaging, image-guided therapy, patient monitoring and health informatics, as well as in consumer health and home care. Philips generated 2018 sales of EUR 18.1 billion and employs approximately 77,000 employees with sales and services in more than 100 countries. News about Philips can be found at www.philips.com/newscenter .

About Hong Duc General Hospital

Established in September 2000, Hong Duc General Hospital is one of the most trusted healthcare providers in Ho Chi Minh City with hundreds of thousands of admissions annually. It has more than 5,000 inpatients and performs 2,000 laparoscopies per year. The hospital has gained many achievements in terms of patient outcome, investment in advanced healthcare equipment, and lower costs. The establishment of Hong Duc II and III Hospital aims at meeting social demands in healthcare service. For more information, please visit www.hongduchospital.vn



Attachment
DENVER, CO, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via NEWMEDIAWIRE  Phoenix Life Sciences International Limited (PLSI) (Phoenix Life or the Company), an adaptive healthcare solutions company, today announced the launch of The Global Health Initiative (GHI, the Foundation) and the appointment of Dr. Kylie OBrien as Chief Executive Officer of the Foundation, commencing the next chapter of the founders vision of the Company.

The Global Health Initiative is an independent non-profit foundation and public charity that combines significant investment, research partnership and a commitment by the founders of Phoenix Life to The Giving Pledge , investing 50% of their holdings in the Company and their future dividends to philanthropic support for creating change in global health. The Giving Pledge is a commitment by the world's wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to giving back.

We see The Global Health Initiative as an opportunity to set an example for others from the cannabis industry to give back to their communities, research, education and to provide access to those in need, said Phoenix Life CEO Martin Tindall. We are proud to be the founding benefactor to create The Global Health Initiative to be a catalyst for change.

As part of launching The Global Health Initiative, Kylie OBrien, Ph.D. has been appointed as Chief Executive Officer of the foundation. OBrien holds a Master of Public Health, Bachelor of Applied Science in Chinese Medicine, Bachelor of Science in Optometry, Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Education and a Ph.D. in Chinese Medicine. As an advocate for medical cannabis, she developed Australias first course in medical cannabis to receive Category 1 Continuing Professional Development points with the Royal Australasian College of General Practitioners.

OBrien also created the pathway for Australian doctors to become authorized prescribers of medicinal cannabis under the Therapeutic Goods Administrations (TGA) Authorized Prescriber Scheme. Recently, she was appointed to the TGAs Advisory Committee for Complementary Medicines by the Australian Federal Minister of Health and reappointed to the Australian governments Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agencys Expert Panel.

Story continues

She has a reputation as a highly-regarded international leader among medical professionals. She serves as a Council Member for the Specialty Committee of Cancer Rehabilitation and was also on the Standardization Committee of the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies. She has spoken about integrative oncology at medical conferences in Australia, China, and Turkey. She was invited to a roundtable which included members of the Malaysian government to discuss policy for decriminalizing hemp and introduce it as an agricultural crop within the country. Her first book, A Clinicians Guide to Integrative Oncology, was published by Springer in the US in 2017.

I have dedicated my career to raising awareness for treatment alternatives within the international health community and look forward to helping expand the global knowledge on medicinal cannabis while helping communities in need gain access to it, said Global Health Initiative CEO Kylie OBrien, Ph.D. Im very humbled by the Tindall family and Phoenix Lifes generosity and Im excited to see how we can mutually benefit each others efforts.

Cannabis is currently undervalued and under-researched in todays healthcare systems and we hope to be able to form meaningful relationships with companies like Phoenix Life and change the way people utilize it as a viable healthcare treatment option, concluded Dr. OBrien.

About The Giving Pledge

The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage wealthy people to contribute a majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes. As of 2019, the pledge has 187 signatories, either individuals or couples, from 22 countries. Most of the signatories of the pledge are billionaires, and their pledges total over $365 billion.

To learn more about The Giving Pledge, please visit https://givingpledge.org .

About The Global Health Initiative

The Global Health Initiative is a public charity organized in the United States in Colorado and in Australia. The organizations efforts are focused on addressing local and global health and social issues affecting children and families. By developing strategic partnerships with government and health officials, wellness organizations and supportive community members, the Global Health Initiative aims to create a foundation for community, research, education, access, training and empowerment.

To learn more about The Global Health Initiative, please visit http://ghi.life

About Phoenix Life Sciences International Limited

Phoenix Life Sciences International Limited is an adaptive healthcare solutions company. Our business is to advance research and integrate programs and manufacturing of products that target and treat diabetes, pain, cancer, and address psychological, neurological, autoimmune and sleep disorders. We strive to create partnerships and integrate these programs for human health into communities worldwide as part of our Global Health Initiative.

To learn more about Phoenix Life Sciences International, please visit https://phoenixlife.co/

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Information contained in this press release regarding Phoenix Life Sciences International, Limited and its subsidiaries, (the Companies) may constitute forward-looking statements or statements which may be deemed or construed to be forward-looking statements. The words plan, forecast, anticipates, estimate, project, intend, expect, should, believe, and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements involve, and are subject to, known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the Companys actual results, performance (financial or operating) or achievements to differ from the future results, performance (financial or operating) or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The risks, uncertainties and other factors are more fully discussed in the Companys filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements attributable to the Companies herein are expressly qualified in their entirety by the above-mentioned cautionary statement. The Companies disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements contained in this press release, except as may be required by law.

FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION (FDA) DISCLOSURE

These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and therefore the products sold by Phoenix Life Sciences International are not available in the U.S.

LEGAL DISCLOSURE

Phoenix Life Sciences International does not sell or distribute any products in the United States that are in violation of the United States Controlled Substances Act (US.CSA). This company does not grow, sell, and distribute cannabis-based products in the United States and is solely involved with the legal distribution of medical cannabis-based products within certain international markets outside of the United States.

Investor Contact:



Phone: 1.888.717.5655 or international +1.720.699.7222



E-mail: investor.relations@phoenixlife.co



Media Contact:



Kathryn Reinhardt



CMW Media



Kathryn@cmwmedia.com



619-972-3089
WILMINGTON, Del., April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- WSFS Bank has welcomed long-time advisors Christopher Reed and J. Porter Ginn to the Banks Wealth Management Group. Together, they bring over 25 years of experience in helping clients reach financial goals with customized wealth management solutions.



Mr. Reed joins WSFS Bank as Vice President of Client Management in Southeastern Pennsylvania. He specializes in developing credit and wealth management solutions for high-net-worth individuals. Prior to joining WSFS, Mr. Reed held positions with several financial institutions, including The Vanguard Group, Univest Bank & Trust in King of Prussia, and National Penn Bank in Berwyn. He is a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania where he received his Bachelor of Science in Psychology.

Mr. Ginn joins WSFS Wealth Investments as a financial advisor also in Southeastern Pennsylvania. In this role, he will assist WSFS Customers with developing financial strategies to help them reach their financial objectives. He joins WSFS from Charles Schwab where he was most recently a Vice President and financial consultant. Previously, he held roles at TIAA-CREF and Fidelity Investments. Mr. Ginn is a graduate of the University of Vermont with a Bachelor of Science.

We are delighted to welcome Christopher and Porter to WSFS Bank where they will leverage their expertise to assist our Customers who have unique long- and short-term financial objectives, said WSFS Steve Kochie, Senior Vice President of Client Management. Their extensive knowledge in fiduciary services and investment management strategies will benefit new and existing WSFS Customers in WSFS growing Southeastern Pennsylvania market.

The Wealth Management segment at WSFS offers personalized solutions to help clients reach their financial goals, including personal wealth planning, trust services and brokerage and investments.

About WSFS Financial Corporation

WSFS Financial Corporation (WSFS) is a multi-billion dollar financial services company. Its primary subsidiary, WSFS Bank, is the largest, longest-standing, locally-headquartered bank and trust company in the Greater Delaware Valley. As of December 31, 2018, WSFS Financial Corporation had $7.2 billion in assets on its balance sheet and $19.0 billion in assets under management and administration. On March 1, 2019, WSFS Financial Corporation completed the acquisition of Beneficial Bancorp, Inc. and its primary subsidiary, Beneficial Bank, and are now operating as one Company with approximately $13 billion in assets. WSFS now operates from 150 offices in Delaware (45), Pennsylvania (74), New Jersey (29), Virginia (1) and Nevada (1) and provides comprehensive financial services including commercial banking, retail banking, cash management and trust and wealth management. Other subsidiaries and divisions include Beneficial Equipment Finance Corporation, Cash Connect, Christiana Trust Group, Cypress Capital Management, LLC, Neumann Finance Company, Powdermill Financial Solutions, WSFS Institutional Services, WSFS Wealth Investments, West Capital Management, and WSFS Mortgage and Arrow Land Transfer. Serving the Greater Delaware Valley since 1832, WSFS Bank is one of the ten oldest banks in the United States continuously operating under the same name. For more information, please visit wsfsbank.com.

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Important Information

J. Porter Ginn, as a financial advisor of WSFS Wealth Investments, offers securities and advisory services through Commonwealth Financial Network, member FINRA/SIPC, a Registered Investment Adviser. Investments are not insured by the FDIC and are not deposits or other obligations of, or guaranteed by, any depository institution. Funds are subject to investment risks, including possible loss of principal investment. WSFS Bank is not a registered broker-dealer or Registered Investment Adviser. WSFS Bank and Commonwealth are separate and unaffiliated entities. Fixed Insurance products and services are offered through WSFS Wealth Investments or CES Insurance Agency. WSFS Wealth Investments, 3801 Kennett Pike, C200, Greenville, DE 19807

Media Contact: Jimmy A. Hernandez

(302) 571-5254

jhernandez@wsfsbank.com

Photos accompanying this announcement are available at:



http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/69a1833a-a36c-4b98-923a-ee765d84ec17

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Asbury Park in New Jersey has become synonymous with the rich musical scene which thrived there in the 1970s and still exists nowand a new documentary will explore the complex history of the town, the riots that almost tore it apart, and the music scene which helped turn it back into a destination.

You can check out the trailer for Asbury Park: Riot, Redemption, Rock n Roll, directed by Rumson, NJ native Tom Jones, below.

Asbury Park was once a seaside resort, but in July 1970, racial tensions due to "the lack of jobs, recreational opportunities, and decent living conditions" exploded into a series of riots that left the town in flames. The town, which was always known for its Westside jazz and blues scene, irrevocably changedand what emerged was the classic Jersey sound we now associate with Bruce Springsteen and his peers.

The film has been in the works for over a decade, and they write: "Asbury Park returns Asbury sons Steven Van Zandt, Southside Johnny Lyon and Bruce Springsteen to the legendary Upstage, the psychedelic after hours club where they got their start, featuring never before seen interviews and performances. Shuttered for four and a half decades, the Upstage remains a perfect time capsule of the Club, which united both sides of the tracks in Asbury and acted as a crucible for young talent. Now, as Asbury Park enjoys its long awaited renaissance, it is music, which has brought it back from the dead."

The movie will premiere at The Asbury Park Music & Film Festival on April 28th before arriving in cinemas around the world on May 22nd.

And if you're looking for other Springsteen-related cinematic pursuits, there's a new film called Blinded By The Light coming out later this year soundtracked by his songs. Directed by Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham), it's about a Boss-obsessed Pakistani British teen in the '80s, and it is supposed to be a total delight.

As Variety wrote, "When the Springsteen songs come on, you dont have to be a rockist to feel the supreme lack of irony, the passionate majesty of it. Its music so unhip its transcendent, to the point that when Javed starts to sport a flannel shirt with cut-off sleeves, or when he and Roops (Aaron Phagura), the fellow Pakistani who first turned him onto the Boss, sneak Born to Run into the school DJ booth, and blast it, and the movie suddenly becomes a virtual musical, with Javed, Roos, and Eliza dancing through the city and into the fields, its corny as hell and irresistible for that reason. Blinded by the Light has the courage of its own shameless teen rock-god sincerity."
April 12 (Reuters) - The following are the top stories from selected Canadian newspapers. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL

** Manulife Financial Corp is making major changes to its senior ranks as chief operating officer Linda Mantia makes plans to leave the company this summer, according to people familiar with the matter. (https://tgam.ca/2v1FGnW)

** Printing, packaging and media company Transcontinental Inc is fighting allegations that it had misrepresented information about its business in the 2017 sale of its East Coast newspapers. (https://tgam.ca/2v2g2iY)

** United States activist investors plan to withhold their votes for three of TransAlta Corp's directors, including the chairman, in an escalating battle over the power generator's C$750 million ($563 million) partnership deal with Brookfield Renewable Partners LP. (https://tgam.ca/2P51Kak)

NATIONAL POST

** Shareholders of Colorado-based Newmont Mining voted to approve a $10 billion purchase of Goldcorp Inc, creating the largest gold company in the world with a market capitalization of roughly $29 billion. (http://bit.ly/2v2GZD4) ($1 = C$1.33) (Compiled by Bengaluru newsroom)
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley doesn't believe a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality will succeed, the Iowa Republican told the Des Moines Register on Thursday.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is once again in jeopardy after President Donald Trump reignited debate over his predecessor's health care law in March when his administration decided to support a federal judge's ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional.

Grassley, who is one of the many Republicans who oppose President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law, said Thursday that he expects the Supreme Court will uphold Obamacare if the case is brought before them.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley doesn't believe a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality will succeed, the Iowa Republican told the Des Moines Register on Thursday.

"I don't believe the courts are going to strike it down," Grassley said, adding that Republicans don't have to work on a replacement for the 2010 health care law because he said it is unclear what the courts will decide to do.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is once again in jeopardy after President Donald Trump reignited debate over his predecessor's health care law in March when his administration decided to support a federal judge's ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional.

In December, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled the health care law unconstitutional after 20 Republican-led states filed a suit against the policy. O'Connor said that without the law's individual mandate  a tax penalty on anyone who did not purchase health insurance  Obamacare could not stand.

The Trump administration reduced the individual mandate to $0 in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

O'Connor's ruling awaits deliberation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Obamacare and pledged to repeal it, but Republicans have yet to propose a health care policy to replace it that could pass muster in Congress. Trump said in a late March tweet that the "Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare," but the president was forced to abandon the cause when his party expressed little desire to revisit the health care debate before the 2020 election.

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Grassley, who is one of the many Republicans who oppose President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law, said Thursday that he expects the Supreme Court will uphold Obamacare if the case is brought before them.

He told the Register he "would be very doubtful" that Chief Justice John Roberts would "be changing his mind" on the law. Roberts was the deciding vote that upheld Obamacare's constitutionality when the law was deliberated by the Supreme Court in 2012.

Obamacare, which sought to expand access to insurance and increase consumer protections, includes provisions that expand Medicaid in most states, allow children to remain on their parents' insurance plans until age 26 and protect those with pre-existing conditions.

The health care law captured the ire of conservatives when it passed in 2010. Republicans have vowed to do away with Obamacare ever since, but the GOP failed to repeal the policy in 2017 when they controlled Congress and the White House. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle believe Republicans' failed efforts to scrap the law handed Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives in last year's midterm elections.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in March the Senate would wait until Republicans gained full control of Congress before considering a replacement plan. The GOP, which holds a majority in the Senate, needs 21 more seats in the House to win a majority in the next election.

Grassley, who has been working on a bipartisan basis to tackle high drug prices in the U.S., also praised a bill he co-sponsored that protects people with pre-existing conditions. However, Grassley told the Register that the bill, which was unveiled this week, would not be debated unless Obamacare were repealed.

Though Grassley doubts Obamacare will be ruled unconstitutional, he claimed replacement legislation could "easily" be created.

Grassley's office confirmed the Register's reporting, but did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for additional comment.

Read the Des Moines Register's full report here.





More From CNBC


Rite Aid will start selling CBD creams, lotions, and lip balms in Washington and Oregon this month.

The company will sell the products in more than 200 stores across the two states.

Walgreens and CVS also recently introduced similar products in some of their stores.

Rite Aid RAD on Thursday said it will start selling CBD creams, lotions, and lip balms in Washington and Oregon this month, the company announced Thursday.

"Rite Aid has heard from many customers about their interest in purchasing CBD products," the company said in a statement.

Rite Aid will sell the products in more than 200 stores across the two states. Walgreens WBA and CVS CVS also recently introduced similar products in some of their stores.





More From CNBC


SWINDON, United Kingdom, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sensata Technologies (NYSE: ST ) today announced that it will disclose its first quarter 2019 financial results on Wednesday, May 1, 2019, at 6:00 a.m. Eastern Time.



Sensata will then host a live conference call and webcast on the same day at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time to discuss the results and business trends. The webcast and subsequent replay will be available on the investor relations page of the Companys website at http://investors.sensata.com .

Investors can also listen to the earnings call live via telephone by dialing 1-844-784-1726 or 1-412-380-7411 and referencing the Sensata Q1 2019 Earnings Conference Call. A replay of the call will be available until May 8, 2019. To access the replay dial 1-877-344-7529 or 1-412-317-0088 and enter confirmation code: 10130572.

About Sensata Technologies

Sensata Technologies is one of the worlds leading suppliers of sensing, electrical protection, control and power management solutions with operations and business centers in 11 countries. Sensatas products improve safety, efficiency and comfort for millions of people every day in automotive, appliance, aircraft, industrial, military, heavy vehicle, heating, air-conditioning and ventilation, data, telecommunications, recreational vehicle and marine applications. Further information can be found on Sensatas website: www.sensata.com .

Contact:

Joshua Young

Vice President, Investor Relations

+1 (508) 236-2196

Joshua.Young@sensata.com
Finally giving in to the pressure of sanctions from Washington against Russia, Royal Dutch Shell plc RDS.A has decided to leave the Baltic liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, located in the Russian Baltic coast. The major project was operated by Russian state-run natural gas company, Gazprom. Following the sanction inflicted by the United States on Russia, working on energy projects with Russia has become difficult for western companies, especially those which have a U.S. connection.

The decision from the Anglo-Dutch company came following an announcement of a final development plan for the Baltic LNG project from Gazprom in March. The Russian company is eyeing full integration of the Baltic LNG and a gas processing plant, which is expected to come online in the 2022-2023 time period. Gazprom is targeting production of 10 million tons of LNG per annum from the project.

Shell leaving Baltic LNG project will cripple Gazproms reach to technologies and machineries of the Netherlands-based energy major. This is a major blow to the Russian company, considering that the country produced natural gas of 725.2 billion cubic meters last year and is looking to increase the numbers further. Notably, Shell had quit some shale hydrocarbon projects in the past due to the sanctions imposed on Russia.

What About the Other Projects?

Shell and Gazprom had announced a strategic alliance in 2015. The European companys decision to leave the Baltic LNG project is not expected to affect other developments between the companies. Shell still has a stake in the Sakhalin-II LNG plant, operated by Gazprom. It is the first LNG plant in the country, located in the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin.

Notably, Shell built a Sakhalin Energy LNG plant-specific technology. This February, both the companies created a joint venture, from which Russias technology for supercooling gas will be hugely benefited.

Price Performance

Headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands, Shells stock has gained 6.2% in the past month compared with 3.5% collective growth of the industry it belongs to.

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Zacks Rank and Other Stocks to Consider

Currently, Shell carries a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Investors interested in the energy sector can opt for other top-ranked stocks as cited below:

Buenos Aires, Argentina-based YPF Sociedad Anonima YPF is an integrated energy company. It delivered average positive earnings surprise of 210.4% in the trailing four quarters. The stock currently holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Calgary, Canada-based TransCanada Corp. TRP is a midstream energy company. In the trailing four quarters, the company delivered average positive earnings surprise of 19%. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2.

Houston, TX-based Altus Midstream Company ALTM is also midstream energy company. In 2019, the companys top line is expected to increase more than 300% year over year. The stock currently has a Zacks Rank #2.

Breakout Biotech Stocks with Triple-Digit Profit Potential

The biotech sector is projected to surge beyond $775 billion by 2024 as scientists develop treatments for thousands of diseases. Theyre also finding ways to edit the human genome to literally erase our vulnerability to these diseases.

Zacks has just released Century of Biology: 7 Biotech Stocks to Buy Right Now to help investors profit from 7 stocks poised for outperformance. Our recent biotech recommendations have produced gains of +98%, +119% and +164% in as little as 1 month. The stocks in this report could perform even better.

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Zacks Investment Research
The driver who allegedly ran over a teenage girl in Brooklyn last month  and who was then caught on camera inspecting the injured victim, before getting back in her car and fleeing  has been arrested by police.

Julia Litmanovich, a 49-year-old Staten Island woman, was arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Thursday, and now faces a slew of charges including leaving the scene of an accident with an injury and reckless endangerment. But Litmanovich, whose lengthy rap sheet includes several drunk driving arrests, apparently doesn't see the problem in her actions.

What is the big deal?" she allegedly told officers escorting her to Central Booking, according to Assistant District Attorney Tziyonah Langsam. "It was an accident."

Surveillance footage of the incident shows Litmanovich's Dodge Challenger  with Georgia plates  plowing into 14-year-old Xin Yi Wang in a Borough Park crosswalk and launching her into oncoming traffic. After exiting the vehicle to check on the victim, the driver reportedly claimed she was going to park her car, but never returned.

The victim was transported to Maimonides Hospital with severe bruising. She is now in stable condition.

On Thursday, Brooklyn prosecutors noted that Litmanovich's past arrests included three felonies and 38 misdemeanors. She has been convicted three times for driving while intoxicated.

According to the Daily News, attorneys for Litmanovich countered that their client's last arrest was more than a decade ago, and that she is now a licensed substance abuse counselor.

She has truly turned her life around since her last arrest, the defense attorney reportedly said. "She got clean 11 years ago."

But Judge Gina Abadi appeared unconvinced. After suspending her license, the judge ordered Litmanovich held on $7,500 bond or $3,000 cash. She is expected to return to court on April 16th.


Not for distribution to U.S. Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States of America. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of U.S. Securities laws.

CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / April 12, 2019 / Sparta Capital Ltd. (SAY.V) (the "Corporation" or "Sparta") is sticking to its own mantra "Do What's Right" and is preparing for future fuel mixtures by outfitting ten of its operating highway vehicles with HydraGENTM Technology.

In a recent press release, dynaCERT (TSX VENTURE: DYA) (OTCQB:DYFSF) (FRA:DMJ) ("dynaCERT") announced that Sparta's Newport fleet of ten highway tractor trailers will soon run on dynaCERT's HydraGENTM Technology; a system designed to enhance combustion and track greenhouse gas emissions. This Canadian technology disassociates distilled water into its two base molecules of hydrogen (H2) & Oxygen (O2) gases, producing them on demand for injection into the combustion chamber of a diesel engine. The system was developed to reduce harmful emissions and provide significant savings on fuel.

"Our team is very familiar with the effects and benefits dynaCERT's HydraGENTM can provide; not only reducing emissions but enhancing fuel economy in the process," said John O'Bireck, President of Sparta. "As part of Sparta's overall strategy of looking to transform single-use plastics into useful alternative fuel mixtures and thus finding environmentally responsible places to deploy them, enhancing the combustion process with hydrogen becomes obvious. By combining the two complimentary fuels it is anticipated that we can drop our carbon footprint [for this fleet alone] by more than 700 tonnes/year. With HydraGEN's inherent ability to measure, track and present resulting changes in GHG emissions, we look forward to presenting our results as they become available," Mr. O'Bireck went on to say.

Recently, Sparta announced a Joint Venture with Pi.ECO Canada Ltd., to convert unsortable waste plastic into clean synthetic fuel, on an industrial scale. In addition, they are working with other Canadian technology to develop a decentralized model of converting small batches of single-use plastic into immediately useable fuels.

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The HydraGENTM Technology will be installed within the next few weeks and it shouldn't be long before they are able to review the first emissions tracking report.

The makers of the HydraGENTM Technology are a Toronto based, internationally growing, energy company. Recently, dynaCERT won the Mining CleanTech Challenge in Denver. Their technology was deemed the best among a highly competitive field of entries that included companies from Canada, the United States and Israel.

About Sparta

Sparta Capital Ltd. is a company that owns or holds a controlling interest in a network of independent businesses that supply energy saving technologies designed to reduce energy inefficiencies, achieve reduced emissions and increase operating efficiencies in various industries. Sparta's network of independent businesses provides a wide range of specialized energy capturing, converting, optimizing, and related services to the commercial sector. Sparta provides capital, technical and engineering expertise, legal support, financial and accounting knowledge, strategic planning and other shared services to its independent businesses.

Sparta is a publicly-traded company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "SAY" Additional information is available on our website at www.spartagroup.ca or on SEDAR at www.sedar.com

For more information contact:

John O'Bireck, President

Email: jobireck@spartagroup.ca

Telephone: (905) 751-8004

Cautionary Statements:

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. When used in this news release, the words "estimate", "project", "belief", "anticipate", "intend", "expect", "plan", "predict", "may" or "should" and the negative of these words or such variations thereon or comparable terminology are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. Although the Corporation believes in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking information because the Corporation can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, estimates and opinions on the date of publication of this news release and the Corporation undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change. Furthermore, the Corporation undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third parties in respect of the Corporation. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, statements pertaining to the Corporation's business and Advisory Board and actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to, the failure to obtain necessary regulatory approvals, necessary financing and risks associated with the environmental technologies industry in general. All forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release).

SOURCE: Sparta Capital Ltd.





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/541807/Sparta-Outfits-its-Highway-Tractor-Fleet-with-Emission-ReducingEnergy-Saving-Technology




Coins saving increase to profit.

(Photo: Shutterstock)



The countrys largest labor and employment firms enjoyed strong growth in 2018, thanks to high demand that has been spurred by litigation, new laws and regulations, multinational clients and the #MeToo era.



But each of the four top-grossing U.S. firmsLittler Mendelson; Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart; Jackson Lewis; and Fisher & Phillipshas relied on its own model for growth, ranging from differences in partnership structure and international strategy to the firms' specific practice priorities and investments in technology.









Revenue and Head Count Gains





With more than 1,000 lawyers, Littler is the largest of the four, followed by Ogletree, Jackson Lewis and Fisher Phillips.





Thomas Bender

Thomas Bender



Tom Bender, the co-president of Littler with Jeremy Roth, said it was an incredibly strong year for the firm. Financially it was very, very good. That may be even a bit of an understatement.



Whats more, Bender said, the firm made major strides in global expansion, tech and innovation, and diversity and inclusion.



At Littler, revenue grew an estimated 8.6 percent to $584.2 million, pushing up revenue per lawyer 6 percent to $547,000. (The firm discloses only head count data; revenue and profit figures are derived by ALM.)



Littlers overall lawyer head count increased 2.4 percent to 1,068 lawyers for its U.S. offices. Globally the firm has more than 1,500 lawyers, but Littler Global is structured as a Swiss verein, so the U.S. branch is a separate financial entity.





C. Matthew Keen of Olgletree Deakins

Matt Keen



Ogletrees managing shareholder, Matt Keen, also said his firm saw strong growth across practices, adding that immigration, class actions, workplace safety, ERISA and traditional labor matters were busy areas last year.



Ogletrees revenue increased 8.6 percent to $509.8 million, resulting in a 5.4 percent RPL increase to $602,000. Total lawyer head count increased 3 percent to 847 lawyers.



At Jackson Lewis, co-chair Kevin Lauri said social forces and state legislatures have driven tremendous demand for our services.





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Kevin Lauri

Kevin Lauri



Lauri, who is in New York City, and Will Anthony, in Albany, New York, became Jackson Lewis new co-chairs in January.



Jackson Lewis grew revenue 6.4 percent to $447.5 million, but RPL declined 2 percent to $534,000. The firm added a net of 67 new lawyers last year, increasing lawyer head count by 8.6 percent to 838. Lauri said a lot were associates with lower billing rates, which pushed down RPL a bit.



The #MeToo movement has raised awareness among employees about inappropriate treatment, Lauri said, and jurisdictions in New York, California and other states have passed new laws requiring mandatory harassment training and employee protections around gender identity, pregnancy and other issues, as well as benefits such as paid lactation breaks.





Will Anthony

Will Anthony



Lots of new state legislators have created new protections, Lauri said. We are out there educating our clients on what their obligations are.



He added that demand for litigation services remained strong, while it increased for wage and hour class action work, employee benefits and workplace safety.



Fisher Phillips increased revenue 9.5 percent to $200.7 million, while increasing RPL 3.1 percent to $572,000.





Roger Quillen

Roger Quillen



Fisher Phillips chair, Roger Quillen, reported that the firm has been very busy in states with aggressive enforcement regimes, because the federal regulatory framework for labor and employment issues continues to lag. New laws and regulation around gender pay equity and medical and recreational marijuana have also created new work.





Partner Profits





While the labor and employment firms RPL clustered in a range from $534,000 at Jackson Lewis to $602,000 at Ogletree, there was more of a spread on profit per equity partner. That was because the firms have widely varying ratios of equity to income partners.



Ogletree led the pack in partner profits. A net income jump of 12 percent ($146.4 million) pushed up PEP by 7.3 percent to $776,000. But Ogletree also has the lowest ratio of equity to income partners. Its 189 equity partners make up less than half (47 percent) of its total partnership.



Jackson Lewis reported a sizable 9.8 percent hike in net income, which reached $153.8 million and pushed up PEP 5.2 percent to $603,000. The firms 255 equity partners make up 57 percent of the total partnership.



At Fisher Phillips a 4.7 percent increase in net income (to $70.1 million) hiked PEP by 3.6 percent to $574,000. Fisher Phillips has twice as many equity partners (122) as income partners (62).



Littler has three times the number of equity partners (381) as nonequity ones (119), which makes its PEP relatively lower at $521,330. Net income increased 11.9 percent (to $198.6 million) pushing up PEP 13.1 percent.



If the firms are compared on the basis of profit per lawyer, however, there is only a $27,000 spread. Fisher Phillips leads the pack with PPL of $199,786, followed by Littler with PPL of $185,980. Thats followed by Jackson Lewis with PPL of $183,518. Despite having the highest PEP, Ogletree has the lowest PPL at $172,792.





International vs. U.S.





Littler has been the most aggressive of the four firms in expanding internationally. Of its 81 offices, 26 are outside the United States. Littler started with a Venezuela location in 2010 and quickly expanded into Latin America and Canada, then in 2015, Europe, with a German office.



Last year, the firm added another German office in Frankfurt, plus locations in Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands, followed this year by Norway. It also opened U.S. offices in Madison, Wisconsin; Salt Lake City; and Greenville, South Carolina, while closing another in Columbia, South Carolina.





Jeremy Roth

Jeremy Roth



Littler opted to open its own offices abroad instead of using an international law firm alliance to provide a coordinated service solution for multinational clients, said Roth, the firms co-president. We are really trying to be one firm.



Five of Ogletrees 53 offices are internationalin Mexico City, Toronto, London, Paris and Berlin. Keen said the decision to add offices abroad, starting with Berlin and London just over six years ago, was client-driven, as companies Ogletree serves asked for help elsewhere. The firm opened one U.S. office last year in Portland, Maine.



Jackson Lewis and Fisher Phillips have steadily expanded their U.S. coverageJackson Lewis has 60 offices, and Fisher Phillips has 33but both firms provide clients legal expertise outside the United States through international law firm alliances.



Jackson Lewis Lauri said theyve considered international offices but so far "we've been successful meeting client needs through our L&E Global alliance.



Jackson Lewis didnt add any offices last year, but it added several large groups, including 15 lawyers in St. Louis at the beginning of the year, led by labor attorney R. Michael Lowenbaum, from his firm, Lowenbaum Law. (Another national labor and employment firm, FordHarrison, subsequently poached five lawyers in St. Louis from Jackson Lewis to start its own office there.)



Fisher Phillips didnt add offices either in 2018, but it made significant lateral hires in Washington, recruiting Theresa Connolly from Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete to lead the office, and then in January acquiring six-lawyer boutique The Farrington Law Firm, led by Dan Farrington, as Connollys office co-leader.





Tech Investments





Legal technology has become a significant expense for labor and employment firms, as they jockey to offer clients new products to help them track cases and expendituresideally, more efficiently.



Littler has made significant investments to stay at the forefront. The firm in 2010 rolled out CaseSmart, which offers flat-fee pricing on single-plaintiff and class action litigation (although clients can opt for hourly rates) using flex-time lawyers. A dashboard allows clients to track their cases progress across venues.



So far, more than 1,300 clients have used CaseSmart to handle about 20,000 litigation matters, the Littler leaders said, with annual increases in case volume and the number of flex-time lawyers. Its become a pretty significant part of our revenue and net, said co-president Bender.



Clients like it, Bender said, because its more cost-effective, and the dashboard allows them to survey their case landscape and see what the hot spots are for a case type or region.



The value-add is not just the alternative staffing and fixed or flat-fee pricing, Roth added, Its the data. Clients can mine that to be proactive in heading off problems, he explained. That part is really starting to catch on with the client community.



For instance, clients can easily check how their company has handled past cases and what theyve settled for, Bender said. Clients are more and more looking for that type of information.



Last year Littler rolled out a new pay equity tool that clients can use to assess employee pay by region, demographics, type of jobs or operational roles. Clients were overwhelmed and tired of looking at regression analysis using equations, Roth said. The new offering has been popular, he said, because it allows clients to look at data more intuitively with heat-map visuals.



Jackson Lewis was named Innovative Law Firm of 2018 by the International Legal Technology Association, which cited the firms web-based tool, workthruIT, which helps clients stay abreast of new laws and regulations. It covers topics such as pay transparency laws, sexual harassment training and investigations, minimum wage requirements, paid sick leave, disability and health management.



Ogletree was able to derive 40 percent of its revenue last year from alternative fees, Keen said, because of its internal knowledge management program, which allows all of its lawyers to access prior work product.



The firm has formed an exclusive partnership with a new tech startup, LegalMation, to develop a tool to produce draft answers to complaints and discovery requests. Its an area where using AI and machine learning can perform work more efficiently and save clients money, Keen said.



At Fisher Phillips, Quillen said his firm increased its usual IT spend by $3 million last year to continue investing in IT upgrades last year. That included data analytics and knowledge management to make pricing and case outcomes more predictable for clients.
TELUS Corporation TU recently announced that it has secured new 600 MHz spectrum licenses in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec for a consideration of $931 million. Equating to a national average of 11.3 MHz, these licenses will likely allow the Canadian telecommunications company to provide improved mobile broadband connectivity at a time when the industry is moving from 4G LTE to 5G.



The deployment of this latest spectrum is crucial to TELUS 5G growth strategy coupled with better network quality, speed and coverage. The 600 MHz band can travel distances in rural areas and penetrate barriers to better reach in-building locations.



TELUS 4G LTE network covers 99% of the countrys population and the addition of 600 MHz spectrum will help it increase urban capacity, while expanding the rural availability of wireless broadband service. Reportedly, TELUS has made more than $6 billion spectrum-related investments since 2008 and over $54 billion in technology across the country since 2000.



TELUS is also likely to benefit from the increasing penetration of smart devices, wireless data services and wireline fiber optic networks. The company expects balanced growth in the wireless and wireline businesses supported by healthy investment in high-speed broadband technology. The company plans to invest $175 million in networks across Quebec in 2019.



Between 2013 and 2021, TELUS intends to invest more than $300 million to expand its PureFibre network in the eastern part of Quebec, with $72 million in support from the federal and provincial governments. In the next two years, it plans to offer direct fiber access to 93% of Greater Quebec City and Eastern Quebec residents.



TELUS is focused on execution of its strategies along with amplifying efforts on cost efficiency for margin-accretive customer growth and investments to support its expansion strategy. With the expansion of Internet of Things marketplace into Canada, TELUS is aiming to consolidate its foothold in the market. It has introduced the TELUS Global IoT Connectivity platform to deliver seamless connectivity and simplified billing across 200 networks globally, thus support the expansion of Canadian business enterprises.



In 2019, TELUS plans to generate subscriber growth in its key growth segments, including wireless, high-speed Internet and TELUS TV. Increasing demand for reliable access and fast-data services is expected to support customer addition. Moreover, TELUS International and TELUS Health are likely to contribute to the companys growth profile, organically and from acquisitions.



Driven by diligent execution of operational strategies, the stock has rallied 8.6% on average compared with the industrys rise of 1.4% in the past three months.





Story continues





TELUS currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the industry include Deutsche Telekom AG DTEGY, Telenor ASA TELNY and Telecom Italia S.p.A. TI, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Deutsche Telekom has long-term earnings growth expectation of 8.8%.



Telenor currently has forward P/E (F1) of 16.5x.



Telecom Italia currently has forward P/E (F1) of 8.3x.



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By Hamid Ould Ahmed

ALGIERS, April 12 (Reuters) - Thousands of protesters gathered in Algiers for an eighth successive Friday to demand the departure of the ruling elite as Algeria prepares for a presidential election in July.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika stepped down from 20 years in power 10 days ago, bowing to pressure from the army and weeks of demonstrations mainly by young people seeking change in the North African country.

But protests have continued as many want the removal of an elite that has governed Algeria since independence from France in 1962 and the prosecution of what they see as corrupt figures.

Bouteflika has been replaced by Abdelkader Bensalah, head of the upper house of parliament, as interim president for 90 days until a presidential election on July 4.

"No to Bensalah," the protesters chanted, gathering in the centre of Algiers where mass protests broke out on Feb 22.

"We want the prosecution of all corrupt people," one banner read.

On Wednesday, Algeria's army chief, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Gaed Salah, said he expected to see members of the ruling elite prosecuted for corruption and said he would support a transition toward elections.

More than one in four people under the age of 30, some 70 percent of the population, are unemployed - one of the central grievances of protesters who want the economy liberalized and diversified to reduce its reliance on its oil and gas production.

The army monitored the unrest from the sidelines. Then Salah intervened, declaring Bouteflika - rarely seen in public since suffering a stroke in 2013 - unfit to rule. (Editing by Ulf Laessing and Angus MacSwan)
U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks on United States 5G deployment in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos Barria

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said Friday the United States should not nationalise its 5G network and said private companies should move quickly to deploy the faster next-generation network.

"In the United States our approach is private-sector driven and private-sector led. The government doesn't have to spend lots of money," Trump said. "Leading through the government, it won't be nearly as good, nearly as fast."

The White House mulled the idea of nationalising the 5G network for more than a year. In March Politico reported that Trump's reelection campaign supported a government role in managing the 5G networks even as White House officials including top economic adviser Larry Kudlow have said for months they oppose the idea.

Trump spoke alongside Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai who disclosed Friday the agency plans to hold its third 5G spectrum auction on Dec. 10, the latest effort to make more spectrum available that could transform significant sectors of the U.S. economy.

Pai said Trump's comments opposing nationalisation was an "important signal" to the private sector that is investing tens of billions of dollars in the 5G networks.

CTIA, an industry trade group, said Friday that Trump's statement "puts an end - once and for all - to any misguided notions of nationalising spectrum resources or government-mandated wholesale 5G markets."

Pai is also proposing to invest $20.4 billion (15.6 billion) over 10 years to build out high-speed broadband networks in rural America.

The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund aims to provide funding through a reverse auction to service providers in areas without access to high-speed service and aims to connect up to four million rural homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks.

5G networks are expected to be at least 100 times faster than the current 4G networks, cut delays and allow for innovations in a number of fields.

Pai spoke on a call with reporters ahead of the White House event with Trump and rural residents who could benefit from faster networks to tout the administration's efforts to boost 5G wireless networks and funding for rural broadband.

Story continues

Since November, the FCC has auctioned 1,550 megahertz of spectrum to be used by commercial wireless providers for 5G connectivity. The third 5G spectrum auction will be the largest, with the FCC selling 3,400 megahertz in three different spectrum bands.

The FCC voted on Friday to seek comments on bidding procedures for the next auction. Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the auction is a good step but the commission must also pivot "to mid-band" spectrum "or risk falling behind other countries."

Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Corp, Sprint Corp and T Mobile US Inc are beginning to deploy 5G service in U.S. cities and are working to extend their networks as 5G-compatible phones slowly become available.

The Republican administration has also been warning other countries against adopting 5G systems from Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, citing security concerns.

For more than a year, the White House has been mulling an executive order that would direct the Commerce Department to block U.S. companies from buying equipment from foreign telecommunications makers that pose significant national security risks, Reuters reported in December.

The FCC since March 2018 has also been considering rules to bar the use of funds from a government programme to purchase equipment or services from companies that pose a security threat to U.S. communications networks. Pai said that proposal is still pending.

(Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; editing by Dan Grebler and James Dalgleish)
(Adds quotes, details, background)

By Ali Kucukgocmen and Ebru Tuncay

ISTANBUL, April 11 (Reuters) - A Turkish court on Thursday acquitted HSBC Turkey chief executive Selim Kervanci of a charge of insulting President Tayyip Erdogan by retweeting a video on social media at the time of nationwide protests in 2013.

Insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison in Turkey and thousands of such cases have been opened since Erdogan became president in 2014.

The latest case was launched after a complaint by a private citizen. Kervanci told the court he did not intend to insult anyone by retweeting the video and had not viewed the video before sharing it.

"When I did this there was no way I could have intended any insult," he told the court before the verdict was announced. "I work in an international bank. An unjust decision would harm my career and would harm my country's prestige."

The video in question was an excerpt of the 2004 German feature film "Downfall" which depicts Adolf Hitler's last days and the collapse of Nazi Germany.

The incident occurred at the time of protests which began against the redevelopment of central Istanbul's Gezi Park and grew into nationwide anti-government unrest.

Sixteen civil society figures, writers and actors are facing trial over their alleged roles in the protests, accused of seeking to overthrow Erdogan's government in 2013.

(Reporting by Ebru Tuncay and Ali Kucukgocmen; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
As a sign of a sea change in attitude toward marijuana use, New York is on the brink of enacting a trailblazing bill that prevents most New York City employers from forcing applicants to submit to a drug test for marijuana.

Sponsored by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, the bill passed overwhelmingly on Tuesday in a 40-to-4 vote. It applies to most companies, both private and public. However, the measure will exclude industries where safety and security are a concern, such as law enforcement, construction, commercial driving, and health and child care. Also, employers could be permitted to perform a drug test on an employee shows signs of being under the influence of marijuana during work hours.

The proposed law would also not supersede federal drug-test requirements on federal and state employees or contractors and transportation workers.

The bill is believed to put New York at the vanguard of cities in the U.S. working toward preventing employers from enforcing punitive policies on marijuana use, according to Dionna King, a policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, an organization which works on drug reform initiatives across the country.

King said that to her offices knowledge, most of the legislation elsewhere has extended to individuals using medical marijuana.

In that sense, its a huge step in creating legal protection and having it be made a part of policy, she said.

Press officials at City Hall did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gothamist. However, Olivia Lapeyrolerie, a mayoral spokesperson, told the New York Times that de Blasio fully supports the bill.

In a press release, Williams said, "Testing isn't a deterrent to using marijuana, it's an impediment to opportunity that dates back to the Reagan era's war on drugs measure that's now a war on workers. Prospective employers don't test for alcohol so marijuana should be no different, but in no way does this bill justify individuals going to work under the influence.

Testing for drug use by employers ramped up during the 1980s under former President Ronald Reagan, who mandated drug testing at federal agencies. Critics have faulted Reagan's aggressive anti-drug campaign and political hysteria with giving way to a zero-tolerance policy that continued to linger into the early 1990s.

Drug Policy Alliance has been working on a package of bills related to marijuana justice reform that have been introduced in the City Council. On Wednesday, the City Council held a hearing on a bill that would require the citys Administration for Childrens Services to report data on the role marijuana plays in its investigations, driven by the concern that recreational marijuana use disproportionately affects low-income families of color.

In marijuana-driven cases, the citys child welfare system needs to provide more transparency, King said.

Opponents of the bill included the Partnership for New York City, a coalition of business interests. Its president Kathryn S. Wylde said the legislation was interfering with "the relationship between employers and employees" and would also drive up costs for companies that needed to change their policies to adjust to a new city law.

Although the legalization was cited as one of Governor Andrew Cuomos priorities, the measure did not make the recent budget.

Nonetheless, progressive Democrats and advocates of legalization have been keeping the issue at the forefront, not only to legalize marijuana but remove the punitive policies associated with the drug.

We are happy with this progress, King said. In the meantime, she added, If the state is not there yet, were going to work with municipalities.
With global growth already slowing down, starting a trade war now between the U.S. and the European Union would be both a political and economic mistake, according to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.

In two Twitter posts this week, U.S. President Donald Trump hit out at the EU, even calling the bloc "a brutal trading partner."

"There are trade tensions between the U.S. and China. We should not add trade tensions between the U.S. and the EU, it will be a political mistake and an economic mistake too," Le Maire said.

With global growth already slowing down, starting a trade war now between the United States and the European Union would be both a political and economic mistake, France Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Thursday.

That warning came in response to a question from CNBC about whether Le Maire felt worried that the next leg of a global trade war will center on the U.S. and the EU. In two Twitter posts this week, U.S. President Donald Trump hit out at the bloc, declaring it's "a brutal trading partner."

Trump on Twitter: Too bad that the European Union is being so tough on the United Kingdom and Brexit. The E.U. is likewise a brutal trading partner with the United States, which will change. Sometimes in life you have to let people breathe before it all comes back to bite you!

"We have to avoid a trade war. We're facing a slowdown both at the global level and the European level and the reason why there is such an economic slowdown is that there are trade tensions all over the world," the French minister told CNBC's Joumanna Bercetche at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund meeting in Washington .

"There are trade tensions between the U.S. and China . We should not add trade tensions between the U.S. and the EU, it will be a political mistake and an economic mistake too," he added.

Trump on Twitter: The World Trade Organization finds that the European Union subsidies to Airbus has adversely impacted the United States, which will now put Tariffs on $11 Billion of EU products! The EU has taken advantage of the U.S. on trade for many years. It will soon stop!

Story continues

Since taking office, Trump has called out major trading partners including the EU, China and Canada for what he deemed unfair practices that affected American workers and companies. Trump increased tariffs on some U.S. imports, which led to a global trade fight that many governments and analysts blamed for hurting economic activity.

Hubertus Muhlhauser, the CEO of European-based capital goods firm CNH Industrial, explained that his company had exposure to the U.S. agriculture market and said any escalation with the EU would be concerning.

"We are really allies, we are in the same situation, we have to find a trade deal," he told CNBC's Julianna Tatelbaum on Friday.

"We are very concerned if there's not a trade deal found that the retaliation actions from the Europeans will go against the U.S. farmers and again this is not in the interest of the United States," he added.

The IMF this week slashed its forecast for global growth for the third time since last October. The fund said the world economy is projected to grow by 3.3 percent in 2019  down from an earlier forecast of 3.5 percent.

European economies are expected to be among the largest contributors to the global slowdown, according to the IMF. That's coming at an inopportune time for the bloc, according to Pierre Moscovici, European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, taxation and customs.

The region, he explained, is currently preparing for another potential blow: The United Kingdom leaving the EU without a deal.

The U.K. and the EU earlier this week reached an agreement to once again extend the Brexit deadline until Oct. 31. The next six months should be spent on ensuring the U.K. doesn't crash out of the bloc and slow down the European and global economy even more, Moscovici told CNBC's Bercetche at the same Washington meeting.

"Let's avoid a no-deal (Brexit)," he said. "We must really find a way to live together and for that, a deal  I don't know which deal, it's up to (the U.K.) to say precisely what they want  is much preferable to no deal."





More From CNBC


US and Russia 'need to strengthen' economic and political ties, Russian finance minister says

"This is not the best climate for business development I think that we need to strengthen our links, both economic and political links, between the U.S. and Russia," Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov told CNBC on Thursday.

His comments come amid a long series of provocations and flare-ups between Moscow and Washington in recent years, whose relations are seen by many as at their worst since the Cold War.

In 2018, Russia's gross domestic product (GDP) grew at 2.3%, marking the country's highest level of expansion in almost seven years.

Russia and the United States must find a way to resolve their differences on the international stage in order to improve the overall health of the global economy, Russia's finance minister told CNBC on Thursday.

His comments come amid a long series of provocations and flare-ups between Moscow and Washington in recent years, whose relations are seen by many as at their worst since the Cold War.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's completed repor t into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election that there was no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.

When asked whether there was a tangible sense of relief among Moscow's business community after a summary of the Mueller report was released, Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov replied: "We have never had any doubts in the conclusions of that report, on the one hand."

"On the other hand, I think that it is not really about the results of that investigation; the problem lies with the overall state of relations between our two countries."

"This is not the best climate for business development I think that we need to strengthen our links, both economic and political links, between the U.S. and Russia. This would be of benefit to the global economy and, to our countries, our people and our entrepreneurs, first and foremost," Siluanov told CNBC's Joumanna Bercetche in Washington on Thursday.

Story continues

'Wait and see'

Earlier this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly said the Mueller report was always going to end up finding nothing.

Putin has previously described the original allegations of collusion as "complete nonsense."

The Mueller report did not clear Moscow of trying to meddle in the 2016 vote, and U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the Kremlin did interfere  citing a campaign of email hacking and online propaganda.

Speaking at the International Monetary Fund's ( IMF ) spring meeting, Siluanov said: "It is the change in the overall rhetoric in our relations that is the problem. We can see that the results of the report have had no effect, they have not led to any willingness to stop the sanctions that are coming out of the U.S."

"We shall have to wait and see how things pan out but so far we have seen no changes in the matter of restrictions imposed on Russia," he added.

Russia has repeatedly criticized U.S. and EU sanctions placed on Russia since 2014 for a variety of reasons, ranging from its annexation of Crimea, the poisoning of an ex-spy in the U.K. and meddling in the 2016 U.S. election.

Economic growth

In 2018, Russia's gross domestic product ( GDP ) grew at 2.3%, marking the country's highest level of expansion in almost seven years.

"The rate of economic growth is less linked to the oil prices because we have been taking all the necessary measures to carry out structural reforms and changes, to bolster the growth rate," Siluanov said.

"We have minimized the effect of oil and gas prices on our budget, we have minimized their impact on the balance of payments so the rate of growth we have enjoyed recently has been achieved by stepping up business activity and investments," he added.

As one of the world's top producers of natural gas and oil, Russia stands to benefit from higher oil prices.

International benchmark Brent and U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures have risen by approximately 30 and 40 percent respectively since the start of the year.





More From CNBC


Per a recent media release, WEC Energy Group, Inc. WEC received approval from the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin for two solar projects with capacity of 450 megawatt (MW). The request was submitted in May 2018. The total cost of the projects is expected to be $390 million, of whichWisconsin Public Service Corp (WPS) will invest $260 million. The projects are expected to initiate commercial service by the end of 2020.

Notably, Solar projects in Manitowoc County will be developed by NextEra Energys NEE unit NextEra Energy Resources. Moreover, the Badger Hollow project in Iowa county will be developed by Invenergy.These projects are expected to produce enough renewable energy equivalent to the power consumed by 120,000 Wisconsin households in a year.

Development of Renewable Projects

The demand for energy is rising in the United States and going forward a major portion of the electricity will be produced from clean sources. Per a forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), all renewable fuels  wind, solar, and hydroelectric  will account for 18% of U.S. electricity in 2019 and almost 20% in 2020. In addition, EIA projects that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emission will decline by 1.6% in 2019 and 1.0% in 2020.

Utility companies shift to the renewables in the past few years is notable. These companies are inclined toward alternate energy to generate electricity and have reduced the usage of fossil fuels. WEC Energy also focuses on lowering carbon emissions by approximately 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2050. In Dec 2018, WEC Energy received approval for the Solar Now pilot program, under which the company is expected to add up to 35 MW of solar panels on customers property.

Long-Term Plans

The company expects long-term earnings growth in the range of 5-7% per year, with more than 99% of the bottom line being derived from regulated operations. In 2018, the company invested $2.1 billion, up from the spending of $156 million in 2017. WEC Energy expects total capital expenditure to be nearly $14.1 billion over the 2019-2023 time frame.

Story continues

Moreover, the company is making strategic acquisitions to expand existing operations. In Jan 2019, the company acquired 80% ownership of Coyote Ridge Wind Farm. The site comprises 39 GE wind turbines and has capacity of 97 MW.Involvements in wind and solar projects indicate the companys growing interest in renewable expansions.

Apart from WEC Energy, utilities like Exelon Corp. EXC and Duke Energy DUK are also involved in solar generation projects.

Zacks Rank & Price Movement

WEC Energy currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Shares of the company have gained 26.7% in the past 12 months compared with the industrys 14.3% rise.

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Slowdown fear has engulfed the Chinese market of late, but several Chinese sectors and stocks are flying high this year. Signs of a resolution to the year-long U.S.-China trade spat is acting as the main tailwind (read: What Led China ETFs Outperform in Q1 & Have More Room to Run).

In late February, President Donald Trump first postponed the increase of tariffs on about $200 billion worth of Chinese goods and most recently, the Financial Times reported that top U.S. and Chinese officials have resolved most of the issues pertaining to trade conflicts.

Apart from this, reformative measures taken by the Chinese government is creating further opportunities in the equity markets. The Chinese government has left no stone unturned to shore up the slowing economy.

The government announced a cut in the value-added tax (VAT) for the manufacturing sector to 13% from 16%, and VAT for the transport and construction sectors to 9% from 10%. The government will also cut social security fees paid by companies to 16%. All these tax cuts are worth about 2 trillion yuan for the year.

Against this backdrop, below we highlight three sector ETFs that have been hovering around a 52-week high level. These sector ETFs have returned double the S&P 500 (up 14.8%) in 2019.

Healthcare

The Chinese biopharmaceutical and healthcare industries are bubbling with opportunities right now. China is a big market with about $1.26 billion population, which has always been a point of interest for both Chinese and Western providers of drugs.

The country was the world's second-largest pharmaceutical market in 2017???worth $122.6 billion, after the United States. It is also the biggest emerging market for pharmaceuticals with growth expected to reach $145 billion to $175 billion by 2022, per healthcare information company IQVIA (read: Explore China's Booming Biopharma Space With This New ETF).

As part of Beijings Made in China 2025 industry plan, President Xi Jinping acknowledged the pharmaceutical sector as one to work on, with focus on innovation, and domestic research and development.

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Global X MSCI China Health Care ETF CHIH (up 31% this year) and Loncar China BioPharma ETF CHNA (up 30.4%) are the two ETFs to tap this boom.

Real Estate

Including the latest 100 bps cut being enacted in January, China has cut commercial lenders reserve requirement ratio (RRR) five times to make borrowing easier for small and private firms. Chinas successive RRR cuts and VAT cut for the construction sector have probably promoted liquidity in the real estate market. Also, Chinas efforts to promote urbanization have boosted property developers. The government aims to increase China's urbanization rate by at least 1 percentage point by the end of this year.

The housing market of China thus seems to have maintained its stable development. Chinese property developers ruled the issuance of U.S. dollar-denominated junk bonds in the first quarter of 2019, according to a report by research firm CreditSights. BlackRock, Pimco and UBS are of the opinion that high-yield bonds by Chinese property developers are attractive investments for 2019. No wonder, Global X MSCI China Real Estate ETF CHIR is up 31.8% this year (as of Apr 9, 2019).

Consumer Staples

Policy easing in the economy and growing urbanization must have boosted staples stocks of late. Also, the sector is recession-proof in nature and is thus a welcome investment at a time of economic slowdown. Global X MSCI China Consumer Staples ETF CHIS has gained 33.8% this year (read: Top and Flop ETF Areas of March).

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On Monday, Katherine Pineda-Briceno was on stage in the cavernous auditorium of Veritas Academy, mic in hand, making a final plea to her classmates to vote for the school greenhouse project.

Pineda-Briceno, a senior with blue-tipped hair who hopes to become a biochemist, was one of two dozen teens at the high school in Flushing, Queens, who helped dream up the idea of building a greenhouse after learning that students could choose how to spend $2,000 of the schools budget this year. The process, known as participatory budgeting, was meant to ignite student interest in democracy and civic engagement.

For weeks, the momentum favored the greenhouse project. Pineda-Briceno and her classmates campaigned in classrooms and hallways, put up posters and went out into the streets near their Gothic-style school building to interview residents about their needs and healthy eating. On stage, the 17-year-old walked the audience through a variety of options for greenhouse frames, ranging in price from $115 to more than $650. A classmate discussed with the audience possible locations for the new construction.

Then Pineda-Briceno welcomed to the stage two science teachers whod endorsed the project. Working in the greenhouse would help students fill their community service hours, said one of the teachers, Norma Petrakos. But theyd also be protecting the environment, she said, and helping our community by raising crops to donate to those in need.

While the greenhouse held broad appeal, on this voting day earlier this week, students who backed the other two project finalists werent giving up easily. Student supporters of a multi-purpose studio delivered an energetic performance featuring salsa and yoga moves and a ukulele. The studio would likely be carved out of an existing classroom, explained 18-year-old senior and studio supporter Roodmerly Norvilus, and would give students at the small school a new space for pursuing additional electives like cheerleading and different types of dance.

A filtered water fountain was the third finalist. Student-conducted tests of the schools regular water fountains had identified trace levels of lead.

Participatory budgeting originated in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre in the late 1980s and, since then, has spread to more than 3,000 cities worldwide. The idea is that giving citizens control over how to spend a share of public funds will bring more transparency to the budgeting process and activate greater participation in democracy.

A few years ago, a school district in Phoenix became the first in the U.S. to introduce the process in schools on a large scale, according to the nonprofit Participatory Budgeting Project. This year, New York became the second school system to do so district-wide.

Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled the proposal in his 2018 State of the City address, as part of a broader push for civics education. We know that when students feel that opportunity to make a difference, he said, it will be the beginning of a long lifetime of participation.



Veritas Academy students chose among three finalists in the schools participatory budgeting process: a filtered water fountain, a greenhouse or a multi-purpose studio. (Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report)

Over the past year, the New York City Department of Education (DOE) has been scrambling to put the idea into practice. This year, some 48 high schools introduced the process, part of a pilot that the DOE says will extend to more high schools in the coming years.

Josh Lerner, co-executive director of the Participatory Budgeting Project, which advised the DOE, said the process teaches students how to identify needs in their schools, find ways to address them and pitch their solutions to peers and school leaders. Those are powerful skills for getting anything done in todays world, he said.

Research suggests that participatory budgeting makes people more likely to vote and attend and speak at community meetings.

The money thats been allocated in NYC, though, is small, just $2,000 per school. That may not be enough, according to some students and supporters of participatory budgeting, to fund enduring projects or give students a true sense of empowerment. $2,000 seems like a lot, but I dont really think its a lot, said Norvilus, the Veritas senior. Were trying to make the best out of it.

In an email, Danielle Filson, a spokesperson for the Department of Education, said the agency would continue to strengthen and expand the program in the coming years.

A handful of schools have been given the chance to spend more. This year, students at Park Slopes John Jay Educational Campus, where four schools and a suspension site share space, voted on how to allocate $500,000 in capital funds, put aside by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. They also divvied up $10,000 in funds from the schools themselves.

The students chose to spend the majority of the capital money, $400,000, on bathroom renovations. Another $100,000 went to water fountains. Smaller amounts went to things like a movie night and a campus carnival. The teens also helped set school policies; they decided to create a campus-wide safety council.

Aaron Kirshenbaum, a 17-year-old senior at John Jays Millennium Brooklyn High School, said he hoped involvement in the budgeting process would improve cohesion among the campus schools. His school is the best-resourced, he said, and its students tend to get more lenient treatment from security guards  a topic the safety council would tackle. We really wanted to bring all the schools together, said Kirshenbaum.

In Flushing, Veritas students also considered refurbishing their aging school bathrooms, until they realized their money wouldnt stretch, said Bobby Thomatos, a Veritas economics and government teacher who helped lead the schools participatory budgeting process.

Eight student-created projects were eventually whittled to three finalists, which yielded the vote on April 8. Students voted digitally, on laptops on the auditorium stage, and received I voted stickers.



Students at Veritas Academy will have a chance to construct a campus greenhouse with $2,000 from the schools participatory budgeting process. (Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report)

Hydra Mendoza, the deputy school chancellor who was on hand for the vote, drummed up suspense. What if there was a tie? she said, speaking into the microphone from beneath the stage. Do we revote? Do we fund both projects? Should we do a run off of the top two?

In the end, though, the vote wasnt much of a squeaker. The greenhouse won with about two-thirds of the 495 ballots cast. The studio took second, with roughly a quarter of the votes, and the filtered water fountain received 11 percent of the vote.

Ashley Torres, an 18-year-old senior whod campaigned for the water fountain, said she wasnt surprised by the outcome. Their project didnt just benefit the students but it also benefited the community, she said. They were able to plant not just vegetables but feed hundreds of people and they could get hours for community service. More so than the water fountain, she acknowledged, the greenhouse made a statement.

Norvilus, the studio supporter, said she didnt like to see her project lose but, she added, after participating in the budgeting process, she felt more inclined to vote in political elections. I am 18, I should start, she said, because I know a lot of people my age, they dont.

Thomatos said he hoped many of his students would feel this way. Last year the school tried a voter registration drive for seniors, but interest was low, he said. He wanted this year to be different.

Participatory budgeting broadened my view of democracy and it made me feel that my voice actually does count, said Pineda-Briceno, the senior who backed the greenhouse.

She added she had enjoyed trying to get all sorts of people excited about the project. Its the sort of extensive engagement she wishes more politicians would do.

I honestly feel that the campaigns, they should reach out a little bit more, said Pineda-Briceno, to different types of people  to all types of people.

This story on participatory budgeting in schools was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.


MOHMAND, Pakistan -- Walid Ali had worked tirelessly to cleanse a remote, impoverished corner of northwestern Pakistan of the crippling disease polio.

But his family is now reeling from his untimely death. Earlier this week, Wajid was allegedly killed by a man after a reported remonstration over his refusal to vaccinate his children.

He said, I am paid to serve the children of our nation, and I want to do this honestly, his elderly father, Malik Bakhth Muneer, told Radio Mashaal of the last conversation he had with his son. It was the morning of April 8, before Wajid left to vaccinate children in the rural district of Mohmand in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

Munir says that a few hours later he received the news of his sons murder in the nearby town of Ghalani, which serves as the administrative headquarters of Mohmand.

Wajids cousin Farooq Mohmand is a physician. He told Radio Mashaal it was Wajids dedication that convinced him to give up his job abroad and return to Mohmand to serve his people.

He says he began his new job on April 8.

I called his friend after hearing about the incident, Mohmand said. But when I reached the hospital where he was taken, he had already passed away. He was martyred.

Wajid is among scores of polio workers killed for doing their jobs after a Taliban insurgency emerged in Mohmand and other regions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa following the demise of the Taliban regime in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001.

Militants have targeted health workers because they allege the immunization campaign is a cover for Western spies and part of a conspiracy to sterilize Muslim children.

Wajid is survived by his widow and their twin children. Spogmai Ali and Majid Ali are only eight months old and will never know their father. As guests offered the customary condolence prayers, the twins clung to their uncle, Sajid Ali, unaware of the tragedy the family was going through.

Now, they are our only consolation, Muneer said. He was a great support to my family. After he started his job [two years ago], he took care of his ill mother by paying for her treatment.

Officials have accused two men of Wajids killing and have arrested one of them.

I give Wajid's family my word that I will personally follow this case to its conclusion, said Babar Atta, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan's special adviser on polio. Parents can refuse polio vaccination, but attacking and then killing innocent polio workers will not be tolerated, no matter what.

The World Health Organization also condemned Wajids murder.

We strongly condemn this and any attack targeting healthcare staff like Mr. Ali who are working hard to rid the world of polio and other diseases," said WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Ahmed Al-Mandhari. "Health care should never be a target, and WHO and our partners will not be deterred by such attacks.

Globally Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria are the only three countries where the crippling disease remains endemic. An external review for the Global Polio Eradication Initiative last year indicated that insurgent violence and difficulties in vaccinating children hamper the eradication drive in Pakistan.

The only tribute we can pay to those who have sacrificed their lives to protect Pakistani children from the death and lifelong disability polio brings is to complete their mission and eradicate polio from Pakistan, said Nima Abid, acting WHO representative for Pakistan.

 With reporting by the Telegraph
At least 20 people were killed and 48 injured in a bombing claimed by an affiliate of the Pakistani Taliban in Quetta, southwest Pakistan on April 12, police said.



Police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema told RFE/RL's Radio Mashaal that explosives were packed in a car parked at a busy vegetable market.



Two children were among the dead and seven were rushed to hospital with injuries, he said.



The bombing appeared to target members of the Shiite ethnic Hazara community, Cheema added.



Provincial police chief Mohsin Butt said eight Hazara were among the victims.



Hazara make up about 500,000 of Quetta's 2.3 million people.



Amnesty International said the blast was a "painful reminder" of the many attacks suffered by the Hazara community in Quetta over the years.



"Each time, there are promises that more will be done to protect them, and each time those promises have failed to materialize," Omar Waraich, Amnesty's deputy director for South Asia, said in a statement.



The Qari Hussain Force, an affiliate of the Pakistani Taliban, also known as the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), later claimed responsibility for the attack.



Jam Kamal Khan, the chief minister of Balochistan Province, condemned the attack, saying "the enemy of humanity is behind this act of terrorism."



Quetta is the capital of Balochistan, where separatist groups have waged a low-level insurgency.



Pakistani Taliban militants have been waging a campaign of bombings and other attacks on Pakistani security forces.

With reporting by AP, AFP and Reuters
KABUL -- A Taliban spokesman says the UN Security Council has at least temporarily removed sanctions on members of the militant groups negotiating team.



Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told RFE/RLs Radio Mashaal and the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) late on April 11 that the Talibans negotiation team in Qatar had been informed by the Security Council that the names of Taliban figures had been removed from the sanctions list.



Mujahid did not provide details, but AIP quoted a Taliban source as saying the Security Council has taken the decision with the consultation of its five permanent members. In the first step, the sanctions have been lifted for nine months. However, later the Taliban leadership was informed that the decision would be extended.



The report could not independently be confirmed, and neither the UN nor permanent members of the Security Council have commented on the report.



Many members of the 14-man Taliban team negotiating with the U.S. special envoy for peace in Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, are on a UN sanctions list.



Khalilzad has been meeting with Taliban negotiators in Qatar in an effort to bring an end to the 18-year war in Afghanistan.

On April 11, the Afghan government said talks with the Taliban that were meant to start on April 14 in Qatar have been rescheduled to begin five days later.



The planned meeting has been seen as a significant step toward finding an end to Afghanistan's long war and allowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.



Kabul has complained vehemently that it has been sidelined in talks between Khalilzad and the Taliban militants, who have called the Afghan government a puppet of the West and refused to officially negotiate with its representatives.



The Taliban says it will speak with government representatives in the Doha meetings but recognize them only as "ordinary" Afghans.

In February, the Taliban called off a planned round of peace talks in Pakistan, saying that most of the members of the negotiating team were unable to travel because they were subject to U.S. and UN sanctions.



The Afghan government had angrily protested the planned discussions in Pakistan, saying the meeting "constitutes a violation of the national sovereignty of Afghanistan."



The Kabul government said the meeting would amount to the official recognition and legitimization of an armed-group that poses a serious threat to the security and stability of Afghanistan, and whose members are sanctioned by provisions of the UN Security Council's 1988 Committees Sanctions Regime.



The United States, which is a Security Council permanent member, also has similar sanctions on Taliban individuals.


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The Army has battled for more than 15 years to get its 1st Space Brigade a home on Fort Carson.

The unit moved into the post Thursday amid ceremony that coincided with the closing of the Space Symposium. But its soldiers, who help other units access space services and manage a constellation of communications satellites, might want to keep their bags packed. The move comes as Congress mulls creating the Space Force, which would swallow the brigade into a new service.

The Space Force was the elephant in the room at the symposium, which drew space experts from around the world to The Broadmoor. While the acting secretary of defense said the service planned to encompass the militarys space efforts, officers, including Army space boss Lt. Gen. James Dickinson, avoided the topic.

Dickinson, one of the keynote speakers Thursday at the event, instead focused on the Armys mission with not a word about its uncertain future.

Its important to talk about how important space is to the United States Army, he told a crowd that packed The Broadmoors International Center.

While the future of the Space Force remains in the hands of Congress, it would likely consume the Armys space efforts, which date back to the 1940s. The Space Brigade, the only unit of its kind on the planet, ensures that ground troops get the satellite services that have grown increasingly important in battle since the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

When a 4,000-soldier Army combat brigade heads to war now, it is packing 2,750 pieces of equipment that rely on satellite signals, from navigation and communications gear to intelligence and missile warning.

When most people think of the Army, they dont think of space, Dickinson said.

The Space Force would include as many as 20,000 troops, most coming from the units of Air Force Space Command in Colorado Springs, but also wrapping in Army and Navy satellite experts.

The Air Force space contingent is the best known and dominates Peterson and Schriever Air Force Bases. The Armys Space Brigade, meanwhile, was hidden in rented quarters near Fountain and Powers boulevards since its founding in 2003.

The brigades new digs are on one of Fort Carsons main streets. That puts the space soldiers amid their comrades in infantry and armor units.

Theres no question that the 1st Space Brigade is part of the Fort Carson team, the units commander Col. Eric Little said at a ceremony to cut the ribbon on the new headquarters.

The Pentagon has plans to start the Space Force as soon as next year. Planners at Peterson Air Force Base, including some Army officers, are at work designing the service even as Congress debates its merits.

At a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Republicans seemed warm to the idea, which has been pushed personally by President Donald Trump. The Trump administration contends that growing threats to American satellites from rivals, including Russia and China, drives the need for a service branch focused solely on space.

Senate Democrats, though, voiced concerns Thursday that the new service would increase bureaucracy and costs without making the country measurably safer.

Despite the cloudy future, the Army is celebrating bringing its space troops home to Fort Carson.

Its a great and fitting end to the Space Symposium to cut this ribbon and go back to our mission, Dickinson said as he welcomed the brigade to its new home.
Whether training for the field or taking inventory for change of commands, Sgt. Joseph Collette made whatever he did fun, Sgt. Thomas Simpson said.

When told to jump into a water buffalo tank to clean it out, the explosive ordnance disposal specialist asked to be shut inside and pushed around. If there was a pelican case nearby, the Fort Carson soldier would ask others to close the lid so he could pop out and scare his captain.

Collette, 29, brought laughter and lightness to almost every moment, even the memorial the post held Friday afternoon three weeks after his death in Afghanistan. He and Fort Carson Special Forces Sgt. 1st Class Will Lindsay were killed during a firefight with Taliban insurgents in Kunduz province.

It has both comforted me and brought me great sadness, said Simpson, pausing to quietly clear his throat, remembering how much joy Joey brought to my life while he was in it and knowing that he is not anymore.

As Simpson and others shared memories of Collettes antics, the 200 enlisted personnel and civilians crowding the Soldiers Memorial Chapel couldnt help but smile through their sniffles and tears.

Their mourning for the Lancaster, Ohio, native came through in the silence as his name was called out three times during his final roll call, in the smoke that hung in the air after the firing of three volleys and as his wife, Caela, and two of his young daughters stood holding hands in front of Collettes helmet, boots and rifle.

Collettes job dismantling explosive devices is one of the most dangerous in the Army. Despite the risks, his ceaseless drive to help others and solve problems led him toward the position, said Maj. Elizabeth Schwemmer, the 242nd EOD Battalion Rear-Detachment commander.

Incredibly brilliant, Sgt. Collette had no shortage of options in or out of the Army. He couldve picked any job, she said. But due to his desire to help his fellow man and make an impact beyond himself, he selected one of the most dangerous jobs. A job whose mission is to protect others by taking on grave risk upon oneself.

The Army posthumously recognized his valor by promoting him from specialist to sergeant and awarding him the Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

Collette was a nine-year Army veteran on his first Afghanistan deployment. He was assigned to the Posts 71st Ordnance Group and earned the four Army Achievement Medals.
A judge said Friday that she needs more time to rule on a mans plea for leniency nearly two decades after authorities say he killed a Crystola couple as a 16-year-old out for a thrill.

The announcement by 4th Judicial District Judge Marla Prudek came at the end of a five-day resentencing hearing for Josiah Seth Ivy. He is due to join the nearly two dozen youthful killers who have received new sentences after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that barring parole for people who commit serious crimes as children is cruel and unusual punishment.

We understand that its difficult to come back after all this time, one of Ivys attorneys, Cindy Hyatt, told the judge Friday, arguing that laws and attitudes have changed and that Ivy is due the chance to show he can be rehabilitated.

Now 33, Ivy was originally sentenced to two life terms without parole in the Nov. 6, 2002, killings of Gary Alflen, 47, and Stacy Dahl, 39.

A 2012 Supreme Court decision effectively abolished life sentences without parole for juvenile killers, and a 2016 decision made the ruling retroactive, requiring Colorado to craft a new sentencing scheme for children charged with murder or other heinous crimes.

Whether Ivy gets a shot at freedom depends on Prudek.

His attorneys want Prudek to craft a sentence that will grant him a chance of parole after 40 years, or to select a penalty in the mitigated range of 30-50 years. If the judge were to order that the sentences run concurrently, instead of stacking them to a cumulative total, he could one day be released under either scenario.

Prosecutors want the sentences to be served one after another, all but guaranteeing Ivy would die behind bars.

A guard at Spring Creek Youth Services Center testified at Ivys 2005 trial that he confessed to being the trigger man, telling her that he shot the couple to see what it felt like, but the allegation met resistance this week.

Ivys attorneys questioned whether Ivy ever made the statement, and they blamed the shooting on an older co-defendant, Michael Paprocki, 20, who they say persuaded Ivy to claim responsibility. They put on evidence that his abusive childhood left him less able to appreciate consequences and more likely to be manipulated by older people.

Paprocki was also convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in separate proceedings and is serving life without parole in prison.

Nearly a dozen of the victims friends and relatives spoke out against granting Ivy a sentence that would release him.

I hope the right decision is made so I dont ever have to think about Josiah Ivy again, Alfens nephew, Michael Dabkowsi, said in a statement read in court, calling him evil and recounting testimony that Ivy returned to the scene of the crime a day afterward to watch detectives at work.

Ivys sister and others spoke about his effort to take accountability and change his life while being held in prison.

Its unclear when a ruling will be issued.
As storms go, even a baby bomb cyclone could be expected to wreak some havoc. Or at least drop some snow.

So what happened Wednesday that the predicted blizzard turned out to be such a dud?

According to Kathleen Torgerson, the lead forecaster in the National Weather Services Pueblo office, the blame  or the credit  goes to what is known as dry air entrainment. In short, dry air turned off the snow.

Its a fancy way of saying that the storm didnt develop when we thought it was going to, Torgerson said. We expected it to come over the mountains, pick up moisture to add to what it was carrying from the Pacific and curl that moisture back around the system, which didnt happen.

Denver still got about 4 to 8 inches, northern El Paso County somewhat less and barely a trace fell in much of Colorado Springs.

Winds in Colorado Springs and Denver maxed out at 55 and 41 mph, respectively. Although still strong, it was nothing compared with the record-breaking 96 mph gust clocked at the Colorado Springs Airport during Marchs bomb cyclone.

Predicting if, when and where storms will build is tough, especially in the spring and fall when the ground temperature before storms is high, Torgerson said. Sometimes, when forecasters pinpoint the epicenter of a storm 10 miles from where it actually lands, it looks like we messed up.

Its a very delicate dance we do when storms come from across mountains and are projected to intensify on the Front Range. ... Sometimes, like Wednesdays storm, they gain power too late and only hit hard when they reach the northeast part of the state.

Colorado is particularly challenging compared with plains states to the east. In Kansas and Nebraska, forecasters can watch the storm take shape for miles and make predictions over a longer period. In Colorado, the weather service is bent to the will of the mountains.

What hits is determined by where Mother Nature draws the line, Torgerson said.

Whether the predictions were right or wrong, Colorado Springs was ready, said one of the citys snow managers, Chris Howard.

We make arrangements and predictions based on what were given, and when it doesnt pan out, we make adjustments, he said.

The city had its full fleet out by 2:30 p.m. When the snow didnt materialize, some of the crews manning the south and west were sent home.

We kept some patrol in those areas just in case, Howard said.

Though not as dangerous as past storms, roads up north were slick with ice when the sun went down and wind chill values plummeted to 18 degrees in Black Forest. Wind chill values reached -3 in the northeast corner of El Paso County.

In terms of safety and emergency management, Torgerson and Howard agreed that theyd rather everyone err on the side of caution than be blindsided by the elements.

If you were prepared, werent out on slick roads and didnt get into an accident, is it so bad that the blizzard didnt last long and not much snow fell? Torgerson said.

Twitter: @lizmforster Phone: 636-0193
Following a week off from competition, the UTSA track & field teams will return to action this Friday-Saturday, April 12-13, at the Texas A&M Invitational at EB Cushing Stadium in College Station.The Roadrunners will face Air Force, Arizona State, Houston, Rice, Sam Houston State, TCU, Texas A&M, Texas State and UTEPin the two-day, team-scored meet. Live results can be found online at https://flashresults.com/2019_Meets/Outdoor/04-12_TamuInvite/ The meet will get underway at 4 p.m. Friday with the women's pole vault and the men's and women's long jumps on a day that features all field events.Saturday's action will start in the field with the men's pole vault at 3 p.m. Running events are slated to begin at 5:25 p.m. with the 4x100-meter relays.UTSA last competed on March 28-30 with a partial squad at the Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays in Austin.placed ninth among collegians in the triple jump with a leap of 13.01m (42-8 ), whilewas sixth among collegiate competition in the B section of the triple jump with a 15.09m (49-6 ) effort.took 11th in the high jump with a season-best 2.04m (6-8 ) clearance. The 4x800m relay team ofandpassed the baton to a time of 7:44.67 to place sixth on the final day of the meet.The UTSA men own 11 top-five marks on the latest Conference USA performance list.leads the circuit in the 400m hurdles (52.51), while the 4x800m relay squad tops the league with a 7:44.67 clocking.is second in the 110m hurdles (13.98), Douglas has the second-best triple jump (15.44m/50-8) andstands second in the decathlon (6,648).ranks third in the hammer throw (59.46m/195-1), while McDaniel and Edwards rank fourth (2.05m/6-8 ) and fifth (2.04m (6-8 ), respectively, in the high jump. Chatham is fifth in the 800m (1:51.71), as isin the decathlon (6,082), while the 4x400m relay team has the fifth-fastest time (3:14.79) in C-USA.The women boast seven top-five marks on the most recent C-USA list.has clocked the league's fastest 400m hurdles time (1:00.12), Spence sits atop the conference in the triple jump (13.36m/43-10) andhas posted the highest point total in the heptathlon (5,001).is fourth in the shot put (14.61m/47-11 ), whileis tied for the fifth-best clearance in the pole vault (3.70m/12-1 ),ranks fifth in the heptathlon (4,296) and the 4x400m relay team stands fifth (3:46.10).
Grand Old Partisan honors Francis Blair, born this day of 1791. Early in childhood, the family relocated from Virginia to Kentucky. He became a prominent newspaper editor. His advocacy helped win the presidency for Andrew Jackson. In 1830, he established the Washington Globe, which soon became the Democratic Party's unofficial newsletter.

Outraged by his party's support for slavery, Blair joined a Grand New Party at its formation. He chaired the Republicans' organizational meeting as well as their first National Convention, in 1856, and was delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention. It was he who extended Abraham Lincoln's offer to Robert Lee of command over the Union army. This took place at his residence, the Blair House, across from the White House. President Lincoln's talk with the rebel vice president came about thanks to his initiative.

His eldest son Montgomery was Lincoln's first Postmaster General. Youngest son Francis was a Union army general, the 1868 Democrat vice presidential nominee and a U.S. Senator.

Silver Spring, Maryland is named for Blair's summer home, itself named for a "mica-flecked spring" on his estate. A house built there for middle son James, a naval officer, features prominently in what is now a park.

Here is a Video Version of this article on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S-d9OdHvWmw

Michael Zak is author of Back to Basics for the Republican Party, a history of GOP civil rights achievement.

Each day, Michael Zak's grandoldpartisan YouTube channel and Grand Old Partisan blog celebrate more than sixteen decades of Republican heritage. And, see Speech Raves for audience feedback from his presentations in thirty-one states so far.

He also wrote the 2005 Republican Freedom Calendar.

Clarence Thomas cited Back to Basics for the Republican Party in a Supreme Court decision.

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My names Will Capers. For almost nine years, Ive blogged on various topics. I blogged as Blaque Ink first, and as Brotha Wolf second. The latter had a mu...

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Canyon Lake Firefighter Sam Palasota took in five orphaned kittens, four of which were saved from a house fire he and Engine Company extinguished on March 30. Submitted photo
Jones, a member of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom, began by expressing his heartfelt sympathies to Maryam Rajavi with regards to the devastating floods in Iran that have claimed almost 300 lives so far. He asked Maryam Rajavi to pass his comments about the floods on to the Iranian people, who are suffering greatly with no help from the mullahs.

Jones urged the British government to condemn the Regimes lack of relief efforts (i.e. bringing aid to affected areas, rescuing victims) and especially their repressive measures against the people who have been erecting flood barriers in an attempt to save their cities.

Maryam Rajavi said: The Iranian regime has not taken any serious steps to aid the people faced with this national disaster and unprecedented tragedy, and has instead given priority to preventing justified protests in these areas.

Maryam Rajavi has urged the Iranian people to help each other because the Regime wont and they have responded incredibly.

Jones then took the time to once again express his support for Maryam Rajavi and the Iranian resistance movement and their brave quest to bring democracy and popular rule to Iran.

He said: It has been a great privilege to meet with [Maryam Rajavi] and the members of this resistance in Albania in a city that you have built here. I am impressed by the work and efforts of the member of the [Iranian Resistance]. They have dedicated all of their lives to the struggle for freedom.

Jones then spoke about the need to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity, something that Maryam Rajavi has been saying for years. He said that the designation is needed to ensure peace and stability flourish in the Middle East, while support for terrorism crumbles, because the IRGC are a threat to the world at large. He asked the UK and the EU not to remain silent, but rather take effective measures against the Regimes domestic repression and export of terrorism.

Maryam Rajavi also emphasised why the IRGC, which is the main tool for the mullahs domestic suppression and export of terrorism and fundamentalism, must be listed as a terrorist organization.

Maryam Rajavi noted that the Iranian Resistance has declared on many occasions that the IRGC in its entirety needs to be listed as a terrorist group in order to improve peace, stability, and security in the Middle East.

It is worth noting that two days after this meeting, the US designated the IRGC as a terrorist group, but the UK and EU have yet to follow suit.

Jones also explained the Iranian regime has been demonising Maryam Rajavi and the Iranian Resistance because they are terrified of the peoples uprising that supports Maryam Rajavi becoming the president of Iran.
And while support for the mullahs is ever-diminishing, support for the Iranian Resistance group, the Peoples Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), headed by Maryam Rajavi, is only growing. The majority of the Iranian people and the Iranian diaspora support the MEK and would encourage world leaders to do the same.

Currently, Iran is experiencing dire floods that, as of writing, have killed almost 300, but the Iranian Regime has failed to send in rescue workers with aid. Instead, they sent in the suppressive security forces with guns. People have been shot dead for trying to protect their families, homes, and businesses from a natural disaster. Many more have died because the Regime failed to fund disaster relief and skimmed money from construction budgets over the past 40 years to feed the suppressive security forces.

That doesnt even take into account the domestic repression, regional warmongering, support for terrorism, and nuclear weapons threat posed by the Regime, which makes so many people support the MEK instead.

Given that the sun is setting on the Iranian Regime, we thought it only right to look at the 10 Point political platform adopted by the MEK to see where Iran is headed in the near future.

Democratic Elections: The MEK believe that the only route to political legitimacy should be a free and fair election based on universal suffrage. Individual Freedoms: The MEK want to create an Iran with complete respect for individual freedoms, including of party, of assembly, of expression, and of the media. Gender Equality: The MEK believes in gender equality across all sectors of life, which is why they would ban any form of discrimination against women, support equal female participation in political leadership, and allow women to freely choose their own clothing, relationships, education, and employment Judicial Reform: The MEK wants to set up a modern judicial system that is based on the rule of law and ascribes to the principles of presumption of innocence, the right to defence, effective judicial protection and the right to be tried in a public court. They would abolish Sharia law, along with the death penalty, and hire independent judges. Nationality Equality: The MEK is committed to the equality of all nationalities, which would include preserving the language and culture of all Iranians. They have also adopted a plan for the autonomy of Iranian Kurdistan. Human Rights: The MEK is committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and international covenant and conventions, including the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture. Foreign Policy: The MEK seek a foreign policy based on peaceful coexistence, international and regional peace and cooperation, and respect for the United Nations Charter. Nuclear Policy: The MEK wants a non-nuclear Iran, with no weapons of mass destruction. Market Economy: The MEK believes that all Iranians must enjoy equal opportunity in employment and in business ventures, which would include respect for private property, private investment and the market economy, as well as protection of the environment. Separation of Religion and State: The MEK is committed to the separation of Religion and State, which would ban discrimination against the followers of any religion and denomination.
However, Pompeo refused to comment on whether sanctions waivers for countries that import Iranian oil would be extended past May, despite senators, like Ted Cruz of Texas, imploring him to end the waivers when the deadline comes up as they current generate billions of dollars for the Regime.

Pompeo said: Weve been clear about our objective in getting Iran to zero (imports) just as quickly as we possibly can, and will continue to do that.

The US reimposed sanctions on Iran last year after pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. In November, the oil sanctions came into place, but the US allowed temporary six-month sanctions waivers for Irans eight biggest buyers  India, Turkey, China, Japan, South Korea, Greece, Italy, and Taiwan.

Reportedly, India, which has bought about 9 million barrels a month since November, has held off on ordering Iranian oil until they hear what the decision is.

Pompeos comments come shortly after Trump declared that Irans Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) would be designated a foreign terrorist organization on April 8. This marked the first time that the US has formally designated another nations military a terrorist group and sparked predictable threats against US troops in the Middle East from Iran.

Meanwhile, Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah, which has long been designated as a terror group by the US, also threatened retaliation for the sanctions on April 10.

Leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that all options were on the table if the US threatened the Iranian Regime as Iran and its allies hold many strong cards.

He said: There are measures which, if taken by the Americanswho said they will remain without response?

However, Pompeo argued that there would be significant pressure on Iran, not the US, for the move, noting that many entities would now be forced to stop funding the Iranian Regime. This is because the IRGC control the vast majority of the Iranian economy.

He said: If youre the general counsel of an Asian bank or a European bank, your world changed when that designation came out yesterday.

Pompeo also said that there is no doubt there is a connection between Al Qaeda and Iran.
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- President Rodrigo Duterte delivered a speech behind the bullet-proof glass for the second time

- However, he said that he would be happy if ever he gets assassinated

- The President reiterated his weariness as he is now 74 years old

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President Rodrigo Duterte has delivered a speech behind a bullet-proof glass once again. However, KAMI learned that the President would be happy if he gets assassinated.

Kaya nilagyan na ng Presidential Guard, kasi baka targetin ako doon sa malayo. Eh ako 74 years old, kung mamatay ako ngayon sa bala ng assassination, kaligaya ko na lang. Pagod na ako. Gusto ko na ring sumibat, the President said.

Tapos na ako. Mga anak ko mayor na, tatakbo na nga ng congressman pati ng vice mayor. Ayaw naman tumakbo ng tiga-Davao, gusto ko na ngang umalis, he added.

According to a report by the Manila Bulletin (author Genalyn Kabiling), the Presidential Security Group (PSG) said that it is their mandate to protect the President with or without any threats and implement the highest security protocols. They first used the protective glass during the speech of President Duterte in Malabon City.

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During the same speech, the President said that he is not planning to overstay in his power. He also mentioned that his daughter, Sara Duterte-Carpio, has no interest in running as the next president of the Philippines.

As previously reported by KAMI, President Duterte reiterated that he is tired as he was turned 74 last March 28. He added that he is just trying to find an excuse to quit from his post.

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!

Which Food Delivery App Is The Best? We tested three famous food delivery apps: Panda, GrabFood and Honestbee - to check which of them is the coolest. What is your experience with ordering food using these apps? Check out all of our exciting videos  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph
- A female British tourist was almost raped in El Nido, Palawan

- Fortunately, the victim was able to escape from the suspect

- It was the 3rd assault case that happened in El Nido this year

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A female British tourist was almost raped in El Nido, Palawan. KAMI learned that the 29-year-old who is a resident in England was assaulted as she was trying to enjoy her vacation in one of the best tourist spots in the Philippines.

In a report by the Palawan News (author Gillan Faye Ibanez), the incident happened at around 3 a.m. when the victim was walking at a dark alley near her hotel on April 10. However, the victim managed to escape from the harasser.

Wala, hindi nangyari yon kasi parang nag-a-attempt pa lang siya nakatakbo na yong ating victim, naka-bigwas na agad, MIMAROPA Police Regional Office (MPRO) spokesperson Police Lieutenant Colonel Socrates Faltado said.

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However, the victim only reported the incident at around 4 in the afternoon on the same day. The authorities are still conducting a follow-up investigation about the case.

As reported by the Manila Bulletin (author Aaron Recuenco), this was the third time that a sexual assault happened in El Nido, Palawan, this year.

The first one happened on February 13, involving an Irish tourist and the suspect was a tricycle driver. The second incident was on March 12 when a 43-year old man attempted to harass a female Spanish tourist.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

Which Food Delivery App Is The Best? We tested three famous food delivery apps: Panda, GrabFood and Honestbee - to check which of them is the coolest. What is your experience with ordering food using these apps? Check out all of our exciting videos  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph
- Tali Sotto was taken to California, USA by her parents Vic Sotto and Pauleen Luna

- Some of the locations they went to include the Redondo Pier and Carlsbad

- New heartwarming photos of their vacation went viral on social media

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More photos of Tali Sottos awesome vacation in California, USA with her daddy Vic Sotto and her mommy Pauleen Luna were uploaded online.

KAMI learned that the photos show the celebrity family going to different locations in the US.

Some of the locations they went to include the Redondo Pier, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Carlsbad, California.

Vic and Pauleen were very sweet with each other as they kissed in public while Tali just enjoyed the company of her parents.

Here are some of the reactions of netizens after seeing the new photos:

Parang mukhang magka age na si bosing at poleng, lalong bumabata si bosing gwapo

na shy ka baby tali sweet nga ni dada and mama eh

Ang Ganda nang kuha nyo dyng 3. Si Mama ang ganda nang tingin nya Si talibanana tignan mo naman ng ngiti nya at mata din nkakatuwa. Si Dada vic naman sobrang gwapo sa kuha nya.

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KAMI already posted earlier photos and clips from the familys US vacation.

Vic Sotto and Pauleen Luna are both hosts of Eat Bulaga, the longest noontime variety program in the Philippines. Their daughter Tali Sotto is now one of the most popular celebrity babies in the country today, thanks to her viral social media photos and videos.

POPULAR: Read more news about Tali Sotto!

Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

Which Food Delivery App Is The Best? We tested three famous food delivery apps: Panda, GrabFood and Honestbee - to check which of them is the coolest. What is your experience with ordering food using these apps? Check out all of our exciting videos  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph
- China claimed that the Spratlys Group of Islands are theirs

- They added that Chinese fishers have been fishing in that area for thousands of years

- Chinas statement came after the Palace rebuked the presence of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea

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The Peoples Republic of China has maintained their claim over the Spratlys Group of Islands even if after the Palace rebuked the presence of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea.

KAMI learned from a report by the GMA News (author Ted Cordero) that China Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said during a press conference that the Nansha Islands or Spratlys are part of China.

"The Nansha Islands are China's territory, which is backed by sufficient historical and jurisprudential evidence," he said.

"For thousands of years, Chinese fishermen have been fishing in these waters in the South China Sea. Their rights should not be challenged, he added.

Lu mentioned that they had taken note of the remarks made by the Philippine officials. He added that they are committed to maintaining peace and stability over the South China Sea.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry also discussed the personal efforts of President Rodrigo Duterte and President Xi Jinping in handling and resolving the disputes through negotiation and consultation.

"This positive momentum is hard-won and shall be all the more cherished. We hope that the Philippine side could work with us to properly deal with the South China Sea issue, uphold peace and tranquility on the sea, and bring more benefits to the two peoples, he said.

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Earlier, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said that they will fill a diplomatic protest against China if it has been verified that there are Chinese vessels in Kota Island and Panata Island that are part of Spratlys.

"If they continue to be present in our territory then it is an assault to our sovereignty, Panelo said, as reported by the CNN Philippines (author Eimor Santos).

They have no business being there, he added.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download KAMI's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major Filipino news!

Which Food Delivery App Is The Best? We tested three famous food delivery apps: Panda, GrabFood and Honestbee - to check which of them is the coolest. What is your experience with ordering food using these apps? Check out all of our exciting videos  on KAMI HumanMeter YouTube channel!

Source: Kami.com.ph
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Voters in northeast and southeast Los Angeles will go to the polls on May 14 for a special election to fill an open seat on the L.A. Unified School Board.

The race in LAUSD's Board District 5 is taking place on the heels of a historic strike by the district's teachers union.

"The strike aroused the public," candidate Jackie Goldberg said. "They are now committed. They want something to happen. And I think being on the school board is the place to do it from."

A former member of the City Council and the California Assembly, Goldberg is a fixture in L.A. politics. Her career in elected life began in 1983, when she was elected to the first of two terms representing District 5. Now, she's hoping to win that seat again.

Goldberg is facing off against Heather Repenning, a former aide to L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, in the May 14 special election. Both candidates spoke recently with KPCC/LAist.

The following is a transcript of KPCC/LAist's hour-long Q&A with Jackie Goldberg. Her answers and our questions have been edited or condensed for clarity and length, so directly quote from this story with caution. Listen to an audio version of this interview here.

JUMP TO A TOPIC BELOW:

RELATED: Q&A with Goldberg's opponent, Heather Repenning

I.) UTLA STRIKE

Kyle Stokes (KPCC/LAist): Do you think that the teacher strike impacted this race in any way?

Jackie Goldberg: I do. It raised the level of consciousness of an awful lot of people in Southern California, about the conditions in the public schools. See, I think people remember -- particularly people in their 40s and 50s and 60s -- they remember that things were better. And they still think that's how it is.

I remember talking to people when we were standing out on the sidewalk, and they'd say, "Why are you striking?" I'd say, "Well, there's this school here that I'm standing in front of with the teachers. There's a nurse one day a week." And they go,"Really, how did that happen?"

People didn't realize that since Proposition 13 passed in 1978, with continuous underfunding of L.A. and all California public schools, conditions have just gotten worse and worse. We didn't used to worry about whether we had class sizes that were over about 30, 31 or 32.

Q: Did you consciously make what you learned on the picket lines in January part of your campaign strategy ahead of the primary in March?

Yes. The big motivation for my running is to try to protect public education and to try to get it funded once again.

There were some really fine candidates in this race besides me. They're terrific people, a whole lot of them. But none of them have the connections in Sacramento, the city, and the county. I think that's an advantage, and trying to take the momentum that the teacher strike created on behalf of public education, and go back up to Sacramento and say, "OK, we gave Democrats a two-thirds majority now." Now, we expect you to find out where the wealth is, and tax it and invest in our children.

That money needs to go to reduce class sizes, they're too big. They're particularly too big if the kids are from low-income areas, because they need more attention to catch up. We need more assistant principals. My God, we need teaching assistants in every classroom, probably. We need special ed teachers and special ed teaching assistants. We need counselors. If we don't get the money from Sacramento, we won't be able to raise it anymore locally because of Prop. 13.

Q: LAUSD did put a parcel tax on the June ballot.

Yes, that'll help a little, and I'm favor of that -- although I wanted to do it last year to try to prevent the strike.

II.) LAUSD'S FINANCES

Q: During that teachers strike, we all got used to this debate over how much money LAUSD has to spend -- and what it means to have a $2 billion reserve. United Teachers Los Angeles claimed that was $2 billion that district officials were hoarding and refusing to spend. LAUSD officials said that was misleading, that they had already committed to spend basically all of this money in order to avoid a deficit --

-- actually, that wasn't true. There's a difference between a reserve and a surplus. OK, a reserve is exactly what they said, a reserve is money that has been pretty much allocated, but you didn't spend it during the year you allocated it. So you're reserving it to pay those bills as they come in.

A surplus is money that's unallocated, and they had a $2 billion surplus, which they called a reserve. That kind of ticked me off a little bit -- because I was there, I know the difference.

Q: It seemed to me, though, that they had something like a $2 billion "ending balance" --

That's totally unallocated.

Q: The district wouldn't agree with that. They forecast they need to spend that money in order to balance their budget in each of the next three years.

But the third year never comes! They've been saying this for 30 years that I'm personally aware of. They always predict that the third year is a catastrophe. And the third year is only a catastrophe under one set of circumstances: a statewide recession. Now, if we have a big statewide recession again, then they may be right.

My view is you don't spend all of the $2 billion. You put $1 billion away in case there is another recession. But you spend a billion right now because you can't tell children, 'Oh, well, we're afraid. So you don't get smaller classes.'

Q: Let me come back to the underlying assumption that there's $1 billion to spend. The L.A. County Office of Education (LACOE) says they're willing to appoint a "fiscal advisor" -- someone who can veto school board decisions to force hard choices about the budget -- if the district doesn't get its budget in line. They specifically cited that the district won't have enough money in reserve in the third year of its current budget. Is LACOE wrong?

Yes -- because they always assume the worst-case scenario. And in the worst-case scenario is when they're correct. The problem is when you tell children to be put on hold while we worry if they're, we're going to have the worst-case scenario.

If the worst-case scenario comes, what do you have to do -- you have to cut. In the meantime, we've got the advantages of spending the money on them.

Elected officials don't want to make cuts because it's unpopular. So rather than risk making cuts, they're willing to hold back money from the kids right now. I think that's wrong. It's a philosophical difference of opinion.

Q: Back in May, you spoke at an LAUSD board meeting. You said, "I'm really saddened that the Board of Education is about to embark on a period of history in which this district very well may end up in bankruptcy. Look at what's happening to Inglewood."

That has nothing to do with LACOE. That had to do with the systematic financial undermining of the district by charter school attendance.

Inglewood Unified has almost 60 percent of its kids in charter schools. That's why they're in state receivership.

When a kid leaves a district-run school for a charter school, the fixed costs of the school they're leaving don't change. When that child leaves for a charter, there's less money for LAUSD to pay the fixed costs.

Q: Well, hold that thought -- we'll come back to charter schools and school choice. But on LAUSD's finances, you don't feel that the district's finances are currently in trouble -- but there are risks, and the risk comes from charter schools?

Well, there are also risks around health care costs. If the president is able to further gut Obamacare by introducing cheaper policies that cover less, that means people who remain in the insurance system will be paying higher amounts of money, which includes district employees. So there are threats, which is why I said of the $2 billion reserve, put $1 billion away.

But nothing is going to fix any of the real problems of public education without going back to where we were, where we truly were in the top five to seven every year in per pupil expenditures.

III.) CHARTER SCHOOLS & SCHOOL CHOICE

Q: Public school choice in LAUSD is about more than just charter schools. The district offers its own menu of choices: magnet schools, dual-language programs, or other options focused on the arts, STEM, or career education. Is this spread of public school choice a good thing, or a bad thing?

I've never been against choice.

I'll say this -- school choice used to mean creating a school that you couldn't get any other way. Anytime charter schools are doing something that we aren't able to do, or we haven't chosen to do, I think it's a good idea. In other words, there's a charter school that teaches Nahuatl, the Aztec language. From my point of view, I would support that charter school because it's a choice you can't get anywhere else in the district.

But I would say at least half of them are virtually no different than L.A. Unified schools. I don't understand why we need them. I really don't. They're not doing anything exciting. They're not doing anything different.

I taught teachers, preparing them to teach in inner-city schools for UCLA for eight years after I left the California Assembly. My interns were placed in charter schools, so I had a look at about 40 charter schools on a regular weekly basis. About one-third of them were significantly different -- and, I thought, better. And there were about a half a dozen of those 40 I wouldn't leave a kid in overnight.

Charter school advocates have spent a fair amount of money, in my opinion, lying to the public, that if you go to the charter school, your kids' scores are going to go up, they're going to do much better. Well, L.A. Unified magnet schools as a group beat charter schools as a group every year on test scores. So if you're taking scores, I still don't see the need.

Schools of choice should offer something different. That's what our magnet schools try to sell. If charter schools are providing a real choice, I have no problem with them whatsoever.

Q: The bind that you get into as a board member is that you have limited authority to regulate charter schools.

We have no authority, practically. I keep telling parents in southeast L.A. who wonder if I'm going to close their kids' schools if I win: "Not only do I not want to, I couldn't if I wanted to -- that's not how the system works."

Q: The issue though, is that people do have the sense that the school board could improve how charter schools are regulated. What steps do you think the district could take?

Not much without Sacramento, to be honest with you. I think that districts should be the only entity authorizing charter schools in their district boundaries. I don't think that the State Board of Education should charter any schools. I don't think it's their decision, frankly, it should be a local decision.

I also think there should be something called an "education impact report," filled out by the charter applicant, and by the schools in the neighborhoods that the charter would impact.

If you have one charter school near Crenshaw High School, I would say, "Probably not a problem." But now there are eight charter schools. So Crenshaw High School has 850 kids, and all of the charter schools surrounding it are also under-enrolled. This is not a good system. You need to be able to tell a charter school, "We're going to charter you. But you can all surround one school and empty it. We're going to tell you where you can go. You don't want to go there? Then go somewhere else."

These under-enrolled schools on either side are not helping either side. Some of the charter school people I'm talking to agree with me on that. There are charter school people who want a moratorium because they don't feel like they can continue if they keep losing enrollment, because they're fighting each other over, as well as the district schools.

Q: Do you support a charter school moratorium?

I support a temporary moratorium while we try to deal with some of the legislative changes -- but it's not going to happen. The state's charter school law has not been reviewed in the 26 years it's been on the books, and it's time. But I don't think it's going to happen because there's too much money against it from charter school advocates.

Q: Different topic -- magnets were set up as a desegregation program.

And mostly they still are.

Q: Well, I think thinking people can disagree about whether they're still a desegregation program.

Most of them are -- remember that there's probably not 20 percent of the district left of what we used to call "other whites."

Many of the magnets are, in my opinion, integrated, because they have African American, Latino, Asian and white kids in them. I don't think desegregating the schools includes only white kids. It's partially white kids, but not only white kids.

Now, some magnet schools are not able to do that at all, because there are no white families willing to send their kids there. So those are not really doing any desegregation, unless it is encouraging a multiethnic group of kids of color, in which case, I still think it's serving a desegregated function.

You don't want an African American school here and a Latino school there. You want kids growing up and going to school and knowing each other, and I do think I magnets, more or less, depending on where they're geographically located, are doing that.

Listen to an audio version of this interview here.

JUMP TO A TOPIC:

RELATED: Q&A with Goldberg's opponent, Heather Repenning

IV.) BD5 DEMOGRAPHICS

Q: Very early in the race, a bunch of Latino candidates called me to a restaurant in Highland Park to say, "We're worried the major endorsements in this race are all going to white candidates. This stinks."

They were right.

I wanted to be appointed so this would not happen. I asked the school board to appoint me in July of last year. I told them, "I know the district. I represented 80 percent of the people in the district. If you appoint me, I will not run in 2020."

And that's because special elections always favor white people. Always. That's why I didn't want one. And I told them that. I went to each board member and I told them that. I said, "If you don't do this, you're going to have Latino candidates that are of high quality who can't get elected, and that's wrong."

And three charter-backed school board members and [District 7 board member Richard] Vladovic said, "No, we're not gonna do that."

"OK," I said,"then I'm running and all bets are off." Now I'm not saying I'm not running in 2020.

Q: Is Board District 5 a "Latino seat"?

Yes! Yes. Absolutely. It should be. It's the hardest part of this for me. But I really didn't feel like any of the other candidates had a chance -- many of them really terrific candidates -- had a chance of winning against a charter person. And I didn't want the seat to go to charter people again.

Q: Why do you think these other candidates didn't have a chance?

Name recognition and a short race. If they had a full race, I probably wouldn't have run, because they would have had time to develop that name recognition. But in a 60-day special election? Not gonna happen.

Q: This issue isn't only about just race. For at least a decade, Board District 5's representative has come from the northern half of the district. The board representative hasn't hailed from the Southeast Cities -- which are even more predominantly Latino -- for at least a decade. How do you make links to that community, both in the racial and geographic sense?

I'm already doing that. I've now been endorsed by the mayor of Maywood. I've now been endorsed by the vice mayor of Cudahy. I'm working with people on the city council, although I'm not asking for their endorsement at this point. But I'm working with people on the city council in both Huntington Park and South Gate.

You know, I've lived in the same house for 40 years -- I haven't moved into the district, OK. I've always been in the district.

I always hire a multiethnic, multilingual staff, and I will do so again. Hopefully, they will run. I've got five or six people who have already asked for my help to figure out how to get ready to make a major run.

I'm not a king- or queen-maker. I don't pick a person and say,"You're it." Several of them are from the southeast. Not all of them ones from the northeast, but they're all Latino -- Latinx is the new term. They're all Latinx. And I intend to help them in any way that I can.

V.) SUPERINTENDENT BEUTNER'S PERFORMANCE

Q: The most consequential decision a school board member can make is to hire or fire a superintendent. Do you think Austin Buetner is doing a good job in that role?

I don't, but I don't think he's doing a terrible job either.

His biggest problem is, is that his private sector background makes him do things in private that I think he should do in public. He wants to do some reorganization. OK, fine. He should have started -- when he first got there -- by going out to every community and saying, "I think it's time for us to look at how we structure L.A. Unified. What I want to know is from you, what would you change?" And he should listen to all of that. And then he should go back, with his staff and his consultants.

Q: He would say that he did. There were listening sessions.

Bull. You couldn't even find them. You really couldn't find them. I'm on every mailing list in the district, and I couldn't find them. I'm talking about months of going out, not one time in each part of the district and hoping that the 25 people who showed up you can say represented everybody in that area.

I'm talking about multiple iterations of community meetings: "Tell me your ideas. What do we need to change?" Then, go back, make some plans -- and then go out a second time and say, "Give me a critique of that." Now you have support. Right now, you can't find hardly anybody who thinks that they want to support him, because they, first of all, don't know what it is.

[Editor's note: After KPCC/LAist conducted this interview with Goldberg, Beutner gave interviews saying his plans to change how LAUSD schools relate to the district's central and regional bureaucracy is not nearly as ambitious as early leaked documents suggest.]

Q: How do you think that he handled the strike?

Poorly. Honest-to-God, I didn't think there needed to be a strike. All of the things they agreed to, they could have agreed to before the strike.

I think they decided that they could beat the teachers union. I think they completely underestimated the solidarity of the teachers -- and completely underestimated the solidarity of the community with the teachers. I underestimated that too. I thought there would be some, but I had no idea it would be massive.

He figured they could get on the radio and talk about, "These are poor kids, they're going to lose their education! This strike is anti-children, anti-poor kids!" Beutner was just wrong.

Q: Can you work with Beutner?

Of course, I can work with anybody. I don't come in with an opposition to him. I'm not trying to get rid of him.

I have met with every superintendent since my time on the board -- including Beutner when he first came in -- because I feel obligated to go and say to them, "Here are some things I learned. I want you not to have to wait to learn them." He had given me a 20-minute interview, but we spent an hour together. There are things we agree on. And there are things we don't agree on.

VI.) SCHOOL BOARD DYNAMICS

Q: In May, you spoke at a school board meeting to speak against the decision to hire Beutner as superintendent. But you didn't stop there, sharply criticizing board members more generally. You told board members they had "sold their souls to the devil" -- and you weren't just talking about the scandal-plagued Ref Rodriguez. If elected, how are you going to work with other board members?

I was really tied up in knots that day.

I'm planning to meet with Kelly Gonez. I have a good relationship with two of the board members already [Scott Schmerelson and George McKenna], who have endorsed me. Richard Vladovic and I have worked together on bunches of stuff for years -- that's five members of the seven-member board.

Even the two with whom I have most basic disagreements about charter schools [Nick Melvoin and Monica Garcia], I think that there are areas we can work on. I've always worked on boards and on in Sacramento with people who don't agree with me.

Q: It's interesting that you say this because you also can appear, in public, like a real bomb-thrower.

I'm a bomb-thrower when I get really ticked off -- and so are some of them. I mean, people have emotions, and I get emotional about some things. And I was very emotional about Ref Rodriguez voting on the decision to hire Beutner. He had no business doing that, or voting on the budget. It was nothing personal -- in fact, of all of the board members, I met with him more times than anybody, because he was my board representative.

Q: Four months after this sharp criticism of Beutner and the board, board members passed you over for a temporary appointment to the Board District 5 seat. Was that a motivator for you to run?

Yes. It wasn't the only motivator.

Q: A more negative way of asking the question is, "Are you just running out of a sense of pique?"

No, no, that's too much trouble to do, run out of pique. Much too much trouble. You have to raise too much money, you have to go to too many meetings, you have to leave your life as you knew it completely.

I just believe deeply that if you want a democracy, you have to have quality public education. And that's really the only reason I'm running.

Q: And just to clear the record -- because we had this mixed up in an earlier story we wrote about the race -- if elected, you would still run in 2020?

What I had said gets misquoted because I did say publicly at the school board in August, "Appoint me, and I won't run in 2020." People thought I was making a blanket commitment. But if I'm going to this much trouble to run, I'm going to stay long enough to get something done.
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Three years ago, L.A. Sheriff Jim McDonnell banned a logo used by the department's East L.A. station because he felt it was disrespectful to the community. New Sheriff Alex Villanueva has revived the logo and it's once again displayed prominently at the station.

On Saturday, current and former deputies who've been stationed in East L.A. are getting together for a party in part to celebrate the return of the logo, which portrays riot gear emblazoned with the words "Fort Apache" and "Low Profile."

Villanueva's move has drawn criticism from a community activist and a member of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission.

McDonnell ordered the removal of the logo from the station over concerns "Fort Apache" suggested deputies felt they were in conflict with the communities they policed.

Fort Apache was the name of a 1948 John Ford western about an isolated U.S. Army post in the 1800's in the midst of Apache territory.

The former sheriff declined an interview request, but Neal Tyler -- his undersheriff at the time -- spoke with LAist about McDonnell's decision.

"Words have power. Symbols have power," Tyler said. "It does matter whether our symbols and our communications are civil and respectful."

Villanueva, who once worked at the station and met his future wife when she was a deputy trainee there, overturned McDonnell's decision after his election last fall and the logo is once again on station walls, shirt pins and squad car bumper stickers.

The sheriff declined to comment on why he restored the logo, but the department made the East L.A. Station's new captain available for an interview.

The Fort Apache logo in the central hallway of the East L.A. Sheriff's Station minutes before work crews removed it last fall. It had been carpeted over for two years. (Frank Stoltze/LAist)

A REVERED SYMBOL FOR DEPUTIES

"The symbolism for Fort Apache would be a lone outpost," Capt. Ernest Chavez conceded. "But it has no negative connotation. I think it was just something that stuck because of some of the incidents that were taking place throughout the community."

McDonnell's decision to remove the logo angered many deputies at the station.

"It was personal for me," Detective Leo Sanchez said on a recent afternoon as he stood beneath a flag with the logo flying above the station. "I took a lot of pride in the actual logo."

Inside the station, Sanchez, a 23-year department veteran who was born in East L.A. and has spent the last dozen years at the station, pointed at the floor tiles in a central hallway.

"You can see the darker ones and the lighter ones," he said. "Those are 16 tiles in a diagonal pattern. That's where the logo was."

Capt. Ernest Chavez at the back door of the East L.A. Sheriff's Station, which leads to the deputy parking lot. (Frank Stoltze/LAist)

McDonnell first had the tiles covered with a carpet. Then, before he left office last December, he ordered the tiles torn out.

Deputies at the station had a reverence for their logo -- perhaps more than at any other station, Sanchez said.

"We didn't walk on it," he said, pausing and lowering his voice. "We walked around it."

BORN OUT OF THE CHICANO MORATORIUM

The logo was born out of violent clashes between East L.A. deputies and anti-Vietnam War protesters during the 1970 Chicano Moratorium.

Two young men hold a banner during the Chicano Moratorium in August 1970. (Photo by Sal Castro via Los Angeles Public Library archive)

The sheriff at the time, Peter Pitchess, responded to the violence by ordering deputies to keep a low profile, prompting one to design a patch with a riot helmet sitting on top of a boot and the words "Low Profile." For Sanchez and others, those words mean, do your job quietly and don't draw attention to your accomplishments.

It wasn't long before deputies started calling their station Fort Apache and the name was added to the logo, said retired East L.A. Deputy William "Pico" Rivera. The logo was a source of pride and camaraderie, he said.

Sitting at his kitchen table in East L.A., Rivera showed off a boot mounted on a piece of wood with a helmet on top -- a memento he received when he retired in 2002.

Gesturing to a Fort Apache patch on the table, Rivera, who was two years on the job at the time of the Chicano Moratorium, explained the meaning behind the words "siempre una patada en los pantalones" -- Spanish for "always a kick in the pants."

"As terrifying as some of those incidents are," he said, the job was also "fun, always a kick."

In the foreground, helmeted police armed with clubs escort a collapsing officer as, in the background, other police confront a wall of demonstrators during the National Chicano Moratorium in Laguna Park (later renamed Salazar Park) on August 29, 1970. (Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library archive)

"HE'S CRAZY! HOW CAN HE BRING IT BACK?"

Some in the community have a very different feeling about the logo.

When told that Sheriff Villanueva had restored the logo, longtime East L.A. activist Carlos Montes reacted with shock.

"What? He's crazy! How can he bring it back?" he said.

"We definitely will oppose it. We'll protest it."

Sitting at a picnic table on the banks of Belvedere Park Lake, a stone's throw from the East L.A. station, Montes recalled that when the logo was created back in the 1970s, almost all of the deputies were white.

"There was no question to us what 'Fort Apache' meant," he said. "They were in an outpost in the middle of the desert among the savages, the savage Mexicans, the savage Chicanos. So they had to have a fort to defend themselves."

The logo wasn't controversial internally until 2015, when McDonnell ordered a review of the more than 100 logos used throughout the department. He decided 10 logos -- including Fort Apache -- gave the wrong impression and should be retired.

Another logo that was retired was at the sheriff's gun range, where the cartoon figure Yosemite Sam with his two guns blazing adorned various walls.

Sheriff Villanueva brought his dog Alvin to his office on April 11, 2019. A boot and helmet from the Fort Apache logo sits under the oversized sheriff's badge on the wall behind his desk. (Courtesy L.A. County Sheriff's Department via Facebook)

"A REAL STEP BACKWARD"

The return of the logo troubles Sean Kennedy, a member of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission.

Kennedy argues it's no coincidence that the station with the Fort Apache logo was home to the department's first deputy clique, or as he calls it, gang.

"It probably explains why to this day we are having so many problems related to the East L.A. Station and the proliferation of deputy gangs," he said.

Earlier this year, seven deputies from the East L.A. station filed legal claims against the department, saying they were beaten up by colleagues who were members of the station's Banditos clique, deputies who sport tattoos of a skeleton with a sombrero, bandolier and pistol.

In 2014, L.A. County paid a female deputy assigned to the East L.A. station $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit in which she claimed she had been physically and mentally harassed by Banditos members after refusing to go along with the clique's "traditions and initiation rituals."

Villanueva has said "hazing run amok" is the problem, not deputy cliques or logos.

"I think that Sheriff Villanueva's position on logos and gangs has been a real step backward," said Kennedy, a former federal public defender in L.A. and a Loyola Law School professor who's studied the department's history of cliques.

"THIS IS HOME TO US"

Earlier this year, seven deputies from the sheriff department's East L.A. station filed legal claims against the department, saying they were beaten up by colleagues who were members of the station's Banditos clique. (Frank Stoltze/LAist)

Asked if he is a member of the Banditos, Sanchez, the East L.A. detective, said no.

He called the September "incident" between deputies that prompted the legal claim "unfortunate."

Villanueva has given deputies new hope that they'll be backed up in a way they felt the previous sheriff did not, Sanchez said. He also strongly objected to the idea that the Fort Apache logo means he sees the community as the enemy.

"I fished in that pond," he said pointing toward Belvedere Park Lake. "I went to high school down the street. My parents live just blocks from here. So this is home to us."

Sanchez said he expects new tiles depicting the Fort Apache logo to be back in the station's central hallway in a few weeks.
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30 (5) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (7) Sep 26 (4) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (5) Sep 23 (8) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (6) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (5) Sep 16 (7) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (4) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (5) Sep 11 (5) Sep 10 (5) Sep 09 (7) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (2) Sep 06 (7) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (4) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (2) Sep 01 (2) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (3) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (4) Aug 25 (3) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (3) Aug 22 (4) Aug 21 (4) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (4) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (2) Aug 16 (2) Aug 15 (5) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (5) Aug 12 (10) Aug 11 (5) Aug 10 (4) Aug 09 (5) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (5) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (3) Aug 02 (5) Aug 01 (7) Jul 31 (5) Jul 30 (5) Jul 29 (4) Jul 28 (3) Jul 27 (3) Jul 26 (5) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (5) Jul 23 (5) Jul 22 (7) Jul 21 (5) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (5) Jul 18 (6) Jul 17 (5) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (6) Jul 14 (4) Jul 13 (3) Jul 12 (2) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (3) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (4) Jul 03 (3) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (8) Jun 30 (6) Jun 29 (4) Jun 28 (6) Jun 27 (6) Jun 26 (6) Jun 25 (6) Jun 24 (6) Jun 23 (4) Jun 22 (4) Jun 21 (5) Jun 20 (4) Jun 19 (5) Jun 18 (8) Jun 17 (6) Jun 16 (5) Jun 15 (5) Jun 14 (5) Jun 13 (4) Jun 12 (4) Jun 11 (6) Jun 10 (4) Jun 09 (3) Jun 08 (5) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (3) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (3) Jun 02 (3) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (2) May 29 (2) May 28 (2) May 27 (4) May 26 (4) May 25 (3) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (5) May 20 (4) May 19 (2) May 18 (3) May 17 (3) May 16 (3) May 15 (4) May 14 (5) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (3) May 10 (4) May 09 (4) May 08 (4) May 07 (3) May 06 (2) May 05 (3) May 04 (4) May 03 (2) May 02 (3) May 01 (3) Apr 30 (3) Apr 29 (4) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (4) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (3) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (4) Apr 20 (4) Apr 19 (5) Apr 18 (7) Apr 17 (6) Apr 16 (10) Apr 15 (5) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (4) Apr 12 (5) Apr 11 (4) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (7) Apr 08 (4) Apr 07 (7) Apr 06 (4) Apr 05 (7) Apr 04 (5) Apr 03 (4) Apr 02 (5) Apr 01 (5) Mar 31 (5) Mar 30 (5) Mar 29 (7) Mar 28 (6) Mar 27 (5) Mar 26 (5) Mar 25 (6) Mar 24 (5) Mar 23 (5) Mar 22 (5) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (3) Mar 19 (6) Mar 18 (6) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (4) Mar 15 (5) Mar 14 (4) Mar 13 (5) Mar 12 (5) Mar 11 (4) Mar 10 (4) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (5) Mar 07 (4) Mar 06 (3) Mar 05 (4) Mar 04 (6) Mar 03 (4) Mar 02 (4) Mar 01 (5) Feb 28 (6) Feb 27 (4) Feb 26 (4) Feb 25 (6) Feb 24 (2) Feb 23 (3) Feb 22 (4) Feb 21 (6) Feb 20 (2) Feb 19 (6) Feb 18 (4) Feb 17 (2) Feb 16 (3) Feb 15 (6) Feb 14 (6) Feb 13 (6) Feb 12 (9) Feb 11 (5) Feb 10 (3) Feb 09 (4) Feb 08 (4) Feb 07 (7) Feb 06 (3) Feb 05 (4) Feb 04 (5) Feb 03 (4) Feb 02 (3) Feb 01 (3) Jan 31 (4) Jan 30 (4) Jan 29 (3) Jan 28 (2) Jan 27 (2) Jan 26 (3) Jan 25 (4) Jan 24 (4) Jan 23 (2) Jan 22 (2) Jan 21 (5) Jan 20 (4) Jan 19 (5) Jan 18 (4) Jan 17 (4) Jan 16 (3) Jan 15 (4) Jan 14 (3) Jan 13 (3) Jan 12 (3) Jan 11 (2) Jan 10 (8) Jan 09 (6) Jan 08 (2) Jan 07 (2) Jan 06 (3) Jan 05 (2) Jan 04 (2) Jan 03 (2) Jan 02 (2) Jan 01 (2) Dec 31 (2) Dec 30 (3) Dec 29 (3) Dec 28 (3) Dec 27 (2) Dec 26 (2) Dec 25 (2) Dec 24 (2) Dec 23 (2) Dec 22 (2) Dec 21 (2) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (2) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (2) Dec 16 (2) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (2) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (5) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (2) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (5) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (4) Nov 29 (4) Nov 28 (2) Nov 27 (2) Nov 26 (2) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (2) Nov 23 (2) Nov 22 (2) Nov 21 (2) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (2) Nov 17 (2) Nov 16 (5) Nov 15 (5) Nov 14 (4) Nov 13 (2) Nov 12 (2) Nov 11 (2) Nov 10 (2) Nov 09 (2) Nov 08 (2) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (6) Nov 05 (4) Nov 04 (5) Nov 03 (5) Nov 02 (3) Nov 01 (5) Oct 31 (7) Oct 30 (5) Oct 29 (4) Oct 28 (3) Oct 27 (2) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (4) Oct 23 (4) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (2) Oct 20 (3) Oct 19 (2) Oct 18 (2) Oct 17 (3) Oct 16 (5) Oct 15 (4) Oct 14 (2) Oct 13 (2) Oct 12 (4) Oct 11 (5) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (3) Oct 06 (2) Oct 05 (5) Oct 04 (5) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (4) Oct 01 (5) Sep 30 (2) Sep 29 (2) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (6) Sep 26 (2) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (2) Sep 22 (2) Sep 21 (2) Sep 20 (2) Sep 19 (3) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (2) Sep 15 (4) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (5) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (6) Sep 10 (2) Sep 09 (5) Sep 08 (5) Sep 07 (5) Sep 06 (4) Sep 05 (4) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (2) Sep 02 (3) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (2) Aug 30 (2) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (6) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (2) Aug 25 (2) Aug 24 (3) Aug 23 (2) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (5) Aug 20 (4) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (2) Aug 17 (5) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (4) Aug 14 (5) Aug 13 (2) Aug 12 (2) Aug 11 (2) Aug 10 (2) Aug 09 (2) Aug 08 (5) Aug 07 (5) Aug 06 (6) Aug 05 (2) Aug 04 (5) Aug 03 (2) Aug 02 (3) Aug 01 (2) Jul 31 (4) Jul 30 (2) Jul 29 (2) Jul 28 (2) Jul 27 (2) Jul 26 (3) Jul 25 (4) Jul 24 (2) Jul 23 (3) Jul 22 (2) Jul 21 (3) Jul 20 (4) Jul 19 (2) Jul 18 (3) Jul 17 (4) Jul 16 (5) Jul 15 (2) Jul 14 (3) Jul 13 (2) Jul 12 (3) Jul 11 (2) Jul 10 (2) Jul 09 (2) Jul 08 (2) Jul 07 (2) Jul 06 (2) Jul 05 (2) Jul 04 (2) Jul 03 (2) Jul 02 (2) Jul 01 (3) Jun 30 (3) Jun 29 (7) Jun 28 (3) Jun 27 (2) Jun 26 (3) Jun 25 (1) Jun 24 (2) Jun 23 (3) Jun 22 (5) Jun 21 (3) Jun 20 (2) Jun 19 (2) Jun 18 (2) Jun 17 (2) Jun 16 (2) Jun 15 (2) Jun 14 (2) Jun 13 (3) Jun 12 (3) Jun 11 (3) Jun 10 (2) Jun 09 (4) Jun 08 (2) Jun 07 (4) Jun 06 (5) Jun 05 (3) Jun 04 (3) Jun 03 (2) Jun 02 (2) Jun 01 (4) May 31 (2) May 30 (3) May 29 (3) May 28 (3) May 27 (2) May 26 (2) May 25 (2) May 24 (2) May 23 (2) May 22 (3) May 21 (3) May 20 (2) May 19 (2) May 18 (4) May 17 (7) May 16 (2) May 15 (3) May 14 (4) May 13 (3) May 12 (4) May 11 (4) May 10 (4) May 09 (3) May 08 (2) May 07 (2) May 06 (2) May 05 (1) May 04 (2) May 03 (4) May 02 (3) May 01 (4) Apr 30 (1) Apr 29 (3) Apr 28 (2) Apr 27 (3) Apr 26 (2) Apr 25 (2) Apr 24 (4) Apr 23 (2) Apr 22 (2) Apr 21 (2) Apr 20 (3) Apr 19 (3) Apr 18 (4) Apr 17 (5) Apr 16 (4) Apr 15 (4) Apr 14 (3) Apr 13 (3) Apr 12 (3) Apr 11 (3) Apr 10 (4) Apr 09 (4) Apr 08 (3) Apr 07 (2) Apr 06 (3) Apr 05 (3) Apr 04 (1) Apr 03 (1) Apr 02 (1) Apr 01 (2) Mar 31 (2) Mar 30 (3) Mar 29 (2) Mar 28 (3) Mar 27 (3) Mar 26 (3) Mar 25 (3) Mar 24 (2) Mar 23 (3) Mar 22 (3) Mar 21 (4) Mar 20 (2) Mar 19 (3) Mar 18 (1) Mar 17 (2) Mar 16 (2) Mar 15 (1) Mar 14 (3) Mar 13 (1) Mar 12 (2) Mar 11 (1) Mar 10 (3) Mar 09 (2) Mar 08 (1) Mar 07 (1) Mar 04 (2) Mar 02 (2) Feb 28 (1) Feb 24 (1) Dec 31 (4) Dec 30 (4) Dec 29 (4) Dec 28 (5) Dec 27 (3) Dec 26 (3) Dec 25 (4) Dec 24 (3) Dec 23 (3) Dec 22 (4) Dec 21 (3) Dec 20 (3) Dec 19 (3) Dec 18 (3) Dec 17 (3) Dec 16 (3) Dec 15 (3) Dec 14 (3) Dec 13 (3) Dec 12 (3) Dec 11 (3) Dec 10 (3) Dec 09 (3) Dec 08 (3) Dec 07 (3) Dec 06 (3) Dec 05 (3) Dec 04 (3) Dec 03 (4) Dec 02 (3) Dec 01 (3) Nov 30 (3) Nov 29 (3) Nov 28 (3) Nov 27 (3) Nov 26 (3) Nov 25 (3) Nov 24 (3) Nov 23 (3) Nov 22 (3) Nov 21 (3) Nov 20 (3) Nov 19 (3) Nov 18 (3) Nov 17 (3) Nov 16 (2) Nov 15 (3) Nov 14 (3) Nov 13 (3) Nov 12 (4) Nov 11 (3) Nov 10 (4) Nov 09 (4) Nov 08 (4) Nov 07 (3) Nov 06 (3) Nov 05 (5) Nov 04 (4) Nov 03 (3) Nov 02 (4) Nov 01 (4) Oct 31 (4) Oct 30 (3) Oct 29 (3) Oct 28 (2) Oct 27 (4) Oct 26 (4) Oct 25 (4) Oct 24 (3) Oct 23 (3) Oct 22 (3) Oct 21 (4) Oct 20 (4) Oct 19 (3) Oct 18 (4) Oct 17 (4) Oct 16 (3) Oct 15 (3) Oct 14 (3) Oct 13 (3) Oct 12 (3) Oct 11 (3) Oct 10 (4) Oct 09 (3) Oct 08 (3) Oct 07 (4) Oct 06 (3) Oct 05 (4) Oct 04 (3) Oct 03 (4) Oct 02 (5) Oct 01 (3) Sep 30 (4) Sep 29 (3) Sep 28 (3) Sep 27 (4) Sep 26 (3) Sep 25 (3) Sep 24 (3) Sep 23 (3) Sep 22 (3) Sep 21 (3) Sep 20 (3) Sep 19 (4) Sep 18 (3) Sep 17 (3) Sep 16 (4) Sep 15 (3) Sep 14 (3) Sep 13 (3) Sep 12 (4) Sep 11 (4) Sep 10 (4) Sep 09 (4) Sep 08 (4) Sep 07 (3) Sep 06 (3) Sep 05 (3) Sep 04 (3) Sep 03 (3) Sep 02 (4) Sep 01 (3) Aug 31 (3) Aug 30 (4) Aug 29 (3) Aug 28 (3) Aug 27 (3) Aug 26 (3) Aug 25 (4) Aug 24 (4) Aug 23 (5) Aug 22 (3) Aug 21 (3) Aug 20 (3) Aug 19 (3) Aug 18 (3) Aug 17 (3) Aug 16 (3) Aug 15 (3) Aug 14 (3) Aug 13 (3) Aug 12 (3) Aug 11 (4) Aug 10 (5) Aug 09 (3) Aug 08 (3) Aug 07 (4) Aug 06 (5) Aug 05 (4) Aug 04 (3) Aug 03 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City Council Members Frustrated No Pot Shop Landlords Facing Civil Penalties

Several members of the Los Angeles City Council expressed frustration that the City Attorneys Office is not pursuing civil penalties against landlords whose properties are the site of illegal pot shops.

The comments came before the council approved a set of actions aimed at cracking down on illegal shops, including the formation of a working group comprised of the Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department and other city departments to manage and direct enforcement efforts.

Members of the police department and City Attorneys Office spoke told the council that to date, 22 illegal shops have had their utilities shut off; the city is in the process of sending out cease-and-desist letters to many shops; and 216 criminal cases are being pursued against 861 defendants associated with 182 locations.

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Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson pointed out that the city has the ability to pursue a $20,000 penalty  which could be applied for each day of a violation  against landlords.

This will be now my fourth time in a public meeting asking the exact same question. How many times have we pursued the civil penalty against landowners? he said. So there are 182 locations where people are getting arrested, theoretically, and charged with misdemeanors, the same way we used to do when we had the war on drugs  find somebody with drugs in the alley, we arrest them, we go on. So you just identified 182 locations. Did we pursue a civil penalty against the landlord in any of those cases?

In a lengthy response, David Michaelson with the City Attorneys Office said 329 landlords are among those facing criminal charges. He also said the pursuit of civil nuisance cases can take years to prosecute and you never really know what the judges will do with them.

Harris-Dawson, sounding frustrated, said Michaelson did not actually answer his question, and was ultimately told that none of the landlords of the 182 locations were being pursued for civil penalties.

Its true that it could take years and I believe that you are right on point when you predict what the judges will likely do and how they will handle it. Thats your space and I believe that you know it, Harris-Dawson said. Heres the thing. You dont know how someone will respond just at the threat of it. So just a letter saying were taking you to court and you could get fined $20,000 a day, I can tell you, a lot of mom-and-pop property owners in my part of town, thats enough. Theyre done.

Michaelson responded that the office may be pursuing some civil penalties soon.

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The problem of illegal pot shops has been a frequent topic of discussion among city leaders over the last few months, and the council recently gave the green light to shutting off utilities.

Huge increases should be included in the next city budget for enforcement of illegal pot shops, Mayor Eric Garcetti said recently.

Since the beginning of 2018, all businesses conducting commercial cannabis activity in Los Angeles are required to be licensed by both the state and city, but hundreds without the proper licenses are believed to be operating, according to the LAPD.

I think the individuals that are on the front line, those are the small players here. There are far more egregious violations that are happening and we need to be vigilant in making sure that we are going after the individuals that continue to create this type of nuisance in our community, Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez said.

Councilman Paul Krekorian wondered if the city could pursue liens against commercial property owners in the same way it does for an illegal fence, improper signage or some other violation.

Its absolutely, easily enforceable whenever they sell that property, he said. Is there some way that these offenses, which are much more egregious than most building and safety violations, cannot be enforced in an administrative way in the same way and then we take advantage of the lien procedure?

Michaelson said that it was an idea that could be examined.
Clyburn and Booker Introduce Sweeping Anti-Poverty Bill

U.S. House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-SC) and U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a sweeping anti-poverty bill to better target federal grant dollars to high-poverty urban, rural, and tribal communities. The bill, titled An Act Targeting Resources into Communities in Need, expands the successful 10-20-30 anti-poverty formula, including a significantly larger group of struggling communities and broader universe of federal accounts by targeting funding into high-poverty census tracts.

While genius is spread equally across zip codes, opportunity is not, said Senator Booker. This bill more strategically targets federal resources to where they are needed most, ensuring that families and communities long left behind are given a fair shot. In doing so, we can move to a smarter, more responsive government.

For far too long, persistent poverty communities have suffered from neglect and indifference, leading to a lack of access to quality schools, affordable quality health care, and adequate job opportunities, said Majority Whip Clyburn. This legislation seeks to right this wrong by targeting much needed federal investments to areas that need them the most.

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The quality of life in our urban counterparts is directly linked to the health and vitality of rural America.the majority of our food, fiber and fuel are produced in these areas.this legislation continues to strengthen that link, said Sam Wade, CEO of the National Rural Water Association. We would also like to commend our partners at Rural Development, and we believe they are uniquely qualified and experienced to assist these communities, many of which, unfortunately, lack the human capacity and financial resources to move ahead without some assistance. We at NRWA stand ready and able to work with Congress and our partners at Rural Development to further the health and prosperity in these rural communities.

In the United States, poverty is not equally distributed. It clusters in specific regions, states, towns, and even neighborhoods, said Minor Sinclair, Director of Oxfam Americas U.S. Domestic Program. At Oxfam, weve seen states in the Gulf Coast working to pull people out of poverty, but struggling against formidable barriers, including a legacy of racism with roots in slavery, exacerbated incarceration rates, and elevated exposure to climate hazards such as hurricanes. The Clyburn-Booker bill is a critical step to ending the injustice of poverty. This bill would target resources in the communities that need it most, helping to mitigate the historical, social, and environmental factors that inhibit communities abilities to thrive.

The Housing Assistance Council has almost 50 years of experience working in persistently poor rural communities across the country, said David Lipsetz, CEO of the Housing Assistance Council. We know how challenging it is to direct federal funds to these high-need places. Without increased federal investment in capacity on the ground, high-poverty communities will continue to fall behind. We applaud Congressman Clyburn and Senator Booker for addressing this challenge with An Act Targeting Resources to Communities in Need, which will direct important federal funding and programs  like those of USDAs Rural Development and the CDFI Fund  to the nations most persistently poor communities.

In 2017, over 12.8 million children in America lived below the official poverty level  $25,094 for a family of four, and nearly half lived in extreme poverty at below half the poverty level, said MaryLee Allen, Director of Policy at the Childrens Defense Fund. More than one in ten children spend at least half their childhoods in poverty and the longer a child is poor, the greater their risk of becoming a poor adult. An Act Targeting Resources to Communities in Need is an important step toward badly-needed investment in the persistently poor areas so many of our most vulnerable children and families call home.

Confronting and eradicating areas of persistent poverty will address educational imbalances, health disparities and economic inequities, said Lou Tisler, Executive Director of National NeighborWorks Association. National NeighborWorks Association supports instituting the 10-20-30 plan more broadly, as proposed by the Clyburn-Booker Act, which will prioritize and provide necessary resources, while creating impactful leverage and enduring strength in neighborhoods and communities across the country, as NeighborWorks organizations do every day.

Child poverty is not inevitable  we know firsthand from our work in rural communities across the country that investing in families and community supports can help break the pervasive cycle of poverty and ensure equal opportunity for all, said Mark Shriver, senior vice president for Save the Childrens U.S. Programs and Advocacy. Recently, the National Academy of Sciences released a landmark study confirming child poverty in the United States is a solvable problem if there is the political will to address it. I want to thank Congressman Clyburn and Senator Booker for focusing on one of the most pressing issues facing our country today.

Poverty is deeply related to place, said Professor Trevon Logan, Economics professor at the Ohio State University. That means we need solutions that target areas where poverty is entrenched and persistent. This bill expands on a proven policy of targeting federal expenditures to make sure that we do not overlook areas beset by persistent poverty. Bills such as this can move Americans out of poverty and move all of us towards economic prosperity.

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The 10-20-30 formula requires that a minimum of ten percent of federal funds of a particular federal program go to communities with persistent poverty, defined as a county where the poverty level has been 20 percent or higher over the past thirty years. This formula was successfully applied to three accounts in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, 15 accounts in the omnibus appropriations law of 2017, and 14 accounts in the omnibus appropriations law for 2018. This new bill expands this formula so that it applies to a larger universe of federal programs, ensuring that more high poverty communities are reached.

In order to ensure federal investment reaches all high-need communities, including pockets of deep poverty and those communities experiencing more recent economic downturns, preventing them from being defined as persistent, the bill would also require certain federal agencies and programs target resources to census tracts with poverty rates currently exceeding 20 percent.

Read a summary of the legislation here .
Harris, Colleagues Introduce Medicare for All

U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris (D-CA) on Wednesday joined Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and 13 Democratic colleagues to introduce the Medicare for All Act of 2019 to guarantee health care at far lower cost to working families and the nation as a whole.

Health care should be a right for everyone in this country, not a privilege for the few. No family should be forced to go into debt to pay for the medical treatment of a loved one or the prescription drugs they need to stay healthy, said Harris. Medicare is the most popular health plan in the country because it works. Medicare for All finally makes sure every American has affordable, comprehensive health care.

The Medicare for All Act of 2019 would ensure that Americans could go to the doctor of their choice and get the care they need, when they need it, without going into debt. It would significantly lower the price of prescription drugs by empowering the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical corporations. Furthermore, it would expand coverage to include home and community based long-term care services, ensuring people with disabilities can receive the care they need to stay in their homes and remain part of their communities.

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While the United States spends more per capita on health care than any other nation, it remains the case that approximately 30 million Americans do not have health insurance, thousands of people die each year because they cannot afford medical care, and nearly half of Americans fear bankruptcy in the event of a health emergency.

In addition to Harris and Sanders, the legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Edward Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Brian Schatz (D-HI), Tom Udall (D-NM), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
HBCUs Testify Before Congress

Tuesday, April 9, Herman Felton, Ph.D., president and CEO of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, provided testimony before the House panel that decides the funding levels for all federal education programs. The House Appropriations Committees Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee received public witness testimony from only 24 individuals to inform their crafting of the upcoming bill to fund the government for fiscal year 2020. The remarks provided by Dr. Felton focused on the funding and national benefits of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).

A Marine Corps veteran and lifelong educator, Dr. Feltons testimony was the first of the afternoon to receive bi-partisan support from both Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D-CT) and Ranking Member Tom J. Cole (R-OK). The funding leaders commended Wiley College (a UNCF-member institution) and similar HBCUs, for their work with first-generation college students, specifically for being an integral part of the American higher education fabric for decades. Chairwoman DeLauro added, concerning the $39 billion National Institutes of Health (NIH), We will be sure that the center of our discussion and debate will be that we strengthen HBCUs. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) who introduced Dr. Felton to the Subcommittee prior to his testimony, noted that funding recommendations in Dr. Feltons testimony just make sense.

UNCF (United Negro College Fund) worked with Congress to garner the opportunity for HBCUs to be represented in todays proceedings. Dr. Felton echoed the priorities laid out by UNCFs president and CEO Dr. Michael L. Lomax during the organizations inaugural State of the HBCUs Address on March 5, including

Increase funding for the discretionary Strengthening HBCUs Program to $375 million ($93 million increase over FY 2019);

Reauthorize the mandatory Strengthening HBCUs Program this year;

Fund the HBCU Capital Finance Program, including support for the deferment authority;

Double the Pell Grant award and support Second Chance Pell; and

Support funding to produce more African American health professionals and researchers, including at NIH.

What we witnessed today was history, commented Lodriguez V. Murray, UNCFs vice president for public policy and government affairs. One of our HBCU member presidents delivered remarks about the needs of all HBCUs and their students, weaving in the history of Wiley College. The goals are clear: increase resources necessary for the Pell-eligible and first-generation college students who have found an HBCU education to be a necessity; and allot the funding necessary for HBCUs to continue to remain competitive and thrive.

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Murray concluded, The reception Dr. Felton received at the hearing showed, once again, that when we take a positive proactive agenda to Capitol Hill, bipartisanship is the response.
Senator Schumer: Trump and Barr Threaten African American Gains Under Obamacare

New York Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer has continued to call out President Donald Trump and his administrations assault on the Affordable Care Act.

Schumer noted that African American gains under the health care legislation, commonly known as Obamacare, are threatened by Trump and Attorney General William Barr as the Justice Department has argued in federal court that the law is unconstitutional and should be struck down  Not just vital insurance reforms like protections for individuals with pre-existing conditions, as they had first argued last year, Schumer said.

By Monday, April 1, Trump appeared to back away from his push for a vote on an Obamacare replacement until after the 2020 elections, a move CNN said was bowing to the political reality that major health care legislation cannot pass in the current Congress.

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Earlier, administration officials announced that they now agreed with a judges ruling that the entire Affordable Care Act should be scrapped.

The opinion was a dramatic reversal from the administrations previous stance that only portions of the act could not be defended, CNN reported.

However, the presidents latest move allows him to wait on the issue as legal challenges against the health care law make their way through the federal court system.

If its ultimately overturned, Trump can claim he made good on a campaign promise in time for his 2020 re-election campaign  though he would then face the prospect of an estimated 20 million Americans losing their health insurance on his watch, with no Republican replacement in the legislative pipeline, according to a CNN analysis.

If its upheld  as it has been in previous Supreme Court challenges  Trump can rail against a liberal court system.

Trump dialed back expectations that Republicans would be able to pass major health care legislation before the 2020 election, but his promise of a vote that would hinge on a Republican takeback of the House ensures nonetheless that health care will figure prominently in 2020.

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That is a fight Republicans are wary to have after they suffered huge losses in 2018 congressional races in large part over the issue of health care, according to the analysis.

In the court battle, the appeals process will likely stretch into next year.

In a memo provided by Schumers office, the senator and Democrats noted that after the Trump administration and Republicans repeatedly have claimed that they are in favor of protecting people with pre-existing conditions, they essentially have crystallized their actual position: They think health insurance coverage for nearly 20 million Americans, pre-existing condition protections and tax credits to afford health care, should be annihilated.

Democrats are fighting against this new attack against President Obamas legacy and working to provide better health care for communities that need it most, according to the memo.

The Affordable Care Act and its protections are vital to African Americans across the United States in helping them have access to quality, affordable health care, Schumer said.

The African American community would be devastated if Republicans gut the backbone of our countrys health care system, he said, according to the memo.

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the African American uninsured rate dropped by more than a third since passage of the ACA. The same report also noted that African Americans have higher uninsured rates than Whites and Asians.

On top of this, Africans Americans are more likely to have a pre-existing condition, including high blood pressure and diabetes.Women of color will particularly be harmed if Republicans are successful in eliminating pre-existing condition protections.

Black women have increased rates of maternal mortality and higher rates of pre-existing conditions such as diabetes, asthma, hepatitis B, and HIV/AIDS, necessitating vital protections like those preventing discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.

The removal of these protections will make it harder for women of color to access affordable prenatal and postpartum care. The contrast couldnt be more stark, Schumer noted.

The Trump administration now is going after health care as we know it, which if successful would result in skyrocketing health care costs  including for prescription drugs, millions more uninsured, and vital health care protections eviscerated, he said.

Schumer and the entire Democratic caucus have vowed instead to continue to fight for those with pre-existing conditions and to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable, quality health care.

If the Trump administration has its way, it would raise health care costs, including prescription drugs, revoke coverage for millions who gained health care through Medicaid expansions, [and] strike pre-existing condition protections for hundreds of millions, Schumer said on the Senate floor this week.

Democrats will not stop fighting to protect health care for millions, he said.
Free online Python programming courses are available from various accredited universities and institutions. Read on to find out what you can expect to learn and what you need to get started.

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Overview of Free Python Programming Courses Available Online

Python is a programming language with its own syntax and grammar focused on data structures and object-oriented programming. Many schools and institutions offer free online courses for learning Python. These courses may consist of video lectures or readings, and some may include assignments to practice your new skills, though you may need specific software to complete them.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers multiple free online courses for students to learn the programming language Python through their OpenCourseWare. No prior knowledge is needed for these undergraduate courses. Students can follow along with the lecture videos, slides, and notes, as well as the assignments and readings. Topics covered by the courses include functions, iterations, strings, lists, tuples, recursion, dictionaries, debugging, and more aspects of Python grammar, all helping students learn to write programs. A textbook and a computer with Python is required to finish the assignments. Examples of free online Python courses at MIT include the following:

A Gentle Introduction to Programming Using Python

Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python

Python Tutorial

University of Michigan

These free online undergraduate courses from the University of Michigan teach basic Python programming as well as cover its various practical applications. The courses (not eligible for college credit) comprises five distinct units that incorporate video lectures, readings, and quizzes that are available after a quick sign-up process. Programming basics, data structures, accessing web data, and database querying using Structured Query Language (all in Python) are just some of the topics included in these courses. A computer is needed to complete the assignments. The courses included in this free online tutorial are the following:

Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python)

Python Data Structures

Using Python to Access Web Data

Using Databases with Python

Capstone: Retrieving, Processing, and Visualizing Data with Python

Python Software Foundation

While not an exhaustive exploration of the language, this free online tutorial by the developers of Python, the Python Software Foundation, can help students gain a basic understanding of Python's syntax for scripting and programming. No sign-up is needed to access the tutorial, and everything is freely available. The tutorial simply consists of readings with example code, but additionally includes information about previous versions of the language. A computer with Python installed is necessary to get the most out of the tutorial. Some of the topics students will be introduced to in the free online Python tutorial include:

Using Python as a calculator

Control flow tools,

Data structures

Modules

Input and outputs

Errors and debugging

University of Colorado Boulder

Though specifically designed for students learning earth data science, these free online Python courses from the University of Colorado Boulder could be helpful for anyone wanting to learn the programming language. Hours of video lectures and exercises are provided after a quick enrollment process, and the courses tell you how to install everything you need to get started on your own computer. The courses cover many topics, such as data types, variables, conversion, interactive coding, script coding, lists, data manipulation, and creating data visualizations. The University of Colorado Boulder offers the following free online courses:
Discover the undergraduate and graduate degree programs available for aspiring school counselors in Illinois. Learn about the educational topics covered, the licensing requirements, and the employment statistics of this thriving profession.

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Those looking to pursue a career as an Illinois-based school counselor will require a substantial academic background in both undergraduate and graduate studies, along with hands-on practical experience to obtain the proper licensure. Students will develop a strong sense of empathy, critical thought, and cultural sensitivity, while delving into the intricacies of developmental behavior and responding to varying cases accordingly.

What Is the Most Common Degree Offered for Aspiring School Counselors?

The standard nationwide requirement for becoming a school counselor is a master's degree. A master's degree program will train you in both the practical and theoretical knowledge of counseling in a school context. Courses will touch upon topics such as crisis intervention, adolescent development, and the legal/ethical issues within the profession.

Additionally, you will have the opportunity to apply your skills in an actual school context. Through hands-on experience with real students, individuals will further develop their practical and critical-thinking skills, as well as understanding psychological behavior across a range of cultures. Working with school faculty members will also allow for mentorship from experienced industry professionals.

Students will be equipped with the vital skills required to lead and deliver counseling services based on social justice, empowerment, and a thorough understanding of human development. Depending on a part-time or full-time workload, students can complete this program in 2-3 years.

What Schools Offer These Master's Degrees in School Counseling?

Schools in Illinois that offer comprehensive master's degree programs in school counseling include:

Loyola University Chicago

Roosevelt University

DePaul University

Northern Illinois University

It is important to note that while some of these programs provide a master's degree specific to school counseling, some fall under the general area of counseling with options to specialize in school-specific contexts.

Should I Pursue a Bachelor's Degree?

A bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university is generally required to apply for a master's degree program in school counseling. While no specific major is required, students will likely benefit from undertaking a bachelor's program in psychology.

The courses within a bachelor's degree program in psychology are designed to prepare students for graduate studies in the field, which involve specializations such as clinical, developmental, cognitive, and counseling psychology. When undertaking these programs, you may be recommended to pursue electives qualifying for a graduate program in school counseling.

What Schools Offer a Bachelor's Degree in Psychology?

Schools in Illinois that offer a bachelor's degree in psychology include:

DePaul University

Loyola University Chicago

The Chicago School of Professional Psychology

Concordia University Chicago

What Are the Requirements to Become a Practicing School Counselor?

You will generally be required to hold a license or certification in your field to practice as a school counselor. Completing a master's degree is typically necessary to obtain these credentials, in addition to an internship or practicum experience. Examination requirements commonly include the Test of Academic Proficiency (TAP) or another exam, though many states have no examination requirement.

It is also common to undergo a criminal background check as part of the licensure process. Depending on your state, you may also be required to hold a teaching license or have classroom teaching experience prior to certification.

What Is the Job Outlook for School Counselors?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, school and career counselors are expected to have a positive employment outlook in the years leading to 2029 with a median salary of $58,120. Their research projects an 8 percent growth in employment from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations.

With increasing student enrollments across primary, secondary, and tertiary schools, job prospects are expected to be good for counselors. A higher number of students means a higher demand for services catering to their social, developmental, and academic needs.
Surrounded by mountains and desert, Umm Yasser, a Bedouin woman, explains to a group of foreign travelers how a local plant has been used in medicine.

Among the Bedouin, women almost never work outside the home. They rarely meet with outsiders. But the 47-year-old Umm Yasser is now one of four Bedouin women working as tour guides in Egypts Sinai area.

It is against our culture, but women need jobs, Umm Yasser said. People will make fun of us, but I dont care. Im a strong woman.

The women are part of Sinai Trail, a project in which local Bedouin tribes worked together to bring visitors to Egypts Sinai Peninsula.

Founded in 2015, the project has set up a 550-kilometer trail through the mountains of the peninsula. Eight different Bedouin tribes provide guides for the trail, which can take up to 42 days for visitors to complete.

Members of the tribes often feel that major tourism development in the Sinai has gone to beach resorts and desert safari companies. The Sinai Trail project has helped the tribes receive tourism money.

Until recently, all the projects guides had been men. Ben Hoffler is the co-founder of the Sinai Trail project. He felt that was not enough. He told the Associated Press, How can we be credible calling this the Sinai Trail if the women arent involved?

Over the years, Hoffler suggested using women as guides. But almost all the Bedouin tribes reject this idea. Only the Hamada -- one of the smallest, oldest and poorest tribes -- accepted it.

Members of the Hamada tribe live in small houses along the Wadi Sahu, deep in the mountains of south Sinai. They have no running water and only have electricity for about five hours a night. The men often leave the village to find work.

Umm Yasser was the first Hamada woman to become a tour guide. She said she explored the mountains and valleys as a child. She knows the area very well. She asked the families of three other women to permit them to work as guides with her.

There are some conditions, however.

Women guides can only lead tours for female visitors. The tours cannot go overnight. Each day before the sun sets, the group must return to the Hamadas home village in Wadi Sahu. And visitors can only take pictures of the female guides when they are wearing a full covering over their face.

On a recent tour joined by Associated Press reporters, Umm Yasser and three other three women guides led 16 female visitors through the area in and around Wadi Sahu. The women they led came from Korea, New Zealand, Lebanon, European countries, and Egypt.

During the two-day tour, the group walked across mountains and valleys of dry riverbeds. The guides talked about plants and herbs. They discussed local history and told stories of the surrounding mountains.

In the evening, the group returned to the Hamada tribes village. The women sat on the floor of Umm Yassers home and visitors asked the guides about life in the village, marriage and divorce.

Some younger Bedouin girls followed the group and talked about wanting to be female guides in the future.

Mohammed Salman is an older man from the Aligat Bedouin tribe. He said the project was a great step for women. If a woman wants to work, she should be able to have the right to, Salman said. Many men say no, a womans place is at home. But Im sick of this ideology. Shes a human being.

I'm Ashley Thompson.

Hai Do adapted this story for Learning English based on Associated Press news report. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story
And all this is happening while the EU does nothing. As the author notes:

Hungary has committed suicide in plain sight, and it has done so with the inept assistance of the European Union  while the rest of the member states stand by and watch helplessly. The death dance of democracy has begun again, just like in the 20th century, by painting human rights, freedom of the press, judicial independence, science and art to be political questions. By portraying facts and reality as a matter of threatened identity. And by depicting hate and violations of the law as moral obligations. This is not just taking place within the EU, this is the EU itself, living up to the delirious nightmares of the far right. What right-wing nationalists call "bureaucrats taking away national identities" means, in practice, that Brussels continues to provide full financial support even as mentally ill rulers dictate the destruction of entire countries  their art, literature and science  in the name of resisting interference in domestic affairs, and by keeping borders open for those chased away. The mass moral hysteria of Hungarian political conservativism is the driving force of the cold civil war that has been battering Hungary since 2002.

The irony (albeit a dangerous one) here in the U.S. is that it's precisely those who imagine themselves to be "progressives" (and not fascists) who treat "science and art" as "political questions," and specialize in pleading "threatened [or vulnerable] identity" as the justification for just about anything. (Recall the discussion of the academic lunatics on Twitter asserting that all scholarly citations are "political.")

Regarding the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the author writes:

The most recent victim was Central European University, but now, it is the turn of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Orban's attacks usually start with a hateful press campaign against un-Hungarianness; in the case of the Academy, the prelude was an attack on "degenerate" gender studies as a representation of lazy humanities and therefore superfluous. It is followed by an extremely rapid legal and/or financial trick, rendering the victim dysfunctional  withholding the budget of the Academy, for example. Next, prominent Fidesz politicians reinforce the fabricated narrative by focusing on complex, incomprehensible and meaningless technical details. It is enough to confuse outsiders, but for those familiar with the matter, it is based on blatant lies to such a degree that it precludes any discussion....

Then, under the pretext of negotiations (which never actually took place in the case of the CEU), the whole matter is stalled until what's left of the opposition press loses interest and the public gets used to the underlying arguments of the government narrative (basic research is unnecessary, humanities are for liberals on the leftist fringe, gender studies spread homosexuality and the government's intervention isn't really much of a shift at all). After a few months, the original plan is carried out under the guise of a compromise solution: Every conciliatory step from the victim is used against her, the noise from the tired press and the confused public grows ever quieter and the government presents itself as being the solution to the conflict it generated in the first place. The fate of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the country's beholder of intellectual capital, appears to be sealed, because in the coming EU fiscal period support will primarily be available for innovation and research, and a directly controlled structure is necessary for Orban to appropriate the funds.

(Thanks to Balazs Gyenis for the pointer.)
This traditional braided bread is slightly sweet and soft, and best served warm for a perfect treat on Easter morning!

When I think of Easter Bread, I think of the colorful loaves or buns that are typical of bakeries here in New York. They tend to be sweet but not overly so, often being somewhere in the realm of a dessert muffin or coffee cake. In terms of appearance, they can be decorated with glazes, sprinkles, and sometimes colored eggs, since theyre intended to be as much a feast for the eyes as for the palate.

Invariably, when I was growing up, these breads would be displayed in virtually every bakery window during the Easter Season, and in particular on Easter Sunday for people on their way back home from Mass. Back then, even the priests would joke about the Easter Mass attendance. Remember, this coming Sunday youre going to see a lot of strangers in here. It will be loud, it will be hot, and many of you who are accustomed to the front row will arrive to find standing room only. Be charitable, my sisters and brothers, and welcome these wayward members of our flock with open arms. And remember, you dont have to like them, you only see them once or twice a year. Just do what I do and offer it up.

After those Easter masses we would have to pass by a bakery window on our way back to our car, and I remember trays and trays of these colorful and artfully formed breads, often in the shape of wreaths. They were positively works of art  but they werent pastries. Oh no, the sign made sure to tell me that they were Easter Breads.

Naturally, we would never buy these breads  my mother always made her own.

The origins of Easter Bread are hazy to say the least  in part because virtually every cultural group in Europe claims some version of this bread as their own, and almost no two are alikeat all.

For example, German Osterbrot typically resembles a loaf of plain raisin bread with the addition of chopped almonds, and sometimes features a glaze, and rarely a colored egg as decoration. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Spanish Hornazo is a savory meat bread with chorizo, hard boiled eggs, and bacon folded inside.

Growing up, my familys Italian version of Easter Bread  Colomba Pasquale  was a loaf my mother would form into the shape of a dove. The loaf was semi-sweet, though slightly sweeter than the more familiar pannetone, and had candied fruits and peels baked in. After baking, the loaf was topped with a white glaze and coarse sugar. While most often served as coffee cake in the morning, it was more like dessert for breakfast, at least in my mind. Back then, you could sometimes find these in Italian bakeries and grocers imported them from Italy during the Easter Season.

Greek Easter bread, Tsoureki, is likely where things start to become a bit more familiar for those of us from the states  that is, slightly sweeter and (usually) more colorful. Tsoureki, in my experience, is prepared from a sweetened yeast dough, and is often formed into braided loaves with a challah-like consistency, although you can expect circular and roll shapes as well. Red colored eggs are a hallmark  though not a rule. Glazes and sprinkles are also not off limits, but are not traditional.

So, whats the right way to make Easter Bread? Whichever way brings you the most joy, of course, and for someone like myself who thinks of those sweet and colorful confections from the windows of New York bakeries when I was growing up, thats precisely where todays recipe comes in.

Now, I know what youre thinking as youre looking at the pictures, that this is hard, andyeah, its not going to be easy. Just follow along, and youll do fine.

We begin by sweet-proofing some yeast. To do this, we heat milk in a small saucepan until its warm to the touch. You want to warm it, not scald it. Scalding takes about four minutes, so youre not going to want to heat this for more than two. Once warm, transfer the milk to a sturdy glass  I prefer a mason jar  and then add in your yeast and a tablespoon of sugar. Set this aside and let it froth. No, dont cover it.

Next, in the bowl of a stand-mixer with the hook attachment in place, combine your flours, three tablespoons of sugar, and a teaspoon of salt. Add your proofed yeast to the mix, along with butter, eggs, and honey. Now mix the dough on low speed until it comes together as a smooth, soft dough. Cover the dough and let it rest in a warm place for about two hours. You want the dough to roughly double in size.

Transfer the dough onto a well-floured surface, and begin gently kneading the dough into a smooth ball. Now, divide the dough in half, and then divide those halves into quarters. You want to end up with eighths. No, you cannot just cut the dough into eighths. Trust me on this.

Working with one of those pieces, divide it yet again, and then rope those halves until they are about twelve inches long, and then twist the ropes together as shown below. You want to construct wreaths as pictured below. Repeat this process with each piece of dough, setting the wreaths on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

When youre done, cover the wreaths with a cloth, and let them rise in a dark, warm place for about an hour.

After thats done, brush the breads with an egg wash, and top with colored sprinkles, and then bake for about ten minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or until golden.

clock clock icon cutlery cutlery icon flag flag icon folder folder icon instagram instagram icon pinterest pinterest icon facebook facebook icon print print icon squares squares icon heart heart icon heart solid heart solid icon Easter Bread Author: Living the Gourmet

Total Time: 25 minutes

Yield: 6 Easter breads 1 x Print Recipe Pin Recipe Ingredients Scale 1x 2x 3x 3 cups AP flour

AP flour  cup whole wheat flour

whole wheat flour 4 tablespoons sugar

sugar 1 teaspoon salt

salt 2 eggs

eggs 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

butter, melted and cooled 1 tablespoon honey

honey 1 package active dry yeast

package active dry yeast 1 cup milk

milk Egg wash (1 egg + 1 tablespoon water whisked together)

Sprinkles for topping

Colored eggs (optional) Instructions Begin by proofing your yeast. In a small saucepan, heat milk just until warm to the touch. Transfer to a glass then add your yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Set aside and let the yeast froth. In the bowl of your mix master with the hook attachment, combine flours, remaining tablespoons of sugar, and salt. Once your yeast has proofed, add to the flour mixture along with butter, eggs, and honey. Mix the dough on medium-low speed until a soft dough comes together. Cover the dough and let rest in a warm place for at least 2 hours, or until the dough has doubled in size. Transfer the dough onto a well-floured surface and lightly knead into a smooth ball. Divide the dough ball in half, then in quarters. Working with one of the quarters, divide them in half and rope both halves until about 12 long. twist the ropes together, then make a wreath with them by pinching the edges. Place each wreath on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat this process for the rest of the quarters. Cover the Easter breads and let rise once again in a warm place for about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Brush the Easter breads with an egg wash, then top with colored sprinkles. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the breads are golden. If you choose to serve these breads with colored eggs, be sure to let them cool to room temp before place the colored eggs in the center of the hole. Serve and enjoy! These bread will keep for up to 1 week. Notes Prep Time does NOT include Inactive Prep Time. Prep Time: 15 minutes

Cook Time: 10 minutes Nutrition Serving Size: 6

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You can, of course, serve these with cooled colored eggs propped in the middle.

And this is what I think when I think Easter Bread. What are some of your favorite Easter themed confections? I would love to hear from you!

Enjoy with Love!
Thomas Heaton is a food and travel reporter for The Kathmandu Post. Before working in Nepal, he spent five years in New Zealand, most recently as a food writer for Cuisine magazine. Heaton is content trawling through markets, sampling sundry skewers of offal and getting into uncomfortable situations while travelling.




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.
Shawn Fields (Campbell University - Norman Adrian Wiggins School of Law) has posted Guns, Knives, and Swords: Policing a Heavily Armed Arizona (Arizona State Law Journal, Forthcoming) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Arizona is widely recognized as the most permissive state in the country for public weapons possession. In 2010, then-Governor Jan Brewer famously removed all permitting requirements for public concealed carry of firearms, making Arizona only the third constitutional carry state in the nation. Also in 2010, and to much less fanfare, Arizona became the first state to prohibit local governments from enacting any regulations restricting the sale or possession of knives of any kind, including swords, maces, and other exotic blades. Today, Arizona remains the only state in the country with virtually no restrictions on the public concealed carry of any type of bladed weapon. In part owing to this deregulatory environment, as many as twelve percent of all Arizonans report publicly carrying a concealed deadly weapon on their person or in their vehicle.

But these laws have also created confusion for Arizona police officers charged with protecting the public. For over a century, Arizona officers could justifiably initiate an investigatory stop of a publicly armed individual based on little more than a reasonable suspicion that such possession was unlawful. But in a state where a significant percentage of the population lawfully possesses weapons in public, Arizona police must now discern which lethal weapons carriers are law abiding citizens and which ones pose true criminal threats to the public. Increasing the confusion for Arizona law enforcement, the Ninth Circuit and Arizona Supreme Court have recently authored conflicting opinions regarding whether a lawfully stopped individual can be frisked solely because he is armed or whether he must also give the officer reasonable suspicion that he is presently dangerous.

This Article examines three distinct aspects of Arizona law and policy as it relates to this growing confusion. First, it challenges the efficacy and constitutionality of Arizonas duty toinform law, which seeks to clarify this reasonable suspicion quandary by requiring concealed weapons possessors to affirmatively disclose the presence of weapons to police officers when asked. As a matter of federal constitutional law, officers can only require citizens to cooperate with inquiries if reasonable suspicion already existed to justify the stop. In contrast, by requiring citizens to voluntarily disclose information to officers, duty to inform laws arguably place these encounters with law enforcement outside the traditional Terry v. Ohio stop context, thus rendering the encounter consensual and failing to solve the reasonable suspicion issue.

Second, the Article considers the competing case law in Arizona regarding the armed and dangerous prong of stop and frisk for lawful gun carriers. The Arizona Supreme Court in State v. Serna held that lawful weapons carriers cannot automatically be considered dangerous for purposes of a protective frisk. The Ninth Circuit, in United States v. Orman, held otherwise, and

focused on characteristics of gun ownership not explicitly considered by the Arizona Supreme Court. But both cases involved consensual encounters and not involuntary investigative stops. The Article surveys case law from other jurisdictions to offer a balanced approach to frisks of lawfully stopped, lawfully armed Arizonans.

Third, the Article highlights policy considerations relevant to resolving these competing perspectives, as well as the competing interests of Arizonans in exercising their statutory possession rights and of officers in protecting themselves and others when faced with a public weapon carrier. In doing so, the Article explores for the first time in scholarly literature what, if any, parallels can be drawn from the experience of officers stopping and frisking lawful gun carriers and officers stopping and frisking lawful knife carriers.
A total of 2,381 Chinese white dolphins, an endangered species, have been identified as living in the Pearl River Estuary, local authorities said yesterday, according to Xinhua.

As of 2011, the administration of the Pearl River Estuary Chinese White Dolphin Reserve, has continued to monitor the dolphins and found that their numbers in the Pearl River Estuary accounted for a half of the total population of the species in China, said sources within the administration.

The current Chinese White Dolphin population in the Pearl River consists of six generations of the dolphin, including the early infancy and infancy stage, juvenile stage, adolescence stage, mature stage and senile stage, the sources said.

The dolphin, which is under state protection, can be found in just a handful of coastal areas, with the Pearl River Estuary a major habitat in China.

Recent developments in the Pearl River Estuary, such as the construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge, raised concerns about the population of Chinese White Dolphins. It was reported by environmental and ecological activists that the population has been shrinking. DB
Wynn Resorts is looking to do nearly anything to keep the Massachusetts Gaming Commission (MGC) happy. Its latest suggestion was to ban Steve Wynn, its co-founder, from entering any of their properties, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

If the MGC takes up that offer, Steve Wynn would be prohibited from both the Wynn Las Vegas and Encore Las Vegas, the Macau locations operated by Wynn Resorts, as well as the new Boston project at the heart of the MGC case.

Thats not their only offer though. In their 49-page legal brief, Wynn Resorts offered 12 other suggestions to avoid losing their license.

Those suggestions include a compliance committee to investigate sexual assault claims, an annual audit of their policies, routine discrimination and harassment training for their staff, to stay away from Steve Wynns lawyers, and to otherwise keep the MGC in the loop on every complaint raised.

One of the suggested concessions that didnt make the cut was for CEO Matt Maddox to lose his job. As Steve Wynns handpicked successor and right hand man for several years, The Boston Globes Joan Vennochi argued he should be forced to resign, as he carries a reminder of Steves bad behavior, and likely helped conceal it in some manner.

These 13 new suggestions of Wynn will all go over fairly well, argues Calvin Ayre, but the big question is if they go far enough.

Based on the events of Elaine Wynns testimony day, Maddox isnt a favorite of the MGC, and with the Globe pushing for his resignation as well, that might just be what it takes for Wynn to keep its license. DB
Sam Lee is a marketing manager and property consultant at JML Property. JML was established in 1994 and offers Investment Property & Homes. It specializes in managing properties for owners and investors, and providing attractive and comfortable homes for tenants.

Estate planning involves distributing your assets to people or causes according to your wishes should anything happen to you. This helps minimize legal complications and tax issues.

Whilst this planning applies to more than just property or real estate, property is usually at the center of an individuals wealth or assets.

Although it can be irksome to think about, putting together an estate plan is something that should be done by everybody, not just the wealthy. The earlier the better!

Planning your estate whilst you are in good mental and physical health provides a sense of security for your family.

What would happen if you were no longer here? You can imagine what effect this would have on your family. You can save your loved ones the further distress of guessing what you wanted, or possibly even disputing distribution of assets with other parties.

Estate plans made during an illness that may affect your capacity to think straight can be challenged, complicating matters for beneficiaries.

The better we prepare for such an eventuality beforehand, the easier it is on the family should something happen.

Steps in planning your estate:

1. Take stock of all your material possessions (technically referred to as estate), and determine their value.

Typical items comprising the estate include: house(s) and land; bikes, cars, etc; cash-in-hand; savings accounts, pension accounts; certificates of deposits; stocks, bonds, and mutual funds; insurance and annuities; employee benefits; jewelry, furniture, art collections; ownership rights/interests in businesses; and claims against others.

Mind you, the list is not exhaustive and your debts and obligations to others are also a part of your estate.

2. Line up the details of your beneficiaries names, addresses, and ages. In addition, you should determine who should be the trustees/guardians in case the beneficiaries are minors at the time of planning the estate.

3. Identify an executor of the estate.

This can be done with the help of a lawyer or legal advisor.

4. Prepare any legal documents such as divorce decrees, previous wills, deeds of real estate property, and latest tax returns before you consult a professional estate planner.

Though small estates might be easy to plan, it is advisable to take the help of professional estate planners, including lawyers and CPAs, to explore all the possibilities to reduce tax incidence.

As a last side-note, estate planning is not a one-time affair. Any change in your marital status, death of beneficiaries, a birth of a child, or changes in the law will require a review of the plan.

www.JMLProperty.com

info@JMLProperty.com
The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has killed more than 750 people, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday, ahead of a key review on the severity of the epidemic.

WHO's latest toll for the outbreak declared in eastern DRC last August came as the agency's International Health Regulations emergency committee was meeting in Geneva.

In October that committee held off declaring Ebola in DRC "a public health emergency of international concern," but has decided to review the situation amid a series of worrying developments.

As of April 9, nearly 1,200 cases of the virus have been reported in the affected provinces of North Kivu and Ituri, with 751 people dead, the WHO said.

The Red Cross has said that transmission is accelerating while Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has warned that the international response is failing to bring the epidemic under control.

Poor security owing to the presence of armed groups, coupled with resistance of some communities to seeking treatment, has hampered the fight to stem the spread of the disease.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva on Friday that security concerns, including recent attacks on health facilities, has made it impossible to maintain a sustained response.

When health workers are unable to get to communities because of unrest, "no people are being vaccinated, there is no treatment (and) people are staying at home and infecting other people."

"Now we see that we are regaining that access and it is normal when you start regaining that access that you start seeing those cases that you have not seen when you didn't have access, and that partially explains the rise in numbers," he said.

WHO considers defines a public health emergency of international concern as "an extraordinary event" that poses risks to multiple states and requires "a coordinated international response."

This is DRC's 10th outbreak of Ebola in 40 years and is the second worst to date.

The deadliest was a 2014 epidemic in West Africa which killed more than 10,000 people in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

 2019 AFP
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

As an expert in reproductive health care for incarcerated women, Carolyn Sufrin kept running up against a troubling obstacle: She needed prisons to provide hard data that simply didn't exist.

Sufrin, a medical anthropologist and obstetrician-gynecologist, was running a women's health clinic at the San Francisco County Jail. In her research and policy work, she found that statistics on the pregnancies that occurred in prison were grossly outdated, and that information on other basic maternal health datasuch as numbers of miscarriages and abortionswas missing entirely.

"The fact that nobody collected these data before signals just how much this population is neglected," says Sufrin, a Johns Hopkins alum who returned to the university in 2014 as an assistant professor in gynecology and obstetrics at the School of Medicine.

In 2016, she set out to fill in the blanks, launching an ambitious endeavor with a team of researchers to collect data from prison systems across the U.S.

The Pregnancy in Prison Statistics, or PIPS, study is considered to be the first national-scale, systematic investigation of pregnancy frequencies and outcomes in prison. Its findings were published last month in the American Journal of Public Health.

The projectwhich originated as part of an initiative Sufrin heads at Hopkins called Advocacy and Research on Reproductive Wellness of Incarcerated Peoplecovered 57 percent of the female prison population, recruiting 22 state prisons and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to report data for 12-month spans between 2016 and 2018.

The very existence of this study proves that it's possible to track data on pregnancies in prisons, Sufrin saysa responsibility she believes a federal entity, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the Bureau of Justice Statistics, should take over on a regular basis in the future.

"I think that's the significant contribution this paper makesdocumenting all of this," Sufrin says.

The report notes that 111,616 women overall were imprisoned at the end of 2016a 742 percent increase since 1980. Over a 12-month study period, 1,396 pregnant women were admitted to prisons, about 4 percent of all women admitted during that time frame. The vast majority of pregnancies, 92 percent, resulted in a live birth. Six percent of these births were pre-term and 30 percent were cesarean deliveries.

Approximately 6 percent of the pregnancies ended in miscarriage, the study found. Eleven pregnancies ended in abortion, four ended in stillbirths, and two pregnancies were ectopic. In three cases, the babies died after delivery. The study recorded no maternal deaths. All but six births took place in a hospital.

Currently there are no mandatory standards of care for pregnant women in U.S. prisons, but Sufrin believes these numbers provide a vital starting point for policymakers, medical professionals, and prison officials to consider improvements and alternatives to existing protocols.

"Having these data available I hope will bring attention to the tremendous health care, social, and other needs these women have, and also help us think more as a society ... [and] really critically evaluate why and how we're incarcerating pregnant women," she says.

Among the notable findings, Sufrin notes that the prevalence of abortions was particularly low in prisons (1 percent) compared to the national average (18 percent). She says the study lacks details to explain that discrepancy, though previous research has found that some prisons have policies denying access to abortions.

Sufrin says she was also surprised by the variability of outcomes by states. In some states, for example, miscarriages represented 20 percent of pregnancy outcomes. And at certain points, Texas and Ohio had more than 50 pregnant women in their custody, while other states had none. The report says a number of factors could account for such variations, including state laws, prison health care policies, individual patient attributes, and other details the quantitative study didn't record.

As Sufrin notes, the study doesn't detail the distressing experiences some pregnant women go through during incarcerationsuch as solitary confinement, being denied medical care, or being shackled during labor.

"Behind every number is the experience of a pregnant woman behind bars," she says.

And for Sufrin, that's exactly what prompted her to get involved in this area of reproductive health in the first place. As an obstetrics resident in Pittsburgh, she delivered a baby for a prisoner whose legs were shackled to the bed during labor as a guard stood in the room.

"It kind of determined the rest of my career," Sufrin recounted to Rewired in 2017.

Before Hopkins, Sufrin was a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, coinciding with the time she worked as an OB-GYN for the health clinic at the San Francisco County Jail. She chronicled her experiences there for her 2017 book Jailcare: Finding the Safety Net for Women Behind Bars.

Going forward, Sufrin is building on the PIPS research with further studies. One is examining jail treatments for pregnant women who have opioid use disorder, seeking alternatives to forced detox. Another is collecting more qualitative data on reproductive healthcare behind bars.

"We're interviewing pregnant women in custody about how the experience of being incarcerated impacts various decisions they make about pregnancy," Sufrin says.

On the advocacy end, Sufrin and her team have been busy sharing the findings of their landmark study.

"I've been in touch with lawmakers and policymakers," she says. "This is about disseminating information and advocating for change."

Explore further First of its kind statistics on pregnant women in US prisons

More information: Carolyn Sufrin et al. Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 20162017, American Journal of Public Health (2019). Journal information: American Journal of Public Health Carolyn Sufrin et al. Pregnancy Outcomes in US Prisons, 20162017,(2019). DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2019.305006
A pediatric nurse holds a premature baby after feeding him at Medellin's General hospital on August 20, 2014 in Medellin, Colombia. A Greek mother of the first baby born using DNA from three people has praised the revolutionary technique

The Greek mother of the first baby born using DNA from three people on Friday praised the revolutionary technique that helped her conceiveand thanked the mystery woman who donated her egg.

Under the terms of the treatment, she was not allowed to meet the donor, said 32-year-old Matina Karavokyri. But she had a message for the woman whose egg donation allowed her to finally have a child by in vitro fertilisation (IVF).

"I would like to thank her very much," she told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA).

"She is one of the many people that helped to make me happy. I will never be able to forget her, even though I do not know her. I wish her all the best."

A team of Greek and Spanish doctors helped her give birth to a baby boy Tuesday using a new IVF technique they call the Maternal Spindle Transfer method, at the Institute of Life, in Athens.

The team used an egg from the infertile mother, the father's sperm and another woman's egg to conceive the baby boy, transferring genetic material with chromosomes from the mother to the egg of a donor whose own genetic material had been removed.

A similar DNA-switching technique was used in Mexico in 2016 to avoid transmission of a mother's hereditary illness to her child.

This new technique was developed to help mothers who had failed multiple times to conceive through IVF treatment because of genetic disorders or other problems.

Karavokyri said she had made four unsuccessful attempts at IVF fertilisation when they were offered the new technique.

"Then I was given the choice to try this new method and I did not think twice," she said.

And the new technique meant she could keep her genetic material.

"It does not contain anything from a third person. It's ours a hundred percent," Karavokyri added.

"We finally managed to become parents and acquire a healthy and biological child, thanks to a great scientific advancement that will enable many women to have the child they tried for with IVF treatments for so long and who think they cannot succeed," she said.

Greek embryologist Panagiotis Psathas led the team who pioneered the approach, working with Spain's Dr Nuno Costa-Borges.

Some specialists in the field however, have raised ethical reservations.

"I'm concerned that there's no proven need for the patient to have her genetic material removed from her eggs and transferred into the eggs of a donor," said Tim Child, Oxford University professor and medical director of the Fertility Partnership.

"The risks of the technique aren't entirely known, though may be considered acceptable if being used to treat mitochondrial disease, but not in this situation," he said in a statement.

 2019 AFP
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Hard-to-clean privacy curtains in hospitals and nursing homes worldwide may be contaminated with deadly drug-resistant bugs, according to findings to be presented Saturday at an infectious diseases conference.

More than a fifth of 1,500 samples taken from six post-acute care nursing facilities in the United States were laced with one or more dangerous bacteria, including the hospital bug MRSA, researchers found.

Nearly 20,000 MRSA-related deaths occurred in the US in 2017, most of them from hospital- acquired infections, according to the US Centers for Disease Control.

"These pathogens on privacy curtains often survive and have the potential to transfer to other surfaces and patients," said co-author Lona Mody, a doctor and researcher for the University of Michigan Medical Center.

"As privacy curtains are used all over the world, it's a global issue."

A comparison of bacteria found on the patients and the curtains showed that both were often contaminated with the same strains.

The bugs in these cases likely moved from the patient to the curtain, the findings suggested, but the opposite is "certainly possible", Mody told AFP.

The results, in the pipeline for peer-review publication, were to be unveiled at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Amsterdam, running April 13-16.

Despite improvements in hygiene, hospitals awash with antibiotics can become incubators of drug-resistant bacteria that mutate to survive the drugs designed to eradicate them.

In-patients, meanwhile, with weakened immune systems and open wounds after surgery are especially vulnerable to attack.

Typically made of plastic or cotton, curtains that separate beds or encircle them in private rooms are often cleaned infrequently.

Dirty hands

"Hospital policies vary tremendously, but typically include changing privacy curtains every six months or when visibly soiled," Mody said.

Previous research has examined their capacity to retain bacteria, but this is the first to look at a "post-acute" setting, the authors said.

The patients in the skilled nursing facilities were hospitalised on average 22 days.

Bacterial samples from 625 rooms were taken upon admission, and periodically thereafter up to six months, assuming patients were still on site.

A total of 22 percent of curtain samples tested positive for multi-drug resistant bacteria, ranging from 12 to 29 percent, depending on the facility.

The percentage of curtains infected with different bugs ranged from five percent for MRSA, to six percent for resistant gram-negative bacilli (R-GNB), and 14 percent for vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE)all potentially deadly.

"There is an increasing recognition that hospital environments play an important role in transmission of pathogens," Mody said.

"Privacy curtains are often touched with dirty hands after a patient interaction," she added. "They are cumbersome to disinfect and clean."

The concentration of bacteria her team found on curtains was higher than on bedside table tops, but less than toilet seats, bedrails and TV remote controls.

The researchers said their findingsbased on "traditional microbiologic methods"needed to be duplicated using more advanced genomic methods.

Explore further Hospital privacy curtains may harbor dangerous germsnew study

 2019 AFP
New research presented at this week's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Amsterdam, Netherlands (13-16 April) shows that only one third of patients that enter the emergency department with suspected urinary tract infection (UTI) actually have evidence of this infection, yet almost all are treated with antibiotics, unnecessarily driving the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The study is by Dr. Laura Shallcross, University College London, UK and colleagues.

Concern over delaying antibiotic treatment for severe infection means that clinicians have a low threshold for initiating antibiotics in the emergency department (ED) for patients with suspected urinary tract infection (UTI) syndromes. Although a non-infectious cause is established for many of these cases, antibiotics are often continued unnecessarily, which drives the emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). In this study, the authors estimated the frequency of over-diagnosis of UTI syndromes in the ED, in order to estimate the potential to reduce antibiotic prescribing by stopping antibiotics early for patients with no evidence of bacterial infection.

The authors undertook a cohort study in a large teaching hospital (the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK), using electronic health records (EHRs) from patients with suspected UTI syndromes who attended the ED. Individuals who had a sample submitted for microbiological culture of urine in the ED were eligible for inclusion. The research team randomly selected a subset of 1000 patients (700 admitted to hospital) and described the clinical and demographic characteristics of this population. They then compared diagnoses made by the ED physician to clinical diagnosis based on urinary symptoms and microbiological outcomes and international classification of disease (ICD-10) diagnostic codes. Finally, they estimated how often antibiotics were stopped at or shortly after (<72 hours) admission to hospital.

A total of 943 patients were eligible for the study. Of these, 289 patients had an ED diagnosis of UTI syndromes including 56 cases of pyelonephritis, 42 cases of urosepsis and 191 cases of lower UTI. Treatment with empirical antibiotics was recorded for 173 (91%) of patients with an ED diagnosis of lower UTI, but only 63 of these cases (36.4%) had clinical evidence of UTI. ICD-10 diagnostic codes were available for 83 patients with lower UTI who had been admitted to hospital. Of these, more than 40% (34/83) had a primary diagnostic code for a non-infectious condition, suggesting antibiotic treatment was not required.

The authors say: "A focus on antibiotic review in patients with an emergency department diagnosis of suspected urinary tract infections could support reductions in inappropriate antibiotic prescribing in secondary care, and help reduce the impact of unnecessary prescribing on the development of antibiotic resistance."

They add that it is difficult to generate accurate estimates of overprescribing. "Probably the most robust estimates are derived national survey data in the USA* which includes emergency department and outpatient settings," explains Dr. Shallcross. "These estimated that around 30% of antibiotics that are prescribed in these settings are inappropriate. More recently, a study from Australia suggested that at least one third of emergency department prescribing is inappropriate.**" Our estimates of inappropriate prescribing of between 60-70% are higher because we have measured how often an emergency department diagnosis of UTI is supported by clinical evidence."

Going forward, the authors say that antimicrobial stewardship initiatives such as Start Smart then Focus in England*** recommend that all antibiotic prescriptions should be reviewed, taking account of the patient's clinical progression and microbiological results. Dr. Shallcross concludes: "Our study highlights the potential impact on total antibiotic prescribingand antibiotic resistancethat could be achieved by widespread adoption of such initiatives."

Explore further New technology set to lead fight against anti-microbial resistance

Provided by European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
These maps identify levels of DPT3 vaccine coverage in African communities (left) and the likelihood of meeting global DPT3 vaccine targets (right). Credit: Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Many African nations have made substantial progress in vaccinating children against life-threatening diseases, however, within countries wide discrepancies remain, according to a new scientific study.

The proportion of children receiving the full infant series of three vaccinations against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT3) increased in almost three quarters of districts in Africa between 2000 and 2016. In 29 of 52 nations studied, however, coverage with DPT3 varied by more than 25% at the district level, highlighting substantial variation within countries.

The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, was published in the international medical journal The Lancet.

"Despite substantial gains in coverage, progress was far from universal," said Dr. Jonathan Mosser, the lead author on the study. "Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions, substantially contributing to children living beyond their fifth birthdays. We continue to see wide areas of low coverage at the local level, however, illustrating that targeted improvements are needed to ensure that all children have access to lifesaving immunizations."

The study, "Mapping diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine coverage in Africa, 2000-2016: a spatial and temporal modelling study," maps nations in fine-scale, 5x5 kilometer increments, so that health officials nationally and locally can identify gaps in vaccine coverage and target interventions with precision, tailoring health policy decisions at local levels.

Using data from nearly 900,000 children, this analysis provides the first annual estimates of childhood DPT3 coverage across the entire African continent. It measures each community against the Global Vaccine Action Plan benchmark of reaching 90% national coverage and 80% in every district. These goals were established in 2012 by WHO member nations, as well as other organizations, including UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private health partnership committed to increasing access to immunizations in poor countries.

Of the 52 countries studied, only Morocco and Rwanda are estimated to have already met the district-level goal of 80% coverage. In contrast, on the local level, areas of DPT3 coverage at or below 25% were found in several countries, including Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Angola. Moreover, dropout rates exceeding 25% were identified in portions of Nigeria, Angola, Chad, Mali, Guinea, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, South Africa, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

"National estimates can mask subnational pockets of low coverage, leaving children in at risk for preventable diseases and death," Mosser said. "Our study offers insights for nations' health ministers and other decision makers to better understand local patterns of vaccine coverage and to identify where to improve vaccine delivery systems."

An official with the Gates Foundation underscored the value of the study and its geospatial mapping techniques.

"We know that there are many children not getting the vaccines they need, but there's a real lack of detail about where those children are," said Violaine Mitchell, director of Vaccine Delivery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "These maps are a critical step forward in revealing important detail on where the unvaccinated children are so that tailored strategies can be developed to reach them and truly achieve equitable coverage."

Explore further Child vaccination levels falling short in large parts of Africa

More information: Jonathan F Mosser et al, Mapping diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine coverage in Africa, 20002016: a spatial and temporal modelling study, The Lancet (2019). Journal information: The Lancet Jonathan F Mosser et al, Mapping diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine coverage in Africa, 20002016: a spatial and temporal modelling study,(2019). DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(19)30226-0
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DEC 4, 2012

10 Surprising Facts About Magellans Circumnavigation of the Globe

Explore 10 little-known aspects of one of naval historys most legendaryand deadlyvoyages.

EVAN ANDREWS DEC 4, 201210 Surprising Facts About Magellans Circumnavigation of the GlobeExplore 10 little-known aspects of one of naval historys most legendaryand deadlyvoyages.

https://www.history.com/news/history-lists/10-surprising-facts-about-magellans-circumnavigation-of-the-globe

1. Magellans expedition had a multinational crew.

Although it was a Spanish expedition, Magellans fleet featured a culturally diverse crew. Spaniards and Portuguese made up the vast majority of the sailors, but the voyage also included mariners from Greece, Sicily, England, France, Germany and even North Africa.

2. Magellans voyage was sparked by a treaty between Spain and Portugal.

Magellan originally launched his expedition as a means of finding a western route to the Moluccas, a small archipelago in Indonesia known for its stores of precious spices like cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg. The Spanish were desperate to discover this alternate path because of 1494s Treaty of Tordesillas, a decree from Pope Alexander VI that had essentially divided the world in half between the Spanish and the Portuguese. This agreement placed the more practical eastern route to the Spice Islands under Portuguese control, forcing the Spanish to find a new passage by sailing west around South America.

3. Magellan was considered a traitor to his home country of Portugal.

While Ferdinand Magellan was originally from Portugal, King Charles I of Spain ultimately sponsored his voyage. This outraged the King Manuel I of Portugal, who sent operatives to disrupt Magellans preparations, ordered that his family properties be vandalized and may have made an attempt to assassinate him. Once the expedition sailed, Manuel I even ordered two groups of Portuguese caravels to pursue Magellans fleet in the hopes of capturing the navigator and returning him to his homeland in chains.

4. Many of Magellans crew mutinied or deserted the expedition.

Magellans mostly Spanish crew resented the idea of being led by a Portuguese captain, and the expedition was forced to weather two mutinies before it had even reached the Pacific. The first of these failed revolts was easily unraveled, but the second proved more elaborate. Worried that Magellans obsession with finding passage to the Pacific was going to doom the expedition, in April 1520 three of his five ships turned against him. Magellan and his supporters ultimately thwarted the revolt, and he even marooned two men on an island when he found they were planning a third mutiny. The rebellions continued later that year when the vessel San Antonio deserted the fleet and prematurely returned to Spain.

5. Magellans expedition claimed to have encountered giants in South America.

While anchored near modern-day Argentina, Magellans men reported encountering 8-foot-tall men on the beaches of Patagonia. After befriending these giants, Magellan supposedly tricked them into boarding his ship and took one of the men captive. The giant was later baptized and named Paul, but died during the fleets long crossing of the Pacific Ocean. Historians have surmised that Magellans giants were in actuality members of the Tehuelche, a naturally tall tribe of Indians native to southern Chile and Argentina. While Magellans men almost certainly exaggerated the height of the Tehuelche, the myth of Patagonian giants would persist for many years.

6. Magellan gave the Pacific Ocean its name.

After weathering horrific storms near southern South America and losing one of his ships to rough seas, Magellan finally entered what is now known as the Strait of Magellan in November 1520. Crossing into a calm and gentle ocean, he named it Mar Pacifico, which means peaceful sea in Portuguese. Magellan believed that he would quickly reach the Spice Islands, but his beleaguered fleet would sail the Pacific Ocean for 98 days before reaching any habitable land.

7. Magellan was a staunch Christian evangelistand this may have cost him his life.

Although it was never an official part of his mission, Magellan took great pains to convert all the indigenous peoples he encountered to Christianity. The most notable example came in April 1521 in the Philippines, where he baptized King Humabon of Cebu along with thousands of his subjects. Magellans religious fervor was so strong that he threatened to kill those chieftains that resisted converting to Christianity, and this harsh decree ultimately proved to be his downfall. When a king named Lapu-Lapu refused to convert, Magellans men burned his village on the island of Mactan. Magellan later returned to Mactan with 49 men and demanded that Lapu-Lapu yield to his authority. The king refused, and in the ensuing battle Magellan was killed after he was struck by a spear and then repeatedly stabbed by the islanders cutlasses and scimitars. In the Philippines, where Magellan is remembered as a tyrant rather than a hero, the Battle of Mactan is reenacted every April 27, with a well-known Filipino actor playing the role of Lapu-Lapu.

8. Magellans slave may have been the first person to truly circumnavigate the globe.

One of the most important members of Magellans voyage was his personal slave Enrique, who had been with the captain since an earlier voyage to Malacca in 1511. A native of the East Indies, Enrique reportedly spoke a Malay dialect and acted as the expeditions interpreter during their time in the Philippines. As many historians have noted, if Enrique was originally from that part of the world, then by the time the expedition reached the Philippines he would have already circled the earth and returned to his homeland. If true, this would mean the slave Enriquerather than any of the European marinerswas the first person to circumnavigate the globe.

9. Magellan only deserves partial credit for the circumnavigation.

Magellan is often cited as the first explorer to have circumnavigated the globe, but this is not technically true. While he organized the voyage and negotiated the treacherous South American strait and the crossing of the Pacific, Magellan was killed before the mission ever reached the Spice Islands. Credit for the successful circumnavigation of the globe should also go to the Basque mariner Juan Sebastian Elcano, who commanded the return voyage of Victoriathe only surviving vesselfrom late 1521 until its arrival in Spain in September 1522.

10. The next circumnavigation of the globe took place nearly 60 years after the return of Magellans expedition.

When the lone vessel Victoria returned to Spain in September 1522, only 18 men remained out of the expeditions original crew of about 260. Circumnavigating the globe ultimately proved to be such a herculean featand the Magellan expeditions success so improbablethat it was 58 years before it was repeated. Led by the English navigator Sir Francis Drake, this second circumnavigation of the globe first sailed in 1577 and largely followed the same route as Magellan. Like Magellans armada, Drakes fleet was also ravaged by the long journey, and only his flagship Golden Hind remained when he returned to England in 1580.





I've spent the last year thinking a lot about Magellan.Well as a Guam historian, I think about Magellan a lot and quite regularly, whether I want to or not.But the particular ways I've been thinking about Magellan lately have centered around the fact that the 500th anniversary of the circumnavigation he led will take place in 2021.There will be several voyages that will be following his route around the world and they will naturally stop in Guam in March 2021.I was invited to a conference on behalf of Guam and the University of Guam last March, which was seen as being a launching event for the Spanish Navy for their anniversary commemoration.I wrote about it on this blog as part of my Circumnavigations series.Since then I've been working with a few other people, most notably Robert Underwood, David Atienza and Carlos Madrid on pushing for the development of a commission that can organize Guam's own events around this commemoration and also work with other countries that are planning to visit Guam.When I traveled to Spain for their conference, I was frustrated at the fact that since Guam was a territory of the US, I couldn't work directly with any of the government officials I met.They all seemed to think it would be more appropriate if the US State Department or US military worked with them, since Guam and Spain have no direct formal diplomatic relationship.This commission would be a means to hopefully get around our colonial status and insist that we can participate in the planning for any commemoration that takes place in Guam and also elsewhere.Last year and also last month I testified in support of the bill at the Guam Legislature.I'm hopeful that it will be passed and that we can get started on this work.The first and only time that Magellan visited Guam he gave us the name Ladrones, which stuck for centuries.The world will turn its attention to Guam in March 2021 whether we like it or not.Media and dignitaries will visit and tell their own stories about the greatness of their countries.Spain and Portugal in particular will use the moment to talk about the greatness of their navigators and reminisce about the former glory of their empires.We can use that moment to make sure our story, the Chamoru story, the Guam story is told.We can make sure that another Ladrone moment doesn't happen.And by doing so we can find another way to act independent, to act sovereign by forming partnerships and connections to other countries, even if, as a territory, it isn't supposed to be allow.I pasted below a list of 10 little known facts about Magellan from the website History.com.Banidosu yu' na bei sangan na esta hu tungo' todu este sha, ya guaha otro mas ti matungo' na fakto kinu este siha.**********************************
Professionally, I am an associate professor. I blog about current events, politics, higher education, the economy and whatever else interests me. I believe in free markets. I live in West Shokan, New York, near Woodstock, NY. All material on this blog  copyright 2003-2012 Mitchell Langbert.
" " Under federal law, you do have to give back an improperly received bonus. Glowimages/Getty Images

It just feels wrong. Last week, the Los Angeles Times called out the Pentagon's aggressive effort to claw back millions of dollars in bonuses paid to California National Guard members who re-enlisted to fight in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Under pressure to meet quotas, the California Guard improperly handed out re-enlistment bonuses to thousands of soldiers who did not qualify for them, although the soldiers didn't know they were ineligible.) Faced with angry blowback from Congress and veterans groups, Defense Secretary Ash Carter called for an immediate suspension of the debt collection efforts until a fair and streamlined system could be devised.

Americans were shocked by the idea of the government taking back bonuses (with interest!) from veterans who had served their country faithfully, demanding $20,000 to $40,000 from each soldier. But the truth is that most employers  public or private  have the legal right to recoup bonuses or other wages if they can prove that the worker was overpaid.

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Deborah England has seen it firsthand. A civil rights attorney in San Francisco, England has 30 years of experience in labor and employment law. She says that the National Guard case involves a completely different set of legal issues, but that regular workers also can end up owing money to their bosses.

"Most of the cases I've seen involve a hiring bonus where there was a string attached, such as the person had to stay employed for X amount of time with the company," says England. If the employer feels like the worker didn't live up to her end of the bargain, they can ask for the bonus back. If the worker refuses, the boss can sue for breach of contract.

Contract disputes are one thing, but what if payroll simply screws up and cuts a check for $2,000 more than the worker deserves? Does the lucky employee have to give back that money, too?

Yup.

Both state and federal labor and employment laws give employers the right to garnish an employee's wages  subtract chunks from a worker's paycheck  in cases of overpayment. The federal law, known as the Fair Labor Standards Act, is notoriously weak on worker protections when it comes to garnishing wages.

"Under the federal law, an employer can deduct the full amount of overpayments, even if  and this is key  it brings the employee's wages under minimum wage for the pay period," England says.

In a published opinion, the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor confirms, "It has been our longstanding position that where an employer makes a loan or an advance of wages to an employee"  overpayment counts as an "advance of wages"  "the principal may be deducted from the employee's earnings even if such deduction cuts into the minimum wage or overtime pay due the employee under the FLSA."

"Basically the federal law gives no protection to the employee," says England.

Many state laws are just as bad. In the state of Washington, an employer doesn't even have to notify workers that it is garnishing their wages if the overpayment was inadvertent and it was caught within 90 days. In Indiana, employers can recoup overpaid wages without authorization, but at least have to give two weeks' notice before pulling money from each paycheck.

California offers the strongest worker protections against bosses clawing back money that they think was overpaid. First, an employer can only recoup money if the worker signs a written agreement outlining the exact terms of repayment.

If the worker refuses, then the boss can take it to the courts and initiate garnishment proceedings. Even if the employer proves its case, that the worker was indeed overpaid, "under no circumstances can an employer reduce an employee's wages below minimum wage here in California," England says.

So if you think that the National Guard horror story couldn't happen to you, you might want to check up on your state's labor laws.

Now Thats Lame Defense Secretary Carter called for a suspension of the debt collection, but not forgiveness. Appeals will be considered on a case-by-case basis, and thousands of vets may still be on the hook. Meanwhile, many of the same angry congressmen and women who are calling the Pentagons efforts "disgraceful" refused to pass a law forgiving the debts back in 2014.

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Originally Published: Nov 1, 2016
ARCHIVED - February property sales in Spain up by 5 per cent



Activity in the market is at its highest level for a decade

This Friday saw the publication by the governments central statistics unit of the residential property sales data for the month of February 2019, showing that the number of transactions was 5.3 per cent higher than in the same month last year at 43,695.

Although this marks a return to growth after the first year-on-year decrease for ten months in January, the slightness of the rise appears to confirm the impression given by another set of data released earlier in the week by the countrys notaries, that the level of activity in the market may be reaching a plateau after five years of growth.

However, as is so often the case, the overall figures hide a good deal of disparity among the results reported in Spains 17 regions. The figures were higher than in the first month of 2018 in 14 of them, most notably in La Rioja, where an extraordinary rise of 71 per cent reported, while elsewhere the most significant gains were in Galicia (22.6 per cent) and Castilla-La Mancha (21.9 per cent). On the other hand, for the second month in a row there were significant decreases in both the Canaries (20.6 per cent) and the Balearics (12 per cent), and falls in the Balearics are becoming a constant feature of these monthly statistics: last year the islands were the only Spanish region in which the annual total was lower than in 2017.

It is perhaps significant that the Balearics was one of the regions where the market began to recover soonest after the slump which began in late 2007, while the others - Madrid and Catalunya  showed relatively stable figures in January, with increases of between 5 and 6 per cent).

As is almost always the case, the region with most sales per 100,000 inhabitants of property-buying age during January was the Comunidad Valenciana, with a figure of 164, and this is due in large part to the frequency with which properties in the Costa Blanca change hands among the non-Spanish population in the Costa Blanca.

Although the overall total of sales registered in January was flat, in the longer view the extent to which the real estate sector in Spain is still recovering is the fact that the level of sales activity is now 76.5 per higher than when the market bottomed out in February 2014, with the running 12-monthly total standing at over 517,000, 7.2 per cent higher than a year ago and the highest figure since January 2009.

To view a wide range of properties for sale across Spain consult the Spanish property page.

Follow Murcia Today on Facebook to keep up to date with all the latest news, events and information in the Region of Murcia and the rest of Spain: https://www.facebook.com/MurciaToday/.

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Disney has released new information about its upcoming streaming service, which seeks to compete with the likes of Netflix, TechRadar reports.

The streaming service will use a similar interface to Netflix, showing users recommended and new content in a tiled format.

Additionally, there will be five specific hubs for content from the companys major franchises: Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic.

The service will be available on most smart TVs, as well as in web browsers and on mobile devices. Disney has also confirmed specific partnerships with Roku and Sony to publish its content on their respective platforms.

Disney also announced that all 30 seasons of The Simpsons will be available on Disney+ at launch, alongside releases such as Captain Marvel, Disneys Signature Collection, all Pixar shorts, and a new live-action version of Lady and the Tramp.

Disney+ will release in the US on 12 November, and will cost $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. No South African pricing or release date has been announced.
SpaceX has successfully landed all three of its Falcon Heavy boosters back on Earth for the first time.

The two outer boosters touched back down at SpaceXs landing pads near its launch site in Cape Canaveral, while the centre core landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

During its previous Falcon Heavy launch, SpaceX successfully returned the two outer cores to its landing pads after separation, but the centre booster missed its drone ship target and crashed into the ocean.

SpaceX launched its Falcon Heavy rocket yesterday, ferrying the Arabsat-6A satellite to geosynchronous orbit in its first commercial mission.

The companys Falcon Heavy rocket can carry heavier payloads into orbit than the Falcon 9 while still maintaining a similar degree of re-usability by landing its boosters back on Earth.

This spacecraft has attracted business from both commercial clients and the US Air Force, which awarded SpaceX a $130-million launch contract.

Falcon Heavys side boosters land on Landing Zones 1 and 2 pic.twitter.com/nJCCaVHOeo  SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 12, 2019

Now read: How SpaceX lowered the cost of space travel
Ken Van Oeveren, a Mount Veeder resident and longtime volunteer firefighter, waited five years for a new kidney.

Now hes being honored for the second year in a row at the Golden Gate Relay road race, which starts May 4 and winds from the Napa Valley to Santa Cruz. Nonprofit Organs R Us organizes the run, with hopes to promote organ donation.

Nearly 15.5 million Californians have registered to donate their organs, according to Donate Life California, a nonprofit created by the state. More than 23,000 of the 114,000 Americans waiting for an organ live in California, and most of those people need kidneys, according to the nonprofit.

Van Oeveren, 72, feels his work at the Dry Creek-Lokoya Volunteer Fire Department helped him get a kidney. Its hard to get an organ donation at his age, Van Oeveren said, but his job at the fire department pushed him to exercise regularly and keep his heart in good shape. Hes been with the department for 15 years, with six of those years spent as assistant chief.

I actually enjoy helping people in the community, he said. It gives you a good feeling.

He got a second chance at life in January, when doctors with the UC, Davis called and woke him during the night to say they may have found an organ match. Van Oeveren said he was nervous as he began packing his hospital bag.

I wasnt freaking out, he said. But I was really happy that I was going to finally get a kidney.

Van Oeveren signed up to receive an organ through UC Davis, but he continued to try to find a match on his own in hopes to avoid a length wait. That proved difficult because his firefighter friends worried they would need to keep both kidneys since they work in harsh environments, and his older peers werent in good enough health to withstand surgery to remove a kidney.

Van Oeveren underwent dialysis, a life-saving treatment that cleans the blood of patients whose kidneys are failing, for two years after his arthritis medication destroyed his kidney. Three days per week and six hours per session, he received hemodialysis, a physically demanding treatment in which a patient is connected by tubes to a machine that cleans their blood.

Van Oeveren then switched to peritoneal dialysis, a form of dialysis that he found less physically taxing, but the treatment had to be administered every day for 10 days. A cleansing fluid is put in a patients body through a catheter in the stomach during peritoneal dialysis, and the stomach acts as a filter for wastes in the body.

Van Oeveren said the transplant has helped him to feel normal, though his anti-rejection medication  which fights the bodys natural inclination to reject a foreign object, such as a new organ  has given him unexpected tremors. He might have to wear a mask whenever he leaves his bedroom or accidentally double tap a key while texting, but hes happy to be mobile.

He moved from Ohio to California as a high school sophomore and became a volunteer firefighter in Terra Linda as a high school senior, around 1965. He joined the Navy during the Vietnam era, moved to Florida to work in a nuclear power plant, then returned to California later in his career. Van Oeveren studied to become an emergency medical technician while working at the Dry Creek-Lokoya Volunteer Fire Department, and underwent trainings with Cal Fire-Napa County Fire.

Now Van Oeveren has two goals: encourage veterans to join a volunteer fire department, and educate others on his experiences with hemodialysis and peritoneal dialysis to help patients make more informed decisions.

Van Oeveren first got involved with the Golden Gate Relay after the relay had to change course and Jeff Shapiro, of Organs R Us, reached out to the Dry Creek-Lokoya Volunteer Fire Department.

Thats also how Karen Crouse, who hosts a stop for the relay in front of her Mount Veeder home, got the Golden Gate Relay bug. The Dry Creek-Lokoya Volunteer Fire Department saved her newly renovated home during the 2017 wildfires and she was happy to help.

Runners of all ages participate and the atmosphere is happy and high-energy, she said. Many have done the race for years, she said, and the fact that so many runners are willing to cover the length of the Bay Area shows passionate people are about the cause.

The Golden Gate Relay makes space for people to talk about organ donors, Crouse said.

Nobody ever wants to have this conversation about What if?, and there are so many people who need organs, she said.

The relay starts at CrossWalk Community Church on First Street in Napa on Saturday, May 4, and ends up in Santa Cruz the next day, said Darlene Valencia. The church has been involved with the Golden Gate Relay for about 25 years, and has long offered its facilities as a place for runners to shower, rest and eat.

A seat at the all-you-can-eat buffet comes with a suggested donation of $8. CrossWalk hopes to use put any money raised toward its local missions, such as its on-campus food pantry, and remodeling its facilities, Valencia said. The church seeks to remodel parts of its gym, bathroom and locker rooms so it can cook meals and create Americans with Disabilities Act-accessible bathroom and shower space, in hopes to accommodate residents in an emergency.

The church has had members who have both donated and received organs, Valencia said. She said she saw firsthand how a double-lung transplant changed the life of a woman she knew.

The Golden Gate Relay was a good match for CrossWalk, which promotes organ donation, Valencia said.

So many lives could be saved if people were put down as donors, she said. It doesnt need to be as difficult as it seems.

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From the comments on her Facebook page, Lynda Jordan was an inspiration to her students and colleagues.

Since 1995, Jordan owned Napas Le Melange Academy of Hair and Esthetics, Napas only cosmetology school.

I feel so honored to have attended such a wonderful school that led me to the path Im on, wrote one commenter.

Thank you for giving me a wonderful foundation in esthetics that has now lead me into nursing, wrote another.

Lynda  set the foundation that has given me an incredibly successful career. Thank you for changing my life, wrote another.

Sadly, Jordan passed away after her long battle with cancer, according to an April 7 post on the Le Melange Academy Facebook page. The exact date of her death could not be confirmed.

Besides the loss of a business owner, it also means the future of the citys last cosmetology school looks uncertain. Le Melange Academy is located at 931 Coombs St. on the ground floor of the Native Sons of the Golden West building.

According to Matt Woodcheke, a spokesman for the California Department of Consumer Affairs, during the first week of April, the agency was notified by a representative of the school that the sole proprietor of Le Melange Academy had passed away.

Woodcheke explained that U.S. Department of Education regulations require that in such a situation the new ownership structure must be announced, or a notice of closure issued, within 10 days of the event.

It is the Bureaus understanding the school will close, said Woodcheke.

That means Le Melange students are now left to find a way to recover their tuition costs, access academic and financial records and research other cosmetology schools to transfer to.

During a brief phone call on Tuesday, Ed Miller, Jordans son-in-law, said We know nothing about the future of the school. Miller said Jordans business is now in the hands of the trustee of her estate. That person has not been publicly named.

A message left on the schools voicemail was not returned.

As of Friday afternoon, the school remained locked and empty. NO ENTRY, read signs taped to the doors.

Woodcheke said the California Department of Consumer Affairs Office of Student Assistance and Relief coordinated with the school to host a workshop on April 9 to help students understand their rights as a result of the school closure.

According to Woodcheke, there are an estimated 30 active students at Le Melange, plus another 15 students who were enrolled within the past 120 days of the closure but did not complete the program.

Those students are eligible to apply for federal loan discharge, receive reimbursement from a fund by the state called the student tuition recovery fund and the right to request a transfer to another school, he explained.

Those who left the school more than 120 days ago and before completing the program are likely not eligible but should contact the Office of Student Assistance and Relief anyway.

Following the workshops, we take a case management approach with each student individually. We will work with them to help their financial or academic records, research new schools, fill out forms and paperwork for the various financial restitution programs, he said. We want to work with them to help them secure their academic and financial future.

According to the Le Melange 2018 course catalog, total tuition for the cosmetology curriculum at the school was $21,984. Total tuition for the esthetic curriculum was $10,500 and tuition for the manicuring curriculum was $6,279.

The loss of Napas last cosmetology school is going to be huge, said Robert Ortenzi, the former owner of Vintage Academy of Hair Design.

There used to be three cosmetology schools in Napa County: Le Melange, Vintage Academy of Hair Design, a Napa Valley College program run by Vintage Academy of Hair Design and Napa Beauty College.

Napa Beauty College closed. The Napa Valley College program was eliminated due to budget cuts.

In 2011, a chain called Marinello Schools of Beauty bought Vintage Academy of Hair Design. In 2016, Marinello closed all 56 of its campuses in five states after losing federal funding over allegations of misconduct.

That left Le Melange as the only option for aspiring Napa County cosmetology students.

Such a closure is unfortunate, Ortenzi said. Without vocational education training people to work in the community, its going to be harder to find a quality stylist, he said.

Local salons wont have the normal rotation of new stylists coming into the workforce, he said. All salons are going to be hurting for stylists to fill open spots.

Its not easy to start a cosmetology school by any means, Ortenzi said. When Ortenzi owned Vintage Academy of Hair Design, he was training 180 students a year.

There are so many things you have to do to make it work, including meeting the requirements of multiple agencies and accreditation boards. Its a tough industry, with lots of oversight.

Besides the loss of new stylists, it will also be harder to find trained workers to fill jobs at tourist-serving businesses like day spas and country clubs, Ortenzi noted.

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If Napa Valley College builds it, many students and faculty members will come.

That was the conclusion of a newly released study that could guide the two-year schools leap into on-campus housing, a long-discussed project that could become a lifeline to students, professors and staff increasingly squeezed by Napa Countys high rents and minuscule vacancy rate.

Student demand for housing on NVCs main campus on Highway 221 is great enough to fill at least 300 beds in a mix of dormitory and apartment units, according to the report by The Scion Group of Irvine, which also laid out a potential fast-track path to break ground on housing in early 2021 and take in the first occupants for the fall semester of 2022.

NVC officials have pondered various proposals for more than a decade, including a campus village that would blend housing with shops on the largely vacant northwest corner of the main campus on Highway 221.

Although barely a quarter of U.S. community colleges  including 11 in California  have on-premises dorms or apartments, the search for housing has increasingly gained the attention of NVC directors concerned that unstable living arrangements will crimp the recruitment of students and instructors. College officials in 2017 estimated a third of the student body was housing insecure, meaning they had no fixed address and were forced to frequently couch-surf or otherwise move from place to place.

You hear sad stories of housing insecurity that exist among community college students in California, Scions project executive Ann Volz told NVCs board of trustees Thursday evening. Its becoming a growing crisis within our state.

Among 679 NVC students who responded to Scions survey, 53 percent of single people and 73 percent of married people said they would consider staying in housing at the Napa campus. Forty-one percent of the 314 part-timers in the survey added the ability to live on campus would encourage them to take a full-time course load.

The report added that 41 percent of surveyed faculty and staff would consider, and another 41 percent might consider, staying in on-campus housing.

Volz said the survey results were based on a slate of sample rents that varied by the size and type of dwellings, ranging from $750 a month for each student in a two-person dorm room up to $2,200 for a three-bedroom faculty apartment.

By comparison, monthly apartment rents averaged $1,722 for one bedroom and $2,142 for two bedrooms in a survey of more than 35 rental complexes from Napa to as far as Sonoma, Vallejo and Fairfield, according to the study.

Weighing construction costs against the need for affordable housing may be the most crucial balancing act in planning a project on the NVC grounds, suggested trustee Rafael Rios after seeing the proposed rents.

Were looking not only at availability but also at affordability, he told Volz of Scion. Is this more affordable, or is it pretty equal to the market?

Volz, in response, said on-campus rents would cover utilities and furniture and pointed to the savings on transportation for those living next to their studies.

Scion officials offered a schedule of steps to lead NVC toward a decision in the coming months, starting with a financial analysis workshop at the college April 22 and an open forum on May 8.

If the school can start negotiating with a would-be developer by August, a building agreement could be completed by the start of 2021 to have housing ready about 20 months later, said Volz. However, some board members urged caution about setting too aggressive a schedule.

I have a little discomfort moving forward with a developer who hasnt seen this feasibility study yet, said trustee Jeff Dodd. It seems like putting the cart before the horse.

No price estimate on a housing development was given on Thursday. In 2017, NVC cited an architects preliminary estimate of $70 million for a complex with space for 314 residents over three floors.

The discussion in Napa played out two days after NVCs Sonoma County peer, Santa Rosa Junior College, approved $42 million for a five-story housing complex with room for 360 students, by far the largest such residential project in that schools history.

College trustees and leaders in Santa Rosa described affordable on-campus housing as a necessity to halt an enrollment decline that accelerated after the 2017 North Bay wildfires eliminated 5 percent of the citys housing stock, the Press Democrat reported. A Scion survey conducted after the fires revealed 7 percent of SRJC students planned to leave the college and another 30 percent were thinking of departing.

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Like Napa Valley Cabernet, California sparkling wine has earned its place in the wine world, now widely enjoyed as a worthy  and often more affordable alternative  to Champagne.

The likes of Domaine Chandon, Mumm, and Korbel grace supermarket shelves across the country, but no other California sparkling is arguably as celebrated as Schramsbergs J. Schram.

Schramsberg pioneered Californias premium sparkling movement. It all started in 1965 with the release of their Blanc de Blancs using the traditional champagnoise method.

No one had made one in California, or the U.S. for the matter, so this notion of a Chardonnay sparkling wine was novel in itself, said Hugh Davies, CEO and president, who was born a month after his parents purchased the old Schramsberg property in Calistoga.

Twenty-two years later, after becoming a staple at White House events, Schramsberg decided to take things to the next level. Enter: J. Schram.

The idea was that no care would be omitted, no corner cut. We wanted to create the best blanc style, said Davies.

This will be the smaller, special select, more singular blend. Wed always focused on Chardonnay, but here, it represented just three percent of our overall production utilizing the best lots and ageing the wine for that much longer too. We wanted to make a richer style on one hand, but have vibrancy and fruitful acidity.

It was a fresh idea in California, but was modeled after the famous Champagne houses that often produce two tiers of wine: one thats more commercial and available, and the Tete de Cuvee, which is more premium, exclusive, and naturally, expensive, like Veuve Clicquots Yellow Label.

J. Schram accounts only for roughly 2,500 cases of Schramsbergs total production, yet it also requires fastidious attention from the winemaking team.

In 2018, Schramsberg sourced Chardonnay and Pinot Noir from a 65 cool-climate sites (120 total blocks) across four North Coast counties: Marin, Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino. From all of the sites, each year they create more than 300 different-sized base wines; some see malolactic fermentation, some dont; some are put in barrels, some in tanks. After fermentation, all are thoroughly tasted  always blind  to begin narrowing them down to the final wine blends for J. Schram.

Theres a somewhat elaborate process of making this full range of components, said Davies, who downplays the task. We want to start categorizing and separating out what we perceive to be the best of the lots. We want the best riper lots, best lean lots, some of the best barrels, some of the best tanks. We look at them all as individuals, then in sets, like all pinot tanks, pinot barrels, etc. We make sure were tasting them all, giving each lot time to shine.

After several tastings over a handful of months, the base wines are cut down to 25 out of the 300. We cant be perfect, said Davies. We give it our best, but at some point, you have to cut bait and move on.

The 25 base wines are then worked out into different percentages and the final spice added is about two percent from older vintages in barrel. The blend is bottled and set aside for secondary fermentation, napping eight years on the yeast before riddling, disgourging and the adding of dosage.

Once corked, caged and labeled, the bottles rest another six months before release. The current vintage of J. Schram is 2009.

Thats a substantial amount of time, and somehow the double digits seems more meaningful, said Davies. Theres a profile that comes with additional ageing that you just cant create in a few years.

By the time the process is completed, each bottle of J. Schram will have been touched by a Schramsberg employee more than 50 times, and each year, Davies believes the blend gets better. The winery also now has three top-tier sparklings: J. Schram, the Reserve and J. Schram Rose.

Hopefully its recognized as that ultimate California sparkling wine. From my perspective, theres nothing wrong with the French Champagnes, but hopefully its viewed as one of the worlds top sparkling wines, said Davies of J. Schram. Its the goal my parents had and we continue on that track. Were better than weve ever been, and thats exciting.
Irakanum.am: Armenia PM to meet with members of ruling faction of Yerevan's Council of Elders tomorrow

French Senate to set up group for Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenia PM attends 6th Eastern Partnership Summit

Turkey's ex-Ambassador to US to be appointed special envoy for normalization of relations with Armenia

Aliyev on Armenian POWs: We returned them to Armenia, and they were detained there

Aliyev claims that Baku has managed to convince Yerevan about 'inevitability of opening of road to Nakhchivan'

Zelensky offers to host summit of leaders of Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Turkey in Kyiv

Armenia Security Council Secretary to meet with National Security Advisor to US President Jake Sullivan

Democratic Party of Artsakh members meet with representatives of Republican Party of Armenia

Armenian army generals submit recommendation letter for release of detachment commander Ashot Minasyan

Mitsotakis: Turkey's financial crisis presents danger for stability in the whole region

Germany declares two officials of Russian Embassy persona non grata

Armenia justice minister discusses sector-specific meetings with Croatian, Irish, Greek counterparts

Ruling faction of Yerevan's Council of Elders launches procedure to express lack of confidence in mayor

Moldova's special services arrest and conduct search against founder of Wargonzo Semyon Pegov

Zakharova: Moscow welcomes direct contacts between Yerevan and Baku

Russian MFA: Normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations would contribute to recovery of general situation in region

NEWS.am daily digest: 15.12.21

Georgia justice minister accepts Armenian counterpart's invitation to visit Armenia during meeting in Venice

Candidate for Mayor of Armenia's Vanadzor is detained, charged under 3 articles

Armenia Migration Service: Russia has adopted and has yet to adopt new rules for migrants

Armenian, Slovenian premiers confer on Armenia-EU relations

Candidate for Vanadzor mayor taken to Investigative Committee in Yerevan

Armenia's Ambassador Viktor Yengibaryan presents credentials to Germany President

Artsakh President chairs Security Council meeting

Armenia deputy PM in Brussels, meets with EU Commissioner

Court rules to arrest opposition 'Armenia' Alliance member Narek Mantashyan for two months

EU heralds Schengen Area reforms

Turkish opposition parties have decided to put an end to 'monstrous' presidential system

5.0-magnitude earthquake hits Iran

Dollar still falls noticeably in Armenia

Turkish opposition member insists that Erdogan has decided to go to snap elections

Legislature vice-speaker from opposition: Secret agreements can lead to new capitulation of Armenia

Brother of North Korea's founder Kim dies at 101

Artsakh ombudsman: Azerbaijan does not allow Taghavard village residents to visit their community cemetery

Armenia opposition MP: People have collective will to not let Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem implement idea of corridor

Armenia National Assembly fails to ensure quorum in 4 hours

Armenia parliament to convene special session tomorrow

Armenia opposition 'With Honor' Faction head summoned to National Security Service, interviewed as witness

Opposition 'Armenia' Faction head: No need to be afraid of Turkey and Azerbaijan, but there are risks and dangers

Armenia justice minister tells CoE Secretary General about violations of international law against Armenian POWs

Paylan to Turkeys Cavusoglu: An Armenian minister was sitting on your chair 110 years ago

Armenia ex-defense minister shows up at Prosecutor General's Office within scope of civil forfeiture of illegal assets

Macron, Putin discuss avenues to resolve Karabakh conflict

Kopirkin: Russia, Armenia have very major cooperation within EEU

Armenia, Moldova leaders underscore developing of bilateral economic ties

Armenia ruling majority obstructs parliament special session initiated by opposition faction

Blinken: We welcome statements on appointing special envoys by Armenia, Turkey

Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders hold private talk as well in Brussels

Azerbaijan president refuses to discuss Artsakh status issue

USCIRF: Armenian church demolished in Turkey, Armenian cemetery in Van destroyed this year

Yerevan hosting 7th annual session of Eurasian Expert Club

212 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Russia peacekeepers ensure safe conduct of agricultural work in Karabakh

Artsakh FM: Azerbaijan's corridor for corridor approach is fraught with serious challenges for Russia, Europe

Newspaper: Crimes increase in Armenia

Newspaper: Armenia government underperforms grants

European Council chief: EU will provide expert mission/consultative group to help border delimitation, demarcation

Charles Michel: It was agreed to proceed with restoration of railway lines

Armenias Pashinyan: We reaffirmed with Azerbaijan president agreement on restoration of railway

Armenia delegation thwarts Azerbaijan anti-Armenian event at session of UN Convention against Corruption

Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker receives Matthias Luttenberg

Newspaper: 3 sections of highway to Armenia's Voskepar will be on Azerbaijani border, alternative roads to be built

Yerevan court examining National Security Service's motion to arrest opposition 'Armenia' Alliance member

Karabakh State Minister: Lachin corridor can't be under any kind of control of Azerbaijan

Armenia President sends congratulatory message to Iran's Ebrahim Raisi on occasion of his birthday

Pashinyan-Michel-Aliyev meeting kicks off in Brussels

Armenia Ombudsman: We visited Armenian soldiers arrested after returning from Azerbaijani captivity

Israel, Azerbaijan hold security forces drill

Armenia justice minister discusses subjecting judges to disciplinary liability with Venice Commission President

Armenia's Pashinyan: Azerbaijan is trying to bring opening of regional communications to a standstill

Aliyev declares that checkpoint regimes of Zangezur and Lachin corridors need to match

Armenia's Pashinyan, Charles Michel express hope for effective meeting with Aliyev (PHOTOS)

Earthquake hits 2 km northeast from Armenia's Shorzha, felt in Gegharkunik, Kotayk and Tavush Provinces

Stoltenberg declares NATO neutrality towards Armenia and Azerbaijan

Aliyev and European Council head speak on normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia

Putin, Macron discuss Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, results of trilateral meeting in Sochi

Armenia justice minister attending conference with counterparts of CoE member states in Venice

Armenia's Pashinyan meets with European Council President in Brussels

NEWS.am daily digest: 14.12.21
YEREVAN.  The capital city Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction on Friday morning denied the appeal by the legal defense team of Armenias second President Robert Kocharyan, and with respect to ending the criminal proceedings against Kocharyan on the basis of presidential immunity.

As reported earlier, the Criminal Court of Appeal on Thursday denied the appeal by Kocharyans attorneys, and of the extension of his custody period for two more months.

On March 15, the Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction granted the Special Investigation Services (SIS) petition to extend Robert Kocharyans pretrial measure of custody for two more months, and denied the defenses motion for releasing their client on bail.

The court found, however, that there was no reasonable suspicion on the bribery charge that is brought against him.

On January 18, the Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction granted the SIS petition with a request to extend Kocharyans confinement for another two months, but denied the motion by the legal defense team of Kocharyan, and to the effect that their client be released from custody on bail. The defense, however, appealed this ruling to the Criminal Court of Appeal. But on February 7, the court denied this appeal.

On February 15, the SIS announced that it completed the preliminary investigation into the criminal cases connected with the incidents of March 1 to 2, 2008.

The SIS assessed that there was sufficient evidence to file charges against second President Robert Kocharyan, former Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, former Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces and former CSTO Secretary General Yuri Khachaturov, and former Deputy Prime Minister and ex-Secretary of the National Security Council Armen Gevorgyan.

Accordingly, Kocharyan has been charged with breaching the constitutional order and taking a particularly large bribe; Ohanyan and Khachaturov are charged with breaching the constitutional order; and Gevorgyan is charged with aiding in breaching the constitutional order, taking a particularly large bribe, and legalizing unlawfully acquired property.

But solely Robert Kocharyan is remanded in custody in connection with this criminal case. Seyran Ohanyan and Armen Gevorgyan have been released on a signature bond, while Yuri Khachaturovon bail.

On March 1 and 2, 2008 the then authorities of Armenia used force against the opposition members who were rallying in downtown Yerevan, and against the results of the presidential election on February 19, 2008. Eight demonstrators as well as two servicemen of the internal troops were killed in the clashes. But no one had been brought to account for these deaths, to this day.
A truck of a military unit of the Ministry of Defense (MOD) of Armenia had an accident Thursday.

At 8:31pm, the 911 emergency hotline received a report that an MOD vehicle had turned over on the Meghri-Tsirani Dzor motorway, there were affected, and rescuers were needed.

It was found out that the military truck had gone off road, crashed into a rock, and turned over.

Prior to the rescuers arrival at the scene, however, 18 military servicemen were taken to Meghri Regional Medical Center.

Center director Lusine Vardanyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am that most of the injured conscripts were administered first aid at this medical center, and then they were transferred to a military hospital.

She noted that 20 servicemen, including an officer and the truck driver, were initially brought to the medical center.

In Vardanyans words, four conscripts are currently being treated at the medical center, and, in all likelihood, one of them will be transferred to another hospital for surgery.

The physicians said the injured are in satisfactory condition, and their injuries are not life-threatening.
Senator Robert Bob Menendez raised the matter of Armenian Genocide recognition during Thursdays hearings at the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the Voice of America Armenian Service reported.

The senator posed several questions to David Michael Satterfield, who has been nominated as the next US Ambassador to Turkey, during the Senate hearings on the approval of his respective candidacy.

Menendez asked Satterfield whether he acknowledges that around 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire, from 1915 to 1923.

Satterfield responded that they certainly were aware of that brutality.

Menendez asked Satterfield whether he recognizes that it was genocide.

Satterfield responded that the US president had stated that it was one of the most horrible atrocities of the 20th century, and that he joins that statement.

Menendez asked Satterfield whether it was genocide.

Satterfield responded that the presidents statement is the position of the US government.

Menendez asked Satterfield whether he acknowledges that in 1915, the allied forces of England, France, and Russia for the first time jointly accused another government of committing a crime against humanity and civilization.

Satterfield responded that he is a historian and well aware of the events of that time.

Menendez asked Satterfield whether he acknowledges that Henry Morgenthau, the then US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, had stated that the Turkish governments order on the deportation of Armenians had actually been an execution order for an entire nation.

Satterfield responded that he is aware of that statement.

Subsequently, Bob Menendez noted that this was like a diplomatic dance. He stated that the US, as a country, does not recognize the historical fact, whereas even the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has recognized Armenian Genocide. Menendez added that we cannot move toward the future if we cannot acknowledge the past.
The Permanent Representative of Armenia to the United Nations (UN), Mher Margaryan, on Thursday attended the UN Security Council meeting devoted to UN peacekeeping operations and women in peacekeeping.

In his address, Margaryan noted that the Armenian government attaches a particular importance to the promotion of womens engagement in all domains of public life.

Noting that the increasing of womens participation in peacekeeping operations is one of Armenias priorities in the reforms which the countrys armed forces are carrying out, he presented the steps which Armenia is taking toward increasing the number of women peacekeepers in the countrys military units that partake in international peacekeeping operations.

Also, Ambassador Margaryan recalled Armenias national action plan for the implementation of the provisions of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.
YEREVAN.  At the conference that was organized in Bucharest regarding the current and future issues of Europe, we presented our vision for the prospects for Armenia and EU development.

Arman Yeghoyan, Head of the Standing Committee on European Integration of the National Assembly of Armenia, on Friday told the above-said to reporters.

I stressed that Armenia has already begun the reforms, the majority of which coincides with the agenda that the EU had with us [Armenia], Yeghoyan said. [But] Armenia is not doing that to get more encouragement, but proceeding from the demand of our citizens. Thats our vision, and the EU can be part of these reforms.

In this historic period, the EU has a unique opportunity to participate in the reforms taking place in the Republic of Armenia, [but] which will take place anyhow. Its just that the EU can speed them up. With its assistance, the EU can speed up the pace of the reforms, increase the amount.

Yeghoyan noted that the EU has 20 proposalsor messagesfor the Eastern Partnership countries, and regarding the most diverse domains.

After the revolution, Armenia has done a great work at least in half of them, he added. In particular, in the fight against corruption, in the matters of freedom of the press, of speech, in the matters of freedom of assembly.
An act that the prosecutors in the Case of the Seven refused couldnt be incriminated to second President of the Republic of Armenia Robert Kocharyan and the others. This is what Hayk Alumyan, one of the attorneys of Robert Kocharyan, said during an April 12 press conference.

According to him, prosecutors refused charge of overthrow of constitutional order in the Case of the Seven, stating that the article on overthrow of constitutional order increases liability.

As of 2009, seven prominent members of the political opposition, including Alexander Arzumanyan, Myasnik Malkhasyan, Suren Sirunyan, Shant Harutyunyan and others, were charged under Article 300, that is, overthrow of constitutional order. In 2009, the corpus delicti for overthrow of constitutional order was removed from Article 300 and became Article 300.1, and 6 prosecutors refused the charge brought up against the 7, explaining that Article 300.1, which entered into force in 2009 and is now being ascribed to Robert Kocharyan, is a norm increasing liability compared to the norm that existed in 2008. Those 7 werent held liable under the charge of overthrow of constitutional order based on this explanation, and now were simply demanding that the same standard be applied to Robert Kocharyan, he said.

According to him, today, prosecutors are doing the opposite by incriminating Article 300.1 of the Criminal Code to Robert Kocharyan.

This is absurd in terms of law. It is the culmination of violation of human rights and cant go on for a long time. Judges are stuck in the middle  they either have to violate the law and go down in history as judges depriving Armenias second President of liberty illegally, or enforce the law, but find themselves behind bars. This has to end, the attorney said.

As far as the attorneys future actions are concerned, Alumyan said the following:

Were ready to take unexpected steps and have an influence, but we simply dont want to reach that point. There are already 5 complaints sent to the European Court of Human Rights, and were working on the sixth one.

On 11 April, the Criminal Court of Appeal of Armenia ruled to reject the attorneys appeal against extension of the period of remand of second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan for another two months.
Irakanum.am: Armenia PM to meet with members of ruling faction of Yerevan's Council of Elders tomorrow

French Senate to set up group for Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenia PM attends 6th Eastern Partnership Summit

Turkey's ex-Ambassador to US to be appointed special envoy for normalization of relations with Armenia

Aliyev on Armenian POWs: We returned them to Armenia, and they were detained there

Aliyev claims that Baku has managed to convince Yerevan about 'inevitability of opening of road to Nakhchivan'

Zelensky offers to host summit of leaders of Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Turkey in Kyiv

Armenia Security Council Secretary to meet with National Security Advisor to US President Jake Sullivan

Democratic Party of Artsakh members meet with representatives of Republican Party of Armenia

Armenian army generals submit recommendation letter for release of detachment commander Ashot Minasyan

Mitsotakis: Turkey's financial crisis presents danger for stability in the whole region

Germany declares two officials of Russian Embassy persona non grata

Armenia justice minister discusses sector-specific meetings with Croatian, Irish, Greek counterparts

Ruling faction of Yerevan's Council of Elders launches procedure to express lack of confidence in mayor

Moldova's special services arrest and conduct search against founder of Wargonzo Semyon Pegov

Zakharova: Moscow welcomes direct contacts between Yerevan and Baku

Russian MFA: Normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations would contribute to recovery of general situation in region

NEWS.am daily digest: 15.12.21

Georgia justice minister accepts Armenian counterpart's invitation to visit Armenia during meeting in Venice

Candidate for Mayor of Armenia's Vanadzor is detained, charged under 3 articles

Armenia Migration Service: Russia has adopted and has yet to adopt new rules for migrants

Armenian, Slovenian premiers confer on Armenia-EU relations

Candidate for Vanadzor mayor taken to Investigative Committee in Yerevan

Armenia's Ambassador Viktor Yengibaryan presents credentials to Germany President

Artsakh President chairs Security Council meeting

Armenia deputy PM in Brussels, meets with EU Commissioner

Court rules to arrest opposition 'Armenia' Alliance member Narek Mantashyan for two months

EU heralds Schengen Area reforms

Turkish opposition parties have decided to put an end to 'monstrous' presidential system

5.0-magnitude earthquake hits Iran

Dollar still falls noticeably in Armenia

Turkish opposition member insists that Erdogan has decided to go to snap elections

Legislature vice-speaker from opposition: Secret agreements can lead to new capitulation of Armenia

Brother of North Korea's founder Kim dies at 101

Artsakh ombudsman: Azerbaijan does not allow Taghavard village residents to visit their community cemetery

Armenia opposition MP: People have collective will to not let Turkish-Azerbaijani tandem implement idea of corridor

Armenia National Assembly fails to ensure quorum in 4 hours

Armenia parliament to convene special session tomorrow

Armenia opposition 'With Honor' Faction head summoned to National Security Service, interviewed as witness

Opposition 'Armenia' Faction head: No need to be afraid of Turkey and Azerbaijan, but there are risks and dangers

Armenia justice minister tells CoE Secretary General about violations of international law against Armenian POWs

Paylan to Turkeys Cavusoglu: An Armenian minister was sitting on your chair 110 years ago

Armenia ex-defense minister shows up at Prosecutor General's Office within scope of civil forfeiture of illegal assets

Macron, Putin discuss avenues to resolve Karabakh conflict

Kopirkin: Russia, Armenia have very major cooperation within EEU

Armenia, Moldova leaders underscore developing of bilateral economic ties

Armenia ruling majority obstructs parliament special session initiated by opposition faction

Blinken: We welcome statements on appointing special envoys by Armenia, Turkey

Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders hold private talk as well in Brussels

Azerbaijan president refuses to discuss Artsakh status issue

USCIRF: Armenian church demolished in Turkey, Armenian cemetery in Van destroyed this year

Yerevan hosting 7th annual session of Eurasian Expert Club

212 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Russia peacekeepers ensure safe conduct of agricultural work in Karabakh

Artsakh FM: Azerbaijan's corridor for corridor approach is fraught with serious challenges for Russia, Europe

Newspaper: Crimes increase in Armenia

Newspaper: Armenia government underperforms grants

European Council chief: EU will provide expert mission/consultative group to help border delimitation, demarcation

Charles Michel: It was agreed to proceed with restoration of railway lines

Armenias Pashinyan: We reaffirmed with Azerbaijan president agreement on restoration of railway

Armenia delegation thwarts Azerbaijan anti-Armenian event at session of UN Convention against Corruption

Armenia Parliament Deputy Speaker receives Matthias Luttenberg

Newspaper: 3 sections of highway to Armenia's Voskepar will be on Azerbaijani border, alternative roads to be built

Yerevan court examining National Security Service's motion to arrest opposition 'Armenia' Alliance member

Karabakh State Minister: Lachin corridor can't be under any kind of control of Azerbaijan

Armenia President sends congratulatory message to Iran's Ebrahim Raisi on occasion of his birthday

Pashinyan-Michel-Aliyev meeting kicks off in Brussels

Armenia Ombudsman: We visited Armenian soldiers arrested after returning from Azerbaijani captivity

Israel, Azerbaijan hold security forces drill

Armenia justice minister discusses subjecting judges to disciplinary liability with Venice Commission President

Armenia's Pashinyan: Azerbaijan is trying to bring opening of regional communications to a standstill

Aliyev declares that checkpoint regimes of Zangezur and Lachin corridors need to match

Armenia's Pashinyan, Charles Michel express hope for effective meeting with Aliyev (PHOTOS)

Earthquake hits 2 km northeast from Armenia's Shorzha, felt in Gegharkunik, Kotayk and Tavush Provinces

Stoltenberg declares NATO neutrality towards Armenia and Azerbaijan

Aliyev and European Council head speak on normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia

Putin, Macron discuss Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, results of trilateral meeting in Sochi

Armenia justice minister attending conference with counterparts of CoE member states in Venice

Armenia's Pashinyan meets with European Council President in Brussels

NEWS.am daily digest: 14.12.21

Armenia Central Bank head on coronavirus vaccinations

Georgia to build road leading to border with Azerbaijan

Armenia Central Bank chief presents forecasts for economic growth in 2021 and 2022

Armenia Parliament Speaker receives Kazakhstan Ambassador

Azerbaijan opens new military unit on border with Armenia

TNI: Can Armenia and Azerbaijan settle differences at Eastern Partnership Summit?

Armenia Central Bank: National currency increasing in value

Armenia ex-FM on Pashinyan-Aliyev meeting in Brussels

Central Bank chief: 12-month normal inflation in Armenia has increased to 8.4%

Meeting of Charles Michel and Ilham Aliyev is taking place in Brussels

Dollar drops considerably in Armenia

Ruling force MP: Establishing diplomatic relations with Turkey is in Armenia's state interests

Armenia ex-foreign minister: Current objective of Co-Chairs of Minsk Group is to prove their viability

Armenia PM arrives in Brussels, to hold meetings with Charles Michel, Ilham Aliyev and European counterparts

Lawyer: Opposition Armenia Bloc member detained

Armenia ruling party MP fails to answer question about price to pay for normalization of ties with Turkey

Bloomberg: Turkey attempting to normalize Armenia relations to please Biden

Armenia Prosecutor General's Office files cassation appeal under case of Robert Kocharyan and other ex-officials

Turkey companies begin taking over Azerbaijan-occupied territories of Artsakh

Armenia ruling power MP questions role of former commander of Russia peacekeepers in Artsakh in releasing of captives
1. Yes. Patrol cars in the lot and armed officers inside would deter would-be criminals.

2. Yes. Police should announce their plans and be highly visible during store hours.

3. No. The citys police officers have other obligations. More private security is the answer.

4. No. Perhaps, but installing more surveillance cameras would be a better deterrent.

5. Unsure. More police might help, but it could also stretch KPDs resources too thin.

Vote

View Results
Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan, who is on a working visit to the United States, as well as head of the Central Bank of Armenia, Artur Javadyan had meetings with IMF Deputy Managing Director, Tao Zhang and Director of the IMFs Middle East and Central Asia Department, Jihad Azour on Thursday. They also met with IMF Dutch Sub-Group Executive Director Anthony De Lannoy and IMF Executive Director Richard Doornbosch on Friday, the government's press service reported.

During the meetings, the Deputy Prime Minister emphasized the importance of the programs implemented with the IMF for Armenia and expressed hope that the existing cooperation will be further developed thanks to joint efforts.

The interlocutors touched upon the tax reforms to be implemented in Armenia, exchanged views on the steps necessary to develop the capital market. Presenting the Government's priorities, Deputy Prime Minister emphasized the importance of joint work with the partners, supporting the development of Armenia.

Deputy Prime Minister also met with European Investment Bank's Vice-president Vazil Hudak on April 12.

Deputy Prime Minister highly appreciated the growing cooperation with the European Investment Bank and highlighted the consulting support from the EIB, which essentially raises the targeted programs and develops the professional capacities for the effective implementation of future projects. Mher Grigoryan expressed hope that the EIB will be actively engaged in direct investments in the private sector, which will directly contribute to the development of modern business culture and business transparency in the country.

The interlocutors discussed the development of cooperation between Armenia and EIB in new directions, in particular, water management and energy efficiency. At the meeting, the sides stressed the importance of the future EIB projects' portfolio, which will allow to develop proposals for new projects and to consider future cooperation opportunities.
Story Highlights Non-college whites have had double-digit preference for GOP since 2010

GOP advantage among this group has expanded to 25 points in 2019

Whites with college degrees now favor Democratic Party by 10 points

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- White Americans without college degrees helped propel Donald Trump to an upset victory in the 2016 election and have been one of his most supportive subgroups during his presidency. The group's support for Trump may largely reflect their political leanings as much as their affinity for Trump, as currently, 59% of non-college whites identify as Republicans or say they are independents who lean toward the Republican Party.

But non-college-educated whites were firmly aligned with the GOP well before Trump announced his presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015. In 2014, 54% of whites without college degrees identified as Republicans or were Republican-leaning independents, compared with 34% who were Democrats or Democratic leaners.

In fact, white college nongraduates have preferred the GOP to the Democratic Party for most of the past two decades, with at least a slight Republican advantage in affiliation for 15 of the past 20 years. The exceptions were in 1999, the year of the Republican-led Senate trial attempting to remove President Bill Clinton from office, and 2006 through 2009, troubled years for the U.S. related to the Iraq War and the Great Recession, mostly under Republican President George W. Bush. By 2010, after President Barack Obama's honeymoon was over, the Affordable Care Act became law and the Tea Party movement emerged as a political force, non-college whites' loyalties to the GOP were re-established, and they have become even stronger than before.

Thus, it appears Trump has capitalized on white college nongraduates' existing preferences for the GOP more so than creating them. Still, the 25-percentage-point edge in non-college whites' preferences for the Republican Party (59%) over the Democratic Party (34%) thus far in 2019 is the largest in the past two decades, and is up from a 20-point gap in 2014.

At the same time that non-college whites' attachment to the GOP has grown, there has been a shift in the political allegiance of whites with college degrees toward the Democratic Party. Since the 2016 presidential election year, white college graduates have gone from being evenly divided in their political preferences to preferring the Democratic Party by double-digit margins in 2018 (52% to 42%) and 2019 (54% to 41%).

White college graduates' political affiliation was broadly similar to that of non-college whites until about 2011. Both groups showed a GOP preference from 2000-2005, became about evenly divided in their political loyalties between 2006 and 2009, and shifted back toward the GOP in 2010. However, college-educated whites did not swing back to the Republican Party during the later Obama years to the same degree that white college nongraduates did. Since 2014, white college graduates have shown at least some movement toward the Democratic Party each year.

As a result of these trends, the proportion of the Republican Party consisting of whites with college degrees versus those without has changed. In 2014, 57% of Republican Party identifiers and leaners were whites without college degrees; now 59% are. Five years ago, 27% of Republicans were white college graduates, but that proportion has declined to 23% today.

Nonwhites Consistently Back Democratic Party

While education is a major predictor of whites' political loyalties, it bears little relationship to nonwhites' political preferences, which are heavily Democratic regardless. Among nonwhites with college degrees, 69% identify as Democrats or lean Democratic, compared with 21% who identify as Republicans or lean Republican. The figures among nonwhites without college degrees are 65% and 21%, respectively.

Nonwhites, regardless of education level, have shown strong support for the Democratic Party over the past 20 years, peaking at 75% in 2008 as Obama was campaigning to become the first black U.S. president.

Non-College Whites' Proportion of the Population Is Shrinking

The U.S. population can be sorted into three racial and educational groups, each with distinct political leanings:

nonwhites, who align strongly with the Democratic Party and represent about 32% of the U.S. adult population

whites without college degrees, who represent 42% of the population and are now nearly as strongly aligned with the GOP as nonwhites are with the Democrats

white college graduates, who have tilted more strongly to the Democratic Party in recent years and represent 25% of the U.S. population

The recent changes in political affiliation of white college graduates, the presumptive swing group of the three, is not a positive sign for the GOP, and evidence of this came in the strong Democratic performance in the 2018 midterm elections.

Adding to the challenge for the GOP is that the percentage of the population that is nonwhite has been growing, while the proportion of Americans who are white and do not have a college degree has been shrinking. Since 2014, before the unofficial beginning of the 2016 campaign and the Trump era, the percentage of Americans who are white without college degrees has fallen from 45% to 42%, while the nonwhite population has increased by the same amount, from 29% to 32%. The proportion of white college graduates has been stable during this period.

Because nonwhites vote at much lower rates than whites do, the political advantages that accrue to the Democratic Party from nonwhite population growth are blunted to some degree. But most of the deficit in nonwhite voting is made up by white college graduates rather than by non-college whites, as was the case in the 2016 and 2018 federal elections, further underscoring the electoral importance of educated whites as a voting bloc.

Race and Education Subgroups' Share of U.S. Population and Electorate in Recent Election Years Share of population Share of electorate Difference % % pct. pts. Nonwhites 2018 31 24 -7 2016 30 21 -9 White college graduates 2018 25 31 +6 2016 25 31 +6 White college nongraduates 2018 42 43 +1 2016 43 46 +3 Proportion of electorate based on percentage of subgroup that was identified as likely voters in Gallup's final 2016 and 2018 pre-election polls. Percentages do not total 100% due to missing information on race or education for some respondents. Gallup

Turnout has helped Republicans remain competitive in recent national elections to some degree, resulting in the party's winning not only the 2016 presidential election but also a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2010 through 2016 elections and a majority in the U.S. Senate in the 2014 through 2018 elections.

Implications

The growing pro-Republican gap in party preferences among non-college-educated whites has probably helped the GOP in elections since 2010 more than turnout has. And changing U.S. demographics underscore the importance of the party maintaining or expanding that gap. Trump's politics and his policies on issues like immigration, the Affordable Care Act and abortion have arguably helped increase the party's appeal to whites without college degrees, but they may be a double-edged sword if it is also driving white college graduates away from the party.

These trends have obvious implications for Trump and the Republican Party as they develop a strategy for the 2020 election and beyond. They can, as they did in 2016 and 2018, continue with a strategy to appeal mostly to the party base by emphasizing issues that can divide the country on values and possibly race. However, pursuing that strategy may further alienate college-educated whites, and make GOP electoral success more dependent on running up huge margins among whites without college degrees.

Alternatively, Trump and the Republicans can try to expand the party base by trying to win back white college graduates. Even if that strategy were to turn off some white college nongraduates, presumably the party would maintain a healthy advantage among that group.

If the GOP emphasizes the "appeal to the base" strategy in 2020 and it succeeds, that approach will probably not work for many more future elections if the demographic trends continue and the proportion of whites without college degrees in the U.S. population continues to shrink.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
Most people hear about the Electoral College during presidential election yearsbut what exactly is the Electoral College? News@TheU spoke with University of Miami Political Science professor Gregory Koger, to help understand what purpose the Electoral College serves, and why many want it to be abolished.

What is the Electoral College?

The Electoral College is not an actual organization. It doesnt meet. Its a process by which presidential electors from each state are selected by the states and cast votes for people who they want to be president and vice president. They never meet because those votes are actually cast in the capital of each of the 50 states, so they never come together in one place. Each state gets a number of electors equal to the number of U.S. Senators (always two) plus the number of its U.S. House representatives. According to the constitution, each state gets to decide what process they use to grant their electoral number to the state. The process that Florida uses is that the winner of the popular vote in the state gets all the Electoral College votes of that state. That is known as the unit rule. Every state uses this system except Maine and Nebraska.

Why was the Electoral College implemented in the beginning?

It was an early compromise established by our founding fathers at the Constitutional Convention. For most of the convention, our founding fathers argued if a national legislator should choose the president. They didnt like that fact that it would make the president dependent on Congress, so they started looking for other options. One delegate from Pennsylvania proposed a national popular vote for president, and everyone disliked the idea.

Why do you think theres a growing amount of people in favor of the removal of the Electoral College?

Theres a partisan element to it. In recent years Democrats have been much more likely to win the popular vote and lose the Electoral College. It happened in 2000 and it happened in 2016. Thats frustrating to Democrats who feel like theres no reason they should be in this situation of actually winning the national popular vote and watching someone else get inaugurated as president. Its growing now because theres two recent incidents.

What would you say are the pros and cons of the Electoral College?

Pros:

The Electoral College makes it easier to determine who won the election. If there are controversies about the voting, at least those controversies are focused on a few states, as opposed to having to do a national recount.

One thing that people have argued is that it enhances legitimacy of the winner. What that means is, you can get a very narrow percentage of the popular vote and still will a majority of the Electoral College. Winning with a huge majority of the Electoral College helps people to accept that the outcome wasnt as close as it looks if you just look at just the popular vote. It makes it more willing to accept that the winner was legitimate.

Cons:

Critics say it over represents rural states. For example, voters in Alaska, Wyoming, Delaware and Vermont have more influence on the outcome of the election than larger states.

It focuses a candidates attention on swing states. Thats good for Florida because Florida has traditionally been a swing state. What it means is that large segments of the population like people in California, Texas, New York and Illinois have been ignored. If candidates know how a state is going to vote, then theres no incentive for them to campaign there and to talk to people to find out what their problems are.

What would it take to change the Electoral College system?

The most straight forward way to do that is to create a Constitutional amendment that would implement a direct popular vote. Its unlikely thats going to happen because its extremely hard to pass an amendment. Thats where the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact comes in. The idea is that every state part of the compact would give all of their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, rather than the individual who brings in the most votes in their state. That may mean that a large state like California, with 54 Electoral College votes, could end up giving all of its votes to a Republican candidate who won the national popular vote even if a Democrat won specifically in their state. All it takes for a state to join this system is to pass a state law. It could go into effect once enough states have joined to comprise a majority of the Electoral College. Up to this point, its been primarily Democratic states that have come on board. What would really help is if strongly Republican states like Alabama and Mississippi joined in and agreed that theyre not getting much attention either.
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Nearly 79 per cent of Indian firms do not have a computer security incident response plan (CSIRP) in place that is applied consistently across operations, a new IBM-Ponemon Institute study said on Thursday.

In the past two years, 51 per cent of Indian organisations surveyed experienced a data breach and 56 per cent experienced a cyber security incident, revealed the study conducted by US-based Ponemon Institute on behalf of IBM Security.

Of the organisations that do have a CSIRP in place, 57 per cent do not test plans regularly or at all.

Only 23 per cent reported using automation significantly in their organisation, the findings showed.

"In India, Incident Response (IR) strategy is at a nascent stage and organisations are beginning to conceive this as an integral part of risk mitigation and resilience plan," said Vaidyanathan Iyer, Security Software Leader, IBM India/South Asia.

"Considering the lack of a well-developed and tested IR in an organisation's cyber resiliency strategy, enterprises need to evaluate and implement the right tools at the earliest," Iyer added.

The IBM-Ponemon study found that globally, 77 per cent of respondents indicated they do not have a cybersecurity incident response plan applied consistently across the enterprise.

Studies show that companies who respond quickly and efficiently to contain a cyberattack within 30 days save over $1 million on the total cost of a data breach on average.

"Failing to plan is a plan to fail when it comes to responding to a cybersecurity incident. These plans need to be stress tested regularly and need full support from the board to invest in the necessary people, processes and technologies to sustain such a programme," expressed Ted Julian, Vice President of Product Management and Co-Founder, IBM Resilient.

Only 30 per cent of the respondents reported that staffing for cybersecurity is sufficient to achieve a high level of cyber resilience while 62 per cent indicated that aligning privacy and cybersecurity roles is essential to achieving cyber resilience within their organisations.

Read More News:

Facebook to use AI to map world population
SIU, Daley College to cooperate on industrial management, applied engineering degree program

by Tim Crosby

Engineering students based in the Chicago area soon will be able to earn a degree through one of the programs in Southern Illinois University Carbondales College of Engineering.

SIU recently entered into an agreement with City Colleges of Chicago that will allow that that institutions graduates  or students who have otherwise earned an associates degree  to earn a Bachelor of Science degree in industrial management and applied engineering while attending class at Daley College.

Chicago-are students to benefit from flexible, fast program

The program is designed for working adults, with classes scheduled for the weekends at Daley College. Daley College recently opened its Manufacturing Technology and Engineering Center, a state-of-the-art facility that combines preparation in manufacturing design and production.

Daley officials say almost half of City Colleges of Chicago students who graduate with an associates degree transfer to other institutions to continue their educations. The new agreement will allow those students to stay at Daley to complete a degree.

Julie Dunston, associate professor of technology at SIU, said the university offers the program at two other Chicago-area colleges already. City Colleges, however, offered some unique circumstances.

In addition to its new MTEC facility, SIUs program and Daley Colleges associate degree in advanced manufacturing technology were natural fits, Dunston said.

Students count toward SIU enrollment

We believed that we had an untapped market in the City Colleges of Chicago system, Dunston said. We wanted to strategically position ourselves as a strong partner with Daley as it made plans to expand its manufacturing programs and grow enrollment. SIU now has a permanent presence on the Daley campus with the recent hiring of a full-time SIU instructor on site.

Officials hope to have between 10 and 15 students enrolled in the program in fall 2019 when it launches. All such students will count as enrolled at SIU.

Our SIU adviser for the Daley site has been proactively working with Daley advisers to assist students in their transition to the IMAE program, Dunston said.

Program to open great opportunities

Dunston said the effort will benefit SIU in several ways. Daleys new MTEC facility increases that institutions enrollment capacity and is a draw for students interested in those studies. Not only does that provide opportunities for students, but also helps SIU serve the needs of industries in the area by providing continuing education for their employees.

This will increase the visibility of not just the IMAE program in the region but SIU Carbondale and potentially pave the way for partnerships with other SIU programs and City Colleges, Dunston said.

A bachelors degree in industrial management and applied engineering prepares students for careers in manufacturing leadership, management, operations, quality control, equipment procurement and facilities planning. Students will take courses in supply chain operations and logistics, lean manufacturing methods, safety, and project management, among others.

John Cooper, clinical assistant professor of technology in SIUs off-campus degree programs, said the new partnership will bring unparalleled opportunity to Chicago area students who wish to excel in the manufacturing and applied engineering sectors.

Its fast, accessible and affordable, and its perfect for the working adult, transfer students, and manufacturers seeking professional development pathways for their employees, Cooper said.
SIU faculty to highlight research in lightning talks next week

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill.  Learn more about some of the research conducted by Southern Illinois University Carbondale faculty later this month.

University faculty will offer insight into some of their ongoing work during Flash Talk 3.0, hosted by the College of Applied Sciences and Arts on April 17. The presentations begin at 6 p.m. at the Varsity Center, 418 S. Illinois Ave., Carbondale. A reception at 5 p.m. kicks off the evenings events.

The presentations are free and open to the public. There will be refreshments.

Faculty and staff from throughout the university are participating

There are 28 presentations by 39 faculty and staff from numerous departments throughout the university. There also are 18 student poster presentations set. This is the third year for the event.

Faculty members will give a three- to five-minute PowerPoint lightning talk, with each presenter answering three questions:

What is it?

Why is it of interest?

How might the community be further involved?

Get involved with research projects

Because the audience may not be familiar with a technical topic, presenters will make their discussions understandable to people who are outside of the expertise field.

Event highlights ongoing research

A variety of research areas will be highlighted, including:

A Multidisciplinary Collaboration: Fashion and Electrical Biomedical Engineering, Seung-Hee Lee and Yuli Liang, fashion design and merchandising; Jun Qin, electrical and computer engineering.

Transportation and Affordable Housing Linkages, Shannon Sanders McDonald, School of Architecture.

Waste Motor Oil-to-Diesel Fuel Project, Blaine Heisner, automotive technology.

Birds of a Feather Subflock Together: Divisions Among Elites Based Upon Exposure to Diversity, Scott McClurg, School of Journalism; Malinda Suprise, Viloshanakumaran Veeramani, Alan Franklin, doctoral candidates, applied psychology.

Utilizing Flight Data Monitoring to Examine Flight Instructor Modeling, J. Kenneth Bro and Michael Robertson, aviation management and flight.

Interdisciplinary collaboration between Dental Hygienists and Cancer Treatment Facilities, Stacey L. McKinney and Jennifer S. Sherry, dental hygiene.

A New Perspective on Federal Government Deficits, Debt and Trust Funds, Samuel R. Pavel, aviation management and flight.

Womens Agency in the Making of Bodies, Cuisines, and Culture in Maharashtra, India, Gauri A. Pitale, Saluki Success Program.

Spiritual Beliefs Among Individuals with Dementia and Appropriate Faith-Based Interventions, Robert Rados, health care management.

Public Perception of Airline Safety, Steven C. Goetz, Matthew J. Romero, aviation management and flight.

Health Care Management Strategies to Address Social Determinants of Health and Health Disparities to Improve Health Outcomes, Sandra Collins, Thomas Shaw, Jessica Cataldo, health care management; Vicki Brown, senior, health care management.

How Can Health Care Professionals Help Combat the Sex Trafficking Dilemma? Sandra Collins, Thomas Shaw, health care management program; Courtney Collins, graduate masters program, health administration.

Studies of Corrosion on Passenger Car Rotors (Cast Iron Made), Prabin Parajuli, graduate masters program, mechanical engineering.

The Opioid Crisis: An Exploration of Social Determinants and Artificial Intelligence, Marshon Tucker, graduate masters program, health administration.

Cyber Vulnerabilities in Aviation, Malik Alassaf, senior, aviation management.

A complete list of presentations and presenters is on the Flash Talk 3.0 website.

Presentations almost doubled compared to prior years

Andy Wang, dean of the College of Applied Sciences and Arts, said he is pleased with the increase in the number of presentations and additions from other colleges and from the community. The Flash Talk can also be helpful in initial stages of research, particularly when there is active recruitment for more participants or collaborators, he said.

Research achievements by SIU faculty can play a role in saving lives and improving the way we live, Wang said. Sharing research with a wider audience can make the research more visible, thus enhancing the impact of the research.
(Adds comments from police and the head of the country's eradication agency)

LIMA, April 12 (Reuters) - Two farmers were killed in clashes in Peru that erupted on Friday as authorities launched an operation to uproot coca plants - used to make cocaine - in a region near the border with Bolivia, a local mayor and the police said.

A third person was in critical condition and had been taken to a local hospital, said Roger Larico, the mayor of the district of San Gaban in the region of Puno.

The eradication team - 158 civilian workers and 72 police officers - had arrived to San Gaban before dawn to destroy illegal coca farms in the coming days, but were attacked by people wielding machetes and sticks as they sat up their camp, the Peruvian National Police said in a statement.

But Larico said witnesses told him that the police had fired live bullets recklessly.

"They were shooting right and left. That's why we have this bloodshed," Larico told Reuters by phone.

The deaths are under investigation, said Victor Rucoba, the head of the government's eradication agency.

"It's very likely that to protect their lives and the lives of unarmed civilians, police had to increase the use of force," he added in comments broadcast on local TV channel Canal N.

The unrest underscores the risks of forcibly eradicating illegal coca, a crop that tends to fetch a much higher price in Peru than alternatives such as coffee and cacao. It comes a day before U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visits the Andean country in a four-country tour of South America.

Peru has been one of the leading producer countries of cocaine for decades, despite efforts by consecutive governments to capture drug traffickers and shift farmers toward alternative crops from coca.

But in recent years, illegal coca farms in Peru have expanded.

The U.S. government said in November that Peru's potential cocaine production had risen 20 percent to a 25-year high of 491 tonnes.

Story continues

Police reinforcements were being sent to San Gaban to ensure the eradication team could work in the days ahead, said Rucoba, adding that coca cultivation had expanded "exponentially" in the area.

In a 2017 report, Peru's anti-narcotics agency Devida said coca growers from the country's most notorious drug-trafficking region, the VRAEM, had been migrating to Puno to start new farms. The coca produced in San Gaban is part of a supply chain that moves cocaine into Brazil through Bolivia, it added.

Peru plans to eradicate about 25,000 hectares (61,776 acres) of illegal coca crops per year through 2021, according to the country's anti-narcotics plan.

Coca is also grown legally in Peru, where it is widely used as an infusion as well as in traditional indigenous rituals.

(Reporting by Mitra Taj and Marco Aquino, editing by G Crosse)
(Recasts first paragraph, adds comments from U.S. senior administration official, background, PIX available)

By Silvio Castellanos, Miguel Gutierrez and Roberta Rampton

MADRID/WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - Spanish police on Friday arrested Hugo Carvajal, a former head of Venezuelan military intelligence, who Washington believes has a "treasure trove" of details he is willing to share about Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Carvajal, a former general and close ally of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, was arrested on drug trafficking charges on a warrant issued by the United States, a police spokeswoman said.

"He is, I would dare to say, the most knowledgeable person to now be outside of Venezuela and be willing and able to cooperate with ... a treasure trove of information," the U.S. administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"He will clearly be cooperating with us. He's expressed that publicly," the official said.

A court spokesman said Carvajal would appear before Spain's High Court on Saturday. The court needs to decide within 24 hours of his arrest whether he will be jailed pending a decision on his extradition or if he will be set free.

The U.S. Justice Department said it had asked Spain to extradite Carvajal to face cocaine-smuggling charges that were filed in 2011 and unsealed in 2014.

Carvajal, head of military intelligence from 2004 to 2008, denounced Chavez' successor Maduro in February and gave his support to Juan Guaido, who in January invoked the constitution to become Venezuela's interim president.

Guaido was later recognized by the United States and dozens of governments, but Maduro remains in office with support of the military and has denounced Guaido as a U.S. puppet.

Guaido has offered amnesty to military leaders who took his side.

Carvajal recently said on Twitter that he would relay all the information he knows to the appropriate authorities, the senior U.S. administration official said.

Story continues

"We look forward to receiving that information and to learning everything he knows ... about how Maduro and his mafia operate," the official said.

Washington expects to learn more about Maduro's ties to Cuba, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the official said.

The arrest is "very bad news" for Maduro and will provide protection to Carvajal who "probably had a target on his head," the senior U.S. administration official said.

SECOND ARREST

This was the second time Carvajal has been arrested on the U.S. charges, which allege that he coordinated the transportation of 5,600 kg (1,235 pounds) of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico in April 2006. That shipment was bound for the United States, according to charges filed in federal court in New York.

Carvajal was arrested on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba in 2014, but the Dutch government accepted Venezuela's argument that he had diplomatic immunity because he had been nominated consul to Aruba.

Carvajal also was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2008 for "materially assisting the narcotics trafficking activities" of Colombia's FARC rebel group.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) said Carvajal's assistance to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia included protecting drug shipments from seizure by Venezuelan anti-narcotics authorities and providing them with weapons.

Carvajal also provided FARC with official Venezuelan government identification documents that allowed its members to travel to and from Venezuela, OFAC said.

In an interview with the New York Times published in February, Carvajal said any dealings he had with drug traffickers resulted from his role investigating them as intelligence chief.

Carvajal said he had met with FARC members in 2001 to engage them as a government negotiator in the kidnapping of a Venezuelan businessman, a trip that had been approved by presidents in both Venezuela and Colombia. (Reporting by Silvio Castellanos and Miguel Gutierrez in Madrid and Roberta Rampton and Andy Sullivan in Washington writing by Angus Berwick; editing by Angus MacSwan and Bill Berkrot)
(Adds comments from Trump and U.S. national security advisor)

By Toby Sterling and Stephanie van den Berg

AMSTERDAM, April 12 (Reuters) - Just days after the United States' government revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, judges at the ICC on Friday rejected her request to open an investigation into alleged atrocities in the war in Afghanistan, citing practical reasons.

The decision, which prosecutor Fatou Bensouda may appeal, angered human rights groups and means that the Taliban, the Afghan government and the United States will not face any investigation at the ICC for their alleged crimes, which dated mostly from 2003-04.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the decision "a major international victory," and denounced the international court for its "broad, unaccountable, prosecutorial powers," as well as for what he considers its threat to American sovereignty.

"Any attempt to target American, Israeli or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response," Trump said.

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, a sharp critic of the ICC, called the ruling a "vindication" of the U.S.' tough policy against the court that he has engineered and a "stinging defeat" for the prosecutors.

He told reporters that even the cases of ousted Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who Washington wants to step down, should fall under the jurisdiction of their home countries, and not the ICC.

"Fundamentally, political maturation and responsibility requires that people be held responsible by their own societies," Bolton said.

In an unusual ruling, the ICC judges said Bensouda's case seemed to have met the court's criteria for jurisdiction and admissibility, but given an array of practical considerations that made chances of success remote, it did not make sense to pursue it further.

Story continues

They cited a failure to gather evidence at an early stage, a lack of cooperation from governments involved, and the likely costs as prohibitive.

In addition, "the current circumstances of the situation in Afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited," the judges said in a 2-1 ruling.

"An investigation into the situation in Afghanistan at this stage would not serve the interests of justice and (the chamber) accordingly rejects the request," the judges said.

Bensouda said her office would "consider all available legal remedies" against the decision.

International legal experts saw the ruling in part as a recognition of the realities the court faces in conducting prosecutions.

Human rights groups were incensed.

The decision "is insane and politically charged," Karine Bonneau, director of international justice at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said in a tweet.

The ruling was "an affirmation of double standards. This situation was exactly why the court was created," she added.

Kevin Jon Heller, associate professor of International Criminal law at Amsterdam University, said the decision appeared to impose significant hurdles on any case before the ICC in terms of the chances of a successful prosecution.

"If these are the criteria they are never going to open an investigation," he said.

COURT WAS 'LAST HOPE'

In 2006, Bensouda's predecessor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, opened an examination into alleged war crimes by all parties in the conflict in Afghanistan, including the possible role of U.S. personnel in relation to the detention of suspects.

Bensouda took over the dossier in 2010, but did not request a formal investigation until November 2017.

The United States revoked Bensouda's entry visa earlier this month, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in March that Washington would withdraw or deny visas to any ICC staff investigating possible war crimes by U.S. forces or allies in Afghanistan.

ICC prosecutors said in 2015 they had evidence suggesting international forces in Afghanistan had caused serious harm to detainees by subjecting them to physical and psychological abuse.

They also noted that there was evidence of violations committed by Taliban and forces that supported the Afghan government.

U.S.-backed forces drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 at the start of a war that has dragged on for 17 years.

Human rights and victims' organizations in Kabul called the ICC ruling "absolutely shocking."

"We the Afghan people have suffered so much and the court was a last hope for all of us in a country which is completely lacking justice," Hadi Marifat of the human rights group AHRDO told Reuters.

The ICC is a court of last resort with 122 member states. It acts only when countries within its jurisdiction are found to be unable or unwilling to seriously investigate war crimes, genocide or other serious atrocities.

The court has convicted three men for war crimes and crimes against humanity since it was set up in 2002: Congolese warlords Germain Katanga and Thomas Lubanga and a former Islamist rebel who admitted wrecking holy shrines during Mali's 2012 conflict.

There have been repeated negotiations in recent months between the Taliban and U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to try to broker a deal to end the Afghan conflict. So far the Taliban has refused to meet directly with the Afghan government, which they dismiss as a U.S. puppet regime. (Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; additional reporting by Toby Sterling, Anthony Deutsch, Bart Meijer and Steve Holland; editing by Alison Williams, Frances Kerry and G Crosse)
(Adds Chinese comment; paragraphs 5,6)

KUALA LUMPUR, April 12 (Reuters) - Malaysia and China agreed on Friday to resume construction of a multi-billion dollar rail project, shaving nearly a third of the cost, after months of negotiations that strained ties between the two trade partners.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who came to power after a stunning election victory in May, has vowed to renegotiate or cancel what he calls "unfair" Chinese projects authorized by his predecessor, Najib Razak.

The two sides have agreed to cut the cost of the 688-km (430-mile) rail project to 44 billion ringgit ($10.7 billion) from the original 65.5 billion ringgit, Mahathir's office said in a statement.

"This reduction will surely benefit Malaysia and lighten the burden on the country's financial position," it said, adding that more details would be revealed on Monday.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang told a regular news briefing that officials in both countries had maintained close communication on the project.

"We also hope that both sides can resume project construction at an early date, manage well this good situation, and expand areas of mutual benefit," he said.

In January, Reuters reported, citing sources, that contractor China Communications Construction Co Ltd (CCCC) had offered to nearly halve the cost to save the project, known as the East Coast Rail Line (ECRL).

In March, Malaysia's representative in the talks, Daim Zainuddin, said they could include commercial elements that would benefit the southeast Asian nation, but he did not elaborate.

Launched in 2017, the centerpiece project of China's Belt and Road program in southeast Asia aimed to link Malaysia's east coast on the South China Sea with the busy waterway of the Malacca Strait on the west.

But Malaysia suspended the project last July, after its cost ballooned amid a lack of transparency, threatening to saddle the country with uncomfortably large debt. ($1=4.1180 ringgit) (Reporting by Joseph Sipalan and Liz Lee in KUALA LUMPUR; Additional reporting by Martin Pollard in BEIJING; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Clarence Fernandez)
(Adds data on losses due to slowdown)

By Julio-Cesar Chavez

EL PASO, Texas, April 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will send about 100 agents to the Mexico border to speed up crossing times, a U.S. congresswoman said on Thursday, as businesses grapple with trade delays after officers were redeployed to immigration duties.

The slowdowns began late last month after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to close the border if Mexico did not halt a surge of people seeking asylum in the United States.

The administration moved several hundred border agents to handle the influx of migrants, triggering long delays for cross-border traffic because of the staffing shortage.

As soon as Monday, CBP plans to send officers from the Canadian border and other parts of the country to El Paso, Texas, said Democratic U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar of Texas, noting she had been informed by CBP Deputy Commissioner Robert Perez.

CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Rio Grande Valley, on the eastern edge of the border, was being considered as another point to deploy extra officers, Escobar added.

Wait times totaling hours have hit industrial trade hard.

Losses have amounted to $800,000 a day for transportation businesses in Mexico's Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, said the head of Mexican trucking association CANACAR, Manuel Sotelo.

Data from border business association Index Juarez showed that losses from 28 exporting firms in Ciudad Juarez that utilize the crossing total $15 million over the past week.

In El Paso, several truckers said they usually did four crossings a day and were now managing only one.

Some manufacturing plants, including automotive factories that depend on constant cross-border shipments, have turned to expensive air freight to stay on schedule.

Passenger vehicles that would normally wait up to an hour and a half to cross are now facing four-hour waits. (Reporting by Julio-Cesar Chavez in El Paso, Texas; Additional reporting by Sharay Angulo in Mexico City; Editing by Peter Cooney and Stephen Coates)
JetBlue Airways plans to join the crowded skies between the East Coast and London.

The low-cost airline, a pioneer in in-flight perks including free live TV, trendy snacks and speedy Wi-Fi, plans to begin flights from Boston and New York JFK in 2021. The airline is adding a long-range version of the Airbus A321 to its fleet to serve the routes.

Twenty years ago, our founders had a simple formula for choosing a new market  it had to be overpriced, underserved, or both, JetBlue President and Chief Operating Officer Joanna Geraghty said in a statement. London is the largest metro area JetBlue doesnt yet serve from both Boston and New York, and we could not be more thrilled to be changing that in the years ahead. The fares being charged today by airlines on these routes, specifically on the premium end, are enough to make you blush.''

The 19-year-old carrier, which wins rave reviews from travelers, has been talking about London service for several years and all but confirmed it in March when CEO Robin Hayes told a London newspaper they were actively working on it.

The company announced the new flights in an employee ceremony in New York Wednesday and teased the upcoming service earlier Wednesday on Twitter using British spellings.

Blue has always been our favourite colour and well never apologise for that.  JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue) April 10, 2019

The airline is a late entrant to transatlantic service. American, Delta, United, several foreign carriers and low-cost carriers including Norwegian Air are among the airlines offering flights between the East Coast and London. The airline says many carriers charge "obscene'' fares on the routes.

Delta Air Lines President Glen Hauenstein said on the airline's earnings conference call Wednesday that Delta has seen competition come and go in the transatlantic market.

Story continues

"This is not something new,'' he said.

He said the airline "feels very secure'' about its position in the market.



5 things to know about JetBlue Airways' new flights to London

1. You won't be able to fly JetBlue to Europe this summer, or next. JetBlue's flights to London won't begin until 2021. The airline needs to get FAA certification for long overwater flights, the same process Southwest Airlines had to complete before launching Hawaii service.

2. It's unclear which London airport(s) JetBlue will serve. The city's major airports are Heathrow and Gatwick. The airline said it is evaluating which airports it will serve. Its CEO plans to address "competition concerns and airport access challenges'' in a speech in London Thursday.

3. The airline is a long way from releasing information on flight schedules and introductory fares. But the airline calls competitors' transatlantic fares sky high and "obscene,'' so expect lower fares  at least to start.

4. Get ready to hear a lot about Mint. That's not a snack, it's JetBlue's oft-praised business class service, currently offered on cross-country flights. JetBlue promises a "reimagined'' Mint section on the London flights, with more lie-flat seats.

5. These are not JetBlue's first international routes. The airline launched Caribbean flights a few years after it was founded and now serves nearly two dozen countries in the Caribbean and Latin America.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: JetBlue Airways announces flights to London from New York, Boston: 5 things to know
By Ruth Anderah.

High court Judge Henrietta Wolayo has concluded hearing a case in which Deported MTN Chief Executive Officer Wim Joris Vanhellepute filed against Ugandan Government seeking orders to quash his deportation.

After hearing the application Justice Wolayo said she will deliver her ruling on June 7th of this year.

Vanhellepute in his suit before High Court in Kampala says, the said order labelled him as a desirous and prohibited immigrant yet he has been a law abiding citizen and has no trace of a criminal record for the 25 years he has stayed in Uganda.

Vanhellepute who was against his will repatriated to his native country Beligum

filed a suit against Attorney General through his lawyers from Birungi and company advocates demanding damages from government for his violated rights to a fair hearing , just treatment and illegal detention .

Court heard that his troubles began on January 29th 2019 when he was summoned by the Special Investigations Unit at Kireka and accused of communicating to the deported MTN staff, to which he was also asked to record a statement.

That he was then ordered to report back at SIU on February 14th 2019 but despite explanations to police that he needed to communicate to the deported staff because they had not yet officially handed over ofifce , he was simply detained, drove to Entebbe Airport , handed over to aviation security and at 11. 59 pm , was deported through an SN Brussels Flight.

Vanhellepute claims he was neither given an opportunity to explain himself to Minsiter Jeje Odongo before signing the Order that declared him unwanted in Uganda nor communicate to his Ugandan wife; Barbra Adoso and 2 children who are residents at Lubowa in Makindye.

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For investors, increase in profitability and industry-beating performance can be essential considerations in an investment. Below, I will examine Electromed, Inc.'s (NYSEMKT:ELMD) track record on a high level, to give you some insight into how the company has been performing against its long term trend and its industry peers.

See our latest analysis for Electromed

Was ELMD weak performance lately part of a long-term decline?

ELMD's trailing twelve-month earnings (from 31 December 2018) of US$1.9m has declined by -7.7% compared to the previous year.

Furthermore, this one-year growth rate has been lower than its average earnings growth rate over the past 5 years of 43%, indicating the rate at which ELMD is growing has slowed down. Why is this? Well, let's look at what's occurring with margins and whether the rest of the industry is experiencing the hit as well.

AMEX:ELMD Income Statement, April 12th 2019

In terms of returns from investment, Electromed has fallen short of achieving a 20% return on equity (ROE), recording 8.1% instead. However, its return on assets (ROA) of 7.0% exceeds the US Medical Equipment industry of 6.9%, indicating Electromed has used its assets more efficiently. Though, its return on capital (ROC), which also accounts for Electromeds debt level, has declined over the past 3 years from 14% to 13%.

What does this mean?

Though Electromed's past data is helpful, it is only one aspect of my investment thesis. Companies that are profitable, but have volatile earnings, can have many factors influencing its business. You should continue to research Electromed to get a more holistic view of the stock by looking at:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ELMDs future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for ELMDs outlook. Financial Health: Are ELMDs operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why weve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 31 December 2018. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



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Algiers (AFP) - Clashes erupted in Algiers on Friday as protestors tossed back tear gas grenades and attacked police vehicles after a huge demonstration demanding the departure of figures close to ousted leader Abdelaziz Bouteflika, AFP journalists said.

For the eighth Friday in a row, vast crowds marched through the Algerian capital pressing demands for Bouteflika's entourage to step down.

While the massive demonstration was largely calm, tensions were noticeably higher than at previous rallies.

Violence erupted at the end of the day when on edge of the rally several hundred youths resisted as police moved to break up the crowds outside the post office in central Algiers that has become an emblematic protest site.

It was the first time such severe clashes have taken place in Algiers since the marches began in February demanding an end to Bouteflika's 20-year rule.

Helmeted anti-riot police, dressed in black, managed to push back the protesters with tear gas and water cannon.

Young demonstrators responded by throwing stones and bottles, turning over large dumpsters to use as barricades.

At least one police car was set alight, while another was raided by protesters who climbed on it and smashed the windows.

- 'Troublemakers' blamed -

Several protestors were slightly hurt, injured by stones or in the ensuing scuffles, or suffered the effects of tear gas.

The police said 83 of its personnel were wounded, including four seriously hurt.

It put the violence down to "delinquents" infiltrating the crowds, and said 108 people had been arrested.

Other protestors stepped in to calm the tensions, with some kneeling in the streets, raising their hands in peace.

As the crowd dispersed, protestors blamed "troublemakers" for the violence, also criticising the toughening stance by police, who have reduced the area in which the demonstrations are allowed.

The crowds have rejected the holding of presidential elections on July 4, despite interim leader Abdelkader Bensalah pledging "transparent" polls.

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But the appointment of upper house speaker Bensalah as Algeria's first new president in 20 years has failed to meet the demands of demonstrators.

Although the 77-year-old is barred under the constitution from running in the upcoming election, protesters have pushed for the close Bouteflika ally to step down.

- 'Why vote?' -

Students and magistrates have called for renewed rallies and marches in the capital and other cities across the North African country.

"I'm not going to vote. What for?" asked Walid.

For the first time since the anti-Bouteflika protest movement was launched in mid-February, police vehicles and forces earlier tried to block off access to the post office.

But young protesters were undeterred.

"We will be out in large numbers, very large. They don't know what's coming. They won't be able to do anything against us," said Yassine, 23.

For Mahrez Bouich, a philosophy professor at the University of Bejaia, east of Algiers, "the July 4 election has already been rejected by the people, which also rejects Bensalah's nomination".

The demonstrators argue that elections cannot be free and fair if they are held under the same judicial framework and institutions as those of the Bouteflika regime.

Bensalah has received the implicit support from the army, a key powerbrokers whose chief General Ahmed Gaid Salah withdrew his backing for Bouteflika, prompting the president's resignation on April 2.

But the general has defended keeping in place Algeria's existing institutions and warned against the "unrealistic slogans" of protesters aiming to sweep away the whole ruling system.

Prime Minister Noureddine Bedoui, who served as interior minister until Bouteflika appointed him premier on March 11, has promised an independent electoral commission.

But he too has been a target of protesters' ire.

And candidates are not rushing to take part in a system rejected by the vast majority of Algerians.

The country's long-marginalised opposition parties do not appear to be gearing up for polls either, particularly if they cannot guarantee the election will be free and fair.
Puyo (Ecuador) (AFP) - In dugout canoes and on foot, dozens of people from an indigenous tribe have emerged from the Amazon rainforest in eastern Ecuador to protest against government plans to open up their lands to oil exploration.

With painted faces and wearing tufts of multicolored feathers, traditionally dressed Waorani people marched through the streets of the town of Puyo to the provincial courthouse, where a legal bid to halt the process began Thursday.

"They have come from far away to make their claim," said Nemonte Nenquimo, head of the Coordinating Council of the Waorani Nationality.

Some, she said, had been "walking for eight hours. Some came in canoes for about three days."

The marchers represented 16 Waorani communities scattered across the dense Amazonian jungle in the north of Ecuador's vast Pastaza province.

At stake is some 180,000 hectares of ancestral lands. Puyo, the provincial capital, is located on the eastern edge of Ecuador's Amazon basin.

- 'The jungle is our life' -

Under a large banner that read "The jungle is our life. No more oil," the procession marched to the courthouse for the start of a hearing in their suit taken to protect their constitutional rights to the land.

The Waoranis are seeking to prevent the Ministry of Energy and Non-Renewable Natural Resources, and the Ministry for the Environment to sell exploration licences to big oil companies.

It seeks to keep the jungle area of Pastaza free of all oil exploration activities, said Nenquimo.

The Waorani, who number around 3,000, also inhabit other Amazonian provinces. Nenquimo said they had come to Puyo to ensure the state respects their lands, where she said "they live freely, healthy and happy."

The lands are protected under Ecuador's constitution that establishes the "inalienable, unseizable and indivisible" rights of indigenous people "to maintain possession of their ancestral lands and obtain their free adjudication."

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Former social democrat president Rodrigo Borja handed over title to some one million hectares to indigenous communities during his 1988-1992 presidency. Crucially, however, the wealth in the subsoil is owned by the state.

The constitution also enshrines the need for prior consultation on any plans to exploit the underground resources, given the probable environmental and cultural impacts on tribal communities.

The state reached an agreement with the Waorani over oil exploration in 2012, but the tribe's leaders say they were duped.

"The state in 2012 violated our rights of free, prior and informed consultation. The government trying to sell our lands," said Waorani spokesman Oswando Nenquimo.

The Waorani people -- including two clans that remain in voluntary isolation and are enemies among themselves -- are seeking court protection to avoid an oil bidding process developing, until a new consultation process can be agreed.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hits back at Trump after he misquotes her in tweet defending him against impeachment Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Donald Trumps bluff after he misquoted her in a tweet defending himself against growing calls for his impeachment.The Democratic congresswoman told broadcaster ABC that the Democrats have a very real risk of losing the presidency to Donald Trump if the party does not have a candidate in 2020 who will fight for true transformational change in people's lives.In a tweet posted on Sunday, Mr Trump used an edited version of Ms Ocasio-Cortezs quote to hit back at those calling for his impeachment.'I think we have a very real risk of losing the Presidency to Donald Trump,'" tweeted Trump, citing Ms Ocasio-Cortez's quote. I agree, and that is the only reason they play the impeach card, which cannot be legally used!In response, the New York congresswoman tweeted: Mr. President, youre from Queens. You may fool the rest of the country, but I'll call your bluff any day of the week.Opening an impeachment inquiry is exactly what we must do when the President obstructs justice, advises witnesses to ignore legal subpoenas & more.She concluded her response with Bye and a waving-hand emoji.The back-and-forth between Mr Trump and Ms Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter comes as dozens of Democrats call to impeach the president, even as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has quashed the prospect of impeachment for now.In her interview with ABC's Jonathan Karl, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said Mr Trump's recent Oval Office meeting with George Stephanopoulos was the latest indication of why Mr Trump should be held accountable to the rule of law. During the meeting, the US president acknowledged he would consider accepting information on his political opponents from a foreign government.I think every day that passes, the pressure to impeach grows and I think that it's justifiable, I think the evidence continues to come in, she said.I believe that with the president now saying he is willing to break the law to win re-election, that transcends partisanship, it transcends party lines, and this is now about the rule of law in the United States of America.Her sentiment is reflective of a recent spike among Democratic voters pushing for impeachment. A poll released on Sunday from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal found that 48 per cent of Democratic voters back impeachment, up from 30 per cent last month. But the poll found that the nation remains largely divided on the issue, with Republican and independent voters opposing impeachment hearings.Mr Trump's tweet quoting the New York congresswoman came towards the end of a busy Sunday for him on Twitter. This saw him sending Father's Day wishes even to his worst and most vicious critics, of which there are fewer and fewer, sharing a video of lawmakers and pundits doubting his 2016 campaign and congratulating golfer Gary Woodland for winning the US Open.The US president also thanked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for inaugurating Trump Heights, Israel's newest town on the Golan Heights. The town is located in the same area that Trump recognised in March as being part of sovereign Israel.Ms Ocasio-Cortez also commented on the candidacy of former vice president Joe Biden on Sunday, saying that he still has some work to do to change his behaviour towards women.Asked whether she believes Mr Biden understands some of the concerns that have been raised regarding his behaviour, she said: I think that's something that he has to kind of show the electorate."You know, I think that it is an issue where there is a struggle; I'll be completely honest.When asked whether Mr Trump would be re-elected if the Democrats do not nominate someone who identifies as a true progressive, Ms Ocasio-Cortez warned against electing a president who advocated for half-measures, such as someone who would not fight for a $15 minimum wage, a tuition-free college initiative or advancing women's rights. She reiterated her concern of what that would mean for 2020.I think we have a very real risk of losing the presidency, she said.Washington Post
WASHINGTON  The revelation late Thursday that the White House tried multiple times to pressure immigration authorities into releasing migrants on the streets of sanctuary cities did not go over well with Democrats, who denounced the Trump administration as cruel.

The plan, reported by the Washington Post, was concocted to retaliate against Democrats and target sanctuary cities in liberal strongholds. It didn't come to fruition after pushback from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Post reported. ICE rejected the idea after at first thinking it was a joke, the Post reported.

Members of Congress and immigration advocates called the idea inhumane and called for those within President Donald Trump's administration to be held accountable.

"This reporting exposes yet a new level of inhumanity in this Administration," Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Ohio, wrote on Twitter. "Those who pursued this disgusting policy are beneath the dignity of the offices they hold and must be held to account."

More: A multimillion-dollar question: What's a 'sanctuary city?'

The White House did not immediately respond to inquires about the proposal. In a statement to the Post, the White House said, "This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion." The Post reported that the proposal sought to ease the bed shortage at immigration detention centers while also retaliating against sanctuary cities and "send a message to Democrats."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district was specifically targeted, according to the Post, noting that the White House wanted to transport migrants into her congressional district in San Francisco.

Ashley Etienne, a spokeswoman for Pelosi, called the proposal "despicable."

"The extent of this Administrations cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," Etienne said in a statement. "Using human beings  including little children  as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable, and in some cases, criminal."

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Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., agreed.

"Immigrants are people. Not pawns to deploy in the President's petty political fights," Quigley said on Twitter. "@realDonaldTrumps cruelty knows no limits."

Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro, who is running for president in 2020, reacted to the news live on CNN during a town hall.

"The cruelty of this administration never seems to end," Castro said, noting the list of Trump's immigration policies that have been criticized or challenged in court. "These folks want us to choose cruelty as a weapon against these people and against political opponents."

Actress and activist Alyssa Milano called the proposal "so sick and twisted." Other activists chimed in, also denouncing the idea.

"Trump is failing and flailing at the border, so hes looking to blame Democrats with a desperate and cynical ploy. Despicable," said Frank Sharry, president of Americas Voice, a progressive group that advocates for immigration-system reform. "This is what youd expect from an out-of-control 12-year-old bully, not a president of the United States."

Contributing: Daniel Gonzalez, The Arizona Republic.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'A new level of inhumanity': Democrats denounce White House idea to release migrants in sanctuary cities
If you're not sneezing, suffering from nasal congestion, and/or dealing with watery eyes, consider yourself lucky.

Spring has sprung, and allergies are rearing their drippy, dreary heads once again. And you're not just imagining things: More people are dealing with allergies that are more intense than ever. To boot, people who have never encountered seasonal allergies before are now facing allergies for the first time.

What's causing all this runny-nosed distress? "Climate change is making allergies worse," Amiinah Y. Kung, MD, an allergy and immunology specialist at Northwestern Medicine Central DuPage Hospital, told POPSUGARin a recent piece by Emily Shiffer on seasonal allergies. "Winters aren't as cold, so there isn't much of a freeze, and with seasonal warming beginning earlier, it makes Spring particularly bad."

Dr. Kung also explains that pollution in the air can heighten the intensity of your allergy symptoms. As always, it's best to consult with an allergist to work with an expert to determine the cause of your allergies and come up with a game plan to treat them.

WATCH: Whats Causing My Allergies? Grumpys Guide To Plants That Make You Sneeze

Hang in there. Happiness is around the corner, guys and girls. Or at least, we sure hope it's waiting for us around the end of this pollen-filled season.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Wednesday he'll sign legislation cutting off funding to "sanctuary cities" that don't cooperate with federal immigration authorities despite the Republican's objections that the measure could open the door to racial profiling.

The governor announced he would sign the measure , which would also prevent cities from blocking local law enforcement from asking about a person's citizenship or immigration status. Any cities found to be in violation would be ineligible to receive discretionary funds administered by the state.

Hutchinson, a former federal Homeland Security official during the George W. Bush presidency who oversaw border security efforts, had asked the bill's sponsors to require probable cause before law enforcement asked about citizenship and immigration status. He said that without the change there would be too much opportunity for racial profiling. Lawmakers rebuffed the request, but Hutchinson said the sponsor assured him he was willing to change the law in a special or regular session to include that language.

The governor said he opposes sanctuary cities and generally supports prohibiting such policies. Hutchinson, however, repeated his concern that the bill doesn't allow cities to give law enforcement guidance and would leave it up to officers about when to ask for proof of citizenship.

"This would lead to profiling and indiscriminate questioning of citizens of the United States based solely on the officer's determination that the citizen looks different than what the officer thinks a U.S. citizen should look like," Hutchinson wrote. "This is contrary to the fundamentals of our Constitution."

Hutchinson told reporters that concern wasn't enough to veto the bill since there aren't any sanctuary cities in Arkansas as defined by the bill.

"I don't see any change in policy going forward that would be disruptive to our society," he said.

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The bill's opponents said the measure opens the state and cities to lawsuits and that officials need to reassure the immigrant community that they're welcome.

"Our immigrant community is afraid, and they are so confused. They don't even know if they can come out of their houses right now," Mireya Reith, founding executive director of Arkansas United, an immigrant advocacy group.

The majority-Republican House earlier approved the bill by a 71-24 vote and sent it to Hutchinson's desk. Supporters have called it a preventive measure.

"This is not about racial profiling. This is about following the law," House Majority Leader Marcus Richmond, who voted for the bill, said on the floor.

Several Republican states have enacted measures prohibiting sanctuary policies, which have also been targeted by President Donald Trump.

Opponents have said the proposal would damage law enforcement's relationships with the immigrant community. Another opponent made a religious appeal to colleagues as she urged them to vote against the bill.

"We in this room are lawmakers and if we are lawmakers who claim Christ we can and should do the work of making just and fair laws that also embody the compassion of Christ and his command to welcome the stranger into our communities," Democratic Rep. Megan Godfrey said.

Under the bill, the state's attorney general would investigate complaints that a city had illegal sanctuary policies. If the city was found to be in violation, it would be ineligible for discretionary funds administered by the state.

Hutchinson announced his decision after signing two bills cheered by the immigrant community, including one that allows public colleges and universities to charge in-state tuition to certain students currently paying higher, out-of-state rates. That includes students in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, a program implemented during former President Barack Obama's administration allowing young immigrants living in the country illegally who were brought here as children to remain in the U.S. Another bill Hutchinson signed would allow DACA recipients to get nursing licenses.

"We're a welcoming state and we want to be able to continue that," Hutchinson said at the bill-signing ceremony. "I don't want anything to overshadow the good news by these two bills and that we'll continue to be a nation of law, but also a nation of compassion."

___

Follow Andrew DeMillo on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ademillo
Quito (AFP) - A collaborator of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested Thursday in Ecuador while trying to flee to Japan, the South American country's interior minister said.

Maria Paula Romo did not identify the person but told Sonorama radio he was very close to Assange, who was arrested Thursday in London on a US extradition request after spending seven years in the Ecuadoran embassy there.

Channel Teleamazonas identified him as Ola Bini, a software developer focused on privacy, security and cryptography, but did not name its source.

Earlier Thursday, the minister had linked the collaborator with alleged attempts to destabilize the government of President Lenin Moreno.

He "has been detained simply for investigation purposes," she said, adding he had taken foreign trips with former Ecuadoran foreign minister Ricardo Patino, who gave political asylum to Assange in 2012.

"We have sufficient evidence that he was collaborating in attempts to destabilize the government," she said.

Romo's announcement followed the arrest of Assange earlier Thursday.

British police moved in after Ecuador pulled its asylum for Assange and cancelled his citizenship, granted in 2012.

He had been living in the embassy, fearing arrest, but the Ecuadoran government says that Assange "repeatedly violated" the conditions of his protection.

The US Justice Department said Assange was being charged with a computer hacking conspiracy relating to his work with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in March 2010.
London (AFP) - Outside the Ecuadoran embassy in London, the police and the demonstrators have disappeared: and for the local community, at last after seven years, the Julian Assange circus has left town.

"My God, this nightmare is over, what a relief!" said Tony Knight, a financial consultant in his 60s who lives near the embassy, a two-storey apartment just behind the swanky Harrods emporium in the plush Knightsbridge district.

"This whole area, people who live here were getting upset about what was going on, because they had police presence, demonstrations," he told AFP.

"It wasn't every day but it was a situation that went on and on for seven years."

"Fortunately I live around the corner, because living right in front of the embassy must have been horrible."

Knight, who has lived in the area for more than 30 years, said it even had an effect on sale and rental prices for houses.

"Somebody told me that prices had gone down, they had to give a 30 percent rental discount because of this," he said, pointing to the four-storey, red-brick building which houses the embassies of Ecuador on the left and Colombia on the right, plus a dozen private apartments.

Both are reached through the main front door that WikiLeaks founder Assange was dragged out of in handcuffs on Thursday.

Up the short flight of stairs, inside, a security guard sits in a small marble-floored, dark-walled reception.

After nearly seven years, Ecuador revoked Assange's asylum and allowed the British police inside to arrest the Australian 47-year-old for jumping bail by entering the embassy in 2012.

The United States also wants to extradite him on hacking charges.

When he was dragged out into Hans Crescent and bundled into a waiting police van, the Colombian embassy staff could not use the main entrance and had to come and go through a back door.

Apart from that, the presence of Assange in the neighbouring flat hardly bothered them at all.

Story continues

"It has not really been a nuisance," said one employee, who did not wish to be named.

"It was just like having a neighbour that you never see."

- Dirty protest allegation -

Outside, however, traces of the numerous protests and rallies, some featuring celebrities such as the veteran British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, still remain on the other side of the street.

On the piled-up metal barricades once used by police to contain the demonstrators hangs a sign with a picture of the former computer hacker and a large white banner reading "Free Assange".

The WikiLeaks head had been granted asylum by president Rafael Correa, but his successor, President Lenin Moreno, was less warm towards his residency in the London mission, denouncing his behaviour as provocative and disrespectful.

"This man with his faeces smeared on the walls of the embassy," Moreno said -- an allegation Assange's lawyer denied.

A handful of news crews and reporters were waiting around Friday just in case anything further happened, for example if a cleaning squad were to go in to muck out the tiny room that had been Assange's den of seven years.

Staff at the Ecuadoran embassy declined to speak to the press.

Outside the Houses of Parliament, Ambassador Jaime Marchan told AFP on Thursday that Assange's rights had been respected but his stay had been terminated due to his "continuing and repeated breakage of his obligations under the American treaties on asylum.

"This was a termination of long wait for this to be concluded in the framework of international law," he said.

"He didn't comply with any of his obligations and that obliged Ecuador to put into effect last October a special protocol of living together in an embassy... he continued to break that protocol."

Right behind the television cameras still visible in Hans Crescent, a 50-year-old woman scrubbed the steps of a grand-looking private residence.

"At the beginning there was a lot of police here every day, and that went on for some years," said the Polish housekeeper, who did not want to give her name.

"They were keeping an eye on him, making sure he didn't sneak out.

"But after some time there wasn't any sense for that anymore: where was he going to go anyway? He was like in prison already."

She looked across to the miniscule balcony where Assange occasionally went out to speak to the gathered crowds.

The housekeeper was surprised that a dwindling number of news crews were still keeping a vigil outside.

"Tomorrow it will probably be back to normal," she said.
By Ritah Kemigisa.

The Ugandan government and other African states has been asked to learn lessons from what has taken place in Sudan.

This after the army yesterday ousted President Omar Al-Bashir and took over government ending his 30 year rule.

The army has since announced a three months state of emergency and a two-year transitional period followed by elections.

Now the leader of opposition in parliament Betty Aol Ochan says what has happened in Sudan shows the strength of people power.

She however says Uganda should not allow such a thing to happen much as the situation could be worsening.

Related Stories..

Sudans President Omar al-Bashir ousted and arrested by the military
It's here: The largest "Game of Thrones" exhibit to date has opened in Northern Ireland.

"Game of Thrones: The Touring Exhibition" made its grand debut in Belfast this week with the addition of two new exhibits created exclusively for the Northern Ireland stop: the Winterfell Crypt, guarded by stone direwolves featuring six of the Stark ancestors and the ancient dragon skulls.

The touring exhibit recreates the fictional, mystical GoT universe with costumes, props and settings from all seven seasons of the hit HBO series. Exhibits include the wintry landscapes of the North; treelined pathway of the Kingsroad; the home of the Night's Watch, Castle Black; and the showstopping centerpiece, the Iron Throne Room.

The highly anticipated eighth and final season bows April 14.

The exhibition kicked off its worldwide tour in Barcelona in 2017, before moving to Paris and Oberhausen, Germany.

The Belfast show marks the exhibit's largest display yet.

Along with the touring exhibit, the franchise will also be extended into a series of legacy projects that include a "Game of Thrones Studio Tour" set to open next spring in Northern Ireland. The 110,000 square foot Linen Mill Studios is the original filming location for many of the iconic scenes and will be turned into an interactive experience for fans.

For nearly a decade, the dramatic landscapes, coastlines and castles of Northern Ireland have doubled as the fictional setting for Westeros.

"Game of Thrones: The Touring Exhibition" is in Belfast until September 1.
A womans body found in the Dominican Republic has been confirmed to be that of a New York tourist who disappeared along with her boyfriend while on vacation two weeks ago, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State confirmed to PEOPLE.

Portia Ravenelle, 32, died April 4, the spokesperson said, more than a week after she and boyfriend Orlando Moore, 43, were scheduled to return home from their vacation March 27, according to NBC New York.

We offer our sincerest condolences to the family on their loss, the statement read. We are closely monitoring local authorities investigation into the cause of death. We stand ready to provide all appropriate consular assistance. The U.S. Department of State and our embassies and consulates abroad have no greater responsibility than the protection of U.S. citizens overseas.

Dominican Republic national police chief spokesman Col. Frank Felix Duran Mejia said in a statement Tuesday that authorities had found two bodies they believed to be Ravenelle and Moore, according to a translation by CBS.

The statement reportedly said police believe the couple crashed in a rental car en route to the airport.

Portia Ravenelle, Orlando Moore

RELATED: N.Y. Couple Goes Missing on Vacation in Dominican Republic: Something Strange Has Happened

Ravenelles body was found unconscious on the side of a road, and she was taken to the hospital, where she died days later, police said at a Spanish-language press conference translated by NBC New York.

Meanwhile, the body believed to be Moore was found in a car in the ocean on March 31, according to CBS. A tattoo on the body matches a tattoo on Moore.

RELATED VIDEO: Missing American-Canadian Couple Found Dead in Belize

CNN reported authorities have said there is no sign of foul play.

The Dominican Republics National Police did not immediately respond to PEOPLEs request for comment.

A State Department official told PEOPLE on Tuesday, We are aware of reports regarding a U.S. couple missing in the Dominican Republic. The welfare and safety of U.S. citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the Department of State.

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The official added, Due to privacy considerations, we have no further information to offer at this time.

RELATED: Police Believe Theyve Found Bodies of New York Couple Missing in Dominican Republic

Moores aunt told the Post on Monday she was very worried, but holding out hope that couple might still be alive.

But as time goes by, we start thinking that something strange has happened, she said.

Relatives told the outlet the couple never checked out of their hotel room, and never returned their rental car. Both their phones were off.
New York (AFP) - The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced Thursday it would meet with American commercial airlines that use the Boeing 737 MAX, which has been grounded worldwide since mid-March following two accidents that killed 346 people.

The meeting, scheduled to take place on Friday in Washington, comes as Boeing faces intense scrutiny after 157 people died in an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash on March 10 -- the second deadly crash involving the aircraft in five months.

"The purpose of this meeting is for the FAA to gather facts, information, and individual views to further understand their views as FAA decides what needs to be done before returning the aircraft to service," the agency said in a statement.

Security representatives from American Airlines, Southwest and United will be at the meeting, as well as representatives from their pilot unions.

American and Southwest use the 737 MAX 8, while United has 737 MAX 9 aircraft in its fleet.

The FAA recently formed an action committee with NASA and international civil aviation authorities to help certify the fix to the MCAS anti-stall system Boeing developed specifically for the 737 MAX.

The MCAS is believed to have been a key factor in both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 people in October.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenberg said Thursday that the changes the aircraft manufacturer is working on will make the 737 MAX "even safer by preventing erroneous angle of attack sensor readings" from triggering the MCAS.

Speaking in public for the first time since the Ethiopian Airlines crash, Muilenberg told a conference in Dallas, Texas that Boeing has conducted 96 test flights of the modified 737 MAX and the pilots have taken part in more than 159 hours of tests.

He added that he had been on board one test flight in Seattle and that the software update "functioned as designed."

"In these challenging times, I am even more confident we will come through this even stronger," he said in conclusion, adding he "(regrets) the impact the grounding has had on all of our airline customers and their passengers."

Muilenberg is expected to answer questions from the financial community on April 24 as part of the release of Boeing's first quarter results.
NEW YORK  The American Museum of Natural History refused to say Friday whether it will cancel an event honoring Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right president of Brazil who has spent the opening days of his term stripping protections from the Amazon rainforest and the indigenous people who live in it.

The May 14 event will be a private gala organized by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, a business group that plans to honor Bolsonaro as the Brazilian of the Year. The group organized and announced the event last month, but the museums decision to host it drew criticism this week from activists who said it should be ashamed.

The museum, which calls itself one of the worlds preeminent scientific and cultural institutions, responded to the criticism Thursday, saying on Twitter that the event had been booked before Bolsonaro was confirmed as a guest and that it was deeply concerned about his attendance.

We are exploring our options, it said in a tweet.

The external, private event at which the current President of Brazil is to be honored was booked at the Museum before the honoree was secured. We are deeply concerned, and we are exploring our options.  American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH) April 12, 2019

In a follow-up statement sent to HuffPost on Friday, the museum did not clarify whether those options included canceling the event honoring Bolsonaro. But it expanded on the Twitter post to say that the event does not reflect its stance on protecting the Amazon rainforest.

We are deeply concerned, and the event does not in any way reflect the Museums position that there is an urgent need to conserve the Amazon Rainforest, which has such profound implications for biological diversity, indigenous communities, climate change, and the future health of our planet, the statement said.

The museum reiterated that it was exploring its options on the event, which is sponsored by a host of multinational corporations and financial institutions, including Bank of America, UBS, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase and Santander.

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During his 2018 campaign for president, Bolsonaro pledged to pull Brazil out of the Paris climate agreement and promised to open the Amazon up to mining and agricultural interests, in part by removing official protections from indigenous lands and other areas of the rainforest. As president, he has appointed a foreign minister who believes climate change is a Marxist plot and stripped key agencies that govern the Amazon of their power. One of his first acts as president was to move the bodies that oversee forest protections and indigenous land rights under the agricultural ministry, which is heavily influenced by Brazils strong agri-business and mining industries.

Bolsonaro this week floated plans to overhaul Brazils National Council of the Environment in a manner that could further reduce oversight of the Amazon and other parts of the environment.

Indigenous leaders have warned that his policies could lead to their genocide, while climate experts worldwide have said that Bolsonaros policies that threaten the Amazon could have global ramifications for the fight against climate change.

Alessandro Molon, the Brazilian opposition leader in the lower house of the legislature, said the event in New York encouraged the presidents contempt for [the] value and richnesses of our nation at home.

It is quite ironic, Molon told HuffPost via WhatsApp.

Twitter users bombarded the museums Thursday tweet with replies calling on it to cancel the event, and Brazilian activist groups in New York and Washington spent Friday afternoon drafting a petition that will similarly call on the museum to abandon plans to host Bolsonaro.

The petition reads in part:

Jair Bolsonaro and his government are enacting a strong anti-scientific agenda in Brazil, curtailing research funding, threatening public education, and reducing environmental regulations to an unprecedented level in Brazilian history. By accepting to host the event, AMNH contradicts its principles and its role as one of the worlds leading scientific institutions.

The event showed that the museum is suffering from a detachment from reality on the Amazon and Bolsonaros policies toward it, said Natalia Campos, an activist from the New York-based group Defend Democracy in Brazil.

While the museums leaders support environmentalism and climate change awareness on paper and in exhibitions and statements, Campos said, they dont really know what it means for the populations that are being affected.

Their statements are empty, she said. Theyre not really engaging in the reality of how Bolsonaros policies affect peoples lives.

Defend Democracy in Brazil and other activist groups plan to target the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce and the businesses that agreed to sponsor this years event.

All of this is destroying the economy and democracy of the largest South American country for nothing more than sheer profit, Campos said. It is destroying natural resources, and it is destroying lives.

Bolsonaro is scheduled to attend the May event, which would mark his second visit to the United States since he took control of Brazil at the start of this year. In March, he met with President Donald Trump in Washington, where he also met with prominent Brazilian and American anti-globalist advisers, including one who has called climate change a hoax. Bolsonaro also has a long history of making racist, sexist and homophobic remarks, and has previously praised the murderous military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985.

Anthony Torres, an organizer for queer and climate issues in New York City, said Bolsonaros support for anti-LGBTQ violence and deforestation makes the event doubly egregious.

Theres no place for an institution like the Natural History Museum to be showcasing an autocrat, he said.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose office makes him an ex-officio member of the museums board of trustees, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the event. But de Blasio called Bolsonaro a very dangerous human being during an interview with WNYC radio on Friday.

Hes dangerous not just because of his overt racism and homophobia, but because he is, unfortunately, the person with the most ability to be able to impact what happens in the Amazon going forward, de Blasio said.

The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the opposition to its event or the museums statement.

The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869, pitches itself as a cultural center meant to honor and protect the natural world and human interaction with it. But as the focus on climate change has intensified, so has scrutiny over the museums ties to prominent climate deniers, and the brouhaha over the gala honoring the homophobic, climate-denying Brazilian president came at a fortuitous time for one New York City grassroots group.

Revolting Lesbians, which last year led protests aimed at pressuring the museum to cut ties with billionaire Rebekah Mercer, had already planned a second annual rally on Saturday to demand again that the museum boot the Republican donor and climate denier from its board. Mercer has donated more than $4 million to the museum.

Now Anne Maguire, a spokeswoman for the group, said the protest will take aim at Bolsonaro, too.

Its outrageous, she said. But its a symptom of the museums leadership. Theyll accept anyones money, they dont care whats behind the money and theyve been doing this with impunity for a while now.

This was updated with comment from Molon.

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Related Coverage

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
DETROIT  Check yourself, public health officials say, as the number of cases in a Michigan measles outbreak climbed Friday by five more people to 39 cases  the largest statewide outbreak since 1991.

Even if you think you've been vaccinated for the measles, ask your doctor to check your immunization record to be sure.

If you have proof you received two doses of the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine (MMR), you should still ask to have the antibodies in your blood checked, especially if you've been to one of the growing number of exposure sites.

Even if you had measles as a child or were born prior to 1957 and are considered immune by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, double check. And again, that's especially true if you've been to a known exposure site.

There's a chance you're not as safe as you think you are.

"All these people walking around are vulnerable and don't know it," said Dr. Janet Snider, a Bingham Farms, Michigan, pediatrician. "We're learning in the trenches because we don't usually see measles," which was pronounced eradicated in the United States in 2000 but is surging right now in pockets of the country.

"All those suppositions we have aren't holding up," she said. "It's like you think your basement is waterproof if you live in the desert. But then all of a sudden, there's a flash flood, and then you really learn if it is."

For many people born after 1957 but before 1989, they may have gotten only got one dose of the MMR vaccine, which might not be enough to protect them in an outbreak situation. The CDC changed its recommendations for the MMR vaccine in 1989, urging people to get two shots rather than just one, said Leigh-Anne Stafford, a spokeswoman for the Oakland County Health Division.

"For a lot of people who were born after 1957 but prior to 1989-1990, there was only one dose that was recommended at that time," Stafford said. "A lot of people might feel they are up to date on their vaccines because their parents may say, 'Oh, youre up to date. We vaccinated you.' But they're not.

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"So thats why we keep talking about knowing your status. Are there two doses documented somewhere with a doctor? Or Is it listed in MICR (Michigan Care Improvement Registry), which is the Michigan registration database for immunizations? If you dont, then get vaccinated."

More: Is my child safe from the measles? Everything parents should know

More: I'm fighting New York's measles outbreak from the inside, but the public needs to help

Two doses of the MMR vaccine are believed to offer people up to 97% protection against measles, which is highly contagious and is spread by person-to-person contact and through the air, most often when an infected person coughs or sneezes.

Of the 39 confirmed Michigan cases, those infected with measles range in age from 8 months old to 63 years old. At least three of them had two documented doses of the MMR vaccine, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. But at press time, the MDHHS did not know how many were unvaccinated or could not document their immunizations.

"The measles vaccine is safe and extremely effective," Snider said. "Two doses confer 97% immunity to the population. But that still means that 3% of people may not respond to the vaccine."

That means that if 100 vaccinated people are exposed to measles, three may catch it, she said. "But if 100 unvaccinated people are exposed to measles, 90 would likely contract it.

More: Do 'the right thing': People who can't get vaccinated during a measles outbreak rely on the healthy

"People of all ages (should) check their vaccination status and make sure that they have had two documented MMRs after 1 year old, or they have had a blood test to confirm their immunity to measles.

"This local outbreak was started by a traveler in his mid-40s who assumed that he was vaccinated as a child, who was exposed to measles in New York weeks before arriving in our area.

"He, like the many people in his age group exposed here, found out the hard way that the recommendations from those years are inadequate in the face of an actual measles outbreak. Some people born before 1957, although supposedly 'presumed immune,' also found they lacked immunity."

One such person is Oakland County Commissioner Helaine Zack, whose 18th District includes Oak Park, a community hit hard by the measles outbreak.

Zack said she had measles as a child, but when her blood was drawn to check for immunity in 2006, doctors discovered she had no measles antibodies.

"They gave me an MMR (vaccination) then," she said. "Then, later, I had a physical, and my antibodies were not as high as the health department would like them to be given the measles outbreak, so I went and had a second MMR last week."

She and her husband have been to several of the exposure sites in Oakland County. So he got an MMR vaccine, too.

Registered Nurse Erika Blaskay (left) prepares a dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine for Amber Jones, 32, of Detroit on Friday, April 6, 2019 at the Oakland County Health Division's Southfield clinic.

Of the people with confirmed cases of measles in Michigan this year, 38 are from Oakland County and one is from Wayne County. Exposure sites are largely in southern Oakland County and include grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, health care facilities, a post office, Derby Middle School, dozens of religious institutions and houses of worship. Exposures occurred at a bank in Macomb County as well as government offices and a food manufacturer in Detroit.

Symptoms of measles usually begin 7-14 days after exposure, but can appear up to 21 days after exposure and may include:

High fever (may spike to over 104F)

Cough

Runny nose

Red, watery eyes (conjunctivitis)

Tiny white spots on the inner cheeks, gums, and roof of the mouth (Koplik spots) 2-3 days after symptoms begin

A rash that is red, raised, blotchy; usually starts on face, spreads to trunk, arms, and legs 3-5 days after symptoms begin.

If symptoms develop, call your doctor or emergency room before arriving so they can take precautions to prevent exposure to others.

Follow Kristen Jordan Shamus on Twitter: @kristenshamus

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Born between 1957-1989? You may not be protected from measles outbreak
By Guy Faulconbridge, Kylie MacLellan and Andrew MacAskill LONDON (Reuters) - The United Kingdom now has until Oct. 31 to leave the European Union but the British political elite is still squabbling over how, when or if to Brexit. Some EU officials think the United Kingdom could change its mind - a spectacular reversal that would illustrate the bloc's fortitude and keep one of Europe's top powers inside the club. Eurosceptic supporters of Brexit say the divorce is under threat from what they cast as an undemocratic plot that risks undermining political stability in the United Kingdom. Below are possible scenarios: 1) NO BREXIT: The fresh delay gives time for the opponents of the divorce to push for a revocation of the formal Article 50 divorce notification, or for a referendum - either via parliament or an election. Prime Minister Theresa May, who voted for remaining the EU in 2016, has repeatedly ruled out either revocation or another referendum. But if she is toppled, a successor might be tempted to call an election. The outcome of any election is uncertain and while both main parties' manifestos support Brexit, the opposition Labour Party backs a "confirmatory referendum" on any deal. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who voted against membership in 1975 and gave only reluctant backing to the 2016 campaign to remain in the EU, has signaled only lukewarm backing for another referendum. His party, though, is clear it wants one. May's finance minister, Philip Hammond, said on Friday it was very likely that the idea of a second Brexit referendum would again be put to parliament at some point, though the government remained opposed to any new plebiscite. Parliament has been in deadlock over the terms of Brexit, having rejected May's withdrawal plan three times since January. When over the past month lawmakers twice held a series of votes on the various Brexit options aimed at breaking the stalemate, a second referendum was the most popular option, although it fell short of reaching a majority. On April 1, a proposal for another referendum drew the support of 280 lawmakers - 40 seats short of a majority. A week earlier, it had the backing of 268 lawmakers. If parliament agreed to a second referendum, Britain would probably have to ask for an extension beyond the end of October to allow enough time for a campaign. Yet in Brussels, that idea is not outrageous. More delays are on the cards, depending on developments in Britain, according to EU officials and diplomats. Three of the four former British prime ministers still alive - John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown - have said a referendum is the way to resolve the crisis. The case for a second referendum could be enhanced if europhile candidates - mainly from center-left parties - do well in the May 23-26 European Parliament elections. To get another referendum, the British parliament would have to approve new legislation and settle on a question. Britains electoral regulator would then ideally need six months to test the question with the public and then grant a period for the campaign to take place, a spokesman said. Both sides of the Brexit divide are preparing for the possibility of another referendum. It is far from clear how the United Kingdom would vote and even if it did vote to remain, Brexit supporters would demand a third and decisive vote. Goldman Sachs puts a 40 percent probability on a no Brexit. 2) HER KINGDOM FOR A DEAL: May still hopes parliament will approve the deal she completed with the EU in November, though it has gone down to repeated, heavy defeat in parliament since then. For a graphic of the recent votes in parliament, please see: https://tmsnrt.rs/2CI8MwU May promised to resign if her deal is approved, but that moved neither eurosceptic nor pro-EU opponents to support her, so she is now warning that Brexit may never happen. If talks with the Labour Party ultimately collapse, May has said she will accept the will of parliament on what to do next. Votes in the fractious House of Commons have shown that none of the alternatives to May's agreement - such as leaving with no deal, a referendum or a much closer post-Brexit economic relationship - can yet muster a majority. One option that could win over Labour lawmakers is to have a post-Brexit customs union with the EU and to align with many of the rules of the bloc's single market. Brexiteers and many supporters of membership both say such an option is foolish as it would leave the United Kingdom with no say over rules it would have to abide by. The EU would be happy to do that and could do it fast. Such a deal, Brexiteers say, would be "Brexit In Name Only". Goldman Sachs puts a 50 percent probability on the ratification of a modified deal. 3) ELECTION: May's deal fails again, parliament cannot agree on what to do and May, or a successor, calls an election. Britain's next national election is not due to be held until 2022, but there are two ways an earlier vote can be called: a) Two-thirds of parliament's 650 lawmakers vote in favor of holding an election. b) If a motion of no confidence in the government is passed by a simple majority of lawmakers and no party can succeed in winning the confidence of the House of Commons over the next 14 days, an election is triggered. 4) NO DEAL: The chaos worsens in London and a hardline, Brexit-backing leader ultimately goes for a no-deal exit. This is the nightmare scenario for many businesses. By stripping the world's fifth largest economy of its complex foreign trade relationships at one stroke, it would spook financial markets and dislocate supply chains across Europe and beyond. The political and social impact is unclear. No-deal means there would be no transition so the exit would be abrupt. Britain is a member of the World Trade Organization so tariffs and other terms governing its trade with the EU would be set under solely WTO rules. Goldman puts a 10 percent probability on a no-deal exit. (Additional reporting by Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels and Helen Reid in London; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
Edinburgh (AFP) - With Britain tearing its hair out over the Brexit confusion, Scotland's government is biding its time as it prepares for the ultimate prize -- independence.

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, a strong opponent of Brexit, has said she will set out her thinking on independence plans later this month.

The issue presents voters and leaders north of the border with another source of dispute, something that this week's decision to delay Britain's departure from the European Union has done little to resolve.

The government is "absolutely committed to an independent Scotland in the European Union," Scottish Minister for Europe, Migration and International Development Ben Macpherson told AFP while out campaigning in Leith, east of Edinburgh.

But even independence backers are divided over Brexit -- five years on from Scotland's own referendum in which 55 percent opted to remain a part of Britain.

Retiree Phil, enjoying the sunshine in a central Edinburgh park, said he wanted "complete independence".

Phil said Sturgeon's Scottish National Party had "done a lot of good but I don't agree with them on Brexit".

He said he would even consider voting for Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party -- much to the consternation of companion Lisa.

"I'm Scottish first, then European," she said.

- 'Sick of all the Brexit' -

Some pro-EU voters who wanted to stay in the United Kingdom in the 2014 referendum are now in favour of independence, but the issue risks pushing away those who want a clean break from both London and Brussels.

Former SNP deputy leader Jim Fairlie said the government's policy of independence within the EU was an "oxymoron", and that tying the two issues together meant "they're not going to get the votes of traditional nationalists like me."

"All the SNP has to do to keep the independence movement together is to decouple it from membership of the EU," he added.

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But over 60 percent of Scots voted to stay in the EU, and some are being won over to the independence cause.

"I know quite a lot of people... who voted to stay with the UK... who now say because they're sick of all the Brexit, they've changed their minds," said local resident Mary Cryan amid the hubbub of Edinburgh's Royal Mile, in the shadow of the city's centuries-old castle.

The shifting blocs have largely cancelled themselves out so far, with polling stuck at around 55 percent versus 45 percent in favour of staying in the United Kingdom, according to polling expert John Curtice, from the University of Strathclyde.

But independence supporters think that the chaos in Westminster could shift the balance.

"It certainly makes the democratic case easier because it really does throw into stark relief this democratic deficit problem," Kevin Pringle, a former director of strategic communications for the SNP, told AFP in his Edinburgh office.

- 'Concentrate on the day job' -

Independence supporters still face a stiff challenge in winning over more conservative voters, who wanted to stay in both the EU and the UK.

"The SNP should concentrate on the day job rather than looking at independence," 50-year-old public servant Craig told AFP in the city's Scots Guards Club, as pipers and other folk musicians played in the background.

Complicating the task for the SNP, Brexit has become something of a moving target since the terms of the withdrawal and the date are far from certain.

"It's a bit like a mirage in the desert," Pringle said.

Key to the calculations will be whether Britain will remain in the European customs union after Brexit or not, which would take any volatile "hard border" debate out of a future independence campaign.

Campaigners must also soon must also find a united position on a raft of economic issues, including what currency an independent Scotland would adopt.

Pringle added: "It's a challenge that can be achieved but I don't think anybody underestimates the scale of it".
New updates in DNA technology helped to convict serial burglar Peter Hall of a crime he committed in 1986 (SWNS)

A serial burglar has been convicted of raping a woman at knifepoint more than 30 years ago - thanks to advancements in DNA testing.

Peter Hall, now 58, committed the horrific attack on a 19-year-old girl on October 12, 1986.

Hall had stalked and grabbed his victim from behind as she left a cinema.

He held a knife to her throat and marched her to a secluded area in Beckenham, south east London.

An investigation was launched by police at the time - but despite extensive inquiries nobody could was brought to justice.

But clothing containing DNA was stored at the time of the horrific crime, which provided crucial evidence in solving the cold case.

A warrant was issued for Hall's after it emerged he had been arrested in Belgium for theft (SWNS)

In 2004, Hall was arrested for outstanding burglary offences at Stansted Airport in Essex and had his DNA taken.

A routine review of the rape case was undertaken in 2011, leading to a definite match.

DNA samples available were retested, using technology that had advanced over time.

From there, scientists established a match probability of one in a billion between the DNA and semen found at the rape scene.

A warrant was issued for Hall's arrest. In 2016 it emerged he had been arrested in Belgium for theft.

Read more on Yahoo News UK:

Mother jailed for killing crying baby after police use 3D scanners to detect injuries

Jealous ex who murdered graduate former girlfriend, 24, after they broke up is jailed for life

Shameless care worker jailed after defrauding vulnerable victims out of 1m to fund lavish lifestyle

He was arrested and extradited back to London in December 2018, following a European Arrest Warrant.

The attacker denied involvement in the rape - but the overwhelming evidence forced him to admit the attack in court.

Hall, of no fixed abode, was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on Friday at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

He was also sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment for three burglaries from 2004, to be served concurrently.

Detective Constable Bhulesh Pala said: This was a dreadful attack on a young woman simply making her way home from the cinema.

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---Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK---

Hall grabbed her from behind and forced at knifepoint into a grassy area before subjecting her to a terrifying sexual assault.

I would like to pay tribute to the victim who was incredibly patient and courageous throughout an investigation which spanned over 30 years.

I hope today's sentencing gives her some measure of comfort and closure.

I also hope this case gives other victims of rape and sexual offences the confidence to report such crimes to the police.

Although this offence took place 32 years ago, this case demonstrates that we are committed to bringing offenders to justice, irrespective of how much time has passed since the crime was committed.
WASHINGTON  As Pete Buttigieg prepares to officially kick off his presidential campaign Sunday, new polls in two important states show the previously little-known mayor from South Bend, Indiana, doing better than far more established Democrats.

He ranked behind only former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in a Monmouth University Poll of registered Democratic voters in Iowa.

That was the same order of preference in a New Hampshire poll by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center.

"The emerging dark horse in this race may be Pete Buttigieg, who has gone from a virtual unknown to vault to 11% support, trailing only Biden and Sanders and ahead of (Elizabeth) Warren," said Neil Levesque, executive director of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

His rise is driven by a 33-percent increase in name recognition, almost all of it favorable, Levesque said.

Likewise, in Iowa, Buttigieg had one of the best ratios of positive and negative opinions about him among the 24 Democratic presidential hopefuls the Monmouth University Poll tested.

"Buttigieg's current standing in the horse race is impressive given that nearly half of likely Democratic caucus-goers have yet to form an opinion of him," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute. "He could move up if he is able to maintain that rating as he introduces himself to more voters."

Biden topped the poll with 27% support. Sanders got 16%. Buttigieg was next with 9% choosing him as their top choice in the survey of 351 Iowa voters who are likely to attend the 2020 Democratic presidential caucuses  the first balloting contest for the nomination.

Warren and California Sen. Kamala Harris lagged Buttigieg with 7% support. Beto O'Rourke, whose campaign has been seen by some as having been eclipsed by Buttigieg, was the choice of 6%.

2020 Democrats: Who is running for president in 2020? An interactive guide

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South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg poses for photos with Erica Woolley of Nevada after Buttigieg spoke at a meet-and-greet at Madhouse Coffee on April 8, 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Buttigieg has also gotten a recent boost from influential Democrats.

Democratic megadonor Susie Tompkins Buell, a Democratic megadonor, held a fundraiser for Buttigieg in San Francisco Thursday.

How has this 37-year old Rhodes scholar war veteran and openly gay South Bend mayor risen from being largely under the radar to raising $7 million in the first quarter of his presidential campaign? Wed like to know! she wrote in an email invitation obtained by Politico.

Buell, who raised money for Hillary Clintons 2008 and in 2016 presidential bids, had attended California Sen. Kamala Harris' presidential campaign kickoff in Oakland in January.

In Massachusetts, another donor-rich state, party insider Steve Grossman is backing Buttigieg despite his previous encouragement for Warren.

"I think (Buttigieg) is a MIdwestern, down-to-earth, smart, savvy, in-touch candidate who will continue to grow," Grossman told The Boston Globe.

Grossman is one of the five former leaders of the Democratic National Committee who endorsed Buttigieg when he ran for DNC chair in 2017.

Although Buttigieg had the most support from previous chairs for DNC job, he withdrew from the race when it was clear he was not going to beat Tom Perez for the job.

Grossman told the Globe that he had backed Buttigieg because he saw him as someone "who can help revolutionize a party that is in desperate need of being revolutionized."

Buttigieg vs. Pence: Tensions flare in 'long and complicated' relationship between Pete Buttigieg and Mike Pence

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Buttigieg outpolling most of Democratic field in early states
What happened?

Nigel Farage launched The Brexit Party today in response to the governments failure to deliver the UKs withdrawal from the EU. Mr Farage will lead the new party into the European Parliamentary elections next month, unless Theresa May manages to agree a Brexit deal before then. At the launch event in Coventry, Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of Eurosceptic MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, was announced as the partys first candidate. Mr Farage has already vowed to take votes from tarnished UKIP, who he says have been taken over by the far right.

Do they have any chance of success?

The former UKIP leader said the Brexit Party had an impressive list of 70 candidates ready to stand in the European elections including Mrs Rees-Mogg, who has stood for the Tories in the past. Mr Farage told the press conference his new party had already received 750,000 online over 10 days, made up of small individual donations of up to 500.

The Brexit Partys strategy will be to drum up support from Conservative voters incensed over Theresa Mays failure to deliver an exit from the EU. They will also try and subsume the UKIP vote, especially those who fear the Eurosceptic party has lurched even further to the right under current leader Gerard Batten. Given the Brexiteer fury over Mrs Mays decision to delay the deadline of departure until October, the Brexit Party may well enjoy a surge in support. In the last European elections in 2014 Ukip won 24 seats, showing there is an appetite for Eurosceptic MEPs.

However we might not have European elections at all. Theresa May said this week there will be another Brexit deal vote soon, and possibly another round of indicative votes if she fails to win MPs support again. If the Prime Minister does eventually get a deal through Parliament before May, the UK will leave the EU days later and will not take part in the voting.

Read the full story here:

Jacob Rees-Moggs sister to stand for new Brexit Party (PA Ready News)

Fag in mouth, pint in hand, Nigel Farage is ready to ride his Brexit Party to abject failure (Independent)

Nigel Farage returns to haunt Tories as he reveals defectors to Brexit Party (Evening Standard)

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After Nigel Farage launched The Brexit Party on Friday in Coventry, talk has turned to whether the former UKIP leaders latest political venture will be successful. Mr Farage has already vowed to take votes from tarnished UKIP, who he says have been taken over by the far right. Do you believe the UKs newest political party will be popular? Read the full story and have your say below:

Jealous ex who murdered former girlfriend jailed for life

A man found guilty of killing his ex girlfriend in a Leeds flat has been jailed for life. Joe Atkinson, 25, was sentenced for a minimum of 15 years at Leeds Crown Court on Friday, for the murder of 24-year-old Poppy Devey Waterhouse. Atkinson pleaded guilty to murdering Miss Waterhouse when he appeared at court last week. Miss Waterhouses body was found at the flat they shared in at The Avenue, Leeds, on December 14 2018. A post-mortem found she died from head and neck trauma. (Yahoo News UK)

UK citizens who go to foreign terror hotspots could face 10 years in jail

British citizens who go to live in foreign terror hotspots could face up to 10 years in prison under new laws that come into force on Friday. The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 creates a criminal offence of entering or remaining in a designated area overseas. Ministers unveiled the measure last year as part of efforts to boost authorities ability to tackle the threat from so-called foreign fighters. An individual found to have entered or remained in a designated area could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. (PA Ready News UK)

Drone footage reveals the destruction in Palu city, which suffered heavy damage from last weeks earthquake and tsunami. (Sky News)

4 billion

The government has halted all emergency planning for a no-deal Brexit despite committing billions to preparations, according to reports. The government had also moved thousands of civil servants (around 6,000 according to the Guardian) away from their normal jobs to prepare for the possibility that the UK would leave the European Union without a deal.

The chancellor Phillip Hammond defended the spending and said the 4bn is not just for a no-deal Brexit  much of that money would need to be spent anyway to replace EU systems that weve been using up to now. (Sky News) (The Independent)
Spencer Platt/Getty

Celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti has been indicted by a federal grand jury in California on 36 counts, including fraud, tax dodging, and embezzlement.

The latest charges come about two weeks after federal prosecutors in New York and California accused Avenatti of trying to extort millions from Nike, Inc., and of stealing from clients and forging tax returns to defraud a bank.

Avenatti has denied the charges, tweeting on Thursday, I intend to fully fight all charges and plead NOT GUILTY. I look forward to the entire truth being known as opposed to a one-sided version meant to sideline me.

The new indictment names five clients whom Avenatti allegedly scammedand they include cases The Daily Beast has previously reported on, from a disabled man and a YouTube beauty mogul to a client who has accused Avenatti of running his business like a Ponzi Scheme.

Client 1

In January 2015, Avenatti negotiated a $4 million settlement on behalf of Client 1, Geoffrey Johnson, a paraplegic man who sued Los Angeles County over his emotional and physical injuries from a stay in jail.

Johnsons story is tragic. According to his now-settled lawsuit, Los Angeles police encountered him at 6:30 a.m. on April 24, 2011, when he was completely naked, praying in the middle of the street outside his apartment building.

The lawsuit alleges Johnson was suicidal when transported to a local hospital. His intake form, according to the civil suit, said he believed that the only way to escape the plot of others to kill him was to commit suicide.

Johnson would be transferred from hospital to jail cell, after he allegedly lunged at a doctor. He was taken to the Twin Towers Correctional Facility and placed in a cell with a violent prisoner, despite his father and sister warning the jail of his mental illness and suicidal thoughts.

After being released and then re-arrested, Johnson was kept in a cell where inmates were known to spit and throw feces. Johnson attempted to hang himself but landed on his head, resulting in a permanent disability from a spinal cord injury.

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According to the indictment, Avenatti falsely represented to Client 1 that the settlement agreement had to remain confidential, and that Los Angeles County couldnt pay the $4 million in one lump sum. Avenatti also allegedly said the county needed to approve a Special Needs Trust for Johnson before he could receive the funds.

Yet Avenatti received millions from the county and failed to disclose the payment to Johnson, prosecutors allege.

From Jan. 26, 2015 to March 30, 2015, Avenatti transferred $3.12 million of Johnsons money to an Eagan Avenatti account, before transferring substantial portions to an account for his law firm Avenatti & Associates, then to other bank accounts controlled by Avenatti, including his personal bank account and accounts associated with GB Auto.

By July 6, 2015, the indictment states, Avenatti had drained all of the settlement proceeds out of Johnsons client-trust account, using much of it to pay his own personal expenses.

Avenatti then made 69 payments of $1,000 to $1,900totaling at least $124,000to Johnson from July 2015 to March 2019, prosecutors say. The lawyer also paid assisted living facilities for Johnsons rent, and falsely represented to Johnson that these payments were advances on the settlement owed to him.

In 2017, Johnson told Avenatti he wanted to purchase his own residence, and Avenatti allegedly agreed to find him a real estate broker.

According to prosecutors, Avenatti promised Johnson hed received the settlement proceeds to buy a house, but after Johnson was in escrow on the purchase, Avenatti falsely informed him there was no money, because the county still hadnt approved the Special Needs Trust.

Avenatti also caused Johnson to lose his Social Security benefits, prosecutors say.

In November 2018, Avenatti informed Johnson he would help him provide documentation to the Social Security Administration, which was evaluating Johnsons eligibility for Supplemental Security Income benefits.

Knowing full well that the requested information could lead to inquiries that could reveal that defendant Avenatti had embezzled [Johnsons] portion of the settlement proceeds, defendant Avenatti failed to provide the requested information to SSA, which resulted in [Johnsons] SSI benefits being discontinued in February 2019, the indictment alleges.

Last month, facing questions over Johnsons settlement at a judgment-debtor exam, Avenatti falsely told Johnson that the county had finally approved the Special Needs Trust and Johnson would receive his settlement.

Avenatti then had Johnson sign a document claiming he was satisfied with Avenattis representation of him. Avenatti claimed the signature was necessary to effectuate the settlement agreement, the indictment states.

Client 2

Avenatti negotiated a settlement for the unidentified Client 2 on Jan. 7, 2017, with Individual 1 agreeing to make an initial payment of $2.75 million by Jan. 28. An additional payment of $250,000 was due Nov. 1, 2020 under the agreement.

Prosecutors say Avenatti, who was owed 33 percent of the total $3 million, didnt provide a copy of the settlement agreement to the client.

Instead, Avenatti falsely represented that Individual 1 would make an initial lump-sum payment that would go to Eagan Avenattis fees. The individual would then make 96 monthly payments over the next eight years, Avenatti allegedly told his client.

Still, Avenatti allegedly concealed the $2.75 million settlement, and transferred $2.5 million of it to the attorney-client trust account for another law firm. The same day, prosecutors allege, Avenatti had this law firm transfer the money to Honda Aircraft Company, LLC, so Avenatti could purchase a private jet through his company, Passport 420. (The remaining $250,000 was transferred from an EA account to an A&A account.)

To appease the client, Avenatti made 11 payments totaling $194,000 to the client from March 2017 to June 2018, the indictment states.

After that, Avenatti stopped paying the client, claiming Individual 1 was not complying with the settlement agreement.

On March 24, 2019, the client met Avenatti at his Los Angeles residence, where Avenatti claimed the client would soon receive a payment to make up for the missed monthly paymentsmonthly payments to which Individual 1 never agreed.

Client 3

In December 2017, Avenatti negotiated a $1.6 million settlement on behalf of a client, which appears to be Gregory Barela, who previously accused Avenatti of stealing his payout and running his firm like a Ponzi scheme.

In May 2015, Barela filed a lawsuit against a Colorado-based company over an intellectual property dispute. The civil complaint said Barela was the inventor of a product which can be summarized as a paving system for paving or flooring.

Under the settlement agreement, Barela was owed $1.6 million by January 10, 2018, followed by three payments of $100,000 by Jan. 10 of 2019, 2020, and 2021, according to the indictment. Avenatti was owed $760,000 in attorneys fees, or 40 percent of the total $1.9 million payout.

During a Dec. 28, 2017 meeting at Eagan Avenattis offices, Avenatti gave Barela an altered copy of the settlement, which forged a new payment deadline of March 10, 2018.

Meanwhile, Avenatti pocketed Barelas money and used $1.59 million of it to pay his own expenses related to his coffee company, Global Baristas, prosecutors say.

From March 2018 through November 2018, court papers allege, Avenatti lied to Barela, saying the company hadnt paid the settlement. Avenatti claimed he was working on obtaining the money Barela was owed.

In April 2018, Avenatti began providing Barela multiple payments totaling $130,000calling them advances on the unpaid $1.6 million settlement.

Client 4 and 5

In September 2017, Avenatti negotiated a Common Stock Repurchase Agreement with a company on behalf of Client 4 and Client 5. Based on the payment deadlines and figures listed in the indictment, these clients appear to be famous beauty vlogger Michelle Phan and a business associate, Long Tran.

As The Daily Beast reported, Phan launched her own makeup brand, EM Cosmetics, in 2013. Four years later, she announced she was leaving Ipsy, a beauty subscription service she co-founded, and that shed acquire EM from the company.

According to prosecutors, an unnamed company agreed to repurchase Phans shares for about $27.47 million, followed by additional shares for about $8.14 million. The total repurchase amount was about $35.62 million, court papers state.

On Sept. 18, 2017, the company wired $27.41 million to Avenattis client-trust account. About $2.79 million was designated for Avenattis attorneys fees, which was 7.5 percent of the total payout.

Yet in March 2018, Avenatti withheld Phans $8.14 million payment.

Between March 15, 2018 and May 4, 2018, Avenatti used about $4 million of Phans money for his own purposesincluding using $2.82 million to pay his debts to the Internal Revenue Service. The feds claim Avenatti also transferred the money to bank accounts associated with his other companies: Global Baristas, Avenatti & Associates and Passport 420.

And to prevent Johnson from discovering that Avenatti embezzled his $4 million payment from Los Angeles County, Avenatti used Phans money to provide Johnson with about $1,900, prosecutors say. Avenatti also used Phans settlement to pay Client 2 about $34,000, the indictment alleges.

From March to May 2018, Avenatti allegedly failed to disclose to Phan and Tran that hed used about $4 million of Phans money for his own purposes. He told them hed give them their money at a later date and that to do so, he needed to visit the bank to fill out paperwork for wire transfers.

On May 4, 2018, Avenatti paid Phan $4 million and $146,288, authorities say. But Avenatti allegedly failed to transfer the remainder of the $8.14 million to Phan.

From May 4 to June 4, 2018, Avenatti and another unidentified attorney told Phan and Tran that the entire $8.14 million had already been transferred to Phan in three separate wire transfers. According to the indictment, Avenatti falsely presented a wire transfer document document that supposedly showed a second $4 million wire transfer to Phan.

Instead, Avenatti had already used the remaining $4 million for his own purposes, prosecutors say, and the wire transfer document he showed Phan related to the first wire transfer she already received on May 4, 2018.

After Avenattis arrest last month, Phan posted on Twitter: When karma finally comes through. You never disappoint. She followed up with, Im so grateful.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here
Today we'll evaluate New Century Group Hong Kong Limited (HKG:234) to determine whether it could have potential as an investment idea. Specifically, we'll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), since that will give us an insight into how efficiently the business can generate profits from the capital it requires.

Firstly, we'll go over how we calculate ROCE. Then we'll compare its ROCE to similar companies. Then we'll determine how its current liabilities are affecting its ROCE.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

ROCE measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. Generally speaking a higher ROCE is better. In brief, it is a useful tool, but it is not without drawbacks. Author Edwin Whiting says to be careful when comparing the ROCE of different businesses, since 'No two businesses are exactly alike.'

So, How Do We Calculate ROCE?

The formula for calculating the return on capital employed is:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for New Century Group Hong Kong:

0.056 = HK$97m  (HK$1.9b - HK$196m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2018.)

So, New Century Group Hong Kong has an ROCE of 5.6%.

View our latest analysis for New Century Group Hong Kong

Is New Century Group Hong Kong's ROCE Good?

One way to assess ROCE is to compare similar companies. Using our data, New Century Group Hong Kong's ROCE appears to be around the 5.7% average of the Hospitality industry. Aside from the industry comparison, New Century Group Hong Kong's ROCE is mediocre in absolute terms, considering the risk of investing in stocks versus the safety of a bank account. Readers may find more attractive investment prospects elsewhere.

New Century Group Hong Kong reported an ROCE of 5.6% -- better than 3 years ago, when the company didn't make a profit. That implies the business has been improving.

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SEHK:234 Past Revenue and Net Income, April 12th 2019

When considering ROCE, bear in mind that it reflects the past and does not necessarily predict the future. Companies in cyclical industries can be difficult to understand using ROCE, as returns typically look high during boom times, and low during busts. ROCE is only a point-in-time measure. If New Century Group Hong Kong is cyclical, it could make sense to check out this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What Are Current Liabilities, And How Do They Affect New Century Group Hong Kong's ROCE?

Liabilities, such as supplier bills and bank overdrafts, are referred to as current liabilities if they need to be paid within 12 months. Due to the way the ROCE equation works, having large bills due in the near term can make it look as though a company has less capital employed, and thus a higher ROCE than usual. To counteract this, we check if a company has high current liabilities, relative to its total assets.

New Century Group Hong Kong has total liabilities of HK$196m and total assets of HK$1.9b. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 10% of its total assets. This is a modest level of current liabilities, which would only have a small effect on ROCE.

Our Take On New Century Group Hong Kong's ROCE

If New Century Group Hong Kong continues to earn an uninspiring ROCE, there may be better places to invest. You might be able to find a better investment than New Century Group Hong Kong. If you want a selection of possible winners, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a P/E below 20 (but have proven they can grow earnings).

I will like New Century Group Hong Kong better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will meet leaders from eastern and central Europe in Croatia on Friday to talk business, fresh from a key summit with EU where he pledged opening up his country's economy.

The coastal city of Dubrovnik is hosting the eighth annual "16+1 cooperation" -- an economic platform for Beijing's investments in 11 eastern European Union states and five Western Balkan countries.

The grouping has been eyed cautiously in western European capitals as an attempt to "divide and rule" the bloc, a goal Li has denied.

In an article published in Croatian dailies ahead of the gathering, the Chinese premier tried to paint the summit in a cheery light:

"When we put 17 multicolour countries together we get a colour richer than a rainbow," he wrote in the article titled "Multicolour countries, spacious future".

"If we build a rainbow bridge through Asia and Europe, we will achieve a nice future cooperation."

Eastern Europe is a core component of Beijing's vast "Belt and Road" project, valued at up to $1 trillion and aimed at constructing land and sea links to allow Chinese exports to flow westward.

China has previously announced a $10 billion credit line and $3 billion investment fund for the 16-country region.

So far its record on follow-through is mixed, with some major construction projects under way while other promised investments have been delayed or scrapped.

For instance, building on one of 16+1's flag-ship projects -- a railway from Belgrade to Budapest -- has just started in Serbia but is held up by snags in Hungary, ultimately making scant progress five years after it was announced.

- 'Pilot project' -

This year's summit comes just three days after a top EU-China meeting, attended by Li, held as Brussels demands more balanced economic ties with a country it recently labelled as a "systemic rival".

In Brussels on Tuesday the Asian giant pledged to push further to open its economy and deepen ties with the bloc.

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EU Council president Donald Tusk hailed Beijing's new commitments as a "breakthrough" with both sides committed to globalisation and pursuing international rules.

Brussels and Beijing in a document called for "broader and more facilitated, non-discriminatory market access," in wording the Europeans saw as a Chinese concession.

The EU is increasingly unhappy that markets in Europe are wide open to Chinese companies, while the equivalent is not the case in China.

While the EU's 15-trillion-euro ($16.9 trillion) market gives it significant economic clout, the bloc struggles to maintain unity among its 28 members on issues of foreign policy, allowing China to pursue one-on-one deals with individual countries.

Some EU powers, such as France and Germany, are growing increasingly concerned with China's Belt and Road ambitions, especially after populist-led Italy recently became the first G7 member to join the scheme.

In 2018, China was the second largest destination for European exports.

The Chinese trade balance is largely in surplus with the bloc at 184 billion euros, according to Brussels figures.

During the first visit of a Chinese premier to Croatia, Li on Thursday visited the site where a Chinese firm started construction on a 280-million-euro bridge on the Adriatic coast.

It is the first significant Chinese project in Croatia and funded by the EU.

"This bridge is a pilot project for both '16+1 cooperation' and cooperation between China and EU," Li said while visiting the bridge's site on Thursday.

About 1,000 businessmen including some 400 Chinese will participate at a business forum held alongside the summit in Dubrovnik.
By Brenda Goh SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's largest stock images provider, Visual China Group, shut its website and apologized on Friday after it falsely claimed copyright of images such as the first photo of a black hole and China's national flag. The company, which partners with U.S. photo agency Getty Images, said in a post on its official Weibo account the incident revealed its weak management and that it was cooperating with authorities investigating the matter. Shares in the company slumped by the maximum 10 percent allowed. The topic "Visual China apologises" was among the most-read items on China's Twitter-like Weibo platform on Friday, with over 250 million views. According to its website, Visual China has over 40 million editorial images and 1.25 million videos. Criticism of the company mounted earlier this week after Visual China put its logo over the first photo of a black hole, which was the work of a team of 200 scientists known as the Event Horizon Telescope project. The company said it had obtained a non-exclusive editing license from the project for media use. Other users also questioned why the company was asking for payment for the use of images like China's flag and logos of Chinese companies such as Baidu. The Tianjin city branch of China's internet watchdog said on Weibo that it had met the company's leaders on Thursday evening and ordered them to rectify its website. Visual China acknowledged that its website had issues with non-compliant pictures which it said had been provided by contractors, and pledged to "learn from these lessons". IP RIGHTS Political control of the internet has tightened under President Xi Jinping, with demands that companies tighten oversight of "harmful information" which could range from vulgar to politically sensitive content. The country's leaders have also pledged to do more to protect intellectual property rights amid complaints by the United States and other key trading partners about the theft of such assets. Elliot Papageorgiou, the Shanghai-based head of the IP practice at law firm Clyde & Co., said Visual China's use of the black hole image was embarrassing due to the photo's high profile. "It comes at an inconvenient time because China is trying hard to get recognition for some positive steps it is taking to protect intellectual property," he said. (Reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Additional Reporting by Michael Martina and Yawen Chen in Beijing; Editing by Stephen Coates)
We often see insiders buying up shares in companies that perform well over the long term. The flip side of that is that there are more than a few examples of insiders dumping stock prior to a period of weak performance. So we'll take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in Cincinnati Bell Inc. (NYSE:CBB).

What Is Insider Selling?

It's quite normal to see company insiders, such as board members, trading in company stock, from time to time. However, most countries require that the company discloses such transactions to the market.

We don't think shareholders should simply follow insider transactions. But equally, we would consider it foolish to ignore insider transactions altogether. As Peter Lynch said, 'insiders might sell their shares for any number of reasons, but they buy them for only one: they think the price will rise.'

Check out our latest analysis for Cincinnati Bell

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At Cincinnati Bell

The Chairman of the Board, Phillip Cox, made the biggest insider sale in the last 12 months. That single transaction was for US$184k worth of shares at a price of US$12.60 each. While insider selling is a negative, to us, it is more negative if the shares are sold at a lower price. It's of some comfort that this sale was conducted at a price well above the current share price, which is US$10.16. So it may not tell us anything about how insiders feel about the current share price. Phillip Cox was the only individual insider to sell shares in the last twelve months.

In the last twelve months insiders purchased 3614 shares for US$46k. On the other hand they divested 14597 shares, for US$184k. The chart below shows insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

NYSE:CBB Recent Insider Trading, April 12th 2019

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

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Does Cincinnati Bell Boast High Insider Ownership?

I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. From our data, it seems that Cincinnati Bell insiders own 1.5% of the company, worth about US$7.5m. We do generally prefer see higher levels of insider ownership.

What Might The Insider Transactions At Cincinnati Bell Tell Us?

There haven't been any insider transactions in the last three months -- that doesn't mean much. The insider transactions at Cincinnati Bell are not inspiring us to buy. We also note that, as far as we can see, insider ownership is fairly low, compared to other companies. If you are like me, you may want to think about whether this company will grow or shrink. Luckily, you can check this free report showing analyst forecasts for its future.

But note: Cincinnati Bell may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - A refugee fund set up by the World Bank, the United Nations and the Islamic Development Bank on Friday approved a $31.5 million grant for Colombia to aid Venezuelan migrants and refugees.

The Global Concessional Financing Facility grant provides budget support to Colombia as it works to facilitate access to jobs and basic social services to improve the migrants' lives, the World Bank said. The grant will aid the communities hosting the migrants.

"These non-reimbursable resources will help finance the significant fiscal effort Colombia is making to host and help the Venezuelan migrants in the best way possible."

The concessional funding is part of a $750 million development policy financing package being prepared by the World Bank to support Colombia's fiscal sustainability, economic competitiveness and migration challenges.

Specific policy measures include efforts to regularize the status of over 260,000 migrants.

The World Bank estimates that about 3.7 million people have left Venezuela in recent years, and more than 1.2 million migrants and refugees from Venezuela are now living in Colombia.

The influx of migrants and refugees to Colombia has put a severe strain on the countrys economy and social services such as healthcare. The annual cost of hosting the migrants, not including infrastructure and facilities, is currently estimated at around 0.4 percent of GDP, according to the Bank.

"The massive and rapid migration from Venezuela presents an unprecedented humanitarian and development challenge for the region today," World Bank Latin America vice president Axel van Trotsenburg, said in a statement. "We need to act now to ensure that the migrants from Venezuela and their hosts get the support they need."

The Global Concessional Financing Facility was launched in 2016 as a response to large numbers of refugees fleeing Syria to Jordan and Lebanon. In two years, the facility has approved $500 million in grants that have unlocked $2.5 billion in concessional financing for development projects aiming to improve the lives of refugees and their host communities.

The fund said contributions for the Colombian grant came from Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and Britain. (Reporting by David Lawder; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
Washington (AFP) - Colombia will receive a $31.5 million grant to help deal with the flood of refugees from neighboring Venezuela, the World Bank announced Friday.

Colombia has received about a third of 3.7 million refugees who have fled the worsening crisis in Venezuela in recent years -- the most dramatic and fastest exodus in the world after war-torn Syria, according to the United Nations.

This influx of migrants and refugees to has put a severe strain on Colombia's economy and social services such as health care. The World Bank estimates the annual cost of hosting the migrants, not including infrastructure and facilities, at around 0.4 percent of GDP.

The grant comes from a multinational donor program known as Global Concessional Financing Facility.

The resources "will help finance the significant fiscal effort Colombia is making to host and help the Venezuelan migrants in the best way possible," Colombia's Finance Minister Alberto Carrasquilla said in a statement.

The grant will support policies and programs aimed at improving the lives of refugees and the communities hosting them throughout the country, the World Bank said.

In addition to the grant, the World Bank is working on a $750 million financing package for Colombia to address a series of issues, including competitiveness of the economy and migration.

The GCFF was launched in 2016 by the World Bank, the United Nations and the Islamic Development Bank to provide concessional funding to middle-income countries hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees, such as Jordan and Lebanon.

The funding mobilized for Colombia through the GCFF includes contributions from Canada, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Kingdom.
Former FBI director James Comey took issue Thursday with Attorney General William Barrs recent claim that U.S. intelligence agencies spied on the Trump campaign.

Comey, addressing a cybersecurity conference in California, drew a distinction between spying and the authorized surveillance that was conducted on the Trump campaign.

I have no idea what hes talking about so its hard for me to comment, Comey said. When I hear that kind of language used, its concerning, because the FBI and the Department of Justice conduct court-ordered electronic surveillance. I have never thought of that as spying.

Comey was responding to Barrs Wednesday testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, in which the attorney general surprised Democratic lawmakers by stating that the surveillance conducted on the Trump campaign in order to identify possible links to Russia qualified as spying.

I think spying did occur, Barr told the panel. But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I am not suggesting that it wasnt adequately predicated. . . . I am not suggesting those rules were violated, but I think it is important to look at that. And I am not talking about the FBI necessarily, but intelligence agencies more broadly.

I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal  its a big deal, he added.

Congressional Democrats have chastised Barr for insinuating that the surveillance conducted on the Trump campaign, which relied in part on a FISA warrant supported by the unsubstantiated Steele dossier, was in some way politically motivated, as many of their Republican colleagues have long alleged. They contend that the counterintelligence investigation, which also relied on confidential informants, was an appropriate response to the threat of Russian election-meddling.

Comey on Thursday acknowledged that, as a two-time attorney general with decades of government experience, Barr is entitled to the benefit of the doubt, but expressed surprise that he would accuse U.S. intelligence agencies of spying on a presidential campaign.

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If the attorney general has come to the belief that that should be called spying, wow, Comey said. Thats going to require a whole lot of conversations inside the Department of Justice. But I dont know what he meant.

Barr told lawmakers Wednesday that he has formed a team to investigate whether the counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign was tainted by bias. The team will likely examine the degree to which FBI and Department of Justice officials misled the FISA court about the origins of the Steele dossier, which was commissioned by a firm contracted by the Clinton campaign, in order to obtain a warrant to surveil Carter Page. Page had left the Trump campaign by the time the surveillance began, but the warrant likely entitled authorities to surveil his prior communications with fellow Trump campaign officials.

More from National Review
While some investors are already well versed in financial metrics (hat tip), this article is for those who would like to learn about Return On Equity (ROE) and why it is important. To keep the lesson grounded in practicality, we'll use ROE to better understand Comvita Limited (NZSE:CVT).

Comvita has a ROE of 1.0%, based on the last twelve months. That means that for every NZ$1 worth of shareholders' equity, it generated NZ$0.0096 in profit.

View our latest analysis for Comvita

How Do You Calculate ROE?

The formula for return on equity is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit  Shareholders' Equity

Or for Comvita:

1.0% = NZ$1.8m  NZ$187m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2018.)

Most know that net profit is the total earnings after all expenses, but the concept of shareholders' equity is a little more complicated. It is the capital paid in by shareholders, plus any retained earnings. The easiest way to calculate shareholders' equity is to subtract the company's total liabilities from the total assets.

What Does Return On Equity Mean?

ROE measures a company's profitability against the profit it retains, and any outside investments. The 'return' is the yearly profit. A higher profit will lead to a higher ROE. So, all else being equal, a high ROE is better than a low one. That means ROE can be used to compare two businesses.

Does Comvita Have A Good ROE?

Arguably the easiest way to assess company's ROE is to compare it with the average in its industry. Importantly, this is far from a perfect measure, because companies differ significantly within the same industry classification. As is clear from the image below, Comvita has a lower ROE than the average (5.9%) in the Personal Products industry.

NZSE:CVT Past Revenue and Net Income, April 11th 2019

That certainly isn't ideal. We prefer it when the ROE of a company is above the industry average, but it's not the be-all and end-all if it is lower. Nonetheless, it could be useful to double-check if insiders have sold shares recently.

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How Does Debt Impact ROE?

Companies usually need to invest money to grow their profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the case of the first and second options, the ROE will reflect this use of cash, for growth. In the latter case, the debt used for growth will improve returns, but won't affect the total equity. Thus the use of debt can improve ROE, albeit along with extra risk in the case of stormy weather, metaphorically speaking.

Comvita's Debt And Its 1.0% ROE

Although Comvita does use debt, its debt to equity ratio of 0.60 is still low. Its ROE is certainly on the low side, and since it already uses debt, we're not too excited about the company. Careful use of debt to boost returns is often very good for shareholders. However, it could reduce the company's ability to take advantage of future opportunities.

The Bottom Line On ROE

Return on equity is useful for comparing the quality of different businesses. A company that can achieve a high return on equity without debt could be considered a high quality business. If two companies have the same ROE, then I would generally prefer the one with less debt.

But when a business is high quality, the market often bids it up to a price that reflects this. The rate at which profits are likely to grow, relative to the expectations of profit growth reflected in the current price, must be considered, too. So you might want to check this FREE visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.

But note: Comvita may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Many investors are still learning about the various metrics that can be useful when analysing a stock. This article is for those who would like to learn about Return On Equity (ROE). By way of learning-by-doing, we'll look at ROE to gain a better understanding of Digital Realty Trust, Inc. (NYSE:DLR).

Digital Realty Trust has a ROE of 3.1%, based on the last twelve months. Another way to think of that is that for every $1 worth of equity in the company, it was able to earn $0.031.

Check out our latest analysis for Digital Realty Trust

How Do You Calculate ROE?

The formula for return on equity is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit  Shareholders' Equity

Or for Digital Realty Trust:

3.1% = US$250m  US$11b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2018.)

Most readers would understand what net profit is, but its worth explaining the concept of shareholders equity. It is all the money paid into the company from shareholders, plus any earnings retained. Shareholders' equity can be calculated by subtracting the total liabilities of the company from the total assets of the company.

What Does Return On Equity Mean?

ROE measures a company's profitability against the profit it retains, and any outside investments. The 'return' is the yearly profit. A higher profit will lead to a higher ROE. So, as a general rule, a high ROE is a good thing. That means it can be interesting to compare the ROE of different companies.

Does Digital Realty Trust Have A Good Return On Equity?

By comparing a company's ROE with its industry average, we can get a quick measure of how good it is. The limitation of this approach is that some companies are quite different from others, even within the same industry classification. If you look at the image below, you can see Digital Realty Trust has a lower ROE than the average (6.7%) in the REITs industry classification.

NYSE:DLR Past Revenue and Net Income, April 12th 2019

That's not what we like to see. It is better when the ROE is above industry average, but a low one doesn't necessarily mean the business is overpriced. Nonetheless, it could be useful to double-check if insiders have sold shares recently.

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The Importance Of Debt To Return On Equity

Virtually all companies need money to invest in the business, to grow profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the case of the first and second options, the ROE will reflect this use of cash, for growth. In the latter case, the use of debt will improve the returns, but will not change the equity. In this manner the use of debt will boost ROE, even though the core economics of the business stay the same.

Combining Digital Realty Trust's Debt And Its 3.1% Return On Equity

Digital Realty Trust clearly uses a significant amount of debt to boost returns, as it has a debt to equity ratio of 1.04. Its ROE is quite low, even with the use of significant debt; that's not a good result, in my opinion. Debt increases risk and reduces options for the company in the future, so you generally want to see some good returns from using it.

The Key Takeaway

Return on equity is useful for comparing the quality of different businesses. Companies that can achieve high returns on equity without too much debt are generally of good quality. All else being equal, a higher ROE is better.

Having said that, while ROE is a useful indicator of business quality, you'll have to look at a whole range of factors to determine the right price to buy a stock. The rate at which profits are likely to grow, relative to the expectations of profit growth reflected in the current price, must be considered, too. So I think it may be worth checking this free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
This week the House passed the Taxpayer First Act of 2019 with bipartisan support, which included a peculiar item: a provision that outlaws the IRS from making taxes easier for millions of Americans.

In many countries, the tax-collecting arm of the government makes things fairly easy, providing pre-populated tax forms and other simplifying features. The IRS, for example, gets forms from employers and knows what should be in the boxes you fill out. For years, TurboTaxs parent company Intuit and H&R Block have lobbied against legislation that would make taxes easier, which might make it less likely for consumers to use those companies tax software to file their taxes.

Right now, the IRS Free File Program is the only way the government provides tax preparation software, through a partnership with private industry companies like Intuit. The agreement is set to expire in October 2020.

As Intuits 10K itself states: If the Free File Program were to be terminated and the IRS were to enter the software development and return preparation space, the federal government would become a publicly funded direct competitor of the U.S. tax services industry and of Intuit.

The bill, co-sponsored by Reps. John Lewis (D-GA) and Mike Kelly (R-PA), is likely to become law, according to Fundstrat Washington Strategist Tom Block  its bipartisan and led by the venerable Lewis. However, Block told Yahoo Finance, the Senate does not always like passing narrow tax bills and sometimes holds them so its possible it could be held up.

This photo made on Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019, in Zelienople, Pa., shows mulitiple forms printed from the Internal Revenue Service web page that are used for 2018 U.S. federal tax returns. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)

The bill does not contain explicit language outlawing the IRS from simplifying tax preparation, but instead uses language to refer to a memorandum that is already in place, said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for tax and accounting at Wolters Kluwer.

Essentially, the bill would turn this memorandum and agreement into a law, instead of a looser agreement or a temporary agreement.

Congress is seeking to formalize the agreement [for the IRS] to not provide free online tax prep software in this statute, said the Tax Policy Centers Mark Mazur. (The Tax Policy Center does not take a position on the bill.)

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This has happened in the past, but on a temporary basis.

In prior years, Congress has put similar language in the annual Appropriations bills for the IRS, he said. Obviously, this separate statute would be a more permanent prohibition, since the Appropriations language only applies to the year for which the funds are being appropriated.

Mazur noted that its not at all clear as to whether an IRS-created tax software solution would be any better than what exists now  or whether it would be cost effective. But, he added, the proposed law would not give the IRS even a chance to find out.

In any event, its big for tax preparers like Intuit and H&R Block that handle millions of peoples taxes that might be otherwise simplified and doable without professional help. With the passage of this bill, the major risk factor of government competition would be gone.

[The bill] does benefit paid preparers and software firms, said Mazur.

-

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumer issues, personal finance, retail, airlines, and more. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.
Naftalan (Azerbaijan) (AFP) - Immersed up to her neck in a dark viscous liquid, Sulfiya smiles in delight, confident that the fetid substance will cure her painful condition.

Sulfiya, a Russian woman in her 60s, has travelled to Azerbaijan's north-western city of Naftalan in the hope that crude oil baths at a local sanatorium will end her years of suffering from polyarthritis, a disease affecting the joints.

"This is so pleasant," she enthuses, despite the reek of engine oil.

Her naked dip in oil heated to just above body temperature lasts 10 minutes, after which an attendant scrapes the brown oil off her skin and sends her into a shower.

The native of Russia's Tatarstan region said she and her friends "have long dreamed of coming" for treatment in Naftalan.

The petroleum spa resort in the oil-rich Caucasus country is a draw for visitors despite its proximity to Nagorny Karabakh, a region disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in a long-running armed conflict.

After 10 days of bathing in crude oil Sulfiya says she now feels "much better" and has even reduced her medication for the polyarthritis that she has had for 12 years.

"It is a gift from God," agrees 48-year-old Rufat, an Azerbaijani journalist and opposition party member who is undergoing treatment in the sanatorium called Sehirli, or "magic" in Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijan's vast oil deposits were discovered in the mid-19th century, making what was at the time part of the Russian Empire one of the first places in the world to start commercial oil production.

Oil exports to markets all over the world are the largest sector of Azerbaijan's economy, but the crude that comes from subsoil reservoirs in Naftalan is not suitable for commercial use.

Instead the local oil is used to treat muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynaecological and neurological problems.

According to a legend, which spa staff readily tell clients, the healing properties of Naftalan's "miraculous oil" were discovered by accident when a camel left to die near a pool of oil was cured.

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The small town of Naftalan some 300 kilometres (185 miles) from the capital Baku became a popular health resort for Soviet citizens in the 1920s.

"In the past, when there weren't any hotels or sanatoriums, people would come to Naftalan and stay with locals," said one of the doctors at the Sehirli sanatorium, Fabil Azizov, sitting in her office under a portrait of strongman President Ilham Aliyev.

"But as time passed, sanatoriums were built and treatment methods developed."

- Controversial benefits 

Some specialists warn the method has dangerous side effects.

"Despite the stories of past cures, the use of crude oil for medicinal purposes has been condemned by Western doctors as potentially carcinogenic," former journalist Maryam Omidi wrote in a 2017 book published in Britain about Soviet-era sanatoriums.

In fact, the oil at Naftalan is almost 50 percent naphthalene, a carcinogenic substance found in cigarette smoke and mothballs that in large amounts can damage or destroy red blood cells.

But doctors and patients at Naftalan brush aside any misgivings and the sanatorium even has a small museum displaying crutches that once belonged to patients who have recovered from their illnesses.

- 'We heard gunshots' -

During its heyday in the 1980s, Naftalan would host more than 70,000 visitors a year.

But in 1988, a bloody war began with neighbouring Armenia for the control of Azerbaijan's separatist Nagorny Karabakh region, which unilaterally proclaimed independence from Baku in 1991.

The conflict claimed the lives of some 30,000 people from both sides and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

A 1994 ceasefire agreement ended hostilities, but the arch foes have yet to reach a definitive peace deal and there are frequent skirmishes along the volatile frontline.

During the war, the sanatoriums in Naftalan -- a few kilometres from the frontline -- were converted into hospitals for wounded soldiers and temporary accommodation for refugees.

Over the last two decades, the Azerbaijani authorities have worked hard to re-establish Naftalan's reputation as a health resort.

They resettled refugees in other regions, demolished decrepit Soviet-era sanatoriums and built brand-new tourist facilities.

Modern Naftalan is a blend of kitsch-looking high-end spas where a week's treatment costs some 1,000 euros, and modest sanatoriums where a week's treatment costs around 100 euros.

The simmering Karabakh conflict may be out of sight, but guests can still feel uncomfortably close to the military action.

During one of the deadliest recent bouts of fighting in April 2016, "we heard gunshots," said a member of staff at Naftalan's luxurious Garabag spa, adding quickly that "everyone stayed on."
It hasn't been the best quarter for Cambridge Cognition Holdings Plc (LON:COG) shareholders, since the share price has fallen 11% in that time. But over three years, the returns would have left most investors smiling In fact, the company's share price bested the return of its market index in that time, posting a gain of 66%.

Check out our latest analysis for Cambridge Cognition Holdings

Cambridge Cognition Holdings isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

Over the last three years Cambridge Cognition Holdings has grown its revenue at 5.6% annually. Considering the company is losing money, we think that rate of revenue growth is uninspiring. The modest growth is probably broadly reflected in the share price, which is up 18%, per year over 3 years. Ultimately, the important thing is whether the company is trending to profitability. In this sort of situation it can be worth putting the stock on your watchlist. If it can become profitable, then even moderate revenue growth could grow profits quickly.

Depicted in the graphic below, you'll see revenue and earnings over time. If you want more detail, you can click on the chart itself.

AIM:COG Income Statement, April 12th 2019

This free interactive report on Cambridge Cognition Holdings's balance sheet strength is a great place to start, if you want to investigate the stock further.

A Different Perspective

Investors in Cambridge Cognition Holdings had a tough year, with a total loss of 42%, against a market gain of about 6.0%. Even the share prices of good stocks drop sometimes, but we want to see improvements in the fundamental metrics of a business, before getting too interested. Longer term investors wouldn't be so upset, since they would have made 2.4%, each year, over five years. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. You could get a better understanding of Cambridge Cognition Holdings's growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

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If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on GB exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Star Wars fans were fully anticipating the first trailer for Episode IX to pack some revelations, most prominently the actual title for the final installment in the nine-film, triple trilogy series. And they got that  the December release is called Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker  but not before director J.J. Abrams and company dropped arguably an even bigger bomb on the Star Wars Celebration crowd at Chicagos McCormick Place convention center where the preview premiered. Rise of Skywalker returns one of the sagas all-time great rogues, Emperor Palpatine to action, as indicated by the sound of the Sith Lords unmistakable cackle over the trailers waning minutes. Palpatines role was further confirmed when Ian McDiarmid, the actor behind the hooded villain, appeared on stage to issue whats now become the ceremonial roll it again decree. According to Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy, the re-emergence of Palpatine  thought dead after the events of Return of the Jedi  was long planned. This has been in the blueprint for a long time, Kennedy told us on the films press line (watch above). We had not landed on exactly how we might do that, but it was always [to be in Episode IX]. Abrams wouldnt say much (shocker) about how Palpatine would play into the story (has he been pulling the strings this whole time???) but he loved directing the Star Wars icon who played him. Working with Ian was among the most wonderful experiences Ive ever had. He is a breathtakingly good actor, and its gonna be a lot of fun for audiences. John Boyega, long proven the biggest Star Wars fan among the new cast members, was unsurprisingly impressed, even if he was a little skeptical: I was very excited about that, and even had a discussion with J.J.  a very in-depth nerd discussion. Im always devils advocate. I come on set and challenge all the narrative decisions because Im always thinking about the fans... But Im so excited. Hes my favorite villain, I love him. As for that title, which clearly hints at the return of our thought-dead original hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Kennedy will say this: The Rise of Skywalker, it doesnt answer anything. Its provocative, it asks questions, and it could mean a lot of different things. And I think thats what was important to us. We didnt want to have a title that felt like it was telling you the story. At the same time, it needs to feel emotional, which is a challenge, to try to figure out what that might be, and I think the word Skywalker, it captures all 40 years of whats gone before. Abrams, meanwhile, was just impressed they were able to keep it a secret up until the big reveal (other titles like Will of the Force and Balance of the Force were rumored). The fact that we got to withhold the title, the fact that we hadnt released anything about the movie, and hadnt any kind of trailer this far out, its sort of amazing to me that we were able to do it, he said. Im grateful to everyone involved who couldve easily told someone or tweeted something or posted something and chose not to. It feels right to me and not very surprising. I say that because the entire experience of doing this movie has been working with people who seem to have the fans and audiences interests at heart.
In this April 10 photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, North Korae. AP



North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been reelected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission, the communist state's highest decision-making body, in a key parliamentary meeting, state media reported Friday.



North Korea's Prime Minister Pak Pong-ju has also been replaced with Kim Jae-ryong, a senior member of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, according to the media.






Bob Iger arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger has attacked social media for its role in spreading hate.

According to Variety, while accepting an award for his humanitarian work at the Simon Wiesenthal Center tribute dinner, Iger said: Its the most powerful marketing tool an extremist could ever hope for.

By design, social media reflects a narrow worldview, filtering out anything that challenges our beliefs, while constantly validating our convictions and amplifying our deepest fears.

It creates a false sense that everyone shares the same opinion.

Social media allows evil to prey on troubled minds and lost souls, and we all know that social news feeds can contain more fiction than fact, propagating vile ideology that has no place in a civil society that values human life.

Iger made the comments as he picked up the 2019 Humanitarian Award.

Read more: Hawkeye series with Jeremy Renner set for Disneys streaming service

Iger succeeded Michael Eisner as CEO of Disney in 2005, after joining as President and COO in 2000.

He was being honoured by the centre, a global human rights organisation that says it confronts anti-Semitism, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations.

The Disney chief shared his thoughts about social media after US lawmakers and tech giants met on Capitol Hill for a House Judiciary Committee hearing scrutinising the spread of white nationalism and hate speech through social media platforms.

Read more: Every live-action Disney remake currently in development

The Simon Wiesenthal Center was set up in the name of Simon Wiesenthal, a survivor of the Nazi death camps.

He dedicated his life to hunting down the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Wiesenthal tracked down nearly 1,100 Nazi war criminals, including Adolf Eichmann, a senior Nazi.




The Duke and Duchess, who are expecting their first child later this month, said they would be

Some remember it as a glorious moment of history being made, as a newborn future king was brought outside by his loving parents for the besotted public to see.

Other recall it as the days when Britain collectively lost its head staring at a closed hospital door.

Either way, the scenes of jubilation outside the Lindo Wing will not be recreated for the next royal birth, as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex swap the celebratory public moment for total privacy as a new family of three.

The Duke and Duchess, whose first child will be an Earl or Lady rather than Prince or Princess, said they would be "celebrating privately as a new family" after the birth as a first priority.

In a short statement issued yesterday, they said they would not be sharing plans for the arrival of their baby, and will not undertake a public appearance after it is born.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Prince George Credit: PA

Instead, they will arrange for photographs of the baby to be taken in the days following the birth, after mother and baby have enough time to recover and bond.

The low-key plans in part reflect the status of Baby Sussex, who will be seventh in line to the throne. He or she will not have an automatic HRH title, being known as the Earl of Dumbarton if a boy, and Lady [firstname] Mountbatten-Windsor if a girl.

George, Charlotte and Louis, the baby's cousins, were all confirmed as being a Prince or Princess before birth thanks to a Letters Patent issued by the Queen in December 2012, seven months before the arrival the first Cambridge child.

No such declaration has yet been made with respect to the Sussexs baby.

The choice of a private birth plan also sees the Sussexes choose a different path to that of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, who confirmed each of their three children would be born at the Lindo Wing and invited members of the public and media to wait in a carefully-controlled area outside to see them.

The Princess Royal and Diana, Princess of Wales, both also stepped out of the Lindo Wing cradling their babies, while Sarah, Duchess of York, posed outside the Portland.

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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex will instead follow in the footsteps of the Queen with hopes for a home birth, and will settle into their new home in Windsor before the public is offered a glimpse of their newborn.

In a statement issued by Buckingham Palace, a spokesman said: "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very grateful for the goodwill they have received from people throughout the United Kingdom and around the world as they prepare to welcome their baby.

"Their Royal Highnesses have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private.

"The Duke and Duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family."

The palace are expected to issue a short written announcement confirming the Duchess is in labour, with a second to follow upon the safe arrival of the baby, giving details of its sex, weight and time of birth.

Pictures of the baby will be issued later, when the infant is a few days old.

The couple are also likely to utilise their SussexRoyal Instagram page to share news and images of their choice.

The palace will not yet confirm whether news of his or her arrival will be posted on an easel outside Buckingham Palace, or whether it would be celebrated with a gun salute.

As the child is not directly in line to the throne, there is no convention that insists upon it.

The Royal Collection Trust would not say whether a range of china will be produced.

Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, pointed out the announcement had already led to accusations from critics that the Sussexes had courted publicity when it suited them only to shun it again, but said the majority of people would be understanding.

I think the expectation [from the public] was that the photocall had become a bit of a royal tradition, he said of the Lindo Wing.

The Duke and Duchess of Cambrigde at the Lindo Wing with Prince Louis in 2018 Credit: Getty

As we now know thats not proved to be the case, and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have chosen to do things in their own way for their own reasons.

I think there may be an element of disappointment on the part of the most zealous of royal watchers.

But like all matters royal, these things evolve and this is how the Sussexes have chosen to do it.

Simon McCoy, the BBC newsreader who became famous for his dry observations about the lack of Lindo Wing action during Prince Georges birth, responded to the announcement with a cheerful good news!!!
The Hague (AFP) - A Dutch doctor at the centre of an IVF scandal fathered at least 49 children, an organisation representing parents and children born through his now-closed clinic said Friday.

Jan Karbaat, who died in 2017, is the father of 49 children born after women visited his Rotterdam clinic where he used his own sperm instead of sperm from a chosen donor to inseminate them, Defence for Children said.

Results of DNA tests conducted Friday at a hospital in the southeastern city of Nijmegen "showed that 49 children in the case are direct descendants of the late Karbaat," the organisation said in a statement.

"The results confirm serious suspicions that Karbaat used his own sperm at his clinic," Defence for Children added.

The controversial case became public after a Dutch court ruled in February that the results of Karbaat's DNA test should be made available to parents and children to conduct their own comparisons.

Before his death, aged 89, Karbaat reportedly admitted to having fathered about 60 children in his time at the discredited clinic which closed in 2009 amid reports of irregularities.

Karbaat later also admitted to mixing sperm from various donors and issuing fraudulent donor documentation, the Dutch daily newspaper NRC reported.

The group of suspected "Karbaat children" dragged his family to court to force them to release Karbaat's DNA profile, which was kept locked in a safe.

The Karbaat family's lawyers had argued that their clients' right to privacy had to be respected.

"However, with the judges agreeing to the paternity test, the judge placed the children's rights above those of Karbaat and his family," Defence for Children advisor Iara de Witte said.

"Now, after years of uncertainty the plaintiffs can finally close a chapter and start processing the fact that they are one of Karbaat's many descendants," De Witte said.

One of the children, Eric Lever, recently told the NRC newspaper he was "not angry with Karbaat."

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"I don't get the feeling that he cheated my mother," he told the NRC paper.

"She really wanted a child and could not have one with my parental father," he said.

The Defence for Children added it was likely that Karbaat sired even more donor children than the 49 revealed on Friday.

"Sperm belonging to the late doctor was also distributed to other clinics," Dutch news agency ANP quoted the organisation as saying.

The organisation has appealed to anybody who may suspect that Karbaat was their donor father to apply to a Dutch database for DNA matching.

Applicants can apply in writing to an official body called the FIOM, which maintains a DNA database to match children conceived via anonymous donors.

jhe/har
Quito (AFP) - Ecuador said Thursday that it had identified a WikiLeaks collaborator close to Julian Assange as being involved in a plot with two Russian hackers to destabilize President Lenin Moreno's government.

The extraordinary claim by Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo at a press conference in Quito came shortly after Moreno terminated Assange's near seven-year asylum at Ecuador's London embassy, allowing British police to arrest him.

"For several years now, one of the key members of this WikiLeaks organization and a person close to Mr Julian Assange has lived in Ecuador, and we have sufficient evidence that he has been collaborating with the destabilization attempts against the government," Romo said.

Ecuador recently filed a formal complaint to the UN special rapporteur on the right to privacy, Joseph Cannataci, accusing WikiLeaks of spreading private information linked to Moreno.

Photos, videos and private conversations appeared on portals such as Twitter and Facebook.

Moreno was forced to deny allegations of corruption which surfaced on the website inapapers.org, with the president claiming he knew who was responsible for the accusations.

Romo made no direct link between her claims and the recent complaint to the UN rapporteur, however.

The minister told reporters in Quito the WikiLeaks collaborator had worked closely with former foreign minister Ricardo Patino, who gave political asylum to Assange in 2012.

She also said the "two Russian hackers" live in Ecuador, and that their names and locations would be given to the prosecutor's office.

"We are not going to allow Ecuador to become a hacking center, and we cannot allow illegal activities to take place in the country, either to harm Ecuadoran citizens or those from other countries or any government."

Patino served as foreign minister under Rafael Correa, a socialist former president whose government granted Assange diplomatic asylum in 2012.

Correa on Thursday called Moreno "the greatest traitor in Ecuadoran and Latin American history" for allowing the arrest.
London police on Thursday arrested Wikileaks founder Julian Assange on behalf of US authorities after Ecuador announced that it would be withdrawing his asylum. Assange spent more than six years inside Ecuadors embassy in London in order to avoid police.

Related stories

Julian Assange's Twitter account vanished for around 12 hours

Hackers hijack Wikileaks, reroute web traffic

How the CIA hacks computers that aren't even connected to the internet

Ecuador president Lenin Moreno announced on Twitter that the country would no longer assist Assange:

Today, I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially, the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable, Moreno stated. Ecuador sovereignly has decided to terminate the diplomatic asylum granted to Mr. Assange in 2012.

Moreno went on to explain in detail what led to the decision to turn Assange over to the authorities:

The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behavior of Mr. Assange: He installed electronic and distortion equipment not allowed. He blocked the security cameras of the Ecuadorian Mission in London. He has confronted and mistreated guards. He had accessed the security files of our Embassy without permission. He claimed to be isolated and rejected the internet connection offered by the embassy, and yet he had a mobile phone with which he communicated with the outside world.

Moreno also explained that a recent WikiLeaks action, the Vatican documents leak from January, was what convinced Ecuador that Assange was still involved with WikiLeaks, and thus interfering in internal affairs of other nations. A video showing the moment Assange was escorted out of the embassy, in handcuffs, was posted on Twitter:

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The US government, meanwhile, has charged Assange with conspiracy to hack a government computer, The New York Times reports, with the criminal complaint having been unsealed in the hours following his arrest. Assange will have the right to contest the extradition request in British courts.

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Yuri Gripas

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has defined her 2020 candidacy with a series of detailed policy proposals, has a plan to impose a new tax on Americas largest companies like Amazon.

Its almost Tax Day, and chances are youll be paying federal taxes this year. Maybe its a lot, maybe its a little, Warren writes in a Medium post unveiling the policy. Well, guess what? You will be paying more for running the federal government than a bunch of big American corporations that made billions of dollars in profits in the last year.

The Real Corporate Profits Tax, revealed on Thursday morning applies to companies that report more than $100 million in profits. The first $100 million would not be touched, but under the plan, for every dollar of profit above that $100 million, the corporation would pay a 7 percent tax.

Warren estimates that Amazon would pay $698 million as opposed to zero federal corporate income tax and that Occidental Petroleum would pay $280 million.

Its a small new taxbut because our richest, biggest corporations are so skilled at minimizing their taxes under our current system, that small new tax will generate big new revenue, she writes. According to an estimate from economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman at the University of California-Berkeley, the tax will bring in $1 trillion in revenue over the next ten yearsjust from the massive profits of the thousand or so richest companies in the country.

An Amazon spokesperson responded to the proposal by saying: Amazon pays all the taxes we are required to pay in the U.S. and every country where we operate, including paying $2.6 billion in corporate tax and reporting $3.4 billion in tax expense over the last three years."

Warren explains that the new tax is a better fix than simply raising the corporate tax rate because the corporate tax code is so littered with loopholes that simply raising the regular corporate tax rate alone is not enough.

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The tax would apply to worldwide profits of all American corporations that report more than $100 million in net income in a given year, foreign companies with significant U.S. operations and profits would also be subject to it and Warren promises robust enforcement of anti-inversion rules to prevent large companies from reincorporating abroad to avoid tax.

In a letter to Warren from Saez and Zucman, they estimate that close to 1,200 public corporations would be liable for the tax and that it would raise $1.05 trillion on public companies alone over the ten- year budget window 2019-2028.

The introduction of this proposal comes the day after Warrens campaign revealed that she had raised more than $6 million in the first quarter, a number that has been reached even while she has eschewed high-dollar fundraisers.

It provided some evidence that the policy-centric campaign has found an audience with voters, despite the appearance of an operation in need of cash.

Since launching her candidacy, Warren has introduced plans to break up large tech and agriculture monopolies, get to universal child care coverage, a housing initiative to pay for the construction of more homes to eliminate housing shortages and an ultra-millionaire tax among other plans.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here
Nanterre (France) (AFP) - More than 1,000 people including survivors and the families of victims of Europe's worst peace-time shipping disaster took their claims for compensation to a French court on Friday, 25 years after the sinking of MV Estonia in the Baltic Sea.

The ferry went down on the morning of September 28, 1994 while travelling between Tallinn and Stockholm, killing 852 of the 989 people on board.

Following the incident, an international commission established to investigate the accident concluded in a 1997 report that the problem had been a defect in the bow-door locking system that opened onto the ferry's car deck.

The French court will assess whether shipbuilder Jos L. Meyer-Werft, and the French certification agency, Bureau Veritas, which had inspected the ferry twice in 1994, should pay damages to the 1,116 plaintiffs.

Maxime Cordier, a lawyer acting for them, said the court would rule "who is responsible for the negligence in the conception and the operation of the vessel".

It has taken more than twenty years of efforts in the French legal system to have the case heard and the claimants are asking for more than 40 million euro ($45 million) for psychological damages, Cordier said.

After the disaster, the Swedish-Estonian shipping company that owned the MV Estonia agreed to pay 130 million euros ($147 million) for loss and damages to survivors and next of kin through an indemnity fund.

The hearings, which are scheduled for Friday and Monday, will take place in front of a French high court on the outskirts of Paris, near the headquarters of Bureau Veritas. A verdict is expected in July.

The claimants will seek to show that the design of the ferry was intrinsically dangerous because of the opening mechanism at the front of the vessel, designed to allow vehicles to drive off quickly.

The MV Estonia has never been raised from the seabed, 85 metres (280 feet) down, and the wreck remains off limits to divers.
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission said on Friday it had approved Japanese firm Nidec's planned purchase of U.S. white goods maker Whirlpool Corp's compressor subsidiary Embraco, subject to conditions.

Nidec, a Japanese electric motor manufacturer, agreed a year ago to buy Brazil-based Embraco for an enterprise value of $1.08 billion.

The Commission said that the deal as notified would have reduced competition and resulted in higher prices given that Nidec and Embraco were close competitors.

The Commission said it was satisfied with Nidec's subsequent commitments to divest its refrigeration compressor business for both household and light commercial applications

It also committed to make available to the purchaser of this divested business significant funding for future investments in the production lines in Austria and Slovakia.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; editing by Foo Yun Chee)
By Julie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong Airlines shareholders have demanded to see 2018 accounts before considering providing at least HK$2 billion ($255 million) needed to ensure the carrier - part owned by the indebted HNA Group - keeps its license, two sources said.

The demand came at a tense extraordinary shareholder meeting last week and at which former majority owner HNA did not speak at all, the sources said of the discussion, which has not previously been reported.

Shareholders questioned the airlines' dealings with other HNA firms, including querying the prices paid to lease planes from affiliates as well as the cost of materials bought from them, the sources said, declining to be identified as the information was not public.

Hong Kong Airlines said, as a private company, it does not comment on its financial activities. HNA declined to comment.

Just weeks earlier, Hong Kong's Air Transport Licensing Authority (ATLA) demanded the airline detail plans to improve finances. ATLA declined to comment further on Friday.

ALTA's demand came after a travel insurer in January dropped protection against the airline's collapse, prompting the airline to reassure customers it was operating as normal. A month before, the airline suffered a series of executive departures.

Meanwhile, the formerly acquisitive HNA - a planes-to-banking Chinese conglomerate - has been working to improve finances since China cracked down on aggressive debt-fuelled foreign dealmaking began in mid-2017.

At that point, a $50 billion spree had netted HNA assets including the single largest stake in Deutsche Bank. It has since been selling off holdings, including low-cost carrier Hong Kong Express Airways last month.

At last week's meeting, Hong Kong Airlines executives told shareholders that without fresh funds, the airline's operating license was at risk, said the people familiar with the matter.

Executives then discussed raising HK$2 billion via share placements, the people said. Such a move would significantly dilute the holdings of shareholders if they do not participate.

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Major shareholders include Chinese private equity firm Frontier Investment Partner with about 34 percent, and Zhong Guosong, a former executive and director of the airline, at about 27 percent.

HNA cut its stake in the carrier two years ago and currently owns 29 percent through Hainan Airlines, its mainland flagship airline and China's fourth-largest carrier.

Meeting attendees demanded to see the airline's accounts for 2018 including details of interactions with other HNA firms before considering whether they would participate in the share placements, the people said.

The airline also told shareholders that it swung to a loss of about HK$3 billion last year, the people said. In 2017, it booked profit of HK$759 million, showed accounts for that year seen by Reuters.

The 2017 accounts showed signs of rising financial strain, including a 50 percent jump in trade receivables - money due but not received - while revenue rose only 11 percent. Payments owed to the airline by HNA companies more than doubled to HK$1.3 billion, or 73 percent of total receivables.

The airline also held stock of four unlisted HNA affiliates, worth $367 million at the end of 2017, and had outstanding loans at that point of $300 million extended to two other HNA firms.

(Changes spelling of Zhong Guosong in para 11.)

(Reporting by Julie Zhu and Jennifer Hughes in Hong Kong; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
Suh Kwan-woo at The Korea Times office in downtown Seoul, April 7. / Korea Times photo by Lee Suh-yoon



By Lee Suh-yoon



Suh Kwan-woo, 31, is running out of time.



Before his temporary asylum-seeker visa ends, he needs to find his Korean father, a man called Kang Nak-ki who worked for Daewoo Engineering & Construction in Liberia in the late 1980s.



"Why should I be a refugee in my own father's country in the first place?" Suh asked during an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul, Sunday. Suh, also known as Nakie like his father's first name, is one of some



Suh arrived in Korea in July 2017. He applied for a residency visa open to foreign nationals with a Korean parent. Suh An-mo, a Korean businessman in Liberia who gave him his family name and supported Suh's upbringing as a foster father, came with him and registered Suh as his son to facilitate the visa process.



The immigration authorities, however, said more evidence was needed to prove Suh formed an adoptive relationship with his foster father while he was a minor, something that was difficult to prove as both of them had been living overseas. The application was turned down and the younger Suh was told to produce a "real" Korean father who could pass a DNA test.



But the problem is Suh has never seen his birth father. His Liberian mother met his father, Kang, in 1987 while her brother was working for Daewoo E&C. Kang left the country before Suh was born.



"They met for about eight months. My mother knew Kang had a family back in Korea but Kang lied to my mother saying he was going to divorce his wife," Suh said. "After he found my mom was pregnant, he decided to leave." By Lee Suh-yoonSuh Kwan-woo, 31, is running out of time.Before his temporary asylum-seeker visa ends, he needs to find his Korean father, a man called Kang Nak-ki who worked for Daewoo Engineering & Construction in Liberia in the late 1980s."Why should I be a refugee in my own father's country in the first place?" Suh asked during an interview with The Korea Times in Seoul, Sunday. Suh, also known as Nakie like his father's first name, is one of some 30 children born to Liberian mothers and Korean fathers in the late 1980s, while Daewoo E&C was building a highway between the capitals of Liberia and Sierra Leone.Suh arrived in Korea in July 2017. He applied for a residency visa open to foreign nationals with a Korean parent. Suh An-mo, a Korean businessman in Liberia who gave him his family name and supported Suh's upbringing as a foster father, came with him and registered Suh as his son to facilitate the visa process.The immigration authorities, however, said more evidence was needed to prove Suh formed an adoptive relationship with his foster father while he was a minor, something that was difficult to prove as both of them had been living overseas. The application was turned down and the younger Suh was told to produce a "real" Korean father who could pass a DNA test.But the problem is Suh has never seen his birth father. His Liberian mother met his father, Kang, in 1987 while her brother was working for Daewoo E&C. Kang left the country before Suh was born."They met for about eight months. My mother knew Kang had a family back in Korea but Kang lied to my mother saying he was going to divorce his wife," Suh said. "After he found my mom was pregnant, he decided to leave."

Suh Kwan-woo (middle) poses with two Korean MBC journalists and two other Korean-Liberian children, King Suh (red shirt) and Reynold Guwoo Choi (right), in this file photo from 2010, when the Korean broadcaster visited Liberia to interview half-Korean Liberian children. / Courtesy of Suh Gwan-woo





"Kang stayed at my place for a week after he was blocked from leaving the country. He was a vehicle mechanic for Daewoo E&C. From the very beginning, he rejected the mother's claim that the baby was his," Suh An-mo said in a phone interview from his home in Liberia, Wednesday. "So the mother said she would raise the baby on her own if he gave her $300. But even $300 seemed like a big sum to him. He refused and I said I will take responsibility instead as a foster father. Then he left."



The junior Suh was born in 1988. A civil war broke out in Liberia the following year. Despite support from her relatives and the older Suh, his mother struggled to raise the boy on her own, having to leave him in his grandmother's care at times. They moved between cities often to avoid the conflict and seek shelter at relatives' homes. After the war, Suh recalls, he sold his mother's pastries in residential areas to make ends meet.His foster father took him in during the vacations and helped pay his high school fees.



Growing up as a half-Korean in Liberia was not easy, Suh says.



"I often felt humiliated and got into fights. They called me all sorts of names, like mixed breed kid," Suh said, turning his hands palms-down to show small white scars.



Still, he considers himself to be luckier than



"Isaac wanted to go to university, but he couldn't and now works as a cashier. And my other friend King, he works in a gold mine," Suh said, referring to Liberian peers whose Korean fathers also left them. "It was different for half-Lebanese and half-German kids. Lebanese fathers set up businesses for their children and German fathers took them back to Germany."



After graduating from Cuttington University with a degree in agriculture, Suh worked at a German NGO that trains farmers and later a Malaysian palm oil company in Liberia. Afraid of being left alone with the baby, his mother filed a child support case against Kang through a human rights lawyer. Kang was blocked at the immigration gate as he was trying to leave the country."Kang stayed at my place for a week after he was blocked from leaving the country. He was a vehicle mechanic for Daewoo E&C. From the very beginning, he rejected the mother's claim that the baby was his," Suh An-mo said in a phone interview from his home in Liberia, Wednesday. "So the mother said she would raise the baby on her own if he gave her $300. But even $300 seemed like a big sum to him. He refused and I said I will take responsibility instead as a foster father. Then he left."The junior Suh was born in 1988. A civil war broke out in Liberia the following year. Despite support from her relatives and the older Suh, his mother struggled to raise the boy on her own, having to leave him in his grandmother's care at times. They moved between cities often to avoid the conflict and seek shelter at relatives' homes. After the war, Suh recalls, he sold his mother's pastries in residential areas to make ends meet.His foster father took him in during the vacations and helped pay his high school fees.Growing up as a half-Korean in Liberia was not easy, Suh says."I often felt humiliated and got into fights. They called me all sorts of names, like mixed breed kid," Suh said, turning his hands palms-down to show small white scars.Still, he considers himself to be luckier than other Korean-Liberian children . A high-ranking Liberian official he met while working at his mother's guesthouse financed his university tuition."Isaac wanted to go to university, but he couldn't and now works as a cashier. And my other friend King, he works in a gold mine," Suh said, referring to Liberian peers whose Korean fathers also left them. "It was different for half-Lebanese and half-German kids. Lebanese fathers set up businesses for their children and German fathers took them back to Germany."After graduating from Cuttington University with a degree in agriculture, Suh worked at a German NGO that trains farmers and later a Malaysian palm oil company in Liberia.
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration met for three hours on Friday with representatives from the three major U.S. airlines that fly now grounded Boeing 737 MAX airplanes and their pilots' unions to discuss two fatal crashes and the path forward.

More than 300 Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes, one in Indonesia in October and one in Ethiopia last month.

At the meeting with American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co, the FAA discussed the preliminary reports from both crashes and Boeing's proposals for a software upgrade and new pilot training, said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association which represents American's pilots.

American Airlines said in a statement it was "confident in the direction the FAA is heading. Well continue to work collaboratively with the FAA, Boeing and the Allied Pilots Association in this process."

Tajer said pilots were pleased with the "very good briefing" and said pilots need to be satisfied in the training and software upgrade. He said the FAA sought pilots' input.

"We have to unground the confidence in this airplane," Tajer told reporters outside FAA headquarters.

American and United have canceled flights through early June, while Southwest said Thursday it would remove its 34 737 MAX jets from its flying schedule through Aug. 5, leading to around 160 daily flight cancellations during the revised summer schedule.

Tajer said everyone is focused on getting the plane back in service safely. "We take off out watches and put the calendars in the drawer," he said.

Boeing said it has reprogrammed software on the 737 MAX to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system that is under mounting scrutiny following the two deadly nose-down crashes. On April 1, Boeing said it delayed submitting the proposed revisions to the FAA for approval.

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The FAA said the meeting is to help "the FAA to gather facts, information, and individual views to further understand their views as FAA decides what needs to be done before returning the aircraft to service." The FAA added it "continues to gather all available information and data in considering the return of the 737 MAX to service."

The agency is also convening a joint review with aviation regulators from China, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other countries.

Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector generals office and a blue-ribbon panel are also reviewing the planes certification. (Reporting by David Shepardson Additional reporting by Tracy Rucinski Editing by Alistair Bell)
President Trump and the Federal Communications Commission unveiled a new 5G effort Friday afternoon.

5G networks will also create astonishing and really thrilling opportunities for our people, Trump said at the press conference. Opportunities that we never even thought we had a possibility of looking at. We cannot allow any other country to outcompete the United States in this powerful industry of the future.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced the third 5G spectrum auction set to begin on Dec. 10. Pai said it will be the largest spectrum auction in U.S. history, which will be critical to providing the airwaves necessary for carriers to deploy 5G wireless networks, said Pai.

Pai also announced his plans for a Rural Digital Opportunity fund, which would dedicate $20.4 billion over 10 years to expand high-speed broadband access to underserved or unserved areas.

The FCC says the fund will connect up to four million rural homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks

This is a critical tool toward closing the digital divide and it will provide some of the critical infrastructure to connecting rural Americans with 5G technologies, said Pai.

To pay for it, Pai said the agency plans to repurpose money from the Universal Service Fund. Each year for the next decade, $2 billion dollars would go toward rural carriers to build out the broadband network.

Pai said the FCC still needs to go through the notice and comment process on the proposal, but he wants the funding to be given to companies through a reverse auction. The chairman hopes to start that process sometime this year.

There have been concerns that the United States may be lagging behind China in 5G, but Pai is confident the U.S. is leading the way.

We have the greatest number of 5G deployments currently than any country in the world. The FCC is making more spectrum available than any other country in the world and were taking steps going tin the future to make sure we maintain that leadership position, said Pai in an interview with Yahoo Finance.

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President Trump shot down the idea of a nationalized 5G network at the White House event on Friday.

In the United States our approach is private-sector driven and private-sector led, said Trump. "We don't want to do that [nationalize 5G]. It won't be nearly as good, nearly as fast.

Pai told Yahoo Finance he agreed with the president.

It simply wont work. The amount of money that would be required, the amount of legwork that would have to be done would be on a scale that the federal government would be incapable of doing, said Pai.

Pai told Yahoo Finance 5G has the potential to create an internet economy that would dwarf what we saw with 4G, though its difficult to estimate 5Gs economic impact at this point.

We dont know precisely how some of these industries are going to be transformed  only that they will be. Whether it is agriculture, health care, transportation or manufacturing  all of these have a very compelling 5G use case, said Pai.

In a tweet ahead of the White House event, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said, So far this administrations interventions on 5G have done more harm than good.

So far this Administrations interventions on 5G have done more harm than good. From imposing tariffs on 5G equipment to alienating allies on 5G security to falling behind the rest of the world on critical mid-band spectrum, it has yet to offer a workable plan for US leadership.  Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) April 12, 2019

Pai responded to the criticism telling Yahoo Finance he believes the U.S. is leading the 5G race and he hopes to move forward in a bipartisan way to maintain that American leadership.

Jessica Smith is a reporter for Yahoo Finance based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter at @JessicaASmith8.

Sen. Sherrod Brown wants a chance to grill bank CEOs, too

Battle brewing on Capitol Hill over new trade agreement

Sen. Warren wants to make it easier to lock up CEOs for company wrongdoing
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said Friday the United States should not nationalize its 5G network and said private companies should move quickly to deploy the faster next-generation network. "In the United States our approach is private-sector driven and private-sector led. The government doesn't have to spend lots of money," Trump said. "Leading through the government, it won't be nearly as good, nearly as fast." The White House mulled the idea of nationalizing the 5G network for more than a year. In March Politico reported that Trump's reelection campaign supported a government role in managing the 5G networks even as White House officials including top economic adviser Larry Kudlow have said for months they oppose the idea. Trump spoke alongside Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai who disclosed Friday the agency plans to hold its third 5G spectrum auction on Dec. 10, the latest effort to make more spectrum available that could transform significant sectors of the U.S. economy. Pai said Trump's comments opposing nationalization was an "important signal" to the private sector that is investing tens of billions of dollars in the 5G networks. CTIA, an industry trade group, said Friday that Trump's statement "puts an end - once and for all - to any misguided notions of nationalizing spectrum resources or government-mandated wholesale 5G markets." Pai is also proposing to invest $20.4 billion over 10 years to build out high-speed broadband networks in rural America. The Rural Digital Opportunity Fund aims to provide funding through a reverse auction to service providers in areas without access to high-speed service and aims to connect up to four million rural homes and small businesses to high-speed broadband networks. 5G networks are expected to be at least 100 times faster than the current 4G networks, cut delays and allow for innovations in a number of fields. Pai spoke on a call with reporters ahead of the White House event with Trump and rural residents who could benefit from faster networks to tout the administration's efforts to boost 5G wireless networks and funding for rural broadband. Since November, the FCC has auctioned 1,550 megahertz of spectrum to be used by commercial wireless providers for 5G connectivity. The third 5G spectrum auction will be the largest, with the FCC selling 3,400 megahertz in three different spectrum bands. The FCC voted on Friday to seek comments on bidding procedures for the next auction. Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said the auction is a good step but the commission must also pivot "to mid-band" spectrum "or risk falling behind other countries." Verizon Communications Inc, AT&T Corp, Sprint Corp and T Mobile US Inc are beginning to deploy 5G service in U.S. cities and are working to extend their networks as 5G-compatible phones slowly become available. The Republican administration has also been warning other countries against adopting 5G systems from Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, citing security concerns. For more than a year, the White House has been mulling an executive order that would direct the Commerce Department to block U.S. companies from buying equipment from foreign telecommunications makers that pose significant national security risks, Reuters reported in December. The FCC since March 2018 has also been considering rules to bar the use of funds from a government program to purchase equipment or services from companies that pose a security threat to U.S. communications networks. Pai said that proposal is still pending. (Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; editing by Dan Grebler and James Dalgleish)
Mark Wilson/Getty

Federal prosecutors have charged President Obamas former White House counsel with making false statements in connection with his role in disseminating a report commissioned by Paul Manafort.

Prosecutors allege that as an attorney in private practice, Greg Craig lied to officials at the Foreign Agents Registration Act unit after the Justice Department launched an investigation into Paul Manaforts illegal lobbying on behalf of his pro-Russian clients in Ukraine. The charges, spurred by a referral from then-Special Counsel Robert Muellers office, mark the first time the Russia investigation has led to a criminal complaint against a prominent former Democratic official.

Craig was a partner at Skadden Arps in 2012 when Manafort arranged for the firm to write a report about his client, former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, and the prosecution of Yanukovychs former political rival, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Skadden reached a settlement with the Justice Department in January 2019 over its work with the Ukrainian government. As part of the agreement, the firm admitted that a partner then at Skadden made false and misleading statements to the FARA Unit, which led it to conclude in 2013 that the firm was not obligated to register under FARA. Under the deal, Skadden Arps agreed to register as a foreign agent and pay $4.6 million to the U.S. Treasurythe cost of its work on the report.

Prosecutors say Craig, who led a team of Skadden lawyers in writing the report, ventured into lobbying when he allegedly offered a copy of the report to a New York Times reporter, subsequently identified as David Sanger, and pitched him on a call with a lobbyist for Ukraine in advance of its release. Craigs conversations with the Times reporter took place shortly after he met with Manafort and a public relations firm to discuss the media strategy for the reports rollout, and prosecutors viewed his media calls as an outgrowth of the strategy meeting.

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The indictment alleges that Craig began lying to officials at the Justice Department's FARA unit when they inquired about his contacts with the media shortly after the Times story ran. In a meeting with the chief of the FARA unit and in a subsequent letter, prosecutors say, Craig falsely claimed that his conversations with reporters was done in response to requests from the media and that the Ukrainian government neither knew of it nor directed it.

In particular, they claim that Craig failed to tell FARA officials he had recommended and facilitated the Ukrainian government's choice of a PR firm, had been briefed on the firm's strategy, and had recommended Sanger as a recipient for the report after he met with the PR firm and a lobbyist for Ukraine.

The indictment quotes a handful of emails from Craig meant to back up claims that his media outreach was allegedly an extension of a Ukrainian government-directed PR strategy and not a responsive correction of the record.

Craig allegedly emailed Sanger in December 2012 with the explanation that the Ukrainians have determined that you should be given first look at the report.

In an email sent shortly after Craig handed an advance copy of the report to the Times, the lawyer reported to a PR firm working for Ukraine that he told Sanger it was his if he wanted to use it and that tomorrow is not too late for [another U.S. reporter] or for [another major U.S. newspaper].

In discussions with prosecutors, Craigs attorneys have doubled down on his claims about contacts with the media, according to CNN. They claim Craig only spoke with the Times in order to correct an unspecified mischaracterization of the report and that the prosecution represented an attempt to make the Russia investigation and its spin-off prosecutions, which have primarily targeted Republicans, seem less partisan.

The Skadden report featured prominently in court documents filed in Manaforts Washington, D.C., lobbying case. The special counsels office alleged that Manaforts choice of the lead attorney at Skadden was made with the United States lobbying effort in mind" and that the report Craig spearheaded was misleading and used to justify the political prosecution and jailing of a political opponent. Skadden earned $4.6 million for the report, paid through Manaforts offshore accounts in Cyprus, but the Ukrainian government publicly claimed that the work cost only $12,000.

Craig resigned from Skadden in April 2018, shortly after attorney Alexander Van Der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying to the special counsels office about his work on the report. Van Der Zwaan, whom Skadden fired in 2017, destroyed emails requested by the special counsel and lied about talking points he passed to Manafort aide Rick Gates and an advance copy of the report he slipped to a public relations firm. He served a 30-day prison sentence after pleading guilty and agreeing to cooperate with Muellers office.

Prosecutors said that the Skadden report was one part of a sprawling illegal lobbying campaign that enlisted other Washington heavyweights, Mercury Public Affairs and the Podesta Group, to sell Washington on Yanukovychs government. The special counsels office alleged that Manafort used an obscure think tank in Brussels as a cut-out to allow Mercury and the Podesta Group to lobby for the Ukrainian government without registering as foreign agents. Mercury subsequently registered with the Justice Department for its Ukraine work but the Podesta Group fared worse. Its founder, Tony Podesta, left the firm shortly after Mueller indicted Manafort in October 2017, and the firm closed seven months later.

The charges against Craig are another sign that the Russia investigation has led to increased vigilance in enforcing foreign lobbying rules by the Justice Department. The department announced in March that Brandon Van Grack, a special counsels office prosecutor who worked on Manaforts Virginia tax and bank fraud trial, would take over as the head of the Foreign Agents Registration Act unit.

Read more at The Daily Beast.
Union Pacific Corporation UNP is slated to release first-quarter 2019 financial numbers on Apr 18, before the market opens.



Last reported quarter, the company delivered a positive surprise of 2.9%. Moreover, the bottom line improved 39% year over year. Quarterly revenues also surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate and increased 6% year over year as well. Higher freight revenues drove such impressive results in the period.

Lets see, what awaits the company in the first quarter.



Factors Likely at Play



High operating expenses have been hampering Union Pacifics bottom line for quite some time now and the first quarter is not likely to be any different. Moreover, escalated capital expenditures are further adding to the companys costs.



However, robust freight revenues on the back of volume growth are expected to boost the top line in the soon-to-be-reported quarter. Notably, at the Stifel 2019 Transportation and Logistics Conference, the company's CFO  Rob Knight  stated that overall volumes for the first quarter rose 4% as of Feb 11. Volumes were especially strong at the premium and industrial segments with the same rising 8% and 9%, respectively.



The Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter freight revenues in the Agricultural segment stands at $1,155 million, higher than $1,098 million reported in the year-ago period. The consensus mark for Industrial Products stands at $1,422 million, above $1,340 million reported in the first quarter of 2018. Meanwhile, the consensus estimate for total freight revenues is pegged at $5,400 million compared with $5,122 million reported in the year-earlier period.



Additionally, the companys operating ratio (operating expenses as a percentage of revenues), a key measure of efficiency, is anticipated to improve owing to higher revenues. A lower value of operating ratio is more desirable.

Union Pacific Corporation Price and EPS Surprise

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Union Pacific Corporation Price and EPS Surprise | Union Pacific Corporation Quote

Earnings Whispers



Our proven Zacks model shows that a company needs the right combination of two key ingredients  a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better  to increase the odds of an earnings surprise. However, that is not the case as highlighted below.



Earnings ESP: Union Pacific has an Earnings ESP of -0.75% as the Most Accurate Estimate is pegged at $1.90 per share, lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.91. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: Union Pacific carries a Zacks Rank of 3, which increases the predictive power of ESP. However, the companys negative ESP leaves our surprise prediction inconclusive.



We caution against all Sell-rated stocks (#4 or 5) going into an earnings announcement, especially when the company is seeing negative estimate revisions.



Stock to Consider



Investors interested in the broader Transportation sector may consider Air Lease Corporation AL, Ryder System, Inc. R and SkyWest, Inc. SKYW as these stocks possess the right mix of elements to beat on earnings in the upcoming releases.



Air Lease has an Earnings ESP of +4.41% and is a Zacks #3 Ranked stock. The company will report first-quarter results on May 9.



Ryder is a #3 Ranked stock and has an Earnings ESP of +3.44%. The company is set to release first-quarter earnings numbers on Apr 30.



SkyWest has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and an Earnings ESP of +0.83%. The company is scheduled to announce first-quarter financial figures on Apr 25. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Radical New Technology Creates $12.3 Trillion Opportunity



Imagine buying Microsoft stock in the early days of personal computers or Motorola after it released the worlds first cell phone. These technologies changed our lives and created massive profits for investors.



Today, were on the brink of the next quantum leap in technology. 7 innovative companies are leading this 4th Industrial Revolution - and early investors stand to earn the biggest profits.



See the 7 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



SkyWest, Inc. (SKYW) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Air Lease Corporation (AL) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Ryder System, Inc. (R) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Union Pacific Corporation (UNP) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



Zacks Investment Research
Nathalie Emmanuel attends HBOs Game of Thrones eight and final season premiere at Radio City Music Hall in New York, NY, April 3, 2019. (Photo by Anthony Behar/Sipa USA)

As Game of Thrones returns for its final series next week, the stars have been talking about how sad the final days were on set. But Nathalie Emmanuel, GoTs Missandei, will have something else to distract her today, with the announcement that her new show  Mindy Kalings new Four Weddings & a Funeral TV spin-off  has been given a July transmission date.

The new drama inspired by Hugh Grants hit comedy, will see a group of American friends arrive in London for a wedding. Emmanuel, who replaced the originally cast Jessica Williams (Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald), will play Maya.

She is joined by Rebecca Rittenhouse (The Mindy Project), who will play the bride they come to support. Rittenhouses character, Ainsley, is also the daughter of returning original star Andie MacDowell (who will make an appearance too). The stars obviously bonded while on set, as they have featured in a number of Instagram posts together.

Just last month Emmanuel posted a video of herself and Rittenhouse dancing after being challenged by Kaling, as part of Womens History Month. The Fast & Furious actress then extended the challenge to her GoT co-star Emilia Clarke (among others).

British actress Zoe Boyle, known to many as Lavinia Swire in Downton Abbey, also got involved with the Four Weddings friendsfest, calling Rittenhouse her bae in one post.

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Four Weddings & A Funeral got the Comic Relief treatment back in March, when many of the original cast reunited for a special one-off sequel. They were joined by Lily James and Alicia Vikander, who were married by the still bumbling Father Gerald played by Rowan Atkinson, in the BBC One special.

Read more: Four Weddings reunion hit with Comic Relief viewers

Spin-off creator, Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project) took to Twitter to announce the arrival of the show on US streaming service Hulu. No UK date has been set as yet.

The Oceans 8 star also got the green light from Netflix recently to create an autobiographic series about her life growing up in the US.

Watch the Nathalie Emmanuel in the final series of Game of Thrones, which starts this Monday on Sky Atlantic.
General Electric Companys GE business arm  GE Healthcare  has joined forces with Rockwell Automation, Inc. ROK to make manufacturing process more flexible and scalable for biopharmaceutical companies.

The collaboration will leverage GE Healthcares proficiency in bio-pharmaceutical manufacturing technologies along with Rockwells industry-leading expertise in automation. Their collective proficiency in single-use bioprocessing, automation and IT knowledge will enable biopharmaceutical companies to boost manufacturing competencies, quickly respond to market demand and deliver advanced solutions.

Notably, both the companies will work on integrating the FlexFactory single-use equipment with Figurate bioprocess automation. This will help firms improve reproducibility, repeatability and compliance, thus enhancing their operational efficiency. The solutions will also facilitate digitization of batch files and processes, which will significantly shorten review times for companies. Additionally, these will enable customers in delivering instructions to workers with augmented reality, eventually enhancing batch execution, equipment setup, operations and training.

Separately, GE Healthcare also joined the Rockwell Automation PartnerNetwork Program as an equipment manufacturer partner. The move will allow it to work in collaboration with a group of companies in offering state-of-the-art distributed control systems required for streamlining customers supply chain and simplifying project implementation.

Existing Business Scenario

General Electric intends to become more competent by focusing on core businesses. In June 2018, the company announced its plan to become a high-tech industrial company focused on Aviation, Power and Renewable Energy. However, a weakening Power business remains a key cause of concern.

Notably, the Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) companys share price has increased 20.5% on a year-to-date basis compared with 22.1% growth recorded by the industry.

Story continues

Stocks to Consider

A couple of better-ranked stocks in the same space are United Technologies Corporation UTX and Macquarie Infrastructure Company MIC. Both these companies carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

United Technologies exceeded estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, the average being 14.87%.

Macquarie surpassed estimates twice in the trailing four quarters, the average being 0.51%.

Radical New Technology Creates $12.3 Trillion Opportunity

Imagine buying Microsoft stock in the early days of personal computers or Motorola after it released the worlds first cell phone. These technologies changed our lives and created massive profits for investors.

Today, were on the brink of the next quantum leap in technology. 7 innovative companies are leading this 4th Industrial Revolution - and early investors stand to earn the biggest profits.

See the 7 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



General Electric Company (GE) : Free Stock Analysis Report



United Technologies Corporation (UTX) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Macquarie Infrastructure Company (MIC) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Rockwell Automation, Inc. (ROK) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
BBC six o'clock news newsreader George Alagiah - PA

George Alagiah has revealed that he thought he was "the guy who made it" before his bowel cancer returned.

The BBC newsreader, 63, underwent 17 rounds of chemotherapy to treat advanced bowel cancer in 2014 before returning to presenting duties in 2015.

His cancer later returned and the presenter underwent further treatment.

In a new podcast, In Conversation With George Alagiah, he speaks candidly about his treatment and living with the disease.

He reveals that he has a mantra, which he repeats every evening, saying: "I ask myself if I'll be here tomorrow, and for the past few years I've answered 'Yes'."

But Alagiah, who has stage four bowel cancer, says of the disease returning: "I found it harder the second time round. I got seduced into the idea that I was the guy who made it.

"So to be told it had come back was quite tough."

Speaking of the extreme fatigue he experienced during chemotherapy, he says: "There were days I'd call the sofa days when I just sat on the sofa.

He adds: "It's easier for us as patients then it is for those around us. I've limited my life right down to 24 hours ahead, 'Can I do what I need tomorrow? Yes I can.'

"Whereas for my wife and our sons, they are looking ahead, they've got their own lives to lead. But they also feel that they have to care for me and be sensitive to my needs as well."

The BBC journalist hosts the first series of Bowel Cancer UK's podcasts, interviewing supporters and leading experts on the disease, as well as discussing his own treatment and diagnosis.

Bowel cancer is the UK's fourth most common cancer and second biggest killer cancer with more than 16,000 people dying from the disease every year, the charity said.

But it is treatable and curable, especially if diagnosed early.

Veteran BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen, 59, recently revealed that he is also suffering from the condition despite having none of the "classic" symptoms, after getting pains in his legs and back.

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Deborah Alsina, chief executive of Bowel Cancer UK, said: "We're so incredibly grateful to George for hosting our first series of podcasts to raise awareness of the disease during Bowel Cancer Awareness Month.

"Our podcasts form part of our #thisisbowelcancer campaign, which aims to shine a light on the varied and many people affected by the disease."

In Conversation With George Alagiah: A Bowel Cancer UK podcast, with Matthew Wiltshire, can be found at www.bowelcanceruk.org.uk/podcasts.

Sign up for your essential, twice-daily briefing from The Telegraph with our free Front Page newsletter.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York said Tuesday that her relationship with Hillary Clinton is strong and that Clinton had given her advice about her 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gillibrand, appearing at a town hall televised by CNN, fielded questions about her political record, including the policy shifts she made on immigration, and offered a status update on her long-standing relationship with Hillary and Bill Clinton. In 2017, Gillibrand had said that Bill Clinton should have resigned from the presidency after his inappropriate relationship with an intern came to light two decades ago.

Gillibrand said Tuesday that her "fondness" and respect for Hillary Clinton are "very strong" and that she continues to admire and look up to her. She supported Clinton's 2016 Democratic presidential bid and took Clinton's U.S. Senate seat when Clinton was appointed secretary of state in 2009.

"Secretary Clinton is a role model for all of us," Gillibrand said. "My views on her husband are very different. And I've said all I'm going to say about that."

In a February interview with The Associated Press, Gillibrand said she had not yet spoken to Hillary Clinton about her campaign.

Gillibrand hoped Tuesday's town hall would give her a fresh opportunity to introduce herself to the voters and donors she'll need to ensure her campaign stays on track, according to a person familiar with the campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss strategy.

The town hall came as the sprawling Democratic field begins to take shape. The first fundraising quarter just wrapped and gave an initial view of how the candidates are faring.

Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Kamala Harris of California, along with Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, posted big numbers. But Gillibrand is among the candidates who haven't yet released their haul.

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Gillibrand began her campaign with $10 million cash on hand. Her campaign did not say how much she raised in the first quarter.

The fundraising number isn't just about bragging rights. It's part of the criteria used to qualify for the first two presidential primary debates this summer. To get on the stage, a candidate must either reach 1% approval in three recognized polls or raise money from at least 65,000 donors across at least 20 states.

Acknowledging potential fundraising trouble, Gillibrand aides said her path to the debate stage is through her standing in polls.

There are reasons for optimism, her aides say. They say her online donors have doubled since March 17, when she officially launched her campaign. But they wouldn't disclose how many donors she has.

The aides spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign thinking.

Gillibrand is betting that Tuesday's town hall gives her a fundraising boost, as it did for other candidates. Buttigieg, who was virtually unknown outside his state a few months ago, said he raised $600,000 in the 24 hours following his own appearance at a CNN town hall.

Gillibrand's campaign views her candidacy in two distinct phases.

The first "exploratory" phase began in January with a focus on introducing Gillibrand to voters. She appeared on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert," quickly made her first trip to the leadoff caucus state of Iowa and held 60 events across eight states.

The second phase began with the formal launch of her campaign on March 17. She's tried to make bolder and higher-profile moves since then.

She participated in MSNBC's first town hall of the presidential season and became the first presidential candidate to release her 2018 tax returns. She pressed her rivals to follow suit.

In a video released by her campaign, she described herself as "brave," a theme that has been a cornerstone of the early days of her official bid.

She has sold herself to voters as a candidate who is able to win in Republican strongholds, saying in Concord, New Hampshire, over the weekend that she'd won her first race for Congress in a district she described as "red, red, red," and promised to do whatever she could to defeat President Donald Trump.

"What he is creating is wrong," she said. "It is immoral. It is harmful. It is hurtful."

But she's faced setbacks through all stages of her candidacy.

Gillibrand has faced criticism over the handling of a sexual harassment claim in her Senate office that resulted in a female staffer resigning over the office's handling of her accusation against a male aide. After Politico reported that the male aide was kept on and presented Gillibrand's office with additional allegations, the male aide was fired.

Gillibrand, who has been a champion of women and victims of sexual misconduct, has stood behind her office's response to the incident.

Last month, she held a speech in the shadow of the Trump International Hotel & Tower in Manhattan and launched a verbal attack on him, mocking the president for the many properties that bear his name.

"He does this because he wants you to believe he's strong," she said. "He is not. Our president is a coward."

The event was billed as Gillibrand's first major speech of her campaign, with the intention of showing a sharp contrast between Gillibrand and the president. Yet it came hours before the Justice Department released the principal conclusions of the long-awaited report by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, which overshadowed the speech.

Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist, noted that the 2020 primary field is still growing and said Gillibrand has time to make her mark on the race.

"As long as she qualifies for those debates, she will have plenty of opportunity to make her case, to rise to the top, and pull ahead," Cardona said.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Washington and Hunter Woodall in Concord, N.H., contributed to this report.
Goldman Sachs Chairman & Chief Executive Officer David M. Solomon testifies before Congress. | Source: MANDEL NGAN / AFP

Goldman Sachs is not opening an institutional crypto trading desk, despite rampant rumors suggesting otherwise. Thats what Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon told the House Financial Services Committee this week.

The Congressional hearing gathered the CEOs of the seven largest banks in the United States. They were grilled about the bloated executive pay packages of Wall Street bankers and whether the institutions have become more responsible in the decade since the massive taxpayer-funded bank bailout of 2009.

We Never Had Plans to Open a Crypto Desk

During the hearing, David Solomon claimed that Goldman never had any concrete plans to launch a crypto trading desk. Solomon blamed the speculation on a news report by Bloomberg from December 2017.

Perhaps not surprisingly, that Bloomberg story came out at the height of the bitcoin bull market, when the bitcoin price approached $20,000.

That Bloomberg article was not appropriate. Like others, we are watching, plus doing work to try and understand the cryptocurrency marketplace as it develops. We have some clients that have certain functionality that weve engaged with on clearing physically-settled futures. But other than that, we never had plans to open a cryptocurrency desk.

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon

Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon: We never had plans to open a crypto trading desk. (screenshot)

Read the full story on CCN.com.
Washington (AFP) - Widening differences over economic policy among euro area countries are "unsustainable" and could undermine the currency union itself, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said Friday.

"There isn't enough solidarity in the eurozone," Le Maire told reporters on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Spring meetings.

"Growing economic divisions among member states are unsustainable in the long term and could result in the disappearance of the common currency project."

"Countries with solid budgets must invest more," Le Maire said.

That was the same message pushed by the IMF itself, which on Friday again urged Germany in particular to boost spending in order to accelerate growth a raise wages, and reduce its budget and trade surpluses.

Le Maire said "Those with the means shouldn't hoard money for years and years, allowing growth to deteriorate."

Instead, those governments should "invest in new projects, innovation, so that there can be more cooperation and solidarity in the eurozone."

Le Maire also said the global economic slowdown was "pronounced and worrisome," calling on countries to be prepared for a "collective response."

The European response could come in the form of the "growth pact" he proposed Friday which would include increased spending by economies with the "fiscal space" to do so, an allusion to Germany and the Netherlands.

Meanwhile, states like France should pursue economic reforms and shore up their finances, something Paris is "determined" to do with measures "that get results," he said.

The country is "clear-eyed about France's economic weaknesses," he said, adding, "I hope that every euro area member will have the same wisdom and clarity. If not, there can be no common future."
We think intelligent long term investing is the way to go. But no-one is immune from buying too high. To wit, the King Stone Energy Group Limited (HKG:663) share price managed to fall 56% over five long years. That's an unpleasant experience for long term holders. And it's not just long term holders hurting, because the stock is down 37% in the last year.

See our latest analysis for King Stone Energy Group

King Stone Energy Group recorded just HK$12,649,000 in revenue over the last twelve months, which isn't really enough for us to consider it to have a proven product. You have to wonder why venture capitalists aren't funding it. So it seems that the investors more focused on would could be, than paying attention to the current revenues (or lack thereof). It seems likely some shareholders believe that King Stone Energy Group will discover or develop fossil fuel before too long.

Companies that lack both meaningful revenue and profits are usually considered high risk. You should be aware that there is always a chance that this sort of company will need to issue more shares to raise money to continue pursuing its business plan. While some such companies go on to make revenue, profits, and generate value, others get hyped up by hopeful naifs before eventually going bankrupt. King Stone Energy Group has already given some investors a taste of the bitter losses that high risk investing can cause.

Our data indicates that King Stone Energy Group had net debt of HK$74,229,000 when it last reported in December 2018. That makes it extremely high risk, in our view. But with the share price diving 15% per year, over 5 years, it's probably fair to say that some shareholders no longer believe the company will succeed. The image below shows how King Stone Energy Group's balance sheet has changed over time; if you want to see the precise values, simply click on the image.

SEHK:663 Historical Debt, April 11th 2019

Of course, the truth is that it is hard to value companies without much revenue or profit. Given that situation, would you be concerned if it turned out insiders were relentlessly selling stock? It would bother me, that's for sure. It only takes a moment for you to check whether we have identified any insider sales recently.

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A Different Perspective

While the broader market lost about 3.2% in the twelve months, King Stone Energy Group shareholders did even worse, losing 37%. Having said that, it's inevitable that some stocks will be oversold in a falling market. The key is to keep your eyes on the fundamental developments. Unfortunately, last year's performance may indicate unresolved challenges, given that it was worse than the annualised loss of 15% over the last half decade. We realise that Buffett has said investors should 'buy when there is blood on the streets', but we caution that investors should first be sure they are buying a high quality businesses. You could get a better understanding of King Stone Energy Group's growth by checking out this more detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.

If you like to buy stocks alongside management, then you might just love this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on HK exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Comerica Incorporated CMA is scheduled to report first-quarter 2019 results before the opening bell on Apr 16. Its revenues and earnings are expected to grow year over year.

Before we discuss whether Comerica will be able to keep its earnings beat streak alive in the to-be-reported quarter as well, lets take a look at how the company performed in the last reported quarter.

The companys fourth-quarter results reflected robust organic growth on rise in revenues, lower expenses and improved credit metrics. A strong capital position was another positive. However, fall in deposits was a key headwind.

Notably, the company boasts an impressive earnings surprise history. It surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, the average positive surprise being 7.2%.

Comerica Incorporated Price and EPS Surprise

Comerica Incorporated Price and EPS Surprise | Comerica Incorporated Quote

Why a Likely Positive Surprise?

Our proven model shows that Comerica has the right combination of the two key ingredients positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better  to increase the odds of an earnings beat.

You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Earnings ESP: The Earnings ESP for Comerica is +0.27%.

Zacks Rank: The company currently carries a Zacks Rank of 3.

Notably, the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.94 for the quarters earnings reflects growth of 22% year over year.

Factors to Drive Results

Net Interest Income (NII) to Exhibit Growth: Improvement in lending scenario, particularly in commercial and industrial, and consumer portfolios will lend some support to Comericas interest income growth.

Also, NII is likely to improve, supported by expanding net interest margin on the back of the late-2018 rate hike. However, flattening and sometimes inversion of yield curve witnessed during the quarter will likely offset the benefit to some extent.

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Further, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for average earning assets of $65.2 billion for the first quarter indicates slight year-over-year improvement.

Slight Growth in Card Fees: Revenues from Comericas Direct Express government card program are expected to be affected by the January government shutdown. However, consumer spending likely picked pace in the remaining months of the first quarter, resulting in usage of debit/credit cards and merchant payment processing services. Thus, card fees (a major contributor to fee income in 2018) might register marginal growth in to-be-reported quarter.

Overall Non-Interest Income to Remain Stable: Per Comericas mid-quarter update provided at the RBC Capital Market Financial Institutions Conference, deposits have likely declined in January and February. Also, no significant improvement is expected to have been witnessed in March. Thus, service charge on deposits accounts might remain muted.

However, equity markets were relatively strong during the quarter, reflecting positive investors sentiments over the Feds dovish stance on monetary policy and some clarity over U.S.-China trade talks. Thus, fiduciary income is likely to improve on asset inflows.

Given expectations of rise in NII and muted fee income, total revenues are likely to increase. The consensus estimate for sales for the first quarter is $853.1 million, reflecting an improvement of 7.6% year over year.

Controlled Expenses: The companys GEAR Up initiatives are expected to keep expenses under control. However, some impact of technological investment, seasonal rise in compensation expenses and restructuring charges is likely to persist.

Credit Quality to Improve: Credit quality is likely to remain strong on the back of an improving economy. Also, the consensus estimate shows nearly 30% decline in non-performing assets and loans, on a year-over-year basis.

Other Stocks to Consider

Here are some other stocks you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to post an earnings beat this time around.

Northern Trust Corporation NTRS is scheduled to release results on Apr 23. It has an Earnings ESP of +0.57% and a Zacks Rank #3. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation BK is scheduled to release results on Apr 17. The company, which carries a Zacks Rank of 3, has an Earnings ESP of +0.63%.

The Earnings ESP for BankUnited, Inc. BKU is +1.89% and it carries a Zacks Rank of 3. The company is scheduled to report quarterly numbers on Apr 24.

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Hillary Clinton said the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose website published hacked emails from her 2016 presidential campaign, must answer for what he has done in the wake of his dramatic arrest on Thursday.

Her comments came hours after Assange was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and taken into custody by Londons Metropolitan police and charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network.

Related: Julian Assange faces US extradition after arrest at Ecuadorian embassy

Assange is accused of working with Chelsea Manning, then a US army intelligence analyst, to break into the defense department network in March 2010 to obtain classified documents.

The US confirmed it would seek the extradition of Assange from the UK, prompting immediate concerns over journalistic protections under the first amendment.

I think it is clear from the indictment that came out its not about punishing journalism, Clinton said at an event in New York.

Clinton said the issue was not one of press freedom, but about assisting the hacking of a military computer to steal information from the United States government.

After 2,487 days in the embassy, the 47-year-old was arrested after Ecuador revoked his political asylum and invited police officers inside their Knightsbridge premises, where he has stayed since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations which Assange has always denied.

Later on Thursday, he was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court and faces up to 12 months in a British prison.

Look, Ill wait and see what happens with the charges and how it proceeds, but he skipped bail in the UK, Clinton said. The bottom line is he has to answer for what he has done, at least as its been charged.

Clinton also took a swipe at Donald Trump, stating of her former rival: I do think its a little ironic that [Assange] may be the only foreigner that this administration would welcome to the United States.

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Related: From hatred to love to cold indifference: Trump's changing tune on Wikileaks

Clinton has long pointed to Russian interference in the 2016 election as a major factor in her defeat to Trump, citing in particular the impact of hacked emails published on WikiLeaks at pivotal moments in the campaign.

The website first leaked the contents of internal emails stolen from Democratic National Committee servers just ahead of the partys convention in July. WikiLeaks then published thousands of hacked emails in October from Clintons campaign chairman, John Podesta, which were released just hours after the release of an Access Hollywood tape in which Trump had bragged about groping and kissing women without their consent.

Despite hailing WikiLeaks as a treasure trove during the 2016 campaign, Trump feigned ignorance about the website and its activities in the wake of Assanges arrest.

I know nothing about WikiLeaks, the president told reporters at the White House. Its not my thing.

After WikiLeaks disseminated the hacked DNC emails in 2016, then candidate Trump infamously declared: WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks.

Vice-President Mike Pence defended Trump in an interview with CNN on Friday, stating his prior comments were in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information by the United States of America.

The justice department is now seeking extradition and were going to bring Julian Assange to justice, Pence said, while adding Assanges work with Manning was one of the greatest compromises of classified information in American history.

Manning, a former US soldier, was convicted in 2013 of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks and sentenced to 35 years in prison for espionage and theft. She was released in 2017 after a seven-year stint in prison, but sent back to jail in March of this year after refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

While the narrow charge against Assange of violating computer hacking laws was not widely in dispute, academics and advocacy groups were alarmed by the justice departments accusatory tone toward journalistic activities that include protecting the anonymity of sources and sharing government information and records in the public interest.

Assanges lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, said his arrest sets a dangerous precedent for all media organizations in Europe and around the world.

Its called conspiracy, added WikiLeakss editor-in-chief, Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Its conspiracy to commit journalism.
A man who has been arrested following fires at three historically black churches in Louisiana is the son of a sheriffas deputy who authorities believe may have been influenced by ablack metal musica.

Governor Jon Bel Edwards announced that 21-year-old Holden Matthews had been arrested in connection to those fires, which impacted three churches over a ten day period.

aI donat know what this young manas motive, I donat know what was in his heart a but it cannot be justified,a Mr Edwards said on Thursday during a press conference.

State Fire Marshal Butch Browning said that Mr Matthews has been charged on three counts of arson on a religious building, with each individual count carrying a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

Mr Browning was the official who said that black metal music may have been involved in Mr Matthewas motive.

(St Landry Parish Sheriff's Office)

aWe can now confirm all three of these fires are intentionally set and all three of these fires are related,a Mr Browning said.

Mr Matthewsa father works for the St Landry Parish Sheriffas office, and Sheriff Bobby Guidroz said that his employee was shocked by the news about his son.

aHoldenas father is an employee of mine,a Mr Guidroz said. aHe was shocked and hurt as any father would be. He was in terrible shape.a
Every Friday our Personal Finance team will round up consumer news you need to know ahead of the weekend, on a segment we call Family First for YFi PM. Read below for this weeks round-up on taxes, cheap airfare, and a new warning for parents.

Final weekend to file taxes

Tax day is Monday, so this is the final weekend to file before you need to file for an extension. Thirty percent of Americans still havent filed their returns, according to the latest IRS report. That means another 49 million returns still need to be filed. Tax refunds are $31 less on average, down by 1.1%  and total refunds issued by the IRS are behind by 2.6%, or $5.8 billion.

If youre filing using mobile apps, beware of fake ones that are impersonating well-known online tax filing services like H&R Block, that trick consumers into downloading malware onto their devices. A new report by RiskIQ cites 30% of mobile tax apps have been blacklisted. Not only can these blacklisted apps steal your identity, but the spyware software installed when you download these apps can spy on everything a user does, even if they are not using their phone, warns RiskIQ.

Related: Your last-minute questions about taxes answered

Why right now is the best time to book your summer travel

Once youve filed your taxes securely, you might want to think about using your tax refund on your summer airfare. Travel site Hopper forecasts prices will be 7% higher next month, and could drop down again in July. Round-trip tickets on domestic flights are $229 on average this month, up 2.3% compared to March. But compared to prices at the same time two years ago, flight prices are down 6.3%.

For international flights, travel experts recommend booking five to six months in advance.

Wake-up call for parents with baby sleepers

A baby sleeper linked to 32 infant deaths is still on the market, after the American Academy of Pediatrics called on maker Fisher-Price to withdraw the product this week. Rather than a recall, Fisher-Price and the Consumer Safety Production Commission issued a joint warning to consumers on April 5 that parents should stop using the product after 3 months of age, or once their child exhibits rollover capabilities.

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Because deaths continue to occur, CPSC is recommending consumers stop use of the product by three months of age, or as soon as an infant exhibits rollover capabilities. CPSC has previously warned consumers to use restraints in infant inclined sleep products. Fisher-Price warns consumers to stop using the product when infants can roll over, but the reported deaths show that some consumers are still using the product when infants are capable of rolling and without using the three point harness restraint.

Watch more:

How to get more time to file your taxes

Why getting audited can be a good thing for your business

How to tackle taxes in retirement
April 11, 2019 - Hannah Farrington

Professor Parnall discusses Methods of Legal Analysis with Chief of Party Garry Ledbetter and Dean Gulnoza S. Ismailova at UWED

Former UNM Law Dean and Emeritus Professor Ted Parnall recently led a unique seminar as part of the USAID-funded Tetratech Judicial Reform in Uzbekistan (JRUP) Project. The Methods of Legal Analysis seminar, held at the University of World Economy and Diplomacy (UWED) offered an opportunity for teachers in Uzbekistan to familiarize themselves with the IRAC and FIRAC methods of analysis, and to explore how to apply these in practice. UWED is supervised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Parnall subsequently made a visit to the Tashkent State University of Law (TSUL), supervised by the Ministry of Justice of Uzbekistan, in early March meetings with Deputy Rector Mansur Kamalov of TSUL and other representatives. During the meetings, Parnall participated in discussions relating to programmatic and curricular considerations affecting the TSUL Masters degree in law, including the development of Mock Trial and Legal Writing courses.

Professor Parnall said that he drew heavily not only on his own experiences over many year of working in numerous other countries, such as Indonesia, Egypt and China, but also on the focus the UNM School of Law has placed on similar programs. There is a significant international trend to make legal education more practical and responsive to the economic and social needs of their communities, and it is encouraging to see the developments being undertaken by Uzbekistans institutions, shared Parnall.

For more information on former UNM Law Dean and Emeritus Professor Ted Parnall, please click here. For more information on UWED click here.
By Lawrence White

BIRMINGHAM, England (Reuters) - HSBC has so far moved only a "tiny" number of jobs to Paris in order to deal with Brexit, Chief Executive John Flint said on Friday, in the bank's most detailed comments yet on its plans.

The total number of jobs moved is likely fewer than 100 of as many as 1,000 the bank has said it could ultimately transfer, Flint told Reuters on the sidelines of the bank's annual shareholders' meeting in Birmingham.

"I would imagine it's tens, I don't know exactly but it's a tiny number of people who have moved so far," Flint said.

Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson said the lender would likely slow the pace of moving the jobs due to recent uncertainty over the outcome of talks with the European Union.

Prime Minister Theresa May's repeated failure to get her withdrawal agreement through parliament has left lingering uncertainty as to when, or indeed if, Britain will exit the bloc. EU leaders agreed this week that Brexit was to be delayed until October 31.

The update from Europe's biggest bank on how many roles it has moved so far comes amid fears in Britain that Brexit could ultimately lead to a decline in London's status as the continent's leading financial hub.

A Reuters survey in February found financial services firms expected to move around 2,000 jobs as a result of Brexit, a fifth of the 10,000 flagged in a survey in September 2017.

PENSION VOTE

Shareholders at the meeting overwhelmingly voted against ending a form of pension cuts affecting thousands of former employees, following a protest by some of them outside the bank's annual meeting in the central English city.

The policy, under which former employees' pensions are cut when they begin receiving state benefits, is known as a 'clawback', which some of the protesters referenced by dressing in lobster outfits.

Advising shareholders to vote against the protesters' proposal, HSBC Chairman Mark Tucker said the cuts were legal and fair, and fewer than 4 percent of votes cast were in favour.

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HSBC also faced questions from climate change activist groups over its financing of coal power-related projects in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam.

The bank last year ended funding fossil fuel projects in all other countries, but said a lack of alternatives in those three meant it would continue there for now.

"We don't agree that we need to bring an immediate end to financing of all fossil fuels," Flint said.

(Reporting By Lawrence White; editing by John Stonestreet and Mike Harrison)
By Toby Sterling and Stephanie van den Berg

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Just days after the United States' government revoked the visa of the International Criminal Court's prosecutor, judges at the ICC on Friday rejected her request to open an investigation into alleged atrocities in the war in Afghanistan, citing practical reasons.

The decision, which prosecutor Fatou Bensouda may appeal, angered human rights groups and means that the Taliban, the Afghan government and the United States will not face any investigation at the ICC for their alleged crimes, which dated mostly from 2003-04.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the decision "a major international victory," and denounced the international court for its "broad, unaccountable, prosecutorial powers," as well as for what he considers its threat to American sovereignty.

"Any attempt to target American, Israeli or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response," Trump said.

White House National Security Advisor John Bolton, a sharp critic of the ICC, called the ruling a "vindication" of the U.S.' tough policy against the court that he has engineered and a "stinging defeat" for the prosecutors.

He told reporters that even the cases of ousted Sudan President Omar al-Bashir and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who Washington wants to step down, should fall under the jurisdiction of their home countries, and not the ICC.

"Fundamentally, political maturation and responsibility requires that people be held responsible by their own societies," Bolton said.

In an unusual ruling, the ICC judges said Bensouda's case seemed to have met the court's criteria for jurisdiction and admissibility, but given an array of practical considerations that made chances of success remote, it did not make sense to pursue it further.

They cited a failure to gather evidence at an early stage, a lack of cooperation from governments involved, and the likely costs as prohibitive.

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In addition, "the current circumstances of the situation in Afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited," the judges said in a 2-1 ruling.

"An investigation into the situation in Afghanistan at this stage would not serve the interests of justice and (the chamber) accordingly rejects the request," the judges said.

Bensouda said her office would "consider all available legal remedies" against the decision.

International legal experts saw the ruling in part as a recognition of the realities the court faces in conducting prosecutions.

Human rights groups were incensed.

The decision "is insane and politically charged," Karine Bonneau, director of international justice at the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said in a tweet.

The ruling was "an affirmation of double standards. This situation was exactly why the court was created," she added.

Kevin Jon Heller, associate professor of International Criminal law at Amsterdam University, said the decision appeared to impose significant hurdles on any case before the ICC in terms of the chances of a successful prosecution.

"If these are the criteria they are never going to open an investigation", he said.

COURT WAS 'LAST HOPE'

In 2006, Bensouda's predecessor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, opened an examination into alleged war crimes by all parties in the conflict in Afghanistan, including the possible role of U.S. personnel in relation to the detention of suspects.

Bensouda took over the dossier in 2010, but did not request a formal investigation until November 2017.

The United States revoked Bensouda's entry visa earlier this month, after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in March that Washington would withdraw or deny visas to any ICC staff investigating possible war crimes by U.S. forces or allies in Afghanistan.

ICC prosecutors said in 2015 they had evidence suggesting international forces in Afghanistan had caused serious harm to detainees by subjecting them to physical and psychological abuse.

They also noted that there was evidence of violations committed by Taliban and forces that supported the Afghan government.

U.S.-backed forces drove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan in 2001 at the start of a war that has dragged on for 17 years.

Human rights and victims' organizations in Kabul called the ICC ruling "absolutely shocking".

"We the Afghan people have suffered so much and the court was a last hope for all of us in a country which is completely lacking justice," Hadi Marifat of the human rights group AHRDO told Reuters.

The ICC is a court of last resort with 122 member states. It acts only when countries within its jurisdiction are found to be unable or unwilling to seriously investigate war crimes, genocide or other serious atrocities.

The court has convicted three men for war crimes and crimes against humanity since it was set up in 2002: Congolese warlords Germain Katanga and Thomas Lubanga and a former Islamist rebel who admitted wrecking holy shrines during Mali's 2012 conflict.

There have been repeated negotiations in recent months between the Taliban and U.S. special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad to try to broker a deal to end the Afghan conflict. So far the Taliban has refused to meet directly with the Afghan government, which they dismiss as a U.S. puppet regime.

(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; additional reporting by Toby Sterling, Anthony Deutsch, Bart Meijer and Steve Holland; editing by Alison Williams, Frances Kerry and G Crosse)
Galway Metals Inc. (CVE:GWM) shareholders might be concerned after seeing the share price drop 24% in the last month. But don't let that distract from the very nice return generated over three years. To wit, the share price did better than an index fund, climbing 86% during that period.

View our latest analysis for Galway Metals

Galway Metals hasn't yet reported any revenue yet, so it's as much a business idea as an actual business. So it seems that the investors more focused on would could be, than paying attention to the current revenues (or lack thereof). It seems likely some shareholders believe that Galway Metals will find or develop a valuable new mine before too long.

As a general rule, if a company doesn't have much revenue, and it loses money, then it is a high risk investment. You should be aware that there is always a chance that this sort of company will need to issue more shares to raise money to continue pursuing its business plan. While some such companies do very well over the long term, others become hyped up by promoters before eventually falling back down to earth, and going bankrupt (or being recapitalized). Galway Metals has already given some investors a taste of the sweet gains that high risk investing can generate, if your timing is right.

Galway Metals had net cash of just CA$4.3m when it last reported (September 2018). So if it has not already moved to replenish reserves, we think the near-term chances of a capital raising event are pretty high. Given how low on cash the it got, investors must really like its potential for the share price to be up 23% per year, over 3 years. The image below shows how Galway Metals's balance sheet has changed over time; if you want to see the precise values, simply click on the image.

TSXV:GWM Historical Debt, April 12th 2019

It can be extremely risky to invest in a company that doesn't even have revenue. There's no way to know its value easily. One thing you can do is check if company insiders are buying shares. It's often positive if so, assuming the buying is sustained and meaningful. Luckily we are in a position to provide you with this free chart of insider buying (and selling).

Story continues

A Different Perspective

It's good to see that Galway Metals has rewarded shareholders with a total shareholder return of 18% in the last twelve months. That gain is better than the annual TSR over five years, which is 12%. Therefore it seems like sentiment around the company has been positive lately. Someone with an optimistic perspective could view the recent improvement in TSR as indicating that the business itself is getting better with time. Investors who like to make money usually check up on insider purchases, such as the price paid, and total amount bought. You can find out about the insider purchases of Galway Metals by clicking this link.

There are plenty of other companies that have insiders buying up shares. You probably do not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on CA exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
By Jamie Freed

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Budget Indian airline SpiceJet Ltd said on Friday it planned to lease a "first lot" of 16 Boeing Co 737-800s to help fill a gap in aviation capacity that ratings agency ICRA said has pushed up fares by 30 to 40 percent since September.

SpiceJet had canceled some flights due to the grounding of its 12 737 MAX planes after Ethiopian Airlines' deadly March 10 crash. However, the bulk of the reduction, which ICRA said removed 15 percent of market capacity, is due to Jet Airways Ltd grounding more than three-quarters of its fleet as a result of funding problems.

"The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector," SpiceJet Chairman Ajay Singh said in a statement. "SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimize passenger inconvenience."

India's civil aviation minister Suresh Prabhu has directed the civil aviation secretary to review issues related to Jet Airways and take steps to minimize the inconvenience to passengers and ensure their safety, the minister said in a Tweet on Friday.

India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation has de-registered 11 737-800s that had been leased by Jet Airways on request from lessors, the agency's website said, and another 14 requests for de-registration remain pending.

SpiceJet did not say whether it planned to lease planes that had previously been flown by Jet. The budget carrier's shares rose 5 percent in early trade on Friday.

(Editing by Jacqueline Wong)
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Five days ahead of Indonesia's general election, President Joko Widodo retains a double-digit lead over his challenger, retired general Prabowo Subianto, three opinion polls published this week show. The election in the worlds third-biggest democracy is a repeat of the 2014 contest, and the incumbent has been comfortably ahead in most surveys after winning by almost six percentage points last time around. Three recent surveys by Indopolling, Roy Morgan and Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) showed Widodo likely to win between 54 and 57 percent of the vote. Prabowo, as he is usually known as in Indonesia, has between 32 and 37 percent of the vote, the surveys conducted in the first weeks of April show. The SMRC survey published on Friday showed 6.3 percent of voters remain undecided, down from as many as 25 percent several months ago. The opposition has disputed the findings of surveys putting it behind, saying big turnouts at its rallies showed it had far stronger support, as well as its own survey. It has also claimed to have uncovered data irregularities affecting millions of people in the election rolls and vowed to take legal action, or use "people power", if its complaints were not resolved. Several videos appeared online this week appearing to show thousands of voting papers stuffed in bags at a warehouse in neighboring Malaysia, with many seeming to have been already marked. One showed people holding up ballots, saying they were marked in favor of Widodo, as well as for a member of one of the political parties backing him. Arief Budiman, chairman of Indonesia's election panel, said he would send a team to Malaysia to investigate, along with officials from the election supervisory agency. "There's no decision on whether (overseas) voting will be postponed in Malaysia," he said by text message. The agency had received a report from Malaysia that punctured ballots in favor of Widodo had been found inside a plastic bag and a black diplomatic bag at two shophouses, a supervisory official, Ratna Dewi Pettalolo, said by telephone. Another supervisory official, Mochammad Afiffudin, said in a statement 550,000 overseas Indonesians were set to vote on Sunday in Malaysia, with 319,293 due to mail their votes. The Widodo campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment but a senior campaign official was quoted by the Detik.com news portal describing the incident as an attempt to discredit it. Prabowo's campaign denied any involvement. (Reporting by Jessica Damiana and Yerica Lai; Writing by Fanny Potkin; Editing by Ed Davies and Clarence Fernandez)
Photo credit: Parco Valentino

From Car and Driver

Et tu, Torino? If there's a country more passionate about vehicles and the act of driving than Italy, we'd be hard pressed to name it. But now, even Italy is joining the global rush to hand it all over to the robots and let the cars drive themselves.

As self-driving cars make the transition from dreamy-eyed research conducted in laboratories and simulators, carmakers and tech firms need actual streets on which to test in real-world conditions. While some government regulators have proven more cooperative than others (Phoenix, Arizona, for instance), legal permission to run driverless cars on city streets isn't easy to come by, particularly for smaller startups. But now one city isn't just allowing self-driving cars to run on its roads, it's courting them.

That city is Turin, the fourth largest in Italy and-as longtime home of Fiat headquarters (and several of its plants)-about the closest equivalent to Detroit you'll find in southern Europe. That is, if you can imagine southeastern Michigan with a Mediterranean climate and ancient architecture.

Through the recently launched Torino City Lab initiative, the municipality aims to attract tech startups and provide them with the tools, data, and expedited bureaucracy they need to develop new technologies. And it's placing particular emphasis on the automotive and transportation sectors.

Photo credit: FEV

With its Smart Road project, the city is developing a 22-mile circuit of urban streets augmented to create a real-world testing ground for autonomous vehicles and driver-assistance systems. Along the route, the city and its partners are installing 5G mobile internet infrastructure, an array of 72 smart traffic lights, and dedicated cloud-computing servers close to the network.

"We are doing this to attract in our city innovation, to give new opportunities to our citizens, and to create an ecosystem that is open and ready for innovation and new startups," Paola Pisano, deputy mayor for innovation and Smart City in Turin, told tech investors at the OurCrowd Summit, which recently took place down the Mediterranean coast in Jerusalem. "We want to be the first city in innovation."

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What Turin stands to gain extends beyond jobs for its residents and tax revenues from the influx of companies it's courting. The initiative is designed to give planners insight into the relationship among vehicles, infrastructure, and the people who use them. And through those insights, it aims to develop new transportation models to cater to the needs of residents and visitors while reducing traffic congestion, road accidents, and environmental pollution.

Photo credit: Navya

French autonomous-vehicle firm Navya has already begun testing its self-driving shuttles in Turin, the first such pilot project undertaken anywhere in Italy. Engineering consultancy FEV has also started testing its self-driving prototypes there. And Intel's Mobileye division (based just across town from where the summit was held) is creating high-definition digital maps of the city. But those are just a few of the many partners that the Palazzo Civico (Turin's city hall) has lined up to support the project.

Also taking part are local universities, telecom companies, and automakers. These include not only the obvious ties to Fiat Chrysler, but also Italdesign (the Volkswagen Group's Turin-based design house), the consulting arm of Mercedes-Benz, and General Motors (which divested from most European operations but kept its powertrain-development facility in Turin).

"We have a strong ecosystem around mobility and around manufacturing," Pisano said. "So for this reason, for us, it is natural for us to do this evolution."

New Funding Is Driving Self-Driving Startups

In Israel, Pisano penned a new partnership on her city's behalf with OurCrowd, the investment firm that organized the summit, to help the tech startups it funds take advantage of the initiative and test their technologies in Turin. Of the $1 billion it has raised and dispersed to 170 companies in its portfolio since 2013, OurCrowd currently funds 10 startups working on driver-assistance and autonomous-vehicle technologies.

"Partnering with Torino City Lab gives our companies not only access to an urban playground for testing and strengthening their technology but a potential foothold into the European market as well-a win for everyone," said OurCrowd founder and CEO John Medved upon the announcement. "Public/private partnerships like this one are the future of scalable innovation," Pisano added, noting that her administration is "glad to continue to be the forefront of this trend."

Unleashing fleets of autonomous prototypes on public streets might be enough to scare off some government officials. But the official responsible for Turin's innovation initiatives is adamant that the potential benefits outweigh the safety risks and that the infrastructure her team and partners are putting in place will mitigate the chances of possible mishaps.

"The car has all the sensors around it to understand the environment, but if you want to create a more secure structure, you have to give more redundancy to the data," Pisano told Car and Driver. "So for this reason, we map all the city with precision mapping in order to [provide] redundant data.

"If you have 5G, you have low latency," she said. "But if you have also the cloud close to the car, you can have faster [processing] of the algorithm. So we have really strong technology for safety, we [gather] redundant the data, we take out [drivers'] distracted behavior . . . and we cross our fingers that the thing we are thinking is correct for the security of our citizens."

('You Might Also Like',)
Tokyo (AFP) - Japan Friday attacked an "extremely regrettable" ruling by the World Trade Organization that upheld a ban by South Korea on some seafood from Fukushima imposed after the 2011 nuclear disaster.

The WTO's highest court overturned an earlier judgement from 2018, handing Seoul a final victory in a legal battle that has dragged on for years.

"Even though the ruling did not acknowledge that South Korea's measures comply with the WTO rules, it is extremely regrettable that Japan's argument was not approved," said the foreign ministry in Tokyo.

"There is no change in Japan's position of demanding South Korea lift all the restriction measures, and we will pursue this via talks with South Korea," added the ministry in a statement.

Foreign Minister Taro Kono urged South Korea to "correct its policy" but acknowledged that Japan had now run out of legal recourse.

Fearing radioactive contamination, Seoul imposed a partial ban on seafood imports from the region after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Tokyo first took the row to the WTO in May 2015, requesting consultations -- the first step under the global trade body's settlement system.

But talks broke down, prompting Japan to seek a WTO ruling in August 2015.

The WTO panel ruled in 2018 that South Korea should lift its ban but the so-called appellate court quashed this, the final word on the subject.

According to Fukushima authorities, four countries and regions -- China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau -- have maintained a ban on importing a broad range of locally-produced foods.

South Korea, Singapore, the United States and the Philippines have partial bans in place.

But the majority of other countries and regions -- including the European Union -- have lifted bans on imports or allow imports on condition that a certificate of inspection is attached.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen as he leaves a police station in London - REUTERS

Jeremy Corbyn has called on the Government not to extradite Julian Assange, saying he had exposed evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The 47-year-old WikiLeaks founder spent his first night in custody after being convicted on Thursday of breaching bail following a dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

He is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer which, on conviction, could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice.

Almost 12 hours his arrest, the Labour leader tweeted: "The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government."

He accompanied his social media post with a video tweeted by shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, which she said showed leaked Pentagon footage of a 2007 air strike in Iraq which implicated American armed forces in the killing of civilians and two journalists.

He was retweeted by Assange supporter Pamela Anderson, who once described Mr Corbyn as "clearly a decent and fair man".

An individual alleged to have links to Assange was arrested on Thursday night while trying to leave Ecuador, officials in the country said.

The man, said to be Swedish software developer Ola Bini, was held at Quito airport as he prepared to board a flight bound for Japan on Thursday.

Ecuador's interior minister Maria Paula Romo said a person had been arrested for allegedly conspiring against the country's government.

Ms Romo told CNN's Spanish service: "We have information on how WikiLeaks would have intervened in domestic politics.

"Today a collaborator close to Julian Assange was arrested for investigative purposes. He has been living in Ecuador and was preparing to travel to Japan."

British software developer Martin Fowler said he was "very concerned to hear that my friend and colleague @olabini has been arrested in Ecuador".

Story continues

A tweet posted under the Twitter handle @olabini on Thursday referred to a press conference given by Ms Paula Romo in which she claimed there were "Russian hackers in Ecuador".

"Very worrisome news - this seems like a witch hunt to me," said another tweet on the account.

The US accuses Assange of assisting Chelsea Manning, a former US intelligence analyst, in breaking a password that helped her infiltrate Pentagon computers.

Addressing the House of Commons on Thursday, Ms Abbott said Assange was in the "cross-hairs of the US administration" over his whistle-blowing activities.

Ms Abbott said: "It is this whistle-blowing into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale, that has put Julian Assange in the cross-hairs of the US administration.

"It is for this reason that they have once more issued an extradition warrant against Mr Assange."

In response, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said: "Why is it whenever someone has a track record of undermining the UK and our allies and the values we stand for, you can almost guarantee that the leadership of the party opposite will support those who intend to do us harm?

"You can always guarantee that from the party opposite."

Assange, with grey hair tied into a pony tail and sporting a long beard, was described by a judge at a packed Westminster Magistrates' Court as behaving like a "narcissist", as he advised him to "get over to the US" and "get on with your life".

Assange spent almost seven years in the embassy, where he sought political asylum in 2012 when he failed in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations, one of rape and one of molestation.

In May 2017, Sweden's top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

Sign up for your essential, twice-daily briefing from The Telegraph with our free Front Page newsletter.
After mulling it over for a long time, JetBlue is taking a leap  across the pond, that is.

JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes announced Wednesday that the airline plans to start flying to London from New York and Boston in 2021.

Hayes said customers want the service, and it will strengthen JetBlue in key Northeast markets. The airline hasn't picked which London airport it will use.

JetBlue shares rose 58 cents, or 3.6%, to $16.92 in anticipation of the widely rumored announcement.

The CEO made it official during an employee gathering at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.

JetBlue leaders have been talking about the possibility of flights to Europe since mid-2016, around the time they announced plans to tweak their Airbus orders to get a longer-range plane.

Hayes said the airline waited until the right plane came along, a single-aisle plane with plenty of range to avoid the need for costlier two-aisle or "widebody" planes.

JetBlue will convert an existing order with Airbus to acquire 13 A321LR jets. They will be outfitted much like the Airbus planes that JetBlue flies on transcontinental routes but with more lie-flat seats in the premium cabin, which the airline calls Mint.

"This opens up a number of markets that haven't traditionally been served in this way," Hayes said in an interview. "You can anticipate other European destinations. It puts cities like Dublin and perhaps Amsterdam in scope."

The trans-Atlantic market is highly competitive. The three largest U.S. carriers all fly across the Atlantic in revenue-sharing deals with big European carriers  American Airlines has a deal with British Airways and Iberia; United Airlines teams up with Germany's Lufthansa; and Delta Air Lines has partnerships with Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic.

Delta seemed to throw down a gauntlet last week when it joined with Virgin Atlantic and announced plans to serve London's Gatwick Airport from New York and Boston sometime in 2020  details were sparse.

Story continues

Hayes thinks there is room for JetBlue to undercut bigger rivals, whom he accuses of price-gouging. He said he can offer dramatically lower fares in business class and throw in amenities like live TV and more legroom in economy to stimulate new demand.

Delta President Glen Hauenstein responded that his airline has seen other low-fare carriers try to compete across the Atlantic.

"There are always new entrants coming and there always entrants leaving," he said, adding that he thinks Delta is "in a very good spot."

JetBlue has plenty of work to do before the first passenger can board. For one thing, it needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct long, over-water flights with two-engine jets.

Southwest Airlines took far longer than it expected to gain that approval for flights between California and Hawaii. JetBlue has hired industry veterans with experience in the FAA process, and it will tap outside help, Hayes said.

JetBlue plans to limit London flights to about 1 or 1.5% of its daily departures. It has no immediate plans to serve London from anywhere beyond New York and Boston, Hayes said.

___

David Koenig can be reached at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter
Have you been eager to see how JPMorgan JPM performed in Q1 in comparison with the market expectations? Lets quickly scan through the key facts from this New York-based major global banks earnings release this morning:



An Earnings Beat



JPMorgan came out with earnings of $2.65 per share, which surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.32.



Improved revenues were partly offset by a rise in expenses.



How Was the Estimate Revision Trend?



You should note that the earnings estimate revisions for JPMorgan depicted pessimistic stance prior to the earnings release. The Zacks Consensus Estimate moved nearly 1% down over the past seven days.



JPMorgan have an impressive earnings surprise history. Before posting the earnings beat in Q1, the company delivered positive surprises in three of trailing four quarters, as shown in the chart below:

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Price and EPS Surprise

JPMorgan Chase & Co. Price and EPS Surprise | JPMorgan Chase & Co. Quote

Overall, the company has a positive earnings surprise of 0.39% in the trailing four quarters.



Revenue Higher Than Expected



JPMorgan recorded revenues of $29.1 billion, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $28 billion. Also, it compared favorably with the year-ago number of $28.5 billion.



Key Q1 Statistics:



Investment banking fees were up 6% year over year

Fixed Income Markets revenue declined 18% year over year

Equity Markets revenues fell 14% year over year

Provisions for credit losses increased 28% year over year

Average Core loans up 4% year over year

Returned nearly $7.4 billion to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks

Basel III common equity Tier 1 ratio of 12.2%, as of Mar 31, 2019



What Zacks Rank Says



The estimate revisions that we discussed earlier have driven a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) for JPMorgan. However, since the latest earnings performance is yet to be reflected in the estimate revisions, the rank is subject to change. While things apparently look favorable, it all depends on what sense the just-released report makes to the analysts.



(You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.)



How the Market Reacted So Far



Following the earnings release, JPMorgans shares were up 2.1% in the pre-trading session. This is in sync with to what the stock witnessed in the prior-days session. Clearly, the initial reaction shows that the investors have considered the results in their favor. However, the full-sessions price movement may indicate a different picture.



Check back later for our full write up on this JPMorgan earnings report!



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Julian Assange has been charged by the US with conspiring to hack into a secret Pentagon computer network, in a criminal indictment unveiled soon after the WikiLeaks founders arrest in London.

Assange is accused of working with Chelsea Manning, then a US army intelligence analyst, to break into the defense department network in March 2010 to obtain classified documents.

Related: Julian Assange: US justice department says he faces five years in jail  live updates

Assange, 47, is charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison if convicted, though he may yet face additional charges.

US prosecutors allege Assange helped Manning crack an encrypted password to gain access to the computer network under a username that did not belong to her, making it more difficult for authorities to trace the source of leaked documents.

Assange, who did not possess a security clearance or need to know, was not authorised to receive classified information of the United States, they said.

Manning had by then given WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of secret government records, including logs from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. She went on to give them a huge cache of secret diplomatic cables. Some of the files were published by WikiLeaks in partnership with news organisations including the Guardian.

The indictment cited online discussions between the two in which Assange was seen actively encouraging Manning to provide more information, the justice department said.

After this upload, thats all I really have got left, Manning was said to have told Assange in one message. Assange allegedly replied: Curious eyes never run dry in my experience.

Assange was secretly indicted in March last year by a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, according to the documents released on Thursday. The charge remained a secret until it was partly revealed by the justice department in a mistaken court filing last November.

Story continues

By charging Assange with hacking rather than for publishing classified information, US prosecutors avoided having to directly challenge the press freedoms guaranteed under the first amendment of the US constitution.

The charge accuses Assange of conspiring to knowingly access a computer without authorisation in order to obtain secret information whose release could be used to the injury of the United States and the advantage of any foreign nation.

But allies of Assange said the US was prosecuting a publisher by the back door.

Barry Pollack, an attorney for the WikiLeaks founder, condemned what he called an unprecedented effort to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information. Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower, described Assanges arrest as a dark moment for press freedom.

Barack Obamas administration was known to have investigated WikiLeaks in the years following the release of Mannings document haul. But Eric Holder, Obamas first attorney general, reportedly decided against bringing charges out of concerns that a precedent could be set for prosecuting publishers.

The grand jury in Virginia has continued investigating Assange in recent months, indicating the possibility of future charges. WikiLeaks has come under scrutiny for publishing leaked spying tools taken from the CIA, and for releasing emails hacked from the accounts of senior Democrats during the 2016 election campaign.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said in response to the charges that Assange had become a direct participant in Russian efforts to undermine the west and should be punished.

The US confirmed it would seek the extradition of Assange from the UK. He was arrested on Thursday morning at the embassy of Ecuador, where he had been staying since 2012 after being granted asylum. He was then under investigation by authorities in Sweden for allegations of sexual assault, which he denied.

Attorneys for Assange said they would fight the extradition process, which could result in a lengthy legal dispute in the British courts system.

Manning was convicted in 2013 under the Espionage Act for stealing classified government records. In May 2017 she was released from a military prison in Kansas after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence. Barack Obama granted Manning clemency during his final days in office.

Manning has been jailed in Virginia for the past month after being found in contempt of court for refusing to testify to the grand jury investigating Assange. She was held in solitary confinement for part of that time.
Chelsea Manning has said the arrest of Julian Assange a the man to whom she leaked classified information a decade ago a underscored her claim that her continued imprisonment represents judicial abuse.

Ms Manning, 31, was last month sent to jail indefinitely after she refused to take part in a Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks, and told judges she would accept awhatever you bring upon mea. The investigation is using secret hearings involving a grand jury.

aI will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech,a she said, as the court ordered her to be held until she agreed to cooperate, or else the grand jury process was completed.

On Thursday, after Assange was arrested in London on behalf of the US where he was charged with conspiracy in relation to publishing the material Ms Manning provided, the former army intelligence analyst said through her lawyers, that developments had make her argument stronger.

aThe indictment against Julian Assange unsealed today was obtained a year to the day before Chelsea appeared before the grand jury and refused to give testimony,a she said in a statement.

aThe fact that this indictment has existed for over a year underscores what Chelseaas legal team and Chelsea herself have been saying since she was first issued a subpoena to appear in front of a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia a that compelling Chelsea to testify would have been duplicative of evidence already in the possession of the grand jury, and was not needed in order for US Attorneys to obtain an indictment of Mr Assange.a

** STATEMENT: Chelseaas legal team responds to todayas unsealed indictment. This is further evidence that the governmentas continued imprisonment of Chelsea for her principled stance against grand jury secrecy is punitive, cruel and unnecessary https://t.co/WZiDuVWHPa a Chelsea E. Manning (@xychelsea) April 11, 2019

The statement added: aSince her testimony can no longer contribute to a grand jury investigation, Chelseaas ongoing detention can no longer be seriously alleged to constitute an attempt to coerce her testimony. As continued detention would be purely punitive, we demand Chelsea be released.a

Story continues

Ms Manning served seven years in jail between 2010a2017 after being charged with more than a dozen crimes, after leaking 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive documents to WikiLeaks.

Among the information, was video footage showing US military helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen people.

Easier this month, it was revealed Ms Manning had been moved from administrative segregation at the Virginia jail while she is serving an indefinite sentence after refusing to testify to the grand jury probe.

The Associated Press said jail officials refused to confirm Ms Manningas status, but said administrative segregation was used for safety reasons and those inmates still had access to social visits, recreation and break time.
Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, after he was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum. (PA Images)

Julian Assanges mother has railed against Theresa May over the 'thuggish, unlawful arrest' of her son.

Christine Assange also attacked Ecuadors president and the judge who branded the WikiLeaks founder a narcissist in a stream of tweets demanding her son is released.

Pledging to fight like hell, Mrs Assange said the Prime Minister was trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dogs breakfast".

Mrs Assange, who lives in Australia, tweeted and shared articles regularly after her son was seen being forcibly removed from the Ecuadorean embassy on Thursday.

Addressing the countrys president, Lenin Moreno, she tweeted: Shame on you @Lenin #Moreno! May the Ecuadorean people seek vengeance upon you, you dirty, deceitful, rotten traitor!

May the face of my suffering son haunt your sleepless nights.. And may your soul writhe forever in torturous Purgatory as you have tortured my beloved son!

Assange was taken to Westminster Magistrates Court after his removal from the embassy on Thursday.

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer representing Julian Assange, talks outside Westminster Magistrates Court after the WikiLeaks founder's arrest (John Stillwell/PA Wire)

Kristinn Hrafnsson, Editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks and barrister Jennifer Robinson speak to the media outside Westminster Magistrates' Court in London (PA Images)

District Judge Michael Snow described his behaviour as that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.

His mother tweeted: UK judge should NOT be making statements like this! This is (a) rubbish Legal process!

On Friday morning UK time, she issued a plea to police, prison officers and court staff.

She said her son had been detained without charge, deprived of fresh air, exercise and sun and denied proper medical/dental care for several years.

She also claimed he had been isolated/tortured for a year.

Please be patient, gentle & kind to him, she tweeted.
Justin Smoak put on a hitting clinic on Thursday. (CP)

The vast majority of the Toronto Blue Jays troubles this season have stemmed for two offensive deficits.

Toronto has been both over-aggressive and punchless. Entering Thursdays action, the club ranked 23rd in the majors in walk rate (7.7 percent) and 28th in Slugging Percentage (.320). Lagging behind the field in either of these stats can be survivable, but together its a run-scoring death sentence.

Justin Smoak is arguably the only Blue Jay who has both, plus patience and power. Although the team has been more than one hitter away from fielding a functional offence so far, his recent absence has been felt.

In his return to action after four games on the shelf with a stiff neck, he showed the Blue Jays precisely what theyve been missing. In fact, in his third inning at-bat against Bostons Nathan Eovaldi on Thursday night, he incapsulated everything the 2019 Blue Jays have lacked as a lineup thus far.

The nine-pitch work of art ended in this three-run shot:

 SMOAK ALERT 



We can confirm this: We're in flight! #LetsGoBlueJays pic.twitter.com/jU05qHNET8  Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) April 12, 2019

But the process was almost as impressive as the result. Heres the story of a one-on-one battle the likes of which the Blue Jays havent seen this season.

0-0 - Cutter 91.5 mph

Via MLB.tv

Theres nothing particularly special about this take, but you can see Smoak considers going after it. Because its in the middle of the plate, its the type of offering thats tempting for a low-ball hitter like the Blue Jays big first baseman.

1-0 - Splitter 84.9 mph

Via MLB.tv

Not a good pitch. A guy like Smoak isnt going to wave at a splitter that doesnt threaten the zone in a hitters count. Still, credit where credits due for not blowing it.

Story continues

2-0 - Four-seam Fastball 98.2 mph

Via MLB.tv

Even though the pitch is called a strike, thats a good take. Smoak likes to extend his arms and hes not going to drive a fastball with elite velocity that far inside unless hes specifically gearing up for the pitch. In a 2-0 count, you hope to see something juicer, and theres a pretty good chance of a pitch like this being called a ball.

2-1 - Cutter 91.3 mph

Via MLB.tv

Another good take, and probably a bad call from the umpire. If youre behind in the count, this is close enough that youre looking to foul it off. Sitting at 2-1, Smoak was definitely right to steer clear.

2-2 - Curveball 79.3 mph

Via MLB.tv

Blue Jays fans will recall watching Kendrys Morales waving and missing at this exact pitch far too often. Smoak wants no part of this uncompetitive breaking ball though, and he brings it to a full count.

3-2 - Cutter 91.6 mph

Via MLB.tv

Arguably the first strike of the at-bat. Smoak looks like hes gearing up for the fastball and fouls it off. Theres a thin line between what happens here and the veteran rolling one to second base, but he walks it successfully.

3-2 - Four-seam Fastball 97.7 mph

Via MLB.tv

The reason Smoak leaves the box on this pitch is that its very nearly a double down the line. His swing here shows in no uncertain terms that hes not going to be beaten by Eovaldis big fastball. Hes looking for a heater and he almost nearly gets a hold of this one. This is a if you throw me another fastball things might not go well for you foul ball.

3-2 - Cutter 91.7 mph

Via MLB.tv

Eovaldi tries to come in with the cutter but he misses his spot. Fortunately for the right-hander, the pitch actually ends up in a decent location in the lower third over the outside corner. Yet again, Smoak rips it foul in a way that demonstrates hes ready for the heater.

3-2 - Four-seam Fastball 99.1 mph

Via MLB.tv

That right there is a barrel.

It seems that because Smoak had seen Eovaldis entire arsenal, the right-hander tried to reach back for a little extra heat. It played right into the first basemans hands, and he did not miss.

All-in-all the plate appearance was what a broadcaster with no aversion to cliches might call a professional at-bat despite the fact all at-bats in the big leagues are professional. It was a perfect example of beating a pitcher mentally and physically.

Smoak is never going to be an extremely outspoken leader on the Blue Jays, even if hes one of the few veterans left on the squad. What he can do, though, is lead by example. Thats precisely what he did on Thursday in this epic battle.

The Blue Jays can only hope their stable of young hitters were playing close attention.

More Blue Jays coverage from Yahoo Sports Canada
A few hours after the world (by way of the internet) laid eyes on the very first photographic image of a black hole, the name Katie Bouman began trending. According to a tweet from the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, the 29-year-old MIT postdoctoral student had led the creation of a new algorithm that made the black hole image possible. After the pic went public on Wednesday, it wasnt long before another photo began making the rounds: one of the fresh-faced scientist posed in front of a computer screen that displayed the groundbreaking image shed helped create, with her hands clasped over her mouth in proud disbelief.

Have you seen this, @MaryMcDonnell10 ?

Katie Bouman  young scientists developed the crucial algorithm that helped capture the groundbreaking first-ever image of a black hole

And the man  likely  plays with his cell phone under table.. Women have to do everything. pic.twitter.com/Z8fKWplypn  Silvia_Mac (@Silvia1_1aivliS) April 12, 2019

In an instant, Bouman became a stand-in for generations of women scientists whose contributions to technological breakthroughs were buried under the names of their male colleagues. Celebrities tweeted in appreciation. Others listed the names of female scientists that time, and sexism, had allowed us to forget. The moment felt triumphant: a chance for women in STEM to get their long-deserved moment in the spotlight. But there was also some pushback against this simple, feel-good version of events  namely, from Katie Bouman herself.

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Im so excited that we finally get to share what we have been working on for the past year! she wrote on Facebook. The image shown today is the combination of images produced by multiple methods. No one algorithm or person made this image, it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat. It has been truly an honor, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all.

In fact, Bouman was one of more than 200 scientists from 60 different research institutions, in 18 countries across six continents, to contribute to the project. Approximately 40 women (including Bouman) were involved.

The people behind the black hole image. Here are (almost) all the heroes of the @ehtelescope. (From our last collaboration meeting in Nijmegen, Nov. 2018.) #EHTblackhole pic.twitter.com/ixegKTo5Lb  Heino Falcke (@hfalcke) April 11, 2019

While many media outlets (including us) mistakenly reported that Bouman had led the creation of the algorithm used to visualize the previously unphotographable image, a Harvard astronomer named Shep Doeleman was actually in charge of the project.

Boumans contributions were important to this process, and while its true that she led a team in developing an algorithm intended to create an image of a black hole, the New York Times reported Thursday that Boumans algorithm was not the one ultimately used to make the photo we saw on Wednesday. (On Friday afternoon, the MIT CSAIL Twitter account issued a series of posts to clear up earlier confusion.)

There are women involved in every single step of this amazing project, said Sara Issaoun, a 24-year-old graduate student at Radboud University in the Netherlands, in an interview with the Times. Issaoun was one of the researchers involved.

So, it appears that many of us got the details of this story a bit wrong, and the reasons why are pretty straightforward. Obviously, its easy to jump to less-than-accurate conclusions from information thats shared on social media, especially in celebration of a young woman for a breakthrough in STEM, a field in which women are so notoriously underrepresented.

The Bouman story was also the product of our tendency to credit individual thought-leaders or pioneers for making change happen. We like being able to point to a single person who made a difference in the world, because it inspires us to try to do the same. But the truth is that no one person alone is responsible for making big things happen.

Collaboration is a superpower. As Katie Bouman wants us to remember, its when we work together that the impossible comes within reach  or, in the case of black holes, that the unphotographable becomes photographed. The Bouman story is one of teamwork and triumph, and by upholding that spirit, more of us will be able to shine. It may not be the story we wanted, but its the one with the most to offer.

RELATED: The Black Hole Photo Everyones Freaking Out About Was Made Possible by This Female Grad Student

(Photo by Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
KBR, Inc.s KBR global government services business, KBRwyle has won two contracts from the Air Force Installation Contracting Agency to provide key support to F-35 and other air force aircraft under DoD Information Analysis Center's Defense Systems Technical Area Task multi-award contract.



These cost-plus-fixed-fee task orders are valid for a period of 42 months and the work related to the contracts will be performed at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.



Per the first task order, worth $41.9 million, KBRwyle will provide analysis, research and product support to the Air Force Life Cycle Management Centers (AFLCMC) aeronautical systems. The company will accomplish engineering, airworthiness, system security, assurance, risk management and safety analyses for aircraft.



Markedly, the work will help AFLCMC's Engineering Directorate in delivering pioneer weapon systems for infrared countermeasures, cyber resiliency, survivability, and vulnerability analyses of the latest stealth and materials technology.



By means of the second $54.6-million defense systems task order, the company will serve AFLCMCs Special Projects Office with detailed acquisition strategy, which includes planning, development, sustainability, cybersecurity, and engineering and business improvement process. Also, it will support Air Forces F-35 Hybrid Product Support Integrator organization, F-35A Fleet Management Office and other new programs.



Notably, KBRwyle has been supporting Engineering Directorate since 2007. Also, it has more than 24 years of experience with the F-35 program. Over the past 40 years, the company has served more than 135 aircraft platforms as a leading system engineering and integration provider to the U.S. Air Force.



KBRs Government Services Unit: A Bright Spot



KBR has a diversified business portfolio, which helps combat cyclicality associated with any single market. The companys Government Services (GS) segment, accounting for more than 72% of the total revenues, has been performing pretty well. Presently, it is banking on the strength of the said segment to optimize growth potential.



As of Dec 31, 2018, the companys backlog came in at $13.5 billion compared with $10.6 billion in the corresponding period of 2017. More than 80% of the total backlog represents work in the GS segment. The segments backlog was up 31.7% year over year. Notably, in fourth-quarter 2018, organic sales from GS business recorded 31% growth, following a 12% increase in the third quarter, and 11% uptick in both the second and first quarters of 2018. Notably, the segment recorded 78% revenue growth in 2018.

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Coming to price performance, shares of KBR have gained 17.1% in the past year, outperforming its industrys average growth of 3.1%. Contract winning spree underscores KBR's strong ability to safely and efficiently deliver projects in operating facilities.



Zacks Rank & Other Key Picks



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Apergy, Quanta Services and AECOMs earnings for the current year are expected to increase 2.1%, 25.3% and 2.6%, respectively.



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WASHINGTON (AP)  The Latest on the Trump administration and immigration (all times local):

3:15 p.m.

Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is welcoming employees to their new campus on her last day on the job.

The guests included some officials who have recently been pushed out by the Trump administration, including the head of Secret Service, acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and acting deputy secretary for Homeland Security.

They all gathered in the sunshine outside the new headquarters on Wednesday on the site of a former psychiatric hospital.

Kevin McAleenan, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection who is taking over as acting DHS secretary, also attended, shaking hands with employees and giving Nielsen a standing ovation. Transportation and Security Administrator David Pekoske, who has been tapped as acting DHS deputy secretary, was also on hand.

Nielsen welcomed everyone to the new campus, joking that the construction took so long she wasn't sure she'd still be secretary when it opened. She just made it, she quipped.

She said serving in the post has been the honor of a lifetime.

__

10:38 a.m.

President Donald Trump says there's only one person in charge of his immigration policy: Him.

Trump was asked as he was leaving the White House Wednesday whether he had ever considering tapping his influential aide, Stephen Miller, to lead the department in the wake of Kirstjen Nielsen's departure.

Trump says Miller is an "excellent guy' and a "brilliant man," but said, "Frankly, there's only one person that's running it: You know who that is? It's me."

Trump has picked United States Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan to serve as acting secretary. Asked whether he might keep him on permanently, Trump said he likes McAleenan "a lot" and that it "could happen."

He adds that, "right now" McAleenan is "the man."
Donald Trump and his top White House aide declare that the administration will not give the president's tax returns to Congress, as required under a 1924 anti-corruption law. But both the Treasury secretary and the tax commissioner have been much more nuanced, saying that they will obey the law even as they delay actually doing so.

I know why Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Charles Rettig, the IRS commissioner, are so cautious. They dont want to be removed from office and sent to prison for five years just for doing Trumps bidding.

The reason will no doubt surprise those who think Trump can thumb his nose at the law governing congressional access to anyones tax returns, including his. It will for sure shock Trump, who claims that "the law is 100 percent on my side."

The exact opposite is true.

Under Section 6103 of our tax code, Treasury officials shall turn over the tax returns upon written request of the chair of either congressional tax committee or the federal employee who runs Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation. No request has ever been refused, a host of former congressional tax aides tell me.

There is, however, a law requiring every federal employee who touches the tax system to do their duty or be removed from office.

The crystal-clear language of this law applies to Trump, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Mnuchin and Rettig, federal employees all.

The law says all of them "shall" be removed from office if they fail to comply with the request from Representative Richard Neal, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.

Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero The Daily Beast/Getty

There are no qualifiers in Section 6103 that shield Trump from delivering, in confidence, his tax returns to Congress. No wiggle room at all.

Another provision in our tax code, Section 7214(a), provides that Any officer or employee of the United States acting in connection with any revenue law of the United States who with intent to defeat the application of any provision of this title fails to perform any of the duties of his office or employment shall be dismissed from office or discharged from employment and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $10,000, or imprisoned not more than 5 years or both.

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All that Neal must do is make a request in writing that falls within the committees tax law and IRS oversight duties. Neals carefully articulated reasoning and requests for specific tax returns and related tax information in his April 3 letter easily meets that standard.

Congress earlier applied this law to Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace after a second audit of his returns showed he was a major league tax cheat. Nixon fabricated deductions worth more than $3.4 million in todays money. Nixon got off with a pardon, while his tax lawyer went to prison.

The IRS had audited Nixons 1969 tax return but failed to catch major league cheating by the sitting president. Only when Congressional tax lawyers went over it, and the IRS did a second audit, did they spot blatant tax evasion.

Even if Mnuchin or Rettig or anyone else escaped prosecution for failing to provide the requested tax returns, removal from office under 7214(a) would damage and perhaps destroy their opportunities to cash in once they leave office.

Removal from office would require disclosures to future employers and investors, limit or block service on corporate boards and require disclosures to lenders. Even someone running a privately held company, as Trump still does, would be affected by heightened disclosure requirements.

Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and savings and loan company chief executive, is only 56. Removal from office alone could mean an end to his big paydays in finance under existing regulations.

Rettig, 61, a tax lawyer whose specialty was helping wealthy tax dodgers who got caught in audits, could lose his California law license, especially were he to be convicted.

The good-conduct provisions of the tax law are as broad as they are severe. Significantly, it doesnt just affect IRS auditors and collections officers. It applies to any federal employeewhich means Trump as well as Mnuchin and Rettigwho fails to perform any of the duties they are assigned.

It also applies to any federal employee who conspires or colludes with any other person to defraud the United States; or who makes opportunity for any person to defraud the government. This provision could hit Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff and Trumps budget director, given his reckless statements on Fox News, which some call Trump TV.

Should congressional tax lawyers, after examining Trumps tax returns, finds that he is a tax cheat, anyone with knowledge of the cheating would also be at risk of prosecution.

Keep in mind that Trump lost two income tax fraud civil trials over his 1984 New York state and city tax returns, as recounted in my 2016 book The Making of Donald Trump.

He is also a confessed sales tax cheat, prompting Mayor Ed Koch of New York to say that Trump should have served 15 days behind bars for his crimes.

The law covers official inaction, too. Anyone who omits his duty shall be removed and may be prosecuted as a felon.

Section 7214 covers anyone with knowledge or information of the violation of any revenue law by any person, or of fraud committed by any person, against the United States [who] under any revenue law, fails to report, in writing, such knowledge or information to the Treasury secretary.

The risks to his liberty and fortune help explain why Mnuchin, while not turning over tax returns by the Wednesday deadline, told Congress this week, as I've said in the past when we received the request, it would be reviewed by our legal department, and it is our intent to follow the law.

That artful language was likely written by a government lawyer to help shield Mnuchin from removal from office and prosecution, at least for now.

Mnuchin cant stall forever. If he or Rettig tries endless inaction, forcing House Democrats to sue in federal court, the failure to act could result in the same painful results as outright refusal to comply.

Under what is known as a delegation order, the responsibility for giving Congress tax returns upon written request has long been the duty of the IRS commissioner.

In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday, Rettig said the decision on turning over the tax returns was his. He said he is working on a letter about what he will do. He also noted that he reports to Mnuchin since the IRS is under the umbrella of the Treasury Department.

One big problem for Rettig and Mnuchin, and perhaps others, is the provision requiring removal from office for anyone who conspires or colludes with any other person.

Mnuchin has acknowledged that Treasury officials talked with White House officials. And Rettig indicated he has spoken with Mnuchin and others at Treasury.

How many others were in the loop? Maybe Congressional hearings will tell us.

Johnston won a 2001 Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the American tax system in The New York Times. He is the author of bestselling books on taxes and on Trump. He teaches at Syracuse University College of Law and is chief editor of the news service DCReport.org.

Read more at The Daily Beast.
Washington (AFP) - Nine years ago, a 23-year-old US army specialist, deeply troubled by the US war in Iraq and by her own gender identity, rocked the US government by leaking disturbing classified military records to WikiLeaks.

Chelsea Manning spent years in prison for her crime before her sentence was commuted -- but on Friday was again sitting in jail for what her supporters say is an ongoing punitive political vendetta.

Last month, she refused to testify in a secret grand jury investigation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was arrested in London on Thursday on a US indictment linked to their cooperation in 2010 on the leak of secret US records of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In fact, her lawyers point out, the grand jury secretly issued its Assange indictment over one year ago, making Manning's testimony superfluous.

But federal prosecutors have jailed her anyway, with little explanation of why.

The Assange indictment "is further evidence that the government's continued imprisonment of Chelsea for her principled stance against grand jury secrecy is punitive, cruel and unnecessary," her lawyers said.

- Deep divide over Manning -

Manning, now 31, had worked since her release from military prison in 2017 to start a new life, as a civilian and as a woman.

But the US is divided over whether what she did was heroic or traitorous.

She was Bradley Manning when, in 2009, she was sent to Iraq as an army intelligence officer with access to a massive database of US war records and classified diplomatic communications.

Manning was already struggling with gender dysphoria in a military officially closed to gay and transgender soldiers.

Meanwhile, she grew despondent about the ongoing wars, leading her to release the hundreds of thousands of files that made Assange and WikiLeaks famous worldwide.

"I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year," she said in her 2013 trial.

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"If the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information... this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general."

Manning was arrested within weeks after a confidant turned her in. She was thrown into a military prison and held for three years until her trial in 2013.

One day after she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, she announced she was a woman and would go by the name Chelsea.

But until her sentence was commuted in 2017 by president Barack Obama, she endured an ongoing crisis over her gender and attempted suicide twice in prison as she fought for gender reassignment surgery.

- Finding her footing -

After her release, Manning struggled to find her footing, lauded as a spokeswoman for whistleblowers and transgender people, but also spurned over her decision to leak US secrets.

Strong criticism from senior intelligence officials forced Harvard University to rescind a fellowship offer, with CIA chief Mike Pompeo branding her an "American traitor."

In 2018, a half-hearted attempt to run for political office in Maryland failed, but she continued to be celebrated as an important whistleblower.

While everything she did with WikiLeaks in 2010 came out in her trial, in March she was nevertheless ordered to testify again in front of a grand jury, now known to have been investigating Assange.

Manning, a strong critic of the secret panels often used by prosecutors in high-profile cases, said she objected "strenuously" to the subpoena.

"We've seen this power abused countless times to target political speech," she said, making clear that she would be willing to testify in public.

On March 8, the judge ordered her locked up in an Alexandria, Virginia detention center until she testifies or the grand jury is wound up.

The indictment of Assange -- issued secretly in March 2008 -- would appear to negate the need for her testimony.

But on Friday, she remained behind bars.
By Ulf Laessing and Ahmed Elumami

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - Life might look normal in most of the Libyan capital Tripoli - but with artillery blasts audible in much of the city as eastern LNA forces attack its southern fringe, there is tension everywhere.

"We have heard gunfire since morning in here," said a waiter in a cafe about 10 minutes' drive from the front line, his voice almost a whisper, as he served customers while military vehicles rushed by. "If the fighting gets any closer, I'll run away."

Like others, he refused to give his name, wondering whether General Khalifa Haftar, backed by his eastern Libyan National Army (LNA) forces, will soon be running Tripoli.

Government offices remain open, as does the only functioning airport -- but planes only land and take off at night, when Haftar's ageing jets are less of a threat. Children are still going to lessons - unless their school has been turned into a hostel for those who have fled their homes.

In the centre and northern parts of the city, there is no fighting, and cafes and shops bustle with customers, staying open as usual until late at night.

There is less traffic, though; many have left to stay with relatives, and others stay indoors. They regularly get updates from friends living closer to the front - and strain to hear whether the fighting is coming closer.

Although some streets in the southern suburb of Ain Zara, scene of the heaviest fighting, have been changing sides several times a day, overall the front line is static.

Forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government, based in Tripoli, have barricaded the main southern arterial roads with sandbags and shipping containers to deter Haftar's tanks and armoured personnel carriers.

The few buses and private cars on those roads give way to military vehicles with anti-aircraft mounted on the back, speeding to and from the front line.

Yet pharmacies, bakeries and shops selling microwaves and furniture still line the street, just as they do in the city centre, almost as far as the sandbags.

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"THIS IS NORMAL HERE"

Nextdoor to the cafe, Ameen Trabulsi plans to keep his small grocery shop open, just as he has done during the previous - albeit smaller - armed clashes that have been a part of life in Tripoli since 2011.

"This is normal in Libya," he said, before adding: "The situation now is calm but, who knows, it could worsen anytime."

Business is actually better for him now as families displaced by fighting have been put up in a student hostel nearby, and flock to his store.

Opposite his shop, veiled women who have just fled Ain Zara wait at the gate of a municipal building, trying to attract the attention of officials inside scurrying to find sleeping places in schools converted to shelters.

The United Nations says more than 9,000 residents have already been displaced. Outside the building, a truck packed with mattresses stands by.

While the city centre is still unscathed from the latest fighting, there are plenty of reminders there too of what war can do.

The shiny blue tower that houses the state oil firm NOC and the Foreign Ministry overlooking the Mediterranean still have burned out widows and blackened walls from attacks by Islamic State militants last year.

Some of those who have stayed feel so accustomed to spasms of violence, fuel shortages and a dysfunctional government that they see no reason to panic now.

"I'm not afraid. Life goes on," said 68-year-old retiree Ali Lafla, sitting outside his favourite cafe in the upmarket Ben Ashour district, close to the centre but still only 11 km (7 miles) from the front line.

His wife and his four sons and three daughters, all married, have all decided to remain. "God will decide what happens next - but I'm staying in Tripoli."

(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
This is the worst.

Logan Paul, who infamously vlogged a dead body in Japans suicide forest and filmed videos blatantly disrespecting foreign cultures, invited notorious conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whos long harassed mass shooting survivors and victims families, onto his podcast, Impaulsive.

Jones, whos been banned by YouTube for spreading hate speech following the Parkland, Florida, high school massacre in 2018, was able to appear on the platform due to Pauls show.

And many people across social media werent happy with Paul for giving Jones a platform.

Logan Paul is the worst

...

He disrespected a dead body

...

He disrespected gay people by pretending to be gay for a little bit

...

He proved it even more by giving right-wing conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, a platform on Paul's popular YouTube channel

...

Seriously. The worst. pic.twitter.com/PNRnmNLNFO  Laura (@lsirikul) April 12, 2019

Youtube bro Logan Paul interviewed far-right conspiracy nut Alex Jones yesterday for his podcast. Jones hawked his brain pills and ranted about Hollywood being chock-full of satanic pedophiles. Logan has 18 million teenage subscribers. He's willing to radicalize them for views. pic.twitter.com/upXykig3gt  Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) April 11, 2019

What kind of person thinks a hilarious podcast guest would be a guy who terrorized the parents of babies killed in a mass school shooting?



Oh.

https://t.co/7zVGqD3JYK  Brandy Zadrozny (@BrandyZadrozny) April 10, 2019

This is so disturbing, truly. TALK TO YOUR LOGAN PAUL WATCHING KIDS ABOUT ALEX JONES (also talk to them about Logan Paul) https://t.co/ooDL2cBhQW  Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) April 10, 2019

During the podcast, the hosts downed vodka with the guest, allowed him to run wild with his theories, laughed as he smeared journalists, including Megyn Kelly, whom the Infowars host called a goddamn lying whore, and eventually sealed the show with a fist bump.

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When discussing Jones Sandy Hook massacre denial videos, which the conspiracy theorist later blamed on bouts of psychosis, Paul let Jones slide.

If Im going to be a human being for a second, stand by my moral grounds. I would like to forgive you and give you a second chance to talk about your future from here on out.

Jones had been given a platform recently on Joe Rogans podcast, during which the Infowars host claimed that once Asians go to war, theyre not crazed, going wild in a battle. Theyre like robots coming to kill you. He also claimed that Native Americans go into groupthink quickly and are easier to mind control.

Nope nope nope.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost.
I've been keeping an eye on China Yuchai International Limited (NYSE:CYD) because I'm attracted to its fundamentals. Looking at the company as a whole, as a potential stock investment, I believe CYD has a lot to offer. Basically, it is a financially-healthy company with a a strong track record high-grade dividend payments, trading at a great value. Below, I've touched on some key aspects you should know on a high level. If you're interested in understanding beyond my broad commentary, take a look at the report on China Yuchai International here.

Very undervalued with flawless balance sheet and pays a dividend

CYD is financially robust, with ample cash on hand and short-term investments to meet upcoming liabilities. This suggests prudent control over cash and cost by management, which is a crucial insight into the health of the company. CYD's has produced operating cash levels of 0.84x total debt over the past year, which implies that CYD's management has put its borrowings into good use by generating enough cash to cover a sufficient portion of borrowings. CYD is currently trading below its true value, which means the market is undervaluing the company's expected cash flow going forward. Investors have the opportunity to buy into the stock to reap capital gains, if CYD's projected earnings trajectory does follow analyst consensus growth, which determines my intrinsic value of the company. Also, relative to the rest of its peers with similar levels of earnings, CYD's share price is trading below the group's average. This supports the theory that CYD is potentially underpriced.

NYSE:CYD Price Estimation Relative to Market, April 12th 2019

Income investors would also be happy to know that CYD is one of the highest dividend payers in the market, with current dividend yield standing at 4.2%. CYD has also been regularly increasing its dividend payments to shareholders over the past decade.

NYSE:CYD Historical Dividend Yield, April 12th 2019

Next Steps:

For China Yuchai International, I've compiled three pertinent aspects you should further research:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for CYDs future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for CYDs outlook. Historical Performance: What has CYD's returns been like over the past? Go into more detail in the past track record analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of our analysis for more clarity. Other Attractive Alternatives : Are there other well-rounded stocks you could be holding instead of CYD? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Uniformed Secret Service police officers are viewed on Pennsylvania Avenue as seen from inside the White House near the North Lawn in Washington on Friday.

WASHINGTON  The Secret Service tightened security at the White House on Friday after a man set his jacket on fire while riding in a motorized wheelchair near the northwest entrance on Pennsylvania Avenue.

"A male subject operating an electronic wheelchair-type scooter lit his outer jacket on fire while sitting along Pennsylvania Ave. outside the North Fence Line," the Secret Service said on Twitter. "Uniformed Division Officers immediately responded, extinguished the fire and rendered first aid."

It added in a follow-up tweet: "The male subject has been transported to a local hospital with what appears to be non-life threatening injuries."

Officers restrained the man and carried him into Lafayette Park to treat him. The Secret Service closed Pennsylvania Avenue to pedestrians in front of the White House, and shut down a nearby street to vehicular traffic due to concerns about unattended packages.

There was no threat to President Donald Trump, officials said.

UPDATE: A male subject operating an electronic wheelchair-type scooter lit his outer jacket on fire while sitting along Pennsylvania Ave. outside the North Fence Line. Uniformed Division Officers immediately responded, extinguished the fire and rendered first aid.  U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) April 12, 2019

The incident unfolded as tourists took photos outside the White House. Authorities rushed to man and put out the fire using an extinguisher, witnesses told USA TODAY.

I could hear shouting, like he was trying to yell, then I walked over and I could see cops all over him, said Shell Ievoli, who was at the White House. Then, Secret Service and everyone just started yelling 'get out of the park!' You could hear the urgency in their voices so we knew it was something."

Officers cleared Pennsylvania Avenue and the North Lawn of the White House, restricting reporters to the White House briefing room. Lafayette Park was also closed and Secret Service agents barricaded off sidewalks.

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Daniel Kingery, 57, who also watched the bizarre incident unfold said the man appeared to be acting in protest. Kingery said he was outside the White House when he saw the man roll up in his wheelchair holding up a dark-colored jacket.

"He was holding both the jacket and a phone. It looked like he was recording the whole thing," Kingery said, adding that the flames were small and were quickly put out.

Lots of commotion outside the White House after a man reportedly set himself on fire @USATODAY

Witnesses here say the man was in a motorized wheelchair and set his jacket on fire. Authorities rushed in and used an extinguisher to put it out pic.twitter.com/7H6H1CS5zc  Christal Hayes (@Journo_Christal) April 12, 2019

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Man sets jacket on fire outside White House, Secret Service says
Mark Wilson/Getty

Former White House counsel Greg Craig is bracing for an indictment on lobbying charges soon in connection with a case referred by former Special Counsel Robert Muellers office.

In statements to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, Craigs lawyers said they expect federal prosecutors in Washington, DC to charge their client with making false statements related to his work on a report commissioned by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. In anticipation of the move, Craigs attorneys blasted the misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion and say he was under no obligation to register as a foreign agent for his work on a 2012 report for powerhouse law firm Skadden Arps.

The report featured prominently in the special counsels Washington, DC case against Manafort. Prosecutors alleged that the report, paid for by the government of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, was one part of a broad lobbying effort waged by Manafort on behalf of his clients in Kiev. The report examined Yanukovychs prosecution of his former rival Yulia Tymoshenko and, in the eyes of the special counsels office, whitewashed the move as in keeping with norms of the rule of law.

Craig spearheaded the writing of the report and, in the opinion of the Justice Department, ventured from analyst to lobbyist when he reached out to The New York Times to ask if a reporter would take a call from a lobbyist on the case and delivered a copy of the report to the Times. In a civil settlement with Skadden, Justice Department officials wrote that Craigs outreach was consistent with Ukraines media strategy and that he had an obligation to register with the Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

But sources close to Craig have pushed back aggressively on that characterization to the Journal and CNN. They argue that Craig never billed his clients for the time he spent talking to the Times and that the discussions were only an attempt to correct misinformation circulating about the report and not an extension of the Ukrainian governments media strategy.

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Prosecutors took issue with that explanation in their January 2019 settlement with Skadden. They wrote that Craigs false and misleading statements included his claim that he spoke to reporters only in response to requests from the media and spoke to the media to correct misinformation about the report that the media was already reporting.

The Journal reported that the National Security Division has taken up the Craig case after prosecutors in New York, who originally investigated the case after it was referred by the special counsels office, declined to press charges.

Craig resigned from Skadden in April 2018, shortly after Alexander Van Der Zwaan, a former Skadden lawyer who worked on the report, was sentenced for lying to the special counsels office about his interactions with Manaforts associates. Skadden fired Van Der Zwaan in 2017.

Read more at The Daily Beast.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that the U.S. needs a referendum on socialism in the 2020 congressional elections and that the Republican Party will be on the front lines against it.

We need to have a referendum on socialism, the Kentucky Republican told reporters. Im going to be arguing, and Im encouraging my colleagues to argue, that we are the firewall against socialism in this country.

Republicans will have to defend 22 Senate seats in 2020, compared to the Democrats 12 seats.

If youre uncomfortable with things like the Green New Deal and Medicare for none, the best way to avoid that is to have a Republican Senate, McConnell said.

Six senators who have thrown their hat in the ring for the Democratic presidential nomination have thrown their support behind the Green New Deal: Senators Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand.

Meanwhile, all of those presidential candidates except for Klobuchar have sponsored Sanders Medicare for All plan, although they have not all called for the effective end of the private health insurance market, as the Vermont independent and self-described democratic socialist has done.

Klobuchar, who tends right of her opponents for the Democratic nomination, has pushed instead for an optional buy-in to a government health care plan, saying she is looking at something that will work now rather than later.

If we cant make that case, we ought to go into another line of work, McConnell said.

The GOP lost their House majority in 2018 but added two seats to their Senate majority.

We got crushed in the suburbs, the Senate leader said.

Theres no good reason for your typical suburban resident to be frightened by this Republican Senate, he said. I think were the safeguard or, put another way, the firewall against a bunch of people who are in a totally different mindset.

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The Senate leader said he is encouraging Republicans defending their seats in 2020 to run independent campaigns to appeal to their respective constituents rather than paint themselves as identical to the national part or President Trump.

More from National Review
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is declining to say whether he thinks his chamber would confirm Herman Cain to join the Federal Reserve board, casting doubt on the former Republican presidential candidate's prospects should President Donald Trump advance him for the post.

Asked Thursday if a Cain nomination would face problems , McConnell, R-Ky., noted that successful nominees must pass background checks and have a likelihood of confirmation.

"And, as you know, some of my members have expressed concern about that nomination," McConnell told reporters. "But as far as I know, it hasn't been made yet."

Trump's interest in potentially nominating Cain along with another political ally, conservative commentator Stephen Moore , has sparked questions among lawmakers from both parties in Congress about the president's influence on the central bank.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell reiterated the importance of the Fed's independence during a talk Thursday evening with House Democrats meeting in Virginia for their annual issues retreat, according to a source in the room unauthorized to discuss the private session.

Powell told lawmakers that he saw his role as totally apolitical. He also said the Fed does not consider political pressure in its decision making, the source said. Another source in the room confirmed the remarks.

The chairman fielded questions from lawmakers during a question-and-answer session in Lansdowne, but declined to comment on the president's potential picks.

Powell was Trump's choice to lead the Fed, but the president has been critical of him for raising interest rates.

Earlier Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said elevating Cain and Moore to the Fed would risk politicizing the nation's central bank and endangering the economy.

"These two appointments to the Fed are the worst, ill-suited appointment that the president could come up with," she told reporters.

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Three GOP senators  Utah's Mitt Romney, Alaska's Lisa Murkowski and North Dakota's Kevin Cramer  told The Associated Press they'd likely vote against Cain. With Republicans controlling the Senate 53-47, it would take opposition from just four GOP senators to sink the nomination, assuming all Democrats are also "no" votes.

As he did earlier this week, McConnell also sidestepped a question about whether he would back Cain or Moore, a Fed critic and former Trump campaign aide, for the board. Trump has said he will nominate both men.

"We'll see who's actually nominated," said McConnell.

Cain has run into concerns by lawmakers from both parties that, as a Trump loyalist and deeply conservative political figure, he would threaten the Fed's traditional political independence. Trump himself has taken a nontraditional approach to the Fed, repeatedly accusing it of mismanaging the economy by not pushing hard enough for low interest rates.

The White House offered no fresh comment Thursday about Trump's intentions, referring reporters to his earlier comments about Cain.

Trump initially called Cain "a very terrific man" who would "do very well there." But he said earlier this week that he didn't know how Cain was faring in the vetting process and that Cain "will make that determination" whether to continue.

Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza, ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He dropped out of the race after allegations of sexual harassment and infidelity, which he denied. Last year, in September, he helped found a pro-Trump super political action committee, America Fighting Back PAC, whose website says, "We must protect Donald Trump and his agenda from impeachment."

Cain formerly served on the board of the Fed's Kansas City regional bank. He has also called for a return to the gold standard to control inflation, which most economists consider unworkable.

Moore is a conservative commentator and another Trump political ally.

___

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro in Lansdowne, Virginia, and writer Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.
CHRIS JACKSON

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have told the world to butt out of their birth plans.

There will be no photographs on the steps of any hospitals, no press pens at any locations and definitely no announcements on easels at Buckingham Palace.

In a surprising statement Thursday the royals said, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very grateful for the goodwill they have received from people throughout the United Kingdom and around the world as they prepare to welcome their baby.

Their Royal Highnesses have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private.

The Duke and Duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family.

The news that media organizations are to be denied any information about the babys birth until after the event will go down badly in the offices of Britains national newspapers, although the general public are likely to be more understanding.

Harry and Meghans decision to impose a black out ban on all information to the media should also be understood as an important declaration that they believe their child should be entitled to a very high level of privacy as it is not in the direct line of succession like George, Charlotte and Louis.

Read more at The Daily Beast.
New York (AFP) - Lawyers for the convicted Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman requested a new trial Tuesday, saying some jurors followed media coverage of the first one, violating the judge's orders.

The former Sinaloa cartel chief was found guilty on February 12 of smuggling tons of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana into the United States. He is scheduled to be sentenced in June and faces the prospect of life in prison.

After the conviction, Vice News published an interview with a member of the jury who alleged that at least five jurors defied orders not to follow media coverage of the three-month trial, look it up online, or communicate with anyone about the case.

"We believe that juror misconduct deprived Joaquin of a fair trial in a case in which the defense was extremely restricted to begin with. We look forward to vindicating his rights in a new trial before a jury that will abide by its oath," Guzman attorney Eduardo Balarezo said.

The defense team filed a motion with federal court in Brooklyn where the trial was held to seek a special hearing on the Vice News report.

US judges routinely instruct jurors to refrain from watching media coverage of their cases, so verdicts will be based solely on information presented during the trial.

"Reports of jury misconduct, of course, are nothing new in high-profile cases," the motion for a new trial reads.

"One factor that sets these apart is a juror's frank confession that panel members actively sought out and actively discussed the most sensational extrinsic information -- including vile allegations that the defendant raped young girls," the motion added.

These allegations came from a former Guzman associate who testified as a government witness. They featured in documents made public right before the jury started deliberating.

The witness did not make these allegations while testifying. But they ended up being published in news reports.
EDITORIAL: Promoting Parks: Were fat, lazy and out of shape, but thats not the only reason we should improve citys parks
Beijing (AFP) - Microsoft has been collaborating with researchers linked to a Chinese military-backed university on artificial intelligence, elevating concerns that US firms are contributing to China's high-tech surveillance and censorship apparatus.

Over the past year, researchers at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing have co-authored at least three papers with scholars affiliated with China's National University of Defence Technology (NUDT), which is overseen by the Central Military Commission.

The research covers a number of AI topics, such as face analysis and machine reading, which enables computers to parse and understand online text.

While it is not unusual for US and Chinese scholars to conduct joint research, Microsoft's work with the military-backed NUDT comes amid increasing scrutiny around China-US academic partnerships, as well as China's high-tech surveillance drive in the northwest region of Xinjiang.

"The new methods and technologies described in their joint papers could very well be contributing to China's crackdown on minorities in Xinjiang, for which they are using facial recognition technology," said Helena Legarda, a research associate at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, who focuses on China's foreign and security policies.

"Many of these advanced technologies are dual-use, so they could also contribute to the PLA's (People's Liberation Army's) modernisation and informatisation drive, helping the Chinese military move closer to the 2049 goal of being a world-class military," she added.

In an email, a Microsoft spokesman told AFP that the company's researchers "conduct fundamental research with leading scholars and experts from around the world to advance our understanding of technology."

In each case, the research "fully complies with US and local laws" and is published to "ensure transparency so everyone can benefit from our work," he said Thursday.

Story continues

-'Raw material'-

The growing concerns around human rights violations in Xinjiang have also added pressure to US firms with business in the region, where some one million Uighurs and other mostly Muslim Turkic language-speaking minorities are held in re-education camps, according to a UN panel of experts.

In February, US biotechnology manufacturer Thermo Fisher announced it would stop selling equipment used to create a DNA database of the Uighur minority to China.

That same month, a security researcher exposed a massive database compiled by Chinese tech firm SenseNets, which stored the personal information and tracked the locations of 2.6 million people in Xinjiang.

At the time of the data leak, Microsoft was listed as one of SenseNets' partners. The company declined to comment.

But experts have also stressed that, in the case of NUDT, Microsoft's co-published work is open and publicly accessible.

"The authors are basically sharing with the rest of the world how to replicate their approaches, models, and results," said Andy Chun, an adjunct computer science professor at City University of Hong Kong.

That allows others to potentially "build upon, enhance and expand this research," he said.

Microsoft Research Asia also tends to focus on long-term research or projects that are not immediately transferable to applications, such as those that could be used to monitor or suppress a population of people, pointed out Yu Zhou, a professor at Vassar College, who studies globalisation and China's high-tech industry.

And while such concerns are certainly valid, it may be difficult for AI researchers to avoid China, she told AFP.

"It's a field where Chinese researchers have made quite a lot of advancements, and they are generating data which is the raw material for this industry - so how are you going to avoid that?"
Today we'll look at Reliance Industries Limited (NSE:RELIANCE) and reflect on its potential as an investment. To be precise, we'll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), as that will inform our view of the quality of the business.

First, we'll go over how we calculate ROCE. Then we'll compare its ROCE to similar companies. Then we'll determine how its current liabilities are affecting its ROCE.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

ROCE measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. All else being equal, a better business will have a higher ROCE. In brief, it is a useful tool, but it is not without drawbacks. Renowned investment researcher Michael Mauboussin has suggested that a high ROCE can indicate that 'one dollar invested in the company generates value of more than one dollar'.

How Do You Calculate Return On Capital Employed?

The formula for calculating the return on capital employed is:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for Reliance Industries:

0.11 = 612b  (9.0t - 3.4t) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2018.)

So, Reliance Industries has an ROCE of 11%.

View our latest analysis for Reliance Industries

Does Reliance Industries Have A Good ROCE?

When making comparisons between similar businesses, investors may find ROCE useful. Using our data, Reliance Industries's ROCE appears to be around the 10% average of the Oil and Gas industry. Separate from how Reliance Industries stacks up against its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms is mediocre; relative to the returns on government bonds. Investors may wish to consider higher-performing investments.

As we can see, Reliance Industries currently has an ROCE of 11% compared to its ROCE 3 years ago, which was 8.0%. This makes us think the business might be improving.

NSEI:RELIANCE Past Revenue and Net Income, April 12th 2019

Remember that this metric is backwards looking - it shows what has happened in the past, and does not accurately predict the future. Companies in cyclical industries can be difficult to understand using ROCE, as returns typically look high during boom times, and low during busts. ROCE is, after all, simply a snap shot of a single year. We note Reliance Industries could be considered a cyclical business. Future performance is what matters, and you can see analyst predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

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What Are Current Liabilities, And How Do They Affect Reliance Industries's ROCE?

Short term (or current) liabilities, are things like supplier invoices, overdrafts, or tax bills that need to be paid within 12 months. Due to the way the ROCE equation works, having large bills due in the near term can make it look as though a company has less capital employed, and thus a higher ROCE than usual. To counter this, investors can check if a company has high current liabilities relative to total assets.

Reliance Industries has total liabilities of 3.4t and total assets of 9.0t. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 38% of its total assets. Reliance Industries's ROCE is improved somewhat by its moderate amount of current liabilities.

Our Take On Reliance Industries's ROCE

Unfortunately, its ROCE is still uninspiring, and there are potentially more attractive prospects out there. You might be able to find a better investment than Reliance Industries. If you want a selection of possible winners, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a P/E below 20 (but have proven they can grow earnings).

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this free list of growing companies that insiders are buying.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Las Vegas Sands Corp. LVS is looking like an interesting pick from a technical perspective, as the company is seeing favorable trends on the moving average crossover front. Recently, the 50 Day Moving Average for LVS broke out above the 200 Day Simple Moving Average, suggesting a short-term bullish trend.

This has already started to take place, as the stock has moved higher by 0.9% in the past four weeks. Plus, the company currently has a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) suggesting that now could definitely be the time for this breakout candidate.

More bullishness may especially be the case when investors consider what has been happening for LVS on the earnings estimate revision front lately. No estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 3 higher, while the consensus estimate has also moved higher too.

So, given this move in estimates, and the positive technical factors, investors may want to watch this breakout candidate closely for more gains in the near future. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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New York (AFP) - New York's Museum of Natural History said it was "considering its options" after discovering a private function booked to take place there would honor Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.

Bolsonaro, who has been attacked at home and abroad for policies that critics say threaten the environment and indigenous communities, is due to receive an award at the museum from the Brazilian-United States Chamber of Commerce.

"The external, private event at which the current President of Brazil is to be honored was booked at the Museum before the honoree was secured," the museum tweeted on Thursday.

"We are deeply concerned, and we are exploring our options."

Bolsonaro was chosen to receive the "Person of the Year" award from the chamber at a May 14 gala dinner attended by more than a thousand people.

The website Gothamist quoted one environmentalist as saying it was "a particularly bitter irony ... that a man intent on destroying one of the world's most prized natural resources would be anointed Person of the Year inside a space dedicated to the celebration of the natural world".

In an open letter published in the French newspaper Le Monde on Wednesday, 13 representatives of Brazilian indigenous peoples denounced Bolsonaro's environmental policies, saying they left them on the verge of "an apocalypse".

"The government wants to monopolize the entire Amazon, bleed it even more by building new routes and railroads," it said.

Since taking office on January 1, Bolsonaro has rolled back environmental protection laws in favour of miners and farmers.
If you own shares in Oil-Dri Corporation of America (NYSE:ODC) then it's worth thinking about how it contributes to the volatility of your portfolio, overall. In finance, Beta is a measure of volatility. Volatility is considered to be a measure of risk in modern finance theory. Investors may think of volatility as falling into two main categories. The first category is company specific volatility. This can be dealt with by limiting your exposure to any particular stock. The other type, which cannot be diversified away, is the volatility of the entire market. Every stock in the market is exposed to this volatility, which is linked to the fact that stocks prices are correlated in an efficient market.

Some stocks see their prices move in concert with the market. Others tend towards stronger, gentler or unrelated price movements. Some investors use beta as a measure of how much a certain stock is impacted by market risk (volatility). While we should keep in mind that Warren Buffett has cautioned that 'Volatility is far from synonymous with risk', beta is still a useful factor to consider. To make good use of it you must first know that the beta of the overall market is one. Any stock with a beta of greater than one is considered more volatile than the market, while those with a beta below one are either less volatile or poorly correlated with the market.

Check out our latest analysis for Oil-Dri of America

What we can learn from ODC's beta value

With a beta of 0.96, (which is quite close to 1) the share price of Oil-Dri of America has historically been about as voltile as the broader market. Using history as a guide, we might surmise that the share price is likely to be influenced by market voltility going forward but it probably won't be particularly sensitive to it. Share price volatility is well worth considering, but most long term investors consider the history of revenue and earnings growth to be more important. Take a look at how Oil-Dri of America fares in that regard, below.

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NYSE:ODC Income Statement, April 12th 2019

Could ODC's size cause it to be more volatile?

With a market capitalisation of US$250m, Oil-Dri of America is a very small company by global standards. It is quite likely to be unknown to most investors. It doesn't take much money to really move the share price of a company as small as this one. That makes it somewhat unusual that it has a beta value so close to the overall market.

What this means for you:

Oil-Dri of America has a beta value quite close to that of the overall market. That doesn't tell us much on its own, so it is probably worth considering whether the company is growing, if you're looking for stocks that will go up more than the overall market. This article aims to educate investors about beta values, but it's well worth looking at important company-specific fundamentals such as Oil-Dri of Americas financial health and performance track record. I highly recommend you dive deeper by considering the following:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for ODCs future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for ODCs outlook. Past Track Record: Has ODC been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of ODC's historicals for more clarity. Other Interesting Stocks: It's worth checking to see how ODC measures up against other companies on valuation. You could start with this free list of prospective options.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
The heads of Kaizler Inbar, an Israeli PR firm, appear to have spent election night with the Netanyahus

Political operatives working for Benjamin Netanyahus party have boasted that they drove down voter turnout among Arab-Israelis by illegally hiding 1,300 cameras inside Arab polling stations.

Israeli police intervened in the middle of Tuesday's election after it emerged that volunteers for Mr Netanyahus Likud party were monitoring Arab polling stations with hidden cameras attached to their clothing.

Israeli election forbids filming inside polling stations and police confiscated the cameras. Mr Netanyahu defended the use of hidden cameras as an effort to combat voter fraud in Arab areas.

Arab and Left-wing political parties said the cameras had deterred Arab voters from turning out because they were intimidated. Overall Arab turnout was at 50 per cent, down from 63 per cent in the 2015 election.

The heads of Kaizler Inbar, an Israeli PR firm, wrote on Facebook that they were behind the hidden camera operation and boasted the percentage of [Arab] voters dropped to 50%, the lowest seen in recent years.

An Israeli PR firm just posted that they were behind the hidden cameras in Arab polling stations. They boasted: "the percentage of [Arab] voters dropped to 50%, the lowest seen in recent years!"



The operatives seem to have been w/ Netanyahus last night. https://t.co/axwn6cnegcpic.twitter.com/ap63znQkfI  Raf Sanchez (@rafsanchez) April 10, 2019

A photograph alongside the post appeared to show the PR firms leaders with Mr Netanyahu and his wife on election night.

The low Arab turnout helped propel Israel's Right-wing to victory.

Mr Netanyahu made antagonising Israels Arab citizens a part of his election campaign. He said at one point that Israel is not a state of all its citizens but only a nation state of the Jewish people.

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The comments led to a rebuke from Reuven Rivlin, Israels president, who condemned the entirely unacceptable remarks about the Arab citizens of Israel.

On the day of the 2015 Israeli election, Mr Netanyahu infamously warned that Arab voters were coming to the polls in droves. His comment was criticised by the White House and he later apologised.

It seems more likely that Arab turnout was low this year because of frustration with Arab political parties, rather than fear of Likuds hidden cameras.

Many Arab voters were frustrated when the Joint List, a coalition of all the Arab parties, broke apart after a bout of political infighting.

All of the Arab parties are hopeless and nobody deserves my vote, said Hamzeh Sahleh, a 47-year-old resident of Tamra, an Arab city in northern Israel.

The Arab parties appear to have won only 10 parliamentary seats in this election compared to 13 seats in the last election.
New Jersey has given terminally ill individuals the right to choose when they want to die.

On Friday, Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed the Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act, which was passed by the New Jersey state legislature last month.

Allowing residents with terminal illnesses to make end-of-life choices for themselves is the right thing to do, Murphy said in a statement. By signing this bill today, we are providing terminally ill patients and their families with the humanity, dignity, and respect that they so richly deserve at the most difficult times any of us will face.

The governor praised Deputy Assembly Speaker John Burzichelli (D) for introducing the bill and guiding it through the legislature.

Under the new law, New Jersey residents with an irreversibly fatal disease or those with a prognosis of death within six months or less can ask their doctor to provide life-ending medication. Disabilities do not qualify as a condition for this kind of treatment.

If a patient decides they want a lethal prescription, they must make two oral requests to their doctor at least 15 days apart and an additional request to their doctor in writing.

Patients must also sign a form acknowledging that they have been fully informed of their diagnosis, prognosis, the nature of the medication and all the risks involved.

This measure is about dignity, Murphy said in a statement last week, in which he vowed to sign the bill.

Allowing terminally ill and dying residents the dignity to make end-of-life decisions according to their own consciences is the right thing to do, he added.

Six other states and Washington, D.C., have enacted similar legislation enabling terminally ill patients to choose whether they want a medically assisted death. Medically assisted death is legal in Montana through a court decision.
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By Josh Smith and Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's new nominal head of state is a long-time loyalist with deep ties to the ruling Kim family and whose fortunes have closely followed the rise of leader Kim Jong Un, analysts said.

Choe Ryong Hae was named President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea, state media reported on Friday, replacing Kim Yong Nam who had held the position since it was created in 1998.

In that position, Choe will be the constitutional head of state, and is likely to be the public face of North Korea at many official functions.

With Kim Jong Un personally taking an unprecedented role in international engagement, Choe's role may evolve. But analysts say Choe now holds a position of rare prominence for anyone outside the Kim family, which has ruled North Korea since it was established in 1948.

Born in 1950, Choe began to forge his relationship with Kim Jong Un after being tasked in 2009 to help him prepare to succeed his father, Kim Jong Il.

Choe's father had ties to Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un's grandfather and the founding leader of North Korea, and Choe himself had a personal relationship with Kim Jong Il for decades.

Choe was one of the most powerful officials in North Korea as head of the Workers Party of Korea Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), according to database North Korea Leadership Watch.

He survived years of purges after Kim Jong Un took power, and has weathered a series of ups and downs in his standing.

In late 2015, South Korea's National Intelligence Service said Choe had been sent to a countryside farm for political reeducation, but in recent years Choe appeared to be gaining more influence since he was promoted in October 2017 to the party's powerful Central Military Commission.

South Korea's spy agency said in 2017 it believed he was behind the punishment of General Hwang Pyong So, once one of Kim Jong Un's most-trusted advisers.

Story continues

Still, analysts said Choe appears to be more of a smooth "yes man" than a hardened enforcer within the government.

"He is a schmoozer," said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert at the Stimson Center, a U.S. think tank. "He's not one of these guys with bloody knuckles, not someone we would associate with being a leg-breaker in the regime. He knows how to do that if he needs to, but he's more of a schmoozer."

In December, Choe was one of three North Korean officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department for "serious human rights abuses and censorship".

In a statement at the time, the department said as head of the OGD, Choe oversaw censorship and control of North Koreans.

A former South Korean diplomat who met Choe said that even during meetings where he was not the most senior official, Choe seemed "confident, or even arrogant", often doing most of the talking.

"I had the impression that he had the trust of Kim Jong Un, which wouldve come from his fathers relationship with the Kim family," the diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue.

(Additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Michael Perry)
By Sarah Marsh HAVANA (Reuters) - From breeding miniature cows to importing water buffalo, Cuban leaders have long gotten creative in their effort to remedy food shortages. Now, they are proposing ostrich and rodent farms as an answer, prompting ridicule from a weary population. Meat and eggs have become hard to find in the Communist-run country in recent months due to a declining economy. Meanwhile officials are touting the potential of the flightless African bird and the hutia, a rodent native to Cuba that can weigh up to 8.5 kg (19 pounds). "An ostrich lays 60 eggs, and of those you get around 40 chicks, and from these 40 chicks per year you get four tonnes of meat - whereas a cow just gives birth to one calf and after a year it's only a yearling," said Guillermo Garcia Frias. Garcia Frias, 91, holds the honorary title of commander of the revolution as a former guerrilla in Cuba's 1959 revolution and heads state company Flora and Fauna that is developing seven ostrich farms. He spoke at a roundtable discussion broadcast on state TV last week. He lavished praise on hutias for their "level of protein higher than any other meat" and "high quality pelt," noting his company was also breeding crocodiles. His comments have prompted sarcastic memes and jokes that have gone viral on social media since Cuba's food schemes have often failed to fulfill expectations. In one meme, a Cuban arrives home with a live ostrich he got via the state ration card. In another a flock of the birds from Cuba arrives at the Mexican-U.S. border seeking asylum. Cubans also joked the state might give them an ostrich per household, as it did with chickens during the deep economic depression of the 1990s following the fall of former benefactor the Soviet Union. "They should be focusing on chicken, a basic foodstuff that has disappeared, rather than something so unusual," said Elizabeth Perez, 22, a law student who said she hadn't been able to find chicken in the supermarket for a month. Ostriches are already farmed around the world, particularly in South Africa. In the United States, the bird is often served more as a novelty than a staple. The red meat is said to resemble lean beef, with a gamey flavor. For some, Garcia Frias' comments recalled late leader Fidel Castro's genetic engineering project to produce high-yield dairy cows. His cow Ubre Blanca or White Udder is in the Guinness Book of Records for the highest milk yield by a cow in one day: 110 liters (29 gallons). Her offspring were not as productive so the experiment petered out. Cuba imports 60 to 70 percent of its food because of inefficient central planning of the state-run economy and the effect of the decades-old U.S. trade embargo. But the country has also had to cut back on imports over the past three years due to cash shortfalls resulting from problems with its deals with former and current leftist allies, in particular declining aid from crisis-stricken Venezuela. Whenever chicken arrives at supermarkets in Havana these days, long queues quickly form and do not peter out until the stock is exhausted. Communist Party leader Raul Castro on Wednesday warned the economic situation could worsen in coming months as the United States further tightens its sanctions on the island although it would not become as dire as in the 1990s. (Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
File photo dated 23/2/2017 of Pamela Anderson arriving to visit Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Pamela Anderson has called the arrest of her close friend Julian Assange a diversion from Brexit bull****, and accused the UK of being Americas b****.

Anderson tweeted her strong feelings after WikiLeaks founder Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in central London and now faces charges in the United States.

Assange was detained by British police and carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy after his South American hosts abruptly revoked his asylum, paving the way for his extradition to the US.

Read more: The glitz and glamour of Julian Assanges embassy guestbook

Anderson tweeted her feeling about the arrest: I am in shock..

I couldnt hear clearly what he said?

He looks very bad.

How could you Equador ?

(Because he exposed you).

How could you UK. ?

Of course  you are Americas b**** and

you need a diversion from your idiotic Brexit bulls***.

(Twitter)

The tweet is part of a thread where Anderson shows her support for WikiLeaks by posting a link to a crowdfunding appeal, and also lambasts her the president of her home country of America, without naming Donald Trump:

And the USA ?

This toxic coward of a President

He needs to rally his base? 

You are selfish and cruel.

You have taken the entire world backwards.

You are devils and liars and thieves.

And you will ROTT

And

WE WILL RISE 

Read more: Pamela Anderson calls for an end to reality shows

Anderson, who has had a long-lasting friendship with the fugitive founder of WikiLeaks, tweeted soon after he was taken out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody Thursday April 11, 2019.(Victoria Jones/PA via AP)

Anderson often visited and brought bags of food to Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he sought refuge for nearly seven years. While they were romantically linked at one time, she blasted those reports as sexism.




Washington (AFP) - US Vice President Mike Pence on Friday defended what some say is his boss Donald Trump's puzzling position over the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Repeated past praise for WikiLeaks from Trump was not "an endorsement," Pence told CNN.

Republicans generally celebrated the capture of Assange, who had been taking shelter at Ecuador's London embassy for nearly seven years until British police took him into custody Thursday.

But Trump's first reaction was dismissive, telling reporters "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing."

"I know nothing really about him," he said of Assange.

This raised eyebrows because during his 2016 presidential campaign Trump repeatedly lauded and encouraged the hacking and information-dumping platform, which six years earlier had caused a massive scandal by publishing thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents.

"I love WikiLeaks," he said on one occasion, as the platform leaked stolen emails that proved damaging to his opponent Hillary Clinton's campaign -- even though WikiLeaks is alleged to have been working in close coordination with Russian intelligence.

Pence told CNN that Trump simply backed the exposure of information during the election, not the WikiLeaks organization itself.

"I think the president always, as you and the media do, always welcomes information," Pence said. "But that was in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information by the United States of America," he said.

Other Republicans appear less satisfied with Trump's position on the drama over Assange, who faces extradition to the United States.

"You need to talk to the president about his comments," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said.
Pentagon's controversial transgender policy takes effect

A Pentagon policy set to go into effect Friday bars from service anyone requiring treatment for dissatisfaction with their gender identity. Implementation of the policy concerning the medical condition known as gender dysphoria was pushed by President Donald Trump and blasted by Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who said the policy "had no place in our country." It had been delayed by court challenges. Currently serving troops who have been treated will be allowed to continue serving. Transgender troops must serve in their sex at birth, and must file for waivers for use of showers, bathrooms, physical fitness and other standards, according to the policy.

Military-style weapons now illegal in New Zealand

Sweeping gun laws that outlaw military-style weapons took effect in New Zealand on Friday in the wake of mass shootings at two mosques last month that left 50 people dead and dozens wounded. By a vote of 199-1, New Zealand's Parliament on Wednesday passed a bill outlawing most automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banning components that modify existing weapons. The law includes a buyback scheme under which owners of outlawed weapons can be compensated for surrendering them. Anyone possessing a banned weapon after Friday faces a penalty of up to five years in prison.

Swedish prosecutors consider request to reopen Julian Assange rape case

Prosecutors in Sweden were on Friday considering reopening an investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was dramatically arrested Thursday in Londons Ecuadorian Embassy, where he had been holed up since 2012. The Australian national, who denies the rape allegation, faces an extradition battle to the United States on a charge that he conspired to hack military computers. U.S. authorities say Assange conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to steal and publish huge troves of classified documents. WikiLeaks said in a Thursday tweet that "Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to dehumanize, delegitimize and imprison him."

Story continues

Reservations begin for Samsung's nearly $2,000 Galaxy Fold phone

Dying to buy Samsung's new Galaxy Fold phone? Get in line. Starting Friday, Samsung will be sending out invitations to those who have signed up on its website expressing interest in the Fold. After receiving the invitations, those interested in purchasing one of the foldable phones will be able to reserve their place in a virtual line, granting them the ability to be one of the first to buy the phone/tablet hybrid when the actual pre-order begins April 15. The Galaxy Fold, which will be available for $1,980 for a 4G LTE version with 512GB of storage, becomes available April 26.

Black Lives Matter flag is going up for 400 days at Vermont high school

Vermont's Rutland High School is set to raise a Black Lives Matter flag Friday after students sought permission. It won't just be for a few weeks, either: The school is going to keep it up for 400 days. Rutland High is the latest in a number of educational institutions that have sought to raise the flag in the Green Mountain State. The flag and the movement it represents have been a source of conflict, however. Supporters say Black Lives Matter seeks to draw attention to systemic racism and violence against black people. Opponents say the movement is antagonistic toward police.

A Black Lives Matter Flag was raised outside Burlington

Prefer to listen? Check out the 5 things podcast below and subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts:

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pentagon transgender policy, New Zealand gun ban, Samsung's Galaxy Fold: 5 things to know Friday
Osman Abdullah has been the CEO of Petards Group plc (LON:PEG) since 2016. This report will, first, examine the CEO compensation levels in comparison to CEO compensation at companies of similar size. Next, we'll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally we will reflect on how common stockholders have fared in the last few years, as a secondary measure of performance. The aim of all this is to consider the appropriateness of CEO pay levels.

View our latest analysis for Petards Group

How Does Osman Abdullah's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

At the time of writing our data says that Petards Group plc has a market cap of UK13m, and is paying total annual CEO compensation of UK105k. (This is based on the year to December 2017). It is worth noting that the CEO compensation consists almost entirely of the salary, worth UK105k. We looked at a group of companies with market capitalizations under UK153m, and the median CEO total compensation was UK239k.

This would give shareholders a good impression of the company, since most similar size companies have to pay more, leaving less for shareholders. While this is a good thing, you'll need to understand the business better before you can form an opinion.

You can see, below, how CEO compensation at Petards Group has changed over time.

AIM:PEG CEO Compensation, April 12th 2019

Is Petards Group plc Growing?

Petards Group plc has increased its earnings per share (EPS) by an average of 1.7% a year, over the last three years (using a line of best fit). It achieved revenue growth of 28% over the last year.

It's hard to interpret the strong revenue growth as anything other than a positive. And in that context, the modest EPS improvement certainly isn't shabby. I'd stop short of saying the business performance is amazing, but there are enough positives to justify further research, or even adding the stock to your watch-list. Shareholders might be interested in this free visualization of analyst forecasts.

Story continues

Has Petards Group plc Been A Good Investment?

Boasting a total shareholder return of 58% over three years, Petards Group plc has done well by shareholders. As a result, some may believe the CEO should be paid more than is normal for companies of similar size.

In Summary...

It appears that Petards Group plc remunerates its CEO below most similar sized companies.

Osman Abdullah is paid less than what is normal at similar size companies, and the total shareholder return has been pleasing over the last three years. Although we could see higher growth, we'd argue the remuneration is modest, based on these observations. Whatever your view on compensation, you might want to check if insiders are buying or selling Petards Group shares (free trial).

Arguably, business quality is much more important than CEO compensation levels. So check out this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg was on Ellen Friday, and the likely presidential candidate came just short of officially announcing his candidacy.

I can think of no better place than here. Except one, which is my home town, Buttigieg said of South Bend. We have a big event planned on Sunday and cant wait to have as many friends and supporters as we can come, and were looking to make some news.

And while he didnt talk about what Sundays event would entail, the Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar did discuss topics like his recent back-and-forth with Vice President Mike Pence, who claims Buttigieg has been attacking his faith.

Im not critical of his faith, Im critical of bad policies, Buttigieg said. I dont have a problem with religion, Im religious too. I have a problem with religion being used as a justification to harm people, especially in the LGBTQ community.

Buttigieg said that while hes not interested in a war of words with Pence, he encouraged him to clarify his stance, saying he could come out to today and say hes changed his mind, that it shouldnt be legal to discriminate against anybody in this country for who they are.

He also broke down the reason he chooses not to go after and react to President Trump as frequently as many of the other presidential candidates have.

Of course when he lies we gotta say something about it, and when he does something wrong we gotta confront it. But it cant be all about him, Buttigieg said of the Democartic party and Trump. Its really about making sure were talking about you the American voter.

The 37-year-old Buttigieg, who is a concert pianist and served as a member of the United States Navy Reserve in Afghanistan, also talked about the importance of having gender balance and diversity in government. Which is why the openly gay prospective Democratic presidential candidate said he would be open to having a female vice president if he was able to earn the nomination.

Story continues

The next president is going to have to make sure that that administration, at the most senior levels, has gender balance. Especially if the next president turns out to be male, Buttigieg said. Gender balance and diversity in general, is going to be extremely important and that starts with the ticket.

Ellen airs weekdays, check local listings.

Watch the now-grown up kids from The Brady Bunch reunite on Today:

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Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below.

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Connor McLaren proposed to Jaimie McGregor on top of Glen Lyon, Perth and Kinross. [Photo: SWNS]

23-year-old Connor McLaren spent three months planning the perfect proposal.

Silhouetted by the Milky Way in the background, he got down on one knee and proposed to girlfriend of five years, Jaimie McGregor, 29.

The couple, from Perthshire, Scotland, climbed nearby mountain, Glen Lyon, Perth and Kinross, at 3am on 31 March.

The galaxy was most visible around that time, which fortunately coincided with the couples five-year anniversary.

The couple hiked for 40 minutes to reach the top of Glen Lyon. [Photo: SWNS]

They hiked for 40 minutes at 3am in the morning to reach the place McLaren had selected nearby the Praying hand, a rock formation popular with tourists.

READ MORE: You can now buy a Disney inspired engagement ring

McLaren, who is a freelance photographer, set a 10 second timer on his camera and popped the question when he was in shot.

He described his girlfriend as being totally shocked.

He said: I think she was just surprised at how organised it all was. You cant do it when the moon is out, or in summer when it is too bright, or in winter when its below the horizon.

McLaren admits that the hardest part of the proposal was keeping it a secret. [Photo: SWNS]

Surprisingly, McLaren admits that the hardest part of the proposal was keeping it a secret.

He said: It was quite difficult hanging onto the ring and keeping it a secret for two months.

READ MORE: Bride-to-be rejects second hand engagement ring

He bought the ring from the shop McGregor works at when it went on sale. She had her eye on it, so he told her boss of his plans and together they came up with a cover story that an old lady had bought the platinum ring.

McGregor finished by saying it all just went to plan on the day. The perfect ending.

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The Hunt for Grey April: The Massive Search Operation for a Missing Japanese F- ALADIN

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04-12-2019 10:40 AM



Posts: 5,423









Post: #1 The Hunt for Grey April: The Massive Search Operation for a Missing Japanese F-

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U.S. Joins Search Operation for Missing JASDF F-35 Lost in 10,000 Feet of Water.



Sections from the left and right rudders of a Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) F-35A Lightning II, serialled 79-8705, the first of 13 Japanese F-35s assembled at the Nagoya FACO (Final Assembly and Check-Out), that disappeared in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, April 9, 2019 were located by Japanese authorities at approximately 21:45 local on Tuesday, only hours after the aircraft was reported missing.



The aircraft disappeared from a flight of four F-35As at 19:27pm (10:27 GMT) 135km (84 miles) east of Misawa, in north-eastern Japan. The search continues for the aircrafts pilot, whose identity has not been released but is being described as a major in his 40s.



A report filed by journalist Jon Sharman in The Independent on April 10, 2019 quoted Japanese authorities as saying, The pilot had signaled he wanted to abort the mission before losing contact.



A separate report in Stars and Stripes by reporter Hana Kusumoto said that, The pilot was conducting a nighttime anti-fighter combat drill with three other F-35s. Kusumotos report went on to quote an anonymous spokesman, who told the Stars and Stripes, communications with the pilot indicated nothing abnormal, although the pilot called off the training before the jet disappeared.



The F-35 disappeared about 28 minutes after take off.



Water depth in the area where the tail section wreckage was recovered is reported as being 10,000 feet making search and recovery operations difficult.



Some concern in the media has surfaced that other countries may attempt to recover sections of the aircraft in an attempt to gather intelligence about the F-35s low observable and sensor technology. While interest around the aircraft parts is high, real chances of another country finding and exploiting any of the planes remains are unlikely.



It could present problems depending on what is recovered, when it is recovered and, above all, in which conditions, after impacting the surface of the water, our own David Cenciotti told Fox News via email. The F-35 is a system of systems and its Low Observability/stealthiness is a system itself.



It is obtained with a particular shape of the aircraft, a certain engine and the use of peculiar materials and systems all those are managed and tightly integrated by million lines of software code: this means that it would be extremely difficult to reverse engineer the aircraft by recoverying debris and broken pieces from the ocean bed.



However, there are still lots of interesting parts that could be studied to get some interesting details: a particular onboard sensor or something that cant be seen from the outside but could be gathered by putting your hands on chunks of the aircraft intakes or exhaust section, on the radar reflectors etc.



https://theaviationist.com/2019/04/11/th...nese-f-35/



It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a ma s k on their nose and mouth ... The Hunt for Grey April: The Massive Search Operation for a Missing Japanese F-35.Sections from the left and right rudders of a Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF) F-35A Lightning II, serialled 79-8705, the first of 13 Japanese F-35s assembled at the Nagoya FACO (Final Assembly and Check-Out), that disappeared in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, April 9, 2019 were located by Japanese authorities at approximately 21:45 local on Tuesday, only hours after the aircraft was reported missing.The aircraft disappeared from a flight of four F-35As at 19:27pm (10:27 GMT) 135km (84 miles) east of Misawa, in north-eastern Japan. The search continues for the aircrafts pilot, whose identity has not been released but is being described as a major in his 40s.A report filed by journalist Jon Sharman in The Independent on April 10, 2019 quoted Japanese authorities as saying, The pilot had signaled he wanted to abort the mission before losing contact.A separate report in Stars and Stripes by reporter Hana Kusumoto said that, The pilot was conducting a nighttime anti-fighter combat drill with three other F-35s. Kusumotos report went on to quote an anonymous spokesman, who told the Stars and Stripes, communications with the pilot indicated nothing abnormal, although the pilot called off the training before the jet disappeared.The F-35 disappeared about 28 minutes after take off.Water depth in the area where the tail section wreckage was recovered is reported as being 10,000 feet making search and recovery operations difficult.Some concern in the media has surfaced that other countries may attempt to recover sections of the aircraft in an attempt to gather intelligence about the F-35s low observable and sensor technology. While interest around the aircraft parts is high, real chances of another country finding and exploiting any of the planes remains are unlikely.It could present problems depending on what is recovered, when it is recovered and, above all, in which conditions, after impacting the surface of the water, our own David Cenciotti told Fox News via email. The F-35 is a system of systems and its Low Observability/stealthiness is a system itself.It is obtained with a particular shape of the aircraft, a certain engine and the use of peculiar materials and systems all those are managed and tightly integrated by million lines of software code: this means that it would be extremely difficult to reverse engineer the aircraft by recoverying debris and broken pieces from the ocean bed.However, there are still lots of interesting parts that could be studied to get some interesting details: a particular onboard sensor or something that cant be seen from the outside but could be gathered by putting your hands on chunks of the aircraft intakes or exhaust section, on the radar reflectors etc. Organicnongmoaware

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Post: #2 RE: The Hunt for Grey April: The Massive Search Operation for a Missing Japanese F-

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By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda SANTIAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday defended sanctions on Venezuela and said the United States would not "quit the fight" in the socialist-run Latin American nation which is spiraling into deepening economic and political crisis. Pompeo is on a three-day trip to Chile, Paraguay and Peru, a clutch of fast-growing countries in a region where Washington's concerns are focused on China's growing presence as well as the Venezuelan crisis. "The United States and its allies will not quit this fight," he said during an event in Chilean capital Santiago, adding that the country would keep supporting Venezuelans "courageously standing up for democracy in their home country." Washington is pressuring President Nicolas Maduro to step down and urging more countries to join the coalition supporting opposition leader Juan Guaido. South America has seen a political shift in recent years toward the right, and most nations have backed Guaido. "It's a historic opportunity when you have all but a handful of countries that are truly market-driven, democratic in ways that you haven't had in South America for decades," Pompeo told reporters earlier en route to Santiago, where he met with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera. Pompeo will travel later on Friday to Paraguay, the first visit by a U.S. secretary of state to the country since 1965, a gesture experts say underscores U.S. commitment to the region. On Sunday he is set to visit Cucuta, a Colombian border city receiving significant numbers of Venezuelan migrants fleeing hunger and violence in their homeland. U.S. 'TRYING TO HELP' Washington has imposed a raft of sanctions against Maduro's government in an attempt to dislodge him from power. On Friday, it added four firms and nine ships to its blacklist. Critics have warned that heavy sanctions could hurt ordinary Venezuelans, already suffering from hyperinflation and food and medicine shortages. Pompeo said the people recognized the United States was not to blame for the country's crisis. "I think they understand who the malign actor is here and I think they'll see all the countries in the region, including the United States, as truly trying to help them," he said. Maduro blames U.S. sanctions for the country's economic problems and dismisses Guaido as a U.S. puppet. While most Western nations have recognized Guaido as head of state, Russia, China and Cuba have stood by Maduro. Pompeo on Friday accused China of aiding Venezuela's economic collapse by bankrolling Maduro's government and said Russian troop presence in the country was an "obvious provocation." Working under a U.S. warrant, police in Spain arrested on Friday a former general and close ally of Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez. The former general, Hugo Carvajal, has thrown his support behind Guaido and is expected to be willing to cooperate with U.S. officials and share a "treasure trove" of information, a senior U.S. official told Reuters. CHINA PIVOT Pompeo is also seeking to highlight the gains from economic and trade cooperation with the United States, whose regional influence has been increasingly challenged by China. Asked about China in Santiago, Pompeo warned about "predatory" lending practices and "malign or nefarious" actions, mirroring criticism previous U.S. officials have made about China during Latin America trips. "Make no mistake about it, China's trade activities often are deeply connected to their national security mission, their technological goals, their desire to steal intellectual property, to have forced technology transfer, to engage in activity that is not economic," he said. China, whose booming economy over the past two decades has driven up demand for raw materials, is already the top trade partner for nations from tiny Uruguay to Brazil, Latin America's largest economy and the world's top soybean exporter. The pivot by Latin American countries toward China for financing has alarmed Washington. U.S. President Donald Trump's December 2017 national security strategy said China was seeking to "pull the region into its orbit through state-led investment and loans." Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in the region has risen by $70 billion since 2012, according to the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. While the United States remains the largest source of FDI, its share fell to 20 percent in 2016 from 24 percent in 2012, according to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. (Reporting by Natalia Ramos in Santiago, additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Writing by Adam Jourdan; Editing by James Dalgleish and Rosalba O'Brien)
Washington (AFP) - Four top US Democratic lawmakers known for their support of Israel on Friday warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to annex the West Bank, amid signs President Donald Trump is ending Washington's longstanding push for a Palestinian state.

In a joint statement, the four lawmakers including Representative Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said they backed Israel's security but were "greatly concerned" about prospects that the Jewish state will unilaterally annex Palestinian territory.

"We hope that any security measures are implemented within the context of preserving the eventual possibility of a two-state solution," they wrote.

"Two states for two peoples, negotiated directly by the two sides, with mutually agreed-upon land swaps, is the best option to achieve a Jewish, democratic, secure Israel living side-by-side with a democratic, demilitarized Palestinian state."

The statement was also signed by House Appropriations Committee chair Nita Lowey, Ted Deutch -- who heads the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East -- and Brad Schneider, another Democratic congressman known for his support of Israel.

All four lawmakers are longtime backers of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and broke with their party to oppose a 2015 nuclear accord with Iran negotiated under president Barack Obama.

Netanyahu, who narrowly won a historic fifth term this week, promised at the end of the election campaign that he would annex at least parts of the West Bank -- a move that would effectively preclude a negotiated deal for a Palestinian state.

Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner is expected shortly to unveil a plan for the Middle East.

In a series of appearances before Congress, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to say whether the plan would reaffirm Washington's decades-old backing of a Palestinian state, saying only that past plans have failed.

The Democratic lawmakers' statement comes as Israel faces growing criticism within the party, with presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Beto O'Rourke both attacking Netanyahu as an extremist and pledging a new approach if elected.
A coming trade pact between Washington and Beijing could mean US goods will out-muscle regional Asian exporters reliant on sales to China, the International Monetary Fund warned Friday.

"In the case of an agreement involving managed trade, with China committed to import more from the US, reducing imports from elsewhere can be an issue," Changyong Rhee, head of the IMF Asia Department, told reporters during the fund's spring meetings with the World Bank.

"There could be negative impacts on other countries whose exports to China would be crowded out by US exports."

Washington and Beijing have been in talks since the start of the year to resolve their nine-month trade war.

Beijing has floated offers to make eye-popping purchases of US agricultural and energy exports as a means of cutting its soaring trade surplus with the United States.

President Donald Trump has been outraged by the US trade deficit with China, which has increased despite the punishing tariffs he imposed last year on Chinese imports.

Countries such as Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Mongolia are crude exporters to China, suggesting they could lose market share should US exports to China increase.

Rhee also said Friday that formal bilateral purchase agreement would be a departure from the prevailing rules governing international trade.

"Likewise if the deal involves preferential access for the US to the Chinese markets, this could lead to broader worries about the future of the multilateral trade system," he said.
WASHINGTON  The White House tried to pressure immigration authorities into releasing captured immigrants into sanctuary cities, particularly targeting liberal strongholds in hopes of hurting Democrats, according to a report from The Washington Post.

The report noted that the White House has attempted to pitch the idea to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at least twice since November. The White House suggested both transporting migrants who were captured at the border and those currently being held in facilities to sanctuary cities where local authorities don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities.

Among the areas targeted: Democratic strongholds, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco.

The Post reported that the proposal sought to ease the bed shortage at immigration detention centers and "send a message to Democrats."

The White House did not immediately respond to inquires about the proposal. In a statement to the Post, the White House admitted it was "just a suggestion that was floated and rejected."

The Department of Homeland Security echoed the White House in a statement to USA TODAY, saying, "this was a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion."

'His immigration legacy': Immigration policy legal challenges? Advisers urge Trump to ignore setbacks, charge ahead

More: A multimillion-dollar question: What's a 'sanctuary city?'

Indeed, ICE's legal department pushed back against the White House proposal, pointing out the legal concerns, budget issues and "PR risks as well," according to the Washington Post, which cited both emails and officials within the DHS.

Ashley Etienne, a spokeswoman for Pelosi, derided the administration's idea to use immigrants in an attempt to hurt Democrats, including the idea to target her district.

"The extent of this Administrations cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," Etienne said. "Using human beings  including little children  as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable, and in some cases, criminal. The American people have resoundingly rejected this Administrations toxic anti-immigrant policies, and Democrats will continue to advance immigration policies that keep us safe and honor our values."

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The first time the White House brought up the idea was in November, around the time of the midterm elections, as a migrant caravan was approaching the southern U.S. border, the Post reported.

President Donald Trump repeatedly brought up the caravan and the southern border as a crucial issue in the lead up to the midterm races, even deploying 6,000 troops to the border in the days before voters cast their ballots.

"The idea has been raised by 1-2 principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bussed to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities," May Davis, a deputy assistant to Trump wrote in an email to officials at ICE. The email's subject line read: sanctuary City Proposal," according to the Post.

Matthew Albence, who two administration officials say will be tapped as ICE's acting director by Friday, wrote back and pointed out the flaws with the plan, including the "operational burden" in transporting so many migrants.

"Not sure how paying to transport aliens to another location to release them  when they can be released on the spot  is a justified expenditure. Not to mention the liability should there be an accident along the way," he wrote, according to the Post.

The White House again brought up the proposal in February amid the government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history after Trump and congressional Democrats hit an impasse over funding for a wall along the southern border.

The president has continued to push his aggressive immigration agenda, even using his executive powers to implement policies or kickstart projects, such as his declaration of a national emergency in February that freed up billions to construction a wall along the southern border.

More: Another top DHS official is leaving, paving the way for President Trump's pick to run the agency

Want news from USA TODAY on WhatsApp? Click this link on your mobile device to get started

Sanctuary cities have long drawn Trumps ire. Just days after taking office, Trump signed an executive order in 2017 that cut off federal funding to sanctuary cities, calling undocumented immigration a "clear and present danger" to national security. The order was immediately challenged in court and so far, judges have found the presidents order unconstitutional, though the Trump administration continues to appeal.

Trump's immigration policies have been a focal point of his presidency with his administration continuing to pose hardline stances on the issue, including a policy that led to the separation of migrant children from their families at the border.

That approach might be intensifying. Last week, Trump said he was pulling his nomination for a new director of ICE so they could go in a different direction with someone tougher.

The presidents comments came amid a massive shakeup within DHS that led to a handful of the departments top officials leaving, including Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Report: White House wanted to release immigrants into sanctuary cities to punish Democrats
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein pushed back Thursday against allegations that Attorney General William Barr had been biased in his handling of Special Counsel Robert Muellers final report, calling such accusations bizarre.

Hes being as forthcoming as he can, Rosenstein told the Wall Street Journal. And so this notion that hes trying to mislead people, I think is just completely bizarre.

Barr, a Trump appointee, submitted a four-page summary of the nearly 400-page report to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees last month, in which he stated that Mueller had found no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia but had left open the question of whether the president obstructed justice during the probe. (Rosenstein and Barr subsequently declined to file obstruction charges against Trump, saying nothing none of the presidents actions had corrupt intent.)

On Thursday, Rosenstein defended Barrs handling of the Mueller report from critics who have charged him with bias.

It would be one thing if you put out a letter and said, Im not going to give you the report, Rosenstein said. What he said is, Look, its going to take a while to process the report. In the meantime, people really want to know whats in it. Im going to give you the top-line conclusions. Thats all he was trying to do.

Barr said in congressional testimony Wednesday that he the believes the DOJ spied on the Trump campaign and he plans to open a DOJ investigation into the origins of the Russia probe. He also described the four types of redactions that the DOJ will make before releasing a version of the report to lawmakers: grand-jury information, information that would reveal intelligence sources and methods, information that affects the privacy of peripheral players not charged as a result of the investigation, and information that would compromise ongoing prosecutions.

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Rosenstein appointed Mueller as special counsel for the Russia probe in May 2017, after Trump fired former FBI director James Comey, who had directed the investigation to that point. The investigation fell to Rosenstein after then-attorney general Jeff Sessions recused himself from the probe.

More from National Review
(Repeats April 11 item. The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)

* Chart: https://tmsnrt.rs/2X0zgkX

By John Kemp

LONDON, April 11 (Reuters) - Policymakers in the advanced economies are increasingly worried by the economic, social and political disruption resulting from the decline of traditional manual jobs in manufacturing, mining and distribution.

Globalization, trade, migration, the rise of the internet, and the advent of artificial intelligence/robotisation have all been blamed for the adverse impact on those who make a living from manual labor.

In reality, the loss of manual employment is the extension of a trend dating back more than 200 years that has gradually replaced physical jobs in agriculture, mining and manufacturing with service sector employment.

Relatively rapid change in employment, energy consumption and industrial patterns has been both the stimulus to, and the consequence of, economic growth of the last two centuries.

Returning to the greater employment security and stability of the pre-1800 world would imply a reversion to its more stagnant economy.

For policymakers, the challenge is therefore how to manage the transitional costs for the most affected communities  not try to halt the changes altogether.

ENERGY AND LABOUR

Economic growth in the past two centuries has been propelled by changes in technology, organization and intellectual capital but the fundamental driver has arguably been an enormous increase in the availability and use of energy, initially from fossil fuels and more recently from renewable sources as well.

Until 1800, almost all power in the economy for food production, manufacturing and transportation was provided by human and animal muscles, supplemented by small quantities of energy captured by wind and watermills.

Since then, there has been a continuous trend towards greater mechanization and automation, substituting human and animal labor for mechanical power driven by energy from coal, oil, gas, nuclear and now renewables.

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The great acceleration in the economy and living standards in the last 200 years has depended on an equally prodigious increase in energy capture and use and displacement of human and animal labor by machines (https://tmsnrt.rs/2X0zgkX).

On average, each person in North America and Western Europe now consumes more than six times as much energy as in 1800, and thanks to improvements in energy efficiency, the social gains have been even greater.

In terms of delivered energy services, each person in the United Kingdom now benefits from 60 times as much heating, 70 times as much power and over 500 times as much passenger transport as in 1800.

In the process of this great acceleration, tens of millions of manual jobs in agriculture, mining and manufacturing have been eliminated to be replaced by even more employment in the service sector.

In the United States, agriculture accounted for two-thirds of all employment in 1850, but that had fallen to one-third by 1910, less than 10 percent by the 1950s and now less than 1 percent in the 2010s.

Manufacturing employment expanded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to peak at 35 percent of the total in the 1950s and 1960s but had fallen to less than 30 percent in the early 1980s and is now less than 15 percent.

Instead, the proportion of jobs in the service sector has surged from 18 percent in 1850 to 50 percent by the 1950s and now more than 80 percent in the 2010s.

Mechanization and industrial development has shrunk or eliminated tens of millions of mostly manual jobs over the past century - including several whole categories of employment.

The U.S. workforce doubled from 42 million in 1920 to 80 million in 1970 and then nearly doubled again to 145 million in 2018.

But the number of workers employed in mining has fallen from more than 1.2 million in 1920 to fewer than 500,000 in 1970 and below 200,000 in 2018.

Farm employment has fallen from 11 million in 1920 to less than 4 million in 1970 and less than 500,000 in 2018 (Historical statistics of the United States, Census Bureau).

Mechanization and improvements in energy capture have been responsible for the enormous increase in productivity and economic opportunity but mostly at the expense of manual labor.

At the same time, tens of millions of new jobs, many of them unimaginable in 1970, let alone 1920 or 1870, have been created over the same period, mostly in the service sector.

VANISHED COMMUNITIES

On balance, mechanization and increased use of new energy rather than manual labor have brought a tremendous improvement in living standards, but the costs for subgroups affecting by the transitions have been intense.

Containerisation transformed the global economy during the 1960s and 1970s, making long-distance maritime trade faster and cheaper, opening new markets and consumption possibilities.

But it was a disaster for hundreds of thousands of dockworkers in long-established communities at ports around the world.

Cranes and straddle carriers handling shipping containers eliminated tens of thousands of former manual jobs involved in loading and unloading ships by hand.

In New York, the number of hours worked by longshoremen fell by 90 percent between the mid-1960s and the mid-1970s in Manhattan and by 60 percent in Brooklyn.

Away from the docks, tens of thousands more jobs were lost in transportation, distribution and manufacturing trades, as freight flows and supply chains shifted to the new container ports in New Jersey.

The decline of jobs reverberated through New York Citys economy, economist Marc Levinson wrote in a history of containerisation.

Poor immigrant communities relying on unskilled manual employment were devastated as an entirely new system of goods distribution was put in place.

In London, the same wrenching changes hit dock communities along the Thames, as freight moved downriver to the giant container terminals at Tilbury and then Felixstowe that needed far fewer workers.

The same pattern played out in port cities around the world: containerisation created a small number of skilled jobs, usually at higher pay, but eliminated far more relatively unskilled manual positions.

Strikes and mechanization agreements between employers and unions aimed to slow the pace of change and provide some compensation for workers affected, with little success.

Containerisation left waterfront communities that relied on large numbers of dockyard jobs scarred by social and economic problems for decades.

NOSTALGIA AND REACTION

Because of its concentrated impact on certain demographic groups and local communities, mechanization and the revolution in energy services have often produced a backlash.

Workers in mid-career or living in communities dominated by a single industry may not have much opportunity to retrain and move to another form of employment without loss of income (and status).

In Britain, handloom weavers smashed new automated textile machines in the first decades of the 19th century (the Luddite movement) while agricultural workers smashed threshing machines in 1830 (the Swing riots).

Around the same time, the introduction of sheep farming in the Scottish Highlands, an extension of the enclosure movement that had been eliminating rural jobs in England for two centuries previously, displaced traditional peasant farming communities and produced a similar violent reaction (as well as mass emigration).

Rapid changes in technology and the resulting displacement of workers have often generated a political reaction and a longing to return to an older, simpler, more prosperous age.

Something similar appears to be happening at the moment with an angry backlash against trade, immigration and technological changes that seem to threaten established employment patterns.

But experience suggests machine breaking, riots, strikes, protectionism, anti-immigration campaigns and nostalgia cannot durably hold back the long-term shift in employment and energy patterns.

Further reading:

- Heat, power and light: revolutions in energy services (Fouquet, 2008)

- Why the West rules  for now (Morris, 2011)

- The employment shift to services: where did it come from? (Urquhart, 1984)

- Occupational changes during the 20th century (Wyatt and Hecker, 2006)

- The Box: how the shipping container made the world smaller and the world economy bigger (Levinson, 2006)

- The Highland Clearances (Richards, 2016) (Editing by Richard Mably)
By Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt

April 9 (Reuters) - A political feud over President Donald Trumps picks for the U.S. Federal Reserve Board broke into an open brawl on Tuesday even before the nominations of Herman Cain, a former restaurant chain executive, and Stephen Moore, a conservative economic commentator, have been formally submitted to the Senate.

Cain and Moore, both overt loyalists to the president, in recent days have waged unprecedented public campaigns for the Fed jobs, with both eagerly endorsing Trump's economic policies and Moore pledging to "accommodate" those policies once he is at the Fed.

The central bank's leadership prides itself on its nonpartisan stewardship over the world's biggest economy, and views political independence as key to its ability to carry out monetary policy effectively.

On Tuesday, Democrats including Senator Chuck Schumer and Joint Economic Committee Vice Chair Carolyn Maloney took public aim at the pair's qualifications, with Maloney saying that Moore is "superbly underqualified for the role for which he has been nominated."

And at least four Republican Senators indicated they could break ranks on Cain, enough to sink his chances for the required approval in the Senate.

The Trump administration is "probably going to hear from a number of our members about concerns that they have" about Cain, John Thune, the Republican whip in the Senate, told Politico.

Another Republican senator, John Cornyn, said, "Before the president starts floating names ... we need to have a conversation about who is actually confirmable up here," according to a Twitter post by New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush.

Cain and Moore are battling hard for the two vacant seats on the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors, positions that would give them a say for years on interest-rate policy and bank regulation.

In recent days they have taken to social media and the airwaves to promote themselves and lash out at critics and anyone they view as standing in the way of Trumps agenda or his prospects for reelection.

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In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Moore trumpeted his agenda for economic growth and again took aim at critics.

There are a lot of people on the left that are afraid of my ideas. They realize that they couldnt defeat me based on my ideas, because theyre popular, and theyre right, so that leads to this kind of smear campaign, which is ugly," Moore said.

"I have a pretty populist agenda that Im pursuing, which is more growth, higher wages, more transparency and more sunlight on how the Fed operates," Moore said, calling those priorities "the right things to do" and saying that he wants to talk directly to the American people."

"NOT SO FAVORABLY INCLINED"

Cain and Moore's open politicking is a departure from past practice, with confirmation of Fed nominees typically a sleepy process of quizzing candidates, mostly economists with doctoral degrees, about their views on monetary policy and banking oversight.

Lewis Alexander, chief U.S. economist at Nomura Securities, said it was positive "for people's views to be known," but he added a note of caution. "It is certainly not a part of the Federal Reserve's mandate to promote the chances of reelection of a particular president."

Trump has repeatedly criticized the Fed for raising rates, saying that rate hikes are holding back the economy. His pick of Moore and former Republican presidential candidate Cain has been seen by critics as a means to put pressure on the central bank to ease policy and help him politically.

Moore and Cain have kept up unusually public profiles. Cain's has included digs against Democrats ("lunatic liberals," he said Monday on Facebook) and gays (a Tuesday tweet linked to a piece on Floyd Brown's Western Journal that portrays gays as unnatural).

Cain has said he would not be disappointed if he does not get the Fed job, but has repeatedly brought it up on his daily show. In a video posted Tuesday, Cain said "a lot of people ... do not like the fact" that he is under consideration and are trying to discourage the administration from nominating him because of his conservative political leanings. "The decision's going to be made basically on the facts," he said.

Cain remains co-chair of the America Fighting Back PAC, which was co-founded by Brown to promote Trump's reelection. Cain's photo and name were used as recently as last month in a letter raising funds to oppose a group of 12 senators if they ever "cross" Trump.

Two of those senators are on the Senate Banking Committee, the first stop in a two-step Senate approval process for any Fed nominee. Brown, who was the founding chairman of Citizens United, said in an interview that Cain has stepped back from day-to-day involvement in the PAC. Cain did not respond to requests from Reuters for comment.

Moore in radio and TV interviews has praised Trump's economic record and embraced easing monetary policy, a stance that Trump himself has vigorously promoted.

People "are not going to vote against someone who has been this successful on the economy," Moore said on Monday, adding in another interview that day that he is "looking forward to getting over to the Fed."

Cain's candidacy appeared by late Tuesday to be drawing the most political fire. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski told The Hill that she is "not so favorably inclined" on Cain, whose 2012 run for president was derailed by claims of sexual harassment, which he has denied.

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell declined to publicly endorse him, the Washington Post reported.

It is not the first time a Fed nominee has faced political opposition. In 2011 Republicans scuttled the nomination by Democratic President Barack Obama of Peter Diamond, a Nobel laureate in economics and MIT professor, for what Republican Senator Richard Shelby then said was a lack of experience and appropriate policy preferences.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir and Trevor Hunnicutt Additional reporting by Howard Schneider Editing by Leslie Adler)
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A court in Russia fined Facebook on Friday for failing to tell authorities where it stores Russian user data, Russian news agencies reported, a ruling that highlights wrangling between tech giants and Moscow as it ramps up Internet controls. The court fined Facebook 3,000 roubles ($47) for not providing information in line with legislation that came into force in 2015 requiring social media companies to store user data on servers located in Russia. The only tools Moscow currently has to enforce its data rules are fines that often amount to small sums or blocking the offending online service, an option fraught with technical difficulties. Russia plans to impose stiffer fines on technology firms that fail to comply with its laws, sources familiar with the plans told Reuters in October. Russia blocked access to LinkedIn in 2016 for not holding its Russian user data on servers in Russia. Last year it moved to block the Telegram instant messaging service, but the attempt failed and the service is still popular. Facebook did not send a representative to the hearing on Friday, but the court pressed ahead anyway as Facebook did not seek for it to be postponed, the Interfax news agency cited the court as saying. A court fined Twitter 3,000 roubles for a similar offense last week. Russia has introduced tougher Internet laws in the last five years, requiring search engines to delete some search results and messaging services to share encryption keys with security services. Russian authorities could gain new powers to block content in November when draft legislation that seeks to expand Russia's sovereignty over its segment of the web could come into force. The bill sailed through a second reading on Thursday in parliament and will become law if it is approved in a final reading, passed by the upper chamber and signed by President Vladimir Putin. (Reporting by Maria Tsvetkova; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Maria Kiselyova)
President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that he is considering a move to force immigration officials to transport migrants who arrive at the border to so-called sanctuary cities.

"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump wrote on Twitter. The Washington Post reported the proposal on Thursday, writing that the White House had tried to pressure immigration authorities into releasing captured immigrants in sanctuary cities and targeting liberal strongholds in hopes of hurting Democrats.

"Sanctuary cities" have been a frequent Trump target, both during his 2016 election campaign and throughout his presidency.

What is a sanctuary city?

"Sanctuary city" is not a legal term but a now politically-charged phrase used to describe jurisdictions  cities, counties, states  that don't fully comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts.

When asked to define it, Trump administration officials cite a federal law that says local jurisdictions cannot bar their police or sheriffs from communicating with federal immigration officials about detainees who are potentially in the country illegally.

"That means, according to Congress, a city that prohibits its officials from providing information to federal immigration authorities  a sanctuary city  is violating the law," said a White House statement released last spring.

The Supreme Court is at the center of the debate over President Trump's effort to end former President Barack Obama's DACA program.

But some cities have been labeled sanctuaries simply because their jails prohibit employees from asking federal immigration authorities about a detainee's immigration status.

Another key threshold is whether a local jail cooperates with so-called "detainer orders" from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Those are requests from ICE to alert the feds before a detainee is released, so federal authorities can take them into custody, for deportation or other proceedings. If a jail releases a detainee without honoring that federal request, that could be considered a sanctuary city policy.

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How many sanctuary cities are there?

More than 300 jurisdictions across the U.S. are considered immigration sanctuaries in some fashion. But they're not just cities.

At least eight states  from New Jersey to Illinois to California  are considered sanctuary states, according to an analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors restricting immigration.

Hundreds of additional cities and counties decline to tell federal immigration authorities about possible illegal immigrants in their custody and refuse to comply with detainer orders.

But some jurisdictions have been mislabeled. For example, in Alachua County, Fla., the sheriff's office ended up on a report issued by Homeland Security last year shaming sanctuary cities. That department has a policy that forbids its agents from honoring federal requests to hold suspects for up to 48 hours for immigration agents.

The sheriff's spokesman, Art Forgey, told USA TODAY that's because courts have ruled the practice to be a violation of the constitutional due process rights of suspects. But Forgey said his office immediately shares information on every inmate who enters its jails with the local office of the federal immigration enforcement agency.

Deputies pass along the name, fingerprints, country of birth, criminal charges and even the estimated release date of each person in its jails. So it came as a shock to his office when it was listed as a sanctuary city.

"Where they come up with their information and how they come about it, it's perplexing," Forgey said last year after federal officials tagged the county. "The people at Homeland Security, I think they're ill-equipped to deal with the orders that have been placed upon them."

Can the feds legally target sanctuary cities?

Last year, the administration tried to withhold federal money from cities, counties and states that it considers "sanctuaries" for undocumented immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security tried to publicly shame such jurisdictions, and the Department of Justice issued letters to nine local governments warning that they could lose federal grants if they are deemed sanctuaries.

But in several court rulings, judges have blocked Trump's attempts to withhold federal grant money from "sanctuary cities."

Last year, for example, a U.S. District Court judge in San Francisco ruled that Trump exceeded his presidential authority when he signed an executive order Jan. 25 directing his administration to withhold all federal funding from local jurisdictions deemed to be immigration sanctuaries.

Theyve been roundly defeated again and again, Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, told fivethirtyeight.com earlier this year.

That website's analysis notes there are two main legal arguments against stripping funds from sanctuary cities. First, Congress has spending authority under the U.S. Constitution, so it's illegal for the president to try to strip money from jurisdictions without lawmakers' go-ahead. Second, the 10th Amendment protects states rights.

If Trump tries to move forward with his latest proposal to drop immigrants in sanctuary cities, it's sure to face a bevy of legal challenges.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sanctuary cities for illegal immigrants? Here's what you need to know
The Satanic Temple has launched a legal challenge to Missouri laws requiring women to wait three days before undergoing an abortion.

An appeal filed in the Eighth US Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday on behalf of a member of the group, named only as aJudy Doea, claims rules in the state infringe on First Amendment rights to religious freedom.

Missouri operates a so-called aInformed Consenta abortion process, where women are forced to wait at least 72 hours after requesting the procedure before it is carried out.

In that time, laws require patients are given a booklet which states: athe life of each human being begins at conceptiona.

They must also be offered the opportunity to listen to the foetal heartbeat and view an ultrasound before an abortion can take place.

A federal judge initially dismissed the case in March, ruling the laws were not discriminatory on religious grounds.

But the temple has now requested the appeals court adjudicate on whether life begins at conception and whether a matter of areligious opiniona can be imposed by law.

aOur appeal presents a challenge for judges who want to defy the law to promote an agenda because the Eighth Circuit will have to overrule itself to deny our claims,a said Satanic Temple co-founder and spokesman Lucien Greaves.

aIt is laughable for theocrats to obviously impose their religious viewpoint into law only to claim that their actions are not discriminatory by virtue of the fact that everybody is equally burdened by the restrictions theyave created. We are confident that reason will prevail upon appeal.a

A similar lawsuit filed by a Satanic Temple member was rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court in February this year.

In that case, a woman known as aMary Doea argued the temple taught a womanas body is ainviolable and subject to her will alonea.

She also stated it was her sincerely-held religious belief a foetus was not part of her body and was not a human being.

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However, the court ruled Informed Consent did not violate religious freedoms because parts of it only ahappened to coincidea with certain religious tenets on abortion, rather than being based on them.

A spokesman for Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt at the time said the law was adesigned to protect women from undue pressure and coercion during the sensitive decision of whether or not to have an abortion.a

The Satanic Temple, which has 13 chapters across the US and Canada, is a non-theistic moment founded in 2013, which promotes egalitarianism, civil liberties, secularism and reproductive rights.

Adherants do not believe in a literal Satan, but consider the literary Satan a metaphor for questioning authority and promoting scepticism.

It is also known for its use of satire to challenge Christianity, an action for which its members have faced accusations they do not hold sincere Satanist beliefs and are instead just attempting to prank or atrolla targets.

In August last year, the group unveiled an eight-foot bronze statue of the goat-headed devil figure Baphomet outside the Arkansas state capitol building in protest against a Ten Commandments monument on the site.

In 2016, the temple sought to establish aAfter School Satana clubs, in protest against evangelical Christian Good News Clubs, which it considers an erosion of the separation of church and state in public education.

Additional reporting by AP
Christchurch (New Zealand) (AFP) - Four weeks on from the New Zealand mosques massacre, the Christchurch Muslim community was struggling to get worshippers to overcome their fears and return to Friday prayers.

"They are still very scared," Linwood mosque Imam Ibrahim Abdelhalim told AFP. "Normally we would expect around 100, but now it's about 30."

A 28-year-old Australian, Brenton Tarrant, a self-avowed white supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 of attempted murder after opening fire at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques on March 15.

The Muslim community was further shaken this week when a 33-year-old man, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the name of US President Donald Trump, shouted abuse at worshippers at the Al Noor mosque.

Daniel Nicholas Tuapawa, who pleaded guilty in court Friday to acting in a manner "likely to cause violence," said he did not realise what he had done until police showed him a video of him yelling abusive comments including "all Muslims are terrorists".

"I can't believe this is actually me," he told reporters after being remanded on bail until July 31 for sentencing.

Tuapawa said he suffered from mental health issues and had nothing against Muslims.

"It's just because it's been in the news and in my head," he said.

- Flashbacks -

Abdelhalim said many Muslims who wanted to return to the mosques "are having flashbacks and that's not good."

New Zealand police have issued a statement saying the national threat level "remains high" a month after the slaughter, even though the gunman is thought to have acted alone.

The security fears have led to a drastic reduction in the number of services later this month on Anzac Day, a national day of remembrance to commemorate New Zealanders and Australians who served in wars and peacekeeping operations.

In Auckland, only 26 will take place -- down from nearly 90 last year -- which the city's police commander Karyn Malthus said would make it easier for police to maintain public safety.

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"There is no information about a specific threat to ANZAC events at this time, however, it's important that the public be safe and feel safe at events in the current environment," she said.

In the wake of the shootings, New Zealand has rushed through legislation to tighten firearms regulations, removing semi-automatic weapons from circulation through a buy-back scheme, prohibition and harsh prison sentences.

On Friday, the government closed a potential loophole by extending the law to cover exports of semi-automatic weapons, magazines and parts.

It shuts off the possibility of gun owners snubbing the buyback scheme and selling their now-illegal firearms to overseas buyers for more money.

"These changes are essential to ensure that weapons that are prohibited in New Zealand are not exported to other countries where they would pose a similar risk," deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters said.
The Simpsons (Credit: Fox/Disney)

The first 30 seasons of The Simpsons will be available to stream on Disneys new streaming service Disney+ when it launches in America, its been confirmed, following the acquisition of Fox by Disney.

In typical style, the showmakers mocked the merger, with a clip featuring Disney boss Bob Iger and Darth Vader on pedestals, a signed picture of Rupert Murdoch in their trash, and the corporate buzzphrase Welcome Synergy on the roof of 742 Evergreen Terrace.

After forcing the family to put on mouse ears, Homer is then crushed by Dumbo.





The Simpsons will be a valuable addition to the growing suite of content on Disney+, with the vast library from Springfield being available from day one of launch, and for the first time on any streaming service.

The launch of the service has now been confirmed for November 12 in the US, with the price set at $6.99 per month or $69.99 for a year, though theres no UK price confirmed as yet.

Disney UK has confirmed to Yahoo that it plans to launch Disney+ in Western Europe between October 2019 and March 2020. The slate of content coming to Disney+ in the U.K. and Europe is likely to be similar to the one announced by Disney overnight, but the spokesperson said the launch date, content slate, and pricing was still to be confirmed.

Its worth noting Disney launched Disney Life, its own streaming service, in the U.K. and the Philippines in 2015. Its just 5 a month, and offers a huge wealth of Disney content including most of its classic animated films, Pixars back catalogue (bar recent releases such as Coco and Incredibles 2) all the Pirates of the Caribbean films, and some Star Wars and Marvel content, but not the films.

How Disney Life and its subscribers will be impacted by the launch of Disney+ is yet to be confirmed, but our guess is that current subscribers will be seamlessly ported over to the new service. Whether Disney+ will include the full Star Wars and Marvel back catalogue here in the U.K. is unclear, as the studio has rights deals with Sky Movies which gives the satellite broadcaster exclusive TV rights to broadcast its most recent releases exclusively for a period of time.

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Read more: Monsters Inc spin-off for Disney+

When it launches in America, Disney+ will come with a swathe of Disneys library of movies, with classics like Snow White, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin set to join the whole of the Pixar slate before the end of the year.

Heres how Disney+ might look on your TV when it eventually launches. (Disney)

Meanwhile, Captain Marvel will be the flagship streamable movie at launch, doubtless followed by other 21 movies in the canon so far.

This will be added to the planned spin-off series for Tim Hiddlestons Loki, WandaVision, with Paul Bettanys Vision and Elizabeth Olsens Scarlett Witch, a series based on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, and another on Jeremy Renners Hawkeye.

Then theres the Star Wars franchise, set to be augmented by a number of new series.

At an investor presentation yesterday, Lucasfilms Kathleen Kennedy confirmed a new spin-off series starring Diego Lunas rebel leader Cassian Andor from Rogue One, which will team him with Alan Tudyks deadpan droid K2-SO.

The Mandalorian (Credit: Disney/Lucasfilm)

It will join the already-in-production The Mandalorian, helmed by Jon Favreau, and following a Mandalorian bounty hunter in the period after Return of the Jedi, but before The Force Awakens.

Read more: Every Disney live-action remake on the way

The series already boasts a stunning  and unusual  cast, including Pedro Pascal, Nick Nolte, Giancarlo Esposito, MMA star Gina Carano, Werner Herzog and Taika Waititi.

It will also premiere on the Disney+ launch day.

Elsewhere, there will be new series based on the likes of Monsters Inc and High School Musical, as well as documentary series The World According to Jeff Goldblum, from the National Geographic brand.




A Southwest Airlines flight attendant is being lauded online over her kind deed for a weary traveler.

Savannah Blum, an elementary school teacher, was traveling home to Nevada on Saturday with her husband, Marcus, and their 19-month-old daughter, Brittain, after visiting relatives in Austin, Texas.

The family had just boarded a connecting flight from Las Vegas to Reno when the toddler began throwing a fit, WNBC reports.

As soon as the meltdown began, Blum says a flight attendant, who she identified only as Jessica, approached the family and reached out for Brittain, saying, "Come here, baby. I got her, Mama. You go sit down."

Blum immediately began recording on her cellphone as Jessica started walking down the aisles of the plane, closing overhead bins with Brittain on her hip.

Enjoying the attention, the toddler immediately calmed down and even began blowing kisses at fellow passengers on the plane  an act which was met by a wave of "awws."

Blum shared footage of the moment on Facebook, writing, "Everyone loves this little girl  even Southwest passengers and flight attendants." It has since racked up over 31,000 views and dozens of comments calling the video "priceless" and "precious."

In a statement, Southwest praised the kind deed, writing that its employees "take great pride in delivering our legendary Southwest Hospitality, so it's not surprising that one of our amazing Flight Attendants shared her Southwest Heart while helping to care for one of our youngest customers in such a sweet, fun way!"
Cape Canaveral (AFP) - SpaceX carried out its first commercial launch on Thursday with its Falcon Heavy rocket easing a Saudi telecoms satellite into orbit.

The bright white rocket rose with a roar and spewed thick gray smoke on the ground as it made its way up into clear blue skies over Cape Canaveral, Florida, trailing a long plume of orange fire.

About 34 minutes after liftoff, the shiny silver satellite was successfully deployed. Staff in the control room cheered and clapped.

Earlier, boisterous spectators chanted along with the launch announcer who counted down the final 10 seconds before liftoff.

The Falcon Heavy rocket exerts 5.1 million pounds of thrust -- that of more than a dozen jetliners, SpaceX said.

The rocket carried a Saudi Arabian satellite operated by Arabsat, a year after sending SpaceX founder Elon Musk's slick red Tesla roadster into orbit as a test.

The Falcon Heavy had been scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday but that was delayed because of strong winds in the upper atmosphere.

The job was to place the six-ton Arabsat-6A satellite into geostationary orbit about 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. It went off without a hitch.

The satellite is designed to provide television, internet, telephone, and secure communications to customers in the Middle East.

Less than 10 minutes into the flight, the rocket's three boosters detached from the Falcon Heavy on schedule.

Two of them, as planned, landed safely back on pads at Cape Canaveral, to a roar of approval from the crowd. It was quite a spectacle, with the boosters coming down gently, and vertically, fiery end first.

A third landed, also as planned, on a barge out in the Atlantic.

"Three for three boosters today," a SpaceX webcast commentator said.

SpaceX has two operational rockets: the Falcon 9, which with 21 launches in 2018 dominates the US market, and the Falcon Heavy, which as its name suggests is designed to lift much heavier payloads into more distant orbits.

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It consists of the equivalent of three Falcon 9 rockets combined, tripling its thrust.

In Falcon Heavy's first launch, in February 2018, a dummy dubbed Starman was placed behind the wheel of Musk's roadster, which is currently orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars.

Since then, the US military and private clients have signed contracts for Falcon Heavy launches, and NASA has raised the possibility it may use the rocket for its planned missions to the Moon.
President Donald Trump doesnt want to release his tax returns to Congress, but thanks to progressives, two of the biggest scandals in U.S. history and a fight between two millionaires, he doesnt have a choice.

Congress has had the power to request individuals tax returns since 1924. Now, House Democrats are using that law to request Trumps returns in order to provide oversight into the alleged audit the president said is keeping him from sharing the info  which could reveal how much he evades paying his taxes  with the public.

In a letter to Congress, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin asked for more time to fulfill the request for Trumps tax returns as he consults with the Justice Department. Democrats view this maneuver as a stalling tactic. The law is clear that the Treasury Department shall provide anyones tax returns to the House Ways & Means Committee upon request.

The power of Congress to request those returns came about through a series of legislative compromises over the publicity of tax returns and congressional oversight of the executive branch and fueled by two of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. Now, the scandal-plagued Trump administration finds itself in a fight with Congress over keeping those returns private.

(HuffPost)

Progressive Push For Publicity

For much of the early years of the United States, there was no income tax.

The government first implemented income taxes during and immediately after the Civil War. At the time, personal income tax returns were not treated as confidential documents. In fact, certain tax information was generally made available to the public by the government and printed in newspapers. After an outcry, the government banned republication of tax return information in newspapers in 1870. Then, the year after that, the income tax was abolished until 1913. But a provision making it illegal to disclose tax returns remains in place.

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In the years after the end of the income tax, the United States underwent a radical change as the Industrial Revolution rampaged through the country and corporations came to dominate American life and politics, along with their wealthy owners and financiers. The complete upending of the American world in the late 19th century created a populist and progressive backlash. Progressives supported the establishment of corporate taxes, a progressive income tax and the full publicity of individual and corporate tax returns to level the political power of the people with the dominating monopolists.

The first fight over the publicity of tax returns occurred in 1909, when President William Taft backed legislation to implement new corporate taxes and demanded they be treated as open records. After the Commissioner of Internal Revenue tried to prevent disclosure by citing a lack of funds, Congress gave him the money but added the stipulation that returns could only be made public upon order of the President. The president was given the same authority after President Woodrow Wilsons administration brought back income taxes.

After these legal changes, the executive branch found itself as the chokepoint for public disclosure of all tax returns. Congress had no legal right to the information. Efforts to mandate the executive branch hand over tax returns requested by Congress were scuttled in 1910 and 1921. But then Congress entered into investigation hysteria during the greatest corruption scandal up until that point in U.S. history.

Trading Oil Leases For Cows

Interior Secretary Albert Fall became the first cabinet official to go to jail for corruption because of the Teapot Dome scandal. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Before every political scandal carried a -gate suffix, all political corruption was compared to Teapot Dome. Like Watergate, the Teapot Dome scandal was named after a physical place. It was a U.S. Navy-owned oil field in Wyoming named after a nearby rock formation that at one point resembled a teapot.

President Warren Hardings Interior Secretary Albert Fall sold the rights to Teapot Domes oil, and other government-owned oil fields, in exchange for literal bags of money and some cows. Falls New Mexico neighbors raised their suspicions of the Interior secretarys new cows and construction on his ranch with members of Congress. That launched a first-of-its-kind investigation that rewrote the terms of congressional oversight and scandal politics in Washington.

Congressional investigators pressed President Calvin Coolidge, who had taken over after Harding died, for tax return information for Fall, the oilmen who bribed him and the companies that stood to benefit. Coolidge and his Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, one of the three wealthiest Americans, opposed public disclosure of tax returns, but they acceded to the demands of congressional investigators and handed over the returns.

The Teapot Dome scandal spurred other investigations into the executive branch, including the attorney general and Treasury Secretary Mellon. It was this latter investigation into Mellon that finally pushed Congress to give itself the right to obtain anyones tax returns.

Two Millionaires Fight About Each Others Taxes

The tax policies of Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon (left) were a major factor leading Congress to give itself the authority to review tax returns. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

The investigation into Mellon began like many important historic events do: as a petty feud between two rich people. Sen. James Couzens, a Republican from Michigan, had recently been appointed to the Senate after Truman Newberry, another extremely wealthy Republican, was kicked out for receiving illegal campaign contributions in his race against Henry Ford, the wealthiest American at the time. Couzens allied himself with the Progressive Republican bloc in the Senate and opposed Mellons plan to cut taxes for corporations and the rich.

Couzens made an unflattering revelation in stating his opposition. He disclosed that he had a personal financial stake in the policy debate: a heavy investment in tax-exempt government securities, which Mellon was seeking to discourage.

Mellon immediately seized on Couzens error. In response, he implied that Couzens was not paying taxes (Must a system of taxation which permits a man with an income of over $1,000,000 a year to pay not one cent to the support of his Government remain unaltered? Mellon said.)

Couzens took the question to be an admission that Mellon, who as Treasury secretary was in charge of the Bureau of Internal Revenue, had spied on his tax returns and demanded to see Mellons. He then called for an investigation into the Bureau and Mellons oversight of tax collection. Couzens push for an investigation may have been ignored at other times, but it came just as Congress was furious over the Teapot Dome scandal.

This spat fueled progressive calls for Congress to finally enact a provision to give itself the right to tax returns. The most progressive lawmakers called for full publicity tax returns, as had been the case during the Civil War. The administration, as represented by Mellon, opposed any provision allowing congressional access. Others were more concerned with Congress obtaining the right to get tax returns for oversight purposes. The debates over Congress getting access to tax returns centered on which committees could get them and what they could do with them.

I know the Ways and Means Committee is a great and a powerful committee, but even so the Ways and Means Committee ought not to try to hog the whole show, Rep. Lamar Jeffers, an Alabama Democrat, argued.

Congress ultimately passed a provision giving access to the tax committees and special committees. The provision also allowed the committee to submit any relevant or useful information learned from the tax returns to the full House or Senate.

Two years later, Congress amended the provision limiting the special committees that could receive tax returns to those approved by resolution to investigate returns and to require committees to sit in a closed session to receive the returns. The president could still approve the transmission of tax returns to other committees.

And that was the way the disclosure of tax returns were handled for the next fifty years.

Whats he trying to do, say that we cant play politics with IRS?

President Richard Nixon ordered his cabinet and aides to access tax returns of his political opponents. (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Then Richard Nixon became president. As the Watergate investigation revealed, Nixon used the IRS as a tool to attack his political opponents.

Nixon ordered investigations into his 1972 presidential opponent George McGovern and suggested looking into income tax returns for donors to the Democratic National Committee. The president complained about Treasury Secretary George Schultzs reluctance.

Whats he trying to do, say that we cant play politics with IRS? Nixon complained about Treasury Secretary George Schultzs reluctance. Just tell George he should do it.

After Nixon resigned, President Gerald Ford issued an executive order preventing the president from obtaining or ordering the disclosure of tax returns. And Congress decided to enshrine these restrictions into law.

In a 1976 tax reform law, Congress declared that tax returns and return information should be treated as confidential. This meant that only tax administrators and entities approved by Congress, which includes Congress, were allowed to obtain and review tax returns. The law also required presidents to inform the Joint Committee on Taxation if they sought to obtain a tax return. As for Congress ability to obtain the tax returns, the 1976 changes restricted how non-tax committees could receive tax returns, but did not change the rules for the tax committees.

In the end, Nixons abuses led to a restriction on executive branch access to tax returns, but not congressional access, which was much more limited to begin with.

Trumps Returns

Mnuchin is not yet complying with the Democrats request for Trumps tax return partially because he does not see the legitimacy of the asserted legislative purpose.

The history of the provision shows, however, that Congress enacted this measure to enable investigations into private individuals and the highest-ranking government officials to ensure that they are not getting favorable treatment or evading their taxes.

Maryanne Trump Barry, the presidents sister, resigned her seat as a federal appeals court judge on Thursday to avoid an investigation into her  and her brothers  alleged tax fraud.
By Shihar Aneez COLOMBO (Reuters) - Sri Lanka's controversial former defense secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa has launched legal proceedings to renounce his U.S. citizenship, he said on Friday, ahead of a probable candidacy in a presidential election. Gotabaya, brother of former president Mahinda Rajapaksa, oversaw the crushing of Tamil Tiger rebels a decade ago, but has faced accusations of war crimes, including extra judicial killings. Soon after his return from a trip to the U.S., Gotabaya, who has citizenship of both the United States and Sri Lanka, told reporters he had begun the process with U.S. authorities. "I went to the U.S. to initiate the legal process to renounce my U.S. citizenship. I have done it successfully," said Gotabaya, who was welcomed home by hundreds of supporters gathered at the airport. His spokesman, Milinda Rajapaksha, said Gotabaya was considering plans to run for president later this year. But a possible obstacle to his political ambitions could prove to be lawsuits filed by activists seeking compensation for his alleged role in the civil war. Gotabaya has rejected the accusations, ascribing a political motive to them. The South Africa-based International Truth and Justice Project, in partnership with U.S. law firm Hausfeld filed a civil case in California this week against Gotabaya on behalf of a Tamil torture survivor. In a separate case, Ahimsa Wickrematunga, the daughter of murdered investigative editor Lasantha Wickrematunga, filed a complaint for damages on April 4 in the same U.S. District Court in California for allegedly instigating and authorizing the extrajudicial killing of her father. "I have been in the U.S. more than ten times. But these people never asked me for compensation. So this is done ahead of the presidential poll," said Gotabaya. Gotabaya and his brother Mahinda have rejected calls for an international probe into alleged war crimes in the final phase of the 26-year war. (Reporting by Shihar Aneez; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani and Clarence Fernandez)
Craig Revel Horwood speaks out about Darcey Bussells exit from Strictly Come Dancing (Photo by Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

Craig Revel Horwood has weighed in on Dame Darcey Bussell quitting Strictly Come Dancing  and given how well known he is for delivering brutally honest and often scathing critiques, it comes as no surprise that hes telling it like it is.

The long-standing judge told The Mirror that the rumours suggesting Bussell stepped down due to receiving a smaller salary than fellow panel members Shirley Ballas and Bruno Tonioli is absolute rubbish.

Read more: Dame Darcey Bussell steps down as judge from Strictly Come Dancing

It depends what else you do for the BBC, he explained to the publication. The same was said about Len [Goodman] and Bruno earning more than Darcey and I. That was because Len did that dreadful Partners in Rhyme show. Darcey and I are absolutely fine.

Despite Bussell stating that she enjoyed every minute of her seven years on the BBC dance competition and that she was not leaving because of any upset or disagreement at all, viewers were quick to speculate otherwise.

Dame Darcey Bussell steps down as judge from Strictly Come Dancing

Fueled by insider comments, some arrived at the unfounded conclusion that she had become tired of the Bruno show and felt the dynamic between the judges changed after Craigs jibes at Shirleys cosmetic surgery.

But Revel Horwood insists that Toniolis theatricals annoy everyone, darling. Not just Darcey. Basically, its highly unlikely that that was the reason behind her walking away.

Darcey is a prima ballerina  we were really honoured to have her, he added. Thats really important, that we had someone of her calibre on the show.

Read more: Oti Mabuse is the favourite to replace Darcey Bussell on Strictly Come Dancing

Its a good thing she wants to do other things.

During the interview, Horwood noted how he had sent well wishes to best mate Bussell privately unlike everyone else who sends their condolences as though shes dead!

Shes not died, shes just left the show, he laughed. Im really going to miss her [but] shes got a life to lead  shes a Dame, she doesnt need it.




FRANKFURT (Reuters) - German car parts makers Benteler and Freudenberg Vibracoustic are joining forces in the development of parts for electric vehicles, the companies said on Thursday, amid a growing trend of companies in the sector cooperating to cope with change. The car industry is facing multi-billion euros investment crunch as manufacturers shift from developing combustion engined cars toward zero-emission electric and autonomous vehicles. Benteler will provide know-how on chassis and system integration and Vibracoustic expertise in reducing noise and vibration, the companies said. Separately, Freudenberg Chief Executive Mohsen Sohi said that the group has for now shelved plans for an initial public offering of Vibracoustic. "We still consider a stock market flotation of Vibracoustic, but not in the near future as market conditions are unfavorable. In the event of a future listing, Freudenberg will definitely remain an anchor investor of Vibracoustic," he said. (Reporting by Arno Schuetze; Editing by Edward Taylor)
By James Mackenzie

KABUL (Reuters) - Taliban fighters mounted a big attack in eastern Afghanistan on Friday heralding the start of a spring offensive despite ongoing preparations for another round of peace talks.

A Taliban statement said the objective of the Al-Fath

("Victory") offensive was "eradicating occupation, cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption, establishing an Islamic system along with defending and serving our believing fellow countrymen".

Hours after the announcement, a large number of Taliban fighters stormed the Shirzad district centre in eastern Nangarhar province, on the border with Pakistan, putting heavy pressure on government forces, local officials said.

Combat had already intensified across Afghanistan in recent weeks and hundreds of Afghan troops and civilians have been killed, making the launch of Al-Fath largely symbolic.

The Afghan government mounted its own offensive, dubbed Khalid, in March.

Friday's clashes took place days before the expected resumption of talks between U.S. peace envoy Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban officials in Doha.

Representatives from a range of Afghan groups are also expected to be present but the talks will once again exclude the Afghan government, which the Taliban dismiss as a U.S.-appointed "puppet" regime.

International travel restrictions were lifted on members of the Taliban's negotiating team, including its leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said.

However, after repeated rounds of negotiations between U.S. and Taliban representatives over recent months, the new offensive underlined how far Afghanistan remains from peace more than 17 years after U.S.-backed forces drove the Taliban from power in 2001.

"Even as large parts of our homeland have been freed from the enemy yet the foreign occupying forces continue exercising military and political influence in our Islamic country," the Taliban statement said.

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Khalilzad condemned the announcement as "reckless" and said: "The Afghan people have clearly voiced a preference for peace."

As well as assurances that civilians would be protected, the Taliban called on Afghan government soldiers and police, who have been suffering thousands of casualties a month, to abandon their posts and join the insurgency.

"We again call on troops working in enemy ranks to shun senseless hostility and futile resistance, to join the Mujahideen and gain guarantees of safeguarding life and wealth," it said.

The Taliban have made gains as moves towards a possible peace deal continued, with government forces in control of just over half the country, according to U.S. estimates.

U.S. President Donald Trump was reported last year to be planning to withdraw about half of the 14,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan, adding pressure to secure a peace agreement with the Taliban to prevent the country collapsing.

High-profile attacks in cities such as the capital, Kabul, have dropped in recent months, but heavy fighting has carried on in the provinces.

A total of 3,804 civilians were killed last year, the highest number recorded, according to United Nations figures.

Afghan security forces have suffered the brunt of losses, with more than 45,000 killed since 2014.

(Additional reporting by Abdul Qadir Sediqi and Ahmad Sultan in Jalalabad; Editing by Paul Tait and Angus MacSwan)
Kabul (AFP) - The Taliban on Friday announced their annual spring offensive, which comes as the US and Afghan politicians try to negotiate for a peace settlement with the Islamist militants.

Operation Fath -- which means "victory" in Arabic -- will be conducted across Afghanistan with the aim of "eradicating occupation" and "cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption", the Taliban said in a statement.

The annual spring offensive traditionally marks the start of the so-called fighting season, though the announcement is largely symbolic as in recent winters the Taliban have continued fighting Afghan and US forces.

"Our Jihadi obligation has not yet ended," the Taliban said.

"Even as large parts of our homeland have been freed from the enemy, yet the foreign occupying forces continue exercising military and political influence in our Islamic country."

Qais Mangal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defence, said the Taliban's spring offensive is "mere propaganda."

"The Taliban will not reach their vicious goals and their operations will be defeated like previous years," Mangal said.

After suffering horrific bloodshed in 2018, Kabul has in recent weeks enjoyed something of a lull in violence.

But on Monday three US Marines were killed in a Taliban attack at Bagram air base north of the city, and authorities in the capital are on high alert.

The administration of President Ashraf Ghani recently declared its own spring offensive, Operation Khalid, and the Taliban used that announcement as a justification for launching a new push.

It shows "the enemy still seeks to attain its malicious objectives through the use of force", the Taliban said.

The US has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in a bid to bring an end to the war against the insurgents.

Separately, Afghan politicians also have met with the Taliban in Moscow, and a fresh round of talks is expected to take place later this month between officials from the Kabul government and the Taliban in the Qatari capital Doha.

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The US still has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, nearly 18 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban.

While Western forces quickly ousted the group, the insurgents have reclaimed much of Afghanistan over the years, primarily in rural areas.

In 2018 a record 10,993 civilians were wounded or killed in Afghanistan, according to UN figures.

US President Donald Trump last year decided to slash the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, though no such drawdown has happened yet.
Kabul (AFP) - The Taliban on Friday announced a new spring offensive, alarming the US negotiator who has been sitting with the militants to seek an end to more than 17 years of war.

Operation Fath -- meaning "victory" in Arabic -- will be conducted across Afghanistan with the aim of "eradicating occupation" and "cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption", the Taliban said in a statement.

The spring offensive traditionally marks the start of the so-called fighting season, though the announcement is largely symbolic as in recent winters the Taliban have continued fighting Afghan and US forces.

"Our jihadi obligation has not yet ended," the Taliban said.

"Even as large parts of our homeland have been freed from the enemy," the Taliban said, "the foreign occupying forces continue exercising military and political influence in our Islamic country."

Zalmay Khalilzad, the US diplomat who has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in hopes of reaching a peace deal, called the once-routine annual announcement "reckless" and "irresponsible".

"If executed, it will only yield more suffering and thousands more causalities," he tweeted.

"At a time when all Afghans should come together in talks to determine a common future, a call for fighting suggests the Taliban are stuck in the ways of the past," he said.

But Khalilzad said the United States still wanted dialogue -- and gave a timeline of a peace plan by the end of 2019.

"The killing of Afghans must stop. All sides must end unnecessary violence, and instead engage in intra-Afghan dialogue which leads to negotiations on a political settlement and a roadmap to end the war this year," he said.

Khalilzad also pressed Pakistan and Qatar, two of the countries with the closest relationships with the Taliban, to join in the condemnation.

- Fears of spike in violence -

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After suffering horrific bloodshed in 2018, Kabul has in recent weeks enjoyed something of a lull in violence.

But on Monday three US Marines were killed in a Taliban blast at Bagram air base north of the city, and authorities in the capital are on high alert for new attacks.

The administration of President Ashraf Ghani recently declared its own spring offensive, Operation Khalid, and the Taliban used that announcement as a justification for launching a new push.

It shows "the enemy still seeks to attain its malicious objectives through the use of force", the Taliban said.

Qais Mangal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defence, dismissed the Taliban's spring offensive as "mere propaganda."

"The Taliban will not reach their vicious goals and their operations will be defeated like previous years," Mangal said.

A fresh round of talks is expected to take place later this month between Afghan political leaders, including some officials from the Kabul government, and the Taliban in the Qatari capital Doha.

The Taliban have long refused to speak officially with Kabul, dubbing the government a "puppet" of the West, and the militants have insisted that government officials are attending only in a "personal capacity".

- Seeking 'position of strength' -

Kabul-based military analyst Ateequllah Amarkhail said violence is likely to increase even as negotiations proceed.

The Taliban "want to enter the talks from the position of strength. Their operations are to challenge the government, and they want to have the upper hand," Amarkhail told AFP.

He predicted "intense" fighting for 2019, with the renewed bloodshed taking a toll on civilians.

In 2018, a record 10,993 civilians were wounded or killed in Afghanistan, according to UN figures, and several thousand Afghan police and soldiers are dying each year.

Fed up with the $45 billion annual price tag and what his military leaders termed a "stalemate", US President Donald Trump last year decided to slash the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

No such drawdown has happened yet and the US still has about 14,000 troops in the country, nearly 18 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban.

While Western forces quickly ousted the group in late 2001, the insurgents went on to regroup and over the years have reclaimed much of Afghanistan, primarily in rural areas.

Many Afghans are worried that in America's push for a settlement, concerns for human rights and democracy will ultimately be cast aside and the Taliban will return to power and reimpose their extreme version of Sharia law.
This is the moment a car was sent flying at 100pmh during a road rage incident on the M4.

Two motorists, one in a blue mini and the other in a Ford Mondeo, are shown to be repeatedly undertaking and tailgating each on the eastbound carriageway of the M4, near Port Talbot, in June 2018.

The drivers are seemingly going head to head in footage shot on a Police dashcam.

But the mini dramatically speeds of to the left bank of the motorway, before hitting a barrier and flipping on its front end.

The car crashes on the motorway after it spins out of control and is sent flying through the air (South Wales Police)

The car overturns and spins across the busy motorway before splintering into pieces.

Police say it was sheer luck that neither driver was seriously injured in the crash.

Read more on Yahoo News UK

CCTV shows moment ATM is ripped from a wall

Drink-driver who drove wrong way down M4 escapes prison sentence

Man reports drink driver following crash but 'forgets' he was drunk too

The drivers involved were convicted of dangerous driving on Friday at Cardiff Crown Court.

Evidence provided to the court proved how Wayne Sebury and Paul Carpenter were driving at speeds of up to 110mph before the crash took place.

The car skids across the floor after the 100mph crash (South Wales Police)

Carpenter, 44, from Boxhill in Surrey, and Wayne Sebury, 59, from Pontypridd, denied any wrongdoing but later pleaded guilty to dangerous driving.

Carpenter was sentenced to six months in prison and disqualified from driving for 18 months at Cardiff Crown Court.

Meanwhile, Sebury was handed an 18 month community order and disqualified from driving for 12 months, as well as being ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid community work.

Officers said it was 'sheer luck' the driver was not killed or seriously injured (South Wales Police)

PC Kathryn Matthews of the South Wales Police Roads Policing Unit said: 'This incident was a classic case of road rage where two motorists have driven dangerously, at high speeds, undertaking, tailgating and flashing their lights.

'It is sheer luck that nobody was killed or seriously injured and the dash cam footage of the incident sends out a clear message about the consequences of driving in such an irresponsible manner.'
White House officials have tried to pressure US immigration authorities to release migrants detained at the border onto the streets of asanctuary citiesa to retaliate against Donald Trump's political adversaries.

The Washington Post which reviewed emails on the issue and spoke to unnamed officials at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months.

According to the emails, the measure was first suggested in November, as a migrant caravan approached the US southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Mr Trump's border wall.

Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.



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White House officials first broached the plan in an email on 16 November, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused ato small- and mid-sized sanctuary citiesa.

The White House told US Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of jail space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within the US Customs and Enforcement (ICE), with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that athere are PR risks as well.a

After the White House pressed again in February, ICE's legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

A White House official and a spokesman for the DHS sent nearly identical statements to them on Thursday, indicating that the proposal is no longer under consideration.

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aThis was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion,a the White House statement said.

Ms Pelosi's office criticised the plan.

aThe extent of this administration's cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated,a said Ms Pelosi's spokesperson Ashley Etienne. aUsing human beings a including little children a as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonise immigrants is despicable.a

Mr Trump has made immigration a central aspect of his administration, and he has grown increasingly frustrated at the influx of migrants from Central America.

He often casts them as killers and criminals who threaten US security, pointing to cases in which immigrants have killed US citizens a including a notable case on a San Francisco pier in 2015. And he has railed against liberal sanctuary city policies, saying they endanger Americans.

aThese outrageous sanctuary cities are grave threats to public safety and national security,a Mr Trump said on 7 December in a speech to the Safe Neighbourhoods Conference in Kansas City, Missouri. The speech came less than a month after the White House asked ICE about moving detainees to such cities.

aEach year, sanctuary cities release thousands of known criminal aliens from their custody and right back into the community," Mr Trump said. "So they put them in, and they have them, and they let them go, and it drives you people a little bit crazy, doesn't it, huh?a



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The White House believed it could punish Democrats a including Ms Pelosi a by busing ICE detainees into their districts before their release, according to two DHS whistleblowers who independently reported the busing plan to Congress.

One of the whistleblowers spoke with The Post, and several DHS officials confirmed the accounts. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller discussed the proposal with ICE, according to two DHS officials. Matthew Albence, who is ICE's acting deputy director, immediately questioned the proposal in November and later circulated the idea within his agency when it resurfaced in February, seeking the legal review that ultimately doomed the proposal.

Mr Miller and Mr Albence declined to comment.

Mr Miller's name did not appear on any of the documents reviewed by The Post. But as White House senior adviser on immigration policy, officials at ICE understood that he was pressing the plan.

Mr Trump has been demanding aggressive action to deal with the surge of migrants, and many of his administration's proposals have been blocked in federal court or, like the family separation policy last year, backfired as public relations disasters.

Homeland Security officials said the sanctuary city request was unnerving, and it underscores the political pressure Mr Trump and Mr Miller have put on ICE and other DHS agencies at a time when the president is furious about the biggest border surge in more than a decade.

aIt was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out,a said one congressional investigator who has spoken to one of the whistleblowers. aWhat happened here is that Stephen Miller called people at ICE, said if they're going to cut funding you've got to make sure you're releasing people in Pelosi's district and other congressional districts.a

The idea of releasing immigrants into sanctuary cities was not presented to Ronald Vitiello, the agency's acting director, according to one DHS official familiar with the plan.

Last week the White House rescinded Mr Vitiello's nomination to lead ICE, giving no explanation, and Mr Vitiello submitted his resignation on Wednesday, ending his 30-year-career.

Mr Trump told reporters the following day he wanted to put someone atoughera at ICE.

DHS officials said they do not know whether ICE's refusal to adopt the White House's plan contributed to Mr Vitiello's removal. His departure puts Mr Albence in charge of the agency as of Friday.

The White House proposal reached ICE first in November as a highly publicised migrant caravan was approaching the US. May Davis, deputy assistant to the president and deputy White House policy coordinator, wrote to officials with US Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the Department of Homeland Security with the subject line: aSanctuary City Proposal.a

aThe idea has been raised by 1-2 principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bussed to small and mid-sized sanctuary cities,a Ms Davis wrote, seeking responses to its operational and legal viability. aThere is NOT a White House decision on this.a

Mr Albence replied that such a plan awould create an unnecessary operational burdena on an already strained organisation and raised concerns about its appropriateness, writing: aNot sure how paying to transport aliens to another location to release them a when they can released on the spot a is a justified expenditure. Not to mention the liability should there be an accident along the way.a

The White House pushed the issue a second time in the midst of the budget standoff in mid-February, according to DHS officials, and on the heels of a bitterly partisan 35-day government shutdown over Trump's border wall plan. The White House discussed the immigrant release idea as a way to punish Democrats standing in the way of funding additional detention beds.

ICE detainees with violent criminal records are not typically released on bond or other aalternatives to detentiona while they await a hearing with an immigration judge, but there have been instances of such detainees being released.

The White House urged ICE to channel releases to sanctuary districts, regardless of whether immigrants had any ties to those places.

aIt was retaliation, to show them, 'Your lack of cooperation has impacts,' a said one of the DHS officials, summarising the rationale. aI think they thought it would put pressure on those communities to understand, I guess, a different perspective on why you need more immigration money for detention beds.a

Senior officials at ICE did not take the proposal seriously at first, but as the White House exerted pressure, ICE's legal advisers were asked to weigh in, DHS officials said.

A formal legal review was never completed, according to two DHS officials familiar with the events, and senior ICE attorneys told Mr Albence and others that the plan was inappropriate and lacked a legal basis.

aIf we would have done that, we would have had to expend transportation resources, and make a decision that we're going to use buses, planes, etc. to send these aliens to a place for whatever reason,a a senior DHS official said. aWe had to come up with a reason, and we did not have one.a

The proposal faded when House Democrats ultimately relented on their demand for a decrease in the number of detention beds, a final sticking point in budget talks between the White House and House Democrats.

The number of immigrant detainees in ICE custody has approached 50,000 in recent months, an all-time high that has further strained the agency's budget. Those include immigrants arrested in the US interior, as well as recent border-crossers transferred from Border Patrol.

With unauthorised migration at a 12-year-high, the vast majority of recent migrants a and especially those with children a are quickly processed and released with a notice to appear in court, a system that Mr Trump has derided as acatch and release.a

The process has left Mr Trump seething, convinced that immigration officials and the DHS more broadly should adopt a harsher approach.

Mr Vitiello's removal from ICE last week was followed Sunday by the ouster of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who lost favour with Mr Trump and Mr Miller by repeatedly warning the White House that the administration's policy ideas were unworkable and likely to be blocked by federal courts.

The sanctuary city proposal ran contrary to ICE policy guidelines, as well as legal counsel. ICE officials balked at the notion of moving migrants to detention facilities in different areas, insisting that Congress only authorises the agency to deport immigrants, not relocate them internally, according to DHS officials.

The plan to retaliate against sanctuary cities came just after Mr Trump agreed to reopen the government in late January, following a five-week shutdown over wall funding. The president gave lawmakers three weeks to come up with a plan to secure the border before a second fiscal deadline in mid-February.

During the talks, Republicans and Democrats sparred over the number of detention beds, with House Democrats pressing for a lower number amid pressure from their left flank.

It was during that mid-February standoff that one whistleblower came to Congress alleging that the White House was considering a plan to punish Democrats if they did not relent on ICE funding for beds. A second official independently came forward after that.

According to both, there were at least two versions of the plan being considered. One was to move migrants who were already in ICE detention to the districts of Democratic opponents. The second option was to bus migrants apprehended at the border to sanctuary cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

The Washington Post
By Ron Bousso and Rami Ayyub MAALE ADUMIM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's record fifth term is likely to be dominated by corruption allegations, scrutiny of his election promises and the unveiling of U.S. President Donald Trump's long-awaited Middle East plan. In the closing days of a campaign that had been driven more by personalities than policy, Netanyahu, 69, seized international attention by promising to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. "Who says that we won't do it? We are on the way and we are discussing it," Netanyahu told Israel's Channel 12 News on April 7 when he was asked why he had not extended Israeli sovereignty to large West Bank settlements. Some political analysts saw the right-wing leader's pledge as a calculated bid before Tuesday's election to siphon votes from far-right rivals who have long advocated annexation of the West Bank, where more than 400,000 Israeli settlers now live, among 2.9 million Palestinians. Settlements, which Israel's B'Tselem rights group says cover about 10 percent of the West Bank, are one of the most heated issues in efforts to restart peace talks, frozen since 2014. The Palestinians and many countries consider the settlements illegal under the Geneva conventions that bar settling on land captured in war. Israel disputes this, citing security needs and biblical, historical and political connections to the land. Netanyahus words drew immediate condemnation from Palestinians, and created an expectation among some settlers, at least, that he would deliver if re-elected. "May the dream of annexation come true," said Itzik Gideon, a 65-year-old resident of the settlement of Maale Adumim near Jerusalem. "I think we will get more building permits here in Maale Adumim, it will do us much good." Others expressed concern that without annexation, their settlements could be evacuated, as a previous Israeli government did with its settlements in Gaza in 2005, a move that Netanyahu opposed. "My friends have been driven out from their house, so I hope it's not going to happen again. Not to me, not to anyone in the settlements," said Sipir Cohen, 25, a kindergarten teacher from Shilo settlement. After Netanyahu's re-election, Palestinians voiced fears that the Israeli leader would now feel emboldened. "Regrettably, Israelis overwhelmingly voted for candidates that are unequivocally committed to entrenching the status quo of oppression, occupation, annexation and dispossession in Palestine," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Executive Committee. "Israelis chose to entrench and expand apartheid." Hazen Taha, a Palestinian security guard in the West Bank city of Ramallah, said: "The current American administration will give Israel the freedom to do whatever it likes." TRUMP PLAN Whatever Netanyahu's intentions, the annexation promise is likely to go on the backburner at least until Trump releases his administration's long-awaited Mideast plan. "There is certainly no point in making any unilateral step before we hear what the American president's plan is," Tzachi Hanegbi, a government minister and senior Likud legislator, told Israel Radio on Thursday. The U.S. proposal, which is shrouded in secrecy, is being spearheaded by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and is expected to be released only after Netanyahu forms a new governing coalition. Trump has given Netanyahu several political boosts over the past year and a half, including his decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital and to move the U.S. Embassy to the city. However, U.S. officials say the plan will demand compromises from both sides, despite scepticism from Palestinians who have refused to deal with a White House that they regard as too biased towards Israel. If it does require Israeli territorial concessions, it is certain to infuriate Netanyahu's right-wing allies and rivals. Some of those conservatives reacted with fury in February to reports that the Trump plan might address long-standing  and politically incendiary - issues such as borders between Israel and the Palestinians. They feared this would be a harbinger to a Palestinian state, which they oppose. "In the next few months the focus will be the U.S. peace plan, and Netanyahu's re-election fits with American desire to go ahead with it," said Ofer Zalzberg, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. "Netanyahu will then have to deal with differences within his coalition," he added. Netanyahu opposed the Oslo interim peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s. In 2009 he conditionally accepted the creation of a Palestinian state but in 2015 he vowed that no state would be created under his watch. INDICTMENT DEADLOCK Aside from policy concerns, Netanyahu's political future may also depend on the outcome of three corruption cases that Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit plans to indict him on. Netanyahu faces allegations of wrongfully accepting $264,000-worth of gifts from business leaders and dispensing favors to try to secure positive coverage in a newspaper and on a website. He denies any wrongdoing, but could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of bribery. If charged - Netanyahu will be able to plead his case to Mandelblit in a pre-trial hearing - he will not be required by law to step down. His position could be secured if parliament legislated against indicting a sitting prime minister. Several of Netanyahu's right-wing allies have said they would support such a law, although many have rejected applying it retroactively. Netanyahu gave a cryptic reply when he was asked about the idea in an interview with Israel Radio last week. "I'm not dealing with it, and that's the truth, just like I haven't dealt with other things," he said. Still, coalition partners could try to wriggle concessions from Netanyahu, such as expanding settlements or allocating funds, in exchange for their support of immunity legislation or a promise to remain in a government led by a prime minister dividing his time between governing and court. "If the indictment against Netanyahu is confirmed there is likely to be significant policy deadlock," said Jack Kennedy, a senior analyst at data compiler IHS Markit. "Netanyahu would likely be under far greater obligation to secure the support of the smaller members of his coalition." Hanegbi, the Likud cabinet minister, said he was unaware "as things stand now, of any initiative in the coalition" regarding an immunity law. "For now, we know that (Netanyahu) believes in his innocence and will go to the (attorney general's) hearing with the entire defense team," Hanegbi said. No date has been set the procedure. (Editing by Stephen Farrell and Timothy Heritage)
Donald Trump will have to release five years of tax returns if he wants appear on the Illinois 2020 presidential ballot, the state's senate has ruled.

The bill, which still requires approval by the Prairie State's House of Representatives, comes amid a growing row in Washington over Mr Trumps unprecedented refusal to make publicly available his income tax returns.

The US Treasury ignored a congressional deadline to release the documents earlier this week. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin claimed the request by the House ways and means committee was politically motivated.

Mr Trump himself has claimed that he cannot release his tax returns because they are under audit, although technically there is nothing preventing him from doing so.

In Illinois, the bill would need to be signed into law by Democratic governor Jay Robert Pritzjer, if it passes through the House which is also controlled by Mr Trump's political rivals. Mr Pritzjer is yet to take a public stance on the issue.

Tony Munoz, the state senator who sponsored the bill said: If you want to run for vice president or president of the United States, hey, whats wrong with providing your tax returns for the past five years?

The veteran Democrat added: If youve got nothing to hide, you shouldnt worry about anything. Thats how I see it.

But the move drew complaints from Republicans in the senate.

This is, quite frankly, with all due respect to the sponsor, an embarrassing waste of the senates time, said Dale Righter. This is being pushed by a far-leftist organisation from the city of Chicago that wants to be able to get up and chirp about the president of the United States."

Ilinois is not the only state where legislation to codify standard practices surrounding tax disclosures for presidential candidates is being advanced.

The Washington state senate last month approved legislation that would legally require all presidential candidates to release the last five years of their personal tax returns in order to have their names featured on both primary and general voting ballots.

New Jersey has also advanced a similar bill to the states general assembly that would force candidates to disclose their recent tax returns.
By Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday he was considering sending illegal immigrants in the country to so-called sanctuary cities, prompting U.S. mayors to accept such an offer as the battle over border security raged.

Frustrated by rising numbers of undocumented immigrants arriving at the southern border and a failure to get Congress to fully fund a U.S.-Mexico border wall, Trump taunted Democrats by dangling the possibility of an influx of illegal immigrants into their communities.

"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump wrote on Twitter.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney responded in a statement: "While the Trump administration's proposal shows their disdain to basic human dignity, the City (Philadelphia) would be prepared to welcome these immigrants just as we have embraced our immigrant communities for decades."

In February, a federal appeals court said the Trump administration could not terminate federal grants to Philadelphia for its refusal to cooperate with immigration agents seeking to deport immigrants.

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement "We would welcome these migrants with open arms, just as we welcomed Syrian refugees, just as we welcomed Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria and just as we welcome Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide in Myanmar."

Sanctuary cities are local jurisdictions that generally give undocumented immigrants safe harbor by refusing to use their resources to help enforce federal immigration laws that could lead to deportations.

Those localities argue that it is not their responsibility to get involved in federal enforcement and that doing so could hinder policing efforts within communities.

The Washington Post first reported on Thursday that the White House has been considering a plan for transporting immigrants in detention and releasing them into sanctuary cities that are Democratic strongholds.

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The newspaper reported there was resistance from some high-level Department of Homeland Security officials concerned about several aspects of such a plan, including the potential costs.

Nevertheless, Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday, said of sanctuary cities, "We can give them an unlimited supply" of immigrants.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said these would be "illegal aliens that are already set for release," which likely would include families with children.

House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hometown of San Francisco is another sanctuary city.

In remarks to reporters on Friday, Pelosi, a Democrat, said she was not aware of the newspaper report. But she added, "it's just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face, as a country, as a people, to address who we are, a nation of immigrants."

Pelosi was in Leesburg, Virginia, where House Democrats were wrapping up a three-day retreat.

One immigration expert, who asked not to be identified, noted that undocumented immigrants in federal custody could be at one of several stages of the adjudication process and that Trump likely has the power to have them sent to different jurisdictions from where they are being held.

But the source added, "This is a stunt. It doesn't enhance the efficiency of the process."

Trump's challenge to Democrats came one day after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican like Trump, told reporters that he wanted to launch bipartisan negotiations to seek solutions to the nation's immigration woes.

In March alone, 103,492 undocumented immigrants have been taken into custody along the southern border or turned away. Many of them are from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and are seeking asylum in the United States away from high levels of violent crime and illegal drugs at home.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham and Richard Cowan in Washington and Susan Cornwell in Leesburg, Virginia; editing by Richard Chang and James Dalgleish)
By Roberta Rampton and Soyoung Kim

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but said in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that Washington would leave sanctions in place on Pyongyang.

Trump and Moon, in the Oval Office, discussed the possibility of Moon having an inter-Korean summit with Kim soon as a way to boost dialogue between the United States and North Korea on denuclearization.

North Korea, which has suspended nuclear tests and missile launches, has been pressing for sanctions relief but has not taken meaningful steps towards dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore last June, building good will but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

"It could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step. It's not a fast process. I've never said it would be. It's step by step," Trump said.

Asked by reporters whether he was prepared to ease some sanctions on North Korea, Trump said he and Moon were discussing "certain humanitarian things" and the possibility of South Korea helping the North with food. He did not rule out participating in a three-way summit with both Kim and Moon.

Of sanctions, he said, "We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that at this time."

Moon said he does not view the summit that collapsed in Hanoi as a failure, but part of a longer "process." He said he agreed with Trump on the "ultimate goal" of total denuclearization by North Korea.

"The important task that we face right now is to maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook regarding the third U.S.-North Korea summit to the international community, that this will be held in the near future," Moon said.

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In a statement following the meeting, the White House said Trump reiterated to Moon that he has a good relationship with Kim and "noted the door remains open to dialogue."

PUSH FOR ANOTHER SUMMIT

A South Korean statement issued after the meeting, which included a working lunch, said Moon told Trump he will push to hold another summit soon with Kim.

"The two presidents agreed that the top-down approach will continue to be indispensable in the peace process on the Korean peninsula. In this regard, President Trump stressed that the door was always open for dialogue with Chairman Kim," the statement said.

A South Korean official said nothing has been decided about the timing and location of a next inter-Korean summit.

Moon told Trump he will contact the North in earnest to talk about holding an inter-Korean summit soon, the official said. Trump asked Moon to brief him as early as possible on North Korea's latest thinking.

Ahead of his trip, aides to Moon stressed the need to revive U.S.-North Korea talks. Moon has put his political reputation on the line in encouraging the negotiations.

He has stressed the need to offer North Korea concessions, but Washington appears to have hardened its position against a phased approach sought by Pyongyang in which gradual steps would be rewarded with relief from punishing sanctions.

Trump said he was open to a step-by-step approach but would need to see details.

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen. Things could happen. You could work out, step by step, pieces. But at this moment, we're talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," he said.

On Thursday, North Korean state media said Kim had told a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Wednesday that he would push forward with efforts to make the economy more self sufficient "so as to deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring (North Korea) to its knees."

Last month, a senior North Korean official warned that Kim might rethink a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests in place since 2017 unless Washington makes concessions such as easing sanctions.

On Wednesday, North Korea's state media said Kim had chaired a politburo meeting on Tuesday to discuss ways to make progress under the "prevailing tense situation."

Kim and Moon met three times last year and Kim promised to visit South Korea in return for the South Korean leader's visit to Pyongyang in September. Analysts said a fourth Kim-Moon meeting could encourage another meeting between Kim and Trump.

Moon's top nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon said on Friday that sanctions were necessary to deter North Korea from "making bad decisions" but could not solve all unresolved problems.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Joyce Lee, Josh Smith, and Hyonhee Shin in Seoul; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Neil Fullick, James Dalgleish, David Gregorio and Sandra Maler)
President Trump and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai at an event about United States 5G deployment on April 12. (Photo: Carlos Barria/Reuters)

WASHINGTON  Amid ongoing trade talks with Beijing, President Trump heralded the success of the American private sector for building 5G while warning of foreign competition, but in a marked departure for his administration made no specific mention of China.

Surrounded by workers in hardhats and men and women in cowboy hats who Trump identified as farmers, the president said, We cannot allow any other country to outcompete the United States in this powerful industry of the future. However, in contrast to the Trump administrations worldwide tour warning allies about the security dangers of implementing foreign technology in the development of 5G  the networks that will operate with lightning-speed connections  Trump did not specifically bring up China or its top telecom companies, Huawei and ZTE.

The decision to omit mention of China lines up with an apparent switch in strategy that senior administration officials have pursued in recent weeks, advocating a country and company agnostic policy when it comes to 5G security. Amid a cooling trade war and an international community that remains undecided on how to deal with Huawei, which provides inexpensive and high-quality technology to rural and developing regions, the administration has hesitated in outright banning the Chinese technology by executive order.

President Trump also dismissed a former potential strategy, developed by a former National Security Council senior official, Rob Spalding, to get the government more involved in securing 5G throughout development. While Trump said the new networks have to be guarded from the enemy, an opponent that went unnamed, he also indicated speed as a top priority for rolling out 5G.

We had another alternative of doing it ... leading through the government, he said. We dont want to do that, because it wont be nearly as good, nearly as fast.

Spalding, a retired Air Force brigadier general, repeated a frustration he has had about 5G for a long time to Yahoo News  that the telecom industry has so far succeeded in controlling the narrative.

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Thats why Randall Stephenson went to see him, wrote Spalding in an email to Yahoo News, referring to a briefing the AT&T CEO gave the president on progress in the race to 5G earlier in the week, according to Politico. Im sure of it.

The government isnt completely staying out of 5G, however. Trump gave Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai the floor on Friday afternoon to talk about how the FCC would be auctioning off broadband spectrum to companies for their 5G networks, as well as a program to help rural communities get access to the necessary technology for advancing network connectivity.

These are part of the FCCs 5G Fast Plan, said Pai.

_____

Read more from Yahoo News:
Ankara (AFP) - Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu clashed on Friday with a French lawmaker over the commemoration of the "Armenian genocide" in a heated exchange that prompted the French delegation to walk out.

Turkey and Armenia are at odds over how to describe treatment of Armenians during the Ottoman era in WWI, with Turkey denying massacres and forced deportations amounted to a genocide.

French President Emmanuel Macron in February announced France would hold a national day on April 24 to commemorate the "Armenian genocide", drawing criticism from Ankara.

During a meeting of the NATO parliamentary assembly in Antalya in southern Turkey on Friday, Turkish parliament chief Mustafa Sentop lashed out at France's decree to establish the commemorative day, accusing Paris of "manipulating history."

He also referenced massacres committed in Algeria when it was still a French colony and in Rwanda whose government accuses Paris of being complicit in the 1994 slaughter there.

Attending the meeting, French lawmaker Sonia Krimi, from Macron's LREM party, criticised Turkish comments saying she was shocked. But that provoked a sharp response from Cavusoglu.

"In terms of genocide and history, France is the last country to be giving lectures to Turkey, and we have not forgotten what happened in Rwanda and Algeria," the minister said.

"You can keep trying to look down on us, but we will keep putting you in your place."

Krimi and the French delegation left the room in protest over Cavusoglu's remarks.

"When the arrogant @MevlutCavusolgu gives you lessons on arrogance and politeness, arrogantly and without any respect," she wrote on Twitter referring to the incident.

Turkey's presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin hit back posting on Twitter a story from state news agency Anadolu about "dark stains in French history."

"Neither their colonial past nor their self-centred present guarantees their moral superiority," he wrote.

Armenians commemorate the massacres on April 24 -- the day in 1915 when thousands of Armenian intellectuals suspected of harbouring nationalist sentiment and being hostile to Ottoman rule were rounded up.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Shutting down a Kentucky coal-fired power plant is the right decision, the new head of the Tennessee Valley Authority said Friday. President Donald Trump and the U.S. Senate majority leader who hails from Kentucky had previously criticized the move.

Jeff Lyash took over as president and CEO of the nation's largest public utility on Monday. In an interview with The Associated Press, Lyash said the Paradise Fossil Plant is at the end of its life and no longer cost effective to operate.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had joined Trump in the plea to keep Paradise up and running, but TVA's board still voted days later in February to retire the remaining coal-fired unit there by December 2020. The board also voted to close the Bull Run Fossil Plant near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, by December 2023.

"These coal plants were 'the' technology when they were built," Lyash said Friday. But he added that technology has changed along with customer demands.

"And that's what leads to decisions like retirements on Paradise and Bull Run. For me it has little to do with a 'war on coal' or anything else. It has to do with deciding what's best for the Tennessee Valley," he said.

And as for Trump, Lyash said with a laugh, "One of my objectives is to never be on either end, good or bad, of a presidential tweet."

Lyash did not signal any big changes for the utility with the change in leadership. Outgoing CEO Bill Johnson is taking over at San Francisco-based PG&E later this month.

Asked about groundwater pollution from TVA's coal ash dumps, Lyash said monitoring wells have shown the pollution is "fairly contained around the ash sites."

At the shuttered Allen coal plant in Memphis, high levels of arsenic and other toxins were found in monitoring wells in 2017, spurring fears that an aquifer that supplies Memphis' drinking water could become tainted.

Testing has since deemed the public water supply unaffected, but a report last spring by the utility showed a connection between the shallow aquifer where toxins were found and the deeper Memphis Sand Aquifer that provides the city's drinking water.

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Lyash said the utility is going through the permitting process in order to move the ash offsite to a "lined, permitted facility."

As for ash dumps at other facilities, Lyash said, "TVA is going to do the right thing." He didn't elaborate other than to say the utility will work with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation to determine the right course of action.

TVA provides power to more than 10 million people in parts of seven Southern states.
Nairobi (AFP) - Suspected Somali Al-Shabaab jihadis kidnapped two Cuban doctors in northeastern Kenya on Friday and killed their police escort officer, officials said.

The operation happened as the two doctors -- a general practitioner and a surgeon -- were on the way to work in the town of Mandera, close to the border with Somalia.

"Today at around 9:00 am, suspected Al-Shabaab militants abducted the two Cuban doctors stationed at the Mandera County Referral Hospital," the county's governor, Ali Roba said in a statement.

Kenyan police spokesman Charles Owino said the assailants used two Toyota Probox cars to block the vehicle that the doctors were travelling in.

One of the two police officers escorting them "was shot by the attackers and died on the spot. The attackers succeeded to abduct the two doctors and crossed the border with them," said Owino.

The driver of the doctors' vehicle was arrested "and is currently being interrogated," he said.

"Our security officers are pursuing the attackers."

A senior police officer, who asked not to be named, told AFP: "From the modus operandi and the fact that they went towards the Somalia border, we have reasons to believe that the kidnappers are Al-Shabaab."

The two doctors, whose names have not been released, are part of a group of about 100 Cubans who came to Kenya last year to help boost health services.

Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants have been waging an insurgency against Somalia's foreign-backed government for over a decade.

Last November, an armed gang seized Silvia Romano, 23, an Italian charity worker, in the southeastern town of Chakama. Her whereabouts are unknown.

Police at the time warned against any speculation that the Shabaab may have been involved in her abduction.

The Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, have been fighting since 2007 to topple Somalia's fragile government, which is supported by a 20,000-strong African Union force, Amisom.

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The Shabaab fled fixed positions they once held in Mogadishu in 2011, and have since lost many of their strongholds.

But they retain control of large rural swathes of the country, and continue to wage a guerrilla war against the authorities, striking at the heart of Somalia's government.

The group has carried out a number of attacks in Kenya in reprisal for the country's participation in Amisom.

Kidnappings in Kenya are relatively rare but can have a devastating impact on tourism, a major income-earner.
Reuters / Henry Nicholls

LONDONThe U.S. has charged Julian Assange with illegally helping Chelsea Manning crack a computer password to steal classified documents, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Assange was dramatically dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London by British police early Thursday, where cops arrested him on one relatively minor charge of skipping bail in 2012 over rape charges in Sweden, and then later arrested him for a second time on an extradition warrant on behalf of U.S. authorities. Assange was found guilty of the bail charge.

The Justice Department revealed that Assange the arrest was over a federal charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and relates to the Wikileaks founder's alleged role in what it calls one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.

The indictment alleges that in March 2010, Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Manning has been in jail since March 3, when a federal judge found her in contempt for refusing to testify in front of the Alexandria, Virginia, grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. The grand jury has been probing the secret-spilling website since 2010 it started publishing hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables Manning leaked to Assange.

The Justice Department alleges that Assange helped Manning try to access computers under a username that didn't belong to her. The statement goes on to say that, once Manning gained access to the system, Assange repeatedly encouraged her to share more and more information.

During an exchange, Manning told Assange that after this upload, thats all I really have got left, the Justice Department claimed. To which Assange replied, curious eyes never run dry in my experience.

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Any extradition may take some time. The British government released its own statement on Assange earlier in the day in which it made clear anyone who's being extradited will be given the opportunity to appeal to the government, then to the country's High Court.

It also said that British judges have the power to decide whether or not extradition would breach an individuals human rights, or whether their health makes it unjust or oppressive to extradite them.

Assange arrived at a court in London Thursday afternoon, three hours after he was hauled out of the place he called home for nearly seven years. He was found guilty on the relatively minor bail chargefor which he could serve twelve months in prisonand was told he would face a hearing on the extradition warrant in just four weeks.

Read more at The Daily Beast.
By Timothy Gardner and Valerie Volcovici (Reuters) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will unveil a proposal to speed state-level permitting decisions for energy infrastructure projects soon, the agencys chief told Reuters on Thursday, blasting states that have blocked coal terminals and gas pipelines on environmental grounds. President Donald Trump is seeking to boost domestic fossil fuels production over the objections of Democrats and environmentalists concerned about pollution and climate change. On Wednesday he issued a pair of executive orders targeting the power of states to delay energy projects. "We started working on it in advance, so we hope to have something out soon," EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview. He was unable to provide a precise timeline. Based on Trumps orders, Wheeler's EPA has been tasked with clarifying a section of the U.S. Clean Water Act that has allowed states like New York and Washington to delay projects in recent years. New York has used the section to delay pipelines that would bring natural gas to New England, for example, and Washington state has stopped coal export terminals that would open the Asian market for struggling coal companies in Wyoming and other landlocked western states. "They are trying to make international environmental policy," Wheeler said of Washington state, whose governor, Democrat Jay Inslee, is running for president on a climate change-focused platform. "Theyre trying to dictate to the world how much coal is used." Wheeler said New York, which amid strong public pressure denied a clean water act permit for construction of a natural gas pipeline to New England, is forcing that region "to use Russian-produced natural gas." "We are importing Russian natural gas which is not produced in an environmentally conscious manner. If the states that are blocking the pipelines were truly concerned about the environment, they would look to where the natural gas would be coming from... I think its very short-sighted," he said. Wheeler said the EPA would not prevent a state from vetoing a project, but would clarify the parameters they should be able to consider, and the length of time they have to do so. He also said that California is playing politics in its fight with the EPA to preserve its more stringent vehicle emission standards as the national standard. CLIMATE: NOT A PRIORITY Wheeler said he believes climate change is a problem, but that it had been overblown by former President Barack Obama's administration - at the expense of other bigger issues like water quality. "Yes, climate is an issue and we are working to address it, but I think water is a bigger issue," he said. Wheeler dismissed the findings of a report released earlier this week by EPA scientists in the journal Nature Climate Change that detailed the scale and urgency of climate change. He said while he encouraged EPA scientists to carry out and publish research, he stressed the recent paper "did not reflect EPA policy." Environmental groups say the EPA's replacement of an Obama-era rule limiting carbon emissions from power plants would likely lead to increased emissions by allowing older, more polluting coal plants to operate longer. Asked whether the replacement - the Affordable Clean Energy rule, which gives states responsibility for regulating emissions - is stringent enough, Wheeler said it adheres to the parameters of federal law. "I think what is effective regulation is one that follows the law and one that will be held up in court," he said. Several Democrats challenging Trump in the 2020 election have made climate change a top-tier issue, embracing aggressive policy platforms like the Green New Deal calling for an end of fossil fuels use. Asked whether he was concerned that the EPA may be out of synch with polls showing an overwhelming number of young people believe climate change should be a priority issue, Wheeler was dismissive. "I do fear that because so many people only talked about climate change. Youre right, there could very well be a new generation coming up saying thats the only environmental issue - and it's not," he said. (Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler)
By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday the agency would revise its proposed freeze of vehicle fuel economy standards before unveiling its final regulation in the coming months. In August, the EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed freezing requirements for new cars and trucks at 2020 levels through 2026 but EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in an interview at the agency's headquarters "our final regulation is not going to be the same as our proposal." "We've taken constructive comments, criticisms, concerns from a whole host of different interest groups," Wheeler said. "I hope our final regulation is something that everybody can get behind and support." Two U.S. officials briefed on the matter said they expected the EPA to wind up requiring a small increase in the yearly fuel efficiency gains, likely around mid-June, but said the precise figure had not been finalized. It is also not clear what flexibilities will remain in the final rule. Obama-era rules adopted in 2012 called for a fleetwide fuel efficiency average of 46.7 miles per gallon by 2026, with average annual increases of nearly 5 percent, compared with 37 mpg by 2026 under the Trump administrations preferred option. The administration's proposed changes would also strip California of the ability to impose its own state emissions standards or require a rising number of electric vehicles. The proposed fuel efficiency freeze would hike U.S. oil consumption by about 500,000 barrels per day by the 2030s, according to administration officials. Wheeler denied the rules were written at the behest of oil industry lobbyists. "This has nothing to do with the oil industry. We're not doing this for the oil industry. I'm not doing this for the oil industry," Wheeler said. The Trump administration said in August that the freeze would save automakers more than $300 billion in regulatory costs and reduce the projected cost of a new vehicle by $1,850. It also said the measure would save lives because Americans would more quickly buy newer safer vehicles, a claim disputed by California and environmental groups. Automakers like General Motors Co, Ford Motor Co and Toyota Motor Corp oppose a freeze but want requirements reduced to account for changes in oil prices and consumer demand. All have pushed for a compromise deal to head off years of legal uncertainty. The White House in February ended talks with California to try to reach a deal. Reuters reported in March the White House had held meetings with automakers to push them to back it in its fight with California. California last week sued the EPA over its failure to provide data used to justify easing vehicle efficiency standards.. California and 16 other states had previously vowed to challenge any emissions rollback. Wheeler heaped scorn on California. "This is so much more about politics for the state of California than it is protecting the environment," Wheeler said. California's top air regulator Mary Nichols said in February the proposal flies "in the face of science, logic and any effort to protect public health." (Reporting by David Shepardson, Tim Gardner, mValerie olcovici and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Tom Brown)
By Mark Hosenball and Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of Russian interference in U.S. politics is over, but prosecutors are investigating two prominent Washington lobbyists for their work for the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine, according to three sources close to the probe. In a sign that evidence from Mueller's 22-month investigation may yet ensnare more prominent Washington figures, federal prosecutors in Washington cited a former U.S. congressman "working for the government of Ukraine" in charges filed Thursday against former Obama administration official Greg Craig. Craig pleaded not guilty on Friday to lobbying violations and making false statements. The former congressman is not named in Craig's indictment, but other filings by his former law firm cite identical work done for the firm by Vin Weber, a lobbyist with Mercury Public Affairs, who was a U.S. representative from Minnesota from 1981 to 1993. Weber disclosed his work for a Ukrainian think tank, but he did not register as a foreign agent for the government of Ukraine under a the 1938 Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which would have required him to spell out his activity in detail, according to a Reuters review of lobbying records. The Department of Justice is stepping up FARA enforcement after decades of inactivity. Mueller's investigation has not led to criminal conspiracy charges against Trump or his former associates, but it has exposed previously hidden foreign lobbying activity by some of Washington's most prominent lobbyists and prompted a flurry of new registrations since 2017. U.S. Attorney General William Barr is expected to release a redacted version of Mueller's findings next week. Three sources familiar with the investigation said federal prosecutors in Manhattan are examining work done for Ukraine by both Weber and Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta, a top official of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's 2016 Democratic presidential campaign and a former White House adviser. A spokesperson for Weber and for Mercury declined to comment. Tony Podesta also declined to comment. The FARA crackdown has factored in cases against Craig, Craig's former law firm Skadden Arps and Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman now serving a 7-1/2 year prison sentence for lobbying and financial crimes. Other lobbyists have rushed to comply with the law. As of April, 446 separate entities registered with the Justice Department, up from 387 at the end of 2016. Tony Podesta disclosed his lobbying work for a Brussels-based think tank, the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, to Congress. But he did not register with the Justice Department as a foreign agent for the government of Ukraine. Podesta's work for the Ukrainian government came to light in 2017 after Mueller's team charged Manafort with lobbying violations. Those revelations prompted Podesta to step down in October 2017 from his Podesta Associates lobbying firm, which collapsed shortly after. Sources familiar with the investigation said that investigations into Ukraine-related lobbying by Craig, Podesta and Weber were all initially being pursued by the Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York, but the probe related to Craig was transferred to federal prosecutors in Washington. Craig denies misleading the Justice Department about his activity in Ukraine, saying in a statement on Thursday that the effort to prosecute him was "unprecedented and unjustified." According to the indictment, Craig was hired to write a report for the Ukrainian Justice Ministry about the prosecution of former Ukraine Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Prosecutors say Craig concealed the fact that the project was largely funded by Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch who was close to Bill and Hillary Clinton but also donated to the Trump Foundation after Donald Trump made a September 2015 speech in Kiev. (Reporting by Mark Hosenball and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)
By Jake Spring BRASILIA (Reuters) - The American Museum of Natural History said on Friday that it is "concerned" an event booked to be held at the New York museum will honor far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro as a "person of the year," a move that has triggered online outrage. The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce is holding its annual Person of the Year gala at the museum on May 14, during which it will give the award to Bolsonaro, according to the chamber's website. The award is typically given to one Brazilian and one American each year, although this year's American recipient is not listed. Bolsonaro, who styled his campaign for office last year after that of U.S. President Donald Trump, has considered pulling out of the Paris Agreement on climate change and railed against what he sees as indiscriminate fines for environmental crimes. He continues to support mining and other development in the Amazon rainforest region, considered by most scientists as the world's biggest natural defense against climate change. "The external, private event at which the current President of Brazil is to be honored was booked at the Museum before the honoree was secured," the museum said on its official Twitter account. "We are deeply concerned, and we are exploring our options." Bolsonaro's office and the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The responses to the museum's tweet included hundreds of messages urging that the event be canceled, with people identifying themselves as activists and scholars saying it was inappropriate that Bolsonaro be honored at an institution of science because of his views. "It certainly is cause for outrage," Philip Fearnside, an American professor at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research and one of the most cited experts on the jungle, said in a telephone interview. "He denies the existence of anthropogenic climate change and he's appointed several other denialists to his Cabinet," Fearnside said. "And he is also dismantling the environmental protections in Brazil ... so obviously it's not something to be celebrated by science." (Reporting by Jake Spring; editing by Jonathan Oatis)
By Diane Bartz

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Senator Mark Warner, who co-sponsored legislation this week to ban deceptive practices by social media companies, said on Thursday he was eyeing additional bills aimed at limiting hate speech and allowing users to move their data across platforms.

The Democratic lawmaker said he would offer more bills in the next month or two, ideally with Republican colleagues as a co-sponsor.

The additional legislation could focus on hate speech, data portability, which gives social media users the ability to easily take their data to another site, and transparency about who or what is on the other side of an internet conversation, Warner said in an interview with Reuters.

On Tuesday, Warner joined with Republican Senator Deb Fischer to introduce a bill to bar online platforms like Facebook Inc or Alphabet Inc's Google from misleading people into giving personal data to companies, or otherwise tricking them.

It would also ban online platforms with more than 100 million monthly active users from designing addicting games or other websites for children under age 13.

Warner is eager to increase transparency on social media platforms.

"Shouldn't we have the right to know whether we're being contacted by a human being versus a bot when you're on social media?" he said.

Issues of engagement and data collection are key for social media companies since they use information gathered about users to sell advertisements, a key source of profit.

Warner noted the real-life implications of hate speech on social media, pointing to mass killings in New Zealand and Pittsburgh.

In a massacre in New Zealand, a gunman opened fire in two mosques on March 15, killing 50 people as he broadcast the attack live on Facebook. Last year, 11 people were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The man accused in the killings had made aggressive anti-Semitic comments in online forums.

Some of the proposed legislation could be rolled into a federal privacy bill being drafted in Congress. That bill was prompted by California's data privacy law that imposes fines of up to $7,500 on large companies for intentional failure to disclose data collection or delete user data on request, or for selling others data without permission. It takes effect next year.

"I want technology to stay. I want the social media platforms to stay," Warner said. "But I do think the days of the Wild Wild West where anything goes, people just aren't going to allow it." (Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Peter Cooney)
By Joshua Franklin NEW YORK (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc has 91 million users, but growth is slowing and it may never make a profit, the ride-hailing company said on Thursday in its IPO filing. The document gave the first comprehensive financial picture of the decade-old company which was started after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night and has changed the way much of the world travels. The S-1 filing underscores Uber's rapid growth in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders. The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to "increase significantly in the foreseeable future" and it "may not achieve profitability." Uber lost $3.03 billion in 2018 from operations. The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Uber had 91 million average monthly active users on its platforms, including for ride-hailing and Uber Eats, at the end of 2018. This is up 33.8 percent from 2017, but growth slowed from 51 percent a year earlier. Uber had not disclosed the latest user numbers before, and the figure indicates the scale of the business. Although its user base includes customers of other services and ride-sharing, the number is nearly five times the 18.6 million announced by rival Lyft Inc. Uber in 2018 had $11.3 billion revenue, up around 42 percent over 2017, but below the 106 percent growth the prior year. Uber set a placeholder amount of $1 billion but did not specify the size of the IPO. Reuters reported this week that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion worth of stock at a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion. Investment bankers had previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion. Uber would be the largest initial public offering since that of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2014, which raised $25 billion. Although Uber is no longer targeting a $120 billion valuation in the IPO, some stock bonuses to Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi and other company executives are only triggered when that valuation is reached. Uber will follow Lyft in going public. Shares in its smaller rival closed at $61.01 on Thursday, 15 percent below its IPO price set late last month, a development which has sent a chilling signal for other tech start-ups looking to go public. After making the public filing, Uber will begin a series of investor presentations, called a roadshow, which Reuters has reported will start the week of April 29. The company is on track to price its IPO and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early May. ADVERSE EVENTS Uber faces questions over how it will navigate any transition toward self-driving vehicles, a technology seen as potentially dramatically lowering costs but which could also disrupt its business model. Last year, the ride-hailing giant settled a legal dispute over trade secrets with Alphabet Inc's Waymo self-driving vehicle unit. Waymo, in its lawsuit, had said one of its former engineers who became chief of Uber's self-driving car project took with him thousands of confidential documents. Uber revealed in the filing it could have to pay a license fee to Waymo or face a substantial delay to the development of its self-driving technology if the initial assessment of its technology by an independent expert is confirmed. The expert, installed as part of Uber's settlement with Waymo, has identified on an interim basis certain functions in Uber's autonomous vehicle software that "are problematic and other functions that are not," Uber said. A Waymo spokesperson said: "This review is on-going and we will continue to take the necessary steps to ensure our confidential information is not being used by Uber." One advantage Uber will likely seek to play up to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it operates. Analysts consider building scale crucial for Uber's business model to become profitable. In addition to answering questions about Uber's finances, CEO Khosrowshahi will be tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the culture and business practices after a series of embarrassing scandals over the last two years. Those have included sexual harassment allegations, a massive data breach that was concealed from regulators, use of illicit software to evade authorities and allegations of bribery overseas. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 to replace company co-founder Travis Kalanick who was ousted as CEO. Uber said in its filing its ridehailing position in the United States and Canada was "significantly impacted by adverse publicity events" and that its position in many markets has been threatened by discounts from other ride-hailing companies. A #DeleteUber campaign surged on social media in 2017 after a public relations crisis, which Uber said in its filing meant hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using its platform within days. Uber said its market share fell in most regions last year, although the rate of decline has slowed. The company claims more than 65 percent market share in the United States and Canada, versus Lyft's stated 39 percent in the United States. Uber is reserving some shares in the IPO for drivers who have completed 2,500 trips among other criteria. (Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York, additional reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Ismail Shakil in Bangalore; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Himani Sarkar)
14 million users of pregnancy club Bounty UK had their personal information sold to companies (GETTY)

An online pregnancy club has been fined for illegally sharing the data of 14 million users without their consent.

Bounty UK, which offers advice to new parents, unlawfully shared members data with marketing agencies in an unprecedented case.

The Information Commissioners Office (ICO) said the company, which used information on potentially vulnerable new mothers and children, appeared to have been motivated by financial gain.

The regulator found the company had collected information on users through its website, mobile apps, merchandise - and from the hospital bedsides of new mothers.

ICO said Bounty UK breached the Data Protection Act 1998, after it shared around 34.4 million records with agencies including Acxiom, Equifax, Indicia and Sky.

Read More on Yahoo News UK:

A third of young people pressured into sharing personal information online

'Highly likely' GRU hacked UK institute countering Russian fake news

Heres the big problem with all those GDPR emails youve been getting

ICO director of investigations Steve Eckersley said of the findings: Bounty were not open or transparent to the millions of people that their personal data may be passed on to such large number of organisations.

Such careless data sharing is likely to have caused distress to many people, since they did not know that their personal information was being shared multiple times with so many organisations, including information about their pregnancy status and their children.

The number of personal records and people affected in this case is unprecedented in the history of the ICOs investigations into the data broking industry and organisations linked to this

Bounty UK managing director Jim Kelleher, said that while the company acknowledged the findings, the breaches were historical issues.

Mr Kellher said: We acknowledge the ICOs findings  in the past we did not take a broad enough view of our responsibilities and as a result our data-sharing processes, specifically with regards to transparency, were not robust enough.

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(GETTY)

This was not of the standard expected of us. However, the ICO has recognised that these are historical issues.

Our priority is to continue to provide a valuable service for new parents that is both helpful and trusted.

As the ICO has highlighted, we made significant changes to our processes in Spring 2018, reducing the number of personal records we retain and for how long we keep them, ending relationships with the small number of data brokerage companies with whom we previously worked and implementing robust GDPR training for our staff.

Our Bounty Promise sets out our continued commitment to carefully look after our members personal information.

And to ensure our promise is never broken, we will appoint an independent data expert to check how we are doing every year and we will publish their findings annually on the Bounty website.

---Watch the latest videos from Yahoo UK---
Urals Stampings Plant PAO (MCX:URKZ) is a stock with outstanding fundamental characteristics. When we build an investment case, we need to look at the stock with a holistic perspective. In the case of URKZ, it is a financially-robust company with a a strong track record of performance, trading at a discount. Below, I've touched on some key aspects you should know on a high level. If you're interested in understanding beyond my broad commentary, read the full report on Urals Stampings Plant PAO here.

Flawless balance sheet and undervalued

URKZ delivered a bottom-line expansion of 46% in the prior year, with its most recent earnings level surpassing its average level over the last five years. Not only did URKZ outperformed its past performance, its growth also exceeded the Metals and Mining industry expansion, which generated a -2.7% earnings growth. This is an notable feat for the company. URKZ's strong financial health means that all of its upcoming liability payments are able to be met by its current cash and short-term investment holdings. This suggests prudent control over cash and cost by management, which is a crucial insight into the health of the company. URKZ appears to have made good use of debt, producing operating cash levels of 1.55x total debt in the prior year. This is a strong indication that debt is reasonably met with cash generated.

MISX:URKZ Income Statement, April 12th 2019

URKZ's share price is trading at below its true value, meaning that the market sentiment for the stock is currently bearish. According to my intrinsic value of the stock, which is driven by analyst consensus forecast of URKZ's earnings, investors now have the opportunity to buy into the stock to reap capital gains. Also, relative to the rest of its peers with similar levels of earnings, URKZ's share price is trading below the group's average. This further reaffirms that URKZ is potentially undervalued.

MISX:URKZ Price Estimation Relative to Market, April 12th 2019

Next Steps:

For Urals Stampings Plant PAO, I've put together three relevant aspects you should further research:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for URKZs future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for URKZs outlook. Dividend Income vs Capital Gains: Does URKZ return gains to shareholders through reinvesting in itself and growing earnings, or redistribute a decent portion of earnings as dividends? Our historical dividend yield visualization quickly tells you what your can expect from URKZ as an investment. Other Attractive Alternatives : Are there other well-rounded stocks you could be holding instead of URKZ? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.



If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.
Chicago (AFP) - The white son of a Louisiana police officer has been arrested and accused of burning down historically black churches in the southern US state, authorities announced Thursday.

Holden Matthews is charged with three counts of arson on a religious building for allegedly burning down three rural churches over a 10-day period beginning in late March.

Each charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

Authorities said they were not ready to discuss the motive for the attacks, but a federal hate crimes investigation was ongoing.

"I don't know what this young man's motive was... but I can say it cannot be justified or rationalized. These were evil acts," Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said at a news conference.

"It has been especially painful because it reminds us of a very dark past of intimidation and fear."

The 21-year-old is allegedly associated with a type of music known as "black metal" which promotes church burnings, authorities said.

In extreme cases, those who associate with the musical genre have espoused white supremacist ideologies, according to The Daily Beast website and the anti-hate group the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The sheriff in St Landry Parish where the church attacks occurred said the arrested suspect was the son of one of his deputies, Roy Matthews.

"He knew nothing about his son's activity," Sheriff Bobby Guidroz said, adding that the deputy "broke down" when he was informed.

"He's shocked and hurt, as any father would be," Guidroz said.

The arson attacks targeted three historically black churches -- St Mary Baptist Church in the city of Port Barre, Mt Pleasant Baptist Church in Hammond, and Greater Union Baptist Church in Opelousas.
Washington (AFP) - German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen and Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan discussed Friday the need to repatriate Islamic State foreign fighters from Syria or fund detention centers to hold them long-term.

Washington wants European allies to take back hundreds of IS fighters from their countries who were captured in recent months in Syria.

The alternative is to hold them long-term in camps or prisons in Syria or Iraq, but that would need financing.

"We have assured once more that we will take care individually of every single case," von der Leyen told reporters after meeting Shanahan, the acting secretary of defense.

"But we were both also convinced of the fact that the challenge consists mostly in collecting the evidence in the region as regards to the terrorist activity of the terrorist fighters," she added.

Some European countries are refusing to repatriate and put on trial their nationals given the absence of any investigation on the ground in Syria showing what they might have done with Islamic State.

In addition, the fighters are being held by the Syrian Democratic Forces, who do not have the status of a sovereign government.

But Washington fears that if they are not repatriated, the fighters could rejoin jihadist operations. The US wants the Europeans to finance the building of detention centers, which could be in Iraq, according to the Pentagon.

Baghdad has said it could put on trial the alleged jihadists, but that it would need funding to support that.

That would solve the problem for their home countries, but human rights groups are uncomfortable with that path.

Von der Leyen meanwhile expressed satisfaction with the assurances she received that US forces will maintain a presence in Syria "with the required number of troops," after Trump said in December that the Pentagon would pull out following the defeat of Islamic State.

"The next weeks will show how everybody can bear their fair share of the burden," she said.
Washington (AFP) - The US Treasury on Friday unveiled financial sanctions on four maritime shipping companies and nine of their oil tankers over crude deliveries to Cuba, to pressure Havana to end support for Venezuela.

The sanctions raise US pressure on the "the illegitimate regime of former President Nicolas Maduro," the Treasury said in a statement.

"We continue to target companies that transport Venezuelan oil to Cuba, as they are profiting while the Maduro regime pillages natural resources," US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in the statement.

"Venezuela's oil belongs to the Venezuelan people and should not be used as a bargaining tool to prop up dictators and prolong oppression."

Mnuchin said that since losing popular support, Maduro has been relying on the support of Cuba's military and intelligence services to remain in power.

Venezuela is suffering an economic collapse and humanitarian crisis including shortages of basic food and medicine and the exodus of millions of people.

The US sanctions targeted three Liberian shipping corporations and one based in Italy. Of the nine tankers penalized, four had delivered Venezuelan crude to Cuba.

The sanctions freeze US-based assets of the company and also block them from much of the global financial system.
Washington (AFP) - The United States on Thursday urged Sudan's army to bring civilians into government after ousting veteran leader Omar al-Bashir, saying an announced two-year timeline was too long.

Washington calls "on transitional authorities to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government," State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters.

His comments came after Sudan's army announced "the toppling of the regime," to be replaced by a transitional military council, but there was growing international pressure for a handover to civilian rule.

"The Sudanese people should determine who leads them and their future and the Sudanese people have been clear and are demanding a civilian-led transition," Palladino said.

"The United States position is the Sudanese people should be allowed to do so sooner than two years from now," he said.

The United States had been trying to mend relations with Sudan after years of tension with Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup and hosted Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who stayed until 1996.

Palladino said that the United States was "suspending" the so-called Phase II talks, in which Washington was considering removing Khartoum from the US blacklist of state sponsors of terrorism, but he added: "We remain open to engagement."

Bashir remains wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes in the western Darfur region that Washington has described as genocide.

Palladino said that the United States supported accountability on Darfur but declined to specify whether Bashir -- or the coup leader, Defense Minister Awad Ibnouf -- should face extradition.

"We believe that the victims of Darfur deserve justice and that accountability is essential for achieving a stable and lasting peace in Darfur," he said.

"The United States continues to call for those responsible for the horrific crimes that were committed in Darfur to be held accountable for those actions," he said.

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Also Thursday the State Department raised to the highest level its travel advisory for Sudan.

"Do not travel," it warned, after ordering the departure of non-emergency US government employees from the country.

"There is a national state of emergency in effect across Sudan, which gives security forces greater arrest and incarceration powers," the advisory said.
Asuncion (AFP) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo began a four-nation tour of Latin American allies Friday, arriving in Paraguay after talks in Santiago with Chile's President Sebastian Pinera that focused on Venezuela and the growing commercial influence of China.

Pompeo arrived in Asuncion late Friday on the second leg of his trip, greeted by Paraguay's Foreign Minister Luis Castiglioni.

He was to hold talks with President Mario Abdo Benitez and his counterpart Castiglioni on Saturday before heading to Peru.

Earlier Friday in Santiago, Pompeo thanked Chile "for being a true leader for the Venezuelan people" in taking in around 300,000 refugees fleeing President Nicolas Maduro's embattled socialist regime.

"I want also to applaud President Pinera for helping isolate Maduro and for showing compassion towards innocent people fleeing the economic and humanitarian crisis in their home country," Pompeo said in a speech.

Chile's President Sebastian Pinera reiterated Chile's position that change in Caracas must occur "in a democratic and peaceful way, discarding a military intervention."

The US has repeatedly warned Maduro that "all options" remain on the table to bring about a resolution to the crisis. Maduro has blasted this statement as a clear threat of military intervention.

The highlight of Pompeo's trip will be a brief visit Sunday to the Colombian city of Cucuta on the Venezuelan border, where he will meet refugees. All four countries on his itinerary are led by right wing or center-right leaders favorable to Washington's uncompromising approach to Maduro.

- China influence -

Pompeo's visit is partly aimed at blunting trade rival China's growing reach in Latin America, where Beijing is Chile's biggest trading partner, representing 30 percent of Santiago's exports -- mainly raw materials such as copper and agricultural products.

By comparison, the US accounts for only 14 percent of Santiago's exports.

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The US official said before landing in Chile that the current US administration had "spent a lot of time" in Latin America seeking to improve trade in a region which has turned its back in recent years on a slew of leftist governments.

"This is an historic opportunity," he told reporters, referring to "a handful of countries that are truly market driven, democratic in ways that we havent had in South America for decades. And we think it creates real opportunity."

Asked about China's influence at a press conference following a working lunch with his Chilean counterpart, Pompeo said: "I think the Chilean government and the United States government both share the same concerns."

"China's trade activities often are deeply connected to their national security mission, their technological goals, their desire to steal intellectual property, to have forced technology transfer, to engage in activity that is not economic," he said.

"And one of the things we talked about is how we could share information together so that we would know which was which, so that each country could protect its own citizens, so that each country could stay away from occasions where China was acting in malign or nefarious ways while still understanding that trade between our countries is important."

- US concerns -

Of concern to the US is Chile's contracts with Huawei, the Chinese tech giant which Washington has long considered a security threat. It has already severely restricted the Shenzhen-based company's presence in the United States, suspecting its products could be used to spy on Western governments.

While making no direct reference to Huawei, Pompeo said: "Fair, free and open trade is fine."

But he added: "It is not okay to put technology systems in with latent capability to take information from citizens of Chile or any other country and transfer it back to President Xi's government.

"Those are the conversations that we had today, and I am confident we have a full understanding of both the risks and the opportunities associated with China."
Brendon Thorne/Getty

For months, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has derided Vice President Mike Pences partnership with President Donald Trump as a craven move to legitimize the thrice-married serial philanderer in the eyes of evangelical voters. Now, Pences first public remarks on the simmering feud accuse Buttigieg of being the cynical one.

He said some things that are critical of my Christian faith and about me personally. And he knows betterhe knows me, Pence said in an interview on CNBCs Squawk Box that aired on Thursday morning.

But I get it, Pence continued. You know, its, look, again, 19 people running for president on that side in a party thats sliding off to the left. And theyre all competing with one another for how much more liberal they are.

Pence, who served one term as governor of Indiana while Buttigieg was in his first term as mayor of South Bend, makes numerous appearances in the Democratic presidential candidates memoir, where he is depicted as a holy warrior whose obsession with social conservatism embarrassed the state and, in part, inspired Buttigieg to come out as gay.

It really made my life harder, as we were trying to demonstrate that Indiana was ready for the future, Buttigieg told The Daily Beast in an interview about his long and complicated relationship with Pence. He seemed to be intent on sending us back into the past.

During his time in Congress, Pence opposed same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, and workplace protections for LGBT people. His support for federal funds for organizations that help people seeking to change their sexual behavior during his 2000 congressional campaign has frequently been interpreted as an endorsement of conversion therapy, although Pence has denied that he believes in the practice.

As governor, Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which gave individuals and businesses cover to discriminate against LGBT people if they held personal religious beliefs disapproving of homosexuality. The law made Indiana a target of national protest, as dozens of organizations pulled business out of the state. Pence compounded the crisis during a disastrous appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, when the governor refused to say whether it should be legal for businesses to discriminate against LGBT people.

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Pence was not asked about that stance in the CNBC interview, but reaffirmed that he and his family have a view of marriage thats informed by our faith, and we stand by that.

But that doesnt mean that were critical of anyone else who has a different point of view, Pence, who Trump once joked wants to hang all gay people, said.

Although Buttigieg has actively discouraged fellow Democratic presidential candidates from centering the race on opposition to Trump, he has publicly criticized the vice president in recent weeks. On Sunday, Buttigieg told a largely queer audience at a Washington fundraiser for the LGBT Victory Fund that the Mike Pences of the world need to take their problems with gays to a higher authority.

If you have a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me, Buttigieg said. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.

The vice president has avoided responding directly until Thursday, but his wife Karen, who works at a Virginia private school that bans gay employees and students, told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday that the pair have always had a great relationship.

Its funny because I dont think the vice president does have a problem with him, but I think its helping Pete to get some notoriety by saying that about the vice president, the second lady said at the time.

Buttigieg, apparently in response, tweeted hours later that People will often be polite to you in person, while advancing policies that harm you and your family. You will be polite to them in turn, but you need not stand for such harms. Instead, you push back, honestly and emphatically. So it goes, in the public square.

Asked for comment on Pences comments, Buttigiegs campaign referred The Daily Beast back to the mayors previous statementsalthough the mayors upcoming Friday appearance on Ellen likely means that the contretemps is far from over.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast here
We are approaching the end of the Vladdy Jr. saga. (Jeffrey T. Barnes/AP)

Theres no way to tell the story of Vladimir Guerrero Jr.s pre-MLB career without talking about service time manipulation.

Guerrero Jr. has wielded the kind of bat that would unquestionably improve the Toronto Blue Jays for a while now. When he was dominating Triple-A pitching as a 19-year-old it became clear the reason he was in Buffalo was exclusively about maximizing the Blue Jays window of team control and aligning it with their potential window of contention.

The Blue Jays have been unwilling to articulate those intentions for fear of a MLBPA grievance -- not that those have traditionally been particularly effective -- and they have explained Vladdy Jr.s absence from the team with half-baked notions about making him into a complete player and maximizing his potential. Realistically hes a bat-first player whose bat has been ready for a while now.

Its been an ugly situation from the beginning, but on Thursday its parameters changed.

Last night, Vlad Jr. went 2/4 with a walk, a double and a homer at triple-A



As of today, the #BlueJays control his 2025 season regardless of when they call him up. Now that Jays have that 7th year of control, his MLB debut becomes a question of oblique rehab/development  Ben Nicholson-Smith (@bnicholsonsmith) April 12, 2019

From this point on, there should be no bad-faith explanations for Vladdy Jr. being in the minor leagues. Hes legitimately rehabbing an injury and trying to get up to speed after missing time in March with an oblique injury. Its a matter of getting him a few more at-bats, the question is just how many.

More than what he has now. I dont know how many more, manager Charlie Montoyo said. Could be 20, or 30. [Buffalo Bisons] Bobby Meacham will let us know when this guy is ready and he looks good at the plate. He needs to play the field too. So if hes playing good defensively and hes swinging the bat and hes got 20 or 30 at-bats or whatever it is then Bobbys gonna let us know.

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Although the implication that Meacham will be an integral part of the decision-making process seems a bit flimsy, thats a pretty real answer. Although general manager Ross Atkins was unwilling to get even close to committing to a date when he met with the media Friday, he was more candid than usual.

Our sense is that its sooner than later, he said. For a player that has played as much as he has with as much success as hes had now its about getting built up and getting into regular season form and being hopefully ready to make a debut sometime soon.

Atkins made it clear he saw a path for Guerrero Jr. to develop at the major-league level, something he often shied away from when the young sluggers continued development was the public rationale for keeping him in the minors.

There isnt going to be a day where we say hes done from a development standpoint because his development will continue here, he said.

Atkins is no longer incentivized to be disingenuous. Much like Blue Jays fans, now he really does want to see Guerrero Jr. in the major leagues as soon as possible. Although theres plenty of reason to begrudge the club for its handling of this situation, the worst is over. For the first time in what feels like ages, the front office and fans have the same priorities.

It really is exciting, Atkins said. Puts a big smile on my face to think about it.

More Blue Jays coverage from Yahoo Sports Canada
Looking for a stock that has been consistently beating earnings estimates and might be well positioned to keep the streak alive in its next quarterly report? Abiomed (ABMD), which belongs to the Zacks Medical - Instruments industry, could be a great candidate to consider.

This maker of heart devices has an established record of topping earnings estimates, especially when looking at the previous two reports. The company boasts an average surprise for the past two quarters of 7.08%.

For the most recent quarter, Abiomed was expected to post earnings of $0.94 per share, but it reported $0.97 per share instead, representing a surprise of 3.19%. For the previous quarter, the consensus estimate was $0.73 per share, while it actually produced $0.81 per share, a surprise of 10.96%.

Price and EPS Surprise

With this earnings history in mind, recent estimates have been moving higher for Abiomed. In fact, the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) for the company is positive, which is a great sign of an earnings beat, especially when you combine this metric with its nice Zacks Rank.

Our research shows that stocks with the combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or better produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time. In other words, if you have 10 stocks with this combination, the number of stocks that beat the consensus estimate could be as high as seven.

The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a version of the Zacks Consensus whose definition is related to change. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.

Abiomed currently has an Earnings ESP of +0.54%, which suggests that analysts have recently become bullish on the company's earnings prospects. This positive Earnings ESP when combined with the stock's Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) indicates that another beat is possibly around the corner. We expect the company's next earnings report to be released on May 2, 2019.

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With the Earnings ESP metric, it's important to note that a negative value reduces its predictive power; however, a negative Earnings ESP does not indicate an earnings miss.

Many companies end up beating the consensus EPS estimate, though this is not the only reason why their shares gain. Additionally, some stocks may remain stable even if they end up missing the consensus estimate.

Because of this, it's really important to check a company's Earnings ESP ahead of its quarterly release to increase the odds of success. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.



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To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
Wikileaks is at the center of major questions in Robert Muellers investigation, including whether anyone involved in Donald Trumps presidential campaign assisted the organization in releasing hacked materials. But the charge in the one-count indictment against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange unsealed on Thursday shortly after his arrest doesnt speak to those questions or broader First Amendment issues.

In an indictment dated March 6, 2018, the United States charges Assange with one count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion. The indictment alleges that in March 2010, Assange engaged in a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the U.S. Army, to assist Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications.

Conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, which violates the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is the meat and potatoes in the world of computer crime, says Paul Rosenzweig, who teaches at the George Washington University School of Law and was deputy assistant secretary for policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Almost everybody that you see whos charged with a computer fraud of some sort gets a charge thats somewhere like this.

This fits with the typical prosecutorial strategy of charging someone with a smaller, more easily provable crime in what could be a larger criminal context. The conspiracy component of it can be pretty easy to prove, that there had to be some degree of coordination of efforts and action, says Thomas Holt, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University who is an expert in computer hacking. So conspiracy is a way to treat it as low-hanging fruit where you can at least demonstrate through email and other communications that they were working in some degree in concert to produce an outcome.

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Limiting the indictment against Assange to this one, narrower charge and not charging him with espionage leaves aside any First Amendment questions that could have been raised about Wikileaks publishing classified material. There has been a lot of speculation that the U.S. would indict Assange merely for distributing classified material, former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote on Twitter. You have heard a lot of concern about that, and it is justified. Many legitimate press publications in the U.S. distribute classified material at times.

3/ There has been a lot of speculation that the U.S. would indict Assange merely for distributing classified material. You have heard a lot of concern about that, and it is justified. Many legitimate press publications in the U.S. distribute classified material at times.  Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) April 11, 2019

But this indictment does not charge Assange with a crime related merely to the publication of the material. Rosenzweig offers this analogy: If a journalist has sources offering classified documents, the journalist can publish those documents and this indictment against Assange has no bearing on that. But if a source tells a journalist there are documents behind a locked door, and the journalist offers to help pick the lock, thats when it becomes a crime. You as a journalist have become engaged in a criminal enterprise in a way thats different from normal journalist behavior, Rosenzweig says of that scenario.

This is where relevance to Muellers Russia investigation comes in. In 2016, hackers that the U.S. government believes to have been directed by the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee and Clintons campaign chairman John Podesta. Batches of the hacked emails were released by Wikileaks. Mueller indicted Russian intelligence officers for crimes related to this operation, but he did not charge Assange.

There are two key relevant questions in Muellers investigation. The first is how the hacked material made its way from Russias Internet Research Agency to Wikileaks, and whether Trump advisor Roger Stone or anyone else associated with the campaign was in that chain of custody. The second, related question is whether Stone or anyone else in the campaign assisted in targeting the hacking or selecting and timing the release of hacked material. (Stone has been charged with lying to Congress and obstructing an investigation into his communications with Assange. Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen also testified that he was present for a July 2016 phone call during which Stone informed Trump that Assange was planning to publish hacked Democratic emails.)

As in Rosenzweigs analogy, if Stone or another member of the campaign simply knew about the information in advance, that likely wouldnt be a crime. But if they conspired in the hack, that could be.

Attorney General William Barr has said Muellers investigation did not establish that anyone on the Trump campaign conspired with Russia to influence the election.

For now, this single-count indictment against Assange for activity from nine years ago doesnt seem to have direct bearing on lingering questions from the Mueller investigation. And Mueller hasnt recommended any more charges to come directly from his office. But Assange and Wikileaks loom over multiple aspects of Muellers investigation, and more details may surface in the coming days when Barr releases a redacted version of the report.

-With additional reporting by John Walcott/Washington
If I told you there was a movement to create a navy or an air force, you might respond, Dont we already have those? If I said we need a movement to persuade bears to relieve themselves in the woods, you might say, Wait. Isnt that happening already?

But if I said we needed to tax the rich, a lot of peoples first reaction would be, Yes! Its about time!

In fact, theres an astroturf movement based on precisely this notion. There was just a big conference, fittingly named the Tax the Rich! conference, hosted by a group called Patriotic Millionaires.

Tax the Rich. Save America. Yes, it really is that simple, they explain in their mission statement.

This slogan is simply dishonest; rich people do, in fact, pay taxes. Just under half (48 percent) of federal revenue comes from income taxes. If you define the rich as the top 1 percent  which is probably too narrow, depending on the region of the country  the rich pay a big chunk of that. In 2016, according to the Tax Foundation, the top 1 percent accounted for 37.3 percent of all income-tax revenue, a share that was greater than the bottom 90 percent of all payers of income tax combined. The top half of taxpayers paid 97 percent of income taxes.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that 44 percent of Americans wont pay any federal income taxes for 2018. That doesnt mean they dont pay any taxes, of course. Payroll taxes eat up a big chunk of many Americans paychecks  a fact we all learn the first time we shout, Who the hell is FICA!?

But the income tax is remarkably progressive. Once again citing the Tax Policy Center (a joint project of two left-of-center think tanks: the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute), Americans in the top 20 percent paid an estimated 87 percent of income taxes for 2018. This was up from 84 percent in 2017, which means that the Trump tax cuts actually made the tax code more progressive.

The folks shouting Tax the rich! know this, which is why, when they move beyond sloganeering, they say that what they really want is for the rich to pay their fair share. This is a more debatable claim because fair is in the eye of the beholder. Its not preposterous to argue that the rich, however defined, should pay a few percentage points more in income tax in the name of fairness. But its also not preposterous to say that when 1 percent of the people provide more than a third of income-tax revenue, theyre already paying their fair share  and suggesting that people who dont want to pay even more are unpatriotic is bullying nonsense.

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While were on the topic of fairness, theres another common argument for hiking income taxes for the wealthy, or for even simply taxing wealth itself: The rich deserve it. Or, to be more generous, the super-rich dont deserve their money, while the rest of the country does.

The New York Times Farhad Manjoo recently argued for abolishing billionaires outright. Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Beto ORourke say we should make the rich less rich because income inequality is bad. Candidate Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (and many others) think that everything from Medicare for All to the Green New Deal can be financed largely  or entirely  by pillaging the bank accounts of the rich.

This is populist insanity masquerading as public finance. According to the Manhattan Institutes Brian Riedl, doubling the top tax brackets (from 35 and 37 percent to 70 and 74 percent) would close just one-fifth of the long-term Social Security and Medicare shortfall. Even seizing all annual income earned over $500,000 would not come close.

You could literally confiscate 100 percent of the wealth of the entire 1 percent and not come close to paying for Sanderss version of Medicare for All (price tag: $32 trillion).

This points to my real problem with all of this tax the rich talk. It works from the assumption that the problems of ordinary Americans are the result of a tiny group of people selfishly refusing to do their part. Not only does this assume that the wealth of people who have paid considerable taxes still belongs to everyone, its also simple scapegoating. By my lights, it would be no less outrageous if the math added up. But it doesnt, which makes it even more irresponsible.

 2019 Tribune Content Agency LLC

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LONDON (AP)  British police on Thursday hauled a bearded and shouting Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he was holed up for nearly seven years, and the U.S. charged the WikiLeaks founder with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to get their hands on government secrets.

Police arrested Assange after the South American nation revoked the political asylum that had protected him in the embassy, and he was brought before a British court  the first step in an extradition battle that he has vowed to fight.

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno said he decided to evict Assange from the embassy after "repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols," and he later lashed out at him during a speech in Quito, calling the Australian native a "spoiled brat" who treated his hosts with disrespect.

In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department accused Assange of conspiring with Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon. The charge was announced after Assange was taken into custody.

Assange, 47, took refuge in the embassy in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped. He refused to leave the embassy, fearing arrest and extradition to the U.S. for publishing classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

Manning, who served several years in prison for leaking troves of classified documents before her sentence was commuted by then-President Barack Obama, is again in custody in Alexandria, Virginia, for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning's legal team said the indictment against Assange showed prosecutors didn't need her testimony and called for her to be released, saying her continued detention would be "purely punitive."

Over the years, Assange used Ecuador's embassy as a platform to keep his name before the public, frequently making appearances on its tiny balcony, posing for pictures and reading statements. Even his cat became famous.

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But his presence was an embarrassment to U.K. authorities, who for years kept a police presence around the clock outside the embassy, costing taxpayers millions in police overtime. Such surveillance was removed in 2015, but the embassy remained a focal point for his activities.

Video posted online by Ruptly, a news service of Russia Today, showed several men in suits pulling a handcuffed Assange out of the embassy and loading him into a police van while uniformed British police formed a passageway. Assange, who shouted and gestured as he was removed, sported a full beard and slicked-back gray hair.

He later appeared in Westminster Magistrates' Court, where District Judge Michael Snow wasted no time in finding him guilty of breaching his bail conditions, flatly rejecting his assertion that he had not had a fair hearing and a reasonable excuse for not appearing.

"Mr. Assange's behavior is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests," Snow said. "He hasn't come close to establishing 'reasonable excuse.'"

Assange waved to the packed public gallery as he was taken to the cells. His next appearance was set for May 2 via prison video-link in relation to the extradition case.

Assange's attorney, Jennifer Robinson, said he will fight any extradition to the U.S.

"This sets a dangerous precedent for all journalist and media organizations in Europe and around the world," she said. "This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States."

Asked at the White House about the arrest, President Donald Trump declared , "It's not my thing," and "I know nothing about WikiLeaks," despite praising the anti-secrecy organization dozens of times during his 2016 campaign.

Assange has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for years for WikiLeaks' role in publishing government secrets. He was an important figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and Democratic groups.

"The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done," Clinton said later Thursday, at a speaking event with husband Bill Clinton.

WikiLeaks quickly drew attention to U.S. interest in Assange and said that Ecuador had illegally terminated Assange's political asylum "in violation of international law."

"Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to de-humanise, de-legitimize and imprison him," the group said in a tweet over a photo of Assange's smiling face.

But in Assange's native Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australian Broadcasting Corp. he had no plans to intervene in the case as the charge was a "matter for the United States" and had nothing to do with Australia. Consular officials were to visit him Friday in jail.

Ecuadorian officials suggested Assange's own behavior was to blame.

Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo said Assange's mental and physical health worsened while he was holed up, and he began to act aggressively toward his hosts, including smearing feces on the walls of the embassy.

In a fiery speech in Ecuador, Moreno called him an ungrateful and "miserable hacker" who treated embassy officials poorly.

"When you're given shelter, cared for and provided food, you don't denounce the owner of the house," Moreno said to applause at an event outside Quito.

"From now on we'll be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments," he added. "We are tolerant, calm people, but we're not stupid."

Other Ecuadorian officials in Quito accused supporters of WikiLeaks and two Russian hackers of trying to destabilize the country as the standoff with Assange intensified recently.

Romo said a close collaborator of WikiLeaks had traveled with former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino this year to several countries  including Peru, Spain and Venezuela  to try to undermine the Ecuadorian government. She also said a person close to Assange had been detained at Quito's airport trying to fly to Japan. The person, who she did not identify, is accused of conspiring against the Ecuadorian government.

Later Thursday, a senior Ecuadorian official said a Swedish software developer living in Quito had been arrested at the airport as authorities attempt to dismantle a blackmail ring that in recent days had threatened to retaliate against Moreno.

The official identified the person as Ola Bini. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity and didn't provide any additional details about Bini.

On a blog, a Swedish man of the same name describes himself as a software developer working in Quito for the Center for Digital Autonomy, a group based in Ecuador and Spain focused on privacy, security and cryptography issues. It makes no mention of any affiliation with Wikileaks.

On Twitter earlier Thursday, Bini called claims by the Interior Minister that Russian hackers and someone close to Wikileaks were working inside Ecuador "very worrisome" news and said events looked like a "witch hunt."

But former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa called Moreno's decision "cowardly," accusing him of retaliating against Assange for WikiLeaks spreading allegations about an offshore bank account purportedly linked to Moreno's family and friends.

On Wednesday, WikiLeaks accused Ecuador's government of an "extensive spying operation" against him. It alleges that meetings with lawyers and a doctor in the embassy over the past year were secretly filmed.

Speaking in the U.K. Parliament after the arrest, British Prime Minister Theresa May said it showed that "no one is above the law."

Moreno appeared to suggest a swift extradition to the U.S. was unlikely.

"In line with our strong commitment to human rights and international law, I requested Great Britain to guarantee that Mr. Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty," Moreno said. "The British government has confirmed it in writing, in accordance with its own rules."

Edward Snowden, the former security contractor who leaked classified information about U.S. surveillance programs, called Assange's arrest a blow to media freedom.

"Images of Ecuador's ambassador inviting the U.K.'s secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher of  like it or not  award-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books," Snowden tweeted from Russia, which has granted him permission to stay there while he is wanted by the U.S. "Assange's critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom."

___

Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan and Gregory Katz in London; Joshua Goodman in Caracas, Venezuela; Gonzalo Solano in Quito, Ecuador; and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Follow AP's coverage of the arrest of WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange at https://www.apnews.com/WikiLeaks
Washington (AFP) - Using cryptography and virtual drop boxes, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks created a revolutionary new model for media to lure massive digitized leaks from whistleblowers, exposing everything from US military secrets to wealthy tax-dodgers' illicit offshore accounts.

Assange's arrest in London Thursday on a US extradition request to face charges of computer crimes could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks.

But his legacy will live long in the world's media.

News outlets and journalists everywhere can now offer to potential sources encrypted apps and secure virtual mailboxes to receive secrets that were once divulged by discreet whispers, furtive phone calls and unmarked manila envelopes.

Skilled at hacking and cryptography -- and motivated by a deep distrust of traditional institutions -- Australia-born Assange took a cypherpunk's libertarian streak to the challenge of government secrecy.

In 2006 he built an online platform that offered an anonymous, encrypted path to leak computerized files without fear of exposure.

- 'We liberated cryptography' -

Leaks have forever been crucial currency in journalism. But no one had before created a convenient, relatively easy-to-use electronic drop box that could almost instantly, with absolute secrecy, take delivery of gigabytes of documents.

And he did it at a ripe time, as the connected world emerged and social media took off.

For Assange, it was the democratization of powers that had before belonged to governments alone. "Cryptography was then the exclusive property of states," he wrote in 2013.

"By writing our own software and disseminating it far and wide we liberated cryptography, democratized it and spread it through the frontiers of the new internet."

WikiLeaks' first release in December 2006 was an apparent assassination order by a Somali rebel leader that may or may not have been authentic.

But it drew attention. Over the next year, WikiLeaks obtained documents baring the Kenyan leader's corruption, the secret operating rules for the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and offshore banking records from a Swiss bank.

Story continues

It began scooping mainstream media on stories from secret climate discussions to Iran's nuclear activities and Icelandic banking fraud.

- The Manning files -

In 2010 US army intelligence official Chelsea Manning -- a transgender woman then known as Bradley -- began secretly feeding hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks.

They showed possible war crimes by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a never-before-seen video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 18 people, including civilians and two Reuters journalists.

The stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream.

Assange partnered with The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and others to help sort through and make sense of the Manning material. WikiLeaks won awards and Assange was put on the cover of Time magazine.

"What WikiLeaks demonstrated was the potential for a stateless transparency organization to get around the ability of the most powerful governments in the world to suppress information," said Micah Sifry, author of a 2011 book on WikiLeaks.

- WikiLeaks copycats -

Almost as soon as he hit that peak, Assange's star began to fade.

Political pressure to counter WikiLeaks was huge. A multi-country effort got major credit card and payment firms to cut WikiLeaks' financial lifeline of donations.

And he began to fall out with collaborators, a victim of his domineering personality that made WikiLeaks a one-man show, and his insistence that leaked material be published unedited, including that information that could harm people -- soldiers in the field, human rights activists and others.

But by 2012 others were already adopting his model of setting up encrypted, anonymous paths for leakers to hand over documents.

WikiLeaks copycat sites opened in different countries. Journalists became trained in the use of encryption and secret file transfers.

"Exposing the secrets of the US government was a powerful signal that nobody could keep information under control in the internet age," said Sifry.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden did not deliver his trove of hundreds of thousands of top-secret intelligence and military documents to a media drop-box in 2013.

But he used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize to communicate with the journalists he collaborated with.

In 2013 the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had aided WikiLeaks with financing, developed a new anonymous drop box free for anyone to use: SecureDrop.

The New Yorker, an early adopter, explained its value to leakers: "As it's set up, even we won't be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won't be able to tell them."

SecureDrop is important to the most successful WikiLeaks-like operation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In recent years it has obtained from leakers millions of financial account files detailing money laundering and tax avoidance from offshore banking centers -- the "Panama Papers" and "Paradise Papers."

The top of the ICIJ's web page offers links to SecureDrop and other encrypted tools for sharing information.

And it has one simple invitation for its users: "Leak to us."
Attorney General William Barr dared to use the s-word.

He said in congressional testimony that the Trump campaign had been spied on by the U.S. government. Pressed by incredulous Senate Democrats, he clarified: I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.

Spying has a negative connotation, so perhaps surveilling would be the better way to put it. But a key question is indeed whether there was improper surveillance of the campaign, as Barr stated at another point in the hearing.

Barr is committed to reviewing the conduct of the Russia investigation, which is getting denounced as an outrage by his critics. But why shouldnt the attorney general seek to understand his departments role in the high-stakes investigative melodrama of the past two years?

The Mueller probe was a national trauma. Its boosters didnt experience it as such, of course. They enjoyed it and played it up and hoped for the very worst. But it cast a shadow over the White House, occupied an inordinate share of the nations political attention, and saddled innocent people with large legal bills.

And for what? To establish that the far-fetched theory that the Russians coordinated with the Trump campaign indeed wasnt true, and to take a pass on pronouncing one way or the other whether President Donald Trump allegedly obstructed justice?

You dont have to be a deep-state conspiracy theorist to want to know how this got started and why.

We should try to find out as reliably as possible how much FBI and other officials were legitimately freaked out by some of the Russia connections of Trump associates, and how much they were acting in an amateurish panic and out of partisan malice.

How was it that a garbage anti-Trump dossier gathered by an exforeign spy from shadowy Russian sources came to set so much of the media narrative about the Russia probe, and evidently have an outsize influence on the thinking and the actions of the FBI?

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It may be that without the dossier, there wouldnt have been a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant against Carter Page. Barr is surely at least thinking of Page when he talks of spying. Its true that the FISA warrant on Page was approved after he had left the campaign, but the surveillance would have extended both forward and backward in time, to likely include campaign communications.

And the FBI obviously had the campaign in mind. It wrote in the FISA application, The FBI believes that the Russian governments efforts are being coordinated with Page & perhaps other individuals associated with [Trumps] campaign.

How was it that the FBI opened an investigation against the president when he fired its director? And why did it apparently think it could make an obstruction-of-justice case against Trump for acting within his lawful powers?

In the aftermath of the firing of James Comey, why did Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appoint Robert Mueller, in part, to investigate the cashiering of Comey that he was party to, and without specifying the crime that the president was being investigated for, as required under the special-counsel regulation?

The appointment of Mueller was so momentous because once you have a special counsel, even a highly professional one, you have an investigative beast roaming the landscape that will inevitably command an enormous amount of attention and find crimes to prosecute even if they are removed from his original charge.

Of course, this is one of the reasons why Mueller had such fervent support among Trumps detractors. But there is no reason that Barr should share their assumptions, or their horror at the idea of finding out more about the investigation that they portrayed as the single most important event in American public life.

Maybe the s-word is indeed too pejorative. By getting as much information out publicly about the roots of the Russia probe, Barr can let people decide for themselves.

 2019 by King Features Syndicate

More from National Review
For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  April 12, 2019 Stocks in this weeks article include Medifast Inc. MED, Foot Locker Inc. FL, Amedisys Inc. AMED, Comfort Systems USA Inc. FIX and CarGurus Inc. CARG. Kevin Matras screens for companies showing their 'first' profit and explains why they are ones to watch.



Screen of the Week written by Kevin Matras of Zacks Investment Research:



5 Top-Ranked Stocks to Play DuPont Analysis

Return on equity is one of the most coveted metrics by investors. The metric enables investors to differentiate between a profit-churner and a profit-burner. It is a profitability ratio that measures the earnings that a company generates from its equity.

To shortlist these gems, one can look at the DuPont technique to analyze basic ROE at an advanced level. Here is how DuPont breaks down ROE into its different components:

ROE = Net Income/Equity

Net Income / Equity = (Net Income / Sales) * (Sales / Assets) * (Assets / Equity)

ROE = Profit Margin * Asset Turnover Ratio * Equity Multiplier

Why Use DuPont?

Although one cant play down the importance of normal ROE calculation, the fact remains that it doesnt always provide a complete picture. The DuPont analysis, on the other hand, allows investors to assess the elements that play a dominant role in any change in ROE. It can help investors to segregate companies having higher margins from those having high turnover. For example, high-end fashion brands generally survive on high margin as compared with retail goods, which rely on higher turnover.

In fact, it also sheds light on the companys leverage status, which can go a long way in selecting stocks poised for gains. A lofty ROE could be due to the overuse of debt. Thus, the strength of a company can be misleading if it has a high debt load.

So, an investor confined solely to an ROE perspective may be confused if he or she has to judge between two stocks of equal ratio. This is where DuPont analysis wins over and spots the better stock.

Story continues

Investors can simply do this analysis by taking a look at the companys financials. However, looking at financial statements of each company separately can be a tedious task. Screening tools like Zacks Research Wizard can come to your rescue and help you shortlist the stocks that look impressive with a DuPont analysis.

For the rest of this Screen of the Week article please visit Zacks.com at:https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/378214/5-TopRanked-Stocks-to-Play-DuPont-Analysis



Disclosure: Officers, directors and/or employees of Zacks Investment Research may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material. An affiliated investment advisory firm may own or have sold short securities and/or hold long and/or short positions in options that are mentioned in this material.

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Strong Stocks that Should Be in the News

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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Comfort Systems USA, Inc. (FIX) : Free Stock Analysis Report



MEDIFAST INC (MED) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Zacks Investment Research
SYDNEY, April 12 (Reuters) - New Zealand's state pension fund will sell off investments of NZ$19 million ($13 million) in makers of weapons outlawed by tough new firearms laws following the country's worst peacetime mass shooting, it said on Friday.

Lawmakers voted almost unanimously this week to ban military-style semi-automatic guns and assault rifles less than a month after a lone gunman used them to kill 50 worshippers in attacks on mosques in Christchurch.

"Companies involved in the manufacture of civilian automatic and semi-automatic firearms, magazines or parts prohibited under New Zealand law have been excluded from the NZ$41 billion NZ Super Fund," the fund said on its website.

The move was a response to the new law, it said, and identified holdings in seven companies to be affected by its decision, including American Outdoor Brands Corp, Sturm, Ruger & Co Inc and NOF Corp.

The others are Vista Outdoor Inc, OLIN Corp , Richemont and Daicel Corp.

Others may be identified in future, added the fund, which gave no timeframe for its divestments.

Makers of tobacco and some other munitions are already excluded from its investment mandate.

Authorities have charged Australian Brenton Tarrant, 28, a suspected white supremacist, with 50 counts of murder following the Christchurch attacks. ($1=1.4839 New Zealand dollars) (Reporting by Tom Westbrook; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. and Panasonic Corp. are reportedly tempering expansion plans for the battery gigafactory theyve plugged billions into the last few years, deepening concerns about demand for the carmakers electric vehicles.

The maker of the Model 3 sedan said Thursday that while its going to continue making new investment as needed in its plant outside Reno, Nevada, existing equipment may be able to produce far more output than previously estimated. Panasonic said it will study additional investment in collaboration with Tesla, following a Nikkei report that said the two had frozen spending plans.

Tesla shares slumped as much as 3.8 percent Thursday, extending their drop this year to 20 percent. A record decline in deliveries during the first quarter stoked concerns about slackening demand for the Model 3, the companys newest and least-expensive car. While Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk last week reiterated a forecast for 360,000 to 400,000 vehicle deliveries in 2019, investors remain cautious given Teslas history of missing ambitious projections.

The environment for Tesla is getting tougher and there are question marks on Teslas ability to deliver sustainable profits, said Sven Diermeier, a Frankfurt-based analyst at Independent Research GmbH. Other major manufacturers are readying their own electric lineups, and are able to cross-finance battery cars with the higher returns from combustion-engine cars.

Tesla and Panasonic had intended to raise capacity at the gigafactory by about 50 percent by 2020, but financial problems have forced a re-think, the Nikkei said, without citing its sources.

A Tesla spokesman said both companies continue to invest substantial funds into the plant, but that the focus has shifted to boosting output using existing lines and equipment. The maker of electric cars and storage batteries said cell supply remains a production constraint, including for its Powerwall and Powerpack products.

Story continues

The Nikkei also reported that Panasonic intends to suspend planned investment in Teslas battery and electric vehicle plant in Shanghai, and instead provide technical support and a small number of batteries from the existing gigafactory.

But its unclear whether Panasonics involvement in the Shanghai plant was ever formalized. Bloomberg News reported last month that Tesla was in talks with top Chinese battery producer Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. about supplying cells for the Model 3 cars it will assemble at the new factory.

In a Feb. 19 regulatory filing, Tesla said it expected to need additional production from the Nevada gigafactory to support the start of Model 3 manufacturing at the plant in Shanghai.

Teslas financial strength has been a concern for investors. The company had to pay off a $920 million convertible bond in February, which ate into the about $3.7 billion of cash and equivalents it held at the end of last year.

Musk warned in late February that Tesla probably would lose money during the just-ended first quarter, and the carmaker has a $566 million note coming due in November. The company, which reports first-quarter earnings on April 24, has said it has enough money to pay off debt obligations with cash flow.

The Model 3 has been available in the U.S. since 2017, though the pace of sales in the market has slowed following the shrinking of federal tax incentives, and the company has struggled to get the car quickly into Europe and China. In the March quarter, Tesla delivered 63,000 vehicles, down from 90,966 in the final three months of 2018.

Panasonic President Kazuhiro Tsugas bet on Tesla has also been a source of concern as the carmaker went through what Musk called production hell ramping up output of the Model 3 last year. While production at the gigafactory in Nevada has improved and sales have climbed, the business has yet to become a major contributor to earnings.

(Updates with information from Tesla 10-K filing in seventh paragraph.)

--With assistance from Anthony Palazzo, Elisabeth Behrmann and Dana Hull.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net;Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net;Anthony Palazzo at apalazzo@bloomberg.net

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange languished Friday in a British jail at the outset of a likely lengthy extradition battle following the dramatic end to his seven-year stay in Ecuador's London embassy. Within hours of police hauling him out of the embassy on Thursday, the 47-year-old Australian appeared in court for breaching his British bail conditions in 2012 and to face a subsequent US extradition request. A legal source familiar with the case told AFP that Assange was being held at Belmarsh prison in southeast London. One of eight "high security" jails in England, it can also hold prisoners "requiring specific management arrangements because of their public and media profile", according to a 2018 inspection report. Assange was remanded in custody Thursday at a hearing in front of a London judge, who pronounced him guilty of disobeying his bail terms by fleeing to the embassy in June 2012. He could receive up to a year in prison when sentenced at an as yet undetermined later date. His separate extradition case on charges of computer hacking is set to be next heard by video-link at Westminster Magistrates' Court on May 2. However, under British law the United States has until June 12 to submit full extradition papers. Assange's London lawyer Jennifer Robinson confirmed he would contest the long-feared attempt to try him there. "He's obviously going to fight extradition and fight it hard," Robinson told BBC radio on Friday, adding she had visited her client in a court cell after the hearing when he thanked supporters and said: "I told you so." "The bigger question is... why is the United States seeking his extradition over publishing truthful information." - Extradition 'should be opposed' - Assange sought asylum at Ecuador's embassy in London's chic Knightsbridge district after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault allegations. Inside the red-brick building he lived a sparse existence in a flat measuring 18 square metres (190 square feet) with just a bed, shower, computer, treadmill and microwave. Britain spent 13.2 million up to 2015 on policing up to 2015, maintaining a 24-hour guard at the embassy's doors in the first year. Relations with his Ecuadoran hosts gradually soured and new pro-US President Lenin Moreno on Thursday pulled his asylum and permitted British police to remove Assange. Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed the arrest as showing "no one is above the law". But opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a leftist stalwart, called for the government to block the extradition. "The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed," he said on Twitter. May's comments prompted a furious reaction on Twitter from Assange's mother, who lives in Australia. She accused the British prime minister of "trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dog's breakfast by cheering on the thuggish, brutal, unlawful arrest of my courageous, tortured multi-award winning journalist son". - Years-long extradition cases - Legal experts said the case could be stuck in British courts for up to two years and, if appealed, potentially go all the way to the European Court of Justice. "The chances of him winning (against) extradition are low," Ben Keith, a British barrister specialising in the field, told AFP. "We extradite most people to the US." Critics of the move, including WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson, have warned the US could add more charges once Assange is extradited. But Keith said once they have filed their formal request within the next 65 days, American officials would be limited to those charges. "There's specific international extradition law protection that prevents you from charging someone with additional (offences)," he added. Assange supporters, including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, rallied outside Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday. Inside the courtrooom, judge Michael Snow described him as a "narcissist" and suggested he could consent to the extradition to "get on with your life". Previous comparable cases, involving accused hackers Lauri Love and Gary McKinnon, took between five and 10 years but eventually resulted in their extraditions to the US being blocked. Within hours of police hauling him out of the embassy, the 47-year-old Australia appeared in court for breaching his British bail conditions back in 2012 Timeline on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, arrested by the British police on April 11
COPYRIGHT NZCIVAIR

All information and photographs used on this blog are copyright to NZCIVAIR.


Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!

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The weird tech from SVU lives on.

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lol those episodes were on again not that long ago and he just so fucking weird.

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lmaooo i watched shameless after seeing those and it took me awhile to not hold a grudge against mickey for that alone.

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Every update I see of this show since I stopped watching it lets me know I made the right choice.

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What the fok is going on with this show.

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he can play as many roles as possible but I'll always associate him with Max Keeble's Big Move

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that's all I think about when I see him

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I ship Mickey and Ian so I'll definitely be watching but hopefully it's the last season



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ugh now i have to start watching again. idgaf about shameless anymore but i think noel is a really engaging actor. he's one of the few actors i think are capable of portraying complex, layered emotion and tbh, he deserves better than season 10 of shameless.

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No Fiona no1curr.



I want Mandy back & to see what became of Karen.

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same

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i thought this said he was returning to shameless for $10. i was mildly intrigued lol

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Guess now that Emmy is gone, they offered him a nice salary bump... #showtimeaintshit

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OMGG OMG OMG

theyve won me back

they mustve given him Emmys salary

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The shippers must be losing their shit

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what's the endgame here though

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i think seasons 1-4 remain some of my favorite tv. i stopped after 5 and never looked back. but this will probably bring me back. i think. idk, i hated everyone BUT mickey by the end of season 5. and from stuff i have read for 6-9, all the gallaghers still suck.



i am still dreading noels show on cbs. its so not my kind of show but i watched 2 turtle movies for him.

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lol

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he looks old

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In a new interview with Trevor Noah, Oprah discussed her decision to do the "After Neverland" interview with Wade Robson, James Safechuck, and Dan Reed about the documentary "Leaving Neverland." She said that when she first watched the documentary she realized people wouldn't understand that it's not about one person, it's about the pattern and seduction of sexual abuse, but it was important enough to raise awareness that she would take on the hateration. Michael Jackson stans have been claiming that Oprah has gone back on the documentary and deleted the After Neverland interview (they are using fans' or non official uploads of the interview on YouTube getting taken down for copyright as "receipts"), but the documentary is still there on OWN Trevor Noah asked Oprah is she ever wavered, particulary after Dan Reed conceded on twitter that there was an issue with the timeline of James Safechuck's abuse because a Neverland train station hadn't been built yet. Oprah said that she hasn't wavered because when you're in the midst of trauma, you may not remember the exact time. She says she's never won a case because when you put a girl on the witness stand and she can't remember if the abuse was on a Wednesday or Thursday, she's automatically discredited. People think that if the victim doesn't remember the exact day and time, it automatically didn't happen, but she has been through that and it doesn't work that way.Michael Jackson stans have also been saying that Oprah condemns Michael Jackson, but is still friends with Harvey Weinstein. Oprah has actually condemned Harvey Weinstein and talked about how he was a bully

Paul McCartney on Michael Jackson's "dark side": "Nobody knew about the other side thats shown in that movie. It makes it difficult. I can understand why people dont want to listen to his music anymore." https://t.co/nJ9HmxDhJA pic.twitter.com/rR0T6CWbKf  cameron adams (@cameron_adams) March 25, 2019

Id really love to be able to hire a forty-something plumber to work for the MJ defenders for awhile and then have him say, Hey, I never really had a childhood and purely love children and I want your 9 year-old son to come sleep over at my house and then watch their faces.  Richard Marx (@richardmarx) April 7, 2019

here is my blog post from yesterday explaining why my floor music and routine changed! subscribe and check it out! @BhndTheMadness https://t.co/iG3zVZsevl  Katelyn Ohashi (@katelyn_ohashi) April 8, 2019

Sam Smith's stories on instagram are utterly disappointing  pic.twitter.com/Y9Cg2DqOjJ  Erie Fr  (@EriettiF) March 11, 2019

I just watched #LeavingNeverland. Wade Robson and James Safechuck are very brave. If more people feel empowered to speak out against sex crimes the abusers wont be able to get away with it anymore.  Heather Graham (@imheathergraham) April 5, 2019

10 Undeniable Facts About the Michael Jackson Sexual-Abuse Allegations https://t.co/ibYH6c5vlB  shonda rhimes (@shondarhimes) March 4, 2019

Just because you read it in a magazine or see it on the tv screen dont make it factual. -MJ



I was at Neverland. Until weve heard from the accuser AND the accused, we should withhold judgment. pic.twitter.com/jfKvi0Tw91  Dan Karaty (@DanKaraty) March 5, 2019

Paul McCartney said in a radio interview Obviously Michael was a great singer, a great artist and a great dancer. For years weve loved that. Nobody knew about the other side thats shown in that movie.When I knew him he was a really nice guy. I didnt know about the dark side. It makes it very difficult to look back on the memories which were good memories, to think, oh boy, there was other stuff going on.For me, Im OK to just stay with the personal memories I had of him. The other side is the other side. I dont know about that.I can understand why people are very disappointed in him and angry that he had the dark side.Rapper Boosie said that he loved Michael Jackson's music, but he was a sexual predator. He says that this has been known and his own dad told him Michael was a predator. He says that if 10 people accuse you of the same thing, at least one or two have to be true. He says there's something not right when you spend all your time with little boys lounging in pajamas. He also says that the parents can be blamed for hustling because they knew their kids were freaks and that Michael was a freak. The interviewer asks if he thinks little 7 years olds are freaks and he says yes. Dan Reed also shared this interview with a Russian caption that translates to "I can't help myself" , but OP personally does not understand why he shared it... I get that there's a celeb that believes MJ is predator, but also sharing someone who calls the little boys freaks as well is not it.Richard Marx, singer-songwriter of his own song "Right Here Waiting" and NSYNC's "This I Promise You" says that he would love to be able to hire a plumber in his 40s to work for MJ defenders and watch their faces if the plumber said he wanted their 9 year old son to have a sleepover with him because he never had a childhood and purely loved children.Katelyn Ohashi, UCLA gymnast who went viral with her floor routine that included music from Michael Jackson, the Jackson 5, Janet Jackson, and Tina Turner , made a blog post about the choice to change her floor routine. Her new floor routine removed any Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 music and added Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)." She said that her own floor coach (Jordyn Wieber) and several of her teammates are survivors of sexual abuse and she stands by and supports survivors. She also says that the goal of her floor routine has always been to spark joy and if Michael Jackson music makes just one person uncomfortable, she doesn't want that. She had also been bothering Miss Val, UCLA gymnastics coach, since last summer to get two floor routines and she wanted a routine with all female artists.Sam Smith posted instagram stories urging everyone to watch Leaving Neverland and applauding the survivors and their familes for their strength and bravery.Actress Heather Graham said Wade and James are very brave and that she hopes more people are empowered to speak out against sex crimes, so abusers won't be able to get away with it anymore.Cris Judd, dancer, choreographer, and Jennifer Lopez's ex-husband, posted a message of love and support for his friend, Wade Robson. Cris was also the lead dancer on Michael Jackson's HIStory tour. In Cris' comments there was also support for Wade from Chucky Klapow, one of the choreographers for High School Musical and one of the dancers chosen for Michael Jackson's This Is It tour, and Tricia Miranda, a dancer and choreographer who choreographed Missy Elliot's 2015 Super Bowl appearance and danced and choreographed for Beyonce as well as other artists.Shonda Rhimes shared Maureen Orth's article "10 Undeniable Facts About the Michael Jackson Sexual-Abuse Allegations."Dan Karaty, dancer, choreographer, and reality TV judge, who was a friend and collaborator of Wade Robson, posted Michael Jackson's song "Tabloid Junkie" and said that we should withhold judgement until we've heard from both the accuser and accused. He also did an interview with PageSix . He said he watched the documentary and felt ill. He lived with Wade Robson and his mom Joy (Joy was also his first manager) for a year and a half when he moved to LA in his 20s. He says that Wade eventually opened up to him about how much Michael meant to him and what an inspiration he was to him and never talked about abuse or anything negative. He says he even got to go to dinner with Michael at Neverland with Wade and Wade's family. He says Michael was nothing but gracious and interested in his guests dreams'. He says accusers should be given the chance to speak out, but there also needs to be due process and the problem is that Michael is dead, so he's not here to defend himself.
Good.



Edited at 2019-04-12 04:29 pm (UTC)

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wait, so he hasn't?



Is he rich? bc if he doesnt get charged, maybe they could bleed those bank accounts :/

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I think he was charged with battery but now that his victim has died they're filing new charges

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As he should be.

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This was incredibly wild. Disgusting beyond words. Like, what an asshole. RIP Mr. Hernandez

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GOOD. Let this be a lesson to all aggressive drivers out there. And there a lot of them.

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Yea people need to try to let things go more when driving, it's not worth it.

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Exactly! I rarely even beep at other cars unless its for safety reasons or the person is clearly on their phone texting. You never know who is in the other car and what theyre capable of

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Someone literally tried to kill me cause I wouldn't let him cut me off once.



I was making a left turn in the far left lane, and someone in the lane to the right of me kept trying to cut in front at a light. It didn't happen, and after turning left we got on the highway. He then tried to run my car off the road, actually ramming his car into mine on the passengers' side. I was able to catch control of my car thank god, and nothing happened outside of some paint from his car rubbing on my car but it will never not be one of the scariest moments in my life.

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Good, fuck him. Was the guy in the wrong to go up to Lyles car? Yeah, but Lyle had no business running out to punch Hernandez in the face as he was backing his way to his car. AND he just like left him lying on the street..

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GOOD TBH



i don't drive because i get awful anxiety after being in a passenger in a number of car accidents, and shit like this only solidifies my reasoning (i'm also lucky enough to have lived in large cities with accessible public tranist). i don't understand how people can have so much anger inside them.

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Thanks to CCTV for receipts on his undeniable behavior thru and thru. may he get served hard

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Excellent. I hope they go for the max. Fuck him.

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He's an American Citizen. The news here said that the guy that died got out of the car first and threaten Lyle and his family first.

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obviously do not go up to someone and threaten them--but also don't punch them in the head over it. and then run away.

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I mean, yeah. I just wrote how the Mexican media (and his lawyers) was spinning the whole situation.

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Unless the guy had a weapon, what was he going to do if Lyle just stayed in the car? If someone gets out to yell at you, you don't also get out and escalate it to a physical level.

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what's your point?

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You can watch the video Lyle had to run back passing another vehicle to punch the man.

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Yeah he's an American. I was like wtf too.

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and not mention of him being American too.







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This idiot is from my home state.

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https://youtu.be/m0YwZ2_nCgg



Edited at 2019-04-12 05:06 pm (UTC) Any time someone rides my ass and Im tempted to retaliate, I just think of this video. Anger and speed are never worth the consequences. Hell will find a way to repay you

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I used to just driven even slower, then once a guy got absolutely furious with me. And when we stopped at a red light he was yelling at me and telling me to lower the window.

Since then I've been more cautious.



Wow at that video, heartbreaking.

How can the girl just be so cold?



Edited at 2019-04-12 05:45 pm (UTC)

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Let this be a lesson to my 67 year old mother and her unneeded road rage.

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my sister has such road rage. she was in an accident last week and while the police say she wasn't at fault i definitely believe she was speeding and is a distracted driver. she's been in 5 accidents in 10 years.

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That's awful. I hope I never come across her, lol.

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from the video it didn't seem he intended to kill him? just punch him/knock him out? wouldn't that be manslaughter?

not saying what he did was right, but I don't see intent here.

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He left the scene, took a plane and flew to Mexico.

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If he has stayed at the scene and tried to help the guy or something after he went down its possible it would have been mansalughter, but the dickhead immediately fled and flew to another country.

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fleeing is usually a different offense though, separate from the homicide. like you can charge him with manslaughter/murder and then tack on the "fleeing a crime scene" charge if it applies.



Edited at 2019-04-12 09:36 pm (UTC)

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The fact that he was far away but chose to run back to this guy to punch him - when he wasn't in danger since, again, there was a significant amount of distance between the two - would push this to murder. In some states it could even count as pre-meditated bc some courts have ruled that pre-meditation can take just seconds, so the fact that he willfully went back to hit him? The case for murder is strong. You have to reasonably know that with his size, strength and momentum a punch like that is capable of killing someone.

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Friday, April 12th, 2019

Despite losses on Thursday, oil is set to close out a sixth consecutive week of price gains. The market has been steadily tightening for quite some time, but the instability in Libya this week was the main contributor. Demand is mixed but the tightness of the market is going to win out, Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at consultants Energy Aspects Ltd., said in a Bloomberg television interview.

OPEC production falls 534,000 bpd. OPEC production in March fell by 534,000 bpd, led by a massive 324,000-bpd reduction from Saudi Arabia, putting overall output at just below 9.8 million barrels per day (mb/d), well below its 10-mb/d ceiling as part of the OPEC+ deal. Meanwhile, Iraq lowered output by 126,000 bpd, and Venezuela saw a sharp 289,000-bpd decline in output, due in large part to power outages. On the other hand, Libya saw 196,000 bpd come back online, owing to the ramp up of the Sharara oil field. However, fighting in Libya now puts those gains at risk.

IEA: Oil supply and demand fundamentals relatively bullish. The IEA said that supply declines and steady demand have helped tighten up the oil market. However, the agency noted that there are some concerns about demand, and even as the agency maintained its 1.4-mb/d demand growth estimate, it conceded that there are downside risks to that forecast. Related: Is This The End Of The OPEC Deal?

ExxonMobil in talks on floating LNG in Israel. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) is reportedly in talks with Noble Energy (NYSE: NBL) and Delek Drilling (OTC: DKDRF) on building a floating LNG gas ship to help develop the Leviathan gas field in Israeli waters. Such a project would allow gas to be exported beyond the region and it would also avoid having to build infrastructure to connect the field to Egypt.

Investors see climate change as threat to profits. Investment advisory firm Mercer LLC says that climate change could cut into profits in entire sectors. While coal, oil and gas lose out if the world gets serious about addressing carbon emissions, sectors such as industrials and agriculture could lose out if there is inaction. Asset owners should consider climate change at every stage of the investment process, from investment beliefs, policy and process to portfolio construction decisions, said Deb Clarke, global head of investment research for Mercer.

New gas pipeline could help Permian, and Mexico. Kinder Morgan received a greenlight from federal regulators to begin construction on its Sierrita Compressor Expansion, which would expand the existing Sierrita Gas Pipeline from Arizona to Mexico. More capacity could ease gas bottlenecks in the Permian.

IMF downgrades global GDP. The IMF warned about slower economic growth in an April 9 report, downgrading estimated GDP growth to 3.3 percent this year, down from 3.6 percent in 2018. Previously, the Fund expected growth of 3.5 percent.

Trump issues executive order on pipelines. President Trump signed an executive order intended to streamline the permitting of new energy infrastructure, an effort to strip states of their authority to regulate projects. The effect of the order is unclear since many legal experts think that the order cannot get around federal Clean Water Act legislation that grants states such authority.

Related: European Markets Defy The Biggest Oil Rally In A Decade

Texas flaring enough gas to power the entire state. The Permian natural gas crisis has become so acute that oil producers were flaring gas at the end of 2018 in volumes equivalent to Texas entire residential gas demand, according to Bloomberg. The lack of pipelines has resulted in a glut of gas, but because drillers are focusing exclusively on oil, the associated gas continues to come out of the ground. With nowhere to go, natural gas prices have crashed to zero and companies have increased their rates of flaring. Its a black eye for the Permian basin, Pioneer Natural Resources Chief (NYSE: PXD) CEO Scott Sheffield said at a conference at Columbia University this week. The state, the pipeline companies and the producers -- we all need to come together to figure out a way to stop the flaring.

Singapore said it will have enough supply for IMO regulations. Forthcoming regulations on marine fuels have raised fears that ship-owners may not have enough low-sulfur fuels, but Singapore, which is home to the worlds largest maritime refueling port, said that it will have ample supply when the IMO regulations take effect at the start of 2020.

Chevron to buy Anadarko for $33 billion. Chevron (NYSE: CVX) has agreed to purchase Anadarko Petroleum (NYSE: APC) for $33 billion in a cash-and-stock deal. The acquisition will boost Chevrons shale assets, as well as some offshore and natural gas plays. Chevron agreed to purchase all of Anadarkos shares at $65, a 39 percent premium. Chevron said it would dispose of $15 to $20 billion worth of assets between 2020 and 2022 as a result.

ExxonMobil accuses DOE of selling tainted oil from SPR. ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM) said that some oil it purchased from the federal governments strategic petroleum reserve (SPR) last year was tainted, containing extremely high levels of hydrogen sulfide, according to Bloomberg. That follows complaints from other companies, and raises the concern that the SPR may not offer the supply assurance that the government and the market have long thought.

U.S. approves 40 percent more drilling permits under Trump. The U.S. government has approved nearly 40 percent more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in 2018 because of an automated online system, helping to clear a backlog, according to Reuters. Notably, however, the online system was setup in the last days of the Obama administration. Meanwhile, Politico reports that the Trump administration is considering opening up the eastern Gulf of Mexico near Florida to offshore drilling, a politically dangerous move that both parties have steered cleared from for a long time.

By Tom Kool for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The U.S. crude oil production juggernaut continues to move forward. In 2018, U.S. production increased 17 percent over the previous year in a dynamic that is impacting both geopolitics as well as setting a new course for American global diplomacy.

Annual U.S. crude oil production reached a record level of 10.96 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2018, 1.6 million b/d higher than 2017 levels. In December 2018, monthly U.S. crude oil production reached 11.96 million b/d, the highest monthly level of crude oil production in U.S. history, the EIA said on Tuesday. Moreover, U.S. crude oil production has increased significantly over the past 10 years, driven mainly by production from tight rock formations using horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, hence the U.S. shale oil revolution. The EIA now projects that U.S. crude oil production will continue to grow this year and in 2020, averaging 12.3 million b/d and 13.0 million b/d, respectively.

Lone Star state leads the pack

Not surprisingly, Texas is still leading U.S. production, similar to the lead it took up to the 1970s when the state was largely responsible for allowing the U.S. to play the then-role of global oil markets swing producer before ceding that role to a Saudi Arabia-led OPEC for the next four decades. Texas accounted for 40 percent of the national total oil production last year. The state has held the top position in nearly every year since 1970, the EIA added, with the brief exception of 1988, when Alaska produced more crude oil than Texas, and from 1999 through 2011, when production from the Federal Offshore Gulf of Mexico region was higher. Related: Is This The End Of The OPEC Deal?

Crude oil production in Texas averaged 4.4 million b/d in 2018 and reached a record-high monthly production level of 4.9 million b/d in December. Texass 2018 annual production increased almost 950,000 b/d. This growth has been largely driven by output in the Permian region in west Texas. For its part, Permian production represented nearly 60 percent of the total increase in overall U.S. oil output last year.

Latest data

Oil production increases in the Permian region, which spans parts of Texas and New Mexico, also drove a 215,000 b/d, or 45 percent production increase in New Mexico in 2018. This level was the second-largest state-level growth in 2018 and accounted for 13 percent of the total U.S. increase, setting a new annual record production level in New Mexico.

The EIA in its most recent Short Term Energy Outlook said yesterday that U.S. crude oil production averaged 12.1 million barrels per day (b/d) in March this year, up 0.3 million b/d from the February average. EIA also forecasts that U.S. crude oil production will average 12.4 million b/d in 2019 and 13.1 million b/d in 2020, with most of the growth coming from the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico.

Gathering oil markets headwinds

U.S. oil production for its part, is the main factor, along with global economic growth concerns, that is keeping global oil prices from spiking even higher than they have so far this year. Both global oil benchmark, London-traded Brent and U.S. benchmark, NYMEX-traded West Texas Intermediate (WTI) futures are hitting highs amid growing geopolitical turmoil as well as Saudi Arabia and the OPEC+ group of producers continuing to trim oil output in an effort to reduce global supplies further and keep upward pressure on prices. Oil prices hit a five-month high on Monday, with WTI surging above $64 per barrel and Brent topping $71 per barrel.

Counterweight

Stellar U.S. production is acting as a counterweight on the supply side of the global oil markets equation, offsetting, at least to a degree, geopolitical problems and more output reductions in Libya as that country is embroiled in fighting around Tripoli, as well as U.S. sanctions against Iran and Venezuela. Without strong U.S. oil production, prices would likely have maxed out north of $100/barrel by now, similar to 2008 when prices hit a record high above $140/barrel. Related: Shale Jobs In Jeopardy Despite Oil Price Rally

No win situation for Trump

On Monday, the Trump administration, in a move that pleased Saudi Arabia, labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a terror group, further increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran. "This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft, President Trump declared in a statement. The IRGC is the Iranian governments primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign." On Tuesday, Iran responded in kind. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani denounced the U.S. as the actual head of global terrorism, while labeling U.S. forces in the Middle East as a terror group.

What now remains to be seen for global oil markets is whether Trump will extend waivers for customers of Iranian oil. The president, however, has put himself in a no-win situation. If he grants more waivers as he did last fall, he will continue to create problems in his once cozy relations with Saudi Arabia, who was taken back last year when he granted the first set of waivers. However, in doing so he will add more barrels to global oil supply and help keep a lid on prices. If the president removes waivers for Iranian oil, then more barrels will be removed from global oil markets, with the knock-on effect of increasing both oil prices and gasoline prices at home just as the 2020 presidential election cycle kicks in.

By Tim Daiss for Oilprice.com

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ExxonMobil has raised concerns that part of the crude oil it bought from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) last year contained very high levels of the toxic hydrogen sulfidethe latest company to have complained about tainted crude from the U.S. emergency stockpile, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing emails it had obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The U.S. Department of Energy disputes the claims that it has been repeatedly selling crude tainted with dangerous levels of hydrogen sulfide, although it admitted that it had paid some US$1 million to clean up a contaminated cargo for PetroChina, Bloomberg reports. Some of the readings of the companies may have been spurious or contamination may have occurred during the shipping of the crude from the SPR to the companies, the Department of Energy told Bloomberg.

Exxon is not the first company to have complained of high levels of the toxic hydrogen sulfide in crude bought from the SPR. Last year, Reuters reported that Shell, Macquarie Group, and the U.S. trading arm of PetroChina had raised concerns about the toxic substance in U.S. government crude.

Apart from corroding refinery equipment, high levels of hydrogen sulfide are dangerous to humans, and many effects are seen even at low concentrations, according to the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Effects range from mild effects, such as headaches or eye irritation, to very serious consequences, including unconsciousness and death.



Related: Chevron To Buy Anadarko In $33B Deal

Chemical engineers told Bloomberg that the possible contamination in the SPR crude could have occurred when high-sulfur crudeput in the stockpile years agowas blended with oil that has been added more recently, or that bacteria may have grown in the caverns and transformed the sulfur in the sour crude into hydrogen sulfide.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, set up in the 1970s when the Arab oil embargo created a fuel crisis in the United States, held a total of 649.1 million barrels of crude oil as of April 5, 2019, including 254.6 million barrels of sweet crude and 394.5 million barrels of sour crude oil.

Renewed concerns over the quality of the U.S. strategic oil reserve could undermine the role of the emergency stockpile as a safeguard against shortages of sour crude or affect future sales out of the SPR, according to Bloomberg.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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Libyas oil production is under threat from renewed fighting between warring armed groups and the situation could become as bad as it was during the 2011 civil war, the National Oil Corporations chairman, Mustafa Sanalla, told the Financial Times in an interview.

I am afraid the situation could be much worse than 2011 because of the size of forces now involved, Sanalla told the FT, adding Unless the problem is solved very quickly, I am afraid this will affect our operations, and soon we will not be able to produce oil or gas.

The flare-up of inter-group violence took many by surprise as it came after comments from the commander of the Libyan National Army, General Khalifa Haftar that soon Libya will have a single government. The LNA is affiliated with the eastern government that the UN has not recognized but some took the comments to mean negotiations are on the table.

Instead of negotiations, the LNA advanced on Tripoli. Since then, fighting has been intensifying with no end of the violence in sight.

Sanalla called on the international community to step in and put an end to the violence but options are limited amid the deep division between warring factions, all of which are seeking control over the countrys oil.

The oil production must remain uninterrupted. If we lost 1.2m barrels a day of production at this time you cannot imagine what the global price would do, Sanalla said in the interview. Libya depends on its oil and gas exports for more than 95 percent of its exports and the consequences of the conflict spreading to oil and gas fields will in all likelihood be disastrous for an economy still reeling from the fallout of a bloody civil war.

The EU, which recognizes the Government of National Accord based in Tripoli, yesterday issued an official statement urging the sides in the conflict to stop the violence. Their heeding the call remains doubtful.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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North Korea is making its move into the renewable and other alternative energy business, according to a CNBC report.

North Korea, which has suffered under the weight of sanctions that have targeted the countrys need for energy, is now looking to solar, wind, tidal power, and even coal gasificationto generate power as coal, oil, fuel, and diesel imports to the blacklisted country are few and far in between.

Numerous reports have shown that North Korea has received oil shipments during the sanctions period, including ship to ship transfers, but the squeeze is on, and few countries are willing to export to North Korea in defiance of those sanctions.

In a rare move, North Korea has sent its engineers to both China and Russia to learn what they can about alternative energy, CNBC reports, in order to keep the lights onand the military runningat home.

Talks between North Korea and the United States thus far have proved rather unfruitful, and North Korea continues to ratchet up the ways in which it can get its hands on energy as it becomes increasingly desperate to find a work around to the sanctions. Innovative methods to skirting the UN sanctions include physically disguising tankers, identity fraud, night transfers, and manipulation of vessel AIS transmission systems.

Finding a domestic, secured, and lasting energy source may seem like a longshot, but if successful, could mean to end to further negotiations. North Korea has an abundance of coal to make gasification happen, if not the knowhow, but even if successful, it may not be sufficienteven when combined with tidal-generated energy which it also has the resources to do, to completely make up for what it loses in the sanctions.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

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European refiners are switching to Russian sour grades as U.S. sanctions have shrunk Venezuelas similar-grade exports, Reuters reports, adding that the Russian sour crude is getting increasingly expensive.

Citing sources from the trading industry, Reuters says the situation has been made worse by the fact that OPEC members have cut mainly their output of heavier, more sour grades under the OPEC+ agreement aimed at stimulating a price rise.

U.S. crude is not an alternative as it is overwhelmingly light and sweet, while refineries in Europe are equipped to process heavier grades as well as light ones to make refined products.

The news is the latest reminder that the world is tipping towards a shortage of heavy, sour crude, which is the staple kind of Venezuela crude and which many refineries need to produce fuels and other products.

Urals is anchored in a positive zone versus dated Brent and there is no indication it will fall to a discount any time soon, one of the Reuters sources said. Thats a complete reversal of the traditional differential between light and heavy oil, with the latter typically trading at a discount to Brent, a light blend.

Sanctions on Iran are further complicating life for European refiners as they have restricted exports of sour grades that Iran also produces in addition to its very popular superlight crude, also called condensate.

According to Reuters, U.S. sanctions have removed 800,000 bpd of heavy crude from the global market, leaving refiners scrambling for alternatives in a limited pool that, besides Russia and Middle Eastern producers, also includes Canada and Mexico as large producers of these grades of crude. The former is having its own problems with a pipeline capacity shortage and a production cut that has boosted prices, and the latter has yet to reverse a fall in oil production.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Venezuela has sent 1 million barrels of crude to Cuba despite pressure from the United States to suspend these shipments, Reuters reports citing a PDVSA document as well as shipping data.

The U.S. has been trying to plug Venezuelas oil exports through sanctions on PDVSA, which have effectively stopped the flow of Venezuelan oil to U.S. refiners, and through a suspension of diluent exports to Venezuela. The latest was sanctioning 23 vessels and two companies involved in shipments of oil to Cuba.

However, as TankerTrackers.com co-founder Samir Madani noted soon after these sanctions were announced, 31 of the 35 sanctioned vessels were not tankers at all but tug boats, as per the official list released by the Department of Treasury.

Reuters noted in its report that the two tankers used to make the latest shipment to Cuba were not on the sanctioned vessels list. One carried 400,000 barrels of crude and the other 600,000 barrels.

And thats not all. Besides the two tankers en route to Cuba with crude oil, there are three more waiting to load refined products, also bound for the Caribbean island.

Despite dropping oil production, Venezuelas still-standing government is adamant about honoring its barter deal with Cuba, which opposition leader Juan Guaido slammed as stealing and called for a suspension of shipments as the oil was more needed at home amid a string of devastating blackouts.

PDVSA, however, is under the control of military officials still loyal to the Maduro government, hence the continued shipments to Cuba, whose leader, Raul Castro has been equally adamant that the island will continue supporting its ideological ally.

Venezuelas oil production fell sharply last month, by 289,000 bpd to below 1 million bpdto 732,000 bpd in March, according to OPECs secondary sources cited in the latest edition of its closely watched Monthly Oil Market Report.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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Businessman Ifeanyi Ubah, senator who won the Anambra south election on the platform of a new party, Young Peoples Party (YPP), has dumped the party for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

This is coming four days after he denied plans to dump the new party.

APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole announced Ubahs membership of the ruling party at a meeting President Muhammadu Buhari had with APC senators-elect in Aso Rock on Monday night.

At a press conference on Friday, Ubah had said: I am not yet ready to defect from the YPP. I am still in the YPP. In party business, you cant determine what would happen next. Sometimes you wake up and you will start seeing one problem or the other. For me today, I am in the YPP and I hope to remain in the party.

The YPP is bringing a revolution of change to Nigeria. I must join a progressive group in the Senate since I cannot be alone. The YPP is the party to beat in this country. I won my election without the party having an office in any part of Anambra State.
Blessing Benedicta Daniel, a sex worker in the Modena Nord area of Italy, was murdered by an Italian suspected to be her client.

Benedictas identity was a problem following her murder early in April.

Forty-year-old Leopoldo Scalici handed himself over to the police and confessed he was the killer.

Her body was found on 7 April in a ditch.

In a reconstruction of the murder, in the night between Saturday and Sunday Scalici approached Blessing on the street, carried her in his van and took her to a secluded place for sex.

Modena Today guessed that Scalici must have been provoked into aggression after being dissatisfied by the sexual act.

Scalici said he hit the stranger at the head, using a heavy workbench vise. A blow that would have been lethal.

The exact place where the crime took place has not been disclosed, but it can be assumed that it took place in one of the various secluded pitches used by African prostitutes practicing in the industrial area of Modena Nord.

The killer has been arrested and autopsy has been ordered for Blessing Benedicta Daniel.

Post Views: 75
The FCT High Court in Maitama on Thursday fixed May 23 for hearing a N500,000 aggravated damages suit filed by Ali Konduga, a former spokesman of Boko Haram.

Mr Konduga dragged the Director-General of the State Security Services (SSS) and the Attorney-General of the Federation to court for alleged breach of his fundamental rights.

Through his counsel, Mohammed Tola, he filed a suit before Justice Samira Bature alleging that he was kept in detention for an extra three years after serving his three-year jail term before he was released in 2016.

Mr Konduga was convicted by a Chief Magistrates Court in Abuja and sentenced to three years imprisonment for criminal intimidation in 2011.

In the suit, Mr Konduga claimed that he was kept in the custody of the SSS instead of the conventional prison to serve his term because the government wanted him to serve as a key witness to prove a terrorism charge against Ali Ndume, a senator, in a Federal High Court in Abuja.

He further stated that as of the time of his release, he was never called to testify in the matter or any other matter.

Mr Konduga said that he was taken to the SSS office in Maiduguri on September 8, 2016, and was released on September 9, 2016, to his parents.

He claimed that the SSS offered his family the sum of N700,000 when he was released, and informed his family that the money was meant for his medical treatment.

The gesture, Mr Konduga said, showed that the SSS knew he was entitled to compensation for his illegal and unlawful detention, adding that the Service refused to pay him any other compensation except the N700,000.

He further stated that some individuals attacked him after he was released in 2016 and he sustained a head injury from the attack.

He added that as a result of the injury he sustained, the police from GRA Police Station, Maiduguri, Borno, took him into protective custody and later referred him to the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital in Maiduguri.

He, therefore, demanded for an unreserved public apology in three national newspapers.

Mr Konduga also prayed for an order of the court, directing the respondents to jointly and severally pay him N500,000 as aggravated damages and compensation for the illegal detention.

Post Views: 75
The Senate on Thursday urged the Federal Government to explore the option of dialogue to quicken the release of Leah Sharibu, who has been in Book Haram captivity since 2017.

This followed a Point of Order, by Sen. Shehu Sani( PRP-Kaduna)at plenary on Thursday.

Sharibu is one of the 115 pupils abducted from Science Secondary School Dapchi, Yobe State on February 19, 2018.

Referring to Order 43 of the Senate Standing Rule, under personal explanation, Sani said it was disheartening that fourteen months after captivity,

Leah Sharibu was still in the captivity of Boko Haram.

He also drew attention to the fate of some Chibok School girls still in Boko Haram captivity, five years after their abduction.

He said while there was no doubt that the federal government had intervened in ensuring release of some of the captors, but expressed concern that there seemed to be silence on release of the remaining. girls.

My problem is the silence of the political class. The silence of those that need to speak out.

The stand that we should not negotiate with terrorists is true but we have a hostage at hand and the life of that hostage is more important than any grandstanding.

 For every day this girl remains in the custody of her abductors, the cloud of guilt will continue to hang over Nigeria.

This girl has carried out her duty, if she is slain, her blood will speak on the conscience of this nation.

That is why I said even of nobody has the courage to speak about her and the others, I will.

I urge the federal government to do everything to secure Leahs release.

According to him, the captivity of the girls call for urgent action to ensure their release.

The lawmaker said, there appears to be a lull in terms of interest to secure the release of these girls.

What may be the most important strategy to be adopted in getting Leah and others out of captivity is the option of dialogue with the their abductors.

It has worked in so many other places where similar abductions have taken place like Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc, terrorised by the Talibans.

Though government cannot be said not to have taken actions in getting Leah and others released, but there is need for it to redouble and expedite actions in that direction.

This is for parents and relatives of the abductees be freed from the psychological trauma they must have been facing and for the abductees to know that they have a country that cares for them.

In his remarks, the President of the Senate, Dr Bukola Saraki said efforts must be made for the release of Leah and others.

Meanwhile, Sani in an interview with newsmen shortly after plenary, said he raised the issue at plenary to prick the conscience of Nigerians and to bring the attention of the government to this matter.

Leah Sharibu symbolises resilience against a violent deadly element and such

a young soul must not be allowed to perish.

I called for the government to reactivate the dialogue process towards securing the release of these girls.

Dialogue involves making the right contact with mediators and negotiators who will make an offer to the insurgents, reach out to them and secure Leah Sharibu and the other girls release.

Sani, who is Chairman, Senate Committee on Local and Foreign Debts, said he was confident that the girls would be released through negotiation and mediation.

He said, each day spent by these girls in the hands of their abductors is a moral stain on the country.

We must not fail Leah Sharibu and all the persons who are currently in the hands of their captors.

I believe Leah is alive for the fact that if she is dead, her abductors would have publicly announced it.

I also believe that if this girl was the daughter of a high ranking personality in this country, more efforts would have been put into securing her release, he said.

The lawmaker said, if necessary machineries were put in place, Leah will be out in a matter of days.

A splinter group of Boko Haram insurgents had on Feb. 19, 2018, abducted 115 girls from the School but released 109 a month after, claiming that five of the girls died in captivity while Leah Sharibu was held back for refusing to renounce her faith.

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From Greg Swank, 12-4-2 You are about to read a list of 45 goals that found their way down the halls of our great Capitol back in 1963. As...
" " The building that originally housed the Bauhaus art school from 1925 to 1932 is now a museum in Dessau, Germany. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0

When significant cultural movements reach a major milestone, it's tempting to try to condense their meaning into neat, condensed tributes. But the Bauhaus transcended all expectations and standards, and the school of art, architecture and design still leaves its mark on the world today, a century after its inception in Weimar, Germany.

Founded by Walter Gropius and named after the Bauhutten, or masons' lodges, the Bauhaus is considered one of the most influential art movements of the 20th century. One major unique feature of the school is that it can't really be categorized as a single school at all. The Bauhaus melded and brought to life conversations around art, society and technology through elements of traditional fine art and more modern design education.

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In his 1919 "Proclamation of the Bauhaus," Gropius described a sort of guild uniting architecture, sculpture and painting into one overarching creative expression. From there, he developed a craft-based curriculum, which informed the creation of objects combining form and function. Students from diverse educational and social backgrounds came to study the curriculum, which started with an immersive course on materials, color theory and more.

Some major names in the era's visual arts scene who are now regarded as Bauhaus legends typically taught that preliminary course: Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers. Once the immersive course was completed, students then specialized in crafts like metalworking, weaving, typography and more. The slogan for the school at the time was definitely appropriate: "Art Into Industry."

The development of the Bauhaus wasn't accidental or random; as the 19th century came to a close, people felt uncertain about the unprecedented rise of modern manufacturing. What impact would it have on art? Would the efficiency of factory work make artistic expression obsolete? Through the Bauhaus, Gropius and his colleagues hoped to create practical objects with a soul, elevating the credibility of artforms like interior design and architecture while continuing to revere the traditional fine arts like painting and sculpture.

The school itself moved throughout Germany over the course of its 14 years, traveling from its base in Weimar between 1919 and 1925 to Dessau until 1932, and then eventually Berlin, where it was permanently shut down by the Nazis. While the formal structure of the school itself was disbanded, some of the biggest leaders in the Bauhaus went on to spread the tenets of the movement throughout the world. Albers is credited with shaping the graphic design program at Yale, and Laszlo-Moholy Nagy, who co-taught the school's foundational course with Albers, went on to launch the Institute of Design at IIT in Chicago.

For a more comprehensive deep dive on all things Bauhaus, check out these notable creations of the era: Red Balloon by Paul Klee (1922), Yellow-Red-Blue by Wassily Kandinsky (1925), lub Chair (Model B3) (The Wassily Chair) (1925) by Marcel Breuer, Universal Bayer by Herbert Bayer (1925), Photogram by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy Photogram (1926) and the Bauhaus building in Dessau, Germany (1919-1925) by Walter Gropius.

Learn more about the Bauhaus movement in "Bauhaus" by Magdalena Droste. HowStuffWorks picks related titles based on books we think you'll like. Should you choose to buy one, we'll receive a portion of the sale.

Now That's Cool The students and teachers of the Bauhaus were apparently excellent at costume parties. In his 1925 essay, "Life at the Bauhaus," architect Farkas Molnar wrote, "The essential difference between the fancy-dress balls organized by the artists of Paris, Berlin, Moscow and the ones here at the Bauhaus is that our costumes are truly original. Everyone prepares his or her own. Never a one that has been seen before. Inhuman, or humanoid, but always new. You may see monstrously tall shapes stumbling about, colorful mechanical figures that yield not the slightest clue as to where the head is. Sweet girls inside a red cube. Here comes a winch and they are hoisted high up into the air; lights flash and scents are sprayed."
" " A marriage between people of different races hasn't always been legal in the United States. Gabe Palmer/Getty Images

In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court made the controversial decision that same-sex couples were entitled to marry. Fifty years ago this week, the Court made another landmark decision about who could love whom. The serendipitously named Loving v. Virginia was decided in favor of Mildred and Richard Loving, a mixed-race Virginia couple who married in Washington, D.C., despite the state of Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, which prohibited marriage (and even sexual intercourse) between men and women of different races  primarily blacks and whites.

In 1959, the Lovings were sentenced to prison for "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth," but fought back. Eight years later, the Supreme Court deemed anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional. Today, 1 in 6 marriages in the United States are between people of different races or ethnicities.

" " Mildred and Richard Loving's marriage led to major civil rights progress in the United States. Bettmann/Getty Images

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More Local Than Worldwide

Between the years 1634 and 1967, the British colonies in the New World that became U.S. state governments forbade interracial marriages. In 1967 when Loving v. Virginia was decided, 16 states still banned mixed marriages, while a century prior they had been outlawed in more than half of the existing states. Although there has never been a federal ban against mixed marriages in the United States, the country remains the historical leader in anti-miscegenation legislation. Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa both forbade marriage between certain ethnic and racial groups, for instance, but overall, explicit anti-miscegenation laws have been rare worldwide. Despite the Loving decision, individual courts and clerks sometimes refused to issue marriage licenses, as in the 1970 Mississippi case of Roger Mills and Berta Linson.

This could partly be due to the fact that in some places in the world, the government doesn't involve itself with marriage as the United States does  coupling is governed by customary or religious rules, bringing culture rather than ethnicity or race to the forefront. For instance, under some interpretations of Islamic law, Muslim men are allowed to marry Christian or Jewish women, but Muslim women are not allowed to marry outside of the faith unless their potential husband converts to Islam. During its empire-minded expansion period in the late 18th century, France passed acts against interracial relationships in its colonial territiories, and India following its 1857 uprising against British rule was subject to similar laws.

" " In 2015, 17 percent of marriages in the United States were between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Patryce Bak/Getty Images

And sometimes there are no laws, just custom. For instance, in China in 1978, there was not one interracial marriage registered in the entire country of more than 950 million people. This was not because of any specific law forbidding it  at the time, marrying someone who was not Chinese just wasn't done. (Definitions of race and ethnicity can be messy, and change over time, so while an outsider may see everyone in China as "Chinese," internally you could deal with the Han ethnic majority but also more than 50 other officially recognized minority groups.) These days, interracial marriages are on the rise in China  in 2012, 53,000 Chinese men and women tied the knot with people who weren't Chinese nationals.

"Interracial marriage has definitely increased everywhere," says Sally Kitch, a professor of women's and gender studies at Arizona State University and author of the anti-miscegenation laws entry in the Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies, via email. "Immigration contributes to that effect, but it really depends on what you mean by races."

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It's Complicated Because We Make It Complicated

The idea that parentage is important is very old  selective breeding of livestock has been around for millennia, and parentage is important in stories we've been telling each other for thousands of years. For instance, according to Christians, Jesus being the son of God had a lot to do with his importance, and Wonder Woman wouldn't be so talented or beautiful if she weren't the daughter of Zeus. The later-disproven eugenics movement which captured the imaginations of American scientists and intellectuals in the early 20th century can basically be boiled down to the idea that humans should be "bred for fitness," which translated pretty tidily into selecting for "white" and "rich."

And although eugenics was used to support laws like the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which kept Mildred and Richard Loving from being legally married in their home state of Virginia, the modern understanding of race gives us to understand that small morphological differences between humans are products of trivial differences in DNA. For example, our current understanding of genetics and skin color suggests that it takes only about 100 generations of living under a particular set of environmental conditions to change the skin tone of an entire population of humans.

Yet sometimes it doesn't even take something as noticeable as looks to cause groups of people to separate from one another.

"Are Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda different races?" says Kitch. "They observe different religions and have antagonistic relations, but there are no physiological differences between them. In 1994-1995, seven out of ten non-Christian Tutsis were murdered by Christian Hutus pumped up by their leaders on the ideology of Hutu Power. Because physiology had nothing to do with the conflict, the killers had to check national ID's in order to know who was Tutsi and who was Hutu and, therefore, whom to kill. Because of extensive intermarriage, brothers-in-law sometimes killed brothers-in-law and tore families apart."

The U.S. has known similar violence, but these days the marriages that were prevented by law for so long have steadily been increasing, from just 3 percent of all performed in 1967, to 17 percent in 2015. And according to surveys performed by the Pew Research Center, attitudes about interracial marriage have improved, even in the past few decades. In 1990, 63 percent of nonblack adults said they would oppose a close relative marrying a black person, while only 14 percent responded the same way in 2015.

Now That's Interesting Loving Day is celebrated on June 12 each year, in honor of the landmark Supreme Court decision.
" " Genghis Khan's habit of killing a lot of men and engaging in a lot of procreation means a large chunk of the population shares his genes. Rachel Fox/iStock/Thinkstock

Back in the late 1990s, a team of international geneticists researching the genetic history of a number of Asian populations stumbled across a very unusual Y-chromosome mutation. They found that it occurred in about 8 percent of the males in 16 of the populations  a pretty large percentage, as far as genetic mutations go. Upon further investigation, the team computed that the most recent common ancestor of the mutated group lived about 1,000 years ago.

That 8 percent converts into 0.5 percent of the male population of the world, which made this unknown man the direct ancestor of about 16 million men around the globe [source: Zerjal]. That's a whole lot of descendants to amass over a relatively short period. So the geneticists knew the phenomenon was caused by more than just natural selection or biological advantage. It was more likely transmitted through a very rare occurrence of social selection: Somehow, the males in the lineage had attained increased reproductivity, and unrelated males had been at least partially eliminated.

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As it turns out, the 16 populations were in countries (China, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq) that had been part of the Mongol Empire, the territory of Genghis Khan. The highest concentration was in Mongolia itself, and there was also a tribe in Pakistan with high frequencies of the mutation. This tribe happens to have a long history of claiming to be directly descended from Genghis Khan. So all arrows started to point to the notoriously brutal empire-builder as the perpetrator of this social upheaval.

Genghis Khan wasn't the first man to have this mutation  it probably started with one of his great-great-grandfathers  but he certainly set the wheels in motion for its rapid spread. The Mongols are still infamous for their pillage-and-plunder tactics, routinely slaughtering the men in the populations they conquered. (Elimination of unrelated males? Check.) They also took the women for their own, making them concubines or collecting them into harems. The direct Khan descendants got their pick of the women and tended to have overwhelming amounts of children. Khan's son Tushi was said to have had 40 sons. (Increased reproductivity? Check.) This pattern continued for hundreds of years  it was, the researchers said, "selection based on social prestige" [source: Zerjal].

The only way to definitively confirm this theory is to perform DNA testing on Genghis Khan's remains, which is most likely never going to happen, but the geneticists do make a good case that Genghis Khan is the direct ancestor of .5 percent of the world's male population.

But wait ... it's just the men we're talking about here. The Y-chromosome is passed directly from father to son (it's the only part of the genome that doesn't combine with the mother's genes), so it's the easiest and best way to track paternal lineage.There is no Y-chromosome equivalent that allows similar documentation of maternal lineage, so there's no way of knowing exactly how many women are also part of the Khan clan. Sorry, ladies.
" " Female impersonator Sushi takes a test run descending in a giant high-heel shoe in preparation for a New Year's celebration Dec. 31, 2004 in Key West Florida. The red-shoe drop (which still goes on) is not even the wackiest "ball drop" out there. Rob O'Neal/Florida Keys News Bureau via Getty Images

Every Dec. 31, throngs of revelers eager to ring in a new year crowd into New York City's Times Square. In the final minute of the year, as the clock ticks away seconds toward midnight, an opulent, oversized ball descends from above  and when it reaches its destination the crowd cheers, Happy New Year!

The New Year's ball drop has its roots in naval history, inspired by the Time Balls  introduced in the early 1800s. These devices were affixed to towers in coastal towns and would drop a ball at a precise moment of the day to alert nearby ship captains when to precisely set their navigational tools, called chronometers. In 1833, the Astronomer Royal, John Pond, set up a Time Ball at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The current New Year's tradition is a particularly American affair, and the Times Square ball drop has inspired numerous imitators across the United States, and even around the world. Here are some of the most surprising things people drop to ring in the new year.

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1. Bologna Drop in Lebanon, Pennsylvania

For 25 years, a city in central Pennsylvania has celebrated the turn of the calendar by dropping a massive bologna. The spiced tube meat is popular in the region, and Lebanon, Pennsylvania, is home to several producers. Plus, there's an annual bologna festival in January. For the first 20 years of the New Year's event, a single 200-pound (91-kilogram) bologna was lowered by an industrial crane right before midnight.

In 2016, though, the tradition shifted from one massive bologna to 20 individual blocks of bologna weighing in at 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) each. The reason for the change? The organizers of the annual event donated the meat to charities after the drop, and it took too long in the hours after midnight to slice up one gigantic bologna.

2. Onion Drop in St. George's, Bermuda

Revelers who spend New Year's Eve on the island of Bermuda don't just get to celebrate a few hours before most of the rest of the Western Hemisphere. They get to watch a gigantic onion drop at the stroke of midnight. Musicians, artists, street food vendors and other performers liven up King's Square. St. George's, founded in 1612, was Bermuda's first English settlement, and the Atlantic island became a major producer and exporter of onions. A glittering golden onion covered in light bulbs descends above the square, which overlooks Hamilton Harbour, and a laser show and fireworks traditionally follow the event.

3. Peeps Chick Drop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

The folks of Pennsylvania are a creative bunch. In addition to the bologna that drops in Lebanon, less than two hours away the city of Bethlehem celebrates with an enormous Peep drop that wraps up two days of celebration known as PeepsFest. The sugary (and divisive) marshmallow confection is generally produced in the shape of a bird, and is most common in U.S. stores around the Easter holiday. Just Born, the Bethlehem-based candy company responsible for Peeps, also makes Mike & Ikes and Hot Tamales. The giant Peep dropped on New Year's Eve weighs 400 pounds (181 kilograms) and stands at 4 feet and 9 inches tall (149 cm).

4. Deuce of Clubs Drop in Show Low, Arizona

This central Arizona locale gets its unique name from its days as a frontier town without a name. Two rival cowboys and ranch co-owners named Corydon E. Cooley and Marion Clark were playing an extended game of poker. The loser would vacate the city, letting the other keep hundreds of acres of land. The deciding hand, according to city lore, would belong to whichever cowboy could "show low" by holding the lowest-value card possible  and the winner turned over a two of clubs.

These days, not only is the city's main street named Deuce of Clubs, but Show Low drops a colossal illuminated playing card every Dec. 31, just a block away from where a statue commemorating the card game once stood. The statue accidentally burned down during a candlelight vigil in 2016, so the fiberglass statue was replaced by a bronze one.

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5. Idaho Potato Drop in Boise, Idaho

Idaho's signature holiday event features the dropping of a giant potato. Dylan Cline, a fourth-generation Idahoan, got the idea after he traveled many hours to see the famous Times Square ball drop in New York City. Each year since 2013, tens of thousands of onlookers have gathered in downtown Boise to witness the potato drop at the Idaho State Capitol. In 2017, the 17-foot (5-meter) tall potato sculpture was upgraded to fit a LED light box inside it, and is now known as the "GlowTato."

6. Red High Heel Shoe Drop in Key West, Florida

What started as a one-off crazy stunt has become a beloved New Year's Eve Key West tradition. Since 1996, a celebrity drag queen named Sushi has sat in a giant red high-heeled shoe as it's lowered from the balcony of the Bourbon St. Pub on Duval Street, Key West's main street. Over the course of an hour, the size 8 shoe (made of fiberglass and stainless steel) complete with the 4-foot (1.2 meter) heel, is lowered 20 feet (6 meters) to the ground.

For good measure, Key West also features a conch shell drop and a "pirate wench" drop on New Year's Eve. Let the revelries begin!

Now That's Cool The current Times Square ball is the seventh version to perform the duty of ringing in the new year. The tradition began in 1907, when a ball made of iron and wood and covered in 100 light bulbs descended a flagpole. The latest version of the ball boasts 2,688 Waterford Crystal triangles and 32,256 LED light modules.

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Originally Published: Dec 28, 2017
" " Plagiarism usually involves deliberately passing off somebody else's original expression or creative ideas as one's own. Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0

A reporter at The New York Times. A U.S. Senator, running for president. A first lady. A revered country music star. A civil rights icon.

Each of them, along with thousands and thousands of students every year, uncounted scientists and doctors, titans of business and speakers at the local Rotary Club are virtual thieves, swiping the work, words and ideas of others and passing them off as their own. They are plagiarists.

"We've seen plagiarism in movies. We've seen plagiarism in music ... We've seen plagiarism in dance. We've seen plagiarism in architecture. We've seen plagiarism in almost every form of creativity," says Jonathan Bailey, a writer and businessman who runs the website Plagiarism Today.

"It's a particular problem in academia because we care so much about the process," says David Rettinger, a professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the president of the International Center for Academic Integrity. "I say this to my students all the time: I don't care that you give me a [clean] paper. I care that you write a paper. The point is ... it's like sending someone to the gym for you. It completely defeats the purpose."

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What Is Plagiarism?

If Merriam-Webster is your definition of definitions, then plagiarism is, in its verb forms:

transitive verb

: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source

intransitive verb

: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

For an example, we could simply have copied those definitions (which, in fact, we did), not changed a word (ditto)  not even the format (yep)  and not credited Merriam-Webster. But then, of course, we'd be flat-out plagiarizing, or at the very least trampling on the line between plagiarism and safer, albeit sleazy word-cribbing. Wisely, we attributed the words to Merriam-Webster. We even provided a link.

Plagiarism is not always that cut-and-paste easy. The legal definition  this taken from Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute  is, as legalese often is, murky:

Deliberately passing off somebody else's original expression or creative ideas as one's own. Plagiarism can be a violation of law if copyrighted expression is taken. Often, however, plagiarism does not violate any law, but instead simply marks the plagiarist as an unethical person in the political, academic or scientific community where the plagiarism occurs.

So then, what about taking information from someone else, twisting a few words around, maybe changing a name or two, and passing it off as your own? How much do you have to change to avoid plagiarism? How much "borrowing" is too much? Where do you draw the line?

"It's always OK to use the ideas or the words of somebody else. That's not the problem. The problem is acknowledging your sources," Rettinger says. "Different disciplines and different situations have different expectations of what's yours and what's shared."

Lawyers, for another example, can use similar wording in legal briefs  maybe even the exact wording  but that may be more generally acceptable; it is, Rettinger says, shared language in their profession. But what about scientists, or researchers borrowing wildly from another paper that was based on an originally researched study?

Or this example from journalism: A big news site, say, taking chunks of a story reported and written by another site. If it's a 1,000-word article done by Site A, and Site B uses 800 words of it verbatim, is that OK, even if Site B credits Site A? Is that plagiarism? Can we agree that, at least, it's pretty lame?

"It seems to me more and more mainstream sites are doing it," Bailey says. "I kind of expect it from Johnny Q Snapchat Blogger or whatever. But when I see a mainstream website doing it, I get very worried."

The point is, it's hard to say sometimes what is and what isn't. Oftentimes, the plagiarizer and the one who is ripped off don't see eye to eye.

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Who Plagiarizes?

Who would do such a thing? Students, all the time. Researchers (according to one study, close to 10 percent of retracted journal articles were pulled because of plagiarism). Politicians (former U.S. Senator and Vice President Joe Biden, famously, was accused of it in a speech and, years after the fact, admitted to plagiarism he committed as a student  though he said it wasn't "malevolent"). First ladies (Melania Trump has been dogged by rumors of plagiarism in speeches ever since her opening night address at the Republican National Convention in 2016). Journalists, as we've pointed out. Musicians, too (Bailey names Johnny Cash). Poets (see Now That's Interesting, below) and writers.

Sometimes, we should acknowledge, plagiarism is accidental. A student, borrowing an idea from a website while doing research, pastes some information into a paper s/he is working on and forgets to attribute it. Obviously, it's a small problem when it's a sentence or a brief paragraph. It's a bigger problem when several paragraphs or chapters make their way into the paper.

But some, of course, steal wantonly, never intending to give others credit in an attempt to pull a fast one. They figure they won't be caught and, if they are, they think they can explain it away.

There are others, too, both brazen and sly. Many, many others. "The ones that get me are the students that just don't feel like they can do the work," Rettinger says. "Those are the ones that make me the saddest."

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Why Do Plagiarists Steal?

Why? Laziness, or at least an unwillingness to put in the necessary effort, is one explanation. Expediency. A desire for acceptance or a good grade. Perhaps a lack of drive, or a lack of time. Maybe, as Rettinger says, a lack of talent, or at least a perceived lack of talent.

"Plagiarism begins, I think, at the core, when a person doesn't see the value in creating the work themselves," Rettinger says.

For those who don't plagiarize accidentally  and, of course, "It was an accident" is the first line of defense for any plagiarist  there are any number of reasons to go rogue. In a plagiarist's mind, if you're never caught, it's not wrong. It becomes acceptable.

Former American journalist Jayson Blair fabricated quotes, dreamed up things that never happened, stole entire passages from published news accounts verbatim, then concocted dozens and dozens of stories, passing them off as fact under his byline in The New York Times. He got away with it for years.

He tried to explain himself to Duke students in 2016. "Once you do something that crosses any ethical line... it is easy to go back and do it over and over," he told the student reporters. "I danced around it and then crossed it and had a real hard time coming back."

" " This plagiarism spectrum graph provides a scale of how likely someone is to have plagiarized accidentally or deliberately. The Australian National University

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How Big of a Problem Is Plagiarism?

With a moving definition of plagiarism, it's difficult to pin down exactly how many word and idea thieves are among us. (Not to mention those ripping off music  "Blurred Lines"  or other forms of expression  say, the movie "The Shape of Water.")

The biggest battle in the never-ending war against plagiarism remains in academia, and it's certainly not limited to high schoolers. One study found that more than half of 400 Iraqi medical students said they had plagiarized.

Even in the halls of higher learning, though, it's hard to determine how widespread the problem is. Schools often contract commercial firms like Turnitin to use their software to try to catch plagiarism. (Turnitin recognizes 10 types of plagiarism on its Plagiarism Spectrum.)

"It ranges from very little to all the time," Rettinger says. "It depends on how hard you look, and what subject you teach and to whom. In terms of wholesale plagiarism, probably not that often, but in terms of maybe a paragraph here or sentence here or a paragraph or sentence there  it depends on your definition of 'common'  but my impression there is it's fairly common.

"It's an arms race. And as long as it's on, we're going to lose, because there are more of them and they're very motivated."

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How Can We Stop It?

Aside from firms like Turnitin, online plagiarism checkers, which compare written papers to a database of published material, are available (some for free) for those wanting to stop plagiarism before it happens, or catch it once it does. Bailey  who has been the victim of plagiarism  is a copyright and plagiarism consultant at CopyByte, which says it offers "Plagiarism and Copyright Expertise You Can Trust."

Even with new methods of identifying plagiarism and plagiarists, Bailey admits that stopping the practice altogether is practically impossible. "It's one of those things," he says. "No police officer catches all the criminals."

Slowing plagiarism, though, can be a goal. It's critical for educators, Rettinger says, to teach students the very real worth of researching and writing their own work. And it's important to make students and other would-be plagiarizers understand, Bailey says, that both sides lose when someone tries to take credit for another person's work, words or ideas.

"You might be able to get away with it in the short term. But it's not just getting away with it in the short term. It's about trying to get away with it forever. And that is a losing battle," Bailey says. "It's almost inevitable that you'll get caught in the long term So be thinking about it not just in terms of today but, 'Could this ever come back to bite you?'"

NOW THAT'S INTERESTING The word plagiarism has its root in the Latin plagiarius. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word means "kidnapper, seducer, plunderer, one who kidnaps the child or slave of another ..." and was used by the Roman poet Martial to describe another poet who had plundered his works.
" " President Donald Trump's approval ratings have been lower than all of his predecessors at this point in their presidencies. MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Voting is the ultimate popularity contest. In the United States, voters have the opportunity at least every two years to cast ballots in federal elections, either filling seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate or the White House.

But operating non-stop between those elections is a political prognostication machine designed to predict the next batch of winners. There are at least a dozen major polling organizations who quiz Americans on a daily basis about their approval or disapproval of current officials, their opinion on the latest hot-button political issues, and whether or not the nation is on track or off the rails.

There's a lot at stake in these polls. Political donors use them to decide which candidates and political issues to bankroll, and savvy congressional representatives consult them to calculate the political risk of backing or splitting with the White House on its legislative agenda.

But the polling number that grabs the most headlines is the president's job-approval rating. President Donald Trump used to consistently tweet-brag about his outstanding job-approval ratings. Today he mostly contests them, because most poll numbers have his combined approval numbers for time in office so far hovering consistently in the low 40 percent.

The reason the president tweets about his approval ratings is that job-approval ratings are about more than just stoking or bashing the president's ego. They are perhaps the single best predictor of who might become the next president.

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Approval Ratings and Midterms

But even before the president can even consider being re-elected, the U.S. has midterm elections. The midterms happen exactly two years after each presidential election and almost always pose a serious challenge for the party in the White House. The president's political party has lost seats in the House of Representatives in all but two midterm elections since World War II (exceptions were Bill Clinton in 1998 and George W. Bush in 2002). What's interesting is that the severity of the midterm losses appears to be directly related to the popularity of the president.

Gallup reported in 2010 that when postwar presidents had approval ratings of 50 percent or above at the time of a midterm election, their party only lost an average of 14 seats in the House. But if the president had an approval rating of 49 percent or lower, the average loss was 36 seats. (Using more recent data from 1970-2014, Bloomberg put the average loss at 33 seats for presidents with approval ratings under 50 percent.)

There have been some exceptions, however: Ronald Reagan had an approval rating of 63 percent in 1986 and his party still lost five seats in the midterms. On the other side of the aisle, John F. Kennedy had a 61 percent approval rating in 1962 and lost four seats.

The connection between presidential job-approval and midterm elections is particularly strong during the first midterm election after a new president takes the White House. Pundits see those first midterms largely as a referendum on the president's job performance.

Of course we know what happened during the 2018 midterm election. The blue wave that Democrats had hoped for failed to fully materialize. Before the election, Republicans held 235 seats in the House and Democrats held 193; there were seven vacancies. Democrats did win control of the House flipping a total of 41 seats. But the Republicans kept control of the Senate, albeit not by much. Today the U.S. Senate has 53 Republicans and 45 Democrats, plus two independents.

" " Employees of Puritan Medical Products in Guilford, Maine, take photos as President Trump speaks during a tour of the factory, which makes the swabs used in COVID-19 testing. Trump so far has refused to wear a mask in public. Portland Press Herald/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

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Approval Ratings and Re-election

So what does all this mean for the 2020 presidential election? Will President Trump's job-approval rating make or break his chances of winning re-election?

The short answer is yes. Since World War II, not a single incumbent presidential candidate has won re-election with a job-approval rating below 50 percent. Barack Obama almost became the exception in 2012, with an approval rating in the mid-40s a few months before election day. But by November, it had cleared the hurdle at 51 percent.

Does that mean that if Trump's approval rating continues to languish below 50 percent he will definitely lose re-election in 2020? Absolutely not. If there's one thing that Trump has proven in both his candidacy and tumultuous time in office is that precedent means nothing to this president.

Just look at this one startling fact: Trump was elected in 2016 despite being the least-liked major party presidential candidate of all time. His unfavorability rating on election day was a whopping 61 percent. It helped that his opponent, Hillary Clinton, had the second highest unfavorability rating in history at 51 percent.

You might notice that not every job-approval poll comes up with the same numbers. That's because each polling organization uses a slightly different methodology. Some pollsters, like Gallup and Quinnipiac, call up a representative sample of Americans over 18 and simply ask them if they approve or disapprove of the president's job performance. In Trump's case, those polls result in lower approval and higher disapproval numbers.

But what about Rasmussen Reports, Trump's favorite pollster? In that case, Rasmussen doesn't simply poll American adults or even American registered voters, a tighter demographic. Rasmussen only counts answers from "likely voters," people who say they are likely to vote in the next election. Rasmussen is also the only company polling people on a daily basis.

On top of that, Rasmussen Reports give respondents four options: "strongly approve," "somewhat approve," "somewhat disapprove," and "strongly disapprove." In Trump's case, the inclusion of "somewhat approve" seems to be enough to lift his Rasmussen approval numbers as many as 10 points higher than other major national pollsters. However, that doesn't always seem to be the case. The June 9, 2020, Rasmussen poll found that only 44 percent of likely U.S. voters approve of President Trump's job performance. The findings of the latest Gallup poll however, which was released June 10, 2020, showed Trump's approval rating had fallen to 39 percent. The polling was conducted from May 28-June 4, 2020, as protests occurred throughout the country after the May 25 death of George Floyd in police custody. It's the first time his approval rating has been below 40 percent since October 2019.

Of course, the 2020 election is not the 2016 election. The biggest difference, perhaps, is Trump is an incumbent president running on his own record. And 2020 so far has not been kind. Trump's approval rating has dropped 12.7 points among registered or likely voters since April 15, according to FiveThirtyEight estimates. And his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the economic collapse that followed and the protests after of the death of Floyd by police could be his biggest threat to re-election, despite what any presidential approval poll says.

Now That's Polarization President Trump's job-approval numbers are dramatically split along party lines. According to Gallup, 92 percent of Republicans approve of the president's job performance, while 86 percent of Democrats disapprove.

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Originally Published: Jun 9, 2020
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

THERES no better way to know a thing or two about a place and its culture than an introduction to its foodparticularly, its street food.

Netflixs upcoming series Street Food lets its viewers embark on a culinary journey while learning about the stories of the people that contribute to the street food culture spread across the world. Cebu, the Queen City of the Philippines, is part of the show during its tour across Asia.

The episode on Cebu will showcase mouthwatering local dishes and staples loved both locals and tourists from the Tuslob Buwa (which means to dip into a froth or bubbles) composed of pork brains, innards and spices sauteed in a wok and thickened to boil; the Nilarang Bakasi, sour stew made with reef eel, and the ever popular and signature dish of Cebu: the famous Lechon.

Other cities that will be featured include Seoul, South Korea; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Delhi, India; and Bangkok, Thailand, to name a few.

From the creators of Chefs Table, Street Food is set to premiere on April 26 on Netflix.
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

THE Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) asked the Commission on Elections (Comelec) Friday, April 12, to look into the alleged partisan political activities involving barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) officials, saying they are committing election offenses.

In a one-page letter, DILG Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III endorsed supposed complaints by citizens against 52 barangay and SK officials supposedly engaged in electioneering.

This is the transmittal of complaints by our citizens against barangay and SK officials who are openly participating in campaign activities, said Densing in an interview.

We are asking the Comelec to, on their own, look into it and file motu proprio cases, he added.

The DILG official said this is because they agree with the supposed complainants that the barangay and SK officials are violating the law, as well as rules of the Civil Service Commission (CSC).

We know that there is a joint memorandum by the Comelec and CSC that is tied up with the Omnibus Election Code, saying it is prohibited for civil servants to engage in campaign activities, Densing said.

He said the 52 is just an initial batch, as they have already received over 700 complaints.

We have cases from Misamis Oriental, Taguig, Cavite, Bulacan, Caloocan, Quezon City. And hopefully after Holy Week, we can submit another batch, said Densing.

The DILG action is in contrast with the position of election lawyer and now senatorial candidate Romulo Macalintal that only appointed civil service officers and employees, and not elected officials, are prohibited from engaging, directly or indirectly, in partisan political activities or any form of electioneering as provided under Section 2(4), Article IX-B of the 1987 Constitution.

Macalintal said the provision was even affirmed by the Supreme Court in the Quinto vs Comelec case in 2010, wherein it said that such ban "does not cover elected officials" since it is in the nature of their offices to engage in partisan political activities all year round, even outside the campaign period.

For its part, the Comelec said an endorsement of cases supposedly filed by citizens may not be enough to initiate legal cases.

We have to wait for them to file verified complaints. There has to be sworn affidavits, where an investigation by the Comelec will be based for possible election offenses, said Comelec Spokesman James Jimenez in a separate interview. (HDT/SunStar Philippines)
A Hong Kong student wanted in Taiwan for the murder of his pregnant girlfriend pleaded guilty on Friday to money laundering charges at the High Court, raising the possibility of a prison term that could help him avoid extradition to the self-ruled island.

Chan Tong-kai, 20, is at the centre of a firestorm over the governments proposal to allow the transfer of fugitives from Hong Kong to mainland China, Taiwan and Macau, with officials arguing that his case exposes a loophole that needs to be plugged.

The High Court heard for the first time that Chan admitted to police he had killed his girlfriend, Poon Hiu-wing, 20, while in Taiwan after learning that she was pregnant with another mans child, hours before they were due to return to Hong Kong on February 17, 2018.

The Shenzhen-born student also admitted to taking her ATM card and withdrawing money from her account to pay credit card bills.

Chan has been on Taiwanese authorities wanted list since Poons decomposed body was found in bushes near a subway station on the outskirts of Taipei on March 13, 2018.

Taiwanese authorities said they had sought Chans extradition, but received no response from Hong Kong.

Hong Kongs current extradition system was roundly criticised over the case because the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance do not apply to Taiwan  meaning Chan could not be sent there to face a murder trial.

Barrister Ronny Tong Ka-wah SC, an adviser to the citys leader, said if Chan was ordered to serve a short sentence before the new fugitive bill was passed, there would be no arrangement for the authorities to stop him from fleeing Hong Kong.

So hopefully, the law would be amended in time, he said.

Eric Cheung Tat-ming, a principal law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, agreed that Chan would be able to avoid extradition, but wondered if it would matter.

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Surely he could leave Hong Kong, Cheung said. But would other places let him in?

Cheung said Chan would face risks in any country that has an extradition treaty with Taiwan, and he could run afoul of laws abroad as well as visa rules.

Even so, Cheung urged the government not to push through the new fugitive law amendments just to suit Chans case.

Pro-establishment lawmaker Holden Chow Ho-ding, a lawyer who has been in contact with Poons family, expected Chan to be released soon.

From past cases, the jail term for money laundering could be around one to years.

Holden Chow, a lawmaker

From past cases, the jail term for money laundering could be around one to two years. So, deducting the time that hes spent in detention, he could be freed after the sentencing [on April 29], he said.

Chan has been in custody since he was arrested by Hong Kong police on March 13, 2018. He pleaded guilty to four counts of dealing with property known or believed to represent the proceeds of an indictable offence at Eastern Court on December 31, 2018.

The money laundering charges stem from Chans theft of Poons property, which included her HSBC bank card, a Casio digital camera, an iPhone 6, and 20,000 New Taiwan dollars (US$650) and HK$19,200 (US$2,445) in cash.

On Friday, Chan confirmed those pleas were voluntarily entered.

Revealing details of the case for the first time, prosecutors said the pair met at work in July 2017 and became lovers the next month. Poon confirmed she was five weeks pregnant in early December.

They travelled to Taipei on February 8, 2018. A copy of Chans arrival and departure card for Taiwan was discovered in Poons flat, leading police to interview him on March 13.

Under caution, Chan said the couple had quarrelled after Poon allegedly revealed that her baby belonged to her former boyfriend and showed him a video of her having sex with another man.

Feeling agitated, Chan said he hit Poons head against the wall, strangled her from behind with both hands and struggled with her on the floor for around 10 minutes until she was dead.

Chan also admitted to using Poons ATM card to withdraw 20,000 New Taiwan dollars to buy clothes  which he did not end up doing  and then again after he returned to Hong Kong to withdraw HK$19,200 to settle his credit card bills.

In mitigation, defence counsel Ronny Leung said Chan was a man with a clear record who had been remanded in custody since March 2018.

Money laundering carries a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison and a HK$5 million fine (US$636,947).

Prosecutors had asked the court to consider the murder as the predicate offence for money laundering, which they argue would lead to a higher sentence. That request was rejected by Madam Justice Anthea Pang Po-kam, who will sentence Chan on April 29.

Separately, Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu said at the Legislative Council on Friday that he would respect the courts decision in the murder case.

Lee revealed that the Hong Kong government had asked to meet Taiwanese authorities through two semi-official agencies: the local Hong Kong-Taiwan Economic and Cultural Co-operation and Promotion Council and its Taipei-based counterpart, the Taiwan-Hong Kong Economic and Cultural Co-operation Council.

We are anxious about it, and we hope to do some preparation before the law can be amended so through the [two councils] we told Taiwan this month that we wanted to discuss this issue as soon as possible, he said.

A month earlier, Taiwanese officials had complained that their Hong Kong counterparts were lukewarm about discussing the case through the two agencies, which were established in 2010 to promote exchanges amid cross-strait ties at that time.

The government has already proposed to water down the extradition law by exempting a list of white-collar crimes to pacify the business community, but has been unable to convince those who mistrust the mainland legal system.

Additional reporting by Tony Cheung

This article Hong Kong man wanted in Taiwan murder case could escape extradition after pleading guilty to money laundering charges first appeared on South China Morning Post

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QUEZON CITY, Philippines  Various counterfeit products worth P65.44 million were destroyed at Camp Crame on Friday (April 12).

According to Atty. Josephine Santiago, Director General of the Intellectual Property Office of the Philippines (IPO), the items were only a part of the total P23.6 billion confiscated in 2018 by the National Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (NCIPR).

The items include counterfeit branded bags, wallet, shoes, watches, and clothes among others.

Santiago said the entry of such fake items is killing the businesses of legitimate brand owners.

The official, thus, calls on the public to refrain from buying imitations because patronizing such fake products has adverse effects on the countrys economy.

Dalawa po ang kailangang magtulungan dito, ang mga brand owners at ang ating law enforcement agency. Hindi po makakakilos ang law enforcement agency kung walang pahintulot ang brand owners, (The brand owners and our law enforcement agency should work together on this. Our law enforcement agency cannot move without the permission of the brand owners,) Santiago said.

Meanwhile, IPO Deputy Director Atty. Ted Pascua said aside from the destroyed counterfeit products, they are also monitoring the possible proliferation of fake medicines and cosmetics materials that might pose health risks.

Any amount on counterfeit pharmaceuticals is alarming kasi you just dont know one tablet can kill somebody, Pascua said.

Among the items destroyed were counterfeit Louis Vuitton wallets (P16.1M); Louis Vuitton bags (P15.820M); fake shoes (P10.120M); fake Oppo cellphones (P10M); Louis Vuitton phone cases (P7.280M); Louis Vuitton notepad cases (P2.420M); and fake Rolex watches (P1.8M).  Marje Pelayo (with details from Lea Ylagan)

The post P65M-worth of counterfeit products destroyed at Camp Crame appeared first on UNTV News.
A 27-YEAR-old foreign medical student was arrested after he was caught videotaping a young female student who was taking a bath in their rented apartment in Barangay Sambag 2, Cebu City on Thursday afternoon,

A 27-YEAR-old foreign medical student was arrested after he was caught videotaping a young female student who was taking a bath in their rented apartment in Barangay Sambag 2, Cebu City on Thursday afternoon, April 11.

The suspect was identified as Noah Malken, a native of Papua New Guinea.

Investigation showed that the complainant, Bela (real name withheld), took a bath around 5 p.m.

She later noticed a hole in the bathroom. When she stared at it, she was startled to see a human eye.

Bela wrapped herself in a towel and walked outside. She caught the suspect, holding a cell phone.

The 21-year-old victim called the police and reported the incident. A team rushed to the area and arrested Malken.

Malken and Bela attend the same university in Cebu City.

Abellana Police Station Chief Eduard Sanchez said Bela cried upon learning that the suspect had taken a video of her inside the bathroom.

Bela will press charges against the suspect, who admitted committing the crime.

I was tempted at that time when I saw her in an open window close to my room, Malken said.

The foreigner arrived in Cebu in 2017. He could possibly be deported back to his home country, according to Sanchez.

Bela believed that the foreigner had peeped on her several times.

Malken will be charged for violating Republic Act 9995, or the Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009, which makes it illegal to take photos or video of persons having sex, or of any persons private parts without that persons consent. (from AYB of SuperBalita Cebu/KAL)
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

FINANCE Secretary Carlos Dominguez III underscored the need for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank to closely coordinate efforts and explore their complementarities to more effectively accelerate sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region.

On behalf of the Philippines, Dominguez said during the recently concluded Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) 23rd Finance Ministers Meeting that close coordination between the two multilateral institutions will help weed out duplications in their functions and help them respond more effectively to the regions financing needs.

Aside from the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam also called on the ADB and World Bank to work in synergy and complement their efforts in alleviating poverty in the region.

From the point of view of the governor of both institutions, I dont see the necessity for spending so much overhead in duplicating the offices of both ADB and the World Bank around the region. From the point of view of the client, why do we have to deal with two bureaucracies for the same purposes? stressed Dominguez.

So Id like to suggest, especially on behalf of the smaller countries, that ADB and World Bank consider becoming more closely coordinated, and perhaps look for areas where they can cut their own internal costs in servicing the other needs of Asean, he added.

Dominguez represents the Philippines in the Governors Boards of the ADB and the World Bank.

He made the statement after the presentations before the Asean Finance Ministers by the ADB and World Bank about their respective institutions financing programs in the region.

During the recent finance ministers meeting held in Chiang Rai, Thailand, World Bank acting chief economist for East Asia and Pacific Andrew Mason discussed the institutions partnership and financing support for sustainable development in the region, while ADB president Takehiko Nakao presented the banks innovative financing approaches for sustainable infrastructure in Asean.

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After the presentations made by the ADB and World Bank, Dominguez also took the opportunity to thank the two multilateral institutions for helping the Philippines develop new reform policies and secure infrastructure financing support for its Build, Build, Build program.

Of the 75 flagship projects under the governments Build, Build, Build program, 44 are under various stages of implementation, 24 are under pre-investment studies and the remaining seven are up for review.

Id like to express our appreciation for the support of the ADB and World Bank, both in the assistance they have provided in developing new reform policies and in helping us get new infrastructure financing on board for the Philippines. Our engagement with ADB has been the most intense I think in the last 20 years; so with the World Bank, Dominguez said.

Dominguez and his fellow Asean finance ministers also thanked the World Bank and ADB for their continuous support to development efforts in the region, which encompass a wide range of concerns that include human capital development, disaster risk management, education, technology, transport, infrastructure, environment and energy.

During an earlier phone conversation with former United States treasury undersecretary and now World Bank president David Malpass in February, Dominguez told him that a close collaboration between the World Bank and ADB will enable both institutions to build on each others strengths. (PR)
Sudan's second new military leader in as many days vowed Saturday to "uproot" deposed president Omar al-Bashir's regime and release protesters, in a bid to placate demonstrators demanding civilian rule. "I announce the restructuring of state institutions according to the law and pledge to fight corruption and uproot the regime and its symbols," General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan said, a day after he was sworn in to head Sudan's new ruling military council. He also ordered the release of all prisoners jailed by special emergency courts and the immediate lifting of a night-time curfew imposed by the council earlier this week. Career soldier Burhan took the helm of Sudan's transitional military council on Friday when his predecessor General Awad Ibn Ouf -- a close aide of ousted veteran president Bashir -- quit after little more than 24 hours in power. Burhan also pledged Saturday that individuals implicated in killing protesters would face justice. His initial announcements indicated he wanted to show the tens of thousands of protesters on the streets that he is not part of the regime's old guard and was genuinely committed to reform. He also accepted the resignation of the head of the feared National Intelligence and Security Service, Salah Abdallah Mohammed Salih -- widely known as Salih Ghosh -- the military council announced. Salih Ghosh had overseen a sweeping crackdown against protesters in four months of mass demonstrations that led to the army's toppling of Bashir on Thursday. - Demand for civilian rule - Dozens of protesters were killed and thousands of activists, opposition leaders and journalists arrested. The police said Friday that 16 people had been killed in live fire in Khartoum alone over the previous two days as NISS agents led a last stand for Bashir before the army intervened. But in a statement Saturday evening, Burhan said the deputy chief of the NISS was a member of the newly formed 10-member council which also includes the police chief and military figures. Burhan named as the council's deputy Mohammad Hamdan Daglo, who is also known as Himeidti, field commander of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) counter-insurgency unit, which rights groups have accused of abuses in war-torn Darfur. A photograph published by state news agency SUNA had shown Burhan talking with protesters outside army headquarters on Friday, before his elevation to the top job. Khartoum erupted with joy when Ibn Ouf tendered his resignation on Friday night barely 24 hours after taking the oath of office. But protest organisers urged demonstrators to keep up their week-old vigil outside army headquarters. Ibn Ouf had served as Bashir's defence minister right up to the president's downfall, ending three decades of iron-fisted rule. A former military intelligence chief, Ibn Ouf remains under US sanctions for his role in the regime's brutal response to a 2003 ethnic minority rebellion in Darfur region. Bashir himself came to power in a 1989 Islamist military coup, toppling an elected government led by Sadiq al-Mahdi. Burhan comes with less baggage from Bashir's deeply unpopular rule than Ibn Ouf. The grass-roots Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) composed of doctors, teachers and engineers, has spearheaded the nationwide protests. While welcoming Ibn Ouf's departure, it demanded that Burhan swiftly "transfer the powers of the military council to a transitional civilian government" and said it would continue to stage sit-ins to that end. - 'Violating the constitution' - Bashir remained in custody and his National Congress Party on Saturday urged the military council to release arrested members. "We consider (the) taking of power by the military council as violating the constitution's legitimacy," the NCP said in a statement. "The NCP rejects the detention of its leaders, among them its acting president" Ahmed Harun, it added, calling for their immediate release. Outside the Middle East, the formation of a military government to replace Bashir has met with widespread criticism. The African Union said Bashir's overthrow by the military was "not the appropriate response to the challenges facing Sudan and the aspirations of its people". The Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) called for dialogue and a peaceful transition of power, in a joint statement from their summit in Ndjamena, Chad. The European Union urged the army to carry out a "swift" handover to civilian rule, and former colonial ruler Britain said that the two-year transition announced by the military "is not the answer." "We need to see a swift move to an inclusive, representative, civilian leadership," said Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt. But Saudi Arabia backed the transitional military council and promised an aid package including, wheat, medicine and "petroleum products", the Saudi Press Agency reported Saturday. Members of the military council have sought to reassure foreign diplomats about its intentions. "This is not a military coup, but taking the side of the people," the council's political chief Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin told Arab and African diplomats at a meeting broadcast on state television on Friday. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has longstanding arrest warrants against Bashir for suspected genocide and war crimes during the regime's brutal campaign of repression in Darfur. But the military council has said it would never extradite him or any other Sudanese citizen.
Thousands of Pakistanis clad in white gathered in the central city of Jhang Friday to make a human image of Christchurch's Al Noor mosque, where 50 people were killed by a white supremacist four weeks ago. Drone images showed worshippers standing in formation, their snow-white traditional shalwar kameez and prayer caps in stark contrast to the emerald green of a public field, as a second group formed the words "Islam is peace" nearby. Huge New Zealand and Pakistani flags were also displayed along with a giant banner which read: "Solidarity with the martyrs of Christchurch from Pakistan". The tribute was organised by the Muslim Institute, a non-government organisation aimed at promoting peace and stability in the Muslim world, which also released the drone footage. Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian and self-avowed white supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 of attempted murder after opening fire at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques on March 15. Nine of the victims were of Pakistani origin. One, Naeem Rashid, was posthumously given an award for bravery by Pakistan after he apparently tried to tackle the gunman before being shot. Tribute organisers praised the New Zealand government after what had been a "very tough time" for Muslims in the country -- especially Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Her response "not only soothed the wounds of Muslims but also assured them that Muslims in their country are safe," Sahibzada Sultan Ahmad Ali, a religious scholar and one of the organisers, told AFP. "We worked really hard to make this model," one participant, Noor Hassan, told AFP of the tribute. "It was so pleasant that we were ready to stand like this for the whole day," he added.
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A study of after-school programs in Connecticut led by UConn researchers suggests that students who participate for several years in programs sponsored by 21st Century Community Learning Centers have higher attendance in school and higher academic performance.

"Improving School Attendance and Academic Performance: The Role of Multiyear Participation in After School Programs," was conducted jointly by the Center for Applied Research in Human Development (CARHD) in UConn's Department of Human Development and Family Sciences and the Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) in Hartford. The 21st Century after-school program provides academic enrichment opportunities to students attending high-poverty and low-performing schools. The study covered more than 9,100 students attending 108 after-school programs in Connecticut.

The study findings were presented in mid-March at the annual meeting of the Society for Research in Children Development in Baltimore by principal investigator Beth S. Russell, associate professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and director of CARHD. Co-investigators included two doctoral candidates, Jennifer Dealy and Morica Hutchison, and Shelby Pons and Betsy Laborious of CREC. Russell discussed the study with UConn Today.

Q. How did this come about?

A. Many states offer a 21st Century program, which is federally funded. In Connecticut, we have around 120 sites every year that are specifically designed to target low-income communities and high-risk schools. The goals of the program are to improve academic outcomes, but also to attend to things like attendance and disciplinary infractions because there's a lot of promise for what after-school programs can provide for kids, particularly in our most vulnerable populations. In addition to supporting students' academic successes, after-school programs are a pragmatic support for a lot of working families.

Q. What specifically were you looking at in the programming?

A. Part of what we hope for in most ancillary school programming  so anything that's happening outside the school day  is increasing the student's engagement in the school environment and building relationships between students, their peer group, and mentors or teachers. After-school opportunities that continue to work are valuable because they provide an important moment for social and emotional development that doesn't happen in the structured 45-minute or hour-long course period in the school day. It's a different kind of environment that looks to continue much of the social development that happens in the school day but does so by providing mentorship opportunities and tutoring around subject areas where students might be having a hard time, always with the backdrop of positive interactions with peers or mentors.

Q. Was there consistency in the after-school programs' curriculum? Programs can be different.

A. In fact, we hope they are. Communities are different, and the needs that a particular community might have need to be considered so that we have an agile response. The risk characteristics that a group of kids are presenting with are the risk characteristics that we're trying to meet. While 21st Century as a program expects a high degree of fidelity that we might meet across sites, sites are also empowered to add additional components or make tailored outreach opportunities to kids who have things that fall outside that core spectrum of common elements the program is designed to address. For example, Connecticut 21st Century programs have literacy events, not just for the literacy they might be struggling with at school but also for their family members  these might vary in their content and frequency depending on the community's needs.

Q. There is a mention about the timing of the programs. What does this involve?

A. Timing refers to the number of years the kids attend the program and when that timing begins. We don't yet understand if risk trajectories are most vulnerable to change in the primary school years or if there is something particularly malleable abut risk in the middle school years, for example. Certainly we know the earlier we intervene and for longer, the more likely we are to see positive impacts. That's the main story of this conference presentation: after three or four years, we start to see significant impacts for kids who participate in 21st Century.

Q. The involvement of the community and activities that take place in the community can be in conflict with these programs. Has there been evidence of how that affects a child's desire to stay focused on the program or go in another direction?

A. In our data, no. Most of the data we get comes from the program sites and the Board of Education itself. There's very little student report data, where the student can tell us about how they perceive their engagement with the program. I think that's something to talk about when we consider how we want to refine our evaluation each funding cycle. I think students' voices are important, and I think parents' voices are another perspective to consider including. We have 16,000 cases in the most recent data draw. The challenge is to propose a pragmatically feasible new component where we might sample perspectives of the participants and their families. We need to be careful in how we propose doing that so we're sampling from the statewide collection of sites equitably.

Q. One of the issues always brought up in talking about school funding and distribution of state funds is the disparity between the larger cities where you find these schools and the affluent suburbs which fund their school programs more highly and have more resources. You're focusing on the high-risk groups. How could any change really affect these kinds of programs?

A. After-school programs tend to make a positive difference for all students, not just those that are at high risk. What we're looking for is a disparity in the gain that a low-risk group might see compared to their higher-risk counterparts. I would never suggest that there's a community that should get a particular service and another community that should not. The question is: if we make equitable access to support services available across towns, districts, or regions, how do we then examine which characteristics promote the greatest success for which students?

Q. This is the first step with this study looking at the issues in this way. Where are you headed in the next step?

A. Our next step is to propose sampling the parents and children who participate in 21st Century. I'd be particularly keen in getting perspectives from first-year participants versus those who have participated for two or more years.

Q. Where else do you see the need to go with this research?

A. I think the current conversation is evolving about how we resource school systems in Connecticut  specifically whether we consider regionalizing  and how we put together a constellation of support services for communities and families to try and improve equitable access to the best support across the state. I'm interested to see how that conversation plays out.

Explore further It can take a village to feed hungry kids in schools
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In an unprecedented public push to change Amazon policies, nearly 4,500 employees have put their names to a letter asking CEO Jeff Bezos and the commerce giant's board of directors to become global leaders in fighting climate change.

The letter, posted online Wednesday, is the latest step up in an internal drive by employees for a comprehensive corporate climate strategy. "We have the power to shift entire industries, inspire global action on climate, and lead on the issue of our lifetimes," the group of employees, calling themselves Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, write.

The group is asking Amazon to set timelines consistent with a scientific consensus that calls for greenhouse gas emissions to be cut in half by 2030 to avoid ever-greater climate catastrophes, and commensurate with the company's industry-leading position. But the company's board of directors says Amazon is already doing, or planning to do, what the employees are asking for.

"Amazon has the resources and scale to spark the world's imagination and redefine what is possible and necessary to address the climate crisis," write the employees, who are from some 28 countries and work in warehouses, data centers, engineering hubs, media studios and corporate headquarters. "We believe this is a historic opportunity for Amazon to stand with employees and signal to the world that we're ready to be a climate leader."

Amazon, as the avatar of modern consumption-driven capitalism, has become perhaps the biggest target of pressure outside of the fossil-fuels industry for those concerned about climate change. Indeed, it received more activist shareholder proposals on climate and other environmental, social and governance issues this year than any other company, according to the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. ExxonMobil and Chevron were previously the top targets.

The Amazon employees argue that the company's guiding principleobsession with customersnecessitates a fulsome climate response in the face of a global crisis: "In our mission to become 'Earth's most customer-centric company,' we believe our climate impact must be a top consideration in everything we do."

The climate push began in December when a small group of employees, who are also company shareholders by virtue of stock earned as part of their compensation, proposed a shareholder resolution asking the company to publicly report on its plans for climate-driven disruptions and reducing fossil fuel dependence across the company.

That led to a series of internal meetings with Amazon leaders in which employees asked for support of the resolution.

According to the employees, Amazon's board of directors did not challenge the proposal, so it will go for a vote of the company's owners at its annual meeting in May. But the board plans to recommend a vote against the proposal, according to a draft statement provided to proponents of the proposal.

That statement lists dozens of climate-related efforts across Amazon's sprawling business empire, from renewable-energy purchases to packaging improvements to sustainable building practices at its Seattle headquarters campus. Moreover, Amazon said in February it plans to report its "companywide carbon footprint, along with related goals and programs, later this year."

While the Amazon employees behind the shareholder proposal applaud those efforts, they say Amazon's climate-related announcements have typically lacked firm timelines and context, such as the company's total emissions, or have included wiggle words that make them difficult to evaluate.

They're keeping up the pressure for a comprehensive plan "within the timeline required by science."

The scientific consensus in the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that global greenhouse-gas emissions must be reduced 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030 and brought to zero by 2050 to preserve a chance of holding global-average temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsiusa level of warming that is still expected to cause major, disruptive changes to the Earth's climate and widespread suffering and loss of life.

The Amazon employees who began the effort created a tool allowing colleagues to read and sign the letter with their names and job titles, said Weston Fribley, a front-end software engineer.

The tally of co-signers grew steadily Wednesday after the letter was published, he said. Amazon has some 650,000 employees worldwide, meaning the co-signers represent less than 1 percent of the company. But it's still an exceptional number of employees to publicly pressure Amazon for a change.

"People are finding their voice," Fribley said. "They're feeling encouraged. ... I'm happy to work for a company where all these people are so concerned about it, and care about it so deeply."

While Amazon has a long and growing list of climate-related initiatives, Fribley and his colleagues say this does not yet amount to a comprehensive climate strategyat least not one that's been presented publicly.

Earlier this week, for example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced plans to purchase wind energy from projects planned in Ireland, Sweden and California. The company said the new projects, combined with its existing portfolio, are expected to generate about as much electricity as Nashville, Tennessee., uses each year.

The company said that in 2018, some 50 percent of the power consumed by the infrastructure supporting its highly profitable but energy-hungry cloud- computing business came from renewable sources, halfway toward a long-term goal, albeit one with no publicly stated timeline. Likewise, the companywide goal of 100 percent renewable energy has no timeline.

But the employees note in their letter that the same AWS infrastructure is used to help the fossil-fuels industry "accelerate and expand oil and gas extraction." Amazon's cloud-computing competitors also have dedicated businesses serving the industry, and the company also hosts data sets and provides credits to environmental researchers.

Amazon in February announced a new program called Shipment Zero, a plan that addresses Amazon's other core business of shipping purchases to customers. Under that plan, Amazon aims for net zero carbon emissions for half of its shipments by 2030.

Dave Clark, Amazon senior vice president of worldwide operations, said in a February blog post that the company has been preparing "an advanced scientific model to carefully map our carbon footprint to provide our business teams with detailed information helping them identify ways to reduce carbon use in their businesses."

Underscoring the tension between Amazon's business imperatives and climate pressures, Clark added, "Customers are always going to want more selection, faster delivery speed, and lower costs. We believe that lower costs include lowering the costs to the environment we all live and work in every day."

The climate-focused employees poke holes in the Shipment Zero commitment as well, noting that the goal of "net zero" emissions suggests the company would offset its emissions by planting trees or buying carbon credits.

That "allows us to continue to pollute," the employees write, citing the company's newly ordered fleet of diesel-powered delivery vans. Carbon offsets, they add, "do nothing to reduce our diesel pollution which disproportionately harms communities of color."

Moreover, Shipment Zero "does not commit to a decrease in emissions compared to current levels," the employees write. "Given Amazon's rate of growth, reaching 50 percent net-zero shipments by 2030 could still be an increase in emissions compared to today."

Explore further Amazon's growing ties to oil industry irks some employees

2019 The Seattle Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
The Southern Inner Circle showing recovered lithic densities (figure by the authors).

A trio of researchers from the University of Leicester and the University of Southampton has found evidence that suggests the Avebury monument might have started out as a single-dwelling home. In their paper published in Cambridge University's journal, Antiquity, Mark Gillings, Joshua Pollard and Kristian Strutt discuss their study of the Neolithic monument and what they found.

The Avebury monument is a Neolithic site situated approximately 20 miles from the more famous monument Stonehenge. Like Stonehenge, Avebury is made mostly of large stones. In the case of Avebury, the stones are smaller and spread wider. The monument consists of both standing stones and other stones arranged in circles. There is also a much larger ring of stones encircling the other stone structures, which is itself encircled by an embankment. No one knows why the monument was built, though, as with Stonehenge, there are many theories. The site has not been excavated since the 1930s and is now designated as a World Heritage Site. In this new effort, the researchers sought to learn more about the monument by using modern technology rather than digging.

To learn more about the history of the monument, the researchers went back to the work done by the team in the 1930s, and then scanned the area beneath one of the inner circles using ground-penetrating radar. They report that they found a square stone structure not far below the surface with walls approximately 30 meters long. They report also that the square structure was built around another structure, which closer study revealed to be a Neolithic house. They note that the earlier team had found flint tools near where the house was located.

They claim that the evidence suggests that the house was built sometime around 3700 BC. They also found evidence suggesting that the stone square around the house was added later, as were the circles of stone that enclosed them both. They theorize that the site began as a simple abode for a single family, but was deemed special by those who came later. Those later arrivals apparently treated the house as a shrine after its inhabitants had passed on, and built the rings and other structures to honor them.

More information: Mark Gillings et al. The origins of Avebury, Antiquity (2019). Journal information: Antiquity Mark Gillings et al. The origins of Avebury,(2019). DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2019.37

 2019 Science X Network
Fruit flies of the species Drosophila melanogaster during mating. Credit: Mareike Koppik

During mating, both males and females sometimes evolve creative strategies to pursue their interests. Researchers from Munster (Germany) and Lausanne (Switzerland) now report that male flies manipulate their partners primarily in order to increase their own chances in reproductive competition. The study was published in the journal PNAS.

The fundamental biological process of reproduction can differ greatly from animal species to species. Both males and females sometimes evolve creative strategies in pursuing their interests in these mating interactions. In small species such as the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the female receives proteins through the male's seminal fluid, which, after mating, cause radical changes in her behaviour and in the processes occurring inside her body. The proteins increase her activity, reduce her sexual receptivity and stimulate her immune system.

It has been known for some time that such processes are not always beneficial for both sexes. The researchers in the current study have now taken a closer look at which mechanisms change evolutionarily if there are no conflicts of interest between the sexes, i.e. competition between males is eliminated. The result: Male flies produce fewer proteins in their seminal fluid that are responsible for changing the behaviour of the females. This means that male flies mainly manipulate their partners in order to increase their own chances in reproductive competitionas a side effect, females often have health disadvantages. "With the current study, we confirm a theory that has existed for a long time," says evolutionary biologist Claudia Fricke, a research group leader at the University of Munster. The study has been published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Background and methods:

In order to determine the extent to which the different interests pursued by each sex play a role in the evolution of fruit flies, the researchers arranged for individual pairs of flies to live monogamously over many generationscontrary to their normal mode of reproduction. Only one male and one female mated with each other, ruling out any opportunity for antagonistic interactions among potential partners. The male only gained as many offspring as the female could lay eggs. In a second group, five males and five females mated freely with one another. This polygamous lifestyle, a perfectly normal one for these insects, naturally created competitionboth between males and between females, with the scope for antagonistic interactions. The total population was, however, of equal size in both groups.

After 150 generations and 10 years of sexual selection, the researchers compared the behaviour and physiology of the flies in each group. They found that, in the first days after fertilisation, polygamous females laid one-third more eggs than those flies that had mated in an environment containing only one mating partner. Also, the females that had mated with a polygamous male were noticeably more restlessas shown in recordings of movement patterns. Both are factors that are influenced by receipt of these male seminal fluid proteins.

Why is that of advantage to the male? Since female flies are able to store the sperm of several partners and use it for more than a week to fertilise their eggs, the first male the female mates with does everything to ensure that she lays as many eggs as she can as quickly as possible and does not reproduce with others. This early investment is to the detriment of the female, which is discouraged from saving her energy and procreating over a longer time period. This was also shown in the study: "Females that had been with polygamous males died twice as frequentlywithin a few hours of matingcompared to females in monogamous relationships," says Laurent Keller from the University of Lausanne, who was involved in the study with his colleague Brian Hollis.

In a further step, the scientists read out the expression of genes of female fruit flies after mating. In the female's abdomen and brain, i.e. in the structures responsible for reproduction and for any changes in behaviourthe researchers measured the expression of genes important for reproduction. They discovered that these genes are far less expressed in females, which lived monogamously.

This corresponded to what they found in males. Without any competition, the monogamous males had a lower expression of genes coding for male seminal fluid proteins with which females can be manipulated after mating. In subsequent studies, the researchers hope to identify further genes that play a role in this process in both female and male fruit flies. The general principles of their observation may also be transferable to other insect species with a similar mating system.

Explore further Fruit fly promiscuity alters the evolutionary forces on males

More information: Brian Hollis et al, Sexual conflict drives male manipulation of female postmating responses in Drosophila melanogaster, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2019). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Brian Hollis et al, Sexual conflict drives male manipulation of female postmating responses in Drosophila melanogaster,(2019). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1821386116
Credit: University of Manchester

An international team of geographers has found indications that the climate we have in Europe today began 5000 years ago, hidden in the shells of mussel shrimps.

Although the earth has been in a warm period  known as the Holocene  for almost 12000 years, the beginning of the current climate conditions in Europe seems to have come much later than that.

The experts, including Dr. William Fletcher from The University of Manchester, identified a striking change in hydroclimatic conditions about five millennia ago, which corresponds with the establishment of climate mechanisms comparable to today's North Atlantic Oscillation.

The North Atlantic Oscillation is the name given to the differences in atmospheric pressure between the Icelandic Low to the north and the Azores High to the south. These are accompanied by changes in rainfall, especially in the western Mediterranean and northern Europe.

Dr. Fletcher and other geographers and geoscientists from the Universities of Leipzig, Marrakesh and Iceland examined the shells of tiny freshwater crustaceans called mussel shrimps from Lake Sidi Ali in Morocco. Based on oxygen isotope levels measured in the shells, the team were able to reconstruct Holocene rain anomalies for the western Mediterranean. They established a link between these anomalies and ancient weather change events in the North Atlantic.

"Our data clearly indicates an enduring change in the atmosphere and the ocean in the North Atlantic some 5000 years ago. At that time, large climate mechanisms began to changein the western Mediterranean, phases of increasing winter rain coincided with iceberg surges in the subpolar North Atlantic," says Dr. William Fletcher.

"These phases are similar to current activity observed today in the North Atlantic Oscillation, which has a major influence on weather and climate events throughout Europe. The striking change 5000 years ago can thus be seen as the birth of our current climate in Europe," adds Professor Christoph Zielhofer of the University of Leipzig, who directed the project.

"We assume that the abrupt shift in hydroclimate 5000 years before present was a threshold mechanism response of the European climate to a gradual change in long-term insolation," says Steffen Mischke of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik, who was also involved in the research.

The results of this research have been published in the journal Climate of the Past.

Explore further The mechanism for Arctic cold air outbreaks into Eurasia

More information: Christoph Zielhofer et al. Western Mediterranean hydro-climatic consequences of Holocene ice-rafted debris (Bond) events, Climate of the Past (2019). Journal information: Climate of the Past Christoph Zielhofer et al. Western Mediterranean hydro-climatic consequences of Holocene ice-rafted debris (Bond) events,(2019). DOI: 10.5194/cp-15-463-2019
Messier 3: Containing an incredible half-million stars, this 8-billion-year-old cosmic bauble is one of the largest and brightest globular clusters ever discovered. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, G. Piotto et al.

Globular clusters are inherently beautiful objects, but the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, Messier 3, is commonly acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful of them all.

Containing an incredible half-million stars, this 8-billion-year-old cosmic bauble is one of the largest and brightest globular clusters ever discovered. However, what makes Messier 3 extra special is its unusually large population of variable starsstars that fluctuate in brightness over time. New variable stars continue to be discovered in this sparkling stellar nest to this day, but so far we know of 274, the highest number found in any globular cluster by far. At least 170 of these are of a special variety called RR Lyrae variables, which pulse with a period directly related to their intrinsic brightness. If astronomers know how bright a star truly is based on its mass and classification, and they know how bright it appears to be from our viewpoint here on Earth, they can thus work out its distance from us. For this reason, RR Lyrae stars are known as standard candlesobjects of known luminosity whose distance and position can be used to help us understand more about vast celestial distances and the scale of the cosmos.

Messier 3 also contains a relatively high number of so-called blue stragglers, which are shown quite clearly in this Hubble image. These are blue main sequence stars that appear to be young because they are bluer and more luminous than other stars in the cluster. As all stars in globular clusters are believed to have formed together and thus to be roughly the same age, only a difference in mass can give these stars a different color. A red, old star can appear bluer when it acquires more mass, for instance by stripping it from a nearby star. The extra mass changes it into a bluer star, which makes us think it is younger than it really is.

Explore further Hubble spots flock of cosmic ducks
HP3 model in the DLR test laboratory in Bremen. Credit: DLR German Aerospace Center

A blue box, a cubic metre of Mars-like sand, a rock, a fully-functional model of the Mars 'Mole' and a seismometer  these are the main components with which the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR) is simulating the current situation on Mars. After its first hammering operation on 28 February 2019, the DLR Heat and Physical Properties Package (HP), the Mars Mole, was only able to drive itself about 30 centimetres into the Martian subsurface. DLR planetary researchers and engineers are now analysing how this could have happened and looking into what measures could be taken to remedy the situation. "We are investigating and testing various possible scenarios to find out what led to the 'Mole' stopping," explains Torben Wippermann, Test Leader at the DLR Institute of Space Systems in Bremen. The basis for the scientists' work: some images, temperature data, data from the radiometer and recordings made by the French Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) during a brief hammering test conducted on 26 March 2019.

When the NASA InSight lander arrived on the Martian surface, everything looked even better than expected. Although the lander's camera showed numerous rocks some distance away, the immediate surroundings were free of rocks and debris. The reason why the 'Mole' hammered its way quickly into the ground after being placed on the surface of Mars and was then unable to continue its progress is now being diagnosed remotely. "There are various possible explanations, to which we will have to react differently," says Matthias Grott, a planetary researcher and the HP Project Scientist. A possible explanation is that the 'Mole' has created a cavity around itself and is no longer sufficiently constrained by the friction between its body and the surrounding sand.

Another type of sand

In Bremen, DLR is now experimenting with a different type of sand: "Until now, our tests have been conducted using a Mars-like sand that is not very cohesive," explains Wippermann. This sand was used during earlier tests in which the 'Mole' hammered its way down a five-metre column in preparation for the mission. Now, the Mole's ground model will be tested in a box of sand that compacts quickly and in which cavities can be created by the hammering process. During some of the test runs, the researchers will also place a rock with a diameter of about 10 centimetres in the sand. Such an obstacle in the subsurface could also be the reason why the HP instrument has stopped penetrating further. In all experiments, a seismometer listens to the activity of the Earth-based 'Mole'. During the short 'diagnostic' hammering on Mars, SEIS recorded vibrations to learn more about the Mole's impact mechanism. Comparisons between the data obtained on Mars and the Earth-based tests help the researchers more closely understand the real-life situation. "Ideally, we will be able to reconstruct the processes on Mars as accurately as possible."

DLR engineer Torben Wippermann with the HP3 experimental set-up. Credit: DLR German Aerospace Center

'Moles' on Earth as guinea pigs

The next steps will follow once the scientists know what caused the progress of the 'Mole' to come to a halt on 28 February 2019. Possible measures to allow the instrument to hammer further into the ground must then be meticulously tested and analysed on Earth. For this reason, a replica of the HP3 instrument has been shipped to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. There, the DLR researchers' findings can be used to test the interaction of the 'Mole', the support structure and the robotic arm to determine whether, for example, lifting or moving the external structure is the correct solution. "I think that it will be a few weeks before any further actions are carried out on Mars," says Grott. The break in activities for the Mars Mole will only come to an end once a solution has been found for the Earth-based 'Moles'.

DLR engineer Torben Wippermann with the HP3 experimental set-up. Credit: DLR German Aerospace Center

Explore further Good luck 'Mole'experiment starts hammering into the Martian soil

Provided by DLR German Aerospace Center
In this Dec. 1, 2011, file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gestures as he speaks during a news conference in central London. The arrest of Assange reignites a debate with no easy answer: Is the former computer hacker and founder of WikiLeaks a journalist or not? His lawyers are quick to characterize the case against him as a threat to all journalists. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis, File)

After the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, his lawyer was quick to characterize it as an assault against the rights of journalists all over the world who seek to uncover secrets.

But was it quite that clear? Does WikiLeaks do journalism, or is it something else?

The answer wasn't evident when the organization burst into public consciousness at the top of this decade with the release of government documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems even less so now.

Launched in 2006 as the vision of Australian computer hacker Assange, WikiLeaks produced raw data, not storiesthings like Sarah Palin's personal emails or membership rolls of neo-Nazi organizations. The thousands of memos, cables and other documents about U.S. war efforts revealed when Assange allegedly conspired with Chelsea Manning to break into a Pentagon computer took WikiLeaks to another level. Some viewed Assange as a hero, others as a traitor.

Either way, it was a heady time. WikiLeaks was considered a new type of news organization, fueled by the power of the Internet and democratization of information.

"There is a desperate need for our work," WikiLeaks member Sarah Harrison explained in a 2016 column in The New York Times. "The world is connected by largely unaccountable networks of power that span industries and countries, political parties, corporations and institutions. WikiLeaks shines a light on these by revealing not just individual incidents, but information about entire structures of power."

The organization's methods can beand sometimes areseen as a threat to the journalism's traditional gatekeepers of power. But journalism has encompassed many traditions over the decades and centuries.

WikiLeaks has been an influence in two positive trends for journalism over the past decade, says Lisa Lynch, a journalism professor at Drew University who has written about the organization. It emphasized the importance of data-driven journalism, an increasingly valuable tool. Since WikiLeaks was often willing to work with traditional outlets in how it released data, it encouraged news organizations to cooperate more in chasing stories. The 2016 "Panama Papers" investigation that revealed the offshore financial havens of political leaders showed what can happen when journalists team up.

In this Feb. 24, 2011, file photo, the founder of WikiLeaks Julian Assange speaks to the media after his extradition hearing at Belmarsh Magistrates' Court in London. The arrest of Assange reignites a debate with no easy answer: Is the former computer hacker and founder of WikiLeaks a journalist or not? His lawyers are quick to characterize the case against him as a threat to all journalists. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File)

Despite utopian ideals, though, real life is more complicated.

Information isn't always merely information; government files can reveal wartime informants and put people's lives in danger. And information can be weaponized through decisions about what to reveal and what not to reveal. For example: Many people saw Assange's decision to publish the private emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman as a sign of coziness with Russia and a contributing factor in Donald Trump's election as president.

Yet some of history's most prominent journalists have been advocates as well, and have expressed clear points of view.

Upton Sinclair, a progressive "muckraker" in the early 20th century, made no secret of the fact that his expose of the meatpacking industry, "The Jungle," was an attempt at jump-starting reform. "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach," he wrote later. Today, news outlets across the political spectrum, from The National Review to Mother Jones, from Fox News to MSNBC, are considered to be journalismalbeit delivered from a distinct vantage point.

Add into the mix the rise of blogging and social media, which permit anyone with an internet connection to use the term "journalist" and be immediately and globally amplified, and the result is ambiguity about who is a journalist and who isn't.

In that environment, Assange, too, presents an ambiguous image.

"I had trouble seeing him as a journalist from the start," said Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin, a frequent writer about the media. "But he certainly was a publisher. It turns out he was not just any old publisher, he was a publisher with a distinct angle. And his angle is anti-democratic."

Certainly Assange, a prickly personality who may never be forgiven by many Democrats for WikiLeaks' role in the 2016 election, doesn't cut a sympathetic figure. Does that disqualify him from the mantle of journalist, though?

In this Dec. 16, 2010, file photo, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen outside the High Court in central London. The arrest of Assange reignites a debate with no easy answer: Is the former computer hacker and founder of WikiLeaks a journalist or not? His lawyers are quick to characterize the case against him as a threat to all journalists. (Stefan Wermuth/Pool Photo, File)

"People feel very differently about WikiLeaks now than they did in 2010," Lynch said. "There's no doubt about that. I feel very differently about WikiLeaks now. But that doesn't mean I'm not just as concerned about what happens to WikiLeaks going forward."

She added: "If we start drawing boxes around who is or isn't a journalist in court and the conversation becomes about the way WikiLeaks used information, then we might end up with unintended consequences."

David Boardman, dean of Temple University's communications school and chairman of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said one key thing sets WikiLeaks apart from news organizations: the accusations that Assange acted illegally with Manning to obtain the war documents.

"I consider it something different," said Boardman, the former executive editor of The Seattle Times. "I don't consider it a journalistic organization."

Boardman considers the U.S. government's case against Assange, as it is now outlined, as narrowly based upon his actions with Manning and thus not threatening to journalists. Others consider this a narrow reading of the caseone fueled, perhaps, by a discomfort with Assange's methods and the idea of whether he should be considered a journalist at all.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, himself no stranger to controversies about the release of information, tweeted Thursday: "If you're a U.S. media star who has spent two years claiming to be so concerned about press freedoms over Trump's mean tweets about your friends, but don't raise your voice in protest over this grave attack on press freedom, take a hard look in the mirror."

 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Retired astronaut Scott Kelly, who spent a year on the International Space Station, is pictured on the right, opposite his identical twin brother Mark, also a former astronaut

A NASA study of a US astronaut who spent a year in space while his twin brother remained on Earth is providing valuable insights into the effects of extended spaceflight on the human body, a key to planning a future manned mission to Mars, researchers said Thursday.

US astronaut Scott Kelly spent a year on the International Space Station while his identical twin Mark Kelly, also a former NASA astronaut, stayed on the ground.

The researchers who carried out the "NASA Twins Study" found that most of the changes to Scott's body during his time in space returned to normal within months of his return to Earthalthough not all of them.

The findings, published in the journal Science, were encouraging to scientists and engineers envisioning interplanetary travel such as an eventual trip to Mars, a mission that could last two to three years.

"The Twins Study is the most comprehensive review of the response of the human body to spaceflight ever conducted," said Dr Susan Bailey of Colorado State University.

Dr Steven Platts, deputy chief scientist of NASA's Human Research Program, said it will "guide future biomedical space research and allow us to have a safer journey to and from Mars."

Using Mark as a baseline, 84 researchers at 12 universities documented the molecular, cognitive and physiological effects of Scott's year in space.

Retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly

Scott, a 50-year-old veteran of two US Space Shuttle missions, spent 340 consecutive days on the ISSfrom March 27, 2015 to March 1, 2016.

He was monitored pre-flight and post-flight and during his time on the ISS. Blood, urine and stool samples were sent back to Earth on resupply vessels.

At the same time, scientists monitored Marka veteran himself of four Space Shuttle missionson Earth as what they called a "genetically matched ground control."

'Nauseous, dizzy'

Bailey said the uniqueness of using twins was because the scientists could "attribute any kind of differences that we saw in spaceflight to spaceflight.

"It wasn't because of any genetic differences," she said.

Scott Kelly spent nearly a year aboard the International Space Station and was part of a landmark NASA 'Twins Study' along with his identical twin brother Mark

Dr Michael Snyder of Stanford University said there are "thousands of gene and molecular changes that occur as someone goes in space."

"Virtually all of those returned to normal (in Scott) by six months," Snyder said. "It's reassuring to know that when you come back things will largely be back to the same."

Scott Kelly said he was extremely fatigued after coming back from the ISS and attributed it mostly to the adaptation to gravity.

"I felt like I had the flu," he said.

"I was nauseous. I was dizzy," he said, and suffered from joint and muscle pain and rashes.

Dr Stuart Lee of NASA's Johnson Space Center said measurements were taken of the thickness in both Scott and Mark of the carotid artery wall, which can be a predictor of cardiovascular disease or stroke risk.

US astronaut Scott Kelly after returning to Earth on March 2, 2016 after a nearly one-year stay aboard the International Space Station

"Our main findings in Scott were that the carotid artery wall became thicker early in flight and remained so throughout the mission," Lee said.

Mark did not have any such thickening.

Thickening of the carotid artery wall has been observed in astronauts previously.

So has weight loss due to poorer nutrition in space and a lack of exercise.

Scott lost seven percent of his body mass during his time on the ISS while Mark gained about four percent during the course of the study.

In one test, both Scott and Mark were administered a flu vaccination. It delivered a similar immune response.

US astronaut Scott Kelly (R) aboard the International Space Station

The twins also performed a battery of cognitive tests before, during and after the flight and found that Scott's cognitive performance declined post-flight in terms of speed and accuracy.

Telomere length

Chris Mason, a geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine, looked at how the unique environment of space impacts genes.

"We catalogued basically what is the landscape of all these genes that have gone up and gone down at different stages during the mission," Mason said.

"We saw that the vast majority, over 90 percent of all these changes, all returned back to baseline coming back to Earth," Mason said.

Some of the most interesting research was done by Bailey's team at Colorado State University which looked at telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that typically shorten as people get older.

US President Barack Obama meets with NASA astronauts Scott Kelly (C) and his twin brother Mark Kelly in the Oval Office

Telomeres are considered a biomarker of aging or health risks from cardiovascular disease or cancer.

Bailey's team evaluated Scott and Mark's telomere lengths before the flight and found that they were very similar.

What surprised her team was that Scott experienced a "specific elongation of telomeres" during his time on the ISS.

Bailey cautioned that the finding "can't really be viewed as the fountain of youth and that people might expect to live longer because they're in space."

She said there was a "very rapid decrease" in telomere length upon Scott's return to Earth and he also experienced some unexplained telomere loss.

Bailey said her team has not come up with a reason for the telomere lengthening but was looking at whether the higher radiation exposure in space, inflammation or stress may be responsible.

Explore further Astronaut has no lingering, major epigenetic differences from earthbound twin brother

More information: F.E. Garrett-Bakelman el al., "The NASA Twins Study: A multidimensional analysis of a year-long human spaceflight," Science (2019). F.E. Garrett-Bakelman el al., "The NASA Twins Study: A multidimensional analysis of a year-long human spaceflight,"(2019). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aau8650 M. Loebrich el al., "Hazards of human spaceflight," Science (2019). science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi  1126/science.aaw7086 Journal information: Science

 2019 AFP
This 2018 photo provided by the National Park Service shows, scientists perform a necropsy on Bryde's whale that was stranded in the Florida Everglades National Park. Federal scientists say a tiny group of Bryde's whales in the Gulf of Mexico is endangered, with threats including oil and gas exploration and development. Laura Engleby, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries' service, said Friday, April 12, 2019, that there may be as few as 23 in the Gulf's DeSoto Canyon. (National Park Service via AP)

Federal scientists say a tiny group of Bryde's whales in the Gulf of Mexico is endangered, facing threats including oil and gas exploration and development.

"They're the only year-round baleen whales that make their home in Gulf of Mexico, and (they) have a unique and very important role in the ecosystem," said Laura Engleby, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries' service.

Two other subspecies are found in tropical waters around the world, but this one is so genetically different it may even be a different species, Engleby said. The filter-feeding whales known as baleen whales can be hard to tell apart by sight, she said. "That makes it even more challenging to study them, in some ways," she said.

A Republican congressman from Florida and a marine mammal scientist in Massachusetts applauded the decision to protect the whales. There probably are about 33 of them in a deepwater area called the DeSoto Canyon, Engleby said. If there are any in the southern Gulf, she said, the total including the known population is probably less than 100.

"Although belated, this designation will help to protect this vulnerable species and aid in its recovery," U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan said in an emailed statement. Buchanan and Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Florida, had pushed for the designation, Buchanan spokesman Anthony Cruz wrote.

"I think it's a great thing to declare them endangered. It's been coming for a while," said Scott Kraus, chief marine mammal scientist at the New England Aquarium's Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life.

However, "It's absolutely not too late" to save the whale, said Zac Smith, attorney for the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group that sued the government in 2014 to get the endangered listing. "This species now has a fighting chance for survival and to rebound from the brink of extinction."

Engleby said the next step is to work out ways to help the whales recover, including consulting with other agencies and considering whether to designate critical habitat.

Such a designation would require NOAA Fisheries consultation about any federal contracts, which include oil and gas leases in federal waters.

Threats include noise from seismic surveys for oil and gas and ship traffic, which interfere with their subsonic communication.

Oil and gas companies agreed in 2013 not to use seismic surveys in an area including the DeSoto Canyon. That agreement, originally for 2 years, has been extended and will remain in effect until 2022, NOAA Fisheries spokeswoman Kim Amendola said.

A study released in 2015 estimated the whales' numbers at 26. It said the BP offshore oil spill in 2010 overlapped nearly half their habitat and might have killed up to 22 percent of the population. Other threats include fishing nets, oil and gas development, pollution, and even being hit by shipsa whale was hit and killed by a ship in 2009.

It arrived in Tampa, Florida, "on the bow of a ship," Engleby said. Since it was lactating, she noted, the calf probably died, too.

The name is pronounced "BROO-duhs" because they were named after the 19th century Norwegian whaler Johan Bryde.

Whalers' records dating back to the 1700s show they once swam in the central and northern gulf, according to NOAA Fisheries. They eat crustaceans, fish and cephalopods, which they filter through baleen plates and bristles.

Because they were confined to the Gulf of Mexico, they probably never were as numerous as some other species, said Smith.

Engleby said, "We don't really know much about this species." She said a study funded with money from penalties that energy giant BP PLC and others paid after the oil spill is using visual surveys, passive acoustic monitoring and tagging to learn more, including their part in the ecosystem.

Explore further Rare whale found dead in Everglades National Park waters

 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Decades of commercial mountaineering have turned Mount Everest into the world's highest rubbish dump

Climbers with pressing needs on Mount Everest will soon find an "eco-friendly" toilet at a Chinese campsite 7,028 metres (23,058 feet) above sea level in an ongoing campaign to deal with the peak's waste problem.

Decades of commercial mountaineering have turned Mount Everest into the world's highest rubbish dump as an increasing number of big-spending mountaineers pay little attention to the ugly footprint they leave behind.

Fluorescent tents, discarded climbing equipment, empty gas canisters and even human excrement pollute the well-trodden route to the summit of the 8,848-metre peak.

During the climbing season this spring, a Chinese expedition company will add what state media dubbed an "eco-friendly" loo at the higher campsite on the northern slope in Tibet.

"The toilet makes it easy to collect human waste produced by the climbers as there is a barrel with rubbish bags underneath the toilet," Xinhua quoted Pema Tinley, deputy secretary general of the Tibet Mountaineering Association, as saying.

The waste will be collected and brought down the mountain.

Similar facilities have been installed at lower camps, including at the 5,200-metre north base camp, in previous years, according to Xinhua.

The waste from the base camp is taken away daily and is provided to local farmers to use as fertiliser, the news agency reported in February, citing observations by its reporter and a member of the mountaineering management team.

The temporary toilets will be removed at the end of the climbing season.

Governments on both sides of the mountain have been battling the human waste and trash left by an increasing number of climbers.

In February, China banned non-climbers from accessing its Everest base camp in Tibet in an attempt to clean up its side of the mountain.

Meanwhile, engineers in Nepal are considering installing a biogas plant near the more popular south base camp that would turn climber poo into a useful fertiliser.

Currently raw sewage from the camp is carried to the next village - a one-hour walk - and dumped into trenches, where it risks contaminating water sources down in the valley.

Explore further Nepal to send team to clean Mount Everest

 2019 AFP
PAGA based embedding of the developmental trajectories in the Zebrafish embryo, colored by timepoint. Credit: Original data from Wagner et al., Science (2018)

Experimental molecular assays with single-cell resolution generate big and complex data. Researchers at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen and the Technical University of Munich are now presenting their computer algorithm PAGA. They create data-driven, easily interpretable maps that reveal cellular processes and fates in complex contexts. Their paper has been published in Genome Biology.

The fate of individual cells in the body is relevant in many ways. Researchers want to study developmental processes and understand how diseases progress. "Experiments generate large data sets, which is to say big data," explains Professor Fabian Theis, Director of the Institute of Computational Biology (ICB) at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen and professor of Mathematical Modelling of Biological Systems at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Researchers gather information not only about cells per se, but also about their interactions with other cells and other tissue types. "Previously, however, it was not possible to model complex processes at the cellular level in a clear and comprehensible manner."

PAGA interprets big data

So far, researchers have taken two approaches to data analysis. Either they searched for cells with similar properties and grouped them (clustering), or they described the timing of cells along their developmental pathways (trajectory inference). "If you look at the data through these very different lenses, divergent and unclear interpretations inevitably arise," adds Alex Wolf, who until recently headed a machine learning team at the ICB. "PAGA does everything that clustering and trajectory inference can do in a single analysis, with a single method and with a single consistent modeling approach." Depending on the desired resolution, the tool groups cells by type (such as skin cells) and biological state (such as cells in undergoing mitosis) and reveals transitions between cell types and states.

Use in research

In recent months, several articles have been published that show the possibilities PAGA opens up. Mireya Plass of the Max Delbruck Center of Molecular Medicine within the Helmholtz Association together with Wolf and colleagues reconstructed the first cellular lineage tree of an adult animal  an achievement the journal Science hailed as one of the foremost scientific breakthroughs of 2018. Recently, a team headed by Blanca Pijuan-Sala of Cambridge University used PAGA to reconstruct the developmental processes of a mouse embryo. Other papers show that PAGA delivers important results in a clinical context. Using PAGA to determine the lineages of intestinal cells, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard gained an understanding of the different cellular contributions to chronic inflammatory bowel disease. Theis also sees great future potential in the tool: "Basically, any biological phenomenon that can be attributed to a cellular process can be analyzed with PAGA as soon as the data are available."

Explore further A complete cell atlas and lineage tree of the immortal flatworm

More information: PAGA: graph abstraction reconciles clustering with trajectory inference through a topology preserving map of single cells, Genome Biology. DOI: 10.1186/s13059-019-1663-x Journal information: Science , Genome Biology PAGA: graph abstraction reconciles clustering with trajectory inference through a topology preserving map of single cells,

Provided by Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen
The author of an unsigned text can be identified by analyzing the relationship between just a few words of the text, as shown by physicist-statisticians from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow. (Source: IFJ PAN) Credit: IFJ PAN

People are more original than they thinkthis is suggested by a literary text analysis method of stylometry proposed by scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences. The author's individuality can be seen in the connections between no more than a dozen words in an English text. It turns out that in Slavic languages, authorship identification requires even fewer words, and is more certain.

The researchers sought a solution to the problem of verifying the authorship of historical texts known only from fragments, the identification of plagiarism, and similar problems. In many cases, traditional stylometric methods fail or do not lead to sufficiently reliable conclusions. In Information Sciences, scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow now present their own statistical tool for stylometric analysis. Constructed with the use of graphs, it analyzes the structure of texts in a qualitatively new way.

"The conclusions of our research are, on the one hand, encouraging. They indicate that the individuality of any person manifests itself clearly in the way they use a surprisingly small number of words. But there is also a dark side. Since it turns out that people are so original, it will be easier to identify individuals by their statements," says Professor Stanislaw Drozdz of Cracow University of Technology.

Stylometry, the science dealing with the statistical characteristics of the style of texts, is based on the observation that each person uses the same language in slightly different ways. Some have a broader vocabulary, others narrower, some prefer certain phrases and make mistakes, others avoid repetition and are linguistic purists. And in written text, they also differ in the way they use punctuation. In the typical stylometric approach, the basic features of a text are usually examined, including the frequency of occurrence of individual words, while punctuation is ignored. Analyses are carried out for the studied text and for texts written by potentially well-known authors. The creator is deemed to be the person whose works have parameters with the values closest to those obtained for the material being identified.

"We suggested that the characteristic features of the style could be represented in a network representation of the text, using graphs," explains Tomasz Stanisz, Ph.D. student at the IFJ PAN and the first author of the publication. "The graph is a collection of points or vertices on the graph, connected by lines, i.e. the edges of the graph. In the simplest casein the so-called unweighted networkthe vertices correspond to individual words and are connected by edges if and only if two given words have occurred adjacent to each other at least once in the text. For example, for the sentence 'Jane is hungry,' the graph would have three vertices, one for each word, but there would only be two edges, one between 'Jane' and 'is,' the other between 'is' and 'hungry.'"

While constructing their stylometric tools, the researchers tested different types of graphs. The best results were obtained for weighted graphs, that is, those in which each edge carries information about the number of occurrences of its corresponding connection between words. Two parameters turned out to be the most useful in such networks: the node degree and the clustering coefficient. The first describes the number of edges coming from a given node and is directly related to the number of occurrences of a given word in the text. In turn, the clustering coefficient describes the probability that two words connected by an edge with a given word are also connected with an edge between themselves.

Using statistical tools prepared in this way, the Cracow-based physicists looked at 96 books: six novels by eight well-known English authors (Austen, Conrad, Defoe, Dickens, Doyle, Eliot, Orwell and Twain) and eight Polish authors (Korczak, Kraszewski, Lam, Orzeszkowa, Prus, Reymont, Sienkiewicz and Zeromski). The authors included two winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (Wladyslaw Reymont and Henryk Sienkiewicz). All the texts were obtained from internet resources: Project Gutenberg, Wikisource and Wolne Lektury. The group from the IFJ PAN then checked the reliability with which the authorship of 12 randomly selected works in one language could be determined, treating the rest of the pool of works as comparative material.

"In the case of English texts, we identified the authors correctly in almost 90 percent of cases. In addition, in order to achieve success, it was necessary to trace the connections between only 10 to 12 words of the examined text. Contrary to naive intuition, a further increase in the number of words studied did not significantly increase the effectiveness of the method," says Stanisz.

In Polish, the determination of authorship turned out to be even simpler: analyzing only five to six words was required. Notably, despite the fact that the pool of significant words was half as many as in English, the probability of correct identification was increased by up to 95 percent. Such high diagnostic accuracy, however, was only achieved when punctuation marks were also treated as separate words. In both languages, omitting punctuation resulted in a significant reduction in the number of correct guesses. The observed role of punctuation is another confirmation of the conclusions from a 2017 publication of the group of Prof. Drozdz, in which it was shown that punctuation plays a role in language equally important as the words themselves.

"In comparison with English, Polish seems to give greater possibilities of revealing the style of the author. We think that the other Slavic languages are characterised by similar features. English is a positional language, which means that the order of the words in a sentence is important. This sort of language leaves less room for an individual style of expression than the Slavic languages, in which inflection, or variation, determines the role of a word or phrase in a sentence. This allows for greater freedom to organize the order of words in a sentence, while its meaning remains unchanged," says Prof. Drozdz.

Explore further Overlooked elements of language and literature play a key role

More information: Andrzej Kulig et al, In narrative texts punctuation marks obey the same statistics as words, Information Sciences (2016). Andrzej Kulig et al, In narrative texts punctuation marks obey the same statistics as words,(2016). DOI: 10.1016/j.ins.2016.09.051
US President Donald Trump has insisted that a separate branch of military is needed to focus on protecting satellites, tackling vulnerabilities in space, and asserting US dominance in orbit

The Space Force that President Donald Trump wants to launch ran headlong on Thursday into skeptical lawmakers who questioned the need for a stand-alone military wing.

Trump has insisted that a separate branch of military is needed to focus on protecting satellites, tackling vulnerabilities in space, and asserting US dominance in orbit.

Under a Pentagon proposal, the Space Force would be established as its own branch of the military but would fall under the Air Force, similar to how the Navy oversees the Marine Corps.

"Both China and Russia have weaponized space with the intent to hold American capabilities at risk," Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told the Senate Armed Services Committee, whose endorsement he sought for the new force.

Not since the Air Force was stood up in 1947 has the Pentagon created a new military branch. A Space Force would join the Army, Navy and Marines as well as the Air Force.

"The bottom line is the next major conflict may be won or lost in space," Shanahan told the committee.

But lawmakers were less than clear on why setting up the force solely for space-related matters made sense.

"I don't understand how putting a new box in an organizational chart is going to help us to respond to the new challenge that we face. I'm genuinely undecided, although as you can tell, I'm skeptical," said independent Maine Senator Angus King.

Republican Tom Cotton of Arkansas wondered about the need for a new military service, as opposed to placing space matters in an existing one.

"Can you explain why we need to put all space assets, space forces into a separate service as opposed to a combatant command?" he asked.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, recalled that a space force was first suggested two years ago and then dismissed.

At that time, Dunford said, he had his doubts but is now convinced about the need for a separate force.

General John Hyten, who heads US Strategic Command, said creation of a Space Force is inevitable because "every physical domain we have when it becomes contested, we create a military service to deal with that."

What the committee must decide, he said, "is when is that going to happen."

The Space Force would comprise about 20,000 personnel, grouping all Pentagon military and civilians dealing with satellites, rockets, weapons and technology related to space.

"This doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sorry," said West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, who considered the Air Force's current handling of space matters satisfactory.

Democrat Elizabeth Warren, a presidential hopeful from Massachusetts, said that "all I see is how a new... force will create one more organization to ask Congress for money.

"And there is no reason to believe that adding an entirely new Space Force bureaucracy and pouring buckets more money into it is going to reduce our overall vulnerability in space."

Explore further Pentagon submits Space Force proposal to Congress

 2019 AFP
Credit: Jorge Martinez/FFI

Every year thousands of turtles come ashore along the beaches of the south Pacific coast of Nicaragua to lay their eggs. The female turtles return to the beaches on which they were born to lay an average of 100 ping-pong ball shaped eggs into nest holes dug out of the sand. The beaches in this region are of global importance for nesting turtles, including endangered olive ridley turtles, and critically endangered Pacific leatherback and hawksbill turtles.

Sadly these turtles face some sinister threats at the hands of humans. These include the poaching of turtle eggs by marginalised local communities for income, which significantly threatens turtle populations in the region. Additionally, the prevalence of plastic bags on nesting beaches poses a risk, as these are known to be consumed by, and do harm to, turtles.

Fauna & Flora International (FFI) started working in the region in 2001, and has since developed a turtle conservation programme in order to tackle these threats through a range of strategies. These include community ranger patrols, establishing community hatcheries, awareness raising, and supporting local people to find sustainable sources of income, for example through the Weaving for Nature initiative. This is where our turtle-friendly plastic comes in.

Weaving for Nature was launched in 2007 and involves the formation of women's weaving groups, who collect plastic bags polluting beaches and weave them into products for sale, predominantly to tourists. The aim is to increase the household income of the participating women, thereby decreasing their incentive to poach turtle eggs, and at the same time to reduce the amount of plastic pollution on important turtle nesting beaches, to lower the risk of turtles consuming plastic bags.

Credit: Alam Ramirez/FFI

The initiative has been promoted across a number of communities in the region. These communities were known to be poaching turtle eggs, including many of the weavers and their families. These sites also had high levels of plastic waste due to the wide use of plastic by a relatively large population (attracted to the area by the potential income from egg poaching), compounded by a lack of waste disposal facilities, which led to widespread discarding of plastic into the environment.

Weaving for Nature has successfully contributed to a wider programme of work that has improved turtle conservation. In particular, this initiative has provided families previously reliant on turtle poaching with sustainable livelihood options and changed attitudes towards turtle conservation, as the in-country coordinator, Alma Susana, confirms: "Many of the women, and many of their relatives who are now part of this initiative, used to go to the beach to poach turtle eggs. Now they visit the same beach, but to clean it." During the 2017/18 nesting season, 100% of the nine leatherback turtle nests were protected from poaching in Chacocente, a globally important area for nesting sea turtles, resulting in the release of 137 leatherback hatchlings to sea, whereas 100% of all nests were poached prior to FFI's intervention.

Anecdotal reports also suggest that plastic pollution levels on and around beaches have reduced. A woman from the weaving group in Astillero, a community near Chacocente, recounted: "I feel that in some way we have contributed towards a change in Astillero, because if you came here six years ago, that field over there would be filled with bags that were being blown into the air towards the sea."

Credit: Alam Ramirez/FFI

The initiative has also successfully increased household income. It has helped to channel an average of US$100 extra per month back to each weaver, contributing a significant proportion of household income in a region where the average salary is estimated to be US$200 per month in a fishing household.

Furthermore, the women were a disadvantaged group within these marginalised communities; the initiative has brought them together so that they share a common purpose, and has boosted their sense of empowerment and motivation: "I am a grandmother. I am a wife. I am a housewife. I am also a weaver. I am Wonder Woman!" It has improved their social status within their families and the wider community, and the women are empowered to take more control over their lives; for example, they are starting to use family planning to achieve their desired family size.

However, pursuing an enterprise that relies on plastic waste in order to tackle plastic pollution has not been without its challenges. Developing this kind of initiative requires careful examination of potential social, livelihood and health implications. Nonetheless, if appropriately considered, they can achieve positive environmental and socio-economic impacts, as highlighted above. In developing Weaving for Nature, a number of lessons have been learned. We have shared these in a learning document in the hope that they can be applied to subsequent projects that plan to use a similar approach in order to tackle plastic pollution.

Explore further 10,000 turtle hatchlings released back into the wild
Research that reveals what lies at the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean -- the Mariana Trench.Until now, scientists knew more about Mars than the deepest part of the ocean. But an expedition to collect samples of the microbial population at the deepest part of the Mariana Trench (some 11,000 meters down) has revealed a new 'oil-eating' bacteria. Credit: University of East Anglia

Scientists from the University of East Anglia have discovered a unique oil eating bacteria in the deepest part of the Earth's oceansthe Mariana Trench.

Together with researchers from the China and Russia, they undertook the most comprehensive analysis of microbial populations in the trench.

The Mariana Trench is located in the Western Pacific Ocean and reaches a depth of approximately 11,000 metres. By comparison, Mount Everest is 8,848 metres high.

"We know more about Mars than the deepest part of the ocean," said Prof Xiao-Hua Zhang of the Ocean University in China, who led the study.

To date, only a few expeditions have investigated the organisms inhabiting this ecosystem.

One of these expeditions was organized and led by noted marine explorer and Academy Award-winning film director James Cameron, who built a specialised submersible to collect samples in the trench.

Dr. Jonathan Todd, from UEA's School of Biological Sciences, said: "Our research team went down to collect samples of the microbial population at the deepest part of the Mariana Trenchsome 11,000 metres down. We studied the samples that were brought back and identified a new group of hydrocarbon degrading bacteria.

"Hydrocarbons are organic compounds that are made of only hydrogen and carbon atoms, and they are found in many places, including crude oil and natural gas.

"So these types of microorganisms essentially eat compounds similar to those in oil and then use it for fuel. Similar microorganisms play a role in degrading oil spills in natural disasters such as BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

"We also found that this bacteria is really abundant at the bottom of the Mariana Trench."

In fact, the team found that the proportion of hydrocarbon degrading bacteria in the Trench is the highest on Earth.

The scientists isolated some of these microbes and demonstrated that they consume hydrocarbons in the laboratory under environmental conditions that simulate those in the Mariana Trench.

In order to understand the source of the hydrocarbons 'feeding' this bacteria, the team analysed samples of sea water taken at the surface, and all the way down a column of water to the sediment at the bottom of the trench.

Dr. Nikolai Pedentchouk, from UEA's School of Environmental Sciences, said: "We found that hydrocarbons exist as deep as 6,000 meters below the surface of the ocean and probably even deeper. A significant proportion of them probably derived from ocean surface pollution.

"To our surprise, we also identified biologically produced hydrocarbons in the ocean sediment at the bottom of the trench. This suggests that a unique microbial population is producing hydrocarbons in this environment."

"These hydrocarbons, similar to the compounds that constitute diesel fuel, have been found in algae at the ocean surface but never in microbes at these depths."

Dr. David Lea-Smith, from UEA's School of Biological Sciences, said: "These hydrocarbons may help microbes survive the crushing pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which is equal to 1,091 kilograms pressed against a fingernail.

"They may also be acting as a food source for other microbes, which may also consume any pollutant hydrocarbons that happen to sink to the ocean floor. But more research is needed to fully understand this unique environment."

"Identifying the microbes that produce these hydrocarbons is one of our top priorities, as is understanding the quantity of hydrocarbons released by human activity into this isolated environment," added Prof Xiao-Hua Zhang.

'Proliferation of hydrocarbon degrading microbes at the bottom of the Mariana Trench' is published in the journal Microbiome on April 12, 2019.

Explore further Scientists map 'deepest' parts of Southern Ocean
A section of an ice wedge extracted from the northern Alaskan tundra is providing insight on the region's geological history. Credit: Yoshinori Iizuka, Hokkaido University.

Evidence of historic marine life present in Alaskan permafrost is helping scientists reconstruct ancient changes in the ice cover over the Arctic Ocean.

Hokkaido University researchers and colleagues have found that the Beaufort Sea, on the margin of the Arctic Ocean, was not completely frozen over during the coldest summers of the late Ice Age, some 12,800 years ago. Their methodology, using ice wedges from the Alaskan permafrost, could help scientists further reconstruct historic sea-ice conditions in the Arctic Ocean, and thus improve forecasts for the future.

Scientists have long studied ice core samples from large permanent ice masses in the Antarctic ice sheet around the South Pole, and in Greenland near the North Pole. These samples contain relics from our climate's distant past, such as ions, dust particles, sea salts, volcanic ash and air bubbles, which can give us information on how Earth's climate has changed over thousands and thousands of years.

Now, a research team led by Yoshinori Iizuka of Hokkaido University's Institute of Low Temperature Science has found a way to investigate the geological history of areas near the north Arctic sea, which had previously been difficult using standard methods.

This map shows the current sea level around the Arctic region, with BIWS indicating the location of the ice wedges near Barrow, Alaska. Map provided by the Japan consortium for Arctic Environmental Research. Credit: Iizuka Y. et al., Ion concentrations in ice wedges: An innovative approach to reconstruct past climate variability, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, March 26, 2019.

Permafrost is a layer of frozen ground present under the tundra of high northern latitudes in areas such as Russia, Canada, and Alaska. It contains massive wedges of ice that form when meltwater freezes in underground cracks. Iizuka and his team investigated ion concentrations in an ice wedge sample collected near the city of Barrow in northern Alaska. Another group dated this ice wedge back in 2010 to belonging to the late Pleistocene period, which represents the latter end of the last Ice Age some 14,400 to 11,400 years ago.

The team tested the levels of several ions in the ice wedge, including calcium sulphate, sodium, chloride, and bromide. Significantly, they determined that methanesulfonate (MS) ions in the wedge reliably indicated marine life activity, as they originated from oxidized dimethyl sulphide, a compound produced by plankton and ice algae attached to seasonal sea ice in the summer.

MS ion concentrations were high in the parts of the wedge representing the coldest periods of the late Pleistocene, from 12,900 to 12,700 years ago. This indicates that, even during these coldest periods of the late Ice Age, the near-shore region of the Beaufort Sea near Barrow may not have been completely filled by permanent ice, and that some open water existed in this area during the summers.

The team concludes in their study in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters that further studies of MS, bromide and sodium concentrations in other permafrost ice wedges could help scientists reconstruct past Arctic sea-ice conditions. In addition, according to Dr. Iizuka, "Understanding the mechanisms behind fluctuations in the Arctic sea ice provides a useful foundation for developing future strategies related to the Arctic region."

Explore further Controls on nitrogen nutrient availability in the Arctic tundra

More information: Yoshinori Iizuka et al, Ion concentrations in ice wedges: An innovative approach to reconstruct past climate variability, Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2019). Journal information: Earth and Planetary Science Letters Yoshinori Iizuka et al, Ion concentrations in ice wedges: An innovative approach to reconstruct past climate variability,(2019). DOI: 10.1016/j.epsl.2019.03.013
Julian Assange's arrest could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks

Using cryptography and virtual drop boxes, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks created a revolutionary new model for media to lure massive digitized leaks from whistleblowers, exposing everything from US military secrets to wealthy tax-dodgers' illicit offshore accounts.

Assange's arrest in London Thursday on a US extradition request to face charges of computer crimes could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks.

But his legacy will live long in the world's media.

News outlets and journalists everywhere can now offer to potential sources encrypted apps and secure virtual mailboxes to receive secrets that were once divulged by discreet whispers, furtive phone calls and unmarked manila envelopes.

Skilled at hacking and cryptographyand motivated by a deep distrust of traditional institutionsAustralia-born Assange took a cypherpunk's libertarian streak to the challenge of government secrecy.

In 2006 he built an online platform that offered an anonymous, encrypted path to leak computerized files without fear of exposure.

'We liberated cryptography'

Leaks have forever been crucial currency in journalism. But no one had before created a convenient, relatively easy-to-use electronic drop box that could almost instantly, with absolute secrecy, take delivery of gigabytes of documents.

And he did it at a ripe time, as the connected world emerged and social media took off.

Assange's legacy will live long in the world's media

For Assange, it was the democratization of powers that had before belonged to governments alone. "Cryptography was then the exclusive property of states," he wrote in 2013.

"By writing our own software and disseminating it far and wide we liberated cryptography, democratized it and spread it through the frontiers of the new internet."

WikiLeaks' first release in December 2006 was an apparent assassination order by a Somali rebel leader that may or may not have been authentic.

But it drew attention. Over the next year, WikiLeaks obtained documents baring the Kenyan leader's corruption, the secret operating rules for the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and offshore banking records from a Swiss bank.

It began scooping mainstream media on stories from secret climate discussions to Iran's nuclear activities and Icelandic banking fraud.

The Manning files

In 2010 US army intelligence official Chelsea Manninga transgender woman then known as Bradleybegan secretly feeding hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks.

They showed possible war crimes by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a never-before-seen video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 18 people, including civilians and two Reuters journalists.

The stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream.

Chelsea Manning's stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream

Assange partnered with The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and others to help sort through and make sense of the Manning material. WikiLeaks won awards and Assange was put on the cover of Time magazine.

"What WikiLeaks demonstrated was the potential for a stateless transparency organization to get around the ability of the most powerful governments in the world to suppress information," said Micah Sifry, author of a 2011 book on WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks copycats

Almost as soon as he hit that peak, Assange's star began to fade.

Political pressure to counter WikiLeaks was huge. A multi-country effort got major credit card and payment firms to cut WikiLeaks' financial lifeline of donations.

And he began to fall out with collaborators, a victim of his domineering personality that made WikiLeaks a one-man show, and his insistence that leaked material be published unedited, including that information that could harm peoplesoldiers in the field, human rights activists and others.

But by 2012 others were already adopting his model of setting up encrypted, anonymous paths for leakers to hand over documents.

WikiLeaks copycat sites opened in different countries. Journalists became trained in the use of encryption and secret file transfers.

"Exposing the secrets of the US government was a powerful signal that nobody could keep information under control in the internet age," said Sifry.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize

US whistleblower Edward Snowden did not deliver his trove of hundreds of thousands of top-secret intelligence and military documents to a media drop-box in 2013.

But he used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize to communicate with the journalists he collaborated with.

In 2013 the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had aided WikiLeaks with financing, developed a new anonymous drop box free for anyone to use: SecureDrop.

The New Yorker, an early adopter, explained its value to leakers: "As it's set up, even we won't be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won't be able to tell them."

SecureDrop is important to the most successful WikiLeaks-like operation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In recent years it has obtained from leakers millions of financial account files detailing money laundering and tax avoidance from offshore banking centersthe "Panama Papers" and "Paradise Papers."

The top of the ICIJ's web page offers links to SecureDrop and other encrypted tools for sharing information.

And it has one simple invitation for its users: "Leak to us."

 2019 AFP
An orchard of young trees withstands drought in California's Central Valley in 2014. The ability to predict heat waves in the Central Valley could help better prepare and protect crops and people from the impacts. Credit: UC Davis

When heavy rain falls over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean, it is a good indicator that temperatures in central California will reach 100F in four to 16 days, according to a collaborative research team from the University of California, Davis, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Climate Center in Busan, South Korea.

The results were published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on April 12.

From prediction to protection

Heat waves are common in the Central California Valley, a 50-mile-wide oval of land that runs 450 miles from just north of Los Angeles up to Redding. The valley is home to half of the nation's tree fruit and nut crops, as well as extensive dairy production, and heat waves can wreak havoc on agricultural production. The dairy industry had a heat wave-induced economic loss of about $1 billion in 2006, for instance. The ability to predict heat waves and understand what causes them could inform protective measures against damage.

"We want to know more about how extreme events are created," said Richard Grotjahn, corresponding author on the paper and professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. "We know that such patterns in winter are sometimes linked with areas of the tropics where thunderstorms are enhanced. We wondered if there might be similar links during summer for those heat waves."

The scientists analyzed the heat wave data from June through September from 1979 to 2010. The data were collected by 15 National Climatic Data Centers stations located throughout the Valley. From these data, the researchers identified 24 heat waves. They compared these instances to the phases of a large, traveling atmospheric circulation pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO.

The MJO manifests as heavy rain that migrates across the tropical Indian and then Pacific Oceans, and researchers have shown that it influences winter weather patterns.

Tropical rainfall and California

"It's well known that tropical rainfall, such as the MJO, has effects beyond the tropics," said Yun-Young Lee of the APEC Climate Center in Busan, South Korea, the paper's first author. "So a question comes to mind: Is hot weather in the Central California Valley partly attributable to tropical rainfall?"

Lee and Grotjahn found that, yes, enhanced rainfall in the tropics preceded each heat wave in specific and relatively predictable patterns. They also found that hot weather in the valley is most common after more intense MJO activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and next most common after strong MJO activity in the Indian Ocean.

"The more we know about such associations to large-scale weather patterns and remote links, the better we can assess climate model simulations and therefore better assess simulations of future climate scenarios," Grotjahn said.

Explore further The forces behind South and Central China's extremely hot summer

More information: Yun-Young Lee et al, Evidence of Specific MJO Phase Occurrence with Summertime California Central Valley Extreme Hot Weather, Advances in Atmospheric Sciences (2019). Yun-Young Lee et al, Evidence of Specific MJO Phase Occurrence with Summertime California Central Valley Extreme Hot Weather,(2019). DOI: 10.1007/s00376-019-8167-1
Credit: Asociacion RUVID

The presence of a rival male affects sperm quality, according to a research study led by the University of Alicante and the University of Upsala (Sweden). The work was carried out with adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) and reveals that male spermatozoa exposed to high competition (two males and a single female) present dramatic changes in phenotype resulting in faster and more competitive spermatozoa. However, this phenotypic plasticity may incur a cost in the next generation as it has negative effects on DNA integrity.

According to lead author Paula Saez, results are revealing, as this model provides detailed new data on the effect of sexual competence on sperm function and quality.

The research methodology involved exposing the male zebrafish to a high competition treatment for two weeks. Another group of two males with one female represented low competition, i.e. a male with two females. Although the presence of a rival male increases the competitiveness of spermatozoa, it has negative effects on DNA, Saez added. A possible explanation for the difference in damage to genetic material is that males in highly competitive treatment experience higher stress levels, probably triggering greater production of reactive oxygen species. This increase could be triggering the damage observed in the DNA chains, affecting both the fertilisation success and the offspring survival, as stated by the UA researcher.

The work, published in the prestigious scientific journal Journal of Evolutionary Biology, proposes new experimental designs and analysis techniques in reproduction biology. Animal research is key for advancing knowledge of the mechanisms involved in the biology of human development. In this sense, as suggested by UA Research Chair in Human Fertility Director and coordinator of the study Maria Jose Gomez, zebrafish is an extraordinary model for studies due to its high level of fertility, the genetic similarity with humans, and the external fertilisation that produce transparent embryos

Variations in shape and size

The special structural organisation of sperm comes from complex morpho-genetic changes during spermiogenesis, when the nucleus is extended and remains in the head of the sperm, the mitochondria are placed in the neck and the centrioles give rise to a flagellum or tail.

Alejandro Romero, co-author of the study and researcher at the UADepartment of Biotechnology, says shapes and sizes of spermatozoa vary between species. However, the genetic influence on cell design and its relationship to sperm rivalry is still little understood. Romero also explained that through the application of geometric morphometry, an analysis technique defined as the union between biology and geometry, the researchers painstakingly isolated variations in the sperm shape and size, also analysing their relationship with other cell signaling mechanisms.

Thus, the consequences of the presence of a rival male in zebrafish are spermatozoa with a phenotype characterised by smaller heads and an elongation of their intermediate pieces and flagella, as opposed to those exposed to low competition. In the processing of high rivalry, sperm appeared to be less sensitive to osmotic stress induced by water, according to the UA researchers However, these sperm showed higher rates of DNA damage.

Reproduction is key to understanding species diversification and evolution. This is why the UA researchers insisted on the need to design biological models to understand aspects of sperm function and quality during sperm competition. Accordingly, interdisciplinary work between researchers from Alicante and Sweden suggests new experimental designs and analysis techniques in reproduction biology.

Explore further 'Old' sperm produces healthier offspring

More information: Willian T. A. F. Silva et al. The effects of male social environment on sperm phenotype and genome integrity, Journal of Evolutionary Biology (2019). Journal information: Journal of Evolutionary Biology Willian T. A. F. Silva et al. The effects of male social environment on sperm phenotype and genome integrity,(2019). DOI: 10.1111/jeb.13435
South Africa: Govt ensures tough enforcement of National Minimum Wage

Governments political will is to ensure the tough enforcement of the implementation of the National Minimum Wage (NMW).

Ours as a government is to strengthen the inspectorate and the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) monitoring roles, said Labour Minister Mildred Oliphant, pledging that government was looking at increasing the budgets of these entities.

Speaking during an hour-long live webcast organised by the ILO in Johannesburg on Thursday, the Minister cautioned employers who dismiss workers en masse and re-employ and pay them at NMW rate or even less.

Oliphant said government was aware of a new tactic that was gathering traction - that of firing workers to undermine the labour laws that seek to address unemployment, inequality and poverty.

The Minister said her department will stop these tactics in their tracks.

Already the department is in the process of naming and shaming employers who fail to comply by publishing them on the departments website.

The department is also on a national blitz to assess levels of NMW Act, at businesses with over 1 300 inspectors assigned to monitor compliance.

The Act, which came into effect on 01 January 2019, stipulates that R20 is the minimum rate workers should earn per hour. For farm and forestry workers - it is R18.00 per hour, domestic workers R15.00 per hour and for Extended Public Works Programme (EPWP) it is R11.00 per hour.

The webcast organised was part of the ILO which is marking its centenary. In the African continent, the ILO has been in operation for 60 years.

The Minister said labour laws such as the Labour Relations Act exist to strengthen relationships between employers and employees.

She said South Africa should pride itself that it had a structure like Nedlac where all social partners were able to deal with problems afflicting the labour market.

Oliphant went on to reassure that government was also committed to investing in the economy of the country to create much-needed jobs.

South Africa was also in support of the recommendations contained in the ILOs Global Commission on the Future of Work report  that of increasing investment in peoples capabilities, increasing investment in the institutions of work and increasing investment in decent and sustainable work. - SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
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
CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. For more stories by Dan Walters, go to Commentary.
" " Amanita phalloides, the death cap mushroom, is establishing itself across the North American continent, increasing the need for awareness of its dangers from the general public. Wikimedia Commons ( CC BY-SA 3.0 , the death cap mushroom, is establishing itself across the North American continent, increasing the need for awareness of its dangers from the general public.

Following a mushroom bloom in the San Francisco Bay Area in late 2016,14 people consumed a poisonous fungus and fell drastically ill. One child even suffered permanent neurological damage. These were just some of the latest in a string of poisonings over the past few decades  a small handful of which proved to be fatal. The toxic cause: Amanita phalloides, better known by its grim moniker, the "death cap" mushroom.

Amanita phalloides is what's known in the world of mycology as a "mutualist," according to Anne Pringle, the Letters and Science Rubenstein Professor of Botany and Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "A mutualism is, very simply, a relationship between two organisms of different species that result in a benefit for both organisms," says Pringle. As an ectomycorrhizal fungus (a fungus that grows outside the plant's roots), the death cap mushroom forms this relationship with a host tree. The fungus grows in the soil and mingles with the tree's roots, drawing out nitrogen from the soil and bringing it to the tree in exchange for carbon.

In California, where the death cap mushroom is fairly common  possibly due to its pleasant Mediterranean climate  the fungus normally grows in tandem with coast live oak. On the east coast, the fungus usually attaches to pine. And in the fungus' native Europe, it's a combination of beech and oak.

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Where Did the Death Cap Come From and Where Is It Spreading?

Pringle's research confirms what other mycologists have theorized: Amanita phalloides is a non-native species that was introduced to California from Europe in the not-too-distant past. How did she establish this? "By building an understanding of the relationship between the California populations and the European populations," says Pringle. If Amanita phalloides was native to California, it would be genetically different from the European variety. But the California death cap is genetically interrelated to the European one. Ergo, the fungus is one and the same. Pringle states that the first known sightings in California were at the Del Monte hotel in 1938 and on the University of California-Berkeley campus in 1945.

How on Earth did Amanita phalloides get to California? One common theory is that individuals from Europe transported cork oak from Europe to California to plant the tree locally, and that's how Amanita phalloides  growing on the cork oak's roots  may have reached North America. It's not a bad theory, but there's little hard evidence to support it. "It's not like anyone has the smoking gun, 'Here's the cork oak, and I sampled its roots and found phalloides!" says Pringle. But what we do know is that someone at some point in time brought a plant that carried Amanita phalloides from Europe to North America.

While the death cap is considered an invasive species in California, that's not necessarily the case on the East Coast. It's partly due to a difference in habitat. In California, the fungus grows in pristine environments, particularly in forested areas like the Point Reyes National Seashore in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. On the East Coast, you'll often find it in more contained urban settings like parks, where someone may have planted a tree that hosts the death cap. It's the spreading of the fungus that makes it invasive on the West Coast compared to the East Coast. The fungus is spreading in British Columbia too. Some scientists like Pringle are interested in managing the spread of invasive fungi like the death cap. Pringle's team has mapped nearly 100 genomes of phalloides, so it's possible that future research could help curb the mushroom's deadly reach.

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The Death Cap's Poisonous Effects

What happens if you accidentally ingest a death cap mushroom? According to Rais Vohra, medical director for the Fresno-Madera Division of the California Poison Control System, Amanita phalloides contains a couple of toxins. These include phallotoxin, which "causes severe nausea, vomiting, and dehydration with resulting kidney damage and electrolyte imbalances," says Vohra. But the kicker is the "alpha-amanitin (also called amatoxin)," which "stops cell functioning by targeting the transcription of RNA by RNA polymerase II, and this prevents the cell from making essential proteins and cell components." This last toxin descends quickly upon the liver. Previous victims have required emergency liver transplants.

The poisoning is spread out over three phases, as it can take several hours for symptoms of the death cap's toxins to present in the body. Phase I: nausea and vomiting. Phase II: in a cruel twist, the nausea and vomiting might cease, but liver damage progresses in dramatic fashion. Phase III: advanced liver failure, seizures, loss of blood pressure, brain swelling and comas can occur. And, in the worst-case scenario: death. Yikes.

" " Two young death caps (Amanita phalloides) with a match box for size comparison. Wikimedia Commons

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Not for Human Consumption

The No. 1 takeaway: Do not consume the death cap in any form. In fact, unless you're extremely familiar with the fungi in your area, Pringle urges that you hold off on wild mushroom foraging, as it can be tricky to identify and separate poisonous mushrooms from safe ones. If you spot a mushroom that you suspect may be an Amanita phalloides and want help verifying its identity, Pringle suggests heading over to Mushroom Observer to seek guidance. In addition to its coloring, which Pringle describes as "olivaceous with a green tinge," mature death caps also have "brown striations" or markings on the cap and possess a unique ring around their stem.Touching Amanita phalloides should be fine, since there's no evidence that the toxins transmit through skin contact. However, Pringle advises that you should wash your hands after handling any sort of mushroom.

But let's not get too carried away. Although they cause the majority of mushroom-related fatalities globally, Amanita poisonings are still pretty rare in the U.S. Moreover, Vohra says the fatality rate for Amanita poisonings is believed to be in the range of 10-15 percent of cases. That's nothing to sneeze at, but it's not exactly a death sentence, either.

IMPORTANT: If you suspect that you've ingested a death cap (or any poisonous mushroom), call the American Association of Poison Control Centers' toll-free, 24-hour hotline at 1-800-222-1222 immediately. If you live outside the U.S., contact the local poison control center in your region or country.

Now That's Interesting Legend has it that Agrippina may have murdered Roman Emperor Claudius to secure the throne for her son, Nero. The murder weapon? Many speculate that it was a poisonous mushroom, perhaps Amanita phalloides.
Users that have downloaded the VSDC multimedia editing software between 2019-02-21 and 2019-03-23, may have been infected with malware.

Users that have downloaded the VSDC multimedia editing software between 2019-02-21 and 2019-03-23, may have been infected with a banking trojan and an information stealer.

VSDC is a popular, free video editing and converting app and its website has over 1.3 million monthly visitors, for this reason, this incident may have potentially exposed a large number of people. The hackers already compromised the official website of VSDC in the past, in previous attacks they hijacked the download links to deliver malware to the victims.

In the latest attack, they embedded a malicious JavaScript code inside the VSDC website that was used to determine the visitors geolocation and replace download links for users from the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia

Doctor Web researchers discovered that the official website of a well-known video editing software, VSDC, was compromised. reads the blog post published by Dr. Web.

The hackers hijacked download links on the website causing visitors to download a dangerous banking trojan, Win32.Bolik.2, and the Trojan . PWS . Stealer (KPOT stealer) along with the editing software.

The Win32.Bolik.2 malware is a modular polymorphic file Trojan that has the ability to perform web injections, traffic intercepts, key-logging and stealing information from different bank-client systems.

At the moment, experts believe at least 565 people who downloaded the software were infected.

Attackers also delivered the KPOT Stealer, a variant of Trojan.PWS.Stealer, starting from March 22. The malware is able to steal information from web browsers, Microsoft accounts, several messenger services, and some other programs.



According to the researchers, 83 users were infected with the information stealer.

Unfortunately this isnt the first time that the VSDC site has been hacked.

In July 2018, experts from Chinese security firm Qihoo 360 Total Security discovered that attackers hijacked the download links of the VSDC website.

The experts discovered that hackers hijacked download links on the websites in three different periods, the links were pointing to servers they were operating.

Below the details of the three different attacks:

June 18  Hackers substituted download links with hxxp://5.79.100.218/_files/file.php

July 2  Hackers substituted download links with hxxp://drbillbailey.us/tw/file.php

July 6  Hackers substituted download links with hxxp://drbillbailey.us/tw/file.php

At the time, hackers were serving the visitors the AZORult Stealer, X-Key Keylogger and the DarkVNC backdoor.

Users that had downloaded the software in the above between have to scan their system for malware using an up-to-date of the antivirus software.

Users are also recommended to change their passwords for banking websites and other services.

Pierluigi Paganini

( SecurityAffairs  hacking, VSDC)

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In mid-March , a suspicious Office document referencing the Ukraine elections appeared in the wild, is it related to APT28 and upcoming elections?

Introduction

In mid-March, a suspicious Office document referencing the Ukraine elections appeared in the wild. This file was uncommon, it seemed carefully prepared and was speaking about who is leading in the elections polls, arguing about the life of the favorite candidate, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who is defined Servant of the People, along with a strong headline referencing conflicts between Ukraine and Russia. A copy of the Daily Express article published back in February.



This document actually is the first step of a more complex cyber attack.



Figure 1: Overview of the malicious document

The particular theme and its detection timing attracted our attention, so we decided to dig further to assess the nature of this malicious document.

Technical Analysis

Sha256 8a35b6ecdf43f42dbf1e77235d6017faa70d9c68930bdc891d984a89d895c1e7 Threat Document dropper Brief Description Dropper of possible APT28 sample ukraine elections Ssdeep 12288:hRd2KFJ7uq9U2Gaz6L2qJnlIzeTLC7m0HmhVyqZPY/q7rB:/RFwqK21VolI6TL0m0GhM6LF

Figure 2: password required to view and modify macros on document

The first peculiarity of the malicious document is the protected macro, in fact, when the user tries to read it immediately shows a message box asking for password. This Office password protection could be easily bypassed using the classic malware analysis tools and after the code extraction, its possible to analyze the plain-text code as follows.



Figure 3: source code of the document macro

At first glance there is no trace of obfuscated code, but an anomalous function invocation could be spotted into the macro: ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties.Item(Company).This method allows to recover a property belonging to the document metadata. In the specific case, the code tries to read the value contained within the Company property, which is embedding a base64 encoded string.



Figure 4: Payload stored in Company tag of document metadata

The usage of document properties section to hide the malicious payload has also been used by the Emotet banking malware, one of the most aggressive malware threats against companies and users all around the world. Anyway, unlike the initial code, the decoded payload revealed a highly obfuscated Powershell command.



Figure 5: powershell code after base64 to ascii conversion

After several deobfuscation stages, the clear code is the following:



Figure 6: clear powershell code

This script is quite interesting because its first action aims to lower its fingerprint: it disables the Powershell ScriptBlock logging and the Antimalware Scan Interface (AMSI).



The ScriptBlock logging feature was introduced in Powershell v5 and is able to log blocks of code as they are executed by the PowerShell engine, including obfuscated snippet and the correspondent deobfuscated one. AMSI, instead, is a versatile interface standard that allows applications and services to integrate with any anti-malware product installed on a machine, allowing them to evaluate code just prior to its execution, possibly after the payload de-obfuscation. Further detail about AMSI have been described in a previous analysis report.



So, the malware checks the current Powershell version: if it is greater or equal than 3, it disables the above mentioned security features. Both the features are bypassed using a few lines of code. The ScriptBlock logging can be disabled through the following instructions:

$settings = [Ref].Assembly.GetType(System.Management.Automation.Utils).GetField(cachedGroupPolicySettings,NonPublic,Static).GetValue($null); $settings[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\ScriptBlockLogging] = @{} $settings[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\ScriptBlockLogging].Add(EnableScriptBlockLogging, 0)

And the AMSI bypass code, instead, is even simpler:



[Ref].Assembly.GetType(System.Management.Automation.AmsiUtils).GetField(amsiInitFailed,NonPublic,Static).SetValue($null,$true)<br>

This instruction is able to modify the value of amsiInitFailed variable, setting it to true. In this way, when the ScanContent method uses the variable to determine if AMSI should scan the command to be executed, it returns the AMSI_RESULT_NOT_DETECTED value and lets the payload run. Investigating these techniques, it seems the malware writer has taken inspiration from this article to implement these functionalities. The blog post, in fact, explains both AMSI and BlockLogging disabling techniques.



At this point, the powershell code tries to download the next infection stage from hxxps://functiondiscovery[.]net:8443/admin/get.php, after setting up the InternetExplorer 11 User-Agent to stay under the radar. This code also includes a Powershell Empire characteristic indicator: the cookie session=J+kcj5bWE11g4zBLrjvZjNO296I=.



Figure 7: user agent set by malware

The network communication ends up into a command and control address is located in Czech Republic. This IP is was first seen on October 2018 and was active until April 2019.

Figure 8: information about DropURL/C2

A Problematic Attribution

The portion of script contacting the C2 server are created using the popular post-exploitation tool Empire and some Sofacy samples already analyzed by other firms used Empire-generated script as post-exploitation module.

APT28 (aka Fancy Bear, Pawn Storm, SofacyGroup, Sednit, and STRONTIUM) launched several attacks on democratic institutions in Europe between September and December 2018.



The APT28 group has been active since at least 2007 and it has targeted governments, militaries, and security organizations worldwide. The group was involved also in the string of attacks that targeted 2016 Presidential election.

According to a report published by Symantec in October, the group was actively conducting cyber espionage campaigns against government and military organizations in Europe and South America.

Starting in 2017 and continuing into 2018, the APT28 group returned to covert intelligence gathering operations in Europe and South America.

Moreover, according to FireEyes analysis about the Russia-linked APT groups, APT28 is increasing its reliance on public code repositories, such as Carberp, PowerShell Empire, P.A.S. webshell, Metasploit modules and others, likely to accelerate their development cycle and provide plausible deniability. Also, the hot argument covered by the malicious document and its discovery date suggests the possibility of a state-sponsored attack.



However, the capabilities of the analyzed sample makes some confusion about the attribution. As previously mentioned, in fact, the documents content is not obfuscated in any way: the user can read the entire article about Ukraine elections, so why should he enable the macros? Moreover, also the macro code is totally readable without the usage of encryption or obfuscation to evade detection. The only macro protection mechanism consists in locking dev project from viewing through password, but it is easily bypassable using the classic malware analysis tools. All these elements are not too characteristics of the canonical APT28 droppers, in which the heavy obfuscation has been traditionally adopted. SecurityArtWork team, in their analysis, hypothesize the sample belongs to Sofacy group due to similarities between an older sample (8cccdce85beca7b7dc805a7f048fcd1bc8f7614dd7e13c2986a9fa5dfbbbbdf9) studied by Vitali Kremez. The researchers team highlighted the likeness between the functions names used into the macro code and the usage of WMI connector to start a new malicious process.



However, analyzing both the documents, the macros do not show the same structure even if the name of some functions are equals. In the right figure, corresponding to the sample analyzed by Vitali Kremez, the code is quite obfuscated: it includes $ character to evade AVs and a custom base64 routine to perform decoding.



Figure 9: Macro comparison: newer sample (left) vs older sample (right)

The part of macro in which WMI is invoked corresponds to a trick used to bypass Microsoft ASR(Attack Surface Reduction) and launch a new process from Office applications. This trick, and the used code, is not directly related to the Russian group due to the fact that similar code snippets are publicly available on Github. So the similarity of the macro code between the documents substantially rely on this open-source code reuse.



Conclusion

We are not fully confident of this attribution, so we are investigating other recent samples related to the Sofacy group to better explore possible their interest in influencing political elections.



Further details, including Indicators of Compromise and Yara rules, are reported in the analysis published on the Yoroi Blog.

Stay Tuned.

Pierluigi Paganini

( SecurityAffairs  Ukraine, APT28)

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 After veto-proof vote, New Hampshire appears poised to be first state to repeal death penalty legislatively since 2013 | Main | Henry Montgomery (of Montgomery v. Louisiana) denied parole yet again at age 72 

The title of this post is the headline of this New York Times commentary authored by Jamelle Bouie. Here are excerpts:

Americans may see it as common sense that you lose your right to vote when youre imprisoned, but in many democracies prisoners retain the right to vote. When that right is revoked, its only for particular crimes (in Germany, its for targeting the democratic order), and often there is a good deal of judicial discretion. Mandatory disenfranchisement is unusual, and permanent disenfranchisement is even rarer....

As it stands, incarcerated people retain a variety of rights, some of which touch on the political rights and responsibilities of citizenship. Prisoners have freedom of worship. They can protest mistreatment and poor conditions. They can exercise some free speech rights, like writing for newspapers, magazines and other publications. To that point, there is a rich literature of work by incarcerated people tackling complex social and political issues. Voting would be a natural extension of these activities.

An obvious objection is that criminal transgressions render prisoners unfit for participation in democratic society. But theres nothing about committing a crime, even a serious one, that renders someone incapable of making a considered political choice. Losing your liberty doesnt mean youve lost your capacity to reason. Prisoners are neither more nor less rational than anyone else who is allowed to vote.

If anything, the political system needs the perspectives of prisoners, with their intimate experience of this otherwise opaque part of the state. Their votes might force lawmakers to take a closer look at what happens in these institutions before they spiral into unaccountable violence and abuse.

There are practical benefits as well. Racial disparities in criminal enforcement and sentencing means disenfranchisement falls heaviest on black communities. This is not just a direct blow to prisoners electoral power; it also ripples outward, depressing political participation among their friends, families and acquaintances. On the other end, suffrage in prison may help incarcerated people maintain valuable links to their communities, which might smooth the transition process once theyre released.

Citizenship is not a right that expires upon misbehavior, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote for the majority in Trop v. Dulles, a 1958 case dealing with the rights of a military deserter. And, he continued, citizenship is not lost every time a duty of citizenship is shirked. Yes, prisoners have committed crimes, and yes, some of those are egregious. But depriving any citizen of the right to vote should be the grave exception, not a routine part of national life. Universal suffrage means universal suffrage.
 Henry Montgomery (of Montgomery v. Louisiana) denied parole yet again at age 72 | Main | Spotlighting concerns about organization tasked with helping Justice Department develop and implement risk and needs assessment tools under FIRST STEP Act 

As reported in this local article from Alabama, headlined "Execution called off for Christopher Price; SCOTUS decision allowing it came too late," five members of the Supreme Court tried again to enable a state to go forward with a scheduled execution, but its decision was later than it needed to be to allow the execution to go forward last night. Here is the story:

Christopher Price was set to be executed at 6 p.m. Thursday for the 1991 killing of a minister in Fayette County, but the execution was called off about half an hour before Prices death warrant expired at midnight. An order from the U.S. Supreme Court that says the execution could go forward was issued shortly before 2 a.m. Friday, but it was too late for the state to carry it out because of the expired death warrant. The state will now have to set a new execution date.

In a 5-4 decision the U.S. Supreme Court denied Prices request for a review of his appeal and for the stay of execution. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent, joined by three other justices, objecting to the overruling of decisions by a federal judge and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the execution.

The order came after several appeals Thursday, beginning with Prices attorneys filing an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction to a federal judge in Mobile asking her to halt the execution around 1 p.m. Just before 4 p.m. Thursday U.S. Southern District Court Judge Kristi DuBose stayed the execution for 60 days. She wrote the state had until May 10 to submit evidence in contradiction to Prices contention that the three-drug execution protocol will cause or is likely to cause him severe pain and that execution by the new method  nitrogen hypoxia  will significantly reduce the substantial risk of severe pain.

The AGs Office appealed to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed DuBoses ruling and kept the stay in place. The Attorney Generals Office on Thursday night then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, saying in part that Price had not met a deadline for signing up for the new execution method.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the Alabama Attorney Generals Office in its order issued Friday morning. The majority opinion stated that Price essentially waited too late. In June 2018, death-row inmates in Alabama whose convictions were final before June 1, 2018, had 30 days to elect to be executed via nitrogen hypoxia ... Price, whose conviction became final in 1999, did not do so, even though the record indicates that all death-row inmates were provided a written election form, and 48 other death-row inmates elected nitrogen hypoxia. He then waited until February 2019 to file this action and submitted additional evidence today, a few hours before his scheduled execution time.

At 11:34 p.m.  when the nations highest court had yet to rule  the state called off the execution. A statement from the ADOC said, As a practical matter, the time remaining before the expiration of the death warrant does not permit sufficient time to accomplish the execution in accordance with established procedures."

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall released a statement after the announcement was made. Tonight, in the middle of National Crime Victims Rights Week, the family of Pastor Bill Lynn was deprived of justice. They were, in effect, re-victimized by a killer trying to evade his just punishment. This 11th-hour stay for death row inmate Christopher Price will do nothing to serve the ends of justice. Indeed, it has inflicted the opposite  injustice, in the form of justice delayed."...

Samantha Banks, an ADOC spokesperson, said Prices last request was to be married to his fiancee. He was married Wednesday in the visitation yard at Holman. Price was visited by his wife, an aunt, and an uncle on Thursday. Wednesday, he made four phone calls to attorneys, one to his wife, and one to an aunt....

Lynn, a minister at Natural Springs Church of Christ, was fatally stabbed with a knife and sword outside his home in the Bazemore community three days before Christmas in 1991. Court records state Lynn was putting together Christmas presents for his grandchildren, when the power went out. He walked outside to check the power box when he was attacked. Records state Lynn suffered 38 cuts, lacerations, and stab wounds, and one of his arms was almost severed. He died en route to a local hospital. His wife, Bessie Lynn, was wounded in the attack but survived her injuries.

Price, of Winfield, was 19 at the time and was arrested in Tennessee several days after the slaying. He was convicted in 1993.
The usual process of getting your own property starts off with an online search for your dream home. Once youve found one that matches your requirements and budget, youll then proceed to apply for a loan from a bank. The thing is, home loan approval remains a challenge for most homebuyers, with rejection rates extremely high at nearly 60% by value last year, according to Bank Negara Malaysia. In other words, every 1 in 2 home loans get rejected today.

So even though 92% of Malaysians intend to buy a house this year (according to our own research), its highly likely that many will be rejected by the bank! This loan rejection affects your credit score negatively, and makes it even harder to get your subsequent loan applications approved. This means the chances of you getting your loan approved decreases every time youre rejected by the bank, throwing you into a downward spiral.

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37 Chinese firms and universities added to US unverified list telling suppliers to handle them with care

The US has put dozens of Chinese companies and universities on a Commerce Department unverified list demanding extra caution from US suppliers in dealing with these organisations.

A 32-page report published on Thursday added a total of 50 bodies to the list  making it harder for US companies to do business with them.

The department said it was unable to verify that the organisations in question were abiding by US Export Administration Regulations.

Those affected included 37 mainland Chinese companies and universities, many of which work in fields such as precision optics, electronics, machine tools or aviation.

A spokesman for Chinas Commerce Ministry, Gao Feng, said on Thursday that the move would have a negative impact on Chinese enterprises and accused the US of abusing its export restrictions.

China called on the US to rectify its mistake by following the principle of mutual trust and mutual benefit, Gao said.

Kevin Wolf, a former assistant secretary of commerce for export administration who is now at the law firm Akin Gump, said that being placed on the unverified list meant US suppliers could no longer use licence exemptions to sell products such as repair equipment to them.

Telescopes dispute brings US-China trade war into sharp focus with Chinese firms accused of cartel-like behaviour

He told Reuters that in some cases they would need to obtain fresh licences to supply things it had previously sold them, adding: Even though its not an embargo, because of the hassle sometimes suppliers will treat it as an embargo.

Besides the 37 mainland Chinese organisations, six Hong Kong firms  Able Supply Chain, Boson Technology, HK Hengyu Storage Logistics, Rising Logistics, Swelatel Technology and Universe Market  were also included on the list.

A Chinese subsidiary of a Japanese auto parts manufacturer Aisin Nantong Technical Centre and high-end screen manufacturing company Beijing Bayi Space LCD Materials Technology Company were also on the list.

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Educational institutes affected included Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Guangdong University of Technology, Renmin University and Tongji University in Shanghai.

According to information posted on its website, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry specialises in research in fields such as defence and economic development as well as training graduate students.

The entities could not verify their bona fides because an end-use check could not be completed satisfactorily for reasons outside the US Governments control, the Commerce Department wrote in its report. These checks included both pre-licence and post-shipment verification, it said.

One analyst said the move may been seen as a way for the US to keep up its pressure on Beijing, amid their ongoing strategic and economic rivalry.

Zhang Baohui, professor of political science and director of the Centre for Asian Pacific Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, said the additions to the unverified list were part of US efforts to tighten control over technology exports to China for national security reasons.

He said: It reflects rising American concerns over the evolving balance of power between the two countries. The Chinese will no doubt see it as a containment measure.

This latest development shows an accelerating strategic rivalry between China and the United States. It is thus not a negotiating tactic by the Trump administration to affect the trade talks.

This latest development shows an accelerating strategic rivalry between China and the United States

Prof Zhang Baohui, Lingnan University

Rather, it is part of a broader and long-term US strategy to affect the future balance of power between the two countries, Zhang added.

The US has been sending out mixed signals regarding China in recent weeks and on Wednesday it was reported that the two sides had agreed to establish enforcement offices in the event of a trade deal.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said they had basically settled on a mechanism to police any agreement, including new enforcement offices.

Trumps four-week time frame to end US-China trade war is an uncertain timetable, says state media

But US president Donald Trump has indicated that he is in no rush to complete a deal to end the trade war been the two sides.

Trump said after the latest round of negotiations in Washington last week that conclusion of the trade talks between the worlds two largest economies may take another four weeks.

The new unverified listing also included four entities in the United Arab Emirates, two in Malaysia, and one in Indonesia.

Additional reporting by Reuters

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen as he leaves a police station in London, Britain April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Alexandra Valencia

QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador has suspended Julian Assange's citizenship and accused him and people connected to his WikiLeaks group of collaborating in attempts to destabilise the Andean nation's government, after years of offering him shelter.

A bearded and frail-looking Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after Ecuador terminated his asylum at its London embassy, where he had lived since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation.

Assange's Ecuadorean citizenship was suspended on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Jose Valencia told reporters.

To some, Australian-born Assange is a hero for exposing what supporters cast as abuse of power and for championing free speech. To others, he is a dangerous figure who has undermined the security of the United States and has too many ties to Russia.

WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that laid bare often highly critical U.S. appraisals of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.

Assange's lawyer in Quito, Carlos Poveda, told reporters asylum was terminated in reprisal for corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno and that his life will be in danger if he is extradited to the United States.

Assange was offered refuge in 2012 by Ecuador's then-president Rafael Correa, but his relationship with Ecuador has soured under Moreno, who has said Assange violated the terms of his asylum.

Assange received Ecuadorean citizenship in January 2018.

Moreno was angered after years-old private photographs of him and his family taken when they lived in Europe circulated on social media. His government said it believed the photos were shared by WikiLeaks.

Ecuador was not aware of any active extradition requests for Assange before it terminated his asylum, Valencia told the national assembly.

"At the time the decision to finalise his asylum was made, there was only a case in the United Kingdom for violating the conditions of his bail in 2012," Valencia told lawmakers.

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U.S. prosecutors unsealed an indictment against Assange on Thursday, accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.

Assange faces up to five years in prison on the American charge, the U.S. Justice Department said in a statement.

Assange and WikiLeaks have intervened in Ecuadorean affairs, Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo told reporters in Quito, and at least one Russian hacker involved with the organisation is living in the country.

She would not confirm whether the hacker was involved in the creation of web pages that accuse Moreno of corruption, but said they had participated in the creation of a page later spread by WikiLeaks.

"We hope it will be the Ecuadorean justice system which will confirm the exact relationship," Romo said.

Also living in Ecuador is a member of WikiLeaks who is connected to former Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Patino, who was serving under Correa when Assange was granted asylum, Romo said.

"We have evidence that they have collaborated in attempts to destabilise the government and that they work closely with and have travelled with Ricardo Patino," Romo said.

Patino denied the allegations.

Romo "just invented a story about a supposed relationship of mine with Russian hackers," Patino said on Twitter. "The only thing left is for her to say where we left Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty."

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Helen Murphy, Bill Rigby and Alistair Bell)
By Gul Yousafzai QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomb ripped through an outdoor Pakistani market on Friday, killing at least 18 people, half of them ethnic Hazaras, officials said, in an attack apparently aimed at minority Shi'ite Muslims. Some 48 people were wounded in the blast in the southwestern city of Quetta, capital of resource-rich Baluchistan province, officials said. Baluchistan is the focus of the $57-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link planned between western China and Pakistan's southern deepwater port of Gwadar. The attack came after a lull of at least a year in violence against the mainly Shi'ite Hazara minority in the province, though there have been isolated shootings. The blast took place at Hazar Ganji, a fruit and vegetable market on the outskirts of Quetta. Eight of the dead belong to the Hazara community, Quetta city police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema said, adding that one paramilitary official from a squad deployed to guard the community at the market was also killed. He initially said that the explosive device was hidden between sacks of potatoes, but, later, he and the provincial home minister, Zia Langove, told a news conference that a suicide bomber exploded his device among the people in the market. "The bomber seemed to be disguised as one of the laborers when he exploded his device," another police official, Bahram Mandokhel, told Reuters. "We have found his head and other body parts." No group immediately claimed responsibility. Hazaras have been frequently targeted by Taliban and Islamic State militants and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. They have been heavily targeted in Afghanistan in attacks claimed by an affiliate of Islamic State. Friday's bloodshed came two days after authorities freed Ramzan Mengal, a top leader of a banned sectarian group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Cheema said. Mengal had been detained for three months under maintenance of public order regulations, he said. The LeJ has worked both with al Qaeda and Islamic State in Pakistan and has claimed several coordinated attacks in Baluchistan against what it terms Shi'ite heretics. Ethnic Baluch separatists are also battling what they call unfair exploitation of the province's gas and other resources. In 2013, three bombings killed more than 200 people in Hazara neighborhoods, prompting security forces to escort Hazara buses to the market. The same practice was followed on Friday, but the blast took place in the market. "Targeted for their religion by sectarian armed groups, (Hazaras) have suffered many such tragedies over several years. Each time there are promises that more will be done to protect them, and each time those promises have failed to materialize," Omar Waraich, an official of rights group Amnesty International, said in a statement. "Prime Minister Imran Khan's government has made important commitments to protect all religious groups. Those commitments must translate now into policies to effectively protect the Hazaras of Quetta, ending more than a decade of bloodshed." Khan himself "strongly condemned" the attack. "I have asked for an immediate inquiry & increased security for the ppl," he said in a Tweet. (Additional reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; Writing by Syed Raza Hassan and Nick Macfie)
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang discussed boosting business with leaders from eastern and central Europe in Croatia on Friday, pledging that his country was ready to open up its economy and would respect European Union standards. The coastal city of Dubrovnik hosted the eighth annual "16+1" cooperation, which became "17+1" as Greece joined the economic platform for Beijing's investments in 12 European Union states and five Western Balkan countries. The grouping has been eyed cautiously in western European capitals as an attempt to "divide and rule" the bloc, a goal that Li has repeatedly denied. "We intend to cooperate and respect European standards," Li said at the summit's opening in Dubrovnik. "We all need to increase trade and connect our economies." Eastern Europe is a core component of Beijing's vast "Belt and Road" project, valued at up to $1 trillion and aimed at constructing land and sea links to allow Chinese exports to flow westward. China has previously announced a $10 billion credit line and $3 billion investment fund for the region. So far its record on follow-through is mixed, with some major construction projects under way while other promised investments have been delayed or scrapped. For instance, building on one of 16+1's flag-ship projects -- a railway from Belgrade to Budapest -- has just started in Serbia but is held up by snags in Hungary, ultimately making scant progress five years after it was announced. - EU hails 'breakthrough' - This year's summit comes just three days after a top EU-China meeting, attended by Li, held as Brussels demands more balanced economic ties with a country it recently labelled as a "systemic rival". In Brussels on Tuesday the Asian giant pledged to push further to open its economy and deepen ties with the bloc. EU Council president Donald Tusk hailed Beijing's new commitments as a "breakthrough" with both sides committed to globalisation and pursuing international rules. Brussels and Beijing in a document called for "broader and more facilitated, non-discriminatory market access," in wording the Europeans saw as a Chinese concession." Li said Friday's event was an "additional step" after the Brussels meeting and a "useful complement to cooperation between the EU and China". The EU is increasingly unhappy that markets in Europe are wide open to Chinese companies, while the equivalent is not the case in China. While the EU's 15-trillion-euro ($16.9 trillion) market gives it significant economic clout, the bloc struggles to maintain unity among its 28 members on issues of foreign policy, allowing China to pursue one-on-one deals with individual countries. Some EU powers, such as France and Germany, are growing increasingly concerned with China's Belt and Road ambitions, especially after populist-led Italy recently became the first G7 member to join the scheme. - 'Deepen relationship with EU' - In 2018, China was the second largest destination for European exports. The Chinese trade balance is largely in surplus with the bloc at 184 billion euros, according to Brussels figures. During the first visit of a Chinese premier to Croatia, Li on Thursday visited the site where a Chinese firm started construction on a 280-million-euro bridge on the Adriatic coast. It is the first significant Chinese project in Croatia and funded by the EU. "Projects like the Peljesac bridge can inspire future cooperation" between EU and China, Li said Friday. He hailed Greece becoming a full-fledged member of the now "17+1" grouping. "With Greece joining in and all the central and eastern European countries... we will deepen China's relationship with the EU," Li told reporters after the summit. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who attended Friday's event, welcomed future cooperation within the initiative "in full respect of EU rules and procedures". About 1,000 businessmen including some 400 Chinese participated at a business forum held alongside the summit in Dubrovnik.
By Ulf Laessing and Ahmed Elumami

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - An offensive by eastern forces on the Libyan capital Tripoli stalled in the face of strong resistance on the southern outskirts on Thursday and the internationally recognised government said it had taken almost 200 prisoners.

The fighting between Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) and troops under the internationally-backed Tripoli government has killed at least 56 people and forced 8,000 to flee their homes in the city in the last week, the United Nations said.

A Reuters reporter heard occasional heavy gunfire and explosions as the LNA faced off with forces of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj's government around a disused former international airport and the Ain Zara district.

After sweeping up from the south, the LNA became bogged down in Tripoli's southern suburbs 11 km (7 miles) from the city centre. Several locations have changed hands more than once.

More than 190 LNA troops were captured, officials allied to Tripoli said, accusing it of using teenagers. A total of 116 fighters were captured in Zawiya, a town west of Tripoli, and an additional 75 in Ain Zara on the southern outskirts of the capital, officials said.

In a prison in Zawiya, Reuters reporters saw prisoners, mostly young men, some wearing civilian clothes, sitting on the floor of a prison while others stood with their faces turned to a wall.

In Tripoli, officials brought families displaced by fighting on the southern fringes to shelter in schools. Red Crescent workers were heading out rations in one school as gunfire clattered in the distance.

Haftar's push on Tripoli in Libya's northwest is the latest turn in a cycle of factional violence and chaos in Libya dating back to the 2011 uprising that overthrew veteran dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

The European Union urged the LNA forces to stop their offensive, agreeing finally on a statement after France and Italy had sparred over how to handle the escalating conflict.

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"The military attack launched by the LNA on Tripoli and the subsequent escalation in and around the capital are endangering civilians, including migrants and refugees, and disrupting the U.N.-led political process, with the risk of serious consequences for Libya and the wider region, including the terrorist threat," the EU top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said in a statement.

France, which has oil assets in eastern Libya, has provided military assistance in past years to Haftar in his eastern stronghold, Libyan and French officials say. It was also a leading player in the war to unseat Gaddafi..

Italy supports the U.N.-backed government of Serraj.

MILITANT ATTACK

Haftar has moved troops from southern and eastern Libya to Tripoli, stretching his lines.

Exploiting this, Islamic State's AMAQ news agency said on that the Islamist militant group had killed six soldiers from the LNA force near Sabha in Libya's southwest.

LNA spokesman Ahmed Mismari confirmed the attack but said there had been no casualties on the LNA side.

In the latest tally of casualties from the U.N. World Health Organization (WHO) said 56 people - mainly combatants though also some civilians including two doctors and an ambulance driver - had been killed, and another 266 wounded in Tripoli.

It was not clear if this included the toll given by the LNA for its soldiers - 28 killed and 92 wounded since the start of the offensive a week ago.

The number of people forced out of their homes by fighting rose to 8,075, the U.N. migration agency IOM said.

As well as the toll on civilians, the renewed conflict threatens to disrupt oil supplies, increase migration across the Mediterranean to Europe, scupper the U.N. peace plan for the country and encourage militants to exploit the chaos. Libya is a main transit point for migrants who have poured into Europe in recent years, mostly by trafficking gangs.

The LNA forces swept out of their stronghold in eastern Libya to take the sparsely populated but oil-rich south earlier this year, before heading towards Tripoli, where Serraj's U.N.-backed government sits.

Haftar was among the officers who helped Gaddafi seize power in a 1969 coup before parting ways with him later. But critics call Haftar another strongman in Gaddafi's mould.

Haftar has resisted U.N. pressure to accept a power-sharing settlement to stabilise the country, using his leverage as a Western ally against militant Islam in North Africa.

(Reporting by Ulf Laessing and Ahmed Elumami in Tripoli, Ayman al-Warfalli in Benghazi, Tom Miles in Geneva, Hesham Hajali in Cairo, John Irish in Paris and Gabriela Baczynska in Brussels; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Frances Kerry)
Moroccos prison administration said that inmates who were convicted on charges relating to Rif protests will be moved to jails north of the country for humanitarian reasons.

The decision was taken after an appeals court in Rabat confirmed the prison sentences against the activists of the Hirak who were convicted of threatening public order among other charges.

The move aims at making it easy for families to visit the detainees who shall be taken to local prisons in the northern cities of Nador, Tetouan, Al Hoceima, Tangier and Fez.

Nasser Zefzafi, the protest leader, will be transferred to the Prison of Ras El Ma in Fez while reporter Hamid El Mahdaoui will be taken to the prison of Tifelt about 30 kilometers away from his house, le360.ma said.

The Rif protests started after a fishmonger was crashed to death by a garbage truck while trying to retrieve his confiscated fish.

The protests started in late 2016 and derailed into clashes with law enforcement officers.
Loh Beng Lea, 46, also used a sheathed knife to smack his 34-year-old Indonesian wife. (PHOTO: Getty Images)

SINGAPORE  When his wife refused to pick up the clothes that he had strewn about in a drunken tirade, the man placed a chopper, five knives and a sword on a bed to scare her.

Loh Beng Lea, 46, then used a sheathed knife to smack his 34-year-old Indonesian wife. At the State Courts on Thursday (11 April), the technician was jailed three weeks after pleading guilty to one count of breaching a protection order and one count of using criminal force on her.

Wife obtained protection order

According to court documents, Lohs wife had obtained a protection order against him on 16 January 2017.

On 12 August that year, Loh returned home drunk and argued with his wife. He then threw his clothes and necklace around the house and demanded that his wife pick them up.

When she refused to do so, he gathered up chopper, five knives and a sword from around the house and placed them on a bed in his wifes presence.

Loh then used a sheathed knife to hit the woman on her right arm. He also struck her back with his hands and challenged her to call the police.

Fearing for her own safety, the woman then hid in the toilet and called the police. Loh had also called the police before she did.

The woman only emerged from the toilet after police officers called out to her. Loh was arrested at the scene.

Accused was highly stressed: lawyer

Lohs lawyer Wee Hong Shern told the court that his client had been highly stressed at the time of the offence.

He had sold his house and invested a large amount in his friends business. However, he lost a huge portion of the money after being cheated by his friend, said the lawyer.

Loh had also lost his job and had to support his two children, aged seven and five. Since then, Loh has undergone counselling and has not returned to drinking or caused any violence, said Wee.

District Judge Eddy Tham noted that Loh was going through a stressful time.

However, this clearly does not excuse his action in putting his wife in great fear of harm by displaying these numerous deadly weapons on the bed, especially when he was in an intoxicated state and heaving in an angry manner, he said.

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I have no doubt that his wife was put in great fear for her own safety resulting in her hiding in the toilet added the judge.

For using criminal force, Loh could have been jailed up to three months, fined up to $1,500, or both. Breaching a personal protection order carries a jail term of up to six months along with a possible fine of up to $2,000 on a first conviction.

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A Palestinian teenager was shot dead by the Israeli army Friday during renewed clashes on the Gaza border, the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave said. A ministry spokesman said Maysara Abu Shaloof, 15, was "shot in the stomach by the (Israeli) occupation east of Jabalia," referring to a demonstration site in northern Gaza. At least 48 others were taken to hospital with a variety of injuries from clashes at several spots along the border, the ministry said without elaborating. An Israeli army spokesman told AFP that around "approximately 4,700 rioters and demonstrators" took part in various incidents along the frontier. "The rioters were hurling rocks and there were several attempts to breach the security fence," he said. "Troops responded with riot dispersal means and fired in accordance with standard operating procedures." He had no comment on any Palestinian casualties. Palestinians in Gaza have for more than a year gathered at least weekly along the border for often-violent protests, calling on Israel to end its blockade of the enclave. Israel says it is protecting its borders and accuses the Islamist movement Hamas which runs Gaza of orchestrating the protests. An AFP correspondent said Friday's protests were smaller than in the past. At least 264 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since the protests began. The majority were killed during clashes, though others were hit by tank fire or air strikes. Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period.
Indonesian prosecutors have demanded 10 years' jail for a Polish man accused of having links to Papuan rebels, his lawyer said Thursday. Jakub Fabian Skrzypski was charged in August after meeting separatist fighters in the restive region, which has seen a decades-long insurgency over independence and Papuans' share of its lucrative mineral wealth. Prosecutors said the globetrotting Pole made contact with rebels to in order to spread information about their armed struggle. "Today prosecutors demanded that Jakub receive 10 years in jail," his lawyer Latifah Anum Siregar told AFP. Papua shares a border with the nation of Papua New Guinea, just north of Australia. Skrzypski faces a range of charges, including of plotting to overthrow the Indonesian government and joining an outlawed rebel group, according to the indictment reviewed by AFP. He was accused of meeting with leaders of the Free Papua Organisation (OPM) and was found with documents and video detailing the Papuan struggle for independence. Authorities also said Skrzypski and his Indonesian co-defendant Simon Carlos Magal discussed sourcing arms from Poland. Jakarta is deeply sensitive about its easternmost region, where sporadic fighting with central government forces has simmered for decades, and it routinely blames separatists for violence in the region. Prosecutors on Thursday also demanded a decade in prison for Magal. Neither of the men had a lawyer present in the court in the remote town of Wamena, Siregar said.
The Taliban on Friday announced their annual spring offensive, which comes as the US and Afghan politicians try to negotiate for a peace settlement with the Islamist militants. Operation Fath -- which means "victory" in Arabic -- will be conducted across Afghanistan with the aim of "eradicating occupation" and "cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption", the Taliban said in a statement. The annual spring offensive traditionally marks the start of the so-called fighting season, though the announcement is largely symbolic as in recent winters the Taliban have continued fighting Afghan and US forces. "Our Jihadi obligation has not yet ended," the Taliban said. "Even as large parts of our homeland have been freed from the enemy, yet the foreign occupying forces continue exercising military and political influence in our Islamic country." Qais Mangal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defence, said the Taliban's spring offensive is "mere propaganda." "The Taliban will not reach their vicious goals and their operations will be defeated like previous years," Mangal said. After suffering horrific bloodshed in 2018, Kabul has in recent weeks enjoyed something of a lull in violence. But on Monday three US Marines were killed in a Taliban attack at Bagram air base north of the city, and authorities in the capital are on high alert. The administration of President Ashraf Ghani recently declared its own spring offensive, Operation Khalid, and the Taliban used that announcement as a justification for launching a new push. It shows "the enemy still seeks to attain its malicious objectives through the use of force", the Taliban said. The US has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in a bid to bring an end to the war against the insurgents. Separately, Afghan politicians also have met with the Taliban in Moscow, and a fresh round of talks is expected to take place later this month between officials from the Kabul government and the Taliban in the Qatari capital Doha. The US still has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, nearly 18 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban. While Western forces quickly ousted the group, the insurgents have reclaimed much of Afghanistan over the years, primarily in rural areas. In 2018 a record 10,993 civilians were wounded or killed in Afghanistan, according to UN figures. US President Donald Trump last year decided to slash the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, though no such drawdown has happened yet.


Singapore  A&W Restaurants makes its highly-anticipated return to Singapore at Jewel Changi Airport on Thursday (11 April).

The 80-seater outlet is located at B2-209 of the mall, and will operate 24 hours to cater to locals and travelers going through Singapore Changi Airport.

A&W Singapore will serve well-loved classics such as the Chicken/Beef Coney Dog (S$5.20), Waffle Ice Cream (S$7.90) and not forgetting the all-time favourite beverage, the A&W Root Beer Float (S$3.50) which is served in the signature ice-cold frosty mug.

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Frosty root beer. (PHOTO: Flora Yeo/Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore)

The menu also includes bestsellers from A&W Restaurants in the region such as Cream Cheese Chicken/Beef Burger ($7.90) inspired from A&W Restaurants Okinawa, as well as Waffle Sundae (S$4.90) from Thailand.

The new outlet at Jewel Changi Airport is set to play a pivotal role in the brands expansion plans, and as an incubator for menu innovation and service design.

A look at the menu. (PHOTO: Flora Yeo/Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore)

Fresh Root Beer. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)

Cream Cheese Beef Burger. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)

Chicken Beef Coney Cheese Dog. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)

Chubby Chicken Sandwich. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)

Chicken Beef Coney Dog. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)

Marina Fish Sandwich. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)

Mozza Burger. (PHOTO: A&W Restaurants)
Kams Roast. (PHOTO: Wenting/ Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore)

Singapore  Hong Kongs Michelin-starred Kams Roast Goose brand opens their second outlet in Singapore at Jewel Changi Airport, marking the brands first-ever outlet in an airport setting.

Known as Kams Roast in Singapore, the brand follows their first branch at Pacific Plaza in keeping roasted goose out of their menu in Singapore due to the difficulty in attaining quality geese meat here. Fret not, Kams Roast still offers a wide variety of roasted meats including roasted duck, roasted pork, and Iberico char siew, along with mouthwatering dishes such as soya chicken, marinated duck, and suckling pig here.

Kams Roast. (PHOTO: Wenting/ Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore)

Exclusive to the Jewel Changi outlet includes the Roast Duck Travel Pack (S$60), which compromises of the restaurants signature roast duck packed in an exquisite travel gift box. Travellers are allowed to bring the travel pack onto their flights.

Cured sausages (S$25), available in both lean pork and goose liver, are also available for takeaways at the Jewel Changi outlet. Travellers can have them packed in exquisite gift boxes at no extra costs to bring back home as souvenirs. Special discounts for two boxes and above are available only at Jewel Changi outlet.



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Kams Roast. (PHOTO: Wenting/ Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore)

On top of the brands signature roasted duck, diners can also enjoy the high-quality Iberico Char Siew roast, made with free-range black pigs of the Iberian Peninsula. Marinated and seasoned with a secret Kams blend, the meat is roasted in the traditional way, giving it the enticing ratio of meat and charred bits.

To celebrate the opening of the Jewel Changi outlet, Kams Roast is offering lunch promotions for both takeaways and dine-ins, including S$1 cured meat (S$8.80) at both of their outlets. Promotions will run from now until 26 May.
Georgian Govt to Appeal Stockholm Court Decision over Omega Group Case

By Tea Mariamidze

The Government of Georgia is going to appeal the decision of International Arbitration Institute of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce made over the Omega Group Tobacco (OGT) case, which reads that Georgian government has been banned from selling the OGT property.The Stockholm court was applied by Zaza Okuashvili, the founder of Omega Group. The Ministry of Justice of Georgia was a respondent in the case.In addition, Georgia was ordered to compensate Zaza Okuashvili for the court-related expenses.The Omega Group claims Georgia is obliged to enforce the decision of the International Arbitration Court of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce.The Ministry of Justice of Georgia released a statement and explained that Georgia will not pay the imposed compensation.The ministry noted they informed the Stockholm Arbitration that it is going to appeal against the decision made by the arbitrator regarding Zaza Okuashvili's case.Georgia will not pay the imposed compensation either, even though the special arbitrator has only partially satisfied Okuashvili's demand in this part, the ministry said.The statement reads that the arbitrator rejected Zaza Okuashvili's main demand concerning the restriction of ownership or prohibition of realization of the applicants 11 companies by the state and said that Okuashvili could not prove that the Georgian side took or planned to take any measures against the applicants companies and property.The arbitrator partially satisfied the applicant's claim and established the necessity of taking temporary measures. However, it is not clear why the arbitrator prohibited the enforcement of Tbilisi City Courts decision of 4 October 2018, since it has not been enforced by the National Enforcement Bureau, the ministry added.In March 2018, the Revenue Service (RS) appealed to Tbilisi City Court to obtain a permit for the sale of seized property of OGT as it had accumulated unpaid GEL 51 million tax to the state budget.In June, the Tbilisi City Court satisfied the request of the Revenue Service, which was appealed by the company. On the decision of the Appeals Court on 25 July 2018, the company's complaint was not satisfied and the Revenue Service was granted permission to sell the sequestered property of Omega Group., in case the company did not cover the debt.The Revenue Service says Omega Group paid 1 million GEL on October 26, 2018, and asked for a renewal of production to "maintain jobs and continue production so the company was granted such rights.The factory resumed functioning and worked until January when its work was again suspended for not fulfilling the obligations undertaken under the new schedule.Omega and its founder Zaza Okuashvili say that under the Georgian Dream leadership its cigarette company OGT suffered $100 million loss after multinational company British American Tobacco violated the laws on competition and tobacco control with the help of the Georgian Dream government members.The corporation says that they had to take loans from banks to cover their necessary expenses, pay the staff and the state budget but they failed to do so.


Singapore  Located at Jewel Changi Airport, this marks the restaurants first Southeast Asian outlet, serving up signature items as well as one-of-a-kind Singapore-exclusive menu.

Fans of the famous burger chain will swear by its popular ShackBurger (S$9.20 for single, S$12.90 for double) or the Shroom Burger (S$10.80)  crisp-fried Portobello mushroom filled with different types of cheese, served on a potato bun.

After all, Shake Shack began as a hot dog cart in New York, so the Shack-cago Dog (S$6.50) is pretty much the go-to item if you are undecided.

READ MORE:

Burger King unveils new design concept 20/20 Prime at Jewel Changi Airport

First look: Jewel Changi Airports impressive indoor waterfall and more

Singapore airport still ranked best in the world

(PHOTO: Flora Yeo/Yahoo Lifestyle Singapore)

The Singapore-exclusive menu includes Pandan Shake (S$7.50)  vanilla frozen custard ice cream blended with pandan, coconut and topped with gula melaka crumble and Jewela Melaka Concrete (from S$7.50), a frozen custard ice cream mixed with coconut salted caramel chocolate chunks, shortbread and gula melaka.

Another concrete for the chocolate lovers is the Shack Attack  a chocolate custard mixed with Plain Vanilla brownies, fudge sauce, Lemuel chocolate chunks and chocolate sprinkles. This is a Singapore spin on the Shack classic, and features chocolate brownies from local patisserie Plain Vanilla Bakery.

Culinary director, Mark Rosati, who was present at the opening preview, shared that there are plans to open 10 outlets in Singapore in the near future.

See more photos from the media preview.

Singapore exclusive concretes. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Chocolate milkshakes. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Jewela Melaka. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Pandan Shake. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Burgers galore. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Culinary director Mark Rosati at the media preview. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Shack-cago Dog. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Shroom Burger. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)

Shack Burger. (PHOTO: Shake Shack)
Two years ago, Collins Dictionary named Fake News 2017s word of the year, citing a 365% increase in its use since the previous year.

However, its significant usage in common speech masks the fact that Fake News was, in fact, also the worst word of 2017; dare I say, the worst word of the decade.

At this point, you may be wondering: whats the relationship between a 2017 Collins Dictionary report and Singapores recently-discussed Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA)?

You see, the term Fake News is just one of a slew of problems POFMA suffers from. Perhaps the biggest problem has nothing to do with the bill itself, but the optics of the roles of several actors that are relevant to the billministers, Singapores courts, and the people.

Yesterday afternoon, at an informal dialogue with online media representatives, Minister Shanmugam shared his thoughts on POFMA and the debate it has ignited.

With respect to the first point of contentionSingapores ministersthe intentions of POFMAs authors have been sorely misunderstood. A key aspect of the bill is that it grants Cabinet Ministers the power to issue Part 3 orders (takedowns, corrections, and the like). Critics have stated their preference that these powers be given to independent government bodies; a neutral third party.

To Minister Shanmugam, this provision is an essential part of the bill: that a Ministers name is tagged to the Part 3 order, and that one elected person can be held accountable for issuing it (whether in parliament, in court, or at the ballot boxes) instead of a faceless, unelected body.

To critics, it is a point of much ire: that any minister is given immense power to hammer their detractors. In this case, however, Im inclined to agree with the Minister; if I want to call someone a Draconian Oppressor Of the People, Id like to know who Im talking about.

Of course, Minister Shanmugams intentions only work if the mechanism for that accountabilityparliament, courts, electionsare functional. With Singapores parliament, the government falls prey to the ownself debate ownself argument that an 83-6 majority engenders.

Story continues

With elections, well, Ill get to that in a minute. Lets first tackle the courts.

The most flagrant criticism of the POFMAs accountability mechanism is that the courts are not independent. This could be construed as a malicious falsehood; the courts have ruled against the government before, most notably of late in allowing a gay man to adopt his surrogate son.

It is not false, however, to highlight that the courts more often rule in favour of the government than against it. This makes it all the more important to ensure that courts are granted appropriate power to rule on Part 3 orders from ministers.

This is where the Minister Shanmugam is involved in some misinformation of his own. In saying that courts will be the arbiters of truth, under the powers of the bill, he excludes a critical caveat.

In laymans terms, the law specifies that a judge can only overturn a Part 3 Order only if:

a) the defendant cannot technically comply,

b) the article did not reach Singapore, or

c) the statement of fact in the article is not false

But take a hypothetical scenario, in which a petty or rogue minister decides to abuse this law, targeting a single false statement of fact that is part of a longer article, and issues a Part 3 Order to take down the entire article. The judge presiding over the case cannot overturn the Part 3 Order if they decide that it does not, in fact, serve the Public Interest.

The court is, as Mr Shanmugam said, the arbiter of truthnot the truth of whether or not a Part 3 Order is justified (in service of Public Interest), but simply the truth of any specific statement within an article for which the Part 3 Order is issued.

Of course, the governments response to this point is the third mechanism of accountability: the peoples vote, which is how officials who serve the Public Interest are elected.

On one hand, it can be argued that voting out a politician takes too long, and the furore can quickly fade; but the same can be said for any democracy or any law, anywhere.

At the same time, POFMAs image problem stretches beyond the roles of these three actors, beyond the shores of our country, to the international debate on that most contentious term: fake news.

The story begins, like every terrible story of the last five or so years, with Donald Trump, and Twitter.

As any dollar-store political-science-major can tell you, negative and fake are one and the same to the Donald. Bludgeoned by his abuse of the term, Fake News has adopted a fresh meaning: anything said about you that you dont like.

Fast forward to 2018, and some things have become clearer. Bots, hackers, and unscrupulous actors are revealed to be responsible for guiding netizens to share and over-share misleading reports or outright lies. International media swoops in; after all, they are the ones most hurt, as it is the publics trust in their content that has been eroded.

So what do they call these actors, bots, hackers; these faux-writers, scammers, forgers?

Fake news.

In response, the British government actually banned official the use of the term in October the same year. If that doesnt prove how poisonous the very term Fake News is, I dont know what does.

Fast forward to 2019, Singapore.

In the discussion surrounding POFMA, Singapore Management University Professor Goh Yihan, Dean of the School of Law, has expressed astonishment at the fake news surrounding this bill. Yesterday, at the dialogue with online media, Minister for Law K Shanmugam also voiced discontent at the fake news about [POFMA].

Im a little surprised that they dont see the issue with this kind of language. While they may use the word to mean blatant falsehood, it is a callback to, and implication of, the terms other meaning: a justifiable criticism that they dont like hearing.

I dont believe that POFMA is intended maliciously, or to crush free speech. I do believe that there are important criticisms of the bill. But by using that term, its proponents are committing the linguistic equivalent of shooting themselves in the foot.

In summary: POFMA grants sweeping, broad powers to ministers so they can be held accountable by their peers, by the courts, and by the people. That these powers are broad and sweeping is not exceptional, nor exclusive to Singaporean democracy. However, the measures of accountability for these powers must be equally broad and sweeping, not restricted, as is their current state.

Furthermore, lets debate the bill in an open, fair, and informed manner, without dismissing proposed refinements or criticism with that most insidious term, discussed at length above. After all, POFMA isnt the governments attempt to clamp down on petty criticism; there are plenty of other laws for that.

And, for the Love of Democracy, may I never hear another soula minister, a Law Dean, a journalist, or a toddleruse the word Fake News ever again.

Have something to say about this story? What do you think of POFMA? Tell us at community@ricemedia.co.

The post Singapores Online Falsehoods Bill Doesnt Just Need RefinementIt Needs Re-Branding appeared first on RICE.
Taiwans Shilin Night Market inspired pop up is coming to Singapore on 19th  21st April! Everyone loves Taiwan street food. From their famous chicken cutlet, to stinky tofu, to braised pork rice, these alone can make one salivate just by even thinking about it! Today, we got our hands on the famous Taiwanese Yam and Sweet Potato Ball recipe, shared by none other than Share Foods founder - Pei Wen! Shes the hands behind 250 over recipes and today shes presenting her very own creation!

A chewy and refreshing dessert for any day!

Chewy and refreshing, this dessert can either served hot or cold, which is perfect for any season!

Did you know that yam, also known as taro is a traditional Taiwanese cuisine dessert? It can be found in almost every part of Taiwan, among which, Jiufen's yam ball is said to be the most famous. Chewy and refreshing, this dessert can either served hot or cold, which is perfect for any season!

These are the ingredients that youll need: yam, sweet potatoes, tapioca starch, white and brown sugar, red bean, grass jelly, coconut milk and ice.

Shred the ingredients separately

Cut them up into long strips to fit into Kenwood kFlex kitchen machine.

First, lets prepare the yam and sweet potatoes first! Cut them up into long strips to fit into Kenwood kFlex kitchen machine. Attach the shredding disk and proceed to shred the ingredients separately. kFlex comes with more than 15 attachments that allows you to blend, chop, shred, weigh, knead, whip and juice, this will definitely save you a lot of time preparing the ingredients!

Proceed to steam for 15 minutes until soft.

Steam until the ingredients are soft for mashing

Proceed to steam for 15 minutes until soft.

Once the yam and sweet potatoes have softened, transfer them into a mixing bowl separately and pour in tapioca starch and sugar into the respective bowls. Mash them while they are still warm. Proceed to knead them once they have cooled down. Once the dough has reached a smooth and moist consistency, cover it with a damp cloth to retain the moisture in the dough.

Cut the dough into desired size

Once all the dough has been rested, roll them into a long strip and cut them to a desired size.

Story continues

Once all the dough has been rested, roll them into a long strip and cut them to a desired size. Coat them with tapioca starch to prevent them from sticking together. A lot of recipes would call for sweet potato flour. However, Peiwen strongly suggest the use of Tapioca starch so that the balls will remain chewy even when its served chilled. The tip is not to add in too much tapioca starch as it will dilute the original sweetness from the sweet potato and make the balls too hard to chew on.

Mix with light brown sugar for added sweetness

Adding in light brown sugar will help to separate the balls and add sweetness to them!

Proceed to boil 1.5L of water in a pot and add in all the balls. Cover the lid and leave it to boil until all the balls float onto the surface of the water. Proceed to drain and transfer them into a bowl before adding in light brown sugar. This will help to separate the balls and add sweetness to the balls.

Achieve shaved ice by using Kenwood kFlex kitchen machine

Using the kFlex, attach the slicing disk and add in ice cubes

Its time to assemble! Using the kFlex, attach the slicing disk and add in ice cubes. Once youve gotten a good amount of shaved ice, scoop them into a serving bowl and pour coconut milk over it. Top it up with some red beans, grass jelly and tapioca balls.

A colourful dessert filled with varying texture in a single bowl

A colourful dessert that surprises you with the varying texture in a single bowl.

There you go! A colorful dessert that surprises you with the varying texture in a single bowl. Some would prefer eating them in a bowl of warm and sweet gingery soup, or you can have it with shaved ice. Try out this recipe and let us know what you think!

Have a recipe that you would love to share with us? Send it to us at http://www.sharefood.sg/submit-recipe/!

Grab the full recipe below now!

Taiwanese Yam and Sweet Potato Balls Dessert

CuisineAsian

Ingredients

Yam ball

200g yampeel and cut into large strips

50g tapioca starch

4tsp sugar

Sweet potato ball

200g sweet potatopeel and cut into large strips

50g tapioca strarch

Purple sweet potato ball

200g sweet potato

50g tapioca starch

Toppings

5tbsp light brown sugar

1tube ready made grass jelly480g, cut into large cube

200g ready made red beanas desired

500ml coconut milk

Iceas desired

Instructions

Prepare yam and sweet potato

Deskin and cut them into long strips that fits the opening of the food processor. In the food processor, attach the shredding disc. Shred the yam and sweet potatoes separately. Place them on the steamer plate. Steam for 15 mins till soft.

Mould yam and sweet potatoes

Transfer steamed yam into a mixing bowl. Mash while yam is still warm. Once the mixture has cooled down, use hand to knead it till no visible flour. Add in more flour gradually if the dough is still wet and sticky. If the dough cracks, it means that its too dry and you can add in 1 tbsp of water at a time to knead to the desired consistency. Dough should be moist and smooth. Place the dough in a bowl, use a damp cloth to cover it. Let the dough rest for 15 mins for easy handling Repeat the same step for sweet potatoes. Once all the doughs are rested, take yam dough and place it on the table. Roll into a long strip and cut to desired size. Coat it with tapioca starch. Set aside. Repeat the same step for sweet potatoes.

Cook

In saucepan, boil 1.5L water. Add in all the balls. Cover the lid for 2  3 mins till it floats on surface of water. Drain and transfer into a bowl, add in light brown sugar. #Tips: this will help to separate the balls and add a sweet note to the balls.

Assemble and serve

In a food processor, attached the slicing disc. Add in ice cubes and slice it. Scoop into a serving bowl. Pour coconut milk over it. Top it up with grass jelly, red bean and balls. Serve immediately.

Recipe adapted from Pei Wen

Dont forget to like and subscribe to Share Food Singapore!

The post Taiwanese Yam and Sweet Potato Ball Dessert appeared first on Share Food Singapore.
Skeptical Science at EGU 2019 - Thursday

Posted on 11 April 2019 by BaerbelW

As the main post was getting too large and unwieldy quickly, I decided to break it up into one post per day. As each day becomes available, the previous post will link to it at the end.

Thursday, April 11 - A focus on (climate) science communication

The day started with the first part of session Communication and Education in Geoscience: Practice, Research and Reflection (EOS4.1) convended by Sam Illingworth who is - among other things - the editor of the Copernicus journal Geoscience Communication which is dedicated to the important field of, well, cmmunication efforts in the geosciences. They received so many abstracts for their session that they were given four timeslots for this important topic throughout the day.

One of the climate-related presentation was given by Xavier Fonseca and showed How media influences the perception and knowledge about climate change among students. A running theme throughout the survey results he shared was that theres quite some confusion among students about the causes and effects of climate change. According to Xavier, at least some of that is due to not clear enough communication in the media. From the abstract:

For example, a very high percentage of these young people, the most educated in history, with all modern technology and information at reach, have a negative view of the natural greenhouse effect in general and think of it as man-made, confusing it with its enhancement by anthropogenic emissions; or that the climate crisis represents a greater threat to the Earth itself than to living creatures. In addition, almost sixty percent pessimistically acknowledge that the environmental problem has probably no solution

Rebecca Williams talked about The use of social media in volcano science communication - challenges and opportunities. Although the topic of her talk focused on volcanoes as an example, I think that the use of social media as shown in her presentation is transferable to climate science and therefore from vulcanologists to climate scientists.

Therell be another section about EOS4.1 below, but - as theres just too much interesting stuff going on at the same time at EGU - I left it after this first of four parts to head to the Great Debate The safe operating space for the planet and how to ensure it is not passed.

The debate was chaired by Jonathan Bamber and Stefan Rahmstorf and had Prof Myles Allen, Prof. Sabine Fuss, Erica Hope and Prof. Linda Steg on the panel. Each of the panelists gave a short statement about their take on the planetary bounderies to kick things off. After the presentation, Stefan Rahmstorf initiated the debate with 2 questions posed to the panelists. While they were answering the questions, a rather long line of at least a dozen people formed to ask questions of the panelists. Unfortunately, some of the people in the queue were more interested in giving a co-presentation instead of asking a short question and had to be reined in - with mixed results - by Jonathan Bamber. You can watch the recording of the webstream here.

After the lunch-break I joined short course SC2.2 offered by Robin Matthews (IPCC WGI Science Officer) and Cheryl Manning (Science teacher) about Ideas and Resources for Teaching Climate Change. The course was intended for science teachers and educators but many of the suggestions are adaptable for other setttings as well.

Robin and Cheryl walked us through various topics in their shared presentation and inbetween had us do some learning activities like matching terms (e.g. greenhouse effect, rising seas, coastal flooding, relocation, renewable energy) to different categories (climate processes, hazards, impacts, adaptation, mitigation). Robin explained scientific aspects and how the IPCC-reports can become helpful resources for educators, while Cheryl - who is a teacher - shared pointers about how to engage students and get them interested in science.

To complete the day, I re-joined EOS4.1 for its fourth part. It didnt have any specifically climate-related presentations, but a wide variety of suggestion of how to get students interested in the sciences were shared:

The highlight of the session was Sergej Lebedev explaining what happens in Ireland with a National-scale engagement of school students using an active research: the SEA-SEIS North Atlantic Expeditions outreach programme. Students get a chance to virtually accompany scientific expeditions out at sea and interact with the crew and scientists via live video connections.

So, Ill leave you with this fun video coming out of this:

Source of this video: https://sea-seis.ie/videos/

Recap for Wednesday - Main Post - Recap for Friday
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) on Thursday nabbed 34 illegal immigrants for allegedly peddling drugs in Kasarani.

They included 33 Nigerians and 1 Eritrean who were posing as students from the nearby United States International University (USIU) and Kenyatta University (KU).

Kasarani OCPD Peter Kimani said the suspects have been operating businesses around the institutions of higher learning with the intention of selling drugs.

Also arrested during the raid was the owner of a popular club behind the Thika Road Mall (TRM), who is accused of aiding the immigrants.

Police further indicated that the suspects had been terrorising residents as they were linked to a spate of robberies in the area.

The raid follows a recent security shake-up at Kasarani police station with the former leadership accused of being in bed with the suspects.

The suspects are expected before the Kiambu Law Courts.

In August 2018, 19 Nigerians were arrested in Umoja, Kasarani and Roysambu estates in Nairobi for conning Kenyans through scams on Facebook and other social media sites.

Two of the suspects were accused of running a pseudo account for the First Lady Margaret Kenyatta and using it to scam unsuspecting internet users.
If youre thinking of investing in Uber when the company goes public this year, you might want to read the document the company published on Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission outlining the potential of its businessand its risks.

Some highlights:

 Uber has grown very, very fast. The company notched 5 billion trips between its 2011 launch and September 2017and another 5 billion in the subsequent 12 months.

 The total value of Ubers gross bookings, which counts all the money taken in by all of Ubers services, a measure of the companys scale, was $41.5 billion in 2018. More than 80 percent of that is from ridesharing, with most of the rest coming from Uber Eats.

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 91 million people used Uber once a month at the end of 2018.

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 Ubers business model isnt all there: While theres optimism about elements of the core business, the company lost more than $3 billion on operations in 2018, revenue growth slowed between Q3 and Q4, and theres a possibility that the company might continue to offer big incentive payments to drivers for quite some time and never reach profitability.

But one detail in particular caught my eye. About 24 percent of Ubers bookingsall the money that customers pay through the app and in cash, including driver earningsoccur in just five cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, and Sao Paulo.

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For a company that operates in more than 700 cities, including quite a few giantsMexico City, Tokyo, Paris, Lagos, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Mumbai, to name a fewthat concentration gives Uber a surprising vulnerability at the local level. And they know it. The filing reads:

We experience greater competition in large metropolitan areas than we do in other markets in which we operate, which has led us to offer significant Driver incentives and consumer discounts and promotions in these large metropolitan areasAn economic downturn, increased competition, or regulatory obstacles in any of these key metropolitan areas would adversely affect our business, financial condition, and operating results to a much greater degree than would the occurrence of such events in other areas.

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This vulnerability casts a new light on, for example, Ubers 2015 humiliation of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, when the company fought off the City Councils proposed vehicle cap. That was a warning to other politicians, and a show of power, but it was also a vital business move. The companys filing also mentions, as a cautionary tale, what happened afterward: Just three years later, the City Council approved minimum rates for drivers and a cap on the number of new ride-hail vehicles. The company also mentions its regulatory challenges in London and San Francisco.

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During Ubers previous skirmishes with cities, I always thought the companys huge reach and light footprint (very few local employees or inventory) gave them a lot of leverage. They could afford to play hardball with Austin, Texas, one week and San Antonio the next, with little impact on a business distributed so widely.

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The filing reveals that certain cities actually have a pretty strong negotiating position. So do the companys drivers in those places. And its rivals. What appears to be a global, decentralized platform is in fact highly dependent on the whims of a few local politicians, drivers groups, and taxi cab unions that can engineer big chokepoints for the companyas London Mayor Sadiq Khan must have done when he revoked the companys license in 2017. (They got it back last year.)

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Another example of the companys vulnerability by concentration: 15 percent of the bookings pot comes from trips that begin or end at an airport. That might not be so surprising, since airports tend to be cab trips even for car commuters, and being a long way from town, produce high fares. But airports offer a preview of the changing municipal economics that could be coming for Uber. The airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, made more money in 2017 from parking fees than it did from American Airlines. Parking accounted for more than a quarter of the airports revenue. As passengers shift to ride-hailing, airport revenues are declining. Airports are an easy place where public authorities can implement a fee on Uber rides to make up for the lost revenue.

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That same dynamic is set to play out in cities as well. Congestion pricing, which will soon exist in two of Ubers biggest markets (New York and London), is just the first way that governments are exerting more fine-grained control over how cities raise money from automobile use.

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Uber actually fought for congestion pricing in New York, believing that the one-time fee on private cars entering Manhattan would work in its favor. It probably will. But thats not the only way street pricing enabled by new technology could work: Cities can tax vehicles per mile traveled, or per hour in the congestion zone, or just slap a huge tax on Uber vehicles because they produce a lot of traffic and serve a relatively wealthy clientele.

One thing the filing makes clear: It wouldnt take a global movement to stress the companys business model. A couple big-city mayors could do that all on their own.
My horoscope for this month starts off pretty ordinarily: As the days get longer, dear Virgo, your mind will get clearer. It then advises me to [l]et go of [my] productivity agenda. So far, so good. Its not till the last sentence of it that something feels off: New music and spring playlists on Prime Music can provide a soundtrack to keep you dreamy. When did astrology start shilling for Amazon?

Theres an easy answer to that: around February of this year. As Fast Company noticed this week, the companys Prime Insider newsletter has been sending out shopping horoscopes for three months now, matching the 12 signs of the Zodiac to products and services from Amazon. Fast Company regarded these scopes with skepticism, and plenty of others reacted with horror. If the idea of a Prime horoscope is out there to begin with, the execution doesnt do the concept any favors: The recommendations are so generic that they point readers toward things as basic as music (from Amazon), as in the Virgo example; reading material (from Amazon) for Leos; and delivery (from Amazon) for Libras. Uh, thanks?

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You know who else disapproves? Actual astrologers. Just ask Susan Miller, who is practically royalty in this realm. This is a trainwreck, Im sorry to say, Miller told me. (In the astrology world, disappointing Susan Miller might be the only thing worse than Mercury retrograde.) Im saying to myself, where are they getting this from? Theyre not mentioning a new moon or a full moon. Theyre not mentioning a planet. Theres such beauty and complexity in astrology that its a shame to flatten it and mannerize it into a cartoon.

Theyre not mentioning a new moon or a full moon. Theyre not mentioning a planet.  Susan Miller

If you believe the wave of trend pieces, these are boom times for astrology, so Amazons instinct to cash in on the fad makes a kind of sense. Miller guessed that [t]he men in black, the MBAs, said, Oh, astrology is really big. This is great; its bees to honey. Well get them to read their horoscopes and then well push our products.  Amazon didnt share with me when asked how many people its Prime Insider newsletter reaches, but if it goes to most or even a smaller portion of Prime members, that number could be massive.

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What makes Amazons foray into the zodiac so annoying to, well, everyone? Some would say corporate star charts are an especially crass example of the companys anything-for-a-sell ethos. From another angle, you could argue that one of astrologys charms for the young people who have embraced it is its lack of commercial associations: Its spiritual, its mysterious, its free. But converting that appeal into a selling point has worked for some brands. When Spotify came out with astrology-themed playlists, I pressed play on the Virgo one. I certainly cant pretend Ive never coveted an astrology-themed accessory while shopping at Urban Outfitters. Even Miller writes gift guides from time to time, for chi-chi brands like Tory Burch and Kenzo. Asked about this, she emphasized that she is careful to put thought, and the actual positions of the stars, into the lists when she does.

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So why do some corporate attempts to co-opt this draw more ire than others? Something another astrologer said helped me put my finger on it. Madame Clairvoyant, the nom de plume Claire Comstock-Gay uses when she writes horoscopes for the Cut, wrote in an email, I know plenty of astrologers are troubled by the idea of astrology being dumbed down or not taken seriously enough, but Im not bothered by people using astrology in creative or funny or nonstandard ways. [Amazons attempt] doesnt feel particularly interesting or funny, though, just cynical and joyless. To me, part of astrologys great appeal is that it offers us a way to see ourselves as people with rich and complicated inner lives that have nothing to do with being a consumer.

Amazons horoscopes arent bad because the company is capitalizing on astrologyor not only because of that. Theyre bad because theyre no fun.
This article is published through a partnership with New York Medias Strategist. The partnership is designed to surface the most useful, expert recommendations for things to buy across the vast e-commerce landscape. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. Every editorial product is independently selected by New York Media. If you buy something through our links, Slate and New York Media may earn an affiliate commission.

If your moms a reader, you may be looking for a Mothers Day book to buy right now. While theres a certain genre to choose from (one unfairly termed mom lit  female-centric novels by Ann Patchett or Elena Ferrante that get snatched up for book clubs or beach reading), theres a whole wide world of books out there that mom would love, like Gina Kolatas investigation into one familys battle with illness, or Colm Toibins latest take on a classic Greek tragedy. Weve put together a list of the 23 best Mothers Day books  some coffee-table books (this would be helpful, too), some literary nonfiction, and some mom lit (which we still love)  thatll arrive in time with two-day shipping.

For the mom who cant resist a mystery

Celine by Peter Heller

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Inspired by the authors own mothers career, this literary whodunit takes an intrepid private eye to Yellowstone National Park and beyond, on a missing-persons case not as cold as she first assumed.

For the mom who loved Olive Kitteridge

Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout

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Perhaps no one captures a certain contemporary feminine psyche quite like Pulitzer Prizewinning Elizabeth Strout; here, an adult Lucy Barton (of the best-selling My Name Is Lucy Barton) returns home after decades to grapple with the indelible stain of family.

For the mom who loves Elena Ferrante

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

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Any mom who couldnt put down the Neapolitan series would eat up this short and satisfying volume, which tells the story of a recently separated, quietly simmering translator on a reluctant search to find her disappeared husband on a sleepy Greek island.

For the mom who needs a beach read

The Arrangement by Sarah Dunn

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If your moms idea of a good time includes lapping waves, sandy toes, and SPF 50, this lively look at a restless wifes decision to enjoy six months of an open marriage will be the perfect racy summer companion. Apologize in advance that shell likely finish in one gulp.

For the mom who loves Swedish noir

Quicksand by Malin Persson Giolito

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Lisbeth Salander stans have a new, unlikely Swedish heroine: 18-year-old Maja was implicated in a mass shooting at a fancy Stockholm prep school. Through the course of her trial, the savage depths of her motivations and biography are plumbed.

For the mom who lives for high fashion

Fashion Forward: 300 Years of Fashion by Pierre Berge

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A lush synthesis of the last three centuries of couturiers, from stuffy courtwear to nonchalant normcore. The hefty tome by Yves Saint Laurents partner was a companion to a comprehensive 2016 exhibit at the Louvre.

For the mom who fancies herself a decorator

How They Decorated: Inspiration From Great Women of the Twentieth Century by P. Gaye Tapp

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First, reassure her that the way she redid the living room is beyond; nothing compares to her new sofa; and, yes, it was worth the 36-week wait. Then offer this endlessly inspiring guide to women decorators (Bunny Mellon, Georgia OKeeffe, Elsa Schiaparelli) as a starting point for her next interior undertaking.

For the mom who remembers the Factory

Andy Warhol: Prints

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Maybe she admired from afar, or maybe she even met him. Amazingly, this is the first time Warhols prints have been collected in one place, from the campy to the soul-stirring.

For the mom who has back issues of Ms.

Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order)

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Before pussy hats and punny protest signs, feminists took a different form. Whether she has a career in the arts or just admires those who do, every Gloria Steinem devotee will appreciate this thoughtful look at women who changed the world.

For the mom who loved How to Murder Your Life

This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression by Daphne Merkin

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Merkins unflinching, unputdownable memoir is like mainlining the truth, in all its perplexing complexity. Comforting is a strange descriptor for things that nearly destroy us; one cant help feel closer to humanity when someone staggers forth, story intact.

For the mom who reads in small doses

Somebody With a Little Hammer by Mary Gaitskill

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A collection of essays from one of Americas finest living writers serves as a pointed swan song to the country that made her. Subjects include, but arent limited to, porn, politics, and Peter Pan.

For the mom who loves a medical mystery

Mercies in Disguise by Gina Kolata

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If your mom is a rampant scientific-study forwarder or armchair surgeon general, this artful narrative tells the story of a family uncovering a vicious genetic illness, and their far-from-linear journey forward.

For the mom who contemplates existence

The Moth Presents All These Wonders: True Stories About Facing the Unknown by Catherine Burns

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A diverse chorus of voices from the New York City storytelling collective comes together with tales from the precipice of the unknown, in all its terrifying, life-affirming hilarity.

For the mom who eats up a murder mystery

Into the Water by Paula Hawkins

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Two women turn up, face down in a river. A dark and devastating exploration of their fates comes forth from the reigning queen of psychological thrillers, the author of The Girl on the Train.

For the mom who loves art-based historical fiction

A Piece of the World by Christina Baker Kline

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If you can still picture the year when Girl With a Pearl Earring lived lovingly on her bedside table, this fictionalized account of Christina, the polio-impaired heroine in Andrew Wyeths Christinas World, will offer mom another transporting peek behind the canvas.

For the mom who adores a family saga

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

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For fans of The Joy Luck Club and Big Little Lies, this story of four generations of Korean immigrants in Japan offers both a sweeping family portrait alongside plenty of drama, sex, and intrigue.

For the mom who marched on Washington

A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

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If politics has her down, and yet she cant look away, this novel from a master of the form provides a relevant respite. The story of an Evangelical and an abortion provider deftly illustrates the quintessential American chasm present long before Mar-a-Lago was in the lexicon.

For a mom who likes non-fantasy fantasy

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

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If she loves a good story, but cant do unreal  Lord of the Rings makes her roll her eyes  this story of four boys with identical DNA living four very different lives is just the sort of grounded-in-reality flight of fancy she can get lost in.

For the mom whos watching The Handmaids Tale on Hulu

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid

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A little like the eerily significant Margaret Atwood novel, this love story amid the rubble of violence, uncertainty, and modernity feels at once otherworldly and all too real. (A certain Strategist editor already plans on gifting this one to her mom, whos an immigration scholar.)

For the mom who wants to read about white-collar-life reckoning

Trajectory: Stories by Richard Russo

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In four galloping stories, the voice of the working class takes on the cognoscenti  a professor, a realtor, an academic, a novelist. No real surprise: Its every bit as nuanced, human, and captivating as Russos breakout book turned movie, Empire Falls.

For the mom who majored in classics

House of Names by Colm Toibin

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Shes going to devour this captivating retelling of Clytemnestra and her mariticide (shes fabled to have killed her husband, Agamemnon) by the virtuoso Irish writer.

For the mom whos an Impressionist buff

Renoir: Intimacy by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

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If she still raves about the time you braved Saturday crowds for the Impressionist wing at the Met, this thoughtful and revealing examination of the tactile reverberations in Renoirs work will be a far more detailed look at the visceral paintings she loves.

For the mom who spins after Arcade croissants

Food Swings: 125+ Recipes to Enjoy Your Life of Virtue & Vice by Jessica Seinfeld

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Introducing chia seeds, quinoa, and kale smoothies is a whole lot more palatable presented alongside no-fail eggs Benny and a killer blue-cheese burger.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication.
Care and Feeding is Slates parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Email careandfeeding@slate.com or post it in the Slate Parenting Facebook group.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I worked as a nanny last summer and fall, and I have a question that has been nagging at me. The child I nannied was 4 years old. About a week in, he tells me he has to poopthats all great and fine. But upon seeing my quizzical face when I told him to go ahead, he quickly tells me he needs me to wipe for him. I was pretty aghast by two things: One, 4 seems pretty old to have someone wipe for you. Obviously, kids arent great at wiping, but that seems like a lesson they should learn with potty training. Second, I was mortified that his parents never mentioned this to me. Im ashamed to say I never asked them about it because I was too embarrassed, so I just went ahead and wiped for him whenever he went (not often). But it was sort of a degrading experience, especially because he was a pretty bossy kid and seemed to take some weird pleasure from it. I have a lot of experience with older kids (elementary school), so Im not sure if I just didnt understand that age or if this is totally bonkers. What do you think?

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Is This Normal?

Dear Is This Normal,

Yes, its normal. Lots of 4-year-olds still need help wiping, though this is the age when most kids are gaining enough coordination and diligence to do the job themselves. Potty training isnt a process which ends with a graduation ceremony and a diploma that says Total Bathroom Independence Achieved. If youre not comfortable helping, I recommend sticking to nannying older kids.

You can ask the parents if hes generally wiping himself (in case hes just trying to regress with a new care provider), but I can assure you this is not bonkers. This is really pretty standard.

In terms of it being degrading, we all come into the world needing our butts wiped, and most of us will leave the world needing our butts wiped. Some perfectly lovely people need that level of care their entire lives. If it feels degrading for you, you may not be the best fit for young children. But its not degrading in and of itself.

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Dear Care and Feeding,

This is a strictly feeding question. My 8-month-old loves to eat, especially if he can feed himself and especially if that food is avocado. He can eat half an avocado in one sitting and then will grunt for more and try to rip it from our hands. So many baby-feeding books say to follow the babys cues, but if I did that I might have to start illegally smuggling avocados out of Mexico. How much avocado is too much avocado? Also, if Donald Trump closes the border and no avocado is available, what other foods do you suggest for an avocado-crazed relatively new eater?

Avocado Monster

Dont borrow trouble, and enjoy his new enthusiasm.

Dear Avocado Monster,

Go ahead and decide how much of your family food budget can be safely devoted to stuffing your baby with avocados, and then do so with my blessing. Should we run out of avocados, your child will be able to experience the loss at an early enough age as to inoculate him against future traumas, such as when the first guinea pig goes to play at the great farm upstate in the sky.

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Avocados really are fantastic for self-feeding (and for leaving green smudges everywhere) and are rich in splendiferous fats and vitamins. For now, dont borrow trouble, and enjoy his new enthusiasm.

 If you missed Wednesdays Care and Feeding column, read it here.

 Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

My 3-year-old is a sweet, charming, loving child. He is also totally spoiled. We recently had his third birthday and I put on the invitation no presents because he has so many toys. Well, our generous friends brought presents anyway, which was very thoughtful, but we got a ton of crappy plastic cars. He loves cars, but he has hundreds of them. Im not exaggerating: My in-laws bring him a new car every week, most of them from cheap plastic. I dont care that they are inexpensive but the plastic waste makes me cringe. And he appreciates the gift for about five minutes and then whines for another one.

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Ive tried to explain gift-giving, being grateful, and even donating old toys to charity but he seems too young to really understand and it ends in tears. I try to sneak toys out, but hes got a memory like an elephant and he ends up crying because hes missing a particular car.

Ive asked my in-laws to please stop buying him presents, but hes so used to it that he asks every time he speaks to them and often cries so they give in. Hes now also taken to asking anyone who comes to our house because of his birthday. Now he thinks its just a thing we do. I dont want to offend my friends and family who are being very generous, but its turning my 3-year-old into a monster. Help!

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Please, No More Cars!

Dear PNMC,

Well, its time to (mildly) offend your friends and family! They are being ridiculous. The easiest way to do this is to get pleasantly conspiratorial with them, like you need their assistance to help your son get over his (very common, very normal) Smaug phase.

Explain to the main offenders that your son now expects gifts from everyone who comes to the door, does not cope well when you attempt to pass those toys on to kids who are in greater need of them, and is in danger of becoming one of Willy Wonkas more  permanent  visitors. If they protest, shake them down at the door and make it clear the cars are going directly to charity. But ideally, you will be able to get them on board to keeping presents to one or two special occasions per year.

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What cannot be allowed to occur is your in-laws knuckling under to tears. They are supposed to be the adults! I recommend suggesting they use that money to take your kid out for fun experiences: the zoo! A kids movie! A corn maze!

You cant spend anyone elses money, but you can keep them from burying you in Hot Wheels in your own home. I believe that you can do this.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a 6-month-old with an obvious genetic condition. The condition doesnt impair his intellectual functioning in the slightest but does give him an unusual appearance. People comment on his condition in public, and I am trying to find ways to respond that respects that my son will someday want privacy. But I also know he will get asked these questions often, and I want him to have the skills to explain to others when needed. This condition is going to be obvious to others throughout his life, and at times hes going to need minor accommodations.

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I want to find a balance between honoring his right not to have everyone know his medical condition, but also acknowledging that given his appearance there are going to be questions. Is it best to give a factual explanation to people who ask directly to model how to explain this condition? Or should I refuse to respond (which feels rude to me)? Is there an in-between option? Obviously, he doesnt care now but he will in the future.

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Mommy, Why Does He Look Funny?

Dear MWDHLF,

You are indeed correct that your child will have years (decades!) of questions about his appearance ahead of him, which will run the gamut from polite curiosity to blatant rudeness. As he gets older, he will have every right to decide on his own how to react to such questions (and pointed looks).

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What I think you can do over the next few years, while the questions are still directed to you, is to politely model both his right to medical privacy and the idea of social politeness by answering questions from strangers with There are billions of people on the planet, and many of them look different from what you might be used to. This is what Charlie looks like. Whats your name? Close friends and family can certainly know his exact condition, and he may grow up to want to share that information more widely, which is his call and can be done at his own pace.

Your child does not need to be a teachable moment for all and sundry. He will eventually get truly rude questions (What happened to your face?) and I want you to make sure you allow him the scope to occasionally say, Thats a really inappropriate thing to say to a stranger and not always have to be the Saintly Disabled Kid. My mother has a tremendous amount of scarring, and when an adult asks what happened to her she has a lightning-fast terrible accident while masturbating response which has, I believe, cured numerous nosy people from a lifetime of asking shit thats none of their business.

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Most of my friends and acquaintances with facial disfigurement (the term they, at least, prefer) have a ton of time for well-meaning questions from small children, and very little time for spit-take glances and interrogations from adults. Raise him with self-esteem and confidence and the concept of civility, but dont make him think its his job to manage the emotions and embarrassments of others.

It sounds like youre a great parent, and Im glad youre thinking about these questions early. Give him a squeeze for me.

Nicole

Ask a Teacher

My daughter is a very bright first grader, excelling at both reading and math well beyond her grade level. Because of this, she has become quite bored and disengaged with school, and has even asked if I could teach her at home full-time (not currently a viable option). My parents have asked why I dont just have her skip a grade. While it used to be more common, this option has not been presented to me by the school, and I have not heard of any child skipping a grade in years. Is grade-skipping still a thing?
South Koreas Constitutional Court overturned a 65-year-old ban on abortion in a 72 vote on Thursday. Criminalizing a woman who undergoes abortion of her own will, the ruling read, limits the right of self-determination of the woman. The court called on the Korean parliament to revise the law by 2020.

The abortion ban was adopted in 1953, following the 195053 Korean War. Women who terminated their pregnancy could face up to one year in prison or a fine of 2 million won (about $1,750). Doctors who performed abortions risked up to two years in prison, although the Korean government rarely prosecuted medical professionals under this law.

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Some exceptions have been introduced over the years, permitting abortion in cases of rape and incest, when the mothers life is at risk, and when there is a high risk of hereditary disorders. Despite these allowances, however, abortion under exceptional circumstances requires spousal consent and is always illegal after 24 weeks. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, South Koreas restrictions are on par with those in Poland, Thailand, and Saudi Arabia. In Poland, for example, abortion is legal only in cases of incest, rape, or fetal impairment, and requires parental consent for minors. Similarly, in Thailand, abortion is permitted in cases of rape, fetal impairment, or if the pregnancy endangers a womans health. Saudi Arabia requires a woman to obtain parental and/or spousal consent and allows terminations only to save the mothers life. Overall, countries in North America and Europe and Central and Eastern Asia have the most liberal abortion laws in the world, with South Korea and Poland as the two notable exceptions.

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The court ruling comes at a time when South Koreas fertility rates have hit historic lows. In the early 1970s, when exceptions to the abortion ban were first introduced, the fertility rate averaged at 4.1 children per woman. In fact, the Korean government was so worried about its increasing population that it offered men exemptions from mandatory military service in exchange for free vasectomies. By 2015, the average was just 1.2 children per woman, one of the lowest in the world. As early as 2009, the government became concerned with declining birth rates, launching a public campaign to discourage abortion, with subway ads proclaiming that With abortion, you are aborting the future.

Perhaps in response to the governments concern or due to other factors, abortion rates in Korea have been steadily falling. In 2008, the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs counted 241,411 abortions, whereas in 2017, the number dropped to only 49,764. Of course, those numbers do not account for the many abortions that go unreported. Beyond health risks associated with illegal abortions, fear of retribution has been a major issue for Korean women, with cases of husbands and boyfriends using womens secret abortions to blackmail them. About 10 percent of Korean women who had an abortion reported using illegally obtained medications to induce a miscarriage, rather than seeking a medical operation. Theres some concern about the unsanctioned use of abortion medication, however, as women often have no way of knowing if pills theyve purchased illegally are properly manufactured and safe to use, thus increasing their risk of health complications.

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Contrary to the conservative stance of their government, the majority of Korean women were in favor of overturning the abortion ban before Thursdays court ruling. In 2018, 75 percent of women believed that the law punishing women for receiving abortions should be amended.

Forty-nine percent wanted to specifically amend the rules surrounding spousal consent. Womens rights groups in Korea have been pressuring the government to uplift the abortion ban for a few years now. The Constitutional Court has already considered amending the anti-abortion legislation back in 2012, when it split 44, leaving the law intact. In 2017, more than 200,000 South Koreans signed a petition calling for the legalization of abortion. When South Koreas Ministry of Health and Welfare classified abortion as an unethical medical practice, activists staged protests in Seoul, demanding an end to the anti-abortion law. Finally, a gynecologist charged with conducting 69 abortions between 2013 and 2015 brought her case before the Constitutional Court in hopes of overturning the 2012 rulingthis time, it worked.

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Abortion remains a hush-hush topic in South Korean society: A baby in South Korea is considered to be 1 year old at birth, implying that life begins at conception, and unmarried pregnant women continue to face societal stigma. When the Constitutional Court moved to consider the abortion ban, stories of hardships that South Korean women faced after getting an abortion proliferated in the media. One woman told the Japan Times how a doctor openly judged her24, unmarriedwhile performing an abortion and dismissed her physical discomfort during the procedure because shed already done everything. Another remembered taking a traditional Korean brew at 21 in hopes of inducing a miscarriage, enduring extreme pain, and being forced to travel to a clinic to receive an illegal abortion when the herbs failed.

While this weeks court ruling is a major victory for women and womens rights activists in South Korea, the country still has a long way to go when it comes to eliminating cultural stigma and normalizing abortion as a valid choice.
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On The Gist, the political parties of Israel.

In the interview, Jean McConvilles murder in 1972when The Troubles were at their bloodiestsparked what few deaths did in Northern Ireland: a reckoning. The New Yorkers Patrick Radden Keefe joins us to give context to McConvilles death, from the various factions at war back then to the countrys incomplete reconciliation process and oddly rehabilitated politicians. Keefe is the author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

In the Spiel, Medicare for all isnt as cheap as Bernie wants us to believe.

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Undergraduate students at Georgetown University voted overwhelmingly Thursday in favor of paying an additional fee to go toward reparations for the descendants of slaves sold by Georgetown in the 19th century, in what would, if approved by the university, be the first time an American university financially addresses its past as a slave-owning institution.

The Reconciliation Contribution would charge students $27.20 per semester to go toward a fund, directed by a board of students and slave descendants, that would support projects in communities where some descendants of Georgetowns slaves now live. But a student vote is not a binding measure that sets policy for the larger university, and the administration has not committed to the fund. Instead, the university has said it sees the vote as valuable insight into student perspectives, according to NBC News.

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According to the Georgetown University Student Association Elections Commission, which announced the results on Friday, of the nearly 60 percent of undergraduates who voted, 2,541 supported the measure and 1,304 opposed it.

In 1838, two Jesuit priests serving as the universitys presidents sold 272 people enslaved by the Maryland Jesuits. The university was mired in debt at the time, and the profits from the sale$115,000, or about $3 million today, according to the Washington Postallowed the university to stay open. Proponents of the measure argued that the sale split apart families and sent some slaves south to horrific conditions on cotton and sugar plantations and that the universitys debt to those enslaved people, and their descendants, should be addressed.

In 2016, Georgetown publicly recognized and apologized for its slave-holding past, and the university has since renamed the two buildings named after the Jesuit priests who organized the sale. It also gives preferential admissions (considering them as legacy admissions) to descendants of those 272 slaves. Four students are currently enrolled under that admissions policy, according to the Post.

Several Democratic presidential candidates have expressed support for some form of reparations nationallyor at least studying the possibility of reparationsincluding Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Julian Castro, Beto ORourke, and Pete Buttigieg.
In his nine years on the bench, Judge Carlton Reeves has proved to be one of the most eloquent, courageous, and principled jurists in the United States. Reeves, appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, has issued a series of pathbreaking decisions protecting the rights of women and minorities. He struck down Mississippis same-sex marriage ban; invalidated a law banning abortions after 15 weeks, dismissing its ostensible goal of protecting womens health as pure gaslighting; and threw out a racial gerrymander designed to dilute black citizens votes. This last decision so infuriated a conservative appeals court judge that she launched a personal attack on Reeves that is now the subject of a judicial ethics complaint.

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Reeves is not one to mince words or conceal his contempt for injustice. And on Thursday, he delivered an extraordinary speech upon receiving the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Medal in Law. Reeves speech is worth reading or listening to in full. The address is a powerful defense of diversity and equality, as well as a grave warning that, as Reeves put it: We are now eyewitnesses to the third great assault on our judiciaryone led by President Donald Trump.

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The first assault, Reeves explained, came during Reconstruction when white supremacists reversed the postCivil War march of civil rights. Ku Klux Klan members and their allies attempted to assassinate black judges, shot black jurors, and filled judgeships with former Confederates who had sworn to uphold slavery. The second came after Brown v. Board of Education, when segregations assailed courts efforts to integrate the South, smearing judges, shrinking judicial power, and scrubbing diversity from courtrooms. Senators tried to strip courts of jurisdiction over civil rights claims and impeach judges receptive to those claims. Judges who sought to deliver justice faced death threats and hate mail. Their pets were poisoned. Their childrens graves were desecrated.

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Beginning with President Jimmy Carter, however, our nation witnessed a revolution, one that dramatically expanded and improved the body of expertise federal courts depend on to find truth. We saw the addition of more black judges, more women judges, more Latina and Latino judges, more Asian-American judges, more Native American and Pacific Islander judges, and more openly LGBTQ judges than ever before. But this effort to make our judiciary reflect America was as brief as it was remarkable. Because now the third assault has begun. Reeves continued:

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If youve never relied on a court, you may not see the assault. If youve never seen a friend or loved one wrongly imprisoned, you may not feel it. If you have never been stopped for Driving While Black, like my friend Judge Robert Wilkins, you might not fear it. But if you know the words of Mississippis darkest moments, you can hear it.

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Then, in a remarkable passage, Reeves listed Trumps litany of condemnations against the judiciary:

When politicians attack courts as dangerous, political, and guilty of egregious overreach, you can hear the Klans lawyers, assailing officers of the court across the South.  When the powerful accuse courts of open[ing] up our country to potential terrorists, you can hear the Southern Manifestos authors, smearing the judiciary for simply upholding the rights of black folk. When lawmakers say we should get rid of judges, you can hear segregationist senators, writing bills to strip courts of their power. And when the executive branch calls our courts and their work stupid, horrible, ridiculous, incompetent, a laughingstock, and a complete and total disgrace, you can hear the slurs and threats of executives like George Wallace, echoing into the present.

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Every single one of these quotes was uttered by Trump.

Reeves went on:

I know what I heard when a federal judge was called very biased and unfair because he is of Mexican heritage. When that judges ethnicity was said to prevent his issuing fair rulings. When that judge was called a hater simply because he is Latino. I heard the words of James Eastland, a race-baiting politician, empowered by the falsehood of white supremacy, questioning the judicial temperament of a man solely because of the color of his skin. I heard those words and I did not know if it was 1967 or 2017. This false seed is being sown across this country, from Mississippi to Virginia. I know, because I am there. The proof is in my mailbox. In countless letters of hatred Ive been called a piece of garbage, an arrogant pompous piece of sh**, a disgrace, an asshole [who] will burn in hell, and the embodiment of Satan himself. One person has even told me that he has prayed that God will give [me] complete discomfort. The deliverers of hate who send these messages aim to bully and scare judges who look like me from the judiciary. And so they share an aim with those who used whips and ropes and trees against my ancestors: scrubbing the black experience from our nations courts.

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Reeves then tore into the astonishing lack of diversity among Trumps judicial nominees:

This attack is heard loudest in the slander of Judge Curiel. But it will be felt through this administrations judicial nominations, especially those confirmed with the advice and consent of the Senate. Of the Article III judges confirmed under the current administration, 90 percent have been white. Just one of those judges is black. Just two are Hispanic. Its not just about racial diversity. Barely 25 percent of this administrations confirmed judges are women. None have been black or Latina. Achieving complete gender equality on the federal bench would require us to confirm only 23 women a year.  Think: in a country where they make up just 30 percent of the population, non-Hispanic white men make up nearly 70 percent of this administrations confirmed judicial appointees. Thats not what America looks like. Thats not even what the legal profession looks like.  This administration and a bare majority of the Senate, walking arm-and-arm, are not stumbling unaware towards a homogeneous judiciary. Think of the slurs against Judge Curiel. Think of the nominations to the bench of those who call diversity code for relaxed standards, who call transgender children part of Satans plan, who defend the KKK in online message boards, who led voter suppression efforts for segregationists like Jesse Helms. Think of the pattern of judicial nominees refusing to admit, like generations of nominees before them have, that Brown v. Board was correctly decided.

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The consequences of this homogeneous judiciary, Reeves noted, will be devastating to justice.

Defending the judiciary means more than demanding that more women and people of color be appointed to the bench. With no Muslims on the bench, will our judiciary understand the many facets of religious freedom? How can it defend economic opportunity with so few judges who know the taste of a free lunch program or the weight of poverty? How can our judiciary understand the depths of mass incarceration when so few judges have stood with the accused or know them as neighbors, as Sunday School students, as loved ones? Filled only with the experiences of prosecutors and state court judges, of Big Law partners and corporate counsel, of a single religion or sexual orientation, our courts will fail to find the many truths justice must see. We need a judiciary as diverse as our countryas diverse as We the People.

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Reeves then turned to the Supreme Court. We have as many justices who have graduated from Georgetown Prep, he pointed out, as we have justices who have lived as a non-white person. When our Supreme Court captures such a narrow set of perspectives, what truths will it overlook? Moreover, too many justices have failed to defend the judiciary against Trumps bigotry. It is not enough for judges, Reeves said, seeing race-based attacks on their brethren, to say they are merely disheartened,  as Justice Neil Gorsuch did, or to simply affirm their nonpartisan status, as Chief Justice John Roberts has. We must do more to defend our bench.

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But courts must do more than denounce and diversify. Judges must demand resources they need to find truth. We must expand the reach and power of our courts, offering justice to all who claim the promise of America.

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Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has lately moved in the opposite direction. And Trumps new crop of judges shows no interest in offering justice to all. Due to the cynicism and cowardice of senators and judges who kowtow to Trump, this third great assault on the judiciary shows no sign of ceasing. But Reeves refuses to stand by and watch the erosion of civil rights in quiet dismay. He has issued a call to arms for all who support a strong, independent, and diverse judiciary: fight for what you believe in before Trump and his allies close the courthouse doors to those who most need justice.
Public Enemy No. 1: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was indicted today in London, ending a standoff of nearly seven years at the Ecuadorian Embassy. He was charged not with what hes best known forpublishing sensitive government documentsbut with conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack the Defense Department computer network. As Fred Kaplan puts it, Assange is having his Al Capone moment.

Whats beef? Pete Buttigieg recently denounced Vice President Mike Pences history of anti-gay policies, to the surprise of the Pence family and political journos of all stripes, one of whom called these remarks Trumpy. But its not Trumpy if its true. Mark Joseph Stern looks at the homophobic policies Pence has championed throughout his career and concludes that Mayor Petes comments are more than justified.

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He drinks and he knows things: Peter Dinklages wisecracking Tyrion Lannister quickly emerged as a fan favorite among Game of Thrones gazillion characters, but over the past few seasons the show seems to have lost interest in him. Inkoo Kang explains how the Imp lost his way. And if all this talk of Westeros has you feeling a sense of dread about the shows final season, Dan Kois can relate. Must we watch?, he asks.

Please dont stop the music: D.C. was in uproar this week after a resident of a luxury apartment building in a historically black neighborhood threatened to sue over a nearby store blaring go-go music, a homegrown subgenre of funk. Go-go scholar Natalie Hopkinson explains how this neighborhood spat exposed the fault lines in the citys rapid gentrification.

For fun: Can Kim Kardashian actually become a lawyer without going to law school?

Dare to dream,

Vicky
By the time many of us have just woken up, Manny, an undocumented immigrant I interviewed in South Texas, has already started his workday. (His name has been changed at his and his wifes request.) Manny is a painter, and he has to start his work early in the morning to avoid the stifling South Texas heat. Manny has been in the United States for more than a decade, and he has been consistently employed since he arrived. During his time in the United States, he has never been arrested, he has started a family, and he has built a full life. Manny works five days a week at a job that an overwhelming majority of Americans would never even consider. Although he is otherwise law-abiding, he could not avoid breaking the law in order to get his job.

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When he got that job, he did not have the money to hire an immigration lawyer to help him get a work visa or citizenship. With no knowledge of the U.S. immigration system and no money to pay an attorney, it seemed like Manny only had two realistic options for employment: 1) continue working odd jobs that paid cash, or 2) use another persons Social Security number to procure employment.

But Manny had grown sick of under-the-table cash jobs because it was not uncommon for people to refuse to pay him after his work was complete. With a family to feed, he could no longer rely on odd jobs to make ends meet. So he did what a lot of other undocumented people in his position do: He used someone elses Social Security number to fill in his I-9 form (a form that deals with employment eligibility verification).

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Often the Social Security number used by an undocumented immigrant is one of a family member or close friend.

Mannys story is a common one, and the Supreme Court recently announced it would hear a landmark case centered on situations like his. Next term, the court will hear whether states can use information found in an I-9 to criminally prosecute those in Mannys position, despite a federal statute that suggests they do not have that authority. The courts ruling will have an enormous impact on the countless undocumented people in this country who use another persons Social Security number to procure employment.

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Its important to understand that undocumented immigrants in the United States have many ways of getting another persons Social Security number, and most of those ways actually involve the consent of the person they are taking it from. Often the Social Security number used by an undocumented immigrant is one of a family member or close friend. Even if a person consents to another person using his Social Security number when filling out employment forms, using that Social Security number falsely can be illegal under federal law. Some individual states, however, have also made it a crime to use false Social Security numbers on those forms under their identity theft laws. The looming Supreme Court fight centers on such a state case.

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In Kansas, Ramiro Garcia, an undocumented immigrant who was working as a line cook, was arrested and convicted by state officials for identity theft after using someone elses Social Security number to fill out his I-9 form. After appealing all the way up to the Supreme Court of Kansas, Garcias conviction was reversed based on the federal statute that seems to govern the forms uses. The court ruled that the states identity theft prosecution was expressly preempted by federal law. The court explained that the language in 8 U.S.C.  1324a(b)(5), the code that makes it a criminal and civil offense to hire undocumented immigrants, explicitly prohibited state law enforcement use not only of the I9 itself but also of the information contained in the I9 for purposes other than those enumerated in the statute. The enumerated purposes in that statute were limited to federal criminal prosecutions such as perjury, fraud in connection with identification documents, and visa forgery. State criminal prosecutions for identity theft are not included in those enumerated purposes.

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Kansas appealed the state Supreme Courts decision, and last month the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear that appeal. Kansas v. Garcia is now likely to be one of the blockbuster cases of the courts next term. The case deals with complex issues of federal preemption of state laws and of statutory interpretation. One bottom line, though, is that if the court decides to reverse the Kansas Supreme Courts decision, it could put countless undocumented immigrants at risk of being prosecuted by state governments.

The National Council of La Raza has reported that the majority of undocumented immigrants pay income taxes using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) or false Social Security numbers. If Kansas v. Garcia results in a reversal, then millions of undocumented people could have their I-9 forms and the information contained therein used against them in identity theft cases brought by individual states. People who work some of the most demanding manual labor jobs in this country could regress from earning an honest and consistent salary to working odd jobs for low and inconsistent pay. The industries that would be the hardest hit are some of the most integral for everyday American life. For instance, according to Pew, agriculture, food manufacturing, and construction are all industries in which unauthorized immigrants make up more than 10 percent of the workforce.

Some argue that an affirmation of the Kansas Supreme Courts decision will only encourage undocumented immigrants to continue falsifying information on I-9 forms. Others argue that a reversal of the decision will make finding work prohibitively difficult for hardworking immigrants who need to feed their families. Both sides seem to be right from a public policy perspective, which is a symptom of a bigger issue: The current immigration regime in the United States is broken. That is a problem that cant be fixed by the courts.
As Deputy President Wiliam Rutos source of wealth continues to be an enigma, there is also the issue of how many helicopters he owns.

According to former Jubilee Party vice-chairman David Murathe, the self-declared hustler is a billionaire who currently owns seven choppers.

To back his claims, the former Gatanga MP said that Ruto is building a multi-billion mansion at his rural home in Uasin Gishu County.

Murathe questioned the source of the DPs wealth, noting that even former Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale raised same concerns about Rutos choppers.

Khalwale is on record saying he wants William Ruto to explain how he has acquired 4 or 5 helicopters, he now has 7. How hes building a house worth Sh1.2 billion in Sugoi, where is the source of his money? he posed while appearing on the Point Blank show.

Murathe went ahead to sensationally claim that most of Rutos wealth was acquired through proceeds of corruption, including the prestigious Weston Hotel in Nairobi.

The hotel which he owns sits on a piece of land which has been stolen, Murathe added.

According to Murathe, Ruto does not meet the integrity threshold to continue holding a public office.

In the exclusive interview hosted by Tony Gachoka, the former Jubilee official said the looming arrests and prosecution of top Government officials for corruption will trigger a major Cabinet reshuffle.

He said President Kenyatta has given the investigative agencies the go-ahead to probe and charge any State officers involved in graft no matter how high their positions in the Jubilee administration.
Tracking abortion legislation in 2019 is like timing a swim meet where all the competitors have just exchanged their baggy board shorts for Speedos. Records are being broken left and right, with a growing number of states competing to install the most restrictive law in the country. And its all moving much faster than anyone watching from the stands expected.

Since the beginning of the year, 14 states have passed, introduced, or moved forward legislation that would ban abortions performed after about six weeks of pregnancy. (Conservatives call them heartbeat bills, because fetal pole cardiac activity usually shows up on a vaginal ultrasound around six weeks gestation.) Abortion bans this extrememany people dont even know theyre pregnant at such an early stageare both recent and rare. Ohio introduced the first six-week ban in 2011, though it didnt pass. Since then, until this year, only two states had succeeded in passing such a ban: North Dakota in 2013 and Iowa in 2018. Courts struck them both down, ruling that Supreme Court precedent protects abortion rights up until the point of fetal viability, around 24 weeks gestation.

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But in the past three months, the governors of Kentucky, Mississippi, and (eight years after its inaugural effort failed to pass) Ohio have all signed six-week abortion bans into law. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has signaled his support for one recently passed by the Georgia Legislature. Similar bills are also percolating through the legislatures of Missouri and Tennessee, and theyve been introduced in eight other states. Abortion rights advocates say 2019 has seen a two-thirds increase in the number of six-week bans introduced compared with this time last year.

In years past, anti-abortion politicians have traditionally moved with caution. With the Supreme Court precedents of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey intact, most took an incremental approach to the dismantling of abortion rights, lest a too-dramatic rollback get rejected by the courts, strengthening the Roe and Casey precedents. In 2016, even as she called herself the most pro-life governor in the nation, thenOklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin vetoed a bill that would have made performing any abortion a felony in the state. As Ohio governor, John Kasich earned praise from anti-abortion activists who said he was laser-focused on regulating abortion out of existence. But in 2016, Kasich vetoed a six-week ban in favor of a more moderate 20-week ban.

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A lot has changed in the past three years. Anti-abortion activists saw Donald Trumps election as the beginning of the end for abortion rights. (Hopefully, this will be the last march we have to have, one March for Life protester told me in January 2017.) Trump fulfilled their expectations when he nominated Brett Kavanaugh, who had proved his anti-abortion bona fides as a federal judge, and shifted the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court. In GOP-dominated state legislatures and governors offices, it was like a switch flipped. Republican lawmakers felt emboldened to enact what previously would have been considered blatantly unconstitutional abortion legislation, knowing that the Supreme Court and lower courts freshly stocked with Trump appointees would likely take their side. Instead of coming up with ways to restrict abortion access through indirect means like building codes, anti-abortion politicians took aim at Roe itself.

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Its not just abortion legislation thats getting increasingly extreme. The anti-abortion movement itself appears to be taking more cues from its far-right fringesgroups that reject the term pro-life and call themselves abortion abolitionists instead. Abortion abolitionists prize ideological purity over incremental wins. They fight, for instance, against the exceptions for cases of rape and incest that make anti-abortion bills palatable for more moderate voters. Using quotes from Martin Luther King Jr. and the language of the antislavery and civil rights movements, abolitionists carry the primary argument of the anti-abortion movementthat abortion is the murder of a human beingto its logical conclusion: that abortion should be prosecuted as homicide.

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Earlier this week, hundreds of abortion abolitionists testified in favor of a Texas bill that would classify all abortions as homicide and remove the line in the Texas penal code that exempts women from being charged with murder after getting an abortion. If the bill passes, women who get abortions could be eligible for capital punishment.

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According to anti-abortion activists, this was the first time a total, no-exceptions abortion ban that would treat the procedure as homicide has gotten a legislative hearing in the U.S. Though the bill is unlikely to pass, the fact that Republican leaders in the Texas Legislature decided to grant it a hearing and allowed more than 400 people to testify in favor of treating abortion-seeking women like murderers marks a shocking shift in the partys public rhetoric.

The Texas penal code already defines an individual as a human being who is alive, including an unborn child from fertilization until birth,  Rep. Tony Tinderholt, the author of the bill, said in a statement to Slate. However, Texas law provides two exceptions to homicide: for a mother or a medical professional who performs an abortion.  Some think we should exempt mothers, but that would inherently treat unborn children differently than other people who are murdered.

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The shift from casting women as victims to trying them as murderers will happen quickly.

The idea that women should be prosecuted as murderers for terminating their pregnancies has not been a talking point of the mainstream pro-life movement. In public, advocates usually prefer to paint these women as victims of a profit-hungry abortion industry led by Planned Parenthood. When Trump said in 2016 that women should be punished if they get an abortion, some major anti-abortion groups gently pushed back, reminding Trump that the scourge of abortion would be punishment enough. But an undercurrent of judgment and a desire for retribution has always coursed beneath the surface of the anti-abortion movement. Its impossible to reconcile a worldview in which abortion is murder but the half-million U.S. women who get abortions each year have done nothing wrong.

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Now that legislators in Texas have shown the way, I predict that more politicians and activists will begin to change their public postures. Anti-abortion politicians are constantly trying to outdo one anotherjust look at all the governors who claim to lead the most pro-life state in the country. If the accelerated pace of extreme anti-abortion legislation in 2019 is any indication, the shift from casting women as victims to trying them as murderers will happen quickly, without concern for public justification. Less than three years ago, many people interpreted the six-week abortion ban that Kasich vetoed in Ohio as a distractionan outrageous, obviously unconstitutional bill passed to make the 20-week ban seem more reasonable. Now, that six-week ban is law. All it takes is a group of persistent activists and a few bold lawmakers to make the unthinkable thinkable, the radical unradical. The abortion abolitionist moonshot will seem like an extremist movement, right up until it becomes the norm.
This piece was originally published on Just Security, an online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy.

After 30 years in power, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is finally out. On Thursday, Minister of Defense Lt. Gen. Awad Mohammed Ibn Ouf announced that Bashir had been removed from office and arrested. Ibn Ouf also declared the dissolution of the presidency and Cabinet, the suspension of the constitution, and the establishment of a two-year transitional military council. Sudan is now under a three-month state of emergency and a one-month curfew. The countrys airspace was closed for 24 hours, and all ports of entry are closed until further notice.

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The coming days, weeks, and months will be pivotal for Sudans future. While Bashirs removal is a momentous occasion and victory for the Sudanese people, there is much uncertainty about what comes next. The protesters who had called for Bashirs ouster worry about a military takeover, and with good reason: The last time Sudan deposed a dictator, a largely ineffective government lasted for three years before Bashir grabbed power. Armed groups remain formally at war with the government in three regions. And the question of whether Bashir will be turned over to the International Criminal Court, which first issued an arrest warrant for him a decade ago, looms over this weeks events.

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Ibn Ouf had signaled on April 8 that support for Bashir was wearing thin. Speaking to his senior commanders, he reportedly said the armed forces understood the causes of the protests, would not allow the country to slide into chaos, and would not hesitate to protect the countrys security, unity, and leadership.

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Although Bashir had survived many challenges to his rule, a determined protest movement and bleak economic situation within Sudan ultimately proved too much for him to overcome. Protests began Dec. 19 after the government removed a key subsidy, tripling the price of bread. The demonstrations spread quickly and became a much broader challenge to the corruption and economic mismanagement that has defined Bashirs three decades in office. In January and February, the protests grew in size and organization, as the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) began to lead the effort to remove him from power. The association is an umbrella group of professional committees and labor organizations, including teachers, lawyers, doctors, and journalists that traces its roots to 2016, but became the force that it is now just last year.

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After initial gains, the protest movement seemed to reach an impasse in late February, as Bashir declared a yearlong state of emergency on Feb. 22 while also dissolving federal and state governments. But the demonstrations continued, as did harsh and violent repression, often by the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) and special police units. According to Human Rights Watch, Sudanese authorities have killed at least 51 protesters while detaining hundreds, if not thousands, more. Earlier this month, Physicians for Human Rights published a report finding the government responsible for the deaths of 60 protesters and concluded that authorities entered and attacked at least seven medical facilities treating wounded protesters.

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Opposition leaders rejected Bashirs state of emergency as illegitimate and unlawful, but the government used hastily established emergency courts to try and sentence individuals for violating the order. Frequently, those arrested, tried, and sentenced had no access to an attorney.

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This stalemate began to give way on April 6, as tens of thousands of people assembled in front of the Sudanese Armed Forces headquarters at a military complex in the capital Khartoum. The complex also houses the Ministry of Defense and the presidential residence.

These demonstrations were the largest turnout since the protests began in December. Although NISS agents attempted to disperse the protesters, they failed to do so. As the crowd persisted in the following days, the military began protecting them. Sensing the change, protesters remained at the complex for five days and vowed to stay until Bashir stepped down, setting up the critical stage for this weeks events.

Now that Bashir has indeed been ousted, there is nevertheless deep disappointment and even anger from many protesters and human rights organizations who were eager for their country to form a civilian government.

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The Forces of the Declaration of Freedom and Change issued a statement saying the group categorically rejected Ibn Oufs statement and called the act an internal, military coup detat [that] reproduced the same faces and institutions that our courageous people have revolted against. The coalition urged demonstrators in front of the military headquarters to hold their positions and said other protesters should continue to take to the streets until a civilian government is established. The Forces of the Declaration group is a broad collection of organizations, including the SPA, opposition political parties, youth groups, and other marginalized communities. Sara Abdelgalil, a spokesperson for the SPA, offered similar statements, according to the New York Times, calling the militarys action a coup that is not acceptable.

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For its part, the military has provided little information regarding the transition other than the brief announcement by Ibn Ouf (his name sometimes is translated as Ibn Auf). The state-sponsored Sudan News Agency published a three-sentence statement that does little more than emphasize the necessity of a transitional military council and calls for citizens to adhere to the security restrictions. It is clear the majority of protesters are not satisfied with the possibility of two years of military rule, and demonstrations will continue.

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How the military and security forces allow Sudans transition from Bashir to move forward will influence the outcome of this process as much as any single factor. Comparing political transitions across states is much more of an art than a science, and local politics, culture, and tradition render such comparisons guideposts as opposed to blueprints.

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Here, the two obvious comparisons are Tunisiawhich after many moments of uncertainty remains the only peaceful, though still ongoing,transition of the 2011 Arab Springand Egypt, which after a period of great hope, fell back into repression and authoritarian rule.

Tunisia succeeded where Egypt failed for a variety of reasons, but perhaps none more so than the establishment of a technocratic caretaker government that allowed for a genuine and homegrown democratic government to take hold. In addition, the Islamist Ennahda Party remarkably ceded political power, even after winning free and fair elections, when it reached a political impasse with the opposition. In other words, Ennahda did the rarest of things for a political party and put the well-being of the country ahead of earned political power.

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For Sudans transition to succeed, the military must show the same courage, leadership, and trust that the protesters and the SPA have demonstrated. The SPA took an incredible risk that the armed forces would side with it, particularly given the repressive history of the military, the Rapid Support Forces, and NISS.

Now, the Sudanese Armed Forces must take the same risk and place the same trust in civil society and political leaders, so they can work together to form a lasting democratic government. Still, this does not mean that the military will not have a critical role in this transition. Security will, of course, remain paramount, and the plethora of militias formed by Bashir over the years that will now be competing for power will not help. But the relatively professional military should be able to keep the country secure without requiring a two-year transition to do so.

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And of course, none of this will be easy, but the Tunisian experience is again instructive as the dynamics of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet of four organizations, which received the Nobel Peace Prize for its role, are similar to that of the SPA. But even assuming such a positive outcome, the Tunisian Quartet only ensured that the country survived the initial shock of democracy without collapsing into civil war or returning to autocracy. Moving to a peaceful democracy will require much more from all leaders throughout Sudan.

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In addition to whether the military relents and allows for a civilian government, or at least the inclusion of civilians within the transitional process, another looming question is what happens to Bashir. In his announcement, Ibn Ouf said Bashir had been arrested and was being held in a safe location.

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Now that Bashir has indeed been ousted, there is nevertheless deep disappointment and even anger from many protesters

Bashirs arrest warrants from the ICC have long been complicating factors in any plan to remove him from power. While Bashir has successfully evaded arrest since the court issued these arrest warrants in 2009 and 2010, he relied on the argument that he had sovereign immunity because he was an acting head of state. Even assuming this argument to be correctand many legal scholars argue it is notthat status no longer applies. Sudanese officials say they do not plan to extradite Bashir, but calls for him to face international justice will only grow louder.

The new Sudanese government might be able to foreclose this issue by trying Bashir in Sudan for his alleged crimes in Darfur. But this is very unlikely, as Bashir based his political survival on building a strong network of support within the armed forces and security services. It is hard to imagine that these same men, many of whom also would be exposed for participating in serious human rights crimes if not their own international criminal acts, would allow for this to happen. Indeed, Ibn Ouf was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2007 for his role in the Darfur atrocities. At the time, he was the head of military intelligence and security.

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Bashirs removal from power raises many other political and security questions. Armed groups remain at war with the Sudanese government in Darfur, South Kordofan, and Blue Nile, even though the fighting has lessened considerably.

Regionally, Bashir was the East African leader most invested in the success of the South Sudan peace process, itself a fragile deal with a fast-approaching deadline to form a transitional government by May 12. Across the Red Sea, Sudan has contributed a significant number of soldiers to the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen, but given the instability at home this support might be drawing to an end. Sudan is also in the middle of a serious dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt over the building of the largest dam in Africa.

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Lastly, the United States relies heavily on Sudan for intelligence in its counterterrorism efforts in East Africa and beyond. At the same time, Sudan remains on the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, a designation imposed in 1993, and cannot access desperately needed debt relief until it is removed. Depending on the outcome of Sudans transition, now could be the time to remove Sudan from this list. At the very least, the prospect of being removed gives the U.S. considerable leverage in pushing the transitional government towards a more democratic and inclusive state.

While all of these considerations are important and even pressing, it is also a day for celebration. It is worth remembering that, after 30 years of authoritarian rule, it was not armed struggle, U.S. sanctions, or the International Criminal Court that ended Bashirs rule. Rather, it was the will of the Sudanese people and the remarkable bravery of the protesters in Khartoum and throughout the country.

Just fall, that is all! was a key slogan repeated at demonstrations through the last four months. But for peace and democracy to take hold, the spirit of this uprising must continue for years and not end at the removal of Bashir.
Thanks to Wednesdays compromise in Brussels, the U.K. wont be crashing out of the European Union on Friday without a Brexit deal. British leaders still have a lot of decisions ahead, and the way forward is no more clear than before.

Today in Parliament: Theres one reason for even the most hardline Brexiteer MP to celebrate the six-month extension: It means they get to go on recess! The recess, which starts tomorrow, might have been canceled if members still needed to hammer out a deal or cope with the fallout of a no-deal Brexit, but for now, theyll have until April 23 to rest, relax, and plot coups against Theresa May.

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May returned to London to brief Parliament on the flextension the EU had granted and urged her colleagues to use the opportunity of the Recess to reflect on the decisions that will have to be made swiftly on our return after Easter. And let us then resolve to find a way through this impasse.

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The new Brexit deadline is Oct. 31, but under the terms of the extension, it can still happen sooner if Parliament would finally agree to pass Mays withdrawal agreement, which MPs have now rejected three times. May wants this to happen by this summer, so that the U.K. doesnt have to participate in EU Parliament elections, but preparations for those elections are beginning anyway. Calls for a new referendum on Brexit are also growing now that theres actually time to organize one before the deadline.

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During Prime Ministers Questions, May batted away reports that theres been little headway in her cross-party talks with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, saying the two sides have substantial agreement on whether to keep Britain in a customs union with Europe, Labours main condition for supporting the withdrawal agreement and something which Brexiteers vehemently reject. She also refused to rule out asking for yet another extension and rejected one Tory MPs call for her to resign.

The Guardians Andrew Sparrow notes that in the Commons the Brexiter response was close to subdued, considering the tumult that was supposedly going to break out if Brexit wasnt delivered. Maybe everyones just ready for a break.

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Today in polls: Several recent polls show Labour now solidly leading the Conservatives. Local elections on May 2 could turn into a referendum on the governing partys failure to deliver Brexit. Paul Waugh of HuffPost UK suggests that the Liberal Democrats, rather than Labour, could end up being the big winners in that vote.

Today in What is Emmanuel Macrons deal? The French president reportedly annoyed his fellow European leaders during Wednesday nights dinner/debate in Brussels, when he insisted on speaking last and launched a one-man crusade to prevent the long Brexit extension of nine to 12 months that the other 26 leaders favored. Macron was unconvinced that the May-Corbyn talks would bear fruit and worried that Britain would play the role of spoiler if it stuck around in the EU Parliament too long after declaring its intention to leave. The Guardian reports that German officials were very irritated with Macrons grandstanding. Macron tweeted on Wednesday that the Brexit distraction should be dealt with quickly since we have a European renaissance to lead, which is now going to be my default excuse for leaving any meeting that goes too long.

Today in Today in Brexit: With the deadline extended and Parliament going on recess, the pace of Brexit news is likely to slow quite a bit, so were going to stop publishing this column on a daily basis. But never fear, watch for This Week in Brexit starting next Thursday on this very website.

Days until next deadline: 204
In a week that opened with the White House cleaning house at the Department of Homeland Security and ended with the president openly threatening to release detained immigrants into so-called sanctuary cities to punish his immigration reform foes, some good news has come in a major legal challenge to another secretive and tough immigration policy. On Friday afternoon, the government signed a settlement agreement in a massive class-action suit challenging the Trump administrations termination of the little-known Central American Minors (CAM) parole program. As a result of that agreement, almost 3,000 vulnerable kids will have a chance to be reunited with their families in the United States.

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The Obama-era CAM program was created in 2014, following news of a surge of tens of thousands of unaccompanied children fleeing violence in the Northern Triangle countries El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The initiative, intended to create a safe and lawful alternative to dangerous solo treks through Mexico, allowed lawful immigrants who lived in the U.S. to apply for refugee status on behalf of their children younger than 21 and certain eligible relatives. The secretary of homeland security was given case-by-case discretion to parole in foreign nationals for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit for those who perhaps didnt meet the stringent definition of refugee but nevertheless merited consideration on the grounds of humanitarian relief. These eligibility determinations were made when the minors were still in their home countries so as to avoid dangerous solo travel via Mexico. Humanitarian parole would allow them to spend two years in the United States, without a pathway to citizenship.

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The program stuttered to a stop almost as soon as Donald Trump took office. In response, a lawsuit was brought in June on behalf of the families of 12 minors whose lives were in limbo as the program languished. The suit, filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), one of the groups that first challenged the Trump administrations travel ban, was on behalf of the more than 2,700 children who had already applied before the program was terminated but had received no answer. Many of these applicants had already gone through months or years of processing and had already been approved by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for relocation pending final medical and security checks. But the program was shuttered, first in secret, without any notice to the applicants, and then formally in August of 2017 with an unexplained mass rescission of conditional approval for parole status for nearly 3,000 children. Worse still, the plaintiffs alleged that USCIS had continued to accept money from applicant familiesincluding $400 for DNA tests, $100 or more for medical exams, and $1,400 for each childs plane ticketlong after the program had been decommissioned. In effect, they argued, the program was still taking applications on its website and accepting payments while rescinding everyones conditional approval en masse.

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This willingness to sign off on a settlement agreement suggests yet again that this border crisis is less about public safety than ugly political signaling.

In December, a federal magistrate judge found that the cancellation of the program was illegal under the Administrative Procedure Act, which delineates how federal agencies propose and establish new regulations. Then, early last month, the same federal magistrate judge in San Francisco ordered the administration to restart the processing of CAM applications for those who had already been conditionally approved, finding that the governments action was causing irreparable harm to the plaintiffs by preventing their children from escaping life-threatening danger. She gave the government until March 21 to begin processing these children at late stages of processing again and explicitly ordered that DHS may not adopt any policy, procedure, or practice of not processing the beneficiaries or placing their processing on hold en masse and must process the beneficiaries in good faith.

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On Friday afternoon, the Department of Homeland Security entered into an agreement with the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, in which USCIS now agrees to process the approximately 2,700 people who had been conditionally approved for parole prior to the CAM parole programs termination and agrees to process them under the pre-termination standards. That means that, for the families who have been waiting for years to be reunified in the U.S. with children facing horrific danger and violence in Central America, at least the process of attempting to reunify now begins again.

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For S.A., the plaintiff whose name is on the IRAP lawsuit, that will finally mean the possibility of reunification with her daughter and small grandson. S.A. has lived lawfully in the U.S. since 2001 under a program designed to help citizens of countries experiencing armed conflict. She works for a lice-removal company in San Francisco. Her youngest daughter, who still lives in San Salvador, has been threatened with brutal gang violence. She and her baby son had been cleared in February of 2017 to travel to the United States and had paid nearly $5,000 for their flights, DNA tests, and other processing requirements at that time. Their approval was rescinded when the CAM program was canceled. Similarly situated teens in the lawsuit, fleeing from horrific gang violence and sexual abuse, will now at minimum see their applications processed as promised.

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For Linda Evarts, the attorney with IRAP who litigated this suit, the agreement with the Trump administration is an unalloyed win for reunification of families: We are so pleased that after many years apart our clients will finally have the opportunity to reunite with each other in safety. These families belong together here in the United States, and we are hopeful this settlement will allow for their swift reunification. Given the Trump administrations current stance that holds that all migrants, but especially those from Central America, are de facto criminals and rapists and gang members, this willingness to sign off on a settlement agreement suggests yet again that this border crisis is less about public safety than ugly political signaling.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was handed over to British authorities in London early Thursday morning. Once a self-styled freedom of information fighter, love him or hate him, Assanges legacy has grown far more complicated since the 2016 election when Assanges WikiLeaks apparatus operated as a clearinghouse for hacked information passed along from Kremlin-linked sources. Hacked DNC and Clinton campaign emails, for instance, were in effect laundered through WikiLeaks and then injected into the bloodstream of the American electorate. Trump knew the valueand potentially the sourceof the information leaked to his benefit. But when asked about Assanges arrest, the president clammed up.I know nothing about Wikileaks. Its not my thing, Trump told reporters. Its not my deal in life.

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That, of course, is not true. During the campaign, WikiLeaks was candidate Trumps main squeeze and he its most high profile booster.

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President Trump, who often expressed his love of WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign, says following the arrest of Julian Assange on Thursday: "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing." pic.twitter.com/VwvOnLDJmw  MSNBC (@MSNBC) April 11, 2019

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But do a couple of rallies really make WikiLeaks Trumps deal?

The Wikileaks e-mail release today was so bad to Sanders that it will make it impossible for him to support her, unless he is a fraud!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 23, 2016

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I hope people are looking at the disgraceful behavior of Hillary Clinton as exposed by WikiLeaks. She is unfit to run.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 11, 2016

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Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 12, 2016

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We've all wondered how Hillary avoided prosecution for her email scheme. Wikileaks may have found the answer. Obama! https://t.co/xF0wv8Oa8q  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2016

WikiLeaks proves even the Clinton campaign knew Crooked mishandled classified info, but no one gets charged? RIGGED! https://t.co/FgGxDsS0a1  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2016

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Huma calls it a "MESS," the rest of us call it CORRUPT! WikiLeaks catches Crooked in the act - again.#DrainTheSwamp https://t.co/juvdLIJPWu  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 21, 2016

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WikiLeaks: 'Clinton-Kaine Even Lied About Timing of Veep Pick'https://t.co/e1NVdpSfNr  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2016

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Why has nobody asked Kaine about the horrible views emanated on WikiLeaks about Catholics? Media in the tank for Clinton but Trump will win!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 24, 2016

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'WikiLeaks Drip-Drop Releases Prove One Thing: There's No Nov. 8 Deadline on Clinton's Dishonesty and Scandals'https://t.co/MfRy3Nvd4F  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2016

WikiLeaks emails reveal Podesta urging Clinton camp to 'dump' emails.

Time to #DrainTheSwamp!https://t.co/P3ajiACiXK  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2016

WikiLeaks? I havent heard that name in years.
One year ago to the day, one of Donald Trumps nominees to a seat on the Eastern District of Louisiana, Wendy Vitter, sat before the Senate Judiciary Committee and declined to say whether Brown v. Board of Educationthe 1954 ruling that struck down the separate but equal doctrine in public educationwas correctly decided. In response to a question from Sen. Richard Blumenthal on the topic of Brown, Vitter replied, I dont mean to be coy, but I think I can get into a difficult, difficult area when I start commenting on Supreme Court decisionswhich are correctly decided and which I may disagree with. Again, my personal, political, or religious views I would set asidethat is Supreme Court precedent. It is binding. If I were honored to be confirmed, I would be bound by it, and of course, I would uphold it.

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At the time, it seemed that Vitter and other nominees were willing to go further than we had ever believed possible to make the claim that Brown was indeed precedent while avoiding saying that they agreed with one of the most widely accepted Supreme Court decisions of all time. Ten years ago, such a maneuver would have been unthinkable. As Perry Grossman and I noted last year, At his Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 2006, Samuel Alito called [Brown] one of the greatest, if not the single greatest thing that the Supreme Court of the United States has ever done. Only a year ago, Neil Gorsuch said at his confirmation hearing that Brown was a seminal decision that got the original understanding of the 14th Amendment right. 

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What changed in the time between Gorsuch and Vitter has nothing to do with whether Brown is still good precedent. What changed is that judicial nominees are carving a path toward saying that they neednt be bound by any precedent, and also that every precedent is now on the table. When judicial nominees say, as they now regularly do, that Brown is a precedent of the court, what they are really saying is that a case that was decided was decided, and that its the law until its reversed. That is a truismit is a description of what is. It is also a departure from a standard that existed until quite recently.

What changed is that judicial nominees are carving a path toward saying that they neednt be bound by any precedent, and also that every precedent is now on the table.

But this has become the party line: One may not comment on the correctness of any Supreme Court case that has come before. Or almost any. Neomi Rao, selected to replace Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, also declined last month to answer Blumenthals question about Brown: Brown is a really important precedent of the Supreme Court, and one that overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, which you know was a real black mark on our history she testified. Then she went on to say that it was not appropriate to comment on the correctness of particular precedents. In other words, one can comment on the bad precedentslike Plessy, which she ably stated was incorrectly decided. But one cannot comment on the correctness of decisions like Brown, which purport to correct Plessy. Because one is incorrect. And the other is not not incorrect.

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This is the problem with sanctimonious claims that judicial nominees should not parse which cases are correctly decided (a strategy most frequently deployed by nominees who want to avoid having to comment directly on Roe). All nominees still do ittheyve just moved the goal posts on which cases are correctly decided, and which are simply precedent. But theres a second problem with the newfound refusal to sign off on the fundamental correctness of Brown: Its not just judges doing it. Which brings us to this week, when Donald Trumps pick for deputy attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, did the same thing in his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Asked, again by Blumenthal, whether he believed that Brown v. Board was correctly decided, Rosen was not willing to concede it, saying instead, Senator, I dont think that it would be a productive exercise for me to go through the mostthousands of Supreme Court opinions and say which ones are right and which ones are wrong.

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Rosen then continued, I, um, I have views about lots of Supreme Court cases, but Im not being nominated for this position to be the solicitor general nor a judge and I think in this context the point Im trying to make is that, whatever the law is, whether its a decision I would favor or disfavor, I see it as the role of the Department of Justice to uphold the law such as it is, unless Congress or the courts change it.

See what he did there? Not only is it improper for judges to weigh in on cases that may come before them (the so-called Ginsburg rule, which has nothing to do with Ginsburgs Senate testimony), its also improper for the deputy at the Trump Justice Department to weigh in because, well, he isnt a judge. As Ed Kilgore noted Wednesday, this was a decision by the prospective number-two person in the agency responsible for enforcing civil rights laws to take the Fifth on a landmark decision that even open bigots now accept as inevitable and even right. And of course, this is the same Justice Department that routinely reverses course about which laws it will seek to uphold.

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Why are Donald Trumps nominees suddenly willing to disavow even precedents they were once at least willing to pretend respect for? In part, its because their answers dont matter. No Senate Republican will vote against a nominee for merely being unwilling to stand behind Brown. But more importantly, as nomination hearings become ever briefer and less substantial, this is a way of limiting even further the topics that can be explored: Dont ask about what I have written or said in the past, as it isnt material, and dont ask what I might do in the future, as it isnt appropriate.

In the end, as is often the case, this has less to do with Brown v. Board than with growing contempt for the institution of the Senate. These prospective judges dont want to say they would overturn Roe, so they decline to discuss it, and then extend that logic to Brown in an effort to make it sound like a principle. But make no mistake, this is also a performance of contempt for the courts themselves. Because an unwillingness to discuss what constitutes precedent reflects a conviction that its all up for grabs anyhow. The new posture appears to be that no law is settlednot anymoreand that its not for any judge to pronounce whether a case was correct or not until she is given the job of doing just that. Its a new way to say that nothing is certain and nothing is fixed. Thats the tag line of the Trump epoch.

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If the newest Trump judges have shown anything, its been a willingness to strike down precedent even from the district court bench. And the newfound refusal to approve of the core logic of Brown should signal to us that the issue is somehow a live one. As Grossman and I wrote at the time of the Vitter hearing, Are Vitter and Oldham suggesting they may not discuss Brown because they believe its conceivable that a case questioning its prohibition on de jure racial segregation may come before them? Shouldnt we find out what that case is?

Its one thing for future judges to decline to make promises about pending cases. Its another thing to imply that what John Roberts once described as immutable super precedents are suddenly up for debate. This week saw the next step in that progression: The Justice Department thinks Brown is still the law of the land until and unless it stops thinking that. Which could happen tomorrow.
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To understand whats happening on the border, you have to look at the policies and leaders on both sides of it. So, how has Mexico, under its new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, changed its approach to refugees and migrants fleeing north? And how has the Mexican president changed, himself?

Guest: Leon Krauze, columnist for Slate, co-host of Trumpcast, and news anchor for Univision.

Tell us what you think by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or sending an email to whatnext@slate.com.

Follow us on Instagram for updates on the show.

Podcast production by Mary Wilson, Jayson De Leon, and Anna Martin.
Donald Trumps Middle East strategy took another pounding this week, when Egypt withdrew from an anti-Iran coalition that Saudi Arabia proposed two years ago and that the president and his top aides have been pushing ever since.

The fact that the pullout occurred the day after Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi met with Trump in the White Housea warm get-together where Trump praised Sisi as a great presidentcompounds the setback.

Finally, the fact that Egypt has the Arab worlds largest army signals that the coalitionformally called the Middle East Strategic Alliance and dubbed by some the Arab NATOhas collapsed before it stood up.

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In very much related news, Benjamin Netanyahus apparent reelection this week as Israels prime minister, along with his pledge to annex the West Bank, all but guarantees that the chance of an Israeli-Palestinian peace dealstill a grand pipe dream of Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushnerhas shrunk from nil to zero.

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Some in Israel, perhaps including Netanyahu himself, think that Trumps avid endorsement of his reelection pushed the four-term incumbent over the top in the very close contest. Most U.S. presidents in this position would use that perception as leverage to get Netanyahu to back off on some of his more self-destructive policies. Not Trump. In his bid to win votes from Jews and Christian evangelicals in 2020, Trump is letting Netanyahu and his even farther-right-wing partners do whatever they want. Not long before the election, in what may have encouraged Netanyahu to announce his West Bank intentions, Trump formally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heightsand then asked for nothing in return.

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Arab leaders have slackened their support for the Palestinians in recent years, since turning their attention to the cold war with Irana cause for which some have even formed a quiet alliance with Israel. (Their championing of the Palestinian cause, even in the heyday of Yasser Arafat, was always a bit of a ruse, to deflect their own internal and internecine disputes and problems of governance.) Still, it is hard to imagine these leaders ever agreeing to an overt peace with Israel if Netanyahu now follows through on his expansionist plans.

The Middle Eastlike health care, as he once exclaimed in a short-lived moment of clarityis more complicated than Trump figured.

According to Vicky Wards new book, Kushner, Inc., the peace plan being drawn up by Trumps son-in-law, at least at one point, involved Jordan giving some of its land to the Palestinians in exchange for a chunk of land from Saudi Arabia. The Saudis would then be compensated with two Red Sea islands from Egypt. This would have been a preposterous notion even when Washington had more leverage in the region and shrewder diplomats to exert it. Now, its the stuff of absurdist comedy.

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Trump officials have denied the account as fake news. But the Kushner peace plan is widely mocked on the inside. When Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the most deferential member of Trumps Cabinet, was asked at a congressional hearing last month when Kushners plan would be unveiled, he replied, laughing, Less than 20 yearsI prefer not to be more precise.

The Middle East is a tough place for even the finest, best-intentioned diplomats. If the regional tensions between Shiites and Sunnis were the only problem to settle, things would be tough enough. But the region is rife with multiple conflicts over ideology, religion, and land. Some nations are allies on some issues, adversaries on others; borders are in dispute and, in any case, porous; transnational terrorists inflame the tensions, as do outside powers who view local battles as proxy wars for their own benefit.

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But Trump is making matters worse by encouraging Netanyahus worst tendencies, exacerbating the Saudi-Iranian sectarian conflict, making no diplomatic overtures (not even just for rhetorical show), and abrogating what little influence he might have, except when it comes to encouraging war against Iran and its militias.

Egypts withdrawal from the anti-Iran coalition should (but wont) prod Trump into realizing that the Middle Eastlike health care, as he once exclaimed in a short-lived moment of clarityis more complicated than hed figured.

Sisis problem with the notion of an Arab NATO seems to be threefold. First, he doesnt believe the United States will stick with it, especially if Trump isnt reelected in 2020. Second, he understands that the prospective member countriesKuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Egypt and Saudi Arabiahave their own differences. Third, Egypt, though an age-old rival of Iran in the contest for regional dominance, doesnt feel directly threatened by the Islamic Republics current leaders and has no desire to intensify tensions with them, much less get sucked into an alliance-driven war.

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This last bit, I suspect, surprises Trump the most. It must puzzle him that Sisi has no affection for Iran but no desire to topple the regime either, not even as a tribute to their friendship. (Once again, as in many other meetings with world leaders, Trump mistakes political behavior for friendship and fails to see that policies are, in any case, shaped more by interests than by personal relationships.)

The big failing in Trumps policy in the region is that he doesnt know what he wants, except to help Israel (which he isnt doing, in the long run, by giving Netanyahu and his partners everything they want) and to crush Iran (which is harder than he imagines and which would likely lead to something worse). He has no strategy, only bluster, and Egypts breakaway makes that clearer than ever.
President Donald Trump and his apologists have concocted an excuse for his refusal to release his tax returns. They claim that voters, by electing Trump president in 2016, gave him a mandate to keep his returns private. The tax question was already litigated during the election, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney declared in a Fox News interview on Sunday. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didnt. And they elected him anyway. On Monday, Trumps deputy press secretary, Hogan Gidley, repeated that Democrats had litigated this in 2016 and that voters had rejected their arguments. On Wednesday, Trump said the public had cleared him. I got elected last time with this same issue, said Trump, because, frankly, the people dont care.

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Candidates for president should release their taxes regardless of public opinion, because every voter has the right to know whether the countrys most powerful officeholder has financial conflicts of interest. Trumps vast holdings and his shady business history make that concern all the more apt. But for now, lets stick to a simpler question: Is it true that voters gave Trump a mandate to hide his tax returns? No, its false. Every poll shows that Americans think he should release his returnsand that if he doesnt, Congress should pry the returns from him.

Looking back over the past three years, I found roughly 20 surveys on this subject. In each one, most respondents said Trump should cough up his returns. In 2016, the question was posed in various ways, always with the same result. Do you think it is necessary for presidential candidates to publicly release their tax returns, or dont you think thats necessary? Necessary, 59 percent to 38 percent. Do you think it is necessary for Donald Trump to publicly release his tax returns, or dont you think that is necessary? Necessary, 59 percent to 37 percent. Do you think Donald Trump should publicly release his tax returns, or not? Should, 74 percent to 21 percent. Do you think Donald Trump should or should not release his tax returns for public review? Should, 73 percent to 24 percent.

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Many people who voted for Trump in 2016 expressly rejected the idea that in doing so they were authorizing him to hide his returns.

Polls taken this year show that little has changed. Do you think Donald Trump should publicly release his tax returns, or not? Should, 64 percent to 29 percent. Do you think Donald Trump should or should not release his tax returns for public review? Should, 67 percent to 27 percent. Do you think Donald Trump should or should not release his tax returns to the public? Should, 56 percent to 27 percent. Do you think Trump has a responsibility to publicly release his tax returns, or does he not have this responsibility? Has a responsibility, 64 percent to 32 percent.

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Many people who voted for Trump in 2016 expressly rejected the idea that in doing so they were authorizing him to hide his returns. In an August 2016 Quinnipiac University survey, more than a third of respondents who said they were inclined to vote for Trump also said he should release his returns. In a September 2016 CNN poll, half the people who said they intended to vote for Trump said he should disclose his tax forms. In a May 2016 Washington Post/ABC News poll, Republicans were evenly split on whether Trump should release his returns. In the CNN poll, a slight plurality of Republicans said he should release them. In an August 2016 Quinnipiac survey, 62 percent of Republicans said he should do so.

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This dissident faction of Trump supporters persists. In a HuffPost/YouGov poll taken a week ago, 28 percent of respondents who voted for Trump said he should release his returns. In a CNN poll taken last month, 37 percent of Republicans and 35 percent of Americans who said they approved of Trumps job performance also said he should release his taxes.

Its true that during the 2016 campaign, Trump and the Democrats litigated, in a political sense, whether he should produce his tax forms. Voters elected Trump, but they rejected his arguments on that issue. One argument, for instance, was privacy. In June 2016, a CNBC poll asked voters whether Trump should release his tax returns because the public has a right to know about his financial affairs, or whether he should not release his tax returns because his income and financial affairs are no ones business but his own. Thirty-one percent of voters agreed with Trump that it was nobody elses business. But twice as many, 62 percent, said the public had a right to know. Trump also pleaded that he couldnt release his returns because they were under audit. In the September 2016 CNN survey, only 33 percent of voters bought that excuse. Most said he was trying to hide something.

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If Trump thinks Democrats will lose a political fight over his tax forms, hes mistaken. In January, a Post/ABC poll asked the public whether Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives should or should not use their congressional authority to obtain and release Trumps tax returns. Respondents said the Democrats should do so, 60 percent to 35 percent. In March, a Quinnipiac poll asked, If President Trump refuses to release his tax returns, do you think that Congress should investigate the situation, or not? Again, respondents said yes, 57 percent to 38 percent. And in a Politico/Morning Consult poll taken a week ago, 51 percent of Americans endorsed Democrats efforts to obtain President Trumps tax returns. Only 36 percent opposed such efforts.

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Trump thinks he can dismiss the congressional push for his tax returns as a partisan ploy. But the public sees a difference between matters such as Russian collusion, which have been investigated, and Trumps taxes, which havent. In the January Post/ABC poll, only 38 percent of respondents said Democrats in the House should investigate whether Trump colluded with Russia, and only 40 percent said House Democrats should start impeachment proceedings. But 60 percent said the Democrats should obtain and release Trumps tax returns.

The White House is correct: Trumps concealment of his taxes was litigated during the election. But the result of that litigation wasnt that voters bought Trumps arguments. The result was that they gave him the job for other reasons, while rejecting his arguments on that issue. They wanted to see his taxes, and they still do. And if he doesnt hand over his returns, they want Democrats to go get them.
Heres a Trump White House immigration gambit that likely will shock, but not surprise you. The Trump administration, the Washington Post reported Thursday, came up with a cartoonishly villainous plan and then pressured immigration officials to carry out the Trumpian scheme of arresting undocumented migrants coming into the country and then busing them and releasing them on the streets of so-called sanctuary cities. The aim? Retaliation, of course, against political enemies and for not treating undocumented families like criminals.

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The Trump folks tried to make this plan a reality on multiple occasions over the last six months, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Post.

White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities, places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that there are PR risks as well. Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller discussed the proposal with ICE, according to two DHS officials. Matthew Albence, who is ICEs acting deputy director, immediately questioned the proposal in November and later circulated the idea within his agency when it resurfaced in February, seeking the legal review that ultimately doomed the proposal.

This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion, the White House statement said. It was just a brainstorm!
Kenyan doctors are pushing for a bill to be passed into law which will allow the harvesting of kidneys from fresh dead people.

Head of renal unit at KNH John Ngigi on Wednesday said if the bill is passed, the harvesting of kidneys will aid many Kenyans who are on the waiting list for kidney transplants.

We also hope we can change the law to extract from friends, but we dont want to open a Pandoras box where people can buy kidneys. When the [proposed] bill is up we can harvest from dead people, Ngigi told journalists.

The Bill will operationalise the Health Act which allows Kenyans, either in a written will or oral statement, to donate their organs or body parts upon death.

It will set proper frameworks for the donation of cadaveric tissues, the medic observed.

Cadaveric donation comprises organ donation, taking organs (heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, pancreas) from brain dead people, as well as tissue donation, meaning taking tissues (skin, corneas, tendons, bone) from brain dead as well as heart dead people.

Ngigi was speaking at Kenyatta National Hospital during a briefing on the ongoing donor-supported orthopedic and kidney transplant project.

Statistics show that about 4,300 Kenyans are currently undergoing dialysis across the country. Last year, 2,000 of those people were on its waiting list for transplants.

Ngigi noted that KNH only conducts about 15 transplants a year and only 466 patients have undergone transplants in public and private hospitals since 2006.

Apparently, some patients opted for dialysis instead of transplant because the National Health Insurance Fund does not pay for the life-long drugs needed after transplant.

Theres a narrative that it is cheaper to be on dialysis than a transplant. This is a disincentive created by NHIF because it fully pays for dialysis at Sh9,500 per session, two sessions a week, he said.

For a transplant, NHIF only pays Sh500,000 but not for the life-long immunosuppressive drugs needed after transplant and which can set back a patient Sh40,000 every month.

It makes more sense for NHIF to pay for immunosuppressants so we move many people from dialysis to transplant, the doctor said.

The Kenya National Blood Transfusion and Organ Transplantation Bill is receiving expert input before being forwarded to Parliament.
On Saturday, the New York Times published a fascinating and anxiety-inducing article about the rise of an antifungal-resistant yeast called Candida auris in hospitals around the world. Patients with weakened immune systems are particularly susceptible, and once the fungus hits, infection spreads through their bloodstreams and causes fever and chills. Nearly half of people sickened by it die within 90 days, according to the Times, though its unclear if they are killed by the pathogen itself or by the diseases and conditions that landed them in the hospital in the first place. C. auris can also survive for weeks outside a patienton sinks and mattresses, door knobs and bedside tables. To eradicate it after one patient died, a hospital in Brooklyn even had to rip out some of the ceiling and floor tiles in his room. How often do hospitals have to take such extreme steps to stop the spread of these drug-resistant superbugs?

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Fortunately, very rarely, but when they do, the steps required can be expensive and exacting. According to the CDC, hospitals can often manage outbreaks by simply paying more attention to cleaning the environment and equipment around a patient. Medical experts know how to kill pretty much everything we encounter with disinfectants. The hospitals standard quaternary ammonium compounda common antimicrobial cleaner that kills many bacteria, fungi, amoebas, and virusesis used for everyday cleaning and works most of the time. For the viruses (such as noroviruses) and bacteria (such as the very-long-living Clostridioides difficile) that survive, the hospital can use a bleach-based cleaner or other disinfectant known to kill specific organisms.

The concern in infectious outbreaks is generally that we will encounter a strain of a familiar bacteria or fungus that has developed a drug resistance that makes it hard to kill once its settled in a patients body. Hospitals are, unfortunately, one place a patient is more likely to encounter an antibiotic-resistant strain of something. They are, after all, where a large amount of antibiotics are used. That becomes particularly troublesome when paired with the long life span and sturdiness displayed by hardier microbes such as C. auris and C. difficile. While most pathogens die when left without a host, these can survive for weeks or months.

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When hospitals know they have encountered an infection that can jump easily from patient to patient, they take crisis-level precautions. They isolate patients and prevent staff who treat them from caring for others. They hold meetings for medical and cleaning staff to train them on the specific rules for the specific microbe. They require visitors and staff to don gloves, gowns, and masks while in the patients rooms and become extra vigilant about ensuring no one leaves without washing their hands. (Thorough and careful hand-washing can go a long way to keeping pathogens from running amok.) Depending on the type of contaminant, they may also place patients in a ventilated room that doesnt allow air to circulate into the rest of the hospital.

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In extreme circumstances, like this C. auris outbreak, hospitals may be forced to tear apart rooms to get to where the microorganisms may be living. Typically, hospitals are only forced to discard more easily movable objects: infected mattresses or linens (as in a particularly tragic outbreak of Mycobacterium abscessus in a New Orleans pediatric hospital) or tools and other smaller sources of infection. In one case in the 1970s, a green liquid soap used to clean skin for IV insertions had been contaminated with the bacteria Pseudomonas stutzeri. In a much more recent case, the Food and Drug Administration traced two types of fungi, including Aspergillus, the most common cause of fatal fungal infections, to drug vials given to six patients in an experimental study.

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Its not unheard of for a hospital to have to tackle plumbing more aggressively. Especially in older buildings, bacteria cling to and flourish in sinks and pipes. When three people died in an outbreak of Legionnaires disease at the University of Wisconsins hospital in Madison last year, the hospital found the bacteria in its pipes and, like others in the same situation, simply pumped chlorine into the water. In other cases, the pipes have to be ripped out for testing and sanitizing. Recently, the staff at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, experimented with reducing the amount of bacteria that can grow in a water system by literally taking out plumbing and putting it in a different shape.

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One of the most extreme responses to an outbreak occurred at that same hospital, during a 2011 outbreak of an antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase, or KPC, a bacterium that can, like C. auris, cause infections in blood streams or wounds, leading to fevers, chills, a bloody cough, and eventually organ failure. Patients began testing positive for serious infections at a rate of around one per week, and standard cleaning failed to stop the spread. The hospital staff tore apart the plumbing in some rooms to remove sink drains where they found the bacteria lurking. They also used a robot to spray hydrogen peroxide in those emptied-out rooms after patients were moved to a separate ICU. (According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this technique has not been tested and proven effective and is therefore only recommended as an extra precaution after scrubbing everything else by hand.) These cleaning and isolation methods eventually worked, but of the 18 patients infected by KPC that year, six died from it.

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The NIH case showed how techniques more advanced than bleach and isolation can come in handy to tackle outbreaks. A team of NIH researchers used genome sequencing to quickly decipher and trace the genetic code of the bacteria from one patients infection to another so that they were able to figure out how it had spread. According to a 2013 study from the case, the technology allowed the staff to determine that all the patients had been infected from one another, not independently, and they were able to pinpoint their areas of weakness. Advanced investigative approaches like this genetic sequencing have allowed hospitals to better track and confront the new and aggressive drug-resistant strains alarming the medical community.

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The anxiety some medical professionals have about C. auris is valid: It is not acting in a way experts may have expected based on other forms of Candida, and that uncertainty translates into a need for caution. As experts have become more familiar with C. auris, they feel more confident about how to eradicate it from an environment and likely wont need to take such extreme measures as ripping out parts of the ceiling and wallsa simple bleach cleaning would likely do the trick.

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The real danger is in human fallibility: If someone fails to designate tasks clearly, a piece of medical equipment may fail to get the thorough disinfecting and sanitizing it needs in a crisis. The environmental services staffthe (sometimes underpaid) people in charge of scrubbing a patients roomoften arent allowed to touch the medical equipment, and that discrepancy can allow germs to sneak through. Some medical equipment, such as X-ray machines, cannot be reserved for just one patient, and hospitals may struggle to eliminate bacteria from such bulky and complex machines. Manufacturers of hospital equipment can accidentally introduce contaminants to their products. And doctors and nurses, who often work long shifts, are susceptible to the kinds of careless mistakes we all make.

But still, patients shouldnt worry too much about how their hospital is preparing for these new infections. As Susan Matthews wrote in Slate, your risk of being harmed, even if immunosuppressed, is extremely low.

The Explainer thanks Dr. Lisa Maragakis at the Johns Hopkins Health System and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Dr. Snigdha Vallabhaneni at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Over the weekend, news outlets reported that a New Zealand man named Andrew Barker had found a camera, hidden in a smoke detector, in his Airbnb that was livestreaming a feed of the living room. Barker was in Cork, Ireland, on a 14-month trip around Europe with his family when they checked into the rental house. Once they unpacked, Barker, who works in IT security, conducted a scan of the Wi-Fi network and found a camera the owner had not mentioned. He was then able to connect to the camera and view the live feed.

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The next day, the Barkers notified Airbnb, but he told the media that the company treated the incident like a canceled booking and just temporarily suspended the rooming post after a privacy investigation that the family found unsatisfactory. It wasnt until Nealie Barker, Andrews wife, posted details of the incident on Facebook that Airbnb removed the listing and admitted that the original response did not meet the high standards we set for ourselves.

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This isnt the first time that an Airbnb guest has discovered hidden recording devices in a rental unit. As Ars Technica reported, a woman found a remote-controlled camera in the living room of an apartment she had been planning to stay in for a month in 2013. She sued both Airbnb and the apartments residents, alleging that the camera had filmed her without clothing and recorded intimate conversations she had with her partner. In 2017, Florida police arrested a man for video voyeurism after his Airbnb guests reported finding a camera in the bedrooms smoke detector.

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Airbnbs terms of service dictate that hosts must disclose the presence of cameras to their guests. Its unclear how common a practice it is for Airbnb hosts to hide cameras in their units, but if youre particularly worried about prying eyes, there are imperfect ways to search for invasive devices. Hidden cameras are probably rare but there are steps that an average user can take to increase their chances of finding one if one exists, Barker wrote in an email to Slate. Since our incident I will be performing network and ports scans at every accommodation we stay at.

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That seems like a good practice. But it also requires some knowledge. When the story hit the internet, lots of people found themselves wondering how, exactly, to scan a network. The good news is that doing network and port scans for suspicious devices on the local Wi-Fi network doesnt require as much technical knowledge as you might fear. Nor does it require expensive gear.

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Various apps can perform the scans for you: Barker recommends Angry IP Scanner, NetworkMapper, and Network Scanner by First Row. In his Ireland Airbnb, Barker used Network Scanner for the network scan and NetworkMapper for the port scan, but most apps have both features.

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Check to see whether there are inexplicably two smoke detectors in the same room.

Network scans generally allow users to view the IP addresses and manufacturers of devices connected to the Wi-Fi. In Barkers case, the manufacturer of the hidden recording device was literally listed as IPCAMERA. Once you have the list, its a good idea to work backward. You should in theory be able to tick off each device found through the scan to a device you are aware of and can physically see, Barker wrote.

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If you see a device that looks suspicious, a port scan can help to identify its purpose. The scan will list the different ports for connecting to the device and the services they provide. The services will be listed as short codes; a Google search will generally reveal what the codes mean. For example, the code RDP indicates that users can remotely control the desktop of the computer. The codes RTMP and RTSP are for video streaming.

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These sorts of scans will only work if your device and the camera are connected to the same Wi-Fi network. If the camera is on a different network, or if it stores the footage on an internal hard drive, youll have a harder time finding it. For more details on how the scans work, check out the guide that Barker wrote for travelers after his Airbnb incident.

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Good old-fashioned sleuthing can also be helpful for finding cameras. Consumer-grade hidden cameras come embedded in a variety of different commonplace objects. Glance through the website for BrickHouse Security or the Amazon search results for the term hidden camera and youll find fake alarm clocks, USB chargers, buckets, lamps, stuffed animals, and bottles of Mountain Dew ($429$519 on the website Covert Law Enforcement, if youre curious) with discreet pinhole cameras. When you enter a room, you should check around to see if anything looks out of place. These things tend to stand out like a sore thumb, says Dan Tentler, founder and CEO of Phobos Group, a cybersecurity firm. For example, he recommends checking to see whether there are inexplicably two smoke detectors in the same room.

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Holding an object in your hands can also help to determine whether its fake. If theres a can of Mountain Dew randomly sat on the kitchen counter  and you walk up and pick up the can, youre going to immediately know that its a hidden camera, says Tentler. Look for reflections when you shine a light on objects, which may reveal the presence of a lens.

If and when you find such a device, make sure to alert Airbnb or the hotel. You might also want to inform law enforcement, especially if youre in a state where two-party consent is required for recording. If you find a camera, take pictures of it, says Tentler. Make noise, post pictures of the thing on the internet, on Twitter.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in London on Thursday, after hiding out in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012. U.S. authorities now want to charge the man whose website had published hundreds of thousands of classified and sensitive U.S. government documents. U.S. lawmakers have long regarded the large-scale leaks published by WikiLeaks as a threat to national security, but it was not entirely clear what crime they would be able to charge him withAssange himself, so far as anyone knew, had not stolen any information but instead merely published it. It seemed possible that he might be charged under the Espionage Act for something like unauthorized communication of national defense information (one of the things Edward Snowden was charged with), but that could have frightening implications for journalists who publish classified documents or information given to them by sources.

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So it was a relief to many when, on the same day as Assanges arrest, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and made no mention of the Espionage Act. University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, for instance, tweeted in response to the charges, the key is that this isnt about the Espionage Act, or the publication of classified national security informationits not a direct threat to the press.

The extent of Assanges involvement in anything technical was a single failed attempt to help Manning figure out a password.

But what has Assange been charged with, if not disseminating classified government materials? The answer lies at the intersection of conspiracy law and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which Assange was charged with conspiring to violate. Typically, to violate the CFAA a person has to access a computer without authorization or in excess of their authorizationsomething that Assange did not clearly do while running WikiLeaks. He published lots of stolen information but did not steal it himself. However, Assange has not been charged with violating the CFAA but merely with conspiring to violate the CFAA, which makes the case more plausible and perhaps also a little bit more confusing.

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In the relatively brief six-page indictment, the Justice Department outlines how, in 2010, Assange and Chelsea Manning discussed Mannings efforts to leak sensitive military materials that would later be uploaded to WikiLeaks. Manning, who was charged under both the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, clearly did the lions share of the technical work to access and download the stolen documents from military networks. However, according to the indictment, at one point in March 2010, Assange agreed to help Manning try to crack a password stored on Department of Defense computers connected to the militarys classified Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. Manning gave Assange a hash value for the password in question, and Assange later reported back that he had had no luck so far trying to figure out the password from the hash value. The indictment says he requested more information from Manning related to the password.

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That was the extent of Assanges involvement in anything technicala single failed attempt to help Manning figure out a password. That could make it difficult to pin a CFAA charge on Assange since theres no evidence that he ever used a stolen password or cracked it (or even really tried to crack it!) to access a computer without authorization. But a person can be found guilty of conspiring to commit a crime even if they do not actually commit that crime, Harvard Law School lecturer Kendra Albert explained.

A successful conspiracy charge does not require you to actually violate the underlying statue, Albert told me. The government doesnt need to prove that the CFAA was actually violated.

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Instead, to prove a conspiracy charge, the government needs only to show that Manning and Assange agreed to violate the CFAA and then one of them (not necessarily Assange!) took an overt act to advance that plan. So, Mannings steps to access classified government materials without authorization are enough to support conspiracy charges against Assange. That could still be concerning to some journalists who discuss classified materials with their sourcescould those conversations be used as grounds for a conspiracy charge even if they themselves dont take any overt acts to steal that information?

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Probably notthats why the password cracking agreement is so central to this indictment.

What the password cracking does is it helps establish that Assange also had the intent to violate the CFAA, Albert said. It also gives the Justice Department a way to charge Assange and minimize the slew of controversial and complicated First Amendment questions related to freedom of the press that would come up around Espionage Act charges.

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Instead, the Justice Department has made a very deliberate and careful move to focus not on WikiLeaks or Assanges publication of classified documents but instead on the one moment in March 2010 when he appeared to briefly cross the line into computer hacking himself (and not very successfully, at that). Its an interesting strategy and one that may create other problems for the Justice Department related to extradition and the statute of limitations, but it tries to sidestep concerns about what going after Assange might mean for journalistsa surprisingly cautious and measured choice for this Justice Department.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Contemporary Christianity does not have a reputation as a vanguard of technological sophistication, or even enthusiasm. Sure, many churches have embraced smartphones abilities to spread their messages, for example. But Christian institutions are not often leading the big conversations about technology and culture. Traditional theist religions have turned from a creative into a reactive force, as historian Yuval Noah Harari put it in his 2016 book, Homo Deus. They now mostly agonize over the technologies, methods and ideas propagated by other movements.

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That reputation makes a statement on artificial intelligence released Thursday by the Southern Baptist Convention all the more intriguing. The SBCs public-policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, spent nine months researching and writing Artificial Intelligence: An Evangelical Statement of Principles, and it has been signed by 68 prominent evangelical thinkers. The brief document is intended to respond to the existential questions raised by A.I. technology. It takes a strikingly optimistic tone in doing so. This was created not out of fear, but out of an understanding that [A.I.] is a tool that God has given us, said Jason Thacker, who headed the project at the ERLC. Our hope is that for the first time in a really long time, the church can be proactively engaging in issues affecting society, rather than always responding and reacting.

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The document opens on a note of hope, describing technology in general as a tool that can aid in the Christian mandate to engage the world around us with the unchanging gospel message of hope and reconciliation. In most areas, the document acknowledges both the promise and pitfalls of A.I. A section on bias, for example, states that A.I. is inherently subject to bias and that these biases must be accounted for, minimized, or removed through continual human oversight and discretion. Other articlesthere are 12 totaladdress A.I. in arenas including medicine and war. (Any lethal action conducted or substantially enabled by AI must employ human oversight or review.) Each article ends with a list of Bible verses backing up its claims. (The first verse listed after the section on privacy is Exodus 20:15: Thou shalt not steal.) The document avoids referencing specific technologies because the drafting committee intends it to have a long shelf life as a guide and conversation starter within Christian institutions and beyond. This is a statement of principles, Thacker said, not a statement of applications.

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This is a statement of principles, not a statement of applications.  Jason Thacker

The document does draw some firm lines. Article 1 declares that technology ought not to be assigned a level of human identity, worth, dignity, or moral agencyrobots are not, and will never be, human. And unsurprisingly, Article 6 states that A.I. should not be used to pursue sexual pleasure and should not intrude upon or substitute for the biblical expression of sexuality between a husband and wife: Its Adam and Eve, not Adam and HAL. Albert Antosca, a visiting scholar at Dartmouth College who has written about religion and technology for Slate, said the document would likely have to be adapted as technology advances. But overall, he said, theyre making a lot of urgent and sophisticated points here. This doesnt seem like a reactionary document.

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The documents signatories are a whos who of mainstream conservative evangelicalism. They include the president of Focus on the Family, Jim Daly; the editor in chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli; the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, Gabriel Salguero; theologians Richard Mouw and Wayne Grudem; and many current and former Southern Baptist leaders and pastors. One signatory is a senior manager of technical program management at Amazon, but few others have obvious technological backgrounds; Thacker said that some signers have backgrounds or affiliations in the tech world, but opted to list other credentials. (Another notable imbalance: Just a handful of women signed.)

American evangelicals are not the only faith group pondering the intersection of A.I. and religion. The Southern Baptist document appears just a few months after Pope Francis met with the president of Microsoft to discuss the ethical use of A.I., a topic he has raised publicly several times. The Vatican and Microsoft are co-sponsoring a prize for the best doctoral dissertation this year on the topic artificial intelligence at the service of human life.

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Antosca pointed out that the Baptist document has a deeply humanist perspective, emphasizing the distinctness of human life and the definitiveness of death. Elements of that perspective may put it somewhat at odds with organizations like the Christian Transhumanist Association, which ponders the possibility of transcending traditional humanity by extending life indefinitely, for example. Russell Moore, the head of the ERLC, has been critical of transhumanism, because of the theological belief that humans can only be fully perfected by faith in Jesus. He told a reporter in response to the first-ever Christian Transhumanism Conference in 2018 that there could no more be a Christian transhumanist society than a carnivorous vegan society. The two are completely contradictory. But Moore also said Christians shouldnt be afraid of technology and that they should take such challenges seriously long before theyre a reality. Thats exactly what the new document aims to do.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
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.
The finders called the preservationists and are eligible to the 100 percent finder's fee.

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Archaeologists have been researching interesting findings in the Liptov region. A married couple during a hike to the Choc mountain near Likavka made a great discovery of silver and two golden coins from the turn of 15th and 16th century, My Liptov wrote.

The husband saw the coins in terrain that was dug out by boars. They did not touch it, but immediately contacted archaeologists. They waited for three hours at the spot.

Shallow hole

Archaeologists and preservationists are used to people who come to their offices and literally pour the coins on the table. The discovery near Likavka is unique and precious because experts have the opportunity to observe it at the spot of the finding. Coins were collected from an area of about two square metres.

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Read also: Archaeologists found treasure of silver Celtic coins Read more

In the shallow hole, there was the broken clay bottom of a jug with coins that were, thanks to corrosion, attached to the remains of the fabric on the inner side of the jug. Nearby, there was a metal pot-lid.

The treasure was covered by a fine layer of soil. We can assume that the person who covered the coins was in hurry. The treasure was located near to an historical trade road.

The most beautiful he had ever seen

Martin Furman from Regional Monuments Board Zilina who was also in the team of experts who worked on the spot talked about the treasure as of the most beautiful archaeological discovery in his professional life.

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Read also: Historical coins discovered in Sobotiste Read more

We can only guess who and why hid the coins into the ground. Neither the archaeologists have a clear answer.

There could be several reasons. It is the treasure hidden either in 1527 or shortly after this year, or it at least looks like that by now. It is probably linked to turbulent year of civil war between Ferdinand of Habsburg and John Zapolya who were fighting to gain the Hungarian throne, Furman explained, as quoted by My Liptov.

Furman also pointed out that labourer earned between 6 and 10 silver coins per day in 16th century. It is literary a fortune. Ordinary person could only hardly gain a golden coin.

To be exhibited in the museum

The public will have also the possibility to see the treasure from Likavka. However, people should be patient as there are many steps to be taken before it finally get into the Museum of Liptov in Ruzomberok.

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Historical value of the treasure is unquantifiable, the economic price wil l be given by experts. The married couple will get a reward, as the law said. Monument Board should approve it and in this case, they can look forward to the full finding value.

If a finder act in accordance with monuments law and let the finding at the spot and call the representatives of the monuments board who will pick up the finding using the methods of archaeological research, he or she has a right to finders reward of 100 percent of the finding given by an expert, explained Furman, as quoted by My Liptov.

In this case, all the requirements were fulfilled. During my 13-year-long practice in Zilina, I havent experienced anything like that.

Furman dedicates his time of archaeologists also to numismatics. When he received the call, he was in upper Orava region and it took three hours to get to the spot on Saturday. His colleague Barbora Danielova from Orava Museum also helped when she left everything what she was doing, picked up the needed tools and went to the spot to document the treasure.
The Drug Testing Standards and Practices Committee of the Association of Racing Commissions International (ARCI) is considering a major change to the recommended penalties for violations of the associations drug rules to dramatically increase sanctions on those violations that can be considered doping or equine endangerment.

An ARCI workgroup has been quietly working for the past year to put together a system to increase penalties for violations categorized as Doping of Equine Endangerment. Penalties for such violations would be effectively doubled from the existing Class A penalties, with a first violation requiring a two to five-year suspension of the trainer and a minimum $50,000 fine which could be increased to $100,000 with aggravating circumstances. A second violation in any jurisdiction would trigger a license revocation.

The proposal would also impose a $25,000 fine on an owner if there is a second lifetime offense in the owners stable in any jurisdiction. A third offense would suspend the owner for a minimum of thirty days to as much as a year and impose a minimum fine of $50,000 which could be increased to $100,000.

Because of the seriousness of these violations a summary suspension would be required, pending any appeal.

Existing penalties for medication overages would remain the same and many would be re-categorized as a Treatment Misapplication & Mismanagement. If the substance or the quantity of a substance found in horse would warrant an equine endangerment charge it would be the commissions equine medical director or regulatory veterinarian who would have to recommend such to the Stewards.

The proposal also contains a minimum $500 fine for a first-time failure to keep or report required treatment records. A second offense would bring a $2,500 fine, a third offense a $5,000 fine plus a referral to the commission for possible license review.

In August 2017, the RCI Board tasked the DTSP Committee with performing a review of the current penalty guidelines and structure with an eye toward differentiating between violations that could clearly be called doping or equine endangerment from those that were overages of therapeutic medications with less of an impact on performance by virtual of being classified as a Class 4 or 5 drug.

Following that meeting an online survey was conducted of DTSP Committee members and a similar survey was conducted of interested industry contacts. A conference call was held to discuss the project and a smaller group provided subsequent input.

Recognizing that the task was a potentially enormous undertaking, Committee Chair Duncan Patterson, the Chair of the Delaware Thoroughbred Commission, asked former RCI Chair Dan Hartman to coordinate a workgroup to flesh out what a modified penalty guideline system might look like.

The following individuals agreed to serve on the workgroup and literally spent countless hours discussing almost every substance contained on the RCI Classification Document. Those who worked on the project were:

Dr. Kathy Anderson, DVM - past AAEP President;

Dr. Charles Vail, DVM - past AAEP President, former Colorado Racing Commissioner;

Mr. John Ward - former regulator and lifelong horseman;

Rick Baedeker - former track operator and current regulator;

Mike Hopkins - former horseman and lifelong regulator, and;

Dan Hartman, current regulator.

At last weeks committee meeting at the ARCI Annual Conference in Arcadia, California, the draft proposal was presented along with a request that it be circulated for industry review, comment, and potential modification where appropriate.

The draft documents are posted online and anyone interesting in commenting or making a related proposal may do so by emailing comments or documents to [email protected]

The draft penalty matrix for Doping and Equine Endangerment can be downloaded here.

The draft modified Classification schedule along with suggested penalty categories can be downloaded here. (Please note the tabs at the bottom of the page on the Classification schedule which organizes substances by Class.)

It is anticipated that this proposal will be a discussion item during the ARCI summer meetings in Saratoga, details of which are posted on the ARCI website.

(ARCI)
After having solid success in low-level conditioned races at Pompano and the Meadowlands earlier this year, Spilling The Beans shipped to Massachusetts, stepped up to the top class and made her first start at Plainridge Park a winning one after launching a late furious stretch drive to capture the $15,000 Winners-over for fillies and mares on Thursday afternoon (April 11).

Western Stepp (Drew Campbell) claimed her usual spot on the front end and led the ladies through fractions of :27.2, :56.4 and 1:25, fending off a challenge from Rockin Ruby N (Nick Graffam) through the last two panels. As the race headed into the final turn, Stonebridge Honey (Mitchell Cushing) tipped three wide with Spilling The Beans (Mike Stevenson) following from sixth. The two outsiders were doing the better work heading down the lane when Spilling The Beans just exploded and flew past both Western Stepp and Stonebridge Honey to win by two lengths in 1:54 at 15-1.

It was the third score of the year for Spilling The Beans ($33.20) who is owned by Bret Pisarski and trained by Robert Marston.

In the $14,000 conditioned event for side-wheeling distaffers, Always Be Lucy (Mitchell Cushing) sat snug in a two-hole trip behind Pammy Jo (Jimmy Whittemore) until halfway down the stretch where Cushing had just enough room to get out in front of Dry Creek Gin (Shawn Gray) and out-pace the front runner to the wire in 1:54.1, which was a new seasonal mark.

The win was the third of the year for Always Be Lucy ($14.00) who just shipped in from wintering at Pompano Park. Karma Racing owns the mare that is trained by Eric Beach.

Shawn Gray was the top teamster on Thursday, doubling up in runaway wins with Stroman (1:54.4, $2.10) and Southwind Terror (1:53.1, $5.00) who both won by six and three-quarter lengths.

Live harness racing resumes at Plainridge Park on Friday afternoon (April 12) with first post time of 4:00 p.m. The $15,000 Winners-over trot is the feature race and there is a $3,867 carry-over pool for the Wicked Hi-5 pentafecta in race six.

(Standardbred Owners of Massachusetts)
Buried Truths, a podcast led by Emory professor Hank Klibanoff, has been honored as a nominee for the prestigious Peabody Awards, which celebrate the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcast and digital media in 2018. The podcast explores cases that have been investigated by Klibanoff and the undergraduate students in his Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project class.

It is our great honor to recognize the most powerful and compelling, but also most brilliant and creative programming of 2018, says Jeffrey P. Jones, executive director of the Peabody Awards. Across genres and platforms, these are stories that help us make sense of our world, and locate our humanity in the joys and tragedies and struggles of people worldwide.

Buried Truths, produced by Public Broadcasting Atlantas WABE-FM, is one of 11 nominees in the radio/podcast category. Overall, there are 60 nominees for this years Peabody Awards, selected unanimously by 19 jurors from more than 1,200 entries.

Winners in the categories of news, radio/podcast, web and public service programming will be announced April 23. Winners and nominees will also be honored May 18 at a gala event in New York City hosted by investigative reporter Ronan Farrow.

Buried Truths, now in its second season, examines racially motivated crimes in Georgia during the civil rights era. The podcast, and the Emory course on which it is based, are not focused on solving crimes  for many of these cases, the assailants are known  but rather seek to understand how and why such crimes went unpunished in the Jim Crow South.

Season 1 told the story of Isaiah Nixon, an African-American husband and father of six who exercised his right to vote in rural Georgia in 1948 and was killed for doing so. When his family fled to Florida in the wake of the killing, his grave was lost to time, until it was discovered by a student in Klibanoffs cold cases class in 2015.

Listener response has been emotional and most of all grateful, Klibanoff noted at the start of the new season. We have heard from so many people who thanked us for bringing attention to a period of history that isnt always taught in school and for giving a voice to a man whose life was cut short for no reason other than the color of his skin.

Season 2, which launched Feb. 18 and has new episodes released weekly through April 15, tells the story of A.C. Hall, an African American teen who was shot by police in Macon, Georgia, in 1962 after he was mistakenly identified as stealing a gun. Through Halls story, Klibanoff examines police privilege, racial conditioning, community activism and more.

A journalist for more than 35 years, Klibanoff now serves as professor of practice in English and creative writing at Emory. He co-authored The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for history.

Buried Truths is produced by WABEs David Barasoain and written by Klibanoff and Richard Halicks. The editor is Marilyn Geewax. The executive producers are Christine Dempsey and Je-Anne Berry.

The podcast has received more than one million downloads and is available on all major podcast players, including Apple Podcasts, Google Play Music, NPR One and Stitcher. It is also on WABEs website: wabe.org/buriedtruths.
Israel has managed to stay in the top ten arms exporters for over a decade and in doing so has steadily increased its share of annual worldwide arms export market. Over the last five years Israel has gone from accounting for 2.1 percent of arms exports to 3.1 percent. Arms exports are still dominated by the same five nations (United States, Russia, France, Germany, and China) that account for 75 percent of exports. But Israel got on the list because it offers a lot of combat proven military technology and weapons. Israel is also taking sales away from Russia, which has made a lot money over the last half century selling high tech weapons to India. Israel came along and offered more reliable and effective tech and India has become a regular and satisfied customer while reducing purchases from Russia. In the last decade Israeli arms exports grew 60 percent while Russia suffered a 17 percent decline.

This Israeli prominence as an arms exporter is not something new. Despite decades of Arab boycotts and pressure on countries to not deal with Israel, Israeli military exports continue to grow. By 2012 Israeli firms sold $1.8 billion worth of weapons to the Americas (mostly the United States, but a third of that went to South America), $1.6 billion to European customers, and $200 million to African nations. About half those sales are for anti-aircraft systems. Israel has a wide range of anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems, many of them using successful Israeli air-to-air missile designs for ground based systems. Israeli air defense technology has proved itself in combat, is famous for its reliability and technical excellence, and is priced to sell. Israel is also a major exporter of military space satellites, night vision and surveillance gear, and all manner of military communications equipment. Israel is also second only to the U.S. as a UAV exporter and was first to develop a lot of key UAV technology that the U.S. built on. Israel pioneered the development of add-on armor for combat and non-combat vehicles. Israel is also one of the premier developers of electronic warfare equipment (for aircraft and ground vehicles). Israel exports warships, warplane upgrades, and all manner of technical service.

Because of all this, Israeli military exports were huge a decade ago when annual sales had already reached $7 billion. In 2007 Israel became one of the top four arms exporters on the planet, shipping $7.2 billion worth of military equipment. The year before Israel had exported $6.9 billion. The U.S. is the largest exporter, followed by Russia and Germany. Israel is holding on as number four despite being much smaller than the top three (the U.S. has a population of 310 million, Russia 142 million, and Germany 82 million people, compared to 7.8 million in Israel). Israel defense exports account for about three percent of their GDP, compared to .7 percent in Russia and even less in the United States and Germany.

Half the weapons exported worldwide recently came from the United States (mostly) and Russia. European nations have long occupied the next three slots (Germany, France, and Britain). But during the last five years German and Israeli exports have been growing. The other big exporters are Spain, China, the Netherlands, and Italy. These top ten exporters accounted for over 90 percent of the exports. The major importers are Middle Eastern Arab nations, India, South Korea, China, and (until 2008) Greece.

Israel and Germany have been gaining more sales because of reliability and quality. Israel has a major advantage in that many of its weapons and military equipment have proved their worth in combat. Often subject to arms embargoes, Israel learned to design and build a lot of its own weapons and equipment. With a highly educated and motivated workforce, Israeli gear was often world class, while also cheaper and more reliable (and often combat proven) than similar stuff coming from the United States and Europe.
The presidential elections have been delayed until September 28th even though the current president's term of office ends on May 22nd . Government officials cannot agree on how to establish an interim government or simply extend the term of the current president. The delays are largely due to the Taliban violence in many parts of the country, which makes it difficult to set up polling places and then collect the votes. That is intentional because the Taliban believe democracy is un-Islamic and violently opposes voting and considers any elected government illegitimate and tainted by Western heresy and manipulation. This is their excuse for refusing to negotiate with the current Afghan government.

Meanwhile, the Taliban have increased the number and size of their attacks while also trying to negotiate a peace deal with the Americans. The Taliban recently announced their annual Spring Offensive. The Taliban appear intent on achieving some kind of spectacular victory to kick off Spring Offensive 2019 but so far have not been able to score big. A major operation in the west (Badghis province) began well enough a week ago but quickly stalled because of determined resistance and Afghan and American airstrikes.

Negotiating With The Taliban

The current effort to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan is not popular with most Afghans or most of the neighbors. The main problem is that the Taliban failed to gain control over the entire nation in the late 1990s (and were still at it on September 11, 2001) and are unlikely to do any better if they get another chance. Worse, few people in the region (especially Afghans and Iranians) expect the Taliban to agree to a ban on Taliban controlled Afghanistan again becoming a sanctuary for Islamic terrorists. Many Afghans are wondering why the Americans are even negotiating with the Taliban, who have long demonstrated that they cannot be trusted. Iranians are particularly wary of this as they see the Taliban as inherently anti-Iranian. Iran also has issues with the Afghan drug gangs, who continue to produce, with Pakistani cooperation, all that heroin, opium and hashish. Much of it gets out of Afghanistan via Iran and that has turned the Iran/Afghan border into an increasingly bloody battle zone.

At the same time, Afghans worry that Iran has some secret plans for the 10,000 Afghan Shia who returned to Afghanistan after serving several years as Iranian mercenaries in the Syrian civil war. The risk of death or permanent injury was great but the pay was good (up to a thousand dollars or more a month) and, until the Americans revived economic sanctions against Iran in 2017, it was relatively easy to have that money sent back to families in Afghanistan or Iranian refugee camps. Many of these Afghan Shia stayed in Iran or even accepted the Iranian offer to settle in Syria in a program for militia veterans that is less extensive than Iran hoped because of budget problems. The American sanctions have reduced what Iran can afford to spend in Syria and that is why so many Afghan Shia militiamen were discharged and sent back to Iran or Afghanistan. Those who arrived back in Afghanistan were respected by their families for their efforts (and the money sent back) but most Afghans, even many Shia, are suspicious that Iran may eventually try to revive their Afghan mercenary units inside Afghanistan.

Elements Of Economic Growth

Foreign economists predict 2.5 percent GDP growth in 2019 and three percent in 2020. Despite the Taliban violence and troublesome weather (drought followed by too much rain and floods over the last year), economic growth continues. The prosperity is not evenly distributed with only about half the population rising out of poverty. Ten percent benefit directly from the drug trade while another 40 percent tend to be in towns and cities, better educated and certainly more prosperous. The poverty of rural Afghanistan is worst in the west where Badghis province has 80 percent of its population in poverty and growing Taliban violence that keeps it that way. The capital (Kabul province) is the most prosperous with only 12 percent of the population in poverty. The Taliban is strongest in rural areas where these Islamic terrorists often shut down schools, especially those that teach girls. Literacy and education are key factors in moving from perpetual poverty to economic growth and prosperity.

Overall GDP had more than quadrupled since the Americans arrived in 2001. The GDP growth was mostly due to over $100 billion in foreign aid (much of it stolen locally) and nearly as much illegal income from the drug trade. Running a legitimate business in Afghanistan is still very difficult because of the corruption and outlaw attitudes that have long characterized the country. Legitimate economic activity declined after most foreign troops departed in 2014. Afghans were left to decide for themselves if they wanted a legitimate economy or a traditional (for Afghanistan) one based on violence, banditry and plunder. Old habits are hard to shake. Despite the source of the income the GDP continued growing a 2-3 percent a year. In most of the country, lawful commerce is still possible. As long as the drug gangs and their Taliban enforcers can be kept out the economy thrives. Agriculture is doing particularly well and schools are able to function. Unfortunately, many young Afghans who get an education end up leaving the country because there are not enough legitimate jobs.

The major threat to prosperity is the drug trade and the use of Pakistani backed Taliban as hired guns to protect production and export routes. Indians, Afghans and Iranians generally agree that Pakistan has no interest in abandoning its use of certain Islamic terror groups (like the Taliban) as a way to put pressure on neighbors. If the Taliban gain power and survive the subsequent civil war, Afghanistan is still in big trouble because the Taliban prefer it when they and their closest associates, plus the drug gangs, have most of the money. This is only ten percent of the population and, as the Taliban were doing until late 2001, the Taliban were constantly fighting the poor majority, usually via traditional methods of massacres and assassinations. The Taliban insist this time it will be different but there is no indication they have fundamentally changed their approach to running Afghanistan and most Afghans would rather fight than find out if a new, improved Taliban are any more tolerable.

The illegal drugs are believed to account for about eight percent of GDP and provide direct benefit to about ten percent of the population. This is mainly the farmers who grow the opium plus the drug gang personnel who refine opium into heroin, the smugglers who get it out of the country and the Taliban who are paid to protect all this. The Taliban account for only a few percent of the Afghans who benefit from the drug trade. The Taliban have the most dangerous job and are paid, by the month, more than the average soldier or policeman. The drug gangs pay death benefits to the families of Taliban killed in action, and that casualty rate is higher than what the security forces suffer. Despite a drought (that began in 2017 and recently ended) that cut opium production over 40 percent (to 5,300 tons of opium) in 2018 Afghanistan is still the source of 90 percent of the worldwide heroin supply.

April 11, 2019: The Taliban banned the Red Cross and WHO (World Health Organization) in areas where the Taliban is a major presence. This ban is common with delivering medical care to rural areas and particularly urgent because of the current effort to vaccinate children in rural areas against polio. The Taliban banned foreign medical aid groups because of suspicions that these foreigners are helping the government and foreign troops who attack the Taliban. In the past, the Taliban has provided foreign aid (particularly medical) groups security guarantees if the foreigners did favors for the Taliban or simply paid large bribes. The foreign medical aid groups are popular in rural Afghanistan but the Taliban insists that the foreigners show some support and respect for the Taliban. It is unclear what offended the Taliban this time or what demands they made that the Red Cross and WHO cannot comply with. For the moment the Red Cross and WHO are shutting down operations in rural areas because of the security risk from Taliban and bandit attack. In an emergency (as defined by the Afghan government) the Red Cross or WHO can get a military escort to take them to a rural area but that is rare. When the Taliban say they dont want you, foreign aid groups have learned to back off. This makes the Taliban even less popular with the civilians affected. The Taliban never paid much attention to public opinion.

In the north (Samangan province) local Taliban have again kidnapped many (about 60) truck drivers who refused to pay the Taliban for the right to use local roads without being attacked. This is an old problem in this area and the Taliban continue (since late 2018) having problems getting truck drivers to pay $93 protection money each to avoid being attacked as they transport coal to major towns and cities. The local Taliban declare that they control some key roads used by the coal trucks but local police, tribal militias and soldiers do not agree. The Taliban kidnapped at least fifty of the drivers back in December 2018 but quickly released them so it was difficult to see who really has the power in this area, which is traditionally hostile to the Taliban and drug gangs.

April 10, 2019: In the east (Kunar province), an American UAV used missiles to kill seven ISIL personnel including (it was later confirmed) a senior ISIL leader.

April 9, 2019: The Taliban denounced the April 29 Loya Jirga called by the Afghan government. This Loya Jirga is meant to provide a grass-roots assessment of how Afghans feel about peace talks with the Taliban, despite the fact that the Taliban has declared the Afghan government and any Loya Jirga called by that government as illegitimate. The Taliban insist they will never negotiate with the Afghan government and are only talking with the Americans to obtain a deal that has foreign troops leave Afghanistan. What the Taliban does not like to discuss is that the elected government of Afghanistan and Loya Jirgas are more representative of what Afghans want than Taliban press releases. The Taliban learned in the late 1990s, when they were trying to take control of all of Afghanistan, that most Afghans are hostile to the Taliban and the drug gangs that finance the Taliban. Those attitudes have not changed and a Loya Jirga is a pretty convincing reminder.

Loya Jirgas (great conference) are usually held in Kabul and bring together two or three thousand prominent Afghans (tribal leaders and politicians) from all over the country to discuss important issues that concern everyone . Over the last decade, Loya Jirgas have dealt with issues like how much longer to host foreign troops (most them left by 2014 but the Loya Jirga wanted some to stay ) and former president Karzai's 2013 plea for a peace deal with the Taliban ( Loya Jirga hostile to the idea) . The main function of the Jirga is for leaders from around the country to get a sense of the attitudes of other tribes and form a consensus. Loya Jirga is a Pushtun word, but it a common practice among the Indo-European tribes that have occupied the region for over 5,000 years. The purpose of the Loya Jirga has changed because of technology. Those now attending have cell phones and access to international radio and TV news. Thus it is no longer a meeting of strangers. Local Jirgas are meetings of people who are often distantly related to each other and are more frequently used to settle local or family disputes. Loya Jirgas used to be rare events, but now that are much more frequent (almost annual affairs) and an opportunity to achieve some kind of national consensus.

Loya Jirgas also make it clear that most Afghans, and people in the region, have issues with the Afghan drug gangs, who continue to produce, with Pakistani cooperation, some 90 percent of the worlds supply of heroin (in addition to the cheaper opium and hashish for local markets). This is unpopular with Afghans and the civilian populations of all nations adjacent to landlocked Afghanistan. Thats because the exported heroin passes through all of these nations and creates millions of local addicts in the process. Then there is the violence on the borders as the Afghan drug smugglers are armed and if bribes dont work bullets come next. Bribes work best on the Pakistani border while the Iranian border has been a war zone for years. The current effort to negotiate a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan is not popular with Iranians. The Taliban are seen as inherently anti-Iranian. Iran also has issues with the Afghan drug gangs, who continue to produce, with Pakistani cooperation, all that heroin, opium and hashish.

April 8, 2019: Outside the capital, near Bagram air base, a Taliban bomb killed three American marines and an Afghan contractor. So far this year seven American troops have died in Afghanistan. In 2018 fourteen died and in 2017 there were 15 and 13 in 2016.

April 7, 2019: Airlines serving Afghanistan are demanding that the government do something about the continued Pakistani ban on anyone using their air space. This has been going on for over a month and has cost Afghanistan, airlines and passengers nearly $10 million so far. Because of the air battles in Kashmir between Pakistan and India in late February Pakistani airspace has been closed since then and it is costing Afghanistan a lot of money and costing people flying to or from Afghanistan a lot more cash and time as well. Afghanistan gets a $500 fee for every commercial aircraft that passes through Afghan air space and in a normal month there were over 400 such flights a day. But because of the Pakistani flight restrictions, the Afghan international air overflights are down to 20-30 a day. In the last month alone that has cost Afghanistan over seven million dollars. Flying from Afghanistan to India became more difficult. For the first time Iran allowed Afghan transports to reach India via Iranian air space (to the Indian Ocean and then east to India.) This took a lot longer (and was more expensive in terms of fuel and other operating expenses). Via Pakistan, the flights take 90 minutes. Via Iran, the same flights take 300 minutes. Thus passengers had to pay $300 to fly to India versus the usual rate of $160. The air space closures have no end date because Pakistan called the air space closure indefinite, at least until the Pakistani government changes that.

April 6, 2019: In the west (Badghis province), a large (over a thousand gunmen) Taliban force surrounded the large (about 600 troops) Bala Murghab army base and are trying to overrun it like they have been doing to smaller (a hundred or fewer troops) bases for the last two months. The Bala Murghab compound also contains other government operations and the Afghan government is making a major effort to defeat the Taliban attack. By April 12th the battle was still going on with frequent Afghan and American airstrikes preventing the Taliban from overrunning the outnumbered security forces. Air drops of supplies have sustained the surrounded soldiers and police and the army is slowly (to avoid Taliban ambushes) advancing on the battle area. Apparently, the Taliban are determined not to lose this one or at least make it very difficult for the government forces to prevail.

These Taliban attacks on an army base near the Turkmenistan border are mainly about securing important smuggling routes for drug gangs and the Taliban have been attacking army outposts and forward bases near the border since the start of the year.

April 5, 2019: In the east (Nangarhar province), Afghan special operations troops completed a five day operation against ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) camps in the area and killed at least 53 ISIL gunmen via airstrikes or ground combat. While the ISIL forces are small they are much hated by Afghans because many of the ISIL members are foreigners and ISIL is behind a lot of the large terror bombings that mainly kill civilians. That is one reason why civilians casualties have gone up since ISIL established a presence in Afghanistan. In 2018 a record number (3,800) of civilians died from the fighting. While it is still the case that more than 80 percent of these deaths are the result of Islamic terrorist violence, the ISIL efforts are seen as the most callous, even by Afghan standards, towards the death of women and children.

April 4, 2019: In the southeast (Paktia province), Afghan and American forces continue to put pressure on Haqqani Network operations. Pakistan ( South Waziristan) borders Paktika province and is close to Pakistani Baluchistan as well and the Pakistan-backed Haqqani has been operating in this area for decades. The leaders of Haqqani are currently key members of the Afghan Taliban leadership and key to whatever future plans Pakistan has for the Taliban.

April 3, 2019: In the east (Kunar province), a three day long operation against led to at least 13 ISIL killed and 55 local Taliban surrendered.

March 30, 2019: For the second time in less than a year First Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum survived an assassination attempt. This one took place in the north (Balkh province) and involved two attacks on the Dostum convoy. One bodyguard was killed and two wounded. Four of the Taliban attackers were killed and seven wounded. In July 2018 ISIL took credit for a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport in an effort to kill Dostum, who was returning from 14 months outside the country (for medical treatment and to deal with family matters.) The ISIL attack was apparently meant for Dostum but the timing was off and the Dostum convoy had just left when the suicide bomber struck. The explosion killed 14 people and wounded more than fifty. Dostum had left the country just for medical treatment, he also wanted to avoid prosecutors who sought him for questioning about the kidnapping and torture of a political rival in the north (Jawzjan province). This was not the first time Dostum has been accused of that sort of thing. In the past he eventually escaped prosecution, sometimes by leaving the country for months. Dostum is a powerful man, a classic Afghan warlord and supreme in the north. There is no official leader of the non-Pushtuns but the most powerful of these leaders is outspoken about the continued Pushtun dominance of the government. The best example of this is Dostum, who has been a foe of the Taliban since the 1990s. Dostum is a powerful Uzbek politician, and a long time warlord (he was a general in the communist army that was dissolved in 1992). The Uzbeks are Turks and comprise nine percent of the population. The Uzbeks have always been hostile to the Taliban and drugs. Dostum is their leader but has become popular with Afghans who openly oppose Islamic terrorists. Dostum makes the most of this by regularly giving speeches condemning Islamic terrorism. This involves constantly traveling and exposing himself to terrorist attack. So far he has survived dozens of attacks and this increases popularity while enraging the Islamic terrorists he publicly berates and condemns. Dostum has long been a major critic of Pakistan and how Pakistan continues to support Islamic terrorists operating in Afghanistan.

March 26, 2019: Afghanistan recalled its ambassador to Pakistan as a protest to the Pakistani prime minister suggesting that the elected government of Afghanistan be replaced by an appointed one approved by the Afghan Taliban. The Afghan Taliban refuses to negotiate with the elected government of Afghanistan regarding a peace deal because they consider that government a puppet of the United States and the Taliban believe democracy is un-Islamic. Thus the suggestion that a more acceptable (to the Taliban) Afghan government somehow be created so it could negotiate a takeover by the Pakistan sponsored Taliban. Most Afghans believe the current American peace talks with the Afghan Taliban are actually nothing more than an effort by Pakistan, which created and continues to control the Afghan Taliban, to gain more control over Afghanistan.

March 22, 2019: In the north (Kunduz province), two American soldiers were killed.

March 20, 2019: The election commission delayed the presidential election until September 28th. These elections were to have taken place on April 20th because the current president ends his term of office May 22nd.
What 2 things made Mecca such an important city?

The city of Mecca is a very important pilgrimage site in Saudi Arabia. For hundreds of years, Muslims from all over the world have traveled to Mecca to participate in the pilgrimage ritual known as Hajj.

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Mecca is the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and it is also where the Kaaba can be found.

The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of the Islamic...

See full answer below.
Question:

What events led to the Battle of Little Bighorn?

A Grave Miscalculation:

The Battle of Little Bighorn is one of the most well-known battles between the U.S. Army and the Native Americans. In part, this is because there were no survivors from General Custer's 7th Cavalry Regiment. Going into the battle, Custer believed he was about to fight a small handful of Native Americans settled in Northern Wyoming in a single village, what he believed would be a slaughter in his favor rather than a battle. To his surprise, he faced over 8,000 Native Americans from the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho.

Answer and Explanation:

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Question:

What was the goal of the Peninsular Campaign?

George McClellan :

McClellan had graduated from West Point in enough time to fight with the American Army in the Mexican War as an engineer. He continued to serve in various roles until he resigned from the army in 1857. When the Civil War broke out, he was promoted to Major General of the Ohio volunteers by the governor of Ohio. In late 1862, Lincoln gave him control of the entire army, but he was one of many in the rotation of Union generals. In 1864, he was the Democratic nominee for president, but he lost a close election to Lincoln.

Answer and Explanation:
University of Texas El Paso

At the University of Texas El Paso, students can enroll in the school's Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program. This degree can be completed entirely online and allows students to focus on poetry. Students will complete a total of 48 credit hours, 42 of which are comprised of workshop courses and classes that cover topics in literature. Some possible courses that students may take cover topics like prose poetry, poetic form and technique, and advanced poetry writing. Students complete the remaining six hours by writing a master's thesis, with can be a manuscript of poetry for students interested in this writing form. A unique attribute of this program is that students are able to submit their writing in Spanish, though all the coursework is offered in English.

Lindenwood University

The MFA in Writing offered by Lindenwood University can be completed entirely online, though students can also choose to complete some program requirements on-campus if they desire. In this program, students are able to study poetry by selecting it as an emphasis, which then requires them to complete 27 of the required 48 total credit hours in the area of poetry. Some coursework topics may include classical and contemporary foundations in poetry, female poets, prose poetry, love poetry, and the sonnet as a form. Students can finish all the requirements in as quickly as 15 months, but they have up to five years to complete the program.

University of Nebraska

Another option that students have is the online MFA in Writing offered by the University of Nebraska. Students are exposed to a number of different types of writing, including poetry, and are able to take the majority of courses online. There are some short residency requirements that take place at a conference center in Nebraska City, which is about an hour from the university campus in Lincoln. This program may be particularly appealing to students who have already completed some graduate coursework, as there are a couple of different pathways that allow students to receive credit for their previous studies and complete the MFA more quickly. The curriculum requires that students complete 12 credits of poetry seminar that involves both the composition of original poetry and the analysis of existing poetry.

Concordia University - Saint Paul

Students may also be interested in the Creative Writing MFA offered at Concordia University - Saint Paul. This degree can be completed entirely online in two years. In total, students must complete 36 credit hours, or 12 courses, that are predetermined and must be taken sequentially. All students will take courses that cover poetry, creative nonfiction, and novel writing, and then are able to focus on their chosen writing style, like poetry, during advanced workshop courses. The program culminates in a master's thesis, which requires the completion of a full manuscript of poetry.

National University

Another option for students is the online MFA in Creative Writing offered by National University. In this program, students are able to select a genre to pursue, like poetry, which they will focus on throughout their studies, ultimately completing a thesis project in this style. Instead of taking multiple courses at once, this program is structured so that each course is taken individually and takes one or two months to complete. The two-month courses are structured as workshops in which students will regularly submit their writing and receive critiques and feedback from their fellow students and faculty members.
The three Presbyterian affiliated colleges introduced in the table above, as a whole, offer students wishing to study in Kentucky a range of degree programs in variety of subject areas. Budding scientists, teachers, artists, and prospective clergy are all presented with appropriate educational pathways by these Kentucky-based institutions.

Centre College

Founded in 1819, Centre College is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and offers a range of bachelor's degree programs (more than 50 majors, minors, pre-professional and dual-degree). The student body numbers 1,450 (all undergraduate), there are 129 faculty members, and the average class size is 18, according to the school's website. The school also reports that the student-to-faculty ratio is approximately 10:1, and 90% of students receive some form of financial aid for their studies.

University of Pikeville

The University of Pikeville was founded 1889 by Presbyterians and offers a range of undergraduate and graduate liberal arts and science programs. The university is accredited by Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and had a student population of 2,336 in 2017, of which 1,560 are undergraduates, according to the NCES. The school has a diverse student body, as students come from 42 states and 24 countries, according to the school. Pikeville students can experience small class sizes and personalized attention, as the school reports a student-to-faculty ratio is 16:1.

Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Established originally in Danville in 1853, the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary (LPTS) is one of ten seminaries in the US Presbyterian Church and offers a specialized selection of theological master's and doctoral programs. LPTS has a student population of 152 (all graduate students), of which 25% are from an ethnic minority background (per the school website). All master's students receive financial aid through grants and scholarships, many of which are issued through the Seminary's Covenant of the Future initiative. LPTS has 2,200 active alums, with 69% of these in active ministry.
Saint Leo University | Master of Social Work - Advanced Clinical Practice (2-Year)

Students seeking to enhance their clinical and counseling skills might benefit from the curriculum offered in Saint Leo University's Master of Social Work - Advanced Clinical Practice (2-Year Program). Continue reading to get more details about this program's curriculum, required credits, and more.

Official Program Name:

Master of Social Work - Advanced Clinical Practice (2-Year Program)

School Offering Program:

Saint Leo University

Degree Level:

Master's

Program Prerequisites:

Aspiring students of this MSW program might already have counseling experience, and it is helpful to have completed undergraduate coursework in psychology, counseling, and social work. The MSW program at Saint Leo University is only available to students who are residents and physically living in the states of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, South Carolina and Virginia. Applicants to Saint Leo University's master's degree programs should have already earned a bachelor's degree; some programs may have additional requirements.

Program Description:

The Master of Social Work - Advanced Clinical Practice (2-Year Program) at Saint Leo University is designed to help students build a deeper understanding of social work and social welfare systems, intervention methods, theories, and human behavior. Foundational courses might address such topics as impacts on human behavior, social policy development, social work research methodologies, and methods for working with victims of child abuse and neglect. The curriculum also focuses on clinical approaches to individuals, groups, and families. Advanced courses in the second year might discuss mental health assessment and diagnostic tools and advanced clinical methods for treating individuals. Courses might also be taken that address evaluation and treatment of substance abuse and traumatic events as well as areas of child protection services such as foster care and adoption. A four-part practicum allows students to handle caseloads and apply theories and methods studied throughout the program. The Master of Social Work program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the Council on Social Work Education.

Learning Format:

Online

Program Length:

62 credits.

Financial Aid Available:

Eligible students could be able to receive financial aid in the forms of grants, loans, and scholarships. Contact Saint Leo University's financial aid office for more information.
I went to premiere: There is a no sadder story in the world - "West Side Story" (NO SPOILERS)

The film tells about the confrontation between two New York street gangs and the impossible love of a guy and a girl from hostile groups of the late 50s...
Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis has accused Egypt of banning the passage of oil tankers to Syria through the Suez Canal writes Asharq al-Awsat.

Egypts government denied Wednesday banning the passage of oil tankers to Syria through the Suez Canal. Navigation in the canal is going according to international conventions and treaties that guarantee the right of safe navigation to all tankers without discrimination.

The Egyptian response followed rumors circulating in the media about authorities in Egypt banning an Iranian tanker from passing to Syria.

The governments media center revealed that the Suez Canal Authority has absolutely denied the report. In its statement on Wednesday, the center affirmed that the rumors aim to influence navigation in the canal.

According to the Authority, the government is keen to manage the facility efficiently and impartially in a way that meets the interests of Egyptians and other people in transporting essential goods without any slowdown.

The Authority urged the media to check the accuracy of the news before publishing it, and not to heed anonymous sources that seek to influence navigation, which has been lately witnessing a remarkable progress.

Chairman of the Suez Canal Authority Mohab Mamish affirmed in previous statements that no ship carrying legal goods can be banned from passing. He added that the ban can take place in two cases only: if there is a warning from the UN, or if the ship has committed violations.

Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis has held the US and Egypt responsible for the crisis in providing energy derivatives. He said the crisis started six months ago after the flow of two million barrels per months to Syria were stopped, and all quests to persuade the Egyptian government to let the Iranian tankers pass have failed.

Khamis added that things worsened when US forces announced that every oil carrier heading to Syria would be targeted. They have also imposed a tight surveillance on ships, individuals and crew as well as a restriction on transactions.

Syrian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Ghanem said that the oil sector has suffered USD74.2 billion in losses. The countrys oil needs are estimated at 100,000-136,000 bpd and this is why it relies on imports, he added.

Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
The Syrian opposition has said that meetings between Russia and Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham point to a lack of willingness to attack Idleb writes Al-Quds Al-Araby.

A Syrian opposition member has revealed that several secret meetings have been held between the Russian army and the command of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham on the outskirts of Idleb province before and after Turkish observation points were deployed there.

The official spokesman for the opposition delegation in Astana, Ayman al-Asmi, said that Jolani, or his representative, had met with Russian forces on the outskirts of Idleb province more than three times before and after the Turkish observation points were deployed, and that Moscow considered the group to be a force with weight on the ground and wanted to know its demands given that most of its members were Syrians and not all foreigners.

Asmi added that: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and the Syrian opposition are in one geographical spot and there needs to be dialogue or discussion between them. This can be inferred from the deployment of the Turkish observation points, which were deployed without any disputes on the ground. In the end, we do not want a battlenot with Tahrir al-Sham or any other entity. The reason is that in any battle, civilians pay the price.

He said, Tahrir al-Shams project and the Assad regimes project are totally rejected in favor of the Syrian national project, but in the end we need to reach a compromise that protects civilians and does not force them to be displaced. If the breaches by Iran and Russia continue in northern Syria, this will be evidence of their efforts to derail the Astana process. They have the ability to pressure the regime to stop its indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

He added: The Russians are not serious about a ceasefire in the de-escalation zone. If they wanted to, they could end Assads rocket and artillery attacks. But what were seeing is the opposite of that, where they use long-range weapons from the Mediterranean Sea to strike civilians targets in northern Syria.

According to Asmi, Moscow has been persuaded that military action against Idleb isnt possible because of the fixed Turkish position around the area. Russia is trying to find new means of resolving the Idelb issue in terms of the groups that are present there, and in terms of the ongoing bombardment. Politically, the Russian and Turkish presidents statements have been clear that there will be no attack.

The opposition spokesman saw the military escalation on Idleb as Russian attempts to improve bargaining conditions, whether with regards to the matter of prisoners in regime prisons or opening vital roads and crossings. Russia knows that this bombardment will not produce any military action or advancement toward areas in the province, but it wants there to be a price for them, and to advance specific wishes and aims of Moscow.

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.
The arrest of journalist Mohamed Hershou has caused anger among colleges and members of parliament, who see it as an attack on the freedom of the press reports Al-Modon.

The Syrian regimes security agencies arrested the director of loyalist Hashtag Syria and the Al-Ayyam newspaper, Mohamed Hershou, months after a similar incident when the director of Damascus Now, Wissam al-Teir was arrested in mysterious circumstances.

On Wednesday, Hershou was arrested in Damascus after publishing news about the governments intention to raise gas prices, amid a severe crisis in the country. This led to a verbal attack by the regimes Oil Ministry on Hashtag Syria, which accused the site of causing the heavy traffic that occurred at gas stations because of the publication of false news.

The report quoted sources as saying that, the government is preparing to issue a decree to lift gasoline subsidies to half of what they are currently. According to the new decree, the price of a tank of gas will doublethat is, from 4,500 Syrian pounds to 9,000, which is in line with global prices.

The site confirmed in a statement that Hershou had been arrested, saying that a few days ago, there was a rare meeting between Prime Minister Imad Khamis and editors and representatives of pro-regime media, with the media focusing on, exchanging views with full transparency about how the government and private media cooperate, without highhandedness from the former or acting falsely from the latter.

The site added that four days after this meeting, which was described as important and encouraging, Assads intelligence agencies from the Electronic Crimes branch arrested Hershou. It said that the arrest tested the words spoken by the Prime Minister at the meeting. The site said that Khamis had avoided Hershou at the time, saying that the Minister for Oil should respond to the gas news and clarify the facts. It said: A minister who runs from the press and the opportunity to clarify facts does not deserve to be in office.

The site said that what they were interested in was confirming the veracity of the news that was published, based on information provided by sources which they described as informed and accurate. They said that reducing the subject in this manner and making accusations of the site was devoid of truth or logic and would not convince even children, as they put it. They added that the Oil Ministry had tried to push them to withdraw the news, and that Hashtag Syria had asked the Ministry to send a response denying it, but they declined.

The site noted that gas stations had been closed hours before the news was published and the news was not the reason for the closures. The closure of most stations had been what pushed the site to investigate and figure out why. Their research told them that the stations had been closed so that the Internal Trade Ministry could conduct an inventory of fuel supplies, in preparation of the lifting of subsidies.

On Thursday afternoon this position changed, when the site issued a brief statement on its Facebook page, saying: Through communication with concerned individuals, we are able to clarify to Hashtag Syria readers, that the issue is being considered and that no decision has been taken, as the Prime Minister clarified during his meeting with journalists. We apologize to Hashtag Syria readers if this issue was understood incorrectly.

Pro-regime journalists and members of parliament also declared their solidarity with Hershou openly, something which wasnt witnessed at all in Wissam al-Teirs case. Some of them said that the incident was a blatant violation of press freedom and freedom of expression, as guaranteed by the Syrian constitution for journalists.

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.
Kurdish groups have condemned the arrest of prominent Kurdish figures, as well as the kidnapping, armed robbery, seizure of property and forceful expulsion of residents in Afrin reports Etihad Press.

Thirty-six Kurdish organizations have condemned Turkish authorities arrest, through its allied factions, of pro-Ankara Kurdish National Council members in the Afrin area, and called for violations to stop and for them to be immediately released.

The statement accused factions of the Syrian Coalition close to Turkey of carrying out humanitarian violations through kidnapping, armed robbery, seizing property, and forcibly expelling residents.

The statement blamed Turkish forces for the arrest of Mohamed Ali Rida, who is 80 years-old and a member of the Kurdish National Council, and the arrest of Hussein Eybish, a member of the central committee of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria, and is also head of the Kurdish National Council in Afrin. They called for them to be released along with all other prisoners, who number 2,000.

Recently armed factions affiliated with the coalition and loyal to and overseen by the Turkish government have stepped up the pace of violations to expel remaining residents clinging to their land.

The statement said: We in the aforementioned civil society organizations condemn these crimes and the arbitrary arrest of Kurdish citizens in the Afrin area, in particular, prominent national figures in the Kurdish political field. We hold the Turkish government responsible for their arrest and we call for their release and the release of all prisoners held under false pretexts by armed elements. We also call on the international community and international humanitarian organizations to intervene to stop these practices and inhumane violations and to open safe passages for the return of those who were forcibly displaced and to secure international protections for Kurdish areas in Syria in general.

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.
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Sure the Samsung Galaxy A80 is cool and all but it's the Samsung Galaxy A70 smartphone that everyone asks the price for. Samsung had announced that pre-orders for the device is now open. The 6GB + 128GB variant will be priced at 2999 Yuan (~RM1839) and the 8GB + 128GB variant at 3299 Yuan (~RM2023).

The Samsung Galaxy A70 looks like any ordinary smartphone on the market, unlike the Samsung Galaxy A80. However, it does have some impressive tech specs which include the Snapdragon 675 chipset, a 4500mAh battery capacity with 25W fast charging and supports expandable memory up to 512GB. It features a 32MP selfie camera housed in the Infinity-U notch and as for the rear camera, youll find a triple camera setup with 35MP + 5MP (ultra-wide) + 8MP sensors.

In terms of design, it does have an array of colours to choose from which are Laser Black, Pearl White, Coral Orange and more. No sign of a Malaysia price yet or Malaysia release date yet but well let you know on TechNave.com when we do. Is the price of this device what you expected it to be?
An AI agent provides its rationale for making a decision in this video game. Credit: Georgia Tech

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers, in collaboration with Cornell University and University of Kentucky, have developed an artificially intelligent (AI) agent that can automatically generate natural language explanations in real-time to convey the motivations behind its actions. The work is designed to give humans engaging with AI agents or robots confidence that the agent is performing the task correctly and can explain a mistake or errant behavior.

The agent also uses everyday language that non-experts can understand. The explanations, or "rationales" as the researchers call them, are designed to be relatable and inspire trust in those who might be in the workplace with AI machines or interact with them in social situations.

"If the power of AI is to be democratized, it needs to be accessible to anyone regardless of their technical abilities," said Upol Ehsan, Ph.D. student in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and lead researcher.

"As AI pervades all aspects of our lives, there is a distinct need for human-centered AI design that makes black-boxed AI systems explainable to everyday users. Our work takes a formative step toward understanding the role of language-based explanations and how humans perceive them."

The study was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Researchers developed a participant study to determine if their AI agent could offer rationales that mimicked human responses. Spectators watched the AI agent play the videogame Frogger and then ranked three on-screen rationales in order of how well each described the AI's game move.

Of the three anonymized justifications for each movea human-generated response, the AI-agent response, and a randomly generated responsethe participants preferred the human-generated rationales first, but the AI-generated responses were a close second.

Frogger offered the researchers the chance to train an AI in a "sequential decision-making environment," which is a significant research challenge because decisions that the agent has already made influence future decisions. Therefore, explaining the chain of reasoning to experts is difficult, and even more so when communicating with non-experts, according to researchers.

The human spectators understood the goal of Frogger in getting the frog safely home without being hit by moving vehicles or drowned in the river. The simple game mechanics of moving up, down, left or right, allowed the participants to see what the AI was doing, and to evaluate if the rationales on the screen clearly justified the move.

The spectators judged the rationales based on:

Confidencethe person is confident in the AI to perform its task

Human-likenesslooks like it was made by a human

Adequate justificationadequately justifies the action taken

Understandabilityhelps the person understand the AI's behavior

AI-generated rationales that were ranked higher by participants were those that showed recognition of environmental conditions and adaptability, as well as those that communicated awareness of upcoming dangers and planned for them. Redundant information that just stated the obvious or mischaracterized the environment were found to have a negative impact.

"This project is more about understanding human perceptions and preferences of these AI systems than it is about building new technologies," said Ehsan. "At the heart of explainability is sense making. We are trying to understand that human factor."

A second related study validated the researchers' decision to design their AI agent to be able to offer one of two distinct types of rationales:

Concise, "focused" rationales or

Holistic, "complete picture" rationales

In this second study, participants were only offered AI-generated rationales after watching the AI play Frogger. They were asked to select the answer that they preferred in a scenario where an AI made a mistake or behaved unexpectedly. They did not know the rationales were grouped into the two categories.

By a 3-to-1 margin, participants favored answers that were classified in the "complete picture" category. Responses showed that people appreciated the AI thinking about future steps rather than just what was in the moment, which might make them more prone to making another mistake. People also wanted to know more so that they might directly help the AI fix the errant behavior.

"The situated understanding of the perceptions and preferences of people working with AI machines give us a powerful set of actionable insights that can help us design better human-centered, rationale-generating, autonomous agents," said Mark Riedl, professor of Interactive Computing and lead faculty member on the project.

A possible future direction for the research will apply the findings to autonomous agents of various types, such as companion agents, and how they might respond based on the task at hand. Researchers will also look at how agents might respond in different scenarios, such as during an emergency response or when aiding teachers in the classroom.

The research was presented in March at the Association for Computing Machinery's Intelligent User Interfaces 2019 Conference. The paper is titled "Automated Rationale Generation: A Technique for Explainable AI and its Effects on Human Perceptions." Ehsan will present a position paper highlighting the design and evaluation challenges of human-centered Explainable AI systems at the upcoming Emerging Perspectives in Human-Centered Machine Learning workshop at the ACM CHI 2019 conference, May 4-9, in Glasgow, Scotland.

Explore further VRKitchen: An interactive virtual environment to train and test AI agents
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Dave Bittner, is a security podcast host and one of the founders at CyberWire. Hes a creator, producer, videographer, actor, experimenter, and entrepreneur. Hes had a long career in the worlds of television, journalism and media production, and is one of the pioneers of non-linear editing and digital storytelling.
Looking for the vulture assist with Neolithic burials

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Is FedEx A Buy Before Earnings?

There Are Reasons To Be Wary Of FedEx FQ2 Results If you are thinking FedEx (NYSE: FDX) is going to have a strong quarter you are probably right. The company is forecasting a 10% increase in holiday deliveries that, when coupled with all the price increases, should deliver revenue growth in the mid-teens at least if not up into the 20% range.

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Weather Alert

...HIGH WIND WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 9 PM CST THIS EVENING... * WHAT...Southwest winds increasing into the 30 to 40 mph range with gusts from 50 to 65 mph. Peak gusts as high as 75 mph will be possible in localized areas. * WHERE...Portions of east central, northeast and southeast Nebraska and southwest and west central Iowa. * WHEN...From noon today to 9 PM CST this evening. Winds will increase in speed this afternoon in eastern Nebraska and southwest Iowa. A few hours with winds gusting over 50 mph are likely. * IMPACTS...Damaging winds will blow down trees and power lines. Widespread power outages could occur. Damage to structures will be possible. Travel will be difficult, especially for high profile vehicles. Unsecured outdoor objects may be blown away. Areas of blowing dust could also occur in open areas or near construction zones. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Fire danger will reach the extreme category over parts of southeast Nebraska and southwest Iowa in this afternoon and early evening. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... People should avoid being outside in forested areas and around trees and branches. If possible, remain in the lower levels of your home during the windstorm, and avoid windows. Use caution if you must drive. &&
Yes, you read that right!Russia has fined Facebook with 3,000 rubles, roughly $47, for not complying with the country's controversial Data Localization law.It's bizarre and unbelievable, but true.In December last year, Russian Internet watchdog Roskomnadzor sent notifications to Twitter and Facebook asking them to provide information about the location of servers that store the personal data of its citizens.Roskomnadzor  also known as the Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies, and Mass Communications  is Russian telecommunications watchdog that runs a huge blacklist of websites banned in Russia.Though the social media platforms had one month to reply, they choose not to disclose this information, as a result of which Moscow's Tagansky District Court imposed 3,000 rubles fine on Twitter last week and the same on Facebook today.The fine is the minimum that Russian courts can impose on companies for violating Article 19.7 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, i.e., failure to provide information. The maximum amount of the fine under this article is 5,000 rubles.In July 2014, Russia approved amendments to the Russian Personal Data Law which came into force in 1st September 2015, under which foreign tech companies were required to store the personal data of its citizens within the country's borders.Although the fine imposed on Facebook and Twitter may seem nothing, further refusal to comply with the country's data localization law could result in much more serious repercussions, like Russia can ban social media companies, just like it banned LinkedIn in late 2016 Russia is not the first country to enforce such law on foreign tech companies. In May 2016, Iran also imposed new regulations on all foreign messaging and social media apps to move 'data and activity' associated with Iranian citizens onto servers in Iran within one year.China also passed amendments for data localization in late 2016 that would force "critical information infrastructure operators" to store its citizens' data within the nation's borders.
Police seized a total of 74 bags of cocaine, a couple of phones and a large wad of cash.

On Thursday afternoon, officers of the Luxembourg-Gare police station surveilled the walkway above the train tracks.

Knowledge of the drug deals as well as a description of the suspect led to the area being surrounded.

Officers observed two people preparing a deal from afar. In order to prevent the respective buyer and seller from escaping, the police intervened before the trade took place.

As the presumed perpetrator was searched, officers found 74 bags of cocaine, a couple of phones and a considerable sum of money.

The public prosecutors office was informed and the man was arrested. He faced an examining magistrate this Friday.
This post is prompted by a number of things that have left me pondering how as Christians we are to bring about change in our churches. When we strongly b...

6 years ago


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The number of Moroccans living in Spain rose 5.4% to 812,412 making up the largest community living in the country, Spanish statistical office said.

Moroccan diaspora was the largest diaspora surpassing the 669,434 Romanian citizens, 249,015 Brits and 227,912 Italians.

The Spanish population rose to 47 million people, 284,000 more than last year, an increase that the office largely ascribed to migration flow.

Before 1985, Moroccans did not require visas to enter Spain. Many young people came for seasonal or short-term work in agriculture and industry, coming and going from Spain without settling there.
Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz made a volt face by declaring an outright support for Moroccos sovereignty over the Sahara making it clear that Rabat and Nouakchott share borders with no entity in between.

There is no state between us said the President in an interview with Arai Al Yaoum news portal.

The statement clarifies years of ambiguity of Mohammed Ould Abdel Azizs leadership and stresses Mauritanias support for the territorial integrity of its neighbor with whom it shares centuries old history and strong trade ties.

The US, Europe and the West do not want a state placed between Morocco and Mauritania, said President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz, much to the chagrin of Algeria, which has been funding and backing the separatist Polisario militias for over four decades in vain.

Ould Abdelaziz made the statement at a time cracks appear in the edifice of the Algerian regime, which has been putting pressure on African countries to support the Polisario.

This is also a mea culpa by President Oulf Abdel Aziz who has shown ambiguous stands regarding ties with Morocco, which he never visited during his two terms.

Ties warmed up between the two countries in late 2018 after the appointment by Morocco of its new ambassador to Nouakchott Hamid Chabar.

In December 2017, Mauritania appointed Mohamed Lemine Ould Aboy new ambassador to Morocco, filling thus a position that has been vacant since 2012.

Mauritania is key in Moroccos African policy as the Kingdom has stepped up its economic ties with Africa.

The gas pipeline launched by Morocco and Nigeria will require a common ground between all passage countries in West Africa including Mauritania. All the West African countries are set to benefit from the project notably in terms of boosting energy security.
European and U.S. fashion brands sourcing from Vietnam must stop their harsh tactics that push down workers wages and trap millions in poverty, labor rights campaigners said on Thursday.

Vietnam, which is one of the worlds largest garment manufacturers and supplies fashion chains such as Zara and H&M, is home to over 6,000 garment and textile factories that employ about 3 million people, government figures showed.

Many work excessive hours, sometimes more than 50 hours of overtime a month without rest days, and still struggle to make ends meet, a new study by U.S.-based campaign group Fair Labor Association (FLA) showed.

Out of the 13,000 Vietnamese garment workers surveyed by the FLA, most were earning more than double the countrys minimum wage but still unable to pay for their basic needs.

Workers should not have to rely on excessive overtime to provide for themselves and their families, FLA president Sharon Waxman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an email.

Brands should avoid using harsh negotiating tactics with suppliers that lead to razor-thin margins, which often can be a driver of involuntary or excessive overtime.

The Vietnamese government should increase its minimum wage and fashion brands must review their costing policies to ensure workers are fairly compensated, she added.

Vietnams labor ministry did not respond to emails seeking comment.

Garment workers in Vietnam generally enjoy higher wages than those employed in the other regional garment-making hubs such as Cambodia and Bangladesh.

The government has hiked wages in the past few years, with the current minimum wage range from $125 to $180 a month.

Despite some advances for workers, global businesses have come under pressure in recent years to ensure their supply chains are free of labor exploitations, as a worldwide push to end modern slavery gains momentum.

Earlier this year, charity Oxfam criticized Australian fashion firms for using a system of entrenched exploitation that see workers in their supply chains in Bangladesh and Vietnam not earning a living wage.

These tactics include pressuring garment factory owners during price negotiations or using short-term contracts.

A living wage means enough money is earned to cover basic needs such as food, housing, education and healthcare.

Brands have a role to play and more brands should take responsibility, said Alexander Kohnstamm, director of the Amsterdam-based non-profit Fair Wear Foundation, which is not involved in the study.

Kohnstamm said better production planning and contract pricing could cut workers reliance on overtime work, which often lead to labor rights violations.

Western brands are part of the problem but they can also choose to be part of the solution, he said.
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The Pedagogical College of Da Lat, a must-see for tourists visiting the beautiful capital city of the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, will close its doors to visitors starting today, April 12, the schools management board announced on Thursday.

Built in the heart of Da Lat using a combination of Western and Oriental architecture styles, the Pedagogical College of Da Lat has become a popular tourist attraction due to its quaint and charming ambiance.

However, those who have yet to visit the iconic school of Da Lat may never have the chance to do so, as the schools management team has declared that visitors will no longer be permitted on campus due to security reasons and to protect the schools landscape.

Aside from prohibiting tourists from entering the school, the college will continue to operate as usual.

A school staffer revealed to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that the decision was made in response to concerns that pressure from the massive number of visitors to the school was putting a serious strain on its facilities, sanitation, and security force.

A hole in the ceiling of a classroom at the Pedagogical College of Da Lat, located in Vietnams Central Highlands. Photo: M.V / Tuoi Tre

The college welcomes over 70,000 visitors every year, constituting a significant portion of our operational costs, even though it is designed to function as a small-size educational institution, the staff told Tuoi Tre.

A huge chunk of the schools operational expenses goes toward cleaning trash left behind by tourists, the staffer said.

The news comes as a serious disappointment to Da Lat lovers.

Its a pity that the school will stop welcoming visitors, said Tran Tuan Tien, a Ho Chi Minh City resident currently visiting Da Lat.

But it would be a greater pity if tourism caused damage to the schools architecture, Tien added.

Some have even suggested that the Pedagogical College of Da Lat begin collecting entrance fees from visitors to offset the cost of maintaining the architecture and landscape.

Moss on the ceiling of a classroom at the Pedagogical College of Da Lat, located in Vietnams Central Highlands. Photo: M.V / Tuoi Tre

The Pedagogical College of Da Lat was built between 1926 and 1935, and is the only construction work in Vietnam recognized by the Union of International Architects (UIA) as one of the worlds 1,000 most unique buildings constructed in the 20th century, according to local news outlet VietNamNet.

It was acknowledged as a National Architecture Relic on December 28, 2001.

The building began to deteriorate in 1975 due to improper use.

Randomly repairs made without permission from state agencies that oversee heritage management led it to decline further.

A number of its classrooms have been converted into accommodations for teachers and officers from other localities visiting Da Lat for working trips.

Several school staffers even live inside the school and have turned classrooms into apartments in which they live and raise children.

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The Womens Union of the Vietnamese Embassy in Japan participated in the 43rd annual Asia-Pacific Ladies Friendship Society (ALFS) charity bazaar held in Tokyo on Wednesday, where they introduced Vietnamese goods to Japanese customers.

The union used its kiosk at the fundraiser to introduce traditional Vietnamese foods and handcrafted goods such as silk, gemstone ceramics, and embroidered paintings to dozens of interested customers, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

The Womens Unions of Tokyo-based embassies of ALFS member nations, alongside other event sponsors, raised funds by selling artisan goods and traditional dishes representing their respective countries.

The charity bazaar is one of ALFSs most prominent annual activities, notable for the its continued success in raising funds to put toward helping and rescuing women and children in countries throughout the region.

Representatives of the Womens Unions of the countries with diplomatic missions in Japan, along with the spouse of Japanese foreign minister Toro Noko and other wives of high-ranking Japanese officials, attended the event to show their support for its noble cause.

Customers gather in front of Vietnams stand at a charity bazaar held by the Asia-Pacific Ladies Friendship Society in Tokyo on April 10, 2019. Photo: Vietnam News Agency

In 2018, Vietnam received JPY1.3 million (US$11,700) from ALFS to build purification systems for two elementary schools in polluted areas of the north-central province of Ha Tinh, as well as for the support of children from poor households in Vietnam, according to the Vietnam News Agency.

This year, similar funding from the organization is expected to be allocated for water purification systems for several elementary and middle high schools in the central province of Quang Nam.

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At least four people have died and multiple others injured after a luxury automobile, driven by the owner of a major hotel, crashed into a funeral procession in the south-central Vietnamese province of Binh Dinh on Thursday afternoon.

The accident happened on Nguyen Cong Tru Street in Le Hong Phong Ward in the provincial capital of Quy Nhon at around 1:00 pm, according to preliminary information.

The victims were a group of pallbearers who were sitting along the side of the road.

Two people were killed on the spot, while two others succumbed to their injuries at a local hospital later the same day.

About six people were injured and are being treated at the infirmary.

According to an eyewitness, the pallbearers were about to carry the coffin onto the hearse when the accident occurred.

The car driver was one of the mourners, the witness said, adding that he just got on the automobile seconds before the crash happened.

The scene of the accident in Quy Nhon City, Binh Dinh Province. Photo: Truong An / Tuoi Tre

An official from the provincial police department confirmed on Friday that officers had confiscated the car, a Lexus LX570 with license plate No. 49X-6666, to assist the investigation.

The car was registered in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong and belongs to a company based in the provinces Da Lat City.

The cars inspection certificate will expire on August 27.

The driver of the car was identified as Nguyen Duc Huyen, who is the owner of a big hotel in Quy Nhon.

According to Cu Tuan Nghia, a traffic police official in Lam Dong, the automobile could have been sold to Huyen via an authorization contract, which explains why its registration is still in Lam Dong.

In Vietnam, car owners have to register their vehicles in their permanent place of residence, according to the law.

Car buyers and sellers often agree on an authorization contract in order to keep a perfect license plate number, which is 6666 in this case, Nghia elaborated.

If a sale is properly carried out via a formal transfer contract, the new owner will have to register the vehicle again in their province or city of residence when the seller has registered it in another locale, he added.

"As a result, the new owner will be granted a new license plate number," Nghia said.

When the owner and seller come from the same locale of residence, they will be allowed to keep the old license plate.

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The World Bank unveiled a new plan Thursday to help African countries strengthen their human capital, setting ambitious targets to be achieved in the region by 2023.

The objective of the plan is to enable Africas young people to grow up with optimal health and equipped with the right skills to compete in the digitizing global economy, the WB said in a press release.

Sub-Saharan Africa scores the lowest of all the worlds regions on the World Banks Human Capital Index, a measurement of how well countries invest in the next generation of workers.

The score is explained by high mortality and stunting rates in the region, as well as inadequate student learning outcomes  all of which have a direct effect on economic productivity.

In an effort to help countries turn these indicators around, the World Banks Africa Human Capital Plan is setting ambitious targets to be achieved in the region by 2023. These include a drastic reduction in child mortality to save 4 million lives, averting stunting among 11 million children, and increasing learning outcomes for girls and boys in school by 20%. These achievements can raise Africas Human Capital Index score upwards to increase the productivity of future workers by 13%.

The Plan also aims at empowering women to prevent early marriage and pregnancy for adolescent girls.

The World Bank will increase its investments in human capital in Africa by 50% in the next funding cycle.

This includes new World Bank grants and concessional finance for human capital projects in Africa totaling $15 billion in fiscal years 2021-2023. The World Bank will invest these funds strategically to unblock structural constraints to human capital development.

The World Bank will also target game changing interventions that leverage technology and innovation and that prevent and reverse damage to human capital in fragile and conflict-affected settings.

The World Bank is already supporting countries to come up with new strategies to invest more and better in their people. Twenty-three African countries, covering over 60% of the regions population, have joined a coalition of nearly 60 countries to join the Human Capital Project, committing to a set of accelerated investments in their human capital.
Read what is in the news today!

Politics

-- Vietnam suggests that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) continue assisting the Vietnamese government in institutional reforms and state governance, including building an e-government, Minister-Chairman of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung said during a working session with the agencys leaders in Washington D.C. on Thursday.

Society

-- A local man has been arrested by police in the northern Vietnamese province of Quang Ninh for attempting to smuggle an entire tiger skin and tiger bones into China, officers said on Thursday.

-- Four were killed when a seven-seater Lexus crashed into a funeral procession in the south-central province of Binh Dinh on Thursday.

-- Japan plans to install modern equipment using bio-nanotechnology on the bed of the To Lich River in Hanoi to help clean up this heavily polluted waterway, Dr. Tadashi Yamamura, an environmental specialist of the United Nations, said as he led a delegation to meet with Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in the Vietnamese capital on Thursday.

-- More than 100 Vietnamese and Dutch scientists, experts and business owners in the field of water resources and the environment, along with leaders of departments and universities in Ho Chi Minh City, and 13 cities and provinces in the Mekong Delta gathered at the Water Business Dialogues held by the Netherlands Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City on Thursday.

Business

-- President Donald Trumps trade war with China has U.S. companies shifting purchases of tariff-targeted products like furniture, refrigerators and car tires to countries such as Vietnam, South Korea, and Mexico, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a new analysis by trade data firm Panjiva.

-- Coffee prices in Vietnam fell this week, with farmers in the Central Highlands selling the beans at VND30,900-31,800 ($1.33-$1.37) per kg on Thursday, down from VND31,600-32,500 last week, after the International Coffee Organization raised global surplus forecasts.

Lifestyle

-- Vietnams Book Festival 2019 is slated to take place at the Hanoi Library on April 19, as part of a series of activities to mark the Vietnam Book Day (April 21) and the World Book and Copyright Day (April 23), the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has announced.

-- The Third Wife, a film by Vietnamese director Ash Mayfair that won the NETPAC award at the Toronto International Film Festival 2018, will hit theaters in Vietnam from May 17.

Sports

-- Da Nang will be the first Vietnamese city to ever host the 5th Ironman 70.3  Asia Pacific Championship, scheduled for May 9 - 12, with the participation of nearly 2,200 triathletes, including 40 professionals, from 50 countries and territories, the government portal reported on Thursday.

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Eight people have been missing and possibly killed since a fire broke out at a 1,000-square-meter workshop complex in Hanoi on early Friday morning.

The flames erupted at the facility on Dai Linh Street in Trung Van Ward, Nam Tu Liem District at around 2:00 am, according to a source close to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

A total of four workshops in the venue were burned down before the fire was finally extinguished four hours later.

A workshop is heavily damaged by the falmes. Photo: M. Quang / Tuoi Tre

Eight people were inside one of the workshops, where plastic recycle bins are manufactured.

Many fears the victims were killed in the blaze, but so far no bodies have been found.

Preliminary information shows that the fire first broke out at one of the workshops before spreading rapidly through the entire venue.

Authorities deal with the incident. Photo: M. Quang / Tuoi Tre

All of the facilities within the complex were used to store highly flammable goods made from plastic and wood.

Officers are still searching for victims.

Chairman of the municipal Peoples Committee Nguyen Duc Chung and his deputy, Nguyen Van Su, visited the scene to show support for rescue workers.

An investigation has been initiated to determine the cause of the incident.

Authorities deal with the incident. Photo: M. Quang / Tuoi Tre

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The notorious sewage smell of the To Lich River in Hanoi can be greatly improved in just three days with the help of a bio-nanotechnology solution from Japan, a Japanese expert claims.

Dr. Tadashi Yamamura, a United Nations environmental expert and president of the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), proposed the idea at a meeting with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Hanoi on Thursday.

With a nano bubble aeration system placed on the bed of the To Lich River, foul smell can be significantly reduced in three days, Dr. Tadashi said.

He added that experts from Japan had surveyed the river for two years before coming up with the solution.

We hope that this modern technology will help Vietnam with water treatment, he said.

JETRO wants to sponsor the pilot application of this technology on a section of the To Lich River as well as in some areas of Hanois West Lake, he added.

The To Lich River in Hanoi is seen in this aerial photo. Photo: Nam Tran / Tuoi Tre

PM Phuc acknowledged Dr. Tadashis proposal and said he had great regard for the Japanese technology.

The Vietnamese government always has environmental concerns in mind when devising policies for national development, the premier said.

Regarding the testing of this new technology in Hanoi, PM Phuc said the proposal is in line with government visions for protecting the environment in the age of industrialization and modernization.

He asked the Japanese side to work closely with the Vietnamese Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Peoples Committee of Hanoi to come up with a detailed plan to implement the To Lich River deodorizing project.

This will be a good stepping stone for treating polluted water in other provinces and cities, the Vietnamese premier stressed.

The To Lich River runs nearly 15 kilometers from Cau Giay District to Thanh Tri District in the capital.

Formerly a busy channel for trade and famous for its clear water, To Lich is now heavily polluted by household sewage after a part of it was reclaimed for urban construction in the late 1880s, cutting it off from the Red River.

The river remains notorious for its foul smell despite recent government efforts to clean To Lich.

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A Vietnamese man has been arrested for attempting to smuggle an entire tiger skin and tiger bones into China, police said Thursday in the southeast Asian country where illegal wildlife trade flourishes.

Vietnam is both a consumption hub and popular trading route for illegal animal products destined for other parts of Asia, namely China.

Border guards in Vietnam's northern Quang Ninh province arrested a man Wednesday carrying a full tiger hide and five bones, weighing a total of 5.4 kilograms (12 pounds).

"The man attempted to bring the tiger items across the border," an official at a border station in Quang Ninh told AFP Thursday, requesting anonymity.

A tiger skin can fetch up to $6,000 in Vietnam and as much as $10,000 in China, according to Vietnamese state media. The bones can sell for $1,000 per one hundred grams (3.5 ounces) in Vietnam.

Tiger remains are highly prized in Vietnam, where their skin is used for decoration, their teeth and claws for jewellery, and bones, whiskers and paws for traditional medicine.

Their bones are commonly boiled down and mixed with rice wine to make an elixir believed to treat arthritis and promote strength, which scientists have disputed.

Along with ivory, rhino horn and pangolin scales, the illicit trade of tiger parts has shifted online in recent years, making sellers harder to catch despite government vows to crack down on the industry.

Wild tiger populations have dropped globally by 97 percent over the past century and the animals are categorised as an endangered species, according the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Tigers used to roam Vietnam's forests, but the last time the animal was photographed in the country in the wild was in 1997, and it is not known how many remain today.

It is legal to raise tigers as pets in Vietnam with official permission, and there are an estimated 240 kept in homes and zoos across the country according to Education for Nature Vietnam (ENV) conservation group.

This week's seizure is not the first haul of tiger parts in Vietnam.

Five frozen tigers were discovered in a freezer in central Nghe An province in 2017, with their skins intact but internal organs removed.

ENV recorded more than 630 cases of illegal marketing, trading and storing tiger parts in Vietnam last year.
The leader of a security team in the central city of Hue found a satchel packed with nearly US$1780 in cash on Wednesday and immediately mobilized his entire squad to help find the owner.

Vo Le Nhat, director of the Hue Monuments Conservation Center, confirmed the story the same day.

Huynh Ngoc Anh, leader of a security team stationed at the Hue Citadel historical relics, came across a shoulder bag left on the path to the sites main gate while patrolling the area on Wednesday morning and immediately reported it to police officers so that its contents could be searched.

Upon finding VND41 million (US$1780) in cash, some credit cards, a South Korean passport, and other valuables inside, Anh mobilized his whole squad to find the owner before he left Hue.

Using the name on the passport, the team was able to locate South Korean man Kim Seong Ki and return the lost assets to their owner.

Kim expressed his gratitude to the security personnel of the Hue Monuments Conservation Center, sharing that he panicked the moment he realized he had lost his bag and the important items inside.

This is a beautiful action that carries a lot of meaning, he said with delight.

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There may be signs the media watchdog is finally reacting to signs that too often it stands accused of slapping networks with a wet lettuce leaf

Channel Seven has agreed to a court enforceable undertaking around Sunrise following that much-maligned panel discussing the removal of Indigenous children in March 2018.

In September the Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled the segment was inaccurate and in serious contempt on the basis of race, due to strong negative generalisations. But there was no punishment given Seven was mulling an appeal in the Federal Court, a move that would have been expensive for the network, without any guarantee of success.

Last week Seven withdrew that application and agreed to provide to a court enforceable undertaking.

That will require Seven to:

commission an independent audit of the production processes for the current affairs content of Sunrise

ensure editorial staff are provided with training in relation to identifying and dealing with such matters.

Too often ACMA is accused of simply requiring networks to better train their staff -always after, never before, mistakes happen (see above).

Enforceable undertakings are fairly rare, even in the ACMA world, and they usually involve the network agreeing to be seen to be doing the right thing.

The first was in 2009 when Nine agreed to a sum, equivalent to ad revenue during Underbelly and Kitchen Nightmares that it would pay if it the shows breached the Code again.

Sam Newman once kept Nine and ACMA so busy that then-CEO David Gyngell offered $200,000 surety for a charity, if Newman were to fall foul of the Code of Practice in the next 2 years.

In 2016 outgoing ACMA chair Chris Chapman recalled, That was creative because there are mid-tier power gaps that the ACMA wrestles with. Apart from coming up with a mutually agreed outcome we have taken to making recommendations to broadcasters in the event of a breach.

That was one where we negotiated an outcome I thought was a useful way of resolving.

Back in 2012 then-Communications Minister Stephen Conroy also referred to stronger ACMA outcomes, .so instead of just having the slap on the wrist or closing down the station there are what youd call mid-tier powers.

Fines would fall into that category. Id give that serious consideration.

In recent weeks Breaches of the Code in both Television and Radio have drawn comment for their light touch. Free TV Australia has also been critical that Breaches apply to Broadcast but not to the Online sector, which falls under ACMAs remit (albeit without spectrum involved).

Quite what the independent audit of assembling Sunrises current affairs content entails is unclear.

The decision to withdraw the application for judicial review is an important acceptance of the ACMAs findings, said ACMA Chair Nerida OLoughlin.

Channel Sevens response to the ACMA takes account of the high threshold for this breach finding.

Remedial action must allow for the discussion of matters in the public interest, including extremely sensitive topics. However, these discussions must be done with due care, with editorial framing to ensure compliance with the Code.

A Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight, Seven has worked with the ACMA to agree on the appropriate steps that enable both parties to move on and avoid the time and expense of court action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgAfE6ZlDnc&feature=youtu.be

On Mondays Four Corners, Dylan Welch reports on Orphans of ISIS, a grandmothers desperate journey to rescue her children and bring them home.

Just because their last name is Sharrouf, (it) doesnt mean they are monsters. Karen Nettleton.

On Monday Four Corners exclusively brings you the story of the Sharrouf children and their grandmothers epic fight to find them and bring them home to Australia.

Id never thought Id be in this situation ever. I mean trying to get children out of Syria. Im just a grandma from the suburbs. Karen Nettleton.

If there was one family that represented the alarming tide of Australians flocking to the black flag of Islamic State, it was the Sharroufs. The children of the notorious jihadist Khaled Sharrouf were taken to the self-declared caliphate in 2014. The world learned of them after their father published pictures of his eldest son holding the severed head of an IS prisoner, sending shockwaves around the world.

This image is really one of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed  of a seven-year-old child holding a severed head up with pride and with the support and encouragement of a parent. Then US Secretary of State, John Kerry.

For five years their grandmother, Karen Nettleton, has been trying to reach the children and bring them home.

She is not going to give up. She once said Dont underestimate this nanna. And sure as day follows night, no matter how depressed and upset she is, she picks herself up. Robert Van Aalst, lawyer.

She has mounted several rescue missions, with each one ending in failure. Now, in Syria, shes making a last-ditch effort to save them from a squalid refugee camp.

I just hope today is the day I get them. If not, I will try again tomorrow and the next day because Im not going home without them. Karen Nettleton.

Reporter Dylan Welch and producer Suzanne Dredge have documented the familys experience for four years, travelling with the childrens grandmother as she tries to convince the authorities in Syria and Australia to release the family into her care and allow them to return home.

Are my children a risk to Australia? Absolutely not, absolutely not. No way.

What happened to this family over the years they lived in the IS caliphate has remained untold. Now on Four Corners, you will see and hear their story.

Monday 15th April at 8.30pm on ABC.
Morocco has convicted a Swiss suspect in connection to the Imlil murders, where two Scandinavian tourists were killed in December 2018 in Moroccos Atlas Mountains.

The Criminal Chamber in charge of terrorism cases at Sales appeal court sentenced the Swiss national, named according to press reports Nicholas P., to 10 years in prison for links to the perpetrators of the murder of the two Scandinavian tourists, a judicial source announced.

Nicholas P., nicknamed Abdelkerim, was arrested in connection with the investigation of the murder of the two Scandinavian tourists. He was found guilty on Thursday of participation in a terrorist association.

The defendant was prosecuted for the setting up of a gang to prepare and commit terrorist acts aimed at seriously undermining State security, premeditated assistance to perpetrators of terrorist acts, training of persons to join a terrorist organization and apology for terrorism.

Swiss news outlets reported that the 33-year-old has been living with his wife and two children in Rabat for some years and that the court convicted Nicolas based on his relationship with Genevans who went to Syria to fight with ISIS.

A second Swiss national, Kevin Zoller Guervos, was prosecuted in the same case for setting up a gang to prepare and commit terrorist acts as part of a collective project aimed at seriously undermining public order and promoting terrorist acts and organizations, as well as the failure to report terrorist crimes.

According to media reports, the two defendants came into contact while residing in Switzerland and even exchanged the video showing the murder of the two tourists.

Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, a 24-year old Danish, and Maren Ueland, a 28-year old Nowegian, were found dead on December 17, 2018, in Imlil, near Mount Toubkal.

Police have arrested 23 other suspects in connection with the murders. Suspects convicted of terror-related crimes typically receive 10- to 15-year prison sentences.
Amid a growing row over whether Julian Assange should be extradited to the US, the Press Association looks at the legal battle ahead.

 What happens next?

Following his arrest on a provisional arrest warrant, the US has 65 days to submit a full extradition warrant together with an affidavit stating what the charges will be, human rights lawyer Karen Todner said.

His legal team will raise objections and submit arguments on what bars there are to extradition before a full hearing in front of a district judge at Westminster Magistrates Court, which is likely to take a number of days.

 How can he fight extradition?

Ms Todner said lawyers could argue political motivation in relation to the process, or say Assanges mental health has been harmed after living in confined conditions over the last seven years.

Whatever one thinks of Assange & Wikileaks today, it's important to remember what this case was originally about: they published evidence of grave crimes by the US military in Iraq (& Afghanistan). This is why they are being pursued & why this case has implications for journalism pic.twitter.com/O4tLdbNRMk  Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) April 12, 2019

She suggested Article 3 of the Human Rights Act  that no one should be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment  could be used if he faces charges carrying a sentence of life imprisonment without parole, while lawyers are also likely to challenge US prison conditions.

Rebecca Niblock, an extradition specialist and partner at law firm Kingsley Napley, said Assanges most obvious argument is that he would not face a fair trial in the US, which would be a breach of his human rights.

Other possible arguments could include his speciality rights  that he could face further charges once extradited  or whether the alleged offence was committed in the UK, she said.

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 What are his chances of success?

Ms Niblock said: I think hes got a chance, but I think its going to be very, very difficult for him and I cant see him being successful.

He has worn down the patience of the judiciary by hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy for seven years.

I feel quite confident that the judiciary will have to be impartial, but if there was any good will, its been exhausted.

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested (Victoria Jones/PA)

Ms Todner said: Its really difficult to say. I think hes got a strong argument in relation to political motivation, but whether or not a British court will go for that is uncertain.

He didnt seem to receive a very sympathetic hearing yesterday.

 Can Assange challenge the judges decision?

Both sides have the right to appeal the judges decision to the High Court. Assange could then appeal to the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.

 Who has successfully fought extradition in the past?

Last year, the High Court overturned the decision to extradite Lauri Love to the US over allegations he hacked US government computer networks.

Judges said the extradition of Mr Love, who has Aspergers would be oppressive by reason of his physical and mental condition.

His case bore similarities to that of Gary McKinnon, another alleged cyber-hacker with Aspergers, who eventually had his extradition blocked by then Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012 following a decade-long legal battle.

Gary McKinnon had his extradition blocked (John Stillwell/PA)

She later announced changes to the law that transferred powers away from the Home Secretary to the courts.

 Can the Government block Assanges extradition?

According to Ms Todner, who represented Mr Love and Mr McKinnon, the answer is no.

Following the case of Gary McKinnon, Theresa May severely limited the powers of the Secretary of State to prevent extradition, she said.

Also, though the Secretary of State does have very limited powers to interfere, I dont see that discretion being used.

Theresa May was home secretary when Gary McKinnons extradition was blocked

The Home Secretary can block extradition to countries where the death penalty may be used, but Ms Todner said the US would likely make assurances that capital punishment would not be on the table in Assanges case.

Ms Niblock agreed that it was unlikely ministers could do anything to stop Assanges extradition following the change in the law.

Its very difficult for the Government to interfere in the extradition process now, she added.

 How long will it take?

Ms Niblock said there will be pressure to deal with the case as quickly as possible but is likely to take around a year to 18 months to resolve.

But it could possibly be longer. Its possible to draw things out if you need to, she said.

Assange will have to serve his sentence for breaching his bail conditions in the UK before being extradited, but any time he spends in a British prison after that on remand will be taken off any sentence in the US.

Ms Todner said another potential delay could be if Sweden decides to issue a further arrest warrant in relation to the alleged rape incident in the country.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping sent his congratulations to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un following his re-election as chairman of the State Affairs Commission, China's official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.

Xi told Kim that China highly values its friendship with North Korea and is willing to push forward the bilateral relations.

(Reporting by Beijing Monitoring Desk; Editing by Michael Perry)
The UK is on track to hold European Parliament elections on May 23, having met Fridays deadline to inform Brussels it will take part.

But what are the elections about and will they really take place?

 What are the European Parliament elections?

Held every five years, the polls select MEPs to sit in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. The UK has 73 seats in the 751-member Parliament.

 When will voting take place?

The ballot is due to take place on Thursday May 23 in the UK and the Netherlands, May 24 in Ireland and over the weekend in the other EU states. Votes will not be counted until polling is completed in all 28 countries on May 26.

The European Parliament site in Strasbourg, France (Gareth Fuller/PA)

 How are MEPs elected?

The UK is divided into 12 electoral regions  nine in England and one each for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  each of which elects a set number of MEPs, ranging from 10 in the South East and eight in London to three each in the North East and Northern Ireland. The South West region also includes Gibraltar.

 What voting system is used?

In England, Scotland and Wales, a party list system is used. Voters mark an X by their favoured party and a proportional system is used to share the regions seats between parties. Candidates at the top of a partys list are first in line to take any seats won. Candidates can also put themselves forward as individuals. In Northern Ireland, voters rank candidates in numerical order according to the single transferable vote system.

 What are the deadlines for taking part?

Candidates must submit nomination papers by April 25  apart from the South West and Gibraltar, where the deadline is April 24. Voters must register by May 7 and can apply for a postal vote until May 8. Polling stations will open from 7am to 10pm on May 23.

 Are the elections actually going to take place in the UK?

This is still to be determined. The Government can cancel the elections right up to the day before polling. Theresa May hopes to get her Brexit deal agreed in time to stop them happening. Under the terms of the delay to Brexit agreed in Brussels on Wednesday, the UK can pull out of the elections if the Prime Ministers Withdrawal Agreement is ratified by May 22.

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(PA Graphics)

 If the UK pulls out, what happens to its seats?

Brussels has agreed a redistribution of seats to take place when Brexit happens. The size of the European Parliament would be reduced by 46 to 705 and the remaining 27 seats will be shared out between EU countries, with France and Spain getting five extra MEPs, Italy and the Netherlands three and several other countries one or two. This redistribution could take place even if Brexit happens during the election campaign.

 What happens to the UKs MEPs if Brexit happens after they are elected?

As their constituents are no longer citizens of the EU, they will not be entitled to remain as their representatives in the European Parliament and will lose their seats. With the deadline for Brexit now set as October 31 and the Prime Minister hoping to leave earlier, it is possible that any UK MEPs elected will sit for only a few weeks or months.

 What were the results last time round?

The 2014 European elections saw Ukip come top of the polls, taking 24 seats to Labours 20 and 19 for the Conservatives. It was the first time since 1910 that neither Labour nor Conservatives won the largest share of seats.

With Nigel Farage as leader, Ukip came top of the polls at the last European Parliament elections in the UK in 2014 (Steve Parsons/PA)

 Who will be standing this time?

The big parties face a tight schedule to select their candidates, and it is understood that some sitting MEPs have made plans for post-Brexit life and do not want to stand again. Nigel Farages new Brexit Party will be putting up 70 candidates and other new parties are likely to fight the election, including supporters of The Independent Group of MPs, standing under the Change UK banner.

 How much will it all cost?

The estimated cost of European parliamentary elections in the UK has been given as up to 109 million.
The IMF has urged Nigeria to curb its large appetite for Chinese loans as the country struggles with a 70 billion debt burden. Thats up from 62 billion in 2017, representing a year-on-year growth of 12.25 per cent. Nigerias Nation newspaper leads with disturbing revelations the global lender at the ongoing IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington that loans from China were contracted under concessional terms without consideration of Paris Club debt servicing arrangements. Trillions of NairaVanguard quotes Nigerias Debt Management Office as saying that Nigerias external loans obtained from China currently stand at 8.5 per cent of its total debt burden. Daily Trust for its part said Abuja was last year, negotiating an additional 5.3 billionacility from Chinas EXIM Bank to fund the construction of the Ibadan-Kano rail line project. Nigeria spent 50 percent of its revenue from oil on debt payment in 2018, according to Punch newspaper.Business Hallmark, adds a frightful dimension to the debt controversy. If the amount is divided by the countrys 198 million population, it argues, then each Nigerian owes China 15, 000 Naira.Beijing earning it both waysMost of the funds given out actually go back to them by way of supplies, construction contracts with all the equipment brought over from China itself states Obadiah Mailafiya, a former Deputy Governor of Nigerias Central Bank, who played a key role in Nigerias debt relief negotiations with the Paris Club of public creditors in 2005. The development economist who was a candidate in the 2019 Presidential elections also raises a problem he has with the Bretton Woods institutions. The Chinese come into places where nobody wants to go, due to the Western medias painting of Africa as a continent of poverty, disease and chaos Obadiah Mailafiya said. That makes it difficult for African countries to go into the euro/dollar markets to source for loans and financing, he added.No colateralsFor the Nigerian banker, who is also a former official of the African Development Bank, all the Chinese need is for you to show them where the road or the dam is to be constructed and they get on with it, the EXIM Development Bank of China standing by, to provide the money needed.Obadiah Mailafiya urges African governments to ensure that they read the small prints of the conditionalities defined by the Chinese. In his view that would avoid Beijing laying claim to some of their assets, as they are doing in Madagascar, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Mailafiya also shares very worrisome allegations, hard to prove, in his words, that the Nigerian government has pledged some oil fields as collaterals for the Chinese loans.

The IMF has urged Nigeria to curb its large appetite for Chinese loans as the country struggles with a 70 billion debt burden. Thats up from 62 billion in 2017, representing a year-on-year growth of 12.25 per cent.

Nigerias Nation newspaper leads with disturbing revelations the global lender at the ongoing IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington that loans from China were contracted under concessional terms without consideration of Paris Club debt servicing arrangements.

Trillions of Naira

Vanguard quotes Nigerias Debt Management Office as saying that Nigerias external loans obtained from China currently stand at 8.5 per cent of its total debt burden.

Daily Trust for its part said Abuja was last year, negotiating an additional 5.3 billionacility from Chinas EXIM Bank to fund the construction of the Ibadan-Kano rail line project.

Nigeria spent 50 percent of its revenue from oil on debt payment in 2018, according to Punch newspaper.

Business Hallmark, adds a frightful dimension to the debt controversy. If the amount is divided by the countrys 198 million population, it argues, then each Nigerian owes China 15, 000 Naira.

Beijing earning it both ways

Most of the funds given out actually go back to them by way of supplies, construction contracts with all the equipment brought over from China itself states Obadiah Mailafiya, a former Deputy Governor of Nigerias Central Bank, who played a key role in Nigerias debt relief negotiations with the Paris Club of public creditors in 2005.

The development economist who was a candidate in the 2019 Presidential elections also raises a problem he has with the Bretton Woods institutions. The Chinese come into places where nobody wants to go, due to the Western medias painting of Africa as a continent of poverty, disease and chaos Obadiah Mailafiya said. That makes it difficult for African countries to go into the euro/dollar markets to source for loans and financing, he added.

Story continues

No colaterals

For the Nigerian banker, who is also a former official of the African Development Bank, all the Chinese need is for you to show them where the road or the dam is to be constructed and they get on with it, the EXIM Development Bank of China standing by, to provide the money needed.

Obadiah Mailafiya urges African governments to ensure that they read the small prints of the conditionalities defined by the Chinese. In his view that would avoid Beijing laying claim to some of their assets, as they are doing in Madagascar, Kenya, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Mailafiya also shares very worrisome allegations, hard to prove, in his words, that the Nigerian government has pledged some oil fields as collaterals for the Chinese loans.
Police in Ireland have insisted a taxi driver who admitted sexually assaulting three passengers has had his licence revoked.

The case has drawn widespread attention after reports of the legal proceedings stated that the mans bail conditions allowed him to carry female passengers, as long as they do not sit in the front seat.

The issue was raised in the parliament on Thursday by Sinn Feins justice spokesman who branded the reported bail terms as outrageous.

Within hours the gardai issued a statement insisting the mans taxi licence was revoked following his conviction in February.

A garda spokesman said: In February of this year a male taxi driver pleaded guilty and was convicted in the Criminal Courts of Justice on three charges of sexual assaults.

This case was remanded for sentencing on April 9.

Following the conviction, Garda Sergeant Aoife Cronin immediately referred the matter to the Garda Superintendent Carriage Office, Dublin Region.

On the February 28 the small public service vehicle licence was revoked with immediate effect for this male driver.

Earlier in the Dail parliament Donnchadh O Laoghaire described the case as frightening.

How can anyone feel safe in a taxi, no matter where they are seated, that is being driven by a man who has pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault, he added.

What mother or father would not be worried that this man could collect their daughters tonight.

It is unsafe, absolutely wrong and our legislation should not allow it. It is frightening that such a man could drive a taxi in Dublin tonight.

Before the garda clarified the issue, Tanaiste Simon Coveney said: As a father of three daughters, it is important that parents and young people can have faith that, when they get into a taxi, they are safe.

But I think I need to be careful about referring to any individual cases, he added.

Its a serious issue and of course legislation should be tested and, if necessary, changed to ensure that people who are travelling in taxis are protected appropriately and people who are given a licence to drive taxis are appropriately vetted to make sure that, whether its women or men who travelling in taxis, are given the appropriate legal protections they deserve.

He added that the Government is committed to preventing and addressing sexual abuse and gender-based violence.
The senator is not drowning in riches, or hypocrisy. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

As President Trump keeps fighting to keep his tax returns secret, several Democrats hoping to challenge him in 2020  including Kirsten Gillibrand, Jay Inslee, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren  have already released several years worth of tax returns. Soon, Bernie Sanders will join them.

Sanderss campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, told CNN on Wednesday that they will release ten years of returns by April 15, the deadline for filing taxes. Though we dont know the broader story theyll tell about Sanderss finances, one point has already drawn a lot of attention: Sanders has become a millionaire since his first presidential run in 2015. The candidate confirmed his financial status in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday. I wrote a best-selling book, he said. If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too.

Shakir told CNN that the candidate still believes in opportunity for all, and the fact that he is somebody who has personally benefited from that opportunity is something that he feels should be a shared opportunity with everyone else. Hes made some money off a book. And I think that the opportunity that he has had is evaporating for so many others. He feels that strongly.

Unsurprisingly, Sanders still received some flak for his millionaire status. Bernie is lucky to live in a capitalist society, CNNs Erin Burnett remarked on a Tuesday episode of her show. Its all very off-brand and embarrassing, but Senator Bernie Sanders is a millionaire, announced one ThinkProgress piece. But alleging that Sanderss wealth makes him a hypocrite relies on a misunderstanding of his political views, and at the same time, obscures the real red flag his tax-return saga raises.

Candidates should publish their tax returns as a matter of principle (and except for Trump, every presidential candidate has, dating back to Richard Nixon). That goes double for a candidate like Sanders, who is running as a champion of working people. Until its easier for working-class people to run for public office, chances are high that a presidential candidate will be richer than the average voter. By revealing the sources and extent of their wealth, candidates at least make themselves more accountable to voters. Trump, for example, ran for office not just as a populist focused on the concerns of white workers, but as a successful businessman. Theres reason to believe his tax returns would contradict that claim, and even reveal the extent of his corruption  information that might have shifted voters views. Warren ably summarized the argument on Wednesday. Ive put out eleven years of my tax returns because no one should ever have to guess who their elected officials are working for, she told CNBC. Doing this should be law.

If Sanders is a hypocrite, its for delaying the release of his tax returns. The size of his bank account has nothing to do with it. A person can criticize capitalism, or even categorically oppose capitalism, despite being wealthy. Left-wing movements always have their class traitors, as any college freshman who is passingly familiar with Friedrich Engels could remind us. In a similar vein, socialisms antagonists havent updated their arguments much over the last century or so. Leftists have frequently been accused of either lusting for other peoples money, or betraying their own cause because they do not live in cardboard boxes. Sanders has been subjected to similar attacks for years. Bernie Sanders slams billionaires, gets reminded he owns 3 houses, the Washington Examiner trumpeted in 2017. Socialist Bernie Sanders Wears a $700 Jacket While Complaining About Rich People, Newsweek jabbed a year later. (The jacket happened to be a gift.)

Sanders does not appear to be an anti-capitalist in the strictest sense  his brand of social democracy is compatible with capitalism, even as it seeks to regulate it and loosen its grip on the American worker  but even if he were, his wealth wouldnt make him a fraud. Socialism does not demand asceticism. As the old labor slogan says, workers need bread and roses, too  small luxuries that make life more tolerable. The point isnt to accumulate excess, but to elevate the human dignity of the worker  a radical shift from the current the political reality. When the U.S. government does offer help to low-income people, it typically does so under punitive conditions. People who need welfare have to prove theyre looking for work, as if theyre lazy bums who must be goaded into productivity. Similarly, theres no real financial reason for the Women, Infants, and Children food aid program to ban beneficiaries from purchasing herbs or spices, but it does. One F-35 fighter jet can buy a lot of dried basil, and only one of these items works as advertised on a regular basis. (Its not the jet.) The government could improve the material circumstances of vulnerable Americans with relative ease, if it chose to do so  thats the core argument Sanders, and like-minded politicians, have put forward.

So Sanders owns too many roses. If he suddenly promoted Trumps tax cuts, his detractors would be right to call him a hypocrite. The proof is in his policy. Sanders should have released his tax returns long ago. But whatever his faults, he is no Smaug, defending his horde from all comers. He has repeatedly endorsed higher taxes on wealth to fund an expansion of the welfare state, and though he isnt the only Democratic candidate to do so, his consistency is a point in his favor. His recent wealth may even make him more credible to voters as he offers it up in the name of progress. Even as a millionaire, Sanders stands in sharp contrast to Trump.
Choe Ryong Hae, vice-chairman of the central committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), inspects a farm in Sariwon, North Korea, in this photo released on April 9, 2019 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via REUTERS

By Joyce Lee and Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea named a new nominal head of state and a new premier, state media said on Friday, replacing the two senior leaders charged with representing Pyongyang in many international engagements and playing a major role in developing the civilian economy.

Choe Ryong Hae was named President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea at a session of its rubber-stamp legislature that took place on Thursday, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, replacing Kim Yong Nam.

The person holding that position is technically considered North Korea's head of state and usually represents the country at diplomatic events, though experts say real power remains concentrated in leader Kim Jong Un's hands.

Since early 2018 Kim has embarked on a push for economic development and international engagement, including historic summits with the leaders of the United States, China, and South Korea.

Kim Yong Nam, who was born in 1928, has been one of the longest serving senior officials, having had held the position since 1998, according to data by South Korea's Unification Ministry.

His replacement, Choe, was subjected to political "reeducation" in the past, but in recent years appeared to be gaining more influence since he was promoted in October 2017 to the party's powerful Central Military Commission, South Korean intelligence officials previously said.

South Korea's spy agency said in 2017 it believed he was behind the punishment of General Hwang Pyong So, once one of Kim Jong Un's most-trusted advisers.

Choe, born in 1950, was one of the most powerful officials in North Korea as head of the Workers Party of Korea Organization and Guidance Department, and had been director of cultural exchange programmes and vice chairman at the Kim Il Sung Youth League in the 1980s, leading youth delegations on goodwill visits to China, Russia, Japan, Libya and Greece, according to database North Korea Leadership Watch.

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He is a second-generation revolutionary and personally knew the late Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un's father, for over 50 years, North Korea Leadership Watch said.

Choe was one of the three officials sanctioned by the U.S. in December over allegations of rights abuses.

On Thursday U.S. President Donald Trump, who has had two summits with Kim to discuss North Korean denuclearisation and has expressed his willingness for a third, said Washington would leave sanctions in place.

North Korea also replaced the premier of its cabinet, an official at the centre of efforts to jumpstart the economy.

Leader Kim Jong Un has made economic development the centrepiece of his strategy and told officials this week that building a self-supporting economy would be a blow to the "hostile forces" that have imposed sanctions on the North Korea.

Pak Pong Ju had served his current post as premier since 2013.

According to analysts at NK News, a website that monitors North Korea, Pak helped oversee a process of "radical reform" in the economy that helped it survive sanctions.

Among those reforms were loosing control of state-run enterprises, allowing them to operate more freely in the market and to seek private investment, according to a 2017 profile of Pak in NK News.

Some of those reforms earned the ire of Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, who led North Korea at the time. But the younger Kim has more openly embraced many of those market changes, and North Korea has sought to ease sanctions and attract more private investment.

There is little known about Pak's replacement, Kim Jae Ryong, but his position will be key as Kim Jong Un doubles down on economic development.

In an expected move, KCNA also reported that Kim Jong Un has been re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee and Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by James Dalgleish and Grant McCool)
By Alexandra Valencia and Mark Hosenball

QUITO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ecuador's decision to abruptly end Julian Assange's seven-year asylum in its London embassy on Thursday followed a long deterioration in relations, driven in part by suspicions he was secretly fuelling corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno.

British police on Thursday arrested the WikiLeaks founder, who sought asylum in the Andean nation's diplomatic mission during the government of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa - who saw Assange as a hero for leaking secret U.S. documents.

By contrast, Moreno took a dim view of Assange when he took office in 2017, ordering the Australian hacker to cut back his online political commentary, stop riding his skateboard in the halls of the embassy and clean up after his pet cat.

Moreno's government accused WikiLeaks of being behind an anonymous website that said Moreno's brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a U.N. agency.

Moreno denies wrongdoing.

The leaked materials, dubbed the "INA Papers," contained private photographs of Moreno and his family. After the release of the materials, Moreno said that Assange had no right to "hack private accounts and phones," without directly accusing him.

WikiLeaks tweeted about the reports but, in messages and statements to Reuters, strongly denied that Assange was responsible for the leaks or had anything to do with their initial publication.

EMBASSY BEHAVIOUR

Ecuadorean government figures on Thursday publicly described what they called Assange's unacceptable and ungrateful behaviour in the embassy. The government said it had spent $6.2 million on his upkeep and security between 2012 and 2018.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said Assange had been using a mobile phone that was not registered with the embassy and had warned the ambassador in January that he had installed panic buttons that he would activate if he considered his life at risk.

Story continues

"It's strange that Mr. Assange has insisted on being the victim," Valencia told Ecuador's National Assembly.

The interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, told reporters on Thursday that Assange had been "allowed to do things like put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature."

Valencia told the congress that embassy cleaning staff described "improper hygienic conduct" throughout Assange's stay, adding that a lawyer representing Assange had attributed the issue to "stomach problems."

Lawyers for Assange did not respond to requests for comment. Vaughan Smith, a friend and founder of London's press Frontline Club who visited Assange late last week, told Reuters he believed the faeces allegation was false.

"Julian has been under stress but seemed in a balanced frame of mind every time I have seen him. It doesn't seem in character," Smith said.

STAFFING CHANGE

Friends of Assange who visited him inside the embassy over the last several months say that since Moreno became president, almost the entire embassy staff was replaced.

The foreign ministry named a new ambassador after Moreno took office and fired one official, Fidel Narvaez, seen as close to Assange.

While embassy staffers were friendly to Assange during Correa's presidency, Moreno's new diplomats were polite to visitors but hostile to Assange, his friends said.

In early February, according to Ecuadorean government memos released by Assange's supporters, Ecuador complained to Assange that he had deliberately pointed a studio lamp at a security camera the embassy had installed in a room where Assange was receiving visitors.

Later that month, the ambassador sent Assange a memo complaining that he had "shown once again an unacceptable behaviour" by playing a radio loudly while meeting visitors. "This action disturbed the work being carried out by the embassy," the ambassador said.

Assange had taken refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was later dropped.

U.S. officials announced after his arrest on Thursday that he had been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, paving the way for his extradition.

Correa, in an interview with Reuters in Brussels, said Moreno had given Assange "to his executioners."

Asked whether he had worked with Wikileaks to leak the INA documents, he did not directly respond. He said the documents showed the "rottenness" within Moreno's family.

"I apologise on behalf of the Ecuadorean people. A government like that - such a treacherous, treacherous president - does not represent us," Correa said.

Valencia declined to comment on criticisms of Moreno.

Correa is embroiled in a legal battle with prosecutors pursuing a case involving the kidnapping in 2012 of an opposition lawmaker. An court in Ecuador last year ordered him to be imprisoned pending a trial and issued an international arrest warrant. Correa denies the charge.

(Reporting by Alexandria Valencia in Quito and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Additional reporting by Bart Biesemans in Brussels and Carlos Vargas and Helen Murphy in Bogota; Writing by Angus Berwick and Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Rosalba O'Brien)
A third baby has died after contracting a rare blood infection at Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow (Google)

Three babies are now confirmed to have died at the same hospital after they all contracted a rare blood infection.

Two babies who were born prematurely died at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow in January, while NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde said a third has also died.

The third child was said to be have been seriously ill at the time of birth and the health board said that the Staphylococcus aureus infection was one of a number of factors in the death.

The Staphylococcus aureus infection was said to be one of a number of factors in the death (Wikipedia)

They said: As previously reported, we have been rigorously managing a number of cases of a rare Staphylococcus aureus blood stream infection in extremely premature babies in the neonatal unit of the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital.

Three babies, who were extremely poorly due to their very early birth, sadly died and infection was one of a number of contributing causes in their deaths.

The third chid had been receiving treatment following the deaths of the first two babies the health board said.

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A programme of staff and family screening has been carried out at the hospital to combat the spread of the infection.

The board added: As this was an extremely rare strain, which is highly resistant to the two antibiotics normally prescribed for S. Aureus and the skin cleaning agent routinely used in hospitals across the UK, we put in place a number of further infection control measures including the prescribing of different antibiotics and the introduction of a new skin cleaning agent.

The three babies were extremely poorly due to their very early birth (Getty/stock photo)

Staphylococcus aureus is found on the skin and in the nasal passage of some one in four people, and only causes infection when it enters the body.

No further patients at the hospital have tested positive for the infection since March but added that the source of the infection may never be known.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court's unanimous rejection of a request to investigate U.S. forces for possible war crimes in Afghanistan is a "major international victory", U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday.

He, however, warned the court against trying to prosecute Israelis or Americans following a complaint by Palestinians, which have called for an ICC investigation of Israel.

"This is a major international victory, not only for these patriots, but for the rule of law," Trump said in a statement. "We welcome this decision and reiterate our position that the United States holds American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards."

(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish)
Laleh Shahravesh was reunited with her 14-year-old daughter Paris in an emotional scene at Heathrow.

A mother held in Dubai over Facebook posts calling her ex-husbands wife a horse has returned to Britain after being freed from the most horrendous ordeal.

Laleh Shahravesh, from Richmond, south-west London, touched back down in Heathrow on Friday morning, according to the Detained in Dubai campaign group that supported her.

She was swiftly reunited with her 14-year-old daughter Paris in an emotional scene at the airport.

Laleh is free and home in London after horse insult on social media. pic.twitter.com/t0omYMHRaC  Radha Stirling  CEO @detainedindubai  (@RadhaStirling) April 12, 2019

While tearfully hugging her daughter, 55-year-old Ms Shahravesh told reporters: Im really, really happy to be reunited.

Her voice cracking with emotion, she thanked Detained in Dubai chief executive Radha Stirling who worked tirelessly to get me home to my daughter.

Ms Shahravesh was detained under controversial cyber-crime laws as she visited the United Arab Emirates for the funeral of ex-husband Pedro Correia Dos Santos in March with Paris.

Authorities had received a complaint over posts made three years ago and Ms Shahravesh was warned she faced prosecution and up to two years in prison.

But during a court appearance on Thursday, a judge ordered that her passport was to be returned if she paid a fine of 3,000 UAE Dirham (624).

Speaking to Sky News, who were present for the call with Paris, she said: Its been the most horrendous period of my life.

Ive never been separated from Paris in this way and every day part of me was dying from being away from her, during a time when I knew she needed me the most. So yes, its been very traumatic.

Story continues

The pair had travelled to the United Arab Emirates on March 10 for the funeral of her ex-husband, who was also Pariss father.

After discovering he had remarried in 2016, Ms Shahravesh called his new wife, Samah Al Hammadi, from Tunisia, a horse on Facebook.

Ms Stirling renewed her calls for the Foreign Office to provide more accurate information to Britons about the many risks they face in the UAE.

It is simply not enough to warn people to obey the laws and customs, when very often the legal system itself poses a threat even to law-abiding tourists who may be subjected to false arrests, fabricated cases, forced confessions, torture and lack of representation, she said.

Ms Stirling also warned that cyber-crime laws there task the legal system with catering to the tyranny of individual egos when people are offended by online posts.

A Foreign Office spokesman said its advice included warnings that posting material online that could be seen as being critical of the UAE government, companies or individuals or that is culturally insensitive could be considered a crime by the countrys authorities.
Raylene Marks claims the stores ear piercing policy leaves some children distressed. [Photo: Getty]

Raylene Marks, a former employee at a Claires branch in Alberta, Canada, claims the stores ear piercing policy makes some children feel pressured.

She handed in her notice after her manager told her she should have pierced a seven-year-olds ears, despite the childs evident distress at the process.

Marks shared an open letter on Facebook detailing what happened. The letter, which has been shared thousands of times, sparked a flurry of support.

It described how she was asked to assist on a double. Marks describes a double as both ears at the same time. Its reserved for nervous kids who might change their mind after the first earring goes in.

READ MORE: Primary school hires a nappy changer

She continues to explain how the girls mum was putting a great deal of pressure on her daughter. Marks told the other piercer she wouldnt be a part of the ear piercing on the girl after she pleaded and sobbed for 30 minutes not to be pierced.

The following day, though, her boss questioned her refusal, telling Marks: Yes, you do the piercing even if the little girl cries and asks her not to.

That was enough to encourage her to hand in her notice.

READ MORE: Is it ok for parents to have a favourite child?

Marks read the stores policy thoroughly and realised that it was deeply flawed. There was no mention of the use of physical restraint by a parent or the employees right to refuse an ear piercing.

Her message gathered thousands of responses. One Facebook user wrote: Good for you, no means NO, no matter what the age.

She finished the open letter by imploring Claires to be better. Be accountable. Know whats going on in your stores, and do something about it.

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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.
Candace Owens. Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

The Republican Party lost whatever credibility it had as a sincere partner in curbing white nationalism when its delegates selected Donald Trump as the partys nominee for president in 2016. That credibility, such that it was, continued to erode over the following two and a half years as Republican members of Congress coalesced behind President Trumps immigration policies, which were designed by advisers like Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon, who describe Latin American immigrants as an invading criminal horde, and sold in Fox News segments drumming up white fears of a nonwhite majority. The GOP arguably hit rock bottom with its continued support of Steve King, a Republican congressman whose openly racist politics  including his denial of nonwhite contributions to Western civilization  were rebuked by his own party for the first time this year. (He remains in office.) But it continued to plumb the depths on Tuesday, when Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee called on Candace Owens to testify during a hearing about the threat of white nationalist violence following terrorist attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Christchurch, New Zealand.

Owens is a black right-wing media personality, communications director for the conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, and a favorite of the Infowars circuit. Predictably, she took Tuesdays opportunity to deny that racism is a particular problem in the Republican Party or the conservative movement more broadly. She called the Southern strategy  which during the 1960s saw the GOP embrace an anti-civil-rights platform to attract bigoted white southern voters  a myth, and accused Representative Ted Lieu of believing that black people are stupid because he played footage of Owens tacitly endorsing Adolf Hitlers nationalism. Her unseriousness overshadowed the actual authorities who were invited to testify by Democrats, including Kristen Clarke, a civil-rights lawyer, and Mohammad Abu-Salha, whose two daughters and son-in-law were killed in 2015 in a suspected hate crime. There is an argument to be made that Owens was invited to distract the public from an issue that threatened to indict too many Republican legislators and voters regarding their complicity. But her presence had the unintended side effect of highlighting that complicity instead.

The bar for entry as a black Republican and YouTube celebrity turned congressional expert witness is low, and seems to privilege two traits: an enthusiasm for reassuring white Republicans that they are not racist, and a willingness to be a public symbol of their purported non-racism. Today, Owens is the most visible exemplar of both, and of the characteristics they require  namely, a relentless dishonesty in the face of factual evidence and an unquenchable thirst for the spotlight. She is also something of a last resort. The GOP has so thoroughly discredited itself as a party even remotely concerned with the plight of the average black American  and especially the average black American woman  that its white standard-bearers are willing to bestow legitimacy, expert status, and a certain degree of party spokesmanship on practically any black person who toes the party line. People like Owens have become Republicans go-to retort to allegations of racism. And her deployment betrays the belief, endemic to the GOP, that racisms existence is a matter of opinion that can be debunked by any random black persons say-so.

This is demonstrated by the continued success of Diamond and Silk, a pair of black female performers whose comedic tours  attended primarily by white conservatives  hinge on assuring their audiences that their support for Trump does not connote bigotry. It was demonstrated when Michael Cohen testified before Congress that Trump was a bigot, citing times when the president referred to black people as stupid and prone to living in degraded conditions by choice, only to have Representative Mark Meadows, a North Carolina Republican, respond by parading a black Trump employee before the committee as physical evidence to the contrary.

Racism is measurable, of course, in disparities ranging from wealth gaps to residential segregation to incarceration rates. But its deadly nature is perhaps no more vivid than after a mass shooting, when the bodies of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch or Jewish ones in Pittsburgh are dead and bleeding on the ground. Collectively, they are irrefutable evidence. Meanwhile, Owenss claim to the credibility that allows her to dismiss such violence as overblown, or part of a Democratic plot to frighten nonwhite voters, is that she received racist phone calls from a white classmate in high school. Summoning her to Washington, D.C., to cast doubt on racisms dangers demonstrates an irreverence on the part of Republicans that transcends the unseriousness of its vessel. It is downright sinister  not to mention denialist  regarding the GOPs debt to the very white nationalist movement in whose name said violence is committed.

And even if the rate of deaths caused by white nationalists pales in comparison to those caused by car collisions or heart disease, that the former is powerful enough to inspire one person to kill 11 others in a single day is, at the very least, worth taking seriously. House Republicans this week treated it as theoretical, or worse, a joke. They presented to Congress and to Americans refuting testimony from a social-media provocateur whose entire brand is to lie about racism. It might have been innocuous had it not sought to obscure the toxic ideology that simultaneously radicalizes young white men, inspires mass murder, and questions the human worth of nonwhite people, all while enabling Republicans to capture the White House in 2016, against all expert predictions. The House GOP knew entering Tuesdays hearing that the 2020 election is around the corner. It is in their best interest to save their meal ticket until it can once more be redeemed, rather than discard it simply to undermine the social ills that accompany it.
Vietnamese ride-hailing firm FastGo has announced to launch its helicopter ride-sharing service in Hanoi, said the firm general director Nguyen Huu Tuat.

According to Tuat, the service named FastSky will be conducted from early next month. From April 20, customers can book FastSky flights.

The flights will focus on tours from Hanoi to northern tourist destinations such as Ha Long Bay and cover services for wedding photography emergencies. Passengers will be picked up and then returned at Gia Lam Airport in Hanoi. Each flight is allowed to transport up to 12 passengers.

The price depends on different service. The package fees range from USD3,000-5,000. Customers can pay in installments over a period of 12 months.

FastGo has prepared 10-12 helicopters for the service.

Set up in April last year, FastGo has expanded its operations to some Southeast Asian countries like Myanmar, Indonesia and Singapore.

It has also got a nod from the Ministry of Transport to pilot its FastCar service in HCM City.

Nguoi Lao Dong/Dtinews
Higher import tariffs proposed by the government are expected to restrict imports of trucks and specialized vehicles from China.

The Ministry of Finance (MOF) has made public the draft of Decree 125 on preferential import/export tariffs, under which some specialized vehicles such as refrigerator trucks, waste collection vehicles and cement tanker trucks would be taxed 25 percent instead of 20 percent.

The ministry has also proposed raising the import tariff on concrete mixer trucks from 15 percent to 20 percent.

Explaining the decision, MOF said domestic automobile manufacturers now can manufacture medium and heavy trucks and specialized vehicles, with the total capacity of 45,000 products a year, which is bigger than market demand by three times. The adjustment of tax will encourage domestic production.

Explaining the decision, MOF said domestic automobile manufacturers now can manufacture medium and heavy trucks and specialized vehicles, with the total capacity of 45,000 products a year, which is bigger than market demand by three times. The adjustment of tax will encourage domestic production.



Meanwhile, the tariffs applied in other regional countries such as Thailand and Malaysia are much higher, 40-60 percent, than Vietnam.

Analysts believe that the tax hike will keep Chinese vehicles, especially trucks, away from the market because the products will be less competitive compared with domestically assembled ones.

According to Bui Xuan Truong, director of Truong Thanh Automobile, Chinese vehicles dominated the domestic market previously because they were cheaper than domestically made products, while their prices were just half of the imports from Japan and South Korea.

However, truck imports from China decreased in 2015, when MOF raised tariffs on some truck lines. The imports will continue to drop with MOFs latest move.

However, analysts still doubt the tax hike will restrict Chinese imports.

Phung, a truck dealer in district 12, HCMC, said Chinese trucks still account for 50 percent of total trucks sold thanks to the low prices.

Chinese Howo, Dongfeng, Sinotruck and JAC products are priced at VND1 billion in Vietnam, while the products of the same types sourced from South Korea and Japan are sold at VND1.5-1.8 billion.

If the tariff increases by 5 percent, Chinese trucks would be more expensive by tens of million of dong. However, with the prices, Chinese products would still be cheaper than Japanese and South Korean models.

Duc Manh, director of a truck trading company in HCMC, thinks the tax hike would decrease the number of imports from China, but the sales of Chinese products assembled in Vietnam would not decrease significantly. Vietnamese manufacturers would still feel the pressure of the competition, he said.

Nguyen Minh Dong, an automobile expert, said that raising import tariffs is a good solution to improve the competitiveness of domestic manufacturers. However, to help the industry develop in a sustainable way, the government needs to set reasonable policies to encourage domestic enterprises to make automobile parts so the localization ratio can be raised.



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The major reason behind the subsidence in Mekong Delta is the overexploitation of underground water.

Reports show that the average subsidence rate in Mekong Delta has been 18 centimeters over the last 25 years, while the rate is up to 30 centimeters in some places.

Mr Nguyen Huu Thien (standing)

As the subsidence continues and becomes more serious, scientists have called on to take action to save the delta. The Government Office on March 27 conveyed PM Nguyen Xuan Phucs instruction to take reasonable measures to mitigate the subsidence speed in Mekong Delta.

For a delta created by alluvial river sedimentation, there are three reasons behind subsidence.

As the subsidence continues and becomes more serious, scientists have called on to take action to save the delta. The Government Office on March 27 conveyed PM Nguyen Xuan Phucs instruction to take reasonable measures to mitigate the subsidence speed in Mekong Delta.



First, natural causes. If the Mekong river runs naturally, it will bring alluvium to raise the level of Mekong Delta, thus offsetting the subsidence. However, according to the Mekong River Commission (MRC), the volume of silt brought to Mekong Delta dropped by 50 percent in 1992-2014, from 160 million tons per annum to 85 million tons. The figure is expected to decrease further as a result of the appearance of hydropower dams.

Second, the weight of the construction works that press the ground. However, the effects are only seen in large urban areas.

Third, the overexploitation of underground water. This is believed to be the main reason leading to the subsidence.

The Mekong River is situated at the end of Mekong River basin with the annual water flow of 475 billion cubic meters on average. In the Mekong Delta, the rainfall is 1.4-2.0 meters of water, making up 11 percent of total water of the Mekong River.

In the world, the Mekong ranks third in terms of annual water volume, after the Amazon, Congo and Chanjiang, and 18th in terms of water flow (cubic meters per second).

However, instead of using river water, locals now prefer underground water. They think underground water belongs to everyone and they can use for all purposes  daily use, crop watering and shrimp pond dilution.

Even during the six months of rainy season, people prefer using underground water, because rivers have become seriously polluted, while rainwater is no longer clean.

According to Nguyen Huu Thien, a respected independent expert on Mekong Delta ecology, reducing the exploitation of underground water would be the best solution to subsidence.

To do this, it is necessary to find water sources during the dry season. Local authorities could build water supply works to provide river water to people.

Meanwhile, households could build tanks to store rainwater. Thien suggested using technologies to turn sea water into fresh water. Also, it is necessary to upgrade river water quality to ensure supply for the long term.



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Rising concerns about the environment and livelihoods are setting barriers to developing solar energy in Vietnam, experts stressed yesterday.

Workers install solar panels in the central province of Quang Ngai.  VNA/VNS Photo Sy Thang

They were speaking at a conference entitled Solar energy Viet Nam: grid integration challenges and opportunities hosted by the National University of Civil Engineering Viet Nam (NUCE) and the KU Leuven Belgium, with the support of the Embassy of Belgium in Hanoi.

Solar energy harvesting, especially through the Photovoltaic system, has witnessed a boom in recent years.

The Governments decision No 11 released in 2017, has created good conditions to accelerate the industry.

Since then, Vietnam has attracted 20GW of large-scale developments, which makes the country the regional leader in solar energy.

Vietnam is standing in front of unprecedented opportunities to develop solar energy, said renewable energy expert Nguyen Van Khai.

He said 242 solar energy projects have been registered. Some 100 projects are at the stage of closing deals with Viet Nam Electricity (ENV) and 50 are due to come into operations.

The buying price for each kW rises, from VND1,800 to VND3,000 (US$0.078 to 0.129).

At the same time, the cost for solar panels and accessories has fallen.

Beside the large-scale projects, people are interested in smaller rooftop installations.

He stressed the advantages of solar energy systems installed in isolated areas, fishing boats or shrimp breeding ponds to serve basic needs.

However, new projects are causing concerns over grid overloading and suboptimal operation of PV installation.

Environmental concerns including the rapid growth of population, urbanisation expansion, the diminishment of agricultural land for solar energy projects and impacted communities have posed challenges to solar energy projects in Viet Nam.

These problems have called for more innovative and comprehensive solutions that are not only technical but also socio-economical.

At the conferences, participants touched upon innovations in solar harvesting and storage technologies which offer integrated solutions for also food production, cultivation and sustainable development.

Vietnams annual power consumption has increased by 10 per cent in recent years, putting the country at risk of power shortages in the future.

Renewable energy like solar and wind would play an essential role in helping Vietnam complete its long-term goal of connecting the whole country to the national grid.

Both home rooftop systems and large projects invested by domestic and foreign investors are main focuses of the countrys solar power development plan.

According to experts, Vietnams solar system had a potential to reach 35,000MW by 2030.

Government has applied tariff incentives or renewable energy payments for solar power since 2017 in an attempt to accelerate investment in renewable energy. The fixed solar power price is set at VND2,086 ($0.08).

The Ministry of Industry and Trade is working on new prices for solar energy based on geographical zones and opening the floor for feedback.

VNS

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National Assembly deputies are still arguing about the one program, many sets of textbooks principle they approved five years ago.

The National Assemblys Resolution No 88 released in 2014 says that Vietnam would diversify textbook compilers. The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) would be the only agency which has the right to set curricula for education levels, but would not be the only agency that compiles textbooks.

Pham Van Hoa, NA Deputy

Organizations and individuals will be encouraged to compile textbooks based on the curriculum framework. General education establishments will choose textbooks for their students after consulting with teachers, students and parents.

The resolution was released after thorough discussions and the idea of one curriculum, many sets of textbooks was praised as encouraging creativity and renovation which is in line with the international practice.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) would be the only agency which has the right to set curricula for education levels, but would not be the only agency that compiles textbooks.

But now, many problems have emerged.

The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) would be the only agency which has the right to set curricula for education levels, but would not be the only agency that compiles textbooks.

Pham Van Hoa, a National Assembly deputy, said the idea of letting schools to choose textbooks after consulting with students and parents is irrational, because they dont have the necessary knowledge and experience in this field to contribute opinions.

He warned that a lot of problems may arise if schools in the same province use different textbooks, especially when students follow different textbooks but have the same exam questions.

Warning that many textbooks may make things chaotic, he said students will have to buy other textbooks if they move to other schools. He also fears that wrongdoing would occur as publishers and compilers may give bribes to school leaders in exchange for the schools using their textbooks.

Tran Van Tien, another National Assembly deputy, also disagrees with one program, many sets of textbooks, for fear that the existence of more than one set of textbooks for every grade will make it difficult to organize national exams.

How will we design a national exam for all students if students learn with different textbooks? he said, adding that there should be one official set of textbooks for every grade, while the other books will be for reference.

A model has been suggested under which a national council would be in charge of compiling official textbooks to be used for many years and in all localities. However, the textbooks will be open for local authorities to add lessons about typical characteristics in their localities.

The textbooks will be reviewed periodically every 5-10 years, and they will be re-compiled and updated with information if necessary.

Disagreeing with the opinions, Bui Van Phuong thinks that one program, many sets of textbooks is reasonable, saying that textbooks should be seen as a tool for students to access knowledge from general education. The textbooks which help students better access knowledge must be chosen, he said.



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Mai Lan
Various solutions for sustainable water management were raised at the Water Business Dialogues held by the Netherlands Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City on April 11.

At the Water Business Dialogues

The event brought together more than 100 Vietnamese and Dutch scientists, experts and businesspeople in the field of water and environment, along with leaders of departments and universities in Ho Chi Minh City, and 13 cities and provinces in the Mekong Delta.

Dutch Minister of Infrastructure and Water Management Cora Van Nieuwenhuizen spoke highly of Vietnams great attention to issues regarding water management and climate change.

More attention should be paid to saltwater intrusion prevention and water resource management in serve of agricultural production, and clean water supply in the Mekong Delta, thus contributing to spurring the regional development, she suggested.

Nieuwenhuizen expressed her hope that cooperation projects between Vietnam and the Netherlands in water resource management and environmental protection in the Mekong Delta in the time ahead will help open up many economic development opportunities, and improve operational capacity of local river ports and water transport, and ensure clean water supply for local people.

The Netherlands stands ready to support and share knowledge and experience in this field with Vietnam, especially coastal localities in the Mekong Delta in climate change adaptation, she said.

Sharing Nieuwenhuizens views, Deputy Director of Can Tho citys Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Pham Truong Yen said the lack of water management has resulted in saltwater intrusion, flooding and water shortage in the dry season.

The Blue Dragon project, with the support of Dutch experts, has partially helped ease environmental pollution after dams were built to prevent saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta, he said.

Can Tho has built water management systems in O Mon district and Xang Xa No cannel, he added.

Menno Snel, Dutch State Secretary for Finance, underlined the importance of the water sector to national construction and development.

Therefore, it is necessary to invest in mid- and long-term projects on water management in order to serve sustainable development, he said, noting that these big projects require attention and investment from both Vietnamese and Dutch Governments in order to push ahead with efficient water management in the Mekong Delta.

Over the past five years, more than 300 Dutch experts and researchers have organised over 200 workshops on water management, environmental protection and climate change adaptation in the Mekong Delta.

Many Dutch organisations and experts have also shared experience in risk management and mitigation, and flood combat with Can Tho city, and Soc Trang and Kien Giang provinces.-VNA
Tran Minh Thuan, an 18-year-old student in Hanoi has won scholarships to 10 universities in the US.

Tran Minh Thuan



Before starting high school, Thuan attended a summer camp in the US and has wanted to study overseas ever since. Last year, he developed a strong interest in environmental issues, especially since air pollution in Hanoi has worsened. He was determined to study both the environment and economy to understand how they impact each other and the situation in South East Asia.

"A cousin of mine in the central province of Binh Dinh died partly because he drank polluted water which was contaminated with lead and mercury for too long. Vietnam's water filtration systems are also lacking," he said.

He has won two international maths contests in 10th and 11th grades, became the resident of the Maths Club at Concordia International School in Hanoi and co-founder of the Concordia International Research Conference. Thuan also plays the ukulele at his school's choir and sings at the Binh Minh Jazz Club during the weekends.

He is the head of the Department of Communication at SANSE, a non-government organisation based in Lao Cai Province. They often bring teas from Ban Lien Commune to sell in Hanoi and used the profits to help disadvantaged pupils in Ban Lien attend high school.

Phan Thuy Phuong, Thuan's mother, said he had shown a passion for arts since very early. "He's an empathetic person. In order to get into his dream universities, he has worked very hard in the past years," she said.

Thuan has won scholarships to several universities in the US such as the Stanford, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Davidson College.

Thuan said he was wavering between Stanford and Princeton. But no matter what, he will definitely enrol in statistical science and environmental studies. After graduation, he wants to return to Vietnam and use data science to set up an environmental company. Dtinews
Whether its legal or not, Trump wants to transport detained migrants far from his electoral base. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Washington Post created a major buzz in political circles Thursday night when it reported the Trump administration had been kicking around the idea of transporting and releasing migrants detained at the border in districts represented in Congress by their Democratic enemies, or in cities that have sanctuary policies limiting cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts (Nancy Pelosis San Francisco, of course, qualifies under either approach).

Every administration official the Post talked to denied that any such plan was under active consideration, despite its apparent strong support from presidential adviser Stephen Miller, thought to be a bigger dog than ever after a recent purge of DHS. For one thing, federal immigration attorneys could find no discernible legal authority for taking such a step, particularly since federal judges tend to frown on using executive authority visibly to punish political enemies, which was clearly a major rationale for the proposal.

But just when the idea was thought to be one of those scary potential Trump administration policies that cooler heads would sidetrack, you-know-who gave it fresh momentum:

....The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

As my colleague Jonathan Chait observed, the migrants-to-the-cities idea reflects a general radicalization of the administrations challenge to legal and political norms:

There is little mystery about Trumps intent to turn [DHS] into an unalloyed instrument of his agenda. So we are left wondering whether the danger has been thwarted, or whether it yet looms over our heads.

A related question is whether Trumps tweets on the subject are just an act of trolling designed to put Democrats in a bad spot, or something that appeals to his (and Millers) crude but sometimes shrewd political instincts.

Once you think about it for a while, the migrants-to-the-cities policy does make sense from the perspective of xenophobic MAGA supporters living far from New York or Chicago or San Francisco, who count on Trump to protect them from the swarthy invaders that represent an existential threat to everything they cherish. The idea of owning the libs by exposing them directly and exclusively to the consequences of their unpatriotic policies makes it an even more emotionally satisfying proposition among angry conservatives. The underlying message to the presidents enemies is: You want these garbage people in our country? Then you take em in your neighborhoods and streets and schools!

But theres another side of the political coin on this subject: Though he meant it as a taunt, Trump may actually be right that accepting migrant families into their communities would make a lot of urban liberals happy. Despite the lurid picture of migrants Trumps allies like to paint, these are hardly hardened criminals. Most immigrants with serious criminal records arent released anywhere other than back across the border. They do represent a fresh source of inexpensive labor at a time when labor markets have become very tight. For people in cities that dont fear them, migrants could represent an important new economic resource, particularly for places where construction is booming, as the New York Times notes:

The recent shortage of immigrant workers is impacting housing and housing affordability, said Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Phil Crone, who runs the associations Dallas chapter, said the labor bottleneck was adding about $6,000 to the cost of every home built in the area and delaying completion by two months.

Were it not for immigrants, the labor crunch would be even more intense. In 2016, immigrants accounted for one in four construction workers, according to a study by Natalia Siniavskaia of the home builders association, up from about one in five in 2004. In some of the least-skilled jobs  like plastering, roofing and hanging drywall, for which workers rarely have more than a high school education  the share of immigrants hovers around half.

As Splinters Libby Watson points out, dumping migrants anywhere without appropriate support would be horridly inhumane  not to the host communities, but to migrants themselves:

The release of these migrants to the streets without any support, of course, is vile in itself. On Christmas Day last year (gotta love this administrations Christian charity), NPR reported that ICE had released approximately 400 migrants near the Greyhound bus terminal with no apparent plan in place for the men, women and children over the past few days. Those migrants were left completely reliant on generous strangers who have been showing up in droves to distribute food, water and blankets as temperatures drop into the 40s.

But Watson goes on to suggest that the own the libs rationale for such a policy doesnt hold up:

A premise like busing migrants to San Francisco will punish Nancy Pelosi is not self-explanatory. I do not immediately understand the mechanism by which releasing a tired, huddled mass of immigrants in cities with massive populations  and cities where asylum approval rates are much higher  punish their representatives.

So while its almost certainly not going to happen, for all sorts of reasons (including the law), its worth noting that the administrations assumption that people everywhere would freak out at having to deal with relatively small numbers of resettled migrants could be dead wrong. That doesnt mean we can just happily move to a country where polarized attitudes on immigration and other subjects can be accommodated by two sets of policies that together please most of the people most of the time. But it may show that the myth of hypocritical lefties who are bigoted as everyone else is just that.

Perhaps it could even become a popular slogan: Dear Migrants: Welcome to New York City!
Kris Kobach makes Cuccinelli look almost reasonable. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

The whole world understands that the recent sacking of key personnel at the Department of Homeland Security represented a presidential demand for a toughening of already-rough immigration policies. The competition to succeed defenestrated DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen may indicate exactly how vicious Trump and his trusted policy henchman Stephen Miller intend to get.

Naturally, Trump favorite Kris Kobach, who has some time on his hands after losing the 2018 gubernatorial election in Kansas, is in the mix. He boasts a dual commitment to exclusionary immigration policies and voter suppression that makes him especially congenial to the MAGA folk. But he may not be confirmable in the Senate.

And then theres the possibility of a lateral transfer for Energy Secretary and former Texas governor Rick Perry, who has always been tough on border security, despite occasional squishiness (i.e., agreement with a majority of Americans) on other immigration issues, like treatment of Dreamers and other undocumented people already in the country.

A possible compromise between troglodyte Kobach and mere Visigoth Perry is emerging, though: Virginias former attorney general and conservative ideological warhorse Ken Cuccinelli.

Cucccinelli, who gained national attention as the failed Republican nominee for Governor of Virginia in 2013 (losing to Terry McAuliffe), is a hard-core immigration hawk, mainly as a corollary of his general determination to stake out the firmest and clearest conservative ground on everything. He was best known in Virginia as a right-wing culture warrior against legalized abortion and homosexuality. But he also battled climate science, tried to kill Obamacare, and on the issue most relevant to his current aspirations, he called for a constitutional convention to revoke birthright citizenship.

The Virginians big problem is that he was not an original Trump supporter; indeed, he was Ted Cruzs chief delegate hunter before and during the 2016 Republican National Convention. But as Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics reports, Cuccinelli, like Cruz himself, has tried to make it all up to the warlord who conquered his party:

Cuccinelli has all the prerequisites for the Trump Cabinet, whose members regularly double as cable TV guests. He is tough on crime, hawkish on the border, and an articulate, often feisty, interviewee. The longtime lawyer regularly made the cable news circuit to defend the president before signing with CNN in 2017 as a legal commentator.

A combative Cuccinelli notably caught flak there for clashing with Ana Navarro. During a shouting match over Trumps immigration policies, he told the former Republican strategist and current co-host of The View that he was sick and tired of listening to your shrill voice in my ears.

Cuccinelli is getting major backing from his long-time movement-conservative allies:

In a letter postmarked for Friday and obtained by RealClearPolitics, 19 outside conservative organizations urged the president to pick Cuccinelli. Longtime Trump boosters, including former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center, and Ginni Thomas  the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas  lent their signatures.

Those are some important friends to have. He also reportedly has the good fortune of being acceptable to both Stephen Miller and his sometimes-rival, presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Trump is also considering the appointment of a an immigration czar who gets to ride herd on administration officials who arent sufficiently zealous on the subject, without having to run the sprawling DHS. Cuccinellis on the short-list for that gig, too, if it materializes.

Any way you slice it, Cuccinelli is another symbol of the fusion of Trumpism with movement conservatism, and the extinction of NeverTrump ideological ultras. The turn to the right at DHS could help blur or even eliminate the old differences Cuccinelli embodied in 2016, once and for all.
Recap of some polls that were released this week.

Iowa: The state kicks off the 2020 vote with its caucus on February 3. A Monmouth University Poll showed former vice-president Joe Biden in front with 27%, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders at 16% and South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg at 9%.

New Hampshire: The nation's first primary is scheduled for February 11. A St. Anselm College poll also had Biden, Sanders and Buttigieg in the top three slots, with 23%, 16% and 11%, respectively. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of neighboring Massachusetts was at 9%.

South Carolina: The final early primary state will hold its contest on February 29, just three days before Super Tuesday. Change Research found Biden with 32% support, Sanders 14% and Sen. Kamala Harris in 3rd at 10%. Georgia's Stacey Abrams was included in this survey; she finished in 6th place with 7%.
Gal Koplewitz in The Economist:

Few people ever observed Emma Kunz, a Swiss alternative healer and artist, at work. One of the only accounts comes from a man called Anton Meier, who first met Kunz when his parents asked her to cure his childhood polio. Kunz was a spiritualist who used drawing as a way to divine the future. Meier recalled watching her in the early 1940s as she attempted to predict the outcome of a meeting between Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

Standing in front of the sheet of graph paper and concentrating on her question, she held her pendulum in her right hand above the paper. The movements of the pendulum indicated points, which she marked down; the drawing thus began with an array of pencilled dots. She then used the pendulum to establish the main lines and drew them directly on the paper, before starting to connect the dots with lines in pencil, coloured pencil and crayon.

The drawings Kunz created through this unusual process  more than 400 in total  are kaleidoscopic, hypnotic and enigmatic. They remained in her workroom during her lifetime, and werent exhibited until 1973, more than a decade after her death, when they went on show at a museum in Switzerland. Now, around 60 of them are on display at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

Kunz was born in Switzerland in 1892 into a family of handloom weavers, and developed an early interest in the paranormal. As the exhibition catalogue puts it (perhaps too matter-of-factly), she [discovered] her telepathy and extra-sensory powers as a child. In 1910 she took up radiesthesia, a form of divination she practised with a pendulum. She had a strong independent streak and at the age of 19 travelled to America in pursuit of a pastors son. The trip was not a success, and she returned to Brittnau, the town where she grew up, where she was given the cruel nickname Mrs Philadelphia. She never married, although she did live with Jacob Friedrich Welti, an art critic, for five years, after working as a part-time housekeeper for his family.

More here.
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Rideshare company Uber officially unveiled plans for an initial public offering today, filing its S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. By and large, the document is unsurprising. Just as with Lyfts IPO, Uber wants investors to know that it might never become profitable.

Uber already operates at a substantial loss. In fact, Ubers operating expenses might increase more, should certain factors change. For instance, if the courts decide that Uber drivers have been misclassified as independent contractors, and should actually be employees, Uber then has to rejigger its finances. The list of pending court cases against Uber is substantial.

Unlike Lyft, however, the noose around Ubers neck is its reputation, which has repeatedly affected the companys business, just as harassment scandals and PR mistakes have affected the company. Perhaps the most well-known anti-Uber campaign was #DeleteUber, which went world-wide shortly after President Trumps first Muslim ban went into effect in early 2017. Cab drivers at JFK airport stopped working as a sign of protest, and shortly after, Uber disabled surge pricing  a move that was perceived as a sort of strike-breaking maneuver. Swept up in a wave of anti-Trump solidarity, many users decided to #DeleteUber.

According to Ubers S-1, the loss of users was substantial. As a result of the #DeleteUber campaign, hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using the Uber platform within days of the campaign, the company revealed to potential investors. Unlike other tech companies that are reliant on advertisers for revenue, Uber charges its users directly, making its reputation with them more important than, say, Facebooks reputation with its users. Because each user pays money directly to Uber, each one is far more valuable than the comparable user of a free, ad-supported service.

Later in 2017, allegations of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation in the workplace adversely impacted our reputation and further encouraged platform users to cease use of our offerings, the filing further states, referencing a bruising blog post from former employee Susan Fowler, which set off a wave of reports about aggressive mismanagement by then-CEO Travis Kalanick. We have been on a new path forward since the hiring of our Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi in September 2017, the S-1 promises.

Uber cannot entrench itself as easily as companies like Facebook or Google or Amazon, which rely on their scale to succeed. Sure, its nice that Uber is available in so many places, but each user doesnt harness the power of the entire network. They just need one car to take them to one place  and that type of business can be replicated relatively easily. Thats part of the reason why managing its reputation is so important: Uber has a lot of competition.

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For months, conventional wisdom has held that the Democratic primary would be overflowing with candidates. Not only would the debates, much like those the Republicans held in 2016, require both an adult and kids table, but a few unfortunate nobodies might end up sitting on the floor.

As the first debates approach in June, its beginning to look as if the predictions of a primary with 30 or even 40 Democrats wont come true. But 20 is still within reach. With ten months until the first primary in Iowa, heres whos in and whos out, in alphabetical order.

Everyone Whos Running in 2020

Michael Bennet

The Colorado senator planned to announce his candidacy in April, but a prostate-cancer diagnosis slowed him down. After surgery that his campaign described as completely successful, the 54-year-old entered the race on May 2, telling CBS This Morning. I think this country faces two enormous challenges, among others. One is a lack of economic mobility and opportunity for most Americans, and the other is the need to restore integrity to our government.

Joe Biden

After months of speculation, Biden launched his campaign in late April with a direct attack on President Trump. I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time, he says in the video. Hes the front runner, and by honing in on the general election, hes acting like it.

Cory Booker

New Jerseys junior senator and the former mayor of Newark, Booker launched his campaign in February with a typically positive message focusing on his favorite subject: love. We need to have leaders in this country who understand what patriotism means, and patriotism means love of country, and you cant love your country if you dont love your countrymen, he said.

Steve Bullock

With a focus on campaign finance reform and his ability to work with Republicans, Montanas Governor became the 23rd candidate to join the race in mid-May. Expect to hear a lot of talk about his being the Democratic governor of a state Trump won by 20 points  if you hear him at all.

Pete Buttigieg

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has a compelling profile as a gay veteran who speaks seven languages. Thats helped him get attention in a crowded field despite being a relative unknown with a hard-to-pronounce name. Hes hoping itll also help become the youngest-ever president.

Julian Castro

President Obamas HUD secretary and the former mayor of San Antonio, Castro has long been pegged a Democratic rising star. Now, the 44-year-old, who is the only Latino in the race, is hoping to take on Trump by focusing on immigration.

Bill de Blasio

New York Citys Mayor is not very well liked at home, but hes decided to take his progressive record national. In his launch video, de Blasio said he knows how to take on Donald Trump. Then he proved thats not true by unveiling a terrible nickname for the President: Con Don.

John Delaney

The former Maryland congressman started running for president in July of 2017, earlier than anyone else. That doesnt seem to have helped.

Tulsi Gabbard

An early Bernie Sanders supporter in 2016, Gabbard has already made history as the first American Samoan and Hindu member of Congress. She faces hurdles in her attempt to become the first female president though, including some of her foreign-policy views.

Kirsten Gillibrand

Gillibrand, a moderate New York congresswoman turned progressive senator, jumped into the presidential race in January on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Im going to run for president of the United States, because as a young mom, Im going to fight for other peoples kids as hard as I would fight for my own, she said.

Mike Gravel

The 88-year-old former Alaska senator says he doesnt want to be president, but, with the help of some plucky teens, hes running in hopes of making the debates, where he can push the field left.

Kamala Harris

Before she was a senator from California, Harris was the states attorney general, a job that gives her the kind of law-enforcement background that could be a liability in the Democratic primary and an asset in the general election.

John Hickenlooper

Colorados former governor, Hickenlooper was nearly Hillary Clintons pick for vice-president. Now, hes got his sights set on the Oval Office and hopes his record as a moderate leader from the swing state will help him make the unlikely journey there.

Jay Inslee

The Washington governor isnt likely to win the Democratic nomination, but as a single-issue candidate focused on climate change, his candidacy could help shape the debate.

Amy Klobuchar

Dogged by criticism of her treatment of her staff, the Minnesota senator has attempted to use her intensity as an asset, telling CNN, When youre out there on the world stage and dealing with people like Vladimir Putin, yeah, you want someone whos tough.

Wayne Messam

Among the least well-known candidates, Messam is the mayor of Miramar, Florida, and the son of Jamaican immigrants. Among his policy proposals is the cancellation of student debt.

Seth Moulton

The Massachusetts congressman and former Marine says he joined the race to talk about service, security, and patriotism. A frequent critic of his own party, Moulton has said its time for a new generation of Democratic leaders. At 40, hes the third-youngest candidate in the field. (Both Buttigieg and Gabbard are 37.)

Beto ORourke

A close-but-not-quite challenge to Senator Ted Cruz turned the former Texas congressman into a Democratic star. Now, hes hoping to win over national Democrats with a candidacy thats often criticized for putting style over substance.

Tim Ryan

The Ohio congressman was previously best known for trying, and failing, to oust Nancy Pelosi from the Speakers chair. Now that hes running for president, hes still best known for that.

Bernie Sanders

Back after a second-place finish in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary, the Vermont senator has seen the party move toward his positions in the past three years. Hes in the top tier, but isnt a shoo-in for the nomination.

Eric Swalwell

The California congressman is running with a focus on gun control.

Elizabeth Warren

A commitment to rolling out big policy initiatives has defined the early months of Warrens candidacy. For some reason though, the Massachusetts senator hasnt caught fire.

Marianne Williamson

If Williamson, a self-described moral and spiritual awakener, is good enough for Oprah, she must be good enough for America, right?

Andrew Yang

Yang is an entrepreneur, a big fan of universal basic income, and a favorite candidate of many meme-loving young folks.

Everyone Whos Ruled Out a 2020 Run

Michael Avenatti

The man best known as Stormy Danielss lawyer never seemed like a serious contender for president, so it was little surprise that his flirtation with running ended before it got serious. A father of three, Avenatti said on December 4 that he would not be running at the request of his family, though he went on to claim that many of the others likely to run have no real chance at winning. His subsequent indictment on dozens of federal charges confirmed he wont take up residence in the White House anytime soon.

Michael Bloomberg

The billionaire New Yorker said hes not running when it became clear that Biden was.

Sherrod Brown

Seen by some as the only hope Democrats have for winning Ohios electoral votes, Brown opted not to take his message of the dignity of work national. Thats good news for anyone concerned about losing Senate seats to the GOP.

Bob Casey

Pennsylvanias senior senator answered a question no one was asking when he said in a statement on January 18 that the best way for me to fight for the America that so many of us believe in is to stay in the U.S. Senate and not run for the presidency in 2020.

Hillary Clinton

In early March, Clinton stated clearly whats long been obvious: Im not running, she told News 12. But Im going to keep on working and speaking and standing up for what I believe.

Andrew Cuomo

Weeks after winning his third four-year term as New Yorks governor, Cuomo said that his current job would keep him from pursuing a new one in Washington. I am ruling it out. I ran for governor, I have a full plate, I have many projects. Im going to be here doing the job of governor, he said.

Eric Garcetti

The mayor of Los Angeles is young, moderate, and your average Mexican-American-Jewish-Italian. But despite visiting New Hampshire last year and testing out an anti-Beltway, outsider pitch, Garcetti said on January 25 that he wants to stay in L.A.: I realize that this is what I am meant to do, this is where I want to be.

Eric Holder

The former attorney general wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that he wont join the crowded Democratic primary, choosing instead to focus his efforts on the fight to end gerrymandering.

Tim Kaine

As Hillary Clintons running mate, the Virginia senator received more votes than Donald Trump in 2016, but hes not going to try to do it again next year. My highest and best use is in the U.S. Senate he told the Richmond Times-Dispatch on November 17.

Mitch Landrieu

The former New Orleans mayor told CNN on February 6 that he doesnt think hell run for president due to the great candidates already in the race. He left himself some wiggle room  You never say never because you dont know how things will work out  but it sounds like Landrieu plans to sit this one out.

Terry McAuliffe

Despite his belief that he could beat Trump like a mule, the former Virginia governor will sit out 2020. McAuliffe was considered a likely candidate if Joe Biden declined to run.

Jeff Merkley

The Oregon senator faked out supporters with a video titled My Plan for 2020. His plan? To stay in the Senate.

Chris Murphy

With so many of his colleagues jumping into the race, the Connecticut senator tweeted on January 25 that he plans to be one of the few Democrats to stay behind to keep the fight going here!

Richard Ojeda

West Virginias most intense politician left the State Senate earlier this year after becoming one of the first Democrats in the presidential race. On January 25, ten days after leaving office, he ended his campaign, citing a lack of money to make the media pay attention.

Martin OMalley

After serving as the Democrats hot-dad candidate in 2016, the former Maryland governor said on January 3 that he wont be running in 2020. But in an op-ed for the Des Moines Register, he wrote that a younger hot dad should: I believe the new leader who can best bring us together and turn us around to create that better American future, is Beto ORourke.

Deval Patrick

Though he was reportedly encouraged by team Obama to make a run at the nomination, the former Massachusetts governor took his name out of consideration on December 5, citing the cruelty of our elections process.

Adam Schiff

A star of the resistance, the House Intelligence Committee chairman showed up in New Hampshire on February 4 to speak at the famed Politics & Eggs event. He was asked the obvious question and responded bluntly: Im not running.

Tom Steyer

The billionaire activist announced on January 9 that he wouldnt run for president so he could focus 100 percent of my time, effort and resources to one cause: working for Mr. Trumps impeachment and removal from office.

Jon Tester

Hes a farmer at heart, the Montana senator told Rachel Maddow, who prodded him to run during a December 3 appearance on her MSNBC show. Even if I wanted to do it, and I really dont, Im not sure that mentally or physically I am in any shape to run the kind of race that needs to be run to be president of the United States, he added.

Oprah Winfrey

After repeatedly denying any interest in running, Oprah did so once again while stumping for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams last November. I dont want to run, she said. Im not trying to test any waters. Dont want to go in those waters.

This post has been updated throughout.
The New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science was looking for a fun way to tie in its current exhibits about the brain.

Brain: The Inside Story, which runs through June 23, presents recent findings in neuroscience, highlighting the brains ability to rewire itself in response to experience, disability or trauma, according to the museums website. Drugs: Costs and Consequences, Opening Eyes to the Damage Drugs Cause explores the effects of drugs on society and the environment from a global perspective. It will run through Sept. 30.

There is one portion of the brain exhibit that focuses on dance and everything that the brain has to sort of use in order to execute dance, said Rachel Veracka, director of visitor experience at the museum. We even hosted a lecture about aging in the brain, and one take-away was how important dance is to keep your cognitive faculties to keep them going and to keep your brain healthy. We thought we should host a dance. We will have some TED talks going on in the planetarium that will be focusing on brain health and dance and other types of physical activities. We will have amenities like a bar and a food truck and a DJ, and weve been working with community dance groups in town to make sure that the danceability of the music that we have will be of a high quality, and we will also have the dancers that are really passionate about dance. So overall, the point of these kinds of events are to add some value to our communities and the quality of life in Albuquerque.

This is your Brain on Dance also will have different activities attendees can participate in such as creative art projects, brain games, chess. The event also will commemorate the departure of Stan, the signature T-rex in the museums atrium. The weekend of the dance is the last time Stan will be on display at the museum. Stan will be replaced by a new animatronic T-rex that would have been native to the area that is now New Mexico.

Dance guests will be able to visit both the Brain: The Inside Story and the traveling drug exhibit from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration Museum and the DEA Education Foundation.

Part of having these events is being able to welcome people into the museum, Veracka said.
For more than a decade, Bryan Konefsky has brought international filmmakers to New Mexico.

Its a lot of work, but he enjoys it.

Konefsky is the founder and director of the Experiments in Cinema film festival.

Over the course of the festivals existence, it has grown by leaps and bounds.

And the growth continues this year.

The community has supported us over the years and its been amazing, he says. This is the reason were recognized as a great film festival, and it gives me the opportunity to travel around the world.

Konefsky looked through 600 submissions for this years festival.

He had the help of his 11-member committee, which whittled it down to 100 films.

The films are representing 35 countries, he says. And more than 50 percent of the films are made by women.

Countries including Iran and Sri Lanka have films in the festival that have never been seen in New Mexico.

Konefsky says that instead of presenting the festival as one that shows experimental films, he changed the name to Experiments in Cinema.

Its easier to wrap your head around this festival, he says. I think in the past people thought it was avant-garde. These filmmakers are poets.

The festival is divided into 18 blocks or experiments.

The festival includes a presentation of Ism, Ism, Ism: Experimental Cinema in Latin America, with an introduction from Adam Hyman from LA Filmforum, on Thursday, April 18.

There is also a block of New Mexico-based films.

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We have a partnership with the UNM Art Museum, and they are doing an exhibit on Bruce Conners films and sculpture work, he says. In terms of New Mexico films, every year we do a regional youth program, and this year we are focusing on junior high and high school students.

The Regional Youth Program will screen at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, at the KiMo Theatre. The event is free.

Albuquerque Academy, Amy Biehl Charter High School, Bosque School, Family Focus Center, Media Arts Collaborative Charter School, Public Academy for Performing Arts, Sandia Prep, Working Classroom and Zia Family Focus Center are participating. The program was curated by Nina Shoenfeld and Xen Garcia.

The goal is to inspire a new generation of homegrown filmmakers to recognize the value of their media voices and to participate in shaping future trends of cultural representation, Konefsky says.

Konefsky is also looking forward to the presentation of the Videoex: Swiss Experiments 2006-2016 at 8:45 p.m. Wednesday, April 17, at the KiMo Theatre. This event is also free.

Videoex is Switzerlands largest festival dedicated to experimental film and video. Every year at the end of May, over the course of nine days, Videoex shows films and videos beyond conventional narrative cinema: experimental, visually surprising, conceptually unexpected, or controversial political films and videos on the threshold between visual art and film.

We are bringing in special lecturers who are festival directors and curators from around the world, Konefsky says. It would be a nice opportunity for local and regional filmmakers to meet some of the people that may evaluate their films. There are panel discussions on how the festivals get put together. Its an opportunity for New Mexico filmmakers to get another vantage point to filmmaking.
Fifty-one years.

Thats how long the Dance Theatre of Harlem has existed.

In the half-century, the company has grown its vision for ballet into the 21st century.

At the helm is Virginia Johnson, who as artistic director has helped push the company into new directions since its inception.

Johnson is also a founding member of the company, where she also danced for 27 years.

Ive performed in Albuquerque, like 5,000 years ago, she quips in a recent interview. After dancing, I came back to be artistic director. Its a double blessing because Ive had the opportunity to perform a vat and different repertoire. Being artistic director is a completely different perspective. Its my job now to make sure that were bringing something new and unique to the stage.

The company was started in 1968 at the height of the civil rights movement by Arthur Mitchell and Karel Shook.

Mitchell created the company in New York City, after making history in 1955 as the first black principal dancer at New York City Ballet. He was also the famed protege of George Balanchine  the Russian-born dancer, choreographer and co-founder of the School of American Ballet.

Johnson says Mitchell started the company after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968.

Since then, the company has grown in its repertoire and risen in the ranks in the dance world.

The 17-member, multiethnic company performs a forward-thinking repertoire, including treasured classics, neoclassical works by Balanchine and resident choreographer Robert Garland, as well as innovative contemporary works that use the language of ballet to celebrate African-American culture.

Johnson says the company will be performing four works at Popejoy Hall on Wednesday, April 17.

Johnson says the first piece is Valse Fantasie by Balanchine.

Theres tulle skirts, dancers en pointe and some very tech aspects to ballet, Johnson says. Its a great opener for the program.

Following is Christopher Wheeldons This Bitter Earth, which has music from Dinah Washington.

And Ulysses Doves Dancing on the Front Porch of Heaven. The show closes with a Garland piece.

This piece is set to music of Aretha Franklin and James Brown, she says. It brings classical ballet and African social dancing together. The pieces represent our history as a ballet company, but also a look at how each person is a 21st century human being who dances.
Its been 80 years since John Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath was published.

The novel has inspired many. A movie was made, starring Henry Fonda.

The classic was the impetus behind the Cameron Fords film The Bikes of Wrath. The film will screen in Albuquerque and Santa Fe on Monday, April 15.

The Bikes of Wrath is inspired by the Joad familys fictional journey from Sallisaw, Okla. to Bakersfield, Calif. with the backdrop of heartland America in The Grapes of Wrath.

In the multiple award-winning and critically acclaimed The Bikes of Wrath, five lovable Aussies take the 1,600-mile journey on bicycles, in 30 days  while living on the kindness of strangers to survive (and the current-day equivalent of $18; the amount the Joad family survived on).

Ford says the documentary explores the broader themes of poverty  in the modern day and in the Great Depression, when the book is set  and humankinds willingness to offer assistance to their fellow humans.

I remember riding through New Mexico, and Albuquerque was our halfway point, Ford recalls. We were coming down the big hill into Albuquer-que, and we were thinking of a way to celebrate our halfway point. We went to Marble Brewery to have some drinks, and we had four offers for a place to stay for the night. Turned out our host offered us an extra day and we took it as a rest day. Albuquerque is very special to us for that.

The documentary was filmed in 2016 during the presidential campaign.

Ford and crew wanted to travel through the heartland and talk to the people who lived there.

Because these Aussies were giving them a voice, these Americans, just like the characters in the book, helped get the boys to their destination with food, accommodations and, often, cash. They are presented as sympathetic characters, because they are, and audiences worldwide are resonating with the themes and the sentiment of generosity on display.

We all have a fascination with America, he says of the group of Australians who took part in the trip. We grow up looking at this country as a top-down superpower. I had done road trips in America before, but that was in a car. Being on a bike, we were able to move at a slower pace. This gave people a chance to open up to us and tell their story. The conversations intrigued us because it started some great conversations.

_WebHeadline>EXCERPT: Five Australians who have a fascination with America ride from Oklahoma to California

The Bikes of Wrath

WHEN AND WHERE: 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 15, Winrock 16, 2100 Louisiana NE; 6:30 p.m. Monday, April 15, Violet Crown Cinema, 1606 Alcaldesa St., Santa Fe

HOW MUCH: $12.02, plus fees, at tickets.demand.film for Albuquerque show; $12.50 at tickets.violetcrown.com for Santa Fe screening
David Oyelowo enjoys projects that put fear into him, because they offer him a challenge.

If it scares me, then it has my attention, he says. Thats the way I stay challenged, and if I consistently put myself in that type of scenario, thats what teaches me more about humanity. Its about getting to jostle with several obstacles, and thats what is in any good piece of writing.

It was exactly this feeling that led Oyelowo to his role as Javert in Les Miserables. The six-part miniseries premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday, April 14, on New Mexico PBS.

The 1862 Victor Hugo novel is adapted by award-winning screenwriter Andrew Davies.

The series stars Dominic West stars as fugitive Jean Valjean, with Oyelowo as his pursuer, Inspector Javert, and Lily Collins as the luckless single mother Fantine.

Ellie Bamber and Josh OConnor co-star as the young lovers Cosette and Marius.

The action begins in 1815 as Jean Valjean, a man sentenced to 19 years of hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family, finds only hatred and suspicion when he is released on parole.

As Valjean crosses the landscape of early 19th century France, he is pursued by the righteous Javert.

From his adoption and love of the orphan Cosette, to the darkly funny plots of the thieving Thenardiers, from the soaring revolutionary fire of the student rebels who fight on the barricade in the streets of Paris to the final confrontation between Jean Valjean and Javert.

Fantine is an impoverished factory worker who loses her job and turns to prostitution to continue paying the Thenardiers to care for her illegitimate daughter, Cosette.

Working with a stellar cast also had its benefits.

We all came to the project for the same reason and with the same attitude, Oyelowo says. Andrew really wrote an epic story, and it resonates with the time were in. Revolution is in the air all over the world. Les Miserables is about the social injustices.

Oyelowo is also a producer on the series and says it was an opportunity to expand on the story.

Victor Hugos classic is 1,500 pages long, he says. Its a lot of material, and weve get six hours of opportunity to expand on each of the characters. With Javert, we get into the context of why hes so obsessed with Jean Valjean. He was born to criminal parents, and pursuing criminals is his justification. He is constantly clawing his way back up.

Oyelowo wanted the opportunity to dive in deeper to Javerts character.

To keep an audience engaged is to keep something fresh, he says. We all know the characters from the musical and the recent film. But there are so many layers to Hugos story. It was an opportunity to tell that story.

SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email film@ABQjournal.com. Follow me on Twitter @agomezART.

On TV

Victor Hugos classic Les Miserables will be brought to TV in a six-part miniseries on Masterpiece airing at 8 p.m. Sunday, April 14, on New Mexico PBS.
An Albuquerque woman pleaded guilty Thursday in state District Court to murder charges in the 2018 killing of her friends mother-in-law at a West Side home.

Prosecutors say Annie Rael, 29,  along with Alissa Bickett, 44, and Bicketts son Drake, 21,  killed 65-year-old Marilyn Gandert in late January. Relatives reported Gandert missing on Jan. 28, 2018, and a passerby found her burned body on the mesa west of Rio Rancho. An autopsy determined she had been beaten and stabbed.

Police arrested Rael and Alissa Bickett in May, and Drake Bickett a month later. The murder case against the Bicketts is ongoing.

Initially facing a first-degree murder charge, Raels plea agreement lowers it to second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The agreement asks for a sentence of 12 years in prison followed by parole.

Rael admits that she, Alissa Bickett and Drake Bickett intended to kill Marilyn Gandert, according to the agreement.

Police say Rael and the Bicketts were renting Ganderts home in the 4700 block of Taylor Ridge NW until she evicted them, sparking a dispute that ended when the three beat and stabbed her to death, according to court documents. Afterward, they took her body to the mesa in Raels truck, where Alissa Bickett doused her in gasoline and set it on fire.

Detectives found blood spatter in the home, Ganderts belongings in Raels truck, and Drake Bicketts girlfriend told investigators that the three made her help them dispose of the body.
A prosecutor and a police officer from Kabul, Afghanistan, were in Albuquerque on Thursday, learning how domestic violence cases are handled in the U.S. and New Mexico.

The idea is to learn from American systems and adopt best practices in Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Abdul Haq Anabia, the prosecutor, and Gita Qaderi, a police officer in the family response unit, observed a domestic violence hearing at 2nd Judicial District Court in Downtown Albuquerque.

This was a big cultural difference, Anabi explained, as mediation is typically used in Afghanistan for situations of domestic violence rather than a hearing.

I prefer and support mediation. I prefer (domestic violence) is solved through mediation, said Anabi, who runs an office responsible for this type of intervention in Afghanistan.

Despite the differences in systems, Anabi said the purpose of the trip is for the pair to adopt applicable initiatives in Afghanistan.

We are specifically interested in things we can use, and not overall obviously, Anabi said through his translator Reda Waciri.

A United Nations report done in May 2018 found that violence against women remained widespread throughout Afghanistan despite governmental efforts to crack down and criminalize the practices. While the report recognized progress in the country, it also found that womens access to justice was limited and women continued to face inequality before the law.

Overall, we are trying in Afghanistan to decrease the violence against women, said Qaderi, who joined the police force four years ago due to a shortage of female officers.

Qaderi said one of her takeaways so far from her Albuquerque visit was adopting awareness programs.

She said she would like to bring back initiatives to Afghanistan that promote awareness of domestic violence and highlight services and resources for survivors.

We need to have more programs in building awareness, she said.

Im hoping to go back and focus on such programs that would be very helpful, she added.

Albuquerque was just one stop for the pair, who arrived on Wednesday and will leave on Saturday.

They have also visited courts in Santa Fe and out of state such as Washington, Baltimore, Cincinnati and Detroit.

Their local trip was part of an international visitors program through Global Ties ABQ and partner KWH Law Center for Social Justice and Change, according to Pamelya Herndon with KWH.
TUCUMCARI  The New Mexico Supreme Court has publicly censured a 10th Judicial District judge in Tucumcari for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct during a private meeting last year with Quay Countys manager.

Judge Albert J. Mitchell allegedly said he would ask the governor to veto capital outlay funds due to the county because of a dispute over court security funds, according to a document unsealed Monday by the high court.

Mitchell, who serves Quay, De Baca and Harding counties, denied he engaged in willful misconduct regarding political influence but did not contest several allegations arising from a private meeting with Quay County Manager Richard Primrose.

In the document, Mitchell acknowledged he met privately with Primrose on Jan. 8, 2018, after a meeting of the county commission and voiced his displeasure with the commissioners vote concerning courthouse security.

According to the high court, Mitchell did not contest these allegations during a meeting with Primrose:

 Mitchell made statements indicating he had the governors ear and could call on her to line-item veto capital outlay funds for Quay County court security measures requests werent met.

 Mitchell also stated if his requests werent met, a prominent legislator could take the Quay County courts security measures into his own hands and pass a court security law.

 Mitchell stated if several options for court security were implemented, he would not notify then-Gov. Susana Martinez about Quay Countys failure to implement the measures.

The manner in which Respondent presented the options to the County Manager on January 8, 2018, was suggestive of a threat and the possibility of putting Quay County in jeopardy of not receiving capital outlay funds, the high court said.

The state Supreme Court ruled Mitchell knew or should have known his actions clearly were a failure to be patient, dignified and courteous, and his statements created an appearance of impropriety and could be perceived as an abuse of the prestige of judicial office, which reflects negatively upon the independence, integrity, and impartiality of, and respect for, the judiciary.

Primrose declined to comment. An email to Mitchell requesting comment was not immediately answered Tuesday.

Mitchell has served the 10th Judicial District since 2008. He wasnt retained during the 2014 election, but Martinez appointed Mitchell back to his old position a few months later.

The New Mexico Supreme Court nixed a petition to block his appointment, and he was re-elected in 2016.
QUITO, Ecuador  Did Western media and government hypocrisy bring about Julian Assanges arrest, or was it his bad manners?

The dramatic end to Julian Assanges asylum has sparked curiosity about his 7-year stay inside Ecuadors embassy in London that was marked by his late-night skateboarding, the physical harassment of his caretakers and even the smearing of his own fecal matter on the walls of the diplomatic mission.

It wouldve tested the patience of any host. But for tiny Ecuador, which prides itself on its hospitality and spent almost $1 million a year protecting Assange, it was also seen as a national insult.

Weve ended the asylum of this spoiled brat, a visibly flustered President Lenin Moreno said Thursday in a fiery speech explaining his decision to withdraw protection of Assange and hand him over to British police. From now on well be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it, and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments.

Others, including former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum in 2012, said that while Assange violated the terms of his asylum and was a burden on Ecuador thats no excuse for throwing him to the lions.

Ecuador emerged as a safe haven for the WikiLeaks founder in 2012 as his legal options to evade extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations dried up in the United Kingdom. On a June day, he moved into the countrys embassy near the upscale Harrods department store for what most thought would be a short stay.

Instead, the cramped quarters, where a small office was converted into a bedroom, became a permanent address that some likened to a de facto jail.

As the asylum dragged on, his relations with his hosts soured and his behavior became more erratic. Embassy staff complained of him skateboarding at night, playing loud music and walking around in his underwear with no apparent concern for others in the tiny embassy.

One senior Ecuadorian official described his room as a sovereign territory within a sovereign territory that none of the staff at No. 3 Hans Crescent could enter. But the stench from going weeks without a shower, and dental problem born of poor hygiene, was a constant nuisance, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he isnt authorized to discuss details of Assanges behavior.

Then there was the issue of Assanges poop, which authorities said he spread across embassy walls on at least one occasion in an act of open defiance showing how little he thought of his hosts.

When youre given shelter, cared for and provided food, you dont denounce the owner of the house, Moreno said Thursday to applause.

Within months of taking office in 2017, Morenos government scolded Assange again for meddling in international affairs by voicing his support for Catalan secessionists from the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Relations grew so prickly that last year Ecuador increased its restrictions on his Internet access and required him to clean up after his cat James. The rules said that if the feline wasnt properly fed and cleaned up after, it would be sent to the pound.

Assange tried challenging the restrictions in Ecuadorian court, to no avail.

More recently, as the feuding became more public, he started physically and verbally harassing his caretakers, accusing them of being U.S. spies looking to exchange information on WikiLeaks in exchange for debt relief for Ecuador.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said audio recording a few months ago captured a moment when Assange threatened Ambassador Jaime Merchan with pressing something of a panic button that he said would bring devastating consequences for the Embassy in the event of his arrest. Although it wasnt clear what he meant by the threat, authorities shared their concerns with British authorities and in carrying out the raid Thursday were careful to prevent Assange from returning to his room to execute any possible emergency plans.

The final straw for Moreno was WikiLeaks decision to spread information about a purported offshore account controlled by the presidents brother. Personal photographs of Moreno lying in bed, as well as images of close family members dancing, were also leaked, further incensing him.

Correa, however, criticized a double standard by Western media and governments who he said have been quick to condemn Assange for publishing sensitive information about U.S. national security interests.

Although Julian Assange denounced war crimes, hes only the person supplying the information. Its The New York Times, the Guardian and El Pais publishing it. Why arent those journalists and media owners thrown in jail? he said in an interview in Brussels.

He said that if Assange had been Chinese dissident exposing Russian secrets instead of facing arrest and extradition hed be receiving awards right now in the U.K. and U.S.

___

Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia, and Goodman from Caracas, Venezuela. AP writer Mike Corder contributed to this report from Brussels.

Follow APs coverage of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange here: https://www.apnews.com/WikiLeaks
CHEYENNE, Wyo.  Authorities say an infant abducted in southern Wyoming has been found safe in Colorado.

Cheyenne police say 1-year-old Gregory Marks was found in Aurora about 10 p.m. Thursday with 26-year-old Mijito Johnson who was thought to have taken the child earlier that day.

Police say Johnson is the boyfriend of the boys mother. He was taken into custody.

Police say officers with the Aurora Police Department found Johnsons vehicle abandoned in a parking lot and located him a short distance away at his brothers residence.

Johnson remains in police custody in Colorado and a warrant has been issued for his extradition to Wyoming.

The Amber Alert that was issued Thursday for the boy was canceled.
Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer. Photos: Getty Images

Democrats on Twitter are weirder than they appear. The small slice of blue America thats visible on social media is much more ideological, progressive, white, college-educated  and, above all, interested in politics  than the Democratic coalition writ large.

Online, Ralph Northams youthful experimentation with blackface (and/or, Klan cosplay) self-evidently requires his resignation; the Democratic base is sick and tired of neoliberal triangulation; appealing to African-American voters means making the case for reparations; and Mayor Pete (and his love of Ulysses) are well-known throughout the nation. But an alternative political reality prevails in the churches, barbershops, union halls, and Panera Breads where extremely offline Democrats roam. A silent (or at least, non-posting) majority of Virginia Democrats wants Northam to stay in office. For the moment, the typical Democratic primary voter supports Joe Biden, the Third Way Democrat par excellence (unless Uncle Joe doesnt run, in which case, theyll take the democratic socialist). The typical black Democrat, meanwhile, prefers race-neutral wealth redistribution to reparations  and if you ask a group of normie Dems what they think of Pete Boot-edge-edge, theyll be liable to think youre having a stroke.

This week, the New York Times put a spotlight on these realities in a much-tweeted feature titled, The Democratic Electorate on Twitter Is Not the Actual Democratic Electorate. The piece, which draws on survey data from the (militantly moderate) More in Common project, serves as a corrective to punditry that mistakes the consensus views of Democrats on social media with those of the partys base. And theres much to be gained from dispensing with that false equivalence. The fact that Democratic voters are less woke, ideologically motivated, and attentive to the news cycle than they appear to be on social media has real implications in the upcoming primary fight. To name just one: Progressives who assume that Joe Bidens many trips to the wrong side of history will inevitably condemn him to historys dustbin are likely indulging in the pundits fallacy.

This said, if misinterpreted, the Times analysis could end up promoting its own fallacies. It is important to understand that progressives on Twitter are not representative of rank-and-file Democrats. But its equally important to remember that the major parties governing agendas arent set by their rank-and-file voters in popular referenda. Rather, each partys priorities are shaped primarily by its political elites  which is to say, by its most influential elected officials, activists, donors, policy intellectuals, and interest-group leaders. Such partisan elites have never been representative of their normie allies. For this reason, if we want to assess the relevance of extremely online progressives in real life political outcomes, it isnt enough to ask whether theyre representative of the Democratic electorate; we also need to know whether they speak for their partys reigning elite.

Elite preferences matter (more than ordinary voters preferences do).

It might be easier to appreciate all these points if we turn our gaze to the right. The Republican Partys reigning elites are roughly as demographically and ideologically distinct from the broader GOP electorate as the online left is from the broader Democratic one. The attendees of Koch Network summits, members of Chambers of Commerce, segment producers of Fox News shows, and leaders of evangelical megachurches are more highly educated, ideological, and ideologically conservative than the Trumpian proletariat. And yet, this fact does not render the formers views irrelevant to political outcomes in the real world. In fact, the preferences of conservative elites are much more relevant to such outcomes than those of ordinary Republicans.

This is true in two distinct senses. First, such elites are much more effective at imposing their will on the GOP because they have the time, money, and attention necessary to punish party officials who betray their preferences and reward those who do their bidding. Ordinary voters, by contrast, cant afford to fund lobbying operations or make big-dollar donations as individuals  and do not (generally) have enough interest in politics to form organizations capable of funding such operations collectively. Thus, the median Republican has relatively little leverage over her partys officeholders: In opinion polls, a majority of GOP voters actually oppose cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, support increasing federal spending on health care, and say that the Supreme Court should uphold Roe v. Wade. The Republican Party nevertheless treats cutting taxes on the rich, reducing health-care spending, and appointing anti-Roe judges to the judiciary as governing priorities  because this is what conservative elites prefer.

Secondly, the views of conservative elites are more significant than those of the typical GOP voter because, on many issues, the typical GOP voter will simply take dictation from her partys elites. As the poll results cited above would suggest, rank-and-file Republican voters are a bit more likely to identify as moderate  and to express support for a heterodox mix of liberal and conservative policy positions  than their most politically engaged co-partisans. But in most cases, this moderation does not reflect a strong ideological commitment to center-right policies, so much as a lack of ideological commitment, in general. As political scientists Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe (among others) have demonstrated, most voters view politics through the lens of identity, not ideology. Voters are born into families, religions, ethnic groups, regions, and economic classes  and most derive their partisan preferences from these social-group attachments. Relatively few care enough about politics to subscribe to any coherent philosophy of government. Thus, when asked to categorize themselves ideologically, many voters who have little use for such categories will identify as moderate, by default. Meanwhile, even self-identified conservatives tend to be partisans first, and ideologues second. Or as Kinder and Kalmoe write, ideological identification seems more a reflection of political decisions than a cause. In other words: The average conservative Republican doesnt identify with the Republican Party because she is a conservative  she identifies with conservatism because she is a Republican.

This ideological innocence gives GOP elites leeway to define (and redefine) the conservative position on a wide variety of issues for ordinary Republican voters. In the mid-aughts, opinion polls showed that Republican voters were becoming increasingly concerned about climate change, and open to government action to address it. Then, as Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol has documented, Fox News and other organs of the conservative media began ramping up their coverage of the climate hoax  and that polling trend abruptly reversed. By 2009, more than 60 percent of GOP voters were telling Gallup that global warming was exaggerated. This follow the leader phenomenon has been especially conspicuous in the Trump era, when the Republican Partys most influential public-facing elite have forced the conservative faithful to radically redefine its orthodoxy on U.S. policy toward Putins Russia, the relevance of personal morality to an individuals fitness for high office, and free trade.

The party might not decide, but partisan elites (almost) always do.

To be sure, Trumps success at revising these elements of GOP orthodoxy  like his success at winning the GOP nomination  shows that the ability of established elites to dictate terms to partisan voters is far from unlimited. And yet, it would be a mistake to read Trumps ascension as a testament to the supremacy of ordinary voters in the Republican coalition. GOP elites arent a monolith. And immigration has long divided the partys corporate funders from a segment of its ideological donors, activists, and media personalities. In this context of intra-elite conflict, the preferences of rank-and-file Republicans proved decisive. The old guard could neither make GOP primary voters care about Trumps heresies on trade or universal health care, nor make them forgive Jeb Bush for his heretical softness on immigration. The party did not decide.

But the base didnt decide by itself, either. Subsequent events have confirmed the central importance of the GOPs nativist counter-elite to the 2016 revolt. As weve seen, immigration isnt the only issue where elite conservative opinion is in tension with the intuitions of ordinary Republican voters. But since the GOP has no welfare chauvinist counter-elite, the party has made no effort to translate Trumps populist (and popular) positions on health care, infrastructure, or drug prices into policy. And even with the support of nativist elites, GOP voters have been unable to force their party to implement their preferences on immigration: Despite the presidents best efforts, a unified Republican government declined to pass restrictions on legal immigration, or funding for a border wall during his first two years in office. In the end, on almost all issues of substantive import, Jeb Bushs donors did decide.

Both sides do it.

All of these dynamics apply to the Democratic Partys internal politics. A significant minority of Democratic voters harbor decidedly non-woke views on a variety of social issues. But these days, such voters preferences are almost entirely ignored in intra-party debates. This is because Team Blues social liberals arent merely more numerous, but also, better organized. NARAL has the resources to impose a cost on Democrats who work to curtail reproductive freedom; low-information Democratic voters who parrot right-wing talking points in conversations with pollsters do not. Meanwhile, on many issues, what the Democratic base will see as the liberal or moderate position is effectively dictated by elite signaling. When Barack Obama came out in favor of gay marriage, support for that civil right among black voters jumped from 41 to 59 percent. Finally, on those occasions when grassroots revolts stymie Democratic elites, it is generally because a counter-elite has effectively mobilized in opposition  as when labor unions and consumer groups defeated Obamas push for the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

All of which is to say: Extremely-online Democrats dont need to be representative of the broader Democratic electorate for their views to be of paramount importance. They just need to be representative of their partys most powerful elites.

And in many cases, these categories overlap: Some of the most prominent Democrats on Twitter are members of Congress, Hill staffers, former White House officials, and leaders of party-aligned interest groups. That said, such partisan elites share space on social media with left-wing commentators, media personalities, unaligned activists, and political super-hobbyists whose prominence reflects their polemical gifts, not any ties to pillars of Democratic power. Such voices can wield some independent influence by winning the hearts and minds (and likes and retweets) of party elites, along with those of the small segment of hyper-engaged voters who follow politics on social media. But this is a very limited form of power; the progressive super-tweeters bark far exceeds her bite. So, unless left-wing ideologues and intellectuals are largely in step with the partys genuine power players, their overrepresentation in social-media discourse will produce a skewed picture of elite Democratic opinion.

And unfortunately, online progressives are not perfectly representative of Democratic elites. Most significantly, corporate interest groups exert considerable influence on Democratic policy-making, but are almost entirely absent from the partys online conversation. Major Wall Street banks do not advance their aims through memes or Twitter essays, but rather, through lobbying operations and campaign donations to business-friendly Democrats like New Jersey congressman Josh Gottheimer.

Josh Gottheimer's "questioning" before big bank CEOs in the House Financial Services Cmte was the most subservient display I've seen in quite a while. Here was the open: pic.twitter.com/yDrRQWwPlF  David Dayen (@ddayen) April 10, 2019

It is better to be powerful than popular, if you cannot be both.

Progressives on Twitter are more liberal than the median Democratic voter. But that is not the primary constraint on the online lefts political relevance. After all, the biggest ideological gaps between progressive ideologues and rank-and-file Democrats lie on (so-called) social issues  and the ideologues have nevertheless made steady progress in turning their preferences on issues of reproductive freedom, LGBT rights, and immigration into party orthodoxy. Meanwhile, as indicated above, most of the Democratic Partys self-professed moderates are non-ideological (as opposed to being ideologically committed to Third Wayism), and are willing to follow the lead of their partys elites on a wide range of issues. In other words, the typical moderate Democratic voter does not share progressive Twitters ideological commitments  but she isnt firmly opposed to them either.

When 17 Senate Democrats voted to loosen regulations on the financial industry last year  in defiance of the overwhelming consensus among Democratic tweeters  they did not do so at the behest of ordinary voters. Low-information, moderate Democrats (i.e., the kind who are underrepresented on Twitter) did not march on Washington chanting, What do we want? To raise the asset threshold that qualifies banks for heightened risk management standards from $50 billion to $250 billion! When do we want it? Now! Rather, this demand came from the executives of regional banks.

Similarly, just this week, congressional Democrats rallied behind a bill that would prohibit the IRS from providing all Americans with free tax-filing software, much to progressive Twitters chagrin. Of course, Nancy Pelosis caucus did not accept this provision because ordinary Democratic voters want our nations tax-filing process to be needlessly complex and costly. House Democrats did so because (among other reasons) the tax-preparation industry has invested heavily in many of their campaigns.

In sum, Democrats on Twitter are not representative of their partys broader electorate, which is both less ideological and politically engaged, and therefore much more likely to forgive (or fail to notice) the ideological heresies of trusted partisan elites like Joe Biden. But this is not the most significant constraint on the political relevance of the progressive Twitterati; the power of Democratic Party-aligned corporate elites is. On the right, extremely online conservatives hold many views that contradict those of ordinary, politically disengaged Republican voters. But since upholding conservative ideological purity  and showing deference to corporate power  are compatible on most policy issues, the preferences of the rights top tweeters are largely in sync with the governing priorities of their party. The lefts most prolific posters arent so lucky. And so, for Democrats, Twitter is not real life.

But someday, it could become awfully lifelike  if progressives ever find a way to evict the money-lenders from their partys temple.
Girl Scout Hannah Johnson of Angel Fire  named a top youth volunteer of 2019 by The Prudential Spirit of Community Awards  will be recognized today during the Girl Scouts of New Mexico Trails Annual Appreciation Luncheon.

The event will be at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center at noon and feature recognition of many volunteers, donors and community members, organizers said in a news release.

Johnson, the middle-level winner who attends school in Eagle Nest and lives in Angel Fire, was nominated by Girl Scouts of New Mexico Trails.

She took on a project to warn residents of her town about dangerous weather conditions, and also collected supplies for crews battling a nearby wildfire, officials said.

Her Weather Awareness project began when she realized last year that many residents remained unaware that dry conditions prompted a burn ban. She printed fliers about the ban and posted them around town.

She later created and posted fliers about possible flash floods, strong winds and lightning strikes, including information on how to keep track of hazardous weather and local conditions.

She also spoke with her towns fire chief and bought a red flag for the department to fly to warn the public about wildfires, according to a news release.

For the The Prudential Spirit of Community Award, she will receive $1,000, an engraved silver medallion and an all-expense-paid trip in early May to Washington, D.C., according to a news release.

In May, she will join the top honorees from each of the other states and the District of Columbia for four days of national recognition events.

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com.
DALLAS  Southwest Airlines customers relaxing on Thursday evening got an email that may mean their summer vacation could be more stressful and expensive than they planned.

Southwest, the biggest operator of Boeing jets, is removing the grounded 737 Max from its schedule until at least Aug. 5, well past the peak of the summer high season.

Company President Tom Nealon wrote in his email that the airline is taking the Max out of its schedule two months longer than previously planned to reduce the need for last-minute changes during the summer travel season. The decision, he wrote, would make the schedule more reliable.

Other airlines are likely to follow Southwests example, putting pressure on Boeing to finish fixing software on an anti-stall system implicated in two deadly crashes.

Last month, Boeing and federal officials said privately that the company would finish its work before the end of March. Instead, it was delayed by an unexpected problem that Boeing hasnt fully described, and the company is now aiming to complete its work by late April.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the companys pilots have flown 96 test flights totaling 160 hours with the new software and will operate more in the coming weeks to prove that the fix works.

The changes must be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration for approval. Foreign regulators including those in Europe and China will then do their own reviews  significant because foreign airlines account for about 85% of Max orders, according to analysts for financial services firm Cowen.

It remains uncertain how willing passengers will be to board the Max after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed all 346 people on board.

The general flying public seems to be asking more questions about the airplane than they have with prior fleet groundings, said Goldman Sachs analyst Noah Poponak, referring to the 2013 grounding of Boeing 787s because of overheating lithium-ion battery packs. The 787 survived and became a hit with airlines and passengers.

FAA officials including acting chief Daniel Elwell met in Washington with representatives from Southwest, American and United and their pilot unions. An FAA spokesman said they went over the early findings from the two crash investigations, upcoming changes in the Max software, and pilot training for those changes. Elwell promised that the agency would be transparent about decisions to clear the plane to fly.

American Airlines 737 pilot Dennis Tajer, who was in the meeting, said unions pushed for a stronger pilot-training program including troubleshooting items only indirectly related to the anti-stall software. He said FAA seemed receptive.

This will not be a minimum-training event to just get by, he said.

The longer the Max planes sit on the ground, the more money airlines lose. Southwest already figures that just the first three weeks the Max had been grounded, along with other setbacks, cut the airlines first-quarter revenue by $150 million.

Southwest has been canceling about 90 flights a day because its 34 Max jets have been grounded since mid-March. Spokesman Chris Mainz said the new schedule eliminates about 160 daily flights to assure customers that it will operate the flights they booked.

That is 4% of Southwests 4,000 daily flights during summer. Still, unless the airline finds replacement planes quickly  and that can be a complicated process  Southwest will scrap about 10,000 flights that could have carried nearly 1.8 million people between now and early August.

American Airlines doesnt expect its 24 Max jets to be flying before June 5, and it too is canceling about 90 flights a day.

United Airlines, with 14 Max planes, says it is shuffling its fleet and mostly covering flights that were scheduled with the Max in mind.

Without those planes, travelers will have fewer flights to choose from, and fewer planes to carry passengers whose flights are canceled for other reasons such as bad weather. There could also be fewer fare sales.

Travelers who have not already booked their summer reservations may end up paying a slightly higher airfare, said Henry Harteveldt, a travel-industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, but its not going to be the summer from hell.

Harteveldt said he expects airlines that dont have Max jets  a list that includes Delta, JetBlue, Alaska and Spirit  will court travelers with price-cutting.

The cost of the Max crisis to Boeing also rises the longer the plane is grounded and jets coming off the assembly line pile up around Seattle.

With aircraft orders booming, Boeing shares have soared for more than two years, although they dropped about 14% from March 1 through Fridays close. Most of Wall Street has expressed confidence that Boeing can fix the Max quickly and regain momentum.

Poponak, the Goldman Sachs analyst, said however there is a risk that Boeing orders could suffer for the next few years. He said some airlines seemed to view the Airbus competitor, the A320neo series, as superior, and some aircraft-leasing companies faced a challenge to place the Max with airline customers.

Since its launch in 2017, the Max had emerged as Boeings best-selling jet. Fewer than 400 have been delivered, but about 4,600 are on order.

However, the company took no new orders for the Max in March  not even before the March 10 crash in Ethiopia  and only 10 in the first three months of the year, down from 112 in the same period last year. It could be that airlines interested in the plane had already placed orders.

Boeing stopped deliveries and announced last week that it was cutting production of 737s from 52 to 42 a month.

Airlines in China and Norway have said they want compensation for their grounded planes. While other airlines have kept silent, analysts expect Boeing will make concessions that could total hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Chicago-based company also faces a growing number of lawsuits by families of the crash victims.

Boeing hasnt provided numbers on the financial impact from the Max crisis.

___

David Koenig can be reached at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter
The Rio Rancho Governing Body has confirmed a new city councilor.

At their meeting Wednesday evening at City Hall, governing body members voted 5-1 to confirm Mayor Gregg Hulls appointment of Jeremy Lenentine to the District 2 city council seat. City Councilor Jim Owen cast the dissenting vote.

Dont take any of this personally, Owen said.  I find the resume for Jeremy to be a little light.

Owen said Lenentine has good character, but the job of city councilor involves more than character.

Councilor Dave Bency said he and Councilor Bob Tyler talked with Lenentine before the meeting.

I was impressed with his ability to absorb stuff quickly, Bency said of Lenentine. His attitude is very forward-looking.

Bency said Lenentine, as a young family man, represents the silent majority of Rio Rancho. The city has a median age of 34, he said.

Lenentine replaces Dawnn Robinson, who moved to Atlanta with her family after her husband obtained a job there. Hull appointed him from among six applicants, contingent upon confirmation from the rest of the governing body.

Robinson was elected to her second four-year term in 2018. Lenentines term runs to March 2020, when the District 2 voters will choose a councilor to represent them until the 2022 election.

Also at the meeting, the governing body voted to adjust the budget to pass through the fee for collection organization Municipal Services Bureau to continue seeking payment of unpaid court fines and fees.

Municipal Judge G. Robert Cook said the court had recently entered into an agreement with the company to collect bad debt. Municipal Services Bureau collects the payment owed plus an extra 14 percent as its fee, and sends the entire sum to City Hall.

The court must then provide the 14-percent fee out of its own budget. The budget adjustment transferred $5,000 from City Hall to the court to cover the fee for the rest of the fiscal year.

The good news is collections are up, Cook said.

He added that collection of bad debt for the municipal court was higher than predicted, setting a record.

Cook asked for $3,000. Acting City Manager John Craig suggested and the governing body approved $5,000 to make sure the adjustment would be enough even if collections continued climbing above expectations.

Craig said the expense of moving the money to the court would equal the income from collections.

The budget adjustment request had included another $5,000 for courtroom renovations, but Cook said the court staff had already covered the cost by putting off computer purchases. Theyre getting new carpet and paint now, he said, and will need new chairs next fiscal year.

In other business, governing body members:

Heard Hull proclaim April as World Autism Awareness Month in Rio Rancho. An event revolving around autism is set for 10 a.m. to noon May 4 at A Park Above. It will provide information and resources for autism, as well as activities such as a dance-off.

Approved an application for financial assistance from the New Mexico Finance Authority. The money would reimburse the developer of Los Diamantes subdivision for water and sewer infrastructure installed to serve Joe Harris Elementary School.

Approved the first reading of an ordinance authorizing a loan from the New Mexico Finance Authority for up to about $12.2 million to buy more water rights.

Approved updates to the procurement code.
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. Today, Bill Barrs cover-up in plain sight, Joe Bidens fitness for office, and Pete Buttigiegs sprint up the polls.

Bill Barrs assertion that spying did occur against the Trump campaign has brought condemnations of impropriety from congressional Democrats and career intelligence officials, and raised suspicion that the attorney general is covering for Trump. Has Trump, at long last, finally found his Roy Cohn?

When you invoke Roy Cohn, you have to specify which Roy Cohn. Theres the New York Cohn of the 1970s and 80s, the Mob-connected fixer who enabled Trumps rise, of course. But theres also the earlier, Washington Cohn: the smear artist who abetted Joe McCarthys witch hunt to expose supposed Commies in the United States Army during the 1950s. The brilliantly perverse achievement of Barr is that he combines both Roy Cohns in a single package. Hes a fixer for Trump, as evidenced by his unsupported conclusion that the Mueller report lets the president off the legal hook for his manifold efforts to obstruct justice. But Barr is also the McCarthy-era Cohn, sliming a group of leaders there at the upper echelon of government agencies for spying without offering any specifics or evidence.

That said, Barr is more insidious than either Roy Cohn. The Cohn of the McCarthy era was the chief counsel to a Senate committee; the New York Cohn was a lawyer in private practice. William Barr is the attorney general  the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States. And he is just getting started in his career in nonenforcement. He is poised to bowdlerize the Mueller report with redactions whose legitimacy cannot be verified and is stonewalling congressional efforts to read the report in full. He is in position to assist Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, as he buries documents whose exposure Trump may fear more than Muellers evidence  his tax returns. And, as the GOP operative turned Never Trumper Rick Wilson has pointed out, Barrs accusations of spying are designed not only to feed right-wing conspiracy theories about a deep state plotting to subvert Trump but also to sully the future public, private, and legal testimony of members of the DOJ, FBI, and intelligence community who have seen the damning data on Trump and his claque. The goal? To intimidate anyone who would investigate Trumps vast portfolio of corruption and obstruction of justice, both before and after he took office.

Barr, lets recall, was more highly-thought-of only a few weeks ago. As the successor to Matthew Whitaker, a low-rent scam artist with not even minimal qualifications to serve as acting attorney general, he didnt have a tough act to follow. He was routinely praised as an institutionalist who would protect the Justice Department  though his advocates never explained why any true institutionalist would enlist in an administration that above all is devoted to the destruction of governmental institutions and defiance of the rule of law. In this sense, Barr was initially welcomed as another iteration of those previous adults in the room who would protect America from their bosss worst instincts: John Kelly, Rex Tillerson, Jim Mattis, H. R. McMaster, and Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser who sold his soul for a tax cut rather than publicly break with a president who gave a pass to neo-Nazis chanting Jews will not replace us in Charlottesville.

In the end, no Trump Cabinet member ever rises above the common denominator of his or her peers, a perpetual rogues gallery that, from Mnuchin to Wilbur Ross to Betsy DeVos to (RIP) Kirstjen Nielsen, makes the bar in Star Wars look like King Arthurs court.

After addressing comments from several women who said he touched them inappropriately or made them uncomfortable, Joe Biden joked about their complaints during a conference appearance and told reporters Im not sorry for anything Ive ever done. Is he showing himself unfit to be a Democratic candidate in 2020?



Bidens unchecked, apparently lifelong habit of handsy behavior as well as his clueless explanations and pseudo-apologies for it are lamentable, but they dont disqualify him from seeking the nomination. What does make him a subpar choice for the presidency is his record in public life. Its not only that he behaved atrociously during the Clarence Thomas hearings but that he still refuses to take any responsibility for that behavior. Speaking of Anita Hill, he recently said that she was abused through the hearing  taken advantage of  attacked. All true. And his own role in this travesty? I regret I couldnt come up with a way to get her the kind of hearing she deserved. He was the chairman of the Judiciary Committee presiding over that hearing, for heavens sake, not an impotent bystander. This mealymouthed excuse of the mistakes were made (but not by me) genre suggests that Biden has not gained the wisdom you might expect at the age of 76. Nor is it an anomaly in a career that has been adorably avuncular (though not to those women he touched inappropriately) but wrong-headed on major issues, including the struggle for racial desegregation, reproductive rights, and the Iraq war.

Whats been most instructive about the Biden controversy is how it is spun and weaponized by Republicans. With predictable shamelessness Trump didnt let his record of serial sexual assault stand in his way as he mocked Biden for relative misdemeanors, but he did so even as he floated the appointment of another practitioner of serious sexual misconduct, Herman Cain, to the Federal Reserve. Other conservatives cried crocodile tears for poor, put-upon Biden so they could wield him as a club to portray Democrats as narrow-minded elitists: Dont do it, Joe, counseled Peggy Noonan, asserting that the bitter, resentful, divisive Democratic Party is against white people in general, and white males in particular. Is there anything more disingenuous than whiny white writers playing the victim card on the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal? If Noonans caricature of Democrats were true, Biden would not still be well ahead in every poll of Democratic primary voters.

What will do Biden in, I imagine, will not be his promiscuous touching of women but his general political doofus-ness. His past presidential campaigns, or near-campaigns, now dating back to 1980, have been fiascoes, right through his 2008 candidacy, which folded after he drew less than one percent in the Iowa caucuses. (The best portrait of Biden as presidential candidate is in Richard Ben Cramers classic campaign book, What It Takes, on the 1988 race.) The Biden whose advisers recently floated the patronizing idea of recruiting Stacey Abrams as his vice-presidential nominee  an idea quickly shot down by Abrams (you dont run for second)  is of a piece with his hailing of Barack Obama as articulate and bright and clean. People dont change.

On the heels of impressive fundraising and polling that puts him third among Democratic contenders, Pete Buttigieg seems to have launched himself into the top tier of candidates for the White House. How has he come so far so fast?



You dont have to hear from me all that is appealing about this guy; the hagiographies are coming by the day. The biggest immediate threat to his candidacy may be overexposure too soon. His rise in the polls  hes now No. 3 among Democrats, behind Biden and Bernie Sanders, in both Iowa and New Hampshire  is remarkable. His rising popularity may also express a dissatisfaction with the existing candidates, numerous and various as they are, and a certain press synergy with reporters who are products, as he is, of the well-educated upper-middle class. (That would include me.) That he is only 37 and the mayor of a (to be charitable) medium-sized city are not disqualifying in a country that has elevated a reality-television star known for fraud and bankruptcies to the Oval Office.

That he is gay is also a plus, Id argue. Any American who refuses to consider a gay candidate for office is a locked-in Republican voter anyway. And not the least of Buttigiegs skills is his ability to call out pious Republican bigots like Mike Pence, whom he branded the cheerleader of the porn star presidency for practicing a hypocritical bastardization of Christianity that aspires to relegate LGBTQ Americans to second-class citizenry. As both openly gay and openly Christian  and as a veteran of military service in Afghanistan  Buttigieg speaks with rare authority when he calls out the Taliban tendencies of Pence, who championed a Draconian Religious Freedom law as governor of Indiana and whose wife even now teaches at a school that bars gay students.

If theres one thing thats missing from our politics at this moment, its joy, and Buttigieg so far is offering that, along with his smarts and progressive convictions. He markets his views with wit and without rancor. His candidacy hasnt even been officially declared yet  that may happen this weekend  and anything can and will happen. But for the moment lets not look a gift dark horse in the mouth.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Governor Gavin Newsom is working on a plan to cover wildfire cost.

A new report, prepared by the Governor, shows PG&E's rates could double if it is found responsible for another disaster.

The report says wildfires have caused more than $36 billion in damages over the past two years.

One possibility the governor will examine is a statewide risk pool which could include a rise in insurance rates.

"The money has got to pop out somewhere in the economy of the State of California. And it's most likely that it's going to hit all of us in one form or another," said Steven Weissman from UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.

"We are absolutely against any sort of ratepayer bailout. Let's come up with other funds," said Dr. Mark W. Tony from The Utility Reform Network.

In a statement to Action News Now, PG&E said the following:

"It is clear that more needs to be done to adapt and address the threat of extreme weather and wildfires."

Action News will bring you more information after the Governor speaks today.
MARYSVILLE, Calif.  There are new developments in the case of a Marysville teen accused of killing a woman in Idaho.

Authorities said 18-year-old Dustin Alfaro and a 17-year-old boy killed 87-year-old Arlyne Koehler in her home in Pocatello in March.

Alfaro is charged with first-degree murder and is now behind bars in Bannock County.

A motive for the crime has not been revealed.
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - It's April now but the scene in Paradise is the same. Street after street, block after block, the homes are still leveled, the devastation remains.

But what became of all the people - the thousands and thousands of people whose homes did not survive?

The lucky ones, if you could ever call losing your home and everything in it lucky, took their insurance money and decided to rebuild their lives elsewhere. But thousands of Camp Fire survivors had no insurance and nowhere to turn, like 66-year-old Pamela Lyons.

Yet, with her tiny, 15-foot trailer, she feels she too is one of the lucky ones. For $400 per month, it sits on a lot in Chico with other trailers, other Camp Fire survivors.

Im constantly tripping over everything, Lyons said. Its almost impossible to get anything done. Trying to cook a meal is impossible almost. But it's better than being homeless."

After spending more than two months at a Red Cross shelter, Pam, who is disabled, was very close to actually being homeless. With almost no help from FEMA, she turned to the Paradise Adopt a Family Facebook page.

"Basically begging, help me, please, she said. And I got contacted by Lisa Richardson."

Lisa Richardson lives in Sacramento and has no ties to Butte County. But it was her that helped get that donated trailer for Pam.

"Most of the people Ive been meeting initially were living in their cars," Richardson said. "There are people in desperate need. They don't have anywhere to go. Theyre feeling very helpless at this point. Five months after the fire they're really feeling hopeless."

Butte County Chief Administrative Officer Shari McCracken said without the caring generosity of private individuals and organizations, the interim housing crisis would be dramatically worse.

"I'm concerned too. We're all concerned, McCracken said. "We think there's a population that slips through the cracks. We don't even know where they all are because they're spread out."

But where is the FEMA housing? FEMA said finding suitable trailer locations has been challenging, complicated by constant weather delays and community push-back.

FEMA said the first of five temporary housing communities should be ready by early May. The plan is to eventually provide 1,300 housing units but right now there are just 295 travel trailers in use, and 19 mobile homes, which are spread across eight counties.

Meanwhile, day after day, week after week, month after month, McCracken continues to work with FEMA, and other federal a state agencies, to solve the unprecedented problems.

Ive learned a lot. Im managing my expectations of what's reasonable, McCracken said. So is it surprising we're this far out? Not really. We wish we were further along so that we were putting people in mobile home units.

Thousands of survivors, like Lyons, wish the process was farther along too.

"This is barely affordable," Lyons said. "I would like to have my life back. And Im trying to get my life back."

Meanwhile, McCracken wonders if permanent housing structures could be built with the amount of money FEMA is spending on temporary housing, which still does not exist. She hopes a pilot program to do that might be considered for Butte County.
CHICO, Calif. -- Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a generous donation to Paradise High School students affected by the Camp Fire.

Paradise High School band students lost more than one hundred instruments in the Camp Fire, but thanks to this generous donation, students can continue to keep up their passion and play music.

Music plays a big role in Greg Schofield's life.

"By allowing me a place to just be unabashedly myself," said Schofield.

The Camp Fire changed the face of the school band Schofield loved so dearly.

"The support network we built up was much smaller, fractured as everybody scattered," said Schofield.

Schofield, like many of his classmates, lost his tuba in the Camp Fire, but thanks to a generous donation, the music is back on.

"We feel like music is a very healing thing," said April Dever, a member who helped donate musical instruments.

Mike and April Dever are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Washington.

"We've been collecting instruments to try and help the people in Paradise, to show them we care and give our support," said April Dever.

Kayla Dixon's family moved to Elk Grove, just south of Sacramento, after the fire destroyed their home. Dixon continued commuting up north to stay at Paradise High School.

"Staying with the band has definitely been a form of normalcy. We've become a close-knit family," said Dixon.

She says while the Camp Fire changed her life, it doesn't define her.

"Not everybody has one thing in common, but now we do and I say it's made our bonds stronger and we're closer now," said Dixon.
REDDING, Calif. - Redding Police arrested a man after he crashed into a power pole, causing a small fire while driving under the influence and Snapchatting.

Police said James Knapp, 21, was Snapchatting his girlfriend while driving at around 11:25 p.m. Thursday night. Police say Knapp crashed into a power pole at the intersection of Old Oregon Trail and Rancho Road. Officers arrived to find the power lines on top of Knapp's Nissan Murano, and a small vegetation fire started by the downed lines.

Officers said Knapp was taken into custody for driving while intoxicated and was already on probation for a prior DUI.

Redding Electric Utility (REU) responded to assist with the downed power lines. The vegetation fire was quickly extinguished. A dog was also rescued from the crushed Nissan and given to Shasta County Animal Control.

The Redding Police Department would like to remind citizens to use designated drivers when consuming alcohol and avoid the use of cell phones while driving.
Gov. Newsom to lay out wildfire cost plan

Governor Gavin Newsom will lay out his plan to cover wildfire costs. The report says wildfires have caused more than $3 billion in damages over the past two years. One possibility the governor will examine is a statewide risk pool, which could include a rise in insurance rates.

Redding police arrest suspected DUI driver after crashing into power pole

Redding police arrested a man for crashing into a power pole while drunk and distracted. Police said James Knapp was snap-chatting while drunk on Old Oregon Trail and Rancho Road Thursday night. Officers said he crashed into the pole, brought down powerlines and started a small fire. Knapp was on probation for a prior DUI.

Health officials confirm measles case in Shasta County

A confirmed measles case in Shasta County now brings the number of cases up to 11 in the North State. Health officials are trying to piece together where the patient contracted the virus or if it is linked to the other cases. Shasta County Public Health is urging anyone who has not been vaccinated to do so now.

Police identify robbery suspect in Anderson

Police now say they now know the identity of a suspect in an armed robbery in Anderson. The robbery was captured on surveillance video on March 30 at the Safeway Gas Station on Balls Ferry Road. Police have not released the identity of the suspect. Criminal charges are now filed with the Shasta County district attorney.

Gateway Unified School District to unveil electric school buses

Gateway Unified School District plans to introduce its brand new electric school buses Friday. District officials said they went electric because of lower cost as well as environmental concerns. The new buses also have upgraded safety features.
National- Of all the beautiful relations of the world, the bond that sisters have among themselves is one of the sweetest bonds one could ever see. Infusing a fresh perspective on family ties and sacrifice, COLORS Bangla brings forth the story of unbreakable bond between two sisters through Kanak Kakan. Scheduled to launch on the Bengali New Year the show celebrates the struggle of two sisters and how they stand by each other against all adversities. The show Kanak Kakan produced by Snehasish Chakroborty will go on air from 15th April every Monday to Saturday at 8 pm on COLORS Bangla.

The sisters Kanak and Kakan are connected by a deep bond specially with the passing away of their parents. Kanak the younger sister is a sprinter and Kakan is a very good dancer. Though Kakan has lungs problems yet she gives tuition in dancing schools as well as attends functions to make ends meet. She tries her level best to fulfil her fathers desire of seeing her younger sister become a successful sprinter. The story sees the comeback of popular actress Shweta Bhattacharya as Kakan and beautiful Srabani Bhunia plays the role of Kanak. Will Kanak and Kakan who serve as the source of strength, care and love for each other be able to withstand all adversities or fail the test of time?

Speaking on the launch Rahul Chakravarti, Business Head  COLORS Bangla & Odia said, We strive to provide our viewers with fresh, innovative content. The story of Kanak and Kakan is an engaging story and their courage and determination to fight against the most difficult situations will inspire everyone. Having lost their parents early in life, both sisters stand by and support each other in everything they do. The gripping narratives and compelling storytelling is sure to make this show an inherent part of their daily lives.

Commenting on the launch of the show, Snehasish Chakraborty, Blues Production, The show orbits around the story of two sisters and how they emerge from even the most difficult situations. The writing for this show is extremely strong in terms of characterization and the engaging screenplay should leave audiences hooked at the end of every episode. Every bit of our experience has been enriching and we are confident that our audience enjoy our narrative through the eyes of our protagonists. We hope Kanak Kakan will be a stepping stone to a long-standing partnership with COLORS Bangla.

Along with Shweta Bhattacharya, Srabani Bhunia, Kanak Kakan will feature a stellar line-up of artists Chaitali Chakroborty, Dipankar De, Apurva, Suvonkar and others.

The channel extends its reach with a continuous marketing push through a 360-degree promotional campaign that involves a combination of innovative social media and traditional media elements like Outdoor, Print, cross channel & BTL activities.

Celebrate this Bengali New Year with the launch of a heartening story Kanak Kakan, starting 15th April every Monday to Saturday at 8 pm only on COLORS Bangla!!
Looks like there wont be any 9-9-9 plan for monetary policy after all. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

President Trumps plan to turn the Federal Reserve Board into a right-wing-cable-show alumni society is hitting a snag as four Senate Republicans have signaled opposition to former presidential candidate Herman Cain, before any formal nomination has been made, according to the Washington Post:

A strong ally of the president, Sen. Kevin Cramer (N.D.), on Thursday joined three other Republicans  Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Cory Gardner (Colo.)  in announcing opposition to Cains appointment to the Fed. Republicans control 53 votes in the 100-seat Senate, and losing the support of four members means Cain would need help from Democrats, which appears unlikely.

As my colleague Jonathan Chait noted recently, there had already been reports that the White House might jettison Cain in order to save another equally unlikely Fed appointment, that of Stephen Moore:

Faced with the prospect of attempting to confirm two absurdly unqualified cranks for esteemed Fed positions, the conservative movement has undertaken a triage operation, focusing its defenses on Moore and leaving Cain to twist in the wind. The decision to save Moore at Cains expense makes some sense: Of the two, Cains kookery was on more colorful display through his slapstick 2012 presidential campaign. Cains treatment of women (numerous sexual-harassment lawsuits) is harder to defend than Moores (open adultery followed by failure to pay child support.)

The idea is that Republican senators might buck Trump on one nomination, but hardly two.

Its possible this speculation is all wrong and that Trump will go to the mat for the former Godfathers Pizza executive, who had an active career as a right-wing talk-radio gabber in Atlanta before he went national with a 2012 presidential campaign. Even if it fails, a fight over Cain would be a useful credential for Trumps extremely slim claims of interest in promoting African-American representation in high federal offices.

More likely than not, though, Cains proto-nomination is toast; there are late-breaking reports that he will withdraw his candidacy for the post, relieving the president of the responsibility for pulling the plug.

Well now have to see if Trump follows up with another poorly qualified media figure, or lets Moore stand alone as a testament to his belief that talking on television is the only relevant qualification for any position, from president on down.
After an eventful Day 1 of Goafest 2019, Day 2 kicked off with the Knowledge Seminar by COLORS Marathi. Indias biggest advertising festival Goafest opened with Viacom18s brand promise of Open New Worlds. The energy just kept rising from there as the sessions went forward as Day 2 indeed Opened New Worlds of creativity and ideas with a line-up of the most inspiring and fun speakers.

Only love can save this world. So I stay, I fight, I give. Thats my mission- Wonder Woman. This message was what set the mood for the 1st speaker on stage- Chief Creative Officer and Founder Badger and Winters, Madonna Badger, who spoke on the powerful message: #WomenNotObjects. The advertising maven who has been in the industry for more than 25 years, got real as she spoke about motherhood, the accident that took her children and her parents away from her, and how life taught her that one can never have enough control. Through a series of powerful films, she showcased how one can, if they really care, change the narrative of the industry and the world. 1 million girls suffer from anorexia in the US alone skyrocketing the suicide rates in the country. Research shows that 80% of little girls at 11 say that they would rather have cancer than be fat. We need to take care of our women. And the filter to use in doing so is empathy! Women are sexual beings, just like men. Its ok if she wants to be seen as pretty. But that cant be weaponized to an extent when you stop seeing her as a woman and start seeing her as a thing.

After she woke everyone up, literally, and made everyone much more aware about the perils and power of advertising, came speaker 2, Founder and Global Chairman Gordon Bowen, Founder and Global Chairman, McGarryBowen and global CCO, Dentsu Aegis Network. Suitably titled Datas Inferno, he spoke about how creativity has and will always outshine data. Gordon himself epitomised what McGarryBowen stands for: spirited, problem solver, rebel, wonderer, collaborator, human.

With a series of his ads, from Olympics for United Airlines to Hallmark to Disney, he proved the endless possibilities and the power of creativity. Showcasing the collaboration of Beethovens 5th with Intel Inside through a film he proved the power of a creative idea and intuition. He ended his session with a message that could very well be the reality for everyone present in the room- Creatively lead, data driven and tech enabled. Thats the philosophy we live by at Dentsu, and thats how it should be. Its always creatively lead. Nothing can ever replace creativity. For a slice of heaven, we have to fall back on creation. Just like in the Bible, the single verb that describes God is that he is the creator. Its not data driven. It is creation driven. A powerful message indeed!

The two impactful sessions spoke about empowerment through the right use of creativity and intuition. It spoke about the power of individuality, dreams and brave choices. Hence the mood was already set, when the last session before lunch, moderated by Kubra Sait, brought two actors on stage. Bollywood actor and writer Kalki Koechlin and Siddhant Chaturvedi kickstarted the fun and high energy session by discussing the powerful topic of bullying. When people are picking on you, its a bad place to be in. You got to stand up one day and speak for yourself. Tell them bhaag bhaag bhaag, dekho sher aya sher, said Siddhant Chaturvedi to a roaring crowd. Kalki added, Abuse is different from bullying. For me, it was a process that went deep into my adult life. It was when I started questioning why Im angry and rebellious, that I found my answers. Our generation is talking and coming out about feelings. The way we must raise the next generation should be my empowering them with tools to communicate.
Mindshare was adjudged Media Agency of the Year with 14 metals, including 4 Gold, 6 Silver and 4 Bronze Abbys.

MA Parthasarathy, CEO, Mindshare India:

Winning Goafest is a fabulous feeling. All credit goes to our talented and passionate team, and to our clients, who inspire us to new heights. The Golds that we won on Close Up, Lifebuoy, Brooke Bond and ABC are particularly satisfying as they brought together data, content and digital to create very distinctive solutions.

Amin Lakhani, Chief Operating Officer, Mindshare South Asia:

The body of work that Mindshare is representing this year at Goafest is very impressive. The work spans across media, content, tech and data with several clients. Even if you look at it from a geographical representation you will find work from all our offices. I am hoping that the industry sees and recognizes the effort and good work that we have done.

The zing factor in our work this time is data-led creativity. Mindshare has put in a lot of work analysing data and solving problems for clients across the spectrum whether it is using Big Data and solving rural marketing challenges or whether it is using data and producing a bespoke solution for a BFSI client.

Data is informing us to create the right messaging at the right place, at the right time. The information is there and the beauty is how you use that to improve connect with your consumers.

We are hoping to set the tone for this year beginning with the Abbys and carrying it forward till the end of the year. Fingers crossed and lets hope for the best.

Placed second was Madison Media with 11 metals, comprising 3 Gold, 1 Silver and 7 Silver Abbys. The agency scored a total of 58 points.

Vikram Sakhuja, CEO, Madison Media:

We are delighted. We came second although we would have loved to come first. Congratulations to Mindshare, who have done a fantastic job. We are delighted because we won around 10 metals, three of which were Golds. We covered a diverse amount of work apart from our Tata Salt campaign, which got 2 metals. Everything else got one metal each, which shows a good variety. Also, our work showcased on old conventional media as well as modern properties; if you look at Godrej Properties campaign, that had used data, tech and creativity.

This Goafest, if you look at all the categories and sub categories, each one has a very clear reason to be. We have 180-odd shortlists, where digital had about half and traditional had about half.

Marrying data with creativity starts with integrated teams and somewhere along the line the people who are leading the teams hold the mantle. Sometimes it will be a traditional planner and sometimes like in the case of Godrej Properties it was the digital team that took centre stage with support from traditional.

With 7 metals, Initiative Media secured the third spot. The agencys tally included 2 Gold, 1 Silver and 4 Bronze Abbys. Initiatives total points stood at 38.

Vaishali Verma, CEO, Initiative:

I am absolutely thrilled and delighted that Initiative is at No. 3 at this years Goafest Media Abbys. What makes it heartening is that all our 25 shortlists are across the width of our clients  ranging from Reckitt Benckiser to Amazon to Hamdard, InfoEdge, American Tourister. The awards have been won across multiple categories, which is a manifestation of the depth of our good work. All campaigns have been path breaking, innovative and to me each one of them is a winner whether they won a metal tonight or not. I will be completing a year here as a CEO and the last 10 months have gone into strengthening our product and people across functions, and we will continue to do so. I would like to congratulate my entire team at Initiative for putting up such a stellar performance and I would like to thank all our clients for pushing us to scale newer heights and always believing in us.

Dentsu Aegis Networks Carat India was placed fifth among the Media Abby winners with 3 metals  1 Gold and 2 Silvers. The agency scored 20 points.

Mayank Bhatnagar, Senior VP & Head - West, Carat India:

Wow! Very happy! There are two campaigns that we won awards for. We won 1 Gold and 1 Silver Abby. Both are extremely close to us. One campaign is about how a brand can come forward and help a cause. The second is how we can use the biggest property in India and help the brand using data and tech to support real time personalization. So, both the awards are very special for us and show the depth of the work that we do from traditional media to new age media using technology and data together to bring our perfect solutions for the brand.

The award that we won for IPL for our client Mondelez  we won Silver for this  the challenge was how we can get all 14 brands together in IPL, as the tournament is so cluttered. We were using real time data and the API from Cricbuzz and we created 114 different ads, where we were targeting different segments with different messaging through ads.

The campaign we won Gold for was for Cadbury Bournvita, which focused on the pressure that parents put on their kids especially during exam times. This campaign was really about how kids can go about and do really well in their future career if they really follow their passion.

Signpost India from Street Talk, won a total of 4 metals, which comprised 1 Silver and 3 Bronze Abbys. The agency was a tad below Carat with total 18 points.

Rajat Sikder, Senior Vice President, Street Talk, a division of Signpost India:

It feels amazing. This is the Mecca of all awards in India, at least. We won 4 awards today  1 Silver and 3 Bronze. It is an amazing feeling because we have an amazing team. We are a company that is not aligned with any media or creative house. We are mostly into outdoor. Every campaign and every client we have pitched for and executed and every piece of work we are giving it our 200 per cent. Signpost is about 11 years old. Our head office is in Mumbai, but we are spread across the country in Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Pune. We have a few more nominations on the third day of Goafest and hope to winsome more awards.

This is the first time we are participating in Goafest, it has been an amazing experience and we are looking forward to more in the next two days. I was discussing earlier with my team members that even if we are not putting in our participation, we should still come to Goafest. It is not just about contesting and winning an award, it is more than that. We have spent a lot of time in the AV room trying to see other peoples work and it will help us in our own work. I see a lot of transparency at Goafest. Learning is the key at Goafest.

FoxyMoron won a solitary Gold in Media Abbys for the Meethe Bahane campaign done for Hersheys, which fetched the agency a total of 8 points.

Nishit Vora, Account Director, FoxyMoron:

Extremely stoked to have won this award. There have been a lot of collaborations and partnerships done and we really believed in the idea so really happy to get approved for this.

The concept for the campaign came purely from the insight that we keep coming up with reasons to run away from the food that our mothers give. We really wanted to give it a twist by getting Chef Ranveer Brar onboard to support the story and give them reasons to actually consume the food that we make.

It feels extremely great to be here at the Abbys. I really like the idea of the Master Jury, it is a great change. Another thing that Sudhanshu mentioned is bringing back the credibility and now we have realised this and are working towards it. We are extremely happy for that.

In Publisher Abby, ABP One from ABP Pvt Ltd bagged 1 Gold ad 1 Silver Abby, taking its total points to 12.

ABP spokesperson:

The campaign that we did was for Sugar Free, called Stop the Sugar not the Tea. The idea was to get people who consumed black tea without sugar to try Sugar Free as a variant. The campaign ran for three months and grew the brands share by 14 per cent from their then level of sales. The biggest learning from this campaign was how we understood the psyche of the Bengali audience, which we have been doing over the years and leverage it to create this disruptive growth for the brand.

Equinox Digital, an arm of Publicis Media, too, bagged a Gold in Media Abbys for its campaign done for ZEE5, where the OTT player turned Google Search ads into real-time news portal during the Assembly Elections results.

Equinox Digital spokesperson:

When you are looking at search as a platform, very few people look for innovation. What we thought about was integrating technology and at Equinox, we believe whatever objective you have should be hidden behind that and be a seamless solution for the consumer. It was a user driven solution.

Today, we have X number of news channels coming up and everybody wants to be updated on the latest news. We thought of the best solution that the brand could offer and what we could do as an agency partner. The thought was to bring everything in one place and make the user experience better and that was by providing the best and the most updated news.

One thing that Tanmay Mohanty used to tell us is that whatever campaigns you are running, even though it is for the brand, it has to be user-centric. We hope the next few days at the Abbys will be as fantastic as today and that we will learn a lot and implement the learning in our future campaigns.
"One family member said Derek can be violent and has attacked Rex in the past, court documents stated. The family member also said Dereks mother had died years ago and Rex was taking care of him alone."



This grisly story offers another side to the shiny, happy portrayal of autism during the month of April. A Spokane, Washington widowed physician, age 61, was found brutally murdered and his 29 year old, preverbal autistic son living amid squalor. It appears that the son is at least, a suspect. If not, he is also a victim, left alone in the home without life skills. Either version is a far cry from what we're spoon fed about autism. This kind of tragic story is going to repeat itself over and over, like the stories of autistic children wandering and drowning. Parents will age. Strong adult men (and women) with autism will rage. The future may be bleak and harsh. Meanwhile, we're told we are "allowed" to seek awareness, but not cure or even true treatment. Our loved ones must suffer a lifetime of... autism. God bless Dr. Rex Porter and his son Derek.



###





Detectives are investigating the death of a retired Spokane anesthesiologist whose body was found dismembered and burned in the backyard of his Dishman Hills area home.

The victim, Dr. Rex C. Porter, 61, previously worked for Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center. He was the caretaker of his son, Derek C. Porter, 29, who is autistic and nonverbal, according to court documents. They lived on an 11-acre property in the 2800 block of South Park Lane near the Iller Creek Conservation Area.

On Saturday, a neighbor called 911 to report that Porters car had been sitting in the driveway for two days with a door open. A garage door had been left open, too.

Spokane County Sheriffs deputies responded Sunday to the house for a welfare check, according to a search warrant filed Tuesday in Spokane County Superior Court.

Deputies reported seeing the house in disarray as they looked through the windows, including broken glass on the floor. Attempts to call Rex Porter were unsuccessful, prompting deputies to enter the house. They smelled a strong odor they believed to be animal feces, according to court documents.

Deputies continued their search downstairs to the basement and found more glass, along with blood and damaged items. They opened a door and suddenly an adult male was standing in front of them with only shorts and a T-shirt, according to court documents.

Deputies detained the individual, believing he was squatting in the house, according to court records.

In the bathroom, the toilet was full of feces and the sink held what deputies thought was the remains of a dead animal, court records stated.... Read more at Spokesman.com
Immigration dominated in this years World Press Photo competition, with photographers John Moore and Pieter Ten Hoppen winning the Photo of the Year and the Story of the Year prizes respectively with images showing the human face of population movement, notes the British Journal of Photography. Moore won for his shot of a Honduran toddler crying as she and her mother were taken into custody in McAllen, Texas, last June. Hoopen won for a series about a migrant caravan traveling north from Honduras.
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Representative Ilhan Omar. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Ilhan Omar has courted controversy ever since she transformed, in the publics conception, from a telegenic symbol of American pluralism to an actual person with actual opinions. In the months after her swearing-in to Congress, the Minnesota representative has been strident in her criticism of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both are American allies, but its her position on the latter country that has prompted members of her own party to turn against her. The past two months have seen her accused varyingly of anti-Semitism, disloyalty to the United States, and, most recently, of downplaying the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The first criticism can be attributed to her suggestion that American support for Israel is all about the Benjamins  a seeming nod to the bigoted trope that rich Jews control the world. The second and third are more flagrantly Islamophobic in origin.

The backlash came to a head this week after footage surfaced of Omar speaking about Islamophobia at a Council on American-Islamic Relations event last month. Far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and frankly, Im tired of it and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it, Omar said to an audience gathered in Los Angeles. CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, she said, gesturing as if to separate herself from some people, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

Conservatives seized on Omars characterization of 9/11 as some people did something to cast it as an effort to trivialize the attack. President Trump on Friday tweeted a video that intercut her repeatedly saying some people did something and footage of the 9/11 attacks, with the caption, We will never forget! Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican, tweeted that her comments were unbelievable. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel added that Omar is anti-American, while the New York Post on Thursday published a cover photo of airplanes colliding with the Twin Towers. Rep. Ilhan Omar: 9/11 was some people did something, the headline read. Heres your something: 2,977 dead by terrorism. The photo echoed imagery from an Islamophobic poster displayed at the West Virginia statehouse last month, which pictured Omar in front of the collapsing World Trade Center. Never forget, you said, the caption reads. I am the proof  you have forgotten. Such an ungenerous interpretation of her remarks is only possible if one is inclined to believe that Omar sympathizes more with terrorists than her murdered countrymen. That she spoke them in the course of decrying Islamophobia makes it especially disconcerting that her political opponents would decontextualize them to fan the flames  she receives regular death threats on the basis of her faith, including from one New York man who threatened recently to put a bullet in her fucking skull.

Omars imprecision regarding Israel can be frustrating for her supporters. Even those who engage with her geopolitical critiques in good faith might find her deployment  intentional or inadvertent  of anti-Semitic tropes unforgivable, were she not so apologetic about her self-proclaimed ignorance and backed by a vocal cohort of Jewish-American progressives who insist that her comments were directed at a government  not a people  whose supporters routinely accuse its critics of anti-Semitism to stifle debate. But it grows increasingly apparent that efforts to discredit her are rooted in a larger project for which her comments are mere pretext. One of the first two Muslim women ever in Congress was always likely to face smears equating her with terrorism and questioning her loyalty and fitness to serve. Such are the wages of embodying an existential threat to a politics that has spent decades profiting from fear of Muslims, immigrants, and  more recently  refugees and asylum seekers, and vowing ruthlessness toward them in response.

Omar is a Congressional first, and her opponents smell blood in the water. Even her less-spotlit Muslim woman counterpart, Michigan representative Rashida Tlaib, has faced dubious allegations of anti-Semitism and having terrorist sympathies. (Tlaib is Palestinian-American.) The political value of attacking both is apparent. For Republicans, it enables them to deflect from their own bigotry, personified most recently by a president who has attempted to ban Muslim immigration, dissolve the American asylum system, and cast Muslims as latent or active terrorists while demonizing brown-skinned immigrants more broadly. For centrist Democrats, entertaining the suggestion that Omar is anti-Semitic is an opportunity to signal their commitment to pluralism while shoring up their ties to Israel and its supporters. Both rely on a willful misreading of her intentions that is more compatible with anti-Muslim stereotypes than with her actual, documented opposition to human- and civil-rights violators of all stripes.

Such reductionism is not a recent trend. Congressional firsts have long been targeted by political opportunists and bigoted peers, dating back to Reconstruction. Following the Civil War, lies underpinned by stereotypes were how anxieties regarding free black people holding elected office in the South were articulated. One cannot study Reconstruction without first frankly facing the facts of universal lying, wrote W.E.B. DuBois in his history of the period, Black Reconstruction. There was not a single great black leader [of that era] against whom almost unprintable allegations were not repeatedly and definitely made. Hiram Rhodes Revels, the first black U.S. congressman ever elected, in 1870 faced legal challenges from white Democratic congressmen who claimed he was ineligible because he had not been a citizen long enough, having only been granted said status a few years prior with the 14th Amendment and 1866 Civil Rights Act. (These challenges were later overruled.) Parroting the prejudices of the era, historians and artists attempted to cast Reconstruction as a time when black vice, sloth, and stupidity transformed government into a corrupt and chaotic free-for-all. D.W. Griffiths 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, famously portrayed black congressmen voting on bills with their boots off, feet on their desks, gorging on fried chicken.

This is how power and orthodoxy respond to threats. Neither has encountered a black Muslim congresswoman before, or such a vocal critic of Israeli policy and the lobbying that supports it. Political discourse has reached the point, with Omar, where good-faith debate over her deployment of anti-Semitic tropes has been largely displaced by pure Islamophobic id. Opponents regularly equate her with terrorists, riling up voters, politicians, and pundits who already believe that the proper response to Islam is violence. Trumps inflammatory rhetoric has already inspired successful and attempted terror attacks  including by Cesar Sayoc, who sent mail bombs to prominent critics of the president, and Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue after being inspired about a Trump-peddled conspiracy theory about criminal immigrants.

But Omars treatment is a logical extension of decades of Islamophobic rhetoric and policy  much as the Reconstruction-era response to black congressmen was an extension of centuries of anti-black sentiment and violence. Perhaps it should have been expected in a scenario where Republicans  whose platform and standard-bearer, Trump, call for the exclusion and maltreatment of Muslims, refugees, and asylum seekers  came face-to-face with a Muslim refugee and former asylum seeker from Somalia who is now one of their peers. Political disagreement was bound to define the encounter. But anti-Muslim bigotry is not innate  it is a choice that Omars detractors continue to make, and the dangers of doing are only becoming more apparent. Now that Trump has fanned the flames, the backlash only stands to intensify further. The costs are already steep, and they will only get higher.

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Palestinian voter turnout in Israeli elections has dropped substantially in recent years, prompting Palestinian leaders in Israel to call the reduction an emergency situation. Voter turnout stood at 50% this year, a 13% drop from 63% in 2015. The reduced turnout has led to a loss of three Knesset seats since 2015, from 13 to 10 out of a total 120 seats.

The low turnout in the April 9 elections is a reflection of the desperation and lack of faith among Arab citizens in Israel toward the political system, which has ignored them and passed laws that discriminate against non-Jewish residents.

Botrus Mansour, director general of the Nazareth Baptist School, told Al-Monitor that even though Palestinian citizens have done well economically and their legislators have performed solidly in the Knesset, those factors have failed to boost turnout. Nazareth had the biggest drop in voting," he said of the largest Arab city in Israel. "While some intellectuals boycotted [the elections] on an ideological basis, most stayed away out of apathy and desperation.

Mansour blames political marginalization for the low turnout. The marginalization of Arabs and their lack of influence, despite their abilities, is a major reason for this feeling of desperation, he said.

Jamal Zakout, a leader of the first intifada and an adviser to former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, told Al-Monitor that Palestinian nationalism has receded in general and been replaced by a desire to address daily issues. Palestinians in the 1948 areas [Israel] have chosen to prioritize daily life issues over the national issues," he said. "People didnt care about the national issues despite the [Jewish] nationality law, which clearly discriminates against them.

Zakout also argued that the division and the split of the Joint List" affected voters.

The Joint List, which included four Arab parties, split into two different lists. Hadash (the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), headed by Ayman Odeh, joined forces with Ahmad Tibi of the Arab Movement for Renewal (Taal). This list won six seats.

The other list combined the United Arab List (Raam)  which includes the Islamic Movements Southern Branch and is headed by Mansour Abbas  with the National Democratic Assembly (Balad), headed by Mtanses Shehadeh. This list won four seats.

Anton Shalhat, a respected Israeli affairs analyst with the Madar Center, agreed that the pre-election divisions  which led to the split of the single Joint List into two lists  negatively affected the Arab electorate. There was disappointment in the split of the Joint List and the 'horse trading' that left many feeling that the leaders of the parties were more concerned about themselves than serving their community, Shalhat told the Haifa-based Arab48 news on April 11.

Bader Mansour, the founder and president of the Nazareth-based Nazdaq software company, told Al-Monitor that the Palestinian citizens of Israel are in the midst of an identity crisis that has become clearer in this election. The struggle for identity of Arabs in Israel was accelerated by the incitement against them by [Benjamin] Netanyahu, while [Benny] Gantz totally ignored them," he said. "This has left many feeling marginalized and lacking any desire to be represented in the Israeli parliament.

Zaha Hassan, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an April 11 interview with Carnegies Gulf-based Diwan site that Palestinian citizens of Israel were of two minds on the election. Many of them believed that it would legitimize a government that had effectively told them that they were not part of Israeli society," she said. "This is the message they got from the passage of the Jewish Nation State Basic Law, which defines Israel as a Jewish state and affirms that only Jews are entitled to self-determination in the country.

Haasan, however, said that other Palestinian citizens of Israel" believed "it was important to participate in elections, as flawed as they were  for example, parties calling for equality between Jews and non-Jews are banned.

Israels Arab population of the Druze faith participated in the election and voted for the left-wing Meretz party. Haaretz ran a headline April 11 stating: How Israeli Arab Voters Saved Meretz. The article stated that the Druze voted for Meretz as payback for the Jewish nationality law that discriminated against non-Jews, including the Druze who serve in the Israeli army.

The low turnout pushed many leaders and thinkers to ask: Where do we go from here? Awad Abdel Fattah, the former secretary-general of the Balad party  which barely passed the 3.25% threshold  said on his Facebook page that a serious review is needed.

Abdel Fattah called for a change in leadership. The key question is who will take on this review and the mission of forging ahead a new way with renewed national ethos," he said. "Certainly not the failed leaders who have been holding on to their leadership positions for over two decades.

Palestinian citizens of Israel, who constitute 20.9% of the overall 8.8 million citizens of Israel, will have 8% of Knesset representation (10 out of 120). But this imbalance changes drastically when you compare overall Jewish and Palestinian populations between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Reuters reported in March 2018 that parity between the two ethnic groups was reached, leaving the long-term choices of the leaders of both communities very clear.

The choices are sharing the land or sharing the power. The low turnout and the drop in Arab representation in the Israeli Knesset, along with the rise of serious talk about annexing parts of the West Bank, will create an even further shift in the aspirations of Palestinians on both sides of the green line, separating Israel from the occupied territories, away from the two-state solution and toward the one-state solution with equal rights for all citizens.
Democrats in Congress came out swinging this week after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu secured a fifth term with the aid of his right-wing allies.

Netanyahus close alignment with President Donald Trump and his dalliance with the extremist Jewish Power party has opened him up to unprecedented criticism from even staunchly pro-Israel Democrats in recent months. The Israeli leaders last-minute campaign promise to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank has added fuel to the fire, generating condemnation far beyond the partys left fringe.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., fired the opening legislative salvo on Thursday, introducing a resolution calling on the Trump administration to restore US assistance to the West Bank and Gaza.

Aid to innocent civilians should not be caught up in broader geopolitical battles, Merkley told Al-Monitor. We can and should restore aid to children and other vulnerable populations at the same time as we stand steadfastly by Israels security.

The resolution calls on the Trump administration to spend $196.5 million in economic assistance and $61 million in security aid appropriated by Congress that has been held up because of legal uncertainty. Trump suspended economic and humanitarian aid to the Palestinians last year; since then the Palestinians have rejected all further assistance amid concerns that accepting it would open them up to court-ordered legal damages following last years enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act.

Merkleys resolution has five Democratic cosponsors: Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the top Democrat on the foreign aid panel, and Sens. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Chris Coons, D-Del., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Van Hollen also penned a Washington Post op-ed with Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., on Wednesday urging Congress to pass legislation calling for the protections of the human rights of Israelis and Palestinians and opposing any actions that sabotage a future two-state solution.

While the resolution is unlikely to advance in the Republican-held Senate, it stands a better chance in the Democratic-controlled House. Today, four pro-Israel leaders in the lower chamber  Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y.; House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel, D-N.Y.; Middle East subcommittee Chairman Ted Deutch, D-Fla.; and Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Ill.  weighed in with a statement condemning Netanyahus rhetoric.

We are greatly concerned by the possibility of Israel taking unilateral steps to annex the West Bank, they wrote. We hope that any security measures are implemented within the context of preserving the eventual possibility of a two-state solution.

Lowey has previously criticized Trumps Palestinian aid elimination. And Deutch has introduced legislation that would allow Palestinian aid to resume despite the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act.

Nonetheless, the lawmakers avoided calling Netanyahu out by name and asserted that Palestinian leadership has been unwilling to accept any reasonable peace proposal or even to negotiate seriously toward a solution.

Our fear is that such unilateral steps  whether from Israelis or Palestinians  would push the parties [further] from a final, negotiated settlement, they wrote.

Van Hollen and Connolly went further in their op-ed, calling Netanyahus annexation pledge the first step toward a West Bank with enclaves of stateless Palestinians or of a greater Israel without Palestinians.

These developments have not taken place in a vacuum, the lawmakers wrote. They have been recklessly aided and abetted by President Trump, whose indiscriminate support for Netanyahu and the Israeli far right has been characterized by total disregard for long-standing US policy, international law and regional stability.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also faced heat from Democratic senators during two appearances on Capitol Hill this week. Pressed by Van Hollen about what the Trump administration would do should Netanyahu move forward with settlement annexation on Thursday, the secretary refused to answer.

Trumps recognition of Israels annexation of the occupied Golan Heights last month garnered condemnation from Democrats, who fear that the move served as a green light for Netanyahu to propose doing the same in the West Bank.

Pompeo also repeatedly declined to endorse a two-state solution. Israeli media reported today that the administrations long-delayed plan would drop anywhere between June and November.

The old set of ideas arent worth retreading, Pompeo told lawmakers on Wednesday. They have simply not succeeded.

No one in Congress has seen the carefully guarded peace plan, and Republicans indicated that they are perfectly fine with that. They also believe that decisions that benefited Netanyahus chances at the polls, such as the Golan Heights decision and last years decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, do not obligate the prime minister to make any concessions as part of a US peace plan.

Ultimately its a determination for the people of Israel in terms of what agreement would further security in Israel and in the Middle East, said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. We should respect the sovereignty of Israel and the Israeli people to make those determinations.

For his part, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., downplayed Netanyahus annexation proposal and its impact on the peace process.

The prime minister is always going to act in the best interest of Israels security, Rubio told Al-Monitor. Im not very optimistic about there being a [peace] settlement at this point on that issue given the players that are involved. And theres no one to negotiate with on the Palestinian side.
CAIRO  Egyptians will vote in late April in a referendum on the constitutional amendments that the House of Representatives have been considering. Wide political support was given to these amendments during the discussions "under the dome," as Egyptians call the parliament building, where the final vote is scheduled for April 16-17.

Al-Monitor learnt from multiple parliamentary and partisan sources that the election of a 300-member Senate, which would be reinstated under the amendments, will be held before the end of 2019, most likely in the last quarter of the year.

The sources, who declined to be named, said it was decided that 100 members of the Senate would be appointed by the president, while the other 200 would be elected according to a mechanism that will be specified in the electoral law. They revealed that the head of the parliamentary Legislative Committee, Bahaa Abou Chaka, would most likely be appointed to chair the Senate.

Egyptians living abroad will cast their vote on April 19-21, and the nationwide referendum will be held on April 22-24.

On March 24, the House of Representatives released a statement indicating that the constitutional amendments procedures  hearings and final vote  are more likely to be completed by mid-April, after which the national Elections Commission should call upon the electorate to vote in the referendum, in case the required parliamentary majority voted in favor [of the amendments]."

Article 226 of the constitution stipulates that a two-third majority is required in parliament before the amendments are referred to a public vote.

The constitutional amendments that the Egypt Support Coalition put forward Feb. 3 seek to extend the presidential term from four to six years, provided that the president does not remain in office for more than two terms in a row. They also include a transitional text allowing current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to run for two additional consecutive terms. On Feb. 14, 485 parliamentarians voted in favor of these amendments in the initial vote in parliament.

Political parties, especially the Nations Future Party, organized rallies to introduce the amendments to the public and urge voters to vote yes in the referendum, focusing on Articles 243 and 244 that provide for parliament quotas for women, youths, people with disabilities and peasants. The amendments to the electoral law will specify the percentages of this representation.

Also, fairs where commodities are sold at lower prices were held, paving the way for the people to approve of the amendments.

Under the amendments, Articles 243 and 244 stipulate that the state shall ensure an adequate representation in the House of Representatives of peasants, workers, youths, Christians, people with disabilities and Egyptians living abroad, as the anticipated law specifies.

Al-Monitor learnt that the parties allocated huge sums to the rallies, and that Sisi, who is expected to run in the 2020 presidential elections, made a number of decisions, which he announced on March 30, serving as financial incentives to prompt the people to vote for him in the two terms, according to parliamentary sources.

Speaking at a March 30 Mother's Day event organized by the National Council for Women, Sisi said that starting July 1, the minimum wage for public employees will increase from 1,200 Egyptian pounds ($69) to 2,000 pounds ($115) a month. He added that the minimum pension would be increased to 900 pounds ($52) a month. In addition, pension arrears would be paid, which is the subject of a judicial dispute between pensioners and the government.

Commenting on the political parties efforts to mobilize the masses, official spokesman for the Wafd Party Yasser al-Hudaibi told Al-Monitor that the party will conduct an internal vote on its stance toward the amendments, adding that should its General Assembly agree, popular rallies will be held to encourage partisans to vote yes. Of note, the Wafd Party announced being in favor of the amendments during the Legislative Committees hearing in parliament.

Although the majority of parliament members agreed on the amendments during the discussions, they were keen to emphasize in their official statements and remarks that it is up to the people to decide on the amendments.

On April 4, Youm7 reported Al-Sayyed Al-Sherif, parliament's first deputy speaker, as saying in an official statement that the amendments are only considered final once approved by the people who are the ultimate decision-makers. He added, The community dialogue sessions in parliament have been an opportunity for all social segments to freely express their opinions regarding the amendments and to listen to the different opinions.

The Ministry of Manpower and Immigration launched a campaign April 4, dubbed Know  Participate  Even abroad, to answer the questions of Egyptians living abroad on the constitutional amendments and to raise awareness of the importance of a large voter turnout in this constitutional milestone.

Shourouk News reported Minister of Immigration and Egyptian Expatriates Affairs Nabila Makram as saying in an official statement April 4, The campaign seeks to open a direct communication channel on the amendments with Egyptians living abroad and to answer their questions in this regard. The campaign aims to raise awareness of everything related to the proposed amendments among Egyptians living abroad.

She added, It is a national and constitutional right for them to express their opinion and vote in the referendum.

Voters are expected to support the amendments in the referendum, given the political indications under the dome and the arties political and popular activities in the street.
The ouster of Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir by the countrys military yesterday following months of unrest has had a mixed reception in the Arab world, with assorted rulers shaking in their shoes. One leader in particular, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, will be watching closely how the transition of power pans out.

The junta said it has taken Bashir into custody, suspended the constitution and will run the country for a two-year transitional period with elections to follow.

Why it matters: In December, Bashir became the first Arab leader since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 to visit Damascus, where he met with Assad. The visit was widely seen as an overture that would likely pave the way after years in the wilderness for Syrias eventual re-integration into the Arab world. Assad has been treated like a pariah and Syria was suspended from the Arab League in November 2011 in response to his governments brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

But it's become increasingly apparent, thanks in no small measure to Russia and Irans support, that the Assad regime is not falling anytime soon. Countries like Jordan, which is home to at least 1.4 million Syrian refugees and keen to repatriate them, have been quietly reaching out to Damascus. In December, the United Arab Emirates became the first of the Gulf countries that had shuttered their embassies in Syria to re-open. Bahrain followed suit the next day. Bashir was, at Russias prodding, angling to get Syria back into the Arab League and to attend its latest summit in Tunis last month, but ultimately failed.

The friend of my enemy can be my friend: It may seem counterintuitive for Assad to be unhappy about the ejection of the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Bashir, since at home, alongside the al-Qaeda-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Brotherhood-friendly rebels and their sponsors Turkey and Qatar are among his most bitter foes. And by the same token it may seem odd that Bashir would be mentoring Assad.

Follow the money: Russia, which flew Bashir to the Syrian capital, has reportedly been investing in cash-strapped Sudan, including in its mineral and energy sectors. Rising prices were among the chief triggers of the protests that toppled Bashir and Moscow has used its leverage to get Bashir to help Assad back into the Arab fold.

Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, another of Bashirs friends, must be nervous too. While he repeated his aversion to military coups  he survived one himself in 2016  Erdogan was pointedly silent about the plight of his fellow Muslim Brotherhood-aligned traveler in a news conference with Burkina Fasos president, Roch Mare Christian Kabore, in Ankara yesterday.

There are around 200 Turkish companies operating in Sudan with a total investment of $650 million, according to Turkeys daily financial newspaper Dunya. In 2018, Turkeys state petroleum company TPAO signed a $100 million joint production agreement with the Sudanese government, and the list goes on. At the same time, Sudans Suakin Island, where an unspecified number of Turkish forces are said to be deployed, was seen as a strategic foothold in the Red Sea as Turkey looks to expand its military footprint in the Middle East and beyond.

The spiraling food prices that expedited Bashir's political demise are one of the reasons Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party lost Turkey's biggest cities, Ankara and Istanbul, in the March 31 municipal elections.

Whats next: Sudans pro-democracy protesters are not celebrating Bashirs fall yet because it remains unclear what the military plans to do, although military leaders have said they dont seek power. But Assad, Erdogan and the ousted dictators other regional allies need not panic yet, said Elizabeth Tsurkov, a Syria expert and research fellow at the Washington-based Forum for Regional Thinking. Tsurkov told Al-Monitor, Regimes across the region that have not fallen, including the Assad regime and [Egyptian President Abdel Fattah] al-Sisi regime, are definitely unhappy about the developments in both Sudan and Algeria. But we dont know what power will replace Bashir. If it's another military dictatorship, Assad and Sisi and all the other authoritarian regimes will be quite pleased with that outcome.

Know more: Read about Cairos reasons for backing Khartoum during the protest as well as the Iranian medias reaction to the Sudanese leaders fall.

-Amberin Zaman
When tensions along the border with the Gaza Strip escalated in early March, the leadership of the Blue and White party traveled to the southern town of Ashdod to shore up support for its bid to oust the dominant Likud party from power. Videos of that campaign tour showed party Chair Lt. Gen. (Res.) Benny Gantz, along with two other decorated colleagues, Lt. Gen. (Res.) Moshe Yaalon and Lt. Gen. (Res.) Gabi Ashkenazi, being welcomed warmly by local residents. Footage posted online showed the three former army chiefs, along with their partner Knesset member Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party, sitting in a coffee shop looking pleased with themselves. You have the right to full security, Gantz told residents. We have three former army chiefs and Yair [Lapid] who was a member of the security Cabinet; we know what the military can do.

Warm welcome notwithstanding, the publicized visit evidently did not convince Ashdod residents to vote Blue and White. The ruling Likud party remained the dominant political force in the port city, garnering almost 34% of the vote, as it did in the 2015 elections. Only 16% went for Blue and White. The results in all outlying areas in the countrys south and north were similar, with Likud surging well ahead of its newly minted rival.

Almost half (49%) of the residents of the northern Lebanon border town of Kiryat Shmona, for example, voted Likud and only 11% of the votes went to Gantz and his generals. Even an embarrassing October 2018 event during which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insulted a Kiryat Shmona resident who complained to him about the citys poor health-care services did not dent the popularity of his Likud party. When the complainant, Orna Peretz, tried to interrupt a Netanyahu speech, he shut her up by saying, Youre boring us, setting off a media storm. Pundits predicted at the time that Kiryat Shmona would turn against the Likud. Netanyahus political rivals called Peretz and used the incident in their campaign propaganda as proof of the prime ministers disdain for his voters. Peretz shifted her support to Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, a former Likud stalwart who heads the center-right Kulanu party.

The Blue and White leadership also traveled to Kiryat Shmona during the campaign, had its photos taken eating at a famous local falafel joint and being welcomed warmly by residents, just as they were in Ashdod. On election day, April 9, Kiryat Shmona stood by Netanyahu.

Netanyahu also took 55% of the votes in the eastern town of Beit Shean, with Blue and White barely getting 5.2%. The Likud swept to victory in the southern border town of Sderot, battered for years by Qassam rockets from Gaza, with some 43% of the vote, leaving Blue and White far behind with only 9%. The same pattern emerged repeatedly: Residents of less well-established, outlying towns  many having suffered for years under constant barrages from Gaza and complaining that the government had abandoned them  once again placed their faith in Netanyahu and his Likud party.

In more prosperous, centrally located areas, Blue and White overtook the Likud to become the biggest party, providing a mirror image of the results in the rest of the country. In Tel Aviv, for example, Blue and White garnered 45% of the vote, leaving the Likud far behind with 19%. Over 55% of voters in the upscale suburban Tel Aviv town of Ramat Hasharon gave their support to Blue and White, compared with 17% to Likud. Almost half (48%) the voters in the neighboring town of Herzliya voted for the generals and only 23% for the veteran Likud. In the nearby town of Hod Hasharon, also part of the Tel Aviv metro area, 53% voted for Blue and White and only some 20% for the Likud.

This voting pattern is not new. The results reflect nothing more than the traditional support the Likud has enjoyed for decades in the geographic periphery. Blue and White assumed it could disrupt this pattern with generals at the helm, some well-known right-wing figures who formerly sided with the Likud, and back-slapping, glad-handing photo-ops. They expected some Likud voters to jump ship and come over to them. The outcome was nowhere near that scenario. The Likud scored a crushing victory, in no small part due to Netanyahus long-standing close ties with his electorate. Not only did the criminal probes and possible indictments, pending a hearing, on charges of corruption not hurt Netanyahu, they buttressed the support he has enjoyed since he first went into politics at the end of the 1980s and ran on the Likud slate for the Knesset after serving as Israels ambassador to the United Nations.

Elections cannot be won in Israel without the backing of the periphery. Support of major towns in the center are not sufficient. A former close aide to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Sheves, used to recount that the 1992 election campaign that resulted in Rabins victory focused almost entirely on the periphery (considered stronghold of the Likud). Rabin barely campaigned in the countrys center. Rabin also had a well-established party backing him  the Labor party, many of whose Knesset representatives hailed from the periphery. While Likud was already a strong party at that time, Rabin succeeded in attracting quite a few voters from right-wing bastions on his way to the prime ministers office.

Like Rabin, Gantz was also chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), but that was not enough. Gantz heads a new party formed about two months ago, which lacks a foothold in outlying regions. Positioning the former mayor of the small Negev Desert town of Yeruham, Michael Biton, in the relatively high 11th place on the Blue and White Knesset slate was not enough. Judging by the results, the move did not help much. The Likud is still the biggest party in Yeruham  42% of Bitons former constituents voted for Likud on April 9, only 10% for his Blue and White party.

The recurring question after every election cycle in Israel of why the periphery keep voting as a herd for the Likud despite persistent social and security woes under its leadership reflects a total lack of understanding of this tight, historic relationship. For residents of what are known as development towns, established in the 1950s and 1960s to house immigrants, many of them from Arab states in North Africa and the Middle East, the Likud is a political home. The party, shunned by the ruling Mapai party (precursor of the Labor Party) responsible for sending those early immigrants to the geographic periphery, is an integral part of their identity and self-determination. They are not a herd as many tar them and they do not vote blindly. It is also a mistake to regard these Likud voters as poor. That was the case in the states early years, but today many party faithful are relatively well-off, even though they live in distant development towns. The poorest Israelis are actually Arab citizens and ultra-Orthodox Jews, almost none of whom vote Likud.

The Likud is a party with a proud tradition and deep ties to its core constituents. Netanyahus achievement  increasing the Likuds Knesset faction from 30 to 36 seats, despite the criminal suspicions against him and the generals party that set out to unseat him  was not only due to traditional Likud voters. Netanyahu enjoyed major support in the countrys center as well, from independent voters who believe in his leadership, view him as a great statesman, as Mr. Security, and are willing to ignore the corruption scandals dogging him. These were the icing on the cake for him. Netanyahu went into the 2019 elections secure in knowing that he could count on a solid base of faithful Likud supporters in the countrys periphery.
Optimists in the Blue and White Party predicted during the election campaign that winning 34 to 35 seats in the 120-member Knesset would be a political watershed. Any figure above the target, said the strategists of the newly minted party established to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would guarantee them power.

On April 9, it turned out they had met their optimistic target but lost the fight. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud won the same number of votes for his Likud party, but is better positioned to form a government due to the strong showing of the right-wing bloc and its numerical advantage over the left and center-left. On April 11, after the final results were published, the Likud got one extra Knesset seat, reaching 36 mandates.

In fact, Netanyahu has devoured the right, wiped out his nemesis Naftali Bennett of the New Right Party, eliminated the outcast Zehut Party of Moshe Feiglin that had been a thorn in his side and managed to contain the ultra-right United Right Party, still leaving him sufficient partners with whom to form a stable government, his fifth. On the other hand, Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz and his Blue and White co-chair Yair Lapid brought Labor to a historic low by pirating its voters, leaving them with very few significant partners with whom to form a government. The fact that Israels Arab parties are not considered viable partners by the center-left and are not players in the coalition maneuvering makes the task of this political bloc virtually impossible.

What happens now? Blue and White was established on the fly to achieve a single goal: bringing down Netanyahu. It is led by a quartet consisting of former military chief Gantz, who hooked up with another former chief of staff, Lt. Gen. (res.) Moshe Yaalon, who had formed the Telem Party. The two then joined forces with Lapid and drew in a third former military chief, Lt. Gen. (res.) Gabi Ashkenazi. It all happened within two weeks and two and a half months prior to election day. This patchwork creation is composed of representatives from the political right and left, social activists and additional generals (two former major generals, two police commissioners, a former deputy head of the Shin Bet agency and a former deputy Mossad chief). The quartet runs this strange hybrid from what has been dubbed the cockpit, with Gantz at the controls and the other three as co-pilots. Whether this strange creature can survive in Israels political jungle and opposition exile is unclear.

In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon formed a similar party, Kadima. Netanyahu sought repeatedly to dismantle Kadima and cannibalize it for his Likud, but failed. Kadima nonetheless disintegrated less than a decade later. Is there sufficient glue within Blue and White to ensure its survival and ability to challenge the next Netanyahu government from the benches of the Knesset opposition?

It all depends on what the interests are, a senior party figure told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. It all depends on the alternatives. Right now, we are united behind one goal and none of us has other options. We are here to stay.

Lets start with Lapid. This is his third election campaign. If he bows out now, so soon after aligning himself with Gantz and company, he will lose the political capital he has accumulated and Yesh Atid will become a niche party devoid of real prospects. Lapid has to stay the course. The same goes for Gantz. He has no political experience and has no reason to give up after winning 35 Knesset seats in his first ever run for office. Yaalon made the best deal in aligning his tiny Telem, which has no electoral base, with Gantz and Lapid and turning himself into a significant political force. He is not going anywhere, either, nor is the charismatic and popular Ashkenazi, who has told associates that Blue and White intends to provide an alternative to Netanyahu, protect Israels democracy and keep going.

Netanyahus possible indictment in three cases of suspected corruption makes any talk of a Likud-Blue and White unity government irrelevant. Even if some magical formula can be found to make it possible, such a government would fall apart once Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit makes his final decision to indict Netanyahu, expected by the end of the year. Would anyone bother forming a unity government for eight months? Probably not.

The only one who could reshuffle the cards is US President Donald Trump with his impending deal of the century for Israeli-Palestinian peace. The Washington rumor mill suggests its unveiling is near. Are Trump and Netanyahu coordinating? Might the US president bring to bear his considerable weight to convince Gantz, Lapid and their fellows to help Netanyahu make history? The prospects of such a scenario are slim to nil.

Right now, the guys over at Blue and White are high on motivation and good intentions. We have almost half the people behind us, another senior party source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. People who voted for us and view us as their last hope, the final barrier to the destruction of Israeli democracy. We cannot disappoint them.

Blue and Whites game plan is to operate like a disciplined military unit and try to make life miserable for Netanyahu, as Lapid announced on April 10. There is, however, a world of difference  or more precisely, a wide and dangerous expanse of desert  between the military discipline ingrained in the party heads and the rest of the political arena. Most of the partys new Knesset members are political novices clueless about political work, and they may be deeply disappointed to realize that life in the opposition is hard and unrewarding most of the time. Not all are likely to survive the adventure.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu has been busy. He is trying to engineer a blitz to bring Kahlon and his small Kulanu Party back into the fold of the Likud. Also on his agenda is a bid to dismantle the United Right alliance and pull its less radical wing led by Rabbi Rafi Peretz (HaBayit HaYehudi) into a mega-Likud comprised of over 40 Knesset members. It would hand him ultimate control of state affairs with the support of the disciplined, obedient 15 Knesset members of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and make the task of the Blue and White opposition tougher than ever.

Blue and White has set itself a target of undermining Netanyahus legitimacy. It is inconceivable, one of the partys putative Knesset members told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, for half the people of Israel to ignore the fact that we have a prime minister under suspicion in three criminal cases who will soon be indicted for bribery. The existence of Blue and White, a party with tremendous electoral backing and broad support, provides a real alternative to Netanyahus corrupt regime.

The party is now waiting for the evidentiary material and testimony against Netanyahu, expected to leak out once Mandelblit hands it over to the prime ministers legal team. Senior party officials are hoping the material will highlight the extent of government corruption under his aegis. We have to lead a broad public protest against the phenomenon of corruption in general and by Netanyahu in particular, one party member told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. We have to take control of the public discourse and the street, to display our presence and set the agenda. We must not give Netanyahu a chance to evade this truth contained in the hundreds of binders of investigation material. This will be our test and this will be our mission.

This determination will come up against one of the most skilled politicians in Israeli history. Netanyahu proved during the recent campaign that he is still going strong and that he can deconstruct and reconstruct any agenda. On the other hand, Blue and White has finally provided a counterbalance. We are witnessing a heavyweight fight between two almost equal forces that has just begun.
RAMALLAH, West Bank  The shuttering of Alfalstiniah TV on April 1 has highlighted the financial crisis plaguing Palestinian media outlets, in particular satellite TV channels. The immediate cause of Alfastiniah's demise was its inability to pay the monthly fees it owed to obtain satellite broadcasting services. Other outlets are finding themselves in similar situations due to reduced foreign aid to nongovernmental organizations and a lack of government support.

Palsat, a private company established by presidential decree in April 2015, collects monthly fees from Palestinian channels in return for satellite broadcasting services. The channels pay Palsat between $24,000 and $28,000 per month, depending on the level of the broadcast quality.

On the day Alfalstiniah TV ceased operations, it aired an interview with its director general, Maher Shalabi, who said that the channel had received notification from Palsat on March 20 that it would cease broadcasting due to the debt it had accumulated. Shalabi accused the government, as represented by the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), as being behind the crisis facing the channel.

Alfalstiniah TV launched in 2012 as a private satellite channel owned by a holding company. The Siraj Fund Management Company withdrew from the holding company in 2013, after which the PBC bought Siraj's 49% of the shares, valued at $2.6 million. The PBC pledged to invest $900,000 for Alfalstiniah's development. According to Shalabi, the investment never materialized, and the channels total debt rose to $3.2 million, including interest.

Meanwhile, Maan TV is also dealing with financial difficulties. Nasser al-Laham, Maan editor in chief, revealed March 30 on the station that the network had received formal notification the day before from Palsat that its broadcasts would cease April 1 due to accumulated debt.

Raed Othman, director general of the Maan network, told Al-Monitor that independent Palestinian media outlets have been negatively affected by the decline and sometimes halt in funding, as in the case of financial assistance from the United States, to support civil projects and institutions in Palestine. Some media outlets, he explained, receive part of their funding from civic institutions, unions and women's and youth organizations for broadcasting programs produced by these groups.

Othman said that such media outlets cannot survive for very long because their sources of income are so limited. He added that Ma'an has never received a dime from the PA, although he had thought the PA would support local media outlets to sustain their role in conveying the Palestinian narrative to the world and to expose the realities of Israel's policies toward the Palestinians.

Maan was founded as a non-profit in 2002 by a group of Palestinian journalists. As it was getting off the ground, it had received financial support from the Danish and Dutch Representations in Ramallah.

Othman said Maan's administration was surprised by Palsats notification because the channel had settled $110,000 of the $160,000 it owed. Palsat said in a March 31 statement that an agreement had been signed November 1, 2016, to allow Maan TV to begin broadcasting, but since then until March 13 of this year, Ma'an had only settled six months worth of payments.

Omar Nazzal, a member of the General Secretariat of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, told Al-Monitor that Ma'an and Palsat had asked the syndicate to help them reach a compromise, determine the exact value of the debt and develop a mechanism for settling what is owed through installments.

We are on it, Nazzal said. Maan hasnt stopped and wont stop broadcasting unless there is a joint decision taken by the syndicate and the two involved parties.

Some Palestinian media outlets have faced insurmountable obstacles. In February, employees of Jerusalem-based Al-Quds TV said that they had received a notice from their management stating that the channel would be closing its offices due to a financial and debt crisis preventing it from paying employee salaries.

The Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV announced that for financial reasons its last broadcast would be Dec. 20. It, however, was saved when Hamas politburo bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh stepped in to keep it running. A year earlier, Al-Kitab, an educational TV channel run by the Islamic University of Gaza, had closed its doors because of financial difficulties.

In light of these developments in broadcasting, Nazzal remarked, The crisis plaguing media outlets is worrying as it harms diversity in the Palestinian media, which is important when it comes to ensuring freedom of opinion and expression.

Nazzal added, The PA lacks programs aimed at supporting independent media outlets, and it mainly focuses on supporting government media outlets. The PA imposes high licensing fees on private media outlets. These fees depend on the nature of the outlet and on whether it is a TV channel, a newspaper or a radio station.

Besides the outlets themselves, another victim of the political and financial challenges that Palestinian media outlets are grappling with are the journalists working for these institutions. Among journalism majors, 49.2% are unemployed, according to data released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics in November 2018 covering through the third-quarter of the year.
Lewandowski. Photo: Al Drago/CQ-Roll Call

Corey Lewandowski, Trumps former campaign manager, has been helping Ruth Papazian, a medical journalist who is launching a long-shot challenge to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-term Democratic incumbent congresswoman.

Papazian has been telling Republican operatives in New York that Lewandowski has agreed to serve as an unofficial adviser to her. She has been on Fox News and given interviews to the New York Post and the Daily News since she announced she was going to run on the GOP line against Ocasio-Cortez. When contacted by Intelligencer on Thursday, however, Papazian quickly hung up the phone, then sent a text message reply saying that due to Holy Week beginning in three days, she would be unable to speak until after Easter Monday. Lewandowski could not be reached for comment.

Lewandowski was Trumps original campaign manager, growing close to the president and maintaining his post even after he was charged with battery for grabbing a news reporter who attempted to ask Trump a policy question. He was pushed out of his role in June 2016 after feuding with campaign chairman Paul Manafort, but he has reportedly continued to serve as an informal White House adviser.

Papazian has said she decided to run after Ocasio-Cortezs opposition to the Amazon deal led to the companys decision to cancel its plans to build a second headquarters in New York. She parachuted into a congressional district she doesnt even represent and led the parade of grandstanding politicians to tank the deal, Papazian told Fox News. Instead of fighting to keep Amazon out of Queens, she should have been fighting to bring Amazon to the Bronx.

Papazian, who writes for medical trade journals, leads an anti-AOC Facebook group called Bronx Bolshevik Bulletin and has written for American Greatness, a pro-Trump political blog best-known for an anonymous post declaring the 2016 race The Flight 93 Election that compared the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency to armed hijackers flying an airplane: Charge the cockpit or you die, wrote author Michael Anton, who later went on to serve in the Trump administration.

Papazians posts are less inflammatory, but in one she did suggest that the Deep State was taking its cues from the Netflix television show House of Cards to attempt to undermine the Trump presidency; in another she argued that Americans are now forced to armed themselves because politicians who take donations from gun control activists have passed unreasonable gun control laws that effectively negate your Second Amendment rights.

A recent Siena poll found that 52 percent of Ocasio-Cortezs constituents have a favorable opinion of the Democrat, even as a larger majority also expressed a desire for Amazon to come to New York City.

Since dethroning Joe Crowley, the head of the Queens County Democratic Party and the Democratic caucus leader in the House of Representatives, Ocasio-Cortez has achieved an unprecedented degree of political stardom for a first-term member of Congress, appearing on the cover of major national magazines and being a near-nightly target for Fox News anchors.

Due in part to her stardom, Ocasio-Cortez is likely to face a number of challengers in both the Democratic primary and in the general election. Any Republican, however, will have a very difficult time defeating her, particularly in a presidential election year, and in a district that stretches from some of the poorest neighborhoods in the Bronx and Queens to wealthier, ultraliberal enclaves like Astoria, Woodside, and Jackson Heights, which Hillary Clinton won by 57 points in 2016.

A spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez declined to comment.
Just four days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left Moscow, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived on April 9 for a full day of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, leading to agreements to expand trade, tourism and energy cooperation as well as hints at deepening defense ties and discussions about next steps in Syria.

As Maxim Suchkov writes, Putin gave Erdogan the empathy the Turkish leader isnt getting from Washington. And Erdogan welcomed the Russian bear hug. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) suffered setbacks in municipal elections in Turkeys largest cities on March 31, and US-Turkish relations remain, well, pretty awful.

The US-Turkey relationship is in such a bad state that the sides cant even agree on what was discussed during recent high-level bilateral talks, writes Semih Idiz. This was the case following the meeting between Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington on April 3, which included some embarrassing public back and forth about what was discussed and agreed and what was not.

The Donald Trump administration was crystal clear, however, about Turkeys intent to purchase the Russian S-400 air defense system. A Pentagon spokesperson said, The S-400 is a threat to the F-35 program and the safety of our NATO allies. The Defense Department nixed a Turkish offer to set up a bilateral working group to temper these concerns, as Jack Detsch reports. The chairs and ranking members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees wrote in the New York Times that Turkeys choice is either the US F-35 fighter jets or the S-400; in other words, Erdogan cant have it both ways. If the choice is the S-400, Turkey could even face sanctions under the Countering Americas Adversaries through Sanctions Act, they wrote.

At a NATO event in Brussels on April 3, referring to Turkeys purchase of the S-400, US Vice President Mike Pence said, "Turkey must choose.  Does it want to remain a critical partner in the most successful military alliance in the history of the world, or does it want to risk the security of that partnership by making such reckless decisions that undermine our alliance?"

Erdogan, speaking in Moscow, spurned US requests to rethink the Russian deal, saying, Those who advise or ask us to scrap it most probably dont know us.  It is a done deal for us."

Putin couldnt resist piling on, saying that he and Erdogan discussed other current and promising defense cooperation projects beyond the S-400s, and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu added that Turkey would even consider purchasing another S-400 system if the United States follows through on its threats.

And in the category of bad to worse for US-Turkey ties, US Sens. Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) introduced a bill to sanction Turkish officials unless Ankara frees two Turkish employees of the US Consulate in Istanbul and Turkish-American NASA physicist Serkan Golge for their alleged involvement in the 2016 coup against Erdogan, which the Turkish president blames on Fetullah Gulen, who resides in the United States, and his followers.

Also in Congress, Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced legislation that would lift the arms embargo on Cyprus and allow the United States to enter into energy cooperation agreements between Cyprus, Greece and Israel, which will all be poorly received in Ankara, as Bryant Harris reports.

In Moscow, Erdogan compared the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Americas Syrian Kurdish partner in the war against Islamic State, to the terror group, also called Daesch. Just like DAESH was a great threat, the YPG/PYD is a threat of the same nature, he said. With the elimination of DAESH, similar organizations and threats must also be eliminated.

The SDF is composed primarily of the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), the gendarme of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), which Turkey considers as one and the same with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which both Ankara and Washington have labeled a terrorist organization.

Erdogans again revealing the chasm between Washington and Ankara reinforces Putins role as broker among Syria, the Kurds and Turkey. Like the Trump administration, the Russian president does not want a Turkish invasion of northeast Syria. Working out a resolution among the parties in northeast Syria is a heavy lift, but Putin continues to press the diplomatic action.

And while their conversations in Moscow on Idlib and Syria contained little new, with an agreement deferred for another day, Putin flashed another key card, saying that he and Erdogan agreed to coordinate next steps in a political settlement in Syria according to UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and in coordination with the Syrian government.

Putin has been looking to rebuild the bridge from Ankara to Damascus, a trend we have covered in this column.

As with his mediation between Israel and Iran in Syria, Putin is hoping that Washington will begin to see him as the missing piece in US Syria policy, with the hope of some payback down the road in the form of sanctions relief.

The talks have crystallized the two elements of Russias current approach to Turkey, concludes Suchkov. First, on most issues sensitive to Ankara, Moscow seeks to convey the type of empathy Erdogan doesnt encounter either with the United States or Europe. Second, the meeting was meant to look beyond the Syrian file to the bilateral relations. Putins remarks suggest he genuinely believes that both of the ongoing Syrian security problems  Idlib and the northeast  will be settled soon or later. The clock may be ticking for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as he seeks to control all of Syria, but Turkey and especially Russia can afford to take their time. When this happens, however, Moscow and Ankara would need some other basis to rely on to keep the mechanism of the relationship functioning.

Erdogan may well be betting it will all blow over in time, adds Amberin Zaman, as happened when the United States slapped an arms embargo on Turkey when it invaded northern Cyprus in 1974. By this reckoning, Turkey is too big a prize for the United States to let go of and that Erdogans personal chemistry with President Donald Trump might be leveraged along with the latters affinity for Putin to save the day.

There is also the question of how the AKPs losses in the elections may affect Erdogans calculations in Syria.

By backing the opposition, the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) used a surgical strategy in Turkey's local elections March 31 to help defeat the ruling Justice and Development Party,  writes Fehim Tastekin. Kurdish votes were the key to the AKP's loss in many areas, including big metropolises such as Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, and other important centers such as Antalya, Mersin and Artvin.

The governments propaganda that the opposition was collaborating with terrorists had little effect, adds Kadri Gursel. Failing to create a perception of threat, the government failed to convince its disgruntled voters to go to the polls and dissuade right-wing opposition voters from backing CHP candidates. Its narrative that the elections were a matter of survival proved a flop.

It's important to see what Erdogan will learn from this situation, Tastekin continues. Will he opt to win over the Kurds who made him lose, or will he stick to his cooperation with the nationalist circles inside the Turkish bureaucracy and pursue his vengeance? Given his pragmatism and the economic crisis the country is facing, there are those who believe that Erdogan is likely to be more conciliatory in foreign policy issues, and that he could opt to de-escalate tensions with the EU and the United States by softening his firm stand with Syria.

Yet renewed peace talks between Erdogans government and the Kurds are still unlikely for two reasons, Tastekin concludes. First, to launch a new dialogue with the Kurds, Erdogan would have to terminate his alliance with the [Nationalist Movement Party] and nationalist cliques inside Turkey. This front wont allow him open up to Kurds. Second, Erdogan has caused so much damage to the Kurds that nobody from their camp will easily extend a hand to him.
President Donald Trump's decision to designate Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a foreign terrorist organization was not just an election gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it was a boon for all Israelis.

The IRGC is and has been, without doubt, Israels sworn enemy. It has been indirectly responsible for numerous terror attacks against Israeli citizens in Argentina and Bulgaria through Hezbollah. Two of the institutions that were in charge of arranging Irans 2016 Holocaust cartoon competition were directly related to the IRGC. As if thats not bad enough, the IRGC has been planning to create a base in Syria from which to terrorize Israels citizens. Now, with the designation by the Trump administration, the IRGC will have to be more careful about how it threatens Israeli citizens around the world and from Syria, as its designation as a terrorist organization will make Israeli retaliation more justifiable.

It's not just Israeli supporters of Trumps decision to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) who will back his recent decision regarding the IRGC. Israeli supporters of the Iran nuclear deal are also likely to back it, as they witnessed how the IRGC terrorized the post-nuclear deal atmosphere during the term of President Barack Obama. Many backers of the Iran deal in Israel were hoping that after the deal, the IRGC would allow Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to reduce tensions with Israel and the West. The IRGC did the opposite: Soon after the deal went into effect, it tested a missile with a Hebrew banner on it that called for the elimination of the State of Israel. It boosted its Shiite militia forces under its command in Syria, while Irans supreme leader and the IRGCs ultimate commander called for the elimination of Israel. Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, soon after Irans frozen assets abroad were released in 2016 as part of the JCPOA, boasted that Hezbollahs budget, its income, its expenses, everything it eats and drinks, its weapons and rockets, come from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In the long run, Trumps decision is unlikely to create lasting cohesion among opposing factions inside Iran, something that would have been of concern to Israel. Yes, the Rouhani government issued a statement of support for the IRGC and condemned Trump. And to show solidarity, members of the Iranian parliament turned up in IRGC uniforms after the designation. However, underlying such statements and photo-ops are fundamental differences of views and interests between the IRGC and the moderate faction headed by Rouhani. To name a few of the differences: Irans foreign policy in general and its involvement in Syria in particular, as well as management and control of the countrys economy and economic resources. Therefore, the apparent cohesion created by Trumps decision is unlikely to last in the long term.

On April 7, Irans Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif tweeted that supporters of Netanyahu, by having called for the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, want to to drag US into a quagmire on [Netanyahus] behalf. What Zarif does not and would not mention is that without Israels initiative or support, the IRGC was already risking war with the United States even before Trump entered office.

During the heyday of US-Iran nuclear negotiations and soon after, and despite Obama writing three letters to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei between 2015 and 2016, on a total of 58 occasions the IRGC undertook activities that could have led to war. This was through the IRGC's armed boats and drones' unprofessional and provocative behavior toward US ships in the international waters of the Persian Gulf. In 2015 and 2016 there were 23 and 35 such incidents, respectively. In 2017, when Trump entered office, there were 14 such incidents. Then, the incidents ended in August same year. Iran claims that such incidents are down due to a change in US behavior. However, the United States denied any such changes. It cannot be ruled out that Iran became concerned that Trump, as he promised during his election campaign, would not be so tolerant of the IRGCs provocative behavior in the Persian Gulf. Its unlikely that the IRGC, just because it was labeled a terrorist organization, would now want to enter a new conflict with the United States, especially since such a designation is mostly symbolic and does not add much to the existing heavy US sanctions against the organization.

It's important to remember that the IRGC, now more than ever, is unpopular inside Iran. As well as being deterred by Americas stronger firepower and Trumps tougher approach, the IRGC is also likely to be deterred by a lack of support at home. Trump is unpopular in Iran because of sanctions, but the IRGC is also unpopular. Trump (wrongfully) walked out of the Iran deal and imposed tough sanctions on Irans economy in May 2018, while the IRGC has been pillaging Irans economy since the end of the Iran-Iraq War through its corrupt business interests. The IRGC in Iran is synonymous not only with corruption, but also with violence against the citizens of Iran and their arrest and torture, either directly or indirectly through its Basij militia. Whatever sympathies and support it had garnered among Irans population for having contributed to the war against Saddam Hussein's invading army have since mostly disappeared due to its own actions.

The IRGC, despite boastful threats, has come to realize the limits of its own capabilities, as Israel has witnessed in Syria. The same is likely to apply to the threats of its supporters: After its designation as a terrorist organization, they said the United States should order coffins for its soldiers in West Asia.
TUNIS, Tunisia  The Tunisian government decided March 30 to increase fuel prices in an effort to reduce the budget deficit and meet harsh economic reforms requested by international lenders.

The countrys Ministry of Industry and Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises issued a statement announcing that unleaded gasoline prices will increase by 0.08 dinar ($0.027), putting the price of one liter at 2.065 dinars, which is equivalent to $0.68. The new price of one liter of diesel fuel stands at 1.57 dinars ($0.58), an increase of 0.09 dinar ($0.030).

According to the statement, the Ministry of Industry justified this new price hike  the sixth of its kind since 2017  with the continuous rise in oil prices and derivatives globally, as the price of crude oil exceeded the threshold of $68 a barrel in late 2018.

In this context, Tunisian farmers held a protest April 10 before parliament and another before the Ministry of Agriculture to demand an increase in the prices of agricultural products such as cereals, milk, poultry, tomatoes and potatoes. The protest, which was called for April 6 by the Tunisian Union of Agriculture and Fishing (UTAP), also called for alleviating fuel price increase repercussions on the capabilities and potential of farmers.

This decision sparked a wave of anger among Tunisians, prompting some car owners truckers to block roads across the countrys main governorates.

Tunisian Ministry of Interior Spokesman Sufian al-Zaaq said in a statement to IFM radio April 2 that car owners and truckers have closed five major roads in different governorates in peaceful protests against the new price hikes, and security forces are following up on the situation.

The last time the Tunisian government raised fuel prices was in September 2018 in a bid to curb the budget deficit and cut it to around 3.9% of the 2019 gross domestic product, which stood at 4.9% in the past year.

Other Tunisian citizens also took to social media to express their anger and condemnation of the new gas prices, calling for street protests until the government reverses its decision.

Activist and lawyer Khaled Awainia called in a Facebook post on April 3 for car owners and truckers to park their vehicles at the entrances of the cities and block the roads and cause paralysis to the entire country until the decision is reversed.

Another activist, Mohamed Ferjani, said April 1 in a more sarcastic post on his Facebook page that Tunisians ought to ditch their cars and get bicycles instead given the new soaring prices.

Tunisias powerful labor union, known as the Tunisian General Labor Union, issued a statement April 2 urging the Tunisian government to rescind the decision, accusing it of deepening the citizens economic burdens and stressing that this increase reflects the governments failed economic and financial policies for which Tunisians are paying the price.

In an April 1 statement to private radio station Shems FM, Chairman of the Finance Committee in parliament Monji Rahwi considered that the new gas prices will harm economic and agricultural institutions as they will cause an increase in the prices of services and products.

This increase is the sixth of its kind in a year and a half. These repeated price increases will inevitably affect the purchasing power of Tunisians, Ezzeddin Saidan, an economics professor at Tunis University, told Al-Monitor.

Saidan said economic institutions will be forced to raise the cost of production to offset the price hikes, which would adversely affect the ability of institutions and individuals to save. Saidan said this decision will not contribute to reducing the budget deficit but will increase its financial burdens since it will lead to more social demands and exacerbate the already tense situation in the country.

Commenting on the government's new decision, Prime Minister Youssef Chahed said during the opening of the 8th session of the Arab-Chinese Businessmen Conference held in Tunis April 2 that the government had to take these measures as the country has been going through a difficult period. Chahed said the price increases were provided for in the Tunisian Finance Law of 2019.

Secretary-General of UTAP Quraish Belghith told Al-Monitor the governments decision came without warning, stressing that it will harm the summer agricultural season and cause price increases in all basic materials whose production requires large amounts of fuel.

The Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts  a trade union organization concerned with defending businessmen and owners of free economic institutions  warned in a statement April 1 against the catastrophic consequences of such successive and arbitrary price increases on the local industrial fabric and several occupations and trades. The statement added that these measures have dangerous repercussions on the competitiveness between and sustainability of economic institutions and on the industrial sector as a whole.

The confederation also stressed that this government step will hinder the national economy and disrupt development at the level of the countrys governorates, which successive governments have been seeking to establish. The statement called for halting these obscene price hikes and freezing any decision to increase prices in 2019.

Meanwhile, Salim Basbas  a member of the Tunisian parliaments Finance, Planning and Development Committee and a leader of the Ennahda party, which is part of the ruling power  told Al-Monitor that the government seeks to safeguard the financial balances set as per the 2019 budget and set a limit to the states fuel subsidiaries.

Basbas said the rise in international oil prices has caused an imbalance in the budget, which prompted the government to increase gas prices in a bid to counterbalance this gap.

Yassin Bin Ismail, a professor in financial engineering at Tunis University, told Al-Monitor the governments decision is arbitrary and ill-considered as it was not run by economists and experts, which could cause a social crisis  especially since it directly affects citizens purchasing power.

Ismail explained that the price increase will help the government reduce the budget deficit, especially since it had previously approved wage increases in the public sector. The government has also to respond to the conditions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to cut public expenditures and implement harsh economic reforms to be eligible for the fourth tranche of the IMF $2.98 billion loan, which was approved for Tunisia but has yet to be disbursed.

Of note, the Independent High Authority for Elections decided March 29 to postpone the presidential elections that were slated for Nov. 10 until Nov. 17. This came in response to the demands of protesters calling for the postponement of election day as it coincides with the birthday of the prophet.
A story about a car killing a Turkish worker as he pushed a cart down a road three years ago garnered attention largely because the victim was an 87-year-old grandfather still in the workforce. Today in a number of industrial districts in the country manual laborers with deep wrinkles on their faces and hands can be seen. It's routine to see elderly men working eight to 10 hours a day.

More than 20% of Turkey's population has income levels below the official hunger threshold, and many of the elderly have no choice but to work.

One business owner who employs three elderly porters around Istanbul's Grand Bazaar area told Al-Monitor, I wanted to do a good deed. Old age is prevalent here and no one wants to hire grandpas. I wanted to be a good Muslim. But his neighbor laughed at him and said, You are a miser! These [elderly] guys work at half the market rate; they are cheaper than Syrians. That's why you hire them.

In a brief encounter, the elderly men  ages 72 to 88  all told Al-Monitor they had to keep working or go hungry.

One said, My son-in-law took my house. My daughter doesn't want me around. I will work until I collapse on these streets. The man had fresh, deep cuts in his calloused hands from holding the ropes of his load. When asked why he was kicked out of his own house, tears came to his eyes. I was on medication and, I dont know, one day I wet myself, so my son-in-law beat me," he said. "I left. I have dignity.

Especially with the recession deepening, more senior men can be spotted working in the underground economy  mostly collecting trash, cleaning houses or carrying loads.

Older women also continue working. In 2017, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) initiated a grandmother project that promised a salary of 435 liras (around $75) per month for those taking care of their grandkids younger than 3. The pilot project was set for one year by the Ministry of Family and Social Services and had 105,000 applicants. But applicants had to be younger than 65, which didn't help the elderly. Older women have fewer job opportunities than men or younger women. They are the most likely group to experience abuse or neglect.

Turkey is aging, slowly and quietly.

Yesim Gokce Kutsal, a medical doctor, is president of the Geriatric Sciences Research and Application Center at Hacettepe University and director of the Turkish Geriatric Society. She told Al-Monitor that Turkey's population of people over 65 reached 7.2 million at the end of 2018. That's 8.8% of the total. She said that in 2009, the percentage was 6.8%. "By 2023 we expect this rate to be 10.2%. According to UN criteria, if a country has 8% to 10% elderly, it's considered old; if it has more than 10%, it's considered very old.

All around the world aging populations are increasing, and the Population Reference Bureau in Washington predicts that by the year 2050, 21% of Turkey's population will be age 65 and over.

Most of the talk about domestic abuse in Turkey is focused on that suffered by children and women. However, elder abuse has also been becoming a bigger problem, particularly as the number of the aged increases.

In Turkish culture, the elderly are to be respected and revered as a valuable member of the family. In most television shows they're presented as an amiable member of the extended family. However, the reality isn't always as pleasant. A 2015 study estimated that 4% to 10% of Turkey's elderly suffer abuse and neglect.

Al-Monitor contacted rest homes for the elderly, health care workers at homes or convalescent care facilities and relatives of the elderly to understand the situation. All the involved parties agreed with scholars that most abuse goes unreported or underreported because it is considered a private family matter. Women with low income and those who are widowed or divorced are at the highest risk among all the elderly to face neglect and abuse. Family members, spouses and children are most likely to be the culprits.

A nurse working at an upscale private rest home in Ankara told Al-Monitor, Most of our guests are financially well-to-do and are educated. Their kids and grandkids or close relatives don't pay enough attention to them. We don't see physical abuse victims often, but there are cases where the family members acting as caregivers will intentionally or unintentionally skip or change dosage of the patients medication."

The nurse added that neglect of their personal hygiene is a top issue the elderly complain about. She said that in her 15 years of service at the facility, almost all of her patients have said they are there because they feel like they are a burden on their families.

It's often difficult to verify claims of abuse by elderly people who suffer memory loss or those who are fragile or accident-prone. Kutsal said, Any facility working with the elderly should conduct an initial psychiatric evaluation prior to accepting them." Signs of emotional abuse and the recovery process must be followed closely.

Kutsal said the Turkish Geriatrics Society, as a member of International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics-IAGG, provides training courses for medical personnel so they can recognize different types of abuse and neglect.

There is no standard protocol [among medical professionals] to detect abuse, and doctors aren't expected to receive routine training to recognize signs of abuse, which could lead to low levels of reported cases," she added.

There are several red flags that could potentially signal emotional and/or physical abuse. The most obvious signs include weight loss, dirty clothes or hair, repetitive injuries and unexplained bruises, scars, burns or bedsores. Signs that sometimes are overlooked as indications of neglect or abuse include changes in behavior, agitation or withdrawal, depression or fearfulness.

A doctor working at a private rest home highlighted another issue: Many of the elderly could continue living independently or cohabit with their extended families with simple adjustments at home, such as a handle by the bathtub and toilet for them to lift themselves up independently, or soft shoe-like slippers to minimize falls. Most of our patients suffer accidents at home and that frustrates their families simply because they don't know how to handle it.

Along with private rest homes, there are also those funded by the government. In both cases, the guests have to pay, but the costs are significantly cheaper at state-funded facilities. If the elderly guest is self-sufficient, the expenses will be even lower. Still, a goodly number of Turkish cities have no facilities for elderly care. Kutsal said 136 rest homes are government-run, 21 are operated by local municipalities and 29 by nongovernmental organizations. There are also 169 privately run rest homes. These facilities are for people who are self-sufficient. Kutsal said there are also 435 convalescent care homes for those who need around-the-clock care. She emphasized that it is important for government agencies to regularly monitor these homes and make sure all standards are met.

Loneliness is a major issue for the elderly who opt to live alone and can do so. Without a proper circle of family and friends they can become easy prey for internet and phone scams. Former criminal lawyer Zafer Yilmaz told Al-Monitor, They prey on lonely people, asking them to pay for fraudulent services. There are con artists who pose as potential brides for widowed elderly men. These are just scams to take elderly retirees' life savings. In some cases, we have seen hours of phone conversations between the criminal and the victim. Most of the time, it's the relatives that report the case to police.

Elderly abuse and neglect rarely make it onto politicians' agendas. However, with its aging population, Turkey will have to break this taboo and start finding better ways to help the elderly on financial, sexual, physical and emotional levels. Raising public awareness is crucial for detecting or prevent elder abuse.
ALEPPO, Syria  The Syrian regime continues to bomb civilians in the demilitarized zone in northwestern Syria's Idlib province, last week carrying out a horrific massacre in the town of Kafr Nabl.

The regime used cluster munitions in the April 4 attack, according to media activist Sanaa al-Ali from Kafr Nabl.

The Syrian regime forces [fired] three high-explosive rockets in the market in the center of Kafr Nabl, killing 14 civilians, and wounding dozens. The regime also bombed other towns and cities in the Idlib countryside the same day. Unfortunately, the Turkish military patrols in the buffer zone did little to stop the regime from carrying out strikes, Ali told Al-Monitor.

The next day, the imams of the mosques in the town warned people through loudspeakers not to go to mosques to perform Friday prayers, fearing another possible attack by the regime forces, she added.

Since the beginning of February, the regime's ongoing strikes and shelling of the demilitarized zones towns and villages have killed dozens of civilians and displaced thousands of families.

Turkey patrols inside the 15- to 20-kilometer-wide zone, while Russia operates in the border area outside Idlib. The aim is to prevent the Syrian regime from launching assaults on Idlib, which is home to nearly 3 million people. Turkish army patrols, including armored vehicles flying the Turkish flag, roam the demilitarized zone. Normally, a patrol takes only two hours, which serves as a brief hiatus in the shelling. Once the patrol is over, the bombing resumes.

The Turkish army ran 16 patrols from March 8 through April 5. But this has not been enough," Naji Abu Hudayfah, a spokesman for Syrian opposition faction National Front for Liberation, told Al-Monitor. "The Turkey-backed front is part of the Free Syrian Army. As soon as the patrols are over, the regime resumes bombing the villages and towns with heavy artillery shells and rockets. It seems that the Syrian regime doesn't wish to abide by the Russian-Turkish agreements and seeks to disrupt them. Russia and Turkey, which are the guarantors of the de-escalation process in the area, ought to further pressure the regime to stop its bombing.

Yet the regime has intensified its air and artillery campaign in the opposition-held cities and towns in Idlib, rural Aleppo, Hama and Latakia, prompting armed opposition factions to retaliate by attacking regime sites.

We have every right to retaliate to the sources of fire," Abu Hudayfah added. "We will not remain silent on the daily regime strikes on our areas. A response in kind is our legitimate right. The Turkish patrol comprises six armored vehicles that are escorted by vehicles belonging to the National Front for Liberation. Every patrol takes a different route, trying to explore all the roads of the demilitarized zone. Perhaps in the coming period, there will be more patrols to stop the bombing and prevent it altogether.

Media activist Fawaz Jwaid told Al-Monitor that on April 5, the Turkish army ran an observation patrol from al-Ais in southern Aleppo all the way south to the Turkish observation post in Tell Touqan in eastern Idlib. "The patrol continued south to the observation post in the Sarman in southeastern Idlib and then all the way to the Turkish post in Morak in northern Hama," he said.

A few hours later, after the end of the patrol, the regime forces resumed the bombardment of the very same villages that were patrolled earlier in southern Aleppo. The regime also bombed the town of Zammar with artillery shells and rockets, Jwaid concluded.

Al-Monitor also spoke to Deifallah al-Murr, head of the local council in Idlib province's Umm Jalal. Murr was also appointed by the Turkish army and the local councils in the area as a coordinator between the two sides.

We have had several meetings with military officials in the Turkish army over the last few days," Murr said. "We have been assured that there will be an uptick in the Turkish patrols during the month of April. We hope this will put an end to the regimes attacks. Local councils in the demilitarized zones villages and towns that have been patrolled have been very cooperative and expressed their readiness to facilitate the operation. The residents, however, will not rest until the shelling stops and they can go back to their daily lives."

A member of the Humanitarian Response Coordinator, a charity in northern Syria, told Al-Monitor, Despite the ongoing Turkish patrols, we have not registered the return of any of the displaced families in the camps of northern Idlib to their homes. On the contrary, people are still fleeing from this area to the camps, or to areas close to the Turkish checkpoints and observation points, as the regime did not stop shelling. The member used the pseudonym Abu al-Abd.
Birmingham chef Chris Hastings and his wife, Idie, of Hot and Hot Fish Club and OvenBird have added a new business to their culinary ventures. The pair have launched a full-service catering company, Hastings Catering.

Customers can place orders through the companys website.

The idea for the catering company has been a long time coming, Chris Hastings told AL.com in an interview Thursday afternoon.

Weve owned Hot and Hot for 24 years now. So, almost from the very beginning, people were calling us and weve always considered ourselves a restaurant that would do private events when requested. But we really didnt have a separate staff, catering director, or the ecosystem to become a full service, customized event and catering company.

That all changed when the Hastingses tapped culinarian Katie Wilson as director of catering. Wilson, a long-time catering talent, has worked with Shindigs, Kathy G & Co., and the Renaissance at Ross Bridge.

Shes a rock star when it comes to really curating and executing events, making them extraordinarily special, said Hastings. Thats her gift and were excited to have her on the team.

The concept

Hastings Catering specializes in creating custom culinary experiences. In lieu of a set menu, the company will work with patrons to curate and select dishes based on their tastes and the location of their event.

Those who want the tradition of Hot and Hot will be able to have it, and the company offers a list of dishes, including Conecuh sausage gumbo, suckling pig cookout, and deviled quail eggs as well as seasonal celebrated classics like the Hot and Hot tomato salad. Seafood offerings include oyster shooters, shrimp and grits, and a crawfish boil.

The history of the Hot and Hot Fish Club and that Lowcountry story certainly will always be part of our DNA, said Hastings.

But the James Beard award-winning chef says Hastings Catering is a chance for customers to push the boundaries of a traditional catered event and work with the revered chefs team to bring their own culinary expectations and ideas to light.

If youre the customer, you may want to do a family dish or recipe," he said. "And well work with you on that. Or you may have a certain theme that you want-- New Orleans, California, Italian or French-- whatever that is, we can customize our events around all of that.

Hastings Catering will also include live-fire cooking. Customers can create a menu and the chef and his team will set up a Francis Mallman-style outdoor fire for a full culinary exhibition.

Were not talking about a trailer and barbecue pit. Were talking about literally setting up a live fire from scratch, wherever we go, said Hastings. So thats a really cool and unique thing that were really excited about.

The James Beard Award-winning chef and winner of Iron Chef America is well known for his turkey camp, and Hastings says the catering company will also offer a wild game concept.

We can either purchase farm-raised animals like rabbits, quail, and turkeys. Or the group can bring me the things they caught and killed and then we will curate an entire menu around that, he said.

Hastings Catering will also use meat and produce from a number of Alabama farmers, including Fudge Family Farms, Petals from the Past, and Pepper Place Saturday Market farmers.

For Hastings, who has long lauded Alabamas purveyors as the heroes of chefs, the company is another opportunity to showcase the states best produce and culinary offerings.

Thats just the way we cook," he said. "Were not the kind of (place) where food supply trucks show up and they unload stuff from other places. We really focus our energy on supplying our menus and our thinking with the best possible products from Alabama.
Producers of a film about a white civil rights activist in Montgomery asked for permission to film on the campus of Huntingdon College, which the activist attended, but said the college sent a list of demands including that film executives sign a letter not to say anything negative about the college.

Basically, they made so many demands they were pretty sure we wouldnt be able to meet all their demands, said Bob Zellner, author of The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, published in 2008.

Zellners memoir is the basis for the movie, Son of the South, which began filming in Montgomery on April 9. Its scheduled to shoot for six weeks. Spike Lee is an executive producer. The director, Barry Alexander Brown, wrote the screenplay. He has worked with Lee on projects including Do the Right Thing, Crooklyn, Malcolm X, and the 2018 film BlackkKlansman, which was nominated for an Oscar for best picture.

Barry Brown and me would have to sign a statement saying we would not make any disparaging remarks about Huntingdon College, Zellner said. And they get to determine what is disparaging.

Production moved to Tuskegee University on April 11, since the production crew couldnt come to an agreement with Huntingdon College to allow them to film there.

Zellner said Huntingdon President J. Cameron West refused to meet with producers and instead an attorney for the college sent a list of demands, including limiting shooting to two days, and only after classes were done for the day.

We asked Cam West for permission to shoot on campus, Zellner said. Cam West wouldnt even agree to meet and talk with us. His lawyer got in touch with our lawyers.

West was not available for comment on Friday, but an administrator for Huntingdon College denied that the college turned down a request to film parts of Son of the South on its campus.

Weve had some conversations with the production company and theyre still ongoing, said Anthony J. Leigh, senior vice president for institutional development at Huntingdon College in Montgomery.

A lot of the movie takes place at Huntingdon, Zellner said. I graduated there with honors in 1961. I thought by this time theyd want to put some of that behind them and move on.

Meanwhile, Tuskegee University has reaped the benefits.

Theyre being very accommodating, Zellner said. Theyre delighted to have it at Tuskegee. The campus looks great too.

Tuskegee could earn some international exposure if the film gets the same kind of reception at the Cannes Film Festival and at the Academy Awards that Lee and Brown got with BlackkKlansman.

Zellner is portrayed in the movie by actor Lucas Till, best known for his role as Havok in the X-Men movies. Veteran character actor Brian Dennehy portrays Zellners grandfather, a racist who disowns Zellners father after he quits the Ku Klux Klan.

I was on the Tuskegee campus yesterday, Zellner said. Brian Dennehy was fantastic. It was fascinating watching him work. They were shooting the college scenes at Tuskegee.

Producers of Son of the South will be forced to shoot some footage of Huntingdon from public streets at a distance if college administrators wont give them permission to film on campus, Zellner said.

Maybe it could still happen, Zellner said. Wed really like that to occur.

Zellner said he was surprised that Huntingdon College didnt embrace the film project, since West had previously welcomed him.

When the book was published he invited me on campus, Zellner said. I was banned from campus for many years. He publicly lifted the ban. He took a very courageous stand before.

The movie focuses on Zellners time as a student at Huntingdon College and on the backstory of his family.

My father, grandfather and older brother were Methodist ministers, Zellner said. I was a ministerial student at Huntingdon. Our whole lives have been dedicated to the church, and the Methodist church especially. My dad as a young man was a member of the KKK. Mother and dad went to Bob Jones University. Bob Jones is my godfather. The story is coming from that background. My father left the KKK after he went to Europe with Bob Jones before World War II. My grandfather disowned him. his brothers never spoke to him again.

Zellner was a student at Huntingdon from 1957-61, and met the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery from 1954-60, and Rosa Parks, who were key leaders of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Zellner became active with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights group that emerged from student sit-ins.

Like many other young people, I got involved in that, Zellner said.
A former CEO who founded a company in Birmingham and then returned to his roots as a missionary in Thailand has been featured in a cover story in this months Christianity Today.

Dwight Martin, who grew up in Thailand as the child of missionaries, has created a database for keeping track of Christian house churches in every village.

I provided technology to count the sheep, Martin said in an interview this week.

He has documentation on all 5,805 churches in Thailand, a country that is more than 90 percent Buddhist.

Reach A Village, a U.S.-based ministry that supports Martins mapping work in Thailand and neighboring countries, promotes local Christians doing village-level outreach across Southeast Asia.

I started doing databases for where all the churches are, Martin told AL.com. Almost all the pastors in Thailand know me.

The Harvest database he created documents house churches by village throughout Thailand. Its online and interactive, with detailed data on members, and has been touted as one of the most comprehensive directories of Christian mission work in any country in the world. Martin oversees the most comprehensive national church database in the world, according to Christianity Today.

We do data down to the village level, Martin said. The gospel has been here for 190 years, but all the growth of the church was in clumps. The north has five percent of population and 50 percent of the churches; 95 percent of villages have never heard the gospel.

At 17, Martin left Thailand. In 1990, he moved to Birmingham for a job in computer software. In 1999, he quit his job as a software development executive and started his own software business, Aquracy, providing check processing for corporate payment centers. By 2005, Aquracy had annual sales of about $1 million.

In 2006, he sold all but 10 percent of his stake in the company and moved back to Thailand with his family.

I heard God say sell everything and come back, Martin said.

Now 60, this week he was back in Birmingham to meet with leaders at the Church of Brook Hills, where he was ordained and served as a lay pastor before he returned to Thailand. The church has been funding his mission efforts in Thailand. Shades Mountain Community Church and Mountain Brook Community Church also provide support. He met with leaders of the Church of the Highlands this week, hoping to get them involved also.

Since December 2016, weve started 465 house churches, Martin said. When they get 20 churches in an area, they start a mother church that provides training to indigenous leaders.

The cost to start a church is $600, Martin said. We want to plant 600 more in the next year.

The approach of a house church movement led by indigenous leaders is spreading faster than old models, and can be targeted in needed areas through the database that shows villages that dont have churches. Every country is going to be reached, Martin said.

Hes not knocking the old model that sent his American parents to Thailand  his mothers translation of the Gospel of John from Greek to Thai is still widely used there  but sees a new and better way.

My parents were traditional missionaries, who would go to villages, show them the gospel, and most times they would never go back, he said.

Under the old model, still prevalent today, A foreigner shows up speaking really bad Thai and says, Believe my world view, he said. Most of the tracts are unusable because theyre full of Christian words that the people dont understand.

Under the new model, the leaders are native Thai speakers motivated by faith.

We have a very appropriate Thai style, Martin said. House church meetings get long because we always go over the basics. We want you to get in Gods word, study for yourself. We assign a house church leader based on someone who is humble and serving already. House church leaders go to the mother church on Sundays for training.

Martin outlined a new way of Christian foreign missions, in which a U.S.-based foreign mission group, Reach A Village, is providing the technology, but native converts to Christianity provide the leadership.

People are coming to us, asking, Can you train us? Martin said. As soon as we train them, theyre effective. Its bottom up. They are the ones that have to have the passion and the heart. It has to come from them.

Martin notes that U.S. missionaries arriving in Thailand often contact him and say they want to start a church. I say, How many churches have you planted in your home country? And they say, None, and I say, Why do you think you can do it here? Its infinitely harder here. Theyre good-intentioned, but not well-informed. It takes at least 10 years to get to know the language well.

Most have very little impact, dont stay long enough to make a difference, and leave frustrated, he said.

Its about egos, logos and we-gos, Martin said. We need to think about missions differently.

The old method of sending American missionaries to foreign countries is expensive and not efficient, he said. Its not working, Martin said. Somebody needs to say it out loud.

An American missionary typically has to raise financial support of about $50,000 a year to sustain themselves in a foreign country, Martin said.

By focusing on indigenous leaders, the cost goes down and the effectiveness goes up, Martin said.

We dont pay salaries, he said. Thats the killer. When you pay a salary, youre their boss and theyve got to do what we tell them.

The new paradigm of data-driven targeting of villages with indigenous leaders has been spreading with amazing speed and a modest budget, he said.

House churches have been started in more than half of the 14,000 villages in Cambodia; Reach A Village founder Bob Craft estimates that every village can have an indigenous house church within five years.

Throughout Southeast Asia, Reach A Village and its partners have launched 6,500 new churches in villages in the past five years.

We want to reach every village in the world for Christ, Martin said. There are 1.7 million villages.
Alabama lawmakers from both parties and advocacy groups spoke today in support of a bill to give payday loan customers more time to pay off loans, a change they said would help protect financially fragile borrowers from spirals of debt.

Birmingham-Southern College President Emeritus Neal Berte joined the legislators and officials with Alabama Arise and the Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice at a State House press conference.

Alabama law allows payday lenders to charge a fee of up to $17.50 per $100 borrowed on loans with terms as short as 10 days. If calculated as an annual percentage rate, that equates to 456 percent.

The bill would set the minimum term at 30 days, effectively reducing the maximum APR by more than half.

Advocates for the bill said the longer term would help consumers pay off their loans instead of rolling them over and incurring more fees. They said consumers are accustomed to paying their obligations, like car payments and rent, on a monthly basis.

Thats a very modest reform, Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville said. It would allow payday lenders to stay in business. But it would provide relief and again drastically reduce that APR and address some of the people that are in the most severe situations.

Max Wood, owner of Cash Spot and president of Alabamas payday lenders trade group, Modern Financial Services Association, said changing to a 30-day term would reduce profits for lenders by about 20 to 25 percent, and increase the default rate on loans by taking away the flexibility to set the due date on a borrowers payday. He said some payday loan stores would close and customers would turn to online lenders.

Garrett is House sponsor of the bill and has been working on the issue for five years. Other lawmakers who spoke in support of the legislation today were Rep. Merika Coleman, D-Pleasant Grove; Rep. Neil Rafferty, D-Birmingham; Rep. David Faulkner, R-Mountain Brook and Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur. Orr is sponsor of the Senate bill.

Representatives of two groups, Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice and Alabama Arise, distributed a report, Broke: How Payday Lenders Crush Alabama Communities.

We hear every single year from payday lenders and their lobbyists that they are doing Alabamians a favor by issuing short-term loans with APRs up to 456 percent, Dana Sweeney of Alabama Appleseed Center said. In the course of writing this report, we have traveled all over the state of Alabama. We have sat down with borrowers from Huntsville to Dothan and plenty of places in between and we can tell you that these high-cost loans are doing no favors for families facing hardships in Alabama.

Payday loan reform bills are proposed in the Legislature every year but do not pass. Coleman said the efforts go back more than 10 years.

This is 2019 and the Legislature hasnt gotten it right yet, Coleman said. "We have the opportunity this session to get it right.

Orrs bill to extend payday loan terms to 30 days passed the Senate last year but failed to win committee approval in the House. Payday lenders fought it.

Garretts bill has 30 co-sponsors in the 104-member House. He said the key will be getting approval by the House Financial Services Committee.

I dont have a commitment one way or the other but we will be bringing this bill up and asking for a committee vote, Garrett said. I do believe if it gets to the floor of the House, it passes.

House Speaker Mac McCutcheon, R-Monrovia, said today discussions are ongoing about possible changes to the bill and was not ready to take a position on it.

I want to see when we get everybody to the table whats going to be the final product, McCutcheon said.
This is an opinion column.

Ask the 210,710 or so citizens of Birmingham what opportunity means to them, and youll likely get close to that many responses.

Opportunity is personal.

To some, it means the opportunity to obtain a quality education or get a job that allows them to sustain their family, or to love (and marry) the person they want to love (and marry).

Some long for the opportunity to feel safe in their home and neighborhood  to see where they live rid of blight and depravity. And potholes.

Some crave the opportunity to launch a business, produce a film or television show or pursue an artistic dream with like-minded creatives.

To some the word means having the opportunity to, yes, make money, to invest their dollars in projects and products that provide a positive return.

To each of us in this city, opportunity should mean this: Demanding the opportunity to grow, to evolve, to move beyond those traits seemingly embedded in our DNA that have long held  and still hold  us back.

Maybe we can agree opportunity in Birmingham should be an amalgam of all-of-the-above, so each of us ultimately receives our most desired opportunity.

If youre not familiar with Opportunity Zones, school up.

Theyre what the government calls economically distressed U.S. Census tracts. Read: Po neighborhoods, where new investments may qualify for tax breaks - deferring gains on capital gains 10 years.

Investments like renovating distressed properties or acquiring long-neglected, tax-delinquent land.

The provision was originally a bipartisan bill co-introduced by U.S. Senators Tim Scott (S.C.), a Republican, and Democrat Cory Booker (N.J.), along with others, as a way to incentivize folks  from individuals to institutions with lots of cash to invest in places theyve likely never been, and almost certainly not considered prime investment opportunities.

Until now, perhaps. Hopefully.

It was buried on page 130 of the controversial Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, which may have been a good thing because no one on either side of the divisive political aisle paid much attention to it. It was never specifically debated in either the House or Senate but became law when the Act was passed in December 2017.

So, Birmingham, despite our recent economic gains, were pretty much an Opportunity Zone.

Of the citys 70 census tracts, 60 qualify to be designated as Opportunity Zones (which is officially done by state leaders); 77 of our 99 neighborhoods are touched by areas that could be OZs.

Which is why Josh Carpenters phone was blowing up when the citys director of innovation and economic (ahem) opportunity stepped off a plane in Birmingham, returning from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro (elev. 19,340 ft) in Tanzania in January. Each of the messages was pretty much the same: So, what are we going to do about Opportunity Zones?

This morning, city officials, along a busload of mayors from around the nation, gathered on an weathered, vacant lot next to the long-dormant Stonewall Building downtown and shared what Birmingham has done, and is doing, about Opportunity Zones:

Early last year, city officials met with Gov. Kay Ivey and her team, which included Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs Director Kenneth Boswell and asked for 47 of Birminghams eligible areas to be declared OZs.

Their pitch included 28 letters of support from community leaders throughout the city  which may be partly why Birmingham received 24 of the states 158 OZ designations, more than twice as many as the next nearest city.

We didnt get everything we wanted, but were grateful for what we did get, Carpenter says. Now we want to maximize the opportunity to drive investment into the city.

While OZs are being designated nationwide, Birmingham appears to have launched with a unique strategy designed to not just lure venture capital, institutional dollars and personal wealth into distressed areas but also to educate and empower residents in those areas to help identify projects in their neighborhoods that could spur the proverbial all-of-the-above opportunities all parties desire.

The effort, known as Inclusive Growth Initiative Partnership, will be guided by two boards: One comprising people who believe in Birminghams potential (Carpenters words) but who may not live in the city; the second, an 11-member community investment board including local entrepreneurs, educators, pastors, who represent a diverse range of people respected within their communities who can help education and awareness.

Additionally, 500 residents will study a curriculum created to help them become experts on the law so they may identify viable opportunities in their neighborhoods and participate in pitching them to potential investors.

Our big vision is to democratize the information, Carpenter says. To take information baked into a convoluted tax bill in D.C. get it into the hands of residents in our neighborhoods. Knowledge, credibility, and cohesiveness across many groups is essential to the success of Opportunity Zones.

The citys public/private strategy, along with the community, grass-roots component, is what attract the likes of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and U.S. Conference of Mayors President Steve Benjamin of Columbia, S.C. to the announcement Thursday at the 12-story Stonewall Building downtown, which sits in an Opportunity Zone and is one the citys first OZ projects.

The striking, but long-dormant structure owned by Ed Ticheli since 2004 was long the headquarters for American Life Insurance until it acquired Stonewall Insurance and moved the company from Mobile in 1967. More than a year ago, it was announced the 84,000-square-foot building would be converted into 140 units of affordable (but no Section 8) housingappropriately known as workforce housingwith rents between $700-$1200 per month for a studio and some one-bedroom units.

Garcetti and Benjamin were also here as part of Accelerator for America, a consortium of mayors and business leaders in 30 cities created to share best (and successful) practices across municipalities. They came bearing platitudes that set a high-bar for expectations in the city.

Our mission is to look at why so many Americans are left behind, Garcetti said. American should be a nation of second chances, especially for some people who never had a first chance. To every city in America, we say, Look whats happening in Birmingham.'"

Birmingham is definitely on the leading edge of Opportunity Zone initiatives, Benjamin added. Whatever new ideas, new regulations, whatever corners the feds turn, Birmingham is ready for it.

Birmingham was authorized to spend up to $420,000 to improve sidewalks and public right of ways around the building. Carpenter says the city also helped bring the non-profit Dannon Project into the project.

One of the citys most vital charities, the Dannon Project tries to transition previously incarcerated individuals and so-called at-risk citizens into the workforce. Ticheli donated five units in the Stonewall to Dannon participants free for 10 years.

Ticheli said construction is slated to begin no later than 45 days from Thursday, and should be completed within 14 months.

Im excited about it, the owner said. People are going to be living here.

Isnt it ironic, Carpenter says, that a place once known as the American Life building, for the first time in forty years, will be filled with life?

And, hopefully, a breadth of opportunity.

No matter how you define it.

[Birminghams Opportunity Zone website. ]

Column was updated with quotes from mayors and building owner.

A voice for whats right and wrong in Birmingham, Alabama, Roys column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Reach him at rjohnson@al.com and follow him at twitter.com/roysj
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Its a dark time in the executive suite of the Department of Homeland Security. After a weekend push to get rid of many top officials, the president removed his nominee for ICE director for someone tougher, and pushed out Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in favor of someone who appears more willing to break the law. For DHS secretary, the president has reportedly found in Ken Cuccinelli a potential nominee more to his taste. In 2013, former Virginia Attorney General Cuccinelli called for a constitutional convention to revoke birthright citizenship. The year before, he compared immigrants to rats.

But whoever is leading the DHS may have a hard time matching the ideas coming from the Trump administration itself, according to a new report from the Washington Post. According to DHS officials who spoke with the paper, the White House shopped around the idea of releasing migrant detainees in so-called sanctuary cities as a political tactic to frustrate Democrats representing those areas.

According to the report, in the past six months, Trump administration officials have twice considered moving detained migrants to urban areas represented by Democrats: Once in November, during the nativist panic surrounding the migrant caravan, and a second time in February, after the president realized he shut down the government just to come up short on funding for a border wall. According to Homeland Security officials who spoke with the Post, Nancy Pelosis district in San Francisco was one of the areas the White House intended to target. As the Post reports:

White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities, places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of detention space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that there are PR risks as well.

When the White House broached the subject again in February, ICEs legal department reportedly rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

Two DHS whistleblowers also reportedly informed Congress of the plan. According to the Post:

The White House believed it could punish Democrats  including Pelosi  by busing ICE detainees into their districts before their release, according to two DHS whistleblowers who independently reported the busing plan to Congress  According to both, there were at least two versions of the plan being considered. One was to move migrants who were already in ICE detention to the districts of Democratic opponents. The second option was to bus migrants apprehended at the border to sanctuary cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

The reported source for the plan shouldnt surprise anyone paying attention to the recent coup at the Department of Homeland Security. According to the two DHS officials, Stephen Miller brought the proposal to ICE, where officials understood that he was pressing the plan, according to the Post.

Who else but Miller  the senior aide who authored the travel ban and pushed for family separation  would lobby to bus at-risk individuals to unfamiliar cities as a means to antagonize political opponents? It was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out, said a congressional investigator who spoke to one of the whistleblowers. What happened here is that Stephen Miller called people at ICE, said if theyre going to cut funding, youve got to make sure youre releasing people in Pelosis district and other congressional districts.
This is an opinion column.

Even before this years legislative session got underway, there had been whispers in Montgomery that Gov. Kay Iveys plan to fix Alabama prisons was for the Legislature to do nothing.

And when lawmakers gavel out the session, Ivey would do  something.

That something could be a state bond deal issued without legislative approval. That something could be lease-backs from private developers. That something could be full-privatization, handing over our states inmates and tax dollars to prison profiteers.

Something.

And this week, that something showed itself, ever so briefly, like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster, just long enough for us to get a fuzzy picture.

The Alabama Building Commission posted a hard-to-find notice on its already obscure website. Alabama, the notice said, is looking for someone to build three new prisons and lease them to the state, and the commission is seeking expressions of interest from qualified contractors.

A spokesperson for the Building Commission says the notice, which expired Wednesday, went up two weeks ago, but state Rep. Chris England says he only found out about the notice Monday after someone brought it to his attention.

And therein lies the problem  whatever this secret plan is, most of the Alabama Legislature appears to have been left in the dark with everyone else.

I want to remind everyone this plan or a form of it has been rejected by the Legislature several times, England said on Twitter. Maybe, just maybe, it is a bad idea.

I spoke with England Wednesday, and he has a long list of questions about the plan, including whether its legal for the Department of Corrections to enter into a lease longer than a year. According to England, its not.

And what about Tutwiler? England said, referring to the states prison for women which would not be replaced by the new plan.

England is one of those rare lawmakers who speak truth in Montgomery, but ultimately, the executive branch doesnt seem interested in his concerns.

This year weve already seen one of Gov. Kay Iveys secret plans put into action. When she called the Alabama Legislature into a special session to pass a new gas tax, Ivey goofed up and said her quiet part out loud.

All the freshmen who ran for House and Senate were indeed briefed on the need for an infrastructure bill well before they were elected, Ivey said. And they were vetted by the House and Senate leadership, and if they were not for increasing the gas tax for infrastructure, they were not encouraged to run.

In other words, Ivey and the Senate leadership knew the gas tax was a done deal before you even knew who was going to be on the ballot in last years election.

The fix was in then.

And it sure looks like the fix is in for prisons, too.

And heres the thing: Alabama might need new prisons. In fact, it might be the very least we could do. Last week, the U.S. Justice Department released a damning report, calling a failure by Alabama to staff and maintain its prisons a violation of the Constitution.

Prison conditions in Alabama isnt a new problem. It has been a constant issue for the state, Nearly 50 years ago, United States District Judge Frank Johnson called Alabama prisons unfit for human habitation.

Its long past time to do something.

And if our gas tax was reason enough for a special session, shouldnt this be, too?

Because if were going to find an answer to this problem  if Alabama is finally to do something  the place to look for it shouldnt be behind locked doors.

Kyle Whitmire is the state political columnist for the Alabama Media Group.

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Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary has removed stained glass windows featuring denominational leaders, including one depicting a pastor from Alabama, from its chapel.

The windows in the MacGorman Chapel featured past presidents of the Southern Baptist Convention and several key leaders in the denominations conservative resurgence movement, the Alabama Baptist reported. One of the windows also featured a likeness of Paige Patterson, the former president who was dismissed last year from the paid position of President Emeritus over his handling of sexual abuse cases involving students at the seminary.

Also featured on the windows were retired Alabama pastor Jimmy Jackson; founder of Saddleback Church Rick Warren; and past SBC presidents Charles Stanley, W.A. Criswell, Adrian Rogers and more. You can see a gallery of the windows here.

Where  and if  the windows will be reinstalled remain to be seen. The Fort Worth, Texas seminary has not provided any reason for their removal, other than to say it was in the best interest of the institution.

An April 3 letter from Kevin Uekert, chairman of the SWBTS board of Trustees said the removal came after much prayerful consideration and discussion.

The windows were installed in 2013.
With a more determined and prioritized approach, the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees announced plans to freeze tuition increases for in-state students at all three campuses for the 2019-20 academic year.

The board will formally approve the halt on raising tuition at its June meeting, newly-appointed chancellor Finis St. John IV said during trustee meetings Friday at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

It's the first time in 40 years there will no tuition increase at the UA System campuses in Birmingham, Huntsville and Tuscaloosa. The Tuscaloosa campus also did not have a tuition increase for the 2018-19 academic year.

St. John said he hopes to see more tuition freezes in the future.

"I hope this won't be a rare occurrence," he said.

According to the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, tuition has skyrocketed at the three campuses in the UA System as well as across the state. Over the past 10 years, tuition has risen 70.1 percent at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and 64.6 percent at UAH and 54 percent at the University of Alabama.

The largest tuition increase in the state over the past 10 years is 82 percent at the University of Montevallo. The 54 percent UA increase is the smallest in the state since the 2009-10 academic year, according to ACHE.

St. John said he expected to see a "modest increase" in tuition for out-of-state students.

"Our focus was on in-state tuition and I'm very, very excited we have been able to develop a budget that allows it to freeze for a year," the chancellor said.

The decision, and ability, to put a one-year half on rising tuition was the result of hard work, St. John said.

"The desire has always been there," he said. "I think we just worked harder at it. We're going to make sure we use our dollars more carefully than we ever have. Our universities are not going to grow at the same rate that they have in the last 15 years forever. We have to learn to live within the means we have available to us. If the education becomes too expensive for our citizens, we dont even need to be in existence."

During his report to the trustees, St. John said of the tuition freeze, "We hear the needs of our students and their families, and we will continue to make their concerns our highest priority in the months and years ahead.
An 18-wheeler that crashed into a Tarrant daycare Tuesday did so after running a red light, police said Friday.

The driver of that tractor-trailer, whose name has not been released, is facing traffic citations, but Tarrant police Det. James Butterbrodt said no criminal charges will be filed.

The incident happened Tuesday morning on Alabama 79 near the intersection of Cedar Street. The 18-wheeler apparently collided with a dump truck, veered across multiple lanes of traffic and struck two other vehicles before driving into the Precious Seeds Learning Center.

Birmingham Fire Battalion Chief Sebastian Carrillo said five people in the vehicles were injured but no children or daycare workers were injured. The students and workers were in a room adjacent to the part of the daycare struck by the truck.

A dash cam video of another 18-wheeler captured the entire incident. That video was uploaded to YouTube Wednesday but has since been removed.

Butterbrodt said the building that housed the daycare has been deemed unsafe.
A Birmingham police officer has been arrested on charges he was improperly using a law-enforcement-only computer system for personal reasons.

Zarion Quanshay Brison-Headen, 25, was arrested Wednesday at Birmingham Police Headquarters. He is charged with four felony counts of computer tampering. The case was investigated by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agencys State Bureau of Investigation, along with Birmingham police.

Brison-Headen, a North Precinct patrol officer, is accused of illegally using the Law Enforcement Tactical System. The program  commonly known as LETS - is a web-based search engine that simultaneously searches many Alabama state databases with one query. It was developed to help law enforcement by providing them with critical information at the roadside  including vehicle, driver, and violation data. It also displays driver license photos.

LETS is run through ALEA and leaves a cyber trail of its users. SBI Lt. Jon Riley confirmed they investigated the case against Brison-Headen but said he couldnt elaborate on the details of the accusations against him, except to say it involved LETS.

Brison-Headen was booked in the Jefferson County Jail at 4:08 a.m. Wednesday and released the same day, at 6:45 p.m., after posting $80,000 bond. Birmingham police spokesman Sgt. Johnny Williams said Brison-Headen was placed on administrative leave following his arrest.

In a different criminal case, a former Birmingham City Jail corrections officer was arrested Thursday. Ashley Nicole Ricks, 26, is charged with embezzlement, also a felony.

Ricks was booked into the Jefferson County Jail at 5:20 p.m. Thursday and released at 10:15 p.m. after posting $5,000 bond. Williams said Ricks was terminated prior to the warrant being issued against her.

Details of the allegations against her werent immediately available, but Williams said they involved inmate funds. Brison-Headen and Ricks know each other, but authorities said the alleged crimes arent connected.
An Alabaster couple is charged with two felony crimes, accused of nearly starving to death one child, and woefully neglecting another.

Tramaine C. Walter, 28, was arrested by Alabaster police on Thursday, according to court records made public Friday. He is charged with aggravated child abuse and willful abuse of a child under the age of 18.

His girlfriend and the mother of both children, 35-year-old Regina Hosey, is sought on the same charges. Alabaster police launched their investigation in November after they were contacted by the Shelby County Department of Human Resources, who had been brought in by Childrens of Alabama, said Det. Randy Ray.

The victims were two children  a 3-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. Hosey is the mother of both children, and Walter is the father of the young boy.

Charging documents state that the little boy had a gastrostomy tube - also called a G-tube  which is a tube inserted through the abdomen that delivers nutrition directly to the stomach. It's one of the ways doctors can make sure kids with trouble eating get the fluid and calories they need to grow.

Between November 2015 and November 2018, police say, Walter and Hosey on more than one occasion failed to take the boy to doctors visits to access the G-tube. The victim, records state, lost nearly 10 pounds and was suffering from severe malnutrition. It is in that case that they are charged with aggravated child abuse.

The willful abuse of a child charge involved the 4-year-old girl. Documents state the young boy was left in her care for hours at a time, and police say she was forced to bear more responsibility than is feasible for a child her age.

Both kids were placed in foster care late last year. Ray said the boy is now physically OK.

Walter is being held in the Shelby County Jail on bonds totaling $20,000. Police are searching for Hosey.

Anyone with information on Hoseys whereabouts is asked to call Alabaster police Det. Ray at 205-663-7401.
Nakia and Michael Toney smiled Thursday despite their grief.

They were pained smiles at times, but smiles nonetheless.

It had been less than 24 hours since their son, Michael Mike Toney Jr., had been killed in a drive-by shooting in southwest Birmingham. Still, they were able to remember better times.

He was all about trying to help people, Nakia said. He was a little man with a big heart of gold.

Michael Jr. was killed about 6:15 p.m. outside a home on Woodland Avenue S.W. It was the second deadly drive-by shooting outside that home in less than two years.

Friends said Michael Jr. had walked across the street to the Citgo, bought a cigar and was returning to the house. At that point, the suspect or suspects drove by in a dark-colored vehicle and opened fire, striking Michael Jr., as well as the house and several vehicles. He made it back to the house where he collapsed on the porch.

Michael Jr. was rushed to UAB Hospitals Trauma Center where he was pronounced dead a short time later. His parents, surrounded by family and friends at their home, couldnt really make sense of it.

Its shocking, Michael Sr. said. No one ever wants to bury a 23-year-old.

He hadnt even started living really, Nakia said.

Several of Michael Jr.s friends gathered at the home where he was killed, his blood still staining the front porch where they stood. One of his friends, Jeanna Cameron, tied a blue balloon to an electrical outlet in his honor.

This boy had morals, had goals, Cameron said. He had a heart of gold, and always showed me love.

The house on Woodland, directly across the street from the Citgo, was where 21-year-old Te'kia Turner was killed in May of 2017. Turner was in the back seat of a Ford Taurus when at least one bullet pierced a small, rear driver's side window and struck her in the head.

Police said the Taurus was stopped in front the home on Woodland Avenue when another vehicle approached and opened fire on the car. No one has ever been charged in Turners slaying.

The owner of the home, who asked not to be identified, said her house has been gathering place for several generations. She, and others gathered there Thursday afternoon, insisted it is not a place for trouble, but rather a refuge for those who have nowhere else to go. Still, she acknowledged previous gunfire directed at the home and pointed to several bullet holes in the house from the Wednesday-evening shooting.

His parents said they knew very little about who had taken their sons life, or why. Birmingham police did not release any update on the case Thursday.

Michael Jr. was the father of twin 19-month-old daughters and doted on them. They were his heart, Nakia said. He and his girlfriend had just gotten approved for an apartment for the four of them.

He attended Midfield High School and then graduated from Parker High School. He also had just gotten a new job and a new car. He was quiet and observant, his mother said. He was a leader.

Nakia said of the couples three children, Michael Jr. gave her the most trouble in childbirth. The umbilical cord got wrapped around his neck, she said. The struggle has always been real with him, but he was a fighter.

The parents said their son was all about helping others. You know the saying, He wanted see everybody eat? he said. That was Mike.

Nakia and Michael Sr. said they have already forgiven whoever killed their son. Vengeance is mine said the Lord, Nakia said.

Still, they want justice and, more importantly, they want Michael Jr.s death to be the beginning of the end of violence in the city. I want them to put the guns down, Nakia said.

Asked what they would remember most, Nakia said this: His smile, his laughter. He didnt like people to be sad. He wasnt going to have that.

Anyone with information on Michael Jr.s death is asked to call Birmingham homicide detectives at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777.
A slate of $132 million in projects intended to offset environmental impacts of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on the Alabama coast has received federal approval, Gov. Kay Iveys office announced Friday.

The news is a step forward in the process spelled out by the federal RESTORE Act, which governs disbursement of money paid in penalties by companies involved in the disaster. While it isn't the last step, it means that 28 separate projects can now be submitted for individual approval, which will allow work to begin.

"We'll be submitting those starting now," said Chris Blankenship, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. "We should see work starting later this summer on some of these."

They are:

Environmental Restoration of Cotton Bayou and Terry Cove, $515,000 Development for a Regional Strategic Plan for the Coastal Alabama Region, phase III, $579,375 Expansion of the Orange Beach Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Center/Gulf Coast Wildlife Recovery and Interpretive Center, $472,255 Auburn University Gulf Coast Engineering Research Station, $9,270,000 Characterization and Delineation of Significant Sand Resource Areas Essential for Beach Restoration, Offshore Alabama, $950,175 City of Chickasaw Sewer Rehabilitation Project, $1,339,000 Alabama Gulf Seafood Marketing Campaign, $2,937,699 Aloe Bay/Mississippi Sound Water Quality Enhancement Project, $11,845,000 Extension of Effluent Force Main from Bayou La Batre Wastewater Treatment Facility, $16,068,000 Bayou La Batre Collection System/Lift Station Upgrades, $13,189,150 Lillian Park Beach Habitat and Shoreline Protection, $645,254 Perch Creek Area Sanitary Sewer Trunk Line, $3,665,048 Longevity, Stability & Water Quality Improvements, Bon Secour DMDA, $350,966 Replacement of Substandard Facilities at the ADEM Coastal Office & Mobile Field Office, $6,038,599 Mobile Area Storm Water Mapping & Resiliency Planning, $3,090,000 Three Mile Creek Watershed Restoration, $12,081,900 Fairhope Area Community-Based Comprehensive Land Use Plan, $669,500 Fort Morgan Parkway Trail Extension, $4,566,608 Meaher Park Improvements, $3,553,500 Mobile County Dirt Road Paving (Sediment Reduction) Program, $10,395,914 Alabama Point Seawall Repair, $2,562,640 Canal Road Improvements East of Ala. 161, $1,903,718 Orange Beach North Sewer Force Main Upgrade, $5,350,850 Storm Water Management Improvements for Toulmin Springs Branch and Gum Tree Branch, $1,222,744 Fairhope Sewer Upgrade Phase I, $10,300,000 Little Lagoon Restoration Project, $6,175,557 Eastern Shore Sanitary Sewer Overflows Prevention Plan, $1,030,000 One Mobile: Reconnecting People, Work and Play through Complete Streets, $1,287,500

The list also includes a $300,000 planning grant for the state expenditure plan. Full details can be found online at https://restorethegulf.gov.

The approval of the State Expenditure Plan continues reinvestment in the Alabamas Gulf Coast communities as a result of the oil spill funds guaranteed to the people of Alabama through the RESTORE Act, said Ivey. As these projects move forward, I look forward to seeing the return on this investment, as we build a more resilient coast.

The RESTORE Act divides restoration money into five "buckets" to be spent in different ways. In March 2018 the Alabama Gulf Coast Recovery Council unveiled a slate of 50 Mobile and Baldwin county projects adding up to $315 million that it had selected for approval. That announcement included $187 million in projects funded by Bucket 1 money, divided among Gulf Coast States for economic and environmental restoration. That portion wasn't involved in Friday's announcement.

The Alabama Gulf Coast Recovery Council also had voted to recommend $128.5 million in projects to be funded by Bucket 3 money, which is overseen by the federal Gulf Coast Ecosystem Recovery Council. Friday's news was that that council had approved the roster of Bucket 3 projects submitted by the state council.

The list approved by the federal council is much the same as the one publicized by the state council last year. It omitted one small project, a stream gaging station on Fish River, but Blankenship said that had been funded with money from a different source.

The overall amount was slightly higher: Where the state councils list of Bucket 3 projects added up to $128.5 million, the total approved by the federal council was $132.4 million.
President Donald Trumps threat of tariffs targeted at Airbus was an elephant in the room as U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne spoke at a Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce function on Friday: He didnt bring it up, and Mobiles business community didnt ask.

Afterward, speaking to reporters, Byrne said he had expressed concerns to the White House and thought an accommodation would be reached. Bill Sisson, President and CEO of the Mobile Area Chamber of commerce, said the organization was watching the situation closely but had yet to take a specific position.

Byrne's remarks to the audience at the "Forum Alabama" luncheon in some ways resembled a stump speech, though he didn't directly appeal for votes or criticize competitors by name. Byrne is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Democrat Doug Jones.

Byrne portrayed the upcoming 2020 election cycle as a battle against socialism and held up Venezuela as a cautionary example. He mocked Democrats for (among other things) a Green New Deal concept that he said looked like a 'Saturday Night Live' skit.

On a more practical level, Byrne said that with a Democratic majority in the House and an election looming, he didnt expect much productivity out of Congress for the next 18 months.

"It's not going to be fun and we're not going to get a whole lot done between now and the general election next year," he said.

In response to a question from Sisson, Byrne said he is optimistic that funding can be found for major south Alabama infrastructure projects, specifically the proposed I-10 bridge over the Mobile River. However, he said in the absence of broad bipartisan cooperation on a big infrastructure plan, he thinks progress will have to come via small, focused measures.

"I'm dubious we can come together on a big plan," he said.

Speaking after his address, Byrne said that "obviously we heard from Airbus" on the tariff issue. Trump proclaimed in Tuesday morning tweet that he wanted tariffs on billions of dollars' worth of European goods, as punishment for the European Union's allegedly unfair support of Airbus.

The list of potentially affected goods includes airplane parts, which could put a crimp in Airbus' operations in Mobile. The company assembles A320-family jets in a plant at the Mobile Aeroplex at Brookley and is building a second assembly line for its A220 jets.

"We have communicated our concerns about that directly to both the White House and the Department of Commerce," Byrne said. "We're engaged in discussions with the White House and the Department of Commerce about that. I believe it'll work out well for Airbus."

Byrne said he was strongly appreciative of Trump's aggressive stance on trade with China, saying "that's why I'm so proud of the president." In the European tariff issue, and in general, Byrne said that personal criticisms of Trump and his handling of international negotiations was counterproductive.

Earlier in the week, Jones challenged Byrne and other Alabama Republicans to speak up more strongly about Trump stances that could hurt the state.

"I do not believe publicly criticizing the president as Sen. Jones has done is helpful," said Byrne. "In fact I think it's harmful. He should know better."

"I do think the president is taking a tough line with the Europeans, and I think he's right in doing so because Europeans have taken advantage of us," Byrne said. "But the end of the day it's in their interest and our interest for us to get a deal," Byrne said.

Sisson depicted the chamber as being on the fence, in that it favors free trade but also favors fair trade. Beyond that, he said, weve not taken an additional position.
A 40-year-old Selma man received the maximum sentence after pleading guilty to a gun charge.

Jeffrey Bernard Harris was sentenced to 120 months in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to a Friday announcement by Richard W. Moore, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama.

According to court records, Selma police responded Aug. 9, 2017, to Wrenwood Trailer Park on a report of a fight with one person armed with a gun. The caller told police Harris was beating a man with his fist and with a gun. Harris later fired on a vehicle in which the assault victim was a passenger.

Authorities said Harris was still at the trailer park when police arrived. They interviewed several witnesses who reported they saw Harris beating the victim and then fire multiple shots.

One of the rounds struck the victim in the jaw and exited through his nose. Other rounds fired by Harris hit the front windshield and rear fender of the vehicle. A tenant at the trailer park told police she found a bullet lodged in the wall behind her refrigerator.

The firearm Harris used was a Taurus PT 24/7 Pro .45 caliber semi-automatic handgun. At the time of the shooting, he already had been convicted of two counts of first-degree robbery and one count of first-degree receiving stolen property.

The Selma Police Department, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated this case.
Senator Elizabeth Warren addresses striking Stop & Shop workers on April 12, 2019 in Somerville, Massachusetts. Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Organized labor is already poised to play a significant role in the Democratic primary. But now Stop & Shop workers have raised the stakes to new heights, launching the largest private-sector strike since 2016. On Friday, 31,000 workers in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut are on strike for a second day. A speedy resolution appears unlikely, and some 2020 candidates are already wading into the dispute.

Workers, who are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers, initially authorized a strike in March, as negotiations with Stop & Shop began to falter; theyve been working without a contract since the end of February. A press release on the unions website outlines its opposition to the grocery chains latest contract proposal, which would require full-time employees to pay an additional $893 for their health-care premiums over the next three years. Part-time employees would have to pay $603 more for their employee-only health coverage. According to Boston.com, the union also opposes plans to reduce the number of working cashiers and offset the difference with self-checkout lanes. In a statement emailed to New York on Friday afternoon, a representative for Stop & Shop said the chain is disappointed that the UFCW chose to order a work stoppage in an attempt to disrupt service at our stores, and said it has contingency plans in place. The company noted that its proposal did not contain pay cuts and argued that the unions proposed a contract that would increase the companys costs. This would make our company less competitive in the mostly non-union New England food retail marketplace.

A handful of Democratic candidates responded swiftly to news of the strike. As of Friday afternoon, Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bernie Sanders had all tweeted support for striking workers. And Senator Elizabeth Warren, who represents many of the workers, walked a picket line in Somerville, Massachusetts.

I stand with the @UFCW and @StopandShop workers on the picket line. This strike is about 31K workers across New England making their voices heard and fighting for living wages and better benefits. When workers fight, workers win. pic.twitter.com/P19WjhRqG6  Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) April 12, 2019

For primary candidates, the Stop & Shop strike doesnt change the dynamics of the race so much as it amplifies them. The nation was already gripped by an ongoing national strike wave. Data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in February depicts an escalating number of work stoppages, defined as strikes or walkouts. More workers walked off the job in 2018 than they have since 1986, according to Time magazine; the actual number of stoppages was the highest it had been since 2007. Organized labor wasnt dormant before 2018, but as educators and flight attendants and domestic workers make new strides, they keep labor power  and the notion of the strike itself  firmly in the public square.

Unions arent rushing to formally anoint a chosen candidate; theyve unveiled more incremental endorsement processes instead, as the American Federation of Teachers told New York last month. Its likely that some, if not most, will wait to endorse until the Democratic National Convention nears. They may even wait to endorse until after the party has chosen a candidate.

Meanwhile, the strike wave looks set to continue. Chalkbeat reported on Wednesday that educators employed by five charter school networks have voted to authorize a collective strike. In New York City, some pre-K teachers have authorized a one-day strike on May 2. Flight attendants for Air Wisconsin may also go on strike soon; a representative for AFA-CWA, which represents the flight attendants, told the Appleton Post-Crescent their members only make $15,000 a year. In this climate, candidates must work for labors vote. Support for striking workers may well come to distinguish the fields furthest-left counterparts from their moderate and conservative competitors  though its an open question if candidates who send pro-labor tweets will follow through with pro-labor policy proposals.

This post has been updated.
The CARE Act, a bill authorizing medical marijuana use in Alabama

Does anyone remember a time when tobacco companies spent millions of dollars on advertising that promoted cigarettes? It started before I was born with ads like,Nine out of 10 doctors recommend Camel brand cigarettes. What do we know now about cigarettes? It turns out that what was sold to us by the people who were going to profit from it was not true.

Here we go again.

If you think the pending Bill in the House of Representatives legalizing medical marijuana use is about helping people with medical issues, I strongly disagree with you. I think it is really about big money, but not for the State of Alabama or us, as tax payers.

We are being sold something by the people who will profit from it. In my capacity at the Sheriffs Office I have had the opportunity to hear many experts present the facts about what has happened in Colorado since medical use of marijuana was decriminalized. I am told that the tax revenue from marijuana sales there is less than one percent of Colorados total tax revenue. I am also told that the cost of providing services to those abusing marijuana is as much as 10 times that of the tax revenue- a net loss of tens of millions of dollars to the State. Those on the other side of this debate would argue and say that Alabamas CARE Act is different.

Its not if you pull the curtain back. Just wait and see.

Alabama legislators have followed the exact same playbook as Colorados legislators did and if the Care Act passes, decriminalizing recreational use of marijuana is right around the corner. Why would they vote for this knowing what has happened in Colorado?

The big corporations that will ultimately make tens of millions of dollars from marijuana sales in Alabama will not pay for the costs to society. We will pay that cost. They just put the money in their pocket, except for what they donate toward achieving their goals.

Here is one fact no one can argue with. The marijuana of today is vastly different than the marijuana of twenty years ago. Most marijuana in the past had a THC content of less than 10 percent. Today, some of the marijuana products that will be sold if this bill passes have a THC content as high as 90 percent.

A THC percentage so high that Colorados emergency rooms and first responders have seen a sharp increase in psychotic episodes among users and a dramatic increase in traffic related accidents and fatalities where marijuana was found to be a causative factor. There is no field sobriety test for marijuana by the way.

All of those working toward the legalization of marijuana are very adept with messaging and mental imagery. Here are some examples of their good salesmanship. First, the name of the act itself. Who could argue against something called the CARE Act? Next, this bill seeks to improve the lives of those suffering from a medical condition. Who could argue against helping someone who is suffering, certainly not me? But here, as in Colorado, the big money behind decriminalization and ultimate legalization is only using the medical argument to get them closer to their goal which is legal recreational use. They know they cant eat the elephant in one bite so they will desensitize us to the idea of legal recreational marijuana with legal medical use first. There are over 100 known cannabinoids in marijuana. Only a handful has been researched. What other drug has been approved for medical use without thorough testing and research?

The Bill currently being considered, AL HB 243, is bad for Alabama. Here is one glaring example. The Bill recognizes certain debilitating medical conditions that would qualify a person for legal use of marijuana. The first condition listed in the Bill is addiction. So the sponsors of this bill are saying they already approve of someone addicted to heroin or cocaine using marijuana also.

If you think I am making that up go to the legislatures website and pull the Bill up. Read it for yourself.

Next, to make it easier for people to get a prescription for medical marijuana this bill would allow not only physicians to prescribe, but also their assistants and nurse practitioners. The reason this language is so loose is really because when they come back in a couple of years to make recreational marijuana legal they want prescriptions to be easy to get. If your business is to sell something you want your customers to be able to get your product easily. More sales mean more profit. Remember who is really behind this and why it has as much support as it does in Montgomery.

There is no way I can fully give all of the arguments against legalizing marijuana for any purpose in a short op-ed piece. If nothing else maybe this will encourage some people to reach out to their legislators and let them know they also oppose legalizing marijuana.

Major Ken Burchfield is Chief of Staff, Shelby County Sheriffs Office.
Theres a saying that goes, Elephants never forget. But where I live, the saying could be expanded to read, Elephants and Mobilians never forget. Thats because about 10 years ago, bullyboy Boeing wrestled a $40 billion contract from its competitor to build refueling tankers for the U.S. Air Force.

The Air Force had originally given the contract to Airbus and its owner, EADS, which would have built the planes in Mobile. Boeing refused to accept that outcome, however, and aggressively lobbied and leaned on politicians and bureaucrats across the District of Columbia until the Pentagon relented, changed its mind and awarded the contract to the Washington-state-based Boeing.

Many good things have happened to Mobile since those dark days, including the opening of an Airbus assembly plant for commercial jets, but even so, residents of southwest Alabama have neither forgotten nor forgiven Boeing for its behavior.

So while we feel deeply for the families who lost relatives in Boeings two recent plane crashes, youd be hard-pressed to find anyone in the region with a drop of sympathy for Boeing since its 737 Max commercial jets went down, killing a total of 346 people. Its response in 2019 has been reminiscent of how it behaved a decade ago: When the going gets tough, Boeing gets arrogant.

Ten years ago, Boeings arrogance was expressed via targeted denigration of Airbus, of Mobile and of Mobilians. The most infamous and egregious insult was uttered by a Boeing vice president who was expressing faux concern about southwest Alabamas labor pool.

You've got all these sections coming into Mobile, with people who've never seen them before," said Boeing VP Gary Mears. "It's like being in the living room on Christmas morning, surrounded by boxes and you're trying to put a tricycle together for the first time.

More recently, Boeing aggressively defended its 737 Max planes in the wake of the crashes in March (Ethiopian Airlines) and October 2018 (Lion Air), saying the plane was fundamentally safe and suggesting pilot error contributed to the crashes. (Investigators exonerated the pilots.) Even as one country after another grounded its 737 Maxes, Boeings top brass kept insisting that the plane was fine and they just needed to update some software.

Finally, though, when the Federal Aviation Administration followed other countries lead and grounded the 737 Max in the United States, they slacked off their aggressive defense of the plane.

Meanwhile, Boeing executives eventually began to sound more human in their apologies to and concerns for victims families, whereas at first their statements sounded like standard boilerplate responses prepared and issued by hired PR guns.

Interestingly, at least to those of us in coastal Alabama, industry experts say that one of the reasons Boeing hurried to introduce the 737 Max in 2011 was due to intense competition from Airbus and its A320 -- a single-aisle, medium-range plane that is assembled, among other places, in Mobile, Alabama.

What delightful irony.

Whats not delightful, and is in fact downright awful, is that two 737 Maxes crashed within five months of one another, leaving several hundred people dead and public confidence shaken worldwide. The crashes have also generated investigations into how much the FAA relies on Boeing to certify its own planes, and how many Pentagon employees eventually end up working for Boeing.

All in all, Boeing has a wonderfully cozy relationship with the Pentagon, Congress and the White House -- a fact that has surprised many ordinary people around the country who dont understand how much political horsepower the airplane giant has and how ruthlessly it can exert that horsepower.

Not in Mobile, however. We may be naive about a lot of things, but were not stupid. Most of us can assemble tricycles, some of us can assemble Airbus jets and none of us will ever forget the time when residents of south Alabama saw the dark side of Boeing up close and personal.

And we will never, ever forget it.

Frances Coleman is a freelance writer living in Baldwin County. Email her at fcoleman1953@gmail.com and like her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances.
US officials will never end up before ICC judges, but speaking truth to power could still boost the courts credibility.

Judges at the International Criminal Court have denied a request to open an investigation into atrocities committed in Afghanistan. Their decision comes one and a half years after the prosecutor requested authorisation from the judges to open an official investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan.

The judges ruled today that an investigation would not be in the interests of justice. This marks the first time that judges have invoked this argument, yet the ruling was meagre on its application, devoting just three and a half pages to the subject and, remarkably, not referencing any other cases or jurisprudence on the subject. Prosecutors will now appeal that decision and the court still has a chance to reverse course.

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For some, however, the decision is a good one for the court. They believe that an investigation could only hurt the court because no American would ever end up before judges at the ICC. In denying the investigation, judges stated that changes in the political landscape in non-member states (ie the US) make it extremely difficult to gauge the prospects of securing meaningful cooperation from relevant authorities for the future. In short, they believed that an investigation would be too difficult to be worth trying, and therefore, not in the interests of justice or the court.

But they are wrong. A lack of cooperation from Washington or other states should not have prevented the ICC from investigating alleged atrocities in Afghanistan. Even without cooperation, such an investigation would likely bolster  not undermine  the courts credibility.

The waiting game

That it took the ICC judges one and a half years to come to todays decision will only increase speculation that they were acting politically, fearful of the political implications of an investigation and, possibly, Washingtons wrath.

At the same time, the ICC prosecutors office has been plagued by numerous high-profile setbacks. Within the last 12 months alone, judges acquitted both former Vice President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo Jean-Pierre Bemba and former President of Ivory Coast Laurent Gbagbo. It has also come to light that the ICCs own president, Chile Eboe-Osuji, is suing the court for higher pay at a time when the institution is struggling to resource its current workload.

Against this backdrop, it is tempting to conclude that the ICC should be risk-averse, focusing only on suspects who are likely to be surrendered to the court. In line with such thinking, it would have been ill-advised for the ICC to investigate atrocities in Afghanistan as cooperation wouldnt be forthcoming. Such is the advice of many observers of the ICC.

The cooperation game

Followers of the ICC have repeatedly pointed out that US cooperation with the court would cease if the ICC opened an investigation into Afghanistan. They insist that there will be no cooperation from the Afghan government, the Taliban, or the US. Moreover, without any prospects of a successful trial of US officials along with the cessation of cooperation, [t]here would be significant cost to the ICC, for little gain.

These fears were confirmed when US National Security Adviser John Bolton threatened the ICC and its staff with sanctions while declaring that the US would use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court. They were further corroborated when Washington revoked ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensoudas entry visa to the US.

There is no reason to believe that the ICC could win any confrontation with the US. Washington has promised to pull out all the stops in an attempt to isolate the court. Any investigation into Afghanistan would preclude cooperation and there is a virtually no chance that US officials would end up facing judges at the ICC. As a result, many worry that an investigation would further sap the ICCs already sagging credibility. They neednt.

The credibility game

An organisations credibility is partly a measure of the gap between the expectations that people have of the institution and its actual performance. If the performance of an institution falls short of our expectations, its credibility will suffer. If expectations are met, or are even surpassed, an institution will experience a credibility boost.

So, what does this mean for the ICC?

In its other cases  say, Joseph Kony in northern Uganda or Omar al-Bashir in Sudan  the expectation has been that any warrant would be enforced so that they face justice in The Hague. The courts credibility suffers precisely because neither has appeared before the ICC more than a decade after warrants were issued for their arrest. But that wouldnt have happened with Afghanistan because those arent the expectations at play when it comes to alleged US crimes.

As observers rightly point out, no one reasonably expects the US to cooperate with an ICC probe into alleged crimes committed by its officials. No one. Therefore, if the court were to ever issue arrest warrants for a Dick Cheney or a George W Bush, no one would expect them to be surrendered to the ICC. The expectation will be that Washington vociferously defends its former political leaders while belligerently attacking the court at every opportunity.

US vitriol wont fit the global narrative of an ineffectual ICC so much as the narrative of American exceptionalism and refusal to take responsibility for a government-planned and implemented era of torture. In the words of a former international judge, it will be consistent with the new American line: We are No 1 and we stand above the law.

The ICC versus the US would be a tale of David versus Goliath. But even if David misses with all of his stones, no one would blame him.

The end game

The ICC has failed to meet many expectations. It hasnt contributed to a spate of peace or reconciliation and it hasnt held the worst mass murderers to account. And to be clear: unenforced arrest warrants can hurt the ICCs credibility. But in this case, they wouldnt.

The global community doesnt judge the court merely on the basis of its legitimacy as a court, where surrenders and trials are of the essence. They judge it as an international organisation going where none has gone before: putting major powers on notice for their abuses. The inevitable tantrums that would follow any arrest warrants for US officials would only boost the perceived legitimacy of the court, especially among those who never expected that an international tribunal would ever confront American power.

No one believes that American officials will end up at the ICC. The assumption is that the ICC will wilt before American power. Many will see todays decision as the judges proving them right. But if there is any chance, on appeal, for the court to reverse course, it should do so and surprise us  and exceed expectations.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance
New UK legislation creates a criminal offence of entering or remaining in a designated area overseas.

British citizens who go to designated conflict zones could face up to 10 years in prison under a new law.

Enacted on Friday, the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 creates a criminal offence of entering or remaining in a designated area overseas.

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The measure, unveiled by ministers last year, allows the United Kingdom home secretary to designate an area, subject to parliamentary approval.

According to Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the law gives police the powers they need to disrupt terrorist plots earlier and ensure that those who seek to do us harm face just punishment.

The Act also gives border guards the power to stop and search individuals without suspicion on the grounds of tackling hostile state activity. It also criminalises viewing terrorist-linked material online.

Exemptions have been included in the legislation for people with legitimate reasons for being in a designated area, including journalists, aid workers and those attending a funeral.

The measure wont allow prosecutions retrospectively, so those who fought with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are exempt.

However, officials have said the law will assist if a similar outflow of fighters is seen in a future conflict.

Human rights concerns

Human rights watchdogs and press freedom campaigners have raised serious concerns about the legislation.

In a joint statement signed last year by nine organisations, including Index on Censorship and Reporters Without Borders, the groups warned that the vaguely defined crime of hostile state activity would provide border guards wide-ranging powers to stop, search and detain British citizens.

According to UK Home Office estimates, more than 900 individuals of national security concern have travelled to take part in the conflict in Syria. About 20 percent of those people have been killed overseas, while about 40 percent have returned to the UK, according to the Home Office.

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Figures disclosed in the House of Commons last year suggested about 10 percent of returnees have been prosecuted over direct action in Syria.

The enactment of the new law comes weeks after the UK decided to revoke the citizenship of Shamima Begum, a British teenager who travelled from London in 2015 to ISIL-controlled Syria.

Begums case created a media frenzy when the now 19-year-old appealed in a television interview in February to be allowed to return home with her newborn son.
Official says 40 others wounded in blast, claimed by ISIL, that appears to have been aimed at the Hazara community.

Islamabad, Pakistan  At least 20 people have been killed and another 40 wounded as an explosion ripped through a market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, a provincial official says, the latest attack to target the citys minority Hazara community.

Announcing the death toll, provincial minister Zia Langove said: Four or five [of the wounded] are in critical condition.

The explosion took place as Hazaras, who are Shia Muslims, were buying vegetables early on Friday morning.

Members of the Hazara community go to the market every day to shop, and we provide them with a security escort, Quetta police chief Abdul Razzaq Cheema told Al Jazeera by telephone.

They were at the market as police and [paramilitary] Frontier Corps soldiers patrolled the area. There was a store selling potatoes, and that is where the explosion has taken place.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) claimed responsibility for the bombing through its Amaq website on Saturday.

Images from the scene of the explosion showed blood sprayed across the dirt floor of the market, damaged vehicles and sacks of potatoes split open by the force of the blast.

Cheema said police would not know whether the bomb was planted or a suicide attack until investigating teams, who had cordoned off the site, completed their analysis.

The bomb appeared to have been set in the potato sacks, but we cannot rule out whether it was a suicide attack just yet, he said.

At least seven members of the Hazara community and one paramilitary soldier were among those killed, he said.

At a press conference later he said there had been no warning the market might be attacked.

There are a lot of general security threats issued, but for this place, there was no specific threat.

Targeted campaign

Since 2013, more than 509 Shia Muslims  mainly ethnic Hazaras  have been killed in a campaign of targeted shootings and bombings in Balochistan province, according to government data.

The majority of attacks have occurred in the provincial capital, Quetta, where most of the countrys roughly 600,000 Hazaras reside.

The citys Hazara residents now live in two heavily protected enclaves on either side of the city, with movement outside of those areas restricted by threats to their lives.

Members of the community say they refrain from engaging in business or education in other parts of the city because of the risks.

Every morning, police guard a convoy that leaves the Hazara enclave to visit markets so that Hazaras may stock up on basic necessities.

This is not the first time vegetable traders have been targeted by attackers.

In October 2017, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a van bound for the fruit and vegetable market, killing the driver and four others, police say.

The attacks have been linked to the far-right Ahle Sunnat Wal Jammat (ASWJ) Sunni Muslim political party, and its associated Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) armed group.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on Friday.

Additional reporting by Saadullah Akhtar in Quetta

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeeras digital correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.
Sometimes, solidarity means donuts. Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Intelligencer staffers Benjamin Hart, Sarah Jones, and Ed Kilgore discuss how the Democratic Partys leftward drift fits in with a newly confident labor movement, and which candidate might get the nod from influential unions.

Ben: Today, Elizabeth Warren joined striking Stop & Shop workers in Massachusetts, who are taking part in the second-largest private-sector walkout since 2016. Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bernie Sanders have also signaled their support for the workers. What does the enthusiasm from top Democrats about the strike, and others like it, say about the partys relationship to unions right now?

Sarah: Labors always been an important partner for the Democratic Party, but the dynamics of that relationship have changed over the last 12 months. We seem to be in a strike wave, but thats not the only way labor has demonstrated its resilience lately. Though the Supreme Courts ruling in Janus v. AFSCME was a blow for labor, right-to-work groups didnt really get the result theyd hoped for, either. There was no exodus of fee-payers; public-sector unions are adding members. Unions themselves remain relatively popular with voters, too. All of this is to say: Top Democrats have typically been supportive of unions, at least on paper, for a long time. But labors in a position now to make them prove exactly how serious they are about that support, and I think thats why were seeing what looks like a surge of enthusiasm from this years crop of candidates.

Ed: Well, theres a supply as well as a demand side to this phenomenon: all these candidates pursuing a fixed quantity of labor resources and endorsements.

Sarah: Thats also true. Unions can afford to be picky because they have a lot of options at the moment.

Ed: Unions are in a position to carefully vet candidates instead of succumbing to the pressure to side with some front-runner like many did in 2016. And to leverage candidates to get cozier  and even to supply doughnuts!

Ben: Labor had slipped in power fairly dramatically over the decades, since the days when it was a truly crucial element of securing the Democratic nomination. Now, as youve said, were seeing renewed attention to labor issues as the party veers left. But is that renewed attention simply a result of the partys leftward drift, or is it because labor has actually gotten more powerful too?

Ed: Id say labor is in the process of rebounding, both in membership and  more importantly  in economic and political relevance.

Sarah: Im not sure its totally possible to pry the two trends apart. They both exist in large part because they are responses to dramatic inequality. The simplest explanation for the labor movements relative popularity with voters is that people generally understand why they need unions. Members have told me that their fellow workers didnt need a lot of convincing to stay in their unions after Janus.

Ed: By the time Nikki Haley finally runs for president, the fact that she used to proudly say South Carolina didnt need or want union jobs could be an actual problem for her. Which would really just return things to where they were maybe 20 years ago, when even Republicans showed a bit of respect for unions, particularly in the private sector.

Sarah: And thats tied, I think, to the sorts of economic pressures that lead the public to at least be tolerant of a policy proposal like Medicare for All. I dont want to oversimplify the polling on the matter, since support does vary depending on how the question is worded, but I do think its fair to say that voters seems consistently friendly to the notion of more government involvement in health care. And why is that? I would guess that its because insulin, for example, is becoming too expensive for many people to afford. People do realize the economy isnt working for them. Unions promise workers a way to better their conditions.

Ben: You wrote that unions may take a while, perhaps a long while, to endorse a Democratic candidate. Will most of them presumably endorse the same person? And is there one candidate that seems to have an inside track? (Or anyone who definitely wont get the nod?)

Ed: I dont think John Hickenlooper is going to get any endorsements, unless theres a brewery union. Seriously, I dont think labor will move all at once unless the primaries become very polarized ideologically, which is unlikely. And some unions may decide not to play in the primaries at all.

Sarah: I think theyll wait until someone resembling a consensus candidate emerges, which means that many will probably end up endorsing the same person. As for who it might be: There are some Democratic candidates who have work to do if theyre going to prove themselves as allies to labor. Cory Booker, for example, has a very poor relationship with teachers unions. Firefighters, meanwhile, have pretty much promised to endorse Joe Biden if or when he enters the race. Id say the other front-runners to be the labor candidate are Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, whos really working hard to position herself as a pro-teacher candidate.

Ed: I wouldnt even begin to know what kind of relationship Pete Buttigieg, whos in something of a polling surge right now and who is auditioning to become the candidate of Rust Belt working people, has with labor. Same with Beto. Youd have to figure the three candidates Sarah mentioned have a big advantage just based on how many labor connections they already have.

But speaking of connections: Does the heartburn so many lefty folk have with Biden extend that deeply into the labor movement?

Sarah: Not necessarily.

Ed: Hes been in an awful lot of Labor Day parades and rallies over the years.

Sarah: Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, did not think the recent allegations against him were a deal-breaker.

Ed: Thats especially interesting insofar as AFT is a union whose membership skews pretty heavily female.

Sarah: There might be an interesting gender divide within the labor movement this year. National Nurses United are big Bernie backers. The Sanders campaign also said that teachers and nurses were among the top backers for the first quarter. And Ill be interested to see who AFA-CWA, one of the two major flight-attendant unions, endorses.

Ben: Do unions think Trump can hang on to the dangerously high percentage of their members he won in 2016?

Sarah: I think he probably retains some support. But hes failed to deliver on promises he made to revitalize coal and manufacturing, and that could hurt him.

Ed: Im not sure what unions think, but Im quite sure they view Trumps inroads into their membership as a deadly threat, much like similar inroads by Nixon and Reagan earlier. So like every other Democratic-aligned constituency, they may have been overconfident in 2016, but they wont make that mistake in 2020.
Washington, DC  A prominent Palestinian human rights activist and cofounder of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was denied entry to the United States on Wednesday, despite holding valid travel documents.

Omar Barghouti was travelling to the US on the invitation of Arab American Institute (AAI) in Washington to speak at New York Universitys DC campus.

Upon arrival at Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Barghouti was told by airline staff that the US Consulate in the city was directed by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to deny him travelling to the US due to an immigration matter.

Barghouti holds valid travel documents and a US visa valid until 2021.

They just said its a ban by the US immigration service, nothing beyond that, he told Al Jazeera.

Barghouti was also scheduled to speak at public events at the NYU campus in New York, Harvard University and with policymakers and journalists, AAI said in a statement on Thursday. At the end of his trip, he planned on attending the wedding of his daughter who lives in the US.

Barghoutis difficulties travelling in the past were due to the Israeli government restricting his ability to exit and enter Israel by not renewing his travel document, but this was the first time he has faced a ban by the US government.

This US entry ban against me, which is ideologically and politically motivated, is part of Israels escalating repression against Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders in the BDS movement for freedom, justice and equality, Barghouti said.

Israels far-right regime is not merely continuing its decades-old system of military occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing; it is increasingly outsourcing its outrageous, McCarthyite repression to the US and to xenophobic, far-right cohorts across the world, he added. The most precious thing that this ban deprives me of, and that I cannot compensate, is being at my daughters wedding. I am hurt, but I am not deterred.

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AAIs President James Zogby said in a statement that Omars denial of entry into the US is the latest example of the Trump Administrations disregard for those rights.

Having spent considerable time here as a student and while on speaking tours, Omar visiting America was never an issue before, he added. It is clear this arbitrary political decision is motivated by this administrations effort to silence Palestinian voices.

The US embassy in Jerusalem and USCIS did not immediately respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

Regressive anti-BDS bills

Zoha Khalili, a staff lawyer with Palestine Legal, a US-based advocacy group, said the effort to block Omar Barghoutis speaking tour demonstrates a coming together of two important strains of government overreach that weve seen ramp up especially under the Trump administration: the politicisation of our borders and the push to censor and punish the movement for Palestinian rights.

At least 27 states in the US have introduced laws to combat BDS activism, according to Palestine Legal.

Free speech is under assault in order to shield human rights violators from criticism, Khalili told Al Jazeera.

Most recently, Maryland introduced a ban on companies from contracting with businesses that boycott Israel earlier this year.

This year, the US Senate also passed an anti-BDS bill that would allow state and city governments to terminate contracts with US entities that support the BDS movement. The Hill reported on Wednesday that Republican politicians in the House of Representatives are launching a discharge petition to force a vote on the Senate measure.

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At a time when some members of Congress are advocating for regressive anti-BDS bills and resolutions, and when states have passed legislation targeting the non-violent boycott movement in violation of our protected First Amendment rights, it is disturbing that policymakers and the American people will not have the opportunity to hear from Omar directly about his views, Zogby said.
Interior Minister Maria Romo did not reveal the name of the man but said he was arrested for investigative purposes.

A man linked to Wikileaks cofounder Julian Assange has been arrested in Ecuador for investigative purposes, the countrys interior minister has said.

A person close to Wikileaks, who has been residing in Ecuador, was arrested this afternoon when he was preparing to travel to Japan, Maria Romo tweeted late on Thursday.

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The man who was arrested has reportedly lived in Ecuador for several years and has frequented the countrys London embassy where Assange had been staying, Romo told CNNs Spanish language service.

An unnamed Ecuadorian official told the Associated Press that a man named Ola Bini, a Swedish software developer living in Ecuadors capital, Quito, was arrested as authorities attempt to dismantle a blackmail ring that in recent days had threatened to retaliate against Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity and didnt provide any additional details about Bini.

The arrest came hours after Assange himself was arrested at Ecuadors embassy in London.

In a blog, Bini described himself as a software developer working in Quito for the Center for Digital Autonomy, a group based in Ecuador and Spain focused on privacy, security and cryptography issues. It makes no mention of any affiliation with Wikileaks.

On Twitter earlier on Thursday, Bini called claims by Romo that Russian hackers and someone close to Wikileaks were working inside Ecuador very worrisome news. This seems like a witch hunt to me, Bini wrote.

Assange arrest

Police in London on Thursday said they arrested Assange, an Australian national, after being invited into the embassy by the ambassador, following the Ecuadorean governments withdrawal of asylum.

Footage appeared to show police dragging a bearded Assange from the embassy and putting him into a police van.

Assange had been living at the embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.

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Ecuadors President Moreno said in a video posted to Twitter that he had revoked Assanges asylum because of his discourteous and aggressive behaviour.

There has been an ongoing dispute between the Ecuadorian authorities and Assange about what he was allowed to do at the embassy.

Moreno said he believed Assange was still working with WikiLeaks and was therefore involved in interfering in international affairs of other states.

He also accused Assange of installing banned electronic and distortion equipment in the embassy, blocking the buildings security cameras, mistreating guards and accessing the embassys security files without permission.

The asylum of Mr Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable  after his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols, Moreno said.

Al Jazeeras Rory Challands, reporting from outside the court where Assanges hearing took place later on Thursday, said that as well as being arrested for the charge of skipping bail, Assange had been further arrested for charges he faces in the United States.

Assange pleaded not guilty to the charge of breaking the terms of his bail but was convicted. He will be sentenced at a later date when he will face a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison for the offence.

He is due to appear in court via video link on the issue of extradition to the US on May 2.








WHO says it fears the outbreak of infectious diseases among the thousands of families fleeing their homes in Tripoli.

Gunfire and blasts echoed through downtown Tripoli in the small hours of Friday around the disused international airport and the Ain Zara district, the Reuters news agency has reported.

Renegade General Khalifa Haftars planned push into the capital appears stalled on the outskirts of the city as his Libyan National Army (LNA) forces continued to skirmish with those of the internationally recognised government.

The fighting between LNA and troops loyal to the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj has displaced 9,500 people in the capital, the United Nations (UN) said.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had made contingency plans in case thousands if not hundreds of thousands were displaced.

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At least 75 people have been killed since fighting began a week ago, and 323 have been wounded. The casualties included seven civilians killed and 10 wounded, according to Syed Jaffar Hussain, the WHO representative in Libya.

Haftars push on Tripoli in Libyas northwest is the latest turn in a cycle of factional violence and chaos dating back to the 2011 uprising that overthrew long-time ruler Muammar Gaddafi.

After sweeping up from the desert south, the LNA has been held up in the southern suburbs of Tripoli, about 11km from the centre.

The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said in a report on Thursday that 3,500 people had left their homes in Tripoli in the previous 24 hours, and that 90 percent of those who had requested evacuation could not be moved to comparatively safer areas.

Meanwhile, WHOs Hussain told a Geneva news briefing by telephone from Tripoli that he feared outbreaks of tuberculosis, measles and diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, especially among the displaced.

The WHO has delivered trauma kits and medicines to hospitals.

These supplies will last for two weeks, the acute phase, he said.

WHO has contingency plans to deal with any potential mass displacement caused by the fighting.

Ceasefire calls

Late on Thursday, the European Union called for an immediate ceasefire and for the LNA to withdraw its troops from Tripoli.

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In a statement, the EUs High Representative, Federica Mogherini, said that the military attack launched by the LNA on Tripoli is endangering civilians, including migrants and refugees, and disrupting the UN-led political process, with the risk of serious consequences for Libya and the wider region.

A planned UN conference to discuss a constitutional framework for elections as a means of ending the North African countrys eight-year political crisis that was to be held this week has been postponed.

As well as the toll on civilians, the renewed conflict also threatens to disrupt oil supplies.

The head of Libyas state oil company, Mustafa Sanalla, warned that the renewed fighting in the country could wipe out the North African nations crude production, according to a retweet by National Oil Corp (NOC).

The conflict also threatens to increase migration across the Mediterranean to Europe and encourage traffickers to exploit the chaos. Libya is the main transit point for migrants who have poured into Europe in recent years, mostly trafficked by smuggling gangs.

The LNA forces swept out of their stronghold in eastern Libya to take the sparsely populated but oil-rich south earlier this year before heading towards Tripoli, where Serrajs UN-backed government sits.

Haftar was among the officers who helped Gaddafi seize power in a 1969 coup before parting ways with him later. Critics call Haftar another strongman in Gaddafis mould.

He has so far resisted UN pressure to accept a power-sharing settlement to stabilise Libya.
The two doctors working for the Kenyan government were taken in the northeastern town Mandera, according to local media.

Unidentified gunmen abducted two Cuban doctors and shot dead a police officer near Kenyas border with Somalia, Kenyan media reported on Friday.

The Daily Nation said the attackers drove off with the doctors, who are employed by the Kenyan government, after the shooting in Mandera in the northeast of the country.

KTN News said police suspected the doctors and their abductors, thought to be members of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab group, had gone into Somalia.

Kenyan Citizen television footage showed police officers setting up a roadblock on a road leading to the border.

Ali Roba, the governor of Mandera, said in a statement that the gunmens vehicle blocked the doctors vehicle and opened fire at their bodyguards, killing one instantly.

The abductors might have taken the doctors to Somalia, police spokesman Charles Owino said. He said the doctors driver had been detained to help with investigations.

A police official identified the doctors as Dr Assel Herera Correa, a general physician, and Dr Landy Rodriguez, a surgeon.

They were stationed at the Mandera County Referral Hospital as part of a group of about 100 Cubans who came to Kenya last year to help boost health services.

Mandera has been the scene of frequent attacks in which dozens of civilians and security personnel have been killed. Al-Shabab has taken responsibility for most of them.

In November, armed attackers wounded five people including two children and kidnapped an Italian charity worker in Chakama, a small town near the Kenyan coast and south of the Somali border. The fate of the Italian woman is unknown.

Frequent assaults

Al-Shabab is fighting to topple Somalias central government and establish its own rule based on strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The group also conducts frequent assaults in Kenya, mostly in the region bordering Somalia, to put pressure on the Kenyan government to withdraw its troops from Somalia.

On Tuesday, the US embassy had upgraded its travel warning for Kenya, listing do not travel for Mandera county.

Exercise increased caution in Kenya due to crime, terrorism and kidnapping, the warning read.
Judges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have turned down a request by its chief prosecutor to open a war crimes probe in Afghanistan that could have looked into the possible role of United States forces in wrongdoing.

The judges decided that an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan at this stage would not serve the interests of justice, the Hague-based court said in a statement on Friday.

While the judges said that it was reasonable to consider crimes had been committed in Afghanistan and would be admissible before the ICC, there were a number of conditions that led them to rule against opening an investigation.

They cited the long timeframe between the 2006 preliminary investigation and any follow-up, the changing political scene in Afghanistan since then, and the lack of cooperation the prosecutor had received so far.

The current circumstances of the situation in Afghanistan are such as to make the prospects for a successful investigation and prosecution extremely limited, the statement said.

In 2016, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda issued a report that found that US armed forces and the CIA may have committed war crimes by torturing detainees in Afghanistan between May 1, 2003, and December 31, 2014.

Bensouda requested authorisation from the court to open a formal investigation in November 2017.

Dead to us

US National Security Adviser John Bolton has previously called the court illegitimate and any prosecution unjust. We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC,  Bolton said in September 2018.

We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us.

In March, the US secretary of state said his country would revoke or deny visas to any ICC personnel seeking to investigate possible war crimes by US forces or allies in Afghanistan.

Last month, it did just that, cancelling Bensoudas entry visa.
The armed forces were banned from politics in 2004, but the general remain powerful behind the scenes.

Jakarta, Indonesia  When Robertus Robet, a human rights activist, joined the student protests to topple Indonesian dictator Soeharto nearly 30 years ago, he sang a song criticising the military without getting into trouble.

Earlier this year, Robet sang the song again to show his opposition to President Joko Widodos decision to allow active military officers to take jobs in government ministries. He was duly arrested.

No one was offended when I sang the song before, Robet told Al Jazeera. I said in my speech I have nothing against the plan. Yes, they can [get jobs in the administration], but first, they have to retire.

The Indonesian military, commonly known by the acronym TNI (Tentara Nasional Indonesia), was forced to reform after the fall of Soeharto, losing the seats it held in the national parliament during the authoritarians 32 years in power.

It also had to give up its dual role  to defend the country, but also to enmesh itself in political life across the archipelago.

Banned formally from politics since 2004, neither the soldiers nor the police are allowed to vote.

But even with the legal restrictions, the generals remain a powerful force.

Joko Widodo, the former mayor of Solo who became president in 2014, was the first Indonesian leader to come from outside the traditional elite. While he pitched himself as a democrat reformist, he has come increasingly close to the military.

He has built up a personal network of trusted officers who had worked with him since early in his political career, Antonius Made Tony Supriatma, a visiting fellow in the Indonesian Studies Programme at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, wrote in a paper.

No doubt, despite the military being banned from politics, Jokowi [Widodo] knows full well that the armed forces are still the most important political player in Indonesia.

Joko Widodo, left, accompanied by then-Military Chief Gatot Nurmantyo on a visit to the Trans Papua road in 2017 [Indrianto Eko Suwarso/Antara Foto via Reuters]

Confidantes

Two of Widodos most-trusted advisers are former generals.

Luhut Binsar Panjaitan served in the countrys special forces for more than 20 years, while AM Hendropriyono was also in the special forces and headed the intelligence agency in 2004 when Indonesias most prominent human rights activist Munir was killed.

The administration of Widodos predecessor said Hendropriyono had no connection with the death of Munir, who was poisoned with arsenic on a flight to Europe.

Both mens sons-in-law have also enjoyed a rapid rise up the ranks during Widodos time in office.

The president also appointed former Army Chief Wiranto to his administration in 2016, giving him the job of Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Minister.

Wiranto was indicted by the United Nations for crimes against humanity relating to more than 1,000 deaths during East Timors bloody 1999 independence vote. He has denied wrongdoing.

Try Sutrisno, meanwhile, who was Soehartos vice president and was also accused of abuses in East Timor, has endorsed Widodo for a second term.

Our society is stumbling when it comes to spelling out the narrative of civilian and military, said Puri Kencana Putri, a human rights activist who works on military and human rights issues.

[We have] failed to guard the reform agenda, including to revoke the dual function of the military.

Over the past few years, Widodo has sought to address the surplus of middle and senior officers caused by the abolition of that dual function.

In 2017, about 141 TNI generals and 790 TNI colonels  each representing about a fifth of the total  had no formal position, according to Supriatma.

The proposal to allow 60 to take up jobs in the civilian administration without having to retire, as well as the creation of new units and commands, is part of an effort to address the imbalance.

But Evan Laksmana, a senior researcher with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta, said the proposal is merely a stop-gap that does not resolve the problem of officer promotional logjams.

It is a regressive public and military policy, he said.

The military has also been getting more involved with the countrys development, in the kind of national infrastructure initiatives and village-based projects that were a hallmark of the Soeharto era.

In its 2018 annual report, the Agrarian Reform Consortium, an NGO, said 41 people were killed, 51 shot and 546 tortured as a result of conflicts over land during Widodos first term. The report also claimed that the military and police were working with the government and companies.

In Nduga, West Papua, thousands have been forced to flee amid a military offensive that followed last Decembers massacre of construction workers by independence fighters. NGOs on the ground accuse the military of harassing local villagers and destroying houses and churches.

The TNI spokesman in Papua earlier this month described the allegations as hoax and said its troops were committed to upholding the Geneva Conventions.

He [Widodo] failed to make the military more professional, said Puri.

Wiranto, then military commander general, and Prabowo Subianto, then chief of the strategic command pictured together in 1997. Both have been accused of human rights abuses. Wiranto was appointed to the Cabinet in 2017 while Prabowo is running for president for a second time [Enny Nuraheni/Reuters]

Widodos challenger in the April 17 poll, Prabowo Subianto, is also a former general, implicated in the abduction of pro-democracy activists in May 1998.

Prabowo was a loyalist of Soeharto and former commander of the Army Strategic Command (Kostrad) and has built a campaign based on nationalism and conservatism, aligning himself with Islamic political parties including the Prosperous Justice Party and the National Mandate Party (PAN).

PAN is linked to Muhammadiyah, Indonesias second-largest Muslim organisation.

Prabowo hopes to capitalise on recent surveys, including Charta Politika and Lembaga Survei Indonesia (LSI), that suggest Indonesians now see the TNI is the most trusted institution in the country.

Nevertheless, some people are sceptical.

The younger generation have begun to care about military history in Indonesia and the impact on their everyday life, said Nisrina Nadhifah Rahman, who works with The Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras).

They began to believe that the military [had] gained more power.

Robets arrest triggered a public outcry. He was charged with online criminal defamation and for insulting an authority or a public institution.

Amnesty International Indonesias Executive Director Usman Hamid said the charges were a blatant attempt to silence criticism.

[Robet] is an academic who is guilty of nothing more than voicing his views over proposals to place senior military officers in positions of power within the government, said Usman.

Robet remains undaunted.

Jokowi is [the leader] of a civilian government, said Robet. He must not sacrifice civilian supremacy only for the pragmatic interests of the election.

This is also a warning for Prabowo. If he wants to restore the style of the military, the structure of the TNI, the military ideology in the midst of our democratic life, he will face us again.
A race against time, more heavy rain forecast for Iran as it battles to recover from flooding.

Aid workers in Iran say US sanctions are hampering their ability to help people affected by massive flooding.

Southwest Iran is suffering from some of the worst flooding in decades  and more rain is forecast to come.

The government has ordered tens of thousands of people to leave their homes in the city of Ahvaz, the capital of Khuzestan province.

Hundreds of villages in the oil-rich province have also been evacuated.

Al Jazeeras Zein Basravi reports from Tehran.
Burning US flags, Iranians rallied after Friday prayers against the USs decision to blacklist the countrys elite forces as a foreign terrorist organisation.

Iran is officially protesting the decision of the United States to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group.

In a letter to the United Nations, its Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has said the move could have dangerous consequences.

This, as supporters of the IRGC held a demonstration in Tehran condemning the US president.

Al Jazeeras Zein Basravi reports from Tehran.
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia  Malaysia will resume work on the multi-billion dollar East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) after months of negotiations with the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and the Chinese government brought the cost down by a third.

The cost of the first two phases of the line was reduced from 65.5 billion Malaysian ringgits ($15.9bn) to 44 billion ($10.6bn), the Prime Ministers Office said in a statement.

Malaysia said it welcomed the signing of a supplemental agreement between Malaysia Rail Link and the CCCC, the main contractor, which would pave the way for construction on the 688km railway to resume.

This reduction will surely benefit Malaysia, and lighten the burden on the countrys financial position, it added. Further details are scheduled to be announced on Monday.

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The electrified railway is designed to connect Malaysias capital with the towns on the peninsulas east and northeast and, backed by loans from China, was touted as an economic game changer by former Prime Minister Najib Razak.

Critics said it benefited China more than Malaysia. China is building a deep-sea port on Malaysias east coast and the railway is a key link in its Belt and Road Initiative.

Najib was overthrown in a general election nearly a year ago amid public anger at allegations of wrong-doing at state fund, 1MDB.

The ECRL project was stopped by the new administration shortly afterwards because it was too expensive. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he was worried that the cost of construction would leave the country indebted for a generation.
A right-wing government in Israel could mean more restrictions on Palestinian life, faster annexation of the West Bank.

Jerusalem  When US President Donald Trump congratulated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his election win, he said it gave the yet-to-be-revealed US regional peace plan a better chance.

The fact that Bibi won, I think well see some pretty good action in terms of peace, Trump said on Wednesday. Everybody said you cant have peace in the Middle East with Israel and Palestinians. I think we have a chance and I think we now have a better chance, he added.

In his election campaign, Netanyahu, whose last government was the most right-wing in Israeli history, showed little interest in peacemaking. Ahead of the vote, he said he would annex illegal Israeli settlements if he won a fifth term.

With the new coalition government likely to be even more right-wing than the last, analysts expect it will lead to tougher restrictions on Palestinian daily life and a more rapid annexation of the occupied West Bank.

Our existence is under threat

The 2019 election campaign was riddled with anti-Palestinian racism as Israeli political discourse shifted further rightwards.

Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist Blue and White party, bragged in campaign videos about the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza during the Israeli military assault in 2014 when he was in command. He boasted about sending parts of Gaza back to the Stone Age.

On election day itself, 1,200 activists from Netanyahus Likud party were provided body cameras and sent to voting centres in predominately Palestinian neighbourhoods, seemingly in an attempt to intimidate voters there. When asked about the controversy, the prime minister said there should be cameras everywhere to ensure a free and fair vote.

Commentators have remarked on the weakness of left-wing parties in Israel; in the election, voters were choosing between the right and the far-right.

With all votes counted, it appears likely that only 10 out of 120 Knesset members (from the predominantly Arab political parties) will support equality for Palestinians, an end to the occupation and do not back Israels bombing of Gaza.

Of the parties elected to the Knesset, left-wing Meretz is the only predominantly-Jewish Israeli party that supports an end to the occupation. However, it has a record of supporting Israels bombing of Gaza, according to Diana Buttu, a Haifa-based analyst and former legal adviser to Palestinian peace negotiators.

Dahlia Scheindlin, an international public opinion analyst and strategic consultant based in Tel Aviv told Al Jazeera that as 46 to 50 percent of Israels population is right-wing, candidates had correctly calculated that they would need to compete to appear more right-wing during the campaign to win more votes.

As far as Israels government is concerned, there is no end in sight for the 52-year-old occupation of the Palestinian territories.

They wont even talk about a two-state solution and certainly not a Palestinian state because the phrasing is important. And the last thing they will do is use the word occupation because thats left-wing, Scheindlin told Al Jazeera.

In the three election cycles after 2009, Likud has declined to offer a platform on conflict resolution or anything else, she added.

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Buttu said that Netanyahus renewed mandate will allow him to continue his policies of apartheid, colonisation, and racism.

He has done everything in his power to make it difficult if not impossible to live in this country. We saw this with the language hes used, with the passage of the nation-state law, with series of home demolitions of Palestinians in Israel his government has taken and all these measures to erase Palestinian identity, Buttu said.

Unfortunately Israeli fascism and Israeli racism ends up having a disproportionate impact on Palestinians  Our existence is under threat here. I dont say this lightly.

Annexation under way

Just days ahead of the vote, Netanyahu made headlines when he promised to annex illegal settlements in the West Bank to Israel.

But annexation has already been under way for some time, according to Israeli human rights organisation Yesh Din, which says there was a marked shift from de-facto to de-jure incremental annexation of the West Bank during the previous parliament shift.

In four years, 60 bills pertaining to annexation were presented to the Knesset and eight were approved, becoming law in Israel.

The Israel Knesset regards itself as the legislative authority in the West Bank and the sovereign there, Yesh Din noted.

Israel is transforming itself into an apartheid state, in which two types of people live: Israeli citizens who have full rights and Palestinians who lack political rights, as well as other rights.

While Israeli civil law applies to Israelis living in illegal settlements in the West Bank, Palestinians living in the same territory live under Israeli military law.

Theyve erased the green line  All that has been missing is simply to do that formal annexation. But on the ground it already has been annexed, Buttu said.

While some dismissed Netanyahus annexation pledge as an election gambit, others took him at his word.

Many alluded to the previous election in 2015 when Netanyahu said that if he returned to the office he would never establish a Palestinian state, reversing his previous endorsement of a two-state solution.

And guess what, there is no Palestinian state under his watch. We have no reason to doubt him especially because there is already de facto annexation going on in the ground today and it has been going on for years, Scheindlin said. We should believe him.

US peace plan

Israels attorney general said in February that he intended to indict Netanyahu on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust.

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Post-election negotiations are likely to involve Netanyahu extracting majority support for a law that would see parliament members, including prime ministers, granted immunity from prosecution.

In return, his potential coalition partners are likely to make strategic demands for positions in the cabinet or for policy guarantees, such as a form of annexation of the West Bank, assurances that no settlers will be evicted or the application of additional Israeli laws in the West Bank.

Its rumoured that the US plan, expected to be released in the coming months, will allow Israel to keep Area C, some 61 percent of the West Bank which includes the illegal settlements and areas used by the army.

According to Aluf Benn, writing in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Palestinians are expected to be offered some form of economic compensation.

If they reject the plan, as expected, it will be easier to support Israeli annexation of [the occupied West Bank], as Washington justified its recognition of Israels annexation of the Golan Heights, he wrote.

According to political analyst Ofer Zalzberg, the highly likely Palestinian rejection will drive the Israeli government to further advance the pro-settlement policy.

Broad policies of settlement construction and limitations on Palestinian life due to supposedly Israeli security needs, will continue and be more pronounced, Zalzberg predicted.

Furthermore, the new right-wing coalition may promote the implementation of Israeli law in occupied East Jerusalem, most controversially completing the land registration reform so that all land in East Jerusalem will need to be registered in the Israeli land register, Zalzberg said.

This could be very significant in terms of the crisis it would provoke. It would create conflicts over land between East Jerusalemites and the state of Israel, he added.
Photo: Pete Marovich/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock

The Washington Post has an explosive report that the Trump administration directed the Department of Homeland Security to release immigrant detainees into sanctuary cities, including districts represented by Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi. This was not one of the bizarre, megalomaniacal schemes President Trump tends to dream up and rant about intermittently, but a pattern of concerted bureaucratic pressure. Trump tweeted a confirmation of this thinking on Friday:

Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

That the effort failed allows us to read the story with two minds. On the one hand, we might conclude that the system worked: The departments lawyers refused to endorse a transparently illegal scheme, and it has now been exposed in the media by a whistle-blower. On the other hand, the bureaucratic resistance to the administrations demand was followed by a sweeping purge of the department, one specifically predicated on the refusal of its leadership to violate the law.

There is little mystery about Trumps intent to turn the department into an unalloyed instrument of his agenda. So we are left wondering whether the danger has been thwarted, or whether it yet looms over our heads.

Trumps election inspired a wave of concern, sometimes shading into outright panic, over the stability of the republic. It is fair to say that nothing has yet occurred that would irreversibly impair the democratic character of the state or entrench Trump and his allies in power. In this light, an increasingly smug wave of revisionism has taken hold. Shadi Hamid, writing in the Atlantic, scolds the intellectuals who wrung their hands over the possibility of democracys backsliding under Trump. He mocks the widespread attention to the book How Democracies Die  dismissing it as an alarmist bible  and, especially, the widespread use of Hitler analogies.

Of course, it has never made sense to consider the Nazis a historical analog to the party of Trump. While Trump may be an instinctive authoritarian who admires the control exerted by strongmen, unlike Hitler, he is not a social Darwinist bent on a genocidal war of territorial conquest. The worst-case scenario with Trump is not going to culminate in anything resembling totalitarian rule, industrialized murder, and global war.

Such stark, black-and-white terms have never been adequate for assessing the problem. The democracy literature, including How Democracies Die, is an attempt to frame the problem in less dramatic terms without downplaying its seriousness. One myth the authors are attempting to correct, without any apparent success on the part of critics like Hamid, is the popular habit of treating democracy in binary terms, with the alternatives being either an idealized republic or the rule of the most murderous totalitarians of the 20th century. The phrase democratic backsliding captures a messier reality in which autocracy moves along a continuum rather than suddenly descending in a parade of jackboots in the street. It involves the subversion of democratic norms and recruiting neutral government actors into agents of the regimes political interests.

In recent days, the warning lights have flashed as bright as ever. Trump has ramped up the volume of his authoritarian rhetoric. This week alone, Trump has used treasonous as a description for both Democratic immigration policy (I think what the Democrats are doing with the Border is TREASONOUS. Their Open Border mindset is putting our Country at risk) and the Mueller investigation (In fact, it was an illegal investigation that should never have been allowed to start. I fought back hard against this Phony & Treasonous Hoax!).

Meanwhile, he is energetically subverting the independence of the Federal Reserve. The countrys economic health and the presidents standing are generally in alignment, but to the extent that they diverge, Trump wants to ensure that the Fed will prioritize the latter over the former. He has appointed a pair of flagrantly unqualified hacks to the board. He wants guys he can call at home at night and tell them what he wants done, a former administration official tells The Wall Street Journal.

The Senate appears predisposed to reject Herman Cain for a variety of idiosyncratic reasons, ranging from the numerous sexual harassment allegations against him to his association with a group that has challenged incumbent Republican senators. But Stephen Moores confirmation appears likely, and it would seem simple for Trump to appoint somebody just as pliant as Cain without the gratuitous disqualifying factors.

The Republican Senate recently mounted faint, ineffectual resistance to Trumps plan to unilaterally redirect federal funds for a purpose Congress has rejected. And it has formed a solid wall of support behind Trumps refusal to hand over his tax returns to Congress, despite both deep-rooted norms and law supporting the demand that he do so. This is in keeping with a broad Republican decision that Trump is entitled to run a personal business empire while holding office without disclosing the numerous avenues for corruption this arrangement opens up.

Also this week, Attorney General William Barr supplied fresh evidence he is carrying out the job the way Trump has always demanded: as a Roy Cohn figure committed to ignoring Trumps misconduct while hounding his enemies. Barr announced he is investigating the possibility that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign. The most likely explanation for what went on, and the one supported by all the known evidence, is that the FBI merely investigated figures associated with the Trump campaign who were connected with Russian intelligence, not the campaign itself. But Barr instead teased more nefarious explanations, even prejudging the outcome of his investigation. (I think there was a failure among a group of leaders [at the FBI] at the upper echelon.) And he attacked the FBI for allegedly failing to inform the Trump campaign of Russian infiltration, when in fact it did exactly that.

It is never easy to tell in the moment where all of this is going. Maybe Barr and other Republicans are patronizing the president, appearing to busily carry out his demands while actually delaying things and doing little. Or maybe Trump is actually figuring out how to get his hands into the gears of government and corrupt it as he sees fit.

The most dire outcomes do not have to be the most probable outcomes in order to legitimately command our attention. We know for sure that whatever Trumps capabilities, the malevolence of his intentions lies beyond dispute. If Trump does win reelection  a prospect that is close to a coin-flip proposition under current economic conditions  that would place us now barely more than a quarter of the way through his presidency.
Thousands of worshippers in Pakistans Jhang city pay tribute to 50 victims of New Zealands double mosque attack.

Thousands of Pakistanis clad in white have gathered in the central city of Jhang to make a human image of New Zealands Al Noor mosque in Christchurch city, where 50 people were killed by a white supremacist four weeks ago.

Drone images showed worshippers standing in formation on Friday, their snow-white traditional shalwar kameez and prayer caps in stark contrast to the emerald green of a public field, as a second group formed the words Islam is peace nearby.

Huge New Zealand and Pakistani flags were also displayed along with a giant banner which read: Solidarity with the martyrs of Christchurch from Pakistan.

The tribute was organised by the Muslim Institute, a non-government organisation aimed at promoting peace and stability in the Muslim world, which also released the drone footage.

Brenton Tarrant, a 28-year-old Australian and self-avowed white supremacist, has been charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 of attempted murder after opening fire at the Linwood and Al Noor mosques on March 15.

Pakistani victims

Nine of the victims were of Pakistani origin. One, Naeem Rashid, was posthumously given an award for bravery by Pakistan after he apparently tried to tackle the gunman before being shot.

Tribute organisers praised the New Zealand government after what had been a very tough time for Muslims in the country  especially Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Her response not only soothed the wounds of Muslims but also assured them that Muslims in their country are safe, said Sahibzada Sultan Ahmad Ali, a religious scholar and one of the organisers.

We worked really hard to make this model, one participant, Noor Hassan, said of the tribute. It was so pleasant that we were ready to stand like this for the whole day.
Organisers of the months-long demonstrations that triggered the overthrow of Sudans President Omar al-Bashir have urged pro-democracy supporters to protest against a military takeover, renewing their demands for a civilian-led government.

The appeal by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) came late on Thursday as tens of thousands of protesters defied a nighttime curfew announced earlier in the day by General Awad Ibn Auf, who was sworn in as the head of a military council that replaced al-Bashir.

In a Twitter post, the SPA called on protesters to gather now and continue a days-long sit-in outside the army headquarters in the capital, Khartoum.

Stay put and guard your revolution, it added. To comply with the curfew is to recognise the clone rescue government.

The Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors said that at least 13 people were killed when security forces intervened in Thursdays protests.

They included two demonstrators in the capital Khartoum, the Committee said in a statement on Friday.

Since Saturday, at least 35 people have been killed in clashes with security forces, which have repeatedly tried to disperse the sit-in by force, it added.

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Outside the sprawling complex, protesters beat drums, sang and chanted slogans such as Peace! Justice! Freedom! and The first one fell, the second will, too! as they thronged the area overnight.

What is happening in Sudan is that the old system is being rebuilt in new clothes, said activist Mohammed Hisham. Im 30 years old, and my whole life we have suffered from lack of freedom and continuous threats.

Since December, Sudan has witnessed persistent demonstrations sparked by rising food prices that quickly escalated into wider calls for the departure of al-Bashir, who came to power in a 1989 coup. Dozens of people have been killed in protest-related violence since the demonstrations began.

The crisis intensified on April 6  the 34th anniversary of a non-violent uprising that removed ruler Jaafar Nimeiri  when thousands began amassing in front of the army headquarters.

As the protesters refused to leave, while braving live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas, state media said on Thursday morning that the army would make an important announcement.

This raised the expectation of al-Bashirs removal and prompted celebrations in the streets of Khartoum.

A protester wearing a T-shirt with a slogan reading, Free revolutionaries, #Fallen and Thursdays date [Ashraf Shazly/AFP]

Joy turns to anger

Later on in the day, in a televised address to the nation, Ibn Auf announced that 75-year-old al-Bashir had been overthrown and taken to a safe place after being arrested.

But the protesters jubilation quickly turned to anger when Ibn Auf, who Bashir appointed as first vice president in February, also said that the military council would run the country for a two-year transitional period.

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He also declared a three-month state of emergency, suspended Sudans constitution and imposed the month-long curfew, from 10pm to 4am local time (20:00 to 02:00 GMT).

Later on Thursday, Ibn Auf was sworn in as chief of Sudans new ruling council.

Protesters denounced the militarys moves, with the SPA demanding the handover of power to a civilian transitional government that reflects the forces of the revolution.

Omer Eldigair, leader of the Sudanese Congress Party, also called for more protests, saying: We will not accept half victory. We need the whole and complete victory as anticipated and wanted by our martyrs.

He added: Dont be scared and dont retreat as we will continue our path till the end.

Nafisa Badri, a protester in Khartoum told Al Jazeera. Nobody is happy  We dont want the army for another two years  People will continue to demonstrate.

World reaction

Amid the uncertainty in Sudan, politicians around the world appealed for calm and restraint.

Antonio Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, called for an inclusive transition that will meet the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people, while the African Union said a military takeover was not the appropriate response to the countrys challenges.

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The United States, Britain and the European Union called for a civilian-led transition, but Egypt, Sudans neighbour, said it had complete trust in the countrys military to overcome this defining phase and its challenges.

Payton Knopf, an analyst at the United States Institute for Peace, called for an international consensus on a civilian-led transition in Sudan, warning that failure to do so could lead to chaos in the country.

Its increasingly clear that a military government with or without Bashir will neither have the political or economic resources necessary to address the crisis of legitimacy in the country, and the crisis facing the economy, he told Al Jazeera from Washington.

Its vital at this inflection point for Sudan that the US and its European partners, and indeed states in the region, coalesce around an international consensus on the type of civilian-led transition in Sudan that they can support and that they can provide economic resources to stabilise the country to deal with the economic emergency that was the proximate cause of the demonstrations when they broke out in December, and set the country on a new path forward.

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, researcher at Yale University, said any solution to Sudans crisis will require the regime to make an earnest effort to open this transition to civilian figures and to really put this process in their hands.
The US Treasury Department has designated not just Venezuelas vital oil industry but its entire banking sector also as the target of sanctions, making it almost untouchable for companies and banks that do business with the United States.

But in the last three months, President Nicolas Maduros government has been busy finding ways to circumvent the US sanctions.

Venezuelas Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza is travelling across the globe, closing economic cooperation deals with countries like Turkey, Syria and South Africa, out of the reach of US sanctions. Not to mention the military and oil industry deals with Russia.

Al Jazeeras Lucia Newman reports from Puerto Cabello, in northern Venezuela.
Wall Street Journal says Riyadh offered millions of dollars to Khalifa Haftar to help pay for his Tripoli campaign.

Days before Libyas renegade General Khalifa Haftar launched an offensive on the countrys capital, Tripoli, Saudi Arabia offered tens of millions of dollars to help pay for the operation, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The offer came during a visit by Haftar to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, ahead of his April 4 military campaign, the Journal said on Friday.

Citing senior advisers to the Saudi government, the Journal said the offer of funds  accepted by Haftar  was intended to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders, recruit and pay fighters, and other military purposes.

We were quite generous, one of the unnamed advisers told the Journal.

The latest conflict in the North African country pits Haftars Libyan National Army (LNA) against forces allied to the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA).

The GNA controls Tripoli, situated in northwestern Libya, while the LNA is allied to a parallel administration based in the east of the oil-rich country, which splintered into a patchwork of competing power bases following the overthrow of former leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.





The United Nations, which had hoped to organise a national conference this month bringing the rival eastern and western administrations together to organise an election, has called for a ceasefire. The United States, G7 bloc of wealthy nations and the European Union have also urged the LNA to halt its offensive.

According to the latest UN figures, at least 75 people have been killed in the fighting between the warring parties while 320 others were wounded. Some 9,500 people have also been forced from their homes.

Warplanes over Tripoli

Khalil Jahshan, the executive director of the Arab Center of Washington DC, said Haftars backers and supporters were well known before the publication of the Journals article.

Several Middle Eastern countries including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have backed Hafter as a bulwark against Islamist groups, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, who took a prominent role in Libya following the 2011 uprising and continued to participate in Libyan politics under the Tripoli government.

There was an increase in support, clearly, but not a change in the political role. I think Saudi Arabia wanted to up its participation in the conflict in Libya and that probably contributed to the visit of General Haftar to the kingdom and his meeting with both King Salman and the Crown Prince, Jahshan said.

Immediately after his [Haftars] return, he kind of escalated his role, his confrontation with his competitors in Libya so clearly he got the political endorsement first and Im sure he got the financial and military support afterwards even though this is not necessarily the only party in the Gulf or in the Middle East that has been supportive of Haftar over the past few years.

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During his visit to Saudi Arabia prior to the offensive on Tripoli, the Journal said Haftar met King Salman, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) as well as the kingdoms intelligence chief and foreign minister.

The Saudi government and spokespeople for Haftar did not respond to requests for comment.

Meanwhile, at least five civilians were killed on the outskirts of Tripoli on Friday when rockets and shells fired by forces loyal to Haftar hit a residential area.

Al Jazeeras Mahmoud Abdelwahed, reporting from Tripoli, said Haftars forces had launched several air raids in western Libya.

Haftars warplanes have been intensifying air attacks in the west of the country and staff members in Mitiga airport  the only operational airport in the Tripoli  say that there is a state of panic among staff members and passengers, he said, adding that anti-aircraft weapons at the airport were trying to target the warplanes.

Fighting decreased relatively on Friday compared with the last two or three days but sources at the GNA say that the government forces managed to recapture sites that were taken over by Haftars forces days ago, Abdelwahed said.

More than 1,000 people also gathered in central Tripoli to demand Haftar stop the advance on the coastal city of about 1.2 million people.
Three attacks in two weeks leaves observers fearful of rising violence under Jair Bolsonaros far-right government.

Sao Paulo, Brazil  At least six people have been killed in a series of deadly Amazon land conflicts in Brazil, stoking fears of rising violence in the region under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro.

In two weeks, between the end of March and beginning of April, three separate attacks were recorded; two in Para and one in Amazonas states. Two police investigations are ongoing and the death toll could be higher.

Bolsonaro was elected last year with overwhelming support from Brazils powerful farming lobby. Since taking office, the president has reduced protections for forests and indigenous lands and sought to take away the power of environmental agencies.

Observers fear these measures, coupled with the presidents pro-gun, anti-indigenous rhetoric, will encourage unscrupulous farmers, loggers and land grabbers in a region where impunity reigns and disputes are commonly settled in murder.

We foresee an intense round of violence in the beginning [of his term] and think its going to be a growing pattern, said Jean Bellini, a national coordinator at Brazils Pastoral Land Commission (CPT), a rural violence watchdog.

In the most recent attack, according to police reports seen by Al Jazeera, six hooded gunmen stormed a squatted rural property in Senador Jose Porfirio, Para, firing at a house with a family inside.

An occupant returned fire, killing one of the gunmen and injuring another, whose dead body was found decomposing nearby days later. A teenager and a couple who were inside the house were injured and taken to hospital.

One of the dead was military police sergeant Valdenilson Rodrigues, 54. Police investigations suggest that the group intended to carry out a violent land eviction and that Rodrigues was acting as a hired gunman.

For rural Para and other remote parts of Brazil, police working as armed mercenaries on behalf landowners or land grabbers is a decades-old problem.

In 2017, two Amazon massacres  the two largest of recent years  involved former or serving police officers clearing land and properties.

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Recently, police militias have also provided security for private construction and mining projects. In 2016, a group of military police officers provided illicit private security for an Australian mining firm in Para.

These groups utilise the equipment and knowledge of the state for private security at the expense of the population, said Armando Brasil, a military prosecutor that investigates police misconduct.

Environmental activists targeted

Land violence has long plagued the resource-rich Amazon region, home to the worlds last great tropical forest. Deforestation also reached a 10-year high in 2018.

Its one of the worlds deadliest places for environmental activists, with recent decades marked by high-profile assassinations Chico Mendes, Sister Dorothy Stang and Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva.

The number of land conflict killings in Brazil jumped then steadily increased from 2015, the year when Brazil fell into political and economic crisis.

According to CPT, 2017 saw 70 land and resources related killings in Brazil, the majority in Amazon states and the highest since 2003.

That number dropped significantly in 2018, according to CPTs annual rural violence report released today, to 25 killings, 15 of which happened in Para.

However, Bellini, the CPT national coordinator noted that there was an uptick in the number of leaders killed, as well as land evictions ordered by judges.

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So far, in 2019, according to CPT methodology, there have been at least 10 killings, not including the two gunmen killed in Para.

In late March, hooded gunmen arrived at a rural settlement in Sao Domingos that borders the Amazon states of Acre, Rondania and Amazonas.

According to a police report, the gunmen killed 53-year-old Nemes Machado de Oliveira. Residents told police they were expelled by suspected land grabbers and houses set ablaze.

The Amazonia Real website reported four people were killed, their bodies still missing. The site also reported that the residents did not have land titles and that they had bought the land having been given false documents.

Small farmers vulnerable

Across the Brazilian Amazon, many small farmers do not have land deeds, much of which is due ot a chaotic mass colonisation process which began in the 1970s and subsequent land occupations.

According to Brenda Brito, a researcher at the NGO Imazon and specialist in Amazon land grabs, this leads them vulnerable to armed land grabbers.

In areas that dont have land titles, powerful groups feel they are able to arrive and take the land for themselves, she said.

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Alan Rick, an Acre congressman with the right-wing Democrats party, allied to President Bolsonaro, denounced the violence in the lower chamber and met Brazils controversial environment minister Ricardo Salles.

Brazils agrarian reform was suspended indefinitely in March, meaning the end of creation of new rural settlements for landless farmers.

Bolsonaros secretary for land affairs, Luiz Antonio Nabhan Garcia, is former president of the Democratic Farmers Union (UDR), which has been previously accused of organising rural militias to clear land.

At the end of March, in Tucurui, Para, police arrested a farmer in connection with the murder of social movement leader Dilma Silva, 53, who previously fought the construction of a nearby hydroelectric dam.

Two of her colleagues were also killed at the same time on the rural settlement where she lived.

A police report detailed that Fernando Rosa Filho had ordered the killing because he wanted the land to construct a clandestine plane runway in which to use for drug trafficking.

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The G1 website reported that he also ordered the killings of three rural workers who intended to take him to court over an unpaid labour debt. His lawyer denies all charges.

During the same period, suspected land grabbers reportedly returned to invade the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau indigenous territory in Rondonia state, having been expelled by the tribesmen in January.

Invaders told the indigenous they would return and the same month Brazils public prosecution office urged action to protect the territory and three other indigenous lands.

Ivaneide Bandeira, coordinator of Kaninde, an NGO that works closely with the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau, told Al Jazeera that a large number of land grabbers had returned.
The head of Sudans ruling military council has resigned in a speech broadcast live on state television, naming Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan as his successor.

The announcement by General Awad Ibn Auf came late on Friday as tens of thousands of protesters rallied in Sudans capital, Khartoum, demanding a civilian-led transition after the military overthrow of the countrys longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir.

I, the head of the military council, announce I am giving up the post, Ibn Auf said, just a day after he was sworn in as the head of a transitional military council.

This is for the benefit of our nation, without having to look at special interests, big or small that may impede its progress, he said in a brief statement.I would like to recommend that you work together and reach a solution very speedily.

Ibn Auf said he was confident al-Burhan will steer the ship to safe shores, and added he was stepping aside to preserve unity of the armed forces.

Protesters in Khartoum greeted the move with ululations and cheers, said Al Jazeeras Hiba Morgan.

People are celebrating on the streets; they are saying that they managed to topple President Omar al-Bashir after four months of protests and less than 48 hours after the military council took over, they managed to bring down Ibn Auf, too, she said from the capital.





Al-Burhan, who was appointed as al-Bashirs chief of staff and head of the ground forces in February, did not have the same tainted record as that of other al-Bashir era officials, she said, citing accusations of war crimes against both the former president and his successor during the 2003-2008 war in Sudans western region of Darfur.

The new leader was one of the generals who reached out to protesters at the week-long encampment near the military headquarters, meeting with them face to face, and listening to their views.

Morgan said al-Burhan was expected to address the Sudanese public on Saturday.

The protesters are waiting to see what kind of vision and plan al-Burhan has, [in order] to see if he is going to be the person they would want to represent them during the transition period, or whether they should continue with their sit-in, she added.

Patience, sacrifice

Protesters in Khartoum told Al Jazeera the toppling of al-Bashir and resignation of Ibn Auf within 36 hours was the result of patience, sacrifices and struggle for four months.

We now want to witness the power being handed over to the civilians, this is the  democracy and freedom we aimed to achieve, Abdul Jabar Ibrahim, 60, said.

The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), which spearheaded the months-long demonstrations that triggered al-Bashirs overthrow on Thursday, hailed Ibn Aufs departure as a triumph of the will of the masses.

However, it called on residents of Khartoum to continue their days-long sit-in outside the army headquarters, in defiance of a nighttime curfew imposed by the army, until their demands for a civilian-led transitional government and democratic reforms, as outlined in the January Declaration of Freedom and Change, were met.

They called for a total strike until the full transfer of power and urged supporters elsewhere in the country to take to the streets outside the militarys various posts until these demands are fully implemented.

A Sudanese protester holds up a sign reading in Arabic revolutionaries, free, will continue the course [Ashraf Shazly/AFP]

Ibn Aufs resignation came hours after a spokesman for the military council promised to hold talks with all political groups in Sudan and declared it had no ambitions to hold the reins of power.

The council was ready to step down as early as a month if a government is formed, said council member Omar Zein al-Abideen.

Sudans military council also asked all political forces in the country to name two representatives by Saturday for a dialogue on the countrys transition, according to SUNA news agency, adding the time for the meeting would be set once it had received the names from all of the groups.

Sudans envoy to the United Nations, Yasir Abdelsalam, reiterated that sentiment ahead of a Security Council meeting on Sudan. He said the military council would be the guarantor of a civilian government in which no party was excluded.

The Security Council, which met behind closed doors, did not announce any action on Sudan, but the bodys president said all 15 members agreed to monitor events there closely.

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Meanwhile, Michele Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged Sudanese authorities to refrain from using force against peaceful protesters and called for the release of all those detained for protesting.

Earlier on Friday, al-Abideen said the military council wanted to create an atmosphere to manage a peaceful dialogue, but warned protesters that chaos will not be tolerated, however.

According to activists, scores of pro-democracy protesters have been killed by Sudans widely-feared security services since the demonstrations began in December, sparked by anger over rising bread prices.

The protests quickly evolved into broader calls for al-Bashir and and his political entourage to give up power.

Mohammed Amin contributed in this report from Khartoum
Operation victory will be conducted with the aim of eradicating occupation from Afghanistan, the group says.

The Taliban on Friday announced its annual spring offensive, even while it is in peace talks with the United States and ahead of planned meetings with Afghan representatives later this month.

Operation Fath, which means victory in Arabic, will be conducted across Afghanistan with the aim of eradicating occupation and cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption, the Taliban said in a statement.

The annual spring offensive traditionally marks the start of the so-called fighting season, though the announcement is largely symbolic as in recent winters the Taliban has continued fighting Afghan and US forces.

The administration of President Ashraf Ghani declared its own spring offensive last month, Operation Khalid, and the Taliban used that announcement as a justification for launching a new push.

It shows the enemy still seeks to attain its malicious objectives through the use of force, the Taliban said.

The group called on Afghan soldiers, police and other pro-government fighters to join them.

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The group said it will keep fighting despite gains it has made across the country because international forces continue to have military and political influence, including launching bombing attacks and ground raids.

Our Jihadi obligation has not yet ended, the Taliban said.

Mere propaganda

Qais Mangal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defence, said the Talibans spring offensive is mere propaganda.

The Taliban will not reach their vicious goals and their operations will be defeated like previous years, Mangal said.

The group controls or contests about half of the country and Afghan security forces are taking high casualties.

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After suffering horrific bloodshed in 2018, Kabul has in recent weeks enjoyed something of a lull in violence.

But on Monday three US Marines were killed in a Taliban attack at Bagram air base north of the city, and authorities in the capital are on high alert.

The US has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in a bid to bring an end to the war against the fighters. The group has repeatedly refused to meet with Ghanis government calling it a puppet of the West.

Another round of negotiations are expected to take place later this month in Qatar where the Taliban have a political office, and will include representatives from a variety of Afghan groups.





An Afghan delegation who are not part of the government also met with the Taliban in Moscow in February.

The United States still has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, nearly 18 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban.

In 2018 a record 10,993 civilians were wounded or killed in Afghanistan, according to UN figures.

Last December there were reports US President Donald Trump was planning to halve the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, though no such drawdown has happened yet.
Members of the LGBTQ community and their supporters slam the ban as bigoted and irresponsible.

US President Donald Trumps controversial ban on transgender Americans in the military came into force on Friday following a protracted legal battle that went all the way to the nations top court.

Trumps administration has insisted that there is too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality to allow transgender people to serve  reversing a policy enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama.

But rights groups and thousands of trans members of the military have criticised the ban as bigoted and said it makes the US less safe.

The Pentagon says the restrictions are not a blanket ban, but they would bar many if not most people who identify as transgender from enlisting in the nations armed forces, and could also affect currently serving personnel.

This policy will ensure that the US military maintains the highest standards necessary to achieve maximum readiness, deployability, and lethality to fight and win on the battlefield, the Department of Defense said on its website.

The policy has undergone various iterations since Trump first announced it on Twitter in July 2017.

The US Supreme Court ruled in January that the policy could take effect pending the outcome of ongoing litigation.

Under the latest version, no one who has transitioned to another gender or who requires hormone treatment will be able to enlist.

Those who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria are also presumptively disqualified from enlisting unless they have been stable for 36 months and (are) willing and able to serve in (their) biological sex, according to the Department of Defense.

Gender dysphoria, according to the American Psychiatric Association says involves a conflict between a persons physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.

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Serving troops who already transitioned or requested gender reassignment surgery prior to Friday are allowed to remain in the military.

But starting on Friday, those who are newly diagnosed with gender dysphoria may be discharged if they are unable or unwilling to serve in (their) biological sex, the Department of Defense said.

Repeating dont ask, dont tell

Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a research institute focusing on sexual minorities in the military, said the policy amounts to a ban that will force transgender troops to remain silent and invisible.

It is dont ask, dont tell all over again, said Belkin, referring to the policy under which gay service members had to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal from the military.

The Trump-Pence transgender troop ban is dangerous for both transgender people and our national security, said

Sarah McBride of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), described the policy as a national security threat.

The fact that a service member who came out on Thursday can continue to serve openly, while a service member who comes out on Monday cant, only reinforces the cruel and arbitrary nature of this ban, she said in a statement.

Akira Wyatt, a member of the US Navy, told HRC that the US governments ban, sends the message we arent capable of doing the jobs were doing now. It sends off the message of disloyalness, disbelief.

As the #TransMilitaryBan goes into effect today, every transgender patriot should know that a grateful nation supports you. pic.twitter.com/SLj4AWYDA5  Human Rights Campaign (@HRC) April 12, 2019

Under the Obama-era policy, transgender recruits were to start being accepted by July 1, 2017. The Trump administration postponed that date to January 1, 2018, before deciding to reverse the policy entirely.

The Pentagon estimates that 9,000 out of a total of 1.3 million active-duty personnel identify as transgender. Of those, 1,000 say they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or want to.

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Transgender rights activists say the figure is higher.

As many as 15,000 transgender service members stand to lose their jobs, Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King, who is transgender, told ABC News this week.

For those of us who are grandfathered in because weve already come out and we already have a diagnosis, theres the possibility for systematic discrimination, King said.

The new policy is indefensible, Meghan McCain, daughter of the late Senator John McCain, wrote on Twitter.

This discriminatory policy will lead transgender service members, patriots who have decided to serve their nation, to live in the shadows, she wrote.
In meeting with South Koreas Moon, Trump says its not the right time to ease sanctions on Pyongyang.

US President Donald Trump and South Koreas Moon Jae-in agreed on Thursday on the importance of nuclear talks with North Korea, but the two leaders arent completely aligned on whether sanctions would pressure Kim Jong Un to give up his nuclear weapons or drive him away from the negotiating table.

Trump, in his first meeting with Moon since the unsuccessful US summit with Kim in Hanoi, said the United States wanted to keep economic sanctions in place to pressure Kim to denuclearise. But Trump said he retained good relations with Kim and didnt rule out a third summit or taking steps to ease food or other shortages in the repressive nation.

We want sanctions to remain in place, Trump said at the White House. I think that sanctions right now are at a level thats a fair level.

Moon, for his part, has called for an easing of sanctions, including those holding back joint economic projects between North and South Korea. But he didnt speak about the sanctions issue as he and Trump spoke with reporters at the start of their talks.

Moons top nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon said on Friday that sanctions were necessary to deter North Korea from making bad decisions but could not solve all unresolved problems.

Trump said he would favour easing those sanctions at the right time but added, This isnt the right time. He said he was open to discussing smaller steps, such as helping to ease North Koreas humanitarian problems, but that, in general, the US wanted sanctions to remain.

There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen, Trump said.

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You could work out step-by-step pieces, but at this moment, were talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons.

Negotiations on Pyongyangs nuclear programme appear to be stalled, and there is uncertainty over whether Kim is considering backing out of talks or restarting nuclear and missile tests. The Korean Central News Agency on Thursday said that at a party meeting on Wednesday, Kim stressed self-reliance in his country to deal a telling blow to the hostile forces that go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring North Korea to its knees.

Push for another summit

Trump and Moon discussed the possibility of the South Korean leader having an inter-Korean summit with Kim soon as a way to boost dialogue between the US and North Korea on denuclearisation.

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Kim and Moon met three times last year and Kim promised to visit South Korea in return for the South Korean leaders visit to Pyongyang in September.

A South Korean statement issued after the meeting, which included a working lunch, said Moon told Trump he would push to hold another summit soon with Kim.

The two presidents agreed that the top-down approach will continue to be indispensable in the peace process on the Korean Peninsula. In this regard, President Trump stressed that the door was always open for dialogue with Chairman Kim, the statement said.

A South Korean official said nothing had been decided about the timing and location of a next inter-Korean summit.

Moon told Trump he would contact the North in earnest to talk about holding an inter-Korean summit soon, the official said. Trump asked Moon to brief him as early as possible on North Koreas latest thinking.

Before his trip, aides to Moon stressed the need to revive US-North Korea talks. Moon has put his political reputation on the line in encouraging the negotiations.

Third summit could happen

Trump expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with Kim, but said it wasnt a fast process.

Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore last June, building goodwill but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programmes.

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It could happen. A third summit could happen. And its step by step. Its not a fast process. Ive never said it would be. Its step by step, Trump said.

Moon said he did not view the summit that collapsed in Hanoi as a failure, but part of a longer process. He said he agreed with Trump on the ultimate goal of total denuclearisation by North Korea.

The important task that we face right now is to maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook regarding the third US-North Korea summit to the international community, that this will be held in the near future, Moon said.

In a statement following the meeting, the White House said Trump reiterated to Moon that he had a good relationship with Kim and noted the door remains open to dialogue.

Although Trump didnt rule out a third summit, Victor Cha, a North Korea expert, wasnt hopeful.

With Trump already campaigning for re-election, Cha said, Its hard for me to think Trump will risk a third summit.

Last month, a senior North Korean official warned that Kim might rethink a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests which have been in place since 2017 unless Washington made concessions such as easing sanctions.

On Wednesday, North Koreas state media said Kim had chaired a Politburo meeting on Tuesday to discuss ways to make progress under the prevailing tense situation.

North Koreas Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said last month that Kim would soon make clear his post-Hanoi position. She said her country might pull out of the nuclear negotiations with the US, citing a lack of corresponding steps to some disarmament measures that North Korea took last year. She also hinted that Kim was considering whether to continue the talks and his moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.
Emilia Balsamic Vinegar, from Nebraska. Photo: Phil & Whitney Mayhew | P&W Phot/ 2017 P&W Photography

Balsamic vinegar is one of the most familiar pantry products. But it can also be one of the most confounding, because its uses span the culinary map  from dressing salads to marinating roast chicken to drizzling on vanilla ice-cream. Many of the best balsamic vinegars must meet strict regulations.

The finest balsamic vinegars hail from two Italian regions  Modena and Reggio Emilia  and you know youve found a good one if its bottle is labeled Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Reggio Emilia DOP or Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena DOP. These balsamic vinegars are made with local grapes freshly pressed into a must (a mixture of juice, skin, and seeds) that is cooked super slowly and then barrel-aged for between 12 and 25 years. Those seeking a quality balsamic vinegar at a more affordable price should look for bottles from these regions labeled with IGP (which means the vinegar is produced and aged there, but the grapes may come from elsewhere) or condimento (a product that falls somewhere between DOP and IGP).

Tastes can vary among good balsamics, but generally they are thicker, with deep fruity notes and woody flavors from the barrel-aging process, according to Emily Lycopolus, the author of The Olive Oil and Vinegar Lovers Cookbook: It shouldnt taste like a vinegar, it should taste more like a liqueur. Here, 12 balsamic vinegars that food writers and importers we spoke with recommend for a range of uses and budgets.

Best DOPs

Best IGPs

Best condimento

San Giacomo Balsamic Vinegar $34 Condimentos are one of the hardest categories of balsamic to define, because unlike DOPs and IGPs, they are not produced according to any strict regulations. Typically made in the traditional method, condimentos can be batches that didnt make the DOP cut, or sometimes theyre a DOP-IGP blend, according to Turkell, who is a fan of this bottle. Since most are made traditionally, condimentos are used like DOPs  for drizzling, not for cooking (but you can pour more freely, since theyre often less expensive). $34 at Amazon Buy $34 at Amazon Buy

Best American-made balsamics

Emilia Balsamic Vinegar $75 Photo: Phil & Whitney Mayhew | P&W Phot/ 2017 P&W Photography The Nebraska prairie is a long way from Modena and Reggio Emilia, but this small-batch balsamic produced in the Cornhusker States Sandhills region rivals some Italian-made vinegars, says Turkell. $75 at George Paul Vinegar Buy

Best balsamic for drizzling on ice-cream

Villa Manodori Balsamic Vinegar $45 Italian chef Massimo Bottura  the man behind the three-Michelin-starred restaurant Osteria Francescana in Modena  began producing his award-winning brand of balsamic vinegars back in 1995. Made with Trebbiano grapes (which, along with Lambrusco grapes, are the two main varieties used in balsamics), this vinegar pairs perfectly with ice-cream, according to Lycopolus. $45 at Amazon Buy $45 at Amazon Buy

Best white balsamic

Williams Sonoma White Balsamic Vinegar $30 $30 If youve always gone for syrupy black balsamics, maybe its time to try a white version, which Lycopolus prefers for dressing salads (she also likes adding a few drops to mocktails). Williams Sonomas white balsamic vinegar is made in Modena by the Leonardi family, who produce an excellent range of vinegars, according to Jenkins. $30 at Williams Sonoma Buy

Best fruit-forward balsamics

Best balsamic glaze

Lucero Balsamic Vinegar Glaze $30 Balsamic glaze is thicker and sweeter than the vinegar itself, and making your own using any bottle is easy enough (mix it with brown sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stir until the sugar dissolves, bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer until you have about half the amount of glaze in the pan). But if youd rather just buy a bottle, Lycopolus recommends Luceros. $30 at Lucero Buy

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London, United Kingdom  The UKs opposition Labour Party has called on the government to halt the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, where he has been charged with offences related to his work with whistle-blower Chelsea Manning.

The 47-year-old Australian activist was arrested by British police on Thursday and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London after his asylum was revoked, bringing to an end more than six years in the building.

US prosecutors say Assange faces five years in prison if convicted of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, though further charges are expected to be brought against him. On Thursday, a UK court found him guilty of violating his bail terms when he fled to the embassy in 2012. He will be sentenced at a later date.

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott on Friday said Prime Minister Theresa May should intervene as she did in the case of British hacker Gary McKinnon, whose extradition request she rejected on medical grounds in 2012.

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McKinnon was sought by US authorities on charges of hacking military computers and faced up to 70 years in prison, but was deemed by doctors to be a significant suicide risk.

In the end, the then-home secretary, Theresa May, blocked his extradition on what she said were human rights grounds. We think there may be human rights grounds in relation to Assange, Abbott told the BBC on Friday.

However, May has shown no desire to interfere with US wishes this time. She welcomed the arrest in Parliament on Thursday, where current Home Secretary Sajid Javid accused Labour of supporting a man with a track record of undermining the UK and our allies and the values we stand for.

Nearly 7yrs after entering the Ecuadorean Embassy, I can confirm Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK. I would like to thank Ecuador for its cooperation & @metpoliceuk for its professionalism. No one is above the law  Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) April 11, 2019

Assange originally sought asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden, where prosecutors wanted to question him over a rape allegation, which he denied. The case was subsequently dropped in 2017 because it could not proceed while Assange was in the embassy.

On Friday, Swedish prosecutors said they were examining the rape case at the request of the alleged victims lawyer.

When asked about the rape allegations, Abbott said it was right that he should face justice if charges are brought.

If the Swedish government wants to come forward with those charges, I believe that Assange should face the criminal justice system, said Abbott, who added that the arrest was politically motivated as WikiLeaks has published enormous tranches of sensitive military information.

We all know what this is about. Its not the rape charges, serious as they are, its about WikiLeaks. All that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military that was made public and that is what it is about.

Assange was bundled into a police van following his arrest on Thursday [Henry Nicholls/Reuters]

Serious human rights violations

Abbotts comments follow a post on Twitter by Corbyn on Thursday that praised Assanges exposing of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and said that his extradition to the US should be opposed by the British government.





Massimo Moratti, Amnesty Internationals deputy director for research in Europe told Al Jazeera that if extradited, Assange would face the risk of serious human rights violations, namely detention conditions, which could violate the prohibition of torture and other ill-treatment due to the possibility of solitary confinement.

We also consider him at risk of being subject to an unfair trial and even the death penalty cant be excluded a priori. As a result of these risks, the UK at this point is under the obligation not to extradite him or otherwise send him to the US, he added.

Assanges collaborator Chelsea Manning spent seven years in prison in the US for providing 750,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks in 2010  including a year in solitary confinement, which the United Nations deemed cruel and inhumane. Manning was once again jailed in March for refusing to give evidence before an investigation into WikiLeaks, she remains under arrest.

Ruairi Casey contributed to this report from London.
Frontrunner Volodymyr Zelensky meets French leader as incumbent president courts both Merkel and Macron on the same day.

Ukraines presidential candidates have travelled to Paris and Berlin to seek international backing nine days before the April 21 runoff vote.

French President Emmanuel Macron first hosted comic Volodymyr Zelensky, a political novice who is tipped to become Ukraines sixth president, for talks in Paris before a planned meeting with the incumbent, President Petro Poroshenko.

Poroshenko, who is anxious to make up ground lost to Zelensky by showing off his experience, travelled earlier in the day to meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin.

Both men were expected to discuss Ukraines five-year war with Russian-backed rebels in the countrys east, a conflict in which France and Germany have attempted to broker peace.

Polls show 41-year-old Zelensky, whose only political experience involves playing the president on TV, easily defeating Poroshenko for the leadership of a country jaded by the conflict with Russia.

Very cool, Zelensky said of his meeting with Macron.

We spoke about life, we spoke about the main things, he told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. We spoke about stopping the war in Donbass, he said, referring to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

In the first round of the presidential vote held on March 31, Poroshenko received fewer than 16 percent of the votes whereas Zelensky secured more than 30 percent.

France and Germany are part of the so-called Normandy Quartet [Adam Berry/Getty Images]

Merkel told a news conference with Poroshenko that she had invited him to Berlin to continue their constant exchange on security.

I think its important that we continue to discuss, even at a time when the elections are under way, she said.





France and Germany are part of the so-called Normandy Quartet with Ukraine and Russia set up to try to end the conflict between Kiev and Moscow-backed separatists.

The war has killed 13,000 people since 2014.

Poroshenko, a 53-year-old chocolate mogul, has positioned himself as the only candidate able to stand up to the Kremlin.

On Friday, he downplayed the significance of Zelenskys rise from comedian, telling reporters in Berlin: We have politicians who are not part of the political system, but that also exists in other parts of Europe. Ukraine is not an exception.

On Thursday, he had described the Paris and Berlin visits as especially important in the face of what he called Western attempts to lift sanctions against Russia, imposed after its 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimea Peninsula.

Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of supporting the rebels militarily. Moscow denies that.
The Guardian reports US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged the Saudi crown prince to sever ties with Saud al-Qahtani.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to cut ties with a former close royal adviser linked to the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Guardian reported on Friday, citing unnamed sources.

According to the Guardian, Pompeo has privately raised concerns about MBSs contact with Saud al-Qahtani, who is accused of masterminding Khashoggis murder.

Khashoggi was killed on October 2, 2018, after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain documents for his upcoming marriage. After initially offering several contradictory statements, the Saudi kingdom confirmed the journalist was killed inside its consulate in Turkey. US intelligence agencies have reportedly concluded that MBS was involved in Khashoggis killing  a conclusion the kingdom denies.

Al-Qahtani is believed to have played a pivotal role in Khashoggis assassination by first trying to lure him back to Saudi Arabia. He met the Saudi hit team before they left for Turkey and allegedly gave orders to kill Khashoggi if he refused to return to his country voluntarily.

Al-Qahtani was dismissed as a royal adviser following Khashoggis murder, but the ambiguity surrounding his status has raised questions about whether he continues to have influence behind the scenes.

In January, the Washington Post reported that MBS remained in regular contact and continued to seek advice from al-Qahtani.

The Post quoted a Saudi source as saying that al-Qahtani had recently made two trips to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), even though he was presumed to be under house arrest in Riyadh.

The adviser also reportedly met senior deputies from the royal courts Centre for Studies and Media Affairs recently at his home in Riyadh and told them that he had been blamed and used as a scapegoat. Al-Qahtani had run the centre until shortly after Khashoggis death.

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The Guardian also reported that al-Qahtani is still active within MBSs private office.

The State Department told The Guardian it would not discuss private diplomatic conversations. The department did not immediately respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment.

Al Jazeeras Rosiland Jordan, reporting from Washington, DC, said there has been this perception in the US that Saud al-Qahtani has had an outsized amount of influence on Mohammed bin Salman.

Increased pressure

The Guardians report comes against the backdrop of increased pressure on Pompeo and the White House to do more to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Khashoggis death.

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Congress has sent a bill to President Donald Trump that would end US support for the Saudi-UAE war in Yemen. The legislation is seen as a strong rebuke over Trumps support for Saudi Arabia in the wake of Khashoggis murder. Trump has not acted on the measure, but the White House has previously indicated that the president will veto the bill.

Last week, the State Department barred entry to 16 Saudi nationals, including al-Qahtani, over what it described as their role in the murder of Khashoggi.

The section under which the individuals have been designated provides that, in cases where the Secretary of State has credible information that officials of foreign governments have been involved in significant corruption or gross violations of human rights, those individuals and their immediate family members are ineligible for entry into the United States.

The State Department previously revoked visas of nearly two dozen Saudi officials and froze the assets of 17 others.
Hugo Carvajal, who had advised Hugo Chavez, recently became the biggest military figure to declare loyalty to Guaido.

Venezuelas longtime spy chief was arrested on Friday in Madrid by Spanish police acting on a United States warrant for allegedly trafficking tonnes of cocaine.

Hugo Carvajal, who, for more than a decade, advised late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and headed the countrys security apparatus, recently became the most influential military figure to declare his loyalty to opposition leader Juan Guaido.

The opposition saw Carvajals criticism of Venezuelas current government as a possible stimulus to prod other military figures to defect, but the countrys armed forces have remained largely loyal to current President Nicolas Maduro.

Fridays arrest is a result of a 2014 indictment by the Southern District of New York in which the US Attorneys Office accuses Carvajal of having coordinated the transportation of approximately 5,600 kilograms of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico in 2006.

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A spokeswoman with Spains National Court, which handles extradition cases, said that Carvajal would testify on Saturday before Judge Alejandro Abascal in Madrid. He can either accept the extradition to the US or fight it before the court, explained the official, who wasnt authorised to be identified by name in media reports.

Cartel of the Suns

Carvajal, who climbed the ranks in Venezuela since he befriended Chavez in the early 1980s, is no stranger to US law enforcement agencies.

In previous indictments, authorities also named Carvajal as part of several high-ranking Venezuelan military and law enforcement officials who provided a haven to major drug traffickers from neighbouring Colombia.

The group came to be known in Venezuela as the Cartel of the Suns because top officers in the country wear sun insignias on their uniforms.

Carvajal also allegedly provided weapons to the FARC, Colombias armed fighters, according to the US Treasury Department, and helped fund the groups activities by facilitating shipments of large amounts of US-bound cocaine through Venezuela.

In 2014, he became the highest-ranking Venezuelan official ever arrested on a US drug warrant. But authorities in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, where Carvajal was serving as Venezuelas consul, refused to extradite him.

Carvajal, known in his country by the nickname El Pollo (the Chicken) eventually returned to Caracas, where Maduro received him as a hero, but very quickly switched to a low-key presence in the countrys turbulent politics. In 2017, he broke with the Venezuelan government over Maduros plans to create a constitutional assembly that would gut what was left of the opposition-controlled Congress.

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In mid-February, when Carvajal announced his support for Guaido in a video distributed on social media, the former spy chief said Venezuelas military was in as ramshackle a state as the nation as a whole.

We cant allow an army, in the hands of a few generals subjugated to Cuban instructions, to become the biggest collaborator of a dictatorial government that has plagued people with misery, he said at the time, asking fellow military to join him.

As recently as two days ago, Carvajal remained hopeful that other former peers would follow his steps.

I have no doubt, he wrote in his Twitter feed, that Maduro will leave by a decision of the Armed National Force.

But despite attempts by Guaido and other opposition figures to encourage those defections, the Venezuelan military remains largely behind Maduro.

The US embassy in Madrid refused to comment on the arrest of Carvajal, deferring to Spanish authorities. The National Police of Spain confirmed the arrest but there was no official comment on it from the Spanish government.
US president pressed to send his vice president or another official to India to meet the ageing spiritual leader.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union seriously outspent the United States on military equipment. The U.S. and its NATO allies worried that the Russians would have such overwhelming military power that, at any moment, Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces could flood Western Europe, starting with the Fulda Gap, where NATO would be pushed back and defeated.

The problem today is less Russia -- with decent technology but not enough funds to produce great numbers -- than China -- with money to produce, but not yet a great technological base. So China uses ours.

American companies face no meaningful export restrictions and they are eager to take advantage of low-cost manufacturing in China and potential access to China's huge domestic market. This has had an impact on Chinese electronics as well as aircraft manufacturing, submarine capabilities, and more. What China has not been able to get from legal American imports, it has worked to acquire by electronic and human spying.

The Cold War

At the height of the Soviet buildup, the United States, with fewer tanks, fighter planes, and ships, developed what became known as "qualitative military edge" (QME). The most important edge of our quality over their quantity was the use of advanced semiconductors and digital computers grafted onto existing conventional weapons.

The development of the look down-shoot down radar is an example. Until the development of computers and microelectronics, radars became confused by "ground clutter," that is, signals bouncing off the ground. Fighters could only engage an enemy head on, and combat effectiveness rested mainly on air-to-air missiles, gunnery, and pilot capabilities.

The U.S. and its allies were ahead of the Soviet Union in air-to-air missile technology and had better tactics, but neither together offered a decisive combat advantage. Look down-shoot down radar could differentiate between fast-moving aircraft and returns coming from the ground. For the first time, a pilot could fly above the enemy and detect it well before the enemy could respond.

Battle Testing

In the first actual combat test of look down-shoot down radar, Israel fought Russian-armed Syrians over the Lebanons Bekaa Valley in 1982. The Israel Air Force (IAF) decimated its Syrian adversary, shooting down 82 Syrian-Russian jets. The IAF lost no planes to dogfights.

The Russians were shocked as they understood that Israel, mainly flying American aircraft, had won a decisive battle based largely on computers and microelectronics. The first practical use of QME had been a resounding success for the U.S. and its ally.

Todays Tech Conundrum

Today, much of what constituted the QME of the Cold War, particularly electronics, has been handed over to China, and the American government has taken few steps to contain Chinese ambitions. The theft of American technology remains at unprecedented high levels, and legal American exports of technology remain largely unconstrained.

At the same time, American defense companies -- and the Pentagon itself -- are using imported Chinese products that are subject to Chinese monitoring and/or information theft.

A great power cannot afford to spend trillions on weapons only to have the weapons compromised even before they are fielded. If our security systems are Made in China to any substantial degree, what happens to QME?

We may find out. Washington has failed to provide leadership and lacks a serious program to deal with the menace it helped to create.

The export control system is broken, ineffective and poorly administered. Cyber protection of our key defense industries -- and the Pentagon itself -- is in failure mode. It will soon get worse as our most highly classified information is placed on publicly-owned commercial Cloud platforms that are unproven and unsafe.

The Fix

American export controls must be redesigned to protect vital technology, understanding that a significant portion of that technology is commercial, not military, and will be difficult -- though not impossible -- to restrict.

Protection must include limits on what can be imported, especially for government and military use. Too much Chinese technology is purchased by the Pentagon and by other government agencies. The government should primarily (perhaps only) use American products made in in America and vetted for security.

Americans should be raising hell over the fact that their investment in security is going out the door to China. And hell, too, over the imports of foreign technology that put other security investments at risk. But Americans, like their global counterparts, appear mesmerized by cheap tech, including cell phones and laptops, and have even been willing to sacrifice their own privacy for the latest in gadget. How much less do they appear concerned about the governments privacy? The overwhelming bread and circus of mostly-Chinese tech is blinding people  citizens and lawmakers  to the real national security harm that awaits us in the future.

To update Lenin, the U.S. is willing to sell  and buy  the rope to hang itself.

Stephen Bryen is former Director of the Defense Technology Security Agency (DTSA) and Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center.
As the long conga line of Democrats prepare for their chance at the Presidency, not since the American Civil War has the country been so divided on critical issues as it is right now. Moreover, although Democrat Socialists, aka leftists, say the country is in a mess, they don't seem too concerned with the traditional topics of taxes, military spending, and balanced budgets. They are, however, very focused on trying to demonstrate what a bad person they think Trump is and how righteously superior they think they are.

Listening to Democratic candidates lecture Americans on morality regarding a border wall or the sanctity of sanctuary cities their campaign rhetoric sounds more like a religious movement than a political position. It is rather apparent that the left is entirely void of any economic plans or international policies. Instead, it has resorted to becoming pseudo-preachers of a quasi-socialist religion, sounding more sanctimonious by the day. So the only questions Americans can ask themselves at this point is whether or not they want to remain a nation based on the belief in God and laws or a country based on faith in government and social justice?

One of the biggest scams and tactical deceptions that leftists use to gain support from outsiders is the attempt to equate Christian teachings to their socialist policies. As if Christianity is more closely matched with the left's good socialist intentions rather than the God-centered Constitution. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In fact, according to a February 2016 article on the Action Institute power blog, since the mid-1800s every Catholic pontiff from Pius IX to Benedict XVI has forthrightly condemned socialism.

The American conservative sees God as the architect of everything and originator of man's freedom, and the view of government is limited to protecting those God-given gifts. Whereas the leftist sees government as a godlike idol and their role as the arbiters that control the allowances parted out to the masses -- two opposite ways of life with socialism utterly incompatible with Christianity on every level.

In the secular world, the left has an advantage in playing dirty politics. In Proverbs 9:10 it reads, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." Also, since the left does not believe in the Lord, it is without any fear of the Lord. Hence, leftists feel free to announce damaging lies without any pains of conscience such as Trump colluded with Russia, Benghazi was the result of a video, or if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.

Other examples of the left having no difficulties with making false statements and outright lying to the American people are seen when leftist U.S. House Select Committee Chairman Adam Schiff stated many times that he had seen hard evidence that Trump colluded with Russia. He hadn't, but Schiff still said it. When amid the most horrific crisis at the border, when former Border Patrol Chief Mark Morgan testified before Congress that the crisis is at a magnitude never seen in modern times, Democrats continued ignoring the evidence and maintained the lie at the expense of American lives and stated that no such crisis exists.

Perhaps the clearest example of the left having no conscience would be when Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was questioned about the outright lie he told in 2012 that then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney had not paid taxes for ten years: "Romney didn't win did he?" According to the left, if the lie works, it's okay.

So there is a vast difference between what the left is selling and true Christianity. The left's Green New Deal states that taxpayers must guarantee economic security to those who are able but unwilling to work. At first glance this might sound like such a caring, "Christian" intention, until you read what the Bible says regarding work in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. And the left continually distorts Christian charity to justify a perpetual welfare state, as well as to seek reparations for people who were never slaves from people who never owned slaves.

And what about the left wanting to increase the taxes on the rich to pay for things the less fortunate of society need? Surely reallocating money that is surplus to the wealthiest 1% and giving it to those who need it more is Christian. Leftists certainly think so, but they probably haven't read 2 Corinthians 9:7 ESV: "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." Forcefully taking from one person and giving it to another is not only unChristian but outright robbery.

Also, Jesus Christ never stole a thing from the rich to give to the poor. In His time, Jesus was surrounded by a massive inequality of wealth, and yet there is not a word mentioned in the Gospels about redistributing wealth.

Make no mistake, when leftists talk about helping others, they do so intending to use other people's money, because the left has as its primary motivation not assisting people, but obtaining power and exercising control over others. Just take a look at the black community that has been entirely under the direction of the Democrats for the past sixty years. Are they better off, with better family units, better jobs, better schools?

In Luke 3:11 ESV, "Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise. However, the left has a slightly different version, "Whoever has two tunics take one away from him and give it to him who has none."

Whatever the concocted program, law, or policy, be assured that leftists will put themselves in the best possible position of authority to judge the thoughts, feelings, and actions of others. Higher taxes, selective justice, and group acceptance are just a few of the notable manipulations by which leftists controls those around them.

The leftist doesn't believe he knows better -- he knows he is better. So because he knows this, he also know that anyone who disagrees with him must be inferior, evil, and dangerous. The paradox is that the leftist is afraid, not of the opinions of others but of the shadow they cast upon other individuals. In other words, the leftist perceives and fears in others that which is within himself. Show me a leftist accusing a political opponent, and I'll show you the next leftist scandal.

In the final analysis, the left has no connection with Christian values and nothing to offer the American people except division and disharmony. Attacking Trump, along with extreme unworkable socialist designs is their only agenda for 2020. Let's hope Americans never board the rudderless Democrat socialist ship adrift in a sea of dishonesty and facing the political abyss.
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In 1949, with the debris of WWII still clogging German cities, Western nations led by the United States and Great Britain formed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The primary purpose of the alliance was to provide a multinational shield against Soviet aggression.

Today the alliance itself is threatened, with President Trump rightly accusing Germany and other members of not living up to their pledges to support the pact. Of the 28 members of NATO, only seven are paying the required 2% of GDP to support the alliance. The United States weighs in with a hefty 3.39% while Germany, the second largest economy in the alliance, is only contributing 1.36%.

After being called out by Trump, German Chancellor Angela Merkel promised that Germany would begin increasing its defense contributions reaching an initial plateau of 1.5% by 2024.

But its not working out that way. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz threw the target into doubt with the new German federal budget that suggests their percentage is actually going to shrink to 1.23%. Whats going on?

In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs, Robert Kagan addressed the issue in an article titled, The New German Question, What Happens When Europe Comes Apart?

Kagans article opens as a thoughtful overview until it becomes obvious he's just another ideological #NeverTrumper. He covers the grand sweep of German history and the country's historic position in Europe before dissolving into shameless Trump bashing.

There has always been something ironic about the American complaint that Europeans dont spend enough on defense. They dont because the world seems relatively peaceful and secure to them. When the world is no longer peaceful and secure, they probably will rearm, but not in ways that will benefit Americans. If one were devising a formula to drive Europe and Germany back to some new version of their past, one could hardly do a better job than what U.S. President Donald Trump is doing now.

Appropriately, Trump has challenged the status quo with Germany and other members of NATO along with unfair balances of trade that have strongly favored Germany.

Immediately after WWII, subsidizing the balance of trade was the enlightened thing for America to do. It helped the Germans get back on their feet, ultimately creating a more stable society and a more stable Europe. But that was then.

NATO contributions are not the only reason for Trumps criticism of Germany. Last year he observed that mass migration into Europe has created a total mess on the continent.

Kagan doesnt quite see it that way.

Even today, a right-wing nationalist party, Alternative for Germany, holds the third-largest number of seats in the Bundestag. The party is guided by ideologues... tired of the (cult of guilt), who blame the influx of foreigners on German politicians they call... puppets of the victor power of the Second World War.

Notice how Kagan glosses over the gorilla in the room: the aggressive, overwhelming surge of Third-World refugees into Europe. More specifically, he makes no mention of the rapid growth of Islam openly challenging the traditional Christian-based cultural heritage and the homogeneous makeup of these countries with "no-go zones" as well as increased criminal activity such as stabbings and rape gangs. This was accelerated by Merkels 2015 decision to not only allow one million immigrants, mostly Muslims, into Germany, but also to subsidize them. This opened the floodgates for massive rushes of both Middle Eastern and African immigrants into Southern Europe hoping to get to Germany, Scandinavia, or France. More than anything (certainly the cult of guilt) this relentless invasion (which Merkel herself later acknowledged was a mistake and which has now has cost her the leadership of Germany), is the driving force in the growth of Europes right-wing parties, not just in Germany, but also in France, Holland, Denmark, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and other countries. It has nothing to do with guilt over WWII.

How can Kagan be so obtuse? The people of these countries are sick of seeing their traditional cultures stolen in front of them by third-world outsiders being given special privileges and financial subsidies. This has nothing to do with Trump. It has everything to do with weak-spined politicians selling out their constituencies in the name of "human rights." When your small town in Germany is suddenly taken over by rough black African or Middle Eastern Muslims gangs, you have to ask: how does this support the human rights of the native people who live in those villages?

Ironically, it is Der Spiegel, a leading left-wing German political magazine, that exposes the shallowness of Kagans attack on Trump.

At the heart of Europe, the Germans are recklessly jeopardizing the future of the alliance that has guaranteed their freedom and security for 70 years. At three successive summits since 2014, the German government has promised its allies that it would increase defense spending to get it closer to the agreed upon 2 percent of GDP The goal of spending 2 percent of a country's GDP on defense... first agreed upon by country leaders at the NATO summit in Wales and... later confirmed at the Warsaw and Brussels summits in 2016 and 2018, was intended to ensure that NATO countries have the high-quality troops they need to fulfill missions, including the commitments they made to the Eastern Europeans.

Instead the Germans have failed to fulfill their promises. The German Army was scheduled to have eight fully equipped brigades by 2031. Now Der Spiegel says this goal will not be achieved.

Why? Der Spiegel names Rolf Mutzenich, a little known SPD backbencher in the German parliament in charge of Germanys foreign and defense portfolio and empowered by a badly weakened Merkel/CDU led parliament. He blasts Trump saying, "The alliance is not being undermined by Germany, but by Trump casting doubt on NATO's legitimacy as well as whether the U.S. will follow through on its security guarantees."

The left-wing SPD party sees a winning election issue in keeping Merkels CDU from fulfilling its NATO pledges by calling her a lapdog of Trump. Because of the weak leadership of both the CDU and the SPD, Mutzenich holds a strong hand, apparently too strong for the lame duck Merkel to deal with.

As long as Mutzenich is more or less calling the shots in the coalition, the Germans will have a hard time with their allies. In the run-up to this week's meeting of foreign ministers in Washington, the Americans made it clear that the celebrations surrounding the 70th anniversary of the alliance could get rather uncomfortable for them.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told Congress that NATO members as a whole are on track to increase defense spending by up to $100 billion, saying President Trumps message is having a real impact."

Kagan ends his essay on this note.

"Across Germany, there are still thousands of unexploded bombs dropped by the Allies during World War II. One blew up in Gottingen a few years ago, killing the three men trying to defuse it. Think of Europe today as an unexploded bomb, its detonator intact and functional, its explosives still live. If this is an apt analogy, then Trump is a child with a hammer, gleefully and heedlessly pounding away. What could go wrong?"

He got the bomb part right, but not in the way he means. Europe is indeed starting to look like an unexploded bomb. But it's an ideological and cultural bomb created by weak-minded politicians who are destroying their own cultures and the well-being of their increasingly angry citizens, something that has nothing to do with Trump. The children with the hammers are their own shortsighted political leaders.

Frank Hawkins is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer, Associated Press foreign correspondent, international businessman, senior newspaper company executive, founder and owner of several marketing companies, and published novelist.
Sicko is one of Michael Moores many movies, focusing on the U.S. health care system, costs, the uninsured, and the usual liberal talking points. Despite his many criticisms of U.S. health care, when Moore was sick with pneumonia, he chose hospitalization in a New York City hospital rather than in one of those countries with a supposedly far better health care system, say, Cuba.

He could make a sequel to Sicko, this time focusing on the southern border of the U.S. and the hordes of sick men, women, and children invading America, bringing all sorts of exotic diseases on top of the many other problems they bring, including crime. These diseases are making many Americans sicko.

Its more than simply lice or scabies, annoying conditions, but hardly a mortal threat to Americans. Instead its contagious diseases that we havent heard much about in decades or since many of us were afflicted as children. These diseases are making the news, but as predictable as sunrise and sunset, the media and government officials are at a loss to explain the resurgence of these mostly once-eradicated conditions.

Much as when a swarthy young man enters a gay nightclub in the U.S. shouting 'Allahu Akbar!' and shoots the place up, the media and law enforcement are puzzled for days as to motive. Same with the appearance of these resurgent contagious diseases.

Temple University in Philadelphia had a mumps outbreak, now at 140 cases. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the story nonchalantly, avoiding their namesake with zero inquiry as to the cause and origin of this outbreak. Nearby University of Pennsylvania had three cases of mumps on campus with no explanation as to why.

If 140 MAGA hats suddenly appeared on students heads at any major university, the schools would request the assistance of the National Guard to create safe spaces, with endless tolerance committees and focus groups to address the sudden epidemic of racism, bigotry, white nationalism, and everything else associated with MAGA. Yet for mumps, mum's the word.

A cousin of mumps is measles, also returning to the scene just like the crummy remakes of one-time successful television shows. New York City declared a measles emergency after 285 cases occurred since last fall, including 5 individuals earning a trip to the ICU, perhaps in the same hospital bed Michael Moore visited after his movie bashing our health care system.

Mayor Bill de Blasio blamed the outbreak on a lack of vaccinations in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn. Sure, blame the Jews. Rep. Ilhan Omar was unavailable for comment and her office could not confirm any association with Benjamins.

Mayor de Blasio also defends New York as a sanctuary city and is happy to provide free health care to one and all, regardless of immigration status. With the rise in infectious diseases, he and other sanctuary mayors may get their wish, providing free hospital care for those sick with nasty infectious diseases.

One more similar disease, acute flaccid myelitis, is a polio-like condition affecting 218 children in 2018 in the U.S., leaving some with residual arm or leg weakness. Its origins are still a mystery to the germ sleuths at the National Institutes of Health.

Researchers and epidemiologists are overlooking the obvious modes of disease transmission. When they are not befuddled, their convenient excuse is vaccinations. Although thats a controversial topic, the Centers for Disease Control reports: In 2017, coverage with most recommended vaccines among children aged 1935 months remained stable and high, generally above 90 percent with only about 1 percent of children receiving no vaccinations.

Most kids are being vaccinated, as they were in recent past years, meaning thats not the answer. Will the media search harder for what might be making our kids more sicko?

How about a look at immigration, both legal and illegal, and where immigrants are coming from? Immigration has been rising since 1970, and showing no signs of slowing down, despite the White House and Congress being under the control of each political parties at different points in time over the past 50 years. It seems that open borders are the one thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

Chart from Migration Policy Institute

The illegal immigration problem is obvious to anyone paying even a small bit of attention to the news. There are ongoing stories of migrant caravans from Central America streaming northward to the U.S. border. Recently border control forces have been overwhelmed, Cloward-Piven style, to the point that illegal immigrants are just pouring in, without scrutiny, including medical screening, then quickly disappearing in the vastness of America.

What diseases are these refugees and illegal immigrants bringing? Measles, mumps, drug resistant tuberculosis, polio, hepatitis, rabies, and so on are supposedly being screened for in refugees by the CDC, but how often or accurately in a system that is overwhelmed?

Venezuela may be a source for many of these infectious diseases, as Monica Showalter recently described in these pages. But its beyond just there. Refugees are coming from Congo, Burma, Ukraine, Bhutan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Russia. Its far more than just Mexico and Central America.

How many of the diseases do the refugees bring from their home countries versus picked up along the way, whether in Central America or wherever? When you bring there here, here becomes there.

President Trump acknowledged the obvious a few days ago when he announced, The country is full, so turn around. Is anyone listening? Congress certainly isnt, nor are U.S. judges, quick to rule against any Trump initiative to slow the flood.

Even open borders propagandists in the media acknowledge the crisis, as NBC wrote, Border crossings by undocumented migrants in March hit 12-year high. Yet the same media want nothing done, instead repeating the lie of Trump putting kids in cages despite glaring evidence to the contrary.

Note the photo below, courtesy of Fox News, of one of President Obamas detention centers, with cages in the background. This was in 2014, before Donald Trump was even a candidate for president,

Meanwhile, CNN reports 300 new cases of mumps in the U.S. in March, with nary a word about potential causes, blissfully ignoring the obvious association between a refugee onslaught and bringing there here.

Perhaps the only way to get the attention of the D.C. open borders elites is to bring a bunch of refugees to Sidwell Friends School to experience a day of privilege. This is where members of Congress and news anchors send their children, safe and clean, far from the riff-raff and chaos they inflict on less privileged America. When the children of the ruling class come home with mumps, measles, or head lice, something finally might be done to seal the border.

Until then, expect to see continued rare diseases making a comeback in the U.S., with no explanation, making many of us sicko.

Brian C. Joondeph, M.D., MPS, is a Denver-based physician and writer. Follow him on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Image credit: Greg Gutfeld/Fox News report, via YouTube, screen shot
A cluster of events this past week marked a steepening in the upwards trend toward online censorship.

In a New York Times/Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) collaborative report about online extremism, authors claimed the social media sphere enabled a global network of white extremists to develop and that this has led to a surge of white supremacist and xenophobic terrorism in the West. Although grasping in its conclusions and broadly flawed, the report was no doubt a clear enough justification for many to continue the culling of speech freedoms online.

In a near-identical report of its own, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) described certain social media platforms having apparently become round-the-clock digital white supremacist rallies. They too conclude more policing from both industry and government had to be done.

Both reports coincided with social media executives themselves being called to a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee where it was demanded that they do more to stem white nationalist propaganda and hate speech online.

The collective push to double down on a free-speech atmosphere already challenged post-Christchurch seems to beg the question: is it a surge in hate were witnessing, or rather surge in hate panic?

According to the Times analysis of social media posts, among global white extremists who have committed murders since 2011, one third, or 15, were inspired by others who had committed similar acts by either having read each others manifestoes or acknowledging one anothers crimes.

But whether such connections can be said to be a true motivating factor in their crimes should be viewed as a highly fact-dependent enquiry, and one likely only answerable by probing the killers directly. Further, to say these connections between them constituted an actual network seems to inflate that term as normal people understand it. What might constitute a network is online correspondence between extremists, which the Times found one instance of.

The report seems to have uncovered not so much a surge in social media-enabled violence but the pervasiveness of social media in peoples everyday lives and the ease with which ones online reading and communication habits (and criminal motives) can be ascertained.

The Times surge in violence claim is similarly loose. Between North America, Europe, and Australia, the report counts a headline number of 347 attacks (undefined in the report) being perpetrated by whites from 2011 through 2017. But when broken down, the figure approaches 50 a year, which, in the minds of many, may not signal a widespread scourge, especially considering the white population in these regions is roughly 800 million. Responding to a Times op-ed which parroted an ADL finding that, from 2008 to 2017, 71 percent of 387 extremist related fatalities in the U.S. were linked to white supremacists, American Spectators David Catron worked out the per year figure to be 28. As he wrote, [e]very death is tragic, but this is less than half the annual fatality rate associated with bee and wasp stings.

And of course, the fact that the report relied on the SPLC is a general taint on its conclusions. Recent bombshell revelations in the New Yorker confirm what critics have long contended about the organization -- that it inflates its hate-group standard and manufactures reports, according to one former staffer, showing hate always to be on the rise. Although perhaps commendable in the civil-rights arena at one time, for years founder Morris Dees and his top lieutenants (many of whom have left since the revelations), treated the center as a hate business of sorts; using, as the insider describe it, hyperbolic fundraising appeals to scare donations out of gullible Northern liberals. As Nathan J. Robinson of Current Affairs summed it up, the Morris Dees model was to find[] as much hate as possible in order to make as much money as possible.

The same charge has been laid against the ADL, whose Senior Vice President for Policy, Eileen Hershenov, also testified at this weeks congressional hearing. They also employ a hate labelling program in addition to surveys on U.S. and global anti-Semitism. Critics claim that the surveys are often push-polls (from one questionnaire: Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust is this probably true?) and say anti-Semitism is certainly not at the pandemic-levels they assert (ADL critic Noam Chomsky: In the ranking of problems, I think maybe it comes up to a thousandth). The group follows a similar Morris Dees model, say critics. Quoting him at length, David Samel writes:

ADL perpetually has its hand out for donations, and what better way to motivate donors than a screaming headline that there are one billion anti-Semitic adults on the planet? ...ADLs home page trumpets the frightening results and offers visitors an easy way to Help ADL Change the World with a single click It is difficult to imagine that the survey was not planned, at least in part, as a fundraiser, with foreknowledge of a direct relationship between the quantification of the danger and the anticipated revenues.

As Robinson writes in Current Affairs, groups like the SPLC and ADL engage in the politics of spectacle. Their brand of anti-racism advocacy, as he says, is endemic to a certain kind of elite liberalism, one which totally skew[s] the idea of how racism works and how to begin solving it. For these groups, this might actually be the whole point.

These groups are big players behind the internet censorship trend which started with the 2016 U.S. election, ticked up after Charlottesville, and ticked up again post-Christchurch. Without countering it, and the alarmist research and organizations that encourage it, social media censors will be free to claim that there is a surge in hate across the West, rather than a surge in hate panic, as is more likely the case.
TV actor Jussie Smollett is going to pay for perpetrating a hoax on the Chicago Police Department, even though all charges against him have been dropped and the records sealed.

The city announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Smollett, looking to recover costs for the intense investigation it undertook to find Smollett's "attackers."

ABC7:

The City of Chicago's Law Department filed the suit after Smollett failed to meet a city-demanded deadline to pay more than $130,000 into that allegedly staged attack. City attorneys write in the suit, "Defendant knew his attackers and orchestrated the purported attack himself. Later, when police confronted him with evidence, he still refused to disclose his involvement." The lawsuit was filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County and seeks money "included, but not limited to $130,105.15." The suit also asks Smollett be found liable to the city for $1,000 "for each false statement he made to the city, in addition to three times the amount of the damages that the city sustained, as well as litigation and collection costs, and attorneys' fees." "They've got a case on the face of it," said ABC7 Legal Analyst Gil Soffer. "Whether they win is a different story, but they've got a case." Soffer said through the process called discovery the public could see a lot. "Lawyers for the city will get evidence that exists," Soffer explained. "They'll get tape recordings. They'll get video surveillance, they'll get phone records and they'll take depositions. And transcripts will be made of those depositions. And then if it goes through to a trial we'll see all of this come out in the open. You'll see Jussie Smollett take the stand and testify."

Smollett had better think twice about not paying what he owes. If all of that comes out and becomes part of the public record, he will be a laughingstock for claiming innocence of the hoax.

The investigation took about a month. That $130K bought a lot of legwork on the part of detectives who reportedly are still upset over their hard work being tossed aside for political considerations.

What those detectives probably understand is that no one  not the police brass, city politicians, or even black activists  wanted this case to come to trial. The police didn't want the high profile, given recent history regarding troubles with black citizens. The politicians saw a racial nightmare with people taking sides and subsequent racial strife. And black activists were afraid that Smollett was guilty.

And given the political interference in this case from national Democrats, it seems that the powers that be determined that the case should simply disappear.

But Smollett will pay. And that's small comfort to the city.
In closed congressional testimony last year, a lawyer for the FBI told lawmakers that even after the bureau obtained a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign aide Carter Page, officials were still trying to assess the "reliability" of Christopher Steele, author of the anti-Trump Steele dossier.

What makes that revelation so significant is that in the affidavit requesting the FISA warrant, the bureau vouched for Steele, saying, "The FBI assesses Source #1 to be reliable," reads the Oct. 21, 2016 FISA application, referring to Steele.

"Source #1 has been compensated [redacted] by the FBI and the FBI is unaware of any derogatory information pertaining to Source #1."

And yet, a month later, the FBI attorney, Sally Moyer, told Congress that officials reached out to the Justice Department's Bruce Ohr, who knew Steele from working with him on other cases, asking Ohr to assess Steele's reliability.

In that application, FBI and Justice Department officials asserted that Steele, a retired MI6 officer, was credible and reliable. That assessment has come under question in recent months, as the most serious claims in Steele's dossier have either been undermined by new evidence, or have yet to be verified. "We were meeting  one of the reasons that the investigators were talking to Bruce Ohr was to try to get further clarity about Christopher Steele and his reliability," Moyer told lawmakers, according to a transcript of her testimony obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The FBI had severed ties with Steele around a week before the Nov. 8, 2016 election because of his unauthorized contacts with the media. Steele was quoted anonymously in a story published by Mother Jones on Oct. 31, 2016 that laid out claims that the Kremlin had blackmail material on Trump. Moyer's testimony provides new insight into why the FBI asked Ohr to reconnect with Steele. Other FBI and Justice Department officials have said that the FBI wanted to reconnect with Steele after Trump's election win as part of the bureau's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.

To this day, the FBI refuses to say that the Steele dossier is credible or not.

Of all the information that has come out and will come out into how the Russia collusion narrative got started in the nation's top law enforcement offices, the way that the FBI obtained FISA warrants to spy on Americans may rise to the level of criminality. Agents lied. They misrepresented the facts, the source, and the accuracy of the information upon which those FISA warrants were based.

This is not in dispute. The question is, was it a criminal act or simply an abuse of process?

It probably depends on whether the Justice Department can prove motive  that being to interfere in the political campaign of a candidate they hated.

Ohr first met with Steele regarding the ex-spy's Trump investigation on July 30, 2016. Days after the meeting, Ohr met at FBI headquarters with then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and his general counsel, Lisa Page. Ohr testified to Congress on Aug. 28, 2018 that he told the FBI officials about the Trump-related information that Steele had shared. Ohr also testified that Steele said he was "desperate" not to see Trump elected president because of his concerns about the Republican's links to Russia. The FBI did not include Steele's comments about Trump in its FISA applications. The bureau did, however, portray Steele as a reliable and credible source.

The words "desperate" and "investigation" should never be used in the same paragraph. It shows just how "professional" the FBI was acting when pursuing the collusion case.
The man who once said of Donald Trump, "You are an habitual liar and complete narcissist who also is a disgrace as a president and an embarrassment to our nation" has been indicted on 36 counts of tax fraud, wire fraud, bribery, embezzlement, and several other very bad things.

Michael Avenatti, lawyer for porn actress Stormy Daniels, is accused of bilking clients out of millions of dollars in settlement money, using it to buy expensive merchandise.

NBCNews:

Avenatti, 48, faces charges of wire fraud, failure to collect and withhold payroll taxes, attempting to obstruct the IRS, failing to file tax returns, aggravated identity fraud, bank fraud and false testimony under oath during bankruptcy. The lawyer was arrested March 25 on some of the counts, but the 61-page indictment filed by a federal grand jury late Wednesday "significantly broadens the scope of the case," according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California. The criminal charges in the indictment "are all linked to one another because money generated from one set of crimes appears in other sets  typically in the form of payments to lull victims and to prevent Mr. Avenatti's financial house of cards from collapsing," said U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna.

That "financial house of cards" was partially built by embezzling millions of dollars from a paraplegic client.

The charge involving the paraplegic man says Avenatti drained a $4 million settlement paid out to the client by Los Angeles County, using "portions of the settlement to finance his coffee business or pay personal expenses," the U.S. attorney's office statement said. "Avenatti concealed the receipt of the settlement from Client 1 and instead gave him periodic "advances" of no more than $1,900 and paid the rent for his assisted living facility," the statement said. Avenatti lied by telling that client as he was trying to buy a house that his settlement money was not available, causing him to fail to meet escrow, according to the indictment. Avenatti is also accused of failing to fulfill a promise to respond to that client's Social Security Administration inquiry, leading to a loss of benefits. Josh Robbins, the attorney representing that alleged victim, Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, said in a statement that Johnson is the "victim of an appalling fraud." "Mr. Avenatti stole millions of dollars that were meant to compensate Mr. Johnson for a devastating injury, spent it on his own lavish lifestyle, then lied about it to Mr. Johnson for years to cover his tracks," Robbins said. "His actions have left Mr. Johnson destitute." Avenatti also allegedly embezzled millions of dollars from four other clients, using the money to fund the purchase of a jet, his coffee business, "his auto racing enterprise" and his own legal and personal expenses.

To think some Democrats actually thought Avenatti would make a good president is beyond belief. Here's what he said at a Democratic fundraiser in Iowa while he was still considered a viable candidate:

I know some of you may disagree with me. The answer to Donald Trump, you may say, is to do just the opposite of Donald Trump. Being noble, being kind, being classy. And I am all for each of those things, but tonight, with our country under an unprecedented assault by a con man who fights only for himself and degrades the vulnerable and the powerless and regular hardworking people day in and day out, I believe that we must honestly ask ourselves ... [in the Democratic] party whether those we fight for can afford our gentleness.

After reading of this guy's crimes, don't you feel as if you have to take a shower to remove the stench of his dripping hypocrisy?
Secretary Mike Pompeo has announced that he will travel to Chile, Paraguay, Peru, and Colombia.

His trip to South America is a step in the right direction, as Ana Quintana wrote:

The four countries Pompeo will visit this week are leading international efforts against Maduro's dictatorship. In the history of Latin America, this sort of cooperation and consensus is unprecedented. There is symbolism attached to the trip as well. Three of the four countries  Chile, Paraguay, and Peru  have known oppression firsthand. All were formerly governed by dictatorships and are now democracies. The State Department is highlighting how their democratic transitions can serve as an example for a post-Maduro Venezuela. Chile today can boast of being Latin America's most prosperous nation, based on per capita income. This year marks the 30th year anniversary of the plebiscite that started Chile's transition to democracy[.] ... Paraguay is a dynamic example of a small country punching above its weight. This landlocked South American nation has overcome a history of political instability and dictatorships and is now emerging as a free-market-oriented democracy[.] ... Peru suffered through decades of military and authoritarian rule, yet the last two decades have seen an emergence of stable, democratic governance. After more than a generation of armed conflict with the narco-communist Shining Path insurgency, the fighting has finally calmed down. ... The final stop on Pompeo's trip is Cucuta, Colombia. This border town is the primary crossing point for Venezuelans fleeing Maduro's dictatorship. Since 2015, over 3 million Venezuelans have left their country. Nearly 2 million have resettled in Colombia, while 700,000 have resettled in Peru.

Also, these four countries have serious leadership.

During the Obama years, Latin America never received the attention it deserved. The Obama administration was only interested in "Latinos" who wanted to walk into the U.S. illegally.

It's nice to see that the Trump administration is supporting democracies and also standing up to Maduro.

Good move and another demonstration that Secretary Pompeo was a brilliant choice.

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.
Democrats claim they want to reduce income inequality and lift those at the bottom of the scale. So why are they trying to kill policies that mean: "For the first time during the recovery, lower-end earners are getting more of the benefit"? I would think journalists and other Democrats would be cheering these excellent results, but they are not.

For instance, Democrats say they are all for raising the minimum wage. Well, here's a real minimum wage rise, and it's already in place: President Trump's lower taxes and reduced regulations burdening corporations are obviously allowing benefits and wages to trickle down to the wages of workers. In other words, the market works. Worker wages are rising without the federal government passing an increase in the minimum wage. Instead of accepting that the market works (and different areas of the country have different costs and economic activity), Democrats want to kill opportunities by forcing an increase in the minimum wage, no matter how destructive it may be to small- and medium-sized cities, whose poor and middle class will lose opportunities to move up the economic ladder. Small cities can often compete against big ones on cost. If Democrats get the minimum wage hike they want, they will kill the competitiveness of those cities and the jobs of their workers.

And that won't be all the harm they do. A significant increase in the minimum wage will harm senior citizens who supplement their fixed retirement income with part-time jobs in service industries, such as retail.

Those jobs will go, too. The higher the minimum wage goes with all the other related costs, the faster the push toward automation becomes. Socialist House rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez actually said it is good to automate because it gives people more free time. Republicans generally believe that jobs are more important  jobs build up morale in a way being dependent on the government never can.

The U.S economy is performing much better now under President Trump than it did at any time during President Obama's years, and what's more, it's performing better than almost all developed countries throughout the world. So why the strange push to reverse the policies?

As Democrats disparage the very thought of "trickle down" economics, they are the biggest believers of all in that idea when it comes to what they are pushing for. They believe that the greedy government should confiscate a greater and greater share of workers' paychecks under the rubric of "taxing the rich," in the name of rewarding the rich bureaucracy around the D.C. suburbs with even more of that money, and then trickle out the remainder as they see fit. We have heard Democrats claim, repeatedly, that food stamps and unemployment benefits are great stimulators of the economy. This is trickle-down in spades, quite unlike anything that comes from free-market economics.

Under President Trump, workers at the lower end of the pay scale are finally are getting the most benefit from rising wages. Here's what CNBC has to report:

For the first time during the recovery, lower-end earners are getting more of the benefit, according to a Goldman Sachs report.

The trend could mean that the economy has more strength to it than some economists think.

The recent jump in paychecks has come with an unusual characteristic, as workers at the lower end of the pay scale are getting the greater benefit.

Average hourly earnings rose 3.4 percent in February from the same period a year ago, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report last week. That's the biggest gain since April 2009 and seventh month in a row that compensation has been 3 percent or better. For instance, retail industry employees saw an increase of 5 percent and leisure and hospitality earnings rose 4.6 percent from February 2018. At the same time, professional and business services workers gained 2.8 percent while Wall Street-related positions in finance increased just 2 percent.

Unemployment claims are at a 50-year low. What is amazing is that in 1969 total non-farm employment was around 70 million and today it is around 150 million.

But wait, there's more. From the Department of Labor released April 11:

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE WEEKLY CLAIMS In the week ending April 6, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 196,000, a decrease of 8,000 from the previous week's revised level. This is the lowest level for initial claims since October 4, 1969 when it was 193,000. The previous week's level was revised up by 2,000 from 202,000 to 204,000. The 4-week moving average was 207,000, a decrease of 7,000 from the previous week's revised average. This is the lowest level for this average since December 6, 1969 when it was 204,500.

Here is just a small amount of evidence that Trump economic policies are working well to lift everyone up. So why are most journalists and other Democrats fighting so hard to reverse his policies?

These are numbers from December 2016 when Obama was done and March 2019 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Manufacturing Jobs 12.36 Million, 12.82 Million Construction Jobs: 6.82 Million, 7.45 Million Part Time Jobs: 5.62 Million, 4.50 Million (add 1,120,000 to job numbers) Black Unemployment: 7.9%, 6.7% Hispanic Unemployment: 5.9%, 4.7% Women Unemployment: 4.3%, 3.3% Less than High School Unemployment: 7.6%, 5.9% High School Unemployment: 5.1%, 3.7%

Job openings also are very high at over seven million.

Instead of focusing on the good news on the economy, Democrats are seeking to reverse and destroy Trumps policies and go back to and expand on Obamas big government policies, which gave us the slowest economic recovery in 70 years. Why would anyone want that if they cared about helping the poor and middle class move up the economic ladder?

The Democrats are trying to stop, with whatever means necessary, giving the power and money back to the people.

I understand why Democrat politicians want to get rid of Trump by any means necessary. I do not understand the unrelenting attack on Trump by most journalists on his economic policies, when those very economic policies have yielded such great results for people they claim to care about.
Rep. Ilhan Omar, who trivialized 9/11 in a speech to the radical Muslim group CAIR and found herself rightly blasted by the New York Post on its front page yesterday, has a peculiar ally and defender.

Not just her usual cronies, nasty pieces of work such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It's a given that they would defend her, they like the sorts of things she spews. No, the noteworthy defender out there in her defense is President Obama's "mind meld," narrative master, and deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes. Here are his tweets:

Rupert Murdoch has done more damage to politics, discourse and society in the West than just about anyone. This kind of incitement to hate and violence is what he and his family do to profit on the emotions of Americans (and Brits and Australians). https://t.co/F8NecI4vGK  Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) April 11, 2019

Twisting what she said to incite hate against her is shameful and definitely not civil. The double standard that @IlhanMN is subjected to holds a mirror up to our politics and media, and the site isnt pretty. https://t.co/83eFxeAIe7  Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) April 11, 2019

Defending her trivialization of 9/11 and attacking the New York Post instead is weird stuff, indeed, because Rhodes is also out there trying to make himself into a respectable foreign policy figure. The bannerhead of his Twitter site is a shill for his foreign policy memoirs, and he announces various speaking engagements at major universities for students to learn from him at his knee. The man who couldn't get a security clearance until President Obama intervened for him is trying to go legit.

Why would defending an out there extremist such as Omar, whose views are indefensible, be something that Rhodes would put his political capital to work at right about now?

Rhodes has always been someone's pawn, so one wonders if maybe the Obama political machine is behind the effort to prop Omar up. We know that Omar seems to have ties to Louis Farrakhan; it may just be that her ties also extend beyond him to the Obama political machine. Obama, of course, had ties to Farrakhan of his own.

There were signs of Obama having Omar's back earlier, as these tweets signal  another close member of the Obama inner circle, Valerie Jarrett, took a stand for Omar after she took flak for Jew-hating tropes and statements. See here:

Valerie Jarrett sent a text to Ilhan Omar some time back that said..We have your back. Then pictures showed up of him and Tlaib..meeting with the junior congress members? He had no business there except pushing Radical Islam.  @Skyfalls007 (@Skyfalls0071) April 11, 2019

And here is where Judicial Watch says she has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. https://t.co/3FZBxwcmrd  VonHeltonNewsNetwork (@HeltonVon) April 7, 2019

Just WOW! Valerie Jarretts tweet encouraging Rep. Ilhan Omar after she slammed a Jewish rep. has NOT aged well https://t.co/KAwCT8RCsT  Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) February 11, 2019

It's rather suggestive of the idea that the Obama machine is protecting her, always there to defend her, no matter what she does.

Here's another thing: Omar doesn't retreat, no matter how big a mess she makes for herself. She stands her ground the way Nicolas Maduro stands his ground in Venezuela and has quit apologizing for even the most egregious anti-Semitism and America-hatred.

There's one notable exception: when she badmouthed President Obama over drone use on terrorist-infested hellholes.

She beat a hasty retreat on that one, declaring, "I am an Obama fan!"

And here is where Judicial Watch says she has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. https://t.co/3FZBxwcmrd  VonHeltonNewsNetwork (@HeltonVon) April 7, 2019

Just WOW! Valerie Jarretts tweet encouraging Rep. Ilhan Omar after she slammed a Jewish rep. has NOT aged well https://t.co/KAwCT8RCsT  Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) February 11, 2019

She then made the absurd claim that the difference between President Trump and President Obama was that President Trump is "not human."

That was the only thing she ever backtracked on with sincerity. (She did make a half-hearted semi-apology after her first instance of anti-Semitism under political fire, but it was nothing like the backtrack she beat on the Obama matter.)

So there seems to be some Obama support mechanism out there, picking her up every time she falls flat on her face.

Why is Obama protecting her?
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Auburn University and Southern Union State Community College are entering into a partnership that makes Auburn accessible and affordable to two-year college students who transfer and complete a bachelors degree.

Provost Bill Hardgrave told the Board of Trustees at its meeting Friday that Path to the Plains is aimed at helping highly motivated, two-year college students who desire a four-year degree, but may face financial barriers.

The program will initially serve a limited number of students studying biosystems engineering, public relations or geospatial and environmental informatics.

Board members agreed to set tuition at $129 per credit hour, the same amount in-state students pay at Southern Union, for the four semesters students are concurrently enrolled at both institutions. Auburn student and professional fees would also be waived for students in the program.

As a land-grant institution, Auburn University believes that access and affordability are paramount in our efforts to expand and elevate educational opportunities in Alabama, Hardgrave said in a memo to the board.

He noted that nearly 900 students from two-year institutions transfer to Auburn annually to complete their bachelor's degrees.

The new partnership with Southern Union also aligns with the states goals of supporting transfer students and educating more Alabamians.

In other matters, the board granted final approval to the first phase of the multi-year campus parking expansion project. The phase calls for constructing 300 additional paved parking spaces at the West Campus Parking Lot for resident students and 300 additional gravel parking spaces at the Hayfield Parking Lot for commuter students.

The $3.5 million project will be financed by the University General Fund and parking fees.

The board also decided to:

Approve a $3.8 million project to renovate dining space, as well as back-of-house and other preparation areas in the Village Dining facility to include all-you-care-to-eat kitchen space, dining room improvements, extensive equipment upgrades, new back-of-house epoxy flooring and an additional point-of-sale entry. Stacy Norman Architects of Auburn was previously selected as project architect.

Initiate a project to renovate the Ag Heritage Park Pavilion on South Donahue Drive.

Enter into an environmental covenant for the two-acre parcel along Wire Road that was formerly used by the university as a landfill.

Amend the lease agreement with Milstead Farm Group Inc., allowing Milstead to substitute approximately 2.5 acres of land that is too wet for cotton module storage for an adjacent 2.48 acres which is more suitable for a storage warehouse. Milstead currently leases 25 acres of university property at the E.V. Smith Research Center.

Establish a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and a Master of Science in Education Research, Measurement and Evaluation in the College of Education.

Close the online programs for Master of Science and Master of Agriculture in Soil, Water and Environmental Science. The College of Agriculture will continue to offer a Master of Science and a Master of Agriculture in Crop, Soil and Environmental Science.

For Auburn University Montgomery, the board decided to:
The Samsung Galaxy Note10 model numbers have seemingly been revealed by SamMobile. The source shared some exclusive info, claiming that the SM-N970 and SM-N975 will be the two main models of the upcoming Galaxy Note flagship. The source also claims that we can expect to see differences in screen size, and other specifications as well, between these two models.

As some of you know, a recent report suggested that we may see four different Galaxy Note10 models hit the market, that seems to be true, to an extent. The other two models merely seem to be 5G variants of the two models the source has mentioned. The other two models, 5G units, are expected to carry SM-N971 and SM-N976 model numbers. Those two variants will only be available in markets where 5G is available at the time, as expected.

A recent report claimed that the Galaxy Note10 will be available in two size variants, one variant will sport a 6.28-inch display, while the other one will arrive with a 6.75-inch panel, which is a borderline tablet-sized display. Those two variants are rumored to sport three and four cameras on the back, while the battery capacity will almost certainly differ between the two models as well, but we still do not have any specific info regarding that.

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So, if all of this information is accurate, the Galaxy Note10 will arrive in two main variants, and those very same models will be available in 5G options as well, which will result in four models overall. This seems to be a logical move on Samsungs part as 5G is becoming a thing, even though it will take a long time for it to become a standard, while it also makes sense offering two different sizes of the phone as not everyone prefers a tablet-sized display. It seems like the smaller Galaxy Note10 will be inferior to the larger one, which is a shame, but that is not surprising either.

The Galaxy Note9 was announced back in August last year, and its safe to assume that the Galaxy Note10 series will arrive in August this year, prior to IFA in Berlin. Samsung still did not confirm anything regarding the Galaxy Note10, as it is still way too early, but as August comes closer, we will see many more rumors, reports and leaks, in addition to Samsungs teasers which are expected to start dropping in July.

The Samsung Galaxy Note10 variants will probably both be fueled by the Snapdragon 855 and Exynos 9820 SoCs, depending on where you purchase them. Same as with the Galaxy S10 series, the Snapdragon 855 will fuel the US and China models of the device, while the Exynos 9820 will ship with European and Indian variants.

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The Galaxy Note10 will come with Android 9 Pie out of the box, on top of which Samsungs One UI Android overlay will be applied. The Galaxy Note10 is also expected to come with a brand new S Pen stylus, which is expected to offer some new features, as it does every year. That stylus will probably retain Bluetooth functionality from the previous model.

The Galaxy Note10 will almost certainly be made out of metal and glass, and sport a curved Dynamic AMOLED display, and an in-display fingerprint scanner. The smaller model may differ somehow, by utilizing a flat display, or something of the sort, well have to wait and see.
An issue surrounding casting content to an Android TV device from a Google Home speaker now appears to be fixed.

Google has not officially confirmed the fix, but a number of forum users do state the fix has been applied. After some brief testing, Android Headlines can also confirm the issue seems to have been resolved.

This has proven to be an awkward issue for Android TV device owners as the problem was not an organic one in the sense that an update was rolled out and broke the feature.

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Instead, the ability to cast in this way was intentionally disabled by Google as a means to ensure a security vulnerability was no longer in play.

Back in early March, a user noted that when accessing the Google Home app and specifically the Linked accounts section related to an Android TV device, the app would display some details of other users along with the device owners details.

This led to confusion and misreporting by some over whether the photos stored in Google Photos of those unknown users could be seen on a different users device  that was never the case.

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However, the bug did lead to Google opting to remove the cast feature as a precaution to ensure if it was possible to cast content belonging to other people on a device, the option was disabled.

The downside of this precaution is that it also removed the option to cast pretty much anything from a Google Home unit to an Android TV device, including YouTube.

To be clear, this issue was specific to voice commands given to a listening device equipped with the Google Assistant, such as the Google Home line and Assistant-enabled smart displays.

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Users have always retained the ability to manually cast content from a smartphone to an Android TV device.

It is this particular voice command aspect that now looks to be resolved with users once again able to issue instructions to a Google Home unit to cast content, and have that content cast.

For example, if a user tells a Google Home device to Play Android Headlines on YouTube on Living Room TV, the Google Home device would have either not complied at all, or tried to resulting in an error.

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Its worth noting that other users on the same forums have stated that the issue is still in effect for them.

Due to the lack of official communication from Google on this, it remains to be seen when exactly the issue was fixed.

Users started reporting the return of the feature over the last two days and therefore it could be the case the update that fixes the problem is still in the process of rolling out.

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Location may also prove to be a factor in this case.

So far users have reported the ability to cast YouTube, Pandora, Spotify, Google Play Music, and Google Play Movies, but not Netflix.

Netflix in particularly has proven to be a bit of an ongoing annoyance in this respect and while the majority of users are reporting it is still not working, a few say it is working for them.

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Your miles may vary on Netflix but in our testing it also seemed to work fine.
According to a recent commit spotted in the Android Open Source Project code repositories, the version of the OS coming after Android Q could allow calls to be forwarded from one SIM to another at the system level. Summarily, that would allow handsets with Dual SIM hardware and operating with more than one of the SIM cards in place to push phone calls made to the inactive SIM onto the SIM that is activated. That would ensure that calls made to the inactive SIM arent missed just because it isnt turned on to receive the calls.

Comments on the commit, for the time being, point to the addition of what is effectively a blank UI for the feature that appears when two SIM cards are inserted in a smartphone. Tests have been performed to ensure that works properly and that an appropriate UI also appears when a call has been forwarded.

The deeply integrated nature of the functionality increases the likelihood of the feature initially debuting on Googles own hardware, though it will obviously be a while before that scenario can happen; Android R isnt expected until next year and will most likely hit the stable channel shortly before the Pixel 5 series launches.

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How could smart call forwarding work and who might benefit?

The biggest beneficiaries of a call forwarding feature such as that hinted at in the Android R-related commit would almost certainly be users in the enterprise or business end of the market. Thats because the feature could feasibly allow a more customizable and individualized separation between business lines and personal numbers.

It could allow those users to more easily accept phone calls from friends, family, and associates when traveling internationally too. The travel phone number wouldnt need to be handed out to anybody and calls  and possibly messages as the feature becomes more filled-out  could simply be forwarded to the travel SIM. That may or may not result in undesirable long-distance charges depending on how forwarding is implemented but it would certainly be much more hassle-free and useful.

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On the other side of the equation, users who hold multiple SIM cards, each with their own phone number but not necessarily intended for phone calls, would benefit too. If a phone number intended for text messaging or for data-only communications and uses receives a call, the gadget could be set up to automatically push that to the call-specified SIM.

For all devices or Pixel exclusive if it ships at all

Android Q isnt even out yet, currently existing only as a part of a beta for developers and users to try out on select devices and only in its second iteration of six prior to its expected launch in October. That puts the still uncertain Android R  pending a decision from Google on its timeline for replacing Android with Fuchsia OS  out at least another year.

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So this feature is a long way from being completed in anything resembling a consumer-ready product and it isnt necessarily any more likely that it will be finished than scrapped.

Simultaneously, theres a chance that Google might choose only to make the feature available on its own Pixel-branded handset instead of the entire ecosystem. Since theres no guarantee that carriers will want to allow forwarding, theres a further chance that it might only work for devices using either traditional or eSIM connections on the companys own Google Fi network.

Put simply, Android users and those who might consider switching to access the feature should probably hold off getting too excited just yet.
LG is one of just a handful of top-tier smartphone manufacturers that havent announced a folding smartphone yet and the recent publication of no fewer than ten trademarks from the company, spotted by LetsGoDigital, might provide deeper insight why. The vast majority of the new trademarks, listed with the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) point to gadgets that are meant to roll up instead of fold. They all also rather obviously point to smartphones or related accessories.

Among the more straightforward trademarks are marketing terms such as The Roll, Bi-Roll, Double Roll, Dual Roll, Roll Canvas, and E Roll. Given the heavy use of the word Roll, other designations filed around the same time for Signature R, R Screen, R Canvas, and Rotolo would appear to point in the same direction. Trademark listings, while not automatically pointing to the imminent release of anything, would also suggest that the gadget or gadgets referred to are well into the research and development process.

Previous hints at a roll-up design

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LGs patents and even its talk about the introduction of its first flexible flagship have, up until this point, been oriented around a straightforward folding device. Thats the direction the company is expected to take in a future variation of the V-Series at any rate, based on statements made by LG executives.

The roll designation does not, however, point in that direction and neither should it necessarily come as a surprise. Alongside the many patented designs held by LG in the folding phone segment, the company has repeatedly filed designs that are much more suitable for the designation in question as well.

Among the first of the rollable LG designs to be spotted was reported in late 2018, pointing to a device that unfurled like a scroll. Conceptually, that isnt too different from select LG television designs that have been appearing at various prominent events for several years now. Namely, the gadget would work almost identically to the LG SIGNATURE OLED TV R, expected to arrive for purchase this year.

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The name of some gadgets trademarked hints that at least one of the devices in question could very easily be built around the same design but scaled back into a handset format instead but that isnt the only direction the company could go.

A folding phone that doesnt technically fold

Another patent spotted more recently points to an LG smartphone that expands from a user-perspective but which actually centers around a rolling mechanism that is out of sight from the user perspective. The mechanism in that design sucks in a portion of the display or releases it based on how the gadget is oriented.

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A similar design built into a more traditional folder would fit the resulting device into the appropriate category to match competitors while providing the company a way to avoid using similar naming conventions to those other companies.

The use of an alternative to the folding smartphone design leading the technologys charge into the mainstream would go a long way toward explaining the names listed in the newest trademarks from LG. It would also serve as a way for the Korean tech giant to differentiate the device from others being released by top Android OEMs such as Samsung and Huawei. Those companies presently hold a market lead  and by a substantial margin  giving LG plenty of incentive to find new ways to set itself apart when it does get in on the latest technology race.
Posted on: April 12, 2019 9:39 AM

Organisers of next years Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops have announced that 502 bishops and 382 spouses have so far registered for the decennial event, with the numbers rising each day. Registrations to date come from 39 of the Anglican Communions 45 member Provinces and Extra Provincial Churches. In comparison to the 2008 event when registrations had not started at this point, this is a most encouraging position to be in, Lambeth Conference Chief Executive Phil George said.

The Lambeth Conference is one of four Instruments of Communion of the global Anglican Communion. Invitations are extended by the Archbishop of Canterbury to the bishops of the Communion to gather for prayer and discussion.

Setting out his vision for next years Lambeth Conference, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby expressed his hope that it would be an opportunity to meet the worlds need for the good news of Jesus Christ, saying that the world needs to see it in our actions, envy it in our love together, and hear it in our confident proclamation of the good news of Jesus.

Amongst the first to sign up is Bishop Te Kitohi Pikaahu of Te Tai Tokerau in the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia. He told the Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) that it was important for the bishops at next years Lambeth Conference to discuss issues of peace and justice; the Churchs response to the effects of Climate Change and its impact on humanity and the environment; poverty and injustice; and theology and Anglican ecclesiology.

The hope is that I come back to New Zealand refreshed, renewed and fulfilled by the Lambeth experience, he said. I gained a critical insight, at the Lambeth Conference in 2008, into the lives of other bishops who were very different to myself in terms of theology and churchmanship. I learned that I had more in common with them in terms of the challenges and blessings I experienced in my ministry and leadership as a bishop.

The Bishop of Montego Bay, Leon Golding, a suffragan bishop in the Church of the Province of the West Indies Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, will be attending his first Lambeth Conference. He told the ACNS that he was looking forward to creating new friendships and learning more of the nature of the Anglican Communion.

He said: The most important issues the bishops need to address is those that divide. A divided church, which is different from a diverse church, cannot give creditable witness to a divided world. It will be my first time. I suppose I hope to take away a better understanding and appreciation of Communion of which I am you.

Another first-time attendee is Bishop Vithalis Yusuph of the Diocese of Biharamulo in the Anglican Church of Tanzania. 2020 will be my first Lambeth Conference as a new and young bishop, so what Im looking forward to most is the fellowship with my fellow bishops globally, he said.

The most important thing that bishops should address at Lambeth Conference is how can we walk and serve together as Anglican family apart from our differences! God is love and there is no way we can help and encourage each other if we separate mission and love.

In addition to making new friends, Bishop Vithalis said that he hoped the Lambeth Conference would provide a new perspective to rehabilitate our Anglican Communion.

A bishop with less to travel than most  the Bishop of Burnley in the Church of Englands Diocese of Blackburn, Philip North, told ACNS that he was looking forward to a greater sense of the global nature of Anglicanism and feeding from some of the evangelistic energy of Anglican churches in the global south.

He added: I hope we can focus above all on issues around the environment, poverty and social justice. In addition we need to think about what it means to disagree well on those issues that divide us and so I hope that all theological viewpoints are richly represented.

I hope that we come away more fired up about sharing the Gospel, building the Kingdom and giving a voice to the poor in the name of Jesus Christ. I hope also we can develop a greater unity of purpose as those who share a common mission under Christ.

The Bishop of Buhiga in the Anglican Church of Burundi, Evariste Nijimbere, will be attending his first Lambeth Conference. My expectation is to experience the work of God in the worldwide Church, and have new friends, learning from others, he said.

He said that the Lambeth Conference would be an opportunity to address the objectives of the Anglican Communion and think together how to move forward. People of God sitting together can shape each other and encourage each other through fellowship, he said.

Responding to the large number of registrations, Phil George, said: It is very encouraging to have so many bishops and spouses already registered to come. I am delighted that we have received more than 880 bookings so far.

The process of delivering invitations to over 165 countries is not straightforward and some have taken a lot longer than expected to arrive. So the initial request to register by 31 March was always seen as an encouragement to do so rather than a fixed deadline. Of course, the guest list is changing all the time as new bishops are appointed and others step down. But I would encourage all who have now received their invitations to sign up as quickly as possible and ideally by 31 July 2019.

The last Lambeth Conference, in 2008, attracted 623 bishops and a smaller number of spouses.
Posted on: April 12, 2019 1:48 PM

An ecumenical spiritual retreat led by the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis at the Vatican ended yesterday with Pope Francis kissing the feet of South Sudans political leaders. The unprecedented two day retreat was organised in an effort to support the countrys fragile peace deal. The political leaders present at the retreat included South Sudans President Salva Kiir Mayardit and opposition leader Vice President Riek Machar. The two are expected to form a national unity government under a fragile peace deal designed to end six years of civil war in the worlds newest country.

Pope Francis shocked the church and political leaders present at the retreat in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, the official Vatican guest house which is also home to Pope Francis, yesterday (Thursday) when he broke off from his prepared remarks to make a personal plea to Sudans political leaders.

To the three of you who have signed the peace agreement, I ask you as a brother: stay in peace, Pope Francis said. I am asking you with my heart. Let us go forward. There will be many problems but they will not overcome us. Go ahead, go forward, and resolve the problems. You have begun a process. May it end well.

There will be struggles and disagreements amongst you, but let this be within the community  inside the office, as it were  but in front of the people, hold hands, united; so as simple citizens you will become fathers of the nation.

He said he was asking from his heart with his deepest sentiments, before walking towards the leaders and kneeling to kiss their feet; to the evident shock and surprise of those present.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, described the retreat as a miracle, saying that until within 24 hours of it beginning we didnt know it was going to happen. The atmosphere has been extraordinary and we just see the hand of God in it.

The retreat was proposed by Archbishop Justin and approved by Pope Francis. It would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. We have a gathering at the invitation of the Pope, in the Vatican, with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, Archbishop Justin said. These are Churches that have been separated for half a millennium.

We have the main political leaders from South Sudan, with the main spiritual leaders, gathering together. The political leaders have been at war for six years.

And we have them all having arrived, the logistics have worked and they are engaging with each other as human beings and there is a profound sense of the Spirit of God at work.

He added: if you have seen so many attempts at peace, that you have given up hope that it will ever happen, that you are feeling sceptical and cynical about it, I understand exactly why. But I start with our Christian faith: that we believe in the God that raised Jesus Christ from the dead so all evil and darkness was finally overcome in the resurrection. And resurrection life overflows in ways we cant predict; so that there is always hope.

And what we have seen in this last 24 hours is not a promise of change; but it is a reasonable hope of change.

The Anglican primate of South Sudan, Archbishop Justin Bada Arama, used Twitter to tahnk people for their prayers. We have concluded the healing retreat today at the Vatican, he said. We were all commissioned by the Holy Father, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Presbyterian Moderator of Scotland to go and be ambassadors of peace and reconciliation in South Sudan.

The Anglican Primate of South Sudan, Archbishop Justin Badi Arama, with President Salva Kiir Mayardit and opposition leader Vice President Riek Machar, during an ecumenical retreat at the Vatican this week

Photo: Archbishop Justin Badi Arama via Twitter

As the political and Church leaders were gathered at the Vatican, an ecumenical group of women were taking part in three days of prayer and fasting at the headquarters of the South Sudan Council of Churches in Juba.
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Nations of the world are addressing a list of daunting economic, social and environmental worldwide challenges, and Auburn University is contributing to the local, national and global solutions.

The U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, or SDSN, recently launched a U.S. chapter to mobilize and support Americas colleges, universities and other leading research institutions.

Janaki Alavalapati, dean of the Auburn University School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, represented the university at the historic opening meeting at Columbia University in New York.

As a land-grant university, Auburn is already a leader for several sustainable development goals, Alavalapati said.

The SDSN has been operating since 2012 under the U.N. secretary general to promote practical solutions for sustainable development by accelerating joint learning and promoting integrated approaches that address interconnected global challenges. Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, were established in 2015 in pursuit of eradicating poverty and deprivation cultivating a thriving and inclusive economy, protecting the environment, and promoting peace and good governance.

At the SDSN USA opening meeting, representatives of more than 60 academic institutions around the nation developed a work plan for the new network, focusing on priority SDG challenges facing the United States.

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network website emphasizes that universities are critical to the success of the Sustainable Developments Goals, through their teaching programs, research activities and powerful ability to convene leaders of government, civil society, academia and business to collaborate on SDG solutions.

As members of SDSN USA, Auburn University faculty will collaborate with Sustainable Development Solutions Network scholars and organizations around the world in efforts to fulfill the SDGs at local, national and global scales.

Our membership in the SDSN US Chapter will enhance our capacities to advance these SDGs through national and global networks, Alavalapati said.

The second Sustainable Development Goal is a zero hunger world, and the Auburn University College of Human Sciences has been a leader in this fight since 2004.

June Henton, dean of the College of Human Sciences, and Harriet Giles, managing director of the Hunger Solutions Institute, visited the SDSN headquarters at Columbia University in New York as a follow-up to the charter meeting and about Auburns leadership role among universities in eliminating hunger and malnutrition.

Network leaders were excited to learn about Auburns longstanding commitment to hunger elimination, which began in 2004 in partnership with the United Nations World Food Programme, and has led to the formation and oversight of Universities Fighting World Hunger, Presidents United to Solve Hunger and End Child Hunger in Alabama, Giles said.

Following the meeting, Henton and Giles invited a SDSN representative to participate in the annual PUSH Leadership Forum in Portland, Maine. The representative addressed a group of high level college and university administrators from across the country and around the globe about the role of the SDSN and ways in which universities can contribute, including the creation and use of online courses for the Sustainable Development Goals Academy.

The PUSH Forum provided an excellent opportunity for SDSN to recruit new members and for PUSH and SDSN to begin discussing potential ways in which these two networks can join forces to accelerate the elimination of hunger and malnutrition, Giles said.

Meeting the objectives of the seventeen SDGs by the target date of 2030 is crucial if we are to ensure a livable future, said Mike Kensler, director of the Auburn University Office of Sustainability. Dean Henton and Dr. Giles engagement with SDSN leadership is a perfect example of Auburns capacity to make substantial contributions to reaching the SDGs. Already, it is clear that joining SDSN will expand our opportunity for engagement and amplify the impact of our efforts.
Lok Sabha election 2019: Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a public rally in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, on Friday targeted Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, asking voters to choose between 'Imandar Chowkidar' and 'bhrashtachari naamdar". "I have no expectation from the Congress since it has stopped thinking about people long ago," he said. He also said the previous government was a weak government, and that the soldiers demanded revenge from Pakistan, but the government never dared. The first phase of elections across 18 states and two UTs ended with over 50 per cent voter turnout across all 90 Lok Sabha constituencies on Thursday. While maximum 81.8 per cent voter turnout was recorded in Tripura, around 50 per cent people voted in Bihar for the four Lok Sabha seats. States like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Uttarakhand registered 66 per cent, 60 per cent, and 57.8 per cent voting, respectively. Despite a huge security concern, 54.4 per cent voting was recorded in Jammu and Kashmir's two Parliamentary constituencies. Polling was going on late night on April 11 in over 300 booths in different districts of Andhra Pradesh as faulty EVMs hampered voting in the day.

Lok Sabha Election 2019: Polling dates, full schedule, election results, constituencies' details, voting FAQs

Complete list of state-wise Lok Sabha election 2019 dates: EC announces 7-phase poll, result on May 23

Here are the live updates of first phase of the Lok Sabha Elections 2019.

4:25pm: Congress and BJP MP candidates from Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha constituency Mithun Rai and Nalin Kumar campaign in Mangaluru.

#Karnataka: Congress & BJP MP candidates from Dakshina Kannada Lok Sabha constituency Mithun Rai (pic 1&2) and Nalin Kumar (pic 3&4) respectively, campaign in Mangaluru #LokSabhaElections2019pic.twitter.com/ubbDA3gBaV  ANI (@ANI) April 15, 2019

4:20pm: Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot garlanded with lemons and chillies by National Students' Union of India (NSUI) workers at an event in Bhilwara.

Rajasthan: CM Ashok Gehlot garlanded with lemons and chillies by National Students' Union of India (NSUI) workers at an event in Bhilwara. pic.twitter.com/TbMJpLgcT8  ANI (@ANI) April 15, 2019

4:10pm: Opposition parties raise doubts over electronic voting machine (EVM) again.

4:00pm: The Election Commission prohibits Up CM Yogi Adityanath from campaigning for 72 hours, BSP supremo Mayawati for 48 hours for violation of Model Code of Conduct.

Election Commission prohibits #YogiAdityanath from campaigning for 72 hours, #Mayawati for 48 hours for violation of Model Code of Conduct#LokSabhaElections2019pic.twitter.com/vHpyPhQIiW  Doordarshan News (@DDNewsLive) April 15, 2019

3.08pm: Nirmala on 'letter' by armed forces veterans: "We learnt of ex-servicemen reached the President. I would like to draw the attention that two senior officers have both highlighted that in petition they have not given their consent."

2.40pm: "Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi after BJP delegation met EC: "Rahul Gandhi has crossed all limits by using such level of unparliamentary language for PM."

Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi after BJP delegation met EC: Rahul Gandhi has crossed all limits by using such level of unparliamentary language for PM. He's chief of Congress's 'gaali gang.' Have demanded action be taken against his statements, which aren't based on facts. pic.twitter.com/vtwuL9o8Rg  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

2.33pm: Nirmala Sitharaman on purported letter to Pres signed by Armed Forces veterans: "Two senior officers said they have not given consent,worrying that fake letters being signed by vested groups."

2.15pm: The more you'll attack me, the harder I'll work against Congress in Amethi, says Smriti Irani. Earlier, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi had said that "Smriti Irani ji ne apne educational qualifications ko lekar ek cheez kaayam ki hai ki kis tareeke se graduate se 12th class ke ho jaate hain, wo Modi sarkar se hi aur Modi sarkar mein hi mumkin hai."

Nirmala Sitharaman on purported letter to Pres signed by Armed Forces veterans: Two senior officers said they have not given consent,worrying that fake letters being signed by vested groups.Condemnable. Rashtrapati Bhawan has also said that they have not received the letter. pic.twitter.com/7CqHmAcvA9  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

2.00pm: "We have said in our manifesto that everyone will be given a new house by 2022. We will provide power, water supply, free health insurance worth Rs 5 lakh, and Rs 6,000 per year to every farmer," says Amit Shah. The BJP chief is holding a rally in Keonjhar, Odisha.

#WATCH Union Minister Smriti Irani: In the last 5 years, they have attacked me in every which way possible. I only have one message for them, the more you will insult me, the more you will attack me, the harder I will work against Congress in Amethi. pic.twitter.com/ag3R9JV4yL  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 12, 2019

1.45pm: Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Krishnagiri: "We will never ever let the people of Tamil Nadu be ruled by Nagpur. Tamil Nadu is going to be ruled from Tamil Nadu and MK Stalin is going to be the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu."

1.40pm: The Congress releases the video: "Demonetization, GST, Employment, Farmers - the truth of Modi Govt. about these has come out."

12.55pm: "Do you remember the previous ten years of the earlier remote-controlled government? Scams and delays in decision- making were the order of the day. You need to now choose between Imandar Chowkidar and Bhrashtachari Naamdar," Modi said.

12.40pm: "Mujhe samajh nahi aata hai ki Sharad Rao Pawar ko kya hogya hai?" says PM Modi.

Video Release-



Demonetization, GST, Employment, Farmers - the truth of Modi Govt. about these has come out.



The people have gone through inaction of Modi Govt. in the past 5 years but now they want Modi to see the 'Sach ka Aina'.

Stop misleading the people.



Dekho Aaina Modi Ji pic.twitter.com/RJaGRd75To  INC Chhattisgarh (@INCChhattisgarh) April 12, 2019

12.35pm: The Congress statement on Army veteran's letter to the President.

PM Modi in Ahmednagar: Lekin mujhe samajh nahi aata hai ki Sharad Rao Pawar ko kya hogya hai? Aapne toh desh ke naam par Congress chhod di thi, Congress ko tod di thi. Ab desh mein do PM hone ki baat par aap kab tak chup rahoge? (2/2) #Maharashtrahttps://t.co/ytgOXvugY2  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

12.29pm: The number of independent candidates elected in respective years; it has been showing a decreasing trend over the years.

12.16pm: PM Narendra Modi addressing a public meeting in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. "The previous government was weak in front of Pakistan. The soldiers demanded revenge, but the government never dared," says PM Modi.

INC COMMUNIQUE



Press statement by @priyankac19, Convenor- Communications and National Spokesperson, on the letter written to the President of India by veterans of Armed Forces. pic.twitter.com/bf8ecIltxK  INC Sandesh (@INCSandesh) April 12, 2019

12.13pm: CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury on Friday asked the Election Commission to act strongly against the ruling BJP for its "despicable attempts" to politicise and misuse the armed forces during the ongoing election campaign, reports PTI. Over 150 armed forces veterans have written to President and Commander-in-Chief Ram Nath Kovind to complain about the manner in which political parties have been repeatedly using armed forces for political gains ahead of the Lok Sabha election.

12.08pm: BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi moves a contempt petition against Congress President Rahul gandhi. Lekhi says the words used and attributed to the SC in the Rafale case has been made to look something else. "He is replacing his personal statement as the SC order and trying to create a prejudice," says the plea.

11.38am: Makers of the film move Supreme Court against the stalling of the film's release. The SC agrees to hear the case on April 15.

11.30am: Congress' Priyanka Chaturdevi: "A new serial is going to come, 'Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi'; Its opening line will be 'Qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ek degree aati hai, ek degree jaati hai, bante affidavit naye hain." "Smriti Irani ji ne apne educational qualifications ko lekar ek cheez kaayam ki hai ki kis tareeke se graduate se 12th class ke ho jaate hain, wo Modi sarkar se hi aur Modi sarkar mein hi mumkin hai," says Congress' Priyanka Chaturdevi.

#UnfoldingIndianElections with #PIB



No. of independent candidates elected in respective years; It has been showing a decreasing trend over the years. The number fell from 37 in 1952 to 3 in 2014.#LokSabhaElections2019#GeneralElections2019pic.twitter.com/xhG2OR17Up  PIB India (@PIB_India) April 12, 2019

11.26am: Congress President Rahul Gandhi will address a rally in Tamil Nadu.

11.17am: The SC directs all political parties to give poll panel details of identity of donors, amount in account of donors by May 30 in sealed cover. The SC says it would examine in detail changes made in law and ensure balance does not tilt in favour of any party.

10.46am: Twitter says over 45.6 million tweets were recorded related to the Phase 1 of the Lok Sabha polls from India and across the globe.

10.43am: The Supreme Court has asked all political parties to disclose all particulars relating to donations received through electoral bonds to the Election Commission of India (ECI) in sealed covers by May 30.

10.38am: The Kerala Christian Forum has expressed hope that Amit Shah and the BJP tender apology on the BJP's remarks on minority.

Makers of biopic 'PM Narendra Modi' move the Supreme Court against the stalling of the film's release. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case on April 15. pic.twitter.com/QWh6CnPOlb  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

10.30am: More than 3,000 people form a human chain at the Pamban Sea Bridge in Rameswaram to spread election awareness.

#WATCH Congress' Priyanka Chaturdevi: A new serial is going to come, 'Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi'; Its opening line will be 'Qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ek degree aati hai, ek degree jaati hai, bante affidavit naye hain. pic.twitter.com/o8My3RX9JR  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

10.15am: Kerala Christian Forum has said Amit Shah's statement that "We'll (BJP) ensure implementation of NRC in country. We'll remove every single infiltrator from country,except Buddha, Hindus & Sikhs," is direct attack on identity and integrity of the nation as a secular state.

10.05am: AAP may form an alliance with JJP (Jannayak Janata Party) in Haryana. Seat sharing formula: six seats for JJP and four for AAP. Both the parties will hold a joint press conference tomorrow.

10.00am: TDP-YSRCP supporters face off again: Supporters of both the parties resort to stone pelting as clashes continue in Andhra's Kurnool.

9.55am: Two groups of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers clash during a rally in Masuda, Ajmer.

In the last month, the top conversation topic for #LokSabhaElections2019 on Twitter was national security, followed by religion, jobs, agriculture, and taxes and trade. pic.twitter.com/QRxJtW7Cl0  Twitter India (@TwitterIndia) April 11, 2019

9.50am: "Modi may try to use soldiers for votes, but it's clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP. 156 Veterans of the Indian Armed Forces including 8 former Chiefs of Staff write to the President of India urging him to act against Modi for trying to use soldiers for votes," says the Congress party.

9.45am: PM Modi to hold rallies in 3 states.

Ahmednagar, Maharashtra 11am

Gangavathi, Karnataka 3pm

Kozhikode, Kerala 6.30pm

9.38am: BJP national president Amit Shah will address rallies in Odisha and Chhattisgarh today.

The Kerala Christian Forum also expressed hope that Amit Shah & BJP tender apology to the nation & especially to the minority communities of the country, which has felt persecuted by the statement. https://t.co/6nJ8G1HLlY  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

9.30am: Several security personnel on election duty in Noida were served meals in packets labelled "Namo Foods", triggering criticism from the opposition even after the local police said the packs only displayed the name of a food shop. The Bahujan Samaj Party said it has complained to the Election Commission. Union minister Mahesh Sharma is the Bharatiya Janata Party candidate seeking re-election there. The packets, coloured in a shade of saffron and with "Namo" emblazoned on the top in Hindi and foods' in English, soon generated a buzz among curious onlookers. (PTI)

9.25am: A glance at the voter turnout on Thursday.

Tamil Nadu: More than 3000 people form a human chain at Pamban Sea Bridge in Rameswaram to spread election awareness for 100% voter turnout in Ramanathapuram Lok Sabha constituency. pic.twitter.com/cCkpr94vJX  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

9.15am: Local poll authorities in Maharashtra are learnt to have told the EC here that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks asking first-time voters to dedicate their vote to those who carried out the Balakot air strike, are prima facie violative of its orders, asking parties against using the armed forces in their campaigns. Addressing a rally in Ausa in Maharashtra's Latur on April 9, Modi said, "Can your first vote be dedicated to those who carried out the air strike."

9.10am: Prime Minister Narendra Modi to address rallies in three states today. "Today's campaigns will be in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Kerala," says the PM.

#WATCH Rajasthan: Two groups of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers clash during a rally in Masuda, Ajmer. (11/4/19) pic.twitter.com/AMrJXTKlbg  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

9.00am: 15 EVMs damaged during Phase 1 polls: A total of 15 electronic voting machines (EVMs) were damaged due to vandalism in the first phase of the Lok Sabha election Thursday, the Election Commission said. While there were six reports of EVM damage from Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh reported five matters, one each were from West Bengal and Bihar and two from Manipur, reported PTI. Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha said action would be taken for damaging electoral material and various sections of the Indian Penal Code.

Edited by Manoj Sharma
Marysville, CA (95901)

Today

Windy with a steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 44F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..

Tonight

Windy with a steady rain this evening. Showers continuing overnight. Low 44F. Winds SSE at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Did the Guardia Civil officer who led the October 1st investigation use the Tacito nickname on Twitter to post messages against the Catalan independence process? The question will remain unanswered for the moment. When he testified a few weeks ago before the Supreme Court, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Baena, chief of the Guardia Civil's judicial police, denied being the owner of, or administering, this Twitter profile (now closed), although in a recorded conversation with Publico newspaper he had admitted to it. On the day of his appearance, the same paper revealed that Baena and Tacito shared the same profile picture. Based on this, the defense teams asked the 13th Court judge to investigate whether it was the same person, but the judge has denied the request.

The defenses had asked the judge to urge Twitter to certify the address of the computers from which Tacito had posted certain messages to ascertain whether they had any connection with the Lieutenant Colonel of the Guardia Civil. They argued that if it could be proven that Baena and Tacitus were one and the same, the investigation and police reports authored by the Lieutenant Colonel would have to be invalidated.

In a resolution reported by Efe [a Spanish wire service], the judge explained that investigating whether the head of the Guardia Civil judicial police is the user of the aforementioned account has no "transcendence or relevance", since "the validity of his professional performance, producing statements and reports and coordinating an investigation [that, which should not be forgotten, is led by an investigating court] does not depend on the political views that he may hold."

The judge referred to the Supreme Court resolution that had already ruled out probing this point, using the same argument. The court said that the ideological considerations of those in charge of, and members of, security forces did not affect the validity of their investigations.

"An account was linked to me, because I followed that Twitter account from my personal account, and a reporter published that," Baena told the Supreme. The Lieutenant Colonel not only denied being the owner of the account, but also denied any role in its management. However, Publico released a telephone conversation with the Lieutenant Colonel in which he eventually admitted that he managed the profile, together with other people. "I am not [doing it] on my own, you see", he said in self-defense.
Maruti Alto is India's best-selling car for 15th consecutive year

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Naresh Goyal not done yet with Jet Airways; former chairman likely to bid for stake in airline



Jet Airways founder and former chairman Naresh Goyal, who along with his wife Anita Goyal resigned from the board of cash-strapped carrier, had said in his farewell speech that the decision was not the end of the journey but the start of a brand new chapter. Amid ongoing speculations over the future of Jet Airways, Goyal is likely to submit initial bids for stake in the airline . Among others, four entities have also expressed interest in the bidding process for stake in Jet Airways.



Maruti Alto emerges as India's best-selling car for 15th consecutive year



It may have lost the crown to stablemate Dzire for the calendar year 2018, but a steep decline in sales for the last three months of fiscal 2019 (January-March period) has seen the compact sedan lose the advantage to long-time bestseller Maruti Alto. A 4.4 per cent growth in the last quarter as against an over 16 per cent decline in sales of the Dzire helped its cause.



Nine states to raise Rs 9,800 crore through selling securities



Nine state governments, including Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, will raise Rs 9,800 crore by selling securities on April 15, the Reserve Bank said Thursday. The auction will be conducted on the Reserve Bank of India Core Banking Solution (E-Kuber) system, it added. The Reserve Bank further said it will determine the maximum yield/minimum price at which bids will be accepted.



India election sees 45.6 million tweets; PM Modi most mentioned figure: Twitter



Conversations around elections kept Twitter buzzing over the last one month with over 45 million tweets being shared, the microblogging platform said Thursday. Prime Minister Modi emerged as the "most mentioned figure" during this first phase of the #LokSabhaElections2019 conversations on Twitter. Interestingly, national security ranked ahead of topics like religion, jobs, agriculture, and taxes and trade in the election conversations.



Amazon's Bezos challenges retail rivals to raise minimum wages



Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos on Thursday challenged rival retailers to increase their minimum wages to $16 an hour.

Amazon's wage hike came at a time when U.S. unemployment was at a near two-decade low as retailers and shippers were competing for hundreds of thousands of workers for the all-important holiday shopping season.



Assange arrested in London after 7 years in Ecuador embassy, U.S. seeks extradition



WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police and carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy on Thursday after his South American hosts abruptly revoked his seven-year asylum, paving the way for his extradition to the United States.


























Cal Newport, a computer-science professor at Georgetown University, marshals evidence that the addictive properties of our devices are not accidental but, rather, the product of careful thinking by tech companies about the feedback loops that will keep people returning to them. Newports main indictment is of social-media platforms, but he also argues that people need to rethink the way they consume news.  The New Yorker
The Civil Aviation Ministry is awaiting a report from the regulator DGCA on the issue.

Jet Air has also grounded its services to and from the East and Northeast regions.

The crisis deepened at Jet Airways on Thursday even as the bid process to get new owners for the debt-ridden airline elicited good response from investors.

In a regulatory filing, Jet Airways said 10 more of its aircraft have been grounded over non-payment of lease rentals, taking the total number of grounded planes to 79.

The airline has cancelled all international flights for Thursday amid reports that the government is likely to review Jet Airways' eligibility to continue its international operations. The Civil Aviation Ministry is awaiting a report from the regulator DGCA on the issue.

Jet Air has also grounded its services to and from the East and Northeast regions.

The airline has reduced its fleet to just 14 planes as of Thursday noon, way down from 123 planes in operations at the peak.

Sources said private equity firms TPG Capital and Indigo Partners, National Investment and Infrastructure Fund Ltd (NIIF) and Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways are among the four firms that have submitted their expressions of interest (EoIs) for picking a stake in Jet Airways.

Former Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal is also expected to submit initial bids for a stake in the airline, sources said.

SBI Caps, which invited Expression of Interest (EoI) for stake sale in Jet Airways on April 8, has already extended the date for submission of bids to April 12 from April 10.

Sources said lenders are expecting EoIs from international airlines like Air Canada and Delta Airlines.

SBI Caps has the mandate for Jet Airways' sale on behalf of the SBI-led consortium of domestic lenders to the private carrier.

It has put between 31 per cent and up to 75 per cent in the airline for investors.

An agency report quoting a source said, "Jet Airways flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled for April 12 are cancelled for operational reasons."

The airline will not operate on the Bengaluru- Amsterdam-Bengaluru route on April 13 as well, the report said.



"All Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern regions are suspended. Following this, there are no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region," said a travel industry source.

Jet Airways said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati via Kolkata stand cancelled for Friday due to "operational reasons."

(With inputs from agencies)
Gandhi and Kiran traded in 454 shares and 6,770 shares, respectively, during the UPSI period.

Both have paid a total of over Rs 70 lakh as settlement charges.

New Delhi: Sun Pharma group's senior executive Abhay Arvind Gandhi and his wife Kiran have settled with Sebi a case related to insider trading in shares of Ranbaxy Laboratories in 2014.

Both have paid a total of over Rs 70 lakh as settlement charges.

At the time of alleged violation, Abhay Arvind Gandhi was the CEO of Sun Pharma Laboratories Ltd (SPLL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.

Currently, Abhay Gandhi is CEO of Sun Pharma's North America business.

Gandhi and his wife traded in Ranbaxy shares soon after Japanese major Daiichi, in 2014, agreed to sell Ranbaxy to Sun Pharma.

According to separate notices sent to the two individuals, they had traded in the shares of Ranbaxy when the proposed deal was to be made public.

The proposed deal was UPSI (Unpublished Price Sensitive Information) from February 14, 2014 to April 6, 2014.

By trading in the shares of Ranbaxy during the UPSI period, both allegedly violated prohibition of insider trading norms, as per the notices.

As Gandhi was then the chief of SPLL, he and his wife were insiders under the Sebi norms.

Gandhi and Kiran traded in 454 shares and 6,770 shares, respectively, during the UPSI period.

In two separate but similarly-worded orders issued on Thursday, Sebi said the two individuals sought to settle the adjudication proceedings initiated against them in 2017.

Under Sebi's settlement mechanism, without admission or denial of guilt, both proposed to pay Rs 35.06 lakh each to settle the case.

The settlement amounts proposed were approved by a panel of Sebi's Whole Time Members, according to the two orders.

While settling the case, the regulator also said that enforcement actions could be initiated if any representation made by the two individuals is found to be untrue.

"Sun Pharma is pleased that the matter of Mr Abhay Gandhi and his spouse has been brought to a closure.

"Without admitting or denying the findings of fact and conclusions of law, Mr Gandhi and his spouse have proposed to settle the proceedings with Sebi," the company said in a statement.

Sun Pharma has full faith that Gandhi conducts himself with the utmost integrity in any situation, it added.
The scheme has stimulated air connectivity between destinations in a distance of up to 800 km.

Chennai: The UDAN scheme intended to make regional connectivity easy has opened up a few less explored tourist destinations.

The scheme has stimulated air connectivity between destinations in a distance of up to 800 km. Among them, Hyderabad-Nanded is the most travelled route, as per a study by Paytm Travel. Mumbai - Nanded also is one of the top routes opened up by UDAN scheme. Nanded in Maharashtra used to be a lesser known tourist destination earlier.

Similarly, Vidyanagar in Karnataka too has become known among tourists. Hyderabad to Vidyanagar is the fifth most travelled UDAN route and Bangalore - Vidyanagar is the sixth most travelled route.

Porbandar is known for being Mahatma Gandhi's birthplace. Its tourism value has gone up in recent times. Mumbai-Porbandar is the fourth most travelled UDAN route.

Further, Hyderabad - Nanded is also one of the top 10 routes that can be travelled by flight for less than Rs 2000. Chennai-Cuddapah is the top sub-Rs 2000 route, followed by Lucknow - Allahabad and Bikaner-Jaipur.

Paytm Travel 2018 also found that flight travelers book their tickets 13 days in advance to avoid last-minute surge in prices. Train travelers usually book their tickets one month in advance. However, there are travelers who opt for last-minute booking with tatkal facility. This takes the average train booking period five days prior to journey. In case of bus travel, travelers generally opt for last-minute booking due to multiple options and availability of tickets.

The data with Paytm shows that booking a flight 28 days in advance provides best savings. Both for flight and bus, Tuesday is the cheapest day to make a booking, while Sunday is the most expensive day.
TDP president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu accused the YSR Congress of indulging in violence to win the election.

Muslim women show their inkmarked finger after casting their vote in Ghaziabad on Thursday. (Photo: G.N. Jha)

New Delhi: The great Indian electoral tamasha rolled out on Thursday as 91 Lok Sabha constituencies in 21 states went to polls in the first phase of elections. At least two people were killed in clashes in Andhra Pradesh, there were IED blasts in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh and reports of EVM glitches and multiple complaints from voters about their names not being on the electoral list.

While no average polling percentage was available for the first phase in total, the highest polling percentage of 81 per cent was registered in West Bengal where the two North Bengal constituencies of Alipurduar and Cooch Behar voted. The lowest voter turnout  50 per cent  was in Bihar where four seats went to the hustings.

Voter turnouts for the other states were: Arunachal Pradesh (66 per cent), Bihar (50 per cent), Lakshadweep (66 per cent), Maharashtra (56 per cent), Meghalaya (67.16 per cent), Odisha (68 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (63.69 per cent), Sikkim (69 per cent), Mizoram (60 per cent), Nagaland (78 per cent), Manipur (78.2 per cent), Tripura (81.8 per cent), Assam (68 per cent), West Bengal (81 per cent), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (70.67 per cent), Chhattisgarh (56 per cent) Telangana (60 per cent), Uttarakhand (57.85 per cent), Jammu and Kashmir (54.49 per cent).

Andhra Pradesh, where simultaneously elections were held for state Assembly along with 25 Lok Sabha constituencies, saw a 66 per cent voter turnout. There were widespread reports of Electronic Voting Machine malfunction, missing names from voters list and sporadic violence as well.

One worker from the ruling Telugu Desam Party and one from the main Opposition, YSR Congress, were killed in a clash in a village in Tadipatri Assembly constituency in Anantapuramu district.

TDP president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu accused the YSR Congress of indulging in violence to win the election.

No developed country is using EVMs as they are prone to manipulation. We have hence been demanding that we revert to the ballot paper system, Mr Naidu said after casting his vote in Undavalli village in Amravati amid numerous reports of EVMs not functioning properly.

The Opposition countered it by saying that the followers of local TDP MP and MLA, the J.C. brothers (MP J.C. Diwakar Reddy and MLA J.C. Prabhakar Reddy) tried to rig votes in a polling booth in Veerapuram village.

The two parties also clashed in other parts of the state. In other incidents, Madhusudan Gupta, a candidate of the Jana Sena Party, was arrested after he smashed an EVM in Guntakal, alleging that party symbols were not properly printed on the ballot unit.

Even as the Election Commission in a press conference claimed that there were no untoward incidents, the BSP claimed that in UP police stopped Dalit voters from going to poll booths.

CPI(M) cried foul in Tripura west, claiming people were not being allowed to vote for the party. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed voter names had been deleted across the country.

The Congress claimed that the Nagaland deputy chief minister voted eight times. According to reports, there was no voting in 15 Odisha booths because of the fear of Maoists.

Addressing an election rally in Silchar, Assam, hours before voting in the first phase ended, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that he sensed a massive Modi government wave.

Mr Modi, whose BJP became the first party to gain majority on its own in three decades, said the mood in the country can be guessed by the crowds in his rallies. Which way the winds are blowing, can be seen from your enthusiasm. Today voting is taking place in the first phase in some parts of the country. From what we know so far, a zabardast (massive) wave for phir ek baar Modi Sarkar (Modi government again) is visible.

Polling for the seven-phase general elections ends on May 19 and the results will be declared on May 23.

Apart from Andhra Pradesh, there were reports of violence from other states as well. In Maharashtra, Naxals triggered an IED blast near a polling booth in Waghezari area of Gadchiroli district while voting was underway, police said. There were no casualties. Later in the day, two police commandos escorting a poll party were injured in an IED blast in Etapalli in the district.

In the Naxal stronghold of Chhattisgarh, four guerrillas were arrested and firearms seized from them in Bijapur district while the poll process was underway.

In Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh, BSF personnel fired in the air at a polling booth when some people, who were not carrying their identity cards, tried to forcibly enter the premises to cast their votes, police said.

There were reports of EVM glitches and voters not being allowed to exercise their franchise as well.

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal took to Twitter and tagged people who claimed their names or the names of their relatives has been deleted from voter lists.

What is happening EC? Are these elections fair? Mr Kejriwal asked.

Anti-BJP votes deleted all across India. Reports coming from all across India that votes have been deleted on unprecedented scale. Why are all faulty EVM machines seen to be voting always for BJP? he said in a tweet.

In Jammu and Kashmir, the National Conference and the PDP alleged that uniformed personnel coerced people to vote for the BJP and EVMs malfunctioned in some places with the Congress button not working during polling in Jammus Poonch area.

PDP president Mehbooba Mufti tweeted a video showing voters raising anti-BJP slogans after they were purportedly roughed up by the BSF for not voting for the BJP.

Using armed forces at polling stations to coerce people to vote for the BJP shows their desperation & hunger to usurp power by hook or crook, PDP president Mehbooba Mufti said in her tweet.

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Police women kept verifying identities of burqa-clad women as villagers reached polling stations in tractors and bullock carts.

Muzaffarnagar: Despite sounding confident, the BJP is keeping its fingers crossed in the communally sensitive sugar belt in Western Uttar Pradesh as voters in eight seats, with a considerable population of Jats and Muslims, cast their ballot on Thursday in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections.

Brisk polling took place in the agrarian belt, including Muzaffarnagar, Baghpat, Bijnor, Saharanpur, Kairana and Meerut, as voters virtually leapt from their beds early in the morning and headed for polling booths. There were queues outside booths in many constituencies, with visible excitement in villages. There were some reports of names missing from voters' list and EVM "malfunctioning" in Muslim-dominated areas.

Police women kept verifying identities of burqa-clad women as villagers reached polling stations in tractors and bullock carts.

We did not face any problem at the poll booth, said Roshni, a first-time voter from a college in Muzzaffarnagar city, who braved the scorching sun to exercise her franchise.

The mighty combination of SP-BSP-RLD is looking to seek a sweet revenge in the region for the 2014 washout by the BJP that has been alarmed by the RSS internal report saying that it is likely to lose six of the eight seats it won in the last election. By the final hour of voting, the new alliance appeared confident of accomplishing its mission of puncturing the BJPs Vijay Rath.

Distressed cane farmers in the region are said to be unhappy with the BJP government for not getting them their sugar mill dues amounting to Rs 22,000 crore that have been pending for over an year. The voting pattern in this belt is crucial as it sets the tone for the entire state and the Hindi belt. The Narendra Modi wave in 2014 had started from this region itself following major Jat-Muslim riots in Muzzafarnagar in 2013.

In Muzaffarnagar, farmer leader Chaudhary Ajit Singh of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the common candidate of the SP-BSP-RLD alliance, is pitted against former Union minister and sitting BJP MP Sanjeev Balyan. Mr Balyan was accused by the rival camp of playing a role in the 2013 communal violence in Muzzaffarnagar that laid the foundation for polarisation of votes that resulted in the saffron party winning all eight seats in the belt in 2014 polls.

After meetings with party workers on polling day, Chaudhary Ajit Singh exuded confidence of a win. Arithmatically, the SP-BSP-RLD combination is unbeatable, Ajit Singh told The Asian Age, dismissing fears that supporters of SP and BSP were confused as they were looking for symbols of their respective parties' instead of RLD's handpump election symbol on EVMs.

The ECs security observer and the administration remained on tenterhooks in the entire sugar belt on the poll-eve and throughout the voting day after a minor flare up between two rival camps of Jats in Bijnor constituency on Wednesday night.

Sources said that there were reports of poll-eve freebies, including biryani, doing the rounds in the region which is known to explode over minor communal triggers. Two additional companies of Central forces were deployed in the region for polling security.

In Muzaffarnagar, there are approximately 16.5 lakh voters out of which five lakh are Muslims and the rest are Hindus, a majority of them Jats and Jatavs.
The coverage  which is the biggest ever embarked upon by the national broadcaster  is also being telecast on its channel DD India simultaneously.

Sources stated that special programmes have also begun airing on DD News since the day the Election Commission of India announced the initiation of the poll processs in the country.

New Delhi: The public service broadcaster, Doordarshan, has made unprecedented arrangements for the impartial and extensive coverage of 2019 Lok Sabha electoral process. Doordarshan News, has made provision for coverage of elections from all states, deploying reporters and dozens of live broadcast DSNG vans across the country to facilitate extensive coverage of the electoral process.

With the digital penetration of the country at an all time high, tor the first time ever a provision has been also been made for a simultaneous coverage and live telecast of the DD News feed on social media sites like YouTube and FaceBook.

The coverage  which is the biggest ever embarked upon by the national broadcaster  is also being telecast on its channel DD India simultaneously.

Sources stated that special programmes have also begun airing on DD News since the day the Election Commission of India announced the initiation of the poll processs in the country. Distinct programmes like Janadesh are aired daily on issues related to the voters, another programme Janmat is aired on the weekends, while Election Express tries to provide ground reports from various Lok Sabha constituencies. Sources pointed out that DD News was perhaps the only news channel that had deployed reportes in all states of North East India, Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep islands.

It is learnt that reporters and programming staff of the channel had conducted dry runs of the broadcast process for over a fortnight in an effort to provide a glitch free telecast of the entire process, that is scheduled to take place over a period of almost two months.

The Lok Sabha polls for 543 constituencies is being held in seven phases for which the counting is scheduled for May 23.

Voting for the first phase of polls was conducted across 91 Lok Sabha constituencies spread across 18 states and two Union territories on Thursday.
Following media reports on the issue, director of the Special Protection Group was asked to carry out a detail investigation into the incident.

New Delhi: Home ministry and security agencies have ruled out any threat to the life of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in the wake of reports that a green laser light was pointed at his head, which could have come from a sniper rifle, during a roadshow in Amethi on Wednesday.

The green laser light, which triggered security concerns regarding the Congress president, was later found to be from a mobile phone and not a sniper rifle.

Following media reports on the issue, director of the Special Protection Group (SPG) was asked to carry out a detail probe into the incident. SPG is tasked with providing security cover to Mr Gandhi and some other members of his family. SPG, a highly trained security unit, is also responsible for providing close proximity security to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

An indepth review of the incident conducted by SPG security experts revealed that the green laser light pointing tow-ards Mr Gandhi in some media clippings was found to be from a mobile phone which was being used by an AICC photographer who was videographing the impromptu press interaction of the Congress leader.

This interaction took place near the collectorate in Amethi and there was a huge crowd at the venue.

Senior home ministry officials claimed that as soon as they got information about the incident, they immediately alerted the SPG and directed them to ascertain what exactly happened.

Senior Congress leaders like Randeep Surjewala and Abhishek Manu Singhvi denied that the party had written any letter to the home ministry regarding a possible breach of Mr Gandhis security. Even the home ministry spokesperson clarified that the ministry has not received any communication from the Congress in this regard.

Earlier there were reports that the Congress had accused the Uttar Pradesh administration of an alarming lapse, and written to the Union home ministry asking it to probe and neutralise the threat, if any.

Reports had earlier on Thursday claimed that in a letter to the home ministry, the Congress had enclosed a security video of Mr Gandhi's media interaction, which showed a spot of green light on the temple of the 48-year-old party chief.

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Rahul says he is perfectly happy in case Modi govt takes action against him.

New Delhi: Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was "not invincible" and it will become clear after the Lok Sabha elections.

He also said that he would be "perfectly happy" in case Mr Modi wants to take any action against him over allegations of corruption.

Talking to reporters in Rae Bareli, after his mother and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi filed her nomination papers, Rahul Gandhi said that Mr Modi had not done anything in the last five years.

He said there have been many people in the history who thought they are invincible but history proved otherwise.

"His invincibility will be in full view after the Lok Sabha polls," Rahul Gandhi said.

When asked to comment whether Mr Modi was "invincible", Ms Sonia Gandhi said not at all, adding that the 2004 elections should not be forgotten.

Replying to questions about allegations of corruption against the Congress, the party chief said, "I am perfectly happy if Modi takes any action against me."

He added that Mr Modi should answer his "three-four questions" as he reiterated his dare to the Prime Minister for a debate on the Rafale deal.

"The day he holds a debate with me, he will not be able to look into the eyes of people."

Referring to Wednesday's developments in the Supreme Court on the Rafale issue, he said Mr Modi should answer why the top court "has started investigation" in the matter.

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous judgment, on Wednesday rejected the preliminary objections raised by the Central government and as a result, will hear the Rafale review petitions on merits. The court will also look into the published documents.

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Hamlin Kicks Off Mission 600 with Tour of USS San Jacinto at Naval Station Norfolk

Posted by: newsla on Apr 12, 2019 - 06:06 PM Hamlin Kicks Off Mission 600 with Tour of USS San Jacinto at Naval Station Norfolk



It was Anchors Away for Charlotte Motor Speedway and Mission 600 on Thursday, as Coca-Cola Racing Family driver Denny Hamlin made a pit stop at Naval Station Norfolk for an interactive tour of the USS San Jacinto. During his visit, Hamlin met with sailors and toured the 567-foot-long guided-missile cruiser  which fired the opening shots of Operation Desert Storm and, more recently, provided support to Hurricane Irma relief efforts last year.



Hamlin, a Virginia native, participated in a ship handling trainer simulation, which gave the veteran driver an in-depth education in maneuvering a warship at sea. Hamlin also took part in a weapon-firing training scenario and launched a simulated Tomahawk cruise missile from the USS San Jacintos combat information center (CIC), which serves as the tactical command center for long-range strike capability in battle.



Its amazing how fast things happen here and how well everyone is trained, Hamlin said. I cant say enough about representing the military at the race track. Seeing the sailors out here who are protecting our country is amazing to see. I got to take the helm and shoot a couple of missiles, which was awesome, but really for me its about honoring these guys and seeing the work they put in to continue to defend our freedom. This is the ultimate display of teamwork if there ever is one. You see everyone working in sync and theyre trained in all sorts of things in case chaos breaks loose. Its great to see the teamwork they put in and its something the race teams look at and say, How can we make ourselves better? based on what they do here.



Theres so much work and effort that goes into defending our freedom. For us, in NASCAR, we do a great job of paying tribute to the military and really nothing is like what Charlotte does on Memorial Day weekend. The Salute to the Troops is amazing and so is the Troops to the Track program. All you have to do is go to the garage and see all the American flags hanging on the pit boxes and haulers to see what the military means to us.



Captain Dennis Farrell, the commanding officer of the ship, and its crew of 334 sailors hosted Hamlin, who received a USS San Jacinto sailors ballcap and an American flag that flew on the ship to commemorate his visit. He took the helm on the bridge, where sailors navigate and maneuver the ship. Hamlin also donned head-to-feet firefighter gear and went through a fire training scenario.



Hamlins visit marked the first of the year for Mission 600 with Charlotte Motor Speedway in conjunction with the Department of Defense. Mission 600 incorporates all five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces with Coca-Cola Racing Family driver trips before the historic 60th running of the Coca-Cola 600 on May 26. The trips will also serve as a platform to support the #KnowYourMil initiative.



The Coca-Cola 600 also serves as the opening for the NASCAR Salutes initiative. In a 600 Miles of Remembrance tribute, every race cars windshield will carry the name of a fallen serviceman or servicewoman. Hamlins windshield will carry the name of U.S. Navy Ensign Sarah Mitchell, a native of Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, and Virginia Tech graduate who was stationed aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109) which is also stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. Mitchell passed away in July of 2018.



Itd mean a lot to me (to win with her name on the car), Hamlin said. Obviously, this is a special area for me since I grew up racing in this area. Nothing would make me prouder to represent (Mitchell) and her family than being in Victory Lane at the Coca-Cola 600. Thats a big one on my list Id love to check off. Ive finished second there a few times. Getting a win is certainly high on the priority list, but the most important thing is were out there paying tribute to our military.



Along with Mission 600s thrilling build-up to the Coca-Cola 600, thousands of troops will join fans in the race-day festivities, which will include static military displays and interactive showcases in the Fan Zone. Additionally, 600 troops comprised of members from all five branches of the U.S. Armed Forces will be on the frontstretch during pre-race activities.



Mission 600 kicks off the festivities, with upcoming visits tentatively slated to feature Ryan Newman at Fort Bragg on April 17; Bubba Wallace at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base on April 23; Kyle Larson at Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island on April 29; and Austin Dillon at U.S. Coast Guard Station Wrightsville Beach on April 30.



Through the speedways Patriot Partners program, race fans or corporate customers can buy a ticket for a member of the U.S. Armed Forces for just $25. Tickets will be distributed to active-duty personnel and their families through the USO.



Prior to the green flag, ticketholders to the Coca-Cola 600 can also enjoy a FREE pre-race concert featuring Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Cheap Trick.



PaddockTalk Perspective




The final figure on polling percentage in the booth may go up, sources in district election office (DEO) in Dantewada said.

The MLA's mobile phone is missing and it might have been taken by Naxals, the official said. (Image: AP)

Raipur: The polling booth in Shyamgiri under Kuakonda block in Chhattisgarhs south Bastar district of Dantewada where local BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi was killed along with four jawans in a Maoist Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast on April nine, on Thursday witnessed a record polling of around 78 percent.

The polling booth is a part of Bastar (ST) Lok Sabha constituency which went to polls in the first phase of parliamentary elections in Chhattisgarh on Thursday.

The final figure on polling percentage in the booth may go up, sources in district election office (DEO) in Dantewada said.

Tribal voters in the village of Shyamgiri were seen standing in queue at the polling booth since morning to exercise their franchise. They poured into the polling Centre in full strength defying the Maoists call to boycott poll. The convoy of the BJP MLA was attacked by Maoists at a place barely one km from Shyamgiri where he had gone to attend a tribal fair on the fateful day.

His bullet-proof SUV was blown up in an IED blast by Maoists while he was on way from Shyamgiri to Nakulnar, leading to his death along with four jawans accompanying him.

In show of grit and defiance, grief-stricken family members of the slain BJP MLA on Thursday reached the polling booth in their village of Gadapal in Dantewada district to exercise their franchise.

The deceased MLAs widow Ojoswi Mandavi and his father Linga Mandavi were seen standing in a long queue of voters in the booth to cast vote. They were accompanied by the slain MLAs four minor children. There were 1100 voters in the village.

In Errabore village under south Bastar district of Sukma, tribals were seen standing in long queue since morning to cast their votes.

Errabore had hogged limelight when Maoists stormed a relief camp opened for members of now banned Salwa Judum, an anti-Naxal civil vigilante force, in the night of July 18, 2006 killing 31 inmates including an infant and a six-year-old girl, and injuring 70 others.

Keep yourself updated on Lok Sabha Elections 2019 with our round-the-clock coverage -- breaking news, updates, analyses etc all. Happy reading.
The Order of St Andrew the Apostle is the highest state decoration of Russia, the official said.

Modi has been conferred with the award for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India, the official said. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Thursday named for the 'Order of St Andrew the Apostle' award by Russia for exceptional services in promoting bilateral ties between the two countries, a Russian embassy official said.

The Order of St Andrew the Apostle is the highest state decoration of Russia, the official said.

Modi has been conferred with the award for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India, the official said.
Writing the judgment, Justice Shah said that such incidents are on the increase nowadays and that these are offences against the society.

New Delhi: In a significant verdict the Supreme Court has held that a person having sex with a woman on the promise of marrying her will amount to rape and her consent will be of no consequence as it is obtained by fraud.

Giving this ruling, a Bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao and M.R. Shah said this kind of consent obtained by the accused cannot be said to be any consent because she was under the misconception that the accused intends to marry her, therefore, she submitted to sexual intercourse with him. This kind of consent taken by the accused with clear intention not to fulfil the promise and persuading the girl to believe that he is going to marry her and obtained her consent for the sexual intercourse under total misconception cannot be treated as consent.

Writing the judgment, Justice Shah said that such incidents are on the increase nowadays and that these are offences against the society. Rape is the most morally and physically reprehensible crime in a society, an assault on the body, mind and privacy of the victim. As observed by this court in a catena of decisions, while a murderer destr-oys the physical frame of the victim, a rapist degrades and defiles the soul of a helpless female, the court observed.

The Bench, slapping a seven-year imprisonment on the appellant doctor Anurag Soni, said rape reduces a woman to an animal as it shakes the very core of her life. By no means can a rape victim be called an accomplice. Rape leaves a permanent scar on the life of the victim. Rape is a crime against the entire society and violates the human rights of the victim. Being the most hated crime, rape is tantamount to a serious blow to the supreme honour of a woman, and offends both her esteem and dignity, the court said.

The Bench noted that merely because the accused had married another lady and/or even the prosecutrix subsequently married is no ground not to convict the appellant accused of the offence punishable under Section 376 of the IPC. The appellant accused must face the consequences of the crime committed by him, the court said.

In such cases, the bench said the trial courts must very carefully examine whether the complainant had actually wanted to marry the victim or had malafide motives and had made a false promise to this effect only to satisfy his lust, as the latter fell within the ambit of cheating or deception.

The prosecution case was that the prosecutrix was the resident of Koni, Bilaspur. She was familiar with the accused doctor since 2009 and there was a love affair between them. The appellant had even proposed marriage to her and this fact known to their respective family members. But he lured her on the promise of marriage, had sex with her and then refused to marry.

On a complaint of rape, the trial court and the Chattisgarh high court awarded 10 years imprisonment and in the present appeal the apex court reduced the sentence to seven years.
Clashes were reported between the two main rivals the volatile Rayalaseema and Palnadu regions.

The voting percentage was put at 80, which is be revised today. (Photo: PTI)

Vijayawada: Two persons died in clashes between YSRC and TDP workers in Rayalaseema during Thursdays elections to 175 Assembly segments and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies in Andhra Pradesh.

Clashes were also reported between the two main rivals the volatile Rayalaseema and Palnadu regions. There were incidents of EVM damage and stone pelting in many centres.

The voting percentage was put at 80, which will be revised on Friday. This is higher than the 78.4 per cent registered in 2014.

Polling was affected by about 400 EVMs malfunctioning across the state, and voting was expected to continue till midnight in Mangalgiri where minister and TDP candidate Nara Lokesh, the son of AP chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, is contsting.

Mr Naidu alleged that YSRC leaders and workers were creating chaos in polling booths. He said the Election Commission and police had failed to stop the violence of YSRC workers. He also expressed his displeasure over malfunctioning of EVMs at various places.

Long queues were witnessed at almost all the polling booths across the state as early as 7 am. Many of them were disappointed when EVMs did not function. Polling was delayed by three hours at some centres, forcing voters to suffer under the scorching sun.

Around 45,900 EVMs were used for Assembly and Lok Sabha elections and problems were reported in about 400 of them, said AP Chief Election Officer (CEO) Gopala Krishna Dwivedi, who faced an embarrassing situation when the VVPAT did not work when he went to vote.

Officials corrected 310 EVMs, and another 52 EVMs were found to be technically problematic.

Both TDP and YSRC had approached CEO and accused each other of malpractices and rioting. TD has demanded repolling in 200 booths

The YSRC said one of its actvists was attacked with sickles by TDP cadres and killed in Veerapuram of Tadipatri constituency in Anantapur.

The TD said its activist Siddha Bhaskar Reddy was killed by YSRC cadres in Veerapuram.

The YSRC said its supporter B.R. Venkatrami Reddy of Thambalapalle of Chittoor district died when he was hit on the chest with a stone during clashes.

A total of 3,93,45,717 voters were registered in the state, 1,94,62,339 male, 1,98,79,421 female and 3,957 transgenders. About 10.15 lakh are first-time voters in the age group 18-19.

Mr Naidu and his family cast their vote at a polling booth in Undavalli. Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan reportedly broke the queue and voted in Patamata. YSRC chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and his family voted in their family bastion Pulivendula in Kadapa district.

After casting the vote, Mr Reddy told the media that his appeal was vote without fear and vote for change. Asked about income-tax raids, he said unaccounted money was bound to invite action,

About the transfer for the Director-General of Police, he said the EC had not considered the YSRCs genuine demand. He said that in 2009, the TD had complained to the Election Commission to change the DGP and the EC has conceded the demand and shifted the DGP in undivided AP. In the same spirit of democracy we have complained but the EC did not respond, he said.

Mr Kalyan said about 10 per cent of EVMs did not function across the state and it is the responsibility of the Election Commission to ensure free and fair poll without any confusion.
The apex court, while hearing the appeal, told petitioner Pandit Amar Nath Misra to 'stop poking' around with the issue.

Supreme Court said Friday while dismissing a plea seeking permission to carry out religious activities in nine ancient temples situated on the undisputed acquired land adjacent to Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid site at Ayodhya. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: "You will never let this country remain in peace," the Supreme Court said Friday while dismissing a plea seeking permission to carry out religious activities in nine ancient temples situated on the undisputed acquired land adjacent to Ram Janambhoomi-Babri Masjid site at Ayodhya.

"There will always be something," said a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna.

The bench was hearing an appeal filed against the January 10 order of the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court, which had dismissed the plea seeking its nod to offer prayer in the nine temples there and had also imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on the petitioner.

The apex court, while hearing the appeal, told petitioner Pandit Amar Nath Misra to "stop poking" around with the issue.

Misra, who is a social activist, had claimed before the high court that authorities have turned a "blind eye" to the initiation of religious activities in ancient temples which are situated on the acquired but undisputed land in Ayodhya since last 25 years.

The apex court recently appointed a panel of mediators headed by former top court judge Justice F M I Kalifulla for exploring the possibility of an amicable settlement to the vexatious land dispute.

Spiritual guru and founder of Art of Living Foundation Sri Sri Ravishankar and senior advocate Sriram Panchu, a renowned mediator, are the other two members of the panel of mediators.

Fourteen appeals have been filed in the apex court against the 2010 Allahabad High Court judgment, delivered in four civil suits, that the 2.77-acre land in Ayodhya be partitioned equally among the three parties  the Sunni Waqf Board, the Nirmohi Akhara and Ram Lalla.

On December 6, 1992, the Babri Masjid, constructed at the disputed site in the 16th century by Shia Muslim Mir Baqi, was demolished.
Former Army Vice Chief Lt. Gen. M.L. Naidu (retd) also said his consent was not taken before listing his name as one of the signatories.

New Delhi: A major controversy broke over a purported letter written by 156 military veterans to President Ram Nath Kovind expressing outrage over the use of the armed forces for political purposes, while some ex-service chiefs named in the letter denied any connection with the campaign.

Seeking Mr Kovinds intervention in preserving the apolitical character of the services, the letter, dated April 11, carries names of eight former service chiefs but two of them  former Army Chief General S.F. Rodrigues (retd) and Air Chief Marshal N.C. Suri (retd)  said they have not signed it. Former Army Vice Chief Lt. Gen. M.L. Naidu (retd) also said his consent was not taken before listing his name as one of the signatories.

All my life, weve been apolitical. After, 42 years as an officer, its a little late to change. Always put India first. Dont know who these people are  a classic manifestation of fake news, said Gen. Rodrigues, distancing himself from the campaign.

Air Chief Marshal Suri said, I dont agree with whatever has been written in that letter. We have been misquoted.

However, the military veterans behind the campaign claim that they have email evidence to show that General Rodrigues and Air Chief Marshal Suri did endorse the letter.

The government condemned the campaign with defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying, Two senior officers said they have not given consent, worrying that fake letters being signed by vested groups. It is condemnable. Rashtrapati Bhavan has also said that they have not received the letter.

The Congress attacked the government over the issue. Prime Minister Narendra Modi may try to use soldiers for votes, but its clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP. 156 veterans of the Indian armed forces including eight former Chiefs of staff write to the President of India urging him to act against Modi for trying to use soldiers for votes.

When contacted, several veterans, including former Army Chiefs Gen. Deepak Kapoor (retd) and Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury (retd), acknowledged writing the letter. Former Navy Chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta (retd) also told a news website that he had signed the letter.

The letter also lists former Navy Chiefs Admiral L. Ramdas (retd), Admiral Arun Prakash (retd) and Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (retd) as signatories.

The letter complained about the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be Modiji ki Sena, a reference to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanaths remark at a political rally in Ghaziabad on March 31.

This is in addition to media pictures of election platforms and campaigns in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms and posters and images with pictures of soldiers and specially of IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, displayed, said the letter.

The veterans warned that such misuse of the armed forces would impinge adversely on the morale and fighting efficiency of the serving man or woman in uniform.

The letter was mailed to the official email ID of the Rashtrapati Bhavan with copies to the Election Commission.

As Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, the letter appealed to the President to ensure that the secular and apolitical character of the Armed forces is preserved.

The apolitical and secular nature of Indias armed forces has been an article of faith for every soldier, sailor and airman, it said.

The veterans urged the President to direct all political parties to desist from using the military for political purposes or to further their political agendas.
President Vladimir Putin signed an executive order conferring the award on Mr Modi., the Russian government said.

New Delhi: In yet another top foreign honour, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Friday awarded the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, the highest state decoration of Russia, for promoting deeper cooperation between India and Russia.

President Vladimir Putin signed an executive order conferring the award on Mr Modi., the Russian government said.

On April 12, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was decorated with the Order of St Andrew the Apostle  the highest state decoration of Russia  for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between the Russian Federation and the Republic of India and friendly relations between the Russian and Indian peoples.

According to news agency reports, the foreign awardees of the award have included President of China Xi Jinping, and (then) President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev. The award ceremony is usually held at the St Andrew Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

The Order was reportedly established in 1698 by Tsar Peter the Great, in honour of Saint Andrew, the first apostle of Jesus and patron saint of Russia.

Recently, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had decided to confer the countrys highest civilian award The Order of Zayed on Mr Modi as a recognition for his leadership to develop strategic partnership between India and the UAE.

Mr Modi had in February received the Seoul Peace Prize for 2018 in South Korea in recognition of his dedication to improving international cooperation, raising global economic growth, accelerating the human development of the people of India.

In April 2016, Mr Modi was given Saudi Arabias highest civilian honour, the King Abdulaziz Sash.
The rebels had called for the boycott of polls to protest against the lack of development in the region.

As many as 15 booths in Maoist-affected Malkangiri district registered zero polling following threats by the Red radicals. (Representational image)

Bhubaneswar: As Odisha voted in the first phase of polls on Thursday for not only the Lok Sabha (LS) but also for the state Assembly, all eyes are now riveted on the final voter turnout in 2019 elections.

Though preliminary data by the chief electoral officer (CEO) Bhubaneswar estimated the poll percentage in the first phase of polling in Odisha at 66 per cent, it is likely to touch 70 per cent after the compilation of final figures.

As many as 15 booths in Maoist-affected Malkangiri district registered zero polling following threats by the Red radicals. The rebels had called for the boycott of polls to protest against the lack of development in the region.

As reports received from the ground suggested great enthusiasm among voters spread across the four LS constituencies and 28 Assembly constituencies (AC), the gusto to vote was discernible in constituencies like Berhampur, which had recorded a lower turnout of around 48 per cent in 2009.

Long queues were noticed prior to the starting of polling hours at 8 AM in tribal constituencies like Nabarangpur and Koraput. The passion of voters was noticeable in Kalahandi too. Nabarangpur, Kalahandi and Koraput are constituencies to watch out for in the first phase of polls.

EC data till 7 pm suggested a voter turnout of around 53 per cent in Kalahandi and 55 per cent in Koraput, respectively. Till 6 pm Nabarangpur witnessed a poll percentage of 50 per cent.
PDP chief reacts to BJP seeking her arrest over highway remark.

SRINAGAR: The BJP on Thursday demanded the arrest of former chief minister and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti after accusing her of instigating people to break law.

FIR should be registered against her for statements to instigate the public to defy vehicular ban on (Srinagar-Jammu) highway on Wednesdays and Sundays, the chief spokesperson of the J&K unit of the BJP, Sunil Sethi, said while speaking to reporters in winter capital Jammu. He added, We demand the arrest of Mehbooba Mufti for instigating public to break law. He accused the BJPs former ally of creating chaos for pity political gains.

Reacting to the BJPs demand, the PDP leader said she is not made of a wood that burns easily and, therefore cannot be scared by such tactics and threats.

BJP wants me arrested for instigating Kashmiris to defy a callous ban that prohibits them from using their own roads. But such tactics & threats wont scare me. They forget I am not made of a wood that burns easily, she tweeted.

The Jammu and Kashmir government had on April 3 issued an order banning civilian traffic movement from 4 am to 5 pm for two days  Sunday and Wednesday  every week until May 31 on the vital highway connecting the Kashmir Valley with rest of the country to facilitate the movement of security forces convoys. The move has been widely resented by Kashmiri political parties, trade organisations and civil society groups terming it callous, absurd and anti people. The Army has distanced itself from the governments decision and said that it was not taken onboard on the issue.

Ms Mufti had while speaking at a protest demonstration against the ban here on Wednesday asked the people to defy the diktat by running their vehicles on the highway on Wednesdays and Sundays to reach wherever you have to. She said that schoolchildren and sick people were suffering because of this dictatorial and imprudent decision of the government.
Rahul Gandhi also slammed the Modi led-BJP government for indulging in hate politics against the people of Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu: The Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) will help Indias 20 per cent poor people without harming the economy, said Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Madurai on Friday.

Some months back we started a process of trying to figure out how much money we can give to the poor people of the country. I asked P Chidambaram some months back that give me a number and do not give me a long list and a big theory, he said.

I asked how much money we can give to the poor without harming the economy. The answer was Rs 72,000 per year to 20 per cent of Indias poorest families, said Rahul, asserting that Congress manifesto represents the voice of Indias people.

Gandhi, who was addressing an election rally, said: People appreciated our manifesto. In our discussions during the manifesto building process, people told us about NEET. They don't like its imposition on Tamil people. They told us of a young Tamil girl Anitha who committed suicide due to this.

If you read our manifesto, you will find a line in her memory. The line sayswe will not impose NEET on the youngsters of this state. It seems like a small line in the manifesto but it is actually an expression of the people of Tamil Nadu, he said.

He said that the 2109 Lok Sabha elections are a clash between two ideologies.

The Congress party is in favour of different ideas, different history, perspectives, different languages, different culture should live happily together and all voices must be heard. RSS and BJP say that only one idea should govern India, he said.

Cong manifesto is not Man Ki Baat, its Kam ki Baat: Rahul Gandhi

Taking a veiled dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's radio talk programme, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday evening's rally at Theni said his party's manifesto was not the "Man Ki Baat of one megalomaniac" but talked about work of the nation.

Addressing an election rally in this southern town in Tamil Nadu, he claimed Congress manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls was the voice of the entire nation and he was happy that many people lauded it.

"Congress manifesto is not the "Man Ki Baat of one megalomaniac this is Kam ki Baat (a talk about work) of the nation," he said.

He accused the Prime Minister of pursuing "negative economics" and said people's purchasing power collapsed and it led to goods left lying in factories.

In an apparent reference to allegations that the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu was subservient to the BJP, the Congress president said he was surprised Modi was 'convinced' he can run the state from Delhi.

"He has no idea of Tamil Nadu. I don't think this man has read anything about Tamil history. I dont think he understands Tamil language. He certainly does not under stand the Tamil spirit."

Also, may be a "few books of Karunanidhi ji. The gentleman has no idea of what Tamil Nadu is...I am confident our alliance is going to win," he said.

Rahul mocks PM's Make in India, says Made in China rules

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday afternoon mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" slogan, saying the country's market was now flooded with Chinese products in a rally at Tamil Nadu's Salem.

"He gave you an empty slogan called Make in India but wherever we look we see Made in China products," he said. Be it phone, shoes or shirt "you see made in China," he added. "Now we want real made in India and real made in Tamil Nadu," Gandhi said.

Under Modi, "Make in India" if a young Tamil entrepreneur wanted to start a business he had to knock on the doors of different government offices where "he had to pay bribes," the Congress chief alleged. "By the time he got his permissions the business is already failed," he said.

They could take the permission once the business was established and till such time the focus could be on making the business work and consolidating it, Gandhi said. "Once your business is established take permission."

"But when Tamil farmers are protesting in Jantar Mantar, he has not got even one word to say. They have to take off their clothes and still, he does not pay any attention. He does not have the decency to call them and ask them why they were upset."

The Prime Minister could also be seen sitting with Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya, but not with any poor person, he alleged. "There is not a single picture of the Prime Minister with a poor farmer or owner of a small business," the Congress chief charged.

Tamil Nadu will not be ruled from Nagpur, Stalin will be CM: Rahul

Earlier on Friday in a public rally in Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri, Rahul Gandhi slammed the Modi led-BJP government for indulging in hate politics against the people of the state and claimed he would launch a surgical strike on poverty if brought to power.

BJP wanted to indulge in hate politics against the people of Tamil Nadu. Without love, we cannot win the hearts of the people of this state, said Rahul Gandhi here.

Accusing the ruling party in the state, Rahul promised Tamil Nadu would be ruled from here and M K Stalin would be the CM.

We will not allow Tamil Nadu to be ruled from Nagpur. The state will be ruled from here, and Stalin will be the chief minister of the state, said Rahul Gandhi while concluding his address to the public in the state.

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Listen to Casey Dreier and Brendan Curry, the Planetary Society's Chief of Washington Space Operations, discuss the 2024 lunar landing goal in this episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio.

But even if the money shows up, there are a number of reasons to be skeptical about the 2024 timeline. There are also a few reasons to be optimistic. And it is at this point that my Chief Advocate self and my Policy Adviser self part ways. My advocate self very much wants this to happen, but my skeptical policy self considers it unlikely.

Reasons to be Skeptical

The Timeline

Five years is not a lot of time. When John F. Kennedy called for the nation to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth, his advisers recommended a timeline of before the decade is out in order to give NASA some additional slack and to shift a possible failure into the next Presidency (his second term would have ended in 1968).

From his announcement in April of 1961, NASA had approximately 8  years to develop, test, and validate the necessary hardware and methods for getting astronauts onto the Moon and safely returning them home. They succeeded, but had the money and the political consensus that enabled them to do so. But they also had 3 more years than NASA does now. Granted NASA is much more capable now than in 1961, but many of the same deficiencies exist: there is no functional heavy-lift rocket, no functional spacecraft for deep space, and no lunar lander even under formulation. Humans haven't been beyond low Earth orbit in 47 years. NASA now has five years to change that.

The Hardware

Human-rated space hardware is extremely complex and is subject to significant oversight in terms of safety and reliability. The last time NASA successfully designed, tested, and flew human-rated space hardware in less than five years was during the Apollo program.

Obviously, NASA has far more knowledge and experience for placing humans in space than it did in 1961, but it is primarily for operations in a low Earth orbit environment. Necessary hardware such as the SLS and Orion are still in the development and testing phase, not production, and a lunar lander project will have to ramp up from effectively zero. Even if NASA uses public-private partnerships to develop a lunar lander, all one needs to do is look at the commercial crew program to be reminded that this strategy provides no magic bullet for the timely development of crew-capable spacecraft.

The availability of commercial rockets, however, is a notable difference compared to the early 1960s, though size and mass constraints will be a real issue as they primarily serve customers in low Earth orbit. The Falcon Heavy is currently not rated to fly important NASA payloads, and though rockets like SpaceX's Super Heavy and Blue Origin's New Glenn should exist in coming years, for now, they don't.

The Money

The year after Kennedy's speech to Congress, NASA's budget nearly doubled. In 1963 it doubled again. It eventually peaked in 1965 at roughly $42 billion in today's dollars, with the majority of funds supporting Project Apollo. Yet political support waned by the mid-1960s and effectively vanished by the end of the decade. NASA's budget tumbled as a result. The funding level was unsustainable.

I have no idea how much it will cost to accelerate a lunar landing to 2024. No one does. NASA is working on it, and we will see how much they expect it to cost (or, more accurately, what they're allowed to ask for) when they submit a supplemental budget request next month. Whatever the increase, it must be sustained over the next five years (or longer to build up a permanent presence) for there to be any hope of success.

Given the upcoming clashes on overall levels of government spending, particularly given the number of proposed cuts for issues important to the Democratic party and the return of the automatic budget cuts of the sequester this year, it will be a difficult slog to get a budget at allmuch less one that significantly increases NASA funding.

The Politics

The sudden interest in accelerating this program is itself a worrying sign for how long this attention will last. Could the president lose interest just as quickly? It's not impossible, particularly if the cost estimates turn out to be high. Fortunately, vice president Pence is a stabilizing force in the White House, which should help maintain focus.

There is also the possibility that lavishing funds on NASA while proposing cuts to other agencies could create political hostility to the effort. I have also written about the political risks of tying a policy proposal tightly to a President because it can incite partisan opposition. Congressional Democrats, who now run the House of Representatives, have already expressed skepticism at the sudden change of pace, and it remains to be seen if significant opposition materializes from the opposing party, as it did against the Space Exploration Initiative under George H.W. Bush.

There is also the fact that not so long ago NASA was shut down with the majority of its 18,000 employees furloughed without pay for five weeks. The immigration issue that drove that shutdown has not yet been resolved, and is likely to return again. NASA can only move so fast when it is subject to arbitrary closures, furloughs, and short-term budget extensions.

Reasons to be optimistic

The Politics

Regardless of one's personal opinions of the current executive branch leadership, they demonstrate a real and ongoing interest in space issues. In the past, presidents have dropped into a NASA center, made soaring speeches about space, and then moved on. Vice President Pence, on the contrary, has shown ongoing interest in the space program. His March speech demonstrates that he is closely following NASA's progress and is willing to express his (and the president's) displeasure. This sort of public pressure is unprecedented in recent history and has the potential to push the workforce of NASA and its contractors to perform better.

In addition, a Republican president has the ability to marshal his party in Congress to support domestic spending measures in a manner impossible for a Democratic president, by the very nature of their partisan alignment (or unalignment). If spending-averse members of Congress do not resist increased funding for NASA due to their alignment with their party's president, NASA is more likely to gain the additional resources necessary to enable this effort.

The Commercial Sector

If commercial rockets are the only way to get American astronauts to the Moon in the next five years, then commercial rockets it will be, said the vice president. Commercial rockets are indeed in the cards, and a new generation of launch vehicles are just around the corner.

Competition between companies for fixed-price or milestone-based contracts for lunar landers, crew vehicles, or other related components could help speed up development, particularly if NASA steps back and lessens its direct oversight. This doesn't guarantee success by any means. Again, look at the struggles of Boeing and SpaceX for commercial crew. But it's a new factor at play. Is there a new way of doing business at the Moon? Maybe! One of the lunar lander concepts currently being explored by NASA is a 3-stage spacecraft that is partially reusable and can fit onto commercial rockets. Again this doesn't ensure success, but it presents new pathways to get there.
Forty CRPF jawans were killed in a terrorist attack in Pulwama area of Jammu and Kashmir on February 14.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee during her election campaign in Darjeeling on Thursday. (Photo: Asian Age)

Darjeeling: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday held the NDA government responsible for the Pulwama blast, claiming that the BJP-led dispensation did not take any step to thwart the attack despite having specific intelligence inputs.

Addressing a public meeting at Chauk Bazaar area here, Ms Banerjee also claimed that Indias independence and its Constitution were under threat in BJPs rule.

You (Modi) had information about the Pulwama blast. But you (Modi) failed to contain the attack. You (Modi) are responsible for the entire episode. Terrorism has increased 260 per cent in the last five years under the BJP government.

Indias Independence and its Constitution have also come under threat. People have forgotten the principles of Gandhiji, Netaji and Vivekananda, she stated.

Forty CRPF jawans were killed in a terrorist attack in Pulwama area of Jammu and Kashmir on February 14.

The Trinamul Congress (TMC) supremo asserted that the saffron party was trying to take advantage of the political turmoil in Darjeeling.

They (BJP) ignite fire in Darjeeling during polls. People in Delhi (BJP) instigated the problems here. The more the problems, the better are their chances of taking advantage of the situation The BJP does not want any progress in Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Kurseong and Mirik areas, she said.

Ms Banerjee also alleged that saffron partys outgoing MP S.S. Ahluwalia has not taken any measure to bring about development in the region.

Ahluwalia never visited the region after winning the election. The parliamentarian, who fled the Hills, is contesting from Burdwan this time, she claimed.

Urging people to cast votes for the TMC, Ms Banerjee said her party has fielded Darjeeling MLA Amar Singh Rai as its candidate for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency as it wanted a son of the soil to represent the people here.

Taking a jibe at the prime minister, the TMC chief said Narendra Modi is busy promoting himself at a time when the country is in need of security and development.

He (Modi) has become so tall a leader that he is making his biopic. He has come up with NaMo shops to sell NaMo suits... After elections, these shops will also sell NaMo slippers. All Modi has ever done is to publicise himself, Ms Banerjee added.

The TMC chief also said that Mr Modi did not live up to the promises he made before the 2014 elections.

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PC Chacko blamed the AAPs leadership for the failure of not having an alliance against the BJP in Delhi.

In a press conference, PC Chacko, AICC in-charge for Delhi said, 'AAP wants tie-up in other states but we are ready for an alliance only in Delhi.' (Photos: PTI)

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party is capable of defeating both the BJP and the Congress in Delhi and an alliance is possible with the Congress only when it will be done on 33 Lok Sabha seats, said AAP leader Gopal Rai Friday.

The AAP, in turn, wanted such an alliance to extend to Haryana and Punjab as well. "We want alliance on all 33 seats with the Congress and not three seats in Delhi. We are capable of defeating the BJP and the Congress on our own in Delhi. If an alliance has to be there, it has to be on 33 seats," Rai said.

Another AAP leader Sanjay Singh said the party was even ready to make the Congress its senior partner in Haryana, but now it has moved ahead. However, sources said there was still a slim chance of an alliance as the AAP might offer a 5:2 seat sharing formula in Delhi, where the party would contest from five seats and the Congress from two seats.

Earlier in the day, Congress announced that there will not be any alliance with Aam Aadmi Party and would contest alone in all seven seats in Delhi.

In a press conference, PC Chacko, AICC in-charge for Delhi said, AAP wants tie-up in other states but we are ready for an alliance only in Delhi.

Even today, we are ready for an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party with seat sharing arrangement of three seats to the Congress and four to them, he added.

He also blamed the AAPs leadership for the failure of not having an alliance against the BJP in Delhi.

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He is currently an MP from Unnao and has made several controversial statements in the past as well.

Unnao will go to polls, where Maharaj is seeking another term, during the fourth phase of the elections on April 29. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Bharatiya Janta Party leader Sakshi Maharaj warned voters that they would be cursed by him, if they did not vote in his favour.

Maharaj said, I am a sanyasi (monk), if you make me win, I will win; otherwise will do bhajan and kirtan in temple; but today I am here to seek your votes. I am here to beg at your door, if you refuse a sanyasi, I would take away the happiness of your family and will curse you.

The party is yet to respond to Sakshi Maharajs statement.

He is currently an MP from Unnao and has made several controversial statements in the past as well. Maharaj has now resorted to a unique yet shocking way of seeking votes.

Unnao will go to polls, where Maharaj is seeking another term, during the fourth phase of the elections on April 29.
The AAP wants the alliance to extend to Haryana and Punjab as well.

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday said that it has decided to go alone in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi after talks of an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party failed over the latters impractical demand of seeking an alliance in Haryana too.

We are compelled to fight on our own and fight alone in Delhi, the partys general secrertary in-charge of Delhi, P.C. Chacko, told the media.

He said that while the party was ready for an alliance in Delhi and had agreed to the formula of a 4:3 arrangement going by the vote share the two parties had, the situation was different in states like Haryana.

AAP leader Gopal Rai said on Friday that his is capable of defeating both the BJP and the Congress in Delhi and an alliance is possible with the Congress only when it will be done on 33 Lok Sabha seats.

The AAP wants the alliance to extend to Haryana and Punjab as well.

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Irani retaliated by saying that the more the Congress insults her, the harder she will work against it.

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday launched a scathing attack on Union minister Smriti Irani over her educational qualification calling her a serial liar and released a parody song to mock the changing affidavits on educational degrees filed in successive elections by Rahul Gandhis Amethi challenger. Ms Irani retaliated by saying that the more the Congress insults her, the harder she will work against it.

The Congress targeted Ms Irani after the BJPs Rajya Sabha MP and Union textiles minister disclosed in her nomination affidavit for the Amethi Lok Sabha seat that she had not completed her graduation. Ms Irani had made contradictory claims in her affidavit for elections in 2004, 2011 and 2014.

Seeking her resignation, the Congress claimed on Friday that Ms Irani had falsified records about her educational qualifications.

A new serial is coming, Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said at a press conference, twisting the name of Ms Iranis hugely popular TV serial Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahoo Thi dating back to 2000-2008.

Its opening line will be Qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ekdegree aati hai, ek degreejaati hai, bante affidavit naye hai (Qualifications keep changing, keep getting new forms, one degree comes, another degree goes, new affidavits keep forming), she added, partly singing the title song.

The Congress claimed that by submitting contradictory affidavits to the Election Commission, the Union minister is guilty of offence under Section 125A read with Section 33 of the Representation of People Act, besides sections of the Indian Penal Code. Section 125A of the Act pertains to penalty for filing false affidavit while Section 33 deals with the nomination and affidavit filing process, Ms Chaturvedi said.

We have no issue with the fact that Smriti Irani is not a graduate. The issue here is that she has lied repeatedly on oath and to the courts. People of India will see through these lies and give a befitting political reply to a serial liar, she said.

Responding to the Congress attack, Ms Irani on Friday said that the Congress has not left a single chance to pass derogatory remarks on her in the past five years.

In the last five years, the Congress leaders did not leave a single chance to insult and pass derogatory remarks about me. I only have one message for them: the more you insult me, the more you attack me, the harder I will work against Congress in Amethi, she said.

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Banerjees nephew and Trinamul MP of Diamond Harbour, Abhishek Banejree, echoed her a rally at Rajganj in Jalpaiguri.

Kolkata: Condemning Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for begging for votes in the name of military in the Lok Sabha election Trinamul Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Friday cautioned them to not to repeat their appeals. She also rallied her support behind more than 150 military veterans including eight chiefs from three services who complained of politicisation of forces in a letter to President Ramnath Kovind.

Ms Banerjees warning came a day after the ex-servicemens move. Addressing an election campaign rally at Kurseong in Darjeeling the West Bengal chief minister said, Not only the Gorkha Regiment, we are proud of each and every regiment because our army have done so much for our country. But we will not follow the footsteps of Mr Modi who begs for votes in the name of Army during the polls. The Army is above all like the sky.

Sending a strong message to Mr Modi she added, Do not bring disrepute to their name. I have found that several persons who once served the Army even those who were the chiefs said that whatever is happening in the name of the army is not right. I condemn it. I am with them. Referring to the PM, BJP chief and president BJP of Darjeeling Ms Banjerjee also added, Mr Modi, Mr Shah and Mr Ahluwalia, you will come and go. But those who protect the country are also ready to sacrifice their lives. This is their tradition.

Do not compare anything with them. Do not make your political identity with them. Their identity is the highest in the country.

Ms Banerjees nephew and Trinamul MP of Diamond Harbour, Abhishek Banejree, echoed her a rally at Rajganj in Jalpaiguri.

Only three days ago the PM prayed to the public to cast votes to him and BJP for the Army. I do not think anyone can be more inferior, shameless, brutal than the person who uses the martyrdom of the brave soldiers for own political interest.

He said, It is painful, tragic and unfortunate. General Shankar Roychowdhury, who signed in the letter to the President, former Army chiefit alleged, Photos of those, who have done good job in military service, are used in political rallies. We have objected to it because military has never been associated with any political party. I firmly believe that it would not happen in future also. The political parties should understand it. They may be ignoring it. They are not even caring of the Election Commission. So writing to our Commander-in-Chief was the last resort.

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Shah further said the slain MLAs widow has also demanded CBI probe into her husbands killing by Maoists.

Rajnandgaon (Chhattisgarh): BJP national president Amit Shah on Friday smelt a political conspiracy in the killing of partys MLA Bheema Mandavi in Shyamgiri in Chhattisgarhs south Bastar district of Dantewada by Maoists on Apirl nine and demanded a CBI probe into it.

Addressing an election meeting at Dongargarh in Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh, Mr Shah said that the sequence of events leading to killing of the Dantewada MLA has raised suspicion that it might be a political conspiracy to eliminate the lone party MLA of Chhattisgarhs Bastar region.

A CBI probe would alone unearth the conspiracy, he said.

He called upon Chhattisgarh chief minister Bhupesh Baghel to order a CBI probe into the incident and wondered why the state government was reluctant to hand over the investigation to CBI if there was nothing to hide in the incident.

Mr Shah further said the slain MLAs widow has also demanded CBI probe into her husbands killing by Maoists.

Mandavi along with four jawans were killed when the bullet-proof SUV in which they were travelling was blown up in a Maoist Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast at Shyamgiri in Dantewada district on April 9.

The incident took place barely 48 hours before Bastar (ST) Lok Sabha constituency went to polls in the first phase parliamentary elections in Chhattisgarh.

He was on his way to Nakulnar in the district after attending a tribal fair at Shyamgiri when the incident took place.

Former chief minister and BJP national vice-president Raman Singh too suspected a political conspiracy in the incident and demanded a CBI probe into it.

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The Trump administration regulation bars transgender people from the military unless they "correct those deficiencies."

San Diego: A Trump administration regulation set to go into effect Friday bars transgender people from the military unless they correct those deficiencies, a description the American Medical Association (AMA) said Thursday is unfair and defies science.

The AMA told The Associated Press on Thursday the policy and its wording mischaracterises transgender people as having a deficiency. It said it also objects to the Defense Department classifying the need to transition to another gender among administratively disqualifying conditions that include those the Pentagon has labelled as congenital or developmental defects.

The new regulation strips transgender troops of rights they only recently secured under the Obama administration to serve openly and receive care if they choose to transition to another gender. The Defense Department said its use of the words deficiencies is military lingo for when an individual fails to meet standards to maintain a lethal force.

It is not a reference to gender dysphoria, a condition of extreme distress from not identifying with ones biological gender, Lt Col. Carla Gleason said. The department says transgender people can serve if they remain in their biological sex. The only thing deficient is any medical science behind this decision, American Medical Association President Dr Barbara L McAneny said.

Decorated Army helicopter pilot Lindsey Muller was a plaintiff in one of four lawsuits that tried to block the policy from taking effect. But the final legal injunction was lifted in March, though new legal challenges are expected. Muller said she and other transgender troops feel demoralised.

Under our ethical standards, we cant say anything derogatory against the administration, while we are being presented in a disparaging and derogatory light, said Muller, 37, who is based in Fort Carson, Colorado. Troops like Muller, who began openly identifying as a woman in 2016, are worried they will be discharged.

The administration says it will not boot current service members who transitioned before the Pentagon issued its directive, though the government has also said it retains the right to eliminate that protection. Muller said the policy will cost the armed forces far more in terms of losing experienced personnel like herself and training replacements than any costs associated with specialised health care for trans service members.

She plans to retire from the military next year after serving 20 years. Under the new policy, a service member can be discharged based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria if he or she is unable or unwilling to adhere to all applicable standards, including the standards associated with his or her biological sex, or seeks transition to another gender.

It said the discharge should come after an individual has been formally counselled on his or her failure to adhere to such standards and has been given an opportunity to correct those deficiencies. The policy calls for troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria to be medically evaluated before discharging them to see if they qualify as having a disability.

Otherwise gender dysphoria can be considered a condition that interferes with military service like sleep walking, bed wetting, motion sickness, and personality disorders.They can dress it up in whatever words they want, but when you carefully look at this its total disrespect for these human beings by saying a core piece of them is not acceptable, former acting US Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock said.

Pollock signed a statement with three former US surgeons general and two former military surgeons general, saying they are troubled by the Defense Departments characterisation of the need to undergo gender transition as a deficiency, and by the addition of gender dysphoria to official lists of congenital or developmental defects that include bed-wetting and disturbances of perception, thinking, emotional control, or behaviour.

An estimated 14,700 troops identify as transgender. Military chiefs testified before Congress last year that they found no problems with transgender troops on morale or unit cohesion. Many have received medals since the armed forces welcomed them in 2016. Transgender troops say the regulation mirrors the dont ask, dont tell policy that prohibited gay men and women from serving openly in the armed forces before Congress repealed it in 2010.
A look at the complicated case of WikiLeaks, trying negotiate its status in intricate structures of the media world.

New York: After the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, his lawyer was quick to characterise it as an assault against the rights of journalists all over the world who seek to uncover secrets. But was it quite that clear? Does WikiLeaks do journalism, or is it something else?

The answer wasnt evident when the organisation burst into public consciousness at the top of this decade with the release of government documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems even less so now.

Launched in 2006 as the vision of Australian computer hacker Assange, WikiLeaks produced raw data, not stories, things like Sarah Palins personal emails or membership rolls of neo-Nazi organisations. The thousands of memos, cables and other documents about US war efforts revealed when Assange allegedly conspired with Chelsea Manning to break into a Pentagon computer took WikiLeaks to another level.

Some viewed Assange as a hero, others as a traitor. Either way, it was a heady time. WikiLeaks was considered a new type of news organisation, fuelled by the power of the Internet and democratisation of information.

There is a desperate need for our work, WikiLeaks member Sarah Harrison explained in a 2016 column in The New York Times. The world is connected by largely unaccountable networks of power that span industries and countries, political parties, corporations and institutions. WikiLeaks shines a light on these by revealing not just individual incidents, but information about entire structures of power.

The organisations methods can be and sometimes are seen as a threat to the journalisms traditional gatekeepers of power. But journalism has encompassed many traditions over the decades and centuries. WikiLeaks has been an influence in two positive trends for journalism over the past decade, says Lisa Lynch, a journalism professor at Drew University who has written about the organisation.

It emphasised the importance of data-driven journalism, an increasingly valuable tool. Since WikiLeaks was often willing to work with traditional outlets in how it released data, it encouraged news organisations to cooperate more in chasing stories. The 2016 Panama Papers investigation that revealed the offshore financial havens of political leaders showed what can happen when journalists team up.

Despite utopian ideals, though, real life is more complicated. Information isnt always merely information, government files can reveal wartime informants and put peoples lives in danger. And information can be weaponised through decisions about what to reveal and what not to reveal. For example: Many people saw Assanges decision to publish the private emails of Hillary Clintons campaign chairman as a sign of cosiness with Russia and a contributing factor in Donald Trumps election as president.

Yet some of historys most prominent journalists have been advocates as well, and have expressed clear points of view. Upton Sinclair, a progressive muckraker in the early 20th century, made no secret of the fact that his expose of the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, was an attempt at jump-starting reform. I aimed at the publics heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach, he wrote later.

Today, news outlets across the political spectrum, from The National Review to Mother Jones, from Fox News to MSNBC, are considered to be journalism, albeit delivered from a distinct vantage point. Add into the mix the rise of blogging and social media, which permit anyone with an internet connection to use the term journalist and be immediately and globally amplified and the result is ambiguity about who is a journalist and who isnt.

In that environment, Assange, too, presents an ambiguous image. I had trouble seeing him as a journalist from the start, said Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin, a frequent writer about the media. But he certainly was a publisher. It turns out he was not just any old publisher, he was a publisher with a distinct angle. And his angle is anti-democratic.

Certainly Assange, a prickly personality who may never be forgiven by many Democrats for WikiLeaks role in the 2016 election, doesnt cut a sympathetic figure. Does that disqualify him from the mantle of journalist, though? People feel very differently about WikiLeaks now than they did in 2010, Lynch said. Theres no doubt about that. I feel very differently about WikiLeaks now. But that doesnt mean Im not just as concerned about what happens to WikiLeaks going forward.

She added, If we start drawing boxes around who is or isnt a journalist in court and the conversation becomes about the way WikiLeaks used information, then we might end up with unintended consequences.

David Boardman, dean of Temple Universitys communications school and chairman of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said one key thing sets WikiLeaks apart from news organisations are the accusations that Assange acted illegally with Manning to obtain the war documents. I consider it something different, said Boardman, the former executive editor of The Seattle Times. I dont consider it a journalistic organisation.

Boardman considers the US governments case against Assange, as it is now outlined, as narrowly based upon his actions with Manning and thus not threatening to journalists. Others consider this a narrow reading of the case, one fuelled perhaps, by a discomfort with Assanges methods and the idea of whether he should be considered a journalist at all.
Several candidates are opting for crowdfunding to finance their election campaigns to form an impartial and independent government.

Ever since the joy of giving took on the digital avatar of crowdfunding  a means of raising money for a cause from a large number of people  several cash-starved candidates have been taking this route to retain their independence and build a bond with voters.

Among the prominent Lok Sabha election candidates resorting to crowdfunding and donations via www.ourdemocracy.in are Atishi Marlena of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) who is fighting from East Delhi; Communist Party of India (CPI) candidate Kanhaiya Kumar who is fighting from Begusarai in Bihar; Congress candidate Nana Patole from Nagpur; AAP candidate Raghav Chadha from South Delhi; and CPI candidate Mohammed Salim from Raiganj in West Bengal. These nominees are advocating transparency in poll campaigns leading to an impartial government which otherwise works to favour corporate sponsors.

Since whole political and democratic actions have become money-playing politics, there is a direct invention of corporate houses. It has put up a serious challenge before the parliamentary and democratic proceedings as it is not allowing the democracy to function in a right way (sic), says Atul Kumar Anjan of the CPI, who is contesting the Ghosi constituency in Uttar Pradesh. According to the Communist leader, if street funding doesnt occur, corporate houses will also form parties and field their own candidates. If a party wins through the peoples money then it is bound to work for the people, unlike other parties working for their sponsors, asserts Atul.

Kanhaiya Kumar

The former president of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Students Union, Kanhaiya Kumar has raised more than Rs 70 lakh from 5,500 people. With Rs 50 lakh, Atishi follows Kanhaiya in the online fundraising club. We are doing crowdfunding for individual candidates and we have been raising a pretty fair amount. The message is very simple: if people fund their party, after elections it will serve those people, says Akshay Marathe, the national joint secretary of AAP. He adds that because of crowdfunding, the AAP steered clear of the tangled web where parties get funding from corporate houses. Crowdfunding is always about the common people Most donors have given a small amount and that helps keep the party independent, he insists.

While online crowdfunding has been a popular exercise in Europe, it was first witnessed in India during the Manipur Assembly polls in 2017. It was the time when then active anti-AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act) campaigner Irom Sharmila had collected Rs 4.5 lakh for her party  Peoples Resurgence and Justice Alliance. Since then, there have been many instances where political parties have raised money from the people via the Internet. However, this is the first time that crowdfunding has been adopted by many politicians for 2019 Lok Sabha elections to meet the expenses of poll campaigns. While this may lead to an impartial and independent government, Akshay is of the opinion that crowdfunding also helps build a connect with the electorate. The major benefit of crowdfunding is that candidates give the direct message to the voters that they will be working for them as they paid for the campaign. This helps in connecting with people and introducing yourself directly to the people of your belt, says Akshay.

It suggests that we are running an honest government because if we have taken money from outside sources then we would not be asking for crowdfunding, he adds.

Lamenting the present scenario, Atul reveals that both the BJP and Congress have almost Rs 7,800 crore in party funds that have not been disclosed to the Election Commission or income tax department. They should show where that money has come from. Our political proceedings are run by a corrupt methodology. Elections are contested and conducted with black money but crowdfunding has no such option, he says.

Apparently, according to an amendment to the Finance Bill 2018, political parties are exempted from the scrutiny of funds they have received from abroad or other sources. With crowdfunding, parties are promising to perform independent (of the control of corporations) and people know where the money is coming from, says Atul.

MP Devappa Anna Shetti, also known as Raju Shetti, from Hatkanangle constituency, is the leader of Swabhimani Paksha. He has won elections twice using the crowdfunding method since 2004. For him, crowdfunding is a way to work independently. If people fund the elections, after winning it, I can independently and impartially work for them and take their issues to Parliament, says Raju who mainly works for the rights of farmers. All the farmers in my constituency support me with whatever little amount they can and I assure them that I will work for them with honesty and transparency, he says.
As the year 2019 marks a centennial of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, a city-based storyteller reads two stories from the past.

Out of the many massacres in history, the painful memories of some linger a little longer and such is the case with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place on April 13, 1919.

Out of the many massacres in history, the painful memories of some linger a little longer and such is the case with the Jallianwala Bagh massacre that took place on April 13, 1919. The brutal massacre that was ordered by Colonel Reginald Dyer on the occasion of Baisakhi  Punjabi New Year led to the death of over 1000 people by the soldiers of the British Army. And even now, after 100 years, a mere mention of that day is enough to make one unsettled or even rage with anger. As the writers and the poets are the first to record the tremors felt by such events that change the path of history, one such storyteller Jameel Gulrays from the organisation Katha Kathan is going to revisit the day through the words of two eminent writers.

Remembered as the deadliest attack on the unarmed and peaceful celebrators, Jallianwala Bagh massacre forced many writers to respond to the deplorable and brutal act against humanity. Shaken by the event, writers and poets have penned down the details of the massacre that continues to echo in literature. It is perhaps why Jameel has chosen to read Mantos Deevana Shayar and Krishan Chandars 1919 Ka Ek Din Both the stories are set on the background of Jallianwala Bagh. It has been 100 years of the deadliest event and this is my way to pay tribute to all the innocent people who lost their lives, says the storyteller who intends to bring the literature of the massacre in light through these stories.

These writings not only record the chronicles of the fateful day that force one to look back at the trauma of the event, but also are illustrative of its evergreen expression found in literature and poetry. In a long list of literature by writers and poets, the stories by Sadat Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander and poems by Sohan Singh and the other parallel poets are the most remembered ones.

While Amritsar Azadi Se Pahele, Amritsar Azadi Ke Baad talks about the unheard heroes of Jallianwala Bagh  the valiant women like Begum, Zainab, Paro, and Sham Kaur who challenged General Dyerss illegal crawling order, the poem The Bullet Marks by Sohan Singh Misha, translated by Jasdeep Singh and Amarjit Chandan also gives a rich description of the massacre. Later as contemporary writers delved into the literature of the past, playwrights like Bhisham Sahni through his play, Rang De Basanti Chola brought several facts about Amritsar of 1919 that was filled with joy and innocence. A short story Jallianwala Bagh is Alive by a Punjabi writer Navtej Singh informs that the past never dies or goes away. In the most recent times, noted writer and activist Rakshanda Jalil has also put together a volume highlighting Indias cultural responses to the massacre.

According to Jameel, the cold-blooded massacre left many minds unsettled and it still has the power to disturb any sensitive human being, hence it is important to revisit these painful memories. Complaining about the ignorance, he rues People or the political parties have long forgotten the brutal event and they dont talk about it because they wont get votes for it.
AAP forms alliance with JJP in Haryana for LS polls.

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday announced that it had decided to go alone in the Lok Sabha elections in Delhi after talks of an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party failed over the latters impractical demand of seeking an alliance in Haryana too.

We are compelled to fight on our own and fight alone in Delhi, party general secrertary in-charge of Delhi P.C. Chacko told the media.

He said that while the Congress was ready for an alliance in Delhi and had agreed to the formula of a 4:3 arrangement going by the vote share the two parties had, the political situation was different in other states like Haryana. It (alliance in Haryana) is not feasible and practical.

The party, which has already finalised the names of four candidates out of seven in the capital, is likely to announce the names of the rest three in a day or two. However, Mr Chacko was quick to add that the Congress is open to alliance even now in Delhi if the AAP was ready.

I would like to repeat that in spite of the reservations the Congress leaders of Delhi had, we thought that it is political necessity at the national level that we should be able to come to understanding and defeat BJP wherever it is possible, he said.

The Congresss reaction came hours after AAPs Gopal Rai said that the Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) has entered into an alliance in Haryana for Lok Sabha elections. JJP will contest on seven seats and AAP will contest on three seats in Haryana, Mr Rai said.

The JJP was launched by former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautalas grandson Dushyant Chautala, following a power struggle in the states main opposition INLD last year.

For an alliance with the grand old party, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwals party demanded Gurgaon, Faridabad and Karnal seats  three Haryana constituencies in the National Capital Region (NCR)  in return for giving up on major Delhi seats.

However, sources said there was still a slim chance of an alliance as the AAP might offer a 5:2 seat sharing formula in Delhi, where the party would contest from five seats and the Congress from two seats.

Uncertainty over alliance between the AAP and the Congress has been continuing for weeks now with the former demanding an alliance on 33 seats of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Goa and Chandigarh. We want alliance on all 33 seats with the Congress and not three seats in Delhi, We are capable of defeating the BJP and the Congress on our own in Delhi. If an alliance has to be there, it has to be on 33 seats, Mr Rai said.
The handset is capable of 3,00,000 folding cycles making durability a non issue.

Earlier this year Sharp patented a vertically folding smartphone and now, we get a first look at the device in action. The 6.18-inch display smartphone corresponds to the patent filed and since it folds vertically, it is different from the Huawei Mate X and the Samsung Galaxy Fold.

As per a report by GSMArena, the vertically folding phones display measures 6.18-inches and boasts a resolution of 1440 x 3040 pixels. It comes with a large notch and folds right in the middle. Sharp claims that it has been tested for durability as it can withstand up to 3,00,000 folding cycles. Sharp claims that there will be a heavy demand for such a device as it would excel where other such handsets aren't so successful  portability.

The report goes on to claim that Sharp seeks to commercialise this form factor in a few years. With a similar folding mechanism like the Motorola foldable phone, the Sharp folding smartphone aims to capture the market ahead of the Lenovo-owned brand.
Kim Jong-un, has been re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission, the communist state's highest decision-making body.

The parliamentary meeting in North Korea coincides with South Korea' President Moon Jae-in state visit to the United States. (File Photo)

Pyongyang: Kim Jong-un, North Korean leader, has been re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission, the communist state's highest decision-making body, reported Yonhap News Agency.

"The election of the Supreme Leader as chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the DPRK is the great political event of crucial historical significance," said the government in a statement on Thursday.

Kim was elected as Chairman first in June 2016, when the commission was formulated through an amendment in the country's constitution.

Meanwhile, Kim Jae-ryong, a senior member of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, has been appointed as the country's Premier, who replaced Pak Pong-ju.

Notably, North Korea's top denuclearisation negotiator Kim Yong-choi, who was involved in February's second summit with the United States, was also elected as a member of the State Affair Commission.

The parliamentary meeting in North Korea coincides with South Korea' President Moon Jae-in state visit to the United States.
People in large numbers were present when the blast took place near a car and damaged adjacent shops as well.

Pakistani paramedics carry an injured blast victim at a hospital following a bomb blast at a fruit market in Quetta on Friday. (Photo: AFP)

Islamabad: At least 20 people  including two children, a Frontier Corps official and eight members of the Shia Hazara community  were killed on Friday and 48 sustained injuries in an explosion at fruit and vegetable market in Quetta's Hazarganji area.

People in large numbers were present when the blast took place near a car and damaged adjacent shops as well.

Since 2012, attacks against the ethnic Hazara community, have been on the rise. Hazara casualties include everyone from students and government employees to sportsmen.

The hospital sources informed that the injured were in serious condition. Emergency was imposed in all hospitals of Quetta and people were requested to donate blood to save lives. Police said the bomb was hidden inside sacks of potatoes. The investigation teams collected evidences from the targeted area and security forces conducted search operation in locality.

Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal said the attack was conducted to sabotage the peaceful atmosphere. While expressing solidarity with the victims, the chief minister said those who are responsible for this heinous activity are inhumane and deserved no mercy.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the incident and summoned report from the concerned authorities. He further directed to provide best medical facilities to the wounded.

Hazara make up roughly 500,000 of the city's 2.3 million people.

Amnesty International said the blast was a "painful reminder" of the many attacks suffered by the Hazara community in Quetta over the years, and called for the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan to give them better protection. "Each time, there are promises that more will be done to protect them, and each time those promises have failed to materialize," wrote Omar Waraich, Amnesty's deputy director for South Asia. Violence in Pakistan has dropped significantly since the country's deadliest-ever militant attack in Peshawar school.
Judges selected this year's winners from 78,801 images entered by 4,738 photographers worldwide, the Amsterdam-based organisers said.

The picture of the wailing toddler was published worldwide and caused a public outcry about Washington's controversial policy to separate thousands of migrants and their children. (Photo: Facebook)

Amsterdam: The haunting image of a little girl crying helplessly as she and her mother are taken into custody by US border officials Thursday won the prestigious World Press Photo Award.

Judges said veteran Getty photographer John Moore's picture taken after Honduran mother Sandra Sanchez and her daughter Yanela illegally crossed the US-Mexico border last year showed "a different kind of violence that is psychological".

The picture of the wailing toddler was published worldwide and caused a public outcry about Washington's controversial policy to separate thousands of migrants and their children.

US Customs and Border Protection officials later said Yanela and her mom were not among those separated, but the public furore "resulted in President Donald Trump reversing the policy in June last year," the judges said.

'Fear On Their Faces'

Moore was taking pictures of US Border Patrol agents on a moonless night in the Rio Grande Valley on June 12 last year when they came across a group of people who tried to cross the border.

"I could see the fear on their faces, in their eyes," Moore told the US-based National Public Radio broadcaster in an interview shortly afterwards.

As officials took their names, Moore said he spotted Sandra Sanchez and her toddler who started wailing when her mom put her down to be searched.

"I took a knee and had very few frames of that moment before it was over," said Moore, who had been covering the US-Mexico border for a decade.

At the awards ceremony in Amsterdam, Moore told AFP: "I wanted to tell a different story."

"For me it was a chance to show a view of humanity that is often only related in statistics," the 51-year-old photographer said.

"I think an issue like this, immigration issues, resonates not just in the United States, but around the world," Moore also told several hundred guests at the awards.

Migrant Caravan

The sensitive issue of immigration was further highlighted at Thursday's awards.

Judges chose Dutch-Swedish photographer Pieter Ten Hoopen's images of the 2018 mass-migrant caravan to the US border as its winner in the "World Press Photo Story of the Year Award".

Ten Hoopen's pictures, which show families and children as they made their way from Honduras in mid-October to the US border "showed a high sense of dignity," one of the judges said.

Ten Hoopen thanked the migrant families, saying without them his award would not have been possible.

Trump said Tuesday he won't resume separating children of undocumented migrants, but insisted that the policy did prevent people from illegal border crossings like a trip to "Disneyland".

His words came after he announced the departure Sunday of the official in charge of fighting illegal immigration -- Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

According to US media reports, Trump's reshuffle could herald even harsher measures on the southern border.

Judges selected this year's winners from 78,801 images entered by 4,738 photographers worldwide, the Amsterdam-based organisers said.

Three lensmen from AFP, John Wessels, Brendan Smialowski and Pedro Pardo were handed one second place and three third places overall in the various categories.

Based in Kinshasa, Wessels' series of pictures of last year's Congolese elections took second prize in the General News-Stories category, while his series of images about an Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo came third in the same category.

Smialowski and Pardo came third in their respective categories with a picture of Trump leading French President Emmanuel Macron by the hand and immigrants climbing over the US-Mexico border fence respectively.

Last year AFP's Ronaldo Schemidt took top honours in the 2018 competition, winning the World Press Photo Award with a fiery image of a masked Venezuelan protester in flames.
Cruelty-Free Mens Grooming Products

15 Mens Skin Care Products That Dont Test on Animals

The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service.

When it comes to sacrificing our comfort for convenience, many people can be pretty reluctant to actually do it. We much prefer to have all the effort go on behind the scenes so we can walk away with the final product unphased. Easy peasy. Examples of such ... inconveniences, well call them, can be found behind the tech we use, the clothing we wear, and of course the food we eat.

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However, a part of our lives that is often forgotten when it comes to animal testing is our grooming products. Awareness is on the rise, but there is still a lot of confusion about what actually goes into making your favorite products. Countries around the world have banned animal testing  Norway, India, New Zealand, South Korea, and the 28 countries of the European Union  but the United States isnt on that list. Part of the issue is that China, a major purchaser of American cosmetic and skin care products, requires animal testing for most beauty and personal care goods sold.

According to 2013 poll data provided by the Humane Society, 73 percent of Americans are in favor of banning animal testing. So why are we still testing on animals? Do we really need to? The short answer: No.

What Is Cruelty-Free?

Before you start filling up your cart, heres what you should know. In the U.S., there is no single legal definition of the term cruelty-free, and the FDAs website even states that this allows for the unrestricted use of the term, says Amanda Nordstrom, company liaison for PETA's Beauty Without Bunnies Program. Unfortunately, this means that some companies may state that they dont test on animals  even while theyre paying for tests on animals in China.

Companies and brands on PETAs cruelty-free list have all verified that their policy against tests on animals applies not only to their finished products, but also their ingredients, raw materials, and formulation, Nordstrom tells us.

Tara Foley, founder and CEO of clean skincare and beauty store Follain, adds, You can also look for third-party certification seals like the Leaping Bunny  Many cruelty-free products dont yet have these seals since it takes a lot of time and in some cases, money, for the brands to get and use the seal, but [they] are a sure-fire way to know that something is cruelty free.

That means every ingredient from beginning to end didnt get tested on an animal.

Is Cruelty-Free Less Safe or Effective?

According to Foley, cruelty-free products are just as safe as those that are tested on animals. In fact, maybe even more so. If a company is so certain about the safety of its ingredients for the consumer, they dont need to test the ingredients on animals, she tells us. You can assume cruelty-free products are generally safer than products that have been tested on animals.

On efficacy, Nordstrom says these products may actually do more: A product that has not been tested on animals [isnt necessarily less effective] than products tested on animals, since there are many scientifically validated sophisticated non-animal methods companies can use in the research and development phases to perfect their products for their target efficacy and shelf life.

Simply put, products that have been developed using non-animal test methods may be even more effective when used by consumers. Some brands use all-natural ingredients that are gentle and known to be safe. Most others use ingredients that have been in use for many decades without endangering humans, Nordstrom explains.

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The numbers are starting to show that consumers are paying more attention than ever before. Sixty-three percent of women and 44 percent of men would be very or somewhat likely to stop purchasing a brand that was reported to test on animals. Foley supports these stats, adding, While historically, smaller, newer, clean indie brands have launched with cruelty-free status, established brands ... have now recently made the move to cruelty-free certification based on growing consumer demand.

Cruelty-Free Grooming Products to Try

If you think youre ready to try grooming products that work great while leaving animals out of the equation, then we have a list 15 grooming essentials ready to take the place of those other, less friendly options.

Maapilim

This gentle cleanser is suitable for all skin types and includes argan, rosemary, and jojoba oils plus witch hazel and aloe vera. All sourced from the rich coastlines surrounding the Great Sea, Maapilim products are all-natural and dont have anything they dont need. This cleanser doesnt leave your face feeling tight or itchy, only handsome.

Maapilim Face Cleanser, $18 at Maapilim.com

OZNaturals

The older guys get, the more they tend to notice sun damage and want to try and fix it. The quick answer is to start using a Vitamin C serum. The problem? These serums usually cost $100 or more. OZNaturals packs the punch of its higher priced counterparts, but does so at a much lower cost to you, and to the world around you.

OZNaturals Vitamin C Facial Serum, $17.95 at Amazon.com

Brickell Men's Products

This anti-age duo is made with all natural, organic, plant-derived ingredients. Together, these creams take advantage of the potent antioxidant properties of caffeine  which helps protect your cells against UV radiation  and hyaluronic acid, a key molecule involved in skin moisture due to its superior ability to plump skin through moisture retention.

Brickell Men's Ultimate Anti Aging Routine, $75 at Amazon.com

Drunk Elephant

Drunk Elephants new vegan retinol cream stands apart from others thanks to its lack ingredients from their Suspicious Six: essential oils that can irritate skin, alcohols that dry out skin, silicones that can clog pores, and SLS (or Sodium Lauryl Sulfate), which is a harsh skin-stripping detergent. When using a Vitamin A retinoid, the more natural and less irritating, the better.

Drunk Elephant A-Passioni Retinol Cream, $74 at Sephora.com

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ASARAI

The white Australian kaolin clay, red Australian clay, and aloe vera work together to detoxify and clear up clogged pores while soothing and keep it hydrated. This brand from the Land Down Under also donates a portion of sales to better the environment through 1 Percent for the Planet.

Asarai Earth Tones Mask, $28.95 at Asarai.com

Abbott NYC

With fragrances inspired by the founders favorite destinations  think clean cold water, crisp dry grass, and open fires for Big Sky, Montana, or the crisp mountain air, rushing water, old wood, and leather of Telluride, Colorado  their latest fragrance Voyagers is inspired by the waters, grasses, trees, and wildflowers of Minnesota Voyageurs National Park.

AbbotNYC Voyageurs Eau de Parfum, $65 at Amazon.com

Oribe

Luxury and cruelty-free arent often used together, but in the case of Oribe, they are. The signature Cote dAzur fragrance is paired with the rich ingredients including coconut oil, coconut fatty acids, and vegetable glycerin to make a bar of soap so good, we gave it an AskMen Grooming Award.

Cote dAzur Soap, $28 at Oribe.com

Captain Blankenship

This new one-of-a-kind gel feels much better than those crispy, crunchy ones full of alcohol, fragrance, artificial everything (that bright blue color isnt natural  you know that, right?). Even after dry, it still feels like its you hair under there instead of a shell of shellac holding it in place. All the better that its from Captain Blankenship, a certified B Corp that is Leaping Bunny Certified.

Captain Blankenship Sailor Jellyfish Hair Gel, $15 at CaptainBlankenship.com

Jack Black

This body scrub uses the Jack Black fan-favorite Turbo body wash fragrance, but in a more-bang-for-your-buck scrub. Still offering a rich sulfate-free lather, this includes sea salts, arnica, and eucalyptus to both clean as well as buff away rough, dry skin.

Jack Black Turbo Body Scrub, $32 at GetJackBlack.com

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Bulldog Skincare for Men

British-born Bulldog Skincare delivers a non-greasy face lotion that manages to leave all animals out of the equation. Free from parabens, sodium laureth sulfate, artificial colors, and synthetic fragrances, this lightweight face lotion certified by Cruelty Free International and simply put, works really well.

Bulldog Skincare for Men Original Moisturizer, $6.99 at Amazon.com

Summer Fridays

Paraben- and sulfate-free, vegan, and made in America, this hydrating mask from the young brand Summer Fridays prides itself on its all-natural ingredients. Currently focusing on their three distinct masks, we picked the original Jet Lag Mask for an AskMen Grooming Award.

Summer Fridays Jet Lag Mask, $48 at SummerFridays.com

John Paul Mitchell Systems

John Paul Mitchell has been against animal-testing for almost 40 years, and this Skin and Beard Lotion is all you need if you crave some lightweight moisture after a shave. It also works in place of a shave, instead of lathering up with a thick face cream or greasy beard oil.

MVRCK Skin and Beard Lotion, $11.25 at PaulMitchell.com

Method

AskMen Grooming Award winner Method Men body wash in naturally derived with a fresh forrest fragrance. It lathers up quickly and rinses clean. Theyre a Certified B Corp and Leaping Bunny Program approved, and they use all recycled plastic in their packaging  thats a lot for a brand that can clean everything in your home, including you.

Method Men Juniper and Sage Body Wash, $5.99 at Amazon.com

Dr. Dennis Gross

Looking at the innovative, technology-driven, dermatologist-formulated products from Dr. Dennis Gross, you may think the brand couldnt possibly be completely cruelty-free, but not only can it say that, but PETA certifies it. This dark spot correcting serum is one of the latest launches straight from the doc using ingredients that together are shown to be a viable alternative to hydroquinone, a controversial and potent skin lightening ingredient.

Clinical Grade IPL Dark Spot Correcting Serum, $92 at DrDennisGross.com

James Read

We appreciate how well this fine spray tanning mist from James Read works. It has aloe vera, witch hazel, and chamomile, which means its perfect to help soothe post-shave. We like it so much we gave it our AskMen Grooming Award for best tanner for oily skin.

James Read Tan Hydra Tan Mist, $24.15 on Amazon.com

Whereas this is a great list of mens cruelty-free grooming products, by no means is it all of them. As consumers pay more attention to what goes into making their favorite products, brands are being held more accountable. Whether its for the environment, the animals, or simply for your own skin, using products that try to be better should make you feel better, and that will help you feel great, every day.

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A single-engine air tanker, or SEAT plane, drops its payload of fire retardant to contain the blaze on day one of the Lake Christine Fire last summer, which would go on to burn 12,588 acres and destroy three homes. The total bill from the fire exceeded $25 million, as reflected in court documents filed recently. Aircraft operations accounted for 35 percent of the $20 million attributed to the Forest Service.
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Adopting or developing more robust and comprehensive strategies to gather data on BAME (black, Asian and minority ethnic) employees;

Continuing to evaluate recruitment processes to eliminate any obstacles to employment from the widest pool of talent;

Developing an action plan to better understand whether retention of employees from a BAME background is an issue;

Developing an action plan to counter attrition of employees from a BAME background to the extent that this is identified as an issue and;

Adopting aspirational targets in relation to the recruitment and retention of employees from a BAME background.

This report represents an important step towards helping law firms to better understand the concerns of their BAME communities and to create a culture which is conducive to the success of everyone regardless of background, said Hogan Lovells associate Atrayee Basu, a memner of the NOTICED steering committee. We hope this report will inspire actions to improve BAME recruitment and retention across the City and beyond.

Thomson Reuters announces innovative legal workflow system

One of the leading providers of legal insight tools has announced a new workflow system.

Thomson Reuters Panoramic is a cloud-based data-driven solution that enables firms to plan, manage and execute legal matters and aims to create a more streamlined connection between front and back office operations.

I visit law firms all the time and all are working through transformation  how they price, collaborate with clients, budget or manage work, Elisabet Hardy, vice president of Financial & Practice Management at Thomson Reuters said. But if you scratch a little bit below the surface, you realize that while firms are embarking on these transformations, lawyers are often struggling with how to become more effective, how to plan matters, how to budget against the work that they're competing for.

The new product is powered by dynamic Matter Maps, which are created and kept up to date by expert Practical Law attorney editors.
Colin Biggers & Paisley has expanded its team in Brisbane with a transport and government law.

Nicole Franklin has joined the firm as a senior associate in the firms transport and logistics team in the Queensland capital. She moved from MinterEllison, where she was part of the dispute resolution team for nearly four years.

Colin Biggers & Paisley said that Franklin is an expert in managing legal responses to high-profile matters in the transport industry, including investigations, environmental clean-ups, statutory responsibilities, liability, and dispute resolution. She also has significant experience in maritime law, including contractual responsibilities, legal liabilities, drafting and advising on complex contractual documents, and litigation.
AMG

Unlike GT prototypes we've spotted in the past, the one we have here doesn't deliver the unmistakable soundtrack of the M178 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8.So we could be looking at a new entry-level model animated by the German automotive producer's newly revived straight-six.Perhaps the machine is powered by the M256 3.0-liter twin-turbo inline-six found on models such as the Mercedes-CLS53 and E53 - those machines see the unit joining forces with a 48V mild-hybrid system to deliver 425 hp and 520 Nm of torque.Then again, this prototype could simply be testing a new quiet mode for the expected Black Series incarnation of the GT. That would mean one hell of an exhaust setup, though.You see, now that the Mercedes-AMG GT Pro is out, the automaker is expected to release the Black Series, which should be the definitive range-topper.For one thing, the aero package found on this test car points to such a setup, as it's even more aggressive than the bits and pieces that keep the GT Pro glued to the road at high speeds.Regardless of what lurks under that camo, we can tell you this much: check out the clip below and you'll see the Mercedes-AMG GT tester having its way with a G80 BMW M3 prototype. This shouldn't come as a surprise though - the Nordschleife might be the world's longest active racetrack, but with so many prototypes now using the circuit to build handling muschle, such encounters are normal.
The national sales company for the Nissan brand has just bid good fortunes to Ramesh Narasimhan after his 3-year tour as the NPI's president and managing director. Succeeding him is Atsushi Najima, who became the company's fourth president and managing director on April 1, 2019.

There's a changing of the guard that just happened over at Nissan Philippines, Inc. (NPI).

Mr. Najima joined Nissan in 2016 from Procter & Gamble, previously serving in a variety of roles across the Asian region in management and finance. Najima will be reporting to Vincent Vijnen, Nissan's senior vice president for sales and marketing at Nissan Asia and Oceania.

With his rich experience in managing teams across multiple countries, I am confident that Atsushi will continue to drive the strong growth trajectory established by the current leadership team, said Wijnen in a press release.

The previous president, Ramesh Narasimhan, has had a storied career as head of Nissan Philippines. He was a former Ford executive based in Australia, and took the opportunity to lead NPI. In his tenure, Nissan has experienced unprecedented growth in the country with a stronger product line that includes the Navara and Terra. Ramesh's term also saw the official (and much awaited) Philippine launch of the GT-R, up to and including the supercar-beating GT-R NISMO.

But perhaps it was Narasimhan's management style that put an emphasis on developing his team, as well as his frank and almost fearless demeanor that helped the brand charge forward with double digit growth and vastly improved sales performance.

Ramesh now moves on to take the big role of president and managing director of Nissan Thailand, a much larger market and the major production and export base for the brand.

Under the strong leadership of Ramesh Narasimhan, Nissan has seen significant growth in the promising Philippine market. In calendar year 2018, Nissan's sales volume in the Philippines grew by 40% to an 8.7% market share, continued Wijnen in the press release.

In 2013 when Nissan Philippines, Inc. took over as the national sales company, they had set a market share target of 8%. Now, they've surpassed it.

Prior to 2013, Nissan's efforts in the Philippines were divided between two Nissans: Nissan Motor Philippines, Inc. (NMPI) and Universal Motors Corporation (UMC). NMPI mostly handled the passenger cars like Sentra and Almera, while UMC mostly handled the commercial vehicle side with the Patrol, Navara, among others.

When Nissan Philippines, Inc. entered in as the national sales company in 2013, it consolidated the brand's efforts into one unit. Kenji Naito was the first president, followed by Antonio Zara, Ramesh Narasimhan, and now Atsushi Najima.
We're a pretty special market too, because we will be the first country to get the small hatch outside of Indonesia. You can even see in the photos that the cars are in left-hand drive. All Honda Brios are to be assembled in Karawang Indonesia meaning the cars we will be getting soon will be completely built units or CBUs.

It won't be long until the all-new Honda Brio arrives in the country. In fact, they've been teasing us for quite some time already, showing previews on their Facebook page. Now, we also know that a big batch of them will be landing on our ports.

For now, we don't know for certain the specs of the Philippine-market Brio. However, we do see that there's the standard model, along with the RS variant making their way to the ship. It could mean that we'll see at least three variants of the Brio. The possible variants are an entry-level model with a manual transmission, one with a CVT, and the aforementioned RS.

Engine specs are also yet to be determined. It is currently unknown if the all-new Brio will stick to a 1.3-liter engine, just like the soon to be outgoing model. However, if Honda wants to streamline their models across the region, then it is more likely to use the 1.2-liter engine in the Indonesia-spec Brio. That engine is good for 90 PS and 110 Nm of torque.

The all-new Honda Brio was previewed here during last year's Philippine International Motors Show as the Small RS Concept. Its front end is largely based on the Mobilio with its upswept headlights and upright grill. Meanwhile, the side profile is more conventional than its previous iteration, and it has grown in size as well.
The Arctic region has been pushed into an entirely new climate, one that's outside the experience of longtime residents and native wildlife, shows a new report in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Why it matters: The far north is undergoing profound changes that are affecting the rest of the world  from the melting of permafrost, which releases greenhouse gases, to the disappearance of sea ice.

The big picture: To understand how unusual and consequential Arctic warming is, one need only to look at recent events in Alaska, which this year experienced its warmest March on record, and warmest October through March. The state has had its warmest 6 years on record, too.

Details: People across the state are coping with an unusually early start to spring, according to Dave Snider, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alaska.

This means ice breakups on rivers, life-threatening hunts for food in native communities and many other impacts.

The likelihood that Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) would reach this year's March average temperatures had just a 1-in-250,000 chance of occurring in a given year, Snider tells Axios.

Between the lines: In Talkeetna, north of Anchorage, workers who produce birch syrup had to be called in on an emergency basis, several weeks earlier than normal, because temperatures were rising so quickly, Snider says.

Snider thinks the Nanana ice tripod  a webcam of a big stick in the middle of a frozen river  will melt out early this year.

The earliest date on record is April 20, Snider says.

The bottom line: March is no fluke. "It doesnt appear to be a one-off if you do the stats," Snider says. A new Arctic has emerged during the past 40 years, and Alaska is experiencing that firsthand.

Due to higher air and sea temperatures, land-based ice in Alaska is being lost at the rate of about 14,000 tonnes per second, William Colgan, a co-author of the study, tells Axios.

"This report is part of an emerging genre of climate reports sounding the klaxon that the future is now in terms of virtually all observable Arctic climate indicators."

Go deeper: The Arctic is unraveling as climate change intensifies
An expansive and intensifying storm is unleashing an array of hazardous weather to a broad swath of the lower 48 states on Wednesday, from 100 mph winds in Colorado to record warmth and an ongoing derecho moving from Kansas into Nebraska and Iowa.

Why it matters: The storm has already set all-time high temperatures for the month of December, as readings soar into the 70s all the way to the Iowa-Minnesota border. Its winds have knocked out power to more than 200,000 customers in four states, with outages climbing in Colorado and Kansas, according to poweroutage.us.
The astonishing first photo of a black hole, revealed Wednesday by the team behind the Event Horizon Telescope, opens up new avenues for researchers to probe more deeply into the inner workings of these extreme and fundamental aspects of our universe.

Why it matters: The major announcement that scientists have finally caught one on camera, so to speak, paves the way for the pursuit of new avenues in astrophysics that will probe the nature of gravity, scientists tell Axios. This work may reveal limits to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Details: One focus for scientists going forward will be trying to observe and understand the powerful jets of radiation and ultra high-speed particles that are ejected from near the black holes at close to the speed of light. It's thought that black holes are the source for some of the most energetic particles in the universe, known as cosmic rays.

Context: The photo, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope, shows the shadow of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy's supermassive black hole surrounded by a ring of light near the object's event horizon  the point at which nothing, not even light, can escape the gravitational pull of the black hole.

The ring consists of superheated gases known as plasma, which forms as a result of the black hole's immense gravitational field.

The material headed toward Earth appears brighter than the side moving away.

What's next: Sera Markoff, a member of the EHT science council and theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam, tells Axios that even with the new discovery, scientists are still limited in their understanding of black holes.

"Im very interested in this interface with theoretical physics, and what are black holes really?" Markoff tells Axios.

"We know that Einstein was right in a general sense, but we dont actually understand why gravity works the way it does on a really microscopic level. How does it function? Gravity is not a force like the others  general relatively explains how it works, but it doesnt answer the why."

 Sera Markoff

Markoff says the jets that are "literally rooted in the black hole" could be used to figure out something fundamental about the nature of space-time. "So were not there yet, but theres just so much thats going to come out of this," she says.

The intrigue: "The most exciting thing we could possibly do would be to supplant Einstein, to find that in this extreme gravitational laboratory that theres something a little new," Avery Broderick, an astrophysicist with the EHT team, said at the press conference.

"The problem of quantum gravity remains unsolved with the current tools that we have. Black holes are one of the places to look for answers," Broderick said.

Where it stands: Currently, EHT consists of 9 radio telescopes at 7 sites, including those in Antarctica and Greenland.

The EHT team is planning to add 2 more to the mix by 2020 and is putting together proposals for a space-based telescope to boost capability for probing the secrets of black holes.

Go deeper:
President Trump's special envoy for Middle East peace said today that the forthcoming White House peace plan won't be "a sell out" for the Palestinians.

Between the lines: With the end of the Israeli elections, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's victory, the release of the White House peace plan could be imminent. Jason Greenblatt's public message was directed at the Palestinian leadership in an attempt to stress that the plan won't be as bad as they fear.

Why it matters: The Palestinians have boycotted the Trump administration since December 2017 over the president's Jerusalem embassy announcement, but the White House still hopes they'll change course after seeing the peace plan. The Palestinian President said he will be ready to engage if the plan includes a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem.

What he's saying: Greenblatt tweeted today, "To the [Palestinian Authority]: Our plan will greatly improve Palestinian lives & create something very different than what exists. Its a realistic plan to thrive/prosper even if it means compromises. Its not a 'sell out'  if the plan isnt realistic, no one can deliver it. The Palestinian future is in your hands  we hope you use your power wisely and in a way that helps Palestinians live happier and better lives. Its time for them to thrive."

Netanyahu's nationalistic rhetoric on the campaign trail won't help the White House sell any peace plan the Palestinians might consider. He pledged to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank if re-elected.

What's next: The White House peace plan isn't expected to be published until at least mid-June. The exact date will be influenced by the formation of the new Israeli government, the Jewish holiday of Passover, the Muslim month of Ramadan and other national days on both sides.

Go deeper:
The World Health Organization declined Friday to declare a "Public Health Emergency of International Concern," (PHEIC} its highest alert level, despite a sharp uptick in the number and geographical spread of cases of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Why it matters: This is already the second-largest Ebola outbreak on record, with more than 1,000 cases of the hemorrhagic fever so far, and it's the first to occur in a country where there is widespread civil unrest.

The details: The outbreak, which began in August, has killed 751 and sickened 1,186 as of April 9, according to WHO and DRC Ministry of Health data.

During the past few weeks, a dramatic increase in the number of cases, and the prevalence of community cases  patients unknown to health workers who often die at home, exposing caretakers to the virus  have raised concerns and prompted a WHO committee meeting to determine if an emergency declaration was warranted.

"The emergency committee almost unanimously decided against recommending a public health emergency of international concern," said Robert Steffen, chair of the WHO's Emergency Committee, during a press conference in Geneva.

Steffen said an emergency was not warranted because the outbreak has not spread to any other country, though there's nothing preventing its spread.

Between the lines: The WHO has been criticized for moving too slowly to declare a public health emergency during this outbreak while issuing optimistic outlooks about its ability to contain it, despite a steady rise in cases, an anemic international response effort and multiple deadly attacks on Ebola treatment facilities and workers.

According to Jennifer Nuzzo, a public health expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, an emergency declaration is the best option at the WHO's disposal:

"I am deeply disappointed by todays decision to not declare a PHEIC. The statement that there would be no added benefits of a PHEIC declaration is misplaced. Potential benefits are not criteria by which these decisions should be made. The decision to declare a PHEIC should be made on technical merits, not political ones."

Alexandra Phelan, a health expert at Georgetown University, also criticized the WHO's decision:

"The persistence of community and health care workers cases and high risk of regional spread means that significantly greater financial, political, and technical support is urgently needed. A PHEIC declaration is intended to garner this support and provide guidance to the international community. This is not only a missed opportunity but undermines the international law developed to safeguard global health.

By the numbers: The WHO's director, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the WHO needs $104 million until July 31 to close a funding gap in order to continue to fight the disease in the DRC.

The WHO says it needs a total of $148 million to carry out its Ebola fight.

But, but but: A lack of an emergency declaration may work against the fundraising effort, Nuzzo says.

"The reason thats been given for not declaring a [Public Health Emergency] has been skepticism that it will result in anything," she says, referring to additional resources from the international community.

"While I can understand where that skepticism is coming from ... I also know that not declaring it certainly doesnt wake up world leaders either."

Go deeper: Ebola outbreak passes 900 cases amid urgent new warnings
The world's largest-ever exercise in democracy began today, the first of 7 election days over the next 5 weeks as India's 900 million registered voters cast their ballots.

The big picture: Prime Minister Narendra Modi was swept into power 5 years ago promising to turbocharge India's economy and flex its muscles on the world stage. This election represents a referendum on him, Alyssa Ayres of the Council on Foreign Relations writes for Axios Expert Voices:

"While India has seen comparatively good economic growth, it has not created enough jobs for the bulging youth demographic, and unemployment has reached a 45-year high."

"Rural voters, who make up more than 66% of the population and depend overwhelmingly on agriculture, have been hurt by a collapse in food prices and poor rainfall."

"Yet Modi may have shored up support among voters focused on terrorism and national security with his decision to order airstrikes in response to a recent suicide bombing claimed by a Pakistan-based terrorist group."

Between the lines: There are big questions about the intelligence failures that made that attack possible, and the effectiveness of India's response, but the episode speaks to precisely the attributes Modi has been touting  strength, decisiveness and leadership," the Carnegie Endowment's Milan Vaishnav said.

Modi has remained India's most popular politician despite the mixed economic record, and the current nationalist fervor only plays into his hands. Even the opposition Congress Party acknowledges that Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will be the largest single party in the next parliament, Vaishnav says.

He says that leaves 3 scenarios:

The most likely outcome is that the BJP will be unable to match the 2014 landslide in which they won an outright majority, but will perform well enough to form a governing coalition with relative ease. The BJP and its electoral allies could even ride their current momentum to an outright majority, giving Modi another massive mandate. There's also a chance (Vaishnav puts it at around 15%) that the BJP loses enough seats to make it extremely difficult to form a coalition.

In that scenario, smaller parties could say they'll only join a BJP government if Modi is replaced with someone less hardline, "and frankly less popular," Vaishnav says.

Modi and the BJP might actually prefer to sit in opposition in such a scenario, waiting for a government consisting of "a rickety hodgepodge of opposition parties to implode, Vaishnav adds.

What to watch: The election will unfurl in stages for security and logistical reasons, so votes won't actually be counted until May 23.

In the meantime, Vaishnav says to watch youth turnout  younger voters are more likely to back the BJP  and opposition unity. There are cross-party alliances in place intended to stop the BJP, but some are looking fragile.

The bottom line: "Conventional wisdom sees Modi likely to return to power. But Indian voters have delivered surprises before. With an election of this scale and complexity, nothings over until the last ballot is counted," Ayres writes.

Worth noting: This could be the first election in India's history where women make up the majority of the electorate. That's reflected in the main parties' platforms, which include increased social spending and promises of greater political representation for women.
A court in Yerevan on Friday dismissed former President Robert Kocharians claim that Armenias constitution gives him immunity from prosecution on coup charges strongly denied by him.

An article of the constitution stipulates: During the term of his or her powers and thereafter, the President of the Republic may not be prosecuted and subjected to liability for actions deriving from his or her status.

Kocharians lawyers cited this provision when they asked the district court last month to free the ex-president and throw out the charges stemming from the 2008 post-election violence in Yerevan.

One of the lawyers, Hovannes Khudoyan, said during a March 26 court hearing that investigators have still not explained why they believe the clause does not apply to the high-profile criminal case. Khudoyan argued that Armenias Court of Appeals upheld his clients immunity from prosecution when it ordered his release from pre-trial custody in August.

Acting on prosecutors appeal, the higher Court of Cassation overturned that ruling in November, however, ordering the Court of Appeals to examine the case anew. The latter allowed law-enforcement authorities to press charges against Kocharian and again arrest him on December 7.

Siding with the prosecutors, the district court ruled that the man who ruled Armenia from 1998-2008 cannot be protected from prosecution. It did not immediately publicize its arguments in favor of that ruling.

On Thursday, the Court of Appeals upheld a lower courts March 15 decision to extend Kocharians pre-trial arrested by two months. The ex-presidents lawyers denounced the decision, saying that it was dictated by the Special Investigative Service (SIS), a law-enforcement body conducting the long-running inquiry into the 2008 violence.

Kocharian as well as three retired army generals are accused of overthrowing the constitutional order in the wake of a disputed presidential election held in February 2008, less than two months before he completed his second and final presidential term. The SIS says that they illegally used the armed forces against opposition supporters who demonstrated against alleged electoral fraud.

Eight protesters and two police servicemen were killed in street clashes that broke out late on March 1, 2008. Kocharian declared a state of emergency in the Armenian capital on that night.

All four men deny the charges. Kocharian, who was also charged with bribery last month, has accused the current authorities and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in particular of waging a political vendetta against him. Pashinian, who was one of the main opposition speakers during the February-March 2008 protests, has dismissed the ex-presidents claims.
An Armenian opposition leader on Friday praised Prime Minister Nikol Pashinians latest remarks on Nagorno-Karabakh but disputed his claim that Armenia has become a full-fledged democracy since last years velvet revolution.

Of course, there were many interesting and good points, Gevorg Gorgisian of the Bright Armenia Party (LHK) said, commenting on Pashinians speech delivered in the Council of Europes Parliamentary Assembly (PACE) on Thursday. In particular, with regard to the Karabakh issue, on human rights in Karabakh and the conflicts resolution and peace.

But there were also some flaws such as [Pashinians claims about] the establishment of democracy, economic miracle, reforms which have only just begun, a process where we see numerous shortcomings, Gorgisian told RFE/RLs Armenian service (Azatuyun.am).

Armenia is today unequivocally a democratic country with absolute freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, Pashinian declared on the PACE floor. He said his government has eliminated systemic corruption, broken up economic monopolies and created prerequisites for everyones equality before the law since taking office less than a year ago.

Gorgisian countered that the civil liberties cited by Pashinian are necessary but not sufficient for a democratic political system which he said also requires an effective system of checks and balances. He said the prime minister is reluctant to curb sweeping executive powers inherited from the countrys former leader, Serzh Sarkisian.

Sergey Bagratian, a senior lawmaker representing the opposition Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK), also hailed parts of Pashinians speech that related to the Karabakh conflict. In particular, he said, Pashinian was right to make a case for international recognition of the Karabakh Armenians right to self-determination.

While stressing the importance of his constructive and positive dialogue with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, the Armenian premier called for direct contacts between the two societies. He rebuked the PACE for having paid no attention whatsoever to supporting non-governmental organizations operating in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Pashinian also criticized pro-Azerbaijani resolutions on Karabakh adopted by the PACE in the past. He charged that one of those resolutions became a prelude to offensive military operations launched by Azerbaijan in April 2016.
By Abdul Kerimkhanov

At the 140th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Doha, the Armenian delegation tried to change the text of the draft law in own favor. However, the Azerbaijani delegation was able to stop the Armenian provocation in time.

The Azerbaijani delegation, which included MP Shahin Ismayilov, Kamran Bayramov and Sona Aliyeva, participated in the 140th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Doha on April 6 to 10.

Over 2,200 representatives from over 150 countries attended the event. This year, the main issue on the agenda was Parliaments as a platform for raising the level of education for peace, security and the rule of law.

MP Ismayilov addressed the Forum of Young Parliamentarians of the Assembly and spoke in detail about the youth policy conducted in Azerbaijan under the leadership of President Ilham Aliyev.

During the meeting of the Permanent Committee on Peace and International Security of the Assembly, a draft resolution on the Inadmissibility of the use of mercenaries as a means of undermining peace and violating human rights was submitted for discussion. Visitors discussed more than 120 proposals submitted by 20 states on this document prepared by the co-rapporteurs Khalid Al-Bakkar and Boris Tarasyuk.

Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Azerbaijan to Qatar Rashad Ismayilov also participated in the Assemblys work along with the Parliament delegation.

In turn, MP Kamran Bayramov spoke about the essence of the changes proposed on behalf of the Azerbaijani delegation to the draft resolution and told the Forum participants in detail about the laws and measures taken in this field in Azerbaijan. The changes were put to a vote, and were unanimously adopted, despite the protests of the Armenian side.

Armenian delegation at the Assembly put forward nine proposals providing for deleting the phrase territorial integrity from the text of the draft law and the addition of the words the right to self-determination of peoples. During the discussion of these proposals, the Azerbaijani delegation strongly protested and justified it by the fact that these proposals are unacceptable and insisted on their rejection.

As a result of voting, the proposals put forward by the Armenian MPs were not accepted. On the contrary, it was considered appropriate to add the words territorial integrity to the draft resolution.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries arose in 1988 due to the territorial claims of Armenia against Azerbaijan. Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions - 20 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan - are under the occupation of the Armenian armed forces.

The four resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council on the withdrawal from occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent territories have not yet been implemented by Armenia.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

AzVirt, being one of the largest and reputable road construction contractors in Azerbaijan, will launch construction works in Ukraine in May 2019, a source at the company told Trend.

The project costs 130 million euros and will be implemented in three phases, the source noted.

"All earthwork will be completed by the end of April, after which there will be full readiness for laying the road with a total length of 80 km," the source said.

The company is engaged in the construction of roads, runways, airports. Besides the construction and design of roads and big facilities, the company is involved in the production of building materials, including asphalt concrete mixtures, activated mineral powder.

Within more than twenty years since its establishment, AzVirt has grown in size and scope to meet the needs of the region as the demands for improved transport infrastructure increase.

Meanwhile, the construction of a highway with the participation of the Azerbaijani company AzVirt as part of the Bishkek-Osh (Madaniyyat-Jalal Abad) road project is scheduled to begin in May 2019. The total length of the road is 67 kilometers.

The project is planned to be completed in three years, and its cost is about $50 million. At the current stage, preparatory earthwork is being carried out. All necessary equipment have been delivered to the site.

The project also involves German specialists who will share their experience in implementing the large-scale road project.

Moreover, AzVirt participates in infrastructure projects in Serbia. AzVirt implemented the major road project in Serbia based on the document signed between Azerbaijan and Serbia in 2012. In 2012, the government of Azerbaijan provided a 308 million euro loan for a period of 25 years with a three-year grace period at a rate of four percent per annum for the construction of the highway in Serbia. The loan financed the construction of the Ljig-Boljkovci, Boljkovci-Takovo, and Takovo-Preljina sections of E-763 highway.

Meanwhile, AzVirt plans to implement the second major road project in Serbia. This project involves the construction of roads and related road infrastructure in Serbia.

The company noted that the exact starting dates for the implementation of the projects are still unknown, but AzVirt also mentioned that according to their plans, construction work should begin in the coming months.

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By Trend

Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will provide immense opportunities to bring China and Azerbaijan closer, Hikmat Hajiyev, head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration told China Daily, Trend reports.

"The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013 has touched the hearts of the Azerbaijani people, as the restoration of the ancient Silk Road is for the benefit of the entire world, and the development and prosperity of all countries," he said.

Hajiyev believes the initiative will provide immense opportunities to bring China and Azerbaijan closer.

According to Hajiyev, Azerbaijan fully supports the initiative, and is building new bridges of cooperation and friendship. "We are looking forward to the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation at the end of this month, and Azerbaijan will actively participate in this high-level event," he said.

"The point of the transportation network is to integrate it with the original countries," Hajiyev said, adding Azerbaijan has built a network of transportation including seaports, airports, railways and land roads.

"15,000 kilometers of land roads have been built in the past couple of years, and the country also constructed one of the biggest seaports in the Caspian Sea," Hajiyev said, adding all these are important pillars of the ancient Silk Road.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway became operational on Oct 30, 2017, and aims to complete a transport corridor linking Azerbaijan to Turkey and Central Asia and China to Europe by rail. "It works as a major exporter and middle corridor under the Belt and Road Initiative, and Azerbaijan is also working on the East-West line and North-South Line, linking the railway systems of Iran and Russia."

Azerbaijan became a signatory to the Belt and Road Energy Partnership Declaration in October 2018.

The document emphasized that the Belt and Road Initiative will provide new opportunities for the international cooperation as an open and inclusive platform. By signing the Declaration, the signatory countries have also expressed their support for Building the Belt and Road Energy Partnership.

One Belt, One Road initiative was put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Azerbaijan expressed its support to the initiative when the country signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Joint Encouragement of the Establishment of Silk Way Economic Belt in 2015.

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By Leman Mammadova

Azerbaijans national pavilion has been named best at the 26th International Forum on Information and Communications Technologies TIBO-2019 in Minsk, Belarus.

An Azerbaijani delegation, led by Deputy Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies Elmir Velizade, including about 15 representatives of public organizations and private companies, attended the event along with delegates from 100 companies from 16 countries.

TIBO-2019 features the adjustment and transformation of IT gaining momentum in Belarus. It presents both opportunities as well as challenges, being an excellent platform to see new trends of development, to gain new business & network. The exhibition covers a wide professional audience of Belarus and foreign experts, representatives of public authorities and business communities.

Azerbaijan has been presented at the TIBO-2019 exhibition-forum by the national pavilion for the 7th time. The pavilion shows the achievements of our country in the field of ICT.

The International Specialized Exhibition TIBO is considered one of the largest ICT events in the CIS and Baltic countries.

ICT is considered to be one of the crucial spheres for the further development of Azerbaijan's economy and an integral part of the economic and political reforms which are currently implemented in the country. The income to be obtained in the sector in Azerbaijan is projected to hit $9 billion by 2020.

In general, Azerbaijan is one of the leading countries implementing high technology in the region. Today, the country constructs high tech parks in the capital and regions.

In 2019-2022, $550-$600 million will be invested in Azerbaijans telecommunications and information industry. There are plans to expand broadband connections by 2020 to 70 percent in the fixed network and to 70 percent in the mobile network.

By 2020, investments in the expansion of the fiber optic broadband network in Azerbaijan will amount to $80 million, the coverage by fiber optic cables will increase to 70 percent by 2020 and to 95 percent by 2025.

In the first nine months of 2018, $132 million were spent on the sector, 70 percent more than in the same period in 2017.

Recently, the project Speaking Library presented by the Data Processing Center of the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies under the brand Made in Azerbaijan has been awarded the prize Champion Project at the World Summit on the Information Society Prizes 2019 (WSIS Prizes 2019).
By Leman Mammadova

Azerbaijani investors are interested in investing in Montenegro, Azerbaijani Ambassador to Montenegro Eldar Hasanov said at a meeting with countrys Prime Minister Dusko Markovic.

The meeting highlighted the possibility of enhancing ties between Azerbaijan and Montenegro through expanding investment in tourism, energy and infrastructure, Report informed.

The sides also touched on the organization of direct flights between Montenegro and Azerbaijan that will give the impetus to the growth of tourist flow between two countries.

The meeting also discussed Azerbaijans largest investment in Montenegro  the Portonovi resort. Hasanov said that Azerbaijani investors are interested in new investments in tourism resorts as well as in infrastructure strengthening projects.

Portonovi resort is one of the largest projects in the territory of Montenegro. The total cost of the project amounts to 650 million euros. The complex is comprised of a hotel, SPA-centre, yacht port, residences, villas, houses, and restaurants. The developer of the project is Azerbaijans Montenegro-based Azmont Investments company.

The Protocol about establishment of diplomatic relations between Azerbaijan and Montenegro signed in 2008 can be considered as the beginning of bilateral mutually beneficial cooperation. After the opening of the diplomatic mission of Azerbaijan in Montenegro and of the Honorary Consulate of Montenegro in Azerbaijan, bilateral relations have further developed.

The establishment of the Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation between the governments of Azerbaijan and Montenegro in 2013 is an indication of the importance of cooperation between the two countries.

Montenegro successfully cooperates with Azerbaijan in the energy sector. Montenegros cooperation with Azerbaijan in this sphere is currently based on activities related to the Ionian-Adriatic Pipeline (IAP). IAP, which is expected to be connected to the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), will pass through Montenegro as well.

IAP is a proposed natural gas pipeline in Southeastern Europe that will stretch from Albania through Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina to Split in Croatia. The capacity of the pipeline will amount to 5 billion cubic meters of gas per year.

Montenegro is also interested in joint participation with Azerbaijan in renewable energy projects, particularly on the use of solar energy.

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

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By Trend

The Financial Market Supervisory Authority of Azerbaijan (FIMSA) will publish the list of all persons who will receive compensation for problem loans in Azerbaijan after April 15, FIMSA told Trend April 12.

The information will be posted on the FIMSA website. Also, the information on problem loans will be transferred to the appropriate banks, the clients of which took loans.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev earlier signed a decree on additional measures in connection with solving the issue of the individuals problem loans. The decree envisages the payment of compensation to citizens whose loan burden increased as a result of the devaluation of the manat in February and December 2015.

According to the decree, opportunities are created for restructuring on concessional terms of both US dollar loans and manat loans with a delay of more than 360 days.

If the amount of compensation exceeds 500 manats, then these funds will be transferred to the account of the individual; if less, the payment will be made via money transfer.

The corresponding plastic cards which will be received by individuals are issued for a period of 1 year and are free of charge. Banks and postal operator are not entitled to charge a fee for issuing or conducting operations with these cards or for making money transfers.

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By Laman Ismayilova

There are many notable Azerbaijani composers who played a major role in shaping our world through their contributions to music.

With nearly 110 musical pieces, Gara Garayev was undoubtedly one of the most highly regarded national composers.

His originality and his ability to unveil the meaning and emotions through music has left no one indifferent.

Being considered one of the greatest Azerbaijani composers, he enriched national music with numerous music pieces, including ballets, operas, symphonic and chamber pieces, solos for piano, cantatas, songs and marches.

He brilliantly juxtaposed features of Mugham with jazz, blues, African music, European counterpoint styles, and developments related to the 20th century Western music such as the 12-tone technique.

This year, Azerbaijan marks the 100th anniversary of People's Artist of USSR, Gara Garayev.

President Ilham Aliyev has signed an order to mark the jubilee of the legendary Azerbaijani composer.

Under the Order, the book entitled "Gara Garayev - selected piano works" was published by Bellman Company in Germany.

The book was presented with the support of the Azerbaijan Ministry of Culture and European Forum for Intercultural Cooperation, Azertag reported.

The publication includes CD of Gara Garaevs piano works performed by the Honored Artist of Azerbaijan Elnara Ismayilova.

The book "Gara Garayevv- selected piano works" aims at promotion of Azerbaijani music in Germany, as well as popularization of national music among the European youth.

Having synthesized Eastern and Western musical traditions, his works cover essentially all genres. The works by Gara Garayev are performed all over the world.

Garayev inherited his love for music from his parents. His father Abulfaz Garayev was a famous pediatrician in Baku. Abulfaz Garayev was known for his kindness and generosity. When patients were too poor to pay for treatment, he often left money under the prescription that he had written out for them.

He knew Azerbaijani folk music very well and loved to sing. Garayev's mother, Sona Khanim, was among the first graduates of the Music School, the Baku branch of the Russian Music Society.

At the age of eight, Garayev first entered the junior music school at the Azerbaijan State Conservatoire. His exceptional musical talents let him to study simultaneously in two faculties at the conservatoire. His teachers were Georgi Sharoyev, Leonid Rudolf, and the prominent Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyli.

In 1938, Garayev composed his first musical piece, a cantata "The Song of the Heart" to the poem by Rasul Rza. It was performed in Moscow's Bolshoi Theater in the same year. He was only 20 years old at the time.

Garayev returned to Baku in 1941. He began teaching students at Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Society.

In 1945, both he and Jovdat Hajiyev wrote the "Motherland" opera, for which they were awarded a prestigious Stalin Prize. At the age of 30, Garayev was again awarded this prize for his symphonic poem "Leyli and Majnun", based on the same-titled famous work of Nizami Ganjavi.

In 1952, under the direction of the choreographer P. A. Gusev, Garayev's "Seven Beauties" ballet was staged at the Azerbaijani Theater of Opera and Ballet. Based on Nizami Ganjavi's famous poem, "Seven Beauties", it became the first Azerbaijani ballet and opened a new chapter in the history of classical music of Azerbaijan.

His ballet, "Path of Thunder", staged in 1958, was dedicated to racial conflicts in South Africa. In the same year, he wrote the score for the documentary film" A Story About the Oil Workers of the Caspian Sea", directed by Roman Karmen and set at the Oil Rocks.

Through his life, Garayev wrote nearly 110 musical pieces, including ballets, operas, symphonic and chamber pieces, solos for piano, cantatas, songs and marches, and rose to prominence not only in Azerbaijan, but also worldwide.

Garayev died on May 13, 1982 in Moscow at the age of 64.

The composer has left a legacy of music that will be felt for generations to come. The memory of great composer will always live in the hearts of Azerbaijani people.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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By Laman Ismayilova

Days of Russian Culture in Azerbaijan solemnly opened at the Heydar Aliyev Palace on April 11.

Addressing the ceremony, Azerbaijan Minister of Culture Abulfaz Garayev said that that holding the Days of Russian Culture in Azerbaijan is a significant event in the life of two peoples, Azertag reported.

"Today, the world-famous Kremlin Ballet Theater will present us the play "Thousand and One Nights" by the outstanding Azerbaijani composer, Peoples Artist of the USSR, Hero of Socialist Labor, State Prize Winner of the USSR Fikrat Amirov. It should be noted that the set designer of today's performance is another great figure of Azerbaijani culture - the national artist Tahir Salahov," the minister said.

"The show "Thousand and One Nights" is timed to the 90th anniversary of the outstanding master of the brush. I would like to emphasize that Azerbaijan and Russia are connected by warm good-neighborly relations in many areas. Artists, masters of arts, creative teams of our countries take part in many festivals, symposiums, forums and other events held both in Russia and Azerbaijan. A number of cooperation agreements have been signed between the ministries of culture of the two countries. Once again I congratulate all those gathered at this remarkable event," Garayev said.

The Chairperson of the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Valentina Matviyenko, expressed her gratitude to the government of Azerbaijan for the warm welcome and support in holding the Days of Russian Culture in country.

She noted that the peoples of Azerbaijan and Russia are bound by centuries-old friendship and a common historical path of development.

This in turn creates the condition for further cooperation between the two states at the level of strategic partnership.

"Presidents Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliyev, who have warm, trusting relations, play an important role in strengthening ties between our countries. I would like to especially note that the Council of the Federation and the Azerbaijani parliament have been in constant interaction for many years," Matviyenko said.

Valentina Matviyenko called the Baku International Humanitarian Forum an authoritative dialogue platform that plays an important role in bringing together Russia and Azerbaijan, especially in the humanitarian sphere.

"Russia highly values the preservation and promotion of the Russian language in Azerbaijan. There are branches of leading Russian universities, there are schools with the Russian language of instruction, for many years the Russian Drama Theater and many other activities. For all this I want to express deep gratitude on behalf of all Russians to the government of the Republic of Azerbaijan," she said.

Afterwards, Russian Kremlin Ballet presented the play "Thousand and One Nights".

The play that has been successfully presented on the stage of Moscow's State Kremlin Palace since 2010 was warmly welcomed by the audience in Baku.

Libretto of the ballet was written by Magsud and Rustam Ibrahimbayovs on the basis of the famous "Thousand and One Nights" tales. The producer is Andrey Petrov, People's Artist of Russia.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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By Abdul Kerimkhanov

The U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Earle Litzenberger, expressed pleasure that the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continue to contact.

I am very pleased that the parties continue to contact and that there will be another meeting. The co-chairs hope to help create the right atmosphere, space and provide support to the parties to work together and discuss the very complex issues that currently divide them. Obviously, the goal is to achieve peace, the ambassador told reporters.

Further, Litzenberger spoke about the priorities of his activities in Azerbaijan.

He expressed hope to achieve a number of goals related to strengthening the already very strong bilateral relations between the United States and Azerbaijan.

Litzenberger informed that one of his goals is to do everything possible to expand the opportunities for two countries and peoples to get to know each other, about each other's cultures.

I also hope to expand access to education in English here in Azerbaijan, he concluded.

In January 2018 the U.S. Senate approved Earle Litzenberger's candidature, which was proposed by U.S. President Donald Trump, for the position of ambassador to Azerbaijan.

At various times, Litzenberger served at the German Marshall Fund, the US Mission to NATO, the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, and the U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

As OSCE Minsk Group co-chair, U.S. plays an important role in finding ways to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

The occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and the seven districts adjacent to it are clear evidence of a flagrant violation of norms and principles of international law by Armenia.

The UN Security Council adopted relevant resolutions related to the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

Armenia, ignoring these resolutions, tries to maintain the status quo and thus freeze the situation, which is unacceptable for Baku.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

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By Trend

The Armenian media outlets spread the information about the comments of the secretary general of the Council of Europe made after the meeting with the Armenian prime minister in Strasbourg, where he spoke about the need to give the CoE commissioner for human rights the right to visit the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

While commenting on this information for Trend, spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Leyla Abdullayeva stressed that Secretary General of the Council of Europe Thorbjrn Jagland offered the CoE member-states to make a political decision regarding the visit to the so-called "gray zones", including the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

"Azerbaijans position in this regard is clear and all the corresponding international organizations, including the Council of Europe, have been repeatedly informed about that, she said. This is the countrys sovereign right to allow some individuals, whether representatives of international organizations or citizens of other countries, to enter its territory within the internationally recognized borders and in accordance with its domestic legislation."

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.

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By Trend

Azerbaijan is a peace-loving country, a country where stability has been restored, but it will never reconcile with occupation, Culture Minister Abulfas Garayev said in an interview with Bouziane Ahmed Khodja, director and host of the Medina En TVE program of Spains state TV, who is on a visit to Azerbaijan, Trend reports with reference to Azerbaijans Culture Ministry.

In the interview, the minister spoke about the Armenian military aggression against Azerbaijan, the essence of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, occupation of 20 percent of the Azerbaijani territories, adding that the cultural and historical monuments of Azerbaijan were destroyed and looted.

The minister stressed that Azerbaijan is a tolerant country, where nations belonging to different religions live in peace and harmony, and Azerbaijans model of tolerance is considered an example for the Muslim world.

Garayev reminded that numerous international conferences and forums on this topic are held in Azerbaijan, and the 5th World Forum on Intercultural Dialogue will be held in Baku on May 2-3 this year, and the 43rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee will be held June 30-July 10.

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By Trend

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed an order regarding measures to continue renovation of the water supply and sewage systems in the city of Mingachevir, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani presidential press-service.

Under the presidential order, 7 million manats will be allocated to Azersu OJSC for the continuation of renovation of the water supply and sewage systems in Mingachevir.

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By Trend

Russian-Azerbaijani relations are mutually beneficial, built on mutual respect, friendship and mutual consideration of interests, Chairperson of Federation Council of Russias Federal Assembly Valentina Matviyenko told reporters in Baku April 12, Trend reports.

Last September, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made an official visit to Russia, she said. This is an important event in our bilateral relations. During this visit, 15 important documents were signed, which created the prospect for expanding our cooperation until 2024. It is important that the Russian-Azerbaijani ties are mutually beneficial, based on mutual respect, friendship and mutual consideration of interests. This creates exemplary mutually beneficial partnership relations for other states that have reached the level of strategic partners.

Speaking about the development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia in the humanitarian sphere, Matviyenko noted that First Vice-President of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation led by her make huge contribution to the development of relations in this sphere.

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By Trend

A round table discussion on the security problems of the South Caucasus and the countries of the Caspian region was held at the press center of Trend News Agency.

The event was organized by the North-South political center under moderation of Anzhelika Trapeznikova, the executive director of North-South, and Gulnara Mammadzade, the head of the Caspian Expert Club.

In a welcoming speech, the moderators of the round table noted the importance of holding a meeting for forming an expert dialogue of Caspian littoral states, as well as the prospects for further cooperation, particularly in the field of security.

Speaking at the event, Azerbaijani MP Rasim Musabayov drew the attention of the round table participants to the qualitative changes that occurred in the context of regional security, including that of the Caspian Sea.

According to him, cooperation going beyond the frames of the partnership of the littoral states and beyond the Caspian region is necessary for neutralizing risks and threats in the region and in the Caspian Sea.

Musabayov noted that, as of today, this kind of a tight cooperation exists between Russia and Azerbaijan. The two countries hold joint military exercises aimed at neutralizing terrorist threats, exchange experience and information, and law enforcement agencies of the two countries closely cooperate in the area of security  all of which allow for the preservation of security.

Touching on the issues of Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation in the context of the new challenges for the Caspian region, the roundtable participant Stanislav Chernyavsky, Director of the Center for Post-Soviet Studies at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, noted certain positive trends with regards to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Chernyavsky spoke positively about the past meeting of the parties in Vienna in March of this year, noting that there was an intensification of regular contacts between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia, including the participation of the Russian side.

While breaking down the topic of the development of North-South, East-West and South-West transport corridors, stating that they are a condition for ensuring the security of the Caspian region, Azerbaijani political scientist Ilgar Velizade said that the economic aspect is one of the foundations that motivates the security of the Caspian region today.

Thanks to the implemented projects, a new logistic map of the region is being formed, and all regional players show great interest in making use of these logistics, which is an incentive for security, according to him.

Velizade noted that the southern regions of Russia are actively using the infrastructure that is being built in the South Caucasus, which ensures the development of economic ties between Russia and Azerbaijan.

According to him, some experts often misinterpret the events occurring in the region, while comprehending the interdependence of the countries  in this case, Russia and Azerbaijan depends on correct assessment and analysis by experts and the media.

Touching on the signing of the Constitution of the Caspian Sea in the context of ensuring regional security in the South Caucasus, Konstantin Kurylev, Doctor of History at the Department of Theory and History of International Relations of Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, said that this convention is of serious importance not only from a regional, but also from a global standpoint, as it creates conditions for ensuring stability and security in the Caspian.

According to the Russian expert, this will significantly strengthen the position of Azerbaijan in the region, as it provides an opportunity for increasing the volume of international cargo transportation, as well as increasing interest in the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars transport corridor.

According to Kurylev, the Caspian Convention is important for Baku not only from an economic, but also from a political standpoint.

While addressing the issue of regional conflicts and security in the South Caucasus, Elkhan Alasgarov, PhD, head of the Expert Council of the Baku Network, said that the most important condition for ensuring stability and security in the South Caucasus is the settlement of the years-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

According to the political analyst, two blocs formed in the South Caucasus that influence the situation in the region - these are the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and NATO.

NATOs presence in the South Caucasus is gradually expanding, and this became obvious after the CSTOs prestige decreased in connection with the scandal over Secretary-General Khachaturovs resignation. As for the situation in Armenia, the pro-Western element clearly strengthened with the rise of a new government in the country. Nevertheless, a favorable situation is emerging today for the resolution of the conflict, since the level of external threats and risks has been reduced. For example, the spread of terrorism in Syria has been prevented, the level of risks and threats with respect to Iran has been reduced, and I believe that, in this situation, the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should become a priority in the South Caucasus. In my opinion, the future of the South Caucasus without a resolution of this problem seems obscure, Alasgarov said.

Furthermore, in the context of deepening economic relations between Azerbaijan and Russia in light of the formation of a new technological structure in the world economy and economic security, deputy director of the Russian School of Economics Professor Elshad Mammadov emphasized that there has been a fairly high level of volatility in the world economy in recent years. At present, the world economy is moving to the stage of forming a new, sixth technological order, and the geography of centers of activity and the structural component of economic development are changing.

Mammadov noted that one of the key points in the sphere of cooperation between Russia and Azerbaijan is the positive dynamics in trade, and  from the point of view of the development of the Azerbaijani non-oil sector, and taking into account the fact that Azerbaijan is implementing a policy of diversification of the economy  Russia is deemed a priority direction.

In the near future, it is necessary for Russia and Azerbaijan to implement investment programs, switch to mutual settlements in national currencies, and also increase the degree of technological cooperation between business entities, according to him.

Issues regarding information security were raised by Tofig Abbasov, Senior Advisor of the Baku International Multiculturalism Center, who noted that Azerbaijan and Russia need to work out mechanisms of complementarity so that there are no problems in this direction.

In conclusion, the roundtable participants discussed the problem of terrorist threats in the Caspian and South Caucasus, as well as the risks associated with the transport of narcotic drugs to the Caspian states.

Speaking on this topic, expert on national security issues Kamil Salimov noted that the threat of drugs in the South Caucasus and in the Caspian countries tends to grow.

According to him, this is largely due to the fact that the tactics, strategy and methods of delivering drugs by land and sea are changing.

Salimov emphasized the fact that terrorist threats against the region have become more frequent since the beginning of Armenias occupation of Azerbaijani territories.

Summing up the event, Gulnara Mammadzade, moderator of the round table and head of the Caspian Expert Club, noted the importance of holding such expert meetings, which create a platform for discussions on global issues and issues of the international agenda.

The expert noted that all these pressing issues need to be discussed and analyzed in order to transmit an objective and competent opinion to the public.

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By Abdul Kerimkhanov

Armenia will receive a new loan and a rather large one from the World Bank.

World Bank's program "Country Partnership Framework" with Armenia for 2019-2023 totaled $500 million, but no grouds to boast.

First, there are no prerequisites that these funds will be used in the fight against corruption or in the formation of human capital. The only thing clear is that those $500 million will significantly increase the country's debt obligations, while the country's volume of obligations is still at a dangerous point.

Forecast by the Ministry of Finance says that even without the WB program, the national debt will exceed the mark of $7 billion this year. At the end of 2018, the Ministry of Finance presented a loan program for 2019 and according to this program, the national debt of Armenia is expected to increase by $490 million in 2019.

Last December, it was declared that Armenia would receive the largest loan of $343 million from Russia, $53.1 million from the Asian Development Bank, $50.4 million from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, $9.7 million from the International Development Association, $9.4 million from the European Investment Bank, $7.5 million from the German Bank, $7.3 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as $2.8 million from the International Fund for Agricultural Development and $200,000 from the OPEC Fund for International Development.

Atom Janjughazyan, the Minister of Finance, clearly pointed out that new loans are necessary to cover the budget deficit.

"If we have a state budget in which there is a deficit, then what source do we imagine to cover the deficit? Loans," he said.

Armenia needs new loans primarily to cover budget holes. However, it is obvious that budget deficit could be considerably reduced at the expense of internal sources. The problem is a lack of desire to reduce costs.

Armenian Minister of Finance believes that given the current state of the country's economy, it is unrealistic to cover the budget deficit with something other than new loans. However, he does not take into account that expenditures should be more modest. Moreover, the indiscretion in expenditure significantly increases the country's debt obligations.

Remarkable, if we calculate the amount of public debt per capita, it turns out that today every citizen of Armenia owes more than $2,330, and this is excluding personal debts and personal credit obligations to banks.

Against this background, Armenia is getting into new debts. The fact that this path leads the country to default, to a catastrophe, was voiced when the previous authorities were in power. However, today Armenia goes into debts with an even faster pace.

This is not the take-off speed, which Nikol Pashinyan spoke about several months ago. This is the speed of the fall.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

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By Trend

French President Emmanuel Macrons decision on the so-called "Armenian genocide" is irresponsible, head of the PR department of the Turkish Presidential Administration Fahrettin Altun said, Trend reports referring to the Turkish media on April 11.

By signing a decree declaring April 24 the day of memory of the so-called "Armenian genocide", Macron made a big mistake, he added.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu also stressed that by signing the decree, the French president grossly violated international law.

Before making such a decision, the French president should recall the dark moments of the history of his country, he said.

On April 10, President Macron signed a decree declaring April 24 as the national day of memory of the so-called "Armenian genocide".

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, allegedly carried out "genocide" against the Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915.

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By Trend

The Italian parliament is not entitled to adopt a resolution on the so-called "Armenian genocide", Speaker of the Turkish parliament Mustafa Sentop said.

The Italian parliament exceeded its authority and adopted a resolution on non-existent events of 1915, Sentop added, Trend reports referring to the Turkish media.

"We call on Italy to recall its role during the World War II," he said.

The Italian parliament adopted a resolution recommending the countrys government to recognize the events of 1915 in the Ottoman Empire as the so-called "Armenian genocide".

Armenia and the Armenian lobby claim that Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, allegedly carried out "genocide" against the Armenians living in Anatolia in 1915.

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AMRITSAR: Exchanging scientific information freely, forging cooperative research, hosting Indian executives, students and faculty, and sharing agricultural biotechnology to promote the development and use of drought- and pest-resistant crops.

These were just a few of the collaborations that was strengthened when Cornell University whose world university ranking in 2019 is 19, signed a memorandum of understanding with Guru Nanak Dev University on Thursday. In a historical and strategically development, Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar has entered into a partnership with Cornell University, one of the top university of the world to establish a program of exchange and collaborations in Agriculture, as well as other related matters of mutual interest. A formal MoU was signed between Cornell University Vice-Provost for International Affairs Professor Wendy Wolford and GNDU Vice-Chancellor Professor Jaspal Singh Sandhu recently. The collaboration will increase the number of academic and student exchange opportunities between the institutes.



Prof. Sandhu said 'Today marks nothing less than the beginning of a new era of cooperation for India and USA. By teaming up, our university is creating a unique alliance and leading the way in shaping the future of Indo-US research partnership. This is the first time in the history of Guru Nanak Dev University that an international partnership of this magnitude and significance has been established with top university of the world. "A higher education degree which helps build a strong foundation in academic fundamentals and at the same time provides the required skills and knowledge necessary to compete in a global marketplace is needed, " he added. I am happy to look forward to continuing our dialogue in this regard. This initiative will further cement our universitys position as one of the worlds premier locations for research and innovation. Prof Sandhu further said, This collaboration is an immense opportunity to promote cooperative research and to facilitate the international exchange of ideas, the development of new knowledge and to enhance global research acumen through these hubs. The modes of cooperation could include faculty visits for collaboration in research, student mobility programs for learning, development of cooperative research projects and dissemination of finding through scholarly publication.



Professor Wendy Wolford in his message said This strategic partnership between Cornell University and Guru Nanak Dev University is a milestone with respect to international relations. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded ABSPII is a global consortium led by Cornell University. ABSPII focuses on the safe and effective development and commercialization of bio-engineered crops as a complement to traditional and organic agricultural approaches. The project helps boost food security, economic growth, nutrition and environmental quality.



We are delighted to be a co-founder of this exciting endeavour between two international institutes to promote Cooperative research. I am sure that this partnership will bring mutual benefits for all involved parties and across the entire range of academic disciplines."We are happy to sign MoU with Guru Nanak Dev University. We look forward to a long and fruitful collaboration with the Department of Agriculture, Guru Nanak Dev University, which is among the best universities in India with a high research focus and diverse academic programs. This is the beginning of a long-term collaboration, having students from Guru Nanak Dev University coming to the USA and American students coming to India and launching of exciting professional development programmes.



Dr. Preet Mohinder Singh Bedi, Coordinator University-Industry linkage Programme said Through closer collaboration and shared expertise, we will gain a deeper insight into our ground-breaking research and fulfil our joint ambition to address some of the biggest challenges facing society today. Furthering academic and student exchange programmes will also enrich both Cornell University and GNDU communities, enabling them to develop and grow intellectually, culturally and socially. Dr. Bedi said 'University is delighted that we have successfully established a strategic partnership with Cornell University, one of the world's most renowned universities. We can contribute our expertise here to this newly-formed strategic partnership and develop our existing contacts to the Cornell University in areas of mutual interest. I believe this will provide a new impetus for research in India. The MoU cover the scope of interaction among members of faculty relating to joint research projects, visits for such purposes and when necessary, joint applications for research funding from external funding agencies.
By Abdul Kerimkhanov

The flexible and comprehensive foreign policy of Kyrgyzstan strengthens ties and international relations with major foreign states and partners, one of which is the South Korea.

Dinara Kemelova, the Kyrgyz Ambassador to the South Korea, has met with the Vice-President of the Korean Asiana Airlines Kim Tae Yop, the Kyrgyz Embassy in the South Korea informed on April 12.

During the meeting, Kemelova spoke about the annual growth of Korean tourists visiting Kyrgyzstan. She noted that mutual interest is growing between the two countries, especially in tourism and business.

Taking into account the growth prospects for the number of tourists to visit Kyrgyzstan from South Korea and the Southeast Asian countries, she stressed the urgency of opening direct passenger air links between Bishkek and Seoul.

Kemelova added that this is important for the launch of direct air cargo transportation between the two countries.

Kim Tae Yop, in turn, said that he will study the proposals of the Kyrgyz side, taking into account the profitability and prospects of opening a direct flight with Kyrgyzstan.

Expressing his admiration for the nature of Kyrgyzstan, as well as interest in the history of the Kyrgyz people, he said that a large increase in the tourist flow is needed, which will be the impetus for the opening of direct flights between Kyrgyzstan and the South Korea.

Established in 1988, Asiana Airlines has developed into a global airline. The company is striving to become one of the world's largest airlines, making intensive efforts for sustainable growth.

Diplomatic relations between Kyrgyzstan and the South Korea were established in January 1992. In January-October 2018, the trade turnover between the two countries amounted to $23.4 million.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

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By Trend

Ishanguly Amanlyev was appointed Turkmen Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador to Tunisia, Trend reports referring to the Turkmen presidential decree on April 12.

Amanlyev heads the diplomatic mission in Turkey and supervises the diplomatic mission in Morocco.

Turkmen Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister Rashid Meredov was received by Tunisian President Mohamed Beji Caid Essebsi in early 2019. During the meeting, special attention was paid to the development of relations in the trade and economic sphere.

The Tunisian president initiated the creation of a joint working group to expand bilateral cooperation.

The Turkmen delegation also met with Tunisian Minister of Development, Investment and International Cooperation Ziad Al-Azari.

The sides stressed that there are ample opportunities for establishing ties in such spheres as investment activity, industrialization, trade and agriculture.

An agreement on the development of a legal framework governing the relations between the two countries in the investment and tax spheres was reached.

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By Abdul Kerimkhanov

For the export of domestic goods to the markets of the Persian Gulf countries, Kazakhstan will build two logistics centers in the ports of Iran.

This was announced at a meeting of the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Kazakhstan Mukhtar Tleuberdi with the Minister of Transport and Urban Planning of Iran, Mohammed Islami, and the Deputy Minister of Agricultural Jihad Iazdan Seif, reports Kapital.kz

For the construction of logistics centers, Iran will provide land in the ports of Bandar Abbas and Amirabad.

Kazakh-Iranian political consultations were held in the capital of Iran. The meetings were held within the framework of the implementation of the Five-year program of cooperation between the foreign affairs agencies of the two countries.

The sides discussed the state and prospects of trade and economic cooperation, in particular, the development of transit transport potential, agricultural exports to Iran.

Tleuberdi held talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif about the resignation of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the new president Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and the upcoming early presidential elections.

The Kazakh diplomat noted that, despite changes in the country's leadership, the states foreign policy will remain unchanged. He stressed the development of good-neighborly relations with Iran is one of the priorities in the foreign policy of Kazakhstan.

The sides noted positive dynamics of bilateral interaction in transit-transport and agricultural spheres and emphasized the importance of enhancing the use of the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran railway route with further access to the Persian Gulf.

A summit of leaders of the Caspian states was held in Aktau on August 12, 2018. One of the main results of the forum was the signing of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea.

According to the Convention, the main area of the Caspian water surface remains in the common use of the parties, and the bottom and subsoil are divided by neighboring states into areas by agreement between them based on international law. Shipping, fishing, research and construction of trunk pipelines are carried out according to the rules agreed by the parties. When implementing large-scale offshore projects, the environmental factor is mandatory taken into account.

The Convention fixes a provision on the prevention of the presence of armed forces of non-regional powers in the Caspian Sea, defines five Caspian states responsible for maintaining maritime security and managing its resources.

Diplomatic relations between Kazakhstan and Iran were established on January 29, 1992.

Bilateral trade between Kazakhstan and Iran amounted to $ 516.309 million (exports - $426,768 million, imports - $89,541 million) in 2018.

Kazakhstan supplied barley, wheat, rolled iron, meat, sunflower seeds and rapeseed to Iran.

Kazakhstan imported pistachios, dates, apples, plastics, tableware and meat processing equipment from Iran.

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Abdul Kerimkhanov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AbdulKerim94

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Leman Mammadova

Since the number of tourists visiting Azerbaijan is growing year by year, the country, aiming to never cease to amaze experienced travelers, strives to develop all kinds of tourism and improve the existing base of leisure activities existing here.

The Czech Hiking Markers System of safe tourist trails is being introduced in Azerbaijans Shahdag and Hirkan national parks, Trend reports referring to the Azerbaijani Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources on April 11.

Together with the specialists of the Azerbaijani State Tourism Agency, Czech specialists visited these parks on April 2-7, 2019, where they conducted training for the representatives of the local environmental protection services and marked the trajectory of the future routes for tourists.

The Czech system, which is used in many countries, is planned to be applied in other national parks of the country. Hiking trails determine the consistent movement of tourists through the territory of historical and natural monuments. This will allow creating ecotourism in the country in accordance with modern standards.

Azerbaijani Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Mukhtar Babayev met with Czech ambassador to Azerbaijan Milan Ekert in early 2019 and received the corresponding permission to use the "Czech system" for marking tourist trails in Azerbaijan.

Stretching over 322,492 acres, the Shahdag National Park is considered the largest national park in the Caucasus. There, you can find such types of trees as Caucasian oak, chestnut-leaved oak, senna, European wild pear, as well as other rare plants. The park is one of the five most popular tourist destinations in winter among the CIS countries. Located near the border with Russia, the park covers six regions of Azerbaijan, as well as the territory of the Ismayilli and Pirguli natural reserves.

Established on the territory of two regions of Azerbaijan- Lankaran and Astara, the Hirkan National Park covers the area of 42,797 hectares, and all of them are occupied by picturesque bright greens of numerous plants. Of the plants spread on the territory of Azerbaijan, 1,900 species grow in the Hirkan forests, including 162 endemic, 95 rare, 38 endangered species. Among them Hirkan boxwood, ironwood, chestnut-leaf oak, fig, pearl Hirkan, Lenkoran albition, Caucasian persimmon and alder are listed in the Red Book.

Hiking trails is an important form of ecotourism that give opportunity to the visitors to communicate directly with nature and observe the animal and plant world in natural conditions. This is complemented by visual information on the stands and signposts that are installed on the route, as well as the guides story.

The first hiking trails appeared at the beginning of the last century in the U.S.. Forester Benton McKay proposed to build a walking route in the Appalachian Mountains. By 1922, the 3300 km long ecological trail stretched across the entire Appalachian Range from Maine in the north-west to Georgia in the southeast.

Later, long and short hiking trails began to appear in the U.S. national parks. These routes have become a favorite place for recreation and communication with the nature of many Americans and visitors of the country.

Currently, hiking trails are widespread in many countries of the world, including such as Canada, France, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Kenya, India, Japan and others.

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Leman Mammadova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @leman_888

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

Azerbaijan, a country with a rich culture and centuries-old history, has a variety of architectural monuments and sights, with historical and cultural reserves playing a special role among such attractions.

Head of the public relations department of the agency Kanan Guluzade told Trend that based on the proposals put forward by State Tourism Agency of Azerbaijan, a new, modern infrastructure is being created on the territory of the Yanardag Reserve.

He stated that a new concept for the modernization of the infrastructure of reserves in Azerbaijan will be presented to the public in the coming months.

We believe that the document will be already submitted in May. Currently, work on the reconstruction of the Yanardag State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve, which is included in the structure of the state agency, is being completed. In total, there are seven reserves included in the structure of the agency. Besides Yanardag, it is Temple of Fire-worshipers State Historical-Architectural Reserve, Basgal State Historical-Cultural Reserve, Khinalig State Historical-Architectural and Ethnographic Reserve, Lahij State Historical-Cultural Reserve, Yukhary Bash State Historical-Architectural Reserve in Sheki and the Kish State Historical-Architectural Reserve. By decree of the President of Azerbaijan, the state agency was instructed to prepare relevant information on the current state of Basgal State Historical and Cultural Reserve and prepare proposals for the development of tourism infrastructure within territory of this reserve, Guluzade said.

Cultural reserves and historical sites operating in the regions of the country have attracted many visitors throughout the year.

One of such examples is Ateshgah Temple. The place that is saturated with ancient history and religious beliefs is among the most attractive places of the country. The number of tourists visiting the place is increasing every year. Last year the number of tourists visiting Ateshgah was 30,751, while 25,346 of which were foreigners. The main share of those who visited Ateshgah made up the tourists coming from Russia and Arab countries.

Basgal settlement is located in the Ismayilli district at an altitude of 998 meters above sea level and is also a part of the state cultural and historical reserve. It is protected by the state.

According to a number of historians, Basgal was founded in the fourth century.

The small yet miraculous Khinalig is located at the peak of the Caucasus Mountains, 2,350 meters above the sea in Guba region. This village itself is enlisted as a State Historic-Architecture and Ethnography Preserve from 2007.

There are a number of tours and guests houses in the village, which make trip to Khinalig more convenient for tourists.

In 2017, a great number of tourists visited the State Historical-Cultural and Natural Reserve of Yanardag. During the year, 54,717 out of 63,574 people that visited the place were foreign tourists. They mostly came from Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and other countries.

Last year, 56,742 tourists visited the Yukhari Bash State Historical-Architectural Reserve in Sheki. Some 40,182 people visited Lahij State Historical and Cultural Reserve in Ismayilli, and 25,850 tourists came to see Kish Historical-Architectural Reserve in Sheki.

In 2016, some 356,000 tourists visited the historical and cultural sites, whereas in 2017 this figure reached 486,233, a considerable share, namely, 166,153 of which fall on foreign citizens.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), April 12, 2019

Press release

HRCP slams attack on Shia Hazara community

Lahore, 12 April 2019. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has strongly condemned todayas attack in Quetta, which has killed at least 20 people and injured about 48 others. The attack targeted the cityas Shia Hazara community, who live in aprotected enclavesa and a given the frequency of such attacks last year a are now accompanied by a police escort when venturing out to buy food and supplies. HRCPas sources in Quetta say that, in addition to other civilians, at least eight Shia Hazara and one Frontier Constabulary personnel were killed in the attack.

In a statement issued earlier today, HRCP has said: aThe fact that this incident occurred in a vegetable market that is frequented by the Shia Hazara indicates that they remain consistently vulnerable, despite efforts to help ensure their right to life and security. This reflects a deeper sectarian problem that will not be resolved until the state makes a concerted effort to eliminate militancy and religious extremism. The Shia Hazara have been effectively ghettoised, their movement and assembly restricted, and their ability to conduct business and everyday affairs severely compromised. This is no way to live.

aIt is worth recalling that, according to the National Commission on Human Rights, over 500 Shia Hazara have been killed in targeted attacks in the last five years. As citizens of Pakistan, the Shia Hazara community have the right to live as part of wider society without constant fear of being targeted by militant outfits. Important as it is to provide protection through police and Frontier Constabulary escorts, this is a short-term solution. The state must ensure that law enforcement agencies in Balochistan a who have themselves lost personnel in this and similar attacks a prioritise bringing the perpetrators to justice. It must also send across a clear message that the state will not countenance violence against any religious or ethnic minority.a

Dr Mehdi Hasan

Chairperson

Habib Tahir

Vice-Chair, Balochistan chapter

[SEE ALSO:

Statement by Amnesty International: Pakistan: Hazara community must be protected (12 April 2019) ]
The Algerian generals and the Polisario were expecting everything in these difficult times Algeria is going through, except to be dealt a hard blow by their yesterdays ally, the Mauritanian president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

Ould Abdel Aziz, having decided in November 2018 not to run for a third term in the presidential elections of June 2019, felt free to express himself more freely on the hot issue of the Sahara. In the past, he succumbed to the pressure of the Algerian regime and often aligned with its hostile positions against Morocco and its territorial integrity.

As an evidence of his change of position, the outgoing president said that the West, the United States and Europe do not want a state that would geographically separate Mauritania and Morocco.

This came in an interview with Palestinian journalist of the electronic media Rai al-Youm, Abdel Bari Atwan.

President Ould Abdel Aziz, pushing the knife a little deeper into the wound, said, anything you hear, outside of this framework, is false. That was an open disavowal of the Polisarios claims to an independent state in the Moroccan Sahara.

The position of the Mauritanian head of state is in line with the position expressed as early as 2008 by the Dutch Peter van Walsum, a former personal envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the Sahara.

In April 2008, Walsum had actually acknowledged before the Security Council that the independence of the Sahara recovered by Morocco in 1975, was not an achievable goal and that direct negotiations between the parties, relaunched in 2007 in Manhasset, near New York, lead nowhere.

President Ould Abdel Aziz, whose country had recognized the so-called Sahrawi Republic SADR in 1984, has thus inflicted a hard blow to the Polisario leaders and their Algerian sponsors.

The Mauritanian presidents statements constitute an additional setback for the Polisario leaders who have been recently taken aback by the revelations of the London-based independent news website Middle East Eye.

The e-journal reported that the United States would be intervening behind the scenes to put an end to the Polisarios independence claims.
State Rep. Dade Phelan is continuing his strong performance in this session of the state Legislature by sponsoring four major bills in response to Tropical Storm Harvey. The House has passed them, and now the Senate must, too. Our area senators, Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, and Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, must urge their colleagues in that chamber to send this legislation to Gov. Greg Abbott.

The most important bill in this package is HB 13, which dedicates $3.26 billion from the Economic Stabilization Fund to a new Flood Infrastructure Fund. This is a significant achievement for two reasons.

First, it pries some money from the stabilization fund, that by its very nickname (the Rainy Day Fund), shows that it is designed to respond to special needs. If Harvey, the greatest natural disaster to hit Texas since the hurricane that devastated Galveston Island in 1900, doesnt qualify, nothing does. The Rainy Day Fund has grown to nearly $12 billion, which is a testament to the fiscal restraint of the Legislature. But thats a huge sum of money, and the state should not sit on it while pressing needs go unmet.

Phelans bill would use a portion of that fund in just about the best possible way  devoting $3.26 billion to improve flood control infrastructure now so that the next hurricane or tropical storm doesnt do so much damage. Thats smart planning for the future, which helps ensure that future sessions of the Legislature wont have to find some money for storm rebuilding.

That visionary approach in Phelans package is continued with HB 5, which would create a catastrophic debris management plan and a model contract that cities and counties can use to speed up debris removal after disasters.

Again, this is Disaster Response 101, the kind of plan that Texas should have had in place before Harvey. Until neighborhoods can get the piles of trash off their curbsides, they cant really start their rebuilding. Storms like Rita, Ike and Harvey produced mountains of debris that simply overwhelmed traditional removal processes.

This is the kind of legislation Texas needs, not just because of Harvey, but because of the likelihood that climate change will bring even more hurricanes and tropical storms to Texas in the future. As the state with the most coastline on the Gulf of Mexico, we are vulnerable to that threat. We cant change that, but we can take some common-sense measures to improve drainage and build higher so that the next disaster might not be so bad.

The Legislature has a budget surplus to work with, and again, the Rainy Day Fund has grown to $12 billion. The time for action is now, in this session, not the one in 2021. The state Senate should make sure these bills end up on the governors desk.
Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Novant Health plans to transfer some services from Charlotte, N.C.-based Ballantyne Outpatient Surgery Center to a new hospital, according to the Winston-Salem Journal.

Three insights:

1. Novant plans to shift two operating rooms and one gastroenterology room from the surgery center to a new, 36-bed hospital in Charlotte. The timeline for the transition is unclear.

2. The health system will also move beds from Charlotte-based Presbyterian Medical Center into the new facility.

3. Novant received conditional approval April 9 to build the $154 million hospital. The hospital is expected to open in 2023.
Male specialists and self-employed specialists receive higher compensation than their peers, according to Medscape's "Physician Compensation Report 2019."

Medscape surveyed 19,328 respondents across 30-plus specialties. Four insights:

1. Self-employed physicians continue earning more than employed physicians:

Self-employed: $359,000 annual salary

Employed: $289,000 annual salary

2. Male specialists earned 33 percent more than female specialists, down slightly from 36 percent in 2018:

Male specialists: $372,000 annual salary

Female specialists: $280,000 annual salary

3. Male specialists spend about 9 percent more time seeing patients than their female peers:

Male specialists: 40 hours per week

Female specialists: 37 hours per week

4. Women may spend slightly more time on paperwork and administrative work each week:

Male specialists: 15 hours per week

Female specialists: 16 hours per week
Seguin, TX (78155)

Today

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 68F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 68F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Amazon has thousands of employees around the globe who are tasked with listening to and transcribing Alexa conversations to help enhance the virtual assistant's understanding of human speech, Bloomberg reports.

The team, which is made up of employees in Boston, India and Romania, among other locations, reviews up to 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to the report. The employees do not have access to personal identifying information of the users speaking, such as account details, an Amazon spokesperson told the publication. However, Bloomberg reports that recordings sent to Alexa include the user's account number, first name and the device's serial number.

"We take the security and privacy of our customers' personal information seriously," an Amazon spokesman said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. "We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order [to] improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone."

To review Alexa chats, Alexa extracts a random, small sample of customer voice recordings and sends them to the employees who transcribe users' commands. The employees then compare the recordings to Alexa's automated transcript or note the interaction between the user and Alexa, writing notes about what the person asked and whether Alexa provided a proper response.

Other employees are required to annotate everything Alexa's speaker hears, including background conversations. If employees hear any conversations where users discuss private details, such as names or bank information, they are required to label the audio file as critical data and then move onto the next file, according to the report.

In Alexa's privacy settings, users can opt to disable Amazon's use of their voice recordings for the development of new features.

To access the full report, click here.
The following healthcare layoffs have been reported by Becker's Hospital Review since April 5.

1. Bon Secours St. Francis Health System in Greenville, S.C., will close its Pelham Road Medical Plaza May 3, resulting in the layoff of 60 employees.

2. Bayer AG will eliminate about 4,500 positions in its home market of Germany.

3. Cambridge, Mass.-based Merrimack Pharmaceuticals revealed it will complete another round of layoffs. The announcement comes after the drugmaker stopped work on its sole drug candidate in a clinical trial.

4. Gilead Science will lay off about 20 percent of its sales team after the drugmakers lucrative, older drugs lost patent protection.

5. Clarksville, Ind.-based Kentuckiana Medical Center closed April 5.

6. Pittsburgh-based Highmark Health said it laid off 239 IT employees.
Nurses at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, Idaho, voted April 11 to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union, according to a Lewiston Tribune report.

The vote was 157-44 in favor of organizing.

They didnt feel they had a voice, Val Holstrom, secretary/treasurer and principal officer for Teamsters Local No. 690, told theTribune.

They wanted to be sure they continued to provide the highest quality of care for their family, friends and neighbors, he said.

Hospital spokesperson Christina Metcalf told the publication that hospital officials respect the nurses decision and are focused of improving the health of community members.

The vote comes after St. Joseph Regional Medical Center partnered in 2017 with Brentwood, Tenn.-based RCCH HealthCare Partners, which completed a merger with Brentwood-based LifePoint Health last year. Before that, St. Louis-based Ascension owned St. Joseph.

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Yale-New Haven (Conn.) Hospital has signed a new contract with the union that represents its cafeteria workers, according to the Yale Daily News.

The five-year contract covers 268 employees represented by the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.

An April 4 news release says the deal reflects mutual support for skill-building, development and career growth of employees, as well as promoting consistent operational best practices.

The agreement is retroactive to Jan. 1 and runs through 2023.

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Stanford Health Care, Packard Childrens Hospital nurses authorize strike

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From a nurse suing a Washington health system over unpaid breaks to a Florida healthcare executive convicted in a $1.3 billion healthcare fraud case, here are the latest healthcare industry lawsuits making headlines.

1. Nurse sues Washington health system over unpaid breaks

A nurse at Bremerton, Wash.-based Harrison Medical Center filed a class-action lawsuit against Tacoma, Wash.-based Franciscan Health System, claiming the system fails to properly compensate employees for meal break.

2. Pipeline Health accused of defying court order to keep Illinois hospital open

Westlake Hospital staff and local leaders are accusing Los Angeles-based Pipeline Health of violating a court order to keep the Melrose Park, Ill.-based hospital open until May 1.

3. Pharmacy owner, pharmacist charged in $9.2M billing scheme

The owner of two pharmacies in Michigan and the pharmacist-in-charge at both facilities were charged April 9 for their alleged role in a $9.2 million billing scheme.

4. Ex-MetroHealth COO sentenced to 15 years for defrauding hospital

The former chief operating officer of Cleveland-based MetroHealth System was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to defraud the health system through a series of bribes and kickbacks.

5. Boston Children's Hospital sues Saudi prince over $3.5M bill

Boston Children's Hospital filed a lawsuit against a Saudi Arabian prince, alleging he owes the hospital $3.5 million, which he agreed to pay, for care provided to a Saudi Arabian child.

6. 7 found guilty in $40M Texas hospital kickback case

Seven out of nine defendants were convicted April 9 for their roles in a bribery and kickback scheme involving now-defunct Forest Park Medical Center in Dallas.

7. Feds charge 24 in $1.2B telemedicine fraud scheme

Top executives from telemedicine companies and the owners of durable medical equipment companies were among 24 defendants charged for their alleged participation in a healthcare fraud scheme that resulted in more than $1.2 billion in losses.

8. Florida healthcare exec convicted in $1.3B fraud case

Philip Esformes, who operated a network of more than 30 skilled nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Florida, was found guilty April 5 of 20 charges, including paying and receiving kickbacks, money laundering and bribery.

9. Former CEO of pain clinic chain guilty in kickback scheme

The former CEO of Brentwood, Tenn.-based based Comprehensive Pain Specialists was found guilty April 4 for his role in a kickback scheme.

10. Ex-Florida hospital director gets prison time for role in $1B fraud scheme

The former director of outreach programs at Larkin Community Hospital in South Miami, Fla., was sentenced to 15 months in prison April 3 for her role in a $1 billion healthcare fraud scheme.

11. Biotech accuses Dr. Soon-Shiong of orchestrating a 'catch and kill' scheme to protect cancer drug

A California biotech claims that billionaire biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, orchestrated a "catch and kill" scheme to stop development of an experimental cancer drug that may have saved the U.S. healthcare system more than $1 billion.

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A Florida federal judge sentenced Arnaldo Carmouze, a former physician assistant, to 80 months in prison for his role in a $1 billion Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme.

Mr. Carmouze was one of three defendants charged in 2016 for his involvement in the scam, which involved admitting patients to skilled nursing homes and assisted living facilities owned by Philip Esformes for medically unnecessary care.

Mr. Carmouze was sentenced roughly three months after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud.

One of his co-defendants, Odette Barcha, pleaded guilty in January to defrauding the federal government and paying and receiving healthcare kickbacks. On April 3, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison.

Mr. Esformes took his case to trial and was found guilty April 5 of 20 charges, including paying and receiving kickbacks, money laundering and bribery. His lawyers plan to file an appeal in the case.

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A nurse at Bremerton, Wash.-based Harrison Medical Center filed a class-action lawsuit against Tacoma, Wash.-based Franciscan Health System, claiming the system fails to properly compensate employees for meal breaks, reports the Kitsap Sun.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court April 9 on behalf of all nurses at the health system in the name of Hana Etcheverry, a nurse at Harrison Medical Center. Ms. Etcheverry claims the nurses' unpaid breaks are "continuously subject to interruption," which violates the Fair Labor Standards Act and Washington state law, according to court documents cited by the Kitsap Sun.

The lawsuit claims Franciscan Health System does not pay nurses for work performed during their meal breaks. It also alleges the health system encourages break interruptions by mandating nurses carry electronic devices for communication purposes.

"We are aware of the recent filing, are looking into all the matters raised in the complaint, and will handle all appropriately," Cary Evans, CHI Franciscan's vice president for communications and government affairs, told the Kitsap Sun. "CHI Franciscan takes the allegations seriously, and we are committed to fair treatment for all of our employees."

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

Boston Children's Hospital sues Saudi prince over $3.5M bill

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Westlake Hospital staff and local leaders are accusing Los Angeles-based Pipeline Health of violating a court order to keep the hospital open until May 1.

Citing a staff shortage, Pipeline suspended services at the Melrose Park, Ill.-based hospital on April 9 and gave employees a 60-day notice of closure. Pipeline's plan to immediately shut down the hospital was put on hold when Cook County Circuit Court Judge Eve Reilly granted the village of Melrose Park a temporary restraining order to prevent Pipeline from closing the hospital, cutting services or laying off workers until May 1.

Hospital staff members told several local media outlets that Pipeline has continued to lay off employees and haul medical equipment off site, despite the court order. Employees who spoke to NBC 5 on April 10 said patients were being turned away from the hospital.

The village of Melrose Park filed an emergency motion asking for Pipeline to be held in contempt of court for allegedly disregarding the temporary restraining order. Cook County Circuit Court Judge Moshe Jacobius heard the emergency motion on April 11 but didn't make a final ruling. Instead, he scheduled an evidentiary hearing for next week, according to Crain's Chicago Business.

Pipeline has denied any wrongdoing. "The allegations are false. We are following the judge's order," a company spokesperson told NBC 5.

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Ex-MetroHealth COO sentenced to 15 years for defrauding hospital

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Republican Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed a bill to add work requirements to the state's expanded Medicaid program, according to the Idaho Statesman.

Idaho voters approved Medicaid expansion during the November 2018 elections. Idaho legislators didn't fund the expansion or repeal it, but rather pursued bills to change it.



On April 4, state lawmakers passed legislation that included work requirements for Medicaid recipients. Mr. Little signed the bill April 8.



The Trump administration, which backs Medicaid work requirements, appealed a judge's recent decision that blocked Kentucky from implementing work requirements for Medicaid recipients. The ruling also stopped Arkansas from continuing its Medicaid work requirement program.
The American Organization of Nurse Executives will change its name to the American Organization of Nursing Leadership, the group announced April 11 at its annual meeting in San Diego.



The rebranding aims to clarify that AONE represents all nurse leaders, not just nursing executives.

"Today, we represent a diverse and growing field, serving leaders at every stage of their leadership journey across the care continuum," AONE said in a video announcing the name change.

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[April 11, 2019] Vonage's Applications Group President to Leave the Company at Completion of Integration HOLMDEL, N.J., April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage (NYSE: VG), a global leader in business cloud communications, announced today that Dennis Fois, Vonage's Applications Group President and former CEO of NewVoiceMedia, has informed the Company of his intention to step down from his role to become Chief Executive Officer of a private technology company. Vonage has initiated a global search for a new Applications Group lead. Mr. Fois will remain at the Company through April 30, 2019, and Alan Masarek, Vonage CEO, will assume interim leadership of the Applications Group until the search is completed. "We acquired NewVoiceMedia to accelerate Vonage's growth strategy and leadership position in cloud communications, strengthen our presence with global mid-market and enterprise clients, and deepen our integrations and key go-to-market relationships with CRM providers," Mr. Masarek said. Mr. Masarek continued, "Dennis has been a great partner and helped lead a smooth integration of NewVoiceMedia into Vonage, including the creation of the Applications Group and its go-to-market strategy. We are grateful for the work he's done to help position Vonage for continued success." Mr. Fois commented, "I am very proud of the many significant achievements at NewVoiceMedia, most important of which was the combination with Vonage to create a global leader in cloud communications. Vonage is uniquely positioned in the marketplace with its own technology stack across unified communications, contact center, and programmable APIs, and this allos Vonage to best respond to customer needs."

"While I have decided to leave Vonage to pursue my passion to be a CEO, I am confident that Vonage's talented team is well positioned to execute on its strategy for 2019 and beyond. I believe that Vonage is among the best in the rapidly evolving cloud communications industry," Mr. Fois added. Since closing the acquisition of NewVoiceMedia, Vonage has integrated its teams across the business including Sales, Product, Engineering, Finance, Marketing and HR. The Company recently launched CX Cloud Express , a NewVoiceMedia-based contact center solution integrated with Vonage Business Cloud, to meet the growing demand for a combined unified communications and contact center solution. About Vonage Vonage (NYSE:VG) is redefining business communications, helping enterprises use fully-integrated unified communications, contact center, and programmable communications solutions to improve how business gets done. True to our roots as a technology disruptor, we've embraced technology to transform how companies connect, collaborate and communicate to create better business outcomes. Vonage's fully-integrated cloud communications platform built on a microservices-based architecture enables businesses to collaborate more productively and engage their customers more effectively across all channels, including messaging, chat, social media, video and voice. Vonage Holdings Corp. is headquartered in Holmdel, New Jersey, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. (vg-a) View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vonages-applications-group-president-to-leave-the-company-at-completion-of-integration-300831079.html SOURCE Vonage

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An Illinois woman filed a lawsuit against Peoria-based UnityPoint Health-Methodist April 11, alleging hospital employees pressured her to undergo an abortion after a medical error, reports the Peoria Journal Star.

Twenty-three-year-old Reneizha Morris was admitted to the hospital in November 2017 for a psychiatric evaluation and learned she was pregnant. She had a sonogram on Nov. 6, which revealed she was carrying a healthy 7-week-old baby, according to Heart of Illinois ABC.

The suit claims staff members mistakenly injected Ms. Morris with methotrexate, which can cause severe birth defects. Physicians met with her twice after the error occurred to inform her about pregnancy risks. Ms. Morris said she still wanted to have the baby despite her physicians' warnings.

UnityPoint Health-Methodist's risk manager allegedly called Ms. Morris' home several times and eventually gave her $2,000 to cover the cost of a consultation at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago, the suit claims. Ms. Morris said she felt pressured to have an abortion and underwent the procedure Dec. 15, 2017. The risk manager's calls with Ms. Morris are not listed on her medical record.

"The hospital administration knew full well they would have been legally responsible for the considerable healthcare costs associated with the baby's birth injury," Ms. Morris' lawyer, Thomas R. Mulroy III, said in a statement cited by Heart of Illinois ABC. "The hospital purely had their own interests in mind and failed to take Reneizha's wishes into consideration."

The suit is seeking more than $50,000 in compensatory damages. A spokesperson for UnityPoint Health-Methodist shared the following statement with Becker's:

"Patient privacy laws prevent us from discussing any individual's care," the spokesperson said. "At UnityPoint Health, we respect all patient rights in every aspect of the care we provide."

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Contamination of patient privacy curtains with multidrug-resistant organisms is common, according to a study that will be presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases meeting in Amsterdam, Netherlands, April 13 through April 16.

Researchers from Michigan Medicine's University Hospital in Ann Arbor conducted the study at six skilled nursing facilities in southeast Michigan. They collected cultures from several patient body sites and high-touch surfaces in the patient's room. They collected cultures upon patient admission, on day 14, on day 20 and every month for six months.

The research team collected 1,521 samples from privacy curtains in 625 short-stay patients' rooms.

They found that 334, or 22 percent, of the cultures obtained from privacy curtains were positive for multidrug-resistant organisms, including 13.8 percent that tested positive for vancomycin-resistant enterococci, 6.2 percent for resistant Gram-negative bacilli and 4.9 percent for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. There was no difference in curtain contamination between private rooms and shared rooms.

Additionally, researchers found beside curtain contamination was linked to patients becoming colonized with MRSA and VRE.
NuVasive's manufacturing facility in West Carrollton, Ohio, achieved several milestones in 2018 and plans to continue building upon those wins, General Manager Dale Wolf told the Dayton Business Journal.

Five takeaways:

1. The West Carrollton facility launched the Porous PEEK interbody implant, which is designed to promote bone on-growth and in-growth, and improve blood-to-implant contact. A Charlotte, N.C.-based facility recently used the first Ohio-produced Porous PEEK product.

2. The West Carrollton facility also began manufacturing NuVasive's Modulus Titanium Technology last year. The technology is currently on the market.

3. Going forward, NuVasive will continue enhancing the facility's manufacturing models and roll out new technologies, Mr. Wolf told the Dayton Business Journal.

4. Additionally, NuVasive will expand the facility's workforce and manufacturing capabilities. About 250 workers are currently employed at the location.



5. NuVasive as a whole also reported several wins in 2018. The company's global revenue for the year surpassed $1 billion and its growth rate was 7.3 percent higher than the spine market average.
The Catholic Foundation of Greater Philadelphia is partnering with Philadelphia-based Rothman Orthopaedics to discuss the opioid crisis.

The two organizations are hosting an executive series on faith-driven pain and opioid management strategies May 1.

The event will feature two guest speakers from Rothman:

Asif M. Ilyas, MD, president of the Rothman Orthopaedic Institute Foundation for Opioid Research and Education

Alexander Vaccaro, MD, PhD, president of Rothman Orthopaedic Institute and a member of the CFGP board of trustees

Click here for more information.

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An extension postponing the UK's exit from the EU until October has helped avert "imminent economic crisis", a business group has said.

The extension to Article 50 agreed by Prime Minister Theresa May with fellow EU leaders this week removed the threat of a no-deal Brexit today, but did not completely remove it as a potential outcome.

Angela McGowan, director of the CBI in Northern Ireland, said the time between now and October required "political compromise and a fresh approach".

She said local businesses would now be adjusting their plans for a no-deal Brexit, not cancelling them.

"The impact that Brexit uncertainty is having on business investment is clear. In the coming months rebuilding confidence and boosting investment will be critical to support the all-island economy," she said.

"No-deal brings unnecessary risk to the Good Friday Agreement, which has been the foundation of social, economic and political progress. Cross-party collaboration must happen now to end the crisis."

Aodhan Connolly, director of the NI Retail Consortium, also welcomed the extension but said the pressure was far from off.

"While we understand the high level of Brexit fatigue, politicians must use the time given to break the political impasse in Parliament," he said.

"It would be pure negligence by our elected representatives if we find ourselves once again teetering on the edge of a no-deal Brexit in six months."

But others voiced fears that the Brexit deadline extension would create even more uncertainty for companies.

The Federation of Small Businesses in the UK said its members were being "driven to despair".

Chairman Mike Cherry said: "We have seen some cross-party engagement in recent days to try and end the stalemate. There should be no let-up in attempts to deliver the circuit breaker needed to secure a solution to this crisis.

"Extensions do avoid a cliff-edge in the short term, and dodging the economic harm of no-deal at 11pm today will be a huge relief for many small businesses.

"What is a problem, however, is that these extensions provide no comfort that there will be an end to the debating, dithering and delay."
IT company Xperience has reported 32% year-on-year growth on the back of a raft of new jobs.

The Lisburn firm, one of Northern Ireland's longest established companies in the sector, marked its landmark 50th year with a 27% expansion of its workforce to 111 people.

The business said the growth followed a sharp increase in market demand for what it called smart IT solutions.

Ten new staff have already been taken on, with recruitment ongoing for a further 12 people, including in graduate and engineering roles.

Xperience has also reported an additional 1.5m in new customer sales since the start of the year.

The group's managing director, Iain O'Kane, said the firm was performing strongly.

"This is an exciting time for Xperience Group as we have high expectations over the next five years from both organic and acquisitive growth and we are delighted about our plans for adding additional staff," he added.

"Welcoming the best technology talent to our team in Northern Ireland is key to bringing the most innovative solutions to our clients.

"Since starting 50 years ago in Northern Ireland, we have seen a continuous uptake in technology adoption, including a 30% increase in cloud adoption since 2015.

"Every day we see how our clients, across a wide range of industries, benefit from implementing cloud-based technology and IT solutions.

"We look forward to further educating the business community on how we can make computing simple."

The firm said the recent introduction of its third cloud computing platform would help it build on the spike in cloud adoption seen since 2015.
A man looks across the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland from Edentober in Co Louth to Newry in Co Down

Brexit will not stop the economies of Northern Ireland and the Republic growing, an economist has said.

Andrew Webb, who has been appointed as the new chief economist for Grant Thornton in Northern Ireland, was speaking as the UK was granted an extension to Article 50 late on Wednesday night.

The UK is now on course to leave the EU on a new date, October 31, or sooner if MPs approve a withdrawal deal. It could still leave without a deal on June 1 if MPs reject taking part in European elections.

Despite the uncertainty, Mr Webb said: "The economy across Ireland has shown remarkable resilience over the past few years. While there is a marked difference in the pace of growth between Northern Ireland and the Republic, we expect both parts of the island to continue growing during the year.

"Much of the forward outlook is still dependent on Brexit and the terms of trade between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

"The most recent delay, until the end of October potentially, provides some breathing space and perhaps room for calm heads to prevail, but it brings no certainty for business."

The senior economist said that while Brexit had dominated the socio-economic and political conversation north and south of the border for more than three years, a number of issues were equally concerning.

"In addition to planning for Brexit, both economies on the island face challenges around issues such as skills, innovation, productivity, housing, internationalisation, economic inactivity and entrepreneurship," said Mr Webb.

"At an all-island level - almost ironically given where Brexit could take us - there has been an increased focus to develop a more integrated economy, either through the Belfast to Dublin eastern corridor initiative, the Wild Atlantic Way or the North West Regional Development Group. Our economic advisory practice is already engaged in this space and aims to support innovative policy development across the island."

Mr Webb joined Grant Thornton's Belfast-based headquarters at Donegall Square West earlier in the month. The business services group has also recruited John Lavery as a new associate director in its economic advisory team. It is part of a 4m expansion in Northern Ireland by Grant Thornton, which recently announced plans to recruit 48 new staff in Belfast.

Welcoming the pair to Grant Thornton's Belfast headquarters, managing partner Richard Gillan said: "Recruitment of 48 new roles, recently announced as part of a 4m expansion, is also well under way and we anticipate further growth to come."
What the proposed apartment block for Sailortown would look like

An apartment block proposed for Sailortown in Belfast would be Northern Ireland's tallest building - standing at 30 storeys.

The development of 195 apartments over 30 storeys - two storeys higher than the Obel, which is currently the tallest building in Ireland with 29 floors - is being proposed by Amigo Developments, based in Lisburn.

It is also significantly taller than the Grand Central Hotel in Bedford Street in the city, which has 23 floors.

The development at Clarendon Dock would include a shop and restaurant on the ground floor, as well as a private cinema and a room for residents to practise Pilates and yoga. It will also include a rooftop bar.

Amigo Developments wants to demolish the derelict Pat's Bar and Rotterdam bar which sit back-to-back at Pilot Street and Princes Dock Street.

A travel co-ordinator would be appointed to encourage residents to cycle around the city, according to a brochure.

A car park will also be operated by car rental firm Sixt, with residents given the option of hiring cars by the hour.

They also propose a rooftop bar which they say would become "one of the most breathtaking and unique social spaces in Belfast".

And Barrow Square - an area of unused sunken ground just beyond the area, and part of the development plan - would feature raised lawns and planters "to soften its appearance and make it less forbidding," according to a brochure by planning consultants O'Toole & Starkey.

The brochure said that the height of the building was in keeping with the general area.

A second 30-storey building is proposed for the Titanic Quarter, across from Clarendon Dock.

It said: "Clarendon Dock and the surrounding area of Belfast is in the process of undergoing significant transition, with various major developments having been completed and approved in recent years.

"Taller buildings are part and parcel of the emerging urban fabric of the area."

The brochure cited the Obel building, which has 28 storeys, and Clarendon Dock's James Clow Apartments of 14 storeys adjacent to the proposed development site.

It added that the high-rise building would also "punctuate the block and add visual interest to Barrow Square, and act as a key gateway building to the city centre on approach along Belfast Lough, complementing the 30-storey Abercorn Tower building within the Titanic Quarter".

O'Toole & Starkey held a public consultation event to showcase their plans this week.

The new plans are not the first for Sailortown.

Various proposals have been put forward to redevelop the bars over the years, including a building housing 112 apartments, two restaurants and a gym, but no projects have ever came to fruition.

The consultation event was held to hear the views of the public before a planning application is submitted to Belfast City Council.

Sailortown was a working-class community located in the docks area of Belfast.

The Rotterdam was a hotbed for alternative musical talent in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland.

It is believed to be one of the oldest bars in the city and first started trading during the late 1800s.
'The toy retail chain, which employs 1,530 people, currently operates its sole local outlet at Castlecourt in Belfast'

Toy franchise The Entertainer is to open its second Northern Ireland outlet at The Junction Retail Park in Antrim after a 300,000 investment.

The new 4,000 sq ft store will bring another eight jobs to the shopping complex when it opens in June. The toy retail chain, which employs 1,530 people, currently operates its sole local outlet at Castlecourt in Belfast.

The group acquired the Early Learning Centre portfolio in February, consisting of 80 concessions within UK Mothercare stores and 400 standalone franchise stores worldwide.

It also acquired 57 toy shops in Spain from POLY in December 2018.

The new store follows the recent completion of Lidl's new supermarket at The Junction and McDonald's new drive-through restaurant.

Nando's is set to open its doors at The Junction later in 2019.

Andrew Milner-Walker from The Entertainer said: "We were impressed to learn of The Junction's redevelopment plans and felt it was a prime opportunity for us to build The Entertainer's brand presence further in Northern Ireland. As a family-owned business, we are excited to launch our new store in Antrim's leading shopping destination, where catering for a family-market is a key focus".
They say you should never work with animals or children but the people behind Belfast business Peter Thomas Photography have won a host of awards by throwing the rulebook out of the window. The company's photographer Peter Crymble has just won the Professional Photographers Association of Northern Ireland pet portrait photographer of the year award with a stunning image of Hugo the dachshund, while his co-worker Stacey Irvine's portrait of pomeranian Kizzy came second.

Although the firm also caters for humans, the pair have topped the pet category for three years in a row, with Stacey winning in 2017, followed by Peter in 2018 and again this year.

Peter explains: "We have different approaches to pet portraiture. Stacey would be more hands-on but I find the opposite works for me - a lot of patience and not being afraid of getting the odd lick."

Stacey reveals the secret to their success: "You have to be prepared to make an absolute fool of yourself. From making silly noises to get their attention to knowing what special words also work. 'Walk' for instance, is great but yesterday the name 'Gavin' was the only thing the pup responded to.

"You just need to ensure the dog feels comfortable and not stressed being in a studio with huge lights - whether that means having their owner sitting right next to them. It's all about making them feel safe.

"Once, a dog came and just sat on my lap while I was trying to take their photograph. She just wanted a cuddle and you need to work with them on their terms," Stacey says.

We talked to some of the pet owners who are overjoyed to have their four-legged friends committed to film.

Zena Gardner (43), from Millisle, works for Northern Ireland Ambulance Service. She is married to Paul and has two children Amy (20) and Lewis (12), and also cares for seven huskies.

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Zena says huskies can be hard work and are not for the faint-hearted - and she found most photographers were unwilling to hold a session with seven of them at once.

"They don't do off-lead and they don't have good recall. They're not an obedient dog, so Peter Thomas Photography did exceptionally well. We were very impressed," she says.

"With most photographers, when they see you have seven huskies, they back right off. We did have one who wanted to go to Tollymore and photograph them like they're wolves, but we didn't want to do that. They're not wolves, they're dogs and associating them with wolves is one of the things that gives huskies a bad press."

Zena says several of her dogs are rescues that have been rehomed. One of them, Delta, is a 56kg "monster" who was supposed to be a foster and is still with the family over two years later.

"There are so many needing homes. Game of Thrones has a lot to answer for, because a lot of people want a dire wolf," she says. "They should tell you that the fur comes out in handfuls. I had my dogs' hair made into wool and I crocheted a throw from it.

"They sing every morning at 6.30am for their breakfast and they sing every night at 6pm for their dinner."

Zena has always had dogs, but she chose huskies after her Jack Russell and German shepherds passed away.

"I did a bit of research and read up on breeds, and the breed that stood out was the husky. I like the fact that they all have such individual personalities," she adds.

"Any husky owner will tell you, don't just stop at one. Huskies are a pack animal and they like to be with other dogs. Very rarely will you get one that is happy in his own company. There are so many needing homes."

The huskies sleep together at night in a shed in a galvanised steel cage and are walked on waist leads, harnesses that are fastened round the waist.

"We bought them a scooter for Christmas that we get them to pull," she says.

They also have a rig for running five or six of them at once, but haven't entered them in any of the Dryland Mushing races yet.

Zena says she won a photoshoot voucher at a PDSA fundraiser and, after meeting the huskies, Peter Thomas Photography has gone on to raise money for Tyrone Husky Rescue.

"The dogs trashed the place but they were so patient with them. I kept apologising and saying they get really excited when they meet new people," she says.

"When they got there, (employee) Tara's face was a picture.

"She was delighted - it was like all her Christmases had come at once.

"They peed everywhere, they pooed everywhere, but the staff didn't even blink an eye.

"The photographer was wearing black, but she was covered from head to toe in white fur. They laughed the whole time.

"The photographer was on the floor with them, she was on the sofa with them - she was brilliant."

Civil servant Stephanie McGall (35), from south Belfast, was photographed with ruby cavalier Thea, one of the pups that was recently rescued near Larne Port during a police operation.

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Stephanie says she had been looking for a pup for a while and had spotted a Facebook post by Mid Antrim Animal Sanctuary which took in three of the dogs.

She asked to take the morning off work and was the first person in the car park waiting for the sanctuary to open.

"We were watching all the cars coming in and were starting to panic, and about 20 minutes before they opened, I got out and started a queue. When they opened the doors and came out, there were about 100 people there for the three puppies," she says.

The sanctuary carried out a home check at Stephanie's house.

She adds: "On Friday evening we got a phone call to say that she was ours. She was 10-weeks-old and very tiny. I work full time and she stays with my mum and is with us in the evenings. She follows me about, is full of energy and is very clever, learning little things like 'fetch' very quickly. She's doing great.

"She's very cuddly and loves to be cuddled. If you are lying on the sofa, she's cheek-to-cheek with you."

Stephanie says she noticed early on that Thea would take a bite of her food and then hide with it.

"She is probably used to other pups sharing food from the same dish. I've had to get special dishes to slow her down because she was eating so quickly," she says.

She says Peter Thomas Photography had sent vouchers to the animal sanctuary for photo sessions.

"We went and had her photo taken. She was around 13/14 weeks at the time. The images are fantastic and it was so hard to choose the best.

"Ruby cavaliers are all the one colour, which seems to be quite unusual, and the photographs they took with the red backdrop are absolutely amazing," she says.

Retired chef Paul Edmondson (62) rescues stray cats around his home in south Belfast and decided to get his picture taken with his cat, Toby.

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I am a life member of the Cats Protection League and have been for last 25 years," he says. "There are feral cats near my home and I've rescued 10 of them. Seven went to new homes - the CPL took them in after I rescued and tamed them. Three were too wild to be tamed and they were released after being neutered.

"I got bitten by one of them and had to get a tetanus injection. That's how committed I am to rescuing them!"

Paul uses a trap borrowed from the CPL, baits it with food and sets it to close without hurting the cat, then checks the traps at 7am every day to see if he has caught any.

"Some of them are only kittens," he says.

Surprisingly, he describes himself as more of a dog person.

"I had to have cats because I was working. If my cat Toby goes, I will get a dog, but Toby is only 12 at the moment," he says.

"Toby was a stray that came round to my house and tortured me until he got in. Somebody must have owned him because he wasn't neutered and then he went away for a week and he came back neutered. He mustn't have liked it there because he kept coming back.

"He's always there. He's more like a dog - he follows me everywhere. The neighbours all know him."

Paul won a small pet portrait in a competition and decided to have a bigger one taken of himself with Toby.

"I thought I'd get a bigger one - it will do for the top of my coffin when I am gone! We both got dressed up for it and the cat has a dicky bow on him," he says.

"He wasn't too bad at the session because I thought he would be a lot worse than he was. He did sit for a short while."

Engineer Gregor Neish (32), from Scotland, lives in Lurgan with his wife Fiona, baby son Leo (seven months) and dog Josie. He explained why they chose to have Leo and Josie photographed together.

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Whatsapp Gregor and Fiona Neish's baby son Leo and their pet dog Josie

Josie is a rescue dog. We never knew what she was, but we recently had her DNA tested to find out what she was and she's a mixture of spaniel, terrier and beagle. She's just a bit of a scruff really," he says.

"We think she's about four-and-a-half but we are not quite sure. We got her from Causeway Coast Rescue in November 2015 after we saw her on their Facebook page. We went up to visit and decided to adopt her.

"She's lovely. She's quiet and never really barks. She was a bit nervous when we got her but she's really placid and chilled out now.

"When Fiona was pregnant we were looking at newborn photography. We were looking at various websites and we saw they offered the chance to include the pet so we decided to go for it."

The family chose the newborn package, which involves a newborn photo followed by a six month photo and a third around Leo's first birthday.

"The first one went great. We went in and tried to get photos of the dog and the kid together, but she's not trained and we tried to get her to sit but she wasn't really taking part.

"So we focused on the newborn photos and as the session went on she started going over, so we got pictures of her just acting natural.

"Josie is fine with Leo. When he was a newborn and he was screaming, she would take herself off to a quiet spot, but she's really good with him.

"She hasn't really changed at all since he came along.

"She's always been quite chilled out."

Peter Thomas Photography, 48 Duncrue St, Belfast, tel: 02890 756705 or go to www.peterthomasphotography.com
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Lu Kang's Regular Press Conference on April 12, 2019

2019/04/12

At the invitation of State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono will pay an official visit to China from April 13 to 15. During this visit, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Foreign Minister Kono will co-chair the fifth High-level Economic Dialogue between China and Japan. Senior economic officials of both countries will attend the event. The two sides will also attend the opening ceremony of the China-Japan Youth Exchange Year.

Q: The Malaysian Prime Minister's Office just released a statement saying that with the concerted efforts of the Malaysian and Chinese governments and companies, companies on the two sides have signed a supplementary agreement that will pave the way for the resumption of the East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project. What is your comment?

A: China and Malaysia are neighbors that enjoy traditional friendship and important partners for cooperation. Both sides attach great importance to such friendship and cooperation. The governments of Malaysia and China as well as the companies involved have been in close communication for the relevant project. We are glad that after friendly consultations, the two sides have reached a solution. We hope the construction of the project can be resumed at an early date for more win-win outcomes.

Q: First, lately some Australian media have been accusing China of intimidating Professor Brady of Canterbury University, New Zealand, claiming Chinese security services were suspectedly involved in her burglary cases. On April 9, New Zealand Prime Minister Ardern in an interview said such claims were "completely wrong" and that she received no advice identifying the involvement of any Chinese security service. Do you have any comment? Second, we noted that Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said that the Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China is a initiative for international cooperation with deep insight. As the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is just around the corner, how do you understand the prospect for international organizations' participation in the Belt and Road?

A: We have noticed these reports and the remarks by Prime Minister Ardern. This fully proves that certain Australian media's attacks against China are just baseless rumors. Such ploys to smear China could barely stand up to any scrutiny. Any unbiased person will make a responsible judgment. Once again we advise certain media in Australia to honor professional ethics, stop making irresponsible comments, and instead, contribute to mutual trust and friendship between countries.

Regarding your second question, the recognition and support for the Belt and Road Initiative are now becoming the mainstream among the international community. Now, 125 countries and 29 international organizations have signed BRI cooperation documents with China. The effective complementarity between the Belt and Road Initiative and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has formed a policy synergy to promote global common development.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on many occasions, including the time when he was visiting China last September, that the UN agrees with and supports the Belt and Road Initiative and that it is of great significance to the UN's goal of reducing the poverty population globally. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said that the Belt and Road Initiative is a positive initiative to the UN and he hopes that China will inspire more countries to get on the path towards prosperity and stability. Heads of UN bodies, including Executive Director of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), also commended the Belt and Road Initiative.

Under the BRI, we are ready to work with other participants to enhance regional interconnectivity, promote world economic growth, address global challenges and achieve common prosperity.

Q: When meeting with ROK President Moon Jae-in in the White House, US President Trump said that he would be open to a third summit meeting with DPRK's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and a step-by-step plan to achieve denuclearization. He also said he had decided not to impose additional sanctions on Pyongyang, but current sanctions will continue. What is your comment on President Trump's statements? My second question is that DPRK's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un was re-elected as Chairman of the State Affairs Commission. There are some changes of posts at the senior level. What is your comment?

A: We have noted that during his visit to the US, ROK President Moon Jae-in exchanged views with US President Trump on the Korean Peninsula situation. We believe that it serves the common interests of all parties and meets the shared aspirations of the international community to sustain the momentum for dialogue to further ease the situation and move forward peace talks. We have talked about it many times and I would like to repeat it here that China hopes all relevant parties will stick to the right path of solving the problem through dialogues, step up engagement, take phased and synchronized steps as part of a package plan, respect and accommodate each other's legitimate concerns, strive to narrow differences and expand consensus, and work together to advance the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the political settlement of the Korean Peninsula issue. We believe that the US side has sent out positive messages when they say they will continue dialogue and do not wish to increase sanctions. We hope that the momentum for dialogue on the Korean Peninsula issue will be sustained and consolidated.

As for your second question, you may have noticed that President Xi Jinping has sent a congratulatory message to Kim Jong-un on his re-election as Chairman of the State Affairs Commission.

Q: Just a follow-up question on Malaysia's East Coast Railway project. Can you shed any light on what China may have offered Malaysia in order to get that agreement?

A: I think I have made it very clear that the governments and businesses of China and Malaysia have reached relevant consensus and signed an agreement in the spirit of mutual respect and equal consultation, which is conducive to both sides. Regarding the specifics, as this is a matter of cooperation between businesses, I'd refer you to the relevant parties. Regarding whether China has offered Malaysia anything in exchange for the agreement as you asked, there is no such offering at all.

Q: A military coup unfolded in Sudan. The Sudanese Defense Ministry said that President Omar al-Bashir was arrested. What's China's view on the situation in Sudan?

A: We have been closely following the development of the situation in Sudan. As you all know, non-interference in other countries' internal affairs is our consistent principle. We believe that the Sudanese side is capable of managing its own internal affairs and ensuring its national peace and stability.

Traditional friendship runs deep between our two countries and peoples. No matter how the situation may evolve in Sudan, we will remain committed to upholding and developing friendly and cooperative ties.

Q: The USS Wasp is conducting military drills with the Philippines in the South China Sea. What's the Foreign Ministry's response to this?

A: Perhaps you were not here the day I answered this question. The South China Sea itself is a peaceful place. Countries in the region have been working together to safeguard regional peace and stability by resolving or managing disagreements though friendly consultation and coordination between countries directly concerned. We hope non-regional states will refrain from stirring up trouble in the calm waters of the South China Sea.

Q: Does China recognize the military council in Sudan? What role does it intend to play in helping maintain social stability in Sudan? With major investment in the country, is China worried that its interests will be harmed?

A: Just as I said earlier, and as I believe you are well aware of, China's position is very clear: we are committed to non-interference in other countries' internal affairs.

On the latest situation in Sudan, as I said, we believe that the Sudanese side is capable of managing its own internal affairs and ensuring its national peace and stability. As to the Chinese investment and other interests in Sudan that you referred to, I'd like to point out that, over the years, the bilateral relations between China and Sudan have enjoyed sound development and our mutually-beneficial cooperation has delivered benefits to both peoples. We share a deep friendship. No matter how the situation may evolve in Sudan, we will remain committed to upholding and developing friendly and cooperative ties.

Q: Several years ago President Xi Jinping referred to Bashir as an old friend. Is China concerned that its old friend has been overthrown by Sudan's military? Does China plan on offering its old friend any material support? Also, there are a lot of protesters now on the streets defying curfews which is a potentially dangerous situation. Where does China stand on that current situation?

A: Regarding your first question, like I said, China and Sudan enjoy traditional friendship. In our decades-long friendly relations, we have maintained friendly exchanges with Sudan's government, its all walks of life and the Sudanese people.

As for your second question, I would like to reiterate that we believe Sudan has the capability to properly handle its internal affairs.

Q: What's your expectation for Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono's upcoming visit to China?

A: China and Japan are each other's important close neighbors. The bilateral relations between the two countries maintain the momentum of improvement and development. China attaches importance to Foreign Minister Kono's visit to China. State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will hold a talk with him and the two sides will exchange views on China-Japan relations and international and regional issues of mutual interest. They will co-chair the 5th China-Japan High-level Economic Dialogue, during which more than ten government officials from the two countries will have an in-depth discussion on a wide range of topics including our macro-economic policies, bilateral economic relations and trade, third-market cooperation and innovative ways of cooperation, and explore more cooperation opportunities.

China stands ready to work with Japan to implement the consensus on improving China-Japan relationship reached by the leaders of the two countries, jointly plan for the exchanges at various levels and across-the-board practical cooperation going forward, properly resolve relevant issues and promote the sound and steady development of China-Japan relations.

Q: What is the reaction of the Chinese government toward Julian Assange's arrest?

A: The Chinese side noted the relevant reports and hopes that parties will properly resolve this issue through friendly consultation.

Q: The newly installed World Bank President on Thursday urged caution with the loans from China, citing the high buildup of debt, especially across the nations in Africa. He also pushed for more transparency in cooperation between China and Africa. What is your response?

A: China's mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, including that with African countries as you mentioned, is carried out following the principle of openness and transparency and on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit through friendly consultation.

As to whether such cooperation will add debt burdens for the partners, we already took similar questions on many occasions earlier. I wonder whether the relevant party is able to provide any solid evidence proving that the debt crisis in any country is attributed to its cooperation with China? But no such evidence has been offered to us by far. On the contrary, on this podium, we have come forward with solid evidence that slapped back the doubts of relevant parties and proved that the debts in the countries they identified are not caused by their cooperation with China at all. Instead, the debts incurred because some other countries caused a bigger proportion of their debts.

Q: Regarding Julian Assange, you just said that China hopes the relevant parties are able to resolve this situation. Does China regard extraditing Mr. Assange to the US as a good way of resolving this situation?

A: This issue indeed needs to be resolved through friendly consultation by all relevant parties.

Q: Regarding the railway deal with Malaysia, does this represent that China is making adjustments in the BRI agreements for relevant countries?

A: I cannot understand what you meant by saying there were adjustments. The Belt and Road cooperation between China and other countries follows the principle of consultation and cooperation for shared benefits. On the basis of mutual respect and equal-footed consultation, we reach mutually acceptable arrangements with other countries. There is no fixed pattern. The same is true with Malaysia. Some may say there have been some differences between China and Malaysia recently. Now facts have proven that our two sides can resolved differences through friendly consultations.

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The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the municipal government of Tianjin will hold a promotion event presenting Tianjin to the world at 3:30 PM on April 16 in the South Building of the MFA. The theme of the event will be China in the New Era: A Dynamic Tianjin Going Global. Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the CPC Tianjin Municipal Committee Li Hongzhong will attend the event and deliver a speech, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi will address the event, and Mayor of Tianjin Zhang Guoqing will promote the city. Representatives of foreign diplomats in China will be invited to speak and interact with the guests.

This promotion event will be the first ever held for a municipality directly under the central government. Tianjin, one of the cradles of China's modern industry, has made important contributions to the country's economic and social development over the past 70 years. At the beginning of a new era, Tianjin, following a new development concept, is deepening implementation of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei coordinated development strategy, seeking integration into the Belt and Road Initiative and striving to build an open, inclusive and livable metropolis. The promotion event will showcase the city's inclusive historic culture and demonstrate its burgeoning exploration in pursuing high-quality development through self-driven innovation. Your active participation and coverage will be most welcome.

With this MFA Tianjin promotion event scheduled, the MFA regular press conference will be adjourned for Tuesday, April 16, and be resumed on Wednesday, April 17. In the meantime, you may fax or email your questions to the Office of the Spokesperson as usual.
Playing hide and seek with your friends sounds like a perfectly pleasant outdoor activity for your average nine-year-old boy.

But when your hiding place is among the dead bodies piled up at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, the childhood game takes on a haunting perspective.

Tomi Reichental, now 84, is a Holocaust survivor. Thirty-five members of his family were among the millions of victims.

For 55 years he kept those memories locked away,

Next Monday will be the 74th anniversary of Tomi's liberation from Bergen-Belsen.

Moving up the employment ladder brought him to Ireland as a 24-year-old. He soon married and has made Dublin his home for the past 60 years.

Fifteen years ago Tomi started to talk about his experience, and his travels around schools and colleges brought him to the Ulster Museum last night at the invitation of the History Teachers' Association of Northern Ireland, where guests watched his latest film, Close To Evil.

It documents his attempts to meet Hilde Michnia, a former SS guard at Bergen-Belsen.

Those attempts failed when the 93-year-old showed no remorse, still in complete denial of the reality of what had happened.

"I wanted her to forget the past and concentrate on the future," said Tomi. "I was prepared to reconcile with her, if not forgive. I know she was a victim of her time, and I always say if I was born into that environment, who knows what I would have done?"

The meeting never happened, despite Michnia admitting she was present at "death marches" in the camp. Legal manoeuvres are still under way in Germany which could hold her accountable.

"She may well yet be the last to face trial for her actions," said Tomi.

Born in Slovakia in 1935, he lived on the family farm until he was nine.

"My father was a farmer and was considered a useful citizen when they first started rounding up Jews in 1942," he said. "Most of those taken away in the first phase didn't survive."

There was no such luck the second time and October 16, 1944 is a date etched on his mind.

"We found ourselves in Gestapo headquarters," he said.

"From there we were deported to Bergen-Belsen. I was nine. It wasn't an extermination camp but people were still dying through starvation and disease. Over 70,000 perished there, mostly Jews, but also gypsies and political prisoners.

"I saw people die on a daily basis. As children we continued to play, but the most tragic time was in January 1945 when many more were transported from Auschwitz. The population grew from 25,000 to 60,000 in a couple of weeks.

"An epidemic of typhoid broke out and people were dying in their hundreds. The crematorium couldn't cope. Corpses were thrown into heaps. Thousands upon thousands.

"The stench was unbearable. Conditions were unimaginable. People were skeletons. Occasionally they fell down and we stopped playing to see what would happen. In most cases they never got up.

"We would play hide and seek and hide behind a pile of corpses. As children we did not fully comprehend the scale of the crimes committed around us. Children survived better than the adults.

"I didn't speak about it for 55 years. I've started speaking now and I'm not going to stop on behalf of those millions who can't.

"The world is becoming very dangerous again and we have to teach the young people. If they see any bullying, racism, they must tell. When I was a boy nobody spoke up."

Since finding his voice Tomi has spent his time educating young people with his first-hand experience, working with Dublin based filmmaker Gerry Gregg on three documentaries and writing several books.

"I can see history repeating and education is the most important thing. People need to know, they need to tell their families, their friends," he said.

"The response has been amazing from young people. There is a real difference between hearing this from a teacher and hearing it from me. I was there. After all the horror, I am doing my best to keep the memory of those lost ones alive.

"In the next 20 years no survivors will be left and those who deny the Holocaust ever happened will have a free hand to say what they want. I won't let that happen."
A retired British soldier with memory loss will not have to give evidence at the Ballymurpy inquest, a judge has ruled.

It emerged yesterday that the ex-serviceman, known only as 'Soldier M12', has been diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

The pensioner, who is understood to have been a member of Support Company 2 Para, was on duty near Springfield Park, where Father Hugh Mullan and Francis Quinn were shot dead.

Ten people killed by the Parachute Regiment in Ballymurphy in west Belfast between August 9 and 11, 1971.

Medical reports indicated that the former soldier, who had expressed a strong desire to give evidence at the inquest, was experiencing "significant cognitive impairment" as a result of the condition, which is in its early stages.

A Ministry of Defence (MoD) barrister argued the ex-soldier was unable to recall past events due to memory loss and that any attempt to question him would be an act of "humiliation".

"He is not able to provide a reliable witness testimony," the barrister said.

The legal representative told the inquest that M12 was unable to recall new information within minutes of learning it.

"He appears to provide implausible answers to fill memory gaps," they said.

The soldier is also said to talk incoherently about the IRA and show signs of confabulation - a memory condition defined as the production of fabricated, distorted or misinterpreted memories without the conscious intention to deceive.

"He may provide answers which are superficially plausible but inaccurate," the lawyer said.

However a barrister for the next of kin claimed the MoD was "trying to have its cake and eat it" by maintaining that witness statements obtained from M12 last year should be read into the record.

Karen Quinlivan QC said the exact same argument put forward by the MoD applied in "equal force" to M12's written statements.

Delivering her ruling, coroner Mrs Justice Keegan excused M12 from having to attend the inquest. However, she stressed that she did not take such decisions lightly.

Mrs Keegan accepted it was clear from the medical evidence that M12 suffered from "a significant cognitive impairment" and would not be able to provide "reliable witness testimony".

The court heard that while the former solider has Alzheimer's disease, he has recently been in hospital for another condition which may require inpatient treatment.

The coroner, who noted that she believed M12 was cooperative and was keen to attend the inquest, also noted expert medical advice that he was at higher risk of suffering a stroke because of his illness.

She did not consider special measures to be realistic and she concluded that it would be "totally unfair on him and of no assistance to me to compel him to attend".

Hearings for the Ballymurphy inquest are due to resume on April 29, following an Easter recess.
Police at the scene where womens body was found in Cuchulainn House. Credit: Press Eye

A Belfast community has been left "devastated" after a woman's body in a block of flats.

Police have launched an investigation following the discovery at a flat in Cuchulainn House in the New Lodge area on Thursday morning.

It is understood she was in her 30s.

A PSNI spokesperson added: "A post mortem will be carried out in due course. Enquiries are ongoing."

SDLP councillor for the area, Paul McCusker, said the community has been devastated by the young woman's death.

"This woman had her whole life ahead of her. Whilst the circumstances around her death are unclear, it is extremely sad that her friends and family will be receiving this horrific news," he added.

The community in the New Lodge is extremely tight knit and many will be devastated to know that a young woman has died in the area. My thoughts go out to anyone who knew and loved her.

Sinn Fein councillor JJ Magee offered his condolences to the woman's family and friends.

Police investigations are now underway. My sympathies are with the family, friends and neighbours of this woman at this time," he added.

I would appeal to anyone with information on what happened to bring it forward to the PSNI.
A veteran who took part in a protest ride to Stormont in support of Soldier F who is being charged over Bloody Sunday fears more prosecutions could follow.

The man, who gave his name as Tony, said he was involved in an incident during Northern Irelands troubled past and felt he was dealt with fairly at the time.

But he queried whether he should now expect a knock at his door.

Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972.

Tony told Press Association: Where will it end? We have the flags that say we support Soldier F but it is not only about Soldier F, its soldier a, b, c and all after.

Where are they going to go then, once they have finished with the alphabet, where will it end?

We are saying that we want it to stop here. Soldiers carried out their duty at the time, they did as they were told.

Expand Close The Rolling Thunder ride was in support of Soldier F (Liam McBurney/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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I was involved in an incident whereby I was detained, interviewed and released.

I believe I was dealt with justly at the time. Do I sit and wait for 20 years for a knock at the door?

And the rest of these gentlemen, mostly veterans, are they the same  just sit and wait for a knock at the door?

The event took place in Belfast as a similar Rolling Thunder demonstration took place in London.

Around 80 riders, many of them military veterans, set off from the Cultra, Co Down, and arrived at Stormont, the seat of devolved government in Belfast, at around 1.30pm.

Expand Close Motorcyclists ride along Prince of Wales Avenue (Liam McBurney/ PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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There was the sound of horns blasting and engines revving as the bikers rode up the mile-long Prince of Wales Avenue.

Parachute Regiment flags flew from a number of the bikes taking part.

Another participant, John Hutchinson  who served with the Prince of Wales Own Regiment of Yorkshire  said he feels Soldier F has been scapegoated.

The officers who were in charge at the time and all the politicians are now dead. After the Saville Inquiry there has been this rump of an investigation and it seems it has become a sop to nationalists, he said.

One person is possibly going to be prosecuted for an event that happened in 1972 and after all those known terrorists got letters of comfort and have not been prosecuted, I dont think it is fair that soldiers can be done, yet terrorists get to walk.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. Press: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists ride across Westminster Bridge in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist rides past police officers in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists gather after riding in a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists gather after riding in a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist displays a badge on his jacket dedicated to Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Scooterists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist displays a badge on his jacket dedicated to Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride across Westminster Bridge in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist displays a badge on his jacket dedicated to Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest arrive in Parliament Square, London (Kirsty OConnor/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. Press: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

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Government is not looking after soldiers. We went out and did their bidding, we did jobs that no one else could do or would do.

Soldier F 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, Northern Irelands Public Prosecution Service has said.

Some relatives of the 13 killed in Londonderry on January 30 1972, one of the most notorious days of the Northern Ireland Troubles, have long campaigned for justice.

A public inquiry conducted by a senior judge shortly after the deaths was branded a whitewash by victims families and a campaign was launched for a new public inquiry.

Relatives sought to right the wrongs of false claims that their loved ones had been armed. A fresh probe was eventually ordered by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1998.

A decade-long investigation by Lord Saville concluded that the troops killed protesters who posed no threat.
An Antrim council candidate has said that his comments were "tongue in cheek" after writing on social media that he would "apply for the job as executioner" if Donald Trump began killing immigrants.

Si Harvey is standing as a candidate for the Democrats and Veterans Party in Carrick Castle.

During a 2017 Facebook discussion when asked if he was calling Adolf Hitler or Trump a "legend", he replied "in a funny way both".

Mr Harvey told the Irish News that his comments were a "bit of a joke" and part of "sticking up for Donald Trump".

Alliance Carrick Castle candidate Lauren Gray said that the comments were "deeply offensive" and said they would "horrify" many people in Carrickfergus.

During the Facebook discussion Mr Harvey was asked "Would you still support Trump if immigrant executions start?".

"100%. I'd apply for the job as executioner," Mr Harvey replied.

The discussion centered around a German magazine cover which showed President Trump draped in a US flag and giving a Nazi salute.

Mr Harvey told the Irish News that he was not racist and did not support Hitler, he said the remarks were "a wind-up", though he did believe immigration should be limited.

He said that it was "ridiculous to compare Hitler with Trump".

"All I was doing was sticking up for Donald Trump," the veteran said.

"I would 100 per cent support Donald Trump. I think he has done an unbelievably fantastic job in America."

Mr Harvey said his execution comments were "tongue in cheek".

"Obviously it's not going to happen anyway because it wouldn't come to executions," he said.

The Democrats and Veterans candidate said that he "hated" Hitler and that he "was awful".

"I'm a veteran  why would I want to support Hitler?," Mr Harvey said.

Alliance's Mrs Gray said that the comments were "not remotely funny in any way, shape or form, and have no place in our society".

"Instead of Mr Harvey claiming these posts are a misguided attempt at humour, he needs to take a long, hard look at himself and apologise unreservedly for them," she said.

Such prejudiced views are not welcome in Carrick or indeed anywhere else. Im sure voters will make up their own minds after seeing them.
A man allegedly raped and tried to kill a woman after injecting her with a substance, the High Court has heard.

Prosecutors also claimed police discovered signs of an attempted "clean-up operation" at 27-year-old Shaun Hegarty's flat in Londonderry.

Hegarty, of Balliniska Heights in the city, is accused of tying a rope round the woman's neck and carrying out a sex attack last weekend.

His failed application for bail was delayed briefly amid allegations that he had just been assaulted in custody by another inmate.

Hegarty denies charges of raping and attempting to murder her, causing grievous bodily harm, attempted choking, administering a substance with sexual intent, perverting the course of justice and breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

He insists the pair only engaged in fully consensual sex.

The court heard the woman was found in a distressed state on Londonderry's Northland Road in the early hours of April 7.

Crown lawyer Robin Steer disclosed that she had sustained fractures to her cheekbone and eye socket, as well as a suspected bleed on the brain.

The woman alleged Hegarty had put a rope round her neck, injected her with something and raped her at his flat.

When officers forced their way into the accused's home he appeared to be just out of the shower, according to the prosecution.

A sofa cushion found in the bathroom was discovered in the bath, with Mr Steer contending efforts had been made to wash stains out of it.

"There were also other signs of blood, and that there had been an attempted clean-up operation," he said.

"Bleach and cleaning agents were found in the flat."

During interviews Hegarty denied harming the woman in any way.

He claimed they began kissing while at the flat drinking together, before going on to have consensual sex.

The accused told police that at some point she had banged her head off the bathroom door, with blood dripping from around her eye.

When the woman announced she was leaving Hegarty raised no objections, according to his case.

Defence barrister Sean Doherty argued that police had "jumped to conclusions" based on the account provided by a complainant with a serious drug problem.

"On her first account she made the allegation the defendant had prostituted her from the flat, that over the course of the evening various men had come there," he said.

"That is transparently false - police have examined the CCTV and there's no evidence at all of any persons coming or going."

Counsel also disputed claims that the woman was given any substance to stupefy or overpower her.

"She initially made the case this was injected into her tongue, but no needles or drugs were found," Mr Doherty continued.

"By her own account she had drunk a half bottle of vodka. The idea that a substance was administered is complete fantasy, it casts a shadow over the entire case."

Judge Stephen Fowler QC was told Hegarty claims the pair were on good terms when the woman left Hegarty's home wearing a pair of his tracksuit bottoms.

Refusing bail, however, Mr Fowler ruled: "My view is there's a serious risk of further offences."
Arlene Foster has accused the EU of "barely paying lip service" to unionists and being over-influenced by the pro-backstop lobbying of nationalists.

Writing in today's Belfast Telegraph, the DUP leader said "intransigence in Brussels and ineffectiveness in London" were preventing Brexit and it was time to implement the referendum result.

Sinn Fein accused her of pursuing a reckless Brexit agenda and of ignoring the views of unionist Remainers.

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Mrs Foster met EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier in Brussels yesterday as senior Tories warned pressure would increase on the Prime Minister to resign with no certainty as to when Brexit will happen.

Theresa May returned to Westminster yesterday with a new Halloween deadline for the UK to reach agreement on the terms of its departure from the EU.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn branded the latest delay a "diplomatic failure".

The UK is now on course to hold European elections next month.

Mrs Foster described her meeting with Mr Barnier as "useful" but added: "Only time will tell if he was listening."

She said she had told him that her party wanted "a sensible deal" which respected the referendum result and "the economic and constitutional integrity of the UK".

Brexiteer Tory MPs Owen Paterson and Iain Duncan Smith also attended the meeting.

Mrs Foster said: "Whilst the EU has spoken much about protecting the peace process and the Belfast Agreement, it has barely paid lip service to the views of unionists who cannot support the erection of trade barriers between Northern Ireland and our greatest market in Great Britain.

"Between intransigence in Brussels and ineffectiveness in London, we have arrived at a wholly undesirable place where we could be electing MEPs to the European Parliament within weeks but almost three years after the UK voted to leave the EU."

The DUP leader urged Mrs May to use the extra six months now available to tackle the issue of the backstop.

She claimed that if the EU refused to reopen the withdrawal agreement, the UK was "heading inexorably" towards no-deal.

Asked if she had confidence in the Prime Minister, Mrs Foster said the DUP had signed a confidence and supply agreement with the Tories and would work with whoever led the party.

Reacting to the DUP leader's Brussels trip, Sinn Fein deputy leader Michelle O'Neill said: "I'm sure the irony of Arlene Foster's comments won't be lost on those unionists who voted on a cross-community majority basis against Brexit.

"Those people have seen their wishes ignored by the DUP ever since as they continue to pursue a reckless Brexit agenda alongside their allies on the hard right of the Tory Party, as evidenced by Arlene Foster being accompanied by Tory MPs Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson."

Ms O'Neill said the DUP continued to ignore warnings from businesses, the agricultural sector, universities and trade unionists who support the backstop.

"The DUP should drop the pretence of defending anyone's interests but their own," she added.

Ulster Unionist leader Robin Swann said the issue of the backstop had to be addressed.

"Unionists of all shades and opinion should continue to resist attempts by the EU, the Irish Government and others who wilfully misrepresent the Belfast Agreement," he said.

"They should tell them to seek a sensible agreement which doesn't annex Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK.

"No matter what way it is shaped, the backstop is a direct attack on the bedrock of the Belfast Agreement, and unless a new approach is adopted, Mrs May's woes will continue."

Alliance deputy leader Stephen Farry said the six-month extension must be used for a "fundamental rethink" of Brexit.

"The EU is rightly stressing that the withdrawal agreement, and crucially the backstop, remains the bottom line and cannot be reopened," he said.

"The only alternatives are for Parliament to work a softer version of Brexit, which would still have its own challenges and contradictions, or to finally hold a people's vote to fundamentally reconsider Brexit."

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood also welcomed the six-month extension but added: "This chaos makes the return of government in Northern Ireland all the more important.

"The DUP has set its face against the will of people and businesses here for five minutes of influence at Westminster. They cannot be allowed to act as the sole voice for Northern Ireland in the six months ahead."

Meanwhile, Number 10 said last night that the Government's talks with Labour to break the Brexit deadlock wouldn't continue "for the sake of it".

Mr Corbyn warned that while his party would continue to engage "constructively" in the negotiations, the Government would have to compromise if the discussions were to succeed.

Mrs May suggested the two sides were not as far apart as was sometimes portrayed.

"I think there is actually more agreement in relation to a customs union than is often given credit for when different language is used," she said.

Earlier, Mrs May told MPs that delivering Brexit remained her priority. She acknowledged public frustration that it hadn't happened.
Former INLA man Dessie 'the border fox' O'Hare has been jailed for seven years for his part in the assault of one man and the false imprisonment of another during the eviction of a family from their Dublin home.

Sentencing the defendant, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said O'Hare had been a "frontman" in the intimidation of a family and an "enthusiastic participant" in a "vicious assault".

He said the "violent side" of his personality was "not in remission" and the threat to society posed by his "disposition to violence" had not completely abated.

O'Hare (62), of Slate Rock Road in Newtownhamilton, Co Armagh, pleaded guilty to assaulting John Roche, causing him harm, at The Towers, Garter Lane, Saggart, Co Dublin, on June 9, 2015. He also pleaded guilty to falsely imprisoning Martin Byrne at Rathcoole and Saggart on the same date.

At a non-jury Special Criminal Court yesterday, O'Hare was given a 10-year sentence for false imprisonment, with three years suspended, and a concurrent three-year sentence for the assault charge.

The court heard O'Hare told gardai he was employed by businessman Jim Mansfield Jnr to evict the family. Mr Byrne worked for the late Jim Mansfield Snr, who owned the Citywest Hotel and other businesses.

He also lived in a house at The Towers on the complex, which became the subject of a dispute involving Jim Mansfield Jnr.

The court heard Mr Mansfield Jnr went with Mr Byrne to a meeting with two former INLA members - O'Hare and convicted murderer Declan Duffy - and that when Mr Mansfield left the room, five more men came in and blocked Mr Byrne.

Mr Byrne was forced into a car, assaulted and brought to his home. He pleaded with O'Hare to be given a few days to leave The Towers voluntarily, but O'Hare refused and told him he was to "get out right now".

The court was shown CCTV footage of Mr Byrne's wife, Lisa, and her son being escorted by the gang of men from their home. Ms Byrne had been ordered upstairs to get dressed while a man stood watching.

The footage also showed the gang of seven men assaulting John Roche, who had earlier refused to let them on to the premises. He was punched, kicked and stamped on while on the ground and O'Hare could be seen kicking him four times.

Yesterday, presiding judge Mr Justice Hunt, sitting with two other judges, listed the aggravating factors, which included O'Hare's "appalling" and "serious previous criminal record".

Mr Roche suffered wounds to his face and scalp, including a fracture to his nose, extensive facial swelling and bruising, and a displaced fracture to a bone in his right arm.

Mr Justice Hunt said O'Hare was an "enthusiastic participant".

The judge referred to the "sinister manner" in which Mr Byrne's wife was threatened that her husband would be attacked in the same manner as Mr Roche.

The accused was a "frontman" in an enterprise to intimidate Mr Byrne and his family, the judge said.

The court had no doubt the reputations of O'Hare and Duffy would have been well known to Mr Byrne, who had a background in security.

When Mr Byrne did not "take the hint" from the menacing tone of a first meeting, it progressed to false imprisonment and violence.

While O'Hare's actions were primarily directed toward Mr Roche, he continued to play a "supervisory role" in the imprisonment of Mr Byrne, Mr Justice Hunt continued.

There was a "very disturbing victim impact statement", which showed the damage done to the Byrne family was significant, ongoing and had a permanent aspect. Family members were still under witness protection, he said. O'Hare led the attack on Mr Roche, while Duffy followed, he said, and he led the removal of the Byrnes from their home.

In mitigation, the judge accepted that the accused had pleaded guilty, which had been of "some value", with witnesses not required to give evidence. He had made a written expression of remorse which the court was "prepared to accept as genuine".

But he added: "We don't accept the offending can be viewed as isolated. The transgressions in the case indicate that the violent side of Mr O'Hare's personality is not in remission. The threat represented to society by Mr O'Hare's disposition to violence has not completely abated."

O'Hare, wearing a black suit, white shirt and blue tie, replied "yes" when asked if he understood the terms of the suspended portion of the sentence.

O'Hare has four previous convictions for offences including possession of a firearm in 1977 and assaulting a garda in 1979.

He was given a 40-year jail sentence in 1988 for false imprisonment and assault causing grievous bodily harm. As a result of the Good Friday Agreement, he was released from that sentence in October 2008.

Former republican paramilitary Duffy was jailed for six years last year after pleading guilty to assaulting John Roche. He also admitted falsely imprisoning Martin Byrne.

Three other men have also been jailed for the attack.
The Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry concluded there should be compensation ranging from 7,500 to 100,000.

Elderly survivors of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland have failed in a High Court bid to have the Secretary of State ordered to introduce compensation payments.

Their lawyers argued that Karen Bradley has the authority and a legal obligation to implement a recommended redress scheme amid the ongoing absence of a devolved administration at Stormont.

But a judge ruled that no unlawful failure to act by either the Secretary of State or the Executive Office was established.

Mr Justice McCloskey said: "The governance vacuum in Northern Ireland does not infringe any principle of constitutional law."

The verdict represents a blow for those fighting to secure the compensation envisaged when a major report into the abuse at children's homes run by religious orders and the state between 1922 and 1995 was published two years ago.

However, it may not be the end of the case.

With the head of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland set to ask Mrs Bradley to put draft legislation dealing with the redress proposals before Parliament, the judge signaled there could be "one final chapter" based on her response to that request.

Proceedings were brought by one man in his seventies, identified only as JR80, on behalf of other survivors of sexual, physical and psychological abuse and neglect.

In 2017 the Historical Institutional Abuse (HIA) Inquiry published a report recommending compensation ranging from 7,500 to 100,000 to those who suffered neglect and assaults.

With no functioning Assembly at Stormont since devolution collapsed, the challenge was aimed at having the Secretary of State and Executive Office compelled to take immediate steps on the pay-outs.

The court heard that up to 30 people who suffered abuse have died since the report was issued.

Counsel for JR80 argued that the deaths were continuing amid a complete loss of democratic accountability and branches of government "pass the parcel" over responsibility for implementing the redress scheme.

He told the court the survivors are enduring a "dystopian nightmare".

Details of the beatings and molestation suffered by JR80 were disclosed during the hearing.

In a statement he recalled being taken to a home when he was aged around seven.

"I was too young to know what was happening or why," he said.

"I simply remember being out with my two brothers picking blackberries, being put in a car and taken to the home."

He was separated from his siblings and didn't see them again during his time there, the court heard.

"Every day there felt like a year," JR80 stated.

He suffered repeated abuse, involving frequent assaults and witnessing even worse violence being inflicted on others.

Beatings were meted out for wetting the bed, according to his account, leaving him frightened to go to sleep every night.

He also described being sexual abused by a man who came to the home.

"I found separation from my brothers unbearable, I didn't know where they were and missed them terribly," he added.

When he finally left the home and was reunited with his brothers they never discussed what had happened to them.

JR80's barrister insisted that countless other children were allowed by the state to suffer a similar fate.

Lawyers representing the Secretary of State and the Executive Office argued that they had no power or legal obligation to intervene.

Dismissing the challenge, Mr Justice McCloskey described the protracted vacuum in governance in Northern Ireland as a disadvantage to the population rather than an infringement of any constitutional principle.

He added: "Absent legislative intervention by the United Kingdom Government, by appropriate amendments to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 or revocation or suspension of devolved powers, the prevailing constitutional arrangements in Northern Ireland, however defective or inadequate they may be viewed in some quarters, permit the moratorium which has afflicted this State for some two years.

"The plight of the victims and survivors of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland illustrates graphically just how damaging this is for certain sections of society."
Eoin Killen was also ordered to pay 100 compensation.

A journalism student who randomly attacked two strangers on a night out has been given 18 months probation.

Eoin Killen was also ordered to pay 100 compensation to both the man and woman he drunkenly targeted in south Belfast.

The 19-year-old, of Abbery Park in Armagh, admitted two counts of common assault and criminal damage to a tee-shirt worn by one of the victims.

Belfast Magistrates' Court heard Killen confronted them on Palestine Street as they walked home in the early hours of January 22.

A prosecution lawyer said neither of them knew the defendant, who became verbally abusive and threatened violence.

Killen allegedly punched the man up to four times before grabbing and ripping his tee-shirt.

"At one point he said to the female injured party 'I'm going to hit you, I don't care'," the prosecutor added.

Both victims managed to get back to their house, but were then pushed over a wall.

They made their way into the property while Killen remained outside, banging on the door for around five minutes.

When police arrested him he stated that he did not know the victims, expressing remorse for acting under the influence of alcohol.

District Judge Fiona Bagnall pointed out: "This was a completely random attack on two people."

Defence solicitor James Hanna disclosed that Killen is a journalism student at Belfast Metropolitan College.

He said his client had been drunk on the night of the assaults, and reacted badly to traumatic incidents in his own life.

"His behaviour was unacceptable, he apologised to both injured parties and since then he has cut down on his alcohol intake," Mr Hanna added.

Despite describing it as "a bad incident", Judge Bagnall acknowledged Killen's age and previous clear record.

Imposing 18 months probation, she also confirmed: "There will be 100 compensation to each injured party."
A Belfast man who stole 10,700 from Danske Bank cash machines as they experienced a technical fault used the money to pay for his wedding.

Jamie Scott Leitch, a father-of -three from Ardkeen Crescent, admitted stealing the money over a two-hour period in September 2017 and was given community service yesterday.

Belfast Crown Court heard that while the 38-year-old self-employed joiner contacted the bank and has offered to pay back 200 a month, this offer was rejected by Danske.

As well as being ordered to "give something back" via a 200-hour community service order, Judge RoseAnn McCormick QC also fined Leitch 1,000.

A Crown prosecutor said that on September 6, 2017, technical issues arose with Danske Bank in Denmark, which resulted in a number of difficulties, including malfunctions of ATMs.

During this period Danske Bank customers were able to withdraw cash from ATMs using their bank cards - but the money didn't come out of their account balances.

The prosecutor said that during the period of malfunction a total of 1.628m was withdrawn by customers.

They were able to withdraw money, even if they didn't have it in their accounts.

In March 2018 it emerged that while around 273,000 has since been recouped, there was still an outstanding loss to Danske Bank of around 1.35m.

Danske Bank subsequently passed details on to police of customers who had withdrawn cash over the period in question, one of whom was a relative of Leitch's wife.

These details indicated that this customer's bank card had been used to make 54 separate withdrawals of cash over a period of just two hours - from 10pm on September 6 to just after midnight on September 7.

The first withdrawal was 100 from an ATM on the Woodstock Road, and apart from the 53 other withdrawals, there were also a further four unsuccessful attempts.

In total Leitch, using his wife's relative's bank card, withdrew 10,700 from various ATMs in and around Belfast.

Leitch was spoken to by police in May 2018.

He initially made the case that his wife's relative owed him money and had given him his bank card to lift 200.

He also claimed he didn't know about the technical difficulties and maintained his innocence, but later admitted a single count of theft.

The prosecutor said that while the Crown accepted this was an opportunistic crime, Leitch did drive to numerous bank machines over a short period, which indicated "some degree of planning".

Defence barrister Mark Farrell branded his client's offending as "very easy to commit and very easy to detect".

The barrister said that while Leitch had made efforts to repay the bank 200, this offer has not been accepted, and added: "Over 1,500 people were able to access more funds than they had."

Regarding Leitch, Mr Farrell said he was a hard-working family man who at the time was struggling with finances, and who used most of the money to fund his wedding.

Saying Leitch "fell into the lure of committing this offence", Mr Farrell said he had expressed regret and remorse and has "acknowledged his wrongdoing".
Northern Ireland farm subsidies could be halved by 2030 because of Brexit, an industry expert has warned.

Farmers will have to do more with less money due to changes envisaged under any scenario short of remaining in the EU, said Michael Haverty, a consultant from The Andersons Centre.

Any kind of exit from the EU will see the UK leave the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which has underpinned the sector's finances for decades.

"The fear seems to be that, without some commitment, future politicians will raid farm funding for other purposes," Mr Haverty said.

"We don't believe that funding will disappear completely, but it will be at much lower overall levels in a decade."

Mr Haverty added that farm funding could fall by as much as 60% by 2030.

Last summer the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs launched a consultation around the CAP.

It is intended to boost competitiveness and ensure the long-term viability and sustainability of the sector.

Productivity and protecting the environment are among the department's priorities.

Mr Haverty said local farming faced an uncertain future.

"Relative to the world market, Northern Ireland produce is relatively expensive," he added.

"Therefore, a quality-focused market approach, emphasising and enhancing the unique selling points of Northern Ireland produce, is crucial."

A conference supported by the Irish Farmers Journal and the Livestock and Meat Commission on the prospects for Northern Ireland's agriculture industry was held in Armagh yesterday.

It also addressed concerns around labour shortages in, for example, fruit-picking.

A government white paper has suggested five-year permits would be available for higher-skilled workers.

Mr Haverty said the Government's Migration Advisory Committee appeared to want less cheap labour, so that productivity would be boosted.

But he added: "It is not clear that the current proposals really understand the situation in the agrifood sector."

Statistics have also shown the employment of indigenous workers is relatively static.

"This suggests that immigrants have not taken locals' jobs," Mr Haverty said.

"Instead a ready supply of good-quality and cheap labour has allowed the sector to grow. That may have actually supported higher-paid domestic jobs."

Mr Haverty also warned that without a deal there would be a degree of "chaos".

"Profitability is likely to be down because the costs involved with any trade, imports or exports, are a deadweight loss to the farming sector," he stressed.

His intervention came as Ulster Farmers' Union president Ivor Ferguson welcomed the further extension to Article 50 until October 31.

"It is good news for agriculture that a no-deal situation on April 12 has been avoided," he said. "However, this pattern of taking the UK to the Brexit cliff edge cannot continue.

"This extension must be used constructively. The Prime Minister, the Government and the rest of Parliament must put the interests of the country first and agree a way forward for the UK to leave the EU with a deal before October 31.
Department of Education figures show that 63.4% of those attending controlled schools last year were Protestant, 10% were Catholic and 26.5% were either of other faiths or had no recorded religious background (stock photo)

New figures show that the largest education sector in Northern Ireland is open to all, it has been claimed.

Historically, Protestant and Catholic children in the region have attended different schools - with most of the former attending controlled schools and most of the latter attending Catholic maintained schools.

Barry Mulholland, who leads the Controlled Schools Support Council, was speaking as the body released a report containing new figures indicating the religious background of the children that attend those schools. The controlled sector has 49.2% of schools including nursery, primary, secondary, grammar and special settings. These also include 27 controlled integrated schools and two Irish-medium schools.

Department of Education figures relating to the 2018 academic year have been compiled in a new report by the Controlled Schools Support Council.

They show that 63.4% of those attending controlled schools last year were Protestant, 10% were Catholic and 26.5% were either of other faiths or had no recorded religious background.

Mr Mulholland said the figures show the "diversity and inclusivity of controlled schools, which are open to all faiths and none".

"Controlled schools provide education to over 143,000 children and young people to enable them to learn, develop and grow together, within the ethos of non-denominational Christian values and principles," he said.
Sinn Fein has been targeted by pro-life campaigners outside Catholic churches in vice-president Michelle O'Neill's Co Tyrone heartland over the party's stance on abortion.

Flyers urging people to snub the party at the ballot box have been left on the cars of people attending Mass in strongholds like Dungannon and Pomeroy.

The leaflets state: "Withhold your vote from Sinn Fein in the forthcoming local elections and send them a clear message that we don't support their abortion policy.

"The Catholic population needs to increase its numbers in the north, not reduce them. We love our children, we don't kill them. Sinn Fein has had its day."

The leaflets are not claimed by any organisation and are headlined "Their Day Is Done!" - a reference to the republican slogan "Our Day Will Come" (Tiocfaidh Ar La), with a passage of Bible scripture at the end.

Some of it reads: "Just as we are about to become the majority in the six counties, along comes a new version of Sinn Fein telling us that we must have British abortion clinics opened in every town in Tyrone and across the north."

It urges people to remember a "photo of Michelle Doris O'Neill and Mary Lou McDonald at the front of Dublin Castle (the one time centre of British rule in Ireland) with a cardboard sign proclaiming that the north was 'next' in line" for abortion.

"Don't they realise that by opening abortion clinics in Omagh, Dungannon, Strabane, Cookstown, Coalisland, Carrickmore etc that they will reduce our numbers to the point where we will never recover?

"Once again, we will become a minority in our own country and we can forget about border polls and everything else."

Mrs O'Neill's family are from Clonoe in east Tyrone. Her father Brendan Doris was an IRA prisoner and Sinn Fein councillor. After his death in 2006 the late Martin McGuinness paid tribute to the Doris family as "a well-known and respected republican family (who) have played a significant role in the republican struggle for many years".

Last June Sinn Fein delegates voted to change the party's position on abortion at its conference in Belfast. They backed a leadership motion stating that women should have access to abortions within "a limited gestational period".

The decision came shortly after a referendum in the Republic removed a constitutional amendment that effectively outlawed abortion. On the day of the referendum result in Dublin, Mrs O'Neill and party president Ms McDonald held up a sign saying that "the north is next".

Previously, Sinn Fein had backed making terminations only available in circumstances such as fatal foetal abnormality, rape or sexual abuse.

Unlike other parts of the UK, the 1967 Abortion Act does not extend to Northern Ireland, meaning that it is the only region of the UK or Ireland where abortion is illegal unless there is a serious risk to a woman's life or health.

Former party politicians Francie and Anne Brolly resigned from over the issue. Sinn Fein TD Carol Nolan also quit over the policy change last year.

When Sinn Fein was approached for comment about the leafleting outside churches, it stated: "Sinn Fein support access to quality and safe healthcare for all women on the island of Ireland."
The scene in Dungiven after a cash machine was ripped from a wall and stolen

Retailers met PSNI chiefs yesterday over the spate of ATM robberies that have brought fear to rural traders across Northern Ireland.

Nine stores have been targeted in the wave of attacks that have left businesses in ruins.

Retail NI chief executive Glyn Roberts led a delegation that met Assistant Chief Constable Barbara Gray and Detective Chief Superintendent Darren Evans, who leads the PSNI task force investigating the raids on ATMs.

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Roberts said his members had been reassured by what they had heard.

"This was a productive meeting with ACC Gray and her senior officers." he said.

"We greatly appreciate the dedication of her officers in their efforts to arrest the criminal gangs behind these robberies.

"I feel reassured that the PSNI is stepping up their investigations and the number of patrols.

"Our members are being ruthlessly targeted by these criminal gangs and feel under a state of siege.

"As we approach the weekend Retail NI members are asking themselves will they be next.

"Retail NI is urging the general public to report anything suspicious around building sites or retailers with ATMs.

"If they see a digger moving in their town or village in the middle of the night, ring 999."

"No small business owner should ever have to face such a threat.

"We are urging the community as a whole to be vigilant and to stand with our members in these challenging times."

Earlier, the PSNI's Detective Chief Inspector David Henderson had called on retailers across Northern Ireland to remain vigilant in the face of the ATM raid threat, saying that the thefts were having a serious impact on rural communities.

"We need communities to help be our eyes and ears," the senior officer said.
Sinn Fein MP Michelle Gildernew has revealed she was diagnosed with PTSD due to living through Northern Irelands troubled past. (Oireachtas/PA)

A Sinn Fein MP says she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder due to Troubles trauma.

Fermanagh and South Tyrone representative Michelle Gildernew was speaking in Dublin during a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on the Good Friday Agreement.

The political veteran grew up Co Tyrone in the 1970s and 80s where her family took part in the civil rights campaign.

She spoke about her PTSD diagnosis on Thursday as Northern Irelands Victims and Survivors Commissioner Judith Thompson urged the committee to press the Irish Government to probe atrocities that took place in their jurisdiction to secure answers for grieving families.

Ms Gildernew, 49, highlighted victims of less well-known atrocities.

There are victims and survivors right across these islands, while the Dublin and Monaghan bombings understandably get a lot of attention, there were bombings in Cavan as well and families bereaved and children who died as a result of that, she told the committee.

Anybody who has lost a loved one knows what it feels like to be a victim.

There is an awful lot of pain and hurt out there, I recognise that, weve all been through the conflict, I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2013 as a result of it, there is a lot of damaged people out there.

We have to look at wider societal issues and the impact we have on prescribed drugs, our suicide rates and all of that.

There is a still an awful lot of hurt and if it is not tackled and dealt with properly, then that hurt will continue to be generational and that pain will be felt for years to come.

Ms Gildernew previously spoke out in 2012 about her 20-year battle with depression.

She explained then a number of causes, including being asked by her party to stand aside both as an MLA and as chair of the Stormont health committee, a family death and a series of people taking their own lives in her constituency.

In 2015 she lost her Westminster seat to Ulster Unionist Tom Elliott.

She returned to Stormont as an MLA in 2016 and won back her Westminster seat in 2017.
Unionist politicians reacted angrily last night after a sinister image of a gunman was posted on the official North Down Sinn Fein Facebook page.

The composite image - which was quickly removed by the party - was condemned by a former mayor of the area, Alan Chambers.

"I'm amazed that such an image would appear on a political party's website," he said.

"But given recent gaffes by the Sinn Fein leadership - like Mary Lou McDonald's intervention in the selection process for a new PSNI Chief Constable, or her walking behind an 'England get out of Ireland' banner in New York, and the disgraceful Kingsmill loaf incident last year - nothing should shock me about the stupidity of Sinn Fein.

"I would hope that the Sinn Fein leadership will condemn this, and disassociate themselves from this intimidating image."

DUP councillor Peter Martin said he was appalled at the image and what it represented.

"I'm very shocked that it has appeared in north Down," he said.

"Sinn Fein want people to be taken in by their rebranding of their image and their messaging, but I don't believe anyone is really being fooled.

"The image harks back to imagery of the past, with the Armalite in one hand and the ballot box in the other.

"My relatives are from Fermanagh, and there are graveyards full of UDR and RUC personnel put there by the IRA.

"We thought that was all behind us.

"I am simply appalled at the image and what it represents.

"An image like this shows the real face of Sinn Fein," the councillor said.

Contacted by the Belfast Telegraph about the image, a Sinn Fein spokesperson said last night: "This image was posted in error.

"It was removed as soon as party members saw the post.

"Sinn Fein has taken steps to tighten up the administration of this page."
Concern has been raised over rising knife crime in Northern Ireland after a man was slashed across the face.

The victim required 20 stitches after the incident in the Cliftonville Road area of north Belfast at around 9.30pm on Wednesday.

Elsewhere, a 33-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of a number of offences including hijacking and possession of a blade after a car was stolen in the New Lodge in north Belfast.

At around 11.30am yesterday a male jumped into a motorist's vehicle and produced a knife.

The driver fell out of the car and ran away.

He was not injured but was left very badly shaken.

The attacks come just weeks after 21-year-old Belfast man Reece Leeman died in a stabbing following an altercation at a property in the east of the city.

A 28-year-old man has since been charged with murder in relation to the incident.

In a separate incident, two people were left in hospital after a masked gang armed with knives broke into in their west Belfast home on April 2.

Commenting on Wednesday's incident at Cliftonville Road, SDLP councillor Paul McCusker described the slashing as terrifying and senseless.

"News of this attack is horrifying - there is no excuse for carrying, let alone using, weapons in our community," Mr McCusker said.

It was recently revealed that almost 800 serious knife crimes were recorded in Northern Ireland last year.

PSNI statistics published last month showed that of the 778 reported incidents involving knives, five resulted in killings, with an additional 29 classed as attempted murders and 58 as threats to kill.

The figures also revealed that an average of around two violent or sexual offences involving the use of a blade were recorded here every day in 2018.

Recent high-profile knife crime cases include that of killer Nathan Ward, who was jailed last month for 17 years for the fatal stabbing of Lisburn woman Jayne Toal Reat.

Ms Toal Reat, who was killed on Christmas Day 2017, died at the hands of Ward after she caught him trying to sexually assault her daughter.

In March, Callin Wilson (20), of no fixed abode, was sentenced to nine years for a fatal knife attack on a Syrian man, Hazem Ahmed Ghreir, in Belfast nearly two years ago.

Knife crime has also been in the national headlines in recent weeks following a spate of murders in UK cities, including the killings of three 17-year-olds in less than a week in England.

Mr McCusker said the increase in such crimes was deeply worrying. "I am extremely concerned that this type of behaviour is going to end in another fatality," he added.

"People have the right to feel safe in our community without having to worry about these totally avoidable and inexcusable incidents."

A 34-year-old man arrested within hours of the Cliftonville incident has since been charged with wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

Detective Sergeant Patrick Conlan said the arrest followed the search of a number of premises in Cliftonville Avenue.

The suspect is due to appear at Belfast Magistrates' Court next Friday.

Mr Conlan added: "Anyone who witnessed this incident or who has any information is asked to contact detectives at Musgrave on 101 quoting reference number 1285 10/04/19."

Information can also be provided anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy. It measures 40 billion km across  three million times the size of the Earth  and has been described by scientists as a monster. The black hole is 500 million trillion km away and was photographed by a network of eight telescopes across the world.

The first ever picture of a black hole: Its surrounded by a halo of bright gas. Picture by Event Horizon Telescope EHT

It was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight linked telescopes.

Prof Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who proposed the experiment, told BBC News that the black hole was found in a galaxy called M87.

What we see is larger than the size of our entire Solar System, he said.

It has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. And it is one of the heaviest black holes that we think exists. It is an absolute monster, the heavyweight champion of black holes in the Universe.

Prof Heino Falcke: We still have to understand how the light is generated

The image shows an intensely bright ring of fire, as Prof Falcke describes it, surrounding a perfectly circular dark hole. The bright halo is caused by superheated gas falling into the hole. The light is brighter than all the billions of other stars in the galaxy combined  which is why it can be seen at such distance from Earth.

The edge of the dark circle at the centre is the point at which the gas enters the black hole, which is an object that has such a large gravitational pull, not even light can escape.

Astronomers have suspected that the M87 galaxy has a supermassive black hole at its heart from false colour images such as this one. The dark centre is not a black hole but indicates that stars are densely packed and fast moving

The image matches what theoretical physicists and indeed, Hollywood directors, imagined black holes would look like, according to Dr Ziri Younsi, of University College London  who is part of the EHT collaboration.

Although they are relatively simple objects, black holes raise some of the most complex questions about the nature of space and time, and ultimately of our existence, he said.

It is remarkable that the image we observe is so similar to that which we obtain from our theoretical calculations. So far, it looks like Einstein is correct once again.

But having the first image will enable researchers to learn more about these mysterious objects. They will be keen to look out for ways in which the black hole departs from whats expected in physics. No-one really knows how the bright ring around the hole is created. Even more intriguing is the question of what happens when an object falls into a black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope

No single telescope is powerful enough to image the black hole. So, in the biggest experiment of its kind, Prof Sheperd Doeleman of the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics led a project to set up a network of eight linked telescopes. Together, they form the Event Horizon Telescope and can be thought of as a planet-sized array of dishes.

The eventual EHT array will have 12 widely spaced participating radio facilities

Each telescope is located high up at a variety of exotic sites, including on volcanoes in Hawaii and Mexico, mountains in Arizona and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, in the Atacama Desert of Chile, and in Antarctica.

The information they gathered was too much to be sent across the internet. Instead, the data was stored on hundreds of hard drives that were flown to central processing centres in Boston, US, and Bonn, Germany, to assemble the information. Katie Bouman a PhD student at MIT developed an algorithm that pieced together the data from the EHT. Without her contribution the project would not have been possible. Prof Doeleman described the achievement as an extraordinary scientific feat.

Katie Bouman is the MIT student who developed the algorithm that pieced together the data from the EHT. Without her contribution the project would not have been possible.

The team is also imaging the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own galaxy, the Milky Way.

Odd though it may sound, that is harder than getting an image from a distant galaxy 55 million light-years away. This is because, for some unknown reason, the ring of fire around the black hole at the heart of the Milky Way is smaller and dimmer.

What is a black hole?

A black hole is a region of space from which nothing, not even light, can escape

Despite the name, they are not empty but instead consist of a huge amount of matter packed densely into a small area, giving it an immense gravitational pull

There is a region of space beyond the black hole called the event horizon. This is a point of no return, beyond which it is impossible to escape the gravitational effects of the black hole.

Another amazing astronomical discovery! Actually we also have a RING OF FIRE on Earth!

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[BBC]
Structural problems at a luxury apartment block in Belfast city centre could cost up to 1m to repair, it can be revealed.

Damage to a column prompted a partial evacuation at the Victoria Square complex earlier this year, but on Wednesday all residents were told to vacate the building "immediately for safety reasons".

It is expected it will take five months to complete repairs at the upmarket development called The Residence, which comprises 91 high-spec homes.

Stores in the adjoining Victoria Square shopping centre are open for business as usual, as is the underground car park, despite structural issues affecting the high-end apartments.

The Belfast Telegraph has learned that apartment owners were previously asked to pay 10,000 each to foot the bill for structural repairs at The Residence, amounting to 910,000.

It is possible this bill will ultimately be covered by insurance, but this could not be confirmed yesterday.

A letter issued to residents by building managers McGuinness Fleck on Wednesday said they would have to find alternative accommodation themselves - and warned that they may not be repaid for any costs in doing so.

The firm said it was working to fix the problem "as soon as possible" but warned "the management company is not in a position to give any assurances about costs at this point in time".

One resident, Cian Carroll, who works in Newry but is renting in Belfast, was put up in a nearby hotel on Wednesday by his employer's rental company.

The 35-year-old content manager for STATSports, who lives with his girlfriend in a two-bedroom apartment that costs 975 a month, said they hadn't been instructed to remove all of the contents from their home.

"It was a big shock when the guy came to the door with a letter saying the building was being evacuated and we had to leave at once.

"We only moved in to The Residence at the start of February so we didn't know anything about the structural damage," Mr Carroll said.

"My employer pays my rent so I'm lucky compared to others who're paying mortgages, because they're not being looked after."

Mr Carroll, who is from Dundalk, added that, like himself, 23 residents stayed in a Holiday Inn on Hope Street on Wednesday while some others slept in a Hampton by Hilton hotel across the road.

"I assume we're staying in the Holiday Inn tonight again, but we're going back to the apartment first to pack up for a longer absence," he explained.

Mr Carroll said one of his neighbours told him that apartment owners had been approached for money for repairs prior to Wednesday night's evacuation.

"Residents told me that homeowners were asked for 10,000 each to cover the damages to the structurally unsound column on the fourth floor," he added.

Mr Carroll also questioned why only the apartments were evacuated.

"If this building is structurally unsound they would surely close down Victoria Square and Chichester Street," he speculated, "... and the car park is still available.

"That's why I can't get my head around it. If they're worried about the building coming down why is that? Why haven't they shut the shops?"

A resident, who has lived in the complex for a few months, told the BBC there had been "absolutely no sign of any damage" in her apartment.

Another resident, who moved into the complex at the end of March, said two men called at her apartment on Wednesday evening and handed her a letter saying a structural report had revealed a problem.

The woman said she was told the apartment "wasn't safe" and she was advised to move out as the whole block was affected by the issue.

The apartments at The Residence are highly desirable. Some have been advertised for sale in recent times at 195,000 and 215,000. A three-bedroom apartment was available for rent in the last year at 1,500 a month.

A statement issued by the Victoria Square (Chichester Street) Residential Management Limited, which looks after the 91 apartments at The Residence, said work will "commence on site as soon as possible".

"The estimated cost of the repairs is significant given the technical nature of the work involved," it said.

"It is estimated that the repair work will take approximately 20 weeks."

It added: "The repair work will involve a period of investigation to determine the specific cause of the damage and the parties responsible."

The management company said it was "regrettable that this situation will cause inconvenience to the residents of the apartments".

It added that it "is doing all it can to resolve the matter as quickly as possible".

"However, the absolute priority is to protect the structure of the building and ensure the safety of its residents", it continued.

The statement said that on February 1 the management company was notified about a structural issue within the building that had become visibly evident within two apartments.

"On inspection by structural engineers, it was recommended as a safety measure that 17 apartments along the vertical line of a damaged structural column were to be evacuated," it said.

"This was promptly arranged by the management company with the assistance of its appointed managing agent.

"The relevant public authorities, including Building Control and HSENI (Health & Safety Executive), were notified about the situation."

The management company said that on April 10 it received "a further notification from its structural engineers that all apartments within the residential development were to be vacated immediately as a further safety measure".

It added: "This notification was actioned by the management company and written notices were delivered to each apartment within a few hours."

The statement said that "in order for evacuated residents to return to the building as soon as possible, it will necessary for the management company to apply its funds in the first instance towards the required repairs".

It continued: "The management company is therefore not in a position to make any assurances in relation to costs incurred by the evacuated residents for alternative accommodation."

"It is possible that some residents may be able to return to their apartments sooner than the projected date for completion of the repair works but this cannot be confirmed at this point in time.

"In the meantime, the management company and its agent will continue to liaise directly with apartment owners affected by the required evacuation," the statement added.
Police have made an appeal for a driver who may have been asked to take an young assault victim home to contact them.

Officers stressed the driver was in no way connected to the attack, but rather could provide key information for their investigation.

The teenage girl was assaulted in the New Mossley area of Newtownabbey on Saturday March 30.

Detective Constable McRoberts is appealing to the driver of a silver-coloured vehicle who collected a young male at a bus stop on Fairview Road/Beverley Road, adjacent to the Co-Op at around 10pm to contact police. It is believed the young male asked the driver of the vehicle if he would take the teenage girl home along with two of her friends.

The driver of this vehicle is in no way connected to the assault on the teenage girl, however he may have information that could assist us with our enquiries," the police officer said.

I would appeal to this man to contact us at PSNI Public Protection Branch on the non-emergency number 101, quoting reference 1640 30/03/19. Alternatively, information can also be provided to the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111, which is 100% anonymous and gives people the power to speak up and stop crime."
A man looks across the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland from Edentober in Co Louth to Newry in Co Down

A counter-terrorism expert has warned Irish communities to "reject violence" amid a growing threat of dissident activity linked to Brexit.

Former PSNI Superintendent Ken Pennington believes a hard border could be used as a "narrative" by terrorists.

The 50-year-old, who served in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years, also voiced concern that an increased media presence could be used as a platform to spread their message around the world.

He told a European Confederation of Police conference in Madrid: "For over 18 months, there's been building political community protest around the subject of Brexit, especially in the border communities."

He said that 30,000 people cross the border daily travelling to work.

"Anything that interferes with that freedom of movement will be seen or thought of very harshly by the communities affected," he said.

"If you end up with a hard border and the disruption to the quality of life for people, that will be used as a narrative that Brexit is an English imposition on the people of Ireland.

"That's why I say it creates almost a recruiting poster and they would gain some support for them within communities. That narrative will be used to justify violence.

"On the back of that, I think the publicity generated by an actual Brexit will be fuel to the fire.

"They will try and make the most of the enhanced media presence at that time.

"Politics always happens in Northern Ireland and the Republic. I think people just need to continue to reject violence.

"We're very fortunate that the two police forces in Ireland are very professional.

"They'll be looking engage with communities, to listen to their concerns and I can't see either of those police services being anything but proportionate in their response."

Mr Pennington, who studied counter-terrorism at St Andrews University, also told how a mortar tube and command wire found by the PSNI on Monday in Castlewellan, Co Down, may be linked to a terror cell.

He explained: "The mortar that was found in Northern Ireland was probably in transit.

"We are finding a lot of these weapons, but we are not finding all of them. These are the activities that precede the coming storm."
Thousands of bikers have taken to the streets of central London and Belfast to protest against the prosecution of a former paratrooper over the Bloody Sunday.

Organisers claim as many as 11,000 bikers met on Park Lane on Friday afternoon, before riding through London to Parliament Square and on to Trafalgar Square.

While in Northern Ireland around 80 riders, many of them military veterans, set off from the Cultra, Co Down, and arrived at Stormont, the seat of devolved government in Belfast, on Friday afternoon.

The protesters, many of whom are armed forces veterans themselves, oppose the prosecution of an unnamed soldier, known only as Soldier F.

Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in January 1972, on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

Some relatives of the 13 killed have campaigned for their prosecution, while others argue that Soldier F should not face trial.

Expand Close Motorcyclists ride past the Cenotaph in London (Kirsty OConnor/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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The protest was conceived in March when Harry Wragg, 56, posted a video on Facebook, calling for Soldier F not to be prosecuted.

He claimed a form of immunity was given to paramilitaries as a result of the peace process  concessions he insisted should be extended to British soldiers who served.

A number of biker groups from around the UK welcomed Mr Wraggs suggestion of a procession of motorbikes in London to protest against Soldier Fs prosecution.

The protesters wore leather jackets with patches that showed their biker group, and many veterans bore the insignia of their former regiments.

Bikers came from across the UK on Friday morning, with some travelling to London from Newcastle, South Wales, Leicester and Kent. They brought flags that read: We stand with Soldier F.

In Belfast a veteran who took part the protest ride to Stormont fears more prosecutions could follow.

Where will it end? We have the flags that say we support Soldier F but it is not only about Soldier F, its soldier a, b, c and all after," he said.

Where are they going to go then, once they have finished with the alphabet, where will it end?

We are saying that we want it to stop here. Soldiers carried out their duty at the time, they did as they were told.

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Park Lane in London was blocked on Friday afternoon by riders queuing to take part in the procession.

The bikers engine revving attracted a crowd to watch the ride begin, at 1.30pm.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. Press: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists ride across Westminster Bridge in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist rides past police officers in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists gather after riding in a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists gather after riding in a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist displays a badge on his jacket dedicated to Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Scooterists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride through the streets of central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist displays a badge on his jacket dedicated to Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists ride across Westminster Bridge in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images A motorcyclist displays a badge on his jacket dedicated to Veterans, in central London on April 12, 2019, during a protest against the Bloody Sunday prosecution of Soldier F and in support of all Veterans. - A former British soldier faces murder charges of two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators on Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972. (Photo by Niklas HALLE'N / AFP)NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/Getty Images AFP/Getty Images Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday April 12, 2019. Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. A similar protest of an estimated 20,000 riders is taking place in London. See PA story ULSTER Sunday. Photo credit should read: Liam McBurney/PA Wire PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest arrive in Parliament Square, London (Kirsty OConnor/PA) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. Press: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

The protest travelled from Park Lane through Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge, back across the Thames at Westminster Bridge and into Parliament Square.

Protesters then rode along Parliament Street and Whitehall and passed the Cenotaph, finishing in Trafalgar Square.

Mr Wragg said: I had a bit of a rant on Facebook saying how disgusting it was really, over Soldier F.

I made a statement saying what about a few of us riding to London, to make a noisy protest?

There are 11,000-plus bikes. Weve just come together. And the best thing for me is that its combined services.

Expand Close Another group of riders massed outside the Stormont buildings in Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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Theres loads of banter between the RAF, the Navy, the Army and the Marines, and weve turned up as one. Ive been truly moved this week.

Alan Coates, 47, who owns a motorcycle shop in Hull, joined the protest against the prosecution, which he said was bang out of order.

I dont know the guy, I dont know his name, Ive never served in the armed forces, he said.

Ive shut my business for the day, come all the way down from Hull purely to show my support.

Theres no greater thing a man can do than lay his life on the line for his country, for people he doesnt know.

Expand Close Some of those taking part were themselves ex servicemen (Kirsty OConnor/PA) PA Wire/PA Images / Facebook

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So people who dont know him now are down here essentially showing him that he has our support and the Government are bang out of order.

All these people here are here to support this man who has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the people. He did his job, as many others did, yet hes being persecuted for what they call a crime.

Soldier F 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.

The Ministry of Defence said the charges have been brought by the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service, which is independent of the Government.

A Government spokesman said: We are indebted to the soldiers who served with courage and distinction to bring peace to Northern Ireland.

Although the decision to prosecute was taken by the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service, which is independent from Government, we will offer full legal and pastoral support to the individual affected.
A former apprentice solicitor who admitted subjecting his ex-girlfriend to a series of violent assaults over a six month period in 2017 was yesterday jailed for four years at Londonderry Crown Court.

Kevin McDaid (32), whose address was given as Hillview in Buncrana, Co Donegal, pleaded guilty to 15 offences, all but one of which he committed against his former girlfriend.

The offences included assault, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, falsely imprisoning and threatening to kill his victim and causing criminal damage to her property.

One of the assaults was committed against a neighbour of the couple when they lived in Princes Terrace in Derry.

The neighbour came to the victim's assistance when he saw McDaid dragging her along the street by her hair.

When the neighbour told McDaid to have some respect for the female victim, McDaid ran at the neighbour and punched him twice on the head and face, inflicting injuries which required complicated follow-up surgery.

A prosecution barrister said the violent assaults on the female victim took place in a toxic and alcohol-fuelled relationship between May and November 2017.

On one occasion McDaid spat in his girlfriend's face. During further assaults he grabbed her by the throat and inflicted injuries which caused swelling to her head and bruising to her body.

McDaid used several weapons during the assaults on his girlfriend. They included a wire coat hanger, a wooden bedside locker and a vacuum cleaner pipe.

Defence barrister Michael McAleer said McDaid, who as a result of his offending had lost a promising legal career, now accepted he was totally at fault.

"Since he first lifted his hand he lost every sense of respect. This behaviour was appalling against the background of a progressively worsening situation. His apology to the victim is not for the optics, it is genuinely meant", Mr McAleer said.

Judge Philip Babington said he had viewed photographs which showed some of the injuries suffered by the victim.

"They show in very graphic terms the way in which the defendant treated her," he said.

Judge Babington said he had read and considered a victim impact report. "There is no doubt that the defendant's treatment of her has affected her adversely, but to what extent it is difficult to know," Judge Babington said.

"She has been advised that she should seek some expert therapy if that is available and one can only hope that as time goes by she will be able to put the way in which the defendant treated her behind her.

"Unfortunately at the present time she feels that the defendant is still a threat to her, but again with time these fears may pass."

He said that McDaid, who had previous criminal convictions for indecent behaviour, disorderly behaviour and for assaulting police, had subjected his victim to both violence and humiliation.

"This was very serious violence in a setting where the victim should have expected to be respected and cherished," he said.

"It went on over a period of time, seemingly without very much mercy from the defendant being shown to his victim.

"All relationships can have moments of difficulty, but there is never an excuse for a man to lift his hand to a woman, certainly not here where it was done many times and with a variety of weapons over a prolonged period of time.

"The photographs of the injuries and bruising caused are quite disturbing. Thankfully, the injuries perpetrated were not more severe than they were. Domestic violence of this nature is not acceptable in modern society."

As well as jailing McDaid for four years, Judge Babington imposed a restraining order on him for five years.

Under the terms of the order McDaid is banned from going within 100m of any property in which his victim lived if he was aware of her home address.

Outside court Detective Sergeant Colin Neill urged other victims of abuse to come forward.

He said: "Domestic abuse is a terrifying crime which has a long-lasting impact on survivors.

"It takes a lot of strength and fortitude to come forward and make a complaint, and to see that complaint through the criminal justice system.

"Perpetrators should be aware that there are penalties and consequences for abusive actions within relationships, including being locked up behind bars."
A Sinn Fein MP has said she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder because of the Troubles.

Fermanagh and South Tyrone representative Michelle Gildernew was speaking in Dublin during a meeting of the Oireachtas committee on the Good Friday Agreement.

The political veteran grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Co Tyrone, where her family took part in the civil rights campaign.

Ms Gildernew (49) also highlighted how victims of less well-known atrocities did not get as much attention.

"There are victims and survivors right across these islands. While the Dublin and Monaghan bombings understandably get a lot of attention, there were bombings in Cavan as well and families bereaved and children who died as a result of that," she told the committee.

"Anybody who has lost a loved one knows what it feels like to be a victim.

"There is an awful lot of pain and hurt out there, I recognise that.

"We've all been through the conflict. I was diagnosed with PTSD in 2013 as a result of it. There are a lot of damaged people out there.

"We have to look at wider societal issues and the impact we have on prescribed drugs, our suicide rates and all of that.

"There is a still an awful lot of hurt. If it is not tackled and dealt with properly, then that hurt will continue to be generational and that pain will be felt for years to come."

Ms Gildernew spoke out in 2012 about her 20-year battle with depression. She outlined a number of causes for it, including being asked by her party to stand aside both as an MLA and as chair of the Stormont health committee, a family death and a series of people taking their own lives in her constituency.

In 2015 she lost her Westminster seat to the Ulster Unionist Party's Tom Elliott.

She returned to Stormont as an MLA in 2016 and won back her Westminster seat in 2017.

Earlier, Northern Ireland's Victims and Survivors Commissioner, Judith Thompson, urged the committee to press the Irish Government to probe atrocities that took place in its jurisdiction to secure answers for grieving families.

Among her recommendations was for Ireland to establish a mechanism similar to the proposed historical investigations unit to carry out investigations into incidents that took place in the Republic.
US President Donald Trump's nomination for the position of ambassador to Ireland has said that he will work to uphold the Good Friday Agreement.

Businessman Edward F. Crawford appeared before the US Senate's Foreigns Relations Committee at his confirmation hearing on Thursday.

Mr Crawford said that he would work to convey the US position "that the Good Friday Agreement should be upheld at all costs".

The Ohio businessman is Irish American, his father emigrated from Cork in 1925, with his mother following in 1927.

The 80-year-old is the CEO of Park-Ohio Holdings, an international manufacturing business with revenues of $1.9bn.

His business makes products for trucks, washing machines and the aerospace sector, and employs more than 7,500 people around the world.

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Mr Crawford also owns a distribution business in Cork city which employs 17 people. He said that he felt his business experience would serve him well as ambassador.

In the 58 years building this company I learned a great deal about people, he told the Senate committee.

He said that he would work to bring "knowledge and enthusiasm" to his new role.

Mr Crawford said he felt he could strengthen the ties between the countries.

I think I could be a very positive force for the goal to make the relationship stronger, he said.

Senators questioned the businessman on the effect Brexit was having in both Northern Ireland and the Republic.

Its unfortunate that we have two of our closest allies, the EU and the UK, in this situation, Mr Crawford said.

He acknowledged that Brexit had affected Ireland in "very strange ways".

Asked by New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen about the potential effect on the border, Mr Crawford said that the issue was "something that has to be settled by the two parties most concerned, that is the EU and the UK".

However he said that the US position was that the Good Friday Agreement "should be upheld at all costs".

Mr Crawford's nomination will now go to a committee vote, followed by a full Senate vote, before he is confirmed as the next ambassador to Ireland.

If approved he will serve as the first ambassador to Ireland in more than two years.
A Co Tyrone charity worker who was killed in car crash in Guatemala will be laid to rest in South America today.

Sally ONeill Sanchez, originally from Dungannon, will buried in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa following a funeral Mass in the Basilica de Suyapa at 2pm local time.

Her body will be taken to Cementerio San Miguel Arcangel for burial following the service.

The popular aid worker, who played a prominent role in Trocaire for 37 years, dedicated her life to working with the poor until she died alongside three of her colleagues.

Following her retirement 2015 Mrs Sanchez continued to carry out volunteer work with prisoners and migrants in Honduras, where she lived.

The organisation expressed profound shock and devastation following the loss of the passionate human rights campaigner.

Trocaire CEO, Caoimhe de Barra paid an emotional tribute to the truly remarkable woman who has been the heartbeat of the charity since 1978 when it was just five years old.

Sally built the foundations of the organisation, she said.

She embodied our values and through her courage and commitment to human rights touched the lives of so many people.

Although we still cannot believe she is gone, we know that she left an incredible footprint on the world.

The charity boss also, who was with Sally in Guatemala shortly before she died, said she remained a driving force for human rights in Central America.

Her drive, passion and commitment was as strong as ever, she added.

Her legacy will live on through the thousands of people whose lives she helped to improve, said Ms de Barra.

Irish president Michael D Higgins also paid tribute to the mother-of-three who distinguished herself for four decades through her commitment and unstinting belief in the dignity and inherent equality of all human beings and who worked on the front line during some of the most significant global humanitarian crises.

That included providing famine relief in Ethiopia in the 1980s and in Somalia in the early 1990s.

To have known Sally ONeill Sanchez was a privilege, Mr D Higgins added.

Sally understood the importance of combining tangible assistance and practical compassion with the pursuit of long-term solutions to the root causes of poverty, marginalisation and oppression.

Through her work she empowered countless people and she was relentless in calling on those with power to bring their influence to bear on the policies and politics that affected those most vulnerable.

In recognition of her career, Mrs Sanchez was awarded the Hugh OFlaherty Humanitarian Award in 2011 and was made a member of the High Level Panel for the Presidential Distinguished Award for the Irish Abroad the following year.

A special memorial mass will also be held by her former colleagues in Maynooth next month.
Police have called for the behaviour to stop.

Bus services in west Belfast have come under attack once again.

Bricks were thrown at two buses on the Stewartstown Road and Lenadoon Avenue areas on Wednesday night smashing windows on both vehicles.

The latest incident comes after public transport operator Translink was forced to suspend services after a spate of attacks in the Lagmore area earlier this year.

Police described the latest attacks as reckless and dangerous.

"Its extremely unfortunate that we are having to revisit this subject," police said.

"Putting the damage to the bus aside, which is in itself a serious matter, this behaviour is extremely dangerous to the passengers onboard our public transport system who could so easily have been showered in glass.

"This behaviour must stop. Its stupid, its dangerous, its affecting the wider community, whose bus services are disrupted by these kind of actions.

"We will continue to try and deter these attacks and prevent them from happening in the first place.

"If you know or can help identify the individuals involved then please contact police on 101 quoting ref 1025 of 9th April 2019."
Did you notice the snow from this storm is a little off-color? If you made it out of your house today you might have noticed some of the snow has a brownish tint. Were calling it snirt or snow dirt. It all started with a dust storm in New Mexico and Texas.

TX, NM dust storm makes dirty snow for MN. Did you notice the snow from this storm is a little off-color?

Dont be surprised if you wake up to a fine coating of West Texas & New Mexico dirt on your car in the morning. A big dust storm / plume spread across the region on April 11, 2019:

Look what this dust storm did the other day across Midland, Texas



Permission By: Julio Reyes@WeatherBug



Date: April 10, 2019

Midland, Texas#TXwx pic.twitter.com/59G2x2r1N1  Live Storm Chasers (@Livestormchaser) April 12, 2019

The high winds and dust caused lots of visibility issues for motorists traveling around the region on Wednesday afternoon.

Strong winds kicked up this dust storm in Lubbock, Texas Wednesday afternoon causing very low visibility. #TXwx #duststorm #blowingdust pic.twitter.com/9JH2JqmsTy  WeatherNation (@WeatherNation) April 11, 2019

Yes, what an amazing haboob:

Check out the dust being swept into the dry slot. #BombCyclone2 pic.twitter.com/z6TOPaMJBr  Keah Schuenemann (@keah88) April 11, 2019

But that power dust storm wasnt only local. The following satellite loop from the University of Wisconsin shows how the new Winter Storm Westley took the airborne dust particles from Texas and New Mexico all the way to Minnesota:

.@NWSTwinCities Here's the #GOES16 Split Window (10.3-11.2 m) from 0301-1546 UTC, showing the yellow signature of airborne dust making its way northward overnight: https://t.co/S3YcGr3K5O Should see reports of "dirty snow" from parts of #SDwx #IAwx #WIwx & even the UP of #MIwx pic.twitter.com/uEF6uB4TuC  Scott Bachmeier (@CIMSS_Satellite) April 11, 2019

Results: a brownish, orangish snow all the way up to Minnesota:

What happens when a snow storm meets a dust storm? #Brownsnow is the result ?? This was taken in Mankato, Minnesota after the snow there met dust that was blown in on strong winds from Texas. pic.twitter.com/LFVeb1bKPh  BBC Weather (@bbcweather) April 12, 2019

See my previous retweet. The direct result of the New Mexico & Texas dust storm as this storm strengthened resulted in our dirty snow as seen here! Pretty neat. pic.twitter.com/BujplNmCUn  Tony Dello (@WX_TD) April 11, 2019

Pretty amazing, no? A TX, NM dust storm makes dirty snow for MN during winter storm Wesley in April 2019. WOW!

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A Belfast City councillor has been accused of "stirring up hatred" over a social media post which said a leisure centre was closed to "local people" in order to "facilitate a group of Muslims".

However, independent councilor Jolene Bunting rejected the criticism saying it was "only asking a question". She also distanced herself from the post saying it was put up by one of her supporters, although she admitted to moderating the comments and that she was happy to be associated with the post.

The post appeared on the 'vote Bunting 1' Facebook page.

It stated: "QUESTION: What is your thoughts on the Shankill Leisure centre being CLOSED to the Local people, who use it all year round, to facilitate a group of Muslims".

The post was accompanied by a picture of a religious group praying in a hall at the centre. It was from October 2014 when a hall in the centre was booked for an EID celebration.

Belfast City Council said the room would have been booked as per normal booking policy - the same as with any other event - and the centre would not have been closed to the public at the time.

Hundreds responded to the Facebook post with many venting their anger describing it as "disgraceful" others posted derogatory comments while some pointed out the post was not correct.

Sinn Fein Belfast council group leader Ciaran Beattie criticised the message for attempting to inflame community tensions.

"This is just the latest example of Jolene Bunting injecting ill-informed bile into the election campaign," he added.

It is entirely irresponsible. It is wrong and the vast majority of her claims are completely untrue  they are simply a crass attempt to stir up hatred and community tension.

Jolene Bunting told the Belfast Telegraph the page was run by a supporter of hers but she did contribute to it and post material as Facebook had pulled her account down. She said the leisure centre post was published by a supporter. She said it was "clear" from the page it was run by supporters.

"It is not stirring up hatred. It is asking a question to the public, that is all. We should have more questions asked to see what the public think.

The outgoing councillor said she thought the picture was from 2015 or 16 and not as far back as 2014. She said at the time she was told the entire leisure centre had been closed to facilitate the event.

"It was a question, not a statement of fact," she added.

On the responses to the post she said she some were "much worse" and she had spent some time hiding many posts from "hundreds of trolls".

She also hit out at Sinn Fein for its criticism given how it has defended party members taking part in commemorations for the Shankill bomber.

Jolene Bunting has recently courted controversy putting up election posters emblazoned with slogans such as "Local homes for local people" and "Put veterans before immigrants".

She said she had no problem with multiculturalism in society but said it had to be controlled.

Last year, Jolene Bunting received a four-month interim suspension from the council after she racked up 14 complaints about her behaviour and links to far-right group Britain First.

She later appealed against the suspension, however it was dismissed at the High Court last month.
The Northern Ireland Electoral Office has provided assurances every absent voting application will be "robustly scrutinised" following the passing of the deadline earlier this week.

Anyone unable to vote on polling day on May 2 for the local government elections can apply to for a postal or proxy vote through the absent voting application process. That closed on Thursday and officials are sifting through all those submitted.

East Londonderry MP Gregory Campbell has said each application needs to be properly scrutinised.

The DUP veteran pointed to analysis that showed a large increase in postal and proxy votes in seats which elected a Sinn Fein MP during the 2017 General Election.

The average number of proxy votes in seats which elected a Sinn Fein MP was 23.5 per 1,000 ballots. In the seats which did not elect a Sinn Fein MP this figure was 7.8 per 1,000 ballots. Almost three times more.

The number of proxy votes cast in Foyle at the last election was 27.8 per 1,000 ballots. Sinn Fein's Elisha McCallion won the Foyle constituency from the SDLP's Mark Durkan by 169 votes.

It later emerged that the use of proxy votes in some Sinn Fein-dominated areas of Londonderry was more than 17 times the UK average.

"The the Electoral Office still needs to instil confidence amongst the public that full and proper scrutiny of every single application is going to be carried out," Mr Campbell said.

"There is no logical explanation for the huge disparity in application rates across Northern Ireland. I have yet to hear any explanation for the situation in Foyle."

Chief Electoral Officer Virgina McVeigh told the Belfast Telegraph the system for considering each absent voting application was overseen centrally by her and was robust.

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She said it was vitally important people had confidence in the election process and they worked to ensure each application was valid before allowing an absent vote.

"I would encourage anyone with information in relation to any suggestion of impropriety to contact me immediately," she said.
Rachel Allen with son Joshua (19), who has admitted drugs charges

The teenage son of Irish celebrity chef Rachel Allen has admitted drugs charges involving both cannabis and cocaine at the world-renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School.

Joshua Allen (19), the eldest son of Rachel and Isaac Allen, appeared before Midleton District Court on a total of six charges contrary to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977.

Four of the charges involved possession and possession for sale or supply of drugs, namely cannabis and cocaine, at Ballymaloe Cookery School in Shanagarry, east Cork, on August 30 2018.

The most serious count involved a charge that Allen possessed cannabis worth more than 13,000 for sale or supply.

Two charges related to possession of cannabis and possession of cannabis for sale or supply at Ballinamona, Shanagarry, on September 5, 2018.

The defendant, who turns 20 in November, currently lives at the Ballinamona address.

He arrived at Midleton District Court shortly before 10.30am with his solicitor, Don Ryan. His parents were not in court.

The defendant, who appeared wearing a smart blue suit and shirt, did not speak during the hearing beyond confirming his identity.

He sat in the main gallery of the court, directly behind his solicitor.

Allen's case was first in a lengthy court list.

"The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has indicated that the matter be dealt with on indictment. The DPP has consented to the matter being sent forward on a signed plea of guilty. That is what is happening," inspector Tony O'Sullivan said.

Solicitor Don Ryan, for Allen, confirmed the pleas to Judge Brian Sheridan.

"That is correct - he is going forward on signed pleas of guilty," he said.

Inspector Sean McCarthy said that after being cautioned and charged yesterday, the defendant made no reply to gardai.

Judge Sheridan remanded the teen on bail to Cork Circuit Criminal Court on May 8.

Gardai had no objection to bail, though Allen will be required to sign on at a garda station three times each week, surrender his passport and undertake not to apply for any new travel documents.

The defendant must also remain within the jurisdiction and live at Ballinamona, Shanagarry. The teen left the court immediately after the hearing and was driven away.

He is the grandson of Darina Allen and the great-grandson of the late Myrtle Allen, founder of the Ballymaloe cookery empire in east Cork.

Joshua Allen was arrested last September after the controlled delivery of a parcel with a US postmark to an address in east Cork.

Rachel and Isaac Allen issued a statement at that time, saying they were "absolutely devastated" by what had happened.

Joshua Allen's arrest came just three months after the death of Ballymaloe founder Myrtle Allen, his great grandmother.
A new baby western lowland gorilla in the arms of her mother Kafi on their island enclosure in Dublin Zoo (Brian Lawless/PA)

A new arrival to Dublins west has been sent warm wishes from Irelands leaders.

The as yet unnamed western lowland gorilla was born at Dublin Zoo on April 1, to first-time parents, mother Kafi and father Bangui.

It is not yet known whether the infant is a boy or a girl, as protective mother Kafi is keeping her baby close to her chest, impeding zookeepers from carrying out examinations.

On April 1, after a gestation period of around 8.5 months, Kafi gave birth to the healthy infant weighing approximately 2-2.5kgs.

One of the many well wishers for Dublins newest citizen was Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who said he was glad to welcome a new resident to Dublins west.

Glad to welcome a new resident to Dublin West. https://t.co/WDg4UUephL  Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) April 8, 2019

Neighbours were also keen to send their congratulations, with Irish President Michael D Higgins, whose home Aras an Uachtarain is situated in Phoenix Park, near the zoo, saying: My congratulations to our neighbours at Dublin Zoo on this new arrival.

"My congratulations to our neighbours at @DublinZoo on this new arrival." https://t.co/2x64TQi4cf  President of Ireland (@PresidentIRL) April 9, 2019

Zookeepers in Dublins iconic zoo are elated with the arrival, and say that the interest from the public is heartening.

The male only came to us last year, the female came to us seven years ago, but he was incredibly single-minded, said Helen Clarke, team leader of the African section at Dublin Zoo.

He doesnt have a huge amount of experience, even though hed fathered a child in France, so if he was stepping out of line, the girls ganged up on him, but left him alone if he behaved, but Id say from day one he had a plan.

We try to interfere as little a possible, we were expecting the birth in the middle of April, but like all first pregnancies, you cant nail it down.

We were checking her daily and there was nothing, then in middle of the day she gave birth.

Ms Clarke said that despite a shaky start in life, Kafi is a natural with the new addition.

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Her own mother died when she was eight months old, and she came to us from an orphan nursery, so you can never tell how good theyll be as mothers.

We did some maternal behaviour training with cuddly toys, and she always showed positive behaviour, so we werent worried.

With these gorillas, the baby is basically glued to the mother for the first five years, for the first two shell never let the baby out of her sight, shell let other females hold the baby eventually, in about a year, but theyll back off until then.

The male is quite protective too, hes always watching to make sure the baby is safe, thats his job.

The gorillas are already a popular exhibit at the zoo, but Ms Clarke says the new baby has already sparked major interest.

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For the first week, we kept mother and baby separate from the others, mostly due to the weather and we didnt want to put them under pressure with visitors.

The first few days we kept her on her own to let her bond, then she went back out last Tuesday.

Since then visitors have been able to see her and the little one, but shes spending a lot of time in the bushes, hiding.

It really catches peoples imagination, theyre so close to human babies, theyre very iconic, were expecting lots of visitors to see the new addition.
It is outrageous and frightening a taxi driver who pleaded guilty to sexual assault can be allowed to continue to carry female passengers as part of bail conditions, the Dail has been told.

The remarks from Sinn Fein TD Donnchadh O Laoghaire came after the case of Mansoor Uddin (41), a taxi driver who sexually assaulted three young women.

AN GARDA SIOCHANA CLARIFICATION.

In Feb this yr. a male taxi driver was convicted in the CCJ on 3 charges of

sexual assault. Following conviction the Garda Carriage Office was immediately

notified and the taxi licence (SPSV) was revoked in Feb with immediate

effect. pic.twitter.com/GjkRQo0a3f  An Garda Siochana (@GardaTraffic) April 11, 2019

Uddin of Castleway, Adamstown, Lucan, Co Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexual assault on January 30, 2016 and two sexual assaults on February 16, 2016.

The case has been adjourned to May 8 to allow for the preparation of a psychological report.

Part of the bail conditions are that a female passenger is not permitted to be a front seat passenger in Uddin's taxi.

He wasnt named in the Dail but the issue was raised by Mr O Laoghaire during Leaders Questions being taken by Tanaiste Simon Coveney.

Mr O Laoghaire outlined details of the case and said the man in question had pleased guilty.

He added: I accept that court decisions and sentencing are the remit of the judiciary and I will not be commenting on a way that influences that.

He said he wanted to raise the issue of the safety of women.

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He said: Bail conditions have been agreed for this man that stipulate that he can continue to drive a taxi but that female passengers are not permitted as front seat passengers.

Incredibly this man is still entitled to drive a taxi and carry passengers including women.

This is outrageous. How can any woman feel safe in a taxi no matter where they are seated thats being driven by a man who has pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault?

He said it is unsafe and absolutely wrong and legislation should not allow it.

He asked what the government is going to do to ensure that people who are guilty of sexual offences are nowhere near taxis and in a position to collect people.

He said if legislative change is needed lets do that.

He added: Its beyond unacceptable and its frightening that such a man could drive a taxi in Dublin tonight and it should not be allowed".

Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail pointed out before Mr Coveney responded that it is highly irregular for TDs to engage in any sort of discussion about a matter still before the courts.

Mr O Laoghaire said he accepted that and argued that the question he asked relates to legislation and who is entitled to drive a taxi.

Mr OA Fearghail added: Lets all of us tread very warily here.

Mr Coveney thanked Mr O Fearghail for the guidance.

He said he could understand Mr O Laoghaires concern but added we do need to be careful what we say here in the context of individual cases.

He said he wasnt familiar with the status of the case.

Mr Coveney said hed like to say more generally that the government is totally committed to preventing and addressing sexual abuse and gender-based violence.

He said there has been increased reporting of sexual crime to the Gardai that can be seen in some ways as a success in that victims feel more confident reporting these crimes.

He said the laws surrounding sexual offences have been significantly strengthened in recent years.

Mr Coveney said he knows Mr O Laoghaire was looking for more specific answers.

He added: I have to say as a father of three daughters it is important that parents and indeed young people can have faith that when they get into a taxi theyre safe but I think I need to be careful in relation to referring to any individual case.

He said he would try to get back to Mr O Laoghaire later having taken some advice on it.

Mr O Laoghaire asked in the abstract if Mr Coveney is confident that the Taxi Regulation Act ensures people who are guilty of sexual offices are not entitled to drive taxis and if not will the government bring forward legislation in order to ensure that is the case.

Mr Coveney repeated that TDs need to be careful what they say regardless of whats in media reports of court proceedings.

He said its a serious issue and of course legislation should be tested and if necessary changed to ensure that people who are travelling in taxis are protected appropriately and that people who are given a licence to drive taxis are appropriately vetted to make sure that whether its women or men who are travelling in taxis are given the appropriate legal protections that they deserve.
A Co Donegal shop owner who stockpiled custard creams for customers has said the Brexit delay has wrecked his plans.

Edward Coyle owns and runs Centra in Raphoe, Co Donegal, six miles from the border with Northern Ireland.

He has been stockpiling UK-made items, such as Jacobs Custard Creams, Heinz Beans and garlic bread, for months in anticipation of a no-deal Brexit.

Now, however, with the deadline pushed back to October, his goods will go out of date unless he sells them, which will in turn impact his supply chain.

We were ready for March 29 and we were ready on April 12. Now this delay has wrecked our plans, Mr Coyle said.

We have to sell off all the stuff that we had stockpiled and we have to stockpile again for October, but my worry is that Brexit can happen at any time.

It can happen in June when they review it, so how do I prepare? How do I manage that?

The politicians are not helping the likes of me to prepare when they cant even give us a date. Will October be the actual date, or will it be pushed down the road again?

Mr Coyle said he and other businesses in the Republic were taking no chances when it came to products manufactured in the UK and had filled warehouses with essentials to avoid empty shelves.

The items I have stockpiled are items that we cant guarantee we will have on the shelves if a no-deal Brexit happens, Mr Coyle explained.

Anything that is produced in Great Britain is stuff we have stockpiled.

That would be biscuits such as custard creams, which are manufactured in the Great Britain and brought across, and brands like Heinz.

Custard creams are very telling because they are something that only sell very well in the British Isles  Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. They are only made in Manchester and a few factories in Great Britain. Its not something where you can ring up France and ask them to send you a few containers of custard creams  they dont make them anywhere else.

You either have them in from your Great Britain factory, or you dont have them at all.

I would have several pallets of custard creams and Bourbon creams stockpiled already. That would be almost 4,000 biscuits.

They all have a sell-by date, which is before October, and now I have to stop buying them from my supplier and sell what I have stockpiled.

That all has implications for the supply chain behind me.

Another thing we have been stockpiling is garlic bread. There is one factory in the North that makes all the garlic bread for the entire island of Ireland.

If there is a hard border and the customs go in and there are controls and lockdown on the border, all of a sudden the 26 counties are going to have difficulty sourcing fresh garlic bread. They will have to get it from France or find some other way.

Because the garlic bread is fresh, the day we cant get it is the day we cant get it.

We have had to compensate by stockpiling frozen garlic bread. We would have several hundred frozen garlic breads stored in our warehouse in Galway.

Now I have to be prepared to stockpile and buy it all in again for October. We dont know the future and that is very difficult for us.

Mr Coyle hopes the UK will not leave the EU at all, but he feels that the current situation has left everyone in limbo.

I can see a lot of wrong things in Europe, but I certainly dont want to leave it, he said. If there is anything that needs fixed, we will fix it from the inside.

With what has happened now, we are all completely in limbo.

You have all these guys getting paid thousands of pounds a week to sort it out, running around in suits trying to sort it out  and they need to sort it out.

I would hate to see the UK leave the EU, but if they are going, well then, go. At least then we would have some sort of clarity and would know what is happening.
Police carry WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London (DailyDOOH/PA)

Julian Assanges mother has railed against Theresa May, Ecuadors president and the judge who branded the WikiLeaks founder a narcissist in a stream of tweets demanding her son is released.

Pledging to fight like hell, Christine Assange said the Prime Minister was trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dogs breakfast by cheering on the thuggish, brutal, unlawful arrest of my courageous, tortured multi-award winning journalist son Julian!

Mrs Assange, who lives in Australia, tweeted and shared articles regularly after her son was seen being forcibly removed from the Ecuadorean embassy on Thursday.

Addressing the countrys president, Lenin Moreno, she tweeted: Shame on you @Lenin #Moreno! May the Ecuadorean people seek vengeance upon you, you dirty, deceitful, rotten traitor!

May the face of my suffering son haunt your sleepless nights.. And may your soul writhe forever in torturous Purgatory as you have tortured my beloved son!

Assange was taken to Westminster Magistrates Court after his removal from the embassy on Thursday.

District Judge Michael Snow described his behaviour as that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.

His mother tweeted: UK judge should NOT be making statements like this! This is (a) rubbish Legal process!

On Friday morning UK time, she issued a plea to police, prison officers and court staff.

She said her son had been detained without charge, deprived of fresh air, exercise and sun and denied proper medical/dental care for several years.

She also claimed he had been isolated/tortured for a year.

Please be patient, gentle & kind to him, she tweeted.
Cross-party negotiations to try to break the Brexit deadlock were continuing in Whitehall on Friday, as Parliament began its delayed Easter holiday.

Theresa Mays effective deputy David Lidington and Environment Secretary Michael Gove were taking part in the talks for the Government side, while shadow chancellor John McDonnell was representing Labour.

The Prime Minister made clear on Thursday she intends to bring her Brexit deal back to the Commons for a fourth time after EU leaders agreed to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process to October 31.

Mrs May met briefly with Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster when they agreed to continue efforts to find a common way forward.

No 10 is still hoping they can get a deal through Parliament in time to avoid the need for Britain to vote in elections to the European Parliament on May 23.

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The UK is now formally on track to hold elections, having informed the European authorities ahead of Fridays deadline that it would be taking part in the ballots occurring across the continent from May 23-26.

However, it is possible for the vote to be cancelled right up to the day before polling if a withdrawal deal is agreed by MPs.

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Preparations for the polls were stepping up a gear, with Nigel Farage launching his new Brexit Party in Coventry.

The former Ukip leader said the existing parties should fear the electorate who feel betrayed by the failure to deliver EU withdrawal almost three years after the 2016 referendum.

Mr Farage told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: We have been betrayed and the fightback begins today.

What were trying to do is launch a revolution in British politics and realign the party structure.

During exchanges in the Commons on Thursday, Mr Corbyn warned the Prime Minister she had to be prepared to compromise if the talks were to stand any chance of success.

Mrs May, however, is under growing pressure from Tory Brexiteers furious at the latest extension after she had promised repeatedly Britain would be out of the EU by March 29  the original Brexit date.

In the Commons, she brushed off a call for her resignation by the veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash who accused her of an abject surrender to Brussels.

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With the Commons having risen for a shortened Easter recess, Downing Street will be hoping for some respite as MPs return to their constituencies.

However, there was further anger among Tory Brexiteers after it emerged the Government had shelved emergency planning for a no-deal Brexit following the latest extension.

It includes the dismantling of Operation Brock on the M20 in Kent to deal with potential lorry tailbacks from Dover caused by the need for new customs checks.

The decision was taken on Thursday at a meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, according to a leaked email seen by Sky News.

The message  said to have been sent to all civil servants in an unnamed front line Brexit department  said the suspension was taking place with immediate effect.

Downing Street said departments were taking sensible decisions about the timing of their no-deal preparations following the agreement by EU leaders to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process to October 31.

Sheer spite, I regret to say. Very sad.



Officials have worked exceptionally hard to deliver our preparedness and deserve better https://t.co/eWxBADM4ue  Steve Baker MP FRSA (@SteveBakerHW) April 11, 2019

The Government has committed 4 billion to no-deal preparations, but some MPs believe the latest delay shows Mrs May was never prepared to countenance leaving without a deal.

Former Brexit minister Steve Baker, who is now deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, accused the Government of acting out of sheer spite.

Officials have worked exceptionally hard to deliver our preparedness and deserve better, he tweeted.

A Downing Street spokesman said: In light of this weeks developments, departments will make sensible decisions about the timing and pace at which some of this work is progressing given that the date we leave the EU has changed, but we will absolutely continue to make all necessary preparations.
The City Council's decision on Tuesday, Dec. 14, also extended the citys temporary lane reconfiguration project, which added a bike lane and closed one lane each on Pier and Hermosa avenues to allow room for the outdoor areas.
Julian Assange faces years in a US prison if he is extradited (Victoria Jones/PA)

An individual alleged to have links to Julian Assange has been arrested while trying to leave Ecuador, officials in the country said.

The man, said to be Swedish software developer Ola Bini, was held at Quito airport as he prepared to board a flight bound for Japan on Thursday.

Ecuadors interior minister Maria Paula Romo said a person had been arrested for allegedly conspiring against the countrys government.

The development emerged as Assange spent his first night in custody after being convicted of breaching bail following a dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

He is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer which, on conviction, could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called on the British Government to oppose any attempt to extradite him.

Ms Romo told CNNs Spanish service: We have information on how WikiLeaks would have intervened in domestic politics.

Today a collaborator close to Julian Assange was arrested for investigative purposes. He has been living in Ecuador and was preparing to travel to Japan.

British software developer Martin Fowler said he was very concerned to hear that my friend and colleague @olabini has been arrested in Ecuador.

WikiLeaks accused Ecuador of acting illegally in terminating Assanges political asylum in violation of international law on Thursday.

The Ecuadorian government had historically been sympathetic to Assanges cause, but a regime change two years ago heralded a less supportive approach.

The countrys ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said that in the time Assange had remained in the embassy he had been disrespectful, continually a problem and interfered in elections, politics and the internal affairs of other countries.

Mr Marchan added: He has said that we were spying on him, he has said we were lying, we were agents of the United States.

However, WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said Assange had been thrown overboard by Ecuador, adding: I thought it was horrible to treat an individual like that. I thought it was disgraceful the Ecuadorians would go back on their word.

The US accuses Assange of assisting Chelsea Manning, a former US intelligence analyst, in breaking a password that helped her infiltrate Pentagon computers.

Mr Hrafnsson said a Grand Jury investigation included charges which could lead to decades in prison or even the death penalty under the Espionage Act 1917.

We dont extradite anybody to a country where they might face the death penalty without that routine assurance. We restated our policy.Sir Alan Duncan

He told the Press Association: We believe this indictment presented in the extradition request is only a part of the story  that there will be more later, that will be added on, more charges.

Ecuadors president Lenin Moreno said the UK Government had given him a written assurance that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.

Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan told the Daily Telegraph: We dont extradite anybody to a country where they might face the death penalty without that routine assurance. We restated our policy.

As an Australian citizen, Assange will have the countrys consular assistance available to him but will not get special treatment, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said.

He will get the same treatment as everyone else, he will get the same support as everyone else, he told ABC News.

The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.pic.twitter.com/CxTUrOfkHt  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 11, 2019

While Theresa May and a number of ministers welcomed the arrest, Labour leader Mr Corbyn called on the Government to oppose extradition.

He tweeted: The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

Assange, with grey hair tied into a pony tail and sporting a long beard, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court where a judge accused him of behaving like a narcissist and advised him to get over to the US and get on with your life.

He spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he sought political asylum in 2012 when he failed in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations, one of rape and one of molestation.

In May 2017, Swedens top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest on Thursday prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

She told The Times she was surprised and saddened that Mr Assange would be handed over to the US.

For me this was never about anything else than his misconduct against me/women and his refusal to take responsibility for this.

Too bad my case could never be investigated properly, but the arrest will not change this, the case has already been closed.

Prosecutors in Sweden have since confirmed that while the investigation has not been resumed, they are looking into the case.
March saw more than a million people pass through Edinburgh Airport (Lesley Martin/Edinburgh Airport)

More than a million people passed through Edinburgh Airport in March for the first time.

Airport chiefs hailed the milestone figure after a total of 1,106,998 people used the hub.

The figure is up 14.8% on the same month last year.

Domestic travellers increased by 18.2%, and international passengers rose 12.5%.

The growth occurred in the context of a difficult March 2018, when the Beast from the East disrupted travel.

Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar said: To get our first ever million passenger March is another milestone for us and shows our variety of destination and types of holidays and trips are really providing for our passengers.

While these figures are good, we always need to look ahead and consider what is on the horizon and uncertainty caused by Brexit, the expensive aviation tax we face and the impact it has on our airlines.

We will continue to work to mitigate and manage those things as best as possible and for the benefit of our passengers.

Popular destinations last month included Madrid, Warsaw and New York City.
The UK is on track to hold European Parliament elections on May 23, having met Fridays deadline to inform Brussels it will take part.

But what are the elections about and will they really take place?

 What are the European Parliament elections?

Held every five years, the polls select MEPs to sit in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. The UK has 73 seats in the 751-member Parliament.

 When will voting take place?

The ballot is due to take place on Thursday May 23 in the UK and the Netherlands, May 24 in Ireland and over the weekend in the other EU states. Votes will not be counted until polling is completed in all 28 countries on May 26.

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 How are MEPs elected?

The UK is divided into 12 electoral regions  nine in England and one each for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  each of which elects a set number of MEPs, ranging from 10 in the South East and eight in London to three each in the North East and Northern Ireland. The South West region also includes Gibraltar.

 What voting system is used?

In England, Scotland and Wales, a party list system is used. Voters mark an X by their favoured party and a proportional system is used to share the regions seats between parties. Candidates at the top of a partys list are first in line to take any seats won. Candidates can also put themselves forward as individuals. In Northern Ireland, voters rank candidates in numerical order according to the single transferable vote system.

 What are the deadlines for taking part?

Candidates must submit nomination papers by April 25  apart from the South West and Gibraltar, where the deadline is April 24. Voters must register by May 7 and can apply for a postal vote until May 8. Polling stations will open from 7am to 10pm on May 23.

 Are the elections actually going to take place in the UK?

This is still to be determined. The Government can cancel the elections right up to the day before polling. Theresa May hopes to get her Brexit deal agreed in time to stop them happening. Under the terms of the delay to Brexit agreed in Brussels on Wednesday, the UK can pull out of the elections if the Prime Ministers Withdrawal Agreement is ratified by May 22.

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 If the UK pulls out, what happens to its seats?

Brussels has agreed a redistribution of seats to take place when Brexit happens. The size of the European Parliament would be reduced by 46 to 705 and the remaining 27 seats will be shared out between EU countries, with France and Spain getting five extra MEPs, Italy and the Netherlands three and several other countries one or two. This redistribution could take place even if Brexit happens during the election campaign.

 What happens to the UKs MEPs if Brexit happens after they are elected?

As their constituents are no longer citizens of the EU, they will not be entitled to remain as their representatives in the European Parliament and will lose their seats. With the deadline for Brexit now set as October 31 and the Prime Minister hoping to leave earlier, it is possible that any UK MEPs elected will sit for only a few weeks or months.

 What were the results last time round?

The 2014 European elections saw Ukip come top of the polls, taking 24 seats to Labours 20 and 19 for the Conservatives. It was the first time since 1910 that neither Labour nor Conservatives won the largest share of seats.

Expand Close With Nigel Farage as leader, Ukip came top of the polls at the last European Parliament elections in the UK in 2014 (Steve Parsons/PA) PA Archive/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp With Nigel Farage as leader, Ukip came top of the polls at the last European Parliament elections in the UK in 2014 (Steve Parsons/PA)

 Who will be standing this time?

The big parties face a tight schedule to select their candidates, and it is understood that some sitting MEPs have made plans for post-Brexit life and do not want to stand again. Nigel Farages new Brexit Party will be putting up 70 candidates and other new parties are likely to fight the election, including supporters of The Independent Group of MPs, standing under the Change UK banner.

 How much will it all cost?

The estimated cost of European parliamentary elections in the UK has been given as up to 109 million.
Nigel Farage is vowing to lead a fightback against an establishment which he said has betrayed the country over Brexit.

The former Ukip leader will step up the pressure on Theresa May with the launch on Friday of his newly formed Brexit Partys campaign for the European elections on May 23.

Many Tories fear they will haemorrhage votes to the new party amid growing frustration with the continuing deadlock at Westminster.

Brexit is no longer just about leaving the European Union. It symbolises a wider battle between the people and the politiciansNigel Farage

In an article for The Daily Telegraph ahead of his launch event in Coventry, Mr Farage described the latest delay to Brexit as nothing short of a national humiliation.

He said Britain was governed by a ruling class which no longer believed in the country and made clear he intended to pitch the campaign as a battle between the people and the politicians.

We are a great nation and a great people. But we are being held back by weak leadership. The time to change this is now, he wrote.

We see the next few weeks as the beginning of a fightback against an establishment that has wilfully betrayed our trust.

Indeed, the word Brexit is no longer just about leaving the European Union. It symbolises a wider battle between the people and the politicians.

Our two-party system is shattered. It must be put out of its misery. The electorate has the power to effect this desperately needed change if it acts now.

If the people want to change politics for good, I am going to give them the opportunity to make that happenNigel Farage

His rhetoric is likely to alarm some at Westminster at a time when MPs have reported growing numbers of personal threats in the highly charged atmosphere over Brexit.

Mr Farage however said his campaign was attracting growing support, raising 750,000 in small donations in the last 10 days.

At the same time, he said, more than 1,000 high calibre men and women had applied to be on the partys European candidates list.

This is the most ambitious project I have ever launched in my life, he said.

If, as I believe, the people want to change politics for good, I am going to give them the opportunity to make that happen.
Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody following the Ecuadorian governments withdrawal of asylum (Victoria Jones/PA)

Jeremy Corbyn has called for the Government to oppose Julian Assanges extradition to the US over allegations that he conspired to hack into a classified Pentagon computer.

The WikiLeaks co-founder was dramatically arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up for almost seven years.

The 47-year-old faces up to 12 months in a British prison after he was found guilty of breaching his bail conditions, while the US charge could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice.

But WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said he fears more charges will be added, meaning Assange could face decades in a US prison.

Theresa May, Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt all said Assanges arrest on Thursday showed that no-one is above the law.

But Labour leader Mr Corbyn said Assange should not be extradited to the US to face a charge of conspiring with former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer.

He tweeted: The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

He was retweeted by Pamela Anderson, one of Assanges most famous supporters, who has previously described Mr Corbyn as clearly a decent and fair man.

Assanges mother, Christine Assange, also took to Twitter to defend her son, who she said was sick and in pain from prolonged detention and torture.

However, legal experts have told the Press Association that the Government has very limited powers to block extradition even if there is the political will to do so.

A law change following the case of accused cyber-hacker Gary McKinnon, who has Aspergers, shifted responsibility away from ministers to the courts after then-home secretary Theresa May intervened to stop his extradition to the US in 2012.

Extradition can be blocked to countries where the death penalty may be used, but human rights lawyer Karen Todner, who represented Mr McKinnon, said the US was likely to give assurances that capital punishment would not be on the table in Assanges case.

Though the Secretary of State does have very limited powers to interfere, I dont see that discretion being used, she added.

In the US, Hillary Clinton said Assange should answer for what he had done, while Donald Trump declared he knows nothing about WikiLeaks when asked about the arrest.

The president praised Assange during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign and welcomed the political boost when the organisation released emails damaging to Mrs Clinton.

Following his arrest, Assange, with grey hair tied into a pony tail and sporting a long beard, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court, where a judge accused him of behaving like a narcissist.

The growing row over the extradition comes as a man, said to be Swedish software developer Ola Bini, was held at Quito airport as he prepared to board a flight bound for Japan on Thursday.

Ecuadors interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, said a person with links to Assange had been arrested for allegedly conspiring against the countrys government.

The Ecuadorian government had historically been sympathetic to Assanges cause, but a regime change two years ago heralded a less supportive approach.

The countrys ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said that in the time Assange had remained in the embassy he had been disrespectful, continually a problem and interfered in elections, politics and the internal affairs of other countries.

Mr Marchan added: He has said that we were spying on him, he has said we were lying, we were agents of the United States.

However, Mr Hrafnsson said Assange had been thrown overboard by Ecuador, adding: I thought it was horrible to treat an individual like that. I thought it was disgraceful the Ecuadorians would go back on their word.

He said a Grand Jury investigation included charges which could lead to decades in prison or even the death penalty under the Espionage Act 1917, although UK Government policy is to block extradition to countries where suspects might face capital punishment.

The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.pic.twitter.com/CxTUrOfkHt  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) April 11, 2019

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said that, as a citizen of the country, Assange will have consular assistance available to him but will not get special treatment.

He spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he sought political asylum in 2012 when he failed in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations  one of rape and one of molestation.

In May 2017, Swedens top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, who represents the unnamed woman, said news of Assanges arrest was a shock to my client and something we have been waiting and hoping for since 2012.

Ms Massi Fritz said in a text message sent to the Associated Press that we are going to do everything to have the Swedish case reopened so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape.

She added that no rape victim should have to wait nine years to see justice be served.

Prosecutors in Sweden have since confirmed that, while the investigation has not been resumed, they are looking into the case.
Katie Price is set for a High Court battle with ex-husband Alex Reid over claims she shared sexual images of him with a television show audience.

The 43-year-old cage fighter is bringing legal action against the former glamour model over claims she shared photographs and video of a sexual nature which feature him.

Reid claims Price showed footage of him to a 40-strong audience on the television programme Celebrity Big Brothers Bit On The Side on January 9 last year.

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At a hearing in London on Friday, Reids lawyers said Price, 40, currently has no legal representatives after failing to pay her former solicitors.

Reid attended the brief hearing, to deal with preliminary issues ahead of the trial, but Price was not present.

His lawyers told Master Gidden, the judge overseeing the case, that they have had no response from Price to recent correspondence.

Patrick Harrington QC said: Solicitors for the defendant are now off the record, she has not put them in funds.

We understand she acts in person now, but does not appear today.

Our best information is that she is in Ibiza, but we are all here and we invite the court to proceed with this matter.

The judge set Reids legal costs budget for the trial, which will go ahead some time after October, at 400,000.

He was told Prices defence costs will be an estimated 314,000.

Following a High Court hearing in May last year, Mr Justice Jay granted Reid an injunction to prevent Price sharing private and confidential information about him.

The court heard four witnesses allege they saw the footage as Price held her mobile phone up in front of audience members while she was a guest on the television chat show.

Lawyers acting for Price at that time said she denied showing intimate footage of Reid or having any such footage in her possession.

They told the court she accepted that she said to audience members, during a very lighthearted discussion that the video was of Reid, but in fact it was a video she had downloaded from YouTube earlier that day.

Granting the injunction, Mr Justice Jay said: What I am urging the parties to do is frankly to sort this out, because the costs are frankly absurd in the context of what this is about.

Price married Reid at a ceremony in Las Vegas in 2010 and they divorced the following year.

The mother-of-five, who was once estimated to be worth around 40 million, has been embroiled in a number of court cases over the past six months.

She eventually reached a deal with creditors to avoid bankruptcy in December last year following a number of hearings at a specialist insolvency court in London.

In January, magistrates heard she was unable to immediately pay a 1,100 after she was banned from driving for a second time for driving whilst disqualified and without insurance.

She received another driving ban and a 1,500 fine in February following a drink driving conviction, after she was found by police slumped in her pink Range Rover while almost twice the limit.

A judge criticised her for failing to attend a court hearing in March over an allegation she used threatening behaviour outside a school during a row with her ex-husband Kieran Haylers girlfriend.

Price, who lives in Dial Post near Horsham, West Sussex, is facing two charges of using threatening and abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress in Shipley on September 6 last year.

She is due to stand trial at Horsham Magistrates Court on June 3.
Theresa May will remain Prime Minister until she has taken the UK out of the European Union, Chancellor Philip Hammond has insisted.

The Chancellor spoke as cross-party negotiations to try to break the Brexit deadlock took place in Whitehall on Friday after the UKs exit date from the EU was delayed until October 31.

Mr Hammond told Bloomberg: The Prime Minister has said that she will leave once she has done the deal and taken us out of the European Union.

But, as far as I know, she doesnt have any intention of leaving until that deal is done.

So, she is a person with a strong sense of duty.

She feels that she has got a duty, and an obligation to the British people to deliver Brexit and she will certainly want to make good on that obligation.

Asked about the implications of a Tory leadership contest, Mr Hammond said: Lets be honest, we have already got people jockeying for position to succeed her, but thats just one of those things.

The Chancellor said Labour was not clear on whether it wanted a new Brexit referendum.

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Mr Hammond said: The Labour Party itself isnt really clear yet whether it wants to argue for a second confirmatory referendum.

Some people in Labour do, some people in Labour are very strongly opposed to it.

So, they have got to decide whether its an ask yet in these discussions.

And then if they did, what that would mean would be some kind of process by which the House of Commons was invited to decide on this issue.

Now, some people in the Commons are very keen on a second referendum, but some are strongly against.

So, I think this is a very open question at the moment whether they are going to ask for it, and if they do, what would actually happen when it is voted on in the Commons.

The Prime Minister has made clear she intends to bring her Brexit deal back to the Commons for a fourth time after EU leaders agreed to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process to October 31.

No 10 is still hoping they can get a deal through Parliament in time to avoid the need for Britain to vote in elections to the European Parliament on May 23.

The UK is now formally on track to hold elections, having informed the European authorities ahead of Fridays deadline that it would be taking part in the ballots occurring across the continent from May 23-26.

However, it is possible for the vote to be cancelled right up to the day before polling if a withdrawal deal is agreed by MPs.

Preparations for the polls were stepping up a gear, with Nigel Farage launching his new Brexit Party in Coventry.

The former Ukip leader said the existing parties should fear the electorate who feel betrayed by the failure to deliver EU withdrawal almost three years after the 2016 referendum.
Ministers are set to hold further talks with Labour in an attempt to break the deadlock on Brexit following the latest delay to Britains departure from the EU.

Theresa May made clear on Thursday she intended to bring back her Brexit deal to the Commons for a fourth time after EU leaders agreed to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process to October 31.

The Prime Minister met briefly with Jeremy Corbyn at Westminster when they agreed to continue efforts to find a common way forward.

The talks have been led by Mrs Mays de facto deputy, David Lidington, and shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, but details of Fridays meeting were still being finalised.

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No 10 is still hoping they can get a deal through Parliament in time to avoid the need for Britain to vote in elections to the European Parliament on May 23.

But during exchanges in the Commons, Mr Corbyn warned the Prime Minister she had to be prepared to compromise if the talks were to stand any chance of success.

Mrs May, however, is under growing pressure from Tory Brexiteers furious at the latest extension after she had promised repeatedly Britain would be out of the EU by March 29  the original Brexit date.

In the Commons, she brushed off a call for her resignation by the veteran Eurosceptic Sir Bill Cash who accused her of an abject surrender to Brussels.

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But senior Conservatives have warned the demands for her to go are only likely to intensify, particularly  as many now expect  the European elections do go ahead.

With the Commons having risen for a foreshortened Easter recess, Downing Street will be hoping for some respite as MPs return to their constituencies.

However there was further anger among Tories Brexiteers after it emerged the Government had shelved emergency planning for a no-deal Brexit following the latest extension.

It includes the dismantling of Operation Brock on the M20 in Kent to deal with potential lorry tailbacks from Dover caused by the need for new customs checks.

In common with the rest of government we have stood down our no-deal operational planning with immediate effectCivil Service email

The decision was taken on Thursday at a meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, according to a leaked email seen by Sky News.

The message  said to have been sent to all civil servants in an unnamed front line Brexit department  said the suspension was taking place with immediate effect.

Downing Street said departments were taking sensible decisions about the timing of their no-deal preparations following the agreement by EU leaders to extend the Article 50 withdrawal process to October 31.

Sheer spite, I regret to say. Very sad.



Officials have worked exceptionally hard to deliver our preparedness and deserve better https://t.co/eWxBADM4ue  Steve Baker MP FRSA (@SteveBakerHW) April 11, 2019

The Government has committed 4 billion to no-deal preparations, but some MPs believe the latest delay shows Mrs May was never prepared to countenance leaving without a deal.

Former Brexit minister Steve Baker, who is now deputy chairman of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, accused the Government of acting out of sheer spite.

Officials have worked exceptionally hard to deliver our preparedness and deserve better, he tweeted.

According to Sky, the email said: In common with the rest of government we have stood down our no-deal operational planning with immediate effect.

This morning, at a meeting chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, we agreed that the objective is to ensure we wind down our no-deal planning in a careful, considered and orderly way.

A Downing Street spokesman said: In light of this weeks developments, departments will make sensible decisions about the timing and pace at which some of this work is progressing given that the date we leave the EU has changed, but we will absolutely continue to make all necessary preparations.
Laleh Shahraves, right, with her 14-year-old daughter Paris (Detained in Dubai/PA)

A mother held in Dubai over Facebook posts calling her ex-husbands wife a horse has returned to Britain after being freed from the most horrendous ordeal.

Laleh Shahravesh, from Richmond, south-west London, touched back down in Heathrow on Friday morning, according to the Detained in Dubai campaign group that supported her.

She was swiftly reunited with her 14-year-old daughter Paris in an emotional scene at the airport.

While tearfully hugging her daughter, 55-year-old Ms Shahravesh told reporters: Im really, really happy to be reunited.

Her voice cracking with emotion, she thanked Detained in Dubai chief executive Radha Stirling who worked tirelessly to get me home to my daughter.

Ms Shahravesh was detained under controversial cyber-crime laws as she visited the United Arab Emirates for the funeral of ex-husband Pedro Correia Dos Santos in March with Paris.

Authorities had received a complaint over posts made three years ago and Ms Shahravesh was warned she faced prosecution and up to two years in prison.

But during a court appearance on Thursday, a judge ordered that her passport was to be returned if she paid a fine of 3,000 UAE Dirham (624).

Speaking to Sky News, who were present for the call with Paris, she said: Its been the most horrendous period of my life.

Ive never been separated from Paris in this way and every day part of me was dying from being away from her, during a time when I knew she needed me the most. So yes, its been very traumatic.

The pair had travelled to the United Arab Emirates on March 10 for the funeral of her ex-husband, who was also Pariss father.

After discovering he had remarried in 2016, Ms Shahravesh called his new wife, Samah Al Hammadi, from Tunisia, a horse on Facebook.

Ms Stirling renewed her calls for the Foreign Office to provide more accurate information to Britons about the many risks they face in the UAE.

It is simply not enough to warn people to obey the laws and customs, when very often the legal system itself poses a threat even to law-abiding tourists who may be subjected to false arrests, fabricated cases, forced confessions, torture and lack of representation, she said.

Ms Stirling also warned that cyber-crime laws there task the legal system with catering to the tyranny of individual egos when people are offended by online posts.

A Foreign Office spokesman said its advice included warnings that posting material online that could be seen as being critical of the UAE government, companies or individuals or that is culturally insensitive could be considered a crime by the countrys authorities.
The city of Chicago has filed a lawsuit against Jussie Smollett in a bid to recoup the costs of investigating a racist, anti-gay attack that authorities say was orchestrated by the Empire actor as a publicity stunt.

The 12-page civil lawsuit, filed in Cook County court on Thursday, is the latest volley in a legal battle that shows no signs of abating since Smollett reported that masked men had beaten him up on January 29 in Chicago, shouting slurs and wrapping a rope around his neck.

The citys resolve to take Smollett to civil court follows a surprising decision by prosecutors in March to drop all criminal charges accusing him of staging the incident, saying they believed they could prove the charges but that it was not worth the time and expense.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel denounced the decision as a whitewash of justice, and others criticised the Cook County states attorneys office for not requiring an apology and an admission of guilt from Smollett as a condition for tossing the case.

Expand Close Cook County States Attorney Kim Foxx, whose office decided to drop all charges against Jussie Smollett (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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The lawsuit comes after Smollett refused a demand that he send the city 130,106 US dollars (99,616) to reimburse Chicago for overtime as police sought to verify his account.

The lawsuit does not include a specific monetary figure, but suggests the amount the city will seek from Smollett will be higher than the 130,000 US dollars.

The complaint lacks the hard-hitting language in the citys letter to Smolletts lawyers earlier this month.

Smollett maintains he has told the truth from the beginning. Reached by phone on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for his legal team said there was no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

His lawyer Mark Geragos said in a letter to the city last week that claims Smollett made the entire thing up were defamatory, accusing Chicago of trying to harass Smollett and pointing to the dismissal of charges as proof he was innocent.

Unless the case is settled beforehand, the lawsuit would eventually go before a jury, which would have to decide if the city or Smollett is right.

Under the city code, Chicago could triple the amount the city originally demanded that Smollett pay to more than 390,000 US dollars (300,000). If Smollett refuses to pay after a verdict in the citys favour, his bank accounts could be frozen.

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Smollett admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed to do some community service before charges were dropped. He also agreed to forfeit 10,000 dollars (7,600) in bond money, which the city could use against him in the civil case as an implied admission of guilt.

Evidence sealed in the criminal case could be unsealed in the civil case and be presented at trial. Smollett could also be required to sit for depositions, forcing him for the first time to explain evidence that the city says shows he was lying.

To the citys advantage, the threshold for proof will be lower than in criminal court. The city will not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt Smollett staged the attack in civil court, only that it is more likely true than not true that he did.

Among the risks for the city is that the civil litigation could end up costing far more in legal bills than it could ever hope to get from Smollett.
Happy Friday! I have an Instagram roundup on some outfits and accessories Ive been loving lately. A few of you have asked for more info on sizing/scale of the mini bags Ive posted in a few flatlays so Im sharing all the details today!

Quick note that a few retailers are having sales going on right now that you might want to take advantage of. Many of my accessories are on sale!

Shopbops sale ends April 13th (extended by one day) with code EVENT19 you can save 20% off orders under $500 and 25% off orders over $500

you can save 20% off orders under $500 and 25% off orders over $500 Nordstrom is price matching a lot of the items from the Shopbop Sale (youll have to search by brand or product name)

Tory Burch is having a sale event through April 15th, 20% off $200, 25% off $350 and 30% off $500 (there are quite a few exclusions), use code SPRING

J.Crew is having a sale with 50% off sale styles and 40% off everything else, online only with code SALEUPGRADE , ends April 15th (update)

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Ark Bag dupe / Sandals Sam Edelman / Jeans Jcrew Toothpick / Polish Chanel Joyau

I did a quick series on Instagram Stories about one of my Ark Bags. This one shown above was a gifted dupe and its a very well made one. The differences between the real Cult Gaia and this one are slight, I wish I knew where it was from but it was a gift and Im a little embarrassed to ask! A few of you mentioned you think its this one from Amazon or possibly this one from Tuckernuck. Based on what Ive seen for the bamboo/wood ones the dupes are very well constructed. If I knew where my exact dupe was from I would 100% buy it.

My favorite sandals this season are from Sam Edelman. I bought a couple pairs and these Gala Sandals are on sale at Shopbop. They run true to size and are very comfortable.

I recently rediscovered J.Crew denim, I always thought their jeans were pricey but with the sales it makes them 100% worth it. The 9 inch high rise has a good fit where it doesnt feel like they are falling off like lowrise ones. No belt needed for this style and at the same time they arent too high it makes me feel like Im wearing pants up to my chest. Theyre a little stretchy but still sturdy enough to hold everything up and in! My favorites however are still from Paige in the Verdugo Ankle style (any color). Out of all the brands/styles Ive tried I think Paige has the most flattering cuts and fit.

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Cult Gaia Ark Bag Mini in Natural / Sunglasses Rayban / Lipstick Tom Ford Carriacou (review soon) / Hair Oil Gisou Mini / Bracelet Celine

My curiosity got the best of me and I felt like I just had to know what the original was like. I bought the real Cult Gaia Ark Bag in the Mini Size Natural Color from Nordstrom (also available at Shopbop) and think its SO cute. The real ones have the Cult Gaia branding inside the handle and in between the strips are tiny round beads while the dupes usually have a gap with the clear plastic showing. Im 53 and find minis fit my frame better in general but they arent always practical because of how little they hold. The mini measures 6.25 inches tall, 9 inches long, 2.5 inches deep. (Scroll down for a photo of me wearing the mini.) I think its the cutest thing ever and it is big enough to hold my wallet, phone, keys, a compact, sunglasses and a couple lipsticks. I do think the bigger sizes, even the small is more practical to hold more things without overwhelming your frame. Im keeping the mini I bought and my gifted dupe  think both are the perfect summer bag, even years after it originally launched. If you want something more unique opt for the Tortoise or pretty Acrylic Colors, I love the blue and melon colors!

Quick note on my sunglasses from Rayban, the style code I have is RB2185 and I have the polarized options which are slightly more expensive than the non-polarized versions. I did not realize this until after I bought mine. I know people say polarized sunglasses have better protection for the eyes, but sometimes I dont like the way they shift colors. I still really love mine and I own quite a few polarized sunglasses. Just wanted to tell you in case you wanted to know or wanted something around $50 cheaper opt for the regular versions.

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Bag Staud Mini Shirley / Sandals Tory Burch / Hat Lack of Color / Lips Bobbi Brown Lychee Baby, Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk Liner, Charlotte Tilbury Kidmans Kiss / Perfume Byredo Bal DAfrique / Earrings Mikimoto / Sunglasses Celine

Ive had the Staud Mini Shirley bag for a little over a year now and love it! As with the minis vs small, I do like my mini, but the bigger options are going to be a lot more practical. I wish I bought the small size but since I use this for days I only carry essentials. Its perfect for date nights or quick trips out. It doesnt have a shoulder strap or long handle to throw over the arm which is the only downside to this style for me. They did just launch another clear option called the Clear Bissett Bag which seems more practical if you need a longer handle to hold over the shoulder or want something a little bigger around.

These style Tory Burch Emmy Sandals run a little small, Id recommend going a 1/2 size up. I normally wear 6.5 in their millers, with these I opted for a 7. The classic Millers are still the most comfortable as the sole of these are stiffer, but theyre still easy to wear for me.

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Hat Lack of Color / Sandals Tory Burch / Shorts AGolde / Black case The Daily Edited / Sunglasses Chanel (old style) / Polish is Chanel Le Vernis Jaspe

I bought the AGolde Parker Shorts the last time Shopbop had a sale and this was the first time I tried high rise shorts. Theyre on the high side as described but its a nice change from the shorter lower waist options Ive tried. Color shown is Swapmeet which is a lighter blue and they have some fun distressing giving them a more casual vibe. I also love the color Rock Steady which is a more traditional classic blue jean color.

To this day Tory Burch Millers are still my favorite sandals. The sand patent has lasted the longest for me. Ive worn my others TO DEATH and they are starting to wear, but they have lasted probably 5 years and Ive worn them EVERYWHERE so I think they were well worth the splurge. My brown leather ones have seen better days  but they have lived through a lot of travel, rain, humidity and moving. Im planning to repurchase and replace them soon.

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Bag Clare V Petite Sandy / Card Case Gucci / Polish Chanel Perle de Corail / Sunglasses Celine / Sandals Sam Edelman Beckie

Another sale splurge last month was the Clare V Petite Sandy and I did not realize how small it was going to be even after checking the dimensions online. I still love it and think its the perfect size for me! (See one photo down to see how small it is.) The larger Sandy is more of what I envisioned this being like though because its bigger and has a longer strap to hold over the shoulder. You can buy a separate shoulder strap from Clare V for a lot of their bags which is something Im considering for my petite option.

Another pair of Sam Edelman shoes Ive been loving are the Beckie Style in Natural Raffia (runs true to size for me). They have a similar style called Bay Cutout which has solid/smooth leather but I have not tried those yet. The Beckie options are the woven material and its very sturdy and comfortable with a slight cushion like the Gala.

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By request, a few mirror selfies to show scale of the bags. Im 53 and 118 pounds (Ive gained weight with our indulgent Miami vacation eating and have also gained muscle weight with our weight training). The struggle to stay fit is real when there are so many tempting good food places to try when you travel. Ive been fluctuating like a yoyo.

Left photo:

Right photo:

Below more photos of another mini bag:

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One last post from Instagram! I mentioned the Anthropologie Cloudfleece top a while back and a lot of you wanted to know what it looked like on. I posted a photo sharing the Mint color. Its super soft and lightweight and hangs nicely for a relaxed fit. Im wearing the XS here.

You also wanted to know how big/small the Tory Burch Marsden Crossbody is on me. It measures 9.25 by 5.5 and 1.25 deep. Here it is on me over the shoulder and worn as a crossbody. I wish it had an adjustable strap to make it a tad bit shorter but its easy to wear and most of you are taller than me so its probably going to be the perfect length! I wear it all the time and it has some slots inside to put cards so you dont need a wallet. Ive owned it since last July and its held up very well even in Florida humidity and rain.

Top Anthropologie / Crossbody Bag Tory Burch / Shoes Converse / Shorts STS Blue / Rimless Aviator Sunglasses Marc Jacobs

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Favorite tops and bottoms mentioned:

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I hope you found this roundup helpful to answer all your questions! Let me know if you have any other ones. If youre shopping the Shopbop sale it ends today April 13th so make sure to check it out!
The Dalai Lama says he feels normal, almost normal after leaving a New Delhi hospital where he was treated for a chest infection.

The 83-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader spoke after he was discharged on Friday. He had been admitted to hospital on Tuesday after leaving Dharamshala to consult with doctors in the capital.

He is likely to return this week to the north Indian hill town that has been his headquarters since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

Expand Close The Dalai Lama was admitted to hospital on Tuesday (AP Photo/Manish Swarup) AP/PA Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Dalai Lama was admitted to hospital on Tuesday (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

The Dalai Lama usually spends several months a year travelling the world to teach Buddhism and highlight the Tibetans struggle for greater freedom in China.

But he has cut down on travel in the past year to take care of his health.

China does not recognise the Tibetan government-in-exile and has not held any dialogue with the representatives of the Dalai Lama since 2010. Beijing accuses him of seeking to separate Tibet from China.

The Dalai Lama denies being a separatist and says he merely advocates for substantial autonomy and protection of the regions native Buddhist culture.
Hillary Clinton speaks during An Evening With The Clintons at the Beacon Theatre in New York (Mary Altaffer/AP))

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange needs to answer for what he has done, Hillary Clinton has said.

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state weighed in on Assange while at an event with her husband, former president Bill Clinton.

Assange was arrested earlier on Thursday at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The US has charged him with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon.

WikiLeaks publication of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers during the 2016 election season hurt Mrs Clintons presidential campaign.

Donald Trump, Mrs Clintons Republican opponent, frequently showered praise on Assange during the final weeks of the campaign and cheered on the release of damaging emails from Mrs Clintons campaign manager, John Podesta.

Assange was arrested after Ecuador revoked the political asylum that had kept him holed up at the embassy for nearly seven years. The US is seeking Assanges extradition.

Mrs Clinton said on Thursday: The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it has been charged.

In a tongue-in-cheek nod to Mr Trumps hard-line immigration stance, Mrs Clinton added: I do think its a little ironic that hes the only foreigner this administration would welcome to the United States.

Earlier Mr Trump declared that he knows nothing about WikiLeaks when he was asked about Assanges arrest.

He said: Ive been seeing whats happened with Assange and that will be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, whos doing an excellent job. So, hell be making a determination. I know nothing really about him.

Its not my deal in life.

But WikiLeaks was of interest to Mr Trump in 2016 as he welcomed the political boost his campaign got and cheered on the release of Mrs Clintons campaign emails.

On the same day that the Access Hollywood tape emerged revealing that Mr Trump had bragged in 2005 about groping women, WikiLeaks began releasing damaging emails from Mr Podesta.

Mr Trump and his allies, facing a tough battle in the campaigns final month, seized on the illegal dumps and weaponised them.

WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks, Mr Trump said in Pennsylvania.

This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove, Mr Trump said in Michigan.

Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks, Mr Trump said in Ohio.

Mr Trump extolled WikiLeaks more than 100 times and a poster of Assange hung backstage at the Republicans debate war room.

At no point from a rally stage did Mr Trump express any misgivings about how WikiLeaks obtained the emails from the Clinton campaign or about the accusations of stealing sensitive US government information, which led to the charges against Assange on Thursday.
President Donald Trump said he did not know anything about WikiLeaks (Evan Vucci/AP)

President Donald Trump has declared that he knows nothing about WikiLeaks after co-founder Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Mr Trumps claim is a stark contrast to how he showered praise on Assanges hacking organisation during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Asked about Thursdays arrest, Mr Trump said: Its not my thing. I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange.

Ive been seeing whats happened with Assange and that will be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, whos doing an excellent job. So, hell be making a determination. I know nothing really about him.

Its not my deal in life.

But WikiLeaks was of interest to Mr Trump in 2016 as he welcomed the political boost his campaign got and cheered on the release of Hillary Clinton campaign emails.

Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks.Donald Trump

On the same October day that the Access Hollywood tape emerged, revealing that Mr Trump had bragged in 2005 about groping women, WikiLeaks began releasing damaging emails from Mrs Clintons campaign manager, John Podesta.

Mr Trump and his allies, facing a tough battle in the campaigns final month, seized on the illegal dumps and weaponised them.

WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks, Mr Trump said in Pennsylvania.

This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove, Mr Trump said in Michigan.

Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks, Mr Trump said in Ohio.

Mr Trump extolled WikiLeaks more than 100 times and a poster of Assange hung backstage at the Republicans debate war room.

At no point from a rally stage did Mr Trump express any misgivings about how WikiLeaks obtained the emails from the Clinton campaign or about the accusations of stealing sensitive US government information, which led to the charges against Assange on Thursday.

Assange for years has been under US Justice Department scrutiny for WikiLeaks role in publishing thousands of government secrets. He was an important figure in special counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe, as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Democratic groups.

When asked about Assange in 2017, Mr Trump said he did not support or unsupport WikiLeaks move to release hacked emails and that he would not be involved in any decision for the US government to arrest Assange.

I am not involved in that decision, whether or not to arrest Assange, Mr Trump told The Associated Press then, but if they want to do it, its OK with me.

The Justice Department has now charged Assange with taking part in a computer hacking conspiracy, accusing him of scheming with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to break a password for a classified government computer.

The single charge of computer intrusion conspiracy carries up to five years in prison, though the Justice Department can add additional charges depending on the evidence it gathers.

Manning was jailed last month for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, suggesting that prosecutors are still at work.

Im glad to see the wheels of justice are finally turning when it comes to Julian Assange, tweeted Senator Lindsey Graham, an ally of Mr Trump.

In my book, he has NEVER been a hero. His actions  releasing classified information  put our troops at risk and jeopardised the lives of those who helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Arlene Foster, Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson leaving the European Commission yesterday following a meeting with Michel Barnier to discuss Brexit

We have met Michel Barnier on many occasions previously, but this was a useful meeting to encourage the EU's chief negotiator to think again.

It was useful for him to hear a combined delegation who could further explain why the withdrawal agreement is failing to secure the support of Parliament.

Only time will tell if he was listening.

Our MEP Diane Dodds - as well as Conservative MPs Iain Duncan Smith and Owen Paterson - alongside Dutch customs expert Hans Maessen were able to encourage Michel Barnier and his team to recognise the problem with the withdrawal agreement and consider a better way forward.

We reminded him that in any negotiation process there can only be an agreement when both parties have accepted the proposals on offer.

The UK Parliament has rejected this deal on three occasions.

It was important for Michel Barnier to understand that we want to see a sensible deal which works for every part of the United Kingdom and which respects the referendum result. We also want to see an orderly exit which also works for the EU, but we cannot accept a deal which would undermine the economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom.

While the European Union has spoken much about protecting the peace process and the Belfast Agreement, it has barely paid lip service to the views of unionists who cannot support the erection of trade barriers between Northern Ireland and our greatest market in Great Britain.

Fundamentally, though, the negotiating process has been poorly handled in London.

Between intransigence in Brussels and ineffectiveness in London, we have arrived at a wholly undesirable place where we could be electing MEPs to the European Parliament within weeks but almost three years after the UK voted to leave the European Union.

If the UK must participate in the European elections, the DUP will contest that election and Diane Dodds will be the DUP candidate.

The people of Northern Ireland will have an opportunity to send the same message to the European Union as we took to Michel Barnier: it is time to implement the 2016 result and all the United Kingdom to leave the European Union together as one country.
Last week, the committee and staff of Pobal issued a public statement to let people know that, after 21 years, it was being forced to close its doors due to lack of funding.

During the 1970s, a diverse range of small Irish language groups had grown up in the North to try and meet the needs of the growing Irish-speaking community.

Pobal was established in 1998 as an umbrella group to bring a voice to those struggling against all odds to strengthen and protect the language.

This was a unique role which no other organisations were fulfilling for small groups in the six counties.

Like most - if not all - of its member groups, at the time Pobal had no state funding, surviving on voluntary efforts for two years before finally winning European Peace funds and then being awarded a small grant from the Republic's Department of Foreign Affairs under Peace and Reconciliation.

Pobal was quick to impact on both the public and government sectors and the public mind. Through an innovative advocacy and awareness-raising programme, it firmly established the image of the Irish language in the North as a human rights issue and made common cause with Irish language groups throughout the island and with the speakers of other threatened languages internationally.

It was not until the period following the Good Friday Agreement that Pobal was eventually awarded a small government grant from the Central Community Relations Unit for basic office equipment.

When the all-island body Foras na Gaeilge was founded, Pobal was included (eventually) for core funding, one of only seven groups in the North to access this, along with 12 groups in the South.

From 2001, Pobal continued to hold centre stage. It worked with a wide range of key players to put forward influential proposals for an Irish language strategy at Stormont.

It carried out unique all-Ireland research into the special needs of bilingual children. It created original and innovative work in the arts, in schools and in the community.

Growing out of this work was the realisation that comprehensive legislation to protect the language and define the services to be provided was the best way forward.

The campaign for the Irish Language Act was grounded in community need and, working with international experts, Pobal itself organised community consultations to agree proposals for legislation with Irish speakers.

The quality and high profile of the work was instrumental in obtaining commitment in the St Andrews Agreement in 2006 that the British Government would introduce an Irish Language Act - a promise subsequently reneged upon, leading to criticism and a full programme of advocacy work directed at both the local political parties and Westminster parties, and at international opinion as well.

Pobal led delegations to Stormont, Leinster House, Westminster and the House of Congress in Washington, DC. In 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2014, international human rights bodies, including the Council of Europe and the United Nations, endorsed Pobal's work and its calls for comprehensive legislation to fulfil the St Andrews commitment.

However, in 2014, Foras na Gaeilge, under direction from the culture and arts ministers at Stormont and at Leinster House, ended core funding to all the organisations based in the six counties previously in receipt of core funding, in favour of six Dublin-centric organisations.

These "lead organisations" were to undertake all the work previously carried out by 19 groups throughout the island.

Fifteen of the Irish language organisations were highly critical of Foras na Gaeilge's proposals; of the lack of evidence presented that this approach would be better, of the lack of transparency in the way it dealt with the groups, of the obvious risk that existing work would be duplicated, of the attack on independence and co-operation, and of Foras's highly flawed process itself.

The organisations based in the six counties raised the lack of infrastructure for the Irish language here in comparison with the South, where many government bodies already have obligations to promote Irish.

They warned of the potential for loss of experience and expertise in all organisations, but especially for those in the North, and the danger that, unless northern organisations were treated fairly, senior decision-making would be removed to Dublin.

Funding from other sources would be endangered, they said, if core funding was removed by what was in effect the primary funder of the Irish language sector.

However, Foras pursued its approach and, for whatever reasons, the ministers North and South signed off on the ending of funding, including axing it for every one of all the northern groups. Several organisations were forced to close immediately.

Since this time, Pobal, with only one part-time staff member instead of the six full-time workers it previously employed, has continued to undertake a comprehensive and challenging work programme with a small capacity building grant from Belfast City Council and drawing on organisational reserves to cover all other costs.

In recent weeks, as a result of Pobal's work, we announced that five cross-party Westminster MPs had written to Karen Bradley to call for the Irish Language Act to be enacted at Westminster if local parties continued to fail to agree.

In addition to high-profile signatories from Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Labour Party, two Conservative Party MPs also signed the letter - something of a cross-party coup and a testament to hard work and commitment to the issue.

With the announcement that, for the fourth year running, there would be no increase in our grant aid, the difficult decision to close Pobal was taken - exactly five years after the axing of Foras na Gaeilge's funding.

Earlier this year, Foras na Gaeilge commissioned a five-year review of the effectiveness of the six lead organisations (although without consulting with those whose funding was removed).

It is disturbing - though not entirely surprising - to learn that it then abruptly ended the contract of the consultant it had employed and has since refused to publish the results of his draft report.

Recent publicity over the alleged mismanagement of the Social Investment Fund here provides a useful reminder that investment of public funding into the voluntary and community sectors is a serious matter, impacting on services, policy, community confidence in fairness and social cohesion.

Foras na Gaeilge, under all-Ireland ministerial control, was set up to signal a new beginning for the Irish language.

Perhaps it is time to examine to what extent it is meeting any of its commitments in this respect.

Janet Muller is chief executive of Pobal
Every science fiction writer in history has been convinced that they know what the future will, or at least could, look like. Almost every time, they have been wrong. In many cases, it is not because they were too outlandish, but because they were not imaginative enough. It is true that humanity has yet to colonize other worlds or create flying cars, but some of the issues that people are already facing on Earth are straight out of science fiction. The bizarre nature of the situation, however, does not excuse people burying their heads in the sand and hoping time will reverse itself so that the world can go back to what it was in the past. That is not how reality works. As such, people need to be ready to face the challenges the future will bring, and Christians are no exception to that rule. Here are some issues straight out of science fiction that Christians must be prepared to handle.

Clones

Cloning is a staple of science fiction, but there is a very good possibility that it will become a fact of reality in the relatively near future. The technology to clone complex mammals has been around for some time. So far, it has not been used on a human being, but the genie has been out of its bottle for years. It is only a matter of time before someone decides to clone a person. The experiment may be done with permission, or like the recent CRISPR baby experiments done by Chinas He Jiankui, it may be kept secret until the clone has been born.

For Christians, the issues of cloning run deeper than the massive ethical issues inherent in any form of human experimentation. Clones are, by definition, a copy of a person who already exists. Genetically and physically, they are identical to the original person. What about their soul? When human cloning is done for the first time, Christians will have to grapple with the question of whether or not clones are human beings in the religious sense. Biologically, they are a human being, but they are not unique. Is the same true of them in their soul? Do they have a unique soul? Do they share one with the original person? Do they have a soul at all? Sadly, the church will have to decide eventually how it is going to treat those who are, essentially, artificial humans.

Sentient Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is another classic science fiction trope, and it is normally associated with utter disaster. Small-scale A.I.s are already in use. The popular Apple Siri and Amazon Alexa are both A.I.s. So far, there is no artificial intelligence in existence that comes even close to approaching human-like thought. That said, constant improvements in the technology with the deliberate aim of making A.I.s more lifelike and better able to think like their human counterparts makes it extremely likely that one day there will be an A.I. that becomes self-aware. When that happens, the ramifications will be enormous. The immediate concerns, of course, are ensuring that this A.I. is not dangerous. There are endless numbers of sci-fi movies warning about the dangers of a machine that can think for itself. That danger, however, means that the church will have to grapple with whether or not this A.I. is to be considered alive. If so, can its creators justify killing it in order to avoid potential catastrophe? Would placing controls or limits on the A.I. constitute slavery? Would this self-aware machine fall under the same rules as the rest of creation, especially the command to be fruitful and multiply? Does an artificial intelligence, created by humans, have the same rights as a creation of God? Would the sudden appearance of sentience turn an A.I. from a human creation to one of God? Does an A.I. have a soul? The appearance of sentient machines will force all of humanity, but especially the church, to decide exactly how much the artificial part of artificial intelligence matters when it comes to human rights.

Aliens

No discussion of potential future problems would be complete without a mention of aliens. It may seem out-there to consider, but the statistical likelihood of humanity being alone in the universe falls every year. As such, it is likely that Christians will eventually have to grapple with the existence of an entirely separate, intelligent race. What will that mean for Christianity? It will certainly mean there are a lot of questions to answer. The biggest issue, of course, is how aliens fit into Gods plan for salvation. Did Christs death save the aliens as well? Were they touched by sin in the first place? Did God become incarnate on their planet as well? Are Christians responsible for baptizing and converting the aliens? This issue is unlikely to really come to a head until either Earthlings or aliens invent faster-than-light travel. Until then, visiting each other would be impossible. The identification of and possible communication with alien life, however, is not as far away as many think. SETI has already identified over two dozen planets in the habitable zone of their solar system, and any one of them might have aliens looking back at Earth and wondering if that little blue rock has life on it, too.

Genetically Modified Children

Designer babies are one of the first objections anyone raises in the debate of genetic modification in humans.

Hikikomori

It is often brushed aside by those who are eager to see the field of genetics expand and dismissed as wildly unlikely. Geneticists, after all, are still struggling to understand how genetics are related to desirable traits such as height, intelligence, athleticism, weight and aesthetic traits such as hair color. Babies are, however, already being designed. Their appearance so far remains up to the genetic lottery to decide, but children are already being born through combinations of three sets of DNA as well as from the DNA of those who have already died. The so-called CRISPR babies stunned the world as well when it was announced that they had been born with a deliberately edited genome that no one could prove had been done successfully or even correctly. The question of how to handle genetically modified children is not something that can be pushed off into the future. It is here and happening already. They may only form a small portion of the world right now, but that number is likely to only continue to grow. How should the church respond to this? Many denominations frown or forbid mucking around with the human genome, but editing genes to prevent horrific diseases might get a pass. The question, of course, is where to draw the line on gene editing and what to do with those who cross it. Does removing a gene that is likely to cause nearsightedness acceptable? How about preventing Down Syndrome? Should parents who edit their children for frivolous reasons, such as appearance, be shunned by the church? What happens to the children who were edited at or soon after their conception? What about the children of those who had germline modifications, modifications that will be inherited by their own children, done to them? Genetic modification is a slope covered in ice, but since people are already piling on the sled, the church needs to figure out how it is going to handle the inevitable crash at the bottom.

The phenomenon of hikikomori is, so far, largely limited to Japan. The term was coined by Tamaki Saito and refers to men and women who become social recluses to the point of refusing to leave their house or room. This bizarre condition affects approximately 1.5 million Japanese people and has no clear trigger. It has been associated with massive stress and pressure particularly among young people who are facing enormous familial and social pressure to succeed in school. The same issue, however, has been documented in older citizens.

The idea of a hikikomori may seem off the wall, but it has become a serious issue in Japan. It also has the potential to spread across the world. Western teens spend less and less time with friends and family each year as their relationships and interests migrate to the digital realm. It is also becoming easier and easier to handle daily necessities without ever leaving ones home. Grocery stores deliver, and the internet can provide just about everything else. Given that many people would prefer to spend their time online anyway, there may soon be a variation of hikikomori appearing in the West.

A refusal to engage with society may seem like a minor problem compared to some of the other things likely to be facing Christians in the future, but this one may be a particular challenge. Christianity has always valued the community and the fellowship group settings create. Reaching out and helping people who refuse to leave their rooms will be especially difficult. Christians will need to overhaul their entire approach if they are going to help those who are hiding away.

The future always ends up looking stranger than anyone in the past could have predicted, but that is no excuse to keep from rising to meet new challenges. The issues future Christians will grapple with are unusual, but that has never stopped them. For over two millennia, the Christian faith has met whatever challenges the world has thrown at it. There is no reason to think that will change, even if worship services are eventually held on Martian soil.
Police threatened Shahidul Alam with waterboarding the night they dragged him from his home in August 2018, then told him the next day all would be forgotten if he stopped criticizing the government, the noted Bangladeshi photojournalist who is free on bail said during interviews in Washington this week.

The ordeal shed light on what might happen to people who disappear in his home country and then reappear weeks or months later, unable or unwilling to say what happened to them, he said.

Its fairly simple: You get picked up, you get tortured, and then youre made a deal. And, based on what happens before the deal, I suppose most people feel the deal is, you know, a good option, Alam told BenarNews.

That was what happened to me  I was made an offer the following day, and I was told in no uncertain terms that it was going to be repeated, and probably get worse, and my family might suffer as well, and that this was an easy way out, Alam said during videotaped interviews given in Bengali and English.

On Friday, Bangladeshi authorities rejected his allegations as untrue.

Alam, who was in the United States to collect an award, said he intended to return to Bangladesh and keep speaking his mind freely, despite a fearful climate for journalists and intellectuals.

Bangladesh is where Im from, thats [where] my work is  at the end of the day, my country is what its about. And come what may, thats where Ill be. It will be tough, but I dont have a choice, Alam said.

Get those pins

By Alams account, after he was taken from his home on Aug. 5, he was questioned very aggressively at a site he could not identify because he was blindfolded with his hands tied behind his back.

A weight was placed on his head, and someone threatened to get those pins.

His interrogators were trying to extract some kind of confession, Alam alleged.

[B]ut as I was not agreeing, at one point someone said, he is a very tough customer. After hitting me  I dont know what they hit me with, as my eyes were blindfolded  I felt blood dripping from my mouth and nose. My clothes were getting wet with blood. Then I heard them saying, it is not wise to hit in sensitive areas, because those are visible, he said.

Then they started talking about water treatment and discussing how this water treatment could best be administered, Alam said.

They were referring to waterboarding, he alleged.

He was led somewhere and when his blindfold was removed he was standing in front of a pond with his hands bound behind his back. But the water treatment was not carried out.

The next day, at police headquarters, he was offered a deal, Alam said.

Essentially that it would all be forgotten  no charges whatsoever, I would be taken back home, I could do what I wanted but I must not criticize the government, he said.

But he refused the conditions, Alam said.

Accepting the deal meant that I was going to be incarcerated intellectually. Thats a freedom that Im not prepared to give up, he told Benar.

Government denials

Alam said he was taken from his Dhaka home on Aug. 5 because of comments he had made in YouTube postings and an interview with the Al Jazeera television network criticizing the government about a crackdown on a student protest movement underway at the time.

He was held without charge for 107 days and released on bail in November. But he still faces prosecution for allegedly spreading fake news online and defaming the government.

A spokesman for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police denied that Alam had been threatened with waterboarding or offered a deal while in custody.

[W]e, the police in Bangladesh, do not follow waterboarding for interrogation. We do not have the facility for waterboarding. So, Shahidul Alams allegation that we threatened him with waterboarding was untrue, police spokesman Masudur Rahman told BenarNews.

He was not tortured at any stage of his captivity, Rahman said, later adding, His comment that we promised him release if he did not talk against the government was untrue.

Alam first made the allegation about violence as he was dragged into court on Aug. 6, shouting to journalists, I was beaten  [They] washed my blood-stained Punjabi and made me wear it again.

Claims that Mr. Alam had been tortured by police are untrue. At the order of the court, Mr. Alam was taken to the Bangabandhu Medical College Hospital where doctors found no injuries or indication of torture, said a fact sheet on Alams arrest released by the government in late August 2018.

Alams arrest was not formally announced until Aug. 6. A judge later told his lawyers during a bail hearing that Alam was lucky he had not been abducted, the German news service Deutsche Welle reported at the time.



Officers move photographer Shahidul Alam to a Dhaka court, where a judge granted police a seven-day remand to question him, Aug. 6, 2018. [BenarNews]

Bengali and English interviews with Shahidul Alam are available on BenarNews' Facebook and YouTube pages.

Kamran Reza Chowdhury in Dhaka contributed to this report.
Flags of political parties contesting the 2019 legislative election fly from the Pante Pirak Bridge in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, April 12, 2019.

Established Islamic parties are likely to lose votes to their nationalist counterparts in next weeks elections in Indonesia, analysts said, despite perceptions of growing religious conservatism.

Several recent polls suggest that nationalist parties will dominate the 575-strong House of Representatives (DPR), with the ruling Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDIP) expected to win the most votes in the April 17 election.

Indonesias main faith-based party, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), is not expected to repeat its 2014 performance, when it won 6.8 percent of the votes, while the more moderate United Development Party (PPP) and National Mandate Party (PAN) may not secure enough votes to pass the 4 percent threshold required to hold a seat in parliament, recent polls suggest.

PPP and PAN won 6.5 and 7.6 percent of the votes in the 2014 parliamentary elections, respectively.

The National Awakening Party (PKB), a member of the ruling coalition that backs President Joko Jokowi Widodos bid for reelection, is the only Islamic party expected to secure its parliamentary seats.

Despite the recent symptoms of identity politics, nationalist parties are expected to dominate, said Ari Nurcahyo, director of PARA Syndicate, a private think tank.

Islamic parties are struggling with a lack of popular figures and innovative ideas, he said.

Besides, many Indonesians dont believe in mixing religion and politics, and many have grown weary with misuse of religion in politics while corruption remains rampant, he told BenarNews.

The arrest of PPP chairman Muhammad Romahurmuziy, an ally of Jokowi, has further alienated voters from the party, he said.

Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission arrested the PPP leader in mid-March on suspicion he accepted a sizeable bribe to engineer a promotion at the Religious Affairs Ministry, an allegation he denied.

Arsul Sani, PPP secretary-general, said he was optimistic that Romahurmuziys legal trouble would not have a significant impact on the partys performance at the ballot box.

PPP is an Islamic party that has been participating in elections for a long time and we are confident that we will still have a place in the hearts of the people, he said.

Diverted

Up to nine of 16 political parties contesting the election may not pass the parliamentary threshold, surveys conducted by pollsters Charta Politika in March and Indopolling Network in April predicted.

Gerindra, the party of Jokowis rival in Wednesdays presidential election, Prabowo Subianto, is expected to finish second, followed by Golkar, the party of the late former president Suharto.

Both PDIP and Gerindra are likely to benefit from having their own presidential candidates, whose campaigns have dominated headlines and eclipsed the parliamentary race, analysts said.

Voters are more likely to vote for parties that field presidential candidates. That could be the reason why Islamic parties are diverted to nationalist parties associated with the presidential candidates, said Arya Fernandes, a researcher at the Centre for International Studies in Jakarta.

Ardha Ranadireksa, a researcher with Charta Politika, a private pollster, said that even though PKS is known for the loyalty of its members, it does not have popular politicians, forcing it to back Prabowos candidacy.

FPI members who support Prabowo will not necessarily vote for PKS, he said, using the acronym for the Islamic Defenders Front, a hardline group.

FPI is led by Islamic cleric Muhammad Rizieq Shihab, who shot to political prominence after he led a campaign in 2016 and 2017 to oust then-Jakarta Gov. Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, a Christian of Chinese descent, over allegations that he had insulted the Koran in off-the-cuff remarks.

The events leading to Ahoks jailing raised concerns about growing religious intolerance in the worlds largest Muslim-majority country. The former governor finished serving his sentence in January.

Sirojuddin Abbas, an analyst at Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting, said simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections meant that political parties not fielding presidential candidates had to work extra had to win votes.

Despite religious fervor on display at Prabowos campaign rallies, PKS and PAN, which also backs Prabowo, are likely to benefit little, he told BenarNews.

New political parties

Ardha said new political parties such as the youthful Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI) had had difficulty garnering support because their platforms were not different from established ones.

PSI is fielding candidates under 40 to attract young voters but is not likely to gain traction in the absence of popular figures, Ardha said.

The secretary general of the Indonesian Solidarity Party (PSI), Raja Juli Antoni, said he was optimistic despite the gloomy predictions.

We continue to work door to door. We knock on peoples doors and their hearts and we also knock on heavens door, he told BenarNews.
MG 520 attack helicopters land at an army base in Jolo, Philippines to reload missiles as they support ground troops engaged in gun battles near Pakitul town that left 12 Abu Sayyaf gunmen dead, April 11, 2019.

At least 12 Abu Sayyaf militants from a faction that has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State have been killed in a series of gun battles with Philippine forces on the southern island of Jolo, the military said Friday.

The violence comes after a Malaysian hostage died from his wounds Tuesday, days after being rescued. An Indonesian perished during the rescue attempt while another Indonesian man was successfully freed.

Among those slain was Abu Sayyaf sub-leader Julie Ikit, the cousin and top lieutenant of Abu Sayyaf senior leader Radullan Sahiron, officials said.

Acting on intelligence data provided by local residents, troops engaged in a series of gun battles near the town of Patikul on Jolo Thursday with an enemy force numbering over a hundred fighters.

The running firefight lasted for about an hour, and reports from ground troops indicated that the enemy factions were led by Sahiron and Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, the overall leader of the Abu Sayyaf faction in Jolo who is believed to have taken over as the new head of the Islamic State in the Philippines.

The firefight forced the enemy to withdraw leaving behind one dead terrorist, later identified as Abu Sayyaf sub leader Julie Ikit, military spokesman Lt. Col. Gerald Monfort said.

Also recovered from the clash site were a pair of night-vision goggles, some 40 makeshift tents and food and water supplies  signs that the Abu Sayyaf militants were highly mobile.

After the first encounter, the 1st Scout Ranger Battalion was deployed to block the terrorists withdrawal, Monfort said, adding that the soldiers cut off the escaping enemy at a remote area, forcing the gunmen to split into smaller groups going into different directions. The body of another unidentified ASG member was discovered during a quick search of the area.

The Rangers then chased one group of the gunmen while the blocking force encountered another splinter group that was escaping.

Intelligence reports from the ground based on radio intercepts said that seven other enemy fighters were killed and up to 19 wounded in the initial clashes. Three more were added to the enemy death toll by Friday evening.

Brigadier Gen. Divino Rey Pabayo, commander of Joint Task Force Sulu, said that the support and cooperation of the local community led to the successful conduct of operations. The loss of Radullan Sahirons second-in-command and the number of ASG casualties during the series of encounters will have a dire effect on the ASGs morale and will to fight, he said.

Earlier this week, President Rodrigo Duterte visited the troops on Jolo and vowed that the Abu Sayyaf would be crushed. Sawadjaan is blamed for masterminding a January attack on a Catholic Church in Jolo that killed 23 people. The authorities said that he had worked with Indonesian suicide bombers, an account that the Indonesian government has rejected.

During his trip, Duterte met with top military commanders on the island, where an estimated 10,000 troops have been chasing after the Abu Sayyaf, a mix of bandits and self-styled militants who had pledged allegiance to the IS.

In Manila, Philippine military chief Gen. Benjamin Madrigal hosted his Malaysian counterpart Gen. Zulkifli Zainal Abidin Thursday night as part of bolstering the two armed forces anti-terror cooperation dating back to the early 1990s.

Our countries enduring friendship that spans more than six decades of bilateral relations has been instrumental in the various engagements and activities that support our mutual security interests, Madrigal said.
For Immediate Release, April 12, 2019 Contact: Tara Cornelisse, (971) 717-6425, tcornelisse@biologicaldiversity.org New Study: Pesticide OK'd by EPA as Safer Alternative to Bee-killing Neonicotinoids Is Harmful to Bees PORTLAND, Ore. A new study has found that a pesticide approved by the Environmental Protection Agency as a safer alternative to harmful neonicotinoid products can disorient and kill bees. Flupyradifurone  marketed under the trade name Sivanto  was touted as posing fewer risks to honeybees and other pollinators than neonicotinoid pesticides. But the study, published this week, found that nearly 3 of every 4 honeybees fed field-realistic doses of flupyradifurone and a commonly used fungicide died. Exposure to the pesticide cocktail also increased the frequency of abnormal behaviors, such as reduced coordination, hyperactivity and apathy. The studys authors documented poor coordination in bees that they defined as falling or stumbling while walking, walking in circles, walking and flying with erratic and irregular movements, and bees that flap their wings while upside down. Its more than a little ironic that the pesticide the EPA claims is safe for bees is just another toxic poison for them, said Tara Cornelisse, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. We know escalating pesticide use is one of the main reasons more than 40 percent of the worlds insect species are on a track to extinction. We need to stop pretending were going to spray our way out of this crisis by swapping one pesticide for another. The Center for Biological Diversity and other conservation groups sued the EPA in 2015 over its initial approval of flupyradifurone, challenging the agencys refusal to take common-sense measures to protect endangered species from this new and controversial pesticide. That case is in its initial stages at the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Late last year the maker of flupyradifurone, Bayer CropScience, requested that the EPA further expand the pesticides use to 300,000 acres of tobacco crops in states like Kentucky and North Carolina. Flupyradifurone is a systemic pesticide with the same mode of action  and potential for harm  as neonicotinoid pesticides, a leading cause of pollinator declines. While the pesticide industry has touted flupyradifurone as a replacement for neonicotinoid pesticides, it poses many of the same risks to nontarget species as neonicotinoids. Flupyradifurone is used on a range of crops such as citrus fruits, avocado trees, squash, peas and other crops attractive to pollinators. Now that Canada and the European Union have concluded that neonics are incredibly dangerous to pollinators and other species and are phasing them out, the chemical industry is scrambling to popularize new, equally dangerous products to replace them, said Cornelisse. But the replacements pose the same risks. Flupyradifurone impairs learning, memory and affinity for nectar rewards in honeybees. Its also highly water-soluble and decreases the viability of freshwater mussel larvae. It also negatively impacts aquatic mayfly larvae survival at levels comparable to neonicotinoid pesticides like imidacloprid and clothianidin. The new study was published in journal in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences by researchers at the University of California, San Diego.


analytica Vietnam 2019, which took place in Ho Chi Minh City from April 3 to 5, provided a twofold cause for celebration: The country's most important industry platform for laboratory technology, analysis, biotechnology and diagnostics, celebrated its tenth anniversary, marking the most successful trade fair event in this series to date. 143 exhibitors from 15 countries occupied around 33 per cent more space in the Saigon Exhibition and Convention Center (SECC) than in 2017. The 4,144 trade visitors not only flocked to the trade fair stands to find out about current developments in the industry but also attended the comprehensive supporting program featuring lectures, tutorials, buyer-seller meetings and lab safety shows.

The exhibitors included numerous national and international industry heavyweights. Germany, China, Taiwan and Singapore were on show with country pavilions of their own. Dr. Reinhard Pfeiffer, Messe Munchen's deputy CEO said: "analytica Vietnam is one of the jewels in analytica's global network and we are delighted with its positive development. 18 per cent more exhibitors, a third more space and 18 per cent more visitors compared with 2017 are an impressive reflection of the boom in the Vietnamese laboratory sector. It also has to do with the increasing need to import laboratory equipment, especially prevalent in the foodstuffs and pharmaceutical industry and in environmental analysis."

Gabriele Kraus, Executive Director of event organizer IMAG said: "We are pleased that analytica Vietnam 2019 has such positive news to report. This trajectory demonstrates just how important the Vietnamese market has become for the industry. In addition to the need for new technologies, the exchange of knowledge has also played a major role in this. Our trade fair concept addresses this need and has been extremely well received by exhibitors and visitors alike."

Pham Thi Tuyet, Marketing Manager at exhibitor SISC, summed it up: "analytica Vietnam is a prestige exhibition that has a lot of influence on the market that makes half of our income. The organizer is really enthusiastic and has had good support for the exhibitors."

Reto Broger, CEO of Metrohm Vietnam, is enthusiastic about his company's participation in the trade fair: "The focus on analytical instrumentation is paramount for us and this is supported by analytica Vietnam. We are very happy with the number of visitors and the interest shown in our products and look forward to attending again in 2021!"

First hand expertise

A particular emphasis of analytica Vietnam was on the comprehensive supporting program, which was very much about knowledge transfer. The analytica Vietnam conference was packed out on the first two days of the trade fair. International speakers discussed topical industry issues and presented findings from recent studies. For example there was considerable interest in the lectures on new chemical and biological analytical techniques for air pollution, on detecting micro-plastics in the environment and on the use of stable isotopes for inspecting the quality of tropical fruit.

The daily experimental lectures on laboratory safety were particularly popular with trade fair visitors. Planned explosions and pyrotechnic effects graphically illustrated the attendant risks of laboratory work, and how to avoid them.

In addition to trade fair stand discussions a total of 268 buyer-seller meetings helped exhibitors and visitors to establish the correct business contacts. The 20-minute meetings, prearranged by the event organizer, brought together potential business partners from appropriate industry sectors.
#Prisms2019: Meet young judge Siyabonga Ngcobo

In the run-up to the 22nd Prism Awards taking place on Sunday, 14 April, we chatted to this year's cohort of young judges about their fresh approach to the judging process.





This years young judges entries far exceeded expectation. The selected group is proof that theres an array of diverse and young talent in this industry and that they have a lot to offer, says co-convenor and founder of the Prisms Young Judges initiative, Palesa Madumo, executive director of strategy at Vuma Reputation Management.



Siyabonga Ngcobo Here, our interview with Siyabonga Ngcobo, marketing manager at Uber South Africa...



What does this recognition and opportunity mean to you? What does this recognition and opportunity mean to you? In this series of interviews, we find out what theyve learnt working alongside the cluster judges and what their young minds bring to the table.This years young judges entries far exceeded expectation. The selected group is proof that theres an array of diverse and young talent in this industry and that they have a lot to offer, says co-convenor and founder of the Prisms Young Judges initiative, Palesa Madumo, executive director of strategy at Vuma Reputation Management.Here, our interview with Siyabonga Ngcobo, marketing manager at Uber South Africa...

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists. - Eric Hoffer

Briefly tell us about your experience in the industry. Briefly tell us about your experience in the industry.

Comment on the judging process. Comment on the judging process.

What has the response been to this years entries? What has the response been to this years entries?

Contrary to popular belief, innovation is not all that it is heralded to be because innovation for innovations sake is worthless. Great brands dont go out looking to innovate, however, they seek to solve real brand challenges and the solutions to those challenges then ultimately lead to innovations.

What makes the winning work stand out? What makes the winning work stand out?

Prisa also introduced the Student Campaign of the Year in 2016. Why do you think its important that PR students are included in such initiatives? Prisa also introduced the Student Campaign of the Year in 2016. Why do you think its important that PR students are included in such initiatives?

What do you think young minds bring to the table? What do you think young minds bring to the table?

What have you learnt working alongside the cluster judges? What have you learnt working alongside the cluster judges?

Comment on the past, present and future state of PR. Comment on the past, present and future state of PR.

The key to unlocking a reimagined PR landscape is amalgamating *sips Woolies water* both traditional and new media platforms when crafting brand narratives.

What would the title of Prisms Young Judge for the 2019 awards mean to you? What would the title of Prisms Young Judge for the 2019 awards mean to you?

What are you most looking forward to in terms of this years Awards? What are you most looking forward to in terms of this years Awards?

Jessica Tennant's articles About Jessica Tennant Jess is Senior Editor: Marketing & Media at Bizcommunity.com. She is also a contributing writer. Jess is Senior Editor: Marketing & Media at Bizcommunity.com. She is also a contributing writer. moc.ytinummoczib@swengnitekram

A quote I was blessed to stumble across in my youth goes:What this recognition and opportunity affords me is yet another opportunity to learn and grow. One of my greatest fears is complacency and I therefore live in the learning zone and constantly seek opportunities to be exposed to excellence that I can benchmark against. That being said, I am both grateful and honoured for the selection and feel compelled to make a meaningful contribution to both the awards and the industry at large.It has always been hard to take snapshots while on this rollercoaster I call my career, as the stills always come out blurry. I could be defined as a marketing oracle, having found my passion for the craft from pretty much the onset of my career.My first foray into PR in particular was through DNA Brand Architects, a small agency at the time, steadfast in their stance against bland communications, where I truly got the chance to think outside the box and make 'wow stuff' happen for brands. This period of my life enabled me to have the audacity to accept nothing short of greatness in all my efforts.Fast forward some years and having had exposure to a multitude of brands and industries, I found my niche in the realisation that I was particularly passionate about assisting international organisations to get the lay of the land and understand the African market, essentially retaining global best practices whilst leaning on local insights. This led to me honing this particular skillset and driving the marketing efforts for brands like BET Africa and a slew of other international television networks on the DStv platform and I am currently one of the custodians of the Uber brand in South Africa in my capacity as marketing manager.The judging process was quite rigorous and emotional at times. The standard of work that was showcased spoke volumes of the calibre of talent that we have in this country, which added to the difficulty in judging. There were categories where we were truly conflicted and went back and forth deciding on a winner.The entries have been really impressive.This years entries have truly been steadfast in aiming to solve brand challenges, leading to some innovative work.Winning work is work that delivers on all of its objectives as well as on the old cliche of 'cutting through the clutter'.I am a big believer in the fact that exposure is the greatest key to unlocking potential. You can only aspire to be what you have been privy to and the earlier students are exposed to brand excellence, it allows them the ability to benchmark against the best that the country has to offer. Including the students in such initiatives also allows the young talent featured in this category the opportunity to start packaging and positioning themselves from the onset of their careers.I believe that young minds bring a fresh perspective to the table. We are living in a young world and in order to progress, we need new ways of thinking to unlock new possibilities.The greatest lesson has been commanding my seat at the table. My opinions, thoughts, insights, feelings and beliefs are worthy to be heard and I own that proudly.Having witnessed the evolution of PR shift from drafting press releases and media drops, to being a cornerstone in the marketing communications value chain, it goes without saying that the future of PR is exciting.The title of Prisms Young Judge would be a tremendous honour as such accolades serve to reaffirm that one is on the right track.With the judging done and dusted, I am looking forward to being a part of the celebration of brand excellence.
#Prisms2019: Meet young judge Monare Matema

In the run-up to the 22nd Prism Awards taking place on Sunday, 14 April, we chatted to this year's cohort of young judges about their fresh approach to the judging process.





This years young judges entries far exceeded expectation. The selected group is proof that theres an array of diverse and young talent in this industry and that they have a lot to offer, says co-convenor and founder of the Prisms Young Judges initiative, Palesa Madumo, executive director of strategy at Vuma Reputation Management.



Monare Matema Here, our interview with Monare Matema, associate architect at DNA Brand Architects...



What does this recognition and opportunity mean to you? What does this recognition and opportunity mean to you? In this series of interviews, we find out what theyve learnt working alongside the cluster judges and what their young minds bring to the table.This years young judges entries far exceeded expectation. The selected group is proof that theres an array of diverse and young talent in this industry and that they have a lot to offer, says co-convenor and founder of the Prisms Young Judges initiative, Palesa Madumo, executive director of strategy at Vuma Reputation Management.Here, our interview with Monare Matema, associate architect at DNA Brand Architects...

Briefly tell us about your experience in the industry. Briefly tell us about your experience in the industry.

Comment on the judging process. Comment on the judging process.

Its no longer good enough to land press releases in publications and have a great AVE.

What has the response been to this years entries? What has the response been to this years entries?

What makes the winning work stand out? What makes the winning work stand out?

Prisa also introduced the Student Campaign of the Year in 2016. Why do you think its important that PR students are included in such initiatives? Prisa also introduced the Student Campaign of the Year in 2016. Why do you think its important that PR students are included in such initiatives?

What do you think young minds bring to the table? What do you think young minds bring to the table?

I love calling myself the voice of the millennial in the boardroom because I feel that we are not as well represented as we should be and I want to change this.

What have you learnt working alongside the cluster judges? What have you learnt working alongside the cluster judges?

Comment on the past, present and future state of PR. Comment on the past, present and future state of PR.

What would the title of Prisms Young Judge for the 2019 awards mean to you? What would the title of Prisms Young Judge for the 2019 awards mean to you?

What are you most looking forward to in terms of this years Awards? What are you most looking forward to in terms of this years Awards?

Jessica Tennant's articles About Jessica Tennant Jess is Senior Editor: Marketing & Media at Bizcommunity.com. She is also a contributing writer. Jess is Senior Editor: Marketing & Media at Bizcommunity.com. She is also a contributing writer. moc.ytinummoczib@swengnitekram

The Prism Awards are the countrys biggest platform for celebrating excellence in PR and to be one of the lucky few who get to judge the awards means the world me! I must say that being recognised as a Young Judge at this stage of my career is incredibly humbling. I am encouraged by the fact that the Prisms value young professionals and students and the platform has given me a voice to shape what that excellence looks like. I have had an opportunity to meet some respected industry peers who have already taught me so much and I look forward to more lessons and more learnings as I continue to embark on this journey.Phew! Where do even I begin? Prior to entering the world of brand communications and PR, I was actually a film major at AFDA (the South African School of Motion Picture and Live Performance). It was there where I got to hone my skills in the art of storytelling, which I got to use in a completely different field when I joined marketing and brand consultancy DNA Brand Architects.I have been working in the industry for a little over three years now and in that period I have held a number of roles and have literally worked my way up from receptionist to brand assistant and now an associate brand architect. My work has allowed me to occupy the boardrooms of some of the biggest brands in the country, including the likes of Steers, Wimpy, Flying Fish, Lion Lager and Samsung.Working with a diverse set of brands has taught me so much and allowed me to gain various experiences. I have realised that each brand has its own DNA and as 'brand doctor' that is tasked to solve problems and come up with solutions, its my job to bring out their brand personality in unique ways that allow for brands to connect more meaningfully with consumers and the media at large. I have also realised how important storytelling is in brand communication and being able to craft great stories for our clients.Its not often that you get to connect with your industry peers so it was really amazing to debate and share ideas with like-minded peers both young and old. As a first time judge, I had to ask a lot of questions. What makes a great campaign? What is the measure of a great campaign? Is AVE (advertising value equivalent) still relevant? The list goes on! However, I was surrounded by experienced professionals who were able to guide me through it all but also encourage my independent opinion which was taken into account during the process.The truth is that PR is changing and this was evident in the work that was coming out.Great campaigns need to have a whole lot more than that and I was encouraged by the innovative solutions that agencies are bringing forth for their clients, which are really changing the way we do PR.There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to this years entries. The number of entries keeps growing year on year, which says that more and more professionals value the Prisms as a barometer of excellence in the industry. The campaigns are a lot more innovative and there is a concerted effort to not only preserve the intrinsic elements of what makes a great PR campaign but to also push for work that matters. This was very exciting for me as a judge as it says that we are moving to a very exciting space as an industry.For me it is innovation. What makes this campaign different, unique, innovative and effective are the questions I found myself asking during the judging process. I was particularly intrigued by work which exuded that 'X factor'. It can at times be intangible but when you see it you see it! Its a perfect combination of all things and then some! Thats what I was looking for when judging the entries and thats what I believe makes winning works stand out.I think its so important to expose students early on in their career to what makes a great campaign. The Student of the Year Award gives students something to work towards before they enter the industry and when they eventually do enter the industry, they are already exposed to a higher standard of excellence. One can only imagine what a Student Campaign of the Year win will do for their career. This will expose them to better job opportunities and allow them to be more intentional in the work they do and students are the future so we better show them some respect!So much!As young minds we understand the desires of the youth, what their interests and passions are and who influences and inspires them. This is so important when it comes to PR and the campaigns that we do for our clients as we are able to make campaigns more relatable and authentic for young people. Our voice really does matter!Oh wow, I had amazing cluster judges and what was great is that my cluster was well balanced with judges that came from the client side and agency side. This exposed me to what clients want from a campaign but also what agencies think makes a great campaign, which was really interesting.I learnt that we cant only look at campaigns from a point of view of ticking boxes, we need to be a lot more holistic in our approach in interrogating whether the campaign actually deserves to be in the category it was entered. Do they understand the client's objectives and the nature of the industry? What research was applied before the campaign was executed? How well were they able to meet the mandate of their objectives in measuring their results? We had a lot of back-and-forths on this but I must say what they really taught me is that everyones opinion matters and we need to take that into account when judging.The past has been great, however, I wont dwell on it too much as I believe that you are only as good as your next job. What I would like to focus on is the current state of PR and the future.The industry is changing and I think that is something that many professionals are becoming more and more aware of. Trends are great and we see a lot of that within the industry. However, we need to focus on sustainable solutions that are going to move the industry and our clients forward and not dwell on how well things worked in the past.If I am to hold a mirror ball into the future, I see digital, social media, content and artificial intelligence playing a stronger role and we need to be able to embrace these new methods of communication and be flexible to change if PR is still going to be relevant. So, lets be willing to learn new things but also willing to unlearn what we have learnt in the past. This for me makes the future so exciting!It has already meant so much to me! I have been working towards this moment for the past couple of years and the fact that it has come to fruition this year is absolutely magical! What it means to me is that my voice in the industry matters. What I think, what I say and how I contribute matters. It truly is a privilege to call myself a 'PYJ'. Theres a lot of exciting things you guys are going to see coming from the Prism Young Judges this year and I cant wait to play a part in taking it to the next level.To be honest I am really looking forward to being in a space where I am surrounded by the best of the best in the industry. I mean the Prism Awards is the biggest celebration of PR excellence in the country, so I am looking forward to the people I am going to meet, the connections I am going to make, the conversations I am going to share and the wins I am going to celebrate. Because when you are surrounded by the best you become the best and I have a strong feeling its going to be a good year!
#StartupStory sponsored by

#StartupStory: iHappify, the new business on the block

The first quarter of 2019 has seen new business development in an uncategorised industry of making people happy. The happiness inspired iHappify to announce their introduction to the public space and to the business sector.

David Jonathan Padayachee, founder and chief executive officer of iHappify iHappify is a company that practices and offers a service of happiness to both its clients and the people of South Africa through authentic customer experience. The company was created based on the theory of happiness; that happiness is the key attribute to add value to people and the business environment.



We chat to David Jonathan Padayachee, a disruptive entrepreneurial leader, founder and the chief executive officer of iHappify, to find out the journey of creating happiness and making a difference in the communities of South Africa.



Can you tell us a bit about iHappify? Can you tell us a bit about iHappify? iHappify is a company that practices and offers a service of happiness to both its clients and the people of South Africa through authentic customer experience. The company was created based on the theory of happiness; that happiness is the key attribute to add value to people and the business environment.We chat to David Jonathan Padayachee, a disruptive entrepreneurial leader, founder and the chief executive officer of iHappify, to find out the journey of creating happiness and making a difference in the communities of South Africa.

What is your role at iHappify? What is your role at iHappify?

When, how and why did you get started? When, how and why did you get started?

What are some of the services you provide? What are some of the services you provide?

What are some of the obstacles you've had to overcome since starting out? What are some of the obstacles you've had to overcome since starting out?

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs? What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

What has been your proudest achievements thus far? What has been your proudest achievements thus far?

What does the future of entrepreneurship look like to you? What does the future of entrepreneurship look like to you?

What is the importance of start-up accelerator/incubator programmes? What is the importance of start-up accelerator/incubator programmes?

What would you like to see changed in the South African startup landscape? What would you like to see changed in the South African startup landscape?

What do you believe are the traits an entrepreneur needs in order to succeed? What do you believe are the traits an entrepreneur needs in order to succeed?

Tell us about your biggest struggle as an entrepreneur, as well as some major highlights. Tell us about your biggest struggle as an entrepreneur, as well as some major highlights.

Why would you encourage someone to become an entrepreneur? Why would you encourage someone to become an entrepreneur?

Where would you like to see iHappify in the next five years? Where would you like to see iHappify in the next five years?

Evan-Lee Courie's articles About Evan-Lee Courie Editor: Marketing & Media; Head of Content for Entrepreneurship

Editor: Marketing & Media; Head of Content for Entrepreneurship

iHappify is the representation of happiness through a company that strives to change peoples mindset about what actually makes them happy.My role here at iHappify is to be the leader that creates the opportunity for people to experience a happier life, but formally put; Id say Im the founder of the company.I started the company in July 2017. It started with a vision to bring back the human element to sociality with simple principals of life and create a positive and happy outlook on life. I knew the only way we would see the greatest impact in South Africa is to empower the youth, just with a vision, understanding of impacting the youth I took a leap of faith.I had no car, no income; however, I woke up every morning and made my way of taking my concept out to the market. Every day I woke up with purpose a heart full of faith and the biggest smile on my face! I had loads of negative situations as well as people who have laughed at me, however few mavericks who are successful entrepreneurs, visionaries, saw the value and gave me an opportunity to prove myself and that was the birth of iHappify.We provide a full spectrum of brand perception, sales, and marketing as well as customer service. Our goal is to create happy customers. We have a promotions/activation team, door-to-door sales as well as a call centre. We believe energy and excitement create the opportunity to make customers happy and increase our clients sales and brand perception.Obstacles are always there; I feel you just get stronger! I started the company with nothing and only a vision the greatest obstacle was getting investors to invest in the business there after the next obstacle was getting the right people on the team. It is so critical to have people who believe and have faith in the vision and not just there for a paycheck.Have faith and passion in what you want to achieve, as you will be tested from all sides. The closest people around you will make you or break you, be very selective in whom you let into your space. Your staff will be your new family, treat them as such and take care of your family because your family will take care of you. Wake up each morning and find a way to make your staff, clients, and customers happier than yesterday.My proudest achievement thus far would be the fact that my people are growing, hearing they moved into a bigger house, a new car or even the simplest thing as they are growing and I living a more fulfilled life. Also managing to stay alive!The future of entrepreneurship I feel will be moving into running countries, creating a productive community all working towards the same goals.It is critical for a startup. You learn loads and fail, however you have the support to get up quicker and go at it again.I would like to see more support structures in place for future start ups that would allow future entrepreneurs to take bigger risks and push the boundaries of our civilization.You need to be a little crazy...well, you must work against what our natural instincts are! Passion in what you do and always seeking to improve the standard way of things. High EQ as working with people is critical in achieving anything. There is always a way and you will find it.The biggest struggle I have had is cash flow! Yes, the one thing that can grind a business to a halt. The major highlights were signing up Supersonic Fibre To The Home internet services as a client and after 4 months reaching The number 1 spot as the best ISP in South Africa, This could have not been achieved without my mentors and business advisors. They have taught me the skills and strategy to grow as a company and they have faith and believe in iHappify. I am humbled and appreciative.Entrepreneurship is a gift, it is never about you, it is about serving others and adding value to the world we live in for the future generations to benefit. We are the crazies that push this world forward!Dont you want to see the change for your future generations? Take that leap of faith!I see iHappify fulfilling its vision of creating happiness in our country; I see iHappify Childrens Homes in all major cities; I see us empowering more than 500 youth and gearing them up for life! I see us as being the best reseller in South Africa and moving into the global playing field. I see happy people!
Exclusive Books cancels Gangster State launch in Cape Town

Exclusive Books CEO Grattan Kirk has announced that the bookstore chain has cancelled its launch of Pieter-Louis Myburgh's book Gangster State at its V&A Waterfront store in Cape Town. The decision was made after a discussion between Exclusive Books, the South African Police (SAPS) and the V&A Waterfront's centre management.



Kirk said that the SAPS was unable to provide any security support if there was a reoccurrence of a similar incident in Johannesburg. Furthermore, Exclusive Books was advised that any damage or injury that would arise from any potential protest action would not be accepted by its insurance company.
This job expired on 21 May 2019.
This job expired on 2 May 2019.
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Paris, TX (75460)

Today

Cloudy skies this evening followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms overnight. Low 67F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Cloudy skies this evening followed by scattered showers and thunderstorms overnight. Low 67F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 50%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Meditation, Modesty, and Interfaith Dialogues

What was notable about the student events, particularly Wu's and Suarez's, was that they didn't present arguments or invite a scholar to give a lecture. Instead, they asked a series of questions and had students gather in small groups to discuss them.

Wu, who was raised in North Dakota and attended a charismatic Christian church, said she designed her event on Buddhism to avoid quick and easy judgment. "I thought about this in the Twitter sense, where there are a lot of people calling out others for cultural appropriation, canceling someone for saying something wrong," she said. "I wanted my event to be more like, 'here are these questions, let's listen to other people talk and help you formulate what you think.'"

At Wu's event, she posed the following questions: Have you ever meditated? Is the practice devalued when used in the West without acknowledging its origins? Where is the line between cultural exchange and cultural appropriation? What are some ways we can be respectful of mindfulness teaching and activities?

Suarez, who was raised in a Catholic family in Washington, DC, said much of his interest in exploring modesty, Islam, and women was inspired by a sociology class he took at Bowdoin called Gender in the Middle East. While he wanted people to examine their ideas about modesty, faith, and women, he said he also wanted his event to help "erase a preconception."

"If you don't know anything about veiling in Islamic culture, you might think it is just an oppressive practice," he said. "Many people don't understand why women choose to do it."

At his event, Suarez asked: What are some preconceived notions you might have when you see someone wearing a veil? What does modesty mean to you? How or where do we encounter questions of modesty in our own society? Do you believe modesty is a personal choice, or is it influenced or shaped by a dominant narrative?

Johnson, a practicing "progressive" Catholic from Charlottesville, Virginia, invited leaders of churches, synagogues, and mosques to participate in his interfaith panel, ending up with clergy from four Christian denominations. "I wanted to talk to them about why it is important in Maine, the least religious state, to have religions that engage the community," he said.

Pazos said Johnson's interfaith event reinforced what he hopes to achieve with the Multifaith Fellowship. "It brought up the need in our society to talk about common ground and unity rather than issues that divide us," he said.
Chris Brown (left) interviewed by 207 host Rob Caldwell

Brown has been involved in the music retail industry for nearly three decades: In the early 90s he helped fellow Bowdoin grad Brett Wickard 90 establish Bull Moose Music, an independent record store chain, also selling video games and movies, with twelve branches in Maine and New Hampshire.

This years Record Store Day on April 13 involves releases from artists across all genres, old and new, dead and alive. They include Pearl Jam, Motorhead, Miley Cyrus, and the Foo Fighters, not to mention jazz greats like Herbie Hancock and classical recordings. This week Chris Brown was a guest on WCSHs television magazine show 207, where he reviewed some of his favorite items being released in connection with the event.
The Four Languages of Actor Michael Wood 06: English, French, Italian, and the Body

Michael Wood 06 is a professional actor who can perform in three languages. He is fluent in French but also speaks Italian, so his voice is clearly very important to him. However, he said, if I lost my voice tomorrow and couldnt speak any language, I should still be able to tell a story."

Wood recently visited the Bowdoin campus, where he conducted student workshops in French and Italian, as well as English. He also delivered a public talk, mostly in French, on physical theater, although he described it as more of a masterclass than a lecture. Physical theater is an art form Wood began studying seriously when he went to live in Paris after graduating from Bowdoin, having earned a double major in French and English combined with theater studies.

"I was told I have a face like rubber. I chose to take it as a compliment! Photo: Fred Field I studied at the Ecole Jacques Lecoq, an international school that specializes in physical theater and where we learned about movement and mime. Not the Marcel Marceau, man-in-a-box-type mime, but mime as a tool for actors on stage, to help them connect with the audience. Paris was already familiar ground for Wood, who spent his junior year studying abroad there. He has returned on several occasions over the years, for two or three months at a time. Wood currently resides in Washington, DC, and works as a jobbing actor, which means going to a lot of auditions. Along with Chicago, DC is the nations second biggest theater market after New York. He also likes the fact that the buildings are shorter than New York and theres more sunlight. It felt like a good place to invest in long-term, without subjecting myself to the rat race that is New York Citys theaterland. Plus theres a little bit of southern hospitality in DC. An Interesting Journey Wood harbored acting ambitions from an early age, he said, but the defining moment in choosing this career was playing Puck in A Midsummer Nights Dream as a high school senior. It was a great experience. The teacher let us help design the set and the choreography. After Bowdoin and the six-month stint in Paris, Wood lived in Boston for a while, where he joined a zany theatrical troupe called the Gold Dust Orphans. We did parodies of classic works. For example, one of our pieces was called Pussy on the House, inspired, of course by Tennessee Williamss Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Then there was Phantom of the Oprah and Peter Pansy. We were like an underground drag company. Then it was a back to Paris for a spell training with the acclaimed Theatre Du Soleil, where he further honed his talent for physical theater. (I was sleeping on a friends floor for two-and-a-half months, getting up at six, home at eleven or so, not getting paid, and spending my savings. I loved every minute of it!)

Back in the US, he spent about a year touring the country doing dinner theater (we did classic American musicals. I sing and dance if you pay me!) When this was over, he spent a brief period experiencing the rat race of New York, where he did eighty-five auditions in four months. Sometimes I had a five in a day, he recalled. It all got a bit much, so I decided to move back to Maine, where my family is. In search of more stability, Wood worked at Bowdoin for three years, ending up as assistant dean for first-year students. In spare time, I also did theater in Portland, which was great because, being in a small community, there was the opportunity to do many things. For example, I created two solo cabaret shows for Portland fringe festivals. Another memorable experience during this time was choreographing a high school musical in Falmouth. I taught fifty kids to tap dance. It was totally unexpected but great fun.

View image caption Photo: Fred Field
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI), William Billy Griffith is excited about the new deal with Lufthansa.

Barbados is expanding its reach in Germany with a new thrice-weekly direct flight from Frankfurt to the Grantley Adams International Airport.



Flight LH 5432, which is scheduled to commence on Monday, October 28, 2019, will run on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, using an A330 aircraft which seats up to 330 passengers.

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc. (BTMI), William Billy Griffith, said his organization will be looking to capitalize on the extra seats the partnership will bring.

"With the addition of some 900-plus seats per week, we will be more aggressive than ever in working with our tour operator partners, local groups such as the Barbados Hotel and Tourism Association and Intimate Hotels of Barbados, as well as in our traditional and digital marketing efforts, he said.

(Source: Caribbean 360)

He added that the BTMI will be working closely with the Lufthansa Group on co-op marketing plans to ensure the success of the new service.
TORONTO - The federal government won't have to comply immediately with a court decision that limited solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided.

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The Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa on Tuesday, July 10, 2012. The federal government won't have to comply immediately with a court decision that limited solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

TORONTO - The federal government won't have to comply immediately with a court decision that limited solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided.

In granting Ottawa's urgent request for an "interim interim" stay, the country's top court said the government had met all three needed conditions. Those factors, the court said, include whether there was a "serious issue" to be tried and whether it would cause the government "irreparable harm" if not granted.

"I am satisfied that these factors have been met for the purpose of the interim interim stay only," Justice Suzanne Cote said. "This order will remain in effect until the determination of the motion for an interim stay, which shall be dealt with on an expedited basis."

In a ruling last month, the Ontario Court of Appeal said placing prisoners deemed a risk to themselves or others in segregation for more than 15 days amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional. The court gave correctional authorities 15 days  until Friday  to comply and end the practice.

The federal government sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, along with a request to put the lower-court decision on hold pending the outcome. However, because the request for an interim stay would only be heard well after Friday's deadline to comply with the ruling, Ottawa sought the interim interim stay.

In support of its request, the federal government said the lower court did not take into account the consequences of capping administrative segregation, and warned that imposing a hard limit in all cases could be dangerous.

"There is currently no alternative recourse to address these situations, placing the safety and security of all federal institutions, the inmates and the staff at high risk," the government said in its notice of leave to appeal.

Critics of isolation say studies indicate that depriving inmates of meaningful human contact for much of their day can cause long-term, even permanent, psychological damage.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which has pursued the case, called it "deeply disappointing" that the government was seeking to appeal.

It opposed the interim interim stay request, calling it highly unusual for courts to allow practices deemed to violate the charter because they amount to cruel and unusual treatment to continue.

"Canada asks this court to prolong a dangerous practice that is 'harmful and offside responsible medical opinion,'" the association said in its filing. "The impact on those affected is real and serious."

Having granted the interim interim stay, Cote gave the association until April 23 to respond to the request for an interim stay, and Ottawa a further two days to reply. It's not clear when the Supreme Court will decide on the stay motion or whether it will hear the government's appeal.
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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A flare stack lights the sky from the Imperial Oil refinery in Edmonton on December 28, 2018. Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifiting into an upcoming federal campaign. "It's pretty clear this issue is warming up politically," said Ragan, head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Five stories in the news for Friday, April 12



CARBON TAX DEBATE FOGGED BY MYTHS: ECONOMIST

A carbon tax doesn't work says the head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, which is a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions. Chris Ragan says between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog  a carbon tax debate is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifting into an upcoming federal campaign. He says there's a bunch of stuff out there that is either misunderstanding or poorly explained. And there a bunch of myths out there, he adds. The commission has just published a report on carbon tax misconceptions.



911 DISPATCH SYSTEM CHANGE FRUSTRATES FIRE CHIEF

A 911 dispatch system in British Columbia is getting a starkly different review from firefighters and paramedics responding to medical emergencies. Fire Chief Nick Delmonico of the Port Coquitlam Fire Department says the so-called clinical response model adopted in B.C. last May has put patient safety at risk because firefighters are no longer routinely being dispatched to medical calls along with paramedics. He says firefighters provide comfort and care to patients before an ambulance arrives but now they're sometimes not being called even when they're supposed to be, such as when paramedics don't show up for 10 minutes.



CANADIANS DIVIDED ON HANDGUN BAN: REPORT

It appears there is no clear answer on whether Canadians are in favour of banning handguns and assault-style firearms. Following a shooting spree in Toronto last summer, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked Crime Reduction Minister Bill Blair to study the possibility of such a ban. A report released Thursday found opinions expressed during in-person discussions and through written submissions both opposed and supported a ban. But when participants responded to a questionnaire, the majority were against the idea.



PUSH RCMP ON STERILIZATION PROBES: NDP MP

NDP MP Don Davies says Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale should use all "legitimate tools" at his disposal to ensure the RCMP investigates women's allegations of forced or coerced sterilizations. In a March letter to Davies, after he called for a criminal probe of coerced sterilizations, especially of Indigenous women, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki said the force will work with commanding officers in each province and territory to see if any complaints have been reported and will reach out to other Canadian police agencies as well. But, Lucki wrote, a preliminary review of the RCMP's national database found no records of specific complaints to pursue. So Davies has written to the minister who oversees the police force.



CRITICS SAY PESTICIDE PLAN IS 'NONSENSICAL'

Environment groups are calling out Canada's approach to assessing pesticides after seven years of reviews led Health Canada to simultaneously decide to allow certain popular products to keep being used with restrictions, and to propose banning the same products from outdoor uses altogether. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency on Thursday released its final decision on what limits should be placed on a category of nicotine-based pesticides known as neonicotinoids to keep them from killing bees. Starting in two years, the pesticides won't be allowed to be sprayed at all on certain crops like apples and tree nuts and there will be limited times when they can be sprayed on many others, like tomatoes, eggplants and berries.



ALSO IN THE NEWS:

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers remarks to supporters at the 2019 convention of the Liberal Party of Canada in Ontario. Note: Media must arrive no later than 7 p.m. local time.

 Liberals from across Ontario gather for the 2019 convention of the Liberal Party of Canada in Ontario. Justin Trudeau will make remarks at the convention on Friday, April 12.

 The Central Okanagan Regional District hosts a Facebook live demo on what to include in an emergency kit in case of flooding, wildfires and other emergencies.
HALIFAX - The Nova Scotia government is delaying an act that would give it more powers to protect biodiversity, including wild animals, plants and water species.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HALIFAX - The Nova Scotia government is delaying an act that would give it more powers to protect biodiversity, including wild animals, plants and water species.

The Liberal government had planned to pass the bill this session, saying it lacked the authority or regulatory powers it needs to manage the province's biodiversity.

However, Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin said Friday that the government recognizes the bill may require more work, and it's being sent back to committee.

The legislation as written would have given the government broad scope to create regulations to help manage threats to rare ecosystems and better protect wildlife against invasive species.

Rankin says the bill will still pass during the current government's mandate, but there will be more consultation with industry, private landowners and environmental groups.

Proposed measures in the bill would allow the government to prevent the import, selling or distribution of an invasive species, and prevent the destruction or disturbance of rare ecosystems and habitats.

Passing the bill was one of the Liberal party's election promises.

The existing bill would give the province the ability to create land management zones for set periods of time to support conservation efforts.

The legislation's current focus is Crown land, with possible regulations aimed at private land in the future.

The yet-to-be-drafted regulations will be key when it comes to defining which species need further protection and in setting out the minister's powers to issue emergency orders around land use.

Many of the details of the bill in terms of what species need further protection were also only going to be defined in regulation.

The Ecology Action Centre, the province's largest environmental group, has said the bill has been needed for a long time.

Its spokesman has said that if legislation had been in place two decades ago, the brown spruce longhorn beetle may not have been able to gain a foothold to ravage the province's spruce trees.

The European insect was discovered in Halifax in 1999, but has been established in Nova Scotia since at least 1990, according to Natural Resources Canada.
Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifting into an upcoming federal campaign.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A flare stack lights the sky from the Imperial Oil refinery in Edmonton on December 28, 2018. Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifiting into an upcoming federal campaign. "It's pretty clear this issue is warming up politically," said Ragan, head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson

Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifting into an upcoming federal campaign.

"It's pretty clear this issue is warming up politically," said Ragan, head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions.

"We have been sorry to see that there's a bunch of stuff out there that is either misunderstanding or poorly explained. There are a bunch of myths out there."

The commission has just published a report on carbon tax misconceptions.

The worst, Ragan said, is that a carbon tax doesn't work.

"If you look at B.C., if you look at California, if you look at the U.K, if you look at Quebec, these policies do work. What they don't do is work overnight."

At least five different published studies have found British Columbia's carbon tax, introduced in 2008, has cut overall emissions, reduced per capita gasoline use by seven per cent, improved average vehicle efficiency by four per cent, cut residential natural gas use by seven per cent and diesel use by more than three per cent.

Meanwhile, the province enjoyed about three per cent annual economic growth between 2012 and 2017.

Other jurisdictions that have successfully used carbon taxes to reduce emissions include Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, several U.S. states, the U.K. and the European Union.

Three separate studies found B.C.'s tax either didn't affect jobs or added them. A fourth found a small decrease in jobs for less-educated workers. Studies in the U.S. or the U.K. found little or no impact on job numbers.

The commission's report finds that far from hurting families, 70 per cent of Canadian households will receive more in carbon tax rebates than they pay.

Energy economists such as Mark Jaccard at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University argue that regulations get faster, bigger results and are politically easier to enact. The big cuts to Canada's carbon emissions, he said, have come from closing coal-fired power plants and clean fuel rules.

"Some people will tell you you have to have carbon pricing," he said on a recent podcast. "That's not true. You could do it all through regulations."

You could, concedes Ragan. But that would cost the economy more. Besides, he said, bringing in carbon taxes gives governments an opportunity to cut other levies such as income tax.

Albertans who believe the province could escape a carbon tax by rescinding provincial legislation may also be mistaken.

Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary law professor, said all Ottawa would have to do is pass an order in council to bring Alberta under the same federal tax that recently came into effect in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. None of those provinces had its own tax.

"It's a matter of getting cabinet together and writing the order," Olszynski said.

Looking to the courts to block Ottawa's tax is an iffy bet, he suggested.

In court hearings on Saskatchewan's anti-tax constitutional challenge, Olszynski said, judges asked if allowing Ottawa to regulate greenhouse gases as a matter of "national concern" would impede provincial efforts to do the same.

"If you recognize this matter as a matter of national concern, you would strip away the provincial ability to regulate these things," he summarized.

But Olszynski notes that courts have recognized that many issues  especially environmental ones  are best managed jointly between national and provincial governments.

Other federal arguments in favour of a national carbon tax are backed by decades of case law, Olszynski added.

Ragan said the debate over carbon taxes is as important to Canada's future as debates over the GST or free trade with the United States.

"It's a big policy issue and it's appropriate that we're talking about it now."

Ragan just wishes the debate wasn't so mythical.

"We live in a democratic society where people play partisan politics. Those political debates don't always stick to the facts."

 Follow Bob Weber on Twitter at @row1960
Left: Anwar Jack  all it took was a paper committal procedure for his matter to be sent to the High Court. Right: Ian Enoch was a well-known Bishop of the Spiritual Baptist faith here.

A former Security Guard of Georgetown will face a judge and jury in connection with a killing which attracted widespread public attention here August last year.

Following a paper committal procedure at the Serious Offences Court last week, Chief Magistrate Rechanne Browne committed Anwar Jack to stand trial for the murder of Spiritual Baptist Bishop Ian Enoch, 50.

Jack was a 24-year-old Security Guard at the time of the incident.

After the Prosecution, Defence and Magistrate reviewed all the evidence and witness statements in the case, Browne concluded that a prima facie case was made out.

The body of the Trinidad and Tobago national who worked here as a Travel Agency Supervisor, was discovered in one of the huts at a tourist attraction area in Argyle known as Carib Village, August 18 last year, shortly after the police had received information that he had gone missing. Enoch was at the time residing at Brighton.

Reports are that he was chopped about his body with a cutlass between 8 p.m. August 17 and 10:40 a.m. August 18 last year.

Attorney Grant Connell represented Jack during the paper committal procedure, while Senior Prosecutor Adolphus Delpleche appeared for the prosecution.
OTTAWA - The federal Liberals are attacking the Ontario Progressive Conservative government's first budget since Doug Ford was elected premier, hoping voters across the country will connect the document's cuts to social spending and the yet-to-be-announced policy leanings of Andrew Scheer's Conservatives.

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This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Minister of Small Business and Export Promotion Mary Ng, Liberal MP Francis Drouin, and Government House Leader Bardish Chagger (third from left) look on as Employment, Workforce Development and Labour Minister Patty Hajdu comments on the Ontario budget in the Foyer of the House of Commons in Ottawa, Friday April 12, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - The federal Liberals are attacking the Ontario Progressive Conservative government's first budget since Doug Ford was elected premier, hoping voters across the country will connect the document's cuts to social spending and the yet-to-be-announced policy leanings of Andrew Scheer's Conservatives.

The provincial budget proposes cuts in post-secondary education and social services, scaling back the growth in spending projected by Ontario's former Liberal government.

Federal Employment Minister Patty Hajdu, an MP from Thunder Bay in northern Ontario, called the budget "reckless" in how it takes a knife to programs that affect everything from social security and job creation to northern development and the province's ability to fight forest fires.

At almost every turn at a news conference Friday, Hajdu told reporters in Ottawa that voters across the country can expect the same kind of "cruel" fiscal slashing from the federal Conservatives under Scheer's leadership, should they choose him to govern the nation in the October election.

"From my perspective, Doug Ford and his cronies are trying to pull a fast one on Ontarians," Hajdu said. "It's quite clear that Andrew Scheer would take exactly the same tactic."

Much as the federal Liberals did in 2015, the Ford government is pledging to balance Ontario's books several years down the road.

Justin Trudeau didn't deliver on his campaign pledge of "modest" deficit spending with a plan to balance the federal budget by 2019. Every year, his government has produced bigger deficits than it promised, and this year's is nearly $20 billion.

Balancing the provincial budget was a key election promise for the Ontario Tories. Finance Minister Vic Fedeli said Thursday he expected the province would eliminate its budget deficit by the 2023-24 fiscal year, two years beyond the end of their term.

"We have developed a reasonable path to balance," Fedeli said. "Our path to balance in five years is a thoughtful and a measured approach to take."

Federal Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre, who for months has been hounding the Trudeau Liberals to say when the federal books will be balanced, said Friday he understands the Ontario PC government was handed a tenuous fiscal situation by the province's former Liberal government.

With that in mind, the Ford government has taken a responsible approach with a plan to bring deficit spending to an eventual end, Poilievre said.

"They inherited a disastrous financial situation and they've tried to balance fiscal responsibility against the continuing needs of the people while constrained by enormous record debt," he said. "I think they got the balance right."

Under the Ontario budget, program expenses in the province are to rise over three years by an average of 0.8 per cent, compared to the 3.3 per cent in growth that the former Liberal government had projected.

The document talks about fighting climate change "without a carbon tax," but provides no new money for climate programs. It does, however, earmark cash for clean-technology investments that could create jobs in industries producing solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicle charging stations.

"Canadians want us to take action on things like climate," Hajdu said, denouncing the Ford government's criticism of the federal carbon tax. "They know that their children's health and safety depends on governments that are going to take responsible action."

Hajdu wasn't focused only on the Ford government Friday. She lumped Jason Kenney's Alberta Conservatives together with the Ford government in warning Canadians that they can expect "cuts, cuts, cuts" to spending under a Scheer government similar to those announced in Ontario and proposed in Alberta where Kenney is fighting to unseat his province's NDP government.

"We see the Conservative governments behave the same way no matter where they are elected," said Hajdu.
A mother-daughter team has created a non-profit to give girls in Westman easy and dignified access to sanitary products while they are at school.

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A mother-daughter team has created a non-profit to give girls in Westman easy and dignified access to sanitary products while they are at school.

Michelle Budwiski was inspired to create a project that would give girls menstruation products in early March after hearing about the Red Box initiative in the United Kingdom. The project is a community-based non-profit that supports young people during their periods by providing red boxes filled with period products to local schools.

CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN Sarah Gilbert, 13, and her mom Michelle Budwiski pose for a photo with a West-Girl Essentials box at Escape The Final Countdown.

Budwiski brought the idea to her daughter, 13-year-old Sarah Gilbert, and West-Girl Essentials was born.

"I think its a good idea," Gilbert said.

The duo began working on West-Girl Essentials in early March and have already found success.

Budwiski has been amazed at the response and support given to the initiative.

The goal of the project is to eventually provide free sanitary products in every girls washroom in Westman schools that are interested in participating.

"Our whole policy is dignity, privacy and access," Budwiski. "The products are there when they need them."

Boxes contain liners, tampons and pads all individually wrapped.

Stocking up on supplies has left the mother-daughter team busy.

CHELSEA KEMP/THE BRANDON SUN Sarah Gilbert, 13, and her mom Michelle Budwiski pack West-Girl Essentials boxes at Escape The Final Countdown.

They recently made a trip to a grocery store and purchased enough sanitary products to fill a cart.

An unusual sight, Gilbert said she found it strange that no one asked about the products or what they were for.

"There were a few people who stared, but nobody asked us what we were doing," Gilbert said.

They are planning a big push of boxes in September when school starts to ensure that every washroom that needs products has them.

So far, they have collected close to $600 worth of products. One hundred per cent of donated items and cash are put back into the boxes.

Each box supplied by West-Girl Essentials contains about $50 to $60 worth of products.

"I know that growing up, I wish I had that," Budwiski said.

The project is important because it can aid in removing barriers some girls face when it comes to access to sanitary products  including affordability and ease of access.

"Weve all been there," Budwiski said.

Initially, West-Girl Essentials will replenish the boxes, but she hopes the idea inspires the girls who use the products to begin refilling them.

Budwiski and Gilbert have created seven boxes so far and placed boxes in Erickson and Melita.

Gilbert is currently attending Rivers Collegiate, and while she has not told her friends about West-Girl Essentials yet, she plans on speaking at school with her mom about the project. It is one of a number of schools where the duo will be speaking.

Budwiski has been amazed and proud of her daughters willingness to tackle what can be a difficult subject to talk about at the tender age of 13.

"Fifty-two per cent of the population are women, and yet when it comes to menstruation and periods and products, its like this big taboo nobody wants to talk about it," Budwiski said. "We need to break that down."

The non-profit is in its infancy, Budwiski said, they are focussed on raising donations of products and cash, along with getting the word out about West-Girl Essentials and getting boxes delivered.

People can donate by dropping products off at the Escape the Final Countdown or by contacting Budwiski to have someone pick up items.

"Its not just Brandon. Its all throughout Westman," Budwiski said.

To help bolster the project, Escape the Final Countdown will be sponsoring West-Girl Essentials in May.

The escape room sponsors a charity each month with "cash for clues," an option for players to pay for hints to aid in completing a puzzle. There will also be a charity day where 20 per cent of the gross revenue goes toward the sponsored charity.

West-Girl Essentials will be having a boudoir fundraiser on April 27 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Prairie Firehouse. The event is hosted by Fierce Fox Boudoir Photography and funds raised will be used to purchase more products for boxes. Twelve sessions are available in exchange for donations.

These fundraisers all play an important role in establishing a foundation for West-Girl Essentials that will enable the project to thrive.

Already planning for the future, Budwiski said they hope to include clean underwear in resealable bags in case of accidents some time soon.

"That way if there is an accident, the girls have something to change into."

 ckemp@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @The_ChelseaKemp
Bernard Arnault, Europes richest man, got another boost as LVMH shares hit a record, due to better-than-expected sales of Louis Vuitton handbags and leather goods.

The Frenchman, whose fortune has increased by $19bn (17bn) in 2019, is rubbing shoulders with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $87bn.

LVMH shares rose as much as 4% to their highest level since the stock was listed, in October 1989, propelling the companys market value close to 174bn.

The luxury conglomerates first-quarter sales report showed its strategy of tapping hip new design talents, such as Virgil Abloh, has reignited interest in its biggest brands.

Mr Arnault has been gradually advancing through the ranks of Europes billionaires, surpassing Zara stores founder, Amancio Ortega, and LOreals Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, the richest woman on the planet.

His wealth has again moved past that of Warren Buffett, the Berkshire Hathaway chairman.

Mr Arnaults rise continues the trend of Europes richest people coming from the luxury and consumer-goods sectors.

The continents wealthiest include the founders and heirs of companies including Chanel, Nutella maker, Ferrero, and EssilorLuxottica, the owner of the Ray-Ban brand.

LVMH sales beat analysts estimates in the first quarter, as fresh propositions, like Christian Dior, monogrammed shoes, and Louis Vuitton utility harnesses hit stores.

The key fashion and leather division  where good news often lifts shares across the fashion industry  posted a 15% gain.

The luxury industry is now in its third year of rapid growth, as millennial and Gen Z shoppers warm up to the revamped offer and to the newfound digital savvy of brands like Kerings Gucci.

The bonanza has been driven by China, where booming sales of high-end fashion have resisted an economic slowdown that pinched revenue for some car manufacturers and for Apple.

LVMHs reshuffle has focused on menswear, with Mr Abloh  who rose to prominence as the longtime creative consultant to rapper Kanye West  taking the helm of Louis Vuittons menswear division last year.

At Christian Dior, designer Kim Jones released new shoe models and adapted the brands famous Saddlebag line for men.

The company said fur-and-handbags label Fendi, shoemaker Berluti, which also changed its designer, and Loro Piana also boosted the fashion divisions growth.

The growth in fashion and leather should be enough to sustain the upward momentum of the shares, Rogerio Fujimori, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note to clients.

Star designer Hedi Slimane, known for his influential skinny silhouette and successful turnaround of Kerings Saint Laurent, returned to LVMH last year to expand the Celine brand.

His new store concept and first collections, including a line of unisex suiting, were rolled out during the quarter.

Overall, LVMHs first-quarter sales rose 11% to 12.5bn. The group  Frances biggest company by market value  promised to reinforce its leadership position in luxury this year.

Bloomberg
Four out of five Cork businesses expect an increase in turnover in the next 12 months, while a third would like support to enter new markets in the wake of Brexit.

Those were some of the findings of Cork Chamber's quarterly economic trends survey, which also found just over half of businesses have vacancies to fill.

Just over a third of these vacancies remaining unfilled for greater than three months since the initial advertisement, Cork Chamber said.

The vacancies are mostly in engineering and surveying, hospitality and finance, the survey found.

When asked how SMEs could be practically supported to overcome challenges and take advantage of opportunities from new open markets, 32% of businesses highlighted the potential for dedicated advice and supports, Cork Chamber said.

A further 16% wanted tailored information sessions, with 14% said Government and EU agencies could help navigate existing and future trade deals.

Maire Ni Mhurchu of tourism firm Activity Days Ireland said in the report:

I think the Chinese tourism market will develop over next five years and we can provide a unique base for this with planning.

The top three challenges to Cork business are Brexit, managing cashflow, and hanging consumer spending and reduced orders, the report said.

Cork Chamber's international relations director Katherine Fitzpatrick said it was encouraging businesses to increase engagement with EU policy and trade agreements, especially in light of Brexit.

"Internationalisation outside of the UK is key and we are now acutely aware of the benefits to strong and diverse markets," she said.
A 3m partnership between UCC and financial services firm Fexco will see major research conducted on emerging financial technologies, or fintech.

Investment in the project, known as FintechNext, will be provided by Science Foundation Ireland and Fexco in equal parts with researchers at the Cork University Business School (CUBS) within UCC carrying it out, Fexco said.

The project will see 12 newly appointed researchers delve into treasury and foreign exchange, digital taxation, and corporate asset administration.

According to the Central Bank, fintech is technology to deliver financial services and products to consumers, such as opening online accounts without having to visit a bank.

The five major retail banks have spent hundreds of millions of euro in recent years to revamp their technologies in the face of stiffening competition from fintech companies.

New AIB chief executive Colin Hunt this week said the bank had spent 870m on upgrading its IT systems between 2015 and 2017, and would continue to invest around 250m a year.

Fexco said the research team will be co-located between its Kerry headquarters and UCC.

It said the project, led by Professor Philip OReilly of CUBS, "will put Ireland on the world map" as a fintech innovation centre.

In July last year, Fexco said it would recruit 175 additional staff to expand its research, development and information technology capabilities.

Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe, who launched the project, said: "Technology is significantly transforming and disrupting the financial services ecosystem. We need to invest in collaborative research projects, such as FintechNext, to give Ireland a competitive advantage in emerging technologies."

Investing in innovation will support higher value jobs in rural regions, Mr Donohoe said.

UCC president Patrick OShea said the partnership "contributes towards developing world-leadingng fintech sector in this region and nationally".

It was a "great example of the way the public and private sectors can invest together in innovative research with potentially valuable commercial applications," the UCC president said.

Chief executive of Fexco, Denis McCarthy said there would be a "dual benefit" for his firm.

"The first is the opportunity to be at the forefront of identifying new trends and technologies that could create new markets for our business and the second in welcoming a team of world-renowned research experts to the organisation. Fexcos staff, including myself, stand to learn a huge amount from them," Mr McCarthy said.
Ireland's ambassador to Britain has hit out at a British political magazine for saying "little Leo" should back down and "rejoin the commonwealth", accusing the publication of a "hostile" anti-Irish attack which should be consigned to the past.

Ambassador Adrian O'Neill wrote to the editor of Spectator magazine in response to a recent pro-Brexit column in the publication, before releasing the correspondence on social media when the magazine failed to print it in full.

In an opinion piece published earlier this week by the Spectator, the Daily Mail's royal correspondent Robert Hardman criticised Ireland's decision to join a French-led group called the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie.

Referring to it as the "French commonwealth", Mr Hardman said it was "two fingers to Brexit Britain" and that "little Leo" should re-join the British commonwealth instead.

Only the mean-spirited would suggest little Leo will do anything to suck up to the top gang in the EU playground. He is going to need to, of course, if he wants to hang onto his nation's cosy corporate tax deals once the Brits are no longer around to help.

He added the only reason Ireland is refusing to rejoin the commonwealth is because this country "was once run by the Brits".

Ireland's ambassador to Britain Mr O'Neill responded with a letter to Spectator saying the remarks were anti-Irish, "snide and hostile", before releasing it on social media when it was not published in full.

While saying he is "not unduly thin-skinned" and that Brexit has undeniably placed some pressure on Anglo-Irish relations, Mr O'Neill wrote that some British criticism "has lapsed into an anti-Irish sentiment which we all hoped had been consigned to the past".The Spectator is a Conservatives-leaning, Eurosceptic political magazine, whose former editors include Tory MP Boris Johnson.
Bikers are holding a protest in London today against the prosecution of a British soldier over Bloody Sunday.

Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after British troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Derry in 1972.

Some relatives of the 13 killed have campaigned for justice.

British veterans have reacted angrily to the decision to take legal action decades after the bloodshed.

The organisers of the Rolling Thunder event said their action is directed against the British Government rather than the victims' families.

They were shot dead on January 30, 1972, on one of the most notorious days of the Troubles.

Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. (John Stillwell/PA Wire)

Soldier F 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 O'Donnell, Northern Ireland's Public Prosecution Service has said.

A public inquiry conducted by a senior British judge shortly after the deaths was branded a whitewash by victims' families and a campaign was launched for a new public inquiry.

Relatives sought to right the wrongs of false claims that their loved ones had been armed. A fresh probe was eventually ordered by then British prime minister Tony Blair in 1998.

Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. (John Stillwell/PA Wire)

A decade-long investigation by Lord Saville concluded that the British troops killed protesters who posed no threat.
A Dublin father of two has been given a suspended sentence for possession of child pornography.

Michael Bohan (56) was traced by gardai who received information relating to email and IP addresses from Canadian police who had raided a company distributing child pornography.

Bohan, of Old Cabra Road, Cabra, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to possession of 1265 images and 23 videos of child pornography on May 9, 2013.

The images and videos which were on various storage devices taken from Bohan's home depicted pre-teens engaging in sexual activity with those of a similar age, as well as pre-teens with their genitalia exposed. Eight printed images classified as child pornography were also recovered.

The material seized was not analysed for four years until 2017 due to a lack of resources in the Garda Computer Crime Unit. Bohan was not charged for a further year until 2018.

Defence counsel, Philip Rahn BL, submitted in mitigation that there had been no sharing or distribution of the material, that Bohan had co-operated with gardai and not offended previously.

Judge Martin Nolan said the case law in relation to child pornography was clear and where certain mitigating circumstances were present, such as those in this case, then a suspended sentence should be considered.

He noted the delay in analysing the material and said a four year delay does impose significant stress on a person being investigated.

Judge Nolan said:

Possession of child pornography is a serious offence. It is not a victimless crime, this material is produced somewhere and this involves the misuse and abuse of children.

He took into account the guilty plea, admissions, previous good record and work history. He also noted that a conviction of this type leads to significant shame on the defendant in the eyes of right thinking people. He imposed a two and a half year sentence which he suspended in full.

Garda Robert Madden told Diarmuid Collins BL, prosecuting, that Bohan had purchased 46 videos from the Canadian company, not all of which were child pornography. Gardai traced Bohan to his home address and seized a number of storage devices and a computer.

Analysis of the computer also revealed internet search terms known to be related to child porn.

Bohan, who has no previous convictions, attended at a garda station the following morning and made admissions. He co-operated with gardai during the search of his home.

Mr Rahn handed in a number of reports to the court. He outlined a report from Forensic Pyschological Services which had assessed his client and placed him at low risk of re-offending.

He said Bohan had been attending psychotherapy and was proactive in addressing his behaviour.

Counsel said there had been a number of stressors in Bohan's life at the time including stress at work. He said Bohan had been medicated for depression and anxiety.

He said Bohan was deeply remorseful for his behaviour and had brought deep shame on his family.

Counsel said the number of images, while not at the low end, were not in the tens of thousands.

He also asked Judge Nolan to take into account that Bohan would be placed on the sex offenders register.
A 79-year-old man the FBI believes has been producing and selling child pornography for at least 30 years has lost a legal challenge to his pending extradition.

Daniel Mullan, a dual US Irish citizen, is wanted by the FBI to face trial in New York on charges related to the sexual exploitation and transportation of a minor as well as two counts of possessing child pornography.

Mr Mullan, who is fighting his proposed extradition to the United States from custody in the Midlands Prison, in Portlaoise, was indicted by a Grand Jury in New York in September 2017, while serving a sentence for sexual offences in Ireland.

The High Court ordered his extradition to the United States in December, and the Court of Appeal upheld that decision today.

Mr Mullans lawyers challenged his extradition on grounds that he suffered from a multiplicity of serious illnesses including sight loss, inability to walk, morbid obesity, atrial fibrillation, chronic cardiac failure, anxiety and cellulitis.

He was pushed in and out of court in a wheelchair and sat through the hearing with a blanket over his knees, wearing sandals, close to the judges as he is hard of hearing.

They also contended that extraditing a 79-year-old Irish citizen in poor health would be disproportionate and not in the public interest.

Dismissing Mr Mullans challenge today, President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said the evidence put forward regarding Mr Mullan's health was "scant".

The fact of the matter was that Mr Mullan had spent a significant period of time in custody in Ireland and the Irish prison system had been able to cope, the judge said.

"There is no reason whatever to believe that the US Federal prison system would not be able to cope as well," he said, adding that reassurances were provided by an official from the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the High Court judge was entitled to conclude that it would not be contrary to the public interest to extradite him.

He said the fact Ireland was a signatory to an international agreement with the United States meant there was always a degree of public interest in allowing individuals to be put on trial.

In Mr Mullans case, he said the public interest was enhanced by the seriousness of the alleged offences, being sexual offences directed at a minor.

He said Mr Mullan had put forward very little in respect of his private life.

While he is an Irish citizen, as well as a citizen of the United States, his primary connection to Ireland has been that he has been a prisoner in this jurisdiction.

He said none of the factors present, either viewed individually or cumulatively, required a refusal to extradite.

In conclusion, Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Ms Justice Maire Whelan and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, said he was not prepared to uphold any of the grounds of appeal but would uphold the order to surrender.

Solicitor Cahir OHiggins, for Mr Mullan, sought a stay on the order for surrender, pending an application for a Supreme Court appeal, which was granted for seven days.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the stay, postponing surrender, would be for seven days to allow the filing of an application to the Supreme Court. If the application was made, the stay will continue until the Supreme Court decides to take the case or not. There is no automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court.

Counsel for the Attorney General, Ronan Kennedy BL, was awarded costs against Mr Mullan.
Update April 13, 7pm: Katie Boswell has been located safe and well.

April 12, 9.20pm: Gardai in Tallaght are seeking the publics assistance in tracing the whereabouts of 14 year old Katie Boswell.

Katie was last seen yesterday at approximately 9.45am when she left her home on Donomore Crescent, Tallaght.

She is described as being approximately 5 6 in height, of slim build, with green eyes and brown hair. When last seen she was wearing a fur green/gold jacket, a green skirt and navy jumper.

Anyone who has seen Katie or who can assist in locating her, is asked to contact Tallaght Garda Station on 01 666 6000, The Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station.
Below: President Donald Trump and wife Melania share a photo op with PM of St. Lucia Allen Chatanet, Presdient to the DR Danilo Medina, PM of Jamaica Andrew Holness, Presdient of Haiti Jovenel Moise and PM of the Bahamas Hubert Minnis. (Photo Credit: dailymail.co.uk)

The recent meeting between USA President Donald Trump and five Caribbean leaders has had it fair share of rebuke and rebuff.



Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Dr. Ralph Gonsalves described the meeting "troubling; Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne referred to the five leaders as "weak minded, and the Dominica Governments legal advisor Anthony Astaphan labelled Allen Chastanet, Prime Minister of St. Lucia and one of the five leaders concerned, as a "lone ranger.

Now, Chastanet, even though he stated that he "will not respond to criticisms, (from Gonsalves and Browne), told reporters on March 26, in justifying the meeting, that he places his countrys agenda above all.

"At the end of the day, I was elected by St. Lucians to represent St. Lucians. At the end of the day, this was not a meeting for CARICOM this was a meeting by invitation by the President of the United States of America, which is St. Lucias largest trading partner, Chastanet told the reporters.

The Prime Minister Chastanet described the meeting with president trump as "a very good me saying further "We were invited by the us president to discuss a series of things that pertain to St. Lucia and also to the region.

Among the issues related to St. Lucia that were discussed, according to the St. Lucian Prime Minister, were: security in the region particularly that of St. Lucia and assistance in this regard; the matter of St. Lucians having to go all the way to Barbados to get us visas and applying closer to home for such visas; pre-clearance facilities for the USA at the new terminal building; turning an old agency into an investment organization with $70 billion in its coffers; and trade with special focus on enabling a review of the requirement/facility regarding agricultural produce from St. Lucia entering the USA.

With respect to the $70 billion facility that could become accessible by St. Lucia, Chastanet spoke of this becoming operable within 60 days, and also mentioned the visit by a team to St. Lucia within the next 90 days, to look into some investment opportunities "that we currently have here.

(Source: Caribbean News)

Other Caribbean leaders who attended the meeting with President Trump were; Prime Minister of Jamaica Andrew Holness, Prime Minister Hubert Minnis of the Bahamas, along with the presidents of Haiti, Jovenel Moise, and the Dominican Republic, Danilo Medina.
Gardai are seeking the public's help in finding a missing teenager from Dublin.

17-year-old Claudia Howard was last seen in Blanchardstown on Thursday, April 11.

She is described as being 5ft 8in with a slim build.

She has hazel eyes and brown hair.

Anyone with information concerning her whereabouts has been asked to contact Blanchardstown Garda Station on 01 666 7000, The Garda Confidential Telephone Line 1800 666 111 or any Garda Station
Judgement has been reserved by Court of Appeal in appeals brought by the State Examinations Commission and the Minister for Education and Skills against aspects of a High Court decision allowing student Rebecca Carter to take up veterinary medicine at UCD.

The outcome of the appeal will not affect Ms Carter's place in UCD, nor will she be liable for any legal costs incurred should the court find in favour of the State parties.

Last September Ms Carter won her High Court case aimed at forcing the State Examinations Commission (SEC) to rectify an error in the totting up of her Leaving Certificate marks before UCD closed its admissions for 2018.

Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled that the appeals process was highly unfair, not fit for purpose and caused untold stress to students.

He said the Minister and Department of Education should review the process to ensure all appeals were completed before the start of the academic year in 2019.

Ms Carter of Ardcolm Drive, Rectory Hall, Castlebridge, Wexford, sued the SEC challenging its decision not to re-check her points score in time to allow her to obtain a place in Veterinary Medicine.

She had repeated her Leaving Certificate in order to get a place in the course having just missed out on a place the year before.

At the Court of Appeal on Friday Nuala Butler SC, for the Minister for Education, said his concern in the appeal is about the judges finding of a constitutional right of access to higher education.

The Minister's objection was not personal to Ms Carter whom he wished well but higher education is a "very complex thing", she said.

The disputed finding places a "significant obligation" on the Minister to provide for higher education commensurate with abilities of the relevant student, she said.

While veterinary science is an important source of study, we need a lot fewer vets than, for example, teachers and if the requirement to make places available is to be decided by individual student desires, that imposes significant resource obligations on the Minister and requires different strategic decisions by the Minister, she said.

The finding of such a right was inappropriately made for reasons including an appropriate State party was not on notice of any such argument and had been released from the case before the judge himself introduced the issue, she said.

UCD campus.

The trial judge had made the finding in the context of Ms Carters pleaded claim of generic breach of her rights, including the constitutional right to earn a livelihood, counsel said.

While the right to earn a livelihood is a recognised constitutional right, the trial judge had on the second day talked of a constitutional right of access to higher education which would allow for securing the qualification necessary for success in the area where Ms Carter wished to earn a livelihood.

It was the judge who had maintained that argument in the case and it formed the basis of his judgment, she said.

The SEC, represented by Conor Power SC, is also appealing the High Court's decision on the existence of a constitutional right to a third level education. It also submitted that it then appeals system was not to blame.

It was UCD's fault, counsel said, as it did not adhere to the published arrangements in the CAO Handbook in regards to university places.

The SEC is also appealing the High Court findings that the appeal system was irrational, flawed, that the SEC failed to take relevant matters into account, and there was a breach of fair procedures.

The SEC further complains that the trial judge engaged in speculation and went beyond the evidence heard in the case.

Micheal P O Higgins SC for Ms Carter rejected claims her application was misconceived and argued that the appeals process was not rational nor reasonable.

Counsel told the court there was a contradiction by the appellants in their decision not to appeal the substantive orders by the High Court, while at the same time challenging the underlying reasons for the orders.

The appellants, it was submitted, were trying to have things both ways by not seeking to interfere with Ms Carter's offer of a place in UCD while at the same time inviting the court to reject the High Court's analysis that led to its conclusions.

In regards to the High Court's finding in regards to the constitutional right to access third level education, it was submitted by Mr O'Higgins that this was a matter for the Court of Appeal to assess if such a right exists. Ms Carter was not present in court for the hearing of the appeal.

Following the conclusion of submissions from the parties the three-judge court comprised of Mr Justice Michael Peart, Ms Justice Marie Baker and Mr Justice Brian McGovern reserved its decision. The court did not say when it would be in a position to deliver judgement.
Bobby Ryan's death was "callous, calculated, controlled murder" and the only verdict available is to find Patrick Quirke guilty of murder, lawyers for the State have told the Central Criminal Court.

The defence says the prosecution evidence is thin and warned the jury of the dangers of accepting the evidence of Mary Lowry.

Mr Quirke (50) of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary has pleaded not (NOT) guilty to the murder of Bobby Ryan, a part-time DJ known as Mr Moonlight. 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 has claimed Mr Quirke murdered Mr Ryan so he could rekindle an affair with Ms Lowry (52).

Finishing his closing to the jury of six men and six women Michael Bowman for the prosecution said for a guilty verdict he must rule out any rational theory that would be consistent with Mr Quirke's innocence. Ruling out suicide, he said Mr Ryan met with a "violent and brutal death".

He ruled out accident saying accident does not have the "hallmarks of concealment of a criminal act". This body, he said, had been stripped naked for forensic reasons and his death was "callous, calculated, controlled murder". The prosecution can't identify a specific weapon or time of death but, he said, it is clear that he died after leaving Mary Lowry's home at 6.30am on June 3, 2011. Mr Ryan's van was seen at Kilshane Woods at 8.30 that morning but according to his daughter the seat was in the wrong position and it was parked in gear so he was not the last person to drive it. His body was found 22 months later, "not 60 yards from where he got out of bed that morning."

Taking the jury through the "strands" of evidence, he said each one would amount to nothing more than suspicion or something uncannily coincidental but it is the combined effect that is important. The evidence, he said, clearly communicates motive. The recovery of the body, he added, is "anything but fortuitous but planned and designed."

He asked what are the chances that it is coincidence that Patrick Quirke was in love with and financially dependent upon Mary Lowry and was experiencing financial pressure due to investments in Ireland and abroad. He is demanding money from Mary Lowry with increasing frequency and determination at a time when Mary Lowry is telling him she wants to finish with him and remove herself as his emotional and financial support. Is it coincidence, he asked, that he is the same man who sent texts to Bobby Ryan pretending to be Mary Lowry and later called Mr Ryan to say he's been seeing Mary Lowry for three years, almost breaking up their relationship. The same man who then reports Mary Lowry for child neglect, his second attempt to compromise their relationship, counsel said. He tells Mary Lowry that she's not welcome at a family function and despite evidence to the contrary tells gardai that the Lowry family was "disgusted" with Mary's new relationship with Bobby.

The same man, Mr Bowman said, who claims Mary Lowry wanted to forgive him a e20,000 debt while she says that is not true. On the day Bobby Ryan went missing the artificial inseminator Breda O'Dwyer noted that he was unusually late milking his cows, the only time in 15 years she had seen him milking when she arrived at about 9.30. On that date he was doing something else unusual, Mr Bowman said, taking his wife for a weekend away for her birthday. When his love rival disappeared life fell back into routine for Mr Quirke, counsel said. He went away with Mary Lowry and wanted to take family holidays with her again. He tells gardai he accepts her relationship with Flor Cantillon, which began in March 2012, but according to Mary Lowry he was making inappropriate inquiries as whether they had become intimate and told her it was too early to start a relationship. And then, Mr Bowman said, there is the "coincidence" that an external hard drive in Mr Quirke's home has recordings of Mary Lowry and Flor Cantillon. Mr Bowman asked: "Is it bad luck that this speaks contrary to what he suggests in interview to be the case."

In August 2012, following the tragic death of Mr Qurke's son, he "berated" Mary Lowry, counsel said, for not supporting him and told her: "After all I've done for you."

Mary Lowry

He further asked whether it was bad luck that Mary Lowry's passport went missing and Patrick Quirke was blamed. He asked if it was bad luck that Mr Quirke had at that time a key for her home. Was it bad luck, he asked, that after being seen on CCTV at Mary Lowry's house on December 3, 2012 somebody in the Quirke household is on the internet at 3.36pm that afternoon looking for "human body decomposition timeline" and that his computer cache shows that a website relating to human decomposition was visited in July 2012. He repeated the question in relation to Mr Quirke's statement to gardai when they asked about the internet searches and he said his son had died. Garfai pointed out that the cached website was visited prior to his son's death.

"Is all this just bad luck?" Mr Bowman asked.

Counsel continued in the same manner, asking if it is coincidence that as the clock was ticking down to his lease terminating at Fawnagowan he decided to empty slurry from the slatted cow shed and decides to draw water from a tank he hasn't looked into since 2008. The tank, Mr Bowman said, is like a "colander" and doesn't hold water yet Mr Quirke said he could see the water being sucked out before discovering the body. Mr Quirke, he said, is one of only four people who know of the existence of that tank and he has had exclusive access to it since 2008.

In interviews he revealed, Mr Bowman said, that he knew the exact depth of the sludge in the bottom of the tank, one foot, and the approximate depth of the tank at five feet. This was something that could only be known, counsel said, by someone who had gotten into that tank.

He added: "Bobby Ryan was murdered by somebody possessed of information and knowledge possessed only by Patrick Quirke. Patrick Quirke is guilty of the murder of Bobby Ryan on June 3, 2011. There is no other rational hypothesis consistent with innocence. The evidence has been laid painstakingly before you over the last 13 weeks. When you weave those strands together it is of sufficient strength to bear the burden and weight placed upon it. There is no room left to doubt and the only verdict available to you is one of guilty of murder."

Defence counsel Bernard Condon SC told the jury that the prosecution evidence was thin and that Mr Bowman had sought to do their job for them. He warned them of the dangers of accepting beyond reasonable doubt the evidence of Mary Lowry. He said the prosecution is based on theory and circumstantial evidence and there is no hard evidence. Circumstantial evidence, he said, is not a shortcut that allows you to adopt a theory unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt. He asked them to apply their "greatest skill: skepticism". This trial is about peoples' lives, he said, principally Pat Quirke's. He said they must approach the trial coldly and dispassionately, like a scientist, and must start from the point that Pat Quirke is innocent. Using the analogy of a train he said the prosecution would have to push the train to "the station of guilt". It would be an uphill journey with many branch lines and many stations before that final one.

He said the evidence presented by the prosecution was "grasping". There were hints, he said, of "give a dog a bad name and hope that will hooch you up the hill a bit."

He said there some things that "grabbed" him, such as former Deputy State Pathologist Dr Khalid not being present when the body was removed from the tank. But, he said, the prosecution had adopted the approach of "so what, nothing to be seen here, don't worry about that." He pointed out that photographs had been lost by gardai, that a pathologist had described the pathology evidence as "sub optimal", gardai had made fresh statements during the trial and fingerprints found in Bobby Ryan's van were not tested until week ten of the trial. He said Mr Bowman had told the jury they could be clear on the time when Mr Ryan died but Mr Condon said "nothing could be further from the truth".

He said the trial is "forensically barren" on what happened to the "unfortunate Bobby Ryan. His last movements, interactions, events, we know nothing about."

The pathologist, he reminded them, said there would have been a lot of blood but there's no evidence of it and there's no evidence of a clean-up. He asked: "When were his clothes taken off, when, where, by whom? Throughout that area of the case, the centre of the case, you have nothing, absolutely nothing."

He said many of the allegations made by Mary Lowry, "wouldn't last five minutes in a court where that allegation was being made on its own."

He said there was nothing to support her claim that Mr Quirke was in her porch when she came home one afternoon or that he took her passport. She also alleged he assaulted her but there is "nothing to support that, nothing", he said. He told the jury to look at each of these things and ask, "am I satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt". He said the prosecutions attempts to establish motive are of no consequence as a motive is not evidence that a person has killed. It is a "step", he said, to say the motive is a motive to murder.

Patrick Quirke

Turning again to Mary Lowry's evidence he reminded the jury that she told them she wants to "solve this case". He said: "That's a very dangerous witness, engaged in a process they should not be engaged in." He said her evidence is "highly questionable" because it is given, "through the prism of trying to solve the case."

He said the jury should be careful of her evidence and suggested that she had, from the start, put a spin on her evidence by saying that her late husband was not great friends with Mr Quirke. He said there was an element of "revisionism" in her evidence and that she doesn't want to accept things that make her look bad.

At the heart of much of what went on between her and Mr Quirke, he said, is a broken relationshp.

He added: "Attached to that can be bitterness and anger and unhappiness and they get mushed up together and people who loved each other deeply can find themselves in the family law courts roaring abuse at each other."

He said the jury was being asked to accept her "unreliable evidence" beyond a reasonable doubt. He said there was a "pettiness" to the arguments between her and the accused including rows over her moving a ladder and him leaving muck in her driveway. He reminded them that his client looked up defamation and contacted a defamation solicitor when Mary Lowry accused him of stealing her passport.

He described their relationship as "dysfunctional". They had an affair, he said, but, "this is not a court of morality". He also pointed out that the case had received "enormous press coverage", adding: "I don't know why. I think there's a prurience to it."

Addressing Mr Quirke being seen on CCTV taking underwear from Ms Lowry's line, he said none of us are "whiter than white" when we conduct ourselves in private. He added: "It doesn't look great but what does it really establish?" He cautioned the jury against establishing anything profound from it, adding: "They were in a sexual relationship and people have all sorts of sexual interests and so what, actually. There may be less to it than meets the eye as opposed to more to it than meets the eye."

Mr Condon will continue his closing speech to the jury on Monday in front of Justice Eileen Creedon.
A violent burglar used as muscle to evict a family from their home, in an attack led by former INLA man Dessie OHare, has had his prison sentence increased on foot of an appeal by prosecutors.

Donal OHara (aged 27), of Glin Park, Coolock, Dublin 17, pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court to assaulting John Roche, causing him harm, at The Towers, Garter Lane, Saggart, Co Dublin on June 9, 2015.

He also admitted falsely imprisoning Martin Byrne at Rathcoole and Saggart on the same date.

CCTV footage captured the moment five men, including OHara, dragged Mr Roche from his house and assaulted him on the ground by kicking and punching him.

OHara was sentenced to three years imprisonment with the final year suspended, by Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding at the three-judge court, on July 31, 2018.

Donal O'Hara in 2015.

The Court of Appeal found OHaras sentence to be unduly lenient today, on foot of an appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions. He was accordingly resentenced to four years' imprisonment with the final year suspended, thus increasing his jail time by 12 months.

Giving judgment, President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said these were very serious offences.

He said the fact the false imprisonments were taking place as part of a campaign to cause a family to leave their home is particularly disturbing.

He said members of the Byrne family witnessed the very serious assault on Mr Roche, which must have contributed to their sense of fear and alarm.

Mr Justice Birmingham said OHara was on bail, in respect of a serious aggravated burglary, for which he received a significant sentence when he committed the present offences.

He said the Court of Appeal was driven to the conclusion that the net sentence of two years in jail was clearly unduly lenient to an appreciable extent.

He said the court had internal comparators in respect of sentences handed down to OHaras accomplices.

Dessie O'Hare (aged 62), of Slate Rock Road, Newtownhamilton, County Armagh, also pleaded guilty to assaulting Mr Roche, causing him harm, and falsely imprisoning Mr Byrne on the same occasion. OHare, also known as The Border Fox was jailed for seven years yesterday.

Dessie O'Hare.

Declan Duffy (aged 44) of Hannover Street West in Dublin, also pleaded guilty to the same offences and was sentenced to six years imprisonment on January 29, 2018.

Daniel Kane (aged 29), of Hollycourt in Ballybrack, County Dublin, also pleaded guilty to the same offences and was sentenced to five years imprisonment with the final year suspended on April 27, 2018.

Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, resentenced OHara to four years imprisonment with the final year suspended, thus increasing his jail term by 12 months.

Counsel for the DPP, Shane Costelloe SC, characterised the offence as a gang of thugs accosting a man to take him out of his house. He accepted that while other parties to the incident were executives, OHara was muscle.

In 2013, OHara was one of seven men who travelled from Dublin in convoy in order to commit a burglary at the home of a family in a cul de sac, in a rural area outside Killenaule, south Tipperary.

He was sentenced to 12 years imprisonment with the final seven years suspended for his role in the raid.
Up to 57% of the country's total heat demand could be covered by district heating networks, according to the Irish District Energy Association.

That is one of the key findings of the 'Heat Atlas for Ireland' study by the body.
More than 80% of Irish people believe there is still a stigma attached to mental illness.

It is National Workplace Wellbeing Day today and mental health charity Suicide or Survive is calling for a culture shift in Irish workplaces, to make wellness a priority.

According to research, 83% of Irish people believe there is still a stigma attached to mental illness.

Caroline McGuigan, from Suicide or Survive, said companies can lead the culture change.

She said there are also simple ways we can monitor our own wellness levels.

Ms McGuigan said: "Now I know this is easier said than done about your struggles, but I think we have to start with ourselves, which is the stigma we carry.

"Whatever is going on in your life, you're doing the best you can with what you have and just to cut yourself some slack."

She said companies can lead the charge in banishing that stigma.

Ms McGuigan said: "How do you look after your mental health? Do you carry any stigma yourself? And then, as a work colleague, are you fully informed about what's available in your organisation and what's available in your community, so that if someone comes to you, you are able to signpost them.

"So doing a little bit of work in advance, but also acknowledging as a manager, your mental health will dip and your mental health will be messy, so we don't all have to be squeaky clean."
Up to 440 patients are waiting on trolleys at hospitals nationwide today.

That is according to the INMO, which found Cork University Hospital is the worst affected with 43 people awaiting a bed.

That is followed by 41 at University Hospital Limerick and 36 at Beaumont Hospital in Dublin.

In all, there are 311 patients on trolleys awaiting admission with a further 129 in overflow wards elsewhere in the hospitals.

Six of those patients are children under the age of 16.
Dr. Julian Ferdinand has been selected as the best Lecturer at the UWI Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business for 2018.



In fact, this is the fourth occasion on which Dr. Ferdinand has been so honoured, having previously received such an accolade in 2014, 2015 and 2017.

The Top Lecturer is assessed, based on evaluation scorers and a lecturers teaching by students, and on written comments they provide.

In a congratulatory note to Dr. Ferdinand, Professor Wayne Hunte, Academic Director at the Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business, said that students speak highly of Dr. Ferdinands "quality of teaching materials and the conduct of lecturers and discussion; and described him as "an amazing lecturer who not only taught the course but also life lessons, and his feedback on assignments as timely, comprehensive and meticulous, addressing both content and writing quality.

The students, Professor Hunte said further, considered Dr. Ferdinand to be "truly an invaluable asset to Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business.

THE VINCENTIAN congratulates Dr. Ferdinand on yet another achievement.
UK Nationals who go overseas to join terrorist groups could now face up to 10 years in prison if they try to return to Britain.

The new laws will apply to future cases but not to those who have already left.
Indonesia's geophysics agency said it has ended a tsunami warning that was triggered by a strong earthquake east of Sulawesi island.

The US Geological Survey said the quake, which was centred at a depth of 17 kilometres (10.5 miles), had a magnitude of 6.8.
Left: Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves described the project as game changing and poised to bring real revenue. Right: Minister of Agriculture Saboto Caesar alluded to having done due diligence of the operations of Rainforest.

Three years in the making, but on April 10, the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Rainforest Seafoods out of Jamaica officially closed the deal, setting the framework for the establishment of a projected EC$20million a year sea food industry.

The agreement is in keeping with strategy by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries plan, inclusive of establishing an agro-export strategy initiative.

A plant to serve sea food industry will be located at Calliaqua.

Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Saboto Caesar, speaking at the signing ceremony at the Argyle International Airport VIP Lounge on Wednesday, further noted that the goal was to ensure that the export arm of production was put in place.

"We went around not only to stakeholders locally and within the OECS, but also throughout CARICOM, he said.

The Jamaican-based company, with plants in Belize and The Bahamas, specializes in the export of sea food (especially lobster and conch) to markets in Europe and Asia.

Meeting the demand

And although the project has had a long gestation period, Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves said that it was a significant event in having the company here.

"We have been discussing the possibility of Rainforest Seafoods establishing a plant here in SVG for some time now, and it took a while longer than we anticipated to get everything put together in order to make it happen, he said.

According to Gonsalves, there were two stereotypes: the first that fisherfolk in the country were pleased with fishing to make enough to cover petrol, feed the family, and some cash; the second, a major "rapacious conglomerate that comes into the country and extracts, leaving very little.

This arrangement, Gonsalves assured, was different and could change the fishing industry, especially since the numbers have indicated that fish landings and value were up.

But there was one constraint  the ability of fisherfolk to meet the demand.

Improving the industry

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Rainforest Seafoods, Brian Jardim said that the decision to come to SVG was encouraged by the construction of an international airport which allows for easier access for live product to leave, and the relationship that developed between himself and the agriculture minister.

He admitted that the industry was not yet aligned to the European Unions (EU) standards, but that they were going to build a facility that was EU compliant.

And companies like his, he said, were able to pay fisherfolk much more by offering live product, or debut product.

Jardim referenced the work done in Belize where they have been operating for about seven years, and where they have helped to improve the lobster industry  changes in methods of harvest and the export of live product as opposed to lobster tails only.

Caesar said that he visited the Rainforest Seafood operations in Jamaica, and studied its operations in Belize before advising on the agreement."It is not the availability of fish, and now with a behemoth like Rainforest Foods, the constraint is not going to be demand, the constraint will be how well our fisherfolk are equipped to meet this growing demand, Gonsalves said.Similar work has been done in The Bahamas in the one year or so that they have operated, Jardim said, adding that the intent was the same here, i.e. to improve the industry and the livelihoods of those involved.
No wonder then that the licensing issue was one of the conditions of the indicative and highly conditional proposal that Lynas rejected the day after Wesfarmers made it public. Lacaze must have known that would not be the end of the matter. A rare earths processor such as Lynas was the perfect target for Wesfarmers boss Rob Scott. He needed the right acquisition to signal the new direction he was taking the $39 billion industrial group after spinning off its supermarket operation, Coles. Wesfarmers chief executive Rob Scott needed the right acquisition to signal the new direction he was taking the conglomerate. Credit:Trevor Collens So it was not just a bizarre coincidence that a team of Wesfarmers executives were walking past her seat ahead of the flight to Kuala Lumpur that autumn afternoon.

No doubt, the surprised group kept their newspapers high and voices low for the nine-hour flight, given Lacaze's hostile response to Wesfarmers in the wake of its bid. For a long period of time I worked at Telstra; I understand the arrogance of large companies, was one of her verbal barbs at the unwelcome suitor. Loading We had assurances from Wesfarmers that it was not in their DNA to do unfriendly and hostile takeovers, yet they took the action they did. She would have been doubly unimpressed that this team was joining another Wesfarmers group flying in from Perth to talk with Malaysian government officials about its interest in Lynas and the regulatory jungle engulfing the group. The visit was meant to be discreet and low key. That was the plan anyway.

According to Scott, it was entirely logical for Wesfarmers to visit Malaysia and see first hand the problems relating to the biggest condition on its indicative offer - the uncertainty of Lynas being able to operate beyond September, when its licence is up for renewal. It is why Lynas and Wesfarmers started talks in August last year on a joint venture to process the rare earths ore it mines in Western Australia within the state and avoid the regulatory problems associated with processing in Malaysia. But Lynas called off those talks in November when Wesfarmers started looking at its would-be partner as a takeover target instead. Loading Lynas's reluctance to consider a bid at $2.25-a-share is understandable. While the offer was pitched at a 45 per cent premium to its share price the day before, the stock had been trading around $2.90 before the shock Malaysian election result last May reinstalled Mahathir as Prime Minister and triggered its regulatory woes. But Scott insists Wesfarmers has been very open with Lynas about its intentions, including its plans to visit Malaysia.

"When we made the takeover public, we said to them that we intended to meet with the Malaysian government to, first of all, establish our credentials," Scott told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. "The reason for doing that was two-fold. Any potential transaction by a foreign company would ultimately require the Malay government to endorse the licence. "Second, it was a strategically important asset in Malaysia and for us to announce a potential transaction without giving the courtesy of speaking to the government would have been considered quite poor form." Issue comes to a head But to its critics, Wesfarmers' grand strategy had face-planted before the team had stepped off the plane because they had no right to be there in the first place.

One thing both sides would probably agree on is that Wesfarmers could not have picked a worse week to quietly go about the business of probing the Malaysian government on the Lynas issue. The spat between two ministers last week, about the onerous new conditions put on the Lynas licence last December, forced Mahathir to bring the issue to a head at a cabinet meeting last Friday. Lynas workers at Kuantan protest outside Malaysia's parliament in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. Credit:Lynas "There may be differences in opinion, but what is determined by the cabinet is what is official, he told reporters on Wednesday. By that time, the Wesfarmers delegation were knee-deep in meetings.

They had been meeting officials and ministers from two of the ministries relevant to the future of Lynas in Malaysia - the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology and the Environment. Their presence had caught Mahathir's attention, which should not have been an unexpected development for the company. Mahathir had led Malaysia's strong campaign for foreign investment. Wesfarmers is a $39 billion conglomerate with a mandate to invest around $10 billion after the Coles spin-off. It was an opportunity the PM was never going to ignore, but the relatively low-level delegation clearly needed more firepower for such a high-level meeting. Scott dropped everything and flew to Kuala Lumpur on Thursday to meet with Mahathir, before turning around and flying out that evening.

Only the parties involved know exactly what was discussed in the meeting, but you can imagine the shock when Mahathir stepped out of the cabinet meeting on Friday evening and dropped a bomb with his grand new plan to reconcile the disparate interests of his coalition partners. We have opened up the business to other people, and there are other companies willing to acquire Lynas, he said. They have given us a promise that in the future, before sending the raw materials to Malaysia, they will clean it up first. They will crack it and decontaminate it in some way with regard to radioactivity. His comments were widely interpreted as suggesting Wesfarmers had cut a deal with the Malaysian PM over a company it did not own a single share of. Wesfarmers has been on the back foot, defending its corporate reputation, ever since. "We question the governance of companies that make undertakings to foreign governments about assets that they don't own, says Matthew Ryland, a portfolio manager with one of Lynas biggest shareholders, Greencape Capital.

At the bottomline, this looks for me like a chapter of innocents abroad. Ownership Matters' Dean Paatsch Dean Paatsch, the influential head of corporate governance advice group Ownership Matters, says: "I think it is unethical. It may be legal but its not the way to do business." No one is accusing Wesfarmers of anything illegal, but it's almost as bad. Wesfarmers, which is still licking the wounds from its disastrous attempt to expand its Bunnings Hardware chain into the UK - its only other international venture - has been accused of dreadful naivety and poor judgement. There is certainly hubris, there is misjudgment, theres, I believe, unethical behaviour. But at the bottomline, this looks for me like a chapter of innocents abroad, Paatsch says. He sees the major issue as the fact that Wesfarmers did not even have a formal bid on the table, it merely had a highly conditional indicative offer.

They can walk away tomorrow and be no better or worse off, that to me should give you pause for thought, he says. And Malaysians with a close-up view of the issue say Wesfarmers' interference has certainly had an impact. Lee Tan, a former Australian Conservation Foundation activist who campaigned against the Lynas presence in her country, was in Malaysia during the pivotal week ahead of Mahathir's announcement. She says Wesfarmers' presence impacted on Lacaze's bargaining position with the government. She probably wouldn't have got away with the waste problem, but would have had a lot more negotiating power," says Lee, who is currently a research candidate at RMIT. "Right now, she has nothing. Scott, unsurprisingly, has a benign interpretation of Mahathir's comments.

"As is evident publicly, for many months there has been a very adversarial relationship between Lynas and the government. And the government was very, very frustrated. The community was putting pressure on government to take action and I think the PMs comments reflected that," he says. As for what was discussed, Scott says: "We were careful not to make any representations on behalf of Lynas but did explain to the government why we were interested in it ... because we like the sector and we want to keep investing in the business in Malaysia. And we made it clear we were attracted to maintaining the Malaysian operations. In our initial proposal that went public, we made a very strong statement to that effect. That seems to have been lost." The good news is that Mahathir's comments opened up the tantalising possibility that the Lynas operation, whoever owned it, would be able to continue operating in Malaysia if it cleaned the raw material of any radioactive elements before shipping it to Malaysia. The problem is, one week after his statement, even government officials could not say for sure what this meant for the conditions governing the renewal of Lynas licence, and if it did anything other than add yet another onerous condition to its survival. Whatever the outcome of the governments deliberations, and Wesfarmers interest in the company, the long-term damage for the latter could be significant.
The debate over federal Labor's plan to promote electric vehicles - including a target of reaching half of new car sales by 2030 - has put the spotlight on a market that is just getting started in Australia.

Just 2216 EVs were sold last year, making up 0.2 per cent of the Australian market, leaving the country behind the likes of Norway where plug-in cars grabbed almost 60 per cent of sales last month.

A Tesla Roadster being charged. Credit:Robert Galbraith

One brake has been the steep upfront cost of EVs and paucity of public recharging points, fostering "range anxiety" concerns. These will ease as battery technology advances.

Limited consumer choice - with about 11 models available or soon to be - will also improve with as many as 60 models on the market within three years as production rockets globally.
HISTORY

Dreamers: When the Writers Took Power, Germany 1919

Volker Weidermann

Pushkin Press, $35

The war to end all wars was virtually over when the revolution began. On November 7, 1918, theatre critic, journalist and dreamer Kurt Eisner led a march through Munich. His aim was to overthrow the ruling classes of Bavaria. In the same breadth as he was proclaiming himself the new prime minister of the Free State of Bavaria, the Wittelsbach royal dynasty was fleeing the palace.

Dreamers, by Volker Weidermann.

After four years of war, the people were behind Eisner, Munich became an ocean of red flags and banners. The "mystical revolutionary" declared, "Is this not miraculous? We have staged a revolution without spilling a drop of blood! There has never been such a thing in history."

Such a thing would last but a few weeks. On February 21, 1919, Eisner was assassinated. He had been going to deliver his resignation letter  after a disastrous result in elections in which his party polled only 2.5 per cent of the vote  when he was gunned down. The revolution sputtered on for a few more weeks with playwright Ernst Toller (a key figure in Anna Funder's novel All That I Am) as president until guns, violence and lust for power simply trampled over the green shoot of dreamy revolution. Toller was tried for treason, spent five years in jail and then moved to America. He killed himself on the eve of the Second World War.
Anna doesn't come back, however, and the mystery of her whereabouts becomes the epicentre of a tangled web. Frustrated by his impotent efforts to patch his family back together, John throws himself into a lonely quest to find her, doggedly visiting people on the fringes of society that Anna had known.

The narrative moves back and forward in time after this sun-kissed beginning, as though searching far and wide for answers as to where everything went wrong. It takes in Helen and John as young parents, then flashes ahead to Junie's initially happy dalliance with Paul and their life on the island. Somewhere along the way, Junie's younger sister, Anna, becomes desperately unhappy and possibly involved with drugs. She disappears when she is 15, an event that Helen initially writes off as a harmless moment of teenage rebellion.

An initial sighting of the titular island captures it in an impressionist haze, using breathless, winding sentences to conjure up a place of ecstatic possibility. For young couple Helen and John and their two daughters, Junie and Anna, it offers isolation, languor and hope. It soon becomes a broken promise, however, the home of a brief anomalous burst of happiness for a family being torn apart by antipathy.

Islands by Peggy Frew.

The story also stretches back to Helen's restlessness as a youth and her initial meetings with John. The seeds are sown for her later self-indulgence; the first time he brings her to his family home for dinner, she wanders off, delaying their meal, to see the sunset. The young Helen was a dynamic figure, "so full of life the air around her seemed to tremble", but there is a strong sense her pairing with John will never satisfy her.

The island's magic has well and truly worn off by the time the girls vicariously experience "The Summer of Helen's Boyfriend, The Summer of John's Crying". Now adolescents, they go horse-riding at a humdrum tourist spot, a visit charged with both ordinariness and a sense of impending loss.

Islands spins out to include other peripheral figures such as Ryan, a misfit who attends high school with Anna. Fuelled by feelings of rejection because of his introversion and poverty, he sees her as something of a kindred spirit, refusing to believe the rumours about her promiscuity and drug dealing. But his view of her is also tempered with frustration. "What was it with kids like Anna, who had to advertise their awkwardness ... wear it like it was fluorescent?" he wonders, as she performatively smokes at a tram stop. The pair only cross paths in one fleeting, piercingly sad encounter, but the brief connection stays with him years later even as he has escaped into a whole new life.

The scattered chronology plays with the idea of fault lines widening across generations and the tragic inevitability of damaged people hurting others as their buried insecurities surface. Many of the encounters circle back to the idea of lust as socially destructive and unpredictable. Junie finds herself resenting Helen's open sexuality and confused by her own changing physicality: "She admires this body, but is afraid of it. This body, disgusting and sexy, is now separate from Junie, from her true self."
A new zone

The happiest person at the presentation of the Stella Prize for writing by women on Tuesday was  surprise, surprise  the winner, Vicki Laveau-Harvie. The Erratics, a memoir that was published by Finch, but then went out of print when Finch went out of business, and has now been picked up by Fourth Estate, is her first book. "I am so far out of my comfort zone," she told the enthusiastic crowd of Stella supporters. She might have been, but that didn't stop her making a powerful acceptance speech. She acknowledged that 2019 would be her year of the Stella. But there were other reasons it should be the year of the Stella, she said. "This is a time when speaking truth seems more important than ever. These are times when the powerful seem determined to make words mean what they want to them to mean. Exonerated comes to mind. We hear phrases like alternative facts and fake news and that's one of my favourites. I think a fake narrative would have to be a poem, wouldn't it?" She went on to describe the Stella as a prize that acknowledges women who write the truth  "of the heart, of the soul, the truth of individuals of each of us, and the truth of the world we live in."

Singing for change

Vicki Laveau-Harvie recalled a book she read as a 10-year-old, Tame, a historical romance set in the early 20th century on the American prairies. It told the story of a young woman who wanted to be a singer, to study abroad and perform. One day she stands on a rise in the prairie and sings her heart out. But behind her approaches "a well-presented young man, her suitor". You can see where this is going, Laveau-Harvie said. There's a proposal and much that follows is great, even glorious. But "you just know that her singing will be restricted to lullabies for calming babies and hymns in church ... Soon this heroine is going to need something like a Stella. But I don't think she had that luck." Laveau-Harvie said she had remembered that story for more than half a century. "Things have changed, but not as much as we would hope."
With much fanfare it was lowered into the waters at Benetti's Livorno facility for the first time. Weighing in at a whopping 3700 tonnes, the superyachts exterior lines were designed by British company RWD, while the interiors were developed by Benettis in-house team. Boasting a beam of 14.5 metres and a height of 30.4 metres, Packer's new ship will be hard to miss, especially if he ever manages to bring it to Sydney and moor it off the back of his new Crown Casino at Barangaroo, which friends say had been the casino mogul's long-term ambition. However, given events this week with revelations his casino business could soon be sold to the highest bidder, such a transaction would potentially put an end to that dream. Over five decks Packer's new tinnie, which replaces his late father Kerry's 88-metre Arctic P now in the hands of big sister Gretel and remains in the Packer armada, features a cinema, gym, sauna, large heated swimming pool and an observation deck.

There is more than 1000 square metres of outdoor deck space alone, with the bridge deck featuring sun pads and a 1.5 metre fire-pit to toast marshmallows on chilly nights at sea. The owners deck is fitted with it's own private dining and seating areas, separate from those on the main deck. The foredeck offers storage for two tenders of 14 metres. Another 10-meter tender can be located in the yachts garage on the lower deck, with up to eight jet skis. Yes, eight. Designed for long distance cruising with no need to refuel, the 345,000-litre capacity tank means it has a range of 6500 nautical miles at a breezy 14 knots, though the ship's top speed is 18.5 knots.

Last September Packer 'off-loaded his 55-meter Amels, EJI. Practically brand new and only intended as a interim yacht while the big Benetti was being built, Packer has long had a passion for large boats, and has previously owned the 50-metre Mangusta, Z as well as the 46-meter Leopard, Z Sydney. At one point he also had the 52-metre Amels, Seahorse. Winx draws a crowd It's official. Winx is bigger than the Melbourne Cup judging by the line up of VIPs heading to Royal Randwick to bid farewell to the record-breaking thoroughbred. The Queen Elizabeth Stakes will be Winx's last race. Credit:AAP Prime Minister Scott Morrison is no doubt keen to press the flesh now he has finally triggered the start gun on the federal election. PS hears Morrison intends to be at Randwick today but it remains to be seen if Labor leader Bill Shorten will be trackside.

Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten taking the campaign to Randwick. Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'Landys is rolling out the welcome mat for a posse of influential types, with everyone from New Corp boss Michael Miller to the editors of The Daily Telegraph and The Australian, along with The Sydney Morning Herald, set to arrive for a day in his director's suite. Alan Jones and his racing buddy and fellow horseman, millionaire breeder and Racing NSW chairman John Messara will be working the Queen Elizabeth Ballroom, though another racing regular and Jones' not so matey 2GB stablemate Ray Hadley is not expected to attend. Bigger than the Melbourne Cup, racing royalty Kate Waterhouse will be among the starters at Randwick to see Winx. Credit:AAP Officially, Gai Waterhouse will be working at Randwick today, however the rest of the Waterhouse clan will be embedded throughout the various corporate suites, with Kate Waterhouse leading the charge at the swish Longines luncheon, where the likes of Jesinta and Buddy Franklin, Kerri-Anne Kennerley, Rachel Griffiths, Sandra Sully and Samantha Armytage will be installed, along with David Panton, who interestingly is flying solo on Saturday, with his regular racing companion and partner, ex-foreign minister Julie Bishop not expected.

Which is a pity as Longines has flown in hundreds of white roses from Columbia to decorate their suite, which promises to be the most extravagant location at Randwick to watch Winx race for the last time. Giddy up! Sounding the burlesque bell PS is still hearing about that party Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch threw for their 20th wedding anniversary a fortnight ago. Shaun O'Hare with Lucy "LuLu" Ellem and his daugthers Ashleigh and Tara, arriving at sister Sarah Murdoch's 20th wedding anniversary party. Credit:Janie Barrett

It has come to light that not only was the room full of billionaires, politicians and power brokers, but also one of Sydney's most talked about entertainers, Lulu Belle, who calls herself a "performance artist and model". Promoting herself as being accomplished in the "art of seduction/burlesque/trapeze" - though she doesn't specify if it's all three at once - PS can confirm her shows are not for the prudish or faint hearted. Turns out Lulu Belle is actually Lucy Ellem who is currently dating Sarah Murdoch's brother, Shaun O'Hare, and has been the subject of much chatter, especially among the mums at the school where O'Hare's teenage daughter attends. Lulu Belle in "work mode". Credit:Instagram Indeed PS received an email from "Mothers Against Filth", who have been doing some seriously exhaustive research into Lulu Belle's professional background and coming up with all sorts of racy material too raunchy to share here.

And with the steamy relationship in full swing, there is the very real prospect that O'Hare and Lulu might make things more permanent, which means the Murdoch's children could soon have a very interesting new aunt Lulu at the next family get-together. Breakfast serial continues for top billing Ray Hadley continued to broadcast out of the Brisbane studios rather than be at 2GB's Sydney headquarters this week. Happier times: Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and John Singleton celebrating 2GB's success in 2016. Credit:Ben Rushton Following PS's exclusive revelations that he is now the subject of new investigations after two staffers filed bullying complaints, Hadley was able to avoid any awkward corridor collisions with his latest accusers. The two new complaints follow "historical" claims made by former Hadley colleagues Chris Bowen and Andrew Moore.

PS has also learned that an independent, third-party investigator has been assigned to look into the new complaints against Hadley and has been making enquiries this week. The new investigations into Hadley coincide with on-going contract negotiations between the station's biggest star, Alan Jones, and 2GB's parent company, Macquarie Media, which is majority-owned by Nine, the owner of this masthead. There was speculation that Hadley would inherit Jones' breakfast timeslot. He has the full backing of management and Macquarie's second largest shareholder, John Singleton, which has caused a deep rift with Jones, billed as a "cold war" inside 2GB. While there has been much speculation that negotiations with Jones had stalled, PS hears from insiders that to the contrary, talks have progressed well with a strong likelihood that Jones will remain in his $4 million-a-year gig.
Pteropus poliocephalus is a smelly bugger. Your nose will crinkle minutes before reaching the park, inhaling that weird camembert whiff of wild animals. The bats hang from river gums, squeaky and restless, every branch a leather chandelier. I visit the hideaway whenever I can, the colony a hike from home, my bid to reconnect with nature, stench and all.

Wing-foot grey-head is the literal translation, which adds up once you meet the flying fox. The logic is the brainchild of Carl Linnaeaus, a Swede desperate to rank the rankness of nature. Taxonomy itself means order-naming, and that was Carl's ambition, his radical system of 1725 usurping the facile Greek ladder proposed by Plato and his ilk.

The latin name of the grey-headed flying-fox is Pteropus poliocephalus, which literally translates to wing-foot grey-head. Credit:Eddie Jim

Because nature isn't neat. Hyenas don't queue; mosquitoes shirk at mustering. When's the last time you put a squid in a box? It's not easy. Linnaeaus ditched the ladder for a web, his Latin binomials the expandable template that fauna and flora demanded, an incomplete crossword for future biologists to fill.

Each binomial serves as a signpost. First is the genus (the species group with its capital letter), then the lower-case generic, specifying the species within that group. For instance, Ailuropoda melanoleuca (or cat-foot black-white) is the giant panda  not just poetic, but systematic. Acrobat little-head? That's the sugar glider, with every other glider joining the Petaurus nest, each variant a distinct "surname" to delineate the cousin further.
CARICOM Heads at their February 2019 Inter- Sessional Summit in St Kitts-Nevis agreed on a unified position on Venezuela.

Tuesdays vote on a Venezuela-related issue at the Permanent Council level of the Organization of American States (OAS), presented another opportunity for CARICOM member states to demonstrate the extent to which they are divided on the issue.



The CARICOM member states, which are all members of the OAS, were called upon to vote to recognize Juan Guaidos ambassador as the countrys official representative to the organization.

Juan Guaido is the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela who took a public oath to serve as Acting President on 23 January 2019, contesting the leadership of Nicolas Maduro.

When the votes were cast, St Lucia, Jamaica, Haiti and the Bahamas voted in the affirmative, while Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, joined Venezuela in voting against the measure.

Barbados, Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago abstained.

Belize was not in attendance.

Interestingly, the four CARICOM member states who voted in favour of the measure, were the four who had attended, on invitation, a recent meeting with USA President Donald Trump.

This most recent difference of opinion comes in the face of CARICOM leaders, at their February 2019 inter-sessional summit in St Kitts-Nevis, reiterating their position of non-interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela, and offering to mediate in the process toward a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

Coincidentally, some say, the OAS votes came on the same day St. Lucia re-affirmed its position that the Caribbean must remain a zone of peace, and that there should be "no third state intervention in Caracas.

This position was influenced, it is believed, by President Trumps threat to deploy USA military forces to oust President Maduro, and by presence of Russian troops in Venezuela, there to give support to Maduro administration.

In the final analysis, the OAS Permanent Council voted to recognize Juan Guaidos ambassador  Gustavo Tarre - as the countrys official representative to the organization, with 18 votes in favor, nine against, six abstentions and one absence.

Venezuelas foreign ministry condemned the vote, saying the bloc was supporting a coup against Maduro.

"With the illegitimate acceptance of a political puppet ... the OAS is supporting the coup detat plan that began on January 23, the ministry said, alluding to the date when Guaido proclaimed his interim presidency.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten insists his party is "united" ahead of the election despite a looming crisis in the key battleground state of Queensland, where uncertainty over Labor's position on the Adani coal mine could put key seats at risk.

The Queensland mining division of the powerful Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union on Thursday issued an ultimatum to Labor candidates in the state, asking that they sign a pledge outlining their support for coal industry jobs.

Coal miner Russell Robertson is Labor's candidate in the Queensland seat of Capricornia. Credit:Glenn Hunt

Third generation coal miner Russell Robertson was the only Queensland Labor candidate to have signed the pledge at the time of publication.

When interviewed, Mr Robertson - who is running in the ultra-marginal seat of Capricornia, held by Liberal National MP Michelle Landry - steered carefully around the topic of Adani's planned Carmichael mine.
As for whether Morrison will keep his job, "None of us can know that except the Lord," he said. It wasn't long before the campaign plummeted to more earthly matters. Morrison's talk of Labor tax hikes was "just a bucket of lies", Shorten told a TV interviewer. Morrison in turn said Shorten's Labor was "about lies and higher taxes and we will call them out when Labor are telling lies".

At least the contours of the next five weeks have been defined early. While the policy details will be slugged out in a bruising and even dirty ground game, the ideological differences are refreshingly clear. Over the next five weeks you will hear about Labor's fairness versus the Coalition's trustworthiness with the economy. The Coalition's warnings against putting at risk gains of the past six years and Labor's claim that those six years have been squandered due to internal government chaos will battle to drown each other out. Talk of Labor's unashamedly higher taxes in return for better services will ring in your ears discordantly with the Coalition's insistence that the nation can't afford better services without an expanding economy - which only they can deliver. Scott Morrison on the campaign trail at the Mulgoa Road Corridor in Penrith. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Eleven years on from the global financial crisis, with economic populism on the rise around the world, Australians are being given a choice about the extent of redistribution of the nation's wealth. The last time Labor seized power from the Coalition, in 2007, Kevin Rudd minimised his differences from John Howard and relied on his own appeal and voter weariness with Howard. The May 18 election will go to the other extreme. Shorten, personally unpopular, has laid out policies that clearly distinguish Labor from the government on income tax, negative gearing, franking credits affecting wealthy retirees and climate change. Observers are not expecting a campaign of which Jesus would be proud. Liberals are musing that Malcolm Turnbull very nearly lost the last election after largely eschewing negativity and are adamant this mistake won't be repeated. The polls and the bookies have Labor well in front. The biggest drag, Liberals privately acknowledge, is the legacy of the leadership chaos of the past few years. Just as Labor was punished over Rudd and Julia Gillard's duelling in 2013, so is it expected that the Coalition will suffer by changing prime ministers twice without input from voters.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten swung through Sydney's affluent eastern suburbs on Friday morning. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Morrison's day-one gambit was to release Treasury costings showing Labor would hike taxes by $387 billion over the next decade, though it turned out that $230 billion of this is made up of Labor's rejection of Morrison's own planned cuts, not an increase on what people are actually paying now. Geoff Gallop, a former Labor premier in Western Australia and now director of the graduate school of government at the University of Sydney, echoed many commentators in saying that for the first time in a long time there is a good, old-fashioned argument about redistribution. The Coalition says the higher taxes will hold the nation back, while Labor says they are necessary to pay for schools and hospitals.

"It's a serious argument  that some of us have got to give something to get a greater benefit for the community," Gallop said. "It'll be a test of the capacity of the Labor opposition to tell a traditional story about the need to redistribute." Gallop says this has been brewing since the financial crisis of 2008. In some countries it has manifested as a populist backlash against elites, but Gallop says it's proof that the traditional left-right distinctions in politics are still valid. Speaking with his "Labor hat on", he stresses this doesn't mean Labor doesn't have a strong economic growth story to tell - indeed he believes they are underselling this part of their policy package. He says Shorten has a strong, centrist team and notes that when Turnbull tried to talk about the future of the economy and the need for innovation, he was actually shot down by his own side. Loading

Promoting fairness meanwhile will prevent too much social fracturing over burdens and benefits. "People will feel they're part of society," he said. "The theory and the aspiration of the Labor voters and a former Labor member like me is that social discontent will settle, we'll become internationally relevant and respected on climate change, new jobs will be created as we shift the economy, which is related to climate change but technology generally, and we'll be a better society for it. That's the argument and the aspiration, all things being equal. "Whether some event comes along and knocks it all off, who knows?" The critical thing to remember about politics is that while parties carefully construct and promote policies on the domestic front, they frequently get knocked off course by events once they're in government, he says. Former Liberal minister Ian Macfarlane says however that Labor's position is really just a variation of what it always stands for. "I don't think Labor's position is that different to the ones it's taken to previous elections. They've always been about taxing the higher brackets so I don't think it's a philosophical change. This time around it's a little bit more stark because of what they see as the cutoff  It's going to be a decision for individuals as to whether they'll be better off and whether Labor or the Coalition has the thresholds right."

Prime Scott Morrison visits Gulf Western with Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne on Friday. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Macfarlane says however enthusiastic Labor's talk of climate change is at the campaign's start, the more bread-and-butter economic issues will triumph. Climate change tends to "show up in exit polling as a fourth, fifth, sixth order issue", he says. One retired Liberal said that fairness could be measured differently: there was equality of opportunity and equality of outcome. Labor had "very much tied their colours to the mast" in support of the latter, this person said. He said Labor's claims to be hitting the "top end of town" were actually "overreach" because much of the slug would be to self-funded retirees and property owners rather than high-income earners. Loading

However, Labor's income tax plans do appear to hit high earners. According to the government's budget papers, the top fifth of income taxpayers will continue to pay about 60 per cent of all income tax over the next six years. By offering tax cuts at lower brackets but not at the higher end, a Shorten government could be shifting more of the burden to those high earners, though without the Treasury to crunch the numbers, it doesn't have figures on what that hit might be. It was notable that Shorten started his campaign with the relatively high-risk option of mingling at the fruit market. At such public events, anything can happen. Morrison's first 24 hours, by contrast, exemplified a stage-managed operation that can't afford mistakes. Journalists whose outlets are paying big money to cover the campaign - were irritated when they discovered they had not been invited to the Windsor RSL, where Morrison mixed with punters and helped call a game of bingo on Thursday. Loading

Morrison's minders distributed footage and photographs of the event afterwards. Macfarlane was one of many observers who say the Coalition will need a degree of negativity in its campaign - though he said he expected it from both sides. "One of the mistakes Malcolm Turnbull made was that he didn't run enough negativity," he said. "Go and talk to John Howard about negative campaigns. They work pretty well. You want to say something good about yourself and something bad about the other side. You watch the TV ads - it'll be one positive for every two negative." Redistribution of a different kind means the government is starting from the toughest position imaginable. The changing of seat boundaries has helped put the government on a notional 73 seats - three below what is actually needed for a majority before the election has even been held. Labor has a notional 72 seats while six are held by minor parties and independents. Peter Dutton has gone hard early, accusing his Labor opponent Ali France in his marginal Brisbane seat of Dickson of using her disability - she lost a leg after being hit by a runaway car - as an excuse not to move into the electorate. She currently lives a couple of kilometres outside the seat.
Questions about eligibility under Section 44 have forced the Liberal Party to relinquish three of its preselected candidates in Melbourne just as the election campaign begins.

The party's candidate for the marginal north suburban Labor seat of Wills, Vaishali Ghosh, was forced to step aside over her Indian heritage, while Kate Oski, Liberal candidate for the safe western suburbs Labor seat of Lalor, had to resign because she may be able to claim Polish citizenship through her father.

Helen Jackson, the Liberals' candidate for Cooper (formerly known as Batman), was asked to resign from the contest because she is an Australia Post employee, but she has refused and will soon be disendorsed, Liberal sources say.

Working as a public servant may compromise a candidate's eligibility, according to Section 44 of the Australian Constitution.

The party is scrambling to find new candidates ahead of the close of nominations on April 23, and will need to double-check the eligibility status of their other candidates ahead of the election on May 18.
In October of 2017, as #MeToo went viral following the publication of explosive allegations of decades of sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein, many, including yours truly, asked the very sensible question, To #MeToo or not to #MeToo?

Some raised valid concerns about #MeToos capacity to re-traumatise victims and asked whether women were being properly supported. Some asked whether women should have to share their traumatic stories (yet again) in order to prove how bad the problem was  many women, after all, had been speaking out for decades, they were simply ignored.

Eryn Jean Norvill, centre, arrives at court on Thursday. Credit:James Brickwood

In one of the most salient essays in response to this question in the early days of the growing global movement, Canadian actress, director and writer Sarah Polley wrote in the New York Times that, Theres no one right way to do any of this. In your own time, on your own terms, is a notion I cling to, when it comes to talking about experiences of powerlessness.

In your own time and on your own terms indeed.
Standing before a media scrum in London, Julian Assanges lawyer Jen Robinson declared that his arrest on Thursday "set a dangerous precedent for all media and journalists in Europe and around the world".

If his extradition were allowed, she said, any journalist could face charges for "publishing truthful information about the United States".

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. Credit:PA

As someone who has been imprisoned by a foreign government for publishing material that it didn't like, I have a certain sympathy with Assange. But my support stops there.

To be clear, Julian Assange is not a journalist, and WikiLeaks is not a news organisation. There is an argument to be had about the libertarian ideal of radical transparency that underpins its ethos, but that is a separate issue altogether from press freedom.
Australias gun lobby will scale back its campaigning at the federal election, conceding that the Christchurch massacre has made it harder for the industry to push for firearm reforms.

And after ploughing hundreds of thousands of dollars into recent federal and state elections, the Shooting Industry Foundation of Australia (SIFA) has confirmed a rethink of its political strategy - including an end to the use of donations.

Gun-friendly members of the 45th Parliament, back: Senator James Patterson, Ian Goodenough MP, Senator David Leyonhjelm, Ben Morton MP, Senator Bridget McKenzie and Brian Mitchell MP; front: Andrew Hastie MP and Luke Howarth MP. Credit:Sporting Shooters Association

SIFA was a busy donor at the 2016 federal election, helping to fund individual candidates such as senior Victorian Liberals Michael Sukkar and Dan Tehan, Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie and her Murray colleague Damian Drum, and a number of unsuccessful Senate hopefuls from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party.

It also helped bankroll campaigns urging people to vote against major parties at the last Victorian and Queensland state elections, including through the so-called Not Happy Dan ads, which attacked Premier Daniel Andrews over crime and power prices.
More than seven years after Cheryl Ardler disappeared from a bus stop in Cranebrook in Sydney's north-west, her boyfriend Dennis French has been charged with murdering her.

Mr French faced Penrith Local Court on Friday on unrelated charges, when detectives from the State Crime Command's unsolved homicide squad charged him with murdering Ms Ardler at Cranebrook on December 12, 2012. She was 41.

Cheryl Ardler's boyfriend Dennis French was charged with her murder on Friday. Credit:NSW Police

Ms Ardler's sisters - Josephine, Margaret and Tracey - as well as her mother, Irene, attended court.

Homicide squad commander Detective Superintendent Scott Cook told the Herald that the arrest came after witnesses came forward.
A dying woman with days to live has been caught up in compliance red tape while waiting for a $240,000 disability payout, leaving her family devastated in her last hours.

Redcliffe resident Margaret Sutherland worked at Coles in customer service for 37 years before being diagnosed with lupus - a chronic condition that attacks the immune system.

Margaret Sutherland is in hospital in Redcliffe, with her family around her.

Eventually forced to stop work, she used all her sick leave and had to go on Newstart payments.

But in the past 12 months her condition worsened, and on Wednesday night she was admitted to hospital with organ failure. By Friday morning she was on a do-not-resuscitate order.
The people of Brisbane may not get a say in the future of a heritage-listed building despite the original design being chosen by the public a century ago.

Queenslands senior heritage bodies are frustrated they have not been asked to comment on a business plan to restore the Old Museum Building on Gregory Terrace.

Little public information is known about the future of Brisbane's famous Old Museum Building on Gregory Terrace. Credit:Tony Moore

Nothing has been said publicly since Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced a public appeal to raise money to restore the building two years ago.

The Old Museum Building, constructed in 1891, has been home to the original Royal National Association, the Queensland Museum and the Queensland Art Gallery as well as being the citys most significant concert venue until 1930, hosting regular concerts by Australias famed opera singer Dame Nellie Melba.
At least five organised crime gangs pose a serious threat to the life of notorious informer, Nicola Gobbo, while her eldest child has also been targeted.

Supreme Court documents released on Friday reveal the danger to Ms Gobbo and her two children, with police warning before her identity was revealed that if criminal figures became aware of her role as an informer, the prospect of death would increase from likely to almost certain.

At least five gangs pose a threat to lawyer-turned-police informer Nicola Gobbo.

Detective Superintendent Peter Brigham from Intelligence and Covert Support Command said Ms Gobbo's case had presented an "unprecedented number of potential threats, on a scale larger than any other witness protection case that Victoria Police has assessed or managed".

"The potential threats to 3838 include the friends, family, associates, or anyone employed or contracted by organised crime figures who may be seeking retribution or to silence 3838," Superintendent Brigham said in an affidavit in 2016.
It was a case late into Tuesday afternoon where hundreds of persons sought to find suitable location from which to view M.V. Gem Star, engulfed in flames, as it drifted aimlessly in the Kingstown Bay.

M.V. Gem Star, owned by Augustus De Roache, was a staple provider of transportation  passengers and cargo - between Kingstown and the Southern Grenadines.

It appeared that the fire had been brought under control by Monday evening, but this was not to be, as by mid-afternoon Tuesday, flames had reappeared on the vessel.

When, by Tuesday afternoon, local, supposedly trained fire officers, dressed in and equipped with what appeared to be appropriate fire fighting requisites, were unable to quell the flames, harbour officials ordered that the vessel be towed out to sea, so as to prevent any threat to other vessels berthed at the Wharf.

There was, of course, the fear that the fuel on board could become heated and cause an explosion.

Drifting aimlessly in the area of the Kingstown Bay closest to Rose Place, the vessel could be seen to become engulfed by more and more flames.

It continued to burn well into the night, and reports are that it drifted into the area of the Edinboro Bay where it showed signs of going under.

With the assistance of Port Authority vessels and the expertise of local sea captains, the vessel was towed further out to sea on Wednesday, and was last seen, still above the water, off Ottley Hall.

The cause of the initial blaze is yet to be determined, but speculation moves from an accident as a result of welding on the vessel, to a sack of coals that was smoldering when loaded and which self-combusted and ignited other cargo.

Checks with relevant authorities indicated that a report is forthcoming.

THE VINCENTIAN reached out, to no avail, for some indication with respect to this and other relevant issues, safe and except to be told that a report should be forthcoming.

"The Gem Star has been buried appropriately at sea, quipped one observer.

Meanwhile, reports reaching THE VINCENTIAN on Wednesday evening, said that M.V. Bequia Express 11 was moving to fill temporarily, the void left by the loss of the M.V. Gem Star to the service to the Southern Grenadines.

The schedule given for the Express is that it will commence a service to the Southern Grenadines today, Friday 12th April, leaving Kingstown at 10:30 am and returning from Union Island at 4:00pm.

Fire on board the vessel was first seen and reported on Monday when the vessel was berthed at the Grenadines Wharf.Needless to say, the report of the fire caused a build-up of vehicular and pedestrian traffic on the Wharf.Further updates on this service will be forthcoming.
Police have laid further charges after an investigation into illegal animal activist activity at WA farms, with a 25-year-old man to face a Perth court later this month on seven charges.

Last week, police announced the arrest of six people accused of breaking into seven farms, and on two occasions stealing animals.

It comes less than a week after dozens of vegan activists were arrested following nationwide protests, as farmers called for tougher penalties for those trespassing on their properties.

The WA arrests follow nationwide animal activist protest last week

The four women and two men arrested in WA were charged after an investigation into activist group Direct Action Everywhere after the arrest and conviction of one of its members in February.
Jakarta: Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed Brunei's decision to criminalise same-sex relationships, and called for an end to violence and discrimination against LGBTI people.

In his first public comments since Brunei introduced Sharia law last week, including the death penalty for extra-marital and gay sex in the majority-Muslim country, Mr Morrison said the Australian government was "deeply concerned about the new measures under Brunei's Syariah [Sharia] penal code".

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, left, shares a joke with Brunei Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah (in blue) and other leaders, at the APEC summit in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, in November. Credit:EPA

The condemnation from Mr Morrison, himself a devout Christian, will potentially open a diplomatic rift with the wealthy kingdom, which is home to about 400,000 people and a long-term ally and security partner of Australia in south-east Asia.

The introduction of Sharia-based laws by Brunei's 72-year-old ruler, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, comes at a time when the rights of LGBTI people and other minority groups in neighbouring Indonesia and Malaysia, also majority-Muslim nations, are increasingly under threat.
New York: Newly arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange needs to "answer for what he has done," Hillary Clinton said on Thursday.

The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state weighed in on Assange while at a speaking event with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Former President Bill Clinton, left, and Paul Begala, right, listen and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Beacon Theatre in New York. Credit:AP

Assange was arrested earlier on Thursday at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and the US has charged him with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon.

WikiLeaks' publication of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers during the 2016 election season hurt Clinton's presidential campaign. Donald Trump, Clinton's Republican opponent, frequently showered praise on Assange during the final weeks of the campaign and cheered on the release of damaging emails from Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.
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The New York Press Association, a statewide group whose members include weekly media, hosted a conference in Albany and our company won 27 awards for excellence.

This was a banner year at the awards for Schneps Media, which expanded last year to become a powerhouse with more than 70 publications. Our editors, reporters, photographers and designers took home 27 awards. Schneps Media papers also scored the most points of any New York City-based chain.

These achievements are a great reflection of the hard work by those involved in this team. Its a source of pride for all of us to work with such dedicated, excellent journalists.

Our Courier Life staff took home two awards from the Better Newspaper

Contest.

Reporter Julianne McShane earned a first place prize for Best News or Feature Series for her series on refugees who resettled in Southern Brooklyn with the help of the Arab-American Family Support Center.

This series did a great job taking a national issue and localizing it. It was well-written and laid out the struggles of refugees, who all came from different backgrounds, the judge wrote about McShanes work. The way the families are presented in the photos, along with the sections at the end of a few of the pieces on how to donate and help people in need, emphasizes the humanity of those seeking asylum, which is obviously an important part of telling these stories.

Reporter Colin Mixson secured a second place prize for Coverage of the Environment. Mixson was recognized for two stories: one about sick raccoons taking to local streets following distemper outbreak in Prospect Park in December; the other about bird lovers calling for an end to fishing in Prospect Park after a great horned owl ensnared by line in the meadow died hours following its arrival at a wildlife rescue last April.

You have found truly local stories affecting people in your community that relate to the environment, the judge wrote about Mixsons stories. I ranked this entry high not in small part because of its entertaining sytle of community focus. Environmental issues dont always have to be the big-picture topics. Sometimes they are a bird stuck in the ice or sick raccoons plaguing the community. Nicely presented.

None of this, of course, would be possible without your continued support. By reading our stories online and picking up our newspaper every week, you help advance the mission of keeping

local journalism strong, viable and

independent.

All of us at Schneps Media want to thank our team for their amazing

efforts  and all of you for your

continued loyalty and dedication.
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Digital Editor
Will Etihad Airways be second time lucky if it wins the bid for acquiring Jet Airways? On the positive side for Etihad, Jet promoter Naresh Goyal with whom it had a tumultuous relationship, will not be in the drivers seat as he has been ousted from the board and might end up with only a small stake in Jet.

In 2013, Etihad bailed Goyal out when he sank into a financial mess by taking a 24 per cent stake in Jet for $397 million. Then, Goyal was not only not ready to play ball with Etihad, he charted out an independent course for the airline that came into direct conflict with ...
Information technology (IT) major Infosys will give an annual salary hike of around 6 per cent to its employees in India. Those located at in-client geographies are likely to get a raise between 1 and 1.5 per cent for the current year.

The Bengaluru-headquartered firm, which is facing a higher attrition rate in recent years, will roll out these salary hikes for 85 per cent of its employees, effective from April. These employees are in junior to middle management roles. We are repeating what we did last year. For about 85 per cent of our workforce, (who are in) the ...




There has been much speculation that the incumbent Unity Labour Party (ULP) could be fielding a slate of candidates that includes a number of new faces, come the next general election.



Of the eight parliamentary representatives that the party put in parliament at the 2015 general election, at least three of these would have contested in 2001, when the ULP recorded its first victory at the polls.

Albeit, of the three - Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, Montgomery Daniel and Sir Louis Straker - Sir Louis did not contest in 2010, but the other two stayed the course since 2001.

The Central Kingstown seat has become something of an opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) stronghold, with St. Clair Leacock winning there in 2010 and 2015.

In brief remarks last week Thursday, Sutherland said, inter alia, "Its time to put the people of Central Kingstown first. We dont have to wait for the pie to grow for our constituents needs to be attended to.

And as far as Sutherland is concerned, the watchwords of all politicians should be decency, humility, and honesty, and being so inclined, he is confident of re-taking the Central Kingstown seat, last won by the ULP in 2010 when Conrad Sayers defeated St. Clair Leacock by a mere 14 votes.

Meanwhile, there was something of a buzz in the air surrounding a replacement for Sir Louis Straker  incumbent in Central Leeward.

The name of Orando Brewster surfaced as the most likely replacement for Sir Louis, though there was no confirmation of this at last Thursdays rally or since.
The Jews of Cochin emigrated to Israel in the 1950s after having lived and thrived in India since ancient times. A few decades after arriving in Isreal, they built a synagogue and museum in the settlement of Nevatim.

Other communities of Indian Jews in Israel  the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews  are also keen to showcase their heritage and are currently in conversation to expand the museum in Nevatim. The Malayalam-speaking, or Malabari Jews, of Cochin claim to have fled the Roman invasion and destruction of the Second Temple. The local Maharaja received them when they ...
The movie An Insignificant Man captures the Aam Aadmi Partys road to forming the government in Delhi. In one of the scenes, Arvind Kejriwal is shown on the campaign trail. Humare paas toh power hi nahin hain(We have no power), he laments.

One of the women in the crowd responds  Hum denge na aapko power (we will give you power). The exchange captures the very essence of a democratic systemone in which a common citizen can look into the eyes of a chief ministerial candidate and tell him, that his fate depends on her ...

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal. They do not reflect the view/s of Business Standard.
Monica La Bennet, Vice President (Operations) Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), is optimistic that the Caribbean region can benefit from the gifts of nature with which it is endowed, but she is also aware that the security is of vital importance.

La Bennet was on hand last week Friday, April 5, at Beachcombers Hotel on the south eastern coast of mainland St. Vincent, for the opening ceremony of the Regional Security System (RSS) Council of Ministers Meeting.

She exchanged letters of the cooperation with respect to Development of Maritime Security Strategies for member states, with outgoing chairman of the Council - Vincentian Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves.

That co-operation included assistance to the tune of US$335,000, which La Bennet said was a "small intervention, but "promises big results.

She stressed the importance of border security, while acknowledging that there are "enormous marine resources at our disposal.

A Memorandum of Understanding was also signed by Executive Director of the RSS Errington Shurland, and Director General of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States Didicus Jules.

A number of Ambassadors to the Region, and whose countries had input into the RSSS, spoke at the opening.

United States Ambassador to Barbados and the OECS Linda Taglialatela confessed to having gained an appreciation of RSS relevance in its response to the hurricanes in 2017, and of its role in evacuating US citizens. She projected on her countrys involvement in the staging of the 2019 Trade Winds Exercise slated to be held here in June.

Lieutenant General Michael Plehn, Deputy Military Commander US SOUTHCOM, noted challenges prone to the area including humanitarian man-made disasters. He pledged to uphold human values, and noted that these transcend political and national borders.

"We are more effective when we collaborate and work together, Plehn indicated.

The Deputy Commander elaborated on the prospect of the RSS taking over roles traditionally maintained by his outfit. He is looking forward to the RSS Headquarters becoming a Training Centre so as to enhance the regions ability to "prevent and respond to natural disasters and other threats.

British High Commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Janet Douglas proffered that it was "crucial that we cooperate for the greater good of individual countries.

She reflected on the depth of humanitarian assistance which was shown in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Canadian High Commissioner to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Marie Legault highlighted her countrys role in airlifting Jamaican defence personnel to Dominica, to assist in relief efforts following the 2017 hurricanes.

Aspects of hatred, race, gender and sexual orientation are linked with questions of security, as far as the Canadian High Commissioner is concerned.

Ovidiu-Viorel Naftanaila, Head of Political, Press and Information at the European Union Delegation to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, emphasised the need for regional cooperation in light of the broad expanse of water surrounding the islands.

But he hastened to add that security is not just a regional concern, it had global proportions.

Naftanaila pointed to his institutions role in training law enforcement agencies in this area, including in the area of "financial criminality, and he assured that the EU will remain a stable partner in the quest to ensure security for the region.
Chevron Corp on Friday said it will buy oil and gas producer Anadarko Petroleum Corp for $33 billion in cash and stock in a deal that doubles down on its bet on US shale and LNG as US energy production shatters records. The deal makes Chevron the second-largest major by crude production, behind Exxon Mobil Corp, up from fourth. It expands Chevron's reach in two areas where US energy output is surging - shale from the Permian Basin of west Texas and New Mexico, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) - which have helped make the US one of the world's largest energy ...
Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, has been arrested in London and charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion over his alleged role in the leaking of classified United States government documents. Assange has already been found guilty of failing to surrender British police, who took him from the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has been living for nearly seven years, having claimed asylum there.

Heres what we know so far. Why was Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in the first place? Assange sought extraterritorial asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London in June ...
Shares of Walt Disney touched an all-time high on Friday after Wall Street analysts said the aggressive pricing of its new video streaming service could help it better compete with Netflix. Netflixs shares fell about 4 per cent after Disney priced its streaming service, Disney+, at $6.99 per month, below the video streaming pioneer's basic plan of $8.99. Investors find a lot of promise in Disneys offerings because its well positioned to fight the likes of Netflix for consumers money, said Clement Thibault, analyst at global financial ...
RSS Council of Ministers, Ambassadors and High Commissioners and representatives of international and regional organisations met in St. Vincent and the Grenadines for the 37th Annual Regional Security System (RSS) Council of Ministers Meeting.

Vincentian Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is in no doubt as to what is required of the Regional Security System (RSS).

The RSS, he said, needs to put plans into operation.

He made the appeal during his address at the opening ceremony of the 37th Annual RSS Council of Ministers Meeting was convened here at the Beachcombers Hotel, Villa, last Friday, April 5.

"We have to take the decisions and have the will to follow through with them with all the partners, the Vincentian leader added.

In that regard, the RSS is a "critical bulwark to our defence and security, the Vincentian leader asserted, and admitted that effective security of the region rests with (the regions) co-operation with traditional partners like the United States of America, Britain, Canada, France, Holland and the rest of the European Union, but contended that the "partners helping us are just helping themselves.

The regions people had a right to enjoy a safe and secure life, Dr. Gonsalves asserted, as he referenced the importance of the RSS and the regions ongoing co-operation on the matter of security.

And he stressed on the importance of preserving "those things that are fundamental to us, as he blasted "criminals who he cited "want the power of the gun.

Persons bent on disrupting society were deemed "selfish by the Prime Minister and he insisted that "we must not cower to cowards.

She is not pleased with the gun culture, and fears that "guns hold us to ransom, and have become "the new currency, and lamented situations like "when people are placed with their back against the wall, or where they dont know where their next meal is coming from, and acts of desperation occur.

The issue of crime and violence was also highlighted by Captain Errington Shurland, Executive Director of the RSS, when he spoke at last Fridays opening.

Shurland noted that there has been a noticeable increase in gun violence with telling consequences.

He urged the policy-makers to quickly devise and implement both hard and soft responses to the predicament.

Fridays opening ceremony was also addressed by diplomatic representatives from partner nations, and saw the signing of an agreement for the development of maritime security strategies, and a memorandum of understanding between the RSS and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).



Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley also weighed in on the concern for crime and violenceThe Barbados-based RSS is tasked with the responsibility of assisting member territories in maintaining peace and stability, through engagement with partner nations.
Kotak Mutual Fund (MF) in an investor call on Friday reiterated that the decision to hold back investor units partially in the fixed maturity plans (FMPs), on account of exposure to the papers of troubled Essel group, was taken in the best interests of the unitholders. Speaking on the call, Nilesh Shah, managing director of the fund house, said: We had two choices as lenders.

Either convert the notional loss into actual loss or give time to the promoters. We thought the second option is better as it would give us a shot at recovering all dues, rather than risk sub-optimal ...
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At least ten personnel of Jammu and Kashmir police sustained injuries after their vehicle met with an accident in north Kashmir's Baramulla on Friday morning, official sources said.

A vehicle carrying security personnel skid off the road and turned turtle at Tragbal Rafiabad in Baramulla resulting in injuries to the cops, the sources said. The region has been witnessing light rain in the last 24 hours.

The injured were immediately rushed to the District Hospital in Baramulla for advanced treatment.

More details are awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Embattled British Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday (local time) defended her decision for a delay in the Brexit process, saying that ensuring the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union with a deal is a "national duty".

In a EU emergency summit that saw the meet go past midnight on Thursday, the EU leaders, including May, agreed to delay the deadline for Brexit period until October 31, with a review on the progress in June.

Dismissing calls for resignation within her Conservative Party members, May told the parliamentarians in the British Parliament that the EU leaders were "frustrated" with the never-ending Brexit crisis which has thrown the UK into complete political chaos, CNN reported.

"We need to resolve this. This is our national duty as elected members of this House -- and nothing today is more pressing or more vital," May said in her statement while making an address at the House of Commons.

However, the British Prime Minister argued that the UK could still leave the EU before October 31 and thus, avoid its participation in the next month's European Parliament elections.

May noted that talks between her party and the opposition Labour party are "serious, detailed and ongoing," adding that "there is actually more agreement" between the two sides on a post-Brexit plan.

However, she acknowledged that if the negotiations did not yield any agreement, parliamentarians could decide on other Brexit options. This means that a proposal for a second referendum could crop up if such a scenario happens.

Earlier, May had said that she would step down from her post if she managed to pass her beleaguered deal in the British Parliament. However, her bold pledge failed to get her pact the green signal for the third time.

May's future as the Prime Minister remains uncertain, given the fact that the UK Parliament has also previously rejected four proposals for the country's exit from the EU.

Meanwhile, European Council President Donald Tusk urged the UK to "not waste" the six-month extension granted to prevent a 'no-deal' Brexit. He also expressed optimism that a deal would be reached at the end of the extension period.

"Please do not waste this time. I am hopeful that a breakthrough can occur in this time," he had said at a press conference in Brussels after the summit ended late on Thursday.Tusk clarified that the June review meeting is just to "update on the progress" not to "decide another extension".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Kerala Christian Forum on Friday demanded an apology from Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah for his statement on the implementation of Register of Citizens (NRC), citing that "it was a direct attack on the identity and integrity of the nation as a secular state".

On Thursday, Shah had said, "We will ensure implementation of NRC in the country. We will remove every single infiltrator from the country, except Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs."

"We hope that Amit Shah and BJP tender an apology to the nation and especially to the minority communities of the country, which has felt persecuted by the statement," the forum said in a statement on Friday.

NRC is a register containing names of Indian citizens, which was prepared for the only time in 1951 and is being updated currently for the state of Assam to weed out illegal immigrants.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday directed Secretary at the Ministry of Civil Aviation Pradeep Singh Kharola to review issues concerning debt-laden Jet Airways and take necessary steps to minimise inconvenience to air passengers.

"Directed Secretary @MoCA_GoI to review issues related to #JetAirways. Asked him to take necessary steps to minimise passenger inconvenience and ensure their safety," Prabhu tweeted.

The development came after cash-strapped Jet Airways suspended all its international flights scheduled for Thursday as 10 more aircraft were grounded due to non-payment of outstanding dues to lessors.

The Union Government earlier said that the beleaguered Jet Airways' eligibility to fly on international routes needs to be examined.

Speaking on the recent Jet Airways crisis, Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola had said, "It (Jet Airways) is currently operating less than 15 planes and its eligibility to fly on international routes needs to be examined."

Since January, it has not been able to pay salaries to pilots and maintenance engineers.

Lenders, led by State Bank of India (SBI), took control of Jet Airways in March after its founder and chairman Naresh Goyal gave up control to resolve the crisis.

The SBI on Monday offered up to a 75 per cent stake in Jet Airways for sale. It extended the deadline on Wednesday for interested bidders to submit a response until Friday. A consortium of SBI-led banks now effectively owns the beleaguered carrier.

.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday moved the Election Commission (EC) seeking action against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for using "false" and "fabricated" words to defame Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Rahul Gandhi has been using inappropriate, false and fabricated words against PM Modi. He has crossed all limits by using such a level of 'unparliamentary' language. He always accuses PM based on wrong information," Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi told media here after he submitted a memorandum to the EC.

He also accused the Trinamool Congress (TMC) of poll rigging during the first phase polling on April 11.

"BJP has asked the Election Commission to conduct re-polling in the booths which TMC goons had captured yesterday as CRPF was not deployed there," said Naqvi.

Echoing Naqvi's stance, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, who also met EC officials, said the BJP sent several petitions to the EC that in spite of the December 2018 verdict of the Supreme Court, the Congress president called PM Modi a "chor".

"Without any evidence, he repeats that the PM gave Rs 30,000 crore to Anil Ambani. Today, we drew the attention of the EC, stating that when neither the Supreme Court nor the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said anything in this regard, then why is Gandhi attributing this with such a conviction," she added.

The defence minister accused EC of not taking the matter into cognisance. "I feel let down by the Election Commission. They looked the other way in spite of our complaints," she said.

On April 10, the Supreme Court had dismissed the Centre's preliminary objections claiming 'privilege' over three Rafale documents cited in petitions seeking review of the December 14 verdict on the fighter jet deal.

In a unanimous judgement, a three-judge bench of the top court headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi allowed the admissibility of the three documents and said the review pleas will be heard on merits.

Congress president on April 11 claimed that the Supreme Court has accepted there was "corruption" in the mega defence deal.

"The SC has accepted that. The SC is going to investigate that," Rahul had said.

Earlier today, the Supreme Court said that it will hear on April 15 a contempt petition filed by BJP leader Meenakshi Lekhi against Rahul, accusing him of misquoting the apex court in connection with the Rafale deal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP president Amit Shah on Friday said Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel should allow the Central Bureau Investigation (CBI) to probe the death of BJP MLA Bhima Mandavi, who lost his life in the Dantewada Naxal attack on April 9.

According to police, a convoy travelling from Kuakonta to Syamgiri in Dantewada was attacked by Naxals using an IED device.

"I want to tell the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh from here today that if you do not have to hide anything, then you should allow CBI probe in the murder of Bhima Mandavi ji. The truth will surely come out," Shah said while addressing a gathering.

"The CBI was banned with the arrival of the Congress government in Chhattisgarh. Earlier Raman Singhji's government was there, he never stopped the CBI because there was no corruption under his rule," he said.

Lambasting Congress president Rahul Gandhi and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, Shah said: "I want to tell Rahul baba that slogans will not bring development. If you feel the pain of poor in your heart, only then you can bring development."

"For 10 years, there was Sonia-Manmohan's government in the country. They did corruption of Rs 12 lakh crores in 10 years and today they claim that they will take the country towards development. What were they doing for 55 years? They did nothing during their rule and now they are now raising slogans," he added.

Speaking about BJP's promises made in its Sankalp Patra (manifesto), Shah said: "The country's security cannot be bigger than the vote bank. It will be a matter of vote bank for the Congress, but for us, security of the country is paramount."

"After the multiple airstrikes on a Jaish-e-Mohammad terror camp, remorse was felt at two places, one in Pakistan and another in the Congress party's office. Congress can do illu-illu with terrorists but we can not. Our policy is clear, if they will shoot at us, we will retaliate."

Comparing the work done by Congress and BJP governments in the state, Shah said: "Within 15 years, Raman Singh ji had done the task of bringing Chhattisgarh to fourth place in the list of developed states across the country. Cement prices are declining in the country but the prices of cement are increasing in Chhattisgarh as Baghel has levied tax on it."

Chhattisgarh will go to polls in the first three phases from April 11 to April 23 for its 11 Parliamentary constituencies. Counting of votes will be done on May 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in the capital, Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik on Friday chaired a meeting of senior-most officers of the force to discuss measures to prevent crime and any terror acts during the polls.

Patnaik also focused on the need for alertness so far as anti-terrorist measures are concerned.

"There should be impartial and professional conduct of all ranks of police personnel," he said.

To tackle the movement of illicit liquor, cash, and narcotics during the election, a check on border pickets would be observed.

The Commissioner also said that special focus should be laid on the security of rallies of all political parties.

He also interacted with the beat constables and division staff during the meeting and motivated them for their exemplary performance.

All seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi will go to polls in a single phase on May 12. The counting of votes will take place on May 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kelcey Allen - Top Female CSEC Performer 2018, is a student of the GHS now enrolled at the SVGCC. Here, she accepts her award from Elizabeth Walker, Chief Education Officer (Ag).

The top performers in the 2018 Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment (CPEA) and Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations were recognized at the Annual National Awards Ceremony, held on Friday 15th April at the Lecture and Theatre Building at the SVG Community College, Villa.



Parents, relatives, school and education officials and members of the media were on hand to witness the event which, for the past 15 years, has been sponsored by telecommunication company FLOW.

Christian Gieowarsingh, formerly of the Kingstown Preparatory School, was on hand to collect his prize for placing first at CPEA. Makaya Gumbs of the Georgetown Secondary School, second; Oniel Sprott of the Kingstown Preparatory, third, and the other top ten performers were also recognized.

Top Female CSEC Performer was adjudged to be Kelcey Allen of the Girls High School, while Jolene Douglas (see separate article) of St. Josephs Convent Kingstown was the Top Performer after Remediation.

The top performers in the other subject disciplines were: Creative Arts/ Performing/ Physical Education - Tamika Gloster of the Girls High School (GHS); Home Economics and Humanities - Chelsea Glynn and Madison Lawrence respectively of the GHS; Industrial Technology  shared by Ghonta Rawlins of the Thomas Saunders Secondary School and Savio Davis of the St. Vincent Grammar School.

The award for School with the Most Improved Results was taken by the Bequia Community High School while the Barroullie Secondary School, had the Best Results after Remediation, and the Girls High School continued its dominance as the School with the Best Overall Results.

Students who gained passes in 5 or more subjects were rewarded for their effort.

Thirty-nine students from the Girls, High School, eleven from the Grammar School, five from the St. Josephs Convent, four from the Mountain View Adventist Academy and one from the St. Martins Secondary School passed 11 or more subjects.

Twin sisters Jesse James and Jesseica James tied for recording the most subjects sat and passed (17).

In addressing the gathering, Acting Chief Education Officer - Elizabeth Walker congratulated the performers and said, " It is my profound wish that you will continue to pursue excellent in all that you do, set realistic goals, persevere to challenges, and most importantly place your hopes and trust in God.

Country Manager at FLOW, Wayne Hull told the gathering that recognizing people for their excellent work sends a strong message and inspires others to lift their overall standards, whether in their education or just life in general. "It is also a tested fact that when recognition is given, this drives higher performance at all levels of the society, he said.

Minister of Education St. Clair Prince expressed his ministrys gratitude for FLOWs continuous support.

He congratulated all the performers, but singled out the Rremedial Programme for special mention, stating that remediation was an important exercise in the school system and must continue to be so.

He appealed to parents and teachers to take note that Bequia Community High School recorded a pass rate of 76.47% and J.P. Eustace Memorial 74.09%. representing increases of 25.21% and 24.8% respectively.

Kyle Dasilva of the Mountain View Adventist Academy took the coveted award of Top Performer at CSEC and Top Male Performer at CSEC, and Top Performer in Business and Science. (See separate article)"It is only right and fitting that in a learning community like ours, we take pride in what we accomplish that we take pride in what others have done as well, the Education Minister told the gathering.
Election Commission of India has directed Chief Electoral Officer, Delhi to ensure prohibition of political content being broadcasted on NaMo TV.

In a letter over the broadcast of NaMo TV or Content TV, the Election Commission has stated that 'any political publicity content, being displayed on electronic media without requisite certification from competent authority should be removed immediately and any political content shall only be permitted strictly in accordance with EC instructions in this regard'.

The ECI also cited that it has been confirmed by the Delhi election commission that there content broadcasted on NaMo TV/Content TV has not been pre-certified by the MCMC Committee of the Delhi poll body.

"As NaMo TV/Content TV is sponsored by a political party, all recorded programmes of political contents displayed on the channel/platform would be covered under the purview of the Commission's Order" reads the letter written by Election Commission to Delhi CEO.

Election Commission has directed him to ensure implementation of the Commission's instructions and to send a compliance report immediately.

Earlier this month, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had written a letter to the poll body, asking whether permission was granted to the recently launched 24-hour television channel NaMo TV after the model code came into force.

The model code of conduct came into effect on March 10 after the commission announced the schedule for the Lok Sabha polls.

The election will be held in seven phases - from April 11 to May 19. Counting of votes will take place on May 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Election Commission has issued a show-cause notice to Union Minister Maneka Gandhi for her remark during a poll speech in Sultanpur on Thursday.

Gandhi had said that her win from Sultanpur Lok Sabha constituency is certain "with or without" the support of Muslims and the community should realise it since they will need to get their work done once the BJP is in power.

"You have to recognise that this victory is sure without you and even with you, and you will have to spread the word," she had said while addressing an election rally.

BR Tiwari, Additional Chief Electoral Officer, said on Friday: "The EC has taken cognisance of the matter. District Magistrate, Sultanpur, has issued a show-cause notice to her and a report has been sent to the EC."

On the other hand, Maneka Gandhi said that she is quoted out of context.

"I had called a meeting of our minority cell. If you read my complete speech, the channel is running that one sentence out of context," she said.

Maneka is contesting from Sultanpur, and her son Varun Gandhi is contesting from Pilibhit.

The polling in Uttar Pradesh will be held in all seven phases which started on April 11. The counting of votes will be held on May 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court on Friday asked political parties to submit in a sealed cover to the Election Commission of India (ECI) details of the donations received through electoral bonds.

In an interim order, the apex court directed the parties to furnish details of donors and amounts received through the bonds to the poll watchdog by May 30.

The order was passed by a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi on a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by NGO Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR) and CPI(M).

Petitioner Jagdish Chokkar told the media, "This is an interim order, not the final judgement. The Supreme Court has asked all political parties to submit in a sealed cover to the ECI details of donations received. The last date for purchase of electoral bonds is May 15. By May 30, every political party has to submit the details of the bonds to the ECI. The ECI will keep details will it."

The NGO has sought a stay on the electoral bonds scheme or to make it mandatory to disclose the names of those who are buying them for maintaining transparency in political funding.

On April 10, the ECI had told the Supreme Court that it was not against the issuance of electoral bonds for the funding of political parties, but was against the anonymity of the donors. It wanted transparency in the scheme.

The Centre had earlier filed an affidavit in the case and said that electoral bonds were a "positive step" to ensure "accountability and transparency" in conducting elections.

These bonds were introduced to deal with the menace of corruption in elections, it had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hours after the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, Ecuador's police here on Thursday detained his accomplice.

"A person who is close to him lives here, we have convincing evidence that he maintained contacts with former Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino. He was detained this afternoon," TASS news quoted Ecuadorian Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo as saying.

The person has been identified as Ola Bini, a Swedish national. Reportedly, he works as a software developer with Wikileaks.

Assange was arrested earlier in the day on Thursday, in London in connection with the INA paper leaks.

Following his arrest, former French MP Jean-Luc Antoine Pierre Melenchon said that his country must grant political asylum to Assange at a time when 'his freedom is threatened'.

Assange has been arrested for failing to surrender to the court over a warrant issued by Westminster Magistrates' Court in 2012, the New York Times reported, while quoting the London Police.

The INA papers are the cache of documents published in February 2019, allegedly uncovering the operations of INA Investment Corp., an offshore tax haven created by the brother of Ecuadorian President.

Wikileaks had announced that Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno is being investigated for corruption charges after the leaks of the papers.

Assange had repeatedly suggested that he might be apprehended outside the embassy and extradited to the United States.

Over the past months, the Ecuadorian authorities were reportedly putting various restrictions on the conditions of Assange's stay in the embassy, which the whistleblower's defence termed as violation of human rights.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The first batch of Sikh Jathas left for Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Pakistan for Baisakhi celebrations on Friday.

Around 839 Sikh devotes led by Shiromani Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee boarded a special train to Pakistan today.

During the visit, the pilgrims would also be visiting shrines Nankana Sahib and Kartarpur Sahib.

On Tuesday, Pakistan had granted 2,200 visas to Sikh pilgrims from India to participate in Baisakhi celebrations from April 12 to 21.

It will be the first Sikh Jatha to go to Pakistan after the Indian Air Force airstrike on Jaish-e-Mohammed's advance training camp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Balakot area in Pakistan. The Balakot operation was following the Pulwama terror strike which was claimed by Pakistan based JeM. The terror act and the subsequent airstrike resulted in heightened tensions between the two countries.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
France on Thursday opposed European Union (EU) trade negotiations with the United States that had withdrawn from the Paris Agreement on climate change.

"We defend exemplary Europe for the climate [policy]. France opposes launching trade negotiations with the US that is not a member of the Paris Agreement," tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron. His comment comes a day after the bloc voted to initiate negotiations with the US to mend trade relation which was affected by the tariff row.

Recently, Trump also attacked the EU saying the bloc is a "brutal" trading partner with the US.

The United States threatened to slap tariffs on EU imports worth USD 11 billion, according to US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, in the wake of the EU allegedly giving subsidies to Airbus.

The proposed tariffs are subject to public consultations and arbitration at the Trade Organisation.

The United States had already imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminium export, with Trump considering the imposition of tariffs up to 25 per cent on European vehicle imports.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Police on Thursday said that the 'Yellow Vest' protests this weekend have been banned in the cities of Paris and Lille.

Police in Paris said that the demonstrators, who are participating in the protests, will be barred from the areas of French National Assembly and Elysee Palace, Anadolu News Agency reported.

In Lille, Yellow Vest protests will be prohibited in the central parts of the city, after a decree was signed by Michel Lalande, prefect of regional daily La Voix du Nord from northern France.

Widespread agitations have been raging on across France since November last year against the hike in fuel prices, with thousands of protesters taking to the streets and donning the 'gilets jaunes', the yellow fluorescent vests that have symbolised the movement.

The French government has since rolled back its plan to increase fuel taxes, with President Emmanuel Macron announcing a minimum wage hike of 100 euros per month for the people of the nation in his "economic and social emergency plan".

However, the demonstrators have continued with their protests, which has continued for 21 straight weekends now. There have been calls of Macron's resignation over his move.

The Yellow Vest protests have claimed the lives of 11 people and left over 2,000 wounded, according to the French government.

More than 8,000 people have been arrested since the demonstrations began and 2,000 others were sent to custody.

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Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], April 12 (ANI): An American woman is facing difficulty to find accommodation for her 14 pets and is currently staying in Silver Springs hotel here with six puppies, six cats, one female dog, and a goat.

Her pets have become a problem for hotel manager Pradeep Agarwal, who has complained of nuisance and foul smell. She even had a tiff with the hotel manager when he asked her to leave the place.

Talking to ANI, Pradeep Agarwal, the hotel manager said, "She came around 3 AM on April 9 and the security guard allotted her a room. Next morning I got to know she has pets and when I asked her to vacate the room, she denied by saying that she has booked and paid room for till April 11."

"Before I tried calling the police, the woman called someone may be from the US Embassy or from police. Police Inspector of Kagdapith, reached our hotel to look into the matter. Generally, the inspector does not come on one call, so she must have called at Embassy", the manager claimed.

He added, "Police tried to help her out but I do not think any arrangement has been done for her yet."

Refusing to reveal her identity, the woman said, "I rescued this female dog in January 2015 in Uttarkashi and this goat in March 2015. I am trying to find a loving and caring family for my pets. Someone assured me to help but he is late and the hotel management wants me to vacate this place".

The woman added, " I can not leave the pets here. I am trying to vacate this place till then I am waiting for help."

"I am arranging for something to solve the issue," she added.

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The Income Tax (IT) department on Friday clarified that the media reports on raids having been conducted at places linked to the family priest of a 'prominent political leader' in Karnataka and Goa were "false".

"No such search or checking of any sort has been done by the Income Tax department in Karnataka," IT Public Relation Officer (PRO) said in a press release.

The statement comes after various media portals on April 12 reported that the IT officials raided an ancient Shiva temple at former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda's native village Haradanahalli in Hassan district. Reports also mentioned that the residence of the family priest.

"It is unfortunate that media persons connected to reputed media houses are spreading such unfounded stories without any attempt at verification," the statement read.

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India and the Netherlands on Thursday reviewed bilateral cooperation in various fields, including political, economic and cultural ties, and deliberated on regional and multilateral issues, including cooperation at United Nations and other international fora.

The two countries held Foreign Office Consultations here. The Indian delegation was led by A. Gitesh Sarma, Secretary (West), Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the Dutch side was led by Johanna (Yoka) Brandt, Secretary General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, according to an official statement by MEA.

"India and the Netherlands share a multifaceted relationship. Both countries used this opportunity to review the entire gamut of bilateral relations, including political, economic, commercial, scientific and cultural cooperation," it said.

The two sides also exchanged views on regional and multilateral issues, including cooperation at United Nations and other international fora," the MEA statement added.

India welcomed the participation of the Netherlands as the partner country for the 25th edition of the CII-DST Tech Summit scheduled to be held in New Delhi in October this year.

"Both sides underlined the importance of sustaining exchanges at all levels, including high level," the MEA statement said.

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Montgomery Daniel, MP for North Windward, broke his silence on what he described as wrongdoings in the 1998 general election.

Montgomery Daniel, Parliamentary Representative for North Windward, said that the Unity Labour Party had "credible evidence that there were wrongdoings during the 1998 General Elections when he lost.

Daniel, while speaking at the Unity Labour Partys 18th Anniversary Rally last week Thursday, said that he lost by a mere 58 seats against the New Democratic Partys (NDP) Monty Roberts, and that the ULP went on to lose the election 7 seats to 8.

"Since the petitions were lodged, I have not said much, Daniel said.

The first bit of evidence was that only 14 election writs were published as opposed to 15, the missing one being for North Windward.

He said that he contacted Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, then the Deputy Leader of the ULP, who, on contacting the then Supervisor of Elections, was told that the omission of North Windwards election writ was due to human error.

Daniel added that there was also evidence which suggested that the final list of names published contained 21 fewer than the preliminary list.

"Remember I lost by 58, but 21 were not there.

It was also revealed that individuals under the age of 18 voted in the 1998 general elections.

"Again, it was said that was due to human error, Daniel told supporters at Heritage Square.

Daniel, who is also the Minister of Housing, said that he won his seat in 2015, amassing 2,700 votes  the NDPs candidate, Lauron Baptiste received 2,300.

"They can go high, low, to any court  2,700 is more than 2,300, he said.
Beresheet, the Israeli moon spacecraft, which was the first privately-funded mission to the moon, on Thursday (local time) narrowly missed out a historic attempt to land on the lunar surface after the rover lost its main engine while attempting a soft landing.

Beresheet was developed by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries. If the mission had been completed successfully, Israel would have been the fourth country, after the Soviet Union, the US and China, to land a spacecraft on the moon.

As it was preparing to land, the technical problems occurred during the final moments of flight, as communications were lost with the spacecraft just long enough for the braking process to fail, and the rover crashed on the lunar surface.

After initiating the landing protocol, tensions were high in the SpaceIL control room near Tel Aviv when they said that it had lost contact with one of the landing detectors when the moon rover was just less than 10 kilometres from the lunar surface, Haaretz reported.

"According to all the signs, we won't be the fourth country to land on the moon. We were very close to the moon. We're on the moon, just not how we wanted. We'll check it again and try to understand what happened," the control room said.

Beresheet was successfully launched on February 22 and entered lunar orbit on April 4. The spacecraft had included plans to measure the Moon's local magnetic field and was carrying a laser retroreflector and a digital "time capsule".

In the final hours before landing, Beresheet's flight engineers found a flat surface where the spacecraft could land safely at a time when the moon's surface was not scorching hot due to the sun's exposure.

The moon rover had travelled more than 3.4 million miles in its orbits around the earth and completed another 1 million miles around the moon's surface.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was tracking the spacecraft's movement from the control room, said that his country will continue its efforts to try landing successfully on the lunar surface.

"Israel will land on the moon!", promised a determined Netanyahu.

SpaceIL was established in 2011 when it competed in the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) contest to land a spacecraft on the Moon.

Beresheet was the first Israeli spacecraft developed by the company to travel beyond Earth's orbit and would have been the first private lander on the moon had the mission became successful.

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Former Union Minister Krishna Tirath quit the BJP and rejoined Congress on Friday after a gap of 4 years.

Tirath was the minister of state in the Manmohan Singh government but joined BJP in 2015.

"Sometimes accidents happen but I have now returned to my old home," said Tirath after joining the Congress.

"I am not thinking about contesting at this point of time but rather working for strengthening the party," she added.

A two-time MP from Delhi, Tirath had contested Delhi Assembly polls in February from Patel Nagar seat. However, she was defeated by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Hazari Lal Chauhan.

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The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday entered into an alliance with the Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) in Haryana.

As per the seat-sharing deal, JJP will contest on 7 seats while AAP will contest on 3 seats.

"The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) have entered into an alliance in Haryana for Lok Sabha elections. The JJP will contest on 7 seats while the AAP will contest on 3 seats in Haryana," AAP leader Gopal Rai said at a press conference here.

"JJP and AAP together will bring change in the state," said JJP leader Dushyant Chautala.

He also took on the BJP and Congress saying, "We will fight against BJP and Congress, which are bringing weakness into the democracy, even in the next election."

"After all the discussion, we had arrived at the conclusion that we will bring similar changes in Haryana as Arvind Kejriwal brought in Delhi in sectors like education and health. Together, we will fight on all seats of Haryana," he added.

Haryana will go to polls in a single phase on May 12. Counting of votes will take place on May 23.

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Manipal PROlearn, a leading professional learning platform and a division of Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE), signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HackerU, the world's leading cyber-security training company, to launch a Cyber-security Certification Programme.

The tie-up aims at skilling professionals in the domain, as per the global industry standards and bridge the huge demand for trained cyber-security professionals. The program has been developed in Israel with more emphasis in cyber-security.

"The demand for cyber-security professionals is growing at an exponential rate but, the availability of talent is still scarce. As India leaps ahead to ramp up its digital infrastructure, the relevance of cyber-security will increase manifold, especially in view of increasing number of cashless transactions and mobile banking", said Ravi Panchanadan, MD & CEO, MaGE.

"For industries, cyber-security has emerged as a key area of priority, as threats emerge from multiple fronts. Our new offering, with the much coveted HackerU, is a one-of-its-kind programme in India that shall enable professionals in India to remain ahead of the curve," he added.

"There is a global shortfall of cyber-security professionals in the world and a big part of the global tech workforce is from India and so we feel, training the Indian workforce to fill this gap in cyber-security was necessary. We are happy to have found a perfect partner in Manipal PROlearn to take this forward", said Gil Adani, Global CEO, HackerU on HackerU's first exclusive tie-up with an Indian educational institute.

The program intends to provide assured placement assistance for students who complete it successfully. It will be delivered in two modes - the classroom mode (in Bangalore to start with) will be a four-month program. The online program targeted towards working professionals will be an 11-month program. The learners will be trained on cyber-security offence and trained for OSCP (Offensive Security Certified Professional) certification - a premium global cyber-security certification.

An estimate by NASSCOM suggests that India shall need over one million cyber-security professionals by 2020. The program aims at preparing trained professionals for the 'Digital Era.'

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article.

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New Zealand on Friday thanked India for its support when the country is recovering from the March 15 shootings in two Christchurch mosques that claimed 50 lives.

New Zealand High Commissioner to India, Joanna Kempkers, in a statement, said, "India, we thank you."

She said that India and New Zealand stand united against terrorism.

"Both countries strongly condemn terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, and all those who support such acts of violence. This support and solidarity underscore the close ties between our two countries, and, from our nation to yours, we'd like to extend a very heartfelt thank you," Kempkers said.

She noted, "We look forward to an enduring close relationship with India, and to continuing to welcome Indians to our country, Aotearoa New Zealand, whether that be for business, for holiday, to study or to migrate more permanently."

"During this difficult time, we have been immensely heartened by the support received from India, including the many personal messages from the Indian community both in India and in New Zealand," the envoy said.

Kempkers said, "Across New Zealand, there has been an outpouring of sorrow as we all come to terms with what happened on one of our darkest days, and grieve for the victims, seven of whom were Indian or of Indian origin."

According to her statement, "It is four weeks since a heinous act of terrorism in Christchurch killed 50 members of New Zealand's Muslim community. Our thoughts are with the families of all those who lost their lives, and those who remain injured, as they cross this difficult milestone."

It said that the country is a proud nation with more than 200 ethnicities, 160 languages, of which Hindi is the fourth most-commonly spoken (behind English, Maori and Samoan).

"New Zealanders' response to the attacks demonstrated what is special about New Zealand -- our people and our values, especially those of inclusiveness and compassion," it said.

Many New Zealanders, led by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, have joined their Muslim friends, colleagues and neighbours in vigils, and visited their mosques to pay respects, lay flowers and give messages of support, the statement said.

"We value and celebrate our diversity and promote peace and security around the The New Zealand government is determined that our country will remain a safe and open society, characterised by religious inclusiveness and freedom," it added.

New Zealand has already tightened gun laws following the attack, banning all military-style automatic weapons, and announced a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the attack.

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The state of Odisha is rich in natural resources, but the people are poor due to corruption, said BJP president Amit Shah while addressing an election rally here on Friday.

"Odisha is rich in natural resources, but the people are poor due to corruption. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik led Biju Janata Dal (BJD) government has failed to remove poverty from the state," said Shah.

Hitting out at the Congress party and BJD, Shah said that the two parties have failed to remove poverty despite being in power for so many years. "People will have to choose between Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led BJP and BJD's Naveen Patnaik in the state assembly polls," he said.

"Even after 19 years rule of Naveen Patnaik, there is still a shortage of water and jobs. People have to migrate to other states for jobs," he said.

Taking a jibe at Patnaik, he said: "Naveen Patnaik did not know how to talk in Oriya. How can he understand the problem being faced by the people in the state?"

"I am in this tribal area after visiting the whole country and wherever I went, there were people chanting slogans in support of Prime Minister Narendra Modi."

"In Odisha, there have been mining scams, chit fund scams but the Chief Minister did not act against the corrupt people. BJP will punish the corrupt if voted to power in the state," he added.

Talking about development having taken place under Prime Minister Modi, Shah said: "The Centre has given Rs 1,600 crore as district mineral fund to the district in the past five years."

"We have built hospitals for tribal people, and the Highway 215 and 6 were made four-lane under our government," he said.

Speaking about the security situation in the country, Shah said: "Our government gave a befitting reply to Pulwama terror attack by targeting terrorist training camps at Balakot in Pakistan."

"The Congress party talks about dialogue with Pakistan. How can we engage in talks with those who killed our own soldiers," asked Shah.

The seven-phased Lok Sabha elections have started from April 11 and will conclude on May 19. The Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls in Odisha will be held in four phases. The first phase was held on April 11 and the remaining three phases will be held on April 18, 23, and 29.

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One person was shot dead and several others were injured when a shooting took place during the funeral procession of the American rapper Nipsey Hussle.

According to Los Angeles police Chief Michel Moore, the event occurred at 103 Street and Main Street and four people are shot during the procession.

The victims were described as three African-American men and one African-American woman all between the ages of 30 to 50, said Moore via social media.

It is unclear which victim died and as per the chief, the suspects in a grey Hyundai fired on the victims.

According to the reports by The Hollywood Reporter, a large crowd gathered Thursday to pay their respects to Hussle as his body was carried from the public funeral at Staples Centre to South L.A. where he was born and raised.

Born Ermias Joseph Asghedom, the 33-year-old Grammy-nominated rapper was killed on March 31.

Days after the killing, Eric Ronald Holder, 29, was arrested in the city of Bellflower, southeast of L.A. by deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Since then he has been charged with Hussle's murder. Holder remains in jail on $5 million bonds.

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A Hundred Indian fishermen holed up in Pakistani jail arrived here on Thursday after being released through Attari-Wagah border earlier this week.

These fishermen are from the state's Veraval region and were caught by Pakistan coast guard for crossing the international sea borders.

They were kept in Karachi jail for over one and a half year before being released on April 8.

Speaking to ANI, one of the fishermen said, "Many of us accidentally cross the border while some go to that side knowingly for catching fishes. I was in Pakistan for about 17 months. We were always confined in a particular cell and were never allowed to venture out. We were clearly told to stay in the definite cell for our own safety."

Another fishermanVikram said, "I was caught accidentally while we were sleeping on over boat. The boat had accidentally crossed inside their border."

The fishermen were brought to Vadodara through train from Amritsar by the state fisheries department.

Ramesh Kumar, Assistant Director, Fisheries Department said, "These were released from Pakistan on April 8. Our team had gone to Amritsar to receive them and have brought them here through a train."

On April 5, Pakistan had announced that it will be releasing 360 Indian prisoners upon completion of their sentences, starting April 8.

The decision comes after India sent a note verbale to Pakistan on Tuesday, urging it to make necessary arrangements for an immediate release and repatriation of Indian prisoners who had completed their respective prison sentences.

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A plea seeking directions to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to ban Jammu and Kashmir politicians Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti from participating in the Lok Sabha elections was 'dismissed as withdrawn' by another bench of Delhi High Court on Friday. The petition filed by advocate Sanjiv Kumar was dismissed by a division bench of Justices Prateek Jalan and S Ravindra Bhat. However, the court has allowed the litigant to approach the ECI on the matter.

On April 10, the Delhi court had sent the plea to another bench for hearing. The PIL was filed on April 8 seeking a ban for the three leaders for their "seditious and communal" statements against the Constitution.The petition filed by Kumar alleged that the statements given by the three leaders were against the Constitution, adding that the court or the ECI should bar or impose conditions on their entry into the general elections.Seven-phase Lok Sabha polls have started on April 11 and will continue till May 19. The counting of votes will take place on May 23. .

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday hit out at 'outdated communists' and 'fake liberals' for their silence on the political violence in Kerela while assuring the BJP workers that their 'struggles' won't go in vain.

"I want to ask the outdated communists and fake liberals--why are you silent on political violence in Kerala? What are your compulsions? I assure my fellow BJP workers that your struggles won't go in vain. Their bullying won't weaken us," PM Modi said while addressing an election rally here.

Terming Kerala as "a land of peace and harmony," the Prime Minister said: "Insensitive Communists and Congress have brought a culture of political violence. Several patriotic RSS and BJP workers have been attacked and killed for serving the people."

The Prime Minister termed the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the United Democratic Front (UDF) as "same in deeds" and being different only in name.

"UDF and LDF are different only in name. In deeds, they are the same. Both have taken turns to loot the state," he said.

"LDF and UDF have dominated the of Kerala but they have miserably failed the people of the state. BJP presents an alternative that is inclusive, democratic, and compassionate," he said.

PM Modi also claimed that opposition leaders are heroes in Pakistan and their speeches are used by Pakistani leaders to discredit India.

"Our opposition leaders are now heroes in Pakistan, where their speeches are quoted, their statements used freely by the leadership there to discredit India," he said.

Questioning the "blatant double standards" of the Congress and the Communists on women empowerment, the Prime Minister said: "The so-called defenders of women rights are the ones at the forefront of defending the brutal and barbaric practice of Triple Talaq."

Commenting on the Sabarimala temple issue, PM Modi said: "BJP will try its best to keep the traditions of Kerela before the Supreme Court. Our government will also try that issues related to faith and beliefs get constitutional protection."

"Now in the garb of Supreme Court order, some vested interests are trying to serve their own purposes. Attacks on our tradition will not be acceptable. Lathis on innocent devotees won't be acceptable," the Prime Minister said.

"If people in our own country will be lathi-charged for following hundred-year-old traditions, then it will be wrong," the Prime Minister said.

The voting for all the 20 Lok Sabha seats in Kerela will be held on April 23. The results will be announced on May 23.

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By Azernews





By Mirsaid Ibrahimzade

AzVirt, being one of the largest and reputable road construction contractors in Azerbaijan, will launch construction works in Ukraine in May 2019, a source at the company told Trend.

The project costs 130 million euros and will be implemented in three phases, the source noted.

"All earthwork will be completed by the end of April, after which there will be full readiness for laying the road with a total length of 80 km," the source said.

The company is engaged in the construction of roads, runways, airports. Besides the construction and design of roads and big facilities, the company is involved in the production of building materials, including asphalt concrete mixtures, activated mineral powder.

Within more than twenty years since its establishment, AzVirt has grown in size and scope to meet the needs of the region as the demands for improved transport infrastructure increase.

Meanwhile, the construction of a highway with the participation of the Azerbaijani company AzVirt as part of the Bishkek-Osh (Madaniyyat-Jalal Abad) road project is scheduled to begin in May 2019. The total length of the road is 67 kilometers.

The project is planned to be completed in three years, and its cost is about $50 million. At the current stage, preparatory earthwork is being carried out. All necessary equipment have been delivered to the site.

The project also involves German specialists who will share their experience in implementing the large-scale road project.

Moreover, AzVirt participates in infrastructure projects in Serbia. AzVirt implemented the major road project in Serbia based on the document signed between Azerbaijan and Serbia in 2012. In 2012, the government of Azerbaijan provided a 308 million euro loan for a period of 25 years with a three-year grace period at a rate of four percent per annum for the construction of the highway in Serbia. The loan financed the construction of the Ljig-Boljkovci, Boljkovci-Takovo, and Takovo-Preljina sections of E-763 highway.

Meanwhile, AzVirt plans to implement the second major road project in Serbia. This project involves the construction of roads and related road infrastructure in Serbia.

The company noted that the exact starting dates for the implementation of the projects are still unknown, but AzVirt also mentioned that according to their plans, construction work should begin in the coming months.
Sharpening his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday said that he runs the government only for his "fifteen friends", including Anil Ambani, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.

Addressing a joint election rally with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) here, Gandhi said: "PM Modi runs the government for his fifteen friends, including Anil Ambani, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi. All the money that should have gone to the poor farmers of the country was diverted to his friends. By far, he has given them over 3 lakh 50 thousand crores."

Congress president contended that if voted to power, he would carry out a "surgical strike" on poverty.

Re-affirming his promise of transferring Rs. 72,000 annually into the bank accounts of people below poverty mark, Gandhi said: "My plan is to make a list consisting of 20 per cent of the poor people in India. It does not matter which caste or religion you belong to, if you are on the list, we will transfer the amount in your account."

He also promised that the amount will be transferred into the account of the "women of the household" only.

Gandhi said that their government will give reservation to women in the Parliament and Legislative Assemblies.

Calling his decision a "historic step" for the future of farmers, he said: "If we get elected, we will come out with a separate farmers' budget. At the beginning of our tenure, we will keep the farmers informed of every step we will be taking."

Hitting out at the Modi-led government over demonetisation and Goods and Services Tax (GST), Gandhi said, "Narendra Modi had stated that he will fight against black money. All of us were there standing in queues outside the banks. His Gabbar Singh tax destroyed the industries in Tamil Nadu. People should not forgive him for this."

He also added that PM Modi has instilled "fear and discomfort" into the hearts of farmers and has "stolen the bonus" meant for them.

Voting in Tamil Nadu for 39 Lok Sabha seats will take place on April 18. The counting of votes will be done on May 23.

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The said on Friday that it will hear on April 15 a contempt petition filed by BJP Meenakshi Lekhi against accusing him of misquoting an apex court in connection with the Rafale deal.

A bench headed by fixed the date of hearing after the plea was mentioned by senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi before it.

The contempt petition, filed by Rohatgi, accused Gandhi of misquoting the order when the said the apex court had accepted that 'chowkidar' (a reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi), is a "chor' (thief).

Talking to ANI, Lekhi said, " has misquoted the Supreme Court's order on the Rafale deal...I am sure the court must have been watching the media where made false claims about the court's order."

Hitting out at Congress, she said, "How can the Gandhi family talk about corruption when three of the four members of the family are out on bail."

"Rahul Gandhi has misquoted the order and he made the remarks to influence the voters during the elections," Lekhi added.

Gandhi while speaking to the media in Amethi said, "The has made it clear that "chowkidar" allowed "theft and that it had accepted that some sort of corruption had taken place in the Rafale deal".

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court had dismissed the Centre's preliminary objections claiming "privilege" over three Rafale documents cited in petitions seeking review of the December 14 verdict on the fighter jet deal.

In a unanimous judgement, a three-judge bench of the top court headed by Gogoi allowed the admissibility of the three documents and said the review pleas will be heard on merits.

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Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday condemned the circulation of a purported letter written to President Ram Nath Kovind by veterans of the Armed Forces expressing displeasure over alleged politicisation of the services.

Speaking to media here, Sitharaman said Rashtrapati Bhawan has asserted that they have not received any such letter. She also said that two senior officers whose named are mentioned in the purported letter have denied signing it.

"Two senior officers said they have not given consent, worrying that fake letters being signed by vested groups. It is condemnable. Rashtrapati Bhawan has also said that they have not received the letter," she said.

Earlier today, a Rashtrapati Bhavan source said that the President has not received any letter from the former officers of the Army, Navy and Air Force.

Reacting to the matter, former Army Chief General Sunith Francis Rodrigues called it "a classic manifestation of fake news".

"I do not know what it is all about. All my life, we have been apolitical. After 42 years as an officer, it is a little late to change. We have always put India first. I do not know who these people are and it (the letter with names of officers) is a classic manifestation of fake news," General Rodrigues told ANI.

The purported letter, which went viral on social media, named eight former services chiefs including General Rodrigues and Ex-Air Chief Nirmal Chandra Suri.

Air Chief Marshal Suri said, "This is not Admiral Ramdas' letter and it has been done by some Major Chaudhary. He has written this letter and this was coming on WhatsApp and emails. To put an end to it, I wrote that armed forces are apolitical and support the politically elected government."

"My consent has not been taken for any such letter. And I do not agree with whatever has been written in that letter... We have been misquoted by this Major Chaudhary," he added.

Former Army Vice Chief Lt General ML Naidu, whose name also figured in the purported letter, said, "No, my consent has not been taken for any such letter and neither have I written any such letter."

However, Major General Harsha Kakkar, an ex-officer who was also named in the letter, said, "Yes, I had given my consent for being a signatory to the letter. I had given my consent only after knowing the contents of it.

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South Korea's Constitutional Court on Thursday (local time) ruled as unconstitutional a 66-year-law that made abortion a crime punishable by two years imprisonment, signalling a major victory for those who campaigned extensively for the abolition of the strict and controversial legislation.

A panel headed by nine judges declared the ruling in a 7-2 vote, in response to a complaint filed by an obstetrician in 2017, who is on trial for performing multiple abortion procedures.

During the ruling, the court said that the anti-abortion legislation under the criminal law is against the Constitution and directed allowing termination in the early stages of pregnancy, Yonhap News Agency reported.

The court gave the South Korean Parliament a deadline of 2020 to revise the law. If the lawmakers fail to respect the deadline, the law would become null and void.

"(The current law) limits the pregnant woman's right to choose freely, which is against the principle that infringements on a person's rights must be kept to a minimum," the court said.

It also termed the move unfair to give more importance to the value of protecting a foetus's life, when the law violated the dignity and rights of a woman.

The abortion ban that came up in 1953 criminalised the termination of a foetus. However, there are exceptions only in cases of sexual assaults, incest, hereditary disorder or health risks.

Under the anti-abortion law, a doctor can be sentenced to two years in prison for carrying out the procedure. Likewise, a pregnant woman, undergoing abortion, can be jailed for an year or cough up a hefty fine of 2 million won (approx Rs 1.20 lakhs).

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A Congress delegation met the Election Commission (EC) on Friday, requesting it to cut-short the campaign days of those leaders who violate the model code of conduct and EC rules by making references to the Armed Forces for the "sake of votes."

The delegation, comprising Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Singh Surjewala, alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and other ministers have grossly violated the EC guidelines.

"We have requested the Election Commission that if a leader from any political party violates EC rules and MCC or particularly reference of Armed forces or Balakot Airstrike in the election campaign for sake of votes, then he should not be allowed to campaign for the whole day. However, if he repeats his mistake for the second time then he or she should not be allowed to campaign for two days and so on," Singhvi told reporters here.

"This never happened in the history of India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP president Amit Shah and other ministers are openly flouting the norms and referring Balakot air strike and other incidences for wooing votes. We demand that it should be immediately stopped," he added.

Prime Minister Modi, while addressing a rally on April 9 in Maharashtra, urged first-time voters to dedicate their votes to the Air Force which carried out air strikes at Balakot. He also made a similar appeal during a public rally in Ahmednagar today.

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Toll in the suicide bomb blast that took place at a vegetable market in Hazar Gunji area of Quetta on Friday rose to 20, provincial authorities have said.

Quoting DIG, Quetta, Abdul Razzaq Cheema, Express Tribune has reported that the blast that occurred around 7:35 am was caused by an improvised explosive device (IED) hidden among vegetables in the market.

"The IED was concealed in a sack of potatoes," the DIG was quoted as saying.

At least 48 others, including three security personnel, were injured in the blast, the DIG added.

The wounded have been shifted to Bolan Medical Complex and Civil Hospital, while the site of the blast was cordoned off by the security forces, he said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan took to Twitter to condemn the blast. He has asked for a report on the blast.

"Deeply saddened and have strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Hazarganji market area of Quetta targeting our innocent people. I have asked for an immediate inquiry and increased security for the ppl. Prayers go to the families of the victims and for early recovery of the injured," Khan tweeted.

Pakistan President Arif Alvi expressed deep shock and sorrow for the victims of the blast. He said that it was "a heinous act of terrorism, which is a reminder for the nation that few remnants of this menace are still left to be eliminated totally."

Condemning the attack, Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry prayed for eternal peace for the departed souls and early recovery of the injured. He said the terrorists wanted to target the process of progress and development by harming peace in the country.

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US President Donald Trump on Thursday said that Washington has signed a "new and very, very large" trade deal with Seoul.

In a video posted by The Hill, Trump, flanked by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and first ladies of both the countries, said, "We have recently completed a new and very, very large trade deal with South Korea and it will very much increase trade both ways."

"It is a very important transaction and is something we have been working on from quite a while... Big difference," the US President added.

The 72-year-old leader made these remarks after a meeting with his South Korean counterpart, who is on a two-day state visit to the US.

Moon, arrived in Washington DC on Wednesday to discuss the second US-North Korea summit in Vietnam, which ended in a stalemate. It is the first face-to-face meeting between the two leaders after the failed Hanoi Summit.

During the meeting, Trump has asserted that he wanted to retain the sanctions imposed on North Korea while he worked towards getting the denuclearisation talks back on track with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

It is widely speculated that Moon is expected to participate in the proposed third US-North Korea summit, along with Trump and Kim, in order to keep the denuclearisation talks on track and to chalk out a peace deal to end the over six-decades-long Korean War.

Technically, North and South Korea remain at war as no peace agreement has been signed between them. The two nations had signed an armistice pact which brought about a complete cessation of hostilities from the two sides.

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Eleven people, including four leaders, have been booked for taking selfies inside polling booths in various cities Uttarakhand on Thursday during the first phase of Lok Sabha elections.

As per the guidelines issued by the Election Commission of India, carrying a mobile phone or clicking photos inside a polling booth is strictly prohibited.

"Clicking pictures of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) or a selfie with it amounts to the breach of voting privacy and cases against these people have been registered for the same offence," Saujanya, the Chief Election Officer of Uttarakhand state informed ANI.

Voting for all five parliamentary constituencies in the state took place on Thursday. Counting of votes will be held on May 23.

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In a veiled reference to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Samajwadi Party (SP) leader Azam Khan on Friday asked who was Pakistan's agent, in response to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's comments on the BJP.

While addressing a public gathering here, the SP leader said, "You (Modi) were Nawaz Sharif's friend earlier, (former Pakistan Prime Minister) and now Imran Khan is waiting for you to become the Prime Minister again. You people (public) tell me, who is the agent of Pakistan - me or.... (Aap kal Nawaz Sharif ke dost the, aur aaj Imran Khan aapke dubara Wazir-e-Azam banne ka intezaar kar raha hai. Batao logon, Pakistan ka agent main hun ya-...."

Earlier this week, Pakistan media had quoted Imran saying there might be a better chance of peace talks with India if Prime Minister Modi wins the Lok Sabha elections.

He had reportedly said that if Congress comes to power in India, it might be too scared to seek a settlement with Pakistan over Kashmir, fearing a backlash from the right wing.

"Perhaps if the BJP - a right-wing party -- wins, some kind of settlement on Kashmir could be reached," Khan was quoted as saying.

On Thursday, Congress spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala said Pakistan had "officially allied" with Modi following Khan's remarks. "'A vote for Modi is a vote for Pakistan', says Pak PM Imran Khan," he tweeted.

"Modi ji, first there was love for Nawaz Sharif and now Imran Khan is your dear friend. The truth is out in the open," Surjewala said in another tweet."

Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti also mocked the BJP by stating "bhakts were wondering if they should praise Imran Khan or not". She also said that the Prime Minister had "frittered away" the chance to hold dialogue with Pakistan.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Deep Industries rose 3.71% to Rs 142.50 at 14:16 IST on BSE after the company said it has received letter of award of contract from ONGC.

The announcement was made during trading hours today, 12 April 2019.

Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 160.12 points, or 0.41% to 38,767.13.

On the BSE, 3276 shares were traded in the counter so far compared with average daily volumes of 6066 shares in the past two weeks. The stock had hit a high of Rs 143.20 and a low of Rs 137 so far during the day. The stock hit a 52-week high of Rs 177.80 on 12 April 2018. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 79.10 on 6 July 2018.

Deep Industries said it has received letter of award (LoA) from ONGC for charter hiring of 01 No. of 50 MT work over rig for Ahmedabad asset for category-2 for a period of three years. The total estimated value of the said award is approximate Rs 18 crore.

Net profit of Deep Industries declined 18.34% to Rs 15.01 crore on 19.11% decline in net sales to Rs 60.39 crore in Q3 December 2018 over Q3 December 2017.

Deep Industries has grown up to be a "one stop solution" provider for every need in oil and gas field operations by catering various equipment and services under rental and chartered-hire basis.

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Tally Solutions, a leading international accounting and compliance software provider, will host a new edition of SMB Pulse in Dubai, UAE, with the aim of reaching maximum small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) to focus on the need to shift to automated accounting solutions.



The event, to be held on April 18, is a continuation of its business-focused event series designed to increase the productivity, efficiency, and profitability of SMBs in the UAE and the rest of the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region, said a statement.



The gathering will feature CA Manu Nair, CEO of the Emirates Chartered Accountants Group, who will shed light on modern challenges affecting business efficiency and how best to tackle them.



A Chartered Accountant and Management Accountant, CA Manu has more than 20 years of extensive experience in the fields of finance, accounts, audit, taxation, and management consultancy.



He has conducted more than a hundred seminars on value-added tax (VAT) across the UAE. The CEO has also done live talk shows on air, including Pravasi Bharathi, and conducted television interviews regarding the topic.



Vikas Panchal, business head at Tally Solutions in the Middle East, said: During the forum, SME representatives in the UAE and the rest of the GCC will have an opportunity to gain insights on the importance of shifting to automated accounting solutions as they operate their businesses under the new VAT system.



Moreover, SMB Pulse will be the platform to learn new ways to enhance their operational efficiency amidst the ever-evolving market landscape and increasing competition in the region. This in-demand event is open to all, such that we can accommodate more small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are seeking to achieve business efficiency, high productivity and profitability, and improved customer experience, he added.



SMEs are considered the backbone of economies worldwide, more so in the GCC region, where a large percentage of businesses belong to the sector. Figures released by MENA Research Partners show that the GCCs SME industry is expected to expand by 156 per cent over the next five years and will generate employment opportunities for 22 million people.



During the forum, the speaker will illustrate how adopting automated accounting solutions is a fundamental business strategy to achieve strong financial performance and robust business operations. Through the forum, we aim to present solutions to various everyday business challenges to increase operational efficiency and, consequently, improve productivity and profitability prospects, added Panchal.



The participants will have an opportunity to gain new perspectives on how to attain higher profitability rate and deliver enhanced customer experience through performance monitoring, financial management, and timely and effective compliance.



The key topics to be covered during the forum include Take control of your business - Cash & Outstanding Management; Master you Stock & Inventory Management; Profit & Cost Centre Management - Cost Control & Cost Analysis; Business Reports - Reflection of your Business Health; and Managing Compliance - Prevention, Detection & Correction Method.



Tallys tax accounting software is accredited by FTA through a vigilant verification of requirements that ensures the software is guaranteed to simplify the VAT compliance for businesses. Over the past one year, Tally has been helping more than 50,000 businesses comply with VAT regulations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia.



The company is an accounting solutions provider that helps clients achieve tax compliance and manage records in a timely and effective manner. Trusted by nearly 2 million businesses globally, Tally Solutions includes a list of satisfied clients across GCC, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd is quoting at Rs 7190, up 0.12% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The stock is up 19.84% in last one year as compared to a 10.67% jump in NIFTY and a 12.64% jump in the Nifty FMCG.

GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd is up for a fifth straight session today. The stock is quoting at Rs 7190, up 0.12% on the day as on 12:49 IST on the NSE. The benchmark NIFTY is up around 0.02% on the day, quoting at 11599.3. The Sensex is at 38619.15, up 0.03%. GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd has slipped around 0.75% in last one month.

Meanwhile, Nifty FMCG index of which GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd is a constituent, has slipped around 0.19% in last one month and is currently quoting at 30151.15, up 0.8% on the day. The volume in the stock stood at 3031 shares today, compared to the daily average of 23716 shares in last one month.

The PE of the stock is 33.12 based on TTM earnings ending December 18.

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Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates that the Nifty could fall 29 points at the opening bell. IT stocks Infosys and TCS declare their Q4 March 2019 results today, 12 April 2019.

Overseas, Asian stocks were trading mixed as investor caution prevailed ahead of the release of first-quarter corporate earnings. US stocks were little changed on Thursday as growing anxiety over a global economic slowdown offset upbeat data and investors waited for earnings season to kick into high gear.

Back home,key equity indices ended with small gains after a lackluster trading session yesterday, 11 April 2019. The Sensex rose 21.66 points or 0.06% to settle at 38,607.01. The Nifty 50 index rose 12.40 points or 0.11% to settle at 11,596.70.

The trading activity on that day showed that the foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 476.51 crore yesterday, 11 April 2019, as per provisional data released by the stock exchanges. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 16.58 crore yesterday, 11 April 2019, as per provisional data.

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At least 20 people were killed, almost half of them belonging to the Shia Hazara minority, and 48 injured when a bomb hidden in a sack of potatoes exploded in a crowded market in Pakistan's Quetta city on Friday.

According to Deputy Inspector General Abdul Razzaq Cheema, nine Hazara, one Frontier Corps (FC) soldier and two children were among the dead, Dawn online reported.

"The attack took place in a (green grocer's) shop (in Hazarganji area). An improvised explosive device (IED) was planted in a gunny sack filled with potatoes. We are yet to ascertain if it was timed or remote-controlled. An investigation is on," Cheema said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

While Cheema said the blast targeted the Hazara ethnic community, Balochistan Home Minister Ziaullah Langove called it a suicide bombing and that it didn't target "a specific community".

"Our guess is that no specific community was targeted. Marri Baloch and FC personnel were among those killed as well. The numbers of the Hazara community were just greater," Langove said. He described the blast as a suicide attack.

Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted: "Deeply saddened and have strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Hazarganji market area of Quetta targeting our innocent people. I have asked for an immediate inquiry and increased security for the people.

"Prayers go to the families of the victims and for early recovery of the injured."

President Arif Alvi and several politicians also condemned the bombing.

Initial police findings indicate the bomb had been planted before Hazara shoppers reached the market on Friday.

Nearly half a million Hazaras have settled in Quetta since fleeing Afghanistan to escape violence in their homeland during the past four decades. The city's Hazarganji area has been witness to similar attacks in the past.

Hazara shopkeepers are known to stock vegetables and fruits from the Hazarganji bazaar to sell at their own shops. They are provided security escorts to and from Hazarganji since they are constantly under threat of attack.

Cheema told Dawn that "people from the Hazara community come here daily in a convoy from Hazara town to buy vegetables. They are escorted by police and FC, and then they return there. It was the same today".

Following the blast, Qadir Nayil, a Hazara community leader, asked the Pakistan government to ensure better protection for them.

"Once again our people were the target... We demand more security from the government and all those involved in today's act of terrorism should be found and punished," he said.

--IANS

soni/bg

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least eight people were killed and several others injured in a blast on Friday targeting members of the Hazara community in Pakistan's Quetta city.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abdul Razzaq Cheema confirmed the toll and told Dawn News that seven victims belonged to the community, which has been targeted by sectarian violence as they are easily identifiable due to their distinctive physical appearance.

The police said that the toll might increase as many of the injured were in critical condition.

Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal strongly condemned the attack and assured that the elements involved in the attack would be strictly dealt with.

"People who have an extremist mindset are a menace to society," Kamal said, adding: "We must foil the conspiracy to disrupt peace."

A report released by the National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) last year stated that 509 members of the Hazara community were killed and 627 injured in various incidents of in Quetta from January 2012 to December 2017.

According to the NCHR, targeted killings, suicide attacks, and bomb blasts have inflicted harm to daily life, education, and business activities of ethnic Hazara community members in Balochistan's largest city.

--IANS

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The Army Commanders' Conference being held in the national capital has comprehensively deliberated all aspects of extant security dynamics, emerging security scenarios, enhancing operational capability and enhancement of combat edge over potential adversaries, as per a statement.

An apex level biannual event, which formulates important policy decisions, is being held from April 8-13.

The conference is an important event in planning and execution process of Indian Army with an aim to ensure due diligence, decisions are taken through collegiate system comprising Army Commanders and senior officers.

"It has been emphasized in the conference that Indian Army is committed to peaceful security environment and shall holistically address emerging threats, challenges and ensure no room for terror," reads the statement.

"Reviews during the conference included readiness, tri-services synergy, military diplomacy, joint exercises that have created capacity and environment and supporting operational plans that have evolved. Defence cooperation has facilitated new vistas and these shall provide excellent opportunities for enhancing strategic engagements."

All future conflicts would be planned and executed jointly by the three services, it said.

"For developing deeper understanding and enhancing jointness, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, Chief of Air Staff addressed Army Commanders and Staff wherein he conveyed vision and high credibility of IAF missions and ideas for synergised application," as per the statement.

"Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of Naval Staff and Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee has also addressed the Army Commanders and focused on jointness and challenges in maritime domain."

Additionally, to promote indigenisation through 'Make in India', an exhibition of emerging and future defence technological innovations was held, in which 53 domestic companies participated, it said.

"This interaction of industry representatives with the senior leadership of the Army facilitated in obtaining a direct feedback regarding product development and enhancement keeping in view the requirements of Army," reads the statement.

With a focus on the welfare of the families of brave soldiers who made supreme sacrifice in the services of the nation, year 2019 has been declared as the year of 'Next of Kin'.

--IANS

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Once hailed by the left as the champion of transparency and reviled by the right as a leaker of state secrets, Julian Assange is now trapped between them having played a role in the rise of a right-wing president and in the spread of hidden information embarrassing to the progressives.

As the founder of WikiLeaks, Assange, was among the first to demonstrate the tremendous power of the Internet and digital technology to pierce the secrecy of governments and impact and society.

The media fed off WikiLeaks data dump that he facilitated, even as it stayed a hands breadth away from legal complicity in obtaining the classified information for which others - and now Assange - paid the price.

Assange straddled the worlds of cyber activism and journalism as WikiLeaks is viewed as a media platform of which he had been the publisher.

Now the media is torn by his arrest, whether to defend him or to walk away, also has to calculate the impact on the profession.

Democratic Party Representative Tulsi Gabbard tweeted: "The arrest of Julian Assange is meant to send a message to all Americans and journalists: be quiet, behave, toe the line. Or you will pay the price."

A writer in the Columbia Journalism Review warned: "Going forward, journalists will need to be vigilant. Assange's case is specific, but the way the Justice Department responds to his arrest could have serious implications for all of us."

The American Civil Liberties Union also highlighted the threat to journalists. One of its project directors, Ben Wizner, said: "Any prosecution by the US of Assange for WikiLeaks' publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organisations."

So far, the US government has not charged him with espionage or aiding the enemy, which could directly involve the journalistic aspects of the leaks. He was charged in a federal court near Washington with only "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" for allegedly helping the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Elizabeth Manning crack passwords to ultra-secret computer networks that she used to get the information for him.

WikiLeaks and Assange became central to the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and collusion with President Donald Trump that have dominated American since then.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated the allegations, found that Russia had meddled in the polls through the leak of embarrassing material about the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, but he has absolved Trump of involvement.

This makes Assange less of a sympathetic character to the progressives and Democrats - and the media - because of Clinton's defeat.

Assange had first earned the wrath of the conservatives and the type of people forming Trump's base because of the government secrets he got from Manning, before she underwent sex-change and was then known as Bradley, in 2010. Of the more than 750,000 documents and other material she gave Assange in 2010, the most damaging to the US were videos of military action in Iraq involving civilians.

The Australian computer geek-turned-activist, Assange, shared them with media organisations producing hundreds of investigative stories around the world, not only on military affairs, but also diplomatic operations and internal political and economic affairs of many countries including India. These made enemies for him around the world.

But the trove of emails and documents purloined from Democratic party officials showing a bias in the party's leadership against Bernie Sanders, the leftist challenging Clinton, marked a turn of events. The disclosures led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other officials.

The upheaval that followed and the disenchantment of Sanders supporters is blamed for Clinton's defeat by President Donald Trump.

The Moscow's had was seen behind the leaks making Russia central to her defeat in the eyes of her supporters and Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate if Trump had colluded with Russians.

Although Assange denied he got them from the Russians, Mueller charged Russian hackers known as Guccifer 2.0 with the hack.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo exemplifies the dichotomy about Assange. On Thursday, he said about his arrest: "I don't have anything to say. There's a legal proceeding now."

But as the Central Intelligence Agency director in 2017, he called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia". He added that US intelligence had determined that the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had used WikiLeaks to release information it had gotten through hacks against the Democratic National Committee.

The WikiLeaks disclosures about India, mostly from US diplomatic cables going back several years, included material about contacts between politicians, public figures, journalists and civil society contacts with diplomats as well American diplomats' views of Indian developments right down to the microlevel of happenings in states.

Assange's accomplice in the court filings in the US, Manning was court martialed on 22 charges including aiding the enemy and was sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in a military prison. However, former President Barack Obama commuted to seven years before he left office and freed how.

But she is back in prison after a judge last month ordered her held indefinitely for refusing to testify before a court panel, known as a grand jury, investigating Assange and WikiLeaks.

Now in British custody, Assange like other fugitives such as Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, will try to fight the extradition to the US or Sweden using the British judicial system.

Trump, meanwhile, has refused to be drawn into a discussion of his arrest or role. "I don't really have an opinion. The Attorney General will be involved in that and he will make a decision," he said.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)

--IANS

al/ksk

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WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange, who was arrested in London on Thursday, will not be given any "special treatment" by his home country, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.

Speaking to Australia's national broadcaster ABC News on Friday, Morrison said Assange "will get the same treatment as everybody else".

Assange, who's accused of one of the largest leaks of classified information in the US, was arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday, where he had been living for nearly seven years after seeking asylum there.

He now faces potential extradition to the US, which has put in a request for him. The Justice Department announced a criminal charge against Assange, accusing him of conspiring with former American Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a classified US government computer.

He was also found guilty of skipping bail by a UK court.

"When Australians travel overseas and they find themselves in difficulties with the law, well, they face the judicial systems of those countries, it doesn't matter what particular crime it is they've alleged to have committed. That's the way the system works," Morrison told ABC.

"Assange will get the same support that any other Australian would ... he's not going to be given any special treatment."

Ecuador, which took Assange in when he was facing a Swedish rape investigation in 2012, said it was rescinding asylum because of his "discourteous and aggressive behaviour" and for violating the terms of his asylum.

Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson had said her client was "arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request".

On Friday, she said the Australian government should do more to intervene in the case, according to SBS News.

"It is time for the Australian government to step up and do what it should have done in 2010 when we asked them to do the first time, which is to reach out to the US, our ally and ask this prosecution be closed.

"This is a matter of free speech. It is an Australian citizen who faces years, potentially decades or life in prison for having published material that the Walkley Awards gave him the most outstanding contribution to Australian journalism for."

She said the legal team will fight the extradition request "all the way", saying the move was a "dangerous precedent" and threat to free speech.

"This precedent if he is extradited means any media organisation, any journalist anywhere in the world, who publishes truthful information about the US could face extradition and prosecution there."

--IANS

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Former US President Barack Obama paid tribute to the late rapper Nipsey Hussle.

"I'd never met Nipsey Hussle, but I'd heard some of his music through my daughters, and after his passing, I had the chance to learn more about his transformation and his community work," he said in a letter at his memorial service here.

"While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighbourhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets and despair, Nipsey saw potential. He saw hope. He saw a community that, even through its flaws, taught him to always keep going," Obama wrote in a letter.

The letter was read out by Hussle's friend Karen Civil during the public memorial service on Thursday, reported cnn.com.

Praising the "Double up" rapper, Obama said Hussle had lifted the "Eritrean-American community to set an example for young people to follow -- is a legacy worth of celebration".

"I hope his memory inspires more good work in Crenshaw and communities like it," he added.

Hussle was shot dead earlier this month while standing outside his store in South Los Angeles with two other men. He was 33.

--IANS

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China's Chang'e-4 probe's lander and the rover switched to dormant mode for the lunar night on Friday, with the rover travelling an accumulated 178.9 metres on the far side of the Moon.

The rover Yutu-2, or Jade Rabbit-2, is expected to awaken again on April 28, and the lander to awaken the following day, according to the Lunar Exploration and Space Programme Centre of the China National Space Administration, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Chang'e-4 probe made the first-ever soft-landing on the Von Karman Crater in the South Pole-Aitken Basin on the far side of the moon on January 3.

As a result of the tidal locking effect, the Moon's revolution cycle is the same as its rotation cycle, and the same side always faces the Earth.

The far side of the Moon was regarded as a virgin territory with unique features, and scientists expect important discoveries.

A lunar day equals 14 days on Earth, and a lunar night is the same length.

According to the measurements of Chang'e-4, the temperature of the shallow layer of the lunar soil on the far side of the Moon dropped to as low as minus 190 degrees Celsius, lower than data obtained by the US Apollo mission on the near side of the Moon.

The 135-kg lunar rover Jade Rabbit-2 is the first-ever rover to drive on the Moon's far side, as well as the lightest rover ever sent to the Moon.

--IANS

rt/ksk

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Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) and GE Power have announced the launch of the Predix Asset Performance Management (APM) application at the 970 megawatts (MW) L1 power station.



The landmark project marks the first digital transformation of a power plant by GE Power in the UAE, said a statement from GE.



GEs Predix APM is a suite of software and service solutions designed to help improve the performance of assets. It connects disparate data sources and uses advanced analytics to turn data into actionable insights while fostering collaboration and knowledge-management across an organisation.



Predix APM reduces unplanned downtime and increases availability and reliability by helping to ensure critical assets and systems are monitored and protected from emerging threats, it stated.



It also improves workforce productivity by prioritising maintenance based on criticality and cost (condition-based), rather than schedule-based maintenance practices and reduces costly emergency repairs by detecting problems early, reducing unplanned downtime, thus introducing predictive maintenance into our business process, it added.



Predix APM has helped customers around the globe to achieve up to 5 percent increase in availability, among other benefits.



Dewa CEO and Managing Director Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer said: "The digital transformation of our assets and facilities is a key component of our plan to support the National Innovation Strategy announced by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, to make the UAE one of the most innovative countries in the world."



"By collaborating with GE, we are enhancing the performance of the L1 power station, taking the technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotics, Blockchain, and the Internet of Things to support the 10X initiative to propel Dubai into the future, putting it 10 years ahead of other global cities through disruptive innovation and R&D, for generations to come," he added.



GE said it had implemented Predix APM on more than 130 assets at the L1 power station located in Jebel Ali, Dubai and will monitor the assets on a continuous basis for a period of two years.



During this period, GE will also provide trainings for Dewas staff to help build in-house capability for them to run Predix APM, analyze the data and develop insights.



"Dewa is at the forefront of driving digitisation and innovation initiatives in the power sector and we are honored to support their digital transformation journey," said Sadi Awienat, Chief Digital Officer of GE Power in Africa, India and the Middle East.



"GEs Predix platform has helped our customers and partners around the world to draw on the power of data to enhance power plant reliability and availability. As the first digital power plant in the UAE, Dewas L1 station will now have a strong digital backbone that will help to further improve operations over the life-cycle of the facility," he added.



Dewa and GE are currently collaborating on several projects, including the flagship Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park and Hassyan Clean Coal project. Dewa has also signed an agreement with GE Power for the upgrade of gas turbines at its Jebel Ali E Power Station.-TradeArabia News Service
The Congress on Friday moved the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in repeatedly.

Congress leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Singh Surjewala also raised the issues of Union Minister Smriti Irani submitting "contradictory affidavits" to the Election Commission on her educational qualifications and also about a web series on Modi.

Talking to the media after meeting the EC, Singhvi said PM, the President of the ruling party and its other leaders are "shamelessly dragging the armed forces for cheap "

"Never in the history has this happened," he said, adding the web series on Modi is also a violation of the Model Code of Conduct as it is biographical in nature and it should be banned immediately.

"If the person makes another violation, he/she should be barred from two days of campaigning, similarly three and four days for the third and fourth violation," he said.

Speaking about Irani's qualification, Surjewala said the Congress is not commenting on her qualification, saying they believe that even the illiterate can also hold high positions.

"But the question is the people have been cheated and the Minister has lied to them about her qualifications."

The Congress has submitted a memorandum to the EC over Irani "repeatedly lying" about her qualifications.

"There is no information about the degree of the PM and also his favourite minister Irani. There are no classmates of the PM and Irani who are coming out. This is a very serious issue as the people have been cheated repeatedly."

Surjewala demanded that the EC should disqualify Irani for changing her qualifications multiple times.

He also said that there should be a strict action and Union Minister Maneka Gandhi should be sacked for her remarks and for "dividing people".

Addressing an election rally, she had said that she would like to win without support of Muslims and would not want to give jobs to them if they did not vote for her.

The party also urged the Election Commission to issue directions to all Chief Electoral Officers, booth level officers and other election officials to ensure proper functioning of EVMs during the Lok Sabha elections. It also sought immediate investigation into the malfunctioning of the EVMs and other issues reported from various parts of the country during the first phase of polls on April 11.

It said posters of Gen VK Singh were posted right outside a polling station. The party also alleged that BJP candidate from Tehri Garhwal parliamentary constituency "printed voter slips on her election pamphlet".

The party said it was making fifth request for "urgent and necessary" intervention against Modi's "continued and brazen violation" of the Model Code of Conduct and in particular the "hateful and divisive comments by him", Shah and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in election rallies at Nanded, Nagpur and Meerut.

In its representation against Irani, Congress called for immediate action for filing "false affidavit", saying it attracts "up to six months imprisonment and/or fine".

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bharatnatyam dancer Rukmini Chatterjee, who has performed globally and has lived in Paris for 25 years, feels that acquaintance with diverse cultures "gives us a big edge over others". She is curating 'Connections', a festival which hosts Chinese dancers with French jazz musicians and opens on Friday.

The three-day international performing arts festival is being held at the Shri Ram Centre for Performing Arts (SRCPA). It is hosting the Remi Panossian Jazz Trio and performers from the Beijing Dance Academy.

Asked about the converging cultures of the world, the choreographer who trained under Mrinalini Sarabhai, said: "It should be an essential part of people's lives today since we live in a knowledge economy and a global village".

"My artistic path for the past 28 years has been that of bringing cultures together on the same stage, crossing borders of all sorts, and getting artists and art forms from across the globe to dialogue," Chatterjee told IANS in an email.

"Knowing and understanding other cultures gives us a big edge over others, by widening our horizons and making us much more capable of dealing with global situations, psychologies, economies and many other domains," she added.

Her leitmotif for the Connections festival, since its inception in 2014, has been selecting performances that touch the hearts and minds of people.

Lined up this year is the Beijing Dance Academy, whose aesthetics come from their martial arts, acrobatics, ancient poetry, painting and drama, and who are performing for the first time in India.

As per the organisers, some of the dances have been created by the choreographer of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony. "Our endeavour has been to bridge the gap between the old and the new by building bridges between our ancient culture and our modern audiences," they told IANS.

Chatterjee, with her vast repertoire of international performances, also shared that the performances that excite her the most connect deeply with audiences across cultures and countries.

"They could be profoundly anchored in their own cultures, but are also universal in nature. Two totally disparate genres can still have a lot in common," she explained.

This merging of cultures is visible in her own oeuvre of performances and personal life - as she mentions Paris as a city that attracts world cultures and the Upanishads, which profoundly uphold the values of the universal man, as deep influences on her work.

'Connections', curated by Chatterjee, will conclude here on April 14. Dancers from the Opera of Paris, Contemporary Circus, Norwegian pop-rock music, Contemporary Flamenco have previously performed in the festival.

Tickets for the show can be bought online on www.bookmyshow.com.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cable operators in Pakistan were on Friday warned by the country's media regulatory authority of "strict action" if they air Indian channels.

Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) Chairman Mirza Saleem Baig said in a press conference that cable operators do not have permission to air Indian television channels and asked them to show more local channels, Geo News reported.

Pakistan's Supreme Court had in March reinstated a ban on the airing of Indian content on local television channels.

The top court had set aside an earlier ruling by the Lahore High Court (LHC) and reinstated a 2016 policy of the federal government banning the transmission of Indian content on local television channels.

--IANS

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Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel in former President Barack Obama's administration, was charged with lying to the Justice Department and concealing information about work he did in 2012 for Ukraine.

Craig, in a video posted on YouTube on Thursday night, called the charges against him "unprecedented and unjustified", and expressed confidence "that both the judge and the jury will agree with me", reports The New York Times.

The indictment of Craig, 74, stemmed from an investigation initiated by the office of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

The Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, had been the basis for charges brought against several people who had been investigated by Mueller. The 1938 law requires Americans to register with the Justice Department when they lobby or do public relations in the United States for foreign politicians, parties or governments.

Before Craig's indictment, the recent charges brought in cases initiated by Mueller had accused people of failing to disclose their lobbying work.

The charges against Craig, on the other hand, stem from public relations, rather than lobbying.

While Craig was not charged with failing to register under the law, the indictment accuses him of lying to, and withholding information from, the Justice Department officials who oversee FARA in order to avoid registration.

"Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA Unit because he had not done anything that required his registration," his lawyers William Taylor and William Murphy, said in a statement on Thursday, referring to the part of the Justice Department that oversees the law.

Craig's indictment also attracted notice because he is the first person who made his name in Democratic Party politics to be charged in a case linked to Mueller's investigation.

Craig also held prominent positions in the administration of former President Bill Clinton.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gregory Craig, who was White House counsel under President Barack Obama, has been indicted on charges of lying and hiding information related to his work for Ukraine.

Craig, 74, was indicted by a grand jury in Washington on Thursday following an investigation that grew out of US special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He has denied any wrongdoing, the US media reported.

Craig faces up to five years in prison for each of the two counts. He is the first prominent Democrat to face criminal prosecution as a result of Mueller's probe, which led to the conviction of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for a series of financial crimes.

Craig was charged with giving false information during an October 19, 2017, interview with the special counsel's office which regulates work in the US by lobbyists, lawyers and other representatives of foreigners under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to CNBC.

He is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his work on a 2012 report aimed at justifying the prosecution of a political enemy of Ukraine's pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych, who was later ousted. Craig's lawyers declined to comment.

He was also charged with concealing details of his work from the same officials.

Craig's attorneys said that the charges were unfair and that prosecutors had chosen to omit evidence that was favourable to him. "Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA unit because he had not done anything that required his registration," they said.

"That is what this trial will be all about."

Craig worked in 2012 for Ukraine's Ministry of Justice while he was a partner at the prestigious law firm Skadden Arps. Manafort, meanwhile worked as a consultant to Yanukovych.

Prosecutors said on Thursday that, if convicted, Craig could also be fined up to $100,000 and $250,000 for the respective charges.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Retired Pope Benedict XVI has broken his silence on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, claiming that it was caused in part by the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the liberalisation of the church's moral teaching.

In an 11-page analysis published on Thursday in a German magazine for priests, Klerusblatt, the former Pope also revealed some of the behind-the-scenes struggles between the Vatican and American bishops in handling the crisis and admits that the Vatican was initially overwhelmed in dealing with it, CNN reported.

"Since I myself had served in a position of responsibility as shepherd of the Church at the time of the public outbreak of the crisis, and during the run-up to it, I had to ask myself -- even though, as emeritus, I am no longer directly responsible -- what I could contribute to a new beginning," Benedict wrote, in explaining why he is speaking out now.

Since his resignation in 2013, Benedict, 92, has rarely left his monastery high on a hill in Vatican City.

In the essay, he asserted that the changes in traditional moral standards on sexuality both in society and within the Catholic Church laid the groundwork for the sex abuse crisis.

"Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of '68," he writes, "was that paedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate".

Benedict said that this mentality also affected bishops and Catholic seminaries and caused, "the extensive collapse of the next generation of priests".

"In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established," he writes, "which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries".

Benedict cites one bishop who showed seminarians pornographic films, "allegedly with the intention of thus making them resistant to behaviour contrary to the faith".

Liberal theologians who questioned the church's traditional norms on sexuality are also partly to blame, the former Pope added.

Benedict also revealed that the Vatican's two investigations into US seminaries, called Apostolic Visitations, were thwarted by cover-up. But he did not not elaborate on who was involved.

As word of Benedict's essay spread, conservative Catholics hailed it, while others called it "embarrassing", CNN said.

"This is an embarrassing letter. The idea that ecclesial abuse of children was a result of the 1960s, a supposed collapse of moral theology, and 'conciliarity' is an embarrassingly wrong explanation for the systemic abuse of children and its coverup," wrote Catholic theologian Brian Flanagan on Twitter.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Delhi Police have arrested an interstate gunrunner from Madhya Pradesh with 21 illegal sophisticated semi-automatic pistols and 42 magazines, a police officer said on Friday.

Mohd. Israr, 28, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district, was arrested on Thursday after a Special Cell team raided his hideout near Fauji Dharam Khanta in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh.

"Israr was evading arrest for over six months and a reward of Rs 10,000 was declared on his arrest," Deputy Commissioner of Police Sanjeev Kumar Yadav said.

"On interrogation, Israr disclosed that he used to purchase arms from Burhanpur in Madhya Pradesh and supplied the illegal consignments of firearms to his contacts in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana with the help of his carriers Vineet and Ram Kumar who were earlier arrested by the Delhi Police," Yadav added.

"Israr had been supplying illegal consignments of firearms for the last four years. After the arrest of his carriers, he escaped from his residence in a bid to evade arrest. He later along with six associates committed an armed dacoity in Ajmer," the DCP said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi High Court has dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a ban on Kashmiri leaders Mehbooba Mufti, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah from participating in the Lok Sabha elections.

A division bench headed by Justice Ravindra Bhat asked petitioner and advocate Sanjjiiv Kkumar to approach the Election Commission.

Thereafter, the petitioner withdrew his plea.

The court on Thursday was hearing the petition which has sought a direction to the poll panel to ban the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from taking part in the general elections as "the loyalties of the leaders of these parties lie elsewhere and not in the Indian Constitution".

The petition has also sought direction to book them on various charges including sedition.

In his plea, the petitioner said allowing these leaders to contest the elections would be a mockery of democracy as these people openly call for a division of "Mother India" on the basis of religion and are demanding two Prime Ministers -- one for Jammu and Kashmir and another for the rest of India.

The petitioner told the court that National Conference President Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah's statements that they would demand revival of the post of Wazir-e-Azam and Sadar-e-Riyasat for Kashmir was unacceptable.

"Mehbooba Mufti, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah's seditious, communal statements are against the Indian Constitution and hence the court/Election Commission should bar/impose conditions on their entry to a very constitutional House (Lok Sabha) as their loyalties lie somewhere else and not to the Indian Constitution," the plea said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Himachal Pradesh Minister Anil Sharma, who has refused to campaign against his son-cum-Congress candidate Ashray Sharma, on Friday quit the cabinet, upset over remarks by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur.

But Anil Sharma has not resigned either from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or from the state Assembly.

"Jai Ram Thakur gave some statements against me in my constituency yesterday (Thursday) and I am upset. This morning I decided to quit from his cabinet and submitted my resignation to his office," Sharma, who held the Power portfolio, told reporters here.

He clarified that he had not resigned from the Legislative Assembly.

"I am still a member of the BJP but I will not campaign for any party candidate," he added. "If the BJP desires, it can sack me from the party."

The friction between the Chief Minister and the Minister surfaced when the latter's son Ashray Sharma left the BJP and rejoined the Congress along with his grandfather Sukh Ram, a former Union Telecom Minister.

Ashray Sharma is the Congress candidate from Mandi. He is pitted against BJP's sitting MP Ram Swaroop Sharma.

The Chief Minister on Thursday told his Power Minister that being a BJP member, "it's his duty and responsibility to work for the party".

"If he doesn't want to campaign for the BJP in Mandi, then he must quit both the cabinet and the party. We can even remove him from the cabinet and the party," Thakur told IANS.

Popularly known as Panditji in Mandi, six-time MLA and three-time MP Sukh Ram, 91, and his grandson Ashray Sharma rejoined the Congress on March 25 after quitting the BJP.

Anil Sharma had earlier announced that he would campaign for the BJP but not against his son.

Himachal Pradesh will vote in its four Lok Sabha seats on May 19.

--IANS

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Hundreds of people, including students, local residents and even visitors, held a candlelight march in Amritsar on Friday evening on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by British Indian forces.

People carried candles in their hands and slowly walked the 1-km distance from the Town Hall building in Amritsar's walled city area towards the Jallianwala Bagh near the Golden Temple complex.

People could be seen carrying and waving scores of national flags with patriotic songs playing in the background.

The march ended at the Jallianwala Bagh where homage was paid to the martyrs.

The 100th anniversary of the killing of hundreds of unarmed, innocent Indians, including women and children, who were protesting peacefully against the Rowlatt Act of the British government, by British Indian forces led by Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, falls on April 13, 1919.

The massacre is one of the darkest chapters of India's freedom struggle to free the country from British occupation. It showed the brutal repression unleashed by the British on Indian subjects.

Punjab Governor V.P. Singh Badnore, state Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, cabinet minister Om Prakash Soni and other prominent people, including members of the families of those killed in the massacre, joined the candlelight march.

Tight security arrangements were made by the Punjab Police and security agencies for the event.

The British government, even after 100 years, has only regretted the massacre but stopped short of apologizing for the killing of so many innocent people.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi is expected to arrive here on Friday night and pay homage to the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh on Saturday (April 13).

Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu will arrive here on Saturday afternoon for the main function to commemorate the 100 years of the massacre.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Vertex Aerospace has expanded its global presence by establishing a regional office in Abu Dhabi, where it will offer complete solutions for aftermarket aerospace services for government and commercial clients.

The company received its licence to practice business in the UAE on March 5 under its Vertex Global Aerospace business line.

Vertex Global Aerospace (VGA) was formed on January 1, 2019. The leadership of the newly established VGA business line held a soft opening February 16, 2019, at its Abu Dhabi location and attended the city's International Defence Exhibition and Conference in the same week.

Steve Suttles, senior director of VGA's Middle East and Africa business operations, said the company is pleased to open its first regional office in the UAE.

"Abu Dhabi is modern, business friendly, and perfectly positioned within the region for easy access to over 75 countries," said Suttles. "We believe the security, stability, and economy in the UAE are strong and we are happy to support strategies and policies that promote the region."

Suttles said he is excited about the Company's recently formed partnerships in the UAE as well as future international opportunities.

"We currently have contracts in Kuwait and plan to expand our presence in the Middle East and African regions," Suttles said. "This makes the UAE strategically the optimal location to establish our first global footprint with trusted partners."

New York-based private equity firm American Industrial Partners purchased Vertex Aerospace in June 2018 to operate as a standalone company. The company now has the capability to provide full-spectrum aerospace support worldwide and has grown its annual revenue to over $1.2 billion. Vertex began its business as a product support division of Beechcraft in 1975. Over the past 43 years, the company has been owned by divisions of Raytheon, L-3 Technologies, and private equity companies.

Vertex Aerospace is a global defence company that provides all aftermarket aerospace services for government and private sector customers. The Mississippi-based company has over 4,200 employees at its 65 US and 35 international locations and proudly employs a 50 percent veteran workforce.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has won 36 seats and surpassed the main rival, the Blue and White party in the 2019 Israel election, official results showed.

According to the Central Election Committee chief Judge Hanan Melcer, the results were released by the committee on Thursday night after two days of counting ballots and delays caused by computer malfunctions, Xinhua reported.

Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party won 36 seats while the centrist Blue and White, led by an ex-army chief, gained 35 seats, the results showed.

Netanyahu now needs to form a governing coalition with at least 61 members in Israel's 120-seat parliament, or the Knesset. He already said he intends to build a coalition with right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.

His likely partners include Shas, with eight seats, and United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, both Jewish ultra-Orthodox parties.

The United Right, a new alliance of pro-settler lists and another likely partner in Netanyahu's coalition, gained five seats.

Israel Our Home, led by Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right politician and Netanyahu's former defense minister, gained five seats.

Kulanu, a center-right party, gained four seats. Overall, the right-wing bloc includes 65 seats.

The Labor party, Israel's largest opposition party which had 18 seats in the recent parliament, gained only six seats this time.

Meretz, a left-wing party, lost one seat and will enter the parliament with four seats only.

Hadash-Ta'al, an alliance of Arab parties, won six seats, and Ra'am-Balad, another Arab party alliance, won four seats.

The Blue and White party, Netanyahu's main challenger in the elections, conceded defeat on Wednesday night, vowing to serve as a "fierce opposition" to Netanyahu.

The results mean Netanyahu is heading for a record fifth term in office and would become Israel's longest-serving Prime Minister.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Israel's Beresheet, the first privately-funded mission to the moon, crashed in the last part of its journey, moments before it was supposed to land, the media reported.

The spacecraft aimed to perform a soft landing on the moon and would have made Israel the fourth country to do so -- and by far the smallest. Only the US, the former Soviet Union and China have done it before, CNN reported.

"I am sorry to say that our spacecraft did not make it in one piece to the moon," Opher Doron, the manager of Israel Aerospace Industries' Space Division, said on Thursday.

"We made it all the way to the moon. This is a great accomplishment. We are the seventh country to make it all the way to the moon."

The $100 million spacecraft, built by SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries, lost communications with the control room during the landing sequence. As programme managers who had been watching the mission in real time tried to re-establish communications, they also dealt with issues in the spacecraft's main engine.

At the time of the communications failure, the Beresheet was travelling at approximately 2,110 mph and was about 120 km from its intended landing site.

SpaceIL was founded eight years ago to compete for the Google Lunar XPrize. The contest offered $20 million for the first privately funded team to launch a spacecraft to the moon, transmit high-definition video and travel 500 meters in any direction.

The XPrize was cancelled in January 2018 but the Israeli team decided to continue its pursuit of the moon landing.

The Beresheet spacecraft was launched on board a Falcon 9 rocket in February. It travelled a total of 4 million miles to the moon, soaring around the Earth before entering orbit around the moon.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actor Shahid Kapoor and the team of "Kabir Singh" has completed the upcoming movie's shoot after days of filming in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Mumbai.

Actress Kiara Advani, who is playing the lead lady in the film, took to Instagram on Thursday to share pictures from the wrap-up party.

In one image, the team is seen cutting a cake on a beach.

The teaser of the film led to a Twitter storm, with fans and film fraternity members praising Shahid for his intense and rugged look.

On the character, Shahid on Thursday posted on Instagram: "As a star, one is so conditioned to showcasing oneself at one's best. But as an actor, one has to have the guts to show yourself at your worst. Kabir Singh in my blood. Hope you feel him too."

"Kabir Singh" is a remake of popular Telugu hit film "Arjun Reddy" that originally starred Vijay Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey.

--IANS

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was re-elected as chairman of the highest decision-making body in the country at a major parliamentary meeting during which members of the team that manages talks with the US were also reappointed, state media said on Friday.

As expected, Kim was re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission during the first session of the new Supreme People's Assembly, the country's legislature, held on Thursday, Efe news quoted the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) as saying.

Kim was first elected chairman of this commission in June 2016, when this body was originally created.

In turn, Kim Jae-ryong, a senior party official, was appointed premier of the cabinet, replacing Pak Pong-ju, according to KCNA.

Choe Ryong-hae, who during the first years of Kim Jong-un's term was considered the number two in the regime, replaces veteran Kim Yong-nam, aged 91, as President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea, a position Kim Yong-nam had held since 1998.

The main delegate of the US negotiating team and one of the heads of North Korean intelligence, Kim Yong-chol, maintained his position in the State Affairs Commission, as well as another key figure in the denuclearization talks, Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho.

Some analysts had pointed to the possibility that, after the failure of the Hanoi summit, Kim Jong-un would opt to change these delegates.

But the leader has kept them in their positions or supported their promotion, as has happened with the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Choe Son-hui, who was elected for the first time as a member of the State Affairs Commission at the parliamentary meeting on Thursday.

The disagreement in Hanoi revolved around the number of North Korean arms assets to be dismantled - in addition to nuclear weapons, Washington advocated that Pyongyang also dismantle chemical and biological missiles and weapons - and the volume of sanctions on the regime that the US would alleviate as a corresponding measure.

Washington considered insufficient what was offered by Pyongyang, as it called for the lifting of many sanctions in exchange for disabling its Yongbyon nuclear research centre.

The North Korean parliamentary session coincided with the summit held in Washington by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in which they stressed the need to keep the dialogue alive despite the setback in Hanoi.

Trump was open to reaching "small deals" with North Korea which do not necessarily have to do with denuclearization, but he remained firm in his refusal to make economic concessions to Pyongyang.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched a broadside on his party's political rivals in Kerala and said it was time the people of the state gave Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a chance.

"For decades the Communist CPI-M and the communal Congress have failed Kerala. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) are different only in name as both have taken turns to loot the state. The BJP-led NDA presents an alternative which will serve each and every citizen," Modi told a mammoth Vijay Sankalp rally here.

This was the Prime Minister's first election rally in the state, after which he left for Tamil Nadu.

Attacking the Left and the Congress, Modi pointed out that both had double standards. "Look at their position on triple talaq. Those who are caught in the ice cream parlour case and the solar scam are speaking about women's empowerment," he said.

Referring to the Sabarimala temple issue, he said: "It's very bad that believers who protested were caned. Centuries-old tradition and faith will not be allowed to be destroyed. As long as the BJP is there, the force of the LDF and the farce of the UDF will not work. I assure you that our party will be there to protect our culture."

Modi also assured his party workers that their work will not go in vain. "Just look at what happened in Tripura. From a bare presence, we have now formed the government there and the same will happen in Kerala," he added.

--IANS

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The ruling Maldives Democratic Party (MDP) has won the parliamentary elections by securing the highest win -- 65 seats in the 87-member Parliament -- in the island nation's history, the Elections Commission announced on Friday.

Elections Commission spokesperson Ahmed Akram told Xinhua news agency that it was highest win for a single party which now gave the MDP a majority in Parliament.

Former President Abdulla Yameen's Progressive Party of Maldives and the People's National Congress together won eight seats while the Jumhooree Party had secured five seats.

The Maldives Development Alliance won two seats while Independent candidates won seven seats.

According to the Elections Commission results, 212,079 people out of 264,442 cast their vote in the parliamentary election held last Saturday.

Election observers said the poll was conducted peacefully.

President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih who is leading the MDP, following the announcement of the preliminary results earlier this week, congratulated all the winners.

--IANS

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Union Minister Maneka Gandhi on Friday kicked off a major controversy when she told Muslims in Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh to vote for her if they wanted jobs.

Addressing an election rally in Turab Khani village, she said that she would not give jobs to Muslims if they did not vote for her. She also said that she would not like it if she won without the support of Muslims.

"My feelings get hurt. If Muslims then come to me asking for work, then I will think let it be, how does it matter? Dil khatta hi jayega. After all, a job is a deal," she said, making it clear that Muslims should not expect jobs if they do not vote for her.

Gandhi further said that Muslim voters need to understand that it was a give and take relation.

"It is not that I will keep on giving without getting your support in return in elections. We are not children of Mahatma Gandhi," she said.

She further said: "I have already won the elections, but you will need me. This is your chance to lay the foundation. When the election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work we will see...

"I don't see any divide, I see only pain, sadness and love. So it is up to you..."

She said: "You can ask anyone in Pilibhit about the kind of work I did there. If you feel I haven't done enough, you can decide not to vote for me."

Gandhi's three-minute speech went viral on social media and led to outrage for its blatant communal content.

The Congress has termed Gandhi's statement "scandalous".

Maneka Gandhi is contesting from Sultanpur, a seat won by her son Varun Gandhi in 2014. Varun Gandhi is contesting from his mother's seat Pilibhit.

--IANS

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has privately urged Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the heir to the Saudi throne, to cut his ties to a close adviser whom Washington has sanctioned for his alleged role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

According to a Guardian report on Friday, Pompeo was understood to have raised his concerns about Saud al-Qahtani in private conversations with Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, and his brother Khalid bin Salman.

The report said that US authorities believe that Qahtani, a former aide to the Crown Prince, oversaw the team that killed Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and a critic of the Crown Prince, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.

He is thought to have remained a confidant of Prince Mohammed despite having a lower profile in recent months. He formerly served as the head of Saudi's cyber-unit.

The Guardian said that the advice to sideline Qahtani comes at a time when Pompeo's support for Saudi Arabia is facing intense scrutiny in Congress, where the Donald Trump administration has been criticized for not condemning Saudi Arabia strongly enough following Khashoggi's murder.

A US State Department spokesperson told the newspaper it would not discuss details of private diplomatic conversations.

Qahtani was publicly rebuked after the Khashoggi murder, when Saudi King Salman had his son's adviser removed from his role at the royal court, according to the daily.

But within months, reports emerged that Qahtani was still communicating with MBS and was actively participating in his crackdown against dissidents.

According to the Guardian, Qahtani is still actively engaged in a similar role within Prince Mohammed's private office.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday again nudged Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar to speak out against the proposal for making two Prime Ministers - one for Jammu and Kashmir and another for India, as propounded by some of the Congress party's allies.

"We have no expectations on this from Congress, they are reaping what they sowed. But what's wrong with you, Sharadrao? For how long will you keep quiet on this demand for two PMs? Your party's name has 'nationalist' in it, but is it only to defraud the people of the country?" Modi asked.

He questioned how, with Pawar around, could people speak of two Prime Ministers in one country, and also wondered how the NCP chief could tolerate such separatist talk when he hails from the "land of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj" and had served as a former Union Defence Minister as well.

The Prime Minister's comments on the issue come again after his remarks on similar lines at his previous political rallies held in Maharashtra recently.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday again nudged NCP President Sharad Pawar to denounce a proposal to make two "Prime Ministers" - one for Jammu and Kashmir and another for India as propounded by some Congress allies.

Modi's comments came again at a public meeting in Ahmednagar in western Maharashtra - Pawar's home turf - after his remarks on similar lines at his previous political rallies in the state.

"We have no expectations on this from Congress, they are reaping what they sowed. But what's wrong with you, Sharadrao? For how long will you keep quiet on this demand for two Prime Ministers? Your party's name has 'nationalist' in it, but is it only to defraud the people of the country?" Modi asked.

Needling Pawar, Modi asked why the Maratha strongman - who had left the Congress in 1999 - was keeping mum and accused both Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party of joining hands with those who want to separate Jammu and Kashmir from India.

Modi questioned how, with Pawar around, could people speak of two Prime Ministers in one country, and also wondered how the NCP chief could tolerate such blatant separatist talk when he hails from the "land of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj" and had served as a former Union Defence Minister as well.

Vowing to safeguard the country's security and integrity, Modi asked whether the youth wanted "an honest Chowkidar" or a "corrupt naamdar" (Gandhis), would they choose India's heroes or those who are heroes in Pakistan.

He urged that it was up to the people to decide what direction the country will take.

One the one side, he said, were the Congress' hollow promises and on the other the BJP's firm commitments.

Modi said that during the Congress-NCP rule in Maharashtra, there were only terror strikes in Mumbai. However, nothing like this was witnessed during the BJP rule which he said had tackled terror with a firm hand.

"Compared to the previous Congress-led government, the world has now witnessed a strong and decisive government in the past five years. The global community views us as a major power," he said, recounting the government's achievements since 2014.

This was Modi's first rally in western Maharashtra region, the home turf of some of the most powerful Maratha clans.

--IANS

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Help India!

By Auqib Javeed, TwoCircles.net

Srinagar: The Shias of Kashmir Valley strongly rebuffed the Bhartiya Janta Partys (BJP) attempts to attract their voters in the upcoming elections, and instead argued that the Shias of Kashmir have given exemplary sacrifices for the cause of freedom.

According to reports, the right-wing Party is trying hard to lure the Shia voters ahead of the parliamentary and the upcoming assembly polls to get some seats from the Valley.

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Regardless of their backwardness, which they blame to their clergy comprising of Agas and Ansaris, the minority sect of Islam especially the youth said they wont vote in coming elections, while others said they would vote on the directions of their leaders come what may.

As long as the BJP doesnt get an Aga or Ansari to campaign for them, Shias will not vote for them. It is as simple as that, says Samir Ali, a political science student from Zadibal area of Srinagar City.

Despite several attempts, the BJP has failed to get any seat from the Valley and are now trying to push a sectarian divide to open their account in Kashmir.

For Javeed Ahmad, all political parties are the same and they have hardly done any work for the upliftment of the Shia community.

Javeed, however, says BJP is just after power and anyone associated with them is doing so for their own vested interests. Reports suggest the BJP has promised to revoke the ban on Muharram processions, increase the Haj quota and separate Waqf Board in an attempt to lure Shia votes. Saqib Mugloo, a Valley-based journalist says the BJP is as much an enemy of Shias as much they are of Sunnis. The fear they have instilled in Muslims has no substitute and allowing Muharram procession or giving reservations is no solace for the pain the Hindutva party has instilled on Muslims regardless of the sects. They are least concerned about Shias or Sunnis, Saqib says. According to reports, BJP had conducted an in-house survey pertaining to the various religious and ethnic sects in Kashmir valley back 2011. According to the data compiled in the survey, the Shia voters comprise approximately 14% vote in erstwhile Kashmir division which included Ladakh as well. Reports suggest the survey also carried the profile of Shia population at district and village levels so that it could effectively engage with community voters for political gains. For decades, Shias have been ruled by Aagas and Ansaries the two religious-cum-political families. However, the people say the two have exploited Shias under the garb of religion and imposing fear to garner votes. Agas and Ansaries are two religious families whose ancestors have served the Shia communities for decades and who eventually joined politics and became the political leaders among Shias.

See the conditions of Shias we have Kashmirs largest slum in Boud Dal where people live in a pathetic condition. For decades, the inhabitants have voted for the Ansaris but they couldnt change anything, said Shahid Hussain, a medial representative. Rashid Maqbool, Assistant Professor at the Central University of Kashmir believes that what BJP is doing right now has been an age-old practice of all the powers since the time of the British. They may not create a division among Shias and Sunnis, but they try to exploit the fault lines. Rashid sees this just an election stunt. The BJP knows the fault lines of Shia voters, so to hit their nerve they have promised for revocation of Muharram ban, the increase in Haj quota and many other things. But the reality is after winning the elections they will not even like to see them, he says. The Shia population of Kashmir has in the past and continues to, participate in Kashmiri politics on every front, whether on the side of separatists or of mainstream politics. There is a wrong impression being created that this particular community supports only pro-India parties. This is a fallacylike Sunnis, Shias are in every camp. So the BJP should understand that they cant divide us, Rashid says, adding that the BJP politics has always been sectarian and communal in every state; they try to exploit the fault lines everywhere ahead of elections to play their politics and same applies here. Zafar Mehdi, a Kashmiri journalist currently based in Iran, says appeasement politics and ill-conceived election gimmicks especially of this kind have never worked on the Shias. Such moves have been attempted in the past too. We refuse to fall into this vicious trap. We refuse to accept Indias colonization and the insipid charade of democracy, Zafar said. A top Shai cleric and politician, while speaking with TwoCircle.net said the BJP was desperate to woo voters on the basis of religion. But they must understand the Shias of Kashmir are mature enough to understand their political gimmicks. Our voters know whom to vote for, said Imran Raza Ansari, a former Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) politician who is now a part of Peoples Conference (PC). Last year, in a significant move that sent shockwaves among the security establishments in the state, Shias in Srinagar displayed a portrait of Burhan Wani, the slain Hizbul Mujahideen commander in the Muharram procession to show their love and respect for the freedom movement. Many Shia youths have been arrested and detained under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing two election rallies in Tamil Nadu on Saturday, said an official of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

"Modi will be addressing a meeting in Theni in the morning and then in Ramanathapuram," the BJP official told IANS on Friday.

The Prime Minister is expected to arrive in Madurai later on Friday and spend the night in this temple town.

At Theni, Modi will seek the support of voters for candidates of the AIADMK-led alliance contesting in Theni, Dindigul, Madurai and Virudhunagar Lok Sabha seats.

In Ramanathapuram, Modi will seek the people's support for the alliance candidates contesting from Ramanathapuram, Sivaganga, Thoothukudi and Tenkasi Lok Sabha seats.

The BJP is part of the AIADMK-led alliance in Tamil Nadu.

--IANS

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US President Donald Trump has said that the sanctions on North Korea will remain in place. However, he deemed it unnecessary to increase them further.

According to the accounts of White House journalists sent to media via e-mail, Trump said while addressing the media along with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the White House that "we want sanctions to remain in place."

Saying the existing sanctions against the N Korea are at a "fair" level, Trump added that "I really believe something very significant is going to happen. We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that."

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said on Wednesday that sanctions against N Korea should not impact humanitarian aid to the country as per relevant Security Council resolutions.

For dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearisation and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronised steps as a package solution, he added.

The second summit between Trump and North Korea's top leader Kim Jong-un in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi ended without an agreement.

Trump told a press conference after the summit that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearising a "large portion" of the North Korea's nuclear programme, something the US could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that N Korea only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Though outnumbered by women in Mizoram's electoral lists for the past many decades, 1.07 per cent more men cast their votes than women in Thursday's Lok Sabha polls in the northeastern state, a top official said on Friday.

Besides the election to the lone Lok Sabha seat, the bypoll for the Aizawl West-1 Assembly seat was also held on Thursday. The bypoll was necessitated after Zoram People's Movement's (ZPM) legislator Lalduhoma vacated it to retain his Serchhip constituency.

According to Chief Electoral Officer Ashish Kundra, 63.08 per cent of the 7,87,777 electorate cast their votes for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Mizoram, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. "In all, 63.60 per cent male and 62.53 per cent female voters cast their votes," he said.

Kundra said that the state's 4,04,169 women voters again outnumbered its 3,83,602 men voters. There were six third gender voters.

This was also the first time that a woman -- Independent candidate Lalthlamuani -- joined the race with five others to represent Mizoram in the lower house of Parliament. The state has seen only two women Ministers in the past 32 years -- in 1987 and 2014.

The CEO said that young voters in the 18-40 years age group, who constitute around 64 per cent of the total 787,777 electorate, dominate Mizoram's electoral

With a population of 1,091,014 (according to the 2011 census), Mizoram is a closely knit society with a Christian majority (87 per cent).

--IANS

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US Vice President Mike Pence has said that President Donald Trump's administration would not return to separating families at the southern border with Mexico as a way of deterring illegal immigration.

In an exclusive CNN interview on Thursday, Pence said: "The President made it very clear this week, we're not rethinking bringing back family separation."

"We ended family separation, and we're not considering going back to it."

Pence's remark comes after senior administration officials told CNN that in the last four months or so, Trump had been pushing then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to enforce a stricter and more widespread "zero-tolerance" immigration policy.

According to multiple sources, the President wanted families separated even if they came in at a legal port of entry and were legal asylum seekers, as well as separated even if they were apprehended within the US.

But on Tuesday, Trump repeatedly denied the claims.

Pence stressed that the onus was on Congress to act and provide a legislative solution to what he said was an inadequate immigration system.

"We've got to close the loopholes in our law. We've got to end 'catch and release.' We've got to reform our asylum system," Pence told CNN on Thursday.

"And that's why Congress needs to sit down, Democrats in Congress need to sit down and take a break from everything else they're focused on and deal with what the American people want them to deal with, which is securing our border and protecting our country."

Meanwhile, more undocumented immigrants and migrants were apprehended along the southern border in March than in any month since 2007, according to Customs and Border Protection data released Tuesday.

There were approximately 92,000 arrests of undocumented migrants for illegal entry along the southern border in March, up from 37,390 the previous year.

Overall in March, more than 103,000 individuals were apprehended along the border or encountered at a port of entry and deemed "inadmissible".

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
RJD chief Lalu Prasad's wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi on Friday made an emotional appeal to her elder son Tej Pratap Yadav to return home.

A day after voting for the first of the seven-phased Lok Sabha polls in Bihar, Rabri Devi, who is pained by Tej Pratap's decision to stay separately in the state capital, instead of living with the family, said in Hindi: "Bahut hua, laut aao beta" (Enough son, please return home).

Tej Pratap Yadav has not returned home since he visited his father Lalu Prasad in Ranchi last year, after filing a petition in court seeking divorce from his newly-wedded wife, family sources said. Tej Pratap Yadav got married in May last year to Aishwariya Rai, the daughter of a senior RJD leader.

Rabri Devi told media here that there is no truth in the reports of differences between her two sons Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav.

"It is all a creation of vested interests," she said.

She said there have been attempts made to divide her family.

"Some people have been trying to instigate and mislead my son. It is possible that our rivals', BJP and JD-U, people may be behind it," Rabri said in a reference to Tej Pratap Yadav.

She also revealed that she telephoned her son daily to talk to him.

Tej Pratap has, however, repeatedly expressed his displeasure over younger brother Tejashwi's refusal to field a candidate of his choice from the Sheohar Lok Sabha constituency.

Rabri also expressed her serious concern about the absence of her husband, who has been undergoing treatment at a Ranchi hospital after being convicted in the fodder scam case.

"I miss Laluji...his absence is really painful. Without him everything is useless. Hope,he will come back soon," she said.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"I could hear shots being fired from my house near Jallianwala Bagh. I rushed there and saw heaps of bodies lying on top of each other. I sorted through them until I found my husband". Thus goes Ratan Devi's account, just one of the many hundreds who lost their loved ones in a heart-wrenching tragedy that still resonates a century down Indias timeline.

Housed in Delhi's Red Fort complex, the newly-opened Yaad-e-Jallian' museum remembers one of the most brutal injustices suffered by Indians at the hands of the British colonial rulers.

As one makes their way inside the museum, the reconstruction of events before, during and after the fateful day of April 13, 1919, chills one to the bone.

They hark back to the day when troops of the British Indian Army led by General Reginald Dyer caused mayhem by opening firing on an unsuspecting crowd of about 20,000 people - mostly Sikhs - for twenty minutes, causing many deaths and casualties. To this day, the Sikh holy city of Amritsar nurses its wounds.

For anyone even remotely connected to India, the massacre is not just registered in history, but also in their minds.

What one would recall from these oft-told tales is a water-filled well that people jumped into to escape the flying bullets, only to die within it. To commemorate that, the museum's curators have create a life-sized well that visitors see right when they enter, with the song "Aao Bachchon Tumhe Dikhaye" from the film "Jagriti" playing in the background.

A major attraction is the four sided flame-shaped obelisk in a room on whose walls are etched the names of those who died in the firing.

The museum, rich with information on the massacre, informs: "General Dyer had been summoned to Amritsar and the city was handed over to him to maintain law and order. He had put a ban on public meetings and gatherings but unaware of his proclamations, people were as usual gathering at Jallianwala Bagh to celebrate Baisakhi and to peacefully protest against the arrest of their leaders (Dr Satyapal and Dr Kitchlew)".

Thus, the sound of his armoured cars and the troops marching to the Bagh were lost amidst the cacophony of the celebrations. The sudden firing, with no warning, caused mass panic, leaving people helpless.

Punjab's Lt. Governor that time, Michael O'Dwyer, is widely cited as an endorser of the firing.

"Speaking with perhaps a more intimate knowledge of the then-situation that anyone else, I have no hesitation in saying that General Dyer's action that day was the decisive factor in crushing the rebellion," the museum quotes "a shameless O'Dwyer" as having said.

A panel also mentions a seven-member Hunter Committee that was established "under public pressure" by the British government to inquire into the events. A few steps down, a series of questions asked to Dyer by the committee, and his answers find space.

"When you got into the Jallianwala Bagh, what did you do?"

"I opened fire," said an unapologetic Dyer.

In its report, the Hunter Committee said that Dyer's conduct rested upon an "honest but mistaken conception of duty", while an Indian report called the slaughter "a calculated piece of inhumanity towards utterly innocent and unarmed men".

One of the end panels of the museum, curated by leading experimental marketing agency Tagbin and established by Archeological Survey of India, mentions revolutionary Udham Singh, who assassinated O'Dwyer 21 years after the 1919 massacre.

"I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. What greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland," were his last words before he was sentenced to death for murder.

Hosting a portion of Amritsar's historical struggle in Delhi, 'Yaad-e-Jallian' is a must-visit on the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

(Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians.in)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russia on Friday announced it had honoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, the highest order of the Russian Federation, for promoting partnership and friendly relations between the two countries.

"On April 12, @narendramodi was decorated with the Order of St Andrew the Apostle for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India and friendly relations between the Russian and Indian people," the Russian Embassy in India tweeted.

Modi was also awarded the United Arab Emirates' highest civilian award, the Order of Zayed, earlier this month for boosting bilateral relations between the two countries.

He has already been conferred with Saudi Arabia's highest civilian honour -- the King Abdulaziz Sash.

--IANS

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(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court on Friday declined to impose a stay on the electoral bonds scheme but said that their issue and the lack of transparency was a "weighty" issue and required a detailed hearing to finally settle it.

In an interim direction, a bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi did not find merit in the government's argument that the court should not interfere in the electoral bond scheme for political funding.

Instead, the apex court took the first step in pulling off the veil of secrecy on the bonds. It directed all political parties to come clean on the contributions received through the bonds and provide full details of all their donors till now.

The parties have been directed by the court to provide all the details before May 30 to the Election Commission.

Refusing the government's arguments not to interfere in its electoral bonds scheme of political funding, the Supreme Court on Friday passed interim directions, directing political parties to make a clean slate of contributions they have received through each bond and provide full details of all their donors.

The bench observed that the lack of transparency in the electoral bonds was a weighty one and this matter required detailed hearing.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, counsel for the petitioner NGO Association of Democratic Reforms, had told the court that the ruling party had received 95 per cent of the payments through electoral bonds.

The Election Commission on Thursday informed the court that a major share of the contributions were made to the ruling party via electoral bonds.

The court said it do not want to "tilt the balance" in favour of any political party. However, adequate safeguards needed to be taken now.

On Thursday, the government informed the court that voters do not need to know the source of funding to political parties.

Attorney General K.K. Venugopal told the court that it cannot kill the scheme in the name of transparency. He informed the court the scheme was in experimental stage and the court should not intervene.

The Election Commission told the court that it was not in opposition to the bonds, but opposed the anonymity associated with it.

The poll panel told the court that the right to vote meant the right to make an informed choice and the voters should know the source of funding of political parties whose candidates were seeking their vote.

"It is more important to know the principal than the agent," the Election Commission counsel said.

The Attorney General countered this and opposed the Election Commission's view.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court on Friday restrained steel manufacturing giant Arcelor Mittal from acquiring Essar Steel India and ordered status quo on the March 8 order of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approving Arcelor's bid for Essar.

The Arcelor's acquisition of Essar would have allowed Arcelor owner Lakshmi Mittal to begin its operations in the Indian steel market.

The tribunal had given its approval to the resolution plan offered by Arcelor Mittal for the acquisition of Essar Steel.

The Committee of Creditors (CoC), however, moved the apex court opposing higher payment to Standard Chartered Bank (SCB).

After the Friday's order, Arcelor Mittal cannot make payments to the lenders to buy Essar Steel.

A bench headed by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman directed the NCLT to expeditiously decide on appeals in the case.

As per the tribunal order, SCB was allotted only 1.7 per cent of its total admitted claims, while the financial creditors were recovering their claims close to 92 per cent.

The NCLT had directed that the distribution should be done on a pro-rata basis, and SCB should be awarded its share accordingly.

The apex court order is bound to delay Mittal's plan to buy the steel mill, which can produce 10 million metric tonne annually.

Post the acquisition, Arcelor will become the fourth-biggest player in the country. It plans to invest trillions of rupees in its infrastructure.

The NCLT had approved Arcelor's and Nippon Steel Corp offer to pay $6 billion to lenders and then invest about another $1.1 billion in the company.

The CoC opposed the NCLT decision asking a panel of lenders to consider higher payment to SCB, and contested the Tribunal's view that a substantial part of its Rs 35 billion ($505 million) dues would remain unpaid under Arcelor's plan. The CoC claimed that the distribution of money among the lender as per the plan is unfair.

The panel of lenders and the State Bank of India challenged the tribunal's direction in the top court.

--IANS

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The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Friday hailed the interim order of the Supreme Court on the electoral bond scheme, saying the court has "clearly stated (that) transparency is the basic principle of electoral funding".

A CPI-M statement said it noted "positively the interim order passed by the Supreme Court on the electoral bond scheme initiated by the Modi government".

It said the changes in the law which was rushed without a proper and comprehensive discussion in Parliament was aimed at removing the limits of corporate funding of political parties, particularly at the time of elections, while making it completely anonymous.

"The changes would have made the entire system prone to crony capitalism with a clear basis for quid pro quo with the ruling party," it added.

The government was opposed to making the funding transparent. The Attorney General told the Supreme Court: "It is not voters' concern to know where the money comes from. Transparency cannot be looked as a mantra of the country."

The CPI-M statement said: "Today's interim judgment has brought in some degree of accountability by making it mandatory for the political parties to place their collection from electoral bonds and the details thereof to the Election Commission by May 30.

"The interim order promised that the seriousness of the issue and its bearing on the very nature of our democracy warrants more in-depth examination.

"The court has clearly stated that transparency is the basic principle of electoral funding. People have the right to know which party has received how much and from whom."

The CPI-M said it was happy that the legal battle, in which it itself is a petitioner, "has yielded some positive result as of now" to make electoral funding completely transparent and free of corporate influence towards breaking the corporate-ruling party nexus.

--IANS

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On April 4, during a meeting, in Brussels, of the European UnionAzerbaijan Cooperation Council, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov emphasized that the two sides are very close to reaching a new partnership agreement, with over 90 percent of the issues in question already decided, The Jamestown Foundation reports in its article Azerbaijan and the EU Prepare to Finalize a New Partnership Agreement. The EUs High Representative Federica Mogherini stressed that the negotiations have now reached a crucial phase (Mfa.gov.az, Eeas.europa.eu, April 4).

Since starting talks, Baku has mainly focused on the quality of this framework agreement with Europe rather than its quick completion (see EDM, June 22, 2017; June 28, 2018). However, the timing for concluding the negotiations has now become critical due to the upcoming European Parliament (EP) elections (scheduled for May 2326) and the subsequent formation of a new European Commission cabinet (College), which could prolong the process. Foreign Minister Mammadyarov said that Azerbaijan hoped the agreement could be initialed during the present Commission term, headed by President Jean-Claude Juncker (EurActiv, April 4, 2019).

Although certain fundamental issues within the relationship still need to be properly addressed, over the past year several key developments in a number of areas of Azerbaijani-EU relations have already positively contributed to the general dynamism of the negotiations (Eeas.europa.eu, March 11). For instance, last November, Baku and Brussels hold their first Security Dialogue on cooperation in combating terrorism, separatism, extremism, organized crime and threats to cyber security (Mfa.gov.az, November 3, 2018). More recently, the EP identified other prospective areas of cooperation, including information security as well as countering dangerous propaganda/disinformation activities (Europarl.europa.eu, March 13).

In February 2019, the two sides launched a high-level Transport Dialogue to discuss trans-regional logistics-infrastructure opportunities involving Azerbaijan, including the BakuTbilisiKars (BTK) railway, Port Baku facilities, as well as the North-South and South-West transport corridors (Mfa.gov.az, February 19). The North Atlantic Treaty Organizations (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted the BTKs importance to the Alliances transit activities to/from Afghanistan, via Azerbaijan (Nato.int, April 4). Similarly, signing the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA) agreement (the first round of negotiations began in 2013Trend, January 23, 2013) would present many new opportunities for Azerbaijan in terms of economic diversification and expanding its role as a strategic regional transport/logistics hub (Vocaleurope.eu, December 20, 2017). Azerbaijans unique geographical location makes it an important node for the growing number of air transportation links between Europe and Asia (Trend, February 19, 2019).

With the timely finalization of the Southern Gas Corridor (SGC), the strategic backbone of EU-Azerbaijani relations, Europe will begin receiving natural gas from an entirely new sourceAzerbaijan. The SGCs final, westernmost leg, the Trans-Adriatic Pipeline (TAP), recently approved by the Italian government (see EDM, March 6), will also supply Bulgaria through its northeastern bifurcation from Greece via Interconnector GreeceBulgaria. Italy will not be the SGCs final destination, as most Balkan countries are themselves interested in connecting to this pipeline network (EurActiv, February 26, April 4). The SGCs possible future expansion will reinforce Azerbaijans role both as a supplier and a potential transit country to Europe for other Caspian-basin energy producers (Eur-lex.europa.eu, July 24, 2018). The EP recently adopted a resolution on the internal gas market concerning competition rules for pipelines from non-EU countries (Europarl.europa.eu, April 4). Although derogations can be applied to existing pipelines (and indeed, TAP received a temporary third party exemption), the SGCs future performance will have to consider this European legislationparticularly given Azerbaijans potential future gas streams and the BPs possible dissociation from the EUs gas market rules after Brexit. BP operates the offshore Shah Deniz II field in Azerbaijans Caspian waters, which will fill the SGC. During his talks with High Representative Mogherini last week, Foreign Minsiter Mammadyarov stressed that European partners could do more to make the EU market[s regulatory environment] more attractive to more gas from Azerbaijan (Mfa.gov.az, April 4).

On March 16, Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev pardoned over 400 prisoners, including some individuals who had previously complicated EU-Azerbaijan relations (see EDM, March 26). Moreover, Aliyev signed another decree on reforming the judicial system, in view of making it more effective and transparent (Eeas.europa.eu, March 17; President.az, March 16, April 3).

Finally, Azerbaijan has implemented a number of reforms pertaining to trade regulations, customs tariffs, and trade-logistics infrastructure, since the country expects to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) as a developing country. Membership in the WTO would allow for more ambitious economic provisions in the new partnership agreement with the EU, thus boosting mutual trade turnover (Trend.az, December 14, 2018; Ednews.net, April 5, 2019). According to Mammadyarov, Azerbaijan demonstrated flexibility on some technical issues (reportedly on trade), and now expects the same from the EU, to be able to move the talks forward (EurActiv, April 4).

Until 2020, EU-Azerbaijan cooperation will be guided by Partnership Priorities (PP), which will replace the 2006 European Neighborhood Policy Action Plan (ENP AP) and manage the EUs financial assistance to Azerbaijan for the latters economic resilience (Eeas.europa.eu, July 11, 2018). The PP, backed by the ENP Reviews differentiation principle, is a balanced and legally non-binding document, reflecting the interests of both sides. The PP expresses respect for Azerbaijans territorial integrity and international borders; but unlike the ENP AP, it does not specify Brussels role regarding the Karabakh conflict (Eur-lex.europa.eu, July 24, 2018).

Last month, Brussels rebuked Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyans attempts to change the negotiations format on resolving the Karabakh conflict. He had pushed for recognizing the Armenians of this breakaway Azerbaijani territory as independent parties in the talks (see EDM, March 4). EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn, while meeting Pashinyan, said We should leave it to the current format [and] not to create something new (Ec.europa.eu, March 3). Mogherini advocated Armenias full engagement in negotiations without preconditions (Eeas.europa.eu, March 5). Whereas, European Council President Donald Tusk told Pashinyan that the status quo is unsustainable and the conflict needs a settlement in accordance with international law (Consilium.europa.eu, March 5). The Azerbaijani government hailed Europes clear stance on this issue (President.az, March 6).

The EUs support for Azerbaijans economic diversification is significant in terms of promoting reforms, improving the business climate, and developing the agricultural sector in this South Caucasus country (Europa.eu, March 15). Azerbaijan prefers more differentiated and flexible treatment in its partnerships with foreign actors. Therefore, instead of pursuing normative alignment with the EU through a traditional Association Agreement, Baku has proposed a partnership agreement text with the potential to raise relations to a more of strategic level. A conscious focus on points of mutual benefit rather than division will help move this process forward.
The Supreme Court will hear on April 16 the West Bengal government's plea seeking to bar former police officer Bharati Ghosh from entering the state.

The bench of Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice K.M. Joseph said the hearing would begin on April 16 and if it is not concluded, the further hearing would be held on April 22.

The court took on the record the status report on the investigation by the state police into the allegations of cheating, tampering with evidence and the actions violating the provisions of Telegraph Act.

Senior counsel Neeraj Kishan Kaul contended that the state was seeking to oust the former police officer as she was campaigning in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections for the BJP.

Kaul said that after February 19 order restraining West Bengal government from taking any coercive action against Bharati Ghosh, the state had moved an application on February 24, but did not press it then, but was doing so as the former police officer has started campaigning.

"Without prejudice to the contentions of the parties, we are of the view that till the next date of hearing, no coercive steps shall be taken against the petitioner (Bharati Ghosh) in any of the cases", the court had ordered on February 19.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In a democracy, it's important to allow freedom of expression, says "PM Narendra Modi" producer Sandip Ssingh, urging the Supreme Court to view the film as an "inspiring story" rather than "political propaganda".

The Supreme Court will on Monday hear a petition filed by the producers of "PM Narendra Modi" against the ban imposed by the Election Commission (EC).

Ssingh said in a statement: "Every citizen of India has the right to appeal for justice and that's what I am doing as the producer. For me and the entire team, this film is special and we want the world to see it."

The film was due to release on April 11. Ssingh said they were "shocked to receive a notice from EC banning the release of the film just hours before the premiere on April 10".

"I am here to appeal to the highest court of the country to allow our film to be released. In a vibrant democracy like ours, it's even more important today to allow each and every one of us to enjoy the right to freedom of expression. Please allow us to exercise that right. Our film is not political propaganda. It's just an inspiring story. I request the honourable court to see it as one.

"Having said that whatever be the decision of the honourable court, we will adhere to it. We will abide by the rules and regulations. We are not going to go against the law and release the film," Ssingh added.

The film, directed by Omung Kumar and starring Vivek Anand Oberoi, narrates the story of Modi from his humble beginnings to becoming the Prime Minister of India.

The poll panel ruled that any material that disturbs a level-playing field should not be displayed.

The EC said any poster or publicity material concerning any such certified content, which either depicts a candidate for furtherance of electoral prospect directly or indirectly, shall not be put on display in the electronic media in the areas where the model code of conduct is in force, amid the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

--IANS

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An online petition to President Ram Nath Kovind by veterans protesting against politicization of armed forces has been marred in controversy as some whose names figure in the protest letter have distanced themselves from the campaign.

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called it a "fake letter" saying Air Chief Marshal N.C. Suri and Gen S.F. Rodrigues, who were listed among those signed, have both come out to say that their consent was not taken.

She said that it was worrying that fake petitions were being signed. The Minister said the President's House had not even received the petition.

The petition had protested against the politicization of armed forces in the wake of comments like "Modiji ki Sena" made by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

It contained names of 156 officers but it was not clear on whose behest the campaign was initiated. Among those named were former Navy chief Arun Prakash who is active on social media and shares his views frequently on burning issues.

After the Balakot air strike, the opposition had accused the government of politicizing the armed forces and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi's election speech is under the Election Commission's scanner for having referring to the military action.

In the petition dated April 11, the veterans urged the President to take "all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas".

They said that "some concerns have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel of the forces".

They have also objected to the use of pictures of Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman -- who was captured by Pakistan and then released -- in posters along with the image of soldiers in election hoardings and campaign.

"It is very worrying that if people are writing fake letters and allegations are being levelled by vested groups. It is highly condemnable. It is happening at the time of elections," said Sitharaman.

Former IAF chief Suri, one of the eight former chiefs of armed forces on the list of signatories, said he has contended that armed forces should remain apolitical but said that his consent was not sought for the letter.

Rodrigues denied signing the letter and called it fake news.

"I don't know what it is all about. All my life, we had been apolitical. After 42 years as an officer, it is a little late to change. We in the services have always done what the government in power ordered us...," he said.

But some other veterans told media houses that they had given their consent to the letter.

The letter said: "The unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be 'Modiji ki Sena'."

The letter quotes the names of Generals Rodrigues, Shankar Roy Chowdhury and Deepak Kapoor; Admirals Laxminarayan Ramdas, Vishnu Bhagwat, Arun Prakash and Sureesh Mehta; and Air Chief Marshal Suri.

--IANS

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Film: "Tashkent Files"; Director: Vivek Agnihotri; Cast: Mithun Chakraborty, Naseeruddin Shah, Shweta Basu Prasad, Mandira Bedi, Pallavi Joshi, Rajesh Sharma, Vinay Pathak, Pankaj Tripathi, Vishwa Mohan Badola, Prakash Belawadi, Achint Kaur, Prashant Gupta; Rating: ***

Based on true incidents, director Vivek Agnihotri's "Tashkent Files", is a fictionalised film with cinematic liberties.

In form, it is a blend between a courtroom drama and an online game with different task levels. In purpose, while seeking answers to the mysterious death of India's second Prime Minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, who died on January 11, 1966, in Tashkent, it implores you, as a citizen of the nation, to question for, "your right to truth".

The film has a kind of stark simplicity: Apart from a brief set-up and a briefer epilogue, a major portion of the film takes place within the four walls of an inquiry commission which is so akin to a jury room, as nine prominent and responsible citizens headed by politician Shyam Sundar Tripathi (Mithun Chakarobarty) debate on the "common conspiracy theory", that surrounds Shastri's demise.

It is an open fact, and no denying it, that there have been various theories surrounding the mysterious death. The Shyam Sundar Tripathi Commission is set up after the investigative journalist Raagini Phule (Shweta Basu Prasad) is coerced by an anonymous well-wisher cum source, into writing an article that digs into the nation's past.

The well-wisher dishes out nuggets of information via a telephonic conversation which appear like stages of an online game.

Soon, Raagini is also roped into the Commission for being a journalist who has done a lot of investigation on the subject. She propels the narrative and drives home her point based on the Mitrokhin Archive II, which is a collection of handwritten notes made secretly by the Russian KGB deflector Vasili Mitrokhin.

Dedicated to the journalists of India, the film, on the face of it appears balanced, but the tone and texture of the narrative definitely appears slanted. Sample this; "Gau bhakt, topi pehnewala baba, kaun the?" This question subtly and surely ignites a sense of underlying brotherhood that forces an ignorant viewer to seek the truth.

And so, on the pretext of speaking the truth, the narrative digs out the bitter and indigestible political history of our country. Also, while smirking at our democracy and our education system, the film makes each one of us feel guilty as it opens a Pandora's Box but shows us nothing that we are not aware of. And the last frame, stating that the facts mentioned in the Mitrokhin Archives have not been proved or verified till date, clearly shows that the plot along with the dialogues, is clever and manipulative.

This is a film where tension comes from personality conflict, dialogue and body language, not action. The drama within the confines of the claustrophobic room appear forced and staged.

On the performance front, the film is Shweta Basu Prasad's canvas. She is effective as the ambitious, yet vulnerable Raagini. She holds her stead against the dynamic Mithun Chakraborty, who gives an equally new and varied dimension to his Shyam Sundar Tripathi.

The duo are aptly supported by an ensemble cast which include; Pankaj Tripathi as Gangaram Jha, Mandira Bedi as the social activist Indira Joseph Roy, Pallavi Joshi on a wheelchair as the historian Aiysha Ali Shah, Rajesh Sharma as a prominent government contractor Omkar Kashyap, Vishwa Mohan Badola as the aging Justice Kurian Abraham, Prakash Belawadi as the senior bureaucrat GK Anantha Suresh and Prashant Gupta as Vivendra Pratap Singh Rana, all members of the commission.

Naseeruddhin Shah as the master brain politician PKR Natrajan and Vinay Pathak with a scarred visage as Mukkhtar, the person who helps Shweta unearth the mystery in Tashkent, have their moments of onscreen glory.

Mounted with ace production values, the visuals of the film do not boast of any cinematic brilliance. The songs with the lyrics, "saare jahan se achcha" and "sach jalta hain" are lost in the narrative.

Overall, with an aggressive pacing, the film is well-researched and potent in nature. But with the timing of its release and the undertones in its messaging, this film appears to be a propaganda film that neither ignites any patriotic fervour nor journalistic appeal.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Tamil Nadu should be ruled by the people of Tamil Nadu and DMK President M.K. Stalin will become its next Chief Minister, Congress President Rahul Gandhi declared on Friday.

Addressing an election rally here, about 260 km from Chennai, Gandhi said: "Tamil Nadu should be ruled from Tamil Nadu. Stalin will be the Chief Minister."

The opposition parties in Tamil Nadu charge the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) with remote-controlling the AIADMK government in the state.

According to Gandhi, the state should not be ruled from Nagpur -- where the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's political mentor, is headquartered.

"We will not let the people of Tamil Nadu to be led by Nagpur," Gandhi said, adding that the DMK-Congress combine will defend the spirit of the Tamil people.

According to Gandhi, when the Congress comes to power at the Centre, farmers will not be jailed for non-repayment of bank loans.

"It is not fair that rich businessmen are not jailed for non-repayment of bank loans while poor farmers go to jail for defaulting on bank loans," Gandhi said.

"After 2019, no farmer will be put in jail for non-repayment of loan."

He said the Congress government will tell the farmers in advance the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other things so that they can plan their crops accordingly.

The Congress chief said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not find time to speak with the Tamil Nadu farmers who had protested in New Delhi demanding farm loan waiver.

Gandhi said the Congress party has decided to carry out a surgical strike on poverty and promised to identity 20 per cent of the poorest in the country and transfer Rs 72,000 every year into the bank account of women head of the poor family under the proposed Nyay scheme.

"Once the money gets paid into the bank account, poor people will start consuming and the economy will kickstart again."

He said the textile industry in Tiruppur and the silk industry in Kancheepuram will start booming again after being affected by the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Gandhi also promised a simple and single rate tax regime once the Congress comes to power.

According to him, the Congress, once if it comes to power, will fill up the 24 lakh vacant jobs in the government and 10 lakh vacancies in Panchayats.

Gandhi said the Congress will bring in reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and state assemblies for women.

"Thirty-three per cent of central government jobs will also be reserved for women," he added.

The Congress is fighting the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu as part of the DMK-led alliance.

He alleged that PM Modi can be seen only with rich businessmen and not with poor farmer or small entrepreneurs.

--IANS

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US President Donald Trump has said he would be open to a third summit meeting with North Koreas Kim Jong-un, suggesting that he was keen to revive a high-stakes engagement that was abruptly suspended after the two leaders failed to strike a nuclear disarmament deal in Vietnam.

Speaking before an Oval Office meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday, Trump also opened the door to a series of smaller deals with North Korea, reports The New York Times.

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen," Trump told reporters alongside Moon.

"Things could happen. You can work out step-by-step pieces, but at this moment we are talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons."

Trump drew the line at easing sanctions on North Korea for anything short of a commitment to give up its entire nuclear arsenal.

But the President also said that he had decided not to impose additional sanctions on Pyongyang, a testament, he said, to his warm relationship with Kim.

In response, Moon heaped praise on his American counterpart for not closing the door to future meetings.

"In this sense, I believe the Hanoi summit was not a source of disappointment," Moon said, adding: "But it is actually part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement."

Trump and Moon's remarks come after Kim on Wednesday vowed never to give in to sanctions, adding that Pyongyang needs to deliver a "serious blow" to those imposing it.

The Hanoi summit in February fell apart as Kim and Trump failed to find common ground over how to match Pyongyang's denuclearization steps with Washington's sanctions relief.

Pyongyang wanted major sanctions relief in exchange for dismantling its Yongbyon nuclear facility.

But Washington insisted on what officials described as "a big deal" that called for trading sanctions relief for the dismantlement of all of the North's nuclear and other weapons programmes.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has announced he will visit Normandy, France, in June to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Trump announced the trip on Thursday in a meeting with World War II veterans in the Oval Office, The Washington Post reported.

"I'll be there," he told a veteran who said he hoped the President would be present for the festivities in Normandy.

More than 9,000 Allied soldiers died or were wounded in the June 6, 1944 operation that marked a turning point in the war.

According to the Times of London, Trump is also expected to make a state visit to Britain around the same time.

"Downing Street officials have been in secret talks with their White House counterparts about the timing of the visit since late last year and are expected to make a joint announcement within days," the paper reported on Sunday.

The White House has not officially confirmed a potential visit and did not immediately respond to Trump's annoucement.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has suddenly withdrawn the nomination of Robert Williams to be the Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs.

A terse White House announcement said on Thursday that his nomination sent to the Senate, which has to approve the appointment, was being withdrawn and gave no reason for it.

The top position in the State Department overseeing South Asia affairs has not been filled since Nisha Biswal quit after Trump became President in 2017. A career diplomat, Alice Wells, has been looking after the portfolio on an acting basis.

The Washington Examiner, a conservative publication, said that according to a senior administration official Williams had decided not to pursue the job. It said he cited "family reasons" for the decision.

Williams is serving as the associate deputy director for intelligence at the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA).

When he was nominated in December, the White House said that he had more than 20 hears experience as an analyst and intelligence officer specialising in South Asia and Afghanistan affairs.

He had previously been the national intelligence officer for South Asia at the National Intelligence Council and defence intelligence officer for South Asia at the DIA, the announcement said.

Scores of diplomatic positions are unfilled. The US does not have an ambassador in Pakistan after David Hale moved to Washington to become the under secretary of state for political affairs in August.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)

--IANS

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India has said that UN member countries should send more all-women units to peacekeeping operations instead of mixed units, as a sure means to increase female participation.

While the UN has set ambitious targets for increasing the number of women peacekeepers, the policy framework for this was being "diluted" to accommodate those countries that could not fulfil their commitments, a counsellor in India's UN Mission, Eenam Gambhir, told the Security Council on Thursday.

"If this is the approach, how can we possibly achieve the targets that we set for increasing women participation in peacekeeping.

"Instead of supporting a policy of mixed units, we believe that all-women units need to be incentivised to encourage greater participation... Priority should also be given to deploying from the pending pledges related to women peacekeepers," Gambhir added.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: "A key priority is to increase the number of women in peacekeeping - both civilian and uniformed, which is where we need the most improvement. This is not just a question of numbers - but also of our effectiveness in fulfilling our mandates."

The targets for women's representation range from 15 per cent to 35 per cent by 2028 in various elements of the peacekeeping operations, he said.

Gambhir pledged at the Council's debate on women in peacekeeping that "India stands ready to make all efforts to fulfil these goals and strengthen both institutional capacities as well as international cooperation".

The first time the UN deployed an all-women peacekeeping unit was in 2007 when an Indian police unit made up of 105 women was stationed in Liberia.

As of February, there were only 42 women among the 6,453 Indian peacekeepers deployed in UN missions, according to the UN.

Gambhir said that India was sending a women's police unit to the UN Mission in South Sudan by the end of this year.

And by August, it was preparing to deploy a Female Engagement Team comprising 22 women officers and soldiers to the Rapidly Deployable Battalion in in the UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo which is known by the French initials, MONUSCO.

The engagement teams operate at the frontlines of peackeeping operations, rather than in support or policing roles.

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who presided over the session, said that women always broadened the skill-set of the missions and this diversity is strength.

She said that to increase the number of women in international peacekeeping missions, the effort has to start at the national level by getting more women into the national armed forces.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
His website claims he is "the artist, the engineer, the designer, the sculptor, the architect, the academician".

It says he has executed more than 750 projects and most of them are "landmarks". The projects include Amar Jawan Jyoti in Jaipur and World Trade Park, among others. What the website does not, expectedly, say is that Anoop Bartaria is allegedly involved in several scams and had been booked by the CBI in 2017 in a cheating case for allegedly causing loss of Rs 209 crore to Syndicate Bank.

A complaint was lodged that the accused hatched a criminal conspiracy to avail home loans/credit facilities from the bank by submitting forged and fabricated documents.

The funds then disbursed by the bank's two branches were diverted and fraudulently siphoned to the companies owned by the accused, allegedly causing loss of approximately Rs 209 crore to the bank, sources said.

Anoop Bartaria, a tainted builder from Rajasthan, however, was given a red carpet welcome by the Yogi Adityanath government. He was assigned the task of developing the sacred Goverdhan Parikrama circuit in Vrindavan.

The beautification of 'Goverdhan Parvat' would include installation of a 300-ft statue of Lord Krishna and development of the 'parikrama' route.

Local residents raised protests over felling of trees in the region and beautification of the water bodies.

Though officials refused to divulge the details of the project, they admitted that it would "involve a few thousand crores".

An official of the Braj Foundation admitted that Anoop Bartaria had been "welcomed" into the project at the behest of some senior leaders in the BJP and RSS but was later taken off the project.

"When we have high-level recommendations, we normally do not dare to delve into the antecedents of the person, and this is what happened in this case too. We are now hearing stories of his scams," the official said, adding Anoop Bartaria is no longer involved in the project.

Anoop's website has a photo gallery that carries his photographs with former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

None of the officials in the chief minister's secretariat in Lucknow were willing to comment on the subject of Anoop Bartaria. A senior officer, however, said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was initially not aware of the real face of the "architect".

Principal Secretary information , Avanish Awasthi, also confirmed that Anoop Bartaria had been taken off the project. "He did give a presentation but the same was not accepted," he said.

--IANS

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In March, Zokirjon Almatov, Uzbekistans first minister of interior from 1991-2005, gave his first interview to an independent Uzbek independent, Qalampir. The Diplomat reports in its article The Re-emergence of Uzbekistans First Minister of Interior that since Almatovs return to government, at the beckoning of President Shavkat Mirziyoyev in 2016, his public appearances have been frequent, but this interview is important for two reasons. First, Almatov is the first rehabilitated Karimov-era senior official to speak extensively about his time in government. Second, Almatov is also the first top official to speak about the 2005 Andijan events.

Almatov was called out of retirement, where hed been for 12 years, soon after Mirziyoyev was inaugurated as president. In December 2016, Almatov reportedly was appointed to the newly created State Anticorruption Commission, but no reports of his activities there followed. In February 2018, Almatov returned to the organization he spent 35 years in to take up a newly created role of an advisor to the current Minister of Interior Polat Bobojonov. Mirziyoyevs decree on reforms in the police forces adopted in April 2017 encompassing 78 areas also likely contributed to Almatovs return to the ministry.

In his new role, Almatov seems to be placed far from decision-making and routine matters of the ministry. Since returning to the ministry, he inaugurated a new police office in Namangan, visited police branches around the country, and even toured the country to show support to farmers during the harvesting season.

In the interview, Almatov described the 2005 Andijan events as the most painful in his professional life. He spoke about the unfair reaction of the world community to the way his ministry managed the events in Andijan. I asked European and U.S. officials what they would have done, they said they would have done the same. No country negotiates with terrorists. Almatov also touched on the thorniest issue of the Andijan events. Without specifying the exact number of casualties, he stated that the number of people killed were not as many as were reported outside Uzbekistan: not 1,000, not even 500. At the same time, he recognized his fault for not foreseeing and preventing such developments in Andijan.

Almatovs interview was also an effort to humanize him and the Ministry of Interior. Almatov spoke about the period of his leadership in the ministry from 1991 to 2005 as the time of connecting the police with the population and nurturing a family atmosphere among the police force, I wanted my police officers to imagine their relatives behind a suspect and treat them with respect. Almatov added that he directed the police to know households in their patrol areas by attending weddings and funerals.

However, journalist Bobomurod Abdullaevs (published then under nom de plume Usman Haknazarov) description of Almatov in 2003 was far from the flattering portrait Almatov made of himself. According to Abdullaev, Almatov and Rustam Inoyatov, then head of the National Security Service, were main rivals for then-President Islam Karimovs attention, government resources, power, and talents. Abdullaev also describes an instance in which Almatov allegedly sent 80 police to Karakalpakstan in 1995 to pressure 24 farmers to extort money. In the same article, Almatov is described as connected to two business magnates from Uzbekistan, Salim Abduvaliev and Gafur Rahimov and protecting their businesses. (Interestingly, these two individuals came up during the interview, whom Almatov described as patriots and philanthropists.)

Almatovs current role in the ministry seems to be to elevate and maintain the reputation of the police while the police forces are undergoing transformations among other law enforcement organizations. He confirmed during the interview that the reputation of the police is being slowly restored following Ministry of Interiors demise after his departure in 2005. Referring to the post-2005 development in the Ministry of Interior, he confirmed that the purging included numerous high-level sackings and arrests in the ministry and that some police departments, in particular the special forces, were transferred to the National Security Service.

As a previously powerful law enforcement official, Almatovs return was deemed necessary for the ongoing reforms in the country and in particular for his ministry. By Almatovs return, the current administration also signals in a sense that his departure was undeserved. The fact that one of the most powerful officials from the 1990s to the mid-2000s has spoken to the media about a previously taboo topic, such as the Andijan events, is a sign of transformation in Uzbekistan. But him continuing with the original government narrative of the events in Andijan reveals the current governments stand on the matter.
Over 150 military veterans have complained to President Ram Nath Kovind against political leaders who they claim are taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and repeatedly using the armed forces for political gains.

In a letter written on Thursday, they urged the President to take "all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas".

They said that "some concerns have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel of the forces".

They have also objected to the use of pictures of Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman -- who was captured by Pakistan and then released -- in posters along with the image of soldiers in election hoardings and campaign.

"The unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be 'Modiji ki Sena'.

"This is in addition to media pictures of election platforms and campaigns in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms; and posters and images with pictures of soldiers and especially of Wing Commander Varthaman displayed," the letter said.

The veterans among the signatories included Generals S.F. Rodrigues, Shankar Roy Chowdhury, Deepak Kapoor; Admirals Laxminarayan Ramdas, Vishnu Bhagwat, Arun Prakash, Sureesh Mehta; and Air Chief Marshal N.C. Suri.

In the letter, they said: "We do appreciate that complaints by some senior retired personnel, including a written submission from a former Chief of the Naval Staff to the Chief Election Commissioner, have elicited a prompt response.

"Indeed a notification has been issued asking for an explanation from those responsible for these statements, including from the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. However, we regret to state that these do not appear to have resulted in any substantive change of behaviour and practice on the ground."

With the ongoing general elections, the veterans said they fear that such incidents may only increase as polling day draws near.

"We believe that you (President) will surely agree that any such misuse of the Armed Forces established under the Constitution of India and under the supreme command of the President of India would impinge adversely on the morale and fighting efficiency of the serving man or woman in uniform. It could therefore directly affect national security and national integrity.

"We therefore appeal to you to ensure that the secular and a-political character of our Armed Forces is preserved," the veterans appealed to the President.

They have also sent a copy of the letter to the Chief Election Commissioner for necessary action.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Within minutes of the trailer launch of "Student Of The Year 2", starring actor Tiger Shroff and glamorous debutantes Ananya Panday and Tara Sutaria, Twitter turned into a meme ground with some social media users asking "where are such schools" and "why so much action".

From Tiger's aerial action stunts to the young beauties fighting for love, amidst the setting of a high-octane competition for a trophy, the three-minute long trailer showcased everything except the element of education.

Netizens took every opportunity to take a dig at the actors as well as producer Karan Johar, who had directed the first instalment of the film in 2012.

While Karan's new batch of 'students' look perfect with six-pack abs, chiselled bodies, flexible dance sequences and stunts as well as sexy outfits, a section of social media users pointed at the film's makers for making fun of the education system.

One user commented: "Kids in India aren't getting education and we are making such movies."

Another wrote: "There is everything... Fight, romance, dance but no study."

Some even criticised Karan for a poor story line.

"No story line, no acting, only glamour and show off 'Student Of The Year 2," one user tweeted.

In the trailer, Tiger is seen jumping off buildings and flaunting his muscles.

One meme read: "Only KJo can bring Marvel and DC at the same time on-screen."

Some Twitter users joked about it saying that the film looks more like a third part of Tiger's action-packed film "Baaghi" than the sequel to "Student of The Year", which had starred actors Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra.

Varun showered praise on the upcoming film.

"Taking a franchise ahead is not easy. Well done Punit. I know you have worked your ass off and now the world can see it. Lots of love to the entire team," Varun tweeted.

Sidharth wrote: "The batch of 2019 is killing it! Trailer looks fantastic."

Members from the film fraternity went gaga over the trailer.

Director Kunal Kohli wrote: "Congrats to all. Love it."

Actor Hrithik Roshan praised Tiger, saying: "Bull's eye! Cheers to a very worthy student, Tiger. Good luck to the entire team."

"Student of The Year 2" will release on May 10.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A British woman who was arrested at an airport in Dubai for insulting her ex-husband's new wife by calling her a "horse" on Facebook has been released, said the campaign group which represents her.

Londoner Laleh Shahravesh, 55, was held after flying to the city to attend her ex-husband's funeral.

The case had been settled with a AED3,000 fine after a hearing, the BBC reported on Thursday, citing the Detained in Dubai group.

Shahravesh was facing up to two years in jail in Dubai and a fine of 50,000 pounds for the insult.

Under the cyber-crime laws in the United Arab Emirates, defamatory statements on social media can attract a fine or a jail term.

According to Detained in Dubai, Shahravesh was married to her ex-husband for 18 years, during which time she had stayed in the UAE for a few months.

While she returned to Britain with her daughter, her husband stayed back, and the couple got divorced.

When Shahravesh saw her ex-husband on Facebook with his new wife, she posted two comments in Farsi, including one that said: "I hope you go under the ground you idiot. Damn you. You left me for this horse."

Shahravesh was arrested when she went to Dubai to attend her former husband's funeral.

Shahravesh's ex-husband's new wife, who lives in Dubai, reported the comments, according to Detained in Dubai.

"We maintain that the case against Laleh should have been dismissed at the outset, and while we are pleased that her nightmare is over, her conviction on this absurd case sets a dangerous precedent," Radha Stirling, the Chief Executive of Detained in Dubai, was quoted as saying by the BBC.

--IANS

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The date is as sacred as Independence Day. But I cant for the life of me see what purpose can be served by a formal apology by a British government that cannot in any way be blamed for one psychotically sadistic man running amok 100 years ago. We might as well blame Reginald Dyers Indian troops who actually gunned down the crowd. The event isnt even part of ...

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A bomb blast ripped through a vegetable market in Pakistan's restive Quetta city early Friday, killing at least 16 people including the members of the minority Hazara community and injuring 30 others.

The blast at around 7:35 am was caused by an improvised explosive device (IED) that had been hidden among the vegetables in the market, police said.

At least eight of those killed in the bomb blast at Hazarganji area of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, belonged to the Hazara community. The security forces fear the death toll may rise, GEO reported.

DIG Quetta Abdul Razaq Cheema told the media that 16 people, including a Frontier Corp (FC) official, lost their lives in the blast which was targetted at the Hazara community.

Thirty others were injured and were undergoing treatment. Four FC personnel were also among the injured, the official added.

Buildings located nearby were also damaged in the blast, police said. Security forces have cordoned off the site of the blast.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the blast in Hazarganji and sought a report on the incident.

Hazaras make up a significant minority group in Pakistan and most of them live in Quetta.

Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Two members of underworld don Ravi Pujari's gang have been arrested in connection with alleged shooting at a beauty parlour run by 'controversial' actress Leena Maria Paul, police said here Friday.

Bilal, 25, from Aluva and Vipin Varghese, 30, from Kadavanthra here were arrested by a team of crime branch police, they said.

The attackers, wearing helmets, barged into the parlour in Panampilly Nagar at around 3 pm on December 15 last year and fired two shots before speeding away on a bike, they added.

A man from Kasargod district, who is also a key member of Pujari's gang had given quotation to Bilal for Rs 50 lakhs to carry out the crime.

The duo was taken to the Beauty Parlour to gather evidence, this afternoon.

The actress had alleged that she had received Internet threat calls on her mobile phone, demanding Rs 25 crore on November 3 under instructions from gangster Ravi Pujari.

According to her, the caller threatened to kill the actress if the money was not paid.

The threat calls were made on subsequent dates also, she stated.

Pujari had allegedly telephoned a media house and challenged the Kerala Police to arrest his men who had fired shots at the beauty parlour.

The Kerala police said in a release that Pujari has been taken into custody by the Interpol and police in African nation, Senegal.

Efforts are on to bring him back to India, it said.

The case was initially probed by the Kochi city police.

Later, it was handed over to the Crime branch wing of the police.

Leena Maria Paul has acted in Bollywood film 'Madras Cafe', Tamil flick 'Biriyani' and Malayalam films 'Husbands in Goa' and 'Red Chillies'.

The actress was an accused in a bank fraud case and was associated with alleged con man Sukesh Chandrashekhar, now in Tihar jail in a matter related to a bid to bribe the Election Commission, involving Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam leader and R K Nagar MLA T T V Dinakaran.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Haryana Police Friday fired in the air and used batons and tear gas to disperse a group of students in Karnal who allegedly pelted stones to protest the death of a student.

The 20-year-old student of an Industrial Training Institute was crushed to death by a government-run bus at the ITI Chowk, in Karnal, on Thursday.

A senior police official said 30 policemen, including two DSP-rank officers and three SHOs, were injured in the stone-pelting that took place on Friday. Seven students were also injured, he added.

Four policemen have received severe injuries, the official said.

A total of 104 students were arrested and charged with rioting, obstructing public servants from discharging their duties and causing hurt and injuries to them, Karnal Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh Bhoria said.

Protesting students charged that state transport bus drivers do not stop buses at designated stops, forcing them to chase buses.

They claimed that after the student was hit by the bus, its driver did not immediately bring the vehicle to a halt, thereby crushing the victim under its wheels.

Bhoria said the protesters were assured Thursday that the administration would form a committee to look into their grievances and efforts would be made to resolve them.

He said the students, however, gathered in large numbers at the ITI Chowk Friday morning and started pelting stones at cops without any provocation.

The SP said some mischievous elements provoked the students to block the highway, an attempt which the police foiled.

Police had to fire in the air to disperse the crowd, the SP said.

Batons and tear gas shells were used to quell the protests, he added.

After the police action, some students had entered the ITI campus, which is nearby, but personnel chased them and over 100 were taken into custody.

On Thursday evening, students of the ITI had created ruckus and vandalised the bus after the incident. They had also blocked the national highway briefly.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
At least 21 people were killed and 50 injured in a at a crowded market in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province on Friday, in an attack believed to be targeting the Shiite Hazara ethnic minority community.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and ordered an inquiry.

The explosion at around 7:35 AM took place in the busy wholesale market area of Hazarganj in Quetta where Hazaras and other traders come daily to buy fruits and vegetables to later sell at their shops in other parts of the city.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that the blast, which occurred when the vegetable and fruit sacks were being loaded onto trucks by the traders, targeted the Hazara ethnic community.

However, Home Minister Ziaullah Langove, in a press conference, said that the blast was not targeting "a specific community".

"Our guess is that no specific community was targeted. Marri Baloch and Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were among those killed as well. The numbers of the Hazara community were just greater," Langove said.

He also described the blast as a suicide attack.

Officials said that 21 people have been killed and 50 injured in the blast.

An Edhi welfare trust rescue official at the scene of the blast said he had counted around 21 bodies being taken to hospitals.

At least eight of those killed in the bomb blast are from the Hazara community, Cheema said.

The security forces fear the death toll may rise, GEO News reported.

Buildings located nearby were also damaged in the blast, police said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Cheema said that due to the blast, security has been provided to shopkeepers and traders at the market.

"Traders who come from other parts of the city to buy fruits and vegetables at the market are escorted by police and Frontier Corp personnel," the officer said.

Cheema said around 70 traders had come to the market in different vehicles and were escorted by the FC and Police.

He said that the police and FC personnel had put up blocks at the entrance and exit of the market.

"The security forces are here, police are here. What more can we do? We secure them (the community) and travel back and forth with them. If something is hidden in a shop, then the shopkeepers will need to be probed," the officer said.

Hazaras make up a significant minority group in Pakistan and most of them live in Quetta.

This is not the first time that the Hazara community has been targeted by militants in the province.

Qadir Nayil, a Hazara community leader, asked the government to ensure better protection.

"Once again our people were the target and once again we will have to bury our dear ones," he said.

There have been similar terror attacks in the Hazarganj area of Quetta in the past. The market serves as a wholesale market for fruits and vegetables.

Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal condemned the attack and assured that the elements involved in the attack and those leading them would be proceeded against.

"People who have an extremist mindset are a menace to the society. We must foil the conspiracy to disrupt peace," he said.

Nearly half-a-million Hazaras have settled in Balochistan, many of them after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan.

The National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) last year stated that 509 members of the Hazara community were killed and 627 injured in various incidents of terrorism in Quetta from January 2012 to December 2017.

NCHR official Fazeela Alyani earlier said that all these lives were lost in Quetta.

According to the NCHR, targeted killings, suicide attacks and bomb blasts have inflicted harm to daily life, education, and business activities of ethnic Hazara community members in Balochistan's largest city Quetta.

Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies.
Three pilgrims were killed and 19 others injured when two tractor-trolleys dashed against each other on the Balrampur-Tulsipur road here Friday, police said.

The pilgrims were on their way to pay obeisance at Tulsipur Devi Patan temple when the accident took place due to overtaking by the tractors, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Arvind Misra said.

In the accident, Gangajali (65), Ram Ujari (60) and Urehi (62) died on the spot, he said.

The injured were admitted to the district hospital where seven of them are stated to be in serious condition, the ASP added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Russian President Vladimir Putins recent visit to Kyrgyzstan allowed to solve some problems of the country's residents, Kyrgyz President Sooronbay Jeenbekov said yesterday, speaking in the parliament. According to him, the government is working on set tasks. Nevertheless, the Kyrgyz society is dissatisfied with the work of the Cabinet. The unresolved conflict on the Kyrgyz-Kazakh border gives grounds for the resignation of the government. To resolve the crisis, the government has the only way out - to appoint Omurbek Babanov as prime minister of the country.

Tomorrow, after a year and a half of the Russian exile, the disgraced politician returns to Bishkek. A rally with 10 000 participants has been announced in his support. On April 23, supporters of another convicted politician Omurbek Tekebayev, the leader of the Ata Meken Party, are going to hold a mass rally demanding his release. Former President Almazbek Atambayev promises to bring people to the streets in two months.

Sooronbay Jeenbekov, taking advantage of his right in accordance with the Constitution, p. 3, Art. 64, delivered a keynote speech at the meeting of the Supreme Council. Thus, as the Kyrgyz political analyst Mars Sariev told Vestnik Kavkaza, Jeenbekov tried to anticipate the events on the eve of the return of the politician and businessman Omurbak Babanov to Kyrgyzstan. Recall, Babanov participated in the presidential election and became the second. During the election campaign, two criminal cases were initiated against Babanov - on the fact of inciting ethnic hatred and public calls for a violent change of the constitutional order. After the results of the 2017 election became known, Babanov left Kyrgyzstan and announced the end of his political career. In March 2019, due to the rumors that Babanov was going to return to his homeland, the State Committee for National Security announced that "Babanov will be interrogated and brought to justice within the law." Nevertheless, the disgraced politician decided to return to Kyrgyzstan.

On the eve, in an interview with local media, he stated that he did not consider himself guilty and was ready to answer all questions. 10 thousand of his supporters promise to meet Babanov at the airport and to hold a rally in defense of their leader in the center of Bishkek. Omurbek Babanovs return comes at the time of aggravation of the relations between President Sooronbai Jeenbekov and former President Almazbek Atambayev. The latter is dissatisfied with the inaction of the authorities and threatens with protests if there are no changes in the country. Sooronbay Jeenbekov loses to Atambayev, and now Babanov too. Jeenbekov wants to dot the is while delivering his speech at the parliament, Mars Sariev believes. The head of Kyrgyzstan promised an increase in salaries to teachers and doctors to ensure the struggle of programs and ideas at the upcoming 2020 parliamentary elections. He also said that he does not serve a narrow circle of people, does not protect their interests and does not cover their theft. This is a direct answer to Almazbek Atambayev, who accused the president with the patronage of "customs curator" - ex-deputy chairman Raim Matraimov, who was called the "purse of the power. The cross-cutting theme of Jeenbekovs speech became the development of the technological process. He also stressed that the country needs a change of elites.

Who will implement this program is unknown. The Cabinet of Ministers does not take initiatives. Even at the negotiations with Putin, Kyrgyz ministers presented a single project for the small hydropower plants construction. Babanov, as he proclaimed, is ready to work for his country and attract investments. In Russia, he got good experience in managing regions. Babanov also cites as an example of the Skolkovo center for the development of technologies and innovations created in the Russian Federation, and he is ready to create a similar one in Kyrgyzstan. But while he is "on the run", investors in Kyrgyzstan will not come.

The union with Babanov is beneficial to both the current president and the ex-president. Each of them is trying to drag political heavyweights, such as Omurbek Babanov, to his side, Sariev said. In his opinion, Sooronbay Jeenbekov will manage to come to an agreement with Omurbek Babanov in exchange for the chair of the Prime Minister of the Republic. In this scenario, Babanov has every chance of returning to Kyrgyzstan "on a white horse." According to rumors, the Kremlin is backing him. It is Babanov who will implement the memorandums signed during the visit of Vladimir Putin. "Russia has a goal to integrate Kyrgyzstan more closely into the regional structures. Russia needs broad integration and economic penetration into the mining industry, energy and other areas. Russia needs an effective manager in Kyrgyzstan," Sariev said.
Five persons hailing from Haryana were Friday sentenced to life imprisonment by a sessions court here for kidnapping a 23-year-old man for a ransom of Rs 5 lakh.

Irfan Hamid Khan (40), Ilyaz Khan (40), Wahid Jogi (24), Kasam Merv (25) and Azad Mevu (25) were found guilty of offences committed under section 364 (a) and other provisions of the IPC by principal judge V G Bisht.

The prosecution had examined 14 witnesses, including the victim and his brother, who was also the complainant, during the course of trial, additional public prosecutor Vinod More said.

During his deposition, the victim's brother, Pankaj Gupta, told the court that he was working at a shoe store in Vasai as a salesman-cum cashier.

In July 2014, he received a call from a person who informed him that he was looking for a man for gold trading in Mumbai.

After negotiating salary, the caller then asked Gupta to come to Faridabad (in Haryana) for further discussion.

As per discussion, Pankaj met the caller there, who introduced him as Rahul (later identified as Wahid Jogi).

The other accused were also present there, Pankaj said.

The accused had a discussion about setting up the business and then he returned home.

Few days later, Pankaj received a call from Rahul, asking him to come to Faridabad again for some verification.

On this occasion, Pankaj sent his brother, Pravin, to Faridabad as he could not get leave from his job.

Following his arrival at Faridabad, the accused took Pravin to a village and held him captive.

They demanded Rs 5 lakh from Pankaj and threatened to kill Pravin if the ransom amount was not paid.

Meanwhile, Pankaj approached Sahunagar police and lodged a complaint.

A team of the crime branch and Sahunagar police went to Faridabad, and with the help of local police, a trap was laid and the accused were arrested when they had come to collect the ransom amount, the investigating officer told court.

The police rescued Pravin as well.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 67 per cent of 4.33 lakh inmates lodged in 1,400 jails in the country are undertrials, while 1,942 children also live in the prisons along with their mothers, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) prison statistics-2016 released this week.

Out of 4,33,003 prisoners lodged in the jails as on December 31, 2016, the number of convicts, undertrial inmates and detenues were reported as 1,35,683, 2,93,058 and 3,089 respectively.

Uttar Pradesh accounts for the highest number of undertrials and convicts in jails.

The undertrial prisoners account for 67.7 per cent of the total prisoners, 31.3 per cent are convicts and 0.7 per cent are detenues. Among the total prisoners, 1,649 are woman who are lodged in jails along with 1,942 children, the NCRB report said.

The number of undertrial prisoners has increased from 2,82,879 in 2014 to 2,93,058 in 2016, having increased by 3.6 per cent during this period.

Among the 2,93,058 undertrial prisoners, the highest number were lodged in district jails (51.2 per cent -- 1,50,172 inmates) followed by central jails (34.9 per cent - 1,02,384 inmates) and sub-jails (11.3 per cent -33,260 inmates) as on December 31, 2016.

Uttar Pradesh has reported the most number of undertrial prisoners (68,432) in its jails accounting for 23.4 per cent of total number, followed by Bihar (27,753 undertrial prisoners, 9.5 per cent) and Maharashtra (22,693 undertrial prisoners, 7.7 per cent) at the end of 2016, the NCRB said.

Among the women, 400 women prisoners (with 459 children) were convicts while 1,192 women prisoners (with 1,409 children) were undertrial inmates.

According to rules, children up to six years of age are allowed to stay with their jailed mothers.

Among the total prisoners, 6,370 are foreigners, accounting for 1.5 per cent of all.

The number of convicted prisoners has increased from 1,31,517 in 2014 to 1,35,683 in 2016, a rise of 3.2 per cent during this period.

The highest number of convicted prisoners is lodged in central jails (65.5 per cent - 88,916 prisoners) out of total 1,35,683 convicts followed by district jails (27.8 per cent - 37,776 prisoners) and open jails (2.4 per cent - 3,299 prisoners) as on December 31, 2016.

Uttar Pradesh has reported the most number of convicts (26,785) in its jails accounting for 19.7 per cent of total number of convicted prisoners in the country, followed by Madhya Pradesh (16,844 convicts - 12.4 per cent) and Punjab (9,931 convicts -7.3 per cent) at the end of 2016.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday announced the name of its sitting MLA Baljinder Kaur as the Lok Sabha candidate from the high-stakes Bathinda parliamentary constituency.

Kaur, the MLA from Talwandi Sabo and party's Punjab unit Mahila wing chief, has been nominated as the AAP's Lok Sabha candidate from Bathinda, a party statement said here.

Kaur, a postgraduate in English, had a brief stint as a teacher at Fatehgarh Sahib, before joining the party ahead of the 2017 state assembly polls.

She had contested from Talwandi Sabo assembly constituency on the AAP ticket in 2017 and won.

With her candidature, the AAP has announced candidates for the 11 out of 13 Lok Sabha seats in Punjab, which goes to polls in the final phase of polling on May 19.

Bathinda Lok Sabha seat is represented by Union minister and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Harsimrat Kaur Badal. However, the SAD and the Congress are yet to announce nominees from Bathinda.

Punjab legislator and Punjabi Ekta Party president Sukhpal Singh Khaira, who had earlier quit the AAP, had recently announced that he would contest from Bathinda.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Within days of seeking enquiry into the alleged leak of the supplementary charge sheet in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper case, the Enforcement Directorate Friday told a Delhi court that there was nothing wrong if the media published or broadcast its contents.

The agency made the submissions in response to a plea by British-national Christian Michel, alleged middleman arrested in the case who accused the ED of politicising the matter by leaking the documents to the media.

"It was a public document and there was nothing wrong if someone accessed it. It is not that no one was entitled to get a copy. The cognisance was already taken," the ED's counsel said while refuting the allegation that the agency had leaked the documents.

The agency sought dismissal of the application filed by Michel.

It had last week requested special judge Arvind Kumar to order an enquiry into the alleged leakage of the charge sheet to media.

In his application, Michel's lawyer had told the court that the copy of the charge sheet was provided to the media before it was provided to the accused.

"Michel has not named anyone in his statement before the agency which is being leaked to media. This is only to make the matter sensational and prejudice the case against my client," the counsel said.

The court, meanwhile, directed the 'ahlmad' (court staff) to file a report containing information related to the charge sheet, including how many copies were filed by the agency.

The court posted the matter for further hearing on April 20 after the accused sought time to submit documents in response to the reply filed by the ED to his application.

ED had on April 6 also urged the court to issue a notice to a organisation asking it to explain how it accessed the documents, while terming the matter as "serious".

Michel had also supported the demand of a probe while accusing the agency of politicising the matter.

Michel, currently in judicial custody, was arrested by the ED on December 22 last year after his extradition from Dubai.

He is among the three alleged middlemen being probed in the chopper scam by the ED and the Central Bureau of Investigation or CBI. The others are Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa.

The agency had earlier told the court that Michel received 24.25 million euros and 1,60,96,245 pounds from the AgustaWestland deal.

The ED told the court that it had identified Michel's properties purchased with the proceeds of the crime.

The ED, in its charge sheet filed against Michel in June 2016, had alleged that he had received 30 million euros (about Rs 225 crore) from AgustaWestland.

The CBI, in its charge sheet, has alleged an estimated loss of 398.21 million euros (about Rs 2,666 crore) to the exchequer in the deal that was signed on February 8, 2010 for the supply of VVIP choppers worth 556.262 million euros.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
BJP national president Amit Shah on Friday held a meeting with party leaders and workers here to review poll preparations of the party in the eastern-UP region.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who accompanied Shah soon after his arrival at the Lal Bahadur Shastri International airport this evening, also participated in the meet.

Shah also discussed the preparations for the roadshow, which the party wants to make a mega event ahead of the nomination filing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from Varanasi Lok Sabha seat to fight for a second term, said a party leader.

Modi is likely to make a two-day stay on April 25 and 26 in the parliamentary constituency, where he may hold a roadshow.

Voting in Varanasi will take place on May 19.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Polling in Thursday's assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh,that went past midnight, stood at 76.69 per cent, with police confirming the deaths of two people in poll related incidents.

The figure is 1.27 per cent less than the total votes polled in the 2014 elections.

But Election Commission authorities here expect the percentage to increase by at least one per cent as the final tabulation of votes polled in all 175 Assembly segments was still continuing.

There are 3,93,45,717 voters in the state.

Polling continued past midnight Thursday in over 200 polling stations because of technical glitches in EVMs during the day.

"We are awaiting final reports from Returning Officers from all constituencies.

At last count early Friday morning,the polling percentage was 76.69. That could almost be the final figure. If at all, there could be a one per cent increase," a senior official in the EC here said.

The EC authorities initially expected the polling to cross 80 per cent as a large number of voters had queued up in all polling stations.

Police Friday confirmed that two persons were killed in election related violence in the state,contrary to conflicting claims of the ruling TDP and opposition YSR Congress.

The TDP and the YSRC issued statements claiming that two each of their workers were killed by rivals on Thursday.

The Director General of Police issued a statement saying there were 'only two deaths' related to the elections as against six in 2014.

While one TDP worker was killed in a group clash in Tadipatri constituency in Anantapuramu district, a YSRC worker's father died accidentally, caught in a clash between TDP and YSRC activists in Tamballapalle in Chittoor district.

"The 68-year-old man was at the scene of the clash,trying to prevent his son from being a participant. He suffered a stone-hit near his eye and succumbed on the way to hospital," Chittoor district Superintendent of Police Vikrant Patil told PTI over phone.

On Thursday, YSRC claimed one of its workers was killed by TDP men in Tadipatri but it turned out that the man only went into a coma after sustaining injuries.

TDP president Chandrababu Naidus son Nara Lokesh tweeted Friday that two of his party workers were "hacked to death".

He did not, however, specify where the second incident occurred.

Police confirmed only the Tadipatri incident.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The current government has shown great resolve in allowing the Army to carry out cross-border strikes but the hands of the armed forces were not tied before that either, Lieutenant General (retired) D S Hooda said Friday.

He was speaking at Goa Fest, an annual event here organised by advertising associations.

"The current government, in giving permissions for cross border operations like surgical strikes and Balakot air strike, has certainly shown great political resolve. But your army's hands were not tied before that also," Hooda said.

"There has been too much talk about free hand given (to the military), but the Army is free on the border since 1947. It has fought three-four wars," he said.

"The line of control is a brutal place because, as I said, your are being fired upon, and soldiers on the ground will respond immediately. They (soldiers) won't even ask me. There is no question of taking any permission. There is free hand given to the Army and it has been there all along, there is no option," he asserted.

Hooda also ridiculed statements (from some quarters) seeking proof of such military operations.

"Please have faith in your senior military leaders. When the director general of military operations comes out and says openly that we conducted a surgical strike, I see absolutely no reason for anybody to doubt it," he added.

The retired Lt. General added that the armed forces had "not seen seen political interference by any governance".

"To be fair and to be honest in my dealings in military matters and how we should undertake military operations, we really did not have too much interference directly by political leaders. Nobody tells you how to behave at the line of control and this is what you need to do," he said.

"So in that sense, political interference is not much," Hooda said.

Lt General (retd) D S Hooda, a former Northern Army commander, now heads the Congress' task force on national security.

Hooda headed the the Army's Northern Command when special forces commandos carried out a cross-border operation in September 2016 after the Uri terror attack, in which 19 soldiers were killed.

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Top Army commanders carried out a thorough review of India's security challenges including along the borders with China and Pakistan, and resolved to enhance the operational capability of the force to effectively deal with potential adversaries, officials said Friday.

A plethora of pressing issues including speeding up infrastructure development along the border with China and ways to ensure jointness among the Army, Navy and the Indian Air Force were discussed by the commanders at the conference which began on Monday and will conclude on Saturday.

Sources said the commanders also deliberated on emerging security scenario along the border with Pakistan in the wake of Balakot air strike and subsequent Pakistani retaliation.

The Army asserted that it is committed to peaceful security environment and shall holistically address emerging threats while ensuring that there is no room for terror.

"The Army Commanders' Conference has comprehensively deliberated all aspects of extant security dynamics, emerging security scenarios, enhancing operational capability in near and long term and enhancement of combat edge over potential adversaries," the Army said in a statement.

"The deliberations at the conference validated the current course set by the military hierarchy, as merited by the dynamics of emerging security and operational events," it said.

The commanders decided that optimum force readiness will be ensured to deal with any security challenge.

The Army said there was a review about state of existing infrastructure along Northern borders and it has been decided to pursue key projects on higher priority, adding all weather connectivity to border areas was an area of focus.

The sources said the commanders also delved into implementation of ambitious reform initiatives in the Army.

The commanders discussed the role of women officers in view of government's decision on their permanent commissioning.

"Avenues for making the lady officers experts in foreign languages, artificial intelligence, data management, cyber and space domains are being examined," the Army said.

The commanders also decided to re-prioritise the existing requirements to ensure that the resources allocated for force modernisation and capacity building be utilised by optimising allotted budget.

Referring to jointness, Army said all future security challenges will be dealt with by the three services.

Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, in his address at the conference, talked about vision and high credibility of IAF missions and how they can be synergised.

Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of Naval Staff, also addressed the Army Commanders, focusing on jointness and challenges in maritime domain.

Additionally, to promote indigenisation through 'Make in India', an exhibition of emerging and future defence technological innovations was also held.

A total of 53 domestic companies participated in the event.

Officials said the commanders also deliberated on ensuring welfare of the families of brave soldiers who made supreme sacrifice, adding the year 2019 has been declared as the year of 'Next of Kin'.

They said Chief of Army Staff Gen Bipin Rawat emphasised on the need to enhance technological threshold of all ranks.

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Actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha arrived here Friday on his first tour of his Lok Sabha constituency after quitting the BJP and joining the Congress and expressed confidence that he will retain the seat for a third time with a record margin.

Sinha, who is a second-term MP from Patna Sahib, landed at the airport here in the evening and told the posse of waiting journalists I had won the 2014 Lok Sabha polls with the highest margin for any seat in Bihar. This time, a new record will be established.

Sinha popularly known as "Bihari Babu" had trounced famous Bhojpuri actor Kunal, fielded by Congress from the seat, in the last Parliamentary election. Before that in 2009, being a BJP candidate he had defeated fellow Bollywood colleague Sekhar Suman, fighting on Congress ticket.

I have come here to fulfil the promise I had been making all through that the location will be the same even though the situation may be different. I am back to the same location. You all know under what circumstances I had to leave the BJP, Sinha who joined the Congress last week said.

Replying to a query, he said that my daughter Sonakshi did not campaign for me in the past nor would she do so this time. She is apolitical. Moreover, I am not dependent on star campaigners from outside to win an election in the city where I grew up.

In my past two elections I had not requested my friends in the BJP like Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj and Yashwant Sinha to campaign for me, because everybody here knows me, Sinha, who had been associated with the BJP since the 1990s but turned critical of its leadership in the past few years, said.

The flamboyant MP, who has also served two terms in the Rajya Sabha previously and been a member of the Union council of ministers headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee will be taking on Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad who has been fielded by the BJP.

You all know how Prasad was given the ticket while I still was in the BJP. Nobody even showed the courtesy to have a word with me on the matter. I truly believe that the Congress for me would mean a new direction and a better condition (nai disha behtar dasha), the former Bollywood star, who is known for his one-liners, said.

About a reported comment by Prasad wherein he had dismissed the sitting MP as a gali ka ladka (street kid), Sinha said I do not wish to speak ill of him. He has been a personal friend and belongs to a reputed family. I wear his label as a badge of honour. Yes, indeed, I am known in every street of the city.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange woke up in a British jail Friday at the start of a likely lengthy extradition battle after a dramatic end to his seven-year stay in Ecuador's London embassy.

Within hours of police hauling him out of the embassy, the 47-year-old Australia appeared in court for breaching his British bail conditions back in 2012 and to face a subsequent US extradition request.

After Assange was arrested and dragged into a police van in the British capital, American officials unsealed an indictment against him for computer hacking as part of his WikiLeaks whistleblowing activities.

The Sun tabloid reported he was being held in Wandsworth prison in south London, where he spent nine days in 2010 following an investigation over alleged sexual assault in Sweden that has since been dropped.

Deemed "the most overcrowded prison" in England at its last inspection in 2018, the 19th-century facility holds around 1,600 inmates.

Inspectors found "most prisoners share a cell designed for one person" while more than a third "were receiving psychosocial help for substance misuse problems".

Assange was remanded into prison custody Thursday at a short hearing in front of a London judge, who pronounced him guilty of disobeying his bail terms by fleeing to the embassy in June 2012.

He could receive up to a year in prison when sentenced at an as yet undetermined later date.

His separate extradition case is set to be next heard by video-link at Westminster Magistrates Court on May 2.

Assange's London lawyer Jennifer Robinson confirmed he would be "contesting and fighting" his long-feared extradition to the United States.

"He said: 'I told you so'," Robinson told reporters and supporters, including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, outside court on Thursday.

WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson warned he fears the US will add more charges, meaning he could face decades in an American prison.

Assange sought asylum at Ecuador's premises in London's chic Knightsbridge district after a British judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face the sexual assault allegations.

Inside the red-brick building he lived a sparse existence in a flat measuring 18 square metres and comprising just a bed, shower, computer, treadmill and microwave.

However, relations with his Ecuadoran hosts gradually soured and pro-US President Lenin Moreno on Thursday pulled his asylum, cancelled his citizenship and permitted British police to remove Assange.

Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed the arrest as showing "no one is above the law".

But opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, a leftist stalwart, called for the government to block the extradition.

"The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed," he said on Twitter.

Meanwhile May's words prompted a furious reaction on Twitter from Assange's mother, who lives in Australia.

She accused the British prime minister of "trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dog's breakfast by cheering on the thuggish, brutal, unlawful arrest of my courageous, tortured multi-award winning journalist son".

Legal experts said on Friday that the case could take several years mired in British courts and, if appealed, potentially go all the way to the European Court of Justice.

"This extradition will be very difficult to fight -- given the nature of the UK-US extradition agreement," Anthony Hanratty from the law firm BDB Pitmans told The Times.

He added other factors stacked against Assange included "the weight which the UK courts attach to the trust and co-operation between the two countries and the effort the US will likely put in".

At Thursday's hearing, judge Michael Snow described Assange as a "narcissist" and said he could consent to the extradition and "get on with your life".

Previous comparable cases have taken several years.

Two British judges last year agreed to block the extradition of accused hacker Lauri Love to the US, on the grounds it would be "oppressive", in a ruling hailed a "landmark judgement".

The US first requested Love's extradition in 2013.

Meanwhile Gary McKinnon, a hacker wanted by American authorities for allegedly breaking into military computer systems, waged an ultimately successful decade-long legal battle against his extradition.

Britain eventually said it would not send him to the US because of a high risk he would attempt suicide.

Both Love and McKinnon suffer from Asperger's syndrome, which played a part in the respective rulings.

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Irans President Hassan Rouhani has hit back at the United States following the Trump administrations announced decision to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist group. Newsweek reports in its article IRAN HAS DEVELOPED MISSILES 'BEYOND YOUR IMAGINATION,' PRESIDENT WARNS AFTER TRUMP DESIGNATES IRGC AS TERRORIST GROUP that turning President Donald Trumps accusation against the elite branch of the Iranian military on its head, Rouhani said in a Tuesday address that the U.S. is the leader of global terrorism.

You use terrorist groups against the peoples of the region and yet claim to have been fighting terrorism? Rouhani asked, according to Irans Fars News Agency. You are at the top of terrorism in the entire world.

He warned, "You know that we have developed missiles since last year until this year that are beyond your imagination, which suggests that Iran could use its missiles to target U.S. bases or regional American allies in retaliation. Tehran has previously claimed to have missiles with a range of more than 1,200 miles.

On Tuesday, Iranian lawmakers met for a parliament session, wearing paramilitary uniforms and chanting "Death to America," according to the Associated Press. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised the IRGC, bashing the U.S. and saying Washington's evil designs would not harm the elite force.

The Iranian president also pointed to the downing of Iran Air Flight 655, which was shot out of the sky by the U.S. in 1988. All 290 civilians on the plane were killed, including 66 children. At the time, Washington claimed the military had thought the Airbus passenger plane was a fighter jet.

George H.W. Bush, who was vice president and would win the presidential election a few months later, responded to the incident by saying: Ill never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I dont care what the facts are.

Citing the incident, Rouhani asked how such an attack on innocent Iranians was not terrorism.

After shooting down our airliner, you claimed that you mistook it for an F-14 fighter, which is a childish claim. With this terrorist act, you wanted to say that you do not consider any red lines and kill women and children, he said. Your message was to support terrorism in the region.

The Trump administration confirmed on Monday that the U.S. would officially designate the IRGC as a terrorist group. With the announcement, the administration cited the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia that left 19 American airmen dead, as well as other foiled plots targeting the U.S. and its allies.

Trump said the new designation "makes crystal clear the risks of conducting business with, or providing support to, the IRGC.... If you are doing business with the IRGC, you will be bankrolling terrorism."

Founded in 1979 following the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the IRGC has grown in prominence, with analysts suggesting it now dominates the Iranian economy. The military force has also been involved in regional conflicts, training and providing support to troops the Iranian regime supports. These efforts are usually at odds with U.S. interests in the region, as the U.S. is closely allied with Iran rivals Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing a close election Tuesday, publicly took credit for Trumps decision with a Monday tweet. Thank you for answering another one of my important requests, which serves the interests of our country and the countries of the region, he wrote.

In his Tuesday remarks, Rouhani argued that the U.S. was concerned more about the interests of Israel instead of those of the world. Washington has made a big mistake by putting IRGC on its terror list and has sacrificed the interests of American people and others across the world for the interests of a host of Zionists, he claimed.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is being held in London's high-security Belmarsh prison which has housed some of Britain's most notorious inmates, a legal source told AFP Friday.

The Sun newspaper had earlier reported that Assange had been taken to Wandsworth Prison following his dramatic arrest at Ecuador's embassy in London on Thursday.

Meanwhile in Australia, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said consular officials would try to visit Assange, a 47-year-old Australian citizen, on Friday.

The Australian High Commission in London could not confirm or deny whether the visit had gone ahead.

The prison in southeast London became one of the country's best-known jails after Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs and career criminal Charles Bronson -- dubbed "the most violent prisoner in Britain" -- were held there.

Opened in 1991 next to Woolwich Crown Court, it has frequently been used in high-profile national security cases.

Among those to have called its cells home is former Finsbury Park Mosque hate preacher Abu Hamza -- who now resides in an American "supermax" prison following extradition.

Radical cleric Anjem Choudary, who was convicted in 2016 of encouraging support for the Islamic State group, spent some of his sentence there.

Belmarsh earned the moniker "the UK's Guantanamo Bay" in the period following the 9/11 attacks after it was used to detain a number of people under anti-terror laws.

The prison, which has a capacity of around 900, houses inmates on remand and serving short sentences as well as those convicted of the most serious offences.

It can hold prisoners "requiring specific management arrangements because of their public and media profile," according to an inspection report last year.

The report said the facility suffered from a "significant shortage of frontline staff" which had resulted in a "severely depleted daily regime" that limited the time inmates could be given outside their cells.

Belmarsh may be an upgrade for Assange on his previous British prison digs.

The infamous whistleblower spent nine days in Wandsworth prison in 2010 following an investigation over alleged sexual assault in Sweden.

Deemed "the most overcrowded prison" in England at its last inspection in 2018, the 19th-century facility holds around 1,600 inmates, with most prisoners sharing a cell designed for one person.

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Scores of Banaras Hindu University students on Friday demanded a CBI probe into the last week's incident where a youth was shot dead at the campus.

Some of the students also took out a candle march near BHU, holding placards that read: "We want justice for Gaurav Singh" and "We demand CBI probe."



Gaurav Singh was standing with his friends outside a hostel on April 2 when unidentified bike-borne assailants fired indiscriminately at him. He was rushed to the trauma centre of the BHU's Institute of Medical Sciences, where he succumbed to injuries.

Earlier, BHU public relations officer Rajesh Singh had said Gaurav Singh and some other students were suspended from the university for their alleged role in the violent protest at the campus in 2017 over "harassment" of some students.

Gaurav Singh's father, Rakesh Singh, who works as a clerk in the university, said his son was pursuing a master of computer applications there. He lamented that the BHU administration had "stooped so low" that even after his son's death, it was denying that he was a student.

Ashutosh Singh, a BHU student leader and a member of the Samajwadi Party students' wing, claimed that he was also targeted, but miraculously escaped unhurt.

He said the killing was part of a "larger conspiracy hatched by some of the local politicians, contractors working in BHU, along with some professors of the varsity".

Gaurav Singh's father had registered an FIR against five identified, including the BHU chief proctor, and two unidentified persons.

Police have so far arrested three students of the BHU's Birla hostel in connection with the case and recovered a countrymade pistol from their possession.

The trio, Ashutosh Tripathi, Kumar Mangalam and Rupesh Tiwari, is said to have confessed that they had a rivalry with Gaurav Singh.

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The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear on April 15 a plea challenging the Election Commission's ban on the release of biopic on Prime Minister

A bench headed by Chief Justice said it will hear the plea filed by producers of the biopic.

The poll panel had on Wednesday banned the screening of the biopic during poll period, saying any such film that subserves purpose of any political entity or individual should not be displayed in the electronic media.



The apex court had on Tuesday disposed of the petition filed by a Congress activist seeking stay on the release of the biopic, saying the Election Commission was the right forum to decide the issue.

The top court had left it for the EC to take a call by saying that since the movie was not certified at that time by the Censor Board it could not entertain the petition seeking ban on the film.



ALSO READ: EC stops release of Modi biopic till Lok Sabha elections are over

Later on Tuesday evening the Censor Board had certified the biopic and the Congress activist on Wednesday succeeded in securing a ban on its release from the Election Commission.
BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking contempt action against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for allegedly attributing his remarks on the recent Rafale verdict to the apex court.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it will hear the plea on April 15.

Lekhi, who is a sitting Lok Sabha MP from New Delhi constituency, in her plea alleged that Gandhi has attributed his personal remarks to the top court and tried to create prejudice.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Lekhi, told the bench that the Congress president reportedly made a remark that the "Supreme Court said chowkidaar chor hai" in the verdict.

The Congress president had on April 10 claimed that the apex court has made it clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed a theft.

He had made the statement while interacting with reporters in Amethi after filing his nomination papers where he is contesting against BJP leader and union minister Smriti Irani.

Gandhi had also recalled a recent interview by the prime minister, in which Modi had said the Supreme Court had given a clean chit to his government on the Rafale deal.

Now the SC has made it clear that 'chowkidarji' (watchman) has committed a theft, Gandhi had told reporters after filing his nomination papers from the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency.

He had claimed that the apex court has accepted that there is some corruption in Rafale.

The apex court, which had earlier cleared the Modi government of accusations of corruption over the Rafale deal with France, Tuesday said it will hear a review petition on the basis of the new documents, referred to by the petitioners.

It had on Wednesday allowed the plea of petitioners relying on leaked documents for seeking review of its Rafale judgement and dismissed the government's preliminary objections claiming "privilege" over them.

"I am happy and I have been saying so for months that Hindustan's PM has given the air force money to (industrialist) Anil Ambani, and the SC has accepted it. The SC is going to investigate it," Gandhi had said.

I want to thank the SC. It's a very happy day. The SC has talked about justice. Justice has prevailed," he had added.

The Rafale fighter is a twin-engine Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) manufactured by French aerospace company Dassault Aviation.

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BJP president Amit Shah Friday said his party is confident of winning all the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh, despite winning only 15 of the 90 seats in the state assembly elections last year.

Addressing a poll rally in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, Shah said the BJP had won 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and exuded confidence that this time the party will emerge victorious in all 11 seats.

In the last three Lok Sabha polls in 2004, 2009 and 2014 after the formation of Chhattisgarh, BJP had won 10 seats in the state every time.

BJP denied tickets to all its 10 sitting MPs in the state this time after suffering a massive defeat in last year's assembly polls.

The party has fielded its state general secretary Santosh Pandey in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency which will go to polls in the third phase of election in the state on April 23.

Shah also described the Naxal attack in which a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed as a political conspiracy and sought a CBI probe into it.

BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi and four police personnel were killed in the Naxal attack on Tuesday, two days before polling in Bastar Lok Sabha constituency.

Shah said the Naxal attack was not a normal incident and "it seems that it was a political conspiracy".

"The attack should be probed by the CBI," Shah said.

On demand for having a separate Prime Minister for Kashmir, the BJP chief said, "Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive".

When the Balakot air strike was conducted, Indians were happy but there was grief in Pakistan and the Congress office, Shah said.

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/ -- Blaze, a first of its kind block-lattice protocol designed for the ever-expanding needs of the digital economy, is commencing its private token sales and has already attracted interest from notable crypto-funds such as CRC Capital.

Blaze was founded by several technopreneurs including CEO Ankur Maheshwari, who is also Founder/CEO Deqode, a prominent blockchain development firm with 200 developers and counts big names in the blockchain space as clients. Jeremy Khoo, Managing Partner CRC Capital and Group CEO IFG Group also comes on board as Chief Product Officer.

Blaze's unique infrastructure offers three advantages: making the governance effortless, improving the transaction processing speed and reducing blockchain bloat. The protocol has been designed to be robust and secure to support mission-critical applications. At the same time, it is flexible and resilient to keep up with the ever-changing needs of the industry.

"Having built and supported countless blockchain projects, it always comes down to how scalable versus decentralised the blockchain layer is, which is never answered convincingly," says Ankur Maheshwari, "We therefore endeavoured to solve this complex problem, and believe we have the solution now."



Blaze also provides a blockchain-as-a-service platform where businesses can set up their own isolated ecosystem without worrying about the security or a need to code. With features like lightweight smart contracts, smart transactions, built-in voting, messaging and more - Blaze ensures that the businesses transition fluently into the next era of technology.

With the token sales, Blaze looks to expand on its already substantial developer base and onboard high volume clients seeking the benefits of the blockchain as well as a highly scalable solution. Blaze will also commence building an open, permissionless e-commerce ecosystem that promises to be fast, scalable and register lowest fees.

With a seasoned blockchain entrepreneurial team in the fintech, IT development and e-commerce spaces, the Blaze community can look forward to major partnerships and utility on the tokens from a network as well as transactional commerce perspective.

"Blaze has been in active development for a while now, and has registered major interest from its fundraising activity," says Jeremy Khoo, "From an e-commerce angle, IFG Group is glad to partner up and believe that we have finally found a solution to build an open commerce system for millions of users."



Blaze is supported by a strong technical team of more than 200 active developers. The Blaze protocol has been patented on its block-lattice technology and is built in collaboration with the Institute of Engineering and Technology, India.

More information on the Token Sales can be found at http://blazeprotocol.io



Logo - https://photos.prnasia.

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The Delhi High Court Friday directed the CBI to file a timeline of events relating to the ongoing investigation in a bribery case involving the agency's former special director Rakesh Asthana and the need for sending Letters Rogatory (LRs) to various countries.

The court questioned the CBI for not sending the LRs till now even though it had passed in January the order dismissing the pleas of Asthana and two others seeking to quash the FIR.

Justice Mukta Gupta said the document, to be filed through Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Vikramjit Banerjee, should also include when the requirement of issuing LRs came to the knowledge of the investigating officers and the details of the CBI officers who spent last 2-3 months on it.

"The ASG will prepare a list of dates and events indicating when the requirement of LRs came to the notice of the IOs. Who spent these 2-3 months and how, resulting in not sending the LRs till date," the court said, asking the agency to file the document in a sealed cover.

Letters Rogatory are a formal request from a court to a foreign court for some judicial assistance.

The court listed the matter for April 23 for further hearing on CBI's application seeking more time to complete the probe in the case lodged against Asthana, DSP Devender Kumar and middleman Manoj Prasad.

On January 11, the court had granted 10 weeks to the probe agency to complete its investigation.

ASG and advocate Rajdipa Behura, representing the CBI, sough six months to complete the investigation.

When the court observed that six months was too much, the CBI counsel suggested for giving four months.

"When this came to your notice that you need to send LRs to other countries. If you move at a snail's pace, who is responsible for it. I know how it works in a typical bureaucratic manner," the judge said.

On instructions, ASG said the CBI officials had come to know of the need of LRs earlier but a decision was taken on it in March.

The high court in January had disposed of three petitions of Asthana, Kumar and Prasad, by a common order in which CBI was directed to complete investigation in the case within ten weeks.

Earlier, Kumar's lawyers had told the court that the application was not maintainable according to section 362 of the Criminal Procedure Code which states that a court may not alter or review its final order in a matter except to correct a clerical or arithmetical error.

The court had not agreed with the contention, saying the instant matters were writ petitions and not a criminal complaint and therefore, section 362 may not be applicable.

Asthana was booked on the allegations of criminal conspiracy, corruption and criminal misconduct under the relevant sections of Prevention of Corruption Act.

Kumar, earlier the investigating officer in a case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi, was arrested on the allegations of forgery in recording the statement of Hyderabad-based businessman Sathish Babu Sana, who had alleged having paid bribe to get relief in the case. He was arrested on October 22, 2018 and granted bail on October 31.

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A case has been registered against some unidentified people who allegedly tried to cast votes at a polling booth in Shamli district's Kairana without valid ID cards, police said Friday.

On Thursday, BSF personnel fired in the air at a polling booth when some people, not carrying their identity cards, tried to forcibly enter the premises to cast their votes, had police said.

A complaint has been registered and investigation has been initiated, District Magistrate Akhilesh Singh said.

According to the police, the incident took place at a polling booth in Rasoolpur Gujran village under Kandhla police station around 12 pm Thursday, they said.

The BSF personnel at the booth had fired in the air to bring the situation under control but it led to chaos. Later police personnel had also reached the spot, Shamli Superintendent of Police Ajay Kumar told PTI.

He further said the situation was brought to normal and polling was restarted.

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China is trying to create its own globally decisive naval force through the ambitious multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative, the Pentagon has told the US Congress, warning that Beijing's "unfavourable deals" strangle a nation's sovereignty like an Anaconda enwrapping its next meal.

Touted as President Xi Jinping's pet project, China is vigorously pursuing the Belt and Road initiative (BRI), offering billions of dollars of loans for infrastructure projects to different countries as it looks to expand global influence.

"China's Belt and Road Initiative in particular is blending diplomatic, economic, military, and social elements of its national power in an attempt to create its own globally decisive naval force," John Richardson, Chief of Naval Operations, told members of House Armed Services Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

"China's modus operandi preys off nations' financial vulnerabilities. They contract to build commercial ports, promise to upgrade domestic facilities, and invest in national infrastructure projects," he said.

The BRI focuses on improving connectivity and cooperation among Asian countries, Africa, China and Europe.

The project has become a major stumbling block in India-China relations as the controversial USD 60 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has been listed as its "flagship project".

India has objected to the CPEC as it is being laid through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and boycotted a high-profile Belt and Road Forum organised by China last year.

"Slowly, as the belt tightens, these commercial ports transition to dual uses, doubling as military bases that dot strategic waterways. Then, the belt is cinched as China leverages debt to gain control and access," Richardson said.

"In the final analysis, these unfavourable deals strangle a nation's sovereignty -like an Anaconda enwrapping its next meal. Scenes like this are expanding westward from China through Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Djibouti and now to our NATO treaty allies, Greece and Italy," he told members of the House Armed Services Committee.

In his testimony, the top naval official said despite the United States' persistent work over two centuries to keep the seas open to every nation and every mariner, there are those who seek to upend this free and open order and stem the tide that has steadily lifted all boats.

"As discussed in the 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS), China and Russia are deploying all elements of their national power to achieve their global ambitions," he said.

China and Russia seek to accumulate power at America's expense and may imperil the diplomatic, economic, and military bonds that link the United States to its allies and partners, Richardson added.

"These actions are not only directed at the United States: China and Russia are working to redefine the norms of the entire international system on terms more favourable to themselves," he said.

China and Russia are determined to replace the current free and open world order with an insular system, Richardson asserted.

"They are attempting to impose unilateral rules, re-draw territorial boundaries, and redefine exclusive economic zones so they can regulate who comes and who goes, who sails through and who sails around.

"These countries' actions are undermining international security. This behaviour breeds distrust and harms our most vital national interests," he told the lawmakers.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday targeted Congress president Rahul Gandhi, asking voters to choose between 'Imandar Chowkidar' and 'bhrashtachari naamdar".

Addressing an election rally here to campaign for Ahmednagar and Shirdi Lok Sabha candidates, Modi also said the world has recognised India as a super power in the last five years.

"Do you remember the previous ten years of the earlier remote-controlled government? Scams and delays in decision- making were the order of the day. You need to now choose between Imandar Chowkidar and Bhrashtachari Naamdar," Modi said.

Reaching out to first-time voters, Modi said,"those born in the 21st century will be voting for the first time. Do you agree with the weak approach of previous governments of compromising national security. Is this acceptable to you?"



Modi hit out at Congress ally National Conference's demand for prime minister's post for Jammu and Kashmir.

"I have no expectation from the Congress since it has stopped thinking about people long ago," he said.

Hitting out at Sharad Pawar, Modi said the NCP president had quit the Congress in the name of the country. "Sharadrao, how can you be silent on the two PM demand. Why are you silent? Is this acceptable to you?



"Your party name is Rashtravadi and still you see the country through foreign lens. Is the name Rashtravadi in your party to fool people," Modi said.

Continuing his tirade against Rahul Gandhi, Modi linked the IT raids on aides of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, claiming this was "Tughlak Road chunavi ghotala" (election scam).

Modi said the Congress needs to be decisively defeated to ensure poverty eradication, modern infrastructure and development of all sections of society.

Modi said there have been no terror strikes as the "Chowkidar" has instilled fear in minds of perpetrators of terror that he will find them even from hell and punish them.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Moscow State Museum of Oriental Art has opened an exhibition titled 'Harmony of space. Traditional Art of Azerbaijan.' More than 100 decorative and applied art objects of the Land of Fire are exhibited at the museum on Nikitsky Boulevard. The exhibition tells about the interior of Azerbaijani houses in the 19th - early 20th centuries with an emphasis on carpets.

At the opening of the exhibition, the cultural and tourism attache of the Azerbaijani Embassy in Russia, Nigar Akhundova, conveyed greetings from Azerbaijani ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbul oglu, who noted that he likes to visit the State Museum of Oriental Art, which is linked to Azerbaijan by many exhibits and knowledge of Azerbaijani history and culture. "The excellent director, my long-term friend is here. To my great regret, I had to leave due to an urgent and important matter. The exhibition will be held at a high level," the diplomat is confident. He congratulated director of the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum Shirin Melikov and director of the State Museum of Oriental Art Alexander Sedov, as well as staff of both museums, who worked "as a single mechanism" on the eve of the exhibition, on the implementation of an interesting and significant project." Polad Bulbul oglu expressed hope that "this wonderful tandem" will repeatedly please the public with the results of joint creative work.

The curator of the exhibition, director of the Azerbaijani Carpet Museum Shirin Melikova told Vestnik Kavkaza that the exhibition shows special comfort and beauty of traditional Azerbaijani interior.

The Azerbaijani Carpet Museum displays items related to the wedding ceremony - the bride's dress and dowry. The bride's dress and accessories should have red accents as a symbol of protection, a new life. Among the gifts, richly decorated with gold embroidery, the mustache protector is of special interest. Azerbaijani dandies wore at night to preserve their lush mustache's shape during sleep.

The Museum of Oriental Art has one of the most extensive collections of the Caucasian art. However, it has special relations with Azerbaijan. The museum's history has began in 1918 with the Azerbaijani 'Bahmanli' carpet of the 19th century, the curator of the exhibition from the Museum of Oriental Art, Maria Filatova, told Vestnik Kavkaza.

Among the Museum of Oriental Art's collection - jewelry, jugs, bowls, trays, decorated with delicate ornaments, as well as 'ambassadorial' tablecloths. They were not put on the table, they were used to wrap gifts for the distinguished guests.

Director general of the State Museum of Oriental Art Alexander Sedov told Vestnik Kavkaza: "Its very beautiful and very colorful here. Many exhibits from the collection of the Baku Carpet Museum and from our collection, which are not displayed at our internal exhibitions often, are really unique. So, the exhibition composed of the two museums' collections is surprisingly completed."

One window displays tools and other attributes for making kelaghayi - silk headscarves, which still remain an integral part of an Azerbaijani woman's wardrobe. For centuries, handmade embroidery has played a large role in Azerbaijani interior and clothing. The clothing reflected not only local peculiarities of the country's historical and ethnographic zones, but also a person's status and marriage status.

Theater and film actress Valentina Titova, who visited the exhibition, told Vestnik Kavkaza: "Now, not many people are engaged in it, but everything that is hard to make is preserved for many years. Antiques draw people's attention, and that's how culture comes into our life."

The 'Harmony of space. Traditional Art of Azerbaijan' exhibition will run until May 12. It was organized by the Russian and Azerbaijani Culture Ministries, the Embassy of Azerbaijan, the State Museum of Oriental Art and the Azerbaijan Carpet Museum.
Seeking to make the Lok Sabha polls a contest between him and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday asked voters to choose between "imaandar (honest) chowkidar' and 'bhrashtachari (corrupt) naamdar".

Gandhi has been hurling the "chowkidar chor hai" jibe at Modi to claim irregularities in Rafale deal, while the PM has been calling the Congress chief as 'naamdar' (dynast).

"You have to choose between imaandar chowkidar and bhrashtachari naamdar. You also have to choose between heroes of India and supporters of Pakistan," Modi said.

At a rally here to campaign for BJP-Shiv Sena alliance candidates of Ahmednagar and Shirdi Lok Sabha constituencies, Modi said, "You have to decide the country's future and which direction will it take in this election."



Modi said in the last five years, people have seen that his government is a strong regime which takes decisions.

"You have seen Chowkidar's government which is strong and takes decisions. Scams and decision-making delays were the order of the day during the remote-controlled government (UPA) earlier," Modi said.

"During the UPA rule, bomb blasts were frequent in which farmers, middle class people and traders were killed. Blasts happened in trains, buses and stations. But under the Chowkidar's rule, where are the bomb blasts," he said.

"This is because the Chowkidar has instilled fear in minds of the terror perpetrators that even a single mistake would prove costly for them. The Chowkidar will find them from hell and punish them," Modi said.

Modi asked if people agree with his policy of killing terrorists by going into their territory and killing them.

He said the earlier government looked weak "in front of Pakistan and rest of the world".

"Our army wanted to take revenge but the (then) government kept quiet. This Chowkidar gave permission (to army) to kill terrorists by going inside their territory. Are you happy with this strong government," he said.

On the National Conference demanding Prime Minister's post for Jammu and Kashmir, Modi said, "the Congress and NCP are supporting those who demand that Jammu and Kashmir have a Prime Minister."



"I have no expectation from the Congress since it has stopped thinking about people long ago," he said. "This sin is the creation of that party," he added.

Modi said NCP chief Sharad Pawar had quit the Congress in the name of the country. "Sharad rao, how can you be silent on the two PM demand. Why are you silent? Is this acceptable to you?



"Your party's name is Rashtravadi but you see the country through a foreign lens after allying with the Congress again. Is the name Rashtravadi in your party to fool people," Modi said.

Reaching out to first-time voters, Modi said,"those born in the 21st century will be voting for the first time. Do you agree with the weak approach of previous governments and their compromising national security? Is this acceptable to you?"



Modi said he has been able to work on various development projects, including farmers welfare, because of people's support.

He expressed confidence that the "Modi sarkar" will be re-elected on May 23 when results of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls are declared.

Modi said after being re-elected to power, his government would have a separate ministry for water management. He accused the Congress-NCP combine of being enemies of farmers.

Modi said the Congress needs to be decisively defeated to ensure poverty eradication, modern infrastructure and development of all sections of society.

Continuing his tirade against Rahul Gandhi, Modi linked the IT raids on aides of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, claiming this was "Tughlak Road chunavi ghotala" (election scam).

Tughlak Road is the residence of a "naamdar neta" in Delhi where funds are being sent, Modi said.

"Child nutrition funds given to Madhya Pradesh government are being used for elections. Habits of the Congress won't go. The Chowkidar is alert and that is why he could arrest the thieves," he said.

Notably, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath's residence as an MP is at 1, Tughlaq Road in New Delhi, while Congress president Rahul Gandhi's official residence as an MP is 12, Tughlak Lane in the national capital.

The Income Tax Department recently conducted raids on close aides of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Congress leader Kamal Nath and others in four states on Sunday.

The CBDT, that frames policy for the I-T department, had said the department has also detected a trail of Rs 20 crore suspect cash allegedly being moved to the "headquarters of a major political party in Delhi" from the house of an important person who lives on Tughlaq Road, home to many VIPs.

There was speculation that Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, whose son Sujay is BJP candidate from Ahmednagar, may attend the rally but the Congress leader stayed away from the venue.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders of using the armed forces for garnering votes while expressing solidarity with the military veterans who have written to President Ram Nath Kovind over what they called "use of military for political purposes".

The party also urged the president to take action against Modi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, and other BJP leaders for alleged use of the military to seek votes.

Over 150 military veterans have written to the president seeking his intervention in preserving the apolitical character of the services. The letter, dated April 11, carries the names of eight former service chiefs, but two of them -- former Army chief General (retd) S F Rodrigues and Air Chief Marshal (retd) N C Suri -- said they have not signed it.

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturverdi, at a press conference, alleged that both Prime Minister Modi and BJP president Amit Shah, in their public addresses in the last few days, have actively referred to the Pulwama terror attack in which 40 CRPF personnel lost their lives.

"The statements come as both the leaders attempt to make the attack a part of their political narrative in the run-up to the 2019 polls," Chaturvedi said, referring to Modi's April 9 election rally in Maharashtra's Latur, in which he urged first-time voters to dedicate their vote to the soldiers who conducted the Balakot anti-terror airstrikes and to those who lost their lives in Pulwama.

"We have also witnessed how PM Modi made an election speech with photographs of 40 Pulwama martyrs in the backdrop," she said.

Chaturvedi also cited instances of Adityanath and Union minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi making references to 'Modi ki Sena'.

"Earlier, BJP MP and national executive member Sakshi Maharaj was shamefully smiling, waving and holding a road show standing next to body of Pulwama martyr in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh and the nation witnessed the despicable act of self-promotion by (Union) Tourism Minister Alphons Kannanthanam who clicked a selfie with a Pulwama jawan's body in Wayanad," Chaturvedi alleged.

"We express solidarity with the 156 veterans who have pointed out that the blood and sacrifice of our Armed Forces should not be used as a political pamphlet to seek votes. We would demand Rashtrapatiji -- the Supreme Commander of our armed forces -- to ensure action against PM Modi, UP CM and several other BJP leaders," she said.

Earlier, the Congress, in a tweet, alleged that the prime minister "may try to use soldiers for votes, but it's clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP."



Referring to the letter, Chaturvedi said that the veterans had expressed displeasure over repeated instances of political parties using armed forces for political gains ahead of the elections.

The Army veterans have urged the President to take "necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes to further their political agendas," Chaturvedi said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday moved the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in the political domain by using them to seek votes.

A Congress delegation, comprising Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Surjewala, made several representations such as over Union minister Smriti Irani's "contradictory affidavits" to the Election Commission on her educational qualifications and a web series on Prime Minister Modi.

The party gave a memorandum to EC over Irani's contradictory affidavits, demanding that she should be disqualified from contesting.

"PM Modi, BJP chief (Amit Shah) and other leaders of the ruling party are shamelessly and openly, for the first time in 70 years, are dragging the forces into cheap politics," Singhvi told reporters outside the Election Commission.

"Dragging the armed forces in political crossfire, asking for votes and doing cheap (using the forces), only Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have done this," he said.

Singhvi said the Congress has asked the EC to stop such violations and also requested the commission to not just censure or pull up those violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), but dock the person guilty of violation a day of campaigning.

"If the person makes another violation, he/she should be barred from two days of campaigning, similarly three and four days for third and fourth violation," he said.

Singhvi said the EC should also put a stop on the web series on Modi, citing the commission's order stalling a biopic on the prime minister.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday moved the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in the political domain and over Union minister Maneka Gandhi's remarks on Muslims.

The Congress also made representations to the poll panel against a web series on Modi, Union minister Smriti Irani's "contradictory affidavits" on her educational qualifications, alleged "hate speeches" by BJP leaders, malfunction of EVMs, and complaint against government official for violation of election guidelines in Bihar's Munger.

A Congress delegation comprising Ahmed Patel, K C Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Randeep Surjewala and Shaktisinh Gohil, made the representations to the EC and demanded immediate action.

The Congress raised the issue of the remarks made by Maneka Gandhi with EC, Surjewala told reporters.

The party demanded that an FIR be registered against Maneka Gandhi and cancel her nomination, Surjewala said.

Addressing an election rally on Thursday in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur, Gandhi told Muslims to vote for her as they will need her once the Lok Sabha elections are over.

"We are not Mahatma Gandhi's children that we keep giving and not get anything in return," she said in Muslim-dominated Turabkhani area of the constituency.

The Congress also asked the EC to issue directions to the prime minister for "deliberately" invoking defence personnel during his speech in Latur, Maharashtra, as a part of his election campaign propaganda.

"PM Modi, BJP chief (Amit Shah) and other leaders of the ruling party are shamelessly and openly, for the first time in 70 years, dragging the forces into cheap politics," Singhvi told reporters outside the EC's office here.

"Dragging the armed forces in political crossfire, asking for votes and doing cheap (using the forces), only Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have done this," he said.

Singhvi said the Congress has asked the EC to stop such violations and also requested the Commission to not just censure or pull up those violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), but dock the person guilty of violation a day of campaigning.

"If the person makes another violation, he/she should be barred from two days of campaigning, similarly three and four days for third and fourth violation," he said.

Singhvi said the EC should also put a stop on the web series on Modi, citing the Commission's order stalling a biopic on the prime minister.

The Congress also complained to the poll panel on alleged "hate speeches" of Modi, Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath during their rallies in Nanded, Nagpur and Meerut, respectively, on April 9.

"At all three of the aforementioned rallies, the concerned individuals employed the use of hateful, communal and divisive language against the Congress Party and its President Rahul Gandhi," the party said in its memorandum submitted to the EC.

"As evidenced by the events of the last month, these individuals will not be silenced by a simple censure or rebuke...We hope that the ECI appreciates the seriousness and on this occasion, intervenes decisively," the Congress said.

The party also demanded urgent and necessary directions to all chief electoral officers, booth level officers and other election officials to ensure proper functioning of EVMs during the polls.

It urged the EC to initiate immediate investigation into the malfunctioning of EVMs and other issues reported from various states during the first phase of polling on April 11.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday welcomed the Supreme Court judgement on electoral bonds, saying the party has always maintained that transparency in political funding and governance must be adhered to.

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi took a swipe at the BJP and said the judgement would bring out the "nexus" between the saffron party and its "suited-booted friends".

"We welcome this judgement coming from the Supreme Court. We have always maintained that transparency in political funding, transparency in governance must be adhered to," she told reporters.

Chaturvedi alleged that the BJP, which came to power on the back of promises like bringing in transparency in the system, has done nothing towards it.

She also alleged that the BJP has undermined the Right to Information and the Central Vigilance Commission and the party is doing everything to suppress transparency in governance.



"We hope that the BJP would explain how they got such kind of political funding. We also hope this would expose the nexus between their suited-booted friends and the political party, which has within its five years not given development to this country, but developed a five-star headquarter for itself in Delhi," she said.

The Supreme Court on Friday directed all political parties to furnish receipts of political funding received through electoral bonds and details of identity of donors in a sealed cover to the Election Commission.

In an interim order, the apex court also directed all political parties to provide details of the amount of the bond and bank account of donors by May 30 to the poll panel.

The apex court said it would examine in detail changes made in Income Tax law, electoral law and banking laws to make them in consonance with the scheme and ensure balance does not tilt in favour of any political party.
In a scathing attack on the Congress-JDS government in Karnataka, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday dubbed it as a "20 per cent commission government."



Addressing a rally here in north Karnataka, Modi said the Congress-JDS coalition's "only mission is commission", attacking it on the issue of corruption.

Modi branded the earlier government (Siddaramaiah's) as a "10 per cent commision" government, but now with Congress and JDS joining hands, it had become a "20 per cent commission government."



He asked whether the Lok Sabha elections was about "nation first or family first," as he attacked the dynasty of several anti-BJP parties.

Modi also asserted that there was a wave across the country favouring the return of his government.

In the first phase of Lok Sabha polls on Thursday, the opposition parties would not be able to sustain, Modi said.

"Phir Ek Bar...." Modi said, and the huge crowd roared in approval saying, "Modi Sarkar.

The Prime Minister also drew huge applause when he spoke in Kannada towards the end of his speech, hailing every strata of society and asking them to say Chowkidhar'.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Himachal Pradesh Power Minister Anil Sharma resigned from the state's BJP government on Friday, days after the Congress fielded his son Aashray Sharma as its candidate from the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency.

Anil Sharma has been under pressure from his own party after his father, former Union minister Sukh Ram quit the BJP and joined the Congress along with Aashray Sharma.

Anil Sharma refused to campaign for the BJP candidate who is contesting against his son for the Lok Sabha seat, and even suggested that he was willing to quit the ministry over it.

Sharma told reporters that though he has now resigned from the ministry he remains with the Bharatiya Janata Party.

He is the BJP MLA from the Mandi segment of the Lok Sabha constituency and the party expected him to campaign for its candidate Ramswaroop Sharma.

Sharma had said he will keep away from Mandi, campaigning neither for his son nor for the BJP candidate.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's poll assurance of NYAY is designed for "bankruptcy", Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri has said, claiming it will prove to be an "ANYAY" (injustice) against people of the country.

Puri, who is the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister in the Modi government, said Congress forgot to tell people that if it comes to power, the party is not going to implement it alone and needs state governments to chip in.

In an interview to PTI, the minister said states will have to implement Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) in coordination with the Centre, seeking to know whether the Congress asked states, which will spend huge money, if they are ready for it or not.

Under NYAY, Congress has promised to deposit Rs 72,000 annually into bank accounts of 20 per cent of the poorest people across the country if it comes to power.

On April 8, Gandhi had said the concept of "NYAY" was at the core of its campaign for the Lok Sabha polls and built on the promises the party has made to the people.

Puri said the Congress policy is to always create debt as the UPA government had done by waiving farm loan worth Rs 70,000 lakh crores while the BJP's policy is totally different and its government at the Centre is depositing money into bank accounts of farmers, in reference to recent launch of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN)



"The NYAY is designed for bankruptcy while our scheme is totally different. As per our policy, if you are GST-registered trader, you will get pension after age of 60 years.

"If you are a farmer, you will get money into your bank account. All our schemes are in the nature of growth without taxes. Congress's NYAY is ANAY," Puri said.

The Congress only makes "non-serious promises" which are just to score political mileage in Lok Sabha elections, Puri said.

He sought to know where money will come from to fund the NYAY scheme and defended the BJP's manifesto which, according to him, majorly focuses on the middle class.

The NDA government has raised the income tax exemption from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, and also, GST rates are coming down.

"We are providing relief to middle class, but they (Congress) are saying different thing," the UD minister said.

There are crores of beneficiaries of the central government's schemes in the country, which indicates people are actually being benefited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taking on the Congress in the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency from where its party chief Rahul Gandhi is contesting, the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF Friday organised a farmers rally highlighting their "sorry plight" since the economic liberalisation of 1991.

Holding placards and banners, the Left Democratic Front workers took out a march at Pulpally town in the high rangeconstituency protesting the "continuing anti-farmer approach" of the Congressand the BJP.

All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) national president Ashok Dhawale and other leaders participated in the march.

The banners listed the farmers' suicides and their "sorry plight" since the 1991 economic liberalisation.

Dhawale, who had led the farmers in the historic Mumbai protest, said it was only the Left Front that can protect the rights of the farmers.

"The agrarian reforms and the economic policy of the Congress has affected the farmers. The BJP is just following the policy of Congress," he said.

The Left farmers group also organised a 'farmers parliament'.

"The neo-liberalisation policy of the Congress in 1991 destroyed the dreams of the farmers. Over thousands of farmers have committed suicide during the Modi regime," a release issued by AIKS said.

Besides Amethi, Gandhi is contesting a second seat, Wayanad, where he had filed his papers on April 4.

The congress president filed his nomination papers for the Amethi Lok Sabha seat on Wednesday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The outlawed CPI (Maoist) has claimed the responsibility for Tuesday's attack in Dantewada district, wherein a BJP MLA and four police personnel were killed.

The banned outfit also accused the Central government of looting the natural resources of Bastar to benefit corporate houses and selling it to them at throwaway prices.

"Our PLGA (Peoples' Liberation Guerilla Army) had executed the attack (on April 9) and killed Bheema Mandavi and his four security guards. We have also recovered four weapons," said a purported statement issued by Maoists and being circulated on the social media on Friday.

Police had earlier said that three weapons, including two rifles, of the security personnel were missing after the attack.

The two-page statement was issued in the name of Sainath, secretary of Darbha division committee of Dandakaranya Special Zone of Maoists, which had been instrumental in executing several deadly attacks in south Bastar, including the deadly Jhiram valley attack in Bastar district on May 25, 2013, in which top congress leaders were killed.

In the statement, the Maoists also alleged that the government and the police had been forcibly carrying out road construction and installing mobile towers in the region, despite opposition from local villagers.

Police said the authenticity of the statement was being verified.

"The authenticity of the Naxal statement is being verified. It is nothing but just a propaganda by Maoists. The banned outfit has no right to justify its act," state Deputy Inspector General (anti-Naxal operations) Sundarraj P told PTI.

Naxals have now weakened and losing their support, which is why they are committing such acts in frustration, he said, adding, "Security forces will give a befitting reply to them."



Despite the Dantewada attack, people came out in large numbers to vote in Bastar Lok Sabha constituency on Thursday which is a victory for democracy, the DIG said.

On April 9, Mandavi, an MLA from Dantewada, and four police personnel were killed when Naxals blew up their vehicle with an IED near Shyamgiri village in the district.

Despite the attack and boycott from Maoists, 57 per cent voting was recorded in Bastar constituency.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
One of the most important events of this April in Azerbaijan was a decree of the President Ilham Aliyev on reforms in the judicial-legal system of the country. This decree says to improve material security and social security of judges, ensure transparency and uniformity of court proceedings, strengthen monitoring of activities of both judges, prosecutors and lawyers. This document also states about creation of special court to review business disputes and other issues related to business activities, and about increase in total number of judges in Azerbaijan by 200. Chairman of the Bar Association of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Anar Bagirov, discussed how implementation of this decree will change the court system in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza.

- How material security of judges will improve quality of court proceedings?

- I believe that improved material support for judges will have benefit justice system in our country, since improvement of social protection of judges and court workers (it concerns not only wages, but also court infrastructure and use of modern technologies) contributes to quality of justice. Unfortunately, today's society has certain dissatisfaction with the state of judiciary system. Of course, all complaints are being considered, all shortcomings are dealt with. I believe that adoption of presidential decree on judicial and legal reform demonstrates the will of the head of state to eradicate negative things in the courts, including bureaucratic obstacles, thereby ensuring the work of judges is independent, objective, fair, incorruptible and transparent.

- What role will formation of unified judicial practice in the country play in ensuring that all courts are just and fair?

- It will play a very important role in the work of not only judges, but also work of lawyers, as well as other participants of judicial process. Unfortunately, very often there are cases when courts make different decisions on the same issues. We are also confronted with the fact that judges of the same court (or even the same judge) make opposite decisions in similar cases. Judicial-legal system shouldn't act this way, because this leads to the fact that lawyers' work becomes absolutely unpredictable, and it also confuses citizens and other parties. It's clear that there are difficult cases where it's really extremely difficult to predict court decision, but it's important that the same decisions are made in extremely similar cases. Legal work of judicial bodies must be predictable.

Predictable legal position is crucial. For example, today we can be guided by legal position specified in the decisions of the European Court for Human Rights, we know legal position from decisions of the Constitutional Court of Azerbaijan. Why can't Supreme Court form legal position on various cases, so that in the future a single court practice would guarantee stability of law enforcement? For citizens, this would be an effective method in terms of access to justice. With a unified judicial practice, when citizen turns to a lawyer, he can confidently tell him that in this type of cases, according to information posted by the Supreme Court, for such and such reasons, things may unfold in a specific way.

Of course, it doesn't mean that precedent system will be introduced in Azerbaijan, although some people think that way. No, Azerbaijan has a continental law system, not Anglo-Saxon, and we're not guided by precedent system, but this does not prevent us from forming a unified judicial practice. Overall, this kind of legal position will favorably affect quality of legal assistance provided to citizens by lawyers, as well as significantly increase prestige and authority of the judiciary system in the eyes of citizens.

- Why was decision to increase number of judges by 200 people made?

- Azerbaijan has a problem with number of judges, since it's much lower here than in other member-countries of the Council of Europe. The number of lawyers in the country also doesn't meet average European numbers (of course, the Bar Association takes necessary measures; last year the number of lawyers increased by 70%, from 900 to over 1,500, and now there are even more candidates, so we can eliminate existing shortage through selection of new members), but situation is different. If our Bar Association is an independent, self-financing structure, the courts are financed by state budget, so they are not able to expand at will. In this regard, decision of the President to increase the number of judges from 600 to 800 will contribute to improvement of quality of justice system and reduce the time it takes to review the case, because burden on each judge will decrease.

At the same time, it should be understood that 200 new judges won't appear in the country immediately. For nine years I represented the Bar Association in the Committee that selects new judges and I know how difficult this work is. Selection process is very thorough, Azerbaijan's experience in this area is considered to be one of the best in European countries, according the European Justice Commission's data. Naturally, selection of 200 judges will take quite a long time, so this is not a matter of one day. It will take more than a year, at least at the stages of examinations, courses, training. There's also selection procedure itself. However, when this part of the decree is executed and the number of judges increases significantly, citizens will certainly feel positive effect from this.

- Another important point is the creation of special court for entrepreneurs. What do you think about this decision?

- The decree also says about using the world's experience of reforms to improve current administrative economic courts. It's possible that a new special court will be created, which will deal specifically with affairs of entrepreneurs, as well as issues related to fiscal structures, taxes, customs and social protection, compulsory insurance funds and other issues business deals with. I believe that this is being done in order to provide the best conditions for entrepreneurs when they appeal to the court, so that business-related matters are reviewed by qualified specialists. There no arbitration court, independent arbitration in Azerbaijan right now. Attempts to create such institutions have been unsuccessful - and its very good that presidential decree raised this issue. I think it could be created inder the Chamber of Commerce, we can invite arbitrators from other countries, like Kazakhstan does, for example.

This will give our entrepreneurs opportunity to choose where their contract dispute will be reviewed in a state court or in arbitration court, and it will improve business climate in the country as a whole and will help to attract foreign investments. Foreign investors, before investing in the economy of any country, always study judicial system, the level and quality of justice, and they are always look whether there's arbitration court or not. That's why presidential decree concerns not only judicial and legal reform, but also economic development in Azerbaijan, since its implementation will give necessary impulse to achieve breakthrough in other areas and improve quality of entire spectrum of reforms.

In addition, Azerbaijan recently adopted new, very progressive law on mediation, taking into account leading international experience. Mediation is a very important tool, an alternative way of resolving disputes, which will reduce burden on courts and give people more ways to resolve disputes without involving courts. This way, the state seeks to ensure that citizens are satisfied with resolution of disputes that arise in their work, family life, business, and so on. I believe that all these measures will soon bring great results.
Delhi Police arrested a member of Rajesh Bawana gang for allegedly assaulting two persons and recovered five country-made pistols with 16 live cartridges, officials said.

The 22-year-old accused has been identified as Sunny alias Hunny, a resident of Delhi's Pooth Khurd village.

According to Gaurav Sharma, the deputy commissioner of police (outer north), on January 4, an information was received from Maharshi Valmiki Hospital in Pooth Khurd that one Ravi, resident of Rohtak district in Haryana, has been admitted to the hospital by his friend after sustaining bullet injury.

After reaching the hospital, the statement of his friend Mohit was recorded.

Mohit told police that one Ajay, along with his associates, had assaulted them at Katewara Village in Delhi with firearms while they were returning from the house of their friend, the DCP said.

During investigation, it was revealed that Ajay was earlier arrested by the crime branch under arms act and was brought for interrogation in the case, police said.

During interrogation, Ajay disclosed about the involvement of Sunny and Manish in this case. Ajay gave specific tips about the hide outs of Manish and Sunny following which a Sunny was arrested on Monday, the DCP said, adding that further investigation is going on.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
captain Mahendra Singh escaped a ban and was let off with a 50 per cent fine on his match fee for an unprecedented confrontation with the on-field umpire during the IPL encounter against in

In a rare instance, Dhoni, who was not even meant to be on the field of play, lost his cool and rushed out of the dug-out to challenge umpire Ulhas Gandhe after he flip-flopped on a no ball on Thursday night.

"MS Dhoni, the captain, was fined 50 per cent of his match fees for breaching the VIVO Indian Premier League's (IPL) Code of Conduct during his team's match against at Jaipur," the BCCI stated.

Gandhe had tried to rule a waist-high full toss as no ball by RR all-rounder But he reversed his decision after square leg umpire Bruce Oxenford did not signal for it.

" admitted to the Level 2 offence 2.20 of the IPL's Code of Conduct and accepted the sanction," it further stated.

As it is the case with IPL teams, it's the franchise that will pay the fine on the player's behalf.

was seen angrily gesturing at Gandhe for backtracking after initially signalling a no ball.

It took some convincing from Oxenford for Dhoni to head back to the dugout even though he seemed far from convinced.

But the confusion and the ensuing confrontation did not have a bearing on CSK's fortunes.

Stokes failed in the final over and Mitchell Santner finished the match with a six to take his team to a four-wicket win in a chase of 152.

According to the ICC Code of Conduct, which governs the IPL, showing serious dissent at an umpire's decision by words or action can lead to a maximum punishment of one-Test or two-ODI ban.
Chennai Super Kings captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni escaped a ban and was let off with a 50 per cent fine on his match fee for an unprecedented confrontation with the on-field umpires during the IPL encounter against Rajasthan Royals here.

In a rare instance, Dhoni, who was not even meant to be on the field of play, lost his cool and rushed out of the dug-out to challenge umpire Ulhas Gandhe after he flip-flopped on a no ball on Thursday night.

"MS Dhoni, the Chennai Super Kings captain, was fined 50 percent of his match fees for breaching the VIVO Indian Premier League's (IPL) Code of Conduct during his team's match against Rajasthan Royals at Jaipur," the BCCI stated.

Gandhe had tried to rule a waist high full toss as no ball by RR all-rounder Ben Stokes. But he reversed his decision after square leg umpire Bruce Oxenford did not signal for it.

"Dhoni admitted to the Level 2 offence 2.20 of the IPL's Code of Conduct and accepted the sanction," it further stated.

As is the case with IPL teams, it's the franchise that will pay the fine on the player's behalf.

Dhoni was seen angrily gesturing at Gandhe for backtracking after initially signalling a no ball.

It took some convincing from Oxenford for Dhoni to head back to the dugout even though he seemed far from convinced.

But the confusion and the ensuing confrontation did not have a bearing on CSK's fortunes.

Stokes failed in the final over and Mitchell Santner finished the match with a six to take his team to a four-wicket win in a chase of 152.

According to the ICC Code of Conduct, which governs the IPL, showing serious dissent at an umpire's decision by words or action can lead to a maximum punishment of one-Test or two-ODI ban.

The ongoing edition of the IPL has had quite a few umpiring controversies so far. Not too long back, India and Royal Challengers Bangalore skipper Virat Kohli lambasted the standards after his team was at the receiving end of a poor no ball call.

The umpire failed to spot a clear case of over-stepping in RCB's clash against Mumbai Indians and Kohli had gone on to say that the officials "should keep their eyes open".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
St. Petersburg's Yunykh Zriteley Theater will host premiere of "The Cliff" play on April 26. It will be produced by famous theater director and teacher Anatoly Ledukhovsky. He puts on performances in Russia and abroad, runs the Domashny Theater in the Shchepkin House-Museum and teaches at the GITIS. His works received many prestigious awards, including the highest national theatrical award "Golden Mask". Author of this play, written based on the novel of I.A. Goncharova, is A. Ya. Shapiro. The story of love and change of eras turns into philosophical parable about knowing oneself. In an interview with Zond News, Anatoly Ledukhovsky talks about his love for St. Petersburg, production team and his own understanding of the creative process.

- Anatoly Vladimirovich, you worked in St. Petersburg two years ago, producing the play titled Relative Values in the Akimov's Comedy Theater. What does this city mean to you?

- I have always had difficult relations with St. Petersburg - after all, I was born and raised in Moscow, which determined a lot in my life: tastes, preferences, lifestyle. For me, Petersburg is associated with work and people who, in the process of this work, became part of my life - someone for a short period of time, and someone for a lifetime. I'm glad that Petersburg has added a lot of new things to my life.

- Have you ever produced plays for the Yunykh Zriteley Theater? What is so distinctive about this theater?

- I should admit, I dont really understand what a Youth Theater as a phenomenon is. Perhaps it's not that easy to find a production for young audience in the Moscow Youth Theater: for many years it stages plays with adult themes. I never had an opportunity to work at the St. Petersburg Youth Theater so I don't really know. Of course, I already saw some of the previous work, I even liked some of them very much, but it's not enough. And, in my opinion, it's not that necessary. I was chosen by management of this theater, and that means they saw something in me, it means they need a director of this type. Why? Only they know that. I just have to do my job as sincerely as possible. Whether they were right or wrong when they chose me as a director will be clear much later, maybe even after the premiere. The St. Petersburg Youth Theater is a theater with its powerful history. Evaluating it's distinctiveness will be possible only after some time. For me, it doesn't really matter. It is important that artists are capable of perceiving different things, responding - otherwise nothing will come out of this work. Overall, distinctivness implies that there are certain traditions, but I dont really like this word.

- What audience is your play intended for?

- It's for adults, the poster says 16+. But this doesn't mean that this play is for any age category. I would not recommend my play to those who are overuse the word classic. After all, I know that they will just say that someone has once again distorted classic, everyone drinks, fights. But for some reason no one remembers that most of Russia's classical works, and not only literature, had all those things.

- Why did you decide to produce a play based on this novel?

- That's the will of the theater, and I think it's a right things. As a director, it's difficult for me to understand what work is necessary in the repertoire of the theater at the moment, it's prerogative of artistic director, he, as a strategist, has much better understanding. It's enough for me to know that this play is based on Goncharovs work. That's why I approve of the choice of the theater, since this work hasn't lost its power and it seems pretty relevant to me.

- Did you like to work with the actors?

- I'm always afraid to jinx it. Actor has a very complex and highly mobile organism, but he's also very fragile. You know how it goes - everything is fine at first, but everything may fall apart by the end, or vice versa, everything develops and becomes clear only to crumble just before the premiere. Right now I mostly rehearse with the young part of the troupe, which has turned out to be quite receptive of my thoughts and style of work. While there's a lack of mutual interest, we have a fruitful dialogue, half of the work is done, and this process was has been pleasant for the most part. But it doesnt mean much, since rehearsals on the big stage are completely different. I hope everything will be alright.

- Who does your production team include?

- I work with young theater artist Andrei Shayev, graduate of the GITIS scenography faculty, where I have been teaching for 21 years. This is our third joint project on the big stage. Music was also written by my student, Maria Galkina, a wonderful actress and musician who plays in my little Domashny Theater at the Shchepkin House in Moscow. Igor Fomin will be responsible for the illumination - this is the same team that helped be to prepare the Relative Values play. Sergey Romanyuk from the Akimov theater, Kuzma Stomachenko, Oleg Senchenko, Anna Migitsko, Anna Lebed (Kochetkova), Anastasia Kazakova, Antonina Vvedenskaya, Kirill Taskin, Ilya Bozhedomov are playing main characters at rehearsals.

- A cliff in your play is a metaphor, what does it represent?

- For me, a cliff is something all-consuming, like a black hole...

- How difficulty is it to create a play based on this big novel?

- This question should be addressed to the author of this play. Adolf Yakovlevich chose those motifs from Goncharov's novel that resonated with him a long time ago. I chose those motifs that resonated with my thoughts and with today's realities. When it comes to such a huge work, the most difficult thing is to isolate those things that are the most important to you, because you have to create several characters with their multilayered life and with a huge number of characters around them, place heroes in an isolated environment where only they exist. It's not that simple.

- Is your play about the Artist?

- It's about failures and illusions, which all of us often have. Again, I repeat, no one ever knows what this play will be about. The main thing is how viewer sees style, sees this story. And if it's different from what I wanted, it's not that important.
Poll authorities in Goa have asked political parties and their candidates to desist from using socio-religious functions to woo voters ahead of the April 23 election in the state.

They have also directed political parties not to hold any public meetings in religious places.

Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Kunal Thursday held a meeting with political parties with regards to hindrance caused while performing religious activities due to the restrictions imposed under the model code of conduct (MCC).

The MCC is currently in force for elections to the two Lok Sabha seats and bypolls to three assembly seats in Goa on April 23.

The meeting was called following a series of complaints from temple committees that the EC's flying squads are forcing them to stop religious activities post 10 pm citing the MCC.

Goa is currently witnessing feasts at various temples in rural areas.

Speaking to PTI, Kunal said directions have been issued to political parties and their candidates, asking them not to use socio-religious events for any political purpose.

"We will ensure the model code of conduct does not come in way of celebration of local tradition and customs.

"We have unanimously resolved that there will not be any obstruction or disturbance to any kind to celebrations happening in temples and churches," the CEO said.

The election authorities have already asked political parties not to hold public rallies or campaign near churches on April 19 (Good Friday) and April 21 (Easter).

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Nepal government has ordered probe into alleged transfer of ownership of a piece of land, situated inside the prime minister's official residence in Baluwatar, to various individuals, including the son of the ruling Nepal Communist Party General Secretary Bishnu Poudel, government spokesperson and Communication Minister Gokul Prasad Banskota said on Friday.

"It has come to light that one of the owners of a plot of land in the Baluwatar area is ruling NCP leader is son of Paudel, Nabin. The former finance minister's son had bought about 2,740 sq ft (eight aanas) of land in Lalita Niwas, the PM quarters at Baluwatar," Banskota told reporters.

He also said that Poudel was not involved in the "shady" deal and innocent.

"He was cheated by some land mafia," the Minister said.

Baskota said "anyone found guilty, whether they are from the ruling or opposition parties, will be punished as per the law".

The Nepal's Central Investigation Bureau and the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority are investigating the case.

According to government sources, some pieces of land in Baluwatar area had been illegally occupied by private citizens and it was also found that the land was divided into parcels and sold to different people.

The report of former finance minister's son acquiring a piece of land of the PM's residential area has gone viral in social media, causing furore in the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Gujarat High Court Friday invalidated the election of BJP MLA Pabubha Manek from Dwarka Assembly seat for submitting a defective nomination form.

Manek's victory from the Dwarka Assembly constituency in 2017 was challenged in the high court by his opponent and Congress candidate Meraman Ahir.

Ahir, in his petition, has said Manek's election should be set aside as he had submitted a defective nomination form having no mention about the name and number of the constituency, that is '82-Dwarka'.

Admitting the contention raised by Ahir, Justice Paresh Upadhyay Friday cancelled the election held for the Dwarka seat in December 2017, saying that the defect in the nomination form was a "defect of substantial character as contemplated under the provisions of the Representation of the People Act, 1951".

Though Ahir also sought to declare himself as the winner for garnering second highest vote after Manek in the poll, the court has not accepted that prayer and only ordered the cancellation of the election of Manek, who is a seven-time MLA from that constituency.

In his petition, Ahir claimed that there was no mention of the name and number of the constituency in Manek's nomination form, a lapse which calls for cancellation of his election.

As per the petition, Manek's proposer Dharnant Bhulabhai Chavda mentioned his own name in a column meant for mentioning the number of and name of the constituency, that is '82-Dwarka'.

Instead of writing '82-Dwarka' in the specified space, Chavda wrote his full name in the nomination form.

Though Ahir had raised the objection during the scrutiny process, his objection was not taken into account by the returning officer, after which he had knocked the doors of the high court to set aside the election.

During the past hearing, Manek's lawyers had tried to convince the court that the defect was not of a 'substantial character', which calls for the rejection.

However, the high court held that it was indeed a 'defect of substantial character' as per the Representation of the People Act and according to some past Supreme Court judgements.

The court also noted that the returning officer's action of rejecting the objections filed by Ahir at that time against Manek's nomination was "illegal".

The court said the result of the election has been "materially affected by improper acceptance" of the nomination of Manek at that time.

"In view of the above, the election of Manek from '82-Dwarka Constituency' for the Gujarat Legislative Assembly Election is declared as void under Section 100 (1)(d)(i) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951," mentioned the order of Justice Paresh Upadhyay.

The court had also rejected Manek's plea for a temporary stay on the judgement.

After the order, Additional Chief Electoral Officer for Gujarat Ashok Manek said that they would report the matter to the Election Commission and wait for further instructions.

Gujarat Assembly Speaker Rejendra Trivedi said he has to accept the high court order, which effectively mean that Manek ceases to be an MLA.

"At this juncture, we have to accept the fact that Manek ceases to be an MLA after the HC verdict. However, if the Supreme Court stays this order, then it's a different situation," he said.

"As of now, the high court order is in effect and it created a situation wherein Manek has to lose his membership of the Assembly," said Trivedi, without elaborating as to what action he was supposed to take after the high court order.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Kerala High Court Friday acquitted five persons who were convicted by a special NIA court here in the Panayikulam SIMI camp case relating to a "secret" meeting of the banned outfit in 2006.

A division bench of Justices A M Shaffique and Ashok Menon allowed the appeal by the five convicts, challenging the November 2015 verdict of the NIA court, sentencing them to varying terms of imprisonment.

Those acquitted are P A Shaduly, Abdul Rasik, Ansar Nadvi, Nizamudeen and Shammi.

The trial court had sentenced two of the accused to 14 years rigorous imprisonment (RI) and three others to 12 years RI, holding them guilty under various provisions of IPC and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The court had acquitted 11 others in the case.

The NIA court had also imposed a fine of Rs 60,000 each on two accused, while a penalty of Rs 55,000 was slapped on three others.

In the case, a Sub Inspector of Binnanipuram in Ernakulam district had received information that the accused had assembled unlawfully at a hall in Pannayikulam and made inflammatory speeches.

Books and pamphlets which were pro-Pakistan and anti-government, seditious and provocative in content with a view to create religious animosity were seized from their possession, it was stated.

The accused hailing from Idukki, Kottayam, Thrissur and Palakkad districts assembled at Pannyikulam for the 'secret' meeting, prosecution said.

The case was first probed by state police and later handed over to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), which filed a charge sheet in December 2011.

The charges were framed by the court in June 2014 and the trial commenced in July 2014.

The prosecution completed arguments in March 2015.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Their head scarves may announce their identity but many women first-time voters here say they want to elect a government that goes past the veneer to understand the complexity of their lives and bring in a truly secular and inclusive India.

Their heads wrapped in the vision of a developed India, the articulate women of AMU Women's College, the biggest college for women in this western Uttar Pradesh town, walk the tightrope between tradition and contemporary times.

Like Dania, a debutant voter, who parks her scooter outside the campus, adjusts her scarf and waits for her other friends.

On the wall, she notices posters of political parties and wonders who she should vote for.

I want to vote for a secular government. It is my first vote. There is a common belief that if you are a Muslim you cannot be secular. I want to vote for change of that perception, the 18-year-old Geography student said.

Dania is one of the 3,000 students studying in the Aligarh Muslim University Women College who will vote for the first time on April 18 in the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections.

Zarrin, 21, who wears a naqab, or a veil across her face, said their attire sometimes traps them in a stereotype and this is what she is fighting against.

Under the present government, I am scared to step outside Aligarh. I feel I will not be safe outside my community but I want to travel. I want to vote for that secular government which makes me feel safe in my own country, the English Honours student said.

The vote is all important, said Fauzia, a 20-year-old English Honours student who also wears her naqab and got married last week. But she will join her husband in Delhi only on April 19 after she casts her vote here.

I want to cast my vote and then shift. I want to vote for development. I want to vote to elect a government that does not differentiate against us on the basis of religion or caste, she said.

Her sister, 19-year-old Maliha, another first time voter, said times are difficult these days and it is very important that we vote for change, for a secular government.

Maliha, who did not elaborate further, said she wants to become a teacher some day and hopes the next government gives them the opportunity to fulfil their dreams.

I keep seeing in the that there are 20 lakh jobs vacant, I do not understand how these jobs are lying vacant. I hope the next government deals with employment properly, she said.

Ayushi, a young student of bachelors of Geography, said she wants to vote for development.

I want India to have a reliable standing in the world, she said.

An essay competition to increase awareness among first-time voters was a huge success, said Naima Khatoon Gulrez, principal of the college.

The idea, she said, was to tell them about importance of voting and how it can play a role in nation building.

India is a beautiful country and its beauty lies in the pluralistic society that we live in which is the essence of our country. We motivate the girls here to get above caste politics, regional communal and vote on the agenda of development, Gulrez said.

The upcoming elections in Aligarh will be fought between incumbent BJP MP Satish Kumar Gautam, Congress candidate Birendra Singh and Mahagathbandan candidate Ajit Baliya.

Aligarh has a total of 18,73,993 voters. Khair, Baroli, Atroli , Kol and Aligarh city are assembly seats in the constituency.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Himachal Futuristic Communications former director Vinay Maloo has settled a probe with Sebi in a matter related to alleged manipulation in issuance of global depository receipts by paying Rs 1.36 crore towards settlement charges.

Maloo was the director of HPCL during the time of alleged violation, and the regulator had initiated adjudication proceedings against him in June 2018.

Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd (HFCL) had issued global depository receipts (GDRs) amounting to USD 50 million in September 2002. Out of this, GDRs worth USD 46.5 million were subscribed by only one entity, Roker Securities Inc.

The subscription amount for GDRs was paid by Roker Securities after securing a loan from Lisbon-based bank Banco Efisa.

However, it is alleged that the firm had pledged the GDR proceeds to the bank against the loan given to Roker for subscription of GDR issue, Sebi said.

Besides, it is alleged that the GDR issue would not have been subscribed if HFCL had not given any such security towards the loan taken by Roker.

Regarding Maloo, Sebi said he "signed the account charge agreement and has acted as party to the scheme".

While the proceedings were pending, Maloo filed an application under settlement mechanism and proposed to pay Rs 1.36 crore without admission or denying of guilt.

The settlement amount proposed was approved by a panel of board's whole-time members, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) said in an order dated April 11.

Accordingly, the proceedings initiated against Maloo for the alleged default are "settled", Sebi said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Moscow State Museum of Oriental Art has opened an exhibition titled 'Harmony of space. Traditional Art of Azerbaijan,' which will run until May 12. The curator of the exhibition from the Museum of Oriental Art, Maria Filatova, told Vestnik Kavkaza about the next joint project of the Russian and Azerbaijani museums.

- How did the history of the Museum of Oriental Art begin?

- The museum was established in 1918, and its first exhibit was the Azerbaijani 'Bahmanli' carpet, created by Karabakh masters in the 19th century. The beginning of the 20th century was a difficult period, new museums were created back then and, naturally, they needed to be filled. The State Procurement Commission distributed items to museums. There were people who chose which museum gets what, and experts of the future Museum of Oriental Art chose this carpet. This is a great happiness. It is also presented at our current exhibition. We call it Carpet number one.

- What is unique about this carpet?

- This is a traditional Azerbaijani carpet. The Karabakh carpets are characterized by dark colors, dark red and intense blue, large patterns. Azerbaijani patterned carpets have floral and geometric design. This carpet has old traditional geometrical ornaments, which existed even in pre-Islamic period, when people worshiped forces of nature. Nature was an essential part of human life. Both solar symbols and images of animals are important symbols having a certain meaning and protecting people, protecting families, giving peace and harmony. Our exhibition is dedicated to the harmony of space and harmony in people's soul. This harmony was created by interior items, including carpets.

There were a lot of carpets, both in houses of the poor and rich people. For example, they made carpets decorated with precious stones, embroidered with gold threads to present them to ambassadors and kings. Such carpets can be seen at the Louvre, at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

- What other exhibits of your museum are on display?

- Jewelry, very interesting copper hammered products. Our Baku colleagues told us very interesting things about their purpose.

- How many exhibits are there in total?

- The exhibition features more than a hundred exhibits. The vast majority of exhibits is from Baku. Baku residents brought mostly embroidery. Large, very beautiful panels covering niches, kelaghayi headscarves, 'ambassadorial' tablecloths. The Museum of Oriental Art presents two 'ambassadorial' tablecloths. They were used to wrap gifts to ambassadors. They were not put on the table, they did not put dishes on them. Tablecloths are finely decorated, they have a graceful ornament.

- Are "ambassadorial" tablecloths characteristic of Azerbaijan?

- I think it is a global practice to give beautifully wrapped gifts. It is just that Azerbaijanis, with their love and special respect for guests, created such delicate handmade things which can be beautiful gifts themselves.
The Income-Tax Department Friday conducted searches at multiple locations in Tamil Nadu on suspicion of alleged illegal cash being pumped in to lure voters in the poll-bound state, officials said.

They said a total of 18 locations in Chennai, Namakkal and Tirunelveli are being raided since early morning hours.

In the first instance, tax sleuths are searching the premises of a contractor firm--PSK Engineering Construction Company-- on charges of routing and possession of alleged "unaccounted cash".

Three premises in Chennai and four linked to the company in Namakkal are being raided, they said.

In the second case, the Chennai investigation wing of the department is searching a group of cash handlers and financiers against whom the sleuths obtained information that they are allegedly "mobilising cash for possible use in elections."



The locations linked to two individuals identified as Akash Baskaran and Sujai Reddy are also being searched, they said.

While 10 premises in Chennai are being searched, one in Tirunelveli is being raided in connection with second case, they said.

Polls in the 39 seats of Tamil Nadu and the lone seat in Puducherry would be held on April 18, the second phase of the Lok Sabha elections.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
/ -- "We have completed the first year of our transformation journey with strong results on multiple dimensions including revenue growth, performance of our digital portfolio, large deal wins, and client metrics. This is a reflection of our increased client relevance stemming from our focus on digital, positioning, and long-standing client relationships," said Salil Parekh, CEO and MD. "Our planned investments have started yielding benefits. As we look ahead into fiscal 2020, we plan to deploy various measures of operational efficiencies across the business."



Infosys_Logo 41.1% YoY



33.8% FYDigital CC growth11.7% YoY9.0% FYCC growth21.5% Q422.8% FYOperating margin2.1% CC2.4% ReportedQoQ growth$1.57Bn Q4$6.28Bn FYLarge deal signingsFY 19 revenues grew by 7.9% in USD; 9.0% in constant currency FY 19 operating margin at 22.8% Q4 19 revenues grew year-on-year by 9.1% in USD; 11.7% in constant currency Q4 19 revenues grew sequentially by 2.4% in USD; 2.1% in constant currency Q4 19 Digital revenues at $1,035 million (33.8% of total revenues), year-on-year growth of 41.1% and sequential growth of 9.7% in constant currency Announces final dividend of INR 10.50 per share FY 20 revenue guidance in the range of 7.5%-9.5% in constant currency FY 20 Operating margin guidance in the range of 21%-23%1.

Financial Highlights -Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)



For the Quarter ended March 31, 2019



Revenues were $3,060 million, growth of 9.1% YoY and 2.4% QoQ



Operating profit was $658 million, decline of 5.1% YoY and 2.6% QoQ#



Basic EPS was $0.13, growth of 1.6% YoY and 15.5% QoQ



For the Year ended March 31, 2019



Revenues were $11,799 million, growth of 7.9% YoY



Operating profit was $2,696 million, growth of 1.4% YoY



Basic EPS was $0.51, decline of 8.2% YoY*@



# Includes additional depreciation and amortization expenses of $12 million for Panaya and Skava for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.

* Includes reduction in fair value and carrying value of Panaya and Skava, respectively which resulted in reduction in EPS by $0.02



@ Includes impact on account of conclusion of an APA with the US IRS which has led to increase in EPS of $0.05 for the year ended March 31, 2018.

"We had another quarter of over $1.5 bn large deal TCV in Q4, as a result of which FY 19 TCV doubled over FY 18. Realization per billed employee was steady which reflects increasing usage of automation in core services and faster growth in newer digital services," said Pravin Rao, COO. "Overall attrition remains high and we are continuing our focus on arresting the same."



"Cash generation in FY 19 was strong and Dividend Per Share increased by 4.5%. During the quarter, we completed the payout of special dividend in January and initiated the share buyback program," said Nilanjan Roy, CFO. "We had another quarter of forex gains thanks to our proactive hedging strategy."



2.

Capital Allocation



During Q4 19, completed payment of special dividend of INR 4 per share announced in January, 2019. Initiated buyback from March 20, 2019 after receiving all requisite approvals. Out of total buyback size of INR 8,260 crore, the company has bought back shares worth INR 1,546 crore so far. For the Financial Year 2019, the Board has recommended a final dividend of INR 10.50 per share ($0.15 per ADR*). After including the interim dividend of INR7 per share, the total dividend for Financial Year 2019 will amount to INR17.50 per share. *US$1 = INR 69.16 as at March 31, 2019



3.

Client wins & Testimonials



Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE), a world leader and a pioneer in the renewable energy industry, has signed a seven-year global partnership with Infosys to enable an end-to-end IT Transformation program towards a digital future and industry leadership. Alan Feeley, SGRE CIO, said, "Infrastructure & applications outsourcing deals are the norm in our business worlds already today. When considering our (SGRE) desired IT operating model for the future, we were looking for a partner that brings a careful balance of innovation, operational excellence and sustainable commercial viability. With Infosys, we are very confident that these attributes were at the core of their operating culture. We are very excited to partner with Infosys on this journey of modernization and were impressed by Infosys Next Generation Application & Infrastructure Management Framework, their agility & focus on delivery excellence, and a clear understanding of our business strategy."



With a vision to provide safe and reliable utility services and improve the customer service of about 800,000 people in the Indianapolis area, Citizens will transform its customer service by leveraging 'Infosys Preconfigured Accelerator for Customer Experience (PACE)', an industry leading framework tuned for Oracle Utilities Customer to Meter (C2M) platform.

Curtis Popp, Vice President of Customer Operations at Citizens Energy Group, said, "At Citizens Energy Group, we're excited to be working with Infosys and Oracle to implement a new CIS and accomplish our strategic goals, including improved customer satisfaction and employee engagement. The experience and expertise of Infosys employees is paramount to the success of this complex project."



Kraft Heinz has selected Infosys to deliver rich digital experience for their recipes and brands to their consumers. "Kraft Heinz has partnered with Infosys to launch new capabilities delivering rich consumer experience. We are becoming more relevant to our consumers by enabling capabilities like Shoppable Recipes, Rich Brand Experience, Personalized Recommendations, Seamless Social Media Integration. We are just getting started.," said,Leandro Balbinot, CIO Global Digital Growth, Kraft Heinz Company.

"Movement Mortgage is committed to providing loan officers, real estate agents and our borrowers with technology and a digital infrastructure that delivers an innovative, user-friendly experience on every platform and in every channel, both today and in the future. We're pleased to have selected Infosys as our strategic partner across these key business functions. Infosys' expertise in Digital Transformation, Cloud Technologies and Mortgage and Retail Lending will help Movement continue to spearhead industrywide transformation that improves the mortgage experience for everyone and makes the dream of homeownership more accessible than ever before," saidCasey Crawford, CEO, Movement Mortgage



"In partnership with Infosys, we are modernizing our collection processes with real-time insights into delinquency rates, better risk segmentations and customized contact & calling strategies." said Julie Signorille, Consumer Banking, Chief Operating Officer, Citizens Bank.

Recognition:



Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Healthcare Services 2019



Infosys positioned as a leader in SAP HANA and S/4 HANA Services NEAT 2019



Infosys positioned as a leader in RPA & AI in Banking NEAT 2019



Infosys positioned in Customer Experience (CX) Shortlist (Constellation ShortList Global Customer Experience (CX) Services)



Infosys positioned as a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Professional and Managed Services, Worldwide



Infosys positioned as a leader in Advanced Digital Workplace Services NEAT 2019



Infosys Lex Wingspan shortlisted in Constellation ShortList Learning Marketplaces for Q1 2019



Infosys positioned as a leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide IT Service Management Implementation Services 2019 Vendor Assessment



Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 High-tech sector service providers



Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Microsoft AI Services 2019



Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Enterprise Blockchain Services 2018



About Infosys



Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

Safe Harbor



Certain statements mentioned in this release concerning our future growth prospects and our future business expectations are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries



Audited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet as at



(Dollars in millions except equity share data)



March 31, 2019



March 31, 2018



ASSETS



Current assets



Cash and cash equivalents



2,829



3,041



Current investments



958



982



Trade receivables



2,144



2,016



Unbilled revenue



777



654



Prepayments and other current assets



827



662



Income tax assets



61



-



Derivative financial instruments



48



2



7,644



7,357



Assets held for sale(A3)(A4)



-



316



Total current assets



7,644



7,673



Non-current assets



Property, plant and equipment



1,931



1,863



Goodwill



512



339



Intangible assets



100



38



Investment in associate



-



-



Non-current investments



670



883



Deferred income tax assets



199



196



Income tax assets



914



931



Other non-current assets



282



332



Total non-current assets



4,608



4,582



Total assets



12,252



12,255



LIABILITIES AND EQUITY



Current liabilities



Trade payables



239



107



Derivative financial instruments



2



6



Current income tax liabilities



227



314



Client deposits



4



6



Unearned revenue



406



352



Employee benefit obligations



234



218



Provisions



83



75



Other current liabilities



1,498



1,036



2,693



2,114



Liabilities directly associated with assets held for sale(A3)(A4)



-



50



Total current liabilities



2,693



2,164



Non-current liabilities



Deferred income tax liabilities



98



82



Employee benefit obligations



6



7



Other non-current liabilities



55



42



Total liabilities



2,852



2,295



Equity



Share capital- INR 5 ($0.16) par value 4,800,000,000 (2,400,000,000) equity shares authorized, issued and outstanding 4,335,954,462 (2,173,312,301), net of 20,324,982 (10,801,956) treasury shares as at March 31, 2019 (March 31, 2018), respectively



339



190



Share premium



277



247



Retained earnings



11,248



11,587



Cash flow hedge reserve



3



-



Other reserves



384



244



Capital redemption reserve



10



9



Other components of equity



(2,870)



(2,317)



Total equity attributable to equity holders of the company



9,391



9,960



Non-controlling interests



9



-



Total equity



9,400



9,960



Total liabilities and equity



12,252



12,255



Infosys Limited and subsidiaries



Audited Condensed Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income for the



(Dollars in millions except equity share and per equity share data)



Three months ended March 31, 2019



Three months ended March 31, 2018



Year ended March 31, 2019



Year ended March 31, 2018



Revenues



3,060



2,805



11,799



10,939



Cost of sales



2,028



1,793



7,687



7,001



Gross profit



1,032



1,012



4,112



3,938



Operating expenses



Selling and marketing expenses



174



147



638



552



Administrative expenses



200



172



778



727



Total operating expenses



374



319



1,416



1,279



Operating profit



658



693



2,696



2,659



Other income, net (B3)



94



100



411



513



Reduction in the fair value of Disposal Group held for sale(A3)



-



(18)



(39)



(18)



Adjustment in respect of excess of carrying amount over recoverable amount on reclassification from "Held for Sale"(A4)



-



-



(65)



-



Share in net profit/(loss) of associate, including impairment(A2)



-



-



-



(11)



Profit before income taxes



752



775



3,003



3,143



Income tax expense(A1)(B4)



171



204



803



657



Net profit



581



571



2,200



2,486



Other comprehensive income



Items that will not be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:



Re-measurements of the net defined benefit liability/asset, net



-



6



(3)



9



Equity instruments through other comprehensive income, net



-



1



10



1



Items that will be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:



Fair valuation of investments, net



3



(2)



-



-



Fair value changes on derivatives designated as cash flow hedge, net



(2)



-



3



(6)



Foreign currency translation



74



(164)



(560)



18



Total other comprehensive income/(loss), net of tax



75



(159)



(550)



22



Total comprehensive income



656



412



1,650



2,508



Profit attributable to:



Owners of the Company



580



571



2,199



2,486



Non-controlling interests



1



-



1



-



581



571



2,200



2,486



Total comprehensive income attributable to:



Owners of the Company



655



412



1,649



2,508



Non-controlling interests



1



-



1



-



656



412



1,650



2,508



Earnings per equity share (A1) (A5)



Basic ($)



0.13



0.13



0.51



0.55



Diluted ($)



0.13



0.13



0.51



0.55



Weighted average equity shares used in computing earnings per equity share( A5)



Basic



4,347,129,592



4,346,554,120



4,347,130,157



4,510,664,644



Diluted



4,353,023,863



4,349,617,024



4,353,420,772



4,515,147,740



NOTES:



A.

Notes pertaining to previous quarters / periods



During the quarter ended December 31, 2017, on account of the conclusion of an Advance Pricing Agreement ("APA") with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service ("IRS"), the Company has reversed income tax expense provision of $225 million which pertains to previous periods. During the year ended March 31, 2018, the Company has written down the entire carrying value of $11 million in its associate DWA Nova LLC. In the three months ended March 2018, Kallidus and Skava (together referred to as "Skava") and Panaya, were classified as "Held for Sale" resulting in a reduction in the fair value amounting to $18 million and $39 million in respect of Panaya for the year ended March 31, 2018 and three months ended June 30, 2018, respectively. During the three months ended December 31, 2018, the Company declassified Panaya and Skava from "Held for Sale" and recognized an adjustment in respect of excess of carrying amount over recoverable amount of $65 million in respect of Skava during the year ended March 31, 2019. Share numbers and EPS have been adjusted for September 2018 bonus issue.

B. Notes pertaining to the current quarter



The audited condensed consolidated Balance sheet and Statement of Comprehensive Income for the three months and year ended March 31, 2019 have been taken on record at the Board meeting held on April 12, 2019. A Fact Sheet providing the operating metrics of the Company can be downloaded from www.infosys.com. Other income includes $7 million for each of the quarter and year ended March 31, 2019, and $41 million for the year ended March 31, 2018 towards interest on income tax refund. During the quarter ended March 31, 2019, on account of the conclusion of an Advance Pricing Agreement ("APA") in an overseas jurisdiction, the Company has reversed income tax expense provision of $14 million which pertains to previous periods. IFRS-INR Press Release: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2018-2019/q4/Documents/IFRS-INR-press-release.pdf



Fact Sheet: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2018-2019/q4/Documents/fact-sheet.pdf



Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/633365/Infosys_Logo.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A one-day National Investors' Conclave on Technical Textiles being held here on April 24 will provide inputs to understand the potential areas of investment in technical textile sector.

The conclave would also give necessary inputs to plan for value addition in the existing products apart from planning diversification, the Indian Technical Textile Association (ITTA), the organisers, said in a release Friday.

Technical textiles has been identified as the thrust area for an exponential growth by the Centre and also by all the state governments considering its potential for value addition, exports, domestic demand, it said.

The central government offers 15 per cent credit linked capital investment subsidy for technical textiles machines under Amended Technology Upgradation Fund scheme apart from providing various other benefits.

The governments in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka have also offered special incentives for investments made in technical textiles.

The Tamil Nadu government in its recent Integrated Textile Policy has announced 6 per cent interest subsidy for technical textiles products.

The meet is being conducted jointly by Mumbai-based ITTA with SIMA and Indian Texpreneurs Federation.

Union Textile Secretary Raghavendra Singh will inaugurate the conclave, the release said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Iranians have rallied against the US' decision to designate the country's powerful Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organization.

Thousands of worshippers came out of mosques after Friday prayers and burned flags of both the US and Israel while also chanting traditional anti-U.S. slogans at such rallies of "Death to America" and "Death to Israel." State media said similar demonstrations took place in other Iranian cities and towns on Friday.

The U.S. government this week designated the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group to increase pressure on Iran, isolate it further and prompt authorities to divert some of the financial resources Tehran uses to fund militant activity in the Middle East and beyond.

Iran responded by designating all U.S. forces as terrorist and labeling the US a "supporter of terrorism.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Unfazed by the crash landing of Beresheet spacecraft on the moon, Israeli envoy to India Ron Malka Friday said despite the setback, it is a "proud moment" that a small country like Israel could land on the moon, a feat achieved only by superpowers.

"We may have crash landed, but we landed. Success is a process and failure is just a part of the process. So we must not be scared of dreaming," Malka said at an event held at the embassy here to celebrate the development.

Israeli spacecraft, Beresheet, lost contact with the Earth and crashed just moments before it was to land on the moon, failing in an ambitious attempt to make history as the first privately-funded lunar mission.

The spacecraft lost communication with ground control late Thursday as it was making its final descent to the moon. Moments later, the mission was declared a failure.

In Israel's Yehud city, Opher Doron, general manager of the space division of Israel Aerospace Industries, said, "We definitely crashed on surface of the moon."



The small robotic spacecraft, built by the non-profit SpaceIL and state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries, had hoped to match a feat that has only been achieved by the national space agencies of three countries: US, Russia and China.

"It is a proud moment for a small country like Israel to achieve the feat which only superpowers have achieved," Malka said.

Responding to a question by reporters on whether Israel will share Beresheet's experience with India, Malka said as strategic partners, the two countries share knowledge.

The work on Beresheet began in 2015. The failure was a disappointing end to a 6.5 million kilometer (4 million mile) lunar voyage, almost unprecedented in length, that was designed to conserve fuel and reduce price.

The spacecraft hitched a ride on the SpaceX Falcon rocket, launched from Florida in the US in February.

For the past two months, Beresheet travelled around the Earth several times before entering lunar orbit in hopes of joining the exclusive club of countries that have made it to the moon.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi government Friday opposed in the Delhi High Court a parole plea by INLD chief O P Chautala, serving 10-year jail term in a teachers' recruitment scam.

Chautala (85) has approached the court seeking parole for three months to spend time with his critically ill wife who is admitted to intensive care unit in a hospital.

The government contended that Chautala had earlier abused the liberty granted to him and will do so again.

Justice Sangita Dhingra Sehgal heard part arguments on the plea and listed it for further hearing on April 25.

The court indicated that it could consider his prayer for meeting his 83-year-old wife and to settle the dispute between his two sons, but it was not inclined to grant parole for the purpose of reviving social ties.

Delhi government standing counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra said the petition does not contain sufficient grounds for parole and Chautala should not be given the relief as it is election time in Delhi and Haryana.

"He (Chautala) is a master litigant. These litigations will continue. The family dispute will not end and these pleas will continue to come up. He is sentenced under the Prevention of Corruption Act and will have to suffer," Mehra argued.

"His sons are busy in elections, what kind of feud he is trying to resolve. His wife is old and ill and is being taken care of by 10 persons in the family," he said.

"These people are staying in seven-star hospital, enjoying luxuries there, abusing the liberty given by the court," he added.

Senior advocate N Hariharan, representing Chautala, contended that his client was entitled to restore his ties with his wife.

"I am also entitled to restore social ties," he said on behalf of Chautala.

The INLD leader, in his plea filed through advocate Amit Sahni, has said he had submitted an application for parole with the jail authorities in November 2018.

In the application, he claimed that being the head of the family he has to amicably settle the dispute between his two sons.

Another ground for parole was to look after his ailing wife, who is suffering from various age-related chronic ailments.

Chautala's parole plea was rejected by the home ministry of Delhi in January this year on the ground that he had already availed two weeks parole and seven weeks furlough in 2018.

Earlier in December 2017, Chautala was granted two weeks' parole to take care of his ailing wife.

In March 2017, the high court had cancelled his parole for attending public meetings across Haryana.

Besides Chautala, his elder son Ajay and three others are serving a 10-year jail term in the case.

The father-son duo and 53 others, including two IAS officers, were among 55 persons convicted on January 16, 2013 by a trial court for illegally recruiting 3,206 junior basic trained teachers in Haryana in 2000.

Later, Chautalas' conviction was upheld by the high court and the Supreme Court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cash-strapped is currently flying less than 50 domestic flights, a senior official of aviation regulator DGCA said on Friday.

"Jet is currently flying less than 50 domestic flights. The has 16 aircraft available with them for flying," the official said.

The official did not give the actual number of aircraft that are currently flying.

The official said that the airline has suspended its international operations till Monday.



As the crisis in the private airline deepened, the Prime Minister's Office has called an urgent meeting to discuss the situation, official sources said.

The airline on Friday announced it will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease to bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline's international and domestic presence.

The announcement comes at a time when airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of around 90 per cent of the 119-aircraft fleet of the cash-strapped



The availability of flights was also hit by pulling out of SpiceJet's 12 "737 Max" aircraft in March over safety concerns following an Ethiopian plane crash on March 10.

" will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the (DGCA) for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft," the airline said.

"Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining fleet in the next ten days," it added.
The Prime Minister's office held an urgent meeting to discuss a crisis at on Friday as the airline suspended all west-bound international flights until Monday and will fly six to seven over the weekend on domestic routes.

The carrier, saddled with more than $1.2 billion of debt, has had to ground more than 80 percent of its fleet over unpaid dues to leasing companies, pushing it to the brink of shutdown and jeopardising hopes of attracting a new investor.

Government officials have previously expressed concern about the loss of jobs at the airline and on the prospect of higher Indian air fares if collapses.

Jet's lenders, led by State Bank of India, are still trying to seek expressions of interest in the carrier from potential investors.

The banks have received initial bids from five to six companies, television channels reported, citing sources.

Nripendra Mishra, the principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chaired the meeting, which had the regulator and civil secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola.

Kharola said the company had money to operate only 6-7 aircraft over the weekend and after that the lenders would have to decide how many aircraft the airline could operate beyond Monday afternoon.

Kharola said the company will meet bankers on Monday for infusion of funds in the interim.

Earlier on Friday, hundreds of Jet's employees marched from the airport to the airline's headquarters in Mumbai to seek clarity on whether they will get paid soon and if their jobs will be secure over the coming months.

Air fares have increased across India in the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of around 90 per cent of Jets 119-aircraft fleet.

(With inputs from Reuters and PTI)
on Friday extended suspension of its international operations till Monday as the prime minister's office called for an urgent meeting to discuss issues with the debt-laden carrier at 6pm.



The Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair the meeting, TV channels said quoting sources. Government officials have previously expressed concern about the loss of jobs at the airline and on the prospect of higher Indian airfares if collapsed.

Incidentally, the stake sale bid invited by the SBI- led consortium of bankers, which manages the day-to-operations of the airline, also closes by the end of the day Friday, after being extended by two days.

Airline founder Naresh Goyal, the UAE carrier Etihad Airways, Air Canada and the country's national investment fund among others are reported to have submitted bids, according to media reports.

On Thursday, the airline had announced temporary grounding of its international operations for day-Jet was the largest international airline from the country till the financial crisis--when it had also suspended operations to the entire Eastern and Northeastern markets as Jet was forced to ground 10 more aircraft following default of lease rentals.



This has left Jet with no large aircraft while it had just 14 planes for domestic operations as of late Thursday.

"Jet has decided to extend suspension of its international operations till Monday, due to severe cash crunch," airline sources told PTI Friday.

Jet was the largest domestic carrier operating in the international sector with a hub in Amsterdam, where a cargo agent had taken possession of an aircraft this on Tuesday demanding bill payment. This led to the cancellation of the Amsterdam-Mumbai flight that day.

Thursday Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled were cancelled for operational reasons," Je had said, adding it had also cancelled the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight Friday.

On the domestic front, all Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states were suspended till further notice. Following this, there would no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region, travel industry source had told PTI.



Jet had also said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stood cancelled till further notice due to "operational reasons."



As of Thursday, the airline had just 14 planes--way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back.

Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330-- generally used for long-haul international operations.



The remaining six planes were, three B737s, which are largely used for flying on domestic routes besides on short- haul international destinations and the rest three are regional ATRs.

With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola had told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet can continue to fly on international routes.

The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations.
The crisis in Jet Airways deepened Friday as the airline could operate only 11 aircraft on Friday, leaving passengers stranded at various domestic and international airports and prompting the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to hold an urgent meeting to discuss the situation.

According to sources, the meeting was called after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked secretary of the department Pradeep Singh Kharola to review issues concerning Jet Airways.

After participating in the meeting at the PMO, Kharola held a meeting - through video conference - with the management of Jet Airways.

Passengers were left stranded at airports as Jet Airways announced on Friday that it is suspending international operations till Monday. Moreover, its employees carried out a protest march in Mumbai, asking the airline to pay their pending salaries.

Kharola told reporters that Jet Airways flew 11 aircraft on Friday and will fly six to seven aircraft on both days this weekend on domestic routes.

When asked if the airline has enough funds to keep the operations going on till Monday, the secretary replied in affirmative.

He said that Jet Airways had a meeting with the bankers on Friday "wherein they put forth their demand" regarding interim funding. A consortium of lenders - leading with State Bank of India (SBI) - is currently handling the airline.

Kharola said that the bankers have asked the airline to "rework its proposal" regarding interim funding.

"Monday again, they (Jet Airways) will be approaching the bank. Depending on what the banks decide, the future course of action would be taken," he said.

"Till Monday afternoon, (six to) seven planes would be flying. After that how many would fly would depend on their interaction with bankers," he added.

The secretary clarified that while one aircraft that would be flying in the weekend would be Boeing 737, all other aircraft would be ATR. With less than 100 seats, an ATR is a much smaller aircraft than Boeing 737.

Naresh Goyal owns 50.1 percent in the airline, most of which is pledged with the consortium of lenders. Goyal had last month agreed to pare down his stake to 25.5 percent for an emergency fund of Rs 1,500 crore from the lenders, and leave the board but the process is yet to be completed due to procedural delays.

Airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of 90 per cent of the 119-aircraft fleet of Jet Airways.

The airline on Thursday had suspended its operations to the eastern and northeastern cities of India "till further notice".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
After 100% of the ballots had been counted, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party got 36 mandates in the Knesset, local media reported, citing the official results of the Israeli general election.

The main rival of Netanyahu's party - the Blue and White alliance (led by Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid) - secured 35 seats.

The smaller parties had the following results: Shas won 8 seats; United Torah Judaism won 7 seats; Hadash-Ta'al and Labor won 6 seats each; Yisrael Beiteinu and United Right won 5 mandates each; Meretz, Kulanu and Ra'am-Balad each won 4 seats.
A journalist working with a vernacular daily was injured in an attack by unidentified persons in Satara district of Maharashtra, a senior police official said Friday.

The incident took place Thursday night when the journalist, identified as Murad Patel,was returning home in Khandala taluka of Satara district, around 250km from here, the official said.

The journalist, employed with a vernacular newspaper, was attacked with stones and suffered head injuries, Satara Superintendent of Police Tejaswi Satpute told PTI.

Police have registered a case under IPC section 307 (attempt to murder) against unidentified persons, she said, adding no arrest has been made yet.

According to the police, Patel is undergoing treatment at a local hospital and his condition is stated to be stable.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Junagadh Lok Sabha constituency in Gujarat has been a BJP bastion since 1991, but the saffron party is not going to have it easy this time going by the results of the 2017 assembly polls.

The Congress has won the Lok Sabha constituency in the Saurashtra region only once in the last 28 years - in 2004 - but the opposition party is banking on its performance in the assembly polls to snatch the seat from the BJP.

In the 2017 elections, the ruling party had lost all the seven assembly segments that are part of the parliamentary constituency to the Congress in the backdrop of issues like rural distress, water scarcity and low prices of agriculture products.

The BJP has renominated its sitting MP Rajesh Chudasama, who will take on Congress MLA Punja Vansh. The two were pitted against each other in 2014 also, with Chudasama emerging the winner by a margin of over 1.35 lakh votes.

Chudasama seeks to improve the 2014 victory margin this time on the ground that he helped set up a civil hospital in Junagadh and set a long-planned ropeway project on the Mount Girnar on city's outskirts rolling.

The sitting MP also has to his credit some road projects along the coastal region of Junagadh.

The party is also highlighting the achievements of the Narendra Modi government.

Local BJP leader Sanjay Manvar said, "Any shortcomings will be ignored by people as they would like to vote for Narendra Modi and see him continue as the prime minister."



But this is not as easy as it appears to be, at least when we look at Congress party's performance on seven assembly seats falling under this parliamentary constituency.

However, the Congress is expected to pose a stiff challenge to the BJP here in the April 23 elections.

In 2017, the Patidar reservation agitation, led by Hardik Patel, had played a key role in the Congress victory in all the seven assembly seats. Patel has now joined the Congress.

The stir had led to a large chunk of Patidar votes shifting to the Congress, which also benefited by raising the issue of agrarian crisis as nearly two-thirds of the Junagadh Lok Sabha constituency are in rural areas.

Patidars are a dominant caste group in Junagadh, next only to Kolis, with a large section of the two communities engaged in farm activity.

Congress leaders said there is an "undercurrent" against Modi over his "failed" 2014 promises, which will help the party win this BJP bastion.

"There is a clear undercurrent against the BJP. They won the 2014 election by making false promises. Farmers, businessmen are all upset," said Congress MLA from Junagadh Bhikhabhai Joshi.

"Votes of Patidars, the second dominant caste, will certainly go to the Congress," he said, adding it is likely that Koli votes will get divided between Chudasama and Vansh as both belong to the community.

Of the 16,41,528 registered voters in Junagadh, around 2.5 lakh hail from the Koli community, while two lakh are Patidars, as per an estimate.

The BJP believes the Patidar agitation has lost steam now and will not impact its prospects



"The Congress won assembly seats in 2017 due to the Patidar agitation, but the issue is no longer relevant now," Pradeep Khimani, a senior BJP leader from Junagadh.

"A large section of the Patidar community voted for the Congress in Junagadh in the last Assembly election. But assembly elections are fought on a different issue.

"The people of Junagadh have always supported the BJP in the Lok Sabha elections, and this has traditionally been our seat. We do not see this changing this time around," he said.

All the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat will have a single phase polling on April 23. In 2014, the BJP had won all the 26 Lok Sabha seats.

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Actor Kate McKinnon will star in a Hulu series about disgraced businesswoman Elizabeth Holmes and her failed blood-testing company Theranos.

The "Saturday Night Live" star will be essaying Holmes in the series, which has been titled "The Dropout", according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The show will detail the rise and fall of Holmes and her company which invented the Edison machine, a revolutionary diagnostic tool that promised to give patients a cheap way to test their blood for 200 diseases at their local drug store with just a finger-prick.

However, the machine did not work as Holmes claimed and her lies allowed her to reap a fortune from investors, and even appear on the front cover of Fortune magazine.

The show, based on the ABC Radio and ABC News' investigative podcast, is backed by Fox Searchlight TV.

McKinnon will also executive produce the project alongside Rebecca Jarvis, the host of the podast. Taylor Dunn and Victoria Thompson will produce it.

Holmes and her company is also the subject of John Carreyrou's book "Bad Blood", which is being adapted by director Adam McKay into a feature film, starring Jennifer Lawrence, and the HBO documentary "The Inventor", which premiered in March.

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Stating that it did not find any evidence to convict him, the Kerala High Court Friday acquitted solar scam accused Biju Radhakrishnan, who was sentenced to life by a lower court for murdering his wife in 2006.

Setting aside the district sessions court verdict, a division bench comprising Justices A M Shaffique and A M Babu said, "We are of the view that the accused is entitled to benefit of doubt and he is entitled to acquittal for the offence under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)."



Radhakrishnan was convicted by Kollam District Sessions Court in 2014.

The court had also sentenced his mother to three years imprisonment under section 498A (husband or relative of husband of a woman subjecting her to cruelty) of the IPC.

The high court also acquitted her, saying it did not find any evidence against her as well.

According to the prosecution, Radhakrishnan's wife, Reshmi, fell unconscious after he made her drink liquor. Later, he strangulated her to death.

Reshmi body was found at her residence in Kottarakkara on February 4, 2006.

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Andre Russell blazed away to a 21-ball 45 after Shubman Gill's brisk half-century, powering Kolkata Knight Riders to 178 for seven against Delhi Capitals, in the Indian Premier League here Friday.

This was Russell's sixth successive 40-plus score, his four sixes and three boundaries coming after youngster Gill stroked 65 off 39 balls, helping the hosts recover from Ishant Sharma's wicket-maiden first over.

The Jamaican, who was cleaned up by Kagiso Rabada with a toe-crushing yorker in their Super Over defeat in the first leg, also exacted a sweet revenge smashing the South African for two sixes in an over that yielded 16 runs.

Chris Morris removed Russell in the penultimate over when he was caught in the deep by Rabada.

Sent into bat, from batting at No. 6 in their last match against Chennai Super Kings, Gill was promoted to open the innings and the 19-year-old responded with a fine knock, his second IPL fifty, and first this season.

Gill smashed seven fours and two sixes, both against spinner Axar Patel, and along with Robin Uthappa (28), added 63 runs after a horror start.

Ishant knocked out the off-stump of Joe Denly with a fantastic inswinger, the Englishman lasting just one ball on his IPL debut.

Delhi could not have asked for a better start with Ishant starting the proceedings with a wicket-maiden.

But KKR did well to bring themselves out of the rut with Uthappa and Gill counter-attacking with a flurry of boundaries.

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The Congress on Friday said its talks with the AAP for an alliance has failed as the Arvind Kejriwal-led party took an "impractical stand" of a tie-up in four states, but indicated that possibilities for an electoral understanding between the two were still alive for Delhi.

Congress in-charge for Delhi P C Chacko announced that the party will go alone, but maintained that it is still willing to have an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party provided the tie-up is restricted only to the national capital.

The AAP, however, said the tie-up can only be done on 33 Lok Sabha seats across four states and one Union Territory.

Soon after the Congress announcement, the AAP announced a tie-up with the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) for Haryana.

The JJP was launched by former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala's grandson Dushyant Chautala, following a power struggle in the state's main opposition INLD last year.

Senior AAP leader Gopal Rai said the JJP will fight on seven seats and AAP on three seats.

Uncertainty over alliance between the AAP and the Congress has been continuing for weeks now with the former demanding an alliance on 33 seats of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Goa and Chandigarh.

The talks between the two sides derailed after they failed to reach an agreement over seat-sharing in Delhi and Haryana.

Chacko said the Congress will contest alone in Delhi since AAP has taken an "impractical stand".

"We are compelled to go on our own as AAP is going back on its stand," Chacko told reporters.

He, however, said, "We are still ready (for alliance) if AAP is willing to have an alliance in Delhi alone. We want to fight the BJP together."



"We are not able to form an alliance as they have taken a difficult and impractical proposition. Congress is going to fight the election in Delhi on its own," he said, adding that the party will come out with a candidate list in a day or two.

He said the Congress has adopted a policy to form alliances with parties to defeat the BJP and this policy was being followed all over the country.

The Aam Aadmi Party, in response, said it is capable of defeating both the BJP and the Congress in the city and an alliance is possible with the grand old party only when it will be done on the 33 seats.

"We want alliance on all 33 seats with the Congress and not three seats in Delhi. We are capable of defeating the BJP and the Congress on our own in Delhi. If an alliance has to be there, it has to be on 33 seats," AAP's Gopal Rai said.

AAP's Rajya Sabha leader Sanjay Singh, who was holding alliance talks with the Congress, said, "Our sincerity to stop the BJP in Haryana is reflected by the fact that we became a junior partner to a four-month-old party (JJP) and agreed to contest only less than half of the seats in the state."



Singh said the AAP was eager for an alliance with the Congress in Haryana so that the BJP could be defeated on all the 10 seats.

"That's why we were prepared to give Congress three seats in Delhi. But they refused an alliance," he said.

Singh exuded confidence that the AAP would win all the seven seats on its own in Delhi.

However, sources said the AAP in a last-ditch attempt may offer a 5:2 seat sharing formula to the Congress in Delhi.

Earlier, the AAP was ready to give three seats to the Congress in Delhi but now it might consider giving it just two seats, the sources added.

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Congress leader Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil Friday stayed away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's poll rally in Ahmednagar, where his son Sujay is the BJP's Lok Sabha candidate.

Speculation was rife that Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, the Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Assembly, would follow his son into the BJP and share stage with Modi at the rally in Ahmednagar, around 325 km from here.

The senior Vikhe Patil was unavailable for comment, but his close aides rejected suggestions about the Congress leader switching sides and joining the BJP.

They also maintained Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil had no role in organising the rally in the western Maharashtra city that will vote on April 23 and asserted Sujay Vikhe Patil is capable of handling his election-related issues.

"Sujay may be contesting elections for the first time. But, he is not new to For the last 7-8 years, he was managing his father's assembly constituency Shirdi," said a close aide of Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil.

"Sujay's contribution in making the Congress the single largest party in the Ahmednagar Zilla Parishad cannot be overlooked. He doesn't require his father to manage his Lok Sabha elections. It is not true that Vikhe Patil was instrumental in organising Modi's rally today," he said.

The aide said Sujay Vikhe Patil kept away from Ahmednagar city and did not work for the party during the municipal corporation elections due to differences with the local Congress unit president.

Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil has already said he would not campaign for the NCP nominee in Ahmednagar.

The NCP has claimed the senior Vikhe Patil is campaigning for the BJP in Ahmednagar and asked the Congress to take action against him.

The Congress has 42 MLAs and the NCP 41 in the 288- member assembly. Any disciplinary action against Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil would mean the Congress losing the Leader of the Opposition post.

Two Congress MLAs - Nitesh Rane and Kalidas Kolambkar - are their way out. While there is speculation that Kolambkar may join the BJP, Rane is likely to contest the Assembly polls scheduled later this year, under the banner of his father Narayan Rane's outfit, the Maharashtra Swambhiman Paksh.

Addressing the rally, Union minister Ramdas Athawale said, "I want to tell the youth that they should join the army and after spending 15 years there, join my party."



Speaking at the rally, sitting BJP MP Dilip Gandhi, in whose place Sujay has been fielded by the party, sought to tell the crowd about the development work he did in the constituency during the last five years, but was asked to cut short his speech.

A visibly irritated Gandhi continued the speech, and expressed his displeasure over not being allowed to speak at length.

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis assured Gandhi that the party will stand with him as well.

"Sujay's entry in BJP was a surgical strike against the Congress," Fadnavis said.

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The first phase of Lok Sabha elections in Maharashtra held on April 11 witnessed an average of 61.81 per cent voting, with Bhandara-Gondiya constituency polling the maximum at 68.27 per cent.

In 2014, the polling percentage there was 72.31 per cent.

According to the state's Chief Electoral Office, the final polling percentage for Gadchiroli-Chimur Lok Sabha seat would be available on Saturday.

However, according to Additional Chief Electoral Officer Dilip Shinde, the initial voter turnout in the Naxal-hit region has been 61.33 per cent.

Shinde said there were incidents of firing and bomb blasts in Gadchiroli, where two jawans were injured.

"There were 4 polling stations where our parties could not reach and therefore voting could not take place. Whenever the Election Commission informs us, elections will be held there," he said.

In Wardha constituency, the final voter turnout was 61.18 per cent (64.79 per cent in 2014), while in Ramtek, it was 62.12 per cent (62.64 per cent in 2014).

Nagpur Lok Sabha constituency witnessed 54.74 per cent (57.12 per cent in 2014), while in Chandrapur, 64.66 per cent people came out to vote (63.29 per cent in 2014).

In Yavatmal-Washim seat, 61.09 per cent voters cast their franchise, up from 58.87 per cent in 2014.

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A man carrying Rs 10 lakh in unaccounted cash has been arrested in the city's Burrabazar area, a senior police officer said Friday.

Acting on a tip-off, a team of Kolkata Police intercepted Shadab Ahmed Siddiquee at Rabindra Sarani in Burrabazar police station area on Thursday evening and seized his bag full of cash, he said.

"We had information from a credible source that Shadab, a resident of Bidhangarh in South 24 Parganas district, was carrying huge amount of cash with no valid documents. He could not give any satisfactory reply when asked about the source of the money," the officer said.

With the model code of conduct in place in view of the Lok Sabha elections, any person carrying cash above Rs 50,000 has to provide evidence of its legitimacy or he might be susceptible to action by the authorities.

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A 28-year-old man, carrying a reward of Rs 1 lakh, was arrested from Madhya Pradesh for allegedly supplying illegal arms to criminals in the national capital and its neighbouring states, officials said Friday.

The accused was identified as Mohammad Israr (28), a resident of Etawah district in Uttar Pradesh, they said.

According to DCP (Special Cell) Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, on May 21, 2018, two associates of Israr, identified as Vineet Kumar and Ram Kumar, were arrested with 21 semi-automatic pistols and 42 live cartridges.

During interrogation, both accused disclosed that they have procured the illegal firearms from Israr, he said.

Police received information that Israr was lodged in the Ajmer Jail in a dacoity case. However, when police reached the Ajmer Jail, they got to know that Israr was released on bail.

Later, Israr was arrested from Madhya Pradesh's Bhind district, the DCP said.

Israr told police that he used to purchase arms from Jeet, a resident of Burhanpur in MP, and then used to supply the illegal consignments to his contacts in Delhi, UP and Haryana.

He and his associates -- Vineet and Ram Kumar -- were involved in supply of illegal arms for the last four years, the DCP said, adding that further investigation is underway.

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South Africa: Security cluster stands ready for 2019 elections

It is all systems go for the 2019 general elections, says the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster (JCPS).

With only 25 days to go to the sixth general election, the JCPS cluster convened a briefing on its safety plans for the elections at the South African Police Service College in Pretoria on Thursday.

Police Minister Bheki Cele, State Security Agency Minister Dipuo Letsatsi- Duba and the National Police Commissioner General Khehla Sitole attended the briefing.

Outlining its state of readiness, the cluster assured South Africans that they can cast their vote freely and safely come Election Day on 8 May 2019.

We are more than committed to ensuring the safety of all voters and voting stations.

We declare that as a cluster we are operationally ready to execute our mandate and ensure a safe and secure environment for free and fair elections to prevail, said the Police Minister Bheki Cele on behalf of his cluster.

The JCPS cluster briefing took place amid several service delivery protests across the country, most notably, the protests in Tshwane which aimed to shut down the capital city.

In light of this, the cluster said it will be on high alert, adding that South Africans can expect increased visibility.

As the JCPS cluster we can assure all South Africans that we have put plans in place to ensure that these elections take place in a free, fair, safe and secure environment.

The South African Police Service will, during the build-up to the election, on the day of the election and the period after the election, increase police visibility through focused deployments of personnel throughout the country, said Cele.

The Police Minister assured citizens that 22 924 voting stations will be operational, ready and secured.

KwaZulu-Natal leads with the most voting stations, registering a total of 4885, followed by the Eastern Cape province with 4791 stations and Limpopo with 3157 voting stations.

We will continue to deal decisively with the so called no-go areas all voting stations in the country will be accessible to all.

No protests nor shutdowns will abuse the constitutional rights of South Africans to exercise their democratic rights to vote for the party of their choice, said the Police Minister.

Hotspot areas

Through its intelligence structures, the cluster has identified a number of hotspots and potentially volatile areas that will be monitored on a continuous basis.

These areas will be targeted through intensified operations, informed by thorough analysis and intelligence-based deployments, said Cele.

Special voters registration

With the application window for special voter registration nearing its close on 18 April 2019, the JCPS cluster encouraged all those who fall within the category to register.

As a security cluster we therefore urge every citizen of this country to act responsibly, observe the laws of our country and to cooperate fully with all law enforcement agencies, said the Minister.

Easter Period

With a week to go until the rush of the Easter period, the JCPS said it stands ready to ensure proper coordination of all safety and security related activities during this period.

We trust that the Easter weekend security plan will be carried out successfully and we would also like to call upon all the citizens of this country to conduct themselves in a responsible manner that will not be in conflict with the law, said Cele.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Georgia's Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze has presented doctor Lado Kakhadze as the Georgian Dream ruing partys candidate who will run in the Mtastsminda district parliamentary by-elections on May 19.

The PM claimed that the ruling party has chosen a "distinguished candidate for a distinguished district."

"Kakhadze is a very worthy candidate. He loves his people and country very much and he has proven this for many years with his activities. For many people, Lado is an example of professionalism," Bakhtadze said, adding that he is eager to play his role in the building of a prosperous and safe Georgia.

"I will fight for this goal," Agenda.ge cited the Georgian PM as saying.

The seat became vacant after the election of Salome Zurabishvili as the fifth president of Georgia.

11 candidates have been registered so far in the district, three of them were presented by political parties: the Georgian Dream, the bloc of Free Democrats-European Georgia and the Girchi party. The remaining eight have been nominated by initiative groups.
The Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai police Friday arrested a real estate developer from Ahmedabad Airport in a Rs 50 crore forgery case, an official said.

Yusuf Lakdawala had allegedly attempted to usurp four acres of land in Khandala, worth Rs 50 crore, by submitting forged documents to the registrars office, the official said.

"He is also accused of destroying original documents from the Mumbai registrar's office. Acting on a tip off that Lakdawala was planning to leave the country, we sent a team and picked him up from Ahmedabad airport," he said.

Lakdawala has been booked under section 465 (forgery) and other relevant provisions of IPC and Indian Registration Act for making false statements, delivering false copies, he said.

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India and Indonesia should set up a shipping chamber to promote shipping cooperation between the two countries as a part of the initiative to establish connectivity in the Indian Ocean, a maritime expert said on Friday.

As a business-to-business entity, the chamber could be a sub-unit of exiting trade and industry chamber of the two countries or a separate one, Siswanto Rusdi, founder and director of Indonesia's National Maritime Institute, said on Friday.

"It is good to start a shipping chamber as soon as possible," he said, calling for a couple of conferences as a prelude for its establishment.

Rusdi was part of a panel which discussed India and Indonesia in the Indo-Pacific in Singapore on Tuesday.

Giving details, Rusdi said on Friday: The most important outcomes (of the conferences) would be the scope of shipping cooperation between India and Indonesia.

With direct maritime/shipping connectivity, Indonesia and India can benefit each other, said Rusdi, pointing out that the world's bulker pool now is full of China's vessels and shipping companies.

Our countries must do something to balance it, he told PTI.

Rusdi also pointed out that the Indonesian government will order all coal exports to be transported by Indonesia-flagged vessels by 2020. India is the largest importer of Indonesian coal.

But our shipping capacity is very limited. India and Indonesia can cooperate on this aspect, let say, to procure bigger bulkers to ply the trade, he said.

As a startup to the shipping chamber, may be embassies of the two countries could set up a transportation attache offices to facilitate whatever the shipping players from India and Indonesia may initiate.

He also commented on some media reports on India's interest in Sabang Port on the tip of Sumatra.

In the old time, Sabang was a free port with significant trading activities. India and Indonesia can revive it to the initial position. Operations at the port are moderate these days.

Since the port is actually a commercial unit under state-owned company Pelindo I, a b2b approach is required, believes Rusdi.

As far as I know, there is no, as yet, Indian business entity coming in to negotiate, he said of Indian participation in Sabang development.

Noting the importance of deep-water ports to India, he said, Naturally, Sabang is a deep-water port. You need not to dredge it to have sufficient draught for big vessels.

So far, the economic activity in Sabang is still moderate, according to Rusdi. What we need is not only physical construction but more on the intangible one. We need industry to be set up in Sabang, he said.

He also underlined the significance of small-coastal vessel operations between Sabang and Andaman island.

The panel discussion was jointly organised by two think tanks at the National University of Singapore the Institute of South East Asian Studies/Yusuf Ishak Institute and the Institute of South Asian Studies.

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Expressing outrage over the "use" of the armed forces for "political purposes", over 150 military veterans have written to President Ram Nath Kovind to seek his intervention in preserving the apolitical character of the services.

The letter, dated April 11, carries the names of eight former service chiefs but two of them -- former Army chief General (retd) S F Rodrigues and Air Chief Marshal (retd) N C Suri -- said they have not signed it.

Former Army vice chief Lt Gen (retd) M L Naidu also said his consent was not taken before listing his name as one of the signatories.

When contacted, several veterans, including former Army chiefs Gen (retd) Deepak Kapoor and Gen (retd) Shankar Roy Chowdhury, acknowledged writing the letter.

Chowdhury said the letter was written expressing sentiments of the military veterans on an important issue.

The veterans said they chose to write to the president as he is the custodian of the Constitution as well as the supreme commander of the armed forces.

Referring to Rodrigues and Suri denying signing the letter, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman called the allegations "fake".

"It is absolutely condemnable that names were mentioned without taking permission," he said.

The letter cites several examples of the military being used for political purposes, including Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath referring to the armed forces as "Modiji ki Sena" and the display of images of Wing Commander Abhinav Varthaman at political events.

Varthaman was captured by Pakistan after an air combat with India and subsequently released. In their rallies, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a number of BJP leaders have been referring to IAF's Balakot strikes besides mentioning the valour of the armed forces in defending the country.

The Election Commission has already taken note of the PM's comments asking first-time voters to dedicate their votes to those who carried out the air strike in Balakot.

"We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the armed forces to be 'Modi ji ki sena'," the veterans wrote.

"This is in addition to media pictures of election platforms and campaigns in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms and posters and images with pictures of soldiers and specially of Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinav Varthaman, displayed," according to the letter.

They said such misuse of the armed forces would impinge adversely on the morale and fighting efficiency of the serving men and women in the uniform.

"It could, therefore, directly affect national security and national integrity. We, therefore, appeal to you to ensure that the secular and apolitical character of our armed forces is preserved," the letter says.

The veterans urged the president to take all necessary steps and urgently direct all political parties to desist from using the military for political purposes or to further their political agendas".

The letter also lists former Navy chiefs Admiral (retired) L Ramdas, Admiral (retired) Arun Prakash and Admiral (retired) Vishnu Bhagwat as signatories.

It mentions the Election Commission's notifications to those violating the model code of conduct, including to Adiyanath, but adds that the actions don't have any impact on the ground.

"Indeed a notification has been issued asking for an explanation for those responsible for these statements including from the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh," the letter says.

"However, we regret to state that these do not appear to have resulted in any substantive change of behaviour or practice on the ground," it adds.

In his reaction, Air Chief Marshal (retired) Suri said armed forces are apolitical and they report to the democratically elected government.

He added that his consent was not taken before his name was mentioned in the letter.

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Tearing into the Congress-JDS coalition in Karnataka over its alleged corruption and dynasty politics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday dubbed it a "20 per cent government", saying their only mission was "commission."



Intensifying his campaign blitz in Karnataka, Modi also asserted there was a wave across the country for the return of the BJP-led NDA government in the Lok Sabha polls, which was between "Rashtravad (nationalism) and Pariwarvad (dynasty)."



He lashed out at the Deve Gowda family, targeting the JDS supremo's son Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy over his reported remark that only those who cannot get two square meals a day seek jobs in the services, terming it an 'insult' to the armed forces.

He also hit out at Gowda's other son and minister H D Revanna, without naming him, for his remark that he would retire from if Modi was voted back to power.

The Prime Minister is addressing back to back rallies in Karnataka, where the BJP has targetted to win 22 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats, riding on what it perceives as a "Modi wave".

BJP is also hoping to cash in on mutual hostility between the ruling coalition partners at the grassroot level in several constituencies.

The BJP won 17 seats in the 2014 polls.

The Prime Minister said the 2019 election is between Rashtrawad (nationalism) and parivarwad (dynasty). "The election was between nation first or family first," he said.

"In Karnataka Congress and JD(S) are signs of Parivarwad. Both parties that have lost touch with the people are that much connected to their families...Their only mission is commission," Modi said.

"When there was Congress government, there was Mr 10 per cent.

Do you remember Mr 10 per cent? Now they have joined together 10 per cent is theirs and other 10 per cent of others. Now Karnataka is going on with 20 per cent," he said.

In his campaign during the May 2018 assembly polls, Modi had attacked the then Siddaramaiah dispensation as a "10 per cent commission government.

The Prime Minister said he had seen media reports yesterday of Kumaraswamy saying that those who don't get food two times a day join the Army.

"What kind of thinking is thisKumaraswamy ji? You cannot escape by saying that your statement has been wrongly interpreted. You have said what is in your heart," Modi said.

"...is it not an insult to our brave soldiers and armed forces...will you seek vote on this? Those who serve the country and ready to sacrifice for it facing all odds...Such words for them, such thinking.

Doob maro doob maro (die drowning), those who insult the country's army," he said.

Modi said such people could not understand the "tapasya" of the Army as they were born with a silver spoon. Those who have remained in power for three generations could never understand the poor and their dignity, Modi said.

"This is the thinking with Congress and JD(S) and their mahamilavati (adulterated) dal....(they) dont give importance to the countrys security," the Prime Minister said.

Accusing Congress and JD(S) of being against "Rashtrawadis" and those protecting the country,Modi said they don't feel ashamed in standing with those shouting slogans 'Bharat tere tukde honge' and dream about it.

The Prime Minister said such people stand with those supporting the secession of Jammu Kashmir from the country.

"They have money for Sultan's utsav, but have shortage of money to remember Hampis pride," Modi, said referring to the state government's controversial celebrations of "Tipu Jayanti" on November 10 every year in memory of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom.

On Revanna's remarks that he would retire from if Modi came back to power, the prime minister said "Do you believe them? Will these people speak the truth any time?"



He reminded the crowd that in the 2014 elections, Deve Gowda had himself said that if Modi won and became the prime minister, he would take "sanyas".

"Did he take sanyas? Did father (Deve Gowda) take sanyas? Will son take sanyas? Leave sanyas, they aregiving tickets to those remaining in the family."



On the response to his rallies across the country and the surging crows at the meeting here, Modi said, "This scene shows which way the wind is blowing."



"Whereever I have had the opportunity to go across the country, phir rk baar..." Modi said, to which the public roared in unison "Modi sarkar".

"This is the voice of the people across the country.There is a wave that is going on. Your love is spoiling the sleep of those sitting in Delhi," he told the surging crowds.

Modi stopped his speech four or five times as the crowds continued to swell and surged forward chanting "Modi, Modi."



Referring to the first phase of voting on Thursday, the Prime Minister said the opposition would not be able to sustain and there was a complete wave of BJP and its allies.

"There is chaos (afra tafri) in West Bengal, they are indulging in killing...but people phir ek baar."



Accusing Congress of having looted the money over which children and pregnant women had their rights, to "buy votes," he said "they committed another corruption for this Lok Sabha polls, called the Tuglaq Raod Election scam."



Pointing out there is a Tuglaq Road in Delhi, where there are prominent leaders' residences, Modi said,..."in Madyhya Pradesh, where Congress formed the government a few months ago, several crores of Rupees was sent to Delhi for election. This money was meant for malnourished children..." he said.

"Till now we were hearing about Congress' involvement in defence deal, land deal, submarine deal, helicopter deal.

Now they are looting the plates of innocent kids. Congress is hungry after remaining out of power for five years...Congress' sin cannot be cleared.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath's residence as an MP is at 1, Tughlaq Road, in New Delhi while Congress president Rahul Gandhi's official residence as an MP is 12, Tughlak Lane in the national capital.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Senior Congress leader Gulam Nabi Azad Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of using achievements and sacrifices of the armed forces for vote bank and said no government in the past has done it.

He addressed a chain of public rallies at Pancheri, Latti, Dudu, Basantgarh and Gordi in Udhampur district in support of Vikramaditya Singh, the party candidate for Udhampur Lok Sabha seat and grandson of erstwhile Dogra Maharaja Hari Singh. Vikramaditya Singh is pitted against Union Minister and BJP candidate Jitendra Singh.

"The BJP, its government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi area trying to take credit for the achievements and sacrifices of our armed forces, which no government in the past has done for vote bank politics", Azad told a rally here.

The Congress leader said "although there were numerous achievements of our forces during previous governments including division of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh, during the regime of Indira Gandhi, no government in past used them".

He said the forces belong to the nation and their achievements also belong to the nation and not to any particular political party.

"It is wrong to take credit for their achievements by the ruling party, as the achievement goes to the entire nation", he said



Azad said the BJP's "divisive for vested political interests" is against the overall interests of the nation.

The Congress leader said that India will remain united and strong by respecting the sentiments of its diversity and taking each and every section together, "not merely by hollow slogans".

Azad referred to the country's development in the past 70 years, attributing the progress to the Congress which was in the power for most of this period.

"The achievements and progress witnessed in all spheres by the nation is because of the visionary and progressive programmes initiated by the successive Congress governments", he said.

Azad took a dig at the Modi government, saying the "propaganda machinery of his government is spreading falsehood and misleading people on various fronts in order to hide their failures in fulfilling their commitments and fake promises to the people in the last election".

He appealed to the people to "reject the forces of divide and hate" and vote for Congress to maintain the atmosphere of peace and harmony for the nation's unity.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was trying to use soldiers for votes but India's armed forces were with the country and not the saffron party.

The opposition party was reacting to a letter written by over 150 armed forces veterans to President and Commander-in-Chief Ram Nath Kovind, complaining about the manner in which political parties have been using armed forces for political gains ahead of the Lok Sabha election.

Congress said that it was clear that the soldiers were with India.

"Modi may try to use soldiers for votes, but it's clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP. 156 Veterans of the Indian Armed Forces including 8 former Chiefs of Staff write to the President of India urging him to act against Modi for trying to use soldiers for votes," said a tweet from the Congress' official Twitter handle.

The letter is signed by three former army chiefs, four former navy chiefs and a former air force chief.

"We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the armed forces to be 'Modi ji ki sena'," the veterans wrote.

The military veterans said it was a matter of considerable concern and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel that the armed forces are being used to pursue a political agenda.

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Launching a scathing attack on the Congress and other parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday said the Opposition leaders are heroes in Pakistan and are being quoted there to "discredit" India.

In an apparent reference to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who is contesting from neighbouring Wayanad besides his traditional stronghold of Amethi, Modi asked the people of Kerala to be cautious of those who come to the State to "save themselves."



He also said the Communists and the Congress have taken the people of the state for granted.

"Beware of those people who come to Kerala not to serve you, but to save themselves. Those who are on bail for tax fraud are coming to Kerala for their own political bail out.

When such leaders or their party members come to you for vote, ask them about their performances in their constituencies. They won't have anything to say," Modi said.

He lashed out at the Congress and its "non-serious attitude" towards national security and said "they were silent when they had to act."



When the Congress was in power, the country saw many terror attacks, Modi said.

"Now our forces, successfully eliminate terrorists in their own home, the Congress and the Left question our forces.

"...Today the bare minimum they can do is to show support but they are questioning and insulting the defence forces," the prime minister said.

"Our opposition leaders are heroes in Pakistan where their speeches are being quoted by their leaders to discredit India," Modi said.

Addressing a massive rally, organised by the BJP-led NDA, at the beach front here, he said electing the Congress and the LDF was like giving licence to its leaders to engage in top-level corruption.

Slamming the Congress for indulging in corruption, Modi said the "Tughlaq road election scam" has been the talk of the nation.

The money that was being looted was meant to be used to provide nutrition to women and children, he said. "Imagine how shameless they are," Modi said at the Vijay Sankalp rally.

"Now the entire nation is talking about a very big national scam of the Congress. This is the Tughlaq road election scam.

In Madhya Pradesh, crores of rupees, bags of cash were found. Detailed probes revealed that the money trail reaches the house of a top Congress leader in Delhi's Tughlaq road," Modi said.

The Prime Minister claimed that the double standards of both the UDF and the LDF in the state were exposed in the matters of women empowerment and the triple talaq.

Attacking the ruling CPI(M)-led LDF and the Congress-headed Opposition, Modi said Communists and the Congress have blatant "double standards" when it comes to women's empowerment.

He said the "so-called defenders of women's rights" are the ones defending the "brutal and barbaric" practice of triple talaq.

"But then the so-called liberals, activate their entire network of paid NGOs, paid civil society, groups, urban naxals, tukde tukde gang to interfere in the faith and traditions of our land," Modi said.

They were trying to make Kerala a laboratory of their "mischiefs."



"They call themselves the champions of speech and expression. But deny the same for the people of Kerala."



Both the Fronts think they can destroy traditions, but are mistaken. "Their lathis, their lies and their disgusting mischief will never be able to destroy our traditions," the prime minister said in an apparent reference to the Sabarimala protests.

The State witnessed frenzied protests after the Left government decided to implement the September 28 Supreme Court verdict allowing women of all age groups to offer prayers at Sabarimala.

Without mentioning Sabarimala in his first campaign speech here after the poll process was notified, Modi said the LDF and UDF will not be able to destroy the traditions.

"Now, in the name of the Supreme Court verdict, some forces have again attempted to destroy traditions for their selfish gains. The attack on our traditions will not be accepted.

The use of lathis on innocent devotees will not be accepted. It is wrong that in one's own country, one has to face lathis to follow the ancient traditions," he said.

BJP would take all steps to place before the Supreme Court, Kerala's centuries-old traditions in detail. The Centre would also make efforts to provide constitutional protection for the state's faiths and beliefs, Modi said.

The BJP in its poll manifesto had made a mention of the Sabarimala controversy, saying it would "endeavour to secure constitutional protection on issues related to faith and belief."



He also took a dig at the Indian Union Muslim League and the Congress leaders and said "those who have a track record in Ice-Cream Parlour case and the Solar case should not talk on women empowerment as it does not suit them."



Modi, who arrived here after addressing campaign meetings at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra and Gangavathi in northern Karnataka, said the UDF and the LDF are different only in name but not in deeds.

"For decades, the communist LDF and the communal UDF have dominated the Kerala But they have miserably failed the people of Kerala.

BJP presents an alternative ie.inclusive, democratic and compassionate. We will serve each and every citizen," he said.

He said electing the Congress and the LDF was like giving licence for its leaders to engage in corruption.

Candidates from Kasaragod to Palakkad shared the dais with the prime minister at the rally.

Modi is expected to come to the state once more before the April 23 elections.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The names of Union minister Uma Bharti and Pragya Singh Thakur, who is facing trial in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, are doing the rounds as the BJP's pick to take on Congress leader Digvijaya Singh in Bhopal.

Bhopal is a BJP stronghold since 1989 but Singh's candidature, and the fact that the Congress won three out of the eight Assembly seats that comprise the Lok Sabha constituency in the 2018 state polls, has forced the saffron party to do a rethink, said sources.

Around 4.5 lakh of the 18 lakh voters in Bhopal are Muslims, they added.

Bharti or Thakur's candidature against Singh could possibly see the poll battle turn into a bitter one with communal overtones, observers said.

Singh has routinely targeted the RSS-BJP and other constituents of the Sangh Parivar and is in turn labelled "anti-Hindu" by saffron hardliners, they said.

Bharti, who had earlier said she would not contest Lok Sabha polls, had won from Bhopal in 1999 defeating former Union minister Suresh Pachouri by over 1.68 lakh votes.

When contacted, Thakur said, "I am ready for the dharma yudh." Though she added that the BJP hadn't contacted her as yet or offered a ticket.

Thakur, a postgraduate in History, had worked with RSS-affiliate Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and Durga Vahini, the women's wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP).

Though she was given a clean chit by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in the 2008 Malegaon blast case, a special NIA court in December 2018 refused to discharge her from the case.

The court dropped provisions of Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against her and she is being tried under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

She was granted bail by the Bombay High Court last year.

Six people were killed and over 100 injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in north Maharashtra, on September 29, 2008.

In the 2018 Assembly polls, the Congress won three out of the eight Assembly seats and the BJP's vote share in the other five seats had seen a slide.

Bhopal Lok Sabha seat comprises Berasia, Bhopal Uttar, Narela, Bhopal Dakshin-Paschhim, Bhopal Madhya, Govindpura, Huzur and Sehore Assembly seats.

Bhopal was won by BJP's Alok Sanjar by a margin of over 3.7 lakh votes in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

Meanwhile, Singh visited several temples as part of his Lok Sabha campaign.

Speaking to reporters in Sehore on March 29, Singh had said he did not use the phrase "Hindu terror", but had used the term "Sanghi terrorism".

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Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik Friday hit out at the BJP-led government at the Centre accusing it of neglecting the farmers.

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president held a roadshow in Hinjili assembly constituency from where he is seeking re- election for the 5th time in a row.

Besides hitting out at the Centre, Patnaik sought the blessings of the people during his brief address.

Raising the issue of farmers in his home constituency assumed significance as most of the voters in the area are peasants.

Braving the scorching sun, a large number of people lined up on both sides of the roads as the chief minister waved at the crowd while moving in a high-tech bus.

"The victory of our party president is certain. We are only concerned about increasing his margin," a senior BJD leader of Hinjili said.

There are around 2.18 lakh voters in the Hinjili assembly constituency from where Patnaik had won for the first time in the assembly in 2000, by 26,417 votes.

The margin increased to 42,642 in 2004.

In 2009 and 2014, Patnaik's margin had increased to 61,773 and 76,586 respectively.

Besides Hinjili, Patnaik is also seeking election from Bijepur in western Odisha this time.

Making his electoral debut in 1997, Patnaik had won the by-election from Aska Lok Sabha seat as a nominee of the erstwhile Janata Dal.

The seat had fallen vacant following the death of his father Biju Patnaik.

Patnaik was also elected to the Lok Sabha from Aska in 1998 and 1999.

This year, the BJP has pitted Pitambar Acharya, a senior advocate against Patnaik, while the Congress has fielded Sambhu Panigrahy in Hinjili.

Acharya alleged that Hinjili was neglected by Patnaik and hundreds of people migrated to other states to eke out a living.

Panigrahy claimed that people in the area are angry over rampant corruption in all spheres.

Elections in Hinjili and Bijepur will be held in the in the second phase of polling on April 18.

The Lok Sabha and the assembly elections are being held simultaneously in Odisha in four phases.

Polling for the next three phases will be held on April 18, 23 and 29.

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Neither the Congress-led UPA nor the BJP-anchored NDA would win more than 200 seats leading to regional parties playing an important role in the formation of next government at the Centre, claimed a key TRS leader.

B Vinod Kumar, who was deputy floor leader of the TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samiti) in the Lok Sabha, said Friday his outfit was in touch with "many" of the regional parties not aligned with the Congress and BJP.

"Role of regional parties will be very important in the formation of the next government at Delhi," Kumar, who sought re-election from Karimnagar constituency, told PTI.

Elections to all the 17 Lok Sabha segments in Telangana were held Thursday.

"Both national parties (along with their allies) will be below 200 (seats); so the role of regional parties will be more in the next government," said Kumar, considered a confidant of the TRS President and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

KCR, as the CM is referred to by many, has been pushing for a non-Congress, non-BJP federal front of regional parties since last year, and was unsparing in his attacks on the BJP and Congress during the recent Lok Sabha election campaign.

Kumar said an alliance of regional parties would be formed after the results of the Lok Sabha elections are declared.

"Not only KCR, all regional parties will play their respective roles in formation of the government", he said.

TRS has not decided on whom to back for Prime Ministership in the event of regional parties holding the "key" after the election results, according to him.

"We have not yet given any thought on all those issues. This is not the time to think who will be the next Prime Minister. Only after the results we can think...", he said.

KCR's daughter K Kavitha, who sought re-election from Nizamabad constituency, said recently she expects "neutral" regional parties to bag 120-plus Lok Sabha seats.

On the Parliamentary elections in Telangana, Kumar said the TRS would win 16 seats. TRS had an understanding with AIMIM and repeatedly said earlier that it expects its President Asaduddin Owaisi to retain the Hyderabad seat.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A truck with servicemen crashed yesterday night in Armenia's southern area on Meghri-Tsirani road, the countrys emergency ministrys press office reported.

On April 11, at 20:31, the emergency service 911 received a call and learnt about the defense ministrys truck accident.

The emergency crew reported that the truck crashed into the rock and turned upside down.

Some servicemen were reportedly injured, but doctors say nothing threatens their lives, ARKA reported.
Sudan's new military leader has resigned just a day after being sworn in, as the country's army rulers insisted they would pave the way for a civilian government.

The head of Sudan's new ruling military council, General Awad Ibn Ouf, announced his departure on Friday after being sworn in late Thursday following the ouster of long-time president Omar al-Bashir.

His move came shortly after the council's political chief Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin told Arab and African diplomats at a meeting broadcast on state television: "This is not a military coup, but taking the side of the people." Ouf's departure was an apparent sign of confusion among the northest African country's new leaders after Thursday's ousting of iron-fisted Bashir.

But there was jubilation at the on the streets of Khartoum.

Tens of thousands of protestors had kept up a vigil at the army headquarters in the Sudanese capital Friday angrily demanding that the military make way for a civilian government.

"I hereby announce my resignation as head of the Transitional Military Council," Ibn Ouf said in an address to the nation, announcing he had chosen General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Abdulrahman to replace him.

He said he trusted in Abdulrahman's "experience and suitability I trust to bring this ship to a safe shore".

The Sudanese Professionals Association which has spearheaded the nationwide protest campaign hailed Ibn Ouf's departure as "a victory of the people's will".

The demonstrations against Bashir's 30-year rule first erupted in December, triggered by a tripling of the bread prices in one of the world's most impoverished countries.

But vast crowds have been thronging outside the army headquarters since Saturday in unprecedented scenes.

Many were preparing to defy a night-time curfew for the second time, denouncing Ibn Ouf's leadership as a military coup.

That was denied by Abdin who said the transitional military council, due to stay in power for two years, would "open dialogue with political parties".

There "will be a civilian government and we will not intervene in its composition," he vowed.

He also appealed to foreign diplomats for "your donations, as we have some economic issues," alluding to fuel and food shortages.

"The role of the military council is to protect the security and stability of the country," Abdin added.

Thousands of men and women, dressed in white, again braved the searing Sudanese heat on Friday to offer prayers outside the sprawling army complex which has become a focus point of the protests since Saturday.

The imam leading the prayers was draped in the Sudanese flag. The police said 16 people had been killed in live fire in Khartoum in the past two days, without elaborating.

Hussein Mohamed, an elderly man from Omdurman, said he was attending the protest for the first time in response to a call to hold Friday prayers there.

"It is too, too hot but I'm impressed by what our young men and women are doing here," he said. "I'll surely come again."



Bashir, who took charge in the northeast African country in a 1989 military coup, remained in custody Friday, but Abdin said the council would never extradite him or any other Sudanese citizen.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued two arrest warrants against Bashir for suspected genocide and war crimes.

The military council had announced a two-year transition period, but Sudan's UN envoy told the Security Council in New York that this could be shortened "depending on developments on the ground and agreements between stakeholders".

Protesters have defied repeated deadly attempts by riot police and the feared intelligence services to crush their movement.

But when Bashir's overthrow was finally announced on Thursday in an address to the nation by Ibn Ouf, it was met not with joy but anger.

Protest leaders dismissed the transitional military council as the "same old faces" from a regime which led the country into multiple conflicts, worsening poverty and ever-widening social inequality.

Thursday's announcement meant "we have not achieved anything", said one protester, who gave his name only as Adel.

"We will not stop our revolution. We are calling for the regime to step down, not only Bashir." Analysts said Bashir's overthrow in a "palace coup" made the transition to democracy in Sudan a more distant prospect.

"The power struggle within the security cabal that took power yesterday is just beginning," said Alex de Waal, a Sudan specialist at Tufts University.

"Bashir had kept their rivalries and ambitions in check; his removal brings in its wake an unregulated uncertainty."



Multiple world powers have made calls for a peaceful transition. Washington urged the military council "to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government".

The European Union urged the army to carry out a "swift" handover to civilian rule.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that a two-year transition overseen by the military "is not the answer." "We need to see a swift move to an inclusive, representative, civilian leadership," Hunt said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dismissing the reports of infighting between her brothers Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav due to distribution of tickets, RJD candidate from Patliputra Misa Bharti has said the opposition is "spreading these rumours", but her party is united to end Modi raj.

"There are no problems between them. Tej Pratap ji always considered Tejashwi as his 'Arjun'. He might have suggested some names and discussions might be going on or party must have taken decision unanimously. It is a common process and every political party goes through it," Bharti, the eldest daughter of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad, told PTI in an email interview.

"It doesn't mean that they are not with the final decision that the party made. Opposition is happy spreading these rumours, but people know that elections are contested on issue. The RJD is united and firm on turning the tide against the Modi government," she said.

There have been reports that Tej Pratap Yadav, the mercurial elder son of Lalu-Rabri, had been resentful of Tejashwi Yadav being declared as the political heir apparent of the RJD supremo.

Tej Pratap Yadav has dropped many hints in the past few years that he was uneasy with the growing clout with his younger, but more suave and savvy, brother.

Last month, he resigned as the 'sanrakshak' (mentor) of the party's students wing, which was seen yet another expression of his frustration at being politically sidelined.

On April 1, he announced the formation of a parallel outfit Lalu Rabri Morcha, which he insisted was not separate from the RJD. Tej Pratap Yadav also urged his mother Rabri Devi to contest from the Saran Lok Sabha seat in place of the father of his estranged wife and threatened to contest as an Independent if his request was not heeded.

Bharti is pitted against BJP's Ram Kripal Yadav, minister of states for Rural Development and former close aide of Lalu Prasad, whom she used to call "chacha" (uncle).

In 2014, he left the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) to join the BJP after being denied ticket from the Yadav-dominated Patliputra constituency. Yadav defeated Bharti by over 40,000 votes in 2014.

Bharti accused him of ignoring the constituency and making false promises.

"There have been many promises in the last five years, but people got communalism, riots, mob lynching only. Nothing has changed in Patliputra in the last five years. Unemployment, lack of drinking water, law and order situations are major issues here, but the MP did not pay any attention," the member of Rajya Sabha said.

Bharti is the only member of Lalu Prasad's family in this electoral battle and is also feeling the absence of her father, who is sentenced in several fodder scam cases and serving a jail term in Jharkhand. He is currently in a hospital in Ranchi.

"Laluji is an ideology. You can confine a person, but not his ideology. It is not only me who is feeling his absence, but everyone whose voices have been suppressed on caste, religion and economic grounds. People will express their anger through voting," she added.

On being asked about the presence of the "Modi wave", she said there is no "Modi lehar", but it is "Modi kehar" (fear) in the country.

"Government has been running like an event management company in the last five years. They are trying to hide their failures and main issues in the name of patriotism. Government has been limited to six words only chai, pakode, chowkidar, gai, bhagode and bhagidaar," said Bharti.

She also termed the BJP's manifesto as an attempt of branding of Prime Minister Narendra Modi by equating him to India.

"The Congress's manifesto focuses on people and removing poverty, while the BJP's manifesto on branding of egoistical Modi by equating him to India. From the pictures of 11 leaders in 2014 to depiction of just one man in 2019 'Sankalp Patra'. Uniform Civil Code, Ram temple, Citizenship Bill are all reflective of Hindu majoritarian dominance theory of the BJP, which is not good for a diverse country like India," said the fire brand leader.

When asked if the caste equations will be decisive again in Bihar, she said atrocities on Dalits and backwards cannot be ignored.

"Rohit Vemula, reservation based on economic condition, ban on 27 per cent reservation to OBCs in MP, Saharanpur riots, there have been so many incidents so how can you think that people will not vote on the basis of caste against the Modi government," she said.

She also feels that it will be easier for the 'mahagathbandhan' to connect with the people due to charisma of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Congress general secretary Uttar Pradesh-East.

"The RJD is stronger in Bihar, but the Congress has immense experience of centre People wanted to see Priyanka ji in active and she connects with them easily. It will surely benefit the alliance," Bharti said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hitting out at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for his "silence" on ally Omar Abdullah's pitch for a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir, BJP president Amit Shah Friday asserted no one can make India part with the state as long as the BJP exists.

Shah also alleged that the Congress and other opposition parties are unhappy with the success of the Indian Air Force's strike on terrorist camps at Balakot in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pulwama terror attack.

"Omar Abdullah has suggested appointing a separate prime minister for Kashmir. Is it possible to have two PMs in a country? Can there be a second PM in Kashmir?



"Rahul Baba (Gandhi) is silent on his poll ally Abdullah's suggestion (separate PM for Kashmir)...He has not uttered a word," Shah told an election rally here.

Asserting that Kashmir is an inseparable and inalienable part of India, the BJP chief said, "No one can take away Kashmir from us. As long as the BJP exists, Kashmir will continue to be an integral part of India."



Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah recently advocated a separate prime minister for his state, triggering angry reactions from BJP leaders.

Shah said barely 13 days after 40 CRPF personnel were killed in Kashmir's Pulwama in a terror attack, air strikes were carried out targeting a terrorist haven inside Pakistan and the whole nation rejoiced.

"But Rahul Baba did not like it. There was mourning in Gandhi's party and his alliance," he alleged.

Lashing out at Gandhi family's close aide Sam Pitroda, who advocated "talks with terrorists", the BJP president asked, "Tell me whether we should hold a dialogue with terrorists or bomb them?"



"If we get bullets from Pakistan, we will retaliate with more lethal ammunition," he declared.

Maintaining that a Modi wave is sweeping across the country once again, he claimed "From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Odisha to Gujarat we hear the chants of 'Modi, Modi' everywhere."



Shah claimed it is the BJP alone that can safeguard people's interests.

Slamming Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for his poor command over Odia language, Shah said despite ruling the state for 19 years he cannot talk to people in their language.

Odisha, he said, is rich in natural resources but its people are still poor because of the wrong policies of the BJD government.

"The 19-year BJD rule has been marked by misgovernance and corruption. The youth are forced to migrate to other states to earn livelihood as Odisha lacks job opportunities."



Shah also shared his plans for the development of this tribal-dominated district.

The BJP government will set up a steel plant and a medical college in Keonjhar district if re-elected at the Centre. All forest produce will be procured at Minimum Support Price from the tribals, while no GST will be levied on tendu leaves, he said.

Under the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) funds, an additional Rs 1,600 crore has already been allocated to Keonjhar, the BJP chief said.

"Unlike the Congress, which did nothing to eradicate poverty during its 70-year rule in the country, the Modi government has been working sincerely for the welfare of the poor, farmers, youth, tribals, Dalits and the weaker sections," Shah claimed.

Polling in Keonjhar, where the BJP has fielded Ananta Nayak as its Lok Sabha candidate, is slated to be held in the third phase on April 23.

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No university will develop any national secret programme with a foreign enterprise in China, a senior official has said, denying reports that the US tech giant Microsoft, in cooperation with some Chinese varsities is developing artificial intelligence based surveillance systems for snooping on Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

British newspaper Financial Times reported that Microsoft Research Asia, the US tech company's Beijing-based research arm, and researchers linked to the Chinese military-run National University of Defense Technology cooperated in developing artificial intelligence (AI) based surveillance systems to detain minorities (in Xinjiang).

"In no way would Chinese universities develop any national secret program with a foreign enterprise," the state-run Global Times quoted an unnamed director of a lab supported by the Chinese Ministry of Education (MOE) and Microsoft at a university in Northeast China as saying.

Their cooperation with Microsoft was based on principles of academic freedom and openness. Its purpose is to train skilled AI professionals, the director said.

Xinjiang was in turmoil for the last several years following Uyghur protests over large scale settlements of Han Chinese into the resource rich province.

China blames the separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) for violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of the country in the last several years.

A number of Uyghurs reportedly joined Islamic State (IS) in Syria and planned to return.

The UN human rights panel said in August last year that it had received many credible reports that about a million ethnic Uyghurs in China have been detained in "massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy".

China defended the camps saying that they are re-education camps aimed at de-radicalise sections of the Uyghur Muslim population from extremism and separatism.

The US and several other countries besides the UN officials have expressed concern over the camps.

Microsoft has also rejected the accusations.

"Microsoft's researchers, who are often academics, conduct fundamental research with leading scholars and experts from around the world to advance our understanding of technology," a Microsoft spokesperson told the Global Times on Thursday.

The spokesperson said "the research is guided by our principles and fully complies with the US and local laws. It will be published to ensure transparency".

Microsoft has been working with some Chinese universities since 2018 under the guidance of the MOE on an engineering project, according to the Microsoft Research Asia website.

The project is part of the implementation of a plan for AI development launched by China's State Council in 2017.

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North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has retained his most important leadership post as his rubber-stamp parliament made a slew of personnel changes that bolstered his diplomatic lineup amid stalemated nuclear diplomacy with the United States.

Some observers say the personnel appointments could show Kim's desire to keep nuclear diplomacy alive rather than returning to a policy of ratcheting up tensions. In Washington, President Donald Trump and visiting South Korean President met Thursday and agreed on the importance of nuclear talks with North Korea.

The North's Korean Central Agency reported Friday that Kim was re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission at the first session of the Supreme People's Assembly on Thursday. It said the assembly re-elected Kim because of "his outstanding ideological and theoretical wisdom and experienced and seasoned leadership." The 35-year-old Kim holds many government, military and ruling party leadership titles, but he officially rules the country in his capacity as the commission chairman. The assembly had first elected him to that post in 2016.

KCNA also published a list of other officials elected to top state posts. Among them is Choe Ryong Hae, one of Kim's top lieutenants who was made president of the assembly's Presidium. Choe was also elected to first vice-chairman of the State Affairs Commission, a new post.

By the constitution, the presidium president post is North Korea's nominal head of state though all state power is heavily concentrated on Kim, the third-generation hereditary ruler of a family that has ruled the North since 1948.

Choe's election to head the presidium means the departure of 91-year-old Kim Yong Nam, who has served all three generations of the ruling Kim family. His retirement has long been expected due to his age.

Three of the four senior officials involved in the nuclear negotiations with the U.S. have been re-elected or newly elected to members of Kim Jong Un's state commission.

Among them was former military intelligence chief Kim Yong Chol, who travelled to Washington and met Trump twice ahead of Kim Jong Un's two summits with the president last year.

The fate of Kim Yong Chol had been the focus of South Korean media speculation since the second Kim-Trump summit ended without any agreement due to disputes over U.S.-led sanctions on the North. The nuclear negotiator who wasn't mentioned in the assembly-elected lineup is Kim Hyok Chol, the North's special representative for U.S. affairs.

The North's latest personnel changes show Choe strengthened his status as No. 2.

His appointment to first vice-chairman of the state commission could also allow him to oversee the U.S. diplomacy while having the nuclear negotiators and others in the commission under his control, some observers say.

Choe has been a rising star since Kim Jong Un took power in late 2011. He went China and Russia as Kim's special envoy, and has assumed a series of high-profile jobs including the top political officer in the North's 1.2 million-member military. In 2015, however, South Korea's spy agency speculated that he was briefly banished to a rural collective farm for reeducation.

"It's a positive sign that Choe has gained greater influence in negotiations" with the United States, said analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at South Korea's Sejong Institute.

He said there is a high chance for Kim Jong Un to send Choe as his special envoy.

Cheong said much of the responsibility for the failed nuclear diplomacy with the United States should be go to Kim Yong Chol, a hardline former military general blamed for two attacks in 2010 that killed 50 South Koreans.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Urmila Matondkar, the star of 90s hit Hindi films like "Rangeela", "Daud" and "Judaai", is contesting the Lok Sabha election but says she isn't approaching politics as a star and would rather be known as people's representative.

"I am not approaching this whole thing as a star with my star image. I am trying to get to grassroot and connect to people. I know it is going to be difficult.

"I want to generate confidence in them about me as their representative more than just another star coming in, waving and asking for votes. Because that is not the thought with which I have gotten into it," Urmila told PTI in an interview.

Considering she is a known face, ask her if Bollywood celebrities can be vote pullers, pat comes the reply, "I can't talk about others, it is not fair. Media generally likes to generalise things as it makes their life easy."



She will be contesting the election from Mumbai North constituency, a seat held by Govinda. Urmila, who has been campaigning and meeting the locals, says some of the major issues of the area are housing, water scarcity, sanitation.

"The most important issue is housing and it is too deep rooted for anyone to get a solution quickly. The slum redevelopment needs to be looked into. Water is another big issue, it is also a deep rooted so overnight solution is not possible. Women's health, local trains. But we need do to things.

"This area is issue-ridden probably the most in Mumbai. People have been telling me about need for public toilets, water in Gorai area is another problem. Also (need for more) local trains as the population is more here and there is no infrastructure."



She is fighting against BJP's Gopal Shetty, a seasoned politician who has called Urmila naive and zero in politics. But the actor isn't affected.

"That shows his mentality in the whole thing. He started of saying that this is going to be a battle of vichardhara (ideology) but non-stop he is speaking derogatory things about me, which I have never done.

"I think there can be two things behind it - someone who is not very confident and all these things stem out of deep rooted fear that must have come in."



The actor said the kind of politics him and his party indulge in focuses more on "emotional battles", keeping people occupied with "all kinds of emotional, religious and socio-economic issues."



"So that they do not come to main issues like what is progress? And where is the progress?



"If that is the politics he is referring to, I am happy to be political zero. For me politics is giving your word, standing by it and abiding by it no matter what."



The 45-year-old actor, who was last seen in a special appearance in Irrfan Khan's "Blackmail", felt it was time for her to do something for the society.

"I was against contesting the elections. I was interested in joining another party and wanted to campaign for whoever they wanted me to. They were interested that I contest the election and when you join a party you go with the decision the party makes and stand by it and give it your best."



According to Urmila, the 2019 Lok Sabha Polls is going to be a "very deciding election for the country".

Since her childhood, the actor says she was socially responsible and has been working towards issues related to women, children's education, AIDS awareness among others.

Talking about Rahul Gandh as a Prime Ministerial candidate, Urmila believes he will be a "phenomenal" Prime Minister.

"He is a person, who is constantly trolled and degraded for the last five years but has worked non-stop without stooping to any such levels that the opposition constantly has like trolling and criticising on wrong issues.

"He has gone to grassroot level tried to understand the problem of people. The outcome of all that is the Congress manifesto, which is remarkable achievement."



She further says Gandhi has utilised the time to build the party and take the nation somewhere up without being in power.

"If he comes in power he will be capable of delivering it well," she adds.

There have been celebrities who are dabbling into both, politics and acting, but Urmila intends to focus only on her political career at the moment.

"As of now I don't see any film thing happening. This is something so huge and challenging. It has been extremely challenging because I was prepared coming from a line of film industry to be criticised and not given your due or to be looked down up but to be ridiculed and trolled completely that all is a lot and that is a separate thing.

"It is a huge challenging career so I think it is already taking lot of time. I don't see film bit happening."



Ask her about the issues faced by the industry and Urmila says, their issues are "same as that of normal people."



"The fact that our freedom of speech or freedom of any sort has come under tremendous danger. Here is the issue that everybody is facing be it media or film industry or common man.

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Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday termed as "inadequate" the expression of regret by British Prime Minister Theresa May on Jallianwala Bagh massacre and said that nothing short of a formal apology from Britain will do.

On the eve of the centenary of the gruesome incident, Singh and Punjab Governor V P S Badnore led hundreds of people from all walks of life who took out a candle march to pay homage to the martyrs.

The march started from the historic Townhall and culminated at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial as slogans like 'Inquilab Zindabad' rent the air.

Amarinder Singh said that Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a heart-wrenching moment in India's history and the people of country want an "unequivocal apology from Britain for the atrocity".

Nothing short of a formal apology will do, the chief minister said.

The Punjab Assembly had passed a resolution in this regard, he pointed out, adding that the tragedy was one of the most horrific examples of colonial excesses and a moral blot on the face of Britain.

Theresa May had on Wednesday described the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar as a "shameful scar" on British Indian history as she marked the 100th anniversary of the tragic incident, but she stopped short of a formal apology.

The massacre took place in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on Baisakhi in April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of Colonel Dyer opened fire on a crowd of people holding a pro-independence meeting, leaving hundreds of people dead and scores injured.

"The candles that were lit on Friday evening here have rekindled memories of the sad day and would serve as a reminder of the sacrifice which has inspired patriotism and nationalism among generations of Indians," Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said.

Amarinder, who will pay floral tributes on Saturday at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial along with Congress President Rahul Gandhi, also met the families and descendants of some of the martyrs.

Several eminent personalities, political leaders and members of various social, religious and voluntary organisations also took part in the candle light march.

Prominent among those present on the occasion were AICC Punjab Incharge Asha Kumari, president PPCC Sunil Jakhar, Cabinet Ministers Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, O P Soni, MLAs Raj Kumar Verka and Inderbir Singh Bolaria.

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The Shirur Lok Sabha constituency in Pune district is set for an interesting battle between a three-time MP of the Shiv Sena and an actor-turned-politician who is popular among people for his on-screen exploits.

Shivajirao Adhalrao Patil, a three-term Lok Sabha MP of the Shiv Sena from Shirur, is taking on Amol Kolhe, a Marathi actor-turned-politician fielded by the NCP.

According to political experts, fielding Kolhe in the Sena bastion was a "smart" move by NCP chief Sharad Pawar as the actor has become a household name in Maharashtra through his roles of Chhatrapati Sambhaji in historical biopic serial 'Swarajyarakshak Sambhaji' and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in 'Raja Shiv Chhatrapati.

Shirur is considered a stronghold of Patil, who has won the seat three times since 2004 with huge margins, with the NCP, which has a strong base in the region, failing to halt his victory march.

This time too, Patil is confident of winning the seat with even bigger margin, citing his "strong connect" with the people of Shirur and development work he has done in the industry-dominated constituency.

The constituency houses several MIDCs in Chakan, Khed, Ranjangaon and Sanaswadi areas where big manufacturing companies, including automobile firms, have their plants.

Kolhe, who joined the NCP in February after quitting the Shiv Sena, however, said Patil has "failed" to bring development to Shirur.

"On the development front, he has failed as an MP. Look at the Pune-Nashik Highway.

"Had there been a trauma centre on the highway, it would have been a boon for people. However, there is an attempt to divert the issue from development to caste-based politics," said Kolhe.

He said an international airport which was supposed to come near Khed in the constituency went to Purandar, also in Pune district, which shows Patil's lack of vision.

The other important issue in the constituency is the ban on bullock cart races, which used to be popular among people in rural areas.

The Shiv Sena MP is spearheading a campaign demanding lifting of the ban on races.

The Bombay High Court has banned bullock cart races in Maharashtra on the ground of cruelty.

"Bullock cart races could be used to give a fillip to the rural economy. I have never seen him meeting Maneka Gandhi (Union minister) over the issue.

"He never tried to explain how the races could help the rural economy in a true sense," the NCP candidate said.

Kolhe said the constituency lacks basic infrastructure and maintained youths here want development and jobs.

"Since there are several historical sites in the constituency such as the birthplace of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj (Shivneri), Tulapur where Chhatrapati Sambhaji sacrificed his life for Swarajya and Ashtavinayak (eight Ganeshas), we will plan a 'Bhakti Shakti corridor' to give encouragement to tourism and employment," he added.

Patil, while speaking to PTI, said there was no anti- incumbency against him and asserted he will seek votes in the name of development.

"I am connected to the people of Shirur and working for development of the constituency.

"Of course, he (Kolhe) is an actor and quite popular because of his serials. However, being popular on the silver screen does not mean that popularity will convert into votes," said the Sena MP.

Talking about allegations on the airport issue, he said it was the Airports Authority of India's (AAI) decision.

"The AAI carried out six feasibility surveys at the proposed site near Khed between 2006-2013 and gave a report to the then Congress-NCP government that due to geographical constraints, the airport was not possible (at Khed)," Patil said.

About the bullock cart race issue, Patil said he has raised the matter on different forums and even tabled a private bill in Parliament.

The Shirur Lok Sabha constituency comprises six assembly segments - Junnar, Ambegaon, Khed Alandi, Shirur, Bhosari and Hadapsar.

The constituency, which will vote on April 29, has more than 20 lakh voters.

Camil Parkhe, a senior journalist and political analyst, said it was a "smartt" move by Pawar to field Kolhe, who is very popular among people due to his on-screen roles.

"For the last three terms, NCP had been struggling to field a strong candidate in the constituency. However, this time they got a strong contender in Kolhe," Parkhe said.

However, it would be a daunting task for the NCP to win the seat as Patil has a strong connection with the people in the constituency and enjoys a clean image, he said.

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Accusing SP, BSP and Congress of practising nepotism, Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma Friday said these parties were contesting the elections only to defeat Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Sharma made the comments while addressing public meetings in Fatehpur Sikri, Aonla and Mainpuri, a BJP release said.

Polling will be held in Fatehpur Sikri in the second phase of Lok Sabha elections on April 18 and it will held in Aonla and Mainpuri in the third phase on April 23.

"SP, BSP and Congress are parties that practise nepotism. While Akhilesh had sidelined his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati has brought her nephew into the party," the release quoted Sharma as saying.

"Contrary to this, no one in BJP knows who will be the next party president," Sharma said.

"On one hand, there is Modi, whose family is not taking any benefits and on the other there are parties that are in to promote their families only," he added.

The deputy chief minister alleged that the opposition parties did not have an agenda.

"These parties are contesting only to defeat Modiji in these elections," Sharma said.

He also hit out at Congress for attacking the government over alleged irregularities in the Rafale fighter jet deal with France.

A person whose "entire family is out on bail" is making absurd allegations, he said, alluding to Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Sharma claimed that the SP-BSP alliance was focused only on a particular section of society, but BJP cared for all.

"While BSP leader appeals to a particular section to vote only for the alliance, our prime minister talks of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas'. This is the basic difference between them and BJP, which cares for everyone irrespective of their caste or religion," he said.

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Over 2,200 Sikh pilgrims from India arrived here on Friday to celebrate Baisakhi festival at Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Rawalpindi district.

The pilgrims, who arrived at Wagah railway station by two special trains, were received by Secretary of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) Tariq Khan and Pakistan Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Sardar Tara Singh.

The ETPB looks after the holy places of the minority community in the country.

Gurdwara Panja Sahib has a handprint of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, on a boulder of the shrine.

"A total 2,206 Sikh pilgrims have arrived here from India on two special trains. After immigration they left for Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hasan Abdal(in Rawalpindi)," ETPB spokesman Amir Hashmi told PTI.

Baisakhi is celebrated to mark the beginning of a new harvest season. Under the framework of the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974. Every year, a large number of Sikh pilgrims from India visit Pakistan to observe various religious festivals and occasions.

He said special security arrangements have been made for them and elite force and rangers are deployed along with them for their security.

Hasmi said the pilgrims will also visit other gurdwaras in Punjab province, including Gurdawa Janamasthan Nankana Sahib, during their 10-day stay here.

They will leave for India on April 21, he added.

Talking to reporters, leader of the Indian delegation Sardar Varmindar Singh Khalsa expressed the hope that the government will issue visas to a large number of Indian Sikh pilgrims on the occasion of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

"We are anxiously awaiting that occasion and hope the government will issue maximum number of visas to the pilgrims," he said, stressing that people-to-people contact between the two countries would help in improving ties between the neighbours.

India and Pakistan have announced opening the Kartarpur Corridor on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he hoped Sudan would return to a "normal democratic process" after an uprising led to the army toppling President Omar al-Bashir.

"I hope that Sudan overcomes this affair with fraternity and ease, and I believe the country should work towards a normal democratic process," the Turkish leader said during a press conference in Ankara.

"But let me say this, the most important desire is for Sudan to get past this period with national reconciliation and peacefully, because these countries have suffered a lot from these kind of coups," AFP cited Erdogan as saying.

The Sudanese Defence Minister announced yesterday that Bashir had been removed from power and detained by the army following months of protests in the northeast African country which began in December over higher bread prices.
More than 5 per cent stake of cash-strapped Jet Airways has been pledged with SBICap Trustee Company, according to a regulatory filing.

Lenders have taken control of the full service carrier, which has a debt burden of more than Rs 8,000 crore.

As per the filing made on Friday, 5.19 per cent stake or 58,95,704 shares of the airline were pledged with SBICap Trustee Company on April 11.

The disclosure by SBICap Trustee was submitted by Jet Airways to the BSE.

Specific details about the pledging of shares could not be immediately ascertained.

Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal has pledged 26 per cent stake in the ailing airline as security for loans from Punjab National Bank, a regulatory filing said on Thursday.

Last month, Goyal and his wife Anita Goyal quit the board of the cash-strapped carrier as part of a debt resolution plan.

Shares of Jet Airways closed flat at Rs 260.45 on the BSE.

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Telangana recorded 62.69 per cent in the April 11 polling across 17 Lok Sabha constituencies, where former Union minister Renuka Chowdhury and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi are among prominent candidates in the fray.

Khammam recorded the highest percentage at 75.28, while Hyderabad, from where Owaisi is seeking re-election,registered 44.75 per cent, an official release said here Friday.

Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency, where 185 candidates, including more than 170 farmers are in the fray, registered 68.33 per cent polling.

The farmers are seeking to highlight their demand for remunerative price to turmeric and red jowar and setting up of a Turmeric Board based in Nizamabad.

In the 2014 elections to Lok Sabha and assembly held in undivided Andhra Pradesh, the state recorded 70.75 per cent voter turnout.

Telangana Rashtra Samiti President and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's daughter K Kavitha, former Union Minister Renuka Chowdary, State Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy Congress Working President Revanth Reddy were among the key candidates in the fray.

BJP contestant from Secunderabad Kishan Reddy submitted a memorandum to election officials demanding they look into the nearly seven per cent rise in polling percentage recorded between 5 PM yesterday till close of polling.

The final figure for Secunderabad was 46.26 per cent compared to 39.20 per cent till 5.00 PM yesterday.

A total of 443 candidates were in the fray in the state which has over 2.97 crore eligible voters.

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Pakistani troops Friday lobbed mortars and opened fire along the (LoC) in and Kashmir's district, drawing retaliation from the

"At about 0830 hours, initiated unprovoked by shelling with mortars and firing with small arms along the LoC in Swajian sector of Poonch," PRO defence said.

The is effectively retaliating, he said.

Pakistani troops last Friday resorted to firing and shelling along the LoC in forward area in Digwar sector, in which two people suffered injuries.

On Tuesday last, the destroyed seven Pakistani military posts across the in retaliation to the continued ceasefire violations by them.

With using heavy weaponry and 120 mm mortar bombs targeting civilian areas along the LoC in Poonch, people have been advised to stay indoors, officials said.
Pakistan has made a reasonable improvement to curb terror financing and money laundering and it is in a better position to present its case in front of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a senior minister claimed as he ruled out the possibility of the country being blacklisted by the terror financing watchdog.

In June last year, the Paris-based FATF had placed Pakistan on the "grey list" of countries whose domestic laws are considered weak to tackle money-laundering and terror financing.

The FATF has told Pakistan to reassess the operation of terrorist groups in the country, already under intense international pressure to rein in terror groups like the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) after the Pulwama terror attack.

Minister of State for Interior Shehryar Khan Afridi said Thursday said that the ongoing crackdown against outlawed organisations had not been initiated under any external pressure.

He said the government was committed to transforming Pakistan so that nobody could point a finger at it.

The government has taken over all religious seminaries, ambulances, dispensaries, hospitals and other assets linked to the proscribed organisations. The government has also released funds to run these assets, he added.

Referring to a report to be submitted by Pakistan to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) next week, he ruled out the possibility of Pakistan's placement on FATF's black list.

The minister said in its last report submitted to the FATF, the federal government had pleaded its case in such a professional manner that all member states except India had lauded Pakistan's efforts, noting a reasonable improvement.

Afridi said in the past, whenever the FATF delegation arrived in the country, Pakistan's case was weak because all state institutions were sending different vibes. However, this is not the case now, he added.

The minister said the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and other agencies had taken exemplary measures to curb human trafficking and money laundering.

"We are erecting fences along borders with our neighbouring countries. Our message to the world is that Pakistan won't allow its soil to be used against any country. Both prime minister and army chief are monitoring these operations," he said.

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Goa Deputy Chief Minister Vijai Sardesai has said late Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar's son Utpal is the right person to carry forward his fathers legacy in the Panaji assembly constituency.

The Panaji assembly constituency was represented by Manohar Parrikar for long and a bypoll is being held on the seat following his death last month.

Utpal Parrikar is being rumoured to be the BJP's candidate from Panaji, where by-election is slated on May 19.

However, Utpal Parrikar is yet to publicly speak about contesting from the constituency won by his father multiple times since 1994.

Sardesai, whose Goa Forward Party (GFP) is a partner in the BJP-led ruling coalition, maintained it is up to Utpal Parrikar to decide if he wants to contest the bypoll.

"I am of the opinion that Parrikar's legacy has to be kept alive but by whom is the question," Saresai told reporters Thursday when asked whether he supports Utpal Parrikar's candidature for the Panaji bypoll.

"First is whether Utpal is interested... if he is interested then certainly he becomes the rightful heir to his father's legacy," the deputy chief minister added.

However, Sardesai said the final decision on candidature has to be taken by Parrikars family and the BJP.

On Thursday, Utpal Parrikar told PTI he has been asked by the BJP to campaign for its candidate in the North Goa Parliamentary constituency.

The BJP has fielded its sitting MP Shirpad Naik from North Goa, the constituency under which the Panaji assembly seat falls.

"Basically, the party has said I should be campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in support of party candidate Shripad Naik.

"As of now, I will be going around the Panaji assembly constituency to campaign for the BJP Lok Sabha candidate," he said.

Utpal Parrikar refused to comment when asked if he would be interested in contesting the Panaji by-election. The elder son of Manohar Parrikar stayed away from when his father was alive.

On March 30, Utpal Parrikar, along with his younger brother Abhijaat, had issued a statement saying they would take ahead the legacy of their father.

Meanwhile, the Congress Friday said the process to shortlist probables candidates for the Panaji by-election will begin in the next couple of days.

"There are several credible leaders in the party who can contest from the Panaji assembly seat and win. The partys Election Committee will consider all such names," Goa Congress chief spokesman Sunil Kawathankar told PTI.

The process to shortlist probable candidates for the Panaji by-election will begin in the next couple of days, he said.

Polling for the two Lok Sabha seats and three Assembly bypolls in Goa will be held on April 23.

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Ahead of the April 23 Lok Sabha polls in Gujarat, some prominent Patidar community leaders led by C K Patel held a meeting with BJP president Amit Shah, Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, deputy CM Nitin Patel and other government functionaries on Thursday.

Shah, who is contesting the Lok Sabha election from Gandhinagar seat, was in the city on Thursday to attend a social function. He left early Friday morning.

C K Patel, who is associated with Vishva Umiya Dham, addressing a press conference Friday, said the meeting was aimed at drawing the government and party's attention towards some unresolved issues concerning the community.

Some of the key issues discussed during the meeting were withdrawal of cases against quota agitators, jobs for the family members of those Patidars who were killed in the 2015 stir, and proper implementation of schemes meant for unreserved classes, he said.

"The meeting has nothing to do with the Lok Sabha polls. Nothing political was discussed. Patidar leaders made a representation on various issues concerning the community. The government's response during the meeting was positive," Patel told reporters.

Notably, Patel had played a key role in inviting Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lay the foundation stone of Rs 1,000 crore Umiya Dham complex near the city last month.

When asked if the meeting was aimed at devising a strategy to counter quota spearhead and Congress leader Hardik Patel, he claimed nothing related to Hardik was discussed.

"The Patidar community will always remain with the BJP. There is no doubt about it. I am appealing to the youth not to get misguided, as the government's approach towards the community is also positive," he added.

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US Vice President Mike Pence on Friday defended what some say is his boss Donald Trump's puzzling position over the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Repeated past praise for WikiLeaks from Trump was not "an endorsement," Pence told CNN.

Republicans generally celebrated the capture of Assange, who had been taking shelter at Ecuador's London embassy for nearly seven years until British police took him into custody Thursday.

But Trump's first reaction was dismissive, telling reporters "I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It's not my thing."



"I know nothing really about him," he said of Assange.

This raised eyebrows because during his 2016 presidential campaign Trump repeatedly lauded and encouraged the hacking and information-dumping platform, which six years earlier had caused a massive scandal by publishing thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents.

"I love WikiLeaks," he said on one occasion, as the platform leaked stolen emails that proved damaging to his opponent Hillary Clinton's campaign -- even though WikiLeaks is alleged to have been working in close coordination with Russian intelligence.

Pence told CNN that Trump simply backed the exposure of information during the election, not the WikiLeaks organization itself.

"I think the president always, as you and the media do, always welcomes information," Pence said.

"But that was in no way an endorsement of an organization that we now understand was involved in disseminating classified information by the United States of America," he said.

Other Republicans appear less satisfied with Trump's position on the drama over Assange, who faces extradition to the United States.

"You need to talk to the president about his comments," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr said.

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The Delhi High Court Friday sought responses of the Centre and the AAP government's tourism promotion body, DTTDC, on a plea seeking to stop the e-auction of stalls at Dilli Haat here.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice A J Bhambhani issued notices to the Ministry of Textiles and the Delhi Tourism and Transportation Development Corporation (DTTDC), seeking their stand by August 6 on the plea by an association representing crafts people from across India.

The association, Dastakari Haat Samiti, has contended in its plea that while the ministry was responsible for building and allocation of stalls at Dilli Haat, the DTTDC was to collect all the income generated there and to maintain it.

However, the DTTDC has issued the Dilli Haat Operation and Management Rules 2006, under which it has given to itself wide discretionary powers to allot stalls, the petitioner association has claimed.

The petition has also claimed that the DTTDC was also setting up temporary stalls in violation of the circular which governs the functioning of Dilli Haat, an open air food plaza cum crafts market.

The association has alleged that the corporation has been in the past "indiscriminately" allocating stalls without consulting the ministry.

It also said that now the DTTDC has started e-auction of the stalls to persons who deal in handmade gifts, household items, furniture, khadi and pre-cooked food which is contrary to the circular regarding allotment of stalls.

The petition has claimed that according to the circular governing functioning of the market, stalls were to be allocated for 15 days to "genuine craftsmen" to sell products made by them.

Apart from seeking that the circular's mandate be followed, the association wants an inquiry into irregularities alleged by it, quashing of the rules issued by the DTTDC, prohibition on e-auction of stalls and stopping construction of additional stalls.

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Benny Gantz, head of the centrist Blue and White party who had challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, called to congratulate him Friday after Israel's final election results showed the prime minister poised to win a fifth term.

Netanyahu appeared all but certain to form the next government, as the final tally showed his Likud party capturing 36 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, edging past Blue and White, which got 35 seats.

"With all votes now counted and the final results in, I would like to congratulate you on your achievement in the elections," Gantz told Netanyahu. "We will continue serving the country's citizens."



Nationalist and Jewish ultra-Orthodox parties, which Netanyahu calls his "natural allies," commanded a parliamentary majority of 65-55, giving the prime minister a further advantage in forming a coalition.

While ballots were still being counted, the Blue and White leaders officially conceded defeat on Wednesday, and vowed to fight the prime minister from the opposition.

Now, attention shifts to President Reuven Rivlin, who announced he would receive party representatives at his residence on Monday to hear their recommendations for who should be the next prime minister.

After consulting with all elected factions, in order of largest to smallest, about their choices, Rivlin picks the candidate he believes has the best chance of assembling a parliamentary majority. In one of the president's only non-ceremonial roles, he asks that leader to form a government within 42 days.

Rivlin's office said it would take the "pioneering and historic" step of broadcasting the president's discussions with party leaders live "in the name of transparency.

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Kerala police Friday opposed a plea seeking a CBI probe into the killing of two Youth Congress workers at Periya in Kasargod district.

The petition was filed early this month by the parents of the two Youth Congress workers, Kripesh and Sarath Lal, who were killed allegedly by CPI(M) activists on February 17.

The Kerala High Court had on April 2 directed the Crime Branch to submit within 10 days the progress of the probe into the case.

In a statement filed before the high court, the state police claimed that the investigation was going in the right track, "truthfully conducted without bias or malafide and supervised by a senior officer".

"Since the Special Investigation Team is conducting the investigation effectively and the main accused have been arrested, there is no necessity to hand over the investigation to the CBI or any other agency," the statement said.

Police also claimed that there was no evidence of the involvement of any higher level CPI(M) leaders in the killings, as alleged by the petitioners.

The parents had submitted in their petition that the ongoing probe was only an eyewash, that too controlled by top leaders of the CPI(M) "whose incriminatory conspiratorial role was very much evident".

Hence, police had not acted against those involved in the larger conspiracy behind the twin murders, they said.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi had termed the "brutal murder" of two Youth Congress workers in Kerala as "shocking" and said the party would not rest until the murderers are brought to justice.

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The Israel Azerbaijan International Association (AzIz), which is engaged in popularization of Azerbaijani history and culture, organised the Nasimi-650 festival, which will take place in a number of Israeli cities in May.

The main event of the festival will be a poetic competition. All persons interested can participate in it, regardless of the country of birth, the language and the poem's theme. More details can be found on the AzIz website.

In the first round, the best poets will be chosen by open voting among readers, and in the final round - by an international jury headed by director of the Maksud Ibragimbekov Center Anna Ibragimbekova. The winners will receive valuable prizes: a trip to Baku and tablets.

The last book by famous Azerbaijani writer Magsud Ibragimbekov will be presented at the festival by his wife Anna Ibragimbekova.

In addition, a meeting will be held with the authors of the Immolatio play - Czech poet Leyla Jafarova Begim and Israeli filmmaker Yefim Abramov. It is dedicated to two great protestants - Azerbaijani Imadaddin Nasimi and Czech Jan Hus, sharing the same destiny. The play was staged recently in Baku by a famous director, Peoples Artist of Azerbaijan Vagif Asadov, and was a great success.

The '7+7 Wonders of Azerbaijan' photo exhibition will be also held withing the festival.

This year marks the 650th anniversary of the great Azerbaijani poet Imadaddin Nasimi, who wrote poems in Persian, Arabic and Azerbaijani languages.
There has to be some oversight by police over places such as private hostels and paying guest accommodations with large number of people, especially women or girls, to ensure their security, the Delhi High Court said Friday.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice A J Bhambhani said Delhi Police has a duty to keep track of their areas and what was happening in such establishments to ensure that women or girls are not kept confined as was allegedly done at an ashram in Rohini here.

The court asked police what steps it had taken when it came to know that several girls and women were living at the Rohini ashram which was running out of a single building.

"Delhi Police has a duty to know what all activities were going on in their area. There should be some oversight when so many girls were living in one building," the court said.

It observed that such situations may exist in other places in the national capital and said that it will pass orders on what the police ought to do in such cases.

The lawyer representing the ashram said it was not running a hostel or a paying guest (PG) accommodation and was only providing spiritual education to the inhabitants of its premises.

The court, in response, said: "It (ashram) may not be a hostel or PG, but you are housing girls there, so their security and safety has to be looked into. You are concerned only about your institute, but we are concerned about larger public issues."



The court was hearing a matter relating to alleged confinement of girls and women at the Adhyatmik Vidyalaya, run by its founder Virender Dev Dixit in Rohini area of Northwest Delhi.

Dixit has been absconding since the matter reached the high court and CBI has offered a reward of Rs 5 lakh for information leading to his arrest.

The issue came to the court's attention after a PIL was moved by an NGO alleging that girls and women were being illegally confined at the "spiritual university" in Rohini.

Subsequently, the court had constituted a panel of advocates Ajay Verma and Nandita Rao and Delhi Commission for Women chairperson Swati Maliwal to inspect the ashram.

On inspection of the ashram, the panel found that girls and women were being allegedly kept in "animal-like" conditions behind metal doors in a "fortress" like building which was surrounded by barbed wire.

The court had, thereafter, ordered the CBI to probe the matter by setting up a special investigation team (SIT) to take charge of all records and documents pertaining to the case.

At the first hearing of the matter, the court had said the situation at the Rohini ashram was "similar" to the one run in Sirsa, Haryana, without making any direct reference to Gurmeet Ram Rahim or the Dera Sacha Sauda sect led by him.

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The Haryana Police Friday used batons and tear gas to disperse a group of students in Karnal, who allegedly indulged in stone-pelting to protest the death of a student after coming under the wheels of a state-run bus.

Police said the students were protesting the death of a 20-year-old student of an Industrial Training Institute, who came under the wheels of a bus at ITI Chowk in Karnal on Thursday when he was trying to board it.

Students charged that state transport bus drivers do not stop buses at designated stops forcing them to chase buses.

They claimed the student was hit by the bus but the driver did not immediately bring the vehicle to a halt as a result of which the student was crushed to death.

The protesting students pelted stones at the police on Friday morning. leaving few policemen injured, police said.

Police used batons and tear gas to quell the protests.

Karnal's Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh Bhoria, who was present at the spot, said the situation was now under control.

On Thursday evening, students of the ITI had created ruckus and vandalised the bus after the incident. They had also blocked the national highway for sometime.

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With polling in the sugarcane belt of western Uttar Pradesh over, farmers hope the next government would ensure that sugar mills clear their pending dues which have run into thousands of crores.

Non-payment of dues to sugarcane farmers dominated the electoral discourse in this Lok Sabha constituency in the run up to the April 11 polls.

Bijnor, one of the five assembly segments under this constituency, has a total of 15,62,065 voters.

"It was an important election issue for us. We honestly don't have much hope from any party but we voted in hope of a better tomorrow, for a change," said Pankaj, a sugarcane farmer in Jamalpur here.

Rajendra Singh, national convener of Azad Kisan Union, said pending arrears is a big issue for farmers.

Farmers have cast their votes hoping for a government that would not make false promises and have concrete plans for them, he said.

Uttar Pradesh is the largest producer of sugarcane in India, accounting for 45 per cent of the country's output in 2018-19, according to data on the website of the Indian Sugar Mills Association.

Sugar mills owe Rs 10,000 crore to farmers in western Uttar Pradesh alone and as much as Rs 250 crore is pending from the previous season, official data shows.

The farmers in the region say they have been complaining about non-payment of dues for months now, but to no avail.

"I was paid last in December 2017. How can we survive like this?" another farmer from Jamalpur, Hari Singh, asks.

He claimed that his dues worth Rs 2.5 lakh were pending.

Mill owners claim that they are unable to pay the farmers as excess production has led to a fall in sugar prices.

However, farmers reject the argument.

They claim the sugar mills don't pay up as the only law which could keep them in check was repealed by the government.

The Sugar Undertaking (Taking Over The Management) Act, 1978, enacted after the price of sugar was deregulated, was repealed in 2015.

The Act provided for temporary takeover of the management of sugar mills in case of prolonged non-payment of dues to protect the interests of farmers and consumers and to rescue ailing undertakings.

"After the Act was repealed, the sugar mills became fearless and they purposely stop payment of our dues," said Tribhuvan Singh, a farmer in Gopalpur village.

Reasons cited by the government for repealing the Act included it's non-usage in three decades and states having their own laws for the sector.

"There was at least a fear among them (sugar mills) that they can be held accountable under this Act," said Tribhuvan, adding that his dues worth Rs 1.5 lakh are pending.

Farmers claimed that the government is pushing them to cultivate other crops.

"The government is now pushing us to grow other crops but they don't understand that each crop requires a favourable to grow," said Farooq, a sugarcane farmer in Agari village here.

He said he had tried to grow poplar (used for making plywood) but the returns were not as lucrative.

"Poplar takes eight to ten years to grow. We get Rs 310 per quintal for sugarcane and just Rs 80-100 per quintal for poplar," he said.

Sitting Bijnor MP and BJP candidate Bhatendra Singh, Congress's Naseemuddin Siddiqui and grand alliance's Maluk Nagar were among the prominent candidates in the fray this year.

Results for the elections will be announced on May 23.

The BJP, along with its ally Apna Dal, had swept Uttar Pradesh in 2014 Lok Sabha polls. They won 73 out of 80 seats in the state.

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Amid demands for an elected students union, Jamia Millia Islamia's first woman vice-chancellor Najma Akhtar Friday said there is a need to consider the pros and cons behind the absence of such a body.

The varsity's students have been repeatedly demanding elections for a students' union ever since they were "banned" in the university in 2006 after the then union allegedly "started interfering with the administrative matters of the institution".

"Student representation is very necessary but whether it is necessary politically has to be seen.

"Something (the absence of a students' union) which has been there for 12 years... its advantages and disadvantages have to be looked into," she said, after assuming charge.

The last time the university went to polls to elect a new students' body was in December 2005.

The university had dissolved the elected body within four months of the taking over charge in March 2006.

Challenging the university directive, three students had moved the Delhi High Court in 2011 and the matter is still pending.

Akhtar assumed charge of the varsity on Friday, a day after the HRD Ministry announced her appointment following a green signal from the Election Commission as the Model Code of Conduct is in place.

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Congress President Rahul Gandhi Friday mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" slogan, saying the country's market was now flooded with Chinese products.

Addressing a poll rally here, he referred to unemployed youth of Tamil Nadu, saying Modi had hurt them in the last five years, giving "huge amounts of money from the banks to the richest people but not to them."



"He gave you an empty slogan called Make in India but wherever we look we see Made in China products," he said.

Be it phone, shoes or shirt "you see made in China," he added.

"Now we want real made in India and real made in Tamil Nadu," Gandhi said.

Under Modi, "Make in India" if a young Tamil entrepreneur wanted to start a business he had to knock on the doors of different government offices where "he had to pay bribes," the Congress chief alleged.

"By the time he got his permissions the business is already failed," he said.

Hence, the Congress came up with a new idea in its manifesto for entrepreneurs, he said adding "when you want to start a new business you will not have to take permission from any government department for three years."



They could take the permission once the business was established and till such time the focus could be on making the business work and consolidating it, Gandhi said.

"Once your business is established take permission."



Terming the GST as Gabbar Singh Tax again, he said it comprised five different taxes and a tax rate of 28 per cent wherein "even weavers had to pay tax if they had to buy thread or material."



The moment his party was voted to power it will be removed and we will give you a "real GST, (envisaging) one tax, minimum tax and a simple tax."



Alleging that Modi "takes thousands and thousands of crores and gives it to people like Anil Ambani and Adani," the Congress chief accused the Prime Minister of giving away Rs 3,50,000 crore to 15 of the richest persons in the country.

"But when Tamil farmers are protesting in Jantar Mantar, he has not got even one word to say. They have to take off their clothes and still he does not pay any attention. He does not have decency to call them and ask them why they were upset."



However, "Modi hugged every single corrupt businessman, and you can see pictures of him hugging Anil Ambani," Gandhi said.

The Prime Minister could also be seen sitting with Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya, but not with any poor person, he alleged.

"There is not a single picture of the Prime Minister with a poor farmer, or owner of a small business," the Congress chief charged.

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Congress President Rahul Gandhi Friday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging he ran his government for 15 of his friends and he wondered why no big-ticket defaulters of bank loans like Vijay Mallya were not in jail.

The Congress chief said the ones like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, after taking bank loans, failed to return it and ran away from the country.

"Not even a single one is in jail," he added.

Gandhi said when his party is voted to power, no farmer "is going to be put in jail for not paying back his bank loan, it is not fair that the richest people do not go to jail but farmers go to jail for the same offence."



He alleged the Prime Minister gave Rs 35,0000 crore to Nirav Modi, Rs 35,000 crore to Mehul Choksi and Rs 10,000 crore to Vijay Mallya.

During the last five years, Modi ran a government for 15 people and you know the names, he said.

"These are Anil Ambani, Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and they are Modi's friends," he said addressing a poll rally here.

Focusing on his party's Minimum Income Support Scheme 'Nyay,' he said it would give purchasing power to the people and that in turn would propel factories in Tamil Nadu and the overall economy.

Textile and silk hubs of Tamil Nadu, Tirupur and Kancheepuram "will become live," again and provide employment opportunities to youngsters, he said.

Gandhi said his party and its allies will never allow Tamil Nadu people to be ruled by Nagpur (the RSS) and expressed confidence that DMK chief M K Stalin will soon be the Chief Minister of the State.

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Former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa's brother Gotabhaya Rajapaksa on Friday returned to the island nation and said he has taken necessary steps to denounce his US citizenship to be able to contest the presidential polls later this year.

Former Defence Secretary Gotabhaya is being promoted as the main candidate from the Rajapaksa camp to face the next presidential election later this year as Rajapaksa cannot constitutionally run for a third term.

Gotabhaya, who is a dual-citizen of Sri Lanka and the US, returned to the country after a private visit to the US and said that during his stay in America he has taken the necessary steps to denounce the US citizenship.

I have taken all necessary steps Rajapaksa said, addressing reporters upon his return from the US.

Gotabhaya, who under his brother's decade-old rule between 2005 and 2015 spearheaded the military onslaught against the LTTE, will have to renounce his dual citizenship to be able to contest the presidential election to be held between mid November and mid December this year.

While in the US, the presidential hopeful of the opposition party Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna Rajapaksa have been served notices charging him in two cases on torture and murder during war time.

One of the cases was filed by the daughter of the editor of the Sunday Leader, Lasantha Wickrematunga while the other lawsuit was filed by a rights group on the behalf of a Tamil torture survivor, Roy Samathnam, who is a Canadian national.

Gotabhaya said both cases were politically motivated to deter him, from becoming the candidate.

Samathnam had claimed that in September 2007 he was held by the police's Terrorism Investigation Division who was reporting directly to Gotabhaya in his role as the top bureaucrat in the defence ministry.

Samathnam has claimed he was psychologically and physically tortured by the Sri Lankan police and was forced to sign a false confession about his links to the LTTE who ran a bloody armed conflict in the north and east of Sri Lanka to carve out a separate Tamil homeland.

The Sri Lankan editor's murder in 2009 under Rajapaksa presidency was cited as a main human rights violation during which time Sri Lanka was termed as one of the worst places for journalism.

The editor's daughter, Ahimsa Wickrematunga, is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Gotabhaya for allegedly instigating and authorising the murder of her father.

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As many as 115 candidates will contest in 13 Lok Sabha seats in Rajasthan, where polling will be held in the fourth phase on April 29.

The remaining 12 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state will go to the polls on May 6 in the fifth phase.

With 38 candidates opting out of the contest on Friday, the last date of withdrawing candidature, and nomination papers of 19 rejected following scrutiny, of the 172 who filed their papers 115 are left in the race, Chief Electoral Officer Anand Kumar said.

While Kota and Jalore each have maximum 15 candidates, Chittorgarh, Rajsamand and Jodhpur have 10 candidates each.

These 13 constituencies have 2.57 crore voters for whom 28,182 polling stations have been set up, Kumar said.

Meanwhile, 13 candidates Friday filed their nominations papers for the fifth phase polling on May 6.

Congress candidates Bharatram Meghwal (Sriganganagar), Subhash Maharia (Sikar) and BJP candidate Manoj Rajoria (Karauli-Dholpur) are among those who filed their nomination on Friday.

Polling will be held in Sriganganagar, Bikaner, Churu, Jhunjhuju, Sikar, Jaipur rural, Jaipur, Alwar, Bharatpur, Karauli-Dholpur, Dausa and Nagaur on May 6.

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The Supreme Court's decision to hear the review pleas against its ruling on the Rafale deal would put to rest the controversy, and the Centre has no problem with it as its "conscience is clear," senior BJP leader and Union Minister Piyush Goyal said Friday.

Addressing a press conference here, Goyal, who is BJP's Tamil Nadu in-charge said: ".. We are happy that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the matter so that once and for all the controversy can be settled and put to rest."



In a setback to the Centre, the Supreme Court had Wednesday allowed leaked documents to be relied upon by petitioners seeking review of its Rafale judgement and dismissed the government's preliminary objections claiming "privilege" over them.

Goyal said the government had taken the stand that the documents cited by the review petitioners should not be considered because they were leaked, but had no problem with the court's decision.

"... our conscience is clear, our work is honest. We have absolutely no problem. Any documents can be relied upon as per the order of the Supreme Court and we welcome the fact that Supreme Court is going to hear it."



To a query on the construction of Ram temple, he said the BJP was committed to building it.

"It must be constructed at the birthplace of Lord Ram just like we have the pride for all our tall leaders of Tamil Nadu. I believe there must be a pride in the birthplace of Lord Ram also. We are committed to it," he said.

Underlining the need to construct the temple in a constitutional manner, he alleged the Congress was putting obstacles in resolving the issue.

"The people of India are noting this. Congress leaders go to temples as political tourists before the election, whereas we are committed to a Ram Temple in Ayodhya," he added.

On Superstar Rajinikanth hailing BJP's proposal to interlink rivers, Goyal said, "I would like to thank him for having welcomed the initiative of interlinking of rivers as announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi".

"It has been long pending demand that Rajinikanth ji has been raising for the welfare of farmers and people of Tamil Nadu. I welcome his comments," he said.

Goyal said the NDA and the BJP were committed to setting up an authority that would speedily implement the inter-linking of rivers which was mooted by former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee when he was in power.

Targetting the Congress over the issue, he said, for 10 years between 2004 and 2014, the national party and DMK were in power but did nothing.

The Railway Minister slammed Congress President Rahul Gandhi over his dig at the 'Make in India' programme after Vande Bharat train, the fastest in the country, had experienced trouble during its initial run in February last.

"Now, we are planning to make more than 100 train sets which would provide jobs to lakhs of people," he said.

On the allegations made by opposition parties that the Income Tax and Election Commission target them during the run-up to polls, he said the Congress and DMK were "corrupt" parties and the whole world knew "what kind of corruption is stumbling out of their closet."



"Government is not targeting anybody. Investigation agencies or the EC are both independent," he said.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been honoured with Russia's highest state decoration, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, for his role in promoting close ties between the two countries.

The award comes days after the United Arab Emirates announced conferring Modi with 'The Order of Zayed'.

The Russian government said Modi is given the highest state decoration of Russia for "exceptional services" in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India and friendly relations between the Russian and Indian peoples.

A Russian official said the 'Order of St Andrew the Apostle' is awarded to prominent statesmen, public figures and those working in the fields of science, culture and arts in recognition of their exceptional services in promoting prosperity and glory of Russia.

The order can also be awarded to foreign heads of state for outstanding services.

The Order of St Andrew the Apostle is the highest order of the Russian Federation.

The foreign awardees of the award included President of China Xi Jinping, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Geydar Aliev.

The award ceremony is usually held at the St Andrew Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

The Order was established in 1698 by Tsar Peter the Great, in honour of Saint Andrew, the first apostle of Jesus and patron saint of Russia, said the official.

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Head of the Russian republic of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov asked the government and Gazprom in his Telegram channel to write off households gas debts.

He said that the gas distribution network of the republic was almost fully destroyed by the 1999-2009 war, when the republic bore incalculable losses and had no possibility to control gas consumption by households.

"Chechnya and its people hope that the government and the company will meet them halfway due to the special circumstances that we are in," Kadyrov said, noting that such a decision would be fair.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Chechnya turned down an earlier court decision to write off households' 9 billion ruble debt for gas.
Congratulating Prime Minister Narendra Modi for being awarded with Russia's highest state decoration, BJP president Amit Shah Friday said it is a matter of pride and joy for all Indians and is a recognition for the countrymen.

Modi has been honoured with Russia's highest state decoration, the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, for his role in promoting deeper cooperation between India and Russia.

"Congratulations to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on being conferred the order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, highest civilian award of the Russian Federation. Every such honour is a recognition for the people of India, who the prime minister represents on the world stage," Shah said.

He said it is a matter of pride and joy for all Indians. "Every award which has been given to Prime Minister Modi in the last five years is of every Indian who aspires for a happy and strong country.

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The Supreme Court on Friday allowed former Trinamool Congress MP Saumitra Khan, who is now a BJP candidate and facing a criminal case, to enter Bishnupur constituency in West Bengal for filing his nomination papers for the Lok Sabha polls.

The top court allowed Khan to approach the Calcutta High Court seeking modification of its earlier order banning his entry into Bishnupur constituency in Bankura district of West Bengal.

Khan is an accused in cases of allegedly taking money from students on the promise of giving them jobs and illegal sand mining.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna said that it is not inclined to entertain the appeal against the high court order of February 18 banning him from entering the jurisdiction of Bankura district till further orders.

Senior advocates P S Patwalia and Neeraj Kishan Kaul, appearing for Khan said that after he joined BJP on January 9, the very next day a false case was lodged against him for illegal sand mining.

"Subsequently other cases were also lodged like I had taken money to give job to someone. One school teacher also lodged a case that I had taken money. Similar thing happened when senior BJP leader Mukul Roy joined the party from TMC. The High Court had then quashed the cases lodged against him," Patwalia said.

The bench said it is not inclined to interfere with the appeal but said that Khan can move an application before the high court seeking modification of the earlier order.

Patwalia said that at least he be allowed to go to his constituency to file nomination papers which will be filed from April 16.

The bench then allowed Khan to enter Bishnupur constituency for one day to file the nomination papers.

The high court had in March extended the ban on Khan, who is contesting the election from Bishnupur parliamentary constituency on a BJP ticket, by six weeks.

The high court had said such a ban was required for a free and fair investigation of cases against Khan considering his political clout in the area.

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The Supreme Court on Friday allowed former Trinamool Congress MP Saumitra Khan, who is now a BJP candidate and facing a criminal case, to enter Bishnupur constituency in West Bengal for filing his nomination papers for Lok Sabha polls.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked Khan to approach the Calcutta High Court for seeking modification of the order banning his entry into Bankura district in which his constituency falls.

Khan is an accused in cases of allegedly taking money from students on the promise of giving them jobs.

The high court had in March extended the ban on Khan, who is contesting the election from Bishnupur parliamentary constituency on a BJP ticket, by six weeks.

The high court had said such a ban was required for a free and fair investigation of cases against Khan considering his political clout in the area.

After Khan joined the BJP, he was also named as accused in illegal sand mining case.

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Welcoming the Supreme Court's decision on electoral bonds, CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury Friday said the apex court had "demolished" the stand taken by the BJP-led NDA government on the issue.

The Supreme Court Friday did not stop political funding through electoral bonds but brought several checks on it to bring transparency by directing all political parties to furnish receipts of amounts received and details of identity of donors in a sealed cover to the Election Commission.

In an interim order, the apex court also directed all political parties to provide details of the amount of the bond and bank account of donors by May 30 to the poll panel.

"Supreme Court demolishes stance taken by Modi, Jaitley & BJP - which had pushed this as a Money bill, for opaque, secret Electoral bonds. The court says transparency is the basic principle of electoral funding. People have a right to know which party got how much, and from whom," Yechury tweeted.

The Centre and the Election Commission had taken contrary stands in the Supreme Court on Wednesday over political funding, with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of donors of electoral bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing names of donors for transparency.

"Anonymity pushed by BJP is on the way out. Donors of black money via this route will be scared to fund from here on. Today EC has the data. Tomorrow the public will also have it," Yechury wrote on Twitter.

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The Supreme Court Friday directed former Jharkhand minister Yogendra Sao to surrender before a court in Ranchi by April 15 in cases related to rioting and inciting of violence.

A bench headed by Justice S A Bobde said that Sao will have to surrender by Monday.

Advocate Tapesh Kumar Singh, appearing for Jharkhand, said that Sao can surrender before the concerned trial court in Ranchi.

He said all the case records have been transferred to Ranchi in compliance with the apex court order.

The apex court order came on a plea of Sao seeking clarification of the order on the place of his surrender.

The top court had on April 4, trashed Sao's plea seeking to campaign for the Congress in the current Lok Sabha polls and cancelled his bail, saying he has violated the bail conditions.

It had transferred the trial of 18 cases against Sao and his wife Nirmala Devi to Ranchi from Hazaribagh district in Jharkhand.

Sao became a minister in the Hemant Soren-led UPA government in Jharkhand in 2013. He is an accused in over a dozen cases of rioting and instigation of violence.

Both Sao and Devi were granted bail on December 15, 2017, by the top court and directed to stay in Bhopal as a bail condition.

They were allowed to visit Jharkhand only for court hearings under police protection after intimating the Bhopal superintendent of police.

It was found that Sao left Bhopal on several occasions without any intimation to local authorities despite the court directions and his presence in Jharkhand during the corresponding period was not disputed, the court had earlier said.

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Lifting the veil of anonymity from the government's political funding scheme, the Supreme Court Friday directed parties to furnish by May 30 all the details of funds received through electoral bonds to the Election Commission in a sealed cover.

The top court, which did not stay the Centre's Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018, made clear it would accord in-depth hearing on the pleas of an NGO and CPI (M) as they as also the Centre and the EC have raised "weighty issues" having "tremendous bearing on the sanctity of the electoral process in the country".

"According to us, the just and proper interim direction would be to require all the political parties who have received donations through Electoral Bonds to submit to the Election Commission of India in sealed cover, detailed particulars of the donors as against each bond; the amount of each such bond and the full particulars of the credit received against each bond, namely, the particulars of the bank account to which the amount has been credited and the date of each such credit," it said.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked the parties to furnish "forthwith" the details of electoral bonds received by a political party till date.

"The details of such other bonds that may be received by such a political party up to the date fixed for issuing such bonds as per the Note of the Ministry of Finance dated February 28, that is May 15, will be submitted on or before May, 30. The sealed covers will remain in the custody of the ECI and will abide by such orders as may be passed by the court," it noted in the 19-page interim order.

The bench, also comprising Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, directed the Finance Ministry to tweak the window period for purchasing the electoral bonds and reduce it from present 55 days to 50 days in 2019.

"The total period...allowable for the month of January (10 days), April (10 days) and 30 days for the election year would be 50 (for purchasing the bonds) whereas the schedule contemplates issuance of bonds for a total period of 55 days that it 45 days plus 10 days of January. A period of 5 days, therefore, have to be deleted from the schedule contained in the Note of the Ministry of Finance of February 28," it said.

The court, which was to decide the plea of NGO 'Association of Democratic Reforms' seeking that the issuance of electoral bonds be stayed or the names of donors be made public, opined that the plea required detailed hearing in view of weighty arguments and the counter.

It also did not consider the plea of the Centre that the purpose behind the scheme was to eliminate the use of black money in elections and the court should not interfere with the policy decision before the elections.

Attorney General K K Venugopal had pleaded that anonymity of donors of electoral bonds is to be maintained for various reasons such as fear of repercussions on a firm or an individual if the other political party or group wins.

The EC, on the other hand, explained its stand and said that it was "exclusively confined to one of transparency in political funding and not on the merits of the scheme".

The court said the scheme has been brought after amending various laws like the Finance Act, the Reserve Bank Of India Act, the Representation of the People Act, the Income Tax Act and the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act and it needed detailed examination.

"The court, therefore, has to ensure that any interim arrangement that may be made would not tilt the balance in favour of either of the parties but that the same ensures adequate safeguards against the competing claims of the parties which are yet to be adjudicated," it said.

The court extensively referred to the objections of EC to the scheme and the changes made in laws.

"In para...of the said affidavit the ECI has stated that the..., had informed the Ministry of Law and Justice that



certain provisions of the Finance Act, 2017 and the corresponding amendments carried out in the Income Tax Act, the Representation of the People Act and the Companies Act, will have serious repercussions/impact on the transparency aspect of political finance/funding of political parties," it said.

The NGO has challenged the validity of the scheme and sought that either the issuance of electoral bonds be stayed or names of donors be made public.

As per scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person, who is a citizen of India or an entity incorporated or established in India.

A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.

Only parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than 1 per cent of votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, will be eligible to receive electoral bonds.

As per the notification, electoral bonds will be encashed by an eligible political party only through a bank account with an authorised bank.

State Bank of India (SBI) in the 6th phase of sale, had been authorised to issue and encash Electoral Bonds through its 29 Authorised Branches from November 1-10, 2018.

The Centre and the EC had taken contrary stands in the court over political funding with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of donors of bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing names of donors for transparency.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court Friday directed all political parties to provide details of donations received in electoral bonds and the identity of the donors to the Election Commission in a sealed cover by May 30, in an attempt to bring transparency around anonymous poll funding.

Refusing to stay for now the contentious electoral bonds scheme, the court gave the direction in an interim order in the midst of the Lok Sabha polls which began on Thursday and concludes on May 19. The political parties were also directed to give details of the bank account of the donors.

The order was given on a petition filed by an NGO--Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR)--challenging the validity of the scheme and sought a stay on the issuance of electoral bonds or that names of the donors be made public to ensure transparency in the poll process.

The order was welcomed by opposition parties as a step towards bringing transparency to political funding.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna also rejected the Centre's contention that the apex court should not interfere with the scheme at this stage and examine whether it has worked or not only after the ongoing general elections.

The top court said it would examine in detail the changes made in laws -- Income Tax, electoral and banking -- to bring them in consonance with the electoral bond scheme and ensure the balance does not tilt in favour of any political party.

It also directed the Finance Ministry to reduce the window of purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days in April-May and said it would fix a date later for final disposal of the petition.

The Congress welcomed the court direction, saying the party has always maintained that transparency in political funding and governance must be adhered to.

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi took a swipe at the BJP and said the judgement would bring out the "nexus" between the saffron party and its 'suited-booted friends'.

CPI(M) General Secretary Sitaram Yechury said the apex court had "demolished" the stand taken by the BJP-led NDA government on the electoral bond issue.

"Supreme Court demolishes stance taken by Modi, Jaitley & BJP - which had pushed this as a Money bill, for opaque, secret Electoral bonds. The court says transparency is the basic principle of electoral funding. People have a right to know which party got how much, and from whom," Yechury tweeted.

"Anonymity pushed by BJP is on the way out. Donors of black money via this route will be scared to fund from here on. Today EC has the data. Tomorrow the public will also have it," he said in another tweet.

Advocate Prashant Bhushan, who appeared for the petitioner NGO, said the court order was an important step towards bringing transparency. He claimed that the BJP was a major beneficiary of the electoral bond scheme.

The BJP said it will wait for the final judgement and noted that the Centre has already placed its stand before the apex court.

"Whatever is the order of the Supreme Court, it has to be complied with and it is always complied with.

"As far as issues raised by the government is concerned, they have been placed before the court for its consideration. And we will await the final judgement," BJP spokesperson and Supreme Court lawyer Nalin Kohli said.

The Centre and the Election Commission have taken contrary stands in the Supreme Court over political funding with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of donors of electoral bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing names of donors for transparency.

The bench on Thursday said if the identity of the purchasers of electoral bonds meant for transparent political funding was not known, then efforts of the government to curtail black money in elections would be "futile".

The Centre, through Attorney General K K Venugopal, had vehemently supported the scheme, saying the purpose behind it is to eliminate the use of black money in elections and asked the court not to interfere with it at this stage and examine whether it has worked or not only after the elections.

He also said that "transparency cannot be the mantra" and asked why must the voter know the source of political funding.

The EC, represented by senior lawyer Rakesh Dwivedi, opposed the Centre's submissions and said secrecy allowed in the electoral bonds scheme "legalises anonymity".

The government had notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018 on January 2, 2018.

As per provisions of the scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person, who is a citizen of India or an entity incorporated or established in India.

A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.

Only political parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than 1 per cent of votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, will be eligible to receive electoral bonds.

As per the notification, electoral bonds will be encashed by an eligible political party only through a bank account with an authorised bank.

State Bank of India (SBI) in the 6th phase of sale, had been authorised to issue and encash Electoral Bonds through its 29 Authorised Branches from November 1-10, 2018.

The Electoral Bonds had validity of 15 days from the date of issue. No payment was to be made to any payee political party if the bond was deposited after expiry of the validity period. The bond deposited by an eligible political party in its account was to be credited the same day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court Friday directed all political parties to furnish receipts of political funding received through electoral bonds and details of identity of donors in a sealed cover to the Election Commission.

In an interim order, the apex court also directed all political parties to provide details of the amount of the bond and bank account of donors by May 30 to the poll panel.

The apex court said it would examine in detail changes made in Income Tax law, electoral law and banking laws to make them in consonance with the electoral bond scheme and ensure balance does not tilt in favour of any political party.

It also directed the Finance Ministry to reduce the window of purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days in April-May and said it would fix a date later for final disposal of the petition filed by an NGO.

The NGO has challenged the validity of the scheme and sought that either the issuance of electoral bonds be stayed or names of donors be made public to ensure transparency in the poll process.

The order was pronounced by a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna.

The government had notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018 on January 2, 2018.

As per provisions of the scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person, who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India.

A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.

Only political parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than one per cent of votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, shall be eligible to receive electoral bonds.

As per the notification, electoral bonds shall be encashed by an eligible political party only through a bank account with an authorised bank.

The Centre and the Election Commission had taken contrary stands in the Supreme Court on Wednesday over political funding with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of donors of electoral bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing names of donors for transparency.

The bench on Thursday had reserved the order, saying if the identity of the purchasers of electoral bonds meant for transparent political funding was not known, then efforts of the government to curtail black money in elections would be "futile".

The Centre, through Attorney General K K Venugopal, had vehemently supported the scheme saying the purpose behind it is to eliminate the use of black money in elections and asked the court not to interfere with it at this stage and examine whether it has worked or not only after the elections.

However, advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR)', had said the scheme has nothing to do with the effort to curb black money and it opens the banking means also to donate by remaining anonymous.

During in an earlier hearing, Bhushan had claimed that the party in power was the major beneficiary of the scheme.

The EC, represented by senior lawyer Rakesh Dwivedi, had opposed Centre's submissions and said secrecy allowed in the electoral bonds scheme "legalises anonymity".

The bench had also observed, "If the identity of purchasers of bonds is not known then there will be greater ramification on the Income Tax law and all your (government's) efforts to curtail black money will be futile".

Venugopal had also said the anonymity of donors of electoral bonds is to be maintained for various reasons such as fear of repercussions on a firm or an individual if the other political party or group wins.

The Attorney General had also said: "Historically, black money is used in elections. This is a reformatory steps. The scheme can be examined after the elections."



In its affidavit, the Centre had said electoral bonds "attempt at bringing greater transparency, ensuring KYC compliance and keeping an audit trail in comparison to the earlier opaque system of cash donations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court Friday issued notice to the West Bengal government on alleged harassment of custom officials at Kolkata airport for checking the luggage a Trinamool Congress leader's wife.

Headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, an apex court bench also termed the alleged incident "very very serious".

"Someone has drawn our attention to something. It is very very serious. We do not know whose claims are bona fide," said the bench, also comprising Justice Sanjiv Khanna.

It did not consider the submission of senior advocate A M Singhvi that no notice was required to be issued on the petition.

On March 29, the Centre had told the apex court that custom officials at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata were "intimidated, harassed and threatened" by the local police for checking the baggage of the wife of a TMC MP Abhishek Bannerjee, Nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Bannerjee.

It had also alleged that "institutional anarchy" and "complete lawlessness" have been prevailing in West Bengal.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta Mehta had told the court that on the intervening night of March 15-16 at around 1.10 AM, two women, who arrived from an international flight, and their luggage were checked by the custom officials.

"They were asked to allow checking of their baggage but they resisted. They were asked to show their passports after which they abused the officials present there," he had said.

Mehta had added that soon after the ladies left the airport, a huge contingent of police personnel entered the premises and tried to arrest the custom officials for checking the baggage of the women.

"This is institutional anarchy and complete lawlessness going on in West Bengal," he had said, adding that custom officials tried to lodge the FIR but no case was registered by the police so far.

A letter was written by Assistant Commissioner of Customs to Inspector in-charge of Airport police station on March 22, seeking registration of an FIR for interfering, obstruction and criminal intimidation by the West Bengal police, he had said.

The custom commissioner has narrated the entire incident and said that one of the ladies whose baggage was checked was wife TMC MP, the nephew of the West Bengal CM, as per the letter.

The Commissioner alleged that police officers who entered the airport in different batches tried to intimidate, harass and threaten the custom officials with arrests.

The commissioner has said that West Bengal police wanted a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) by the custom officials where VIPs were not "checked" and "a safe passage of their VIPs without any interception by customs".

Police personnel, who arrived at the airport, have claimed that they have received a complaint from one of the two women who were checked by custom officials alleging harassment, intimidation and extortion by them, the letter said.

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The Supreme Court refused on Friday to entertain a petition filed by Vedanta group firm Sterlite Copper seeking access to its closed smelter plant in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu to carry out maintenance activities.

The firm had also challenged in the apex court the Madras High Court's order which had declined to give an early hearing to their interim application as well as the main petitions, which relate to the Tamil Nadu State Pollution Control Board (TNPCB's) order to shut down the plant.

"We are not here to control the high court," a bench headed by Justice R F Nariman said after which the firm withdrew its plea.

The plant was ordered to be shut after 13 people, protesting against the alleged pollution caused due to the plant, died in police firing in May last year.

Vendanta has denied the allegations that its plant caused any pollution.

The firm, in its plea in the top court, had said that its "intention was solely to preserve its assets" and for such purpose alone, commence repair and maintenance activities.

It had added that lack of maintenance of assets there has resulted in a loss of over Rs 100 crore to it.

The apex court earlier this year had directed the company to move the Madras High Court against the TNPCB order shutting the plant down.

The firm said the value of the Tuticorin plant was around Rs 3,000 crore and if the high court did not eventually allow it to restart operations, it would need to transport and assemble equipment to another location.

On March 27, the high court had adjourned the matter till April 23.

Sterlite, in its petition filed before the high court, has challenged the TNPCB's May 23, 2018 orders refusing renewal of consent to the plant as well as permanent closure, terming them as wholly illegal, unconstitutional and ultra vires.

The apex court had earlier set aside the order of the National Green Tribunal allowing opening of the copper unit but gave the liberty to the company to approach the high court against the closure order.

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Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange runs counter to the idea of freedom of the media.

Wikileaks is "an independent source of information that is being persecuted," Peskov noted. "Certainly, from our standpoint, it runs totally counter to the idea of freedom of the media and the medias immunity," TASS cited him as saying. We expect that all of "Assanges legitimate rights will be respected," the Kremlin spokesman pointed out.

When commenting on assumptions that Assanges arrest may have negative consequences for Russia because, according to the U.S. media, he disclosed information about U.S. 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clintons correspondence, the Russian presidential spokesman said it was nothing but a conspiracy theory.
The Shiv Sena Friday advised its ally BJP to "speak less" on the Rafale deal, in which the Congress has alleged corruption, cautioning that unwanted statements may increase troubles for the national party.

The Sena also said the ban on NaMo TV could have been avoided had the BJP been satisfied with the coverage being given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign rallies on electronic channels.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led party sought to corner its senior ally over the recent clash between BJP workers in the presence of Maharashtra minister Girish Mahajan at a public rally in Jalgaon, where the party has changed its Lok Sabha candidate.

"The shocking video (of the clash) was seen across the country. The BJP inducted goons in the party and turned them into 'Valmikis'. However here, the experienced Valmikis turned into goons and indulged in violence.

"This is not only a blot on the campaigning of 'mahayuti' (the BJP-Sena alliance), but the time has come for the BJP to clarify its stand," the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

The Sena said the BJP, which calls itself a party with a difference, cannot justify this violence and dismiss the incident as one reflecting diverse opinions.

"At least on the Rafale issue, one needs to shed arrogance and talk with patience. Right from the defence minister to other leaders, people (in the BJP) are speaking whatever they like.

"This may increase troubles for the party and therefore we advise that the lesser spoken the better," the Sena said.

The Marathi daily noted the Supreme Court Wednesday rejected the government's contention that sensitive documents accessed by the media on the Rafale deal can't be treated as evidence and said it will examine the papers while reviewing its December 14 order giving a clean chit to the contract.

The Congress has alleged a massive corruption in the Rs 58,000-crore Rafale deal and its president Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly targeted the prime minister over the issue.

The Sena said along with the ban on release of a biopic on Modi, the Election Commission has also disallowed airing of political content on NaMo TV.

It is the BJP's internal matter if it needs a separate television for the prime minister's publicity, it said.

"Except one or two channels, every channel has become 'NaMo TV'. Modi's speeches are being given prominence and the ban on NaMo TV could have been avoided.

"The BJP has influence over electronic channels and the party is reaping its benefits,," the Sena said.

Citing the its own example, the editorial said the biopic on late Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray was released in January because the party did not want the EC to conclude that the film was made keeping elections in mind.

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Dubbing Union minister Smriti Irani a "serial liar", the Congress on Friday alleged that she has "falsified records" of her educational qualifications and submitted contradictory affidavits to the Election Commission for which she should be disqualified.

In a stinging attack on Irani, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, at a press conference, also sang the title track of the popular soap opera 'Kyuki saas bhi Kabhi bahu thi' by changing the lyrics to "qualification ke roop badalte hain...(qualification keeps changing)".

The sharp attack came a day after the BJP candidate from Amethi Lok Sabha seat submitted to the Election Commission that she did not complete her graduation from Delhi University.

"Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had been rubbishing Opposition's claim that she is not a graduate, yesterday accepted that she enrolled for an undergraduate course in Delhi University but did not complete it," Chaturvedi said.

She should step down and also be disqualified from contesting the polls for misleading the public through her affidavits on educational qualification, Chaturvedi said.

"We have no issue with the fact that Smriti Irani is not a graduate. The issue here is that she has lied repeatedly on oath and to the courts. People of India will see through these lies and give a befitting political reply to a 'serial liar'!" she said.

It is clear that she has not only "falsified records" but has submitted contradictory affidavits to the EC for which she is guilty of offence under Section 125A read with Section 33 of the Representation of Peoples Act, Chaturvedi said.

There was no immediate reaction from the BJP over the issue.

"She is also guilty of hiding information in the Delhi University and misusing her influence and power as a Union Minister. Constitutionally, legally and morally, it would be best if she steps down as the Union minister and by publicly accepting these lies," Chaturvedi said.

She also listed the various affidavits submitted by the BJP leader since 2004 to highlight the "contradiction and falsification of educational qualifications".

In 2004, Irani submitted an affidavit to ECI as Lok Sabha candidate from Chandni Chowk, Delhi, stating that her educational qualification as Bachelor of Arts in 1996 from Delhi University, School of Correspondence, Chaturvedi said.

Irani in 2011 submitted an affidavit to ECI as Rajya Sabha candidate from Gujarat stating her educational qualification as B.Com. Part-I in 1994 from Delhi University, School of Correspondence, she said.

Then in 2014, Irani submitted an affidavit to ECI as Lok Sabha candidate from Amethi, UP, stating that her educational qualification as B.Com. Part-I in 1994 from School of Open Learning, Delhi University.

Chaturvedi said Irani was also quoted at a media event in August 2014 that she has a degree from the prestigious Yale University in the US.

In her affidavit filed on Thursday during her nomination, Irani, who is contesting against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, said she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993.

She has said she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I) - a three-year degree course - from Delhi University's School of Open Learning in 1994.

The party also issued a statement that began with the mock lyrics "qualification ke roop badalte hain...kyunki mantri bhi kabhi graduate thi".

Irani, an actor-turned-politician, had essayed the lead role in 'Kyuki saas bhi Kabhi bahu thi' (Because a mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law too).

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Shares of SpiceJet zoomed 8.5 per cent Friday after the airline announced it will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft, a move that will help in bringing down flight cancellations.

The company's scrip jumped 8.54 per cent to close at Rs 109.90 on the BSE. During the day, it rose sharply by 10.61 per cent to Rs 112.

In terms of traded volume, 99.96 lakh shares were traded on the BSE during the day.

The company's market valuation also rose by Rs 518.9 crore to Rs 6,590.90 crore.

The announcement comes at a time when airfares have been on an upswing across India for the past few weeks due to a sharp decline in the number of flights, primarily caused by grounding of around 90 per cent of cash-strapped Jet Airways' 119-aircraft fleet.

SpiceJet grounded 12 Boeing 737 Max aircraft in March over safety concerns following an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash.

"SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a no-objection certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft," the airline said.

Under dry lease, the lessor provides the airline with the aircraft but without any crew member, while under wet lease, the lessor provides the aircraft along with complete crew.

Meanwhile, InterGlobe Aviation's shares rose by 2.11 per cent to close at Rs 1,432.15 apiece and Jet Airways (India)'s scrip ended flat at Rs 260.45, up 0.02 per cent on the BSE.

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Students at Georgetown University have approved a fund that would benefit the descendants of slaves sold by the elite Jesuit school in the 1800s.

Creation of the reparations fund was approved in a student referendum and the results were announced late Thursday.

The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) said 2,541 students voted in favour of the measure while 1,304 opposed it.

It would levy a USD 27.20 fee on students each semester to create a fund for the descendants of 272 slaves sold by the university's Jesuit founders in 1838 to pay off debt.

The fund would be the first of its kind in the country. It would be administered by a board made up of students and descendants of the slaves to provide money for the of descendants and other charitable purposes.

The results are not binding on the university, which was founded by Jesuits in 1789 and is located in the Georgetown neighbourhood of Washington.

Todd Olson, the school's vice president for student affairs, said the university "values the engagement of our students."



"Our students are contributing to an important national conversation and we share their commitment to addressing Georgetown's history with slavery," Olson said in a statement.

"We understand that the goals of the student referendum are to honor the 272 enslaved individuals sold by the Maryland Jesuits in 1838," he said.

"There are many approaches that enable our community to respond to the legacies of slavery," Olson said.

"This student referendum provides valuable insight into student perspectives and will help guide our continued engagement with students, faculty and staff, members of the descendant community, and the Society of Jesus," he added.

The Georgetown referendum comes as Democratic candidates for president debate whether the United States should provide compensation to the descendants of African-American slaves.

Barack Obama, America's first black president, and 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton did not support compensation for the descendants of slaves.

But several 2020 Democratic hopefuls, including Senator Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, have come out strongly in favor of reparations.

Georgetown University has an undergraduate enrollment of more than 7,000. Tuition for undergraduates in the 2019 fiscal year is USD 53,520.

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Sudan's military council appealed on Friday for financial aid from regional peers to tackle a worsening economic crisis, a day after the ouster of president Omar al-Bashir.

"We want your donations as we have some economic issues," the head of the military council's political committee, Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin, told Arab and African diplomats in a televised meeting, citing "a shortage of essential items like flour and fuel".

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Sudanese protestors vowed Friday to chase out the country's new military rulers, as the army offered talks on forming a civilian government after it ousted president Omar al-Bashir.

But the military council warned it would tolerate no breaches of security, after protesters defied a night-time curfew following Bashir's Thursday fall, keeping up their sit-outside the army headquarters.

Thousands of men and women, dressed in white, also braved the searing Sudanese heat on Friday to offer prayers outside the sprawling complex, witnesses said.

The imam leading the prayers was draped in the Sudanese flag.

Hussein Mohamed, an elderly man from Omdurman, said he was attending the protest for the first time in response to a call to hold Friday prayers there.

"It is too, too hot but I'm impressed by what our young men and women are doing here," he said. "I'll surely come again." Many Coptic Christians were also there, serving food and drinks to Muslims as they got ready for prayers.

Some also brought mats for the worshippers.

The head of the military council's political committee, Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin, confirmed that a day after he was deposed, Bashir remained in custody.

The army takeover brought to an end 30 years of rule by Bashir, one of Africa's longest serving leaders.

But Abdin said the council would never extradite him or any other Sudanese citizen.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has a longstanding arrest warrant against Bashir for suspected genocide and war crimes.

The military council had announced a two-year transition period, but Sudan's UN envoy told the Security Council in New York that this could be shortened "depending on developments on the ground and agreements between stakeholders".

Protesters have held mass demonstrations for four months demanding Bashir's overthrow, defying repeated deadly attempts by riot police and the feared intelligence services to crush them.

But when his overthrow was finally announced on Thursday in an address to the nation, by Defence Minister Awad Ibnouf, it was met not with joy but anger.

Protest leaders have dismissed the transitional military council as the "same old faces" from the regime which led the country into multiple conflicts along with worsening poverty and social inequality.

Thursday's announcement meant "we have not achieved anything", said one protester who gave his name only as Adel.

"We will not stop our revolution. We are calling for the regime to step down, not only Bashir." Analysts said Bashir's overthrow in a "palace coup" made the transition to democracy in Sudan a more distant prospect.

"Ironically, the prospects for democratic transition may be more remote than when Bashir was in power, as there's no centre of power with which to negotiate," said Alex de Waal, a Sudan specialist at Tufts University.

"The power struggle within the security cabal that took power yesterday is just beginning," de Waal said. "Bashir had kept their rivalries and ambitions in check; his removal brings in its wake an unregulated uncertainty."



Protesters at the sit-in said their quarrel was with the commanders who had led the coup, not the rank and file.

"This is now our square. We have taken it and won't leave until victory is achieved," said one protester who gave his name as Abu Obeida.

"We broke the curfew. We will continue doing it until we have a civilian transitional government." Multiple world powers have made calls for a peaceful transition.

Washington urged the military council "to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government".

The European Union urged the army to carry out a "swift" handover to civilian rule. The African Union decried Bashir's military overthrow, saying it was "not the appropriate response to the challenges facing Sudan and the aspirations of its people".

Most shops and offices were closed on Friday, a day of prayer and rest in Sudan. But crowds again began thronging the streets of Khartoum after the main weekly Islamic prayers, raising fears of a confrontation between protesters and the security forces.

The ousted president stands accused of unleashing Arab militias in a scorched earth campaign against minority villages, killing tens of thousands of civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands more into camps.

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Sudan's ousted president Omar al-Bashir, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes, will not be extradited, the country's new military rulers said Friday.

"The president is currently in custody," the head of the military council's political committee, Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin, told a conference.

"We as a military council, we will not deliver the president abroad during our period" in office, Abdin said when asked about the ICC arrest warrant.

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Delhi Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik Friday directed the DCPs of three police districts in northern range to take stringent action against musclemen to avoid interruption in electioneering process and ensure security of rallies of all political parties.

A meeting was held at the Delhi Technological University Auditorium on efforts to be made for the safety and security of general elections, the officials said.

The northern range comprises the northwest, Rohini and outer north police district.

In the meeting, he emphasised on action against illicit liquor and fire arms, more alertness in terms of anti-terrorist measures and joint border checking and patrolling to avoid the movement of illegal liquor, arms and narcotics.

Patnaik also emphasised on the stringent action against muscle men to avoid interruption in electioneering process, security of rallies of all political parties and constant and concerted action against street criminals moving with firearms, the police said.

The meeting was attended by all deputy commissioners, additional DCPs, assistant commissioners of police, SHOs and beat constables of Northern Range.

Special CP (Law and Order) North and Joint CP Northern Range also attended the meeting, they added.

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Israeli President Reuven Rivlin will begin consulting political parties on Monday before deciding who to charge with forming the next government, his office said Friday.

Barring unforeseen circumstances, the task is most likely to fall to incumbent premier Benjamin Netanyahu following Tuesday's elections.

In a first, the presidential statement said Rivlin has ordered the consultations be open to public scrutiny.

"The meetings with the parties will be broadcast live on all platforms, to ensure transparency for Israeli citizens," it said in English.

The talks at the president's official Jerusalem residence will kick off with Netanyahu's Likud party, followed by the Blue and White alliance of his defeated centrist challenger, former military man Benny Gantz.

Likud came out just ahead of Blue and White in the general elections with 36 seats in the 120-member parliament compared to 35 for its rivals.

Meetings with smaller parties will continue throughout Monday and Tuesday, the statement said, adding that "at the end of the round of consultations" Rivlin will announce who he will invite to try to forge a viable coalition.

The president must make his decision by April 24 at the latest.

The chosen politician then has 28 days to form a government, but can ask for an extension of up to 14 days.

An initial count of the votes cast put Likud and Blue and White neck and neck with a projected 35 seats each.

However, an update issued just before midnight Thursday showed Likud a whisker ahead, with local media saying that translated into a one-seat lead, making it the largest party in parliament.

The Central Elections Committee, which updated the figures to include voting by soldiers on active service, prisoners, diplomats abroad and seamen, warned the results could still change until the final and binding tally is published on April 17.

The combined total of seats projected for Likud and what Netanyahu calls its "natural partners" among the right and religious Jewish parties adds up a comfortable 65 seats -- a workable 5-seat majority.

No single political party in Israel's more than 70-year history has ever won an absolute majority in elections and coalitions are the norm.

Gantz and his potential allies trail far behind and on Friday he called Netanyahu to congratulate him and send greetings for next week's Passover Jewish festival.

"I would like to congratulate you on your achievement in the elections," a Blue and White statement quoted Gantz as saying.

A Likud spokesman said Netanyahu thanked Gantz, adding that after the tumultuous election campaign it was now time to "restore Israel to calm".

Maariv daily, citing an unnamed senior official, said Rivlin could suggest Netanyahu and Gantz agree to form a national unity government.

Such an alliance would have a strong majority and would not be beholden to smaller parties.

Contentious issues on the horizon include a pending initiative from US President Donald Trump to try to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, public spending cuts or a tax hike and the fierce debate over whether ultra-Orthodox Jews should perform mandatory military service.

A presidential spokesman told AFP he had no knowledge of any planned Rivlin-Netanyahu-Gantz meeting.

Commentators have said the looming prospect of indictments in several corruption cases against Netanyahu makes him vulnerable to demands for concessions from smaller parties in any coalition bargaining.

Israel's attorney general has announced his intention to charge him with bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three cases.

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After the much delayed public e-auction of the iconic hotel in September last year, the has signed a formal agreement with the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC).

After years of litigation and a bitter battle with the which had reached the Supreme Court, the Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) retained the lease on the iconic property for another 33 years in a fiercely fought auction with rival in September last year.

"The revised agreement was signed on Thursday. From April 11, will get 32.5 per cent more revenue as against about 17.25 per cent.

"This is an achievement for us that we could finally plan the public auction, settle the legal litigation, auction the property and finally implement it on the ground," a senior official said.

The had retained the property at a license fees of Rs 7.03 crore per month including GST. Earlier, they were paying Rs 3.94 crore per month as license fees.

Earlier, the was given to the in 1978 on a 33-year lease, which ended in 2011. The company had since been given nine temporary extensions.

The civic body could not auction the property then as it was tied up in a legal battle with IHCL.
Russia has increased its credibility on the international stage, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at his annual meeting with students and professors at the Foreign Ministrys Diplomatic Academy.

"Russia has significantly increased its credibility all around the world," the diplomat stressed, noting a large number of high-ranking delegations regularly visiting Russia.

In addition, Lavrov noted that most countries accept Russias "independent and fair position aimed at protecting international law," TASS reported.
Three civilians, including two women, were injured Friday when Pakistani troops targeted forward posts and civilian areas with mortars and small arms firing along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district, drawing strong retaliation from the Indian Army.

With Pakistan using heavy weaponry and 120 mm mortar bombs targeting civilian areas, people have been advised to stay indoors, officials said.

"At about 0830 hours, Pakistani Army initiated unprovoked ceasefire violation by shelling with mortars and firing with small arms along the LoC in Swajian sector of Poonch," PRO defence said.

The Indian Army is effectively retaliating, he said.

Three persons, including two women, identified as Tasveer Akhtar, 19, and Shabina Akhtar, 18, of Chapprian village, were injured in the Pakistani shelling and they have been hospitalised, officials said.

A house of one Gani Mir suffered damages in Chapprian-Sawjian forward belt, they said.

As Pakistani army often targets civilian areas, people of the Chapprian-Sawjian area are demanding construction of bunkers for their safety.

We are living along the zero line near the border fencing but have no protective enclosures like bunkers, said Abdul Rashid of Chapprian village.

Two persons were injured when Pakistani troops resorted to firing and shelling along the LoC in the forward area in Digwar sector of Poonch last Friday.

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Sixteen copper statues briefly took to the skies over Paris after they were removed from the Notre-Dame cathedral to undergo restoration work.

Tourists at the world-famous landmark were left stunned on Thursday as the statues -- representing the 12 apostles and the four evangelists from the New Testament -- were lifted off the spire of the cathedral by crane.

"What's unique is that it's the first time we've seen them up close since they were set up by Viollet-le-Duc in the 1860s," Marie-Helene Didier, who is in charge of the renovation work, told AFP.

"It's an exceptional event because we've brought the 16 statues down in a single day. It's a magical moment for everyone," she said.

Built between the years 1163 and 1345, Notre-Dame is one of the most popular tourist sites in Paris, drawing around 13 million people every year.

Its spire, like the rest of the gothic edifice, is undergoing an USD 12.4-million overhaul financed by the French state to repair damage inflicted by time, pollution and the weather.

"Extraordinary," said Sofiane, an onlooker from London, as the statues flew through piercing blue skies suspended from a giant 100-metre (300-foot) crane.

"I'll never see anything like it again." The statues will be put on display inside the cathedral and will travel two-by-two to a specialised restorer in the Dordogne area of southwest France.

Once all have been renovated, they will be put back to their position staring out over the City of Light in 2022.

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BJP's election promise to establish National Traders' Welfare Board if voted to power has evoked a positive response from the traders' community in Uttar Pradesh, while the Congress termed it as a "honey-trap".

Unveiling the manifesto -- Sankalp Patra -- for the general elections on April 8, the BJP had said it will establish National Traders' Welfare Board and create a national policy for retail trade for the growth of retail business.

Ashish Kumar Tripathi, secretary, Tax Lawyers Association, Lucknow, said it was a "good move" as traders had been demanding the formation of such a body for long.

"National Traders' Welfare Board will provide a platform to the traders to raise their grievances," he said.

The proposed board, Tripathi said, will also be effective in curbing atrocities against traders.

However, Lalan Kumar, a member of the media management committee of the Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee, termed it as a "honey trap" for the traders.

"The traders were honey-trapped too during the implementation of the GST. The traders will suffer losses like under the GST. The people of the country are mature, and they will not accept any jumla (rhetoric) of the BJP," he said.

UP BJP media coordinator Rakesh Tripathi said the board will act as a bridge between the government and the traders.

"The board will be a forum where traders will discuss their issues. Till now, there was no such forum available to them," he said.

Samajwadi Party MLC and Spokesperson Rajpal Kahsyap said the BJP has been announcing "jumla after jumla" while the promises made during the 2014 election are yet to be fulfilled.

"What have they done in the last five years. People can no more digest these announcements," he said.

When contacted Mithilesh Gupta, president, Uttar Pradesh Dal Mill Association, said it was a "positive step" taken by the BJP.

"At least there is a party which thinks about us. We generate taxes for the government, and we feel that if the government cares for farmers, it should also do so for traders," he said.

G D Rupani, a Kanpur-based trader also described setting up of the board as a "good move" in the interest of the traders.

Om Prakash Mishra, a chartered accountant, said the body will act as a "channel" between the traders and the government. It will be instrumental in redressing the grievances of the traders, he added.

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The US is currently undergoing a review of its assistance to which is expected to be finalised soon, a top Trump administration official has told lawmakers.

The relations between and the US nosedived after US President last year accused Islamabad of giving nothing to Washington but "lies and deceit" and providing "safe haven" to terrorists.

With Islamabad playing a crucial role in peace talks with the Taliban, which may ultimately result in the withdrawal of the 14,000 US troops from the war-torn Afghanistan, the Trump administration seems to be reviewing its aid policy to

"We're undergoing a review of our assistance in Pakistan that we hope will be finalised soon. And we'll then report to you in terms of what will be going forward," USAID Administrator Mark Green told members of House Foreign Affairs Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

In September, the Trump administration cancelled USD 300 million in military aid to Islamabad for not doing enough against terror groups like the and Taliban active on its soil.

Trump also criticised Pakistan in a Twitter post back in November, saying Islamabad was not doing enough to stop

"As with all of our programmes, we have the programme metrics that we use. One thing we're trying to do more of is to shift from outputs to outcomes. So, we have our roadmap with 17 objective metrics that help us measure capacity and commitment in each country where we work or want to work, like Pakistan," Green said in response to another question on Pakistan.

"So more and more we're trying to make sure that we're able to make a difference on the outcome side, hasting the capacity of our host country partners to take on these challenges themselves, although in Pakistan is daunting," he said, responding to a question from Congressman Brad Sherman.

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is spearheading efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban with the help of Pakistan to end the 17-year Afghan war, America's longest.

"In spite of our aid to Pakistan, conditions in the Sindh Province of South Pakistan continued to deteriorate in many areas. Schools and hospitals are getting worse in many areas as is water availability," Sherman said.

"We see the Hindu minorities subject to persecution to force conversions and forced marriages. What is USAID doing to ensure that assistance to Pakistan is improving the lives of ordinary people in Sindh?" he asked.

Sherman hoped that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will focus on the women and children and especially the minority religions in Pakistan's Sindh province.

"USAID has played an important role in Pakistan, particularly with its education system. Are there ways that charitable organisations can partner with USAID to support that work?" the Congressman asked.
A delegation of poll officials from Uganda was in Noida and Greater Noida where they visited voting sites to understand the nuances of election process in the world's largest democracy, according to officials.

The four-member delegation visited four polling booths, including one critical, with three of them in Noida and the rest in Greater Noida, the officials said.

The delegation from Uganda comprised its Deputy Chairperson for Election Aisha B Lubega, commissioners Kigozi Sabaggala Mustapha and Ahabwe Justin Mugabi, and senior Election Officer Matsiko Emmanuel, a senior official said.

"The delegation was made aware of the Systematic Voters' Education and Electoral Participation programme, better known as SVEEP, a flagship programme of the Election Commission of India for voter education," said Rajeev Tyagi, the nodal officer for SVEEP here.

"The visitors from Uganda were surprised with the festival-like fervour among citizens at the polling booths where several people were queued up for the 'Desh ka Mahatyohar' (the country's mega festival," he told PTI.

Tyagi said the visiting team from the African continent toured four model polling booths, one critical booth, a pink booth, where everything is managed entirely by women and one persons with disabilities booth.

"The delegation had an in-depth understanding of the entire poll process, use of electronic voting machine (EVMs), indelible ink, VVPAT system, and all other poll-related process. They also interacted with voters for an insight," Tyagi, also the general manager of the Noida Authority, said.

Lubega, Ahabwe and Kigozi are members of Uganda's Electoral Commission Strategic Plan 2015/16-2021/22, according to the country's Election Commission website.

In 2016 general election, Uganda had a voting population of 1.52 crore, which is expected to reach 1.94 crore by the next polls in 2020/21, according to their website. Noida and Greater Noida, parts of Gautam Buddh Nagar constituency, went to polls on Thursday during the first leg of the seven-phased Lok Sabha election.

Gautam Buddh Nagar, with 22.97 lakh voters, had 2,397 polling stations that witnessed a total turnout of 62.7 per cent, up from 60 per cent in 2014 and 48 per cent in 2009.

The first phase of the polls that was conducted Thursday in 91 Lok Sabha constituencies, spread across 18 states and two union territories, had more than 14 crore voters, about one-sixth of nearly 90 crore total electorate in India.

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Pro-Brexit British politician Nigel Farage on Friday launched a campaign for an election that may never take place to an institution he routinely insults the contest for U.K. seats in the European Parliament.

Britain was supposed to have left the European Union before the European elections, which take place in late May in every EU nation. But with Britain's Parliament still deadlocked over whether to approve the government's divorce deal with the bloc, EU leaders have postponed the Brexit deadline until October 31.

British Prime Minister Theresa May says taking part in this year's European elections three years after the nation voted to leave the EU would be "unthinkable."



She still hopes Britain can avoid the U.K.'s May 23 election by leaving the 28-nation bloc before then.

But with British lawmakers unwilling to endorse the divorce agreement that May forged with the EU, preparations have begun to fill the 73 U.K. spots in the 751-seat European legislature. Winning candidates from Britain will only get to serve as long as their country remains in the EU.

Britain's ruling Conservatives and the opposition Labour party are unenthusiastic about running in the European Parliament election, where they are likely to be punished by disgruntled voters.

But pro-Brexit and pro-EU parties are eager to run in a contest seen by many as a way to express their strongly divergent views on the EU.

Farage held the first campaign rally of his newly formed Brexit Party, calling delays to Britain's departure from the EU "a willful betrayal of the greatest democratic exercise in the history of this nation."



"The fightback begins here," said Farage, who formerly led the U.K. Independence Party and has sat in the European parliament since 1999.

Farage was instrumental in helping the Leave side win Britain's 2016 referendum on EU membership, but stepped down as UKIP leader after the referendum. UKIP has since shifted to the far right; its new leader hired anti-Muslim agitator and convicted fraudster Tommy Robinson as an adviser.

Farage said he did not want to be a part of a party that promoted "violence, criminal records and thuggery."



Other candidates for the Brexit Party include Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of pro-Brexit Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg.

"I joined the Conservative Party in 1984 and this is not a decision I have made lightly to leave a party for which I have fought at every election since 1987, from Maggie Thatcher through to Theresa May," she said.

"I know which one I'd rather have representing us now."



The pro-EU Independent Group, founded by British lawmakers who quit Labour and the Conservatives, has registered to become a political party so it can run in the EU election on a platform calling for a new referendum on Britain's EU membership.

After months of acrimonious, indecisive yet cliff-edged wrangling in Parliament over Brexit, U.K. lawmakers began a 10-day Easter break on Friday.

May has urged them to "reflect" and use the break to "resolve to find a way through this impasse." Talks continued Friday between senior lawmakers in May's Conservative-led government and the Labour Party in hopes of striking a compromise Brexit deal that can win majority support in Parliament.

Several rounds of negotiations over the past week have so far failed to reach a Brexit compromise.

Labour economy spokesman John McDonnell said the talks would continue and "we will see by the end of next week how far we have got.

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India, which deployed the first-ever all-female Formed Police Unit in Liberia, said UN member states must be encouraged to contribute full women units instead of "mixed units" to ensure greater women participation in peacekeeping.

"India is committed to increasing the number of women peacekeepers...The landmark first ever deployment by UN of all Female Formed Police Unit in Liberia by India became a role model for the local women, to participate in policing and in relevant rule of law frameworks," Counsellor in India's Permanent Mission to the UN Eenam Gambhir said.

Participating in the UN Security Council open debate on 'Women in Peacekeeping' on Thursday, she said in the 'Declaration of Shared Commitments on UN Peacekeeping Operations' under Action for Peacekeeping (A4P), member states agreed to collectively commit to implement the women, peace and security agenda by ensuring full, equal and meaningful participation of women in all stages of the peace process and by systematically integrating a gender perspective into all stages of analysis, planning, implementation and reporting.

The member states have also committed to increase the number of civilian and uniformed women in peacekeeping at all levels and in key positions.

"However, we notice that to accommodate those who cannot fulfil the all-women unit commitments, the policy frameworks are being diluted to prefer mixed units over full women units. If this is the approach, how can we possibly achieve the targets that we set for increasing women participation in peacekeeping," she said.

Gambhir said in order to achieve the increased targets under the uniformed gender parity strategy, countries who are willing to contribute full women units should be encouraged and incentivised.

"Instead of supporting a policy of mixed units, we believe that all women units need to be incentivized to encourage greater participation. Priority should also be given to deploying from the pending pledges related to women peacekeepers," she added.

She said while India welcomes the initiatives by the UN Secretariat in driving the formulation of policy frameworks to increase the number of women peacekeepers, it perceives some hesitation to put in strong commitments into the policy framework.

Gambhir said India is fully prepared to deploy a Female Engagement Team (FET) comprising 22 women officers and soldiers as part of rapidly deployable battalion in Congo by August. It will also deploy a women Formed Police Unit (FPU) in South Sudan by this year-end.

India partnered UN Women towards capacity building initiatives at the New Delhi-based Centre for UN Peacekeeping, which conducted the third UN female military officers course for 40 women military officers from 26 countries. India also provided adequate pre-deployment training on gender sensitization to its peacekeeping forces.

The role of the all-female contingent of peacekeepers from India deployed with the UN mission in Liberia was highlighted for inspiring women in the West African nation to become police officers.

Since 2007, there were nine rotations of all-female police units from India, whose primary responsibilities have been to provide 24-hour guard duty and public order management and to conduct night patrols in and around the capital, Monrovia, while assisting to build the capacity of local security institutions. The last unit of 125 women and supporting personnel from India returned home in February 2016.

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US oil giant Chevron announced Friday it had agreed to acquire all outstanding shares of Anadarko in a stock and cash transaction valued at USD 33 billion, or USD65 per share.

Based on Chevron's Thursday closing price, Anadarko shareholders will receive 0.39 shares of Chevron and USD16.25 in cash for each Anadarko share held, the company said in a statement.

The total enterprise value of the transaction is USD50 billion.

"The acquisition of Anadarko will significantly enhance Chevron's already advantaged Upstream portfolio and further strengthen its leading positions in large, attractive shale, deepwater and natural gas resource basins," the company said.

"The combination of Anadarko's premier, high-quality assets with our advantaged portfolio strengthens our leading position in the Permian, builds on our deepwater Gulf of Mexico capabilities and will grow our LNG business.

"It creates attractive growth opportunities in areas that play to Chevron's operational strengths and underscores our commitment to short-cycle, higher-return investments."



Anadarko Chairman and CEO Al Walker added: "The strategic combination of Chevron and Anadarko will form a stronger and better company with world-class assets, people and opportunities.

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North Korea has replaced its long-serving nominal head of state with a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un who was placed on a US sanctions list last year for alleged human rights abuses, state media said Friday.

Kim Yong Nam, who held the position for almost 20 years, was replaced by Choe Ryong Hae, who will take over the role of representing Pyongyang at international engagements, KCNA said.

The reshuffle, formalised during a session of Pyongyang's rubber-stamp parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA), comes at a time of heightened diplomatic activity that has seen Kim Jong Un hold landmark summits with the leaders of the US, China and North Korea.

As SPA president, Choe is technically head of state, although real power in North Korea is wielded by Kim and his immediate family.

Analysts say his appointment by Kim suggests a generational shift in the North's leadership, especially after the collapse of the Hanoi summit in February.

Born in 1950, Choe is considered Kim Jong Un's right-hand man -- frequently referred to as the regime's "virtual number two official".

In the 1980s, he led the North's youth delegations on goodwill visits to a number of countries, including Russia, Libya and China, before being promoted to the party's powerful Central Military Commission in 2017.

Some reports have even suggested that one of Choe's sons is married to Kim Jong Un's powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong.

He is also one of the three North Korean officials sanctioned by the US last year over human rights abuse allegations.

Choe directs the North's "departments that perpetrate the regime's brutal state-sponsored censorship activities, human rights violations and abuses," US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement in December.

Analysts said, however, the existing sanctions against Choe will have little impact on his future diplomatic endeavours, as long as its nuclear dialogue with the US continues.

"Kim Yong Chol, the North's top nuclear negotiator, also has been sanctioned by Washington since 2010," Ahn Chan-il, the president of the World Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul, told AFP.

"But he visited Washington without a problem earlier this year. Washington will always make exceptions -- as long as Pyongyang has something to offer."



On top of being elected as the nominal head of state, Choe was also appointed as first vice chairman of State Affairs Commission (SAC), the North's highest decision making body -- a position that was newly created after the North recently revised its Constitution.

Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said this will allow Choe to work with the North's key diplomats.

These include Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho, Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui and Pyongyang's top nuclear negotiator Kim Yong Chol who were all also promoted to SAC members this week.

"Kim Yong Nam, while serving as the former nominal head of state, never got to have any roles in the SAC," Cheong told AFP.

"But Choe's position as the vice chairman of SAC -- on top of the ceremonial head of state -- gives him much more authority as he gets to lead a group of elite officials in charge of Pyongyang's diplomacy.

"The fact that these key diplomats became members of SAC signals Pyongyang's willingness for further diplomatic engagement with other countries." Externally, however, Pyongyang has been stressing the importance of "self reliance" after talks on denuclearisation with Washington broke down in Vietnam in February.

Sanctions relief was top of Kim Jong Un's agenda for the Hanoi summit, but the meeting broke up without a statement as North Korea and the US disagreed over walking back Pyongyang's nuclear programme in exchange for relaxing trade restrictions.

Kim earlier this week insisted Pyongyang would overcome the effect of sanctions by developing the socialist economy, telling party officials to push ahead with "self-reliance", KCNA said.

Pyongyang is "trying to undermine sanctions without agreeing to the current denuclearisation demand from Washington, while also improving its diplomatic strategies," analyst Ahn said.

"I believe the North is coming up with very dramatic economic reforms to survive the sanctions. Kim Jong Un needed someone younger and even more ruthless." As expected, KCNA also reported that Kim has been re-elected as chairman of the North's State Affairs Commission.

He was given a new title, described by the state-run newspaper Rodong Shinmun as "supreme representative of all the Korean people.

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Eight former service chiefs and 148 other military veterans have written to President Ram Nath Kovind, expressing outrage over what they termed using the armed forces for political purposes.

The signatories of the letter included former Army chiefs General (retired) SF Rodrigues, General (retired) Shankar Roy Chowdhury and General (retired) Deepak Kapoor, former IAF chief Air Chief Marshal (retired) NC Suri.

Three former Navy chiefs Admiral (retired) L Ramdas, Admiral (retired) Arun Prakash, Admiral (retired) Mehta and Admiral (retired) Vishnu Bhagwat also signed the letter, which was sent to Kovind on Thursday.

"We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the armed forces to be 'Modi ji ki sena'," the veterans wrote.

The military veterans said it was a matter of considerable concern and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel that the armed forces are being used to pursue political agenda.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister recently referred to the armed forces as "Modiji ki Sena" at an election rally in Uttar Pradesh, triggering strong reactions from the opposition parties.

The Election Commission too also took strong objection to the comments.

In the letter, the military veterans also expressed disappointment over the usage of photos of Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman and other soldiers at election campaigns.
According to the plan of cooperation for 2019 between the Azerbaijani and Russian Defense Ministries, a working meeting dedicated to 'Exchange of experience in financial support of the armed forces' was held in Baku, the Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported.

During the event, officials and specialists of the Defense Ministries of both countries responsible for finance and budget delivered speeches.

In addition, the participants exchanged views and made proposals for the application of best practices.
In a controversial remark, Union minister Maneka Gandhi has told Muslims to vote for her as they will need her once the Lok Sabha elections are over.

We are not Mahatma Gandhi's children that we keep giving and not get anything in return, she said in Sultanpur's Muslim-dominated Turabkhani area on Thursday.

District poll authorities issued her with a show cause notice. The Election Commission in Delhi is also examining the transcript of the minister's speech, which was condemned by the Congress.

Maneka Gandhi, the BJP candidate from Sultanpur Lok Sabha constituency, claimed she is all set to win and told the Muslim audience that you might need me tomorrow.

I am winning. I am winning because of the help and love of the people, Gandhi said at the meeting in the constituency earlier held by her son Varun Gandhi.

But if my victory is without the Muslims, I will not feel very good, she said, adding she will be left with a bitter feeling.

If Muslims come for some work after this, I will think why bother, what difference will it make.

Suggesting that it was matter of give and take, she added, We are not Mahatma Gandhi's children to keep giving without getting anything in return.

The minister asked them to check with the people in Pilibhit, her earlier constituency.

If there is even one person who says there had been something wrong on my part, don't vote for me, she said.

Gandhi said she had come with an open mind and they may feel that they might need me tomorrow.

This election I have already won, and you will need me and want to lay the foundation for this," she said.

She also asked people to pass on this message to others.

The Congress reacted strongly with its spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala saying the Bharatiya Janata Party leader is trying to divide people on the basis of caste and community.

The party approached the Election Commission in Delhi and handed over a memoranda on a host of issues, including Gandhi's remarks.

Sources in the UP election office said she will have to respond to the notice sent by the district poll authorities within three days.

They cited paragraph 1 the model code of conduct that forbids parties and candidates from indulging in any activity which may aggravate existing differences or create mutual hatred or cause tension between different castes and communities, religious or linguistic".

Maneka Gandhi's remarks follow other controversial references to the Muslim electorate during the Uttar Pradesh campaign.

At her recent election meeting in Saharanpur's Deoband, Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati asked Muslims to support her alliance with the Samajwadi Party, instead of splitting their vote by opting for the Congress.

In a rejoinder to this remark, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath brought up the controversial Ali-Bajrang Bali reference at an election rally.

"If the Congress, the SP and the BSP have faith in Ali, we have faith in Bajrang Bali," Aditynath said.

Lord Hanuman is called Bajrang Bali while Ali is a revered figure in Islam.

The Election Commission sent Adityanath and Mayawati notices on what could be violations of the model code of conduct.

The poll code came into force on March 10 when the Lok Sabha polls were announced.

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Demanding apology from Britain over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, which completes 100th year on Saturday, descendants of some of those killed have said mere regret would not do.

The massacre took place in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar over Baisakhi in April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of General Reginald Dyer fired indiscriminately at a crowd holding a pro-independence demonstration, leaving hundreds of people dead.

British Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday described the massacre as a "shameful scar" on British Indian history but she stopped short of a formal apology, reiterating the "regret" already expressed by the British government.

"My mama-ji (maternal uncle) Mela Ram was martyred at the age of 18 in the massacre," said 86-year-old Krishana Chohan, recounting how she grew up hearing tales about the incident.

"When the troops started indiscriminate firing on the peaceful gathering, everybody panicked, people started running helter-skelter without having any understating where to go. It was plain ground and there was only one exit, which was a narrow lane. As a result, there was a stampede and many fell upon each other and some fell inside the well in the ground," she told PTI.

She said her uncle was one of those who fell inside the well.

"His body bore bullet marks, I was told. Some freedom fighters who were addressing the gathering were also found dead," she said.

Chohan said the British government should apologise for the incident and a mere regret would not do.

Mahesh Behl, 73, recalled the killing of his grandfather Lala Hari Ram, an advocate, in the massacre.

"British government still hasn't offered apology over the carnage," Behl said.

He lamented that descendants like him even did not get the due honour from the central or the state governments.

"A few years back, the Punjab government gave us freedom fighter card, but nobody recognises this card. Even the card is rejected at toll plazas. Our children didn't get any reservation on the basis of this card in any educational institution," he rued.

"Today after 100 years of the incident, the administration approached us to invite for the candle light march being organised by the state government on the centenary eve," he added.

Legislator and Punjabi Ekta Party chief Sukhpal Singh Khaira said thousands of Punjabis had sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the country and the massacre in Jallianwala Bagh is an unforgettable tragedy. He said the Jallianwala Bagh memorial was a neglected place and reflects apathy of state and central governments.

He also demanded apology from the British government for the massacre.

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Congress president Rahul Gandhi's proposed meeting at Siliguri has been cancelled after the Congress leadership was denied permission for his chopper to land at the police ground there.

Senior Congress leader and the party's Darjeeling Lok Sabha candidate Shankar Malakar said he had sought permission for Gandhi's chopper to land at the police ground on April 14 but it was denied by the police.

"We had to cancel the rally as we didn't get the permission," Malakar said.

Siliguri Police Commissioner B L Meena confirmed that the Congress had sought permission for landing a helicopter at police ground which was denied.

"We had denied permission for that specific ground. There are some rules due to which it was not allowed. But they didn't come up with any alternative venue," Meena said.

Amid the blame game, the infighting in Bengal Congress came out in open as state Congress president Somen Mitra said he was not aware of the rally of the AICC chief.

"I can't say whether or not a rally is going to be held. Please don't ask me this question," Mitra said.

A senior state Congress leader said Mitra was miffed as Malakar who, without informing him, had sought permission for Gandhi's rally, on his own.

"We are all soldiers of Rahul Gandhi. There is no doubt about it. But some of our candidates without informing the PCC chief is announcing that they are planning to hold rallies of Rahul Gandhi, even without seeking permission from his office. This is not sending out the right message," a senior state Congress leader said.

Gandhi so far addressed two election rallies in the state - one at Malda and another at Raiganj.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The White House pushed immigration authorities to release illegal migrants onto the streets of so-called "sanctuary cities" to retaliate against US President Donald Trump's political enemies, the Washington Post reported Thursday.

Citing homeland security officials and leaked emails, the Post said White House officials first broached the plan in November, asking officials at several agencies whether members of a caravan of migrants could be arrested at the border and then bused "to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities".

Sanctuary cities are places where local authorities -- usually Democratic run -- have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

The White House told the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of detention space, but would also send a message to Democrats, the Post said.

The suggested policy was pushed back within ICE, with a top official saying it was rife with concerns and noting "there are PR risks as well".

After the White House pressed the issue again earlier this year, ICE rebuffed it as "inappropriate".

The Post said a White House official and a spokesman for the department of homeland security said the proposal was no longer under consideration.

"This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion," a White House statement said.

One of the centres targeted was the constituency of house speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose office on Thursday blasted the plan.

"The extent of this administration's cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne.

"Using human beings -- including little children -- as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable." Combating illegal immigration is a central plank of Trump's administration and he has expressed increasing frustration at the influx of migrants from Central America, who he often casts as criminals who threaten US security.

The number of immigrant detainees in ICE custody has approached 50,000 in recent months, the Post said, an all-time high that has strained the agency's budget.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Green Tribunal has slammed the Delhi government for not taking action against illegal scrap industries in Mayapuri that are causing pollution, saying why is the chief secretary feeling helpless in protecting lives of victims.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel directed the chief secretary and the Chairman and Member Secretary, Delhi Pollution Control Committee to respond why they should not be jailed and be prosecuted if illegal activities are not stopped and people remain suffering on account of illegal activities.

The green panel also ordered the officials to appear before it on May 3 with compliance report.

Stating that "there cannot be blackmailing by law violators", the tribunal also rejected a plea of business-owners that they be given alternative land before any step is taken to shut their activities at the site.

The NGT said that there is acknowledged failure to comply with the orders of the tribunal by the Delhi government and the chief secretary appears to have merely expressed helplessness in taking action.

"We fail to understand why guilty are not being prosecuted in spite of more than five years of order of this Tribunal and in spite of undertaking given by the Chief Secretary before the Tribunal. Why electricity is being supplied for illegal polluting activities. Why no officer has been dismissed nor any polluter arrested or punished.

"Polluting activity causing deaths and diseases are no less than murder or attempt to murder. Pollution laws confer vast powers on DPCC which is not being exercised for reasons difficult to understand. Why is the Chief Secretary feeling helpless in protecting lives of victims, even though armed with all powers under various laws," the tribunal said.

The green panel said that no meaningful steps have been taken in last four years for compliance of the orders and even the performance guarantee, as required, has not been furnished and responsibility shifted.

During the hearing, a large number of persons who are allegedly carrying out polluting activities were present before the tribunal and sought the NGT's permission to continue their business.

"There is no merit in the applications seeking non-implementation of orders of the Tribunal, directing closure of illegal activities. If such activities are going on since long, it does not create a right to continue the same. One of counsel submitted that they should be first given alternative land and then asked to stop illegal activities.

"There cannot be such blackmailing by law violators. There cannot be any justification to cause pollution and consequent death of people for making earning by illegal means at the cost of life of others," it said.

The NGT had earlier directed the AAP government to furnish a performance guarantee of Rs 5 crore within a month for failing to act against illegal scrap units in Mayapuri here.

The green panel had also directed an oversight committee headed by former high court judge Justice Pratibha Rani to monitor the working of a seven-member Special Task Force which was formed to take action against the units involved in dismantling of heavy vehicles.

The NGT had taken note of an English newspaper report about the scrap business in Mayapuri.

"Proceedings have been initiated in view of the item to the effect that there is scrap business at Mayapuri, Delhi, worth Rs 6,000 crores per annum," it had noted.

"The activities of the said business spew toxic fumes and chemicals and oils are also emitted. Such toxic fumes create severe air pollution affecting public health," it had added.

The item said that authorities have failed to take necessary steps of stopping illegal industrial activities resulting in toxic fumes being released in the air.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday announced that it will fight the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi alone but maintained that it is still willing to form an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party, provided the tie-up is restricted only to the national capital.

Congress' in-charge for Delhi P C Chacko said the party will go it alone in Delhi since the AAP has taken an "impractical stand" by demanding seats in Punjab, Haryana, Goa and Chandigarh.

He, however, said,"We are still ready (for alliance) if AAP is willing to have an alliance in Delhi alone. We want to fight the BJP together."



"We are compelled to go on our own as AAP is going back on its stand," Chacko told reporters here.

"We are not able to form an alliance as they have taken a difficult and impractical proposition. Congress is going to fight the election in Delhi on its own," he said, adding that the party will come out with a candidate list in a day or two.

He said the Congress has adopted a policy to form alliances with parties to defeat the BJP and it was being followed all over the country.

Chacko said there was a suggestion from the AAP to form an alliance in Delhi. "We have been fighting face-to-face in Delhi. We have fought the municipal election, we fought the assembly election and we have fought the Parliament election. So, naturally, there was political bitterness between us," he said.

Despite that bitterness, the party responded to the AAP's proposal of an alliance in Delhi as it was a political necessity, the Delhi Congress in-charge said.

"Congress president Rahul Gandhi gave me an assignment and clearance to go and discuss with the AAP and we persuaded the leadership of Delhi as well," he said.

Citing the vote shares of each party in the 2017 civic polls, Chacko said the Congress had won 31 seats, the AAP 49 seats and together the parties had 80 seats in Delhi.

He said while the Congress' vote share was 21 per cent, the AAP got 26 per cent and together the total vote share was 47 per cent.

Chacko said there are 7 Lok Sabha seats in the national capital and with 47 per cent votes together, the Congress on pro-rata basis was eligible to get 3.13 seats, which was rounded off to three seats. The AAP had 26 per cent votes and their pro-rata seat share comes to 3.87, rounded off to four seats, he added.

"So, four seats to AAP and three seats to the Congress was our understanding in the discussion I held with Mr Sanjay Singh. In spite of the reservations of the Congress leaders of Delhi, we thought it is a political necessity that we should be able to come to an understanding to defeat the BJP wherever possible," Chacko said.

"Delhi is an ideal situation where the AAP and the Congress can come together and defeat the BJP on all seats. We had the discussion with this understanding. We arrived at a pact also, but then they raised Haryana and Punjab and some other states," he said.

"We only want to clarify that it was the instruction of the Congress president to me to have an understanding with the AAP because we want to have understanding with other like-minded parties to defeat the BJP," the Delhi Congress in-charge said.

"We did not want to create any problem. We said 'if you have started work in some places, we are ready to leave it also.' So, then we discussed about our corresponding strength in Delhi on the basis of each other's strength," he added.

The AAP had on Wednesday rejected the offer of the grand old party for a tie-up in Delhi.

All the routes of alliance with the Congress have been closed, AAP's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh had said.

The Congress was eager for tie-up with the AAP in Delhi.

The AAP, in turn, wanted such an alliance to extend to Haryana and Punjab as well.

The talks between the two sides derailed after they failed to reach an agreement over seat-sharing in Delhi and Haryana.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A woman, allegedly fed up with dowry demands from her husband and in-laws, set herself on fire in Rajghat area here, police said Friday.

The woman's family, however, alleged her in-laws burnt her to death.

The woman in her 20s, Poonam Gupta, a resident of Laldiggi locality, was seen running in the street on Tuesday with her clothes set on fire. She was recorded in CCTV cameras in the area and the video later surfaced on social media.

Locals rushed her to a Lucknow hospital where she died Wednesday night, police said.

According to Gorakhpur Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Sunil Gupta, the woman in her dying declaration said she burnt herself after being harassed.

He said the action is being taken on the basis of the woman's statement.

An FIR was filed against nine people including the woman's husband and her in-laws and five of the accused have been arrested so far, the SSP said.

As per the FIR filed at Rajghat police station, Poonam's husband, Alok Gupta, and her in-laws harassed her for failing to fulfil their demand of Rs 5 lakh in dowry.

"My daughter was married to Alok Gupta in 2014 and they were not satisfied with the dowry. Later, they started demanding Rs 5 lakh," Poonam Gupta's mother Rajkumari Devi said.

"She called me a few days ago and said that her in-laws were beating her for money. They burnt her for dowry," she alleged.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The work to enlarge 'Grand Wall Mural' of Mahatma Gandhi has begun at the New Delhi Municipal Corporation building here, the Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) said Friday.

The clay mural will be increased in size from the present 150 square metres to 217 metres, making it 43 per cent larger than its earlier version, it said.

Giving more details, KVIC chairman Vinai Kumar Saxena said the enlarged mural will look more grand and prominent by proportionately increasing its size by four feet on all sides.

"Besides, Indian Flag will be painted on the cement sheets as the background of Bapu's image which will add to the beauty of the image," Saxena said.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu had unveiled the mural to mark Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary year in January.

The 150 square metres clay mural is made of 'Kulhads' (earthern tea cups) by 150 village potters across India, who assembled to make it at Morbi in Gujarat - the birthplace of Gandhi.

The KVIC began the work after taking note of Naidu's suggestion to make it larger during the unveiling of the mural on January 31, a KVIC statement said.

The potters had brought clay from their respective regions to produce Kulhads for the mural, which was mixed with Morbi clay under the guidance of Clay Club, a terracotta designing company at Morbi.

As many as 3,870 all-weather proof Kulhads were used in the final design.

The KVIC chairman said it was a matter of great pride for the nation and the commission as it was practical display of Gandhian thoughts on village industries.

"This tributary endeavour of KVIC is certainly a 'tribute with difference'. It is also a proud moment for the nation, when KVIC's grand mural is showcasing the combined 'sweaty' efforts of village potters across the nation hailing from hilly Leh to seaside Maharashtra and from dense jungle area of Chhattisgarh to Gangetic Varanasi," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court (SC) on Friday rejected Vedanta Group's plea seeking an early hearing in the Sterlite Copper plant case. The company's copper smelter in Tuticorin, Tamil Nadu, was shut down last year after 13 protesters died in police firing. Anil Agarwal-led company had moved the apex court on April 11, seeking access to the plant for maintenance. The company had added that due to inordinate delay in the hearing, it was facing a loss of nearly Rs 5 crore every day.

Mining mogul Anil Agarwal's company had faced a setback in February after the Supreme Court set aside the National Green Tribunal's December 15 order to reopen the plant closed on the orders of the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB). The NGT had set aside the state government's order calling it "non-sustainable" and "unjustified", while the state government also moved the top court, saying the NGT had "erroneously" set aside various orders passed by the TNPCB last year with regard to the Sterlite plant.

Vedanta Resources raises $1 billion through bond issue

The SC said it was allowing the state's appeal against the NGT order only on grounds of maintainability. The apex court, however, asked the company to move Madras High Court to challenge the pollution board's order.

Sterlite copper's plant in Tuticorin has the capacity to produce 400,000 metric tonnes of copper a year. According to Care Ratings, the closure of the Tuticorin smelter had resulted in a steep fall of over 42 per cent in domestic refined copper production during the first half of the FY19. This, in turn, led to the domino effect of a sharp increase in the country's imports and fall in the exports thus turning India into a net importer of refined copper from being a net exporter.

Edited by Manoj Sharma

Supreme Court puts a pause on Vedanta's plan to reopen Sterlite Copper's Tuticorin plant
Even as Vijay Mallya renewed an appeal against his extradition to India, the liquor tycoon suffered another legal setback on Friday in a separate USD 40-million claims case brought by British liquor giant Diageo plc in the UK High Court.

Justice Clare Moulder ruled against the 63-year-old businessman's application to seek a delay in the full hearing in the case scheduled for May 23 and additionally ordered him to pay legal costs of 34,000 pounds.

She was extremely critical of the "unexplained" delays by Mallya in clearing the unpaid invoices of his previous solicitors Greenwoods, which resulted in his new solicitors Joseph Hage Aaronson (JHA) finding themselves in "difficulty" and wanting to seek an unfair adjournment.

"The delay is at best unexplained and arguably of the defendant's [Mallya] own making. In my view, the claimants [Diageo] are entitled to have their claim progressed expeditiously," Justice Moulder said, concluding that Mallya was the "author of its own misfortune".

Also Read: Vijay Mallya renews application before UK High Court to avoid extradition

"The claimants say that if the May hearing is adjourned they will suffer prejudice... there would be a race in relation to Mallya's assets which are subject to a number of competing claims; Mallya may be extradited and this will affect the ability to enforce the judgment against him," the judge noted, in reference to the extradition order and worldwide freezing order already in place against Mallya.

Diageo, which had acquired Mallya's United Spirits nearly six years ago, is claiming USD 40 million paid to him as part of an alleged breach of agreement.

The UK-based drinks giant is also claiming USD 140 million from Mallya, his son Sidhartha and two companies linked to them for alleged questionable payments.

The case, dating back to November 2017, is being contested by Mallya and will now go ahead for a full hearing at the Business and Property Courts of the UK High Court on May 23.

Also Read: UK High Court rejects Vijay Mallya's plea against extradition
Moody's Investors Service has affirmed the government of Azerbaijan's long-term issuer and senior unsecured debt ratings at Ba2, according to a press release by Moody's.

It is reported that the stable outlook was maintained.

The key drivers of the rating affirmation include a growing net creditor position of the government, bolstered by ongoing fiscal reforms and banking sector risks that are gradually receding.

"The decision to maintain the stable outlook reflects balanced risks. On the upside, ongoing fiscal and financial sector reforms may shore up the resilience of the sovereign credit profile to shocks including lower oil prices, and contribute to improving policy credibility and effectiveness to a greater extent than Moody's currently expects," the report says.
Nine state governments, including Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu, will raise Rs 9,800 crore by selling securities on April 15, the Reserve Bank said Thursday. The auction will be conducted on the Reserve Bank of India Core Banking Solution (E-Kuber) system, it added.

"...State Governments have offered to sell securities by way of auction for an aggregate amount of Rs 9,800 crore (Face Value)," the central bank said in a notification. Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra would auction securities worth Rs 2,000 crore each, followed by Telangana (Rs 1,500 crore) and Gujarat (Rs 1,000 crore).

Nine states to raise Rs 9,800 crore through selling securities

Punjab would be selling securities of Rs 600 crore and Kerala Rs 500 crore. Goa and Nagaland plan to raise Rs 100 crore each. The Reserve Bank further said it will determine the maximum yield/minimum price at which bids will be accepted. Securities will be issued for a minimum nominal amount of Rs 10,000 and multiples of Rs 10,000 thereafter. The state government securities will bear interest at the rates determined by RBI at the auctions. For the new securities, interest will be paid half yearly on October 16 and April 16 of each year till maturity.

Reinsurance brokers permitted to open foreign currency accounts, says RBI
Embattled businessman Vijay Mallya has filed an application in the UK High Court to avoid extradition to India. Mallya has filed for an oral consideration after his first attempt at an application seeking "leave to appeal" in the court failed last Friday. The oral consideration is where a judge will decide whether Mallya's plea against his extradition can proceed to a full-fledged hearing.

The Westminster Magistrates' Court has already judged in favour of extraditing Mallya to India, which was then approved by the UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid back in February. Following this, the fugitive economic offender filed his first written application for permission to appeal against the decision in the UK High Court, which was turned down by Justice William Davis on April 5.

Mallya was given a week to apply for oral consideration via a renewed application. Following Mallya's application, the matter will now be listed for hearing in the coming weeks, where his legal team and the Crown Prosecution Service, arguing on the behalf of Indian authorities, will debate for and against extraditing him to India.

ALSO READ: UK High Court rejects Vijay Mallya's plea against extradition

The next date for hearing in the matter will be decided in the coming days. Reports suggest that once the hearing date is finalised, a team of officials from the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate will leave for London to challenge Mallya's appeal against extradition.

Meanwhile, Mallya, 63, remains out on bail. Last year in December, Judge Emma Arbuthnot of Westminster Magistrates' Court had ruled that Mallya had a "case to answer" in the Indian courts.

According to submissions made by banks in the London High Court, Vijay Mallya is broke, bankrupt and living off his partner, personal assistant, a business acquaintance and his children. The court learnt that Mallya's partner Pinky Lalwani draws about Rs 1.35 crore per annum and that he is only left with Rs 2,956 crore (328 million pounds) in personal assets, which he has put forth in his settlement offer to the Karnataka High Court.

ALSO READ: Vijay Mallya is broke and living off his partner, children: report

Mallya is wanted in India over charges of bank fraud and money laundering amounting to Rs 9,000 crore. On January 2, Vijay Mallya was declared as the country's first fugitive economic offender under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act by a special PMLA court in Mumbai.

On July 29, 2015, a case was lodged against Mallya, Kingfisher Airlines Limited (KAL), KAL Chief Financial Officer A Raghunathan, and unidentified officials of IDBI. The allegation was the IDBI officials conspired with private individuals, sanctioned and disbursed loans to KAL despite its weak financial situation, negative net worth and below par credit rating in violation of IDBI's corporate loan policy.

During the investigation, it was found that Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines had fraudulently utilised significant portions of loan funds to service the existing debt, diverted the loan funds to such purposes other than that avowed. Substantial amounts were remitted outside India on the pretext of payment of lease, rentals, etc. He fled the country on March 2, 2016 after a look-out-circular was diluted by CBI.

ALSO WATCH:
Shares of SpiceJet surged over 9 per cent intraday on Friday as the budget Indian airline announced the induction of 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft over the next 10 days.

The stock has gained 14 per cent in the last 2 consecutive trading sessions. SpiceJet has formed a gap up chart pattern today.

After opening with a gain of 2.7 per cent, the stock rose almost 10 percent to the day's high at Rs 110.80 against the previous close of Rs 101.25.

The stock closed at Rs 110, up 9 per cent on BSE today.

The stock has delivered positive returns of 37 per cent in three months, 39 per cent in one month and over 13 per cent in the last week, respectively.

As per the BSE, there has been a spurt in the volumes (45.4 lakh shares on BSE) by more than 4.45 times.

SpiceJet Ltd. notified the exchanges on Friday morning that it plans to lease a first lot of 16 Boeing Co 737-800s which will further help to fill the gap in its aviation capacity as the rating agency ICRA said it has pushed up fares by 30 to 40 per cent since September.

As per the press release, SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a no objection certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft, and after further regulatory approvals, the aircraft will join the fleet within ten days.

Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, SpiceJet quoted, "This is the first lot of Boeing 737s that we are inducting in our fleet. The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimize passenger inconvenience."

The airline added that such new inductions will not just bring down flight cancellations to nil but also help in SpiceJet's aggressive international and domestic expansion plans.

SpiceJet had cancelled some flights due to the grounding of its 12 737 MAX planes after Ethiopian Airlines' deadly March 10 crash.

"The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience," SpiceJet Chairman Ajay Singh said in a statement.

SpiceJet operates 516 average daily flights to 60 destinations, including 51 domestic and 9 international ones. The airline has a fleet of 50 Boeing 737, 27 Bombardier Q-400s and one B737 freighter as of now.

Also Read: SpiceJet to lease 16 Boeing 737s to fill gap as groundings push up fares

Also Read: Share Market Update: Sensex ends 160 points higher, Nifty closes below 11,650; PC Jwellers, Gail, Asian paints top gainers
A madrasa, or Islamic school, on a remote hilltop in northeastern Pakistan that was the target of an Indian air strike just over six weeks ago is still not ready to give up its secrets.

For the first time since the Indian government said it had killed hundreds of "terrorists" and their trainers and associates in the school's compound, Pakistani authorities on Wednesday allowed a group of journalists working for foreign news organisations, and foreign diplomats based in Islamabad, access to the site.

The expectation among some of the visitors was that it might help to settle a number of mysteries about the attack. In particular, whether, as India had said, it was a huge success and took out a major militant training camp or whether - as Pakistan says - India's warplanes missed the madrasa compound completely and hit surrounding hills instead. The difference - as many as 300 dead militants or no fatalities at all.

There was also the question about whether the madrasa, one of more than 30,000 across Pakistan where children of all ages are taught to memorise and recite the Koran, was a cover for the Islamist group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), which was allegedly using the site to train fighters to infiltrate Indian-controlled Kashmir.

JeM claimed responsibility for a suicide car bomb attack in Kashmir that killed 40 Indian paramilitary police on Feb 14, triggering the Indian attack and the worst hostilities between the two nuclear-armed nations for many years.

But the journalists and diplomats, most of whom spent well over an hour climbing steep slopes to get to the madrasa in the Jaba village area near the town of Balakot, didn't get enough time to make any kind of informed assessment.

They were mostly restricted to looking around the madrasa's main building. They were hurried away by the army, which organised the trip, after less than half an hour. Those arriving by vehicle had even less time.

The interactions with teachers and about 100 children at the madrasa - from the very young to older teenagers - were limited. The visitors were shown a group of children learning passages from the Koran partly by rocking their heads back and forward in rhythm. One teacher said he had worked at the madrasa for six years.

TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE

At least three of the diplomats, who were mainly from Western countries and the Middle East and included some military attaches, said it was very difficult to draw any firm conclusions because of the six-week delay in gaining access and the restricted time allowed to look around.

"I don't think the site was hit but I still can't be 100 percent after today," said one Western diplomat. "As to whether JeM were here - they may have been but I can't determine that from this either."

The diplomats declined to be named given the sensitivity of the subject.

When asked after the visit about the limitations, armed forces chief spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor said Pakistan had nothing to hide and that if schedules allowed, journalists could in the future come and spend a night or even a month at the site.

He denied that the madrasa had recently been used by JeM. If there was a relationship it was a long time ago, he suggested.

On the trek up to the compound, past small sheep and goat farms and through pastoral scenery on a beautiful spring day, journalists and diplomats were shown craters that the allegedly wayward missiles had created on the surrounding hillsides.

NO SIGN OF REBUILDING

Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said on the day of the strike, Feb. 26, that "a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated" in the attack. Fidayeen is a term used to describe Islamist militants, or jihadis, on suicide missions.

Other Indian officials have come up with similar claims but despite repeated requests from journalists, the Indian government has not produced evidence that a camp was destroyed or that any militants were killed.

The claims have been an issue in India's general election, which started on Thursday. Senior government officials - including Prime Minister Narendra Modi - have attacked opposition politicians who ask for evidence as unpatriotic.

Satellite pictures have indicated that the main structures on the hill top appear to be in similar condition after the attack as they were before.

Those visiting the site on Wednesday didn't see any signs that there had been significant building work to either clear structures or erect new ones. And the vegetation didn't appear to have suffered the stress that might be expected from a missile attack.

A series of Indian media reports claimed in March that the Indian jets had used smaller precision-guided bombs with warheads that were capable of penetrating a building and then killing its occupants but without blowing up the structure.

Ghafoor told the foreign journalists earlier in the week that he couldn't understand how the idea of a missile that blows up inside buildings like those at the madrasa without hurting the structure could carry any credibility. He challenged India to show how that could be done.

The main madrasa building itself doesn't appear to be reinforced in any major way - it has a metal roof with some modest wooden beams.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, meeting foreign correspondents in Islamabad on Tuesday, asked if there had ever been a target.

"We are still in two minds," he said. "Did they intend to hit a target or was it just symbolic?"
Nearly 45% of Irish employees say that their CEO isnt visible to staff and discourages them from dropping into their office. This is according to a new report published today by Dublin-based communications agency, PR360.

Almost half of employees have had fewer than five interactions with their CEO in the last 12 months and a third of employees say that their CEO doesnt even know their name.

The PR360 New Times, New Leaders: CEO Communications Report 2019, which examines employees attitude to their CEO or organisational heads communication abilities, finds that although CEOs appreciate the basic value of communications, few have any proper communications strategy in place.

The report shows that employees who are informed and engaged feel better about their work and do more of it, benefiting their organisations productivity and revenue. Eighty two percent of employees say regular company-wide communication from the CEO is important.

Among this group, 89% say that regular communication is good for morale and productivity, and 70% say it makes them feel valued. Nearly a third (29%) say that effective CEO communications result in improved financial performance.

Despite positive sentiment towards CEO communications among employees, 40% say that their CEO rates okay, poor or very poor for communication. Nearly half (46%) say they have had fewer than five interactions with the most senior person in their organisationbe that an email or a face-to-face meetingin the last 12 months.

PR360 warn that by failing to engage with employees, CEOs could even be harming their organisations ability to innovate. Just over 40% of employees say that they do not feel comfortable approaching their CEO with a new idea for the business.

Commenting on the reports findings, Managing Director of PR360, Dan Pender said, "The best employees value good leadership and direction. When the CEO doesnt lead or avoids dealing with challenges and crises, these employees grow disillusioned and look elsewhere for work. In an extremely tight labour market full of opportunity, a confident, proactive CEO is often the only thing keeping a good employee from jumping ship."

He added, "The CEO is no longer just the suit at the top of the food chain. In a post-Steve Jobs world, CEOs are visionaries and leaders as much as they are heads of business. The CEO who broadly embraces an empathetic and open approach to communications will create a positive, more productive workplace culture. They will also improve their own performance."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The Sudanese military will not hand over ousted president Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC), head of the political committee of the countrys Military Council General Omar Zein al-Abidin said, adding that he would go on trial in Sudan.

"Omar al-Bashir is in our custody. Our Council is ruling and brings to responsibility, but will not hand him over abroad, to the ICC," TASS cited him as saying.

According to the general, "neither al-Bashir nor any other citizen of the country will be handed over to foreign structures."

On April 11, a military coup took place in the country and President Omar al-Bashir was ousted after 30 years in power. The Sudanese army suspended the countrys constitution, dissolved the parliament, government and local authorities and declared a three-month state of emergency in the country. The army also formed a military council to rule the country during an interim period that is expected to last two years.
Russia is ready to help the Council of Europe overcome its crisis, but those who stripped the Russian delegation to PACE of its powers should take the first step, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at his annual meeting with students and professors at the Foreign Ministrys Diplomatic Academy.

Russia's top diplomat noted that this crisis was not created by Russia. "The first and decisive step should be taken by those who, in violation of the statute of the Council of Europe, deprived the Russian delegation to the PACE of all the necessary powers," RIA Novosti cited him as saying.

Lavrov stressed that "voices of those who want to stop the senseless confrontation" of the West and Russia are multiplying both in the Council of Europe and in Europe.

It is being pumped "for the sake of the geopolitical ambitions" of the United States, as well as in the interests of American business, which seeks to replace "Russian energy resources with more expensive American ones, as well as Russian weapons with American arms," the Russian foreign minister said.

Answering the question of Vestnik Kavkaza about how Russia views the fact that PACE adopted a resolution at its April session, in which it called on Russia to form its delegation, as well as pay contribution to the Council of Europe's budget, spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova said that Russia has always wanted to participate actively in the PACE activities.

Zakharova stressed that Russia's participation in the activities of PACE should be based solely on principles of partnership and equality. "Full membership of Russian representatives in the work of PACE implies payment of contributions, as well as work in a format valid for all other representatives of member-countries of the organization. Violation of principles of equality when it comes to Russia also implies that we won't have to pay contributions," she noted.

The spokesperson stressed that the Russian side has repeatedly said that it's ready to work in PACE only as a fullfledged member of the organization. "Presence at meetings without the right to vote and without the right to work out decisions is unacceptable. We want to ensure that our membership is fullfledged. Only in this case Russia will bear its share of obligations, including financial," Zakharova concluded.

The deputy head of the Council of the Russian Diplomats Association, Andrey Baklanov, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that the Council of Europe's resolution does not indicate that European parliamentarians have come to their senses. "I think positive changes in the position of European parliamentarians have only begun to take shape,being connected with their concern about two things: the organization's financial position and a sharp decline in authority in European and world politics. Both things are due to the fact that a very powerful segment of Russian interaction fell out," he explained.

"I would not count on sincerity and balance of MPs now. This is only the beginning of the process. I would not be in a hurry to return there and would require from them not only a willingness to interact with us on an equal footing, but also apologize for their destructive policy," Andrei Baklanov stressed.

Without Russia, the Council of Europe risks ceasing to play any important role in world politics. "The role of Europe in world affairs is diminishing, and the significance of the European Union is declining. I can say it by negotiations with representatives of Asian states. Therefore, I think they need to learn the lessons very clearly. This is a prerequisite for the European Union to start playing clearer and authoritative role," the deputy head of the Council of the Russian Diplomats Association concluded.
Turkey's Foreign Ministry hopes the transition process in Sudan will be conducted peacefully after the removal of Omar al-Bashir from the presidency.

"We hope that this transition process will be conducted peacefully, with a view to meeting the expectations of the Sudanese people and within the framework of constitutional democracy and national consensus," the ministry said in a press release.

"The basic desire of the people of Sudan is the establishment of peace and stability in the country and the adoption of measures which would enable overcoming the economic difficulties," the statement reads.

The Foreign Ministry noted that Sudan's security and stability are crucial for the stability of the region.

"Turkey will continue to stand by the Sudanese people to ensure the country's stability, welfare, and security," Anadolu Agency cited the statement a saying.

Yesterday, the Sudanese military announced the removal of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan since 1989, and the imposition of a two-year "transitional phase".

Defense Minister Awad ibn Auf also announced the imposition of a one-month curfew along with a three-month nationwide state of emergency. He announced the suspension of Sudans Constitution and the dissolution of the Sudanese presidency, parliament, and council of ministers. According to him, a military council would be drawn up to run the countrys affairs during the post-Bashir interim phase.
Our Promise: Welcome to Care2, the world's largest community for good. Here, you'll find over 45 million like-minded people working towards progress, kindness, and lasting impact.

Care2 Stands Against: bigots, racists, bullies, science deniers, misogynists, gun lobbyists, xenophobes, the willfully ignorant, animal abusers, frackers, and other mean people. If you find yourself aligning with any of those folks, you can move along, nothing to see here.

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You are our people. You Care. We Care2.
The State Bank of India (SBI), a leading public sector bank under Govt. of India, has invited online applications from eligible Indian nationals for filling 8,653 vacancies to the post of Junior Associates (Customer Support and Sales) in clerical category through direct recruitment. The online application-cum-registration process towards the same starts from April 12, 2019 and closes on May 03, 2019

CRITERIA DETAILS Name Of The Posts Junior Associates (Clerical) Organisation State Bank of India (SBI) Educational Qualification Graduation Experience Freshers can apply Job Location India Salary Scale Rs. 11,765 to Rs. 31,450 per month Industry Banking Application Start Date April 12, 2019 Application End Date May 3, 2019

Age Criteria And Fees

Candidates interested in applying for the post of Junior Associates through SBI Clerk Recruitment 2019 must have attained 20 years of age as on April 01, 2019 and must not be more than 28 years (Gen/UR), with relaxation (upper age limit) up to 31 years for OBC candidates, 33 years for SC/STs and 38 years for PWD candidates as detailed in the notification.

Candidates must pay a requisite amount of Rs. 750 (GEN/OBC/EWS) as application processing fee and intimation charges through online (Net- Banking/Debit/Credit/ Mobil Wallets, IMPS etc payment gateways) mode only. SC/ST/Ex-SM and PWD candidates are exempted from paying application fee and must only pay Rs. 125 as intimation charges.

Allahabad Bank Invites Applications For 92 Specialist Officer (SO) Vacancies

Category Wise Vacancy Details For SBI

Category No. Of Vacancies Gen/UR 3674 OBC 1966 SC 1361 ST 799 EWS 853 Total 8653

Educational Criteria

Candidates interested in applying for the post of Junior Associates through SBI Clerk Recruitment 2019 must possess a Graduation Degree in any discipline from a recognized University/Institution.

Selection And Pay Scale

The selection of candidates as Junior Associates through SBI Clerk Recruitment 2019 will be done through an online test (preliminary and main examination) of competitive nature, and regional/local language test opted by the candidate.

Candidates selected as Junior Associates will be paid an emolument in the scale of Rs. 11,765 to Rs. 31,450 per month

Bank of Baroda Recruitment 2019 For Managers, AVPs And Other Posts; Apply Before April 24

How To Apply

Candidates applying for the post of Junior Associates through SBI Clerk Recruitment 2019 must submit their applications through online mode only on the official SBI website at https://ibpsonline.ibps.in/sbijascapr19/ on or before May 03, 2019

Register/Apply online here https://ibpsonline.ibps.in/sbijascapr19/

Read the detailed notification about SBI Clerk Recruitment for Junior Associates here https://www.sbi.co.in/webfiles/uploads/files/careers/11042019_SBI_CLERICAL_RECT_ADVERTISEMENT_2019.pdf
A second bomb cyclone blizzard hitting the United States was limiting the movement and processing of corn, soybeans and wheat around the Midwest and Plains on Thursday.

Grain trader Cargill Inc said it was closing three of its grain handling facilities in Minnesota, two in South Dakota and one in Nebraska on Thursday because of the storm. It also was closing a beef processing plant in Colorado.

Rival Archer Daniels Midland Co temporarily closed several grain and edible bean elevators in South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin due to the snow.

The storm was dumping more than a foot of heavy snow and winds were gusting up to 65 miles (105 km) per hour by midday across northeast Colorado north up through northern Wisconsin, the National Weather Service said.

The high winds also were deterring farmers from pulling crops out of their on-farm storage facilities even in areas where local elevators and processors were open, grain dealers said.

Ranchers around the region were scrambling to keep their herds safe from the snow and wind, which was particularly threatening to young calves.

The storm, which comes as many farmers are still cleaning up from severe floods following a similar storm in March, also threatened to delay planting of U.S. corn and soybeans in the coming weeks as it will leave behind saturated fields after the snow melts.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said at a Thursday news conference he had spoken to lawmakers about disaster relief legislation. The Agriculture Department currently has no program to cover the catastrophic losses of grains in storage from the widespread flooding.

Thats not one of those products thats insured once its out of the field, Perdue said. I think those are the kind of considerations we should look to.

The department separately announced on Thursday emergency grazing measures in Iowa to help livestock producers who lost pastures or fences in recent bad weather.

Lawmakers from Nebraska and Iowa jointly announced a disaster relief bill that would allow early withdrawals from retirement accounts and tax deductions, among other measures.
Zurich Insurances Canadian Unit named a new head of Liability, who starts in the position on July 1. Third Point Reinsurance Ltd. hired a veteran industry executive to lead its specialty treaty portfolio.

***

Marco Royer is Zurich Canadas new head of Liability.

Royer will be responsible for leading the market-facing underwriting teams in Zurich Canadas Liability portfolio, including casualty, energy casualty, construction liability, environmental liability and commercial automobile. Hell also oversee Zurich Canadas Alternate Risk Transfer team and oversee the development and growth of the healthcare and public sector industry verticals. As well, Royer will be tasked with working closely with other Zurich Canada executives to coordinate effective execution of portfolio management, distribution management, risk services and claims management.

Royer will be a member of the Zurich Canada executive team and report to Zurich Canada CEO Saad Mered. His first day at Zurich will be July 1.

Royer is a 30-year insurance industry veteran, with particular experience in the European and Canadian insurance marketplaces. He has a strong technical casualty underwriting background and has increasing executive responsibilities, including 18 years at Gen Re, where he led teams in Paris, London and Montreal. Following Gen Re, he joined Aon Benfield as vice president and casualty specialist, then Quebec regional manager and head of facultative operations, reporting directly to the CEO.

In his most recent position at Aon Benfield, Royer was the head of the Canadian-London team, responsible for all Canadian reinsurance placement in the London market.

***

Third Point Reinsurance Ltd. hired Tracey Gibbons to lead its specialty treaty portfolio.

The portfolio will initially include workers compensation catastrophe, PA/Life catastrophe and other niche lines of business including, but not limited to, contingency and political violence. Gibbons reports to Dan Malloy, chief executive officer of Third Point Re Company Ltd., the companys Bermuda-based operating subsidiary.

Gibbons has over 32 years experience. She was most recently at Allied World Assurance Company as its senior vice president of Specialty Reinsurance. Before joining AWAC in 2003, she was senior vice president at Overseas Partners, where she was instrumental in setting up the companys U.S. operation. Gibbons is a fellow of the Chartered Insurance Institute, an associate in Risk Management and a member of the Institute of Directors.

Sources: Zurich Canada, Third Point Re
Russian-Azerbaijani relations are developing dynamically in many areas, Chairperson of Federation Council of Russias Federal Assembly Valentina Matviyenko said following the talks with President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza reported.

"Today, President Ilham Aliyev once again stressed that Azerbaijan is the most reliable partner of Russia, and I agree with him that the high level of our relations must be supported by deeds, especially since we have achieved good results in the trade-economic, energy and humanitarian spheres", she said in the first place.

"Last September, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev made an official visit to Russia. This is an important event in our bilateral relations. During this visit, 15 important documents were signed, which created the prospect for expanding our cooperation until 2024. It is important that the Russian-Azerbaijani ties are mutually beneficial, based on mutual respect, friendship and mutual consideration of interests. This creates exemplary mutually beneficial partnership relations for other states that have reached the level of strategic partners," the chairperson of Federation Council of Russias Federal Assembly noted.

Speaking about the development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia in the humanitarian sphere, Matviyenko noted that First Vice-President of Azerbaijan Mehriban Aliyeva and the Heydar Aliyev Foundation make huge contribution to the development of relations in this sphere.

Speaking about the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, she stated that there is no military solution to the conflict. "It can be settled by only peaceful, diplomatic means. As a mediator, Russia is doing everything to find a compromise. Russia's position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is intelligible and consistent. We discussed this issue at a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, it is extremely important to find a solution to the conflict, it was would be a great political and diplomatic success," the chairperson of the Federation Council concluded.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Soyia Ellison, soyia.ellison@cartercenter.org

Read the brief 

ATLANTA In advance of International Womens Day on March 8, a Carter Center brief highlights the need for Kenyas Parliament to take action to facilitate womens active and effective participation in civic and political affairs. While Kenyas 2010 Constitution introduced progressive provisions to support womens inclusion in elected and appointed bodies, Parliament has failed to pass the necessary implementing legislation to ensure more balanced gender representation at the national level.

The Carter Center report released today analyzes the legal status of Kenyas two-thirds gender quota. It urges lawmakers to prioritize the passage of legislation required by Kenyas Constitution to implement the gender quota and to provide sufficient resources and an enabling environment for constitutional bodies and commissions to enforce the gender quota requirements.

The Carter Center observed Kenyas 2017 general election and found that women faced serious challenges in running for elective office. While they made some gains, the current National Assembly and Senate fall short of the countrys constitutional provisions that mandate no more than two-thirds of the members of all elected and appointed public bodies shall be of the same gender. In court cases challenging the constitutionality of Kenyas parliamentary makeup, the High Court ruled that Parliament should pass implementing legislation to progressively meet these goals or risk dissolution. Legislation to implement these provisions has failed twice in the past six months, after Parliament did not reach quorum.

The Carter Center in Kenya:

The Carter Centers international election observation mission monitored key parts of the electoral process from April through November 2017. The Center followed up its mission with the deployment of experts from February to August 2018 to conduct further activities focused on information and communications technology, legal reform, and womens and youth participation.

Resources

Gender Quota Legal Brief (PDF) 

###

"Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope."

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.
Photo: The Canadian Press Actors Johnny Depp, left, and Amber Heard arrive for the European premiere of their film, "The Rum Diary," in London.

Actress Amber Heard asked a judge Thursday to dismiss a $50 million defamation lawsuit her ex-husband Johnny Depp filed over an op-ed about domestic violence she wrote in The Washington Post.

In the motion filed in the Circuit Court of Fairfax, Virginia, Heard reiterates her allegations that Depp abused her before and during their marriage and includes exhibits such as photos of her with bruises on her face and scars on her arms, images of damage she says Depp did to their home, screenshots of text messages describing the incidents at the time, and excerpts of her divorce deposition describing domestic abuse.

"Johnny Depp physically and verbally abused Amber Heard," her attorney Eric George said in a statement. "Since their divorce, Mr. Depp has continued to publically harass Ms. Heard, and attempted to gaslight the world by denying his abuse. It is long past time for Mr. Depp's despicable conduct to end."

Depp's lawsuit, filed last month, called the ongoing allegations of domestic abuse "categorically and demonstrably false."

"They were part of an elaborate hoax to generate positive publicity for Ms. Heard and advance her career," the lawsuit states, claiming that "she is the perpetrator."

Depp's attorney, Adam Waldman, said he was reviewing the new filing. He said previously that he and Depp looked forward to providing evidence that would clear Depp's name.

The Post piece by Heard, published in December, does not mention Depp by name or describe any incidents, but it discusses the societal plight of those who speak up about domestic abuse.

"I spoke up against sexual violence  and faced our culture's wrath," the 32-year-old actress wrote, adding that she felt as though she was "on trial in the court of public opinion."

But Depp's lawsuit says it was clear Heard was talking about him, and that it worsened the damage the allegations had already done to his career.

The lawsuit states Depp, 55, has suffered financial losses because of the accusations, including being dropped from his role as Capt. Jack Sparrow in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" films.

Heard's lawyers also argued that the lawsuit should be moved to Los Angeles because that's where the relevant events took place.

Heard first accused Depp of domestic violence in May 2016, the year after they were married. They were divorced in 2017.

The actress, whose credits include "Aquaman" and "Justice League," met Depp on the set of their 2011 film "The Rum Diary."
The Yerevan Court of General Jurisdiction denied the appeal by the legal defense team of Armenias former President Robert Kocharyan to terminate criminal proceedings against him on the basis of presidential immunity.

As reported earlier, the Criminal Court of Appeal denied the appeal by Kocharyans attorneys, and of the extension of his custody period for two more months, News.am recalls.

Kocharyan is charged with toppling constitutional order in collusion with other persons in 2008 March. He was detained on July 26, 2018 for two months in pre-trial detention pending investigation. However, he was released from custody after the Court of Appeals ruled that he could not be prosecuted for the 2008 March 1 post-election violence. That ruling was denounced by the Special Investigative Service, which described it as illegal, saying that the Court of Appeals "overstepped the bounds of its authority." In December, he was arrested again. On March 15, Kocharyan's custody was extended for another 2 months.
Lee Universitys Department of Language and Literature hosted the eighth annual Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Conference on Latin American and Iberian Studies. The conference included panel presentations given by students from various colleges and universities, poster presentations given by Lee students, a photo gallery presented by Colombian photographer Luis Fernando Jaimes, and a lecture led by Lee graduate Guilherme Von Streber.

I am very glad this conference is happening on a yearly basis, as it touches on highly relevant topics related to the Latin American and Iberian communities that are pertinent to the globalized world in which we live today, said Mr. Von Streber.

Panel presentations were given by 28 different students from 11 different colleges and universities, including Columbia University, Wofford College, Western Kentucky University, Northern Kentucky University, Union University, and Universidad de Monterrey, Mexico. The presentations covered a variety of compelling topics including immigration, second language acquisition, religion, social conflict, and art.

Twenty students of Dr. Carmen Guerrero, assistant professor of Spanish at Lee, delivered poster presentations about art, music, history, and politics in Latin America. The students included Timothy Bildeshi, Rebecca Courtney, Dawson Davis, and Dillon Wheeler.

For the first time, the conference hosted a guest artist, Colombian photographer Mr. Jaimes. As a well-known artist, Mr. Jaimes captures photographs that reveal the daily routines, political and social situations, and cultural issues of their subjects. His work focuses on common people, needs in the community, beauty in nature, emotions, and social justice.

I want to thank everybody who made my photo gallery possible, said Mr. Jaimes. These cross-cultural spaces allow us to break barriers, open doors to critical thinking, and construct knowledge. Culture, literature, and arts are forms of human expression that allow us to grow and find our own identity.

Mr. Von Streber offered the plenary lecture for the conference. While at Lee, he received the 2015 Crosby Scholarship and the 2017 Charles Paul Conn Award. Mr. Von Streber is now pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy in interdisciplinary studies at Emory University. His research interests include language and globalization, language ideologies, and language policy, especially in border territories.

The highlight of the conference to me was the Q & A session in which we all engaged in a dialogue related to the topic I proposed, said Mr. Von Streber. This means to me that the topic was a generative one, and I hope it sparked an interest towards Democratically Engaged Learning and Scholarship that will continue to grow in all participants at the conference.

For more information about the conference, visit webpages.leeu.edu/uclasp/.




Cleveland State Community College held a ceremony for students from Bradley Central and Walker Valley High Schools who successfully passed the Siemens Mechatronics Systems Certification Program Level 1 certification. Students take the first four of 10 mechatronics courses in the first semester to be prepared for the Level 1 certification.

Cleveland States Advanced Technologies department is a partner school with the SMSCP, a globally recognized technology leader in mechatronic engineering.

Mechatronics is a blend of mechanical, electrical and computerized technologies forming a complex system. CSCC offers an Associate of Applied Science degree in advanced integrated industrial technology, or mechatronics. The training is a blend of precision engineering, control theory, computer science, mathematics and sensory technology. Mechatronics engineers and technicians work in most advanced manufacturing industries and fields.

This certification was made possible through the MechaCON Grant. Cleveland State Community College was one of four Tennessee community colleges that received a $250,000 state grant to expand its Middle College Mechatronics Program. The grant was funded by a $1 million appropriation in the 2018-2019 state budget proposed by Governor Bill Haslam and approved by the Tennessee General Assembly.

This grant is a great opportunity for students to complete their Level 1 certification, stated Dr. Tim Wilson, Advanced Technologies Department chair. They can even complete a mechatronics technology certificate if their schedule allows, and we will award them 12 credit hours towards their associate degree.

Because high school students dont qualify for college scholarship assistance like Tennessee Promise and Hope Scholarships until they earn their high school diplomas, most of the grants will pay the costs of tuition, fees, textbooks and materials for the students who enroll in the colleges Middle College Mechatronics programs.

The Mechatronics courses required in the Cleveland State Mechatronics Level I Certificate and Mechatronics Technology A.A.S. are taught by Siemens Mechatronics System certification Program Level I and II instructors. Cleveland State has invested in training two Level 1 and two Level 2 instructors allowing the college to be a SMSCP partner school. This allows Cleveland State to partner with high schools to provide instruction, instructor oversight and certification training.

CSCC is one of few community colleges who are partners with the Siemens Mechatronics Systems Certification Program whereas CSCC can offer globally-recognized certifications on top of academic certificates and degrees. Students can receive both Level 1 and 2 training at CSCC and then transfer to Middle Tennessee State University or the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to receive their Level 3 training by earning their bachelors degrees.

Along with this program, the Mechatronics Honors Institute brings further opportunities for students. Implemented this past year, the MHI blends classroom instruction with on-site manufacturing experience at various industry partner sites. Classes such as Electrical Components, Mechanical Components & Electric Motors, Electro-Pneumatic & Hydraulic Control, and Digital Fundamentals and PLCs are offered, among numerous other courses geared toward a career in the manufacturing industry. Upon completion of the program, graduates will earn an Associate of Applied Science degree in Mechatronics Technology.

According to Dr. Wilson, CSCCs advanced technologies program has experienced an 87 percent growth which he credits to strong programs, state of the art hands-on equipment and stellar faculty.

Dr. Wilson added that McMinn Central, Polk and Cleveland High Schools will be taking their Level 1 SMSCP exams the end of the spring semester.

For more information on CSCCs advanced technologies department, contact Dr. Wilson at 473-2247 or email him at twilson03@clevelandstatecc.edu.
On Thursday, Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke launched the Council Against Hate, which proposed several initial recommendations for how they can begin to limit the negative impact of hate and violent extremism in our region.

Those recommendations were included in a report from the Councils Steering Committee, a diverse group of community leaders, law enforcement members, and activists. Recommendations range from developing stronger policies against hate crimes, engaging young people and educators, involving the business community, and improving the communitys media literacy around hate speech and radicalization.

We convened the first meeting of the Council Against Hate several months ago, when America seemed gripped by a fever of hate crimes and violent extremism, said Alison Lebovitz, Council Against Hate co-chair. In the time since then, weve seen only more incidents that underscore the urgency behind this work. We owe it to future generations to address the root causes of this behavior.

Hate speech and violent extremism are global problems, but the solutions can begin at the local level and that's what the Council Against Hate is all about, Mayor Berke said. While law enforcement agencies work tirelessly to keep the public safe from violence, a city of creators will look for new ways to combat hatred by building relationships in every corner of our community.

Former Charlottesville, Va., Mayor Michael Signer joined Mayor Berke and the council for a discussion about what cities can do to counter hate.

Mayor Berke and the Council Against Hate have invited members of the community to join one of their seven Action Teams.
The Lee University School of Music will present its annual Masterworks concert on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the Conn Center. This years program, Operas Greatest Hits, will include a variety of arias, ensembles, and choruses. The performance will be conducted by Robert Bernhardt, artist-in-residence at Lee and director of Lee's Symphony Orchestra, along with several of Lees graduate conducting students.

The concert will feature student and faculty soloists from Opera Theater and will also feature Choral Union, Chorale, and the Symphony Orchestra. The ensembles will perform excerpts from many well-known and popular operas, such as Mozart's The Magic Flute, Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado, Verdi's La Traviata, and even the Bridal Chorus from Wagner's Lohengrin.

I am so delighted to be working with students and faculty in this concert, said Mr. Bernhardt. As a devoted lover of opera and great singing, for me this is a joyful evening of beautiful music among friends. Its intended as much for opera lovers as it is for those whove never been to an opera, and even for those who think they dont like opera. I guarantee that every member of the audience will know the majority of these great melodies, even if they dont know where they came from, and we want it to be fun, informal, and entertaining."

The evening will also include the announcement of Lee University's recipient of the Presser Scholarship, an annual award given to students who demonstrate outstanding accomplishments in music performance at accredited colleges and universities across the country.

Lee University Choral Union is a blend of both music and non-music majors, and it specializes in choral music and major masterworks.

Lee University Chorale is an ensemble of vocalists who are selected by audition. An emphasis is placed on the diversity and breadth of traditional choral literature.

Lee University Opera Theater is an ensemble of vocalists who are selected by audition. They perform one major opera a year, and a selection of opera scenes each semester.

The Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble of select instrumentalists, performs one major concert each semester. Its musicians frequently perform in opera, choral, and other concerts on campus.

Mr. Bernhardt joined Lee's School of Music in the fall of 2011. He also serves as music director emeritus and principal pops conductor of the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera (CSO) and principal pops conductor of the Louisville Orchestra and Grand Rapids Symphony. He is a frequent guest conductor for the Boston Pops and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra.

The concert is free, non-ticketed, and open to the public.

For more information, contact the School of Music at 614-8240 or music@leeuniversity.edu.
Dr. William Woolfitt, associate professor of creative writing at Lee, was awarded the Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry for his book, "Spring Up Everlasting."

The Adrienne Bond Award for Poetry is one of several awards given annually by Mercer University Press. It is awarded to the manuscript that best uses poetic language to convey the vision of the author. Award winners receive contracts for their book's publication in the summer of the following year.

"Set in Appalachia, Costa Rica, Afghanistan, Newfoundland, Mali, and elsewhere, 'Spring Up Everlasting' attempts to listen to and learn from the stories of people who have resisted the destruction and desecration of their environments, families, and homes," said Dr. Woolfitt.

"Farmers, glassworkers, an elk hunter, Mary of Bethany, and the jazz musician Charles Mingus are among the witnesses gathered in the book," continued Dr. Woolfitt. "These poems turn to the hope that we will be braced by the mysteries of God, that the Spirit will move in our broken lives and the mess of our world and spring up everlasting."

Dr. Woolfitt is the author of two poetry collections: "Beauty Strip," winner of the Texas Review Breakthrough poetry contest, and "Charles of the Desert," a biographical sequence about Charles de Foucauld, a French hermit-missionary to Algeria. Dr. Woolfitt's fiction chapbook, "The Boy with Fire in His Mouth," won first place in the Epiphany Editions contest judged by Darin Strauss. Dr. Woolfitt has also had numerous poems and short stories published in literary journals.

Dr. Woolfitt has received the Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writer's Conference and two Denny C. Plattner Awards from Appalachian Heritage. He edits Speaking of Marvels, a blog that features interviews with poets and prose writers.

Dr. Woolfitt sponsors Lee's literary journal, Lee Review, and serves on the board for the university's annual Writer's Festival. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy and Master of Fine Arts from Pennsylvania State University, a Master of Arts from Hollins University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Fairmont State University.

For more information about Woolfitt or his writing, visit www.williamwoolfitt.com.
I was absolutely staggered to learn the much-maligned United Auto Workers Union plans to hold an election in less than three weeks to represent Chattanoogas Volkswagen Assembly plant. I fully believe such an effort, if successful, would be the worst economic tragedy to ever befall us in Southeast Tennessee and would negate all that is right and good in our efforts to be the best we can possibly be in todays very favorable work climate.

I believe any Volkswagen employee, if equipped with the truth, would in no way want any association with the UAW because  bottom line -- all the union wants is money. Quick math: In 2018 the UAW lost 35,000 members, according to U.S. Department of Labor statistics. Todays 395,703 members are a nine percent decrease over 430,871 members it had in 2017.

But the nightmare is that there are an estimated 700,000 former UAW members who are retired and receive UAW pensions. Pensioners dont put any money in, they just take it out. And when you realize that just 15 years ago there were 701,000 UAW members, the pension burden will only grow while membership advantages are  in stark reality -- virtually nil.

The more immediate problem is that General Motors is shuttering four manufacturing plants right now. The most noticeable is Lordstown, Ohio, where 1,700 union members no longer have jobs or, far bigger, any income, other than that UASW pension check. GM puts the blame squarely on the UAW and so does Donald Trump. Listen to what he just said publicly: I had these union leaders in the White House a few months ago, the biggest guys  nice guys. But they are Democrats, no matter what."

Then the President added, I sort of dont want to meet these guys. I want to deal with members of the union  not the heads of the union. The heads of the union are not honest people  yes, Trump said that  they are not honest and they ought to lower your dues, by the way  you are paying too much.

Last week Alphons Iacobelli, an ex-Fiat Chrysler vice president, was sentenced to 5 1/2 years in prison as the eighth member of UAW-Fiat management caught in an ever-widening money-laundering scandal. According to FBI sources, UAW-favored executives at Ford and General Motors are now being targeted, this based on informants working with the FBI in hopes of lesser sentencing, and what has been discovered, millions of dollars was passed through fake charities.

The Detroit Free Press wrote of Iacobelli and the UAW: "E-Fiat Chrysler executive Alphons Iacobelli was sentenced to 5 years in prison for his role in a $4.5-million scheme that steered training money meant for blue-collar workers to UAW officials and himself instead. Among the perks that Iacobelli and others lavished themselves with  using stolen money  were a Ferarri, $38,000 Mont Blanc pens, trips and house renovations."

This summer the UAW will go into bargaining talks with The Big Three  Ford, GM, and Chrysler  and already the UAW has raised its strike pay, leaving no doubt the upcoming talks will be contentious at best. The union just raised weekly strike pay to $250 per week from the current level of $200 per week and, in January 2020, it will go to $275.

Due to a strong anti-union sentiment in the South, the UAW was dealt a stinging loss in Mississippi when in August 2017, the union was voted down. According to the NLRB, employees at Nissan voted 2,244 against unionization, with 1,307 voting in favor. And this is no trend  the UAW is not wanted anywhere.

The biggest reason for the UAWs defeat at the Canton, MS, plant was that the employees were happy with Nissans management. The UAW had little to offer while charging a card-carrying union member $2 per day for representation. For what? They (UAW) cant do anything for us. one Nissan member said on camera. And she is right.

Several weeks ago, during an employee meeting at the VW plant, it was announced new hires will now receive $16 per hour with a top-out of $23.50." A VW spokesperson explained, Production wage progression will increase $.50 at every level. Once an employee has been with VW for six months, they will be eligible to make $17 an hour. Then, after two years with the automaker, employees can make $19.70 an hour.

Finally, the fact the union election will be held so quickly  within weeks -- raises some eyebrows. A key to any unions success is seniority, where a union member for several years can roll a union member with less experience. With GM closing Lordstown, the UAW needs to help the 1,700 members find other jobs. VW workers cant win in a seniority scenario and with trust a very viable issue, the face of the Chattanooga plant could change rather quickly. Who at VW could possibly want that?

Worse, it has been reported GM could close up to five plants in North America, including in Detroit-Hamtramck and Warren, as part of an overhaul of its North American operations in 2019. Why? The cuts would contribute to $6 billion in cash savings by 2020, including $4.5 billion in cost reductions and $1.5 billion in lower capital expenditures. But analysts say that would eliminate 14,000 staff and factory jobs. The bottom line? Any VW worker could be jeopardized by aligning with the UAW because gloom-and-doom may not happen quick; but it will happen.

The Chattanooga plant is adding a new model. If you have a steady heartbeat and can pass a drug screen, you have a chance to become part of a great team and the UAW doesnt have anything to do with it. Thats why unions are going belly up. With our economy so rich, why would anyone alive believe any union  pitting management against work force -- could replace the camaraderie now in place?

You want the truth?

* * *

(Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp said on Thursday it will invest $749 million in five U.S. plants and add 586 jobs as it boosts engine production capacity and adds new hybrid models to its lineup.

Toyota said it will invest $288 million in Alabama to increase annual engine capacity from 670,000 to 900,000 by the end of 2021 and will add new 4-cylinder and V6 engine lines. It will also invest $238 million in a Kentucky plant to build hybrid versions of the Toyota RAV4 and Lexus ES 300h.

Toyota announced last year it would jointly build a new $1.6 billion plant with Mazda Motor Corp in Alabama.

Toyota said it will exceed a 2017 pledge to invest $10 billion over five years with a new commitment to reach nearly $13 billion over the same period, including Thursdays announcement.

* * *

More simply put, if VW votes for a devils pact with the United Auto Workers in three weeks, there aint enough granite to make the tombstones in this country alone.

And thats what the UAW doesnt want a soul to know at Volkswagen.

royexum@aol.com
As a student at Northside Junior high, my civics teacher, Mrs. May K. Smith had us compare democracy to communism. That was when I first leaned about the tragic failures of communism and the successes of capitalism.

This Green New Deal is actually just another approach to communism. Born out of class envy and nourished in ignorance, its the same old mendacity thats failed repeatedly hiding behind the guise of fairness. Even major union leaders oppose it saying it would lead many into poverty. Consider Venezuela where ten years ago people were earning a decent living but are now living in darkness, near starvation and desperate to leave.



Liberals say socialism works in California.Thats not true. California symbiotically interacts with 49 other states which actually subsidize them at times. Californias health care system has been funded by 70 percent by the federal government (US Bureau of the Census State and Local Finance, historic tables, 1984-2018). That likely wont continue because of a cap of $10,000 on mortgage deductions and a cap on state income tax deductions. In the past those of us who didnt have massive walled estates couldnt take those big right-offs. Both changes are causing Californians to leave for states with lower taxes and booming economies.

Currently California is begging the federal government for funding for their high-speed rail system. One of the cornerstones of the so-called Deal is the replacement of planes and cars with these rail lines. Californias leftist governor recently revealed the high speed line they are planning has no path for the line to go. In other words, give us tax money for a train to no where. I couldnt think of a better motto for the New Green Deal.

Another of the Deals biggest lies is that everything will run on electricity. Have you wondered how they will produce electricity with no fossil fuels which are to be eliminated under the Deal? Consider Spotsylvania County, Va. Six thousand, three hundred fifty acres of woodlands are being clear-cut to make way for massive solar panel farms. Havent lefties lectured us for decades on how clear-cutting dangerously alters ecosystems? But the Green Deal could require much, much more clear-cutting. Again for them its okay especially if they can hide it. This is not conservation. Maybe thats why Patrick Moore, co-founder of Green Peace, calls it completely crazy.

Once there were people who claimed they could control the weather. Today we have modern versions of the rain-makers like one who calls herself The Boss. Last year she was mixing adult beverages. This year shes an economic and scientific expert on everything from climate change to spending over $30 trillion on Medicare for all. Recently she led a move to block Amazon from locating in Queens, N.Y. She opposed the state and city giving $3 billion in tax incentives for the corporation to locate there. Apparently she thought $3 billion was just lying around which should be spent on her social projects. In reality, the estimated $12 billion in revenue from Amazon sales she stopped cold could have lowered NY taxes for working people including the 25,000 Amazon workers the state wont have now.

Daily she says something crazier than the day before and the leftist media promotes her. On an MSNBC Town Hall she was boasting about not resorting to name calling like her enemies whom she says are white supremacists and xenophobic. This time her ignorance was of history when she said they had to amend the Constitution to make sure Roosevelt didnt get re-elected. FDR was dead when the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential terms was passed. No one on the show corrected her probably because they didnt know it either. Rather its all about ranting the injustice narrative and weve seen they dont let the truth get in the way of their facts. Within a few days of that show The Boss was proudly proclaiming the migrants were leaving Central American countries because of climate change.

Shes not alone. Theres Beto (pronounced Bay-toe) from El Paso. Nervously flapping and bobbing, Bay-toe jumps on car hoods and lunch counters to rant against capitalism and climate change. Someone should ask The Boss and Bay-toe if capitalism is so unjust, why arent the migrant caravans going to socialist Venezuela?

Theyre now tossing around the crazy myth that we only have 12 years left on the planet? Really? Gore said in 2006 the polar ice caps would melt in 10 years. Notice how they never start that Apocalyptic Clock? The hot air is really from their crazy talk but we shouldnt just laugh them off.

Socialist Bernie Sanders is the prototype of Alternate Reality who lectures us on the injustice of capitalism. Thats from a millionaire who now flies around in private jets and owns four homes. People in Russia didnt take the Bolsheviks seriously. The model for Marxism takes place in incremental stages. Lenin said the goal of socialism is communism. We should ask old wealthy Bernie if thats true.

We should carefully consider what they say. Recently Senator Kamala Harris was asked how she proposes to pay for all this free stuff they promise. She said, its not about the cost. There it is! They have no plan to pay for it, just empty promises hiding their real goals: statism, regulation and control-just what Lenin said a hundred years ago in Russia. That is what we should fear, not Trumps wall.

Im not part of any vast conspiracy as Trump-haters might say. But I smell a con job. I know history and understand civics. So tell those who gleefully admire AOC, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, Che Guevara and the rest of these Marxists, that we oppose any plan which leads nations to poverty. Tell them system failure and relegate their New Green Deal to the same end as Hillarys fizzled fireworks display on election night.

Ralph Miller






Lee University School of Music sent 21 students to the National Association of Teachers of Singing mid-south vocal competition at the University of Northern Kentucky.

Lee voice faculty Dr. Lenena Brezna, Tony Deaton, Dr. Andrea Dismukes, Dayne Frost, and Cynthia Johnson also attended and served as judges. The professors are current NATS members and the ones who select and prepare their individual students for the audition and competition.

My colleagues and I are committed to this invaluable experience for our students each year, said Dr. Dismukes, NATS trip organizer. Our goal is to move them closer to their full potential and to open their eyes to the greater meaning behind studying voice at Lee.

The event included 354 voice students from Tennessee and Kentucky colleges and universities. Three Lee faculty pianists, Dr. ChoEun Lee, Mary Beth Wickes, and Amy Wu, also went to perform with the Lee students at three levels of competition and in nine categories.

Twelve Lee students advanced to the semi-finals, and six went on to place in the finals. According to Dr. Dismukes, the finals concert was four and a half hours long, ranging from high school to doctoral level students singing everything from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Verdi.

John Mburu, winner of last years NATS competition, won first place in the Senior Mens category. Libby Clark won second place in the Junior Womens category, and Gabbi Flannery won third place in the Upper College Music Theater Womens category.

Thalia St. Hubert placed in the Top 5 finalist Freshman Women category, Riley Hooper placed in the Top 5 finalist Freshman Men, and Christian Edwards placed in the Top 5 finalist for Sophomore Men category.

I believe our students were challenged, but also inspired by the performances they experienced, said Dr. Dismukes. We are so grateful that our students had the opportunity to participate in this artistic, educational, and life-altering event.

NATS is the largest professional association of teachers of singing in the world, with more than 7,000 members in the United States, Canada, and nearly 30 other countries. Its mission is to encourage the highest standards of the vocal art and ethical principles in the teaching of singing and to promote vocal education and research at all levels.

For more information about NATS, visit www.nats.org.



For more information about Lee Universitys School of Music, visit http://leeuniversity.edu/academics/music/.






String Theory, in partnership with Lee University and the Hunter Museum of American Art, will conclude its 10th anniversary season with a concert featuring cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, along with pianist Gloria Chien. The concert will take place on Tuesday, April 23, at 6:30 p.m. at the Hunter Museum of American Art.

String Theory was founded in 2009 by Dr. Chien with the mission of exposing new audiences to chamber music, invigorating the local classical music scene, and cultivating a future generation of music lovers.

The upcoming concert will include Mendelssohns Cello Sonata No. 2 in D and Stravinskys Rite of Spring.

As a cello and piano duo, Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han have received Musical Americas Musicians of the Year Award, one of the highest honors granted by the music industry. Over the past year, the duo has performed in prestigious venues and concert series throughout the United States, Mexico, Canada, Asia, and Europe. Additionally, Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han collaborated with violinist Philip Setzer to perform the complete cycle of Beethovens piano trios and completed the filming of a two-part television feature set to air on PBS stations soon.

They are the founders and artistic directors of Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival and institute in Silicon Valley currently in its 16th season. Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han are currently in their third term as artistic directors of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. They also serve as artistic co-directors of Chamber Music Today, a festival held annually in Seoul, South Korea.

Demonstrating their passion for furthering the careers of young artists, Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han have participated in a variety of music education initiatives. For a number of years, the duo taught with the late Isaac Stern at Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Music Center. At the Aspen Music Festival, they started a chamber music studio. In collaboration with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the duo created Chamber Music Encounters. Mr. Finckel and Ms. Han also direct the LG Chamber Music School, which works with dozens of musicians in Korea each year. Finckel also works as professor of cello at The Juilliard School and serves as artist-in-residence at Stony Brook University.

Dr. Chien, selected by the Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year,  who appears to excel in everything, made her orchestral debut at age 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Recently, she has performed at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Kissingen Sommer Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. Chien frequently performs with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. She is a prize winner of the World Piano Competition, Harvard Musical Association Award, and the San Antonio International Piano Competition.

Dr. Chien currently serves as the director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, the co-artistic director of the Lake Champlain Music Festival, and the co-artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest. She is an artist-in-residence at Lee University, as well as a Steinway Artist.

For more information on String Theory or to purchase tickets, call 414-2525 or visit //stringtheorymusic.org/.


On Sunday, April 28, at 2 p.m., Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park will present a one-hour program highlighting the life of Elias Boudinot. He was the first editor of the Cherokee Phoenix, a newspaper printed in both Cherokee and English through the early 1800s, as well as an ardent supporter of Cherokee removal to the west.

This program will begin at the Browns Ferry Federal Road trailhead located on Moccasin Bend, 707 Moccasin Bend Road in Chattanooga. Special Event signs will also help direct participants from Manufacturers Road to the trailhead.



Mr. Boudinot was born with the given name Gallegina Watie in 1802. He was raised in the Cherokee

Nation before moving to Connecticut to finish his education at the Foreign Mission School for children

from American Indian cultures. Upon return to the Cherokee nation, he perceived the resolve of the

United States government to acquire remaining Cherokee land. This prompted Mr. Boudinot to advocate for Cherokee to voluntarily forfeit their land before they were forced to do so.



Mr. Boudinot straddled two cultures and was forced to choose a side during one of the most tumultuous times of American Indian relations with the United States. His decision to support the sale of Cherokee lands to the United States, the catalyst for the Trail of Tears, led to his move to the west and his subsequent death at the hands of anti-Treaty Cherokee in 1839.



For more information about upcoming programs at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military

Park, please contact the Lookout Mountain Visitor Center at 423-821-7786, the Chickamauga

Battlefield Visitor Center at 706-866-9241, or visit the parks website at www.nps.gov/chch.
The Chattanooga Police Department (CPD) K9 Unit will host the United States Police Canine Association (USPCA) Region 22 Field Trials from Sunday through Thursday.

The USPCA is the nation's oldest and largest Police K9 organization. The organization certifies police dogs in a number of categories including General Patrol Dog use and Narcotic Detection which will be the two areas contested during the Field Trials in Chattanooga. The USPCA breaks down the United States into various regions that participate and hold field trials each year.

The K9 teams meeting top scores at the field trials in Chattanooga are invited to attend the National Police Dog Field Trials where a national champion is selected.



CPD expects 30 - 40 teams from Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee to participate in the field trials.
When it comes to trying your hand at online dating, the last thing you want is for your boss to get involved and try to help you pick your next date. That is usually the case unless of course, your boss is Bethenny Frankel from The Real Housewives of New York City.

Bethenny Frankel |Photo by Mike Coppola/WireImage

Frankel and her assistant were stuck on a flight. So she decided to help her assistant decide if she should wipe left or right on a dating app. Her assistant was a very good sport, posting to Frankels Instagram story. I live for doing my assistants online dating its a secret talent, Frankel wrote.

As she digs through her willing assistants phone, Frankel offers tidbits of advice that not only her assistant can abide by, but helpful for just about anyone.

Image is everything

First, the worst picture is what they really look like, Frankel says swiping through her assistants app. Andthis is my job, Frankels assistant says as Frankel gives one guy a heart.

When it comes to responding, be cute, Frankel says. Dont be average, be a little ballsy, she adds. Sometimes you dont know what to say so how about cheers to the freaking weekend. Nobody wants to hear how busy you are or how important you are. She re-assures her assistant that shes great at this stuff.

Also, if they punctuate religion in their profile, know that they are going to really be into it. So if you are not into religion and that would bother you, not for you, she says.

What about some possible deal breakers?

Being a dog lover (or not) can also make or break a relationship. Frankel observes that one guy wrote that dates must love dogs. So they might sleep in bed with their dog, she remarks. Or they might have a 97-pound dog.

She comes across autumn man in another photo. If someone is wearing a vest, holding a pumpkin, then they are that guy that wears a vest and holds a pumpkin, she observes.

Also, if a man posts a picture with his hands around another woman. And its not his mother, they either want to do a three-way or they are an idiot because they are posting a picture of their hands around a woman, she says. Another big no is the guy who posts a picture with his ex-wife and just blurs out her face. No, just no.

What about

On the flip side, a guy who posts awkward photos may be a good sign. It may mean hes not a narcissist, Frankel says. Hes not obsessed with how to filter and take pictures of himself.

She liked a guy hanging off a building. This is who you should be sleeping with, Frankel tells her assistant. He posted he went to Italy on a date got a response of, I can do that too, Frankel said. Then she wrote, How about we go to Greece for our first date?

So will Frankels assistant go on a date with building man who went to Italy on a date? Hopefully, Frankel will provide an update, especially if they do go to Greece.

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Earlier this week, Kensington Palace announced Prince Harry and Meghan Markles plans to keep their babys arrival under wraps. That means, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex most likely wont stand on the steps of the Lindo Wing at St Marys Hospital (or wherever Meghan Markle decides to give birth) for a traditional photocall. It also means that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle could have already had their baby  or, at least thats what some believe.



The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very grateful for the goodwill they have received from people throughout the United Kingdom and around the world as they prepare to welcome their baby, Kensington Palace said in the statement. Their royal highnesses have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private. The Duke and Duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family, they added.



Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Did Prince Harry and Meghan Markle already have their baby?



On April 1st, an Australian publication, New Idea published reports suggesting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex might have already welcomed their first born child into the world. Theres all sorts of talk in royal circles that Meghan and Harry have already had the baby, an unnamed royal source dished to the magazine. No one would be surprised if they had  after all, theyre such a private couple and have never done anything by the books. They couldve had the baby and tucked themselves away in private, away from the spotlight  that wouldnt surprise anyone.



The publication confirms that many speculated Meghan Markles spring due date to be in late April or early May. But, they also noted that some believe the Duchess of Sussex was due much earlier, in late March.



While these reports arent entirely inaccurate  the palace did confirm that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will keep to themselves after their babys arrival  the claims dont really add up.



Prince Harry is expected to go on paternity leave following the birth of his firstborn. But, on Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussexs Instagram account shared a photo of Prince Harry on a royal engagement in Dagenham. Additionally, he attended the premiere of Our Plant at the Natural History Museum with his father, Prince Charles and brother, Prince William last week.



On top of that, these early April reports surfaced before Kensington Palaces confirmation of Meghan Markles birth plan. Which, judging by the language used (i.e. look forward) the royal baby has yet to make an appearance.



That said, in the next coming weeks, it is entirely possible  especially if Prince Harry goes dark on social media and royal engagements  that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will have their baby without the publics knowledge. Kensington Palaces statement made their plans clear, stating that they wish to remain in private as a new family of three before sharing the news with the rest of the world.



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While Meghan Markles exact due date isnt entirely known, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expecting to meet their firstborn baby sometime in the next few weeks.



Earlier this week, Kensington Palace released a statement that confirmed Meghan Markles birth plan and gave insight into when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex might introduce their son or daughter to the world. And, in true Prince Harry and Meghan Markle fashion, they are opting out of royal traditions.



Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Samir Hussein/WireImage

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very grateful for the goodwill they have received from people throughout the United Kingdom and around the world as they prepare to welcome their baby, Kensington Palace said in the statement. Their royal highnesses have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private. The Duke and Duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family, they added.



When will Prince Harry and Meghan Markle release photos of Baby Sussex?



Reading between the lines, it seems unlikely that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will participate in a post-birth photocall on the steps of the Lindo Wing at St Marys Hospital, like most other modern royal parents. Additionally, they probably wont break the news  or share photos  until theyve had at least a few days (and possibly a week or more!) to themselves.



In modern times, the first photo of a royal baby often consists of a proper photocall with his or her mother and father. Even if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex dont pose for a photo after welcoming their firstborn into the world, they could still opt for a formal visual announcement outside of Kensington Palace or Windsor Castle (which is just down the road from their new family home, Frogmore Cottage).



While they dont oppose traditional photocalls  they stood outside of Kensington Palace after their engagement announcement for one!  Prince Harry and Meghan Markle could get a little creative (like they did with their engagement photos and Christmas card) and share more intimate family portraits of the three of them with their son or daughter.



Royal baby birth announcement



In addition to the first photos of Baby Sussex, the royal family will also share an official birth announcement once Prince Harry and Meghan Markle give their communications team the green light.



Following a royal birth, the monarchy alerts the media and public with a traditional birth announcement outside of Buckingham Palace. The announcement is typed up, framed, and posted on an easel for all to see. It is likely that Prince Harry and Meghan Markles baby will receive the same honors upon its much-anticipated arrival.



Prince Louiss birth announcement read: Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cambridge was safely delivered of a son at 1101 hours. The baby weighs 8 lbs 7 oz. The Duke of Cambridge was present for the birth. The Queen, The Duke of Edinburgh, The Prince of Wales, The Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry, and members of both families have been informed and are delighted with the news. Her Royal Highness and her child are both doing well. Since the official announcement was posted on the day of Prince Louiss birth, it was marked with the date at the top right corner. If Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wait to tell the public, the announcement will likely include details of their babys birthdate within the statement.



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The most recent season of Sister Wives chronicled the Browns inexplicable move from Las Vegas to Flagstaff, Arizona. Throughout the familys attempt to hash out the details and figure out whether or not the move was a good idea, several reasons were foisted upon fans.





The Browns cited everything from a desire to return to a small town, to the temperature to educational opportunities as the reason behind the move. Some fans wondered if Kody just liked the attention that he garnered whenever he rolled into a new city, but avid watchers of the show think theyve nailed down the real reason for the familys move, and it has everything to do with Robyn.

Fans think Dayton is going to school in Flagstaff

While the Browns have failed to inform fans of exactly where Dayton, Robyns oldest son, will be attending college, fans of the show find the timing of the move suspect. Fans on several forums and Reddit all agree that Dayton is most likely attending college in Flagstaff, and his schooling decision directly influenced the familys decision to move.

In early seasons, Robyn briefly discussed the fact that Dayton, her oldest child with ex-husband David Preston Jessop, is on the autism spectrum. She also discussed it in a lengthy post on the familys website; My Sisterwifes Closet, but theyve been relatively quiet about it on the show. Some fans wonder if Daytons diagnosis and desire to go to school in Flagstaff influenced the familys move.

Fans are irritated by Robyns tweets about the move

Since fans are in agreement that Robyn spearheaded the move to Flagstaff, they were especially annoyed by her tweets about Dayton, according to In Touch. She noted, in a Tweet on March 31st that Dayton was a rock star during the moving process.

Our son Dayton was a ROCK STAR when it came to the move. He was constantly working and moving stuff from early morning to midnight and had a great attitude. We couldnt have done it without him. #sisterwives  Robyn Brown (@LuvgvsUwngs) April 1, 2019

While Robyn didnt call out any of the other kids, fans surmised that she was throwing shade. Gabriel, Janelle and Kodys son, was an outspoken opponent of the move. He even failed to pack a single box prior to moving day to show his disapproval.

He better. The move was for him and Queen Robyn.  wallflower (@makeuplover4329) April 1, 2019

Fans went on to note that they firmly believed Dayton was the only child benefiting from the move, and thus he had the motivation to help. The rest of the underaged children in the Brown family simply seemed like they were just along for the ride.

Robyn tries to explain the move, but fans arent buying it

Robyn took to Twitter to calm down fans who were alarmed by how little care was shown for the kids affected by it. She insisted in another tweet on March 31 that the family never planned to stay in Las Vegas long term; noting that had always wanted to return to Utah.

She continued by telling fans that a move back to Utah ultimate wasnt possible and that Flagstaff felt the most like home. Fans, however, are not buying it. Several replied to the tweet to call Robyn a liar.

Daytons college acceptance, the quick move, and Robyns unwavering support of leaving Las Vegas are suspect. In fact, many fans fully believe that Robyn orchestrated the move!
In this undated photo, Dave Seagrave, far right, stands with unidentified crew members next to a B-52 in which he served as bombardier. Seagrave's participation in the carpet bombing of targets during the Vietnam War left scars that remain today.

Life has a serendipitous way of coming full circle, and shaping our world view along the way.

"Now I'm a musician," said long-time Medical Lake resident and former City Councilman Dave Seagrave, in a voice reminiscent of the late actor Jimmy Stewart. "How many people get to do what they wanted to do in high school?"

Now 80, Seagrave has traveled a long, often dark road from his days as a high school trumpet and tuba player. During his life he's served in a spectrum of careers, from warrior, to pacifist school teacher, community member, and finally back to his original passion: music.

Despite his service within the community, Seagrave doubts many know his backstory. Probably because it's something he shares with few people. It's certainly not something he wears on his sleeve.

"A majority of people in Medical Lake don't know I was in the service," he said.

Death from above

Like many people in the area, Seagrave is a retired Air Force officer who served in a number of roles during his service between 1959 and 1979.

Of those, the one that left lasting scars was as a B-52 navigator and bombardier during the Vietnam War.

Originally designed as a strategic Cold War bomber, the massive eight engine planes were later modified for more conventional carpet bombing of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese in places in Southeast Asia like North Vietnam and along the Ho Chi Minh trail in South Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

In flights of three, a single B-52 would drop it's load of 500-pound bombs that devastated an area 1,000 feet wide and 3,000 feet long, according to Seagrave. The other two bombers would do the same about 500 feet right and left of the first bomber's initial pass.

"That's a bomb every 30 feet. I just can't imagine anything surviving that. Well, they didn't," Seagrave said, adding that, "at 35,000 feet it's rather impersonal."

But the reconnaissance reports detailing the carnage they left behind made it personal. Despite their lofty distance above it all, the death and destruction Seagrave and his fellow airmen meted out from air bases in Guam, Okinawa and Thailand took a heavy toll on their souls.

Military Cadet

Seagrave attended the University of Rhode Island after graduating high school in 1957, but not to study music, his first love, but engineering. Quickly dissatisfied, a fraternity buddy suggested they enter an aviation cadet program together.

Seagrave was accepted, and was inducted into a flight navigation program at Lackland Air Force Base. After being commissioned in November 1960, he was sent to bomber navigation school where he trained on B-52s, even as rumors of war in Vietnam began to emerge.

Along the way Seagrave was wed to Mary, his best friend's sister whom he'd known since he was 13 years old, in 1963.

More training followed at various bases across the U.S. By 1967 he'd progressed to the role of bombardier.

His first combat duty station was Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, from which major U.S. B-52 bombing missions were launched over Vietnam. Other U.S. and overseas duty stations followed as the war dragged on.

Once, during the height of the Vietnam War and the related domestic unrest, Seagrave found himself stuck at the airport in Chicago overnight while traveling in uniform.

It's nearly cliche now, but reality doesn't change for those who experienced it. Outside, a group of protesters "actually spit on me," Seagrave recalled, and called him a baby-killer. He retreated back into the airport.

There, a member of a group of Hare Krishnas, a modernized Hindu sect common in public places at that time, approached and thanked Seagrave for his service. In what was surely a striking contrast, the military man in uniform spent the night visiting with the group in their flowing robes.

This was not uncommon for him, he said. He and fellow pilots often preferred hanging out with local indigenous people when overseas. It was what he called a "coping mechanism."

"It was purely trying to get away from what we were doing," he said of the many bombing missions they flew.

Education

Seagrave served in a number of combat flight-crew and staff positions during his 20-year career. In 1973, the Air Force decided he should attend college, and he went "bootstrap," a program giving select Air Force personnel up to two years to obtain a college degree.

He studied political science at Gonzaga's Fort Write College of the Holy Names. His instructors? Two nuns. His education involved what he termed a "very proactive learning environment."

"Most of my college was one-on-one," Seagrave said, in a sort of Socratic method where the nuns who would offer opposing positions in support of each side of a social or political issue.

"Now you've heard my side of the issue," one nun would say. "Now go talk to my roommate."

They were polar opposites, Seagrave recalled.

"One was a dove and one was a hawk," he said.

Seagrave was awarded a degree in political science with a minor in science in June 1976. He returned to Fairchild to serve as an intelligence officer.

Meanwhile, that same year Gonzaga launched a part-time masters program on the base. Seagrave enrolled, and in 1978 he earned a masters degree in human resources management.

A year later, Major Seagrave retired.

Retirement

His departure from the military was an abrupt fork in the road of Seagrave's life that harbored unresolved issues. So when he left the Air Force he never looked back.

"I'm getting out of here," he recalled of his retirement, quipping, "I got promoted to mister."

One of the first things he did was remove his collection of "brag wall" military photos from his hallway. All of them. He essentially buried his military career.

It was another coping mechanism.

"I just completely moved on to a new place in my life," he said, not wanting to dwell on what he termed "bad memories."

He became a self-described loner.

"I guess that's how I dealt with the downside of Vietnam," Seagrave said.

Teaching

Perhaps it was the influence of the nuns at the College of the Holy Names, but of the many paths a retired military officer can take, Seagrave chose teaching. After earning a teaching certificate from Eastern Washington University in 1980, he began working as a substitute teacher in the Spokane region.

In 1984, he landed a job at the Hutterite communal colony near Reardan. His title: Headmaster - of the colony's one-room schoolhouse.

His position there is memorialized in an iconic photo by the late photojournalist Kit King that hangs on Seagrave's wall. The image captures a bucolic scene: Seagrave sits at his desk surrounded by several attentive Hutterite children who hover around him looking down. In the foreground sits a girl on the desktop, one leg dangling casually over the desks edge, her white bonnet glowing in the light as she listens while Seagrave expounds on a subject.

The photo hangs on Seagrave's small home office wall.

"They are very educated people for never being out of the eighth grade," Seagrave said, adding, "it's not the number of years in school, but what you do with it."

In 2005, Seagrave again retired, leaving behind the greater Hutterite community that called him bruder Dave - brother Dave.

Vietnam Memorial Wall

The specter of Vietnam remained with brother Dave, however. During a visit to Washington D.C., Mary asked Seagrave if he wanted to visit the new Vietnam Memorial. He declined, saying he wasn't ready. He finally made the pilgrimage in 2007.

"It was depressing, but very humbling and inspiring," he said of the memorial.

A scale replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall, called The Traveling Wall, will arrive in Medical Lake on June 12.

Not so thankless service

While most of those Seagrave served with are now gone, the work of B-52 air strikes didn't go entirely thankless.

Seagrave flew sorties over Khe San, Vietnam during the siege of 1968, carpet bombing the area around the besieged Marine Corps outpost in support of ground troops there, denuding the surrounding jungle to reduce enemy cover and concealment.

Seagrave found himself chatting with the owner of a local auto shop after he first moved to Medical Lake, and they determined they were fellow Vietnam vets. The mechanic, a Marine who had served at Khe San, had an interesting reaction when Seagrave said he was a former B-52 bombardier.

"He picked me up off the floor and he hugged me," Seagrave recalled. "And he said, 'thank you.'"

Peace through service

Seagrave has done much with his post-military life. In addition to serving on the Medical Lake City Council, he's served with nearly every fraternal service organization Medical Lake has to offer, as well as volunteering for a variety of charity groups.

"I guess I was trying to be a better person by becoming truly part of the community," he said.

Lee Hughes Dave Seagrave at his home in Medical Lake. The 80-year-old musician and former B-52 bombardier spent many years after retirement from the Air Force overcoming his experiences during the Vietnam War through community service.

Today, Seagrave is back to his first love: music. Despite hearing loss from his time flying, and a slight shake in his right arm from a neck injury, Seagrave happily plays on the Lilac City Community Band, and will join the group during the opening ceremony of The Traveling Wall when it arrives in Medical Lake.

When asked what words of wisdom someone who has traveled the extremes of war and peace might pass on to people, Seagrave offered this: "We have to learn to accept the past and hopefully learn something from it," he said. "And maybe better learn to get along with people within the world."

Take time to be a parent and to be with your family, a perspective he said he carries forward from his time in the Hutterite Bruderhof community that he called "one big family."

"Today is the first day of our life. I can't do anything about yesterday, but I can do something about today," Seagrave said, then chuckled. "I might not be here tomorrow."

Lee Hughes can be reached at lee@cheneyfreepress.com.
A traveling half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., called The Traveling Wall, will arrive in Medical Lake on June 12 and will be available for viewing at 250 S. Prentis St., Medical Lake, on the Medical Lake Middle School playfield. Each day will include an opening and closing ceremony.

The Traveling Wall will be available for viewing for four days until June 16.

For more information about The Traveling Walls visit to Medical Lake go to http://medicallake.org/vmwall/.
The submarine cable that brings hydroelectric power to Haines has been damaged and could fail at any time, Alaska Power & Telephone officials warned this week. Such failure would force Haines to fire up its diesel generators downtown and would likely drive up prices.

Its going to fail, AP&T operations manager Darren Belisle told the CVN. It could be tomorrow, it could be a year from now. Were just getting the word out that this is coming.

Belisle said the company recognized the damaged cable earlier this month in the process of starting up its Kasidaya plant three miles south of Skagway. He said the fiber optics that allow communication between two plants went dead, and AP&T sent a remote-operated submarine into the water to examine the cable.

The cable had moved, and the outer covering on the line was damaged. Its been pushed 70 to 80 feet from where it lay, so its under a lot of tension right now, Belisle said.

The submarine cable isnt buried, though in some places its covered by silt, Belisle said. The cables position in the river delta puts it in the path of small landslides and shifting currents, which have moved it for the first time since it was placed in 1998, Belisle said.

Belisle said that AP&T is just starting to look at the cost of replacing the cable.

Without a cable replacement, Haines would have to run a backup diesel plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Belisle said. The effect to consumers would be a price hike, depending on the cost of diesel at the time.

Its just more expensive to make power from diesel than to make it from hydro, Belisle said. Lets say Haines is using 1,000 kilowatts. You can make 14 kilowatts with one gallon of diesel fuel.

Currently, Haines is supplied with 100 percent of its power from the Skagway Borough through the submarine energy transmission cable. The cable runs from Goat Lake to Kasidaya, with Skagway in the middle.

The damaged cable is located between Goat Lake and Kasidaya, which would only affect Haines if it fails. Skagways energy needs could still be met by Goat Lake, Belise said.
After Pastor Chu Yiu-ming and eight others were convicted on Tuesday of crimes related to being a part of the pro-democracy Occupy Central with Peace and Love Movement and the Umbrella Movement protests, he stood in a Hong Kong courtroom and gave the sermon of his life.

According to Christianity Today, Chu  who is the leader of the Chai Wan Baptist Church and a pro-democracy advocate shared his personal testimony before the court recalling how his difficult childhood lead him to Christ, to a life in ministry and to fighting for human rights.

According to an English translation of Chus testimony published in the Hong Kong Free Press, the pastor said, I am a Christian minister committed to the service of God. I have resolved to live a life of friendship with the weak and the poor, praying that Gods justice be manifested on earth as it is in heaven, and that the gospel of love and peace be proclaimed among the people.

He continued, But today, old and grey, I find myself in the Defendants dock, making a final plea as a convict. It looks so absurd, if not outright shameful for a person holding holy office.

And yet, at this very moment, my heart tells me that with this defendants dock, I have found the most honourable pulpit of my ministerial career. The valley of the shadow of death leads to spiritual heights.

The pro-democracy advocate also stood behind his belief in a free nation saying, We strive for democracy, because democracy strives for freedom, equality and universal love. Political freedom is more than loyalty to the state. It professes human dignity.

Chu continued, Every single person living in a community possesses unique potentials and powers, capable of making a contribution to society. Human right is a God-given gift, never to be arbitrarily taken away by any political regime.

Christianity Today reports that while Hong Kong is closer to democracy than mainland China, many are fearful that communism will encroach on the region.

While Chu and eight others prepared to face up to seven years in prison, not far away, 200 Christians met to pray for them. Christianity Today reports that the Christians met at Kowloon Union Church, the place where Chu and others first announced the Occupy Central campaign many years ago.

According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2013, Chu and two scholars named Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man started the Occupy Central Movement. The campaign is a non-violent pro-democracy movement that advocates for an electoral system in Hong Kong and universal and equal suffrage. The Occupy Central Movement is often credited with being a motivating factor for the Umbrella Movement protests which led to the 79-day occupation of Hong Kong by protestors.

This led to the three being found guilty of conspiracy to commit public nuisance, Christianity Today reports.

We have no regrets. We hold no grudges, no anger, no grievances. We do not give up, Chu proclaimed before the court. In the words of Jesus, Happy are those who are persecuted because they do what God requires; The Kingdom of heaven belongs to them! (Matthew 5:10)

Chu is awaiting his sentencing hearing set for later this month where he can face up to seven years in prison; others could get longer sentences as they have additional convictions.

Photo courtesy: Dan Freeman/Unsplash
The Trump Administration has been a stalwart defender of Americans religious liberty. From repealing the HHS mandate, to protecting religious rights in the workplace, and especially the appointment of justices and judges who respect the first amendment, the more that was promised by the President after that initial executive order has been delivered.

However, the Administrations actions concerning religious freedom outside the United States is not as impressive as its talk. Last summers Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom featured spellbinding rhetoric delivered by a Whos Who of people whove devoted their lives to the cause of religious freedom. The ministerial culminated in a statement called the Potomac Declaration, which stated, among other things, that Religious freedom is universal and inalienable, and states must respect and protect this human right.

Remember the scene in the movie Braveheart, in which Mel Gibsons William Wallace delivers a barn burner of a speech to Scottish forces, whereupon Stephen, his Irish lieutenant, asks, Fine speech. Now what?

While Wallace had an answer for Stephen, unfortunately the same cannot be said of the current administration, as WORLD magazine recently reported. Under [the Trump] administration, WORLD told its readers, refugee admissions have plunged to historic lows, with persecuted Christians in the Middle East suffering from the fallout.

Just how low? The number of Middle East Christians admitted into the United States in 2018 fell by a staggering 98 percent from 2016. Christians from countries that Open Doors ranked highest for religious persecution saw a 76 percent decline from 2016 to 2018.

So far, the downward trend is continuing in 2019. In the first months of this year, 30 Iranian Christians, 25 Iraqi Christians, and zero Syrian Christian refugees had been admitted to the United States.

As the saying goes, these low numbers arent a bug of the system, theyre a feature. According to one former administration official, the architect of White House immigration policy, Stephen Miller, once said that he would be happy if not a single refugee foot ever again touched American soil.

Whatever you make of the truthfulness of that story, the truth of the refugee story remains: Unless the U.S. is willing to admit persecuted religious minorities as refugees, the Potomac Declaration, as well as all those great speeches by those amazing leaders at the Ministerial are nothing but empty noise.

Think about it: The countries represented at the Ministerial didnt need to be admonished not to persecute religious minorities. The Potomac Declaration wasnt directed at them. It was directed at Iraq, where the dire situation facing Christians is at least partly due to our invading and destabilizing the country. It was directed at Iran, Pakistan, and Syria and other countries on Open Doors list.

Unfortunately, these are the least likely places to take the Potomac Declaration to heart, which leaves us with the question, Now what?

At least part of the answer has to be for the United States to admit people fleeing religious persecution as refugees. Otherwise were sending a clear message to their persecutors hat we dont mean what we say about religious freedom.

As WORLD says, this administration runs the risk of growing disillusionment among Christians for whom their persecuted brethren is a key concern.

Christians have enjoyed nearly-unprecedented access to the White House, to administration officials and many of the promises made to us have been kept. Unfortunately, the promise to aid persecuted Christians around the world has not been kept. We see our persecuted brothers and sisters caught up in the middle of what is a very necessary larger debate over immigration. The administration could both secure the border and help refugees under religious persecution. And if it did, it would be a huge political win.

But even more important, with each year setting new records for religious persecution and martyrs around the world, its the right thing to do.

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: April 12, 2019

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Joe Raedle/Staff
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a bill into law Thursday that bans abortion when an unborn babys heartbeat is detected, although he acknowledged legal challenges will decide its fate.

It is the right thing to do, DeWine, a Republican, said at the signing ceremony.

The bill, SB 23, passed the Ohio House of Representatives 56-40 and the Senate 18-13 this week, sending it to DeWine. Republicans control both chambers. The previous governor, John Kasich, had vetoed such a bill, saying he supported the concept but that it would be struck down as unconstitutional, as has happened in other states.

The bill says no person shall knowingly and purposefully perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman before determining whether the unborn human individual the pregnant woman is carrying has a detectable heartbeat. Ohio Right to Life says an abdominal ultrasound can detect a heartbeat between eight and 12 weeks of a pregnancy.

Governor DeWine continues to prove his commitment to the most vulnerable among us, including the unborn said Stephanie Ranade Krider, vice president and executive director of Ohio Right to Life.

DeWine made a similar argument during the signing ceremony.

The essential function of government is to protect the most vulnerable among us, those who don't have a voice, DeWine said as he signed the bill, according to NPR. Government's role should be to protect life from the beginning to the end.

The bills text includes findings the General Assembly says are grounded in contemporary medical research.

After the detection of a fetal heartbeat there is a ninety-five to ninety-eight percent certainty that the new life will develop full term, the bills text says.

The bill even makes a pro-life argument: A human being at an embryonic age and a human being at an adult age are naturally the same, with the only biological differences being due to the differences in maturity.

The ACLU of Ohio said it will sue to overturn the law.

This legislation is blatantly unconstitutional and we will fight to the bitter end to ensure that this bill is permanently blocked, said Freda Levenson, legal director at the ACLU Of Ohio. SB 23 is one of the most aggressive, oppressive, and radical attacks against women ever seen in this state and this country.

A woman  GOP Sen. Kristina Roegner  sponsored the bill in the Senate.

I am delighted that today the governor signed a bill, boldly declaring that Ohio will protect an unborn life, Roegner said.

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog, MichaelFoust.com.

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Kirk Irwin/Stringer
A woman who survived her mothers abortion attempt urged senators Tuesday to pass a bill protecting babies who live through abortions.

She also said shes not the only abortion survivor in the U.S.

I know of 281 others just like me, said Melissa Ohden, founder of the Abortion Survivors Network. The actual number, though, is likely much higher, she said.

Ohden appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to urge passage of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would prohibit abortion at the point an unborn baby can feel pain. Supporters of the bill say thats at 20 weeks. The bill also would protect babies who survive abortion. Democrats on the committee oppose it.

In 1977, Ohdens mother underwent a saline infusion abortion at age 19 at a hospital in Sioux City, Iowa, when she likely was around 31 weeks pregnant, Ohden said. Ohdens grandmother forced Ohdens mom to get the abortion.

As the toxic salt solution of the saline infusion abortion was injected into the amniotic fluid surrounding me in the womb, attempting to scald and poison me to death, I wonder how long it took for the pain to set in, Ohden said. If you read about it online or in medical journals, you will find children like me called the red skinned, or candy-apple babies, because that toxic solution would turn the skin bright red, as it peeled it away and moved internally into the organs.

I wonder, Ohden added, how much I thrashed about as it attacked my body. Ive met many women who had saline infusion abortions and whove told me how they actually felt their child thrashing about in their womb after the delivery of the toxic salt solution as it started to poison them.

Ohden was expelled from the womb on the fifth day of the procedure.

My arrival into this world was not so much a birth, but an accident, a live birth after a saline infusion abortion. My medical records actually state, a saline infusion for an abortion was done, but was unsuccessful, she said.

The doctor initially thought she was dead. Yet she grew stronger every day and eventually was adopted. She discovered the truth about her birth at age 14.

Since then, she has met the nurses who cared for her. One nurse, she has been told, rushed her to the NICU, shouting, she just kept gasping for breath, and so I couldnt just leave her there to die!

Children just like me are being subjected to similarly horrific, painful abortion procedures that lead to their death, Ohden said. Abortion doesn't spare a child from suffering, it causes suffering.  There should be no question that every child should be spared from the excruciating pain of an abortion procedure like I was subjected to.

Michael Foust is a freelance writer. Visit his blog. MichaelFoust.com.

Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Alex Wong/Staff
The December sky was low and gray on the morning I woke up and could not feel my hands. I wrung out my arms, hoping the sensation would return. I shook them violently to no avail. Rushing to the bathroom, I held them under hot water. Then frigid water. Neither helped.

Within days, prickly tingles crept up my arm and spread to my shoulders. The numbness turned into pain that burned, ached, and stabbed. Even my fingernails throbbed. A neurologist performed tests using electrified needles inserted into my muscles and shock pads placed on the skin. Nothing appeared abnormal.

Next came a series of scans and a litany of tests for minor problems like vitamin deficiencies, major illnesses like Lupus, and life-threatening conditions like multiple myeloma. Each brought excruciating waiting and worry. I was, after all, a writer whose livelihood depended on having control of his hands. All returned negative.

My symptom list grew with each passing month. First came nerve twitches in my legs, arms, back, and face. Then a paradox of sapping fatigue and insomnia. Severe panic attacks struck without warning, and I broke out in excruciating shingles from the overwhelming stress. The slightest stressora large crowd or a long line, common in New York City, where I liveleft me bedridden.

The revolving door of physicians left me without a diagnosis and drowning in an ocean of medications: anti-inflammatory drugs, muscle relaxants, nerve pills, pain killers, antiepileptic drugs, sleeping pills, and a healthy dose of Lexapro and Xanax to keep me from a full-on mental break. I grasped for anyone who would help, scheduling appointments with cardiologists and chiropractors, naturopaths and nutritionists, holistic doctors and Hasidic Jewish healers.

My life blurred. My ability to work was reduced to a meager three hours a day. My social life disintegrated, leaving me in depths of loneliness Id never known before. Everything familiar looked strange. Pain tormented me at every moment. I awoke to pain, worked with pain, dined with pain, and fought for sleep despite pains presence.

I was helpless like Job, brought low before God out of sheer desperation. When he was faced with his own pain, he could only bow before the Divine and listen to the wind. The difference between us is that once Job submitted, God restored him. I had no such luck. I was incarcerated in the prison of my own body.

And just like that, I joined the more than 25 million Americans who struggle with chronic pain disorders, many of them idiopathic in nature. As a Christian, I believed that God was sovereign, which made my chronic pain journey also a voyage of divine disappointment.

Come on, God. You know my story. You were there when my neighbor abused me as a child. You know how awkward and alienated I felt throughout adolescence. You know how Ive struggled with anxiety and depression my entire adult life. Im starting to see sunlight, to get a little relief, and then this happens? Really?

This is the edited version, actually. I spoke words to God that the MPAA would bar from a PG-13 movie.

The Dopamine Roller Coaster

On November 9, 2016, New Yorkmagazine published an article on the science of disappointment. The article opened by stating the obvious, which is that the feeling of being let down is actually one of lifes toughest emotional experiences.

Of course, most people dont need a magazine article to know that this is true, that disappointment hurts. A spouse or partner, that person who made butterflies dance inside you, cheated on you, and then hid it. Your colleague smeared you in a meeting to steal the promotion you earned. The child you prayed over since birth stormed out of the house, swearing to never return. A forgotten birthday, a withheld apology, a bucketful of lies from someone youd die for.

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Disappointment is an unavoidable part of being human, but as the New York magazine article noted, the experience is physiological, not just emotional. The feeling of disappointment is linked to your levels of dopamine: the brains pleasure chemical, released during positive life experiences. The dopamine systems in your brain dont just react to what you experience; they attempt to predict what you want or need.

Heres how it works: Your brain generates expectations about the future. Often these expectations are based on what you want. Something you perceive as good has happened in the past, so you begin to expect it will happen in the future. Before it even happens, your dopamine levels begin to rise in the rush of anticipation. Then, when that good thing actually occurs, you get a double shot of dopamine.

Heres the rub: Life doesnt always give us what we expect. People fail us. People hurt us. People lay us on the altars of their own selfishness. When you dont get the desired resultresearchers call this a reward-prediction errornot only do your dopamine levels fall; they plummet from the heightened level generated by your expectations.

Now, instead of receiving a double shot of dopamine, you receive none. You crash doubly hard: Not only do you not get what you wanted, the article states, but you also feel the displeasure of having been wrong. The point? Losing hurts even worse  when its not what you were expecting.

Rising Expectations

In the valley of my disappointment, I discovered a gospel story thats a portrait of what it looks like when an entire community suffers a reward-prediction error. Its known as the triumphal entry, and it is usually told on Palm Sunday in most churches.

Dust was swirling across the scorching desert as a rebel-Rabbi and his band of co-conspirators climbed up to Jerusalem. Rather than slip into the city unannounced, Jesus did something strange. He told a couple of his disciples to go to a particular place and retrieve a donkey for him to ride into the city.

Jesus turned his face toward a city that kills prophets, stones truth-tellers, and executes troublemakers. With a deep sigh, he steeled himself, mounted the humble beast, and clip-clopped toward the Kidron Valley. When the Jerusalemites saw Jesus approaching, they erupted in excitement. They began stripping off their cloaks and spreading them across the road. The crowd whacked branches off trees and laid them across Jesus path. As if this werent enough pomp and ceremony, the crowd broke into a Passover song.

All four Gospel writers include this narrative, each with their own twist. Matthews version says that the procession turns the whole city into turmoil (21:10, NRSV). The Greek word for turmoil is the root for the English word seismic. The city trembles as Jesus approaches.

The story begins with great expectations, which are easy to miss. Jesus has just been in Bethany, close to Jerusalem, where he resurrected his friend Lazarus from the dead. Lazaruss eyes have barely adjusted to the sunlight, and his story has spread throughout the region. Hearing this story, the crowds react, their brains bathed in dopamine. They begin to predict how God will act in their lives based on the way that God acted before: He will intervene again. He will work a miracle. He will expel the occupiers and resurrect Gods people in Gods city.

The palm branches signaled the crowds high expectations, a symbol largely lost on those of us who are separated from the culture and chronology of the story. Jewish history told of a man named Judas Maccabeus, a freedom fighter who entered Jerusalem 200 years prior to Jesus. As he approached, people waved palm branches and sang hymns. When Judas finally arrived, he defeated the Syrian king, recaptured the Temple, expelled the pagans, and reigned for a century before the Romans took back the city.

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God had saved his people from an occupier once before when an uncommon man trotted into town. With a new sheriff seemingly on the horizon, their dopamine systems kicked in, and they began predicting another takeover. Their song declared, Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! (Matt. 21:9).

This is a song that Jews sang at the beginning of Passover. Its taken from Psalm 118, the most quoted psalm in the New Testament. It tells of an enemy swarming like bees, driving the psalmist to the brink of destruction. Then God sweeps in with a mighty hand and wipes out the enemy. The word Hosanna means Lord, save now. They are asking Jesus to drive out the enemy army and restore order.

Even the donkey plays a role in elevating expectations, as it harkens back to an image from Zechariah 9:9, a prophetic passage that many of these Jerusalemites would have heard before. See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey.

That night, around dinner tables across Jerusalem, the Jews likely discussed the day in hushed voices. Could this be the king weve been waiting for? He was riding a donkey after all. By the time Jesus mounted that donkey and descended into town, their dopamine systems would have been in overdrive.

Resentments Under Construction

The crowds that day arent much different from us. Ive spent my whole life in churchesevangelical and mainline, small and mega, liturgical congregations and those with ear-splitting rock bands. I cant think of one that hasnt projected expectations onto God.

Maybe you picture God as a heavenly bellhop whose job is to satisfy your deepest desires. Or perhaps God is a holy matchmaker who will secure you a spouse. Maybe God is a cosmic bodyguard who protects you from harm. Or the worlds best nanny, making sure your children turn out right. Or a divine doctor, healing your every physical and mental ailment. Or a wonder-working accountant, solving all your financial problemsprovided you drop off a portion in the church coffers, of course.

People tend to assume that God is the deity they want. All you have to do is snatch up a couple of verses that seem to support your preferred version. Then you spend a few years listening to a pastor reinforce them through selective storytelling. Before you know it, the cement of those assumptions dries, and you begin expecting God to work in particular ways in your life. Not unlike the people of Jerusalem.

This works pretty well, as long as God seems to do what we want him to do. But the moment he doesnt conform to our expectations, our whole world rattles. A baby is born with a disability. A person you love abandons you for another. A friend dies before her time. The expectations you placed on God ferment into distrust, into disappointment. As author Anne Lamott says, Expectations are resentments under construction.

In September 2015, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz wrote an article in the New York Times Sunday Review titled Googling for God. He wanted to show how Google search data can tell us a lot about the psychology of the modern age. When it comes to God, many people wont share their struggles with their faith leaders or friends. Instead, they type them into Google, where they can ask with both impunity and anonymity.

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Stephens-Davidowitz sifted through a decade worth of Google searches and found that the most Googled questions about God included these questions: Why does God allow suffering? Why does God need so much praise? Why does God hate me? Why did God make me ugly? Why did God make me gay? Why did God make me black?

A blind man can see the thread binding each of these questions together: disappointment with God.

Many of usperhaps tens of millionshave a common experience when it comes to spirituality. We expect God to be something and then discover that he is not at all like that. Or we expect God to do something, only to realize that he seems to have his own priorities. In these moments, a tsunami of disappointment comes crashing down.

From Disappointment to Disillusionment

The Palm Sunday story displays the transition from expectation to disappointment in Technicolor. The triumph becomes a trial, and the trial becomes an execution. Jesus entered the city on a donkey, but we know he will leave in a body bag. This is not just a fun parade; Jesus is walking down death row.

Here we have a picture of what happens to a group of very religious people when they feel disappointed by God. At the start, the crowds embrace Jesus with dopamine levels soaring and shouts of Save us now! As soon as Jesus turns out to be something other than the savior they expect, their Hosannas morph into Crucify him!

Jesus is a king, but not the kind they wanted. He will serve rather than be served. He will die and not be killed. He enters unarmed, waging peace. This makes a larger point that God does not intend to meet our expectations. Instead, he meets our needs.

This type of God makes me uncomfortable. I dont want vegetables when Im craving candy. I want a God that satisfies my desires, whether or not those align with my needs. And so it is with all of us. We welcome God into our lives with anticipation, with expectation. Were laying down cloaks and waving palm branches with all weve got. But when God turns out to be someone we dont recognize, we scatter like smoke in the wind.

One of the most interesting features of this story is how much preparation Jesus does. He lines up everything, making sure to trigger the crowds expectations. Its like Jesus has hired a PR agency, indicating that he knows exactly what he is stirring up.

But why? Is he trying to disappoint them? No. I think he is trying to disillusion them.

The word disillusion has gotten a bad rap in recent times, but its a gift God gives with abundance. Disillusionment is, well, the loss of an illusion. It is what happens when you take a lieabout the world, about yourself, about those you love, about Godand replace it with the truth. Disillusionment occurs when God shatters our fantasies, tears down our idols, and dismantles our cardboard cutouts. It occurs when we discover that God does not conform to our expectations but rather exists as a mystery beyond those expectations.

The definition offered by Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor in her book God in Pain may be the best Ive seen. She describes disillusionment as the sacred experiences that cut us down to size and remind us of our smallness in this expansive universe. These experiences are often painful but never bad, because they make us shed the lies weve mistaken for truth: Disillusioned, she writes, we find out what is not true and we are set free to seek what isif we dareto turn away from the God who was supposed to be in order to seek the God who is.

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Ultimately, the triumphal entry is not about donkeys and palm branches at all. Its a reminder that placing expectations on God based on our wants is a recipe for resentment. But nurturing openness to divine mystery is a framework for faith.

Shedding Illusions

Ive learned to manage my pain disorder, but it has persisted despite my best efforts. Yet I refuse to let disappointment sever my relationship with God. And over time, Ive begun to uncover and shed illusions. Im dismantling mirages Ive constructed around productivity, identity, and self-worth. No longer can I work 12-to-14-hour days. Or pretend that who I am is enhanced by how much I produce. Or ground my sense of worth in accomplishments and accolades. Or pretend that God will keep me healthy or heal my every ache and pain.

I have traded these lies for a truth: that in times of difficulty, God offers us his presence, not a parachute. This exchange has transformed my disappointment into disillusionment. And disillusion turned out to be a horrible, wonderful gift.

What we experience as disappointment is an invitation to give up holding tight to what we hope is true. To stop trying to cast God in our image. To let God be who God is, not who we wish God would be.

The choice is ours. And who knows? If we decide to step off the dopamine roller coaster, maybe well find ourselves at the foot of a cross, giving up all we have for the One who gave up everything for us.

Adapted from Learning to Speak God from Scratch: Why Sacred Words Are Vanishingand How We Can Revive Them Copyright  2018 by Jonathan Merritt. Published by Convergent Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC.
The Catholic radio celebrates 50 years on the air. The "test of freedom in truth is when you are persecuted, said the cardinal. How easy it is to change truths. Now everyone is entitled to create his or her own truth for political expediency or out of fear.

Manila (AsiaNews)  Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle took part in a Mass yesterday at University of Santo Tomas (UST) in Manila to mark the 50th anniversary of Radio Veritas.

During the service, the Archbishop of Manila underscored the importance of serving the truth, not by keeping it for oneself, but by sharing it so that the darkness of ignorance or illiteracy may be wiped out and the values may be shared by Christians all over Asia

In his comment about the biblical episode of three young Jews coming out unscathed from the furnace in which King Nebuchadnezzar had thrown them for refusing to worship his image, the prelate noted that the test of freedom in truth is when you are persecuted. How easy it is to change truths. Now everyone is entitled to create his or her own truth for political expediency or out of fear.

The cardinal used the biblical episode to focus on the word "Veritas", stating that the truth defines the whole of human existence, and that slavery of untruth is a sin, as Jesus taught.

The Mass, which saw the participation of bishops from the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conferences and Filipino priests as well as UST students and faculty, was led by the Apostolic Nuncio to the Philippines, Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Caccia.

Radio Veritas was inaugurated 50 years ago, on 11 April 1969, in Fairview, Quezon City, by Cardinal Antonio Samore, the then prefect of the Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments, and by the then archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Rufino Santos.
Mark DeYmaz shares how churches can generate multiple sources of income by leveraging their assets

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OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma  Prominent multiethnic church movement leader Mark DeYmaz is warning that tithes and offerings will no longer be enough to sustain healthy churches and suggests that congregations look for alternatives like creating for-profit businesses to generate more revenue.

DeYmaz, who founded Mosaic Church of Central Arkansas in 2001 and co-founded the Mosaix Global Network in 2004, will release in October his new book, The Coming Revolution in Church Economics: Why Tithes and Offerings Are No Longer Enough, and What You Can Do About It.

The book will expand on a chapter from his 2017 book, Disruption: Repurposing the Church to Redeem the Community. The 57-year-old author shared insights from his yet-to-be-released work while speaking at the Evangelical Press Associations Christian Media Convention this week.

Right now, very few  I would say in my experience  less than 5 percent of churches are thinking about the future, that is, the coming disruption of economics, DeYmaz told a packed ballroom of Christian journalists, writers and publishers.

One sociological problem facing churches that will lead to the decrease in tithing and offerings, DeYmaz said, is the rapidly changing population.

By the 2030s, he stressed that the population will decrease in the United States due to fewer babies being born. With an aging population, he contended that many older churchgoers today will age out of the workforce and have less money to give to their churches. He noted that about 75 percent of the wealth in Christianity today is held by people who are 65 or older.

Millennials and Gen X and those coming after do not think about money or give money the way boomers, older people do because most of the church has been built on a transactional model, he explained. And the idea is to get more butts in the seat, right? Because more butts are in the seat, more bucks in a plate, right? Those days are gone.

Another issue he highlighted will be the emergence of artificial intelligence taking jobs away from people.

AI, by 2030, will take away 12 to 22 percent of jobs in the world in the next 12 years, he continued. Thats an Oxford [University] statistic.

He pointed out that a friend of his is the pastor of a church in Baltimore, Maryland, that lost $100,000 overnight when the Baltimore-based corporation Under Armour laid off 400 people. Because of this, the pastors salary and the church budget decreased and a number of church programs were cut.

It's not that those 400 people won't be able to get other jobs, it's just how fast that happens, DeYmaz said.

As exponentially more families in America today are reliant on two or more streams of income than they were decades ago, DeYmaz said churches should be looking for ways to generate multiple sources of income.

The American Church in the 21st century is living as if one paycheck  tithes and offerings  takes care of everything. But it doesnt, he asserted. And we have to disrupt the way we think about what we're branding.

At Mosaic Church, they have a yearly budget of about $1.2 million, DeYmaz later told The Christian Post in an interview. Only 70 percent of that budget comes from tithes and offerings while the rest is generated through smart economics.

DeYmaz explained that disruptive churches should stand on three legs: spiritual, financial and social justice. However, many churches today are only standing on the spiritual leg, he contended.

As DeYmaz is a proponent of multiethnic worship, he stressed that churches need to work to end segregation in the church and solve justice issues impacting their own local community. Additionally, he said, churches need to be innovative when it comes to revenue generation.

The second leg of the stool is how to integrate. We need to integrate disruptive witness in our local communities to advance social justice, compassion and mercy by creating one umbrella nonprofit, he detailed. There's reasons for that. But this also bleeds into economics and why you would do this.

Starting separate nonprofits

As for Mosaic Church, it established a nonprofit entity called Vine and Village in 2008.

You create one nonprofit, think about this [as] two sisters who live in the same house who share the resources, split the cost, etc., he told the crowd. You move your compassion and justice work out from under the budget of the church into the budget of the nonprofit.

You can't scale if it's under the budget of the church, he added. And secondly, when your compassion and justice work is under your social justice side, other churches will send you money. Did you know that? Churches don't write checks to other churches. But if you say hey, I've got a food distribution program that's part of Vine and Village, they'll send you their money and they'll send you the people. [It will] qualify for local, state and federal grants. On and on I could go.

He stressed that it's a smart move economically and allows churches to show people that the church is interested in what is going on in the communities in which they sit.

In our case, Vine and Village focuses and leverages all of our assets like a laser beam on the people of 72204 [a Zip code for an area of Little Rock with 30 percent poverty], he added.

One offshoot of Vine and Village is The Orchard, which is the largest food distribution program in the city of Little Rock that serves 20,000 people each year in a Zip code of 32,000 people.

Vine and Village also runs other programs such as a chess club for at-risk children.

Another nonprofit program established by Mosaic Church is called Immerse Arkansas, one of the first programs in the country to work with kids who age out of the foster care system.

By moving [it] out from under the budget of the church, it received over $2 million in grants in 10 years, DeYmaz said of Immerse Arkansas. One year, we got a five-year grant for $800,000. It is smart economics because you wouldn't get those grants if it was under your [church] budget.

DeYmaz contended that justice and economics are the evangelism of the 21st century.

This is no longer bring Billy Graham to your city, he explained. Tremendous man, amazing, we would all agree. [But] that was the 20th century.  That is not how you lead people to Christ in the 21st century. You know how you do it? Justice and economics. This is the future of the American Church. Jesus didn't say let me hear your words. He said, let them see your good works. And if there was ever a time the society needed to see good works, it's right now.

In order for a church to be disruptive in the economic sense, it should be doing things like repurposing property, creating jobs, generating tax revenue for the community and putting the talents of church members to use in the appropriate ways to further the mission of the church.

This entire 60,000 words [of the book] can be summed up in a question or a statement: How do you as a pastor, how does the church leverage its assets? he asked. [Those assets] are people money and buildings to bless the community.  How do we leverage our assets to bless and advance the Gospel, advance the common good, and at the same time generate for-profit sustainable income?

Utilizing people, money and buildings

According to DeYmaz, churches need to make the most out of the property they have.

As an example, he mentioned how Mosaic Church (now located in a former K-Mart store) is generating income by leasing out about half of the building to a fitness club since 2013. The fitness club pays about $8,000 per month for 50,000 square feet.

The reason behind the leasing of part of the building was to help offset the $7,400 per month the church pays on its mortgage. Because of the lease with the fitness center, DeYmaz said, 20 jobs and about $26,000 in tax revenue was created for the local community.

Another way to generate income is for churches to monetize existing services.

Most churches give out free coffee on Sundays for churchgoers. For Mosaic Church, the coffee costs roughly $3,000 per year, DeYmaz said. Although some churches put out a donation jar, they are never made completely whole on the coffee they serve.

To solve this problem, Mosaic started selling sausage biscuits wrapped in aluminum foil purchased at a wholesale store in its cafe area. The entrepreneurial endeavor has not only offset the cost of the coffee but generated extra income that the church has put toward youth summer camp scholarships.

Considering most churches are smaller than the average K-Mart store, DeYmaz told CP that smaller churches can do things like rent out unused offices or classrooms to an organization in their area looking for a cheaper rent option.

In his interview with CP, DeYmaz explained that churches can also generate income by renting out their buildings for events like weddings or to another church in the area to worship on Sunday nights.

Some churches might allow other churches to use their worship space free of charge because they believe it to be part of ministry. But DeYmaz believes it would be wise for those churches to start charging.

But if you keep doing that you might not be here in 10 years, he warned. So charge them something. You don't have to get top dollar, but get something.

Bigger churches, he added, might have print shops that can be used to generate money.

Starting for-profit businesses

Churches and other nonprofit organizations are legally allowed to start for-profit companies so long as the for-profit entities pays their share in taxes and as long as the profit from the companies go back to support the church or nonprofit that launched them.

Although starting a for-profit entity can be daunting for clergy, DeYmaz stressed that pastors dont need to fully understand how to operate a business so long as they can place that responsibility on lay persons in their congregations with experience running a business.

Some churches also pay for janitorial services. Instead, DeYmaz said, churches could create their own cleaning service business by paying employees to not only clean the church building but also take on contracts to clean other buildings in the community.

Send your janitors out in the community. They get contracts on other places and net $30,000 a year and clean your church for free, he told CP.

While some people facing tough financial times might just rely on God or have faith that things might turn around, DeYmaz asserted that God calls on churches and Christians to be good stewards of what they are given.

Jesus tells the story of a master, right? [He gave one man] five talents, two to another, one to another. When he comes back, what did he say? DeYmaz asked during his speech. The one with the five says  Here's your five and I give you five more. [The second] says  Here's your two and I made you two more. What does the master say? Well done good and faithful servant. Good and faithful steward, right? The [other] guy sat on his asset.
James MacDonald splurged thousands from church funds on vintage car gifted to Wheaton prof Ed Stetzer

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Less than two months after Harvest Bible Chapel in greater Chicago ousted founder James MacDonald for abuse of power and other sins, a new report says he splurged thousands of dollars on a vintage car he gifted Ed Stetzer, the Billy Graham chair of Church, Mission, and Evangelism at Wheaton College last spring.

Citing a tip published by Dee Parsons at The Wartburg Watch, independent journalist Julie Roys, confirmed in a report Tuesday that MacDonald gifted Stetzer a just under $13,000 1971 VW Beetle last April. Stetzer said he had no idea MacDonald used money from church donations to pay for the gift.

Long story shortJames heard that my daughter and I were wanting to fix up an old VW bug as a father/daughter project. And, he surprised us with the gift of 1971 VW, which I assumed was from his personal funds, Stetzer told pastor and podcaster Joe Thorn in a message about the gift shortly after Parsons post went public last Friday.

Stetzer reportedly later checked with HBC after reading reports of the financial scandal at the church and discovered that the funds for the Beetle had come from MacDonalds Walk in the Word broadcast ministry, a sub-ministry of the church. He reimbursed the ministry for the full value of the car in March.

Roys noted that Stetzer, who serves as contributing editor for Christianity Today, and dean of the School of Mission, Ministry, and Leadership at Wheaton College, and executive director of the Billy Graham Center, might have improperly impacted the way in which CT reported on the HBC debacle as it unfolded in recent months.

Stetzers receipt of a large gift from a celebrity pastor like MacDonald raises conflict of interest issues, given Stetzers position at Wheaton College and especially his role as an editor for Christianity Today, Roys wrote.

As part of his paid journalistic relationship with CT, Stetzer manages one of eight special sections on CTs website called The Exchange with Ed Stetzer.

Roys said Mark Galli, editor in chief for Christianity Today, confirmed that Stetzer arranged a conversation (between MacDonald and CT Deputy Managing Editor Jeremy Weber) that led to the magazine publishing MacDonalds article defending his lawsuit against her and four other defendants, titled Why Suing is Sometimes the Biblical Choice. Galli told CP that Stetzer was not instrumental in the publication of the op-ed.

The Christian Post reported last October that HBC slapped Roys and several former workers with a defamation lawsuit alleging the publication of false information about the church, its finances and governance that resulted in the loss of 2,000 members.

Roys and the former employees have since been vindicated in recent months. In March, church officials admitted that there was a lack of financial control over MacDonalds office.

As our Harvest 2020 team is charged with reviewing all finances within the church, we have found that there was a lack of financial control and oversight as well as questionable spending practices made by the senior pastors office.

"In addition, we have identified there was a separate budget for the senior pastors office over which there was not sufficient controls and oversight, officials said.

Roys noted that in December, after her expose on HBC was published in WORLD, Christianity Today published an article titled, Harvest Bible Chapel Disputes World Investigation of James MacDonald.

CTs unusual coverage of the Harvest scandal doesnt necessarily show collusion between Stetzer, MacDonald, and CT. But it certainly raises questions, especially in light of the gifted car. But its not just Stetzers position with CT that may present a conflict of interest, Roys argued.

MacDonalds Feb. 12 ouster from Harvest Bible Chapel was triggered by "highly inappropriate recorded comments" he made on a radio program as well as "other conduct."

He was recorded talking about planting child pornography on Christianity Today CEO Harold Smith's computer, and making crude remarks about Roys  including joking that she had an affair with Galli  and a vulgar reference to Stetzer.
Joni Eareckson Tada released from hospital, thanks God for 'marvelous' healing

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Joni Eareckson Tada, an evangelical author and speaker, announced shes been released from the hospital  and thanked God for healing her lungs just two weeks after she was hospitalized for severe pain and difficulty breathing.

On the Joni and Friends website, Tada shared a photo of herself smiling with her hands raised in front of a hospital entrance.

She captioned the photo: I just signed my discharge papers and I am Free! Praising God for healing of my lungs. Fresh air never felt so good! God bless you for praying me to this marvelous release after 14 days in the hospital! Onward and upward.

In an update posted a day earlier, Tada revealed that her discharge was delayed because the hospital wanted to make certain that all the proper medical equipment arrived at her home prior to her release.

And for that, I am grateful to God! she said. My song today? Holy Spirit, you are welcome here, come flood this place and fill the atmosphere. Your glory, God, is what our hearts long for, to be overcome by your presence, Lord!

God is moving in these medical hallways, she continued, and I have enjoyed my prayer assignment over the past 14 days here at the hospital! Looking forward to tomorrow!!

On March 27, Tadas ministry reported that she had been hospitalized for observation and medical oversight after experiencing severe pain and difficulty breathing. The issues, the update said, occurred in the weeks following the completion of a series of radiation treatments for a recurrence of cancer.

Knowing the truth of that promise of James 5:16, Joni and Ken would be most grateful for your prayers today, reported the California-based ministry, Joni and Friends, referring to Tada and her husband. As they express confidence that God is in control, the support of prayerful concern would be deeply appreciated.

In addition to founding Joni and Friends in 1979, Tada has also served as a senior associate for disability concerns for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, an adviser to the American Leprosy Mission, and the National Institute on Learning Disabilities.

She was first diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer eight years ago and underwent a mastectomy and chemotherapy treatment. In 2015, she was declared cancer-free.

But last November, doctors discovered a small cancerous tumor within a small nodule which had developed over the site of her mastectomy.

When I received the unexpected news of cancer from my oncological surgeon, I relaxed and smiled, knowing that my sovereign God loves me dearly and holds me tightly in His hands, Tada said at the time.

What good is it if we only trust the Lord when we understand His ways? That only guarantees a life filled with doubts.

In February, Tada provided an update explaining that she was nearly done with radiation treatments: All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize, she said, adding that she wants to honor Christ as best I can through this ordeal.
Pastors explain why Christians should tithe, reject 'sow your seed' preaching

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Tithing is not a popular practice among U.S. Christians and some pastors believe the church hasnt done the best job in relaying the significance of giving a tenth of ones income.

Were not talking about it in the right way. When the church has talked about money, its in a guilt thing or obligation, and it is very much in a transactional way  do this and God will do that, Glen Packiam, lead pastor of New Life Downtown in Colorado, said in a recent podcast.

Daniel Grothe, associate senior pastor of New Life Church, knows all too well the message on tithing many pastors give: Sow your seed so you can reap your harvest. Grothe grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which he labeled the word of faith capital of the universe.

The problem with these messages is that they make it all about you and not about the community.

This is not about you and Jesus being OK. This is about God blessing us to make us a blessing because whether or not youre struggling, someone out there is struggling and if we will pool our strength, if we will be the church, there will be single moms and their little kids rejoicing because of it, said Grothe.

Though 83 percent of churchgoers believe tithing is a biblical command that still applies today, only 54 percent of those who attend church at least once a month say they tithe, according to LifeWay Research.

Its fair to say that many people are hesitant to give and skeptical of the local church because theyve seen so much mismanagement of money, Packiam acknowledged. Theyve seen pastors  padding their own bank accounts; theyre not helping the poor.

So in some ways we have earned the distrust of our own community. But we can earn it back by reminding them of the mission, by having a bit of transparency  [and] accountability.

Money given to the church is supposed to help fill the needs of the community, the Colorado pastors maintained.

New Life Senior Pastor Brady Boyd believes if every member of his church tithed, he would be able to solve the homeless single mom problem in El Paso County.

People [are] withholding their money  at the detriment of people right here in the city who are sleeping in their car, he said. There are people in our city who will suffer tonight because the church is not equipped and not resourced enough to meet the need.

The Colorado pastors pointed to the example of the early believers in the book of Acts to demonstrate the impact of giving to the church.

Acts 4:32-35 states: All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And Gods grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

The early Christians showed a radical or even dangerous generosity that resulted in no needy persons among them, Grothe emphasized.

You dont get the sense that after Jesus, once the church is established that tithing goes away. You get the sense that its heightened, that people start living recklessly generous, trusting their Father in Heaven.

Generosity is part of the Christian DNA because of who God is, Grothe suggested. God gave His son and His son gave His own life and Christians are made in His image.

While giving helps people to connect with the rest of the community, the pastors noted a pattern in which the wealthy become more distant and less likely to tithe as they move into better neighborhoods and lose contact with and compassion for those less fortunate.

Poor people who are living among poor people realize the power of the church and thats why tithing, the percentage of giving is really high among poor people because theyve tasted and seen firsthand the power of the church in their lives, said Boyd. The richer we get, the less connected we get  with the poor; thats why tithing keeps us connected to the plight of the poor.

Stripped down to its basics, tithing is an act of worship to God, its a form of surrendering to Him. Its a representative gift thats supposed to speak of everything belonging to God, Packiam explained.

Tithing is not about following artificial standards, noted Andrew Arndt, a teaching pastor at New Life. The important question is: What is the demand of love?

There are moments in life where tithing may be difficult, such as when one loses a job or is dealing with a health problem. Theres grace for those in such situations, Boyd said.

But thats precisely why the rest of the congregation should be tithing  to take care of those who are struggling, he added.

As for whether a believer can tithe their income to places other than their church, Boyd argued that the first 10 percent should be given to the local church  the central place of mission. Donations given to other nonprofits or parachurches should not come from that 10 percent.

In the end, tithing and generosity in general can change a persons life, Boyd stressed.

What tithing has done for me is it revealed motives that were deep in my heart, he said. It revealed in me a fear of losing money or not having enough. Who do I trust for my future and for my money?  Tithing unsettled me, tithing stretched me, tithing made me more disciplined. It forced me into the realm of budgeting  and to stewardship and it uprooted some deep issues in my heart.
Success of 'I Can Only Imagine' made way for Gospel to be heard in China

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The filmmaker behind the blockbuster hit I Can Only Imagine said the success of the film in the United States made it possible for the film to be a witnessing tool in other countries, including China.

Last year, the film "I Can Only Imagine" brought in $17.1 million domestically during its opening weekend, and over $83 million in total, superseding expectations. Its popularity made it go on global autopilot, Jon Erwin explained at the NRB convention in March.

He shared that when a film in America does well, it automatically gets dubbed in multiple languages to be distributed in several countries.

So all these countries around the world begin to pay you for the right to translate and distribute your movie. So its the Gospel on for-profit autopilot, he testified about what happened with I Can only imagine.

One of the countries that had the opportunity to see and hear the Gospel because of the movie, based on the life of MercyMe frontman Bart Millard, was China. Erwin celebrated that China, which knowingly has an atheistic government, actually funded the translation of the faith-based film which was shared to its people amid increasing persecution against Christians.

Chinas large-scale crackdown has been focused mainly on arresting those practicing their religious beliefs, human rights activists, as well as underground and nonsanctioned house churches. Last month, the government shut down Beijings Shouwang Church, according to the Chinese persecution watchdog organization China Aid.

I find it very interesting that in the same year that China actually restricted, a lot of its regulations around Christianity, they paid for I Can Only Imagine,' Erwin said. They paid for the right to translate it and distribute it to their people. Its playing there right now on your behalf. Thats happened in over 100 countries around the world with our films.

The Moms' Night Out creator encouraged those in attendance to continue supporting faith films because it provides another opportunity to spread the Gospel in restricted areas through the medium of cinema.

What happens is when you watch a movie in America and you buy your ticket and that movie becomes a hit, youre pretty much guaranteed that 10 people around the world are going to see it on your behalf because of these incredible things called output deals, Erwin explained.

And in fact, theres a lot of places around the world where you can do more in a movie theater than you can do openly on the streets. Its incredible how far the message gets.

China is listed as the 27th worst nation in the world when it comes to Christian persecution, according to Open Doors USAs World Watch List. In March, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback said he believes the Chinese government is at war with faith.

Testimonies of the Gospel spreading through the movie have come in from all over the world. One woman in Australia testified that a man who sat behind her wanted to hear the message of Jesus right after watching the movie. "What happened to Dennis Quaid (in the movie) I need to happen to me and I need someone to explain it to me," the man said.

"If you can tell the right story in the right way, it really does have the power to change peoples lives," Erwin said.
23-y-o Sunday School teacher sentenced to 50 years in prison for molesting multiple children

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Noel Anderson, a 23-year-old former Sunday school teacher with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in McKinney, Texas, was sentenced to 50 years in prison without the possibility of parole for molesting multiple children who were left in his care starting in his teenage years.

While Anderson taught 7- and 8-year-olds, authorities say his five victims ranged in age from 1  to 6 years old, CBS reported.

In his confession, Anderson said he targeted children he thought would not disclose his abuse  infants he babysat for fellow parishioners.

"We're grateful for these brave children, as their courage helped lock up a serial child predator," Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis announced Thursday, according to the McKinney Courier Gazette.

Before authorities began investigating Anderson for abuse just over a year ago, he enjoyed a good reputation among his church community.

He was an outstanding youth in our church, a concerned parent with knowledge of the case told CBSDFW in 2018, the gold standard for what you would want your son to grow up to be.

McKinney police said it was a young child who rang the alarm on Andersons abuse. The child reportedly saw a picture of Anderson and said I dont like him. A parent eventually asked the child why and what the child revealed shattered the trust of many in the church community.

She indicated that Noel had touched her in her privates, a church member told CBS.

An 8-year-old girl whose parents said she contemplated suicide was the only one of Andersons victims to testify against him in court this week.

Her parents said two weeks before she was set to testify against Anderson who confessed to molesting her since she was a baby, her parents had to call for emergency help to prevent her from taking her life, the Dallas Morning News reported.

The girl who testified against him was just 18 months old when Anderson masturbated as he changed her diapers. He forced her to perform sex acts on him as she grew older until she was 6.

"This is what turns him on," prosecutor Nick Lawrence told jurors, pointing to a baby photo of the girl in a yellow onesie, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Anderson confessed to police that he tried to stop abusing children but he was asked to babysit a previous victim after returning from a mission trip and could not help himself because he had history with her.

"What kind of 'history' can you possibly have with a 6-year-old?" chief felony prosecutor Geeta Singleton asked the jury which convicted him. "He used these babies to live out his own sexual fantasies."

While most of Andersons victims don't remember being molested, many of their family members say their relationship with the church where the abuse occurred has been damaged.

I have lost all trust and hope, one church member told CBS. Just bewildered, shocked.

The jury in the case deliberated for two days before coming back with a verdict.
94 abortion workers seek help to leave industry after watching 'Unplanned'

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Chuck Konzelman, writer and director of Unplanned, a film about Planned Parenthood clinic director-turned pro-life advocate Abby Johnson, revealed Wednesday during a congressional testimony that 94 clinic workers have come forward after watching the movie to seek help leaving their jobs.

Konzelman, who spoke before the Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution, revealed that since the films release on March 29, these workers approached Johnsons nonprofit, And Then There Were None, and have indicated an intent to change their lives.

And Then There Were Nones stated mission is to help abortion clinic workers leave the abortion industry.

READ ALSO: Doctor Who Performed 1,200 Abortions Reveals What Stopped Him

The number of actual workers who have reached out is 94, Konzelman revealed, estimating that this accounts for about 1 percent of abortion workers in the U.S.

The Unplanned director went on to say that these individuals are truly looking to change their lives (you can watch this portion of his testimony at the 2:52-mark here).

One percent of the abortion workers in the United States, after getting one look at them being portrayed on film  have decided to change their lives  and what they do for a living, Konzelman said.

The filmmaker also noted that this is evidence that Unplanned isnt portraying these people as monsters. Instead, some workers appear to find something redeeming about the movie, and are taking personal action as a result.

READ ALSO: Inspired by Unplanned? 5 Pro-Life Movies You Can Watch Now

As Pure Flix Insider previously reported, the congressional subcommittee hearing, titled, Stifling Free Speech: Technological Censorship and the Public Discourse, also dealt with the recent suspension of the official Twitter page for Unplanned, among other claims of censorship.

Watch Actress Ashley Bratcher, who played Johnson, speak about the power of prayer:

Numerous stories have emerged about the filming of Unplanned as well as the impact the movie is having on the masses. Bratcher, who portrayed Johnson in the movie, discussed her own journey toward accepting the role  and the ways in which faith played out on set.

I walk into the set and when I did the presence of the holy spirit just overcame me, Bratcher said. I wanted to just fall to me knees in that moment and cry. It was so overwhelming. I had no idea that the team had been praying over that set.

And Johnson has openly shared her story as well. Listen to her reveal why she fled Planned Parenthood and became a pro-life activist:

Perhaps one of the most interesting people attached to the film is Dr. Anthony Levatino, a gynecologist who performed around 1,200 first and second trimester abortions early in his career before a stunning change-of-heart transformed him into an outspoken pro-life advocate. He plays an abortion doctor in Unplanned and his personal story is incredible:

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.
Baltimore schools to allow transgender students to use preferred pronouns, locker rooms

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Baltimore City Public Schools' board of commissions approved a policy that goes above state requirements by allowing transgender students to use their preferred names and pronouns and access locker rooms and bathrooms of the opposite sex.

The board unanimously (8-0) passed the new policy, known as JBB, at its latest meeting on Tuesday to a chorus of cheers from LGBT advocates holding up signs that read We are all human.

Under the new rules, students will have the ability to use the pronouns and names of their choosing without being required to have already changed their name legally. The transgender students may also use locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity. Also, schools can not force transgender students to use a private or gender-neutral bathroom.

The school districts new policy states that students who object to the policy will be provided with a safe non-stigmatizing alternative.

I applaud the School Board for unanimously passing policy JBB, Baltimore City Council Member Zeke Cohen wrote on Twitter. In the next few weeks, The City Council will introduce legislation to protect and affirm our transgender siblings. To the LGBTQ youth and educators: You led, policy makers followed. Your voices mattered. You matter.

The pro-LGBT American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland also praised the policy.

As The Baltimore Sun notes, the policy is unclear about whether or not biologically male transgender students will be allowed to attend the districts only all-female school. But the policy does ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and gender nonconforming status.

The new policy comes as similar policies passed in other school districts around the United States have raised religious freedom and free speech concerns for faculty and students.

Last December, a French teacher was put on administrative leave for referring to the pronoun that corresponds with the student's biological sex.

Critics of such policies have also argued that allowing transgender students into the opposite-sex locker room violates the privacy rights of other students.

Last November, a group of Pennsylvania students appealed to the Supreme Court asking it to protect their bodily privacy and strike down their districts transgender-inclusive policy.

The nations high court has not yet announced if it will consider the case.

In Maryland, Baltimore City Schools new policy is similar to one passed in Frederick County in 2017 as a result of pressure from students. That year, a 15-year-old student and her mother filed a lawsuit against the Frederick County policy.

"Only in history do we see totalitarian regimes that arrogate to itself powers to force children and citizens to undress in front of members of the opposite sex, the lawsuit reads, according to WBALTV.

Last year, a federal court ruled against a school district located on Marylands Eastern shore that required a transgender student to use a gender-neutral restroom to dress for gym class. The judges reasoning was that by forcing the child to use a different restroom, it harms his health and well-being.

During his last full year in office, the Barack Obama administration issued federal guidance to all school districts nationwide informing them that they should allow transgender students to access bathrooms and locker rooms according to their gender identity.

The administration argued that not allowing transgender students to use the preferred locker rooms is a violation of civil rights law. The administration interpreted civil rights discrimination protections on the basis of sex to also protect on the basis of gender identity. That interpretation was also used by courts and governments in the last few years to rule in favor or pass pro-transgender discrimination ordinances or rules even though gender identity protections are not explicitly written in federal law.

The Trump administration rescinded the 2016 Obama administration guidance, a move praised by Christian leaders and privacy rights advocates.

How can we teach our daughters that their 'no' means 'no' if they're not even allowed to decide who sees them when they shower?" Kaeley Triller Haver, a privacy rights activist and a survivor of sexual trauma, told The Christian Post at the time.
Baptist seminary adopts Nashville Statement as confessional statement

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A Baptist seminary based in Kansas City, Missouri, decided to adopt the Nashville Statement, a declaration from 2017 that affirmed a traditional biblical understanding of sexual ethics and gender identity.

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary announced Thursday that the schools Board of Trustees voted unanimously to adopt the statement at their spring meeting, April 8-9.

Midwestern Baptist President Jason Allen said that the move came in response to the increasing social acceptance of the LGBT movement in the United States.

In light of ever-changing cultural norms and expectations toward marriage, gender, and sexuality, and in recognition that Southern Baptists are a confessional people, expecting their entities to maintain faithfulness to Holy Scripture and a clear witness to the world, Midwestern Seminary will strengthen its doctrinal clarity, witness, and legal standing by formally adopting the Nashville Statement, stated Allen, according to the announcement.

The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, the group that released the statement, celebrated the news of Midwestern Baptists adoption of it.

This is good news out of Kansas City, and it is exactly why the Nashville Statement was created in the first place  to assist churches and Christian ministries to articulate a biblically faithful confession of the Bibles teaching about sexuality, wrote CBMW President Denny Burk on Thursday.

Thanks to President Jason Allen for his leadership in making this happen at Midwestern Seminary. The trustees have made a strong statement of conviction to serve as a guideline for their entire ministry. That can only bear good fruit in the days ahead.

The Nashville Statement was released in August 2017 and within a year was signed by over 20,000 evangelical leaders, activists and theologians.

Notable signatories included John Piper, founder of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary; Dr. James Dobson, former head of Focus on the Family and founder of Family Talk; Karen Swallow Prior, professor at Liberty University; Fred Luter, the first African-American president of the Southern Baptist Convention; and David French, columnist with the National Review.

The statement had its share of critics from both secular and Christin backgrounds.

Pastor Josh Daffern of MTV Church in Columbus, Mississippi, wrote in 2017 that while he agreed with the statement, he felt the document lacked pastoral wisdom.

Daffern noted that a lesbian woman has been attending his church and was reportedly battling addictions and struggling with many other personal issues.

"If I preached on the Nashville Statement and declared my allegiance, would that help or hinder her own spiritual journey?" wrote Daffern.

"Why would I be more comfortable with pastors and not Christian academics creating this document? Because orthodoxy divorced from relationships can many times lead to rhetoric that hinders (not helps) us achieve our overall mission, to lead all people to Jesus."
Giant billboard launched in Times Square to oppose New Yorks abortion extremism

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The pro-life student association Students for Life of America is sponsoring a giant video advertisement this week in Manhattans Times Square, speaking out against New Yorks abortion extremism.

The ad is running for three days and ran while SFLA hosted its annual gala event in New York City on Wednesday.

This year, the SFLA gala is titled Called to Bring Light to the Darkness. The event is being held in a state that passed earlier this year a law that effectively legalizes abortion until birth, something only seven other states had done previously.

The bill signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo garnered much national media attention and drew the outrage of pro-lifers across the nation.

When I asked our supporters if they wanted to send a pro-life message in Times Square, the answer was a resounding YES, SFLA President Kristan Hawkins said in a statement.

The video advertisement is 15 seconds long and is being displayed in a rotation along with other advertisements on a 50-foot-tall video screen.

As the ad is rotating about every three minutes, it will be seen a minimum of 720 times. SFLA expects that it will be seen by tens of thousands of people, if not more.

The SFLA ad features three women holding up pro-life protest signs that include links to StudentsForLife.org.

I dont trust Planned Parenthood, one sign reads. Today, Planned Parenthood will end the lives of 910 human beings.

The second sign in the advertisement reads: I reject abortion extremism.

Only 7 percent of millennials support the abortion extremism made legal in New York state, the second sign reads on the back.

The third states: The pro-life generation has arrived to vote out abortion extremism.

According to Hawkins, SFLA had to fight in order to have its message relayed in Times Square since their advertising request was twice rejected by other companies.

But we dont give up on college campuses, even when facing threats of violence, and we didnt give up on sending a message to the vast majority of New Yorkers who reject infanticide and are horrified by the abortion extremism recently legalized in New York, Hawkins stated.

Hawkins stressed that late-term abortion and infanticide for babies born during abortions represents the human rights issue of our day.

She stressed that late-term abortion and infanticide for babies born during abortions represents the human rights issue of our day.

The Pro-life Generation will not forget the least of these among us, mothers and their pre-born infants, who deserve our help and support, she stressed.

On Thursday, SFLA sponsored a protest in Times Square in which students held over 900 crosses to represent the babies killed by Planned Parenthood every day. The demonstration was part of SFLAs Planned Parenthood Truth Tour, which seeks to hit 130 campuses this spring.
Lecrae signs first-ever female artist to Reach Records: Wande

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ORLANDO  Reach Records founder and Grammy-Award winning emcee Lecrae publicly welcomed their first-ever female artist to the Christian record label on Thursday.

Lecrae and his Reach Records team have been out on the Unashamed 2019 Tour and during their recent stop in Orlando, Florida, the rapper introduced The Christian Post to 23-year-old Wande Isola, the long-awaited first lady of the Reach Records family.

Its a great time in the culture for all this to happen and come together. Im excited to be here in this moment and see what the future holds, Wanda shared during an interview with The Christian Post.

The Austin, Texas, native by way of Nigeria has worked in Atlanta for the hip-hop label behind the scenes for some time and now she is introducing her rapping skills to the world.

Being on the administrative aspects helped me see a lot of things clear that I wouldnt have been able to see if I had only dived into my creative side. I feel likes its really cool because it was almost like a blessing, I was able to be prepared for now before I take on this artistry. There's more knowledge that I have and more wisdom I can use when approaching my artistry, she explained.

The young rapper described herself as multifaceted" and "energetic" who likes to have fun. Like everyone else at the label, the new signee is a devoted Christian and unashamedly shared her faith.

At the core [I] love Jesus and will always tell you about the truth and [am] not afraid to represent that, Wande testified.

Im also just growing because Im becoming an adult, so Im going to take yall along for the ride for that as I discover what its like to be young and unashamed as well.

Wandes new single, Blessed Up, is now available.

Lecrae officially welcomed Wande to the family, alongside all of the Reach Records artists, Andy Mineo, Tedashii, Trip Lee, KB, GAWVI, 1K Phew, and WHATUPRG at Thursday night's concert. After performing her new single, her labelmates and everyone in attendance prayed over her. See footage below.
Ohio governor signs heartbeat abortion ban into law

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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill into law that would prohibit abortions for unborn babies that have a detectable heartbeat, which can be found as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

"The essential function of government is to protect the most vulnerable among us  those who do not have a voice," DeWine said just before signing Senate Bill 23, or the Ohio Human Rights and Heartbeat Protection Act, into law on Thursday afternoon.

"Government's role should be to protect life from the beginning to the end, to protect those who cannot protect themselves, such as the elderly, the unborn, those who are sick, those who have a disability, those who have a mental illness, or an addiction."

Ohios SB 23 passed 56-40 in the House and then 18-13 in the Senate on Wednesday, with local media reporting protests from both sides outside of the legislative chamber.

Mark Harrington, president of the pro-life group Created Equal, emailed a statement out to supporters hours before the signing, saying that it was a historic day.

The legislature and Governor DeWine have declared that no longer should the beating hearts of humans too young to be born be violently torn apart by abortion, stated Harrington.

If pro-abortion lobbies present a legal challenge to this Act, we will defend these babies all the way up to the Supreme Court. Changes on the bench signify an even better day for preborn babies may be on the horizon.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio denounced the new law, vowing that they would sue to stop the law from taking effect.

This legislation is blatantly unconstitutional and we will fight to the bitter end to ensure that this bill is permanently blocked, said Freda Levenson, legal director at the ACLU of Ohio.

SB 23 is one of the most aggressive, oppressive, and radical attacks against women ever seen in this state and this country. A nearly identical bill in Kentucky was just struck down by a federal judge  we feel confident our impending litigation will ultimately prevail.

Last year, the Ohio Legislature passed a similar measure. However, then Governor John Kasich vetoed the bill due to concerns over prolonged litigation.

The state Senate failed to override the veto last December, missing the necessary 20 vote-minimum when they got only 19 votes in favor.
Overseas UMC leaders felt alienation from US churches over traditional marriage support

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United Methodist Church leaders from outside the United States said they feel dismissed by their brethren in the United States over their support for traditional sexual ethics.

Bishop Eduard Khegay, who is based in Eastern Europe, said he received emails from fellow UMC members who no longer want to financially support his Episcopal region after his delegate supported a plan earlier this year that opposes openly homosexual clergy and same-sex marriage.

I find it kind of threatening, explained Bishop Khegay at a meeting last month in Manila, Philippines, as reported by United Methodist News Service.

The question my people ask: Are we a church that wants to support those in need even if they think a different way? Or do we only support those who think like us?

At a special session of the UMC General Conference held in February, delegates voted 438-384 to uphold the mainline denominations official position against homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

Known as the Traditional Plan, the proposal not only upheld the current standards of the Book of Discipline but also included stricter enforcement of the rules and a possible gracious exit for congregations opposed to it.

Delegates representing overseas churches, especially Africa where the UMC is growing the fastest, played a crucial role in the vote result.

Those gathered in Manila talked about the backlash they have received from pro-LGBT churches in the United States.

Simon Mafunda from the East Zimbabwe Conference, who was a delegate at the special session in February, explained that many African members felt alienated by pro-LGBT UMC members.

There is also a feeling they are being treated like perpetrators and another group of people are the victims for the simple act of exercising their right to support what they believe, Mafunda explained.

Others, however, including Bishop Harald Ruckert of Germany, spoke about the pain experienced by those in his region that opposed the Traditional Plan.

When the decision was made on the last day, many of our people indicated to me  this is no longer my church. I lost a home in my beloved United Methodist Church, stated Bishop Ruckert.

Not only because of the exclusiveness toward LGBTQ people but because this plan tries to implement a spirit of mistrust and punishment.

The Manila meeting came about a month before the denominations highest court will convene to determine the constitutionality of the Traditional Plan.

The United Methodist Judicial Council will meet on April 23-26 in Evanston, Illinois, to hear challenges to the Traditional Plan. They are expected to release a decision within days of their meeting.

At issue are two items: the first being from Pastor Timothy Bruster of the Central Texas Annual Conference requesting that the Judicial Council review the constitutionality, meaning, application, and effect of the adopted legislation referred to as the Traditional Plan.

The second is from the UMC Council of Bishops, who submitted a request on March 6 for the Judicial Council to determine the constitutionality of Petition 90066, which changes the denominations policy on congregation disaffiliation.

Already, many pro-LGBT United Methodists in the United States and Europe have stated that they will refuse to enforce the Traditional Plan if it takes effect next year as scheduled.
Suspect in black church burnings showed interest in Satanism, listened to black metal

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Holden Matthews, the 21-year-old son of a sheriff's deputy who was charged with burning down three historically black churches in southern Louisiana, was attracted to Satanism and black metal.

"Information investigators have uncovered, and that Matthews has offered, suggests a possible connection with a genre of music called 'black metal' and its associated history with church burnings in other parts of the world, which have been documented in movies and books," the state fire marshal's office said in a statement cited by CNN.

Black metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music that usually features anti-Christian, satanic and paganistic themes.

Matthews, who is a resident of St. Landry Parish where the fires occurred over the last two weeks, was charged with three counts of simple arson on religious buildings with each carrying a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

Louisiana State Fire Marshal Butch Browning, said at a press conference Thursday morning that the fires are an attack on our God and our religion and investigators acted quickly to arrest Matthews because we felt that other crimes were imminent.

In my career, I have never seen such a spiritual mission that has come home so quickly, said Browning.

Taylor Thibodeaux, 23, who identifies as a Satanist, told USA Today that she met Matthews on social media through mutual friends. She said once he discovered that she was into Satanism he became so obsessed with the practice that she was forced to turn down a date with him.

"We were supposed to go on a date, but, for me, he didnt seem right," she said. "The infatuation he had toward me and my religion just threw me off."

Thibodeaux noted that during their time together, Matthews also used racial slurs, made "black jokes" and "dead baby jokes." She further called the church burnings Matthews is accused of carrying out "absolutely wrong" and argued that Satanism is about self-reflection and loving yourself, not burning down houses of worship.

Mount Pleasant Baptist Church became the third historically black church over 100 years old to burn down in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, in a span of 10 days last week. St. Marys Baptist Church was the first reported church fire on March 26 and Greater Union Baptist Church went up in flames a week later, NBC News reported.

Pastors of the churches that were burned down told The Advocate they were relieved that Matthews was arrested but also prayed that he would turn his life over to God.

"I just thank God that it's over. Our church can rebuild and get back to our work. It's been some sleepless nights. Now we can finally rest for a little while," Rev. Gerald Toussaint of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church said after a news conference Thursday.

I would just like to ask him why he would do such a thing. I dont know his motives, the Rev. Harry Richard of Greater Union Baptist Church said. I would like to see his heart and talk to him and let him express to me what it is that Ive done, or anyone in our churches have done, to cause the pain or whatever it is hes feeling toward us that he would do such a thing.

Toussaint also praised law enforcement for the work they did in responding to the fires.

Lately, law enforcement has been given a black eye but today it showed that they are real, and theyre good, and they supported and helped us. Many of them didnt have to but they did, he told The Advocate.
Karen Pence defends husband from attack on faith by gay presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg

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Karen Pence, wife of Vice President Mike Pence, fended off an attack on her husbands faith Tuesday from openly-gay Democrat presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg.

Speaking Tuesday on The Brian Kilmeade Show on Fox Radio to promote a book she wrote with her daughter, Pence expressed surprise that Buttigieg would target her husband, who is a former congressman and governor of Indiana when they have always had a great relationship.

I think in our country we need to understand you shouldnt be attacked for what your religious beliefs are and I think kids need to learn that from a young age that this is OK, what faith people have; we dont attack them for their faith, she said.

Buttigieg, 37, recently drew criticism from conservatives for declaring that his same-sex marriage has moved him closer to God, and telling Vice President Mike Pence and conservative Christians to quarrel with God if they have a problem with his homosexuality.

"My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man  and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God," Buttigieg declared during a speech at the LGBT Victory Fund's annual brunch in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, according to USA Today. "And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand, that if you've got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator."

Karen Pence insisted, however, that she doesnt believe her husband has an issue with Buttigieg and suggested he may just be attacking the vice president for political gain.

Whats kind of funny is I dont think the vice president does have a problem with him but I think its helping Pete to get some notoriety by saying that about the vice president, but again it just goes back to this religious liberty, she said. People came to America for religious liberty and I think thats something that we as Americans need to continue to teach our kids about and fight for.

In a tweet on Tuesday morning, Alyssa Farah, the vice presidents press secretary said the last time her boss publicly commented on Buttigieg was in 2015 when he came out as gay.

Since some are asking: the last time we recall Pence even mentioned @PeteButtigieg was in 2015, after news that Pete came out, Pence said: I hold Mayor Buttigieg in the highest personal regard. I see him as a dedicated public servant and a patriot, Farah wrote.

In her Tuesday interview, Karen Pence asked Buttigieg if he had a problem with that 2015 comment.

"I'm just like, 'Pete, did you not like that,' because that's what the vice president said about him," she said. "So what's the problem with that?"

In a tweet on Tuesday afternoon, Buttigieg appeared to respond to her, suggesting that Pence was being polite.

"People will often be polite to you in person, while advancing policies that harm you and your family. You will be polite to them in turn, but you need not stand for such harms. Instead, you push back, honestly and emphatically. So it goes, in the public square," he wrote.
Massachusetts becomes 16th state to ban conversion therapy for gay youth; lawsuit expected

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Massachusetts became the sixteenth state to ban sexual orientation change efforts therapy for LGBT minors, with a conservative group planning to pursue legal action in response.

Republican Governor Charlie Baker signed H. 140 into law on Monday. The new legislation prohibits licensed professionals from engaging in counseling meant to help minors struggling with same-sex attraction who want to change.

The Human Rights Campaign, a major LGBT advocacy group, celebrated the new law, which had failed to pass in Massachusetts in previous legislative sessions.

This legislation grants LGBTQ youth in Massachusetts a new freedom to live authentically, free from fear of the debunked and potentially life-threatening practice of so-called conversion therapy, said Marty Rouse, HRC National Field Director, in a statement.

We thank and applaud Gov. Baker and the Massachusetts General Assembly for making these protections law  and congratulate them in taking this momentous bipartisan step forward in ensuring Massachusetts is a safe and affirming state for all LGBTQ children.

However, the Massachusetts Family Institute, which had campaigned against the proposed legislation, denounced Governor Bakers signing of the bill and threatened legal action.

MFI will pursue legal action against the Counseling Ban to defend those constitutional rights in our Commonwealth, said MFI President and General Counsel Andrew Beckwith in a statement emailed to supporters.

This law is an extraordinarily invasive assault on the rights of parents to raise their children and a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech for the counselors whose help they seek.

Beginning in 2012 with California, several states and the District of Columbia have enacted bans on SOCE therapy, also known as conversion therapy or reparative therapy, for minors.

In addition to California, D.C., and Massachusetts, states that ban the practice for minors include Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington State, according to the HRC.

Supporters of these bans have argued that SOCE therapy harms LGBT youth and have pointed to the fact that mainstream American psychiatry rejects the practices.

Critics charge that the bans violate parental rights, religious liberty, and freedom of speech, while depriving youth who may want or even need such therapy from receiving it.

Last July, Maine Governor Paul LePage, a Republican, vetoed his states conversion therapy ban, referring to it as bad public policy.

This is so broad that licensed professionals would be prohibited from counseling an individual even at the individual's own request, stated Gov. LePage last year.

 young people should not be physically or mentally abused if they come out to their parents or guardians because they have experienced sexual or romantic attraction to an individual of the same gender. However, as it is written  'any practice or course of treatment'  can call into question a simple conversation.
Pete Buttigieg draws criticism for saying gay marriage brought him closer to God

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Openly-gay Democrat presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, has drawn criticism for declaring that his same sex-marriage has moved him closer to God, and telling Vice President Mike Pence and conservative Christians to quarrel with God if they have a problem with his homosexuality.

"My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man  and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God," Buttigieg declared during a speech at the LGBT Victory Fund's annual brunch in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, according to USA Today. "And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand, that if you've got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator."

Buttigieg, 37, who is a veteran, a Rhodes scholar and graduate of Harvard, lives with his husband, Chasten, in the same South Bend neighborhood where he grew up, with their two rescue dogs, Truman and Buddy.

Last month, during a Q&A at The South by Southwest Conference & Festivals in Austin, Texas, he said he tries to live a life that is consistent with Christian teachings and questioned whether Pence truly believes in Scripture.

First of all I try to live a life that is consistent with Christian teachings. I know that it is my responsibility not to ever do anything that would in public life, not be equally beneficial or make as much sense to people of another faith or people of no faith. But in my life I believe in that Christian ethic, the idea that was drilled into me in Catholic school even though Im not Catholic, Im Episcopalian, he said.

On Sunday, in an interview on NBCs "Meet the Press," he criticized President Trumps popularity among evangelicals as hypocritical.

Its something that really frustrates me because the hypocrisy is unbelievable, he argued. Here you have somebody who not only acts in a way that is not consistent with anything that I hear in Scripture or in church, where its about lifting up the least among us and taking care of strangers, which is another word for immigrants, and making sure that youre focusing your effort on the poor.

He continued: We see the diametric opposite of that in this presidency. ... Even on the version of Christianity that you hear on the religious right, which is about sexual ethics  I cant believe that somebody who was writing hush money checks to adult film actresses is somebody they should be lifting up as the kind of person you want to be leading this nation.

In an op-ed Monday, conservative commentator Erick Erickson, who is editor of The Resurgent and host of the "Erick Erickson Show" on WSB Radio, insisted that it's Buttigiegs display of progressive Christianity which is a hypocritical farce.

This is why progressive Christianity is so corrupt and flawed. As much as Buttigieg makes a valid critique on the presidents behavior and evangelicals' excusing that behavior, Buttigieg wants to reject the inconvenient parts of faith he does not like. He is a gay man who got married; he does not think homosexuality is a sin despite express statements in Scripture, and he thinks abortion is a moral issue and we cannot legislate our morality, Erickson said.

Buttigieg wants to use the social obligations as Christians against the president, but wants to avoid any implication on the personal obligations of Christians in terms of clear biblical sexual ethics and how we are to live our lives applying our faith even for the least of these, he continued.

Michael Brown, host of the nationally syndicated "Line of Fire" radio program, also called out Buttigieg.

If ever there was a glaring instance of the pot calling the kettle black it was when South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a professing Christian and practicing homosexual, called President Trump a hypocritical Christian. Seriously? Brown wrote in an op-ed Monday. What is utterly absurd, though, is for a man who professes to be a serious Christian, yet is pro-abortion and married to his same-sex partner, to call out Trumps alleged hypocrisy.
Trump says he's not looking to reinstate family separation policy

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President Trump on Tuesday said he's not looking to reinstate the controversial family separation policy for immigrants seeking asylum and those entering the country illegally, but felt it was a good deterrent when the practice was in place, according to The Associate Press.

Im the one that stopped it, Trump told reporters during a sit-down in the Oval Office with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi when asked about reinstating the policy. He insisted that it was his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, who first separated children from their families at the border, the AP reports. But once you dont have it (the family separation policy), he added, thats why you see many more people coming.

"We're not looking to do that," Trump said, according to NBC News, in an attempt to assure reporters that his administration wasn't going to reinstate its zero-tolerance policy of last year.

In June 2018, the president signed an executive order ending parental separations for those held in Border Patrol detention centers upon entering the country illegally.

"We're going to keep families together but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime, by all of the things that we don't stand for and that we don't want," Trump said at the time.

NBC News reported Monday that Trump was mulling whether to reinstate the family separation policy.

The news outlet cited three unnamed sources within the administration who said the president had sought to restart the policy since at least January, in response to the spike in illegal immigration.

Last Friday, Trump gave remarks at the border city of Calexico, California, in which he said the United States had problems accepting more immigrants because the nation is full.

We're full, our system's full, our country's full  can't come in! Our country is full, what can you do? We can't handle any more, our country is full. Can't come in, I'm sorry. It's very simple, Trump said.

In 2018, the Trump administration garnered outrage from liberals and conservatives alike for adhering to a family separation policy for immigrants seeking asylum and those who entered the country illegally.

The policy had existed in both the Obama and Bush administrations, with Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson telling both NPR and Fox News that under the Obama administration some children were detained alone. "We had then 34,000 beds for family detention, [but] only 95 of 34,000 [were] equipped to deal with families."

In June 2018, McClatchy's DC Bureau reported that the Obama administration was known to separate children and parents at the border and housed unaccompanied children in tent communities.

Franco Ordonez and Anita Kumar of McClatchy also reported at the time that while Trump created the "zero tolerance policy" on family separation, it was Obama who "helped create the road map of enforcement that Trump has been following  and building on."

Nevertheless, the rate of family separation is greater under the Trump administration than under Bush and Obama, according to former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The policy garnered outrage from many religious leaders and faith groups, including Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore and National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference President Samuel Rodriguez, the latter being a member of Trumps evangelical advisory board.

As evangelical leaders representing tens of thousands of local churches, campus communities, and ministries we are concerned that the new 'zero tolerance' policy at the U.S.-Mexico border, recently announced by Attorney General [Jeff] Sessions and being implemented by the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, has had the effect of separating vulnerable children from their parents, read an open letter to Trump that both Moore and Rodriguez signed.

As head of the Executive Branch of the federal government, we are writing to ask you to resolve this situation of families being separated that you have rightly described as 'horrible.
Instagram removes Babylon Bee founders cartoon comparing abortion and slavery, calling it hate speech

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The founder of the popular Christian satire site Babylon Bee recently had a post to Instagram comparing abortion to slavery removed by the social media website over claims that it was hate speech.

Adam Ford, who sold the Babylon Bee website last year, posted an entry on his Christian Daily Reporter site on Wednesday, explaining that he recently learned that a comic he posted to Instagram last month was taken down.

Instagram yanked it as hate speech, wrote Ford, who included a screengrab of the message he received regarding the post.

According to Instagram, the removed post violated the websites community guidelines on hate speech and symbols.

We want to keep Instagram a safe place for everyone, and we ask that you treat other members of the community with respect, stated Instagram.

Instagram went on to explain that they remove any posts that have captions that encourage violence or attack anyone based on who they are or posts that have specific threats of physical harm, theft or vandalism.

Please, read the entire comic and try to ponder how in the world it could be considered hate speech, added Ford, who included the whole comic, which is also available to read here, in its entirety on the Daily Reporter post.

The removed webcomic featured a dialogue between two women living in the Antebellum debating the morality of slavery, using arguments similar to the debate over abortion and starting with the question Does slavery ever bother you?

The last picture in the comic is captioned 200 years later and features two women beginning a dialogue about the morality of abortion, with one asking the question Does abortion ever bother you?

I am hardly the first person to espouse the belief (and hope) that one day society will look back on abortion with the same mortified disbelief we now have when we consider our country's history of institutionalized chattel slavery, stated Ford.

If I had published the exact same comic, but instead used it to promote abortion (i.e. without abortion rights, women cannot attain full equal personhood  an argument used on the left), would it have been removed as hate speech? I think we all know the answer to that.

Ford also took to his Instagram account to post a new photo on Wednesday, explaining that the comic was censored, with this post getting nearly 600 likes within a couple of hours.

Last year, Facebook threatened Fords Babylon Bee page with reduced distribution and demonetization in response to a Snopes piece fact-checking one of their satirical stories.

Ford posted about the threat on social media, with Facebook releasing an apology in March of last year, claiming that the initial threat of demonetization was a mistake.

Theres a difference between false news and satire, said Facebook in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time.

This was a mistake and should not have been rated false in our system. Its since been corrected and wont count against the domain in any way."
Michigan health center apologizes to senior citizens for Christmas, Charlie Brown censorship

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A Michigan-based health center has reportedly given a verbal apology to two senior citizens who were stopped from telling visiting students about the religious aspects of Christmas, including while reading A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Last week, the conservative law firm the First Liberty Institute sent a letter to the Kalkaska Memorial Health Center on behalf of two residents of Kalkaska Senior Living Center.

According to the letter, Joan Wilson and Wilma Wells were stopped by a teacher from telling kids from the Centers Child Development Center and Preschool about the birth of Jesus during a Christmas-themed visit last December.

In an email sent out to supporters on Tuesday afternoon, First Liberty reported that the Center had issued an apology to Wells and Wilson and agreed to speak to their employees about the incident.

We are grateful to KMHC officials for acting swiftly and apologizing to Joan and Wilma, said Keisha Russell, associate counsel for First Liberty, in a statement included in the email. Our clients are relieved this ordeal has been settled quickly.

According to First Libertys letter of complaint, sent on April 4, an unnamed teacher told Wells not to explain to the kids why people celebrate Christmas.

Later on during the visit, according to the letter, Wilson read A Charlie Brown Christmas to some children. When she attempted to explain the part where the nativity was mentioned, the unnamed teacher suddenly ended the visit.

As a government-owned facility, the Kalkaska Memorial Health Center is subject to the constraints of the U.S. Constitution through the Fourteenth Amendment, wrote Michael Berry of First Liberty in the letter.

Here, the CDCP teachers actions constitute unlawful discrimination and violate the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

In response to the coverage of the incident, the Center released a statement through a local CBS affiliate on April 5 explaining that a preliminary investigation into the incident found no wrongdoing.

While we take any claims of discrimination very seriously, thus far our preliminary investigation has uncovered no discriminatory acts and several factual inaccuracies in the letter from First Liberty, stated the Center at the time.

For example, the book actually read was not authored by Tim Burton, nor was it entitled 'The Nightmare Before Christmas.' The book read was the classic 'The Night Before Christmas.'

The Freedom From Religion Foundation also defended the Center, with the secularist group releasing a statement on Monday saying that government-sponsored education cannot include religious promotion.

Not only was the teachers decision legally sound, it was the best way for the preschool to ensure that none of its impressionable students was subjected to religious proselytizing as part of this government-sponsored event, stated FFRF.
RocketRoute, a leading provider of Flight Plan Filing and Management, is providing the D-Day Squadron part of the Tunison Foundation full support in preparing, organizing, managing and following the flights of all C-47 and DC-3 aircraft as they cross the North Atlantic. This will include flight plan services when the aircraft take the historic trip up the Hudson River in New York, as they fly around the Statue of Liberty on May 18th, 2019. It will continue as the aircraft fly the original Blue Spruce route that was used to ferry aircraft during the Second World War, with C-47s departing from Oxford, Connecticut (KOXC), stopping to refuel in Goose Bay Airport (CYYR) in Newfoundland, Canada, Narsarsuaq Airport (BGBW) in southern Greenland, Reykjavik Airport (BIRK) in Iceland and refueling a final time at Prestwick Airport (EGPK) on the Western coast of Scotland before making the final leg to Duxford Airfield (EGSU) north of London.

Once arriving in Duxford Airfield, the D-Day Squadron will join with its European counterpart, Daks over Normandy , to participate in multiple events between June 2nd-5th, 2019. The combined fleet of historic aircraft will cross the English Channel on June 5th, fly over Normandy, France and participate in multiple events at Caen-Carpiquet Airport from June 5th-9th, 2019.

We are aviation enthusiasts. To see so many of these amazing aircraft together will be a truly spectacular experience, expressed Steven Morgan, Business Manager for RocketRoute. The RocketRoute team are excited to be part of making this historic event happen.

Support from RocketRoute includes full access to the RocketRoute product suite. The flight plan program, which is cloud-based, covers everything from charts, route generation, weather, airport information, flight tracking and even runway performance, and maintenance and scheduling software. Dedicated apps for Apple and Android devices are also available to the crews.

This technology is further enhanced through an innovative flight status board, and 24/7 concierge flight tracking and management service by RocketRoute specialists, to ensure mission success.

RocketRoute will have an operations team member travel with the Squadron, to ensure full support and a more streamlined communication channel.

This is really a big deal for us, said Moreno Aguiari, Director of Marketing and Public Relations for the D-Day Squadron. This is the kind of support that will actually enable our aircraft to get there. Mission and flight planning are at the top of our list right now, and the support from RocketRoute and so many others is invaluable in bringing these highly significant and legendary aircraft back to Normandy.

Be sure to keep up with the latest news as additional leaders in aviation join the D-Day Squadron mission to honor the few remaining members of the Greatest Generation that participated in the D-Day invasion and salute the monumental effort that changed the world over 70 years ago.

About the D-Day Squadron

The D-Day Squadron is the part of the Tunison Foundation , a non-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization. In June 2019, the D-Day Squadron will lead an American fleet of historic, restored C-47 World War II military aircraft in Daks Over Normandy , a flyover of more than 30 international aircraft to drop 250 paratroopers over the original 1944 drop zones in Normandy commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day. The event will honor the citizen soldiers of the War, whose bravery led the Allies to the liberation of France, and then to an end of the devastating War in Europe. The Squadrons education program takes the compelling story of the citizen soldier to audiences at airshows and events off the flight line to honor these brave Americans and ensure their memory and significance is appreciated for generations to come. The groups efforts are funded through the generous tax-deductible contribution of their supporters. Learn more at DDaySquadron.org .

About RocketRoute
NAACP calls recent black church fires domestic terrorism; some pastors now sleeping inside sanctuaries

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President and CEO of the NAACP Derrick Johnson called the recent burnings of black churches in Tennessee and Louisiana domestic terrorism. Some pastors have reportedly started sleeping in their houses of worship to fend off would-be arsonists.

What is happening in Tennessee and Louisiana is domestic terrorism and we must not turn a blind eye to any incident where people are targeted because of the color of their skin or their faith. The spike in church burnings in Southern states is a reflection of the emboldened racial rhetoric and tension spreading across the country. But this is nothing new, Johnson began in a statement Monday.

For decades, African-American churches have served as the epicenter of survival and a symbol of hope for many in the African-American community. As a consequence, these houses of faith have historically been the targets of violence. The NAACP stands vigilant to ensure that authorities conduct full investigations."

The FBI and other local law enforcement agencies in Louisiana are now seeking to find out why Mount Pleasant Baptist Church became the third historically black church over 100 years old to burn down in St. Landry Parish, Louisiana, in a span of 10 days last week. St. Marys Baptist Church was the first reported church fire on March 26 and Greater Union Baptist Church went up in flames a week later, NBC News reported.

A local Louisiana official, who did not provide specifics about the ongoing investigation, told CNN that the fires had been intentionally set and some pastors in south-central Louisiana's Cajun and Creole Country have been sleeping in their churches to fend off other possible arson attempts.

"I feel our district was being targeted because all three of the churches were in our district," Pastor Freddie Jack, the Seventh District Missionary Baptist Association president, told CNN's Don Lemon on Monday.

"At first we thought it might have been an electrical problem, but then when the second church ... burning occurred I realized it was our sister church. ... Then two days later the third occurred so at least [to] me, [it] made me think that we're being targeted."

A fourth but smaller fire that erupted on March 31 at the predominantly white Vivian United Pentecostal Church in Caddo Parish, more than 200 miles north of St. Landry, is also being investigated.

Julius Alsandor, mayor of Opelousas, which is 75% black, told CNN the church burnings are "hideous."

"The relevance and the impact on the people in the surrounding communities and especially the congregation of each of these churches, it's hurtful and there may be some fear that is being exhibited by those who are a part of the three churches," he said.

We don't know why, we don't know when, we don't know who," the Rev. Gerald Toussaint of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church told CNN affiliate KATC. "We will let the authorities handle that, but we just know a higher power and a higher authority who can bring this thing to fruition."
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Adolf Hitler is wearing a white double-breasted jacket and black trousers. On his arm is a red band with a black swastika. In another scene, he wears a gray suit with a fedora and talks with Heinrich Himmler, the overseer of the Holocaust camps.

These are some of the home movies shot by Eva Braun and her friends at the Berghof, Hitlers retreat in southeastern Germany. Braun was Hitlers longtime girlfriend and briefly his wife. The Alpine scenery in the background is stunning.

We know about these movies because the National Archives is restoring and digitizing them. The entire four hours of footage should be completed this month.

How I react to Hitler

When you saw the headline and read the accompanying story, what was your reaction?

Mine was one of disgust mixed with curiosity. No figure in modern history conjures (or deserves) more revulsion than Adolf Hitler. At the same time, to see him as he was, recorded by friends in a relaxed environment, is historically unique.

What I didnt feel was fear.

Neither I nor anyone in my family was threatened personally by the Holocaust. I was obviously not old enough to fight the Germans in World War II. Due to my longtime love for Israelis, I grieve for them when Hitlers name and legacy come up. But I feel no existential angst.

For most of us, most of the bad news in the news feels the same way.

A recent gas explosion in a North Carolina building killed one person and injured seventeen others. A twenty-year-old college student in South Carolina died after what is being called an accidental fall at a fraternity party last weekend.

We feel sorrow for these victims and their families, but unless we know them personally, they dont touch us personally. Even reports that California is overdue for a major earthquake dont affect us viscerally unless we live in California or know someone who does.

What has and hasnt changed about death

You and I live in a day when technological advances have insulated us from the constant threat of death. Or so we think.

There was a time when hunger, disease, war, natural disasters, and predators were an ever-present reality for most humans. Today, government programs keep even the most impoverished of us from starvation. Medicine is more advanced than ever.

Wars are fought overseas by volunteers and technology. Natural disasters still endanger us, but modern buildings and response systems are better than ever. Predators are seldom an issue for urban and suburban dwellers.

As a result, death seems less a present-tense threat than perhaps at any time in human history. Of course, this appearance is not reality. It is still appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment (Hebrews 9:27). It is true for each of us that you do not know what tomorrow will bring (James 4:14).

Theres another crucial spiritual principle here as well.

When no one dies

At sixty years of age, Im old enough to remember when one of the main appeals of Christianity was its promise of life after death. In a world where humans were frail and life was fickle, being prepared for death was obviously a good thing.

Today, we have euphemized death and anesthetized ourselves to its reality. Few people die at home. Few people witness the deaths of others firsthand. No one actually diesthey move on or go to a better place.

Since few people are afraid of dying today or of going to hell when they do eventually depart, our appeal to them as Christians can no longer be based primarily on the benefits of our faith for the next life.

As a result, it is vital that we show our culture why following Jesus is the best life in this life.

Gods plan is good and acceptable and perfect

Jesus came so that his followers may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). Gods will for us is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2). He intends to supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19). The Lord is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think, according to the power at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).

Have you made your Father the King of your life today (Matthew 6:33)? Have you asked his Spirit to take control of your day (Ephesians 5:18)? Have you prayed for the Spirit to manifest his fruit in your life (Galatians 5:2223)? Will you tell someone what God has done for you so they can experience his incredible grace and love (Mark 5:19)?

If you and I live out all that God has for us today and tell others how they can find the life we have, our witness to our post-Christian culture will be compelling and powerful.

Consider an example.

Focus on this life for the next life

Chris Seiple is a graduate of Stanford and the Naval Postgraduate School with a PhD from The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy. He is a former Marine infantry officer and a founding member of the Pentagons Strategic Initiatives Group.

He is also living with stage 4 cancer and a brain tumor.

Writing in the Washington Post, Dr. Seiple focuses on living today while trusting Jesus for tomorrow. He testifies: I am grateful for the blessing of living in the present, between the already and the not yet. In the Bible, Jesus asks his followers: If he made and cares for the lilies of the field in all of their finite beauty, how much more will he care for us?

Dr. Seiple concludes: I believe death is but the doorway to the rest of life, but until it is time to step through, I want to live like the lilies, expectantly, with enough for today.

So should we.

Originally posted at denisonforum.org
Weekly briefing: Church burnings, transgender, heartbeat

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We've compiled the top stories of the week. Here's what you need to know:

3 black churches burned; suspect arrested

Three black churches that are each over 100 years old were burned in southern Louisiana in the span of two weeks. Holden Matthews, 21, was arrested this week and charged with three counts of arson on religious buildings.

State Fire Marshal Butch Browning noted that Matthews was attracted to black metal music.

He called the fires an attack on our God and our religion.

Baltimore lets transgender students use their preferred pronouns, locker rooms

Under a newly approved policy, students attending Baltimore public schools will be allowed to use the pronouns and names they prefer without being required to have already changed their name legally. The transgender students may also use locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity.

Ohio bans abortions after detection of heartbeat

Months after former Ohio governor John Kasich vetoed a bill banning abortion when a babys heartbeat can be detected, Gov. Mike DeWine signed such a bill into law this week to the applause of pro-lifers.

A fetal heartbeat can be found as early as six weeks into a pregnancy.

Government's role should be to protect life from the beginning to the end, to protect those who cannot protect themselves.  Mike DeWine

Gay presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg stirs controversy with Pence, Trump comments

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, who is in a same-sex marriage, called out both President Donald Trump for being a hypocritical Christian whose life is inconsistent with Scripture and evangelicals for supporting him.

He also targeted Vice President Mike Pence, saying, "My marriage to Chasten has made me a better man  and yes, Mr. Vice President, it has moved me closer to God.

Pences wife, Karen, responded to the jab, arguing that people should not be attacked for their religious beliefs.

Some conservative Christians also pushed back, arguing that Buttigieg is living a life inconsistent with the Bible.

We spoke to pastors about suicide and depression.Read how they get through depression

Pray for

David Lin, a U.S. pastor currently imprisoned in China

New releases

Movie:

Mary Magdalene (April 12)

Albums:

Havent Seen It Yet by Danny Gokey (April 12)

Paradoxology by Elevation Worship (April 12)

Books:

Finding a Loving God in the Midst of Grief by Susan M. Erschen (April 12)

On Faith: Lessons from an American Believer by Antonin Scalia (April 9)
Church body calls for release of Syrian archbishops still missing after six years

Fresh appeals have been made for the release of two Syrian archbishops six years on from their disappearance.

Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim and Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi have been missing ever since they were kidnapped at gunpoint outside Aleppo in April 2013.

What happened to the men after their abduction remains a mystery. It is also unknown who was behind the kidnapping as no group has ever come forward to claim responsibility.

The World Council of Churches has made repeated calls for the archbishops to be released. In a new commuique, its Permanent Committee on Consensus and Collaboration said the churches in Syria and Lebanon were continuing to suffer as a result of their abduction.

"In the years since their abduction, the World Council of Churches has expressed its concern and called for the release of the two archbishops of Aleppo," the communique reads.

"There is still no word on the whereabouts and condition of these two archbishops."

The communique was issued during a meeting of the committee this week at St John of Damascus Theological Institute, at the University of Balamand in Lebanon, where Archbishop Yazigi served as dean.

He was praised in the communique for his work to strengthen the "presence of Orthodoxy not only for Antioch but also throughout the east".

"Both archbishops demonstrated the love of Christ for all persons without exception, and are considered spiritual Orthodox leaders," the document continued.

It concluded with a call to Christians to continue praying for the safe return of the two church leaders "as a sign of hope for all the Christians of Syria and the region".
Steve Clifford leaving Evangelical Alliance after a decade at the helm

Steve Clifford has announced he is to step down as general director of the Evangelical Alliance at the end of this year.

At present, he has no fixed plans for his next chapter post-EA but said it had been "an honour and privelege" to serve the organisation, where he has been general director since 2009.

He admitted that the last 10 years had "not been without their times of challenge" but that the EA had "come through stronger and with a deep commitment to serve God's church right across the UK".

During his time at the EA, Mr Clifford oversaw efforts to unite the UK's evangelical churches in mission, and to build relationships and understanding between different ethnic expressions of evangelical Christianity in the UK.

This included the launch of the South Asian Forum of the Evangelical Alliance in 2010 to support engagement and ministry among the UK's South-Asian Christians, and the One People Commission in 2013 to deepen connections with pastors in the UK's ethnic minority communities. African and Caribbean, Chinese, Korean and Iranian pastors are among those to have joined the commission since its launch.

In 2012, the Gather Network was established to identify and catalyse local unity movements in towns and cities across England, and to foster collaboration in mission.

And in 2016, the Great Commission hub was launched to inspire and equip Christians in evangelism through the creation of over 200 resources and video testimonies sharing how people came to faith.

His time at the helm of the EA also oversaw a major relocation from the organisation's headquarters in Kennington, south London, to King's Cross.

Reflecting on his time at the EA, Mr Clifford said: "The great John chapter 17 prayer of Jesus has echoed in my ears as we have sort to express our 'oneness' with the missional imperative 'that the world might believe'. For me, our strapline says it all: 'Together making Jesus known'," he said.

"As church leaders from one part of the evangelical community, my wife Ann and I have been both challenged and enriched to experience the incredible diversity of the evangelical church and to see first-hand the phenomenal contribution the church is making to its communities.

"There is a rumour that the church is finished; let me tell you from my experience: the church is wonderfully alive and passionately serving Jesus."

Dr Tani Omideyi, chair of the Evangelical Alliance board and senior pastor of Temple of Praise, Liverpool, commented: "A proof of the changes Steve has brought about over his 10 years as general director is seen in the fact that the Evangelical Alliance looks and sounds different today than when he took over its leadership role.

"His outstanding achievement in deepening unity across church traditions and racial backgrounds provides a sure foundation on which hopefully future evangelicals will build. It has been my joy and privilege to support him during some of this period."

John Risbridger, chair of the Evangelical Alliance council, and minister and team leader of Above Bar Church, Southampton, said: "A bridge-builder, courageous leader and friend to so many, Steve has led the Evangelical Alliance through times both of opportunity and of testing with conviction, wisdom and grace.

"We thank God for him and are deeply grateful to him and Ann for all they have brought to the evangelical community over the past decade."

The Evangelical Alliance said it will soon begin the search for Mr Clifford's successor.
The black hole and the cross

I was fascinated by the first photograph of a black hole. No, I don't understand the physics but it spoke to me about the grandeur of the universe and in doing so strengthened my belief that the universe is made and governed by an almighty God.

It also reminded me of the astonishing ability of the human mind to understand such things and confirmed my belief that as human beings we are made in God's image.

Yet what I find intriguing about black holes is not what they are but their power as a symbol or a metaphor. The release of the image on the very day of the latest major twist in the seemingly endless Brexit saga meant it was inevitable that the media was full of the black hole as an image of the British predicament. Well, perhaps. But the black hole is an image that has a wider significance.

The idea of an object so powerfully inward-focused and destructive that it draws everything into itself and then gobbles it up is something that has echoes in many areas of life. It seems that if the phenomenon of a black hole didn't exist, it would surely have to be invented!

As I thought about black holes in this run-up to Easter, I found myself contrasting the idea of the black hole with the cross. There are comparisons: the black hole looks inward while the cross points out, takes in while the cross gives out, brings destruction while the cross brings life.

Those opposing images can be seen as principles that govern our lives. Do we take in or do we give out? Is our priority our own well-being or that of others? Do we focus on the fulfilment of our own desires or the concerns of those about us? It seems as though each of us must choose what principle we live under; to decide whether the geometry of our lives is the shape of the cross or the monstrous and ever hungry circle of the black hole.

These two opposing principles are particularly important when it comes to the Christian involvement in society. Throughout history, Christians (and Christian organisations) have faced the choice of looking inwards or looking outwards. Jesus constantly encouraged his followers to face outwards; to be salt and light (Matthew 5:1316) and to go into all the world. The good news of the gospel is not for our own benefit but for those who we live amongst.

This contrast between the black hole and the cross should make us think. Even if we are a Christian it's tempting, especially at a time when the world seems hostile, to adopt a privatised religion and focus on being blessed or enjoying God. With that comes the danger that the focus of our life points inwards not outwards.

The fact, too, is that now is not the time when we can afford the luxury of spiritual self-indulgence. We live when the influence of Christians on society is needed. There is a bleak moral landscape around us where there is no ultimate right and wrong, where truth is what the media says it is, where mercy and kindness are seen as weaknesses to be rejected, and where money, sex and self-fulfilment are portrayed as all that life is about. These views are not just simply mistaken illusions; they are beliefs that poison lives and leave a bitter legacy. The results are a society that increasingly seems to grow crueller, more unjust and more empty.

The uncomfortable truth is that we who are Christians must share our faith and let it influence our society, both for our sake and its. We must speak out on biblical values and principles, must challenge lies and must oppose wrong world-views. We must seek a Christian life that does not merely love God but loves our fellow beings too. We must either look outward and be involved with others or let ourselves be dragged in to that destructive and potentially inescapable black hole of the self-centred existence.

But it's not easy: the principle of the cross is life-giving but carries a price. All too frequently recently I have found the following phrase echoing in my head: 'It is better to stand with God and be judged by the world than stand with the world and be judged by God.' It's hard to argue with that.

We all need to think about how we can get involved. It's tempting in a world that seems to have little time for Christianity to retreat from it, but in doing so we take a step away from the principle of the cross and edge closer towards the black hole. Can I encourage you this Easter to think about how you relate to the world you live and work in? Pray about how you can be involved, let yourself be challenged by Scripture, set as a goal the influencing of your world for good.

And, specifically, if you are aged 18 to 30 can I recommend that you look at the forthcoming Wilberforce Academy which will take place on 9th14th September 2019 in Oxford? It is a unique opportunity to spend a week grappling and engaging with these issues. It is significantly subsidised, has excellent speakers and is life-transforming.

Finally, the black hole and the cross are not just symbols of the priorities we choose for ourselves but they also apply to our future. One astronomer referred to the imaged black hole as 'the gates of hell'. I'm sure it was merely an arresting phrase but they may have spoken more truly than they meant. To drift towards the black hole of seeking yourself leads to eternal loss; to choose the cross is to gain the resurrection life. Let's make the right choice!

J John is an evangelist and director of the Philo Trust
Young Carl A. Madeleys curiosity got the best of him as he watched Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker sit nonchalantly at Scotts Stores counter in downtown Conroe.

I was looking. I wanted to get a good look, said Madeley, who was a young boy in the spring of 1934. My dad told me Dont stare. He got me by the hand and said Youre coming with me.

Madeleys father, Dale, was a mechanic at Hazel & Alley auto parts and repair shop on South Main in downtown Conroe.

In the spring of 1934, Clyde Barrow asked Dale Madeley to tune up the V-8 he and the gang were traveling in.

Today, Madeleys memories of the infamous duo lead even more credence to the stories about Parker and Barrow that have circulated around Conroe for decades.

Larry Foerster, chairman of the Montgomery County Historical Commission, had for many years heard stories from children of Montgomery County sheriffs deputies that their fathers knew that Parker and Barrow visited his family in Conroe.

'WE HAVE TO STEAL TO EAT': Rare Bonnie and Clyde poetry, photos to be auctioned off in Texas

But they were never bothered by law officers because the gang had superior weaponry and had a reputation for killing law officers, Foerster said. Besides, Clyde reportedly never caused any trouble as it would have caused a problem for his Conroe relatives.

Some of these meetings with Barrow relatives reportedly took place under the old one-lane iron truss bridge that spanned the San Jacinto River on old Texas 105. This bridge is still there and Foerster has for several years sought to have the bridge preserved for its historical value and the stories of duo are a big part of its legacy.

But Madeleys account in addition to an interview with Ellis Dude Barrow from 1974 in The Courier, Clydes older cousin, give evidence that the two spent time in downtown Conroe as well.

Sometime in the spring of 1934, the duo came through Conroe.

According to Madeley, Barrow brought the V-8 car to Hazel & Alley because it wasnt running right.

In a narrative by Foerster, according to reputable historical accounts, the very same Ford sedan had been owned by Ruth Warren in Topeka, Kansas when it was stolen by the Barrow gang in April 1934.

NATIONAL HEADLINES: Original Bonnie and Clyde indictments uncovered in old Tarrant County court records

Most mechanics wouldnt work on a V-8 engine at the time. They just didnt understand it, Madeley said. Clyde said he really wanted that thing to go and then asked for a hamburger place.

Dale Madeley directed him to Hamburger Joes near the courthouse. Barrow encouraged Madeley to give the car a test drive before turning it back over.

While Barrow was grabbing a hamburger, Madeley fixed up the V-8, replaced the spark plugs and tuned up the ill-fated vehicle.

The car was stolen of course, Carl Madeley said. Dad said there was a BAR  a Browning Automatic Rifle, sitting right between the two bucket seats. He didnt want anything to do with that.

But he did take the car for a test drive and it ran just as Henry Ford meant it when he was finished.

When Barrow returned, he asked Madeley how much he made working at the shop. He replied about $1 a day.

Barrow gave him a $20 bill  a lot of money during the Depression. He proudly showed the bill to his family and told them the story of how he tuned up Barrow and Parkers V-8 Ford.

A MUST WATCH: Texas lawmen who caught Bonnie and Clyde take center stage in new Netflix movie

The next morning, the Madeleys were in Conroe on Simonton Street across from the courthouse when Carls father pointed out Barrow as he and Parker sat at Scotts Store.

My dad went in to get groceries and I sat and watched from the car, Madeley said. They sat their for several hours.

Carl Madeleys dad was also good friends with Ellis Dude Barrow who owned a local gravel company.

More information about the duos time in Conroe resurfaced with the discovery of a 1974 interview with Dude Barrow that was published in The Courier in 1974.

He didnt conceal himself, said Dude Barrow in the 1974 interview. It didnt make no difference to him  and if there was a law (Dudes reference for any law enforcement officer) sitting in the cafe, hed come in and sit beside him. He wasnt afraid of them cause as long as you didnt take your hand and put it down on that pistol, he wouldnt bother you.

In the article, Dude Barrow went on to talk about how his father would keep two or three hundred dollars in his pocket and Clyde knew and never did take it.

INFAMOUS REIGN: A look at Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow

And if he owed somebody, he sure did pay it, Dude Barrow said in the article.

Dude Barrow had met Bonnie Parker a few times and didnt care for her long dresses, but he did remember her being pretty handy with a fire arm.

Dude Barrow said he last saw his younger first cousin about two weeks before the duo was ambushed in Louisiana on May 23, 1934 in the very V-8 Ford that was tuned up in Conroe. A Texas posse, lead by Frank Hamer (a former Grimes County deputy sheriff and former Texas Ranger) carried out the attack.

Carl A. Madeley said he once saw the shot-up Bonnie and Clyde car on display in a museum near Dallas. As of 2018, the bullet riddled death car was on display at Whiskey Petes Casino in Primm, Nevada.

Carl A. Madeley went on to learn to fly at the Conroe airport when he was a teenager and the Navy had just handed the airport over to the county following World War II. In 2005, he received recognition from the FAA for having 50 years a commercial pilot and mechanic. Madeley also served time in Korea in the Korean War and is credited with opening the Han Pass when two other teams had failed. He also was one of the first test pilots for the Learjet.

For more information about the Montgomery County Historical Commission, visit www.montgomerycountyhistoricalcommission.com.

The Courier thanks Larry Foerster, Chairman of the Montgomery County Historical Commission, for his contribution to this article and use of parts of his narrative on Bonnie and Clyde.
SARAH SILBIGER/NYT

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Department of Energy announced Friday it is investing $100 million in federal research funding into developing coal power plants with "near zero emissions."

Coal power has been on the fast decline in the United States, as it struggles to compete with cleaner forms of electricity like natural gas plants and wind and solar farms.
Oil notched a sixth weekly advance in a row as unrest in Libya and Sudan raised supply concerns in a market already pinched by OPEC cuts.

Futures rose 1.3 percent for the week in New York for the longest run of gains since March 2016. In Libya, warlord Khalifa Haftar moved forces to the gates of Tripoli, triggering alarm that the OPEC member could slide deeper into chaos. Meanwhile, a military coup in Sudan added to turmoil swirling around producers from Iran to Venezeula.

Crude advanced along with U.S. equities amid a brightening demand picture. The S&P 500 clawed above the 2,900 level for the first time in six months after encouraging trade data out of China and strong earnings from JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chevron Corp.'s $33 billion deal for Anadarko Petroleum Corp. was evidence of growing faith in the U.S. shale boom.

"There's continued depletion of global crude inventories and it's hard to sell a market when that happens," said Thomas Finlon, director of Energy Analytics Group Ltd in Wellington, Florida.

EARLIER: Oil slips most in a month amid U.S. supply boost, demand warning

Crude has rallied more than 40 percent this year as curbs by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners -- originally intended to prevent a surplus -- are compounded by unintended losses among its members. While that's crimping supplies, the International Energy Agency said it could lower demand forecasts because of lingering threats to the global economy.

West Texas Intermediate gave back some gains after a report showed U.S. oil-rig activity increasing for the second straight week. Nonetheless, WTI for May delivery ended the day up 31 cents to close at $63.89 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Brent for June settlement rose 72 cents to $71.55 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange, and gained 1.7 percent for the week. The global benchmark crude was at a premium of $7.53 to WTI for the same month.

See also: Venezuela Oil Output Slumps to 16-Year Low as Blackouts Persist

The International Monetary Fund predicted that global growth this year will be the weakest in a decade. Risks to oil demand are "currently to the downside," the IEA said in a report on Thursday.

"When will we see a ceiling?" asked Finlon, of Energy Analytics. "When there's a demonstrative downturn in demand due to pricing or when a number of geopolitical hot spots cool down. Right now, I don't see anything really poised to restrain it from going further."

--With assistance from James Thornhill and Heesu Lee.

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

Apr. 08, 2019 | LEXINGTON

By West Kentucky Star Staff Apr. 08, 2019 | 10:52 PM | LEXINGTON

Opportunity Costs of Pleasing Unions Tragically High for Charter-less Minorities - By Jim Waters



New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is claiming to address income inequality by demanding the city's elite magnet high schools trash their rigorous entrance exams and implement a racial quota system.



At the same time, de Blasio's imposed an arbitrary cap on charter schools, which, if lifted, would result in even more poor black and Hispanic kids getting admitted to those elite high schools without lowering standards and achieving a head start on addressing the very income-inequality problem the mayor wants to tackle.



Poor minority students from the city's well-known Success Academy network of charters are accepted to these high-performing high schools at double the rate of their peers in traditional settings.



Wouldn't getting more poor minority children an elite education rather than lowering the bar and denying new charters be the preferred way of achieving greater equality for largely disadvantaged students?



Yes, but it's not how twisted minds of teachers'-union bosses and their political lackeys work.



Eva Moskowitz, Success Academy's founder and CEO, recently wrote in the New York Post that 79,600 families last year vied for fewer than 27,000 seats in the city's charter schools, "leaving 52,000 kids on waiting lists."



Moskowitz has tried for several years to co-locate three new charters in empty public-school space  an approach that's previously yielded tremendous results from collaborative efforts between the traditional and charter schools' staff members and students in both schools.



De Blasio denies her requests, meaning, as she writes, "instead of three new high-quality schools (an added 1,500 seats) the city continues to hoard half-empty buildings."



If the mayor's denials were based on sincere questions about charter schools' effectiveness and he was open to genuine debate, the dynamics would be different.



Instead, it's about a political cocktail made partly of power, partly of fear, a grab for complete control and even retribution.



Moskowitz, while chair of the New York City Council's education committee, held a heavily covered multi-day hearing 16 years ago in which she and other witnesses exposed how union contracts imposed inane work rules on public schools and made it nearly impossible for principals to fire bad teachers.



Unions never forgave her and worked overtime to defeat her in the next election.



De Blasio demonstrates his insecurity regarding teachers' unions by doing all he can to please them  including insisting during his 2013 mayoral campaign that Moskowitz "has to stop being tolerated, enabled, supported"  and undermining her plans for new schools.



A similar environment has created a charter-school funk in Kentucky.



Ironically, during the 2017 legislative session, the state House  under Republican control for the first time in nearly a century  passed long-fought-for bills but then abruptly deflated when it came to charter schools.



GOP leaders obstinately refused to vote on a bill that would have made Kentucky one of the nation's strongest charter-school states, instead caving to union threats that supporting truly effective legislation would result in all-out political war in the next election.



No charter schools have started here more than two years later because the impotent law that eventually passed provided no funding mechanism for them and was generally so watered down it could have ended up floating down the Kentucky River and made just as much difference.



It's not because lawmakers don't know that charters are effectively closing gaps and catching many poor, minority students in danger of falling through the cracks in traditional schools.



Rather, too many politicians care more about the next election than the next generation.



Kentucky students who by now could have been leaving failing schools behind and entering high-performing charters are being denied opportunities that won't come their way again, thanks to antagonists who talk of closing gaps and ending disparities while remaining the biggest obstacles toward the only public-education policy that's ever done just that.



Jim Waters is president and CEO of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky's free-market think tank. Read previous columns at www.bipps.org. He can be reached at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com and @bipps on Twitter.
Sysco, the nation's largest food service distributor, said Friday it has purchased two California-based Hispanic food distributors.

J&M Wholesale Meats and Imperio Foods, sister companies based in Modesto, operate throughout northern California and Oregon and have approximately $44 million in combined annual sales. The Houston-based food service giant did not disclose the purchase price for the two companies.

RELATED: Sysco looks to acquire Illinois-based food distributor

J&M, founded in 2003, specializes in serving Hispanic retailers and customers. Imperio Foods, founded in 2014, carries Hispanic canned goods. Executives from the two companies, including owner and operator Maria Jimenez, will continue to manage the business.

"We are excited to welcome J&M Wholesale Meats and Imperio Foods into the Sysco family of businesses," Greg Bertrand, Sysco's executive vice president of U.S. foodservice operations, said in a statement. "The acquisition of these businesses is a complementary adjacency to our existing California area business and provides Sysco with the opportunity to further extend our reach into the Hispanic customer segment."

The deal is the latest in a series of acquisitions expanding Sysco's reach at home and abroad.

In the past year, Sysco has acquired Doerle Food Services, a Louisiana distributor and Kent Frozen Foods, a U.K.-based distributor. In January, Sysco announced plans to acquire Illinois-based Waugh Foods.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Momentum is gaining in Washington for a privacy law that could sharply rein in the ability of the largest technology companies to collect and make money off peoples personal data.

A national law, the first of its kind in the U.S., could allow people to see or prohibit the use of their data. Companies would need permission to release such information. If it takes effect, a law would also likely shrink Big Techs profits from its lucrative business of making personal data available to advertisers so they can target specific consumers.

Behind the drive for a law is rising concern over the compromise of private data held by Facebook, Google and other tech giants that have earned riches by aggregating consumer information. The industry traditionally has been lightly regulated and has resisted closer oversight as a threat to its culture of free-wheeling innovation.

Support for a privacy law is part of a broader effort by regulators and lawmakers to lessen the domination of companies such as Facebook, Google and Amazon. Some, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic presidential candidate, have called for the tech giants to be split up.

The Trump White House has said in the past that it could endorse a broad data privacy law.

The big tech companies have been nervously eyeing a tough privacy law taking effect next year in California. That measure will allow Californians to see the personal data being collected on them and where its being distributed and to forbid the sale of it. With some exceptions, consumers could also request that their personal information be deleted entirely.

Whatever federal privacy law eventually emerges is expected to be less stringent than the California measure and to supersede it. As a result, the tech industry is trying to help shape any national restrictions.

This is the first time ever that the industry wants legislation, said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy advocacy group. The industry is terrified.

Congressional pressure

A House committee was to press Google and Facebook executives about another urgent concern involving Big Tech: Whether theyre doing enough to curb the spread of hate crimes and white nationalism through online platforms. The Judiciary Committee hearing follows a series of violent incidents fueled in part by online communication.

Facebook, used by 2 billion-plus people  including over 200 million in the U.S.  has been a particular lightning rod for industry critics. Having had its reputation tarnished over data privacy lapses, a tide of hate speech and a spread of disinformation that allowed Russian agents to target propaganda campaigns, Facebook appears ready to embrace a national privacy law.

Facebooks founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, published a column last month in the Washington Post calling for tighter regulations to protect consumer data, control harmful content and ensure election integrity and data portability.

The internet, Zuckerberg wrote, needs new rules.

Amazon says it has built its business on protecting peoples information, and we have been working with policymakers on how best to do that.

There is real momentum to develop baseline rules of the road for data protection, Keith Enright, Googles chief privacy officer, said in a policy paper. Google welcomes this and supports comprehensive, baseline privacy regulation.

Looking to Europe

A sweeping privacy shield law in the European Union, covering how tech companies handle personal data in the 28-country bloc, should be a model, Zuckerberg wrote. EU regulators recently fined Google $1.7 billion for freezing out rivals in the online ad business  their third penalty against the search giant in two years. The EU watchdogs have also ordered Apple and Amazon to pay back taxes and fined Facebook for providing misleading information in its acquisition of WhatsApp.

Britain has also unveiled plans to vastly increase government oversight of social media companies, with a watchdog that could fine executives or even ban companies that fail to block such content as terrorist propaganda and images of child abuse.

The entire debate cuts to the heart of Big Techs hugely profitable commerce in online users personal data. The companies gather vast amounts of data on what users read and like and leverage it to help advertisers target their messages to the individuals they want to reach. Facebook drew 99 percent of its revenue from advertising last year. For Googles parent Alphabet, it was 85 percent, according to Scott Kessler of the research firm CFRA.

Amazon, too, doesnt just sell products online; it provides ad space, too. The company doesnt say how much but has said that the other revenue in its financial reports is mainly from ads. Its other revenue topped $10 billion last year, more than double what it was in 2017.

The tech giants relationship with advertisers was spotlighted by action regulators took last month. The Department of Housing and Urban Development filed civil charges against Facebook, accusing it of allowing landlords and real estate brokers to exclude certain racial or ethnic groups from seeing ads for houses and apartments. Facebook could face penalties.

The company has separately agreed to overhaul its ad targeting system and end some of the practices noted by HUD to prevent discrimination in housing listings as well as credit and employment ads. That move was part of a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union and other activists.

Reviving old rules

Besides crafting a bipartisan data-privacy measure in Congress, lawmakers are considering restoring Obama-era rules that formerly barred internet providers  such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast  from discriminating against certain technologies and services.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has proposed fines and jail time for executives of companies guilty of data breaches.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, representing chief executives of major companies, have presented their own proposals to curb privacy abuses.

Among the tech giants that are trying to shape any final restrictions is the chipmaker Intel, which has developed its own legislative proposal.

I think its likely we are going to pass a national privacy law by the end of 2020, David Hoffman, Intels associate general counsel and global privacy officer, said in an interview.

By then, the privacy measure emerging in California will have taken effect.

The California bill is responsible for 90 percent of the lobbying and political pressure to pass a national law, said Robert Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, whose board includes tech executives.

Four senators  Republicans Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Jerry Moran of Kansas and Democrats Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Brian Schatz of Hawaii  are working on a national measure they say would protect consumers from the abuse of their data and provide legal certainty to ensure that tech companies continue to hire and innovate.

It would be nice, said Wicker, who leads the key Senate Commerce Committee, to have it on the presidents desk this year.
In April 2010, a little-known group called WikiLeaks released footage taken by a U.S. Army helicopter as it overflew a Baghdad suburb three years earlier, near the height of the Iraq War. At the end of the video - after the viewer had watched cannonfire slam into a crowd and listened to American soldiers calmly target and mow down survivors, including two Reuters employees - the credits rolled.

The first name on the screen was Julian Assange, "producer, creative director" - not to mention self-taught hacker and the man who founded WikiLeaks to take secrets from the powerful and give them to the public. That's how Assange was introduced to the world, though it may be hard to remember after he was captured in London on Thursday - a haggard, white-bearded man in his late 40s, whose popular reputation as a First Amendment hero had atrophied since 2010 to the point of unrecognizability.

The gunship video was viewed millions of time on YouTube, and WikiLeaks followed it up by releasing huge caches of classified U.S. documents: embarrassing diplomatic cables and disturbing revelations about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By the end of 2010, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had called Assange a "a high-tech terrorist," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had accused him of launching an "attack" on the world, and future president Donald Trump had suggested those involved in the leaks be executed.

What so many politicians condemned, so much of the public celebrated.

Assange was instantly praised by First Amendment and press freedom groups. The readers of Time magazine and Le Monde overwhelmingly voted for him in celebrity-of-the-year contests. He gave a TED talk. International newspapers worked behind the scenes with Assange to publish tens of thousands of leaked documents. And even after Assange went into hiding from the growing number of governments investigating him for alleged crimes ranging from sexual assault to espionage, reporters and TV hosts managed to track him down for sometimes fawning interviews.

WikiLeaks "tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction," Assange told Time in a Skype call from a secret location for a December 2010 cover story. The magazine illustrated it with a picture of the silver-haired, not-quite-40-year-old Australian gagged with an American flag.

The flag might bind his wrists if the illustration were made today, after British police finally captured Assange and frogmarched him through London to await possible extradition to the United States on hacking charges. But would anyone bother to make one?

"He was an unstable figure who was an unfortunate avatar for press freedom," said Alex Gibney, who wrote and directed the 2013 documentary "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks." "I think instinctively, he was always kind of a renegade and also a narcissist, and self-serving and mendacious."

Until his arrest on Thursday morning, Assange was last seen in public when he took refuge inside Ecuador's embassy in London in the summer of 2012 - by then a pariah, suspect or fugitive to most of the governments in Europe and North America.

"A courageous Latin American nation took a stand for justice," Assange told a crowd of supporters from the embassy balcony that August. "And to the people of the United States, United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia who have supported me in strength, even when their governments have not, and to those wiser heads in government who are still fighting for justice, your day will come."

Assange remained inside the embassy building for the next seven years. London police officers kept a nearly constant guard outside, with orders to arrest him the moment he set foot on British soil, and so he did not. Assange continued to give occasional balcony speeches, release occasional videos and entertain occasional celebrity guests - they included Noam Chomsky to Lady Gaga in the early 2010s. He adopted a kitten and made a Twitter account for it that drew modest attention.

But as the U.S. wars faded from public discussion and memories of that old helicopter footage faded from memory, Assange's celebrity dwindled, too.

He might have been simply forgotten by his fans - maybe even by his enemies - had WikiLeaks not scored another big scoop in the middle of a U.S. presidential election.

In the summer of 2016, as Assange managed WikiLeaks from his small bedroom in the Ecuadoran Embassy, the group published tens of thousands of emails recently stolen from the Democratic National Committee - dramatically disrupting the party's national convention.

This did nothing to endear Assange to Clinton, who was chosen at the convention as the Democratic presidential nominee, nor to the intelligence community, which later concluded that hackers working for the Russian government had given the emails to WikiLeaks in an attempt to manipulate the U.S. election.

But WikiLeaks did finally win the admiration of Trump, who was then in the process of taking over the national Republican Party. As The Washington Post reported earlier this week: "Trump mentioned WikiLeaks more than 100 times in just the final month of the 2016 campaign, according to Factba.se. Many of those times, he expressed admiration for its work. 'This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable,' he said once. 'Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks,' he said another time. Yet another time: 'Oh, we love WikiLeaks. Boy, they have really - WikiLeaks! They have revealed a lot.' "

Assange, who once spoke of uniting the world's majority against its elite, began to sound and act like a simple partisan. He gave an interview to Trump-friendly Fox News host Sean Hannity, who had him promise viewers that he was not working with the Russian government. Assange appeared to suggest that a Democratic National Committee employee who had recently died in a botched robbery - Seth Rich - had been his source for the 2016 leaks, fueling right-wing conspiracy theories that Democrats had Rich murdered in retaliation.

Assange remained the subject of media fascination, but now the profiles were tempered with doubts about his motivations and questions about his alleged links to the Russian government. "WikiLeaks, an organization purportedly devoted to transparency, is at a minimum okay with helping out the world's most aggressively authoritarian leader," Vox wrote in 2017.

"Over time, people have seen that Julian's behavior and motivations have become increasingly more unprincipled. That's given a lot of people pause," said Gibney, the documentarian. "When Donald Trump invokes his name during the campaign - 'I love WikiLeaks' - it seems like he [Assange] is motivated by pique against Hillary Clinton and personal animus."

Assange has denied that. He has consistency denied any strategy other than exposing what the most powerful people in the world do not want exposed to the least. But if the public might once have widely believed that, many greeted Assange's capture in London on Thursday with something less than sympathy.

"THAT'LL WIPE THE SMILE OFF HIS FACE," gloated a headline in the Daily Mail, which in 2012 had sent a reporter to profile Assange's lonely existence inside the embassy.

And in the United States, where Assange first earned his celebrity and where he might soon be brought for a federal trial:

"I know nothing about WikiLeaks," President Trump told reporters. "I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. . . . I know nothing really about him."

Still, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups have stood by WikiLeaks since the beginning, and they condemned Assange's arrest as an attack on press freedom dressed up as justice. "How could you Ecuador? . . . How could you UK?" Pamela Anderson, the former "Baywatch" star who befriended Assange during his long stay at the embassy, tweeted rhetorically.

So Julian Assange has been a globally beloved hero and a globally hunted villain, and now he will be known as a prisoner for the immediate future. Gibney, who has studied him in all these manifestations, won't be surprised if Assange finds a way to transform himself once again.

"He's certainly positioning himself as a free-speech martyr," Gibney said. "We'll have to see whether that's properly earned."
3 1 of 3 National Weather Service Show More Show Less 2 of 3 National Weather Service Show More Show Less 3 of 3





A cold front is expected to bring severe storms to the Houston area Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.

The severe weather threat will be between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m., forecasters said. The weak front is expected to stall between College Station and Groveton, setting off thunderstorms throughout the area.
Construction broke ground in February for the new La Colombe dOr Hotel and Residences tower, and already the new structures bones have grown several stories.

The towers creative team  Munoz + Albin architects and Rottet Studio interiors architects  have released renderings of their plans for the new and outdoor spaces that will connect with the existing mansion, also getting its own $10 million makeover.
Millions of visitors descend on the National Mall every year, touring the U.S. Capitol, posing for photos in front of the memorials and picnicking on the Washington Monument grounds. With so many people jostling for space in the strip of green running between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial, the key to an enjoyable visit is finding the right time to go. These are our suggestions for making the most of the Mall.

Note: Sites are listed from east to west, starting at the Capitol. All outdoor memorials are open around the clock every day, though rangers are on duty only from 9:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and memorial bookstores and museums have varying hours.

U.S. CAPITOL

Best time to visit: Morning

If you want to get inside the Capitol, the easiest and fastest way is to arrive at the same time as the people who work there. The U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, accessed from the East Front of the Capitol, opens at 8:30 a.m.  a half-hour before some senators and representatives begin public office hours. The Visitors Center begins offering its free 45-minute guided tours at 8:40 a.m. and starts new ones every 10 minutes. Visitors can reserve slots online, but if you havent, an early arrival is usually your best chance for first-come, first-served passes. And on your way out, youll notice how the lines to get through security have grown throughout the morning.

Early arrivals are also good for photographers: The morning sun shines brilliantly against the Capitol dome, which finished an extensive restoration in 2017.

WASHINGTON MONUMENT

Best time to visit: Afternoon

The Washington Monument remains closed as repairs to its elevator continue, and though the National Park Service has promised a spring 2019 reopening for the landmark, theres still no specific date. In the meantime, the best place to take pictures of the obelisk is from the area between the World War II Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial, where you can catch its reflection in the Reflecting Pool.

JEFFERSON MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Morning

Crowds flock to the Tidal Basin nonstop during cherry-blossom season, capturing pictures of the flowering pink and white blooms, posing for engagement photos, getting shots of the kids in pink flowered outfits  you get the idea. Morning is best for spending some quality time with the thousands of trees that surround the Tidal Basin, and if you come early enough, your chief competition will be exercise fiends getting in their morning run.

The Jefferson Memorial itself is mostly a peaceful place, with visitors sitting on the sun-kissed marble steps, overlooking the water and the Washington Monument beyond, or marveling at the 19-foot statue of Thomas Jefferson inside. If you want to reflect on Jeffersons words or visit the small exhibition on the memorials lower level, its better to beat the rush of school groups.

Another bonus: Early risers have a better chance of scoring one of the three swan-shaped boats that glide around the Tidal Basin  they can be rented only on a first-come, first-served basis, beginning at 10 a.m.

WORLD WAR II MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Afternoon

The World War II Memorial sprawls across 7.5 acres of the Mall, in a prominent spot between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial, at the top of the Reflecting Pool. If you want to explore the memorial, with its bronze reliefs showing scenes of battle and the home front, or pose for a photo in front of your state or territorys memorial column, afternoon might be the best time. This will allow you to take advantage of the memorials most personal quality: free tours and talks led by National Park Service Rangers. Depending on the schedule, you might learn about The Road to Pearl Harbor or venture on a guided 2.5-mile hike to find Obscure Memorials of the National Mall. Events often begin at 2 p.m., but check the online schedule for more details.

FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Evening

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial is the most immersive on the Mall: Its a series of outdoor rooms, representing Roosevelts four terms, filled with bronze sculptures, waterfalls and pools, depicting the Great Depression and World War II. Because the layout calls for exploration, its most rewarding at night, when the statues cast shadows, the water shimmers and its peaceful enough to linger and contemplate.

But dont just take our word for it: In 1998, architect Lawrence Halprin told The Washington Post: When people tell me they love the memorial, I always have one thing to tell them: You really ought to see it at night.

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Afternoon

Theres a lot of inspirational reading to be done at the most recent memorial to grace the Mall: The walls surrounding the 30-foot statue of Martin Luther King Jr. contain famous quotations from his Letter From Birmingham Jail, his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and other notable works. Because of this  and because youll want to take photos  its easier to visit during daylight hours. (Theres a neighboring bookshop, too, where you can buy material to take home.)

As at the World War II Memorial, park rangers are on hand to lead tours and discussions; a recent talk covered Kings approach to voting rights and the 15th Amendment. Talks often begin at 2 p.m., but check with rangers or the bookstore for more information.

KOREAN WAR VETERANS MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Evening

This group of 19 poncho-wearing soldiers on patrol is one of the most dramatic displays in a city that loves historic tableaux. Gesturing, crouching, alert to danger  the larger-than-life steel statues seem ready to spring into action, moving in triangular formation from a wooded area toward a large American flag.

The illusion is even more remarkable as shadows lengthen, rewarding those who visit the Korean War Veterans Memorial, its black granite memorial wall and the peaceful Pool of Remembrance at twilight or early evening.

VIETNAM VETERANS MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Afternoon

Most visitors feel the solemn presence of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial before they reach the famous Three Servicemen Statue or see the austere memorials black granite panels, inscribed with the names of 58,318 American casualties. Even the teenagers on school trips instinctively seem to know that this is a place for hushed voices; when you do hear someone talking on their phone, its a visitor calling a family member for help finding a specific name on the wall.

You can visit after dark, when the memorial feels even more somber. But for first-time visitors, its better to go during the day, when park rangers and volunteers  often veterans  can assist in finding the name of a friend or loved one, so you can make a rubbing or just reach out and touch the name. In daylight, its easier to see the photos and tributes left at the wall or see people reflected in the polished surface. Thats when the emotional impact of the memorial is most striking.

LINCOLN MEMORIAL

Best time to visit: Afternoon or sunset

At the western end of the Malls axis, the Lincoln Memorial is a popular gathering spot for tourists who want to take a photograph in front of Daniel Chester Frenchs statue of the 16th president or stand on the spot where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his I Have a Dream speech. Its more than just history that lures them here: The steps and benches provide a great place to rest and enjoy the view, and the adjacent parking lot is a convenient place for tour buses to pick up their charges.

Once the school groups have left for the day, though, the atmosphere becomes less frenetic. (Except, that is, on summer Tuesdays, when the Marine Corps Drum and Bugle Corps and Silent Drill Platoon perform on the plaza at the base of the memorial.) The Lincoln Memorial offers one of the most beautiful and memorable vistas in Washington, and the white marble glows ethereally with the light of the setting sun behind it. The bookstore, focused on Lincoln and the Civil War, and a small display of images relating to the construction of the memorial are open until 8 p.m.

TAKE THE BUS

Visitors sometimes talk about the Mall as if its a small, easily walkable park. In fact, the stroll from the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center to the Lincoln Memorial is almost 3 miles, and thats if you dont make any detours to memorials or museums along the way. If youre planning to hopscotch between attractions on the Mall  say, from the Thomas Jefferson Memorial to the Lincoln Memorial to the National Museum of African American History and Culture  the best way to do it is on the free Circulator bus.

The Circulator, which launched a route around the Mall in 2015, is an accessible city-run bus that follows a 15-stop route beginning at Union Station before wrapping around the Mall and Tidal Basin. Riders can hop on and off at any time. (Across the city, the Circulator promises buses run every 10 minutes, though the gaps between service are frequently longer.) As a bonus, buses are air-conditioned, and newer models offer free WiFi and USB ports for charging phones. See a route map at nationalmall.dccirculator.com.
Harris County Constable Precinct 4.

A man is accused of attempting to break into the home of a woman the day after he allegedly exposed himself to her and masturbated outside of her property.

Mark Vargas was arrested and charged with indecent exposure, according to a release from Harris County Constable Precinct 4. Vargas was allegedly masturbating outside of the woman's home in the 3600 block of Wells Mark in Atascocita April 9, according to court records. Vargas left before police were able to detain him April 9, according to court records.
DuPont employees at the Bayport plant in Pasadena are accusing the company of intimidation and attempting to interfere with their efforts to unionize.

DuPont officials encouraged employees to vote against joining the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 564, according to employees and company letters. The chemical plant south east of Houston has about 50 workers and produces polyimide plastic film.

Under national labor law it is illegal for an employer to interfere in employees' efforts to unionize.

IUOE Local 564 has been working on unionizing the chemical plant for about a month, according to employees at the site. Workers are voting Friday on whether to officially join Local 564.

Last week, company officials mailed letters to workers arguing that their "unquestionably high wages benefits are at risk in collective bargaining negotiations."

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"If you vote to give your voice to the union and they sit down with the company's negotiators, I am concerned it would drive a bigger wedge between the Bayport team and the company. This will surely foster animosity instead of addressing it," wrote Ed Flanagan, plant manager, in a letter mailed out to workers. "If the negotiations become a battle between the union and DuPont, I don't see how that will help to address the issues you've raised  payroll software problems, input on plant operations and unfounded fears about the future of our site."

Later, Flanagan added, "I think a union is a bad idea."

The engineers' union has filed three unfair labor practice charges against the DuPont's Pasadena plant with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing the company of making coercive statements meant to interfere with union organizing.

EARLIER: Dow Inc.'s stocks jump after chemical spin-off from DowDupont complete

DuPont declined to comment on allegations of unfair labor practices. A spokesperson confirmed the union had filed a petition to organize its Bayport plant with the NLRB and added, "Although we do not believe a union is needed at this facility, DuPont respects the rights of its employees to make this decision for themselves."

DuPont is the middle of a three-way split up of DowDupont after a multimillion merger of the two major chemical companies Dow and Dupont two years ago. DowDupont just completed the spin-off of Dow Inc. April 1. The company will spilt off its agricultural division, Corteva Agriscience, on June 1 and DowDuPont will be renamed DuPont.
The number of out-of-state law firms that opened new offices in Texas grew significantly in 2018, but the actual number of lawyers working at big corporate firms operating in the state declined last year.

Nearly half of all corporate attorneys practicing in Texas now work for a law firm headquartered outside of the state.

Citing a thriving economy and dozens of corporate relocations to Texas during the past five years, more than 15 national and regional law firms launched new offices in Dallas, Houston and Austin in 2018. A couple dozen others have opened outposts in Texas since 2012.

Exclusive new Texas Lawbook research shows, however, that out-of-state law firms have relocated only a miniscule number of lawyers from their other offices to their Texas operations and that the states corporate law community has witnessed almost no growth in its pool of legal talent since the Great Recession ended in 2009.

There were 6,750 full-time attorneys working at the 50 largest corporate law firms operating in Texas last year - down from 7,003 lawyers in 2017, according to Texas Lawbook research.

More than 44% of those 6,750 Texas business lawyers are now employed by law firms headquartered outside the state - triple the number from 2014, which was the first year that The Texas Lawbook started keeping track of such data.

The number would be 50%, except that The Texas Lawbook still credits Norton Rose Fulbright - a global firm that is the result of Fulbright & Jaworskis 2013 merger with London-based Norton Rose - as having its U.S. headquarters in Houston.

A seismic shift has taken place in the Texas legal market, and the entire law firm landscape has changed, says Chicago-based legal industry consultant Kent Zimmermann. But the pool of lawyers for the law firms to chose from seems stagnant and is certainly not growing at the pace that we would expect for such a thriving business economy as Texas.

As a result, the same lawyers are just jumping firm to firm in a law firm version of musical chairs, Zimmermann says.

Top 10 law firms in Texas By number of attorneys Law Firm 2018 TX Lawyers 2017 TX Lawyers Vinson Elkins 430 409 Norton Rose 393 408 Baker Botts 370 374 Jackson Walker 351 359 Haynes and Boone 331 350 Thompson & Knight 296 289 Winstead 291 291 Locke Lord 283 296 Bracewell 228 231 Hunton AK 213 296 See More Collapse

There is no better evidence of the transformation that has taken place than the 2018 annual Texas Lawbook survey of the 50 largest corporate legal operations in Texas.

Only 22 of the 50 largest law firms by lawyer count operating in Texas are now headquartered in the state. In 2014, 38 of the 50 were based in Texas.

The numbers are partially skewed by three major law firm mergers that took place last year: Houston-based Andrews Kurth combined with Virginia-headquartered Hunton & Williams; Dallas-based Gardere merged with Milwaukees Foley Lardner; and Detroit-headquartered Clark Hill joined with Strasburger & Price of Dallas.

As a result, 664 corporate attorneys who worked for those three Texas firms in 2017 are now employed by out-of-state firms. All three of the newly merged firms - Hunton Andrews Kurth, Foley Gardere and Clark Hill Strasburger - are ranked in the top 15 in this years survey.

Twenty-six of the top 50 legal operations in Texas grew their lawyer head count in 2018, according to Texas Lawbook research. Twenty firms thinned out their ranks, while four have exactly the same number of attorneys as they did in 2017.

To be sure, the nine largest corporate law firms - Vinson & Elkins, Norton Rose Fulbright, Baker Botts, Jackson Walker, Haynes and Boone, Thompson & Knight, Winstead, Locke Lord and Bracewell - operating in the state are Texas legacy firms and remain a huge force in the business communities of Dallas, Houston and Austin.

Those nine Texas firms employ 2,973 lawyers, which is exactly six more attorneys than work at the 28 out-of-state firms combined.

For the second year in a row, Houston-based V&E remained the states largest corporate legal operation. V&E added 21 attorneys during 2018 to have 430 lawyers practicing in their Austin, Dallas and Houston offices.

Norton Rose Fulbright, which held the top spot for more than a decade, shed 15 lawyers last year and dropped to second with 393 attorneys practicing in the state.

Baker Botts, Jackson Walker and Haynes and Boone round out the top five.

Seven of the 10 largest law firms operating in Texas saw their lawyer headcount drop in 2018. Two firms - V&E and Thompson & Knight - added attorneys. Winstead had exactly the same number of lawyers in 2018 as they did in 2017.

The Texas Lawbook survey found that 25 of the top 50 corporate law firms grew in size in 2018 and that only seven of those 25 firms are Texas-based. The rest are headquartered outside the state.

Eight law firms - all of them based out of state - increased their number of lawyers in Texas significantly.

In pure numbers, Kirkland & Ellis added the most attorneys in 2018 - 81. The Chicago-founded law firm opened a Dallas office last year and jumped from being ranked 19th in lawyer count in 2017 to 11th in 2018.

Sidley and Winston & Strawn each added 20 lawyers and jumped into the top 20 for the first time. DLA Piper grew by 40 attorneys and leaped from 40th to 25th in the ranking.

For the full version of this article, please visit TexasLawbook.net.
In an effort to update the community and boost morale for independent school districts, superintendents from Aldine ISD, Klein ISD and Spring ISD headed the panel for the Annual Scholarship Luncheon hosted by the Houston Northwest Chamber of Commerce.

During the luncheon, four high school seniors from the school districts received scholarships and gave speeches on their achievements. Bret Champion, Klein ISD superintendent, LaToya Goffney, Aldine ISD superintendent and Rodney Watson, Spring ISD superintendent, all gathered to speak on the current state of their respective district.

Klein ISD

Superintendent Champion advocated not only for better funding for Klein ISD, but all public schools in Texas.

In June 2018, Klein ISD had a tax ratification election fail, forcing the district to cut millions from their budget. Champion said Klein ISD is currently advocating for more public school funding and may consider another TRE at one point, although that plan is not firm.

We have so many things going on and the beauty of it all ... is were all about one thing, Champion said. To ensure that every student enters with a promise and exits with a purpose.

While speaking on Texas legislature, Champion reminded the audience that although legislature may potentially bring billions of dollars in funding to school districts, the result may not be nearly enough. Although legislature may increase education funding by $9 billion, they cut more than $5 billion in 2011.

Last year, Klein ISD had to cut $22 million from their 2018-2019 budget and an additional $8 million from their 2019-2020 budget as well as lay off staff across the district. Champion explained the difference between a bond and a TRE, with bond funds being used for large scale projects, like building schools, and TRE funds being used for programs.

This fall we have Elementary No. 33 opening up paid for by a bond, Champion said. This fall, Elementary No. 33 will be vacant because the TRE failed and it cost about $1 million to staff an elementary school.

Overall, Champion said Klein ISD is working to make sure every single student in the district receives the funding and education they deserve, and praised each of their high schools for having students nominated for the Tommy Tune awards, an award show for high school musical theater, and the hackathon taking place April 13, KleinHacks and the fine arts programs at Klein ISD.

I love this community and this community is incredible, he said. Were so proud that in our most advanced and rigorous courses. We have more students than ever before engaging in those courses and being more successful in them than ever before.

Spring ISD

Watson said Spring ISD is working on strengthening middle schools and feedback received from parents including the new middle school coming to Spring in the fall, Spring Leadership Academy.

One of the areas (parents) indicated was not only do (they) want choice, but (they) want smaller environments, Watson said. This school will be a brand new leadership school focused on blended learning with a community service point in it. One of the areas were excited about is that every student will participate in a team leadership course.

Watson said every student at the school will participate in community service projects. Spring ISD is also opening Springwood Village Middle School. The school will be an international baccalaureate middle school, offering students college-level courses, another request from parents, he said.

Roberson Middle School is also coming to the district this fall, Watson said. Watson said the middle school will focus on STEM programs. The police command center and a new teacher training center, a professional learning center with mock classrooms and students volunteering for practice classes.

Spring ISD is also working on arts integration for the district, putting art into core curriculum, and building a strong pre-K program in the near future.

We are looking at ways to catapult student achievement but also create more engaging classrooms across the entire district, Watson said.

chevall.pryce@chron.com
The Humble City Council and city officials were pleased to hear that the city excelled in its fiscal year 2018 financial audit review.

During Thursday nights meeting Laura Lynch, a certified public accountant with Houston accounting firm Whitley Penn, gave a brief overview on how the firm conducted the citys audit and their findings.

The audit review stated that they had no disagreements with the citys management or their judgments on accounting statements and that the materials were correct.

The citys net position had increased by 4.7% to $138.9 million. The net position includes the cash and investments, capital assets, current liabilities and long-term debt.

The increase means the citys assets exceed its liabilities, according to Lynch. Of this amount, $40.4 million of unrestricted net position may be used to meet the citys ongoing obligations to citizens and creditors.

Humbles long-term liabilities increased by $246,000 due implementation of GASB Statement No. 75, accounting and financial reporting for other post-employment benefits. Long-term liabilities also include general bond obligations, net pension liability, bond issuance premiums and compensated absences for city employees which resulted in $19.6 million, a 1.2 % increase from the 2017 fiscal year.

The citys general fund experienced an increase as well by 9.6% at $31.7 million. The general fund includes total revenues, total expenditures and other financing sources. The citys revenue exceeded their expenditures by $6.7 million.

City Finance Director Aimee Phillips said part of the reason for these numbers is their sales tax increase.

Sales tax revenue for FY 2018 reached at about $13.9 million which is a 6% increase from FY 2017.

Humbles enterprise fund which is used to account for the citys water, wastewater collection and wastewater treatment options witnessed a 4% increase as it reached to $41.5 million for fiscal year 2018 compared to FY 2017 at $39.8 million. The enterprise fund includes total operating revenues, total operating expenses, non-operating income and transfers.

Phillips was content with the overall results of the FY 2018 financial audit review and is looking onto the next year.

kaila.contreras@chron.com
The Fort Bend Childrens Discovery Center is teaming up with MedExpress Urgent Care to teach families about what they can expect when visiting a doctors office.

Health representatives from MedExpress Urgent, a neighborhood medical center, will be at the Fort Bend Childrens Discovery Center and are inviting the community to attend its event scheduled for Friday, April 19 between 11:30 and 1 p.m.
Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls is asking local officials to stay true to their word about fighting human trafficking, while cautioning the community to be wary of suspicious activity related to the problem.

Nehls said his office is looking to to partner with the community, county officials and other law enforcement agencies in the area to identify and prevent human trafficking in Fort Bend County, according to the Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office.

We all know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, Nehls said in a statement. We ask the County Judges office to take steps to fulfill the judges recent promises he would be requesting four new human trafficking investigators.

The statement comes after Fort Bend County Judge KP George met with Congressman Pete Olson, Precinct 3 Commissioner Andy Meyers and agents with the FBI to address human trafficking in the county.

At the time, George called human trafficking a widespread threat that must be tackled by every level of government and vowed hed work with local officials to create a task force to investigate and prosecute cases of human trafficking throughout Fort Bend County.

George, who was elected last year, promised to work with newly elected Fort Bend County District Attorney Brian Middleton, who is seeking grant funds from the state to create a human trafficking division within his office. The division would include up to four investigators and a prosecutor dedicated to anti-human trafficking efforts and would focus on the trafficking of people under the age of 24.

Middleton said the division would use the more than $600,000 worth of computer equipment his office acquired from federal authorities.

We need to get ahead of this problem, and with the Commissioners Court providing the resources we need, I have no doubt we will be successful, Nehls said in his statement. With the addition of these specially trained investigators, Fort Bend County Sheriffs Office will be able to actively pursue and prevent human trafficking activities before they gain a stronghold in our county.

Nehls and his office have notoriously denied reports of human trafficking being as widespread a problem as other area law enforcement have said it is, often using Harris County and Houston as examples to downplay the issue in Fort Bend County.

However, local anti-human trafficking organizations such as Children At Risk and Elijah Rising confirm the problem is a serious issue in Fort Bend County, specifically at illicit massage parlors.

Everyone goes out of their way to find the missing 17-year-old suburban white girl, but lets talk about the women who are here in the middle of our neighborhoods who are being asked to do sexual acts every day, Vanessa Forbes, intervention coordinator at Elijah Rising, told the Houston Chronicle recently. They are hidden in plain sight. They are overlooked.

The Houston Police Department has partnered with several nearby counties to tackle the problem. The task force currently has at least one investigator tied to Fort Bend County.

michelle.iracheta@chron.com
Katy Mayor Chuck Brawner proclaimed April as Sexual Assault Awareness and Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month" in Katy at the April 8 Katy City Council meeting.

Attending in support of the proclamation were representatives of Katy Christian Ministries, which operates a crisis center that provides support to victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Susan Hastings, Crisis Center director, was among those who attended the City Council meeting.

The center helped 912 domestic and sexual abuse victims from January-December of 2017, she said, before the meeting. For the period from January-December 2018, the center had 2,298 domestic and sexual abuse victims.

We did change the YTD reporting for 2018 to include victims helped through crisis intervention over the phone, too, added Hastings. The changes are based on grant requirements.

We believe the increase is due to Hurricane Harvey and over the last 1.5 years our outreach to the community has increased through many new partnerships. The support from area churches has also increased and so this brings a lot of referrals to our program, said Hastings.

The proclamation reads, in part, Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Month were instituted to call attention to misconceptions and misinformation about rape and sexual assault, and to address the issue that many in our society remain disturbingly uninformed with respect to issues of sexual assault and forcible rape.

According to the proclamation, someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in America, approximately one in six women are raped during their lifetime and children younger than 18 account for approximately 44 percent of all reported sexual assaults.

The proclamation says the mayor and City Council support KCMs Crisis Center in its efforts to educate persons about the true impact of rape and sexual assault in our community and asks that people take action to help prevent sexual violence.

In other business at the Monday meeting, Police Chief J. Noe Diaz introduced five new officers recently hired by the Katy Police Department. He said he had three more openings to fill.

Council did not act on an item tabled at its March 25 meeting. At that meeting, Katy City Council in a 5-0 vote approved tabling payment of the $46,583.58 change order for reconciling all bid items with G.W. Phillips Concrete Construction Co. for the Brant Drive storm sewer extension. Some council members said they had received complaints about the project.

We took it off the agenda until we have had time to review the whole project. The issues have not been resolved, said Brawner.

However, Katy City Council voted April 8 to accept public improvements for Cane Island, Section 18 and Cane Island Parkway Phase 5 and the final plat of Katy Main Street Commercial Reserves Plat No. 5.

In reports from council members, Ward A Councilwoman Janet Corte reported that the April 6 Keep Katy Beautiful Trash Bash was a success. We had a really great turnout, she said, reporting 53 on-site volunteers and 182 cars that came through.

At-large Councilman Chris Harris talked about the successful Take Me Fishing Hutsell program on March 30. Also participating in the event were Mayor Chuck Brawner and Katy Police Chief J. Noe Diaz.

karen.zurawski@chron.com
Four suspects are in custody after Harris County Constable Precinct 4 deputies issued a warrant on a home in northwest Houston and found an array of drugs allegedly being sold there.

Deputies said in a release an investigation was started after police learned narcotics were being sold out of a home in the 24200 block of Wild Horse Lane. Johnny Johnson, Johnny Johnson Jr., Elisa Terrell, and Larry Gertman were arrested at the home April 11.
A new Swiss restaurant will open at the Lakeland Village Center in the master-planned community of Bridgeland in the next few weeks, according to store representatives.

Edelweiss Stube is the brainchild of chef and co-owner Markus Klauser, a Swiss native with a restaurant background, and chief operating officer and co-owner Will Payne. Both live in Cypress with their families. Together the pair is promising Houston a unique dining experience that offers guests specialty dishes "one could find only in Switzerland."

"Switzerland has such a different culinary history than the U.S.," Klauser said in a press release. "The Swiss see dining as an experiential coming together of family and friends; through collective, sharable dishes like Raclette, that experience of actually enjoying a meal is amplified."

The restaurant's hallmark dishes are shareable, Raclette-topped Swiss meals. Raclette is an Alpine cheese aged to six months and commonly used for melting. Guests can melt their own Raclette cheese in pans at a table grill and then scrape the cheese over dishes like potatoes, vegetables, fruit and meats. Representatives said when melted, the Raclette develops a nutty, full sweet flavor with a crisp, delightfully chewy crust.

FOR THE FOODIE: Best new restaurants worth the drive to Houston's suburbs

"It is the experience which gives the guests time to enjoy and spend time with family and friends while cooking their own composition of a meal," representatives told Chron.com.

Guests may also choose to have Raclette cheese melted from a half wheel scraped over their dish of choice tableside. Other typical Swiss dishes will also be offered at the restaurant, such as the Alplermagrone, which consists of penne pasta with potato cubes in a creamy cheese sauce, according to representatives. Another famous dish, the Zurcher Geschnetzeltes mit Rosti, comes with tender strips of beef and mushrooms in house-made gravy, served with shredded roasted potatoes.

Edelweiss Stube will serve the cheesy dishes Tue.-Friday 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Saturday 12 p.m.-11p.m. and Sunday 12 p.m.-9 p.m.

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 Montgomery County Commissioners Court delivered a proclamation recognizing National Crime Victims Week, highlighting strides may through the victims rights movement by crime victims and pushing for broader recognition of the needs of those victimized through crime.

Commissioners Court is using the week as an opportunity to reflect on our past contributions to the Victims Rights Movement, to honor how that past carried us where we are today, and to focus on what we as citizens and professionals are doing to create a more hopeful future for those affected by crime, the proclamation stated.

Tyler Dunman, special crimes chief at the Montgomery County District Attorneys Office, emphasized the care and attention given to crime victims in the county in the interest of their defense.

Its important that we recognize the impact that crime can have on people and citizens of our county, said Special Crimes Chief Tyler Dunman of the Montgomery County District Attorneys Office. Its also important to recognize in Montgomery County, in particular, the resources that go into helping victims of crimes.

Dunman cited victim assistance coordinators who advocate for victims in criminal cases the DAs Office handles, providing the victims with general information and helping them manage compensation services.

Kind of holding their hand and guiding them through the process, Dunman said.

Another resource for crime victims, especially children, is Sumi, a comfort dog used during trial testimony, he added. The network of crime victim advocacy in the county, Dunman said, includes Childrens Safe Harbor and the Montgomery County Womens Center.

One of the things that were blessed with in this county is a multitude of agencies and advocates across law enforcement and nongovernment organizations that work very hard to serve victims when they enter the criminal justice system. Our office is very proud of that fact, Dunman said.

Its a message embedded in the Commissioners Court proclamation.

Let us continue to build on the foundation built through previous efforts and partnerships with victims, organizations and communities to labor on for building a hopeful future. As a community we will continue our commitment to the future through our past efforts, the proclamation stated.

Ultimately, Dunman looked to the enduring need of crime victims.

Being a victim of a crime is a serious and unfortunate event for anyone who has to go through that. Its

something that many victims will have to live through forever, Dunman said.
The Texas House and Senate are working on two bills that aim to fix an outdated school finance system, which could put more money in the classroom with teacher raises and reduce property tax burden on tax payers.

House Bill 3 recently passed and sets approximately $9 billion in funding over the next two years. The school finance reform bill would increase the base funding per student for the first time in four years by $890 per student, bringing it from $5,140 to $6,030.

Today is a historic day for Texas, State Representative and House Bill 3 Co-Author Will Metcalf, R-Conroe stated on April 3. The Texas House took a giant step in finally fixing our broken school finance system and simultaneously working towards real property tax relief 

The Senate has not yet passed its public education bill, Senate Bill 3, which could be on the floor soon. However, on Tuesday it passed its budget, which serves as the funding mechanism for the bill and included at least $4 billion appropriated for teacher pay raises.

The Senates school finance proposal will benefit Texas students and teachers, while providing school districts the increased flexibility they need to succeed, state Senator Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe said in a statement to The Courier. Overall, we will provide the necessary resources to Texas public education to address school safety improvements, on-campus job training, rapid enrollment growth, and a significant salary bump for our classroom teachers.

Bill basics

House Bill 3 would provide more local control and requires 25 percent of the money school districts gain to be used for full-time employees excluding administrators, and another 25 percent can be given to administrators. The more-restrictive Senate plan sets $5,000 in raises only for teachers and librarians, Willis ISD Superintendent Tim Harkrider and Chief Financial Officer Darrin Rice said the plan does not identify raises for other positions such as custodians, cafeteria workers and school administrators.

Splendora ISD Superintendent Jeffrey Burke said additional funding has been needed as the cost of education and the cost of living continues to go up. He said House Bill 3s plan could directly impact teacher and staff pay, special education, social and emotional wellness, and school safety. If the plan does not pass, he said current budget projections show little to no growth in state revenue, therefore putting more of the burden on local taxpayers; and, new employment opportunities would be limited to positions based solely on growth needs in the classroom.

What is heartening is that the bills and related amendments indicate that more funding is headed our way, and we are waiting to see how it is allocated and/or mandated, Burke said noting additional amendments would be needed and an observed commitment from both chambers for funding teacher salaries. We are cautiously optimistic and await to see the final result after it passes through both chambers.

Legislation highlights

Among the house bills highlights, includes $2.7 billion for property tax reform lowering property tax rates statewide by about 5.5 percent. It would reduce property taxes by compressing the tax rate by 4 cents per $100 value on the maintenance and operation side and puts money into the school districts that would allow for teacher raises. This plan would save a homeowner in Conroe ISD, where the average home value is about $300,000, about $110 per year, Rice said. It also requires an election for voters to authorize tax rates above $1.01, which is 3 cents lower than the current law. Harkrider said the compressed property tax rate would mean a loss of money from the tax base, but it would be offset by the state sending the school districts more money.

The Senate Bill calls for a 2.5 property tax increase cap on the amount of money that a school district can increase its budget, which Rice said would not allow the school district to employees a raise. Rice shared there is discussion on the state level about a potential proposal for a 1 cent sales tax increase to provide additional funds for property tax relief that could gain traction.

Under the house plan, recapture payments would be reduced by 38 percent this biennium. While some school districts like Conroe ISD and Splendora ISD have not been subject to the Robin Hood Payments that require property wealthy school districts to share the wealth with property poorer school districts, Willis ISD is facing $200,000 in payments next year. Its neighboring school district, Montgomery ISD has been forced to pay at least 12 times since 2004, totaling more than $9.8 million.

Montgomery ISD Executive Director of Finance Kristy Conrad called HB3 a step in the right direction as the administration continues to evaluate its funding.

Whats next

The two bills will enter a conference committee where the bills could undergo significant changes. The elected officials will work on negotiating and amending the bills to develop one state budget for public education. While the legislative session ends in May, it could go into a special session in June to continue to work on the final budget plan which would affect both the 2019-20 and 2020-21 budget for the school districts.

Montgomery County school districts applauded the representatives for making education a priority this session, which will end in May. State Senator Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, said he believes in ensuring a fair and adequate funding system for all the school districts in the state no matter the location.

"While it has been difficult in the past for the Legislature to come to a consensus on what should be done, I believe we will be able to come to one, this session more than any other, Nichols said. Education has and will continue to be the number one issue for our state, and I look forward to working with all of the member of the Legislature to ensure every student is receiving the education they want and deserve.

mellsworth@hcnonline.com
Montgomery County commissioners are moving forward with filling a vacant Information Technology administrator position but agreed the that person should be a licensed peace officer to handle sensitive information.

According to Precinct 3 Commissioner James Noack, members of the countys Information Technology Department approached him with concern regarding the storage of certain documents and photos associated with the investigations of the countys Internet Crimes Against Children task force.

As you can imagine the types of images and the data that is collected is not the type of information or data you want stored just anywhere, Noack explained. You dont just want anybody having access to this information.

Noack said because of that and the specialized needs regarding that information, he would like to have a licensed peace officer who is Texas Commission on Law Enforcement certified as its new IT director.

County Judge Mark Keough ask who currently has access to that information. However, IT officials said no one because the county allotted funds to centralize the data last year. That system is set to go live this year.

Thats the problem, we need some to manage something that doesnt exist now, but will go live soon, said Bobby Powell, co-director of IT.

Sheriff Rand Henderson agrees a specialized person is needed to manage the information.

We do forensic analysis of computers, its pretty heinous stuff, Henderson said. Its stuff that no one but law enforcement can look at, thats the rationale behind this. We have to have somebody with IT expertise that also has a TCOLE card.

Commissioners did not say when they expected to fill the position.

cdominguez@hcnonline.com
Theater students in Fort Bend Independent School District will find out who plies their trade the best  both on stage and behind the scenes  when the Baber Awards are doled out.

The Baber Awards pay tribute to Jerry Baber, a renowned Fort Bend ISD theater educator who created theater departments at both Clements and Kempner high schools.

The fifth Annual Jerry Baber Awards are scheduled to be doled out starting at 7 p.m. Monday, April 29, at Rodgers Auditorium at Dulles High School, 550 Dulles Ave. in Sugar Land. All 11 high schools in the district will perform and students will be honored throughout the production.

According to a news release, this years show will feature a special presentation for Fort Bend ISD veteran educator Brad Cummons, who is retiring. He started teaching theater arts in 1978 and moved to Texas in the early 1980s. In 1985, he started teaching at Fort Bend ISD. As a theater teacher at Dulles High School, Cummons was asked to be on the planning committee for High School No. 7.

In 1995 I was proud to have the opportunity to start Austin High School and The Austin Playhouse, Cummons said on his high school website. Austin High Schools Fine Arts Department has been nominated for numerous Tommy Tune awards and won Best Set Design for Fiddler on the Roof. The Austin Theater Department has also performed at the Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2005 and 2013.

In 2017, Cummons received the Texas Thespian Leadership Award.

The Baber Awards are determined by Fort Bend ISD students. According to the Baber Awards website, Directors at each school choose student judges at the beginning of the year. Each judge is scheduled to see one or more of the qualifying shows and score each show based on a balloted criteria.

The schools and their productions this year include:

Austin High School: The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus and the musical Nunsense.

Baber Award nominees Best Musical: "Chicago" by Bush High School, "Grease" by Kempner High School; "Legally Blonde" by Elkins High School; "Nunsense" by Austin High School; and "Sweeney Todd" by Dulles High School. Best actor in a musical: Jordan Okeke in "Chicago," Reijon Liboon in "Grease," Alex Cannon in "Legally Blonde," Michael Fernandez in "Little Shop of Horrors" and Samir Lahoud in "Sweeney Todd." Travis High School staged "Little Shop of Horrors." Best actress in a musical: Atara Romero-Wilson in "Chicago," Reese Warren in "High School Musical," Payton Wolff in "Grease," Arwen Costello in "Legally Blonde" and Brianna Martinez in "Nunsense." Ridge Point High School staged "Disney's High School Musical." Students also are up for awards in the categories of best supporting actor and actress, best chorus, best executed choreography, best costumes, best lighting, best properties, best publicity, best scenery and best sound. Best Play: "And Then There Were None" by Elkins High School, "August: Osage County" by Bush High School, "The Elephant Man" by Kempner High School; "The Tempest" by Dulles High School, and "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Ridge Point High School. Best actor in a play: David Carpenter in "And Then There Were None," Yusef Dixon in "August: Osange County," Reijon Liboon in "The Elephant Man," Desmond Otasowie in "The Tempest" and Reece Grover in "To Kill A Mockingbird." Best actress in a play: Atara Romero-Wilson and Anne Fandino, both in "August: Osage County;" Jordynn Heins and Ryan Wakefield, both in "The Tempest;" Maria Rosemond in "The Elephant Man;" and Lauren Beaman in "To Kill A Mockingbird." Other awards include best supporting actor and actress, best ensemble, best publicity, best properties, best lighting, best costumes, best scenery and best sound. See More Collapse

Bush High School: August: Osage County and the musical Chicago.

Clements High School: As You Like It and the musical Grand Hotel.

Dulles High School: The Tempest and the musical Sweeney Todd.

Elkins High School: And Then There Were None and the musical Legally Blonde.

Hightower High School: The Odd Couple.

Kempner High School: The Elephant Man and the musical Grease.

Marshall High School: The Boys Next Door.

Ridge Point High School: To Kill a Mockingbird and the musical Disneys High School Musical.

Travis High School: The Triangle Factory Fire Project and the musical Little Shop of Horrors.

Willowridge High School: The Story.

Jay Thomas of San Jacinto Junior College will act as host of this years Baber Awards. Tickets are available at www.baberawards.com and cannot be purchased at the door.

For more information, contact Blake Minor at Dulles High School at 281-634-5712 or blake.minor@fortbendisd.com for more information.

rkent@hcnonline.com
By Matthew Paton FFA, Actuary at Barnett Waddingham The process of setting an assumption is rather like setting sail in stormy seas We know where we want to get to (a well-funded pension scheme!) but it is very likely we will need to change course from time to time in order to get there. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the process of setting mortality assumptions. At the last valuation, we made an assumption about how long members will live. A few years on, are we still happy with our assumption or do we need to correct our course? Well, lets climb into the crows nest and have a look at the sea of evidence to find out. Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI), a research arm of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, has carried out such an analysis for us and indeed they do so on an annual basis. Specifically, we can have a look at the latest population data from England and Wales and identify any trends in the mortality statistics. Helpfully, the(CMI), a research arm of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, has carried out such an analysis for us and indeed they do so on an annual basis. Their latest findings are that mortality rates in the population during 2018 were very similar to those in 2017. In other words, mortality improvements during 2018 were very low, with an overall improvement rate of just 0.2% for males and females combined. This in fact continues a trend of lower mortality improvements which have been observed since 2011. The causes of this are not clear and these effects are currently the subject of much debate. Knowing the ropes when determining life expectancies

To consider the impact on LGPS valuations, we need to briefly explore the mechanics of how we determine life expectancies. In a nutshell, the process can be summed up in three steps: A standard base table of mortality rates is chosen which we think is a close match to the Funds actual mortality experience. These tables are typically compiled by the CMI using a vast amount of data from self-administered pension schemes (SAPS). However, as it takes some time to complete these investigations, the tables are already out of date by the time we can get our hands on them. Our table therefore needs to be brought up to todays date so we can estimate what current mortality rates might be. To do this, we can apply reductions to the historical mortality rates in line with recent improvements we have seen in the general population. We then need to project these current mortality rates into the future, allowing for further potential improvements. Initially, we can continue to apply the same rate of improvements we have been seeing in the population recently. Over the longer term, however, much more judgement is required and it is by no means clear what the long term rate of mortality improvements might be, or indeed for how long improvements may continue at all. At the last set of triennial valuations, the most common assumption by LGPS actuaries was that the long term rate of improvement would be 1.5% p.a. which is currently higher than what we are seeing in general population data. For steps 2 and 3, we use the CMIs projection model which is updated on an annual basis, incorporating the latest mortality improvements in the population. Indeed, this is the model that is currently used by all of the LGPS actuarial firms in order to project mortality rates into the future and estimate the future chances of ending up in Davy Jones Locker. CMI 2018 was released in March 2019 and it is particularly significant as this is the model that will likely be used by most actuaries in the upcoming 2019 valuations for English and Welsh funds. Taking the wind out of improvements in life expectancy

Given the slowdown over the last few years, the most recent versions of the model have been incorporating lower initial improvements. In other words, mortality rates in the early part of the projection have been edging upwards. As the overall life expectancy is a result of the combination of mortality rates at each age, the effect is that our estimate of life expectancies has been steadily reducing over the last few years. At the 2016 valuations of English and Welsh funds, CMI 2015 was adopted. Lets now compare CMI 2015 with CMI 2018 and see what the impact on liabilities might be at the 2019 valuation: As at 1 March 2019, using the S2PA tables and a long term rate of 1.5% p.a.

As can be seen, life expectancies at age 65 are around 13 months shorter for males and 14 months shorter for females, compared with the model adopted at the 2016 triennial valuations. All else being equal, for a typical LGPS fund this could reduce liabilities by around 3%-5%, a welcome tailwind speeding us on to port. Yo ho ho! Lets not go overboard

Of course, not everything else is equal so it is not quite Land Ahoy! yet. At the upcoming valuation, we are also likely to move to the S3 mortality tables and a full longevity analysis covering the last five years will be carried out for many of our funds, which will inform the precise choice of base table that we use. More details on both of these subjects can be found in our recent briefing note Choosing the right mortality table for your Fund. Additionally, many other assumptions will be reviewed besides mortality which will affect liabilities. Given the recent pause in the cost cap mechanism and the McCloud judgement, there is even uncertainty regarding what the actual LGPS benefits are going to be. Perhaps another assumption we will need to make! Shiver me timbers! One other change to the core version of the CMI 2018 model is that slightly more weight is now being given to mortality data in recent years compared with before. This is because there is a growing consensus that the slower mortality improvements we are currently seeing are part of a new trend rather than a short term fluctuation. This change accounts for a significant amount of the reduction in overall life expectancies we can see above. In conclusion, we are expecting that changes to the post-retirement mortality assumptions, all else being equal, will lead to a small improvement in the funding position for most funds at the 2019 valuations. A lot of thought certainly needs to be given to the long term rate of improvement. There is still much uncertainty as to whether the current low levels of mortality improvements will continue for the foreseeable future and it would seem reasonable to remain cautious for the time being. There is also much evidence out there to suggest that members of self-administered pension schemes experience a significantly higher level of mortality improvements than the general population (on which the CMI projection model is based), perhaps reflecting the better quality of life in retirement that people enjoy when they have additional pension provision. Therefore, we will also need to think about whether the level of initial improvements in the CMI model is appropriate. Arrr! Whilst it is not all plain sailing, the good ship Barnett Waddingham will be steaming ahead with the 2019 valuations over the coming months. As part of this we will be working with funds to determine a mortality assumption that is entirely tailored to their own membership, so look out for us in a port near you soon! Sources: CMI Working Papers 115 and 119.
Millions of Texas taxpayers have raised their voices and helped bring property taxes to the forefront of discussion in the 86th Session of the Texas Legislature. While revenue caps and changes to the rollback tax rates have dominated the debate these last few months, there has been a significant push to address another highly effective method of lowering property taxes through transparency to taxpayers. Senate Bill 1253 by State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst (R-Brenham) gives us citizens the full rights to examine how our tax dollars are raised and spent in special districts across Texas. If taxpayers are going to pick up the tab, they ought to be able to look at every item on the receipt.

As Fort Bend County Commissioner Precinct 3 representing the fastest-growing precinct, in one of the fastest-growing counties in the country, I have a lot of reasons to praise the work of the complex network of special districts that span across the metropolitan Houston region. The rapid growth of Fort Bend County has been made possible through hundreds of property tax collecting districts such as Municipal Utility Districts (MUDs), Levee Improvement Districts (LIDs), and other entities, and through the work of thousands of publicly elected board members who manage those tax-collecting districts.

Transparency for Texas taxpayers has made giant strides in the last decade. Starting at the top of statewide government, Fort Bend County resident and State Comptroller Glenn Hegar has a website that states, open government is accountable government. On his official website, he provides online services such as searchable databases and data visualizations that help all Texans to understand state revenue, spending, and budget line items by agency and by subject matter.

Transparency for Texas taxpayers continues down to the city and county levels as well. In Fort Bend County, our citizens can go online and find annual budgets and audited financial statements that include the countys revenues and expenditures line-by-line. Our taxpayers can find the full agenda for every Commissioners Court meeting, along with backup document backups for items on that agenda. They can watch the commissioners meet live via streaming video online, or view archived video of previous meetings and workshops, and search the database of court agendas with any search term they like.

However, with special districts, there is no real transparency. There is no Texas law that requires special districts to make similar efforts to bring their information online for the publics benefit. They are not even required to maintain a website that lists the names of the publicly elected directors, or that identifies the time, date, and location of their meetings. Special districts are not even required to hold their meetings within the geographic boundaries of the district.

Senate Bill 1253 is a much-needed source of relief to taxpayers who are hungry for information and insight into their government. It brings budgets, meeting notices, names, and contact information to taxpayers who have every right to view these essentials, and it brings this information to them without the intermediary of legal counsel as gatekeeper. One of the common complaints I hear from citizens is how their special district chooses to hold their meetings dozens of miles away from the district in metropolitan Houston in the conference room of their legal counsel, making attendance virtually impossible for most working citizens.

Within my precinct in north Fort Bend County, it is commonplace to find special districts whose board has levied a property tax three times the rate assessed by the county. I know, because every year when the tax bills arrive in mailboxes, my office starts to receive calls from confused and disheartened citizens who call their county commissioner in despair after many hours of fruitlessly searching online for basic information on their special district. Some folks are able to find their districts phone number published through the TCEQ Water District Database, but they report that the phone rings straight to the attorneys office where legal counsel follows a carefully scripted process that protects the boards contact information.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people should never be this complex. We should never add more layers to the onion when the technology exists to bring this information quickly, cheaply, and conveniently to taxpayers. As special districts add many thousands in taxes to our overburdened citizens, Senator Kolkhorst believes that it is time to give transparency to the taxpayers who pay those bills. I agree.

I proudly stand with Senator Kolkhorst in support of this legislation, and thank her for her commitment to provide transparency to all Texas taxpayers.

Andy Meyers is the commissioner of Precinct 3 in Fort Bend County.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo continues his recovery from a stroke he suffered in March, the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston said Friday.

DiNardo completed his rehabilitation program at TIRR Memorial Hermann and was released from the hospital on April 5.

Five days later, DiNardo was well enough to attend a dinner for priests serving in the archdiocese that was hosted at St. Mary's Seminary.

The archdiocese said DiNardo will continue outpatient therapy in the coming weeks as he gradually returns to his duties.

WITNESS: Cardinal DiNardo complained of leg problems during parish ceremony

DiNardo, who leads the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has been under mounting pressure to address the church's handling of child sex abuse allegations involving priests since the release last year of an extensive report by a Pennsylvania grand jury. He has also faced questions about his own response to allegations against former Conroe priest Manuel La Rosa-Lopez, who has been charged with four counts of indecency with a child.

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Amid abuse crisis, DiNardo carries hope for church reform

DiNardi moved from the Sioux City, Iowa, diocese to Houston in 2004, was elevated to archbishop in 2006 and was named cardinal in 2007.

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Dora Alvarado felt something was off when she arrived at immigration court in Houston March 12 with her two daughters. A court translator told her that she and her 15-year-old, Adamaris Alvarado, were listed on the docket that day. Her 11-year-old, Laura Maradiaga, was not.

Days later, Alvarado received a letter in English  a language she cannot speak or read  bearing Lauras name. It wasnt until the trio returned to court this week that a different translator told her the letter was the 11-year-olds removal order.

I dont want to leave my mom, Laura said Thursday. I want to stay with her.

UPDATE: Motion to be filed to set aside 11-year-olds deportation

At a news conference Thursday led by FIEL, a local immigration advocacy group, the familys lawyer, Silvia Mintz, said she will file a motion to re-open the case. Mintz said immigration officials were at fault for the girls missed court appearance, which led to her deportation order.

They launched a Go Fund Me Saturday to help the family.

The family entered through the southern border in early October, telling U.S. government officials that they feared returning to their native El Salvador. They were released to pursue their asylum case in the backlogged civil immigration courts, and since then have complied with court orders and appearance dates.

They are part of a record number of Central American parents and children fleeing poverty and gang violence who have arrived in recent months  more than 57,200 in March alone  even as the Trump administration has tried to curtail access to asylum to deter more from coming. The government has overturned a provision allowing those fleeing gang and domestic violence to qualify for the protection and made it more difficult for immigration judges to close cases on their own, exacerbating a backlog of more than 800,000 cases that was further jeopardized by the month-long government shutdown earlier this year.

The administration has also tried to ban those crossing illegally from seeking asylum and force others to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases proceed through the courts, though federal judges have blocked both the latter measures.

Mintz blamed the Executive Office for Immigration Review, a branch of the Justice Department overseeing immigration courts, for the error resulting in the 11-year-olds deportation.

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Migrant families at border surge to record highs

This mistake done by the immigration court has put this family in jeopardy, Mintz said. They will be separated if this is not stopped.

In a statement, the office said, "EOIR records show that on March 12, 2019 an immigration judge issued an Order of Removal for Respondent Laura Elizabeth Maradiaga-Alvarado."

The official order states that Laura is subject to deportation because she was not present for the March 12 court appearance. Whether the court translator available that day provided incorrect information, or the girls case fell through the cracks, is unclear.

Generally speaking, Lauras attorney has about 30 days from the orders date to try to re-open the case, said Ruby L. Powers, a Houston immigration lawyer. Powers noted that the immigration courts system has become chaotic; some clients have been given incorrect court dates, Powers said, while others have experienced clerical errors that led to serious consequences like deportation orders.

It is not uncommon for child migrants to be deported alone, but this typically happens when they arrive on their own rather than with their parents, other legal experts note.

Maradiagas fate, should she be deported without her family, could be dire.

Her home in a rural area of El Salvadors La Paz region became a death trap when a relative testified against a local gang member, Alvarado said. Uncles, nephews, classmates and others have been kidnapped or murdered in retaliation, she added. At the news conference, she held up a photo of a young girl, a neighbor, left for dead on a dirt road close to her home.

Alvarado, who lived through El Salvadors civil war in the 1980s, said the country was safer then.

The gangs dont play by the rules of war, she said. Its just violence for the sake of violence.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Trump policy of returning asylum-seekers to Mexico upends lives before judges order

Late last year, Adamaris Alvarado told her mother that a gang member had been harassing her and threatened to kill the rest of her family if she spoke about it.

Thats when mom told us we were going to the United States, Laura said.

As the family pursued its case, a February court date was rescheduled to March 12 due to the government shutdown.

Alvarado said she trusted the court translator when she told her everything was going to be all right with Laura. But the removal order says otherwise.

Thanks to Alvarados elder daughter, who told her school counselor about the deportation threat, the family contacted FIEL and Mintz, who will represent Laura without a fee.

Houston Police chief Art Acevedo tweeted: "This is heart-wrenching. 1,000 points of light? Family values? Ameican values? Judeo-Christian values? If you're a person of faith, speak out. WWJD?"

While her future remains uncertain, Laura is doing her best to live out her days in what she calls an unfamiliar yet beautiful new country. She takes comfort in studying her multiplication tables, in sharing a bed with her mom and older sister, and in caring for Lalo, the scruffy dog her mother and aunt got her when she arrived.

At her southwest Houston apartment complex, Laura said she still misses the friends she left behind. These friends, living in the same dangerous environment, would come to her home to study or walk with her to buy snacks at a corner store.

I want to be a police officer when I grow up, she said. I want to keep people safe from the bad guys.

ileana.najarro@chron.com

twitter.com/IleanaNajarro

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Harris County Precinct 4 will be gaining a new community center named after President George H.W. Bush.

Precinct 4 spokesperson Joe Stinebaker said the center will be useful to the 1.2 million residents in the precinct, which is one of the fastest growing areas in the county.

It fills a need for this area. Its certainly going to get its use, he said.

Currently, the only location the precinct has is the Mangum-Howell Center, located south of Beltway 8 at 2500 Frick Road.

The county purchased the new 24,500 square foot location from the Cypress Creek Christian Community Center in October 2018 for $1.25 million, according to a county agendsa.

Precinct 4 commissioner R. Jack Cagle decided to name the new center after President Bush, who died in November 2018.

He really admired President George H.W. Bush and thought it was an extremely appropriate way to honor him, Stinebaker said of Cagle.

The Harris County Commissioners Court approved the naming request during its meeting on Tuesday.

The community center will be the second one for the precinct and will be located beside the Barbara Bush Library.

During Hurricane Harvey, the Cypress Creek Community Center, Precinct 4 Justice of the Peace courthouse, Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts, the library and nearby businesses were flooded and took months to repair and reopen to the public.

Related: Barbara Bush Library reopens to the public

While the location was damaged during the flood, it has been remediated and construction is scheduled to begin at the location in November and be completed after 12 months, Stinebaker said.

The center is expected to open to the public in early 2021.

mayra.cruz@chron.com
A two-year initiative is seeking to lower crime rates in northwest Harris County as part of a joint effort between the Texas Department of Public Safety, Harris County Sheriffs Office, Precinct 4 Constables Office and Houston Police Department.

The operation, known as North Star, originally began in April 2017 and was led by DPS.

I said, We need to help out with this. I know we dont have a whole lot to help with, but were going to throw some resources at this and try to combat some of these robberies in Harris County, said Major Jason Taylor with Texas DPS.

A majority of the crimes that have taken place in northwest Harris County have tended to be concentrated along FM 1960, Ella Blvd., Kuykendahl Road, Veterans Memorial Drive and the Champions area, he said.

The four agencies have coordinated operations to target criminal hotspots throughout the county.

The first operation was 10 days long, said Major Jesse Razo with the Harris County Sheriffs Office.

HPD CHIEF: Houston's violent crime down 10%

According to statistics compiled by Texas DPS, a total of 1,962 arrests were made between April 2017 to February 2019 in northwest Harris County.

Texas DPS offices made 314 felony arrests, 1,267 misdemeanor arrests and 381 arrests for drunk driving.

The agency also made 301 arrests in the same period in conjunction with the sheriffs office.

Taylor said that while some crimes, like burglaries of unattended cars, homes and businesses continue, violent crimes have decreased.

We are making an effort to make an impact on the area along with these agencies here, he said.

The District 1 Sheriffs patrol area, which roughly spans between the east to west from North Freeway to Texas 249 and north to south between Beltway 8 to the Montgomery County boundary, has seen a reduction in robberies since North Star was implemented.

RANKED: Safest cities in Texas

District 1 had a 33% decrease of reported robberies, going from 240 in 2017 to 159 in 2018.

Law enforcement presence and perception

Captain Jonathan Zitzman with the Precinct 4 Constables Office said his agency would have more deputies available after the construction on a new substation is completed near the North Freeway and Cypresswood.

Were going to reassign about 70 deputies out that station. Itll be a significant increase in police presence in that area, he said.

While northwest Harris County is generally a safe area to live and work, pockets of areas where crimes to occur more frequently tend to skew the statistics, he said.

Many of the crimes deputies come across are burglaries of unattended vehicles, he said.

The vast majority of those burglaries are occurring from unlocked vehicles. Very few times is it from smash-and-grabs, he said.

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Captain Steve Spears with the Houston Police Department said crime tends to be low around Willowbrook Mall, except for burglaries in parking lots.

So far in 2019, the police department has tallied 133 vehicle burglaries in the area, which can be avoided, he said.

Weve been trying to educate the public in hiding their stuff. Dont leave stuff in plain view. Thats whats going to cause a break-in, he said.

Along with the additional officers and deputies, providing teenagers and children with a more positive view of law enforcement would also help to report crimes and cooperate with investigations.

Zitzman said the perception of police in the media has made young people especially distrustful when incidents occur.

Some of the things were working on this summer is were trying to partner up with several churches and, specifically youth programs, educational programs to get the kids in line with trusting the police, being able to open up to the police, he said.

mayra.cruz@chron.com
3 1 of 3 Courtesy photo Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy photo Show More Show Less 3 of 3





The Central Fort Bend Chamber welcomed new member Off the Vine Bistro, Restaurant & Wine Bar with a ribbon cutting on April 4.

Owner Namita Asthana greeted guest in a casual bistro atmosphere with a variety of wines, potato pops, spiced meatballs and salmon puffs. She also showcased the variety of prepared meals that she has available for pre-order. Customers can special order prepared, fully cooked meals in advance for the week (minimum order of 3 meals) and not worry about messing up the kitchen at home. All meals are made with fresh ingredients and filled with flavor. Pure. Fresh. Local. In addition to their standard menu, Off the Vine offers patrons a vegan menu that is full of tasty choices for all courses of the meal.
A child who could only stand by and watch as a thief took his bicycle from his front yard is now the recipient of massive public support.

The video of the child standing on the front porch of his home was posted by the Rosenberg Police Department in the hopes that it would generate leads about who stole the bike.

Earlier this week we shared a story of a child who witnessed his bike stolen right before his eyes, the Rosenberg Police Department reported. We also wanted to share with you the amount of overwhelming support offered by the citizens of Rosenberg, the people of the great state of Texas, and even from individuals across the country. Generous offers to replace the stolen bicycle began flooding in almost immediately from as far away as New York state.

On Thursday, the child was a guest of the Rosenberg Police Department wherein he received a first-class tour as well as some honorary tokens of appreciation from our very own Chief (Jonathan) White.

We wanted to show that his police department and his community stand behind him.

RELATED: Reward offered for information on suspect seen riding off with boy's bike

While at the Rosenberg Police Department the child received an update on his case, which is still under investigation. Additionally, White presented the child and his brother a gift card to Academy, donated by The Rosenberg Police Officers Association. The children were also guests at a pizza party courtesy of Papa Johns Pizza. Big Rods Towing helped host the day.

The brazen thief is being sought by the Rosenberg Police Department.

According to a release from the Rosenberg PD, on Thursday, April 4, one of our younger citizens had the unfortunate experience of watching his bicycle stolen from his front yard near Travis Park. The incident was captured on video, but as you can see it is difficult to see the subjects face.

Anyone with information is encouraged to contact the Rosenberg Police Department or the Fort Bend County Crime Stoppers at 281-342-TIPS (8477). Tips may able be submitted online here.

Information, which leads to the apprehension and filing of charges on the suspect(s) involved, could earn you up to $5,000 cash reward.

rkent@hcnonline.com
ALBANY  A physician who branded multiple women with the initials of Keith Raniere and television actress Allison Mack is the target of an investigation in which state officials have quietly waged a court battle to compel eight people associated with NXIVM to testify.

The Health Department's efforts are outlined in a state Supreme Court case filed last year against eight "Jane Does" who allegedly were involved in  or had knowledge of  the secret branding ceremonies.

The court case confirms that Dr. Danielle D. Roberts, 37, an osteopath and former Clifton Park resident who had been associated with NXIVM, is being investigated for "allegations of professional medical misconduct."

The state Health Department's Office of Professional Medical Conduct served subpoenas on the women in January 2018, setting off a 10-month legal battle. Attorneys for the NXIVM associates, including Lauren Salzman, who is the daughter of NXIVM President Nancy Salzman, tried unsuccessfully to convince a judge to revoke the subpoenas.

Lauren and Nancy Salzman, along with Mack, each pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges over the past month in a racketeering prosecution that remains ongoing against Raniere and two other NXIVM associates: Clare Bronfman, an heiress of the Seagram Co. business empire, and Kathy Russell, a longtime bookkeeper for NIXVM.

Mack and Lauren Salzman both admitted to helping enroll NXIVM followers into what was purported to be an all-female "slave-master" club, where many of the women were coerced into being branded. Some of them also were allegedly manipulated to have sex with Raniere.

The federal criminal case has laid bare Raniere's secretive efforts to recruit and control women in his cloistered organization, but questions have lingered about Roberts' role in using a cauterizing pen to brand nearly two dozen women during ritualistic ceremonies. Many of the female participants said they wore blindfolds and had been held down by others to help them complete the excruciating procedure.

"The complaint alleged that the subject physician participated in an initiation ceremony for a secret society, which involved the branding of female initiates with a cautery pen without anesthesia and under duress," states a court order issued last September that authorized the Health Department's investigation to go forward.

The charges against Roberts that are being considered by the Health Department include allegations that she practiced medicine with negligence on more than one occasion; practiced on one occasion with gross negligence; is morally unfit to practice medicine; and failed to use scientifically accepted precautions and infection-control practices during the branding procedures.

The investigation of Roberts has been slowed by the federal criminal prosecution of NXIVM's leaders, including charges related to the secret club that conducted the branding ceremonies, sources said.

Hector J. Diaz, an Arizona attorney, is representing Lauren Salzman in her federal criminal case and also is listed as an attorney for one of the "Jane Doe" witnesses in the Health Department's investigation of Roberts. Michael S. Kelton, a New York City attorney who specializes in medical malpractice, represented the remaining seven "Jane Doe" witnesses in the case, according to court records.

The attorneys argued in court filings that "body scarification" is not a form of practicing medicine and therefore the Health Department had no authority to compel the women  who are private citizens and not physicians  to respond to the subpoenas.

Acting state Supreme Court Justice Kimberly A. O'Connor ruled last September that state Education Law gives the Health Department "wide latitude" in determining whether a procedure like branding is within the scope of practicing medicine.

"Additionally, courts have recognized that physicians performing certain procedures that can also be performed by a layperson are held to the standards applicable to a physician," O'Connor wrote.

The once-secret branding ceremonies, which took place in a Halfmoon neighborhood, were initially brushed off by the Health Department after it received a formal complaint in 2017 from a Canadian woman who had been branded. But the agency's probe was revived after published reports drew attention to the branding.

The 2017 complaint filed by Sarah Edmondson of Vancouver, a longtime NXIVM associate, said that at least 20 women associated with the Colonie-based organization were lured into the club and allegedly coerced into being branded in their pubic area.

Members of the club, called Dominus Obsequious Sororium (which means "Master Over the Slave Women"), were required to provide some sort of damaging "collateral," such as a nude photo or a dark revelation from their past, as part of their initiation, Edmonson said.

Edmondson and another woman involved with NXIVM told the Times Union in 2017 that they were brought into the club and subsequently branded by Roberts, who then gave them special bandages and advice on helping the wounds heal.

Edmondson had said she was told it would be a "tattoo" and that she only learned weeks later that the brand, which she was told was a Latin symbol for "the elements," was actually the initials of Raniere and Mack, whom Edmondson's complaint identified as having "started" the secret women's group with Raniere.

After the branding ceremonies were publicized, state Health Department officials said they were researching what regulations might govern human branding. In July 2017, though, they initially dismissed Edmondson's complaint, saying the allegations "did not occur with the doctor-patient relationship and should be reported to law enforcement ...."

Edmondson was associated with NXIVM for 12 years, but left the organization in June 2017 after she learned the brand that she received was really the initials of Mack and Raniere.

Roberts had worked at St. Peter's Hospital from 2012 to 2015 through an employment agency. It's unclear whether she continues to practice medicine, but is often featured at seminars promoting health and wellness programs.

In a related case, the Health Department has filed disciplinary charges against Dr. Brandon B. Porter, a physician for NXIVM who conducted human brain-activity experiments on people associated with the organization.

The state attorney general's office last year suspended its investigation of a nonprofit foundation associated with NXIVM that had sponsored the brain-activity and other human behavioral studies without any apparent oversight, according to court records.

The nonprofit Ethical Science Foundation was formed in 2007 by Bronfman, who has described herself as the operations director of NXIVM.

The Times Union reported in October 2017 that NXIVM's leaders had recruited participants who took part in unsanctioned brain activity studies and other human experiment studies conducted by Porter.

The Health Department's disciplinary case against Porter remains pending.

Kelton, the attorney for both Porter and Roberts, on Thursday said he had "no comment to make with respect to either physician." Diaz, the attorney for Lauren Salzman, did not respond to a request for comment.

Porter abruptly resigned from his job at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany in 2017 after his role in the human brain studies became public.

NXIVM had acknowledged it conducted human research studies, including for treatment of Tourette syndrome, although the studies were apparently never published or peer-reviewed.

The state Health Department initially brushed off a complaint filed in August 2017 by another Vancouver woman who was associated with NXIVM. Jennifer Kobelt, then 28, said she was traumatized by a bizarre experiment in which Porter showed her videos depicting graphic violence in August 2016.

The experiment she was subjected to took place in a small commercial building in Halfmoon that had been used for years by NXIVM for training and seminars. Kobelt said she was recruited for the study by an assistant of Nancy Salzman, and that she knew of at least four other women who took part. Kobelt said she was not told what the study was for or what would take place, and that she was not asked to sign any documents indicating she had been informed what the study was about and consented to take part.

Porter drove Kobelt to the building that day, she said, hooked her up to an EEG machine that monitors brain activity and showed her terrifying images and videos of murder, rape and mutilation.
WEST HAVEN  Sweet Cookie Bakery is named after the coconut cookies that owner Jesus Paredes father made famous at the family bakery in the Dominican Republic, but the new local business also is delighting customers with traditional treats such as cannoli, napoleons, cakes, cheesecake and doughnuts.

We saw they didnt have a traditional bakery in West Haven, so I said, I want to put a bakery in, said Paredes, 42, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic several years ago. I love making everyone happy.

And so far, a few weeks into it, Paredes is doing just that  customers say the taste and service are exceptional.

The bakery, which also has a small sandwich menu, is considered by city officials to be the first traditional bakery on Campbell Avenue since Peschells Pastry Shop closed in 2013 after 67 years in business.

While it offers traditional baked goods, there are Dominican, Spanish, Cuban and Italian twists, including pineapple and coconut cakes, guava pastries, flan, tres leches and oatmeal  the way they make it back home. And of course, they offer Paredes dads secret recipe coconut cookies with a dash of cinnamon.

Non-dessert offerings include a Cuban sandwich, beef, chicken or cheese patty, ham and cheese.

Paredes said he learned various styles of baking from his father, who learned from his father in the home country, and from working in popular New York City bakeries influenced by the many ethnicities.

Sweet Cookies menu is written in Spanish and English.

Marge Irizarry of West Haven dropped in Thursday for the bakerys special coffee blended by Paredes wife and, when asked how it was, kissed her fingers and enthusiastically threw her arm forward as if to say delicious.

Its great here  the hospitality and customer service are wonderful, said Irizarry, who lives around the corner and stops in every day. Theyre very nice and will go above and beyond.

Just ask Ralph Biondi, 74, who stopped in Thursday morning to partake in a special order not on the menu  eggs, toast, breakfast meat  but on a plate rather than the sandwich.

Biondis wife stops in for a breakfast sandwich before work each day and told Paredes what her husband would want later that morning.

The food is phenomenal, the people are courteous, Biondi said. We used to go to New York for our cakes  now we dont have to.

Paredes lives in West Haven, not far from the bakery, with his wife, Shuhay Rodriguez, and their two children, ages 10 and 6. Paredes comes in to start baking at 4 a.m. daily and Rodriguez takes over later in the day until closing at 9 p.m. Paredes sister, Jaqueline Paredes, also a baker, is here for a month from the Dominican Republic to help get her brother started and stays until closing with her sister-in-law.

Jesus Paredes said he liked working and living in New York, but after a brief separation from his wife, decided his family was worth the move.

West Haven is better for me, he said.

The bakery display case at the front counter is relatively small, but Paredes said he has an additional large one on the way. The small case shouldnt fool anyone  he bakes plenty of variety each day and will whip up any dessert item thats ordered, including pies.

He said the cannoli just about fly out the door each day, in part because theyre only $1 each and because he uses a secret recipe with special cream.

The seating space is small, but the location is great for business, Paredes said, because it is in a row of other businesses and across the street from City Hall, which means foot traffic.

Margarita Sanchez, who is from the Dominican Republic and is at a nearby hair salon, said the place reminds her of home and the tastes are like the countryside where your grandma comes from. She loves the specially blended oatmeal and cakes with the moist consistency of those from her childhood.

They have the authentic flavor, she said.
The rule of 1953 prohibits the killing of the unborn in almost all cases. The government called to review it before the end of next year. The Court states it is unconstitutional to punish doctors. Card. Yeom before the sentence: "Welcome every life and improve social assistance".

Seoul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Constitutional Court of South Korea declared this morning that the current abortion law is inconsistent with the Constitution and has requested a revision. The court ruled that an absolute ban is contrary to the Charter and called for a legislative amendment that partially allows the legalization of the practice, in the early stages of pregnancy.

The sentence comes 66 years after the approval of the law, which in most cases prohibits the suppression of the life of the unborn. South Korea is one of the few industrialized nations where the procedure is allowed only for cases of rape, incest and when the mother's health is at risk. The court also ruled that it is against the constitution to punish doctors for performing the procedure, ordering the government to review the relevant law by the end of next year.

At the moment, women who undergo the procedure can be imprisoned for a year and fined, while doctors performing the surgery can be sentenced to two years in prison. The Constitutional Court had ruled in favor of the law in 2012, stating that abortion "would as a practice would become out of control", if it were not punished.

Card Andrew Yeom Soo-jung, archbishop of Seoul, last month reiterated Catholic doctrine in defense of life. Together with thousands of young people and religious leaders, the prelate took part in the Youth Gathering for Life, held last March 16 in the South Korean capital. The event was organized by the Committee for Family and Life of the South Korean Bishops' Conference (CBK) together with March for Life Korea. The cardinal had declared that every human being "has a sacred and inalienable dignity, and life is inviolable from the moment of its conception".

The archbishop called on society to "welcome every life as it is from the moment of conception, under the responsibility of both the father and the mother. Furthermore, given that every life is under the common responsibility of our society, we should try to improve the social assistance system to help parents generate and raise their children .

For the first time, in January the growth rate of the South Korean population fell below 0.1% and the average age of citizens over 42 years, according to the latest report from the Ministry of the Interior and Security. As evidence of the gradual aging of the population, the population aged between 0 and 14 represents 12.8% of the total, while that aged over 65 is 14.8%.
A large apartment fire is burning several apartments in northwest Harris County, authorities say.

The fire is at an apartment complex in 5800 block of West Gulf Bank Road, according to the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office. One firefighter received minor injuries but was treated on scene and released.

Close to a dozen fire departments are trying to tackle the blaze. Arson investigators with the Harris County Fire Marshal's Office are going to determine the cause of the fire.

No other information was available. Check back for updates as they come in.

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
The egg-throwing teenager involved in a fatal New Years Day wreck while fleeing an alleged gun-firing driver has pleaded guilty to unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, according to sources with knowledge of the case.

The boy, who was charged as a juvenile, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to the charge and received one year probation, sources said. He will additionally remain in his parents custody.

The teen was initially charged with murder at the time of the crash at Aldine Mail Route at Aldine Westfield in north Houston, but sources said no other charges are pending against him.

The prankster, who was 14 at the time, and his pals rang in the New Year by taking his familys GMC Acadia for a joyride and chucking eggs at passing vehicles, which included the 1971 Lincoln Continental with Christopher Lopez behind the wheel. A manslaughter charge is still pending against 48-year-old Lopez who has used the same classic car involved in the suspected road rage incident to promote his Lonestar Slab car club, according to prosecutors.

EARLIER COVERAGE: Man accused of chasing, shooting at egg-throwing teens before fatal wreck makes bond

The indictment lodged in mid-January alleges Lopez contributed to the death of Silvia Zavala, who was visiting family from the Rio Grande Valley, by speeding through the red light and causing the teens vehicle to hit the woman. Zavala died at the scene.

During the chase, Lopez allegedly fired a semi-automatic pistol out the window and at the teens, according to authorities.

Surveillance footage of the crash shows what appears to be Lopezs Lincoln Continental skirting around the wreck and speeding off.

Charges of failure to stop and render aid and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon are also pending against Lopez for his role in the Jan. 1 crash.

Soon after the manslaughter arrest, Lopez was slapped with a single count of obstructing a highway for his role in an unauthorized photo shoot under the Be Someone train trestle, according to court records. The Dec. 2 stunt featured about a dozen custom cars  known in Houston as slabs for the cone-shaped metal rims that protrude from the wheel wells  on Interstate 45 at Interstate 10, bringing traffic near the busy interchange to a halt for more than 10 minutes.

Lopez has remained out on bond since Jan. 14 when he surrendered to authorities at the Harris County jail.

nicole.hensley@chron.com
Houston has a number of excellent neighborhoods for raising a family.

But, if you are a single parents who live in and around the city, life is likely going to be more challenging, no matter where you live.

One study from 2019 now breaks down why.

MagnifyMoney (a LendingTree brand) ranked Houston as the worst city for single parents to raise a family.

In order to find the cities where single parents fare best and worst, the company measured and analyzed four key indicators (income, affordability, commute time/hours worked and workplace protection) in the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S.

The purpose of examining 'income of single parents in the community' category was to provide a way to compare "the difference between incomes of single-parent household and all households gives us a sense of whether single parents have a harder time earning money than other members of the community."

The study calculated the 'affordability of the community', particularly related to child care. The study says, "Child care expenses are an absolute necessity for single working parents. So, we wanted to see whether or not a typical single-family household would qualify for assistance from its state, and how much below the qualifying line they fall."

In the 'time devoted to work' category, "the author attempted to evaluate if the amount of time a single parent spends working impacts their time spent with family and can increase the amount spent on child care costs, such as if the parent needs to put their child in day care while they are away at work or commuting."

The aim of the 'workplace protection score' category was to see how much time single parents could take time off work due to family-related issues.

So it makes sense that nine of the top worst single-parent cities, including Houston, scored 0 out of 100 in this category. Chicago was the only city on the '10 Worst' list that rated a score in this category.

The study notes that "Blue states" often have more parental protection laws.

Houston's overall score was 27.1, a full point behind the second-worst single-parent city, Atlanta.

You can check out the rest of the top 10 worst cities to be a single parents, as well as the 10 best cities to be a single parents.

Ten worst cities to live in as a single parent

1.Houston, Texas

2.Atlanta, Georgia

3.Birmingham, Alabama

4.Augusta, Georgia

5.Detroit, Michigan

6.Charleston, South Carolina

7.Bridgeport, Connecticut

8.Baltimore, Maryland

9.Chicago, Illinois

10.Indianapolis, Indiana

Ten best cities to live in as a single parents

1. Springfield, Massachusetts

2. Sacramento, California

3. Buffalo, New York

4. Albany, New York

5. Fresno, California

6. Syracuse, New York

7. Worcester, Massachusetts

8. Rochester, New York

9. Oxnard, California

10. Spokane, Washington

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.
A Houston ISD school designed to give older students another shot at graduation will get its own second chance.

HISD trustees voted 7-0 to reject a recommendation Thursday to close High School Ahead Academy, a northside campus serving about 150 older middle school students, many of whom were held back multiple grades. District administrators wanted to close the school because of low academic performance, dwindling enrollment and excessive disciplinary issues, among other concerns.

Trustees offered several reasons for keeping the campus open, many of which centered on the needs of over-age students and High School Ahead Academys unique ability to serve them. Students travel from all corners of the district to attend High School Ahead Academy, including the northeast and south-central sides of Houston.

EARLIER ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Citing poor results, HISD considers closing school for held-back students

Its interesting to hear how far students will travel to this campus to get those additional services, those alternative services, HISD Board President Diana Davila said. (It) shows commitment, shows dedication, shows the desire for students to be in that environment and parents to send them to that environment.

The decision to keep High School Ahead Academy open drew applause from several of the schools supporters in attendance, who endured about two weeks of nervous anticipation before the vote. Annetta Randel, an administrative assistant at High School Ahead Academy for the past four years, said the campus serves dedicated students who sacrifice for an opportunity to catch up academically.

We have a special group of students, Randel said. They come to us, theyre already behind. If they have that extra help, somebody that believes in them, they can succeed.

High School Ahead Academy opened in 2010 under then-superintendent Terry Grier, who championed the campus as a unique setting for older students at risk of dropping out. Administrators designed the program to allow students to complete two grade levels in a single school year, fast-tracking them back on a path toward graduation.

But in recent years, academic results and enrollment have plummeted, prompting the district administrations closure recommendation. Over the past half-decade, about 30 percent of students have accelerated two grade levels in a single school year, while about 40 percent left the district without completing the program, district officials said.

High School Ahead Academy also held the ignominious distinction of issuing 2.7 suspensions per student last year, the highest rate among Texas 8,600-plus campuses.

That was another concern, that theyre going to this particular school for additional support, but theyre being suspended out-of-school, Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan told trustees.

Board members, however, said academic and disciplinary data from High School Ahead Academy should not be compared to other campuses, where the vast majority of students are on grade level. Some trustees questioned administrators claims that students could be better served at their neighborhood campus, surrounded by younger children.

Its still kind of a leap of faith that these particular students are going to do better at their home schools, HISD Trustee Anne Sung said.

Board member Jolanda Jones also expressed unease about shuttering a school where 65 percent of students are black and nearly 35 percent are Hispanic. In recent years, 10 out of 11 HISD school closures occurred in predominantly black or Hispanic neighborhoods.

I really struggle with closing more schools in the north side, in historically disadvantaged areas, Jones said.

Randel said High School Ahead Academy needs additional support from volunteers, as well as more reliable transportation from the district.

HISD trustees also voted 6-0 on Thursday to rearrange and set some limits on public comment, an effort to reduce the length of their meetings and receive more timely feedback.

Speakers to agenda items will now address trustees during a 60-minute window at their agenda review meeting, which occurs one week before board members vote on items. The hearing of citizens, during which residents can speak to trustees on any issue, still will occur during regular board meetings, with a 30-minute limit. The boards president will have discretion to increase the maximum time allocated for comment.

Several residents have criticized the move, arguing it limits the publics ability to provide input on key issues facing the district.
A Houston man accused of gunning down his employee who was taking a shower Wednesday night admitted to the cocaine-fueled shooting, claiming he was angry about the victim sleeping with his wife, according to court documents.

Edwin Figueroa, 23, had already assaulted 22-year-old Rafael Nunez days earlier after learning that Nunez allegedly had an affair with his wife, according to a probable cause statement read aloud in court Friday morning.

But that beating wasn't enough revenge for Figueroa, he allegedly told police officers. Prosecutors said he confessed to drinking beer, snorting cocaine and purchasing a pistol before driving to Nunez's apartment in the 10400 block of South Drive in southwest Houston.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox

He broke down Nunez's door around 10:20 p.m. as the victim was taking a shower, prosecutors said. He opened fire, striking Nunez several times before fleeing the scene, police said.

RELATED: Man arrested after allegedly exposing himself outside of woman's home and attempted to break in

Paramedics rushed to the apartment to try and save Nunez. He was apparently conscious and, while being wheeled into an ambulance, told the medics that his "boss" shot him, police said.

He later died in surgery at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital.

Officers found Figueroa nearby and detained him. Houston Police Department homicide detectives interviewed Figueroa, who then allegedly made the confession, police said.

He told the detectives Nunez was his friend of four years, they said. Figueroa was charged with first-degree felony murder and is being held in the Harris County Jail with a $100,000 bail amount, records show.

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
Strong to severe storms are set to move into Houston ahead of a cold front early Saturday, so plan your weekend accordingly.

The National Weather Service predicts showers and thunderstorms to begin early Saturday morning as a cold front moves in.

With the front, comes more rain. It will likely bring with it a line of strong to severe storms from late Saturday morning until the afternoon hours.

Isolated tornadoes, damaging winds and hail, along with frequent lightning, are possible with these storms.

Potential heavy downpours could lead to very localized flooding.

The area with the highest possibility of severe weather is north of I-10.

Additionally, minor coastal flooding, with tides 1-2 feet above normal, and dangerous rip currents will continue through Saturday.

The most susceptible areas are Bolivar Peninsula at the Highway 87/124 intersection, Blue Water Highway and Surfside.

Fortunately, this weather system is should be fast-moving, pushing east of the region by the evening hours.

Temperatures aren't expected to fluctuate much until Saturday night when forecasters predict a 51-degree low. Sunday's forecast is sunny with a high of 71.

Marcy de Luna is a digital reporter. 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
The mother of King Jay Davila testified Thursday that the man accused of killing 8-month-old King Jay Davila is not the babys father, contradicting her claims in a San Antonio Express-News report earlier this month.

The revelation by Jasmine Gonzales came during a bail reduction hearing for Christopher Davila, 34, who is accused of staging an elaborate kidnapping to mislead police about the boys death.

Asked by prosecutors if Davila is Kings father, Gonzales paused before answering.

No, Gonzales said.

Earlier in the hearing, Gonzales told a judge that her family does not have the money needed to pay a portion of the $1.25 million bail set by a judge in January.

Bob Behrens, Davilas lawyer, said Davilas family would have to come up with $125,000 if they were to pay the standard 10 percent that is charged by a bondsman. He said that amount is excessive, especially considering that Davila is not a flight risk.

These bonds were set to keep him in jail, Behrens told a judge. We're asking you to reduce the bonds to an amount the family can afford and remember the purpose of bail is to secure his appearance in court and not to keep him in jail or to punish him.

Prosecutors argued that Davila has a history of not appearing to court in the past and that his ties to the San Antonio-based prison gang Tango Orejon make him a danger to the public.

We would ask you to focus on the safety of the community, prosecutor Samantha DiMaio said.

Behrens objected to prosecutors claims, pointing out that Davilas criminal history is nearly 10 years old and that Davila is no longer a gang member. Of one of the cases in which Davila is accused of failing to appear in court, Behrens said Davila appeared the following day.

In the end, Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers agreed with prosecutors and declined to lower the bail.

On ExpressNews.com: Man in prison says he, not Davila, is King Jays father

The hearing Thursday, which fell on what would have been Kings first birthday, was the first time Davila has appeared in court since he was arrested in January.

Prosecutors say Davila injured King in early January after hitting King with an unknown object or hitting King against an unknown object. They say King died because Davila failed to seek medical care for the child.

Earlier this month, a Bexar County grand jury indicted Davila on five different charges, including injury to a child, a first-degree felony punishable up to life in prison.

Davilas mother, Beatrice Sampayo, 64, and his cousin, Angie Torres, 45, were also indicted, accused of helping cover up Kings death by staging the kidnapping.

Since he was arrested, Davila has maintained that King died after the car seat holding the boy fell off a bed. He says he did not call 911 because he panicked.

On ExpressNews.com: In a letter from jail, Davila says he is hurt by his actions

Davila has also maintained that he is Kings father, but last month, Jasmine Gonzales estranged husband told the Express-News he believes he is the boys father.

I know that baby boy is my son, not his, Martin Gonzales said during an interview from a prison in Northeast Texas. Thats my blood, I know it.

Martin Goznales said he was stunned to find out that his estranged wife filed court papers last summer seeking to divorce him and declare Davila, her fiance, the boys father.

Gonzales said he doesnt remember signing the documents. The papers bear the notary stamp of someone who died almost a year earlier, which would render them invalid.

Jasmine Gonzales declined to comment for the story, except to say Davila is Kings father.

King is me and Christophers son, not Martins, Gonzales said at the time. He didnt even know who King is. He needs to move on.

Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton
The California oil major Chevron said Friday it would buy Anadarko Petroleum for $33 billion in the biggest industry deal in four years, making Chevron a stronger leader in both the booming Permian Basin and the deepwater Gulf of Mexico.

The deal will create a clearer class of "ultra major" energy companies and potentially trigger a buying spree by others seeking to follow suit, including Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, industry analysts said. There's also a smaller chance those companies and others could still seek to outbid Chevron for Anadarko, which reportedly turned down a larger offer from Houston's Occidental Petroleum before agreeing to the Chevron deal that was seen as a better fit.

FUEL FIX: Get your energy, oil, and gas news updates each weekday

Chevron said it would acquire The Woodlands-based Anadarko at a nearly 40 percent premium in a $65-a-share cash-and-stock deal that would inevitably cause some job losses north of Houston. Anadarko employs about 4,700 people companywide. In an interview, however, Chevron Chief Executive Michael Wirth downplayed any major layoffs.

"We're not intending to make any changes on real estate and that kind of thing," Wirth said in a phone interview, assuring that Chevron will have major hubs in both downtown Houston and The Woodlands for the foreseeable future.

"One of the great opportunities is when you combine two really good companies with great people is to create an even better workforce than ever before," said Wirth, who took over as CEO in early 2018. Chevron will still keep its headquarters though in San Ramon, Calif.

COMPETITORS: Exxon-Chevron Permian slugfest expected to last years

Wirth emphasized that Chevron and Anadarko fit well together because they have large, adjacent footprints in the Permian's emerging Delaware Basin in West Texas near the New Mexico border. They also are the deepwater Gulf of Mexico's third and fourth-largest producers.

Wirth said he also is keen on starting construction on Anadarko's major liquefied natural gas export project in Mozambique by the end of the year.

HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Oil slips most in month amid U.S. supply boost

Anadarko CEO Al Walker said the price was right and that he expects a relatively smooth and seamless transition under Chevron leadership.

"I believe this will be a very powerful combination for many years to come," Walker said in a conference call.

This is the biggest deal in the energy sector since Royal Dutch Shell agreed to buy the United Kingdom's BG Group for more than $50 billion in 2015, but Chevron and Anadarko are both American companies with huge Houston-area hubs.

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.
Express Entry candidates issued invitations in April 11 Manitoba draw April 11 Skilled Workers Overseas draw issues 403 invitations CIC News Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Manitoba issued 403 invitations to immigration candidates in a draw held April 11 through its Skilled Workers Overseas stream.

The Skilled Workers Overseas stream is a key component of the Manitoba Provincial Nominee Program (MPNP), which allows the province to nominate a set number of economic immigration candidates for Canadian permanent residence each year.

The April 11 draw issued 352 invitations to two groups of candidates, including an unspecified number with a profile in the federal Express Entry system.

The Express Entry system manages the pool of candidates for three of Canadas main economic immigration categories  the Federal Skilled Worker Class, Federal Skilled Trades Class and Canadian Experience Class.

Express Entry candidates with a provincial nomination from Manitoba obtain an additional 600 points toward their Express Entry ranking score and are effectively guaranteed an invitation to apply for Canadian permanent residence.

Find out if you are eligible to enter the Express Entry pool

To be considered for a provincial nomination from Manitoba, Express Entry candidates must submit a separate Expression of Interest (EOI) profile to the MPNP.

Eligible EOI profiles are ranked based on scores awarded for factors that include education, work experience and a candidates connection to Manitoba. The highest-ranked candidates are then invited to apply for a provincial nomination through regular draws from the pool.

Express Entry candidates invited in the April 11 draw were required to have a valid Express Entry ID and job-seeker validation code, and at least six months of recent work experience in an occupation listed as in-demand by the MPNP.

The other group met the following criteria:

a close relative residing in Manitoba or past education or work experience in Manitoba;

at least six months of recent experience in an occupation on Manitobas In-demand Occupations list; and

a minimum language proficiency in English or French of CLB/NCLC 5 unless the work experience is primarily in a regulated occupation, in which case the requirement is a minimum of CLB/NCLC 7, or a compulsory trade, in which case the minimum is CLB/NCLC 6.

The lowest-ranked candidate in these two groups had a score of 561.

The April 11 draw also issued 51 invitations to candidates through one of the MPNPs Strategic Recruitment Initiatives. These include overseas recruitment missions conducted by the MPNP in association with Manitoba businesses.

The lowest-ranked candidate invited through a Strategic Recruitment Initiative was 695.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

 2019 CICNews All Rights Reserved
April is Workplace Violence Awareness Month, and while recent events like the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand and the synagogue attack in Pittsburgh took place in houses of worship, these events are part of a larger climate of hatred, discrimination, intolerance, and violence on the rise worldwide. The U.S. alone saw a 57% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, according to the Anti-Defamation League. What makes you think this kind of hatred and intolerance isnt already in your workplace?

Think about it  James Damore was fired from Google in 2017 for circulating his infamous memo claiming women were biologically less adept at engineering and that personality differences explained the shortage of female leaders at the company. Just this month, activists alleged that an IBM consulting manager is a member of a white supremacist group and has given other members advice about how to get into the tech field. In 2018, a game called SuperSeducer was readily available on the Steam platform. According to the description, its based on pickup artist culture and rewards players for objectifying, harassing, coercing, and ignoring non-verbal cues from women. Earlier this year, Steam and parent company Valve pulled a game called Rape Day from its platform.

Those are just a few high-profile examples. Workplace bullying, cyberbullying, discrimination and sexual harassment, racial discrimination and harassment, LGBTQ+ discrimination and slurs  violent incidents happen daily within the walls of organizations.

What can you do about it? Vijay Eswaran, an entrepreneur, speaker, and philanthropist who is the founder and executive chairman of the QI Group of Companies, says the business community in particular cannot just sit and wait for politicians to act and lead as responsible role models. Nor is it up to individuals alone to solve these problems  it has to be a collaborative solution, from the top down and from the bottom up.

Each of us, in our respective roles, should take action to promote a more open, diverse and tolerant society, Eswaran says. It is high time business leaders argued that diversity is also an extraordinary economic opportunity that brings success and prosperity to all of us. The cohabitation of people of different ethnicities, from different places, with different experiences in cities and societies, is a key driver of innovation. Societies which are diverse are more innovative because they encourage unique collaborations and points of view.

This is borne out on a micro scale, as well, within company structures, he says. A 2017 report from the Financial Management Association shows that more diverse companies announce an average of two extra products in any given year. McKinsey & Co. has also studied the strong positive correlation between financial performance and diversity.

As a collective, the corporate world must come together and be much more engaged and vocal than it has been in its defense of a diverse and tolerant society.  Vijay Eswaran

Diversity means more disruptive products, business models, and ideas floating around the marketplace, Eswaran says. More than ever, flexibility and versatility are becoming the most important keys to success for individuals, companies and countries alike, and a culturally diverse environment is the best way to acquire these qualities. Corporations bear a responsibility to step up and advocate for diversity and tolerance, but they must also have their own houses in order: workplaces and boardrooms must be the shining example, bringing people from different backgrounds to work together.

That also means making the tough calls when needed: Firing the James Damores and the neo-Nazi group members when you find them within your ranks. Listening and taking action when employees report harassment, hatred, and discrimination. Having a zero-tolerance policy toward these types of behavior and following through with consequences.

Of course, we are not going to reverse the trend of hatred and violence overnight. No single article, Tweet, marketing campaign (or blog post) on its own will turn the tide, says Eswaran. But, as a collective, the corporate world must come together and be much more engaged and vocal than it has been in its defense of a diverse and tolerant society. It is an uphill battle, but peace and prosperity depend upon it, he says.
Trade show exhibits in the Far East Published: 12 April 2019 by Chelsey Drysdale by Chelsey Drysdale

Rehm attends trade fairs in China, South Korea and Thailand

As an established manufacturer of reflow soldering systems, Rehm Thermal Systems has also made a name for itself on the Asian electronics market in recent years. Over the coming weeks, the thermal system solutions expert will be attending three major trade fairs in China, South Korea and Thailand. It will showcase the highlights of its extensive product portfolio, as well as further developments in system and process engineering, at these trade fairs.

Nepcon China, which will take place from 24 to 26 April in Shanghai, is the first of the three trade fairs. With around 500 exhibitors, an exhibition space that comprises over 32,000 square metres and around 30,000 visitors, Nepcon China in Shanghai is one of the major trade fairs for the Asian electronics industry. In Hall 1, Stand 1D55 at the World Expo Exhibition and Convention Center, Rehm Thermal Systems will showcase the VisionXP+ Vac convection soldering system, the CondensoXC vapour phase soldering system and the ProtectoXC coating system. A VisionX Semico will also be presented in the SIP demonstration area in Hall 2, Stand 2Q19.

Rehm Thermal Systems will also be at the COEX Center in the South Korean capital of Seoul for Nepcon Korea from 15 to 17 May, also presenting its CondensoXC vapour phase soldering system in Hall C, Stand F145. The third major Asian trade fair for Rehm over the coming weeks is Nepcon Thailand, which will take place from 19 to 22 June at BITEC in Bangkok. Rehm will be showcasing the VisionXC convection soldering system there in Hall 98, Stand 8F37. Thanks to its compact size, it is especially suitable for small and medium batch sizes.

About Rehm Thermal Systems

Rehm is a technology and innovation leader in the state-of-the-art, cost-effective manufacturing of electronic assembly groups and specialises in thermal system solutions for the electronics and photovoltaics industry. Rehm is a globally active manufacturer of reflow soldering systems using convection, condensation or vacuum, drying and coating systems, functional test systems, equipment for the metallisation of solar cells and numerous customised systems. We have a presence in all key growth markets and, as a partner with almost 30 years of industry experience, we are able to implement innovative production solutions that set new standards.
In the fall of 1968, a recent Cornell University graduate named Nathan Tarcov wrote an essay in The Public Interest called The Last Four Years at Cornell. Rising student unrest, Tarcov wrote, presented a fundamental challenge to the universitys approach to liberal education. And Cornells inclination to accede to student demands could only make things worse: Granting a host of peripheral demands cannot remedy a pervasive discontent with the fundamental characteristics of education in the arts college. Cornells continuing failure to acknowledge the nature of the problem and stand up for itself represented a deep dysfunction at the heart of American higher education, one that was sure to have destructive effects, Tarcov warned.

The warning came true far sooner than he expected, as the Cornell campus erupted in racially tinged violence less than a year later. The student protests of four decades ago were not, of course, limited to Cornell. Outbreaks no less serious (and in several cases far more so) occurred at many other elite universities. A similar story line can be discerned in each case: student radicalism, often with racial overtones, spills into violence and tests the resolve of the universitys administrators, who quickly fail the test, cave to pressure to change the curriculum or other practices, and set a lasting precedent for the subordination of academic freedom to an extreme political agenda. In each case, too, the error was only exacerbated with time, with both the students violence and the administrations weakness now celebrated in ways that continue to harm the American academy.

In his essay, Tarcov remembers that he had chosen to attend Cornell in the expectation that it would be far less politicized than Berkeley or Wisconsinand it was, at first. The events of 1969 had special resonance precisely because of Cornells reputation as a calm and nonpolitical campus.

The trouble began with some early indications of racial tension. The number of black students at Cornell had been steadily growing during the 1960s, thanks in particular to the efforts of the universitys administration. When James A. Perkins became Cornells president in 1963, only about 25 of the schools 11,000 students were black. Perkins, a Quaker who had been chairman of the board of the United Negro College Fund, solicited a $250,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to help bring in promising black students. After the program proved successful, Perkins established the Committee on Special Education Projects to further intensify recruiting. By 1969, Cornell had 250 black students in a student body that, because of the baby boom, had reached 14,000.

But despite the efforts of the president and faculty to attract and integrate them, many black students at Cornell felt alienated from the student body and hostile to the administration. In 1966, a group of black students created the Afro-American Society. Strongly influenced by the national Black Power movement, the AAS sought to increase black students autonomy and change Cornells curriculum to suit its views, rather than pursue integration. A typical AAS statement, in the form of a letter to the Cornell Daily Sun, read as follows:

If Blacks do not define the type of program set up within an institution that will be relevant to them, it will be worthless. Moreover, the Blacks must have the right to define the role of white students in the program, even to the point of their restriction, if it is to be valid for Blacks or whites. We do not expect whites to understand because their perception is dimmed by the racism they admit they possess.

In 1968, a group of AAS members disrupted the class of Father Michael McPhelin, a visiting economics professor from the Philippines who had criticized the economic-development policies of a number of African nations. Without addressing McPhelins criticism on the merits, the AAS tried to intimidate him into recanting. The students first tried to read a letter criticizing him in classwithout showing it to him firstbut he refused to allow it. Then they attempted to take over the class, and he resisted. McPhelin complained to the chairman of the economics department, who, instead of punishing the offending students, praised them for their activism. By the end of the year, McPhelin had left Cornell and, as Tarcov saw it, a pattern had been established: The disruption of a class, seizure of a department office and chairman, and the threatened and actual use of force had gone unpunished and had even received the sympathy and admiration of liberals and administrators for the moral convictions manifested.

Similarly, in the summer of 1968, Thomas Sowell, a black economics professor in his first academic position, tried to eject a disruptive black student from his course, only to find his decision overruled by the same chairman who had undercut McPhelin. In his memoir recounting his time at Cornell, Sowell reports that he was called a man from Mars for refusing to join any of the mass discussions or small-group intrigues that dominated the campus. Unhappy at Cornell, Sowell tendered his resignation.

The troubles grew worse. In December 1968, black students demanding a separate curriculum turned over vending machines, brandished fake guns on campus, and marched on the tables of a student dining hall during a meal. The administrations weak response to these disruptions invited greater ones.

Sure enough, these began in the winter of 1969. In February, a symposium about South Africa took place on campus. President Perkins agreed to appear and discuss the universitys investments in that country, of which many student activists disapproved. While Perkins was speaking, a black sophomore named Gary Patton climbed on stage and grabbed him by the collar. The crowd of 800 students let out a collective gasp as Perkins whispered ineffectually to Patton, You better let go of me! Ex-student Larry Dickson then pointed a large wooden plank at the head of Lowell George, Cornells supervisor of public safety, who had moved to defend Perkins. AAS members in the audience beat bongo drums as Patton continued to hold and threaten Perkins. After a few moments, Patton let go and Perkins rushed off the stage, but the New York Times ran a front-page story on the incident, and it was soon clear that Cornell was on the verge of an explosion.

Other modest eruptions continued throughout the semester. By April, many white students had grown weary of the protests and felt that the university should deal with the unrest more forcefully. Stan Chess, editor of the Cornell Daily Sun, claimed in the New York Times Magazine that if the administration [would say] no now, it would get the backing of a majority on this campus. But the administration took no concrete action.

On April 18, students at Wari, a cooperative for black women, reported a burning cross on their lawn and blamed racist whites for the incident. The cross burners were never caught, and Ithaca police suspected, but could never prove, that AAS members themselves had burned the cross, trying to create a pretext for further protest. Stephen Goodwin, a Cornell student at the time who served as the AAS treasurer, later called the cross burning a set-up. It was just to bring in more media and more attention to the whole thing.

Whether it was a set-up or not, the incident set the stage for a massive escalation. At 5:30 AM the next day, the AAS took over Willard Straight Hall, Cornells student-activity center. Though AAS leaders claimed that their action was a response to the cross-burning, they had planned the move weeks earlier, choosing April 19 to coincide with the universitys Parents Weekend.

In carrying out the takeover, AAS students crossed the line between incivility and life-threatening violence. The invading students ran through the building shouting Fire!, sending 30 confused parents outside without even a chance to gather their luggage. A number of parents had the presence of mind to call the universitys department of public safety and ask for help, but they were advised, Theres nothing we can do; do what they tell you. One woman claimed that students wielding steel sticks and crowbars broke the lower panel of her door while urging her to leave. The raiders shouted at the parents, calling them pigs; telling them, Your lives are in danger; you had better get out of here fast; and declaring, The black man has risen. After the parents evacuated, along with 40 university employees who had been inside the building, the AAS chained the doors closed.

The takeover deeply divided Cornell. Within minutes, white members of the left-wing Students for a Democratic Society formed a sympathy barricade around Straight Hall. SDS member C. David Burak told 100 picketers over a megaphone that he condemned the racist and capitalist policies of both Cornell and America at large. Others, however, were angry at the AAS radicals. Twenty-five white students from the Delta Upsilon fraternity entered Straight through a window a few hours after the takeover and got into a minor scuffle with AAS members before leaving the building. According to Allan Sindler, chairman of the government department at the time, black students then brought rifles to Straights loading dock for use by AAS members, and campus police, acting on orders from the administration, did nothing to stop them. Once armed, AAS leader Eric Evans, a senior majoring in communications, demonstrated a proclivity for his chosen field when he shouted through a megaphone, If any more white students come in, youre gonna die here.

The occupiers demanded the nullification of campus judicial action against the students who had overturned vending machines the previous year, the commencement of housing negotiations between the administration and the AAS, and a complete investigation of the Wari cross-burning. They spent Saturday night smuggling in more rifles and preparing for another day of antics. On Sunday, they negotiated with a special committee of faculty members and administration officials appointed to manage the crisis.

That afternoon, the AAS and the administration came to an agreement, and 110 black students left Straight and marched to the Africana Studies and Research Center to sign the deal. Even the exodus took place in a manner embarrassing to the university. AAS leaders Dickson and Thomas Jones were the last to leave, each holding a gun in one hand and making a Black Power salute with the other. Though the guns were, by previous arrangement, unloaded, cameras captured the appalling image of armed students. AP photographer Steve Starrs Pulitzer Prizewinning picture of Evans and another student leaving Straight with weapons in hand shocked the nation and entered 1960s iconography.

The agreement itself was also a blow to the university: in exchange for AAS members leaving the building and cooperating in creating a new judicial system on campus, the administration agreed to recommend that the faculty nullify any actions taken against the five students who had run wild in December, not pursue any charges in connection with the Straight takeover itself, and provide round-the-clock protection for the Wari cooperative. The agreement represented a complete capitulation on the part of the administration.

While the administration cowered, many students and faculty members objected. Allan Bloom, one of Cornells most popularand controversialprofessors, told the Cornell Daily Sun that he was shocked by the agreement, and an unnamed senior government professor warned that this conceivably could be the end of Cornell University. Before the faculty met to discuss the issue, 50 students, calling themselves part of the silent center, protested the administrations cowardice, waving signs reading DONT LET THEM BULLY YOU and BERLIN 32, ITHACA 69. Some students, under Blooms direction, handed out excerpts from Platos Republic.

The faculty by a wide margin voted down the administrations recommendation to dismiss charges against the students who had overturned the vending machines. Though the faculty did not reject other elements of the agreement, the vote against amnesty infuriated the AAS. Jones gave an incendiary speech on campus radio threatening the lives of faculty who had supported the resolution, calling them racists and mentioning the names of three professors (Bloom, Clinton Rossiter, and Walter Berns) and four administration officials (including Perkins and provost Dale Corson). He even reported their home addresses, warning that they would be dealt with if the faculty didnt reverse its position by 9:00 PM. Jones closed his remarks by announcing: Cornell has three hours to live.

The threatened faculty brought their families to motels, registering under assumed names. Bloom also helped protect a black student, Alan Keyes, whom the AAS saw as a traitor because he opposed the takeover. Bloom put Keyes on a late-night bus to Montreal and arranged financial aid for him to finish his studies at Harvard.

The threats and incendiary rhetoric took their toll. By Wednesday at noon, when the faculty convened an emergency session at Bailey Hall, most of the modestly defiant professors of two days earlier had been cowed. They believed that if they resisted any further, SDS, AAS, some unaffiliated students, and a considerable number of faculty members themselves might resort to violence. Twenty-six professors said that they would participate in building takeovers and 49 threatened to strike if the faculty refused to overturn its earlier vote. After 90 minutes of mostly one-sided debate, the faculty agreed, again by a large margin, to reverse the earlier decision, repealing the penalties it had upheld two days earlier. As Bloom put it, students discovered that pompous teachers who catechized them about academic freedom could, with a little shove, be made into dancing bears.

Even after the immediate threat of violence subsided, Cornell did not return to normal. The continued coverage of the crisis in the New York Times provided a steady flow of damaging stories and images. The Cornell Alumni News contributed its own overview of the crisis in a special early-June issue, unfiltered by Cornell officials and reaching 40,000 alumni. According to Sindler, as more people, and particularly more alumni, understood the extent of the administrations follies, Perkinss presidency became increasingly precarious. Perkins soon announced his intention to resign. But while his resignation put an end to the immediate crisis, the aftermath of the events of 1969 continued to bedevil Cornell for many years to come.

The most concrete immediate effect of the takeover at Cornell was the angry departure of a number of prominent faculty members, including Bloom, Berns, Sindler, Sowell, and the beloved classics professor Donald Kagan. Blooms departure in particular hurt Cornell, as he had personally drawn many talented students to the school. Back in 1963, when he had left for a year to teach at Yale, his students had followed him. When he returned, the students returned with him. His departure ensured that those he attracted would go elsewhere. Many of the most noted Cornell graduates between 1965 and 1970 had been his devoted students, including Tarcov (now a professor of political science at the University of Chicago), Paul Wolfowitz (former deputy secretary of defense and president of the World Bank), Alan Keyes (former presidential candidate and assistant secretary of state), Clifford Orwin (professor of political philosophy at the University of Toronto), Edith Jones (chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit), Francis Fukuyama (professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University), William Galston (senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former policy advisor to President Clinton), and others. In many cases, the Straight takeover politicized these studentsor at least awakened them to the extent of the universitys politicizationand as they rose to important positions in government and academia, they carried their Cornell memories with them. Bloom himself described the importance of the experience in shaping his own thinking in his best-selling The Closing of the American Mind.

In addition to its effect on specific people, the Straight crisis had more atmospheric, long-term consequences for Cornell, starting with a collapse of civil discourse on campus. With the emergence of threats, intimidation, and the publicizing of opponents home addresses, political differences became personal. Opposing parties lost the ability to debate differences openly, or to resolve them in a nonviolent manner. The threat of violence, not any adherence to principle, had determined campus policy in the Straight crisis. Once the precedent was established that protest, whether violent or not, could change university policy, the university became increasingly politicized. Any decision would have a political component, and any decision could therefore be challenged, and changed, through political action.

The crisis also had grave implications for academic freedom. If the faculty would not punish violent students, and the president did not feel free to denounce their actions, then individual professors could not expect to speak freely in their classes, especially if their comments might offend certain groups.

Moreover, the events of 1969 ratified the notion of black self-segregation at Cornell, with dire consequences reaching to the present. Acceding to the demands of the AAS (which renamed itself the Black Liberation Front after the takeover), the administration signaled that it would no longer object to black students attempts to live, eat, and learn separately from their white fellow students. Many of these patterns of separation have persisted and spread. Over time, black and white students came to live in separate dorms at Cornell, and students of other ethnic groups (especially Hispanics) established their own living and eating spaces. By the mid-1990s, Cornells West Campus was 70 percent white, while its North Campus had become majority-minority. Given the sheer size of the Cornell campus, this meant that white students and black students established completely separate social worlds in their freshman year. That fact, coupled with the separate classes that the African-studies curriculum entailed, meant that black and white students at Cornell had minimal opportunities for interaction. Attempts to reintegrate were routinely met with protests, most notably in 1996, when Al Sharpton visited Cornell and accused the administration of forcing black and Hispanic students to merge in with everyone else so we dont know theyre here.

Sharpton had come to Cornell to protest a proposal that would integrate housing for freshmen and sophomores and limit self-segregated housing to upperclassmen. During the demonstration, hundreds of students lay down in the street, blocking traffic at one of Cornells busiest intersections. Naturally, no one was arrested or punished, and indeed the whole incident was met with nothing so much as warm nostalgia for the violence of the late 1960s. In his commencement remarks later that year, Cornells president, Hunter Rawlings, even thanked the students for reassuring me the Cornell tradition of demonstrations and protests is alive and well.

Rawlings did take some action to lessen segregation, requiring all freshmen beginning with the class of 2002 to live on North Campus. But the plan left self-segregated dorms intact and has done little in practice to end racial self-segregation. Rawlings displayed even greater weakness in defense of free speech on campus. In April 1997, the Cornell Review, a conservative campus paper, published a parody of black studies, written in Ebonics. In response, black students burned hundreds of copies of the offending issue, and the administration did nothing about the destruction of property or the suppression of free speech. Rawlings condemned the article as race-baiting, stereotyping, and intentionally degrading attacks but didnt protest or investigate the paper burnings. When Ying Ma, the Reviews president, tried to speak in its defense at a hearing, protesters forcibly held her back from a microphone, while others threw a basket of burning papers at her face. Several Review staffers also received death threats.

Similar incidents have continued over the past few years. Intimidation tactics have thus remained a prominent element of Cornells culture wars, and the universitys administration has remained unwilling to do much about it.

At Cornell earlier this year, the university marked the 40th anniversary of the AAS standoff with a campuswide celebration that featured former AAS leader Thomas Jones (now an investment banker). In an interview with the Cornell Daily Sun, Jones described the events surrounding the Straight takeover as an enormous act of selflessness . . . in terms of saying were going to fight this fight as part of the larger battle. And though he expressed regret for the personal toll the takeover had on black students who didnt finish their degrees, professors who quit in anger, and Perkins losing his job, Jones was unapologetic for being one of those who stood up for the fight that we fought that we thought we had to engage in, which he claimed was in this historical context and one of the events that made that chain of history that lead directly to Barack Obama being elected.

The weeklong festival also featured artistic and cultural displays, panel discussions, prizes, a commemoration walk (which takes place every year), a free catered dinner, and a community photo op. The universitys president, David J. Skorton, even appeared and, incredibly, gave the Black Power salute. The events were publicized through a university-sponsored Facebook page and characterized by one student as an opportunity to warmly welcome the next generation of Cornellians through food, prizes, discussion, and much more.

But in fact, the violent student uprisings of the late 1960s and early seventies have left a legacy of political radicalism and intellectual feebleness that continues to haunt not only Cornell, but many of our best universities. The most troubling trends in academic life these past four decadesincluding the introduction of highly politicized new departments and disciplines, the casual acceptance of racial self-segregation and animosity, the burdens of political correctness, and the decline of core liberal education curriculacan be traced in large part to the surrender of authority by university administrators and faculty in the face of student radicalism.

These days, administrators and professors are more likely to be former radicals themselves than to see the damage done by the student protest movement. Their celebration of the surrender of the American academy now shapes the next generations understanding of the events of that period and of the radical politicization of Americas great universities. To recover, the next generation of professors and academic administrators needs to hear the true story of the student uprisings and to rediscover the importance of a truly liberal education, now nearly forgotten after four long decades of false nostalgia.

Photo: Andrew Parmet/Wikimedia Commons
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
In late January, over the course of a week, a lousy journalism job market became truly awful. About 1,000 journalists learned they were being laid off, at BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Gannett, marking a grim record for an industry that has traded in bad news for a decade. By habit, reporters turned to Twitter, mourning for friends who had been cut, venting about their bosses, and desperately beginning a search for work.

It was at that point that the jeers began. A chorus of online trolls began mocking the misfortune of laid-off reporters, saying, basically, that they had it coming. That escalated into increasingly vicious and personal attacks, racist and anti-Semitic, including a meme calling for reporters to be killed. Finally and inevitably, President Trump joined the fray, predicting more bad news for the pressand, he said, rightly so.

Journalisms response was largely to lock arms and turn inward. People blamed the Twitter trolling on a far-right cabal. They filtered the backlash through partisan politics. A few editors hit back at Trump for going after journalists, who have the same medical bills and rent payments and student loan debt as everyone else. They knew he wouldnt listen.

This sort of back-and-forth has become routine over these past two long years. Since that first wave in January, others followed in February, doubling the number of lost jobs. Attacked by the other side, reporters recede among their own kind, seeking solidarity (its a reason newsroom unionization is growing). On social media and in conversations over beers, the bunker is fortified, as journalists begin to dismiss, and tune out, people who dislike them. Then they continue on as they were, filing hot takes at a rapid pace, chasing the next scoop (always following Trumps lead), and loudly broadcasting their stories in frantic hyperbole. More and more, everyone accepts a world that is cleft in twous and them, facts versus fantasy, the enlightened few against an angry mob.

This cant be good. Journalism, after all, is supposed to be about the airing of ideas, about empathy, about listening to what other people think, even, and especially, if theyre not like you. Thats where the best stories live. But because of our natural instinct to huddle together and protect our pack, we fail to do what we desperately must: step away and start reporting on people in realms outside our own. Whats essential to storytelling isnt any of us in the pressit almost never isits the subjects. In better understanding who they are (they happen to be our readers), we can, perhaps, begin the necessary process of rebuilding journalism.

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Weve all at one time or another said to a friend, usually someone not in journalism, Oh, you have a life! Its a bit of an insult, but just as much a point of fascination: you have a way of being that takes place outside of this. For those trapped in the news churn, there is an intenseoften oddly superiorfeeling of remove from other people. The ones with lives. But writing about people as they live their lives is a luxury journalists cant afford to miss. If you cant get past news pegs, how can you perceive anyone as they really are?

We have to be willing to try something new. Journalisms next great project has to be not looking in the mirror (which weve become quite good at over the past two years, first obsessing over every flaw and blemish, then staring in awe at our own self-importance) but honestly assessing how others see us, and how we can see them better.

Thats going to be painful. A big swath of the public doesnt like us or trust us, polls show; many Americans even question the value of the press as an institution. Faith in journalists has never been high, but weve reached a dangerous new drop in the relationship. We know some reasons: the financial crisis of 2008 occasioned profound misgivings about institutional power, and media organizations were swept up in that discontent. Journalism, in the general publics view, had grown both self-absorbed and uncritical of the establishment. The economy recovered but trust in media did not.

The press was seen as part of the power structurepart of the problemand indeed it was. Starting in the 1980s, as profit margins for newspapers and magazines soared, journalism grew increasingly corporatized. Media companies catered more to advertisers than to readers; subscription numbers were secondary to success. The stories we told reflected that shift in approach.

It was a detour from which we never returnedand one that bypassed the vital work being done by writers like Studs Terkel and Joseph Mitchell and Raymond Carver, who we largely ignored as models for professional practice. Today you can go back and marvel at their work, be it fiction or journalism: Ive personally been on a Carver tear, and am now convinced that Ive learned more about fear and alienation in 2019 America from his short storiesdating to the 1980sthan I have from any number of more recent features in The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Consider this brief moment from Carvers short story Want to See Something?, first published in 1981:

I went back to the front of the house and down the sidewalk. I stopped for a minute with my hand on our gate and looked around the still neighborhood. I dont know why, but I suddenly felt a long way away from everybody I had known and loved when I was a girl. I missed people. . . .it came to me then that my life did not remotely resemble the life I thought Id have when I had been young and looking ahead to things.

Perhaps this has always been the case, that journalism has had its nose too close to the glass to get at bigger truths. You need art, or fiction or movies, to do that.

But the scale of the story we are living through today demands a higher level of journalistic thinking. And we are nowhere near where we should be.

Journalists, of course, are just people. They are beset as never beforeby a failing business model, by a public that doesnt want them, by a political climate that calls into question how they see the world, and by a national leader who has declared them, literally, the enemy. Yet one of the ironies of life under Trump is that, as his attacks on the media have become the mainstay of his withering presidency, the fortunes of the press outlets most critical of him have vastly improved. Paid readership of the Post and the Times is growing impressively, as is viewership of MSNBC and CNN. You would think that this represents journalism binding to its audience.

That has not happened. For one thing, even as readers have become the crucial source of media companies revenue, newsrooms havent been covering their communities much differently. This is now an existential problem. At the very moment that readers are rallying behind the Times, for instance, its management made the decision to kill the role of public editorthe readers ombudsmanand replace it with an online commenting system that simply does not work. The papers marketing campaign, The Truth, is something pulled out of the vault from the days when newspapers were the voice of god, watching and ruling from on high.

We have to be willing to try something new. Journalisms next great project has to be not looking in the mirror but honestly assessing how others see us, and how we can see them better.

Journalists have long thought that we have unique access to a greater truth, and, if others cant see or wont accept it, we soldier on, smugly content in the knowledge that right is on our side. I dont think its an exaggeration to say that if that attitude doesnt change, journalism as we know it may not survive. We desperately need our readers; there isnt a viable business model that doesnt count subscription or membership revenue as a central plank.

But it would be a mistake, and shortsighted, to frame the need to repair the relationship between the press and the general public as mainly a business problem. It is that, but journalism is also an enterprise in civic duty. If we are unwilling to engage with people about how they see us, we fail to perceive the world as it is, and were unable to do our jobs.

The surreal circus of the past two years has thrown up a smoke screen of fear and antagonism, convincing some of us that we need to batten down the hatches and wait it out. The outside world is a Trump rally, and members of the press are cordoned off, muttering about the losers out there lobbing insults at us.

That is not a path to securing our business, our profession, or our pride in our work. Well do so only by becoming immersed in the world, not staying apart from it; by imagining alternative ways to develop a picture of a community; by seeking to understand and, painful though it might be, adjusting our perspective.

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Kyle Pope is the editor in chief and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review.
I am not a fangirl. I may have camped out in Central Park once to see the Backstreet Boys perform for Good Morning America. I may have started my own BSB email newsletter and fan site in the sixth grade. I may have spent $3,000 on a BSB cruise and written about it publicly. And Im a lot of thingsthe black sheep of my family, a decently successful professional who struggles with adult relationships, a cultural and political Muslim who fasts one day out of thirty, a friend who is great in person but terrible at staying in touch, a media junkie who is always talking about the podcast I want to start but never starting it. But fangirl? Nope. Not my tribe.

So when, in 2013, I was contacted by Jessica Leski, an Australian filmmaker who wanted to talk to me for a possible documentary about boyband fangirls, I balked. For one thing, I had never been interviewed before. (Ive always preferred to poke at other peoples business or to control my narrative with my own writing.) More to the point: Even if I was cool with being interviewed, did I really want it to be for this? That week also just so happened to be my first at a fancy new tech job in San Francisco. I wasnt sure I wanted to out myself to my colleagues. Then Leski asked if I would be interested in flying down to Los Angeles for a nightall expenses paid. Sure, I thought. I decided it would be fun and harmless, a few hours in sunny LA talking to a stranger with a camera. The conversation would probably go nowhere.

In a previous life, I had been a reporter for a regional newspaper in North Carolina. So when I sat down with Leski, I thought I knew what I was doing. As an interviewer, Id known how to share just enough about myself to get sources to feel comfortable and share even more about themselves with me. Give to get. Now that I was a source, I told myself to stay dispassionate. Dont say anything that might be edited later to make you sound stupid. Youre on camera, so wear Spanx.

But no one had ever asked about the BSB part of my life before. Id loved them since I was 11, and Id never really talked to anyone about it. Aside from the one essay Id written about the cruise, I had kept my fandom to myself and rarely looked at it up close.

In the interview, I unraveled. When Leski asked how being a fan helped me through hard times, I could think only of a major depressive episode Id had in college, during which I attempted suicide. In the moment, on the spot, I made the connection that the Backstreet Boys had often served as an antidote to the down moments of my life. The Backstreet Boys are like mac and cheese, I told her. Theyre my comfort food. (What happened to not saying anything stupid?)

We also talked trivia, including the fact that Nick Carteronce my favorite among the Boysis an Aquarius from Tampa who loves being by the water. Offhandedly, I shared a childhood fantasy: Nick teaching me how to swim.

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At the end of the conversation, Leski told me to put on a pair of headphones and listen to my favorite two BSB songs: one that was upbeat, and one ballad. Then she walked out of the room, leaving the camera to record. Oh, no, I thought. I knew this was a ploy to get me to express emotion. I did as instructed, but I refused to lose myself on camera. I did not shed a tear. At least, not at first.

During the third year of filming I realized I was a subject. Jessica, as I now called her, visited me while I was at my parents house during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting for Muslims. She somehow got my family on camera to offer their takes on my fandom. She filmed me visiting my high school. She had already filmed me at my job, with my friends, in my San Francisco studio. It seemed like a lot of footage for a movie in which I was just one of many participants.

I started to ask questions of Jessica. How many fangirls would be in the film? (Four or five.) Are you interviewing psychologists or boyband members? (No.) Where would this be shown? (Not sure.)

My mom was concerned. I was nearing 30 and had agreed to let her set me up for an arranged marriage, since my own efforts were so clearly failing. The mother of a prospect had called her and asked about my Backstreet Boys obsession. The family had Googled me and found my BSB cruise article. My mom didnt know what to say. They never contacted us again. My mom said to me: Are you sure this movie is a good idea? Do you trust the director? What if theyre going to make fun of you? What if a guy finds this? I asked Jessica and Rita Walsh, the producer, not to include my last name, saying I wanted to preserve the sanctity of my search results. (They obliged.)

At the same time, I kept sharing. On each filming trip, a few days at a time, Jess, as I now called her, would tell me about her life, including the unexpected love shed found for One Direction at the age of 31, which is what started her on the project. We werent friends, exactly, but I liked her. She asked me questions that no one had ever asked. She asked me things that forced me to look at myself.

Given the nature of the music (95 percent love songs), it was nearly impossible not to talk about my own love life. I told Jess about my bad dates, my unhealthy patterns with unavailable men, my growing loneliness. Are there any Backstreet Boys lyrics that resonate with you as an adult? she asked. Hmm, I thought. Then I quoted one: I dont care who you are / Where youre from / What you did / As long as you love me. As I get older, I just want to love and be loved. I care less and less about peoples pasts. Ive been hearing As Long as You Love Me for more than 20 years, I told Jess, and somehow Im just now hearing it differently. (What happened to not saying anything stupid?)

I saw things Id forgotten I had said. In an early scene was an animated illustration of my fantasy swim lessons with Nick Carter.

This movie couldnt possibly come out after I turned 30, could it? Jess and Rita saw me getting anxious. They tried to reassure me, telling me how all the footage made me sound thoughtful. After each shoot, wed lose touch for months and months; the team would run out of funding and Id forget about the project. Then theyd appear again, pumping me up, marveling at what theyd seen in the editing bayhow their team struggled to cut all my clever sound bites.

If theres trust, theres more vulnerability, and that will always make for a better story. I knew that. And I trusted Jess. In 2017, after four years, she filmed me for a final time. I had just started taking swim lessons, and she wanted to watch.

I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl Story premiered at Torontos Hot Docs film festival in April 2018, five years after I was first interviewed. I was one of four subjects. I attended, along with two of the other fangirls, for a walk down the red carpet. Before we stepped out, Jess and Rita sat us down to give us a pep talk. They acknowledged that it would be weird to see ourselves on the big screen, that we might not always like what we were going to see, and that it might be difficult to watch our story arcs low moment. As they spoke, my heart sank. What were they talking about? I had the same job and life the whole time we filmedwhat was my low? Was this a warning for me? Or for all of us?

When the lights went down in the (inexplicably) packed theater, I saw myself. Heard myself. My chubby face; my weird, Invisalign-addled speech patterns. My accidental cleavage when I bent over to open a box of memorabilia that included a 300-piece BSB jigsaw puzzle. My mom will not be happy, I thought.

I saw things Id forgotten I had said. In an early scene was an animated illustration of my fantasy swim lessons with Nick Carter. In another scene, I discussed my low, my collegiate suicide attempt.

But heres the thing: I loved it. I loved hearing the other womens stories. The movie was clearly about way more than just boybands. Also nice: people in the audience laughed at my jokes!

Later, I brought family and friends to see the film when it played in New York. One said, This movie filled in some gaps of my understanding of you. I realized that was true for me, too. Jess was able to see things I couldnt see about myself. Like how the Backstreet Boys represent unattainable fantasyand how, in my twenties, that related to a pattern of falling for unattainable men. Id never made that connection before.

In the weeks that followed, I read reviews. Theres nothing quite like reading about yourself in a review of a movie thats 25 percent about you. You know the writer is reviewing the film, but it feels like theyre actually reviewing you. When a reviewer said that my story resonated, it felt as though she was saying that she liked me. When a reviewer barely mentioned me, I wondered why he didnt like me more. One reviewer argued that the filmmakers were making fun of fangirls. I wondered if that could be true. Had I been used?

Theres a lot of suspicion aimed at journalists these days. Despite having once been a reporter, Ive sometimes found my esteem for the industry flagging. When I became a subject, the documentary reduced the complexity of my life to a single narrative, yes. But I believe that Jess had no idea what story she was going to tell when she started filming. She went in with an open mind, asked thoughtful questions, built trust, edited and re-edited. In the end, Im glad to have had a part of my life captured. The movie is a true portrait of me. Its just not all of me.

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Sadia Latifi is a writer based in San Francisco. She leads writing and content strategy for Airbnb Experiences. A long time ago, she was a reporter at The News & Observer in Raleigh.
Donald Trumps ascent to the White House has had several bizarre side effects. The central political relevance of The National Enquirer, a bottom-of-the-barrel celebrity gossip rag, is one of them. The Enquirer has dallied in politics before: in 2007, it exposed that John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate, was having an affair. But its taken Trump to make the tabloid an enduring subject of Washington intrigue, a node in headlines about illegal hush money payments, sweeping investigations into presidential impropriety, alleged Saudi spying on a US billionaire, and more.

The Enquirers improbable relevance may be about to end. Its chief tie to Trumpworld has been David Peckerthe chairman and CEO of the magazines owner, American Media Inc. This week, The Washington Posts Sarah Ellison and Marc Fisher reported that AMI is ready to offload the Enquirer. A sale has been in the works since last summer, when AMI and two of its top executives finalized a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors over the Enquirers role, during the 2016 campaign, in buying, then killing, a story about Trumps affair with a former Playboy model. According to the Post, AMIs board wanted rid of the hassles that come with Enquirer ownership.

ICYMI: The problem with Captain Americas new both sides website

More recently, Anthony Melchiorre, the hedge-fund manager who controls AMI, added reason to sell. Melchiorre was reportedly disgusted by tactics that the Enquirer had used to break a story about Jeff Bezoswho owns the Post and Amazonrevealing his affair. That story blew up when Bezos, in a Medium post, suggested that publishing the story was politically motivated (Trump hates Bezos). AMI later said that Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezoss love interest, was the Enquirers source; Gavin de Becker, the security expert Bezos hired to investigate the matter, insists that Saudi Arabia hacked his clients phone. (Bezos is apparently meeting with federal prosecutors about this, though no clear evidence has been made public.) Confused? Same.

Who would want to inherit this mess? Yesterday, Edmund Lee and Andrew Ross Sorkin, of The New York Times, reported that Ron Burkle, who made his fortune trading supermarkets in California and buying distressed companies, has been in talks to take on the Enquirer. (Given the Enquirers present political leanings, Burkles past ties to Bill Clinton raised eyebrows.) Lee and Sorkin cautioned that the deal could collapse; after their story published, Burkle dismissed it, asserting, through a spokesperson, that hes not interested in the Enquirer. According to Lee and Sorkin, Burkles team was upset that its talks with AMI had been made public. AMI is keen to press ahead. By the end of yesterday, however, rumors were circulating about alternative suitors: The New York Posts Keith J. Kelly namechecked Paul Pope, the son of the Enquirers founder; James Cohen, CEO of Hudson News; andsurely you saw this one comingBezos. (A source close to AMI called the Bezos speculation idiotic.)

Amid the political headwinds that have buffeted AMI and the Enquirer, it would be easy to overlook the financial aspect. The Washington Post reported that AMI has a recent history of financial woes, and that the Enquirers sales figures are not what they once weresince 2014, theyve fallen by more than half. Kelly, at the New York Post, is expecting a fire sale, far below earlier deals. Once the money-losing tabloids are gone, he points out, AMI will still have Us Weekly, Mens Journal, In Touch, and other magazines in its stable.

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The Enquirers centrality to our politics has been a fleeting historical quirk. Money troubles are perennial; so, too, is the Enquirers central function as a purveyor of cheap sleaze. Its pending disentanglement from Trumpworld probably wont change that. But it might mean that we can soon forget about it.

Below, more on The National Enquirer and its potential buyers:

The Young Pope: According to Kelly, Paul Pope is the only Enquirer suitor to have gone public with his intentions. Pope has hoped to one day regain control ever since the Pope estate sold it in 1989 for $412.5 million and has blasted the management style of Pecker for injecting a political agenda into its coverage, Kelly reports. (Pope is estranged from his immediate family.)

According to Kelly, Paul Pope is the only Enquirer suitor to have gone public with his intentions. Pope has hoped to one day regain control ever since the Pope estate sold it in 1989 for $412.5 million and has blasted the management style of Pecker for injecting a political agenda into its coverage, Kelly reports. (Pope is estranged from his immediate family.) Burkle up: In 2012, Connie Bruck profiled Burkle for The New Yorker. After Bill Clinton left his orbit, in 2010, Burkle finally went public with a bid to enter the movie business, working with Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Bruck reported. Weinstein brought Burkle along to the Sundance festival, and announced that they were partners in the purchase of several movies. They have since worked together on a half-dozen films.

In 2012, Connie Bruck profiled Burkle for The New Yorker. After Bill Clinton left his orbit, in 2010, Burkle finally went public with a bid to enter the movie business, working with Harvey and Bob Weinstein, Bruck reported. Weinstein brought Burkle along to the Sundance festival, and announced that they were partners in the purchase of several movies. They have since worked together on a half-dozen films. Aftershocks: The Washington Posts James Hohmann writes that four of yesterdays big storiesthe pending sale of the Enquirer; the arrest of Julian Assange; the retirement of Maryanne Trump Barry, Trumps sister, as a federal judge; and the indictment, in connection with the Mueller probe, of Greg Craig, a counsel in the Obama White Housecan all be viewed as aftershocks of the 2016 election.

The Washington Posts James Hohmann writes that four of yesterdays big storiesthe pending sale of the Enquirer; the arrest of Julian Assange; the retirement of Maryanne Trump Barry, Trumps sister, as a federal judge; and the indictment, in connection with the Mueller probe, of Greg Craig, a counsel in the Obama White Housecan all be viewed as aftershocks of the 2016 election. Revealed!: Last week, MSNBCs Headliners broadcast a documentary on the Enquirers history of bending the rules. You can catch clips here.



Other notable stories:

ICYMI: A dangerous fentanyl myth lives on

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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.
The First Amendment, like a great party, seems to attract the least reputable people. If the roster of those who have tested its limits the most enthusiastically were a guest list, it might look like this:

Larry Flynt, who published a mock-up of a Campari ad in Hustler featuring a fake interview with Jerry Falwell about having sex with his mother in an outhouse (after I kicked the goat out)

featuring a fake interview with Jerry Falwell about having sex with his mother in an outhouse (after I kicked the goat out) Max Hardcore, the porn producer who was imprisoned on obscenity charges for making videos featuring consenting adults portraying characters who were underage

Kathy Griffin, the comedian who lost her job and was investigated by the Secret Service for tweeting a fake beheading photo, ISIS-style, in which the victim was Donald Trump

Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who went to prison rather than reveal that Dick Cheneys advisor Scooter Libby had outed CIA officer Valerie Plame to her, probably in retaliation for an article by Plames husband Joe Wilson published in Millers own newspaper

Julian Assangethe guy who graduated, like, seven years ago, but can finally grow a beardhas now shown up to the party, and promptly been asked to leave. On Thursday, as Assange was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by UK authorities to face possible extradition to the US, press freedom advocates all seemed to sigh heavily and in unisonlike parents forced to pick up their hard-partying kids.

Press-freedom cases are a mangy bunch. Drill deep enough into the stories of the people mentioned above and you will see that all of them were prosecuted or otherwise punished for some bizarre and tasteless variation on an activity journalists have to perform every day. And for better or worse, we have to be on their team.

Assange has been credibly accused of rape, twiceonce by a woman who is now seeking to have her case reopened in Sweden. Assange also distributed emails and documents that had been stolen from the Democratic National Committee and the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, some of which were then altered, probably by the Russian security service the GRU or one of its proxies, as part of an initiative by the Russian military to support the election of Donald Trump.

The problem for free-press advocates is that Assange is being indicted by a federal grand jury for something else entirely. A March 2018 indictment, unsealed on Thursday, alleges that, in 2010, Assange went beyond the behavior case law is generally understood to allow of journalists: he offered to help US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning break the encryption on a password in the hopes of acquiring further sensitive information. She had already sent information about activity in Iraq and Afghanistan to him for publication and dissemination to other publishers around the world.

Its important to remember of what immense value, both to the general public and to journalists in particular, that information was. At the cost of years of her life, Manning revealed the careless massacre of civilians by foreign militaries in Afghanistan. The most memorable of these is the horrific video of American soldiers in 2007 killing a dozen civiliansincluding two Reuters photographersand then laughing about it. Reuters knew this recording existed; staffers at the organization had been shown it by the Pentagon in an off-the-record briefing and then told to file a Freedom of Information Act request to acquire a copy they could use on the record. Then the Pentagon blocked the request. Manning stole and released the video, and evidence of other atrocities, including the French military strafing a bus full of schoolchildren in Afghanistan.

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ICYMI: The problem with Captain Americas new both sides website

The law under which Assange is being prosecuted, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, is famously overbroad and blunt, especially when applied more than 30 years after its passage in 1986. The law criminalizes unauthorized access to a computer and has been used to prosecute a whole host of activities, some as anodyne as scraping a public website. It was inspired by the 1983 thriller WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. The CFAA has a storied history of misuse dating at least to the FBIs persecution of activist Aaron Swartz for illegally downloading academic articles from database JSTOR, according to a report by Tow Center fellow D. Victoria Baranetsky. Swartz died by suicide before his case could be tried. In no other case besides Assanges, Baranetsky tells CJR, has a journalist been prosecuted for engaging in journalistic activity.

The language in the indictment is especially worrying because it describes ordinary reporting tactics. It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks, the grand jury writes. It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used a special folder on a cloud drop box of WikiLeaks to transmit classified records containing information related to the national defense of the United States. I have engaged in these practices, as has most every other investigative journalist working. I hope to engage in them again.

The Knight First Amendment Institute spotted this immediately: The indictment and the Justice Departments press release treat everyday journalistic practices as part of a criminal conspiracy, Executive Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement provided to CJR. Whether the government will be able to establish a violation of the hacking statute remains to be seen, but its very troubling that the indictment sweeps in activities that are not just lawful but essential to press freedomactivities like cultivating sources, protecting sources identities, and communicating with sources securely.

Journalists were quick to find fault with Assanges behavior as documented in the indictment, and to draw a distinction between him and themselves. Over the years, as a journalist, Ive been careful to distinguish between accepting info and inducing or helping leakers to break laws to obtain information, David Corn tweeted. And Assange has been accused of conspiring with a leaker to hack a classified server.

READ: Last years headlines are in danger of disappearing forever

But journalists often walk a fine line between simply receiving leaks and going to lengths to search them out. It is, after all, illegal to leak classified material, and thus illegal to encourage someone to commit the crime of leaking. But journalists do receive that material, even though its understood that they are forbidden to ask for it. As New York Times reporter Sheera Frenkel wrote, Several times in the last decade in foreign countries, sources offered to obtain material on my behalf. My answer was always: I can look at something you have, but I cant tell you to get something for me. Part of this is, as Frenkel said a little later, a desire to keep ones sources safe from harm and out of prison. Manning herself languished in prison for almost seven years as a consequence of her contact with Assange, often in solitary confinement, discriminated against cruelly because of her identity as trans, before her 35-year sentence was commuted by Barack Obama, whose administration had also jailed her.

In reality, of course, we do want the kind of material that people like Manning brought Assange even if were not allowed to say so. This is the stuff of which journalism awards are made. The US government in particular often declares documents, court filings, and recordings off limits not because they endanger lives but because they endanger reputations and careers built on prosecuting ruinous wars and terrorizing defenseless people.

And it also, often, looks for ways to make any efforts to acquire that kind of embarrassing material illegal. If a reporter receives classified documents a contractor stole from an employer, are they a fence, like a pawnbroker buying a stolen bicycle? Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers thinks so and former FBI director James Comey declined to contradict him in a hearing before the House about Edward Snowden.

The reluctance among members of the press to rally around Assange is understandable, in part because he has tried to wrap himself in a veneer of journalistic respectability even as his tactics changed from the Manning era, from suspect and worrisome to obviously malicious. It will be interesting to see how the notion of Assange as a beacon of press freedom plays today, NBCs Ken Dilanian wrote. Many believe that if he ever was a journalist, those days ended a long time ago.

It doesnt matter if he ever was a journalist. A joke liquor ad making fun of a televangelist isnt journalism, either, but if Larry Flynt cant call Jerry Falwell a motherfucker, The New York Times probably cant call him a bigot. And if the US government can convict Julian Assange in a hacking conspiracy partly for receiving files over the internet and telling a source, curious eyes never run dry in my experience, as his indictment states, they can probably prosecute any of us for just about anything we do in the course of reporting.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Sam Thielman is the former Tow editor at the Columbia Journalism Review, and a reporter and critic based in New York. He is the creator, with film critic Alissa Wilkinson, of Young Adult Movie Ministry, a podcast about Christianity and movies, and his writing has been featured in The Guardian, Talking Points Memo, and Variety, among others.
Congressman Devin Nuness latest lawsuit against people he thinks are making him look badthis one, filed April 8, seeks $150 million in damages from The McClatchy Company and anti-Trump Republican strategist Liz Mairappears unlikely to succeed and, in the eyes of media-law experts, is virtually free of merit. That makes it a lot like the California Republicans first such suit, a $250 million defamation claim filed last month against Mair, Twitter, and parody Twitter accounts claiming to be Devin Nuness Mom and Devin Nuness Cow.

Just because the new lawsuit might be laughed out of court doesnt make it a laughing matter for McClatchy or Nuness other targets. Fighting a defamation suit, however baseless, against a prominent, deep-pocketed plaintiff like a congressman can burn up plenty of time, attention, and money.

And that might be the point.

It seems to me to be stunt litigation, Ken White, a former federal prosecutor whos now a criminal defense and First Amendment lawyer in Los Angeles, says. Increasingly, people seem to sue people for the publicity over the litigation, and the legal outcomes are secondary to the outcome of thrilling your base and whipping them up with the fact that youre taking on the enemy.

ICYMI: All our righteous scumbags

Nuness enemies in this case include the Fresno Bee, a McClatchy-owned paper that covers his district in Californias Central Valley. Last year, the Bee published a story about a San Francisco Bay cruise in 2015 on the SS Alpha Omega, a yacht owned by a nonprofit affiliate of Alpha Omega Winery, of which Nunes is a part owner.

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According to a lawsuit filed by a winery employee who was on the cruise, the 25 men on board drank to excess, snorted cocaine openly, and paid to have sex with women, some of whom appeared to be underage. The winery settled the suit out of court. Nunes was not on the yacht or named in the lawsuit.

The Bees story about the cruise is the nexus of Nuness lawsuit. The suit claims the story was part of McClatchys scheme to defame Nunes and injure his reputation, by implying that he was involved with cocaine and underage prostitutes.

Nunes cites what he claims are factual errors and stealth edits made after the storys initial publication. Nunes also claims McClatchy and reporter Mackenzie Mays conspired with Mair to defame him, because Mair was quoted in McClatchy articles and tweeted links to McClatchy articles, and because Mays had liked or retweeted Mairs tweets about Nunes.

In a statement issued April 9, the Fresno Bee and McClatchy stood by their reporting and called the lawsuit a baseless attack on local journalism and a free press. Nunes declined to be interviewed for the Bees article and has never asked for a correction in the 10 months since it was published, the company said.

Nuness congressional office did not respond to requests for comment, nor did his attorney in the defamation cases, Steven Biss of Charlottesville, Virginia.

The bar that Nunes and Biss must meet to prove defamation is very high. The Bees statements must be provably false and cause actual harm to Nuness reputation, but that by itself isnt enough. Because Nunes is a public figure, he must show the Bee acted with actual malicethat the editors and reporters knew the information they published was false or acted with reckless disregard for whether it was true.

On top of that, Nunes must show the story is false when taken in context and in its entirety. If the gist of something is true, it doesnt matter if a couple of non-material details are wrong, White says. This story puts out there that hes involved in this company; thats undisputed. This company has this yacht; this yacht got used for these purposes. Theres no suggestion that he was there. White, who co-hosts the NPR show All The Presidents Lawyers, described Nunes Twitter lawsuit as unusually buffoonish on a previous episode, and called the McClatchy lawsuit even worse.

Apart from factual and legal deficiencies and prose that White says reads more like a YouTube comment than a professional document, there are problems with Nuness choice of venue. The case was filed in Albemarle County, Virginia. Mair is based in Virginia, but McClatchy doesnt own any papers there. It would make more sense, White says, to hear the case in California, where McClatchy and the Fresno Bee are headquartered, where Nuness district is located, and where the debauched yacht party took place.

The lawsuit states Virginia is an appropriate venue because McClatchy is an investor in Moonlighting, a tech startup based in Charlottesville, and because McClatchy publishes hundreds of stories a year on matters of unique concern to Virginians.

White suspects the real reason Nunes and his lawyer chose Virginia is because it does not have an anti-SLAPP law as strong as Californias. (SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation.) Under his home states anti-SLAPP law, Nunes would be at greater risk of being made to pay McClatchys and Mairs legal fees if his suit is dismissed.

The cost of defending a media company against such a lawsuit could easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, Michael Overing, an adjunct professor of media law at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, says.

The fact that Trumps attorneys were awarded nearly $300,000 against Stormy Daniels tells you minimally what both sides could expect to pay, Overing writes in an email to CJR, referring to the attorneys fees Daniels was ordered to pay when her defamation lawsuit against Trump was dismissed last year. Cases with less publicity are cheaper, but when a president or congressman is involved, the stakes are higher and the billable hours tend to creep up.

However, media companies are insured against libel and defamation lawsuits, so McClatchy almost certainly wont get a six-figure legal bill. (McClatchy, which provided CJR with a copy of their April 9 statement concerning the lawsuit, did not respond to a follow-up.) And the Nunes suit is unlikely to succeed; Overing sees a relatively straight path to a dismissal. The real cost to McClatchy would be the nuisance of defending itself and having to respond publicly to dumb stuff, Overing says.

This lawsuit might go away, but the idea of tying a news organization up in litigation when you dont like its reporting doesnt appear to be going anywhere. Even though the law is typically on their side, journalists and publishers are spending more time responding publicly to dumb stuff.

Its just the sheer weight of these things happening all the time, White says. It has an effect on peoples willingness to speak and to write.

Recently: The National Enquirers pending break from Trumpworld

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Tony Biasotti is a freelance writer in Ventura, California. Find him on Twitter @tonybiasotti.
A federal jury on Thursday convicted two Bucharest, Romania, residents of 21 counts related to their scheme to infect victim computers with malware in order to steal credit card and other information to sell on dark market websites, mine cryptocurrency and engage in online auction fraud, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, and Radu Miclaus, 37, were convicted after a 12-day trial of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit service marks, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit money laundering and 12 counts each of wire fraud. Sentencing has been set for Aug. 14 before Chief Judge Patricia A. Gaughan of the Northern District of Ohio.

According to testimony at trial and court documents, Nicolescu, Miclaus, and a co-conspirator who pleaded guilty, collectively operated a criminal conspiracy from Bucharest, Romania. It began in 2007 with the development of proprietary malware, which they disseminated through malicious emails purporting to be legitimate from such entities as Western Union, Norton AntiVirus and the IRS. When recipients clicked on an attached file, the malware was surreptitiously installed onto their computer.

This malware harvested email addresses from the infected computer, such as from contact lists or email accounts, and then sent malicious emails to these harvested email addresses. The defendants infected and controlled more than 400,000 individual computers, primarily in the United States.

Controlling these computers allowed the defendants to harvest personal information, such as credit card information, user names and passwords. They disabled victims malware protection and blocked the victims access to websites associated with law enforcement.

Controlling the computers also allowed the defendants to use the processing power of the computer to solve complex algorithms for the financial benefit of the group, a process known as cryptocurrency mining.

The defendants used stolen email credentials to copy a victims email contacts. They also activated files that forced infected computers to register email accounts with AOL. The defendants registered more than 100,000 email accounts using this method. They then sent malicious emails from these addresses to the compromised contact lists. Through this method, they sent tens of millions of malicious emails.

When victims with infected computers visited websites such as Facebook, PayPal, eBay or others, the defendants would intercept the request and redirect the computer to a nearly identical website they had created. The defendants would then steal account credentials. They used the stolen credit card information to fund their criminal infrastructure, including renting server space, registering domain names using fictitious identities and paying for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which further concealed their identities.

The defendants were also able to inject fake pages into legitimate websites, such as eBay, to make victims believe they were receiving and following instructions from legitimate websites, when they were actually following the instructions of the defendants.

They placed more than 1,000 fraudulent listings for automobiles, motorcycles and other high-priced goods on eBay and similar auction sites. Photos of the items were infected with malware, which redirected computers that clicked on the image to fictitious webpages designed by the defendants to resemble legitimate eBay pages.

These fictitious webpages prompted users to pay for their goods through a nonexistent eBay Escrow Agent who was simply a person hired by the defendants. Users paid for the goods to the fraudulent escrow agents, who in turn wired the money to others in Eastern Europe, who in turn gave it to the defendants. The payers/victims never received the items and never got their money back.

This resulted in a loss of millions of dollars, prosecutors said.

The Bayrob group laundered this money by hiring money transfer agents and created fictitious companies with fraudulent websites designed to give the impression they were actual businesses engaged in legitimate financial transactions. Money stolen from victims was wired to these fraudulent companies and then in turn wired to Western Union or Money Gram offices in Romania. European money mules used fake identity documents to collect the money and deliver it to the defendants.

The FBI investigated the case, with assistance from the Romanian National Police.

Source: U.S. Justice Department
A U.S. judge ordered Bayer AG to pursue mediation with plaintiffs claiming that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer, asking the company to try to settle lawsuits that have wreaked havoc on its share price.

More than 11,200 people have sued Bayer over Roundup in U.S. state and federal courts, and the company has lost two consecutive trials so far. The judge in San Francisco handling the federal suits initiated confidential talks as he canceled a third trial scheduled for May 20 that would have followed an $80 million verdict against Bayer last month.

The parties should propose a mediator, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria wrote in an order Thursday. If they cannot agree, the court will appoint someone.

Chhabria said in lieu of the May trial, resources are better spent organizing the cases collected in the multidistrict litigation before him. That means determining which of those lawsuits should be dismissed, which should be sent to state courts, and sending other cases back to where they were originally filed for trials in federal court.

Bayer rose as much as 1 percent in Frankfurt on Friday, after an early dip. The legal fight over Roundup, and its main ingredient glyphosate, has wiped more than 30 billion euros ($34 billion) off the German companys market value since the first trial loss last August.

Thomas G. Rohback, a trial lawyer at Axinn in New York, said in an email that Chhabrias order requiring mediation isnt unusual, and cautioned against reading too much into it leading to a settlement anytime soon. But he also pointed to the privacy of mediation, and how that could permit Bayer to resolve the litigation without the multimillion-dollar headlines the trials have produced. Analysts predict a settlement could top $5 billion.

The confidentiality  which is also quite common  could help Bayer pay a settlement amount without making that public, Rohback said. Of course, the key is whether the parties can reach an agreement.

Good Faith

Chris Loder, a spokesman for Bayer, said the company will comply with the courts order for mediation in good faith.

As this litigation is still in the early stages  with only two verdicts and no cases that have run their course through appeal  we will also remain focused on defending the safety of glyphosate-based herbicides in court, Bayer said in an e-mailed statement on Friday.

In addition to the March verdict in Chhabrias court, Bayer lost the first Roundup trial last summer in state court and was ordered to pay $78.6 million in damages. Another state court trial is under way in Oakland, California.

The judge set a May 22 hearing to discuss mediation efforts and possibly set a new date for the canceled trial.

Michael Baum, a lawyer representing plaintiffs in the cases before Chhabria, said in an email that itd be prudent and responsible for Bayer to settle the litigation. Though the company is outwardly denying the evidence against it, internally it may be more accurately assessing Roundups risks and shareholder pressure, he said.

The case is In re: Roundup Products Liability Litigation, MDL 2741, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).
About the photo: Charred remains are piled in a heap of rubble on Thursday in Durham, N.C., the day after an explosion and building fire caused by a gas leak killed one person and injured more than two dozen, including nine firefighters. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

DURHAM, N.C.  The coffee shop owner killed in a North Carolina gas line explosion was last seen in the doorway of his business after firefighters evacuated his customers and told him to leave, as well, the fire chief said Thursday.

New details about what led to the death of the coffee shop owner emerged as authorities raised the toll of people injured to 25, including nine firefighters.

Durham Deputy Fire Chief Chris Iannuzzi said eight more firefighters were treated at a hospital, in addition to the one who underwent surgery. All were expected to be released Thursday.

Police said Kaffeinate coffee shop owner Kong Lee, 61, was the only person killed in the blast that leveled the century-old building.

A gas leak had been reported about a half-hour before the blast Wednesday morning, and firefighters were working to get people out of nearby buildings. A Durham police spokesman has said a contractor boring along a sidewalk hit a gas line and caused the leak, but authorities are still investigating what made it ignite. City officials declined to name the contractor.

Fire Chief Bob Zoldos said Thursday that firefighters told people in the shop to evacuate and got about 10 customers out, but Lee apparently lingered and was last seen in the doorway.

Asked whether firefighters could have done more to convince Lee to leave, Zoldos said time is short during an emergency, and firefighters had to move on to other structures and make sure anyone in danger was told to evacuate.

We spoke with everyone inside his business including him and said that we were recommending evacuation of the structure, and we got everyone else out but him, he said.

Describing evacuation procedures generally, Zoldos said: With time of the essence, we dont make a major case for it. We go in and say: `you need to evacuate the structure immediately because of whatever the incident is. And thats what our people did.

Zoldos said some of his firefighters continued to work the scene after suffering cuts from flying glass or other injuries from flying glass.

A man who answered the door at a Raleigh home address for Lee told a reporter Thursday he didnt have anything to say.

Iannuzzi said at least 15 buildings were damaged by the blast, which happened in a shopping district downtown made of converted tobacco warehouses and other industrial buildings. Some windows were shattered blocks away. Authorities were inspecting the nearby businesses to determine when they can reopen.

Authorities say no one else was believed to be trapped or unaccounted for, but a search of the rubble was continuing as a precaution. Several dozen firefighters, state agents and other authorities could be seen at the site of the explosion on Thursday, including one officer leading a search dog in and out of the rubble pile.

Associated Press writer Emery P. Dalesio in Raleigh contributed to this report.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
About the photo: A firefighter works to battle the Carr Fire at a home in Redding, Calif., Thursday, July 26, 2018. (Daniel Kim/The Sacramento Bee via AP)

CHICO, Calif.  With nearly 40 million people living in California and development spreading into once-wild regions, some of the states best tools toward preventing wildfires cant be widely used.

Still, there is growing agreement that the state must step up its use of forest management through prescribed burns and vegetation removal in an attempt to lessen the impact of wildfires.

In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on wildfires, designed to expedite forest-thinning projects and other programs. In May 2018, former Gov. Jerry Brown called for doubling the amount of forest land treated each year in California by 2023. The state significantly increased the money it was spending on those efforts, with the Legislature earmarking $1 billion over five years in funds generated by the states carbon trading program. The Trump administration has also vowed to manage forests more aggressively.

Cal Fire and the state Board of Forestry estimate 23 million acres in the states responsibility area could benefit from fuel reduction. And those treatments arent one-time efforts: they must be repeated every few years to be effective.

Among the biggest complications in forest management are Californias strict environmental regulations.

Forest treatment projects must obtain approvals under the California Environmental Quality Act. Butte County Fire Safe Council Executive Director Calli-Jane DeAnda said the environmental review process typically uses up 10 to 15 percent of grant funds local fire agencies receive for forest management projects. The reviews can take years.

The state has been working since 2010 on an EIR that would cover all vegetation treatments in California under one overarching environmental document. It would identify environmentally sound processes for various natural landscapes. Then, if a project were proposed that met the guidelines for its landscape, it could be approved through a checklist scenario, according to Board of Forestry Executive Director Matt Dias.

Some projects wouldnt fit the template, he said, and would require more review, but the idea would be to get projects approved and moving forward in a matter of weeks instead of years. A goal has been set to complete the document by the end of the year.

Some environmental groups say state officials are pursuing the wrong path altogether.

Rick Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute said Cal Fire should place more focus on making communities more fire resistant, not on clearing vegetation.

We have a home ignition problem, he said, not a vegetation control problem.

He said it makes more sense to spend some of the vegetation control dollars on fireproofing measures like ember-resistant vents and fire resistant rooftops.

Weve got to stop looking in different directions than where people are, and frankly Cal Fire is not doing a good job at that, he said. `The fundamental problem is that theyre a vegetation management agency  theyre not into the building thing. They have to look at the whole picture.

He said chaparral needs high-intensity but infrequent fires. Vegetation removal wont help that process. About all people can do to help the chaparral is to stop setting it on fire.

There are so many people on the landscape causing so many unnatural ignitions, he said.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
(ANSA) - Paris, April 12 - France said Friday it had "never" been warned of the offensive that eastern Libyan strongman General Khalifa Haftar launched on the UN-backed government in Tripoli.

"Like our partners, we are speaking to all the sides in conflict in Libya, with the goal of obtaining a ceasefire," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

"We were never warned of an offensive on Tripoli, which we condemned from its start," he said.

Premier Giuseppe Conte called a 'summit' on Libya Friday afternoon with Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi and Defence Minister Elisabetta Trenta.

Trenta voiced solidarity with the Italian military contingent in Libya, which she said was made up of "around 400 units".


ORANGE, Ohio -- Fraud, Lander Road: The treasurer for the Landerwood Glen Homeowners Association reported April 9 that unauthorized and fraudulent withdrawals were made from at least two accounts: more than $15,000 from checking, as well as an associate money market account where more than $15,500 was removed between March 28 and April 1.

The Key Bank fraud department is opening an investigation, and police were also given the name of the association's management company.

Menacing, Harvard Road: A Macedonia man, 52, was arrested on the evening of April 5 following an alleged road rage incident on Interstate 271 in which he pulled up next to a Bedford woman, 31, and threatened her with a .40-caliber gun, using hand gestures and obscenities.

Highland Heights police already had him detained, and the other driver wanted to press charges and seek a protection order. He was taken to the Solon Jail without incident.

Trespassing, violation of temporary protection order (domestic violence, resisting an officer), execution of warrant; Park Avenue: Police were called April 8 by management at the 4th & Park Apartments concerning a Highland Heights man, 29, who has been under a civil protection order following a Sept. 18 incident at Pinecrest.

The suspect was gone by the time police arrived and the woman whose family had requested the TPO was uncooperative, having been seen with the suspect in the lobby. While she did not want to press charges, the Pinecrest management did and a warrant was obtained.

Harassment (general), Orange Place: Police responded to University Hospitals Chagrin Highlands campus on April 8, where a Cleveland Heights woman, 33, working in a medical office, reported that one of her doctors patients, a Macedonia man, 62, had blocked her into her parking space in order to verbally assault her about an unsettled civil court case involving his business.

When contacted, the lawn-sprinkler contractor said he was only trying to help her out and had moved his truck when she asked him to. Police told him he was being discharged from the practice and could face criminal trespassing charges if he returned.

Harassing communications, Harvard Road: A resident, 52, reported April 9 that he was having issues over his mother's property with his brother's girlfriend, mainly over some artwork he had sent her from the mother's residence in Aurora.

Police said it appeared to be a civil matter. The man added that he wanted the girlfriend to contact an attorney rather than call him directly anymore.

Grand theft from auto, Orange Place: A Bedford landscaper reported April 5 that the company truck was parked on the side of Bahama Breeze, with his crew working about 500 feet away, around 2:45 p.m. when a gray or silver van pulled up and two men made off with a pair of backpack blowers -- valued at $500 apiece -- that were in the truck bed.

Theft, East Ash Lane: A resident, 45, reported April 3 that unauthorized purchases had been made from his child support debit card in California and Texas, dating back to mid-March.

Larceny, Orange Place: A long-term guest at the Extended Stay South reported April 3 that he had left the door of his room visibly open with a security latch for housekeeping while he was in and out all day delivering meals, while his wife was also at work.

They had also left $200 in cash and a Pandora charm bracelet on a nightstand, where he last saw them between 11:30 a.m. and noon. The cleaning woman said she did not see them on the stand when she arrived around 3:30 p.m.

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Read more news from the Chagrin Solon Sun here.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  The Ohio National Guard faces two lawsuits over a crash involving one of its Humvees that killed a Berea man and his six-year-old son in September 2016.

The lawsuits, recently filed in federal court in Cleveland, say the U.S. government is liable because Private First Class Jeremy Taylor was sleep deprived and inexperienced when he veered left of center on State Route 14 in Ravenna Township.

Taylor first hit an oncoming car and then slammed head-on into a car driven by Brian Bargar, a lawsuit filed this week by Bargars estate says.

Bargar, 34, and his son Wyatt Bentley died in the crash.

Brittany Bentley, Wyatts mother, filed suit on behalf of her sons estate on March 27.

Bargars estate seeks damages of more than $19.5 million. Bentleys estate seeks $6 million. Both filed claims with the Army but did not hear back within a six-month timeframe.

Taylor, 22, of University Heights, pleaded guilty in Portage County Municipal Court to vehicular homicide and vehicular manslaughter, both misdemeanors. A judge sentenced him in February to a year in jail and suspended all but 60 days of the jail term.

The crash was not an unfortunate accident, but rather was caused by the Army National Guards leadership and planning failures, Bargars lawsuit says.

John Reagan, an attorney for Brittany Bentley, said that the irony in this whole thing is that the National Guard is supposed to protect the public. He said the crash has been devastating for his client.

Bargars estates lawsuit says Taylor arrived at the Newton Falls Armory at 8 a.m. Sept. 9, 2016. Lights out for the soldiers that night was at midnight.

Taylor and other soldiers awoke at 3 a.m. Sept. 10, 2016. They left Newton Falls an hour and a half later in a four-vehicle convoy for Camp Perry, near Port Clinton. Taylor drive one of the Humvees, the suit states.

The soldiers trained for eight hours and were supposed to stay there overnight and return to Newton Falls the following day, according to the lawsuit.

Instead, the convoy headed east Saturday afternoon and drove in a rain storm. The crash happened shortly after 6 p.m., the lawsuit states.

A school bus pulled in front of the Humvee and Taylor swerved into the opposite line and side-swiped a car driven by Lisa Mancini, even though Taylor had plenty of time to slow down to avoid the bus, the lawsuit states. He then hit Bargars car.

The lawsuit says Taylor had been awake for at least 15 hours by the time the crash happened. It says investigators found empty energy drink cans inside the Humvee.

The Armys accident safety investigation unit cited multiple instances of leadership failure, which included allowing Taylor just three hours of sleep or less before making him endure a long day of training and having him drive back, the suit states.

The biggest public safety issue is the military is putting these large military vehicles on civilian roadways, often with sleep deprived soldiers, said Tom Merriman, an attorney representing Bargars estate. It may make sense for combat, but not for civilian roadway when people are out with their kids.

Bargar is survived by his four children.

National Guard spokeswoman Stephanie Beougher said attorneys had not yet received summonses for the lawsuits. She said the National Guard does not comment on pending litigation.

Mancini, the driver in the car Taylor sideswiped, is also expected to soon file suit, Reagan said. A phone call left for her attorney was not immediately returned.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio  A Euclid mother is charged with kidnapping after police say she defied a court order to turn her daughters over to childrens services.

Caryann Sewell, 23, was charged Friday in Cleveland Municipal Court, court records say. She is being held in the Cuyahoga County Jail while awaiting her first court appearance.

Authorities arrested Sewell and found her 4- and 2-year-old daughters safe on Thursday evening at a home on Arrowhead Avenue on Clevelands East Side, police said. The girls were reported missing earlier Thursday.

Authorities notified the Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services after they found the girls Thursday. A Cuyahoga County spokeswoman could not be reached Friday for information on the girls current whereabouts.

Sewell attended a court hearing earlier Monday at which a judge determined she must turn her daughters over to the DCFS, police said. Authorities have not said why Sewell was ordered to do so.

She left the hearing and picked the girls up about 5:30 p.m. from All About The Children Childcare on Euclid Avenue near Avalon Road, the report says.

Sewell later made contact with a Euclid police officer. She confirmed she was aware of the court order, but said her daughters were no longer with her because they were out of town, the report says.

Fairview Park police officers saw Sewell and her daughters Wednesday, but she lied about her identity and led officers on a three-minute car chase to evade arrest, authorities said.

When the incident occurred, Fairview Park officers were unaware Sewell had not complied with the court order to turn her children over to DCFS, Fairview Park Lt. Paul Shepard said.

Fairview Park police subsequently obtained a warrant for her arrest on charges of failure to comply and identity theft, according to Rocky River Municipal Court records.

Sewells criminal history includes 2018 convictions for attempted identity fraud and attempted forgery, Cuyahoga County court records say.

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PAINESVILLE, Ohio -- A judge sentenced a Kirtland man to 11 1/2 years in prison Friday for killing Mentor police officer Mathew Mazany in a hit-and-run-crash last year.

Brian Anthony, 25, pleaded guilty in March to aggravated vehicular homicide, operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol and other charges in the June 24 crash. Prosecutors dismissed one count of failure to stop after an accident, saying in court that they did not have enough evidence to get a conviction on that charge.

Prosecutors in Lake County said that Anthony drank for at least three hours prior to the crash, and he tested positive for drugs including fentanyl, heroin, morphine and codeine after his arrest.

Lake County Common Pleas Court Judge John P. ODonnell handed down Anthonys sentence Friday as members of his family watched from the courtroom gallery. Many of them are area police officers and firefighters. Fellow police officers and family members also packed the courtroom on Mazanys behalf.

Anthonys attorneys, Richard Perez and Hector Martinez, maintain that he did not know what happened or that he hit a person. His mother, Ann Albrecht, said at the hearing that her son admitted that he has a drinking problem and that he worked hard to keep himself sober. His stepfather also spoke at the hearing. He went to the scene shortly after the crash happened.

Brian would never choose to bring harm to another human being, Ann Albrecht said. He is a good loving man. This accident doesnt define him as a person. My only wish for my children is for them to be a loving person and a service to others. My prayers will continue for all those impacted.

Mike Albrecht, who has served as a Mentor Firefighter for more than 35 years, apologized to Mazanys family, friends and colleagues.

I pray you (everyone impacted) will one day forgive my son, he said. Im deeply sorry that I had to deliver the news of a fellow officer. I ask you to consider another persons life, the life of my stepson, Brian.

Anthony said through tears that he understands that he made a horrible decision that caused everlasting heartbreak.

I made a horrible series of decisions that evening," he said. I know i need to change my behavior and I promise to do so in my days of incarceration and after.

Mike Mazany, officer Mazanys brother, told Anthony he has no sympathy for him and demanded the maximum time for Anthony as his brother did his duty as a police officer with integrity and service.

How dare you? You knew you hit him, he said to Anthony. This family has fought so hard to demand this man time. Im insulted by it. This man nailed my brother. You grounded him down and flung him through the air. You didnt know? Youre a liar."

Mazany was fierce a protector of his wife and son, his wife, Lisa Mazany said during a statement to the court.

With Matt by my side I always felt safe, his wife said. He was my heart, and soul.

He was her everything, she said, and a hero; not because of the badge, but because he was the epitome of what a good man is.

The crash happened about 1 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of Ohio 2 near the exit to Ohio 306. Mazany was stopped along the highway to help another police officer with an unrelated traffic stop.

The crash pinned Mazany between a Jeep and another Mentor police officers cruiser.

Anthony also struck another police cruiser. Dashboard camera video showed he stopped for a moment before he drove away.

Mazany, who suffered skull fractures and blunt force trauma in the crash, died after paramedics took him to TriPoint Medical Center in Painesville for treatment.

Anthony went to Mentor Lagoons Nature Preserve & Marina after the crash to celebrate a friend who passed the police academy and told a friend that he hit something, but wasnt sure what he hit, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Rocco Dipierro said. Anthony later told investigators he was not aware he hit someone on the side of the highway.

Authorities tracked the Jeep Wrangler after watching the dashboard camera video from the incident and obtaining the license. They found Anthony about 9 a.m. the morning after the crash, sleeping on a hammock at the marina, Dipierro said.

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UHRICHSVILLE, Ohio  A couple apparently upset about the noise from people honking car horns in support of striking school workers is accused of delivering laxative-laced cookies to the employees, according to reports.

The nonteaching employees at Claymont City Schools say they received the cookies but no one ate them, Fox 9 reports.

Still, Bo Cosens, 29, and Rachel Sharrock, 25, have been charged with contaminating a substance for human consumption and aggravated menacing, the Canton Repository reports.

Police tell the Repository they received a tip that Cosens had posted a video on his Facebook page in which he makes threats toward the striking workers, saying he was going to get a gun and shoot them.

The video also reportedly shows Cosens and Sharrock discussing giving the workers tainted cookies. Sharrock is seen crushing laxative pills and mixing them into cooker batter, reports say.

The couple says in another video that they had delivered the cookies, police tell WJW Channel 8. The cookies are being analyzed to see if they were tainted.

WJW reports both Cosens and Sharrock are being held in the Tuscarawas County Jail, each on a $1 million bond.

Uhrichsville is about 90 miles south of Cleveland.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- An evicted and indicted Julian Assange was dragged out of the Ecuador embassy in London looking like he hadnt shaved in his seven-year stay or was planning to evade capture disguised as David Letterman. But theres been nothing funny about Assanges stupid human tricks that resulted in the now unsealed indictment charge the U.S. will seek his extradition to face.

Assange isnt disguising himself as the beard-loving Letterman. Hes disguising himself as a well-intentioned whistleblowing journalist who is the champion of the First Amendment and a free press. Hes not. Assanges lawyers intend make his case about freedom of the press and journalism. Its not. Assange is a bad actor. His case is about illegal hacking, anarchy and sabotage.

The unsealed U.S. grand jury indictment charges Assange with conspiring with Chelsea Manning to illegally hack Pentagon computers to access and ultimately leak classified documents in 2010. Specifically, Assange is alleged to have offered to help Manning break an encoded password to log onto the computer system with another users identity.

Manning was convicted and served 7 years after her 35-year sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama. She has now been returned to jail after being found in civil contempt for not testify to a grand jury about her relationship with WikiLeaks.

In a statement made after Assanges arrest, his attorneys made clear they will fight his extradition and charges by making a free press defense.

While the indictment against Julian Assange disclosed today charges a conspiracy to commit computer crimes, the factual allegations against Mr. Assange boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges,  said Assange lawyer Barry Pollack.

Journalists and consumers of journalism shouldnt be deeply troubled at all by the arrest and indictment of Assange. They dont give out Pulitzer Prizes in journalism for illegally hacking computer systems to leak classified material. They dont give out Pulitzer Prizes for helping others illegally hack. Journalism schools and Editors dont instruct journalists to become tools for authoritarian governments and campaigns attempts to sabotage democratic elections.

Assange wore out welcome at Ecuador embassy

The pale unkempt appearance of Assange as he was dragged out of the Ecuador embassy hinted at one of the reasons he was booted after seven years.

Recent WikiLeaks dumps and Assange turning his embassy quarters and himself into an unhygienic dump led to Ecuador to suspend the citizenship it had granted him after he had sought refuge at the embassy in 2012.

In 2012 Assange was seeking asylum in the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sexual assault accusations. Sweden rescinded the extradition request, but Assange remained in the embassy to avoid potential U.S. charges.

The Ecuador President and Foreign Minister who granted Assange refuge and citizenship left office in 2017. Assange was placed under new house rules by Ecuadors new President and Foreign minister, which he quickly ran afoul by trying to stink up the politics of other countries and not cleaning up after his cat, his quarters and himself.

Ecuador President Lenin Moreno tweeted that Assange was evicted because of his repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.

Assange hasnt just stunk up the Ecuador embassy. Hes stunk up what true whistleblowing and good journalism are about. Youve heard of Yellow Journalism. The only journalism Assange was engaged in was Russian Red, Putin Purple and Trump Orange. Assange is on the crime beat now trying to beat justified and overdue criminal charges.

President Trump is displaying his own Stupid Human Trick by playing brain dead when it comes to WikiLeaks knowledge. Trump barked to the media that Wikileaks is not my thing," even though repeatedly cheering on WikiLeaks hacked Hillary Clinton email dumps was his thing during the entire 2016 presidential campaign.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Disney lifted the curtain on Disney+, its so-called Netflix killer premium streaming service, Thursday at the companys investors meeting in Burbank, California.

Disney+ marks a bold step forward in an exciting new era for our company  one in which consumers will have a direct connection to the incredible array of creative content that is The Walt Disney Companys hallmark," Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger said, according to a release. We are confident that the combination of our unrivaled storytelling, beloved brands, iconic franchises, and cutting-edge technology will make Disney+ a standout in the marketplace, and deliver significant value for consumers and shareholders alike.

Here are 13 things you need to know about Disney+:

1. The service will launch November 12.

2. Disney+ will cost $6.99 per month or $69.99 for a year, though the company said it would likely bundle it with ESPN+ and Hulu, of which it is now majority owner, for one price as well.

3. Disney+ says subscribers will have the ability to create custom profiles with each receiving personalized experiences curated to their unique tastes based on past behaviors and preferred content.

4. The first of two live-action Star Wars series, Jon Favreaus The Mandalorian, will be ready at launch. The Rogue One prequel starring Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and Alan Tudyk as K-2SO will premiere in 2021.

5. There are four live-action Marvel series in the works, all featuring stars from the MCU: The Falcon and the Winter Soldier with Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan, WandaVision with Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany and Loki starring Tom Hiddleston. Though it wasnt mentioned in the presentation, Variety reported earlier this week a show based on Jeremy Renners Hawkeye is also planned.

6. Disney+'s original content its first year will include 25 series and 10 movies including Pixars animated series Monsters at Work, High School Musical: The Series and a live-action Lady and the Tramp movie.

7. Disney+ will be the exclusive streaming home of recent and upcoming releases like Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, Aladdin, Dumbo, Toy Story 4, Frozen 2 and Star Wars: Episode IX.

8. The service will carry a pair of docu-series from National Geographic: the science-based The World According to Jeff Goldblum and Magic of the Animal Kingdom, a wildlife series that takes viewers behind the scenes at the animal attractions at Disney theme parks.

9. In all, Disney+ will offer about 500 movies from the libraries of both Disney and Fox, including classics like Titanic, The Sound of Music, The Princess Bride and Avatar.

10. Disney+ will have a library of more than 7,500 television episodes from shows across ABC, Fox and Disney Channel. That includes all 30 seasons of The Simpsons.

11. All content can be downloaded for offline viewing.

12. The service is ad-free.

13. Disney expects to have 60 million to 90 million subscribers in five years. Netflix currently has about 140 million subscribers.
AKRON, Ohio -- Gretchen Pleuss is releasing her most polished and cohesive work yet with her new album, Daughter of the Broader Skies.

I just finally found my voice as a songwriter, she said. This album feels a little bit more like one songwriter instead of 20.

The album is Pleuss third full-length release, following 2013s Out Of Dreams and 2016s From Birth To Breath To Bone. Shes spent much of the last three years working on the 12 songs, released on Sun Pedal Recordings.

Daughter Of The Broader Skies includes work from local musician Ray Flanagan and Pleuss band, which consists of drummer Holbrook Riles III, bassist Matt DeRubertis and percussionist Anthony Taddeo. The project was produced by Jim Wirt, known for his work with Incubus, Something Corporate and more.

But Pleuss is the centerpiece of each song, with her light, airy vocals and bright acoustic guitar plucking. She said the inspirations behind most of her tunes were from life changes.

Theres an element of personal growth in the album, Pleuss said. That came from quite a few life changes, and getting to know myself better in the last couple of years.

She continued: I feel like, on a personal level, when youre going through changes or just asserting yourself in the world, it gives insight not to just your life, but the lives of others. In some ways, being challenged makes it easier to relate to other people. I feel like thats a lot of what this album is about.

Pleuss favorite song is the personal Songbird, which explores her sense of self in the phases of love and life.

You can listen to Songbird, and the rest of Daughter Of The Broader Skies, below.

Pleuss, who regularly performs in Cleveland and Akron, started in music in Orville, her hometown. At the age of 11 or 12, Pleuss picked up a guitar and started writing songs. Shortly after, she started performing her music for audiences.

By the time I was 12, I was playing out in local coffee shops, even bars. Anywhere I could perform, she said. Its always been part of my trajectory, playing music.

Pleuss will celebrate her three musical homes with three unique concerts this weekend -- Friday at Akrons Rialto Theatre, Saturday at Woosters Lucky Records (for Record Store Day) and Sunday at Clevelands Music Box.

Her new album will be showcased with each concert.

Theres kind of a chance for every area to get out, she said. Ive moved around a little bit, so its nice to be able to see different areas and different pockets of people at each show.

Even though Pleuss is currently focused on her newest album and upcoming shows, shes already got her eyes set on future work. She plans on playing plenty of Northeast Ohio summer shows and embarking on a Midwest tour. She also has started moving on another musical project.

Its funny how you finish one project, and you start working on the next one, she said. You really have to start thinking about what youre going to do next, because time goes by really fast. Before you know it, itll be two or three years from now and Ill be ready to make that next record.

Want more Cleveland music news and features? Sign up for Listen Up Cleveland, an email newsletter delivered on Thursday mornings.
Google theater chains for screening dates and times.

NA The Aftermath

R; for sexual content/nudity, and violence including some disturbing images. 108 minutes.

Set in postwar Germany in 1946, Rachael Morgan (Keira Knightley) arrives in the ruins of Hamburg to be reunited with her husband Lewis (Jason Clarke), a British colonel charged with rebuilding the shattered city. Rachael is stunned to discover that they will be sharing a grand house with its previous owners, a German widower (Alexander Skarsgard) and his troubled daughter (Flora Thiemann).  IMDb

NA Apollo 11

G. 93 minutes.

A documentary on the mission that took astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins to the moon and back half a century ago. Apollo 11 relies on footage shot and audio recorded at the time, and the results, from liftoff to landing to the journey back home, are completely riveting.  Los Angeles Times

A Ash Is Purest White

Unrated. 136 minutes.

The exquisite Ash Is Purest White owns some of its richness to the movies, particularly crime and gangster movies. Set between 2001 and 2018, writer/director Jia Zhangkes drama takes its narrative lead from Qiao (Zhao Tao), the clear-eyed lover of a provincial gangster (Liao Fan) surrounded by variously unreliable, unscrupulous men.  Chicago Tribune

NA The Best of Enemies

PG-13; for thematic material, racial epithets, some violence and a suggestive reference. 133 minutes.

Set in 1971 North Carolina, The Best of Enemies finds Taraji P. Henson taking on the Klan and through a radical set of kindness, winning. Against similar odds, the movie likewise is a success. With Sam Rockwell, Anne Heche and Babou Ceesay.  Chicago Tribune

A Captain Marvel

PG-13; for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive language. 132 minutes.

Any fears that Marvels first female-driven movie would not be deliver are dispelled in the first few minutes of Captain Marvel, as Brie Larson proves to be a match for any male superhero. Without qualification, Captain Marvel is a brilliant, blazing success and the perfect lead-in to the Avengers: Endgame movie opening April 26. With Samuel L. Jackson, Annette Bening and Jude Law.  Michael Sangiacomo

A Dumbo

PG; for peril/action, some thematic elements, and brief mild language. 130 minutes.

Dumbo is a Tim Burton movie, but it is the least overtly Tim Burton Movie in years. Instead of the over-the-top quirkiness that has come to dominate his movies, Burton allows this (bitter)sweet, inspiring story of outsiders under the big top to shine on its own merits. Set in 1919, the action focuses on the low-rent Medici Brothers Circus, traveling the back road of America. With Colin Farrell, Danny Devito, Eva Green and Michael Keaton.  Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

C Five Feet Apart

PG-13; for mature thematic elements, strong language and suggestive material. 115 minutes.

A mushy, three-hankie weeper that is aimed squarely between the eyes of 15-year-old girl with a crush on Cole Sprouse (Jughead in Riverdale). Set in a hospital, the romantic melodrama centers on the romance between two 17-year-old cystic fibrosis patients (Sprouse and Haley Lu Richardson).  Washington Post

A- Gloria Bell

R; for sexuality, nudity, language and some drug use. 102 minutes.

Gloria Bell is almost a shot-for shot remake of the original 2013s Spanish film Gloria that was set in Santiago, Chile. Gloria Bell is set in Los Angeles which allows for an even starker representation of how alienating life in the big city can be for a single woman of a certain age. Directed by Sebastian Lelio, with Julianne Moore, John Turturro and Michael Cera.  Laura DeMarco, The Plain Dealer

B Hotel Mumbai

R; for disturbing violence throughout, bloody images, and language. 123 minutes.

Director Anthony Maras makes his directorial debut with the gripping nearly minute-by-minute account of the carnage that unfolded in the grand Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai, India, during the terror attacks of November 2008. Its a meticulous depiction of the events that is at once disturbing, het also illuminating. With Dev Patel and Armie Hammer.  Tribune News Service

B+ How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

PG; for adventure action and some mild rude humor. 104 minutes.

The third movie in the animated trilogy How to Train Your Dragon series. The saga followed Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his best friend, the dragon Toothless, as they turned Hiccups village of Berk into a place where people and dragons live together peacefully. F. Murray Abraham is a cruel dragon hunter who threatens all of the dragons of Berk with imprisonment.  Julie E. Washington, The Plain Dealer

C Pet Sematery

R; for horror violence, bloody images, and some language. 101 minutes.

Its pretty ironic for a remake of a 1980s horror classic to choose the tag line Sometimes dead is better, especially when Pet Sematary itself is a cautionary tale about the dangers of reviving the things you love. This remake of Steven Kings novel just isnt the same after being dragged out of the grave. With Jason Clarke, Amy Selmetz and John Lithgow.  Tribune News Service

B Shazam!

PG-13; for intense sequences of action, language, and suggestive material. 132 minutes.

Superhero Shazam first appeared in comic books nearly 80 years ago. DC Comics and Warner Bros. Shamza! is the first big-budget modern blockbuster for the character, and the filmmakers have stayed true to its essence  combining his childlike 1940s gee-wiz enthusiasm with a postmodern sense of irreverence, creating a film that is delightfully playful and sharply self-aware. With Zachary Levi and Jack Dylan Grazer.  Tribune News Service

NA Tyler Perrys A Madea Family Funeral

PG-13; for crude sexual content, language, and drug references throughout. 109 minutes.

A joyous family reunion becomes a hilarious nightmare as Madea and the crew travel to backwoods Georgia, where they find themselves unexpectedly planning a funeral that might unveil unsavory family secrets.  IMDb

A- Us

R; for violence/terror, and language. 116 minutes.

Us is a 1970s-inspired horror flick that wears its references on its sleeve, grapples with Big Ideas and crawls with genuinely creepy tension. This is a family horror melodrama that is a classic home invasion thriller that ponders huge philosophical questions about our own existence and identity. Directed by Jordan Peele, with Lupita Nyongs, Winston Duke and Elisabeth Moss.  Tribune News Service

B- Wonder Park

PG; for some mild thematic elements and action. 86 minutes.

Wonder Park plus Captain Marvel make for a terrific female-centric double feature. While Captain Marvel fights aliens, the superhero in the animated movie Wonder Park is a preteen girl with an oversize imagination and mad engineering skills. Visual candy and silly slapstick bring a sense of wonder and fun to Paramount Animations effervescent action-adventure comedy, but a change in tone keeps the movie from soaring as high as it could go. With the voices of Brianna Denski, Matthew Broderick and Jennifer Garner.  Julie E. Washington, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio  An appeals court on Thursday upheld a $30 million judgement against Greyhound Lines to a bus passenger hurt in a 2013 crash along a Pennsylvania highway after the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

The Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals affirmed the judgement against the national bus chain.

A Cuyahoga County jury in 2016 awarded more than $27 million to Cleveland music store owner Mark Soberay, who was one of 43 passengers injured during a trip from New York City to Cleveland. One of the passengers, a 37-year-old tourist from Vietnam, died in the crash.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Sutula awarded $1.6 million in attorneys fees and prejudgement interest that has accrued while the appeals court case was pending, increasing the award to more than $30 million, according to Eileen Petridas, a spokeswoman for the attorneys who represented Soberay.

Soberay lost his right leg and had more than 30 surgeries to repair a hole in his heart, torn muscles in his shoulder and crushed bones in his foot, pelvis and arm.

Were very gratified that the Court of Appeals saw fit to affirm the determinations of the jury and the trial court, Soberays attorney, Chuck Kampinski, said in a statement. We hope this ruling by the Court of Appeals will serve as an incentive to Greyhound to enforce its safety rules to prevent similar occurrences in the future and avoid causing needless deaths and devastating injuries to its passengers.

Messages left with Greyhounds media relations department were not immediately returned.

The appeals court rejected all of Greyhounds arguments on appeal, finding that Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John Sutula made correct decisions during and after the trial, including finding that Greyhound made unreasonably low offers to settle the case for $6.7 million before the trial, $8 million as the trial started and $10 million during the trial.

Soberays attorneys at trial argued that bus driver Sabrina Anderson of Cleveland fell asleep while driving Oct. 9, 2013 on Interstate 80. She crashed the bus into the back of a tractor-trailer in Union County.

Greyhound argued that Anderson suffered a mini-stroke and that she would have been unable to avoid the crash without a medical issue because the tractor trailer was driving too slow.

The jury rejected the arguments and found that Anderson fell asleep.

The jury also found Greyhound "demonstrated reckless indifference to the safety interest" of both passengers and drivers by having contradictory rules and training procedures, and by not enforcing Greyhounds rule requiring drivers to stop every 150 miles.

Kampinksi argued in the punitive phase of the case that Anderson had a history of erratic driving and failing to follow the companys rules, including once telling a passenger that she could crash into a wall if she wanted to after the passenger complained about the way she was driving.

Other passengers injured in the crash filed lawsuits in the states where they lived, including Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, according to the appeals court decision.
(ANSA) - Rome, April 12 - The prosecutor-general (PG) at Italy's supreme Court of Cassation on Friday said it should uphold a life sentence for Vincenzo Paduano, who was found guilty of strangling his ex-girlfriend Sara Di Pietrantonio and burning her body in May 2016 in Rome.

Paduano was first given a life sentence in a fast-track trial in May 2017, which was reduced to 30 years on appeal in May 2018.

The high court found that the appeals judges were incorrect in not taking the charge of stalking into consideration.


CLEVELAND, Ohio  Louis Rosenblum, who died April 4, was a solar energy pioneer at NASA Lewis Research Center and the founding chairman of the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews, which is widely credited with helping millions of oppressed people to emigrate.

The long-time Middleburg Heights resident, 95, died at his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

Herb Caron, then a Veterans Administration psychologist helping Rosenblums drive, said: He had leadership all over him. He was soft-spoken but quite determined to see things through his way. ... Soviet Jews got comfort from knowing they had an American friend of this strength and wisdom.

On the Cleveland Jewish History website, editor Arnie Berger calls Rosenblums feat one of Clevelands great untold success stories. We were the home, the founding, of the grass-roots movement that led to the freeing of Soviet Jewry.

Before forming the Union of Councils, Rosenblum helped in 1963 to start the Cleveland Council on Soviet Anti-Semitism (CCSA), believed to be the worlds first group tackling that problem. He created handbooks and a movie used by similar groups that the council helped to develop elsewhere.

The council recruited trustees from different faiths, races and ethnicities. Honorary chairmen included Cleveland Mayor Ralph Locher and NASA Lewis director Abe Silverstein.

Rosenblum worked closely with local U.S. Rep. Charles Vanik and Washington Sen. Henry Jackson, whose Jackson-Vanik Amendment of 1974 helped pressure Soviet leaders to loosen restrictions.

Rosenblum had a fun side, too. Hed tell shaggy dog stories, encourage relatives to wear garish clothes for family photos, and light sparklers during Passover ceremonies.

Rosenblum was born in Brooklyn. New York. He fought for the Army on Okinawa during World War II, helped occupy Japan, earned a Bronze Star and became a staff sergeant.

After the war, he completed a bachelors degree from Brooklyn College and a earned doctorate from Ohio State University. He worked at NASA Lewis (now NASA Glenn) for about 30 years, becoming chief of the solar and electrochemical division, with some 70 scientists.

Rosenblum pioneered photovoltaic techniques and installed solar panels for power in remote sites around the world, from Tunisia to Arizona. On a Native American reservation, he helped to create the worlds first solar village.

Back in Ohio, he worked with Clevelands pollution control office. He helped pioneer an early nickel-zinc battery that could power a car for some 100 miles. He published dozens of scientific papers.

Rosenblum lived in Fairview Park for a few years before settling in Middleburg Heights. He co-founded Beth Israel  the West Temple and became its president.

In the early 1960s, he helped start a study group that examined the Holocaust. Members decided to look for contemporary oppression of Jews. They found millions of Soviet Jews restricted from either practicing their faith or leaving. They formed the Cleveland Council in response.

Some leaders at home and abroad warned Rosenblum that broadcasting the plight of Soviet Jews might endanger them. But he visited the Soviet Union and found Jews there eager for publicity and help.

The Union of Councils arose in 1970, based in Cleveland. Rosenblum led it for three years and remained active until 1978. He helped it open a lobbying office in Washington, D.C. The Union grew to include 32 local councils with 50,000 members.

His daughter, Miriam Rosenblum, said he was driven, creative and methodical in all things. He designed squirrel-proof bird feeders, raised 300 ears of corn per year, swapped culinary ideas with chefs at restaurants, made sauce from his own tomatoes and mailed it in sealed packets to relatives.

Rosenblum hiked, canoed and studied widely. He sailed a boat called the Kugelhead (kugel being Jewish noodle pudding). He visited Clevelands shvitz (a Jewish steambath) monthly.

He called square dances at Beth Israel and often folk-danced. A film by leading music historian Alan Lomax shows Rosenblum dancing while Pete Seeger played the banjo.

He was married for 64 years to the former Evelyn Landy Mull. In later years, the couple volunteered at the Western Reserve Historical Society, archiving local Jewish materials. They moved to Wellesley, near family, in 2012, and she died the next year.

Three of the couples four children have worked in human rights. Their son Daniel is a career State Department official and the current nominee for ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Rosenblums funeral took place in Wellesley. The family hopes to schedule a memorial service soon at Beth Israel.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  For nearly a month, medical officials at the Cuyahoga County Jail pleaded with County Executive Armond Budishs administration to make changes aimed, in part, at decreasing suicides at the jail.

The calls for reform went unanswered, according to emails obtained by cleveland.com.

Two days after Christmas, 27-year-old inmate Brenden Kiekisz hanged himself in his cell.

Within 17 hours, as Kiekisz lay on life-support, the county implemented the changes that would help ensure inmates, like Kiekisz, receive a state-mandated medical screening that provides critical information to jail staff about their mental health and medical needs.

The revelation about Kiekiszs death  the eighth Cuyahoga County inmate to die in 2018 and now under review by federal investigators  are contained in emails exchanged in December between top county and MetroHealth officials. The county released the emails more than two months after several requests by cleveland.com.

MetroHealth sought to curb the rising number of suicides and attempted suicides at the jail, largely attributed to crowded pods, squalid conditions and an understaffed and overworked jail staff. Half of the eight inmate deaths in 2018 came by suicide, including Kiekisz. The number of attempted suicides tripled to 69 in a three-year span.

When Kiekisz arrived at the jail, he told a corrections officer that he tried to take his own life two days earlier, according to records obtained by cleveland.com.

He never received a medical screening, according to the emails.

And neither did 28 percent of inmates booked into the jail in the four days ahead of Kiekiszs arrival, the emails said.

MetroHealth Director of Correctional Medicine Dr. Thomas Tallman reiterated in an email to jail officials on Dec. 27 the need to make the changes. The message came less than an hour after Kiekisz was found in his cell.

Please, please please Tallman wrote. My patience is gone

The conversations happened in the weeks when county officials said they were working to make swift changes in response to the Nov. 21 release of a U.S. Marshals Service report that detailed inhumane jail conditions.

Every official who participated in the email chain  in Budishs administration and at MetroHealth, which at the time oversaw a portion of jail health care  did not respond to questions from cleveland.com. Cuyahoga County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan said the county would not comment because of lawsuits filed over jail conditions. MetroHealth spokeswoman Tina Shaerban Arundel also declined comment.

Among the unanswered questions is why the county failed to act on MetroHealths urgent recommendations until after Kiekiszs hanging.

On Tuesday, MetroHealth Chief of Staff Jane Platten reported to County Council that all inmates are receiving intake screenings now that MetroHealth is taking over as the jails sole medical authority.

Platten had been emailing the county since Dec. 3, asking jail officials to immediately implement changes. She asked again on Dec. 17, according to the emails.

One change was ensuring that all inmates get their health screening within four hours of their arrival, according to the emails.

To streamline that process, Tallman asked jail administrators to move nurses who perform the medical screenings to the jails entry way, known as the sally port.

Medical screenings used to take place in the sally port, but then-jail Director Ken Mills moved them to one of the jails upper floors in May, Platten said in an email.

Having medical personnel located somewhere other than the sally port meant inmates were being dispersed throughout the jail complex without medical officials knowing whether they were booked, let alone given the chance to screen them, Plattens emails said.

Moving to the sally port should cure this issue, Plattens emails said.

Budish asked his staff Dec. 25 if the changes had been made.

Then-Chief of Staff Earl Leiken, Public Safety and Justice Chief Brandy Carney, Sheriff Cliff Pinkney and interim jail director George Taylor didnt email him back, the emails show. The county will not say if anyone acted on Budishs inquiry or otherwise responded to him.

The countys failure to screen some incoming inmates in accordance with Ohio law was a problem Budish and his administration knew about for months.

In June, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction found that the county had failed to screen six out of the 30 inmates sampled. The agency asked to be notified when Cuyahoga County to corrected the problem. No response was sent.

The U.S marshals in November found that some inmates still werent being screened.

Even when inmates were screened, officers were being forced to conduct the screenings despite not being properly trained as medical officials, according to a grievance filed by corrections officers in November.

The county denied the grievance.

Another change suggested by Platten involved a new policy that would require the jail to turn away people brought to the jail that met certain medical criteria, including people who had attempted suicide in the previous seven days.

That, too, was implemented within a day of Kiekiszs hanging.

In the months since, a federal grand jury subpoenaed the records of Kiekiszs death, a sign that federal investigators have ramped up their investigation into conditions at the jail. The Ohio Attorney Generals Office is also leading a probe into jail conditions that has so far included indictments of the former jail director and five current and former corrections officers.

Below is an accounting of the emails and how the county responded:

Dec. 3

Platten sends the first email to Carney, Pinkney and Taylor about the changes. She asks for them to be implemented immediately. No one replied, Platten said in a later email.

Dec. 17

Platten follows up with Budish and jail administrators to see if the changes were made. She cites an incident where an inmate who needs immediate attention did not receive their medical screening. She again asks jail officials to move intake screenings to the sally port and for an update on the proposed changes. No one replied, according to her later email.

Dec. 25

Budish forwards Plattens latest email to Carney, Pinkney, Taylor and Leiken, and asks if the changes were made. No one returns Budish message.

Kiekisz is booked into jail on an accusation that he violated the terms of his probation stemming from a 2016 heroin and fentanyl possession case

Dec. 27

Morning  A judge finds Kiekisz didnt violate probation, orders him released from the jail and back into treatment.

10:56 p.m.  Kiekisz, who was returned to the jail to await transfer to a treatment facility, is found hanging in his cell. He is taken to MetroHealth and put on life-support.

11:39 p.m.  Tallman emails Pinkney, Taylor, Platten, and then-warden Eric Ivey. He cites the hanging and again asks for intake screenings to be moved back to the sally port.

We just had another code green and my nurses tell me the likelihood of survival is low, Tallmans email said. If that is true, then, well you do the math.

Tallman relays that Kiekisz didnt receive a screening when he was booked into jail. He asks for a full investigation into the case and wants to know who was working on Christmas and what events contributed to Kiekisz not being screened.

My patience is gone and we need our nurses down in the sally port intake area 24 seven, beginning immediately, Tallman said.

Dec. 28

10:12 a.m.  Platten emails Carney, Taylor, Pinkney and copies Budish, Leiken and County Council members. The email says MetroHealth officials were never made aware of Kiekiszs booking, and he was not given a medical screening.

She again questions officials about her repeated requests for the changes, and asks for an immediate response.

We have gotten no response to our emails and requests and there has been no change at the jail to accommodate medical staff having immediate notice and access to incoming inmates for purposes of medical screenings, Plattens email said.

10:15 a.m.  Budish emails Leiken, Carney, Taylor and Pinkney: I thought all changes were made. Whats the problem? This cant continue!

11:11 a.m.  Leiken emails Budish: I also understood all of these issues had been and were continuing to be addressed at the jail.

1:39 p.m. Dr. Julia Bruner, MetroHealths physician executive for ambulatory operations, sends Ivey an outline of how some of the changes will be put into practice. She says she reviewed the changes with Ivey and Pinkney earlier that day.

2:18 p.m.  Ivey asks that changes get added to jail policy and asks for the unions representing jail staff to be notified.

3:34 p.m.  Pinkney replies to the group but addresses the message to Tallman. Pinkney says the changes Platten recommended on Dec. 3 would be put into effect immediately. He says he had ordered the changes to be made weeks ago but had to wait for a property machine for an unrelated part of the booking process. (Cuyahoga County refused to answer questions about the property machine, its purpose and why they had to wait for it to implement changes)

Pinkney says that Tallman has authority over medical decision in his role as medical director.

6:37 p.m.  Platten emails Pinkney and points out that she had emailed jail administrators about the changes three times and got no response. Platten addressed Pinkneys claim that he ordered the changes weeks prior but says execution of those orders though had not been fully realized.

She also notes that Pinkney was able to implement the changes within hours after the hanging.

It is clear that the lines of communication on these matters have broken down, Platten wrote.

Platten also mentions that 28 percent of inmates failed to receive screenings from Dec. 25 to Dec. 28.

Dec. 30

Kiekisz dies in what is later ruled a suicide.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame wants to capitalize on popular renovations and rising attendance by expanding its landmark building at North Coast Harbor.

The museum is seeking a renewable lease on an acre of city-owned land that separates it from the Great Lakes Science Center. The property is a grassy field with a tree-lined walkway that slopes 20 feet down from Erieside Avenue to the waters edge.

The Rock Hall would use the land for a roughly 50,000 square-foot expansion that could include room for exhibits, special events, education, object conservation and research.

The expansion would also include a glass-enclosed, year-round connection along the harbors waterfront promenade that would link the Rock Hall to the Science Center.

Rock Hall visitors who park in the Science Centers garage in winter must now brave a chilly walk between the two museums.

We are excited that this will ultimately form a museum campus by connecting with our neighbor so people can move completely indoors between the two museums, said Greg Harris, the Rock Halls president and CEO since 2012.

Kirsten Ellenbogen, president and CEO of the Science Center, said she was thrilled by the plan in part because it would realize a vision both institutions have had since they were built in the 1990s.

Cleveland architect Robert P. Madison designed a connection back then, but the Rock Hall wasnt able to follow through then.

This is just completing a vision thats been there all along, Ellenbogen said. Greg is doing the hard work. Hes the one pushing this through with his board and his donors.

The museums expansion would replace a plan by developer Dick Pace, who envisioned a 10-story hotel between the Rock Hall and Science Center.

Pace said he withdrew his proposal recently when the Rock Hall and other stakeholders pushed back. He said he recognized that they were right; it was too much building to squeeze into that site.

Pace said he now plans a six-story, 100-foot-high hotel at Dock 32 north of the Science Center on part of an 18-acre parcel he aims to develop north of FirstEnergy Stadium.

In 2014, the city chose Paces Cumberland Development and Dallas-based Trammell Crow Co. to lease and develop lakefront land around North Coast Harbor.

Recently completed projects include the Nuevo restaurant and Harbor Verandas Apartments, just north of the Rock Hall.

Those projects helped convince the Rock Hall it was essential to capture the land between it and the Science Center to avoid being landlocked and unable to expand, Harris said.

On April 5, the citys planning commission unanimously approved the Rock Halls request for the land lease, which will go to Council later this month for approval, Harris said. The lease would extend to 2042, with renewable 49-year terms thereafter, the Rock Hall said.

At the April 5 meeting, City Planning Director Freddy Collier praised the Rock Hall for enabling an expansion that would preserve public space around the harbor.

A preliminary design by DLR Group / Westlake Reed Leskosky of Cleveland shows that the Rock Hall expansion would be a curvy, earth-hugging structure built into the hillside between the Rock Hall and Science Center.

The design  which will evolve, Harris said  will avoid blocking views from City Hall to North Coast Harbor, and from the lake to the city.

It will also avoid blocking key views of architect I.M. Peis iconic Rock Hall building, including its triangular glass lobby and a mushroom stalk structure that houses The Power of Rock Experience Connor Theater.

The theater is part of $20 million in improvements installed under Harris, which include new food service and ticketing operations, a renovated store, live summertime concerts on the Rock Halls entry plaza, and a monumental sign installed there that proclaims Long Live Rock in large red letters.

Upcoming improvements include a revamp of the Rock Halls main exhibit on the history of rock and roll, located beneath the buildings entry plaza. That project is scheduled to begin in 2020. Harris said planning for the new installation would happen in tandem with plans for the expansion.

The Rock Hall improvements have helped boost attendance to over 570,000 annually, and has fired up donors, Harris said.

The museum has raised $56 million for its projects, including the $20 million spent so far. Harris declined to estimate how much the proposed expansion might cost.

Timing of construction depends on completing the design and fundraising, Harris said. Fundraising will also include money for an endowment to build on $32 million in existing reserves, which are largely restricted in purpose.

Major contributions so far include $5 million from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, $2 million from the State of Ohio, $10 million from KeyBank that supports free admission for Cleveland residents, $4 million from PNC Bank and $9 million from philanthropist Christopher Connor.

Its incredibly exciting and an honor to be associated with the [expansion] project, Harris said. Were doing things at the museum that they dreamed about 20 years ago.
CLEVELAND, Ohio  California entrepreneur and investor Joe Sanberg, who is mulling a presidential bid as a Democrat, is putting out feelers in Ohio.

Sanberg, 38, isnt a household name, but is among the growing trend of independently wealthy Democrats who think theyve got a shot at the presidency. The crowded primary already includes the likes of businessman Andrew Yang and best-selling author Marianne Williamson.

Its a marked change in Democratic presidential politics. Private-sector candidates have mostly confined themselves to Republican politics  like Carly Fiorina in 2016 or Herman Cain in 2012  or independent bids such as Ross Perot in the 90s.

That Democrats might consider someone from the private sector as a seemingly contradictory notion at this point. One of their main criticisms of Republican President Donald Trump, who had never run for public office before seeking the presidency in 2016, is a fundamental lack of understanding  or interest  in the inner workings of government.

Even Sanberg agreed, despite his own ambitions.

The reason Democrats have rejected a lot of businesspeople whove gone into politics is, frankly, smart, he said in an interview with cleveland.com. Most businesspeople who go into politics are trying to defend the status quo. What Im trying to do is use the credibility I have as an entrepreneur to explain why the status quo is totally broken and we can fix it.

Sanberg was born and raised in Southern California in a blue-collar environment, something he said had a profound impact on his political views. When he was young, his mother had her house foreclosed on.

Sanberg said watching his mom play by the rules and still lose her home left an indelible mark on him, both politically and personally.

How you grew up always stays with you, Sanberg said. The experience of watching my mom lose her home in a foreclosure and knowing that this idea of an American covenant that if you work hard and play by the rules and everything is OK is a lie and you learn that when youre a teenager, it affects who you are the rest of your life.

He eventually went to Harvard and said he felt a certain kind of shame about discussing his background among the wealthy elite at the university. That feeling followed him when he transitioned to the private sector on Wall Street.

After working for five years at private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Tiger Global Management, he moved back to California in 2009, becoming a founding investor in meal-kit delivery service Blue Apron. In 2013, he co-founded Aspiration, Inc., a socially conscious banking and investment firm.

Hes toyed with the idea of running for office in the recent past, considering either a run for California governor or senator in 2018, but most of his political involvement has been issue-based activism  specifically, expanding state tax credits for working-class people and providing free tax preparation.

A Sanberg candidacy at this point seems quixotic. Public polling on him is nonexistent. Money can only take him so far. Even Yang, a fellow businessman who declared in November 2017, with a massive head start barely registers with voters.

Tax credits were ostensibly the reason for his visit to Ohio this week, though coupled with targeted campaigns in Iowa and South Carolina  two of the first four states to vote in the presidential primary  and its clear his visit was more calculated. The Friday breakfast at Bob and Sheris 49ER in North Broadway included the likes of Policy Matters Ohio Executive Director Amy Hanauer, Newburgh Heights Mayor Trevor Elkins and former state Rep. Nick Celebrezze.

Fridays visit was a chance for Sanberg to message test as well. His potential candidacy would focus on eliminating poverty, partly through breaking up wealth concentration, he said. He supports the Green New Deal and single-payer health care.

We need a president who is going to call it what it is  a monopoly economy  and then change it and address it, Sanberg said. Its a Teddy Roosevelt for our time.

Sanberg said hed also have a tactical advantage in the 2020 election should he decide to run. Trump and the Republican Party have already telegraphed their main line of attack for 2020: labeling Democrats as socialists.

When Trump calls us socialists, he doesnt mean some engagement around a political theory, Sanberg said. What he means is we dont know how to run things. What he means is we cant be trusted as stewards of government. Businesspeople arent socialists. The reason I believe in progressive policy, the reason Im so passionate about single-payer health insurance, is because I believe in a justice case for it and I also think its whats smart for the economy.

A decision would come by July 4, he said.
22-year-old first woman in Morocco's compulsory military Voluntarily chose to enlist

(ANSAmed) - RABAT, APRIL 12 - A 22-year-old woman is the first female to respond to the call to arms in Morocco's compulsory military service. Hasnaa Belaziz, who currently works as a secretary in a university clinic in Marrakech, has decided voluntarily to enlist.



"Becoming a police officer has always been my dream," she said in an interview with a local TV station.



"I hope this experience will give me the chance to prepare for my ambition," she said.



She plans to enlist voluntarily, since having a job gives her the right to an exemption. Enlistment is planned for the beginning of September but Belaziz, who is originally from southern Morocco, has already filled out her application.(ANSAmed).




Migrants: 407 deaths, 12,446 arrivals in Med in 2019 IOM, number dropping compared to same period in 2018

(ANSAmed) - GENEVA, APRIL 12 - At least 407 migrants and refugees have been reported dead in the Mediterranean since the start of 2019 as they were attempting to reach Europe, down from the 558 deaths recorded in 2018, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Friday in Geneva.



The UN agency added that a total of 12,446 migrants and refugees reached Europe by sea from January 1 until April 10, down 22% from the 16,218 arrivals reported over the same period last year. Arrivals in Spain and Greece since the start of 2019 have been respectively 5,776 and 5,796. The number of landings is significantly lower in Italy (551 from 6,894 over the same period in 2018), Malta (246) and Cyprus (177).




Mandelbaum Elected Spokesperson for LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration

April 12, 2019

Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor of Physics Rachel Mandelbaum has been elected as the spokesperson for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope's (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC). Mandelbaum will serve as spokesperson-elect until her two-year term begins on July 1.

Dark energy is the mysterious force that drives the universes accelerating expansion. The LSST, an 8.4-meter ground-based telescope being constructed in Cerro Pachon, Chile, will image the entire visible sky every few nights. It will collect data for 10 years, effectively creating a movie that will allow cosmologists to view billions of galaxies in the universe and monitor how they change over time. Within this dataset is information that will allow researchers to measure, with unprecedented precision, how the universe has expanded over time, which tells us about the properties of dark energy.

Currently, the LSST is in its final stages of construction, with its primary/tertiary mirror traveling from the University of Arizona in Tucson, where it was constructed, to Chile via a five-week-long boat trip. Construction is scheduled to be completed in 2021 and operations are scheduled to begin in 2022.

In preparation for the first commissioning data that will become available in 2021, members of the LSST DESC are hard at work, building up the scientific infrastructure that is needed to interpret the vast amounts of data that the telescope will gather. As spokesperson, Mandelbaum will lead the DESC in the final stages of preparation for the LSSTs first observations, including overseeing its scientific, computing and technical direction, overall collaboration organization and finances (serving as a liaison to funding agencies).

"LSST is going to be a game-changer for our understanding of the cosmological model of the universe. I am very excited to lead the LSST DESC at such a critical time in its preparation for this amazing new dataset," Mandelbaum said.

Since July 2015, Mandelbaum has served as the DESC's analysis coordinator, making her responsible for overseeing the collaborations high priority analysis tasks and seven analysis working groups. Before that she served as a co-leader of the weak lensing working group.

A member of the Carnegie Mellon Physics faculty and the McWilliams Center for Cosmology since 2011, Mandelbaum is a leader in the field of weak gravitational lensing, a technique used to measure the large-scale distribution of ordinary and dark matter in the universe. She has been recognized for her work with the Annie Jump Cannon Prize from the American Astronomical Society, a Department of Energy Early Career Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship.
Robert Iger, chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Co., arrives for a morning session at the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, U.S., on Thursday, July 12, 2018.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said that he is definitely stepping down from his post at the company in 2021.

"I'm expecting my contract to expire at the end of 2021," Iger said Thursday during Disney's investor day presentations. "And I was going to say 'and this time I mean it,' but I've said it before. I've been CEO since October of 2005 and as I've said many times, there's a time for everything and 2021 will be the time for me to finally step down."

Iger has extended his contract with Disney twice during his tenure. Once in 2018 and then through 2021, but it was contingent on the Fox deal closing. Since that merger has wrapped up, Iger will remain with the company as the head executive for the next two years.

"I've been engaged with the board for quite some time and there's discussion about a succession and they've been engaged in a succession process," Iger said. "And we continue to feel that they will be able to identify my successor on a timely enough basis so this company has smooth transition."

Iger has been instrumental in many of Disney's acquisitions, including Pixar in 2006, Marvel in 2009 and Lucasfilm in 2012. He has also pushed for the launch of Disney+, a streaming service filled with original movies and television shows as well as Disney's slate of classic animated and live-action content.

There were rumors last month that Disney's internal restructuring was setting up two top executives as potential successors to Iger.

Kevin Mayer, 55, the company's head of strategy, was named chairman of a new direct-to-consumer and international segment. And Robert Chapek, 58, head of parks, added consumer products to his oversight.

Former consumer products head James Pitaro, 48, was named as the head of ESPN, but is considered a long shot for the role of CEO.
Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger told CNBC's David Faber on Thursday that the company's new streaming platform has an edge over rival streaming service Netflix.

"While I think Netflix has done a good job of creating brand value, and name value, and a product that I think is considered of great value to a lot of people, they're still building their brand in many respects," Iger said. "Whereas in our case, we start with a customer relationship that, in many respects is visceral."

"We're pricing this to be accessible to the millions and millions  if not hundreds of millions  of Disney fans, and Marvel fans, and Pixar fans, and 'Star Wars' fans that are out there," he added. "The sheer number of people worldwide that know our brands, that interact with our brands on a daily basis, that spend money on our brands is huge. And no other company has that."

Disney announced Thursday at the company's investor day that Disney+ will be available starting on November 12 for $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year. The new service will allow customers unlimited downloads so that content can be viewed offline.

Iger also told analysts on Thursday that he would be stepping down in 2021 when his contract ends.

The importance of Disney+ is difficult to understate both for Disney as a leading media empire as well as for Iger himself, who's postponed his retirement to see the project through.

Iger, who's served as the company's chief executive since 2005, first announced in summer 2017 that Disney would introduce its own online streaming service. Though the decision will allow Disney to better take advantage of its extensive media hoard, it's also forced the company to make a huge bet that it can both terminate its profitable licensing relationship with Netflix and eventually compete with entrenched rivals.
A plane is seen flying in front of the second full moon for the month of July, Friday, July 31, 2015 in Arlington, Va.

Hyten  who testified alongside acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan; Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson  said debris would limit future generations from accessing space.

"And where those norms and behaviors should begin in my opinion is with debris. As the combatant commander responsible for space today, I don't want more debris," he said.

"I've advocated for a long time for the development of some kind of international norms and behaviors in space," U.S. Air Force Gen. John Hyten told members of the Senate Armed Services committee during a hearing on establishing a Space Force.

WASHINGTON  As the Pentagon works to create President Donald Trump's proposed Space Force, America's top military officer responsible for defending the U.S. from extraterrestrial threats warned lawmakers Thursday of an urgent danger: space junk.

"If we keep creating debris in space, eventually we are going to get to the point where it's very difficult to find a place to launch, very difficult to find a place to put a satellite, to operate a satellite without having to maneuver it all the time to keep it away from debris. All of those things are complicated and have to be worked in an international perspective," he added.

Hyten's comments come on the heels of India's successful anti-satellite missile test which created more than 250 pieces of space junk, according to U.S. Strategic Command assessments.

Last month India shot down a satellite with an anti-satellite missile, joining an exclusive group of world powers with military space capabilities.

Read more: India joined an exclusive club with its latest anti-satellite missile test  here's what it means for the world

While anti-satellite missiles are by no means new, only a few countries have been able to develop, test and prove the capability. Satellites make up the backbone of GPS, communications, intelligence and more  making the ability to destroy spacecraft a coveted military strength.

In the wake of the test, dubbed "Mission Shakti," India said that if debris was created from the event it would not pose a threat to space-based assets.

"The test was done in the lower atmosphere to ensure that there is no space debris. Whatever debris that is generated will decay and fall back onto the earth within weeks," Shambhu Hakki, a spokesperson for the Indian Embassy in Washington, wrote in an email.

Although India's weapons test was conducted at the relatively low orbit of 300 km, the debris may "pose a threat" to anything in higher orbits, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center, told CNBC in a prior interview. The test's altitude is just below the orbit of the International Space Station, which circles the Earth at about 400 km up.

A recently unclassified report from the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, or NASIC, explained how China conducted an anti-satellite test in 2007 that produced a great deal of space junk. At an altitude of about 800 km, China destroyed one of its own weather satellites with an anti-satellite missile. Although the test was successful, the satellite shattered into thousands of pieces, which continue to zip around in an orbital cloud of deadly debris.

"A huge percentage of the debris in low Earth orbit is still attributable to that one test," Frank Slazer, vice president of space systems at Aerospace Industries Association, told CNBC earlier this year.

However, the test represents an unsettling trend for governments and corporations operating in space, as risk increases that valuable assets "could be third-party victims" of nations demonstrating military capabilities in space.

"The more tests like this happen then the more risk there is that there could be impacts on either [rockets] going to space or satellites in low Earth orbit," Slazer said.

Meanwhile, India's Hakki also maintained that the country is against the weaponization of outer space and "has no intention of entering into an arms race in outer space."

The latest revelations from India, however, come as the United States, China and Russia sprint to equip their arsenals with anti-satellite missiles.

In October, CNBC learned that a never-before-seen missile photographed on a Russian MiG-31 interceptor is believed to be a mock-up of an anti-satellite weapon that will be ready for warfare by 2022.

The Russian anti-satellite weapon, which is attached to a space launch vehicle, is expected to target communication and imagery satellites in low Earth orbit, according to one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. For reference, the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope travel in low Earth orbit.

Images of the mysterious missile on a modified MiG-31, a supersonic near-space interceptor, appeared in mid-September.
You think about the changes that have happened, the advancements in health, in communications in every field that had been led by our country. What frightens me is it's no longer obvious that our country will be the most important driver of advancements of humankind in the 21st century. Not unless we do some things differently.

Pete Buttigieg: Well, American capitalism is one of the most productive forces ever known to man, and there's so much that this country has been able to unlock, especially in the last century, in terms of technology, in terms of prosperity. Now where it goes wrong is when it's only being experienced in certain parts of the country or by certain kinds of people, and I think it goes to show just how important it is for capitalism to work that it be backed by all of the other pieces that business alone can't solve. But when it's working right, there's nothing like it. It's extraordinary.

John Harwood: You have an unusually broad set of peer groups, angles of vision on the American economy as a mayor, as a veteran, as a McKinsey management consultant. What's right about American capitalism?

As he prepares to formally announce on Sunday, Buttigieg sat down on Monday with CNBC Editor at Large John Harwood at a veterans service organization in Las Vegas to discuss his approach to economic change. What follows is a condensed, edited transcript of their conversation.

Even while officially just "exploring" a Democratic nomination bid, Buttigieg has ridden his millennial appeal past more experienced rivals in some polls and in fundraising. The $7 million he raised in the first quarter of 2019 exceeded the totals of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker.

Yet Buttigieg has a remarkably broad range of experiences and talents. After graduating from Harvard, he became a Rhodes scholar. He advised major businesses as a McKinsey & Co. management consultant. He won the mayoralty at age 29 and then, while serving, was deployed as a naval intelligence reserve officer to Afghanistan. He speaks seven languages and has performed Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" on piano with the South Bend Symphony.

He's just 37 years old. He's the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a city of barely more than 100,000 people. If elected, he would become the youngest president in American history, and the first to be openly gay.

Pete Buttigieg: Yeah. It's pretty typical human behavior for people to try to make sure the rules work to their benefit. That's why the U.S. is based on the idea of a robust legal system and constraints on the excesses of anybody, especially concentrated wealth. And yet we're at this moment where concentrated wealth has begun to turn into concentrated power. More than begun. It's well underway. The thing that makes capitalism capitalism is competition. But as you have more and more corporate agglomerations of power, you're going to see less and less competition.

John Harwood: Is that the reason why you think we have expanding income inequality?

Pete Buttigieg: I think it's a vicious cycle. This didn't just happen. The economy is not some creature that just lumbers along on its own. It's an interaction between private sector and public sector. And public sector policies, for basically as long as I've been alive, have been skewed in a direction that's increasing inequality.

And a lot of this is the consequence of what you might call the Reagan consensus. There was a period where even Democrats seemed to operate in this framework that assumes that the only thing you'd ever do with a tax is cut it. That those tax cuts were assumed to pay for themselves. The empirical collapse of that supply side consensus, I think, is one of the defining moments of this period that we're living through.

John Harwood: Why do you ascribe it to the Reagan consensus as opposed to technological change, globalization, movement of capital?

Pete Buttigieg: Well, all of these forces interact. But none of these forces automatically have to make our society more unequal. If anything, globalization was supposed to create more equality among nations.

John Harwood: Well actually it has created more equality in the world. It's taken millions of people out of poverty.

Pete Buttigieg: Sure, it's lifted so many out of poverty. And by the way, there are ways that it can work for us at home, too. But again, we're seeing a concentration of wealth and power that skews things in the opposite direction.

The fundamental truth is, it turns out a rising tide does not lift all boats. Not on its own. Especially if some of the boats are sort of tethered to the ocean floor. And that's the kind of pattern that we've been on.

John Harwood: So how do you fix what's wrong without slowing down or harming what's right?

Pete Buttigieg: Well, first of all, we've got to define what success looks like. Is success just the number, the GDP? Or is success that more Americans are prospering? When you have that definition, it tells you that you have to rate these kind of exchanges between distribution and growth a little more evenly.

John Harwood: So there's an efficiency-equity trade off, and you're willing to make it?

Pete Buttigieg: There may be, yeah. I mean, look, it's great to say that it's all win/wins, and to some extent it is. I actually think an economy that's more equitable also tends to grow better. But if there's a win/lose equation, we shouldn't shy away from that. We shouldn't pretend that all of this stuff can be done  that you can make everybody better off while making nobody worse off. The reality is there are some people who are not paying their share. There are some corporations that are not contributing the way that they should. Until we recalibrate that, until we invest in things like education and infrastructure and health, investments that do in fact pay for themselves overall, some people may have to pay more than others. Because some people frankly are getting a bit of a free ride on the productive energy of this country and this economy.

John Harwood: Now, one thing that surprised me that you said in an interview the other day was that first of all, political change comes first. That is the set of issues, Supreme Court, filibuster, electoral college, because that is necessary to achieve policy changes that you need. But when you identified the most important policy change, it was climate, not the economy. Explain why that's the priority.

Pete Buttigieg: Because I think climate is the biggest economic issue of our time, too. What kind of economy are we going to have if cities are becoming less and less inhabitable, if we're experiencing crop failures and heightening natural disasters? The problem with climate is it wrecks our chance at economic security as well as physical security. So, of course, we want to continue building an equitable and a growing economy. It's just that we can't do that if we're totally ignoring the biggest threat our economy has seen since the Great Depression.

One reason you see traditionally conservative sectors like the military and like the business community way ahead of, for example, conservative politicians in this country on the issue of climate, is that the market, too, is beginning to recognize the stakes of failing to act and simply accepting what will eventually will be trillions of dollars in damage. It's not the planet as an abstraction that's going to be harmed. It's people. It's us. It's our economies, it's our societies, it's our communities. That's why this is such an urgent issue.

John Harwood: You think we need to raise a lot more money for the government. What are the things that strike you as the most achievable and desirable?

Pete Buttigieg: I think we certainly need to consider a higher marginal tax rate for top income earners. Maybe it doesn't have to be as high as it was historically, but we should at least admit that when it was higher, the American economy was growing pretty well. We should consider a wealth tax. I think it makes sense. I think one of the things that's appealing about it is it's not very distortionary compared to an income tax, and that's important.

The least distortionary tax probably is the estate tax, because you're dead. We should think about turning to a more equitable use of the estate tax, especially for the biggest and wealthiest estates. I'm interested also  if we could find the right way to implement it and the devil's in the details  in a financial transactions tax. Because you see preposterous levels of wealth sometimes being created around these millisecond differences in financial transactions that nobody can explain to us whether it adds any actual real value to the economy.

John Harwood: Even McKinsey can't explain whether that adds real value?

Pete Buttigieg: Even McKinsey, as far as I know. Look, the downside of any tax is it can disincentivize economic activity. So let's start by taxing by the economic activity whose value is hardest to prove.

John Harwood: Warren's wealth tax would raise something on the order of $2.7 trillion over 10 years. Is that the order of magnitude you're talking about?

Pete Buttigieg: Probably. I mean, look, we had something on the order of a trillion dollars robbed from the Treasury through the Trump tax cuts on the wealthiest. So even just getting us closer to being able to cover the deficit, with the services Americans count on today, is going to take us filling in a gap of that size. If we want to do more  if we want to have better infrastructure, which we absolutely need; if we want to deal with climate change, which is no longer optional; if we want to actually deliver on health care; if we want to continue to grow as the kind of country that can actually lead the world  then you don't get something for nothing.

John Harwood: Can you do everything that you think needs to be done while hitting only the wealthy? Or is there no rational plan for dealing with our fiscal challenges, as well as our economic challenges, that doesn't also hit the middle class?

Pete Buttigieg: If we're going to collect revenue from the middle class, then we have to be certain that it is going to be reinvested and returned to the middle class in a way that makes us and the middle class better off. So as a middle class taxpayer, I don't mind paying a certain amount in if it's going to come back to me in the form of health care, if it's going to come back to me in the form of education for my kids, if it's going to come back to me in the form of a better road to get me to my job.

John Harwood: How powerful is a racial consideration when you think about the scale of things that need to be done for the entire country?

Pete Buttigieg: We know that if we target inequality in this country, much of which arose not by accident but by deliberate racist policies, and they can perhaps be reversed with intentional anti-racist policies, that we're benefiting the entire society. We all do better when we all do better, as Senator [Paul] Wellstone said. We need to consider, first of all, that it's the right thing to do. Secondly, that this is not a favor to somebody, this is a restoration of a theft. And third, that if we get it right, you don't have to be somebody who is on the wrong side of a racial inequity to be better off for living in a country that did something about it.

John Harwood: Jamie Dimon recently put out a letter to J.P. Morgan that said, "The social needs of too many citizens have not been met." But he also says that tax cut that was enacted late 2017 was the irreducible minimum of what we needed to turn our economy around. What would you say to him?

Pete Buttigieg: The big problem in this country was not that it was too difficult to be wealthy. It just isn't the big problem in our country right now. It's not what led to the political instability we're seeing. It's not what's leading to diminished life expectancy, or the prospect of my generation is going to be the first in history to be worse off economically than our parents. What we could've done, especially if we were going to create a trillion-dollar deficit, is make the kinds of investments in infrastructure and education and health that would have made this whole country better off.

I also think that, no matter how educated or intelligent some of the people working in these industries are, they can quickly get out of touch with the reality on the ground. If you don't understand just how much anger there is in, for example, my part of the industrial Midwest  where it can be used in a very cynical political way to direct it against immigrants, or trade writ large, or against your fellow American, or even against Democrats, just because folks are mad and it's got to go somewhere  you're going to continue to see these destabilizing political outcomes like what we're living through right now.

John Harwood: Others say that the kinds of things you're talking about would be destructive of capitalism, that it's a war on the wealthy, that it would bring socialism to the United States. How how do you respond to arguments like that?

Pete Buttigieg: The crazy thing about arguments like that is how uncoupled they are from evidence. We don't have to speculate on what happens in a Western society that delivers health care to everybody, or that has more social mobility or that invests at a higher rate in infrastructure or education. We know exactly what happens. What happens is you're better off.

The American dream is slipping away. You're much more likely to experience that if you're a kid in Denmark right now than if you're in America. And while people can think up all kinds of excuses why something that worked in other societies hasn't worked here, the reality is, when we've tried it here in our history, it's also served us pretty well.

John Harwood: When it comes to cultural conservatives, you have said that progressives need to be mindful of the distance they have to travel, be sensitive to that. Do you think progressives also need to be mindful of the distance that some in business have to travel, when they think 'hey, they're coming after me?'

Pete Buttigieg: I think a lot of this is tonal. Look, the one thing I learned in the business community, and even more as a mayor engaging the business community, is that while we'd like to think of businesses as the most numbers-driven kind of discipline in America, in my experience it's one of the most emotional. So what's really important is that people not feel that they're being attacked  or at least they understand that if we're attacking a certain way of doing things, or a certain system, that this is not motivated by just angsty hatred. It's being motivated by serious and legitimate concerns about where we're headed.

John Harwood: We have seen in the last 10 to 15 years astonishing change in terms of cultural attitudes on issues like same sex marriage. Do you have any degree of expectation that we're going to see very fast changes of opinion on economic issues?

Pete Buttigieg: I think there is a tectonic change in economic policy. You can see it by the fact that the Republican Party experienced a hostile takeover on the part of, basically, economic populists. This is not just another four-year cycle. This is not just another election, and I don't just mean because of the character, or personality of the president.

I believe we're living through one of those moments just as when the New Deal consensus gave way to the Reagan consensus. We're living through the end of a 30- or 40-year era that defined American politics and helped to explain how Democrats as well as Republicans behaved in office. We're at the dawn of a new one.

We've got to make sure we have an account of economic change, as well as social, and political structures to handle that change, especially in the new machine age with automation transforming our relationship to the workforce. We've got to have answers that go a lot further than just saying "the current guy's rotten and we ought to throw him out."
Economic growth won't last as the U.S. labors under the burden of growing entitlement programs and weakness around the world, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told CNBC.

The long-time central bank chief repeated his warnings about the weight that Social Security, Medicare and other programs are having on what have been otherwise solid gains over the past few years.

"I think the real problem is over the long run, we've got this significant continued drain coming from entitlements, which are basically draining capital investment dollar for dollar," he told CNBC's Sara Eisen during a "Squawk on the Street" interview.

"Without any major change in entitlements, entitlements are going to rise. Why? Because the population is aging. There's no way to reverse that, and the politics of it are awful, as you well know," Greenspan added.

While he said the economy looks "reasonably good" in the short run, he expects that over the longer term, growth "fades very dramatically."

The man known as "The Maestro" while he ran the Fed 19 years from the Reagan to the George W. Bush administrations spoke as signs for growth have turned more positive lately. In its latest GDP forecast, the Atlanta Fed now sees the increase running at 2.3 percent. A month ago, the tracker had put the level at 0.2 percent.

However, Greenspan said much of the improvement has come from a rise in stock market prices: He sees a "stock market aura" in the economy. A rise of 10 percent in the S&P 500 corresponds to a 1 percent real GDP increase, he said. The S&P 500 has risen nearly 16 percent in 2019 and is on track for its best performance in history should current trends hold.

The economy "is going to begin to fade out because Europe is not doing well and we still have a problem where there's a very substantial fiscal problem associated with entitlements."
Shares in Asia were mixed on Friday, with the Chinese markets slipping even as official trade data came in soaring past expectations.

Mainland Chinese shares were lower on the day, with the Shanghai composite dipping just below the flatline to 3,188.63 and the Shenzhen component declining 0.26 percent to 10,132.34. The Shenzhen composite fell 0.106 percent to 1,738.52.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index slipped 0.22 percent, as shares of Tencent and AIA fell.

Those moves came following the release of official Chinese trade figures for the month of March, with exports and the overall trade surplus coming in much higher than expected.

The broader MSCI Asia ex-Japan index was largely flat at 540.19, as of 3:17 p.m. HK/SIN.

Other Asian markets that closed before the data release saw gains on the day, with the Nikkei 225 in Japan rose 0.73 percent to 21,870.56, as shares of index heavyweight Fast Retailing soared 7.89 percent. The Topix index dipped slightly to 1,605.40.

In South Korea, the Kospi rose 0.41 percent to close at 2,233.45 as shares of industry heavyweight Samsung Electronics advanced 1.30 percent.

The in Australia added 0.85 percent to 6,251.30, with almost all sectors advancing.
China-Eastern Europe cooperation summit in Dubrovnik 16+1, focus on infrastructure and energy

(ANSAmed) - ZAGREB, APRIL 12 - An annual summit between China and the countries of central Europe and the Balkans, commonly known as 16+1, began on Friday morning in Dubrovnik on the Croatian coast.



The summit is dedicated to economic cooperation and development of shared projects, part of the strategic Chinese "New Silk Road" initiative.



Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic opened the plenary session and said the summit will focus on the development of shared projects, in particular in the fields of infrastructure and energy.



In the afternoon a new coordination of the initiative dedicated to small and medium-sized businesses will be presented.



This year's summit in Dubrovnik is the 8th summit between China and the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC), 11 of which are EU members.



Countries in the 16+1 are: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, and Slovenia.



Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also attended the summit, showing his intention for Greece to formally join the initiative.



Fourteen heads of state are in attendance at the summit along with Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang, who is leading a large delegation made up of government officials.



About a thousand entrepreneurs, 400 of whom are Chinese, are participating in the summit.




Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates court on April 11, 2019 in London, England.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was arrested in London Thursday, will not be given any "special treatment," Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Speaking to the national broadcaster on Friday, Morrison said Assange, an Australian citizen, "will get the same treatment as everybody else."

Assange, who's accused of one of the largest leaks of classified information in the U.S., was arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday, where he had been living for nearly seven years after seeking asylum there.

He now faces potential extradition to the U.S., which has put in a request for him. The Justice Department announced a criminal charge against Assange, accusing him of conspiring with former American army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning, to hack into a classified U.S. government computer.

"When Australians travel overseas and they find themselves in difficulties with the law, well, they face the judicial systems of those countries, it doesn't matter what particular crime it is they've alleged to have committed. That's the way the system works," Morrison told ABC.

"Mr Assange will get the same support that any other Australian would ... he's not going to be given any special treatment," he said.

WikiLeaks, set up in 2006, became renowned for publishing secret information and news leaks that have caused embarrassment for governments and public officials around the world.
Logo of global biopharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb is pictured on the blouse of an employee in Le Passage, near Agen, France March 29, 2018.

Bristol-Myers Squibb shareholders approved the pharmaceutical giant's $74 billion acquisition of cancer drugmaker Celgene in a vote on Friday.

The deal, announced in January, was a hard sell to Bristol shareholders from the start, and the approval concludes a tumultuous period for Bristol, which saw pushback from institutional investors.

The acquisition adds about $32 billion in fresh debt to Bristol's balance sheet while assuming $20 billion in Celgene's debt, the companies said at the time.

More than 70% of eligible shareholders voted for the deal, the company said Friday. Roughly 24% of shareholders voted against the deal, and 1% abstained. Both Bristol and Celgene shares were slightly higher in morning trading.

"We are pleased with the outcome of today's Special Meeting and thank our shareholders for their support for this combination," Bristol's Chairman and CEO Giovanni Caforio said in a statement.

Buying Celgene was seen by Wall Street analysts as giving Bristol more cancer drugs at a time when its immuno-oncology portfolio struggles to keep up with rival Merck's. Bristol's blockbuster Opdivo, which boosts the immune system to attack cancer, has fallen behind its leading competitor, Merck's Keytruda.

Hedge funds Wellington Management and Starboard Value in late February said the deal didn't sit well with them. Wellington  which is Bristol's largest institutional holder  said the deal asked Bristol shareholders to accept too much risk. Starboard cited similar concerns, saying the Celgene deal was "poorly conceived and ill-advised."

Starboard eventually ended its fight against the buyout once Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis recommended Bristol-Myers shareholders vote in favor of its bid.

For more on investing in health-care innovation, click here to join CNBC at our Healthy Returns Summit in New York City on May 21.

Bristol said Friday the deal, which is expected to close in the third quarter of this year, will create a "premier innovative biopharma company with leading scientific capabilities."

"We look forward to bringing the companies together, which we believe will deliver significant shareholder value," Caforio said.
Pete Buttigieg (D), Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, seen speaking at the National Action Network National (NAN) convention in New York City, NY.

Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg, continuing his war-of-words with fellow Hoosier Mike Pence, said the vice president could "clear this up" by taking a broad stance against discrimination.

"I'm not interested in feuding with the vice president," Buttigieg said Thursday during a taping of "The Ellen DeGeneres Show."

"But if he wanted to clear this up, he could come out today and say he's changed his mind, that it shouldn't be legal to discriminate against anybody in this country for who they are. That's all."

Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, worked closely with Pence while Pence was governor. Since formally announcing his exploratory committee in late January, Buttigieg has rocketed to the upper tier of the Democratic presidential race. If successful, he would be the first openly gay nominee of a major party.

The spat with the vice president began last weekend when Buttigieg critiqued Pence's record on LGBT equality during an event hosted by an activist group, and escalated on Wednesday when the vice president accused Buttigieg of attacking his Christian faith during an interview on CNBC.

"I'm not critical of his faith. I'm critical of bad policies," Buttigieg said Thursday. "I don't have a problem with religion. I'm religious, too. I have a problem with religion being used as a justification to harm people and especially in the LGBTQ community."

In an interview that aired Friday with CNBC's John Harwood, Buttigieg described himself as "the only Maltese-American Episcopalian gay veteran that I know."

Pence, in a CNN interview that also Friday, Pence said he considered Buttigieg a friend, and didn't "believe in discrimination against anybody. I treat everybody the way I want to be treated."

"Pete has his convictions, I have mine," Pence said.

Pence has long faced criticism from LGBT activists for his opposition to gay marriage and his support for legislation that his critics said targeted gays and lesbians. Pence has noted that as governor, he worked to implement the Supreme Court decision that made gay marriage the law of the land.
Herman Cain is expected to remove his name from consideration for appointment to the Federal Reserve, according to a report Friday.

The former Republican presidential contender and Godfather's Pizza CEO has come under repeated fire since President Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Cain as a central bank governor. In recent days, at least four GOP senators said they would not support the move, seeming to torpedo the effort before it even become official.

ABC news reported that Cain will pull his name before it even gets that far. The network said it confirmed the withdrawal with multiple sources, including an administration official and a person close to the matter.

A White House official declined comment. CNBC also has reached out to Cain for comment.

Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF, said in a note Friday that he is "betting on this afternoon" for when Cain withdraws.

The potential nomination drew quick criticism from multiple corners.

Cain briefly was among the leaders in the race for the 2012 Republican primary before fading and giving way to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who later lost to Barack Obama. Romney, now a senator from Utah, was among top Republicans who said they would not support Cain if his name came to the floor.

Among other issues, Cain likely would have faced questioning over sexual misconduct accusations from two women relating to his time as CEO of the National Restaurant Association in the late 1990s.

Trump also has announced his intention to nominate economic commentator Stephen Moore to the Fed board. That move, too, has come under fire from congressional leaders who have questioned Moore's credentials, and as revelations have come up relating to delinquent taxes and child support payments.

However, Washington observers have indicated that Moore would likely have an easier time in the confirmation process than Cain.
A charred vehicle was left in the middle of Honey Run Road as the Camp Fire continues with zero containment in Paradise, Calif., on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018.

LOS ANGELES  California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday released a wildfire report that slams PG&E for its role in major blazes and suggests the state could push to break up the utility. The report also suggests wildfire costs should be spread "broadly," and not just to utilities and investors but to insurers and even government.

"After years of mismanagement and safety failures, no options can be taken off the table to reform PG&E, including municipalization of all or a portion of PG&E's operations," said the report prepared by the governor's "strike force" on wildfire and climate change.

Shares of PG&E shot up 20% in trading Friday after the report was released.

PG&E, the state's largest electric utility, filed for bankruptcy protection in late January after getting hit with a flood of lawsuits from devastating wildfires in Northern California in 2017 and 2018, including the catastrophic Camp Fire in Butte County that killed 86 people and destroyed more than 10,000 homes. Also, PG&E was fined $1.6 billion four years ago after the 2010 deadly gas pipeline explosion in San Bruno, a suburb of San Francisco.

"PG&E hasn't been a good actor," Newsom told reporters after release of the report. "If they get in the way of doing the right thing, all options are on the table."

The governor's strike force report also said the state should "demand that a reorganized PG&E serve the public interest," including if it means "refocusing PG&E's operations on transmission and distribution." The San Francisco-based company currently has natural gas and electric operations, serving about 16 million people throughout northern and central California.

"We share the concerns of the governor and lawmakers for those impacted by the wildfires of 2017 and 2018," said PG&E spokesperson Lynsey Paulo in a statement. "They are our customers, our neighbors and our friends, and we remain focused on supporting them through the recovery and rebuilding process."

She added, "We've heard and are embracing the calls for change. Wildfire risk is a complex issue and we look forward to continuing to work with our regulators, policymakers and the Commission on Catastrophic Wildfire Cost and Recovery to examine a range of solutions that will help make the energy system safer and safeguard California's clean energy future."

In February, PG&E said in a regulatory filing that it believes it's "probable" that the company's equipment will be found to be the source of the deadly Camp Fire. Problems with PG&E equipment near where the Camp Fire is believed to have started were also reported by the utility in November.

Cal Fire previously found PG&E at fault for 17 wine country fires in 2017, including the Redwood Fire, which resulted in nine fatalities. The state agency also found PG&E responsible for the Cascade Fire that killed four in Yuba County in October 2017.

"It is imperative that utilities not put profits ahead of safety and service," said the report. "That is why the state has and will continue to advocate in PG&E's bankruptcy proceeding for fair treatment of fire victims, for California consumers, and for California policies and values."

The report, entitled "Wildfires and Climate Change: California's Energy Future," also suggests the state overhaul legal and regulatory policies because of the risk of more destructive wildfires and the potential impacts to fire victims, communities and the utility industry. One of the changes it proposes is spreading financial risk of wildfires.

"Any real plan must allocate costs resulting from wildfires in a manner that shares the burden broadly among stakeholders, including utilities (ratepayers and investors), insurance companies, local governments, and attorneys," said the report.

For example, the report suggested the state look at creating "a catastrophic wildfire fund coupled with a revised cost recovery standard to spread the cost of catastrophic wildfires more broadly among stakeholders." It also said the state should consider "a liquidity-only fund that would provide liquidity for utilities to pay wildfire damage claims."

In California, utilities face liability under what's known as inverse condemnation as well as for negligence claims for wildfire and other damaging incidents caused by such things as power lines or other utility equipment. However, the report said California should consider modifying the current strict liability standard under inverse condemnation to one that is "based on fault to balance the need for public improvements with private harm to individuals."

Besides PG&E, the change in liability laws could have far reaching financial and legal implications down the road for other major investor-owned utilities in California, including Edison International and Sempra Energy. Edison stock jumped 7% on Friday and Sempra rose more than 1%.

According to the governor's report, more than 25 million acres of California are considered wildlands and "very high or extreme fire threat." It also said one out of every four Californians  about 11 million people  live in areas classified as "high-risk areas."

At the same time, communities in fire-risk areas should be made "more resilient by considering updating codes that govern defensible space, encouraging cost-effective hardening of homes, strengthening evacuation, encouraging other emergency planning, and improving land use practices to reduce the damage to life and property from wildfires," the report stated.

The report points out that the Golden State has experienced 10 of the most destructive wildfires in its history since 2015. It adds that 2019 "has all the conditions for devastating fires, with a very wet season leading to high vegetation density."

The federal government also should "better manage federal forestland," says the report. It follows President Donald Trump previously threatening to pull federal funds from California, claiming the state's "forest management is so poor."

"As the owner of 57% of California's forestland, the federal government must also do its fair share to reduce fire risk," the report said. It added that the governors of California, Washington and Oregon all have called on the U.S. government to double its investment in managing federal forest lands due to the high risk of fires.

Newsom, a Democrat, already has proposed the state spend more for wildfire prevention and even waived environmental rules to clear dead trees and remove other vegetation in fire-prone areas. He also recently called in California National Guard troops to start helping out in some of the wildfire prevention efforts.

Still, the report said California should do more in fire prevention as well as investing in new technologies to model and monitor fire risk. The report also calls for "strengthening utility oversight so that they invest more in safety."
Square Inc.: "I like it. It's fintech. I do like PayPal a little more, but PayPal is going so far so fast, and this one's been stuck ever since the fabulous [former CFO] Sarah Friar left. Square is O.K."

Cabot Oil & Gas Corp.: "High-quality company  I think it is a good one."

Philip Morris International: "This is a hard one. I don't like to recommend the tobacco stocks. [It] does have a good yield. It's not a real cannabis play. Canopy is the only one I'm recommending in that group, by the way. They're very hard to own. So, this is a touchy subject, Philip Morris, and I can't recommend it."

Bunge Limited: "Business is bad. I mean, look at the crop protection business from DowDuPont. Wow. I mean, we gotta steer clear from this for right now. I don't smell a bargain. I just smell something bad."

Greenbrier Companies Inc.: "Stay interested, but don't pull the trigger. I'd rather see you in CSX. I think that's a better buy."

LCI Industries: "You gotta be careful  That is the tightest labor market in the world, so I think you gotta think about your raw cost expenses. But you got a good one. It's good. But I do worry about costs."

AbbVie Inc.: "Look at Celgene. They were rolling over and then suddenly lightning struck. So I'm not gonna tell you to sell Abbvie down here. I just can't do that."
President of Walt Disney Distribution Franchise Management, Business & Audience Insights, Cathleen Taff, speaks in front of the studios part of Walt Disney Studio on screen during the CinemaCon Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures special presentation at the Colosseum Caesars Palace on April 3, 2019, in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The media giant on Thursday announced its much-anticipated streaming platform Disney+, which will be rolled out on Nov. 12. Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger claimed its company's brand name gives it an edge over rival streaming service Netflix , which he said is "still" building its brand. Disney's stock surged as high as 12% on Friday, on pace for its best day since May 2009. Netflix shares fell Friday.

Shares of Disney are on track to hit a 10-year high after the unveil of its new video streaming service, but the platform has some naysayers on Wall Street.

However, some analysts covering the streaming space are doubtful of Disney+'s ability to disrupt Netflix's dominant position, saying its family focused content offering lacks quality and quantity compared with Netflix's.

"We do not view Disney+ as a strong alternative to Netflix," Suntrust tech analyst Matthew Thornton said in a note Friday. "Bottom-line, Disney+ features family content, while Netflix offers a much broader range of content with the majority of the most-searched content on the platform."

J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth also said Disney+ doesn't pose a threat to Netflix.

"While we expect Disney+ will likely be the most competitive streaming offering to Netflix, we still do not view it as a major threat to Netflix subscriber numbers given Netflix's quality & quantity of content, along with the global secular shift toward streaming," Anmuth said in a note to clients Friday.

Disney is entering an increasingly competitive streaming war with rivals Netflix, Hulu and Amazon fighting for market share while various media companies such as Apple and NBC jump on the streaming bandwagon. Disney expects to ramp up its original content with a $1 billion investment in 2020 and $2 billion by 2024.

The company is also expected to reach between 60 million and 90 million subscribers by the end of 2024. One-third of those subscribers will be domestic and two-thirds will be international, the company said.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.




Disney's chief executive said that the company has only just started making global layoffs as it works to incorporate its newly acquired assets from 21st Century Fox.

Bob Iger, the chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company, added that the job cuts are necessary to generate beneficial synergies, an industry term referring to the impact a business tip-up can have on profits or revenues.

In this case, Disney's executives have forecast about $2 billion in cost saving synergies as the combined company cuts business segments or employees that were duplicated through the Fox acquisition.

"We're just beginning a consolidation process across the world. And we've been candid about that with people in the organization," Iger told CNBC's David Faber on Thursday. "There's work to do to get to the synergies that we talked about, which were cost synergies. We have consolidation ahead of us."

Asked explicitly whether there are more job cuts to come, Iger answered in the affirmative.

"We're very early into this process and I've never second guessed decisions that we've made. And I'm certainly not going to second guess this one, not at this point anyway," he added.

Iger told that his conversations with Fox's Rupert Murdoch that ultimately led to the $71 billion deal were based on on the launch of Disney+.

The chief executive's sit-down with CNBC came just after Iger and other Disney leaders unveiled Disney+, the company's forthcoming direct-to-consumer offering. The streaming service is set for launch on Nov. 12 and will cost $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year.

Iger also confirmed at the company's investor day on Thursday that he will step down in 2021.

"I'm expecting my contract to expire at the end of 2021," Iger said during Disney's investor day presentations. "And I was going to say 'and this time I mean it,' but I've said it before."

Iger has postponed his contract with Disney twice during his tenure and has made a successful Disney+ a priority in his last few years at the head of the company.

"The most important thing is that the company get through the transition seamlessly," Iger told CNBC. "I believe that two-and-a-half years from now, or roughly two years after we've launched this massive initiative, the company  it will be well on its way."

"That will be the right time for a transition at the CEO level. The Fox acquisition will have been assimilated. We will be off and running on the direct-to-consumer space," he added.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has admitted it was "surprised" by the extent of the recent slowdown in the euro zone, but expects growth to pick up again.

The euro zone economy has struggled with changes in domestic policies in Germany, social unrest in France, and weaker external trade. However, some of that pressure has started to ease and domestic demand should drive further growth, Poul Thomsen, director of the IMF's European Department, said Friday.

"The European slowdown  has been pretty pronounced. We expected some slowdown, growth had been above potential for a while, it's quite a mature recovery, (but) we were surprised by the softness and the depth of the slowdown," Thomsen told CNBC's Joummana Bercetche at the IMF's Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C.

The European Central Bank (ECB) said in early March that it has seen a "sizable moderation in economic expansion that will extend into the current year." This led the central bank to slash its growth forecasts for this year to 1.1% from a 1.7% estimate last December. At the time, ECB President Mario Draghi said geopolitics, protectionism and vulnerabilities in emerging markets were denting economic sentiment.

Thomsen said Friday that in addition to Draghi's main concerns there are also temporary factors impacting the euro zone, such as the social unrest in France and changes to car emission rules which had impacted Germany's auto sector.

However, the IMF representative said he remained hopeful about the upcoming months, noting "temporary factors that we already see unwinding."

Thomsen said he expected domestic demand "to drive the recovery going forward," helped along by a positive labor market, current oil prices and the support of monetary policy,

Also speaking to CNBC at the IMF Spring Meetings was Klaus Regling, the managing director of the European Stability Mechanism. Regling said that while growth in the euro zone is not going to be as strong as in 2017, the region is far from being in a recession.

"We will not see in the next two, three years the growth rates of 2017. It's quite OK to say that the best is over, but it doesn't mean that there is a crisis," he said.
The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed provisionally around 0.1% higher, with sectors and major bourses mostly in positive territory.

Looking at individual stocks, Danish hearing aid manufacturer GN Store Nord's shares surged to the top of the European benchmark, gaining almost 8% after the company upgraded its revenue growth guidance following a strong start to the year.

Shares of British engine manufacturer Rolls Royce were trading more than 1% higher after the company announced a deal with Korea's Air Premia that will see the firm make engines for its jets.

Petroleum firm Rubis tumbled toward the bottom of the European benchmark after Bloomberg reported the CEO of KenolKobil  an African oil company being taken over by the firm  was set to step down following long-term corruption allegations. Shares of Rubis were down over 4%.

Meanwhile, Italian payments group Nexi priced its IPO at 9 euros per share on Friday, unveiling what is set to be one of Europe's biggest initial public offerings this year. Nexi's shares will begin trading in Milan on Tuesday.
According to the PIME priest, isolation is main challenge that awaits the missions in northern Thailand. PIME runs four centres in Fang, Ban Thoet Thai, Mae Suay and Ngao. Fr Ribolini will leave Ban Thoet Thai for Mae Suay after Easter. "As soldiers of the Kingdom of God, we missionaries must be ready to go where the Lord and his Church send us, he said.

Ban Thoet Thai (AsiaNews)  The main challenge for missions in northern Thailand is breaking the isolation that often characterises recently evangelised tribal communities, this according to Fr Marco Ribolini, a Milan-born member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME) and pastor in Ban Thoet Thai, a remote village in the Diocese of Chiang Rai on the border with Myanmar.

After Easter, he told AsiaNews, he will leave his parish for Mae Suay, another PIME mission to which the bishop and his superiors have assigned him.

Local Catholics belong to different tribal ethnic minorities (Akha, Lanna, Lahu, Isan, Thai Yai and Kachin), who live in the mountains and the plains, amid poverty and social and geographical marginalisation.

The four PIME missions in the north of the country (Fang, Ban Thoet Thai, Mae Suay and Ngao) have hostels to house and educate young people from poor families.

For the past four years, Fr Ribolini has ministered to local Catholics before he became pastor in Ban Thoet Thai, which was set up as a parish just a year ago, separate from Fang.

Fr Ribolini led the parish in its first activities, starting with the building of the church, followed by the pastoral centre and even a bridge, thanks to which cars can now cross the river and reach the mission.

"I am feeling two main emotions right now as I get ready to leave, said the clergyman. On the one hand, I feel sad for people and places so dear to me; on the other, there is a strong sense of freedom, because the heart recognises that what has been done here is not mine, but the Lords: mission, people, places and projects. We are only his servants, and as Jesus says: We are unprofitable servants (Lk 17:10) at that."

"Mae Suey is northern Thailands largest mission. It covers 29 villages, two more than Ban Thoet Thai. It serves more or less the same tribes, but the difference is that it already has 27 years of history.

"Catechetical projects are already very developed, since the mission is more complex and requires a less 'pioneering' approach than Ban Thoet Thai."

Running hostels is one of the main activities of the PIME mission in Mae Suay. About 90 kids live there. There are three sites, some 20 kilometres apart from each other.

Two main facilities stand in the middle of the mission: one of the hostels and a centre for up to ten disabled children.

In recent years, PIME has been training missionaries in order to go beyond simple pastoral outreach in order to promote religious and cultural dialogue. Hence, Fr Ribolini has been deputed to study the main local language, Akha.

For the missionary, "This will allow us to be independent of catechist-translators, who follow us in our visits to the villages. This way we can overcome the problems related to the translation and the inculturation of Christianity.

"This is the first Akha generation to be Christian and there is only one Akha priest in the whole country. For this reason, PIME wants to put a new missionary at the disposal of the Diocese of Chiang Rai, where most Christians belong to that ethnic group.

"By doing so, we will be able to do better in terms of pastoral outreach. Speaking the language, we can bring Christ further in the hearts of the Akha people.

In Mae Suey, Fr Ribolini will find "the same challenges that generally await all the missions in northern Thailand".

"The great local response to the proclamation of the Gospel has led to the creation of many centres, the clergyman explained. At the same time though, this has created a sense of isolation within the communities. In fact, local tribal groups live inside a Thai environment, but contacts between the two are rare."

"Mae Suay is trying to break this isolation, thanks to a project carried out with courage by Camillian nuns. All the nuns are Thai but live and work at the mission. They help about 160 Buddhist patients: poor, elderly with disabilities or abandoned. In addition to the nuns work, we are socially present with a facility for disabled children."

Holy Week is coming soon. For Fr Ribolini, it will be a time of intense activities: pastoral work, summer camps for children, handing over his parish, and planning to move.

"This comes at the end of the (lunar) year in Thailand: schools close and children go home. For this reason, in the northern missions we organise summer camps for young people of different age groups.

"We have already held three of them at Ban Thoet Thai and, ahead of Holy Week. one camp will be devoted to catechesis with more than 100 middle school kids. On Easter night we will celebrate about 40 adult baptisms.

"In the meantime, we are holding premarital courses for tribals who have already been married in accordance with traditional customs. Now they want to do it by the book in order to have access to sacramental life. Because my move is coming up, I will marry three couples on Easter Sunday."

Fr Ribolini has not organised any farewell party in Ban Thoet Thai. "As soldiers of the Kingdom of God, we missionaries must be ready to go where the Lord and his Church send us, with little room for too many recriminations and wistfulness.

Such is the life of an evangeliser. The Lord calls upon us not to put down too deep a root, nor to cling to things and people as if they were ours."
France 'ready to welcome 20 Sea Eye migrants', minister Aboard the Alan Kurdi vessel off Malta

(ANSAmed) - Paris, April 12 - France is ready ''along with several other European partners'' to welcome 20 out of the 60 migrants stranded off Malta aboard the migrant rescue vessel Alan Kurdi operated by NGO Sea Eye, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said on Friday.



''As with the other ships'', Castaner said referring to the Lifeline, Aquarius and SeaWatch, ''I asked personnel at the ministry and OFRA (French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless people) to be ready to travel to the location over the next few hours to facilitate the transfer to France of 20 people in need of protection''.




Health-care stocks were poised to end the week in the red Friday after lawmakers on Capitol Hill threatened to write new laws tightening control over the nation's largest pharmacy benefit mangers to curb skyrocketing drug costs.

The Trump administration's legal challenge to former President Barack Obama's signature health insurance law, the Affordable Care Act, and Sen. Bernie Sanders' new "Medicare for All" bill also weighed on the industry's shares.

The XLV, an ETF that tracks the health-care industry's biggest companies, was down 1.48% for the week as of Friday morning. The biggest declines were from insurers Anthem, Humana and UnitedHealth Group, which were all down more than 5% for the week through Thursday's close.

Executives from CVS Health, Cigna, Prime Therapeutics, Humana and UnitedHealth's OptumRx testified about rising prescription drug costs before the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday. The PBMs left the congressional hearing mostly unscathed but Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, hinted that the committee is ready to write new laws to bring down drug prices.

Ana Gupte, senior health-care services analyst at SVB Leerink, said the health-care sell-off is mostly driven by the proposed legislative changes to the PBMs' business model, which are paid so-called rebates by Big Pharma for getting their drugs covered by private and public insurance plans, like Medicare. These so-called backdoor deals are suspected by lawmakers of increasing drug costs for patients.

It is "very likely" lawmakers force drug companies to give those rebates to consumers instead, starting as early as next year, Gupte said.

Separately, a federal appeals court in New Orleans said Wednesday that it will hear arguments in July on a lawsuit backed by President Donald Trump to overturn Obamacare. Dismantling the health-care law would lead to 32 million more uninsured people in the U.S. by 2026, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office.

Separately, Sanders unveiled a universal health-care plan on Wednesday, which would eliminate most private health insurance by creating a government-run system to provide health insurance for all Americans.

For more on investing in health-care innovation, click here to join CNBC at our Healthy Returns Summit in New York City on May 21.

"Newsflow on the Medicare for All proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders and the scheduling of the hearing on the Texas Court decision to overthrow the ACA at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in July also contributed to the sell off in health-care stocks," Gupte said.

Ross Muken, an analyst at Evercore ISI, told clients in a note that watching the industry's shares fall has "not been fun," but added he expects first-quarter earnings to be positive as "fundamentals generally remain positive and utilization still appears under control."
If President Donald Trump wants to be the leader in 5G technology, the administration should approve the merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, analyst Jonathan Chaplin told CNBC on Friday.

The two wireless companies agreed to a deal last year, but they are still awaiting federal approval of the $26.5 billion transaction.

"If it is really important to the administration to be first in 5G and have a more robust set of infrastructure in the U.S. than China, Japan and Korea do, then they should let the deal go through," Chaplin said on "The Exchange."

"That's the path to the best 5G network we're likely to see in the U.S. and it will drive AT&T and Verizon to invest."

That's because Sprint is sitting on a "phenomenal band of spectrum" that can run the technology, he said. Spectrum is the airwaves networks use to provide the internet to devices. The 5G technology will enable faster data speeds.

"What Sprint has is mid-band spectrum, which can work almost everywhere. It might not be great in the most rural parts of Montana but pretty much everywhere else it's going to work great," said Chaplin, who leads the U.S. communications services research team at New Street Research.

Verizon and AT&T, on the other hand, have high-frequency spectrums, which work great in the big cities but not very well outside of dense markets, he noted.

The problem is, Sprint doesn't have the money to deploy its spectrum band, he added.

"If the deal with T-Mobile goes through, that's going to put those companies in a phenomenal position. If the deal doesn't go through, that spectrum just sits on the sidelines for the next five years."

Trump held an event on 5G at the White House on Friday with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, announcing a $20 billion fund to build out high-speed broadband networks in rural America. The FCC also intends to start the agency's third 5G spectrum auction on Dec. 10.

"The race to 5G is on and America must win," Trump said, noting that 92 5G markets will be ready by the end of the year, outpacing South Korea, which is on pace to have 48 markets live by the end of 2019.

"To accelerate and incentivize these investments, my administration is freeing up as much wireless spectrum as needed," Trump said. "[We're] removing regularity barriers to the buildout of networks.The FCC is taking very bold action, bolder than they've ever taken before, to make wireless spectrum available."

It's an issue the president has been pushing for. In February he called on U.S. companies to step up their efforts on the technology.

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The White House had no comment on Chaplin's remarks.

 CNBC's Todd Haselton and Reuters contributed to this report.
Italy hasn't suffered any negative reaction from U.S. authorities after having agreed to be part of China's Belt and Road initiative, the country's finance minister told CNBC Friday.

Rome was the first major G-7 economy to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Beijing to be part of its massive infrastructure plan  a move that has raised eyebrows in the United States and in some other European countries.

However, Giovanni Tria, an economist in charge of Italy's finances, said: "We have not (had) any backlash."

"We have a strategic partnership, an alliance with the United States and the other countries allied in NATO and this doesn't change," he told CNBC's Joummana Bercetche at the IMF's Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C.
On Wednesday, after 10 years of planning and scientific investments totaling over $50 million, researchers released the first-ever image of a black hole. The image is a feat of modern science  experts say it's the equivalent of taking a photo of an orange on the moon with a smartphone  and international collaboration. Over 200 scientists across the globe contributed to the project. One of those scientists is Katie Bouman, a 29-year-old computer scientist who began working on the project when she was a graduate student at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT. Bouman earned her bachelor's in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Soon, she'll begin working as an assistant professor in the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department at the California Institute of Technology. But when she became involved in the project almost six years ago, she had no experience studying black holes. "I go after problems that excite me. When I started this project, I didn't know anything about black holes and honestly, it was a risky project," Bouman tells CNBC Make It. "But my heart was in this project. I love this project, and I think that that's what makes it a success. When you get really smart people together, who are super motivated by the problem that they're working on, I think people will figure out the answers."

Katie Bouman Courtesy of Katie Bouman

Bouman has gained recognition on social media from a number of public figures including Senator Kamala Harris, who wrote on Twitter, "Katie Bouman proved women in STEM don't just make the impossible, possible, but make history while doing it." "So incredibly excited for Dr. Katie Bouman and her work to get the first picture of a black hole that was captured by the Event Horizon Telescope and rendered by HER algorithm," tweeted Reshma Saujani, founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. But Bouman was just one of many scientists working on the project. Of the more than 200 researchers working on the project, roughly 40 were women, according to The New York Times. "There were lots of people on these teams," says Bouman. "I don't want to call out any person as the leader."

Nonetheless, Bouman's research led to the creation of a new algorithm that allowed scientists to bring the black hole image to life, a task with a level of difficulty that cannot be overstated. "The black hole is really, really far away from us. The one we showed a picture of is 55 million light years away. That means that image is what the black hole was like 55 million years ago," explains Bouman. "The law of diffraction tells us that given the wavelength that we need in order to see that event horizon, which is about one millimeter, and the resolution we need to see a ring of that size, we would need to build an earth-sized telescope." That is where computer scientists like Bouman came in. "Obviously, we can't build an earth-sized telescope. So instead, what we did is we built a computational earth-sized telescope," she says. "We took telescopes that were already built around the world and were able to observe at the wavelength we needed, and we connected them together into a network that would work together." That computational telescope is the Event Horizon Telescope, a constellation of telescopes in the South Pole, Chile, Spain, Mexico and the United States.

After researchers coordinated the super-powerful telescopes, scientists like Bouman were tasked with interpreting a massive amount of data. "The team collected about five petabytes of data, and one petabyte is a thousand terabytes," explains Bouman. "Your typical computer has maybe one terabyte or so. So that would be like 5,000 typical laptops of data. It's just a huge. I mean, we basically had to freeze light onto these hard drives." The data was so large that researchers had to transport the data by plane from around the world.

According to MIT, Bouman led one of four teams responsible for turning this mind-numbing amount of data into one verifiable image. If their team was going to claim to have produced the world's first-ever image of a black hole, they needed to be certain. "We spent years developing methods, many different types of methods  I don't think any one method should be highlighted  because most of all, we were afraid of shared human bias," says Bouman. "If I made an image with my method and and it looks like a ring, I don't want someone to look at my picture and then subconsciously make their image look like a ring too." For this reason, the computer scientists broke into four teams and did not communicate while they were analyzing the data. After months of the teams working independently, they all converged in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and ran their algorithms in the same room, at the same time. The resulting image is one we now recognize as a black hole: a bright ring that's slightly brighter on the bottom.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) -- a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration -- was designed to capture images of a black hole. Source: NASA
Top New York disc jockey and "Talk Stoop" host Nessa Diab has been interviewing celebrities for about a decade, a gig that has turned her into a huge celebrity herself.

The 37-year-old southern California native who's known for her mononym, Nessa, has quite an impressive resume: a celebrity-interviewer powerhouse, MTV personality and host of her own weekday afternoon radio show, "Nessa on Air," on the popular New York City hip-hop station HOT 97. Her fan base: more than a quarter million followers across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

With a reputation for being not only funny and honest but undeniably blunt, Nessa has been able to draw out some of the most startling and intimate truths from such boldface names as Tyra Banks, Dennis Quaid, Maria Shriver and Rosie Perez from her "stoop" in Manhattan where NBCUniversal's 30-minute "Talk Stoop" is filmed.

The 30-minute program, which features quick-hit celebrity vignettes, is produced by LXTV, a division of NBCU-owned television stations.

Now, as part of CNBC's new initiative "Invest in You: Ready. Set. Grow"  a partnership with Acorns that focuses on improving America's money knowledge in the areas of saving, spending and investing  Nessa asked a number of celebrities to reveal their first major saved-up-for purchase.

More from Invest in You:

Boost Your financial IQ by answering these 10 questions

Got goals? These simple actions will help you get the things you want

What your FICO score means and why you should pay attention

"A bicycle," said actor Emilio Estevez. "I made four lunches every day for a dollar a week. There were four kids in the family. So I got up early, I made the lunches, put them in bags and had them ready to go. I made a dollar a week for that. It cost $108. There might have been like a $5 bill that my grandmother sent me from Cleveland every now and then."

Actress, singer, songwriter Christina Milian said a pair of sneakers was her first major buy. "I didn't really have a plan for it. The goal was to just keep saving my lunch money so I said I had money. It was the coolest thing, because I would eat everybody else's lunch."
A worker prepares to lift drills by pulley to the main floor of a drilling rig in the Permian basin.

Chevron's $33 billion acquisition of Anadarko could set off a wave of new merger activity in the oil patch as the major companies seek out a bigger foothold and lower costs in the U.S. shale sector.

Stocks of prospective targets surged after the deal was announced Friday. The speculation centered on major Permian shale players, like Pioneer Natural Resources, Parsley, and Concho Resources, all up about 10%. Others were also higher, including Apache and Hess, with a big position in North Dakota's Bakken basin.

Occidental Petroleum, was initially higher but reversed gains after CNBC's David Faber reported that it had made an earlier failed bid for Anadarko, and it is now considering options.

The Chevron deal, valued at a total of about $48 billion with debt, pushes energy sector merger activity to about $200 billion for the year, its highest level ever, according to Refinitiv.

"You have more than 100 producers in the Permian. The E&Ps have gotten better about turning cash flow positive but the big guys, Exxon, Chevron and Oxy [Occidental] are planning to get bigger. They're all planning to expand in U.S. shale. even though they all have longer term projects," said Stewart Glickman, energy analyst at CFRA. "Exxon and Chevron had deep water. They have [liquified natural gas], but they are still pushing more in the direction of shorter cycle projects, and that means U.S. shale."

Anadarko stock rose 31% after Chevron offered $60.95 per share in stock and cash. The deal gives the second biggest U.S. energy company a boost in shale oil production as well as natural gas and offshore deep-water.

RBC analyst Scott Hanold said the move by Chevron changes the deal landscape. While there were a half dozen significant deals in the sector last year, they were E&P companies buying rivals in mostly stock deals.

"Different from last year, this transaction could also 'kick-start' investor interest in E&P's with current valuations looking attractive, [free cash flow] generation that is growing, oil prices that are well above most budgets while service costs remain benign, and now possible interest by the Majors making the prospect for larger premiums and a cash component," Hanold wrote in a note.

Hanold said he believes the top three takeover candidates are Noble Energy, Pioneer, and Concho Resources, the largest unconventional producer in the Permian. He notes that Noble has assets in the Permian and DJ basin and has significant free cash flow, while Pioneer, with one of the largest Permian positions, has core acreage in Midland and the Delaware basins, that can deliver organic growth of 10% and free cash flow over the next decade or longer.

Both Chevron and ExxonMobil are relative newcomers to the shale industry and both have made inroads into plays like the Permian Basin, where their heft has helped bring down costs.

Viewed as the hottest U.S. shale play, the Permian Basin, producing nearly 4 million barrels a day, is expected to see production double in coming years. Later this year, it will see a boost from the opening of new pipelines in the second half of 2019 that will take more of its oil to Gulf Coast refiners and to a new and growing U.S. export market.

The U.S. has become the world's largest oil producer because of the shale production boom. The U.S. produced 12.2 million barrels of oil a day in the past week, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia..

"This cements the trend of big oil becoming big shale," said John Kilduff of Again Capital. "Shell may be hearing footsteps in terms of competition, and I think BP will be looking around again. I do think this will start a land rush of deals."

Kilduff said higher oil prices have made deals more attractive, but they're not so high as to discourage buyers. "We're in a medium price environment. If you look at the futures curve out to 2028, the forward curve can support these deals and these valuations," he said. The price of West Texas Intermediate was at $64.50, up 1.5% Friday.

Chevron has not been shy that it was seeking acquisitions. The company also said in a release that it would look to upgrade its portfolio and potentially divest of $15 billion to $20 billion in assets between 2020 and 2022. The company said it expects the Anadarko acquisition to be accretive to free cash flow and earnings one year after closing, with a $60 price for Brent, the international oil standard. Brent futures were just under $72 per barrel Friday.

Chevron will assume $15 billion in debt as part of the deal, which must be approved by Anadarko shareholders. The company said that as a result of higher free cash flow, it plans to buy back more of its stock, increasing purchases to $5 billion from $4 billion per year.

"Generally speaking the small fries are targets. Anadarko had a net debt to capital ratio of 62%. The average E and P is more like 35%. I would say [targets] will have high debt levels or poor free cash levels," said Glickman. "Another thing Anadarko had working against it was its reserve life was pretty low."

He said among the type of companies that would be attractive targets are those with Permian exposure, and those with wells that are producing more oil than gas or natural gas liquids.

Glickman said a company like Parsley could be seen as a target since it is primarily located in the Permian and has a deficit cash flow.

"You can imagine every banker in the world is calling these companies," said one banker. He noted that potential targets just got more expensive, and it's not clear that buyers will necessarily bite. Bankers have been expecting not only a wave of mergers among public names, but also among private shale plays.

Chevron shares fell 4%. Based on Anadarko's closing price of $46.80 on Thursday, Anadarko shareholders will receive 0.3869 shares of Chevron and $16.25 in cash for each Anadarko share.

Correction: This story was revised to correct that the Thursday closing price of $46.80 was for Anadarko. Headlines also were revised to correct the spelling to Anadarko.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) talks with reporters as he heads for a meeting at the Capitol October 02, 2018 in Washington, DC.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley doesn't believe a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality will succeed, the Iowa Republican told the Des Moines Register on Thursday.

"I don't believe the courts are going to strike it down," Grassley said, adding that Republicans don't have to work on a replacement for the 2010 health-care law because he said it is unclear what the courts will decide to do.

The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is once again in jeopardy after President Donald Trump reignited debate over his predecessor's health-care law in March when his administration decided to support a federal judge's ruling that Obamacare is unconstitutional.

In December, U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor ruled the health-care law unconstitutional after 20 Republican-led states filed a suit against it. O'Connor said that without the law's individual mandate  a tax penalty on anyone who did not purchase health insurance  Obamacare could not stand.

The Trump administration reduced the individual mandate to $0 in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

O'Connor's ruling awaits deliberation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Obamacare and pledged to repeal it, but Republicans have yet to propose a health-care policy to replace it that could pass muster in Congress. Trump said in a late-March tweet that the "Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare," but the president was forced to abandon the cause when his party expressed little desire to revisit the health-care debate before the 2020 election.

Grassley, who is one of the many Republicans who oppose President Barack Obama's 2010 health care law, said Thursday that he expects the Supreme Court will uphold Obamacare if the case is brought before them.

He told the Register he "would be very doubtful" that Chief Justice John Roberts would "be changing his mind" on the law. Roberts was the deciding vote that upheld Obamacare's constitutionality when the law was deliberated by the Supreme Court in 2012.

Obamacare, which sought to expand access to insurance and increase consumer protections, includes provisions that expand Medicaid in most states, allow children to remain on their parents' insurance plans until age 26 and protect those with pre-existing conditions.

The health-care law captured the ire of conservatives when it passed in 2010. Republicans have vowed to do away with Obamacare ever since, but the GOP failed to repeal the law in 2017 when they controlled Congress and the White House. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle believe Republicans' failed efforts to scrap the law handed Democrats a majority in the House of Representatives in last year's midterm elections.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in March that the Senate would wait until Republicans gained full control of Congress before considering a replacement plan. The GOP, which holds a majority in the Senate, needs 21 more seats in the House to win a majority in the next election.

Grassley, who has been working on a bipartisan basis to tackle high drug prices in the U.S., also praised a bill he co-sponsored that protects people with pre-existing conditions. However, Grassley told the Register that the bill, which was unveiled this week, would not be debated unless Obamacare was repealed.

Though Grassley doubts Obamacare will be ruled unconstitutional, he claimed replacement legislation could "easily" be created.

Grassley's office confirmed the Register's reporting, but did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for additional comment.

Read the Des Moines Register's full report here.
Israel's first private mission to the moon fails Beresheet suffered technical problems, new mission in 2 years

(ANSAmed) - ROME, APRIL 12 - Israeli spacecraft Beresheet suffered technical problems to its main engine and navigation system, leading to the failure of what was supposed to be a record mission.



Another mission will be attempted in two years, said Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu.



Descent operations to the lunar surface started at 9 pm Italian time and everything proceeded as scheduled for about 20 minutes. Beresheet, which in Hebrew means 'in the beginning', had even snapped a selfie with the tag symbolizing the mission and the moon's surface in the background.



When landing appeared imminent, the control system lost contact with the spacecraft, a blackout that lasted a few minutes after which an engine failure was reported.



Opher Doron, the general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries' space division, announced there had been a failure in the spacecraft.



''We unfortunately have not managed to land successfully'', Doron said.



Subsequently, problems were also reported to the inertial navigation systems with the failure of what was supposed to be a record mission, the first that would have taken a private vehicle to land on the moon.



Beresheet was meant to land on Mare Serenitatis, the same spot as NASA's Apollo 17 mission on December 11, 1972.



Israel hoped to become the fourth country to land a spacecraft on the moon after the Soviet Union, the US and China.



The spacecraft was built in Israel by SpaceIL, a non-profit organization that raised 100 million dollars thanks to entrepreneurs, research institutes, the Israel Aerospace Industries and the Israeli Space agency. The Swedish Space Corporation and NASA also participated with communication technology. The Leonardo group built solar panels in Nerviano (Milan).



Launched on February 22 from Cape Canaveral in Florida, Beresheet journeyed through a series of ever-widening orbits around the earth, before being captured by the moon's gravity and moving into lunar orbit on April 4.



The aim of the mission was to research the composition and magnetism of lunar rocks.



The mission had taken part in the competition Goggle Lunar X Prize, which last March had pledged one million dollars to SpaceIL if it succeeded. The prize's sponsors overnight announced that SpaceIL will be granted the prize to attempt a second mission. (ANSAmed)
Russia and the U.S. must find a way to resolve their differences on the international stage in order to improve the overall health of the global economy, Russia's finance minister told CNBC on Thursday.

His comments come amid a long series of provocations and flare-ups between Moscow and Washington in recent years, whose relations are seen by many as at their worst since the Cold War.

Last month, U.S. Attorney General William Barr said in a summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's completed report into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election that there was no evidence of collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.

When asked whether there was a tangible sense of relief among Moscow's business community after a summary of the Mueller report was released, Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov replied: "We have never had any doubts in the conclusions of that report, on the one hand."

"On the other hand, I think that it is not really about the results of that investigation; the problem lies with the overall state of relations between our two countries."

"This is not the best climate for business development I think that we need to strengthen our links, both economic and political links, between the U.S. and Russia. This would be of benefit to the global economy and, to our countries, our people and our entrepreneurs, first and foremost," Siluanov told CNBC's Joumanna Bercetche in Washington on Thursday.
The logo of Japanese mobile provider SoftBank is displayed at an entrance of a shop in Tokyo's shopping district Ginza.

SoftBank has agreed to give up board seats and access to sensitive information, take a more passive role in startups and make other concessions to get government clearance for its technology deals in the United States.

These maneuvers come as the Japanese investor confronts a new U.S. law aimed at cracking down on foreign investors.

SoftBank's investment style has made it a frequent visitor of a U.S. government group known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), charged with reviewing foreign investment for national security and competitive risks.

"We know the deals are going to be reviewed," Marcelo Claure, chief operating officer of SoftBank, said in an interview with Reuters this week. "We have abided by what the U.S. government wants."

SoftBank likes to take large stakes in companies working on artificial intelligence, data analytics, financial services and self-driving cars - technologies increasingly viewed as critical to national security. This puts them in the crosshairs of a law signed by U.S. President Donald Trump last year expanding the powers of CFIUS.

Giving up board seats and access to private information would make SoftBank less of a threat in the eyes of CFIUS, giving its deals a better chance of approval.

"We would not accept this if we were in the business of running companies," Claure said of the concessions. "We're not. We are in the business of investing."

Claure declined to provide specifics on investments where SoftBank has had to make concessions or give up board seats and the U.S. government does not comment on CFIUS reviews.

The regulations have deterred many foreign investors from even attempting investment in U.S. tech companies.

"Everything is a conversation with the government so you figure you are going to pick your battles," Claure said.
After nearly two years of waiting, the much-anticipated finale to the Skywalker Saga finally has a name: "The Rise of Skywalker."

At Star Wars Celebration in Chicago on Friday, Disney unveiled the first trailer for what has until now been called "Star Wars: Episode IX."

Star Wars Tweet

The film will not take place directly after the events of "The Last Jedi," director J.J. Abrams said Friday during the "Star Wars: Episode IX" panel at the Chicago event.

The trailer features voice over from Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, telling Rey, "We've passed on all we know. A thousand generations live in you now. But this is your fight."

She is carrying his hand-me-down lightsaber, now mended following the events of "The Last Jedi," and staring down the barrel of Kylo Ren's TIE fighter in a desert.

Through several cuts we see characters from the previous two films in the newest "Star Wars" trilogy as well as returning favorites such as Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian.

The trailer wraps with ominous theme music and cackling laughter. It is likely the voice of Emperor Sheev Palpatine. Once the trailer was shown at the panel, Ian McDiarmid, the actor behind the iconic villain, appeared from backstage telling the tech team to roll the clip again.

"The Rise of Skywalker" is the final installment in the nine-film "Star Wars" saga centered around the Skywalkers. Not much is known about the plot of the film, only that some time has passed between the second and third installments in the most recent trilogy.

Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Kelly Marie Tran, and Oscar Isaac have returned to reprise their roles as Rey, Finn, Rose and Poe, members of the resistance. Adam Driver and Domhnall Gleeson also return as Kylo Ren aka Ben Solo and General Armitage Hux, leaders of the First Order.

Joonas Suotamo, who took over the role of Chewbacca from Peter Mayhew for the last four "Star Wars" films, will also be featured in the film. Naomi Ackie will take on the role of newcomer Jannah. During the panel, Ackie dodged questions about whether this character was related to Lando Calrissian.

"Lando is a very charming man, so he could have children all over the universe," Ackie said.

The late Carrie Fisher also appeared in the trailer. Unused footage from "The Force Awakens" has been repurposed to give her character Leia Organa more scenes within the film. Abrams said that CGI was never an option for extending her presence in the film.
The level of debt and the lack of regulation in the corporate sector is a concern for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), one of its directors told CNBC.

These vulnerabilities could have a wide of range implications in the event of an economic shock, Tobias Adrian, director of the monetary and capital markets department at the IMF, said Thursday.

"We are particularly worried about the corporate sector, where leverage is rising, underwriting standards and some pockets of the corporate sector are deteriorating," he told CNBC's Joumanna Bercetche at the IMF's Spring Meetings.

The Washington-based institute said in its latest Global Financial Stability report that vulnerabilities in the corporate sector are elevated in systemically important countries, which account for about 70% of global growth.

According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), in the United States, non-financial corporate debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) stood at 73% at the end of last year  close to its pre-crisis peak. Meanwhile in emerging markets, non-financial corporates were one of the top contributors to rising debt levels in the region last year.

Corporate debt has risen in the aftermath of the financial crisis, mainly for two reasons. Borrowing conditions have eased across the world and, at the same time, this type of debt has also provided investors with higher returns compared to government debt  which is perceived as being safer. The attractiveness of corporate debt has therefore made it easier for firms to get the money they want for investments, or in some cases buying back their own stock.
The chief executive and a managing partner of the collapsed Dubai private equity firm Abraaj Capital were arrested on U.S. charges that they defrauded their investors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a federal prosecutor said on Thursday.

Abraaj founder and Chief Executive Arif Naqvi was arrested in the United Kingdom last Friday, while managing partner Mustafa Abdel-Wadood was arrested at a New York hotel on Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrea Griswold said at a hearing in Manhattan federal court.

Abdel-Wadood appeared at the hearing and pleaded not guilty to securities fraud, wire fraud and conspiracy charges. His lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, did not immediately request bail, saying he needed more time to become familiar with the case.

Griswold said prosecutors would seek to have Naqvi, who is charged with the same crimes, extradited. Casey Larsen, a spokesman for Naqvi, could not immediately be reached.

Abraaj had been the largest buyout fund in the Middle East and North Africa until it collapsed last May, after the Gates Foundation and other investors raised concerns about the management of its $1 billion healthcare fund.

In brief indictments unsealed on Thursday, prosecutors claimed that from about 2014 until the collapse, Naqvi and Abdel-Wadood lied about the performance of Abraaj's funds, inflating their value by more than half a billion dollars.

Prosecutors also said that Naqvi and Abdel-Wadood caused "at least hundreds of millions" of investor funds to be misappropriated, either to disguise liquidity shortfalls or for their personal benefit or that of their associates.

Griswold said that Abraaj had represented itself as a pioneer of "impact investing" that promoted social progress, for example by investing in hospitals in developing countries.

"In truth, Abraaj was engaged in a massive fraud," she said.

The indictments were short on detail, Griswold said, because authorities moved quickly to arrest Abdel-Wadood upon learning he was in the United States with his wife and son to visit colleges.

She said prosecutors intended to file more detailed charges by the end of May.

After the hearing, Abdel-Wadood spoke briefly to his wife, who had watched from the courtroom gallery, before U.S. marshals led him away in handcuffs.

Abraaj and Naqvi face related civil charges filed on Thursday by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Dubai Financial Services Authority, the regulator for the economic zone known as the Dubai International Financial Centre, told CNBC in a statement that it's communicating with the SEC on the matter.

"The DFSA's investigation into Abraaj Capital Limited and other relevant companies and persons involved in the Abraaj Group is ongoing," said the regulator, which has the power to impose administrative sanctions but not criminal penalties.

CNBC contributed to this report.
U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump welcome South Korean President Moon Jae-in to the White House April 11, 2019 in Washington, DC.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but said in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that Washington would leave sanctions in place on Pyongyang.

Trump and Moon, in the Oval Office, discussed the possibility of Moon having an inter-Korean summit with Kim soon as a way to boost dialogue between the United States and North Korea on denuclearization.

North Korea, which has suspended nuclear tests and missile launches, has been pressing for sanctions relief but has not taken meaningful steps toward dismantling its nuclear weapons program.

Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore last June, building good will but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

"It could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step. It's not a fast process. I've never said it would be. It's step by step," Trump said.

Asked by reporters whether he was prepared to ease some sanctions on North Korea, Trump said he and Moon were discussing "certain humanitarian things" and the possibility of South Korea helping the North with food. He did not rule out participating in a three-way summit with both Kim and Moon.

Of sanctions, he said, "We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that at this time."

Moon said he does not view the summit that collapsed in Hanoi as a failure, but part of a longer "process." He said he agreed with Trump on the "ultimate goal" of total denuclearization by North Korea.

"The important task that we face right now is to maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook regarding the third U.S.-North Korea summit to the international community, that this will be held in the near future," Moon said.

In a statement following the meeting, the White House said Trump reiterated to Moon that he has a good relationship with Kim and "noted the door remains open to dialogue."
Members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) march during the annual military parade In Iran's southwestern city of Ahvaz before the attack. STRINGER | AFP | Getty Images

The President Donald Trump administration announced its plan this week to officially designate Iran's military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), effective April 15. The unprecedented move garnered swift reaction from critics as well as the Iranian government, which subsequently labeled the U.S. a terrorism supporter and Centcom, U.S. Central Command, a terrorist group. By definition, terrorists are non-state actors  so this designation for a foreign government's military is a major first on the international stage. But with Iran's economy already resembling that of a basket case, how much does this really change things? "The economics are expected to be minimal because the IRGC is heavily sanctioned, and international companies have to be incredibly cautious engaging in business in Iran," Sanam Vakil, a senior fellow at Chatham House and associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told CNBC via phone.

"And under the climate of sanctions already, Western companies have withdrawn so there is little impact there." Iran's economy shrunk by 1.5% last year and is expected to contract by 3.6% this year, according to the International Monetary Fund, compared to 3.8% growth in 2017 before sanctions were re-imposed by the Trump administration after the U.S. withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal in May 2018.

The IRGC's role in the Iranian economy

Much like a conventional military agency, the IRGC, about 125,000 members strong, has ground forces, an air force, missiles, drone forces and naval units. But it's also heavily present in Iran's business sector. With the authority to engage in commercial activity in Iran, it controls an estimated 20% of the country's overall economy, according to some experts.

The symbolism is very important here. The Trump administration is upping the ante... because their policy as it stands today has yet to see any change in Iranian behavior. Sanam Vakil Associate professor, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies

Formed in the wake of Iran's 1979 revolution, the deeply ideological IRGC was designated by Washington as a specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) and sanctioned under the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in 2017. Iran has been listed as a state sponsor of terror by the U.S. since 1984, and in 2007 its foreign operations wing, the Quds Force, was labeled an SDGT. Many experts agree that the FTO label won't significantly deepen the impact that previous designations have already had. Inflation and unemployment in Iran are skyrocketing, with the sanctions compounding an economy long made stagnant by decades of mismanagement and corruption. Oil exports, central to Iran's revenue, have dropped from around 2.5 million barrels a day before Trump's sanctions to just over 1 million per day now. "The symbolism, however, is very important here," Vakil said. "The Trump administration is upping the ante in their maximum pressure campaign, because their policy as it stands today has yet to see any change in Iranian behavior." In the past few years, Iranian-backed proxy activity in the Middle East  including support for Houthi rebels in Yemen and for Bashar Assad's forces in Syria  has only continued or increased.

So what's new?

Still, the designation introduces some important changes. The most significant angle about the FTO label, says Behnam Ben Taleblu, an Iran specialist and senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, is law enforcement. He argues that the designation is more consequential than its critics say.

"An FTO designation of the IRGC further enlists law enforcement to compliment the Treasury and State Departments which have traditionally been in the sanctions business," Ben Taleblu told CNBC via email. It "enhances Washington's ability to punish those who provide material support to the IRGC  Banks, businesses, and other financial institutions will have to tread even more carefully if they continue to transact with Iran." Indeed, the FTO label makes it a crime to knowingly provide material support to the IRGC. It also puts immigration restrictions on anyone who's ever been linked to the IRGC, potentially blocking them from entering the U.S.

A potentially risky precedent

Putting the IRGC on the State Department's FTO list is the latest in the administration's campaign against Tehran, which aims to force it to the negotiating table to relinquish its ballistic missile program and support for proxy groups across the region. But "it is an action heavy on messaging with few practical advantages," Matthew Levitt, a counterterrorism and intelligence program director at the Washington Institute and former U.S. Treasury official, wrote in an analysis piece this week.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, present details of the new sanctions on Iran, at the Foreign Press Center in Washington, Monday, Nov. 5, 2018. J. Scott Applewhite | AP

He and several other experts worry that the decision "could prompt other governments to follow suit and apply their own reciprocal designations to U.S. or other allied government agencies."

Will it actually work?
US President Donald Trump speaks as Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Kevin K. McAleenan (2nd R) watches during a meeting at the Customs and Border Protection National Targeting Center in Sterling, Virginia on February 2, 2018.

The New York Times reported that Trump pushed Kevin McAleenan to take that action last week, despite having publicly claimed days beforehand that he was giving Mexico a warning of one year to stop illegal immigration and drugs flowing over its border or face a shutdown of the crossing.

President Donald Trump urged the now-acting secretary of Homeland Security to close the U.S. border with Mexico, and that he would pardon him if he suffered any legal fallout from following Trump's directive, new reports said Friday.

CNN, quoting two senior administration officials, said that during a visit by the president to the border at Calexico, California, Trump told McAleenan, who at the time was commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, that "he would pardon him if he ever went to jail for denying US entry to migrants."

McAleenan has since been named acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security on the heels of the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen. She had rebuffed the president's earlier efforts to close the border because it would be illegal.

The White House had no immediate comment when contacted by CNBC.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman said: "At no time has the President indicated, asked, directed or pressured the Acting Secretary to do anything illegal. Nor would the Acting Secretary take actions that are not in accordance with our responsibility to enforce the law."
Since taking office, Trump has called out major trading partners including the EU, China and Canada for what he deemed unfair practices that affected American workers and companies. Trump increased tariffs on some U.S. imports, which led to a global trade fight that many governments and analysts blamed for hurting economic activity. Hubertus Muhlhauser, the CEO of European-based capital goods firm CNH Industrial, explained that his company had exposure to the U.S. agriculture market and said any escalation with the EU would be concerning. "We are really allies, we are in the same situation, we have to find a trade deal," he told CNBC's Julianna Tatelbaum on Friday. "We are very concerned if there's not a trade deal found that the retaliation actions from the Europeans will go against the U.S. farmers and again this is not in the interest of the United States," he added.

The IMF this week slashed its forecast for global growth for the third time since last October. The fund said the world economy is projected to grow by 3.3 percent in 2019  down from an earlier forecast of 3.5 percent. European economies are expected to be among the largest contributors to the global slowdown, according to the IMF. That's coming at an inopportune time for the bloc, according to Pierre Moscovici, European commissioner for economic and financial affairs, taxation and customs. The region, he explained, is currently preparing for another potential blow: The U.K. leaving the EU without a deal. The U.K. and the EU earlier this week reached an agreement to once again extend the Brexit deadline until Oct. 31. The next six months should be spent on ensuring the U.K. doesn't crash out of the bloc and slow down the European and global economy even more, Moscovici told CNBC's Bercetche at the same Washington meeting. "Let's avoid a no-deal (Brexit)," he said. "We must really find a way to live together and for that, a deal  I don't know which deal, it's up to (the U.K.) to say precisely what they want  is much preferable to no deal."
Trump administration officials sought to bus detained immigrants to so-called sanctuary cities as a way to retaliate against the president's adversaries, two sources with knowledge of the discussions confirmed to NBC News on Friday.

A former Department of Homeland Security official said the plan, first reported by The Washington Post, was ultimately scrapped when it was determined to be "so illegal." A White House official who also confirmed the broad outlines of the proposal pushed back on the idea that it was meant as retaliation for toward political rivals, however, calling that "absolutely ridiculous."

DHS on Thursday night told NBC News the proposal had been "a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion."

A White House official who confirmed the broad outlines of the proposal on Friday morning insisted the White House had never pressured Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stop it, but simply floated the plan to officials at the agency.

The official confirmed the idea came up twice  initially as a query to ICE about the possibility, and later to inquire why it wouldn't be legally doable. Matthew Albence, who starts Friday as acting head of ICE, was involved in the assessment of the plan and the ultimate conclusion that it would not be feasible.

The Post quoted DHS officials as saying the administration sought to release detainees in the San Francisco-based district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and in other strongly Democratic districts. It said the White House told ICE that the plan was partly meant to conserve jail space but also partly to "send a message to Democrats."

A source familiar with the plan told NBC News it was designed to "somehow hurt Pelosi."

Another source, a former DHS official, told NBC News of the Trump administration's thinking: "Why release [migrants] into Yuma or Phoenix when you can release them in San Francisco where they want them?"

That same official also said the plan was ultimately dropped when it was determined it was "so illegal."

"The extent of this administration's cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," a spokeswoman for Pelosi told NBC News. "Using human beings  including little children  as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable."

The Post reported that two DHS whistleblowers independently reported the busing plan to Congress and that several DHS officials confirmed their accounts. Two DHS officials said Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser who is widely reported to have assumed control of U.S. border policy, discussed the proposal with ICE, according to The Post.

"Sanctuary cities" is a term used to describe jurisdictions that limit or ban cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Trump has accused Democrats of trying to "turn America into one giant sanctuary city for violent criminals and MS-13 and other gang killers."
The world's largest democratic exercise has just kicked off, with India's 900 million eligible voters making a decision that could impact even the biggest U.S. companies like Amazon and Walmart. While results won't be announced until May 23, investors are reading the tea leaves to see what may be on the horizon for trade issues and the regulation of foreign companies. "If Modi is reelected, the market will have a broader assumption on what to expect. With Congress and regional parties, it's a whole lot less clear what the reform program will look like," Richard Rossow, Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India policy studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told CNBC. Geopolitical consultancy Eurasia Group expects Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party to win by forming a coalition. If the BJP does not win a majority in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, Modi would be limited in his ability to pass economic reforms crucial for the country's development as a global marketplace. The coalition scenario could mean "less latitude to advance reforms," Eurasia analyst Akhil Bery said.

Regulation risks

Retail, especially online, has become a bigger focal point for investors. But industry analysts are worried that efforts to expand in India may be stymied by regulation. While India is one the fastest growing economies in the world, unemployment is still on the rise, threatening the country's growth prospects. The latest data showed unemployment at 6.1%, the highest in 45 years.

Voters stand in queues to cast their votes at a polling booth for the first phase of general elections, on April 11, 2019 in Jammu, India. Voters in 18 Indian states and two Union Territories began casting ballots on Thursday, the first day of a seven-phase election staggered over six weeks in the country of 1.3 billion people. (Photo by Nitin Kanotra/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) Nitin Kanotra | Hindustan Times | Getty Images

"Digital commerce is going to comprise a significant portion of India's economic growth. India is going to have make a decision on the kind of regulatory framework it puts into place," said Nisha Biswal, head of the U.S. India Business Council at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. After push back from local retailers and small businesses, the Indian government recently unveiled new e-commerce rules on foreign companies, targeting Amazon and Walmart's expansion in the country. Walmart acquired Indian online retail giant Flipkart for $16 billion last year. "We've seen a shift back to a little bit more protectionism as the [Indian] government focuses on protecting local mom and pop retailers," said Dinesh Moorjani of Comcast Ventures to CNBC.

Trade looms on the horizon

After the ballots are counted, the winner will have to confront lingering trade issues with Washington. The U.S. threatened to remove India's preferential trade status, elevating friction between the two countries. "There are a lot of tensions particularly in the U.S.-India trade relationship  and these are long-standing, they're not a surprise to anyone who has been tracking these issues," said Alyssa Ayres, senior fellow for South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. CSIS' Rossow agreed, saying the trade fight with India has been going on "for quite some time." "India was added to the currency manipulation watch list last year. And the Section 232 tariffs against steel and aluminum producers hit India even harder than China. India is a bigger steel exporter to the U.S. than China," Rossow said. India requested an exemption, but that was denied. New Delhi subsequently threatened retaliatory tariffs, but those have yet to be implemented. There are a number of other trade issues that could make it harder for foreign companies to increase their positions in India, said Ayres, who previously served as U.S. deputy assistant secretary of State for South Asia between 2010 and 2013. She said those include intellectual property rights protections, medical device price caps and limits on foreign direct investment.

An opportunity too good to pass up
Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron, speaking at the 2019 WEF in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 23rd, 2019. Adam Galica | CNBC

To understand why Chevron struck the biggest oil and gas deal in years to purchase Anadarko Petroleum, you should probably pull out a globe. Start in Texas, where Chevron will expand its presence in the top U.S. shale field. Then trace a line to the Gulf of Mexico, where the energy giant will grow its offshore drilling operations. Next, skip across the Atlantic to southern Africa, where Chevron will acquire a massive natural gas export project that's currently under development. The $33 billion blockbuster acquisition  $50 billion including debt  ranks as the sixth-largest oil and gas deal on the books, according to Drillinginfo and Dealogic. It's the largest deal since 2015, when Royal Dutch Shell bought British energy giant BG Group for $82 billion in enterprise value. Here's why Chevron thinks Anadarko is worth the record-setting price tag.

Deal helps Chevron transform shale drilling

Shale drilling, or extracting oil and gas from rock formations, is fueling a boom in U.S. production. Small, independent drillers pioneered U.S. shale production, but the new rule is "the shale game is a scale game," according to Chevron CEO Michael Wirth. Now that the industry has refined technologies such as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the next frontier is industrializing the shale process. That's where companies such as Chevron come in.

Oil majors have the scale and financial wherewithal to essentially turn shale fields into factories. They do that by stringing together large parcels of continuous acreage, which allows them to do highly efficient pad drilling on a massive scale. Pad drilling involves drilling multiple horizontal wells from a single location. Chevron says it can produce oil and gas from a one-square-mile area from a single drilling pad. On Friday, Chevron highlighted that the Anadarko deal creates a 75-mile-wide corridor in the Delaware Basin portion of the larger Permian Basin, the biggest U.S. shale field.

The acquisition allows Chevron to expand its Permian acreage

The 2014-2016 oil price crash sparked a land rush in the Permian, where drillers can produce crude at low breakeven costs compared with other regions. With the best land spoken for, energy companies are now turning to mergers and acquisitions to enhance their positions in the region underlying western Texas and eastern New Mexico. That's illustrated in the Chevron-Anadarko deal, which connects a large patch of Chevron's Permian acreage in Culberson County, Texas, with Anadarko's holdings in neighboring Reeves and Loving counties. Wirth says Chevron plans to add more rigs, expand pad drilling and introduce his company's digital analysis to the Anadarko-held land. "Clearly, a large driver of the deal is Anadarko's prized position in the Delaware Basin where Chevron increases its position by 240,000 net acres to over 1,400,000 net acres," said Andrew Dittmar, a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Drillinginfo. "The Delaware Basin currently provides the best well economics of any shale play in the country." According to sources, Occidental Petroleum also sought to snap up Anadarko. Occidental operates around the world, but its U.S. operations are focused on the Permian  including in the Delaware Basin sub-region that Chevron highlighted. The Chevron deal will likely prompt oil majors to consider purchases of Permian players like Pioneer Natural Resources, EOG Resources and even Occidental, said Dan Eberhart, CEO at oilfield services firm Canary. "Chevron buying Anadarko is the first in a series of takeovers as oil companies rush to scale to make shale work," Eberhart said in an email. "It is nearly always cheaper to drill for oil on Wall Street than in the oil patch."

Chevron gets a foothold in Colorado's DJ Basin and beyond

Wirth also thinks Chevron can put its scale game to work in Colorado, where Anadarko has 400,00 acres of continuous acreage in the core of the DJ Basin, another major shale region. While the market was largely focused on the Permian on Friday, the DJ Basin actually makes up a bigger part of Anadarko's portfolio. It is Anadarko's biggest source of natural gas sales and its second-biggest oil-producing region. Analysts say those assets, along with acreage in other parts of the U.S., shouldn't be overlooked. Chevron's "announcement to acquire [Anadarko] displays further commitment to US onshore development, adding a highly-scalable position in the Delaware but also the DJ and Powder River basins," Justin Lepore, senior associate at RS Energy Group, said in an email.

Chevron ups its Gulf of Mexico game

Chevron currently has six deepwater hubs in the Gulf of Mexico. Once the deal closes, that number will increase to 16 facilities. Those assets also complement each other. Chevron points out that many of the platforms are within a 30-mile radius of the two companies' deepwater acreage. That creates an opportunity to produce offshore oil and gas by connecting fields to existing hubs, rather than investing in expensive new infrastructure. Companies are increasingly using these so-called tiebacks to keep costs down. Wirth declined to name specific tieback opportunities, but noted that Chevron has recently made several discoveries that could be candidates.

Chevron expands its LNG portfolio

Like other oil majors, Chevron is betting big on liquefied natural gas, a form of the fuel super-chilled to liquid form for transport on tankers. The company has two massive LNG facilities in Australia and a stake in southern Africa's Angola LNG, and it plans to develop another project in British Columbia. The Anadarko deal will add to that position with Mozambique LNG, a project under development that will take advantage of a giant gas field off the coast of Mozambique. Anadarko is close to greenlighting the project, which has already locked up customers in some of the biggest LNG markets around the world. "Mozambique offers attractive long-term growth and diversification opportunities for Chevron's LNG portfolio," said Frank Harris, vice president for LNG consulting at energy and mining research firm Wood Mackenzie.

Deal makes Chevron a midstream player
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Jet Airways suspends flights to and from Singapore amid deepening financial woes

India's cash-strapped Jet Airways has suspended fights to and from Singapore on Thursday, April 11, Changi Airport said in an advisory on Facebook.

The airline also grounded 10 aircrafts after failing to pay lessors, according to media reports.

The move comes as a consortium of State Bank of India-led lenders are trying to sell a majority stake in the debt-laden airline to keep it flying.

Photo courtesy: Wikimedia

Once the second biggest airline in its home country, Jet Airways is close to collapsing under its debt. Most of its planes have been grounded as the airline struggles to pay aircraft lessors and staff. Currently, it is only flying 16 planes out of its 119-strong fleet.

Hundreds of flights have been cancelled in recent weeks, said media reports, leaving thousands of customers stranded in recent weeks after hundreds of flights were cancelled, in some cases with little or no notice.

Hit by fierce competition from budget airlines, a declining rupee and fluctuating oil prices, the airline first raised alarm bells in August last year  when it failed to report its quarterly earnings or pay staff, including pilots. It later reported a loss of SGD 115 million.

Jet Airways founder and chairman Naresh Goyal stepped down as chairman and from the company board last month, along with his wife Anita.

Airlines in India are scrambling to survive, as their profits get virtually wiped out due to extreme bargain fares, high oil prices and a weak rupee. Media reports noted that the airlines are paying taxes of up to 44 percent on jet fuel, the highest in Asia. At the same time, they are forking out billions for new planes to keep up with passenger demand.
Sprit of valour exemplified at India-Singapore joint army exercise at Babina

The Indian Army and the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) concluded their annual joint training exercise for armoured units Bold Kurukshetra 2019 at a training facility in Babina, near Jhansi in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

This was the 12th edition of the joint military exercise which was conducted from April 8 to 11.

Handing over of ceremonial flag taking place at the opening ceremony of India-Singapore joint army exercise at Babina Military station near Jhansi in the Indian State of Uttar Pradesh. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Defence, India

More than 100 SAF personnel from 42 Singapore Armoured Regiment moved into Babina in the first week of April to undertake orientation training and independent drills. Several support units had already moved in earlier to prepare for the exercise.

Upon arrival, the India Army facilitated special lectures and demonstrations for safety including local weather conditions, prevention of heat stroke, handling of medical exigencies and equipment safety.

Indian and Singapore army officers holding joint sand model discussion during the joint army exercise. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Defence, India

As part of the independent drills, the Singapore Army Formation undertook various preparatory evolutions including vehicle handling training and live evolutions of Land Assault Mine Breaching Equipment.

Brigade Commanders conducting joint review of the parade at the opening ceremony of India-Singapore joint army exercise at Babina Military station. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Defence, India

At the opening ceremony, a contingent each from both forces took part in a joint parade which was reviewed by Brigade Commanders of both Formations.

After the opening ceremony, troops from both armies quickly got into action and conducted joint tactical discussions and a Table Top Exercise to enhance mutual understanding and interoperability.

Armoured combat units of India and Singapore jointly undertook various challenging combat manoeuvres including live firing drills during four days of joint exercise. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Defence, India

The armoured combat units from both sides jointly undertook various challenging combat manoeuvres including live firing drills during the four days of joint exercise.

Ex #BoldKurukshetra 2019 culminated with Live #Firing Exercise at #Babina Field Firing Ranges. This bilateral exercise has marked another milestone in the Defence #Cooperation and #Synergy between the armies of two nations. #SingaporeArmedForces #IndianArmy pic.twitter.com/VBFMVzU3pQ  ADG PI - INDIAN ARMY (@adgpi) April 11, 2019

SAF undertakes similar bilateral training exercises in India for the artillery units as well as the Fighter Squadrons of Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF).

Joint photograph of the Indian and Singapore army personnel who took part in the India-Singapore joint military exercise Bold Kurukshetra 2019 at Babina Military station. Photo courtesy: Ministry of Defence, India

Both Navies have alternately been hosting an annual maritime exercise for the last 25 years. In keeping with their shared vision for a peaceful and progressive South East Asia, India and Singapore remain committed to increasing their bilateral defence cooperation engagements; as also with the wider ASEAN neighbourhood.

Besides joint military training, both defence establishments also interact regularly through high-level visits, policy dialogues, courses, seminars and other professional exchanges.
Civil servants ordered to stand down no-deal planning

N

Some 6,000 no-deal staff return to normal duties  The Guardian

Carney says managed no-deal less costly than crashing out  FT

o deal Brexit plans have been shelved by the Government with immediate effect as Theresa May faced mounting pressure from Cabinet ministers, Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP to name a date for her departure. Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, told the civil service to wind down worst-case scenario no-deal planning after the European Union imposed a further six-month Brexit delay on Theresa May. Crispin Blunt, a Eurosceptic Tory MP, said the end of no-deal planning represented a complete betrayal of the referendum and described the move as a dereliction of duty. A Government source said that while Operation Yellowhammer, which involves doomsday contingencies for a no-deal Brexit, is being wound down other plans remain in place.  Daily Telegraph

London:

May could bring forward bill to break Brexit deadlock  The Times

as she tells EU to ignore Rees-Mogg  The Guardian

Cox says Government is prepared to listen on second referendum  Daily Telegraph

Prime Minister doubles down on Labour talks  FT

May and Corbyn have more agreement on customs union  Daily Mail

Brussels:

Pressure exposes cracks in Franco-German partnership  FT

EU leaders subdue Macron  The Times

Analysis:

Britain has more time, but few options  Oliver Wright, The Times

Macron might have rescued both Brexit and the EU  Tim Wallace, Daily Telegraph

Brexit is like a slow puncture in the British economy  Chris Giles, FT

A general election is probably coming, and will unlock Brexit  Anand Menon, The Guardian

Window open for flights of unicorns  Henry Newman, Times Red Box

Editorial:

Delay offers respite for the UK  FT

>Today:

>Yesterday:

Party chiefs preparing for leadership contest in the summer

Tory Party chiefs are gearing up for a summer leadership contest in preparation for Theresa May quitting, the Daily Mail has learned. Senior officials have drawn up detailed plans for hustings between leadership candidates, including scouting locations across the country, sources said. Details of the preparations come as a string of Eurosceptic Tory MPs called for Mrs May to resign after she agreed to delay Brexit further. For a comment piece it might be worth doing either Nick Timothy or the Telegraph editorial calling on May to go (again). But in the Commons, loyalist MPs rallied behind Mrs May, telling her to ignore the bullies and stay on to get Brexit through.  Daily Mail

May faces renewed calls to resign  Daily Telegraph

Prime Minister is warned of Cabinet bid to oust her  Daily Express

Eurosceptics vent fury  FT

DUP:

Johnsons team in talks with the Democratic Unionists  The Times

who demand May uses time to fix backstop  The Sun

Wilson clashes with the Prime Minister in the Chamber  News Letter

Comment:

Britain is held hostage by party members  Philip Collins, The Times

Editorial:

Choice is now Brexit or May  Daily Telegraph

Just wait until MPs revoke Article 50  The Sun

>Today: Profiles: Amber Rudd  moderation-preaching, whip-defying, No Deal-opposing. And sought by leadership contenders for support.

>Yesterday:

Donations flood in to the Brexit Party ahead of launch on Saturday

Tories could lose half their 18 MEPs  Daily Telegraph

MPs may boycott the Euros campaign  The Guardian

Bloodbath anticipated at local elections too  The Sun

Change UK asks to see social media posts of would-be MEPs  The Times

Taxpayers face 109 million bill  Daily Telegraph

Nigel Farages Brexit Party has reportedly received 750,000 in small donations in the last 10 days, as the fledgeling party prepares for the European Parliament elections next month. Prominent Brexiteer Mr Farage vowed to lead a fightback against the establishment, which he said has betrayed the trust of the British people. Mr Farage will launch his partys campaign for the elections in Coventry today, after Theresa May agreed to a six-month delay to Brexit. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he described the extension as nothing short of a national humiliation. He added that the UK is governed by a ruling class and that Brexit now represents a battle between the people and the politicians.  Daily Express

Comment:

My party will give people a chance to change politics  Nigel Farage, Daily Telegraph

Dont let apathy give extremists victory  Vicky Ford MP, Times Red Box

Pampered life of British MEPs is about to get cushier  Madeline Grant, Daily Telegraph

>Today: ToryDiary: Polls, Brexit postponed  and the slump of the Conservative vote

>Yesterday:

Fraser Nelson: If anything, the chaos has only stiffened my resolve over Brexit

Yet of the many strange things we are seeing during this debacle, one of the strangest is how few have changed their mind  in spite of seeing the Brexit process turn into a top-to-bottom horror show. The mayhem has not put them off. And why? Because mayhem was expected. The leader of every political party in Parliament, business groups, trade unions, scientists, actors, spy chiefs  all urged the country to vote Remain. Those who declined to do so knew that they were capsizing the boat and expected to see important people splashing around for quite a while. The language and tactics used by Donald Tusk and others has also reminded people like me how I was naive to think the EU would ever reform.  Daily Telegraph

Die-hards must wake from no-deal dreams  Iain Martin, The Times

The nationalist right has lost the battle for Brexit  Martin Kettle, The Guardian

Britain can now change its mind  Philip Stephens, FT

Ministers 1) Javid brings in tougher sentences for visiting terror hotspots

remaining in the area as a way of protecting the public from a risk of terrorism.  The Times

Jihadi brides could face ten years in jail  The Sun

Ministers 2) Wright hints at crackdown on online gambling

British citizens who travel to overseas terrorism hotspots face up to ten years in jail under new laws which come into force today. Under the legislation targeting potential foreign fighters, it becomes an offence to enter or remain in a designated area. Sajid Javid, the home secretary, announced the measure last year as part of a government drive to tackle the threat of people going overseas to fight. The Counter Terrorism and Border Security Act gives the home secretary the power to designate an area and if someone enters or remains there a ten-year jail term could be imposed. Mr Javid has to be satisfied that it is necessary to designate an area in order to restrict UK nationals and residents from travelling to or

The Government may ban gambling with credit cards, a minister hinted yesterday. Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright said it intends to take action on the back of recommendations from the Gambling Commission on the issue. He told MPs he has a good deal of sympathy with Labour calls to prevent credit card gambling. His remarks came after Shadow Culture Secretary Tom Watson raised the case of a woman who racked up a debt of more than 100,000 using nine credit cards in just two days gambling online.  The Sun

Mercer attacks apparent attempt to dig up dirt on him

Willetts speaks out against Mays university reforms

A Tory MP has accused the Conservative whips office of contacting his former military colleagues in a bid to dig up dirt on him. Johnny Mercer, 37, a former army officer, said that he had been contacted by a serving friend telling him of attempts by other Tory MPs to find out damaging information about his past. Westminster folklore has long maintained that whips, the MPs responsible for maintaining party discipline, seek to obtain awkward secrets about their colleagues in order to leverage the information in exchange for loyalty in votes. Mr Mercer, MP for Plymouth Moor View, yesterday shared a text message on social media from a former army comrade.  The Times

A university shake-up ordered by Theresa May could lead to a two-tier system in which the rich buy places on degree courses, a former minister has warned. Students with poor A level grades, such as three Ds or below, could be banned from applying for loans in an attempt to raise degree standards. A government-commissioned review, conducted by Philip Augar, is believed to be considering the proposal. Lord Willetts, the former universities minister, said that this would create a system that allowed rich parents of low-achieving pupils to pay their tuition fees. Poorer students with low grades would be unable to afford to go to university. He suggested lowering the salary threshold for repaying tuition fees, as a way to save taxpayer money.  The Times

Labour mulls automatic registration to raise voter turnout

Speaker candidates prepare for campaign

Labour is to consider adopting automatic voter registration as a policy if it came into power in order to increase election turnout. The party, which timed its announcement on Friday to coincide with the last day that people can register to vote in local elections on 2 May, said it would examine different options used internationally, including where automatic voter registration had successfully increased overall registration levels. Cat Smith, Labours shadow minister for voter engagement, has been tasked with examining systems in Canada, Belgium and a number of other countries where an automatic voter registration system has been successfully introduced. An estimated seven million people in the UK are not on the electoral register.  The Guardian

Mr Bercow, 56, is still expected to step down in June despite Wednesday nights decision to delay the Brexit date until the end of October A friend of Ms Harman said that she was certain to run as there is an absolute crisis of confidence in public trust in parliament so in addition to competent chairing, we need someone who can speak out nationally for parliament and who is a moderniser. Ms Harman, 68, set up the cross-party Wright commission that led to elections for select committee chairmen and chairwomen. There is also a cross-party alliance for a woman Speaker. Dame Eleanor Laing, a deputy speaker, has already confirmed in the House magazine that she will run. Lindsay Hoyle, also a deputy speaker, is also expected by many to run but his office declined to comment.  The Times

Sturgeon muddies waters over independence vote

N

She vows to address the question after Easter  The Scotsman

icola Sturgeon has created further confusion over her position on a new independence referendum by saying she said will spell out her views after Easter, while at the same time demanding a second vote on Brexit. In a letter to Theresa May she said the extension to Brexit must be used constructively and called on the Prime Minister to drop her red lines and stage a so-called Peoples Vote. However, she is also facing a split in her party over the timing of indyref2, with prominent Nationalists demanding a new vote on breaking-up Britain in the next six months. Angus MacNeil, the veteran Western Isles MP, tweeted that the Brexit can had been kicked down the road and the party should not follow suit by kicking indyref2 behind it.  Daily Telegraph

Comment:

First Minister under pressure as Brexit fails to hasten separation  Alan Cochrane, Daily Telegraph

>Yesterday: Henry Hills Red, White, and Blue column: Support for independence slumps in latest Scottish polling

Assange faces years in prison

Julian Assange is facing decades in a US prison for espionage after he was dragged ranting from the Ecuadorean embassy in London nearly seven years since seeking protection inside. The Wikileaks founder was hauled into a police van yesterday morning after Ecuador revoked his asylum and allowed officers from Scotland Yard to storm the premises in Knightsbridge. Looking pallid, with an unkempt white beard and long hair, Assange, 47, shouted: Resist this attempt by the Trump administration. The UK must resist. The US Department of Justice swiftly unsealed an indictment calling for his extradition in connection with one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history.  The Times

Corbyn demands Government opposes US extradition demands  Daily Telegraph

Comment:

He risked the lives of countless agents  Anthony Glees, Daily Mail

Editorial:

An overdue eviction  The Times

News in Brief:
Amber Rudd this week downplayed reports that she will back Boris Johnson in the Tory leadership race. She is unlikely to make a public declaration of her preference until the race is under way and we can see who the candidates are.

But she makes no secret of the considerations which will guide her choice. Since her return in November to the Cabinet, its soft Brexiteer members have looked much better organised.

Rudd, David Gauke, Greg Clark and David Mundell together broke a three-line whip and refused to vote against a motion to take no deal off the table. They defied collective responsibility and got away with it.

Their refusal to vote with the Government upset a considerable number of colleagues, and almost certainly leaves Rudd out of contention as a figure who could reunite the party when Theresa May steps down.

But whoever does take over as leader will need a team that embraces both wings of the party. And as one of the leading figures in the One Nation group, whose formation was announced by Nicky Morgan in her piece on ConHome on Monday, Rudd has a representative value, even if, as is probable, she could not persuade its 40 or so members to vote as a bloc.

A week before Morgans piece appeared, Johnson wrote in his Daily Telegraph column that we need to get back to explaining our One Nation Tory approach, and the vital symmetry between great public services and a dynamic free market economy.business can only flourish if the public sector creates the right seed-bed for growth: safe streets, high skills, good health care and the rest. One Nation Tories understand the need to satisfy both sides of the equation, and it is a profoundly moderate creed.

He evidently proposes to unite the party by reaching out to One Nation Tories like Rudd. And she has indicated a certain receptivity to such an approach, for example in an interview for The Mail on Sunday last November, when she described herself and Johnson as good friends, and added that unlike Jacob Rees-Mogg, he is not socially illiberal.

She backed Johnson during his brief, ill-fated leadership bid in 2016  having been deployed by the Remain campaign in the ITV television debate only a few weeks earlier, when she tried to derail Johnson by saying of him: Hes the life and soul of the party, but hes not the man you want driving you home at the end of the evening.

Since the 2015 general election she had been Energy and Climate Change Secretary, her first Cabinet post, but she did not demand the promise of a job in some future Johnson administration.

She wanted a commitment on climate change, which Johnson was happy to give, though after her request was fed in to his chaotic campaign, nothing happened.

Some Conservative MPs, especially those who are likely to support other leadership contenders, regard the idea of a Johnson-Rudd alliance as a cynical ploy, comparable to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, as one of them put it, and no more likely to work than the alliance between Ken Clarke and John Redwood in the leadership contest of 1997.

Once Redwood had been knocked out, most of his supporters refused to transfer to Clarke, whose views on Europe they found repugnant. They instead decided to back William Hague, who came through and won.

But while it was hard to imagine that Clarke and Redwood had ever enjoyed each others company, Johnson and Rudd are old friends.

This opens them to the accusation that they would form, as another observer with a deep knowledge of the party puts it, a poshocracy.

It is certainly true that like Johnson, Rudd possesses, through her family, a remarkable range of connections. But she also wins golden opinions from a considerable number of Conservative MPs.

As Keith Simpson, a Norfolk MP since 1997, says:

I think she is a highly intelligent, feisty woman, with great courage, wonderful and classy, descended on her mothers side from an illegitimate child of Charles II. One can imagine casting her as the headmistress in a 1950s St Trinians film. She was very much part of the Cameron/Osborne group, but that didnt really damage her with Mrs May. A lot of them were put to the sword, but she impressed by her command of detail, and was very good at baiting Boris during the referendum campaign. Shes like Michael Gove  shell happily stop and chat to you, ask you what are you doing, what are you reading. She passes the dinner party test  would you want to go to a dinner party with them  because it wouldnt just be about her. She has a genuine interest in other people.

Poshness, as long as it is progressive, can still work in the Conservative Party, as David Cameron demonstrated.

In January 1957, Harold Macmillan, a businessman by profession, a member of the ruling class by education and marriage, a progressive and an Anglican by conviction, an opportunist when required, seized the Conservative leadership from under the nose of Rab Butler.

Tory MPs of an imperialist outlook wanted to believe that the Suez debacle of late 1956 had not been a fatal blow to British prestige, and Macmillan managed to give them the impression that some kind of victory had occurred, and that they could still win the next general election.

Harold Wilson, who within a few years would become Labour leader, watched the new Prime Ministers performance with admiration: Macmillan is a genius. He is holding up the banner of Suez for the party to follow and is leading the party away from Suez. Thats what Id like to do with the Labour Party.

It is possible that the next Conservative leader will need, after the humiliations of Brexit, to do something similar. Macmillan led the party to a great general election victory in 1959, when it won almost 50 per cent of the vote by appearing more modern, and more efficiently devoted to the peoples welfare, than Labour did.

Rudd belongs in that progressive Conservative tradition, and is acutely aware of the need for an election victory, her majority in Hastings and Rye having shrunk in 2017 from 4,796 to 346.

Momentum activists from all over the south coast see the chance to turf her out by converging on Hastings.

In an earlier profile for ConservativeHome, I sketched Rudds early life, but omitted to mention that like her parents, she is an Anglican, who worships at St Mary Abbots in Kensington.

Her marriage to A.A.Gill, which ended in divorce but not acrimony, suggests she would not be deterred by the challenge of managing a highly gifted but not entirely reliable man.

Rudd is now, as Work and Pensions Secretary, in charge of the implementation of Universal Credit, a task to which she seems to be bringing a certain realism.

As Home Secretary, the post she occupied from July 2016 to April 2018, she was unseated by the Windrush scandal, during which it looked culpably naive of her not to have realised that her department would set targets for the removal of immigrants, and would try to meet these by picking on people who in no way deserved to be treated harshly, having lived peaceably and lawfully in this country for half a century.

She said she was unaware of any targets, after which a memorandum surfaced which had been copied to her office and which set a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017-18.

The Guardian also published a letter from Rudd to the Prime Minister in which she spoke of an ambitious but deliverable target for deporting migrants. As soon as this came out, Rudd resigned.

Her defenders observe that the Home Office is an exceptionally difficult department to get any sort of control over, as shown by the large number of ministerial resignations from it over the years.

They add that it was her predecessor, May, who in 2010 established the hostile environment policy for immigrants, in the expectation that they would find it very difficult to prove that they had the right to remain, and could be pressured into leaving of their own accord.

Rudds critics say that because of her privileged background, she failed to understand the horrible predicament in which members of the Windrush generation had been placed, and the quite unreasonable demands for documentary evidence being made by the Home Office. Certainly the Home Secretarys inexperience had been exposed.

It is by no means certain who Rudd will end up backing in the leadership contest. She could start by backing a member of the One Nation group, and switch in a later round to one of the other candidates.

But her endorsement will be eagerly sought, for she is respected beyond the circle of those who agree with her views on Brexit. Rees-Mogg told Sophy Ridge at the weekend: Ive always thought highly of Amber Rudd. Shes a long-standing friend of my sisters as it happens and a person of first-class capabilities. I happen to disagree with her on the European issue.

Not all Tory MPs are as charitable as Rees-Mogg about colleagues with whom they disagree. Rudd has deeply annoyed some on both the Remain and the Leave sides by that recent refusal, while a Cabinet minister, to vote with the Government.

Nor will some of her One Nation allies regard the prospect of Johnson as the next leader as in any way tolerable. And she herself might in the end decide to support Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt or some other contender.

Tory leadership contests are very seldom predictable, and a relatively untried and unknown figure such as Matt Hancock could come through, in a John Majorish way, as the stop Johnson candidate.

But Rudd is one of the few members of the present Cabinet who does not give the impression of having had her personality flattened by the sacrifices demanded by a ministerial career. Her support is worth having because she is her own woman.
Dr Dan Boucher was the Conservative candidate in Swansea East at the 2017 General Election.

One of the remarkable things about the unwritten British constitution is the way in which parliamentarians willingly stop short of pressing home what would otherwise be a political advantage because of unwritten conventions. Why is it that legislators stoically abide by these codes even when it costs them? Perhaps the answer lies in their effect. Enabling us to rise above the need for the aggressive application of law, they impart a certain constitutional flexibility and freedom. To some this might seem rather quaint, but it arguably brings, or at least should bring, a sense of dignity to our arrangements.

One such convention is the Salisbury-Addison Convention which has obtained since 1945. Named after the Conservative and Labour leaders in the Lords, it established the principle that the unelected chamber should not block a Bill at Second or Third Reading which was introduced in order to honour a manifesto commitment made by the elected party of government.

This principle makes good sense. Notwithstanding the constraints on its power, the Conservative-dominated Lords could have pressed home its right to vote down the Attlee Governments legislation. Rather than taking this path, however, Conservative peers proactively recognised a moral obligation to respect the ballot box and, rather than waiting to be forced by law to have this freedom fettered, chose to rise to this challenge by embracing what was effectively a principled self-restraint. It is this capacity for principled self-restraint that does not seek the pressing home of legal rights just because it is possible to do so, but effectively pauses to ask whether it is right to press home such rights, which has helped to enable our political institutions to evolve out of difficulty.

The vitality of the British constitutional tradition, which famously finds it strength in being an ongoing growth rather than a finished creation, expresses itself not only by upholding existing conventions but also in developing new conventions, recognising the need for new manifestations of self-restraint as our political system evolves. In this regard, the constitutional convention that was inaugurated by Lords Salisbury and Addison in the 1940s is relevant to our present predicament.

The current difficulty arises from the fact that we have a referendum result pointing in one direction and a parliamentary majority pointing in another. Some might respond to this by saying that, as a matter of law, Parliament has the final say. On this basis, from a technical legal point of view, referenda are always advisory. Having a referendum cannot change the fact that any new law to implement a referendum result must be made by Parliament as our law-making body, not by the people in a mass plebiscite.

This technical legal reality, however, has to be held in tension with the political reality that if you give the people a referendum, dont like their advice and then try to ignore it or tell them they were wrong, you create a huge political problem. This difficulty is greatly compounded in the current context, because the pamphlet the government sent to every household ahead of the referendum said: The referendum on Thursday, 23rd June is your chance to decide if we should remain in or leave the European Union. The sense then was not that the referendum was being held to ask the British people for their advice, but rather to ask them to decide whether or not we should remain in the EU.

Some might respond to this by pointing out that the failure to be clear that the referendum was only advisory does not change the fact that in the British constitutional tradition it could only ever be advisory. Whilst this apparently purist presentation of constitutional doctrine may sound compelling, the truth is that the sovereignty of Parliament does not present a fatal problem for our evolving and unwritten constitution.

There is already an important sense in which, thanks to the Salisbury-Addison Convention, one of the Houses of Parliament has willingly embraced a convention of self-restraint in response to the democratic imperative. Once one House has used its sovereignty to willingly embraced self-restraint in this way, it follows that the other could embrace self-restraint for the same reason. The only difference here is that the nature of the democratic imperative is more compelling in relation to a referendum mandate than in relation to a manifesto mandate  and thus the case for self-restraint by the Commons is stronger.

The Lords embraced voluntary self-restraint because it accepted that the government party is elected by the people on the basis of their manifesto. This then gives its election manifesto democratic legitimacy, even though it is highly unlikely that the winning party will have been elected because all its policies were liked equally. As Philip Norton observes: Though an elected government may claim a mandate for whatever programme was embodied in its election manifesto, it cannot demonstrate definitively overwhelming support for any one particular proposal.

For instance, whilst the electorate returned Margaret Thatcher in 1987 with a majority of over 100, it is doubtful that everyone who voted Conservative was doing so because they wanted the poll tax. By contrast, because a referendum is concerned with a very specific issue (notwithstanding debates about what different words may mean), it is possible to demonstrate express support for a particular proposal  in this case leaving the European Union.

In the context of the enhanced democratic mandate attending a clear public vote on a specific issue, the logic that called the Lords to exercise self-restraint applies even more to the Commons. Crucially, this would not result in changing the fact that Parliament remains sovereign. Parliament would remain so. It would freely choose to use its sovereignty to pass appropriate legislation to respect the referendum result, courtesy of a new convention of self-restraint that would develop (like the Salisbury Convention) to deal with the tensions resulting from the fact that a majority of people voted to leave the EU in the referendum while a majority of MPs would rather remain.

Given that the Salisbury-Addison Convention was named after the Conservative and Labour Leaders in the Lords, perhaps the time has come for a Leadsom-Vaz Convention in the Commons? That would hopefully restore greater dignity to our arrangements, shutting the door on revoking article 50 and hopefully opening the door to a greater determination to really honour the referendum result.
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Hurricane Harvey hit Houston two months after we moved away from the north Houston suburb wed lived in for six years. The natural disaster devasted Houston requiring thousands of water rescues.

Like many of you, I watched the drama play out in real time. I prayed for the victims and rooted for the rescuers. I particularly admired the Cajun Navy, those civilians from south Louisiana who brought their boats and their courage to help their neighbors.

Stories of rescue and deliverance abound, but there is no greater deliverer, no more powerful rescuer than Jesus Christ. Jesus came to earth on a rescue mission.

The night He was born, the angel announced this truth to a bunch of lowly shepherds in the field. And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord (Luke 2:10-11, ESV).

Yes, Jesus came to save our souls, but the scope of His great salvation touches every part of our lives today. Here are 10 ways He's proven to truly be your Deliverer:

Photo Credit: GettyImages/Kieferpix
Genting Cruise Lines welcomed the third member of its Dream Cruises fleet with the christening and inaugural homeport deployment of Explorer Dream at the Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal in a ceremony earlier this week.

Genting said the Explorer Dream is the first newly-launched cruise ship of the post-recalibration period in the Chinese cruise industry and her arrival also marks Dream Cruises debut in Eastern China, with the ship purposely-built and recently renovated for the Asian and Chinese luxury market.

Dream Cruises first 200,000-ton Global Class ship, set to debut in 2021, will also celebrate her inaugural deployment in Shanghai as the largest cruise ship to homeport in the Asia-Pacific.

Dream Cruises is the most recognized cruise brand in Southern China due to World Dream being positioned in the dual homeports of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. However, as we all know, the Eastern and North Chinese market is five times larger than the south and Dream Cruises will be building two 204,000 gross ton Global Class ships to be launched starting early 2021 in Shanghai and Tianjin to accommodate this market. These two ships, being built in our own shipyards Germany, are also designed to be the most advanced and intelligent cruise ships ever to be constructed, said Hui Lim, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Genting Hong Kong. said, In order to prepare the foundations and increase Dream Cruises brand awareness in East and North China, we are pleased today to welcome Explorer Dream in Shanghai as the third ship in our Dream Cruises fleet.

Honorable guests Su Ping, Vice Magistrate of Shanghai Baoshan District Government and Hui Lim, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Genting Hong Kong were joined by management executives and over 500 guests at the ceremonial launch event.

The christening ceremony featured Grace Chen, the godmother of Explorer Dream and one of the most influential fashion innovators in China.

Su Ping, Vice Magistrate of Shanghai Baoshan District Government said, In July 2017, Genting Cruise Lines launched the Golden Sea Route, a seven-night itinerary in Shanghai, which garnered the Best Itinerary Award during the Shanghai Cruise Tourism Festival. In October 2018, a strategic Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Baoshan District Government and Genting Cruise Lines to forge a new partnership. Now, the inaugural arrival of Explorer Dream, the newest member of Dream Cruises in Shanghai, will bring forth distinctive and premium cruise travel products to propel the optimal development of the cruise industry in China.

Sailings from Shanghai homeport on the Explorer Dream will take guests on cruises to popular destinations in Japan that range from three-night to six-night itineraries, such as the three-night cruises to Kyoto, Osaka or Kobe, or the two-night round-trip cruise to Okinawa.

Starting in July, Explorer Dream will begin her homeport deployment in Tianjin. And in October 2019, the Explorer Dream will homeport in Sydney and Auckland.
Frank Del Rio, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, saw total compensation of $22.6 million in 2018 as the company rocketed to a record earnings year with strong performances from Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises.

It was also a good year for Jason Montague, president and CEO of Regent, who saw total compensation of $5.3 million, as did Andy Stuart, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line, seeing similar total compensation.

Compensation was based on various targets, with the company seeing record revenue, record net income and record EPS. Among the highlights the company generated GAAP net income of $954.8 million or EPS of $4.25. Adjusted Net Income was $1.1 billion or Adjusted EPS of $4.92. In addition, total revenue increased 12.2% to $6.1 billion. Gross Yield increased 3.4%.

"Our senior leadership team's focus on driving demand for our brands and executing on our business strategies resulted in record performance for 2018, the company said.

The numbers were reported in an SEC filing by Norwegian. The company noted that annual cash performance incentives were earned based on pre-established targets for entity-wide financial performance.

The SEC filing also said Del Rios employment term extends until Dec. 31, 2020.

Mark Kempa, executive vice president and CFO, is signed through 2021.

Meanwhile, Montague and Stuart both had employment agreements through Dec. 31, 2018, which now renew on one-year terms.

Compensation Table:
There were two more flu-related deaths in Connecticut as the flu continues to be widespread throughout the state.

The Connecticut Department of Public Health said in its weekly flu report that the two flu-associated deaths reported in the 14th week of the year  ending on Saturday, April 6  pushed this seasons total to 66.

Of the 66 deaths in Connecticut, 44 were people over the age of 65, 17 were people between the ages of 50 and 64, four were people between the ages of 25 and 49 and one was a person between the ages of 5 and 17.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the percentage of people nationwide seeing their health care provided with flu-like symptoms is currently at 3.2 percent, above the national average of 2.2 percent.

Between Aug. 26, 2018 and April 6, there have been 3,031 patients admitted to hospitals with lab-confirmed cases of the flu. The percentage of statewide emergency department visits attributed to the flu or flu-like symptoms has decreased from 8.1 percent in week 13 of the year to 7.1 percent in week 14.

There have been 8,929 flu-positive lab tests in the current flu season.

Of the almost 9,000 cases, 2,787 were from New Haven County, 1,965 were from Hartford County, 1,701 were from Fairfield County, 735 were from New London County, 543 were from Litchfield County, 499 were from Middlesex County, 276 were from Windham County and 180 were from Tolland County. The remaining 243 were from unknown counties.
On a recent morning, Lina Schlotter sat at her granite kitchen counter in Simsbury, reading a childs version of Shakespeares Taming of the Shrew aloud to her 10-year-old son, Tucker.

Soon hell be reading the bards original text, while also reading the works of Plutarch, Pilgrims Progress and a biography of Marco Polo  all a part of Schlotters home-schooling plan for her son.

Were doing French right now, we do poetry everyday. Were doing two math programs, natural history, Schlotter said later as she flipped through the thick loose-leaf notebook where she has lessons plans for each day through the end of the year.

Schlotter is so well-organized she already has many of the books that Tucker will need in high school.

The academics are complemented by field trips to museums in Connecticut and Massachusetts, as well as nature walks and sports.

I feel like Im giving my child a steak education, and the public school tries to give them McDonalds, she said.

So Schlotter, like the hundreds of home-schooling parents who made their views known to legislators this year, was relieved last month when the legislatures Education Committee stripped Gov. Ned Lamonts education bill of a provision that would have required home-schoolers to register annually with their school district.

I would prefer to have no regulation, because I dont need it, Schlotter said, though she did allow there might be families who could use some help.

However, while the provision is gone, the idea of requiring home-schoolers to register is not dead.

In fact, at the meeting where Lamonts home-schooling provision was excised, Rep. Liz Linehan, a Democrat from Cheshire who sits on the Education Committee, said the decision to remove the home-schooling bill made it more difficult for her to decide whether to support the governors bill.

In the end, she did support it but said shortly before voting, I believe there should be some regulation of home schooling  I think thats an important piece.

Linehan, who is also co-chairwoman of the Childrens Committee, later said of the proposal to register home-schoolers: I hope it does come back. We are one of only 11 states without any regulatory framework for home schooling.

Anyone can strongly support and acknowledge parents fundamental rights to direct and protect the educational upbringing of their children, Linehan said, but you can still support a regulatory framework thats narrowly tailored to ensure that children are educated and protected from abuse and neglect.

Those are alarming words for home-schooling parents who believe a plan to register their children wont guard against abuse and neglect  one of the motivating concerns behind the legislation  and who worry that registering students is just the first step in a plan to further regulate home schooling.

We believe in the fundamental right of parents to train up their children, said Pam Lucashu, who home-schooled her children and is now legislative liaison for The Education Association of Christian Homeschoolers of Connecticut (TEACH CT), because that right resides with the parents. There isnt any need to involve the state.

Any time you put anything into law, youre putting your nose under the tent, opening the door to increased regulation, said Lucashu, noting that Connecticut laws currently are silent on home schooling.

That contrasts with neighboring states  Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York  that all have high regulation. Connecticut is one of 11 states without even a requirement that parents notify the state of plans to home-school, according to the Home School Legal Defense Association. States in Connecticuts category include Idaho, Texas and Oklahoma.

Other states have requirements such as an annual notification of plans to home school; records of a childs progress and a portfolio of work; a description of curriculum; attendance records; and annual assessments.

No rules, no monitoring

So how is it that Connecticut  a state frequently criticized for having too many regulations and unfunded mandates  has essentially no legal requirements for educating students at home?

Connecticuts statute that enables parents to take children out of school says each parent or other person having control of a child 5 years of age and over and under 18 years of age shall cause such child to attend public school regularly  unless  the parent or person having control of such child is able to show that the child is elsewhere receiving equivalent instruction in the studies taught in the public school.

Thomas Mooney, an expert on education law and a partner with the Hartford law firm Shipman & Goodwin, said he interprets the statute as meaning parents are obligated to show that their children are elsewhere receiving instruction equivalent to the studies taught in the public schools, so thats not voluntary. Its a statutory obligation that the State Department of Education has historically not enforced.

My view is that the state has abdicated its responsibility, he said.

Lawyers for the state Department of Education disagree with that interpretation. A statement from the agencys spokesman said Connecticut is one of only 11 states that does not explicitly require home-schooling parents to provide notice to the district regarding their intent to home school.

While the state does not require notification, it did provide guidance in 1994, recommending  but not requiring  that parents file a notice of intent form with their district providing basic information about their home instruction program. The state also provides a sample form with subjects listed  to be checked off yes or no  including reading, writing, spelling, English grammar, geography, arithmetic, U.S. history and citizenship.

The guidance also suggests that districts hold an annual portfolio review with parents and school officials to determine if instruction in the required courses has been given.

The state Department of Education said in its statement that districts who do receive notification do not report to the department the number of students being home schooled or those who have had a notice of intent filed on their behalf.

As a result, the statement said the department has no real grasp on the size of that population, and therefore we were supportive of the governors efforts to identify and enumerate Connecticuts home-school community.

Timothy Connellan, superintendent in Southington, said he has notices of intent from the parents of about 42 students, most of whom use the form suggested by the state and dutifully check off every subject box.

But he questions the practice, as well as the proposal to make registration a requirement.

We literally have no control over it, Connellan said. Why have them register with local districts, when there is no control whatsoever?

By that, Connellan said, he means the district has neither the power, nor the staff, to oversee what is or isnt being taught to students at home.

I think there should be some sort of monitoring, Connellan said, to ensure students are receiving the education they need. But he says it should be done at a state level because districts are already overwhelmed with responsibilities.

Matthew Tirados death

The proposal that home-schoolers register in person with school districts was tucked into Gov. Ned Lamonts long and complicated education bill, which also included his controversial plan for school regionalization. The proposal also included a requirement that districts post model curricula for elementary school grades that could be used, if desired, by home-schooling parents.

Sue Weisselberg, acting deputy secretary for the Office of Policy and Management, said the bill came out of conversations with state Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell and education advocacy group leaders, including Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, and others.

We were talking about different education issues, and the issue of home schooling came up and that Connecticut had one of the lowest level requirements of any state around, said Weisselberg, adding local school officials sometimes have no idea how many children in their communities are being educated at home.

There was a sense that superintendents stated that they felt they are held accountable for the number of students who might at any time join the district for schooling, but they had no idea how many there were, she said.

But there was also another major reason that leaders, like Linehan, supported the provision, though Weisselberg said it did not prompt the writing of the legislative provision.

That was a report on home schooling issued last year by Child Advocate Sarah Eagan after the death of Matthew Tirado, a 17-year-old Hartford teen with autism who died on Feb. 14, 2017, from starvation, dehydration and child abuse.

In an investigation, the child advocates office found Matthew, though enrolled in the Hartford Public Schools, had not been allowed by his mother to attend school for about a year before his death. The Office of the Child Advocate also reported that despite numerous reports by the school district to DCF alleging abuse and neglect in the Tirado home over the years, Matthews mother successfully withdrew his younger sister from school in November 2017 simply by filing a notice with the district that she would home school the child.

After Matthews death, DCF found no evidence that his sister was, in fact, being home schooled.

Prompted by that case, Eagan became concerned about whether some parents might use the notion of home schooling as a subterfuge for what the parent is actually doing, just hiding the child from public view.

The Office of the Child Advocate decided to review information from six districts, including Hartford, to learn whether there were other children who were removed from school to be home schooled and who lived in families that had a history of involvement with DCF due to reported concerns of abuse or neglect.

The study showed the six districts received notices of intent to home school 380 students between 2013 and 2016 and that more than a third of the children who were withdrawn from school to be home schooled came from families who had previous involvement with DCF because of reported concerns of abuse and neglect.

Our recommendation  was to bring folks to the table to look at how the state could create a safety net for students who are not being removed from school to be educated, Eagan said in a recent interview, but are being removed from school to be hidden.

The investigation showed that many  though not all  parents file for the annual notification, Eagan said, but nobody was doing the annual portfolio review. Once the child was removed from the school district, there was no follow up.

Eagan said the proposal for registration in the governors bill would have been a starting point at least.

Linehan said Eagans report raised concerns about kids falling through the cracks.

I dont think we are in any way saying that home-schoolers abuse and neglect their children, she said. What Im saying is that oftentimes children who are abused and neglected are removed from school under the guise of home schooling.

Another supporter of the provision, Fran Rabinowitz, who served as a superintendent for years in Hamden and Bridgeport, said she does believe home-schoolers should be required, absolutely mandated, to register.

Rabinowitz said most home-schoolers in her experience did a magnificent job, but she has had concerns about what I didnt know about some of the students who were either withdrawn and home schooled or not even attending the school ever.

If she had her druthers, Rabinowitz said, shed like to see home-schoolers follow up with districts and provide progress reports.

I felt like my hands were tied in trying to take a look at what was going on, she said.

A seat at the table

It is the linking of the home-schooling provision to Eagans report, and a fear DCF might become involved with their families, that was particularly irksome for parents.

Look at whats going on in the schools. Theyre not safe there, but yet they are going to be watching us to keep us safe? asked Donna Person, vice president of the Christian home-schooling group TEACH CT. Thats not to say abuse and neglect does not happen in home schooling. Obviously, it can happen in any educational setting, but it doesnt happen at a higher rate. To single out a group of people and start limiting their freedom, theres no basis to do that.

Lucashu, legislative liaison for TEACH CT, agreed.

People who have removed their children to home school and who have abused their children are not the people who are going to comply with any other regulations  The evidence suggests that children are best served when child services focus on identifying high-risk cases and training their staff and focusing their resources there, Lucashu said.

Home-schooling parents also said they were disturbed the proposal was tucked into another bill and no one asked for their opinion.

Schlotter said if changes occur, she at least would like to have a seat at the table.

Rep. Bobby Sanchez, D-New Britain, and co-chairman of the Education Committee, said it seems to him the home-schooling proposal was prompted by the Tirado case.

If it was never an issue before, it shouldnt be an issue now because of one incident, Sanchez said. My feeling is that if it was never a problem before, leave it alone.

Sanchez, who has two nieces who were home schooled and are now in college, said a major problem with the most recent proposal is that it was developed without any parental input.

The governor decided to put this in his (bill), and they went crazy, Sanchez said of the home-schoolers. I can understand, it was a big surprise.

Moving forward, I would like to have a dialogue with home-school parents, he concluded. Maybe the state should know at least how many parents are out there home schooling.
Friday is Day 9 of the Stop & Shop workers strike.

Heres what you need to know.

Are the two sides talking?

Yes.

Both sides said they exchanged proposals, but there was no agreement.

Stop & Shop President Mark McGowan said as negotiations on a new contract continue, I know we are all united in our hope that this situation is resolved soon and that we can all get our energies back to being fully focused on our customers

The UFCW union said Stop & Shop still havent moved from their wage proposal and other substantial issues that matter to you and your coworkers. We will be back at the table tomorrow (Thursday) to continue to work towards an agreement that will make Stop & Shop better for workers and shoppers.

For the unions update on negotiations, click here.

For Stop & Shops updates on negotiations, click here

Whats new?

More News Stop & Shop workers go on strike in CT

Former Vice President Joe Biden attended a rally in Boston on Thurday in support of striking workers.

Stop & Shop president said to the striking workers, I deeply respect your right to picket. It is part of the civil discourse that is so central to our democracy. On several occasions, however, protests have gone far beyond civil - and customers and employees have been threatened, intimidated or put in situations that felt dangerous or disrespectful. That and illegal actions are things that we will - and I will - absolutely not stand for.

Are Stop & Shop stores open?

The only Stop & Shop closed is on Whalley Avenue in New Haven.

Store hours may be different and some services may not be available.

Stop & Shop pharmacies and Peoples United Bank branches are open.

It has posted the stores operating hours here.

How many stores are there?

The grocery giant employs more than 31,000 associates throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The company operates 92 stores in Connecticut alone.

Quincy, Massachusetts-based Stop & Shop, a division of Dutch supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize, has 415 stores across the Northeast but the strike affects 240 stores in the three states.

Should I cross the picket line?

Thats your decision.

Nearly empty parking lots show that many customers have chosen to go to other stores.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 919 asked its members to remain courteous to those who need items from the pharmacies inside the stores. Many of these members of the communities may not have any other options and we know all too well what its like when access to health care is under threat.

Can I support strikers?

Yes.

Check out the GoFundMe page devoted to raising funds for those workers out of jobs. Find the fundraising page by clicking here.
Its wonderful when everything in your business runs smoothly. You know those days -- sales targets get smashed, you win new business and an IT upgrade actually finishes on time. But, we often learn more about ourselves and our businesses in times of trouble. I sincerely hope your crisis never happens. But if it does, here are my tips for handling a crisis like a boss.

Make a list of the five most likely things that could go wrong -- and at least a couple of unlikely things -- that would cause your business big problems. If you own a pizza restaurant, it could be an infestation of rats, a rude waiter upsetting customers or a rival pizza restaurant opening on the next block. Take the emotion out of things by imagining that youre giving advice to a friend, then plan how you should respond to each problem. Pick the spokespeople who can communicate with customers, the media and any investors you may have.

2. Lead on empathy.

A simple and sincere apology will often calm even the angriest of customers. However, a word of warning: Its crucial that the apology comes from you, the boss, not via a carefully worded statement on your companys website or Twitter feed. Apart from being the right thing to do as a human being, it shows that you understand the customers pain, anger or disappointment. It can also help stop the story from escalating on social media or in the media. Also, if possible, publicly commit to find out what happened and promise that it wont happen again.

The United Airlines incident in 2017 -- when a passenger was dragged off an overbooked flight after refusing to give up his seat -- is a an example of how not to apologize. A video of the incident showing the passengers bloodied face took just hours to go viral. Uniteds initial statement about the incident, which apologised for having to re-accommodate passengers was tone deaf and made matters worse. He wasn't re-accommodated -- he was dragged from his seat and off the plane in a traumatic and humiliating incident that became a global news story. The apology looked particularly bad on a CNN split-screen alongside the video footage.

The apology read as if it was written by a lawyer, not a contrite business leader. CEO Oscar Munoz issued a video apology four days later, which was far too late.

3. Dont be too risk-averse.

In my experience, PRs are often too defensive when it comes to how their client deals with the media, especially in a crisis. They play it ultra-safe and encourage the client not to say anything remotely clear, interesting or honest, in case it affects the reputation or profits of the business. The irony is that the public are crying out for leadership and honesty from politicians and business. Take responsibility for what has gone wrong and act.

4. Take action.

Provide a helpline or other form of support for affected customers if necessary. That way, no matter how unexpected or disrupted the situation, you already have the procedures and personnel to respond. Make realistic promises that you can keep, find out what went wrong, publish any review into events afterwards and stick to lessons learned.

Being too cautious can worsen a crisis because you will come across as indecisive. The risk-averse syndrome is at its worst when lawyers call the shots during a corporate crisis. Of course, risks must be considered and mitigated, but they shouldnt be the tail wagging the dog.

5. Keep calm.

Even the most experienced and resilient can become like a deer in the headlights. Its understandable to feel overwhelmed by the pace of events, the media feeding frenzy. The fear, anger and uncertainty can feel all-consuming. I appreciate that you must react promptly to a crisis, but that doesnt mean you should rush. As I half-jokingly say to my clients, take decisions in a brisk but unhurried manner.

A rushed statement about the crisis, in which you may get facts wrong or make rash promises, will make matters worse. Remember the old saying about marrying in haste and repenting at leisure? Take a walk around your block or go for a coffee. That 15 to20 minutes of thinking time could give you some distance from the situation and help you work out how best to deal with it.

Bear in mind that within a couple of days or weeks, a new crisis will knock your company off the front pages. Memories of the event will fade. And if youve handled it well, your reputation may even emerge strengthened, rather than weakened.

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SAUSALITO, Calif. - Former FBI director Jim Comey pushed back on Attorney General William Barr's claim that the U.S. government spied on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign as he pressed the attorney general to release special counsel Bob Mueller's report.

"I don't understand what the heck he's talking about," Comey said here on Thursday. "But when I hear that kind of language used, it's concerning because the FBI and the Department of Justice conduct court-ordered electronic surveillance. I have never thought of that as 'spying.' The reason I'm interested to know what he means by that is that, if the attorney general has come to the belief that that should be called 'spying,' then wow. That's going to require a whole lot of conversations inside the Department of Justice. I don't know of any court-ordered electronic surveillance aimed at the Trump campaign."

Comey fielded questions for an hour-and-a-half during a cybersecurity conference sponsored by the nonpartisan Hewlett Foundation on Cavallo Point, a former U.S. Army post just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. A few dozen technology industry leaders from Silicon Valley and national security insiders from Washington, plus some academics and journalists, are grappling over four days with a thicket of thorny tissues, from when it's appropriate to conduct offensive cyber operations against American adversaries to how social media companies should balance consumer privacy with competing demands.

Testifying before a Senate panel on Wednesday, Barr said the Justice Department is reviewing the decisions made during the 2016 campaign - something Trump has pushed for since taking office. "I think spying did occur," the attorney general said. "I'm not suggesting it was not adequately predicated, but I need to explore that. . . . Frankly, to the extent that there were any issues at the FBI, I do not view it as a problem that's endemic to the FBI. I think there was probably a failure among a group of leaders there in the upper echelon."

Comey, of course, launched the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in 2016. He oversaw it until Trump fired him in May 2017. But Comey emphasized that he's still trying to keep an open mind on Barr, who previously served as George H.W. Bush's attorney general. "I think his career has earned him a presumption that he will be one of the rare Cabinet members who will stand up for things like truth and facts and institutional values," Comey said. "Language like this makes it harder, but I still think he's entitled to that presumption."

The 58-year-old Comey has also been in the news again this week because Trump has continued to attack him by name and refer to him as a "dirty cop." "It was an illegal investigation. It was started illegally. Everything about it was crooked," the president told reporters on Wednesday. "This was an attempted coup. This was an attempted takedown of a president, and we beat them. We beat them!"

Suzanne Spaulding, a former undersecretary at the Department of Homeland Security who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, asked Comey during Q&A with the audience about ongoing Russian efforts to manipulate American public opinion. "I'm worried that we may be missing the boat again around Russia's attacks against the justice system that are ongoing to this day and that you have been a victim of," she said. "Disinformation campaigns have targeted you, Mueller, DOJ and FBI but also courts, judges and prosecutors across the country. . . . How dangerous is it that Russia may be trying to erode confidence in our courts and our justice system? How do we get ahead of this?"

Comey said that he worries more about Trump in this regard than Russian President Vladimir Putin. "My mind actually doesn't go to Russia first when I worry about that threat," he said. "I'm sure Russia is engaged in efforts to undermine all manner of American institutions, but the president of the United States tweets lies about those institutions nearly every day. He does it so often that we've become numb to it. And there's danger in that numbness. I wake up some mornings and the president's tweeted I should be in jail. You know what I do? I laugh and I go, 'Oh, there he goes again.' I don't follow him on Twitter, so I only see it if one of you retweets it. But I laugh. And that laughing is dangerous."

Comey said there's "no conceivable basis" and there's nothing funny about Trump saying innocent Americans should be locked up. "There's not even an investigation of me," he said. "But the numbness is: Holy cow, the president of the United States is announcing that people should be in jail or that the FBI is corrupt! I haven't yet seen how he's going to navigate his belief that he was 'fully exonerated' by a 'corrupt' institution, but he'll navigate it somehow and he'll navigate it with lies. There's tremendous danger to us in our numbness. I'm sure you all feel it."

An erosion of democratic norms is the threat within that keeps Comey up at night. "Every president makes false statements," Comey said. "Barack Obama did it when he said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. George W. Bush when he said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. . . . We held them accountable because we measured their distance to the touchstone of the truth. And those two men spent the rest of their terms and probably the rest of their lives explaining to us - I know, I thought, I meant, I understood - to explain the tether. There are so many lies coming at us now that there's a danger that the touchstone will just wash away and that we will stop measuring our leaders against the truth. It should be plural because the Republican Party bears some responsibility here."

Comey was a registered Republican for most of his adult life. He donated to the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain. Bush 43 appointed him as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and then deputy attorney general. Obama named him as FBI director.

To be sure, Comey emphasized that the U.S. is still not doing enough to counter the threat posed by the Kremlin. "A response to an attack on the United States requires that the commander-in-chief recognize it and understand it," he said. "Our fundamental problem is I don't see that our commander-in-chief acknowledges that it even happened. If you don't acknowledge that another nation attacked you, how can you possibly be doing enough to deal with it the next time? In fact, your silence is an invitation in many ways for them to do it again."

Other highlights:

- Comey said he accepts Barr's summary at face value that Mueller's investigation "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." But he noted that Barr's four-page letter said Mueller did find evidence of Russian interference.

"One of the good things about Barr's letter is that it tells us - without even needing to read the Mueller report - that 'the Russia thing' was not a hoax, that it was real and that that assessment is backed by hard evidence," Comey said, alluding to Trump's acknowledgement in 2017 to NBC's Lester Holt that he had the "Russia thing" on his mind when he fired Comey.

"We need to ask why our president won't acknowledge what his intelligence community has found overwhelmingly," he added. "You need to start there or else you have a situation where the great people who have sworn to protect the United States at lower levels in the government are having to act in the absence of presidential direction and in many ways in the face of presidential denial of a fundamental attack on the United States. I don't think we're adequately prepared and, in many ways, we're inviting it to happen again by virtue of our president's silence."

- Comey said the Russians will try to play aggressively again in the 2020 election. "It is true that the Russians came after us, and they are going to come again because they exceeded their wildest hopes," he said. "They dirtied up our election, they damaged Hillary Clinton and, I don't know what the causal relationship is, but Donald Trump was elected president."

- Comey said he's especially concerned about what Moscow did to fan the flames of racial discord inside the United States, and he hopes that the Mueller report illuminates some of the 2016 misinformation efforts vis-a-vis African-Americans. (I wrote a Big Idea about this in December.)

Pointing to the charges that Mueller brought against the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, Comey said: "You see a lot in the indictment of the Russian actors that showed that their goal was to find our fault lines and to push on them to divide us. Obviously, things like guns are important fault lines, but I don't know of a more important, fundamental, fault line in the United States - since before we were the United States - than race. It appears from the indictment that there was a concerted effort to exploit that fault line to make us hate along lines where we sometimes hate quickly without being pushed. But they pushed."

Barr said on Wednesday that he's still on track to release an abridged version of the 400-page Mueller report early next week. He warned Congress in a letter on March 29th that he will redact sensitive information related to sources and methods, grand jury material, ongoing criminal cases and - most significantly - information that "unduly" infringes upon the privacy and reputational interests of "peripheral third parties." That fourth category gives Barr a lot of wiggle room to hold information back if he chooses to.

Comey urged Barr to err on the side of putting out as much information as possible about "key players" in the Russia probe and pointed to several precedents of the Justice Department weighing in publicly on people who weren't indicted. In doing so, he defended his July 2016 announcement that Hillary Clinton would not be charged with a crime but that her use of a private email server had been "extremely careless." Comey announced shortly before the election that he was reopening the investigation into Clinton because of new information and then said a few days later that he was closing it again. Clinton has blamed Comey, and his letters, for her defeat.

"The Department of Justice has long offered transparency about the conduct of uncharged individuals in cases of legitimate and extraordinary public interest," Comey said. "They did it after Ferguson, Missouri. . . . I did it after I thought the Hillary Clinton investigation was completed. . . . The Department of Justice after the so-called IRS targeting of the tea party criticized the conduct of Lois Lerner but didn't name and criticize the conduct of any lower-level people at the IRS. . . . She was a key player, and for the public to have confidence that the department wasn't pulling its punches they needed to know the department's assessment of this key player. So they said it was poor judgment and bad management, but it didn't rise to the level of criminal conduct.

"That's very similar to what I said in the Hillary Clinton case," Comey continued. "To explain our judgment that this doesn't rise to the level of criminal conduct, we have to explain just what we think it is. Not to attack somebody or disparage them but to be transparent about the basis for this judgment. . . . You'll notice that I didn't talk about anybody else in that announcement in July 2016 except Secretary Clinton, and we tried not to name the people who set up the servers or the peripheral players. That's an important approach to these kinds of things that's consistent with the goal: The public needs to know enough to have confidence that this was done in the right way, and the public doesn't need to know about marginal players for that goal to be achieved."

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller as special counsel eight days after Comey's removal, also wrote the memo justifying Trump's decision to terminate the FBI director based on his handling of the Clinton case. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Rosenstein defended Barr's process. "He's being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that he's trying to mislead people, I think is just completely bizarre," Rosenstein said.

Comey praised House Democrats for conducting rigorous oversight of the Trump administration. "Oversight by the third branch is essential," he said. "It's one of the reasons I thought it was so important that at least one house of Congress be controlled by a different party [in the 2018 midterm elections] because we were seeing, as Americans, no meaningful oversight. And the founders designed our system to have interests crashing against themselves. So it is a great thing, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or neither, for there to be some crashing. I know because I've been subject to oversight when I've been in government that it's a pain in the neck, but it's a great pain in the neck. I believed that even when I was the one being overseen. It's a healthy thing for democracy in general."

Looking back, Comey said the U.S. government failed to appreciate how Russia intended to use the intelligence it was gathering in the run up to the 2016 election. "I think there was a fundamental miss there and an assumption that the extensive hacking activities that the U.S. and its allies saw . . . was traditional nation-state intelligence gathering," Comey explained. "Had we known at that point that it was actually . . . something very different, which was an intention to weaponize or attack the democratic processes of the United States, the government might have done something different to get out in front of that. We looked at that conduct and tried where we could to warn organizations without blowing our sources and methods. If we'd known they were stealing information in order to attack the American election in a year hence, I think we would have thought about and probably acted about it differently."

Susan Hennessey, a former lawyer for the National Security Agency who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and moderated the discussion, asked what else Comey would do differently if he could go back in time to when what was supposed to be a 10-year term started in 2013. "Can I decline to accept the appointment as FBI director?" Comey asked.

- - -

The Washington Post's Joanie Greve and Mariana Alfaro contribute to this report.
The leader of the center alliance respects "the decision of the people" and congratulates the outgoing premier. The ally and former finance minister Lapid promises to make "life bitter for the next" executive. Trump: "I'm with him". The disenchantment of the Arab front that deserted the polls.

Jerusalem (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Benny Gantz, the main challenger of the outgoing Prime Minister, has conceded defeat in the April 9 parliamentary elections and congratulated Benjamin Netanyahu for his fifth mandate to lead Israel.

"We respect the decision of the people," the ex-general declared in the aftermath of the vote, recognizing the failure of the Blue White center coalition with the objective of undermining Likud's domination and opening a new page in the country's political and social history.

Gantz's ally, and former Finance Minister, Yair Lapid assured that he wanted to "make life bitter for the [next] Netanyahu government".

Meanwhile, "King Bibi" - as he is called by his supporters - is preparing to form the new government, with a even more marked drift to the right than the previous executive. While obtaining a similar number of seats to centrists, the Likud-led coalition should reach a total of 65 seats (out of 120) in the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament), thanks to the support of some right-wing parties.

The official results should be released tomorrow. Analysts and experts agree that President Reuven Rivlin will entrust Netanyahu the mandate to form a government, which will take place around a tense negotiating table - which could last days, if not weeks - with future government allies.

Turning to the cheering crowd of his supporters, and accompanied by his wife Sara, Netanyahu said he will head a "right-wing" executive, but that he intends to be "the Prime Minister of all" at the same time. However, an investigation by the judiciary over corruption and fraud with uncertain implications hangs over his future.

The first leader to congratulate Bibi on victory at the polls was US president Donald Trump, who in the last weeks of the election campaign provided more than one assist to his Middle Eastern ally [for example recognition of the Israeli claim over the Golan Heights]. "The United States - said the White House tenant - is with him and with the people of Israel to the end!" Congratulations also came from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Matteo Salvini and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

In the face of the success of the Israeli right and of the Likud, the progressive disappearance of leftist formations and Arab representation within the Parliament must also be underlined. Many observers report the disaffection of a significant part of the country: Israeli Arabs represent in fact just under 20% of the population and 17% of the total electorate. This disaffection is the result of numerous factors: from internal divisions to the nation-state law [Jewish], passing through attacks during the electoral campaign. Netanyahu has repeatedly attacked the Arab front in recent weeks, while rival Benny Gantz has repeatedly ruled out post-voting alliances to avoid losing support.
Connecticut residents with behavioral health conditions should receive treatment just as easily and affordably as they would for any physical ailment, such as diabetes or cancer. Yet, more than a quarter of adults with serious psychological distress in the past year reported an unmet need for mental health care.

At a time when life expectancy is decreasing due to overdoses and suicides, we need to ensure that everyone has access to the services they need. Congress and the Connecticut state Legislature have passed laws requiring parity for diseases of the brain and body. But until tougher enforcement mechanisms are added, the true intent of those laws will not be met and, as weve unfortunately seen, insurance companies will continue discriminating against those with behavioral health issues.

In the recent class action lawsuit Wit v. United Behavioral Health, a federal court found that UBH, the nations largest managed behavioral health care company, rejected insurance claims of tens of thousands of people seeking mental health and addiction treatment based on defective medical review criteria and was wrongly influenced by a financial incentive to suppress costs.

The court found that UBH created its own flawed criteria to deny that treatment. Connecticut law requires insurers to use evidence-based medical necessity criteria for substance use disorders that are consistent with criteria developed by the American Society of Addiction Medicine, which means UBHs criteria were not in compliance with state law.

For those needing mental health or addiction treatment services, an insurers flawed criteria can mean the difference between life and death. Thats because when coverage is denied, patients are left to foot the bill. Many cant afford treatment or dont get enough treatment to support long-term recovery. In 2016, more than 300,000 Connecticut residents experienced serious psychological distress. During that same year, 41.3 percent did not receive mental health treatment because they could not afford it.

The court also ruled that UBHs guidelines improperly required reducing the level of care, such as removing patients from residential treatment programs to some form of outpatient therapy, even if their providers believed  consistent with generally accepted clinical standards  that maintaining a higher level of care was necessary. Doctors, not insurers, should be calling the shots when it comes to treatment.

The Wit v. United Behavioral Health ruling sends a clear message to insurers, but Connecticut regulators, employers and legislators must consider the implications, as well.

Given the federal courts findings about violations of Connecticut law, the state has a duty to hold UBH accountable, including identifying all claims in Connecticut for which UBH used illegal criteria, requiring that UBH reprocess these claims under the supervision of the Connecticut Insurance Department and an independent monitor at UBHs expense, and forcing UBH to reimburse consumers and providers for wrongly denied care.

On the policymaking front, the Connecticut Insurance and Real Estate Committee has passed legislation this session aimed at improving mental health and substance use coverage for Connecticut residents.

House Bill 7125 bolsters the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (The Federal Parity Law) by ensuring that insurance companies are meeting state mental health and substance use requirements. It would also require that insurance companies cover prescription drugs for substance abuse services, regardless of how that prescription is prescribed, without mandatory requirements for doctors approval for medication and step therapy. As the Wit ruling shows, without greater transparency and accountability from health plans and the Connecticut Insurance Department, parity may never be prioritized.

For far too long, we have not been able to attain true mental health parity due to a lack of enforcement. The Wit ruling has the power to spark lasting change if we heed its warnings and act now. By passing House Bill 7125, we can put an end to these harmful practices and ensure mental health and substance use disorder parity for the people of Connecticut once and for all.

Patrick J. Kennedy is the founder of The Kennedy Forum and, while serving as a U.S. representative (D-R.I.) from 1995 to 2011, was a co-author of the Federal Parity Law. The forums Dont Deny Me campaign educates consumers about their rights under the Federal Parity Law and connects them with essential appeals guidance and resources.

State Rep. Sean Scanlon, D-Guilford, has represented the 98th District since 2014 and serves as chairman of the Legislatures Insurance and Real Estate Committee.
Lets face it. Most of the products and services offered by your credit union are commodities. For example, a checking account is a checking account is a checking account. If you think youre going to attract and retain members because you have a better checking account, youre dreaming.

Of course, credit unions pride themselves on great service, but is that really enough? Probably not. I do some banking with Bank of America just to keep an eye on what the big guys are doing and I can tell you, they have great customer service. My United miles card is through Chase and they have great customer service, too. Credit unions may offer exceptional member service, but that may not be the differentiator you think it is.

So what can your credit union do differently?

More and more financial institutions are beginning to position themselves as providers of useful financial content. Im not talking about PhD-level coursework in, say, mutual funds. Im talking about brief, entertaining, quick-hit articles that offer financial information that consumers can use right now.

Back in 2017, Santander Bank won an award from the Content Marketing Institute for its implementation of this then-novel idea. Santander worked with Arnold Worldwide and Sapient Razorfish (which means it probably cost the bank a lot of money) to create its Prosper & Thrive microsite. You can read more about Prosper & Thrive and its award on The Financial Brand website, or you can see it live on the Santander site.

Alliant Credit Union has created something similar called The Money Mentor. Alliants financial portal uses a blog format to present its content. You can see it live on the Alliant website.

What can your credit union do if it doesnt have the resources of a $1.6 trillion bank? Or even the resources of an $11 billion credit union?

One option is FinancialFeed, a product that my company created to put engaging financial content within reach of virtually any credit union. When we launched last year, I came up with some cockamamy asset-based pricing because, well, thats how credit union technology is priced, right?

Not anymore. The cloud has made technology easier and cheaper to deploy, and I realized our pricing needed to reflect that. Now we have only two pricing tiers based on number of members: cheap and cheaper. Plus, we offer FinancialFeed as a monthly subscription with no long-term commitment. Best of all, we can get it set up on your website in 10 minutes. You can see it running live on the FinancialFeed website.

Is this shameless self-promotion on my part? I suppose so, but if thats all you got out of this, you missed my point. Credit unions are hungry for ways to differentiate themselves from other financial providers. Consumers (especially millennials) are hungry for financial information that they can use today to stretch their dollars further. If your credit union offers actionable financial content  no matter where you get it from  you can satiate the needs of both your credit union and your members. In the olden days, we called that a win-win.
CUNA President/CEO Jim Nussle addressed global credit union peers Thursday during World Council of Credit Unions Australian Credit Union Study Trip. His keynote address at a CEO/Director meeting focused on CUNAs efforts to advocate, unify, advance and promote the credit union industry.

Credit unions in the U.S. have seen many positive trends in 2018  from membership growth to increased financial benefits for both members and non-members, Nussle said. The credit union difference is our cooperative superpower. Its our best asset, our competitive advantage, and it extends across the globe.

Last year credit unions provided more than $16 billion in benefits to American consumers, members and non-members alike. The industry also added nearly five million members and grew five times faster than the U.S. population.
There are only a few things one can be sure of in this world: death, taxes, and audits, apparently.

The credit union regulatory space is, lets say, rigorous. (Stifling seems like such a harsh word.)

But its true. As smaller credit unions continue to disappear, either through consolidation or some other dark magic, some doomsayers worry about the future of the credit union industry as a whole. Grim stuff, to be sure.

But this case study from audit software provider Redboard offers a little hope:
Tokyo court orders Aum Shinrikyo cult successor Aleph to pay 1 billion to victims of sarin attack

The Japan Times/April 10, 2019

By Magdalena Osumi

A Tokyo court on Wednesday ordered Aleph, the main successor group of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, to pay more than 1 billion in damages to the victims of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack that shook the country in March 1995.



A series of terrorist attacks and other crimes committed by Aum Shinrikyo cultists, which left a total of 29 people dead and more than 6,000 injured, resulted in the indictment of 192 people.



Last July, Japan executed 13 former members of the cult who were held responsible for the 1995 sarin attack  an act of terror that killed 13 people and injured thousands more. The cultists group renamed itself to Aleph in 2000.



In July of that year the group apologized to the victims and agreed to pay some 900 million to them by 2005 through an administrator, as the group had declared bankruptcy.



Since then Aleph paid a certain amount to the victims supporters but withheld the payment of the demanded amount, claiming it had no assets to repay the debt.



Throughout negotiations in a Tokyo summary court, Aleph admitted to its outstanding debt but continued to delay the payments.



The negotiations continued for nearly six years but ended without progress.



The lawyers supporting the victims group then took the case to the Tokyo District Court demanding some 1.05 billion in compensation from Aleph.



In Wednesdays ruling, presiding Judge Kazuhiko Tanaka ordered Aleph to pay the victims around 1.02 billion plus interest, taking into account the amount returned over the 19 years.



At a news conference held after the Tokyo courts ruling Wednesday afternoon, attorneys representing the victims in the lawsuit said they were content with the courts decision, saying the judges apparently recognized the plaintiffs claim.



The compensation money will be paid to 517 victims and surviving family members.



Kenji Utsunomiya, one of the lawyers, concluded the court had taken into account Alephs attempts to flee from their responsibility.



The victims are aging and we are hoping this ruling will prompt (Aleph) to return the money to the supporters to satisfy the claims of the victims, he said.



Last year the Justice Ministry executed the 13 cultists  including Shoko Asahara, the founder of the doomsday cult and mastermind behind the deadly March 20, 1995, nerve gas attack.



The victims have been suffering for a long while, many have lost their jobs, said Shizue Takahashi, the wife of one of the victims named in the lawsuit.



But the victims are still waiting for the redress payments, for them its not over yet, Takahashi added.

To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.
A California police officer is being hailed as a hero, for quick action which save the life of a baby was choking.

Culver City police officer Brian Cappell is being hailed a hero for saving the life of a nine-month-old baby who was choking. Cappell has served as a police officer for nineteen years

The entire incident which was caught on Cappells body camera.

On March 22, Cappell was nearby when the baby's sister, Aria flagged him down telling the officer his sister was choking.

The video captures Cappell running to Aria.

Upon arriving at the scene baby's mom, Janet Lockridge, was holding 9-month-old Harley who wasn't crying and had blood in her mouth.

"It always makes you nervous, but it's one of those things but your training just kicks in," said Cappell with Culver City Police Department.

Cappell turned the baby over and began striking her on the back. Cappell then heard the baby cry.

Lockridge said, "As soon as we heard that cry it was like an angel. It was like God sent his angel through him."

When paramedics arrived, they continued to care for the child.

Harley's mom says words cannot express how thankful she is to Officer Cappell for saving her daughter's life.

Mom and the officer reunited again on Monday night at the Culver City City Council meeting. The council recognized the officer for his heroic actions.

When asked how he feels, the officer replied, "It feels good, it feels good." Lockridge said how grateful she was and how Haley wouldnt be here if it wasn't for him.
Sales Tax Now Second Highest in State

The new sales tax took effect in Culver City along with 50 other cities in California effect as of Monday, April 1. Sales tax in Culver City jumped from 10 percent to 10.25 percent.

Culver City hiked up 0.25 percent. Culver City's sales tax is now three percent over the state of California's minimum sales tax, which is 7.25 percent, according to the San Francisco Gate.

In 2013 as the nation was trying to recover from the recession votes pasted a % increase in the sales tax for Culver City. Residents and businesses were assured that the tax, which would sunset (expire) in 2023 was temporary and would not be needed after 2013.

Former City CFO Jeff Muir told the council last year that the temporary tax would need to be made permanent and that the additional % sales tax would be required.

Culver City now joins 25 other cities in California unable to pat their bill without a sales tax of 10% or more. The only city that exceeds Culver Citys 10.25% sales tax is Santa Fe Springs with a rate of 10.50%.

According to CaliforniaCityFinance.com the driving force behind many local sales tax increases is skyrocketing public pension costs and public employee retiree healthcare. Research has shown that local sales tax increases are concentrated in California localities that have the largest pension problems.[45]

In an effort to increase the chances of passing a local sales tax, some local governments engage in budgetary games in which they place a sales tax measure on the ballot to help fund a politically popular service (e.g., public safety), and if the sales tax passes, it enables the local government to free up other existing taxpayer funds that can then be spent on less politically popular items such as high public employee salaries and benefits according to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association.

Online retailers are no longer immune from sales tax as California law now also requires out-of-state retailers like Amazon to collect sales tax. The new rules were made by lawmakers to help brick-and-mortar businesses who have lost sales to their online counterparts.
STORY LINK Pound US Dollar (GBP/USD) Exchange Rate Rises as US-China Trade War Weighs on US Economy

GBP/USD Exchange Rate Climbs as US Economy Hit by Trade War Struggles

GBP/USD Exchange Rate Rises as May Defends Brexit Extension

GBP/USD Forecast: Sterling Could Rise on Cross-Party Brexit Consensus

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The Pound US Dollar (GBP/USD) exchange rate edged higher today and is currently trading around $1.3072 on the inter-bank market.The US Dollar (USD) fell against Sterling (GBP) today following the news that Chinese trade with the US had slumped by 28% in the first-quarter, indicating a pressure on the US from the ongoing trade war between the two superpowers.This has particularly weighed on the Greenback today as many of the imports included iron ore, coal and soybeans which are commodities that most benefit the US economy.Julian Evans-Pritchard, a Senior China Economist for Capital Economics, remained optimistic however, saying:While a US-China trade deal looks increasingly within reach, the reversal of US tariffs would only provide a small boost to exports of around one to two per cent. [And] [w]ith growth set to remain weak in the coming quarters a strong rebound in exports therefore looks unlikely.Many US traders, however, are awaiting the publication of the flash US Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index for April today, which is expected to come in slightly lower than Marchs figures.The Pound, meanwhile, has fallen today as Brexit uncertainty has rising on a general lack of developments since the EU granted its 6-month delay to the UKs withdrawal process, allowing Prime Minister Theresa May another chance at pushing forward with her deal.Theresa May defended the extension to Brexit yesterday, saying:The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear. I believe we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest.However, cross-party talks still continue between the Conservatives and the Labour, with the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, remaining generally sceptical of Mays position regarding the Brexit withdrawal agreement.Mr Corbyn added:The prime minister has stuck rigidly to a flawed plan and now the clock has run down, leaving Britain in limbo and adding to the deep uncertainty of business, workers and people all across this country.There are no notable UK data releases today, with many Pound traders focusing on Brexit developments instead.Looking ahead to next week, Pound traders will be focusing on Tuesdays releases of the UK ILO unemployment rate figures for February, which are expected to rise.These will be followed by the UK average earnings figures for February, which, however, are expected to remain static.US Dollar investors, meanwhile, will be focusing on US-China trade talk developments, which have appeared to stall over this week.The GBP/USD exchange rate will remain sensitive to Brexit developments, as Theresa May now has to convince an increasingly divided Parliament to back her withdrawal agreement, and, if this looks increasingly likely, the Pound could rise.

International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements.

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Our own Bruce Siwy and Eric Kieta talk about their true-crime cases in Return To View: The Roundtable

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The president Fr. Paul Karam was one of 200 delegates of the international conference on trafficking, promoted by the Dicastery for integral human development. Lebanon one of the main destinations in the Middle East. The Catholic NGO has opened six centers, which work in collaboration with the government and embassies. The schooling of children to promote integration.

Beirut (AsiaNews) - A front line commitment for victims of human trafficking, especially "women and children from Asia and Africa", which guarantees "material aid such as food and housing, psychological support and training" for rebuild an identity, Fr. Paul Karam, president of Caritas Lebanon, tells AsiaNews.

For over seven years he has been active in welcoming Syrian families fleeing war and supporting, together with operators and volunteers of the Catholic NGO, the victims of human trafficking. The priest returned to the Land of the Cedars last night, after having participated in the international conference on trafficking that was held in recent days in the Vatican. "The event is fundamental to share experiences and to work in groups of different pastoral orientation".

From 8 to 11 April the migrants and refugees section of the Dicastery for integral human development organized an international conference on trafficking in persons, which ended with a private audience with Pope Francis.

The event was attended by delegates from all over the world, including bishops, priests, men and women religious, project coordinators and pastoral agents, along with representatives of Catholic NGOs and trafficking experts. Addressing the over 200 participants, the pontiff condemned what he calls the "commodification of the human being" as a terrible "crime against humanity", warning that "much remains to be done" against a "profound plague".

Lebanon is a major destination for human trafficking, especially of women. Victims are often used for domestic labor in conditions of slavery or end up in the hands of prostitution rings. These include women from Eastern European nations and neighboring Syria.

Traffic also involves minors, also used in the sex market or for forced labor in the sectors of metallurgy, construction or agriculture. There are also several cases of women from Sri Lanka, the Philippines or Ethiopia who enter Lebanon with a regular permit, but who end up victims of forced labor with the seizure of their passport, travel restrictions, threats, physical and sexual violence. In this context, the government has not taken the necessary steps to meet the minimum standards of the fight against a phenomenon that involves hundreds of people every year.

Fr. Paul explains "In LebanonCaritas has launched six centers dedicated to victims of trafficking in persons, victims of sexual abuse or slavery. They are places present in different parts of the country, but we prefer to keep their whereabouts confidential for reasons of safety and to protect the people themselves .

Inside these centres, "psychological and material" help and support are offered, with the aim of "providing a deadly and ethical cultural and professional background" and "encouraging return to the countries of origin, in conditions of full security: these are the ones that we call success stories ".

He continues "It is important that people can regain full confidence and autonomy". Within the next two months, the six centers already active will be joined by a new center dedicated to the recovery of "street children, exploited by the Mafia for child labor or victims of sexual abuse".

Psychologists and doctors, experts and educators operate in the structures as well as a team of lawyers, because we follow the stories also from a procedural point of view. In these years - he underlines - we have won several cases, targeted the perpetrators of this violence and guaranteed compensation ".

The Caritas Lebanon president underlines that at the moment the centers "welcome about 250 people", and "operate in full agreement with the Lebanese security apparatus and the embassies of the nations of origin of the victims, from Africa to Asia, from Iraq to Syria, passing through the Philippines .

Then there are children "born of women who came to us pregnant, to whom we guaranteed welcome and shelter". He concludes that they have started a schooling project for these young children which, to date, "allows at least 145 primary school children to be able to study and learn, starting from the study of the Arabic language which is the basis, the first step towards integration".
The fund, which now has a reserve of 4800 billion yuan, will be reduced to zero. In 2050 only one active worker will have to support a pensioner. After decades of imposition on the One Child Law, the government now supports the birth rate, but without success.

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - By 2035 the state pension fund will be exhausted because of the reduced workforce da direct result of the one-child policy.

A report by the Center for Social Security in the World, a branch of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, warns that the pension fund of the city workers, one of the pillars of the Chinese state pension system, had a reserve of 4800 billion at the end of 2018 of yuan (about 633 billion euros). It is expected that in 2027 it will rise to its maximum point, at 7000 billion yuan (about 933 billion euros), but in 2035 it will be reduced to zero.

According to the Center, funded by the State, by 2050, the difference between contributors and those who benefit from it could create a shortfall of 11 thousand billion yuan (about 1450 billion yuan), since there would be only one worker per pensioner .

The report confirms what many Chinese demographers have been saying for a long time: that due to the restrictions on births, in the future the system of state pensions will be impractical.

In 2018, 249 million Chinese had reached 60 and were entitled to claim a pension, about 18% of the population.

In recent years the government has tried to encourage births, but without success.

Chinas social security regulations require employers to pay up to 20 per cent of their employees salaries into the government pension fund, while employees are required to contribute 8 per cent of their wages. But while the contribution rates are mandatory, enforcement has been lax, with local governments allowing small businesses to pay less to ensure that they maintain high employment.. But this also happens with large industries. Last month, to revitalize the economy, the Council of State decreed to reduce the contributions of companies to 16%. But this is going to cut further revenue to the pension fund.
Dear Editor:

I am writing to comment on The Kingstonian project. I teach on Wednesday evenings and could not be present at the April 10 hearing at Kingston City Hall.

Im a Kingston resident of five years and Ulster County resident of 14 years ( and the descendant of Eastern European Jewish refugees who arrived in Kingston in the 1860s, who are buried in Wiltwyck Cemetery). Im a former renter and new homeowner of one year.

I feel strongly that The Kingstonian project should be subject to a thorough environmental review. Im concerned about an assortment of impacts this project could have on the city  environmentally, structurally and socially.

Whats more, it seems as if some of the information promoting the project is inaccurate  most notably, the number of public parking spaces it would add to the existing 140. By more realistic calculations, taking into consideration the number of residents, hotel guests and employees, the new project would only honestly add about a net of 10 new spots.

In addition to the environmental impacts, among my greatest concerns about the project are:

* Yet another financially well-endowed developer will be given tax breaks at a time when there is not enough tax revenue to address the citys affordable housing crisis, and other crises. I am not anti-development, but I am against prioritizing wealthy developers over existing residents, especially those at the lower rungs of the economic ladder, who will likely find themselves forced to relocate in the face of accelerated gentrification.

* Six million dollars of public grant funding will go toward this when there are so many unaddressed issues with infrastructure and other matters in the city.

* The project doesnt include affordable housing, and, as such, will help exacerbate and perpetuate the problems of economic inequality and segregation. We are at a critical juncture in our country and in our city, at which we can no longer turn a blind eye to economic inequality and segregation. We need a new kind of leadership around development that seeks to address these issues, and that only supports development that is more balanced and benefits everyone in the city  especially if our grant money is supporting it.

* The dubious notion that the state environmental review process should be skipped over in this case  and the threats from the developer and others involved that the process would only shut this project down  make me skeptical of the developer and the project. The days of wealthy people expecting exceptions and favors should be over.

* With so many other boutique hotels being developed in Uptown, who needs another? Who is going to stay at these hotels? Its hard to imagine this kind of saturation being successful.

I hope Mayor Steve Noble and the Planning Board will do what is clearly the right thing, and launch a full environmental review of The Kingstonian project, considering all its many impacts.

Sari Botton, operator

Kingston Writers Studio
The situation, especially in the north, is beginning to worry experts and authorities. The Tharthar basin has a reached a level "never seen" in over 60 years. Two bridges in Mosul submerged by water. The closure of kiosks and businesses near the river. AsiaNews sources: "exceptional" events.

Mosul (AsiaNews) - The level of water in the dams and reservoirs of Iraq has reached a record level, never reached before in the country's history. And this due to recent heavy rains, the tail end of phenomena that have caused very serious damage in neighboring Iran.

The situation, especially in the north, is beginning to cause concern and thousands of families risk having to abandon their homes and lands, for the real risk of serious flooding.

Weeks of heavy rainfall, exacerbated by the melting of snow in Turkey and Iran, have almost filled the four basins of Iraq and inflated the course of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. In Samarra, north of Baghdad, water is diverted to Lake Tharthar, a natural reservoir used to aid runoff.

In Samarra, north of Baghdad, water is being diverted into the natural reservoir at Tharthar Lake in amounts unseen in decades, said dam chief Kareem Hassan. "Today, the Tharthar barrage is seeing the highest levels of water passing through in its history," Hassan told AFP.

"We haven't seen such levels pass through the structure since it was founded in 1956, so 63 years."

The Dukan dam in the northeast also "had not witnessed water levels this high since 1988," said manager Hama Taher, calling on people living nearby to leave.

AsiaNews sources in northern Iraq confirm the gravity of the situation, in a context of rains "of exceptional magnitude, way above normal". "In many cities, such as Mosul, Dohuk, Erbil there is damage and the dams are full. The risk of flooding is real, especially if the next melting of winter snows is added to the rains . The floods, the source concludes, risk creating particular hardships "in the refugee camps and in the tent cities on the outskirts of Mosul and in the plain".

The authorities have already started mobilizing to face a possible emergency. Excess water should be stored in some reservoirs in anticipation of the dry season, in the summer months. They also forbade farmers to plant crops that need large amounts of water to produce fruit.

In the northern metropolis of the country, long a stronghold of the Islamic State (SI, formerly Isis), the river has submerged two bridges connecting the eastern and western sectors, leaving cars and trucks loaded with blocked goods. The owners of kiosks and commercial facilities near the waterways have been forced to close and leave, due to the danger of sudden flooding. The enormous flow of the rivers is one of the factors that caused the sinking of a ferry last month near Mosul, where about a hundred people died.

Damage and disruption are also recorded in the south: in the village of Huweidi, near Basra, over 8 thousand hectares of agricultural land have been flooded; hundreds of families are displaced in the province of Missan, another 2 thousand risk eviction in the coming days. UN officials have had to deliver aid using ships and boats, because the roads are impassable.
PARKESBURG  Kevin Hines shared his story of living 18 years past the day he says he should have died when he jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge.

In September 2000 he was the 26th person to survive the jump, which is up to 39 survivors today. Of those, only five including Hines have full mobility. Hines lives with chronic back pain because of his injuries. He nearly broke his spine. Since it was erected in 1937, more than 3,000 people are estimated to have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

When the Coast Guard platoon pulled him aboard, one of the service members told him that they have pulled 57 dead bodies from the San Francisco Bay and Hines was their first survivor. A woman saw him jump as she traveled across the bridge and called her friend in the Coast Guard, initiating the alert for help before the 911 dispatch. He learned from bystanders that a seal helped guide him to the surface and kept him afloat.

If thats not another miracle from God, I dont know what is, Hines said.

As soon as he jumped he regretted it and then he was under the water. The then 19-year-old prayed to God to save him.

Hines, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder his junior year in high school, said he heard voices in his head telling him to jump and end his life. On his way to the bridge in a bus full of tourists, he hoped someone would notice him crying and ask if he was okay, or what was wrong. If they did, he planned to tell them everything and asked to be saved.

He noted that the only person who noticed aloud had pointed him out to another passenger and with a smirk, asked what was wrong with that kid? The bus driver also missed the opportunity to help and rushed Hines off the bus.

That is whats wrong with some of society today, Hines said.

He said that people either fear people in those situations or feel apathy toward them, and do not offer assistance.

You are doing the work to save lives, he said to the audience, which included a majority of mental health officials and certified mental health first aiders.

He passed two police officers on patrol for jumpers, and he doesnt believe they noticed him because it was before law enforcement officers were trained about suicide prevention. He noted that today, police officers save 72 lives a year on the bridge.

A tourist with a smile on her face asked him to take a picture of her with her family on the bridge. He thought she would be the one to save his life, but he felt mad at her for not realizing he needed help. His friend told him he missed noticing that she showed him something beautiful because she was the only who had a positive interaction with him.

I said nobody cares. The voice in my head louder than it ever had before screamed jump now and I did, said Hines, adding that he immediately regretted his suicide attempt. I had just made the greatest mistake of my life and it was too late.

He felt lonely and never told anyone before that about the voices he heard or the emotional pain he felt.

I thought I wouldnt be missed because the voices said to do it, Hines said. When the Coast Guard member asked him why he jumped, he said he didnt have a real answer other than hearing the voices that told him to jump.

We are all greater than the pain that we feel, Hines said.

He encouraged those who are in the mental health field that they need to rise together to help each other because they are more susceptible to feeling mental pain.

I dont care if you are toughest person in every room, Hines said. No matter your past, no matter the pain, never again silence that pain. Dont learn the hard way like I did.

Dana Heiman, Chief Impact Officer at the Brandywine Health Foundation, noted that the foundation began the life-saving program in 2014 to teach mental health first aid to youth and adults. More than 4,000 people have been trained in Chester County. The foundation hosted Hines on Wednesday at Gateway Church in Parkesburg.

Jacquelyn Taylor, executive director of The COAD group, said such programs increase the mental health literacy and destigmatize the topic. The training also teaches people to help others within their school, at work and in the community.

We hope that the more that we increase the literacy and normalize the conversation that we make it much more acceptable for people to know what to do and to be able to ask for help, Taylor said, which takes such braveness.

Bridgette Miles, the Preschool Administrator at CASD and a Mental Health First Aider instructor, said that people have struggles and she can make a difference as a first aider because I gained some tools to save a life, to be to help someone who is struggling with a mental health crisis, has been very vital to us as a school district and as a community.

She explained the training program teaches people to recognize someone in crisis mode and ask them if they are thinking about suicide and have a plan. Stacy Metz, a professor at West Chester University, added that asking such questions does not put the idea in someones mind, but rather it begins the process to provide professional help to a person in need. Miles said it was tough to ask and the student admitted she did want to take her life. Miles called her parents and sought professional help for the student who she said has since graduated and is doing well.

Coatesville Area Senior High School senior Diamond Marrow said losing a fellow student to suicide was traumatic and she believes that if someone had a simple positive interaction with the student that she would still be alive. She believes that if people had the eight-hour training which she has now completed, that they could save a life.

Youth Mental Health First Aid can and will help people, Marrow said.
by Lavina John Gonsalves

The young woman lives in Mumbai where she studied in a Catholic college. Here she learned to pray while living with other baptized children. Her employer gave her a day off a week to attend a Christian course for adults. [N]ow I do not only pray when I need something but I pray to come closer to God.

Mumbai (AsiaNews)  Lavina John Gonsalves, a young woman from Mumbai, chose to be baptized and this had made her feel happy. She loves Jesus. While her mother worked abroad, she grew up in a Catholic college, where she learned to pray from Sister Margaret, her guardian, who raised her like a daughter, teaching her to take her own decisions and face life boldly in every situation. Today, as an adult, after meeting young people of her religion, she decided to be baptized. This is her story.

My name is Lavina John Gonsalves. I know the name sounds Catholic, but I am a non-Catholic, not because I didnt want to get Baptized, but because my parents were not eligible to get married in church. My father was already married. However, he fell in love with my mother who was a widow with one daughter. They did get married in court, but as per the Christian norms this marriage was not valid. Since the first wife was living, they could not regularize their marriage in church and hence I could not be baptized.

As a little girl when I was in 3rd Grade my Mother decided to go abroad for a job as my father was not working and kept going back to his first wife. This was the time when my mother put me and my step- sister in a Boarding school by the name Regina Pacis Convent High School. I am thankful to God that my mother put me there. That was the start of my Journey to know and pray to Jesus. Our caretaker, Sr. Margaret, kept me very close to her, because I was the smallest one among 100 girls in the hostel. And Because I stayed with her all day long, she used to read me the Bible stories and taught me to pray. She always kept me with girls who were Catholic and allowed me to go for Sunday Mass and Sunday school.

During my stay there I totally forgot about my other religion and my faith in Christianity was kindled and therefore I always stayed back after every prayer, rosary and mass and inquired with Sr. Margaret when I could get baptized and she always assured me that once I was an adult I could choose, but till then I should continue praying to Jesus and never stopped me from Praying the Rosary and treated me as a normal Christian child. I was happy there, but when I came to the 8th grade my Mother returned to India and took me out from the hostel and brought me back home because I was suffering from Asthma and used to get frequent asthma attacks. I remember Sr. Margaret sitting by my bedside and praying for me all that time in my sufferings.

I was then brought back home. The Catholic school in my locality did not accept me because I had no baptism certificate So after that I was put in a Marathi school. I made lots of Marathi friends in this school and at some stage was influenced by their culture and religion and strayed from my daily prayers which Sr. Margaret had thought me. But I never stopped going for mass with my father. Once I completed my schooling, I tried getting admission in a Catholic college, but there too they asked me for my baptism certificate. And I could not get admission even after having good marks. But later on, when I wanted to go for my Hotel Management course, I got my admission done in St. Andrew's College and I was very happy as that brought me back among Christian friends and gave me hope to renew my faith.

When I turned 18 years old my father reminded me about my baptism. But my mother was somewhat unhappy with the decision because till then I had been following her religion. But she knew very well that I have been taking my lifes decisions on my own. Sr. Margaret had always taught me to be a girl who could take her own decisions and face life boldly in every situation. So, my mother did not object much and accepted my decision willing.

My father came along with me to meet our parish priest to know what had to be done in this regard. We met Fr. Xavier Pinto a very kind hearted person who helped me and guided me regarding the procedure for Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) classes and sent me to Fr. Vincent at the pastoral centre, Bandra. After hearing my story and my desire to join the faith Fr. Vincent enrolled me for the RCIA classes.

When I started attending classes and building my faith, the Lord blessed me with my first Job in The Leela, Mumbai which is a 5 Star property. Getting an off on Thursday or changing my shift on Thursdays was becoming very difficult for me, but somehow Jesus always helped me to reach the class. I was most of the time late. Later I spoke to my manager about my classes and he too has so much faith in Jesus that he always supported and gave me off on Thursdays for my classes.

As I came to Classes I came to know a lot of new things about Jesus, about prayers. I used to only pray to Jesus and not the Father above and Holy Spirit but now I have started praying to the Father and Holy Spirit too. I learnt all the prayers which I had forgotten. I started with my daily prayer to Jesus as Sr. Margaret had taught me in the hostel. I learned what is accepted and what is not In Catholic religion. I have built my faith again in the Lord and now I do not only pray when I need something but I pray to come closer to him, try listening to his will in my life. RCIA Classes have helped me a lot to become a better person, and Rose Ma'am my animator has always been there for me, pushed me to do better in growing my faith and always supported me. Now that I have been elected and am the chosen one by God and my wait for so many years Is over, I am truly excited and am just one step away from becoming a Christian and starting a new journey in my life. I am so very much waiting patiently and eagerly for the Day of my baptism and I pray every moment for it and waiting to spend the rest of my life being and living as a Christian Follower of Christ. Love you Jesus.
Rumpole of the Bailey, played by Leo McKern, should turn prosecutor and put those who have handled the Brexit chaos in the dock

Rumpole of the Bailey is being brought out of retirement and given a modern makeover by the daughters of his creator, John Mortimer.

Actress Emily Mortimer and her sister Rosie have 'reimagined' the eccentric barrister for a new TV series. The original Rumpole, played by Leo McKern, ran on ITV for 44 episodes between 1978 and 1992.

Celebrated for his literary allusions, his love of small cigars and copious amounts of Chateau Thames Embankment from Pomeroy's Wine Bar, Horace Rumpole enchanted millions of viewers.

One wonders how Rumpole himself would have reacted to being brought up to date. On being told he had to move with the times, he replied: 'If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.'

He believed the presumption of innocence was the 'golden thread' which ran through British justice and only ever appeared for the defence.

But times have indeed changed since Rumpole last appeared at the Old Bailey.

The introduction of the dreaded European 'Yuman Rites' Act and the creation of the ridiculous Supreme Court have torn up our traditional legal landscape.

Truth and justice have been replaced by spin and duplicity. So, if Rumpole is truly to be updated for the 21st century, he should rethink his guiding principle.

Perhaps it's time that Horace Rumpole appeared for the prosecution. If there was any justice in the world, the entire political class would be put in the dock at the Old Bailey and charged with murdering Brexit.

The scene is Court Number One, Judge Bullingham presiding . . .

My Lord, I appear for the Crown in this case, along with my learned colleague, the lovely Portia of Equity Court, Miss Phyllida Trant. The defence is represented by Mr Claude Erskine Brown QC and Mizz Liz Probert.

This is most unusual, Mr Rumpole. I don't believe I have ever known you to prosecute.

That is correct, Old Darling. In the past, Rumpole has always pleaded Not Guilty. I recall that Your Lordship presided at my most famous victory, the Penge Bungalow Murders trial.

Indeed, I did. Bloodstains, wasn't it?

One wonders how Rumpole himself would have reacted to being brought up to date. On being told he had to move with the times, he replied: 'If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.'

Your Lordship's memory is as acute as ever. But ne'er so bloody as the case before us today. Times have sadly moved on and I find myself compelled, for once, to accompany them.

You may proceed, Mr Rumpole.

I am obliged, My Lord. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. You see before you in the dock as rum a collection of desperados as ever drew breath. They are charged with the theft, kidnap and brutal, pre-meditated murder of Brexit.

What is this Brexit to which you refer, Mr Rumpole?

You may well ask, My Lord, since it has been spirited away before our very eyes in the most vile manner.

(Erskine-Brown). I really must protest, My Lord.

Oh, do shut up, Claude. You'll get your turn. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I invite you to cast back your minds to the morning of June 24, 2016. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive . . .

Get on with it, Mr Rumpole.

Britain awoke to learn that 17.4 million people, a clear majority, had voted to leave the European Union, to cast off the yoke of a corrupt foreign tyranny.

Never again would this royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress built by nature for herself . . .

We get the picture, Mr Rumpole. This is the Old Bailey, not the Old Vic.

Members of the jury, as a consequence of this historic plebiscite, the principal defendant Theresa Mary May became Prime Minister, when 'Call Me Dave' Cameron fell on his sword and was carried from the battlefield.

She promised solemnly that Brexit would mean Brexit. But she lied through her teeth and far from freeing Britain from the deadly embrace of a hostile foreign entity has surrended the last vestiges of sovereignty . . .

(Erskine-Brown). My Lord, I really must protest . . .

Theresa May and her cohorts should be put on trial charged with the murder of Brexit

Oh, do relax, Claude. Members of the jury, I put it to you that Mrs May, aka Mother Theresa of Maidenhead, the self-styled She Who Must Be Obeyed, as if there could be another, is fortunate not to have been charged with treason.

Mr Rumpole, stick to the charges before the court.

The prosecution will show that the defendant is guilty of grand larceny and murder most foul. Yet she stands not alone in the dock.

Behold her co-conspirators, Gina Nadira Miller, Pixie Balls-Cooper, Dominique Legion d'Honneur, Olivia Leftwing, Jean-Claude Bercow, Philip Spread-Fear Hammond, Amber Roland Rat, Anna Soubry-Loo and O Jeremy Corbyn.

I believe charges are pending against others, also, Mr Rumpole.

You believe correctly, My Lord. Unfortunately, there isn't room in the dock for them all to be tried at once.

Another 420 Members of Parliament have been remanded to appear at Snaresbrook Crown Court on similar counts of kidnapping and murder.

(Erskine-Brown). If Your Lordship pleases, my clients refuse to recognise the legitimacy of this court.

They believe members of the jury are too stupid to be trusted to reach the right verdict. They demand to be tried before a jury of their peers, at the European Court of Justice.

I bet they do, Old Darling.

Motion denied, Mr Erskine-Brown. Pray continue, Mr Rumpole.

I am obliged, My Lord. Members of the jury, in a nutshell, 17.4 million people voted to leave the EU and all its works and the defendants promised repeatedly to honour the result.

But immediately after the referendum, the political class and their confederates stole Brexit and have slowly strangled it to death.

Not only have they failed to 'take back control', they have handed our once-proud independent kingdom's fate to our natural enemies. All are guilty of cold-blooded murder.

That is for the jury to decide, Mr Rumpole. Have you anything else before we repair to the Magpie and Stump for luncheon?

If I may further quote the Bard: 'This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land . . . is now leased out. England . . . is now bound in with shame. With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds, that England that was wont to conquer others, hath made a shameful conquest of itself.'

That's enough, Mr Rumpole. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, at the end of the trial you will retire to consider your verdict of Not Guilty.

In the event of a majority in favour of Guilty, you will be instructed to keep on voting until you reach the right decision. We are adjourned until Halloween.

Mine's a large Chateau Thames Embankment, Old Darling.
Alison Jackson, 58, (pictured) reveals the items of personal significance inside the front room of her flat in London's Chelsea. The artist has recently published a new book

1 GLOBE-TROTTER

This painted globe is a family heirloom left to me by my mother Catherine and is a lovely reminder of her and of my travelling days.

She broke her neck horse riding when she was 58 and became tetraplegic, and then she died in 2001 from complications after she was dropped by one of her carers.

She knew I loved travelling.

Before I went to art college as a mature student I spent a year driving around South America in an old Buick.

2 ALL AT SEA

I look like a boy in this photo, and I was always mistaken for one. People would point at me and say, How old is he?.

Id never say anything because I was shy. Im nine or ten in this shot, which was taken on a boat somewhere.

My father George loved boats  he and my mother actually met on a voyage from Britain to South Africa, which took three weeks in those days.

3 FEELING SHEEPISH

My mother grew up at Lock Hall, a country house to the west of Dublin where the writer JP Donleavy was a neighbour.

Alison treasures a photograph of Elton John pictured with a lookalike of the Queen, from her TV series Double Take

This wonderful photo shows her being ferried around in a little cart pulled by a sheep.

I was carried in the same cart when I was a child  albeit with a different sheep.

Sadly my animal was a bit wild so it was replaced with a donkey.

4 FAKE AND FORTUNE

While still a student at the Royal College of Art I was commissioned by the BBC to make my TV series Double Take, in which I used lookalikes and created painstakingly choreographed fake news.

It won a BAFTA, which was an amazing springboard for me.

This picture is of the real Elton John in his Las Vegas home singing God Save The Queen to a lookalike of the monarch, and the wig is for my double of Donald Trump.

5 SPURRED ON

I grew up in the Gloucestershire countryside, where my mother bred horses.

As a teenager I took part in eventing, dressage and cross-country competitions, but since Mum broke her neck riding Ive not ridden at all  I just couldnt face it.

It was sad to see all the horses expecting my mother to come back and ride them.

The Spinal Injuries Association were incredibly helpful so I did a sponsored cycle ride from London to Paris to raise money for them, and Im doing another one later this year through Austria, Hungary and Croatia.

6 HOME FROM HOME

My father George was heartbroken when a compulsory purchase order was awarded to build a motorway through the estate of his ancestral home near Portsmouth.

We then uprooted to Poulton Priory, a former monastery near Cirencester, pictured here, where I spent my holidays while at boarding school.

As told to Nick McGrath. Alison Jacksons new book is called PRIVATE and available on alisonjackson.com. For more information on Alisons upcoming competition for aspiring photographers visit dayinyourlife.co.uk
The new series of thriller Trust Me sets out its stall quickly.

In the opening scenes, a paralysed soldier is wheeled into a hospital ward in time to see a bodybag being zipped up in the bay alongside him.

We lost one last night, the orderly tells him, before the brusque consultant Archie Watson assures him hes in safe hands now.

But patient Danny Adams tells him, Theres a killer on the ward. We have to be careful.

Corporal Jamie McCain, played by Alfred Enoch, pictured, is at the fictional hospital to recover from a spinal injury sustained in Afghanistan that has left him temporarily paralysed but starts to investigate deaths after a patient tells him there's a 'killer on the ward'

The question underpinning the series is who, at this fictional Glasgow hospital, is telling the truth? Who can Jamie, and the viewer, trust?

The first series in 2017 saw Doctor Whos Jodie Whittaker as nurse Cath Hardacre, who stole the identity of a doctor in an Edinburgh hospital after losing her job.

What followed was a tense psychological thriller, much like this follow-up, which has an entirely new cast.

Everyone has a sinister side, says series creator Dan Sefton. And everyone has a secret  but someone has two.

At the heart of this four-part second series is Corporal Jamie McCain, played by Alfred Enoch, who played Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter films.

Jamie is recovering from a spinal injury sustained in Afghanistan that has left him temporarily paralysed.

The wards clinical lead Archie Watson, played by John Hannah, pictured, masks his sinister side with a smooth demeanour and is not 'particularly caring'

Hes flown back to the UK for treatment, Alfred explains. The military rehab facility is full, so he goes to a civilian hospital. Hes a man out of his comfort zone.

His disability means he spends the first episode flat on his back, but there was still a physicality that Alfred found challenging as hes shown straining for things.

In one tense scene, he is seen hauling his paralysed body across the floor to an iPad containing what he thinks is vital information.

I thought, Ill be in bed for the 11-week shoot, itll be restful. It wasnt at all, he says.

As patients start to die around him, Jamies physical and emotional challenges  the nightmares suggest he has PTSD  are matched by his suspicions about whats going on.

And he questions his own sanity over what hes seeing, says Alfred. Dan Sefton finds the circumstances fascinating.

Seeing a strong person literally struggle to move a finger  thats part of my interest.

Jamie decides to investigate the deaths, and the viewer will see that everyone has something to hide  among them Archie Watson (John Hannah), the wards clinical lead.

One of the relationships developed in the series is between Jamie and his physiotherapist Debbie, played by Ashley Jensen, pictured, who is susceptible to manipulation

His smooth demeanour masks a sinister side. Hes more management than medical practitioner, says John.

Archie thinks hes well liked, but hes not particularly caring. The patients are a box to be ticked with success or failure.

A key dynamic is between Archie and apparently dedicated physiotherapist Debbie (played by Ashley Jensen), who is susceptible to manipulation.

Outlanders Richard Rankin plays neurologist Dr Alex Kiernan. Described by Richard as detached and desensitised, he is engaged to doctor Zoe Knight (Katie Clarkson-Hill).

But there are hints Zoe has had a career blip. Alex uses Zoes vulnerabilities against her, says Katie.

She also starts to question whats going on in the hospital. For Zoe, injustice is unbearable.

Patient Danny Adams, played by Elliot Cooper, pictured tells Jamie that there is a 'killer on the ward. We have to be careful'

'So when she starts to see that things arent as they were, shell just go all-in.

For John Hannah, the dramas power is in part in its location. A hospital is a very dramatic setting.

'We as a nation are obsessed by thrillers because we dont really have guns, so its not just bad guys shooting people.

'Were intellectual in our mysteries and a hospital puts characters on the frontline.

Dan believes a hospital is ideal for exploring power and control. The dynamic is about how power shifts.

'When Jamies mental health is questioned, we see the power doctors have to say, Hes mentally disturbed, well give him drugs.

'We see Archies abuse of power as his grip on events loosens.

What the consequences are for the rest of the cast in this chilling drama, well have to see.

Trust Me, Tuesday, 9pm, BBC1.
An A-list interior designer who started her company with a 40 website after hitting rock bottom reveals how she turned her furniture business into a 10.7m empire.

Layla Chapman, 35 and Dan, 33, from Sonning, Berkshire, launched luxury furniture brand HOS Home in 2016 - which boasts celebrity clientele including Amanda Holden, Denise Van Outen and Mark Wright - and has since started a joint business venture with Peter Andre selling bespoke beds.

The website, which launched in February 2016, was basic and cost only around 40 to set up. But the super successful brand and partnership has not been without heartache along the way - as the pair suffered four unsuccessful IVF attempts and devastatingly lost two babies.

Now, they have welcomed their first little girl Yasmin, 12 weeks old, into the world - and are set to make over 10.7m from their business by the end of this year.

'Selling 1million of furniture in the first year was incredible,' Layla explained. 'This started as much as a passion project as a business and it's been amazing to transform so many homes. We've delivered more than 100,000 pieces of furniture in the last three years and the demand increases every month.'

Layla's (pictured) friends were always visiting her home and admiring her furniture. She admitted that design has always been a passion of hers and that she'd accumulated contacts in different areas of bespoke furniture workmanship along the years. Above, Layla with the A. By Andre Kensington bed

Layla and Dan also now have a separate business venture A. by Andre with Peter Andre (above) after building up a relationship with him after styling his home

It was always Layla's dream to have an interior design business and throughout her twenties, she helped various celebrities with their homes.

'It started with friends visiting my home and loving the furniture I had,' she explained. 'Design has always been a passion of mine and I'd accumulated contacts in different areas of bespoke furniture workmanship, particularly with upholstery.'

'I started helping friends and family source and create bespoke items of furniture for their own homes. I had built up contacts through events planning that I had been involved with over the years and as time went on, I began to help more and more people.'

'One of my first paying clients was a good friend of mine, Claudia Valentine from "Posh Pawn" We remain great friends, so she must have been happy!'

Although a big dream of hers, the timing to set up properly was never right for Layla. She married her partner Dan back in 2014 after meeting in 2009, they went from an all time high to hitting rock bottom and losing everything, and having to move in with their parents again.

'Life was amazing and we were on a high, having had our dream wedding and gone off on our dream honeymoon to the Bahamas,' said Layla. 'Prior to founding HOS we had both been involved in the events industry, running exclusive events for brands, high net worth individuals and celebrities across the South East.'

The luxury furniture company has garnered a trusted client base, including the likes of Amanda Holden (above), Denise Van Outen, Mark Wright, Scarlett Moffat, Amy Childs, Megan McKenna, Kady Mcdermot and Olivia Bowen

The power couple fell pregnant with Yasmin (above), now 12 weeks, last year after spending a total of 55,000 on IVF

Layla, 35 and Dan Chapman (above), 33, from Sonning, Berkshire, launched company HOS Home in 2016 with a 40 website following failed rounds of IVF costing 55,000 in total - before finding out she was expecting her first child

'My husband also founded an electronic cigarette business that had started to gain attraction in Australia, but due to a shift in market conditions and a few steep learning curves, both hit financial difficulties around the same time and we found ourselves having to start again having lost our home and car.'

She continued: 'We decided to move back in with my mum, hit the re-start button on our careers, and start again from zero.'

'It was difficult, but we had never had mentors in business and had to learn certain lessons in order to push on again. Looking back it's the best thing that ever happened to us.'

But the next blow came when the couple were told that they would have to start IVF if they ever wanted children.

'When we moved back in with my mum in 2015, we had been trying for a baby for about two years with no success,' she explained. 'Having visited the doctors and gone through all the checks we received the news that the only way for us to conceive was through IVF.'

Prior to founding HOS, Layla (above) and Dan were both involved in the events industry, running exclusive events for brands, high net worth individuals and celebrities across the South East

Luxury furniture brand HOS Home, which is popular amongst a whole host of celebrities and influencers alike. Pictured: Layla with Caprice

'Naturally it was devastating. I come from a big Persian family and it's something Dan and I had spoken about a lot. You grow up thinking that having children is just part of life and a God given right, but it isn't, it's a blessing, and the reality hit us that this might not be on the cards for us.'

She continued: 'It hit us hard. I remember waking up in the mornings feeling like I had a black cloud over me. During the IVF which began the year we launched HOS, I was undergoing treatment at the same time.'

But while it was a difficult period for them both, Layla believes working helped get her though.

'It was incredibly hard for me to pick myself back up every time we had bad news and go back to the business, but I had no choice as we were at a critical time in our business where we needed all hands on deck.'

'In some ways being at work helped me get through the hard times as it was a distraction from what was going on in our personal lives.'

And after moving into rented accommodation to get some space, the idea for House of Sparkles (now HOS Home) was born.

'Having had another failed IVF round, and everyone on top of each other at my mums, we decided to get back on track and move into our own rented place,' she explained. 'The events had picked up again with a lot of hard work and Dan and I were planning on buying a restaurant.'

The couple's first celebrity client was Denise Van Outen, who purchased a Hollywood mirror and they upholstered a bespoke footstool for her. Pictured, Layla, Keith Lemon, Claire Powell and Dan

After several rounds of failed IVF, Layla said it was 'incredibly hard' for her to pick herself back up every time but had no choice as the couple were at a critical time in their business. Above, during a scan with Yasmin

She continued: 'For the last three years, I had spoken to Dan about wanting to start a furniture business. I love interior design and glam furniture, but always gulped at the steep price tags when visiting my favourite boutique and designer shops. I knew there was a gap in the market, but until now it didn't feel like it was the right time for us.'

Then one late January evening, having been targeted by a furniture company on Instagram, Layla showed Dan her idea.

'He said, "right, let's do it," whilst turning off the television and sitting up. "What now?" I said. He replied: "Yep now, let's just do it, we can make this work."'

The couple both knew there was a gap in the market for affordable luxury and exclusive products, and that very night they came up with the name and drew out a business plan and got to work.

The website, which launched on February 6th 2016, was basic and cost only around 40 to set up, but they managed to get a great sale on the first day of trading.

That first sale was of the black Hollywood Mirror and it was sold for 244 and that was made on the first day of trading. From then, the business took off and in that first year they made 1.13m.

Speaking of the moment she was told she would only be able to conceive through IVF, Layla said: 'I remember waking up in the mornings feeling like I had a black cloud over me.' Above, with Yasmin

After hitting financial difficulties at the same time in their careers, Layla (left) and Dan (right) decided to move back in with her mum, hit the re-start button, and start again from zero - and it paid off

'It wasn't easy getting suppliers to work with us at the start,' explained Layla. 'We wanted to sell quality furniture at affordable prices online and the furniture industry insiders and suppliers were wary about this.'

'We convinced a few of our preferred suppliers however, made a basic drag and drop website using Shopify and using Youtube tutorials trying out how to make it work well and look good and the website went live.'

She continued: 'It was basic, but we were proud of it. Dan set up a Facebook advert and we waited, not dreaming that a sale would come in on its first day. But it did and we couldn't believe it!'

'We looked at each other, high-fived, and then got to work. It gave us the confidence we needed that this could work in the way we believed.'

And their first celebrity client was Denise Van Outen, who purchased a Hollywood mirror and they upholstered a bespoke footstool for her.

The couple have since supplied furniture for Amanda Holden, Mark Wright, Brian Mcfadden, Scarlett Moffat, Amy Childs, Kelly Brook, Megan McKenna, Kady McDermott, Olivia Bowen, Caprice and Chloe Sims.

'We are inundated with requests for many interior design influencers and celebrities each month whom love the furniture,' said Layla.

The couple launched a website on February 6th 2016 which cost only around 40 to set up, but they managed to get a great sale on the first day of trading. Above, Layla posing on one of her luxury chairs

The couple's brand first gained attention after Dan set up a Facebook advert and they never dreamed a sale would come on their first day. Pictured, Layla admiring the mirrored furniture

However, Layla's personal life was not without it's rocky side. After continuing to try with IVF, she went on to have four unsuccessful attempts and devastatingly lost two babies before now welcoming this year her baby girl Yasmin.

'It was incredibly hard, particularly on our third failed attempt, having got pregnant and miscarrying, but we are a team,' she said.

'Dan picked up the slack on the days I struggled most, and I picked up the slack on the days he struggled most. The business was so new and Dan and I were doing everything - sales, customer service, warehousing, marketing, product picking, website development, the works. We were so busy that at times it was a welcome distraction.'

She added: 'I do know a difficult point for Dan though was after having found out the devastating news, having to brush himself off and work that afternoon speaking to customers and putting on a brave voice.'

'Inside we were both hurting badly, but we have always said anything is possible, and we weren't about to give up.'

And give up they didn't - Layla and Dan fell pregnant finally last year after spending a total of 55,000 on IVF - and welcomed their beautiful little girl Yasmin in January.

'We feel that God has given us the whole world and we can finally share this amazing news,' explained Layla.

With business booming from their furniture company, the couple are set to make over 10.7m by the end of this year and are on target to keep doubling this every year. Pictured, Dan with a diamante-covered drawer

To date, Layla and Dan have delivered .ore than 100,000 pieces of furniture in the last three years. She said: 'Selling 1million of furniture in the first year was incredible. This started as much as a passion project as a business and it's been amazing to transform so many homes'

'We are proud to have gone through this battle as a team and after four long years of IVF it makes welcoming our little angel even more special. We've been lucky to have incredible support from our family and close friends throughout the journey.'

Through all of this and their beautiful miracle baby this year, they have a bustling furniture empire. They also now have a separate business venture A. by Andre with Peter Andre which is doing amazing, having built up a relationship with him after styling his home.

'The venture with Pete came about having built up a friendship with him and Emily whilst styling their home,' she explained. 'We designed his and Emily's bed which was featured on Michael Mcyintres "Big Show."

'Pete is very passionate about interior design and shared our passion for making designer furniture more affordable. Having made the new bed for them, the conversation progressed and we came up with the idea of a bed range with Pete that we could design together and decided on the name "A. By Andre".

Speaking of her venture with Peter Andre, Layla explained: 'We came up with the idea of a bed range with Pete that we could design together and decided on the name "A. By Andre"' Above, Emily Andre and Layla designing their bed

For Layla and Dan, the aim of their business is to sell furniture (above) which is affordable whilst ensuring the quality remains

They launched at the end of November and now have the beds showcased in the showrooms of 22 of the country's most reputable luxury retailers, with the view to increasing that number to 100 retailers by the end of the year.

They also have plans to expand to sofas later this year with matching bedding in the pipeline also.

'Our aim is for our furniture to be affordable whilst ensuring the quality remains,' Layla explained. 'The major hurdle has been developing a model that allowed us to do this whilst eliminating as many third party issues as possible, and we're happy to say we think we now have a fantastic way of working.'

'We have an incredibly hard-working energetic team and trust in youth and the creativity that they bring. It's a big family, but we love it and we strive to go above and beyond to deliver those family brand values daily.'
Wearing a hat that will wow is one way to stand out at the social event of the summer - The Royal Ascot.

With a history as rich as it is long, Royal Ascot sits proudly as the jewel in the crown of horse racing, and is a favourite in the summer calendar for Britain's royals.

A renowned racing fan and faithful Ascot attendee, The Queen, alongside the Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Sussex, will be taking in the action on the track from the Royal Enclosure.

But the question remains every year - what style of hat will they wear?

Luxury department store Fenwick has once again paired with the Royal Ascot Millinery Collective, to release a collection of dazzling pieces created by some of the monarch's favourite designers - including Stephen Jones OBE and Philip Treacy OBE.

Philip Treacy's elegant hat, which costs almost 3,000. He called it 'an ode to British tradition adapted for contemporary society'

Meanwhile Merve Bayindir drew from the current trend of huge brims for this regal piece, which costs 2,700

With playful bold and colourful designs, this year's Royal Ascot Millinery Collective features wide brims, huge flower decorations and delicate feather pieces.

Several of the pieces have towering styles, making them sure to help the wearer stand out from the crowd.

The ten piece collection features two hats that cost all 3,000, although some are just a tenth of the price at 300.

And this year, to reflect the global support for the Royal meeting, it will feature the first International designer into the regal collection.

Australian designer Jack & Jill is the first International milliner to be featured in the collection, and costs 350

Joining from Australia  a country recognised for its modern, high-quality and diverse range of millinery  is renowned Melbourne-based milliner Millinery Jill.

Nodding to the pieces that Meghan Markle, Princess Eugenie and Sophie Countess of Wessex wore last year, she suggested that hats with 'huge brims' were selling impressively.

She said: 'In Australia I cannot keep up with orders for hats with bigger brims. They are literally selling within minutes of completion.'

She also suggested that the unconventional could be spotted on the race course this year, saying: 'Also, women's top hats are creating a strong and fashionable silhouette at the racetrack.'

Awon Golding called this hat, which costs 880 and featured a monochrome design and a pop of bright pink colour, a classic piece with a 'My Fair Lady twist'

Vivien Sheriff's feather piece is slightly more understated in a fresh nude colour, but bold in it's shape and design

Meanwhile Philip Treacy OBE called the hat he created for the collection 'a lifetime combination of craft and technique combined with new raw materials.'

He described the hat, which costs 2,995, saying : 'This is a handblocked calotte I have been working on since last summer. I designed different versions. It's an ode to British tradition adapted for contemporary society.'

Awon Golding also picked up on the idea of two world's meeting, commenting that their 880 hat was inspired by 'classic millinery with a hint of My Fair Lady glamour.'

While some of the hats focued on a bold but mainly monochrome design, others were more vibrant and playful.

Last year, Kate Middleton donned a white fascinator with a floral design, while her mother Carol wore a wide brimmed powder blue piece

Meghan Markle was ahead of the curve last year for her first Royal Ascot when she wore a wide brim monochrome hat

Siana Yewdall's piece is 550 and particularly playful, with a pale blue colour but intricate neon pink, green and blue feather design

Siana Yewdall produced a fun and fluttering hat that costs just 550, saying the whole point of the event was to feel confident and happy: 'I always like to advise choosing a hat that makes you feel happy and confident, and if you are happy and comfortable in your hat, you will forget you have it on! The right hat will make you smile!'

Merve Bayindir also put together a piece with a huge brim, saying: 'The design for this piece took about a month. The base colour was very important, and it was hard to get it right.

'We then had to get the custom leaf cut and colour each leaf before sewing each of them on to a very large base. It is a special hat and like everything special, it took time and intricate detail to make it.'

Royal Ascot is Britain's most valuable race meeting, attracting many of the world's finest racehorses to compete for millions of pounds in prize money.

Layla Leigh's is one of the most vibrant in colour in the collection, with the designer incorporating feathers into their design. It's also one of the more affordable, and costs just 295

Juliette Botterill's bold blue and turquoise piece has a bright rose like quality to it, that is reminiscent of a shell, 610

Whether it's the arrival of the Royal Procession at 2pm sharp, six world-class races throughout the afternoon or the communal singing around Ascot's Bandstand early evening, each day is an unforgettable whirlwind of excitement and colour.

The Royal Meeting is the perfect occasion for socialising, hosting a choice of four separate enclosures with plenty to offer in terms of dining; three course a la carte luncheon, gourmet picnic, Champagne afternoon tea or Fine Dining.

Also synonymous with sartorial elegance, guests are welcomed to contribute to the sense of occasion.

Each year the racecourse is awash with colourful classic and contemporary fashions as well as the most magnificent and spectacular millinery creations.

Bundle MacLaren also admitted they took inspiration from statement bows and bold block colour for their towering piece, priced at 495
Crown Princess Mary of Denmark enjoyed a family outing with her twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine as they attended Copenhagen Zoo.

The Australian-born royal had visited the zoo the previous day with her mother-in-law Queen Margrethe, 78, of Denmark.

And on Thursday, the 47-year-old mother-of-four made her second appearance for the official public opening of the panda enclosure with her eight-year-old twins in tow - and my, how they've changed.

Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine - who looks just like her mother - stepped out in matching jackets as they were all smiles when they posed for photographs.

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark enjoyed a family outing with her eight-year-old twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine as they attended Copenhagen Zoo on Thursday

Oh my, how they've changed! The eight-year-old twins are all grown up now after they made a special appearance at the official public opening of the new panda enclosure at the zoo

Like mother, like daughter! Princess Josephine enjoyed her day at the zoo with her family

The trio were all rugged up as they met two pandas named Xing Er and Mao Sun, which were gifted by China's Chengdu Panda Base as part of a Danish and Chinese research project.

The Australian-born princess put on a stylish display at the event as she opted for a chic trench coat, retailed around $780 (425).

Her brunette locks were blow dried into sleek curls - while she donned her usual glamorous makeup, including a smoky eye, bronzer and a glossy lip.

Surrounded by zoo-goers, the Danish family-of-three were pictured cutting the giant ribbon on the red carpet, followed by a tour of the new panda enclosure.

Prince Vincent smiling at the camera as he posed with one of the pandas in the new enclosure

Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine stepped out in matching jackets as they were all smiles when they posed for photographs with a panda mascot

Adorable! Princess Josephine giving a mascot panda a big hug as she attended the opening

Surrounded by zoo-goers, the family-of-three were pictured cutting the ribbon on Thursday

Round of applause! Princess Mary was joined by twins Prince Vincent and Princess Josephine

Leading the way! The young Prince and Princess went on a tour of the zoo with their mother

Their family day out comes just one day after Princess Mary the zoo with Queen Margrethe as the Danish royals were seated front row for the opening.

Queen Margrethe opted for a sophisticated monochrome look for the occasion.

She took a lead role in the grand opening of the premises, which was opened to the public on Thursday, and offered her congratulations to the zoo.

The royal paired an asymmetric cream coat with black leather gloves and matching earrings for the occasion.

Queen Margrethe wore her tied back and added a splash of colour to her look with a vibrant red lipstick.

Meanwhile, Crown Princess Mary, 46, stunned in a powder blue coat teamed with navy accessories as she joined her mother-in-law for the monumental event.

The royals looked wrapped up for their visit and wore chic coats in light colours along with cool accessories and leather gloves

Margrethe II of Denmark and Crown Princess Mary opened the panda house in Copenhagen. The pandas Xing Er and Mao Sun arrived to Copenhagen on 04 April, but so far it has only been Zoo's professional staff who have had access to the pandas

The gorgeous piece was eye-catching on a grey day, and she paired it with a patterned grey and black scarf.

The Danish royals engaged in conversation and appeared to take great interest as they toured the enclosure.

Both made an impact as they visited the newly built facility which will welcome two pandas, named Xing Er and Mao Suni, as part of a Danish and Chinese research project.

'Congratulations to all of us. We now have two pandas in a fabulous enclosure that we can look at for many, many years,' Margrethe said.

The enclosure, which is in the shape of the Chinese Yin-Yang symbol, is set to open to the public tomorrow.

Queen Margrethe offered her congratulations as she opened the panda plant at Copenhagen zoo, which will house two pandas that were a gift from China's president during a state visit in 2012

The royals were shown around the panda plant at Copenhagen zoo, which will house the two pandas, namned Xing Er and Mao Suni, which the Queen received as a gift from China's President at the state visit in 2012

The pandas are to be separated and brought together again during the mating season.

Xing Er replaced another male panda China, who was originally picked to go to Denmark after it was discovered he couldn't procreate.

China has lent out pandas as a sign of goodwill to fewer than two dozen nations. Any cubs born during the 15-year loan period are considered China's.

The bears are 'national treasures of China and symbol of peace,' the Chinese Ambassador to Denmark, Deng Ying, said Wednesday.

In February 2018, China loaned two pandas to Finland. Two others arrived in June 2017 at Berlin's Tierpark zoo, where the first visitors were German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The best-known case of panda diplomacy was in 1972, when a arrived in the U.S., two months after President Richard Nixon's trip to China, ending 25 years of isolation and tension between the two.
With the flu season edging ever closer, many Australians are looking for easy ways to prevent illness and stay well.

And while some turn to vegetable soups, fruit and increased exercise to boost their immunity, Sydney-based nutritionist Simon Hill has a few extra tricks he swears by for staying healthy throughout the cooler months.

'With winter around the corner it's the perfect time to introduce warming herbs and spices into your recipes,' Mr Hill, the founder of Plant Proof, told FEMAIL.

'One of my go-tos is a chai spiced porridge containing cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and ginger. Team these ingredients up with oats, banana, hemp seeds and hint of vanilla for the perfect start to a chilly day.'

While many turn to vegetable soups, fruit and increased exercise to boost their immunity, Sydney-based nutritionist Simon Hill (pictured) has a few extra tricks he swears by

How do you prevent a cold in winter? Good hygiene is one of the most important ways to help prevent colds and flu so make sure you: * wash your hands regularly and properly with soap and water * clean surfaces such as your keyboard, telephone and door handles regularly to get rid of germs * don't share cups, plates or cutlery * avoid sharing towels with other people and throw disposable tissues and paper towels in the bin Other ways to help prevent flu can include an annual flu vaccination and antiviral medicines Advertisement

According to Mr Hill, these herbs and spices work together to ease digestion, reduce inflammation and protect the body against any 'oxidative damage'.

'To get more out of your morning oats, spices and herbs, turn this meal into a greater experience by slowing the pace down,' he said.

'Find a quiet spot with a cup of tea (my favourite is Pukka's organic Three Fennel Tea) away from your phone or other gadgets and practice truly disconnecting.

'A cup of tea is absolutely perfect for serving as a reminder to slow down - something that is so incredibly important for our mental health.'

For dinner, Mr Hill recommends cooking up an aromatic Dahl with red split lentils, cumin, ginger, turmeric and coriander.

'One of my go-tos is a chai spiced porridge containing cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom and ginger. Team these ingredients up with oats, banana, hemp seeds and hint of vanilla,' he said

'These herbs are loaded with antioxidants and other phytochemicals and are perfect for boosting your immunity through the colder months,' he said.

'The old saying "food is medicine" is pretty damn accurate - the food choices we make are either feeding disease or fighting it.'

An hour before bed, Mr Hill dims the lights, puts his phone on aeroplane mode and has a cup of tea with chamomile and/or ashwagandha to prepare the body for a restful sleep as sleep is one of the most important cold prevention methods.

'Where possible I recommend buying organic produce and tea free from pesticides and herbicides to minimise your exposure to possible carcinogens and support sustainable farming practices,' he said.

An hour before bed, Mr Hill dims the lights, puts his phone on aeroplane mode and has a cup of tea with chamomile and/or ashwagandha to prepare the body for a restful sleep

What foods should you eat to strengthen your immunity? Vitamin A and probiotics * Sauerkraut, kimchi and kombucha * Organic plain full-fat yoghurt with live bacteria * Green leafy salads with olive oil and lemon * Carrots, pumpkin and sweet potato Vitamin C and foods to aid recovery * Make chicken soup: Fry onion in butter with oregano, thyme and rosemary before adding a whole chook to a large saucepan and cover with water; simmer for 90 minutes to make a broth * Blade steak with onions, two cans of tomatoes, garlic and vegetables creates a healthy stew * Roast cauliflower drizzled in olive oil and herbs NB: While many believe that alcohol can help due to old wives' tales, alcohol actually distracts the body's defences Source: ABC Advertisement

'For this reason I always shop at my local Bondi markets and ask the sellers about the farms.'

Mr Hill is also sure to make sure the food he buys is organic and free of any 'nasties'.

'When it comes to packaged food I always, and I mean always, recommend reading the packaging and not just purchasing based off the design,' he said.

'I want to see that the ingredients are organic, and even better if the product is Organic Certified because that means that a third party has verified their product as truly organic and free from any potential nasties.

'To take things a step further I recommend supporting brands that have a sustainability and human welfare focus like Pukka Herbs.

'As well as being 100 per cent organic Pukka Herbs even go as far to have organic cotton strings on their teabags, vegetable inks on their packaging and are fully carbon neutral in their operations.'
When an Edinburgh entrepreneur launched a cleaning firm, she gave a whole new meaning to stripped back style.

Soon the Scottish capital's movers and shakers were calling up Victoria Murphy's firm, Glimmer, to help with buffing-up the silverware.

For Victoria, 25, employs a 15-strong army of naked cleaners - including three men - who charge between 55 and 75 an hour for their service, depending on the level of nudity.

Victoria Murphy, 25, employs 15 cleaners to work in the nude in the Edinburgh. Her team, including three men - charge between 55 and 75 an hour for their service, depending on the level of nudity

And before she started recruiting, Victoria first tested the water - giving Edinburgh's front rooms a thorough going over, wearing nothing but her birthday suit.

The singleton, who lives in the city with her pet Daschund, Louis, said: 'I didn't want to put my staff into any situation I had not experienced myself.'

With a degree in events management and a strong work ethic, Victoria was keen to start a business with a quirky unique selling point and began considering the adult service sector.

Then working as a beautician, she stumbled across an American company offering a naked cleaning service, and the idea for Glimmer was born.

Before she started recruiting, Victoria first tested the water - giving Edinburgh's front rooms a thorough going over, wearing nothing but her birthday suit. With a degree in events management and a strong work ethic, Victoria was keen to start a business with a quirky unique selling point and began considering the adult service sector.

'I knew I wanted something in that adult niche, which would be fun and risque, but not extreme,' she said. 'We are not an escort service. What we offer is fun and flirty.

'When I did it for a while, I had a laugh and nothing untoward happened.'

Glimmer offers three tiers of adult cleaning - with a service in lingerie or underwear starting at 55 per hour, topless cleaning costing 65 an hour and totally naked cleaning at 75 for the hour.

'None of my staff ever have to do anything they don't feel comfortable with,' Victoria added. 'The client will choose the option they prefer and I will match the cleaner to that choice.'

Victoria pictured on her graduation day, after completing her degree in events management. Initially, she worked in events management, but knew she wanted to go into the the adult service sector

The naked dress code has certainly done nothing to deter prospective employees, with Victoria receiving over 100 applications last time she advertised for staff.

'The most important thing is that someone has professional cleaning experience,' she said.

'Then they need to have a good personality, because engaging with the client, chatting to them and feeling comfortable being naked is all part of what makes someone right for this role.'

But Victoria admits that their 20 regular clients and 15 who book an occasional clean, have completely shattered her preconceptions about the type of person she imagined would use the service.

Glimmer offers three tiers of adult cleaning - with a service in lingerie or underwear starting at 55 per hour, topless cleaning costing 65 an hour and totally naked cleaning at 75 for the hour

The singleton, who lives in the city with her pet Daschund, Louis (pictured together), said: 'I didn't want to put my staff into any situation I had not experienced myself. The most important thing is that someone has professional cleaning experience.'

'I thought we'd get mostly professional working men in their forties but actually, the clients are much more diverse,' she said.

'I thought we'd get mostly professional working men in their forties but actually, the clients are much more diverse. We've had some as young as 30 and others in their 80s. Many of them live alone and a lot of the older gentleman are quite lonely, so it's important the experience is fun and that the cleaners like chatting' Victoria explained

'We've had some as young as 30 and others in their 80s. Many of them live alone and a lot of the older gentleman are quite lonely, so it's important the experience is fun and that the cleaners like chatting.

'We have male cleaners available but women asking for men isn't something that comes up a lot. We're definitely trying to work on that side of things and build it up.

'When I'm recruiting, I'm not worried about what people look like - as everyone has a different idea of what's attractive  but they do need to be presentable and body confident.'

Despite its saucy theme, Victoria said her friends and family have been very supportive about her business.

'They understand this is my baby' she said. 'I do spend a lot of time explaining to people that this is a serious cleaning business, too. We clean to a very high standard.

'Most people ask what the client does while the cleaner is working.

'They imagine they just sit there while the cleaner puts on a show, but that's not what we do.

'A lot of clients have never done anything like this before and are often quite shy.

'So the cleaner will chat and engage with them, but, most importantly, they'll get on with the job of cleaning the house.'

Social media  especially Instagram  has played a key role in advertising Glimmer.

'We can't just put leaflets through people's doors, as there may be families living there and we don't want to offend anyone, so we use social media and also advertise in free listings where we can,' said Victoria.

Social media  especially Instagram  has played a key role in advertising Glimmer. 'We can't just put leaflets through people's doors, as there may be families living there and we don't want to offend anyone, so we use social media and also advertise in free listings where we can,' said Victoria.

Running her business single-handedly, Victoria has high ambitions for Glimmer and is now recruiting naked cleaners in Glasgow and Aberdeen, saying that once she has conquered Scotland, she will clean up across the rest of the UK.

'I do want to expand across the whole country but for now, we're expanding by offering Naked Party Hosting,' she said.

Glimmer is also exploring the idea of offering Naked Handymen, which Victoria believes will appeal to more women, while her current client list is mostly male.

'I am still working part-time as a beautician doing nails mostly, but I am determined to make a success of this business, so I do work really hard,' she said.

'I do socialise with my friends and go out and I love taking Louis for a long walk, but I run every aspect of the business and so, truthfully, I have very little free time outside work.'
A 23-year-old woman from the Philippines, who married a British pensioner, 48-year-older than her, has said that strangers call her a 'mail order bride', but she insists they're in love.

Housewife, Lorie fe Dales, 23, from Cebu, Philippines, was approached by retired business owner, Thomas Greig, 71, from Wallasey, Wirall, on Facebook in 2014, after he fell for her looks.

For him it was love at first sight and although Lorie was initially taken aback by his age, their common personalities warmed her to him.

Their first date was in the Philippines in July that year for her birthday and while she was scared and nervous at first, she fell for him when they met, and they became exclusive.

Their whirlwind romance lead Thomas to propose to her during his first stay with her a few months after he arrived in December 2014 and they got married in the January.

Eighteen months later, in June 2016, they welcomed their daughter, Mary, two, and despite having to communicate via Skype, they say they're a happy family.

Housewife, Lorie fe Dales, 23, from Cebu, Philippines, was approached by retired business owner, Thomas Greig, 71, from Wallasey, UK, on Facebook in 2014, after he fell for her looks

In June 2016, they welcomed their daughter, Mary, 2, and despite having to communicate via Skype, they say they're a happy family

The couple are loved up and have been together for nearly 5 years despite strangers criticising their relationship

Lorie, Mary and Thomas at Disneyland Hong Kong - the family love spending time together when he is in the country

While their families have accepted their relationship, Lorie (pictured) says they have received some backlash from strangers who accuse her of being a 'mail order bride' or that Thomas has 'bought' her to have a 'young wife'

They couldn't wait too long before they got married and had a civil ceremony with just the two of them in January 2015. A year later, in June 2016, they welcomed their daughter, Mary, 2, and despite having to communicate via Skype, they say they are a happy family.

While their families have accepted their relationship, Lorie says they have received some backlash from strangers who accuse her of being a 'mail order bride' or that Thomas has 'bought' her to have a 'young wife'.

Thomas now travels to the Philippines every year and stays for five months at a time to be with his wife and daughter. He hopes to move to be with her in the Philippines in the future.

'We met on Facebook - it just happened: it was destiny. The first time I saw him on Facebook, I was like 'wow he might be old', but he doesn't look as old as you might think,' Lorie said.

Thomas now travels to the Philippines every year and stays for five months at a time to be with his wife and daughter

Lorie says that for them age is just a number and it is a question of 'mind over matter', - she said their saying is: 'if you don't mind it doesn't matter'

'We met here in Cebu and I was so scared, shocked and I didn't know what to say as he is my first boyfriend. But the feelings I had were mutual and we could feel that we are both in love.

'For him it was a love of first sight and to me that time I didn't really love him yet, but I was attracted to him though. He was attracted to my cuteness and I liked his blue eyes the most.

'For us age is just a number; it is a question of 'mind over matter', if you don't mind it doesn't matter - that's our saying.

Lorie posing happily with Thomas and their daughter during one of his 5 month trips to Cebu

'At first, my family said that they couldn't believe I have him as my boyfriend, but now they say if I'm sure about him, they will always support me, and they are happy as long as I am.

'It wasn't easy at all being far from each other but from time to time we have gotten used to it and regarding the intimacy aspects we just always remind ourselves not to worry, we will be together again.

'We communicate through Skype every day and we always see each other so that makes me feel ok as soon as we are near to each other.

'We got engaged way back in December 2014 - he proposed to me when he got here in Philippines. Right after he proposed by January 21, 2015, we got married. It went smoothly as we chose just a civil wedding.'

Lorie and Thomas in a pool with their daughter - he hopes to move to the Philippines permanently soon

Lori having cake with her husband Thomas and her daughter Mary during one of his trips to see her

Happy family - the couple say that their toddler,who is nearly three, has become accustomed to their long-distance relationship

They have since become parents to a toddler who is nearly three, who has become accustomed to their long-distance relationship.

Lorie says that while there is trust and loyalty between them, the distance made things difficult in the beginning. But they are now meeting up regularly and feel that it has helped with the intimacy of their relationship.

'The most difficult thing about our relationship that we have encountered is being carried away with our mixed emotions while being in a long-distance relationship,' she said.

'People think that our ages matters, as he is old and I'm young, but what I will say to them is we live our life the way we want and we are happy, thank you.

Despite having to communicate via Skype, they say they're a happy family. Pictured on a day out with the family

The couple say that their marriage has had its ups and downs but she's not a mail order bride

'People say that I'm a mail order bride, saying my husband has bought himself a young wife.

'Our relationship hasn't been easy so far, there have been ups and downs but we both reassure each other, and we are always happily married. Our daughter recognises her daddy as we always talk and see each other on Skype video.

'Our plan for the future is to give the best to our daughter. Sometimes I do feel like I need him at my side to look after our baby together, but I just look on the bright side about why we are in this situation.'
by Vladimir Rozanskij

The Evangelical Baptist community in Verkhnebakanskiy (Novorossiysk) is registered with the government, but does not have a place of worship of its own, so its members meet in private homes. According to police, all Baptist, Adventist, Pentecostal sects etc. are guilty of breaking the spiritual unity of the Russian people "and should be banned.

Moscow (AsiaNews)  Police interrupted a Baptist evangelical religious service in Verkhnebakanskiy, a village located within the boundaries of the City of Novorossiysk, enforcing the Yarovaya law, which bans religious activity in private homes. The incident in question took place last Sunday.

One of the participants, Yevgeny Kokory, the owner of the home where the prayer meeting was held, reported the incident on Facebook, posting an appeal to President Vladimir Putin, as "defender of the Constitution". Local Baptists were meeting for the Lenten liturgy of the Annunciation, celebrated in accordance with the Orthodox calendar.

As the service reached the moment of the breaking of the bread, police stormed the home without warning, accompanied by a City official and an agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Russias main security agency, along with Cossack militias.

The Baptist community is registered with the local authorities, but does not have a place of worship of its own; for this reason, its members usually meet in members homes.

At the time of the raid, 70 people were present at the gathering, including several children and seniors, who were the target of "vulgarities and screams. Police also threatened women and warned people not to tape the raid with video cameras or mobile phones."

The FSB official and a policeman took the altar, stopping the service and insulting those present in various ways.

Kokory's appeal ends with the request "to you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, to intervene to stop these abuses, especially in a heroic city like Novorossiysk (famous for its resistance to the Nazis), where freedom of conscience is violated in brutal way by the representatives of the State."

The following day, the clergyman went to see the local FSB chief, whom he met for an hour and a half, to discuss the history of the community, its current situation and Sunday's incident.

According to the pastor, "the security man, a very educated person, knowledgeable in history and religion, even recited the Orthodox Creed by heart . . . after which he told me that all sects  Baptists, Adventists, Pentecostals, etc.  are guilty of breaking the spiritual unity of the Russian people. Hence, they should be banned."

The pastor and his congregation are aware that such views are not the personal opinion of an official, but the states position.

With respect to Sunday, the local security services chief hinted that such "provocative" police actions are not random, and are meant to elicit a reaction from the members of the targeted community, in order to implement more radical measures to impose "religious" order at the local level.

For their part, the Baptists said: "we will continue to get together, because this is a command of the Saviour . . . It is difficult to frighten the believers. Our grandparents and great-grandparents went through worse in Soviet times."

The authorities of Novorossiysk have confirmed the ban on gathering to pray in homes, a measure that is increasingly being applied with extreme rigour throughout Russia against various Protestant communities.
A man born with dwarfism has become one of Britain's shortest dads after welcoming his first child.

Actor James Lusted, 30, from Wales, who is just 3ft 7in, had to climb a step-ladder to marry his wife Chloe who towers over him at 5ft 8in.

And two-and-a-half years after their dream wedding, James, 30, and teacher Chloe, 25, have welcomed the birth of daughter Olivia Nevaeh.

Actor James Lusted, who is just 3ft 7in, has welcomed the birth of daughter Olivia Nevaeh with his wife Chloe, who towers over him at 5ft 8in

James said: 'Holding my daughter in my arms is definitely in the top two of the best things I've ever done. Marrying Chloe was the other best day of my life.

'There are no words to describe the love we feel for Olivia. We are both overwhelmed by emotion and have never felt love like this before.

'When Olivia was first born I was just blown away by it all. I can't really describe the moment in words.

'When the nurses placed her in my arms I'd have died for them both, that's all I can say. We are both utterly smitten.'

James, 30, had to climb a step-ladder to marry his wife Chloe, 25, two and a half years ago

Olivia - who arrived weighing a healthy 8lb 3oz - was allowed home with mum and dad in Colwyn Bay, North Wales just 24 hours after being born.

James was born with a type of genetic dwarfism called diastrophic displasia but has not handed the condition down to his daughter.

James said: 'Olivia is just perfect. The paediatrician discharged her and said she was a perfect little baby and she really is.

James (pictured with Olivia and Chloe) was born with a type of genetic dwarfism called diastrophic displasia but has not handed the condition down to his daughter

Olivia - who arrived weighing a healthy 8lb 3oz - was allowed home with mum and dad in Colwyn Bay, North Wales 24 hours after being born

Doting dad James (pictured on his wedding day to Chloe) said: 'Olivia is just perfect. The paediatrician discharged her and said she was a perfect little baby and she really is'

James said that being a dad is 'the best feeling ever' and that him and Chloe (pictured together) are 'cherishing every single moment'

'Chloe feeds her and she goes to sleep at midnight and wakes up at 5am. I am guessing she is so relaxed because Chloe and I are so laid back and she senses that.

'We'd love more children in the future but for now we are just fine and are enjoying every moment with Olivia.

'Being her dad is the best feeling ever and we are cherishing every single moment.'

Chloe's ultrasound: James said that his wife has a 'very easy pregnancy' and craved 'everything orange'

James (pictured with wife Chloe) - who is also a Tory councillor - is currently rehearsing for a role in the Wizard of Oz with former glamour model Linda Lusardi where he is playing the wizard

James says Chloe had a near perfect pregnancy and her only cravings was for anything orange - especially Capri-Sun drinks.

Baby Olivia arrived three days late and Chloe's labour lasted just over seven hours.

James says: 'It was all going well but then Chloe needed an emergency assisted delivery.

'The doctors gave her a spinal block and soon after Olivia was born. She had her first feed within 40 minutes of being born. It was wonderful and amazing.'

James - who is also a Tory councillor - is currently rehearsing for a role in the Wizard of Oz with former glamour model Linda Lusardi where he is playing the wizard.
A former Claire's employee quit her job after learning about a company policy to forcibly pierce the ears of distressed children against their will if their parents insist on it  and now she's calling out the retailer in a viral Facebook post.

Raylene Marks worked at a Claire's store in Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, for four months, but quit earlier this month after an incident involving a seven-year-old girl who made it clear she did not want a piercing.

The girl's mother eventually left with her, but Raylene says she reached her 'breaking point' after a manager said that had the mother insisted and physically held her protesting daughter down in the chair, Raylene still would have had to pierce her.

Conscientious objector: A Claire's employee in Alberta, Canada quit after her manager said she'd have to pierce a child's ear even if their parents restrained them (stock image)

Raylene's open letter to the company and its customers was posted on April 7 and has been shared thousands of times.

She wrote that, as a former employee, 'I didn't mind piercing the ears of children who were excited to get new earrings but nervous about the procedure. I'd do what I could to put them at ease.

'I had a couple "gray area" piercings, though; piercings where the children resisted heavily, were pressured and intimidated by the parents into settling down, and the children weren't happy with what had happened even after the earrings were in place and the standard lollipop had been dispensed.

'I didn't feel good about those, and I started to wonder at what point the piercer and the parent are actually violating a child's personal boundaries.

'Last week was a breaking point,' she said.

Affected: Raylene Marks' Facebook post about the policy included a story about crying seven-year-old who kept telling her mom she didn't want piercings

A mother brought her seven-year-old daughter in to get both of her ears pierced, and Raylene was to assist with the piercing. She explained that when dealing with 'nervous kids who might change their mind after the first earring goes in,' the store would have two employees pierce both ears at the same time.

But the girl was more nervous than their usual antsy young customers.

'The girl pleaded and sobbed for thirty minutes not to be pierced,' she said. 'Despite Mom saying, "Honey, we can go home whenever you want," she was not letting her daughter go home.'

She said the mom put 'a great deal of pressure on her daughter.'

'This child was articulate, smart, and well aware of herself and her body. She expressed that she didn't want us touching her, that we were standing too close, that she was feeling uncomfortable,' she recalled.

'She made it clear she no longer wanted to get her ears pierced. She begged, over and over again, for Mom to please, just take her home. That child's message was loud and clear to me: Do not touch my body, do not pierce my ears, I do not want to be here.

'I'm inclined to respect a child's right to say, "NO," to any adult forcing any kind of non-medical contact on them, so I told the other piercer I wouldn't be part of the ear piercing for this girl. To my great relief, in the end the mother respected her daughter's wishes, and took her home.'

But the whole experience left a bad taste in Raylene's mouth. The next day, when asked by her manager about the incident, Raylene said that she wouldn't have pierced the girl's ears if the mother had insisted.

'I was firmly told, "You would have had no choice but to do it,"' she said.

'I wanted to know how far we were supposed to take this policy of piercing non-consenting children,' she said, and asked the manager: 'So if a mother is physically restraining her daughter, holding her down and saying, "DO IT," while that little girl cries and asks me not to, do I do the piercing?'

Traumatic: The former employee was told it's store policy to pierce a child even if parent is holding her down, and an employee who refuses would face disciplinary action (stock image)

'My manager did not hesitate to respond, "Yes, you do the piercing."'

Raylene quit that day. She says that if she had refused again, she would have faced disciplinary actions that would eventually lead to termination. She also says that according to her manager, this store's policy isn't unique: others in the district operate the same way.

'Our District Sales Manager confirms this policy is correct: Children can be held down and pierced. Children do not have a voice in the piercing process. The associate doing the piercing has no right to refuse to shoot metal through the ears of a child who begs not to be touched,' she said.

'Basically, if I'm not going to get kicked in the head by that restrained child, or if that hysterical seven-year-old is unlikely to knock the gun from my hand, I must go ahead with the piercing.

'This is, by my point of view, a deeply flawed policy that helps facilitate situations where children can be traumatized or otherwise subject to forms of intimidation and abuse in-store,' she went on.

'I believe in upholding a childs right to bodily integrity at all costs, and I will not be an adult that commits an indignity to a child.

'Kids who dont want to endure the discomfort and pain of the procedure should not be forced to because a paying adult comes in, claims to be the legal guardian and insists upon the ear piercing.

This policy helps facilitate situations where children can be traumatized or otherwise subject to forms of intimidation and abuse in-store

'I cannot be part of a company that teaches a child that their right to say "NO" to invasive non-medical contact can be so easily overridden by an adult, and moreover, that they're supposed to accept that.

'This is about a childs right to refuse to be pierced. This is also about an employees right to refuse to pierce the child that refuses to be pierced.'

Raylene signed off with a message to Claire's, pleading with the company to change the policy. She said there needs to be a policy in place that protects children.

'So I implore you now, as does everyone who shares this letter  Be better. Be accountable. Know whats going on in your stores, and do something about it,' she said. 'Our children deserve better. Please do better by them.'

In less than a week, Raylene's post has since earned international attention  and Claire's reached out to her to comment.

'Claire's has reached out to me and expressed intentions to revise the policy,' she wrote in an update. 'I do hope Claires will release a public statement if and when their policies are revised.'

The company also made a statement to DailyMail.com saying that that Raylene acted correctly and they are investigating the store she worked at.

'Claires has been piercing ears for more than 40 years, and has pierced over 100 million ears. Customer well-being is our main priority, and we ensure that any child piercing we do is carried out with the best care in consultation with, and with the agreement of the legal guardian,' a spokesperson said.

'In relation to the ear piercing incident involving the former employee Raylene Marks, we believe she acted appropriately and in line with our policy by refusing to do the piercing,' the representative continued.

'The policy is in place to ensure that if a child is distressed or resisting, Claires employees have the right to refuse to continue the piercing.

'We are investigating the specific store instances she mentions, and will take appropriate corrective action. We will also be reviewing the policy to ensure that the intent is clear.'
A Prada handbag on sale for 1,630 has been likened to 'a climbing wall' by confused Facebook users.

The knee-length black nylon bag is decorated with peculiar inflatable-looking keyrings on the outside.

While Prada counts both the Duchess of Sussex and Cambridge as fans, as well as dozens of other fashion-forward stars such as the Hadid sisters, their latest offering is certainly quirkier than their usual styles.

Some dubbed the eccentric carrier as 'an inflatable garbage bag', 'a thoroughly deflated balloon artist who has failed the Britain's Got Talent audition, walking off stage' while another said it looked like it had 'all your organs on the outside.'

A Prada handbag on sale for 1,630 has been likened to 'a climbing wall' by confused Facebook users

The high-end bag is made of nylon, with a 'detachable double handle', zipper closure, enamelled triangle logo and removable nylon pouches.

The Italian label's website describes the product as: 'Designed by architect Kazuyo Sejima, this versatile Prada Invites nylon bag is defined by its modular design.'

As well as a bin bag, Xenia Nettleship from Southend-on-Sea got more creative and said the tote looked 'like a climbing wall.'

Jennifer Barback from Peterborough went even further, saying: 'It reminds me of those tunics with felt human organs attached with velcro that they have for kids at science museums.'

Some dubbed the eccentric carrier as 'an inflatable garbage bag', 'a thoroughly deflated balloon artist who has failed the Britain's Got Talent audition, walking off stage' while another said it looked like it had 'all your organs on the outside. Left, the front of the bag, Right: the back of the bag

One user penned her thoughts, writing: 'Looks ludicrous, costs and fortune, it's a no from me!'

Another said: 'I wonder if people at Prada think of crazier and crazier ways for people to part with their money'.

A third simply commented: 'Oh. Dear. God.'

The Italian label's website describes the product as: 'Designed by architect Kazuyo Sejima, this versatile Prada Invites nylon bag is defined by its modular design' but Facebook users had some other thoughts

The bag was designed by Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima, 62, who describes her striking creation as 'modular' and 'versatile'.

But the price is less versatile, coming in at a staggering 1,630.

In 2010, Ms Sejima was the second woman to win the Pritzker Architecture Prize, an award often referred to as 'the Nobel Prize of architecture'.

Shoppers may be disappointed to find you can't buy the bag just yet, but you can book an appointment at a Prada store to talk to a consultant about getting on the waiting list. Although many Facebook users appeared to never want to get their hands on the quirky look

However it seems many people are left questioning Ms Sejima's eye when it comes to fashion.

One user was left outraged, commenting: 'All designers are obviously on crack!'

Shoppers may be disappointed to find you can't buy the bag just yet, but you can book an appointment at a Prada store to talk to a consultant about getting on the waiting list.

Prada isn't the only designer label to be mocked of late.

Prada isn't the only designer label to be mocked of late. Shoppers online have mocked the designer dress from Balenciaga (above), which retails at a whopping 3, 700

The company's wacky handbag design release comes just days after Balenciaga was made fun of for selling a green box dress that is comparable to a cushion.

While the designer brand boasts a famous clientele including Kim Kardashian and Gigi Hadid, it's unlikely the 'evening couture dress' will appear on their social media accounts any time soon - if the comments are anything to go by.

Sharp-tongued shoppers couldn't resist offering their strong opinions on the extortionately priced ensemble, which would set fashionistas back a whopping 3,700.

Many have been critical of the dress, with some writing that it could be mistaken for a throw cushion

'This is a disguise for introverts,' one online shopper joked, while another added: 'You sit on the couch at the party and everyone just thinks you're a throw pillow and doesn't try to talk to you.'

One unimpressed shopper even went so far as to advise that the dress should feature a sign saying: 'Warning - you may be sat on'.

The questionable number comes in a trendy bold emerald green colour, and is made from a mat polyester double satin material.
She's become one of the most famous women in the world since meeting Prince Harry, but Meghan's former stylist says she always knew the former actress was destined for 'big things' - thanks to her 'grand desires' and high energy.

Talia Brown Thall from Toronto, became friends with the Duchess of Sussex, 37, after meeting in 2005 on a shoot for Flare magazine.

The stylist bonded with the royal, who was working as an actress on Suits at the time, over their love of yoga, and they worked together for around a year.

They lost touch, but Talia said she wasn't surprised to hear about Meghan's relationship with Prince Harry, telling People: 'It sounds weird but I always knew Meghan was ready for big things.

'I didn't know what they were, but her energy and her desires were always grand.'

Talia Brown Thall said she always knew Meghan was destined for big things, and called her energy and desires 'grand'

She went on: 'She was always working away, she never stopped!'

The pair met while they both lived in Toronto, and it wasn't long till they began to work together, with Talia introducing Meghan to luxury Canadian brands, including Sentaler.

The Duchess is regularly spotted in the brand's wrap coats, which continue to be a favourite in her wardrobe.

The stylist called the royal's style classic and clean, and admitted she's always known how to work her best features in skirts that would finish at the 'perfect' spot on her leg.

Talia revealed that Meghan was a fan of showing off her legs, and knew exactly right skirt length to hit the 'perfect' spot

The pair became friends when Talia worked as Meghan's stylist for a year while the now royal living in Toronto

Meghan chose a Canadian designer Sentaler that Thalia introduced her to for her first official royal Christmas day service in Sandringham

Meghan has continued to wear the Canadian designer throughout her pregnancy, proving Thalia's recommendation a hit

The two would hang out at Meghan's home with her dogs, drinking wine as well as going to yoga together

Thailia went on to say that she thought Meghan would make the best kind of mother.

'She really loves to love,' she said, adding: 'She's kind and she thinks about the world around her, she's going to be so great.'

Talia, who lost touch with the Duchess around the time she started to date Prince Harry in June 2016, said she heard about the couple's engagement through social media.

The Canadian stylist, who is no longer in touch with Meghan, worked with the royal for a year while Meghan worked on Suits

The designer visited Buckingham Palace last year and took a selfie with her partner outside the gates

She visited Buckingham Palace in October last year, and posted a selfie outside the gates.

Earlier this week, the it was revealed that the Duke and Duchess have decided to keep keep arrangements for the birth of their baby private.

The couple were said to have taken a 'personal decision' to maintain a high level of privacy around the birth of their first child, which is expected in the very near future.

The decision by Harry and Meghan not to announce the names of their medical team or a chosen hospital saw bookmakers slash the odds on them opting for a home birth.

The Daily Mail revealed this week that a midwife-led home birth was the 'favoured choice' of Meghan, 37, although she told friends she had not ruled out a hospital delivery.
Ivanka Trump looked ready summer when she stepped out of her Washington, D.C. home in a short-sleeve top and cat-eye sunglasses on Friday, just hours after it was reported her father calls her 'baby' in official meetings and wanted her to lead the World Bank.

The 37-year-old first daughter embraced the spring weather and bared her legs in a $2,495 black, white, and red Michael Kors dress with a front slit and curved hemline as she headed to work after the publication of The Atlantic's profile on her, which includes an interview with President Donald Trump.

Ivanka sported a business casual spring look, cinching her waist with a black belt that matched her black slingback heels.

Stepping out: Ivanka Trump, 37, was seen leaving her Washington, D.C. home with a smile on her face on Friday morning

Outfit: The first daughter wore a $2,495 black, white, and red Michael Kors dress with a front slit. She accessorized her look with a black belt and slingback heels

Style: The White House senior adviser wore her long blonde locks styled in bouncy waves, and thick gold hoop earrings peeked out from underneath her hair

The White House senior adviser wore her long blonde locks styled in bouncy waves, and thick gold hoop earrings peeked out from underneath her hair.

She had a large $515 Sophie Hulme tote slung over her right shoulder when she stepped out of her front gate, and she used her hand to brace the bottom of the handbag when she walked.

Ivanka flashed a small smile as she made her way toward the Secret Service-driven SUV parked outside of her home and headed off for the day.

Her husband, Jared Kushner, was also seen leaving their home on Friday morning.

The 38-year-old White House senior adviser had a smile on his face as he headed to work wearing a navy suit and a gray tie.

Both Ivanka and Jared appeared to be in good spirits when they left their home following The Atlantic writer Elaina Plott's profile about her - and the first daughter showed no signs of stress or concern when she joined her father in the Roosevelt Room at the White House to discuss 5G deployment.

Accessory: Ivanka had a large $515 Sophie Hulme tote slung over her right shoulder. She used her hand to brace the bottom of the handbag when she walked

Early start: Ivanka's husband, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, was also seen leaving their home on Friday morning

Working: The first daughter joined her father in the Roosevelt Room at the White House later in the day to discuss 5G deployment

Important: President Trump watch on as his daughter spoke about advances in technology, before describing 5G as a 'big deal'

Although Ivanka declined to be interviewed for The Atlantic piece, her father, President Trump, spoke candidly about how 'unique' she is.

According to the report, he calls his eldest daughter 'baby' during meetings and has considered her for official roles at the United Nations and World Bank, only to refrain from nominating her to avoid being accused of nepotism.

'Shes a natural diplomat,' Trump said. 'She wouldve been great at the United Nations, as an example. If I did [nominate her], theyd say nepotism, when it wouldve had nothing to do with nepotism. But she wouldve been incredible.'

He added: 'I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank  She wouldve been great at that because shes very good with numbers.'

Although Trump said Ivanka has never shown him any interest in running for president one day, he believes she would be a formidable opponent.

'If she ever wanted to run for president,' he said. 'I think shed be very, very hard to beat.'

The profile addresses the backlash Ivanka has received since her father became president, and her older brother, Donald Trump Jr., admitted that it does affect her.

Different schedules: The couple headed to work together on Wednesday morning, though they tend to leave the house at different times

Favorite: President Donald Trump has revealed he considered Ivanka for official roles at the United Nations and World Bank but didn't nominate her to avoid being accused of nepotism

Affectionate: It was also reported that he calls his eldest daughter 'baby' in official meetings

'She was loved by all the people in the world she wanted to be loved by,' he said. 'I cant say shes not disappointed by them turning on her. After the election, I found 10,000 emails saying, "Hey buddy, we were with you all along," and Im like, "No you werent, you piece of s**t."

'I just think I figured it out a little bit earlier than she did that people were going to see us differently after my father won.'

Ivanka's mother, Ivana Trump, was also interviewed for the piece and was asked about her only daughter's relationship with her stepmother, First Lady Melania Trump.

The Atlantic reported that a source close to Ivanka said she and Melania, 48, have a 'desire to be mutually respectful' but their relationship is not 'affectionate.'

However, Stephanie Grisham, a spokeswoman for the first lady, said that 'theyve always shared a close relationship and still do today.'

According to Ivana, Ivanka doesn't have any issues with her stepmother, but the Czech businesswoman couldn't resist taking a jab at Trump's second ex-wife, Marla Maples.

Understanding: A source close to Ivanka said that she and her stepmother, First Lady Melania Trump, have a 'desire to be mutually respectful' but their relationship is not 'affectionate'

Revelation: Ivanka's mother, Ivana Trump, refused to name the president's second ex-wife Marla Maples in the interview but said her daughter likes Melania 'fine'

The actress famously had an affair with Trump before he and Ivana divorced in 1992. He and Marla wed a year later before welcoming their daughter, Ivanka's half-sister, Tiffany.

'She likes her fine, because she didnt cause me to break up the marriage like the other one  I dont even want to pronounce her name.' Ivana said of Ivanka's relationship with Melania.

Although Ivanka is not quoted in the interview, she did have an off-the-record conversation with Plott in her all-white West Wing office.

It's noted in the piece that Ivanka's office is so glaringly white that one of the former senior White House officials compared entering the room to 'walking into an Apple store.'

Plott noted that taped to the wall by her desk are letters cut out of construction paper that spells out 'JOBS CZAR.'

However, the most puzzling piece of decor was Playa Fire, a book about the Burning Man Festival, that sat on her coffee table.

Neither the writer nor one of Ivanka's friends knew what to make of it.

'Really? Huh?' the unnamed friend said with a laugh after Plott told her about the book.
The Crown Princess Victoria looked to be riding high as she completed her 19th hike through Sweden's landscape today.

Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden, 41, was visiting Hallend on a hiking adventure, where she met local students and hiked with the general public.

She took up a bike for part of her journey, and took time to learn about the local marine environment and fauna nearby.

Crown Princess Victoria took her 19th walk through Sweden today, and looked overjoyed to be walking the "Prince Bertil's Track" during her Halland walk

She also took up biking for part of the hike, and donned a flattering blue helmet to ride along Sweden's coast

Earlier in the hike the crown princess wore a navy anorak and was joined by groups locals, who looked to be enjoying the spring weather

She looked delighted to be taking part in the hike, which is her 19th through Sweden's landscapes.

As part of her walk and cycle through the area, she hiked along Prince Bertil's track.

The trail is named after her father's uncle, Prince Bertil, the Duke of Halland.

The crown princess also met with students from the Eketanga Montessori School during the Province Walk, and learned about the local environment.

As part of the hike, she walked along Prince Bertil's path, which is named after her great uncle. She showed a photograph of Prince Bertil as they hiked

The royal looked every bit the adventurer as she cycled through Halland today, enjoying the west coast of Sweden

Crown Princess Victoria shows a photo of Prince Bertil as she walks the 'Prince Bertil's Track'

The royal posed for photographs on the coast in the beautiful spring weather, and seemed to be enjoying the hike

The mother-of-two looked a natural to the outdoor lifestyle, as she approaches the end of her hiking project

The mother-of-two regularly takes walks with the Swedish public through the country's stunning landscapes.

It's part of an effort to visit all 25 provinces, and take in their scenery. The Princess looked thoroughly prepared for the hike in a practical outfit.

Victoria is the eldest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf and heir apparent to the Swedish throne.

She looked every bit the natural on today's hike, which took place along the western coast of the country.

Crown Princess Victoria cycled along the beach with several locals on her 19th walk through Sweden

The royal met with locals in the area after the hike. She has six more to complete before she has walked through every Swedish province

The crown princess also met with students from the Eketanga Montessori School during the Province Walk, and learned about the local environment

For the hike, she wore a navy anorak, which she later took off as the spring sun came out.

Underneath, she wore a light weight light blue Houdini jacket, which retails in the UK for just 180.

She paired it with an elegant scarf from By Malina, which added a touch of class to her down-to-earth outfit.

At one stage the group walked along Prince Bertil's track, a path named after the Duke of Halland and the Crown Princess' great uncle.

She wasn't joined by Prince Daniel or her children Princess Estelle, six and Prince Oscar, two, on the trip.
A Texas library clarified in a rather humorous Facebook post this week that tonight's anti-prom party will have absolutely 'no snakes.'

The unlikely disclaimer was made after an announcement for the event at the Pflugerville Public Library in Pflugerville, Texas ran in the Community Impact newspaper  and mistakenly promised 'a DJ, snakes and a photo booth.'

The library later assured locals on social media that the party will have snacks but definitely no slithering reptiles.

Whoops! Pflugerville Public Library in Pflugerville, Texas is hosting an anti-prom party tonight, and a A newspaper announcement said it will have 'a DJ, snakes and a photo booth'

The newspaper had information about the event in a list of things to do locally this week.

It read: 'The Pflugerville Public Library hosts a safe space for high school students to celebrate Anti Prom.

'The theme of the night is "Fair Tales," and there will be a DJ, snakes and a photo booth.'

According to BuzzFeed News, several librarians and staff members brought copies of the paper into the library after it ran, but most figured that readers would understand that there was a typo. They dismissed the mistake.

But soon, the library was receiving messages from locals asking if there really would be snakes.

Correction! The library posted a correction on Facebook, insisting there will be 'snacks' and 'no snakes'

'I know it sounds weird  we are kind of forward thinking with our programming, so I figured that this one mistake might actually cause some real confusion in our community,' library marketing specialist Rose Cobb said.

Cobb decided it was necessary to clarify on Facebook.

'ATTENTION - there will be no snakes at this Friday's Anti Prom at the library. There was a typo in a local paper that said we will have snakes,' read the post.

'We will have snacks. Snacks is what we will have.

'Not to say we have anything against snakes. In fact, snakes will be at the library in May during the Teen De-Stressing Day: Reptile Hangout.

'So, just to summarize: April 12. No snakes. May 22. Yes snakes.'

Too funny: There is also a funny sign up in the library with the snake-free assurance

The unexpected post tickled thousands of people on Facebook, who have liked and commented with glee.

'Snacks.... why did it have to be snacks?' joked one, purposefully misquoting a line from Indiana Jones.

'Honestly, as a longtime Pflugerville resident, I cant remember ever being more proud of my town. The retraction is gold, but the anti-prom event is just plain cool,' wrote another.

'Honestly, as a longtime Pflugerville resident, I cant remember ever being more proud of my town. The retraction is gold, but the anti-prom event is just plain cool,' commented a third.
Antibiotics have been doled out unnecessarily by GPs and hospital staff for decades, fueling once harmless bacteria to become superbugs.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned if nothing is done the world is heading for a 'post-antibiotic' era.

It claimed common infections, such as chlamydia, will become killers without immediate solutions to the growing crisis.

Bacteria can become drug resistant when people take incorrect doses of antibiotics or if they are given out unnecessarily.

Former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies claimed in 2016 that the threat of antibiotic resistance is as severe as terrorism.

Figures estimate that superbugs will kill 10 million people each year by 2050, with patients succumbing to once harmless bugs.

Around 700,000 people already die yearly due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria across the world.

Concerns have repeatedly been raised that medicine will be taken back to the 'dark ages' if antibiotics are rendered ineffective in the coming years.

In addition to existing drugs becoming less effective, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years.

In September, the WHO warned antibiotics are 'running out' as a report found a 'serious lack' of new drugs in the development pipeline.

Without antibiotics, C-sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements will become incredibly 'risky', it was said at the time.
Over-the-counter (OTC) lozenges for a sore throat may be fueling the rise of superbugs, research suggests.

A study found antibiotics added to non-prescriptions remedies often fail to wipe out the bacteria causing a patient's symptoms.

Researchers worry this will strengthen bacteria and enable the species to evolve antibiotic resistance.

Over-the-counter lozenges for a sore throat may be fueling the rise of superbugs (stock)

The research was carried out by Cardiff University and commissioned by Reckitt Benckiser Healthcare.

'Our work raises doubt about the continued OTC availability of these antibiotics for the treatment of sore throats, especially considering the primarily viral nature of the condition,' Mr Adrian Shephard, of Reckitt Benckiser, said.

Antibiotics are only effective against bacterial infections, however, many mistakenly believe the drugs will cure viruses. This is concerning because incorrectly treating infections could make life-threatening bacteria harder to kill.

The study comes amid growing fears of antibiotic resistance - partially driven by the unnecessary doling out of the drugs - which has turned once harmless bacteria into superbugs.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned if nothing is done we are heading towards a 'post-antibiotic' era. In the US alone, around 2million become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria every year, resulting in at least 23,000 deaths.

Pneumonia, tuberculosis, gonorrhoea, and salmonellosis are among the growing number of infections that are becoming harder to treat.

To uncover the role antibiotics in OTC medicines play, the researchers analysed four species of bacteria that are known to be developing resistance to commonly-used antibiotics.

Cultures were taken of the species Staphylococcus aureus, Acinetobacter baumannii, Streptococcus pyogenes and Haemophilus influenza.

WHAT IS ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE? Antibiotics have been doled out unnecessarily by GPs and hospital staff for decades, fueling once harmless bacteria to become superbugs. The World Health Organization (WHO) has previously warned if nothing is done the world is heading for a 'post-antibiotic' era. It claimed common infections, such as chlamydia, will become killers without immediate solutions to the growing crisis. Bacteria can become drug resistant when people take incorrect doses of antibiotics or if they are given out unnecessarily. Former chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies claimed in 2016 that the threat of antibiotic resistance is as severe as terrorism. Figures estimate that superbugs will kill 10 million people each year by 2050, with patients succumbing to once harmless bugs. Around 700,000 people already die yearly due to drug-resistant infections including tuberculosis (TB), HIV and malaria across the world. Concerns have repeatedly been raised that medicine will be taken back to the 'dark ages' if antibiotics are rendered ineffective in the coming years. In addition to existing drugs becoming less effective, there have only been one or two new antibiotics developed in the last 30 years. In September, the WHO warned antibiotics are 'running out' as a report found a 'serious lack' of new drugs in the development pipeline. Without antibiotics, C-sections, cancer treatments and hip replacements will become incredibly 'risky', it was said at the time. Advertisement

These were then exposed to decreasing concentrations of gramicidin, neomycin, bacitracin and tyrothricin for 24 hours at human body temperature (37C/98.6F).

And the surviving bacteria were then tested for their antibiotic susceptibility.

The researchers were looking for whether the standard concentrations of antibiotics used in OTC drugs are above the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) - the lowest amount of a drug required to stop bacterial growth.

Results revealed that for S. aureus and A. baumannii, the concentrations of neomycin, bacitracin and tyrothricin were all above the MIC.

And these concentrations were sufficient to stop bacterial growth.

No MIC could be determined for gramicidin.

The researchers claim this suggests none of the gramicidin concentrations tested were able to prevent the growth of S. aureus or A. baumannii.

'We were concerned to find that some of the OTC antibiotics used in sore throat preparations were not sufficiently concentrated to prevent growth of common human pathogens and are enabling these pathogens to develop resistance,' Mr Shephard said.

H. influenza was unable to grow in any of the antibiotics or concentrations tested.

And S. pyogenes only demonstrated growth in very weak concentrations - one per cent and 5 per cent of those found in medicines - when exposed to neomycin.

When S. aureus was exposed to bacitracin, it eventually showed growth after 144 hours at high concentrations.

And a culture grown in a lower concentration of the drug was found to have decreased susceptibility to the antibiotics gentamicin, fusidic acid and ciprofloxacin.

This suggests the bacteria may have benefited from cross resistance.

This occurs when a bug develops resistance to an antibiotic not as a result of direct exposure to the drug but by exposure to a related substance.

This research was presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Co-author Jean-Yves Maillard - professor of pharmaceutical microbiology at the school of pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences - added: 'This was an interesting study that showed once again the potential of bacteria to adapt to chemotherapeutic antibiotics.

'[It highlights] the need for a prudent and perhaps controlled use of antibiotics in practice.'
The number of young kids who went to US emergency rooms because they swallowed toys, coins, batteries and other objects has nearly doubled, a new study says.

In 2015, there were nearly 43,000 such visits among kids under 6, compared with 22,000 in 1995, according to the study published Friday in the journal Pediatrics. The rate jumped from almost 10 per 10,000 ER visits to 18 per 10,000.

The increase 'rang some alarms,' said Dr Danielle Orsagh-Yentis, the lead author and a gastrointestinal physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Orsagh-Yentis noted that an increasing number of consumer products use potentially dangerous button-sized batteries, including TV remotes, digital thermometers and remote-controlled toys, which likely contributed to the increase.

A study published Friday, April 12, 2019 in the journal Pediatrics found a sharp increase in emergency room visits involving swallowed objects by kids under age 6

She said her interest in studying the trend began during her training, 'when we were all being called in in the middle of the night at odd hours to remove foreign bodies from either the esophagus or stomachs of children.'

Her research team analyzed a nationwide database of non-fatal emergency room visits for children younger than age 6.

Almost 800,000 children were treated during the study years after swallowing foreign objects.

Coins, batteries and toys accounted for most of the visits.

While 90 percent of treated children were sent home without hospitalization, severe internal injuries and deaths have been reported.

Batteries and small high-powered magnets often marketed as desk toys for adults are among the most dangerous objects.

When kids swallow more than one powerful magnet, the objects can attract each inside the intestines, boring holes into the abdomen that can lead to life-threatening blood poisoning.

In recent years, the US Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued safety warnings and orders to stop sales of some magnets, citing dozens of hospitalizations and at least one toddler death.

The agency also has warned about dangers from button-sized batteries, which when swallowed can trigger a chemical reaction that can burn holes through tissue inside the throat.

Children who swallow batteries or magnets may vomit or complain of abdominal pain.

They 'should be brought to the emergency room as quickly as possible,' Orsagh-Yentis said.

Morag Mackay of Safe Kids Worldwide, an injury prevention advocacy group, called for more research to understand why the incidents are on the rise. She said parents and caregivers need to be vigilant.

'Try to see the world from a child's point of view by getting on the floor so that you are at your child's eye level. Keep small objects such as coins, batteries, magnets, buttons or jewelry out of reach and sight,' Mackay said.
Receiving the Archicofradia de la Virgen de la Cinta of Tortosa, Francis emphasized that "Living in this way, as united brothers and sisters, supposes effort and renunciation, but I assure you that it is worth it, because it is a sign before a society that is often divided, though it may be outdated now, it has always been and remains a social sin to be divided.

Vatican City (AsiaNews) - Demonstrating that the Church is "a home, a family, a place of welcome and love, in which everyone, especially the poor and the marginalized, feel part and are never excluded or rejected". This is the task that Pope Francis sees in the confraternities, the associations of the faithful, of which he spoke today in the meeting with the members of the "Archicofradia de la Virgen de la Cinta" in Tortosa, (Spain), received on the occasion of the IV centenary of its foundation.

Francis emphasized the aspect of fraternity, that is the union of brothers and sisters, and the unity upon which it is founded. "But it is not enough to say that we are brothers, but we must always remember that" foundational "unity that marks us as such. Siblings - we know - often fight and argue over so many things, but even when that happens, they know how to keep that search for a good that cannot exclude peace and harmony between them alive. And when they can't do it, they suffer. The bond of charity which, as brothers and sisters, unites them with their bishop and, through him, with the Pope, constitutes an important gift that enriches them but also involves a mission: to be a leaven of solidarity in society ".

"Living in this way, as united brothers and sisters, supposes effort and renunciation, but I assure you that it is worth it, because it is a sign before a society that is often divided, though it may be outdated now, it has always been and remains a social sin to be divided. This is why every manifestation of fraternity, of solidarity helps. I encourage you in your task to be a sign before the world of that fraternity that comes from God ".

Finally, the Pope recalled the strong bond that links the Spanish Fraternity to the See of Peter. A bond of renewed communion with today's pilgrimage to the tomb of Peter. A gesture of adhesion that is not something of the past "but keeps its relevance alive".
Women should be able to terminate pregnancies within a week of seeing a doctor, new official guidelines state.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also says patients should be able to self-refer to abortion clinics rather than see a GP first, if they prefer.

They could even be booked in for a termination without seeing a doctor in person if they choose a phone or video consultation instead.

Women should be able to terminate pregnancies within a week of seeing a doctor, new official guidelines state

The draft guidelines have been drawn up by the health watchdog and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists to speed up and improve access to abortion services.

But critics have accused health bosses of rushing women into terminations and limiting medical supervision and support.

Dr Callum Miller, a medical doctor and research associate at the University of Oxford, said: Self-referral, self-administration and less medical involvement in abortions is not an improvement in health services for women. Clearly, the absence of medical supervision for taking powerful drugs, often with great distress, is not an improvement in medical care.

The draft guidance states routine follow-ups are not necessary for women following an abortion procedure.

Dr Miller said this was especially concerning, adding: Mental health reviews have repeatedly stressed the need for screening for those at risk of negative mental health consequences from abortion. It is disappointing to see that such women are not offered psychological follow-up after such a traumatic event which appears to be associated with worse mental health outcomes.

Current NHS rules stipulate that women should not have to wait more than a fortnight after their initial appointment for the procedure, although waiting times vary.

Two doctors must agree termination is necessary to prevent grave, permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the woman or child. Under the proposals, this legal requirement would not change, but could be done by phone.

Current NHS rules stipulate that women should not have to wait more than a fortnight after their initial appointment for the procedure, although waiting times vary

Letting women self-refer to a clinic was also recommended as it removes an unnecessary step in the process, allowing women to access treatment more quickly, the guidelines suggest.

Under the new recommendations, women should undergo an assessment within a week of referral and have the abortion within the following seven days.

Paul Chrisp, of NICE, said: Choosing to terminate a pregnancy is an important part of reproductive health for many women, which is why its essential providers are able to offer consistent support and advice.

Integrating and streamlining services should help improve access for all women, leading to shorter waiting times and allowing earlier terminations.

But Clare McCarthy, of Right to Life, said women should be given more time to consider all the options available.

She said: Simply rushing women through the abortion process does nothing to address the problems these women already face and would only later compound these issues if coupled with post-abortion regret.

Consultation on the draft guidelines will close at the end of next month, with full guidelines expected in September.
The family of a two-year-old girl hope treatment could halve the size of a fluid-filled mass on her face.

Olivia Chicchon, of Lodi, California, has a lymphatic malformation, a mass of small cysts that appear on the head or neck.

When doctors spotted it in the womb, parents Ivan and Teresa Chicchon, both 32, were offered to terminate the pregnancy.

Instead, they opted to have complicated surgery - called an EXIT procedure - to deliver Olivia.

Now, they are in talks with medics about having treatment they have described as 'ground-breaking'.

Sclerotherapy is an standard option for patients like Olivia, but is considered better than surgery because it has less scarring and lower risk of the mass returning.

If Olivia can get it, her life could be changed before she grows up to realise she is 'different' from other children, her parents said.

Olivia Chicchon, two, was born with a lymphatic malformation, a mass that appears on the head or neck due to an abnormal formation of lymphatic vessels

When doctors spotted it in the womb, parents Ivan and Teresa Chicchon, both 32, were offered to terminate their pregnancy. Pictured in hospital holding Olivia with the mass on her face

Mr and Mrs Chicchon hope that Olivia will be able to have treatment they have described as 'ground-breaking' before she realises she is 'different' from other children. Pictured, as a toddler

Mrs Chicchon said: 'We're all ready for the next step. Livie is beautiful the way she is, she will always thrive no matter what.

'But at the same time, if there is treatment out there that's going to help her, we'd rather do it now than wait and have it affect her more in the future.

'Just recently, we said that we're ready to move forward with Livie getting her treatment now.

'We met with her doctors and we haven't arrived at a definite conclusion yet.'

WHAT IS A LYMPHATIC MALFORMATION? Lymphatic malformations, sometimes referred to as cystic hygromas, are a collection of small cysts. The cysts are filled with a clear fluid similar to the fluid in a blister. The cysts have no purpose and can cause problems. The walls of the cysts are quite thin and contain little blood vessels. Cystic hygromas most commonly form on the neck and armpits. They occur when the lymph vessels fail to form correctly during the first few weeks of pregnancy. Due to them occurring so early on in pregnancies, they cannot be prevented. Cystic hygromas can be detected during pregnancy scans. Most are visible during birth or early infancy and appear as painless, translucent, soft lumps. Treatment is not always required but may involve surgical removal or injection sclerotherapy. Sclerotherapy causes an inflammatory reaction that makes cystic hygromas shrink. Cosmetic surgery may be performed in later life to reduce scarring. They affect up to one per cent of newborns in the UK. Their US prevalence is unknown. Source: Great Ormond Street Hospital

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A lymphatic malformation, also known as cystic hygroma, is a collection fluid-filled sacs, known as cysts, that result from a malformation in the lymphatic system - a network of vessels within the body which form part of the immune system.

The surgery the family have high hopes for is sclerotherapy, an injection that is used to treat lymphatic malformations as well as varicose veins.

Medicine is injected directly into the mass with a needle, which irritates and inflames the malformation and causes swelling which will eventually go down.

Sclerotherapy is currently considered to be the best treatment option of lymphatic malformations, as it carries lower risks than open surgery, doesn't create scarring, and the mass has lower chances of returning.

As Olivia has grown up, Mr and Mrs Chicchon have been faced with the challenge of shielding Olivia from curious children.

Mr Chicchon said: 'She is now aware when kids say something and make fun. She knows what's going on.

'So it's becoming much more of a challenge.'

Mrs Chicchon added: 'When we go out in public, of course people stare. Adults, children  they stare because it's different.

'I think it's important to explain to other kids exactly what it is. There are kids that aggressively try and touch it and it's like how do you react to that?'

When Mr and Mrs Chicchon received an initial diagnosis, they were offered the chance to terminate the pregnancy.

Doctors predicted Olivia would have no quality of life going forward.

If Olivia can get it, her life could be changed before she grows up to realise she is 'different' from other children, her parents said. Pictured in her home of California

Lymphatic malformations occur when the lymph vessels fail to form correctly during the first few weeks of pregnancy. Due to them occurring so early on in pregnancies, they cannot be prevented. Pictured, an ultrasound of Olivia

Doctors abruptly suggested a termination of pregnancy, according to Mr and Mrs Chicchon. But they declined and instead had Olivia delivered via an EXIT procedure. Pictured, in hospital after needing support

Mrs Chicchon wasn't able to see her daughter for 15 hours after the birth

Mr Chicchon said: 'The doctors just kind of abruptly told us that she had what is called a teratoma [a type of tumour that could be cancerous] and that we should collect our thoughts and consider termination options.

'We really didn't know if she would survive the birth.

'Luckily, we had a second opinion and doctors there said they had some crazy surgical procedure that would be able to deliver Olivia safely.

'Giving her a chance to be born, no guarantees she would survive, but just giving her that chance.'

Olivia was delivered via an EXIT procedure, similar to a Caesarean, which is used to deliver babies who have are at risk of their airways being compressed due to conditions such as Olivia's.

Mrs Chicchon said: 'When she was born, I didn't get to see her for almost 15 hours. But we all battled on and we got to bring our little girl home.'

Mr and Mrs Chicchon said they are glad they got a second opinion from doctors who were able to perform a delivery. Pictured, Olivia as a baby

Olivia started ballet lessons earlier this year which has boosted her confidence

The family await to hear the news about what treatment Olivia can more forward with but hope she can have Slerotherapy as it carries lower risks than open surgery, doesn't create scarring, and the mass doesn't return. Pictured, at their home together

Now the family await to hear the news about what treatment Olivia can move forward with.

Mr Chicchon said: 'The doctors need an updated MRI and we can go from there, whether it be Sclerotherapy or a bigger surgery.

'The sclerotherapy is more conventional, but it's ground-breaking in the sense that they do everything guided through a needle.'

The treatment would be slowly administered over a course of around three months, with each injection's medicine amount adjusted to suit Olivia's needs.

Olivia has had a rocky start to life after a few health scares. Just weeks after going home, she had two hernias that needed treated immediately.

Mr and Mrs Chicchon also have to be careful of Olivia falling over and landing on her mass, which has happened before.

The day after she fell she stopped eating and drinking and her speech became slurred. She was taken to the emergency room where she was given medication to manage the swelling.

But the parents are pleased that Olivia is developing a positive attitude.

Mrs Chicchon said: 'She's just an amazing little girl, smart, beautiful, active  she brings so much joy to everybody who knows her.

'Being born different is okay, everyone is different and no one is perfect.'

Mr Chicchon added: 'I want her to know that she's beautiful and that it's all okay. That's the most important thing for me going forward.'

The family run their own Instagram account where they like to raise awareness of her condition online and help other families who may be experiencing a similar journey.
Violent attacks in England and Wales are becoming less common  despite the wave of knife crime in 'bloodbath Britain', figures show.

Cardiff University researchers analysed attendance data from dozens of A&E departments, walk-in centres and minor injury units.

They estimated that 187,584 people sought help for injuries they sustained through violent attack over the whole of 2018.

In comparison, 3,162 fewer people were treated for violent injuries across the two countries in the previous year  nearly a two per cent decrease.

The number of people needing treatment after violence has fallen by more than two fifths (41 per cent) since 2010.

Cardiff University researchers analysed attendance data from dozens of A&E departments, walk-in centres and minor injury units

The statistics came from the National Violence Surveillance Network, a database that A&E units share information with for research purposes.

The authors of the study it was 'difficult to explain' why there has been a spike in knife crime amid a decrease in general violent injuries.

The reduction was driven by a fall in violence affecting males, with female attendances showing a slight rise year-on-year.

Violence peaked in July, and on Saturdays and Sundays, according to the study.

Those aged 18 to 30 were most at risk, while there was a 5.2 per cent rise in violence affecting people aged 51 and over.

Professor Jonathan Shepherd, one of the report's authors, said: 'Violence levels in England and Wales have not changed significantly between 2017 and 2018.

'However, the longer term trend shows a large decline in serious violence.

Metropolitan Police officers were called at 7.19pm on Wednesday evening to Arcola Street, Hackney

Dramatic pictures from the scene showed a heavy police presence on the scene, with the road cordoned off

'Between 2010 and 2018 we have identified a drop of 41 per cent in people needing treatment in emergency departments after violence.'

The two main official sources of crime data present a contrasting picture.

Police-recorded 'violence against the person' offences went up by nearly a fifth in the year to September.

But the separate Crime Survey for England and Wales showed no significant change in violence.

The Cardiff report said: 'Understanding violence levels in England and Wales is far from straightforward.

'Increases in youth-related, 'high-harm' knife and gun violence over the past two years against the background of long-term falls in overall violence has been difficult to explain.'

The paper noted separate hospital admissions data shows an increase in knife-related serious violence.

ISN'T KNIFE CRIME AT ITS WORST EVER LEVELS IN BRITIAN? The number of criminals caught with knives or other potentially deadly weapons reached its highest level for almost a decade last year, it was revealed last month. There were 21,484 such offences that came before the courts  but more than six out of ten of those arrested and dealt with by the law were allowed to go free without serving jail terms. A record share of the weapons cases were those involving individuals who either carried or brandished knives, as opposed to improvised weapons such as bottles and knuckle dusters, according to Ministry of Justice figures. Advertisement

Professor Shepherd said: 'Many factors may be responsible for increases in weapon-related violence, including gang-related activity, increased weapon carrying and drug use.'

It comes after a 15-year-old boy was yesterday wounded in a drive-by shooting and the getaway car used in the attack was found burnt out just minutes later.

The teenager was shot in the leg during the shooting near Plaistow station in Newham, east London.

And an 18-year-old was stabbed in a street in Hackney, north-east London on Wednesday. The teenage victim was taken to hospital with stab wounds.

Earlier this year, a spate of fatal stabbings prompted warnings of a 'national emergency' and Theresa May to say knife crime should be treated as an infectious disease.

In an effort to stop the bloodshed, ministers announced a 100 million cash injection to tackle knife crime and relaxed rules on police stop and search powers in badly-hit areas.

Mrs May unveiled joint plans with Home Secretary Sajid Javid which would see nurses, teachers and police officers having legal duties to report possible offenders.

Their proposed 'public health' strategy is very similar to that deployed in Glasgow, where stab wounds have halved in the space of 12 years.

Potential offenders or victims would be referred to violence reduction units where they would be offered mentoring to help change their ways.

Hospitals are treating 21 young patients every day for knife wounds and other assaults, official figures suggested last week.

At least 4,502 victims aged 11 to 25 attended casualty units or urgent care centres with injuries from stabbings or similar assaults last year.

The figures will be a huge underestimate because only 60 per cent of hospitals were able to provide data to MPs. The real total for 2018 is likely to be around 7,600.

The statistics were obtained under freedom of information laws by the all-party group on knife crime, which represents 40 MPs and peers.
A woman who was concerned about the swirly patches all over her body found out the unusual rash was a rare sign of anal cancer.

The 74-year-old, who is unidentified, had lived with the rash for almost a year before going to see a doctor.

She was given anti-histamines at first - but they didn't make any difference. Her rash then became sorer and she started to suffer stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhoea.

This led to doctors in Kansas investigating other causes of the rash, only to discover that it was a symptom of her anal cancer.

The woman underwent treatment and is now in remission after her health scare, the doctors who treated her have now revealed.

A 74-year-old woman form Kansas who had a rash of swirly patches all over her body discovers it is a rare sign of anal cancer. Pictured, the rash

The woman was given radiation and chemotherapy for a devastating anal cancer diagnosis, and within three months, the scaly patches on her skin had gone (pictured)

Doctors at the University of Kansas Medican Centre, in Kansas City, told the story in the New England Journal of Medicine.

This type of rash, although is a sign of cancer, is rare, a dermatologist told MailOnline.

Dr Adil Sheraz, a consultant dermatologist in London and British Skin Foundation spokesperson, said: 'Erythema gyratum repens (the rash) is a rare condition and in up 80 per cent of cases is associated with an internal malignancy such as lung cancer or oesophageal cancer.

'Internal malignancies and cancers can present as rashes on the skin. The rash itself is a sign of an internal issue and in some cases can be the first indication of cancers.

'This is not a common sight in dermatology clinics, however when it presents it is often quite striking and diagnostic.'

WHAT ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF ANAL CANCER? Symptoms of anal cancer can include bleeding, bowel changes and severe itching (pruritus). They can also be symptoms for other conditions such as piles so it's important to seek a doctor's opinion. Symptoms of anal cancer can include: bleeding from the bottom (rectal bleeding) itching and pain around the anus small lumps around the anus a discharge of mucus from the anus loss of bowel control (bowel incontinence) Some people with anal cancer don't have any symptoms. Advertisement

He added that a rash like this is most often associated with blood cancers.

Anal cancer is rare, with around 1,500 people diagnosed in the UK every year, and 8,300 in the US.

The woman had had the red swirly marks on her thighs, buttocks, stomach and armpits for 11 months.

Dr Megan Prouty, one of the dermatologists involved in the treatment of the woman, said the patient had been initially treated with antihistamines.

But over the next four months, the rash developed into scaly plaques, which could have been a sign of many skin conditions from psoriasis to urticaria.

What concerned doctors the most was that the woman had also been showing symptoms of something more sinister.

Medics performed a colonoscopy on the patient, where a camera was inserted into the intestines.

Many anal cancers are found early because they are in a location that doctors can easily view with anal examinations.

It was then that things became clearer - and the woman was diagnosed with stage two anal cancer.

Dr Prouty said: 'The patient was referred to the dermatology clinic for assessment of the persistent, evolving rash.

'She received a clinical diagnosis of erythema gyrateum repens, a rare rash usually associated with breast cancer, lung or oesophageal cancer.'

The woman was given radiation and chemotherapy, and within three months, the rash had gone and never returned - but she was left with scarring.

It is not clear how long she needed treatment for, but the report said she was in remission after eight months.

Human papillomavirus (HPV), which up to four in five people will be affected with at some point in their life, causes more than 90 per cent of anal cancers.

HPV, the name for a group of viruses that affect your skin and the moist membranes lining your body, may never show symptoms and it can take years for cancer to develop. It is unclear if the woman had HPV.
An artist shows feared viruses such as Ebola in a completely new light, by painting them in incredible detail.

Professor David Goodsell also happens to be a structural biologist at Scripps Research in San Diego, California.

Using a little bit of imagination, he has been able to turn what he sees under the microscope into eye-catching watercolour features.

His work has been adored by many, appearing on the covers of scientific journals, educational posters and conference logos.

Professor David Goodsell, a structural biologist, studies pathogens at Scripps Research in San Diego, California. He paints watercolour features of what he sees under the microscope. Pictured is his depiction of Ebola, a virus which the Democratic Republic of Congo is currently experiencing an outbreak of

Pictured is Professor Goodsell's artist impression of HIV, a virus that damages the cells in the immune system and weakens the body's ability to fight infection and disease. The Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections this year featured Professor Goodsell's HIV image as its logo

This is Professor Goodsell's idea of what Zika looks like, a virus spread by mosquitoes that causes symptoms of fever, rash, conjunctivitis, muscle and joint pain. Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause infants to be born with microcephaly - a smaller head

Professor Goodsell told Science Mag: 'I'm a scientist first. I'm not making editorial images that are meant to sell magazines.

'I want to somehow inform the scientists and armchair scientists what the state of knowledge is now and hopefully give them an intuitive sense of how these things really look - or may look.'

Professor Goodsell said his artistic impressions are just that - an idea of what the pathogens and other molecules could realistically look like.

Because new data about the structure of viruses emerges every day, Professor Goodsell's illustrations can quickly become 'out of date'.

Even the colours, arguably the most striking part of the work, are in his imagination, as the pathogens don't have as much beauty in real life.

Professor Goodsell said: 'The colours are completely made up.

'I just use colours that I like and colours that I think will allow you to distinguish different functional compartments.'

Professor Goodsell said his artist impressions are just that - an idea of what the pathogens and other molecules could look like. This is because new information comes out every day about what their structures are made of. Pictured, glutamine synthetase, an enzyme

Professor Goodsell said the colours in his paintings are completely made up and just add dimension. Pictured, ribosomes, particles that are present in large numbers in all living cells

Professor Goodsell started drawing cells as a way of having more of a connection to what he was studying. Pictured, transcription activatorlike endonucleases (TAL effectors) which are proteins secreted by Xanthomonas bacteria when they infect various plant species

Initially trained as an X-ray crystallographer, Professor Goodsell started combining biology and computer graphics programmes in the early 1980s.

By the early 1990s, he put pen to paper and started drawing the cells himself as a way of having more of a connection to what he was studying.

He learnt watercolour painting from his grandfather, and using these techniques, his images are more creative than computer-generated ones used in modern day.

The fascinating work has been adored by many, appearing on the covers of scientific journals, educational posters and conference logos. Pictured, family of GFP (green fluorescent protein)-like proteins

The beautiful paintings are contrasting to typical computer-generated images in modern day. Pictured, circadian clock proteins KaiA (top), KaiC (centre) and KaiB (bottom) which are contained in our cells that measure out a 24-hour circadian rhythm, controlling when we become tired or hungry, for example

The fascinating images make science more accessible to a wider audience who may have little understanding of what viruses such as HIV actually are.

At present, Ebola is raging through the Democratic Republic of Congo, having killed 751 people since the outbreak began nine months ago.

The haemorrhagic fever, which causes uncontrollable bleeding and organ failure, is yet to be contained by health officials in the African nation.
Women who use the female libido pill, Addyi, no longer need to avoid alcohol, regulators have declared.

Previously, Addyi came with a warning to stop drinking two hours before taking the pill, or to skip the pill if they'd had a few drinks.

But on Thursday, the US Food and Drug Administration found studies conducted by the drugmaker, Sprout, showed no need for such a warning.

Sexual health professionals hailed the shift as a win for women.

Addyi drugmaker Sprout conducted three post-approval studies that found alcohol is not an issue

The little pink pill was first approved in 2015, and remains the only FDA-approved treatment for hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD) in pre-menopausal women.

Unlike Viagra, which increases blood flow to a man's penis, Addyi (the brand name for flibanserin) targets the brain with similar effects to an antidepressant.

It boosts dopamine to gear up motivation and excitement, and dulls serotonin, the neurotransmitter which makes us self-conscious.

The drug has plenty of critics: a significant portion of doctors say we do not know enough about female sexual desire to 'fix it' with one pill.

The American Sexual Health Association, a 100-year-old nonprofit source of sexual health information, says HSDD affects a staggering one in 10 women - and ASHA CEO Lynn Barclay told DailyMail.com visits to the HSDD page on their website have been rocketing in recent years and months.

However, many health professionals question whether HSDD is real.

And there is growing concern about antidepressants in general, and how difficult they can be to wean off.

This skepticism has created fertile ground for cannabis entrepreneurs, who thrive in grey areas of medicine, to market marijuana as a 'natural', less risky solution for women lacking libido.

But plenty of sexual health practitioners and advocates say they are just happy to be able to provide women some tangible relief without caveats.

'Women are really looking for information on this,' Barclay said.

'I think, unfortunately, women think that what's happening to them only happens to them, and that there's nothing to be done about it. But Addyi might be something.'

The reason an alcohol warning was slapped on Addyi in 2015 was because Sprout had not adequately studied the drug's interaction with alcohol.

As a result, the FDA allowed the drug onto the market but with a warning, and ordered the firm to conduct three post-approval studies, which is fairly common with drug and device approvals.

Sprout conducted three studies.

The first lasted a week, with 24 women taking either Addyi or a placebo, and on two of the days some had a couple of alcoholic drinks with dinner, then took their pill a couple of hours later. Sprout wanted to see if there was a risk of fainting; in this scenario, there wasn't.

The second involved 96 women, who had three drinks, didn't eat much, then took Addyi in the morning. Again, there was no risk of fainting and blood pressure was stable, but some felt faint.

The third saw 64 women take Addyi or a placebo for 10 days. On four of those days (days four, six, eight and 10) they had a couple of alcohol drinks varying hours before taking their pill. Again, there were no clear side effects.

Dr Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Center for Health Research, said the studies leave many questions unanswered.

'Some women drink every day or almost every day, but the studies only include women drinking one or two drinks on some days but not others,' Dr Zuckerman told DailyMail.com.

'As a result, we dont know what happens if a woman drinks daily or almost daily, whether or not any of those days are what would be considered excessive drinking.'

But the bigger question that still remains, Dr Zuckerman says, is whether Addyi really works well at all.

Sales have been disappointing, driving Sprout to half the price in summer 2018.

Dr Zuckerman believes this may have something to do with the fact that, even in the clinical trials, the drug did not work much better than the placebo.

'The original Sprout studies only found a greater benefit than placebo when they changed the way they asked women to report their frequency of satisfying sexual experiences, using a less accurate measure,' Dr Zuckerman said.

'We think the poor sales of Addyi reflect the fact that it isnt effective (in addition to the outrageous cost and concerns about alcohol).

'Womens loss of libido is an important health issue, but it might or might not be something that can usually be fixed with medication.

'Taking Addyi every day is inconvenient and expensive.

'After the placebo effect wears off, why would any woman keep paying for a product that she realizes doesnt actually work?'
BREAKING AND ENTERING

by Jeremy N. Smith (Scribe 14.99, 304 pp)

The IT department of a major American company receives a call from the company presidents PA, panicking because her boss has forgotten his computer password. They ask a security question  her favourite colour  to confirm that she really is the PA. She answers purple. They give her the password.

Except that it isnt the presidents PA. It is a hacker. How does the hacker know her favourite colour? Simple  they look at her Facebook page, where the profile photo shows her wearing a purple dress, against a background of violets. And now the hacker can access all the presidents files, steal his data and impersonate him online.

Jeremy N. Smith explores the career of cybersecurity expert Elizabeth Tessman who is known as Alien in a gripping new book (file image)

Luckily for the IT department, the hacker is a white hat, someone secretly employed to test their security. Black hats are the real baddies, the hackers who commit fraud. The white hat here works for cybersecurity expert Elizabeth Tessman, the subject of this enthralling book about the murky world of hacking and those who try to stop it.

Tessman  she chose the codename Alien because her initials are ET  started hacking when she was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

We assume these people are nerds with zero social skills, but actually Tessman joined a club that delighted in accessing out-of-bounds places  rooftops, tunnels, heating ducts and the like. Not to cause damage: they simply relished the challenge.

This explains why Alien turned to hacking. Breaking into a whole computer network gave her the same sensation as reaching a rooftop and feeling like everything in sight belonged to her.

Conventional life isnt for Alien. Love you, she says to her mother as she leaves for college. But I dont want to be you, she adds in her head.

She uses small doses of LSD to help her concentrate while revising. She quits a job on MITs cybersecurity team because they introduce a dress code and normal office hours. Shes also female: on one cybersecurity course attended by 20 people she is the only woman.

BREAKING AND ENTERING by Jeremy N. Smith (Scribe 14.99, 304 pp)

But shes the best student, and is offered a job with the company running the course. They wear badges in the shape of tiny bent spoons, in tribute to the scene in The Matrix where the hero bends spoons with his mind.

Testing Aliens clients vulnerability to hacking doesnt just mean trying to access their systems.

In one test an accomplice plays an obnoxious delivery driver, distracting a guard while Alien pretends to be a new employee whose security card wont open the gates. The guard is so hassled he lets Alien into the building without checking her card.

And Alien herself? She establishes her own company employing several people, which gives her more time to look after her children. Dangerously close, indeed, to the normal, boring life she once rebelled against. For Alien, that would be the hardest hack of all.
Having a crash is a terrible feeling at any time, but no worse than when it happens in a foreign country and it's not your car.

Being involved in an accident - even if it's not your fault - is enough to ruin any holiday, but if you do have prang in a hire car you need to keep your wits about you to ensure the safety of everyone around you and protect yourself from a financial nightmare.

We asked hire car experts Rentalcars.com to give a step-by-step guide for what to do if you have a shunt while on holiday.

It says there are four key things a driver needs to do immediately after an accident in a hire car.

Step-by-step guide to coping with a shunt abroad: We asked an expert in the hire car sector to explain what motorists need to do if they have a crash in a rental car when on holiday

Nigel Wolstenholme, head of consumer marketing at Rentalcars.com: In the immediate aftermath of a crash, it's not always easy to think straight.

Using the roads in any country has a level of risk attached.

It's essential that drivers know what to do in the event of an issue when on holiday, and take the time to consider how much risk they're comfortable with before they go.

This step-by-step process should be able to guide you immediately after you've been involved in an accident.

1. Get everyone to safety and DON'T apologise

The top priority after any car accident is getting yourself and your passengers out of harm's way as quickly as possible.

Be careful though; the advice on the NHS website says to avoid moving anyone who's in a lot of pain in case they've broken their leg, or injured or broken their back.

It's normal to feel shaken but try to remain calm, so take a few deep breaths until you're confident you can think rationally.

Losing your temper won't help, and neither will apologising straight away  even if you're sorry that an unfortunate situation has come about, you don't want to be mistaken for taking responsibility.

Don't inadvertently take the blame: It's easy to apologise after an accident due to the unfortunate circumstance, but if it isn't your fault then try not to say anything that can be mistaken for accepting fault for the collision

2. Contact the emergency services

It's a good idea to have the emergency numbers to hand for every country you're travelling through  and it's worth doing your research before you set off on your travels.

In the EU, dialling 112 from any mobile or landline will reach the local police, ambulance or fire service  and the number is free to use.

If you're venturing further afield, this list of emergency numbers might be a useful place to start.

It's recommended that you call the police, regardless of whether you need emergency assistance or not.

In some countries, such as Germany for example, it is mandatory to call the local police immediately (up to two hours after an accident).

And don't forget to get hold of a police report, as if you don't, this could invalidate your insurance.

Be sure to check any location-specific terms included in your rental agreement at pick-up, as requirements such as calling the police after a crash will be mentioned.

Check the location-specific terms included in your rental agreement when you collect your vehicle. It will list any requirements, such as calling the police after a crash

3. Exchange details and record what's happened

Once everyone's safe and the emergency services are en route, the next thing to do is exchange details with other parties who are involved  and any passers-by or other drivers who witnessed the incident.

It's important to remember that this still applies even if the other parties are not present at the scene  perhaps if you've hit a parked car.

Take as many photos as you can, and make sure to take note of the following:

 Name, address and contact numbers for other parties and witnesses

 Date and time of the accident

 Colour, registration, make and model of any vehicles involved

 Description of the weather conditions, the state of the road and any street lighting

 Any damage done to any vehicles and property

 Any injuries sustained by drivers, passengers and pedestrians

If you're involved in an accident with a third party in the EU, they will present you with a European Accident Statement form to collect all the information that's needed  known as the Constat Amiable in France, the CIA in Italy and the DAA in Spain.

The key here is that it will be in the local language of the country you're visiting, so if you're not fluent, it's a good idea to take an English copy with you or to ask for one at the rental desk.

Even though you don't need to complete it in English as well, having a translation to hand means you won't miss out any vital information and you understand what's needed.

After notifying the police and making a record on the collision, the final call you need to make is to the rental company who will be able to inform the insurer, arrange vehicle recovery and provide a replacement car

4. Call the rental company

Last, but by no means least, make sure the rental company is made aware of the situation as soon as you've completed steps one to three.

You'll be able to find their phone number on the rental agreement.

The rental company should be able to handle recovery, repairs and replacement of the hire car if necessary, as well as dealing with the insurance companies and other parties on your behalf.

You can make a very clear case as to who was responsible for the accident, but ultimately, it's up to the rental company to agree who's covering the costs  so don't offer anything at the scene without clearing it with them first.
Jet Airways has suspended its international flights, stoking fresh fears about the future of India's largest private airline.

On Thursday the firm, which is grappling with a $1billion debt mountain, was forced to ground 10 of its aircraft over late payments to its leasing firms.

Some local media outlets claim that the airline is now operating only 14 of its 100 planes, taking it below the 20-aircraft minimum that carriers in India are required to maintain if they wish to run international services, the BBC reported.

Clipped wings: There are fears for the future of Jet Airways amid reports that is has stalled all its international flights

Other reports explicitly state that Jet Airways has cancelled all of its international flights.

Jet Airways flies on 600 domestic and 380 international routes, including services to Europe and Asia.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority acknowledged on twitter that international flights had been suspended, and a notice on Heathrow Airport's website said that Jet Airways' flights today to Mumbai and Delhi will not be running.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority acknowledged on twitter that flights had been suspended

A Heathrow spokesperson said: 'We are aware of this situation and our main priority is working with our passenger service teams to support those affected. We advise travellers to contact the airline for the latest information.'

The airline has been urgently seeking fresh funds to cover its overheads and stave off the risk of collapse.

As the situation intensified it has been forced to ground aircraft and cancel thousands of flights.

Mounting debts: Jet Airways is grappling with a $1billion debt mountain and has been seeking fresh funds

It comes just two weeks after the collapse of Icelandic budget airline Wow Air, which was unable to get a rescue deal over the line.

Flybmi, Monarch, Primera, Air Berlin and Germania, among others, have all gone bust in recent years, during what has been a testing time for the aviation business amid rising fuel costs and hot competition.

Ryanair's outspoken boss Michael O'Leary recently warned that there could be just five budget airlines left in Europe by 2024.

Wow Air hit the buffers at the end of March after claiming it was close to securing a rescue deal

This morning's news will come as an unhelpful blow to the airline sector, which was finally enjoying a much-needed boost after Brexit was pushed back to the end of October.

The new deadline, which prevents Britain from leaving the EU with No Deal today, helped brush away fears that Brexit uncertainty might deter the UK's holidaymakers from booking their summer escape.

On Thursday, travel agent Tui jumped by 8.3 per cent, EasyJet revved up by 8.4 per cent, while British Airways' parent IAG lifted by 5.9 per cent.
LK Bennett is a favourite of the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton, who often wears the firm's nude court shoes (pictured above)

Over a third of LK Bennett's UK stores will close down after the collapsed brand - a favourite of the Duchess of Cambridge - was bought out of administration by a new owner.

The 15 store closures will result in around 110 job losses, administrators at EY said today.

Rebecca Feng, who runs the brand's Chinese franchises, has agreed to buy the business for an undisclosed sum through a new company called Byland UK.

She will take on the firm's headquarters and all of its concessions, but just 21 of its 36 UK shops. The deal safeguards around 325 jobs.

Some 55 store and head office roles were axed previously when five stores closed immediately after the firm fell into the hands of the administrators.

Feng said: 'Under our plan, the business will continue to operate out of the UK, looking to maintain the long-standing and undoubted heritage of the brand.

'This will be achieved through a combination of working with quality British design, and the business's existing supply chain.'

The company's former chief executive and finance director Darren Topp and Andrew Ellis will both stay on after the deal to assist the business.

LK Bennett, known for its upmarket day wear and shoes, hit the buffers last month as it was hit by the headwinds hurting UK retailers, including rising business rates and weak consumer confidence.

The LK Bennett stores set for closure are... Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Bridgewater in Banbridge (Northern Ireland), Royal Exchange in London, Glasgow, Gloucester, Kings Road in London, Knightsbridge in London, Long Acre in London, Northcote Road in London, St Albans, Westgate Oxford, York, York Outlet

The firm has attracted many celebrity fans over its near 30-year history, and gained particular notoriety when the Duchess of Cambridge made their nude court shoes a signature part of her look.

Retail tycoons Mike Ashley and Philip Day were both linked to the LK Bennett deal as potential new suitors.

Dan Hurd, joint administrator at EY said: 'With an established, luxury UK brand, the company received offers from a number of parties.

'We are pleased that we have completed a sale to Byland UK Limited, preserving the jobs of 325 employees across 21 stores, and that the business continued to trade through the administration process, helping to provide continuity of service for its loyal customer base.'

Gift cards, refunds and orders will be honoured as part of the arrangement.
The market is located in an area with many Hazaras, an ethnic group targeted in the past. The IED was hidden in a sack of potatoes. About 509 Hazaras were killed between January 2012 and December 2017.

Islamabad (AsiaNews/Agencies)  At least 20 people have been killed and 48 injured in a morning attack in Quetta (Balochistan province) in a neighbourhood that is home to many ethnic Hazaras. No group has yet claimed responsibility.

The site for the attack was not random. The famous Hazarganji fruit and vegetable market is crowded on Friday mornings, on the Muslim day of rest. The Improvised Explosive Device (IED) was planted in a gunny sack filled with potatoes.

The attack claimed the lives of at least eight Hazaras and one Frontier Corps soldier who was deputed for the community's security. The other victims are shopkeepers, businessmen, workers and local residents.

On Twitter, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and ordered a full investigation.

Deputy Inspector General Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that it was not yet clear whether it was timed or remote-controlled. However, he believes the Hazaras were the target.

The latter, who are originally from Afghanistan, predominantly Shia with Mongol physical features, have been attacked before by Sunni extremists.

A report released last year by Pakistans National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) noted that 509 members of Hazara community were killed and 627 injured in various acts of terrorism in Quetta from January 2012 to Dec 2017.
The grief-stricken family of woman killed by a pallet of falling bricks have spoken for the first time of their anger that no one has been held responsible for her death.

Mother-of-one Michaela Boor, 29, suffered catastrophic head injuries when she was struck by the falling masonry as she stood beside a building site in east London in March 2018.

But a year after her totally avoidable death, no one has been prosecuted  while the Higgins Homes luxury development has been completed, with apartments selling for up to 650,000 each.

Now her heartbroken mother Alaina Selby has broken her silence on how Michaelas death has devastated her family, revealing her heart-ache that her orphaned grandson must walk past the place where his mother died every day.

Michaela Boor, 29, of East London, has died after she was crushed by bricks in East London

Tragic Michaela Boor as a small child, left, and in her school uniform, right

Michaela Boors mother Alaina Selby, left, and sister Rosie, right, hold a picture of Michaela during an interview with MailOnline in their home

Michaela Boors mother, Alaina Selby, holds family pictures during an interview in her home

Michaela Boor, right, poses with her siblings. Left to right: Rosie, George and Nicholas

Miss Boor had recently got engaged to her partner Andy Murgatroyd (pictured together)

In a tearful interview with MailOnline, Alaina, 47, said: This past year has been terrible. As a family we have been bashed about.

But a year later nothing has changed except that Higgins have finished their development. We want answers. We want someone to be held responsible.

Michaela was on her way home from the shops after dropping her four-year-old son, Keiran, off at school in Bow, east London, when tragedy struck.

A pallet of bricks that was being carried on a crane across the adjoining building site broke free and came cascading down upon her.

Her mother Alaina said: Kieran knows that mummy is gone, that she got hurt and the doctors could not fix her. He thinks mummy is a star in the sky, he blows kisses to her.

He is pretty resilient but he does get sad. And every day I have to walk with him past the spot that his mother was killed. How is he going to cope with looking at that when he is older?

Michaelas death was totally avoidable, Alaina added. 'She was not in a dangerous situation. She was walking along the pavement back from the shops.

If the builders had closed the pavement when they were moving the bricks, Michaela would be alive today.

Michaela Boor poses with her son, Kieran, as a baby, left, and as a child, right

Michaela Boor's mother, Alaina Selby, said: We want answers. We want someone to be held responsible

Michaela Boor, 29, of East London, has died after she was crushed by bricks in East London

Michaela Boor's sister Rosie, right, comforts her mother, Alaina, left

This is basket on the crane from which the pallet of bricks is believed to have fallen

The debris, pictured, tumbled 70ft from a crane at a building site in Mile End, East London

Paramedics brought Michaela back to life as she lay in the road amid the debris.

But the young mother was declared brain-dead in hospital and her family were asked to make the agonising decision to turn off her life-support system on Michaelas 29th birthday.

Unable to hold back tears, Alaina recalled: The police came to the door that morning and told me Michaela had been in an accident and that we had to go to the hospital.

They rushed me there with the blue lights flashing. The police picked up everyone, Michaelas dad, her brothers and sister. But when we got to the hospital all we could do was wait.

When they finally let us see her, I could hardly recognise her, she had so many tubes sticking out of her.

The doctors told us that she was brain-dead and said we should turn off her life-support.

But I couldnt do it. I begged them to let us keep her for one more day because the next day was her birthday.

Born into a tight-knit East End family, Michaela is sorely missed by those she left behind.

She was finally laid to rest at a moving funeral ceremony at the Manor Park Crematorium in east London on 27th April last year.

Her loved-ones have also honoured Michaelas memory with custom-drawn tattoos of blue butterflies, her favourite image.

A bunch of flowers marks the spot where Michaela Boor was killed by falling bricks

The scene of the tragic accident is marked by bouquets of flowers a year after the death

The completed apartment block where Michaela Boor was killed last year by falling bricks

The site in London has been cleared although some evidence of the horrific accident remains

Her sister, Rosie, told MailOnline: Michaela and I were so close. We shared a bedroom until we were 25. I just cant believe she is gone.

The Metropolitan Police and the Health and Safety Executive [HSE] launched an investigation into Michaelas death.

But a year on no one has been charged for breaching criminal or health and safety laws.

Alaina told MailOnline the family have tried to give the authorities the time they need pursue their inquiries.

But she is left frustrated that it took six months before an HSE inspector made contact.

The police have been really nice, she told MailOnline. But no one from the HSE got in touch with us for six months! Why did it take so long?

Alaina says she has been forced to speak out after a floral tribute the family had put up at the site of Michaelas death was taken down.

She explained: On the anniversary of Michaelas death [29 March] we attached some flowers to the fence outside the property where the accident happened. It was a love-heart of flowers.

But (someone) took them down. It was a memorial for Michaela! How can they be so callous? I try not to cry in front of Keiran but this sent me over the edge.

She added: I try to be strong for Keirans sake.

Work appears to have halted at the site while a Health and Safety Executive probe is ongoing

Pictured: The aftermath of the bricks which fell around 70ft from the crane in Mile End

Scotland Yard said the woman appeared to have been injured by the debris after 9.30am

Now Michaelas family are calling for a memorial plaque to be erected at the Bow Corner development in her honour.

It would be nice if Higgins erected a plaque to Michaelas memory, to acknowledge that someone died there and that she was loved.

Higgins have a huge sign up advertising their development.

Why cant they put up a plaque in Michaelas memory?

Property developer Higgins Homes say they are unable to intervene in the dispute about the floral tribute or consider erecting a memorial plaque as they have sold the property to private owners.

In a statement Higgins Homes said: Higgins Homes was deeply saddened and distressed by the tragic death of Michaela Boor.

We are co-operating fully with the police and Health and Safety Executive investigation. Our thoughts remain with Michaela Boors family and friends.

The woman was earlier in a critical condition after being hit by a pile of bricks in East London

The basket on the crane can be seen following the shocking incident at the building site

The incident happened next to the Bow Corner housing construction in East London

The Met Police told MailOnline the investigation into Michaela Boors death has not been completed and the Crown Prosecution Service will decide if anyone will face charges.

A spokeswoman said: The investigation into the death of Michaela Boor who died after being struck by falling debris from a building site remains on-going.

One of the investigative lines of enquiry include whether offences of gross negligence in conjunction with breaches of health and safety law are evident.

We are working in consultation with the Health and Safety Executive. A case will be brought before the Crown Prosecution Service to decide upon any charges in due course.

We continue to support and have regular contact with the family of Michaela Boor through a dedicated family liaison officer.

Bow Corner in East London is a development of 19 one, two and three bedroom apartments

Police in Tower Hamlets were called after the woman was severely injured by falling debris

The Health and Safety Executive told MailOnline they regret not keeping Michaelas family better informed and said work on the development only restarted after it was made safe.

A spokesman said: Our thoughts have always been with the family following this tragic incident. We have made a significant contribution to the on-going police-led investigation.

We always seek to keep in touch regularly with bereaved families, in this case via a police family liaison officer. However, we acknowledge the familys view and regret there has not been more frequent contact in this case. We are addressing that issue.

In terms of the work on the site, we ensured lifting operations were stopped until adequate measures were in place to control the risk.
A Lovejoy actor who is standing for election as a Labour councillor in May has been accused of peddling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Chris Jury, 62, who played Eric in the legendary Eighties series as well as appearing in Doctor Who and Grange Hill, is running for a position on Stratford-On-Avon council.

But MailOnline can reveal that he has been expressing provocative views on his blog that have been widely slammed as anti-Semitic.

In a post published in March, Mr Jury wrote: 'My disgust at the cynical abuse of the memory of the 6 million by the right-wing of the Labour Party, aided and abetted by the Israeli Embassy, grows daily.'

In another post, he added: '70 years after the defeat of the Nazis their racist, colonial, Eurocentric, moral degeneracy is still playing out in the Middle-East.'

And in a tweet, the actor said that British politics was being 'subverted' and anti-Semitism was being 'weaponised by the Right of the Labour party.'

Left to right: Chris Jury, Diane Parish, Ian Mcshane and Dudley Sutton in Lovejoy

After ending his career in television, Chris Jury drifted into screenwriting before taking a job at Bath Spa university

Chris Jury's tweet suggesting that anti-Semitism is being 'weaponised' by the Labour Right

Chris Jury, right, and Ian McShane, left, in a classic scene from the legendary series Lovejoy

Chris Jury, left, and Dudley Sutton, right, pose while filming an episode of Lovejoy

When contacted by MailOnline, Mr Jury stood by his comments. In a lengthy statement, he said:

'If the Israeli Embassy has played such a role, it is also perfectly legitimate to point that out as it may partly explain how and why this issue has come to such prominence since Corbyn was elected.'

He added: 'I do not oppose Israel or a Jewish state of Israel, I simply support the Palestinian cause. I believe that just as the Jewish people are entitled to live at peace in their traditional homeland so are the Palestinians.'

Jason Fojtik, a former Labour councillor, resigned over anti-Semitism and was shocked to hear that Chris Jury was a candidate

But Jason Fojtik, a former Labour councillor in the same district who resigned in protest against anti-Semitism last week, said he was 'shocked and horrified' that Mr Jury had been put forward for election.

'Labour is not doing the proper checks on people,' he said. 'The party has known about his views for years.

'Im glad I resigned because this vindicates what Ive been saying. Im sure Ill get some criticism for saying this but people need to hear the truth. Its quite important.'

Mr Fojtik, who is not Jewish, is descended from Czechoslovakian refugees who came to Britain to flee Nazism. 'Chris Jury is not somebody I would care to share a room with,' he added.

'I resigned from the Labour party because anti-Semitism is getting worse, not better. It is a tacit endorsement of anti-Semitism in the local Labour party that they selected him as a candidate.'

Euan Philipps, spokesperson for Labour Against Antisemitism, said: 'Chris Jury has built a political career on the promotion of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in keeping with Moseleys Blackshirts of the 1930s.

'His poisonous attitudes have no place in British society and should have no place in any respectable political party. He needs to be thrown out of Labour.'

Chris Jury poses while filming the 1997 programme Noah's Ark for ITV. He also appeared in Grange Hill

Chris Jury was popular on television in the Eighties and Nineties before entering politics

Chris Jury, left, Warren Mitchell, centre, and Ian McShane, right, pose on the set of Lovejoy

Born in Coventry, Mr Jury's popularity on Lovejoy made him a contender to play the seventh doctor in Doctor Who in 1987, a role that eventually went to Sylvester McCoy. But he was a guest star on the programme in 1988.

Since ending his career as a television actor, he went on to direct Coronation Street and 40 episodes of Eastenders.

He worked for Bath Spa university but has now retired, while burnishing his Leftwing political credentials on his blog.

Mr Jury said: 'I was a teenager in the 1970s when I first learned of the genocidal consequences of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany and it had a profound effect on my political beliefs and has motivated me to fight against the abuse of power and for human rights all my life.

'Historically the Labour Party was and is a proud supporter of the formation of the Jewish state of Israel and the fight against racism of all kinds is at the core of Labour Party values.

'The Labour Party has 500,000 members and I know only a few hundred of them so I obviously cannot claim that there are literally no anti-Semites in the Labour Party, only that I have never seen any substantive evidence that it is a particularly prevalent problem in the Labour Party and certainly not a problem on a scale that could warrant the sustained level of attack on the party over the three years since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader.

'As to Israel I believe that just as Israeli Jews are entitled to live at peace in their traditional homeland so are the Palestinians.'
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With thousands of deadly White Walkers and even the good guys often murdering without cause, it may seem an impossible task to decide who is the worst war criminal in Game Of Thrones.

But volunteers from the Australian Red Cross spent six weeks watching the franchise and have compiled a list of the characters who could be prosecuted for war crimes - and Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow make a surprise appearance high up the list.

'The Mother of Dragons' and the 'King of the North' were both branded war criminals by the group, despite being fan favourites and odds on to take the Iron Throne at the end of season eight.

But perhaps unsurprisingly the diabolical Lord Ramsay Bolton topped the list with 17 war crimes - after horrific scenes of torture and psychological mind tricks on vulnerable characters.

Game Of Thrones saw bloody violence, the likes of which has rarely been seen on a television show before.

With this came the inevitable flouting of today's international humanitarian law.

Some of the worst examples were detailed by the Red Cross, with them citing slavery, torture and sexual violence as the most prominent.

FIRST: Ramsay Bolton topped the list. He paraded his evilness throughout his time on the show, which included castrating Theon Greyjoy as well as toying with his mind and flaying his enemies

SECOND: Daenerys Targaryen is one of the most popular characters on the show and enjoys a large amount of screen time. But the 'Mother Of Dragons' came a comfortable second in the list of war crimes after burning countless enemies alive with her dragons' napalm-style attacks

THIRD: Roose Bolton, who is father to Ramsay, has many of the same characteristics as his illegitimate son. He also partakes in rape after a battle victory, which was how Ramsay was conceived

JOINT FOURTH: The innocent-seeming Jon Snow has violated international humanitarian law six times in the seven series so far. He uses child soldiers four times as well as torture and inhumane treatment

JOINT FOURTH: To fulfil his main role in the programme - to raise a huge army - the Night King incite is responsible for breaking war crimes throughout. This is because his White Walker army is made up of undead slaves

Daenerys, who is 10/1 to succeed the throne, and her use of dragons was understandably a grey area for the Red Cross experts.

But the group decided her use of torture and sentencing enemies to death meant she was the second worst offender in Westeros.

One moment of terrifying ruthlessness saw her murder the defenceless Dickon and Lord Randyll Tarly by the fire of her dragon Drogon. She also massacred the 163 Masters Of Meereen without trial.

JOINT FOURTH: The Sons Of The Harpy also scored six for the number of war crimes they could be prosecuted for. One of the saddest moments in the series sees a lone Grey Worm try to take on numerous Sons Of The Harpy warriors

JOINT FIFTH: Euron Greyjoy, who is Theon's uncle, played a short but explosive role in the series, torturing, raping and illaging as he went

JOINT FIFTH: Walder Frey, played by veteran British actor David Bradley, comes a joint fifth. His most notable moment was the slaughter of Robb Stark and his wife during the Red Wedding in season three

JOINT SIXTH: Twyin was ruthless not only to his illegitimate son Tyrion, but also to his enemies. He was known for enslaving people and slaughtering injured soldiers after a battle

Her lover Jon Snow - who is seen by many as the true hero of the Seven Kingdoms and who has odds of 5/1 to end up on top - was also scolded by the Red Cross.

The group found his use of child soldiers was a breach of international laws of war and he racked up six violations across the seven seasons so far.

This placed him joint fourth on the blacklist with the Night King, who gained additional violations for attacking religious or cultural objects as well as slavery.

JOINT SIXTH: Tyrion has emerged as a strong contender for the Iron Throne. But even the well-spoken dwarf has moments of madness, such as murdering his father on the toilet

JOINT SEVENTH: Joffrey, the son of Jamie and Cersei Lannister, was a cruel and short-fused king during his brief stint in the role

JOINT SEVENTH: Mance Rayder, the leader of the Free Folk, or Wildlings, would attack any who stood in his army's path and give no mercy to survivors

JOINT SEVENTH: Merciless Cersei blew up the Sept Of Baelor. The move was to eliminate as many of her enemies at once

But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the worst offender for breaching the international rules of war was Lord Ramsay Bolton.

Horrific torture scenes included the castration of Theon Greyjoy and the flaying of his enemies that were as barbaric as anything seen on the hit HBO show.

The young Bolton committed 17 serious violations of the law, according to the Red Cross group, which also featured wilful killing, torture, sexual violence and perfidy, before he met his gruesome end in season six.

JOINT SEVENTH: Khal Drogo, Daenerys Targaryen's former wife, was known for his wild acts in the early seasons of GoT, with him raping Daenerys after their wedding

JOINT EIGHTH: The incestuous Jamie Lannister pillaged and killed at pleasure in the early seasons, but has emerged as a fan favourite in more recent episodes

JOINT EIGHTH: A surprise addition to the list, Sansa Stark also commits acts that could be considered war crimes. On two occasions she flouts international humanitarian laws

The third most prolific offender on the list was Ramsay's father Roose, who racked up eight violations during his four seasons in Westeros.

In total, the Red Cross experts identified 103 violations of the laws of war, with prolific use of slaves and child soldiers.

Red Cross International Humanitarian Law national manager Yvette Zegenhagen said the organisation chose to focus on the fictional war crimes to raise awareness of the fact that 'wars have laws'.

'Many people in conflicts around the world feel like the laws of war continue to be a critical way of protecting lives but it can sometimes feel like a bit of a theoretical concept for those that are living in peaceful places like Australia.'

'We haven't done this with HBO - we are just giant opportunistic nerds that love their show and are passionate about talking about the laws of war,' Ms Zegenhagen added.

JOINT NINTH: Robb Stark was killed off so long ago, it can be hard to remember any lasting cruelty he inflicted. But the former king of the north made a hard impact by treating Jamie Lannister badly when he was his prisoner

JOINT NINTH: Stannis Baratheon put viewers through the horrific ordeal of burning his sweet daughter alive after being manipulated by the red lady Melisandre

JOINT NINTH: Yara Greyjoy, sister to Theon, was caught out for a minor offence (in the grand scheme of the programme) when she finished off an injured soldier after battle
David Prior's (pictured) company Bladnoch Distillery has landed a deal with American retailer Walmart, which will see Pure Scot stocked in Walmart stores in Florida and California from June

As a child, entrepreneur David Prior dreamed of being a forklift driver.

'My parents had a plastics packaging factory when I was growing up,' he said.

'I used to drive on the forklifts - back in the days where you could just do that - and I thought it was the best job ever.'

This week, he announced a multi-million dollar deal with Walmart, which will see his whiskey, Pure Scot, sold in 60 stores in Florida and California from June.

Mr Prior purchased the Bladnoch distillery, which was bankrupt and had not produced a whisky in several years, in 2015 after selling his organic yoghurt business, Five:am, for $80million.

He revamped the distillery, and its product, and launched Pure Scot single malt in Melbourne that same year. It was quickly rolled out to 24 more countries before catching the attention of the supermarket giant.

Whisky has seen a resurgence in recent years, Mr Prior said, and a lot of the renewed interest has come on the back of 'cocktail culture'.

However, he said to see the business flourish they have to pick where the whisky is stocked.

'To ensure success I think it's about picking those top markets.'

The 'king markets' are Australia, the United States and Russia, he said.

Pure Scot will be stocked in 60 stores across Florida and California with the intention of expanding to other states in the future.

The success of the deal will depend on how the product sells, Mr Prior said.

The Walmart deal has been one of the biggest the company has managed to land thus far, however Australia's Dan Murphy's is currently the company's biggest stockist.

'I think Walmart gives us the opportunity to position ourselves as a premium bottled whisky.'

Mr Prior's (pictured with his wife) business success is a far cry from his childhood dream of being a forklift driver

Mr Prior said he expected America to eventually become the company's biggest market.

Now a heavy hitter in the business world and worth millions of dollars, the entrepreneur still looks fondly on his working class upbringing, and says while his forklift dream never took off, his family of manufacturers prepared him well for life as a CEO.

'I sort of strayed a bit [from the family business] but I stayed in that manufacturing frame of mind - the school of thinking to go and create something, instead of speculate,' he said.

Mr Prior credits his parents for his natural determination to make things work. He said the couple came over from India and were able to create their own business from nothing.

'They instilled in me the value of hard work - I've taken a lot of risk in business, but they took their own - they set up their own little business and just worked and worked and worked to make it happen,' he said.

'That start in life, I was so lucky to have a business family.'

Mr Prior owned a business with his father before the pair sold up. Stepping out on his own for the first time, the Melbourne entrepreneur said he felt lost until finally deciding on launching a line of organic yoghurts.

The Melbourne entrepreneur said he had decided to get into whisky before he sold his organic yoghurt business, Five:am, because he did not want to feel aimless and lost

Mr Prior bought a 200-year-old distillery in in south west Scotland (pictured) in early 2015. At the time, the distillery was bankrupt and hadn't produced anything in several years

He and his wife had mortgaged their house and owed millions to the bank before Five:am yoghurt took off - but he says it's a risk he had to take.

'In business, the chances are you're going to fail, but it's being willing to take that risk,' he said.

'Everyone thought I was insane with Five:am - I had no background in food and everyone said: "What are you doing? You're going to fail", and after a while even I was like: "S*** I'm going to fail".'

Luckily, Mr Prior did not fail, and in 2014, he sold Five:am to PZ Cussons for $80million.

Remembering the horrible feeling of being directionless from the last time he sold a business, Mr Prior said he had identified his next project - the distillery - before the sale went through.

And while he is enjoying his quarterly visits to the stunning Scotland distillery, he won't be drawn on whether he will stick around or move on to a new market.

'I absolutely love it, I get the biggest thrill going to our distillery - but I might get bored and want to go surfing forever,' he joked.

Mr Prior's Pure Scot range will will be stocked in 60 stores across Florida and California from June

DAVID PRIOR'S ADVICE TO BUDDING ENTREPRENEURS BELIEVE IN YOURSELF 'You sort of have to believe in yourself,' he said. 'Most ideas you have, people will say that it's ridiculous, other people are doing it better, etc. 'People might say it because they care for you, but 99 per cent of the reactions you get [when you decide to start a business] will be negative.' Mr Prior said he was laughed at when he decided to launch Five:am. 'Everyone thought I was insane with Five:am - I had no background in food and everyone said: "What are you doing? You're going to fail", and after a while even I was like: "S*** I'm going to fail".' TAKE RISKS Mr Prior said when he launched Five:am, he and his wife had mortgaged their home and owed millions to the bank. 'In business, the chances are you're going to fail, but it's being willing to take that risk,' he said. Advertisement
Walter Roney, 99, crashed into Britney Poindexter, 17, and 18-year-old Santia Feketa's pickup truck while driving the wrong way down a divided highway in Fort Pierce, Florida

The parents of two teenagers killed in a head-on crash with a 99-year-old driver have been awarded $10million, bringing their total compensation to $11million.

Trucking executive and developer Walter Roney was driving the wrong way on a divided highway in Fort Pierce, Florida, in February 2018 when he crashed into Britney Poindexter, 17, and 18-year-old Santia Feketa's pickup truck.

The girls died in the crash. Roney died three days later.

Besides the $10 million from Roney's estate, the parents previously reached a $1million settlement with Roney's girlfriend, 75-year-old Carolyn Bruns.

That lawsuit asserted she was acting as Roney's caregiver and could've saved the girls, the Palm Beach Post reports.

Michigan driving records show that someone reported Roney to state motor vehicle officials in September, recommending the Dearborn resident be re-examined to determine whether he was still competent even though he had no recent accidents or tickets.

He passed that test January 8, 29 days before the fatal crash.

According to Michigan officials, drivers who are re-examined may be required to pass a driving test and tests of their vision, road sign and law knowledge to keep their license.

They can also have restrictions such as a ban on night-time driving implemented.

The parents of Britney Poindexter (left, and Santia Feketa (right) have been awarded $10million from Roney's estate, and another $1million from his girlfriend Carolyn Bruns

Michigan driving records show that someone reported Roney to state motor vehicle officials in September, but he passed the retest 29 days before the crash (pictured)

Fred Woodhams, a spokesman for the Michigan secretary of state's office, which oversees driver's licenses, would not say who flagged Roney's ability to drive, citing confidentiality policies.

He said referrals typically come from law enforcement, a family member or a medical professional.

According to Florida Highway Patrol Lt. Alvaro Feola, Roney and his girlfriend were driving from Melbourne on Florida's Atlantic coast, where property records show Roney owns a condo.

They were headed to Port Charlotte on the state's Gulf Coast to have interior electrical issues with their RV repaired, Feola said.

Feket (left) had taken classes at the local community college before graduating from high school in June, and was already a college junior working toward becoming a kindergarten teacher. Poindexter (right), a high school junior, competed in equestrian barrel racing and was involved in the 4-H Club

They exited Interstate 95 in Fort Pierce shortly before 7 pm, with Roney taking over the driving from Bruns.

Somehow, Feola said, Roney headed west in the eastbound lanes of Florida 70, a four-lane highway that crosses the state.

Feola said it does not appear the RV's headlights were turned on, although Bruns told investigators they had been working when she was driving.

Feketa was driving east in her 2013 Chevrolet Silverado with Poindexter in the passenger seat when Roney's RV smashed into them.

TCPalm reports Feketa had taken classes at the local community college before graduating from high school in June, and was already a college junior working toward becoming a kindergarten teacher.

Poindexter, a high school junior, competed in equestrian barrel racing and was involved in the 4-H Club.
Christopher Maurice McCallum was arrested for threatening to shoot up the University of Florida campus

A Florida rapper was arrested on Tuesday for threatening mass murder after spitting lyrics about shooting up a college campus.

Christopher Maurice McCallum, who raps under the name Jun Jun, was arrested for threats that came in a diss track posted to his Facebook page last month.

In the song, the 26-year-old, from Ocala, Florida, told a rival: 'Catch you at a Gator [University of Florida] game and shoot the whole campus up.'

McCallum was charged with two second-degree felony counts of intimidation by written threat to commit bodily injury and to kill or injure, according to court records.

The song, which was shared on March 22, also featured lyrics that threatened violence at a Gainesville nightclub.

'Rap is a heavily stigmatized genre of music,' Clay Calvert, a First Amendment expert at the University of Florida told the Gainesville Sun. 'It's not unusual for rap to find itself in the crosshairs of prosecution.'

'Ju Ju' McCallum was charged with two second-degree felony counts of intimidation by written threat to commit bodily injury and to kill or injure

Calvert said the Supreme Court has ruled 'true threats' are not protected speech, but hasn't made clear whether the threat must be a real intention.

Under Florida statutes, it is a felony to threaten to kill or injure someone, as is writing or composing something that indicates the person will conduct a mass shooting or act of terrorism.

Florida law changed after a mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018.

'I haven't listened to the entire song. My understanding is it was very specific as to locations - and concurrent with an upcoming concert,' said Sheriff's Lt. Brett Rhodenizer.

McCallum rapped in the track: 'Catch you at a Gator game and shoot the whole campus up'

'When the court process continues ... and if ultimately this is not a level of proof where he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that's the way the system is supposed to work. But is it probable cause to make an arrest in the interest of public safety? I think so.'

The incident has echoes of a the case of Jamal Knox, aka Mayhem Mal, a rapper from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who was charged with making terroristic threats against two police officers in a video.

He was found guilty in a non-jury trial, and a state appeals court upheld the conviction, ruling the song crossed a line called the 'true threat doctrine' not protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court is scheduled to take up the case.
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He may be little, but he is definitely strong.

A baby white rhino has made its public debut in China at nine months old, weighing a whopping 445 kilograms (981 pounds).

The male calf, nicknamed Da Zhuang or 'Big Strong', enjoyed a hearty meal with his mother last week in Chimelong Safari Park in southern China's Guangzhou city.

Mother and son: Da Zhuang, a southern white rhino, was born in June last year weighing 48kg (105lb) in Chimelong Safari Park

Bon appetite! Male calf Da Zhuang enjoys a hearty meal with his mother as he meets the public for the first time in China

Da Zhuang's name means big and strong in Chinese because keepers describe the baby rhino as a 'big boy' as he grows up

Da Zhuang is a southern white rhino. He was born on June 19 last year, weighing 48 kilograms (105 pounds).

He is described to be a 'big boy' by the keepers as his weight has increased nearly 10 times.

His father 'Little Prince' is the first southern white rhino bred by the park.

His mother 'Southern Phoenix' was introduced from South Africa in January, 2015. Da Zhuang is her first calf.

White rhinos are the second largest land mammals on the planet after elephants.

Around 98.8 per cent of them originate from four countries in Africa: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

Da Zhuang's mother 'Southern Phoenix' was introduced from South Africa in January, 2015. Da Zhuang is her first calf

His father 'Little Prince' is the first southern white rhino bred by the safari park in southern China's Guangdong Province

Around 98.8 per cent of white rhinos originate from four countries in Africa: South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe and Kenya

Contrary to what many people might believe, the word 'white' in their name doesn't refer to the colour. It comes from 'weit' in the Afrikaans and means wide - referring to the animal's mouth.

There are two types of white rhinos: the more populous southern white rhino and the near-extinct northern white rhino. They live in different parts of Africa and have different body shapes.

Although once thought to be extinct in the late 19th century, the southern white rhinos are the only of the five rhino species that are not endangered nowadays. There are 19,600 to 21,000 of them in the world, according to World Wildlife.

Contrary to what most people might believe, the word 'white' in white rhino's name doesn't refer to the animal's colour

The word 'white' comes from 'weit' in the Afrikaans - a Germanic language - and means wide, referring to the animal's mouth

The northern white rhinos are one of the rarest sub-species on Earth. There are only two female northern white rhinos left

In comparison, the northern white rhinos are one of the rarest subspecies on Earth. There are only two female northern white rhinos left and neither of them is able to bear calves.

The rhino mother and daughter - Najin, 30, and Fatu, 19 - live in Ol Pejeta Conservancy in central Kenya.

The last male northern white rhino, 45-year-old Sudan, died in March last year. He was euthanised after suffering from degenerative muscle and bone condition.

The tragic fate of the northern white rhinos is the direct result of decades of rampant poaching by humans for their horns.
Lincoln was shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth in Ford Theater's in April 1865

The handwritten notification of President Abraham Lincoln's death is being offered for sale by a Philadelphia documents dealer.

Nathan Raab, president of the Raab Collection, says the telegram was thought to be lost, and calls it 'truly one of our great finds.'

It was written inside the home where Lincoln was rushed after being shot at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton and Thomas Eckert, the chief telegraph officer, stood watch over Lincoln, who died April 15.

The telegram was written inside a home where Lincoln was rushed after being shot at Ford's Theater on April 14, 1865

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, while attending a play at Ford's Theatre in Washington

The telegram reads: 'Abraham Lincoln died this morning at 22 minutes after seven.'

Stanton dictated the telegram to Eckert, who gave it to a runner to take to War Department telegraphers.

The piece had been in the collection of a Civil War general's family for generations and is valued at $500,000.

The 154th anniversary of Lincoln's assassination is Monday.

Auctioneers say the note has never been offered for sale before and is expected to fetch around $500,000 at auction

'This document was the official word to the nation that the President had died,' Nathan Raab, President of the Raab Collection, said.

'This is the original of that telegram, completely in the hand of Eckert, then sent on to General Dix, who was responsible for telling the press,' the Raab Collection said in a news release.

'This document is how the nation learned of the death of Lincoln and its text is famous.'

Another piece of Lincoln history, an original letter written and signed during the Civil War by the former president sold for $60,000 through the same auctioneer.
A referendum in Switzerland has been overturned for the first time in the country's modern history as voters were not given enough information, a court ruled.

In February 2016 the Swiss held a national poll on whether married and co-habiting couples should pay the same amount of tax.

Under the current system married couples are penalised as they are taxed on both their incomes combined, whereas partners who live together are not.

The tax system means unmarried couples are taxed separately allowing each to benefit from a greater share of the country's tax-free allowance.

Voters were asked if married couples and co-habiting partners should pay the same tax in the 2016 poll.

Switzerland held a referendum in 2016 on whether to tax married and unmarried co-habiting couples the same amount

The Swiss government told voters that only 80,000 married couples were affected by the tax scheme when actually the figure was closure to half a million

The proposal was narrowly rejected with 50.8 per cent voting against and 49.2 per cent in favour.

But Switzerland's supreme court annulled the result of the referendum because the scale of the problem was said to have been underrepresented during the campaign.

It was found the general government had downplayed the amount of affected couples by five times the actual figure, according to the BBC.

Voters were told that only 80,000 married couples were penalised by the tax system when the correct figure was closer to half a million.

Judges ruled that as the result was so close the lack of information given to voters during the build up to the vote meant it was invalid.

The ruling read: 'Given the tight outcome of the vote and the seriousness of the irregularities, it is possible that the result of the ballot would have been different.

The proposal was narrowly rejected but a Swiss court ruled as voters were given incorrect information the referendum should be annulled

'[Voters were] informed erroneously and in an incomplete way. They could not imagine that the number of couples affected by the married couples' tax penalty was more than five times higher than the figure announced.'

The Christian Democrat Party who proposed the vote welcomed the court's decision, but critics said the verdict could lead to a deluge of appeals against previous referendums.

Switzerland often holds national votes on a wide-range of issues due to its system of direct democracy, meaning a proposal only needs 100,000 signatures before being put to the people in a referendum.

As a result Switzerland has held more than 300 referendums on over 600 federal-level proposals since 1848.
A California city is taking a symbolic pro-LGBTQ stand against Chick-fil-A a year after voting to allow the restaurant chain to open a franchise in its local airport.

San Jose city council members voted unanimously on Tuesday to hang rainbow flags along with pink and blue pro-transgender rights flags outside the Chick-fil-A that's scheduled to open inside the San Jose International Airport in May.

Chick-fil-A became a subject of ant-gay controversy again in March after Think Progress published a report claiming the company donated $1.8 million to anti-LGBTQ groups in 2017.

The groups reportedly included Christian groups that ban employees from engaging in homosexual acts.

Since then there have been campaigns around the country, including San Antonio and Buffalo, New York, to try to prevent new Chick-fil-A locations from opening in their communities.

City council members in San Jose, California voted 11-0 on Tuesday to hang rainbow flags at the Chick-fil-A opening in the city's airport in May

Local gay rights trailblazer Ken Yeager, San Jose's first openly gay elected official retired last year, was one of several protesters demonstrating against Chick-fil-A at the city's airport Tuesday

Local gay rights campaigner and former County Supervisor Ken Yeager, San Jose's first openly gay elected official who retired from office in December, was one of several protesters demonstrating against Chick-fil-A at the city's airport on Tuesday.

'My heart just sank when I saw the construction wall (at the airport),' Yeager told the San Jose Spotlight.

'This is going to be people's very first impression of San Jose. And what are they going to see? They're going to see a store known for its anti-gay attitudes and funding anti-gay groups. We need to make sure that people realize when they come into San Jose that this is a very welcoming community.'

San Jose already has two Chick-fil-As operating in the city.

The decision to raise rainbow flags outside the new location comes a year after the council approved a motion granting leases and contracts to a group of restaurants that includes Chick-fil-A along with Shake Shack, Great American Bagel, Trader Vic's, and Brew Pub, to open in the airport, according to KPIX.

Chick-fil-A became a subject of anti-gay controversy again in March Think Progress published a report exposing the company for donating funds to Christian groups that ban employees from engaging in homosexual acts

Chick-fil-A was one of a group of restaurants the council approved airport contracts for in 2018

A spokeswoman for the airport said its administrators will decide where to place the flags, according to NBC News.

San Jose Councilman Raul Peralez said he wants the new Chick-fil-A to hire LGBT employees and become the 'gayest Chick-fil-A in the country.'

In a statement last week to NBC, Chick-fil-A said: recent coverage about Chick-fil-A continues to drive an inaccurate narrative about our brand."

"We want to make it clear that our sole focus is on providing delicious food and welcoming everyone  not being a part of a national political conversation."

Religious rights supporters argue the cities attempting to ban Chick-fil-A are discriminating against Christian groups and are violating the law.

'The city council cannot operate in a way that brazenly violates the Constitution and federal law, but if it chooses to, then the federal government should pull its grant,' Keisha Russell, associate counsel to First Liberty Institute, wrote in a Fox News op-ed.

The contract for San Jose's new Chick-fil-A's isn't set to expire until 2026.
The trial of Jennifer Wenisch, 27, a former IS morality policewoman, opened yesterday in Munich. Together with her husband, a Caliphate fighter, she bought a child and her mother. Chained under the sun, the girl died "in scorching heat". The accused could get life in prison. The case highlights the problem of foreign fighters returning to their countries of origin.

Munich (AsiaNews/Agencies)  A that trial opened yesterday in Munich, Germany, amid massive security, sees a German woman charged with war crimes,

Jennifer Wenisch, 27, joined the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria and Iraq. She and her husband are accused of letting a five-year-old Yazidi slave girl die of thirst.

The case is the first of its kind in the world for crimes committed by former Caliphate jihadists against the Yazidi minority, particularly affected by the madness of Sunni radicals.

Wenisch is charged with various charges: murder, murder as a war crime, membership in a terrorist organisation and violation of the German War Weapons Control Act. If she is convicted, she could get life in prison.

German prosecutors allege the German foreign fighter and her IS husband bought the Yazidi child and her mother, a co-plaintiff in the trial, as slaves whom they held captive whilst living in Mosul, an IS stronghold in Iraq, in 2015.

After the girl fell ill and wet her mattress, the husband of the accused chained her up outside as punishment and let the child die an agonising death of thirst in the scorching heat, prosecutors charge. For her part, The accused allowed her husband to do so and did nothing to save the girl.

German media report that the defendants husband, Taha Sabah Noori Al-J., beat both Yazidi mother and child and that his wife also once held a pistol to the womans head.

Wenish, who reportedly had a troubled past and left school at an early age, eventually converted to Islam in 2013, and travelled in mid-2014 from Germany via Turkey and Syria to Iraq where she joined IS.

Recruited in mid-2015 to an anti-vice squad in the groups self-styled hisbah morality police, she patrolled city parks in IS-occupied Fallujah and Mosul.

Armed with an AK-47 rifle, a pistol and an explosives vest, her task was to ensure strict IS rules on dress code, public behaviour and bans on alcohol and tobacco.

In January 2016, months after the Yazidi childs death, the accused visited the German Embassy in Ankara to apply for new identity papers.

When she left the mission, she was arrested by Turkish security services and extradited several days later to Germany.

Because of a lack of evidence against her at the time, she was allowed to return to her home in Lower Saxony, but quickly tried to return to IS territory.

Her trial raises questions about the fate of IS foreign fighters, most of whom have been rejected by their country of origin.

The EU Commission estimates that about 42,000 people joined terrorist groups between 2011 and 2016, including 5,000 from Europe.

At first many governments refused to repatriate their citizens, but pressure from the United States forced some countries to give in.

Macedonia was the first; in 2018, it repatriated seven militants. In January, France examined the possibility of taking back 130 men and women, but has done nothing so far. Germany too is taking its time, closely monitoring developments in Paris.
A cunning customer has managed to steal $50 from a junior pharmacy worker in an sneaky scam at the register.

CCTV footage captured the con-artist at a pharmacy in Wayville, Adelaide, 9 News reported.

The man walks up to the counter and places a $3 dispenser of hand soap in front of him, making out as if he is going to pay for the product.

A customer managed to steal $50 from a junior pharmacy worker in an elaborate scam

He hands over a $100 note to the unsuspecting worker behind the counter, and accepts the $97 in change.

The man then pulls out a handful of coins and dollar notes from his pocket, asking the woman behind the register to exchange his money.

He slides coins across the counter and the worker hands him the notes, trusting his coin count.

As the worker is distracted and counting the coins, the man subtly folds a couple of notes into the palm of his hand.

The worker finally hands the man more money on the pretense that she hasn't given him enough.

'He had it all planned out, he knew exactly what he was doing. Buy a cheap item, give a big note, and give out a pocket full of coins when he couldve paid with that,' retail worker Ashleigh Scott said.

Manager Vu Vo said the man's hands worked so quickly it looked like a 'magic trick'.

He said it was unfair for the scammer to exploit young and inexperienced workers.

'Coming out into the workforce and experiencing these sorts of things just makes them like more cheated and less trust in other people.'

How the customer tricks the worker The customer approaches the counter with a $3 soap dispenser and makes out he is going to pay for the sanitary product.

He hands the worker a $100 note before she hands him his change.

The con-artist pulls out a handful of money from his pocket and dumps it on top of his change.

He asks the woman to exchange the money for him.

The worker hands him the money and over a series of exchanges, the man eventually takes charge of the counting.

While she is distracted and double checking the count, the con-artist subtly folds money into the palm of his hand.

The customer makes out he has not been paid correctly, and the worker hands him over more money.

The fraud walks out of the store, $50 richer. Advertisement
Shocked: Neil Miles pictured at the funerals of his parents and sister last year

The uncle of four children shot dead in Australia's worst massacre since 1996 has said he is struggling to recover from the tragedy.

Neil Miles lost his parents, his sister Katrina and her four children on May 11 last year.

His father, 61-year-old Peter Miles, shot them all then himself at their farm near Margaret River, Western Australia.

A month before the first anniversary of the massacre, Mr Miles released a statement saying he was still deeply shocked.

'Our family is still feeling the effects of this terrible incident which has affected us all deeply,' he said.

'We have been grateful for the support we have received from our friends and the wider community. Like all of you we remain deeply shocked at what happened on May 11 last year.

'We are doing our best to recover and move on with our lives.

'The family will be spending time together over this difficult anniversary and ask for our privacy to be respected.

'We are waiting for the Coroner's report to be released and have nothing further to add.'

The children's shattered father Aaron Cockman, who was estranged from Katrina and locked in a bitter custody dispute with her, spoke with media just two days after the deaths, saying he believed his ex-father in law had been planning the murders for some time.

From left to right: Rylan, 12, Taye, 13, Kayden, eight, Katrina, 35, and Arye, 10

Peter Miles (center) 61, killed his grandchildren, their mother (far right) and his wife Cynda (top) before turning the gun on himself, last May

Mr Cockman has been lobbying the federal government as part of a campaign by advocacy group For Kids Sake, calling for Family Court reform.

He said late last year: 'The sadness that I'm going through should have never happened.

'I'm really battling. I make it half way through the day and think "I've only got half way to go" and then next day comes.'

The shooting was Australia's worst since the Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania in 1996 which killed 35.

A coronial inquest into the deaths is yet to be scheduled.

For confidential support call the Lifeline 24-hour crisis support on 13 11 14
A desperate search is underway for a two-year-old girl who has been missing for two days.

Georgia Collins was last seen in Hampton Park, near the Melbourne CBD on Wednesday.

Police believe the girl may be with her 37-year-old mother Jade Dunn.

Georgia Collins (pictured) was last seen in Hampton Park, near the Melbourne CBD on Wednesday.

'Georgia is described as having blonde straight shoulder-length hair and blue eyes,' a Victoria Police spokesperson said in a statement.

Jade is 155cm tall, of a slim build, blue eyed and has blonde shoulder-length hair.

'Police and family have concerns for her welfare and have released an image of her in the hope someone recognises her and can provide information regarding her current whereabouts,' the police spokesperson said.

Victoria Police said the girl may be with her mother in the Hampton Park and Lynbrook areas.

Police have asked for anyone with information on Georgia's location to contact them.
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The owner of a San Francisco home adorned with sculptures of Flintstones characters has hit out after a lawsuit was filed to have them removed.

Florence Fang, 85, has accused the affluent town of Hillsborough of harassing and discriminating against her after officials sued, calling the display a public nuisance and eyesore.

The owner of the famous Flintstone House and her lawyer announced Thursday they'd be filing their own lawsuit accusing officials of violating the First Amendment and causing her emotional distress.

Officials from the town of Hillsborough have filed a lawsuit to have Flintstone themed sculptures removed from this home in San Francisco

The multi-colored installations include a herd of 15-foot-tall dinosaurs in the backyard, as well as giant colorful mushrooms

The retired mogul spoke to the media for the first time as she filed her response to officials who last month filed to force her to remove her Barney and Betty Rubble sculptures.

The multi-colored installations include a herd of 15-foot-tall dinosaurs, sculptures of the cast and dotting the landscape with colorful giant mushrooms.

She also has Yabba dabba doo - the catchphrase of Fred Flintston - written on a patch of her lawn in giant purple, yellow and orange letters.

Barney and Betty Rubble, two of the show's favourite characters, were erected in the garden without planning permission

Florence Fang sits with architect William Nicholson and her attorney outside her home and reveals she is counter-suing the town

The wacky property (the kitchen, pictured) has been kitted out just like the home of Fred and Wilma in the cartoon

Fang said meddlesome bureaucrats are the only ones worried about her installations.

Hillsborough lawyer Mark Hudak claimed residents are required to get a permit before installing such sculptures, regardless of the theme.

At the end of a news conference, Ms Fang linked arms with her attorney and the home's original architect, exclaiming: 'Yabba dabba do!'

A view of the Flintstone's House in Hillsborough, the affluent suburb of San Francisco, where officials are trying to have the decorations torn down

The owner had Fred Flintstone's catchphrase 'Yabba dabba doo' spelled in giant multi-colored letters on a patch of the lawn (top right)
Three men will face court on Friday charged with possession of a large quantity of drugs after they were caught with almost $7m worth of MDMA and methylampetamine.

Two men aged 25 and 28-years-old were arrested in a car park at Pendle Hill on Thursday following an extensive investigation in to the supply of drugs in Sydney.

The men and their car were searched by officers who discovered 5kg of MDMA, estimated to be worth around $1.5m.

NSW Police arrested three men allegedly carrying a combined $6.8m of MDMA and meth

NSW Police will allege in court on Friday that the two men were at the location to supply the drugs.

On Thursday, police also arrested another man, 32, a shopping centre at Strathfield, before raiding houses in Meadowbank, Granville and Parramatta.

They discovered an additional 10kg of methylamphetamine, 1kg of MDMA, drug paraphernalia, cash, mobile phones, and electronic devices.

The addition seizures of drugs brought the total value of the haul to $6.8m.

The men and their car were searched by officers who discovered 5kg of MDMA, estimated to be worth around $1.5m

The 25-year-old man, from Granville, has been charged with four counts of supply of prohibited large commercial quantity.

The 28-year-old, from Meadowbank, has been charged with five counts supply prohibited drug large commercial quantity.

While the 32-year-old Parramatta man was charged with three counts of supply prohibited drug large commercial quantity, two counts of drive motor vehicle during disqualification, and recklessly deal in proceeds of crime.

All three were refused bail.

NSW Police established the investigating unit Strike Force Watling in January to tackle drug supply in to Sydney
A tour company that spent seven fruitless months looking for someone to fill a vacancy despite offering a $150,000 salary and a seemingly idyllic job description has finally found the right person - and she couldn't be happier.

Tracey Goodall, 41, has been appointed as General Manager for New Zealand-based company Forgotten World Adventures.

Born in Wales and having moved to Brisbane when she was 14, Ms Goodall studied journalism before she began travelling the world at the age of 18, so a job in tourism had immediate appeal.

Not many shared her enthusiasm for moving to Taumarunui, a small town west of Lake Taupo which had fallen on hard times and the company owners struggled to find anyone interested in taking the job.

Ms Goodall saw the advantage to being out in the countryside instead of wasting too many hours in traffic as she and husband Michael Mudroncik tried to enjoy weekends away from the hustle and bustle of Auckland.

Tracey Goodall and her husband Michael Mudroncik (pictured) lived in Auckland but would spend hours driving to enjoy an adventurous weekend away

She was lucky enough to land a job as General Manager for New Zealand based company Forgotten World Adventures, earning $150,000 per annum

'I was in Auckland and loved it but it had an infrastructure problem. It's frustrating to live in a cool city and not be able to enjoy it,' Ms Goodall told Daily Mail Australia.

'Me and my partner would try to leave work early on a Friday to spend the weekend mountain-biking or hiking. But if we were caught in peak hour traffic, a two or three hour drive would take five and a half.'

'I didn't think I'd find anyone who loved to travel as much as I do but I did,' she said.

When someone mentioned the advertised job in Taumarunui, a town three hours south of Auckland, she applied and got the role.

'It meant we wouldn't spend our time travelling but would be able to enjoy doing the things we loved,' she said.

'New Zealand as a whole is such a beautiful country, especially out of the big cities.'

Taumarunui, which has a population of 3500 people, was a thriving town during the railway and timber era in the 1990s.

However in recent years, many business have closed including the Milk Co-op and the meatworks.

Since 2012, the Northern Explorer train network also doesn't stop-off in the town anymore.

As job opportunities and businesses closed, residents moved away, the local school closed and houses became abandoned.

When someone mentioned the advertised job in Taumarunui, a town three hours south of Auckland, she applied

The company did find one person who was prepared to take the job, but his wife vetoed a move to the the small town.

But where that woman saw isolation, Ms Goodall sees the opportunity created by the cheap housing and small scale of the town.

'Squash is four minutes away from work and the snow is only a half hour drive from where we are,' she said.

'My partner loves to ski and now he can do that,' Ms Goodall said.

She said being able to work a job and live in a town which suits her lifestyle has 'made turned her dream and passion into a reality.'

'If my previous company re-located to a smaller town, most people would leave. It's not suited to everyone.'
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has accused his amputee Labor opponent of using her disability as 'an excuse' to not move into his marginal seat of Dickson.

Mr Dutton on Thursday rebuked Ali France's comments about not being able to move to the outer north Brisbane electorate due to a lack of wheelchair-accessible homes.

The Liberal MP questioned Ms France's seriousness about representing the electorate, saying there are plenty of people with disability living in the area.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton (pictured) has accused his amputee Labor opponent of using her disability as 'an excuse' to not move into his marginal seat of Dickson

Ali France (pictured) issued a statement on Thursday, which stated she already worked in Dickson and planned to buy a home there and make it more accessible if she won

'A lot of people have raised this with me. I think they are quite angry that Ms France is using her disability as an excuse for not moving into our electorate,' Mr Dutton told The Australian.

He claimed his ALP opponent previously told people if she won the election she would move to Dickson, but has now changed her stance - which isn't credible.

Ms France issued a statement on Thursday, which stated she already worked in Dickson and planned to buy a home there and make it more accessible if she won.

She also said she has searched 'high and low' for a wheelchair-accessible home, but finding one with accessible bathrooms and kitchens has been challenging.

'If I am fortunate enough to represent the people of Dickson, I will have to buy a home and renovate it so that it is accessible,' Ms France said.

The ALP candidate, who had her left leg amputated after being struck by a car in 2011, has been a prominent critic of Mr Dutton's policies.

Ms France (pictured) underwent multiple surgeries following her accident in 2011, and since then has become a disability worker and advocate

Mr Dutton rebuked Ali France's comments about not being able to move to the outer north Brisbane electorate (pictured) due to a lack of wheelchair-accessible homes

'Unlike my opponent who has nine houses, one of which is in the electorate, I have just one house that has been built to accommodate my disability,' she said.

Ms France, 45, underwent multiple surgeries following her accident in 2011, and since then has become a disability worker and advocate.

Mr Dutton, who won the seat from Cheryl Kernot, has held the seat since 2001, but the margin has narrowed after the 2016 election and subsequent redistribution.

The activist group GetUp has also set up an office in Dickson to help unseat him and Queenslands biggest left-wing union, United Voice, is aiding Ms Frances campaign.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Mr Dutton and Ms France for comment.
A four-year-old girl who was shot during the horrific terror attacks on two mosques in Christchurch is suffering from brain damage and is no longer able to recognise her parents.

Alen Darahgmih was taken to Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland after the attacks and is conscious but unresponsive, Stuff reported.

Her father Wasseim Alsati was shot three times during the rampage at the Al Noor mosque on March 15, and has been recovering at Auckland City Hospital.

'She's awake, but she's not responding. She can't see. Her hands and her legs are slightly moving, but not the way she wants them to,' Mr Alsati said.

Alen Darahgmih (pictured) was taken to Starship Hospital in Auckland after the attacks and is conscious but unresponsive

'To be honest, it's in the last couple of days I've come to understand the situation.'

The little girl has undergone eight surgeries but doctors say it will take six months of observation for them to know the extent of her brain damage.

Mr Alsati said he will have to wait at least 18 months before he can walk again.

'I am really tired... I'm crying all the time. My wife, she's been really strong. She's got power from our family here,' he said.

Mr Alsati said he has seen his wife for 30 minutes in the last two-and-a-half weeks.

A Givealittle page has been set up to raise money for Mr Alsati and Alen.

Mr Alsati shared an update about his condition to Facebook, and broke down in tears when talking about his daughter.

'I'm so tired and weak. Thanks to Allah - God and my Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and my family and everybody,' he said.

Her father Wasseim Alsati (right) was shot three times during the rampage at the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch on March 15, and has been recovering at Auckland City Hospital

The alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with 50 counts of murder.

The Australian-born man is accused of gunning down almost 100 people in a sickening attack on the Al Noor and Linwood mosques that was live-streamed and shared to Facebook.

He has previously requested to represent himself in court, and in his last court appearance he smirked and gave a white supremacist sign with his hand.
Australia's killer flu season has seen 3,092 confirmed cases in April - the most ever recorded for the same month.

Seven people in New South Wales have already died from flu this year and the virus is expected to kill more than 4,000 before the end of the year.

More than 10,000 people caught the flu in March 2019 - the number for March last year was just 3,173, according to official data released by the Immunisation Coalition.

There's been more than 27,000 confirmed flu cases so far this year, while seven people have already died in New South Wales

There's been more than 27,000 confirmed flu cases so far this year.

Travellers returning from the northern hemisphere are thought to have brought the influenza virus back to Australia.

Those in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia have been worst affected.

Most Australians get their vaccine in mid-April, before the typical June to September flu season - which leaves people unprotected during summer, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The red dotted line shows Australia's flu season in comparison to this time last year - over 10,000 people caught the flu in March 2019 , but the number for March last year was just 3,173

Chair of the coalition Professor Robert Booy said this year's flu season is expected to be particularly severe because people failed to build up immunity during last year's mild flu season.

'This year, we expect the flu to kill at least 4,000 people which is the same number as deaths from suicide and the road toll combined,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

'We've already started seeing peak flu rates in primary schools in year 1 and 2, and while it hasn't been reported widely, outbreaks in schools are happening,' he said.

Where Australia's flu cases are coming from - New South Wales: 7,595 cases - Queensland: 7,289 cases - Victoria: 4,627 cases - South Australia: 4,397 cases - Western Australia: 1,498 cases - Tasmania: 322 cases - Northern Territory: 296 cases - ACT: 203 cases Advertisement

Professor Booy also said nursing homes were being hit hard.

'We have already seen multiple outbreaks at nursing homes right down the east coast,' he said.

Most deaths from the flu occur in people aged over 65 and young children, and are usually related to complications such as pneumonia, heart attacks or stroke.

More than 250,000 flu vaccines have been delivered so far this year, with 42,000 of them going to aged care facilities across New South Wales.

Professor Boy said people underestimate the severity of influenza and often fail to get vaccinated.

2019's flu season is expected to be particularly severe because people failed to build up immunity during last year's mild flu season

'It's most unusual to have flu circulating in April, and the fact that it's causing outbreaks tells us we need to pay attention right now,' he said.

Free flu vaccines are available for Aboriginal people, those over 65, pregnant women, and anyone with conditions such as diabetes, asthma, and heart disease.

Children between six months and five-years-old in New South Wales are also eligible for free flu vaccines, under the state government's $2.6 million program.
A video of an incident between a Florida cop and an 11-year-old boy has gone viral as it shows the moment student was body slammed outside his school.

In Tuesday's clip, the child can be seen walking away from a St Lucie Sheriff's deputy Diederech Hueck before the man runs after him, lifts him into the air, and then throws him onto the pavement in front of Lincoln Park Academy.

The shocking footage from the cell phone of a fellow student watching from a school bus shows the law enforcement officer then place himself on top of the child, whose grandfather told WPTV is now undergoing a mental-health evaluation.

Following the incident the Sheriff's Office said the sixth grader was taken to hospital for a check-up but complained of no injuries and left simply with a Band Aid on his knee.

Diederech Hueck was seen throwing an 11-year-old boy to ground outside school Tuesday

They said the youngster is on a Diversion Program for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon, a felony. The child has to be escorted around school after sex allegations involving a female student.

The boy had been arrested by the school resource officer for aggravated assault five days prior.

Hueck also arrested him February, after he initially resisted arrest for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace following an incident where he disrupted a class he was not supposed to be in. During the incident he slammed his own head into a wall.

The child now faces charges aggravated assault charges from a staff member who accuses the child of chest bumping him earlier in the Tuesday incident.

The police officer's boss said he had not been suspended and his actions were justified because the tween had been 'running around the school campus and not responding to any commands by the school staff'.

He explained in a press conference that the Assistant Principal had asked the deputy  who had eight years of experience working at schools - to follow him after he stormed out of the Dean's office while waiting for a parent to arrive and witness his suspension.

Police claimed the child was 'walking with his fist clenched and had an agitated expression on his face. The incident was filmed from school bus at Lincoln Park Academy, Florida

Dean Drummond was absent on the day of the incident.

According to Sheriff Ken Mascara, the boy was followed onto two buses and encouraged to go home using the mode of transportation despite claims in the police report that he had thrown himself at a classroom pod window earlier and was walking around punching his palm.

But when he disembarked the second vehicle and began to walk, it was deemed necessary to use force on him.

Police claimed the child was 'walking with his fist clenched and had an agitated expression on his face. His brows were turned down and he was punching his fist into the palm of his hand'.

They stated he then 'continued pulling away, twisting and turning his body'.

Sixth grader was taken to hospital for a check-up but didn't complain of injuries after the incident where students watched in horror

Police reports state he has thrown himself at classroom window and slammed his own head into a wall during incidents at school that day and in February

Deputy Hueck noted in his report that he'd reviewed surveillance videos to confirm several staff members had tried to get the child to comply earlier before he was called in.

Parents and guardians at Lincoln Park Academy were horrified after learning about the Tuesday incident.

'If the kid was fighting him back and he felt like he was in some kind of danger, then I could justify his actions, but it didn't appear to be that way,' father of twins, General Platt told WPTV. 'That's kind of rough to be at a school campus, he didn't have to slam him down like that.'

Jazmine Arias, whose sister attends the school, said: 'I would have freaked out if I saw that in person. He's a kid, I don't think a little kid should be thrown to the ground like that.'

The school did not immediate respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Sheriff Mascara noted the deputy involved had worked for years at a high school nearby and had never reached a point where he needed to handle a situation in such a tactile way, even when putting himself between fighting students.

He was arrested for assault and battery after Tuesday's incident as a staff member complained he chest bumped him

Child was arrested for disturbing the peace at Lincoln Park Academy in February and assault with a knife, without intent to kill, in April

'Our school resource deputy is very familiar with this student and knows he has a violent history, including possessing weapons,' Sheriff Mascara said in a Wednesday press conference.

'At the end of the day the deputy did everything he could to diffuse the situation, and his use of force fell within the legal and our agency guidelines.'

According to a police report, the child was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill on April 4 when a 50-year-old female victim complained he was holding a knife in an 'aggressive manner' when she visited him at his residence to resolve an argument they'd just had at her home a few blocks away.

He claimed to police that he believed the alleged victim was going to abuse him.

The child was taken to a juvenile detention center and the Department of Children and Families was notified.

Sheriff Ken Mascara discusses an incident at Lincoln Park Academy involving a student. The press conference begin at 2:09 minutes. Posted by St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday, April 10, 2019
More than a million high-capacity ammunition magazines flooded into California during a one-week window created when a federal judge temporarily threw out the state's ban, gun owners' groups estimated on Thursday.

Reform groups said the projections are self-serving as gun rights organizations try to make the case that magazines holding more than 10 bullets are so common now that a ban is impractical.

The magazines aren't tracked. But there are plenty of anecdotal evidence that the floodgates briefly opened when US District Judge Roger Benitez overturned the state's nearly 20-year-old ban late last month.

The judge halted sales a week later, but ruled that those who bought the magazines can legally own them while the state appeals his ruling.

'Everything was all sold out. I basically took whatever I could get,' said Chris Puehse, who owns Foothill Ammo in Shingle Springs, east of Sacramento.

More than a million high-capacity ammunition magazines flooded into California during a one-week window created when a federal judge temporarily threw out the state's ban, gun owners' groups estimated (file photo)

He fielded dozens of telephone calls while buyers stacked up 20 deep in his one-man store to buy the hundreds of magazines that arrived in two shipments last week. He had just six left by the time Benitez reinstated the ban last Friday.

'People loved it. It was like we were out of prison and were not treated like bastard stepchildren of the country anymore,' he said.

Thirty-round magazines for military-style rifles, handgun magazines holding 17 to 20 bullets, all selling for less than $30 each - 'they disappeared,' Puehse said. 'They wanted to grab more than I let them, otherwise they would have been gone even faster than a few hours.'

State Attorney General Xavier Becerra warned hours before Benitez again halted sales that California was in danger of becoming 'the wild, wild West for high-capacity magazines.'

'There are those who are now trying to flood the state of California with what were until this decision illegal high-capacity magazines, the type of magazines that are used in firearms to commit the mass shootings that we've seen throughout the country,' Becerra said.

Ruger Firearms announced it was releasing its entire inventory. South Carolina-based Palmetto State Armory announced in a Facebook ad that it was 'prepared to send a whole lot of freedom to our friends in California,' but warned of delays due to high demand.

'The pipeline was open and it was flowing, on all platforms - people showing up (in stores), online - I'm guessing that UPS and FedEx had a field day,' said Gun Owners of California president Sam Paredes. 'It was a frenzy.'

He said an estimate of a million magazines 'seems a little bit low.'

Chuck Michel, an attorney for the National Rifle Association and the California Rifle & Pistol Association, has a photograph of empty racks at a Bass Pro Shops store in Las Vegas that used to hold magazines before Californians flocked to the neighboring state to stock up. California's more than 2.5 million gun owners together have nearly 20 million guns, many of which can use the extended magazines.

District Judge Roger Benitez overturned the state's nearly 20-year-old ban late last month. The judge halted sales a week later, but ruled that those who bought the magazines can legally own them while the state appeals his ruling (file photo)

By week's end, Michel said, 'you couldn't get one anywhere, because all that inventory had been diverted to California. That's probably at least a million magazines, probably approaching two to several hundred thousand people.'

Staff attorneys with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco said they've seen no evidence to back up the million-magazine estimate, and said gun rights organizations have a vested interest in inflating the number of law-abiding owners.

'They have a very specific purpose and intent here to try to set up for the court that these are devices that are very commonly used and possessed' and therefore should not be banned again, said California legislative affairs director Ari Freilich.

'It lets them argue that there's no way to un-ring the bell,' added litigation director Hannah Shearer.

The problem isn't the new owners who will use them legally for target shooting or self-defense, they said: it's that some will fall into the hands of criminals or be used by mass shooters.

The magazines allow shooters to fire more bullets without stopping to reload. Gun owners' organizations - and Judge Benitez - said that's helpful to ward off multiple home invaders, but opponents said it gives victims less time to escape or tackle a mass shooter as he reloads.

Reformers expect the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the ban on sales while reinstating a 2016 law and ballot measure banning possession even by those who own them legally.

Opponents are counting on the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately side with Benitez's ruling that the bans infringe on the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

'Because of that one slip-up, in one week you literally had millions of magazines come into the state that were bought legally,' said Puehse, the gun shop owner. 'These magazines are here to stay.'
The government will be able to ban people for travelling to certain war zones to become jihadi brides or fighters (pictured: Jihadi bride Shamima Begum from Bethnal Green, East London)

British citizens who go to live in foreign terror hotspots could face up to 10 years in prison under new laws that come into force today.

It means those who follow the example jihadi brides such as Shamima Begum and Tareena Shakil face far tougher sentences.

But it also has ramifications for those who go to fight for Kurdish resistance group YPG, which fights to oppose Islamic State.

The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 creates a criminal offence of entering or remaining in a 'designated area' overseas.

Ministers unveiled the measure last year as part of efforts to boost authorities' ability to tackle the threat from so-called 'foreign fighters'.

The act allows Home Secretary Sajid Javid to designate an area, subject to parliamentary approval.

In order to use the power, he would need to be satisfied that it is necessary to restrict UK nationals and residents from travelling to or remaining in the area in order to protect the public from a risk of terrorism.

An individual found to have entered or remained in a designated area could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Tougher new rules mean that people who travel to warzones face up to a decade in prison (pictured, Tareena Shakil, who went to Syria)

Exemptions have been written into the legislation to protect those who have a legitimate reason for being in the area, such as journalism, aid work or attending the funeral of a relative.

The offence does not allow retrospective prosecutions of individuals who have gone overseas to take part in fighting, such as those who went to territory held by Islamic State, before returning to the UK.

But officials say it will assist if a similar outflow of fighters is seen in a future conflict.

The aim is to provide a deterrent effect and further avenue for bringing charges in cases where individuals are suspected of travelling for terrorist purposes.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured) welcomed the new anti-terrorism powers

More than 900 individuals 'of national security concern' from the UK have travelled to engage with the conflict in Syria, the Home Office estimates.

Of these, approximately 20 per cent have been killed whilst overseas and around 40 per cent have returned to the UK.

Figures disclosed in the Commons last year suggested that only around one in 10 returnees has been prosecuted over 'direct action' in Syria, although the Government says a significant proportion of those who have come back were assessed as no longer being of national security concern.

The power to designate areas is one of a string of new anti-terror measures that come into force on Friday.

The legislation also:

makes it illegal to 'recklessly' express support for a proscribed organisation;

creates an offence of obtaining or viewing terrorist material over the internet;

extends extra-territorial jurisdiction for some terror-related crimes;

increases maximum sentences for a number of offences.

Mr Javid said: 'These new laws give the police the powers they need to disrupt terrorist plots earlier and ensure that those who seek to do us harm face just punishment.

'As we saw in the deadly attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, the threat from terrorism continues to evolve and so must our response, which is why these vital new measures have been introduced.'

Britain was hit by five attacks in 2017, while police and security services have foiled 18 plots in the last two years.
A mother has been urged to abandon her rental apartment after discovering mushrooms had sprouted from a door frame.

The woman, who had been living in the property with her family for a few months, said the fungi had infested the premises after a shower had sprung a leak.

The mother-of-one from Sydney took to social media to share an image of the discovery and to ask for advice on how to treat the 'gross' growth.

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A family have been urged to abandon their rental apartment after discovering mushrooms (pictured) had sprouted from a door frame

In the image, shared to the Mums Who Clean Facebook page, at least six mushrooms can be seen growing out the bottom of a door frame.

The woman said she had 'freaked out' when she had first found the fungi.

'Grossed out! We live in a rental and only been here for a few [months],' she wrote.

'Water must have been leaking from the shower through the back of the wall for some time.

'Found these tasty mushrooms sprouted out of our door frame.

'We contacted our property manager and they got a plumber to regrout the tiles,' she explained.

Despite a plumber attending to the area, the mushrooms regrew just a few days later.

'I don't think it's fixed the problem as this morning we found the lovely mushrooms are back,' she said.

The mum took to social media to ask for advice on how to treat the mushrooms growing in her bathroom

'Worried as we have a [3-year-old] running around too,' she added.

She said she had also tried to get rid of the mushrooms herself by rubbing vinegar on the door frame.

But in case the mushrooms returned again she asked members of the group for advice.

Alarmed social media users implored her to evacuate the apartment and said the situation was 'extremely dangerous' and 'toxic'.

'Move, get out of lease. That will go into your furniture, clothes and body,' one wrote.

Another warned the mushrooms could make the family 'so sick'.

'This happened in our house, and we had to completely reframe the sections of the wall that had rotted out,' another said.

One user said the landlord had 'breached their duty of care', while another said it seemed like the plumber had done a 'patch up' job.

While others advised the woman to contact the Residential Tenancies Authority about the issue.

Mould can grow in damp, dark and poorly ventilated areas of the home such as bathrooms or basement areas, according to New South Wales Family and Community services.

The service says the most effective way to prevent mould is to let fresh air and light into the home.

It also states cleaning regularly and controlling the amount of moisture in a home will help to stop the issue.
Jussie Smollett deliberately tried to mislead authorities by claiming that the men who 'attacked' him as white, according to a lawsuit.

The City of Chicago is suing actor Jussie Smollett after the actor refused to pay $130,106 worth of overtime that was accrued by police investigating a January incident that authorities believe was a stage attack.

A complaint obtained by DailyMail.com reveals that the city will be seeking that overtime amount and more in damages that were cause when Smollett 'submitted a false police report claiming that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic beating by unknown attacker.'

Smollett was accused of staging an attack on himself on January 29 to try to get a raise on Empire. Police say he paid Abel and Ola Osundairo to beat him in what he then described as a racist, homophobic attack by two Trump-loving perpetrators.

The suit states that the actor told cops that the primary attacker 'was wearing a ski mask that covered his entire face, with the exception of the area around his eyes, by which (Smollett) could tell the attacker was white-skinned.'

'(Smollett) made this statement despite knowing that the Osundairo Brothers are not white-skinned,' it continues.

'By providing this false description, (Smollett) purposely misled the CPD officers to believe that his attackers were white, when, in fact, (Smollett) knew that his attackers were the Osundairo brothers.'

'At no point did Defendant inform police that he knew his attackers or recognized their appearances or voices.'

The complaint also provides a preview of some new information in the case that had not yet been revealed, including Smollett's cell phone records.

Empire falls: The City of Chicago has filed a legal complaint against Jussie Smollett (above in March smiling after charges were dismissed in court) for the $130,106 in overtime that was spent investigating his alleged attack

'On the evening of January 28, 2019, [Smollett's] flight into Chicago was delayed, and he called Abel telling him he needed to delay the staged attack, and Abel agreed,' states the court filing

It is later noted that 'cell phone records indicate that at 12:49 A.M., [Smollett]and Abel spoke by telephone. During this call, [Smollett] told Abel the attack should take place at 2:00 A.M. at the agreed-upon location. Minutes later, Ola ordered an Uber to pick the Osundairo Brothers up at their home.'.

The case against him was suddenly and unexpectedly dropped last month by the State's Attorney's Office in questionable circumstances.

State Attorney Kim Foxx, whose office was in charge of the probe, has faced repeated calls to resign over her handling of the case.

The Chicago Police Department's Superintendent, Eddie Johnson, was aghast when her office decided to drop the case as was Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

They say it sent a clear message that Smollett was favored because he has friends in high places and there was widespread public outcry over the decision too.

The police complaint is likely to further inflame anger at the decision.

There is one glaring inconsistency however in the complaint and the initial police report.

Smollett was arrested in February for allegedly lying about the attack. Police say he paid Abel and Ola Osundairo to attack him and that he thought he could use it as leverage to get a raise on Empire, a claim he denies

'[Smollet] told the CPD officers that his primary attacker (now known to be Abel) was wearing a ski mask that covered his entire face, with the exception of the area around his eyes, by which Defendant could tell the attacker was white-skinned,' reads the complaint.

'[Smollett] made this statement despite knowing that the Osundairo Brothers are not white-skinned.'

That is not what the police report that was initially filed in he case stated however, with the officer who spoke with Smollett writing: 'The primary attacker was wearing a black mask concealing any facial features.'

There is also no indication that either of the suspects was white in the report filed by the officers who first spoke with Smollett, despite police now claiming in this complaint that Smollett said this at the scene.

'By providing this false description, Defendant purposely misled the CPD officers to believe that his attackers were white, when, in fact, Defendant knew that his attackers were the Osundairo Brothers,' reads the complaint.

Smollett did state that one of the attackers was white in a subsequent interview with a detective according to police filings in the case, but never once had it been said that he relayed that claim at the scene until Thursday.

The complaint also reveals that Smollett stayed in contact with the Osundairo brothers after the alleged attack on two occasions.

This complaint was filed as promised by the city following a letter to Smollett demanding he pay for their police force's overtime on the case.

That was met with a blistering response from Smollett's lawyer.

'Your letter is both factually and legally flawed, and Mr. Smollett will not be intimidated into paying the demanded sum,' stated Smollett's lawyer Mark Geragos.

'Your claim that Mr. Smollett filed a false police report and orchestrated his own attack is false and defamatory.'

He then threatened to depose a number of Chicago heavyweights should the city try and file a legal demand, including former mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Smollett's team has never offered an alternative explanation for why the brothers, who he knew and had paid for personal training, would attack him.

One of his lawyer's most bizarre attempts at explaining the case however was that he told police one of his attackers was white because the Nigerian brothers 'might have been wearing white make-up'.

The brothers told police Smollett enlisted them to beat him up and that he betrayed them by then going to the police, claiming to know nothing about the incident.

This has all bizarrely played out as Emanuel leaves office, spending his final days raging at Smollett and Cook County prosecutors for tossing out the 16-count grand jury indictment that was filed against the actor.

It is unclear how new mayor Lori Lightfoot will respond to this filing, in what will likley become her first moment on the national stage in her new role as mayor of the city.

Meanwhile Jussie Smollett was all smiles during a day at the beach in Hawaii on Wednesday as he enjoyed some down time with his family.

The 36-year-old Empire actor was pictured laughing as he ate , talked to his sisters and unloaded a car with children's bags and towels for a fun-filled day out.

They were spotted at the Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park in Kailua on the Big Island.

It is unclear how long he has been in Hawaii. His sisters, Jazz and Jurnee, supported him throughout his case but did not attend court as frequently as his brothers did.
Thousands of children are attending illegal schools where they get little or no teaching and are subjected to dangerous conditions such as open sewers and exposed wiring, a report has found.

The education watchdog warns that more than 200 unregistered establishments may be providing sub-standard teaching and care.

In some cases they are being unwittingly funded by councils.

The unregistered schools include those run for strict religious parents who do not want their children in mainstream education, and privately-run institutions which care for excluded children.

Thousands of children are attending suspected illegal schools Ofsted said. Stock image shows a classroom

Ofsted today releases figures which show that since 2016 it has investigated 521 unregistered schools, and inspected 259  with 71 later sent warning notices.

By law all establishments which offer full-time education to five or more pupils are defined as schools and must provide basic safeguards and tuition.

They also need to register with the authorities so they can be regulated. But many do not  some religious schools so they do not have to follow the national curriculum. Others teach almost nothing but fundamentalist religious instruction, and several keep children in dangerous conditions.

Ofsted's Sue Will said: 'I have been really shocked at the health and safety issues we have seen  quite appalling.

'Open sewers, rat traps in rooms, exposed electrical-ware. I've seen holes in walls and floors, locked fire doors.'

In the cases of schools for excluded children, called 'alternative provision', often they are not registered due to the incompetence of bosses.

Ofsted investigated one such operation which was milking a council for 27,000 per pupil, per year yet still providing little or no real education. In another case, youngsters were allowed to play computer games all day.

A Department for Education spokesman said a new register of children not in school should help uncover dangerous and illegal establishments.
A veterinarian has written an emotional message revealing the shocking suicide rate in his industry, saying it is in 'crisis'.

Tony Karolis from Nepean Animal Hospital in Penrith, western Sydney, shared the post to Facebook on Saturday.

Tony Karolis (pictured) from Nepean Animal Hospital in Penrith, shared the post to Facebook on Saturday

'Most people working in the veterinary industry are paid the minimum wage or close to it,' he wrote.

'Currently a vet leaving a five-year degree... starts in a salary around $50,000 and tops out at around $80,000. Nurses earn far less. Vets are four times more likely to take their own lives than the average Australian.

'That's higher than the military, and farmers... We work under conditions of constant abuse by pet owners who feel that they should have free access to veterinary care, despite the fact there is no Medicare for animals.

Mr Karolis said animal hospitals cost millions of dollars to establish and are expensive to run and maintain.

'Injuries are a daily part of our job. Abuse is a daily part of our job. While the vast majority of our patients survive, in many cases it's because we cover part of the bill,' he said.

Tony Karolis from Nepean Animal Hospital in Penrith, western Sydney, shared the post (pictured) to Facebook on Saturday

Mr Karolis said animal hospitals cost millions of dollars to establish and are expensive to run and maintain. Pictured: Nepean Animal Hospital in Penrith

'We are an industry in crisis. Record numbers of graduates are leaving clinical practice due to the realities they face at work. A 12 hour shift is considered a blessing.

'So next time you decide to criticise your vet, stop and think about the repercussions, because one day we may not be there. Instead we could be working in a myriad of other very highly paid industries with far less stress, and that is happening every day.

'Value your vets, or one day you'll wake up and find the only people left are those who don't care. Because they aren't affected by the suffering and emotional abuse perpetrated by our clients several times a day.

'Improving the quality and length of your pets lives is our calling, not our career. We need your support to keep going.'

Some commenters were supportive of Mr Karolis' plea and the work his hospital does.

A woman said her pet was saved by vets at the Nepean Animal Hospital after she was bitten by a snake.

'Do I think vets are expensive? From my bank account I'd say yes. From my heart, I'd say no. You saved River's life and that is priceless. Thank you for all that you do,' she said.

Another person said vets were 'the most selfless, cheerful and heartfelt people I have ever had the pleasure of working with'.

Some commenters were supportive of Mr Karolis' plea and the work his hospital does (stock image)

One vet industry worker said they had seen the toll workplace pressure had taken on employees.

'In my 14-year career in the veterinary industry, I've lost seven colleagues to suicide - and dozens have left the industry,' she said.

'We need to support each other to change those numbers.'

However, one person said Mr Karolis was 'selling his clientele short'.

'I owned an extremely busy vet hospital for 30 years. We were occasionally abused by the odd client. They were few and far between,' he said.

'Today's vet students are ill prepared for private practice and business. Today they are often lectured by academics with very little real world skills. Students come out with very little pragmatism.

'We are in a service business and that basically means we need to set up the business so we can do that without killing ourselves.

'I would say stop bitching and either change things or change your attitude.'

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A young farmer is calling for greater education about the meat industry in response to the recent 'vegan uprising' spreading across Australia.

Zoe Carter - from Victoria - posted a video to her 190,000 followers on Tuesday, saying a gap in the Australian school system is partly to blame for misinformed vegan ideas.

'The Australian school system leaves this huge gap for people that don't study agriculture, about the meat, dairy, horticulture and cropping industries,' she said.

Ms Carter, 20, also claims social media has 'filled the gap with misconceived, uneducated ideas.'

'Before social media, vegans and vegetarians weren't a huge issue, because they were educated correctly and didn't have these radical ideas put in their head,' the farmer says.

Her video - which has been viewed more than 130,000 times - comes after hundreds of protesters chained themselves to vehicles outside Flinders Street Station in Melbourne on Monday.

Activists also invaded abattoirs and farms in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland at the same time.

Last month, a swarm of more than 150 radical animal rights activists trespassed on a Queensland cattle farm.

The jillaroo says education about the farming industry needs to start when Aussie kids enter school, and shouldn't just be limited to students who study agriculture.

Farmer Zoe Carter posted a video to her 190,000 followers on Tuesday, saying a gap in the Australian school system is partly to blame for misinformed vegan ideas

'[Kids need to learn] the truth and what actually happens and not these radical ideas that people want to push across... every single student needs to be educated.'

Ms Carter - who's worked in sheep and cattle stations, in shearing sheds and in abattoirs - says she plans to go to schools and give talks and educate the younger generation.

The young farmer who grew up in the city says if she hadn't studied agriculture from year 10, she also would have believed what she saw on social media about the meat industry.

The 20-year-old jillaroo says education about the farming industry needs to start when Aussie kids enter school, and shouldn't just be limited to students who study agriculture

'If I didnt study Agriculture I probably never would have believed what posted on social media.

'As someone who has worked on sheep/cattle stations, in shearing sheds, on family farms, abattoirs, etc., I can tell you first hand from experience that the videos the extreme activists post are not correct,' she wrote in her video's caption.

'Sadly the industry (like all other ones) have a small 1% that dont do the right thing and sadly this is what the face of agriculture is.'

Ms Carter added that society had a responsibility to stop social media 'brainwashing people about ridiculous and uneducated claims.'
Comedy is being restricted by a troop of social media whingers with a 'Victorian moral code' complaining about jokes, a BBC boss said.

Shane Allen - who is launching the British Comedy Foundation - said the country's comedic traditions were threatened by political correctness.

He believes the creation of a comedy charter could help to deal with viewers' complaints, particularly around political offence.

'We live in an age where social media can bring comic material to people out of context and without traditional audience expectations having been set,' Mr Allen told Broadcast magazine.

The BBC is backing a new comedy unit which hopes to stand firm in the face of social media whingers

'This means a handful of comments or opinions can quickly be taken out of context, which is damaging for a genre which is there to test boundaries and challenge orthodoxies,' he said.

Many in the industry feel comedy is not as funny as it could be because writers are having to tread carefully and Mr Allen believes a charter would provide them more freedom.

The BBC have reached out to other broadcasters to help promote home-grown comedy and challenge US dominance, the Times reported.

The new BBC-backed comedy unit is tasked with finding stars from 'under-represented' backgrounds.

The broadcaster said yesterday it would 'open the doors to new voices' that do not usually make it to air.

The new unit will set out to 'engage and enable and enrich the under-represented and under-privileged', the BBC said.

However, it is likely to face a backlash from critics over its decision to appoint Mr Allen, who attended the prestigious Belfast Royal Academy grammar school before studying at Edinburgh University.

John Cleese says the BBC would never make Monty Python these days as it is focused on 'social engineering'

His first recruit on the project, Emily Allen, went to St Andrews University. She is also understood to be white.

The venture follows criticism from audiences that the BBC is too white, too middle-class, and does not take enough risks.

Indeed, Mr Allen caused distress to John Cleese last year by saying that Monty Python had starred 'six Oxbridge white blokes.'

Cleese rebuffed Mr Allen and offered that his job title should perhaps be changed to that of head of 'social engineering'.

Mr Allen  who will work on the foundation alongside his existing role as the BBC's controller of comedy commissioning  said he wanted to 'explore what a comedy foundation might look like, who it could unearth, what it could achieve and who'd get behind it'.

The BBC has agreed to fund Mr Allen for three months while he develops the new unit, in the hope that it will become an industry-wide body. Yesterday, the broadcaster said it was too early to say whether it will become a permanent fixture with Mr Allen as its head.
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A powerful photograph of a young girl crying while her mother is detained by US border patrol has been named the best photo of the year.

John Moore took the stunning image of the two-year-old Honduran girl near the Mexico border as her mother was stopped and searched.

The staff photographer at Getty Images has been covering the immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border for the last 10 years and earlier this year he published a book dubbed Undocumented: The Immigration and the Militarization of the US-Mexico Border.

Mr Moore said: 'My goal since I began photographing immigration and border security issues a decade ago has been to illuminate a story that is often told through statistics.'

Since 1955, World Press Photo has been the world's largest and best-renowned annual press photography contest.

Other nominated photos feature children suffering in Syria and the migrant caravan story.

The World Press Photo contest has awarded this image by John Moore their photograph of the year. It shows a two-year-old Honduran girl crying as her asylum seeker mother was detained by US border force in McAllen, Texas. They had rafted across the Rio Grande from Mexico and were stopped and searched before being sent to a processing centre

Three young children receive treatment after a gas attack on al-Shifunieh village in Eastern Ghouta, Syria. The 'Syria, No Exit' story won the second prize in the stories category of the WPP 2019 contest. The event is the world's largest photography contest and has been running since 1955

The 'Story of the Year 2019' award went to the migrant caravan story. This picture shows families bathing, washing clothes and relaxing by the Rio Novillero near Tapanatepec in Mexico. People of all ages stand and sit on the rock looking dejected as they make their way to the US

An injured child is comforted by their brother while receiving first aid at a hospital after a bombing in Douma, Syria. The photo is part of the 'Syria, No Exit' story and was taken in February 2018. The photo shows the rudimentary conditions and the horror of the conflict in which young children became victims

A young girl picks flowers during the day's walk from Tapanatepec to Niltepec in Mexico as part of the 'Migrant Caravan', a distance of 50km. The photograph was taken by Pieter Ten Hoopen. The migrant caravan saw thousands move north fleeing persecution, poverty and violence

Diana Markosium took this photograph titled Cubanitas which was awarded first prize in the competition's Contemporary Issues category. It shows a girl riding around her neighbourhood in Havana, Cuba, in a pink 1950s convertible to celebrate her 15th birthday

People receive treatment after a gas attack in Eastern Ghouta. More than 1,000 Syrian civilians were reported killed in a few weeks after the attacks in February 2018. The Syrian military was accused of targeting civilians in the gas attacks but it said it is trying to liberate the region

'Akashinga - the Brave Ones' by Brent Stirton was awarded first prize in the Environment category. It shows Petronella Chigumbura, 30, a member of an all-female anti-poaching unit called Akashinga in Zimbabwe. She is pictured participating in stealth and concealment training in the Phundundu Wildlife Park

Syrians inspect the rubble of damaged buildings after several days earlier in rebel-held Douma. The photograph shows the scale of the destruction with the whole facade of a multi-storey building destroyed. Brave civilians sweep the streets filled with dust and wreckage from the concrete buildings

Migrants run to a truck that has stopped to give them a rude outside Tapanatepec in Mexico in October. Some drivers charged the desperate travellers for the ride but most offered free lifts as a show of solidarity. The migrants were fleeing desperate situations in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador

'Harvesting Frogs Legs' by Bence Mate was awarded first prize in the Nature category. It shows frogs with their legs severed and surrounded by frogspawn. The colourful photo shows the frogs struggle to the surface after being thrown back into the water in Romania.

A father and son sleep after a long day of walking in Juchitan in Mexico. President Trump labelled the arrival of the migrants an 'invasion' and he sent a number of incendiary tweets calling them 'gang members' and 'very bad people' as they headed towards the US
These stunning aerial pictures show a large scale 3D map of Scotland - the biggest one of its kind in the world.

Polish war veteran Jan Tomasik devoted five years' of work to building the concrete model, between 1974 and 1979, which is currently being restored by volunteers.

Built in the grounds of a hotel once owned by Mr Tomasik, the Great Polish Map of Scotland is the largest physical three-dimensional map of a country in the world, covering an area of 1,590 square metres.

Volunteers are working on restoring a massive concrete map of Scotland left as a gift by a Polish hotelier who recovered from his wounds in the country during the Second Word War

Jan Tomasik devoted five years work to building the concrete model between 1974 and 1979

The map is located in the grounds of Barony Castle in Eddleston, Scottish Borders, the map measures 50 metres long and 40 metres wide and is surrounded by a 142 metre long perimeter wall

The hotelier served in the Second World War, and met his Scottish wife when she cared for him in a hospital.

Mr Tomasik settled in Edinburgh when the war ended, and commissioned the massive map as a gift to the Scottish people, in the grounds of a hotel he owned in the Borders.

Located in the grounds of Barony Castle in Eddleston, Scottish Borders, the map measures 50 yards long and 40 yards wide and is surrounded by a 400ft long perimeter wall.

But after the hotel closed in 1985, the map fell into disrepair - until it was discovered more than ten years later by volunteers determined to save it.

Restoration project manager Keith Burns said: 'We found the map in 1996 and it was virtually lost to the memory of the people in the village.

But after the hotel closed in 1985, the map fell into disrepair - until it was discovered more than ten years later by volunteers determined to save it

'When we looked into its background we knew it could be of significant public interest.

'We cleared 250 tons of earth, roots and concrete as frost cracking had damaged much of the structure.'

After establishing Mapa Scotland as a charity and raising the funds needed to repair the structure, the volunteers are now seeking to transfer the site over to the local community.

Mr Burns added: 'We're very pleased with the job we've done.

'But it's very big and will degrade due to the weather, so it will need a local team to continue looking after what is a very important historic monument.'

It was commissioned by Mr Tomasik, from Krakow, Poland, and designed by Dr. Kazimierz Trafas, a cartographer and town planner

The map was built over six summers by a small group of Polish exchange students, assisted by locals and staff from the Hotel Black Barony, which was owned by Mr Tomasik

'We cleared 250 tons of earth, roots and concrete as frost cracking had damaged much of the structure.'

The map can be viewed from ground level or a viewing tower, equivalent to the scale altitude of 45,000 metres - five times the height of a cruising passenger aircraft.

It was commissioned by Mr Tomasik, from Krakow, Poland, and designed by Dr. Kazimierz Trafas, a cartographer and town planner.

The map was built over six summers by a small group of Polish exchange students, assisted by locals and staff from the Hotel Black Barony, which was owned by Mr Tomasik.

Mr Tomasik, a former sergeant in Poland's 1st Armoured Division, had been stationed in Galashiels, Scottish Borders and married a Scottish nurse in 1942 after being treated in the town's Peel Hospital for a wound.

After the hotel closed in 1985 and ownership of Barony Castle passed from the Tomasik family, the map fell gradually into disrepair and became heavily overgrown

After the hotel closed in 1985 and ownership of Barony Castle passed from the Tomasik family, the map fell gradually into disrepair and became heavily overgrown.

In August 2010 the initial clean-up started and category B-listed status was secured for the map in 2012.

In 2013, work began on clearing loose rubble and weeds from the map in advance of restoration, and tests were carried out successfully to reconnect the old gravity-driven water supply.

The map is now being carefully restored by Mapa Scotland, with the aim of establishing it as a permanent educational resource and visitor attraction.
This is the appalling moment a man dressed in a singlet and shorts snatched a 82-year-old woman's pokies winnings as she went to the toilet.

The man was caught by security camera last week grabbing the ticket, worth $380, from the unattended machine at the Pacific Pines Tavern in Queensland.

In the video the 82-year-old woman can be seen putting up a reserved sign on her machine before walking towards the bathroom with her walking stick.

The man was caught by security camera last week grabbing the ticket from the unattended machine at the Pacific Pines Tavern in Queensland

The man walks up to the machine and takes the winnings before cashing the ticket and fleeing the building.

Queensland Police expressed their disgust at the thief who they labelled a 'grub' and have asked people who knew the man to come forward.

'I'm sure it would have gone a lot way towards a bit of groceries and other goods for her,' Peter Gordon from Queensland Police said to Nine News.

Police said in a statement they would like to speak with the man pictured in the video and asked him to come forward.

The Pacific Pines Tavern declined to comment on the theft.
DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds met Mr Johnson (pictured on March 19) and his campaign team for 40 minutes in the Commons on Wednesday

Senior members of the DUP have held talks with Boris Johnson as pressure grows for Theresa May to quit as Prime Minister.

DUP leader Arlene Foster and her deputy Nigel Dodds met Mr Johnson and his campaign team for 40 minutes in the Commons on Wednesday.

The DUP has already warned Mrs May that its 'confidence and supply' arrangement which props up the Government is due for renewal at the end of the parliamentary session, which is scheduled for June.

Wednesday's meeting between Mr Johnson and the DUP was the latest such encounter between the Northern Irish party and candidates looking to succeed Mrs May, according to The Times.

Mrs Foster refused to say if she had confidence in Mrs May yesterday when probed on the issue after a meeting in Brussels with Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator.

'The confidence and supply agreement we signed is with the Conservative Party and whoever the leader of that party is we will work with,' she said.

Mrs May's decision to accept a compromise six-month extension to Britain's EU exit on Wednesday night has drawn sharp criticism from Tory Eurosceptics and prompted questions about how long she can stay in power.

The DUP's Arlene Foster and Nigel Dodds have reportedly met several contenders to replace Mrs May

Former Brexit secretary David Davis insisted that no progress had been made in Brussels and that pressure on Mrs May to quit as PM will increase, telling the BBC: 'I think what is likely to happen is the pressure for her to go will go up.

'The pressure on her to go will increase dramatically, I suspect, now.'

Leading Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg criticised the latest delay after the UK was originally scheduled to quit the bloc on March 29 and said there is 'some symbolism' in the new Halloween Brexit date.

He said: 'I thought the Prime Minister said a few weeks ago that she wouldn't agree to any extension and now we are getting quite a long one.

'I don't think it's a good idea and it is not delivering on the referendum result.

'People expected to leave on March 29 and here we are heading towards Halloween. There's some symbolism in that I think.'

Environment Secretary Michael Gove declined to answer questions on whether there would be a challenge to Mrs May for the Tory leadership before the new Brexit deadline.

Senior Government sources have repeatedly stressed that the PM (seen yesterday) intended to stand by her promise to the Tory 1922 Committee of backbenchers to stand down once the first phase of Brexit negotiations are complete

Meanwhile, Commons Leader and prominent Leave backer Andrea Leadsom played down speculation that the latest delay could mean the end of Brexit.

She said: 'We have to use this time to make sure that we deliver the Brexit we are all looking for, that we work closely with the EU and that they are genuinely helping to make sure we do deliver on the referendum - there won't be any changing our minds about that.'

Senior Government sources have repeatedly stressed that the PM intended to stand by her promise to the Tory 1922 Committee of backbenchers to stand down once the first phase of Brexit negotiations are complete.
Brandon Lecroy, 26, of Greenwood County, North Carolina, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Thursday

Brandon Lecroy, 26, of Greenwood County, North Carolina, was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to attempting to hire a hitman from the Ku Klux Klan to lynch his black neighbor from a tree.

Lecroy pleaded guilty to the racist murder-for-hire plot back in October.

US District Judge Bruce Howe Hendricks determined that Lecroy's actions technically qualified as a hate crime, but emphasized that planning to have someone else killed was such a serious offense that she would have sentenced him to the maximum penalty allowed by law even if race wasn't a factor.

'It's one thing to think these thoughts, but it's a crime to undertake to do harm to another,' Hendricks said on Thursday.

Federal agents began investigating Lecroy more than a year ago after receiving a tip from a local law enforcement official who works with the FBI's counter terrorism division.

The unnamed officer alerted the FBI that Lecroy had reached out to a local KKK chapter, saying he wanted to pay someone affiliated with the group to kill his African-American neighbor, identified only as 'F.J.' in court documents.

Lecroy's federal public defender, Erica Soderdahl, said F.J. continually came onto her client's property trying to start fights, asking for food and to use Lecoys phone.

She said her client had tried numerous times to get local police to stop the neighbor from trespassing.

'But F.J. kept coming back,' Soderdahl told the judge, according to the Associated Press. 'It's not about an overriding feeling toward a race - it's about one individual.'

An undercover FBI agent pretending to be a white supremacist hitman responded to Lecroy's communique. During a March 20, 2018, phone call, Lecroy told the agent '$500 and he's a ghost', referring to his neighbor.

The State reported Lecroy also told the 'hitman' he wanted him to hang his neighbor from a tree and that he had 'plans to take over the victim's property,' according to an affidavit.

The prosecution played audio recordings of Lecroy's phone calls with the undercover agent, the AP reported. Lecroy could be heard using racist language while suggesting the supposed hitman could use a flaming cross during the murder.

Eventually the FBI agent had a face-to-face meeting with Lecroy who gave him a $100 down payment for the hit.

Lecroy's attorney argued going online and looking up the local Klan chapter was her client's final act of desperation in dealing with his troublesome neighbor.

'Brandon called the KKK because who else was he going to call?' Soderdahl argued. 'It had nothing to do with the color of his skin.'

But federal prosecutor William Watkins told the judge that Lecroy's attempted hit was clearly racially motivated.

'The fact that he reached out to the KKK - this is not a low-functioning individual,' Watkins said, according to the AP. 'It's telling that to get a black person eliminated, he turned to the KKK... He doesn't call a biker gang. What he had in mind for his neighbor was very race specific... He targeted him because of his race.'
A man has proposed to his girlfriend of four years with the help of Jetstar cabin crew as they arrived in the city where they first met.

Jay Doyle, who lives in Melbourne, popped the question after flying to Cairns with his partner Simone and their daughter Amelia.

Mr Doyle knew he wanted propose where the couple first met and decided to orchestrate the perfect proposal with the help of the Australian carrier.

After landing in Cairns, Captain Tony invited the family - and a seemingly oblivious Simone - into the cockpit for a tour.

Scroll down for video

Jay Doyle (right), who lives in Melbourne, popped the question after flying to Cairns with his partner Simone (left) and their daughter Amelia (centre)

Mr Doyle knew he wanted propose where the couple first met and decided to orchestrate the perfect proposal with the help of the Australian carrier

After landing in Cairns, Jetstar Captain Tony invited the family - and a seemingly oblivious Simone - into the cockpit for a tour

'It was a crystal blue sky day and Jay decided that he was going to propose to Simone,' Tony said.

'So I thought, let's do it in the flight deck.'

In a Jetstar video, Captain Tony welcomes the family into the flight deck and urges them to 'grab a seat'.

The couple put on headsets and make themselves comfortable before Simone is told to 'look out the window'.

Eight Jetstar crew members are then seen on the runway holding five large signs.

The crew members spin to face the plane and the text 'will you marry me Simone?' appears.

'It was a crystal blue sky day and Jay decided that he was going to propose to Simone,' Captain Tony said

A teary Mr Doyle holds out an engagement ring to a surprised Simone who responds: 'Oh my God. Of course I will.'

The heartwarming video shows the family embrace before Mr Doyle announces the acceptance to the crew who cheer in excitement.

Mr Doyle told Daily Mail Australia he had been struggling to come up with the perfect proposal idea until he was inspired by a friend.

'I had been thinking about proposing for a while, I just couldn't come up with a right moment to do it,' he said.

'Then I was approached by a friend who had a friend who had an idea.

A teary Mr Doyle holds out an engagement ring to a surprised Simone after the Jetstar crew display 'will you marry me Simone?' posters

Simone, who was oblivious to Mr Doyle's plans responds: 'Oh my God. Of course I will'

Mr Doyle (pictured) told Daily Mail Australia he had been struggling to come up with the perfect proposal idea until he was inspired by a friend

'Then we got together and started to plan and bring this whole event to life.'

Mr Doyle explained he had been working with Jetstar's social media department for a few months, who delivered 'bigger and better' than he could have imagined.

While organising the surprise, Mr Doyle admitted he felt guilty about hiding his plans from his now fiancee.

'I was so nervous, I haven't felt like that since the birth of our daughter,' he said.

'I also felt a little guilty as I was planning this all behind Simone's back without her know and I didn't want to slip up.'

Mr Doyle said he wanted to add a 'wow factor' to the proposal and Jetstar delivered it beyond what he could have imagined.

Mr Doyle explained he had been working with Jetstar's social media department for a few months who he said delivered 'bigger and better' than he could have imagined

Mr Doyle said he wanted to add a 'wow factor' to the proposal and Jetstar delivered it beyond what he could have imagined

In the Jetstar video, Simone admitted she was completely caught off-guard: 'I had no idea, I was so surprised'

'Words can't describe how well it all turned out, I'm just amazed and still in shock myself at how well and how much it has now touched some many people,' he said.

'I think Simone is still in shock, she hates being the centre of attention and now everyone knows of her.

'She couldn't speak as you see in the video.

'She loved it and loves the fact that we can relive this over and over again.'

In the Jetstar video, Simone admitted she was completely caught off-guard.

'I had no idea, I was so surprised,' she said.

'I didn't even suspect anything, right up until he said ''look out the window''.'

The video, shared to the Jetstar Facebook page, has over 50,000 views.
Clarissa Pierburg, pictured outside the High Court in London claimed before a judge that she 'doesn't have anything in the world' despite her previous marriage to one of the richest men in Europe

The estranged wife of a super-rich friend of Prince Charles has been left 'distressed' and 'quite penniless' after losing her fight to divorce him in Britain.

For over 30 years, Clarissa Pierburg, 69, was the wife of Jurgen Pierburg, one of the richest men in Europe, but now 'doesn't have anything in the world,' her lawyers told the High Court today.

Mrs Pierburg wanted her split from fabulously wealthy German industrialist and art collector, Mr Pierburg, 73, to be handled in the famously generous UK divorce courts.

She argued that she had been 'resident and domiciled' in the couple's second home in Kinnerton Street, Knightsbridge, since 2017, and so should be entitled to divorce her husband here.

But Mr Justice Moor today dismissed her British divorce petition, saying the pair must have their fight over finances in the courts of their native Germany.

Mr Pierburg is a pal of the heir to the throne, and has provided generous support in the past for the prince's charity projects.

He attended Prince William's wedding to Kate Middleton, along with Clarissa, whom he married in 1985.

Until they separated in 2017, the couple lived a lifestyle of the utmost luxury.

They shared a chateau in Switzerland with a staff of nine servants, a multi-million pound 'second home' in Knightsbridge, and a 10m 140-foot superyacht, as well as having a cultural treasure trove in the form of Mr Pierburg's fabulous private art collection.

After they became estranged, Mr Pierburg launched a petition for their split to be handled in his native Germany.

But Mrs Pierburg claimed she was 'resident and domiciled' in London.

She claimed her 'love affair' with England began when she worked as an au pair in York in the 1960s.

And even before moving to London, the city had been an 'integral part of her life', she claimed.

German industrialist Jurgen Pierburg, pictured, won his case to have his divorce from his estranged wife Clarissa heard in Germany rather than in London

Her case was backed by statements from June Marijke, Countess of Chichester, and Michael Fawcett, chief executive of the Prince's Foundation.

However, Mr Pierburg claimed his wife was 'German to the core'.

'Clarissa had never once in all the years of our marriage expressed a wish to live in London,' he told Mr Justice Moor.

'Never once in the course of our marriage did my wife say she wanted to live in England.'

The Pierburgs shared a multi-million pound home on this road in London's Knightsbridge

The Knightsbridge, West London, home of divorcing wife Clarissa Pierburg

The judge found that Mrs Pierburg started to 'reside' in London on August 15, 2017, but did not accept any earlier date.

'I accept she visited it regularly, but she did not reside here as she basically confirmed in her oral evidence when she said she 'visited' regularly,' he said.

'She came here for the opera, for the ballet, to visit Dumfries House and to see friends such as Lady Chichester, but she did not live here.

Prince Charles previously thanked the Pierburgs in a speech for their financial support to his charity project to restore the stately home of Dumfries House (where he is pictured in 2012)

'Her decision in St Moritz in February 2017 that she would reside here in the future was not sufficient until she did move here.'

Finding also that she remained 'domiciled' in Germany at the time she filed for divorce, he rejected her petition to divorce in England.

Charles Howard QC, for the wife, told the judge today that Mrs Pierburg was 'quite distressed,' about losing the case.

He also told the court that despite living in the lap of luxury for three decades she now 'doesn't have anything in the world,' a 35,000 a month interim maintenance order imposed on the husband having now come to an end with the dismissal of her case.

'My client is now not only penniless but owes 80,000,' her barrister added.

He said that she now 'hopes and expects' Mr Pierburg to keep supporting her - although he no longer has any legal obligation to do so - until their German divorce battle is ended.

The court heard Mrs Pierburg, pictured, only began living in London full time in 2017

Mr Howard said the wife also 'hopes and expects' to be allowed to keep living in the Knightsbridge house for free.

Lewis Marks QC, for the husband, told the judge that Mr Pierburg is 'sympathetic' to his estranged wife's financial plight.

He is prepared to let her live in the London house, which he will maintain.

He is also willing to keep maintaining her 'at a reasonable level,' the barrister added.

Mr Pierburg is a member of the renowned Pierburg industrial dynasty who made their vast fortune in German motor manufacturing.

He inherited control of the business and most of his wealth when his father Alfred died in 1975.

He has since become famous as an art collector and sold a bronze sculpture by Matisse in 2010 for 37m, then a record for the artist.

In 2014, Prince Charles thanked Mr and Mrs Pierburg in a speech for their financial support to his charity project to restore Dumfries House, one of Britain's most magnificent stately homes.

Mr Pierburg has been widely described as a billionaire in reports.

Outside court, the wife's lawyers said they did not know the exact extent of his wealth.

'We do not have financial disclosure at the moment, but we know he is very rich,' they added.
A controversial injecting room has come under fire after a second employee was allegedly caught shooting up in public.

The woman was allegedly seen shooting up in a car near the North Richmond Community Health Centre, where she works.

The injecting room is located on the same site.

She managed to keep her job despite the recent dismissal of another employee who was caught on CCTV shooting up in February, The Herald Sun reported.

A controversial injecting room has come under fire again after a second employee was allegedly caught shooting up in public - and she managed to keep her job

The North Richmond injecting room (pictured) is currently operating on a two-year trial and is being reviewed regularly by an independent panel regularly during that time

The health care centre refused to comment on both matters on Thursday, telling the publication all their employees are expected to be 'fit for work'.

The expose comes amid a police crackdown on drug dealing in the streets near the injecting room, after residents in the area complained the clinic was causing more crime.

On Thursday, police arrested two men and woman and confiscated a needle and 'small package' on nearby Lennox St about 1.45pm.

A short time after, paramedics were called to the North Richmond injecting room, before transferring out a suspected overdose victim.

Horrified residents have complained the facility aimed at helping recover heroin addicts is ruining their neighbourhood as public drug use soars.

At a fiery meeting on Wednesday, locals demanded a review of the facility, which they say is turning the suburb into a 'ghetto', The Herald Sun previously reported.

Amid the controversy, the state government has requested the facility to review its practices and staffing policies.

North Richmond residents have complained that a new safe injecting facility is ruining the neighbourhood as the streets have become littered with needles, vomit and faeces

Mental Health Minister Martin Foley told the publication the facility review would ensure safety for not only the patients, but also staff and the wider community.

Mr Foley has defended the year-old clinic and, despite the recent controversy, claimed on Thursday that the centre continued to save lives.

About 2,200 registered users have reportedly visited the clinic more than 40,000 times, with an estimated 650 overdoses successfully reversed.

The clinic is also involved in providing advice on drug treatments, treatment for hepatitis C, as well as mental health referrals.

There has been an estimated 650 overdoses successfully reversed at the injecting room

The clinic is also involved in providing advice on drug treatments, treatment for hepatitis C, as well as mental health referrals

The North Richmond injecting room is currently operating on a two-year trial and is being reviewed regularly by an independent panel regularly during that time.

Reason Party leader Fiona Patten agreed there is a problem but said residents' expectations of what the clinic would do may have been misinterpreted.

She has called for a number of measures to make the service safer, including extended hours, the relocation of the needle exchange and police community hub.

'What we are doing at the moment is saving lives, and there is no doubt there is less open street injecting than there was 10 months ago,' Ms Patten said.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to North Richmond Community Health and Minister Foley for comment.

Mental Health Minister Martin Foley (pictured) said the facility review would ensure safety for not only the patients, but also staff and the wider community
A council ranger was knocked out in a brutal random attack in the street.

The ranger was walking with his colleague along a road in Liverpool, west Sydney on Tuesday afternoon when a white Subaru pulled up beside them.

One of the passengers allegedly got out and punched the ranger in the face, causing him to fall to the ground unconscious before the men in the car fled.

Detectives have released images of a man (pictured) they believe can assist with inquiries

The 35-year-old ranger was taken to Liverpool Hospital with serious facial injuries and had surgery on Friday.

Police launched an investigation into the assault and detectives have released images of a man they believe can assist with inquiries.

The man in the image is described as being of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance, with short black hair. He was wearing a black 'Nike' long-sleeved top.

Police have also released an image of the getaway car which had a fake number plate.

Anyone with information that can assist police is urged to call Crimestoppers.
Durham Police Chief Constable Mike Barton

Illegal drug dealing and the prominence of so-called 'county lines' gangs are creating a 'latter-day mafia' in the UK, a prominent police chief has warned.

Durham Police Chief Constable Mike Barton has said that old-fashioned 'hackneyed' police tactics will not help tackle the issue, and says he has instead urged his officers to think outside the box.

He added that that there is a risk of 'narco-states' forming across the country, caused by money falling into the hands of criminals through the drugs trade.

Mr Barton was speaking shortly after being involved in a series of raids on Wednesday in which 16 people were arrested across Darlington and Newton Aycliffe on suspected drug offences.

The arrests were part of Operation Sentinel, a joint initiative between the Northumbria, Cleveland and Durham police forces to disrupt and prevent organised crime in the North East.

Mr Barton, who recently announced that he will retire on June 7, said when he took up the role of chief constable in 2012 that tackling such organised crime, like the drugs trade, would be high up his agenda.

But he said that, despite the work of 'truly inspirational and really brave people', drugs are now 'cheaper, stronger, more dangerous and more freely available'.

Voicing his view that the prohibition of certain drugs simply leads to money falling into the hands of potentially dangerous criminals, he said: 'We're creating a latter-day mafia in the UK, on the back of the Class A drugs trade.'

Making comparisons with the perceived growth of the mafia in 1920s America during the period of alcohol prohibition, he said that 'myopic' attitudes in the UK need to change.

Referencing his belief that the current prohibition on Class A drugs is not effective, he said: 'More arrests and more raids might look good in terms of us puffing our chests out in policing, but it will serve absolutely no purpose.

'The reason why we're arresting more and more people for county lines is because there's more of it.'

Mr Barton was speaking shortly after being involved in a series of raids on Wednesday in which 16 people were arrested across Darlington and Newton Aycliffe on suspected drug offences (stock photo of police)

He added: 'On the evidence of the last 30 years, and the 39 years I've been in policing, it isn't working.

'I wish it was, and I started my policing career thinking it was. I've arrested more drug dealers and more serious villains than you can shake a stick at.

'It's worse now than it ever was. Drugs are stronger, more dangerous and more freely available than they ever have been.'

Mr Barton said that he and his colleagues have devoted much time to attempting to break up county lines gangs - where criminal networks funnel drugs from cities to towns and rural areas.

A characteristic of such groups is that the vulnerable - including people that are homeless, young, or single parents - are exploited by the network to sell illicit substances.

The police chief also warned about the practice of 'cuckooing', whereby county lines dealers take over a person's home and use it as their base for storing drugs, cash and, in some cases, weapons.

At the start of his tenure as chief constable, Mr Barton said he advocated an 'Al Capone' style of policing where, using the same method that officers employed to bring down the Chicago gangster, police bring down hardened criminals for lesser offences when they cannot be brought to justice for their more serious crimes.

When asked whether such a method could be used to bring prominent figures in the illegal drugs trade to justice, he explained: 'I think we've just got to be imaginative in the way that we tackle serious organised crime.

'Criminals are hugely adaptive to the landscape in which they operate, and if we keep using the same old tools, the same old hackneyed tactics, they're just going to run rings around us.

'So, all I advocate in my organisation is to keep changing the way that you operate.'
A couple and their pet dog are lucky to be alive after their yacht became engulfed in flames on Friday morning.

The 64-year-old man and 53-year-old woman woke early this morning after hearing noises and found their boat was on fire.

They managed to escape the burning yacht with their pet Jack Russell Charlie.

Authorities were alerted to the burning 15-metre yacht, located in the waters off Queensland's Moreton Island, at 5.30am.

Police and Queensland Fire and Emergency Services managed to extinguish the fire.

Dramatic video of the burning yacht was released by Queensland Police on Friday.

The couple was assessed for smoke inhalation by paramedics at the Port of Brisbane.

Acting Senior Sergeant Daniel Moyle said the pair were lucky to escape unharmed, but police were still unsure what caused the fire, the ABC reported.

'Because they were very well prepared and they knew their vessel, they got off the ship very quickly and effectively and it potentially saved their lives,' Senior Sergeant Moyle said.

'They heard some noises, and got up to see lights in the kitchen area and they immediately evacuated the ship to a tender and went to a nearby yacht to raise the alarm.

The 64-year-old man and 53-year-old woman managed to escape the burning yacht on their tender boat off Queensland's Moreton Island

Authorities were alerted to the burning boat on the south-west side of the island off the coast of Queensland just after 5:30am

The 15-metre yacht - which the Victorian couple lived on with their dog - was well alight when water police arrived

Sergeant Moyle said the couple were distressed and upset, but are coping well.

The cause of the fire is not considered suspicious and investigations are continuing.

Acting Senior Sergeant Jay Bairstow, Officer in Charge Brisbane Water Police said with Easter coming up, those at the helm should be well-prepared.

Police are urging anyone going out on the water to let people know their travel details so friends and family know where they are and when they are expected to return.
An aboriginal woman's ex-boyfriend has been charged with murder six years after she disappeared.

Dennis French is accused of killing Cheryl Ardler in Cranebrook, west of Sydney.

Ms Ardler, 41, was reported missing just before Christmas in 2012 before a boy found her bones buried in nearby bushland in May last year.

Cheryl Ardler (pictured), 41, was reported missing just before Christmas in 2012 before a boy found her bones buried in bushland in May last year

Dennis French (pictured) is accused of killing Cheryl Ardler in Cranebrook, west of Sydney

After news of the charge today, Ms Arlder's mother Irene said her daughter was 'cruelly taken.'

'Today's news is a very bittersweet moment for our family,' she said in a statement.

'It's very hard to know that our beautiful Cheryl will never be coming home and that she was so cruelly taken from us.

'Cheryl's smile could light up the room and her love for life was infectious.

'She is so loved by all of us and without her here, our family just won't be the same.

Cheryl's smile could light up the room and her love for life was infectious

'As we are still coming to terms with this news, our family requests privacy at this time.'

French did no not apply for bail in a court appearance over unrelated matters on Friday morning and remains in custody.

When Ms Ardler's remains were found, Detective Superintendent Scott Cook said the discovery was a 'major breakthrough' in the case.

It prompted police to announce a $750,000 reward for any information that could lead to the capture of Ms Ardler's killer or killers.

No-one has claimed the reward.

The Unsolved Homicide Squad has been working the case since it was handed over to them after a 2016 coronial inquest.

Deputy State Coroner Teresa O'Sullivan had concluded Ms Ardler had been murdered.

The inquest heard that Ms Ardler was from a tight-knit and loving family she kept in regular contact with.

When the remains were found last year, Detective Superintendent Scott Cook said the discovery was a 'major breakthrough' in the case. Pictured: Ms Ardler's family

It was also revealed in 2016 that Ms Ardler's Facebook account had been accessed more than 100 times after her disappearance.

A message reading 'sucks 2 be u' was posted to her account on January 16, 2013 - three weeks after Ms Ardler went missing.

When Ms Ardler disappeared, her friends and family started to observe unusual activity on her account.

Her photographs were deleted, she used different language and made contact with people she would not typically reach out to via Facebook.

The inquest was told that Ms Ardler was last seen alive with a black eye and 'busted lip' at a bus stop in Sydney's west with Dennis French in December 2012.
A hungover man has confessed to a crime despite having been too drunk to remember what the offence was.

Kieran Towan, 26, handed himself into officers at Rosebud station in Melbourne's south-east with a bag containing $107.50 and a set of keys, sensing he had done something wrong.

Police deducted that Towan had broken into the Nepean Historical Society, commonly known as Sorrento Museum, while he was drunk and on medication.

Police realised Towan had broken into the Nepean Historical Society, known as Sorrento museum (pictured), while he was drunk and on medication

Kieran Towan, 26, handed himself into officers with a bag containing $107.50 and a set of keys (stock image)

Dromana Magistrates' Court heard Towan had been drinking alcohol at his friend's wedding in Sorrento on February 13 last year.

While under the influence, he broke into the Melbourne Road museum where he stole cash and keys from a drawer, the Mornington Peninsula Leader reported.

The 26-year-old knocked down a door to escape, which set off a security alarm.

He returned to his friends after being separated from them and said he had done something wrong but could not remember the theft.

Police were surprised when Towan confessed to the crime the next morning after he had sobered up.

The Yarra Junction man was still charged with theft and was bailed.

He pleaded guilty the burglary and theft charges in court on Thursday.

Towan's defence lawyer said he became 'drunk and stupid' because he combined alcohol with prescription medication.

While Magistrate Gerard Lethbridge said he was impressed by Towan's confession, the 26-year-old should not be excused of his intoxication (pictured: Rosebud Police Station)

While Magistrate Gerard Lethbridge said he was impressed that Towan had confessed, he said the 26-year-old could not be excused due to intoxication.

Towan was placed on a 12-month good behaviour bond and must donate $1,000 to the museum
The Australian government says it's committed to the principle of not exposing its citizens to the death penalty as the US moves in on Julian Assange.

Australian consular officials will visit the WikiLeaks founder in a London jail on Friday after he was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy and promptly convicted of skipping bail.

Supporters fear Assange could face the death penalty if the US succeeds in a bid to extradite and try him over the release of thousands of classified US government documents years ago.

Australian consular officials will visit Julian Assange over death penalty fears if he is extradited the U.S.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne says Australia remained 'completely opposed' to the death penalty.

She said the UK had sought assurances from the US that Assange would not be exposed to death if he was extradited.

'The extradition process itself is a matter between the United States and the United Kingdom, but we have also been provided with that advice from the UK,' she told reporters.

'Australia ... is completely opposed to the death penalty and that is a bipartisan position and one which we have continued to advocate.'

Senator Payne said the Australian High Commission was seeking to have officials meet with Assange on Friday.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne (pictured) says Australia remained 'completely opposed' to the death penalty

News of the planned jailhouse meeting came as Amnesty International called on the UK not to send Assange to the US if he was at risk of human rights violations.

Massimo Moratti (pictured) from Amnesty International called on the UK not to send Assange to the US if he was at risk of human rights violations

The group's Europe spokesman Massimo Moratti said those violations might include 'detention conditions that would violate the absolute prohibition of torture', and the possibility of an unfair trial followed by possible execution.

'We urge the UK authorities to comply with the assurances provided to Ecuador that he would not be sent anywhere he could face the death penalty, torture or other ill-treatment,' he said.

Assange was dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London overnight, charged and promptly convicted in court of skipping bail in 2012.

That was the year he sought asylum at the embassy, saying he feared his life could be at risk if he was sent to the US to be tried for the biggest leak of classified government documents in American history.
Hillary Clinton has said she approved of Julian Assange's arrest because 'he has to answer for what he's done'.

The former Democratic Presidential candidate said that the founder of WikiLeaks, who she blames for her losing the 2016 election, deserves whatever punishment is coming his way.

Hillary also launched a barb at Donald Trump and said it is 'a little ironic that he will be the only foreigner this administration welcomes into the United States'.

The comments are the first time that Hillary has addressed the arrest of Assange who was taken from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by British police where he had been hiding out for more than six years.

His Wikileaks colleagues have expressed fear that Assange could face decades behind bars or even the death penalty if he is extradited to the US.

Hillary Clinton said that she approved of Julian Assange's arrest because 'he has to answer for what he's done' during an event entitled An Evening With The Clintons in NYC on Thursday

The comments are the first time that Hillary has addressed the arrest of Assange, who was taken from the Ecuadorian embassy in London by British police where he had been hiding out for more than six years on Thursday (above)

Assange has been accused by the Justice Department of hacking US military computers and prosecutors are seeking his extradition to America.

Intelligence agencies have said that the embarrassing emails that Wikileaks released from the Democratic party were provided to them by Russian hackers.

THE FATE OF JULIAN ASSANGE Julian Assange could face decades behind bars or even the death penalty if he is extradited to the United States, his WikiLeaks colleagues fear. The 47-year-old was spending his first night in custody after being convicted of breaching bail following a dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years. He is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer which, on conviction, could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice. But WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson expressed concern there could be more serious charges awaiting Assange. He told the Press Association: We believe this indictment presented in the extradition request is only a part of the story  that there will be more later, that will be added on, more charges. It probably adds to the likelihood that he will be extradited from the UK if its on relatively smaller charges. He said the Grand Jury investigation included charges which could lead to decades in prison or even the death penalty under the Espionage Act 1917. -Press Association Advertisement

Hillary was speaking at An Evening With The Clintons at the Beacon Theater in New York alongside her husband Bill when moderator Paul Begala asked her about Assange being held - and got a cheer from the crowd

Begala joked that she had 'some familiarity with the work of Mr. Assange' and she laughed that 'I do, I do'.

Hillary said: 'I think it is clear from the indictment it's not about punishing journalism it's about assisting the hacking of a military computer to steal information from the US government.

'I'll wait and see what happens with the charges but he skipped bail in the UK. Sweden had those charges which have been dropped, but the bottom line is he has to answer for what he's done, at least as it's been charged'.

The talk was interrupted by one protester who called Bill 'boring' and had to be escorted out by security.

The Clintons spoke at length about how to repair democracy in America and both called for the abolition of the electoral college.

Hillary blamed the lack of engagement in politics on the 'big industry designed to feed false information to people'.

Bill said that the sense of 'alienation' people feel was to blame too and admitted that even in his home town of Hope, Arkansas, people had lost faith in Democrats.

Begala said that in Garland County, where Clinton is from, it had gone Democratic from 1874 to 1965 but since then it was a solid Republican seat.

Clinton said that things were so bad for Democrats there that 'I couldn't even get elected dog catcher'.

The Clintons have turned to public tours after being criticized for earning more than $150million from speeches to bankers, a fact which haunted Hillary's election campaign

Bill was asked what the re-election of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who just won a fifth term, meant for peace in the Middle East.

Bill said that 'I don't know' if there is still cause for hope and he urged Netanyahu to be more 'adventurous' in finding peace with Palestine.

Bill Clinton said that the sense of 'alienation' people feel was to blame too and admitted that even in his home town of Hope, Arkansas, people had lost faith in Democrats

Hillary drew a laugh when Begala asked her if politics was more like the West Wing or Veep. She replied: 'Probably Game of Thrones'.

Bill said that he liked the TV series Madam Secretary, about a female Secretary of State, and Hillary agreed that it had the 'ring of authenticity for me'

Hillary spoke about the raid to kill Osama bin Laden in 2011 that she approved of when she was Secretary of State under Barack Obama.

She kept it such a secret that she did not tell her husband, who only found out when Obama called him.

Bill said that Obama told him: 'We got him!' and he replied: 'Who?'

Obama said: 'Bin Laden!'

Obama said he had told Hillary not to tell anyone but he didn't expect that she would keep it secret from her husband - but she did.

Hillary said that the way the decision was reached showed the best way to run the White House and not making decisions 'on Twitter' like Trump does.

Bill said that White House staffers should 'not think about what the President wants to hear before they open their mouths'.

In another barb at Trump Hillary said that voters admired past Presidents because they 'got up every day and went to work', a reference to Trump's five hour long work day which begins mid morning.

Bill also opened up about how proud he was about his daughter Chelsea refused a prestigious Rhodes scholarship while she was at Stanford.

Bill won the scholarship in 1968 to study at Oxford University in the UK but Chelsea turned it down.

He recounted how she called him late one night and said she did not want it because for her father it 'changed his life' but she would be awarded it because of the life she had already led.

Chelsea said that it 'wasn't fair' for somebody like her to take it and that it should go to somebody more deserving.

Chelsea completed a doctorate program on global governance structures at Oxford and graduated in 2014.

Trump supporters gathered outside Beacon Theater to protest the event featuring an on stage conversation with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

Outside the venue a dozen Donald Trump supporters goaded he crowd as they queued up by calling them 'white supremacists' and chanting: 'Where does Hillary Clinton belong? In jail!'

The Trump supporters held up a 10ft tall flag saying 'Re-elect Donald Trump, Keep America Great!' until police told them to take it down.

A man in aviator sunglasses who was live streaming himself shouted: 'Bill Clinton is a rapist and Hillary likes to watch! Bill Clinton has a half black son named William!'

An elderly woman who was attending the event shouted at the police: 'They should be arrested' and wagged her walking stick at a woman holding a Trump flag.

The event was part of a 15-date tour which kicked off last November in Las Vegas and stops before New York have included Toronto and Montreal.

The Clintons have turned to public tours after being criticized for earning more than $150million from speeches to bankers, a fact which haunted Hillary's election campaign.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are seen leaving the Beacon Theater after the event
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Devastated friends of the teenage apprentice who was crushed to death by collapsing scaffolding at a construction site have shown their emotion as they carried his coffin during his funeral.

Christopher Cassaniti, 18, died at Macquarie Park in north-west Sydney on April 1 when a 15-metre tower of scaffolding fell on top of him.

Family, friends and co-workers wearing bright orange high-visibility work shirts attended Mr Cassaniti's funeral at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney on Friday.

Mr Cassaniti's father Rob was clutching his son's work shirt at the service.

Devastated friends of the teenage apprentice who was crushed to death by collapsing scaffolding at a construction site have shown their emotion as they carried his coffin during his funeral

Mr Cassaniti's devasted parents Patrizia and Rob (pictured) held their son's work shirt with his surname written on it at his funeral

Family, friends and co-workers wearing bright orange high-visibility work shirts attended Mr Cassaniti's funeral at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney on Friday

Mr Cassaniti's father Rob (pictured) was seen clutching his son's work shirt at the service

Christopher Cassaniti (pictured), 18, died at Macquarie Park in north-west Sydney on April 1 when a 15-metre tower of scaffolding fell on top of him

His mother Patrizia, who served coffee at a mobile truck down the road, was on the site within minutes after the disaster and was told her son was trapped.

She posted a photo with her 'beautiful boy' on Facebook, captioning it: 'My Guardian Angel... sooo much pain.'

Speculation has mounted as to what caused the collapse which also hospilatised a 39-year-old trademsan.

Union bosses believe that human error was the most likely cause.

CFMEU national secretary Dave Noonan hinted that the scaffolding was either not put up properly or overloaded.

Mr Cassaniti's brothers and his mother Patrizia released a dove at his funeral on Friday

Mr Cassaniti was working at a construction site in north-west Sydney when the scaffolding he was standing on collapsed

Mr Cassaniti's funeral was held at St Mary's Cathedral in Sydney on Friday. Pictured: The order of service

Devastated friends carried Mr Cassaniti's coffin inside the church where his funeral was held on Friday

Workers dressed in high-visibility clothing supported each other with hugs outside the church

He told Daily Mail Australia: 'When scaffolding is used and erected correctly according to specifications, properly maintained and the ties are left in, and it's loaded only in accordance with the safe working loads that are appropriate to its design, then it doesn't fall down.

'Somewhere in that chain, something has gone wrong.'

Police and SafeWork NSW are investigating.

Last year the safety watchdog issued 100 notices for breaches of scaffold safety rules amid fears developers were riding roughshod over regulations in order to meet tight deadlines during Sydney's building boom.

During visits to 1,000 construction sites in the year to November 2018, regulators issued $265,000 worth of fines for various safety breaches.

The mother of an apprentice tradesman who was crushed to death at a building site has paid tribute to her 'guardian angel' in a moving Facebook post. She captioned the above photo: 'My Guardian Angel .. sooo much pain.'

Patrizia Cassaniti (pictured with her husband at the scene) runs a coffee and food truck near the construction site where her son Christopher was killed

Happy family: Christopher Cassaniti (centre) celebrated his milestone birthday with proud parents Patrizia and Rob

Tragic: Christopher Cassaniti, 18, died in the collapse at Macquarie Park, north-west Sydney on Monday. He is pictured on holiday in Hawaii

Harrowing: This is the harrowing moment tradesmen frantically tried to save two of their friends trapped under a mountain of collapsed scaffolding at a construction site

The firm which erected the scaffolding at Macquaire Park, Synergy Scaffolding Services, said safety of workers is paramount.

'We adhere to all safety regulations, ensure all staff are suitably qualified and undergo specific training and inductions,' it said in a statement.

Harrowing video emerged from the scene showing frantic tradesmen trying to save their two trapped colleagues.

Blood-curdling screams echoed around the building site as tradesmen in hard hats and high-vis jackets rushed to free the men.

They were desperate to help but police held them back, fearing that dislodging just one piece of steel would cause tonnes of twisted metal and concrete to collapse further and crush the men to death.

'You're wasting time. We need access,' a tradesman can be heard shrieking in mobile phone footage which showed a policewoman ushering the workers back.

Amid the screaming and shouting a policeman said into a megaphone: 'Oi everybody, we need you guys to help us,' before he lowered the device because his radio interfered.

Amid the carnage a policeman (right) took a megaphone and said: 'Oi everybody, we need you guys to help us,' before he lowered the device because his radio interfered

Frantic: Workers desperately tried to free their colleagues for 20 minutes until the wailing stopped and they were ordered to move away

A policeman (pictured) approached the agitated men and said: 'If you move one piece the whole thing may collapse. It's like a jigsaw puzzle.'

'We are helping,' one tradesman shouted as another yelled: 'You've got a whole army here - we're ready.'

Another policeman approached the agitated men and said: 'If we move the wrong piece more will collapse. It's like a jigsaw puzzle.'

'Give us instructions then, let's do something,' a tradesman replied.

'Come on let's start,' one yelled.

The policeman explained: 'If you move anything, boom, collapse...'

At that point an unknown man screamed: 'My brother's down there.'

The policeman continued: 'Listen, listen. Let the ambos stabilise it and as soon as they say ready we'll get it.'

Mr Cassaniti died in the collapse at Macquarie Park, becoming the fifth person to die at a construction site in Australia this year.

His 39-year-old colleague was pulled from the debris and raced to hospital in critical condition where he has since stabilised.
Workers may have found 27 more human graves near a notorious Florida reform school shuttered in 2011, where children were said to have been locked in chains, beaten and sexually abused.

'Anomalies consistent with possible graves' were uncovered at the site of the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in the Florida Panhandle city of Marianna.

Department of Environmental Protection workers made the discovery as they were preparing to clean up fuel storage 500 feet adjacent to Boot Hill Cemetery, Miami Herald reports.

The discovery would put the estimated number of bodies buried at the site at 82.

The largest gravesite already known is on the northside of the campus, where African-American boys were buried when the school was segregated.

It is at this site where 31 graves are marked with white crosses, but researchers said they believed they do not correspond with actual burial sites.

Possible human graves have been discovered at the shuttered Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida. Department of Environmental Protection workers found disturbed soil while preparing to clean up fuel storage 500 feet adjacent to Boot Hill Cemetery

Florida Anthropologists from the University of South Florida removed the first remains from the cemetery at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys on September 2, 2013

Governor Ron DeSantis wrote in an April 10 letter to Jackson County Chairman Clint Pate that agencies were looking at 'best course of action'

Courtesy of WJXT

State officials have for years insisted that 31 boys were interred in the tiny cemetery.

But using high-tech search equipment, forensic scientists have already found evidence of more bodies buried under the site.

The University of South Florida in Tampa said in 2012 they found evidence of at least 50 graves on the school's property after using ground-penetrating radar and soil samples.

A 2009 investigation report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), found that there were 81 school-related deaths of students from 1911 to 1973.

But another investigation in 2012, by the University of Florida tea, found as many as 98 deaths at the school from 1914-1973 - including two staff members who perished in the 1914 fire. Some of the bodies were thought to have been shipped home to families but many were buried around the area.

However, overgrowth on the grounds has hindered researchers from full searches.

Dozier's own records show that more than 50 children were buried on the grounds, while more than 30 other bodies were sent elsewhere to be buried.

But the school failed to record burial locations for 22 other children who researchers learned died on the site, the Miami Herald reported in 2012.

Six of the children - and two adults - died in the 2014 fire. Several more were killed in an influenza outbreak in the early 1900s.

Some boys died under unknown circumstances, according to relatives.

Johnny Lee Geddy, a 'White House Boy' at the Dozier School for Boys in Jackson County from 1957-61, shows reporters a book he wrote about the experience on April 4, 2017

The boys were allegedly forced into hard labor, while others were beaten, raped or killed

Governor Ron DeSantis wrote in a Wednesday letter to Jackson County Chairman Clint Pate that 'during a ground pollution cleanup anomalies consistent with possible graves have been discovered.'

He said his team 'is dedicated to collaboratively determining the best course of action' and shared the DEP, Department of Management Services, the Department of State and the Department of Economic Opportunity would 'develop a path forward'.

'Representatives of these agencies will be reaching out to meet with county officials as the first step to understanding and addressing these preliminary findings,' he stated.

County Administrator Wilanne Daniels said in a statement: 'We have received the report and are studying the information and findings. We will be working with our State Agency partners to determine the next steps.'

Former students spoke out several years ago with horror stories of sexual abuse and frequent beatings in the White House, at the school.

The school was legend among adolescents for about 100 years in Florida, as the state's major reform school.

White metal crosses mark graves at the cemetery of the former Dozier School December 2012

University of South Florida associate professor Christian Wells attempts to cut loose a block of dirt and clay containing skeletal remains in a grave at the Dozier School on September 2, 2013

Former students have spoken out with horror stories of sexual abuse and frequent beatings in this mausoleum-like building dubbed the 'White House'

Boys at a Christmas event at the School for Boys in Marianna, Florida in the 1950s

Dozier School was closed in June 2011 by the Department of Juvenile Justice after a years-long controversy over widespread physical and sexual abuse.

Previous investigations and lawsuits have been brought by the 'White House Boys' - so called because of the name of the squat, whitewashed building where much of the abuse took place.

A group of former students sued the state in 2010, but their case was dismissed as the statute of limitations had expired. Other students have written books about their experiences.

State Attorney Glenn Hess previously said only one or two employees from the era are known to be alive, and it's unlikely a trial could prove how a boy died or who was responsible.

Jerry Cooper one of the White House Boys, former inmates of Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys reform school, speaks at a cabinet meeting concerning the investigation of the school in 2016
Gerhard Klein was in the Virgin airport lounge when he opted for a slice of multigrain bread - unaware it was made with poppy seeds

A fly-in-fly-out miner's career could have been completely derailed after he failed an on-the-spot drug test because he ate multigrain bread.

Gerhard Klein was in the Virgin airport lounge when he opted for multigrain bread - but while the lounge offers a range of savory options - he was unaware the bread he'd selected was made with poppy seeds.

It's understood he had eaten around four slices of the multigrain bread.

When he arrived back at work he was subjected to a random drug reading, a common occurrence on mining sites, and was bemused to find he had tested positive.

Mr Klein said he was subsequently stood down from his position as a result of the reading, which saw his codeine level sky-rocket to 764 - more than double the allowed limit.

'They came back and said "Oh, you're positive, and stop there, you need to get your supervisor",' Mr Klein told A Current Affair.

While Mr Klein was left wondering whether or not the drug test had sabotaged his career, he was still none-the-wiser as to what could have caused such a high reading.

It was only when his wife asked him if he'd eaten any poppy seeds that he realised what had happened.

(File picture) Mr Klein was unaware as to what could have caused the drug reading, until his wife asked him if he'd eaten any bread made with poppy seeds

While opiates can be naturally found in an opium poppy plant, they can also be found in opium plants that include codeine - which would explain his high reading.

Convinced the multigrain bread he had eaten at the airport was behind the high reading, Mr Klein brought some bread packed with poppy seeds home and tested it.

And it wasn't long before the results came back positive.

In a bid to double check his findings, Mr Klein then ate some bread and tested himself, and got the same result.

(File picture) While opiates can be naturally found in an opium poppy plant, it can also be found in opium plants that include codeine

Thankfully Mr Klein, who has a long and blemish-free work history, was cleared and reinstated.

Although he did warn that other employees, who might be newer to the job, may not have got their job back so easily.

In a statement issued to Daily Mail Australia, Virgin said that while the lounge offers a range of bread it's the individuals responsibility as to what they consume.

'The Virgin Australia lounge offers a range of bread types for our guests to enjoy and we always appreciate receiving feedback from our guests,' the statement read.

Mr Klein then ate some bread and tested himself again. The test again came back as positive

'We believe it is up to each individual to take responsibility for what they consume while in our lounges, and to familiarise themselves with their own employers' drug and alcohol policies,' it concluded.

They also noted that food items that could cause an allergic reaction were treated differently, and the lounge does have sign posts for food that may contain nuts.

It's understood that a recent increase in positive drug testing could be due to poppy seed ingestion, according to occupational physician Dr Robert McCartney.

However, he noted that it was unlikely someone would lose their job if they failed a drug test as it would be difficult to decipher whether or not the reading was down to poppy seeds or drug intake.
Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno branded Julian Assange a 'bad-mannered' guest who acted like a 'spoiled brat' while he stayed at the country's embassy in London.

President Moreno and Assange never saw eye-to-eye while the WikiLeaks founder sought refuge at the Ecuadorian embassy. He has long held that Assange was trying to 'destablize' the country.

'You can't arrive at a house that welcomes you warmly, that gives you food, and takes care of you, and start to denounce the owner of the house,' Moreno said, according to Bloomberg.

He added: 'We've removed the asylum for this spoiled brat and, fortunately, we've gotten rid of a thorn in our side.'

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Ecuadorian Lenin Moreno (pictured) said Julian Assange a 'bad-mannered' guest who acted like a 'spoiled brat' while he stayed at the country's embassy in London

'You can't arrive at a house that welcomes you warmly, that gives you food, and takes care of you, and start to denounce the owner of the house,' Moreno said. 'We've removed the asylum for this spoiled brat and, fortunately, we've gotten rid of a thorn in our side'

The name-calling comes after Ecuador suspended Julian Assange's citizenship and accused him and WikiLeaks members of collaborating in attempts to destabilize the country's government.

After seven years spent in the Andean nation's London embassy avoiding extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault allegation, a bearded and frail-looking Assange was arrested by British police earlier today.

He was offered refuge in 2012 by Ecuador's then-president Rafael Correa, but his relationship with Ecuador has soured under Correa's successor Lenin Moreno, who has said Assange violated the terms of his asylum.

The name-calling comes after Ecuador has suspended Julian Assange's citizenship and the embattled WikiLeaks founder was arrested on Thursday

Moreno was angered after years-old private photographs of him and his family taken when they lived in Europe circulated on social media. His government said it believed the photos were shared by WikiLeaks.

Assange and WikiLeaks have intervened in Ecuadorean affairs and people close to him, including two Russian hackers, are living in Ecuador, Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo told reporters in Quito.

'The interferences in matters of other states also includes the interference of Mr. Assange and his allied organization in internal political matters in Ecuador,' Romo said.

Ecuador has claimed that a high-level member of WikiLeaks is living in Ecuador and worked with former foreign minister Richard Patino, pictured with Assange in 2014

Ecuador has suspended Julian Assange's citizenship and accused him and WikiLeaks members of collaborating in attempts to destabilize the country's government. He was kicked out of the embassy where he had been since 2012 (pictured)

The third person living in Ecuador is a high-level member of WikiLeaks and is connected to former Ecuadorean foreign minister Ricardo Patino, who was serving under Correa when Assange was granted asylum, Romo said.

'We have evidence that they have collaborated in attempts to destabilize the government and that they work closely with and have traveled with Ricardo Patino,' Romo said.

Patino traveled with the person to Peru, Spain and Venezuela, she said. Patino denied the allegations.

Romo 'just invented a story about a supposed relationship of mine with Russian hackers,' Patino said on Twitter. 'The only thing left is for her to say where we left Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty.'

Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo, pictured, told reporters in Quito that Assange and WikiLeaks have intervened in Ecuadorean affairs

To some, Australian-born Assange is a hero for exposing what supporters cast as abuse of power and for championing free speech.

To others, he is a dangerous figure who has undermined the security of the United States and has too many ties to Russia.

WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that laid bare often highly critical U.S. appraisals of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.

Assange's lawyer in Quito, Carlos Poveda, told reporters asylum was terminated in reprisal for corruption allegations against Moreno and that his life will be in danger if he is extradited to the United States.
Senator Fraser Anning was joined by protesters calling for his resignation from politics on the first day of the Federal Election campaign.

A young man was led away by police and a carton of eggs were seized as the senator begun his campaign at the closed doors of Hahndorf Old Mill Hotel, in the Adelaide Hills, on Thursday.

The far-right senator was condemned after he made comments that linked Muslim migration to the Christchurch terror attack.

The day after his shocking comments circulated, 17-year-old Will Connolly smashed an egg over the senator's head at an event in Melbourne.

One protester appeared to be escorted from the protest by police on Thursday

Senator Fraser Anning was met by protesters calling for his resignation from politics on the first day of the Federal Election campaign

A carton of eggs were seized by police as the protesters waited outside the closed doors of Hahndorf Old Mill Hotel, in the Adelaide Hills, on Thursday

Senator Anning's small but vocal group of protesters called for the controversial politician, who was last week censured by the Senate, to quit politics.

He was in Adelaide Hills to recruit candidates for his new party and to speak with supporters.

Senator Anning said his protesters were entitled to their views.

'Unfortunately those sort of people are happy to have their views but they don't want anyone else to have theirs,' he said.

'If they were having a meeting for instance, the people in here wouldn't be out in front of their meeting protesting because they're decent Australians.'

But a spokesman for the protesters, understood to be students, said there was 'nowhere the far right can go where protesters would not be there to confront them'.

Senator Anning was in Adelaide Hills to recruit candidates for his new party and to speak with supporters

The small but vocal group of protesters called for the controversial politician, who was last week censured by the Senate, to quit politics

The spokesman said the protesters were encouraged to take action after more than one million people had signed a petition calling for Senator Anning to resign over his controversial comments in relation to the Christchurch mosque massacres.

'We can clearly see that there are people here who are prepared to take a stand against far right views,' the spokesman said.

Photos from the event show a protester appear to be escorted by police and an officer carrying a carton of eggs.

The group of protesters displayed signage which alluded to the egg-smashing incident.

A banner, with an image of a cracked egg, read: 'Smash fascism'.

'More eggs, less fascists,' another poster said.

'More eggs, less fascists,' was one of the signs held by protesters on Thursday

A spokesman for the protesters said there was 'nowhere the far right can go where protesters would not be there to confront them'

There were about a dozen police officers watching over the group of protesters, the Adelaide Now reported.

'Say it loud, say it clear, Anning is not welcome here,' the protesters chanted.

'Hey hey, ho ho, islamaphobia has got to go'.

Victoria Police announced on Tuesday that Senator Anning and Mr Connolly would not be charged over the egg-smashing incident.

They determined the senator acted in self-defence when he slapped the teen moments after he was egged. Mr Connolly was hit with a caution.

Senator Anning was elected to the Senate as a member of One Nation, but left the party to sit as an independent and has now registered Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party.

A South Australia Police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia the man was spoken to police after the carton of eggs were found.

'The man was not charged or expiated and re-joined the group a short time later,' the spokesperson said.
A woman accused of keeping two Thai women as slaves and forcing them to perform sex work to pay off their $45,000 'debts' has appeared in court.

Rungnapha Kanbut, 57, is on trial in the NSW District Court after pleading not guilty to six charges including intentionally possessing a slave and dealing with the proceeds of crime.

Kanbut allegedly told two Thai women they each had a $45,000 debt to pay off, and would do so through their sex work, after they arrived in Sydney and were taken to live with her in 2004 and 2005 respectively.

Rungnapha Kanbut, 57 (right), is on trial in the NSW District Court after pleading not guilty to six charges including intentionally possessing a slave and dealing with the proceeds of crime

Kanbut (right) allegedly told two Thai women they each had a $45,000 debt to pay off, and would do so through their sex work

The first female complainant told the court on Friday, through a Thai interpreter, that clients 'quite often' spat on her and caused her bruises and that she told 'Rung' about the ill-treatment.

The woman, under questioning from crown prosecutor Peter Neil SC, said that Kanbut's response was 'to take certain medicines, to just put up with it until the time was up and to just keep the customer'.

On Wednesday, the first complainant said she had been taken to a unit leased by Kanbut and her husband in the city's inner west after flying in from Bangkok in November 2004.

The young Thai national had a conversation with Kanbut that evening.

'She said I owed her 45,000 Australian dollars,' said the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.

Kanbut also asked whether she wanted to rest or start working the following day, to which she replied the latter.

Mr Neil on Wednesday asked: 'Did Rung (Kanbut) tell you to keep a book of how many jobs you did to pay the ($45,000) debt?'.

One of the Thai women, who claimed she was spat on and bruised by her Sydney clients, alleged Kanbut (right) told her to 'to take certain medicines' and to just put up with it

'Yes,' she replied.

The woman, who started sex work in her early 20s, said she was also asked to hand Kanbut her Thai passport.

'She said after I repaid the debt, she would return it to me,' the complainant said.

She told the court about the process behind her coming to Australia as a sex worker, including that she had to take 'completely nude' photos beforehand but 'passed the test' of being 'beautiful enough' to be sent overseas.

'The photos were security that I was not going to run away because if I were to run away then the photos would be put up to shame me,' she said.

The man who organised her three-month tourist visa told her hours before she flew out that it'd been approved.

The first complainant said she had been taken to a unit leased by Kanbut (pictrued) and her husband in the city's inner west after flying in from Bangkok in November 2004

The two Thai women were allegedly asked to hand Kanbut (pictured) their Thai passports

He gave her $100 before she got on the plane, took her phone, told her not to have a big bag otherwise 'it would look like I wasn't coming back' and told her not to pack sexy underwear.

The man took her Thai bank account book and told her she would live with a person named 'Rung' in Sydney.

The woman said she didn't have a 'working name' for Australia or Thailand but back home she 'had a number'.

'Everyone has a number on their shirt and when a client comes, they get to choose which number they want,' she said.

Mr Neil on Tuesday said the fact the complainants came to Australia voluntarily for sex work didn't prevent jurors finding 'that either or both of them was possessed - that is used - by the respondent akin to her owning them'.

Defence barrister Jeffrey Clarke said there were issues with some of their allegations but overall 'the real issue here is whether or not what is being described by these witnesses amounts to slavery'.

The trial continues before Judge Nanette Williams.
The Manhattan District Attorney's office was allegedly aware of graphic and detailed evidence against Florida financier and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein (above) when a prosecutor argued for leniency during his 2011 sex offender registry hearing

The Manhattan District Attorney's office was allegedly aware of graphic and detailed evidence against Florida financier and accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein when a prosecutor argued for leniency during his 2011 sex offender registry hearing.

A newly-unsealed brief obtained by The New York Post on Thursday revealed that prior to that hearing, then-deputy chief of Sex Crimes, Jennifer Gaffney, was provided with a confidential state assessment which deemed Epstein to be highly dangerous and likely to continue preying on young girls.

Even though the assessment indicated that Epstein should be labeled as a level three offender, the most restrictive category meant for the most dangerous individuals, Gaffney argued for him to be classified as a level one offender, the least restrictive.

The DA's office reportedly admitted as much eight months after the hearing in its own appellate brief, which The Post sued to unseal.

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A newly-unsealed brief obtained by The New York Post on Thursday revealed that prior to that hearing, then-deputy chief of Sex Crimes, Jennifer Gaffney (above), was provided with a confidential state assessment which deemed Epstein to be highly dangerous and likely to continue preying on young girls. She went against the state's recommendations and argued that Epstein should be considered a level one offender, the least restrictive categorization, instead of level three, the most restrictive

The assessment was made by the New York state Board of Examiners of Sex Offenders, which evaluated the corroborated accounts from dozens of young girls between 14 and 17 years old who'd engaged in sexual contact with Epstein at his Palm Beach compound between 2005 and 2006.

Authorities say the victims were recruited and paid up to $1,000 to give the billionaire erotic massages that included sexual contact, intercourse and rape.

Epstein ended up pleading guilty to abusing just one of the girls in Palm Beach, and was required to register as a sex offender in New York because he has a home in Manhattan.

The brief obtained by The Post alleges that New York prosecutors knew that Epstein had a score of 130 on his risk assessment, which is 'solidly above the 110 qualifying number for level three'.

Epstein ultimately received a level three designation after Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ruth Pickholz deviated from Gaffney's recommendation.

'Our prosecutor made a mistake,' Danny Frost, spokesman for Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr, told The Post in December after it was revealed that Epstein had reached a non-prosecution deal in 2008 with then-Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta's office to secretly end a federal sex abuse investigation involving at least 40 teenage girls that could have landed him behind bars for life.

Epstein is seen in February for the first time since April 2016 in exclusive DailyMail.com photos

Questions about Epstein's deal started to surface after a series of lawsuits were filed by two of his alleged victims.

The women, identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, claim in court papers that they were unaware of the secret deal being made between the defense team and prosecutors back in 2007 that guaranteed federal charges would not be brought against Epstein, 63, which could have resulted in a lengthy prison sentence for the millionaire.

They filed their lawsuit a few months after Epstein received his lenient sentence in 2008, with their lawyers saying the US Attorneys Office violated the federal Crime Victims' Rights Act by not speaking with Epstein's victims about the details of his plea agreement.

The two victims who filed the suit were 13 and 14 at the time of the abuse.

In December it was revealed that Epstein had reached a non-prosecution deal in 2008 with then-Miami US Attorney Alexander Acosta (above) to secretly end a federal sex abuse investigation involving at least 40 teenage girls that could have landed the billionaire behind bars for life

This filing contained more than 140 exhibits including emails between Epsteins defense team, the US Attorney's office and former State Attorney Barry Krischer, which lawyers believe clearly show that victims were being left in the dark.

Bradley Edwards and Paul Cassell, who filed on behalf of the women, previously stated that they hoped US District Judge Kenneth Marra would not force the case to go to trial but rather given what they believe is overwhelming evidence rule in the favor of the two victims.

'There is good reason to believe that if the prosecutors had exposed their dealings to scrutiny by Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2 and other victims, they would not have reached such a sweetheart plea deal,' the motion reads.

'Despite the fact that this case has been in litigation for more than seven years, spanning several hundred pleadings, the government does not write even a single sentence explaining why it entered into an NPA (non-prosecution agreement) with a sex offender who had committed hundreds of federal sex offenses against young girls.'

The motion also says that the deal Epstein received is 'one of the most extraordinarily lenient plea arrangements in American history'.

Epstein settled both of these suits back in December before the victims would be able to testify in court.

Police in Palm Beach turned over the information they had gathered on Epstein's victims to federal authorities in November 2006 after investigating the case for roughly a year following an initial call in March 2005 from a woman who claimed her daughter, 14, had been paid $300 to give Epstein a massage in just her underwear.

Local authorities also filed a probable cause affidavit in May 2006 saying they believed there was enough evidence to charge Epstein with four counts of unlawful sex with minors and one count of molestation.

In the end, these charges were taken to a grand jury despite the recommendation of police, who came back with just one charge against Epstein - felony solicitation of prostitution.

On June 30, 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to a single state charge of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution, and ultimately served just 13 months of his 18-month sentence.

That time was served not in a prison, but rather the Palm Beach Stockade, which is a local detention center.

Epstein was also allowed to leave six days a week to go work out of his West Palm Beach office during his time behind bars.

After his release he did have to register as a sex offender.
Twenty students have been raced to hospital after a bus rolled over on a country road north west of Sydney.

The bus was carrying school children before it crashed at Rylstone, about 250km outside of the city, at midday.

Five of the children - aged between 13 and 18 - were injured, including one who was treated at the scene for a back injury.

NSW Ambulance said the students had sustained minor injuries and they were transported to Mudgee Hospital for assessment.

Twenty students have been raced to hospital after a bus rolled over on a country road north west of Sydney (stock image)
Daniel Tuapawa, 33, was wearing a Donald Trump T-shirt when he launched a sickening tirade outside the Al Noor mosque on Wednesday

A Trump supporter who yelled 'all Muslims are terrorists' outside a mosque targeted in the Christchurch terror attack has pleaded guilty to inciting violence.

Daniel Tuapawa, 33, was wearing a Donald Trump T-shirt when he launched a sickening tirade outside the Al Noor mosque on Wednesday.

'I'm sick of these f***wits they need to f*** off. All Muslims are terrorists, you need to get out of here,' he bellowed.

The tradesman from Christchurch was told by a judge on Friday that he faces jail time when he is sentenced.

Speaking to reporters outside court with his hood pulled over his eyes, Tuapawa apologised and said is battling mental health difficulties.

'I'm very sorry and I'm getting myself fixed for this,' he said.

'I just have blackout and that and I'm f***ing very sorry, I'm so sorry about that okay.'

Tuapawa claimed he went to the mosque to look at the flowers but then blacked out and does not remember shouting.

He said he only realised what he had done when police showed him a video, reported Radio New Zealand.

Tuapawa has asked to personally apologise and shake hands with worshippers who attend the mosque.

He was charged with behaving in an insulting manner that was likely in the circumstances to cause violence against persons to start.

In the terror attack last month, forty-two people were killed at the Al Noor Mosque and eight were gunned down at another mosque.
A 'jealous' boyfriend who is said to have confessed to killing his girlfriend in their New York apartment was upset with her because she stayed out overnight, according to police sources.

Angel Felix Rodriguez, 23, and his 21-year-old girlfriend, Indira Ramirez-Rivera, were said to have had a hot-and-cold relationship, sources told the New York Post.

'They seemed lovable but then they argued and it was heated,' said the couple's 35-year-old neighbor, Smily Rodriguez.

The Bronx native told NYPD officers on Wednesday that he killed his girlfriend.

Police sources with the NYPD claim that 23-year-old Angel Felix Rodriguez was angry with his girlfriend for staying out overnight and decided to kill her as a result. The suspect's Thursday arraignment is pictured

Video courtesy of Pix11

Smily - who shares no relation to the 23-year-old alleged killer - said that when authorities arrived to the couple's Bronx apartment on Wednesday, she knew things were bad.

'I heard one EMT say: 'It looked like the devil was in there,'' she said.

Just before 6pm on Wednesday he walked in 46th Precinct in the Bronx and confessed to killing 21-year-old Indira Ramirez-Rivera

Police found Ramirez-Rivera with strangulation marks to her neck, blunt force trauma to her body, and vaginal cuts.

Rodriguez has not been charged with any sexual offenses.

'He wanted her to suffer,' Assistant District Attorney Kathryn Falasca said during a Thursday arraignment hearing, according to the New York Daily News.

Ramirez-Rivera was left on the couple's bed for two days, authorities said.

'He left her on the bed that they shared to die.' Falasca added

It was also stated that the victim had just returned home from the Dominican Republic after going abroad to get plastic surgery.

Rodriguez arrived at the 46th Precinct around 6pm on Wednesday, and told officers that he killed his 21-year-old girlfriend.

He then gave officers permission to search his apartment at Nelson Avenue and Shakespeare Avenue in Morris Heights in the Bronx.

According to News 12, when authorities arrived to the couple's home they found Ramirez-Rivera's body in the bathroom.

'They seemed lovable but then they argued and it was heated,' said the couple's 35-year-old neighbor, Smily Rodriguez.

Police observed the trauma to her neck, leading them to believe that she was strangled.

A medical examiner will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause cause of death.

Shortly after confessing to the crime, Rodriguez was escorted out of the precinct in handcuffs.

Rodriguez held his head down and covered his face with his hoodie as officers put him in the back of a patrol car.

Neighbors told the New York Daily News that Rodriguez 'was very jealous,' didn't like the way Ramirez-Rivera dressed when she went out and was prone to violence.

Her friend, Andy Rodriguez told the newspaper that 'she wanted to go back to her apartment and pack her stuff and leave him'.

'I didn't expect him to do anything like this,' he said.

They both worked at bars in the Bronx, according to their neighbors.

Rodriguez has been charged with murder and manslaughter.

Attorney information for Rodriguez wasn't immediately clear. The investigation is ongoing.

Shortly after confessing to the crime, Rodriguez was seen being escorted out of the precinct in handcuffs. Rodriguez held his head down and covered his face with his hoodie as officers put him in the back of a patrol car
A third of blind people have either been hit or narrowly missed by an electric car as vision-impaired Australians call for new standards to ensure the deadly quiet vehicles can be heard.

Vision Australia has warned of the dangers as the number of electric vehicles purchased continues to grow.

By 2050, it is predicted up to 90 per cent of cars will be electric.

The vehicles can barely be heard when travelling under 20km/h and blind people want Australia to match new international standards.

The US, Europe and Japan have enforced regulations in which the car must release a warning sound, including a chime or beep, when travelling under this limit.

A third of blind people have either been hit or narrowly missed by electric cars. When travelling under 20km/h , they can barely be heard (file image)

Vision Australia spokesman Chris Edwards said that laws in Australia needed to change top ensure pedestrian safety.

But he told The Australian that calls to Transport Minister Michael McCormack had been ignored.

'He acknowledged the importance of it, but we haven't got any commitment to introduce it, Mr Edwards said.

'They're a silent menace, but it's a problem that can be easily resolved,' he said.

A spokesperson for Mr McCormack said changes were under consideration and the government recognised it was a serious issue for vision-impaired people.

At least 35 per cent of people who are blind or have low vision have had a 'collision or near-collision', according to a study by Monash University and Vision Australia.

Dr Sara Liu, from the university's Accident Research Centre, said people with low vision were vulnerable and could be disadvantaged.

'Our research has highlighted that the risk of incidents between electric and hybrid vehicles is likely to increase unless measures are taken to protect vulnerable road users,' Dr Liu said.

'With the number of electric vehicles globally and in Australia projected to increase, with cumulative estimates of more than 500 million electric vehicles sold globally by 2040, it's important to do something now.'
A sixth-grader from Long Island says she was prevented from picking Donald Trump as a 'hero' for her class project.

Bella Moscato, 11, claims the teacher at Samoset Middle School did not share her admiration for the president - and went on to denigrate the commander-in-chief in front of the entire class.

'Donald Trump is my hero,' she told Long Island's Channel 12.

'The teacher said I wasn't allowed to do Donald Trump because he spreads negativity and says bad things about women.'

Bella Moscato, 11, claims she was not allowed to have President Donald Trump as her hero for a class assignment

Bella said that the teacher in her class told her to pick another hero adding that Trump 'spreads negativity and says bad stuff about women.'

Parents Arthur and Valerie Moscato would like the teacher and the school to apologize for the way they have treated their daughter

'The thing I didn't get, she was OK with someone doing Barack Obama, but not OK with Donald Trump? That's what got me angry,' the student said.

Bella had been a fan of the 45th president since she was eight years old, and even dressed up as Trump for a third-grade class project.

Her parents were outraged and are looking for an apology from the girl's educator, accusing the teacher of attempting to intimidate Bella.

Her mother, Valerie Moscato, claims what her teacher did amounts to censorship.

Bella's father also feels similar: 'I can't believe that anybody in the school would tell her that Trump can't be her hero,' Arthur Moscato said at a school board meeting.

'No one should make a child feel that way, and you're supposed to protect my child,' he said.

Valerie Moscato says the school's behavior amounts to intimidation and censorship

Despite making some good arguments as to why President Trump should be declared a hero, Bella and her parents claim the teacher would not accept Trump as an acceptable answer

The school board say the entire story has been twisted and blown out of proportion.

'It is not accurate that this student was told that they were not allowed to conduct research or report on any individual for a school assignment, including President Trump. To the best of our knowledge, by choice the student is still conducting their project of President Trump,' the school district said in a statement.

'I wish to make it clear that the District does not endorse or condone any limitation or prohibition upon a student's choice of the President of the United States of America as the subject of his or her 'Hero' report,' Sachem Central School District's superintendent Kenneth Graham said in a statement.

Bella, who is in sixth grade, says she has been a fan of Donald Trump for many years - even before he became the 45th President
The homeless veteran who admitted to conspiring with a New Jersey couple in a shameless GoFundMe scam that raised more than $400,000 has been sentenced to five years' probation on Friday.

Johnny Bobbitt, 36, pleaded guilty in March in state court to conspiracy to commit theft by deception.

In a plea deal, Bobbitt will enroll in an inpatient drug treatment program and if he violates those conditions he'll face five years in prison with no possibility of parole for at least 18 months.

Bobbitt made no statement in court Friday.

Homeless veteran Johnny Bobbitt, 36, was sentenced to five years of probation on Friday and will enter a drug treatment program in a plea deal for his role in a GoFundMe scam that raised over $400,000. Pictured in Burlington County Superior Court in Mount Holly, New Jersey on Friday

In a plea deal, Bobbitt will enroll in an inpatient drug treatment program and if he violates those conditions he'll face five years in prison with no possibility of parole for at least 18 months

Bobbitt made no statement in court Friday as he accepted the five years of probation sentence. He pleaded guilty in state court to conspiracy to commit theft by deception in March

Bobbitt along the couple, Kate McClure and Mark D'Amico, who have since broken up, were charged with concocting a story to scam kindhearted strangers out of money with a sensational story of helping homeless Bobbitt start a new life.

In November 2017, Bobbitt along with New Jersey couple Kate McClure and Mark D'Amico, created a GoFundMe account claiming to help Bobbitt, who was homeless at the time, after he gave them his last $20 when their car ran out of gas on a Philadelphia freeway.

Soon more than 14,000 donations poured in raising $403,000. The money was meant to help Bobbitt, but enriched all three co-conspirators.

GoFundMe has said it refunded the donations.

In the plea deal, Bobbitt agreed to testify against his believed co-conspirators McClure and D'Amico.

In November 2017, Bobbitt (left) along with New Jersey couple Kate McClure (center) and Mark D'Amico (right), created a GoFundMe account claiming to help Bobbitt, who was homeless at the time

Soon more than 14,000 donations poured in raising $403,000. The money was meant to help Bobbitt, but enriched all three co-conspirators

Alleged conspirator Katelyn McClure (left), 28, said Bobbitt offered her his last $20 after her car ran out of gas on a Philadelphia highway

Authorities began investigating last year after Bobbitt sued the couple for allegedly not giving him the money.

The couple claimed the cash would be donated to Bobbitt, but New Jersey authorities said the three split the money and spent lavishly, including on a BMW, designer bags, and trips to Las Vegas and elsewhere.

According to prosecutors the couple was going through a hard financial time when they concocted the false story.

Instead of donating all the proceeds to Bobbitt, prosecutors say D'Amico and McClure took the majority of the funds, spending it on designer clothes, holidays and even buying a BMW (pictured: D'Amico and McClure during a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon)

In addition to his state plea, Bobbitt pleaded guilty last month to a federal money laundering conspiracy charge. He'll be sentenced for that at a separate date.

McClure pleaded guilty to one federal count of wire fraud conspiracy in March and faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Her sentencing is set for June 19.

She was also charged in state court with theft and conspiracy but has not yet been indicted, as per NBC.

D'Amico doesn't face any federal charges but was also charged in state court with theft and conspiracy and is also yet to be indicted. D'Amico has denied wrongdoing.
A three-year-old girl in a pram was hit by a truck and pushed along the road for 15 meters in a horrific crash on Friday morning.

The crash happened in Northmead, western Sydney while the girl's mother was waiting to cross the road at a busy intersection.

Paramedics found the girl unconscious and stabilised her before she was flown to hospital by helicopter.

Dramatic pictures from the scene showed the truck mounted on the curb and the child's pram lying sideways on the ground while medics helped the toddler.

A three-year-old girl in a pram was hit by a truck and pushed along the road for 15 meters. Pictured: Medics at the scene
A hapless tourist almost had his arm bitten off by a lioness after sticking it through the bars of her cage and trying to give her a stroke.

Pieter Nortje, 55, was being given a guided tour of the lions at a game lodge in South Africa to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary when he almost lost his arm.

The shocking incident was caught on camera by his wife Ilze in Virginia, Free State Province, before being circulated online.

Pieter Nortje, 55, was on holiday with his wife Ilze at a game reserve in Virginia, South Africa, when he decided to pet the lions while she filmed him

First of all he can be seen stroking an adult male's back and tickling it behind his ear as he quips to his wife: 'If you bite me, then I'm going to bite you back.'

A young lioness approaches the fence at the Tikwe River Lodge as Pieter leaves his arm waving dangerously in the air and says: 'Come here lovey, let daddy stroke you.'

The lioness then digs her teeth into his right forearm, penetrating to the bone, and drags him towards the fence.

Ilze can be heard shouting: 'It's biting him, it's biting him!'

The lioness keeps hold of his arm for a full five seconds, slashing at it with the claws of her left paw, before finally releasing him.

Mr Nortje and wife Ilze were on holiday celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary when the attack happened

Panicked screams of those watching distracted the lioness for long enough for Pieter to pull his bloodied arm back on the other side of the wire.

Netwerk24 reported that Mr Nortje ended up in Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein in a serious condition and suffering septic shock.

Septic shock is a life threatening condition caused by severe infection with a mortality rate of between 25 and 50 per cent.

A spokesman for Tikwe River Lodge, which has 30 lodges overlooking the Sand River, said they had been running the lion enclosure tours for six years without any incidents.

They denied any responsibility for the mauling and said: 'There are warning signs everywhere.

'Nortje stuck his hand through the electric fence to touch the lions and was bitten'.

A South African game ranger at another park who saw the video said: 'The man was lucky that the lioness was probably not hungry or not used to killing live prey outside in the wild.

'Lions are pack animals and hunt as a team so others in the enclosure could easily have joined in and if they had done [they would have] killed him whether there was a fence between them or not.

Mr Nortje was bitten on the forearm by a lioness who sunk her teeth in up to the bone, but fortunately let go after hearing his wife's panicked screams

'Some people never learn that where wild animals are concerned, keep a distance between them and you'.

Mr Nortje, who works as a mechanic at SA Truck Bodies in Bloemfontein, and his receptionist wife were unavailable for comment as was a friend who joined them for the weekend break.

In May last year Mike Hodge, 72, the owner of the Marakele Predator Centre in Thabazimbi just north of Johannesburg, was attacked by a lion when he entered its enclosure.

British-born Mr Hodge was badly mauled and was only saved when the lion, called Shamba, was shot dead by a keeper after it had dragged Mr Hodge into the undergrowth where it was savaging him.

The married family man was rushed by air ambulance to hospital for life saving surgery on wounds to his neck, chest and back but is back running his game lodge now.

In February last year a 22-year-old woman was attacked and mauled to death by a lion at the Dinokeng Game Reserve in Hammanskraal after getting out to take photos of wildlife.
The family of a murdered Islamic State hostage have told how they are 'sick of waiting' for his body to be found five years after he was beheaded.

Former RAF engineer David Haines, 44, from Perth, Scotland, was murdered in Syria in September 2014 after being abducted and held prisoner for 18 months.

The Yorkshire-born aid worker appeared in a sickening ISIS murder video, kneeling in the desert in an orange jumpsuit before being beheaded by Jihadi John.

Former RAF engineer David Haines (left) appeared in a sickening ISIS murder video in 2014, kneeling in the desert in an orange jumpsuit before being beheaded by Jihadi John (right)

Mr Haines, pictured with his daughter Bethany as a toddler, was murdered five years ago

But Mr Haines's family are still waiting for his body to be returned  and his daughter Bethany, 22, is campaigning to bring it back to Scotland so she scatter his ashes.

Her hopes were boosted last year when authorities said they were looking for potential burial sites after capturing two Isis fighters implicated in his killing.

Bethany Haines, 22, pictured in September 2017, is campaigning to bring her father's body back to the UK so she scatter his ashes

But no trace of his body was found  and Miss Haines has grown frustrated with the lack of progress having been dealing with the Foreign Office.

She told the Daily Record: 'There have been so many signs they think it might be (his body) and it's not.

'When I asked if they were actively going out and looking, they said they weren't and rely on information and not speculation.

'Even if they do get leads, I strongly suspect they need confirmation and collaboration to be able to act on it.

'We and the other families are finding it hard to get closure. If no one else is going to do it, I will. I'm sick of waiting around.'

Mr Haines's family knew he had been kidnapped in Syria in March 2013 while working for Acted and had kept quiet in order not to derail any rescue attempts.

But he was executed by an Isis cell which also murdered British aid worker Alan Henning, US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and US worker Peter Kassig.

British militant Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John (left and right), who was from Queens Park in West London, was killed in a drone strike in Raqqa in November 2015

Mr Haines last lived in this home in Sisak, Croatia, before being killed by Islamic State in 2014

His brother Mike Haines has since sought to continue his work by visiting schools and community groups to combat extremist indoctrination of young people.

British militant Mohammed Emwazi, known as Jihadi John, who was from Queens Park in West London, was killed in a drone strike in Raqqa in November 2015.

A Whitehall source insisted to MailOnline that recovering the remains of hostages is a priority.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'The FCO has advised British nationals against all travel to Syria since 2011 and has no diplomatic or consular presence there.

'Consular support is not available in Syria and Her Majesty's Government has no legal obligation to provide consular assistance.'
Christine Assange, mother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, launched a Twitter tirade over his arrest on Friday

Julian Assange's mother has railed against Theresa May, Ecuador's president and the judge who branded the WikiLeaks founder a 'narcissist' in a stream of tweets demanding her son is released.

Pledging to 'fight like hell', Christine Assange said the Prime Minister was 'trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dog's breakfast by cheering on the thuggish, brutal, unlawful arrest of my courageous, tortured multi-award winning journalist son Julian!'

Mrs Assange, who lives in Australia, tweeted and shared articles regularly after her son was seen being forcibly removed from the Ecuadorean embassy on Thursday.

Addressing the country's president, Lenin Moreno, she tweeted: 'Shame on you @Lenin #Moreno! May the Ecuadorean people seek vengeance upon you, you dirty, deceitful, rotten traitor!

The mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has attacked both British Prime Minister Theresa May and Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno, accusing them of 'torturing' her son

'May the face of my suffering son haunt your sleepless nights.. And may your soul writhe forever in torturous Purgatory as you have tortured my beloved son!'

Ecuadorian President Moreno had previously branded Julian Assange a 'bad-mannered' guest who acted like a 'spoiled brat' while he stayed at the country's embassy in London and has long held that Assange was trying to 'destablize' the country.

'You can't arrive at a house that welcomes you warmly, that gives you food, and takes care of you, and start to denounce the owner of the house,' Moreno said, according to Bloomberg.

'We've removed the asylum for this spoiled brat and, fortunately, we've gotten rid of a thorn in our side.'

Australian-born Assange, 47, was taken to Westminster Magistrates' Court after his removal from the embassy on Thursday.

Police carry WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday

Mrs Assange, who lives in Australia, targeted Theresa May (left) and Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno (right), calling him a 'dirty, deceitful, rotten, traitor'

He was found guilty of skipping bail in 2012, when he was trying to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face allegations of rape, and faces up to 12 months in a British prison.

The arrest in London will be followed by an extradition hearing in May, putting Assange on a path to finally facing trial in the U.S. for the leaks, starting in April 2010, of the secrets of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the detention facility Guantanamo Bay, and diplomatic cables.

District Judge Michael Snow described his behaviour as 'that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests'.

His mother tweeted: 'UK judge should NOT be making statements like this! This is (a) rubbish Legal process!'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves Westminster Magistrates Court in London in the police van

Christine Assange pledged to stay strong for her son and said she would 'fight like hell' for him after his arrest in London on Thursday

On Friday morning UK time, she issued a plea to police, prison officers and court staff.

She said her son had been 'detained without charge', 'deprived of fresh air, exercise and sun' and 'denied proper medical/dental care' for several years.

She also claimed he had been 'isolated/tortured' for a year.

'Please be patient, gentle & kind to him,' she tweeted.
Doctors in Papua New Guinea have warned of a nationwide epidemic of botched penis enlargements that has seen men injected with cooking oil and silicone.

Akule Danlop, a surgeon in the capital Port Moresby, said that over the past two years his hospital has handled at least 500 cases including a boy aged 16.

Of those, Mr Danlop said 90 required operations to deal with abnormal swelling or to repair damage, and some may never be able to have sex again.

Surgeons in Papua New Guinea say they treat hundreds of men every year for growths and abscesses on their genitals caused by botched penis englargements

Speaking to The Guardian, he said: 'The bulk of them have abnormal, lumpy masses growing over the penis and sometimes involving the scrotum.

'A good number are coming in with ulcers; they eventually burst open. 'Some of them have difficulty urinating because the foreskin is so swollen it cannot contract.

'Predominantly they regret what they have done.'

Mr Danlop added that the main reason the men undergo the operation is to achieve a better sexual experience with their partner.

He said the true number of people getting the procedure done is likely far higher, as many men will not seek medical help if it goes wrong.

One clinic in the capital Port Morseby (pictured) treated 500 men in just two years with the youngest patient being 16 years old

Experts believe that the bulk of the injections are being offered by off-duty male nurses looking to make some extra money.

They say the problem is not confined to one area or social class within Papua New Guinea, and believe it is relatively common around the world.

Researchers have begun collecting data on the men they treat in the hope of building up a fuller picture of the issue.

One aspect of their study will be looking into whether exposure to pornography has driven a rise in men wanting the procedure.
Austria says it is considering a law to make it mandatory for big internet platforms to register their users and deprive those behind hate posts of anonymity.

'Unfortunately there have been an increasing number of clear violations, denigrations and humiliations online in the past under the cover of anonymity. That's why we need a framework for more responsibility online,' Chancellor Sebastian Kurz wrote on Twitter.

The new law would take effect in 2020 and would make it mandatory for platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to register their users, said Gernot Bluemel, minister in charge of EU affairs, art, culture and media.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz at the European Council meeting. The law would take effect in 2020

It would be up to the platforms themselves to decide the form of registration, but authorities would be able to access users' identities in case of hate postings or on suspicion of other laws being broken, he said.

'The online space should not be a space without laws,' Bluemel told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting, adding that Austria aimed to set a precedent for other countries in the matter.

French President Emmanuel Macron earlier this year caused controversy by suggesting a ban on anonymous postings on social media.

In Austria, the law would have to be approved MPs as well as the European Commission to make sure it is in line with EU guidelines that stipulate, for example, that member states cannot regulate a platform provider more strictly than its country of origin.

The proposed law would only apply to internet platforms that have a certain reach - more than 100,000 users or 500,000 euros ($430,000) annual turnover in Austria - as well as online media that receive more than 50,000 euros in state aid, Bluemel said.

Austrian opposition parties have criticised the proposal, saying it restricts online freedom and gives even more user data to online giants, such as Facebook, which is already under fire over how it handles such information.
A science teacher has been convicted for beating a ringtail possum to death after he found it eating his shrubs.

Robert Ferguson, 68, was sentenced to a two-year conditional release order for beating the ringtail possum to death at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court on April 1.

Mr Ferguson, who is Head of Science at St Augustine's College in Brookvale, has expressed his remorse for killing the animal, saying it wasn't intentional.

On June 22 in 2017, a witness found the dead possum in the front yard of a Curl Curl property along with two baby possums.

Mr Ferguson, who is Head of Science at St Augustine's College in Brookvale, has expressed his remorse for killing the ringtail possum (pictured, stock image), saying it wasn't intentional

The following day members from the RSPCA NSW visited the location and retrieved the possum's body.

Upon inspection, they noticed Mr Ferguson's New Zealand Christmas bushes looked like they had been eaten and there was animal faecal matter on the wall beside the bushes.

A post mortem examination revealed the possum had multiple small subcutaneous contusions over the thorax and a single small contusion over the skull, extensive internal haemorrhage and a ruptured artery.

RSCPA inspectors spoke to Mr Ferguson who admitted to hitting the bushes the night before the possum was found dead.

The science teacher said he had previously taken lawful measures to manage the possum situation, including using lights, noise and chemicals on leaves but none had worked.

'It is an unfortunate phenomenon of the 21st century where people come before the court for beating at something that annoys them,' Magistrate Jennifer Giles said.

Robert Ferguson, 68, pleaded guilty to beating the ringtail possum to death at Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court (pictured) on April 1

'We have become selfish and impatient. It is a mum ringtail possum eating your trees. She is a protected native animal and you are a science teacher.'

Ringtail possums, as well as all native animals, are a protected species under the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974, meaning it is illegal to kill or catch and release them without a licence.

Mr Ferguson was sentenced to a two-year conditional release order for the death of the ringtail possum.

'Conviction here is certainly warranted non-conviction sends an inappropriate message to everyone else who is annoyed by possums, and that recklessly killing it could be dismissed should they choose to do that,' Magistrate Giles said.

RSCPA NSW Chief Inspector Scott Meyers said there are reasonable ways to manage local wildlife and killing animals are not reasonable.

'It was unnecessary for this native creatures life to end and for its young to be orphaned. The protection of our unique native wildlife is a serious matter,' Mr Meyers said.
Cheese lovers have been warned to check their fridges after four popular French bries were pulled from the shelves over health fears.

The Adelaide-based Washed Rind Pty Ltd issued a recall of four of its washed mould cheeses due to a potential microbial listeria monocytogenes contamination.

The products, which all originate from France, have been available for sale at delis, cheeserooms, IGAs and independent stores across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

Anyone with any of these four cheeses on their fridge needs to check the next before date

There are fears the cheeses are contaminated with listeria monocytogenes (pictured)

Injesting the cheese could lead to a listeria infection, a rare but serious illness that can result in serious illnesses including meningitis and septicaemia.

Listeria is more likely to cause illness in pregnant women and their unborn babies, the elderly and people with low immune systems.

Listeria monocytogenes can infect the brain, spinal-cord membranes and the bloodstream.

Symptoms are usually described as flu-like, although fever and gastrointestinal symptoms can occur in pregnant women.

CHEESES UNDER RECALL St Simeon, 200g, with best before dates of 18/02/19, 04/03/19, 26/09/19, 09/04/19, 23/04/19, 10/05/19 and 17/05/19.

Le Coulommiers, 400g with best before dates of 23/04/19 and 17/05/19.

Le Coulommiers Truffe, 750g has best before dates of 19/02/19, 26/03/19, 09/04/19, 23/04/19, 10/05/19, 17/05/19.

Brie de Nangis, 1kg has best before dates of 18/02/19, 18/03/19, 04/03/19, and 26/03/19. Advertisement

The latest product recall is bad news for brie cheese lovers across Australia (stock image)

The time from consuming the bacteria to showing the signs of illness can be between eight and 90 days.

Anyone who has bought an affected cheese can return the product back to the place of purchase for a full refund.

Anyone concerned about their health should seek medical advice.
A man has been charged with the 1978 Queensland outback murders of Karen Edwards, Timothy Thomson and Gordon Twaddle.

The 63-year-old, whom the Courier Mail reported is former prison officer Bruce John Preston from Goulburn, has been charged with three counts of murder.

The charges come more than 40 years after the first of three bodies was found in remote Queensland bushland near Mount Isa.

The cold case was likened to a 'real-life Wolf Creek', the story of three road-trippers in remote Australia who are plunged into danger.

Karen Edwards, Gordon Twaddle and Timothy Thomson (left to right) were found dead from gunshot wounds on October 24, 1978

Former prison officer Bruce John Preston, 63, is from Goulburn and has been charged with three counts of murder

The three had last been seen on the morning of October 5 following their arrival in Mt Isa as part of a motorcycle journey from Alice Springs to Melbourne.

Tim 31, and Gordon, 21 were family friends from New Zealand with a passion for motorcycles.

Karen, 23, was Tim's girlfriend and the trio was on the adventure of a lifetime trekking across the outback.

Once they reached Cairns, the trio planned to head south to Melbourne for Christmas with family.

They never made it.

The trio were last seen at Moondurra (moondarra) Caravan Park, their bodies were found 19 days later in bushland near Spear Creek, 12 km north of Mount Isa

Detective Kentwell said Preston was 'surprised' by the arrest, but would not comment on a motive other than that he was known to the victims before October 5

After their last sighting in the Moondurra (moondarra) Caravan Park, their bodies were found 19 days later in bushland near Spear Creek, 12 km north of Mount Isa.

All three died from gunshot wounds.

Preston had been a person of interest, charged with stealing Tim's motorcycle in 1978 for which he was convicted and fined $300.

Preston had been a person of interest, charged with stealing Tim's motorcycle in 1978 for which he was convicted and fined $300

The trio were travelling with Tim's dog Tristie (pictured). They lost Tristie and found him at Mount Isa dump 18 days before their bodies were found

Detective Senior Sergeant Tara Kentwell said the families of the victims had been told of the charges and were 'relieved' by the outcome.

'We believe that there are still witnesses out there who hold vital information and we appeal for those persons to come forward,' she said.

Detective Kentwell said the accused was 'surprised' by the arrest, but would not comment on a motive other than that he was known to the victims before October 5.

Preston using a joker filter on a Facebook profile picture. He is expected to face Brisbane Magistrates Court on Saturday charged with three counts of murder

Det Kentwell said it felt 'pretty good' to make an arrest four decades after the crime.

'It's a good feeling to provide some closure to these families after such a long time.'

The man is expected to face Brisbane Magistrates Court on Saturday charged with three counts of murder.
A Syrian asylum seeker has been convicted of planning a terrorist attack in Denmark with a homemade bomb made of sulphur stripped from more than 17,000 matchsticks.

A Danish court has found the 32-year-old man guilty of 'preparing for terrorism' by planning to detonate one or more bombs in Copenhagen and then attack passersby with knives.

On November 19, 2016 - the man arrived in the Danish capital from Sweden, where he had arrived as an asylum seeker 2015.

He had planned to meet his accomplice, fellow Syrian citizen Dieab Khadigah, but the 21-year-old was detained by German police as he tried to cross the border into Denmark.

A 32-year-old Syrian asylum seeker was found guilty at Copenhagen City Court (pictured) on Thursday of attempting to carry out a terrorist attack in the Danish capital

In his backpack they discovered 17,460 matches, fireworks, 17 batteries, two kitchen knives and six walkie-talkies as well as other components for the manufacture of bombs.

Instructions by al-Qaeda for making a bomb were found on the man's phone.

'My mission was to carry the bag to Copenhagen and leave it with a contact at the railway station,' he told a German court.

Khadigah was convicted and sentenced to six and a half years in a German prison in July 2017.

The pair are thought to have been brought together over the internet by a mysterious intermediary.

Before that, the court heard, 32-year-old asylum seeker had been an active participant in the Syrian civil war.

Throughout his trial he maintained his innocence and rejected any allegiance or sympathies to ISIS, saying he downloaded films by the terrorist group, which police discovered on his computer, out of curiosity.

But three judges and six jurors dismissed his explanations after it emerged he had searched for and watched footage of several ISIS executions and posted multiple videos on social media that could be interpreted as goodbyes.

The man was discovered to have 'randomly kill or hurt several people in an unknown location in Copenhagen' with a homemade bomb and several knives, according to Danish police

'The defendant was in November 2016 an ISIS sympathizer; he was ready to commit jihad and be called a martyr,' said the judge.

Investigators found he had initiated online conversations about martyrdom and conducted internet searches for the addresses of several embassies, which, according to the prosecutor, must be taken as searches for appropriate targets.

They also discovered he had travelled to Copenhagen central station on November 19, 2016, seemingly to meet with his accomplice to obtain the bomb components.

But he claimed this was an accident and he simply went too far on the train.

According to The Local, the man found not guilty of attempted arson on a Shia mosque in October 2017.

He was awarded 97,000 Swedish kronor (8,000) in damages by a Swedish court after being held in pre-trial detention for four months.

But two months later he was arrested by Danish police on suspicion of planning to 'randomly kill or hurt several people in an unknown location in Copenhagen'.

He is expected to be sentenced in late May.

During the case, bomb experts from Danish armed forces tested the would-be bomb using the al-Qaeda instruction manual.

They found that 17,000 matches could produce 237 grams of explosive sulphur - enough for small but potentially lethal blast that could strike people within a distance of 50 metres.
Diplomats from Britain, Ecuador and the US hatched a secret plot over six months to have Julian Assange dragged kicking and screaming out of hiding, it has been revealed.

A series of highly-confidential talks between the three nations led to the Wikileaks founder being arrested yesterday inside the embassy where he has spent nearly seven years.

In extraordinary scenes, eight British policemen hauled a bearded and dishevelled Assange, 47, to a waiting police van after Ecuador ended his asylum status.

The country said it was tired of his 'discourteous' behaviour and poor personal hygiene, which reportedly included smearing faeces on the walls of the embassy.

In a shocking turn of events, he was then charged by the American government with hacking 750,000 classified documents, which carries a five-year sentence.

Scroll down for video

The arrest of Assange (left) followed talks initiated in June by Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan (shown right, yesterday with Ecuadorian Ambassador Jaime Marchan)

In extraordinary scenes, eight British policemen hauled a bearded and dishevelled Assange, 47, to a waiting police van after Ecuador ended his asylum status yesterday

The arrest was a culmination of an international diplomatic process initiated in June last year by senior Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan.

The British politician opened talks with Ecuador on revoking Assange's asylum status, which eventually led to discussions with the US about a possible extradition.

A breakthrough in discussions was finally reached when the US gave assurances that Assange would not be given the death penalty should be face justice in the states.

Sir Alan told The Telegraph: 'We don't extradite anybody to a country where they might face the death penalty without that routine assurance. We restated our policy.'

US authorities are reportedly set to file further charges in the coming days, including espionage, which can carry a 20-year sentence.

Assange now faces up to a year in a British jail, thought to be Wandsworth prison in south London, while rape allegations in Sweden from 2010 still hang over him.

His lawyer Jennifer Robinson and Kristinn Hrafnsson, Editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, address the media outside of Westminster Magistrates Court yesterday

Moments after the arrest, Wikileaks said Ecuador had acted illegally in terminating Assange's political asylum 'in violation of international law'

Following six months behind bars his fight against extradition to the US would begin, with legal experts warning this process could take anywhere up to two years.

His legal fight began yesterday afternoon, when Assange was hauled in front of a judge at Westminster magistrates' court for breaching bail.

The judge described him as a 'narcissist' unable to get past his own 'selfish interests' and sent the case to crown court. He faces up to a year in jail for the offence.

His comments caused Assange's mother to hit out at the British legal system in a series of posts to Twitter, where she promised to 'fight like hell' to free her son.

Christine Assange tweeted: 'UK judge should NOT be making statements like this! This is (a) rubbish Legal process!'

She added that Prime Minister Theresa May was 'trying to divert attention away from her Brexit dog's breakfast by cheering on the thuggish, brutal, unlawful arrest of my courageous, tortured multi-award winning journalist son Julian!'

Assange's arrest came just 24 hours after Wikileaks accused Ecuador of an 'extensive spying operation', adding that it assumed intel had been handed over to Trump's administration

A police van sits outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody following the Ecuadorian government's withdrawal of asylum

The Wikileaks founder (pictured over a seven-year period) finally appeared in court today after he was sensationally expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been claiming political refuge

Mrs Assange, who lives in Australia, also addressed Ecuador's president, Lenin Moreno, tweeting: 'Shame on you @Lenin Moreno! May the Ecuadorean people seek vengeance upon you, you dirty, deceitful, rotten traitor!

'May the face of my suffering son haunt your sleepless nights.. And may your soul writhe forever in torturous Purgatory as you have tortured my beloved son!'

Meanwhile Swedish prosecutors said they would consider restarting the rape investigation which caused Assange to first seek refuge in the embassy.

The alleged victim's lawyer declared she would 'do all we can' to get the case reopened.

A second woman, who accused Assange of sexual assault, said she was willing to appear as a witness.

Last night, a source close to Wikileaks claimed seven years holed up in the embassy had left Assange with a raft of health issues, including bad teeth and osteoperosis.

Fidel Narvaez (left), former consul of Ecuador to London, looks at some of the footage, alongside WikiLeaks editor in chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and barrister Jennifer Robinson yesterday

The Wikileaks founder was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in handcuffs yesterday by a large group of officers as stunned supporters and protesters watched on in central London

The source told the Mirror: 'He is fighting on, but his health is compromised because he's been in an embassy for however many years, and he's not had sunlight and he's not been able to move around.

'I don't think people understand that it's a very small space, the Ecuadorian embassy. They're not a country with a massive pile in Knightsbridge, it's a few rooms.

'I've seen him and he's...you know, he's suffering. He's a human being, he's suffering. Whatever the reason for that, it's a fact.'

The embassy saga began in July 2012 when  having lost a battle against extradition to Sweden over two allegations of sexual assault  Assange entered the Ecuadorian property in Knightsbridge.

He was given asylum and later made a citizen of Ecuador. But events took a dramatic turn soon after 9am yesterday when police suddenly turned up at the doors.

What is UK's extradition agreement with the US and how long could it take to send Assange to America? The UK to US extradition process is in place to seek justice for serious crimes affecting both countries and its citzens. It protects the rights of those accused and victims. The latest version of the treaty updated the formal extradition relationship between the US and UK following changes in the UK's own extradition laws and corrected a previous imbalances. It was previously required that the US would have to present its evidence in 'prima facie' form, when the US had never required that from the UK. A van with a 'Free Speech' placard and the images of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning on its side, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London earlier this month In the case of Assange experts have now said that he is likely to receive a custodial sentence in the UK and that and extradition to the US will follow. Extradition lawyer Thomas Garner: 'Given Assange's public statements in the past it is clear that he would attempt to raise many bars to his extradition. 'The extradition court here would not come to any conclusions on the merits of the US case in the proceedings here. 'Its sole concern would be whether there are any legal bar to his being extradited to stand trial in the US. The process would take many months to conclude. 'If there were an extradition request from the US, given the likely complexity of the case, it is doubtful that any final hearing would be heard this year.' Advertisement

They were met at the embassy, a few streets from Harrods, by the ambassador whose government had decided to revoke their guest's asylum.

Officers tried to introduce themselves to the Wikileaks founder, but he barged past them and tried to return to his private room, which can be locked by a secret code.

He resisted being put into handcuffs and exclaimed: 'This is unlawful, I'm not leaving.'

Back-up officers were called in and ultimately, a team of eight officers bundled him out of the building by his arms and legs at around 10.15am.

As the scene unfolded, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno released his statement saying Assange's stay at the embassy was 'unsustainable and no long viable'.

Interior minister Maria Paula Romo accused Assange of smearing faeces on the walls during his stay.

She added: 'Behaviour of this kind that is far removed from the minimum respect a guest should have in a country which has generously welcomed him.'

Soon after his arrest, police announced Assange had been held for breaching bail and over an extradition request from the US.

Sporting a long grey beard and a ponytail, the WikiLeaks founder smiled and waved to supporters in the public gallery from the dock in court yesterday.

But the smirk vanished when district judge Michael Snow described his defence to breaching bail as 'laughable'.

In a final barbed remark, the judge suggested Assange should 'get over to the US' and 'get on with your life'.

Meanwhile, the United States Department of Justice yesterday unsealed charges against Assange that had been secret.

He has been charged with 'conspiracy to commit computer intrusion'  hacking  after allegedly agreeing to break a password for a US government computer.

He is accused of working with Chelsea Manning, a former intelligence analyst in the US Army, who downloaded classified records to give to WikiLeaks.

Between January and May 2010, Manning downloaded four databases containing 90,000 reports on the war in Afghanistan, 400,000 reports relating to the Iraq war, 800 Guantanamo Bay detainee assessment briefs and 250,000 US Department of State cables. Many of them were classified but still released by WikiLeaks.

Manning was convicted by court-martial in July 2013 of violating the Espionage Act and was sentenced to 35 years - but that was later commuted by President Barack Obama and she was let out in 2017. She was jailed again in March this year for refusing to give evidence about WikiLeaks.

If he is extradited and convicted of the more serious charges, Assange could even end up in the notorious ADX Supermax Federal Prison in Colorado.

His extradition is likely to be appealed through the chain of the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court and potentially even the European Court of Human Rights.

His legal team said he was facing 'what appears to be an unprecedented effort by the United States seeking to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information.'

Supporters of Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last Friday

Diane Abbott faces furious backlash for defending Julian Assange by saying his 'real crime was to have embarrassed the US military' and 'we all know it's not about the rape charges'

Diane Abbott was accused of 'dismissing' sexual assault allegations levelled at Julian Assange after she said three times this morning: 'Charges were never brought.'

The Shadow Home Secretary yesterday called for the UK to block the Wikileaks co-founder's extradition to the US for revealing sensitive military information.

She told John Humphrys on Radio 4 today that there may be human rights grounds on which to oppose the hacker being taken to the US after he was ejected from the Ecuadorian embassy.

Diane Abbott (pictured, right) has sparked fury online after comments this morning saw her accused of 'dismissing' sexual assault charges levelled at Assange (left)

Abbot (left) has sparked outrage as she was accused of dismissing sexual assault charges relating to two women (right)

The BBC presenter challenged the Hackney North MP, telling her that Assange had skipped bail and only sought diplomatic immunity in the building when he faced sexual assault allegations in Sweden and refused to go to the country.

She responded 'those charges were never brought' before Humphrys pointed out that Swedish law prevents suspects from being charge in their absence.

Abbott then repeated her assertion and said the pursuit of Assange had nothing to do with alleged rape.

'The allegations were made but the charges were never brought,' she said. 'We all know what this is about. It's not the rape charges - as they are - it's about the Wikileaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public.'

Pictured: Assange after he was arrested following a seven-year stay at the Ecuadorian embassy yesterday

After saying for a third time that 'charges were never brought', Abbott said Assange should face justice if the Swedish government comes forward with charges, despite Humphrys having outlined why charges can't be brought with Assange outside the Scandinavian country.

'Much of the information he brought into public domain, it could be argued, were very much in the public interest,' the Labour politician added.

Abbott's remarks sparked outrage on social media as people took to Twitter to point out that Assange had 'escaped' charges by seeking immunity in the embassy. It's not the first time the gaffe-prone MP has come under fire for comments made in an interview, with previous controversies including her assertion that dictator Chairman Mao did more good than harm.

Labour's Jess Philips and Bridgett Philipson joined Tory Anna Soubry to condemn Abbott's comments online. It comes after yesterday their leader, Jeremy Corbyn, called for Britain to 'oppose' any attempt at extraditing Assange to the states.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, pictured, told the House of Commons today Julian Assange was only being pursued by the US for 'exposing wrongdoing'

Supporters of Assange's activism point to him releasing footage of American troops firing on civilians, but his opponents highlight instances of revealing the identities of Afghan informants working with the US to topple Islamists.

It came after she joined left-wing campaigners in condemning Assange's arrest yesterday.

The WikiLeaks founder, 47, is facing 12 months in a British prison after being hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London after a seven-year stay and brought before Westminster Magistrates' Court, where he was found guilty of skipping bail.

Assange's fashion designer friend Vivienne Westwood, pictured, joined supporters outside court to protest against his arrest

Westwood, pictured outside the court today, has previously designed t-shirts with slogans supporting Assange on them

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, pictured, called Assange a 'hero' and said his actions were 'far from criminal'

In a sensational turn of events, he was also charged by the US government with conspiring with American whistleblower Chelsea Manning 'to break a password to a classified government computer' in 2010, for which he could be jailed for five years.

What are some of Diane Abbott's other gaffes and controversies? 2008: Abbott told Andrew Neil on BBC show This Week: 'I suppose that some people would judge that on balance Mao did more good than harm. We cant say that about the Nazis.' 2010: Accused of playing the 'race card' after she defended sending her son James to a 10,000-a-year school claiming: 'West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.' 2012: Outrages cab drivers by tweeting: 'Dubious of black people claiming theyve never experienced racism. Ever tried hailing a taxi I always wonder?' 2017: Told LBC Radio it would cost just 300,000 to hire 10,000 more police officers over four years - a grand total of 30 for each. 2017: Wrongly claims 16-year-olds can fight for their country and should therefore be able to vote. 2017: Refuses four times on the Andrew Marr Show to say she regrets past support of the IRA, adding: 'It was 34 years ago, I had a rather splendid afro at the time. I don't have the same hairstyle and I don't have the same views .' 2018: Angered London Police by criticising their tactic of knocking moped muggers off their vehicles, tweeting: 'Knocking people off bikes is potentially very dangerous. It shouldn't be legal for anyone. Police are not above the law.' 2018: Posts fake image of an Israeli fighter plane bombing Iran in a tweet slamming Britain's airstrikes on Syria. Advertisement

Ms Abbott joined the likes of Pamela Anderson, Edward Snowden, Vivienne Westwood and Peter Tatchell in voicing their concern for Assange.

Ms Abbott told the Commons: 'Julian Assange is not being pursued to protect US national security.

'He is being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces.'

US whistleblower Snowden warned the arrest was a 'dark moment for press freedom,' while fashion designer Westwood protested outside Westminster Magistrates Court.

Snowden, a former CIA agent tweeted: 'Images of Ecuador's ambassador inviting the UK's secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher of-like it or not-award-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books.'

Snowden is currently living in exile Russia having fled the US after leaking a huge cache of declassified documents back in 2013.

Assange's close friend Pamela Anderson also blasted the arrest on Twitter, calling the UK 'America's b****' and claiming it was a 'diversion from Brexit'.

And the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed the move was 'the hand of democracy squeezing the throat of freedom'.

Speaking in the Commons, Ms Abbott said: 'On this side of the House, we're glad that Julian Assange will be able to access medical care, treatment and facilities because there have been worrying reports about his ill health.'

She added: 'Even though the only charge he may face in this country is in relation to his bail hearings, the reason we are debating this this afternoon is entirely to do with the whistleblowing activities of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

'It is this whistleblowing activity into illegal wars, mass murder, murder of civilians and corruption on a grand scale that has put Julian Assange in the crosshairs of the US administration.

'It is for this reason that they have once more issued an extradition warrant against Mr Assange.'

She also compared his case to that of Gary McKinnon, who hacked into US military computers from the bedroom of his North London flat.

It came as Mr Corbyn dodged the opportunity to praise the arrest when it was brought up in Parliament by Prime Minister Theresa May earlier today.

Westwood is surrounded by photographers including a glamorous woman in a red hat and large sunglasses

There were huge crowds of journalists and protesters outside the court today as the Assange case drew attention from around the world

Ms Abbott claimed a 'UN panel' ruled Assange was being 'arbitrarily detained and should be allowed to walk free' from the Ecuadorian embassy.

In response, Home Secretary Sajid Javid said 'the whole country will be pretty astounded by the tone she has taken', saying Ms Abbott was 'suggesting that we should not apply the rule of law to an individual'.

He accused her of 'not giving quite correct information' over her claims the UN had ruled in Assange's favour, saying 'the UN has no view on the Assange case'.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the US was leading an attack on the press and freedom of speech by arresting Assange, and the slammed the British government for cooperating.

Speaking on Sky News, he said: 'What Julian Assange did was publish information that had been leaked by Chelsea Manning.

'He was not the leaker. He published the information in the same way the Guardian did and the New York Times did.
A former Human Resources employee for the city of New York is facing up to 20 years in prison for stealing public money to put a curse on her ex-boyfriend.

Eliana Bauta, 35, pleaded guilty on Thursday in Manhattan federal court to stealing from a federal program intended to redistribute taxpayer's funds to needy New Yorkers.

Last month she also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud while working at the New York City Human Resources Administration for taking emergency benefits and giving them to family and friends.

'I issued benefits to people who were not entitled to them,' Bauta said, reading from a prepared statement, before Circuit Judge Valerie Caproni.

Eliana Bauta, 35, from the Bronx, worked at the New York City Human Resources Administration (pictured)

Prosecutors alleged that Bauta and two co-defendants worked on schemes to forge police reports in order to obtain the money.

On one occasion she was said to have submitted a request for relief to be issued to an individual who was affected by a disaster  except that the disaster never actually occurred.

In fact, the money went towards reimbursing someone for putting a hex on her ex.

Bauta faces up to 10 years in prison for the federal program theft count and up to 20 years for the wire fraud conspiracy count. She is scheduled to be sentenced in July.

'HRA employees like Eliana Bauta are trusted to use their positions to help people in need.

Instead, as she has now admitted, Bauta egregiously abused that trust, working with her co-conspirators to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars intended for New York's needy,' Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said.
China is planning to send millions of youth 'volunteers' back to the villages, raising fears of a return to the methods of Chairman Mao's brutal Cultural Revolution of 50 years ago.

The Communist Youth League (CYL) has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to 'rural zones' by 2022 in order to 'increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science and technology,' according to a Communist Party document.

The aim is to bring to the rural areas the talents of those who would otherwise be attracted to life in the big cities, according to a CYL document quoted in the official Global Times daily Thursday.

Students of the China Young Pioneers, an organisation run by the Communist Youth League, salute during a ceremony held for International Children's Day at Qiyi Primary School on May 31, 2009 in Beijing. The CYL has promised to despatch more than 10 million students to 'rural zones' by 2022 to 'increase their skills, spread civilisation and promote science'

'We need young people to use science and technology to help the countryside innovate its traditional development models,' Zhang Linbin, deputy head of a township in central Hunan Province, told the state-run Global Times.

Students will be called upon to live in the countryside during their summer holidays, although the CYL did not say how young people would be persuaded to volunteer.

Former revolutionary bases, zones suffering from extreme poverty and ethnic minority areas will receive top priority, according to the CYL.

Relations are often fraught between the Han majority, who make up more than 90 percent of the population, and ethnic minorities like the Tibetans and Muslim Uighurs.

A group of Chinese children in uniform in front of a picture of Chairman Mao Zedong holding Mao's 'Little Red Book' during China's Cultural Revolution in 1968

Students and teachers march through Beijing's Tiananmen Square in support of Chairman Mao. They hold placards reading 'Raise High Mao Zedong's Thought and Great Red Flag'. The plan to send students back to villages has raised fears of a return to the methods of Mao

Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily.

Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of 'young intellectuals' into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade.

'Has it started again?' wondered one user named WangTingYu.

'We did that 40 years ago,' wrote Miruirong.

'Sometimes history advances, sometimes it retreats,' noted KalsangWangduTB.

Current President Xi Jinping, known for his nostalgia for the Mao era, himself spent seven years in a village in the poor northern province of Shaanxi from the age of 16.
This is the humiliating moment two British tourists were arrested and forced to sign grovelling apology letters after walking into an embassy and later passing out drunk in a police station.

James Donaghue, 40, and Josh Little, 27, were 'disturbing the peace' in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, at 5am on Wednesday.

They were arrested after the older man, Mr Donaghue, stumbled into the Turkish Embassy while Josh waited outside.

Officers arrested the pair and they were pictured passed out on the tiled floor of a police interview room.

James Donaghue, 40, lies on a tiled floor in a police interview room in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, after getting drunk and stumbling into the Turkish Embassy

Josh Little, 27, rests under a table in the room. The men were arrested after 'disturbing the peace'

Mr Little (left) and Mr Donaghue (right) stand outside Phnow Penh police office's immigration office with their passports after their drunken night on Tuesday through until Wednesday morning

Police made the men sign with their thumb prints two bizarre 'promise' letters in which they agreed to be on their best behaviour while in the country.

Mr Donaghue, a freelance SEO consultant, and Mr Little, a roofer, both from the south east of England, promised to be 'good tourists' in the future or face the country's legal system.

They wrote: 'I will not make any trouble or cause any problems in Cambodia. I will obey the Cambodian law.

Mr Donaghue and Mr Little were made to write a strange apology letter to Cambodia, saying they would not make trouble in the country again

Mr Donaghue's letter (left) and Mr Little's (right) were signed with their thumbprint and said they promised to be 'good tourists' in the future

'I will help Cambodia by being a good tourist every time I visit this wonderful country. In case you need me to come over I am happy to come at any time.'

In a joint letter they both added: 'I am James Donaghue and Josh Little. We would like to apologise for what we have done.

'It was a bad mistake and would like to promise that it will never happen again.'

The men were released without charge but told they would be reprimanded if they broke their promises

Following the police 'promise record' letters - which state that they'll be hauled back before the law if the promises are broken - officers released the men without charge.

Chaktomuk district police police chief Daun Penh said: 'The two foreigners were detained after disturbing residents near the Turkish Embassy.

'Forty-year-old James Donaghue, a British man, then jumped inside the Embassy while his friend, 27-year-old Briton Josh Little stood outside.

'At the time the two men were not coherent and could not explain themselves.

'The Embassy staff were shocked and detained the men and immediately gave them to the local police.'
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon attacked the Pope for criticizing populist movements and sensationally claimed the Catholic Church is on the verge of bankruptcy.

The former Breitbart News chairman, who attended a private Catholic military school, blasted Pope Francis for his comments against populist leaders.

Speaking to MSNBC's Richard Engel, Bannon said: 'He's the administrator of the Church, and he's also a politician.

'This is the problem ... he's constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement.'

While Bannon said he created a 'platform for the alt-right' in Breitbart, Francis has cautioned against the movement, warning two years ago that it could lead to the election of another Adolf Hitler.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has criticized the Pope and sensationally claimed the Catholic Church is on the verge of bankruptcy

Speaking to MSNBC's Richard Engel, Bannon said: 'This is the problem ... he's constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement.'

Bannon, who previously gave a talk about his global nationalist vision via Skype at a conference in the Vatican in 2014, has become highly critical of Francis in recent years.

Many of Francis' positions on topics such as populism, immigration and nationalism in Europe go against former Donald Trump advisor Bannon's ideology.

The 65 year old has praised Trump, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen for their anti-immigration stances, while Francis has called for every country to welcome as many refugees as they can.

In response, Bannon has linked up with several Vatican hardliners, including conservative cardinal Raymond Burke who has supported calls for Francis to step down.

Now Bannon has blasted Francis for 'mismanaging' sex abuse scandals across the globe, and claimed the Catholic Church could go bankrupt.

Bannon, who previously gave a talk about his global nationalist vision via Skype at a conference in the Vatican in 2014, has become highly critical of Francis in recent years

Bannon added: 'The Catholic Church is heading to a financial crisis that will lead to a bankruptcy.

'It could actually bring down, not the theology, not the teachings, not the community of the Catholic church but the physical and financial apparatus of this church.'

Bannon is said to be developing an alt-right compound in Rome with Dignitatis Humanae Institute, reports the Daily Beast.

He previously said it would be 'an academy that brings the best thinkers together' to train 'modern gladiators.'

MSNBC will broadcast Steve Bannon's interview in 'On Assignment with Richard Engel this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.
The British mother arrested in Dubai for branding ex-husband's new wife a 'horse' on Facebook told how she was 'really happy' to be reunited with her daughter Paris after flying back into London early this morning.

Laleh Shahravesh, who'd faced being held in a Dubai jail another week over the post made three years ago in the UK, told Mail Online as she met her crying family upon her arrival into Heathrow: 'I'm just really happy to be reunited with my daughter.

She sobbed with 14-year-old Paris and held her close as she continued: 'I'd like to thank my team in Dubai who helped me a lot and I'd also like to thank my lawyer who did everything in her power to get me my passport back.'

Laleh Shahravesh, wearing dark shades, a black waistcoat over a black-and-white striped top over black trousers, in a tearful embrace with her family this morning at Heathrow

Laleh Shahravesh, (pictured right) who'd faced being held in a Dubai jail another week over the post made three years ago in the UK, told Mail Online as she met her crying family upon her arrival into Heathrow: 'I'm just really happy to be reunited with my daughter'

In tearful scenes the family embraced at Heathrow airport this morning. The single mum-of-one had been arrested when she'd arrived in Dubai a month ago over the country's strict cyber crime laws

Shahravesh sobbed with 14-year-old Paris and held her close and said she was 'really happy' to be reunited with her daughter (pictured right)

The family finally reunited today. Laleh's daughter Paris  who'd been staying with family throughout their ordeal - had earlier described her mum's release as 'the best day of my life'.

Wearing dark shades, a black waistcoat over a black-and-white striped top over black trousers, while shielding her face with her long dark hair and her hands, she held her daughter close and they whispered to each other as they cried.

Ms Shahravesh told the Sunday People: 'The day before I was told I was free to go I'd given up hope. I was suicidal. I felt like I was never going to see my daughter again and sent a message to my sister saying "I can't do this any more".

'I told her, "It's killing me, every day is killing me." I felt so much pain and then I turned off my phone.

'I could see my whole life flashing before my eyes and I just wanted to die. It was torture to me.'

Her family, including one of Lelah's sisters, had stood waiting at the airport terminal barrier for over an hour with flowers awaiting her arrival and had refused to talk to waiting journalists.

The single mum-of-one had been arrested when she'd arrived in Dubai a month ago over the country's strict cyber crime laws. She was eventually released yesterday after paying a 600 fine and getting her passport returned to her.

Her daughter Paris  who'd been staying with family throughout their ordeal - had earlier described her mum's release as 'the best day of my life'.

Laleh Shahravesh, who'd faced being held in a Dubai jail another week over the post made three years ago in the UK in an emotional embrace with her daughter this morning

Laleh Shahravesh lands in the UK with her expectant family awaiting her arrival

Laleh Shahravesh (pictured after being released with a fine) was barely able to speak to her daughter as she sobbed uncontrollably to tell her that she was now a free woman

Paris (pictured) previously said that she plans to celebrate her mother's return by going to eat her favourite food

Laleh Shahravesh, 55, was facing jail over the post made three years ago while living in England, and was seen sobbing outside a Dubai court earlier yesterday before she was eventually released with a 600 fine.

The British legal group Detained in Dubai, which supported Laleh Shahravesh, has written to the FCO calling on them to update UAE travel warnings to UK tourists and warn about online postings.

The organisation's head, Radha Stirling said: 'We have frequently called upon the FCO to provide more accurate information to Britons about the many risks they face in the UAE which the current advisory does not cover.

'A British citizen can be prosecuted if they ever visit the UAE, for posting material online in the UK which anyone inside the UAE may deem offensive.

'It is vital for British citizens to be aware before traveling to the UAE that their entire social media history must adhere to UAE standards of acceptable content before they risk entering the country.

'If anyone in the UAE is offended by someone's online content, even if they do not know that person, and even if that person posted the content in a different country; a criminal case can be made and an arrest warrant issued. It is an enormous threat to free speech well beyond the borders of the UAE.'

Speaking to MailOnline previously, her daughter Paris said that she could not stop crying and screaming with joy after her mother rang to say that she was coming home following the court hearing.

Paris, aged 14, said: 'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It didn't seem real. This is the longest time I have not seen my mum and it's been 30 days of hell. But hearing she is free and coming home is the best day of my life. Nothing beats this.'

Paris revealed that her mother was barely able to speak to her as she sobbed uncontrollably to tell her that she was now a free woman.

Laleh had been arrested on an outstanding warrant on March 3rd when she arrived in Dubai with her daughter. Paris was left to stay with her aunt in Kent.

Paris said: 'My dream has come true. The call from my mum was very emotional. All I've been thinking about these past 30 days is when my mum will come home. Now that it's going to happen, it still doesn't seem real. I have to keep pinching myself.'

Paris added: 'I do everything with my mum. We are incredibly close. We are the best of friends. When I see her I'm going to give her the longest hug ever that will probably last a month to make up for the time we have lost. I'm just going to cover her with kisses and keep telling her how much I love her.'

Paris said that she plans to celebrate her mother's return by going to eat her favourite food.

'Mum loves Iranian food and we'll go to her favourite restaurant. She also likes going to museums so we'll go to as many as we can. I don't think she'll be back until early next week but I'll be at the airport with the rest of the family. We're going to have a big party.'

Paris revealed that she could not have got through the past month without the support of her family. She has been staying with her aunt Ledan in Sheerness, Kent and spending time with her cousin Soraya.

She said: 'When I got the call from mum, the first person I hugged was Soraya. She has been my rock. I was really worried that my mum might go to prison for a long time but Soraya really helped me through it all. I shared everything with her.'

Ms Shavravesh (pictured, left, with her daughter) insulted her ex-husband and his wife (right)

Paris revealed that she has endured a difficult past 18 months, losing both her father and grandfather and dealing with her mother's arrest.

'I feel as if I've matured because I've gone through a lot for a 14 year old. I can't wait for mum to get back and for school to start after the Easter break because I want to get on with my life and put all this behind me.'

A judge earlier ruled that even though her mother Laleh had been convicted, she was free to leave the country and has ordered that her passport be returned.

The 55-year-old, who had earlier collapsed outside court after being told her case was being adjourned for a week, was left virtually speechless by the decision.

Weeping tears of joy she said: 'I am just so happy and relieved that this terrible ordeal is over and I can go home.

'I just want to see my daughter Paris and give her a big hug. I have missed her so much and she has been so brave. I was distraught when told I had to stay.

'This has been the most awful month of my life not knowing what is going to happen and if I will be stuck here and kept apart from Paris.

'As soon as I get passport back I will be on a plane home. I cannot wait.

'The thought of going to prison for something that happened three years ago while I was not even in Dubai was unthinkable.'

The single mother, who wrote insulting Facebook posts about her husband's ex wife, was convicted of a misdemeanour under Dubai's cyber crime laws.

Shahravesh was earlier inconsolable when she thought she could not go home. So much so that she missed the call from her lawyer telling her she was now free.

Speaking exclusively to Mail Online at her Dubai hotel she said: 'When I got back from the court I was distraught and just collapsed crying.

'I turned my phone off for a couple of hours and no one could get hold of me. When I turned it back on there was a message from my lawyer telling me to call.

He told me I was free to go. I just burst into tears. I was in shock and could not believe it. My mind was all over the place and so many emotions.'

The British mother (pictured outside court) broke down when she thought she was facing jail. But she has now been released with a 600 fine, and landed back in the UK to be reunited with her family this morning

Laleh said she telephoned her daughter Paris and broke down in tears as she broke the news that they will soon be reunited.

'We were both in tears, and I cannot wait to see her,' she said.

'I just want to get back home as quickly as possible. My mind is spinning over what has happened. I really thought I would be stuck here another week or even longer, and now I can go.'

Officials do not believe they can get her passport returned before Friday when all Government offices are closed.

Judge Mohamed Mustafa Ibrahim Khalil fined her 3,000 Dh  about 600  and said she was free to leave the country.

The fine is seen as a symbolic amount. Shahravesh's lawyer is understood to have already paid it in full.

Her lawyer Michel Chalhoub had earlier asked for the case to be resolved speedily and the judge said he would make a decision later.

The campaign group Detained in Dubai, who supported her during the month she was held, welcomed the court's decision.

CEO Radha Stirling said: 'We are elated that Laleh will be allowed to return home to be reunited with her daughter Paris; but serious concerns remain regarding the many risks for foreigners in the UAE.

'When cases like this are resolved either through the charges being dropped or through a governmental pardon, or a light sentence after a concerted campaign in the international media, while the situation for the individual victim is over, the system that caused that victimisation remains in place, and abuse is inevitably going to occur again.'

Ms Stirling said Dubai's cybercrime laws were far too draconian and punished freedom of speech on the internet.

She added: 'We maintain that the case against Laleh should have been dismissed at the outset, and while we are immensely pleased that her nightmare is over, nevertheless, her conviction on such an absurd case does set a dangerous precedent.'

Last night, the single mother's daughter Paris, speaking back in the UK, had spoken of her hope that the case would be dropped, adding: 'Every day I come home and I just cry.'

Her mother was at the time facing being held in the UAE for another week before any decision was taken over her fate by breaking the country's strict cyber crime laws.

Her passport was confiscated and she would have been forced to continue staying in a hotel while on bail.

After recovering from the shock Laleh told MailOnline at the time: 'I just feel so sick and don't know how I am going to cope with more time here.

'I really had hoped that the case would be dropped and I could go home to my daughter Paris.

'I know she is going to be devastated like me when she finds out. I'm not sure how we will both cope being apart.'

As Laleh was helped into a taxi sobbing she cried out 'I'm going to die'.

She was so upset that a local woman who had been attending court and never met her before walked her to a taxi. The bystander said: 'She was in a terrible state and I just had to help her.'

During a short hearing Ms Shahravesh was told that a lawyer representing the woman who has filed a cyber crime complaint wanted more time to study the case and asked for a delay.

The lawyer representing Samar Al Hammadi told the court she is new to the case and needs time to study the complaint file.

The judge said he would make a decision later but after Ms Shahravesh's lawyer told her it will be a week she collapsed in tears.

Laleh had been charged with insulting behaviour over a three-year-old Facebook post where she called her late husband's second wife a 'horse'.

Ms Shahravesh (pictured outside court today) collapsed as she was told she could be held for another week

She is the first Briton to be charged under the UAE's cyber crime laws that make it criminal offence to write defamatory and insulting words and post them on social media.

In keeping with Sharia Law, Ms Shahravesh sat on one side of the court with other women while her lawyer sat on the opposite side with the men.

After being told that the delay could be up to a week she began sobbing and her lawyer said: 'I told you this was going to happen.'

Laleh fled the court and was offered a bottle of water outside but was sobbing so much was unable to drink.

Court officials called for a wheelchair and she was taken to a side room used by lawyers.

It was only about 20 minutes after the case had ended that she emerged shaking and weeping as she was ushered to a waiting taxi.

She has been staying at a city centre hotel since being arrested and has run up bills of over 5,000 on lawyer fees and her hotel bill.

Al Hammadi was not in court for the hearing that lasted less than five minutes. Ms Shahravesh's Michael Haloub told the court the case should be resolved quickly as it was attracting international attention

He told the judge the two women should meet for settlement.

The judge had said he would make a decision later today but Laleh fled the courtroom in tears after being told the adjournment would most likely be a week.

She stood weeping on the steps of the courtroom being comforted by local women.

Al Hammadi had claimed she was the victim of a hate campaign waged over email and social media by Ms Shahravesh.

She first complained to police about a post written in October 2016 on Ms Shahravesh's own Facebook page where she was described as a horse.

Ms Shahravesh had no idea about the complaint and was arrested on an outstanding warrant on March 3rd when she arrived in Dubai with her 14-year-old daughter Paris.

They had travelled from their home in Richmond, south-west London, after her ex-husband Pedro collapsed and died from a heart attack aged 51.

Speaking to ITV on Wednesday, Paris said: It's incredibly difficult. Every day I come home and I just cry. Neither of us deserves this, we had to deal with losing my dad; all we wanted to do was say goodbye.

'We weren't even allowed to go to his funeral. I don't think that's asking too much.'

'Everyday I feel so empty without you': Daughter of British mother facing jail writes of her sadness I miss you mamaso, so muchand everyday I feel so empty without you. Exhale a breath to relieve life's dismay. Feel the stars burn far away. A dandelion sits in my heart, it falters between my valves. A derelict stream of pain sparks through the circuits of my memory as I gather events like electric shocks. Parachutes cling to their embroidered stem, but they release their hold as they pound into the revolving atmosphere. Advertisement

Appealing to Al Hammadi to drop the case, Paris added: 'Show that you have a heart and that you loved my dad.

'Every day feels a little harder. I've never been without my mum for so long. I hadn't seen my dad for a while before he passed away and it just feels like my life is repeating itself.

'It's incredibly difficult, she's like my rock. She's who I lean on, she means a lot to me, more than anything.'

Even though the insulting Facebook post was written while Ms Shahravesh was living in the UK the UAE's cyber crime laws meant that as the 'victim' was in Dubai a prosecution could be brought.

Her passport was seized and she was warned that if the case went to trial it could be several months before a date was set for a hearing. If convicted she could have been jailed for two years and fined 50,000.

Paris was informed of today's adjournment by her aunt Ledan Perry, who she is staying with at her home in Sheerness, Kent.

'Paris is absolutely devastated. She cannot even speak at this moment, she's so upset,' she said 'She's more worried now than ever that her mother could end up in jail. She's not able to sleep, she's constantly crying and this adjournment has just made things worse. Paris is under an enormous amount of pressure and anxiety.

'Paris has lost her father, she's not been able to mourn him properly. And now she's worried sick about her mum, which is going to go on for at least another week if not longer. Its heartbreaking that a 14 year old child is having to go through this.'

Ms Perry said that Paris has been spending a lot of time with her 12-year-old daughter Soraya and writing poetry to cope with her ordeal.

She said: 'Laleh's situation has affected the whole family but obviously, Paris the most. She hasn't seen her mum for almost a month. We really hoped the matter would have been resolved today but our pain is continuing.'

Ms Shahravesh claim that the case is being prolonged because of financial matters, accusing her ex-husbands new wife of trying to claim a greater share of his estate.

Ms Perry said: 'Under Sharia law the bulk of a father's estate goes to the children. Paris is an only child and stands to get the most from what her father left. His new wife wants more. That's what this is all about.'

The British mother (pictured) previously broke down over the ordeal. After recovering from the shock Laleh told MailOnline: 'I just feel so sick and don't know how I am going to cope with more time here'

The family claim that Ms Shahravesh has already spent around 15,000 on legal costs and her stay in Dubai but have so far raised only 1000 through go fund me.

Ms Perry said: 'Laleh desperately needs financial support. She could end up losing her flat. We need the British public to get behind her and contribute to her case. We really need their help because my sister and her daughter are suffering, not just emotionally but also financially.'

Samar Al Hammadi told Mail Online she did not attend court as she was working.

Asked if she wanted to reach a settlement with Laleh she said: 'I have not even talked to my lawyer. I have to find out what was said in court.'

Her husband is believed to have converted to the Muslim faith for his marriage three years ago.

Under Sharia Law the estate of her late husband Pedro will be shared between her and his surviving relatives, with his teenage daughter getting the biggest share.

Legal sources in Dubai said it was likely Samar will seek compensation from Laleh over the insulting posts.

In her statement to police she is understood to have mentioned being compensated. The amount that is paid could vary from 3,000 to 5,000.

Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai, who is representing Laleh, said: 'It appears that the complainant may be prolonging the process; making it all the more torturous for Laleh and her daughter.

'There have been ever changing signals by Ms Hammadi since this debacle began; once saying she would withdraw the complaint out of respect for her late husband's love for his daughter; then saying she would drop the charges if Laleh apologised; and the latest reports are that she is seeking monetary compensation.

Now, she has brought in a new lawyer and caused a further delay. It is frankly shocking that the court is allowing this frivolous use of the Cybercrime laws instead of dismissing the case outright.

'There is no public endangerment here, no hate speech, no incitement to violence, no threat; the complainant had the remedy available to everyone else who uses social media and takes offence at someone's remarks: block and delete.

'It is patently absurd to escalate such a trivial matter to criminal charges, and the court should use this case as an opportunity to clarify that the Cybercrime laws were not enacted to criminalise the pain of a newly divorced mother who has been financially abandoned.

'Rather than leaving Laleh's fate in the hands of Ms Hammadi, the court should dismiss the case on its merits, and let her go home to her daughter.'

If you have been affected by this story, call The Samaritans at any time, from any phone for FREE. Call 116 123.
Lizzie Gillespie (pictured), 30, is said to have been filmed raped shortly before she died in Thurso, in the Scottish Highlands, in 2017

Two mothers have both died after they were allegedly raped and filmed by the same man in similar sex attacks in the same Scottish town.

Lizzie Gillespie, 30, is said to have been filmed as she was plied with pills, raped and left 'foaming at the mouth' shortly before she died in Thurso, in the Scottish Highlands, in 2017.

Jenna Johnson, 27, took her own life in the same town on New Year's Day this year after she was drugged, raped and threatened, relatives have claimed.

It is believed the Ms Johnson died after fearing a video of the attack would be circulated - after she woke on December 23 to find herself covered in bruises, scratches and needle marks.

She claimed she had been seriously sexually assaulted by one man and raped by another, with the two having told her they would publish the video and this would lead to her losing her children.

It is now claimed that the same man was allegedly involved in the assaults of both Ms Gillespie and Ms Johnson in Thurso, according to the Daily Record.

One man, who wished to remain anonymous, says he was friends with both women and claims he was 'sickened' after viewing a video of an attack on Ms Gillespie.

He told the Daily Record the footage showed men stripping her, 'putting pills in her mouth and laughing at her'.

Jenna Johnson, 27, took her own life on New Year's Day in the same town after she was drugged, raped and threatened, relatives have claimed

One man, who wished to remain anonymous, says he was friends with both women and claims he was was 'sickened' after viewing a video of an attack on Ms Gillespie (pictured)

He told the publication: 'It's also known they robbed her. Lizzie was prone to fits and I've been told they left her foaming at the mouth and went to the pub where they spent the money they took from her.

'They didn't call for help and in the morning she was found dead.'

It is also claimed one of the men involved in the attack of both women is believed to have killed Stefan Sutherland, 25, who was found dead on a beach after a night out in 2013.

The other accomplice is believed to have since died.

Ms Johnson was found dead at her home after failing to arrive at her mother's house for lunch with her family this year.

One of the men Ms Johnson accused is also suspected locally to have killed Stefan Sutherland (right, with his father Sandy), 25, who was found dead on a beach after a night out in 2013

Ms Johnson took her own life on January 1 and the apparent video footage was never released.

Her body was forensically examined in Glasgow after she died, but tests were inconclusive over any sexual assault or rape because so much time had elapsed.

Ms Gillespie was found dead at home on June 18, 2017 in Thurso.

A spokesman for Police Scotland said there are no suspicious circumstances around the deaths of Ms Gillespie and Ms Johnson.

For confidential support, log on to samaritans.org or call the Samaritans on 116123.
A five-year-old girl was allegedly raped and killed by a man who was then dragged into the streets and hospitalised after being thrashed by incensed locals in a town in eastern India.

Gruesome footage shows the suspect with his hands tied behind his back and being kicked and punched by an angry mob in Jatni in the Odisha province.

He is said to have lured a girl to a secluded spot on Thursday night before raping and killing her.

The suspected rapist and killer during the beating from incensed locals in Jatni, eastern India

The age of the alleged rapist is unknown but reports in India have described him as 'a youth'.

The parents of the victim were alerted to her disappearance when she didn't return home for hours after heading off to fetch onions from a relative's house nearby, one report suggests.

The worried family called police and after they searched the area, they found the girl's body wrapped in a blood-soaked cloth.

After the alleged attacker was brought to hospital, locals staged a protest for harsh repercussions for him. Police stepped up patrols as Jatni residents created road blockades

People from the town of Jatni congregate outside the local police station after the attack

She was rushed to hospital but declared dead on arrival, according to local reports.

The alleged perpetrator was also rushed to hospital in nearby Cuttack city by police after locals thrashed him mercilessly.

It is understood the alleged killer is in a critical condition in CB Medical College and Hospital in Cuttack.

Soon after, locals staged a protest calling for tough reprisals on the alleged attacker.

They blocked roads in the area with flaming tires, extra police have been deployed to pacify the situation.
A chef who forced a Ryanair flight to turn around by refusing to sit down or put on his seat belt after bingeing on 10 pints of lager has been fined 500.

Stuart Leith, 28, from Frodsham in Cheshire, boarded a flight from Manchester Airport in a drunken state on March 7 to enjoy a stag do in Tenerife.

But before the flight had left the ground, Leith refused to sit down or put on his seat belt during the routine safety announcement to passengers.

Chef Stuart Leith, 28, boarded a Ryanair flight for a stag do in Tenerife after drinking 10 pints of lager and forced the plane to turn around before it had taken off by refusing to put on his seat belt or sit down. He has been fined 500 after pleading guilty to being drunk on an aircraft

When cabin crew realised he was intoxicated, the flight was turned around and Leith was arrested.

He appeared at Manchester Magistrates Court yesterday after pleading guilty to being drunk on board an aircraft.

Leith, who lists a former head chef position at Brighton pub the Windmill on his Facebook page, admitted to having guzzled more than a gallon of lager before boarding the flight.

He expressed regret for his actions, with his lawyer Jane Shaw saying he had made a 'stupid mistake'.

Despite his behaviour, police escorted him back to the airport so that he could board another Ryanair flight to Tenerife to join his fellow revellers.

Prosecuting, Rachael Yarwood said: 'This offence dates back to March 7 on board a Ryanair flight to Tenerife.

But before the flight from Manchester Airport (pictured) had left the ground, Leith refused to sit down or put on his seat belt during the routine safety announcement to passengers

'As the flight embarked at 5pm, the crew were trying to give a safety announcement.

'The defendant refused to listen and sit down. Because of his intoxicated state, the flight turned around on the ground and the defendant was arrested.

'In interview, he said he didn't remember much of what happened.

'He said he had about 10 pints of lager before getting on the plane - he said that he drank before he got to the airport and had about five drinks at the airport bar.

'He said that he regrets the disruption that he caused to the passengers because the flight had to turn around.

'It was around 20 minutes later he was arrested after the plane docked up.

Leith, from Frodham,Cheshire, says on his Facebook page that he is a junior sous chef at Edgar House, a luxury hotel in Chester. Leith was arrested after his antics on the March 7 flight but was escorted by a police officer back to the airport the next day to board another flight to Tenerife

'He has two previous convictions for three offences, but none are relevant to this one.'

His defence lawyer, Jane Shaw, said: 'He has pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity and he has made full and frank admissions.

'He has made a stupid mistake.

'He is mortified with what has happened, and he is embarrassed and remorseful.

'He works as a chef and he is a roaming chef between three restaurants. He tells me that he works 40-60 hours a week and that is very tiring for him.

Leith, pictured leaving Manchester Magistrates Court yesterday, was 'mortified' by his actions, defence lawyer Jane Shaw said as he was ordered to pay 135 in court costs

'He explained to me that it's a one-off and when he was released, the police officer took him back to the airport the next day to fly back on the holiday.

'So, it's not serious enough that Ryanair, who have discretion to refuse anybody back on a flight, let him back on.'

As well as his 500 fine, Leith was made to pay 135 in court costs.
This is the terrifying moment a dust devil trapped a man in its powerful vortex and spun him around as he strolled through a popular skatepark.

Security camera footage shows him entering Allan Witt Park in Fairfield, California, on Tuesday. Several other people are stood chatting nearby.

Suddenly, the mini tornado strikes, right where the man is standing - at which point he is forcibly rotated.

As the dust devil gathers force, debris and dust blow all over the place, including strips of roofing from a nearby concession stand, as the unidentified man desperately tries to avoid being hit.

The unidentified man is hit by the dust devil while walking in Allan Witt Park in Fairfield, California, on Tuesday

While others rush for shelter (seen left, by building), the man struggles as debris is sent flying all around him, including strips of roofing from the nearby concession stand

No one was injured in the incident, which lasted around 90 seconds, according to City of Fairfield authorities

While everyone else seeks shelter, he is blasted to the side of the building, where he tries and fails to retrieve someone's backpack, which shoots past him.

Among those seen running for cover was Orlando Rosario, who told NBC: 'All of a sudden, everything started coming off the roof and flying everywhere.'

No one was injured in the incident, which lasted around 90 seconds, according to City of Fairfield authorities.

The phenomenon is known as a dust devil because in many countries around the world they were thought to be bad spirits

Drew Peterson, from the National Weather Service in Monterey, said: 'You see a lot of dust devils in Las Vegas. I saw them on a recent drive down to Southern California,' SF Gate reported.

He added that the phenomenon on Tuesday was probably triggered by a combination of the sun baking the asphalt at the park, a high-pressure spot, and winds moving in different directions.

'There may have been lower-levels winds going in one direction and high-levels winds moving in another direction. It's like a pin wheel being hit on the side,' Peterson said.
A 20-year-old girl who is raising her five siblings after her parents both died of cancer has been given a new car by kind-hearted donors.

Samantha Rodriguez and her five siblings from Orlando, Florida, lost their mother Lisa to cervical cancer and three years later their father Alexander died on April 15, 2016, after battling Lymphoma.

Samantha's grandmother has been helping her care for Milagro, 15, Brenda, 14, Michael, 13, Bella, eight, and Destiny, seven, while Samantha works as a server at Disney Springs at Disney World.

The 20-year-old has been struggling to cope and has had to rely on rides from friends or riding the bus to get the work, run errands and ferry the children around.

But a generous group of anonymous donors decided to step in and help - gifting Samantha a brand new Nissan to help her cope with day-to-day life.

Samantha posing next to the brand new Nissan Versa with her five siblings after the keys were handed over

A viral video posted online by the Orange County Sheriff's Office showed Samantha's elation as she was presented with the car by officers yesterday.

The 20-year-old said: 'Wow, I'm in shock, guys.

'Thank you guys so much, you don't know how much this means to us and it is such a big help.

'Doing everything on my own is very hard but I am so glad to have people like you guys in my life.'

Since news of Samantha's dedication to her siblings broke, well-wishers from across the US have indicated a desire to donate money to help her.

And in the aftermath of her receiving the car, the Orange County Sheriff's Office Aviation Unit have also set up a GoFundMe page for Samantha.

Samantha Rodriguez's parents Lisa and Alexander are seen above. Both have died from cancer leaving behind their six children

A heartbreaking photo shared to Facebook shows Lisa in the hospital with Alex

Officers from the Orange County Sheriff's Office became inspired to help her after hearing Samantha's story

A post on the page reads: 'When the community heard about the family's loss, they stepped up in an amazing way and several anonymous donors came together and bought Samantha a car in April 2019.

'Receiving the car has changed their lives. But there is still a long road ahead for this family.

'Samantha works as a server at a restaurant, and would love to be able to someday put a down payment on a house for her and her siblings, take some college classes, and even save for the kids' education.

'We've created this GoFundMe account because so many generous people from across the country have reached out wanting to help. Your kindness, generosity and well wishes continue to be such a blessing to the Rodriguez kids.'

It has raised more than $9,000 Friday.

Samantha has graduated high school and hopes to continue her education at Valencia College in Florida, according to Yahoo.

'Now that we have a car, we can go to church on Sundays like we used to. And the kids have already asked to go to the park. The possibilities are endless,' Samantha said.

In a video posted on the Orange County Sheriff's Office's social media accounts, the children can be seen smiling as they play around in their brand new car

Since news of Samantha's dedication to her siblings broke, well-wishers from across the US have indicated a desire to donate money to help her. She is seen above with one of her siblings

According to Samantha, after her parents died her siblings were in danger of heading into the state's foster care system.

'I knew what I had to do,' Rodriquez told CNN, 'I learned so much from my mom. I was like her sidekick. I learned what it meant to raise a family.'

She moved with her siblings to Orange County, Florida, because their grandmother lived there.

But resources were scarce and Rodriquez had to grow up fast.

'It can be tough knowing when to be like a parent and when to be their sister,' she said. 'Sometimes it can feel like I'm alone.'

The family first caught the public's attention in December when the Orange County Sheriff's Office surprised the family with Christmas gifts after hearing of their plight.

Samantha's brother Jesus Rodriguez shared this photo with his mom. He wrote: 'Family is everything. My mom might be gone but her memory will be alive forever'
A software developer has been arrested in Ecuador over an alleged plot with Julian Assange to blackmail the country's president.

Swedish national Ola Bini was detained yesterday at Quito airport as he was preparing to board a flight for Japan, according to a senior Ecuadorian official.

Authorities have not charged Bini but said they are looking into whether he was part of a possible effort by Assange and Wikileaks to blackmail President Lenin Moreno.

Swedish national Ola Bini (pictured) was arrested at Quito airport yesterday trying to leave Ecuador for Japan

It comes after Assange spent his first night in custody after being convicted of breaching bail following a dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge, London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

He is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer which, on conviction, could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice.

Ecuadors interior minister Maria Paula Romo confirmed a person had been arrested for allegedly conspiring against the country's government.

Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday

Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday after being arrested by officers from his home in the Ecuador embassy, Knightsbridge

This graphic shows how Assange's dramatic arrest unfolded at the Ecuadorian Embassy

Ms Romo told CNN's Spanish service: 'We have information on how WikiLeaks would have intervened in domestic politics.

'Today a collaborator close to Julian Assange was arrested for investigative purposes. He has been living in Ecuador and was preparing to travel to Japan.'

But friends of Bini rubbished the idea he was involved in any conspiracy with Assange - describing him as a soft-spoken geek.

Vijay Prashad, who runs a Marxist publishing house based in India, is a close friend of Bini.

Indian Marxist intelectual Vijay Prashad said he is a friend of Bini but claimed the Swedish national would never be involved in a conspiracy

He said Bini is 'the last person who would ever be involved in an attempt overthrow a government.'

Mr Prashad said he last saw Bini a few months ago in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

He said he did not know if Bini had any links to Wikileaks or Assange, adding his work as a privacy advocate are being unfairly linked by the Ecuadorians with criminal activity.

British software developer Martin Fowler said he was 'very concerned to hear that my friend and colleague @olabini has been arrested in Ecuador'.

A tweet posted under the username @olabini on yesterday referred to a press conference given by Ms Paula Romo in which she claimed there were 'Russian hackers in Ecuador'.

'Very worrisome news - this seems like a witch hunt to me,' said another tweet on the account.

WikiLeaks accused Ecuador of acting illegally in terminating Assange's political asylum 'in violation of international law' yesterday.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (pictured in 2013) came under intense scrutiny after the website began releasing hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables

The Ecuadorian government had historically been sympathetic to Assange's cause but a regime change two years ago became less favourable.

The country's ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said in the time Assange had remained in the embassy he had been disrespectful, 'continually a problem' and interfered in elections, politics and the internal affairs of other countries.

Mr Marchan added: 'He has said we were spying on him, he has said we were lying, we were agents of the United States.'

But WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said Assange had been thrown 'overboard' by Ecuador.

He added: 'I thought it was horrible to treat an individual like that. I thought it was disgraceful the Ecuadorians would go back on their word.'

The US accuses Assange of assisting Chelsea Manning, a former US intelligence analyst, in breaking a password that helped her infiltrate Pentagon computers.

Mr Hrafnsson said a Grand Jury investigation included charges which could lead to decades in prison or even the death penalty under the Espionage Act 1917.

He said: 'We believe this indictment presented in the extradition request is only a part of the story - that there will be more later, that will be added on, more charges.'

Ecuador's president Moreno said the UK Government had given him a written assurance that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.

Assange lived mostly off takeaway food in the embassy where he resided, swapping restaurants as feared he was going to be poisoned.

Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan told the Daily Telegraph: 'We don't extradite anybody to a country where they might face the death penalty without that routine assurance. We restated our policy.'

As an Australian citizen, Assange will have the country's consular assistance available to him but will not get 'special treatment', Prime Minister Scott Morrison said.

'He will get the same treatment as everyone else, he will get the same support as everyone else,' he told ABC News.

Assange is pictured here at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2015 with the Reverend Jesse Jackson

The police bill? 13m and counting... Scotland Yard has given the figure of 13.2million as the cost of guarding the Ecuadorian embassy while Assange was inside  but the true figure is likely to be far higher. Uniformed officers were permanently stationed outside the embassy in Kensington, west London, from when the WikiLeaks founder arrived in June 2012 until October 2015. At this point, the permanent deployment was stood down as police deemed it was no longer proportionate. Under Freedom of Information laws, the Metropolitan Police has revealed that it cost at least 13.2million to guard the embassy from 2012 to 2015. It said 7.2million had been incurred in police pay, 3.8million in overtime and 2.2million in admin overheads and costs to supporting departments. Scotland Yard has refused to reveal costs incurred after 2015 for undercover officers and other surveillance. It argued the release of such information would cause operational harm. It also said it would allow extremists to gauge the level of policing deployed to a specific site and adversely affect relations with Ecuador. Last night the Metropolitan Police said it was looking into whether it could provide an updated figure. Advertisement

While Prime Minister Theresa May and a number of ministers welcomed the arrest, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the Government to oppose extradition.

He tweeted: 'The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.'

Assange, with grey hair tied into a pony tail and sporting a long beard, appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court where a judge accused him of behaving like a 'narcissist' and advised him to 'get over to the US' and 'get on with your life'.

He spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he sought political asylum in 2012 when he failed in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations, one of rape and one of molestation.

In May 2017, Sweden's top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest yesterday prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

She told The Times she was 'surprised and saddened' Mr Assange would be handed over to the US.

'For me this was never about anything else than his misconduct against me/women and his refusal to take responsibility for this.

'Too bad my case could never be investigated properly, but the arrest will not change this, the case has already been closed.'

Prosecutors in Sweden have since confirmed that while the investigation has not been resumed, they are looking into the case.
Jack Eaves, 19, leaving Minshull street crown court in Manchester where he received an 18 month suspended sentence for having sex with an underage girl

A young man who pressured a schoolgirl into having sex with him before telling her to keep their relationship a secret has been spared jail - after a court heard he would 'sulk' for not getting his own way with her.

Jack Eaves, now aged 19, had met the 13-year-old through Facebook before adding her on Snapchat, and the pair quickly became close.

On numerous occasions, Eaves pressured the girl into sexual activity.

A court heard that Eaves, of Manchester, would go into a 'sulk' if he didn't get his own way with the schoolgirl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, who was said to be feeling like she was being 'emotionally manipulated' by him.

Eaves was said to have taken the girl to secluded areas such as a cemetery to have sex with her, but then bragged to acquaintances about the intercourse.

At Manchester's Minshull Street Crown Court yesterday, Eaves admitted to sexual activity with a child, attempted sexual activity, inciting a child to have sexual activity and sexual intercourse with a child.

Eaves was sentenced to 18 months in custody in a young offenders institution, suspended for two years with a number of conditions.

The offences began when Eaves was 17-years-old and the victim was just 13.

Prosecutor Justin Hayhoe said: 'The offences came to light in 2017 after having a discussion with her mother and her aunt, there had been some talk about engaging in sex with an older person.

The offences began when Eaves was 17-years-old and the victim was just 13

'Her mother informed the police, who went to the home address and interviewed the victim. The defendant was arrested following that interview.

'She would say that she and the defendant had become friends on Facebook. The contact began around the start of 2017 and by March, she had confided in her friends that she was in a relationship.

'They engaged in sexual activity, she says that he was flattering to her, suggesting that she was more mature than she actually was, and so the frequency increased.

'She was aware of his age, he knew that she was younger and he told her to keep their relationship a secret. He had been involved in a relationship previously with another child under 16. The defendant was fully aware of what he was doing.

'He used that as a reason for her to keep their relationship secret, as he knew that what he was doing was illegal.

'The defendant suggested they should meet up, she was of the view nothing sexual was going to take place. What he was doing was gaining her trust, and then invited her to meet him.

'He was keen to say that their relationship should remain secret. He had be warned previously by police that he shouldn't have any contact with underage children.

'Because their messages were on Snapchat they could not be recovered by police, he perhaps would have known that and that that is why he used Snapchat.

'She says that there was a degree of emotional manipulation by him, she describes how he would go into a bit of a mood until he got his own way.

'She did agree to meet him, there were others present. They left the others and they walked towards a school and she was alone with him.

Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester where Eaves received an 18 month suspended sentence for having sex with a 13-year-old girl

'He seemed to be fully familiar with it, she was taken by him to a pathway which was sheltered from the view of others.

'He asked her if she wanted to do it and she was unsure, he asked her to engage in sexual activity, at that stage he became moody, he was trying to manipulate her, then he began to walk away from her.

'She did agree to engage, of course he would know what he was doing was illegal.

'She said that she was in a lot of pain and she began to bleed. She told the defendant that she couldn't have sex and she didn't want to continue and he did stop. He walked her home.

'He assured her that being her first time it was bound to hurt. She confided with one of her cousins about that incident. She told her she was in love with the older male.

'They met again at random locations such as the local cemetery. He appeared to be familiar with these locations as they offered a degree of seclusion. She was telling her mother she was going to meet her cousin during those meetings. There was touching and hugging, this was the defendant building trust in her, not wishing to push too far.

'They met near to B&Q in Bury. They went up to a secluded area, he encouraged her to have sexual intercourse.

'He didn't wear a condom and withdrew. Afterwards she realised what had gone wrong, that she was wrong to agree to it.

'She told officers she had been a virgin and had not had sexual intercourse before.

'She described how the defendant began to brag, the defendant became quite annoying as they walked home. He again asked her not to to talk about their relationship, if they broke up they shouldn't tell anyone what had taken place.

'As soon as he had sexual intercourse with her, he seemed to lose interest which left her feeling betrayed. When the defendant was interviewed he chose not to comment.'

Eaves was said to have genuine remorse and was described to be a 'very immature man with a few friends' at the time of the incident.

In mitigation, his defence lawyer Adam Lodge said: 'His guilty pleas, good character, remorse which is genuine are his strongest mitigation.

'He accepted that it is wrong. There was a significant delay that has been facing this case, he was interviewed in July 2017, the delay has had a significant impact on him.

'This is somebody who has stepped back and reflected. The delay has, in some respects, benefited him.

'He is very different than he was, he is a very immature young man with only a few friends. This was a person who was immature then not a mature adult.

UK age of consent laws The age of consent (the legal age to have sex) in the UK is 16 years old.

Anyone under the age of 13 can never legally give consent.

Anyone who engages in any sexual activity with a child who is 12 or younger is breaking the law

Sexual activity with a child who is under 13 should always result in a child protection referral.

The law gives extra protection to young people who are over the age of consent but under 18. It is illegal: To take, show or distribute indecent photographs of a child (often called sexting)

To pay for or arrange sexual services of a child

for a person in a position of trust (for example teachers or care workers) to engage in sexual activity with anyone under the age of 18 who is in the care of their organisation The Sexual Offences Act 2003 applies in England and Wales, with some sections applying in Northern Ireland and Scotland. It gives more information about specific offences and the related penalties. Source: NSPCC Advertisement

'He has a deep understanding of his dysfunctional thinking, he is in work, he has taken a step back, he has reflected on his behaviour and the impact it has had on him and the victim.

'Allow him to continue to reflect upon his behaviour, there is prospect of unpaid work'.

Sentencing him, Judge Mark Savill said: 'You are 19 years of age, your sexual offending occurred when you were 17 and it is nearly 3 years since that came to the attention of the authorities.

'These offences relate to a relationship that was consensual in the eyes of the law between both you and the victim who at the time was 13.

'Count 1 is penetrating the vagina with your finger, count two she masturbated your penis, count three you attempted sexual intercourse and count four actually having sexual intercourse.

'This was a consensual relationship, but I do reach the conclusion that there was an unhealthy degree of pressure on her. She was significantly younger than you, she no doubt wanted to please you and remain in a relationship.

'When you didn't get your way, you went into a sulk which caused her to feel a degree of pressure.

'The offences came to light when she told her family. You were interviewed by the police and made no comment, you have entered your pleas at the age of 18.

'You are of good character, you have a stable home life, you have a good work record, you are exposed to unpleasant events as a child but don't suffer from addiction to drink or drugs, or have very significant debts.

'You are an individual with a low level of maturity. I have referred to the degree of pressure and unpleasant bragging, and telling the victim your relationship should remain secret.

'There was not an abuse of trust or grooming, as well as the fact that there were a number of sexual activities on a number of occasions. You are of good character and you then have to be given allowance, you were immature at the time and you had had an unstable upbringing.

'There is a strong prospect of your rehabilitation and you are in employment.

'You need to understand that you are fortunate and you have been playing with fire, if you are ever foolish enough to engage in these activities again you know what will happen to you'.

Eaves was also ordered to complete 150 hours of unpaid work, he was placed on an electronic curfew for three months and ordered to complete 25 days of rehabilitation activity requirements.

He must also sign onto the Sex Offences Register for a period of 10 years.
Brunei's foreign minister has defended the country's new Sharia laws that could see gay people stoned to death.

Dato Erywan said in a letter to the UN that the law 'focuses more on prevention than punishment' and will 'safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage'.

It comes after the UN condemned the laws as 'cruel and inhuman' and human rights campaigners protested outside properties around the globe linked to Brunei's sultan.

Dato Erywan, Brunei's foreign minister, has defended the country's new Sharia laws, saying they are aimed at protecting 'the sanctity of family lineage and marriage'

It comes after the UN described the laws as 'cruel and inhuman' and protesters gathered outside hotels owned by Brunei's sultan (pictured, outside London's Dorchester)

Mr Erywan said the evidence needed in death penalty cases would have to be high, implying that it would be rarely used.

'Its aim is to educate, deter, rehabilitate and nurture rather than to punish,' he said.

The capital penalty will also be imposed for blasphemy or heresy against Islam.

Those caught engaging in lesbian sex will be punished by forty lashes, while thieves will have their right hand chopped off. Repeat offenders will then lose a foot.

Oxford university is also reconsidering its decision to award an honorary degree to the Sultan following the new laws

London's Dorchester hotel, which is ultimately owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, has been the focus of protests since the law was announced last month.

The country also owns 45 Park Lane as well as Coworth Park, both in the UK, as well as the the Bel-Air and the Beverly Hills hotels in Los Angeles.

George Clooney, Sir Elton John and the American comedienne Ellen DeGeneres are among celebrities who announced they would no longer stay at any of the hotels in the Sultan's collection.

Last Saturday, protesters broke through a barricade outside the Dorchester Hotel to rally against the Sultan of Brunei and his new LGBT laws.

Around 500 people turned out to take part in the protest in Park Lane, central London, after the Sultan announced the change in law last week.

The gathering, led by human rights activist Peter Tatchell, saw many of the protesters carrying placards and banners calling for homophobia to be stamped out, as well as rainbow flags.

Roughly translated Sharia means 'the way', and is a set of rules interpreted from Islamic religious texts governing how Muslims live their lives.

George Clooney, Sir Elton John and the comedienne Ellen DeGeneres have also agreed to boycott hotels in Los Angeles owned by Brunei (pictured, protesters at the Dorchester)

It is divided into four sections, one of which deals with criminal punishment, with the rest dealing with family matters, prayer, and business dealings.

The criminal section is the one most commonly associated with Sharia, and contains punishments such as removing of hands from thieves and the death penalty for homosexuals.

Sharia criminal law is highly controversial throughout the Muslim world, and is hotly debated among politicians, religious leaders, and scholars.

As a result of this debate, most Muslim nations do not enforce these laws, instead relying on aspects of British or French law which were imported during the colonial period.
Neil Grinnall, of Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset, saw red when told his hand luggage was too heavy and he would have to remove items to be allowed on a flight to Spain

A millionaire property developer said he 'deserved more courtesy' because he was rich after he launched a foul-mouthed tirade at airport check-in staff, a court heard.

Neil Grinnall, of Sandbanks, Poole, Dorset, saw red when told his hand luggage was too heavy and he would have to remove items to be allowed on a flight to Spain.

The jet-setting businessman began to shout and swear at Catia Figueira and Michelle Gillingham, calling them both 'f*****g fat b*****s'.

He also yelled 'this is f*****g ridiculous' and told staff he wouldn't fly from the airport again.

The 56-year-old, who is a friend and neighbour of celebrity interior designer Celia Sawyer, was arrested by police at Bournemouth Airport while his wife Joanne looked on.

When interviewed Grinnall told police that he was 'a rich man', had paid more money for his seat and had 'expected more courtesy'.

The court heard he later offered to pay Miss Figueria and Mrs Gillingham compensation to avoid the case going to court.

But he was charged for using threatening or abusive words towards the staff which he admitted when he appeared at Poole Magistrates' Court yesterday.

He was fined 2,500 and ordered to pay 200 compensation to each of his victims.

It is not the first time Grinnall's temper had landed him in trouble.

In 2017 it was reported he received a police caution after he was filmed launching a stool across a bar after sharing champagne with TV star Sawyer and her husband.

He was arrested for the incident, which took place at Rick Stein's luxury Sandbanks restaurant, but the matter didn't go to court.

Kingsleigh Viollet, prosecuting, told magistrates that Grinnall was hoping to catch a Ryanair flight to Malaga on the morning of May 23, 2018, when he kicked off.

He said: 'He had been told his hand luggage was overweight and had lost his temper and started shouting.

'He shouted things like ''this is f*****g ridiculous" and called both of them ''f*****g fat b*****s".

Kingsleigh Viollet, prosecuting, told magistrates that Grinnall was hoping to catch a Ryanair flight to Malaga on the morning of May 23, 2018, when he kicked off

He was charged for using threatening or abusive words towards the staff which he admitted when he appeared at Poole Magistrates' Court yesterday

In 2017 it was reported he received a police caution after he was filmed launching a stool across a bar after sharing champagne with TV star Celia Sawyer and her husband

'These women were just doing their job and they were understandably petrified.'

He added: 'In his interview with the police Mr Grinnall basically said 'I am a rich man' and believed that by paying more for his seat he deserved more courtesy.'

Despite missing his original flight Grinnall managed to fly to Spain and uploaded a picture of himself in Marbella four days later.

The globe trotter has also posted from Cannes, Monaco and Miami this year alone.

Pictured: Property mogul Neil Grinnall was previously arrested after 'throwing a stall' at a top Bournemouth restaurant

Magistrates were told Grinnall had flown back from another holiday in Spain specifically for the court hearing.

The defendant wore a navy blazer in court and was accompanied by his wife.

Thomas Evans, mitigating, argued that Grinnall felt 'genuine remorse' for the incident and had offered to give the women a 'face-to-face apology'.

Mr Evans said: 'The officer in the case said he did show remorse and would like the chance to apologise for his actions-face to-face.'

Magistrates also instructed Grinnall to pay 310 in court costs and a further 170 victim surcharge.
A judge in Washington has been arrested for raping and assaulting a member of staff in the courthouse where he worked.

Judge Scott Gallina, 55, has been arrested for second-degree rape, fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation and indecent liberties.

Court documents say that when the victim confronted Gallina about his behaviour he told her he 'could not help it because he liked beautiful women'.

Gallina reportedly started inappropriately touching the victim in his chambers at the Asotin County Courthouse a month after she started working there.

Ensuring the door was always locked after she entered the room, Gallina allegedly began by hugging and giving shoulder rubs without her consent in May 2017.

Judge Scott Gallina is accused of raping and assaulting a member of staff at the courthouse in Washington where he worked

It is claimed he then progressed to unzipping her clothing and fondling her breasts, and grinding himself against her.

The woman told police that Gallina put her into a choke hold and sexually assaulted her with his fingers, only stopping when someone knocked on the door.

She told investigators all of the incidents over a two-year period occurred in the judge's chambers, and often happened during a courtroom break.

The woman said she did not report the incidents before because she was scared of losing her job, and worried that no one would believe her as Gallina was a superior court judge and she was not, court documents say.

She eventually told a coworker, who told the police about the assaults.

Nine women working at the courthouse were interviewed, and all reported 'varying degrees of sexual misconduct' by Gallina, ranging from sexually inappropriate comments to touching.

Court documents say that Gallina put the victim into a choke hold and sexually assaulted her, only stopping when someone knocked on the door of his chambers at Asotin County courthouse (pictured)

Several women reported criminal assault with sexual motivation but could not remember when it had happened, and others reported conduct that had happened outside of the two-year statute of limitation for a gross misdemeanor.

One employee also claimed she avoided applying for a promotion at the courthouse because it would have meant working more closely with Gallina.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson issued the following statement: 'Today, my office filed formal charges against Judge Scott Gallina for second-degree rape, fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation and indecent liberties.

'The court set $50,000 bail, issued a sexual assault protective order for one of the survivors, and ordered Judge Gallina to turn in his keys to the courthouse.

'Anyone with information is encouraged to contact Detective Sergeant Greg Tri or Detective Scott Neustel of the Washington State Patrol at 509-249-6743.'

Gallina posted bail yesterday, according to the Lewiston Tribune.

His attorney, Carl Oreskovich, told AP he denied the allegations and would enter a not guilty plea.
An eighth person has been charged over the theft of more than $1million worth of baby formula.

A 22-year-old woman was arrested at Sydney's Silverwater prison on Thursday morning for allegedly stealing the formula and sending it overseas.

Seven other people - including four from the same family - have been arrested since police seized 4,000 tins of formula during raids on two northwest Sydney homes in August.

A 22-year-old woman was arrested for allegedly stealing baby formula and sending it overseas at Sydney's Silverwater prison on Thursday morning

The gang allegedly used a network of thieves who delivered the goods to locations in Carlingford before it was sold overseas.

The 22-year-old woman will face Parramatta Local Court later on Friday charged with 10 counts of larceny and participating in a criminal group - contribute to a criminal activity.

A 31-year-old man from the same family was arrested at Sydney Airport after he arrived on a flight from China.

A 31-year-old man from the same family was arrested at Sydney Airport after he arrived on a flight from China

He was named by the Daily Telegraph as Jian Feng Ke and charged with dealing with the proceeds of crime and participating in a criminal group.

His parents, Lie and Wueqi Ke, as well as his sister Xiaoyu, 29 were previously charged over their alleged roles in the syndicate.

He was granted bail, but an application to have his curfew lifted so he could continue to work at the family's Carlingford newsagency was denied, the paper reported.
Kelly Warwick, 33, found her son Mason, 12, lying on the floor of his bedroom at home

A mother has told how she found her 12-year-old son lying on the floor of his bedroom after he took his own life.

Medics carried out 45 minutes of CPR on Mason Warwick, who was said to have suffered from bullying, at his Brighton home after his community care worker mother Kelly, 39, discovered him.

The inquest in Brighton heard Mason's father Daniel Warwick, 33, a builder, was the last person to see him alive.

That was at about 8.30pm on March 21 when the Varndean High School pupil went downstairs to make a cup of tea before going back up to his bedroom.

His mother later returned to the family's 340,000 terraced home at about 10.45pm and went to check on him.

She saw his bedroom light on and called for him but there was no response, but found him lying on his bedroom floor with something tied around his neck.

Mason is pictured with his father Daniel, 33, a builder, and mother Kelly, 33, a care worker

Emergency services were called and paramedics arrived within minutes, and CPR was carried out in desperate attempt to resuscitate him.

He was then taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital at about 11.45pm where there were further attempts to restart his heart.

Despite continued efforts, Mason was pronounced dead at 12.09am on March 22.

Medics carried out 45 minutes of CPR on Mason Warwick at his home in Brighton

Andreas Marnerides, a consultant pathologist at St Thomas's Hospital in London, carried out the post-mortem and recorded Mason's provisional cause of death as compression of the neck.

Veronica Hamilton-Deeley, coroner for Brighton and Hove, told the court that police enquiries were still ongoing because he is a child.'

She adjourned the inquest until 10.30am on July 17.

Mason's relatives and friends praised the youngster last month following his death. His parents said: 'He was our amazing special angel.'

Another family member said: 'He was the loveliest, sweetest boy. He was happy-go-lucky, really polite, and loved by everybody. You couldn't ask for a better kid.'

On March 30, Brighton and Hove Albion fans held a minute of applause for Mason in the 12th minute of their Premier League match against Southampton.

Mason lived with his parents in a home on a terraced row of properties on this Brighton street

The cause of Mason's death has not yet been confirmed, but a fundraising page has been set up for his family where it is claimed he took his own life after he was bullied.

The GoFundMe page set up by Hayley Storrie on behalf of Mrs Warwick says: 'As most of you know, this beautiful little boy Mason took his own life Thursday night due to nasty bullies.

'He was such a loving caring young man with a heart of gold. His parents Kelly and Daniel are struggling [with] the loss of their little prince as you can imagine, and would love anyone to help raise a bit of money to help them at this sad time.

'Money won't bring that precious boy home, but will help the family a little. RIP Mason.'

For confidential support in the UK call the Samaritans on 116123, visit a local Samaritans branch or click here for details.
Conman Richard William Craig, 42, has been jailed for three years after he ran up a bill of 1,770 in two days at the five-star Grand Hotel, in York, by pretending to be the bride's father at a wedding reception

A conman who posed as father of the bride at a five-star hotel wedding has been jailed for three years.

Richard William Craig, 42, ran up a bill of 1,770 in two days at the Grand Hotel, York, by pretending to be the bride's father at a wedding reception.

When the real father realised what had happened and told the hotel in Station Rise, York, staff found a 'scene of devastation' in the conman's room.

Craig lied that various people would pay the bill, including his 'close friend' the Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, York Crown Court heard.

He was arrested and bailed by police in connection with the fraud, but Craig then conned Claridge's Hotel in London out of 4,683 in two days in early January.

He has 32 previous convictions for fraud said prosecutor Michael Bosomworth,

'He is a practised and persistent fraudster,' said Mr Bosomworth.

Judge Paul Worsley QC told Craig: 'You must have appreciated the huge upset, frustration and distress suffered by the wedding party when they realised they were being confronted with a bill of just short of 2,000.

'The public deserve a break from your activities. You are clearly a skilled conman.'

He jailed him for two years, to be served when Craig finishes the 12-month sentence handed out by Southwark Crown Court in February for the Claridge's fraud.

Craig, of Brompton Road, London, who attended court via video link from HMP Wandsworth, had pleaded guilty before York magistrates to fraud.

Mr Bosomworth said the bride's father had already given the hotel his credit card details as part of the check-in procedure when Craig approached the reception desk last December.

He gave the father's name and asked for a second room 'for his parents' to be charged to the father's credit card.

'No room was ready, the defendant kicked up quite a fuss,' said Mr Bosomworth.

Craig claimed there was always a room for him when he stayed at five-star London hotels.

He was eventually given a room for two days, with an upgrade, and ran up a bill, mostly on alcohol, both on his room's account and on the father's room account.

When the real father checked out, he was stunned to find an extra 300 on his room's account and complained.

Craig ran up the bill at the Grand Hotel, in York (pictured), mostly on alcohol. Craig gave the father of the bride's name during check-in and asked for a second room 'for his parents' to be charged to the father's credit card. Craig, who has 32 previous convictions for fraud, pleaded guilty to fraud at York Magistrates Court

That led to hotel staff discovering the deception and entering Craig's room.

'A complete mess had been made in the room,' said Mr Bosomworth.

'There were bottles of alcohol all over the place; many of them had been spilt.'

Staff called police and Craig was arrested.

The father told officers later the fraud caused him weeks of emails and phone calls and tainted the memory of his daughter's wedding day.

Mitigating Steve Munro said Craig was a long-term alcoholic and had used his time in prison to tackle his problems.
A woman who set fire to a car wash three years ago has finally been charged after her DNA was found on a cigarette butt.

Katherine Smith, 32, poured lighter fluid in the middle bay of the U-Do-It Car Wash in Burien, Washington, and ignited the liquid with a match before casually driving off in her minivan in September 2016.

Smith, who has a lengthy criminal history, caused more than $5,000 damage during the fire - but investigators didn't have sufficient evidence to pin her to the crime.

Katherine Smith, 32, poured lighter fluid in the middle bay of the Washington car wash and lit a match, before casually driving off

She caused more than $5,000 damage during the fire - but investigators didn't have sufficient evidence to pin her to the crime

Despite making the CCTV footage public, no-one could identify the career-criminal, who has been arrested 26 times.

But cigarettes that were recovered from near the scene of the fire were tested in March.

The DNA matched that of Smith's, who was most recently arrested in January.

Sgt. Ryan Abbott with the King County Sheriff's Office told Kiro 7: 'We had surveillance video, we had a picture of her, but nobody could identify her, and without this CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) match, this case would have went unsolved.

Despite making the CCTV footage public, no-one could identify the career-criminal, who has been arrested 26 times

Firefighters put out the flames after Smith casually drove off in September 2016

'Thanks to a confirmed DNA match in early March, the King County prosecutor's office charged Smith with reckless burning in the first degree.

'We were able to use DNA from some cigarette butts that the suspect left behind and we were able to confirm that they were hers,' Sgt. Abbott added.

She was on the CODIS database because of her criminal history.
A defected Liberal MP who's running as an independent against one of her former party colleagues at next month's federal election has admitted she's received assistance from an unlikely source.

Former Liberal Julia Banks confessed she's had phone contact with Alex Turnbull, the son of former prime minister Malcolm, as she plans to oust Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt from his Victoria-based seat.

The extraordinary revelation comes just months after Alex publicly supported high profile independent Dr Kerryn Phelps in her successful quest to win his father's seat in a by-election in the Sydney eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth.

Former Liberal MP Julia Banks (pictured) is running as an independent in the seat of former party colleague, health minister Greg Hunt

'Incredible result and proud of the people of Wentworth. A hearty congratulations to Dr Kerryn Phelps who fought a great campaign. A great day for Australian democracy,' he tweeted at the time.

Ms Banks admitted on Friday Alex Turnbull had put her in touch with an individual who provided $8000 towards setting up her candidate website.

'Alex helped me with the set up of my campaign, the website and set up but this is a grassroots campaign,' Ms Banks told Nine News.

'You have to set up a structure to get all your i's dotted and t's crossed.'

Ms Banks resigned from the Liberal Party in disgust last August following the leadership spill that saw Mr Turnbull replaced as Prime Minister by Scott Morrison.

She described the ousting as the 'last straw' and cited a 'cultural and gender bias, bullying and intimidation' of women in politics.

Ms Banks later had a change of heart and announced she would run as an independent in the Mornington Peninsula seat of Flinders, held by Mr Hunt for the last 18 years.

Alex Turnbull (pictured), the son of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has previously vowed to donate his own money and help raise funds for the right candidates in key seats

Mr Turnbull's son revealed five months ago he would support 'reasonable' independents to run against a number of senior federal MPs at the 2019 election.

The Singapore-based fund manager said he would donate his own money and help raise funds for the right candidates in key government seats, including former prime minister Tony Abbott, former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce and energy minister Angus Taylor.

'If [the hurdle] is a money thing, you would be surprised at how much could be raised,' he told Guardian Australia last November.

'The issue is, if you are going to win, you need someone with local credibility, who is practical and reasonable. Their only real barriers are cash and organisational support. Cash often solves organisational issues.'

Julia Banks quit federal politics when she left the Liberal party but had a change of heart

He continues to publicly support Dr Phelps in her election campaign against Liberal opponent David Sharma by regularly retweeting her Twitter posts.

The most recent retweet was on Friday night.

Former Winter Olympic medallist Zali Steggall is running as an independent in Mr Abbott's seat on Warringah on Sydney's northern beaches, which he's held since 1994.

Meanwhile, the Australian Electoral Commission has been called to investigate the financial vehicles of four independent election candidates, fearing they may 'circumvent' donation laws.

'The fact that a number of independent campaigns use the same infrastructure shouldn't be that shocking. Many of us use Microsoft, Google or other services because they work and are reliable and competent,' Alex Turnbull tweeted late Friday night.
A Gillette Venus advert has sparked outrage online after it shows a woman shaving her arms with a razor.

Social media was deluged with comments from viewers branding the new ad as 'absurd', with many claiming it would make teenage girls 'paranoid' about hair on their arms.

The advertisement shows a woman with tattoos walking under palm trees before running a razor over her forearm lathered in shaving foam as she sits in a bath tub.

The advertisement shows a woman with tattoos walking under palm trees before taking a razor to her arms lathered in shaving foam as she sits in a bath tub

It depicts females of all ethnicities, and others with tattoos and vitilago, shaving before laughing as they head to the beach

It depicts females of all ethnicities, and also those with tattoos and vitilago, shaving before laughing together as they head to the beach.

With the slogan 'My Skin. My Way', the shaving company promises a custom razor 'designed for wherever you shave'.

But many viewers took to Twitter to express their anger and confusion over the company's advert, with some questioning why shaving arms is now considered 'normal'.

Others were 'disappointed' with it, claiming the advert, which is airing in the UK and the US, would make teenagers 'humiliated and paranoid' about having arm hair and that it added 'social pressure' to women.

One user wrote: 'Wait, is that woman on the Venus ad SHAVING HER ARMS? Is that supposed to be normal now?'

The ad depicts females of all ethnicities and others with tattoos and vitilago, and comes with the slogan 'My Skin. My Way'

Another wrote: 'So I've just seen a girl shaving her arms on the Venus advert. Is this a normal thing for females to do!? Because I've never done this. Genuinely intrigued.'

One said: 'Ffs there's a woman shaving her arms on the new Venus advert. GET LOST RAZOR COMPANIES AS IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY MADE US PARANOID ABOUT ALL OUR OTHER BODY HAIR. Genuinely angered.'

Another said: 'I was so humiliated and paranoid about having arm hair as a teenager because I just wasn't sure if women were supposed to or not. How depressing that sounds to me now. That advert would have sent me into a spiral as a teenage girl.'

One said: 'Just seen a @GilletteVenus advert with a woman shaving her arms. How f****ing absurd. Like women need that social pressure. Do one Venus.'

One said: 'I just saw a Venus razor commercial where the women featured was shaving her firearms. Do other women do that? Never once have I ever thought to shave my arms.'

Another wrote: 'On the Venus shavers commercial that I just saw they showed a woman shaving her arms! Is that a thing now?'

Another wrote: 'Just saw a Gillette Venus ad with a woman shaving her ARMS, THE LEG-SHAVING THING IS BAD ENOUGH CAN YOU NOT LEAVE US ALONE??!'

It isn't the first time Gillette has come under fire from viewers over razor promotions.

Hundreds of British men recently threatened to boycott Gillette over a new advert which references bullying, the #MeToo movement and 'toxic masculinity'.

It shows a man talking over a woman in a boardroom, boys fighting and grown men ignoring them saying 'boys will be boys'.

It later features men wolf whistling at women without being countered by their peers.

Britons were so angry about a controversial Gillette advert that they complained to the UK advertising watchdog  despite it not being shown in the country.

The new ad, which critics claim is an assault on masculinity and portrays men as inherently bad, has sparked 15 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

And women who use Gillette products blasted the shaving company for sexism for marketing pink razors called Venus to female users - just hours after its campaign to tackle 'toxic masculinity' divided the nation.

Consumers blasted the global company and accused it of double standards over its branding which include the Passion and Embrace range.

Others even suggested the female-targeted products cost more on average than the male equivalent the Mach3 razor.

A spokesman for Venus Gillette said: 'Venus is committed to celebrate every woman and every kind of skin.

'Many women have told us that they are not only shaving their legs or armpits as portrayed in advertising but other areas such as belly, arms or even toes!

'We used these examples in our advert to better depict women's realities.

'Our intent is not to put additional pressure on women but to help normalise the fact that hair grows in various areas of the body enabling a personal decision to be made on whether or not to shave it.'
Chancellor Philip Hammond insisted a Brexit deal can be done within weeks and ensure any new British MEPs never have to take their seats.

Speaking in Washington, Mr Hammond also said while Parliament might vote again on a second referendum the Government would continue to oppose it.

Shadow chancellor John McDonnell led cross party talks with the Government today, facing off against Mrs May's deputy David Lidington and Environment Secretary Michael Gove.

He warned this week Labour could demand a new public vote as a guarantee any Brexit deal agreed to by Jeremy Corbyn is protected from a Brexiteer replacement for Mrs May.

Following the latest round of talks today, Mr McDonnell said: 'Talks are going on, constructive, so we're hopeful, positive.'

Mrs May and Mr Corbyn held a surprise second meeting yesterday afternoon.

Chancellor Philip Hammond insisted a Brexit deal can be done within weeks and ensure any new British MEPs never have to take their seats

Labour sent John McDonnell (pictured on Peston on Wednesday) into the cross-party Brexit talks today after he hinted a second referendum could be the price for a deal

Mr Hammond told the BBC today: 'Clearly nobody wants to fight the European elections - it feels like a pointless exercise.

'The only way we can avoid that is by getting a deal agreed and done quickly and if we can do that by May 22 then of course we can avoid fighting European parliamentary elections.

'But in any case we want to ensure any British MEPs that are elected never have to take their seats.'

Yesterday, Mrs May signalled the talks are more advanced than had been thought as she told MPs there was 'more agreement in relation to a customs union than is often given credit'.

She also hinted at plans to bring forward legislation to implement the Brexit deal before any new 'meaningful vote' to try and approve it at a fourth attempt.

The shadow chancellor is leading the negotiations today after Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn held a surprise second meeting yesterday afternoon

Mr Corbyn also hinted at progress in the Commons yesterday - and did not repeat his claim Mrs May has refused to shift her position.

He said: 'I welcome the indications from the Government that they may be willing to move in the key areas that have prevented the Prime Minister's deal from being supported on this side.'

Addressing MPs after agreeing the Halloween Brexit extension, Mrs May said it was 'in the national interest' to reach a consensus.

She added: 'This is not the normal way of British politics and it is uncomfortable for many in both the Government and opposition parties.

'Reaching an agreement will not be easy, because to be successful, it will require both sides to make compromises.

'But however challenging it may be politically, I profoundly believe that in this unique situation where the House is deadlocked, it is incumbent on both front benches to seek to work together to deliver what the British people voted for.'

Mrs May said she hoped to agree a 'single unified approach' with Labour. If this fails, she will ask Mr Corbyn to agree a process that would see both sides accept the outcome of a series of votes on Brexit options, including a customs union.

The PM also outlined a third option involving bringing forward the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which would ratify her Brexit deal, and allowing MPs to vote on amendments to it as it progresses.

She said: 'We could bring forward the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which is a necessary element of any deal, whichever course we take.

'This bill will take time to pass through both Houses, so if we want to get on with leaving, we need to start this process soon.

'And it could also provide a useful forum to resolve some of the outstanding issues in the future relationship.'

Scottish Secretary David Mundell said the Government was 'certainly willing' to discuss a customs union compromise with Labour

Tory MP Conor Burns, an ally of Boris Johnson, said the talks with Labour amounted to 'two Remainers debating how to compromise on something that really isn't even Brexit', adding: 'This has moved beyond embarrassing to humiliating'.

1.5bn No Deal plan axed NO DEAL Brexit plans were called off last night as the Government stood down 6,000 civil servants who were due to implement them. The cost of preparing to leave the EU without an agreement had been estimated at 1.5 billion. But after Theresa May struck an agreement to delay Brexit, civil servants seconded from elsewhere have been able to return to their normal roles. Labour MP Hilary Benn, chairman of the Brexit select committee, said it was a 'costly price' to pay for the PM's negotiating stance of keeping No Deal on the table. Downing Street said it continued to make 'all necessary' Brexit preparations. Advertisement

But other senior Tories backed Mrs May. Scottish Secretary David Mundell said the Government was 'certainly willing' to discuss a customs union compromise with Labour.

And ex-minister Andrew Murrison suggested a customs union would be a price worth paying for getting a deal through.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox suggested that the Tories would even discuss the possibility of a vote on a second referendum, a key demand of Labour activists.

However, the DUP hinted it could pull the plug on the Government if Mrs May tries to keep her Brexit deal alive.

Their 'confidence and supply' deal with the Tories is up for renewal at the end of the parliamentary session, due in June.

Sources say the DUP could refuse to back the Queen's Speech if it contains Mrs May's deal  providing an incentive for the Government to keep the session going.
Pope Francis knelt and kissed the feet of South Sudan's rival leaders in an unprecedented act of humbleness to encourage them to strengthen the African country's faltering peace process.

At the closed two-day retreat in the Vatican for the African leaders, the pope asked South Sudan's president and opposition leader to proceed with the peace agreement despite growing difficulties.

Onlookers appeared to be stunned as the 82-year-old pope, who suffers from chronic leg pain, was helped by aides as he knelt with difficulty to kiss the shoes of the leaders and several other people in the room.

The pope usually holds a ritual washing of the feet with prisoners on Holy Thursday, but has never performed such a show of deference to political leaders.

Pope Francis kisses the feet of the leaders of South Sudan during a spiritual retreat in the Vatican

At the closed two-day retreat in the Vatican for the African leaders, the pope asked South Sudan's president and opposition leader to proceed with the peace agreement

'I express my heartfelt hope that hostilities will finally cease, that the armistice will be respected, that political and ethnic divisions will be surmounted, and that there will be a lasting peace for the common good of all those citizens who dream of beginning to build the nation,' the pope said of South Sudan in his closing statement.

The spiritual retreat brought together President Salva Kiir and opposition head Riek Machar. Also present were Kiir's three vice presidents. The pope kissed the feet of all of them.

South Sudanese Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng Garang said Francis' actions moved her profoundly.

'I had never seen anything like that. Tears were flowing from my eyes,' she said.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 but two years later the country plunged into a bloody civil war, which left at least 400,000 people dead.

The two-day Vatican meeting was held a month before the end of the shaky peace deal's pre-transition period. On May 12, opposition leader Machar is expected to return to South Sudan and once again serve as Kiir's deputy.

Pope Francis poses with South Sudan's President Salva Kiir Mayardit (C-L), South Sudan opposition leader Riek Machar (C-R) and a delegation of South Sudan prelates at the Pope's Santa Marta residence in the Vatican

However, the agreement, which was signed in September in Khartoum, the capital of neighboring Sudan, has been met with delays, missed deadlines and continued fighting with key aspects still not implemented.

A military coup in Sudan on Thursday fueled worries in South Sudan that the toppling of longtime President Omar al-Bashir could derail the already fragile peace deal.

'Sudan has helped us with the peace deal. We hope that the new system will also focus on the agreement, ensuring that it will be implemented,' said opposition leader Machar, who attended an evening prayer vigil for peace, held at Rome's church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.
A group of high school students tricked their classmates into thinking all seniors would have a 'mandatory penis inspection' by faking an official district letter.

The elaborate prank, at North Monterey County High School in Castroville, California, saw a letter circulate which claimed the examination was a graduation requirement.

It was formatted in exactly the same way as other notices, complete with the letterhead, and even had a copy of the superintendent's signature, reports WTOC11.

One part of the letter claimed the inspections would be split into circumcised and uncircumcised genitalia.

While it's not known how many people fell for the trick, which spread on Snapchat, an apology from someone who shared it seems to suggest it was taken more seriously than expected.

A trickster at North Monterey County High School in Castroville, California, circulated a letter claiming 'mandatory penis inspections' were a graduation requirement

The school were forced to issue a statement about the letter, which even had the official letter head and a copy of the superintendent's signature, on Facebook

They wrote: 'I did not expect the paper to be taken seriously as I thought the students at North County who read the letter would be able to recognize it as a simple practical joke.'

The High School issued a statement about the letter on Facebook earlier this week.

It said: 'The NMCHS Principal, Dr. Wood, is investigating this matter. If you have questions or information, please contact the NMC High School Principal.'

Kyara Grijalva, who lives near the school, told WTOC11: 'It's not all about being serious and studying all the time.

'Unless somebody took it seriously, and got anxiety and all of that, but I think it's hysterical.'

Whoever created the letter has not been caught.
Health and safety rules have been ridiculed after a brand of peanut butter was withdrawn because the jar does not warn it contains nuts.

The Whole Earth product is called '3 Nut Butter' and makes plain on the front of the label that it contains walnuts and pecans as well as peanuts.

But thousands of the 2.50 jars, available in major supermarkets such as Tesco, are being recalled because they breach rules which state there has to be a nut allergy warning in English on the jar.

The withdrawal prompted hilarity and disbelief on social media.

The Whole Earth product is called '3 Nut Butter' and makes plain on the front of the label that it contains walnuts and pecans as well as peanuts

The withdrawal prompted hilarity and disbelief on social media

Gordon Lancaster responded: 'Ffs, is this a joke? If anyone eats this and doesn't realise it has nuts then I'm afraid, it's called natural selection.'

Sharnie Langford wrote: 'The people who need these instructions are the reason we have 'do not drink' on bleach bottles.'

Justin Thorpe wrote: 'Are people really that stupid they need a label to tell them 3 nut butter contains nuts?'

Jon Brooks commented: 'It says 'peanut, pecan & walnut' on the label and it's 3 nut butter.

'I don't know how much more "THERE'S NUTS IN THIS NUT PRODUCT" they can be ffs.'

Matt Nye pointed out: 'It's written on the front! Just turn the jar round!'

Thousands of the jars, available in supermarkets such as Tesco, are being recalled because they breach rules which state there has to be a nut allergy warning in English on the jar

Health and safety rules were ridiculed after the brand of peanut butter was withdrawn because the jar does not warn it contains nuts

Robin Simmonds raged: 'For Christ sake. Is this real? Don't people have any common sense? It's 3 nut butter! What is wrong with using their brains a bit?'

Kim Ellis was one of the few people to defend the decision to recall the item, writing: 'I can understand this one to be fair.

'It does say it contains other nuts that aren't listed, so I wouldn't eat it, just to be on the safe side. I'm absolutely fine with all nuts apart from pistachios. They make me incredibly ill.'

The makers of the product, Kallo Foods, took the decision to withdraw the jars from sale.

An ingredient box on the jar, written in Dutch, contains the words 'pecan' and 'walnoot'.

They wrote: 'It contains peanuts, pecan nuts and walnuts and may contain traces of other nuts which are not written in English on the back label.

'This means the product is a possible health risk for anyone with an allergy to peanuts and/or pecan nuts and/or walnuts and other nuts.'

Kent County Council's warning states: 'If you have bought the above product and have an allergy to peanuts and/or pecan nuts and/or walnuts and/or other nuts, do not eat it. Instead, return it to the store from where it was bought for a full refund.'
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed boxer Anthony Mundine for telling followers not to vaccinate their children 'period'.

Mr Morrison said the boxer, who used social media to tell parents to 'do their own research' on vaccines, was putting children at risk.

'We immunise our kids so there's a herd immunity that actually protects very vulnerable people in this country,' he told Fox FM after being asked about Mundine's comments.

'I started that when I was Social Services Minister - introducing the no-jab no-play rules that went into our childcare centres and preschools.'

'We immunise our kids so there's a herd immunity that actually protects very vulnerable people in this country': Mr Morrison said Anthony Mundine, who used social media to tell parents to do their own research on vaccines, was putting children at risk

Mundine took to social media on Wednesday to tell his over 43,000 followers that vaccines were dangerous for children.

He also urged his followers to 'do their own research' and watch a film that argues vaccines cause autism.

'Don't vaccinate your kids period! The government bully you into vaccines! Do your research on the s**t and watch the documentary vaxxed,' Mundine said on Twitter.

'Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe' is a film created by a discredited former British doctor, Andrew Wakefield. The film argues vaccines cause autism but relies solely on research conducted by Wakefield.

Wakefield previously conducted research on the dangers of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which was later retracted and debunked through years of scientific studies.

One study in 2015 looked at over 95,000 children across the US and found no association between autism and MMR vaccines.

The film was barred from the Tribeca film festival, even though it was backed by Robert De Niro, and was removed from Amazon's streaming video subscription service.

Mundine took to social media on Wednesday to tell his over 43,000 followers that vaccines were dangerous for children

He also urged his followers to 'do their own research' and watch a film that argues vaccines cause autism

After Mundine received backlash from his Twitter followers, he made another post doubling down on his anti-vaccine beliefs

After Mundine received backlash from his Twitter followers, he made another post doubling down on his anti-vaccine beliefs.

'A lot of talk about this vaccine stuff! All I'm saying is research and check what they giving you or ya baby! When they start mixing it like a cocktail that's where it's going wrong! That's my opinion and other people have the right to theirs.'

Mundine slightly backed down from his statements but continued to suggest that vaccines are dangerous for children.

'I probably was too fired up when I posted that first post. All parents ultimately want what is best for their kids. Like I said in my last post, do your own research. Where there is risk, there must always be.'

The film (pictured) argues vaccines cause autism but relies solely on research conducted by Wakefield. He previously conducted research on the dangers of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine, which was retracted and debunked through years of scientific studies

Mundine's anti-vaccination comments came after warnings of a potential measles outbreak in Sydney's eastern suburbs.

On April 2, Sydney and Maitland residents were issued warnings of a potential measles outbreak after a female in her 20s was diagnosed with the highly contagious virus.

New South Wales Health issued another warning the next day after a man, who was vaccinated as a child, contracted the virus while overseas.

NSW Health Director of Communicable Diseases Vicky Sheppeard said people in these locations at the time should be alert for symptoms up to at least April 23, 2019.

'We cannot stress enough the need for holidaymakers to be vaccinated before travelling to South-East Asia because the majority of cases we are seeing are being brought home,' Dr Sheppeard said.

'NSW already has record immunisation rates but the community is not fully covered and measles is highly contagious and can stay in the air for up to 30 minutes after an infected person has left the room.

'If you're not sure if you have had two doses of measles vaccine which provides lifelong protection in 99 out of 100 people, it is safe to get another jab, particularly if you're heading overseas.'

Mundine's anti-vaccination comments came after warnings of a potential measles outbreak in Sydney's eastern suburbs. On April 2, Sydney and Maitland residents were issued warnings of a potential measles outbreak after a female in her 20's was diagnosed with the highly contagious virus

Australia's vaccination rates have steadily risen each year and are inching closer to a 95 per cent immunisation coverage target.

The government's target is driven by the goal of reaching herd immunity, where a community is resistant against the spread of contagious diseases if a high proportion of individuals are vaccinated.

Herd immunisation would also protect vulnerable people who are unable to receive vaccines, such as young children, people with severely weakened immune systems, or those prone to reactions to vaccines.

Though the national rate has risen, one in ten children in community pockets were not vaccinated or had missed at least one vaccine.

Six local areas in NSW, five of those in Sydney, had vaccinations rates below 90 per cent for five-year-olds.

NSW's overall vaccination rate for five-year-olds was 94.56 per cent, just under the national rate.

Queensland and South Australia had vaccinations rates just under 95 per cent while the Northern Territory had 93.30 per cent.

The lowest state was Western Australia which had a five-year-old coverage rate of 93.15 per cent.
A teenage Argentine girl has described how she was gang raped by at least ten men at a house party while her supposed 'friend' laughed.

The 17-year-old said in a social media video that she was speaking out about her ordeal 'to avoid what happened to me'.

'We were drinking there very calmly,' the girl explains in the short 40-second clip.

'Then more guys started to show up. They were grabbing me, pushing me. They left me with bruises and they hurt me down there.'

At least ten men are being investigated for gang raping a 17-year-old girl, who bravely spoke out about her ordeal in a video posted on social media (pictured) in order to help others

She also says that nobody did anything to help, adding: 'My so-called friend saw me there, lying on the bed naked. She looked at me, laughed and went away.'

'And then when my friend left, they kept raping me and other guys came in too. One after the other they kept on.'

According to local media, at least ten men are being investigated for taking turns to rape the victim - whose name has not been disclosed as she is under the age of consent, which is 18 in Argentina.

The incident allegedly took place at a house party in the city of Florencio Varela in the eastern Argentine province of Buenos Aires, where alcohol and cannabis were consumed.

The teenage victim believes that she was drugged by someone before the alleged gang rape.

One suspect took the girl up to a bedroom where at least nine others joined him, judicial sources told local media.

After the ordeal, the 17-year-old alleges that she was almost unconscious in the bedroom when the male house owner raped her before asking her to take a shower and leave.

When she left the house, she bumped into a former boyfriend who convinced her to report the case to the police.

The alleged incident took place at a house party in Florencio Varela (pictured), a city in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

Reports said that the teenager approached an officer who accompanied her back to the station to file a complaint.

According to judicial sources, the victim managed to identify the suspects involved in the alleged gang rape. A medical examination also proved that she had suffered signs of sexual abuse.

The police have now charged nine suspects with sexual abuse, including a 14-year-old boy who is under the supervision of a juvenile court, according to local media.

A 21-year-old man has been also charged, but his current whereabouts are unknown and an international arrest warrant has been issued.

The investigation continues.
Vice President Mike Pence clapped back at Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg after he attacked Pence's conservative religious views related to sexuality.

'I hope that Pete will offer more to the American people than attacks on my Christian faith or attacks on the President as he seeks the highest office in the land,' Pence told CNN Friday. 'He'd do well to reflect on the importance of respecting the freedom of religion of every American.'

Buttigieg, who is mayor of South Bend, Indiana, is gay, and married to Chasten Glazmen, but is also open about his faith.

Speaking at the LGBTQ Victory Fund's National Champagne Brunch on Sunday, Buttigieg spoke of the importance of his marriage to his husband and framed his sexuality in religious terms.

'If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade,' Buttigieg said. 'And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if you've got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.'

Then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (right) talks with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (left) during a visit in 2015 to recap the legislative session that ends in South Bend. The two previously had a cordial relationship

The relationship between Pence and Buttigieg is admittedly 'complicated' as the Indiana politicians collaborated on economic issues in the state, but clashed in other areas

'And yes, Mr. Vice President,' he added in reference to marrying a man, 'it has moved me closer to God.'

Buttigieg announced he was exploring a big for president earlier this year, and is expected to formally announce Sunday his candidacy to compete for the Democratic nomination.

During the four years in which Buttigieg overlapped with Pence in Indiana politics, the two had a cordial relationship.

Buttigieg presented Pence with a South Bend promotional T-shirt that said 'I (heart) SB' at an fitness event in 2013, and at ceremonial events Pence would lavish Buttigieg with praise. The two politicians also collaborated on economic development issues in the state.

The relationship between the two men has come under scrutiny as Buttigieg's campaign became a surprise hit, raking in $7 million during the first quarter and putting him in the position to become a potential front-runner.

The gay mayor, who will formally launch his bid for the White House on Sunday, has emerged as a celebrated voice for LGBT equality and religious tolerance, and in doing so has also hardened his rhetoric toward Pence.

He has previously called Pence's religious conservatism a 'fanatical' ideology.

'I think Pete's quarrel is with the First Amendment. All of us in this country have the right to our religious beliefs. I'm a Bible-believing Christian,' Pence continued in response to Buttigieg's attacks on his religious views.

Buttigieg admitted in his campaign memoir his relationship with Pence is 'complicated.'

In 2013 Buttigieg presented Pence with a promotional T-shirt that said 'I (heart) SB' during a fitness walk in South Bend

Pence says he is a 'bible-believing Christian' and feels that Buttigieg's harsh words towards him are an attack on freedom of religion

In an interview with CNBC that aired on Thursday, Pence, although critical of the mayor's characterization of his religious beliefs, said the two had a 'great working relationship.'

'He knows better,' Pence said. 'He knows me.'

When asked if he believes the being gay is a sin, Pence replied, 'I draw my truth from God's word.'

Sources say that in state with few influential Democrats, some hoped to tap into Buttigieg's burgeoning political celebrity to help them rebut Pence and his policies, but found he was often reluctant to take on the then-governor directly or forcefully.

In early 2015, Pence was grappling with an HIV outbreak in southern Indiana and facing calls from political leaders, including some fellow Republicans, to respond by approving a needle exchange program. Buttigieg, who was months away from publicly coming out as gay, was largely absent from that debate.

Pence caused a national uproar that year by signing a 'religious freedom' law criticized as anti-LGBT. Republicans including the mayor of Indianapolis demanded that the governor and the GOP legislature 'fix this law' and 'do so immediately.' Buttigieg criticized Statehouse politicians for the 'most embarrassing incident' and tweeted he was 'disappointed' Pence signed the bill.

But several weeks later, as the controversy raged, Buttigieg attended a Pence event in South Bend. The mayor told the South Bend Tribune, 'I'm focused on how we can work together across city limits and across the aisle.'

'With respect to Pence's worst blunder, his most difficult controversy, Mayor Pete was not leading the charge against him,' said Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville in southern Indiana. 'If you're a Democratic mayor in a Republican state and you rely on friendly relations with the General Assembly, you don't necessarily want to be lobbing bombs all the time. But that should not preclude someone from speaking out forcefully on a pressing civil rights issue.'

Buttigieg publicly came out as gay about three months after Pence signed the 'religious freedom' law. In his book, Buttigieg acknowledged that he passed up the chance to urge Pence in person to veto the measure.

'I wish I could say I made a good effort to talk him out of it, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind,' he wrote, referring to a meeting in which Pence told Buttigieg and other mayors he planned to sign the legislation.

As mayor, Buttigieg's allies argue he had to maintain a cordial relationship with a governor who held sway over money sorely needed in South Bend.

'It doesn't help your city if you have an adversarial relationship with the sitting governor, and Mayor Buttigieg recognized that,' said Greg Goodnight, the Democratic mayor of Kokomo, Indiana, who supports Buttigieg's White House ambitions.

For example, one of Pence's last major policy achievements as governor was a program that awarded funding to several regions for redevelopment, including $42 million for the greater South Bend area . During a ceremonial 2016 groundbreaking at a long-shuttered Studebaker factory, Buttigieg and Pence stood side by side and shook hands after scooping dirt with their shovels.

'Where they agreed on issues, like economic development, the mayor worked with then-Gov. Pence for the good of his constituents and his city,' Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith said. 'Where they disagreed, the mayor stood up to him, like when Pence embarrassed the state of Indiana with anti-LGBTQ laws, or when he wanted to turn away refugees from the state, or when Pence's policies hurt South Bend's workers.'

Still, some wish Buttigieg would play it less safe, particularly now that he's on a national stage. Tony Flora, president of the North Central Indiana AFL-CIO chapter, said the mayor says the right things but should expend more political capital.

'I would look to Pete Buttigieg to be a louder voice and be more forceful,' Flora said. 'He came to our rallies, signed petitions and did make public remarks, but he could have been a bit more substantive instead of just making speeches - taking some action and being more supportive.'

Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is a lesbian, said she sympathized with the complicated situation Buttigieg was in as mayor, especially when he dealt with Pence.

'The answer that I came to, and I'm assuming Pete did as well, is that first and foremost, you are the mayor,' said Parker, who is now the president and CEO of Victory Fund, a group that works to elect LGBT candidates. 'You are not an activist. You are the mayor. And every time you speak, it has an impact on your city - for good or ill. And it's something you have to navigate.'

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, South Bend, Ind. mayor, address the National Action Network (NAN) convention, Thursday April 4, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

In this March 23, 2019, file photo, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg arrives to speak about his presidential run during the Democratic monthly breakfast at the Circle of Friends Community Center in Greenville, S.C. Financial support from the LGBT community has helped Buttigieg's 2020 presidential campaign defy expectations by raking in more than $7 million in just over two months. The money has come from grassroots supporters and big-dollar Hollywood donors who hope Buttigieg will make history _ or at least the summer debate stage.

Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, South Bend, Ind. mayor, listen during a news briefing after addressing the National Action Network (NAN), Thursday April 4, 2019, in New York. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)
Theresa May urged MPs to use the Easter recess as a relaxing time for reflection as the Brexit crisis continues.

But quirky senior minister Liz Truss might have taken the request to chillax a little too far today - by revealing her breakfast was a slice of cold leftover pizza.

In what might be a cheeky nod to her fellow Brexiteers in Government - dubbed The Pizza Club for their plotting over food - the Chief Secretary to the Treasury posted a picture of the popular Italian dinner staple to her 54,000 Twitter followers.

Ms Truss, 43, who is known for her fun-loving approach to social media, paired the slice of pizza with a slightly more classy accompaniment in the shape of an espresso coffee in a glass for the full Mediterranean experience.

With the picture she wrote: Starting recess as I mean to go on. #coldpizza #evenbetter.

It came on the first day of the 11-day Easter recess, where MPs are able to take holiday or return to their constituencies to work.

Ms Truss posted a picture of her unusual continental breakfast to her 54,000 Twitter followers this morning

The 43-year-old Chief Secretary to the Treasury usually presents a far more stylish image to Westminster watchers

Ms Truss posted this image last night of the fresh Italian dinner staples she had enjoyed before showing a zero-tolerance attitude to waste by finishing them off this morning

Mrs May yesterday told the Commons: 'Im sure everybody across the whole of this house is looking forward to the opportunity to actually take some time to reflect on the issues that we are dealing with in this house, to do this away from this chamber.'

Last October around a third of the Cabinet held private talks over takeaway pizza amid growing concerns about Theresa May's Brexit strategy.

Senior figures including Jeremy Hunt, Sajid Javid and Dominic Raab - at the time the Brexit Secretary - met in Commons Leader Andrea Leadsom's office.

The gathering was a clear show of strength by ministers as Mrs May came under massive pressure from the EU to make concessions.

Four senior figures including Mrs Leadsom were thought to be ready to resign at the time.

But their plotting seemed to fizzle out, with all but Mr Raab remaining in their ministerial posts.

Ms Truss shared a Taylor Swift selfie with her 6,5000 Instagram followers in February after attending the Baftas

The next month she posted a picture inside 10 Downing Street with the resident cat, Larry

The meeting in Mrs Leadsom's opulent Commons office was also attended by Environment Secretary Michael Gove, Aid Secretary Penny Mordaunt, Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

They ordered woodfired pizzas from Oregano, including Mozzerella, hot and spicy, and vegetarian.

Sources claimed the event was 'social' and there is no sinister plot to unseat Mrs May.

It is not the first time South West Norfolk MP Ms Truss - thought to be keen on an outside tilt at replacing Theresa May - has used social media to highlight her lighthearted.

She has previously used her Instagram to share a selfie with Taylor Swift from the Baftas and a picture taken inside 10 Downing Street with the resident cat, Larry.
This is the moment protesters were thrown out of the luxury Brunei-owned Dorchester Hotel, in London, after they hit out at the nation's decision to stone gay people to death.

The island nation said earlier this month it will introduce death by stoning for homosexuality - a plan backed by prime minister Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 72.

The hotel, in Mayfair, is part of the Dorchester Collection, a chain of hotels owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, which is owned by the Sultan - and it has been the focus of protests since the law was announced.

And in response to the new law, three men unfurled banners and staged a protest, after dining in the five-star venue's restaurant last Thursday, according to onlookers.

Three protesters were thrown out of the luxury Brunei-owned Dorchester Hotel, in London, after they hit out at the nation's decision to stone gay people to death. Above, one of the men is escorted from the premises

In response to the new law, the three men (the other two, pictured leaving the hotel) unfurled banners and staged a protest, after dining in the five-star venue's restaurant last Thursday, according to onlookers

A guest who filmed the men being turfed out, said: 'I was checking out the hotel. The guys came in and had a meal. I think they were pretending they were normal guests. They finished their meals and unrolled some banners and paraded around the bar shouting about "boycotting the Dorchester" and "standing with our brothers and sisters"'

The Mayfair hotel is part of the Dorchester Collection, a chain of hotels owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, which is owned by the Sultan - and it has been the focus of protests since the law was announced

The island nation said earlier this month it will introduce death by stoning for homosexuality - a plan backed by prime minister Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, 72

A video taken by a shocked guest shows one of the men being forcibly removed by a security guard, who held him by his arms, while another shouted.

Two of the men walk out followed by other security workers, but one shouts about 'death by stoning' as he leaves.

In response, a spokeswoman for the hotel group declared: 'Our values are far removed from the politics of ownership.'

The calls come after a celebrity-inspired campaign demanded a boycott of the ruler's hotel empire, which includes the Dorchester in London, above (file image)

The 38-year-old guest, who filmed them being turfed out, said: 'I was checking out the hotel. The guys came in and had a meal.

'I think they were pretending they were normal guests.

Calls for sultan to be stripped of two honorary roles Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah (above) has brought in laws making gay sex punishable by stoning to death The backlash against the Sultan of Brunei is growing amid calls for him to be stripped of two honorary roles awarded by the Queen. Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, who has brought in laws making gay sex punishable by stoning to death, is an honorary Air Chief Marshal in the RAF and an Admiral of the Royal Navy. The calls come after a celebrity-inspired campaign demanded a boycott of the ruler's hotel empire, which includes the Dorchester. Stephen Evans, chief executive of the National Secular Society, said: 'Stripping the Sultan of the honours they [the services] have bestowed upon him would send out the important message that they do not wish to be in any way associated with this medieval barbarism.' Buckingham Palace refused to be drawn into the row, with a spokesman saying: 'Her Majesty acted on the advice of Government in relation to these honorary appointments.' The Cabinet Office would not comment on individuals. Advertisement

'They finished their meals and unrolled some banners and paraded around the bar shouting about "boycotting the Dorchester" and "standing with our brothers and sisters".

'I don't know if they paid for their meal. There were three of them - three men.

'They moved down the Promenade, and kept going around and around until the security came and then they were thrown out.

'They were going up to people and shouting quite close to them.'

A spokeswoman for the Dorchester Collection said it was a 'political and religious issue that we don't believe should be played out in our hotels'.

She said: 'Inclusion, diversity and equality are the foundation of Dorchester Collection.

'We do not tolerate any form of discrimination, we never have and we never will.

'We understand people's anger and frustration but this is a political and religious issue that we don't believe should be played out in our hotels and amongst our 3,630 employees.

'We're deeply saddened by what's happening right now and the impact it is having on our employees, guests, partners and suppliers in particular.

'Our values are far removed from the politics of ownership.

'We are aware that many other brands have ownership with similar backgrounds in this increasingly global world.

'We are a team of people representing 67 nationalities, who love what we do and care enormously for our guests and communities.'

Earlier this week, the Police Federation joined the backlash against Brunei's draconian anti-gay laws by cancelling its bravery awards at the Dorchester hotel.

Chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales John Apter announced the organisation will be boycotting the hotel.

Mr Apter said on Twitter that 'doing nothing was not an option', adding: 'My values, the PFEW and policing as a whole would not allow us to be associated with such a regime.'
Nearly 1,000 taxi licence holders have banded together to sue the Queensland State Government as rideshare companies steal their business.

The group have filed a claim to the Supreme Court, arguing the state engaged in 'unconscionable conduct' because ridesharing companies like Uber - who are their direct competitors - do not pay for taxi licences but share the same rights.

The 956 taxi licence holders are seeking damages under Australian Consumer Law, equitable compensation and damages for breach of contract.

Over 956 taxi licence holders have banded together to accuse the Queensland State Government of engaging in 'unconscionable conduct'

Taxi-industry veteran of 20 years Gary Pascoe owns leased licences which have plummeted in value.

'I paid approximately $520,000 for a licence about five years ago and I believe one has been sold recently for about $60,000,' Mr Pascoe told The Courier Mail.

Lawyer John Maitland said outside court the 1,350 licences combined were worth $513 million and the 956 owners could potentially seek hundreds of millions of dollars from the State.

'A lot of these people have borrowed against property to buy these licences... but the banks don't forgive anybody. Now some people in their mid 80s are being thrown out of houses,' he said.

The Queensland State Government has allowed rideshare operators like Uber to operate in Queensland since 2014 and legally since 2017.

Rideshare drivers allegedly shared many of the rights held by licenced taxi drivers without the same rules, regulations and expensive licence fee

Rideshare drivers allegedly shared many of the rights held by licenced taxi drivers without the same rules, regulations and expensive licence fee.

Taxi licence holders and taxi drivers assumed they could exclusively transport passengers since they paid the fee, the claim said.

The Government offered $20,000 per licence in compensation to taxi licence holders for a maximum of two licences per holder.

The State Government claimed it had only received the amended statement of claim yesterday and is yet to file a response.
At least nine people were killed after a flash flood caused by a freak rainstorm hit the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen last night, local authorities said.

The victims were dredging workers who were swept away while they were cleaning drainage pipes in Luohu and Futian districts, the city's emergency management office said today, adding that two others remained missing.

Video footage of the heavy downpour shows civilians being rescued from a bus trapped on a flooded road. Other clips show stalled vehicles submerged in floodwater and firefighters rescuing drainage crew members.

Video footage of the heavy downpour in Shenzhen last night shows civilians being rescued from a bus trapped on a flooded road. Nine people were killed and two others were missing

Shenzhen's meteorological authorities issued hail and storm warnings at 8pm last night

Officials said the drainage company failed to respond properly to weather warnings and 'pushed their luck'.

The city's meteorological authorities issued hail and storm warnings at 8pm last night, according to China Daily.

At the time, twelve workers were cleaning underground drainage pipes in Luohu district when floodwater rushed in and trapped them inside, the Shenzhen emergency management bureau said in a statement on Weibo.

Firefighters rescue one of the trapped workers from a drain during the heavy downpour

The water resources bureau had sent weather warnings to construction companies and asked them to manage the cofferdams properly

Four of them were rescued while six died. The rest remained missing, the statement said.

Floodwaters hit Futian district at 10:43pm, when four workers were dredging a riverside drain. One of the workers was rescued and three bodies were recovered this morning.

Firefighters and engineers were carrying out search and rescue efforts, the statement added.

Yin Xuekang, deputy director of the Futian District Water Resources Bureau, said in a press briefing that the construction company was careless and did not expect the intensity of last night's downpour.

One of the workers' body was lifted out from a drain last night in Luohu, Shenzhen

Search and rescue efforts were being carried out by rescuers and engineers, officials say

He said that the bureau had sent weather warnings to construction companies and asked them to manage the cofferdams properly.

The bureau had conducted safety inspections on all water-related construction projects this month as flood season approaches.

All engineering projects have been halted and will resume after thorough safety checks, he said, adding that the said drainage company, No 8 Engineering Bureau of China Water Conservancy Hydropower, will be investigated and could face punishment.

The city's weather bureau said more heavy rain was forecast for Guangdong province in the coming week.
Steve Bannon has claimed President Donald Trump will be in 'payback mode' if he is reelected in 2020.

The former White House chief strategist, 65, also said that none of the 18 Democrats who are running could beat the Republican.

Speaking to Politico earlier this week, Bannon said of Trump's reelection: 'You're going to get pure Trump off the chain. Four years of Donald Trump in payback mode.'

Steve Bannon has claimed President Donald Trump will be in 'payback mode' if he is re-elected in 2020

The 'payback' would likely be retaliation for the Democratic-led investigations into the president and the negative media swirling around special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into alleged collusion with Russia - all of which Trump has seen as personal attacks.

Bannon suggested the US hasnt seen anything yet when it comes to the outspoken president's brash antics.

He went on to say that no one could take on the current president 'one-on-one', but identified Elizabeth Warren as having the best policies of the bunch.

He added: 'You're not going to beat Trump with policies, right?

Bannon suggested the US hasnt seen anything yet when it comes to the outspoken president's brash antics

'Elizabeth Warren has an incredibly detailed and probably the most well thought-through set of policy prescriptions, and they keep coming every day. She's at, what, 7 per cent, 8 per cent?'

Last month Bannon revealed he agreed with the Massachusetts senator on her policy calling for the breakup of big tech companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook.

In an advert, Warren claimed the three tech companies had 'bulldozed the competition' and 'used private information for profit'.

Bannon went on to say that no one could take on the current president 'one-on-one', but identified Elizabeth Warren as having the best policies of the bunch

'I said this in September of 2017,' Bannon told WSJ at Large on Fox Business Network.

'These companies have too much concentration of power. They ought to be broken up. You've got to go after Facebook, you have to go after Google.'

Despite his praise, Warren has criticized Bannon in the past, even going as far as to call the former Breitbart chairman, who said it was a platform for the alt-right, a white supremacist.

Speaking at the The Wall Street Journal CEO Council in 2016, Warren said of Bannon: 'People didn't vote for Trump so that he could bring a white supremacist into the White House.'

Bannon went on to say it wouldn't surprise him if Hillary Clinton ran again in 2020, if Democrats were backed into a corner.

He added: 'If they dont think that theyve got somebody that can beat him, the vampire is going to be in the bullpen. She did get 63 million votes.'

In February, Bannon- who served as the CEO of Trump's victorious campaign - predicted that his former boss would win again 'bigger than he won in 2016'.

He added: 'You're not going to beat Trump with policies, right? Elizabeth Warren has an incredibly detailed and probably the most well thought-through set of policy prescriptions, and they keep coming every day. She's at, what, 7 per cent, 8 per cent?'

But he warned that the run-up to the 2020 election would be 'the most vitriolic year in American politics since before the Civil War'.

'And I include Vietnam in that. I think we're in, I think we're in for a very nasty 2019,' he said in an interview on CBS' 'Face the Nation'.

Bannon's comments come weeks after he warned that Trump will 'go full animal' on his political opponents after Robert Mueller's investigation found his campaign did not collude with Russia.

Trump's former policy adviser said the President will 'come off the chains' and use the findings to 'bludgeon' his adversaries in the lead-up to the 2020 election.

Bannon also believes Trump will use Mueller's report to neuter all ongoing investigations in Congress, and says they should be considered dead in the water.

'When I saw no new indictments  I thought, Oh my God!,' Bannon told Yahoo News.

He warned that the run-up to the 2020 election would be 'the most vitriolic year in American politics since before the Civil War'

'They didn't indict anybody regarding the Flynn investigation, they didn't indict Don Jr!

'Maybe [Mueller] could have details about obstruction of justice that are not indictable, but are meaningful. But right now, it looks like they have nothing.'

He continued: 'If the Mueller report doesn't have details about obstruction of justice, Trump will say: "We're not dealing with [House Judiciary Chairman] Jerry Nadler."

While Democrats can request documents, Attorney General Bill Barr will simply refer them back to Mueller, Bannon says.

Bannon's comments come weeks after he warned that Trump will 'go full animal' once Robert Mueller's investigation found his campaign did not collude with Russia

Bannon added that he believed all along that Mueller would find nothing. He even advised Trump not to discredit Mueller, believing that the probe would exonerate the President, he said.

Bannon also reveled in Democrats being 'reduced to tears' by the report, while lambasting news networks for their coverage of it.

'On 'Rachel Maddow,' she went 10 minutes into her show before the words no indictment crossed her lips,' he said.

'On CNN, they're in the mumble tank,' he added. 'They're crestfallen. They thought this would be it.'

Steve Bannon attacks the Pope for his criticism of Trump and populist movements he likened to the rise of Hitler - as he says the Catholic church is on the verge of BANKRUPTCY

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon attacked the Pope for criticizing populist movements and sensationally claimed the Catholic Church is on the verge of bankruptcy.

The former Breitbart News chairman, who attended a private Catholic military school, blasted Pope Francis for his comments against populist leaders.

Speaking to MSNBC's Richard Engel, Bannon said: 'He's the administrator of the Church, and he's also a politician.

Bannon criticized the Pope and sensationally claimed the Catholic Church is on the verge of bankruptcy

'This is the problem ... he's constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement.'

While Bannon said he created a 'platform for the alt-right' in Breitbart, Francis has cautioned against the movement, warning two years ago that it could lead to the election of another Adolf Hitler.

Bannon, who previously gave a talk about his global nationalist vision via Skype at a conference in the Vatican in 2014, has become highly critical of Francis in recent years.

Speaking to MSNBC's Richard Engel, Bannon said: 'This is the problem ... he's constantly putting all the faults in the world on the populist nationalist movement.'

Many of Francis' positions on topics such as populism, immigration and nationalism in Europe go against former Donald Trump advisor Bannon's ideology.

The 65 year old has praised Trump, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban and French far-right leader Marine Le Pen for their anti-immigration stances, while Francis has called for every country to welcome as many refugees as they can.

In response, Bannon has linked up with several Vatican hardliners, including conservative cardinal Raymond Burke who has supported calls for Francis to step down.

Bannon, who previously gave a talk about his global nationalist vision via Skype at a conference in the Vatican in 2014, has become highly critical of Francis in recent years

Now Bannon has blasted Francis for 'mismanaging' sex abuse scandals across the globe, and claimed the Catholic Church could go bankrupt.

Bannon added: 'The Catholic Church is heading to a financial crisis that will lead to a bankruptcy.

'It could actually bring down, not the theology, not the teachings, not the community of the Catholic church but the physical and financial apparatus of this church.'

Bannon is said to be developing an alt-right compound in Rome with Dignitatis Humanae Institute, reports the Daily Beast.

He previously said it would be 'an academy that brings the best thinkers together' to train 'modern gladiators.'

MSNBC will broadcast Steve Bannon's interview in 'On Assignment with Richard Engel this Sunday at 9 p.m. ET.
A hospital in China has reportedly played pornography in its waiting lounge by accident in front of adults and children.

Horrified patients had to flee the room after seeing erotic footage appearing on a TV screen while waiting to see their dentists, according to news reports.

Police have been called to investigate the case, a spokesperson told reporters.

Scroll down for video

Adults and children stand outside the waiting area (right) at the dental department of Chang'an Hospital in Dongguan after pornographic content started to appear on a TV screen

The embarrassing incident took place yesterday at the dental department of Chang'an Hospital in the city of Dongguan, reported Btime.com, an affiliation of Beijing Radio and Television Network.

The news site released a video filmed by a female eyewitness who can be heard saying: 'I am in Chang'an Hospital. What are they playing in broad daylight? It's too much.'

A spokesperson at the hospital told the website that police were investigating the matter.

The comprehensive public hospital has 40 departments and nearly 1,000 employees, according to its website.

Chang'an Hospital has 40 departments and nearly 1,000 employees, according to its website

The spokesperson said officers had checked the relevant equipment, including the TV set and Wi-Fi devices, but were yet to find the culprit.

Porn is strictly illegal in China, where authorities have been ramping up controls on online content.

Earlier this year, a 28-year-old man in the Chinese city of Wuhan was arrested after intentionally hacking into a restaurant's Wi-Fi system and broadcasting explicit content on TV screens.

People who produce, re-produce, publish, sell or spread pornographic content can be sentenced up to life imprisonment in China depending on the seriousness of their crime, according to the country's criminal law.
A Marine killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan has been escorted back to the US.

Staff Sgt. Christopher K.A. Slutman, 43, Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31,and Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, were killed Monday when a bomb struck their vehicle near Bagram Air Base north of Kabul. Their bodies were flown back to America later that day.

Photos show Slutman's American flag-draped coffin arriving at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, escorted by his fellow Marines, on Monday.

Delaware Gov. John Carney, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, and members of an official party prayed in front of the coffin as it was taken from the plane, before it was loaded into the back of a van.

A U.S. Marine Corps carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of on of the soldiers on Thursday as the bodies arrived at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware

Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, (left) Staff Sgt. Christopher K.A. Slutman, 43, (centre) and Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, (right) were killed in the bomb attack this week

Cpl. Hendriks' brother Joseph Hendriks, who is also in a Marine, was reportedly with the cortege as the soldier's bodies were unloaded.

Robert Hendriks' aunt, Lorraine Caliendo, told Newsday that Joseph had been given special permission by the military to escort Hendricks' remains back home.

Ms Caliendo described Robert as a 'sweet, kind and loving young man'.

She added that Joseph has just started a tour in Afghanistan but has had to postpone his tour of duty because of Robert's death.

Caliendo said both brothers hoped to become police officers after their military service and called Robert's death a 'horrible, horrible thing'.

In the aftermath of the deadly incident, the Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack which killed the three men who were in Afghanistan with 25th Marine Regiment, a Massachusetts-based Marine Reserve unit.

Slutman was a 15-year veteran of the New York Fire Department. He grew up in Maryland and lived in Delaware and New York.

Delaware Gov. John Carney, right, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, second from right, and members of an official party pause in prayer in front of the bodies

The fatalities brought to seven the number of U.S. troops killed this year in Afghanistan

The fatalities brought to seven the number of U.S. troops killed this year in Afghanistan, underscoring the difficulties in bringing peace to the war-wrecked country even as Washington has stepped up efforts to find a way to end the 17-year conflict.

Relatives of the deceased Marines were invited to witness what the military calls a dignified transfer in which the cases containing the remains are transferred to a vehicle from the aircraft that ferried them to the United States.

Media access to the transfer event is allowed if agreed by the family of the fallen service member, under a policy initiated in March 2009.
A cowboy builder who that took 300,000 from four separate families but left their homes in ruin has been jailed.

To complete Tony Mottram's, 45, unfinished work- his victims had to fork out an extra 200,000, leaving them out of pocket and their 'lives ruined'.

Details of Mottram's disastrous building work was heard by St Albans Crown Court, Hertfordshire.

This included leaving loft conversions without roofs, live wires hanging from ceilings and leaving a breeze block wall un-adjoined that fell and almost killed a homeowner's children.

One of Mottram's victims, Carla Claydon spoke about how he ruined their family home and stole their life savings after promising her a loft conversion

Carla, 44, said that the stress Mottram caused made her 'hair to fall out', and her 'distraught' husband lost two stone over the two year ordeal. Pictured: The home covered in scaffolding for the promised loft conversion

Carla Claydon's house in St Albans, Herts which was left in a state by builder Tony Mottram who promised them a loft conversion

Carla, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, hired the cowboy to build a loft extension for their semi-detached home in February 2017. Mottram even managed to con a free holiday out of them

The couple, who have two children aged six and seven, paid Mottram 37,000 to build the conversion but had to pay another 30,000 out of their life savings to repair the damage he caused

Mottram has been jailed for nine months and is disqualified from being a company director for seven years.

One of his victims, Carla Claydon spoke about how Mottram ruined their family home and stole their life savings after promising her a loft conversion.

Carla, 44, said that the stress Mottram caused made her 'hair to fall out', and her 'distraught' husband lost two stone over the two year ordeal.

Carla, from St Albans, Hertfordshire, hired the cowboy to build a loft extension for their semi-detached home in February 2017.

After three months of hell they sacked him as he left their family home as a building site, destroying bathrooms that weren't asked to be removed, and not paying staff.

Shockingly, Mottram even conned a holiday out of the couple.

Carla said: 'He told us that he needed to say goodbye to his dying father in Spain, we paid for his holiday.

'His father lived in Stevenage. He lied.'

The couple, who have two children aged six and seven, paid Mottram 37,000 to build the conversion but had to pay another 30,000 out of their life savings to repair the damage he caused.

Carla and her husband have also found themselves in A&E after injuring themselves while trying to fix the mistakes that Mottram made

Carla alleges that because Mottram was not paying his workers, they began to have a physical altercation, causing them to fight one another and even threatened the family.

She said: 'One of the builders said he was going to 'take every nail out of your loft and burn you and your husband in your bed.'

Carla and her husband Stewart notified the police about this threat.

Almost two years later since Mottram stopped working for Carla, the family still haven't recovered financially.

She now has had to start working full time at her job as a housing officer to pay off their debt, meaning that she cannot stay with her two children for as long as she wants.

She said: 'They are struggling to understand the big change, they keep asking me where I'm going and are getting very upset.'

Carla and her husband have also found themselves in A&E after injuring themselves while trying to fix the mistakes that Mottram made: 'He left a breezeblock wall completely unajoined to anything, it fell on my husband and tore his arm to shreds.

If it fell the otherway it would have killed my children.'

Carla said that despite being taken to court after an extensive investigation by the Trading Standards Authority, Mottram still started up a new building company- Choice Lofts Ltd.

On their website it says: 'Project Manager Tony Mottram has been trading for over 29 years in the building industry.'

She said: 'He's still doing it, I couldn't believe it when I saw it. Still hurting families.'

When Choice Lofts Ltd were contacted to reply but the phone line rang out.

Mottram pleaded guilty to charges of managing a business to defraud creditors and engaging in commercial practice with misleading or false information in March.
Archaeologists have potentially scuppered the Queen's plans to go environmentally friendly at Windsor Castle with a new electric car charging scheme.

The Royal Household lodged plans for two charging points for electric cars to be installed on the cobbled streets within the castle grounds in February.

However, archaeologists have warned the scheme could potentially impact on nationally-important remains, threatening the Queen's plans to go green.

The Royal Family have increasingly embraced electric technology in recent years while carrying out public duties.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex drove from the castle to their wedding reception in a 350,000 Jaguar E-Type Concept Zero, an electric version of the 1968 classic.

The Royal Household lodged plans for two charging points (sketch, left) for electric cars to be installed on the cobbled streets (right) within the castle grounds in February

Archaeologists have warned the scheme could potentially impact on nationally-important remains, threatening the Queen's plans to go green

Prince Philip was also the first royal to drive a prototype electric vehicles in the 1970s and more recently he had a London cab which ran on liquid petroleum gas.

Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales added an electric I-Pace Jaguar model for all his official duties in London last year.

The Queen has also voiced concerns about the environment, while a source said she was 'extremely passionate' about the electric car project at Windsor.

In planning documents submitted to Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council, Matt Saywood, archaeology officer at Berkshire Archaeology, said: 'There is potential for the site to lie over nationally important archaeological remains.

'Therefore, there are potential implications associated with this proposed scheme.

'The site falls within an area of archaeological significance and archaeological remains may be damaged by ground disturbance for the proposed development.'

The Royal Household say of the plan: 'The Royal Household intends to gradually replace a number of their existing petrol driven cars with electric models.

Pictured are the Chargemaster devices that would be installed at the castle to charge its growing fleet of electric vehicles

'As a result, the royal fleet of cars, used on a daily basis, are being upgraded to Electrical or Hybrid vehicles.

'The result of this change is a need to provide electrical charging units on all the RHH sites.'

They added: 'The electrical charging points will enable the Royal Household to gradually replace a number of their existing petrol drivencars with electric models.

'The provision of these charging points are modest and it is judged will have minimal impact on the surrounding historic fabric.'

The Royal Mews was originally built as a horse-riding base for Queen Victoria and is out of bounds to the public.

It also has links to Charles II who built accommodation on the site to house his Courtiers.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex drove from the castle to their wedding reception in a 350,000 Jaguar E-Type Concept Zero, an electric version of the 1968 classic

A royal source said: 'This is an extremely important project for The Queen and The Royal Household, not just at Windsor Castle but at several other royal palaces.

'The Queen is extremely passionate about the environment and this project will help her and The Royal Household to save the planet, especially when travelling to and from royal engagements and visits.

'Delays or issues with the project is certainly not good. The site does have a lot of historical significance but the archaeological threat is surprising.'

The Queen and her planning agents are now expected to work with archaeologists and arrange a programme of archaeological work at the site.

It comes amid reports that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have riled palace staff at Windsor Castle by banning them from using a car park overlooking their new home.

They are allegedly being referred to as NIMBYs - as in 'Not in Meghan's Back Yard.'

The car park close to their new residence at Frogmore Cottage had been used for years by staff but the couple are said to have banished them to King Edward VII public car park - a good mile away.

Members of the household and servants are now having to take a long walk over to work and are forking out for their own parking, the Sun claimed.
President Donald Trump once again gushes about his daughter Ivanka in a new profile where he says his unpaid advisor 'created millions of jobs' and confirms he considered her for two prominent posts with global reach.

Trump called his daughter a 'natural diplomat,' and said he considered naming her both to run the World Bank or serve as the nation's representative at the United Nations, where Nikki Haley's departure created a vacancy.

'If I did, they'd say nepotism, when it would've had nothing to do with nepotism. But she would've been incredible,' Trump said of of the UN post.

Trump made the claim about his daughter's suitability for the powerful posts in an interview with the Atlantic.

Ivanka Trump, White House senior adviser and daughter of President Donald Trump, speaks during the inaugural meeting of the Presidents National Council for the American Worker in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on September 17, 2018 in Washington, DC. President Trump says she 'created millions of jobs'

'She went into the whole helping-people-with-jobs, and I wasn't sure that was going to be the best use of her time, but I didn't know how successful she'd be,' Trump said, highlighting his daughter's efforts securing corporate pledges to provide job training.

'She's created millions of jobs, and I had no idea she'd be that successful,' Trump said, crediting his daughter for a portion of the job gains during a continued economic expansion during his term.

Trump said the thing that held him back was a belief that others would claim he pushed forward his daughter, whose husband Jared also works as a key advisor, due to nepotism.

'She would've been great at the United Nations, as an example.' I asked why he didn't nominate her. 'If I did, they'd say nepotism, when it would've had nothing to do with nepotism. But she would've been incredible,' Trump said.

Trump said Ivanka she could be a good fit to run the World Bank and is 'very good with numbers'

Ivanka Trump has taken an interest in such issues as women in the workforce and prison reform

The president sometimes calls his daughter 'Baby' in meetings, according to the article

LEGACY: Describing Donald Trump Jr.'s recent activities, Trump said: 'Don is, uh, he's enjoying politics; actually, it's very good'

Trump also praised Tiffany Trump, a law student

Eric Trump has been running the Trump Organization, along with Donald Trump Jr. and an executive

'I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank,' where the U.S. traditionally gets to put forward a leader. 'She would've been great at that because she's very good with numbers.'

Trump also discussed other members of his clan.

'Barron is young, but he's got wonderful potential,' Trump said of his child with First Lady Melania Trump.

'And Tiffany's doing extremely well,' Trump said of his daughter, who is a student at Georgetown Law School.

Trump held back when briefly describing Donald Trump Jr., who has been whipping up Trump rallies with speeches and defending his father on Twitter. 'Don is, uh, he's enjoying politics; actually, it's very good,' he said.

'And Eric is running the business along with Don, and also very much into politics. I mean, the childrenthe children have been very, very good,' Trump said.
A kindergarten headmaster in central China has been detained on suspicion of sexually assaulting a pupil.

The educator, Sun, is accused of raping a four-year-old girl, known by the pseudonym of Xiao Ya, according to police in Henan Province.

Sun is said to be in his 50s and the only male member of staff at the kindergarten, which has four employees and 55 pupils, according to Chinese media.

Scroll down for video

A video apparently shows the girl's grandmother sitting outside the kindergarten, condemning Sun. A banner calls Sun 'a beast' and says his behaviour 'will not be tolerated by heaven'

The incident took place at the 'Happy Babies Kindergarten' in Sheqi County of Nanyang city.

The kindergarten has three female teachers, apart from Sun, and has been operating without a license, according to BJ News citing insiders.

The same insiders said the kindergarten had been managed poorly.

They added that the kindergarten had a surveillance system, but it was not connected to the power supply.

The incident took place at a kindergarten in Sheqi County in the city of Nanyang (pictured)

A trending video from yesterday apparently shows Xiao Ya's grandmother sitting outside the kindergarten.

The woman is seen condemning Sun's behaviour to passersby.

The footage also shows a banner hung in front of the kindergarten, which accuses Sun of raping the little girl.

The banner calls Sun 'a beast' and says his behaviour 'will not be tolerated by heaven'.

BJ News claimed that medical examination found Xiao Ya's hymen had been broken. Police have not commented on the medical result.

It remains unclear whether the alleged sexual assault had taken place at the kindergarten or elsewhere.

Local police are investigating the case under the direction from the county's public prosecutors, according to a social media statement from the Sheqi Public Bureau.
A four-year-old girl has been pictured for the first time with her smiling family since she was shot multiple times in the Christchurch massacre that killed 50 people.

Young Alen Darahgmih can sit up slightly for half an hour, respond to questions with one word answers and is 'making daily progress', after a lengthy ordeal that saw the child endure eight surgeries.

Her progress has filled her family with hope. When Alen first woke up, she could not see, hear or recognise anyone.

But a picture shared on Friday shows her sitting up surrounded by family - including her father Wasseim Alsati, who was also shot multiple times, as they both recover.

Alen Darahgmih, 4, has been pictured for the first time surrounded by family since she was shot multiple times in the Christchurch massacre that killed 50 people

Relatives made a Give A Little page to 'make sure the family is financially stable in the future'.

'We are unsure as to what she can and can't see,' the page said.

'She can not yet move her body with control, and her eyes do not track or fix on anyone.

'She managed to swallow a teaspoon of water today. No solids yet.

'Please keep praying with us - every small development is very exciting.

'Wasseim is not currently walking but is expecting to walk again when fully recovered.'

Father Wasseim Alsati (pictured with Alen) held back tears from his hospital bed as he explained his daughter has brain damage and has been through eight surgeries

Mr Alsati, a barber, held back tears when he revealed his daughter had brain damage before some of the small developments had been made.

'My daughter Alen woke up five days ago and she's had a lot of surgeries... seven to eight surgeries,' Mr Alsati said.

'She has brain damage at the moment and the doctor has told us they need four to six months to know how bad the damage is.

'My daughter woke up and she doesn't know us and she cannot see us and she cannot hear us at all.

'I don't know if my daughter is cold or warm or if my daughter is replying back to me at all but we're all waiting.'

Young Alen can sit up slightly for half an hour, respond to questions with one word answers and is 'making daily progress'

Mr Alsati thanked Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern, doctors, nurses, friends and family.

'Keep praying for us, we need that. Thank you for being beside us guys,' he said.

'I cannot wait until we all feel better and come back home to Christchurch.

'I miss home. I miss everybody.'

The father and daughter are both in hospital recovering from multiple gunshot wounds. 'I cannot wait until we all feel better and come back home to Christchurch,' Mr Alsati said

The alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant, 28, has been charged with 50 counts of murder.

The Australian-born man is accused of gunning down almost 100 people in a sickening attack on the Al Noor and Linwood mosques that was live-streamed and shared to Facebook.

He has previously requested to represent himself in court, and in his last court appearance he smirked and gave a white supremacist sign with his hand.
This is the shocking aftermath of a seven-year-old's girl nasty playground injury which saw her head impaled with a pair of scissors.

Camila Angelita Cruz Zuniga was rushed to a fire station near her home in the Honduran capital city of Tegucigalpa, by her mother Raquel Zuniga, when a breaktime game went reportedly wrong.

And sensational footage shows the deeply-wedged blades jutting out of the girl's skull while paramedics bandage her.

Camila Angelita Cruz Zuniga, from Honduras, suffered a nasty playground injury which saw her head impaled with a pair of scissors

The video shows a gloved hand slowly rotate a strip of dressing around Camila's head, which is being held still by another medic.

The girl, given her horrific injury, remains extraordinarily calm as the ambulance team wrap her skull.

Camila was then taken by ambulance to the women and children's unit of the city's University School Hospital to have the scissors removed.

But neurosurgeons are reportedly taking time to examine the gash to ensure that dislodging the scissors will not aggravate the wound.

Doctors, who have been managed to stem the flow of blood, describe Camila's condition as stable and she is able to answer doctors' questions have been able to stem the flow of blood.

The girl, given her horrific injury, remains extraordinarily calm as the ambulance team wrap her skull

The supposed impaling occured in the Nueva Capital district, one of the most poverty-stricken areas of the city which is itself one of the poorest in Latin America.

The sight of the scissors lodged into the seven-year-old's skull has left social media users gobsmacked.

Netizen Lorena Arrua said: 'The scissors must have been stuck up and the little girl fell on them.'

Celeste Pereyra added: 'Pray God she's OK!!! Poor baby.'

Local media reports the girl accidentally stabbed herself on the scissors while playing although this has not been confirmed.
A man has been arrested by police for taking secret upskirt photos of a woman at a subway station in south China.

Surveillance footage of the incident shows the 27-year-old man crouching down behind the woman and pointing his phone camera up her skirt while she was waiting for a train at Shangmeilin station in Shenzhen.

The man also grabbed the woman's backside as they boarded the train, according to Chinese reports.

A man is caught crouching down behind a woman and holding his camera underneath a woman's dress at a busy subway station in Shenzhen. He was later arrested and detained

After taking the upskirt photo, the pervert is seen standing back up and checking his phone

After taking the upskirt photo, the pervert was seen standing back up and checking his phone.

When the woman confronted the man and called him a thug, he allegedly shouted back, 'So what, I'm a thug.'

The woman filed a police report on March 4, and the man was arrested three days later following an investigation, according to Southern Metropolis Daily.

When the woman confronted the man, he allegedly shouted back, 'So what, I'm a thug'

Dramatic footage of the arrest shows plain clothes police officers grabbing the man and tackling him to the ground in front of shocked passers-by at Qinghu subway station

The pervert told police officers that he committed the lewd act 'out of curiosity'

Dramatic footage of the arrest shows plain clothes police officers grabbing the man and tackling him to the ground in front of shocked passers-by at Qinghu subway station.

They confiscated his phone, which contained several upskirt photos of different women.

In a video of the questioning, the man, identified by his surname Guo, said he committed the lewd act 'out of curiosity'.

'I took a picture under the woman's dress and touched her bottom,' the 27-year-old told officers.

The man has been detained by police for 15 days for invasion of privacy and committing an obscene act.
Meghan Markle will become the most 'universal fashion icon' on the planet once she gives birth.

That is the prediction from one of the top fashion designers that regularly dresses the former Suits actress turned British Royal.

Oscar de la Renta co-creative director Fernando Garcia says he believes Meghan's global appeal transcends so many other A-list stars, he revealed in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV.

Garcia - who regularly designs outfits for Meghan and co-designed the outfit Meghan's mother Doria Ragland wore to the Royal Wedding in May last year - feels that Markle is inspirational to millions of people around the world and that will only heighten once she becomes a mother.

Meghan Markle is on her way to becoming the most 'universal fashion icon', according to Oscar de la Renta co-creative director Fernando Garcia, who designed this $2,000 black printed silk-chiffon midi dress with unicorns that the Duchess wore in February

Garcia regularly designs outfits for Meghan and admits that whatever she wears sells out immediately, he told DailyMailTV . The designer runs the Oscar de la Renta fashion house along with co-creative director Laura Kim (pictured together at New York fashion week)

In recent weeks the style world lauded the Duchess of Sussex for sporting a $2,000 black printed silk-chiffon Oscar de la Renta midi dress with unicorns showing off her baby bump during a royal visit to Bristol in the UK.

And Garcia, 31, admits that working with the stunning actress turned style icon is 'fashion heaven.'

'I can only imagine it is going to exacerbate the situation when she becomes a mother,' he explains.

'She will become the most universal fashion icon that there is.'

The designer, who was raised in the Dominican Republic before graduating from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, explained why he believes Meghan, 37, commands such a high status among women worldwide.

'Meghan is a woman that is very relatable, much like Amal Clooney. These are working women and so it translates much quicker than somebody who is not in the professional field for instance. It blows up. We sell out immediately, because everybody wants to look up to somebody like either of them. It is fashion heaven for me.'

The designer, who with acclaimed Monse brand creator Laura Kim took the reins of the Oscar de la Renta fashion house three years ago, is relishing offering Meghan's child a variety of outfits for its first year.

But the designer remained tight-lipped on any inside info on the upcoming arrival.

'I don't know anything,' he said. 'The second I have an answer I will send a shipment of clothes that she won't be able to refuse. So I am looking forward to seeing that.'

Garcia also revealed that he feels Meghan's clothes reflect an independent woman, who oozes confidence, has a business drive, which is matched by a natural desire to want to support good causes.

Those traits, he says, are vital for the de la Renta creatives when they carve unique looks for the Duchess.

The 31-year-old designer says that working with the Duchess is 'fashion heaven' and can only imagine how her influence will expand once she's a mother. He dressed her in this Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress worth $13,000 for the Australian Geographic Society gala awards

Garcia says Meghan is very relatable because she is in the professional field and someone everybody looks up to. She is pictured in this navy blue top by Oscar de la Renta, trousers by Altuzarra and stiletto heeled shoes back in September

Yet another one of Garcia's designs, Meghan wore this Oscar de la Renta wrap dress worth about $5,000 to the wedding of Celia McCorquodale in June 2018

Some have criticized Meghan for spending huge sums on her designer wardrobe, but Garcia defended her image status.

He said: 'Nowadays you have to be something else to look up to more than an Instagram person. And there are not that many of them that are trying to take the limelight.

Garcia co-designed this ensemble Meghan's mother Doria Ragland wore to the Royal Wedding in May

'So it is wonderful when you see women like her who are championing all these amazing causes across the world also not being bashful about being stylish and being proud about it, and celebrating it.

'It is not something to be ashamed of even if you are a 9 to 5 type of person.'

Garcia spoke to DailyMailTV as he attended The Colleagues and Oscar de la Renta's Annual Spring Luncheon in Beverly Hills.

He explained the thought process of creating looks for women like Meghan.

'I have found with Amal and all these these women, that want to be seen for what they do as much as what they look like, is that it has to have a good balance of highlighting their figure, making sure it doesn't overwhelm who they are and what they represent.

'It is basically striking a balance across the board with all women, because it suits every personality when you are able to balance something like that.'

Garcia attended the 31st Annual Colleagues Spring Luncheon, where award-winning actress Marlo Thomas was handed The Colleagues Champion of Children Award, which honors those who have made a lasting impact on the lives of children.

He said of the event: 'We are very happy to champion the cause for The Colleagues. I inherited the supporting of this cause from Oscar - my mentor. I get come to LA, soak up the sun and help everyone. It is a win win.

'It's one of the few causes that we support that means so much to us.'

He also oversaw a fashion show from Oscar de la Renta's Fall 2019 collection.

The Colleagues, a 501c3 non-profit corporation, is a group of 65 active women and over 25 sustaining members who volunteer their time and expertise to support and raise funds for their sole beneficiary, the Children's Institute, Inc.

In their efforts to serve Los Angeles' most vulnerable children harmed by community and family violence, abuse and neglect, The Colleagues have donated over $25million to CII through their high-end resale and vintage clothing shop and their annual spring luncheon.
The Maldivian Democratic Party, led by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, won 65 seats out of a total of 87. The agreements signed with China are under careful scrutiny.

Male (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) led by President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has swept the parliamentary elections that were held on April 6th. The political force, back in vogue after the long exile of its leader Mohamed Nasheed, who returned home just five months ago, defeated the opposition of the Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM) winning two-thirds of the seats in Parliament (called People's Majilis ), that is 65 deputies out of a total of 87.

The new parliamentary composition thus gives a free hand to what was announced by Solih on the eve of the vote: scrutinize the infrastructure agreements with Beijing for the New Chinese Silk Road, which created incurable debts and led the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

Yesterday, former president Nasheed said: "The government continues to examine the agreements signed by the previous government, many of which - it is our fear - depended on large-scale corruption. We must allow the authorities to analyze these agreements with forensic attention".

The electoral campaign was played precisely on the fight against the corruption of the regime of Abdulla Yameen, head of the PPM and historical rival of Nasheed, the first democratically elected president in the Maldives and very close to India.

Various commentators, especially from the Indian side, argue that the political turnaround of the archipelago, where 340,000 Sunni Muslims live, has now begun. An editorial published two days ago in the Delhi daily Hindustan Times recalls that Yameen persecuted political opponents last year, indicted two Supreme Court judges who had criticized him, restricted civil liberties by declaring a state of emergency .

The tightening on the life of the country has aroused a widespread discontent that has found its final expression in the surprise election of Solih to the presidency, last September. The conditions for Nasheed's return home and the start of a reform process were laid. Among the most important on which the next Parliament will work, the introduction of the minimum wage and the imposition of the first tax collection system.
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Immersed up to her neck in a dark viscous liquid, Sulfiya smiles in delight, confident that the fetid substance will cure her painful condition.

Sulfiya, a Russian woman in her 60s, has travelled to Azerbaijan's north-western city of Naftalan in the hope that crude oil baths at a local sanatorium will end her years of suffering from polyarthritis, a disease affecting the joints.

'This is so pleasant,' she enthuses, despite the reek of engine oil.

Her naked dip in oil heated to just above body temperature lasts 10 minutes, after which an attendant scrapes the brown oil off her skin and sends her into a shower.

A man bathes in a tub filled with Naftalan crude oil during a treatment session at Sehirli Naftalan Health Centre in Azerbaijan, 186 miles from capital Baku

The crude oil that comes from subsoil reservoirs in Naftalan is not suitable for commercial use. It is instead used to treat gynaecological and neurological issues

A man sits with his head against a cushion in the oil bath as he raises his hand out of the liquid. The country's huge oil deposits were discovered in the 1800s

A monument stands at the entrance of the city of Naftalan - 186 miles from Azerbaijan's capital Baku. The petroleum spa resort is popular among tourists despite being close to the conflict zone Nagorny Karabakh

Oil exports to markets all over the world are the largest sector of Azerbaijan's economy. It helped made the country one of the first places to start commercial oil production in the 19th century

The native of Russia's Tatarstan region said she and her friends 'have long dreamed of coming' for treatment in Naftalan.

The petroleum spa resort in the oil-rich Caucasus country is a draw for visitors despite its proximity to Nagorny Karabakh, a region disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in a long-running armed conflict.

After 10 days of bathing in crude oil Sulfiya says she now feels 'much better' and has even reduced her medication for the polyarthritis that she has had for 12 years.

'It is a gift from God,' agrees 48-year-old Rufat, an Azerbaijani journalist and opposition party member who is undergoing treatment in the sanatorium called Sehirli, or 'magic' in Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijan's vast oil deposits were discovered in the mid-19th century, making what was at the time part of the Russian Empire one of the first places in the world to start commercial oil production.

One Russia woman, known only as Sulfiya, who is in her 60s, said after 10 days in the oil baths she feels better and has been able to take less medicine for her polyarthritis that she has had for 12 years

Oil exports to markets all over the world are the largest sector of Azerbaijan's economy, but the crude that comes from subsoil reservoirs in Naftalan is not suitable for commercial use.

Instead the local oil is used to treat muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynaecological and neurological problems.

According to a legend, which spa staff readily tell clients, the healing properties of Naftalan's 'miraculous oil' were discovered by accident when a camel left to die near a pool of oil was cured.

The small town of Naftalan some 185 miles from the capital Baku became a popular health resort for Soviet citizens in the 1920s.

Spa staff regularly tell of the legend of the healing properties of Naftalan's 'miraculous oil'. They say the powers were discovered by accident when a camel left to die near a pool of oil was cured

The thick, dirty oil runs from a tap into the large brown baths. Naftalan became a popular health resort for Soviet citizens in the 1920s

The facade of Sehirli Naftalan Health Centre, is pictured on March 21. Over the last two decades, Azerbaijani authorities have worked hard to re-establish Naftalan's reputation as a health resort

'In the past, when there weren't any hotels or sanatoriums, people would come to Naftalan and stay with locals,' said one of the doctors at the Sehirli sanatorium, Fabil Azizov, sitting in her office under a portrait of strongman President Ilham Aliyev.

'But as time passed, sanatoriums were built and treatment methods developed.'

Some specialists warn the method has dangerous side effects.

'Despite the stories of past cures, the use of crude oil for medicinal purposes has been condemned by Western doctors as potentially carcinogenic,' former journalist Maryam Omidi wrote in a 2017 book published in Britain about Soviet-era sanatoriums.

In fact, the oil at Naftalan is almost 50 per cent naphthalene, a carcinogenic substance found in cigarette smoke and mothballs that in large amounts can damage or destroy red blood cells.

A man pushes oil away from his body in the bath as his hands emerge from the sludge-like substance. Doctors and patients brush aside misgivings over the treatment method

A grey-haired man holds up his hands in a white bath at the health centre. An orange tap that appears to be made from plastic sits at the top of the bath

But doctors and patients at Naftalan brush aside any misgivings and the sanatorium even has a small museum displaying crutches that once belonged to patients who have recovered from their illnesses.

During its heyday in the 1980s, Naftalan would host more than 70,000 visitors a year.

But in 1988, a bloody war began with neighbouring Armenia for the control of Azerbaijan's separatist Nagorny Karabakh region, which unilaterally proclaimed independence from Baku in 1991.

The conflict claimed the lives of some 30,000 people from both sides and forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.

A 1994 ceasefire agreement ended hostilities, but the arch foes have yet to reach a definitive peace deal and there are frequent skirmishes along the volatile frontline.

In the 1980s, Naftalan would host more than 70,000 visitors a year but has since lost tourists after a bloody war in 1988 ensued with Armenia

Visitors are treated to a dip in the oil, which is heated to just above body temperature, fro around ten minutes. After this an attendant scrapes the brown oil off her skin and sends them into a shower

During the war, the sanatoriums in Naftalan - a few miles from the frontline - were converted into hospitals for wounded soldiers and temporary accommodation for refugees.

Over the last two decades, the Azerbaijani authorities have worked hard to re-establish Naftalan's reputation as a health resort.

They resettled refugees in other regions, demolished decrepit Soviet-era sanatoriums and built brand-new tourist facilities.

Modern Naftalan is a blend of kitsch-looking high-end spas where a week's treatment costs some 1,000 euros, and modest sanatoriums where a week's treatment costs around 100 euros.

The simmering Karabakh conflict may be out of sight, but guests can still feel uncomfortably close to the military action.

During one of the deadliest recent bouts of fighting in April 2016, 'we heard gunshots,' said a member of staff at Naftalan's luxurious Garabag spa, adding quickly that 'everyone stayed on.'
A California man was lauded as a hero this week after he was killed stepping in front of a bullet that was intended for his sister.

Jose Duran Jr., 29, was helping his sister move out of her Fresno home on Sunday when her allegedly abusive husband, Eric Ordonez, 32, pulled a gun on her, police said.

According to authorities Duran instinctively jumped between the couple just as Ordonez reportedly pulled the trigger of his handgun.

The bullet struck Duran in the neck and he died at the scene.

Jose Duran Jr. (above), 29, was helping his sister to move out of her home in Fresno on Sunday when he was allegedly shot dead by her sister's husband

Eric Ordonez, 32, is believed to have drawn the weapon and aimed it at Duran's sister, before the brother stepped in front of the bullet

By all accounts, Jose Duran Jr. is a hero, Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said in a press conference on Wednesday. He died protecting his sister and prevented her from being shot and killed.

Police said that after shooting Duran, Ordonez aimed the gun at the womans father, who was also assisting the move. However, the weapon misfired and the suspect fled the scene.

A California Highway Patrol helicopter discovered Ordonez hiding in a shed in a neighbors backyard less than a mile away at the West Shaw Village Apartment complex  an area reportedly plagued by crime.

Ordonez was arrested and as of Friday was being held by Fresno Police on murder charges.

Authorities say theyre still looking for the alleged murder weapon, which they fear may be found by a child if not recovered.

The bullet fatally struck Duran in the neck and he died at the scene

The reported altercation happened at the West Shaw Village Apartment complex  an area said to plagued by crime.

We are in need of that handgun used in this homicide, Dyer said. Somewhere between the house where this occurred ... and that shed, that gun went missing.

Police believe Durans sister, who has not been publicly named, is a victim of domestic violence  an abusive trend which has seen an increase of nearly 35 per cent in the last year.

Some 150 reports of domestic violence have already been filed this year, according to ABC30.

Officers say they're planning to launch an outreach program alongside community leaders and local residents to discuss ways to combat the sharp rise in domestic violence and to help those who are victims of the abuse.
Far-right activist Neil Erikson has been detained by police for interrupting Muslim Friday prayers in Melbourne's Federation Square.

In a video posted to Youtube on Friday, Erikson and his associates can be seen walking through the peacefully gathered group of Muslims who were sitting in groups of men and women.

Erikson arrived before the 1pm start time of the prayers and can be seen in the video wearing a high-vis shirt and walking through the group of woman before yelling slogans into a megaphone.

Far-right activist Neil Erikson has been detained by police for interrupting Muslim Friday prayers in Melbourne's Federation Square

In a video posted to Youtube on Friday, Erikson and his associates can be seen walking through the peacefully gathered group of Muslims who were sitting in groups of men and women

He can be heard repeatedly shouting the slogans 'Mohammad was a False Prophet,' 'Mohammad was a Terrorist' and 'Vote Fraser Anning.'

The Muslim crowd calmly asked who he was and asked him to leave before police arrived minutes later.

Officers escorted him away from where the prayers were taking place to another part of Federation Square where they questioned him.

Erikson repeatedly asked why he was being moved to another part of the square.

He also questioned why the police had taken three hours to remove hundreds of vegan protesters who blocked Melbourne CBD streets during rush hour on Monday.

At one point in the video he can be seen trying to walk back to where the prayers are taking place despite police directing him to stay where he is.

Officers then tackle him to the ground and handcuff him.

It is understood he was driven across the city to Flemington where he was released with a direction to not return to the CBD.

His associates were not detained.

The stunt was carried out less than one month after a gunman opened fire on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday Prayers in the worst terror attack in the country's history.

The horrific attack resulted in the deaths of 50 Muslim worshippers and another 50 were seriously injured.

In the wake of the attacks, gun laws have been changed in New Zealand, with semi-automatic weapons now banned.
A Miami high school student is in hot water after he allegedly attempted a popular wrestling move on his principal.

Gianny Sosa, an 18-year-old senior at Miami Southridge Senior High School, was arrested after he tried to place his arm around the neck of Humberto Miret to allegedly attempt an 'RKO' move, which was caught on video.

The dangerous move, typically performed by WWE wrestle Randy Orton, is executed by grabbing the back of an opponents head and slamming their face into the ground.

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Gianny Sosa, a senior at Miami Southridge Senior High School, was arrested after he tried to place his arm around the neck of Humberto Miret to allegedly attempt an 'RKO' move, which was caught on video

It was unclear what led to the alleged incident but footage shows the student appear to try the move, only for the principal to wrestle him off and hold him against a wall

It was unclear what led to the alleged incident but footage shows the student appearing to try the move, only for the principal to wrestle him off and hold him against a wall.

The pair then engage in a tussle, with Miret pushing the boy backwards and holding him there.

Later footage, shared on Instagram, shows a heated argument between the pair afterwards as the Miret calls the police and Sosa, 18, accuses his principal of restraining him.

Dangerous: The dangerous move, typically performed by WWE wrestle Randy Orton, is executed by grabbing the back of an opponents head and slamming their face into the ground

The teen is charged with battery on a school official and interference with an educational institution, according to the station

'Oh, now that I'm recording you don't want to touch me? You don't want to hit me now?' Sosa said to Miret in the video.

'It's crazy, ain't it? Now that the camera has your face, you don't want to hit me. Now that the superintendent might see this, you don't want to touch me.'

The teen is charged with battery on a school official and interference with an educational institution, according to the station.

It was not immediately whether the student or Miret will face discipline by the Miami-Dade County Public Schools district.
Georgetown University students have voted in favor of a referendum seeking the establishment of a fund that benefits the descendants of enslaved people who were sold by the school in the 1800s to pay off its debts.

The $27.20-per-semester fee would create one of the first reparations funds at a major U.S. institution.

More than 2,500 undergraduate students at the Washington D.C. campus voted in favor on Thursday for the 'Reconciliation Contribution' fee.

The Georgetown University Student Association Elections Commission said those in favor (2,541) represented 66 per cent of votes.

The fee was opposed by 1,304 students and voting turnout was 57.9 percent.

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Georgetown University students voted on Thursday in favor of a referendum seeking the establishment of a fund that benefits the descendants of enslaved people who were sold by the school in the 1800s to pay off its debts

University administrator Todd Olson didn't commit to the fund's establishment in a statement on Friday, but said the non-binding vote provided 'valuable insight into student perspectives'.

The student-led proposal aims to atone for the Jesuit-organized sale of 272 slaves in 1838.

If they succeed in getting the fund created, it would raise around $406,000 in its first year, based on the school's 2018-2019 undergraduate enrollment of 7463 students. The referendum is titled 'GU272'

Fees would go toward education and health care initiatives in underprivileged communities throughout Louisiana and Maryland, where some descendants of those who were sold now live.

The history of Georgetown, which was founded in 1789 by John Carroll, is rife with benefit at the expense of enslaved people.

In September 2015, Georgetown's 48th president John J. DeGioia formed a working group of faculty, staff and students to study the issue of how the school could address its checkered past, but little action has resulted save removing names from buildings following student demonstrations.

Students held a rally in support of the referendum, titled 'GU272' ahead of the vote on Thursday.

If they succeed in getting the fund created, it would raise around $406,000 in its first year, based on the school's 2018-2019 undergraduate enrollment of 7,463 students, according to data compiled by US News & World Report.

Students held a rally (above) in support of the referendum, titled 'GU272', ahead of the vote on the Georgetown University campus on Thursday

RALLY FOR #GU272 REFERENDUM A LIVE STREAM OF OUR RALLY FOR #GU272 REFERENDUM WE WILL START AT 3:30 PM EST. Posted by Students for GU272 on Thursday, April 11, 2019

In 1838, then-president Thomas Mulledy, SJ, orchestrated the mass sale of enslaved people for the benefit of the school to Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey of Louisiana. This vintage illustration shows Georgetown University in 1830, from a series of prints of American historical college

'What is happening right now on Georgetown's campus is a reflection of a larger political climate, in which, I think, people are taking seriously what anti-racist action looks like,' Marcia Chatelain, a professor of history and African-American studies and a member of the president's working group, told Politico.

'So it's not just being nice to each other or saying racism is a bad thing. It's about actually taking account and responsibility for the ways that these decisions and processes in the past shape contemporary life.'

The history of Georgetown University, which was founded in 1789 by John Carroll (depicted), is rife with benefit at the expense of enslaved people

But the sentiment on campus is far from unanimous regarding the reparations fee, which according to the students' referendum would be paid for by students and not the university.

'When you target undergraduates, to be quite frank, you're literally targeting the least financially successful subset of people who benefit from Georgetown,' sophomore and student senator Sam Dubke, an international economics major, said.

The fee would be tacked on to an already high academic bill, currently running $54,104 in just annual tuition and fees. Room and board averages an additional $16,418 per student each year, bringing the yearly cost of attendance to $70,522.

Meanwhile, an Andrew Mellon Foundation grant to the school has funded faculty positions and fellowships to study slavery, with entire classes devoted to discussing how the school operated in such a way despite founding principles rooted in Catholic beliefs.

After its founding in the late 1700s, one of Georgetown's first directors, Rev. John Ashton, and an early president, Rev. Francis Neale, SJ, would be sued by slaves they each owned for their freedom, according to a timeline on the Georgetown University website.

Records dating back to at least 1792 showed a receipt related to the enslavement of a woman named Sukey, who was just one of many who labored as artisans, cooks and laundresses at Georgetown.

In 1838, then-president Thomas Mulledy, SJ, orchestrated the mass sale of enslaved people for the benefit of the school to Henry Johnson and Jesse Batey of Louisiana.

The slaves were shipped to New Orleans and once there were dispersed between two sugar plantations in the state.

In 1874, Rev. Patrick Patrick Francis Healy, SJ, who was born into slavery in 1834, became the 26th president of Georgetown. His mixed race heritage was not known at the time

Even after the sale in 1838, Georgetown continued to benefit from forced servitude of black people in later years, with a financial statement for the school from 1841 indicating at least two slaves lived on campus at that time.

On April 14, 1862, slavery was abolished in Washington DC, eight months before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed.

In 1874, Rev. Patrick Patrick Francis Healy, SJ, who was born into slavery in 1834, became the 26th president of Georgetown. He father, Michael Healy, was an Irish immigrant and his mother, Mary Elizam, was a mixed race enslaved person. His mixed-race heritage did not become widely known until the 1900s.

The student body wouldn't be integrated until nearly 100 years later, with the first black undergraduate being admitted in 1950.

Georgetown now offers preference in admissions to descendants of the 272 people who were sold, but has fallen short of offering financial reparations.

The first two descendants of those enslaved people joined the school in 2017.

The student referendum hopes to address the issue of lack of financial atonement to the entirety of the estimated 4,000 living descendants, even if the students have to foot the bill themselves.

University officials haven't indicated how they plan to respond if it passes.
A New Jersey high school student has been arrested after a videotaped fight appeared to show her ripping off her classmate's hijab while allegedly yelling racist slurs.

Shocking footage filmed Wednesday and posted to social media showed the two girls brawling over a seat in a common area on campus, according to the school's superintendent.

It shows one East Brunswick High School student apparently punching a girl on the floor while a staff member pulls them apart. Neither girl has been named as they are both under age.

One witness told CBS New York: 'I witnessed a Muslim girl on the floor and she was being senselessly beaten by other girl.

'She was shouting help and stop. I saw her being spat on.'

A New Jersey high school student has been arrested after a videotaped fight appeared to show her ripping off her classmate's hijab while allegedly yelling racist slurs

The East Brunswick Public Schools Superintendent said one of the girls pulled off the other girls hijab and started screaming racist slurs at her, News 4 reports.

In a letter to parents Victor Valeski wrote: 'Ultimately, the fight was determined to be a bias incident and was immediately reported to the East Brunswick Police Department and the County Prosecutors Office in accordance with Board Police and the law.

'The East Brunswick Public School District values our diverse student body and community. The District does not tolerate any incidents of bias, discrimination, harassment, intimidation or bullying and takes swift action if such an event occurs.'

But the accused teen's grandfather told Pix11 the fight was not racially motivated.

The man, who did not want to be named, said: 'She does have a temper and doesnt know how to express herself at times, but shes a good kid.

'Shes been brought up good, she's not racist most of her friends will tell you shes not racist.'

He says they are now receiving 'threatening' text messages.

The accused teen's grandfather, pictured, said the fight was not racially motivated, calling his granddaughter 'a good kid'

Students and parents have questioned why the Muslim student was suspended for 'defending herself' as hundreds showed up at a school board meeting held Thursday evening

Middlesex County prosecutors said the student who is accused of pulling off her classmate's hijab has been charged with simple assault, harassment, cyber harassment and disorderly conduct.

The Muslim girl has also been suspended under the school's zero-tolerance policy after the fight was broken up by a school security officer.

But some students and parents have questioned why she was suspended for 'defending herself'.

The boy who filmed the fight was also suspended. He told News 4: 'I got in trouble for it because I guess it's against the school rules, but at the end of the day I did the right thing.'

Mayor Brad Cohen told mycentraljersey.com: 'The Muslim woman and her family have been seen and offered any help needed from the school psychologists and support staff.

'I am also aware that the perpetrator posted an inflammatory statement on Snapchat, which has also been shared through social media.

'Let me be very clear in that I stand with our Muslim friends and neighbors in condemning this entire incident.'

DailyMail.com has contacted East Brunswick police for comment.
Marcia Clark is opening up about one of her first high-profile cases while working at the Los Angeles District Attorneys office in a special that airs Friday.

The former prosecutor recalls the day she met the family of Rebecca Schaeffer, the budding Hollywood star who was murdered on her own doorstep by Robert Bardo, a man who had stalked her for years.

The actress was only 21 at the time.

'I was pregnant with my first child and hoped that I wasn't showing,' recalls Clark in a clip from 20/20 obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com.

'I remember taking a deep breath before meeting them because I was feeling so much grief and so much pain on their behalf. What do you say?'

Clark said that she ultimately told the family that she was 'going to fight so hard to bring her killer to justice.'

20/20 airs Friday night at 9pm on ABC.

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Fallen star: The tragic murder of Rebecca Schaeffer (above in 1987) at the hands of her stalker Robert Bardo is the focus of a new episode of 20/20 airing Friday on ABC

Schaeffer, who hailed from Eugene, Oregon, broke into the world of acting with a six-month stint on the popular soap opera One Life to Live.

She had moved to New York on her own at the age of 16 to pursue a career in modeling, but shifted her attention to acting after being rejected for job after job on account of her height.

The 5ft 7in high school student had no trouble booking acting jobs though, and managed to make the transition from daytime soap to primetime drama in no time.

In 1986, she was cast as a teenager who moved in with her sister after the death of their parents in My Sister Sam.

The show ran for two seasons, and by 1988 Schaeffer was being courted by major studios for work in feature films.

She had also gained the unwanted attention of Bardo, who went from sending deranged love letters to actually showing up on the set of Schaeffer's show while brandishing a knife and demanding to see the star.

Bardo lost interest when her show went off the air, but his obsession with the actress was renewed after he saw her in the film Scenes From the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.

He then paid a private detective to get Schaeffer's address, had his brother obtain a gun for him and went to her home in Los Angeles.

Killer: In a clip obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com, Marcia Clark recalls meeting the actress' family for the first time ahead of prosecuting Bardo (above in 1991 during his trial)

Schaeffer answered the door the first time he knocked and after a brief conversation he walked off to eat at a diner.

Bardo then returned an hour later and shot Schaeffer at point blank range on her own doorstep.

The tragic incident would later become the inspiration for the 2002 film Moonlight Mile starring Jake Gylleenhall, Susan Sarandon, Dustin Hoffman and Ellen Pompeo.

It was written by her then-boyfriend Brad Siberling, who spent time with Schaeffer's family when they came to Los Angeles for her murder trial.

Bardo was sentenced to life in prison following a bench trial, without the possibility of parole.
Star Labor candidate for Curtin Melissa Parke has quit after a controversial speech which outraged the Jewish community.

Speaking to pro-Palestinian activists last month, Ms Parke described the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as 'worse than the South African system of apartheid'.

Ms Parke also claimed she 'remembered vividly' when 'a pregnant refugee woman was ordered at a checkpoint in Gaza to drink a bottle of bleach', The Herald Sun reported.

She made the comments at first-ever meeting of the Western Australian Labor for Palestine group in March and stepped down on Friday night.

Ex-Rudd government minister Melissa Parke pulled out from the Federal election race for Curtin after she made controversial comments about Israel

The bleach burned the woman's throat and insides but her baby was saved, according to Ms Parke.

Ms Parke is a former lawyer for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees and has worked in the Gaza Strip.

She said she did not want her views on the Middle East to distract from electing a Labor government.

Her speech was called 'nothing more than a laundry list of slanders, including discredited conspiracy theories and downright falsification' by Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council executive director Colin Rubenstein.

Ms Parke withdrew from the race for the Perth seat of Curtin, which was vacated by former foreign minister Julie Bishop.

It is considered a safe Liberal seat because it has been held by the party since 1998.

The former Fremantle MP resigned from her seat in 2016 after nine years to spend more time with family.
A couple from Ohio has been arrested after police say the suspects gave a group of striking school employees sugar cookies spiked with laxatives because they were angered by the noise the protest was generating.

According to police, 29-year-old Bo Cosens and his girlfriend, 25-year-old Rachel Sharrock, were upset that drivers passing by the striking workers were disrupting their sleep patterns by honking in a show of support.

The pair, who live near an elementary school on Uhrichsville, posted videos on Facebook in which they threatened to shoot the striking non-teaching workers, police said.

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Sick joke: Bo Cosens, 29 (left), and his girlfriend, 25-year-old Rachel Sharrock (right), have been charged with giving striking workers cookies contaminated with laxatives

Police say the pair crushed up laxatives and mixed the powder into the batter to bake this batch of cookies to give to striking school workers in Ohio

Cosens and Sharrock were allegedly upset that drivers passing by the striking workers were disrupting their sleep patterns by honking in a show of support

Courtesy of FOX 4 KC

In one recording, Cosens and Sharrock reportedly discussed their plot to bake sugar cookies laced with laxatives and offer them to the picketing Ohio Association of Public School Employees members in retaliation for the honking, reported the station WEWS.

The video also reportedly showed Sharrock holding up a package of laxatives, crushing them up and mixing them into the batter.

Another video showed the couple brag about having the contaminated cookies delivered to the workers on Trenton Avenue.

Investigators said the workers on the picket line thought the baked goods were Cosens and Sharrocks way of showing their support for their cause, but luckily, no one tried the tainted treats.

Sharrock is seen in a Facebook video obtained by police crushing what appears to be laxative tablets into powder

The laxatives were mixed into a cookie batter, as seen in this screenshot from a video

Some of the workers said they were shocked when they learned of the stomach-turning secret ingredient.

Another video showed Cosens saying into the camera that he and Sharrock had someone hand the tainted cookies to the strikers

We are a very close community and it`s sad to me that somebody would be that angry about something like this, that they try to hurt somebody, striking school secretary Shannon Tarbert told WQAD. And one of our kids could have eaten those cookies and that`s what`s scary.

Cosens and Sharrock were arrested after police got an anonymous tip from someone who watched one of the couple's videos threatening to harm the striking workers.

Both the boyfriend and girlfriend have been charged with contaminating a substance for human consumption.

Cosens is facing an additional charge of aggravated menacing for allegedly threatening to shoot the protesters.

The pair are being held in the county jail on $1million bond each. They are due back in court on April 18.
Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza executive and ex-presidential candidate, is expected to withdraw from consideration for a Federal Reserve Board position.

ABC News said early Friday that Cain would withdraw his name after four Republican senators and a moderate Democrat said they would not confirm the businessman who quit the 2012 presidential race over sexual harassment allegations.

President Trump said Wednesday as he left the White House for fundraisers in Texas that it would be up to Cain - who he called a 'great guy' and said he likes a lot - to decide if he wants to pull his name from consideration for the government job that comes with a 14-year-term.

A White House official told DailyMail.com on Friday that the president's statement still stands.

In addition to the sexual misconduct allegations against Cain that resurfaced, critics have argued that he's not qualified to serve on the Fed's board of governors, despite his having held the position of chairman of financial institution's Kansas City branch for two years in the late 80s.

Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza executive and ex-presidential candidate, is expected to withdraw from consideration for a Federal Reserve Board position

The president's announcement that he would appoint Cain to the board of the United States' central banking system is also being interpreted as an attempt by Trump, who has made no secret of his unhappiness with the monetary policies the institution is pursuing, to cut back on the independence of the Fed.

Trump has not officially nominated Cain to one of two vacant position on the Fed's board he's seeking to fill. He's said that he would put Cain's name forward, along with conservative economist and ex-campaign adviser Stephen Moore, but has not submitted the nomination to the Senate for consideration.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wouldn't say Thursday how he thought the men would fare.

"We'll see who's actually nominated,' he told reporters.

Cain does not currently have the support of enough lawmakers to be confirmed.

Republican Sens. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Mitt Romney of Utah have said they will oppose the former Godfather's Pizza chairman.

Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who sometimes crosses party lines to support Trump's nominees, said Thursday that he would not vote confirm Cain, either.

Cramer suggested Thursday that his mind could be changed. 'If I had to vote today, I would vote no,' he said.

Unless Cramer or one of his colleagues change their minds, the nomination is doomed. The GOP holds 53 seats in the Senate and can only afford to lose the support of three of the party's legislators on any given vote, assuming the vice president plays tie-breaker, and still win passage of the measure.

President Trump said Wednesday as he left the White House for fundraisers in Texas that it would be up to Cain - who he called a 'great guy' and said he likes a lot - to decide if he wants to pull his name from consideration for the government job that comes with a 14-year-term

The White House referred DailyMail.com to the president's earlier statements on Cain on Friday as defeat appeared all but certain.

Trump said Wednesday morning, 'Hermans a great guy and I hope he does well.'

'I like Herman Cain and Herman will make that determination,' he said. 'Hes just somebody I like a lot. As to how hes doing in the process, that I dont know.'

White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told The Hill newspaper on Thursday that the president still backs Cain.

'As the president said yesterday, he continues to support him, and we'll see how that turns out,' Kudlow said. 'He's in the process, we'll let him go through it, the president insists on that.'

Trump last week called Cain a 'wonderful' man and a 'terrific person' after a reporter asked about the appointment in the Oval Office.

'He's a friend of mine. I have recommended him highly for the Fed. I've told my folks that that's the man and he's doing some pre-checking now and I would imagine he would be in great shape. I find Herman to be an outstanding person. A truly outstanding individual. I would think he would do very well there,' the president said.

Cain has denied that he sexually harassed women and committed adultery. Nevertheless, he dropped out of the 2012 presidential race as the damaging accusations threatened to tank his candidacy.

Years later, they were on the brink of costing him a position on Fed board, too.

Trump insisted to reporters last week that Cain is a 'highly respected man' and 'someone who gets it' after a reported asked about the businessman in the Oval.

'I hope everything goes well, but Herman Cain is a very good guy,' the president said.

Sen. Kevin Cramer joined GOP colleague Sen. Lisa Murkowski in announcing his opposition to Herman Cain on Thursday - meaning he cannot be confirmed without a change of heart

Republican Sens. Cory Gardner and Mitt Romney also oppose Cain's nomination. That's the ballgame for Cain unless a Democrat crosses the aisle or one of the Republican backtrack

Cain said a week ago on Friday in a video posted to his Facebook page he's up against a 'cumbersome' confirmation process but he wouldn't be scared off by attempts to derail it.

'Let them go back and dig up eight-year-old stuff,' Cain said. 'I will be able to explain this time where they wouldn't let me explain it last time. They were too busy believing the accusers.'

Cain served as chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City from 1989 to 1991. He competed for the GOP nomination for president against Romney in the 2012 contest but dropped out after sexual misconduct allegations from his time at the National Restaurant Association were revealed by news outlets.

Democrats have continued to mock the 9-9-9 tax plan he pushed as a candidate and say he is too partisan to sit on the board of the Feb, which operates independently from the rest of the executive branch.

Not only has Cain sought office as a Republican, he formed a pro-Trump super PAC, America Fighting Back.
A vile child predator who violated boys and babies before sharing his horrific exploits online has shown 'no remorse' for the sickening abuse of at least 13 boys.

Child predator Ruecha Tokputza is dubbed one of South Australia's most evil predatory sex tourists, after grooming Australian and Thai children for sex.

Over six-and-a-half years Tokputza, 30, violated the boys and babies as young as 15 months of age and filmed their torment, encouraging others to do the same.

Appearing at Adelaide District Court, Tokputza pleaded guilty to 50 charges including aggravated indecent assault, unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 14, having sex with children outside of Australia, persistent exploitation of a child outside Australia and transmitting child exploitation material.

Child predator Ruecha Tokputza (pictured) is dubbed one of South Australia's most evil predatory sex tourists, after grooming Australian and Thai children for sex

Over six-and-a-half years Tokputza, 30, violated the boys and babies as young as 15 months of age and filmed their torment, encouraging others to do the same

Court documents revealed Tokputza had a collection of up to '12,500 image files' and '650 video files'.

Included in the predator's sickening film library was boys changing at an Adelaide swimming pool  the location of which has not been disclosed.

Tokputza admitted he indecently filmed the boys, under the age of 17, on May 21, 2017.

Prosecutor Heath Barklay SC said it was difficult to think of worse offending and said the sexual exploitation of the children was 'simply breathtaking'.

'It sits in the highest category of this type of offending,' Mr Barklay said.

Mr Barklay said the 30-year-old didn't show any remorse for his offending and was more than likely to have continued if he hadn't been caught.

'There isn't a case that we could find that comes anywhere near this case,' he said.

Judge Liesl Chapman deemed the case 'troubling', saying it was an abhorrent offence against such young boys.

Court documents revealed Tokputza (pictured) had a collection of up to '12,500 image files' and '650 video files'

According to court documents Tokputza pleaded guilty to 17 counts of unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under 14.

With an added six aggravated counts of indecent assault, all those charges were linked back to the same Australian victim, all happening over six years.

He also pleaded guilty to two counts of committing sexual acts upon and five counts of having sexual intercourse with children outside of Australia, and three counts of persistent sexual exploitation of a child.

All of which related to Tokputza's numerous trips to Thailand between January 2014 and November 2017.

Adding further to his guilty plea count, Tokputza admitted to one count of accessing, nine counts of transmitting, one count of possessing and one count of producing child exploitation material.

Tokputza admitted he indecently filmed the boys, under the age of 17, on May 21, 2017

Tokputza was liberal in sharing his collection with child sex predators and used an online messaging app to distribute images and video files.

In one chat, he urged a man to visit Thailand and 'engage in sexual activity with children under the age of 16'.

Investigators have compared the scale of Tokputa's abuse to Families SA paedophile Shannon McCoole.

He was arrested in January 2018 after a joint investigation from Australian Federal Police, South Australia Polcie, NSW Police and Interpol.
A groom charged with sexually assaulting a waitress at his wedding claimed on Thursday that he must be innocent because his wife is still with him.

Matthew Aimers, 31, is accused of following a waitress into the reception at his own wedding, forcing himself on her and offering her $100 to have sex with him.

He had already asked the underage girl to go outside and 'make out' with him, she claimed.

He denies the charges and, on Thursday, arrived at court in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, hand in hand with his wife Kayla.

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Matthew Aimers, 31, and his wife Kayla arrive in court hand in hand on Thursday. He is accused of sexually assaulting a teenage waitress at his wedding reception

His attorney said their united front was proof of his innocence, telling the court: 'If he committed a crime, not even Dr. Phil could keep them together.

'And the fact that they still are together shows that my client is an innocent man.'

Aimers and his wife held their wedding reception at Northampton Valley Country Club in Pennsylvania in November.

At some stage, he allegedly asked the young waitress to go outside with him and 'kiss him like she meant it'.

Aimers is accused of asking the underage waitress to go outside and make out with him during his wedding reception in November

After the waitress rejected his advances, he allegedly followed her into the bathroom, exposed himself and groped her. He is shown having his first dance with his wife on the same night

Aimers was dragged off a bus drunk by police on the night of the wedding after getting into a fight. He was charged with the sexual assault in February

She said he told her to do 'anything' with him but that she rejected him.

He then allegedly followed her into a bathroom and pushed her into a bathroom stall.

Aimers is accused of then exposing himself and groping the teenager in addition to offering her $100 to have sex with him.

After allegedly assaulting the girl, he got into a fight with staff who tried to stop him from taking alcohol outside.

The staff called police and he was ultimately dragged off a bus he had boarded by a cop wielding a taser.

It is unclear when the teenage waitress reported his alleged assault to the police but he was arrested for it in February.

Staff at the club reported him being drunk and belligerent at the time.

Aimers denies all of the charges.
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Royal Navy warship HMS Dragon has returned to its home base after a 'record-breaking' deployment during which the crew seized drugs with an estimated value of 200 million.

The Type 45 destroyer carried out eight successful raids during its seven-month deployment to the Middle East during which it seized 18,400kg of narcotics - more drugs than seized by police in the UK in a year.

After HMS Dragon arrived at Portsmouth Naval Base, its commanding officer Commander Michael Carter-Quinn praised the crew.

He said: 'It really is great to be home. It's been a long and exceptionally busy seven months.

'Thankfully there is plenty to show for the effort, not least the outcome of a record-breaking eight drug busts - 18 tonnes of drugs that will never reach our streets, and 200 million that will never reach the hands of terrorists and criminals.'

Describing the morale of the crew, he added jokingly: 'I would say they are all buzzing but possibly not the right thing to say after seizing six tonnes of hashish.'

Leading Seaman Jason Granlund (left) is embraced by Stacey Hindon after HMS Dragon returns to Portsmouth Naval Base after a seven-month Gulf mission

Petty Officer Writer Dean Goodey with his daughter Helen, aged 15 months, reunite after the HMS Dragon returns to Portsmouth Naval Base

HMS Dragon drug raids Raid one: 3,000kg of hashish - Arabian Sea - November Raid two: 500kg of heroin, hashish and crystal meth - Arabian sea - December Raid three and four: Two more hashish seizures were made in the Arabian Sea - December Raid five: 49kg of heroin - February Raid six: 2,000kg of hashish was seized in the Indian Ocean - March Raid seven: 224kg of heroin was seized in the Arabian Sea - March Raid eight: 2,540kg of hashish in the final raid - March Advertisement

A Navy spokeswoman said: 'It was during dedicated periods drugs busting with global counter-terrorism organisation Combined Task Force 150 that Dragon made her astounding eight seizures, amounting to more drugs captured in seven months than the entire police force of the UK in one year.

'The achievement is the greatest drugs haul by a Royal Naval unit in recorded history.'

To mark the raids, the ship featured silhouette symbols of eight boats on the side of the bridge.

Engineering Technician Nick Bannerman, 27, from Milton Keynes, was welcomed home by girlfriend Michaela Dicker, 27.

He said: 'I'm just relieved to be back, I'm ready to go home now.'

Ms Dicker said: 'I can't speak, it's overwhelming to have him back.'

The eight drugs raids started with the seizure of 3,000kg of hashish in the Arabian Sea in November, followed by 500kg of heroin, hashish and crystal meth in December.

Later in December, two more hashish seizures were made in the Arabian Sea, with 49kg of heroin seized in February.

In March, 2,000kg of hashish was seized in the Indian Ocean, while 224kg of heroin was seized in the Arabian Sea and 2,540kg of hashish in the final raid.

HMS Dragon will undergo routine maintenance before being deployed later this year in support of aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Wildcat Flight Commander Mark Wookey is welcomed home by his children Jasmine, Austin and Connor at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset after spending 7 months in the Middle East

Jumping for joy: The children all rush in for a hug with their Dad Mark Wookey, Flight Commander as he departs the helicopter

Tears of joy: Flight Commander Mark Wookey looks close to tears at having his children Jasmine, Austin and Connor back in his arms

Leading Hand Meghan Tuplin with her daughter Billie, aged 4, look joyful as they reunite after seven months at sea

Crew members embrace and look overjoyed on board HMS Dragon as their family members come into view on the shore

A crew member wipes away a tear on board HMS Dragon as the ship sails in and family members can be seen waving

Engineering Technician Luke Astley poses for a selfie with his partner Tara Andersen

Royal Navy Type 45 Destroyer HMS Dragon returns to Portsmouth Naval Base after a seven-month Gulf mission

HMS Dragon is anchored alongside as she returns to Portsmouth Naval Base after a seven-month Gulf mission

Crew members onboard HMS Dragon wave to the waiting crowd as she returns to Portsmouth Naval Base

Crew members get ready to depart from the HMS Dragon which they have spent seven months on

Crew members onboard HMS Dragon wave to the waiting crowd

Crew members embrace on board HMS Dragon as she returns to Portsmouth Naval Base after a seven-month Gulf mission

So close but yet so far! Crew member blows a kiss to the loved ones on the shore as the ship makes its way into moor

Max Leah, 8, waves towards HMS Dragon as she returns to Portsmouth Naval Base after a seven-month Gulf mission

A Royal Navy Helicopter flies by as HMS Dragon docked with maintenance workers dangling from the top of the 560ft Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth, Hampshire

Michaela Dicker, 27, welcomes home ET Nick Bannerman, 27, from Milton Keynes as HMS Dragon returns to Portsmouth Naval Base after a seven-month Gulf mission

Eight Ship silhouettes on the side of the bridge of HMS Dragon denoting the ship's 8 successful raids on drug smugglers

Chief Petty Officer Paul Constable greets daughters Daisy (left) and Lola at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset

A brass band plays as the ship sails in from deployment into Portsmouth, the smiles of the crew can already be seen to emerge as the anticipation of seeing their family builds

The Portsmouth-based Type 45 destroyer after it seized 2,540kg of hash from a fishing vessel while the warship was on her way through the Arabian Sea

Dragon's sailors and Royal Marines were launched on fast boats to halt the two dhows, a type of vessel common to the Middle East, in two separate missions over a demanding two-day period. Boarding and painstakingly searching the boats, personnel removed hundreds of sacks of narcotics worth a UK street value of more than 75m
Pupils at a primary school in China can now dance with their headmaster every morning during a mandatory workout session.

Hundreds of pupils at the Lingqiao Elementary School in Huai'an bust out a move on the playground between classes, led by their deputy principal Zhang Hua.

Mr Zhang said he decided to change the pupil's boring daily exercise to the creative choreography after being inspired by another Chinese headmaster who shot to fame for the 'ghost shuffle'.

Footage shows Zhang Hua leading his pupils through the viral 'ghost shuffle' in Huai'an, China

Mr Zhang hopes the new dance routine could attract boys and girls to do exercise more regularly and passionately.

He believes that physical activities are as important as academic studies.

Speaking to Huai'an Newspaper Group, Mr Zhang said: 'The essence of education is to let pupils have a colourful lifestyle and pursue a happy life.'

Mr Zhang was inspired by another Chinese headmaster who shot to fame for the lively routine

The headmaster hopes the dance routine could help children grow up happily and healthily

A new trend is sweeping through schools in China which sees teachers and headmasters demonstrating upbeat dance routines in front of hundreds of students.

Mr Zhang took his inspiration from Zhang Pengfei, the headmaster at the Xi Guan Primary School in Linyi county, Shanxi province.

Mr Zhang was the first educator to lead the trend.

The 40-year-old became an internet star in January after dancing with some 700 pupils in the 'ghost shuffle' routine simultaneously.

Zhang Guannan, a PE teacher in Pingliang, Gansu province, followed suit with videos showing him salsa-dancing to viral hit song, Dura, with about 400 students.

Pupils in China are required to do radio callisthenics every morning before classes (file photo)

Earlier this month, 27-year-old music teacher Wang Lihong, from Rizhao, won her students' heart after choreographing a lively mass dance routine and boogieing away on the playground with youngsters.

Pupils around China are required to do radio callisthenics every morning, in which they move their arms, legs and torso in a rhythmic, synchronised way to music broadcast through a loudspeaker.

The new dancing trend has encouraged more and more schools to replace rigid radio callisthenics with energetic dance routines.
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The German-born boyfriend of a 22-year-old British woman has been accused of her murder by police, after he claimed she died during a 'sex game gone wrong'.

Marc Schatzle, 29, who calls himself 'Marc Dirtywhite', was arrested after Anna Florence Reed, from north Yorkshire, was found dead at Hotel La Palma au Lac, a four-star lakeside hotel in Locarno, at the foot of the Alps.

Swiss police have now revealed that he has been formally accused of intentional murder.

The muscular father-of-two, who has the word 'warrior' tattooed over his left eye, was arrested on Tuesday and is said to have spent the past few years working as a bouncer in various pubs and nightclubs on the Swiss-German border.

Ms Reed had moved to Berlin after finishing her A-levels.

Prosecutors are considering charging Marc Schatzle, with murder, after Anna Florence Reed was found dead in a Swiss hotel room

But his former girlfriend, and mother of his two children, has insisted he is not murderer. Michele Bochsler, pictured, said: 'I am 200 per cent sure, no 1,000 per cent in fact. He has never been violent and he is the perfect father. He is a very lovely man'

Schatzle's ex partner previously said he had problems with alcohol but insisted he is not a murderer.

Marc Schatzle, a father-of-two, is understood to have told prosecutors he suffocated Anna Florence Reed, 22, 'by accident' during botched erotic sex while on a romantic break at a luxury hotel in Locarno, Switzerland.

A post-mortem examination reportedly revealed Miss Reed, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, died from asphyxiation and had small fractures and cuts on her body, according to local newspapers.

But now the mother of Schatzle's two children has defended the 29-year-old German, saying that while he had problems with drink, he was 'not a murderer'.

Michele Bochsler said: 'Marc is not a murderer. He is not a violent man. I'm shocked by what I have read about Marc. Yes Marc had problems with drink but he is not a violent man.'

A spokesman for the cantonal police said: 'A 29-year-old German citizen was arrested on April 9. Today he has been formally accused of intentional murder with the possibility of the lesser charge of involuntary homicide after the investigation, which is ongoing.

'The autopsy has been carried out but the conclusion has not yet reached the Public Ministry.'

A post-mortem examination was said to have confirmed Miss Reed died from suffocation or asphyxiation and had small fractures and cuts on her body, local media reports (pictured on Facebook with her boyfriend Marc Schatzle)

Anna Florence Reed, 22, was discovered dead in the bathroom of the hotel where she was staying with her German boyfriend in the town of Lorcano

Miss Reed died from asphyxiation and had small fractures and cuts on her body, according to local reports. Her boyfriend claimed she died in a 'sex game gone wrong'

Speaking at the home that she shared with Schatzle near Zurich, she added: 'I am 1,000 per cent sure he did not mean to kill this young woman.

'He never ever has been violent. Never ever. It's just not possible. In German we have the expression 'I would put my hand in the fire for that'. I use this expression because I am so sure that he is innocent.

'It was an accident, it must have been.'

Ms Bochsler and Schatzle were together for eight years and they have two young children who he sees regularly.

Devastated Ms Boschler continued: 'I know him very, very well. He is a good father. I know him better than anyone.

'I am 200 per cent sure, no 1,000 per cent in fact. He has never been violent and he is the perfect father. He is a very lovely man.

'This is all so sad. So sad for everyone. I am so shocked. It must have been an accident. We were not actually married but we were more than girlfriend-boyfriend.'

She last saw Schatzle on April 5. He visited his ex-partner and children without Miss Reed.

She said: 'I last saw him a week ago. It was Friday. He was good. He had been travelling. He doesn't usually travel much. He's usually here in Zurich.'

The pair met through a mutual hobby. Michele did not know Miss Reed and believes Schatzle and Miss Reed met travelling.

Schatzle is understood to have hooked up with Miss Reed about a year ago after leaving his partner and two young children.

He told friends he was returning to Switzerland after a round-the-world trip and hoped to see his children.

Schatzle was arrested on Tuesday in connection with the death of Anna. Prosecutors are now considering the most serious charge of murder.

Social media posts showed Miss Reed had travelled extensively in the last few years

Local press said other guests complained at 3am to the porter after hearing arguing coming from the couple's room on the day she died. A porter was then sent to the Room 501 to calm the situation down.

Less than four hours later, Schatzle took the lift down to the lobby, appearing 'agitated' as he told staff his girlfriend was unwell.

An ambulance was called but medics were unable to revive her and she was pronounced dead.

In Switzerland, the police can accuse you of a crime but it is up to the prosecutor to decide what you will be charged with. In this case, Schatzle has been accused by police of murder, but prosecutors are yet to charge him.

Public prosecutor Petra Canonica Alexakis interrogated the suspect in prison yesterday. She then requested he remains in custody. The official autopsy report is not due before the weekend.

The couple arrived at the Hotel La Palma au Lac in Locarno last Saturday and were due to stay for 'several days' in the premium top floor.

Schatzle worked as a bouncer in various pubs and nightclubs on the Swiss-German border.

One source told a Swiss newspaper: 'Nobody knows how he could afford all the travel. Something can't be right.'

An ex-girlfriend said of Schatzle: 'He was on the wrong side of the tracks again and again. He lies to everyone. I always wondered how he could afford such a lifestyle without any regular income.'

On Facebook Anna  a former pupil at 14,000-a-year Ashville College in Harrogate  is pictured embracing her heavily-tattooed partner in several photographs. Police have refused to confirm he is the man arrested.

A barber, who works in Raintown Barbershop in Regensdorf, Switzerland, said the tattooed man, who has the word 'warrior' inked above his left eyebrow and other facial inkings, had been his customer.

He said: 'I knew him as a customer, not a friend. He came in two or three times. I cut his hair. I recognise him because of his tattoos. I only know his first name. I have never heard his surname.

'He did tell me that he lived in Germany not Switzerland. And he speaks German not Swiss German. He said he is sometimes in Zurich and when he was in Zurich he would come in and get his hair cut. I last saw him sometime last year.'

On Thursday new details emerged about the hours before his arrest.

At around 6.30am on Tuesday Anna's boyfriend left their room and took the lift down to the lobby.

He appeared 'agitated' and told the receptionist that his girlfriend 'had a problem with her health'.

A source said: 'They had checked in as a couple on the weekend. They were shown to Room 501. All seemed fine.

'But then early on Tuesday morning he appeared in the reception. He was agitated and said his girlfriend had a problem with her health, that she was ill.

'The receptionist could tell by his tone that it was serious so called an ambulance immediately.

'A few minutes later the ambulance was at the hotel. The medics went straight up to the room. She was on the floor of the bathroom.

'They tried to resuscitate her but there was no response. She was already dead. It was the ambulance crew who then alerted the police. The cause of death was not clear.

'The boyfriend was spoken to at the hotel by police and then he went to a police station. He was interrogated and he cooperated. He was then arrested at the end of the afternoon.'

A post-mortem examination was said to have confirmed she died from suffocation or asphyxiation and had small fractures and cuts on her body, local media reports.

Ms Reed's father Clive, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, was said to be 'utterly devastated' at the news which comes five years after his wife passed away from a brain aneurysm.

The pair pictured together on holiday in a desert - Schatzle wears Middle Eastern dress while his girlfriend has cloth over her face

Photos on Marc Schatzle's Facebook showed him travelling around the world with his 22-year-old British girlfriend

Schatzle (second from left) and Ms Reed (centre) can be seen at a nightclub in this photo from the German's Facebook account

It is understood that he has flown out to Switzerland to visit the Ramada La Palma au Lac in Locarno, in Switzerland, where his daughter died.

An employee of Mr Reed, at Copgrove Hall Stud in Occaney where he is a trustee, told MailOnline: 'This is horrendous for the family.

'Clive is utterly devastated and no one can believe what has happened. We're aware of the tragedy and it is terrible, just absolutely shocking.'

The worker told how Clive's wife Mary had died five years ago, adding: 'It's not for me to say how she passed away but this is the second awful tragedy to hit the family.

'I didn't know Anna but everyone said she was a very bright and beautiful young woman.'

A former neighbour of Mr Reed said: 'This is dreadful news. Clive doesn't deserve all this heartache.

'He's a decent, hard working, very private person and keeps himself to himself. I can't imagine what's he and his family are going through right now.'

Anna is the granddaughter of millionaire equestrian magnate Guy Reed, who died in Monaco in 2013 at the age of 91.

It is believed she may have been enjoying a round-the-world trip which she received from her father as a present for her 21st birthday, as her older sister Millie had received such a gift for her 21st three years ago.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office told MailOnline that British and Swiss police were in contact with their staff.

He said: 'Our consular staff are assisting the family of a British woman following her death in Switzerland and are in contact with the Swiss and UK police.'

The tattooed Schatzle wears a heavy leather jacker in this picture from social media, with ink covering his cheekbones and jawline

Marc Schatzle has tattoos across his body, including one over his left eyebrow which says 'Warrior'

Ramada La Palma au Lac in Locarno, Switzerland, where Anna Florence Reed was found dead on Tuesday morning

Locarno and Maggiore Lake in Ticino, Switzerland. The hotel where Miss Reed was found sits on the picturesque lake

The couple had been staying at the four-star 68-room hotel Ramada La Palma au Lac and had arrived the night before Miss Reed's body was found.

They had paid a premium to secure Room 501 on the top floor and had been due to stay 'several days'.

Local media reported that raised voices were heard coming from their room and the night porter was called to intervene the night before she was found.

A source said: 'They are being helped by the authorities and are expected to be coming out here.'

Lake Maggiore is a popular location for tourists with cruises and boat trips of the picturesque mountains and water.

The 100-year-old Ramada La Palma au Lac hotel is also home to the Locarno International Film Festival, which is held every August.
Distressing footage has emerged of two Chicago cops tasering a 16-year-old girl at her high school.

Dnigma Howard claims she was wrestled to the floor and tasered while her father watched on helplessly following an argument with a teacher over using a cell phone in class at John Marshall Metropolitan High School, on Tuesday morning.

Shocking surveillance footage shows the girl bundled to the floor and dragged down a flight of stairs by the two officers, who have since been reassigned to another school.

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Shocking CCTV footage shows the girl bundled to the floor and dragged down a flight of stairs by the two officers, who have since been reassigned to another school

According to a lawsuit filed against Chicago police, the officers then held her down by stepping on her chest, punching her and then shocked her with a stun gun.

The teen has an individualized education program to help manage her behavior, but her father said the protocol in place wasn't followed.

'She wasn't really fighting back. She was defending herself. They were kicking her and stomping her and stuff. She tensed up. That's a natural reaction of anybody,' her father told WGN9.

According to a lawsuit filed against Chicago police, the officers then held her down by stepping on her chest, punching her and then shocked her with a stun gun

An officer stands with their foot on Dnigma Howard's ankle, left, before she kicks, right, at them during the violent altercation at John Marshall Metropolitan High School in Chicago

The teen has an individualized education program to help manage her behavior, but her father said the protocol in place wasn't followed. 'She wasn't really fighting back. She was defending herself. They were kicking her and stomping her and stuff. She tensed up. That's a natural reaction of anybody,' her father said

Attorney Andrew Stroth said the two officers in the video had 89 percent more complaints of excessive force than other members in the CPD.

He said Howard 'did not instigate or provoke any type of attack.'

Previous footage recorded by the girl's father captured the ugly interaction.

As the police officers were escorting her from the building a distressing dispute erupted and was captured on film by the teenager's father, Laurentio Howard.

In the cell phone footage Dnigma is seen on the floor as two officers stand over her.

One of the officers, who is holding a yellow taser, can be seen with their leg on Dnigma's thigh and she tries to kick and hit at them while rolling around on the floor.

The other officer, who has also not been named, grabs the teenager's arm.

Dnigma then manages to sit up but the officer with the taser keeps a foot on her leg and the other controls her arm.

When she reaches for the taser, the officer swings for her face and shocked students can be heard shouting in the clip.

Chicago Police claimed that Dnigma bit and kicked the officers and that one of them fell down the stairs while trying to escort her from the building.

However Mr Howard alleged the officer tried to 'push' his daughter down the stairs so she 'grabbed the police officer by the vest' in defence, reports ABC7 Chicago.

He said: 'I couldn't believe what was going on. I was thinking, 'If I jump in they're going to shoot me. And if I don't jump in, they're going to hurt my daughter really bad''.'

The teenager reaches for the taser, left, before the police officer swings, right, for her face

Dnigma claims she was left with cuts, one pictured on her face, after the incident. She has since been charged with two felonies and the officers will be reassigned

Mr Howard blames the school for not following the behavioral protocol they had agreed, which includes letting his daughter talk to a counsellor, for the incident.

Both of the officers and Dnigma were taken to hospital and treated for minor injuries.

A Chicago police spokesperson told ABC: 'The officers are currently on medical leave and they will be reassigned to different duties within the District.'

Dnigma was charged with two felony counts of aggravated battery to a peace officer and two misdemeanor counts of resisting and obstructing a peace officer.
Julian Assange, who has long been considered a key figure in the Russian election hacking investigation, says President Trump's inner circle consisted of 'clowns' who lacked the capability of taking part in the conspiracy.

Assange made the comments to documentary filmmaker Sean Langan, who shared the information following Assange's arrest Thursday after police hauled him out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

'Those bunch of clowns'  that was the exact quote  'those bunch of clowns couldn't conspire and organize this kind of thing',' Langan said, describing what he says Assange told him in ABC News' 'The Investigation' podcast.

Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle Thursday following his arrest. He told an interviewer Donald Trump's advisors were a 'bunch of clowns' incapable of conspiring with Russia

He was describing the President's son, Donald Trump Jr. and longtime informal Trump advisor Roger Stone, who has been indicted for obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering.

Langan also described Assange's views on President Trump  who during the campaign declared 'I love WikiLeaks' but following Assange's arrest said: ''I know nothing about WikiLeaks.'

'He certainly did not hold [Trump] in high regard,' said Langan. 'He was quite dismissive.'

The US Department of Justice, releasing this indictment, said Julian Assange had been arrested over an alleged conspiracy with Chelsea Manning 'to break a password to a classified US government computer'

Federal prosecutors charged Assange with a single count of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack a Defense Department computer in 2010. However additional charges are possible.

Federal prosecutors have argued in court documents that WikiLeaks, identified as 'Organization 1,' became a conduit for Russian military intelligence officials who transferred hacked Democratic emails to WikiLeaks.

Emails from the organization cited in the indictment of Russian individuals show the organization soliciting 'anything Hillary related' and even seeking to time the release for maximum impact on the Democratic National Convention.

Roger Stone's indictment does not charge him with conspiring with Russia, however it contains information describing an effort to have him reach out to WikiLeaks.

After the July 22, 2016, release of stolen (Democratic National Committee) emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1," prosecutors wrote.

The indictment also says: "During the summer of 2016, STONE spoke to senior Trump Campaign officials about Organization 1 and information it might have had that would be damaging to the Clinton Campaign. STONE was contacted by senior Trump Campaign officials to inquire about future releases by Organization 1."

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team never made an effort to interview Assange, who was arrested Thursday after seven years holing up in Ecuador's London embassy.

Langan also said Assange fears beating beaten up if he gets extradited to the U.S. and must serve time in a high-security facility.

'He did say he was worried that, if he was in a normal American prison, being beaten up, said Langan.

'And then I said, 'Well, the chances are you're most likely' -- slightly gallows humor, it didn't make him feel better  'you're most likely going to be put into one of those federal Supermax prisons where you won't see a soul,' he said.

Assange also struggled to adapt to life inside the Ecuadorian embassy, drawing complaints from his hosts about his hygiene, his skateboarding, his visitors, and his efforts to avoid surveillance

Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno branded Julian Assange a 'bad-mannered' guest who acted like a 'spoiled brat' while he stayed at the country's embassy in London.

'You can't arrive at a house that welcomes you warmly, that gives you food, and takes care of you, and start to denounce the owner of the house,' Moreno said, according to Bloomberg.

He added: 'We've removed the asylum for this spoiled brat and, fortunately, we've gotten rid of a thorn in our side.'
A Minnesota teacher hit out at American Airlines this week after the carrier reportedly separated him from his students because their flight was overbooked.

According to Mark Westpfahl, the airline removed him from a recent return flight from Washington D.C., where he was escorting 16 middle school students on an out-of-state trip.

However, airline officials claim the teacher volunteered to be bumped - and was compensated for not taking the flight.

Westpfahl and his students from St. Pauls Capitol Hill Gifted and Talented Magnet School were due to fly back to Minnesota via Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport after a five-day trip to the capital.

Mark Westpfahl, (pictured), claimed that American Airlines bumped him from a recent flight home from an out-of-state school trip with his group of 16 middle school students home

Westphfahl said he was concerned about leaving the 16 students in the care of one chaperone and also had some of their prescriptions for medicines they required

Upon arriving at the airport, Westpfahl received an alert that American Airlines had overbooked the flight back to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and there was not enough room for him on the aircraft.

The teacher teacher told the Star Tribune that an airline assistant told him that his name had been 'randomly pulled' to be removed from the flight. The students ranged in age from 8 to 11.

Fortunately, another chaperone was able to bring the 16 students home. However Westpfahl said he was extremely worried, as he had prescriptions belonging to some of the students.

Westpfahl tweeted updates about the situation throughout the week and the airline's responses.

In a tweet dated April 5, he said: 'I'm not so much worried about getting to my destination.

'Sure, it would be really nice to see my own family again  and I understand how airlines overbook, and what procedures are, but I just really wish they would have reconsidered, knowing that I'm traveling w/16 students.'

According to the Tribune, American Airlines officials inquired if any other passenger would be willing to take a later flight, but no one volunteered.

In a letter, the airline said that Westpfahl volunteered to give his seat up on the flight.

He received a voucher reserved for people who give up their seats voluntarily, according to the airline.

People whose flights are involuntarily cancelled are compensated at a different scale.

Westphfhal said he was randomly chosen to be bumped of the flight but the airline claims he had 'volunteered' to deplane, which he disputes

Westpfahl uploaded pictures of the group at different landmarks around Washington D.C.

The group got a special behind-the-scenes tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and got to view the cherry blossom trees dotted around the city

'According to our records, he volunteered,' the airline said in a statement on Thursday. 'And he received compensation as a volunteer in addition to American paying for his hotel accommodation. We always seek volunteers before denying anyone boarding.'

Many social media users responded that it was unacceptable that he was separated from his group of children and expressed fury at the airlines supposed actions.

Billy Schultz wrote: '@AmericanAir needs to acknowledge what they did here and not rely on corporate PR platitudes.

The teacher posted updates about the situation and said he was angry it had happened

'Id be so livid if my child was on a trip and this happened to one of the chaperones,' another Twitter user claimed.

The St. Pauls students arrived home safe on time in Minnesota.

Westpfahl flew back the following day after 'two  hours of sleep at an airport motel and a morning red-eye,' according to the Tribune.

The teacher is arguing that it is still not acceptable that he was pulled off the flight and wants to know what the airline's policy is on separating children from guardians.

He wrote on April 9: 'Update on my @AmericanAir situation. I feel like they are apologizing... but at the same time, don't really apologize.

Westpfahl received a voucher reserved for people who give up their seats voluntarily

The airline wrote and outlined how they were going to compensate him for the inconvenience

People whose flights are involuntarily cancelled are compensated at a different scale

'I'm not as concerned about rerouting me w/a layover, or that it delayed me. I'm more concerned that you pulled a chaperone of 16 middle schoolers.'

However, in a statement to Fox News on Friday the airline said: ' According to our records, and after we consulted with our team in Washington D.C. as well, he volunteered.

'As part of that process, he received compensation as a volunteer in addition to American paying for his hotel accommodation for the night and meals.

'We always seek volunteers before denying anyone boarding. Our customer relations team has also reached out to him directly regarding his concerns,' they added.
Mary Blewitt OBE, 56, arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court for a hearing on March 21

A charity worker who won an OBE for her work with Rwandan genocide survivors avoided jail today for assaulting a child after a judge said she had led a 'exceptional and very traumatic life'.

Mary Blewitt, 56, attacked her daughter Christina Blewitt, 24, and a young girl at her home in Earl's Court, West London.

She then crawled around the floor, accusing her son Richard of having 'no balls' and reached out for his genitals, Westminster Magistrates' Court heard.

District Judge William Blake said: 'It is very sad to see you in in court. You have led an exceptional life and a very traumatic life. Particularly on the anniversary of events which are central for you to find yourself in court.

'I am sure your behaviour and this court appearance is about your problem with alcohol which you resorted to to come to terms with events in your life for most of us impossible to conceive.

'You are someone of exceptional character, not just good character, who never imagined would be in this court.

Hutu refugees in Rwanda in 1995 as they return home following the genocide the previous year

'It is time to move on and resolve as best you can your problem with drink. This is a chance for you to get on with your life, and hopefully in time repair the problems with your family.'

Blewitt, who attended court in a dark blue coat and hair wrap, nodded her head at the judge's remarks.

Prosecutor Dami Eniola told the court in an earlier hearing that Ms Blewitt and her brother were spending Christmas at Blewitt's house.

'Whilst she was at the defendant's house she noticed that the defendant had been drinking and this continued on the next day, that was Christmas Day.

'On Christmas Day the defendant made derogatory comments. When Ms Blewitt responded to one of the remarks she tried to swing at her, missed and ended up hitting the child instead.'

Blewitt then ordered her daughter out the house.

'While she was gathering her belongings in order to leave the defendant threatened to push her and child down the stairs,' said Ms Eniola.

Ms Blewitt said: 'She had obviously had a lot to drink at that point.

'She started saying things to the child who started crying,' she added.

'What sort of things?' asked the prosecutor.

'You are crying because you are a pussy, you are all pussies,' she replied.

After that, the woman picked up the child and moved to the opposite end of the living room.

'She followed me and tried to hit me. She missed and accidentally hit the child. She was just slinging around she struck the child by mistake,' she added.

Ms Blewitt claimed she tried to leave but her mother said: 'If you come any closer I am going to push you down the stairs.

'I told her 'You are sick, how can you say that?' I called her a drunk and she punched me in the face.'

Ms Blewitt said the close-fisted blow landed on her left eye.

Her brother Richard said Blewitt was extremely drunk and was getting progressively more argumentative.

He said: 'She just tried to find arguments in this and that. This was over a period of maybe an hour and a half. At one point she told me 'you have no balls'.

'She fell onto the floor and was crawling towards me, trying to grab my balls.'

He eventually called the police.

Mary Blewitt founded Survivors Fund (SURF) to support survivors of the genocide in Rwanda and was awarded the OBE in 2008 for her work for the charity.

Blewitt denied but was convicted of two charges of assault by beating.

She was sentenced to a 12-month community order, with a 20 day rehabilitation requirement and a three-month drugs and alcohol treatment requirement.

She was also ordered to pay 350 in costs and an 85 victim surcharge.
Controversial pregnancy club Bounty has been fined 400,000 for illegally sharing personal information of more than 14million mothers.

A watchdog investigation found Bounty harvested vulnerable mothers' data and sold it to dozens of companies without their consent.

The 'careless' breach trust is likely to have caused 'distress to many people' after 34.4million records about young children and pregnancies were shared to almost 40 organisations.

Controversial pregnancy club Bounty has been fined 400,000 for illegally sharing personal information of more than 14million mothers. Stock image

Bounty said it 'acknowledged' the The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) findings and had made changes to how data member was shared without knowledge.

The company is notorious for its hard-selling tactics to get new mothers to sign up to the parenting club from their hospital beds, often when they are still recovering from birth.

It offers promotional packs and professional newborn photography in hospitals 'from the comfort of your maternity bed'.

But many did not know that Bounty was also a data broker supplying information to third parties, such as Sky and Equifax, that would use it to fine-tune direct marketing.

The company is notorious for its hard-selling tactics to get new mothers to sign up to the parenting club from hospital beds who are often still recovering from birth

Breaching the 1998 Data Protection Act, it shared personal information without being fully clear that it was being spread so widely.

Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley and Shadow Policing and Crime Minister Louise Haigh welcomed the fine, branding Bounty's actions as a 'shameful exploitation of new mums'.

Steve Eckersley, the watchdog's director, said: 'The number of personal records and people affected in this case is unprecedented in the history of the ICO's investigations into data broking industry and organisations linked to this.'

Mr Eckersley said Bounty was 'motivated by financial gain' and they were not transparent to millions of people that their data would be passed on to other companies.

Jim Kelleher, Managing Director of Bounty said: 'We acknowledge the ICO's findings  in the past we did not take a broad enough view of our responsibilities and as a result our data-sharing processes, specifically with regards to transparency, were not robust enough.'

Bounty has now reduced the number of personal records retained and for how long they keep them and have ended relationships with the small number of data brokerage companies.
A smiling Ian Cognito entertaining the crowd at one of his gigs in Brussels, Belgium. Although he never hit mainstream success, he was a popular and unpredictable comedian

British stand-up comedian Ian Cognito died on stage only ten minutes after joking about having a stroke, leaving the audience thinking it was part of his act.

During his act the popular comic is said to have 'sat on a chair and laid back for five minutes' at the Atic bar in Bicester where the Lone Wolf Comedy Club was being held on Thursday.

Audience members were under the impression this was part of the act and continued to laugh at the supposed joke, with no one aware that Cognito was seriously ill.

John Ostojak, who attended the show, told the BBC: 'Only 10 minutes before he sat down he joked about having a stroke.

'He said, ''imagine having a stroke and waking up speaking Welsh''. '

The compere eventually approached the stage and an ambulance was called after 10pm but Cognito was pronounced dead at the venue.

Cognito, whose real name is Paul Barbieri, had claimed to b

A number of comedians have paid tribute to the comedian, including Rufus Hound, Jimmy Carr, Mark Steel and Katy Brand.

Actor and comedian Hound said comedy had lost 'one of the greats'.

Ian Cognito died on stage only ten minutes after joking about having a stroke, leaving the audience thinking it was part of his act

The iconoclastic performer never achieved mainstream success, in part because of his unpredictable nature and routines, but was beloved on the comedy circuit

Cognito (pictured) enjoyed cult status among his contemporaries and won the Time Out Award for Stand-up Comedy in 1999

He said: 'Ian Cognito has died. That might not mean much to you if your knowledge of stand-up only extends to a screen but for anyone who ever sat down in a comedy club and saw him on a stage - this is a hard one.

'Puck grew up and now Puck is dead. We have lost one of the greats. S**t.'

Brand paid tribute to 'Cogs', as he was known on the comedy circuit, saying: 'Sad to hear about Ian Cognito.

'I hung with him a good few times in the past, and he was always fascinating and hilarious company. RIP Cogs.'

Tiffany Stevenson, who has appeared on Russell Howard's Good News and Mock The Week, celebrated Cognito's reputation as a hell-raiser.

She said: 'There has never been more apocryphal tales around a comedian than Ian Cognito. If half of them are true the s**t he got up to during the heydays of the circuit is of legend.

'Wondering/hoping that at the wake someone will bang a nail into the wall and hang a coat on it.'

A statement from the ambulance service read: 'We were called at 22:11 last night to Crown Walk in Bicester to a medical emergency.

The stand-up comic fell ill at the Atic bar in Bicester (pictured) where the Lone Wolf Comedy Club was being held on Thursday

'We sent a rapid response vehicle and an ambulance crew but sadly one patient passed away at the scene.'

Thames Valley Police said that no further investigation was required.

Stand-up Luisa Omielan said: 'Just heard about Ian Cognito, I saw him one once in stage years ago and was in awe, he was as epic as his reputation. Rebellious and brilliant.

'I heard he passed away after being on stage. He even died like a f****** legend. Far far too soon. Love to his family.'

Jimmy Carr said: 'Veteran stand-up comedian Ian Cognito has died on stage - literally.

'The audience thought it was part of the act. Died with his boots on. That's commitment to comedy.

A smiling Ian Cognito entertaining the crowd at one of his gigs. Although he never hit mainstream success, he was a popular and unpredictable comedian

'I'll never forget his kindness when I started out & how damn funny he was.'

Cognito enjoyed cult status among his contemporaries and won the Time Out Award for Stand-up Comedy in 1999.

But the iconoclastic performer never achieved mainstream success, in part because of his unpredictable nature and routines.

Little Britain star Matt Lucas said: 'In shock at the news of Ian Cognito's sudden passing. He was always kind to me when I started out, and brilliant and provocative and entirely original onstage. What a loss.'

Comedian Shappi Khorsandi said: 'Such a sad shock. Ian Cognito has died. One of the people who made this job brilliant from the very beginning has gone.

'I got so excited to be on bills with him and watch him work and have a beer after. And those eyes! Those beautiful eyes. Much love to all friends and family xx'

Gary Delaney, who has appeared on Mock the Week, said: 'You have to feel sorry for the next comic who dies, because nobody ever wanted to follow Ian Cognito.'

Compere Andrew Bird, who runs the Lone Wolf event, told the BBC that the audience were unaware that something was wrong, thinking that Cognito's stillness was part of the act.

Mr Bird, who was the reportedly the first person on stage to check if his fellow comedian was okay, said Cognito did not feel well before his routine started, but insisted on carrying on.
Weltzin Garcia Mireles, 26, was found by a kayaker on Mountain Creek Lake in Texas, near to her hometown of Grand Prairie

The mom-of-two found dead in a Dallas lake was killed by her abusive boyfriend after she gave him a second chance, her devastated family have said.

Weltzin Garcia Mireles, 26, was found by a kayaker on Mountain Creek Lake in Texas, near to her hometown of Grand Prairie two months after she filed charges for assault against Alfonso Hernandez.

The remains of her 28-year-old partner had been found at a different lake 16 miles away on February 17.

Now her twin sister, Atziry Mireles, has said they believe Hernandez strangled her sibling before dumping her body in a lake and killing himself.

She told The Dallas Morning News: 'Now I believe that Alfonso did kill my sister, in a cruel, selfish way.'

Both Weltzin and Hernandez vanished on February 5, just days after Mireles pressed charges against him for assault.

They vanished the same day police got a warrant signed for his arrest on a family violence charge.

Atziry added: 'That second chance, he took it to take my sister's life.'

Mireles told the Dallas Morning News in February her sister had moved into their cousin's house after a series of disputes with Hernandez.

Blood is also said to have been found in her sister's room. Now the family say police let them sleep there.

Atziry told CBSDFW: 'They let us sleep in the room where my sister was killed. I dont think they did a good job. They waited for my sister to be found by someone else.'

Police say the case was a 'priority', adding: 'Obviously, it was not the outcome that we wanted.'

The remains of her partner Alfonso Hernandez (pictured), 28, were found at a different lake 16 miles away on February 17. Both had vanished on February 5, shortly after Mireles pressed charges against him for assault

Weltzin's twin sister, Atziry Mireles, has said family believe Hernandez strangled her sibling before dumping her body in a lake and killing himself

Mireles, 26, was found by a kayaker on Mountain Creek Lake in Texas. Hernandez's body was found in White Rock Lake, northeast of Dallas

Authorities discovered his Honda Accord near White Rock Lake, northeast of Dallas, after pinging Mireles' phone, FOX4 reported.

Two days later a passerby discovered his body floating in the lake, but there was no trace of his partner.

Mireles' phone was found in Hernandez's pocket, while his own phone was found in his car, reported NBCDFW.

A preliminary autopsy showed no signs of trauma on Hernandez's body and that he drowned, Grand Prairie Police said.

Mireles' body was found in Mountain Creek Lake - 16 miles away - last week although investigators only announced her identity on Monday afternoon.

The couple's two children, aged three and six, have been handed over to twin sister Atziry.

On the morning of February 5, Atziry Mireles said, Hernandez sent a goodbye message to his family and her sister, but could not be found.

He wrote to a friend: 'I love you bro, Im sorry.'

Chrystal De Jesus, Weltzin's best friend, said: 'He gave her a black eye because she told him she didn't want to be with him anymore.'

Mireles herself called police on January 14, saying the father of her two children had pinned her against a wall at their home and hit her.

But De Jesus, 25, said her friend had tried to 'fix' their relationship.

She added: 'When she would call me, she would say, "I have to give him therapy and make sure he knows hes worth it". But why do you have to reassure him if you love him?

'Im mad that she trusted this person and she thought this person loved her. It was all a lie. He only cared about himself.'

The couple's two children, aged three and six, have been handed over to Garcia's twin sister

Mountain Creek Lake in Dallas, where the body of Weltzin, 26, was found last week - NBC reported

Sisters: In a Facebook post on March 17, weeks before her sister's body was found, Mireles (pictured right) said she doesn't think Hernandez was responsible for her disappearance: 'They were working things out,' she said

Atziry has also questioned why police didn't immediately arrest Hernandez after the punching accusations.

A law enforcement official said it can take a few weeks to get a warrant signed for a suspect's arrest in cases where there is no history of family violence.

Garcia's mother, Vania Mireles, posted on Facebook on Monday thanking people for their prayers for her daughter. She is 'in a better world,' Vania wrote in Spanish.

The Dallas Police Department's Homicide Unit will investigate the death of Garcia.

Mark Beseda, a Grand Prairie police spokesman, said: 'Once they [Dallas Police Department] complete their investigation, we will close ours as well.'

In a Facebook post on March 17, weeks before her sister's body was found, Mireles said she doesn't think Hernandez was responsible for her disappearance. 'They were working things out,' she said.
Jessica Monell, 36, was charged on Wednesday after her two-year-old daughter was found dead in her car in Pensacola, Florida

A Florida woman has been charged after her two-year-old daughter died when she was left in a hot car for 10 hours outside their apartment.

Jessica Monell, 36, is accused of leaving her toddler daughter Joy in her white minivan in Pensacola on Wednesday.

Authorities said Monell parked outside the Aqua Porta Apartments at about 6am on Wednesday and left the girl in the car when she went inside.

She allegedly fell asleep inside the apartment and didn't wake up until 4pm.

Police said Monell found her daughter dead in the car when she woke.

She tried to perform CPR while on the phone with 911 dispatchers, according to a police report.

Temperatures in the area reached 82 degrees on Wednesday.

Police said Monell found her daughter Joy dead in the car when she woke up 10 hours after parking her car outside the apartment

A family member told police that Monell had switched cars earlier with another relative and had forgotten that the girl was in the backseat.

The relative also said it was common for Monell and her daughter to stay awake during the night and sleep all day because they were 'night owls'.

When authorities searched Monell's apartment, investigators said they found three bags containing suspected crystal meth and other drugs.

Monell was arrested on charges of homicide-neglect manslaughter, child neglect and possession of a controlled substance.

An autopsy was scheduled to be carried out on Monell's daughter on Thursday.
President Trump mocked an Obama-era White House lawyer after his indictment on charges stemming from the Mueller probe.

Trump said that it should have been front page news that 'very serious charges' were brought against former White House Counsel Greg Craig on Thursday.

'This is a really big story, but the Fake News New York Times didnt even put it on page one, rather page 16,' he said.

He admitted the Washington Post put the scandal on the front page of their Friday paper but complained that was 'not much better' because it was ' tiny page one.' Trump called the outlets 'corrupt' in the tweet that came that accompanied a longer set of gripes about the special counsel probe and Democratic lawmakers.

Trump said Capitol Hill Democrats should stop wasting 'time and money' trying to get their hands on the full, unredacted Mueller report and focus on the crisis at the border.

He said minutes later, 'Even the Democrats now say that our Southern Border is a Crisis and a National Emergency. Hopefully, we will not be getting any more BAD (outrageous) court decisions!'

President Trump mocked an Obama-era White House lawyer after his indictment on charges stemming from the Mueller probe

Greg Craig, left, arrives ahead of his arraignment at federal court in Washington on Friday. A grand jury indicted him on Thursday

As Trump tweeted from the residence of the White House on Friday morning - a day when he had a light public schedule - Craig arrived at a Washington, D.C. courthouse for his arraignment.

A grand jury indicted the prominent attorney who worked for former Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on Thursday in connection to foreign lobbying uncovered Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his investigators.

Craig, who worked alongside former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine, allegedly failed to register as a foreign agent, in violation of U.S. law. He is fighting the charges.

'Mr. Craig is not guilty of any charge and the government's stubborn insistence on prosecuting Mr. Craig is a misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion,' Attorneys William Taylor and William Murphy said in a Wednesday statement.

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway promoted the indictment on Thursday, claiming it was about time an Obama White House official was charged in connection to the Russia investigation.

'FINALLY! WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL INDICTED in connection with MUELLER investigations!' Conway said.

Her boss would later complain that the indictment did not receive more media attention.

He seemed to be watching Fox News at the time, saying in response to an interview with Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham on the program, 'No matter what we do or give to the Radical Left, it will never be enough!'

Roughly 40 minutes later, he tagged GOP Rep. Doug Collins in a tweet that advised Democrats to 'stop wasting time and money and get back to real legislating, especially on the Border!'

Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, also said Democratic lawmakers should calm down.

The outgoing Department of Justice official said that Attorney General William Barr is 'being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that hes trying to mislead people, I think, is just completely bizarre' in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

He noted that Barr is working on a redacted version of the report that he'll put out in a week's time.

'It would be one thing if you put out a letter and said, "Im not going to give you the report," ' Rosenstein said. 'What he said is, "Look, its going to take a while to process the report. In the meantime, people really want to know whats in it. Im going to give you the top-line conclusions." Thats all he was trying to do.'

President Barack Obama hired Craig as his first White House counsel; the pair is pictured embracing Obama's first full day in office in January 2009

Mueller has mostly wrapped his work as special counsel and had turned in his final report. His office is done raining down indictments but the charges against Craig are a signal that the Justice Department plans to crack down on unregistered foreign lobbying and consulting on its own.

Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating two prominent Washington lobbying firms in a similar probe, and Justice Department officials in Washington have been increasingly willing to prosecute people who they believe intentionally conceal their lobbying work from the federal government.

Three months ago, Craig's former law firm agreed to pay more than $4.6 million in fines and publicly acknowledge that it failed to register with the government for its work for the Ukraine.

A civil settlement with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP laid much of the blame for the firm's conduct on Craig, who was a senior partner.

The two-count indictment came a day after Craig's lawyers said he was expected to be charged in the probe.

Prosecutors accused him Thursday of making false statement and concealing material information in connection with his Ukraine work.

Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway hailed the charges as a long-awaited indictment of an Obama official

Craig is a prominent Washington attorney and was the first White House counsel to former President Barack Obama. In private practice, his clients have included former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was charged in a leaks investigation.

Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in 2017 to to lying to the FBI regarding conversations he had with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.

He was the first and only Trump White House official to be charged in his investigation into Russia.

The work that drew the Justice Department's attention to Craig occurred in 2012, when he and Skadden were hired by the Ukrainian government to compile a report on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister. Tymoshenko was a political opponent of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was a longtime Manafort patron.

The report was billed as independent, and while critical in some ways of Tymoshenko's trial, critics have said it whitewashed a politically motivated prosecution.

In its settlement earlier this year, Skadden acknowledged it participated in a public relations campaign for the report and should have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, because of it. The firm also acknowledged it had been paid $4.6 million for the report and not just $12,000, as the Ukrainian government had said at the time.

Craig served as Obama's counsel in the first year of his presidency. He was otherwise flying under the radar post-White House service

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe brought up the investigation in Craig's involvement in unlawful foreign lobbying in the Ukraine

The settlement painted an unflattering picture of Craig's conduct.

In 2012 and 2013, the firm's work attracted the attention of the Justice Department, which sought to determine whether the firm should register under FARA. But according to the settlement, a senior partner matching Craig's description made several 'false and misleading' statements to the government, allowing the firm to avoid registration.

In the statement Wednesday, Craig's lawyers denied that he lied to the government or his firm. They acknowledged that Craig spoke to reporters about the report but denied it was part of a public relations campaign that would run afoul of FARA.

'Mr. Craig repeatedly refused requests that he participate in Ukraine's media and lobbying campaign to promote the Tymoshenko Report,' they wrote.

They said he spoke to reporters at The New York Times about the report to 'make certain that the Times would accurately summarize the report's criticisms of the Tymoshenko trial and not rely on misinformation from Ukraine and its representatives.'

FARA is a decades-old law meant to allow Americans to know when foreign entities are trying to influence public opinion or policymakers. The law, enacted in 1938 to unmask Nazi propaganda in the United States, requires people to disclose to the Justice Department when they advocate, lobby or perform public relations work in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government or political entity.

In the last few years, the Justice Department has brought several high-profile prosecutions involving FARA. That includes a case against Manafort, who was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
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Hundreds of bikers gathered from all across the country to ride on Westminster, to show support for the Bloody Sunday Massacre murder accused.

An estimated 7,000 bikers, riding all manner of motorcycles, brought traffic in central London to a standstill as they rode across Westminster Bridge in a show of solidarity with Soldier F.

Soldier F is the code name for the one soldier who is facing prosecution for the 1972 massacre.

Hundreds of bikers gathered from all across the country to ride on Westminster, to show support for the Bloody Sunday Massacre murder accused

An estimated 7,000 bikers, riding all manner of motorcycles, brought traffic in central London to a standstill

They rode across Westminster Bridge in a show of solidarity with Soldier F', the code name for the one soldier who is facing prosecution for the 1972 massacre

Organisers of the event, dubbed Rolling Thunder, say they are protesting the British Governments actions in charging the former squaddie

The extent of the protest was seen made clear from the air, with hundreds of bikers seen snaking around Parliament Square

Motorcyclists rode a vast array of different bikes, including trikes and scooters, through central London

The CPS announced last month that the man, whose identity is being protected, is to face prosecution for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney

These tourists on a tour bus got more than they paid for as the bikers rode past them through Westminster

Organisers of the event, dubbed Rolling Thunder, say they are protesting the British Governments actions in charging the former squaddie.

The CPS announced last month that the man, whose identity is being protected, is to face prosecution for the murders of James Wray and William McKinney.

He is the only one set to stand trial for the massacre, that took place in Derry at the height of the Troubles.

British soldiers from 1 Para opened fire on protesters, claiming the lives of 14 Irish nationals and wounding at least 14 more.

As the protest took place in London, a similar Rolling Thunder demonstration rode to Stormont, in Belfast, also to show support for Soldier F.

Around 80 riders, many of them military veterans, set off from the Cultra, County Down, and arrived at Stormont, the seat of devolved government in Belfast, at around 1.30pm.

He is the only one set to stand trial for the massacre, that took place in Derry at the height of the Troubles

British soldiers from 1 Para opened fire on protesters, claiming the lives of 14 Irish nationals and wounding at least 14 more. Above: a biker rides a trike motorcycle past the Cenotaph in Westminster

The events of Bloody Sunday helped gain support for the Provisional IRA in the Troubles. Above: a biker rides past Parliament

The bikers donned helmets and goggles and dressed mainly in black as they rode their bikes through the capital

Some bikers wore jackets adorned with medals and badges, including this military man

Others waved Union Jacks and the St George's flag as they rode through the seat of the British Government and Parliament

There was the sound of horns blasting and engines revving as the bikers rode up the mile-long Prince of Wales Avenue.

Parachute Regiment flags flew from a number of the bikes taking part.

The events of Bloody Sunday helped galvanise support for the Provisional IRA early in the Troubles.

At the same time as the London demonstration, another 'Rolling Thunder' group rode to Stormont, in Belfast, Northern Ireland

They were also riding in support of Soldier F, with some displaying flags with the words, 'I stand with Soldier F'

Around 80 riders, many of them military veterans, set off from the Cultra, County Down, and arrived at Stormont, the seat of devolved government in Belfast, at around 1.30pm

An image of a Catholic priest waving a bloodstained handkerchief as he tried to help a victim to safety went around the world.

A public inquiry conducted by a senior judge shortly after the deaths was branded a whitewash by victims families and a campaign was launched for a new public inquiry.

Relatives sought to right the wrongs of false claims that their loved ones had been armed. A fresh probe was eventually ordered by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1998.

The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, investigated by Lord Saville, concluded that protesters who posed no threats to the soldiers were killed.
A road rage driver was caught on dashcam driving at 101mph before his car flipped over three times.

Wayne Sebury, 59, was driving his blue Mini on the M4 near Port Talbot, South Wales, when he got involved in a spat with Paul Carpenter, 44.

The pair began tailgating and repeatedly undertaking each other while wildly flashing their lights.

Dashcam video footage shows Sebury's car veering across the lanes of the motorway in the high-speed incident.

Wayne Sebury, 59, was driving his blue Mini (right) on the M4 near Port Talbot, South Wales, when he got involved in a spat with Paul Carpenter, 44. The two men began tailgating and repeatedly undertaking each other while flashing their lights

Dashcam video footage shows Sebury's car veering across the lanes of the motorway at speeds of up to 101mph - before he hit a barrier next to the hard shoulder, causing his vehicle to flip three times during the incident last June

The aftermath of the crash showing glass, metal and the car's contents strewn across the carriageway

He then smashes into the barriers next to the hard shoulder before the car rolls across the motorway - leaving it strewn with glass, metal and contents from his vehicle.

A court heard the shocking incident took place in June last year.

Sebury, of Pontypridd, South Wales, and Carpenter, of Boxhill, Surrey, both denied any wrongdoing.

Sebury was given an 18-month community order, disqualified from driving for 12 months and must carry out 150 hours' unpaid work. Carpenter was jailed for six months and disqualified from driving for 18 months

But they later pleaded guilty to dangerous driving at Cardiff Crown Court.

Sebury was given an 18-month community order, disqualified from driving for 12 months and must carry out 150 hours' unpaid work.

Carpenter was jailed for six months and disqualified from driving for 18 months.

PC Kathryn Matthews, of the South Wales Police, said: 'This incident was a classic case of road rage where two motorists have driven dangerously, at high speeds, undertaking, tailgating and flashing their lights.

'It is sheer luck that nobody was killed or seriously injured and the dash cam footage of the incident sends out a clear message about the consequences of driving in such an irresponsible manner.'
An Italian man faked being disabled for 12 years in order to claim 118,000 in benefits along with special privileges including meeting the Pope, police say.

Roberto Guglielmi, 55, from Florence, pretended to be wheelchair-bound following a car accident in 2007 - but in fact the crash was faked along with his disability, prosecutors say.

Guglielmi even injected his legs with an anesthetic to weaken the muscle tone and underwent painful physical therapy in order to fool doctors, it is alleged.

Roberto Guglielmi, 55, from Florence, faked a car accident in 2007 to begin claiming disability benefits and then spent 12 years in a wheelchair, police say

While Guglielmi stayed in his chair while he was in Florence, outside of the state where he was not known they say he walked around normally (pictured)

Investigators also unveiled hidden camera footage which they say proves Guglielmi moved around normally, including in front of his state carer

He was caught on Tuesday at Florence's international airport returning from a holiday in Togo when authorities say he walked off the plane without assistance.

Police say Guglielmi devised the scheme in 2007 along with his house-mate as a way for the pair to avoid paying rent, Repubblica reports.

The housemate agreed to fake hitting Guglielmi with his car, who then managed to attain a faked medical certificate saying he was unable to walk.

Investigators say Guglielmi injected his legs with anaesthetic and underwent painful physical therapy in order to deceive doctors

As a result he was granted a disability allowance which allowed him to pay an at-home carer, was given a disabled parking bay outside his home and allowed use of disabled parking bays and driving lanes.

Over the years, prosecutors say Guglielmi's deceptions became more and more extreme as he became a campaigner for disabled rights in local newspapers.

One man even claims that Guglielmi told him that he was a police veteran who was crippled in a shootout with criminals, Corriere reports.

Before he was arrested, the man was even planning to run for elected office, according to the newspaper.

Perhaps his greatest deception came in 2014 when, after writing to the Vatican to explain his story, he was put in contact with Pope Francis.

After a brief correspondence he was granted an audience with Francis the following year and posted images to his Facebook page of the meeting.

He wrote: 'The sky has reopened for me. I told him my gratitude, he was affectionate. I returned home with joy and with a spirit full of hope.'

Guglielmi is also said to have kept up his deception in front of close friends and acquaintances, who also believed he was disabled.

Police say that Guglielmi's lies became more extravagant as the years went by until, in 2015, he was granted an audience with Pope Francis after telling the pontiff of his plight

Guglielmi (pictured before his 'accident') has now been ordered under house arrest while more investigations are carried out

The 55-year-old was caught on Tuesday this week when he arrived back from a holiday in Togo and walked through the airport without assistance

But prosecutors say that while he maintained this deception in public, at home and while outside of Florence he walked around normally, including in front of his carer.

Hidden camera footage taken by detectives inside Guglielmi's home appears to show walking around with little difficulty.

Investigators say they have also interviewed the carer and she has confirmed that Guglielmi's disability was a con.

He is now being held under house arrest while further investigations are carried out.

A judge has also raised the prospect of forcing him to pay multiple stays in hospital and private clinics while his disability was being assessed.
Former gangland lawyer and notorious informant Nicola Gobbo has been receiving death threats for years, with her eldest daughter and mother also at risk.

Ms Gobbo, known as Lawyer X or 3838, was a criminal barrister who represented some of the most notorious Victorian gangland figures, while acting as a police informer, between 1995 and 2009.

She is the current focus of the Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, which is an inquiry into the number, and extent of, criminal cases affected by her conduct.

Former gangland lawyer and notorious informant Nicola Gobbo (pictured) has been receiving death threats for years, with her eldest daughter and mother also at risk

Ms Gobbo (pictured left), known as Lawyer X or 3838, was a criminal barrister who represented some of the most notorious Victorian gangland figures such as Tony Mokbel (pictured right), while acting as a police informer, between 1995 and 2009

In Supreme Court documents released on Friday, it was revealed that as criminal figures are aware she was an informer, the prospect of death has risen from 'likely' to 'almost certain', The Age reported.

Ms Gobbo's testimony was released after a suppression order was lifted, exposing more detail about her intricate dealings with police.

Intelligence and Covert Support Command Detective Superintendent Peter Brigham said Ms Gobbo had received an 'unprecedented number' of death threats.

At least five organised crime gangs have threatened both Ms Gobbo and members of her family in the years before she was officially revealed to be an informant.

In a 2016 affidavit, Superintendent Brigham said the scale of the potential threats have been notably larger than any other witness protection case managed by Victoria Police.

'The potential threats to 3838 include the friends, family, associates, or anyone employed or contracted by organised crime figures who may be seeking retribution or to silence 3838,' Superintendent Brigham said.

Not only is Ms Gobbo being attacked, but her eldest daughter received threats in 2014, and notorious gangland figure Tony Mokbel sent a scathing email to her mother, Mary Gobbo, in 2008.

At least five organised crime gangs have threatened both Ms Gobbo and members of her family in the years before she was revealed to be an informant (pictured Carl Williams)

The scale of the potential threats have been notably larger than any other witness protection case managed by Victoria Police

In 2016, the Human Source Management Unit conducted a risk assessment of Ms Gobbo and confirmed several gangs planned to 'take out a contract' on her life.

The gangs included members from the Williams gang, the Mokbel clan, the Carlton crew, the Italian Mafia as well as unidentified links to Operation Gosford, Operation Vortex and the Petra Taskforce.

It was also revealed Ms Gobbo was a target of intimidation by members of Melbourne gangs long before she chose to become a police informer.

Detailed in her own affidavit, Ms Gobbo explained that she was warned by Tony Mokbel and Carl Williams not to appear at an upcoming bail hearing.

In the days following the hearing, she left her home to find gangland hitman Andrew Veniamin parked outside her apartment building waiting for her.

'He screamed and threatened me saying words to the effect 'You are part of our crew. You were told not to go anywhere near Moran, and you did it anyway. How dare you do what we told you not to do. Tony's not happy with you. Carl is not happy with you. You're a f****** dog,' Ms Gobbo said in court documents.

Nicola Gobbo (pictured with Carl Williams, right, and his chief hitman Andrew 'Benji' Veniamin, left) was a top gangland lawyer before she turned into infamous police informer - 'Lawyer X'

Notorious gangland figure Tony Mokbel (pictured) sent a scathing email to Ms Gobbo's mother Mary Gobbo in 2008

Ms Gobbo also later said she was threatened by Williams himself, who demanded she tell another underworld figure to 'keep his mouth shut'.

She lived most of her years as an informant terrified she wasn't safe, despite police promising her that her identity would always remain a secret.

One of her handlers told her she could never be revealed as an informer or called as a witness, to which she replied: 'If this gets out, say nice things at my eulogy, because I will be gone  and enjoy the royal commission.'

Ms Gobbo explained she wasn't asked to enter a written agreement about her position nor was she given any information outlining the terms.

Police handlers also told Ms Gobbo in 2006 that she could stop informing at any time.

In March Ms Gobbo was finally unveiled as mysterious 'Lawyer X' after she spent years passing on confidential information from gangland clients to police.

Ms Gobbo explained she wasn't asked to enter a written agreement about her position nor was she given any information outlining the terms
A retired pastor from Alabama who went missing last weekend on a hike in Winston County has been located after an intense three-day search and airlifted from a gorge in a forest.

The Rev Sid Burgess, 70, who formerly served as pastor at Edgewood Presbyterian Church, went missing in Bankhead National Forest late Saturday morning, not long after encountering another hiker and even posing for a selfie with him.

The Homewood residents vehicle was found Sunday afternoon at a trailhead where the avid outdoorsman was supposed to be making a day hike.

Saved: Rev Sid Burgess, 70 (left), from Alabama, was rescued on Tuesday by a helicopter crew (right) from a forest, where he had gone missing last weekend

The former pastor is seen being wheeled out of the rescue aircraft on a stretcher

Reunited: Burgess' wife and daughter were on hand to greet their father after three days of searching

Searchers looked for Burgess for 12 hours Sunday. They resumed Monday, but were temporarily halted by storms.

The search continued Tuesday morning, with teams of rescuers, service dogs, horses and drones scouring the area by land and from the air in search of the missing family man.

Finally, just before 11am, Burgess' grown daughter Brittany Burgess Fled, who has been sharing updates about the search efforts on her Facebook page, announced that her father has been located.

'FOUND. CONSCIOUS AND BREATHING. THANK YOU JESUS,' she wrote.

Burgess is seen embracing his daughters, Brittany and Grace, left. Pictured on the right are the daughters with their mother (right)

Burgess, pictured in the hospital after his rescue, suffered scrapes and bruises but no major injuries

The following day, Burgess Feld shared a photo of her father smiling in a hospital chair with both his knees appearing skinned and bloodied.

She also posted a video recorded by someone on the scene in Bankhead National Forest showing the moment her father was airlifted by a helicopter crew from a gorge.

Brittany's sister, Grace Burgess, shared another video capturing the emotional moment the former pastor was reunited with his wife and children following his harrowing ordeal.

Burgess (left) was pastor at Edgewood Presbyterian Church from 1990 until his retirement in 2013

The 70-year-old retired cleric has been described as an avid outdoorsman

In the recording, Burgess is seen lying on a stretcher with both of his legs bandaged up and being wheeled away from a helicopter towards his wife and daughters, who rush to embrace him.

Winston County Sheriffs Chief Deputy Bryan Kirkpatrick said Burgess was found by White Creek Falls early Tuesday. He had a small amount of food left and had been drinking water from a creek to survive.

Al.com reported that he was too weak to walk out of the forest, so he had to be placed in a harness and hoisted out of the forest by a rescue helicopter.

Burgess previously worked at WBRC-TV and Birmingham Cable before entering the seminary.

The married father of two grown daughters was pastor at Edgewood Presbyterian Church from 1990 until his retirement in 2013.

The Rev Joe Genau, the current pastor of Burgess' church, told WBRC the man suffered scrapes and bruises during his time in the wilderness, but no major injuries.
A teenager has been turned away from a Texas high school on registration day because her mother's t-shirt dress and head scarf didn't meet the dress code.

The teen's mother, Joselyn Lewis, claims she was refused entry at Madison High School in Houston on Monday when she went to enroll her 15-year-old daughter.

Lewis said administrators told her that her dress was too short and her head scarf wasn't up to dress code.

The mother told KPRC that she initially thought the school administrator had mistaken her for a student.

Joselyn Lewis claims she was refused entry at Madison High School in Houston on Monday when she went to enroll her 15-year-old daughter because her t-shirt dress was too short

'She went on to say that she still couldn't let me on the premises because I was not in dress code and I still didn't understand what that meant,' Lewis said.

'She said that my head scarf was out of dress code and my dress was too short.'

Lewis said she was trying to register her daughter at the school after un-enrolling her earlier that day from Lamar High School due to bullying.

'When I went to Lamar, I had no problems, but when I got to Madison High School, they refused me access to the premises because of what I had on,' Lewis said.

'I mean, I didn't understand why my headscarf and my dress would conflict with me enrolling someone in school.'

The mother said she was wearing the head scarf because she was about to get her hair done and her dress wasn't shorter than her fingertips when her arms were by her side.

Lewis said administrators told her that her dress was too short and her head scarf wasn't up to dress code

The mother said she was wearing the head scarf because she was about to get her hair done

When she refused to leave, staff called police to ask her to get off the school grounds.

Lewis said she struggled to understand what was wrong with her outfit.

'I can wear what I want to wear. I don't have to get all dolled up to enroll her to school,' Lewis said.

'My child's education, anyone's child's education should be more important than what someone has on, that shouldn't matter.'

Lewis vowed to wear different clothes when she went back the following day to register her daughter.

The school hasn't publicly commented about Lewis' claims.

There is no dress code listed on the school's website for parents.
Hilarious footage shows a young boy lean in for a selfie with one of Australia's most photogenic animals - but get snubbed in the most brutal way.

Perth boy Tyler Eadsforth, 12, shrieked in pain when a quokka bit him on the forehead during a family day trip to Rottnest Island during the Christmas break in 2017.

The two-second clip recently went viral after being shared with family friend Alexandra Plummer, who posted it online.

Ouch! Perth boy Tyler Eadsforth, 12, shrieked in pain when a quokka bit him on the forehead during a family day trip to Rottnest Island during the Christmas break in 2017

The marsupial is normally friendly with people and enjoy being patted and rubbed

'No one could ever beat that (quokka selfie),' Ms Plummer said to Perth Now.

'That's (Tyler) squealing at the end.'

She never expected the clip to go viral when she posted it on the Rottnest Island Facebook page.

'I didn't expect many people would view it,' she said.

The marsupials are normally friendly around humans and enjoy it when people pet and play with them.

Tourists flock to Rottnest island which has become world famous for quokka selfies after the marsupials became an Instagram hit.

Avengers star Chris Hemsworth recorded an encounter with a quokka in March.

But Instagram has warned tourists taking quokka selfies in Western Australia may be a form of animal cruelty.

Social media users who click on the #quokkaselfie hashtag are warned that searching for the images on Instagram may 'encourage harmful behaviour to animals.'

'Animal abuse and the sale of endangered animals or their parts is not allowed on Instagram,' the warning reads.
A blogger has been ordered by a court in China to pay more than 200,000 yuan (22,800) to a real estate developer for criticising its building and saying it had bad feng shui.

A blog post published by Zhuhai Shengun Network Technology last November claimed that the Wangjing Soho development in Beijing, designed by late British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, carries inauspicious forces that would bring misfortune to its tenants.

The article said the trio of curved towers resembled 'pig kidneys', an insult in Chinese, and that it had a 'heart-piercing' and 'noxious' energy that could lead to the downfall of its tenants.

A blog post published by Zhuhai Shengun Network Technology last November claimed that the Wangjing Soho development, designed by late British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, carries inauspicious forces that would bring misfortune to its tenants

Claiming that the development was a 'Waterloo' for companies, the article published on WeChat recommended firms to reconsider staying the building if they want to be successful. The term refers to the Battle of Waterloo which marked the downfall of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 19th century.

The building's developers, Soho China, filed a complaint and sued Zhuhai Shengun for libel after the article was widely circulated, saying that it affected its ability to attract tenants. Soho China is one of the largest real estate firms in the country.

The article has been viewed more than 100,000 times before it was taken down, the Chaoyang District People's Court in Beijing heard.

The article said the trio of curved towers resembled 'pig kidneys', an insult in Chinese, and that it had a 'heart-piercing' and 'noxious' energy that could lead to the downfall of its tenants

Feng shui - literally meaning 'wind-water' - is influential in many parts of Asia, where people adjust their lives and carefully position items such as a cup of water or pieces of crystal in offices and homes to maximise their luck and wealth.

The philosophy says that all events are dictated by the varying balances in the five elements that make up the universe: metal, wood, water, fire and earth.

In its public verdict on Wednesday, the court said the media company had damaged the reputation of Soho China with 'biased analysis and arbitrary conclusions.'

'The article applies superstition to Wangjing Soho building, which institutes defamation,' it said.

Ouyang Hua, the official on the case, said companies should focus on building up core technology and 'not entrust development to feng shui theory.'

Feng shui - literally meaning 'wind-water' - is influential in many parts of Asia, where people adjust their lives and carefully position items such as a cup of water or pieces of crystal in offices and homes to maximise their luck and wealth (file photo)

The blogger who wrote the post was also ordered to publicly apologise to Soho China for the post's 'malicious insults' and 'insulting vocabulary'.

The media company told the court that the phrases such as 'Waterloo' were only a form of expression and did not constitute insults.

'Criticism of architecture and malicious slander are two separate things,' Soho China's chairman Pan Shiyi said in a post on Weibo.

'The distance between reason and ignorance are worlds apart,' he added.

The Wangjing Soho development is located in north-east Beijing near the 798 Art Zone and comprises a trio of curved towers that are 387, 417 and 656 feet tall respectively, resembling three giant pebbles with 500,000 square metres of floor space.

A number of international and technology companies are tenants at the complex, including German carmaker Daimler, German manufacturer Siemens and US heavy machinery maker Caterpillar, according to South China Morning Post.
A Russian belly dancer who was arrested after a racy video of her went viral has been sentenced to a year in an Egyptian jail for 'inciting debauchery'.

Ekaterina Andreeva, who went by the stage name Johara, meaning Jewel, was sentenced at Giza Misdemeanours Court on Wednesday after authorities said she had been dancing without underwear on and working without a licence.

It comes a year after Andreeva was arrested following a viral clip of her provocatively dancing on a boat on the Nile wearing a low-cut backless dress split up one side.

Bad moves: Belly dancer Ekaterina Andreeva, 31, was arrested last February following a performance in Giza, Egypt, and accused of dancing without wearing underwear

The footage was not taken lightly by police and they detained her on suspicion of inciting young people to disobedience and immorality.

She is expected to appeal her sentence but the dancer is yet to issue a statement, the Egypt Independent reported.

Instead, Andreeva responded in an Instagram story on Wednesday.

She posted a picture of her dancing with the caption 'my reaction on today's news' followed by a tongue out emoji.

Andreeva responded to the sentencing with a fresh post on Instagram. She has not issued an official statement

In February last year, Andreeva described being detained by Egyptian authorities as 'the worst days of my life'.

The then 31-year-old had spent several days locked up before being released on bail.

At the time, she also took to Instagram to defend herself against the accusations.

Mrs Andreeva, who takes the moniker Johara when on stage, was dancing in Giza, north-western Egypt which led to her arrest

Andreeva is from Perm Krai in Russia, but performed across the world as a belly dancer and often shared videos of her routines on social media.

Addressing her 136,000 Instagram followers in February last year, Andreeva wrote: 'I'm finally out! My state of health is normal so do not worry about me!'

Revealing that she had spent several days in prison, she called the experience 'the worst days of my life'.

She said she did not know the 'real reasons' why she was arrested, adding that 'those who are professional dancer know clearly my costumes are okay'.

Ordeal: The Russian, who performs all over the world as Johara, said that her time in Egyptian detention was 'the worst days of her life'

Defence: Mrs Andreeva addressed her 136,000 Instagram followers in a post published after her release on bail last February

'Me and my lawyer insure 100 per cent documents are done, we spend six months with my employer to prepare everything clean and right.

'I know that my beloved husband did just unreal job from Russian side and my amazing employer here in Cairo the same here. No words to thank you, all who were helping me

'It was the worst days of my life, but I'm out and JUSTICE TRIUMPHED, so it's only proves that I'm innocent.'

Criminal act? This video purports to show the performance which upset the Egyptian authorities to the point where they had her arrested

Egyptian prosecutor Hatim Fadl said at the time: 'Rules for the dance performance oblige the performer to wear underwear of any colour but beige.

'Johara did not have any underwear, and of course it was provocative.'

It was reported locally that Mrs Andreeva was banned from dancing while her case was reviewed.
An Afghanistan hero was left a 'tortured soul' from the horrors of war and hanged himself after the Army missed 'obvious red flags' about his mental health, an inquest was told.

Danny Johnston killed himself after he was left destroyed by his 14-year army career, which saw him serve in war zones across the Middle East, Kosovo and Northern Ireland.

The 35-year-old Corporal had been part of the UKs elite Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), the sister regiment of the famed SAS.

Danny Johnston (picutred) killed himself after he was left destroyed by his 14-year army career, which saw him serve in war zones across the Middle East, Kosovo and Northern Ireland

Before that he was part of the Princess of Waless Royal Regiment, Portsmouths local infantry unit.

But an inquest into his death revealed how the military offered him no support despite obvious red flags about his mental health flaring up, which later led to him being discharged from the army.

Now James Healey-Pratt, assistant coroner for West Sussex, vowed to write to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson to urge him to improve support for the nation's service personnel to stop 'future deaths' and 'tragedies like Danny'.

Speaking at a hearing in West Sussex Coroners Court, in Crawley, the coroner said: Our service personnel need to be looked after and protected to a greater extent than they are.

In many ways, Dannys tragic situation is an example of that. Its the duty of this court to protect future people from that similar outcome.

The court heard how the experienced soldier had been traumatised by a tour in Afghanistan and unable to sleep.

Fearing his career would be left in tatters if he spoke out, Mr Johnston broke military rules and started using the prescription drug Valium in secret.

But he was eventually caught during a random drug test and sacked from the army, a shame his family said he never truly recovered from.

On May 20, 2018, Mr Johnston disappeared from his family home in Bognor Regis, Sussex, with his body being found on May 23 hanging from a tree in Stoughton woods, near Chichester.

During the inquest, the court heard how Mr Johnston had attempted to take his life in woodland close to his home in Herefordshire exactly a week before he disappeared.

Viv Johnston, mother of special forces hero Danny Johnston (in the picture). A coroner has demanded defence secretary Gavin Williamson do more to protect Britain's troops after the tragic suicide of Mr Johnston

The troubled 35-year-old was caught by police carrying a rope after worried friends contacted officers after a post he made on social media.

Following the failed attempt, he went back to his family home in Bognor Regis, where he stayed with his mother, Viv Johnston.

However, Mr Johnstons sister, Sophie Johnston, told the court her brother was not himself and looked haunted..

She said: Danny was quite a tortured soul sometimes and he didnt talk to anybody.

He was absolutely devastated that he had been discharged from the army and angry with himself.

He found it so hard to adjust to normal civilian life. He knew it was all his fault.

When Mr Johnston disappeared on May 20, a large group of friends, family and fellow veterans - including former members of the SAS - joined the search effort.

The four-day operation saw teams hunting through Queen Elizabeth Country Park, near Portsmouth, and basing themselves at the Army Reserve Centre, in Tudor Crescent.

However, Mr Johnstons body was found by passers-by in Stoughton woods, at 11.30am on May 23, 2018. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

A post-mortem examination revealed he had trace levels of ethanol consistent with mild or moderate intoxication. Benzodiazepine was also detected in his blood at therapeutic levels consistent with the using of prescription valium, Mr Healey-Pratt said.

James Healey-Pratt, assistant coroner for West Sussex, vowed to write to Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson (pictured) to urge him to improve support for the nation's service personnel to stop 'future deaths' and 'tragedies like Danny'

The hearing heard evidence from Lieutenant Colonel Chris Rotchell, who was representing the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

The army officer said since Mr Johnstons death, the MoD had introduced new support measures for troops with mental health disorders.

I joined the military in 1997 and the changes have been staggering from where we were then to where we are now, he told the court. But theres still a huge amount of work to do surrounding the taboos of coming forward [for help].

Reaching a conclusion of suicide, the coroner said the support for Mr Johnston in 2013 wasnt adequate, and added: If a special forces operative has sleeping problems, potentially due to combat tour in Afghanistan, they should feel safe and entitled to seek proper assistance without fear of jeopardising their military career.

He noted the MoDa attitudes had changed since Mr Johnstons discharge but said more still needed to be done.

Danny had been an effective and highly-valued member of his special forces unit the SSR, he added. He served his Queen, he served his country, he served his regiment.

For confidential support, log on to or call the Samaritans on 116123
Residents of a historic Mississippi town have been left perplexed by the appearance of bowls of mashed potato appearing randomly in bizarre places outside of their homes.

Neighbors in the Belhaven district of Jackson have been exchanging anecdotes of the strange places theyve found the spuds over the past week - with some finding the bowls on top of cars, and others discovering them balancing on letter boxes.

Why the Styrofoam containers of lumpy mash are being left around the neighborhood remains a mystery, prompting a number of conspiracy theories.

While many believe the gesture is just all part of a harmless prank, some fear the food may be poisoned and placed on porches to harm neighborhood pets.

Mysterious bowls of mashed potato keep appearing in bizarre places outside homes in the Belhaven district of Jackson

Michaela Lin discovered the bowl of mash (seen right) balancing on her mailbox outside of her home this week. She says some of potato-finders have connections to a local private Christian university, which provide a clue

Some have even theorized on social media that a mashed potato maniac is on the loose and must be stopped.

However Belhaven, one of Jacksons oldest neighborhoods, is no stranger to bizarre events.

This neighborhood does a lot of quirky things, Jordan Lewis told KRON4.

We decorate road signs we put Christmas trees in our potholes, so it's not surprising at all, that's why I love this neighborhood, because they do so many strange things, but it's definitely one of the weirdest things I've seen since living in Jackson, she continued.

Lewis said she found a cold bowl of mash left on the bonnet of her car. After posting about the curious discovery on Facebook, she discovered she wasnt alone.

They've found it on their mailboxes, on their cars... So we don't know if someone is just playing a prank or if someone just had a lot of leftovers, Lewis jokingly suggested.

Jordan Lewis (pictured) said she found a cold bowl of mash left on the bonnet of her car

But a post on Facebook revealed that she wasn't alone, where a number of neighbors described the same odd encounter

Belhaven, one of Jacksons oldest neighborhoods, is no stranger to bizarre on-goings, residents say

Another resident, Sebastian Bjernegard, said he didnt think twice about the bowl of mash he stepped over on the way to work one morning  and he certainly wasnt tempted to take a bite.

Some people were thinking maybe the mashed potatoes were poisoned to kill animals. I didn't taste it, I have a 3-second rule, so I didn't touch it but some people were worried, he said.

Residents say they dont feel the need to involve police in what is likely a harmless joke. And some say theyre even excited to see what the unconventional culprit will do next.

Resident Michaela Lin says some of potato-finders have connections to a local private Christian university, which may provide a clue to help solve the mystery.
Criminal turned catwalk model Jeremy Meeks has hit back at claims he's dating heiress Chloe Green for all the wrong reasons, while leaping to the defense of her disgraced father Sir Philip Green.

Meeks was quick to defend his reputation after being branded a gold digger by many on social media for his relationship with the Topshop heiress and insists he and Chloe, 28, are stronger than ever.

The 'Hot Felon' also fired back at the negative headlines and sex scandals embroiling her British billionaire father over the past year in an exclusive interview with DailyMailTV.

The 35-year-old spoke of his frustration that Sir Philip has been the focus of so much venom, saying: 'Every Brit I have met and my family in general are the sweetest people... By far the sweetest people... And I hate the lies, the lies that they are speaking on my father-in-law. It's horrible, it's horrible... It is so frustrating. He is the kindest man.'

While ducking away from discussing in depth the sex harassment claims of Topshop mogul Sir Philip, Meeks added: 'I am not going to speak on any of that but what I will say is that they are the kindest and I mean the kindest people. So please leave them alone.'

Jeremy Meeks has defended his reputation to DailyMailTV after being branded a gold digger for his relationship with Topshop heiress Chloe Green

The 35-year-old defended his future father-in-law Sir Philip Green, who has been accused of serial sexual harassment, calling him the 'kindest man'

In March, sources close to the couple claimed their 18-month relationship was under strain after they had a public spat on February 19 in Dubai, however their romance seemed solid when they were snapped on holiday in Thailand in March.

The 'hot felon' turned model said there are 'always going to be misconceptions' about his love for Chloe, with whom he shares 11-month-old son Jayden

Meeks told DailyMailTV his love for Chloe, with whom he shares 11-month-old son Jayden, is the real thing: 'There is always going to be misconceptions, but I don't clear up anything, the proof is in the pudding and I am going to work hard and continue to work hard and show them that not only was I given this blessing but I took full advantage of it.'

He added that he does not have the time to defend his name: 'What you got to understand is that there is always going to be people who try to chime in on your personal life when in all actuality they have no idea.

'I would have to spend everyday for the next year trying to defend myself and you just can't do that... Like doing interviews and state the actual facts because you would constantly be stating the facts and I would never be able to get any work done. So I just have to let it go and let it roll off my back and get on with my business and my family and just keep doing me and show them rather than tell them. I would rather show them.'

The shaven-headed ex-con - who shot to fame after his handsome mugshot went viral and now has a career as a fashion model - also has plans to expand his own business interests.

He feels that he is capable of acting and clothes design and feels that 'Everything,' is now possible.

'I am going to jump into every space in this industry... but in baby steps,' he explained.

'You know I don't want to put too much on my plate and be stretched too thin.

'I want to do something and give it my full attention and then step onto the next opportunity... Because sometimes people overload themselves and then they have too much on their plate and nothing works right... Because you are being pulled in so many different directions.'

Meeks spoke as he attended close friend Quavo's launch of his fashion label boohooMAN X Quavo collection at the Sunset Room in Hollywood.

Meeks called the allegations against Sir Philip 'lies' and said the Green family are 'the kindest people' and asked for the public to 'please leave them alone'

The couple are engaged and despite claims that their 18-month relationship was on the rocks, those rumors quickly dissipated after their romantic Thai getaway in March

Sir Philip, 67, has been mired in controversy in recent months.

He has been hit with a string of sexual misconduct and racial bullying claims that have left his reputation in tatters.

In March, The Sun revealed video showing the married dad-of-two kissing a grimacing worker as she sat nervously on his knee.

It also showed the retail tycoon stroking and tickling the clearly uncomfortable young woman while clutching a champagne bottle.

Sir Philip - who is facing calls to have his knighthood stripped - was also unmasked as the tycoon behind an injunction intended to stop the shocking claims emerging.

The other claims, reported in the Telegraph, are allegations that he dragged a woman around in a headlock and smashed a male employee's mobile phone.

It was also claimed that he mocked a male employee's dreadlocks and referred to him 'throwing spears in the jungle'.

Sir Philip also faced allegations that he groped a female executive, paying her more than $1million to stay quiet.

Sir Philip has categorically denied the allegations, insisting he never meant to cause offense.

And earlier this month it was reported that the tycoon's Arcadia group is crumbling.

It was claimed the company is preparing to not renew the expiring leases on around 200 of its shops - including Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and Burton.
Lexi Bergene fell from the window of her block of flats in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, in Scotland on Wednesday

A one-year-old girl who died in hospital after falling from the window of a third-floor flat has been named.

Lexi Bergene fell from the window of a block of flats in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, in Scotland on Wednesday.

In a picture released to the public little Lexi is wearing a pink Mallorca Small Marine World t-shirt and pink leggings as she looks up at the camera.

After her fall she was rushed to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow but died 24 hours later from her injuries.

Tributes poured in for the one-year-old who died so tragically as people commented on a Facebook post.

Annemarie Emslie Beggs said: 'Fly high with the angels baby, love from Nan & Granda.'

Jacqueline MacAdam said: 'So so sad sleep tight little angel god bless you and your family.'

And Jennifer Muir wrote: 'Sleep tight Lexi. The whole of Clydebank is heartbroken for you and your family.'

Cameron Caldwell was on a bus when he passed the scene not long after the fall.

He commented on Facebook: 'Wee shame. I passed by on the bus no long after it happened, won't ever forget it. Prayers for her and all the family.'

On another Facebook post Katrina Moffat commented: 'RIP Lexi honestly heartbreaking I use to see this wee baby nearly everyday with her mummy my heart goes out to all the family.'

After her fall she was rushed to the Royal Hospital for Sick Children in Glasgow but died 24 hours later from her injuries. Pictured, police at the scene

Tributes poured in for the one-year-old who died so tragically as people commented on a Facebook post. Annemarie Emslie Beggs said: 'Fly high with the angels baby, love from Nan & Granda'. Charlene Kielty said: 'My heart is breaking right now I know the family thoughts with them'

And Claire Egan said: 'Heartbreaking for all involved. Hope her parents find peace at some point in their life. This was a horrible accident that no one could have predicted or stopped.'

Police Scotland appealed for witnesses following the incident, near Boquhanran Road, at around 2.10pm.

Officers said there do not appear to be any suspicious circumstances. A report will be sent to the procurator fiscal.

Children lay flowers in tribute to a one-year-old baby girl who has died after falling from a third floor flat on Dumbarton Road

Detective Inspector Steve Martin said: 'The little girl's family have been left devastated by the loss of their child and we are investigating the circumstances surrounding what happened.'

A Facebook post by Argyll & West Dunbartonshire Police Division read: 'With reference to our previous release following the death of a one year old girl who fell from the window of a flat in Dumbarton Road, Clydebank. Please note:

'The girl can now be named as Lexi Bergene.'

The toddler fell from a block on Dumbarton Road in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, yesterday. Pictured police at the scene yesterday

A police officer stood at the front door of the home in Clydebank where the incident happened

Officers have said there do not appear to be any suspicious circumstances. Pictured are police carrying out investigations yesterday

Officers cordoned off the building where a toddler fell and suffered fatal injuries in Clydebank

Detective Inspector Steve Martin continued: 'I continue to appeal for anyone who was in the area at the time, who may have rendered assistance to the family or emergency services, to please get in touch.

'I would also ask any motorists who were in the vicinity to check their dash-cams in case they have captured anything which may be of significance.'

Anyone with information is asked to contact the family protection unit based at Clydebank Police Station on 101, quoting incident number 1888 of April 10.
An Illinois woman has filed a lawsuit against her hospital claiming doctors pressured and allegedly paid her $2,000 to have an abortion after she was mistakenly administered a drug that potentially causes birth defects.

Reneizha Morris, of Peoria, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against UnityPoint Health-Methodist hospital in Peoria County Circuit Court.

The 23-year-old mother-of-two claims the hospital realized the mistake in giving her the fetus-endangering drug Methotrexate in November 2017 and pressured her to get an abortion to 'eliminate evidence of their mistake'.

'When I was told that there was a mistake and my baby might not make it, I was devastated,' she said during a press conference Thursday.

'I think about what happened every single day, and I just dont understand how this happened,' she added.

Illinois woman Reneizha Morris, 23, filed a lawsuit against UnityPoint Health-Methodist hospital in Peoria on Thursday claiming the hospital pressured her to have an abortion after workers accidentally injected her with a fetus-endangering drug

In November 2017 she was mistakenly given Methotrexate, a drug causes severe birth defects when given to pregnant women. Morris pictured above in a press conference Thursday

'When I told that there was a mistake and my baby night not make it, I was devastated,' the mother to two sons said

In the lawsuit she seeks more than $50,000 in damages and UnityPoint is named as the sole defendant, as per the Peoria Journal Star.

The incident unfolded after Morris was admitted to Methodist in November 2017 for a psychiatric evaluation after having an issue with her medication.

She underwent routine testing and learned she was pregnant.

Morris is a mother to two sons and was happy to learn she was pregnant, looking forward to having a girl.

But due to an apparent miscommunication with her hospital, she was injected with Methotrexate, a drug that can cause severe birth defects for pregnant women.

Her attorneys say that the drug was given without Morris' consent and without an explanation of the issues that could arise during pregnancy.

Still she decided to carry the baby to term, between 37 weeks to 42 weeks, but then the hospital's legal team got involved.

Due to an apparent miscommunication with her hospital, she was injected with Methotrexate. Her attorneys say she was administered the drug without her consent

Morris claims that the hospital's risk manager asked Morris to come to the hospital and pick up $2,000 in cash along with a letter stating the money was to be used for 'a consultation' at a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood clinic.

Her attorneys say the hospital's records suddenly trail off and do not detail when or how she supposedly decided to terminate her pregnancy.

According to the letter, the hospital gave her the money because she said she didn't have enough for a consultation.

The lawsuit states that the hospital failed to inform Morris that they mistakenly gave her the medicine because they'd be liable for its medical costs.

'The agents and employees of UnityPoint knew that if they informed Morris that the childs medical costs would be covered, there was a possibility that this information could help her decide to carry the child to term,' the lawsuit states.

In the lawsuit she seeks more than $50,000 in damages and UnityPoint Hospital in Peoria is named as the sole defendant

'There is one important rule that everyone in health care follows. The rule is this, no matter what you do, dont make things worse. First, do no harm. The hospital flunked this test in the most appalling way,' Morris' lawyer Thomas Mulroy III said

The pressure on Morris mounted after a series of meetings with the hospital and she felt forced to terminate the pregnancy.

She aborted her baby on December 15, 2017, according to her lawyers.

'The mistake in this case was absolutely inexcusable,' Morris' lawyer Thomas Mulroy III said.

'There is one important rule that everyone in health care follows. The rule is this, no matter what you do, dont make things worse. First, do no harm. The hospital flunked this test in the most appalling way,' he added.

Methodist spokesman Fabiola Orozco says the hospital doesn't comment on pending litigation.
GUILTY: MICHAEL FLYNN

Pleaded guilty to making false statements in December 2017. Awaiting sentence

Flynn was President Trump's former National Security Advisor and Robert Mueller's most senior scalp to date. He previously served when he was a three star general as President Obama's director of the Defense Intelligence Agency but was fired.

He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his conversations with a Russian ambassador in December 2016. He has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel investigation.

GUILTY AND JAILED: MICHAEL COHEN

Pleaded guilty to eight counts including fraud and two campaign finance violations in August 2018. Pleaded guilty to further count of lying to Congress in November 2018. Sentenced to three years in prison and $2 million in fines and forfeitures in December 2018

Cohen was investigated by Mueller but the case was handed off to the Southern District of New York,leaving Manhattan's ferocious and fiercely independent federal prosecutors to run his case.

Cohen was Trump's longtime personal attorney, starting working for him and the Trump Organization in 2007. He is the longest-serving member of Trump's inner circle to be implicated by Mueller. Cohen professed unswerving devotion to Trump - and organized payments to silence two women who alleged they had sex with the-then candidate: porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal. He admitted that payments to both women were felony campaign finance violations - and admitted that he acted at the 'direction' of 'Candidate-1': Donald Trump.

He also admitted tax fraud by lying about his income from loans he made, money from taxi medallions he owned, and other sources of income, at a cost to the Treasury of $1.3 million.

And he admitted lying to Congress in a rare use of the offense. The judge in his case let him report for prison on March 6 and recommended he serve it in a medium-security facility close to New York City.

GUILTY AND JAILED: PAUL MANAFORT

Found guilty of eight charges of bank and tax fraud in August 2018. Sentenced to 47 months in March 2019. Pleaded guilty to two further charges - witness tampering and conspiracy against the United States. Jailed for total of seven and a half years in two separate sentences. Additionally indicted for mortgage fraud by Manhattan District Attorney, using evidence previously presented by Mueller

Manafort worked for Trump's campaign from March 2016 and chaired it from June to August 2016, overseeing Trump being adopted as Republican candidate at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He is the most senior campaign official to be implicated by Mueller. Manafort was one of Washington D.C.'s longest-term and most influential lobbyists but in 2015, his money dried up and the next year he turned to Trump for help, offering to be his campaign chairman for free - in the hope of making more money afterwards. But Mueller unwound his previous finances and discovered years of tax and bank fraud as he coined in cash from pro-Russia political parties and oligarchs in Ukraine.

Manafort pleaded not guilty to 18 charges of tax and bank fraud but was convicted of eight counts in August 2018. The jury was deadlocked on the other 10 charges. A second trial on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent due in September did not happen when he pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and witness tampering in a plea bargain. He was supposed to co-operate with Mueller but failed to.

Minutes after his second sentencing hearing in March 2019, he was indicted on 16 counts of fraud and conspiracy by the Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., using evidence which included documents previously presented at his first federal trial. The president has no pardon power over charges by district and state attorneys.

GUILTY AND GOING TO WEEKEND JAIL: RICK GATES

Pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements in February 2018. Sentenced to 45 days weekend jail and three years probation, December 17, 2018

Gates was Manafort's former deputy at political consulting firm DMP International. He admitted to conspiring to defraud the U.S. government on financial activity, and to lying to investigators about a meeting Manafort had with a member of congress in 2013. As a result of his guilty plea and promise of cooperation, prosecutors vacated charges against Gates on bank fraud, bank fraud conspiracy, failure to disclose foreign bank accounts, filing false tax returns, helping prepare false tax filings, and falsely amending tax returns.

GUILTY AND JAILED: GEORGE PAPADOPOLOUS

Pleaded guilty to making false statements in October 2017. Sentenced to 14 days in September 2018, and reported to prison in November. Served 12 days and released on December 7, 2018

Papadopoulos was a member of Donald Trump's campaign foreign policy advisory committee. He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about his contacts with London professor Josef Mifsud and Ivan Timofeev, the director of a Russian government-funded think tank.

GUILTY AND JAILED: RICHARD PINEDO

Pleaded guilty to identity fraud in February 2018. Sentenced to a year in prison

Pinedo is a 28-year-old computer specialist from Santa Paula, California. He admitted to selling bank account numbers to Russian nationals over the internet that he had obtained using stolen identities.

GUILTY AND JAILED: ALEX VAN DER ZWAAN

Pleaded guilty to making false statements in February 2018. He served a 30-day prison sentence and was deported to the Netherlands on his release

Van der Zwaan was a Dutch attorney for Skadden Arps who worked on a Ukrainian political analysis report for Paul Manafort in 2012.

He admitted to lying to special counsel investigators about when he last spoke with Rick Gates and Konstantin Kilimnik. His law firm say he was fired.

GUILTY: W. SAMUEL PATTEN

Pleaded guilty in August 2018 to failing to register as a lobbyist while doing work for a Ukrainian political party. Sentenced to three years probation April 2019

Patten, a long-time D.C. lobbyist was a business partner of Paul Manafort. He pleaded guilty to admitting to arranging an illegal $50,000 donation to Trump's inauguration.

He arranged for an American 'straw donor' to pay $50,000 to the inaugural committee, knowing that it was actually for a Ukrainian businessman.

Neither the American or the Ukrainian have been named.

CHARGED: KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK

Indicted for obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. At large, probably in Russia

Kilimnik is a former employee of Manafort's political consulting firm and helped him with lobbying work in Ukraine. He is accused of witness tampering, after he allegedly contacted individuals who had worked with Manafort to remind them that Manafort only performed lobbying work for them outside of the U.S.

He has been linked to Russian intelligence and is currently thought to be in Russia - effectively beyond the reach of extradition by Mueller's team.

INDICTED: THE RUSSIANS

Twenty-five Russian nationals and three Russian entities have been indicted for conspiracy to defraud the United States. They remain at large in Russia

Two of these Russian nationals were also indicted for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and 11 were indicted for conspiracy to launder money. Fifteen of them were also indicted for identity fraud.

Vladimir Putin has ridiculed the charges. Russia effectively bars extradition of its nationals. The only prospect Mueller has of bringing any in front of a U.S. jury is if Interpol has their names on an international stop list - which is not made public - and they set foot in a territory which extradites to the U.S.

INDICTED: MICHAEL FLYNN'S BUSINESS PARTNERS

Bijan Kian (left), number two in now disgraced former national security adviser Mike Flynn's lobbying company, and the two's business partner Ekim Alptekin (right) were indicted for conspiracy to lobby illegally.

Kian, an Iranian-American was arrested and appeared in court charged with a conspiracy to illegally lobby the U.S government without registering as a foreign agent. Their co-conspirator was Flynn, who is called 'Person A' in the indictment and is not charged, offering some insight into what charges he escaped with his plea deal.

Kian, vice-president of Flynn's former lobbying firm, is alleged to have plotted with Alptekin to try to change U.S. policy on an exiled Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania and who is accused by Turkey's strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of trying to depose him.

Erdogan's government wanted him extradited from the U.S. and paid Flynn's firm through Alptekin for lobbying, including an op-ed in The Hill calling for Gulen to be ejected. Flynn and Kian both lied that the op-ed was not paid for by the Turkish government.

The indictment is a sign of how Mueller is taking an interest in more than just Russian involvement in the 2016 election.

GUILTY AND AWAITING SENTENCE: ROGER STONE

Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign official and longtime informal advisor to Trump, was indited on seven counts including obstruction of justice, witness tampering, and lying to Congress about his communications with WikiLeaks in January 2019. Convicted on all counts November 15, 2019, awaiting sentence

Stone was a person of interest to Mueller's investigators long before his January indictment, thanks in part due to his public pronouncements as well as internal emails about his contacts with WikiLeks.

In campaign texts and emails, many of which had already been publicly revealed before showing up in Mueller's indictment, Stone communicated with associates about WikiLeaks following reports the organization had obtained a cache of Clinton-related emails.

Stone, a former Nixon campaign adviser who has the disgraced former president's face permanently tattooed on his back, has long been portrayed as a central figure in the election interference scandal.

'They got nothing,' he said of the special counsel's investigation.

Stone gave 'false and misleading' testimony about his requests for information from WikiLeaks. He then pressured a witness, comedian Randy Credico, to take the Fifth Amendment rather than testify, and pressured him in a series of emails. Following a prolonged dispute over testimony, he called him a 'rat' and threatened to 'take that dog away from you', in reference to Credico's pet, Bianca. Stone warned him: 'Let's get it on. Prepare to die.'

CLEARED: GREG CRAIG

Greg Craig, President Barack Obama's White House counsel, was indicted for failing to register as a foreign agent. Mueller's investigators uncovered Craig's work on behalf the government of Ukraine while probing Manafort, who did business with Craig.

Prosecutors released a grand jury indictment of Craig in April 2019, after Craig's law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP agreed to pay more than $4.6 million as part of a settlement. The prominent firm also acknowledged it had failed to register, and placed much of the blame on Craig, a senior partner there.

Craig's lawyer blasted the decision as an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, and prepared to argue that omission of information during an interview is not tantamount to making false statements.

The charges stem from a 2012 report Craig and the firm produced on behalf of the Ukrainian government on opposition figure and former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She was an opponent of Manafort's client , former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

Craig was cleared on September 9 2019.
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Cliffs overlooking the North Sea were glowing in the sunlight as daffodils bloomed just like William Wordsworth's poem as Britain is set for a bright but chilly weekend.

The country will enjoy a dry weekend with spells of brilliant sunshine as signs of Spring, such as the vast yellow daffodils clifftops in Montrose, Angus, begin to show.

A frosty Friday evening and a cold snap overnight will make way for sun by late Saturday morning just in time for Brits to enjoy their Easter holiday plans, with temperature highs of up to 13C.

Cliffs overlooking the North Sea were glowing in the sunlight as daffodils bloomed just like William Wordsworth's poem as Britain is set for a bright and sunny weekend

This recent photograph shows the blooms, traditionally seen as a sign of spring, in a variety of shades when seen from the sky in Montrose, Angus

A frosty Friday evening and a cold snap overnight will make way for sun by late Saturday morning just in time for Brits to enjoy their Easter holiday plans, with temperature highs of up to 13C

But those heading for family trips in the outdoors may want to wear a jumper as temperatures will drop to a chilly 8C, particularly on coastlines.

And some parts of the UK may even see April showers with patches of rain that could even turn into hail.

Sunday may be on the windy side, with sharp breezes from Scandinavia bringing temperatures to around 11C, which may feel colder due to the wind.

But the cold weather will likely not last as next week is set for sunshine and warm weather after the cold snap.

Met Office forecaster Dean Hall said: 'It will be a cold and frosty start to the weekend with widespread frost for most areas.

'Cloudy down the east coast with isolated showers and patches of rain that could even turn into a little bit of hail in the south east from south east Anglia to Kent.

The country will enjoy a dry weekend with spells of brilliant sunshine as the signs of Spring slowly creep in to replace the cold winter weather

'Saturday will be colder than Friday with highs of up to 12-13C but the evening will be cold with a few showers in the south east and could drop to -3C anywhere in the UK.

'The frost tomorrow will turn into dry bright sunshine which will be warm and fresh  but you will probably still want to wear a jumper.

'Sunday will be windier and breezy with clouds and spots of rain in mostly Cornwall and Northern Ireland. It will be colder at 11C but because of the winds it may feel more chilly.'

Stunning photographs of daffodils glowing in the sunlight capture the sheer beauty of the flowers which inspired poet William Wordsworth's most famous work.

The Romantic writer's 1804 verse known as 'Daffodils' described how 'They stretch'd in never-ending line/ Along the margin of a bay' as he strolled in the Lake District.

This recent photograph shows the blooms, traditionally seen as a sign of spring, in a variety of shades when seen from the sky in Montrose, Angus.

This recent photograph shows the blooms, traditionally seen as a sign of spring, in a variety of shades when seen from the sky in Montrose, Angus

Lines of the flowers could be seen across the clifftops overlooking the North Sea where farmers grow them to sell to florists and supermarkets.

It comes as hay fever season has started three weeks early this year, thanks to the record warm winter.

It means Britains 18 million hay fever sufferers could struggle with symptoms if they venture outside during the Easter holidays.

But the sunny days caused trees to start releasing pollen earlier than usual. It means birch tree pollen  which triggers hay fever in a quarter of sufferers  is already being released across the country.

A Met Office summary said: A fine but chilly end to the day, with just a few showers towards southeast England. Dry overnight, with long clear spells leading to a widespread frost. A few showers continuing along North Sea coastlines, mainly towards the southeast.

'Largely dry though a chilly feel to Saturday, with plenty of sunshine. Cloudier at times in the east with a few showers. Breezy, particularly in the far west and northwest.'
A North Carolina man charged with killing three Muslim college students in 2015 will not face the death penalty, a state official said on Thursday.

District Attorney Satana DeBerry said she plans to proceed with a potential life prison sentence to speed up the first-degree murder case against Craig Hicks, 50.

He is accused of killing University of North Carolina dental student Deah Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21 and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, inside their condo.

Craig Hicks (pictured) is accused of murdering three Muslim students

Deah Barakat, 23, (left), his wife Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, (center), and her sister Razan Abu-Salha, 19, (right), were murdered in an apparent dispute over a parking space in February, 2015

Police said that in 2015 Hicks was angered by a dispute over a parking space in their shared complex.

He accused was expected to face a possible death penalty if convicted, but DeBerry said she plans to proceed with a 'noncapital case' to speed up the four-year-long process.

Hicks is being prosecuted by the Durham County District Attorney's Office, as the killings took place in a part of Chapel Hill that is in Durham County.

The case has not been heard, despite the crimes being committed more than four years ago.

DeBerry claimed she met with the victims families and they 'have suffered not just the tragic death of three bright, beloved children but the continued delay of the prosecution of their case.'

'The longer we delay the trial of Mr. Hicks, the longer we bring additional suffering to the Barakat and Abu-Salha families,' DeBerry said in a statement.

'To insure we are able to bring this case to trial as quickly as possible and help begin the process of healing for the families, I have decided to try this as a noncapital case.'

Barakat, an North Carolina State University graduate, was in his second year at the UNC School of Dentistry.

Craig Hicks pictured at a hearing after being charged with murder in Durham in April, 2016

Hicks is accused of barging into the apartment of the victims and shooting them dead

His wife, also an NCSU graduate, was planning to join her husband at the School of Dentistry in the fall. Her sister Razan was an architecture student at NCSUs School of Design.

Hicks was an unemployed community college student who lived in a neighboring apartment. He turned himself in to Chatham County deputies shortly after the murders.

Following the killings, a preliminary investigation said that the shooting was motivated by an ongoing parking dispute outside their apartment complex. However many disputed this and claimed the murders were the result of a hate crime.

Deah Barakat (left), Yusor Abu-Salha (middle) and Razan Abu-Salha (right) were promising students who had a bright future ahead of them, their family said

Mohammad Abu-Salha said his daughters (pictured) told him the suspect ranted that he hated the way they looked and dressed before their deaths

Mohammad Abu-Salha, whose two daughters were killed, gave a speech at the House Judiciary hearing on Hate Crimes and White Nationalism held earlier this week.

He claimed that the 'tragedy was born out of bigotry and hate,' according to WTDV.

'I am afraid for our country. Please remember them: Deah, Yusor and Razan. They are all my children and they are gone.'

'We miss our children so much,' he added, telling the hearing that the suspect ranted at his daughters about the way they looked and dressed.

A makeshift memorial was built at the UNC School of Dentistry in the wake of the murders

Dentistry students and others watch as a makeshift memorial is made during a vigil at the University of North Carolina

'At times, the pain is just as sharp now as when they died, and I ask you, I truly plead to you, not to let another American family go through this because our government would not act to protect all Americans.'

During the hearing, the committee, which oversees the Department of Justice, came face-to-face with families torn apart by racist violence.

Abu-Salha continued: 'And because the climate of bigotry is getting worse, I am gravely worried that more tragedies will happen if action is not taken at all levels of government.'

Namee Barakat, father of Deah Shaddy Barakat (Back to camera), and his wife Leila Barakat leave after a press conference at Swift Creek Community Center

The Finley Forest condo in Chapel Hill, which was the scene of a triple homicide in April, 2015

DeBerry also noted in her statement the 'hateful public slurs and comments' that the victims families have faced since their murders.

'Even as he [Mohammad Abu-Salha] poured out his grief to his fellow Americans, the YouTube Live feed of his testimony was interrupted by racist and anti-Muslim slurs,' DeBerry said.

'This is NOT who we are or what we believe in Durham. We believe that every one of our lives matter regardless of our religion, race, gender, or sexual orientation.'
Julian Assange appeared to be sending a message when he decided to carry a book by Gore Vidal criticizing the American security state, as he was arrested in London yesterday.

The WikiLeaks founder was pictured carrying a copy of 'The History of the National Security State', which is a scathing critique of the American military-industrial-security complex.

Assange, who fears being extradited to the U.S. to face hacking charges, was given diplomatic asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 when he exhausted all of his legal options to evade extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations.

Julian Assange appeared to be sending a message by carrying a book by Gore Vidal on the American security state when he was arrested in London yesterday. The WikiLeaks founder was pictured carrying a copy of 'The History of the National Security State', which is a scathing critique of the American military-industrial-security complex (the book is circled above)

However, after seven years of refuge, the hacker was unceremoniously booted out yesterday, when Ecuador's leader's grew tired of his alleged petulant antics, allowing British police officers entry into the embassy to take Assange into custody.

As the visibly frail and aging hacker was marched to a waiting police car, Assange was holding the Vidal book, published four years before the noted intellectual's death in 2012.

Later, as he sat in the dock at Westminster Magistrates Court, Assange silently read through the book, before he was found guilty of skipping bail and remanded in custody.

As the visibly frail and aging hacker was marched to a waiting police car, Assange was holding the Vidal book (pictured), published four years before the noted intellectual's death in 2012

Assange pleaded innocent to one charge that he failed to surrender to a Sweden extradition order. His lawyer stated Thursday he vows to fight extradition to the U.S.

The former hacker now faces a maximum sentence of one year in a British jail, likely to be Wandsworth prison in south London. This would see him serve six months before a fight over his extradition to the US begins. Experts say that process could take up to two years.

Meanwhile Swedish prosecutors said they would consider restarting the rape investigation which caused Assange to first seek refuge in the embassy. The alleged victim's lawyer declared she would 'do all we can' to get the case reopened. A second woman, who accused Assange of sexual assault, said she was willing to appear as a witness.

Assange's arrest came just 24 hours after Wikileaks had accused Ecuador of an 'extensive spying operation', adding that it assumed intelligence had been handed over to the Trump administration.

Mr Trump, who had declared 'I love WikiLeaks' during his 2016 campaign when the website released damaging emails concerning Hillary Clinton, said following Assange's arrest that 'I know nothing really about him'.

During his seven-year stay, British taxpayers footed a 13million bill for round-the-clock surveillance and a visible policing effort.

Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday

But events took a dramatic turn soon after 9am yesterday when police suddenly turned up at the doors. They were met at the embassy, a few streets from Harrods, by the ambassador whose government had decided to revoke their guest's asylum.

Officers tried to introduce themselves to the Wikileaks founder, but he barged past them and tried to return to his private room, which can be locked by a secret code. He resisted being put into handcuffs and exclaimed: 'This is unlawful, I'm not leaving.'

Back-up officers were called in and ultimately, a team of eight officers bundled him out of the building by his arms and legs at around 10.15am. As the scene unfolded, President Moreno released his statement saying Assange's stay at the embassy was 'unsustainable and no long viable' after the government had been 'threatened' by WikiLeaks.

Mr Moreno added: 'The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange. He installed electronic and distortion equipment not allowed.

'He blocked the security cameras of the Ecuadorian mission in London. He has confronted and mistreated guards. He had accessed the security files of our embassy without permission.'

A handcuffed Assange is pictured in a van with police officers as he makes his way to Westminster Magistrates Court in London ahead of his hearing yesterday

President Moreno, who entered the office in 2017, was personally targeted by Wikileaks in February, when a set of documents were leaked that allegedly linked the president and family members to financial corruption and money laundering.

Wikileaks has previously called Moreno's pursuit of Assange a 'diversion tactic' aimed at pointing attention away from the scandal and scoring political points with the US, with whom he is believed to want to improve relations.

The revival of US-Ecuadoran diplomacy, led by Moreno, saw the International Monetary Fund in Washington approve a $4.2billion payment to the Ecuadorian government in March, a month to the day that Assange was arrested and charged.

Interior minister Maria Paula Romo accused Assange of smearing faeces on the walls during his stay. She added: 'Behaviour of this kind that is far removed from the minimum respect a guest should have in a country which has generously welcomed him.'

A Downing Street spokesman insisted the UK had not lobbied the Ecuadorians to revoke Assange's asylum status.

The court heard how Assange resisted arrest and tried to barge past officers in an attempt to return to his private room within the embassy when they introduced themselves at about 10am, telling them: 'This is unlawful'

The US Department of Justice, releasing this indictment form, said Julian Assange had been arrested over an alleged conspiracy with Chelsea Manning 'to break a password to a classified US government computer'

Soon after his arrest, police announced Assange had been held for breaching bail and over an extradition request from the US.

Assange's supporters fear that his extradition will be followed by more serious US charges such as treason - a crime that carries the death penalty in wartime. However, the UK has pledged it will not extradite Assange to any country where he could be executed.

A source close to Wikileaks suggested his health is 'compromised' after spending nearly a decade in the Ecuadorian embassy. The former hacker is said to be suffering from a number of ailments including dental problems and osteoporosis, the latter because of a lack of vitamin D.

Sporting a long grey beard and a ponytail, the WikiLeaks founder smiled and waved to supporters in the public gallery from the dock in court yesterday. But the smirk vanished when district judge Michael Snow described his defence to breaching bail as 'laughable'.

Assange was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court. Remanding him in custody, the judge told him he will be sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on June 14 for the bail conditions breach, adding: 'This is a case which merits the maximum sentence, which is 12 months in the crown court.'

In a final barbed remark, the judge suggested Assange should 'get over to the US' and 'get on with your life'.
Just two hours after Lee Dong Kil's daughter was born on New Year's Eve, the clock struck midnight, 2019 was ushered in, and the infant became 2-years-old.

She wasn't alone, though it happened for her quicker than most: Every baby born in South Korea last year became 2 on Jan. 1.

According to one of the world's most unusual age-calculating systems, South Korean babies become 1 on the day of their birth and then get an additional year tacked on when the calendar hits Jan. 1.

But a lawmaker is now working to overturn the centuries-old tradition amid complaints that it's an anachronistic, time-wasting custom that drags down an otherwise ultramodern country.

Lee Dong Kil speaks with his wife Ryu Da Gyeong and daughter Lee Yoon Seol as they celebrate daughter Lee's the 100th day of the birth at their house in Daejeon, South Korea

For parents whose babies are born in December, it can be especially painful. One hour after his daughter's birth in the central city of Daejeon at 10 pm on December 31 of last year, Lee posted the news on social media.

His friends immediately showered him with congratulatory messages.

'An hour later, when the New Year began, they phoned me again to say congratulations for my baby becoming 2-years-old,' said Lee, who is 32 internationally but 34 in South Korea.

'I thought, "Ah, right. She's now 2 years old, though it's been only two hours since she was born. What the heck!"'

The origins of this age reckoning system aren't clear. Being 1 upon birth may be linked to the time babies spend in their mothers' wombs or to an ancient Asian numerical system that didn't have the concept of zero.

Becoming a year older on Jan. 1 is even harder to explain.

It could be that ancient Koreans cared a lot about the year in which they were born in the Chinese 60-year cycle, but, without regular calendars, didn't care much about the specific day they were born; so they mostly ignored the day of their birth and instead marked another year of age on the day of the Lunar New Year, according to senior curator Jung Yonhak at the National Folk Museum of Korea.

This may have then shifted to the solar New Year on Jan. 1 as the South began embracing the Western calendar. North Korea uses the Western age calculating system, but they have a twist: they follow their own calendar that's based on the birth of national founder and president-for-life Kim Il Sung.

The year of your birth is still incredibly important in South Korea, and lumps those linked children together for life.

Other Asian countries, including Japan and Vietnam, abandoned the Chinese-style age system amid an influx of Western culture.

Lee Dong Kil holds his daughter Lee Yoon Seol as his wife Ryu Da Gyeong sits in their home

Officially, South Korea has used Western-style calculations since the early 1960s. But its citizens still embrace the old-fashioned system in their daily lives because the government has done little to get people to change over to the Western style.

Most South Koreans are simply accustomed to living with two ages.

People don't hold massive joint birthday parties on New Year's Day; they just celebrate their birthday on the days they were born. Young people consider themselves another year old on solar New Year's Day (Jan. 1) while older people often use the Lunar New Year's Day.

Many family restaurants don't charge babies if they are 36-months-old or younger, so parents often calculate their babies' ages under the Western method when they're dining out.

Some South Koreans still worry that the practice makes their nation look odd on the international stage. Some feel confusion when meeting with foreigners.

Western journalists in Seoul must ask Koreans what year and month they were born to calculate their Western age for news stories.

There are also some who say the concept of 'Korean age' encourages a fixation on age-based social standing in this seniority-based country.

In South Korea, those born in the same year often treat each other as equals, while people must use honorific titles to address those born earlier, rather than directly using their names.

Ahn Chang-gun, from the southeastern city of Gimhae, said he felt 'empty' when his first child became 2 on Jan. 1, 2013, about two weeks after his wife delivered him after eight years of marriage. 'He was this precious baby that we finally had, but I felt that all of a sudden two years had just gone by and yet I hadn't done anything for my baby,' said Ahn.

Lee, who is 32 internationally but 34 in South Korea, said the rules made him think: 'What the heck?!' whem his daughter Lee Yoon Seol was born

Parents whose babies are born in December often worry about their kids falling behind other children born earlier in the same year, though worries gradually disappear as their children age.

When Seo Hyo Sun from Buchon, just west of Seoul, was taken to the hospital to get a cesarean section on Dec. 29, she couldn't stop weeping because her baby's due date was supposed to be Jan. 7.

'Tears kept flowing. ... My doctor told me the baby wanted to come out today so let's just celebrate,' said Seo, 31 in international age. 'When I awoke from my anesthesia, I felt really grateful ... because my baby was born healthy. That was enough.'

In January, lawmaker Hwang Ju-hong tabled a bill aimed at requiring the government to put international ages in official documents and encouraging general citizens to go with their international ages in everyday life. It's the first legislative attempt to abolish 'Korean age.'

'It is aimed at resolving confusion and inefficiency caused by the mixed use of age-counting systems,' Hwang said in the proposed legislation.

Hwang's office said a parliamentary committee discussion and a public hearing on the issue are expected in coming months.

Surveys in recent years showed more South Koreans supported international age though it wasn't clear how seriously they wanted a change.

'If we use international age, things could get more complicated because it's a society that cares so much about which year you were born,' said Lim KyoungJae, 46, head of the Seoul-based Miko Travel agency. 'We should also definitely count the time of a baby being conceived and growing in its mother's womb.'

Lim's employee Choi Min Kyung, who is 26 internationally and 28 in South Korea, disagreed.

'It's good to be two years younger ... (especially) when you meet men' on blind dates, Choi said with a laugh. 'There is a big difference between 26 and 28.'
Shocking footage of a man pouring boiling water over a caged dog has sparked an outrage in China.

The man, said to be an intern at a hospital's burns centre, filmed himself abusing the helpless pooch before uploading the clip on a popular messaging app as a showoff.

He was punishing his Shiba Inu, named 'Strawberry', because the pet had defecated next to his bed, according to reports.

The man, said to be an intern at a hospital's burns centre, filmed himself scalding his pet dog 'Strawberry' with a kettle filled with boiling water before uploading the video onto social media

The man, known by his surname Chen, works at the Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University in eastern China's Nantong city as an intern.

He is also a master's student at the Medical School of Nantong University.

A spokesperson from the university told Chinese news outlet The Paper that the incident took place on Wednesday night in Chen's rented flat.

The spokesperson claimed that Chen wanted to punish Strawberry because the dog had soiled his bedroom.

It was said that at first Chen punished the dog by ordering it to stand by the wall.

However the dog's teeth accidentally touched Chen's hand. Fearing that Strawberry was going to bite him, Chen put it in a cage before scalding it with a kettle filled with boiling water.

He filmed the whole process before sharing the footage on Chinese app WeChat.

The intern doctor's pet, a Shiba Inu, has been handed to animal lovers to look after (file photo)

Disturbing footage shows the little dog whining in pain while being penalised.

The man also shared a clip of him flogging the dog with an iron stick.

Chen claimed that he ran cold water over the dog afterwards. He said the dog was injured, but its condition was not life-threatening.

The video drew an outpouring of criticism on social media.

Animals lovers stormed Chen's flat last night to confront the cruel pet owner. The authorities of Nantong University and police also arrived at the scene.

Strawberry has been given to the animal lovers to look after, witnessed by police officers.

Chen is described to be 'introverted'. The university spokesperson told The Paper that the student had expressed regret for his behaviour.

The university suggested Chen's parents seek medical assistance for Chen.

The student has reportedly been suspended from the university pending the progress of potential hospital treatment.
Comedy writer Kathy Lette has revealed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hid in her attic before seeking asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy, and claims he refused to read books by women.

This week, in extraordinary scenes, police arrested a dishevelled Assange after the Ecuadorian government ended his asylum status.

He was hauled to court and found guilty of breaching bail in the UK in 2012 and also faces extradition to the US where he is accused of hacking 750,000 classified documents.

Ms Lette said Assange had sought refuge from the media at her home in London, as well as legal guidance of her former husband Geoffrey Robertson QC.

This week, in extraordinary scenes, police arrested a disheveled Assange after the Ecuadorian government ended his asylum status

Kathy Letts can be seen pointing up to the loft of her home where she says Julian Assange lived for a short time and sought legal advice from her then husband Geoffrey Robertson QC

Now writer Kathy Lette has laid bare fascinating details about Assange prior to his seven-year stay in the embassy when he was seeking legal advice from her former husband Geoffrey Robertson

Speaking to 5 News's Simon Vigar, Ms Lette said: 'One of the people who stayed (in the attic) for a while was Julian Assange when he came to my husband for legal advice. So I got to know Julian very, very well.

'And what I picked up about him, I know he's a very controversial character, and one of the reasons he's so controversial is people misread him. And I think he's on the autistic spectrum, I have a son with autism so I have an autism radar for these things.

'And as you know autism is a life-long neurological condition, and it's chief characteristics are an inability so socialise and communicate. Often chronic ocd and anxiety, but also often an incredibly high IQ.

'And Julian Assange is like Wikipedia with a pulse, he's so clever, as a lot of computer geniuses are. But it also means his social skills are quite inept. He's misread as being taciturn and quite abrupt and single-minded and egocentric etc.

'But really this is just describing someone on the autistic spectrum. So I feel for him being in this situation at the moment, where people are abusing him and putting down his personality all the time, when actually I think he has a condition that we all need to understand.'

Ms Lette also revealed Assange could be difficult and at times they got into arguments, telling 5 News, 'He's very easy to argue with and fight with.'

The stairs up to the attic of Ms Lette's home where she says her eminent husband had many political activists come to stay

Ms Lette told 5 News she believed Assange was deeply misunderstood largely because of his undiagnosed autism

She described her frustration with his refusal to read women's literature, adding: 'When he was in Wandsworth prison I sent him in a big box of books by Jane Austen, the Bronte's, all my favourite female authors and said "now that you're a captive audience read these books."

'And of course he read them and he was completely converted to women writers.'

Another of their arguments revolved around the Clinton emails dump, Ms Lette said: 'I was totally against him releasing the Hillary Clinton emails for example, as it lead on to Trump.

'But he's a publisher, and he has published some incredibly important material on atrocities in Iraq and in Afghanistan. And we have to have whistleblowers to hold governments to account.'

Assange faces decades in an American prison for espionage after he was hauled kicking and screaming from the Ecuadorian Embassy on Thursday.

In extraordinary scenes, eight policemen had to drag the bearded and dishevelled WikiLeaks founder to a waiting police van as he ranted about Donald Trump and screamed 'the UK has no civility'.

His arrest came after the Ecuadorian government ended his asylum status, saying it was tired of his discourteous behaviour and poor personal hygiene, which reportedly included smearing faeces on the walls of the country's London embassy.

Speaking to 5 News's Simon Vigar, comedy writer Kathy Lette and friend of Julian Assange reveals that she hid him in her attic while he was seeking legal advice from her former husband Geoffrey Robertson

The WikiLeaks founder was dragged out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in handcuffs yesterday by a large group of officers as stunned supporters and protesters watched on in central London

As well as the prospect of a year in a UK jail for breaching bail, Assange faces extradition to the United States and a renewed rape investigation in Sweden.

Following his arrest, the 47-year-old was charged by the American government with hacking 750,000 classified documents, which carries a five-year sentence.

But US authorities are reportedly set to file further charges in the coming days, including espionage, which can carry a 20-year sentence. As the country submitted an extradition request, a US senator yesterday boasted 'hes our property'.

Following his arrest, Assange was hauled to Westminster magistrates' court in the afternoon where a judge branded him a 'narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.'

He denied skipping bail in 2012 but was found guilty after the judge branded his defence 'laughable'.

Assange had tried to claim he breached his bail conditions because he couldn't be guaranteed a fair trial in the UK.

The former hacker now faces a maximum sentence of one year in a British jail, likely to be Wandsworth prison in south London.

This would see him serve six months before a fight over his extradition to the US begins. Experts say that process could take up to two years.

Assange raises his hands in a V for victory gesture yesterday as he arrived at the courthouse in Marylebone

Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday

Referring to Julian Assange, shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told BBC Radio 4: 'I think that what should happen is that he should be extradited to Sweden.

'And then the Americans can make a further application to have him extradited from Sweden.

'And if he is to be extradited from Sweden then he will have, he will be able to apply to the Swedish courts, and indeed to the British courts, he will be able to apply to the European Court of Human Rights, and he will be able to make his case.'

Meanwhile Swedish prosecutors said they would consider restarting the rape investigation which caused Assange to first seek refuge in the embassy.

The alleged victims lawyer declared she would do all we can to get the case reopened. A second woman, who accused Assange of sexual assault, said she was willing to appear as a witness.

Assange's arrest came just 24 hours after WikiLeaks had accused Ecuador of an 'extensive spying operation', adding that it assumed intelligence had been handed over to the Trump administration.
A crew from NBC's American Ninja Warrior reality game show visited Oklahoma City this week to set up for the filming of its 11th season

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt 'face planted into the water' on Thursday as tried - and failed - to conquer the notoriously difficult obstacle course on NBC's 'American Ninja Warrior.'

Organizers of the hit reality game show were setting up in Oklahoma City near the state's capitol on Wednesday in preparation to film their latest episodes.

Stitt, a huge fan of the show, saw the course being constructed and offered to give it a go.

And it didnt go well for the Sooner State official, who completed just two of three obstacles, according to a show spokesperson.

The Oklahoma governor (center) skinned his elbow during a rope swing on the course's second of three obstacles on Thursday

Stitt, 47, said he's a huge fan of American Ninja Warrior and he wanted to give the course a try

Despite wiping out on the second obstacle, Stitt (left) said navigating the course 'was a blast'

The 47-year-old former CEO also skinned his elbow during a rope swing after he'd already hit he water hard.

'It was a blast,' Stitt told Tulsa World. 'It was exhilarating. It was so fun.'

Ninja Warrior will continue filming Friday and Saturday for its 11th season. Other stops this cycle include Atlanta, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Seattle.

The show qualified for 35 per cent cash rebate through an Oklahoma program for qualifying production expenditures, according to Tulsa World.

You can catch the latest season on NBC on May 29.
Thomas White, 24, was jailed for running the Silk Road site on the dark web

A university dropout who was the 'guiding mind' behind a 73million online black market for illegal drugs has been jailed for five years and four months.

Thomas White, 24, was an administrator of dark web marketplace Silk Road, but less than one month after the site was shut down by the FBI in 2013, he launched its successor - Silk Road 2.0.

The site allowed users to anonymously buy and sell class A and B drugs, as well as legal highs, along with computer hacking tools and other illegal goods, trading with digital currency Bitcoin.

Though investigators could not pinpoint exactly how much money White made, roughly $96million (73million) worth of goods were traded on Silk Road 2.0, with White taking commissions between and 1 and 5% on each sale from the tens of thousands of users.

National Crime Agency investigators uncovered an online chat White had with an administrator of Silk Road 2.0 where he said he wanted to set up a paedophiles' website 'because there is money to be made from these people.'

White, from Liverpool, was sentenced today after admitting drug trafficking and money laundering. He was also sentenced for hoarding 464 category A indecent images of children, which he planned to sell on for profit.

He was jailed for five years and four months today at Liverpool Crown Court.

Pictured: Computer equipment belonging to White - who was sentenced to five years and four months in prison

Judge Thomas Teague QC said: 'You traded in illicit drugs and facilitated the trading by others in such drugs through the medium of a clandestine online marketplace, Silk Road.

'It had sophisticated security arrangements to minimise the risk of detection by law enforcement agencies and users made and received payments in Bitcoin.'

David Jackson, prosecuting, said White, using the name StExo, began using the dark web marketplace in 2013 to buy a prescription drug used for sleeping disorders, and then entered into an agreement with user MedsforBitcoin, based in India, to become a distributor in exchange for a discount.

Mr Jackson said the agreement was a 'stepping stone' and White upgraded from a buyer's to a vendor's account and sold items including drug-testing kits and MDMA.

He went on to become involved in advising on security and creating back-ups of vendor pages and forums in case the site was taken down.

In October 2013 the FBI shut down the site and arrested Ross Ulbricht, who used the name Dread Pirate Roberts, for running it.

White then collaborated with American user Blake Benthall, known as DefCon, to set up a new marketplace, Silk Road 2.0.

Mr Jackson said: 'The Crown say this defendant was the guiding mind behind the site whereas Mr Benthall provided the technical know-how.'

The court heard White, using the name StExo, began using the dark web marketplace in 2013 to buy a prescription drug used for sleeping disorders (pictured: Drugs that were sold by White, who used online alias StExo)

White took up the mantle of Dread Pirate Roberts but once the site was up and running again he began to reduce his active involvement.

Silk Road 2.0 continued to operate until November 2014 but the court heard the defendant had announced his retirement in messages in January 2014, when he was 19.

Judge Teague said: 'From the beginning of 2014 you reduced your personal involvement in running Silk Road, no doubt in the hope of avoiding Ross Ulbricht's fate, however the authorities caught up with you.'

White pleaded guilty last month to supplying MDMA, money laundering and making indecent images of children.

He also admitted assisting or inducing the commission of offences abroad.

Mr Jackson said the charge reflected sales of class A drugs in Germany worth 110,000, for which White earned 1% commission.

White pleaded guilty last month to supplying MDMA, money laundering and making indecent images of children

When police raided the 1,700-a-month flat he rented in Mann Island, Liverpool, in November 2014 they seized electronic devices and, as well as finding material related to Silk Road, they found 464 indecent images of children, including some as young as six months.

National Crime Agency (NCA) detectives Garry Tancock and Paul Chowles, who led the investigation into White, said that among a vast amount of encrypted data found on White's seized computers, some had been hacked from NASA, the FBI and Ashley Madison - a website billed as enabling extramarital affairs.

It is not believed that White himself hacked the data.

Pictured: Drugs that were sold by White

Nicholas Johnson QC, defending, said: 'What we are dealing with is a young man, aged 19, sitting in his student accommodation in Liverpool, who has a degree of sophistication so far as the internet was concerned, and thereby helped to facilitate the setting up of a marketplace which others then joined up to and carried out their own drug trafficking.

'He is, we would submit, significantly removed from what was actually going on.'

The court heard that White had worked as an engineer since his arrest and had tried to make a 'positive contribution' to society.

References from his mother and partner were received by the court.

The NCA said White, who gave up after one term of an accounting degree at Liverpool John Moores University, was believed to own 50 Bitcoin, with a current value of around 192,000.

Detectives said the self-taught computer expert was controlling, manipulative and forthright online - but the opposite in the real world.

Judge Teague ordered he be subject to notification requirements for convicted sex offenders for 10 years.
This is the 'unimaginably disgusting' moment an inmate poured an entire cup of his own urine over the head of an unsuspecting prison guard.

The video, lasting just a matter of seconds, first shows HMP Cardiff inmate Seth Davies, 35, leaning over a rail at the prison.

The inmate then very casually empties the entire contents of his cup over the head of prisoner officer David Rogan, who was standing on the level below.

HMP Cardiff prisoner Seth Davies, 35, received an additional 12 months in jail for pouring a cup of urine over a prison officer

Davies had 12 months added to his sentence for the act, after pleading guilty to administering a noxious substance with intent to injure, aggrieve, or annoy.

Prosecutor David Pugh told Cardiff Crown Court that some of the urine went into Mr Rogan's mouth and eyes.

He also said the incident left Mr Rogan feeling anxious and humiliated.

'He seemed to follow the officer and aim for him,' Mr Pugh said.

The prison officer, David Rogan, said the urine went in his mouth and eyes, leaving him feeling anxious and humiliated

'The liquid hit the officer to the side of the face and he felt it go into his mouth and eye.'

Davies was already serving a seven-year sentence for possession of class A drugs with an intent to supply.

After this latest incident he has now come before the courts for 68 different offences, including assault occasioning actual bodily harm, criminal damage, and dishonesty.

Davies was already serving a seven-year sentence for for possession of class A drugs with an intent to supply

He also has a previous conviction for headbutting a fellow inmate.

His defence counsel told the court at his latest trial that he committed the offence as an act of revenge and was under the influence of drugs at the time.

Judge David Wynn Morgan labelled the incident as 'unimaginably disgusting'.

'Its ongoing effect on the victim for a considerable period of time was profound,' he said.

Davies will serve his additional 12 months after the completion of his current jail term.
Katie Price failed to turn up to court today after ex-husband Alex Reid claimed that she shared 'sexual' images of him with a television show audience, with the reality star instead holidaying in Ibiza.

Reid, 43, is bringing legal action against the former glamour model over claims she shared photographs and video of a 'sexual nature' which feature him.

He has accused Price of showing footage of him to a 40-strong audience on the television programme Celebrity Big Brother's Bit On The Side on January 9 last year.

Price, 40, did not attend a preliminary hearing in London on Friday.

Katie Price, who was due to face ex Alex Reid in court today, failed to show up after being spotted holidaying in Ibiza yesterday

Alex Reid, 43, is bringing legal action against Price, 40, after accusing his ex-wife of sharing 'sexual' photos of him with a TV audience

Reid's lawyers claimed that Price (pictured in Ibiza yesterday) failed to respond to their recent correspondence and, to the best of their knowledge, is still in Ibiza

Reid appeared frustrated outside the Royal Courts of Justice after the hearing in London today

Reid's lawyers claimed that Price currently has no legal representatives after failing to pay her former solicitors.

The cage fighter attended the brief hearing, to deal with issues ahead of the trial, and his lawyers told Master Gidden, the judge overseeing the case, that they have had no response from Price to recent correspondence.

Patrick Harrington QC said: 'Solicitors for the defendant are now off the record, she has not put them in funds.

'We understand she acts in person now, but does not appear today.

'Our best information is that she is in Ibiza, but we are all here and we invite the court to proceed with this matter.'

The judge set Reid's legal costs budget for the trial, which will go ahead some time after October, at 400,000.

He was told Price's defence costs will be an estimated 314,000.

Following a High Court hearing in May last year, Mr Justice Jay granted Reid an injunction to prevent Price sharing 'private and confidential information' about him.

Reid's lawyers claimed that Price currently has no legal representatives after failing to pay her former solicitors

The court heard four witnesses claim they saw the footage as Price held her mobile phone up in front of audience members while she was a guest on the television chat show.

Lawyers acting for Price at that time said she denied showing intimate footage of Reid or having any such footage in her possession.

They told the court she accepted that she said to audience members, during a 'very lighthearted' discussion that the video was of Reid, but in fact it was a video she had downloaded from YouTube earlier that day.

Granting the injunction, Mr Justice Jay said: 'What I am urging the parties to do is frankly to sort this out, because the costs are frankly absurd in the context of what this is about.'

Price married Reid at a ceremony in Las Vegas in 2010 and they divorced the following year.

The mother-of-five, who was once estimated to be worth around 40 million, has been plagued by financial issues recently and has been embroiled in a number of court cases over the past six months.

Price married Reid at a ceremony in Las Vegas in 2010 and they divorced the following year

She eventually reached a deal with creditors to avoid bankruptcy in December last year following a number of hearings at a specialist insolvency court in London.

In January, magistrates heard she was unable to immediately pay a 1,100 after she was banned from driving for a second time for driving whilst disqualified and without insurance.

She received another driving ban and a 1,500 fine in February following a drink driving conviction, after she was found by police slumped in her pink Range Rover while almost twice the limit.

A judge criticised her for failing to attend a court hearing in March over an allegation she used threatening behaviour outside a school during a row with her ex-husband Kieran Hayler's girlfriend.

Price, who lives in Dial Post near Horsham, West Sussex, is facing two charges of using threatening and abusive words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress in Shipley on September 6 last year.

She is due to stand trial at Horsham Magistrates' Court on June 3.
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The newest migrant caravan has crossed into Mexico from Central America, on its way to the U.S. border.

The latest caravan of roughly 1,100 Hondurans covered the 420 miles through Guatemala in just one day, thanks to buses that ferried them from San Pedro Sula to Mexico's southern border.

The group was spotted crossing into Mexico at Ciudad Hidalgo on Thursday, the same crossing used by a series of caravans over the past year.

By Friday morning they were progressing north through Chiapas state at Frontera Hidalgo. The group is still 2,400 miles from the border crossing into the U.S. at Tijuana, but a journey that has shortened considerably due to bus services that have sprung up to service the steady flow.

Nohemy Reyes, who left San Pedro Sula with one of her five children, said her country's economic straits are driving her north. 'The economic situation is very difficult,' she said. But if she finds the U.S. border closed, she said, she will return to Honduras.

A caravan of migrants from Honduras en route to the US walk on a highway in Frontera Hidalgo, Mexico on Friday

The latest caravan crossed into Mexico at Ciudad Hidalgo (above) on Thursday, one day after departing Honduras

Migrants from Honduras wait on the border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala in Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico on Thursday

Honduras migrants, trying to reach the US, wait to be processed in an immigration facility in Ciudad Hidalgo on Thursday

The new caravan is just the latest in what has become a steady stream of migrants from Central America to the U.S., traveling in large groups that often fragment as they approach the border.

U.S. border facilities have been overwhelmed by the number of migrant families in recent months, often processing groups of hundreds at a time who cross illegally and then immediately claim asylum.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced this week that 53,000 parents and children were apprehended at the southern border in March.

Experts say that migrants are now traveling with children whenever possible, knowing that current U.S. policy will prevent them from being arrested and detained for a long period when they have children with them.

Migrants with children are typically released into the interior of the country pending court dates for asylum claims, even if they have crossed the border illegally.

People belonging to a caravan of migrants from Honduras en route to the US walk on a highway in southern Mexico on Friday

A caravan of migrants from Honduras en route to the US walk on a highway in Frontera Hidalgo, Mexico on Friday

U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced this week that 53,000 parents and children were apprehended at the southern border in March. The new caravan is seen marching in Frontera Hidalgo on Friday

Experts say that migrants are now traveling with children whenever possible, knowing that current U.S. policy will prevent them from being arrested. A man is seen with a girl in the caravan as it travels through Mexico on Friday

A man belonging to a caravan of migrants from Honduras pushes a child in a stroller on a highway in Metapa, Mexico Friday

Migrants with children are typically released into the interior of the U.S. pending court dates for asylum claims, even if they have crossed the border illegally. A man and child are seen in the caravan in Metapa, Mexico on Friday

People belonging to a caravan of migrants from Honduras en route to the United States walk on a highway in Chiapas Friday

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned this week and was replaced by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan in an acting capacity.

U.S. President Donald Trump this week threatened to close the U.S.-Mexico border before changing course and threatening tariffs on automobiles produced in Mexico if that country does not stop the flow of Central American migrants.

Trump on Tuesday said he isn't planning on reinstating his controversial policy of arresting adults with children, which separated them. Last summer, more than 2,500 children were separated from adults before a judge ordered them reunited.

The caravans became a popular way of making the trek because the migrants find safety in numbers and save money by not hiring smugglers.

People belonging to a caravan of migrants from Honduras en route to the US, take a siesta on a highway in Frontera Hidalgo

The caravan stops for a rest in Frontera Hidalgo a day after crossing the border into Mexico. The group is still 2,400 miles from the border crossing into the U.S. at Tijuana, but bus services have sprung up to speed the journey

A caravan migrant replenishes his water supply from a hose by the highway in Frontera Hidalgo on Friday

A man with a baby in a stroller takes a break on Friday in Frontera Hidalgo as the caravan presses north toward the US

In late March, Mexico's interior secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero warned that the 'mother of all caravans' was forming. It was not clear where her estimate of 20,000 migrants in the potential caravan came from, but she announced it after meeting with Nielsen in Miami.

That did not materialize, but Central American officials criticized the announcement, saying it could inspire migrants to merge into another caravan.

In March, the Trump administration notified Congress that it would seek to suspend direct aid payments to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, because they were not working. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo defended that decision in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday, arguing that hundreds of millions of dollars had been ineffective.

Miguel Angel Reyes of San Juan Pueblo, Honduras, said his country's violent crime was one factor in his decision to leave, but mostly he was looking for a way to provide for his wife and four children.

'I'm going because the situation is really hard here in Honduras,' said the field worker. 'We can't take it anymore. There's a lot of suffering, no work.'
First Lady Melania Trump hit back at Vogue editor Anna Wintour on Friday for taking a pass at having her on the cover of the fashion magazine.

'To be on the cover of Vogue doesn't define Mrs. Trump, she's been there, done that long before she was First Lady,' spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham said.

Wintour never said that she would not have Melania Trump on the cover again  the former model was featured in 2005 after she married the New York playboy and billionaire who's now the nation's president  yet suggested she isn't interested.

Grisham said the comments demonstrate how 'insecure' and 'small-minded' that the Vogue editor is in a biting statement.

Melania Trump appeared on the cover for the February 2005 edition of Vogue

(L-R) Donald Trump, Gemma Ward, Anna Wintour, Michael Kors and Melania Trump attend VOGUE and AERIN LAUDER host a party for MICHAEL KORS at Jean-George in the West Village on June 9, 2005 in New York City

A few months prior Melania Trump, a former model, had appeared on the fashion magazine's cover

She's pictured here talking to Wintour in 2004, when she was Donald Trump's fiancee and went by her maiden name Melania Knauss. They are seen at the J Mendel Spring 2005 fashion show during Olympus Fashion Week Spring on September 13, 2004 in New York City

Melania Trump and Anna Wintour greet each other warmly at a MAC Cosmetics Hosts Launch Party for Andre Leon Talley's Book, ALT 365 at LaGrenouille on June 7, 2005 in New York City

Interviewer Christiane Amanpour noted that Wintour had made 'overtly' political statements with her political profiles. She profiled Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat known to be plotting a 2020 run for the White House, in an issue last spring.

Former First Lady Michelle Obama appeared on the cover of the magazine three times while her husband was in office. Melania Trump's husband has held the position for more than two years, and she still has not been been featured.

'Obviously these are women that we feel are icons and inspiring to women from a global perspective,' Wintour told Amanpour, bringing up the Democrats. 'I also feel even more strongly now that this is not a time to try  and I think one has to be fair, one has to look at all sides  but I don't think it's a moment not to take a stand.'

She intimated that Donald Trump's politics were the reason the magazine was snubbing his wife. 'Those of us that work at Conde Nast believe that you have to stand up for what you believe in and you have to take a point of view,' she said.

Melania Trump appeared on the February 2005 cover of the Vogue shortly after her marriage to the current president. She wore a cream wedding dress for the cover photo of the iconic magazine.

She and Wintour had been on friendly terms, posing for pictures at parties over the years, including one for designer Michael Kors in 2005, where they shared a frame with the future president.

Having married a New York City real estate titan, she transformed from Melania Knauss, which had been her her maiden and modeling name, to Melania Trump after she and the developer wed in January of 2005.

Wintour endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 over Melania's spouse, as did Vogue, and helped the Democratic candidate raise money for her failed bid for the White House.

She had featured Clinton as first lady just once on the cover of Vogue in 1998, after her husband was mid-way through his second term.

Wintour said she profiled Obama three times, because she 'redefined' the role of first lady.

'You have to stand up for what you believe in and you have to take a point of view,' Wintour told Amanpour of how she picks her cover subjects. 'We profile women in the magazine that we believe in the stand that they're taking on issues we support them, we feel that they are leaders.'

Melania's husband has been in office since January 2017 and has taken up anti-bullying as an issue. She has broadly promoted a campaign for children to 'Be Best' and has visited a number of children's hospitals.

Her husband's own online behavior has been described as bullying, a fact his wife has not denied. She has intentionally broken with him in public on other issues, including the separation of young migrant children from their parents.

After Wintour suggested that Mrs. Trump isn't the kind of woman she wants to put forward as a role model, the first lady's spokeswoman swatted back at her in a Friday afternoon statement.

She suggested that another Vogue cover wouldn't be in the first lady's future, even if she were invited.

'Her role as First Lady of the United States and all that she does is much more important than some superficial photo shoot and cover,' Grisham said.

She claimed, 'This just further demonstrates how biased the fashion magazine industry is, and shows how insecure and small-minded Anna Wintour really is. Unfortunately, Mrs. Trump is used to this kind of divisive behavior.'
Christopher Cleary (pictured), posted that he was going to kill 'as many girls as I see because he couldnt get a girlfriend

A 27-year-old virgin from Denver pleaded guilty to threatening to become a mass shooter on Thursday, after he said he was going to kill 'as many girls as I see because he couldnt get a girlfriend.

Christopher Cleary admitted guilt in a third-degree felony charge of making a terrorist threat in a Utah District Court, as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.

Cleary was arrested at a McDonald's during a trip to Provo, Utah, on January 19, after authorities in Colorado alerted local police to a series of alarming Facebook posts uploaded by the incel.

All I wanted was a girlfriend, one of Clearys statuses said. All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me. I'm 27 years old and I've never had a girlfriend and Im still a virgin.

This is why I'm planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter cause I'm ready to die and all the girls the turned me down is going to make it right by killing as many girls as I see, he continued.

Cleary was arrested on January 19 after authorities in his native Colorado alerted the local Provo police department to a series of alarming Facebook posts uploaded by the 27-year-old

All I wanted was a girlfriend, one of Clearys statuses began. All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me I'm 27 years old and I've never had a girlfriend and Im still a virgin'

The same day that he was arrested, women's marches condemning sexual assault were being held in Provo and Salt Lake City.

Police say they were concerned and disturbed by the post because of the thousands of women expected to attend both marches that weekend.

They say they deemed the rant a threat of terrorism because of the line, shooting up a public place.

Theres nothing more dangerous than a man ready to die, Cleary posted online shortly before his arrest.

Officers say that when Cleary was detained he said he was upset and not thinking clearly when he uploaded them, and decided to later delete them following a number of threats hed received from people who had read them.

Its not entirely clear why Cleary, who describes himself as 'Youtuber Kris', was in Utah at the time of the marches.

He had been staying at an Air BnB in the days leading up to his arrest, police say.

Cleary, an avid Youtuber, was on probation at the time of his arrest for stalking and threatening a number women who refused his sexual advances

Police say they were concerned and disturbed by the post, because of the thousands of women expected to attend two marches in Provo and Salt Lake City that weekend

At the time of his apprehension, the loner was on probation in Colorado for stalking and threatening a number women who refused his romantic advances.

Eight different women and teenagers have reported Cleary to police over the last four years, claiming he had harassed them after they refused to go on a date with him.

In some cases, hes said to have even made violent threats against them and later uploading their names to websites advertising prostitution.

On December 15, 2015, Arvada police received a call from an 18-year-old girl, who told them shed been corresponding with Cleary on Facebook. However, when she declined his invitation for a date she said he started threatening her under assumed identities.

In one of many alarming Facebook messages, a man claiming to be John Coleman told the girl, Ive been watching you. Soon here, youll be lying in your deathbed.

Cleary originally faced up to 15 years in prison after prosecutors charged him with a second-degree count of making a terrorist threat, before he made the plea deal.

He now faces anywhere between probation and five years behind bars. Sentencing has been scheduled for May 23.
Donald Trump harangued Muslim-American Congresswoman Ilhan Omar for referring to the 9/11 terror acts as 'some people did something,' sharing a video on Friday night that shows graphic images of the attack and its aftermath.

He tweeted 'WE WILL NEVER FORGET!' and a 43 second video that showed Omar's comment during a speech to the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), interspersed with footage from September 11.

The video does not include Omar's full statement, 'CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something, and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,' or any other soundbites from her speech.

His assault came after Omar compared her controversial comment to one George W. Bush made after the attack, suggesting Friday that he would have faced similar backlash if he were Muslim.

'Was Bush downplaying the terrorist attack? What if he was a Muslim,' she asked on Twitter.

Progressive Democrats, including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, lined up to support Omar in response to a plea from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for fellow lawmakers to condemn Trump's tweet targeting the freshman congresswoman.

They called the president's behavior 'disgusting' and noted that Omar was receiving death threats.

Graphic: How the video tweeted by Donald Trump played out - a graphic political attack on Ilham Omar for a comment she made at a fundraiser

The Washington Post first noted that Bush once referred to the terrorists as 'the people who knocked these buildings down' in remarks at Ground Zero a few days after the attack.

Omar piggybacked on the example in a tweet that linked to the original article.

She had said at a fundraiser for CAIR that the organization 'was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

'So you cant just say that today someone is looking at me strange and that I am trying to make myself look pleasant. You have to say that this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it, and I am going to talk to them and ask them why. Because that is the right you have,' she stated.

The remarks earned her new criticism, having already weathered allegations that she's an anti-Semite.

'First Member of Congress to ever describe terrorists who killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 as "some people who did something,"' GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw said in an accusatory tweet. 'Unbelievable.'

Rep. Ilhan Omar compared her controversial 9/11 comment to one George W. Bush made after the attack, suggesting Friday that he would have faced similar backlash if he were Muslim

Standing atop rubble, President George W. Bush rallies firefighters and rescue workers during an impromptu speech at the site of the collapsed World Trade Center in New York City on September 14, 2001

Moment of history: George W Bush held on to Bob Beckwith, a retired FDNY firefighter who had come to Ground Zero to help what was by then a search for human remains. They were standing on top of rubble which was over a fire truck and Beckwith, then 69, and now 85, handed a bullhorn to the president, who waved aside the Secret Service and told him to stay

Omar is seen here in the House chamber earlier in April. Lawmakers were attending a retreat on Friday when she made her comment about Bush

Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade said on the morning program he co-hosts, 'You have to wonder if shes an American first.'

The New York Post on Thursday even went as far as to splash a photograph one of the World Trade Center towers collapsing in a ball of flames, with the banner: 'Rep. Ilhan Omar: 9/11 was 'some people did something.'

The Washington Post's fact checker pointed out that Bush once said something similar in a Sept. 14, 2001 speech, when he spoke through a bullhorn at Ground Zero.

Bush told rescue workers in an impromptu speech through a bullhorn that the nation mourns victims of the Twin Towers attack.

'I cant hear you!' one told him. Bush said, 'I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people -- and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!'

It was part of an intentional effort by Bush not to refer to the attackers as Muslims.

Three days after the impromptu speech delivered by bullhorn, Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington D.C. to condemn attacks on Muslims.

He said: 'The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war.

'Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America, they represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed of that kind of behavior.'

After Trump amplified Omar's remarks on Friday night, Ocasio-Cortez called on fellow lawmakers to support the Minnesota congresswoman

Bernie Sanders was the first major Democrat to follow in AOC's footsteps on Friday night

Elizabeth Warren was next, tweeting after Sanders that she too found Trump's attack 'disgusting'

Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar joined her Senate colleagues in supporting Omar hours later. She was careful to note that she does not condone the congresswoman's remarks but found Trump's tweet to be offensive

Omar connected the dots on Friday and pointed out in a tweet that Bush did not come under assault for having referred to the attackers as 'people' instead of murderers or terrorists.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference shortly after Omar sent the tweet that she had not connected with the congresswoman yet.

'I havent had the opportunity to speak with her to see the nature of her comment, and as is my custom with colleagues I call them in before I call them out. So Ill look forward to hearing from her,' she said. 'She was in transit, we tried to reach her, she was in transit. So Ill have some comment after I do speak to her.'

Democrats were at a retreat in Northern Virginia on Thursday, where the comments, that were revealed in an April 8 video posted to Twitter, were a topic of discussion.

Ocasio-Cortez defended her colleague to reporters staking the retreat out.

'We are getting to the level where this is an incitement of violence against progressive women of color,' the New York representative said.

Ocasio-Cortez smacked Crenshaw on Twitter for declining to cosponsor the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund while having the 'audacity to drum resentment towards Ilhan w/completely out-of-context quotes.'

She told the Texas congressman to 'go do something' about Republicans making insensitive comments.

After Trump amplified Omar's remarks on Friday night, Ocasio-Cortez called on fellow lawmakers to support the Minnesota congresswoman.

'Members of Congress have a duty to respond to the Presidents explicit attack today. @IlhanMNs life is in danger. For our colleagues to be silent is to be complicit in the outright, dangerous targeting of a member of Congress,' she tweeted. 'We must speak out.'

AOC shared an image of Martin Niemoller's 'First they came ... ' poem as part of her call to action.

The version of the poem she shared says: 'First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew.

'Then they came for meand there was no one left to speak for me,' the last line of the poem that's featured in United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says.

The New York Post even went as far as to splash a photograph one of the World Trade Center towers collapsing in a ball of flames, with the banner: 'Rep. Ilhan Omar: 9/11 was "some people did something"'

Ocasio-Cortez took on Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), who had blasted Omar's comments and circulated a short clip

Sanders answered her call half-an-hour later. The Vermont senator and 2020 presidential candidate said in a tweet: 'Ilhan Omar is a leader with strength and courage. She won't back down to Trump's racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end.'

Left-wing Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who's also seeking the presidency, was close behind her 2020 opponent with a tweet that that accused Trump of 'inciting violence against a sitting Congresswomanand an entire group of Americans based on their religion.

'It's disgusting. It's shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it,' the Massachusetts senator wrote.

Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar joined her Senate colleagues in supporting Omar hours later. She was careful to note that she does not condone the congresswoman's remarks but found Trump's tweet to be offensive.

The Democratic presidential candidate who shares her home state with Omar said: 'Someone has already been charged with a serious threat on Congresswoman Omars life. The video the President chose to send out today will only incite more hate. You can disagree with her wordsas I have done beforebut this video is wrong. Enough.'

Other candidates including Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and Julian Castro also condemned Trump's attack on Omar.

Buttigieg, who served in the U.S. Navy reserve, tweeted: 'I served oversea, at risk to my life, in the struggle against such terrorism. But it can only be fully defeated if we have leaders at home who defuse its capacity to sow hate - hate against Islam or against any number of "others."

'The president today made America smaller. It is not enough to condemn him; we must model something better.

'The threats against the life of @IlhanMN make clear what is at stake if we fail to to do this, and to beat back hate in all all its forms.'

Other candidates including Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and Julian Castro also condemned Trump's attack on Omar

Omar spoke about threats of violence she had received, as she defended herself against the 'double standards' she said she faces, to Late Show host Stephen Colbert earlier in the week. She that she is 'as American as everyone else' and suffers from anti-Muslim discrimination.

Last week, police in New York arrested a man for allegedly threatening to 'put a bullet in her [expletive] skull.'

She told Colbert: 'I took an oath - I took an oath to the Constitution. I am as American as everyone else is.'

The issue of whether to link al Qaeda and other terrorist attacks including 9/11 to Islam became a campaign issue in 2016 when Trump accused former Barack Obama of refusing to call out 'radical Islamic terrorism.'

He then leveled the same charge at Hillary Clinton, accusing her of being in 'total denial' for not calling the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, the work of a radical Islamic terrorist.

She had tweeted: 'Islam is not our adversary. Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.'

Trump said, 'She is in total denial. And her continuing reluctance to ever name the enemy broadcasts weakness across the world.'

However, when he made his first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia, the home country of a majority of the 9/11 attackers and its mastermind Osama bin Laden, he struck a different note.

'This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations,' Trump said. 'This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.'
A ten-year-old girl from Vermont has taken issue with Saturday Night Live after her disabled pet chicken became the butt of a joke.

Alora Wood's chicken, named Granite Heart, is learning to walk with a custom wheelchair after being attacked by a weasel.

But the young girl failed to see the funny side when SNL featured a news story about Granite on its 'Weekend Update' segment.

Co-host Colin Jost joked that the elaborate custom set up to get Granite back on his feet seemed to be a lot of effort for poultry.

'Just eat the chicken,' the comedian told viewers.

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On the recent SNL episode, co-host Colin Jost made fun of the chicken using a wheelchair and also joked about how she survived a weasel attack last year

Alora Wood's chicken, named Granite Heart, is learning to walk with a custom wheelchair after being born with a deformed foot

The girl said she was not amused when she found out SNL used a recent news story about her chicken as part of its 'Weekend Update' segment

Wood hit out at Jost in an interview with NECN-TV, telling the SNL host to 'be more sensitive'.

The fifth-grader says she knows the segment was meant to be a joke, but said she was not amused by the thought of putting her pet on a plate.

'I know it was meant to be a joke, but what if it was a dog?' she said.

'Any creature, no matter how big, no matter how small, they deserve to have a perfect life.'

The custom wheelchair came from a company in Amherst, New Hampshire, that makes pet wheelchairs.
Eric Torell, 20, was shot to death by three police officers in Stockholm last year

Three Swedish police officers have been charged in connection with the fatal shooting of a man who had Down's syndrome and autism.

Eric Torell, 20, was carrying what his mother, Katarina Soderberg, described as a toy submachine gun when he was shot to death by police officers in Stockholm last year.

One officer has been charged with Mr Torell's death and the other two have been charged with official misconduct.

Mr Torell had been reported missing from his home before police received reports of a man in possession of a gun.

The three charged officers found Mr Torell in a courtyard in the Vasastan district and ordered him to drop what they believed was a dangerous weapon.

They shot him when he didn't comply.

Flowers, candles and a portrait are seen during a memorial service for Mr Torell. He was shot after he ran away from home with a toy gun that police perceived to be a dangerous weapon

Following Mr Torell's death three police officers have been charged. One with Mr Torell's death and two with official misconduct

According to the BBC, prosecutor Martin Tiden said: 'I have decided that the police who have been charged for the shooting did not follow the procedures they should have done and had they done so, they would have realised that Eric - the victim - was not a threat'.

He said that the officers' action of initially opening fire was justified but they should have stopped when Mr Torell turned away from them.

Mr Torell was then taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Ms Soderberg said her son was the 'world's kindest man' who 'wouldn't hurt a fly'.

Sweden's National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg has asked for a government review of the rules surrounding the use of firearms after an increase in the number of people shot and killed.
This video shows a gymnast doing something that none of his peers has ever managed.

Estonian man Jaan Roose completed the world's first ever double backflip on a suspended slackline rope at a gym in the town of Vihtra.

Afterward, he described the trick as 'the most wanted trick in slacklining'.

The captivating footage initially shows Mr Roose failing to land the trick on several occasions, with some attempts ending in spectacular failure.

Estonian man Jaan Roose landed the world's first ever double backflip on a slackline rope in the video

He lands on his head, neck and back on the first three attempts, before finally landing the double backflip in style.

After a series of wobbles, where he almost loses his balance, he stands upright to be the first person to successfully complete the trick.

Mr Roose's first three attempts were unsuccessful and saw him painfully land on his head and neck

Mr Roose is a professional slackliner and has worked as a stunt double in the film Assassin's Creed and as a performer for a Madonna concert tour.

He told Newsflare about his excitement after landing the famed trick.

Mr Roose is a professional slackliner, who worked as a stunt double for the film Assassin's Creed

He said he had been trying to do the trick for six years. He came very close to losing his balance on the successful attempt

'I've been slacklining for 9 years already and it took me six years to do the most wanted trick in slacklining,' he said.

'No one else was able to successfully land this since tricklining existed.'

Slacklining is very similar to tight rope walking, with the significant difference being the taughtness of the rope.

Mr Roose had a huge smile on his face when he realised that he had actually completed the trick

Slacklines are wound less tight to allow people to bounce and perform tricks.

The practice's modern-day origins are thought to go back to the late 1970s in the North-West US state of Washington.
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Nearly half (48 percent) of Americans expect the U.S. to become embroiled in a world war within the next 10 years.

That number is down from 56 percent who believed that in 2016. It also represents a decline from the peak of 63 percent who felt that way in 2002  directly following the September 11 terrorist attacks, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of the General Social Survey, a comprehensive poll that has tracked American attitudes and beliefs since 1972.

Yet the numbers still represent a significant segment of society that is anticipating a grim, war-filled future.

'In some ways it's a rather sensible position, in that the U.S. has been at war for most of the years since it was founded,' said MacDara King, chief information officer of the Foreign Policy Association, in an interview with DailyMail.com.

'But I think people are responding to the end of this unipolar world (in which one country exercises most of the cultural, economic and military influence) as we get the rise of China as another great power,' King added. 'And there's also a sense that some of the post-World War II order is falling away. A lot of the institutions that we put in place (like the UN)  it seems are not as useful a tool at solving the world's problems as many had hoped it would be.'

This graph illustrates the share of all U.S. adults who believed that a world war was imminent within the next 10 years, for the period from 1976-2018. Source: General Social Survey - NORC at the University of Chicago

However, King noted the 8 percentage decrease since 2016 could be part of a decline in the 'globalist perspective.'

'I think we saw some of it under Obama: Americans are tired of being at war,' he said. 'So there was a pullback, there was less involvement in Syria, and I think we just see a logical continuation of that with American's desire to stop policing the world and be a little more concerned with problems at home from infrastructure to education to health care.'

With generations of instability in the Middle East and a hot-cold relationship between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, Americans do have plenty to worry about  even as U.S. troops continue to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.

'I think people are gaining a sense that there's increasing disorder in the world and I think that's what's behind this feeling of impending conflict,' King said.

'People have also seen increasing expansionism - we've seen the annexation of Crimea by Russia and especially the special relationship building between Russia and China which has some people concerned,' he added.

This graph illustrates the share of Democrats, Republicans and Independents who believed that a world war was imminent within the next 10 years, for the period from 1976-2018. Source: General Social Survey - NORC at the University of Chicago

This graph illustrates the share of white and black Americans - from 1976-2018 - who have expected a world war to break out within the next decade. Source: General Social Survey - NORC at the University of Chicago

Opinions broke along partisan lines: In 2018, Democrats were more likely (52 percent) to expect a world war, compared to 42 percent of Republicans and 47 percent of independents.

Among Republicans, there was a 15 percentage point drop in 2018 compared to 2016, when 57 percent anticipated another world war on the horizon - notably since Trump took office.

Black Americans are more likely (59 percent) to envision a war in the nation's future than white Americans, (48 percent) - an 11 point spread.

Interestingly, the expectation of a pending world war peaked among African Americans at 72 percent in 1993, the year after the Los Angeles race riots.

Meanwhile, white Americans are the least worried about a global war that they've been since 2000, when just 33 percent felt such a conflict was inevitable.

Overall, just 36 percent of Americans anticipated a world war in 2000  signaling a period of innocence before 9/11 pushed those fears to a record high in 2002.

However, things have shifted since the era of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, said Gregory Payne, a professor at Emerson College and an expert in diplomacy issues.

'Americans have a tendency to see the world through either a black or white prism and there's a lack of sophistication by a lot of Americans to see the complexity of a lot of global issues,' Payne told DailyMail.com. 'There's also a tendency by a lot of Americans to see America as the problem solver.'

This graph illustrates the share of men and women - from 1976-2018 - who have expected a world war to break out within the next decade. Source: General Social Survey - NORC at the University of Chicago

This graph breaks out the share of each socioeconomic class that believes the U.S. is destined to enter a world war within the next 10 years, based on 2018 survey responses. Source: General Social Survey - NORC at the University of Chicago

'If you see America as the world policeman and there are negative things going on in the world, then many Americans are going to see we're probably going to go into some kind of conflict in order to correct that situation,' he said.

Noting the decline since 2016, Payne said that Trump's 'America First' philosophy - which emphasizes prioritizing this country above others in diplomacy decisions - could have persuaded more Americans that a global conflict is less likely while he's in charge.

'What the president has said is that America is going to be much more passive,' Payne said. 'We're not going to get involved; other people are going to have to pay for things themselves.'

Women were more likely (53 percent) to fear a brewing global conflict than men (40 percent)  a 13 point difference in 2018.

Women have historically been more likely to anticipate another world war, rating higher than men on the question most years since the General Social Survey first asked the question in 1976.

When broken down by age groups, Americans age 35-49 are most likely to anticipate a world war (52.4 percent), compared to those age 18-34 (48.3 percent), age 50-64 (45.1 percent) and seniors age 65 and older (42.1 percent).

Opinions were also divided along class lines, with the richest Americans least likely to fear a world war (23 percent), compared to 44 percent of the middle class, 49 percent of poorest Americans, and 53 percent of the working class.
A welcoming water cannon salute backfired spectacularly after Dubai firefighters broke the Saudi plane they were welcoming on the country's national day and injured a passenger.

Footage shows malfunctioning hoses from two fire engines pelt the side of the Saudi Airlines Airbus A320-214 before water is sent high into the air and comes crashing down.

The highly pressurised water hit the left side of the plane and forced an over-wing emergency exit hatch to open in the incident last September.

After the hatch had opened inward, a safety slide was automatically deployed.

This triggered a master alarm which alerted the flight crew to what was happening and allowed them to halt the plane.

The injured passenger, who had been sitting next to the hatch in a window seat, was given immediate medical attention and was able to carry on with their journey.

According to a statement from the United Arab Emirates' General Aviation Authority (GAA), reported by the the local Khaleej Times, there was a technical fault with one of the hoses.

Highly pressured jets of water came shooting out of a malfunctioning hose which caused an emergency exit hatch to open inwards on the Saudi Airlines Airbus A320-214

The opening of the hatch triggered the deployment of the emergency slide. This injured one passenger who was sitting near the hatch

Dubai International Airport (pictured) said it has reviewed its procedure for water cannon salutes in the wake of the incident

A firefighter had tried to select a high pressure setting on the hose which would see the water arc in the style of a traditional salute but the hose didn't respond correctly.

Dubai International Airport said it has reviewed its procedure for water cannon salutes in the wake of the incident.

It said: 'Immediately following the incident, and working with the vehicle manufacturer and regulatory authorities, Dubai Airports conducted a thorough inspection of its fleet of fire trucks and reviewed its water salute procedures to ensure the fault was not in evidence elsewhere and to prevent any future recurrence'.
Police have identified the 24-year-old man who is accused of tossing a five-year-old boy from the third floor at the Mall of America on Friday.

Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, who is from the Minneapolis metro area, was charged attempted homicide and is currently being held at the Bloomington Police Department.

Police were called to the Mall of America in Bloomington this morning after the man, who is not thought to be of any relation, allegedly threw the child from the balcony.

Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda was arrested Friday at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota

Aranda was chased down inside the mall and was taken into custody.

Witnesses say a woman at the mall was screaming hysterically after the child was thrown.

'She was screaming 'Everyone pray, everyone pray. Oh my God, my baby, someone threw him over the edge,'' Brian Johnson told WCCO.

Emergency crews had rushed to help the child who was seen lying in a puddle of blood.

Police do not think there is any relationship between the man and the child or the child's family.

Horror: Police were called to the Mall of America in Bloomington after witnesses said an unidentified man allegedly throwing the young child from the height, before trying to flee

The 24-year-old suspect was chased down inside the mall and was taken into custody

Potts said, emphasizing that police believe this to be an 'isolated incident.' The area where the fall occurred has been closed (picture taken from the third floor after the man was arrested)

Brian Johnson, a Minneapolis resident, told the Daily News he didn't see the incident, but said he saw the aftermath.

He said the child was lying 'motionless, he was in a pool of blood.'

'Additional information from witnesses indicated the 5-year-old might have been pushed or thrown,' Bloomington Chief of Police Jeff Potts said.

Police officers gave the child first aid along with witnesses, Potts said.

'The child did suffer significant injuries,' he said. 'The child has been transported to the hospital and has been receiving care.'

Police do not think there is any relationship between the man and the child or the child's family

Police were called to the Mall of America in Bloomington after witnesses reported an unidentified man either throwing or pushing the young child from the height, before trying to flee

Police do not think there is any relationship between the man and the child or the child's family

According to Potts, witnesses told police the person suspected of pushing or throwing the child 'took off running immediately after the incident.'

He's currently at the Bloomington Police Department, Potts said, and authorities don't believe there is any further threat to the public.

'At this time, we do not believe that there is a relationship between the child or the family of the child,'

Potts said, emphasizing that police believe this to be an 'isolated incident.'

The area where the fall occurred has been closed.

This was a senseless act and words cannot truly express our profound shock and sadness,' the Mall of America said in a statement on Friday. 'Our immediate and only concern is for the wellbeing of the family and the child, as well as for any individuals who may have witnessed the incident.

'We have counseling services available for anyone who may need assistance. We know that this is a concerning event for all of us. As the Bloomington Police Department continues to investigate how and why this isolated incident happened, we will provide our full cooperation.'
Soni Methu, a prominent Kenyan journalist and former host of CNN's Inside Africa, has died after collapsing with stomach pains. She was just 34 years old.

Methu was reportedly staying at a hotel in Diani, Kwale County, Kenya, on Thursday when she lost consciousness and died.

Her younger sister, Faith, said it appeared Soni experienced a seizure.

Soni Methu (left and right), a prominent Kenyan journalist and former host of CNN's Inside Africa, died on Thursday after collapsing with stomach pains

Methu hosted Inside African on CNN International between 2014 and 2015 (pictured)

Faith Methu described in a statement to the media the moment her older sister clutched her stomach in pain and fell to the floor at around 6pm local time, according to the Daily Nation.

Her sister-in-law rushed her to a hospital, but she was pronounced dead on arrival.

Her feet were cold and lips were dark, a family member told the Kenyan news outlet The Star.

Faith Methu said an autopsy will be performed to determine Soni's cause of death, reported CNN.

Methu hosted the show Inside African on CNN International between 2014 and 2015, before the program switched to a new format without a presenter.

As part of the show, Methu traveled to different countries on the African continent and highlighted their cultures and cuisines.

At the time of her death, Methu worked as a reporter for the Chinese-owned news network CGTN (pictured)

Methu's sister says it's possible the 34-year-old journalist suffered a seizure

We are shocked and saddened to learn of the passing of our friend and former colleague Soni Methu, CNN said in a statement. Our heartfelt condolences to her family and friends, from all at CNN.

At the time of her death, Methu worked as a reporter for the Chinese-owned news network CGTN, which hired her in 2016 following her departure from CNN.

Earlier in her career, Methu, who graduated from Nairobi's Strathmore University, was a reporter for E News Africa and for the South African News network eNCA.

I am blessed to have toured across Africa, Methu wrote of herself on Facebook. I embrace the beauty of our continent. A beautiful people with multiple cultures.
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A British globetrotter who was found dead in a Swiss hotel room in 'a sex game gone wrong' hails from one of the country's top racehorse breeding families and was enjoying a round the world trip as a present from her multi-millionaire father.

Anna Florence Reed, 22 - whose late grandfather is equine legend Guy Reed - had been heard arguing with her German boyfriend shortly before her death on Tuesday.

Her super-rich dad Clive Reed, 62, a trustee of a renowned stud, is understood to have flown to Switzerland with his elder daughter Millie, 24, following the tragedy.

Anna had a privileged upbringing in leafy Harrogate, North Yorkshire, and was educated at the town's renowned private school Ashville College, which charges up to 10,000 a term.

German-born Marc Schatzle, 29, who calls himself Marc Dirtywhite, claimed Anna died as the result of a sex game gone wrong. Swiss police yesterday said he had been formally accused of intentional murder.

Anna Florence Reed, 22, was found dead in the bathroom of the hotel where she was staying with her German boyfriend in the town of Lorcano

Miss Reed - whose late grandfather is equine legend Guy Reed - had been heard arguing with her German boyfriend shortly before her death on Tuesday

A post-mortem examination was said to have confirmed Miss Reed died from suffocation or asphyxiation and had small fractures and cuts on her body, local media reports (pictured on Facebook with her boyfriend Marc Schatzle)

But her life spiralled downhill when her teacher mother Mary, 49, died suddenly in a freak accident when Anna was just 17. A close friend said she was devastated by her mum's death in 2014.

Social media posts revealed that Miss Reed had travelled extensively in the last few years

She had fallen down some stone stairs after visiting her daughter in her stunning new flat, cracking her head which led to a fatal brain aneurysm.

Anna's pal said: 'When she lost her mum she was beside herself with grief, she was devastated, and overnight her life changed.

'She had gone to one of the best schools in the area but after her mum died she didn't care about her studies and moved away to Germany. By all accounts she went off the rails and became something of a wild child.'

A statement from Anna's school said: 'We are saddened to learn of the death of former pupil Anna Reed, and our thoughts are with her family.'

Anna - described as 'bright, bubbly and beautiful' by former neighbours was on a global trip, which had been gifted to her by her father for her 21st birthday. Her elder sister had previously been given the same amazing present.

Anna, who documented her travels on social media under the name Berlin Baby, had posted several photographs of herself in exotic locations in recent weeks.

A number of images show her cosying up to a muscular man tattooed man with the words 'Warrior' inked on his forehead and believed to be her latest beau Marc Schatzle, 29, who has been arrested over her death.

He faces a charge of pre-intentional homicide, a lesser charge than murder.

Her grand father Guy Reed died in Monaco in 2013, aged 91. He also formed Reed Boardall haulage giants. But is was his racing genes that passed through the family.

He dad is a trustee at Copgrove Hall Stud in Occaney on the outskirts of Harrogate. Accounts show the company has a turnover of 25million and total assets of 12million.

The 22-year-old (pictured) had been staying at Ramada La Palma au Lac in Locarno, in Switzerland, according to local media

An employee told MailOnline: 'Clive is utterly devastated and no one can believe what has happened. It is terrible, just absolutely shocking. This is the second awful tragedy to hit the family. I didn't know Anna but everyone said she was a very bright and beautiful young woman.'

A former neighbour of Mr Reed said: 'This is dreadful news. Clive doesn't deserve all this heartache. He's a decent, hard working, very private person and keeps himself to himself. I can't imagine what he and his family are going through right now.'

Post mortem tests showed Anna suffocated to death while small cuts and fractures were found on her body.

She had been staying at the stunning lakeside Ramada La Palma au Lac with her lover, a former bouncer, who lives in Zurich.

A spokesman for the cantonal police said: 'A 29-year-old German citizen was arrested on April 9. Today he has been formally accused of intentional murder with the possibility of the lesser charge of involuntary homicide after the investigation, which is ongoing.

'The autopsy has been carried out but the conclusion has not yet reached the Public Ministry.'
A bizarre dating profile appearing to belong to recently arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been unearthed, where he refers to himself as '87 per cent sl*t' and a 'pig-headed intellectual'.

It is unclear if the profile, from December 2006, really belongs to Assange, 47, but the co-founder of dating website OkCupid insists that it is real.

It was created shortly after Assange launched WikiLeaks.

He is now facing decades in an American prison for espionage after he was arrested and hauled kicking and screaming out of his Ecuadorian embassy bolthole in London.

An OKCupid profile that appears to belong to Julian Assange has been unearthed. Pictured is a photo from the profile

In the dating profile, under the name Harry Harrison, Assange writes: 'WARNING: Want a regular, down to earth guy? Keep moving. I am not the droid you're looking for. Save us both while you still can.

'Passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual seeks siren for love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy.

'Such a woman should [be] spirited and playful, of high intelligence, though not necessarily formally educated, have spunk, class & inner strength and be able to think strategically about the world and the people she cares about.'

The profile is filled with a series of photos resembling Assange, including a close-up where he is smiling at the camera.

The bizarre dating profile, created in December 2006 that appears to belong to the WikiLeaks founder

It is captioned: 'The author, facing the rising sun after an all puzzle contest.'

OkCupid co-founder Sam Yagan told the Sun: 'This is real, as best we can tell.

'We have manual and automatic systems in place to prevent fraud. We can tell when a profile is created, from where -- and we're not going to say.

'If the profile is a ruse, then whoever did it went to elaborate lengths. And if someone faked this in 2006, that person has done an amazing job predicting the future.'

The name Harry Harrison appears to be a reference to the pen name of an American author of science-fiction books whose protagonist is a globetrotting con man.

The profile was described as being extremely active during itsfirst month on the site, completing 42 personalty tests.

Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates' Court yesterday

A handcuffed Assange is pictured in a van with police officers as he makes his way to Westminster Magistrates Court in London ahead of his hearing yesterday

Most members only complete one, if any, said Yagan.

Yagan admits Assange's profile attracted 'several' responses.

The revelation comes after the WikiLeaks founder's recent arrest.

In extraordinary scenes, eight policemen had to drag the bearded and dishevelled Assange to a waiting police van as he ranted about Donald Trump and screamed 'the UK has no civility'.

His arrest came after the Ecuadorian government ended his asylum status, saying it was tired of his discourteous behaviour and poor personal hygiene, which reportedly included smearing faeces on the walls of the country's London embassy.

Kristinn Hrafnnson, Wikileaks editor in chief said today that the ailing Assange should finally be able to receive medical care and will be able to meet with his lawyers more easily than he could in the embassy

As well as the prospect of a year in a UK jail for breaching bail, Assange faces extradition to the United States and a renewed rape investigation in Sweden. Following his arrest, the 47-year-old was charged by the American government with hacking 750,000 classified documents, which carries a five-year sentence.

But US authorities are reportedly set to file further charges in the coming days, including espionage, which can carry a 20-year sentence. As the country submitted an extradition request, a US senator yesterday boasted 'hes our property'.

Following his arrest, Assange was hauled to Westminster magistrates' court yesterday afternoon where a judge branded him a 'narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests'. He denied skipping bail in 2012 but was found guilty after the judge branded his defence 'laughable'. Assange had tried to claim he breached his bail conditions because he couldn't be guaranteed a fair trial in the UK.

The former hacker now faces a maximum sentence of one year in a British jail, likely to be Wandsworth prison in south London. This would see him serve six months before a fight over his extradition to the US begins. Experts say that process could take up to two years.

Today, Kristinn Hrafnnson, Wikileaks editor in chief, said that the arrest means that the ailing Assange should finally be able to receive medical care and will be able to meet with his lawyers more easily than he could in the embassy.
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The new mother's expression will be familiar to every young woman who has just given birth.

It registers an emotional maelstrom mingling unbridled joy with utter exhaustion, relief with sheer awe.

By contrast, perched on her lap just hours after her arrival in the world, her tiny baby girl looks a picture of serenity.

Indeed, she appears so composed as the camera flashes, that it is almost as if she could sense her extraordinary destiny.

This is the first picture ever taken of the future Duchess of Sussex being held by her mother Doria inside a Los Angeles hospital room on August 4, 1981

Bright future: Little did Baby Meghan know that her own child would be a British royal. These remarkable images feature among more than 30 photos in a previously unseen family album shown exclusively to the Daily Mail by Meghan's uncle, Joseph Johnson

Baby Meghan taking her first steps. Charting the Duchess's happy, though sometimes turbulent, childhood, from her earliest moments through to her teens, the pictures are of particular significance to her family

Captured by a family member in an austere Los Angeles hospital room, this starkly evocative portrait is the first-ever photograph of the future Duchess of Sussex.

It was taken so soon after Meghan's birth, at 4.46am, on August 4, 1981, that she still wears identity tags around her wrist and ankle, and barely fills out her sky-blue smock, as she nestles next to her 24-year-old mother, Doria Markle.

The remarkable image features among more than 30 photos in a previously unseen family album shown exclusively to the Daily Mail by Meghan's uncle, Joseph Johnson.

Charting the Duchess's happy, though sometimes turbulent, childhood, from her earliest moments through to her teens, the pictures are of particular significance to her family.

For while we have seen many shots of the young Meghan with her father, Thomas, and his side of her family, this collection opens a fresh window on the times she shared with her maternal relatives, particularly her mother Doria and grandmother Jeanette Johnson; the women who most influenced her.

Bond: 'Granny Jeanette' adored her granddaughter, and helped raise her while Meghan's mother went to work. This collection opens a fresh window on the times she shared with her maternal relatives, particularly her mother Doria and grandmother Jeanette Johnson; the women who most influenced her

Meghan, pictured with her maternal grandmother 'Granny Jeanette' who was a significant influence on her as a young girl

This week, as his niece prepares for the imminent birth of her first baby  albeit in rather different circumstances  Mr Johnson, 69, thumbed through the fading snapshots, reminiscing as he explained why he has chosen to publish them.

'I think this is a good time for the world to see the other side of Meghan's family  the positive side, not the degenerative side  and for them to be part of her story,' he told us, alluding to the constant swirl of scandal surrounding her paternal relatives, including her father and half-brother and sister.

In a wide-ranging interview at his studio in Fresno, California, Mr Johnson, who is a talented artist, also offered a candid insight into many other aspects of Meghan's life, revealing how:

Far from being cowed by her new position, Meghan 'loves' the fame and adulation of being a royal, according to her mother.

He 'doesn't recognise' the Meghan reportedly branded 'Duchess Difficult' by Palace aides for her high-handed manner.

His wife, Pamela, felt 'miffed' that Meghan chose to exclude every family member, except Doria, from her wedding, while he was more sanguine.

He was shocked when Princess Michael of Kent attended a Christmas banquet  at which Meghan was present  wearing what some deemed a 'racist' brooch featuring an African figurine.

He is proud of Meghan and Harry for breaking with tradition by choosing to celebrate the baby's arrival privately, and choosing their own birthing team instead of royal gynaecologists.

He believes Meghan will be quietly hoping her baby is a girl because a boy would present 'more of a challenge' to her.

Mr Johnson and his younger sister Saundra had a different father to Doria, but they shared the same mother, Jeanette, and the three were raised together, first in Ohio and later in California.

The daughter of a hotel bellboy, Jeanette was first married to Joseph Johnson Senior, by whom she had two children  Joseph Junior and his younger sister, Meghan's aunt Saundra. She later divorced and then married antiques dealer Alvin Ragland, Doria's father.

Bonny baby: A chubby Meghan at a few months old. Since Doria had to return to work for financial reasons soon after the birth, it meant Meghan spent much of her infancy in the care of her grandmother

Meghan as an 18-month-old baby, in one of her smarter clothes. She saw less of her grandmother after she went away to university, but the pair remained close until Jeanette died after suffering heart disease and stroke, aged 71, in 2000

Family life: Little Meghan playing with her mother Doria. It is because she enjoyed such a formative relationship with her granny, her uncle surmises, that Meghan is so keen for Doria, now a yoga teacher, to play a major role in her own baby's life

In time, that marriage also ended. However, Meghan's mother, aunt and uncle remained with the matriarchal Jeanette, who raised them for the most part as a single-parent. Her son says she was 'like the man of the family  and the wife and mother', and describes her as 'quite a pistol'.

With racial segregation still rife in America, their childhood was marred by poverty, and such appalling bigotry that the family was once hounded out of a whites-only town in Texas, as they drove west seeking a better life.

However, Mr Johnson says these experiences served only to make Jeanette more resilient and socially aware  traits she handed down to Doria, who in turn passed them on to Meghan, thus inspiring, he believes, her campaigning work for human rights. Meghan inherited other values from her formidable Granny Jeanette, he says, including her self-reliance, quick wit and wicked sense of humour.

For although Meghan's mother and father did not divorce until she was six, Mr Johnson is adamant their marriage was already failing by the time she was born.

Since Doria had to return to work for financial reasons soon after the birth, it meant Meghan spent much of her infancy in the care of her grandmother.

'Doria and my mother lived right around the corner from one another in LA, so Jeanette played a big part in caring for Meghan,' he recalls. 'After the birth, Doria went on with her career [as a make-up artist and later air hostess] and my mother would watch her during the day.'

Browsing through the family album, he picks out various photos that show the bond between Meghan and her granny.

One shows baby Meghan laying across Jeanette's lap, as she pats her back gently to 'wind' her. Another displays her grandmother's adoration as she and Doria hold the baby aloft and gaze at her in wonder.

'That's my mother and her grandbaby, and she's just smiling away,' laughs Mr Johnson. 'Oh, she was happy! [when Meghan arrived] Just crazy, wild with joy.'

Meghan saw less of her grandmother after she went away to university, but the pair remained close until Jeanette died after suffering heart disease and stroke, aged 71, in 2000. She gladly sacrificed her weekends to be at her bedside towards the end.

It is because she enjoyed such a formative relationship with her granny, her uncle surmises, that Meghan is so keen for Doria, now a yoga teacher, to play a major role in her own baby's life.

Her mother is expected to make regular transatlantic trips after the birth, and have her own quarters in Meghan and Harry's new home, Frogmore Cottage, at Windsor.

'I think [Doria] will be a big part,' he says. 'I think she'll be hands-on, just because of Meghan's time constraints. She'll have to be around.

'I think she'll be a great grandmother, if she helps raise that child anything like Meghan was raised.'

Doria, he adds, instilled in Meghan 'love and kindness, and a sense of self', and taught her the importance of 'helping others and having a lot of courage'. He expects these values to be imbued in the baby.

Meghan enjoying herself while playing outside in one of the many charming photos from the newly-released album

Looking again at that beautiful first picture of Doria and Meghan, he recalls the enormity of the occasion. 'I think it was taken the day she was born, or it could have been the next day,' he says.

'Doria has still got her gown on, and she sure looks as though she's just had a baby! We were all happy, over the moon. It was like a new world.

'Before the birth of Meghan, Doria was just like a teenager running wild and fancy-free. This was such a settling moment, in comparison to her life before that, in Hollywood, and at the TV studios [where she temped as a make-up artist] with Tom [Meghan's father, an award-winning lighting director]. This was bringing her into the real world.'

He turns back to the album. Here is Meghan at four months old, enjoying her first Christmas, laying on an unmade bed beside her presents which are stashed in a crimson sack marked 'Santa Claus'.

There she is taking her first, tentative steps on the path outside her house; playing peekaboo with Doria; licking an ice-cream cone and getting it all over her cheeks; tasting her first spare-rib at a barbecue; helping her mother to feed the pigeons; opening her presents at her alfresco second birthday party. They are truly magical mementos.

Meghan is seen having fun with her cousins, including two of Mr Johnson's three sons, Shawn and Jason; and enjoying one of the rare functions where her mother and father's families came together.

The backdrop to many of these photographs is, in itself, highly revealing. At Doria's house, a rusty-looking bike is propped against the bare wall, and the surroundings are spartan and homespun.

And though Meghan was always smartly turned out  and already seems made for the cameras, with her sparkling doe-eyes, retrousse nose and cutesy-pie curls  it is clear her family lived frugally.

Her own baby's background will be light-years away from these make-do-and-mend beginnings.

Putting the album aside momentarily, Mr Johnson recalls how his family received the astonishing news that 'their' little Meghan was dating Prince Harry.

'All of us were just really, really stunned. Shocked. Especially Doria. She was so excited.

'She was just saying 'My little Flower!' [Doria's nickname for Meghan]. 'How can this be true? This is unbelievable.'

She said: 'My Flower's going to be a Princess, wooh-wooh-wooh!'

Of course, Meghan's absorption into the Royal Family has not been entirely straightforward. In December 2017, Princess Michael of Kent caused an outcry after she wore a blackamoor brooch, in Meghan's presence at a Christmas banquet at Buckingham Palace.

Meghan trying her first spare rib at a barbecue in the park. According to Mr Johnson: 'Meghan is a really wonderful person. I really admire Doria for the way she has raised her. She is not afraid [to be herself] and I think she gets that courage from her mother'

She quickly apologised but the unsavoury episode did not sit well with Mr Johnson, who had first-hand experience of racism as a child. 'When it's something that blatant and just in your face I'm always shocked, even at this age, and even though I've experienced racism a lot.'

Mr Johnson is a mild-mannered man who lives quietly with his wife in a detached bungalow in sleepy Fresno. However, he becomes animated when the conversation turns to the more negative publicity Meghan has received.

'What you hear in the Press  I don't even recognise that person,' he says. 'Meghan is a really wonderful person. I really admire Doria for the way she has raised her. She is not afraid [to be herself] and I think she gets that courage from her mother.'

By the same token, Mr Johnson readily admits that Meghan is relishing her elevation from TV star to globally recognised icon.

'She likes that attention, she's had the schooling, and then being in Hollywood, which is a good type of preparation, so she can handle that,' he says. 'I have read that some of Harry's old girlfriends couldn't handle all the scrutiny. But from what I hear, from what Doria says about Meghan, she loves it.

'That is great, because that's certainly a huge part of it [her new role]. The public eye.' Smiling, he adds: 'I couldn't handle it.'

He says he used Doria, now 62, as a role-model when raising his own children. And having been smacked by his parents, perhaps the most important lesson she taught him was that smacking causes a child immense harm. 'Meghan was never hit, or hollered at,' he says. 'I've seen both sides  the way we were raised and the way she was raised.'

The conversation turns to Meghan and Harry's wedding. When he and his family failed to receive an invitation, Mr Johnson remarked caustically that it had perhaps been 'lost in the post'.

Today, he is still unsure why Meghan snubbed even her most loyal, level-headed relatives.

His wife, he said, felt 'really put off' by the exclusion, and others were similarly annoyed, yet he just felt 'kind of sad'.

With a shrug, he went on: 'My wife was kind of miffed. You know  800 guests. But I said, 'Right, we're not having that kind of close relationship right now.'

Without any hint of bitterness, he added: 'Meghan has her own set of friends now. They were the ones she invited. I guess you could say they are Hollywood royalty. People in the spotlight, and that's what her life is about.'

He and Pamela watched the event on TV, and he took photos of the screen on his mobile phone. 'I got it almost frame by frame,' he chuckles. 'It was the biggest thing that's happened in our lives. Wow! I, for one, was thrilled despite the fact I wasn't invited. I aim to do a painting of that ceiling of the chapel, and the floors.'

Meghan Markle's Uncle Joseph Johnson with wife Pamela. The image features among more than 30 photos in a previously unseen family album shown exclusively to the Daily Mail by Meghan's uncle, Joseph Johnson

For reasons of her own, Meghan is no longer in touch with the Johnsons, as with almost everyone in her family, including, of course, her father. However, Mr Johnson has a hunch that 'they might get back together'. For the new baby's sake, at least, he hopes he is right.

Since the wedding, he has been following Meghan's progress closely via newspapers and magazines, and he even keeps a scrapbook of her life and times as a duchess.

He applauds the couple's reported decision to bring in their own birthing team, and limit publicity on the baby's arrival, saying: 'They want to do things their own way, which is fine.'

As for the baby's gender, remembering how Meghan was raised in a household dominated by strong, independent women, he says: 'I think she probably wants a girl.

'I'm sure Harry wants a boy. A daughter would be a real comfort to Meghan. A boy would be . . . more of a challenge. She might be a little more comfortable with a girl.'

Given Meghan and Harry's strong desire to use their positions for the public good, Mr Johnson has high expectations of their child, suggesting he or she could 'take on their passions' and make a positive impact on the world.

Meanwhile, he is excitedly awaiting the first photographs of his great-niece or great-nephew. 'I'm wondering whether he will have curly hair, or red,' he laughed. His curiosity is shared by millions.

Yet whatever the royal baby looks like, he or she will surely be just as beautiful as the little girl resting demurely in the crook of her mother's arm, 37 years ago.
A medical examiner has concluded that a wealthy couple found in their $22 million Minnesota mansion Wednesday died in a murder suicide.

Irwin Jacobs, 77, shot his wheelchair bound wife Alexandra several times before turning the gun on himself, according to a report prepared by the The Hennepin County Medical Examiner.

Irwin, a former part-owner of the Vikings, was found with 'multiple self-inflicted gunshot wounds'.

Police were called to the Jacobs' sprawling lakeside property in Orono Wednesday morning, where the couple were found dead in bed alongside a gun.

A medical examiner confirmed Friday that the deaths of wealthy Minnesota couple Irwin and Alexandra Jacobs was a murder-suicide

The couple were found inside their sprawling $22 million mansion in Orono on Wednesday morning

Irwin and Alexandra had been married for 57 years, and their five children have now scheduled a memorial service for next Monday.

Long time family friend Dennis Mathisen told The Star Tribune Thursday that Alexandra 'had been in a wheelchair for the last year or so and had signs of dementia, [and that] Irwin was just distraught over her condition'.

However, Mathieson added that Irwin was 'upbeat' in the days before their deaths.

'I talked with his son Mark yesterday, and he talked to both of them. He said Irwin seemed up.'

Police are pictured at the property after the discovery of the Irwin and Alexandra's bodies

The couple's children confirmed their parents' deaths in a short statement Wednesday.

They said: 'We are heartbroken by this loss, and we ask that our privacy be respected as we grieve during this very difficult time.'

Irwin had a stake in the Vikings in the 1980s before selling his share.

He gained notoriety nationally in the 1980s as a corporate raider who bought out under-performing companies at a profit. He was known to some as 'Irv the Liquidator.'

Irwin Jacobs had a stake in the Vikings in the 1980s, and gained notoriety as a corporate raider who bought out underperforming companies at a profit

The couple had been married for 57 years and raised five children together

He also owned household products company J.R. Watkins Co. for more than 40 years.

Over the years, Irwin served as CEO of several large corporations, including the now-bankrupt US boat-building giant Genmar Holdings.

His son Mark, a graduate of Brown University, has served as CEO of Watkins Co since 1998.

He was known for doting on his wife, Alexandra, who was an artist.

A family friend said Jacobs was distraught over the health of his wife of 57 years, who was showing signs of dementia

Another friend told The Star Tribune that the couple were 'soul mates'

Their daughter Sheila has cerebral palsy and the family were said to have been major donors to the Special Olympics.

In 2014, the family put their rambling hilltop estate on the market with a listing price of $22 million, making it the second most expensive listing in the Twin Cities area at the time.

The 32-acre property features a 13,000-square-foot main house, a guesthouse, a pool house and other structures.

Speaking to the Star Tribune about his desire to downsize, Jacobs said of his six-bedroom, 10-bath abode that he had owned for more than 4 decades: I really thought I'd die here, but I didn't want to burden my wife if something happened to me.'

Jacobs ultimately took the house off the market.

A friend told The Star Tribune: 'They were soul mates. They held hands, worked together and adored one another.
Back in August 2010, a newly-famous Julian Assange touched down in Sweden on a ten-day visit to promote and raise money for his suddenly modish non-profit outfit, Wikileaks.

At 39, the eccentric former computer hacker might not have been exactly young. But he was very much free and single, having recently started to discover the romantic perks that his rock-star status could afford.

Weeks earlier, Assange had collaborated with a number of news outlets to publish the first tranche of more than 400,000 leaked military and diplomatic cables, detailing years worth of US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The coup had turned this socially-awkward Australian into a sort of a folk hero among liberals, rendering him irresistible to a certain demographic of Left-leaning young women. And Assange seemed happy to take full advantage.

Julian Assange delivers a Wikileaks seminar in Sweden in 2010 while Miss W (foreground with glasses) sits in the audience

On his very first night in Stockholm, he attempted to seduce the English girlfriend of an American journalist whod been invited to dine with Wikileaks activists at a Lebanese restaurant called Beirut.

Over the course of the ensuing seven days, Assange would enjoy two further romantic forays, seducing a pair of young women in turn, both of whom would walk into police stations days later to accuse him of sex crimes.

Each of the two, Miss A and Miss W complained that initially consensual encounters with him had suddenly turned darker, ending in them being forced into unprotected sex in circumstances they found uncomfortable.

Their testimony set in train a series of events that would see Assange spend the next two years in British courts, fighting extradition to Sweden where he was wanted for questioning, followed by another seven hiding inside Londons Ecuadorean Embassy.

Assange, who has always protested his innocence, variously accused the two women of being notorious radical feminists who had got into a tizzy. So who are they and what were the disputed events that spawned their now-notorious complaints?

Miss A (pictured) is an experienced political activist and equal rights campaigner

Miss A is an experienced political activist and equal rights campaigner. In her early 30s at the time of the alleged incidents, she was involved in inviting Assange to attend a seminar entitled How Truth is the First Victim of War and hosted by the Christian wing of Swedens Social Democratic party.

Planning to be out of town visiting family when he arrived mid-week she generously offered him use of her flat in Sodermalm, Stockholm. Assange, who often dossed down on the sofas of supporters, accepted.

On Friday August 13, she returned to town and went out for dinner with Assange, before returning to the one-bedroom property where they were both to spend the night before the seminar. Her statement to police alleges they then sat down to drink tea. It was at this point he began stroking her legs. They embraced, after which he began pulling off her clothes.

Miss As statement claims she initially attempted to put clothes back on, because the situation was going too quickly for her liking. But she says that Assange ripped them off again, breaking a necklace in the process.

After deciding to consent to sex, she then attempted to reach for a condom. However Assange held her arms and pinned her legs to prevent her grabbing it, the statement claims.

Eventually, he agreed to wear protection. However during the ensuing moments, she felt him do something to it with his hands. It was only afterwards that she realised it had been torn. She believes deliberately.

Despite her experience, Assanges host allowed him to remain in her flat for much of the remainder of his visit. Some nights, she decamped to a friends. On others, she slept on a mattress. She alleged to police that Assange continued to make advances towards her every day.

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court after being arrested and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy earlier this week

On Wednesday August 18, she alleged hed approached her, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her.

The arrest warrant subsequently prepared by Swedish police lists three specific allegations against Assange, which contributed to a charge of sexual assault against Miss A.

The first is of unlawful coercion  meaning he took a consensual encounter too far. The second is he deliberately broke a condom during sex after she insisted he use one. Thirdly, he was accused of having deliberately molested her days later.

Assange has of course never allowed himself to face these allegations in a Swedish court, and the crime has a five-year statute of limitations which passed in 2015, meaning hes unlikely to face trial for it.

However, writing about Miss As claims several years later, he declared their night together was unremarkable. He added she seemed totally happy at a party the next day. Photos of them together at the event have been published by supporters of Assange, who believe they undermine Miss As claims.

That day was also when Miss W came into the picture, meeting the Wikileaks founder at the aforementioned seminar. She would later tell police how she had become fascinated with Assange, a man she considered brave and admirable. She spent weeks reading about him, before apparently obtaining a press pass to the event as a photographer.

Dressing to catch his eye, she chose a shocking-pink jumper and sat in the front row. Assange, dressed in grey jeans and a suit jacket, spoke for 90 minutes.

What then unfolded has been compared to the meeting of a groupie and a pop icon. Waiting outside the venue to meet her idol, Miss W approached a member of his entourage, who invited her to join them for lunch at a local eatery called Bistro Boheme. There she struck up conversation with Assange who invited her to spend the afternoon with him.

After a short walk, she told police, theyd decided to visit a cinema. Watching the film did not appear to be on Assanges mind: hed instead spent his time kissing her and putting his hands inside her clothing. Walking in a park afterwards, hes said to have declared you are very attractive to me. When they parted, the duo swapped numbers.

They didnt speak again until Monday, 48 hours later, when Assange agreed to meet her in the evening and suggested they spend the night at her flat.

Miss W wanted to go to a hotel, but he insisted on coming to her home, in the city of Enkoping a 50-mile train ride away. Star-struck, she bought his 10 train ticket because he had no cash (and said he didnt want to use his credit card in case his movement was being tracked).

At Miss Ws home, she told police, they moved to the bedroom and started to have sex. However Assange did not want to wear a condom, causing her to move away because she had not wanted unprotected intercourse. The Wikileaks founder had then lost interest, she alleged, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had consensual sex when he agreed unwillingly to use a condom.

Early the next morning, things took an ugly turn: Miss W says she went to buy breakfast before returning to bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him on top of her, having sex.

And when she asked if he was wearing a condom, he said no. Miss Ws police statement claimed she responded You better not have HIV and he answered: Of course not.

In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. This crime has a ten-year statute of limitations, meaning Miss Ws allegations could still see him facing trial. Assange has vigorously denied they had unconsensual sex.

When details of her police complaint leaked several years ago, he wrote that their encounter had ended amicably: She had kissed him on the cheek and asked him to call soon. However like many a sexual predator, Assange of course didnt call.

A few days later, things escalated in the most unlikely fashion: Miss W called the office of Miss A, whom she had briefly met at the seminar, to discuss future political collaborations. In the course of their conversation, the duo realised to their anger that they had both fallen victim to Assanges charm, within a few days of each other.

After a brief discussion, they agreed to contact Assange and asked him to take a test for STDs. However, for reasons that are unclear, he refused.

Miss W seemed especially anxious about the possibility of HIV and pregnancy. Miss A recalled her being deeply upset.

It was in this febrile state the two women, who had previously barely known each other, decided to take a momentous step which would have ramifications few could have predicted  a few days later, they walked into a police station, and sat down to tell their stories.
Chicago's top prosecutor, Cook County state's attorney Kim Foxx said Friday that she has asked the county's inspector general to review how her office handled Empire actor Jussie Smollett's criminal case.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and others have criticized the decision by Kim Foxx's office to drop charges against Smollett accusing him of filing a false report to police that he was the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack in January.

'Ensuring that I and my office have the community's trust and confidence is paramount to me, which is why I invited an independent review of this matter,' Foxx said in a statement. 'I welcome this investigation and pledge my full cooperation and the cooperation of my office.'

Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx, pictured, has asked the county's inspector general to review how her office handled Empire actor Jussie Smollett's criminal case

Dueling protesters clash over Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx's office's decision to drop all charges against Empire actor Jussie Smollett earlier this month, in Chicago

Foxx said that she pledges her 'full cooperation' and welcomes the investigation from Cook County Inspector General Patrick Blanchard, pictured

A grand jury indicted the actor on 16 counts in early March. Foxx's office dropped the charges about three weeks later, giving no detailed explanation for why the case was abandoned. Smollett has maintained his innocence and insisted he was attacked.

The Chicago Tribune first reported Foxx's request Friday and reported Cook County Independent Inspector General Patrick Blanchard set a letter to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and other county leaders informing them of Foxx's request.

Blanchard wrote that Foxx asked for a review 'of the circumstances surrounding the resolution of criminal charges formerly pending against Jussie Smollett.' He wrote that his office would proceed with the review.

The city of Chicago filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in Cook County court against Smollett, who is black and gay, in a bid to recoup the costs of investigating his claim that masked men beat him Jan. 29 in Chicago, shouted slurs and wrapped a rope around his neck.

The suit comes after Smollett refused the city's demand that he repay it $130,106. A spokeswoman for Smollett's legal team said they had no comment on the lawsuit or Foxx's request for the inspector general review.

The city of Chicago is suing Empire actor Jussie Smollett, pictured, to recoup the cost of investigating his report of a racist, anti-gay attack. City lawyers filed a civil lawsuit, Thursday, April 11, 2019, days after Smollett refused a city demand that he pay more than $130,000 to reimburse Chicago
A schoolgirl claims her principal forced her to cover up her MAGA hat and t-shirt leaving her 'ashamed and embarrassed' at what she said was just a patriotic display.

Ciretta Mackenzie, a freshman at Epping High School, said she was forced to borrow a friend's shirt after she was told that her 'Make America Great Again' apparel was inappropriate for the school's 'America Pride Day' celebrations.

'It's just a shirt, and it only says 'Trump: Make America Great Again,' the schoolgirl from New Hampshire told Boston25.

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Ciretta Mackenzie, a freshman at Epping High School, said she was forced to borrow a friend's shirt after she was told that her 'Make America Great Again' apparel was inappropriate for the school's 'America Pride Day' celebrations

The school's principal Brian Earnest said the red hat and T-shirt violated the school's dress code policy, which according to Mackenzie, doesn't say anything about political clothing

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'It doesn't say anything like 'build a wall,' so I don't get how it could be offensive, how it could be disrespectful,' Mackenzie added.

The school's principal Brian Earnest said the red hat and T-shirt violated the school's dress code policy, which according to Mackenzie, doesn't say anything about political clothing.

'If it said no political gear, I could understand why it was dress code, but it didn't say that, so I feel like I'm obligated to have my own opinion and other people can have theirs,' she said. 'We don't have to agree, that fine.'

Ciretta said that she was ashamed after being asked to cover up and was upset by some classmates' comments.

The Epping High School superintendent said two students were asked to change what they were wearing that day

'Some kids are making [me] feel like I'm uneducated and a bad kid for believing what I want to believe, and that's not right,' she added to WFXT.

She added that she felt 'upset' and 'surprised' after the principal told her that Trump is a controversial president so he didn't want to make people feel uncomfortable.

The teen responded that Trump is still the President.

The Epping High School superintendent said two students were asked to change what they were wearing that day.

'The school was celebrating 'America Pride Day' as part of its spirit month.

Superintendent Valerie McKenny said the incident was under investigation.
China's richest man has praised the long hours expected of workers in high tech companies as a 'huge blessing' for young workers.

Jack Ma, founder of online marketplace Alibaba, defended the company's '996' work schedule - which expects employees to submit to 12-hour shifts between 9am and 9pm during a six-day week.

Of the 168 hours in a week, Alibaba employees are expected to spend at least 72 of them while in work.

China's richest man said his employees were 'lucky' to be working 72 hours a week

Ma was discussing the perceived lack of work-life balance among Chinese high tech workers.

He told employees: 'I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing,' he said in remarks posted on the company's WeChat account.

'Many companies and many people don't have the opportunity to work 996. If you don't work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?'

The issue has fuelled an online debate and protests on some coding platforms, where workers have swapped examples of excessive overtime demands at some companies.

Ma, a former English teacher who co-founded Alibaba in 1999 and has become one of China's richest people, said he and early employees regularly worked long hours.

'In this world, everyone wants success, wants a nice life, wants to be respected,' Ma said.

'Let me ask everyone, if you don't put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?'

Ma referred to the tech industry today where some people are without jobs, or working at companies in search of revenue or facing closure.

'Compared to them, up to this day, I still feel lucky, I don't regret (working 12 hour days), I would never change this part of me,' he said.

Staff at Alibaba are expected work between 9am and 9pm six days a week. He said the 72-hour week was 'a huge blessing'

This month activists on Microsoft's GitHub, the online code repository site, launched a project titled '996.ICU' where tech workers listed Alibaba among the companies ranked as having some of the worst working conditions.

On Thursday, an opinion piece published in a state newspaper argued that 996 violated China's Labor Law, which stipulates that average work hours cannot exceed 40 hours a week.

'Creating a corporate culture of 'encouraged overtime' will not only not help a business' core competitiveness, it might inhibit and damage a company's ability to innovate,' the unnamed author wrote in the People's Daily.
Video footage has emerged of a college student arguing that if a baby is born alive after a botched abortion, the child should be denied healthcare and allowed to die.

Pro-life activist Kristan Hawkins was speaking at Boston College, a private Jesuit-run university, last month when the pro-choice female student made the remark during a Q&A session.

'They were performing an abortion,' the unidentified student said of the hypothetical scenario. 'So, before that, they've already determined that it's not a baby.'

The remark comes amid renewed debate over late-term abortion, and echoes January comments made by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on the subject of babies born alive during botched abortions.

'They were performing an abortion,' the unidentified student said of the hypothetical scenario. 'So, before that, they've already determined that it's not a baby'

The exchange came during a Q&A session on March 19, when Kristan Hawkins (above) was speaking at the invitation of Boston College's Pro-Life Club

The exchange came during a Q&A session on March 19, when Hawkins was speaking at the invitation of Boston College's Pro-Life Club.

Hawkins is the president of Students for Life of America and has toured several universities speaking on the theme of 'Lies Feminists Tell'.

'Do you think that children that are apprehended at the border that are in U.S. government caredo you think babies who are going to die should be resuscitated and given care?' Hawkins asked the student.

'Yes,' the student replied.

'Okay. Do you believe that a baby who is born alive during an abortion at Planned Parenthood should get care?' Hawkins followed up.

The student replied, 'No.'

When Hawkins pressed the student on the difference between the two scenarios, the student said that a baby that survived an abortion was 'not a baby'.

Hawkins is the president of Students for Life of America and has toured several universities speaking on the theme of 'Lies Feminists Tell'

Although most of the students who asked questions during the Q&A criticized Hawkins, with one even rudely asking if she had ever had an orgasm, some were supportive of her pro-life stance, according to an account in student newspaper The Heights.

In recent months, the abortion debate has been renewed over speculation that a changing Supreme Court could overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, reverting jurisdiction over abortion laws back to individual states.

Ohio this week became the latest state to enact a 'heartbeat' bill, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected by ultrasound.

Anti-abortion activists hope that court challenges to these new state laws will go before the Supreme Court and establish a new precedent.

Meanwhile, New York in January passed a sweeping law legalizing abortion up until the moment of birth, and allowing non-doctors to perform abortions.

Hawkins and other pro-life protesters clash with pro-choice protesters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 23, 2016 in Washington, DC

Around the same time, Virginia Governor Northam, a Democrat, defended a similar bill in his state.

Northam, a pediatric doctor, described a hypothetical situation where a severely deformed newborn infant could be left to die.

He said that if a woman were to desire an abortion as she's going into labor, the baby would be delivered and then 'resuscitated if that's what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue' between doctors and the mother.

Late-term abortions are an emotionally charged subject on all sides of the issue, although they are relatively rare.

A 2014 CDC study found that 1.3 per cent of abortions in the U.S. occur during or after the 21st week of gestation.
Four men have been arrested after a group of around 30 immigrants were seen getting into the back of a van from a boat, police said.

Officers were called to the seaside town of Newlyn in Cornwall just before 7.10am today after reports that the group had got into the van.

The town was put under lockdown and witnesses said they saw more than 20 police vehicles and a helicopter desperately trying to track down the immigrants.

Four men have been arrested after a group of around 30 immigrants were seen getting into the back of a van from a boat in Newlyn, Cornwall

The town was put under lockdown and witnesses said they saw more than 20 police vehicles and a helicopter desperately trying to track down the immigrants

The van and another vehicle were stopped by Devon and Cornwall Police on the M5 near junction 28 just after 9am.

Around 30 immigrants, believed to be Vietnamese, were located in the van.

Witness Clive Oxley said: 'There were 32 of them who ran aboard by the jetty, clambered over the fences and ran off.

'The police have stopped all fishing boats going out to sea. There was one dinghy that went back out to sea with about six people on it.'

A van and another vehicle were stopped by Devon and Cornwall Police on the M5 near junction 28 just after 9am and around 30 immigrants, believed to be Vietnamese, were found inside

Mr Oxley added: 'Everyone here is really shocked. There's police everywhere and people in high-vis jackets and they have shut the whole of the front of the harbour.

'There's armed police and armed response vehicles'

A force spokesman said: 'Four men have been arrested on suspicion of offences under the Modern Day Slavery Act.

'Three men have been taken into police custody. One of the men has been taken to hospital and remains under police guard.

'The National Crime Agency, UK Border Agency and other relevant partner agencies have been informed.

'Inquires remain ongoing at this time in Newlyn and Cullompton.'

Anyone who witnessed the incident or has information about it is asked to contact Devon and Cornwall Police on 101, quoting log 93 of April 12.
A Missouri woman who is in jail for helping to kill her Munchhausen-suffering mother after being poisoned and forced to be wheelchair-bound for years is now engaged.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 27, got engaged earlier this year to a man she met when he started writing to her in prison.

Blanchard - whose story is the subject of Hulu's The Act - is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence after she admitted to planning her mother Clauddine 'Dee Dee' Blanchard's 2015 death.

She enlisted the help of her boyfriend at the time, who she met on a Christian dating website, to kill her mother after realizing she wasn't disabled or terminally ill like Clauddine had made out her entire life.

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, 27, got engaged earlier this year to a man she met when he started writing to her in prison after she was jailed over her mother's 2015 murder

Despite being behind bars, Blanchard's family friend Fancy Macelli says the young woman has since found love but keeps her relationship quiet.

'She keeps him very private,' Fancy told In Touch.

'We're not going to release his name or anything like that, but she does have a fiance. That's something she wouldn't have ever been able to do with her mom, be engaged.'

Blanchard's fiance visits her in prison frequently and they speak multiple times a week.

The newly engaged couple met via a prison pen pal program, according to Fancy.

'He started writing her and then visited her,' Fancy said. 'They just grew to have a relationship.

'They're taking it slow. They don't know exactly what they're going to do when she gets out. It's a long way down the road, obviously, so things can change.

'He does have a relationship with her step-mom and her dad. They're actually going to meet him next month, but they've been communicating with him for a long time through phone calls, emails, all of that. So he is involved in their lives, it's not just, 'Oh, he's there for Gypsy'.'

Clauddine, who suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, had led everyone to believe that her daughter was a terminally ill teenager with the mind of a seven-year-old

Clauddine even made her daughter shave her head so it appeared as if she lost her hair through chemotherapy. Gypsy is pictured above wearing a wig

Blanchard's fiance started writing to her in prison after her story was the subject of a HBO documentary - Mommy Dead and Dearest - that aired in 2017.

She is serving a 10-year sentence for plotting to kill her mother, while her accomplice Nicholas Godejohn was given a life sentence.

Her mother was found stabbed to death in June 2015 in her Springfield, Missouri bed.

Clauddine, who suffered from Munchausen by proxy syndrome, had led everyone to believe that her daughter was a terminally ill teenager with the mind of a seven-year-old who suffered from muscular dystrophy, leukemia and other ailments.

Blanchard, who was arrested with Godejohn just two days after Clauddine's body was found, walked into her first court appearance on her own two feet - much to the shock of those who thought she was wheelchair-bound.

Clauddine had moved to Springfield when Gypsy was a child, claiming they had fled from Hurricane Katrina.

The two lived in a home built by Habitat for Humanity, and Clauddine was a full-time caretaker for Blanchard, claiming the girl suffered from ailments including chromosomal defects, epilepsy, sleep apnea, leukemia, and severe asthma.

Blanchard - whose story is the subject of Hulu's The Act - is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence after she admitted to planning her mother's murder

Blanchard is serving a 10-year sentence for plotting to kill her mother, while her accomplice Nicholas Godejohn was given a life sentence

Clauddine's ruse fooled even doctors, who doled out prescriptions and performed surgeries on Blanchard. The mother also accepted financial donations and the two went on charity-funded trips to Disney World.

She had barred her daughter from attending school after kindergarten.

Clauddine even made her daughter shave her head so it appeared as if she lost her hair through chemotherapy.

Blanchard eventually met Nicholas Godejohn on ChristianDatingForFree.com and started an online relationship for two years.

When she opened up to her boyfriend about her mother's behavior, they came up with a plot to murder Clauddine so they could be together.

Godejohn slipped into the house and allegedly stabbed Clauddine while Blanchard hid in the bathroom. The couple then took 'several thousand dollars' from a safe in the home and spent some time in Springfield following her death.

Surveillance footage at local businesses showed Gypsy wearing different disguises and walking on her own before they took a bus 565 miles to Wisconsin.

A shocking Facebook status from Clauddine and Gypsy's shared account on June 14, 2015, read: 'That B**** is dead', which prompted alarmed neighbors to call police.

A second, more disturbing post, read: 'I - SLASHED THAT **** AND RAPED HER SWEET INNOCENT DAUGHTER. ..HER SCREAM WAS SOOOO LOUD LOL.'

The Facebook posts were traced to Godejohn's house in Big Bend, Wisconsin, and the two were arrested on June 16, 2015.
Euro MPs are to splurge 250,000 on bespoke cushions for their chairs after complaining that they are not comfortable enough for the average two hours a day that they sit in them.

Documents reveal that MEPs want the ergonomic padding, paid for in part by UK taxpayers, so they do not strain themselves in the European Parliament while reaching to push buttons when voting on legislation.

MEPs held a debate on the issue after carrying out an ergonomic study on the chairs they use in the parliament chamber and committee rooms in the French city of Strasbourg  where they sit once a month.

MEPs will likely receive new cushions for their seats at the European Parliament building in Strasbourg after next month's elections - although Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman has described it as a waste of money despite agreeing the chairs are uncomfortable

The European Parliament sits in Strasbourg once a month, which has also been a cause of major consternation among critics of the institution because of the cost of relocating to the French city

Liberal Democrat MEP Catherine Bearder led the call for the cushions, which will be fitted to the already-padded dark blue leather chairs after next months European elections.

These chairs, in which we sit for hours at a time in meetings whilst voting, were not designed for women or smaller MEPs in general, she said. We have chosen the cost effective option, which is to add ergonomic cushions to the chairs.

This means that smaller MEPs will no longer strain their backs while reaching over the large desks during voting sessions.

But Tory MEP David Campbell Bannerman criticised the plan, saying MEPs should be concentrating on delivering Brexit. It is true that the current chairs are like Daleks without the manoeuvrability, he said. But we should be concentrating on leaving the EU and saving billions in membership fees, not getting more comfy while still here.

He said MEPs sit in their chairs for about two hours a day on average when the parliament is in Strasbourg.

Minutes of a debate devoted to the subject also reveal that the parliament wants new wheels attached to the chairs to make them easier to move.

An EU parliamentary source said the overall cost will be around 300,000 (258,984).

According to a document, the current chairs are protected by French intellectual property rights, meaning MEPs cannot replace anything on them that would alter their appearance. The cushions will be bespoke and it is likely that as well as giving more padding for MPs bottoms they will provide a head and back rest. They will probably be attached with Velcro.

The document states that the French intellectual property rights protecting the chair design expire in 2024 and that after that the new ergonomic chairs could be replaced by more comfortable chairs.

It says a test phase received a positive reaction and that the cushions should be available to the 751 MEPs.

The parliament in Strasbourg has been branded a travelling circus because it sees thousands of Brussels officials and MEPs travel to the French city for a once-monthly sitting at a cost to taxpayers of around 150million a year.

It involves 2,500 boxes of material being moved from Brussels to Strasbourg, where MEPs stay in hotels and dine out at taxpayers expense. The decision to have a second seat was taken to appease France.

An EU parliament spokesman said: The chairs are indeed very heavy and unwieldy and difficult to pull out from their desks and they have seats and backrests straight as planks.
But a friend of the Swedish woman  referred to as Miss A (pictured)  told the Mail: 'It really is not "all about WikiLeaks".'

A woman allegedly sexually assaulted by Julian Assange has issued a stinging rebuke to Diane Abbott.

The Labour frontbencher was accused of downplaying the allegations against the WikiLeaks founder.

Miss Abbott insisted in a TV interview that Assange had been dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy over cyber crime, saying: 'It's all about WikiLeaks.'

But a friend of the Swedish woman  referred to as Miss A  told the Mail: 'It really is not "all about WikiLeaks".'

The friend added: 'She says it is about him treating people like s***, especially women.'

Assange had been in hiding for seven years after skipping bail in 2012 to dodge being extradited to Sweden over allegations he raped one woman and sexually assaulted another in 2010.

But Miss Abbott and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called his arrest on Thursday politically motivated.

In a BBC interview, Miss Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary, insisted he was targeted because he had embarrassed the American military.

Critics queued up to accuse Miss Abbott of 'ignoring allegations of sexual violence'  and even a Labour shadow minister branded her intervention 'disgraceful'.

The Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has been blasted as she is accused of downplaying allegations against Julian Assange

The woman's friend told the Mail that treating Assange as a political victim was 'not helping the cause  no matter how important', and suggested Miss Abbott was aiding the WikiLeaks boss whitewashing the claims against him.

They said: 'He has, all the time, wanted to draw attention away from his own failures and has used the importance of WikiLeaks to wash his own name. It has been painful to watch.'

Vicky Atkins, the minister for women, said: 'Diane Abbott's dismissal of rape charges speaks volumes about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on Thursday

'It's astonishing that the party which prides itself on fighting for women's rights is so willing to ignore allegations of sexual violence.'

Even a Labour shadow minister admitted: 'Championing Julian Assange is the last thing we should be doing. It is disgraceful. Jeremy and Diane seem to have a blind spot.'

Miss A accused Assange of sexual assault in 2010. She claims Assange violently forced himself upon her after an initial consensual encounter.

The five-year statute of limitations on her allegation has passed.

The lawyer of another of Assange's alleged victims, referred to as Miss W in court documents, has said they will 'do all we can' to reopen the investigation in Sweden.

Assange, 47, denies assaulting the two women. Because he spent so long absconding from justice, the sexual assault allegation was dropped in 2017 because of legal time limits.

But the rape allegation can be re-opened any time before August next year, and Swedish prosecutors are now deciding whether to renew Assange's extradition request.

Assange inside his fetid lair: Revealed, the full squalid horror that drove embassy staff to finally kick him out

by Simon Walters for the Daily Mail

The full scale of disgusting personal hygiene, arrogance and paranoia that brought Julian Assanges seven years holed up in an embassy to an end can be revealed today.

Exclusive photographs seen by the Daily Mail show how the WikiLeaks founder mounted dirty protests at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Just weeks ago, he left soiled underpants stuffed down the lavatory in a fit of rage. On other occasions he left excrement smeared on the wall. He defied pleas not to constantly leave an electric stove on, and ignored repeated warnings not to leave half-eaten meals and unwashed dishes in the kitchen.

Staff grew so exasperated they even threw out his pet cat after he failed to clean up its mess. They also feared he had hidden a camera in its collar to spy on them.

He ignored repeated warnings not to leave half-eaten meals and unwashed dishes in the kitchen

Standing in the bathroom defiled by Assange just weeks ago, Ecuadors UK Ambassador Jaime Marchan said: When Assange wanted to be unpleasant he put excrement on the walls and underwear with excrement in the lavatory. We had to remind him to flush the toilet and clean the dishes. He had to be reminded of normal standards of behaviour all the time. He would always leave the cooker on.

Mr Marchan, 72, a distinguished lifelong diplomat, is relieved to be rid of Assange. The asylum system is to protect innocent people. [He] abused it. He is a predator.

Just weeks ago, he left soiled underpants stuffed down the lavatory in a fit of rage. Pictured is his bathroom which he also smeared his excrement across

This newspaper is the first to have access to the embassy since Assange was dragged out of hiding after the Ecuadorian government ended his asylum status.

He now faces being jailed in the US for computer hacking, and the threat of legal action in Sweden for alleged rape.

Mr Marchan took the Mail on a tour of the embassy  and explained how he finally lost patience with his squalid and spiteful tenant.

The soiled underpants incident occurred in January  and when told to clean it up, Assange is said to have replied: I wont clean it. I wont! The embassys cleaner had to do it instead.

Mr Marchan wrote a formal letter of complaint to Assanges lawyers informing them he had broken a hygiene protocol drawn up because of his dirty habits.

But they wrote back saying he had had a stomach sickness and their photo was proof the embassy had infringed his privacy.

Staff grew so exasperated they even threw out his pet cat after he failed to clean up its mess. They also feared he had hidden a camera in its collar to spy on them

The tour also showed Assange was not as cooped up as it seemed. While he couldnt go out, he had the run of virtually the entire embassy  which is the size of a luxurious Belgravia apartment. Unable to exercise outside, Assange caused mayhem by skateboarding down the central polished wooden corridor and playing football like a rowdy teenager.

Ecuadors UK Ambassador Jaime Marchan, 72, said: When Assange wanted to be unpleasant he put excrement on the walls and underwear with excrement in the lavatory. We had to remind him to flush the toilet and clean the dishes'

He demanded  and got  a bigger bedroom, though Mr Marchan says it was partly for vanity. The one he bagged had a balcony where Assange made speeches to Left-wing fans on the pavement.

His bedroom is now sealed off pending an investigation by the authorities. Mr Marchan added: He played loud music because he said it stopped anyone listening in. It was impossible for us to work. The mistrust was mutual. Assanges cat was removed because he couldnt be bothered to look after it, though the ambassador added: It could go in every room  we were suspicious it may carry a device ... to spy on us.

Mr Marchan is full of praise for how Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan helped the embassy remove its graceless tenant. Without Sir Alan, we could not possibly have done this.

He says that with hindsight, it was a mistake to give Assange refuge in the first place. He said: We have proved Ecuador respects human rights but he didnt comply with his obligations. He is very selfish. I told him, One day youll realise how much Ecuador did to protect you.

GUY ADAMS: Telling their stories, the women who say Julian Assange tricked them into sex without protection within just days of each other

by Guy Adams for the Daily Mail

Back in August 2010, a newly-famous Julian Assange touched down in Sweden on a ten-day visit to promote and raise money for his suddenly modish non-profit outfit, Wikileaks.

At 39, the eccentric former computer hacker might not have been exactly young. But he was very much free and single, having recently started to discover the romantic perks that his rock-star status could afford.

Weeks earlier, Assange had collaborated with a number of news outlets to publish the first tranche of more than 400,000 leaked military and diplomatic cables, detailing years worth of US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The coup had turned this socially-awkward Australian into a sort of a folk hero among liberals, rendering him irresistible to a certain demographic of Left-leaning young women. And Assange seemed happy to take full advantage.

Julian Assange delivers a Wikileaks seminar in Sweden in 2010 while Miss W (foreground with glasses) sits in the audience

On his very first night in Stockholm, he attempted to seduce the English girlfriend of an American journalist whod been invited to dine with Wikileaks activists at a Lebanese restaurant called Beirut.

Over the course of the ensuing seven days, Assange would enjoy two further romantic forays, seducing a pair of young women in turn, both of whom would walk into police stations days later to accuse him of sex crimes.

Each of the two, Miss A and Miss W complained that initially consensual encounters with him had suddenly turned darker, ending in them being forced into unprotected sex in circumstances they found uncomfortable.

Their testimony set in train a series of events that would see Assange spend the next two years in British courts, fighting extradition to Sweden where he was wanted for questioning, followed by another seven hiding inside Londons Ecuadorean Embassy.

Assange, who has always protested his innocence, variously accused the two women of being notorious radical feminists who had got into a tizzy. So who are they and what were the disputed events that spawned their now-notorious complaints?

Miss A is an experienced political activist and equal rights campaigner. In her early 30s at the time of the alleged incidents, she was involved in inviting Assange to attend a seminar entitled How Truth is the First Victim of War and hosted by the Christian wing of Swedens Social Democratic party.

Planning to be out of town visiting family when he arrived mid-week she generously offered him use of her flat in Sodermalm, Stockholm. Assange, who often dossed down on the sofas of supporters, accepted.

On Friday August 13, she returned to town and went out for dinner with Assange, before returning to the one-bedroom property where they were both to spend the night before the seminar. Her statement to police alleges they then sat down to drink tea. It was at this point he began stroking her legs. They embraced, after which he began pulling off her clothes.

Miss As statement claims she initially attempted to put clothes back on, because the situation was going too quickly for her liking. But she says that Assange ripped them off again, breaking a necklace in the process.

After deciding to consent to sex, she then attempted to reach for a condom. However Assange held her arms and pinned her legs to prevent her grabbing it, the statement claims.

Eventually, he agreed to wear protection. However during the ensuing moments, she felt him do something to it with his hands. It was only afterwards that she realised it had been torn. She believes deliberately.

Despite her experience, Assanges host allowed him to remain in her flat for much of the remainder of his visit. Some nights, she decamped to a friends. On others, she slept on a mattress. She alleged to police that Assange continued to make advances towards her every day.

On Wednesday August 18, she alleged hed approached her, naked from the waist down, and rubbed himself against her.

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court after being arrested and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy earlier this week

The arrest warrant subsequently prepared by Swedish police lists three specific allegations against Assange, which contributed to a charge of sexual assault against Miss A.

The first is of unlawful coercion  meaning he took a consensual encounter too far. The second is he deliberately broke a condom during sex after she insisted he use one. Thirdly, he was accused of having deliberately molested her days later.

Assange has of course never allowed himself to face these allegations in a Swedish court, and the crime has a five-year statute of limitations which passed in 2015, meaning hes unlikely to face trial for it.

However, writing about Miss As claims several years later, he declared their night together was unremarkable. He added she seemed totally happy at a party the next day. Photos of them together at the event have been published by supporters of Assange, who believe they undermine Miss As claims.

That day was also when Miss W came into the picture, meeting the Wikileaks founder at the aforementioned seminar. She would later tell police how she had become fascinated with Assange, a man she considered brave and admirable. She spent weeks reading about him, before apparently obtaining a press pass to the event as a photographer.

Dressing to catch his eye, she chose a shocking-pink jumper and sat in the front row. Assange, dressed in grey jeans and a suit jacket, spoke for 90 minutes.

What then unfolded has been compared to the meeting of a groupie and a pop icon. Waiting outside the venue to meet her idol, Miss W approached a member of his entourage, who invited her to join them for lunch at a local eatery called Bistro Boheme. There she struck up conversation with Assange who invited her to spend the afternoon with him.

After a short walk, she told police, theyd decided to visit a cinema. Watching the film did not appear to be on Assanges mind: hed instead spent his time kissing her and putting his hands inside her clothing. Walking in a park afterwards, hes said to have declared you are very attractive to me. When they parted, the duo swapped numbers.

They didnt speak again until Monday, 48 hours later, when Assange agreed to meet her in the evening and suggested they spend the night at her flat.

Miss W wanted to go to a hotel, but he insisted on coming to her home, in the city of Enkoping a 50-mile train ride away. Star-struck, she bought his 10 train ticket because he had no cash (and said he didnt want to use his credit card in case his movement was being tracked).

At Miss Ws home, she told police, they moved to the bedroom and started to have sex. However Assange did not want to wear a condom, causing her to move away because she had not wanted unprotected intercourse. The Wikileaks founder had then lost interest, she alleged, and fallen asleep. However, during the night, they had both woken up and had consensual sex when he agreed unwillingly to use a condom.

Early the next morning, things took an ugly turn: Miss W says she went to buy breakfast before returning to bed and falling asleep beside Assange. She had awoken to find him on top of her, having sex.

And when she asked if he was wearing a condom, he said no. Miss Ws police statement claimed she responded You better not have HIV and he answered: Of course not.

In Sweden, having sex with an unconscious, drunk or sleeping person can lead to a rape conviction punishable by up to six years in prison. This crime has a ten-year statute of limitations, meaning Miss Ws allegations could still see him facing trial. Assange has vigorously denied they had unconsensual sex.

When details of her police complaint leaked several years ago, he wrote that their encounter had ended amicably: She had kissed him on the cheek and asked him to call soon. However like many a sexual predator, Assange of course didnt call.

A few days later, things escalated in the most unlikely fashion: Miss W called the office of Miss A, whom she had briefly met at the seminar, to discuss future political collaborations. In the course of their conversation, the duo realised to their anger that they had both fallen victim to Assanges charm, within a few days of each other.

After a brief discussion, they agreed to contact Assange and asked him to take a test for STDs. However, for reasons that are unclear, he refused.

Miss W seemed especially anxious about the possibility of HIV and pregnancy. Miss A recalled her being deeply upset.

It was in this febrile state the two women, who had previously barely known each other, decided to take a momentous step which would have ramifications few could have predicted  a few days later, they walked into a police station, and sat down to tell their stories.
A New York mother has been left outraged after she was slapped with a $115 fine for breastfeeding her baby while her car was parked in a commercial zone.

The incident occurred Thursday when Guillermina Rodriguez, 30, pulled over on a midtown Manhattan street to tend to her three-week old daughter who was crying in the backseat.

Rodriguez was in the midst of feeding her infant, Eliana Torres, when the NYPD traffic officer approached her Toyota SVU and issued a ticket.

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Guillermina Rodriguez (pictured) has slammed a New York traffic cop after he issued her with a ticket for breastfeeding her baby while parked in a commercial zone in Manhattan

Three-week-old Eliana Torres began crying in the backseat while her mom was driving through midtown Manhattan

Clearly shocked by the incident, the mom immediately took out her cell phone and began filming as the officer walked away.

It appeared the cop may have been getting ready to move her vehicle, with a tow truck seen directly in front of the car.

Sitting in the back seat, Rodriguez slammed the man on camera while continuing to feed her baby.

Enraged by the insensitive traffic officer, Rodriguez whipped out her cell phone to slam the officer while she was still breastfeeding

Rodriguez's recording the aftermath of the incident, which shows her car parked alongside a busy street

'I'm here, breastfeeding my child, and he still gave me a ticket,' she can be heard saying.

'Yep, breastfeeding my baby and he still gave me a ticket. Very nice!'

Rodriguez described the officer as 'insensitive', according to The New York Daily News.

She told the paper that she subsequently contacted a breastfeeding advocacy group and a breastfeeding counselor.

One counselor said Rodriguez should have her $115 ticket thrown out because the situation was an 'emergency'.

The NYPD is reported to be looking into the matter.

Rodriguez contacted a breastfeeding advocacy group and a breastfeeding counselor following the incident
The so-called fan who tackled former professional wrestler Bret Hart to the floor during a WWE Hall of Fame ceremony appeared in court today nursing a heavily marked face.

Zachary Marsden, 26, was pictured leaving Brooklyn Criminal Court after being arraigned on assault charges for his frenzied attack on the 61-year-old ex wrestler, who was in the middle of an acceptance speech when he was dragged to the floor.

Shocking video of the incident shows Marsden pulled from the Barclays Center ring in New York by security who appear to land a flurry of blows on him in retaliation.

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So called fan: Zachary Marsden, 26, was pictured leaving Brooklyn Criminal Court after being arraigned on assault charges for his frenzied charge at the 61-year-old ex wrestler, who was in the middle of an acceptance speech when he was dragged to the floor

Zachary Marden leaves Brooklyn Criminal Court following his appearance on assault charges

Not part of the show: Hart, who was being inducted for the second time - this time as part of the tag team The Hart Foundation along with the late Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart - was standing at the podium alongside Neidhart's daughter when a fan charged him

During his arraignment last Sunday prosecutors revealed that Madsen had told police: 'I just felt like it was the right moment,' when explaining his motives for the incident.

During the hearing at a Brooklyn criminal court a judge issued Bret Hart and WWE security guard Thaddeus Jones orders of protection against Madsen.

The accused, of Lincoln, Nebraska, was held on $1,500 bond on charges of assault and criminal trespassing.

The incident involving Hart occurred when the 61-year-old retired wrestler was being inducted for the second time - this time as part of the tag team The Hart Foundation along with the late Jim 'The Anvil' Neidhart.

Hart was standing at the podium alongside Neidhart's daughter when a fan - allegedly Mardsen - charged at him.

Zachary Marden leaves Brooklyn Criminal Court following his appearance on assault charges

He was promptly subdued by several people who came to Hart's defense on Saturday night and taken into custody by police at the Barclays Center.

A law enforcement official said at the time that a 26-year-old man was in custody and facing criminal charges.

The official was not authorized to discuss to the case and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Several shocked onlookers posted footage of the incident online. The induction event resumed after the fan was taken into custody.

Zachary Madsen, 26, (pictured) appeared in court Sunday facing charges of assault and criminal trespassing

Madsen is accused of tackling both 61-year-old Hart and a WWE security guard during the Hall of Fame ceremony at the Barclay's Center on Saturday

'An over-exuberant fan surpassed our security at ringside and made his way briefly into the ring,' WWE later said in a statement.

'The individual has been turned over to the proper authorities.'

After the individual was arrested, Hart, finished his speech off and appeared to be uninjured.

Bret Hart's brother Owen Hart, a fellow wrestler, died in 1999 after a stunt went wrong and he plunged 78ft to his death during a pay-per-view event in Kansas.
Fisher-Price is recalling nearly 5 million infant sleepers after more than 30 babies rolled over in them and died, since the product was introduced in 2009.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission says that anyone who bought any models of the Fisher-Price Rock 'n Play sleeper should stop using it right away and contact Fisher-Price for a refund.

The USPSC did not reveal the exact causes of the babies' deaths, but said they died after rolling from their stomachs to their backs or sides while unrestrained in the sleeper.

'Since the 2009 product introduction, over 30 infant fatalities have occurred in Rock 'n Play Sleepers, after the infants rolled over while unrestrained, or under other circumstances,' the recall notice said.

US officials and Fisher-Price are asking parents to stop using the Rock 'n Play sleeper immediately and to contact Fisher-Price for a refund after 30 infant deaths in ten years

According to the recall, consumers 'should immediately stop using the product and contact Fisher-Price for a refund or voucher.'

The recall covers about 4.7 million of the sleepers, which cost between $40 and $149.

Last week the CPSC warned people not to use the sleepers for infants older than three months old, since they are more likely to roll over.

A previous warning from Fisher-Price said that older babies that were not buckled into the sleeper had rolled over, fallen out of it and been killed.

As a result, both the USPSC and Fisher-Price warned parents to stop using the rocking crib without restraints once their children were more than three months old.

'This product is deadly and should be recalled immediately,' Dr. Kyle Yasuda, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said at the time.

'When parents purchase a product for their baby or child, many assume that if it's being sold in a store, it must be safe to use. Tragically, that is not the case. There is convincing evidence that the Rock n' Play inclined sleeper puts infants' lives at risk, and CPSC must step up and take immediate action to remove it from stores and prevent further tragedies.'

Safe sleeping is always a top-priority concern for new parents.

Some studies have suggested that babies that sleeping on their backs have a lower chance of dying from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

Doctors advise parents to position babies on their backs in cribs, bassinets or other infant beds, however by the time babies are about three months old, they can roll themselves over - and might do so in their sleep.

A baby sleeping on their stomach can much more easily choke if they regurgitate milk.

More importantly, if they are sleeping somewhere high and without any kind of barrier around them, babies that roll over can fall.

Elevated rockers and bassinets come with warnings that babies should be always strapped in to the seat.

If you or someone you know has this product, you can visit Fisher-Price online at https://service.mattel.com and click on 'Recalls & Safety Alerts' or phone 866-812-6518 from 9am to 6pm ET Monday through Friday for more information.
Four men have been arrested moments after they arrived in Luton Airport on board an international flight.

Airport police arrested the men and handed them over to anti terrorism officers from the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command.

The men, all Sri Lankan nationals, arrived in Luton on Wednesday evening.

They are currently being held in a Bedfordshire police station.

They have not been charged, so remain unidentified.

Scotland Yard confirmed the investigation is currently ongoing.
A gang of six men responsible for a spate of ram raids and ATM robberies across the country have been jailed for a combined 34 years.

The gang stole more than 42,000 over a two-month period by ramming cars into shops and breaking into cash machines with angle grinders, sledgehammers and crowbars.

The men used stolen cars and fake registration numbers to carry out the robberies.

The group's crime wave happened in a diverse number of locations across Britain, including Edinburgh, Liverpool, Birmingham and Northern Wales.

All six men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to burglary and handling stolen goods on Friday in Chester Crown Court.

The Merseyside-based gang rammed through the shop front of a newsagents in Wirral, Merseyside, using a grey BMW and a Kia Sedora on August 22.

The incident was caught on video by the shop's CCTV.

A gang of six men responsible for a spate of ram raids and ATM robberies across the country have been jailed for a combined 34 years

The gang stole more than 42,000 over a two-month period by ramming cars into shops and breaking into cash machines

The video shows one car repeatedly ramming into the shop, before two men run into the gap created by the vehicle.

Bright sparks are seen in the corner of the video, indicating the point where they were trying to break into the ATM with power tools.

After trying to break into the machine for several minutes, they then suddenly flea the scene.

The gang were caught after an investigation by a police unit in Ellesmore Port, Cheshire.

Detective Sergeant Graeme Carvell of Ellesmere Port CID told Cheshire Live that the attacks left many communities terrified.

'With each attack they became more confident and expanded them across the country,' he said

Bright sparks are seen in the video, indicating the point where they were trying to break into the ATM with power tools.

'The services they targeted were recognised as providing important services to our local communities and left a profound effect on the owners and their staff.'

During sentencing, the judge said the group were a 'sophisticated and professional organised crime group'.

Benjamin Sysum (left), 30, got five years and six months jail, while Benjamin Ollerhead (right), 21, of was sentenced to five years jail for the group's crimes, an additional six months for a seperate robbery and a further 18 months for the supply of cocaine

John Kearney, 29, from Old Chester Road in Tranmere, Merseyside received a five-year sentence for the gang's crimes and an additional 18 months for unrelated robberies.

Benjamin Ollerhead, 21, of Prince Edward Street in Birkenhead, Merseyside was sentenced to five years jail for the group's crimes, an additional six months for a seperate robbery and a further 18 months for the supply of cocaine.

Neil Piercy (left), 36, received a five year sentence. Peter Badey (right), 38, will serve five years in jail

Benjamin Sysum, 30, of Victoria Fields in Tranmere, Merseyside, got five years and six months jail.

Mark Fitzgerald, 25, of Violet Road in Claughton, Merseyside, was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Neil Piercy, 36, of Holma Lane in Oxton, Merseyside, received a five year sentence.

Peter Badey, 38, of no fixed address, will serve five years in jail.
President Donald Trump told the head of the Border Patrol he would grand him a pardon if he was jailed for enforcing a policy to keep out immigrants that ran afoul of the law, according to the latest explosive report on Trump's immigration fury.

Trump made the comment to Kevin McAleenan, the head of the U.S. Border Patrol, CNN reported.

Trump told the top border official he 'would pardon him if he ever went to jail for denying US entry to migrants,' according to the report, which said the comment was paraphrased.

President Trump told Border Patrol chief Kevin McAleenan he would pardon him if he were ever jailed for keeping immigrants out of the country, according to an explosive report

Trump dangled the offer on his visit last week to the border town of Calexico, amidst a looming top-level staff shakeup and the president's demands to halt a flood of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers coming up through Mexico.

The network sourced the report to two officials briefed on the exchange, and said it was unclear if it was intended as a joke.

Trump met with McAleenan during a border visit where he railed against immigration and declared the nation 'full.'

Trump designated McAleenan actinghead of the Homeland Security Department after the reported conversation

PARDON HIM: Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (C) and commissioner for Customs and Border Patrol Kevin McAleenan (L) walk with U.S. President Donald Trump during a visit to a section of the border wall in Calexico California, U.S., April 5, 2019

President Trump spoke to McAleenan on a visit where he declared the country 'full'

The president participated in a roundtable on immigration and border security at the U.S. Border Patrol Calexico Station, saying the U.S. is 'full' and can't handle a sustained influx of illegal immigrants and asylum-seekers

Trump made a series of comments at the event where he called for a crackdown, declared an 'emergency,' mentioned those claiming asylum, and otherwise pushed a tough posture.

'The system is full. Can't take you anymore. Whether it's asylum, whether it's anything you want, it's illegal immigration. We can't take you anymore, Trump said. 'We can't take you. Our country is full. Our area is full. The sector is full. Can't take you anymore, I'm sorry. Can't happen. So turn around. Thats the way it is,' he said.

After mentioning the Border Patrol at the event, Trump mentioned backstage conversations, where he expressed a hint of defeatism about the existing laws.

'And I was telling some of the people before: If it's full, there's nothing you can do about it. We have some horrible court decisions that have been made over the years. It's very unfair and that's the way it is.'

'But the system is full. And when it's full, there's nothing you can do. You have to say, "I'm sorry, we can't take you." We've been trying to take people, and I have to disagree with it. We've been trying to take people and you can't do it. You can't do it. So we're going to look at that and we're going to look at it very, very strongly,' Trump said.

Trump named McAleenan Acting head of Homeland Security after he forced out Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen. However another official was in line for the slot and also vacated her post.

As the acting head, he does not need Senate confirmation, although he could be required to testify before Congress on budget matters or as his role as head of the Border Patrol. This would give lawmakers an opportunity to ask him about the exchange under oath.

The report came as Trump confirmed a report that he is considering a plan to send illegal immigrants to 'sanctuary cities,' focusing on political rivals who have criticized his immigration policies.
Darren Carvill, 38, from Maidstone, Kent, admitted 18 fraud charges

A accountant who claimed he was bullied at work decided he would 'go out with a bang' by spending 170,000 of his employers money on a weekend of cocaine and prostitutes.

Accounts worker Darren Carvill stole a total of 260,000 from the car servicing chain Mr Clutch, which he squandered on drug-fuelled sex romps with high class escorts.

The awkward 38-year-old admitted almost bankrupting Mr Clutch by stealing a fortune, because he wanted a 'weekend of madness.'

The head office worker was jailed for two-and-a-half years after admitting 18 fraud charges.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Carvill, of Maidstone, Kent, filed bogus payments to himself after claiming he was bullied at work.

The fraudster said he suffered from low self-esteem and became addicted to a night-life of high-class escort parties being surrounded by 'glamorous' people and drugs, which were believed to be cocaine.

A source told The Sun Carvill attended the Platinum Lace club in London's West End

Carvill's barrister told the court his client had been bullied for most of his life and he spiralled out of control

A sourced told The Sun Carvill attended a club in London called Platinum Lace.

The source said Carvill also went into a room at another club, 'with three escorts, [where] they drank champagne and used cocaine,' adding: 'By the end of the night he had nine or ten escorts in with him.'

Carvill claimed that when he realised he would be caught he wanted to 'go out with a bang' - so spent tens of thousands in just one weekend, partying with prostitutes and drugs.

He revealed he did it because he was suffering from low self-esteem as his barrister James Ross told the court: 'He has had a very unhappy life. For most of his life he has been bullied.

'He has suffered from very low self-esteem and social awkwardness. He says he was a good employee and worked long hours and did good work.

'He says his bosses had shown them nothing but kindness. But other than the owners, there was at least one person who subjected him to ridicule and caused a downward spiral.'

Mr Ross added that Carvill was increasingly unhappy at work and he became more and more addicted to his nightlife, involving an escort agency with sex and drugs and things of that nature.

He said Carvill enjoyed being surrounded by 'glamorous' people and he became more and more addicted to high class escort parties.

Carvill's fraud almost brought the Mr Clutch company - with its numerous franchises - to its knees.

The crooked worker transferred a total of 262,000 from multiple franchises which he disguised as payments to genuine suppliers and traders.

Carvill's barrister said his increasing unhappiness had led to more nightlife

He said initially he planned to repay the money that he was using to deal with his 'sham and unhappy life'.

Mr Ross added: 'He was thinking the money would be paid back but it was deluded thinking that he was merely borrowing the money.'

Sentencing Judge Philip St John-Stevens said Carvill had 'pushed the self-destruct' button but accepted his remorse was genuine.

Earlier prosecutor Bridget Todd told how the fraud left some employees went without pay for five months.

Director Alfred Abdulla said how the company had problems with its VAT and pensions as a result and was 'close to going bankrupt' and face 'many years' repaying money borrowed to pay its bills.

In his victim impact statement, Mr Abdulla said: 'Because of what he did I could not pay two of my suppliers for two months.

'This caused a problem with HMRC and VAT returns were not paid on time.'

He said the company was reported to the Pensions Regulator and his employees 'had no pay for five months because of the defendant's actions.'

Mr Abdulla said Carvill had been regarded 'as a respected and trusted employee' during the four years he worked for the company.

Company bosses also revealed they had to borrow money from family members to avoid going bankrupt.

It was discovered in August that numerous transactions had been made into a bank account for Euro Car Parts, which is a genuine supplier, but this account was not linked to them.

Mr Ross said that initially Carvill stole 40,000 but then repaid 36,500.

By October 2018 he took another 60,000 hoping it could be repaid 'but it was clearly deluded thinking', he added.

Then in August last year, the accounts worker took 72,000, followed by 40,000, 10,000, another 10,000 and 12,000.

Carvill nearly brought the company he worked for to its knees with the money he stole

The court heard the defendant, who paid wages and bills for the company, had previous convictions for ripping off a previous employer.

In 2008 he was given a suspended year jail sentence at Maidstone Crown Court for embezzling a travel company out of money.

Carvill now faces a financial investigation under the Proceeds of Crime Act to try to recover the missing cash.
Late Senator John McCains wife said a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border isnt going to fix issues with human trafficking, which President Donald Trump often cites as a reason for the need for the wall.

"The people that are coming over the border, for the most part, are not trafficked individuals," McCain told NBC News in an interviewed set to air Friday night on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. "It's people within our own walls, in our own borders, so a wall is not going to fix this, but education will and awareness will and strengthening our laws will."

McCain currently serves on the Arizona governors council on human trafficking and works with officials in the state to raise awareness to the issue and amend laws that encompass human trafficking.

She is an outspoken advocate for putting an end to human trafficking and heads the human trafficking initiative at the McCain Institute.

Cindy McCain is an outspoken advocate for putting an end to human trafficking. She spoke at the 10th annual Women in the World program at Lincoln Center on Friday

Cindy says her late husband, former Arizona Senator John McCain, would be 'upset' over the nature of politics today

Earlier this year, Trump declared a national emergency at the border after he did not receive the adequate funding from Congress to construct the border wall. He said the emergency declaration was justified because of the influx in human trafficking practices and drugs entering the U.S. by way of Mexico.

The misnomer in this is that somehow this occurs outside the country, that somehow its another country  not us, ever us, McCain said of those who feel the mass of human trafficking is coming from outside the U.S. Well, it is very much us. The trafficking I'm talking about with you is domestic trafficking, these are domestic individuals being trafficked."

McCain also said her husband would be upset over the current state of the nation and the continued personal attack thrown around between members of Congress.

Hed be so upset over this just because of the tenor, the lack of inaction on many members parts speaking specifically on the members of Congress  and more. I mean, I know him, and he would have been right in the mix saying, No, were going to work together, please, lets not fight. That was who he was, McCain said.

The senators widow added that her husband was a fighter in Congress, but would leave it on the floor.

He loved a good fight, McCain said. But it was never personal with him. He and Ted Kennedy used to fight like cats and dogs on the floor, but they were the best of friends. I wish we could go back to that.

McCain died August 25, 2018, days before his 82nd birthday, after a short fight with brain cancer. He was diagnosed in 2017

McCain's daughter Meghan is a vocal critic of Trump and often challenges him while co-hosting The View

Most recently Meghan said she didn't believe Trump actually cared about National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day. Trump had previously made fun of John McCain for being captured during his service in Vietnam

John McCain died four days before his 82nd birthday on August 25, 2018 following a battle with brain cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2017. He served as a Republican senator to Arizona from 1987 until his death.

McCain deviated from voting with the party and was the final deciding vote that shut down Republicans plans to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump has regularly castigated the move even following the senators death.

Meghan McCain, the daughter of Cindy and John, is a vocal critic of Trump, especially after he made fun of her father for getting captured during his Vietnam service in saying he preferred people who didnt get captured.

Meghan, 34, slammed Trump earlier this week on National Former Prisoner of War Recognition Day, telling him that 'No one believes you care about prisoners of war and people who get captured.
A group of Muslim parents have complained after a four-year-old child came home from school with a book about the lives of a gay couple and their son.

The book, called Daddy's Roommate, includes everyday scenes of the men shaving together in their underwear and resting in bed - with the group saying the content is 'inappropriate for young children, regardless of faith.'

The parents involved meet together in a children's support group in Hounslow, West London and say that their only objection is the child's age.

The row echoes a similar one in Birmingham where an estimated 600 Muslim children were withdrawn from a school in protest against lessons about homosexuality and gender equality.

A spokeswoman for LGBT Muslims slammed the statements from the parents as 'traditional homophobia dressed up as a faith issue'.

The book, called Daddy's Roommate, has been slammed by a children's support group because it shows the lives of a gay couple and their son

The children support group, when interviewed by a BBC Local Democracy Reporter, used words and phrases like 'sin', 'corrupt' and 'the proper way' when discussing the book.

The parents all refused to be named or photographed and they claim that Daddy's Roommate borders on indoctrination, teaching a practice they say their religion forbids.

'We need to stop brainwashing our children'

One father compared Daddy's Roomate to giving a child a book featuring smoking, gun use, or even terrorism.

He said: 'The topic today is why the children are being influenced?

'Just for the sake of LGBT rights - the vast majority of people who just want to live a normal life.

'And a normal life is - outside any faith or any religion - normal life is to have a family, husband, wife, children, living in a family, without any influence on the children from an education they don't need.

'We need to stop brainwashing children.'

The book includes everyday scenes of the men shaving together in their underwear and resting in bed

Although it is not clear how the book ended up in the child's school bag and whether or not it was given to the child by a member of school staff, another mother asked why parents weren't consulted on whether they wanted their children to receive the book, or learn about homosexuality.

The also mother asked why all children were being handed the book, when only a small percentage would grow up to be LGBT.

She said: 'Why don't they designate a special school for children who have gay and lesbian issues?

'I want them to learn the proper way, and if they do change to be gay or lesbian when they're older - the normal way of how people have actually come out - we will have to accept that.'

'Don't corrupt a four-year-old, a five-year-old. God's law is Adam and Eve, and that's how we grew up.'

Another mother said she wouldn't object to the book if it was given to older students, in year five or six, when they had a better understanding of who they are.

She said: 'That's when they need help, or advice, or the support. At four years old, they don't know nothing about the feeling, or the help, or know if they are lesbian or gay.'

The group claim that the content is inappropriate for young children, regardless of faith. A boy, four, allegedly came home from school with the book in his bag

The woman said children today look up everything on their smartphones or computers, and she worried her children would be doing just that.

When asked if it would benefit the child for homosexuality to be normalised before he or she reached puberty, she said no.

Ezra Stripe, a spokesperson for Hidayah, which says it supports and uplifts LGBT Muslims, said it was important for even young children to understand two mothers or two fathers was normal and acceptable.

She said: 'I have a five year old son and he has two mothers. The children in his class need to be aware that's a family set up, whether their parents agree with it or not.'

She said it was wrong to say books like Daddy's Roommate wouldn't encourage children to be gay, because to do so implied there was something wrong with that outcome.

'I don't think teaching a kid about homosexuality will make them homosexual. I do think it's an inbuilt thing but at the same time more people will realise it at a younger age if they have access to information about it.'

'People go through life being miserable and not knowing what's wrong with them, and they get to their mid-40s and realise they're gay.'

One mother said she wouldn't object to the book if it was given to older students, in year five or six, when they had a better understanding of who they are

Around ten per cent of the population are gay or bisexual but only five per cent in the UK are Muslim, Ms Stripe said, making the argument that lessons aren't relevant to most people irrelevant.

She said: 'We still talk about Islam in our classes and consider a religious education as not whole unless it has Islam in it.'

'It's the same argument about racist parents and sexist parents, but school has to teach children to be a functioning member of society.

'It appropriate in a society that accepts LGBT people that children are taught to do that as well.'

Ms Stripe said most interpretations of the Quran do label homosexuality as a sin, but more liberal and modern scholars are finding different interpretations.

She said in the last survey 48 per cent of UK Muslims accepted LGBT people as members of the community.

She thinks in time British Islam will come to embrace LGBT.

The outrage comes after estimated 600 Muslim children were pulled out of Parkfield Community School in Birmingham last month in protest against lessons about homosexuality and gender

One of the mothers at the play group claimed that if she had given a toddler the same book ten or fifteen years ago, serious questions would have been asked at school about what they were exposing them to.

She said: 'They would have called social services on us but now it's okay because the government has said they want to enforce it.'

The front cover of the book states it was published by a programme called No Outsiders.

According to a spokesman for the Department for Education, No Outsiders was developed by the school in question in 2014 to teach about diversity and tolerance and is not considered to be about relationships or sex education.

They said there was no direct link between the No Outsiders programme and the government's introduction of relationships education in primary schools and relationships and sex education in secondary schools.

The school's children joined the campaign against lessons on LGBT lifestyles at a protest last month

When asked about the book, they said: 'Britain is a modern, multi-cultural society, built on the foundations of inclusion, diversity and respect for others. Schools play a key part in this, learning to live together is at the heart of education.'

'A core part of preparing children for life in modern Britain is ensuring they understand the world in which they are growing up.

'For the first time, we are making relationships education - learning how to treat each other with kindness and consideration - compulsory in all primary schools from 2020. This will provide the building blocks for positive relationship.

'There is no reason why teaching children about the diverse society that we live in and the different types of loving, healthy relationships that exist cannot be done in a way that respects everyone's views.'

The department did say relationships education lessons should be delivered in an age appropriate way and after consultation and dialogue with parents - which the group in Hounslow said did not happen.

When the new lessons come into affect in 2020 parents will have the right to request that their child be withdrawn from sex education, but will not be able to withdraw children from relationships education.

The school that supposedly issued the book could not be reached for comment.
A friend of the Swedish woman  referred to as Miss A (pictured)  told the Mail: 'It really is not 'all about WikiLeaks''

Labour was facing a backlash yesterday after Diane Abbott appeared to dismiss the ordeal of women allegedly sexually assaulted by Julian Assange.

Miss Abbott was accused of downplaying the serious claims against the WikiLeaks founder, who was dragged from his Ecuadorian embassy bolthole by eight policemen on Thursday.

Last night, it emerged more than 70 MPs and peers have written to Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Miss Abbott, urging them to 'champion' the possibility of Assange being extradited to Sweden  where the alleged assaults happened  if authorities there request it.

Assange had been in hiding in the embassy for seven years after skipping bail in 2012 to dodge being extradited over the allegations he raped one woman and sexually assaulted another in 2010.

But Miss Abbott and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn have leapt to his defence, calling his arrest politically motivated.

The Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has been blasted as she is accused of downplaying allegations against Julian Assange

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court after being arrested and forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy earlier this week

They were yesterday accused of sacrificing justice for women, with a string of the party's own MPs condemning their stance.

In a BBC interview, Shadow Home Secretary Miss Abbott said of his arrest: 'We all know what this is about  it's not the rape charges.'

She insisted he had only been hauled out of his the Knightsbridge embassy because he had embarrassed the American military, saying: 'It's all about WikiLeaks.'

But a friend of the Swedish woman who claims Assange sexually assaulted her said last night: 'It really is not 'all about WikiLeaks'.'

The friend added: 'She says it is about him treating people like s***, especially women.'

Critics queued up to accuse Miss Abbott of 'ignoring allegations of sexual violence' and even a Labour shadow minister branded her intervention 'disgraceful'.

The Swedish woman's friend told the Mail that treating Assange as a political victim was 'not helping the cause  no matter how important'. She suggested Miss Abbott was helping him whitewash the claims against him, saying: 'He has, all the time, wanted to draw attention away from his own failures and has used the importance of WikiLeaks to wash his own name.'

Peers and MPs write to Javid and Abbott: 'We are writing to request that you do everything you can to champion action that will ensure Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden in the event Sweden make an extradition request. 'This would be so the formal investigation into an allegation of rape can be concluded and, if appropriate, a charge can be made and any trial can take place. 'We do not presume guilt, of course, but we believe due process should be followed and the complainant should see justice be done. 'We urge you to stand with the victims of sexual violence and seek to ensure the case against Mr Assange can now be properly investigated.' Advertisement

Hillary Clinton last night vowed Assange 'will answer for what he's done' as the US prepares espionage charges and a Swedish software developer allegedly linked to WikiLeaks, Ola Bini, was arrested in Ecuador.

But Assange's mother branded UK ministers 'totalitarian thugs'.

Assange, 47, denies raping one woman  known only as Miss W  and sexually assaulting another, known as Miss A.

Because he spent so long absconding from justice, the sexual assault allegation was dropped in 2017 because of legal time limits.

However, the rape allegation can be reopened any time before August next year, and Swedish prosecutors are now deciding whether to renew Assange's extradition request.

Australia-born Assange is being held at Belmarsh high-security prison in southeast London, which has housed some of the country's most notorious inmates including hate preacher Abu Hamza and black-cab rapist John Worboys.

He also faces an extradition request from the US over a computer hacking charge.

Prosecutors could also add further charges relating to WikiLeaks publishing American government dossiers exposing alleged Iraq war crimes.

The Guardian reported that in a letter co-ordinated by Labour's Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips, MPs have called on Mr Javid and Miss Abbott to 'champion action' to ensure that extradition is a possibility should Swedish authorities choose to pursue it.

It is thought it falls to the Home Secretary to determine which extradition request goes first  Sweden's or America's  in the event of competing requests.

Julian Assange arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London on Thursday

On Thursday, Mr Corbyn had tweeted: 'The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British Government.'

Yesterday Miss Abbott was asked three times about the sexual offence claims against Assange on BBC Radio 4. She repeatedly said 'the charges were never brought'.

When it was pointed out that charges could not be brought, because Assange would not go back to Sweden, she said: 'We all know what this is about.

It's not the rape charges, as serious as they are, it is about the WikiLeaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public.'

It triggered a storm of protest. Vicky Atkins, the minister for women, said: 'Diane Abbott's dismissal of rape charges speaks volumes about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.'

Minister James Cleverly said: 'So in Diane Abbott's opinion, does the sisterhood only matter if it doesn't cut across her political worldview? Is the message to victims of sexual violence 'you will be believed, unless it involves a left wing icon'?'

Even a Labour shadow minister admitted: 'Championing Julian Assange is the last thing we should be doing. It is disgraceful. Jeremy and Diane seem to have a blind spot.'

Miriam Mirwitch, the national chair of Young Labour, said she was 'pretty aghast that we seem to be celebrating Assange'.

Miss Abbott tried to limit the damage last night with a tweet saying: 'Assange skipping bail in UK, or any rape charge that may be brought by Swedish authorities shouldn't be ignored.

But the only extradition request is from the US, because he's a whistleblower on atrocities caused by US military ops.

'This extradition would be wrong so we oppose it.' Experts in Sweden doubt whether he will ever face trial there, because of the passage of time. But the alleged rape victim's lawyer vowed she would do 'everything we possibly can' to get the investigation reopened.

A WikiLeaks spokesman said of Assange: 'He faces life in prison for the 'crime' of publishing truthful information.'
The firm behind a fifth of the countrys free cash machines is to start charging customers nearly 1 a time to take their money out.

Notemachine will charge for many of its 10,500 devices following changes to how the ATMs are funded.

The new fee will deal a brutal blow to the elderly, families and small businesses  with the axe likely to fall hardest in rural and suburban areas.

It also paves the way for many machines to be shut down completely if they are still unprofitable after the switch.

The firm behind a fifth of the countrys free cash machines is to start charging customers nearly 1 a time to take their money out (stock image)

The free ATM network is paid for by high street banks such as Lloyds and Natwest, which give a fee to operators including Notemachine when a customer withdraws money using their card. But the banks have now cut these fees.

The change  which has reduced fees from 25p per transaction to 22.5p  came as the five biggest high street banks made a combined 30 billion of profit in 2018.

Notemachine is now planning to charge customers an estimated 95p fee at about half of its machines. The rest, which are operated under contracts for big businesses such as supermarkets, are likely to be spared.

Notemachine chief executive Peter McNamara said: Its just not sustainable and its causing a collapse in the number of ATMs in the country.

A lot of areas  particularly rural areas, and urban areas outside the city centre  face a really severe risk of either not having ATMs or being forced to pay for cash withdrawals.

The people who most need cash are people who probably need to budget very carefully, and there are many millions of them. No date has yet been set for charging Notemachine customers.

When a customer uses their card at an independent ATM, their bank pays the operator a so-called interchange fee.

We have one cashpoint... and three empty banks Hit hard: Peter Tomkins, who owns a health food shop The once thriving community of Milnthorpe now has only one cash machine left. The large village straddling the A6 near the Cumbria-Lancashire border had three banks six years ago, but two are now empty and the third is earmarked for demolition. Peter Tomkins, who owns a health food shop, said: The closures have stopped people coming into the village from outlying areas. We have to rely on local customers to provide us with cash. But they cant get money from the banks so the cash machine is the last source. He added: Some people want to use cash. The banks have been very selfish. Craft shop owner Mary Smith said banks were trying to create a cash-free society, but people want the choice. Advertisement

The fee level is determined by an organisation called Link, which is owned by the banks and ATM operators. Link last year agreed to reduce the interchange fee by 10 per cent  from an average 25p per withdrawal to 22.5p  following lobbying by lenders, chiefly Lloyds and Royal Bank of Scotland. At the time, campaigners warned it would make many devices unprofitable, triggering a wave of closures which would create cash machine deserts where it was impossible to withdraw money.

At least 3,200 free ATMs have shut since January 2018, according to Link, leaving 51,300 still open.

Mike Cherry, of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: Cash machines are still vital to communities right across the UK.

When they shut, that usually means less cash flow in local economies, reduced footfall on high streets and a drop in sales at surrounding small businesses. All that adds up to slower growth.

It comes after a stark warning from the Bank of Englands chief cashier Sarah John that paper money could disappear altogether.

Miss John said: In order for cash to remain a viable payment method, the public needs access both to withdraw cash and to deposit cash. And if retailers cannot easily deposit the cash they receive from customers, they may choose to stop accepting it.

About 13 billion payments a year are still made with cash  or more than a third of the total.

A Link spokesman said: Free access to cash is vital for consumers and the UK enjoys extensive coverage that Link is committed to protecting. We will investigate to make sure there is no negative impact on access to cash for consumers.

The ATM network is supervised by the Payment Systems Regulator. Last October it ordered Link to make sure the public could still access free ATMs in all parts of Britain, regardless of the fee cut.

A spokesman said: We are aware that some ATMs have changed from free-to-use ATMs to pay-to-use. We are looking into this and if it impacts on the commitment Link has made to us to protect the broad geographic spread of free-to-use ATMs, we will take action.
The deputy chief whip is at the centre of an extraordinary row after being accused of mounting a smear campaign against a rising Tory star.

Former Army captain Johnny Mercer this week claimed party whips had tried to persuade fellow ex-servicemen to provide dirt on him.

Now the Daily Mail can reveal that Chris Pincher, the number two in the whips office, is the person accused of seeking damaging information on Mr Mercer. Mr Pincher is alleged to have asked for dirt after meeting a former Army colleague of Mr Mercer for a drink in February.

Tory MP Johnny Mercer believes the whips' office have been digging around seeking damaging information about him from former soldiers whom he served. It is believed Chris Pincher, right, has been involved in the plot

The deputy chief whip last night did not respond to requests for comment. Mr Mercer demanded that Julian Smith, the chief whip, take action.

He said: Ive suggested he gains knowledge of it over the weekend and lets me know what action he intends to take.

The individual concerned knows this has taken place; if he has the integrity to put his hands up, we can all move on. If not, lets see what happens. Parliament is in need of serious reform.

Mr Mercer, 37, who is seen as a future leadership contender, said the alleged plot revealed why the UK was in such a mess.
Hardcore Brexiteers and disgusted ex-Tories are among the Brexit Party's first core group of candidates for the European elections in May unveiled by Nigel Farage.

The 40-year-old married mother of one is a former Tory parliamentary candidate

Annunziata Rees-Mogg

The younger sister of Brexit hardliner Jacob Rees-Mogg was unveiled as the Brexit Party's star candidate.

The 40-year-old married mother of one last appeared on the political stage in 2010 as the Tory candidate in Somerton and Froome, losing the Somerset seat to the Lib Dems by less than 2,000 votes.

Ahead of the poll it was claimed David Cameron asked her to shorten her name to Nancy Mogg - but she refused and later claimed 'I think it's phoney to pretend to be someone you're not'.

Annunziata married former soldier Matthew Glanville in 2010 and they have a daughter, Isadora.

Last year Richard Tice applied to be Mayor of London in 2020 for the Tories, before leaving in disgust

Richard Tice

The founder of Leave Means Leave and Leave.EU is a former Tory who applied last year to be the Tory candidate for Mayor of London in 2020.

He has since quit the Conservatives in disgust at the mess that is Brexit.

He was unveiled as party chairman, saying: 'We cannot, we must not, and we will not allow this complete and utter shambles in Westminster to continue'.

Mr Habib sitting between Nigel Farage and Annunziata Rees-Mogg

Ben Habib

According to the Brexit party he is 'CEO of First Property Group Plc, an award winning commercial property fund manager with operations in the United Kingdom and Central Europe'

He has a similar background to the Dulwich College-educated Brexit party leader, in that he attended private school before working in the City.

He attended Rugby School and Cambridge University before joining Shearson Lehman Brothers to work in corporate finance.

He later set up First property Group, which is based in and claims to control assets worth 730million including properties in Poland and Romania.

June Mummery is a member of Fishing for Leave and is from Lowestoft in Suffolk

June Mummery

A member of Fishing for Leave and the managing director of fish market auctioneers BFP Eastern in Lowestoft, in Suffolk.

Billed as a 'veteran Brexiteer' who 'has spent years fighting for the rights of British fisherman by finally taking back controls of our waters'.

Last year she told the Eastern Daily Press that some people in the East Anglia fishing port 'call me Boadicea' - after the British queen who led a doomed uprising against Roman rule almost 2,000 years ago.

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert is a Cambridge-educated former secondary school teacher

Alka Sehgal Cuthbert

Billed by the party as 'a researcher, author, academic and educator' who is a part-time English teacher and 'educational consultant'.

She boasts a PhD from Cambridge and worked as a secondary school teacher for almost two decades.

She has also written for publications including the Independent and Spiked.

James Glancy was a Captain in the elite British Royal Marines and Special Boat Service

James Glancy

James Glancy was a Captain in the elite British Royal Marines and Special Boat Service, serving in three combat tours of Afghanistan.

In 2012, he was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross (CGC) for leadership and bravery on the frontline.

He is now a Director of a conservation charity, Veterans 4 Wildlife, where he focuses on the preservation of African wildlife and combating the global trade in shark fins.

James is currently a host on Discovery Channel's Shark Week and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

He says Brexit has made Britain an international laughing stock.

Claire Fox

Former Communist Party member Claire Fox admits she doesn't agree with too much Mr Farage says - but they agree on democracy

Former Communist Party member Claire Fox is the director of the Academy of Ideas, which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint.

She is a panelist on BBC Radio 4s The Moral Maze and is frequently invited to comment on developments in culture, education, media and free speech issues on TV and radio programmes in the UK such as Newsnight and Any Questions?

She said: 'Don't get me wrong, I'm from the left. If you sat Nigel and I down, I am not going to agree with them on any range of questions. But the question now is whether we are going to let democracy be overturned'.

Christina Johnson

Christina came to the UK from Malaysia in 1985

Christina is a former NHS nurse turned community leader.

She came to the UK from Malaysia in 1985 after starting her career as a secretary at Turkish Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

She completed her Registered General Nurse training at Winchester General Hospital and went on to work as a staff nurse.

Now she lives in Salisbury after a long career in nursing.

She said: 'I love this country. I want to stand up for the 17.4 million'.

Lance Forman

Smoked salmon mogul Lance Forman

Mr Forman is owner of luxury food company H.Forman and Son, famed for its smoked salomn.

Before taking over the family business, Lance Forman started out as President of the Cambridge Union.

He qualified as a chartered accountant at PWC before running his salmon business out of east London.

Matthew Patten

Charity boss and cricket lover Matt Patten

Matthew is an experienced business and charity director.

He has global board and CEO experience in social impact, sports, commerce, social mobility, governance, campaigning, fundraising and business development knowledge.

He has been Chief Executive of the Lords Taverners, Chief Executive at M&C Saatchi Sponsorship and Director of Communications for Clubs for Young People, working with over 400,000 disadvantaged young people.
Uber has admitted it may never make a profit after revealing comprehensive financial details of the decade-old company for the first time.

The firm also spent $457 million (350m) investing in self-driving cars, flying taxis and other technologies in last year alone.

Information about Uber's finances were made public as part of an IPO filing ahead of going public on the New York Stock exchange.

The S-1 filing underscores Uber's rapid growth in the last three years, attracting 91 million users to its ride lift service.

It also shows how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders.

That includes the death of a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March 2018 at the hands of one Uber's self-driving test cars.

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Uber has admitted it may never make a profit after revealing comprehensive financial details of the decade-old company for the first time. The firm also spent $457 million (350m) investing in self-driving cars, flying taxis and other technologies in last year alone (stock0

Uber has long struggled to turn an annual profit, although it has tipped over the line briefly in some of its quarterly reports.

The latest disclosure revealed just how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to 'increase significantly in the foreseeable future' and it 'may not achieve profitability.'

Uber lost $3.03 billion (2.3bn) in 2018 and spent a total of $1.5 billion (1.15bn) in research and development during that period, the S-1 document revealed.

The San Francisco based company, which was started after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night, is hoping that its investment in automated technology will minimise it's reliance on human drivers in the long-term.

Writing in the S-1 papers, a spokesman for the firm said: 'Along the way to a potential future autonomous vehicle world, we believe that there will be a long period of hybrid autonomy, in which autonomous vehicles will be deployed gradually against specific use cases while Drivers continue to serve most consumer demand.

'As we solve specific autonomous use cases, we will deploy autonomous vehicles against them.

'Such situations may include trips along a standard, well-mapped route in a predictable environment in good weather.'

Information about Uber's finances were made public as part of an IPO filing ahead of going public on the New York Stock exchange. This image shows a concept for the firm's flying taxi

The S-1 filing underscores Uber's rapid growth in the last three years, attracting 91 million users to its ride lift service. This image shows a model for a potential final design for the Uber flying taxi, which will be known as Uber Air

WHAT IS UBER AIR AND HOW MUCH WILL IT COST? UberAir is a network of small, electric, aircraft that enable four-person ridesharing flights in densely populated areas. Artist's impression shown UberAir is a network of small, electric, aircraft that enable four-person ridesharing flights in densely populated areas. The 'electrical vertical take-off and landing vehicles' (eVTOLs) differ from helicopters in that they are quieter, safer, more affordable, and more environmentally-friendly, Uber claims. Users will order the aircraft through the Uber app much like they would one of the firm's taxis. Once they have selected an UberAIR ride, the craft will fly to the nearest 'Skyport' - a series of launch pads spread across the city. Uber estimates that an all-electric, 200mph (320kph) ride across the skies of Los Angeles will be price-competitive with an UberX trip of the same distance. Uber predicts that trips from LAX to the Staples Centre during rush hour can be reduced from up to 1 hour 20 minutes on the ground to less than 30 minutes using UberAir. Its prediction includes UberX transfers to and from UberAir launch pads - the flight over LA itself will take around four minutes, the firm said. The plan will rely on a network of Skyports, which will allow the VTOL Uber Air craft to take off and land on rooftops across the country Advertisement

The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Uber had 91 million average monthly active users on its platforms, including for ride-hailing and Uber Eats, at the end of 2018.

This is up 33.8 per cent from 2017, but growth slowed from 51 per cent a year earlier.

Uber had not disclosed the latest user numbers before, and the figure indicates the scale of the business.

Although its user base includes customers of other services and ride-sharing, the number is nearly five times the 18.6 million announced by rival Lyft.

Uber in 2018 had $11.3 billion (8.65bn) revenue, up around 42 per cent over 2017, but below the 106 per cent growth the prior year.

Uber set a placeholder amount of $1 billion (770m) but did not specify the size of the IPO.

Reuters reported this week that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion (7.65bn) worth of stock at a valuation of between $90 and $100 billion (69 and 76.5bn).

Investment bankers had previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion (90bn).

Uber would be the largest initial public offering since that of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2014, which raised $25 billion (19bn).

Although Uber is no longer targeting a $120 billion (90bn) valuation in the IPO, some stock bonuses to Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi and other company executives are only triggered when that valuation is reached.

It also shows how a string of public scandals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders. That includes the death of a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in March 2018 at the hands of one Uber's self-driving test cars. (pictured in this file photo)

The Volvo SUV was in self-driving mode with a human back-up operator behind the wheel in Tempe when a woman walking a bicycle was hit. Elaine Herzberg, 49, died in hospital. This image shows the vehicle after the crash

HOW DID AN UBER AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE HIT AND KILL A WOMAN IN ARIZONA? A self-driving Uber vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle on March 19, 2018. The accident prompted the ride-hailing company to suspend road-testing of such cars in the US and Canada. The Volvo SUV was in self-driving mode with a human back-up operator behind the wheel in Tempe when a woman walking a bicycle was hit. Elaine Herzberg, 49, died in hospital. Police have said that the victim, 49 year old Elaine Herzberg, stepped out in front of the car suddenly and they do not believe the car was to blame. Uber suspended its self-driving vehicle testing in the Phoenix area, Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Toronto. The testing has been going on for months as car makers and technology companies compete to be the first with cars that operate on their own. Uber's self-driving car crash that led to the death of a mother-of-two could have been avoided, driverless vehicle experts have claimed. Cortica, a firm that develops artificial intelligence for autonomous vehicles, has analysed the dash cam video. The company concludes the car, which failed to brake or swerve before the collision, had enough time to react and potentially save Ms Herzberg's life. Speaking to CNET, Cortica's CEO Igal Raichelgauz said the firm's self-driving AI system detected Ms Herzberg 0.9 seconds before impact. At this point the car was around 50 feet (15 metres) away. He said the autonomous car's cameras and radar system should have had enough time to pick up the pedestrian and react to the situation. Driverless cars are fitted with a system of cameras, radar and lidar sensors that allow them to 'see' their surroundings and detect traffic, pedestrians and other objects. An AI computer system then decides what actions the car takes to avoid a collision - a setup that is supposed to work as well at night as during the day. A top executive for the maker of Lidar sensors used on Uber's self-driving car said she was 'baffled' as to why the vehicle failed to recognise Ms Herzberg. Advertisement

Uber will follow Lyft in going public.

Shares in its smaller rival closed at $61.01 (46.7) on Thursday, 15 per cent below its IPO price set late last month, a development which has sent a chilling signal for other tech start-ups looking to go public.

After making the public filing, Uber will begin a series of investor presentations, called a roadshow, which Reuters has reported will start the week of April 29.

The company is on track to price its IPO and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early May.

Uber faces questions over how it will navigate any transition towards self-driving vehicles, a technology seen as potentially dramatically lowering costs but which could also disrupt its business model.

Last year, the ride-hailing giant settled a legal dispute over trade secrets with Google parent firm Alphabet's Waymo self-driving vehicle unit.

Waymo, in its lawsuit, had said one of its former engineers who became chief of Uber's self-driving car project took with him thousands of confidential documents.

Uber revealed in the filing it could have to pay a license fee to Waymo or face a substantial delay to the development of its self-driving technology if the initial assessment of its technology by an independent expert is confirmed.

The expert, installed as part of Uber's settlement with Waymo, has identified on an interim basis certain functions in Uber's autonomous vehicle software that 'are problematic and other functions that are not,' Uber said.

Uber has long struggled to turn an annual profit, although it has tipped over the line briefly in some of its quarterly reports. The latest disclosure revealed just how far Uber remains from turning a profit, however (stock image)

A Waymo spokesperson said: 'This review is on-going and we will continue to take the necessary steps to ensure our confidential information is not being used by Uber.'

One advantage Uber will likely seek to play up to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it operates.

Analysts consider building scale crucial for Uber's business model to become profitable.

In addition to answering questions about Uber's finances, CEO Khosrowshahi will be tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the culture and business practices after a series of embarrassing scandals over the last two years.

Those have included sexual harassment allegations, a massive data breach that was concealed from regulators, use of illicit software to evade authorities and allegations of bribery overseas. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 to replace company co-founder Travis Kalanick who was ousted as CEO.

Uber said in its filing its ridehailing position in the United States and Canada was 'significantly impacted by adverse publicity events' and that its position in many markets has been threatened by discounts from other ride-hailing companies.

A #DeleteUber campaign surged on social media in 2017 after a public relations crisis, which Uber said in its filing meant hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using its platform within days.

Uber said its market share fell in most regions last year, although the rate of decline has slowed.

The company claims more than 65 per cent market share in the United States and Canada, versus Lyft's stated 39 per cent in the United States.

Uber is reserving some shares in the IPO for drivers who have completed 2,500 trips among other criteria.
The hackers behind 'the most murderous malware' in the world are back and have infected a key infrastructure facility, security analysts say.

Researchers at the firm FireEye say traces of a dangerous malware called Triton have cropped up for the second time since since 2017, when hackers leveraged it to gain control of critical processes at an oil plant in Saudi Arabia.

In a report, the firm did not reveal exactly where the attack happened, who the target was, or even how much damage, if any, was done, though it did highlight some of the group's apparent intentions.

A Saudi Arabian oil plant was the subject of an attack from the same hackers in 2017.

WHAT IS TRITON MALWARE? A murderous malware called Triton was behind attacks targeting a Saudi Arabian oil refinery in 2017. Recent reports reveal that the hackers could have cause a deadly gas leak or explosion using the tool. Security analysts, FireEye, have highlighted Triton's capabilities and linked it to a Russian research lab. The hacking group has developed other tools which FireEye says has infected another unnamed facility. It's unclear what damage hackers carried out, if any. More victims are likely still out there, says the firm. Advertisement

'The actor gained a foothold on the distributed control system (DCS) but did not leverage that access to learn about plant operations, exfiltrate sensitive information, tamper with the DCS controllers, or manipulate the process,' reads the report.

It follows a report from MIT Technology Review earlier this year that warned the malware is 'murderous' and spreading.

By masking their activity through innocuous file names, posing as legitimate administrative tools, and more, researchers say the group was able to stay undetected within the facility's systems for a year before compromising it's Safety Instrumented System (SIS).

SIS is a critical safety tool uses to monitor processes within various plants and other infrastructure facilities.

While the nature of recent attacks is unclear, as reported by by E&E last month, attacks from the group in 2017 could have been fatal.

'Two emergency shutdown systems sprang into action as darkness settled over the sprawling refinery along Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast,' reads the report.

Hackers gained access to the system a year prior to compromising critical safety systems.

'The systems brought part of the Petro Rabigh complex offline in a last-gasp effort to prevent a gas release and deadly explosion. But as safety devices took extraordinary steps, control room engineers working the weekend shift spotted nothing out of the ordinary, either on their computer screens or out on the plant floor.'

Last year FireEye linked the Triton malware to a Russia's Central Scientific Research Institute of Chemistry and Mechanics research lab in Moscow and say that the hackers have been active since 2014.

The potential for more, yet-to-be decteted victims is likely, according to them.

According to Motherboard, withholding the disclosure of victims and details of attacks is a fairly common practice among firms who may be obligated by contract not to do so.

'Critical infrastructure facility' often refers to large scale operational facilities like nuclear power plants, water treatment centers, or power grids,' the report states.
The remains left behind after a mass ritual sacrifice of guinea pics by the Inca empire has been uncovered for the first time from a dig site in southern Peru.

They were found adorned with tiny earrings and necklaces - with some even wrapped up in little rugs before being buried.

Reports of such practices - at which hundreds of animals would be killed - were documented by Spanish conquistadors, but physical evidence had been lacking.

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Unexpectedly, the rodents were found adorned with tiny earrings and necklaces - with some even having been wrapped up in little rugs before being buried (pictured)

During early encounters with the Inca Empire, Spanish conquistadors reported observing that the locals periodically sacrificed various animal species in large numbers.

Guinea pigs were the most commonly used animals for sacrifice and it is believed the Incas would kill as many as hundreds of the rodents in a single ceremony.

However, actual archaeological evidence of this particular ritual had not previously been dug up from anywhere in their territory.

Now, a researcher from the Institute of Andean Studies has unearthed two burial sites containing the remains of 100 guinea pigs in total.

The discoveries were made at the Tambo Viejo dig site, which is located in the Acari Valley, near Peru's southern coast.

The burials both date back to around 400 years ago.

In preparation for the sacrificial ritual, some of the guinea pigs had been adorned with colourful strings - placed on the animals as earrings and necklaces - while some were also wrapped up in tiny rug made of cotton fibre.

Guinea pigs were the most commonly used animals for sacrifice; accounts relate that the Incas would kill as many as hundreds of the rodents in a single ceremony.

Although the finding of the guinea pigs themselves is not surprising in light of the conquistadors' accounts, the decoration was unexpected.

'I was surprised after seeing that a good number of the guinea pigs were adorned with colourful strings that were placed as earrings and necklaces,' paper author and archaeologist Lidio Valdez told Newsweek.

'The Spanish never mentioned anything about that.'

The exact reason for decoration of the sacrificial rodents is unclear.

'[It] could be something to do with the desire of particular individuals, who perhaps wanted to make the gifts extra special.' Dr Valdez suggested.

'A good number of the guinea pigs were found in an excellent state of preservation - naturally mummified,' Dr Valdez said.

The animals were also found buried with their heads facing up, free of any signs of external injuries.

This, Dr Valdez suggests, indicates that 'they may have been alive when buried.'

The remains were found buried beneath the floors of two Inca structures (pictured above, one of the buildings, seen from west to east) within the Tambo Viejo site

The remains were found buried beneath the floors of two Inca structures within the Tambo Viejo site - with 72 guinea pigs under one and 28 below the other.

The two buildings would have been situated adjacent to a plaza in which public activities - including ritual sacrifices - would have been undertaken.

The buildings would have subsequently been taken over during the invasion of the Spanish.

The discoveries were made at the Tambo Viejo dig site, which is located in the Acari Valley, near Peru's southern coast. The remains were found buried beneath the floors of two Inca structures within the Tambo Viejo site - with 72 guinea pigs under one and 28 below the other

The researcher's analysis also revealed that the majority of the guinea pigs were juveniles.

'Humans prefer the meat of young animals because of its tenderness. Humans believed that deities also deserved tender meat, he said.

'We must remember that "young" may also mean other things things, such as pure, uncontaminated, and so on.'

The full findings of the study were published in the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology.
Some Instagram users may want to be extra careful about what they share on their Stories.

Earlier this week, a number of users began noticing strangers' Stories showing up at the top of their feed, according to TechCrunch.

Those affected by the bug said they didn't follow these users and many of the accounts were private.

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Some Instagram users may want to be extra careful about what they share on their Stories. A number of users have seen strangers' Stories showing up at the top of their feed

'Hey @Instagram/@facebook, people who I don't follow (with private accounts) are showing up in my Stories,' wrote Twitter user @internetryan on Tuesday.

He added that a 'quick search on Twitter' showed that many other users had reported the same problem.

As TechCrunch pointed out, luckily, if users tried to watch the strangers' Stories post, it would prevent them from seeing it.

With 500 million people that use Instagram Stories each day, the bug raises privacy concerns that what users post in confidence for friends and family has the potential to be shared with strangers without their consent.

Instagram confirmed the bug and said it was resolved within a few hours.

Those affected by the bug said they didn't follow these users and many of the accounts were private. Instagram has since confirmed the bug and said it was resolved within a few hours

'We're aware of an issue that caused a small number of people's Instagram Stories trays to show accounts they don't follow,' the spokesperson said.

'If your account is private, your Stories were not seen by people who don't follow you.

'This was caused by a bug that we have resolved,' they added.

The flaw comes as Instagram's parent company, Facebook, has been rocked by numerous privacy scandals.

With 500 million people that use Stories each day, the bug raises privacy concerns that what users post for friends and family has the potential to be shared with strangers without consent

Last December, Facebook disclosed that a bug had exposed as many as 6.8 million users' photos that they hadn't posted and shared them accidentally with third-party apps.

And a few months before that, Facebook revealed that it had been hit by its worst ever security breach, as 50 million users' accounts were vulnerable to hackers via a flaw in its 'View As' feature.

Instagram hasn't been free from bugs, either, as it dealt with issues last December that caused a side-scrolling dashboard to become public, despite the feature never being shipped officially.
Channing Powell, the creator of the hit horror television series 'The Walking Dead', is not someone who is easily spooked.

But Powell is scared, 'terrified actually' of what big tech might be up to.

And critics were too after watching her spine-chilling new series, 'The Feed', premiere in Cannes this week.

The Amazon show is set in the near future when we can share emotions, thoughts and what we see with our eyes on a social network embedded in our brains.

If that sounds as far fetched as the post-apocalyptic zombies of 'The Walking Dead', Powell has news for you.

'The Feed' -- which will screen later this year -- is based on Nick Clark Windo's 2018 novel of the same name. Told from inside the fabulously wealthy family who invented 'The Feed' and now effectively control the world, the story doesn't end well (stock image)

WHAT IS ELON MUSK'S COMPUTER-BRAIN INTERFACE? Elon Musk's latest company Neuralink was registered in California as a 'medical research' company in July 2016. Very little is known about the exact nature of the work being undertaken by the firm, beyond the fact it is attempting to develop 'ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers'. Neuralink is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices. They will work on what Musk calls 'neural lace' technology, implanting tiny brain electrodes that may one day upload and download thoughts. Neuralink is aiming to launch a product that will help people who suffer from serious brain injuries, as a result of disorders such as stroke and cancer, in just four years. Musk says that the time before the devices are released depends on regulatory approval and how well they work on people with disabilities. At a tech conference in 2016, Musk said AI and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant 'neural laces' just to keep up, And in eight to ten years, the Matrix-style technology will be available to everyone, he believes. Musk plans on funding the company mostly by himself. Advertisement

'Elon Musk and Facebook are already trying to develop the technology portrayed in the show,' she told AFP at the Canneseries festival in the French Riviera resort.

The Tesla boss and sometime Twitter warrior 'is developing a neuro lace (computer) that covers the entire brain that you would control with thought,' Powell said.

'Facebook has been working on something similar in some place called 'Building 8' where it has all its secret projects.'

Both are very quiet about what precisely they are doing, said Powell.

However, 'people at MIT have already created something you can attach to your ear that is controlled by thought.

'It can tell you the time and how much groceries are when you walk through the aisles of a supermarket,' she added.

'The Feed' -- which will screen later this year -- is based on Nick Clark Windo's 2018 novel of the same name.

Told from inside the fabulously wealthy family who invented 'The Feed' and now effectively control the world, the story doesn't end well.

Given what we have learned about the harvesting and misuse of personal data from the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and how Google can seem to predict our needs before we search for it on our smartphone, that should not be too surprising.

'We have seen dystopian shows before but never like this,' Powell insisted, who cast British actor David Thewlis as the tech guru patriarch of the seemingly well-meaning clan.

'It was a very realistic portrayal of what happens when we let technology control us -- and we are heading in that direction.

Channing Powell (pictured), the creator of the hit horror television series 'The Walking Dead', is not someone who is easily spooked. But Powell is scared, 'terrified actually' of what big tech might be up to

'We cannot let go of our iPhones, we need to check Instagram every hour or minute. The notion that you would put something inside your head is really frightening to me,' the 39-year-old said.

But it is where tech companies are going, she insisted, the next logical step from Google's smart glasses.

Powell said workers in some companies in Belgium and Sweden already have chips implanted in their bodies.

'What is happening around us right now is so scary.

'When somebody like Elon Musk (a radical libertarian) -- who is inside this -- is telling the government, 'You need to regulate us, and stop us from doing what we are doing', that is terrifying. Because he knows way more than we know,' she said.

The Amazon show is set in the near future when we can share emotions, thoughts and what we see with our eyes on a social network embedded in our brains. 'Elon Musk and Facebook are already trying to develop the technology portrayed in the show,' the creator said

HUMAN BRAIN WILL CONNECT TO COMPUTERS 'WITHIN DECADES' In a new paper published in the Frontiers in Neuroscience, researchers embarked on an international collaboration that predicts groundbreaking developments in the world of 'Human Brain/Cloud Interface's' within the next several decades. Using a combination of nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and other more traditional computing, researchers say humans will be able to seamlessly connect their brains to a cloud of computer(s) to glean information from the internet in real-time. According to Robert Freitas Jr., senior author of the research, a fleet of nanobots embedded in our brains would act as liaisons to humans' minds and supercomputers, to enable 'matrix style' downloading of information. 'These devices would navigate the human vasculature, cross the blood-brain barrier, and precisely autoposition themselves among, or even within brain cells,' explains Freitas. 'They would then wirelessly transmit encoded information to and from a cloud-based supercomputer network for real-time brain-state monitoring and data extraction.' The interfaces wouldn't just stop at linking humans and computers, say researchers. A network of brains could also help form what they call a 'global superbrain' that would allow for collective thought. Advertisement

Paranoia about new technology is nothing new, Powell admitted, dating back beyond the Industrial Revolution.

But what we are living through now, and with little or no regulation to hold tech companies back, is of a different order, she argued.

'Technology has brought us so much.... but there are also these negative undertones to it. Facebook is watching you and selling your information.

'They own Instagram and WhatsApp, and (Amazon's) Alexa is in every room of your house. Siri can pop up on your phone when you didn't even call her. You cannot ignore that side of it.'

Members of the cast of "The feed" Channing Powell (L) Guy Burnet (C) and Nina Toussaint-White (R) pose during 2019 Cannes

Set in England, 'The Feed' has British actor Guy Burnet play Thewlis' psychologist son and Nina Toussaint-White his daughter-in-law.

Burnet told AFP that the series' vision of the near future 'was far from crazy... and it is amazing it hasn't been done before' when you see Beijing's plans for its social credit system.

From next year all Chinese citizens will be ranked and either punished or rewarded according to their 'social credit' score.

'I think we're not on the precipice, we may have already passed it,' the actor warned.

In 'The Feed', a handful of people control the code on which the world relies, and it is they, said Powell, who get to decide what the public need to know.

'Which is effectively where we are now' in the real world too, the writer warned.
New footage of debris from an Atlas V Centaur rocket's upper stage soaring through space nearly ten years after its launch has highlighted the ever-growing concerns over space junk.

The European Space Agency today shared a look at the fragments captured just last month by the Deimos Sky Survey, revealing an estimated 40 to 60 pieces that could each be larger than a foot (30 cm) in size.

It comes as a top United States military official warned that one of Earth's biggest space-borne threats may in fact be the 'junk' left over from human exploration.

At a recent hearing on a proposal by President Donald Trump to establish a so-called Space Force, US Air Force Gen. John Hyten told officials that a growing amount of debris left to orbit Earth poses considerable risks and should be a major priority.

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A video captured by the Deimos Sky Survey in Spain shows a stream of debris objects (bright circles across the center) rushing across the sky at the end of last month, as a rocket's discarded upper stage breaks apart in orbit a decade after launch

'Ive advocated for a long time for the development of some kind of international norms and behaviors in space,' said Hyten, according to CNBC .

'And where those norms and behaviors should begin in my opinion is with debris. As the combatant commander responsible for space today, I dont want more debris.'

The threat of space junk has come into full focus in recent years, as scientists and countries around the world begin to accelerate the launch of satellites and other orbitals that may be affected.

And, India's anti-satellite missile test last month has further pushed the issue into the spotlight.

This week, according to a recent announcement from the European Space Agency, debris from the late stage of a rocket was captured on video breaking into pieces, giving scientists a rare glimpse into how debris is formed.

The debris appears as bright white circles in the animation, as seen above. The white streaks surrounding it are stars

The rocket that produced the waste, which started out as 12.5-meter-long upper stage, launched in September 2009.

The new footage shows debris from an Atlas V Centaur rocket's upper stage (pictured, file photo)

'Leaving a trail of debris in its wake, this fragmentation event provides space debris experts with a rare opportunity to test their understanding of such hugely important processes,' explains Tim Flohrer, ESA's Senior Space Debris Monitoring Expert.

The researchers hope to use the event to model how space junk operates around Earth's orbit.

After India's recent test of an anti-satellite missile, NASA criticized the country's for creating hundreds of new pieces of space junk which threatens to damage the International Space Station.

A similar test from China in 2007 created 3,000 new pieces of space junk alone.

Scientists have warned that a growing amount of debris could have an array of adverse effects on future space missions.

Already there are more than 12,000 of pieces of space junk currently orbiting Earth which threaten to collide with important satellites or interfere with launches and landings of space craft.

Though the problem is well-documented, a solution has been less forthcoming.

The U.S. has let loose the most space junk, followed by Russia and China. An artist's impression is shown

While some proposals have involved capturing debris with a net and then dragging the trash into Earth's atmosphere where it will burn up, others have involved a more abrasive approach of harpooning junk and siphoning it in.

In a more high tech solution, objects would be irradiated with a laser until it is essentially vaporized.

No matter what the solution is, researchers say mitigating the Earth's shroud of space junk will likely be an international effort.

The recent video observation of rocket debris saw the cooperation of several countries including Spain, Russia, and Switzerland, in what they hope will set an international standard.
SpaceX has managed to achieve yet another historic milestone.

Amid the fanfare of the Falcon Heavy successfully embarking on its second-ever trip to space, Elon Musk announced that his company was able to recover both fairing halves of the megarocket for the first time.

In a tweet late Thursday, Musk confirmed that both fairing halves were recovered from the Atlantic Ocean undamaged.

The next step is to put the fairings to work again on a Falcon 9 rocket that will blast additional Starlink satellites into orbit, scheduled for later this year.

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SpaceX has managed to achieve yet another historic milestone. Elon Musk announced that his company was able to recover both fairing halves of the megarocket for the first time (pictured)

'Both fairings recovered,' Musk wrote in a tweet. 'Will be flown on Starlink mission later this year.'

In a reply to another user's tweet, the tech mogul explained that each fairing has its own avionics system and nitrogen thrusters, as well as steerable parachutes, to help them return to Earth safely.

Now that they've been recovered, SpaceX will begin the process of cleaning up the fairings for re-use.

The fairing is a piece of material that's part of the rocket's nosecone, protecting the payload, which can include things like satellites, during launch.

The fairing is a piece of material that's part of the rocket's nosecone, protecting the payload, which includes things like satellites, during launch. Pictured is the fairing on a recovery boat

Musk has sought to recover and reuse the fairings for additional launches because they're expensive to build.

He estimates that each fairing costs approximately $6 million, which equates to about 10 percent of the cost of a Falcon 9 launch.

SpaceX has tried to recover payload fairings during previous launches but to no avail.

The company even constructed a boat with a massive net attached, affectionately called Mr. Steven, to try to recover the fairings.

It appears that Mr. Steven wasn't used during yesterday's launch; instead, recovery boats were able to scoop the fairings out of the water and return them to land.

SpaceX constructed a boat with a massive net attached, affectionately called Mr. Steven (pictured), to try to recover the fairings. However, this time around, the boat wasn't used

SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket successfully took its second flight ever on Thursday afternoon, when it lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida carrying Lockheed Martin's Arabsat 6A communications satellite

But the fairing recovery wasn't the only memorable achievement to come out of yesterday's launch.

The launch marks the Falcon Heavy's second-ever trip to space, as well as its first commercial mission, as the megarocket carried Lockheed Martin's Arabsat 6A communications satellite into orbit.

SpaceX also managed to make history by landing three boosters back on Earth for the first time.

Just minutes into the launch, the giant rocket's central core landed safely on SpaceX's offshore barge in the Atlantic Ocean, dubbed 'Of Course I Still Love You,' while the two side boosters landed back on pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Landing Zone 1 and 2.

'We have landed the center core for the first time,' a SpaceX announcer said. 'Three for three boosters today for the Falcon Heavy.'

Its been fourteen months since Falcon Heavy's maiden launch, when it blasted off to become the most powerful rocket in use today.

The latest launch marked the first time Falcon Heavy flies using the new Block 5 hardware, which is designed to last longer than previous versions without the need for refurbishment.
NASAs radical mission to fire a small spacecraft directly into an asteroid now has SpaceX on the roster, too.

The space agency announced this week that its selected Elon Musks aerospace company to launch its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which is slated to lift off in June 2021.

The groundbreaking mission will be the first demonstrated attempt to deflect an asteroid by purposely crashing an object into it at high speed.

After launching from Californias Vandenberg Air Force base atop a Falcon 9 rocket in 2021, the DART craft is expected to reach the object Didymos in October 2022, when its 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth.

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The DART mission relies on whats known as a kinetic impactor  in this case a 2.4-meter-long spacecraft with solar electric propulsion. DART will be targeting the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos, which measures roughly 800 meters across. Artist's impression pictured

NASA revealed on Friday that it had selected SpaceX to provide the launch services for the upcoming DART mission.

The announcement marks yet another achievement for Musks firm in just a few days; on Thursday, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy for the second time ever, logging the huge rockets first commercial mission.

Now, SpaceX will also be playing a part in planetary defense.

The DART mission relies on whats known as a kinetic impactor  in this case a 2.4-meter-long spacecraft with solar electric propulsion.

DART will be targeting the binary near-Earth asteroid Didymos, which measures roughly 800 meters across.

After launching from Californias Vandenberg Air Force base atop a Falcon 9 rocket in 2021, the DART craft is expected to reach the object Didymos in October 2022, when its 11 million kilometers (6.8 million miles) from Earth. File photo of a Falcon 9 after launch

The second object in the pair is whats known as a moonlet, and is only 150 meters. According to NASA, this is more typical of the size of asteroids that could pose a more common hazard to Earth.

The DART spacecraft will achieve the kinetic impact by deliberately crashing itself into the moonlet at a speed of approximately 6 km/s, with the aid of an onboard camera and sophisticated autonomous navigation software, NASA says.

The collision will change the speed of the moonlet in its orbit around the main body by a fraction of one percent, enough to be measured using telescopes on Earth.

So far, the estimated cost is about $69 million, including the launch service.
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Pristine mountain lakes, the soaring peaks of the Sierra Nevada and the majesty of the Mojave desert  welcome to the sublime beauty of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Its a hikers paradise, as adventurer Tim Voors explains in a stunning new book, The Great Alone - Walking the Pacific Crest Trail.

Tim spent six months alone traversing the 2,650-mile trail, which stretches from southern California to the border of Canada, snapping stunning pictures of his epic journey along the way.

The Dutchman had to learn to navigate bear territory and plan his food supply - and carried everything he needed to survive in both blistering heat and freezing snow storms.

Tim said: 'I wanted to experience what it meant to be self-reliant, to carry everything I needed on my back as I walked through the vast wilderness. Free to sleep under the stars, meet new people and walk alone with my thoughts.'

Scroll down to see some of the beautiful images that adorn the tome...

Tim began his journey in Campo, California, and much of the early part of his trip involved hiking through desert landscapes. Pictured is a stunning shot of the wind farms near the Californian city of Tehachapi

The jaw-dropping Kern Falls, which Tim encountered on the way to Kennedy Meadows, California. The falls is known for being rich in salmon

Life's a pitch: Tim sets up camp for the night looking out on to the High Sierras

The second part of Tim's epic hike took him from Mount Whitney to South Lake Tahoe in California. Pictured is Thousand Island Lake, which he reached shortly after passing the town of Mammoth Lakes, California

Tim sits down and takes a rest above a deep glacier valley in the Sierra Nevada mountains

The third part of Tim's journey took him from South Lake Tahoe all the way up to the Canadian border. He said: 'I wanted to experience what it meant to be self-reliant, to carry everything I needed on my back as I walked through the vast wilderness'

As Tim headed north towards Canada, he passed through the US state of Oregon. There he took this incredible image of Crater Lake, the main feature of Crater Lake National Park

This image shows how Oregon's yearly wildfires have left the state's vast forests scorched

Clouds can be seen rolling across Mount Hood in Zigzag Canyon in Oregon. Mount Hood has an elevation of over 11,000 feet

Mount Adams in Washington state rises above the clouds as Tim makes his way through the Goat Rocks Wilderness - a popular hiking area

The sublime view that greets Tim as he approaches the Knife's Edge peak while walking through the Goat Rocks Wilderness in Washington state

Nearly there: The final descent from Castle Pass in Washington state to the Northern Terminus at the Canadian border

Epic: The trail passes through California, Oregon and Washington state

THE TRAIL IN NUMBERS, FROM SNAKES SPOTTED TO NOODLES EATEN 120 beers, 1,000 liters of water 50 snakes, one for dinner 10 guns, one time shot at 100 hamburgers and pizzas Five coyotes and 100 deer 10 joints, five with a result [marijuana is legal in California, Oregon and Washington State] Two bears, luckily at a distance Six pairs of shoes, four pairs of socks 250 packs of noodles and 100 miso soups Six million steps, 19lb (9kg) weight lost 21 resupply boxes, two of which never arrived 9,500 dollars (8,400 euros) Advertisement
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Universal Studios has conjured up a brand new nighttime lights show for Harry Potter fans.

The Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle show is running nightly until the end of the month at the Hollywood theme park.

The show received its media premiere on Thursday, which saw hundreds of guests gathered in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter to watch a mesmerising display of lights, music and special effects.

Spellbound: Guests packed into the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood for the media premiere of the new Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle show

Images of different characters and creatures are projected on to Hogwarts Castle. The show features some of the movie's darkest creatures and villains

Wand-erful: The Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle show is accompanied by an exclusive musical arrangement that is performed by the London Symphony Orchestra

The show sees some of the movies' darkest creatures and villains unleashed, including the powerful dark wizard, Lord Voldemort.

According to Universal Studios Hollywood, the show starts when darkness falls on Hogwarts Castle.

It said: 'Death Eaters and other unspeakable creatures from Aragog and Mountain Trolls to Thestrals will cloak the castle with sinister images from the darker side of magic, until the Patronus spell - one of the most famous, difficult and powerful defense of the dark arts charms in the wizarding world - is cast.'

The show is different from previous illumination events at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Vold move: The Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle show is running nightly until the end of the month at the Hollywood theme park

According to Universal Studios Hollywood, the show includes lights and music and starts when darkness falls on Hogwarts Castle

The show is running until April 28 and then returns again from May 25 to May 27

This one is being described as having 'more intense tones and drama that reflect the dark creatures and wizards that challenge goodness in the Wizarding World'.

The Dark Arts at Hogwarts Castle show is accompanied by an exclusive musical arrangement that will emanate in a surround-sound environment.

It was conducted by prolific arranger William Ross and recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, based on the original scores composed for the film series created by Academy Award-winning composer John Williams.

The show is running until April 28 and then returns again from May 25 to May 27.

The same light show will also debut at Universal Orlando Resort, with the dates to be announced later.

The light show is running until April 28 and then returns to the Hollywood theme park for a second stint between May 25 and 27
Flights from New York and Boston to London on all airlines could become 12 per cent cheaper thanks to the 'JetBlue effect'.

The U.S.-based carrier, known for low fares, announced earlier this week it will be introducing routes between the two US cities and the British capital from 2021.

And according to new research, when JetBlue starts new international routes, it usually drives down prices on other airlines flying the same service.

Flights from New York and Boston to London on all airlines could become 12 per cent cheaper thanks to the 'JetBlue effect', researchers have said

The study was carried out by travel comparison site Hopper, which noted that historically, when JetBlue enters an international market, fares plummet by on average 12 per cent

Though it can be even more.

Hopper pointed out that when the carrier launched flights from Fort Lauderdale and New York's JFK to Trinidad and Tobago, it spurred savings on all airlines of up to 26 per cent.

Hayley Berg, an economist at Hopper, said: 'Historically, JetBlue has caused prices to drop by 12 per cent when it enters an international market, so were expecting a comparable drop once it starts servicing flights to London.

'Its rumoured that the company may announce more routes to European destinations such as Paris, Amsterdam, and Dublin.

Inside a JetBlue economy cabin. It offers the best legroom in economy out of all US carriers at 34 inches

'Were already observing historically low prices to Europe with prices averaging $637 (487) round-trip from US origins this spring. If JetBlue does enter additional European markets, the competition will push down those prices even further.'

According to Hopper, flight prices between New York and Boston to London have already been falling.

Its data shows that for summer 2019, New York leisure travellers should currently expect to pay $597 (456) return for flights to London.

This is because prices are down four per cent compared to last year and 17 per cent since 2017.

Hopper adds that those travelling from Boston should expect to pay $577 (441) for a return to London.

The new JetBlue routes will be served by Airbus A321LR single-aisle aircraft featuring a version of the carrier's premium cabin, Mint

Prices are down 10 per cent compared to last year and 16 per cent since 2017.

The new JetBlue routes will be served by Airbus A321LR single-aisle aircraft featuring a version of the carrier's premium cabin, Mint. It is not known how much the flights will cost.

JetBlue offers the biggest legroom out of any American carrier in economy, at 34 inches.

Delta offers 32 inches, United Airlines 30 inches, and Spirit Airlines gives 28 inches.

The airline currently operates an average of more than 1,000 flights per day to destinations in the US, Caribbean and Latin America.
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A bizarre 'upside down' hotel touted by some as the inspiration for the Star Wars Sandcrawler could be on the brink of demolition.

Hotel du Lac has been a landmark in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, thanks to its inverted pyramid aesthetics.

But now, standing abandoned and exposed to the elements, its fate hangs in the balance as architects believe it could cost more to restore it than to replace it.

The bizarre 'upside down' Hotel du Lac in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, which may be on the brink of demolition

The hotel bears a striking resemblance to the Sandcrawler tank that features in the Star Wars movies. The desert scenes for the first Star Wars movie were filmed in Tunisia

The hotel, designed by Italian architect Raffaele Contigiani, opened in 1973 and boasted over 400 rooms.

Then Tunisia was chosen as a filming location for the desert scenes in the very first Star Wars film, Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).

That movie featured the Sandcrawler, a huge mobile fortress used for transport and shelter by the scavenging Jawas.

And due to its similarity to the hotel, Star Wars fans couldn't help but wonder if creator George Lucas was inspired by the building.

Architects tasked with redesigning the site have warned that the hotel might have to be pulled down. It has been abandoned since 2000

In 2000, the hotel closed and has not re-opened since. It was sold in 2011, with the hope it could be redeveloped.

But now architects tasked with redesigning the site have warned that it might have to be pulled down.

Sahbi Gorgy, a Tunisian architect working for the building's Tunisian owners told the BBC: 'The building is on life-support.'

He added that it would cost less to replace it, especially as its steel frame is thought to have weakened.

The hotel pictured in 1976, three years after it opened. It was designed by Italian architect Raffaele Contigiani

A campaign has now been started by conservation group Edifices et Memoires, which has started a petition and is hoping for backing from Unesco and George Lucas himself to secure the building's future.

Sami Aloulou from the conservation group told CNN: 'The danger is still present. The struggle continues.'

However, some Star Wars experts have played down the hotel's links to the movies and the Sandcrawler.

That's because a sketch of what the Sandcrawler should look like was reportedly completed in 1975 - a year before Lucas first travelled to Tunisia.
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Is your holiday album hiding an award-winning shot?

Well, it might be worth digging through your pictures as the 2019 international Travel Photographer of the Year awards (TPOTY) is now accepting entries and various eye-catching prizes - including a Northern Lights and whale watching trip - are up for grabs.

If you're unsure if you've got what it takes, scroll down to see some of the jaw-dropping shots from the past 16 years the competition has been running, with a mesmerising shot of a bloody-faced bear in Svalbard and a snap of a cute meerkat in South Africa among the standout efforts.

There are various categories in this year's contest, with themes including 'culture', 'adventures' and 'street life'.

There is also a special award for young photographers and one for images shot on a smartphone or tablet.

Offering further inspiration, there are more than 150 photos from Travel Photographer of the Year 2018 on display next to City Hall in London until April 30.

A cute meerkat scratches its head and stops to pose for the camera as the sun rises over Little Karoo in South Africa

After a delicious zebra lunch in a muddy pothole, a small lion cub plays hide-and-seek behind a tree in Serengeti, Tanzania

A polar bear looks at the camera with a bloody face after tackling a seal on the ice, 80 degrees north of Svalbard in the Arctic

Manhattan's iconic Flatiron Building is captured while being whipped by icy winds during a blizzard

A scene from the Rapa das Bestas festival in Galicia, Spain, where the manes of wild horses are cut in front of spectators

A woman cracks a smile for the camera as she distributes chicken skewers in Burkina Faso. This is one of the area's most popular foods

A lone Buddhist monk walks around the boundary wall of the West Kirby Marine Lake in the Wirral, UK

People from the Sichuan province in China pack into a swimming pool with colourful inflatables to hand

This stunning aerial shot shows camels and donkeys journeying through salt plains in Ethiopia's Danakil Depression

A local baker sticks his hand into an oven on a street in the coastal province of Jiangsu in China

A man wearing a turban emerges from a cloud of colours during the festival of Holi in the sacred city of Mathura in Uttar Pradesh, northern India
Jake Gyllenhaal will be doing double duty on his latest project.

The California-born talent will be the leading man and executive producer in an HBO series adaptation of Gary Shyeyngart's critically-acclaimed 2018 book Lake Success.

'We are thrilled to partner with HBO, who has consistently been home to some of the most exciting and acclaimed premium content over the past two decades,' the Oscar-nominated actor, 38, said in a statement along with his Nine Stories co-producer Riva Marker, according to Variety.

New project: Jake Gyllenhaal, 38, will be the leading man and executive producer in an HBO series adaptation of Gary Shyeyngart's critically-acclaimed 2018 book Lake Success. The actor on Wednesday was snapped in Paris, France at the luxe launch of Cartier's Clash de Cartier line

His statement also commended the source material, saying: 'Gary's novel is a beautifully executed character study highlighting the depth of human contradiction and complication, set against the timely backdrop of America today.'

The actor will play the role of Barry Cohen, a married Manhattan hedge fund manager who travels across the states via bus ride in search of an ex-girlfriend, as his wife raises their son and starts an affair.

Shteyngart will be a writer and co-showrunner on Lake Success with Tom Spezialy, whose credits include Ash vs Evil Dead and The Leftovers.

Involved: Author Gary Shteyngart will be a writer and co-showrunner on Lake Success

Gyllenhaal on Wednesday was snapped in Paris, France at the luxe launch of Cartier's Clash de Cartier line.

The debonair actor donned a black suit with a black scarf in place of a tie.

Other notable names in attendance at the jeweler's event included Bohemian Rhapsody's Rami Malek and Lucy Boynton, The Crown star Claire Foy and Black Panther actress Letitia Wright.

Gyllenhaal is currently linked to multiple projects including Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which he'll play the role of Mysterio, a villainous nemesis of the superhero; and Rio, a mystery thriller in which he'll appear alongside his Brokeback Mountain co-star Michelle Williams, as well as actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
At the end of the spiritual retreat in the Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis called on South Sudans civil and Church authorities present to pay attention to the gaze of God and the people. He urges them to reflect on our own lives and the common mission the Lord has entrusted to us. The civil war that followed independence has left 400,000 people dead. Currently some seven million people suffer extreme hunger, whilst four million are refugees. The retreat was held on the day Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir was removed from power. The pope donated a copy of the Bible to participants.

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  A spiritual retreat was held yesterday in Casa Marta with civil and Church leaders of South Sudan presence. In his address, Pope Francis told those present that peace is possible. I shall never tire of repeating this: peace is possible! Yet this great gift of God is at the same time a supreme duty on the part of those with responsibility for the people.

To enhance his message, the pontiff directly implored the leaders present  President Salva Kiir Mayardit, Vice Presidents Riek Machar Teny Dhurgon, Taban Deng Gai and Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabio (widow of South Sudanese leader John Garange)  and knelt before each, kissing their feet.

The retreat is the brainchild of Justin Welby, head of the Anglican communion, the Vatican Secretariat of State Pietro Parolin, and Rev John Chalmers, former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, who were all present at the meeting.

The ecumenical, diplomatic and spiritual character of the gathering stems from the presence of the leaders of South Sudans various Christian denominations. After it gained independence in 2011, the country plunged into a civil war that left at least 400,00 dead.

The war appears over now after a power-sharing agreement was signed; however, peace remains fragile. Members of the government took part in the retreat, as did representatives of the Council of Churches of South Sudan.

Today's meeting was held on the same day that the people of Sudan drove from power dictator Omar al-Bashir, who has ruled the country since 1989. During this time, he led a long war against the south until the latters independence.

According to one of the preachers at the retreat, Jesuit Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, over half the population of South Sudan, about 7 million, face extreme hunger, whilst the countrys schools have been abandoned due to communal violence, and 4 million people have fled and are now in refugee camps.

Speaking about this situation, the Holy Father said, My thoughts turn first to all those who have lost their loved ones and their homes, to families that were separated and never reunited, to all the children and the elderly, and the women and men who have suffered terribly on account of the conflicts and violence that have spawned so much death, hunger, hurt and tears. We have clearly heard the cry of the poor and the needy; it rises up to heaven, to the very heart of God our Father, who desires to grant them justice and peace. I think constantly of these suffering souls and I pray that the fires of war will finally die down, so that they can return to their homes and live in serenity. I pray to Almighty God that peace will come to your land, and I ask all men and women of good will to work for peace among your people.

The purpose of this retreat, Francis explained, is for us to stand together before God and to discern his will. It is to reflect on our own lives and the common mission the Lord has entrusted to us, to recognize our enormous shared responsibility for the present and future of the people of South Sudan, and to commit ourselves, reinvigorated and reconciled, to the building up of your nation.

[S]peaking of the three times that the Lord gazed upon the Apostle Peter [. . .] (cf. Jn 1:41-42), he stressed that Jesus gaze rests, here and now, on each of us. It is very important to meet this gaze with our inner eye and to ask ourselves: How is Jesus gazing on me today? To what is he calling me? What does the Lord want me to forgive and what in my attitudes does he want me to change? What is my mission and the task that God entrusts to me for the good of his people? That people belongs to him, not to us; indeed, we ourselves are members of the people. It is simply that we have a responsibility and a particular mission: that of serving them.

Gods gaze is especially directed to you; it is a look that offers you peace. Yet there is another gaze directed to you: is the gaze of your people, and it expresses their ardent desire for justice, reconciliation and peace. At this moment, I want to assure all your fellow citizens of my spiritual closeness, especially the refugees and the sick, who have remained in the country with great expectations and with bated breath, awaiting the outcome of this historic day. 

The pope called on South Sudans leaders, Christian communities and all its people to be builders of peace, and ended his address with a prayer and a blessing. May the Merciful God touch the heart of every man and every woman in South Sudan, fill them with his grace and blessings, and bring forth rich fruits of lasting peace, even as the waters of the Nile, flowing through your country, bring life and abundant growth.

At the end of the retreat, the pontiff promised to visit South Sudan along with Justin Welby and Chalmers, and urged the leaders to remain united and then knelt to kiss their feet. He also gave those present a Bible signed by him, Welby and Chalmers with the message: "seek what unites [. . .] overcome all that divides you.
Life can be tough as a touring musician.

Just ask The Wiggles' Anthony Field, who contracted a devastating illness most likely after high-fiving young fans at his concerts.

Speaking on the Who Are You podcast on Thursday, the children's entertainer said he was infected with viral meningitis which left him unable to exercise for three years.

'That was dreadful': The Wiggles' Anthony Field (above) has revealed he probably caught viral meningitis from high-fiving children at his concerts and not using hand sanitiser afterwards

'I got viral meningitis, which the doctors say I probably got from the audience, high-fiving children and not using the hand sanitiser,' Anthony, 55, said.

'That was dreadful. It was two to three years ago, and now I've just started getting back into exercise. It really laid me low.'

The Blue Wiggle has experienced health setbacks throughout his career, having previously suffered from depression and anxiety.

Health woes: Speaking on the Who Are You podcast on Thursday, Anthony (far right) said he was infected with viral meningitis which left him unable to exercise for three years. Pictured with The Wiggles on May 18, 2016 on the Gold Coast

Last year, he injured himself while on tour in the U.S. and ended up in hospital.

After returning to Australia, Anthony shared a photo of himself to Instagram and poked fun at his injury, which he sustained by walking into a glass door.

'"Smashed it" on tour and I'm not talking about the shows! Great fun overseas, great to be back! No revolving doors!' he wrote in the caption.

Struggles: The Blue Wiggle has experienced health setbacks throughout his career, having previously suffered from depression and anxiety. Pictured with The Wiggles

He had received 12 stitches at Boston's Tuft Medical Center after his accident, but still didn't miss a concert during the band's U.S. tour.

Anthony, who once sang in rock band The Cockroaches, has been the darling of parents and toddlers for decades for his uplifting work with The Wiggles.

He has been married to wife Michaela Patisteas for 16 years and the couple share three children: daughters Lucia, 15, and Marie, 13, and son Antonio, 11.
She will be honored next month for her 'bravery and strength' at the 26th Annual Race To Erase MS Gala which was founded by multimillionaire and MS sufferer Nancy Davis.

And on Thursday, Selma Blair demonstrated some of those characteristics as she ran some errands in Los Angeles using a cane as a walking aid.

The actress, 46, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in August last year and went public with the news in October.

Errands: Selma Blair was seen out and about in Los Angeles on Thursday, using a cane as a walking aid. The actress, 46, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis last year

Difficulty walking is the more obvious sign of her condition.

But Blair has shared other effects she is dealing with as a result of having the disease that affects the central nervous system and for which there is no cure.

Earlier in the week, the Cruel Intentions star explained via her Instagram that she is losing her eye lashes.

Alongside a close-up photo of herself with some flowers. she wrote: 'My right eyelashes all fell out except 3 corner ones. Happened in end of August. Havent regrown!'

She added: 'just started falling out in left eye so there goes my profile posing.'

Fortitude: Blair appeared to be in good spirits and will be honored next month for her 'bravery and strength' at the 26th Annual Race To Erase MS Gala

Lovely look: She looked lovely in a pretty floral maxi dress and brown leather sandals and wore a blue shoulder purse slung across her body

And on Thursday morning, she shared that she is also suffering from memory loss, a common condition among MS sufferers who often face a number of cognitive changes.

Later in the day, she posted a video clip to her Instagram in which she revealed that one of her errands included a stop for a massage.

In the clip, she is seen having wood therapy, in which her thighs and buttocks receive a deep tissue massage using a sculpted wooden implement.

'I #knead this every day,' she wrote in the caption. 'My butt hasnt worked in 8 months. Time to get woke!!!!!'

Salon stop: Later in the day, Blair posted a video clip to her Instagram in which she revealed that one of her errands included a stop at a salon for a massage

Therapy: She is seen having wood therapy, in which her thighs and buttocks receive a deep tissue massage using a sculpted wooden implement. 'I #knead this every day,' she wrote

Blair, who has a seven-year-old son Arthur, has spoken candidly about how 'relieved' she was when doctors finally diagnosed her with MS after experiencing years of pain.

'I cried, I had tears. They weren't tears of panic. They were tears of knowing I now had to give in to a body that had loss of control,' she said during an appearance on Good Morning America earlier this year.

'And there was some relief in that,' she went on. 'Cause ever since my son was born, I was in an MS flare-up and didn't know and I was giving it everything to seem normal.'

Blair also admitted: 'I was self-medicating when [Arthur] wasn't with me. I was drinking. I was in pain.....And I was really struggling with how am I going to get by in life.'
Ant McPartlin reportedly enjoyed boozy nights with pals during the PJ and Duncan tour, his former manager has claimed.

According to The Sun, Mike Faux claimed the presenter would sneak off for drinks after performing with Declan Donnelly, in a Channel 5 documentary set to air on Friday.

It comes after Ant's triumphant return to presenting on Britain's Got Talent last week, a year after his drink-drive arrest.

Shocking: Ant McPartlin reportedly enjoyed boozy nights with pals during his days performing as the duo PJ and Duncan, his former manager has claimed

In the programme, Mike claims Ant was no stranger to a night out with pals after performing with Dec as PJ and Duncan in the 1990s.

The documentary - which has been made with no involvement from Ant - will show Ant's recent comeback following his drink-drive arrest last year.

As well as taking a break from presenting, Ant recently revealed he has quit drinking since his arrest.

Explosive: According to The Sun , Mike Faux claimed the presenter would sneak off for drinks after performing with Declan Donnelly, in a Channel 5 documentary to air on Friday

Back in the day: Ant and Dec famously performed as the duo PJ and Duncan in the 1990s, after playing the characters on the children's series Byker Grove

Mike said: 'Out of the two of them, Ant was a bit more one of the lads.

'It used to be a nightmare for me with the two of them because we'd have an after-show party, so to speak, and Ant would always come up to me and say, ''Might we look after Dec,'' and so on.

'Then he'd be sneaking off with his mates and going and having beers with them and so on. It would make it a nightmare for me.'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for Ant McPartlin for comment.

Big return: Ant took a break from presenting duties last year after his drink-drive arrest, leaving Dec to fulfil their TV commitments solo

The revelations come as Britain's Got Talent fans were left elated when Ant returned to screens, as he reunited with his partner Dec for Saturday night's pre-recorded show.

Fans were delighted to see the star 'looking happy and healthy' with his long-awaited comeback to his hosting duties after his drink-drive arrest in March 2018.

'Ive missed Ant and Dec so much, Im so happy that Ant is back and looking so happy and healthy #BGT,' one fan wrote, leading the troops.
Her bubbly personality has won her a legion of fans both in Australia and in the U.S.

But Bindi Irwin's sweet nature proved to be a little grating for the cast of Gogglebox on Thursday night.

The couch critics were watching Bindi's recent guest appearance on Dancing with the Stars - and it's safe to say they weren't impressed.

'She's doing my head in!' Bindi Irwin's sweet nature proved to be a little grating for the cast of Gogglebox on Thursday night. Pictured on Dancing with the Stars last week

At first, the Goggleboxers were delighted to see Bindi, who won the U.S. version of Dancing with the Stars in 2015, as a guest judge on the Australian panel.

But their opinions changed when they began to find the 20-year-old's excessively cheerful manner rather annoying.

Moans, groans and eye-rolls followed after Bindi, who is the daughter of late conservationist Steve Irwin, paid a compliment to host Amanda Keller.

'Can I actually just take one moment to say how radiant and beautiful you are every single night!' she said.

Too much: At first, the Goggleboxers were delighted to see Bindi, but their patience soon wore thin. Pictured: Anastasia and Faye

'Oh Bindi, don't be a kiss a**e,' Symon Lovett replied as he watched alongside his housemate Adam Densten.

But it didn't stop there, as the Gogglebox stars soon began to question Bindi's decision to give the DWTS contestants 'perfect 10' scores.

'Oh, that's bulls**t!' Faye Kontos screamed, before Lee joked: 'I would love it if she just came out with, "Oh, that was s**t!"'

Less than impressed! Jad, Sarah Marie and Matty rolled their eyes at Bindi while watching her guest appearance on Dancing with the Stars

'That's enough': The Silberys couldn't hold their frustration in, telling Bindi to cut it out

The Goggleboxers' patience really begin to wear thin when Bindi delivered a 'thank you' speech at the end of the show.

'Dancing with the Stars is the closest I've ever come to flying and the family here are beautiful and inspiring!' she said.

In a quick montage, the couch critics yelled: 'She's doing my head in!', 'Bindi, that's enough!', and 'Oh, get over it, Bindi!'
Members of the creative team behind the musical Dear Evan Hansen have been gathering in London since last weekend.

Producer Stacey Mindich, director Michael Greif, and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul  who wrote the shows music and lyrics (as well as songs for the hit films La La Land and The Greatest Showman)  have been attending auditions all week.

They were joined in the last day or so by musical supervisor Alex Lacamoire and Steven Levenson, who wrote the book for the musical about a lonely 17-year-old high-school student who needs a family and a grieving family who need a boy.

Director Michael Greif, and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (pictured together)  who wrote the shows music and lyrics (as well as songs for the hit films La La Land and The Greatest Showman)  have been attending auditions all week

Its one of the most deeply heartfelt shows I have ever seen  and one of the most eagerly awaited in the West End in years. Previews start at the Noel Coward Theatre on October 29.

Later today, the creatives will start deciding whom to cast in the dozen roles in the ensemble. Those conversations will continue back in the U.S. for the next few weeks.

When the company is fully contracted they will be flown to NY to see the show on Broadway, meet the cast, and spend a week exploring all that connects them to Dear Evan Hansen.

Mindich told me that she had arranged a similar exercise with the Toronto company.

The cast of Dear Evan Hansen musical celebrates two years on Broadway in November 2018

Greif, who has directed many productions, including the modern classic Rent, praised those who auditioned this week.

You need an emotional commitment and a level of sophistication to put over those songs, he said, adding: Musicals can deal with the most complex issues, and really require great acting.

The act of singing is so expressive. You have to give it your all, and I think that the act of singing opens people up emotionally and its taking them to extraordinary places. Weve seen all of that in London.

Whats the buzz? The production of Jesus Christ Superstar that wowed audiences in Regents Park two years ago is heading back to town . . . but with a new group of players.

Robert Tripolino plays the main man, with Sallay Garnett as Mary Magdalene and Ricardo Afonso as Judas Iscariot.

Left to right: Cavin Cornwall, Sallay Garnett, Robert Tripolino, Ricardo Afonso, Matt Cardle and Nathan Amzi

Director Tim Sheader and choreographer Drew McOnie are transferring the show into the Barbican, from July 4.

X Factor winner Matt Cardle will play Pontius Pilate. Cavin Cornwall takes the role of Caiaphas and Nathan Amzi plays Annas.
He surprised everyone early in 2016 by announcing he was $53 million in personal debt.

But Kanye West, 41, was taught to save money by Kim Kardashian, 38.

The reality television star told Vogue's 73 questions on Thursday, that she's proud of the financial advice that she's given her rapper husband.

Just call her frugal: Kim Kardashian told Vogue's 73 questions on Thursday, that she's proud of the financial advice that she's given her rapper husband

Taking it yeezy: Kanye said he has received the advice but not followed it

Asked of what she's most proud, the Keeping Up With The Kardashians beauty explained to the interviewer that she has taught her spendthrift husband how to be more cautious with his dollars.

'I am proud to say that I have taught him - given him like really good financial advice on saving,' she explained.

Kanye, who was nearby, replied: 'You've given me some advice but I don't listen to it.'

He certainly didn't hold back on spending on their new home, which was showcased in the interview.

Loving family: The Keeping Up With The Kardashians beauty explained to the interviewer that she has taught her spendthrift husband how to be more cautious with his dollars

Big fam: This is the first time the 38-year-old siren has given a good look at the spectacular mansion she shares with Kanye West and their three kids North, Saint and Chicago

The couple purchased the Hidden Hills mansion for a reported $20 million in 2014.

They finally moved into it in December 2017 following an extensive renovation, during which they stayed with Kris Jenner.

The momager tweeted in April 2018 that the house is now worth $60 million.

Kim said that in return, Kanye had given her 'major confidence.'

It's the first time the cover girl has shown so much of the dwelling West designed with Axel Vervoordt.

She has a lot to juggle: It is very clear that the kids are extremely attached to Kim

Also seen were their three kids North, aged five, Saint, aged three, and Chicago, aged one.

They are expecting a fourth via surrogate in May.

During her chat, the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star played with all three kids on a bed while West served as babysitter in a very intimate look at their life.

Kanye famously asked Mark Zuckerberg to bail him out in 2016, when he tweeted about his extensive personal debt.

Here we are! Kim walks the Vogue staffer through the foyer and into a bedroom that is off to the right

Zuckerberg didn't respond, but Kanye did fire 30 of his staff following an expensive fashion show which flopped, later the same year, according to Page Six.

By August last year, Ye's financial woes appeared to be over, as Kim told Jimmy Kimmel Live that the father-of-three was close to becoming a billionaire.

His fortunes turned around after he partnered his Yeezy apparel brand with Adidas.

Kim, meanwhile, is valued at $300 million, with television deals, her namesake cosmetics company, a video game and an emoji app.
It's been two and a half years since Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt.

And as the former couple continue to hammer out the legal details of their split, Britain's The Sun claimed Thursday that Jolie has had a change of heart and wants to revive the marriage.

Touting an exclusive, The Sun quotes an anonymous source who told the tabloid: 'Angelina has made it clear to Brad that she wants to be back in a relationship with him.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to representatives of Jolie and Pitt seeking comment.

It's been two and a half years since Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt, pictured in 2014. And Thursday, Britain's The Sun claimed she's had a change of heart and wants him back

The actress, according to the report, is 'dragging out' the divorce negotiations in the hope of a reconciliation.

'She would like them to be a family again and doesnt seem capable of moving on,' The Sun's source claimed. 'Thats why she is making it so difficult for Brad with every detail of their divorce.'

The newspaper goes on to report that Pitt isn't interested in getting back together with his ex but does want to maintain an amicable relationship with Jolie for the sake of their kids.

The Sun's source stated: 'He just wants it all settled  in reality, this could have been over a year ago  but she wont let go.'

The actress, according to The Sun's anonymous source, is 'dragging out' the divorce negotiations in the hope of a reconciliation. She's pictured in Hollywood last month

After seeking full custody of the couple's six children, pictured in Japan in 2011, Jolie is now reported to want them 'to be a family again', The Sun claimed

Jolie has been spotted out and about in public with Maddox, 17, Pax, 15, Zahara, 14, Shiloh, 12, and 10-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne on a fairly regular basis lately, while Pitt's visitation with them is taking place in private

Jolie has been spotted out and about in public with her children on a fairly regular basis lately, while Pitt's visitation with them is taking place in private.

The two Hollywood stars are parents to Maddox, 17, Pax, 15, Zahara, 14, Shiloh, 12, and 10-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.

In January, Jolie, 43, and Pitt, 55, were seen meeting together twice at attorneys offices in Beverly Hills as they work on the details of their divorce.

It was previously announced in November that they had agreed a custody arrangement.

The newspaper claims Pitt, pictured in November in LA, isn't interested in getting back together with his ex but does want to maintain an amicable relationship for the sake of the kids

Meanwhile, PageSix.com claimed in March that Pitt and Jolie had requested a court to make them legally single again even though their divorce hasn't been finalized.

Citing TheBlast.com, the gossip site said the exes both wanted to get on with their lives and 'emotionally move on'.

The actor and actress, who fell for each other on the set of the movie Mr. And Mrs. Smith, were together for eight years before tying the knot in 2014.

In her divorce filing two years later, Jolie cited irreconcilable differences and sought primary custody of their children, three of whom are the couple's biological children and three of whom are adopted.

Her decision triggered a bitter custody dispute during which Pitt was investigated and cleared of child abuse, and both sides accused each other of trying to manipulate media coverage in their favor.

Pitt was previously married to Friends star Jennifer Aniston from 2000 to 2005.

Jolie had two previous marriages - to Johnny Lee Miller from 1996 to 1999 and to Billy Bob Thornton from 2000 to 2003.
The third Bad Boys film is well into filming at this point.

And Will Smith and Martin Lawrence seemed to be fully in character on Thursday as they shot scenes in Miami, Florida.

The 50-year-old Men In Black star kept his cool on set, while the 53-year-old Big Momma's House actor ogled busty beach babes.

Cool: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence seemed to be fully in character on Thursday as they shot scenes in Miami, Florida

Ogle: The 50-year-old Men In Black star kept his cool on set, while the 53-year-old Big Momma's House actor ogled busty beach babes

Smith sported a long-sleeve black button-down shirt while walking around set.

The Legend of Bagger Vance actor's hair looked recently clipped and he had a well-manicured goatee.

He was also spotted in a gold minivan sitting in the passenger seat, wearing gold-framed sunglasses.

Filming: Smith sported a long-sleeve black button-down shirt while walking around set

On set: The Legend of Bagger Vance actor's hair looked recently clipped and he had a well-manicured goatee

Quiet on set: The third Bad Boys film is well into filming at this point

Shooting: He was also spotted in a gold minivan sitting in the passenger seat, wearing gold-framed sunglasses

While in the minivan, Martin was seen sticking his head out the window and hollering at two women in bikinis.

The Blue Streak star sported a maroon bowling shirt with white stripes and a black shirt underneath.

Production has been under way since early January on Bad Boys For Life, which brings back Bad Boys and Bad Boys II stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett.

They will be joined by a number of franchise newcomers such as Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Happy Anderson and DJ Khaled, making his feature film debut.

All gold everything: While in the minivan, Martin was seen sticking his head out the window and hollering at two women in bikinis

Holler: The Blue Streak star sported a maroon bowling shirt with white stripes and a black shirt underneath

Michael Bay directed the first two Bad Boys films, but the filmmaker will cede the directorial reins to Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (Black, Gangsta).

Sony Pictures has set a January 17, 2020 release date for Bad Boys For Life, putting it up against Warner Bros.' Just Mercy starring Michael B. Jordan and Universal's The Voyage of Dr. Dolittle starring Robert Downey Jr.

The story follows Lowrey and Burnett who team up to take down an Albanian mercenary, whose brother they had previously killed.

Plot: The story follows Lowrey and Burnett who team up to take down an Albanian mercenary, whose brother they had previously killed

Around set: Underneath the black sweater top, Smith sported black chinos
The Bachelorette producers are still on the hunt for male contestants, just weeks before the new season is scheduled to begin filming.

And it seems casting agents are going to desperate lengths to find the right suitors for Angie Kent, even approaching random men on Instagram.

Corey Adamson was invited to audition for the show this week, with a Warner Bros. staffer sending him a direct message on Thursday.

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The Bachelorette producers are approaching guys on Instagram in a bid to find contestants for Angie Kent's season - and even asked a man with a PREGNANT WIFE if he was interested

Corey is happily married, however, and even posted a baby announcement with his wife to Instagram on Monday afternoon.

But this didn't stop the casting agent from asking him: 'We think you look great and were wondering if this is something you might be interested in?'

In a bizarre twist, Corey is actually friends with former Bachelor runner-up Nikki Gogan, from Richie Strahan's season in 2016.

He posted a screenshot of the exchange with the Warner Bros. staffer to his Instagram Story, tagging Nikki in the post.

Sorry, he's taken! Corey Adamson, who is happily married, was invited to audition for The Bachelorette on Thursday. Pictured with his wife

Awkward! Corey announced his wife's pregnancy via Instagram on Monday, but this didn't stop a casting agent from asking him: 'We think you look great and were wondering if this is something you might be interested in?'

Bad timing! Corey was invited to apply for the Bachelorette just three days after announcing he and his wife were expecting a baby boy

Nikki later shared the post with her own Instagram followers, adding the caption: 'I wonder what your beautiful pregnant wife would say?'

Fortunately, the producer took the hint and apologised once Corey revealed he was a married man.

'Please disregard my message,' they wrote alongside a crying with laughter emoji.

This year's Bachelorette is former Gogglebox star Angie Kent, who recently said she hasn't had a boyfriend in eight years.

The Bachelorette will return to Channel 10 later this year
Sophia Bush paid tribute to her late dog Penny who died last week in an emotional post on Instagram Thursday.

The 36-year-old actress said that she has kept quiet about the events amid the difficult time.

'It's been a week,' Bush said. 'Still not quite sure what to say, but I needed a break from the internet. Needed to be quiet and hold my heart in the tender comfort of best friends and community. We lost our sweet Penny girl last Thursday.

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Tough time: Sophia Bush, 36, paid tribute to her late dog Penny who died last week in an emotional post on Instagram Thursday

'We knew it was coming, but we didn't know how quickly the day would be upon us.'

The Pasadena, California native opened up about her week of mourning in the wake of her beloved pet's passing.

'For the last seven days we've cried, laughed, and missed her with an ache that is hard to describe,' she wrote. 'We've traded photos, and been so supported by our loved ones.'

Bush, who played Erin Lindsay on NBC's Chicago P.D. from 2014 thru 2017, described her dog as 'a special, wild, rambunctious little thing ... with giant ears, always at attention,' adding, 'I loved Penny from the moment I met her.'

Recovering: The Pasadena, California native said she has spent the week mourning her beloved pet's passing

Lots of love: Sophia said that Penny was family to her as she shared memories

Bush said that the dog brought together her and her best friend Jenny Smart.

Smart 'met Penny before she even met me, while I was gone for the weekend and friends in NC were watching my little copper penny puppy, and Patch,' Bush recalled. 'The first thing Jenny ever said to me was "I love your dogs!" It's still an inside joke in our house, to this day. Penny was our mascot. Our welcome wagon. And our guard dog.'

Bush remembered how Penn was crucial in helping her and her friends through the puppyhood of their dog Griffin - 'which was insufferable at times.'

Advice: Bush urged her fans to adopt their dogs, saying it's a life-changing experience that will 'fill your house with laughter and love'

Fond memories: Bush said her dogs Penny and Griffin were 'inseparable,' 'always touching' and 'always sleeping in a tangled pretzel'

She noted how the two canines were 'inseparable,' 'always touching' and 'always sleeping in a tangled pretzel.

'Even into their adulthood, Penny cleaned his ears every evening around sundown,' she wrote. 'Seeing him look for her in the house makes my heart catch in my throat. He misses her too. We all do. Sure, Penny was mine, but she was truly ours. She was family.'

Bush urged her fans to adopt their dogs, saying it's a life-changing experience that will 'fill your house with laughter and love.'

She added: 'And leave you better than you were before. Sending big love to all the rescuers out there. Theres never enough time, but theres more than enough love to go around.'
He recently admitted to 'hooking up' with his Married At First Sight's Lauren Huntriss after filming the reunion special.

But Billy Vincent, 27, was linked to another co-star on Friday, when he shared an Instagram snap of himself cuddling up to Melissa Lucarelli on the red carpet.

He captioned it: 'How good is this chick @mellucarelli didn't have much time together in the experiment but she defs brought the fireeeeee!!!!! #MAFS'

Cheeky! Mick Gould couldn't resist joking that Billy Vincent and Melissa Lucarelli (pictured) hooked up, after Billy shared this photo to Instagram of them together on the red carpet

Banter: 'And just like that, the drought has ended,' Mick cheekily commented below the snap

Seeing the two posing together, their co-star Mick Gould couldn't resist joking in the comments section that they were romantically involved.

'And just like that ladies and gentlemen, the drought has ended,' he wrote.

Taking the tongue-in-cheek comment in his stride, Billy replied: 'Mickkkkkkkkk!!!!'

All fun and games: Taking Mick's (pictured) tongue-in-cheek comment in his stride, Billy replied: 'Mickkkkkkkkk!!!!'

Their social media banter comes after Billy claimed he 'hooked up' with Lauren Huntriss after filming the show earlier this year.

The barista said things started when he had a 'bit of a flirt' with the makeup artist, 32, at the reunion dinner party, which was filmed in January.

'You didn't see us having a bit of a flirt [on the show],' he told Hot91.1's Dave, Sam and Ash on Monday, before adding that Lauren 'is a lovely girl'.

'He's an awesome guy!' It comes after Lauren Huntriss confirmed she hooked up with Billy after they 'hit it off' at the reunion dinner party

When asked if he hooked up with Lauren after meeting at the reunion, Billy replied: 'It could've happened... It could've happened. She's a sweetheart.

'We're not together [now] or anything like that, I've got to decompress from the whole show.'

Billy clarified to Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday that he and Lauren 'had a thing' in early February, but things didn't work out due to the fact they live long distance.

Romance: Things started when Billy (pictured) and Lauren had 'a bit of a flirt' at the reunion dinner party, which was filmed in January. However, their conversation was not aired on TV

'Me and Loz had a brief thing. We live a distance from one another but we have awesome banter. She really helped me through some tough times,' Billy said.

Confirming the short-lived romance, Lauren added: 'It is true, we did hit it off at the reunion but they obviously chose not to air that [on the show]. They clearly wanted to focus on the drama and violence.

'Billy's an awesome guy, he's got a great sense of humour, he's sociable and a little bit awkward, which I find very endearing.

'Whatever has happened since the show is nobody's business but ours.'

Popped cherry: Lauren was paired with 29-year-old virgin Matthew Bennett on MAFS

Lauren was paired with 29-year-old virgin Matthew Bennett on Married At First Sight.

She eventually took his virginity, before they broke up after Matthew confessed he wasn't physically attracted to her.

Meanwhile, Billy's spouse was 25-year-old cosmetic nurse Susie Bradley, who is now dating disgraced NRL star Todd Carney.
The UCLA #WOW The Wonder Of Women Summit brought out a bevy of stars to Los Angeles on Thursday.

And two female leaders in their fields - Julianne Hough and Lisa Kudrow - took over the red carpet at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center.

Julianne, 30, wore a metallic jumpsuit as Lisa was sophisticated chic in black for the gala that 'encourages meaningful discussions on topics of interest to women'.

Star power: Julianne Hough and Lisa Kudrow attended the UCLA #WOW The Wonder Of Women Summit in Los Angeles on Thursday

According to their website, the #WOW The Wonder of Women Summit's goal 'is to enhance both mental and physical health and inspire the next generation of women leaders.'

All proceeds from the event 'are used to support the UCLA Friends of Semel Scholars and the UCLA Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital Board of Advisors Clinical Innovation Grants.'

Julianne recently opened up about her struggle with Endometriosis, which she was diagnosed with in 2008 and now acts as an advocate for the community to boost awareness of the condition.

'Knowledge is power. Honestly, in the last couple years, Ive seen how many people really dont know anything about endometriosis. I didnt have any knowledge about the disease until I got it.' she told SELF magazine.

Meaningful: Julianne, 30, for the gala that 'encourages meaningful discussions on topics of interest to women'

A good cause: According to their website , the #WOW The Wonder of Women Summit's goal 'is to enhance both mental and physical health and inspire the next generation of women leaders'

Famous friends: In attendance were Sara Bareilles and Peter Roth

'Thats why it was important for me to use my platform and my own story to let other women know that theyre definitely not alone.'

Lisa has been an advocate for equal pay especially in Hollywood. And she laments female characters on TV having no self esteem.

'Standards have just dropped, out of some sense of freedom to express yourself sexually. Why do you have to jump out of your comfort zone to keep someone sexually interested? When it comes to guys, its: "Oh, what do you want?" she told The Guardian.

She was also the emcee for the Summit last year.

Also in attendance were Sara Bareilles and Peter Roth with Valorie Kondos Field and Katelyn Ohashi pulling up the rear.
Tom Hiddleston will star in one of three new Marvel series on the new Disney+ streaming service.

The 38-year-old actor will take the titular role in Loki, a series about his character from the Thoruniverse.

Disney revealed the news on their Twitter account on Thursday, as they revealed further details of the new subscription service.

Loki who's back: Tom Hiddleston will star in one of three new Marvel series on the new Disney+ streaming service

The service will launch in the U.S. on November 12, 2019, and will cost $6.99 a month. It is not known when Disney+ will launch in the UK, or the expected price tag.

Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stanare will be teaming up in the series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, they confirmed.

Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany will reprise their roles as Wanda Maximoff and The Vision in a series titled WandaVision.

The Marvel studio boss on Thursday said series such as WandaVision and Falcon & Winter Soldier will have 'ramifications that will be felt' throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

New content: Paul Bettany (seen in Captain America - Civil War) will star in WandaVision

Kevin Feige also revealed the studio would be debuting its first animated series What If, which is based off of the classic comic book series which looks at key moments in Marvel history and asks, 'What if things had gone differently?'

Disney+ will also be home to Marvel's films, with Captain Marvel available from day one, along with films such as Iron Man, Iron Man 3 and Thor: The Dark World.

Within the first year, Avengers: Endgame, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok and Ant-Man and The Wasp will also be available.

Flying high: Anthony Mackie (pictured in Captain America) and Sebastian Stanare will be teaming up in the series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier

Prince charming: The service will also feature all the Disney classics like Cinderella

Feeling Happy: Snow White will also be in their library

Classic: Beauty and the Beast is another from the entire Disney Signature Collection which will be on Disney+

The Sandlot TV series based off the 1993 movie will also be on the streaming service.

David Mickey Evans, who directed and wrote the feature film, is writing and executive producing the new series and the entire cast is expected to be returning.

The entire Disney Signature Collection, featuring films like Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and Cinderella, will be available at launch.

They're also launching spin-offs, teasing a short animated movie from the Toy Story favourite Bo Peep.

Home run: The Sandlot TV series based off the 1993 movie will also be on the streaming service

'Have you herd? @ToyStory's Bo Peep will be coming home to #DisneyPlus in her very own @Pixar short, Lamp Life,' they tweeted.

In addition to new streaming series, The Simpsons will also be on Disney+ as their new streaming home, according to Variety.

All episodes from the shows 30 seasons are being made available on the service at launch.

It will also have Academy Award winning documentary Free Solo.

They have also announced they'll have two Star Wars live-action series, the upcoming High School Musical series, Noelle starring Anna Kendrick, and Stargirl.

Disney promises that it will release more than 25 original series and 10 original films, documentaries, and specials within the first year.


When Harry Met Sally turned 30 years old this year, yet continues to top lists of the most beloved romantic comedies of all time.

And stars from the classic 80s hit reunited to pay homage to the film as they attend the opening night of the TCM Classic Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood on Thursday.

Leading the way, the movie's lead stars Meg Ryan, 57, and Billy Crystal, 71, put on a cosy display as they reunited on the red carpet.

Iconic: 30 years on from When Harry Met Sally's release, the film's stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal reunited at the TCM Classic Film Festival at the TCL Chinese Theater on Thursday

The duo opted for coordinating black looks, with Sleepless In Seattle star Meg rocking an androgynous ensemble for her red carpet turn.

The romantic comedy legend wore a black suit over a white shirt, with a black tie.

Her blonde tresses cascades down her shoulders in golden waves as she embraced her co-star from the Rob Reiner directed film.

Sartorially in sync with his former co-star, Billy matched Meg's dark ensemble with his own monochromatic look.

The nine-time Academy Awards host kept things simple yet suave as he teamed a dark blue blazer with a black T-shirt.

Throwback: The movie was released in 1989 and attempts to answer the age old question: can men and women ever just be friends? (pictured in a publicity shot from the film)

Two's company: Leading the way, the movie's lead stars Meg Ryan, 57, and Billy Crystal, 71, put on a cosy display as they reunited on the red carpet

The movie was released in 1989 and attempts to answer the age old question: can men and women ever just be friends?

The romantic comedy, written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner, starred Billy and Meg as Harry Burns and Sally Albright respectively.

The film follows the titular characters over the course of 12 years of friendship as they debate whether or not to take their friendship to the next level.

Chic and cheerful: The duo opted for coordinating black looks, with Sleepless In Seattle star Meg rocking an androgynous ensemble for her red carpet turn

Then and now: The romantic comedy, written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner, starred Meg Sally Albright - an uptight yet lovable New Yorker

The late Carrie Fisher also starred in the film, which grossed over $92million in the United States alone, off a $16million budget.

When Harry Met Sally received five Golden Globe nominations, and one Oscar nomination: Best Screenplay for writer Nora Ephron.

It also features one of the most iconic movie scenes in film history, Katz's Delicatessen scene, which sees Sally (Meg) fake an orgasm in a packed diner in order to prove a point to Harry (Billy).

Dapper: Sartorially in sync with his former co-star, Billy matched Meg's dark ensemble with his own monochromatic look as they larked around on the red carpet

Hardly changed: Billy starred as laid-back Harry Burns in the classic movie, which turned 30 years old this year

Earlier this year, director Rob gave some insight into the scene, revealing that Meg went a bit more low-key on the first couple of takes.

'For the first couple of times, she wasnt as committed as she was when we eventually got it,' he told Entertainment Weekly. 'She was nervous.

'In front of extras and the crew and everything, and youre having to pretend to have an orgasm in front of everybody!

'She did it half-hearted the first few times. I kept saying, "No, youve got to really go after it. Youve got to do it full-out."'

The rest  including Rob's own mother delivering the line, 'I'll have what she's having'  is history.

Collaborators: Billy posed alongside the film's director, Rob Reiner, on the red carpet, who recently gave an insight into what happened behind the scenes of filming

Cute couple: Billy and his wife of 49 years, Janice Crystal, both looked great in black as they cuddled up to one another on the red carpet

One to watch: The romantic comedy, written by Nora Ephron and directed by Rob Reiner, starred Billy and Meg as Harry Burns and Sally Albright respectively

The director also offered a few other fun facts about the film, recalling how the Pictionary party scene with Harry, Sally, Marie, and Jess was improvised, revealing that 'baby fish mouth' wasn't even in the script.

'I [told Meg], "Do whatever you want to do,"' Rob confessed, indicating he merely gave her the instruction to draw 'baby talk.'

'There was nothing in the script; we just asked her, "How would you convey baby talk?"' he said.

Her final drawing was 'so perfectly unclear!' that it's no wonder Jess (played by Bruno Kirby) guessed that she was drawing the made-up phrase 'baby fish mouth.'

Shocking: The film features one of the most iconic movie scenes in film history, Katz's Delicatessen scene, which sees Sally (Meg) fake an orgasm in a packed diner

Terrific trio: Billy and Meg joined TCM Primetime Host Ben Mankiewicz on the stage to look back at the iconic film, which is now 30 years old

Fountain of knowledge: Director Rob recently offered a few fun facts about the film, revealing what scenes had been improvised

Meanwhile, Sally's intricately detailed apple pie order while road-tripping with Harry in the beginning of the film was in the script  and is the real-life order of writer Nora.

Rob revealed that he was having lunch with Nora before filming the scene, when he witnessed the writer make the order and insisted they put it in the script.

Even more complicated than Sally's order, though, was having to film the scene the morning after Harry and Sally first have sex.

In the scene, Jess and Marie (played by Carrie Fisher) are in bed together, and Jess speaks to Harry on the phone at the same time Marie speaks to Sally.

Fabulous in feathers: Actress and director Illeana Douglas looked sensational in a black mini dress with a hot pink feathered trim, whilst she boosted her frame in peeptoe heels

You're a pearl, man: Sons Of Anarchy star Ron Perlman looked dapper for his appearance at the star-studded event as he donned a navy polka dot shirt

Spot the difference: Dana Delany looked decades younger than her 63 years in a polka dot dress that showcased her sensational figure

Rob said there were three separate sets for the scene, all on the same soundstage.

'The phones were all hooked up to each other, because there are no cuts, if you notice. If somebody makes a mistake  and its a three- to four-page scene  you cant cover it. You cant cut away to anything. You have to do it over again,' he said.

All in all, they had to shoot the scene 61 times to get it. They nearly had it on take 54, but Jess' last line was flubbed, so they had to start over again.

Film icon: Legendary film critic Leonard Maltin also made a cameo, looking sharp in a pinstripe suit and lemon yellow shirt as he posed on the red carpet

Veteran: Golden Globe winning actress Barbara Rush, 92, looked fabulous in a pants suit at the event, whilst she accessorised with a glamorous gold necklace and heels

Best foot forward: Sarah Blakely-Cartwright cut a stylish figure in a grey belted trench coat, whilst she injected a splash of colour with a pair of gold peeptoe heels

Radiant in red: Bai Ling ensured all eyes would be on her as she slipped into a skimpy sequinned scarlet mini dress with a key hole cut out on the chest

Songstress: Nashville star and singer-songwriter Ronee Blakley covered her blonde tresses in a black beret that she teamed with a mesh top dress

Finally, Rob also discussed how Harry and Sally didn't end up together in the final ending (a story he has shared in past interviews).

'Id been single for 10 years after having been married for 10 years, and I just couldnt figure out how it would work again,' Rob admitted.

Luckily, before they locked into the sad ending, Rob met the woman who would become his second wife, Michele Singer  and finding love again helped him come up with the happier conclusion.
She's rumoured to be joining the steamy antics on the new season of Bachelor in Paradise in sunny Fiji.

But on Thursday night, reality star Florence Alexandra wrapped up against the Melbourne chill while attending the Huffer x Marvel activewear launch.

The Dutch beauty - who was rejected by Matty J during the 2017 season of the Bachelor - accentuated her perfect pins in a pair of wetlook black leggings.

She's slick! Bachelor star Florence Alexandra flaunted her perfect pins in a pair of wetlook leggings while attending an activewear launch in Melbourne on Thursday

Florence, 29, teamed the look with a matching black t-shirt and a statement furry black three-quarter length coat.

She kept her blond locks loose and wavy while sporting a flawless complexion, dark brows and a pink lip.

The blonde's glam appearance comes after rumours she was starring on the second season of Bachelor in Paradise.

Glowing and gorgeous: She kept her blond locks loose and wavy while sporting a flawless complexion, dark brows and a pink lip

And while her appearance hasn't officially been confirmed, the reality star was photographed boarding a flight to Fiji where the series is filmed in early November.

Later that month, Now To Love reported that Florence had found herself in the middle of a love triangle with The Bachelorette season four's Bill Goldsmith and The Bachelor season four winner Alex Nation.

'Bill and Alex seem to hit it off but then Flo comes into the picture and sets her sights on Bill,' an inside source told the publication.

Strike a pose: Florence smiled while posing with fashion stylist Jamie Azzopardi (right)

Unfortunately, it appears that Florence is unlucky in love again, as Bill and Alex were later photographed kissing passionately in Melbourne less than 24 hours after filming for Bachelor In Paradise had wrapped up in Fiji.

It's a case of history repeating itself for the blonde, who was also in a love triangle with Jake Ellis and Megan Marx on the first season of the show last year.

Despite having hooked up with Jake in the real world prior to filming, he still opted to choose Megan over Florence, leaving the blonde single.
Snooki implied that she's going to name her next baby Angelo in an Instagram post on Thursday.

Snooki, 31, shared a shot as she posed in her home donning a black tank top and maternity leggings as her four-year-old daughter Giovanna hugged her baby bump.

She wrote, 'BIG MAWMA,' adding the hashtags, #almosttime and #ANGELO.

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The latest: Snooki, 31, implied that she's going to name her next baby Angelo in an Instagram post on Thursday

The reality star, whose real name is Nicole Polizzi, also posted shots of gifts her friend and Jersey Shore co-star Deena Nicole Cortese gave her, such as a toy and piggy bank with the tot's name on it.

'When I opened this I cried So you guys know the name,' the 4ft8 beauty said in the clip. 'It's gonna be Angelo Thanks, Deena. I love you.'

Snooki said she's 'hoping to have this baby in six weeks,' offhandedly mentioning the physical symptoms she's experiencing amid the later days of her term.

'I can't see anything and, I can't move,' she said. 'And he's on my sciatic nerve - little brat! What am I, 90? My sciatica!'

Pals: Snooki posted a shot with her Jersey Shore co-star Deena Nicole Cortese, who gave her plenty of gifts

Too cute! On Wednesday, Snooki shared a shot of Giovanna and Lorenzo posing together to commemorate National Siblings Day

On Wednesday, Snooki shared a shot of Giovanna and Lorenzo posing together to commemorate National Siblings Day.

'Happy #nationalsiblingday to these nuggets,' she wrote. 'You drive mommy & daddy crazy!! We love you offspring!!'

The Jersey Shore alum, who also has a six-year-old son named Lorenzo with husband Jionni LaValle, told her fans in November she was expecting her third child with a shot of a sonogram, adding, 'What I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.'

Speaking with US in January, Snooki said her children 'kiss [her] belly every single day' and 'can't wait for little brother.'

She said of her third pregnancy: 'I just feel like every day I wake up and there's something wrong with me. My stomach hurts or I'm cranky and I can't move and just need to lay down. It's really annoying, the pregnancy. It's not my favorite.'
Isla Fisher paid tribute to her brothers Edward and Daniel on Thursday to celebrate National Sibling Day.

The Wedding Crashers star, 43, shared a sweet Instagram snap of herself as a child in her gingham school uniform alongside her siblings to mark the big day.

In her typically tongue-in-cheek manner, she captioned the cute shot: 'D-Dog & Dante. Love you both, even tho (sic) you used to tickle torture me daily #nationalsiblingday.'

'You used to torture tickle me daily': Isla Fisher paid tribute to her brothers Edward and Daniel in a sweet childhood snap to celebrate National Sibling Day

Isla looked utterly cherubic as she flashed a gap-toothed smile at the camera in the shot, which was taken after she moved to Western Australia from Oman aged six.

The Confessions Of A Shopaholic star was instantly recognisable due to her signature auburn-hued hair.

Fisher's old-school tribute to her siblings comes after she took another trip down memory lane earlier this year.

Cute: In her typically tongue-in-cheek manner, she captioned the cute shot: 'D-Dog & Dante. Love you both, even tho (sic) you used to tickle torture me daily #nationalsiblingday'

Back in January, she shared a sweet throwback snap of herself singing karaoke with long-time pal Courtney Cox to celebrate the 54-year-old joining Instagram.

The Hollywood actresses have been pals for years, first meeting during Courtney's days on Friends back in 2003.

The fresh-faced stars held microphones and wore white shirts in the shot at what looked like a bar with a disco ball in the background.

Gal pals: Back in January, she shared a sweet throwback snap of herself singing karaoke with long-time pal Courtney Cox to celebrate the 54-year-old joining Instagram

Alongside the snap, Isla wrote: 'I know its not FBF yet, but Im too excited to wait... my bestie has finally joined Instagram @courteneycoxofficial.'

Meanwhile, Isla - who married British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen nine years ago - recently admitted she still finds him attractive when he's dressed up as Ali G, Borat and Bruno.

Isla appeared on Busy Tonight in March to answer questions about which character of Sacha's she would sleep with.

When host Busy Philipps held up a picture of Ali G, Isla answered without hesitation: 'I've got the biggest b*ner. I've got a b*ner. That's my hall pass right there.'
A recent leg injury nearly derailed her 30th birthday last month.

But on Friday, Sam Frost appeared to be fully recovered while stepping out at the launch of Drew Barrymore's cosmetics line, Flower Beauty, at Sydney's Bondi Icebergs.

Joining the Hollywood star at the event, Sam flaunted her perfect pins in a floral Bec + Bridge mini dress, which boasted a plunging neckline.

Pretty as a petal! Home and Away star Sam Frost flaunted her perfect pins in a thigh-skimming floral mini dress while attending Drew Barrymore's cruelty-free makeup launch in Sydney on Friday

Keeping her accessories to a minimum, the actress paired the look with a dainty nude clutch and matching ankle boots.

Wearing her locks loose and wavy, Sam wore a neutral makeup palette, featuring dark brows and a flawless complexion.

It comes after the Channel Seven star marked her 30th birthday with a big bash at the Royal Hotel in Sydney's Paddington at the end of last month.

Star power: Keeping her accessories to a minimum, the actress paired the look with a dainty nude clutch and matching ankle boots

But shortly before the party, Sam revealed she suffered a leg injury.

The blonde beauty shared a photo of her taped-up leg, and told her fans that despite it being the worst timing, the show must go on.

Sam captioned a photo of her leg: 'The worst timing for an injury. It's super annoying, but the festival must go on!

Birthday girl! It comes after the Channel Seven star marked her 30th birthday with a big bash at the Royal Hotel in Sydney's Paddington at the end of last month

Days before, Sam's boyfriend Dave Bashford took her out for an early birthday dinner.

Sam revealed on social media that the navy diver treated her to a meal and showered her with presents.

'Bash is away for the next two weeks for work so he'll miss my birthday,' the soap star explained to fans.

'But he took me out for dinner tonight and now has a couple of early b'day presents for me.'
The Los Angeles Ballet Gala brought out a bevy of stars to Beverly Hills on Thursday.

And two paragons of style - Dita Von Teese and Camilla Belle - stole the spotlight at the annual glamorous fete benefiting the L.A. Ballet.

The 46-year-old famous burlesque entertainer and 32-year-old actress both commanded attention in sophisticated floral frocks.

Pretty as a petal: Dita Von Teese, 46, attended The Los Angeles Ballet Gala in Beverly Hills on Thursday

Stunner: Camilla Belle, 32, attended The Los Angeles Ballet Gala in Beverly Hills on Thursday

Daring to impress, Dita showcased her alabaster skin as her beautiful frock featured a strapless design.

She finished the vintage look with a pair of long sleeve black leather gloves, a red clutch, and black high heels.

Her trademark raven tresses were pinned back in a 1920s style as she went with a soft makeup pallet and dab of berry lip.

Beauty: She finished the vintage look with a pair of long sleeve black leather gloves, a red clutch, and black high heels

Camilla made a dramatic entrance as the couture gown featured a sprawling train.

The black fabric with white flower designs highlighted her skin tone as she braved a soft smokey eye and pink lip.

Her signature raven locks were tied back in a tight bun allowing a full view of her youthful face.

Dramatic: Camilla made a dramatic entrance as the couture gown featured a sprawling train

Famous friends: Camilla posed with So You Think You Can Dance judge Nigel Lythgoe

Camilla posed with So You Think You Can Dance judge Nigel Lythgoe.

And Sofia Carson turned heads in a scarlet gown that featured a high cut hem allowing a peek at her pretty pins.

The gala taking place at The Beverly Hilton honored Sofia and Johnese Spisso.
She's been able to sustain her fame well after her appearance on Channel Nine's Love Island last year.

And on Friday, Tayla Damir stepped it up as she attended a Hollywood A-lister's event in Sydney.

Spotted entering Bondi's Icebergs Club, the 22-year-old looked ecstatic to be on the guest list for the Australian launch of Drew Barrymore's Flower Beauty.

All smiles! Love Island's Tayla Damir cut a stylish figure at Hollywood royalty Drew Barrymore's Flower Beauty launch at Bondi's Icebergs Club in Sydney on Friday

The social media star looked sharp and chic in a pink blazer with a plunging neckline and white flared trousers.

She teamed the outfit with white peep-toe heels and matching nail polish.

Tayla accessorised the look with quirky earrings and a contrasting classic brown Damier Louis Vuitton clutch.

Influential: The reality star looked sharp and chic in a sleek pink blazer with a plunging neckline and white flared trousers

The star rubbed shoulders with other famous faces including Samantha Jade, Sam Frost, Anna Heinrich, Rachel Finch and Tanja Gacic.

Drew Barrymore is currently in Australia to promote the Australian launch of her Flower Beauty line in Chemist Warehouse.

Tayla was noticeably solo at the event, which comes just weeks after she was spotted in a tense exchange with boyfriend Dom Thomas outside a Sydney restaurant.

Cashing in: The reality star has been one of the most successful cast members to come from Channel Nine's Love Island Australia

Their relationship followed Tayla's public breakup with ex-flame Grant Crapp.

The split was announced just two weeks after they won $50,000 on the reality TV dating series.

After she discovered Grant had a 'secret girlfriend,' Lucy Cartwright, outside of the show, Tayla decided to end their whirlwind five-week romance.

Choosing to split the money during the finale, the exes both walked away with $25,000 each.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau whispered to Busy Philipps who gets the throne on Game Of Thrones on Thursday's episode of her E! talk show.

The 39-year-old talk show host welcomed Nikolaj, 48, onto Busy Tonight and quizzed him about the hit HBO fantasy series and his character Jaime Lannister.

Nikolaj also joined Busy in a sketch involving them giving advice to siblings and at the end she leaned over and asked him who gains the throne at the end of the series.

Spoiler alert: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau who plays Jaime Lannister whispered to Busy Philipps who gets the throne on Game Of Thrones on Thursday's episode of her E! talk show

'You really want to know?,' Nikolaj said before whispering the answer in her ear.

She gasped in shock and then asked, 'Who's that?'.

She earlier asked the Danish actor if he feels the pressure of keeping the show's ending a secret.

'Now it's been so long I kind of just want to tell people just to get a reaction. If I did, even if I told you, people ...wouldn't believe me,' Nikolaj said.

Hit show: The 48-year-old Danish actor has been portraying Jaime since 2011 on Game Of Thrones

Busy then asked Nikolaj for his reaction after reading the scripts for the eighth and final season of Game Of Thrones.

'I was literally blown away it was so good. I was like how can you end this? ...I cant imagine it ending in a better way,' Nikolaj said.

He predicted that people would be satisfied with the ending and likened the experience to finishing a great book.

Talk show: Busy, 39, welcomed Nikolaj onto her talk show ahead of Sunday's season premiere of the HBO fantasy show

Nikolaj also was asked about his co-star Kit Harington, 32, hosting Saturday Night Live after shaving his beard.

'So, Nikolaj, where do you stand: beard or no beard?,' Busy asked.

'I think it's great with no beard, because he looks his age of 13. It suits him,' Nikolaj joked.

No beard: Nikolaj joked that he preferred co-star Kit Harington without a beard

Busy said her show asked HBO for a clip from the upcoming season of Game Of Thrones, but instead got just a photo of Nikolaj as Jaime.

She then quizzed Nikolaj about the photo and he confirmed that Jaime was happy in the picture.

Busy asked who Jaime was smiling at in the still and Nikolaj said 'a lot of food'.

Still photo: Busy said her show asked HBO for a clip from the upcoming season but only got a still of Nikolaj as Jaime

'That's very important information, I think. Like a banquet of some sort,' Busy said.

'A banquet, ...oooh,' Nikolaj said as the audience reacted.

Busy noted the background was dark and blurry in the photo and asked if winter had come.

Question time: Nikolaj fieled questions from Busy based on the photograph

'Yes,' Nikolaj said.

'You guys, we're getting somewhere,' Busy told her giggling audience.

Busy for her final question asked if Jaime was sitting on a throne.

'You could call it a throne, yes,' Nikolaj replied.

Getting somewhere: Busy told her audience that they were getting somewhere with Nikolaj's answers

Sage advice: Busy and Nikolaj took part in a sketch handing out advice to siblings

Throne answer: Nikolaj after being asked who gets the throne whispered the answer in Busy's ear

Game Of Thrones will premiere Sunday, April 14, on HBO.

Nikolaj also spoke about his work with the United Nations Development Programme.

He said that he went on a month-long hike in Greenland after filming on Game Of Thrones wrapped to shoot a documentary about climate change.

Nikolaj said he chose climate action and gender equality to focus on as a goodwill ambassador to the UNDP.

The actor has been married to former Miss Greenland Nukaaka Coster-Waldau, 48, since 1998 and they have two daughters together.
She's rumoured to have been dating a lot of famous names since her split from Love Island boyfriend Kem Cetinay in 2017.

And Amber Davies' love life set tongues wagging once again on Thursday night after she was spotted with Toyota centre manager Jamie Eagell outside Soho House, London.

The Love Island winner, 22, tried to keep a low profile as she enjoyed an evening out after her performance in 9 to 5: The Musical, where she is starring as Judy Bernly.

Love life: Amber Davies' love life set tongues wagging once again on Thursday night after she was spotted with a car sales manager outside Soho House, London (pictured after 9 to 5)

Amber and Jamie were pictured leaving Soho House together but quickly made their way back inside.

With the Welsh beauty later leaving via another exit and trying to keep a low profile in the back of a car.

Amber looked stylish for her night out as she wore a pair of high-waisted black leather trousers.

New man?: The Love Island winner, 22, tried to keep a low profile as she enjoyed an evening out after her performance in 9 to 5: The Musical, where she is starring as Judy Bernly

Mystery male: Amber and Jamie were pictured leaving Soho House together, but quickly made their way back inside

Stylish: Amber looked stylish for her night out as she wore a pair of high-waisted black leather trousers

The reality star teamed the item of clothing with a bright pink Balenciaga jumper and matching branded black sock trainers.

She completed her look with a cropped leather jacket and a hot pink leather handbag, styling her blonde locks into a voluminous blow-dried hairdo, she added a slick of glamorous make-up.

Meanwhile, Jamie looked dapper in a pair of black skinny jeans, which he teamed with a white T-shirt and a beige bomber jacket.

Details: The reality star teamed the item of clothing with a bright pink Balenciaga jumper and matching branded black sock trainers

Dapper: Meanwhile, Jamie looked dapper in a pair of black skinny jeans, which he teamed with a white T-shirt and a beige bomber jacket

MailOnline has contacted Amber's representative for comment.

Amber split from Love Island boyfriend Kem in December 2017, with the latter revealing in an interview it was he who 'called it a day' as they were arguing over 'silly things' and 'grew apart'.

The Welsh beauty was then dating James Hawkins over the summer of 2018, but their relationship fizzled out.

Amber has since been reportedly linked to several celebrities including Gary Linekers son Tobias, Liam Payne and Pete Wicks.

Finishing touches: She completed her look with a cropped leather jacket and a hot pink leather handbag, styling her blonde locks into a voluminous blow-dried hairdo

Single: Amber has been rumoured to have been dating a lot of famous names since her split from Love Island boyfriend Kem Cetinay in 2017

However, in February, the dancer insisted that she and Liam are just friends, as she revealed to OK! Magazine: 'Liam is a genuinely lovely guy and very down to earth considering how successful he is.'

Proving that they communicate, she added: 'If I messaged him and asked him for advice he would give it to me, but Im not dating him. Liam is lovely but were just friends!

The brunette also candidly spoke about how she feels about her former flame Kem, who she shared the 50,000 Love Island prize money with.

Opening up she shared: 'We went through a lot together, I was so in love with him. Ill always get that nervous feeling when I see him.'

Ex: Amber split from Love Island boyfriend Kem in December 2017, with the latter revealing in an interview it was he who 'called it a day
She recently enjoyed a Caribbean vacation with her teen daughter.

And Courteney Cox put on a stylish display as she stepped out for dinner at Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica, California, on Thursday.

The Friends star, 54, looked effortlessly chic in a white striped shirt which she wore tucked into a pair of black denim jeans.

Chic: Courteney Cox, 54, looked effortlessly chic in a white striped shirt and denim jeans as she enjoyed dinner at a trendy Hollywood hotspot on Thursday

Boosting her height in chic black heels, Courteney accessorised her look by wearing a pair of tinted shades.

Her raven tresses were styled into a sleek, straight style and she wore light touches of make-up to accentuate her natural beauty.

Courteney wore an array of necklaces, while she gave her look an extra pop of glitter by wearing gold hoop earrings.

Stylish: Her raven tresses were styled into a sleek, straight style and she wore light touches of make-up to accentuate her natural beauty

Last week, Courteney enjoyed a spring break getaway to The Bahamas with her 14-year-old daughter Coco.

The star - who is now dating Johnny McDaid from Snow patrol - enjoyed a beach break with Coco, sharing cute selfies with the teen.

Courteney hit the big time after playing Monica Gellar in the hit series Friends, which follows the lives of a group of 20-somethings living in New York City.

Fans got a blast from the past when the actress revisited the famous apartment the show was set at, in an Instagram video posted Wednesday.

Finishing touches: Boosting her height in chic black heels, Courteney accessorised her look by wearing a pair of tinted shades

'Good night guys, going home!' the actress told the camera as she approached the iconic building, just as music from the show faded into the background.

'The One Where My Rent Went Up $12,000 #friends #mollymcnearney #missthosedays,' she captioned the video.

Courteney starred opposite Jennifer Aniston and Matt LeBlanc in the show, which aired from 1994 to 2004.
He has played the part of Thor since his debut as the God of Thunder in the character's self-titled debut in 2011.

But Chris Hemsworth remained tight-lipped on the fate of the Asgardian warrior in Avengers: Endgame when he was asked if there was any meaning behind his Marvel contract ending.

In an interview set to air on the Graham Norton Show on Friday night, the actor, 35, told the host: 'I cant tell you. But, regardless of what happens in this film with any of these characters, its just the end of phase three for Marvel. So, who knows?'

Keeping mum: During Friday's Graham Norton Chris Hemsworth will remain tight-lipped on the fate of Thor in Avengers: Endgame as he deftly avoided questions about his Marvel contract

He went on: 'This has been the hardest press tour, because we really cant say anything.'

When asked about what it was like when the cast finished filming, he added: 'We all wrapped at different times and people disappeared off to other things so the press tour has had a bitter sweet nostalgic feeling.

'Its a bit like finishing high school and saying, "See you next summer maybe". We were all reminiscing and saying what an incredible journey we had all been on together.'

One of the first: Chris has played the part of Thor since his debut as the God of Thunder in the character's self-titled debut in 2011

Chris' character was one of the first members of the Avengers team to be introduced to the public, before appearing in Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok, and every Avengers film to date.

Avengers: Infinity War saw half of all life in the universe disintegrate after villain Thanos completing all five infinity stones on the Infinity Gauntlet.

In the new film, the remaining Avengers must team up to bring back their loved ones in one final stand against Thanos.

Coy: The actor, 35, told the host: 'I cant tell you. But, regardless of what happens in this film with any of these characters, its just the end of phase three for Marvel. So, who knows?'

God of Thunder: Chris' character was one of the first members of the Avengers team, and appeared in Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok (pictured), and every Avengers film to date

All of the film's cast have refused to say anything about who will survive their final battle, after half the world's population, and the team of superheroes, met a dramatic end during Infinity War.

Giving away spoilers is less of an issue for Chris' co-star Paul Rudd, who told Graham of his innate ability to banish what happened in the story from his mind.

The Ant-Man star, 50, explained: 'I am good at forgetting stuff, which helps. We havent seen the film and there are many things that we dont know because we didnt read the whole script.'

Funnyman: Paul Rudd joked about his character being in Ant-Man And The Wasp rather than Infinity War, as he said: 'I felt like there was a great party going on and I didnt get an invite'

While he joked about the fact his character was missing from Infinity War in favour of starring in his second solo film Ant-Man And The Wasp, as he said: 'Thats a question I have asked myself. I felt like there was a great party going on and I didnt get an invite.'

Of working with the Australian actor, Paul went on: 'Id been working out really hard, Id been eating really great for years and years, and then, when we were filming I stood behind Chris just after wed got out of our suits and I thought, "What is the point? Were basically comprised of similar materials but there is this (pointing at Chriss body) and then theres Ant-Man!'

Chris and Paul were joined on the show by Julianne Moore, Kit Harington and Tom Walker. The Graham Norton Show airs on BBC One on Friday April 12, at 10.35pm.
He is best known as the fair and balanced host of The Bachelor.

But 20 years ago, Osher Gunsberg was a popular VJ for Channel [V], who went by the name Andrew G.

And on Friday the 44-year-old paid tribute to his days on the music show with a lengthy Instagram post.

'Twenty years ago on this date was my first ever day working in television': The Bachelor's Osher Gunsberg (right) looked back at his career when he was still a Channel [V] star in an Instagram post on Friday. Pictured with makeup artist Carla Mico

In the accompanying photo, Osher poses with makeup artist named Carla Mico who he has worked with across various shows.

He wrote: 'Twenty years ago on this day, April 12th 1999 - was my first ever day working in television. It was on Channel [v], live across the nation on By Demand, a video request show.

'On that day I met someone else who was having her first day in television - a work experience kid called Carla Mico.

'We have worked on and off together since that day and full time for the last six years. She is the greatest. She introduced me to my wife.

He wrote: 'Twenty years ago on this day, April 12th 1999 - was my first ever day working in television. It was on Channel [v], live across the nation on By Demand, a video request show'. Osher is pictured on Channel [V] in the 2000s

Back then: Osher worked on Channel [V] for seven years, finishing his run as it's popular presenter in 2006. Osher is pictured on Channel [V] in the 2000s

'I am grateful beyond measure to you @technicarla for everything. You make every day at work a wonderful day. Here's to another twenty years together,' he concluded.

Osher met his wife Audrey Griffen in 2015 while filming season four of The Bachelor Australia, where the TV star worked as a host and Audrey was a stylist, and they married in 2016.

Earlier this year the TV star and his wife Audrey, 38, announced he's soon to become a first-time father.

Fate: In his post, Osher thanked Carla Mico introducing him to his now-wife Audrey Griffen (right). They met in 2015 while filming The Bachelor Australia, where Audrey was a stylist

Love! Osher and Audrey (centre) wed in 2016 and stepfather to Audrey's 14-year-old daughter, Georgia (left)

The author is already a stepfather to Audrey's 14-year-old daughter, Georgia.

Osher worked on Channel V for seven years, finishing his run as it's popular presenter in 2006.

At 38, Osher, whose birth name is Andrew Gunsberg, dropped the Andrew G moniker and decided to change his name to Osher, which is Hebrew for 'happiness' as part of his evolving outlook on life.
Megan Barton Hanson has broken her silence after being rushed to hospital with an undiagnosed nut allergy early hours of Wednesday after falling ill in the night.

The Love Island star, 25, has taken to Instagram days after the scare to reveal that she has 'never been so scared' as when she was told to needed to call an ambulance.

Megan reassured her fans that she is now 'feeling a little more human', as she continues to recover from the event but admitted to feeling disheartened that she had missed her trip to Los Angeles.

'Feeling human again': Megan Barton Hanson has broken her silence after being rushed to hospital with an undiagnosed nut allergy early hours of Wednesday after falling ill in the night

Next to a glamorous snap, Megan defiantly penned: 'The comeback is always STRONGER than the set back. Finally starting to feel a little more human again, I've never been so scared!

'When the doctor looks at you in shock and says we need to call an ambulance right now, a day before I was due to fly to LA [sad face].

'Thank you all so much for your well wishes and support it means so much. Meg xx.'

Terrified: The Love Island star, 25, has taken to Instagram days after the scare to reveal that she has 'never been so scared' as when she was told to needed to call an ambulance

Gutted: Megan reassured her fans that she is now 'feeling a little more human', as she continues to recover from the event but admitted to feeling disheartened that she had missed her trip to Los Angeles

Fans rushed to the comments section of her post, as they sent their well-wishes and encouraged her to 'look after her' in the wake of her allergic reaction.

It was reported on Wednesday that Megan had been rushed to hospital with a mystery ailment, which was later revealed to be a nut allergy.

A source told MailOnline: 'Megan was rushed to hospital this morning with an allergic reaction.

'[She] went into hospital in the early hours after suffering pain and discomfort throughout the night.'

Next to a glamorous snap, Megan defiantly penned: 'The comeback is always STRONGER than the set back. Finally starting to feel a little more human again, I've never been so scared!'

At the time, the source added: 'Doctors are still trying to establish what has caused it and she is currently undergoing tests to determine this.'

A spokesperson for Megan was unavailable for comment.

In January, Megan was rushed to hospital after she was struck down with a bladder infection leading to a 'nightmare few days' when the problem spread to her kidneys.

She wrote on Instagram: 'Glad to be home after a nightmare few days! Don't ignore a bladder infection it WILL spread to your kidneys. Never been in so ill in my life!! (sic)'

Then in February, Megan revealed she was undergoing therapy following her split from Wes Nelson - her Love Island beau.

She said: 'I need to make sure I'm in a good place. I've gone back to therapy. I'm doing (cognitive behavioural) CBT therapy, that's a way they teach you to rationalised your thoughts and keep going over things.'

She also praised her parents for writing her a lovely get well soon note and sending her some flowers. She wrote: 'My parents are the best nothing worse than being away from your family when your poorly thank you (sic)'

Fan girl: Megan Barton Hanson, 25, headed to The 02 arena in North Greenwich in London to see Drake in concert on Monday

Megan's latest hospital drama comes a day after she was seen in good spirits at The 02 arena in London to see Drake in concert on Monday.

She spared no expense on her outfit as she stepped out in a Fendi jacket with a hefty price tag of 1,850.

Megan's new look comes amid claims she's considering joining Celebs Go Dating.

The stunning star has been single since splitting from Wes Nelson in January, but it seems Megan is considering sticking her toe back in the dating pool.

Sources told The Sun: 'Bosses think Megan would be great value as most men find her irresistible. She's mulling it over at the moment as everything she does she wants to properly commit to...

Moving on: The stunning star has been single since splitting from Wes Nelson, 21, in January (pictured in January 2019)

'It's a big decision to go and find love on television again and she doesn't want to jump into anything.'

Megan's ex Wes, 21, briefly dated Instagram model Alicia 'Lissy' Roddy, 24, however their short-lived romance ended just three weeks after it began.

The design engineer, who was accused of having an affair with his Dancing On Ice partner Vanessa Bauer, previously said he wasn't willing to rush into another relationship after his painful break-up from Megan.
He's left viewers lusting at their television screens after a chemistry-fuelled fling with Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character on the hit BBC series.

And Andrew Scott has admitted that he's shocked over his new 'hot priest' status after his debut on series two of Fleabag and that he never used to be a 'sex symbol'.

The Irish actor, 42, appeared on Friday's episode of Lorraine, with guest host Christine Lampard, to talk about the success of the hit BBC series.

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'Hot priest': Andrew Scott has admitted that he's shocked over his new 'hot priest' status after his debut on series two of Fleabag and that he never used to be a 'sex symbol'

Speaking about how he never expected his new 'hot priest' status, he said: 'I sure didnt. [Especially Growing up] with all those not-hot priests - no offence to the priests who taught me in Catholic Dublin.

'It's been amazing, its been absolutely incredible. I knew it was a beautiful script but the effect that its had on people is amazing.'

Revealing he's not always been a 'sex symbol', he added: 'I used to go to these drama classes when I was a kid and I was shaking going in and then something just sort of happened.

'I had this little sort of lisp, quite a strong lisp, and it really helped with that. I think drama is really good for kids... even if they dont become professional actors, even just to learn how to get up in front of strangers.'

'Sex symbol status': The Irish actor, 42, appeared on Friday's episode of Lorraine, with guest host Christine Lampard, to talk about the success of the hit BBC series

Leading role: Speaking about how he never expected his new 'hot priest' status, he said: 'I sure didnt. [Especially Growing up] with all those not-hot priests!' (pictured in character, right)

Andrew starred as the Priest, nicknamed by fans as 'hot priest', in the BBC series yet after sleeping with Phoebe's character, Fleabag, he decided to stick to his religious vows rather than pursue a romance in the final episode.

The actor instantly became a 'sex symbol' after he demanded Fleabag 'kneel' in the church before passionately kissing her during one chemistry-fuelled episode.

Andrew also spoke about his close friendship with Fleabag's creator and co-star Phoebe, who is also the genius behind Killing Eve.

He said: 'We did a play about 10 years ago, we had this amazing meeting last summer, she rang me up to talk about Fleabag and we spoke about love and loss...

Drama: Revealing he's not always been a 'sex symbol', he added: 'I used to go to these drama classes when I was a kid and I was shaking going in and then something just sort of happened.'

Love story: He's left viewers lusting at their television screens after a chemistry-fuelled fling with Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character on the hit BBC series

Heartache: Andrew starred as the Priest, nicknamed by fans as 'hot priest', in the BBC series yet after sleeping with Phoebe's character, Fleabag, he decided to stick to his religious vows

'We wanted to really convey love in a proper sense. They are flawed characters. I think thats why people really respond to Fleabag, the characters are messed up and we all look for love in the wrong places...

'Just because it is funny doesnt mean that there isnt that heartbreaking sad element.'

He added: 'I am very grateful. I absolutely adore Phoebe, she is incredibly gifted and playful.

'People have called [Fleabag] this great feminist piece, which of course it is, but its so full of humanity and there are so many different relationships represented... its incredible.'

'Kneel!': The actor instantly became a 'sex symbol' after he demanded Fleabag 'kneel' in the church before passionately kissing her during one chemistry-fuelled episode

Pals: Andrew also spoke about his close friendship with Fleabag's creator and co-star Phoebe, who is also the genius behind Killing Eve - they starred in a play together ten years ago

However, show watchers will still be able to get their fix of the 'hot priest' as he is starring in his new movie Steel Country, going on to reunite with Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch again for upcoming World War I film, 1917.

Fleabag's finale on Monday night was the final ever episode, Phoebe confirmed the second series is the last, telling the BBC earlier this year it would be 'the final curtain'.

And fans were not left disappointed by Fleabag's final bow on Monday, as the episode tied up loose ends.

Marriage: Fans were not left disappointed by Fleabag's final bow on Monday, as the episode tied up loose ends... Godmother (Olivia Colman) exchanged vows with Dad (Bill Paterson)

Getting rid: Claire (Sian Clifford) got rid of her husband Martin (Brett Gelman), to pursue a relationship with her Finnish co-worker Klare (Christian Hillborg)

Godmother (Olivia Colman) exchanged vows with Dad (Bill Paterson), aka the love of her life, while Claire (Sian) got rid of her husband Martin (Brett Gelman), to pursue a relationship with her Finnish co-worker Klare (Christian Hillborg).

As for Fleabag herself (Phoebe), the Priest (Andrew Scott), told her he had decided to stick to his religious vows rather than pursue a romance after they ended up in bed together in the penultimate episode of the series.

The final scene saw Fleabag shaking her head and walking away from the camera, breaking the fourth wall one last time.

Fleabag is available on BBC iPlayer, while Lorraine continues on weekdays at 8:30am on ITV.
Georgia Love is clearly not superstitious.

The former Bachelorette, 30, took to Instagram on Friday night to share videos of herself dancing around her living room while opening an umbrella.

Georgia was watching Mary Poppins Returns - the sequel to the 1964 Julie Andrews classic, Mary Poppins - when she was caught on camera.

Isn't that bad luck? Bachelorette Georgia Love opens an umbrella indoors as she dances around her living room while watching Mary Poppins Returns

Clearly entranced by the film, Georgia was seen dancing in front of her TV, while twirling an open umbrella.

She appeared to have been oblivious to the fact she was being filmed, instead paying close attention to the television screen in front of her.

The video appeared to have been taken by her Bachelorette 'winner' boyfriend of almost three years, Lee Elliott.

Georgia proved she was clearly not superstitious as she opened the umbrella indoors during the clip

At one stage, a clearly amused Lee can be heard asking: 'You right, babe?'

A somewhat embarrassed Georgia is then seen turning around and explaining: 'It's a sing-along!'

She then bursts into an animated song and dance routine, hamming it up for her beau as he filmed her.

Georgia has made no secret of the fact she's a huge fan of the revived film.

Attending the film's Sydney premiere in December, Georgia shared a photo of herself on the red carpet to Instagram.

The video appeared to have been taken by her Bachelorette 'winner' boyfriend of almost three years, Lee Elliott

'The new Mary Poppins is practically perfect in every way,' she captioned it.

'Yes, I cried. No, Im not embarrassed. Yes, I will learn the entire Leary dance by Christmas and yes, I want to be Emily Blunt when I grow up.'

She later dressed up as Mary Poppins for a photo shoot for Disney Australia, with the edited photo showing Georgia flying through the air while clutching an umbrella.

'Friends: Did you like Disneys Mary Poppins Returns? Me:... I loved the film so much that Ive started to see my wardrobe through new eyes!!' she captioned it.
Grace Kelly's wardrobe is set to go on display at the Christian Dior museum in Granville, France.

The late American actress - best known for the Alfred Hitchcock classics To Catch A Thief, Rear Window and Dial M For Murder - had a deep relationship with the French fashion house throughout her illustrious career.

And to celebrate the Hollywood star-turned-Monegasque royal's 90th birthday, an exhibition will open its doors to the public later this month.

Style and class: Grace Kelly's wardrobe is set to go on display at the Christian Dior museum in France. This dress, which she wore alongside Prince Rainier III of Monaco at their engagement party at the Waldorf-Astoria in NYC in 1956, will be in the collection

A look: Here she is seen on a driveway in front of a ranch-style house near Palm Springs, Florida, with her husband and their children Albert and Caroline, circa 1963

Le look: Fashion historian, Florence Muller, who is responsible for the much-anticipated exhibition, was given the opportunity to access to the palace's archives and subsequently found that one third of Kelly's total pieces were from Dior. With Rainier in 1963

The much-anticipated exhibit will showcase 85 beautifully-crafted dresses, which were from the Hitchcock star's personal collection.

They have been carefully preserved in the Monaco Palace since her tragic death in 1982 at the age of 52.

Fashion historian Florence Muller, who is responsible for the much-anticipated exhibition, was given the opportunity to access to the palace's archives.

And she subsequently found that one third of Kelly's total pieces were from Dior.

Speaking to WWD, Muller said: 'Bohan perfectly understood her role: she needed to be stylish, but respectful of etiquette.

'Before Grace of Monaco, royalty remained a private affair. Princesses weren't seen in public as much, or photographed by the press. She represents a moment of change of etiquette, a real rupture.'

Always poised: The legendary star is seen in Monaco in 1955 wearing a light blue dress

Early days: Here the socialite was seen in a promo shot in Palm Springs in 1954

She looked good in anything: Here the award winning star is seen in a white swimsuit in 1956

She had a way about her: The star is seen in 1959 with her Hermes purse in Monaco

The actress wore the designer's creations throughout her legendary career as an actress and also when she became the Princess of Monaco, after marrying Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956.

That includes the gown she donned to her engagement ball held in New York's Waldorf-Astoria and the couture autumn/winter 1956 look she chose for her first official portrait as Princess Grace of Monaco.

Grace of Monaco, Princess In Dior will run from April 27 to November 17 at the Christian Dior Museum, 1 Rue d'Estouteville, Villa Les Rhumbs, 50400 Granville.

Kelly retired from acting at the age of 26 to marry Prince Rainier, and began her duties as Princess of Monaco.

She was Hollywood gold: The much-anticipated exhibit will showcase 85 beautifully-crafted dresses, which were from the Hitchcock star's personal collection, and have been carefully preserved in the Monaco Palace since her tragic death in 1982 at the age of 52. Seen in 1955 for To Catch A Thief

A perfect match: The blonde beauty with Cary Grant in To Catch A Thief

They had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie. Kelly retained her link to America by her dual U.S. and Monegasque citizenship.

Born in 1929 in Philadelphia to John Brendan Kelly, son of Irish immigrants, and his wife Margaret Katherine Majer, who was of German descent, Grace eschewed college in favour of pursuing a career in acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York.

She supported her studies by modeling and landed her first film role in Fourteen Hours.

Everyone loves her looks: In Dial M For Murder in 1954 with Ray Milland and Robert Cummings

Her big break came when beauty Gene Tierney pulled out of 1953 movie Mogambo, and Grace was given the role along with a seven-year contract with MGM.

Mogambo was the first time that she worked with Helen Rose, the first of three Hollywood costume designers - including Edith Head and Oleg Cassini - who would leave their imprint on her look.

But it was Hitchcock, and his vision of Kelly's ice-cool elegance that really shaped her look.

Dreamy in beige: Here she is seen with Frank Sinatra in 1956's High Society

Princess Grace died at Monaco Hospital on September 14, 1982, succumbing to injuries sustained in a traffic collision the day before.

After her death the French physicians treating her reported that a CAT scan had revealed she had suffered two brain hemorrhages.

The first occurred prior to the crash, and is believed to have been the inciting incident that led to the crash.

The second, suffered while in hospital, is believed to have been the result of physical trauma sustained in the crash.

At the time of her death, she was 52 years old.
MAFS star Ning Surasiang is single and ready to mingle.

And she has found a willing wing-woman in co-star Cyrell Paule, with the pair enjoying a girls' night out on Friday in Sydney.

Cyrell is set to enjoy her 30th birthday on Saturday and appears to have started the party early.

'Looking for her king!' Birthday girl Cyrell Paule (left) took to Instagram on Friday to share a photo from her night out with Ning Surasiang (right)

Taking to Instagram, she shared a photo of the two women dressed to the nines and ready to kick up their heels.

In the caption, Cyrell, who is believed to be dating Love Island Australia's Eden Dally, explained she was on a mission to find Ning a man.

The fiery former MAFS bride wrote of her single friend: 'Shes here guys.. Ning looking for her King.'

Birthday girl! Cyrell is set to enjoy her 30th birthday on Saturday and she has started the party early. In the caption, Cyrell, who is dating Love Island Australia's Eden Dally, explained she was on a mission to find Ning a man

The 32-year-old Ning left the show solo after things did not work out with her 'groom' Mark Scrivens.

Both women showed off their incredible figures in the snap, with Ning in a bright red sequined dress that clung to her amazing physique.

Cyrell was likewise eye-catching in a very tight bright yellow dress which was cut low at the front.

Although her friend is keen to find her a 'king' hairdresser Ning has said she regrets trying to find love in the reality show experiment.

Alone! The 32-year-old Ning left the show solo after things did not work out with her 'groom' Mark Scrivens

She suffered a shock dumping when ex-Army serviceman Mark told her: 'I came on here to find love... but I haven't found it with you.'

The unexpected blow came just moments after Ning surprisingly said she wanted to continue their relationship outside of the experiment.

After the shock dumping, a tearful Ning said, 'Just stop, this is bulls**t!', before throwing her written vows on the ground and storming off.
She recently revealed she was struck down by a cyst that nearly cost her 53,000 just four days into a three-month sabbatical to Florida

And Jenny Powell has bounced back since the incident, as she looked stylish during an outing to the The Gotham Hotel in Manchester on Thursday.

The television presenter, 51, put on an effortlessly chic display as she wore a black lace camisole shirt tucked into an off-white skirt.

Bouncing back: Jenny Powell looked effortlessly chic in a black top and white skirt while out in Manchester on Thursday... after being struck down by a cyst that nearly cost her 53,000

Jenny completed her professional look by wearing a black jacket which had velvet racer stripes along the sleeves, while she wore beige strap sandal heels.

Her brunette curls were styled into voluminous waves, and had an ombre streak, while she used a natural palette of make-up to highlight her pretty features.

Keeping her personal items in a grey handbag, Jenny kept the rest of her look simple as she opted to forgo wearing any accessories.

Sartorial prowess: Jenny completed her professional look by wearing a black jacket which had velvet racer stripes along the sleeves, while she wore beige strap sandal heels

The star was rushed from the Seaquarium in Miami to a nearby hospital after a 'twinge' in her side turned into 'excruciating' pain.

On-site medics worried that the 'searing pain' could be the TV star's appendix and recommended she sought medical attention immediately, the Mirror reported.

The family - Jenny and her daughters Pollyanna, then three, and Constance, then 10, had embarked on the holiday in 2012 with her new partner Martin.

Jenny said: 'It felt like we were at the beginning of this great adventure, but within 45 minutes of the first twinge I was doubled up and my left side felt so excruciating I burst out crying.

Shock: The Loose Women regular was rushed from the Seaquarium in Miami to a nearby hospital after a 'twinge' in her side turned into 'excruciating' pain

Holiday: On-site medics worried that the 'searing pain' could be the TV star's appendix and recommended she sought medical attention immediately

'I knew that US medical bills could be astronomical and I was so worried it could cost thousands as Martin chucked us all into the car and we headed to hospital. By the time we got there I couldn't stand up straight. I was doubled up in pain, needed a wheelchair and was puking up from the agony.'

Jenny underwent MRI and CT scans at the hospital which revealed she had a dermoid cyst in her left ovary which was around the size of an orange.

The abnormal, sac-like growths tend to develop during in a woman's skull, lower back, ovaries or face during her reproductive years.

The cysts can be removed through keyhole surgery, and Jenny was told hers could be taken out that day and only leave two very small scars behind.

Bonding: The family - Jenny and her daughters Pollyanna, then three, and Constance, then 10, had embarked on the holiday in 2012 with her new partner Martin (pictured)

By 6pm, the Celebs on the Ranch star was about to undergo the operation.

The surgery went well for the mother-of-two - but Jenny was sure she hadn't bought any travel insurance to foot the 53,000 ($70,000) bill.

Luckily, she remembered a bank account she used with her ex-husband Toby Baxendale had provided travel insurance automatically - and she had never closed it.

She said: 'I remember saying, "I'll just phone my bank now" and with the sweat running off my forehead, dialling the number and saying, "I'm just confirming, because I know it must all be in place..."

'When they said "Yes, that's all fine, carry on" it was the biggest relief.'

Family: Jenny underwent MRI and CT scans at the hospital which revealed she had a dermoid cyst in her left ovary which was around the size of an orange (Pictured with Connie and Pollyanna)
She's the Love Island beauty who is not afraid to flaunt her incredible bikini body on social media.

And on Friday, Kaz Crossley, 24, shared video of herself from a sizzling poolside photo shoot in Marrakesh.

The reality star showcased her fine physique in a navy two-piece with gold printed palm leaves as she pranced around on set.

Bikini babe: Kaz Crossley, 24, shared video of herself from a sizzling poolside photo shoot in Marrakesh, on Friday

Her sensational look was accessorised with gold earrings and a bracelet.

Kaz wrote in the caption: 'Morocco was such an unbelievable experience.. I still can't believe I have been chosen to be the face of @georgeatasda summer collection!!!!!'

'Such a lovely team as well, thank you for making this experience so amazing! lil ol' me doing up big model then,' the petite beauty added.

Turning up the heat! The reality star showcased her fine physique in a navy two-piece with gold printed palm leaves as she pranced around on set

New man? Kaz and fellow Love Island star Theo Campbell set tongues wagging after the stunner shared a cute snap together with a dog

Kaz's sizzling photo shoot comes after she and fellow Love Island star Theo Campbell sent the rumour mill into overdrive with speculation of a romance during a recent holiday in Thailand with friends back in March.

The two were away in Chang Mai with fellow reality stars Steven Bear and Georgia Harrison on a Muay Thai fitness retreat.

Kaz and Theo set tongues wagging after the stunner shared a cute snap of themselves with a dog.

Tropical getaway: The two were away in Chang Mai with fellow reality stars Steven Bear and Georgia Harrison on a Muay Thai fitness retreat

The snap itself appeared innocent enough, however, Steven clocked chemistry between the pair as he commented: 'What an amazing couple.'

Kaz tried to play down his banter, telling him: 'stop winding everyone up,' however that was enough to deter interested fans from speculating.

Taking to the comments, one person wrote: 'UPGRADED QUICKTIMEE. BYE JOSH.'

Speculation of a blossoming romance between Kaz and Theo comes after the brunette beauty split with her Love Island boyfriend Josh Denzel in January after six months together.
Emma Stone has revealed that she had a 'meltdown' when she discovered that she had landed tickets to see the Spice Girls on tour.

In an interview with chat show host Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Hollywood star, 30, said that she and American pop band HAIM would be seeing the iconic girl group later this year in London.

Unable to contain her excitement, the Oscar-winner shared how she and the members of HAIM would also be inviting two lucky fans to join them for the long-awaited reunion concert.

Exciting! Emma Stone, 30, told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show on Thursday she had a 'meltdown' when she discovered that she had landed tickets to see the Spice Girls on tour

Emma delightedly said: 'Myself and the band HAIM, they are so great and we're pals and the night before my 30th birthday in November they came over and we were talking about some ideas and Este, who is the bass player, said ''we should go to the spice girls concert'' and we all had a mini meltdown.'

During the show, the Easy A actress was asked by Jimmy: 'Let's talk about the Spice Girls because we talked about this the last time you were on the show that you were the biggest fan.'

Emma said: 'Well I don't know if I'm the biggest fan it's a bit superlative but I am a big fan.'

Earlier this year, Emma, who has not yet met the Spice Girls in person, announced that she would be offering two lucky fans to attend the concert with her in order to raise money for the charity Omaze.

Spice up your life! The Spice Girls announced their reunion 2019 tour in November last year

Big fan: The actress shared how she and the members of HAIM would be inviting two lucky fans to join them at the long-awaited concert

Let's talk: The actress was unable to contain her excitement when she shared the moment she had landed tickets to the highly-anticipated show

The online fundraising platform, which allows people to have once-in-a-lifetime experiences through entering a raffle, helps raise money for charities such as PATH, Child Mind Institute and Los Angeles LGBT Center.

Emma said: 'Omaze is this big platform where you can basically enter a raffle. It's $10 minimum or you can pay however much you want and each entry gets you however many tickets of how much you put in. Did that make sense at all?'

She continued: 'It's been a long time coming and so we were so excited and so we partnered with Omaze and you can enter and you can come with the four of us to a Spice Girls concert in London.

Girl power! Emma Bunton, Mel C, Mel B, and Geri Horner will take to the stage on May 24 in Dublin for their first live 2019 reunion show

'You and a friend and it benefits all kinds of wonderful organisations. It's awesome.'

She added: 'So please please enter so you can see me in a semi-conscious zombie state and won't that be fun?'

Emma Bunton, Mel C, Mel B, and Geri Horner announced their reunion 2019 tour in November last year and will take to the stage on May 24 in Dublin for their first live show.
The Star Wars Celebration in Chicago on Friday offered up plenty of new images and information for loyal fans. Not only was the teaser released for December's Star Wars IX but so was the title: The Rise Of Skywalker.

And several cast members hit the stage alongside director JJ Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, was lovely in black as the audience sang happy birthday to her; she turned 27-years-old on Wednesday. Also seen was Oscar Isaac (Poe), John Boyega (Finn), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca). There was also newcomer Naomi Ackie, who plays a character named Jannah.

And Billy Dee Williams, who reprises his role as Lando Calrissian, was a happy addition.

All here: (from left) Stephen Colbert, JJ Abrams, Kathleen Kennedy, Anthony Daniels, Billy Dee Williams, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo and Naomi Ackie participate in the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker panel on day one of the Star Wars Celebration at Wintrust Arena in Chicago on Friday

'How did I find Lando again?' Williams said. 'Lando never left me.'

Mark Hamill, who voices Luke Skywalker in the film, and Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren, were no shows at the packed event.

JJ is currently in the process of editing and adding visual effects to the film. Episode IX opens nationwide December 20, 2019.

She made it: Star Wars Episode IX will feature a live Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, even though she died in 2016, director JJ Abrams shared on Friday; seen with Kathleen Kennedy

IX will feature a live Princess Leia played by Carrie Fisher, even though she died in 2016, director Abrams confirmed on Friday.

He already told fans this in 2018.

What's new here is that Leia is very much alive in IX and not seen in mere flashbacks, which fans thought she might be.

'Princess Leia lives in this film in way that is mind-blowing to me,' Abrams said.

Also revealed is that IX doesn't pick up immediately after the events of The Last Jedi.

So much going on! From left, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian), Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn) and Oscar Isaac (Poe)

All good with her: Daisy seen here smiling at John and Oscar during the sit down in Illinois

Back for more fun: John and Oscar were seated next to Kelly Marie Tran, far right, who was introduced in The Last Jedi

He added that some time has gone by. JJ teased that it will be an adventure that the group goes on together.

'This movie is about this new generation and what they've inherited, the light and the dark,' Abrams added. 'As they face this greatest evil, are they prepared?'

Lucasfilm president Kennedy also reiterated that Episode IX will close out the newest trilogy and the 9-film Skywalker saga that began in 1977.

In a great mood: This is Ridley's third Star Wars film; here she is seen in a strapless dress

Fitting he wore black: Ian McDiarmid, who plays bad guy Emperor Palpatine, also spoke

Stephen Colbert, who is a superfan of Star Wars, moderated the panel.

Star Wars was created by George Lucas. The franchise began with the eponymous 1977 movie.

The first film, later subtitled Episode IV  A New Hope, was followed by two successful sequels, Episode V  The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Episode VI  Return of the Jedi (1983).

Sitting pretty: Billy Dee Williams held onto his cane and wore a sharp suit, nice scarf and sunglasses

On screen: In trailer he is seen laughing as he rides through space in the Millennium Falcon

A subsequent prequel trilogy, consisting of Episode I  The Phantom Menace (1999), Episode II  Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode III  Revenge of the Sith (2005), was completed by Lucas.

He called it the 'tragedy of Darth Vader.'

One wheeled: Described as a friend of BB-8, D-0 was created by Neal Scanlan and the creature and robotics team

A sequel trilogy began with Episode VII  The Force Awakens (2015), continued with Episode VIII  The Last Jedi (2017), and will end with Episode IX  The Rise of Skywalker this year.

The teaser was action packed and full of cast members.

The trailer begins with Rey alone in the desert. She is breathing heavily as she gets information from the late Luke Skywalker.

Luke may have died at the end of the most recent installment but his voice dominates the teaser trailer.

'We passed on all we know,' says Luke from the heavens. 'A thousand generations live in you now.'

Rey holds onto a lightsaber as she has a stern look on her face while surveying the desert. A spaceship is off in the distance and coming towards her fast. She then pulls out her lightsaber which has a long white light.

The teaser is here! The trailer begins with Rey alone in the desert. She is breathing heavily as she gets information from the late Luke Skywalker. Luke may have died at the end of the most recent installment but his voice dominates the teaser trailer

Bad guy doing evil: Next viewers are taken to another planet. Kylo is seen without his mask as he fights soldiers in a forest; the light around him is red

'But this is your fight,' Luke adds. On the screen it reads, 'Ever generation has a legend.'

Next the desert is panned as music builds; something awful is clearly about to take place.

A ship that hovers over the sand is nearly near her.

The pilot's hands in black leather gloves hint this could be her longtime nemesis Kylo Ren - played by Adam Driver - who is the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia.

Rey runs into the ship and does a flip.

Dynamic duo: Then Finn is seen for the first time in the desert in a beige jacket with Poe behind him

Next viewers are taken to another planet. Kylo is seen without his mask as he fights soldiers in a forest; the light around him is red.

A big, heavy black and silver mask is welded with red light; it might belong to Kylo.

Then Finn is seen for the first time in the desert in a beige jacket with Poe behind him and BB-8 is also flashed on the screen.

The Millennium Falcon is seen cruising through the air with Chewbacca at the front. They are traveling through space at what appears to be lightspeed.

Battle ready: Rey is seen walking down a grassy hill with Chewbacca, BB-8, C-3PO, Poe and Finn. They all look ready for battle as they look out at the ocean

Lando, played by Williams is along for the ride and is laughing heartily.

'The saga comes to an end,' it is flashed on the screen.

Then the battle scenes rev up: there is a fight on a planet that appears to be Jakku or Tatooine, where Luke grew up with his aunt and uncle.

A ship with Finn and C-3PO glides through the air. It seems to be on fire and about to crash into the sand.

A new poster was shared too: Here is the first poster for Star Wars IX: The Rise Of Skywalker

Then we see Rey hold onto a device presented to her in the last Star Wars film. She rubs it as if its a magic genie.

There is a shot of Fisher as Leia hugging Rey. The footage is taken from The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams explained months ago. She died in 2016 and he did not want to use CGI to re-create her.

'We always will be with you,' says Luke from the beyond.

Rey is seen walking down a grassy hill with Chewbacca, BB-8, C-3PO, Poe and Finn. They all look ready for battle as they look out at the ocean.

'No one's ever really gone,' says Luke in voiceover.

Menacing laughter from Emperor Palpatine is heard as the screen goes black, then the Star Wars logo is seen in blue. The Rise Of Skywalker is added.

Episode IX opens nationwide December 20, 2019.

Left: Daisy and J.J. posed for snaps in their classy evening attire, Right: Daisy has a giggle with Stephen Colbert

Understated classic: Daisy wore a tuxedo style strapless top with tailored pants

FUn group: Director J.J. Abrams, Producer Kathleen Kennedy and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) with BB-8 and D-O

Cast mates: Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn) and Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron) onstage

Laughs a plenty: Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron) (L) and Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico) onstage

Iconic: Anthony Daniels looked quite dapper as he addresses the stage

Green with envy: Billy Dee Williams rocked a metallic green jacket

Number one: John Boyega, from left, Oscar Isaac and Kelly Marie Tran celebrated on stage

Girl power: Producers Kathleen Kennedy, Michelle Rejwan, Daisy Ridley (Rey), Naomi Ackie (Jannah) and Kelly Marie Tran (Rose Tico) posed for a group shot
Jessica Biel enjoyed some quality time with her mother Kimberly on Friday.

The ladies were spotted enjoying a walk through New York City alongside Jessica's four-year-old son, Silas, who was dressed up as Black Panther.

Kim held hands with her grandson while catching up with her daughter, 37, during their family stroll.

Mom and me! Jessica Biel and her mother Kimberly spotted enjoying a walk through New York City alongside Jessica's four-year-old son, Silas, who was dressed up as Black Panther

Jessica was even matching her mother for the occasion, as both the women wore head-to-toe black.

The Summer Catch actress rocked a black windbreaker jacket, Nike trousers, red shoes, and a beanie atop her flowing brunette locks.

She carried her son's black jacket in hand while rocking an eye-catching pair of metallic sunglasses.

Kim exuded sophistication in a black trench coat, leggings, knee high boots, and a white scarf looped around her neck.

Walk and talk: The ladies enjoyed a catch up during their leisurely stroll through the big city

Sporty: Biel opted for a windbreaker jacket, Nike trousers, and sneakers

It seems Jessica and Kim are close, and last year the actress posted a touching tribute to her mom in honor of Mother's Day.

'It took me almost thirty years to truly understand everything you sacrificed for me,' Jessica wrote in the caption. 'I am in awe of your wisdom and grace, and I hope I can emulate those ideals with my own child (without ending up in a straitjacket).

'I love you so much Mom. Happy Mother's Day to you and all the amazing moms kicking a** and taking names in the world.'

Jessica is a proud mom of one.

The actress and her husband Justin Timberlake welcomed son Silas into the world in 2015, three years after their wedding in Italy.
The grandson of Hollywood legend Clark Gable died from an accidental drug overdose, it has been revealed.

Clark Gable III, 30, took a fatal dose of fentanyl, oxycodone and alprazolam (generic Xanax), according to an autopsy report from Dallas County released to TMZ on Friday.

His time of death is listed as 9:11am on February 22. He was found dead in his bed by his fiancee.

The tragedy sparked a bitter row, with his father refusing to pay for his own son's funeral or let him be buried in the Gable family plot.

Clark Gable III (left) died of an accidental drug overdose. He was the only grandson of the famed American actor known as the 'King of Hollywood' (right)

DailyMail.com exclusively revealed earlier this year that Clark Gable III's sister, Kayley Gable, 32, said she called her estranged father, John Clark Gable, 57, to tell him about the tragic news.

But she claimed he 'hung up' on her and sent a vitriolic text message, which she posted on Facebook.

'I'm sorry for your loss. This is what I want. Cremate him he's not going in my family's plot and I'm not paying for anything,' John wrote in a text.

The family's plot is located at Forrest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles, where Clark Gable is buried.

'All of you use my Fathers name in disgrace and you don't want me to go to the media believe me. Leave me and my Father out of this drug mess. There are no services on my end. Kayley is to never call me. Sorry for your loss I'm done it's just that simple. Respect my wishes.'

In her Facebook post, Kayley shot back at her father claiming that he 'tortured us', 'got us high' and 'did drugs in front of us as kids'.

He was discovered dead in his bed by his fiancee in February. He's pictured with his sister Kayley in an undated photo

John's estranged daughter Kayley posted this message to Facebook that her father sent her where he refused to pay his son's funeral expenses and said Clark III would not be buried in his family's plot

Gable III was the only grandson to Hollywood legend Clark Gable, pictured above in the American classic Gone With The Wind

'I'm sorry, as my brother is in a coffin I'm standing up for him, as I always have, and the world needs to know the truth. I'm putting this out before you start telling lies,' she wrote.

'John F*** YOU!! Your (sic) the one who got us high on drugs and did drugs in front of us as kids and tortured us and especially Clark so I'm going to write a book and let the world know the truth!! Im Disgusted I'm related to you! bring it ON!!!!! your (sic) the druggie!!!!'

Kayley also posted a page from a back copy of a celebrity magazine from around 2006 showing photos of her father leaving a courthouse to head to rehab with what appear to be several needle marks on his arm.

Drug problems have dogged the family, Clark's mother, Tracy Scheff, previously told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

John's brother died age 27 of an overdose, and his girlfriend's death in 2012 was linked to prescription medication.

Kayley shared this picture following his passing, writing: 'I'm so sorry we couldn't save you my heart is broken and shattered RIP'

Scheff said her son had previously struggled with drug addiction, as had all four of her children, including her 17-year-old son who is now one year sober.

Scheff revealed that Gable had sought therapy for addiction in the past, and several members of his family had struggled with drug abuse.

She said her marriage with Clark's father John ended over his addiction problems. The bereaved mother also revealed Clark's three siblings have had issues with drugs.

'My current husband, weve been together 27 years, and hes 32 years sober. Its a struggle that is real,' she said.

'I have four children, all of them have struggled,' Scheff added. 'I have two younger boys with my current husband, Jason. I think one of thems fine, he just likes to party, but the baby has struggled. Hes got a year sober, hes 17 and doing great.

'I have a daughter thats seven months pregnant. Shes doing great now, but shes struggled too.'

A colleague of the late 30-year-old also told DailyMail.com that Gable had used drugs.

Bobby Goldstein, Cheaters creator and show Executive Producer, said that he was aware Gable took drugs but said it never affected his work.

While its true I have heard from others that Clark indulged in drugs, of the many years, almost a decade Ive known him I never saw him on drugs,' he said.

Clark was a beautiful boy, he was a beautiful soul. He was the spitting image of his grandfather on screen and Ive never thought of him other than the most earnest, kind, loving friend and its been a great pleasure to work with him.

He was a great colleague and a great host on Cheaters.
Billy Dee Williams is back as Lando Calrissian.

The 82-year-old actor was seen driving the Millennium Falcon alongside Chewbacca in the new heart-pounding teaser trailer for Star Wars IX: The Rise Of Skywalker, which debuted on Friday at the Star Wars Celebration in Chicago.

Williams has not played Lando since 1983's The Return Of The Jedi.

I'm back baby! Billy Dee Williams is back as Lando Calrissian. The 82-year-old actor was seen driving the Millennium Falcon alongside Chewbacca in the new heart-pounding teaser trailer for Star Wars IX: The Rise Of Skywalker

Williams is seen smiling and laughing in the cockpit as he wears a dark coat and headphones.

Lando was the original owner of the Falcon before he lost it to Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford.

So he may have just been thrilled to be flying his old spaceship once again.

Next to him is Chewbacca, who was Han's sidekick for decades. Soon they're at lightspeed.

His pal: Calrissian was first seen in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back. At first he seems to be Han's friend as he welcomes him and his friends into Cloud City, promising to shield them from the Empire; Han is played by Harrison Ford

Bad move: He has become the Baron Administrator of Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin, and in the film, hands over Han to the evil Darth Vader. Seen (L to R) with a Stormtrooper, Vader and Boba Fett

Calrissian was first seen in the 1980 film The Empire Strikes Back.

At first he seems to be Han's friend as he welcomes him and his friends into Cloud City, promising to shield them from the Empire.

Lando flirts with Leia and has a smooth way about him; Han tells Leia to watch out.

Calrissian may be charismatic but he is also a gambler, con artist and playboy.

Bad turned good: In Return of the Jedi (1983), he becomes a general in the Rebel Alliance and leads the attack on the second Death Star

He has become the Baron Administrator of Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin, and in the film, hands over Han to the evil Darth Vader.

In Return of the Jedi (1983), he becomes a general in the Rebel Alliance and leads the attack on the second Death Star.

Donald Glover portrayed a younger and even more cocky Lando in the 2018 standalone film Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Williams was seen on stage in Chicago with the rest of the cast. He had on sunglasses and carried a cane.

Still cool: Williams was seen on stage in Chicago with the rest of the cast. He had on sunglasses and carried a cane. 'How did I find Lando again?' Williams said. 'Lando never left me'

His love: Billy Dee with Teruko Nakagami (R) and grandson Finnegan (L) at Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015

'How did I find Lando again?' Williams told the audience. 'Lando never left me.'

Also there was director JJ Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy.

Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, was lovely in black as the audience sang happy birthday to her; she turned 27-years-old on Wednesday.

Also seen was Oscar Isaac (Poe), John Boyega (Finn), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca).

There was also newcomer Naomi Ackie, who plays a character named Jannah.

All here: The Star Wars Celebration in Chicago on Friday offered up plenty for loyal fans. Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, was lovely in black. Also seen was Oscar Isaac (Poe), John Boyega (Finn),, Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Billy

And droid D-O was introduced.

Mark Hamill, who voices Luke Skywalker in the film, and Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren, were no shows at the packed event.

JJ is currently in the process of editing and adding visual effects to the film. Episode IX opens nationwide December 20, 2019.

She made it: Star Wars Episode IX will feature a live Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher, even though she died in 2016, director JJ Abrams shared on Friday; seen with Stephen Colbert, left

A lot to take in: Abrams on stage with Kathleen Kennedy, right

IX will feature a live Princess Leia played by Carrie Fisher, even though she died in 2016, director Abrams confirmed on Friday.

He already told fans this in 2018.

What's new here is that Leia is very much alive in IX and not seen in mere flashbacks, which fans thought she might be.

'Princess Leia lives in this film in way that is mind-blowing to me,' Abrams said.

Also revealed is that IX doesn't pick up immediately after the events of The Last Jedi.

He added that some time has gone by. JJ teased that it will be an adventure that the group goes on together.

'This movie is about this new generation and what they've inherited, the light and the dark,' Abrams added. 'As they face this greatest evil, are they prepared?'

Lucasfilm president Kennedy also reiterated that Episode IX will close out the newest trilogy and the 9-film Skywalker saga that began in 1977.

In a great mood: This is Ridley's third Star Wars film; here she is seen in a strapless dress

Fitting he wore black: Ian McDiarmid, who plays bad guy Palpatine, also spoke

Stephen Colbert, who is a superfan of Star Wars, moderated the panel.

Star Wars was created by George Lucas. The franchise began with the eponymous 1977 movie.

The first film, later subtitled Episode IV  A New Hope, was followed by two successful sequels, Episode V  The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Episode VI  Return of the Jedi (1983).

One wheeled: Described as a friend of BB-8, D-0 was created by Neal Scanlan and the creature and robotics team

A subsequent prequel trilogy, consisting of Episode I  The Phantom Menace (1999), Episode II  Attack of the Clones (2002) and Episode III  Revenge of the Sith (2005), was completed by Lucas.

He called it the 'tragedy of Darth Vader.'

A sequel trilogy began with Episode VII  The Force Awakens (2015), continued with Episode VIII  The Last Jedi (2017), and will end with Episode IX  The Rise of Skywalker this year.

The teaser was action packed and full of cast members.

The trailer begins with Rey alone in the desert. She is breathing heavily as she gets information from the late Luke Skywalker.

Luke may have died at the end of the most recent installment but his voice dominates the teaser trailer.

'We passed on all we know,' says Luke from the heavens. 'A thousand generations live in you now.'

Rey holds onto a lightsaber as she has a stern look on her face while surveying the desert. A spaceship is off in the distance and coming towards her fast. She then pulls out her lightsaber which has a long white light.

The teaser is here! The trailer begins with Rey alone in the desert. She is breathing heavily as she gets information from the late Luke Skywalker. Luke may have died at the end of the most recent installment but his voice dominates the teaser trailer

Bad guy doing evil: Next viewers are taken to another planet. Kylo is seen without his mask as he fights soldiers in a forest; the light around him is red

'But this is your fight,' Luke adds. On the screen it reads, 'Ever generation has a legend.'

Next the desert is panned as music builds; something awful is clearly about to take place.

A ship that hovers over the sand is nearly near her.

The pilot's hands in black leather gloves hint this could be her longtime nemesis Kylo Ren - played by Adam Driver - who is the son of Han Solo and Princess Leia.

Rey runs into the ship and does a flip.

Dynamic duo: Then Finn is seen for the first time in the desert in a beige jacket with Poe behind him

Next viewers are taken to another planet. Kylo is seen without his mask as he fights soldiers in a forest; the light around him is red.

A big, heavy black and silver mask is welded with red light; it might belong to Kylo.

Then Finn is seen for the first time in the desert in a beige jacket with Poe behind him and BB-8 is also flashed on the screen.

The Millennium Falcon is seen cruising through the air with Chewbacca at the front. They are traveling through space at what appears to be lightspeed.

Battle ready: Rey is seen walking down a grassy hill with Chewbacca, BB-8, C-3PO, Poe and Finn. They all look ready for battle as they look out at the ocean

Lando, played by Williams is along for the ride and is laughing heartily.

'The saga comes to an end,' it is flashed on the screen.

Then the battle scenes rev up: there is a fight on a planet that appears to be Jakku or Tatooine, where Luke grew up with his aunt and uncle.

A ship with Finn and C-3PO glides through the air. It seems to be on fire and about to crash into the sand.

Then we see Rey hold onto a device presented to her in the last Star Wars film. She rubs it as if its a magic genie.

There is a shot of Fisher as Leia hugging Rey. The footage is taken from The Force Awakens, JJ Abrams explained months ago. She died in 2016 and he did not want to use CGI to re-create her.

'We always will be with you,' says Luke from the beyond.

Rey is seen walking down a grassy hill with Chewbacca, BB-8, C-3PO, Poe and Finn. They all look ready for battle as they look out at the ocean.

'No one's ever really gone,' says Luke in voiceover.

Menacing laughter from Emperor Palpatine is heard as the screen goes black, then the Star Wars logo is seen in blue. The Rise Of Skywalker is added.

Episode IX opens nationwide December 20, 2019.
Kirk Douglas is taking a camping trip at age 102.

The actor's grandson, Cameron, took to Instagram on Friday to post a photo of his 'Pappy' resting inside of a tent pitched in a backyard.

'This amazing man, my Pappy, is such inspiration in so many ways! Going camping at 102! #Spartacus #thrunthru,' Cameron, 40, captioned the snap.

'Going camping at 102!' Cameron Douglas posted a photo of his grandfather Kirk Douglas camping in a backyard on Friday

Laying upon an inflatable mattress while pitched beside a pool, Kirk wasn't exactly roughing it.

Yet the touching photos of the iconic actor taking advantage of the fresh spring air melted the hearts of countless Instagram users, who raved about the photos in the comments section.

Kirk's accommodations included an inflatable mattress, sheets, pillows, and a plush throw blanket.

The Spartacus actor wore a pair of sunglasses as he laid back inside the incredibly spacious tent.

Not exactly roughing it! Kirk's accommodations included an inflatable mattress, sheets, pillows, and a plush throw blanket

Kirk has gone from centurion to centenarian, crafting a sparkling career as one of Hollywood's greatest leading men, and is one of the industry's most-loved figures.

In December, he celebrated his 102nd birthday alongside his wife of 64 years, Anne Buydens.

It seems age hasn't slowed the actor down.

Family first: Last year Michael revealed his dad found a new way to stay in touch with his family - FaceTime (pictured November 2018 with Cameron, Michael, and Catherine Zeta-Jones)

Several months before his milestone birthday, Kirk's son Michael Douglas revealed his dad was exercising with a personal trainer.

The Fatal Attraction actor told TV host Lorraine Kelly last year: 'He still has a trainer. He works out with a trainer at 101.

'I remember when Dad was 90 and he had a guy that he worked out with for more than 30 years, 40 years, Mike Abrams.

'I went to see Dad one day, he was 90 and wasnt feeling so good. I said, "Dad, what's wrong? You don't look good." He said, "Ah, Mike died." I said, "Ah Dad I'm so sorry, Mike died? How old was Mike, Dad?" "94."'

Kirk is also embracing advancing technology and last year discovered FaceTime.

'He's discovered FaceTime,' Michael said on Live With Kelly And Ryan. 'He just loves it.'
Game Of Thrones star Kit Harington was continuing to sport his new clean-shaven appearance on Friday, as he reunited with his co-stars for the show's European premiere.

The actor, 32, cut a dapper figure in a blue tweed suit as he attended the launch for the HBO series' long-awaited final season in Belfast, after devastating fans by shaving off his signature scruff.

Kit's outing comes as he admitted he broke down in tears after a fan asked him whether he was Jon Snow, as it dawned on him he would no longer be playing the character.

New look: Game Of Thrones star Kit Harington was continuing to sport his new clean-shaven appearance on Friday, as he reunited with his co-stars for the show's European premiere

Kit was looking smart in a simple blue tweed checked suit and taupe top, as he walked the red carpet in Northern Ireland.

The acclaimed actor seemed to be growing back a light scruff on his chin, after fans were left outraged by the news that he had shaved off his trademark beard.

Kit was in good spirits as he reunited with several of his co-stars for the event in Northern Ireland, including Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner.

Smart: The actor, 32, donned the sharp ensemble as he attended a launch for the HBO series' long-awaited final series in Belfast

Transformed: The acclaimed actor seemed to be growing back a light scruff on his chin, after fans were left outraged by the news that he had shaved off his trademark beard

The screening comes just days before the much-anticipated eighth and final season of Game Of Thrones begins.

And after wrapping up filming on the fantasy epic series late last year, Kit recently admitted he broke down as he realised he would no longer be playing the role of Jon Snow.

Speaking on The Graham Norton Show, the star confessed he was moved to tears when a fan asked him whether he still played the King Of The North.

Back soon: The screening comes just days before the much-anticipated eighth and final season of Game Of Thrones begins

It's over! After wrapping up filming on the fantasy epic series late last year, Kit recently admitted he broke down as he realised he would no longer be playing the role of Jon Snow

'I used to be': The star said: 'I was determined to be cool about the end and decided that when people came up to me and said, 'Are you Jon Snow?' that I would say very calmly, 'I used to be'

Struggling: He also admitted during the chat that he has found it incredibly difficult to keep schtum about the ending to the addictive HBO hit

He said: 'I was determined to be cool about the end and decided that when people came up to me and said, ''Are you Jon Snow?'' that I would say very calmly, ''I used to be.''

'When I left the set for the final time I was very emotional, and when a girl came up to me and asked the inevitable question, I broke down and cried, ''I used to be!'' She backed off pretty quickly!'

He also admitted during the chat that he has found it incredibly difficult to keep schtum about the ending to the addictive HBO hit.



The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones debuts on Sunday, April 14th on HBO. It will air in the UK on Monday, April 15th on Sky Atlantic.
Hannah Murray was putting on a glamorous display as she attended the European premiere for Game Of Thrones' final season in Belfast on Friday.

The former Skins star, 29, cut an elegant figure in a voluminous blue off-the-shoulder silk gown, as she attended the launch in Northern Ireland.

Hannah's outing comes as she reunited with her co-stars for the long-awaited launch of Game Of Thrones' eighth and final season, after wowing audiences with her role as wildling Gilly.

Beautiful: Hannah Murray was putting on a glamorous display as she attended the European premiere for Game Of Thrones' final season in Belfast on Friday

After years of playing a wildling clad in heavy furs, Emma opted to inject some glamour into her look for the launch, as she donned a beautiful blue gown.

The British beauty highlighted her flawless decolletage with the frock's off-the-shoulder style, and finished her look with a brown clutch bag.

Hannah kept her brunette tresses poker straight for the look as she happily posed for snaps on the red carpet.

Sensational: The actress, 29, cut an elegant figure in a voluminous blue off-the-shoulder silk gown, as she attended the launch in Northern Ireland

Hannah first rose to fame as a star of the E4 series Skins, playing Cassie Ainsworth in the first two series from 2007 to 2008.

Her character's primary storyline saw her struggle with an eating disorder, though she eventually recovered and found love with Sid Jenkins.

Along with several other acting roles, Hannah went onto join the cast of Game Of Thrones during Season 2, playing Gilly, who is well-known for her romance with Samwell Tarly.

Rising star: Hannah first rose to fame as a star of the E4 series Skins, playing Cassie Ainsworth in the first two series from 2007 to 2008

Fans have been eagerly awaited the final season of Game Of Thrones since Season 7 concluded in 2017.

The fantasy epic's ending has been heavily guarded by the show's cast, who have kept schtum despite numerous interviews and press appearances.

A trailer released last month revealed that Jon Snow (played by Kit Harington) and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) will return to Winterfell, though fans will have to wait and see how the final episodes play out.

The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones debuts on Sunday, April 14th on HBO. It will air in the UK on Monday, April 15th on Sky Atlantic.
Villa Premiere Art Gallery Supports PV Orchestra School

Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico - Art Gallery by Villa Premiere Boutique Hotel & Romantic Getaway is a weekly event whose main objective is to support and promote the culture of Puerto Vallarta.

With the help of local artists, Villa Premiere Boutique Hotel & Romantic Getaway - part of the Buenaventura Hotel Group - will set up an exhibition that will be available every Friday and Saturday from 10:00 am.





Villa Premiere will donate 10% of the total value of each art piece sold at the exhibition to the Orchestra School of Puerto Vallarta. For more than 10 years, this civic association has employed community action programs to nourish young children's and teenagers' interest in music, teaching them to play instruments and providing signing lessons - all with the intention of broadening their horizons and forming a better community within the city.

"Art unites, art leads us to share," said Abel Villa, General Director of Villa Premiere Boutique Hotel. "Today, we are celebrating an initiative that odes art in all its expressions, through paintings, sculptures and music, uniting them with a common goal: to contribute to the society of Puerto Vallarta and Mexico through a window that exposes local artists and supports the Orchestra School of Puerto Vallarta to help them achieve their goals and continue to create and educate better citizens in all areas of life."

"This project excites us because it gives us the opportunity to bring new experiences to our guests and to have an approach with local people, while they [get to] know one of the most emblematic hotels in Puerto Vallarta," commented Arthur Viot, General Manager of the adults-only property. "Buenaventura Hotels Group has dedicated efforts over the years to promote art and culture among society through different programs such as the Orchestra School of Puerto Vallarta."

Support from the invited artists for this exhibition series is very important. High on the list of "added value" at this weekly event will be the chance for guests and locals alike to meet and converse with the creators of the exhibited pieces every Friday at 6:00 pm.

Participating artists - including Ada Colorina, Jose Moreno Aparicio, Quetzal Cocoatl, Alexis Rios, Rafael Camacho and Edgar Martinez - will find Villa Premiere the perfect gallery space, enhanced by music and sunset views, to share with attendees and talk about the art works they've chosen to display.
She recently celebrated her fourth anniversary with her beau Jeremy Parisi.

But Kelly Brook cut a solo figure as she headed to her work commitments at Global Radio studios in London on Friday.

The former glamour model, 39, cut an incredibly stylish figure in a tartan coat and skinny jeans.

Stepping out: Kelly Brook, 39, cut a solo figure as she headed to her work commitments at Global Radio studios in London on Friday

All eyes were on Kelly as she strutted along in a pair of grey suede ankle boots while carrying a pink Liberty London bag and toting her belongings in a quilted handbag.

Showing off her style credentials further, she teamed her eye-catching look with a simple white top.

Her brunette locks were tied into a high ponytail and she shielded herself from the rays with a pair of shades.

Kelly looked in high spirits as she continued on about her day in the British capital.

Looking good: The former glamour model cut an incredibly stylish figure in a tartan coat and skinny jeans

Fashionista: All eyes were on Kelly as she strutted along in a pair of grey suede ankle boots while toting her belongings in a quilted handbag

This comes after she recently spoke about starting a family with her partner, Jeremy Parisi.

In an interview with Fabulous magazine, she admitted: 'I've sat down and asked myself: 'Do I really want to have children? Is this something I really want to do?'

'And I've realised that actually it's not something I've always wanted and I'm fine with it,' adding that there is an unkind stigma to being child-free.

Pretty: Her brunette locks were tied into a high ponytail and she shielded herself from the rays with a pair of shades

'Do I really want children?' This comes after she recently spoke about starting a family with her partner, Jeremy Parisi

'It's not anyone else's business how you live your life. I'm actually quite a selfish person.

'I can barely get myself out the front door, let alone go and do a school run.'

Kelly recently celebrated her fourth anniversary with the French-Italian martial arts instructor with a holiday in Portugal.
Former Married At First Sight star Nick Furphy just can't keep out of the spotlight.

On Friday the reality star, who appeared on the 2018 season of the program, posted a photo of himself posing alongside MAFS' Jessika Power just hours after she was publicly dumped by Dan Webb.

Nick, 33, cheekily captioned the Instagram photo: 'Hanging out with my new love.'

Scroll down for video

'Hanging out with my new love': On Friday, Nick Furphy (right) joked while posing alongside with MAFS' Jessika Power just hours after she was publicly dumped by Dan Webb. Nick is pictured here with The Block 2018 winner Hayden Vale (far left) and Jessika Power's brother Rhyce

He referenced other MAFS stars, including Dan, with the hashtags 'sorry Dan,' 'sorry Mick,' 'sorry Eden,' and 'sorry Telv,' adding: 'It's only a show,' and 'have a laugh.'

Fellow former MAFS star Telv williams, 34, succinctly commented: 'Haha for f**k's sake mate.'

The picture was taken at a party held at Morris Jones Restaurant & Cocktail Bar in Victoria, against a floral background.

The cheek! Nick referenced other MAFS stars in the post, including Dan with his use of hashtags. Jessika is pictured

MAFS' most controversial couple Jessika Power and Dan Webb officially called it quits on Friday.

Dan confirmed he dumped Jessika, 27, after their awkward live interview on Talking Married, citing trust issues as the reason behind their split.

In an emotional video published on Yahoo, the 35-year-old said: 'We are not together! There is no way I am going to be dating that girl after the rumours. I'm glad I finished it, it's done.'

It's OVER! Dan Webb (right) confirmed on Friday that he dumped Jessika Power (left), citing trust issues as the reason behind their split

The former rugby player said that Jessika's rumoured tryst with MAFS groom Nic Jovanovic was a major factor in their breakup.

The Gold Coast car broker even broke down in tears as he recalled the blonde bride's alleged lies.

'I just wanted to get to the bottom of the whole situation with her and Nic  if she flirted with him, didn't flirt with him,' he explained.

'There's rumoured about her hooking up with him': Dan said that Jessika's rumoured tryst with MAFS groom Nic Jovanovic (L) was a major factor in their breakup

'There's rumours about her hooking up with him in an elevator. I'm hearing it happened.'

'I was just honest with her,' he said, before saying what he told her.

'I said, "Look I don't think I can continue this. It's toxic, you're not being honest with me. I can't have a relationship with someone if they're not honest with me."
Ben Affleck looked far from sad as he was seen walking in Los Angeles on Friday.

The 46-year-old actor had a skip in his step as she strolled alongside a petite blonde woman who seemed to be thrilled in the company of the Hollywood icon who has dated Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez and used to be wed to Jennifer Garner.

Earlier this week People claimed the Argo star had split again from his SNL producer girlfriend Lindsay Shookus.

New friend? Ben Affleck looked far from sad as he was seen walking in Los Angeles on Friday. The 45-year-old actor had a skip in his step as she strolled alongside a petite blonde woman

Can you feel the chemistry? Sheseemed to be thrilled in the company of the Hollywood icon who has dated Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez and used to be wed to Jennifer Garner

Ben went for a millennial office casual wore a black jacket over a dark grey zip-up hoodie sweater with blue slacks.

He added white high top sneakers with red accents and modeled mirrored Ray-Ban sunglasses.

The woman had on a royal blue tank top under a white cardigan sweater and black Capri leggings with laceless sneakers.

She held onto a turquoise bottle and looked happy to be with the superstar Oscar winner.

Le look de Batman: Ben went for a millennial office casual wore a black jacket over a dark grey zip-up hoodie sweater with blue slacks. He added white high top sneakers with red accents and modeled mirrored Ray-Ban sunglasses

That's a rare smile: The best friend of Matt Damon appeared to be in a jovial mood

Tee hee: The whole time he was out, the Good Will Hunting star seemed on the verge of a laugh

The woman was likely another mom as Ben had just left his children's school.

He has kids Violet, 13, Seraphina, 10, and Samuel, seven, with actress Jennifer Garner.

Ben and Lindsay live on opposite coasts of the country, and the long distance is said to have factored into their decision to break up again, a source told People.

'She has a kid and an ex-husband and a job in New York and Ben has his family and a job in L.A. and while they love and respect each other they just realized it wasnt going to work,' the insider said.

It's over: He has reportedly split again with his girlfriend Lindsay Shookus (pictured January 2018 in New York)

Though they are no longer together, the source adds they still 'have love' for one another.

Ben and Lindsay reconciled last month, after splitting shortly before he entered rehab.

The couple were together for nearly a year before that.

In March the couple attended the premiere of Triple Frontier in New York City together, and had been spotted spending time together in Los Angeles since then.

Dad on the go: Ben was pictured in Brentwood on the day news of his split broke, with his son Samuel and daughter Seraphina

Lindsay was said to have a positive influence on Ben's life when they reconnected last month.

'She has been a positive impact on his life,' an insider told People. 'They had remained friends, and started their relationship again. Theyre obviously back together. She is his number one supporter.'

'Ben and Lindsay have picked back up where they left off at this point,' the source added. 'They have a wonderful, caring relationship and a healthy lifestyle together.'

It was Ben's commitment to health that apparently drew Lindsay back to him following their initial split.

A source told Us Weekly Lindsay reconciled with Ben 'because she was impressed that he'd gone back to rehab and was sober.'

Ben was previously married to Jennifer Garner from 2005 to 2018.

Last summer Jennifer staged an intervention on Ben and helped him get into rehab following a challenging summer which saw him end his relationship with Lindsay before beginning a fling with model Shauna Sexton.
The Northern Territory Government has complained about its treatment in the federal budget with no start date given to revitalise Kakadu National Park and claims it has been hit with more cuts to GST funding.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced $216.2 million for the iconic but poorly serviced and visited Kakadu in January - with Labor committing similar funds - but no start date was announced in Tuesday's budget.

NT Treasurer Nicole Manison also said the Territory had suffered "another blow" with a further $75 million reduction of GST on top of the $500 million a year cut it has already faced.

However, that claim appears to be based on its Treasury's budget forecasts - rather than the Commonwealth's - and the federal budget papers indicate the NT's GST take increasing from $2.74 billion to $2.78 billion in 2019-20.

The Territory government is under immense pressure to fix its own budget, with a large and growing debt pile and deficit, a struggling economy and the results of an independent investigation into its finances due in two weeks.

"The Territory Labor Government has fought to see immediate Federal investment in the Territory and job-creating projects, this budget doesn't deliver that," Ms Manison said.

"There is no investment into developing Kakadu National Park over the next four years and funding into the Darwin Cities Deal is but a trickle."

"This latest drop in the GST is another devastating blow to the budget and will put more pressure on important frontline services because the NT is heavily reliant on the GST compared with other states."

The NT will also receive Roads of Strategic Importance funds of $492 million, which will include interstate roads linking it to Townsville and Newman and others important to the cattle industry.

NT Country Liberal Opposition Leader Gary Higgins said new taxation measures for business and individuals, and infrastructure funds for the development of Northern Australia were welcomed - on the back of record investment in Kakadu, Defence, and the Darwin Cities Deal.

"This is what can be achieved through fiscal discipline - something Labor knows nothing about," he said.
Today's Birthday, April 3: Ben Mendelsohn, Australian actor, (1969 - )

The once self-described "long shot that wouldn't get up" became one of Hollywood's most in-demand character actors after his career-defining performance in Australian crime drama Animal Kingdom in 2010.

Soon the Aussie expat was cast in everything from Christopher Nolan's epic final Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises (2012), to mega-franchise Star Wars film Rogue One (2016), and Steven Spielberg's futuristic Ready Player One (2018).

The 49-year-old can be seen in cinemas right now with green makeup and large pointy ears as an alien hell-bent on conquering Earth in the first female-led superhero film Captain Marvel.

Mendelsohn and his two brothers were born in Melbourne to parents both working in the medical profession. He was reportedly expelled from school aged 13 after setting fire to a property, and a year later officially dropped out to pursue acting.

He started out in television on The Henderson Kids in 1985 opposite Kylie Minogue, before making it onto the big screen in acclaimed coming-of-age drama The Year My Voice Broke in 1987.

After winning an AFI award for his supporting role, he became a mainstay of local cinema, cast in The Big Steal in 1990, and Spotswood in 1992, co-starring Anthony Hopkins.

For the 1996 film Idiot Box, Mendelsohn lead a juvenile gang of delinquents around the Australian urban landscape. In Mullet (2001) he returned to a south coast NSW town living on the fringe of a tight-knit community, poaching mullet fish

But it wasn't until 2010, when his frightening turn as armed robber Pope lurking beneath Melbourne's underworld, that he gained international recognition along with multiple awards.

In 2013 he sealed his deal in Hollywood with a prominent role in Place Beyond the Pines, opposite Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes and Bradley Cooper.

He won a best supporting Emmy for his role in Netflix series Bloodline, between 2015 and 2017.

Recently he's been filming HBO series The Outsider, adapted from a Stephen King novel to be aired in 2020.
A man's been charged with murder over an alleged hit-and-run incident that resulted in the death of an early morning jogger in South Brisbane.

A 53-year-old man was jogging on Strathfield Street in Tarragindi around 4am on February 18 when he was hit by a car.

The driver drove off, leaving him with critical head injuries and fighting for life on the side of the road. He died in the Princess Alexandra Hospital on March 31.

On March 20, police made a public appeal for dashcam footage from anyone driving in the area between 2am and 9am on the day of the incident.

A 32-year-old Tarragindi man was charged on Thursday with one count each of murder, driver of vehicle fail to remain at an incident and assist injured persons showing callous disregard, and one count of unlicensed driving.

He is due to appear in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Friday.
A daughter of notorious Islamic State fighter Khaled Sharrouf, who was just 11 when she was taken to Syria along with her siblings, is asking the Australian government for help.

Hoda, who is 16 now, is in the Kurdish-controlled Al-Hawl camp with her older sister Zaynab, 17, two nieces and brother Hamza, 8. Zaynab is pregnant.

"I want to see my brother grow up as a normal kid," she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

"I want to see my nieces with a happy life with good treatment. I want to see my sister give birth safely.

"What about the children? What about the people that didn't want to come here? What about the people that are stuck here and never wanted to be here in the first place? They don't deserve this kind of treatment.

"We're Australians too. Australia needs to do something about it. They need to step up."

However, it's unlikely her plea will be heard. As recently as Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison rejected bringing them home.

"I'm not going to put one Australian life at risk to try and extract people from these dangerous situations," he said.

"I think it's appalling that Australians have gone and fought against our values and our way of life and peace-loving countries of the world in joining the Daesh fight.

"I think it's even more despicable that they put their children in the middle of it."

Sharrouf and two of his sons were killed in a US air strike on Syria in 2017.

The children's mother is believed to have died of a medical condition in 2015, after following Sharrouf to Syria from Sydney.

Zaynab was married off to Sharrouf's best friend and fellow jihadist Mohammed Elomar when she was just 13. She has two daughters, Ayesha, 3, and Fatima, 2.
GILMORE

* An intriguing battle looms in the NSW south coast seat, with former Labor Party president Warren Mundine dislodging Liberal candidate Grant Schultz following Prime Minister Scott Morrison's intervention. Schultz is running as an independent, hoping to capitalise on local anger with the messy preselection process. Former Nationals state minister Katrina Hodgkinson has joined the battle for the ultra-marginal seat. Labor's Fiona Phillips is aiming to win the seat for the party for the first time since 1996. Sitting Liberal Ann Sudmalis is quitting, citing bullying and intimidation from within her party as a key reason for her departure.

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EDEN-MONARO

* Nationals candidate Sophie Wade will take on sitting Labor MP Mike Kelly and the Liberals' Fiona Kotvojs for the seat which broke its bellwether status for the first time in 34 years at the 2016 election. Kelly has a buffer of a little less than three per cent. The Nationals entering the race sets up a three-cornered contest for the first time since 1993, when the party could only muster seven per cent of the primary vote.

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INDI

* Retiring MP Cathy McGowan is attempting to pass the baton to Helen Haines an independent chosen by the Voices 4 Indi group. Standing in her way will be the Liberals' Steve Martin and the Nationals' Mark Byatt. Deputy Nationals leader Bridget McKenzie won't contest the seat, in northeastern Victoria, but her long period of indecision didn't go down well with many within the party. Labor's candidate is former Wodonga councillor Eric Kerr.

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MALLEE

* Andrew Broad's spectacular fall from grace following revelations of his extra-marital texts to a young woman on a "sugar daddy" website paved the way for a three-cornered contest in his rural Victorian seat. The Liberals' Serge Petrovich, who is based in Melbourne, will challenge Nationals candidate Anne Webster. Broad entered parliament in 2013 by defeating Liberal Chris Crewther, who entered parliament in a Melbourne seat in 2016, with a margin of 6.2 per cent. Tony Abbott's former chief-of-staff Peta Credlin ruled herself out, rebuffing urgings from Liberals to return to the electorate, which contains her hometown of Wycheproof.
TWISTS AND TURNS OF THE TURNBULL/MORRISON GOVERNMENTS

There have been many highs and lows for the Liberal-National coalition since the 2016 federal election.

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2016

JULY

* The coalition under Malcolm Turnbull scrapes back into power with a one-seat majority, scoring 50.4 per cent of the two-party vote.

NOVEMBER

* Proposed same-sex marriage plebiscite is defeated in the Senate.

* Government restores the building industry watchdog

DECEMBER

* Government passes controversial backpacker tax.

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2017

JANUARY

* Turnbull reshuffles cabinet after an expenses scandal forces the resignation of health minister Sussan Ley.

FEBRUARY

* PM hoses down reports he was berated by US President Donald Trump over a refugee swap deal.

* Cory Bernardi quits the Liberals to start his own Australian Conservatives party

MARCH

* Small business tax cuts pass parliament, but broader plan stalls.

APRIL

* Turnbull unveils plans to make it harder to become an Australian citizen.

MAY

* Treasurer Scott Morrison hands down his second budget, announcing a gradual thaw of the Medicare rebate freeze that almost cost Turnbull the election.

JUNE

* New bank levy clears parliament.

* Turnbull responds to Chief Scientist Alan Finkel's review of the energy market with new rules to restrict gas exports and a plan to scrap a process that allows power companies to raise prices.

* Major school funding overhaul, aka Gonski 2.0, clears parliament with crossbench support.

JULY

* Citizenship debacle begins with Greens senator Scott Ludlam resigning. Coalition two-party position slips to 45 per cent.

AUGUST

* Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in parliament. Attorney-General George Brandis describes it as an "appalling thing to do".

SEPTEMBER

* Cabinet minister Fiona Nash and crossbencher Nick Xenophon referred to the High Court over their dual citizenship.

OCTOBER

* The High Court boots Barnaby Joyce from parliament because of his dual New Zealand citizenship, while federal minister Matt Canavan and Nick Xenophon can remain.

NOVEMBER

* 61.6 per cent of Australians say yes to same-sex marriage in a postal survey.

* Turnbull announces a royal commission into misconduct in the financial sector.

DECEMBER

* Barnaby Joyce wins by-election and tells parliament that he is separated from his wife.

* Same-sex marriage is legalised after new laws clear federal parliament.

* Labor senator Sam Dastyari quits parliament over his Chinese donor connections.

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2018

JANUARY

* Turnbull pledges a year of "rewards" for Australians after two years of economic reforms.

FEBRUARY

* After news of his affair with a former staffer breaks in the media, Barnaby Joyce resigns as deputy prime minister and Nationals leader.

MARCH

* Turnbull says Liberal win in South Australian election is an endorsement of the government's energy plan.

APRIL

* Turnbull loses his 30th consecutive Newspoll and shrugs it off as ministers rally around him

MAY

* Katy Gallagher case in the High Court leads to more citizenship resignations, this time on the Labor side and crossbencher Rebekha Sharkie.

JUNE

* The government's $144 billion personal income tax cut plan passes parliament.

JULY

* A "super Saturday" of five by-elections brings no wins for the government, with four seats returning to Labor and one crossbench MP.

AUGUST

* Barnaby Joyce and Tony Abbott speak out over the direction of the government.

* Malcolm Turnbull defeats Peter Dutton 48-35 in a party room leadership ballot. Dutton resigns from front bench.

* Turnbull resigns, but Dutton loses to Scott Morrison 45-40.

* Female Liberals claim to have been bullied. Julia Banks decides to resign at next election over issue.

SEPTEMBER

* Morrison seeks to reset energy policy. Flags possible royal commission into energy.

* Morrison makes first overseas trip as PM, to Indonesia.

* Morrison announces a royal commission into aged care.

* Liberal MP Ann Sudmalis announces she's quitting parliament, blaming "bullying" branch stackers.

* Morrison strikes a $4.6 billion peace deal with Catholic and independent schools.

OCTOBER

* Morrison reveals he is considering moving Australia's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

* Government makes an embarrassing backdown after senators voted in favour of Pauline Hanson's "it's OK to be white" motion.

* Liberals' Dave Sharma loses the Wentworth by-election to independent Kerryn Phelps.

* Government make a national apology to victims of institutional child sex abuse.

NOVEMBER

* Labor's Daniel Andrews decisively wins the Victorian state election. Federal Liberals blamed for loss.

* Julia Banks quits the Liberal Party to sit as an independent, bagging her party's right faction.

* Government announces an April 2 budget will be in surplus, with an election to follow in May.

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DECEMBER

* Morrison says Australia would recognise West Jerusalem as Israel's capital but maintain its embassy in Tel Aviv.

* Nationals MP for Mallee Andrew Broad stands down as an assistant minister over the "sugar daddy" scandal, then decides not to stand at next election.

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2019

JANUARY

* Minister Kelly O'Dwyer announces she is quitting to spend more time with her family, as does former minister Michael Keenan and NT frontbencher Nigel Scullion.

* Liberal candidate in Gilmore, Grant Schultz, is axed in favour of former Labor president Warren Mundine. Schultz decides to run as an independent, with the backing of disgruntled party members.

FEBRUARY

* Former Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop says she is retiring, as does Defence Minister Christopher Pyne.

* Government holds longest-ever question time to delay defeat on a disability royal commission motion.

* Medevac laws pass parliament contrary to government's wishes, triggering reopening of Christmas Island facility.

MARCH

* Indonesia free trade deal signed.

* Nationals launched bid for coal-fired power, as Michael McCormack and Barnaby Joyce exchange fire.

* Former minister Craig Laundy retires.

* Debate over extremism after Christchurch mosque shooting.

* Liberals/National coalition re-elected in NSW election

APRIL

* Federal budget brought forward a month to deliver pre-election sweeteners and a surplus.
KEY ECONOMIC POINTS

COALITION

* Unemployment rate around five per cent.

* Tax rates for individuals and small and medium-sized business being lowered.

* Downward pressure on electricity and gas prices.

* $75 billion, 10-year infrastructure plan.

* Industry policy covers breadth of the economy, beyond mining, tourism and agriculture to services, the defence industry, medical industry, and science and technology.

* Trade strategy to secure more bilateral and multi-lateral agreements, especially in the Asian region.

* Cuts to red tape, saving about $6 billion.

* Budget on track for surplus in 2019/20 - first in 12 years.

* GST carve-up changes legislated.

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LABOR

* Proposes an Australian Investment Guarantee package to help drive business investment and create jobs.

* Budget surplus is more about strong global conditions than good management. But plan to deliver surpluses over the medium term.

* Overall annual tax take is up by more than $100 billion since 2013.

* Forecasts for investment growth, wages, consumption are down.

* Debt has doubled since coalition came to power in 2013.

* Government has failed to properly fund schools and hospitals, which Labor would prioritise.

* Tough decisions are made to find budget savings such as paring back negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.

* Review of dole payment level.
Xem them

...

Tin bai cuoi cung

Khong con du lieu e load
KEY ISSUES FOR 2019 ELECTION

* Tax. The coalition says Labor has a plan for an extra $200 billion in taxes, including a 'retiree tax'. Labor says the coalition wants to give the big banks a tax cut, while people on lower incomes struggle. Expect a joust over who has the biggest and broadest personal income tax cut.

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* Power prices. The coalition says it has a multi-pronged plan to reduce power and gas prices, while ensuring reliability during peak periods. Labor has adopted the coalition's former National Energy Guarantee, which government research showed would cut prices by $550 a year on average.

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* Climate change. The coalition is sticking with its Paris target of reducing emissions by 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030, but has no specific climate policy. Labor has set a 45 per cent emissions reduction target, by delivering 50 per cent of power by renewables by 2030, and wants all industries to play their part, not just the electricity sector.

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* Borders. The coalition says Labor's "soft" stance on border protection will reopen the people smuggling trade and result in deaths at sea and a major cost blowout on detention centres. Labor says it supports boat turnbacks and offshore processing but will do so in a more humane way.

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* Health. The coalition has boosted funding for the states and territories following the badly-received 2014 budget savings. Labor says it will restore funding to the system and the coalition can't be trusted with Medicare.

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* Education. The coalition insists schools funding will continue to rise over time as the Gonski 2.0 reforms are rolled out. Labor says schools funding remains uncertain and has offered sweeteners to the church and independent sector.

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* National security. The coalition says it is best placed to handle terrorism and other threats to national security and is willing to promote legislation to give greater powers to police and intelligence agencies. Labor says national security is a priority, but wants to ensure there are proper checks and balances in any new powers.

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* Industrial relations. The coalition is taking a hands-off approach when it comes to the Fair Work Commission's decision-making, which now has more employer-focused personnel over the term. It also warns of Labor being dictated to by the unions. Labor says the existing system needs reform as workers are not benefiting from economic growth and casuals are being exploited.
KEY SEATS TO WATCH IN FEDERAL ELECTION 2019

(Based on marginality, curiosity or candidates of interest)

Note: Actual margins from 2016 election can be found in brackets after seat name. Some seats have listed notional new margins based on the boundary changes in the federal redistribution.

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QUEENSLAND

Capricornia (0.63)

Large rural and regional seat based on Rockhampton in central Queensland. Michelle Landry (LNP) holds it on a very narrow margin. Third-generation coal miner Labor's Russell Robertson is seeking to win it, after Labor lost it in 2013. Jobs, health, roads, energy expected to be key issues. One Nation preferences could determine result.

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Herbert (0.02)

Labor's Cathy O'Toole holds the north Queensland seat based on Townsville by a mere 37 votes, after narrowly defeating the LNP's sitting member Ewen Jones in 2016. But former serviceman and 2018 Queensland Young Australian of the Year Phillip Thompson (LNP) will put up a fight, especially over the future of mining jobs, and could benefit from minor party preferences such as high school teacher Nanette Radeck (Katter's Australian Party). Defence, national security, jobs, infrastructure key issues.

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Longman (0.79)

Won by Labor's Susan Lamb in 2016 and retained in a July 2018 by-election (over her dual citizenship) with a 4.45 per cent margin. LNP has preselected local businessman Terry Young. Small business, jobs, horticulture, roads key issues. The success of the Greens and conservative minor parties will be crucial to who wins, but Labor should hold.

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Forde (0.63)

Logan-based industrial and small business seat south of Brisbane, it has been held by Bert van Manen (LNP) since 2010. He faces a tough fight with Labor candidate Des Hardman in a seat which has swung back and forth between the major parties since it was created in 1984.

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Flynn (1.04)

Huge central Queensland seat based on the port of Gladstone held by LNP's Ken O'Dowd. He has been sitting member since 2010. Coal, gas, grain, cattle are the key businesses. Labor's Zac Beers is a strong chance of winning. But Sharon Lohse(One Nation) preferences will be crucial. Minor parties got O'Dowd over the line in 2016.

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Dickson (1.6)

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has held the seat since 2001, but the margin has narrowed after the 2016 election and subsequent redistribution. Mortgage belt seat covering Brisbane's northwestern suburbs, with some rural parts. Grass-roots campaigning by GetUp and others is putting pressure on Dutton, who was hit by a 5.1 per cent swing in 2016. Labor's Ali France is hopeful of doing well, but will require a strong showing from the Greens' Benedict Coyne to win.

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Dawson (3.34)

Nationals MP George Christensen has held this north Queensland seat since 2010. Labor has been targeting the seat, with candidate Belinda Hassan. Conservative minor party preferences should flow strongly to Christensen.

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Petrie (1.65)

Northern Brisbane seat, mainly residential with some light industrial and commercial activities. Held by the LNP's Luke Howarth since 2013, but is now vulnerable to Labor candidate Corinne Mulholland, who is campaigning strongly on health issues. Greens preferences could put Labor over the line.

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Bonner (3.39)

A Labor target seat based in Brisbane's industrial inner south. Held by LNP's Ross Vasta who has won and lost the seat in recent years. A double-figure showing by the Greens could help Labor's Jo Briskey.

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VICTORIA

Flinders (7.77)

Health Minister Greg Hunt will battle ex-Liberal Julia Banks, who is giving up her seat of Chisholm to run as an independent. A redistribution has chipped away Hunt's margin, but he's held it since 2001 and is a born and bred local. Green, Labor and minor party preferences could benefit Banks.

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Corangamite (3.13)

Liberal MP Sarah Henderson holds this redrawn seat, based on Geelong and the Great Ocean Road communities, with an estimated margin of 0.03 per cent (was 3.1 at the election). She won the seat in 2013, was re-elected in 2016 but could face pressure from Labor's Libby Coker.

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Macnamara (formerly Melbourne Ports) (1.38)

Labor's Michael Danby is retiring after more than 20 years in the seat, which has been redrawn to reduce the margin to an estimated 1.2 per cent. Labor's Josh Burns will face a battle with the Liberals' Kate Ashmor, a local lawyer, and the Greens' Steph Hodgins-May, who in 2016 came within 477 votes of taking the seat (which would have made her the first female Greens MP in the lower house).

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Dunkley (1.43)

The redistribution has made this south-east Melbourne seat held by Chris Crewther for the Liberals since 2016 into a marginal Labor seat. Labor's Peta Murphy will need to lift her primary vote from the 2016 result to win.

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La Trobe (1.46)

The Liberals' Jason Wood has been the on-again off-again member since 2004. The redistribution appears to have strengthened his hand but a 3.5 per cent margin still makes it a target seat for Labor, whose candidate is Simon Curtis. Labor has campaigned strongly on school funding in the outer metropolitan seat which has a mixed bag of industries from farming to construction and tourism.

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Chisholm (1.24)

Sitting MP Julia Banks is running in Flinders, having quit the Liberal Party over its attitude to women and other issues, to sit as an independent. Banks was the only Liberal to win a seat off Labor in the 2016 election. Before that Labor held Chisholm since 1998. Labor's candidate is Jenny Yang, who has been a local mayor. The Liberals are running Gladys Liu, a speech pathologist who has also advised Victorian Liberal premiers. The Liberals hold the seat with a notional margin of 2.9 per cent.

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Indi (4.83)

Independent Cathy McGowan is retiring from this regional Victorian seat, but her formidable campaign team is swinging behind health researcher Helen Haines. The Liberals have preselected engineer Steve Martin and the Nationals are running Mark Byatt, a key figure in tourism and development in the region. Hard to pick.

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NSW

Cowper (4.56)

Former independent MP Rob Oakeshott, who helped deliver Julia Gillard minority government in 2010, is taking another shot at returning to parliament in the wake of Nationals MP Luke Hartsuyker retiring. He faces the Nationals' Patrick Conaghan in the marginal NSW mid-north coast seat, and could benefit from Labor and Greens preferences.

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Gilmore (0.73)

The Liberals controversially preselected former Labor national president Warren Mundine for this NSW south coast seat being vacated by MP Ann Sudmalis. The man who was to be the Liberal candidate, Grant Schultz, is standing as an independent with the support of some disgruntled local party members. The Nationals are standing former NSW minister Katrina Hodgkinson. Given the 0.7 per cent margin, Labor's Fiona Phillips is hopeful of winning the seat amid the coalition chaos.

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Robertson (1.1)

The Liberals' Lucy Wicks has held this NSW central coast seat since 2013. But with it now sitting on a 1.1 per cent margin, Labor's Anne Charlton could draw on the preferences of Greens candidate Cath Connor and slip over the line.

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Lindsay (1.1)

Labor has chosen former NSW state minister Diane Beamer as its candidate following the scandal over sitting member for Lindsay Emma Husar's "unreasonable" treatment of her staff. As of April 4 it was unclear whether Husar will contest as an independent. Melissa McIntosh is contesting the 1.1 per cent margin seat for the Liberals, with Fiona Scott having lost the seat to Husar in 2016.

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Banks (1.4)

Immigration Minister David Coleman is defending the seat he has held since 2013, but Labor's Chris Gambian is in with a chance in this southern Sydney electorate. Banks, which is home to light manufacturing, commercial and service industries, was held continuously by Labor from its inauguration in 1949 to 2013.

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Page (2.3)

This largely rural and tourism based NSW north coast seat is held by the Nationals' Kevin Hogan by 2.3 per cent. Hogan sits on the crossbench in parliament, having become disgruntled with the coalition leadership revolving door. The seat, which is the fifth poorest in the nation, has swung between Nationals and Labor since its creation in 1984. Labor's Patrick Deegan, a social worker who hails from Casino, is a solid chance at regaining the seat.

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Eden-Monaro (2.9)

This southern NSW seat was once considered a bellwether (going to the party that wins government) but Labor's Mike Kelly brought that to an end in 2016. The 2019 race will be fascinating as the Liberals and Nationals are standing candidates, which will maximise the chances of a coalition win. Labor's best hope lies in a strong Greens preference flow. The coalition will be banking on a positive response to Snowy 2.0 supercharging the local economy. A margin of 2.9 per cent makes it a close-run thing.

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Reid (4.7)

Former minister and Malcolm Turnbull supporter, Craig Laundy, is retiring and will be replaced by child psychologist Fiona Martin. Labor has preselected business manager Sam Crosby, who grew up in Sydney's inner west. The seat had been consistently in Labor hands until the 2013 election, when Laundy became the seat's first Liberal member.

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Warringah (11.1)

Tony Abbott's beachside Sydney seat would not normally be in a list like this but he is facing a barrage of contestants including former Winter Olympian Zali Steggall. It will take a huge swing (in the vicinity of 12 per cent) to unseat the former prime minister. But stranger things have happened in elections.

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Wentworth (17.8)

Another seat that usually does not feature in such lists, but independent Kerryn Phelps will face a battle to retain the 1.2 per cent margin inner Sydney seat against former diplomat Dave Sharma. Phelps and Sharma faced off in a by-election to replace former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Phelps retains a high profile from her advocacy for asylum seekers and work with the Australian Medical Association.

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TASMANIA

Bass (6.1)

This north-eastern Tasmanian seat has swung wildly in recent elections being won by Labor's Ross Hart in 2016. The redistribution has made it slightly more difficult for Labor but it still has a 5.4 per cent margin. Both the Liberals and Nationals are running candidates which will ensure a strong conservative preference swap. A double-digit Greens primary vote is not out of the question. Unclear how it will pan out.

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WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Hasluck (2.1)

This Perth metropolitan seat has been held by federal minister Ken Wyatt since 2010. But his margin has been chipped away to 2.1 per cent. Labor candidate James Martin has a financial industry background and almost two decades in the Army Reserves. Speculation the 66-year-old incumbent was thinking about retiring won't help his cause.

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Stirling (6.1)

Liberal MP and minister Michael Keenan is retiring which should increase the chances of Labor picking up this Perth northern suburbs seat. Keenan has been the local MP since 2004. Labor candidate Melita Markey has been a long-time advocate for asbestos disease victims. The Liberal candidate, former soldier Vince Connelly, defeated four women for preselection despite Keenan's preference to be replaced by a female candidate.

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Swan (3.6)

Former Labor leader Kim Beazley's daughter Hannah is contesting this Perth inner southern suburbs seat, held by Liberal veteran Steve Irons since 2007. Name recognition may help Labor.

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Pearce (3.6)

Attorney-General Christian Porter has a reasonable chance of holding this northern Perth seat, which he first won in 2013, but Labor has made inroads at a state level as young families move into new suburbs. Labor's Kim Travers spent almost three decades in the police service and is a long-time mental health advocate.

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SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Boothby (3.5)

Nicolle Flint won the seat in 2016 after the retirement of Andrew Southcott and holds it with a notional margin of 2.8 per cent after the redistribution. Labor has been targeting Flint over her support for a leadership spill against Malcolm Turnbull. It has preselected local Nadia Clancy. The seat will be in play and Greens/independent preferences will play a role.

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Mayo (5)

First-term Centre Alliance MP Rebekha Sharkie retained the Adelaide Hills and SA coast seat in a by-election after being struck down in the citizenship scandal. She faces another challenge from Liberal blue-blood Georgina Downer. Sharkie should hold but the Liberals are keen to pick it up and will throw a lot of resources at it.

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Sources:

(Electorate sizes, margins and industries: AEC)
Kingmakers, it's said, don't usually become kings.

Labor leader Bill Shorten, one of the ultimate political animals of his generation, will be striving in the federal election to break the mould.

It is his second and, if unsuccessful, almost certainly his last bid for the top job. In 2016 he cut Malcolm Turnbull's majority to one member.

Shorten, 51, has trade unions in his blood from both sides of his family. He grew up with union leaders yarning and plotting around the kitchen table.

At Melbourne's Xavier College he did the numbers for house elections and at Monash University, where he did an Arts/Law degree, political intrigue consumed him.

A friend at that time was quoted in a profile in The Monthly: "It was his ability to do it around the clock. When we were all reeling around hungover after some big night, he'd be hard at it, ringing around, meeting people...Bill had a shocking disregard for his classes, because he was focused on this quest for political aspiration...He just used to borrow our notes and scrape through."

While scraping through, he became president of Young Labor, a delegate to the ALP national conference and worked for the Labor state government and frontbencher Gareth Evans.

After graduating he had a short stint with a Labor law firm and then joined the ailing Australian Workers' Union. Within seven years he was the AWU's national secretary.

His rise in the union was relatively smooth. It was helped by his grasp of economics (he did a part-time MBA), his easy manner on the workplace floor and his ability to gain the trust of employers. He reformed the union's structures and reversed its membership decline.

His rise in the faction-ridden Victorian party was rockier. But he steadily wrested control of the dominant Right. He was clearly a coming man, if still unknown outside Victoria.

That changed in April 2006 with the collapse at the Beaconsfield mine in northern Tasmania and the dramatic fortnight-long search and rescue effort for two trapped miners.

Shorten, as their union leader, rushed there and quickly became the public face of the operation. He did well by all concerned - the miners and their families, the community, mine safety, and himself.

Back in 1999 Shorten won preselection for the state seat of Melton, but didn't go ahead, preferring to stay with the union.

By 2007 he felt ready for a bigger stage. He decided on the safe federal Labor seat of Maribyrnong and there was nothing incumbent Bob Sercombe, though a frontbencher, could do to stop him.

Shorten went to Canberra in the election that swept Labor under Kevin Rudd back to power.

Rudd resisted pressure to put him straight into the ministry.

However he became parliamentary secretary for disability services and was soon laying the foundations for the National Disability Insurance Scheme. He championed the disabled.

He soon moved upwards and over the course of the Rudd/Gillard governments held the financial services, workplace relations and education portfolios.

He also plotted, being a major figure in the overthrow of Rudd by Julia Gillard and then, in a desperate attempt to reduce the damage, the return of Rudd.

When the dust had settled and a rampant Tony Abbott was prime minister Shorten became opposition leader by a new process that delivered a somewhat ambiguous outcome.

Against the Left's Anthony Albanese, he won a sufficient majority of caucus votes to wipe out his rival's lead on the party members' vote.

In 2016, on the back of a ferocious "Mediscare" campaign, Shorten ran Malcolm Turnbull (who'd overthrown Abbott the previous year) desperately close.

Since the election and the Liberal leadership spill which ended in Scott Morrison taking the top job, Labor has consistently been in front on a two-party preferred basis.

But Morrison, like Turnbull before him, has been preferred PM.

Perhaps that will be Shorten's fatal flaw - his competence not quite counter-balancing his reputation for intrigue and plot.
Scott Morrison was being followed by a media pack outside the MCG not long after taking over as prime minister.

He paused to shake the hand of a Geelong Cats supporter.

"What's your name, then?" the man asked.

He was later booed when his image appeared on the big screen inside the famous grounds.

Eight months later, ScoMo, as he is known, is hoping for better name recognition - and voter attitude.

The 50-year-old father-of-two ran Tourism Australia before a successful stint as state director of the NSW Liberal Party.

He was elected to federal parliament in 2007, his NSW electorate of Cook marking the point of arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay.

After the defeat of the Labor government in 2013, Morrison rose to prominence by spearheading the "stop the boats" approach to border protection as immigration minister to Tony Abbott.

His hardline stance toward asylum seekers bewildered some observers, given his devout Christian beliefs.

But he professed a deep belief in the righteousness of crushing the evil people-smuggling trade and preserving the safety of those on board rickety boats.

During a nine-month stint as social services minister, Morrison was also forced to sell the Abbott government's deeply unpopular 2014 budget, which was laced with a cocktail of deep welfare cuts.

However, Morrison was more pragmatic in the role of treasurer, performing back-flips on a range of unpopular government policies.

Immensely unpopular measures including a Medicare levy hike, superannuation changes and big business tax cuts were each eventually cast aside like water off a duck's back.

Just days before taking the Liberal leadership in August last year, Morrison stood in the prime minister's courtyard and was asked to rule out having any leadership ambitions.

"This is my leader and I'm ambitious for him," he told reporters, throwing his arm around Turnbull with a grin.

In reality, he has always held aspirations to lead the Liberal Party, despite being largely unknown by ordinary voters.

He saw off Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton for the leadership, having become a "consensus candidate" who many colleagues hoped would bridge a divide between the party's warring moderate and conservative wings.

He split the vote of the party's right faction and scored the so-called "Anyone but Dutton" vote from some on the left.

However since that time he's sought to bring the Liberal tribes together.

A recent example was the revamp of the party's climate policy, which received strong backing from moderates but also kudos from conservatives when he held out hope of a coal-fired power station in north Queensland.

He's spent months neutralising some key trouble spots for the coalition and building his profile as the nation's leader.

In September he announced a royal commission into problems in the aged care sector, while also striking a peace deal with Catholic and independent schools.

A month later he delivered a much-awaited national apology to survivors of institutional child sex abuse.

However, he's been unable to make the polls move into positive territory for the government.

Along with coalition colleagues, Morrison was breathing a sigh of relief when Gladys Berejiklian won the March 23 NSW election.

The trick now for ScoMo is to turn a burst of confidence into an unlikely victory.
WHO IS SCOTT MORRISON?

* Born May 13, 1968 in Sydney

* Married to Jenny and has two daughters - Lily and Abbey

* Cronulla Sharks supporter

* Won the Liberal leadership after two unsuccessful tilts at Turnbull by Peter Dutton in August 2018.

* Elected as the federal Member for Cook in 2007 after first losing the preselection to Michael Towke, who was disendorsed over reported branch stacking

* Studied an economics and geography degree at the University of NSW

* General Manager of Tourism Council between 1996-1998, then Director of the New Zealand Office of Tourism and Sport 1998-2000.

* State Director of the NSW Liberal Party 2000-2004

* As director of Tourism Australia 2004-2006 he presided over the campaign featuring the slogan "Where The Bloody Hell Are You?

* Appointed to the front bench by federal Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull in 2008

* Took on shadow minister for immigration and citizenship in 2009 following Tony Abbott's leadership spill

* Appointed by Abbott as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection from September 2013, then Minister for Social Services from December 2014

* After Turnbull replaced Abbott as prime minister he was made Treasurer from September 2015
Scott Morrison is set to roll the dice this weekend on a May federal election, after just seven months as prime minister.

Opinion polls have the Labor opposition ahead by an average 53-47 on a two-party preferred basis, which if translated at the polls would see Bill Shorten governing with a comfortable majority in the 151-member House of Representatives.

The minority Liberal-National coalition government is hoping to claw back to majority with a budget delivered on Tuesday promising income tax cuts, a $100 billion spend on road and rail and targeted sweeteners to win over voters in marginal seats.

At the same time, it is appealing to economic conservatives and its corporate base with a forecast return to surplus in 2019/20, a plan to pay down debt within a decade and extend tax breaks for small business.

However, Labor says its tax cuts are deeper and fairer to those on low and middle incomes and has pledged bigger spends on health and education.

Mr Shorten's campaign will home in on concerns about low wages growth, the rising cost of living, a lack of action on climate change, as well as voter disgruntlement over the "chaos" of the past term.

Labor will be backed by the union movement which has been running under the banner of Change the Rules - seeking workplace reform to restore a fair go for workers.

Mr Shorten is promising to restore penalty rates, get the Fair Work Commission to look at a "living wage" to replace the minimum wage and scrapping the coalition's construction industry watchdog.

While the Liberal campaign will have its positive messages about the need for good economic management and being best placed to handle national security, it will also take aim at Labor over its union "puppet-masters" and the risks that poses.

Labor's promises to reform negative gearing, capital gains tax and franking credits will also be used against the party as attacks on home owners, investors and retirees.

However, Mr Shorten says the reforms show Labor is economically responsible, as Australia faces the challenges of a slowing global economy and declining business and consumer confidence.

Minor parties will play a key role, with Labor relying on Greens preference to get over the line in a number of marginal seats and the coalition hoping to gain conservative party preferences.

Neither major party is expected to win majority control of the Senate, with half of the 76-seat upper house up for grabs.

After a national redrawing of seat boundaries, the coalition starts with a notional 73 seats (down from 74) with Labor on 72 (up from 69).
A West Australian barrister will be the next disability discrimination commissioner.

Ben Gauntlett takes on the role for a five-year term after the government appointed Alastair McEwin to be on the panel for the disability royal commission.

"Mr Gauntlett has extensive legal experience as a barrister in Victoria and Western Australia and will bring a range of skills and experience to the role, including lived experience with disability," Attorney-General Christian Porter said on Friday.

"I am confident that Mr Gauntlett will do an outstanding job as disability discrimination commissioner, working collaboratively with government and the disability sector to remove discrimination and promote the rights of people with disability."

The lawyer broke his neck during a rugby match in Perth in 1995, leaving him a quadriplegic with limited movement in his arms, hands and upper body, he told the New York University Law magazine a decade ago.

Before becoming a barrister, he was a Rhodes scholar, an associate to former High Court justice Kenneth Hayne and a counsel assisting the commonwealth solicitor-general.

Mr Gauntlett starts in the job within the Human Rights Commission on May 7.

Commission president Rosalind Croucher will act in the role for the next month.
Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says Labor is running a "cruel hoax" by claiming there is a "magic wand" that can help wages grow more quickly.

Increasing economic growth and bringing down the unemployment rate is the only way to help improve wages in the long-term, the senator has told an estimates hearing in Canberra.

"That is the only sustainable way to secure stronger wages growth into the future," he said on Friday.

The minister's comments came after Labor senator Chris Ketter asked Treasury secretary Philip Gaetjens what decisions had been taken in Tuesday's federal budget to improve wage growth.

Senator Cormann accused Labor of seeking a "magic pudding" or "magic wand" to deal with the issue.

"It is a cruel hoax," he said.

The budget shows wages growth is expected to pick up to 2.75 per cent in 2019/20 and 3.25 per cent in the following year.

Those forecasts are more modest than they were in the last budget update in December, when the government was expecting 3 per cent wage growth in 2019/20.

Deputy secretary of treasury's macroeconomic group Meghan Quinn said that at the same time the authority has been revising down wages growth, it has been improving forecasts for jobs growth.

That's because companies have recently been prioritising employing more people over paying their existing workforce more.

Senator Cormann said wages would have been higher if the coalition government had not addressed the deteriorating employment rate it inherited from the previous Labor government.

"The position that we're in is better than it would have been."

In his budget-reply speech on Thursday evening, Labor leader Bill Shorten reiterated his claim that the upcoming federal election will be a "referendum on wages".

Labor says it can help turn things around by reversing cuts to penalty rates for people who work on Sundays and public holidays and stopping dodgy labour hire arrangements.

Ensuring tradespeople are paid on time for projects funded by the federal government will also help, the opposition believes.
Scott Morrison has denied his environment minister is sitting on approvals for the Adani coal mine in Queensland as opposing forces within his government are once again at loggerheads over the project.

A delegation of Queensland MPs reportedly met with the prime minister on Thursday to express their concerns that federal approval for the massive Galilee Basin mine had not been signed off despite being rubber-stamped by the environment department.

Environment Minister Melissa Price had refused to issue the approval after intense lobbying from southern state Liberals concerned about public sentiment against the mine, The Australian reported.

Mr Morrison on Friday said that was just "excited reporting" and normal processes were being followed.

"There has been no delay," he told reporters in Canberra.

"This is one of a large number of approvals. This is actually a sub-approval to a previous approval.

"We will make sure that in providing any of the consents that are required under the (environmental protection) act that they're done properly with the fullest of information."

Energy Minister Angus Taylor - who is not in charge of the environmental approval process - said the government needed to make sure it was done as quickly as possible.

There were reports Resources Minister Matt Canavan - a Queensland Nationals senator - had threatened to quit cabinet over the dispute on the eve of the election, but he says that is incorrect.

Labor said the apparent heavying of the minister by both supporters and opponents of the mine was yet another sign of the division within the coalition.

"We can't have significant environmental decisions made at the whim of the infighting of the government," Opposition Leader Bill Shorten told reporters in Canberra.

The Indian mining giant's planned $16.5 billion project has become a symbol of the battle over action on climate change.

Adani plans to start producing around 10 million tonnes of coal a year and eventually ramp up to 27.5 million tonnes at the mine.

Environmental groups have slammed the proposal, which they say was not properly assessed and puts water resources at risk.
Federal MP Emma Husar will enter mediation with Buzzfeed before her defamation case against the publisher proceeds.

Ms Husar is suing BuzzFeed Australia, its American parent company BuzzFeed Inc and journalist Alice Workman.

The western Sydney MP claims she was defamed in an article, a tweet and a Facebook post in August outlining misconduct allegations made against her and examined as part of a confidential internal Labor investigation.

The ALP inquiry found Ms Husar had mistreated her electorate staff but did not find evidence to support claims of sexual harassment or that she'd flashed another federal MP.

In the Federal Court in Sydney on Friday, Justice Steven Rares set down a timetable for the parties to file their outlines of evidence before mediation in June.

When they later return to court, they'll either be setting a date for hearing "or it won't be going on", the judge said.
The early police response to the disappearance of Queensland boy Daniel Morcombe did not pay enough attention to his murderer Brett Peter Cowan as a suspect, a coroner says.

Findings have been handed down by state coroner Terry Ryan on Friday, just over 15 years since the 13-year-old disappeared at a bus stop on his way to buy Christmas presents for his family in 2003.

Mr Ryan noted Cowan was a known child sex offender and admitted being in the Sunshine Coast area where Daniel disappeared.

"I agree with the submissions from family and counsel assisting that more could have been done to focus on Mr Cowan in the early stages of the investigation," Mr Ryan said.

He said claims made at the inquest by two police officers - that they were rebuffed when they raised Cowan as a suspect - could not be proven.

Former police officer Dennis Martyn told the inquest he concluded Cowan had abducted Daniel soon after interviewing him.

He said he told the then head of the homicide squad Mike Condon it was Cowan but was told to "f*** off".

His former police partner, Kenneth King, also testified he had considered Cowan a key suspect, but the major incident response team did not immediately pursue their lead.

Mr Condon told the inquest the conversation with Mr Martyn never took place.

Mr Ryan said on Friday the immediate police response was adequate and in line with policy.

Given Daniel was likely killed within an hour of his abduction, his death could not have been prevented by police, he said.

Before the findings, Denise and Bruce Morcombe said they would be forever haunted by the chilling description of the kidnap and murder by the "repulsive pedophile" who killed their son.

But they were grateful for the inquest that began in 2010 and ultimately led to Daniel's body being found, and life in jail for the killer.

The long-running inquest examined if and when Daniel had died, and the adequacy of the police response.

The first question was answered for Daniel's parents and family, who in their statement recognised the extraordinary efforts of police whose covert operation extracted a confession and re-enactment of events.

"The repulsive pedophile's callous description of what took place that day and what he did to our much-loved Daniel is chilling to say the least," they say.

"His words have scarred us and will haunt us all forever."

They said they would be able to move on as family with the conclusion of the inquest but they would never forget.

Cowan, now serving life in jail for Daniel's murder, was arrested in 2011 after confessing to undercover officers in the elaborate police sting.

The inquest was put on hold while Cowan faced criminal proceedings, was convicted in 2014 and then exhausted his appeals.

It resumed again briefly in 2016, hearing more about the police handling of the case.
The search for a 59-year-old man who went missing while kayaking in waters off Perth's south has resumed.

Stephen Angel activated his personal locator beacon just before 11am on Wednesday, but only his kayak, a paddle and the beacon have been found.

The search operation from Cape Peron was suspended on Thursday afternoon due to unfavourable weather conditions.

But the police airwing and water police were redeployed on Friday morning, while mounted officers began searching the beachfront.

Family members said Mr Angel was fit, strong and experienced on the water.

"It's worrying to think what could have gone wrong," a female relative told 7 News.

"He's so good out there with that sort of thing."
A new grants fund for school playgrounds and library upgrades has been dismissed as all but meaningless to the needs of Australian students.

Little detail is available so far on the new $30 million local school community fund included in Tuesday night's budget.

Education Minister Dan Tehan says every electorate will receive $200,000 "to support priority projects in local schools that benefit students and their communities".

But pressed on who would decide which projects had priority - the minister, bureaucrats, local MPs or someone else - a spokesman for the minister said only that it was a discretionary fund and details would be announced in due course.

The teachers' union says the grants in no way make up for capital works cash having been rolled into regular federal funding of public schools.

It is quite insulting to suggest the $30 million would close any infrastructure gaps, Australian Education Union federal president Correna Haythorpe says.

"This provision basically means it's about $3164 per school and about $7.77 per child - which won't even pay for a textbook in the library," she told AAP.

"The treasurer's completely out of touch if he thinks that $3000 per school is going to make any significant difference for our libraries and play equipment."

The money is more likely to be spent on only a couple of schools in each seat.

The number of schools in each electorate ranges between 26 in Fadden, on the Gold Coast, and 181 in Durack, which covers about two-thirds of WA. The typical seat contains about 55 schools.

A new school playground costs between $60,000 and $100,000 - and mostly at the upper end of that range - equipment supply companies have told AAP.

Labor's education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek reiterated the opposition's promise every single school would be better off if her party won government at the imminent federal election.

A similar program for environmental projects, which gives $150,000 to each local member to hand out, has come under fire this week after one Liberal MP claimed he and the environment minister had awarded four grants in March, despite the program not being open to applications until mid-year.
Global travel agency STA Travel has stopped selling Royal Brunei Airlines flights in protest at the country's new death penalty for gay sex.

Full sharia law was enacted on Wednesday in the southeast Asian kingdom, prompting calls to the federal government to revoke Royal Brunei's right to land in Australia.

STA Travel says it will no longer work with Royal Brunei Airlines and has stopped selling the carrier's flights through its global operations.

"We categorically don't support laws that have recently been introduced in Brunei (including on Brunei-registered aircrafts and vessels) which we believe are in direct contravention of basic human rights," Australian manager Monika Rieker said.
Poisonous death cap mushrooms have began sprouting in Victoria following heavy rain, sparking a health warning.

The health department warned on Friday against people gathering wild mushrooms in Melbourne and rural Victoria.

"Autumn conditions create ideal growing conditions for poisonous mushrooms, and recent rains have seen them start to sprout in Victoria," chief health officer Dr Brett Sutton said.

"While commercially-sold mushrooms are safe, poisonings can occur when people gathering wild mushrooms inadvertently include toxic species. Poisonous mushrooms may appear very similar to edible varieties."

The mushroom season is spawned when rain encourages growth of the fungi in the still-warm earth.

Toxic varieties include the Death Cap fungus, Amanita phalloides and the Yellow Staining mushroom, Agaricus xanthodermus.

The Death Cap, usually found near deciduous trees, especially oaks, in some Melbourne suburbs and rural areas, is the most dangerous.

Dr Sutton said anyone who becomes ill after eating mushrooms should urgently seek medical advice and, if possible, take samples of the whole mushroom for identification.

"Symptoms of poisoning can include violent stomach pains, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea, Symptoms may subside after a day or two - but this doesn't mean recovery," he said.

"Death can follow within 48 hours from serious liver damage. The Death Cap is extremely toxic and responsible for 90 per cent of all mushroom poisoning deaths.

"If you have any doubts about a species of fungus or mushroom, don't eat it. Cooking, peeling or drying these mushrooms does not remove or inactivate the poison."

The Death Cap is a large mushroom, with a cap ranging from light olive green to greenish yellow in colour. The gills are white, and the base of the stem is surrounded by a cup-shaped sac.

The commonly found Yellow Staining mushroom turns yellow when the cap or stem is bruised by a thumbnail.
Plans for the partial demolition of Melbourne's Federation Square to make way for a controversial Apple flagship store have been rejected by Heritage Victoria.

Plans to bulldoze part of the Yarra Building to make way for the tech giant were revealed in 2017, with the state Labor government's approval.

Heritage Victoria on Friday published its rejection of the application, saying the demolition and new building would result in an "unacceptable and irreversible detrimental impact on the cultural heritage significance of Federation Square".
Musician Oscar E Villagrana was visiting Australia to play a couple of jazz gigs, but ended up in a Melbourne hospital suffering massive head injuries after a violent assault.

The 32-year-old Californian man was the victim of the random attack last week after alighting a night-time tram at Preston.

Surgeons have had to extract excess blood from his brain, seal his fractured skull with metal plates and he will be left with a scar covering half his head.

The ukulele and trumpet player's jaw was broken and had to be screwed back into place, and nerves in his jaw were also damaged.

Despite horrific injuries, Mr Villagrana has a positive outlook.

"I have progressed a lot this week at the hospital and am very happy to be putting all my energy into the current rehabilitation process," he told AAP from his hospital bed.

The professional musician had been to Australia several times and performed in Melbourne with a jazz collective he helped form.

He was due to fly home to the US three days after the assault but instead faces a prolonged period in hospital.

Mr Villagrana doesn't remember much of the attack but managed to walk to a nearby pub afterwards and get help.

CCTV footage showed a shocking chain of events, including him being chased around a car park before being struck and falling to the ground where the assault continued.

After attending a concert with friends Mr Villagrana caught a tram, and while on board first came into contact with his alleged attacker, who alighted at the same stop.

"He bothered me with questions and I avoided him and continued getting away. Unfortunately he did not let me get away."

A 27-year-old homeless man has been charged with intentionally causing serious injury in circumstances of gross violence, committing an offence while on bail and other assault-related offences.

He is due to face court on Friday.

"I believe I was targeted for no specific reason at all," Mr Villagrana said.

His dad is making the trip from the US to support his son, and other people have banded together to help raise money for the musician's medical costs and rehabilitation.

There's a $10,000 goal and people can donate by visiting gofundme.com/us-muso-attacked-in-melbourne

Mr Villagrana is no stranger to Melbourne.

"For the full year of 2017 I made a living in Melbourne playing ukulele, singing songs on the streets and as a freelance trumpet musician," he said.

On the day of the attack, he had gone to Monash University to investigate enrolling in a music master's program.

He hopes to play again alongside his fellow Melbourne musicians.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made an election-eve pitch to voters, defending his government's record on health, schools and tax.

Labor leader Bill Shorten used his budget reply speech on Thursday to hammer the coalition over its lack of commitment to health, cuts to education and tax breaks for the rich.

Mr Morrison told a function in Sydney on Friday - attended by former prime minister John Howard and a raft of ministers - the government would stand on its record at the coming election, which he is expected to call this weekend.

"Elections are important things - they change the course of nations, they change the economy in which Australians live," Mr Morrison said.

Medicare had "never been stronger" than under the coalition, he said, pointing to a 27 per cent hike in funding since 2013 and 60 per cent rise in hospital spending.

The bulk-billing rate had hit its highest level in history.

As well, public school funding had risen by 60 per cent.

He defended the government's plan to flatten tax, which would see 94 per cent of all taxpayers pay a marginal tax rate of 30 per cent in 2024.

"(Labor) believe that for some people to do better you've got to see some people do worse," he said.

"(We say) lower taxes for everyone - that's a fair go for those who have a go."

Rehearsing an attack line likely to be heard many times over the election campaign, Mr Morrison said: "You will be sent the bill for all Bill's spending."

Earlier, Mr Shorten told reporters Labor had a strong record on defending Medicare.

"Your postcode shouldn't determine the quality of your health care; your credit card shouldn't determine the quality of your health care - it should be your Medicare card," he said.

He said the budget on Tuesday had been a "pretty colourless document", while people were looking for imagination and vision.

"I characterise the difference as this - we're about a fair go for all people, schools, hospitals, university, TAFE, childcare, early years education. We're about a vision to help people in cancer."

Mr Shorten said the nation would be better off if Mr Morrison "whistled up the driver, drove down to Yarralumla and called the election".

"The nation's ready for an election."

Meanwhile, a poll published by News Corp Australia showed 28 per cent of voters will back a minor party rather than Labor or the coalition, with most citing frustration with the major parties.

The coalition's support was strongest among voters aged over 65, with Labor outpolling the coalition in all other age groups.

The full results will be published on Saturday.
Specialist police have raided a penthouse apartment in Sydney allegedly being used as a drug lab before seizing a loaded military-grade assault rifle at another unit used by the crime syndicate.

It's believed one of the syndicate members was linked to a van found in 2018 loaded with hundreds of litres of chemicals and kilograms of methamphetamine.

The NSW Police drug and firearms squad in February began investigating a criminal network believed to be manufacturing and distributing a large amount of methamphetamine in Sydney.

They arrested a 23-year-old Queensland man in Lidcombe as part of those investigations at 10pm on Thursday.

He was driving down a back road in an industrial estate with $66,000 cash, detectives said on Friday.

Officers grabbed four other men as they fled a Strathfield penthouse two hours later.

Among them was a Victorian man who first appeared on investigators' radar after a rental van - containing 10kg of ice, 160 litres of hydrochloric acid, 60 litres of methanol and the same amount of acetone - was repossessed in June 2018.

The vehicle allegedly had been hired in his name.

When the drug squad raided the Strathfield apartment they allegedly found a "large-scale clandestine laboratory" which was being used to make ice.

Officers found five kilograms of the drug with a street value of between $750,000 and $2.5 million.

Police then executed a search warrant at a Lidcombe apartment where they unearthed a loaded M4 carbine assault rifle, a 9mm pistol, 200 rounds of ammunition, $11,000 in cash, drug paraphernalia and ice.

The five men were charged with a string of offences including being part of a criminal group while the one man also faces weapons charges.
Hawthorn premiership player Brian Lake has been released from custody after receiving a community corrections order for assault, trespass, stalking, driving and property damage offences.

Lake was arrested following an incident on Tuesday night and faced Sunshine Magistrates Court on Friday after pleading guilty to the charges on Thursday.

The 37-year-old must complete 250 hours of community service work over 18 months and has had his drivers licence suspended for 21 days.

Lake didn't speak as he left court surrounded by reporters and photographers, jumping straight into a waiting car.

Looking forlorn as he sat in the dock, the 2013 Norm Smith medallist was warned the charges were serious and he could face a jail sentence if he offended again.

"If you had any prior serious criminal history, I would incarcerate you," the magistrate told Lake.

Lake, who played 251 AFL games for the Hawks and the Western Bulldogs, damaged an iPhone at an Aintree property on Tuesday, court documents revealed.

He also committed an indictable offences of stalking, theft and criminal damage at the property while on bail.

The court was told Lake had been seeking help for mental health issues for a number of years.

His defence lawyer pleaded for leniency in relation to Lake's driving offences, arguing he needed to continue working.

Lake was booked for speeding and driving without a licence while behind the wheel of a VW ute at Melton on March 30.
Rising New Zealand UFC star Israel Adesanya will happily engage Australia's middleweight world champion Robert Whittaker in an August showdown if he wins his interim title bout against American Kelvin Gastelum.

Adesanya anticipated a win over Anderson Silva in Melbourne in February would land him a title shot, but an abdominal injury forced Whittaker to pull out of his title defence against Gastelum on the same card.

Now Nigerian-born Adesanya will next weekend get to test his impressive striking game against strong wrestler Gastelum for the interim title on UFC 236.

The winner is set to get a shot against Whittaker for the main title this year.

"He (Whittaker) said he wants to come back in August and I don't mind, August sounds good for me," Adesanya told AAP on Friday.

"It just means now I get two belts - everyone else gets to have one."

Whittaker will watch the interim title fight in his home city of Sydney.

Asked if he planned to send Whittaker a message from the Atlanta bout, the normally chatty Adesanya's succinct reply was "nothing."

His focus is the bout with Gastelum, but not his opponent.

"I'm unstoppable, I can't focus on any other man," Adesanya said.

Adesanya's win over Silva improved his MMA record to 16-0 and his UFC log to 5-0. He drew plenty of confidence from his points win over UFC legend Silva, who was coming off a two-year lay-off.

"I'm the best in the world, I belong at the top of the heap, that's what my last fight did for me," the 29-year-old Adesanya said.

"Beating the guy who I regarded as the best fighter in the world (when I was) a young kid."
A jury has been unable to reach a unanimous verdict in the case of a West Australian farmer accused of murdering his wife of 25 years by crashing her car into a tree then burning her alive in a staged accident.

Gregory Paul Johnston stood trial in the WA Supreme Court accused of killing 56-year-old Susi Elizabeth Johnston at their Borden farm on December 6, 2008.

The jury began deliberating on Tuesday but by Friday afternoon said they could not reach a unanimous verdict, so they were discharged.

Justice Robert Mitchell told family members in the public gallery he understood their disappointment.

He said it would be up to the director of public prosecutions to determine whether a retrial would be pursued.

Mr Johnston was granted bail ahead of a status conference on April 18.

The court heard during the trial that Mr Johnston repeatedly lied to police before he was finally charged a decade later.

Prosecutor Justin Whalley said Mr Johnston was the victim's sole financial beneficiary and also mistakenly believed she had taken out a life insurance policy days before her death.

Mr Johnston had been unfaithful and days after his wife's death transferred $15,000 into the bank account of a woman he had met online, then married her nine months later, the court heard.

But defence counsel Linda Black noted the lack of direct evidence in the circumstantial case, including any proof the fire was deliberately lit.

She admitted Mr Johnston cheated on his wife and lied to police, but insisted he was not a killer.

Ms Black also presented a theory that Ms Johnston wanted to kill herself.
The construction union has been fined $1.5 million and its senior officials another $190,000 over unlawful strikes at the Barangaroo South site in Sydney.

The Full Federal Court on Friday imposed the penalties - a record for proceedings brought by the government's building watchdog - after 1000 workers worked off the job in July 2014.

Despite the Fair Work Commission ordering them back to work, some 300 workers didn't return the following day.

The strike action was sparked after a delegate for the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union was suspended from work after he and a site manager clashed physically over safety issues.

The delegate raised issued over a walkway in the one of the International Towers Sydney, a trio of commercial skyscrapers in the now-revitalised district.

A previous judgement had found that during the two-day strike, union official Luke Collier said words to the effect of "you're lower than a pedophile, you grub" to a government inspector.

The same official also read out the inspector's mobile phone number at a workers' meeting.

A judge said the union had long demonstrated it pays "but little regard to compliance with the law and indeed has repeatedly sought to place itself above the law".

The full court observed the union had a substantial contravening history before fining it $1 million and its NSW body $510,000.

Four union officials including Mr Collier were fined more than $40,000 each while another five officials were fined $21,000 in total.

Australian Building and Construction Commissioner Stephen McBurney said the level of abuse and intimidation directed against workers, public servants and police officers demonstrated "a complete disregard for the law."
Thailand's Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha arrives at Wat Bupparam temple in Chiang Mai Tuesday to oversee a Buddhist ceremony. Prayut is expected to be named premier when final results of last month's election are released

The head of Thailand's army on Tuesday urged political divides to be solved in parliament, as anger and frustration mount in the aftermath of a disputed election.

The military-linked Phalang Pracharat party clinched the popular vote in the March 24 ballot, the first since a 2014 coup.

But inconsistent numbers in the first round of counting sowed suspicion over the result and calls have mounted for members of the Election Commission to be dismissed.

Royal Thai Army commander in chief Apirat Kongsompong urged competing sides to "help solve problems in parliament, debate in parliament".

"But I cannot accept if Thai people come out trying to solve problems on the streets again," he told reporters.

He dismissed suggestion of a coup and said there were other steps to control outbreaks of violence such as declaring a state of emergency.

"Making a coup is not easy. It depends on several situations," he said.

Thailand has been battered by turbulent politics for decades, and has seen more than a dozen coups since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

Demonstrations and an online petition that has garnered nearly a million signatures have heaped pressure on the Election Commission, but it has stood by the results.

The full breakdown will not be ratified until May 9, but analysts say the confusion has fueled public mistrust.

Phalang Pracharat's popular vote edge has been challenged by Pheu Thai, the party linked to self-exiled billionaire Thaksin Shinawatra.

Pheu Thai has teamed up with six other parties in a coalition that is laying claim to a majority of seats in the lower house and the right to form a government.

But rules created under Thailand's junta mean 250 military-appointed senators can vote for prime minister, giving Phalang Pracharat a built-in edge.

The party has put forward 2014 coup leader and junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha as its candidate for premier.

One of the senate seats is reserved for the head of the army.

When asked who he would throw his support behind with a senate vote, Apirat said: "I already have a good person in mind."
Congress president Rahul Gandhi addressing supporters at an event to unveil the party's election manifesto in New Delhi on Tuesday

India's main opposition Congress party vowed Tuesday to end abject poverty by 2030, hand cash to 50 million families and tackle the "emergency" of air pollution as it unveiled its election manifesto.

Recent opinion polls, although notoriously unreliable, suggest Congress is trailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of India's almost six-week mega-election beginning April 11.

In its 55-page manifesto, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi said Modi has offered only "grandiose promises, empty slogans, failed programmes, false statistics and an overall climate of fear, intimidation and hatred".

"The manifesto is the voice of the people," Gandhi, scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, said at the launch of the "Congress will Deliver" programme at party headquarters in New Delhi.

"I do not want a single thing in this manifesto that is a lie because we have been hearing large number of lies spoken every day by our PM," the 48-year-old said.

Describing unemployment as "the gravest challenge to our country", the party promised to give the "highest priority to protecting existing jobs and creating new jobs", helped by the creation of a new Ministry of Industry, Services and Employment.

It also pledged an "ambitious programme" of cash transfers of 72,000 rupees ($1,045) to India's poorest 50 million families, while still bringing the fiscal deficit to under three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020-21.

The manifesto promised a separate budget to focus on the welfare of more than 260 million farmers in India that have been under severe distress due to falling crop prices, poor yields and crippling loans.

On the environment, the manifesto said it recognised air pollution -- 22 of the world's 30 most polluted cities are in India, according to Greenpeace -- to be a "national public health emergency".

"We will significantly strengthen the National Clean Air Programme in order to urgently tackle the problem of pollution. All major sources of emission will be targeted, mitigated and reduced to acceptable levels," it said.

The BJP, which decimated Congress as it swept to power in 2014, is yet to publish its own manifesto.

Modi, 68, has sought in the campaign so far to project himself as India's "chowkidar" ("watchman") protecting the country against Pakistan-backed "terrorism", while also depicting Gandhi as weak.

In their most serious standoff in years, New Delhi and Islamabad launched tit-for-tat air strikes in late February after a suicide bombing, claimed by a militant group based in Pakistan, killed 40 Indian troops in Kashmir.
The Comoros' Supreme Court confirmed incumbent Azali Assoumani, seen giving an interview to AFP on March 20, as the winner of last week's election, overriding opposition claims of widespread fraud

The Supreme Court in Comoros on Tuesday confirmed Azali Assoumani as the winner of the disputed presidential election held last week in the volatile Indian Ocean archipelago.

Azali was declared the winner with 59 percent of the votes, well ahead of his rivals Mahamoudou Ahamada who scored 15,7 percent and Mouigni Baraka Said Soilihi, who was a distant third with 5,5 percent of the ballots cast.

"Having obtained the absolute majority, Azali Assoumani is proclaimed president of the republic," said the country's judge president Harmia Ahmed.

The results were confirmed at a heavily guarded court house in Moroni.

The opposition has complained of widespread fraud and irregularities in the elections held in the country on March 24.

Observers and community groups have questioned the credibility of the election held on March 24.

Violence broke out last week after defeated one of the presidential candidates Soilihi Mohamed, who came fourth in the vote, was arrested.

Soilihi Mohamed, a widely respected former colonel, had been named head of an opposition transitional authority just before his arrest.

He stands accused of trying to set up a parallel government, according to a government source.

The African Union and France have called for restraint in the wake of the political crisis sparked by the disputed vote.

Azali's campaign director Houmed Msaidie said his camp was available to dialogue with the opposition "if the opposition asks for it".

Comoros has had a volatile political history since independence in 1975 and has endured more than 20 attempted coups, four of which were successful.

Azali initially came to power in a coup, then ruled the country between 1999 and 2006, and was re-elected in 2016.

He staged the poll after Comorans voted in a referendum, boycotted by the opposition, to support the extension of presidential mandates from one five-year term to two.

He could theoretically rule until 2029, critics say. Several opposition figures were arrested around the time of the referendum.
Shiite Muslim pilgrims march in the Iraqi capital Baghdad to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim in 799

Several million Muslims have travelled to the shrine of Imam Musa al-Kadhim in Baghdad in recent days to commemorate the revered Shiite figure's death, an Iraqi official said Tuesday.

"More than five million pilgrims" have flocked to the glittering shrine from other parts of Iraq as well as the Gulf, Iran, India and Pakistan since Friday, according to Adi al-Kazmi, an official at the site.

Many had travelled hundreds of kilometres on foot, by horse or even on camels over several days, caught outside in heavy thunderstorms that hit Iraq at the weekend.

Authorities had sealed off many of Baghdad's thoroughfares in recent days to allow pilgrims to reach the shrine, which is located in the city's northern Kadhimiyah neighbourhood.

The site features an intricately-designed mosque and includes Imam Kadhim's double-domed mausoleum.

Musa al-Kadhim, the seventh of 12 imams venerated by Shiite Muslims, died in 799 while in detention by Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid.

Shiite worshippers carry a symbolic coffin in the Iraqi capital Baghdad as part of commemorations of Imam Musa al-Kadhim's death

His death is commemorated yearly with a funeral reenactment that sees a mock coffin carried into the shrine by swaying pilgrims.

On Tuesday, huge crowds of praying visitors made their way to the shrine, passing dozens of tents erected by volunteers to provide free tea, sweets, and shelter.

A group of men dressed in black gathered in a tightly-packed circle and began rhythmically striking their chests as a sign of mourning.

Security forces have set up rings of checkpoints to thoroughly search all pilgrims, and no security incidents were reported.

In 2005, at least 965 pilgrims heading to the Imam Kadhim shrine died after a mass stampede along a nearby bridge that was sparked by rumours of a suicide bomber in the crowd.

Iraq declared victory against the Islamic State group in late 2017 after three years of fierce fighting that ravaged the country's economy.

It is now keen to demonstrate its newfound stability, particularly with religious tourism to its many Shiite sites.

Many of its religious tourists come from neighbouring Iran, which announced recently that it and Iraq would introduce reciprocal visa-free travel.
Iranian soldiers help civilians in a flooded area in a village around the city of Ahvaz, in oil-rich Khuzestan province, on March 31, 2019

Iranian emergency services were bracing for widespread flooding on Tuesday with mass evacuations planned as extensive rainfalls in regions neighbouring Khuzestan converge on the oil-rich southwestern province.

"The water moving south from Ilam and Lorestan provinces will enter Khuzestan... many villages there will be submerged," said Ali Asghar Peivandi, the head of Iran's Red Crescent.

"With the possibility of dams overflowing, we have made preparations to accommodate 100,000 people," he told state television.

Khuzestan has an extensive range of dams but officials said water was flowing into them at a fast rate.

In some cases water levels were only 70 centimetres (around 27 inches) lower than the dam crests, they reported.

"Our dams are more than 95 percent full," Khuzestan governor Gholamreza Shariati told state TV.

Water was released from dams as an emergency measure to prevent them from breaking, leading to fears the outflow may cause havoc in cities, towns and villages downstream.

Iran has been hit by flooding across most of the country for the past two weeks.

The northeast of Iran was swamped on March 19 before the west and southwest of the country were inundated on March 25, killing a total 45 people.

This week the deluge hit the west and southwest, with at least four deaths already reported even though emergency services have only begun reaching regions cut off by floods.

"Seventy-eight intercity roads have been blocked, as many as 2,199 rural roads and 84 bridges have been washed away," said Behnam Saeedi, spokesman for the National Disaster Management Organisation.

"Across 15 provinces, 141 rivers burst their banks and around 400 land slides were reported," he told state TV.

The main rail links between Tehran and the south and north of the country was disrupted as landslides and water swept away tracks.

The government said the flooding had damaged nearly 12,000 kilometres (7,500 miles) of roads, or 36 percent of the country's entire network.

Rescue efforts overnight were hindered by the inability of Iran's ageing and limited rescue helicopter fleet to fly at night.

US sanctions stop Iran from purchasing helicopters, prompting Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to accuse the United States of impeding aid efforts.

The sanctions were "impeding aid efforts by #IranianRedcrescent to all communities devastated by unprecedented floods," Zarif tweeted.

"Blocked equipment includes relief choppers, this isn't just economic warfare; it's economic TERRORISM," he wrote.

The military has been called in to help the emergency services cope.

Drones surveyed flooded regions looking for survivors as choppers and amphibious armoured personnel carriers were used to evacuate stricken residents.
An Iranian family walks through a flooded street in a village around the city of Ahvaz

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday blamed Iran for the level of devastation from major floods, and said Washington was ready to help.

Pompeo issued a statement in implicit response to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who on Twitter blamed "economic terrorism" by the United States whose sanctions have led to a chronic shortage of rescue helicopters.

"These floods once again show the level of Iranian regime mismanagement in urban planning and in emergency preparedness. The regime blames outside entities when, in fact, it is their mismanagement that has led to this disaster," Pompeo said in a statement.

"The United States stands ready to assist and contribute to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which would then direct the money through the Iranian Red Crescent for relief," he said.

Vast stretches of Iran have been inundated since mid-March, killing some 50 people and disrupting major transportation and communications. The Iranian Red Crescent said Tuesday it was preparing to accommodate 100,000 people as rain hits southwestern Khuzestan province.

The disaster struck just as Iran was reeling from the reimposition of sweeping US sanctions with President Donald Trump hoping to curb the clerical regime's influence around the Middle East.

In contrast with earlier disasters such as the 2003 Bam earthquake, foreign assistance has been minimal amid fear of US penalties for dealings with Iran.

Pompeo in his statement also highlighted Iran's targeting of environmentalists "for attempting to help Iran prepare for these very issues."

Eight environmentalists appeared in court earlier this year on charges they were spying on military bases.
Weekly protests have rocked the Gaza border with Israel for nearly a year

A Palestinian wounded three days ago during clashes along the Gaza border died Tuesday, the health ministry in the strip said, bringing to five the number of fatalities from the day.

Faris Abu Hajaras, 26, was shot by Israeli fire in his stomach east of Khan Yunis Saturday and succumbed to his wounds Tuesday, the ministry said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered in different spots along the Gaza border Saturday for the first anniversary of the often violent protests there.

Four other men, including three 17-year-olds, were killed by Israeli fire Saturday, according to the ministry.

At least 263 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire since the protests and clashes began a year ago.

Two Israeli soldiers have been killed over the same period in Gaza-related violence.

Israel says its actions are necessary to defend its borders and accuses Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, of orchestrating violence there.

But a UN probe has said Israeli soldiers intentionally fired on civilians in what could constitute war crimes.
Sudanese police fire tear gas at hundreds of protesters trying to march on the presidential palace in the capital Khartoum on January 24, 2019, as protests have rocked the country since December 2018

Sudanese security forces fired tear gas at anti-government protesters in Khartoum on Thursday, witnesses said, even after President Omar al-Bashir acknowledged that demonstrators had "legitimate" economic concerns.

Protests have rocked Sudan since December, with demonstrators accusing Bashir's government of mismanaging the economy and causing soaring food prices as well as regular shortages of fuel and foreign currency.

Demonstrators chanting "Freedom! Peace! Justice!" have continued to rally despite a state of emergency announced in February, although in recent weeks they have been largely confined to Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman.

On Thursday protesters demonstrated in areas of Khartoum and Omdurman, including in the capital's districts of Burri and Jabra where they were confronted by riot police with tear gas, witnesses said.

Protesters chanted anti-government slogans and urged residents to join them, a witness told AFP, without revealing his name for security reasons.

Late on Thursday police said they had dispersed "illegal gatherings" in several areas of Khartoum state.

Some policemen and citizens have also been wounded, police spokesman General Hashim Abdelrahim told the official news agency.

"Some who threatened public safety and created disturbances have been detained," he said, adding that some had been jailed by special emergency courts.

Protests first broke out on December 19 in response to a government decision to cut vital bread subsidies, but since Bashir imposed a nationwide state of emergency in February to quell the demonstrations, their scale and intensity has shrunk.

Bashir told parliament earlier this week that the economic concerns raised by demonstrators were "legitimate".

"The economic crisis has impacted a wide section of our people," Bashir said on Monday.

While the protests were initially focused on bread prices, demonstrators soon began to demand that Bashir resign after three decades in office.

Bashir swept to power in an Islamist-backed coup in 1989.

Analysts say has the protest movement has been the biggest challenge ever to his iron-fisted rule.

Officials say 31 people have died in protest-related violence, while Human Rights Watch has put the death toll at 51, including children and medics.

Protest organisers have called for widespread protests on Saturday.
An archaeologist brushes a newly-discovered mummy laid inside a sarcophagus found in burial chambers dating to the Ptolemaic era (323-30 BC) at the necropolis of Tuna el-Gebel in Egypt's southern Minya province, on February 2, 2019

A sarcophagus believed to contain an Egyptian nobleman will be opened on live TV during a special broadcast by the American channel Discovery.

The two-hour "Expedition Unknown: Egypt Live" will air Sunday night (0000 GMT Monday) from the site outside Minya, which is along the Nile River south of Cairo and its Giza pyramids.

Egypt has sought to promote archeological discoveries across the country in a bid to revive tourism hit by turmoil after the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak.

The country's Supreme Council of Antiquities declined to comment, even though Discovery announced that council head Mostafa Waziri would be present for the event.

The site containing the sarcophagus was discovered in February last year, and a Discovery spokesman told AFP that the project was set up in collaboration with Egypt's antiquities ministry.

Archeologists at the site recently discovered a network of vertical shafts leading to a network of tunnels and tombs containing 40 mummies "believed to be part of the noble elite."

In one of those, a limestone sarcophagus holding a 3,000-year-old mummy is to be opened during the show.

Discovery declined to disclose the identity of the mummy prior to the broadcast.

Prominent Egyptian archaeologist and former antiquities minister Zahi Hawass will also participate, Discovery previously announced.

Asked by AFP about a possible financial deal between the channel and the Egyptian state for permission to film and open the grave, the spokesman for Discovery refused all comment.

"It's a media spectacle in the end -- but it could make people love antiquities and is a good promotional opportunity for tourism, if done right," an Egyptian archeologist who asked to remain anonymous told AFP.

She said the broadcasters should not open the tomb without providing solid archeological context, but "the main problem" is something else.

"If money is being paid by a major channel to the ministry to show antiquities, where is it going to end up?" the archeologist asked.

"Will it go in the state's purse-strings or end up elsewhere? We need more transparency on where the money is going."

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has overseen a crackdown on dissent, banning protests and jailing Islamists as well as liberal and secular activists.

He regularly evokes political stability to draw foreign investment.

The tourism sector has begun to return, with arrivals reaching 8.3 million in 2017, according to government figures.

That still falls far short of the 14.7 million tourists in 2010.

Discovery's broadcast also comes with global interest in Egyptian archeology generated by a "once in a generation" exhibition about the pharaoh Tutankhamun, which opened in Paris last month and will tour the world.

In Washington, a separate exhibition has opened focusing on the "Queens of Egypt."

Discovery said that its broadcast will be simulcast on the Travel and Science channels.
Timmothy Pitzen was six years old when he disappeared in 2011

The FBI said Thursday that a person who claimed to be a boy who disappeared eight years ago was not the missing child, and media reported he was actually a 23-year-old man.

A person who claimed to be a 14-year-old boy was found wandering the streets of a Cincinnati, Ohio suburb on Wednesday. He had told police he was Timmothy Pitzen, who disappeared in 2011 aged six.

But ABC News reported he was actually 23-year-old Brian Michael Rini, citing police in Kentucky.

The man told authorities he had been kidnapped and held against his will.

The FBI in Louisville, Kentucky, said Thursday DNA results proved the man found in Ohio was not Pitzen.

"DNA results have been returned indicating the person in question is not Timmothy Pitzen," the FBI said.

Pitzen's grandmother said that despite today's false alarm, the family still hopes to find him someday, according to ABC.

"It's been awful. We've been on tenterhooks," she said of the family's disappointment Thursday.

Of Rini, she said he had "obviously had a horrible time and felt the need to say he was someone else, and [I] hope that they can find his family."

Meanwhile, the FBI added that "law enforcement has not and will not forget Timmothy, and we hope to one day reunite him with his family."

"Unfortunately, that day will not be today."

Timmothy Pitzen's mother, Amy Fry-Pitzen, took him out of school early one day in 2011 in their hometown of Aurora, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

She drove around with him for several days and then checked into a motel, where she took her own life.

She left a note saying Timmothy was "safe" but no trace of the boy has ever been found.

"You'll never find him," Amy Fry-Pitzen wrote.
An Afghan army soldier is seen here in March 2017 in Bala Murghab district of Badghis province -- scene of fresh fighting between security forces and Taliban fighters

Taliban fighters have killed about 10 security forces in ongoing clashes in Afghanistan's western province of Badghis, an official told AFP on Thursday.

In the latest assault on Afghan forces, who have faced devastating losses in recent years, Taliban fighters smashed through government defence lines near the city of Bala Murghab, capturing several checkpoints.

Jamshid Shahabi, the Badghis provincial governor's spokesman, said "around 10" police and soldiers were killed in heavy fighting that started before dawn and continued throughout the day.

The Taliban "are shelling the main bazaar of the district with mortars -- government forces are fighting back," Shahabi said.

In a statement, the defence ministry said Afghan forces had made a "tactical retreat" from a number of checkpoints in the district to "avoid civilian casualties".

Abdul Aziz Beg, the head of the Badghis provincial council, described the situation as "critical".

"If reinforcements are not urgently deployed, a catastrophe could happen in Bala Murghab district," Beg said.

The Taliban said they had conducted a coordinated attack on a series of government checkpoints, killing 12 security forces.

The clash comes as Zalmay Khalilzad, the US envoy tasked with forging a peace deal with the Taliban, is concluding a week-long visit to Afghanistan, where he has spoken to national leaders and stakeholders across the country.

In January, President Ashraf Ghani said 45,000 security forces had been killed since he took office in September 2014.
Martha McSally, pictured during her swearing in as a Republican Senator in January 2019, was the first woman to fly in combat for the United States Air Force

An American senator who revealed she was raped while in the Air Force on Thursday called on US military schools to change their practices to prevent sexual assault.

While stressing that sexual assault occurs throughout society, former fighter pilot Martha McSally said "we expect the military to be better."

McSally, the first woman to fly in combat for the US Air Force, made her remarks during a lecture at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, near Washington.

The Republican senator from Arizona spent 26 years in the US Air Force, where she was the first woman to fly in combat.

Last month she told a Senate subcommittee hearing on sexual assault in the military that she had been "preyed upon and then raped by a superior officer."

At Thursday's conference, McSally said that in US military schools, second-year officer cadets are very quickly given responsibility over first-year students, especially on weekends.

"We put 19-year-olds in charge of the 18-year-olds and then we, the adults, leave for the weekend. I never understood that," she said.

"They are teenagers!" she exclaimed, before calling on the directors of the Air Force and Naval Academies as well as the army's West Point officer school to review the practice.

"Take a look at it," she said. "Maybe you have got to do something different."

Thursday's conference on the prevention of sexual assault was the first to bring together the three military academies, as well as delegates from many American universities.

In her Senate testimony, McSally did not reveal who raped her or when it happened, and said she decided only years later to talk about it.

McSally said she considered leaving the Air Force "over my despair" but eventually served until 2010. She commanded a fighter squadron and retired with the rank of colonel.

A Pentagon report in January said the number of reported sexual assaults at America's military academies rose by almost 50 percent over the past two years, despite extensive efforts to combat the problem.
Investigators say the crew of the crashed Ethiopian Airlines plane repeatedly followed procedures recommended by Boeing, but were unable to regain control of the jet

Embattled US aviation giant Boeing on Thursday insisted on the "fundamental safety" of its 737 MAX aircraft but pledged to take all necessary steps to ensure the jets' airworthiness.

The statements came hours after Ethiopian officials said pilots of a doomed plane had crashed last month after following the company's recommendations, leaving 157 people dead.

The preliminary findings released Thursday by transportation authorities in Addis Ababa put the American aircraft giant under even greater pressure to restore public trust, with nearly 350 people dead in crashes involving its formerly top-selling 737 MAX aircraft in less than five months amid mounting signs the company's onboard anti-stall systems were fault.

"We remain confident in the fundamental safety of the 737 MAX," CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a statement, adding that impending software fixes would make the aircraft "among the safest airplanes ever to fly."

Muilenburg also acknowledged, however, that an "erroneous activation" of Boeing's so-called Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System had occurred. The system is designed to prevent stalls but may have forced the Ethiopian and Indonesian jets into the ground.

In an earlier statement, the head of the company's commercial aircraft division had said Boeing was ready to perform "any and all additional steps" to enhance the safety of the 737 MAX.

A report by Ethiopian investigators on Thursday said the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last month, killing 157 people, repeatedly followed procedures recommended by Boeing, but were unable to regain control of the jet.

The initial probe appears to confirm concerns about MCAS, with data echoing that from the crash of the Indonesian Lion Air 737 MAX 8 flight in October last year which killed 189 people.

Boeing's MCAS anti-stall system

Ethiopian authorities' full report has not been publicly released, but according to a draft copy seen by AFP, shortly after take-off a sensor recording the level of the plane began transmitting faulty data, prompting the autopilot system to point the nose downwards.

"The crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer, but was not able to control the aircraft," said Ethiopian Transport Minister Dagmawit Moges, unveiling results of the preliminary probe into the crash.

- 'Not survivable' -

The report recommends "the aircraft flight control system shall be reviewed by the manufacturer," Dagmawit said.

"Aviation authorities shall verify that the review of the aircraft flight control system has been adequately addressed by the manufacturer before the release of the aircraft for operations," she added.

Boeing now says it plans to release a software fix to the anti-stall system used aboard the 737 MAX aircraft in the coming weeks.

US regulators this week demanded further improvements to a proposed fix before it could be submitted for review and announced a review of the certification of the automated flight control system on the 737 MAX.

Boeing says it plans to release a software fix to the anti-stall system used aboard the 737 MAX aircraft in the coming weeks

The Ethiopian Airlines flight was headed to Nairobi on a clear morning on March 10 when so-called Angle of Attack sensors on either side of the nose of the plane began sending conflicting information to the auto pilot system shortly after take-off.

According to report AFP saw, the nose of the plane pointed down four times without pilot input.

The autopilot was switched off at some point and the captain called out "pull up" three times to his first officer as the pair battled to gain control.

Three minutes after takeoff and three minutes before the crash, the captain asked the first officer to try the manual trim system, which changes the level of the plane. He replied that it was not working.

They asked to turn back, but it was too late. The plane pitched down at a 40-degree angle, smashing into a field outside Addis Ababa at about 500 knots (920 kilometers/575 miles per hour).

Both engines were buried at a depth of 10 meters (32 feet), in a crater 28 meters wide and 40 meters long, with fragments of debris found within a radius of about 300 meters.

"This accident was not survivable," said the report.

Citizens from over 30 countries were on board.

Shortly after the Lion Air crash last year, Boeing issued a bulletin reminding operators of emergency guidelines to override the anti-stall system, amid indications it had received erroneous information from Angle of Attack sensors during that disaster.

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A top US official dampened speculation that Washington would seek to nationalize 5G wireless systems in the United States, saying the privately-led system is working well

A top advisor to President Donald Trump said Thursday the United States is committed to private sector deployment of 5G wireless networks, brushing aside the notion of a nationalized system.

Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic advisor, sought to quell speculation that Washington would seek to nationalize ultrafast fifth-generation networks for national security reasons in view of the dominant position of Chinese firms like Huawei, which has been banned from US government contracts.

"I want to note how well we did on 4G, and we will apply the exact same free-market principles to 5G," Kudlow told a gathering of the wireless industry group CTIA.

"We will continue the process of auctioning off spectrum and letting the private companies run (the networks)," he said.

5G will herald a new level of connectivity, empowered by speed.

It is crucial for the future development of devices ranging from self-driving vehicles, to industrial robots, drones and other elements of the Internet of Things.

Kudlow said the latest survey from CTIA showing the US leading the world in 5G deployments this year showed the merits of staying with a privately-led system.

"I don't want the government to run this," Kudlow said, although "the government will be engaged. We have a national security reason to be engaged."

Kudlow added that he wanted US firms to play a role in setting 5G standards to enable them to compete in the emerging technology.

"We want to make sure the door is open for American companies," he said.
Amazon confirmed it is working on a plan to deploy a network of satellites for internet service, becoming one of several moving into the sector

Amazon on Thursday confirmed it is working on a project to deploy a network of satellites for high-speed internet service in underserved parts of the world.

Project Kuiper was first reported by tech news website GeekWire, which cited US regulatory filings disclosing the satellite project that could cost billions of dollars to complete.

"Project Kuiper is a new initiative to launch a constellation of low earth orbit satellites that will provide low-latency, high-speed broadband connectivity to unserved and underserved communities around the world," Amazon said in response to an AFP inquiry.

"This is a long-term project that envisions serving tens of millions of people who lack basic access to broadband internet."

The filings described a plan to put 3,236 satellites in low orbit at altitudes ranging from 367 miles (590 kilometers) to 391 mile (630-kilometer), according to GeekWire.

The frontier of space is internationally agreed to be 62 miles (100 kilometers) above Earth, known as the Karman Line.

The Seattle-based online powerhouse was looking to partner with like-minded companies on the effort.

There was no indication that Project Kuiper thus far involved Blue Origin, the rocket company owned by Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos, which blasted off the 10th test flight of its New Shepard rocket early this year.

More test flights lie ahead, but the first flights with passengers on board could start by late 2019.

Amazon would be one of several companies seeking to use satellites to deliver internet to remote areas including Elon Musk's SpaceX and OneWeb, a venture-backed startup with funding from Japan's SoftBank, Airbus and chipmaker Qualcomm.

Several companies have been attempting to use space-based internet systems since the 1990s including one backed by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Saudi royal family investors.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk exits federal court after attending a New York hearing where the Securities and Exchange Commission asked a judge to hold him in contempt over a tweet of inaccurate information, potentially violating an earlier agreement

A federal judge on Thursday gave Tesla chief executive Elon Musk and US securities regulators two weeks to resolve their differences over Musk's prolific social media use.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had said Musk should be held in contempt of court for allegedly violating an earlier settlement on tweeting potentially market-sensitive information.

US District Judge Alison Nathan told the parties to report back -- while suggesting the SEC reconsider its threat which she said "carries a significant burden."

"I am requiring you to meet and confer for at least an hour," Nathan said.

Musk told CNBC on the courthouse steps he was "impressed" with the judge and would "most likely" be able to resolve his differences with the SEC.

An October agreement required Musk to step down as chairman and pay $20 million to settle charges he defrauded investors with false claims on Twitter in August about a possible go-private transaction that was quickly aborted.

The settlement, which allowed Musk to remain as CEO, required him and other senior officers to obtain pre-approval from Tesla counsel before making written communications "that contain, or reasonably could contain, information material to Tesla or its stockholders."

The SEC revived its action after Musk tweeted on February 19 that Tesla would make 500,000 cars in 2019 -- up from the 400,000 that the company had estimated until then, an apparent increase on a benchmark tied to profitability.

Musk corrected himself four hours later, saying that Tesla would indeed produce about 400,000 cars this year.

The SEC said the inaccurate information should lead to his being held in contempt.

Musk's removal as CEO is not seen as a very likely result of the latest fight, although a finding of contempt could make such an outcome more likely down the road.

A negative ruling could also increase investor pressure on Musk to appoint a chief operating officer to share responsibility for managing a company that has suffered from near-constant turnover.
A threat by US President Donald Trump to impose car import tariffs on Mexico appeared to move him away from a previously threatened closing of the border

President Donald Trump on Thursday retreated from his threat to close the US-Mexican border, warning he will instead impose car import tariffs if the major US trading partner does not do more to stop undocumented migrants and drug smugglers.

"If Mexico doesn't give the help, that's OK, we're going to tariff their cars," Trump said at the White House. "I will do it. I don't play games."

Trump said he was giving Mexico one year to get the cross-border drug trade down or see him impose tariffs at 25 percent. If that does not work, closing the border would come next, he said.

It was not immediately clear if Trump's demand for Mexico to crack down on the flow of migrants also faces a one year deadline or has to be satisfied in the near future.

Trump said that Mexico had started to detain would-be migrants this week, responding to his repeated recent threats to close the border.

Mexico is doing a "really great job" at "grabbing and taking" people, he said.

But suggesting that he wants immediate results, he added that "maybe by the end of this news conference or tomorrow that will stop, and if that stops, we are doing a big tariff."

Regardless, the tariffs option signaled a retreat from previous suggestions that the border might be shut down, at least in parts, within days.

Trump says there is a national emergency from the influx of undocumented migrants and drugs and that drastic action is needed.

A planned visit on Friday to the California border area had raised expectations for a dramatic move. However, his border closure threat alarmed politicians across the country, including in his own Republican Party, who warned of dire economic fallout.

- Confusing policy unveiling -

This was the second apparent climbdown by Trump on a big issue in a week. Earlier, he backed away from announcements that the Republicans were ready to reform America's notoriously expensive healthcare system, when party leaders indicated they did not want to get sucked into what amounts to a political minefield.

Trump's new border policy was first announced in a confusing statement to journalists at a White House meeting on the completely unconnected subject of US urban renewal.

Speaking without notes, full of digressions and often failing to finish sentences, Trump was not wholly clear on the details of his border policy changes.

"If Mexico doesn't do what they can do very easily, apprehend these people coming in... we're going to tax the cars, and if that doesn't work, we're going to close the borders," he said.

"We're also going to do something having to do with tariffs on drugs because... hundreds of thousands of lives (are) ruined a year in our country," he said. "If the drugs don't stop we're going to put tariffs."

"So we will put tariffs if they don't apprehend (migrants) and ultimately -- we're going to give a period of time, but if in a year from now, if drugs continue to pour in, we're going to put tariffs on them," he said.

In Mexico City, Economy Minister Graciela Marquez Colin urged Trump not to disrupt trade relations.

"For the Mexican government, it is very important to keep migration issues and trade issues separate," she told a press conference.

"The United States sometimes mixes the two issues. To us, it's very important to keep the ratification of the trade agreement on one track and migration-related issues on another," said Marquez, referring to the newly negotiated USMCA or United States-Mexico-Canada deal.

"In terms of any new tariffs, we would have to discuss them in terms of a relationship between two trade partners who are in the process of modernizing a trade agreement," she added, referring to NAFTA, the existing trade agreement that the new USMCA deal seeks to update.

The leaders of the US, Mexico and Canada signed the successor deal to NAFTA in November after more than a year of negotiations.
Actor Jussie Smollett has denied accusations that he hired two acquaintances to stage a racist and homophobic attack in order to gain publicity

Chicago officials said Thursday they will sue US television actor Jussie Smollett because he refused to repay costs associated with investigating the alleged hate crime hoax he is accused of orchestrating.

The black, openly gay actor has denied accusations that he hired two acquaintances to stage a racist and homophobic attack in order to gain publicity.

He faced 16 felony counts, which prosecutors dropped in a surprise court hearing late last month -- allowing Smollett to walk free after forfeiting $10,000 in bond and performing two days of community service -- but without admitting guilt.

The case's resolution, which prosecutors said was similar to thousands of other low-level offenses handled in Chicago courts, caused widespread outrage and led President Donald Trump to declare federal investigators would look into the case.

City officials had sent a letter to Smollett's attorneys demanding he repay the $130,000 cost of police overtime for the investigation by Thursday or face new legal action.

Bill McCaffrey from Chicago's Law Department said the actor "refused to reimburse" the money and that officials were "drafting a civil complaint."

"The Law Department will file the suit in the near future. As part of this legal action, the Law Department will pursue the full measure of damages allowed," McCaffrey said in a statement.

Smollett's initial report of being attacked in the middle of the night in late January generated nationwide shock and outpouring of sympathy.

The subsequent allegations that he lied led city officials to accuse the 36-year-old of tarnishing Chicago's reputation for personal gain.
Eric Holder (C), who is charged with the shooting death of rap artist Nipsey Hussle appears with his attorney Christopher Darden (L) at his arraignment in California Superior Court, April 4, 2019 in Los Angeles, California

The man accused of gunning down rapper Nipsey Hussle pleaded not guilty on Thursday to murder and attempted murder as he made his first appearance in court.

Eric Holder, 29, who has also been charged with possession of a firearm by a felon, was arrested on Tuesday following a two-day manhunt.

He is suspected of shooting dead Hussle, who was 33, on Sunday outside the rapper's clothing store in south Los Angeles following a dispute.

Holder, himself an aspiring rapper, was represented in court Thursday by Chris Darden, a former prosecutor who gained notoriety for his work on the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Holder's bond was set at $5 million and his next court appearance was scheduled for May 10.

If found guilty, Holder faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Darden tried unsuccessfully to prevent the media from filming his client during his arraignment on Thursday, arguing that there was an "issue of identity."

Prosecutors, however, dismissed his claim, arguing that Holder's photo had already been widely disseminated before his court appearance.

Authorities say Holder got into an argument with Hussle, who was beloved by residents of his neighborhood for his community work, and then left and returned with a handgun.

He allegedly shot Hussle and two other men, one of whom was hospitalized.

He was arrested in Bellflower, a suburb of Los Angeles, after police received a tip.

Local news reports said he was being kept in solitary confinement in jail for fear he might be attacked by other inmates.

Hussle's long-time girlfriend, actress Lauren London, with whom he has a two-year-old son Kross, broke her silence on Tuesday in a message on Instagram that included several photos.

"I am completely lost. I've lost my best friend. My sanctuary. My protector. My soul... I'm lost without you. We are lost without you, babe. I have no words," she wrote.

Hussle, born Ermias Asghedom, was praised by officials in Los Angeles and by his peers for transforming himself from being a gang member to a successful rapper and community organizer who fought for the black and Latino residents of Hyde Park, the south LA neighborhood where he grew up.

He was set to meet with local authorities on Monday to discuss ways to end gang violence.
The remains of the Malaysia Airlines plane that was shot down over Ukraine on July 17, 2014

The family of an American teenager killed aboard the MH17 flight launched a court case Thursday against Russian banks and US money transfer companies for helping to finance pro-Moscow separatists accused of shooting it down over Ukraine.

In a complaint filed in US federal court, the family of Quinn Lucas Schansman -- the only US citizen aboard the Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur -- takes aim at Russia's Sberbank and VTB Bank, which have offices in the US, and the Western Union and MoneyGram transfer companies.

It accuses them of allowing large amounts of money to be sent to separatists in the Donetsk People's Republic, mainly from Russian diaspora sympathizers residing in the US and elsewhere, allowing them to acquire heavy weapons and to control the eastern part of Ukraine, from which the missile that downed the aircraft was fired.

The 63-page complaint, which seeks unspecified damages, is based on a 1992 US anti-terrorism law that allows American victims of terrorism to sue those who provide material support to terrorism.

Among the family's lawyers is a former deputy US ambassador to the UN, David Pressman.

"The men who launched the missile may never be hauled before a court to answer for their crimes, but all of those who participated in arming them and supporting them must be," Pressman said in a statement.

"Today, businesses and banks that allowed greed to reign supreme by providing -- day in and day out -- a reliable way for these terrorists to raise money from supporters around the world will be forced to answer for their actions," he said.

A Netherlands-led probe concluded in May 2018 that the plane was struck by a Buk surface-to-air missile controlled by Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade, based in the city of Kursk.

Australia and the Netherlands blamed Russia for the disaster, which killed all 298 people aboard, but Moscow has repeatedly denied responsibility for the destruction of the plane
Guards are instructed to confiscate unusually valuable items and mobile phones from those in the camp

Clashes with guards, violent factional quarrels and a new strain of ultra-extremism -- the Islamic State group's territorial "caliphate" may be defeated, but a camp in eastern Syria is emerging as a fresh jihadist powder keg.

Dislodged in a final offensive by a Kurdish-led ground force and coalition air strikes, thousands of wives and children of IS fighters have flooded in from a string of Syrian villages south of the camp in recent months.

Among the hordes of Syrians and Iraqis, some 9,000 foreigners are held in a fenced section of the encampment, under the watch of Kurdish forces.

When they want to go to the camp's market or receive aid rations, these high-risk prisoners are escorted by armed guards.

But tensions are rife among the foreigners themselves.

"We don't have the same mentality -- they (the extremists) want to impose their vision of Islam," said Vanessa, who came to Syria from her native Guyana as a convert in 2013 with her husband and children.

"They say that we are infidels," the gangly 36-year-old said, singling out the camp's Tunisians as especially "extreme".

The semi-autonomous Kurdish administration that rules much of northeastern Syria is urging countries of origin to take back their citizens.

The women and children need to be "re-educated and reintegrated by their home countries," said Kurdish official Abdel Karm Omar.

Otherwise, he warned, they will become "the terrorists of the future".

- 'These people scare me' -

Under IS's so-called caliphate -- declared in 2014 over large swaths of Syria and neighbouring Iraq -- minors were systematically indoctrinated and even exposed to public executions.

In a gesture of continued loyalty to IS, some children at the camp -- a few grinning, others staring coldly -- pointed their index finger to the sky in front of AFP reporters.

Tens of thousands of people are held in Al-Hol camp

One woman threatened to hit a cameraman, but others -- anxious to return home and declaring they regret joining IS -- were keen to talk.

Some of the Tunisians and Russians interned at Al-Hol have adopted "very extreme beliefs", confided a Belgian woman who came to Syria in 2013.

"These people scare me", she said.

Even just "talking to the guards, or requesting to go to the market, can make us infidels" in their eyes, she added.

Once someone is labelled a non-believer, these women decree it lawful to strip the person of their belongings, the Belgian said.

"They can burn our tents and do whatever they want to us."

But tensions are not limited to the foreigners' section.

Everything from nappies to potatoes are on sale at the Al-Hol market

A few days ago, a confrontation escalated in the main area, populated by Iraqis and Syrians. Kurdish police were forced to intervene.

Some of the residents "threw stones" at their fellow residents, a policeman told AFP, without giving his name.

Nabil al-Hassan, who heads the camp's communications, insisted the "security situation is under control".

But, he admitted, major logistical challenges give rise to "problems", including tensions over access to tents and aid.

- 'It's not mine' -

Heavily pregnant Lamia, 21, told AFP she is steadfast in her loyalty to the IS cause.

"We remain with the (Islamic) State," said the former resident of Manbij, a northern Syrian town that was occupied by the jihadists until the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces prevailed.

Lamia wants to go back to her hometown and has been at the camp for a month; her first husband was killed in combat, the second is in prison.

Back at the entrance to the foreigners' area, several women including Algerians and Ukrainians gathered at the gate, insisting it was their turn to go to market.

Blonde children and those from central Asia mingled in the dust.

The women returned from the market hauling trolleys full of eggs, potatoes, nappies, and gas cylinders.

Among the hordes of Syrians and Iraqis, some 9,000 foreigners are held in a fenced section of the encampment, under the watch of Kurdish forces

Everything is meticulously searched by the guards, who are instructed to confiscate, log and store unusually valuable items and mobile phones.

These "security measures" are needed to stop residents stealing from each other -- and from smuggling goods or cultivating contacts in the outside world -- Hassan said.

Delving through a black handbag, the guards retrieved a phone and small piece of paper with a contact number scrawled on it.

"It's not mine, it belongs to my friend," the Tunisian owner insisted.

A little later, in another bag, the guards dug out a ring and a hefty gold chain, carefully hidden in a tiny plastic bag.

The dismayed owner gripped the sentinel's hands in an attempt to prise back the items, to no avail.

"She's not coming back inside. Take her to the cell," the guard said.

The woman clung to the wire fence and wailed.
President Duterte has repeatedly said war with China would be futile and that the Philippines would suffer heavily in the process

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has warned Beijing to back off from a disputed island in the South China Sea, warning of possible military action if China "touches" it amid rising tensions over the key waterway.

Duterte, aiming to attract trade and investment from the Asian superpower, has mostly withheld his early criticism of Beijing's expansive claims to the sea -- a point of regional contention because trillions of dollars of goods pass through it.

But as the Philippine military warned this week that hundreds of Chinese coast guard and fishing vessels had "swarmed" the Manila-held Pag-asa island, also known as Thitu, the Philippine president spoke out late Thursday.

"I will not plead or beg, but I am just telling you that lay off the Pag-asa because I have soldiers there," Duterte said in speech to prosecutors.

"If you touch it, that's another story. Then I will tell my soldiers 'prepare for suicide missions'", he added.

Duterte has repeatedly said war with China would be futile and that the Philippines would lose and suffer heavily in the process.

His words came after his Department of Foreign Affairs issued a statement calling the Chinese ships' presence an "illegal" violation of Philippine sovereignty.

China, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have all staked claims to various islands and reefs as well as waterways in the sea, with rich petroleum reserves thought to sit deep beneath the waters.

In a major victory for Manila, an international maritime tribunal ruled early in Duterte's presidency in 2016 that China's claims to the area have no legal basis.

However, he has largely set aside that ruling and backed off on their once tense territorial dispute over the sea.

He has been criticised at home for taking too soft a stance on China and getting little of the billions of dollars in investment promised by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

For its part, Beijing has downplayed the rising tension over Pag-asa, saying on Thursday that both sides had "exchanged views frankly, amicably and constructively" on the issue.

The United States, long-time Philippines ally and former colonial master, has moved to oppose any Chinese expansion in the sea.

For the first time, the US said in March that it would come to Manila's aid in case of an "armed attack" in the South China Sea.

The US navy has also forcefully asserted its right to freedom of navigation in the area, repeatedly sailing close to the man-made islands and drawing Chinese protests.
British actress Emilia Clarke arrives for the "Game of Thrones" eighth and final season premiere at Radio City Music Hall on April 3, 2019 in New York

The most expensive, most watched, most pirated and most award-festooned fictional television series in history... As "Game of Thrones" starts its eighth and final season on April 14, AFP looks back on its record-breaking run.

- Massive ratings -

First broadcast in 2011 on the US cable channel HBO, "Game of Thrones" -- or GoT to its fans -- was not an overnight phenomenon. But its audiences have never stopped growing and by 2014 it had overtaken HBO's flagship hit, "The Sopranos".

By its seventh season in 2017, viewing figures were stratospheric. Its final episode set an all-time US record for premium cable TV with 16.5 million people watching live or streaming on the day of transmission and 15 million more tuning in later.

Viewing records also tumbled in many of the 186 countries in which it was shown, with Britain's Sky Atlantic and OCS in France showing episodes in the middle of the night in sync with their US premieres.

But the figures become truly mind-boggling when illegal downloading is taken into account, with more than one billion people watching pirated copies of the seventh season.

- Colossal budgets -

The eighth run-out for "Game of Thrones" is reportedly the most expensive season of TV ever shot, with a budget of $15 million (13 million euros) per episode, taking the overall season cost to $90 million.

Although much of this has gone on lavish locations and special effects, the final two episodes will be one hour 20 minutes long -- almost the length of Hollywood movies.

HBO knows there is little danger of them not getting their money back, with the franchise so far earning them more than $1 billion, according to the New York Times.

The massive investment has also brought the series a record-breaking trove of 47 Emmy Awards from 128 nominations.

- Top secret -

After the leak of four episodes of season five before it was broadcast, the producers massively overhauled their security.

To throw hackers and pirates off the scent, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have shot several versions of the final episode, a tactic already used for "The Sopranos" and "Breaking Bad".

Actress Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, admitted that even she had been fooled into believing a red herring version of the denouement.

To make sure no one was snooping, the producers took measures to stop drones overflying their shoots.

- Game of Tourists -

The series has also been a boon for tourism, particularly in Northern Ireland, where much of the series was shot, with fans flooding in to visit locations in the region which had previously been best known for its violent sectarian past.

Iceland and the Spanish cities of Girona in the Catalan north and Osuna near Seville have seen their visitor numbers rocket from special "Game of Thrones" tours.

But the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik, the setting for King's Landing, discovered you can have too much of a good thing. It has had to put limits on the number of visitors it can receive in its picturesque medieval centre.

- Dothraki baby names -

Dogs, goldfish and lots of babies have also been named after characters from the series, with Arya -- together with its alternative spelling Aria -- entering the top 20 most popular names for girls in Britain last year.

Khaleesi, the honorary title in the imaginary Dothraki language given to Daenerys Targaryen, has also become popular, with 466 little girls in the US and 77 in France named after the queen of dragons last year.

The series has been something of a mixed blessing for pets too. Peter Dinklage, who plays "the Imp" Tyrion Lannister, had to appeal to fans to stop buying Siberian husky dogs who look similar to the dire wolves in the show.

Animal rights campaigners had complained that the number of huskies abandoned in Britain has risen seven-fold since the show started.

- Presidential fans -

While he was still in the White House, Barack Obama admitted to being a big fan of the series. He even asked HBO to bend their strict rules to allow him a sneak preview of the sixth season.

His successor in the Oval Office Donald Trump has made wide use of the "Winter is coming" motto of the House of Stark.

Much to the irritation of the channel and several of its actors, the US president has adapted the line several times in his tweets, including about Iran -- "sanctions are coming" -- and his border wall with Mexico: "The wall is coming."

The president, however, does not appear to have learned the lesson of the "Game of Thrones" wall, which has proved utterly ineffective against illegal immigration of Wildlings and zombie White Walkers.
Side-by-side photgraphs of Pakistani waiter Rozi Khan and US actor Peter Dinklage have unsurprisingly made their way onto social media

Pakistani waiter Rozi Khan had never heard of "Game of Thrones" -- or its hugely popular character Tyrion Lannister -- until his striking resemblance to the dwarf anti-hero got heads turning at home.

The 25-year-old so resembles actor Peter Dinklage -- who has played the witty and wily nobleman since the hit series' first season in 2011 -- that he gets regularly stopped by strangers desperate for a picture.

"I don't mind. A lot of my pictures have been taken, that's why I have become very famous everywhere," he said.

Khan says he would love to meet Dinklage, describing him as a friend and brother

Not only are Khan and Dinklage's faces strikingly similar, they are also the same height at around 135 centimetres (4 feet 5 inches).

Photographs of the pair have unsurprisingly made their way onto social media showing the doppelgangers side-by-side.

"Wherever I go, someone says to me: 'Sir, who is this man with you on Facebook?' I say that he is my friend. 'He looks like you'. I tell them he is my brother. It's not a bad thing," said Khan.

US actor Peter Dinklage arrives for the "Game of Thrones" eighth and final season premiere at Radio City Music Hall on April 3, 2019 in New York

The television series has won 47 Emmys -- more than any other fictional show in history -- along with a Golden Globe for Dinklage, 49, for best supporting actor in 2012.

A much anticipated final series is set to premiere on April 14 in the US (April 15 in India).

Khan works at a small Kashmiri restaurant down a narrow line in Rawalpindi, serving customers hearty dishes such as mutton and spinach curries.

Owner Malik Aslam Pervez described him as a hard worker -- and also a drawcard for the eatery.

Not only are Khan and Dinklage's faces strikingly similar, they are also roughly the same height at around 135 cms (4 ft 5in)

"When he takes a day off or gets sick, people look for him and ask where did he go? They get upset. They love him. There is always a crowd here but it has boomed because of him," he said.

Born in Mansehra in northern Pakistan, Khan says he would love to meet Dinklage, describing him as a friend and brother.

"I love him very much, he is my friend... he is my height so I like him a lot," said Khan.

For customers, seeing Tyrion Lannister in the flesh is also a thrill.

"When I saw him, I'm happy, I feel that I met with Lannister in real [life]," said Zain Hadri, 20.

"Game of Thrones" tells the story of noble families vying for control of the Iron Throne, all the while keeping one eye on the "White Walkers" leading hordes of the undead toward an invasion from the North.
Tourists are flocking to Dubrovnik, lured by scenes from Game of Thrones set in Croatia's ancient walled city

Shepherding tourists through the arches and towers of Croatia's medieval walled city of Dubrovnik, Ivan Vukovic spends half his time leading tours of a capital that doesn't exist: the fictional King's Landing from "Game of Thrones".

The two cities now rival each other for fame after Dubrovnik -- already a tourist and cruise ship magnet -- became a set in 2011 for the cult HBO series, whose final season starts on April 14.

Doubling as King's Landing, the capital of Westeros' Seven Kingdoms, "can be a blessing and it can be a curse" for Dubrovnik, said 38-year-old guide Vukovic.

While the "Game of Thrones" stardom has been a boon for his business, it is also bringing a new inundation of visitors to a city already struggling with overcrowding.

Tourists to Dubrovnik's old town have been a boon for business but locals lament the overcrowding: even the pigeons "have no place to land", one local says

"It's an amazing thing because it brings us so many people, but now we don't know what to do with those people," said the guide, describing bottlenecks that choke the city's limestone streets in peak summer season.

More than half of his tours include landmarks from King's Landing, while the others focus on the genuine history of Dubrovnik, a UNESCO site that dates back to the 7th century and features a maze of churches, palaces and fountains perched above the shimmering Adriatic.

Locals no longer bat an eyelid when tourists gather along the old town's baroque Jesuit Staircase to shout "Shame! Shame! Shame!" -- a sight fans recognise as a reenactment of the GoT scene when Queen Cersei is forced to publicly walk naked down the steps after confessing to adultery.

- 'Overtourism' -

Sitting in the terrace of his pizzeria at the foot of the stairs, owner Niko Grljevic says he doesn't mind the GoT fans, though he would prefer guides urged tourists to refrain from stripping down for an even more authentic rendering of the walk of shame.

Already a popular tourist spot, Dubrovnik's use as a "Game of Thrones" set, bringing fans flocking, has raised concerns about overtourism

"We cannot spit in the plate we eat from," says Grljevic.

The bar next to his place offers a "Mojito of Shame" cocktail, while souvenir shops on the main street offer a "Game of Thrones" bottle opener for 40 euros ($45), T-shirts for 34 euros and mugs for 20 euros.

Grljevic is a native of the city's old town and one of its last holdouts, with most locals renting out their apartments to tourists or selling them for up to 10,000 euros per square metre.

From a population of 5,000 in the early 1990s, the number of residents is down to around "700 of us," he says.

Fans like to reenact a wellknown "Game of Thrones" scene at the old town's baroque Jesuit Staircase where the character Queen Cersei is forced to do a walk of shame

After Dubrovnik's debut in season two, the HBO show attracted more than 244,000 tourists -- who spent some 126 million euros -- to Dubrovnik between 2012 and 2015, according to the Zagreb-based Institute of Economics.

That, plus the normal influx, raised concerns of an "overtourism" crisis last year, when more than 1.2 million people descended on a city that is home to 42,000 locals.

Authorities say they are regulating the timing of cruise ships and have set up cameras in the city to monitor crowd flow.

- #KingsLanding -

But locals are worried about how to strike the right balance.

Gordan Prislic, a 70-year-old pensioner, admits "Game of Thrones" has had some positive effects in boosting the city's popularity but that overcrowding remains a serious concern.

Dubrovnik tour guide Ivan Vukovic (pictured) says he spends half of his time leading tours of King's Landing, the fictional city in "Game of Thrones"

"Even the pigeons... have no place to land" in summer, he says, adding: "I'm afraid that tourism will destroy our ancient town."

Tour guide Vukovic also remarks on how the old city has been turned into a shopping mall for tourists, whose Instagram posts often feature #KingsLanding as the second hashtag after Dubrovnik.

He starts his walks by encouraging people to drink the water from a medieval fountain.

Shops sell "Game of Thrones" souvenirs in Dubrovnik which became a set in 2011 for the cult HBO series

"It's the only free thing here," he quips.

The guide used to wear a "Dubrovnik is much more than King's Landing" T-shirt but now fears it might alienate some fans and earn him bad reviews online.

"For young people, movies and social media became more important than history," he said.
Google confirmed it has disbanded its artificial intelligence ethics panel

Google on Thursday confirmed that it has disbanded a recently assembled artificial intelligence ethics advisory panel in the face of controversy over its membership.

The end of the Advanced Technology External Advisory Council (ATEAC) came just days after a group of Google employees launched a public campaign against having the president of conservative think-tank Heritage Foundation among its members.

Another member of the board had already resigned, and the inclusion of a drone company executive had rekindled concerns about potential military uses of artificial intelligence, according to Vox news website, which first reported on the council being disbanded.

"It's become clear that in the current environment, ATEAC can't function as we wanted," Google told AFP.

"So we're ending the council and going back to the drawing board."

Google added that it would seek alternative ways to gather outside input regarding responsible use of artificial intelligence.

- Keeping AI unbiased -

A petition published online called on Google to cull the Heritage Foundation's Kay Coles James from the council formed a week ago, due to her history of being "vocally anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ and anti-immigrant."

"In selecting James, Google is making clear that its version of 'ethics' values proximity to power over the wellbeing of trans people, other LGBTQ people and immigrants," read a statement posted on Medium by a group identifying itself as Googlers Against Transphobia.

Positions expressed by James contradict Google's stated values and, if infused into artificial intelligence, could build discrimination into super-smart machines, according to the post.

The group said that reasoning for James being added to the panel has been given as an effort to have a diversity of thought.

As of late Thursday, the online petition showed more than 2,300 signatures from academics, Google employees and others, including technology industry peers.

The controversy comes as the world grapples with balancing potential benefits of artificial intelligence with risks it could be used against people or even, if given a mind of its own, turn on its creators.

Google chief Sundar Pichai said in an interview published late last year that tech companies building AI should factor in ethics early in the process to make certain artificial intelligence with "agency of its own" doesn't hurt people.

The California-based internet giant is a leader in the development of AI, competing in the smart software race with firms such as Amazon, Apple, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft.

Last year, Google published a set of internal AI principles, the first being that AI should be socially beneficial.

Google vowed not to design or deploy AI for use in weapons, surveillance outside of international norms or in technology aimed at violating human rights.

The company noted that it would continue to work with the military or governments in areas such as cybersecurity, training, recruitment, health care and search-and-rescue.

AI is already used to recognize people in photos, filter unwanted content from online platforms and enable cars to drive themselves.
Carlos Ghosn is bracing for several days in custody

Former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn will remain in custody until at least April 14, a Japanese court ruled on Friday, as prosecutors quiz him over fresh allegations of financial misconduct.

The Tokyo District Court said in a statement it had accepted a request from prosecutors to detain the 65-year-old auto tycoon for a further 10-day period that can subsequently be extended once more.

The "full term of the detention is 14th" of April, the court said.

Ghosn's lead lawyer Junichiro Hironaka has vowed to appeal the decision, but the court rarely overturns its rulings.

Authorities are looking into new allegations that Ghosn transferred some $15 million in Nissan funds between late 2015 and mid-2018 to a dealership in Oman.

They suspect around $5 million of these funds were siphoned off for Ghosn's use, including for the purchase of a luxury yacht and financing personal investments.

Prosecutors say Ghosn "betrayed" his duty not to cause losses to Nissan "in order to benefit himself."

Ghosn denies the allegations and says he is also innocent of the three formal charges he faces: two charges of deferring his salary and concealing that in official shareholders' documents, and a further charge of seeking to shift investment losses to the firm.

Stephen Givens, an American attorney practising law in Japan since 1987, told AFP the latest allegations were the most serious yet.

Junichiro Hironaka, Ghosn's lawyer, says his client has pre-recorded a video explaining his side of the story

"If the facts are true... that is stealing from the company, that is embezzlement, that is terrible," said Givens, who is not connected with the Ghosn case.

"If that's true, it is a serious charge. It differs very significantly from the previous charges that seem minor and technical. These are hurting Nissan or Nissan shareholders and benefiting Ghosn," Givens added.

Justice Minister Takashi Yamashita, a former Tokyo prosecutor himself, hit back at growing criticism of the Japanese system, sometimes described as "hostage justice" due to long detention periods for suspects aimed at forcing a confession.

"I understand that it is being handled appropriately in accordance with the stipulation of the code of criminal procedure. So the criticism is not warranted," Yamashita told journalists.

- 'Worst enemy' -

Ghosn launched a counter-attack in an interview with French channel TF1, recorded just before his dawn arrest on Wednesday.

Describing himself as "a combative man and an innocent man", he vowed to "defend myself to the bitter end".

And he voiced concern that he would not be given a fair trial, with around 99 percent of trials in Japan resulting in a conviction.

"I have doubts over the way the judgement will take place. If there is a fair ruling, I am very confident but if it is not fair, I am worried about what will happen," said Ghosn.

His rearrest came just days after news that Renault, which Ghosn also once headed, had handed French prosecutors documents showing suspicious transfers worth million of euros authorised by the auto tycoon.

At the end of the initial 10 days of questioning, prosecutors can request a further 10-day extension. After this, they must either press formal charges, release him without charge or rearrest him to probe further allegations.

The case of former Nissan boss Carlos Ghosn has had many twists and turns

In his French TV interview, Ghosn lashed out at the conditions in the detention centre, saying he was deprived of his watch, forced to sleep with the light on and forbidden from contact with his loved ones.

"I wouldn't wish what I have suffered on my worst enemy," he said.

Ghosn spent 108 days in the detention centre in northern Tokyo before being dramatically released on bail of around $9 million on March 6, emerging from incarceration dressed in a workman's uniform and face mask in an apparent bid to avoid the media.

He had since lived in a court-appointed apartment in Tokyo without commenting on his situation despite huge international and Japanese media interest in his case that has shocked and surprised from the beginning.

However, just as reports began to surface that he could be rearrested, Ghosn emerged on Twitter to announce plans to hold a news conference on April 11.

With this now impossible, his lawyer Hironaka said Ghosn had pre-recorded a video but refused to give details of the contents or when it would be released.
Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Eric Keabetswe Masisi is squaring off against ex-foreign minister, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi to be the ruling party's candidate for presidential elections in October

The party that has ruled Botswana since independence more than half a century ago faces a historic challenge Friday when it meets to select its candidate for presidential elections in October.

For the first time in the history of one of Africa's most stable democracies, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) will see a genuine fight for the top job.

President Mokgweetsi Masisi is squaring off against an ex-foreign minister, Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi, who is backed by Masisi's predecessor and rival, Ian Khama.

Whoever wins is widely expected to become president after nationwide elections in a country where the opposition is largely fragmented.

About a thousand party delegates are attending a two-day meeting in the small rural Kalahari Desert town of Kang, 400 kilometres (250 miles) northwest of the capital Gaborone.

BDP congresses have traditionally been rubber stamps for the incumbent's bid for re-election.

"This time around, it's a new experience," Leonard Sesa, University of Botswana political science lecturer, told AFP.

Venson-Moitoi's unprecedented challenge against a sitting president could upset the stability of the party and even lead to a split, analysts suggest.

The 57-year-old BDP has ruled Botswana uninterrupted since independence in 1966, presiding over diamond-driven prosperity that stands out in a continent where poverty and turbulence are rife.

- Rivalry -

Masisi and former president Ian Khama have fallen out publicly, with Masisi reversing some of the policies introduced by his predecessor.

The ex-president has thrown his weight behind Venson-Moitoi, who was fired from cabinet in December after she announced she would throw her name in for nomination.

The rift between Masisi and his predecessor was laid bare last month when Khama accused his protege of betrayal.

Botswana's former foreign minister Pelonomi Venson-Moitoi enjoys the backing of Masisi's predecessor and rival, Ian Khama

Khama had last year picked his then-vice president Masisi to succeed him after serving the maximum 10 years in office.

But Masisi has moved to break with the past and establish his own authority since his inauguration a year ago.

In an interview with the SABC public broadcaster in neighbouring South Africa, Khama said he regretted picking Masisi to follow him.

"He had a nature, a character which I just felt very close to and part of. What I'm seeing now is a totally different person than the one I knew," Khama said.

"Regrettably and very unfortunately... I have come to realise that maybe I had misjudged (him) and now we have a situation where there is a bit of a standoff between himself and myself."

- 'Healthy for democracy' -

Analysts believe Khama may be getting uncomfortable amid speculation the Masisi government is set to arrest several of Khama's confidantes -- including one on tax evasion charges and another on accusations of corruption.

"He fought for Masisi to become president, so he feels betrayed, let down and he believes he can only be safe if Masisi is no longer president and if Venson-Motoi becomes president," said lawyer and political commentator Anthony Ndulamo Morima.

Morima suggests "there may have been some promises or undertakings that were made and which Masisi didn't possibly live up to".

"The former president feels betrayed and unprotected, feels exposed, feels vulnerable," said Mosima.

The tensions of a genuine competition for the top job may ruffle feathers in the party, but many commentators say such a development is good.

"Such a contest is healthy for our democracy," said Morima.
Pulane Koboekae remembers "like it was yesterday" the day her 23-year-old brother Richard Motsoahae, an anti-apartheid activist, was hanged

Pulane Koboekae looked pensively at the seven nooses suspended over a trap door in Pretoria Central Prison where her brother Richard Motsoahae was hanged by South Africa's apartheid regime in 1964.

Then she pulled out a white tissue and sobbed silently.

"It has opened up old wounds. I'm feeling mixed emotions. I feel sick, but also relieved," said Koboekae, 66, a retired nurse, her lips trembling.

"We've long been waiting for this," she said, on the day in August last year when her brother's remains were finally disinterred, 54 years after he was buried unceremoniously in an unmarked grave.

Motsoahae was an activist for the Pan Africanist Congress, an anti-apartheid movement which split from the African National Congress (ANC) in pursuit of a more radically "Africanist" agenda.

Motsoahae and three others -- the so-called Krugersdorp Four -- were hanged for killing a policeman -- among 135 political prisoners executed by the whites-only apartheid government that ended with the country's first democratic elections 25 years ago this month.

Richard Motsoahae was one of four members of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) executed by the apartheid regime for their role in killing a policeman

Those executed at the gallows were hastily buried, often anonymously, sometimes in mass graves.

Koboekae remembers the day of the execution of her 23-year-old brother "like it was yesterday". She was just 13.

"I was left alone at home and I was not allowed to come and visit" him in prison, she said softly. "I was sent to school and when I came back, I was all alone."

Next-of-kin such as Koboekae are finally getting a degree of closure decades later thanks to the Gallows Exhumation Programme, created to find the remains of hanged activists and return them to their families for burial.

- 'I was five' -

The project is a spin-off of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up by the post-apartheid, ANC-led government to probe atrocities committed by the whites-only state.

The bodies of about 50 executed activists have been found and reburied so far.

Families of anti-apartheid activists hanged at Pretoria Central Prison can visit the gallows as part of a grieving process that involves their loved ones' remains being located, disinterred, and handed over for reburial

Under the exhumation programme, bereaved families are invited on a visit of the prison and the gallows as part of the coming to terms with their loss.

Recently, relatives of seven hanged prisoners went to Pretoria Central Prison -- since renamed the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre -- which was the headquarters of capital punishment in apartheid South Africa.

The prison briefly also housed Nelson Mandela pending trial.

Guide Abram Rahlogo detailed the last walk of a prisoner, hands cuffed behind his back, from the cell to the gallows, passing the chapel on the way.

One of the visitors, 59-year-old Lazarus Molatlhegi, had pictures taken of him touching the nooses.

"I know those ropes aren't the ones that they used. But it's a rope exactly like that one that killed my brother. I was five at the time," he said.

Molatlhegi's brother Thomas, 31, was one of the Krugersdorp Four.

After the emotional hour-long visit to the prison and gallows which included them walking past the coffins that will receive their loved ones' remains, the families set off for the cemetery of Mamelodi, a township of Pretoria where black prisoners were buried.

The graves of seven men lay exposed, freshly dug up, the soil carefully dusted from the bones.

Koboekae leaned over the grave to look at her brother's skeleton, of which only the leg bones remained intact.

- 'A strange feeling' -

"It's a strange feeling. I never thought I would see my brother's skeleton one day... It's a bit unreal. It's the kind of things you see on TV, things that happen to other people", she said.

The bereaved were offered special counselling before coming face to face with the mortal remains.

"The decomposition process... we tell them how it works," a member of the pathology team that carries out the exhumations told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Some are worried or scared when they see the broken bones... They are afraid that their loved ones were tortured," the expert said.

In South Africa, 135 political prisoners were executed by the whites-only apartheid government that ended with the country's first democratic elections 25 years ago this month

In this case, there had been no torture.

"We know when the bones are broken before death. This is post-mortem. They (loved ones) are very interested in the explanations. It helps them. It's part of the closure," said the pathologist.

For Peggy Seloro, 77, the experience was nevertheless overwhelming.

She struggled to breathe, appeared close to fainting, and had to be supported and calmed by family members.

Her brother Petrus Ntshole was just 22 years old when he was executed -- another member of the Krugersdorp Four.

- 'Closing a chapter' -

Koboekae left the cemetery stoically, bracing for what would be a wait of several months for her brother's remains to be released to the family for burial.

On her way out, she passed a small pyramid-shaped monument on which her brother's name is engraved.

Mute Nyanya Yawa, Katyana Zoya and Mpitizeli Zoya shared a grave in Mamelodi West Cemetery, where black executed prisoners were buried under apartheid

"I am proud of him. They were fighting for liberation," she said.

"I could not assist with his first burial, but at least I will be able to attend his second. He will be buried with his family. That's important for us.

"It is going to close a chapter -- this is closure."

Last month, Justice Minister Michael Masutha handed over Motsoahae's remains to his family, as well as those of eight other executed activists.

"We hope the families of these activists who were hanged in the apartheid gallows will now find peace and closure," said Masutha.

"Rest in peace heroes!"
Japanese Crown Prince Naruhito and his bride Masako Owada in full traditional Imperial wedding costume in 1993

The abdication of Japan's outgoing Emperor Akihito and the enthronement of his son Naruhito will be solemn, ritual-bound affairs complete with sumptuous clothing and sacred paraphernalia.

Here are some of the key elements of the garb and gear that will be seen during the enthronement of the new emperor and subsequent key succession events.

- The new emperor's clothes -

For his enthronement, the new emperor will wear an outfit in the "sokutai" or ceremonial style. The outfit is now rarely seen and is dominated by a voluminous draped brown-gold outer robe with long, wide sleeves and a cinched waist.

Only the emperor wears this colour, with other royals sporting black, red, blue or other colours depending on their rank.

Royal attire often includes motifs of birds, as they were considered divine envoys in ancient times and the emperor's outer garment is decorated with a mythological Chinese phoenix, believed to symbolise the arrival of peace.

During the ceremony, the emperor and other male royals will carry a "shaku" or sceptre -- a narrow plain wooden plate not unlike a large shoehorn.

Detail of a kimono worn by Japanese princess Nobuko, eighth daughter of late Emperor Meiji, at the Kimono Museum near Tokyo

In the past, royals would sometimes attach "cheat sheets" to the back of the shaku to help guide them through complex rituals, and it can also be an indicator of their attentiveness.

"It would be obvious to people around you if your mind is wandering or disorderly because the shaku would start to slant to the side," said Tomitaro Hashimoto, assistant professor of Shinto studies at Reitaku University.

But the crowning glory of the emperor's outfit is the kanmuri hat, which consists of a simple flat black base and a towering black tail at the back that extends upright 60 centimetres (about 24 inches).

- Fit for an Empress -

Incoming empress Masako will wear an elaborate outfit commonly known as "junihitoe" or many-layered robe.

"The outfits called 'sokutai' (for men) and 'junihitoe' (for women) date back to the Heian Era," regarded as a golden period in Japanese culture, said Keizo Suzuki, head of a kimono museum on the outskirts of Tokyo.

Japanese Emperor Akihito in a full ceremonial dress before his enthronement in Tokyo

There is no set rule on the number of layers, though outgoing Empress Michiko wore nine robes during her husband's enthronement.

Masako is likely to choose her own colours but similar motifs to those donned by Michiko in 1989.

Michiko's outfit was dominated by a rich red robe, its sleeves and bottom visible underneath multiple layers of varying lengths, topped by a cream overcoat with light purple lapels and patterning.

Masako's hair will be sculpted into a style that sweeps up and out to the sides with a long ponytail extending from the back and a large golden hairpiece pinned above her forehead.

The elaborate traditional outfit, which can be hard to walk in because of its weight, is rarely seen outside imperial rituals and weddings.

- The sacred treasures -

A key ritual in the enthronement process is the handover of the "three sacred treasures" -- imperial regalia said to date back more than a millenium and have been bequeathed to the imperial line by the sun goddess Amaterasu.

Then Prince Akihito and his wife Michiko Shda pose in traditional wedding dress at their marriage at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in 1959

The treasures are the "Yata no Kagami", a mirror, "Kusanagi no Tsurugi", a sword, and the "Yasakani no Magatama", an unspecified jewel.

The possession of the "three sacred treasures" is considered crucial evidence of an emperor's legitimacy, but there are no photos and even the emperor cannot see them.

"We do not know exactly what they are like," said Eiichi Miyashiro, a senior journalist at the Asahi Shimbun newspaper and royal expert.

The treasures will be passed over in a ceremony held on May 1, which the new emperor attends in Western-style clothes and is off-limits for female royals.

During the ceremony, a replica sword and the original jewel will be handed over, wrapped in cloth. Both are kept at the palace, along with a replica mirror not used in the ceremony.
Foreign women and children walk inside the Al Hol camp housing relatives of Islamic State group members in northeastern Syria in March 2019

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday he was open to allowing the return of orphaned children of an Australian jihadist in a Syrian refugee camp following their desperate plea for help.

Morrison said his government was working with the Red Cross so the children could leave the Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria and Australian officials could assess them.

"Where they might be in a position to return to Australia, we will cooperate with that process," Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

"Where there are Australians who are caught up in this situation, particularly as innocent children, we will do what I think Australians would expect us to do on their behalf."

The PM added that he would not put "any Australian life at risk to extract people from these conflict zones", a stance he has taken in recent weeks despite pleas from their grandmother Karen Nettleton.

Morrison's comments came as Hoda Sharrouf -- the 16-year-old daughter of Australian Islamic State fighter Khaled Sharrouf -- said she was worried about her siblings' health, including 17-year-old sister Zaynab who is seven months pregnant and "very sick".

"What about the children? What about the people that didn't want to come here? What about the people that are stuck here and never wanted to be here in the first place? They don't deserve this kind of treatment," she told The Sydney Morning Herald from the camp.

"We're Australians too. Australia needs to do something about it. They need to step up," she said in an interview published Friday.

The Sydney Morning Herald said there were five children in the family seeking help -- Hoda, Zaynab, their eight-year-old brother Hamzeh, and Zaynab's two young children -- Ayesha, 3, and Fatima, 2.

Sharrouf -- the first Australian to have his citizenship stripped under anti-terrorism laws -- left the country for Syria in 2013 with his wife Tara Nettleton, two daughters and three sons.

He made international headlines in 2014 when he posted an image on Twitter of another son holding a severed head.

He is believed to have died in a 2017 American air strike alongside his then pre-teen sons, while Nettleton reportedly died in 2015.

The fate of foreign fighters and their families has become a significant problem for governments as the conflict against IS draws to a close. Foreigners at the camp are from some 30 to 40 countries.

The Red Cross said Wednesday it wanted hundreds of children of foreign fighters living in the camp to be allowed to return home.

France last month took in five orphans and is dealing with returns on a case-by-case basis.
The world's biggest social network first began looking into its influence on elections after revelations of Russian influence campaigns during the 2016 US election

Facebook will block election advertising from outside Australia ahead of polls next month, in the wake of growing criticism of the social media giant's role in the spread of disinformation.

The restrictions -- already rolled out for polls in other countries such as Thailand and Indonesia -- will come into force when the government announces the election date in the coming days.

"We're temporarily not allowing electoral ads purchased from outside Australia ahead of the election in May," Facebook's Australia and New Zealand policy director Mia Garlick said in a statement.

"The restriction... will apply to ads we determine to be coming from foreign entities that are of an electoral nature, meaning they contain references to politicians, parties or election suppression.

"We also won't allow foreign ads that include political slogans and party logos."

Facebook said it has introduced restrictions on foreign electoral ads in countries including Nigeria, Ukraine, Thailand, Indonesia, and Ireland around its May 2018 referendum on abortion.

For the European Parliamentary elections, it requires advertisers to be authorised in their country to run ads related to the vote.

The world's biggest social network first began looking into its influence on elections after revelations of Russian influence campaigns during the 2016 US election.

Critics have accused the US firm of being too slow to act.

AFP has a global fact-checking network that is dedicated to verifying and debunking disinformation spread online.

Some of this content is flagged on Facebook, as part of a contract between AFP and the social media company. AFP's collaboration with Facebook has just been extended to Australia.
The biopic on India's prime minister Narendra Modi has been postponed amid calls not to release it before the country's national election

Film-makers on Friday postponed the scheduled release of a Bollywood biopic on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, after it failed to get a censor's certificate on time.

India's main opposition Congress party had petitioned against the film's release, calling it a propaganda movie that would influence the country's national election that starts on April 11.

The film's producer Sandip Ssingh announced on Twitter late Thursday that the movie on Modi's rise from humble origins would not come out Friday, promising an update "soon".

But the Central Board of Film Certification said that "PM Narendra Modi" had not yet been given release authorisation.

The film "is yet to be certified as the process is not complete at this point," Prasoon Joshi, the CBFC chairman, told the Press Trust of India news agency.

India's election commission was expected to announce on Friday whether it would block the film's release because of the election.

Critics have labelled the movie a blatant attempt to sway voters in the six-week election.

Congress has said its release should wait until voting ends on May 19.

"This is no artistic venture. It is a political venture -- and that is what we have told the Election Commission -- and should not be allowed," Kapil Sibal, a senior Congress leader said last week.

The first five episodes of a 10 part internet TV series on the Prime Minister's life, 'Modi: A Common Man's Journey', were released without controversy.

Posters advertising the release of the last five episodes on an Indian web streaming service have been pasted across Mumbai.
International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda (C) would continue to pursue her duties "without fear or favour" despite the ban, her office said

The United States has revoked the visa for the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, her office said Friday, over a possible investigation of American soldiers' actions in Afghanistan.

Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda would continue to pursue her duties for the Hague-based court "without fear or favour" despite the ban, her office said in a statement.

The move against Bensouda, a Gambian national, comes weeks after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced restrictions on ICC staff who probe US or allied personnel.

"What we can confirm is that the US authorities have revoked the prosecutor's visa for entry into the US," the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC said in a statement.

Bensouda's office said that under the Rome statute governing the ICC -- which Washington has declined to join since it was set up in 2002 -- she had an "independent and impartial mandate".

"The prosecutor and her office will continue to undertake that statutory duty with utmost commitment and professionalism, without fear or favour," it added.

The US decision was not expected to impact Bensouda if she is travelling to the United Nations in New York where she gives regular briefings to the UN Security Council on investigation, it said.

There was no immediate comment on Bensouda's visa ban from Washington.

Bensouda asked ICC judges in November 2017 for authorisation to open an investigation into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan government forces and international forces including US troops.

The court has not yet decided whether to launch a full-blown probe.

However, the administration of US President Donald Trump has struck preemptively, with Pompeo warning on March 15 that the ICC was "attacking America's rule of law".

Pompeo said he was "announcing a policy of US visa restrictions on those individuals directly responsible for any ICC investigation of US personnel."

"If you're responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of US personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan you should not assume that you still have, or will get, a visa or that you will permitted to enter the United States," Pompeo added.
Images released by forces loyal to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar purportedly show their lightning advance to within 30 kilomtes (20 miles) of the government-held capital

Forces loyal to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar were pushed back Friday from a key checkpoint less than 30 kilometres (18 miles) from Tripoli, checking their lightning advance on the capital, a security source said.

Militiamen from the coastal town of Zawiya, west of Tripoli, retook the base after a "short exchange of fire", the source said on condition of anonymity.

The advance by Haftar's forces on Thursday, which came as the United Nations prepares to convene a conference later this month on holding delayed elections, prompted visiting UN chief Antonio Guterres to voice his "deep concern".

The UN Security Council was to hold an urgent meeting on the crisis later on Friday as Western governments appealed for restraint.

Traffic was flowing normally past the checkpoint on Friday morning, an AFP correspondent reported.

Just a single armoured vehicle was seen the allegiance of its occupants was not immediately clear.

The Zawiya militia is one of dozens that have proliferated since the overthrow of veteran dictator Moamer Kadhafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011 and are variously aligned with the UN-backed unity government in the capital and a rival administration in the east backed by Haftar's forces.

Map of northern Libya

Most of the pro-Haftar fighters who briefly captured the checkpoint late on Thursday were militiamen from the rival town of Sabratha further west along the Mediterranean coast.

Dozens of them were captured and their vehicles seized, the security source said.

Pictures posted on social media of men in military uniform sitting on the ground purported to show some of those taken prisoner, but their authenticity could not immediately be verified.

The Tripoli Protection Force, an alliance of pro-government militias in the capital, said its fighters had taken part in the recapture of the checkpoint 27 kilometres (17 miles) to its south.

The alliance said it had named its operation "Ouadi Doum II" after an airbase in northern Chad where Libyan forces commanded by Haftar, then still loyal to Kadhafi, suffered a major reverse at the hands of the French air force in 1986.

Haftar has remained a deeply controversial figure since he returned from exile after the revolution, with his critics accusing him of seeking to establish a new dictatorship with the support of his Gulf Arab allies.
A woman casts her ballot during Thai elections last month the first vote since a 2014 coup

Thailand's Election Commission said Friday that scores of candidates who were tipped to secure elected seats in last month's contentious polls are under investigation and could be disqualified, in a move that could shift yet-to-be-released final results.

The commission has come under fire for bungling ballot counts and delaying official results following the much-anticipated March 24 election, the first since a 2014 military coup.

The election has pitted the junta-backed Palang Pracharat party against Pheu Thai, a popular anti-military faction linked to an exiled billionaire.

Both have claimed the right to govern in the wake of polls with final tallies not expected for several weeks.

An election commissioner said Friday the body will investigate "66 people who got the highest votes in the constituency system" who were hit with complaints.

"Whether these 66 candidates would be disqualified would have to depend on our investigation," said commissioner Pakorn Mahannop.

He added that investigation results "will affect the calculation" of final parliamentary seats.

Commission officials did not say what parties the candidates belonged to but said 300 complaints had been filed.

The vote is governed under a new military-scripted constitution that delegates 350 lower parliament seats to candidates who won their constituencies.

Another 150 "party list" seats will be allocated based on popular vote.

The 250 upper house seats are military-appointed, stacking the balance of power strongly in its favour.

Thailand's Election Commission has been dogged with criticism since the poll over bungled vote counts, inconsistent tallies and more than 2.1 million invalidated ballots.

Earlier this week it ordered a re-count in two polling stations and a new vote in six polling sites, citing conflicting numbers between voter turnout and ballots tabulated.

The body had previously said a final tally would be announced by May 9, but Pakorn said Friday complete results may take even longer.

Early numbers showed Pheu Thai, the party linked to ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, securing the majority of the constituency seats, with 137.

Junta-backed Palang Pracharat followed them with 97 seats, but they gained the highest in the popular vote -- which tips their prime minister candidate junta leader Prayut Chan-O-Cha to return as a civilian premier.

Pheu Thai spokeswoman Ladawan Wongsriwong said her party doesn't know how many of their candidates are under investigation, but called for the commission "to give them fairness ... for the sake of constructive politics".
A summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un ended in failure in late February after Pyongyang demanded an easing of sanctions

The UN Security Council on Wednesday extended the work of a key panel that investigates North Korean sanctions-busting following weeks of negotiations over Russia's demands for a stronger focus on the humanitarian impact of the tough measures.

The council unanimously approved a US-drafted resolution renewing for a year the mandate of the panel of experts which reports to the UN sanctions committee on North Korea.

The approval had been held up by Russia which had requested that the panel be tasked with providing reports on the impact of sanctions on North Korea's humanitarian crisis, according to documents seen by AFP.

Russia wants the sanctions committee to grant more exemptions on humanitarian grounds, Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told AFP.

"The indiscriminate application of the resolution prevents many things from happening in North Korea. UN organisations have difficulty working on the ground and we want exemptions," he said.

The United States rejected Russia's request to add a new task to the panel, but an agreement was reached to ask UN aid officials to brief the sanctions committee on the humanitarian situation every six months.

In a letter seen by AFP, the United States proposed that the sanctions committee "explore additional steps" to streamline requests for exemptions and help aid groups cut through UN administrative red tape.

- Food shortages -

Western diplomats accuse Russia of using humanitarian aid as a pretext to weaken the tough sanctions regime imposed on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

A summit meeting in Vietnam between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ended in failure in late February after Pyongyang demanded an easing of sanctions.

The United States maintains that Pyongyang's policies are responsible for the dire shortages of food and medicine in North Korea -- not sanctions.

Some 10.5 million North Koreans, or 41 percent of the population, are in need of food aid, according to UN figures.

So far this year, the sanctions committee has granted 18 exemptions to aid organizations working in North Korea, some of which had been under review for as long as a year, with the United States delaying approval.

UN sanctions resolutions specify that humanitarian aid should not be affected by the tough measures, but aid organizations have said they have been hit hard.

The restrictions have made imports of material for their relief projects almost impossible and created major headaches with banking, aid officials say.

North Korea in February told the United Nations it is facing a looming food crisis from an expected sharp drop in crop production this year and asked for help.
Julian Assange's arrest could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks

Using cryptography and virtual drop boxes, Julian Assange's WikiLeaks created a revolutionary new model for media to lure massive digitized leaks from whistleblowers, exposing everything from US military secrets to wealthy tax-dodgers' illicit offshore accounts.

Assange's arrest in London Thursday on a US extradition request to face charges of computer crimes could spell the end of 13-year-old WikiLeaks.

But his legacy will live long in the world's media.

News outlets and journalists everywhere can now offer to potential sources encrypted apps and secure virtual mailboxes to receive secrets that were once divulged by discreet whispers, furtive phone calls and unmarked manila envelopes.

Skilled at hacking and cryptography -- and motivated by a deep distrust of traditional institutions -- Australia-born Assange took a cypherpunk's libertarian streak to the challenge of government secrecy.

In 2006 he built an online platform that offered an anonymous, encrypted path to leak computerized files without fear of exposure.

- 'We liberated cryptography' -

Leaks have forever been crucial currency in journalism. But no one had before created a convenient, relatively easy-to-use electronic drop box that could almost instantly, with absolute secrecy, take delivery of gigabytes of documents.

And he did it at a ripe time, as the connected world emerged and social media took off.

For Assange, it was the democratization of powers that had before belonged to governments alone. "Cryptography was then the exclusive property of states," he wrote in 2013.

Assange's legacy will live long in the world's media

"By writing our own software and disseminating it far and wide we liberated cryptography, democratized it and spread it through the frontiers of the new internet."

WikiLeaks' first release in December 2006 was an apparent assassination order by a Somali rebel leader that may or may not have been authentic.

But it drew attention. Over the next year, WikiLeaks obtained documents baring the Kenyan leader's corruption, the secret operating rules for the US Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and offshore banking records from a Swiss bank.

It began scooping mainstream media on stories from secret climate discussions to Iran's nuclear activities and Icelandic banking fraud.

- The Manning files -

In 2010 US army intelligence official Chelsea Manning -- a transgender woman then known as Bradley -- began secretly feeding hundreds of thousands of classified files to WikiLeaks.

They showed possible war crimes by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, including a never-before-seen video of a US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 18 people, including civilians and two Reuters journalists.

Chelsea Manning's stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream

The stunning leak could not have been carried out in the old days of faxes and printers and it put WikiLeaks into the mainstream.

Assange partnered with The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and others to help sort through and make sense of the Manning material. WikiLeaks won awards and Assange was put on the cover of Time magazine.

"What WikiLeaks demonstrated was the potential for a stateless transparency organization to get around the ability of the most powerful governments in the world to suppress information," said Micah Sifry, author of a 2011 book on WikiLeaks.

- WikiLeaks copycats -

Almost as soon as he hit that peak, Assange's star began to fade.

Political pressure to counter WikiLeaks was huge. A multi-country effort got major credit card and payment firms to cut WikiLeaks' financial lifeline of donations.

And he began to fall out with collaborators, a victim of his domineering personality that made WikiLeaks a one-man show, and his insistence that leaked material be published unedited, including that information that could harm people -- soldiers in the field, human rights activists and others.

But by 2012 others were already adopting his model of setting up encrypted, anonymous paths for leakers to hand over documents.

WikiLeaks copycat sites opened in different countries. Journalists became trained in the use of encryption and secret file transfers.

"Exposing the secrets of the US government was a powerful signal that nobody could keep information under control in the internet age," said Sifry.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden did not deliver his trove of hundreds of thousands of top-secret intelligence and military documents to a media drop-box in 2013.

But he used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize to communicate with the journalists he collaborated with.

US whistleblower Edward Snowden used encrypted communications that Assange helped popularize

In 2013 the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which had aided WikiLeaks with financing, developed a new anonymous drop box free for anyone to use: SecureDrop.

The New Yorker, an early adopter, explained its value to leakers: "As it's set up, even we won't be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won't be able to tell them."

SecureDrop is important to the most successful WikiLeaks-like operation, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

In recent years it has obtained from leakers millions of financial account files detailing money laundering and tax avoidance from offshore banking centers -- the "Panama Papers" and "Paradise Papers."

The top of the ICIJ's web page offers links to SecureDrop and other encrypted tools for sharing information.

And it has one simple invitation for its users: "Leak to us."
WASHINGTON (AP) - How many ways can you measure the first quarter of the year? For Democratic presidential candidates, it's 300-plus events, 26 states and hundreds of voter questions.

The Iowa caucus is still 10 months away, but the Democratic primary campaign is already an all-out sprint - passing eye-popping markers for campaign activity and voter engagement. Voters in Florida and Ohio may not see it, but weekends in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina - not to mention a handful of select states - are a blitz of candidate rallies and local meet-and-greets.

For some candidates the frenetic pace is the message, a way of casting themselves as tireless and willing to take every last question. Elizabeth Warren and Beto O'Rourke are trying to make an ambitious schedule and accessibility part of their brands, but Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand have done their parts to keep up with several dozen events each, most in early-voting states.

It's far from clear that the candidate who holds the most events, whether leaping onto tables or addressing big rallies, will emerge as the candidate with the most votes. Still, Democrats watching the display from a distance say the engagement, the activity and the enthusiasm bode well.

"Broad picture: This is incredibly good for the Democratic Party," said Jim Messina, who managed President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

The Democrats' contested 2008 primary and the GOP's packed 2016 field showed "that enthusiasm in primaries becomes very important in a general election," Messina said. That's because engaged backers are "more likely to do two things you need them to do" in order to win, he said: donate money and help persuade their social networks to vote.

FILE - In this March 15, 2019, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., addresses a gathering as guests take photographs with their phones at a house party during a campaign stop in Claremont, N.H. The Iowa caucus is still 10 months away, but the Democratic primary campaign is already an all-out sprint _ passing eye-popping markers for campaign activity and voter engagement. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)

For all the recent upheaval in politics, the 2020 campaign so far shows some things haven't changed. Retail campaign stops are still essential to breaking through in early-voting states that will play a central role in choosing the nominee. They are, perhaps, even more important in the social media era. One live-streamed rally that goes viral on social media can reach more voters than dozens of smaller events.

Even though no one metric can predict success, a look at the campaigns' tallies of on-the-ground engagement shows how some of the busiest road warriors are faring at the end of the first quarter.

Warren and O'Rourke are logging mileage in areas their party hasn't always traveled to early on and underscoring their appetite for grassroots interaction, a style Pete Buttigieg is also cultivating. Warren took more than 200 questions from voters and O'Rourke answered more than 350, according to their campaigns' first-quarter estimates.

That's a notable feat for O'Rourke, who only entered the race last month. The former Texas congressman has logged 55 first-quarter events in nine states where he publicly took voter questions, according to his campaign. Gillibrand held 59 public events in eight states since launching an exploratory committee in January, according to the New York senator's campaign. Buttigieg has held 35 events in 11 states since the South Bend, Indiana, mayor started an exploratory committee that same month.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar logged 36 public events in 10 states since forming her campaign in February, according to her campaign's tally.

California Sen. Kamala Harris has emerged as a top-tier contender despite fewer public events than some opponents, clocking in with 26 public first-quarter events in eight states since launching her campaign in January, according to an AP estimate. Harris' campaign said Monday night that she took more than 100 voter questions during first-quarter events, where total estimated turnout has topped 37,000.

Warren, a former law professor whose campaign is keeping detailed statistics, took questions at 48 events in 12 states over all three months, according to the Massachusetts senator's campaign. Her aides measure her commitment to voter engagement partly in selfies - estimating that she's taken more than 12,000 with voters so far. The tally of extra time after events is itself a strategic move, an argument that availability can win the day while other candidates spend time on the high-dollar fundraisers she's sworn off.

Other Democrats are consciously mixing up their number and types of public events. Booker is holding a bigger kickoff of a national tour soon after holding smaller events. The New Jersey senator's campaign estimates that he has held more than 50 public events in seven states since he jumped into the race in February and taken more than 350 voter questions.

A handful of other candidates have lagged behind in their total number of first-quarter events. Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's campaign has logged 16 events, while Washington Gov. Jay Inslee held 12 events according to an AP tally. Former housing secretary Julian Castro has held more than a dozen of his own over the first quarter.

All of these candidates tend to fall behind Bernie Sanders in early polling of the Democratic field. Sanders, the runner-up in 2016, has held 17 major events in eight states and Washington, D.C., since declaring his candidacy in early March.

Not all of Sanders' events - nor those of other candidates - feature the sort of real-time voter questions that are a fixture of Warren's and O'Rourke's appearances. But Sanders' crowds illustrate his formidable ability to engage voters on his own terms: The Vermont senator's campaign projects a total turnout of 74,000 people for all of his events so far.

President Donald Trump famously upended the traditional calculus of campaigning in 2016 by making fewer retail visits as he powered past more than a dozen GOP rivals. Whether anyone in the Democratic field can repeat that model remains to be seen.

"We want to fall in love like we did with Barack Obama," Messina said of Democratic voters, "and to do that, you need to do the retail part of this."

Several candidates have made a point of veering off the beaten track, hoping a stop outside the early states will earn them some extra media attention and voter good will.

O'Rourke crossed six states in one week on his post-announcement road trip. Warren has made unexpected trips to Puerto Rico and the Deep South, eager to find a way to set herself apart from the pack.

When the Massachusetts senator touted her "not traditional" choice to visit Alabama during a rally there last month, a voice from the audience chimed in to note that "Obama did it."

__

Associated Press writers Juana Summers in Washington; Will Weissert and Paul Weber in Austin, Texas; Sara Burnett in Chicago; Hunter Woodall in Berlin, New Hampshire; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Feb. 17, 2019, file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks at an organizing event in Las Vegas. The Iowa caucus is still 10 months away, but the Democratic primary campaign is already an all-out sprint _ passing eye-popping markers for campaign activity and voter engagement. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

FILE - In this March 15, 2019, file photo, former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke speaks during a stop at the Central Park Coffee Company in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. The Iowa caucus is still 10 months away, but the Democratic primary campaign is already an all-out sprint _ passing eye-popping markers for campaign activity and voter engagement. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File)
PARIS (AP) - French carmaker Renault's board will hold a special meeting to discuss recent results of its internal investigation of its former boss Carlos Ghosn, amid reports of suspicious payments under his watch.

The board meeting planned for Wednesday will also look into Ghosn's 2018 pay as chairman and CEO of Renault SA, a Renault official told The Associated Press.

Ghosn, under investigation in Tokyo, has denied wrongdoing.

He was chairman of Nissan and headed the two automakers' alliance until his arrest in November in Japan. He was released on bail in March pending his trial in Tokyo.

Unconfirmed media reports this week said the company has handed information about payments worth millions of euros (dollars) to a Renault-Nissan distributor in Oman from its probe to French prosecutors.

Ghosn's representatives called the reports false. In a statement, they said: "The payments made by Renault to the distributor in Oman have not been diverted from their commercial objectives and under no circumstances has all or part of such payments benefited Carlos Ghosn or his family."

Junichiro Hironaka, lawyer of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn speaks during a press conference in Tokyo, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Hironaka said his client cannot get a fair trial under the same judge as the Japanese automaker, which is a co-defendant in a pending financial misconduct case, arguing Nissan has been acting "as one" with the prosecutors.((AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

French prosecutors did not comment.

In Tokyo on Tuesday, Ghosn's lawyer said he has petitioned a Tokyo court seeking separate judicial proceedings for Ghosn and Nissan Motor Co., who currently are co-defendants in a financial misconduct trial.

Hironaka reiterated Ghosn's innocence and accused Nissan of working "as one" with prosecutors who have charged him with breach of trust and with falsifying financial reports in under-stating his compensation.

The lawyer declined comment on the reports about Renault's investigation.

He said that under a plea bargaining process that is relatively new in Japan, some Nissan executives have escaped prosecution in return for cooperating with the prosecutors, Hironaka said.

That has helped prosecutors shape a narrative that suggests Ghosn is guilty, he said.

Hironaka, who has a strong track record for acquittals in a country where the conviction rate is over 99%, said he preferred that a different judge hear testimony from the executives who took plea bargains.

Having Ghosn and his former employer Nissan face trial together would be unfair, he said.

"No matter how you look at it, Nissan is not a defendant but a prosecutor," Hironaka said.

Hironaka also requested that Ghosn be tried separately from another defendant in the case, Greg Kelly, a Nissan executive accused of facilitating Ghosn's misconduct.

___

Kageyama contributed from Tokyo.

Junichiro Hironaka, the lawyer of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn speaks during a press conference in Tokyo, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Hironaka said his client cannot get a fair trial under the same judge as the Japanese automaker, which is a co-defendant in a pending financial misconduct case, arguing Nissan has been acting "as one" with the prosecutors.(AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)

Junichiro Hironaka, lawyer of former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn speaks during a press conference in Tokyo, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Hironaka said his client cannot get a fair trial under the same judge as the Japanese automaker, which is a co-defendant in a pending financial misconduct case, arguing Nissan has been acting "as one" with the prosecutors.((AP Photo/Koji Sasahara)
JERUSALEM (AP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will travel to Russia this week for talks with President Vladimir Putin.

Their meeting on Thursday will take place just five days before Israel's national elections next week. Netanyahu's office says he will be visiting Moscow, but doesn't state the purpose of the visit.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday confirmed the upcoming visit, saying that it will be a brief meeting for the two leaders to "compare notes."

Netanyahu has met with Putin three times over the past year, most recently in February, to discuss military coordination between Russia and Israel in neighboring Syria.

Israel and Russia maintain a hotline to prevent their air forces from clashing over Syria. Syrian forces downed a Russian warplane in September while responding to an Israeli air strike.

Netanyahu seeks re-election as prime minister in the April 9 balloting but faces possible indictment on corruption charges and stiff opposition in the vote.
CAIRO (AP) - An Egyptian province on the Red Sea will impose a ban on disposable plastics, prohibiting everything from single use straws to plastic bags in an effort to fight pollution and protect the environment, its governor said Tuesday.

The ban will apply to restaurants, supermarkets, grocery stores, pharmacies and on cruise ships that dock off the shores of this province, called Red Sea. It will also apply to the hotels in Hurghada, the provincial capital, and elsewhere in the province.

Plastic spoons, forks and knives, cups and dishes will also be among the banned items.

"It's a fight against the sea of plastic that people carelessly discard," Gov. Ahmed Abdallah told The Associated Press. "And it all ends up in the Red Sea."

The ban will go into effect from June, he said, adding that it was first proposed by the Hurghada Environmental Protection & Conservation Association to protect the province's "threatened and endangered species."

The organization said it will launch campaigns across the province to clean up islands, beaches and famous diving areas around Hurghada, one of Egypt's most popular beach resorts and diving centers.

In this June 8, 2018 photo, divers collect plastic and other debris during a cleanup organized by Camel Dive Club, at a dive site off the coast of the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheik, in Southern Sinai, Egypt.An Egyptian official says his Red Sea province will impose a ban on disposable plastics, prohibiting everything from single use straws to plastic bags in an effort to fight plastic pollution. Ahmed Abdallah, governor of Hurghada province, said late on Tuesday, April, 2, 2019, that the ban will go into effect from June. (AP Photo/Thomas Hartwell)

Abdallah, who realizes the campaign will be an uphill battle, did not elaborate on how the ban would be enforced. His hope is that by saying "no to plastic," Egypt will draw more environment-conscious tourists.

In 2017, Egypt launched an EU-funded initiative to encourage people to limit their use of plastic bags and to shift to more environment-friendly alternatives. The country produces 970,000 tons of plastic waste per year.

The environmental affairs agency said last year that Egyptians use around 12 billion plastic bags a year, causing severe problems to the Nile River and the country's two seas - the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Single-use plastics, which are used once before they are thrown away or recycled, have added to the problems, as have items like coffee stirrers, plastic bags, straws, soda and water bottles.

Egypt's vital tourism industry has been hit hard by extremist attacks and political turmoil following the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled longtime autocrat, President Hosni Mubarak.

The once multibillion tourism industry, a vital pillar of the country's economy and source of work for millions of people, has been decimated. The tourism sector suffered a further blow after an Islamic State group bombing brought down a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai Peninsula in 2015, killing all 224 people on board.

Egypt's government has tried to lure tourists back by promoting new archaeological discoveries and boosting security around historical sites.

FILE - In this Nov. 7, 2015 file photo, a tourist swims in the Red Sea, at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. An Egyptian official says his Red Sea province will impose a ban on disposable plastics, prohibiting everything from single use straws to plastic bags in an effort to fight plastic pollution. Ahmed Abdallah, governor of Hurghada province, said late on Tuesday, April, 2, 2019, that the ban will go into effect from June. (AP Photo/Thomas Hartwell, File)
KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - The candidate who placed third in the first round of Ukraine's presidential election conceded defeat Tuesday, but alleged the incumbent who came in second rigged the results in his favor.

Opinion polls had shown Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who has been a fixture in Ukrainian politics for two decades, leading the race until a few months before Sunday's election.

With nearly 99% percent of ballots counted, comic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy had garnered 30% of the vote. President Petro Poroshenko was next with just under 16%, while Tymoshenko received 13%.

That means that Ukraine's new president will be elected in a runoff between Zelenskiy and Poroshenko on April 21.

In her concession remarks, Tymoshenko alleged Poroshenko had manipulated the vote.

"He should not be in the runoff," she said. "He got there by cheating."

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko speaks during her press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, April 2, 2019. Timoshenko has accused incumbent Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of vote rigging in the first round of the March 31 presidential election, but she is not planning to challenge the results.(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

Tymoshenko did not specify what kind of election interference she thought occurred, although she had accused Poroshenko in the days before the election of buying votes.

Speaking to reporters on a trip out of town, Poroshenko wouldn't comment on Tymoshenko's allegations and said that she "should put up with" her defeat at the polls.

The president promised a democratic election last week, saying Ukraine had a lot at stake.

Tymoshenko said she would not contest the election results because she believes Poroshenko controls the courts. She refused to endorse either Zelenskiy or Poroshenko for the runoff.

She said she and her party would now focus on the parliamentary election in the fall, which could give her a post in a new government.

"The chance we've lost in the first round of the presidential election is just one chance," Tymoshenko said. "We still have one opportunity left to bring in a dramatic change, to implement a new course, and this is the next parliamentary elections."

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Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.

FILE In this file photo taken on Sunday, March 31, 2019, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko gestures while speaking at his headquarters after the presidential election in Kiev, Ukraine. Over recent years Ukraine has suffered from an economic meltdown and alleged endemic corruption, which will be great challenges for whom ever wins the upcoming runoff presidential election in three weeks' time. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

In this Sunday, March. 31, 2019 photo, Ukrainian comedian and presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, speaks to the media outside a polling station, during the presidential elections in Kiev, Ukraine. Zelenskiy is used to being in the spot light, imbuing him with an easygoing manner and snappy talk on the presidential campaign trail. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

Doris Barnett, the head of the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE PA), attends a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, April 1, 2019 . Early results in Ukraine's presidential election show a comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy with no political experience maintaining his strong lead against the incumbent president in the first round, setting the stage for a runoff in three weeks. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Iikka Kanerva, OSCE Special Co-ordinator, attends a news conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, April 1, 2019. Early results in Ukraine's presidential election show comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy maintaining a strong lead against the incumbent president in the first round of voting, setting the stage for a runoff vote in three weeks. (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko speaks during her press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, April 2, 2019. Timoshenko has accused incumbent Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of vote rigging in the first round of the March 31 presidential election, but she is not planning to challenge the results as she believes the courts are also controlled by the president. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

FILE In this file photo taken on Friday, March 29, 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukrainian actor and candidate in the upcoming presidential election, hosts a comedy show at a concert hall in Brovary, Ukraine. Zelenskiy has no political experience, but his easygoing manner and snappy talk on the campaign trail strongly resembled his character in "Servant of the People", a schoolteacher catapulted into the presidential seat. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday it has protested Brunei's plans to implement Islamic criminal laws that punishes gay sex by stoning offenders to death.

German diplomats expressed concern at the introduction of Sharia law penalties and appealed to Brunei's ambassador Monday to "abide by existing international human rights obligations," the ministry said in a statement.

The legal change in the tiny, oil-rich monarchy, which also includes amputation for theft, is due to come into force Wednesday.

Human rights group Amnesty International has slammed the punishments as "vicious ."

American actor George Clooney, who is married to prominent human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, called recently for a boycott of luxury hotels in Europe and the United States linked to Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah.

The sultan holds Germany's Federal Order of Merit, a distinction bestowed on him in an exchange of honors during a state visit in 1998. Frank Mueller-Rosentritt, a lawmaker with the opposition Free Democrats, suggested that he could be stripped of the award.

The German president's office said that orders awarded during state visits cannot be revoked, but stressed President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's rejection of the death penalty and stance that threatening gay people with "cruel punishments" violates elementary human rights.
GENEVA (AP) - The World Trade Organization has cut its forecast for trade growth this year by more than a percentage point, to 2.6%, due to an economic slowdown and amid a trade conflict between the United States and China.

The downgrade - from 3.7% forecast issued in September - reflects how quickly the prospects for global business are fading as, among other things, the U.S. and China struggle to agree on how to lift tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars-worth of trade.

"Rising trade tensions are the major factor," WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo told The Associated Press on Tuesday after the release of the forecasts.

Beyond the trade war, the WTO has cited weaker economic growth in North America, Europe and Asia - largely as the effect of fiscal stimulus by the Trump administration wears off. It noted a "phase-out" of monetary stimulus in Europe and China's efforts to shift its economy away from its traditional reliance on manufacturing and investment toward services and consumption.

In 2018, trade grew by just 3% - far below the WTO's forecast for 3.9%, which had itself been downgraded last year. And next year, the Geneva-based trade body expects only a small uptick in trade growth by volume next year, to 3%.

"There is potential for a slight improvement in 2020 but that is very much dependent on an easing of the trade tensions," he said.

FILE- In this Tuesday, March 5, 2019, file photo the Cape Kortia container ship, left, heads into the Port of Tacoma in Commencement Bay in Tacoma, Wash. On Thursday, March 28, the Commerce Department issues the final estimate of how the U.S. economy performed in the October-December quarter. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

The WTO oversees international trade rules and settles disputes between countries. The Trump administration has also been critical of the WTO, accusing it of being "unfair" with the United States.

The U.S. has slowly squeezed the WTO by blocking appointments to its dispute settlement group, the Appellate Body, which could in December fall below the minimum number of members required.

Azevedo pointed to the "fundamental importance of the rules-based trading system," saying that its weakening would "be an historic mistake with repercussions for jobs, growth and stability around the world."
BERLIN (AP) - Germany's greenhouse gas emissions fell 4.2% in 2018, the first major decrease in Europe's biggest economy four years, thanks in large part to warm weather.

Estimates published Tuesday by the Environment Ministry show Germany released the equivalent of 868.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year. That's 38 million tons less than 2017.

Environment Minister Svenja Schulze acknowledged that Germany benefited from last year's warm and sunny weather , which increased production of renewable energy and reduced the need for heating fuel.

Environmentalists claimed the figures highlight the German government's failure to make a real dent in emissions in recent years.

"A warm winter can't replace successful climate policies," said Karsten Smid of Greenpeace. "Germans simply heated their homes less."

Smid noted that Germany's transport emissions remain on a par with 30 years ago.

FILE -- In this Sunday, September 30, 2018 photo water vapour clouds rise from the cooling towers of the Jaenschwalde lignite-fired power plant of Lausitz Energie Bergbau AG (LEAG) in Jaenschwalde, Germany. The German government says greenhouse gases emissions in Europe's biggest economy fell 4.2% in 2018, the first major decrease in four years. Estimates published Tuesday by the Environment Ministry show Germany released the equivalent of 868.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, 38 million tons less than 2017. (Patrick Pleul/dpa via AP, file)

Overall emissions in Germany last year were about 30.6% lower than in 1990. The government had originally aimed to cut them by 40% next year as part of efforts to curb climate change, but has admitted it will miss that target. It has now set a new goal of reducing emissions by at least 55% from the 1990 baseline year by 2030.

One measure that will help reduce Germany's emissions is a plan to phase out the burning of coal for electricity by 2038.

Recent figures from a European Union emissions trading system show seven of the 10 biggest emitters in the 28-nation bloc were coal-fired power plants in Germany.

Cabinet is currently debating a bill that could set legally binding emissions goals for each sector of the economy. Germany's transport minister and the country's powerful auto industry have resisted proposals to introduce speed limits on all highways or raise taxes for drivers to help cut vehicle emissions, which currently account for almost a fifth of overall emissions.

FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2011 file photo photovoltaic modules and a windmill of the wind farm are pictured at the village of Feldheim near Berlin, Germany. The German government says greenhouse gases emissions in Europe's biggest economy fell 4.2% in 2018, the first major decrease in four years. Estimates published Tuesday by the Environment Ministry show Germany released the equivalent of 868.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide last year, 38 million tons less than 2017. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)
BANGKOK (AP) - Thailand's influential army chief warned Tuesday that the military will fight any moves that threaten the country's system of constitutional monarchy with the king as head of state, in an apparent threat directed at supporters of a new anti-junta party.

"The army does the army's duty, which is to protect, maintain, and defend the institutions of nation, religion, and monarchy," Gen. Apirat Kongsompong said at a news conference.

Apirat appeared to be targeting intellectuals backing the Future Forward Party, which according to preliminary figures ran a strong third in the March 24 general election.

Apirat's words "come as an intimidating knock-out punch against any Thai political critics of Thailand's system of government," said Paul Chambers, a lecturer in political science at Naresuan University in northern Thailand. "But more explicitly, the words seem to attack Future Forward Party, whose leaders have seemed particularly critical of the junta and military, and who in the past discussed the monarchy."

Future Forward Party co-founder Piyabutr Saenkanokkul used to be part of the Nitirat Group, legal scholars who sought reforms in Thailand's lese majeste law, which carries stiff prison terms for people found guilty of defaming the monarchy.

Apirat suggested that scholars who have studied abroad may have lost their understanding of the "Thai-style democratic system."

In this Friday, Jan. 18, 2019, file photo, Thai army chief Gen. Apirat Kongsompong reviews the guard of honor during the Royal Thai Armed Forces Day ceremony at a military base in Bangkok, Thailand. Apirat has warned that the military will strongly fight any moves that threaten the country's system of a constitutional monarchy with the king as head of state. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Pitabutr received his master's and doctoral degree in France, and other prominent members of the Nitirat Group studied law in Germany.

"Don't introduce the leftist views you learned that made you all pretentious," Apirat said.

The military-backed Palang Pracharath Party won the most popular votes in the March polls, and its candidate, Prayuth Chan-ocha, is likely to become prime minister, but could end up with the opposition holding a majority of seats in the House of Representatives. Prayuth led a 2014 coup that ousted an elected government and since then has served as junta chief and prime minister.

Supporters of the Future Forward Party believe the courts and the Election Commission may try to disqualify some of its winning candidates, or even the entire party, ahead of the release of official election results on May 9.

Thai social media since the election has been buzzing with postings seeking to discredit the Future Forward Party.

One recently circulated video shows excerpts of a lecture Piyabutr gave in 2013, when he taught law at Bangkok's Thammasat University. He has said it was to explain the relationship of democracy to monarchies in political systems worldwide. But it has been cast by his party's opponents as criticism of Thailand's monarchy.

An obscure right-wing group, Political Civic Group, said it has filed a complaint with the Election Commission about Piyabutr's statements, claiming they violated election law. He has denied the allegations against him and charged the video was taken out of context to undermine him.

Apirat also criticized activists who charge that the Election Commission mismanaged the polls and are seeking to impeach its members.

"Once the referee has made a ruling, you blame the referees. When boxers fight, this guy loses, and you blame the referees. If it's like this it will never end. It will be a never-ending cycle of revenge and disapproval. How can it end? I've said already," Apirat said, before taking a long pause. "I don't want to say something too harsh."

After becoming army commander, Apirat told reporters last October that he refused to rule out more coups if there is political unrest.

"If politics does not create riots, nothing will happen," he said.

His father, Gen. Sunthorn Kongsompong, helped carry out a 1991 coup and served as junta leader for more than a year.
CAIRO (AP) - The U.N. chief has expressed solidarity with Muslims the world over during a visit to Cairo, denouncing hate speech and racism, as well as anti-Semitism.

The remarks by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday in the Egyptian capital come less than a month after the terrorist attack on New Zealand mosques killed 50 worshippers.

Guterres says: "Hate speech is entering the mainstream, spreading like wildfire through social media and radio."

He says that "in this time of difficulties and division, we must stand together and protect each other. Nothing justifies terrorism, and it becomes particularly hideous when religion is invoked. ... We must uphold and promote human dignity and universal human rights."

Guterres' comments came after his meeting with Egypt's top Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam in Cairo.

This photo released by Al Azhar, shows U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, left, during a meeting with Muslim cleric Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, the grand imam, at the Al Azhar headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, Tuesday April 2, 2019. The U.N. chief has expressed solidarity with Muslims the world over during a visit to Cairo, denouncing hate speech and racism, as well as anti-Semitism. (Al Azhar via AP)
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Two of Puerto Rico's most high-profile government officials are resigning following heavy criticism by residents of the U.S. territory over how they performed their jobs.

Education Secretary Julia Keleher, who was appointed in December 2016, stepped down on Tuesday. Public Safety Secretary Hector Pesquera, appointed in April 2017, is expected to resign by month's end.

Dennise Perez, spokeswoman for Gov. Ricardo Rossello, said she did not immediately have further details.

Keleher oversaw the closure of more than 400 schools to save millions of dollars as Puerto Rico continues to see a sharp drop in enrollment amid a recession. In the past three decades, school enrollment has dropped 42%, and an additional 22% drop is expected in upcoming years, according to a report by the Boston Consulting Group.

Puerto Rico's Association of Teachers at the time backed the most recent closures, but then joined teachers and parents who complained that transportation logistics and the needs of special education students were not considered.

Aida Diaz, the association's president, told The Associated Press that she is not surprised by Keleher's resignation.

"She has created chaos," Diaz said.

Some, however, have praised Keleher for overhauling what many considered an agency long known for its bureaucracy. She was also preparing to create charter schools and vouchers as ordered by Rossello in March 2018. Puerto Rico currently has 1,110 public schools and some 319,000 students.

On Tuesday morning, Rossello announced in a brief Facebook video that professor Eleuterio Alamo would serve as interim education secretary.

"The future is positive for our children," he said.

Alamo, who was overseeing the agency's regional office in the capital of San Juan, said he was looking forward to continuing ongoing education reforms.

Meanwhile, a police officers' union celebrated the upcoming resignation of Pesquera, a former FBI special agent in charge of Puerto Rico who also once served as the island's police chief.

Pesquera oversaw the Department of Public Safety, a new agency created by the governor just months before Hurricane Maria hit in September 2017. Pesquera was later widely criticized for how he handled the aftermath of the Category 4 storm and the nearly 3,000 estimated deaths it caused.

"That resignation should have happened a long time ago," said Gregorio Matias, vice president of the Association of Organized Police. He added that police officers are demanding more benefits such as disability insurance and better pensions.

Pesquera and Keleher did not return messages for comment.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is suggesting he will defer until after 2020 his push for a Republican health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Trump tweeted late Monday that Congress will vote on a GOP plan after the elections, "when Republicans hold the Senate & win back the House."

Republicans were cool after Trump surprised them last week with an unexpected pivot to the issue and his claims the GOP will be the party of health care. They don't yet have a comprehensive plan to replace the law, known as "Obamacare."

Trump's effort to repeal former President Barack Obama's health care law narrowly failed in the Senate in 2017. And while Republicans gained Senate seats last fall, there's no indication that GOP senators want another fight over repealing "Obamacare," particularly not those up for re-election next year.

Health care, especially protections for people with pre-existing conditions, resonates with voters and helped Democrats in the November elections.

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters nationwide, nearly 4 in 10 Democratic voters identified health care as the most important among a list of key issues. A Quinnipiac University poll last week found 55% of Americans supporting the improvement and not the replacement of the nation's health care system.

In this March 28, 2019 photo, President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. Trump is suggesting he will defer until after 2020 his push for a Republican health care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. Trump tweeted late Monday that Congress will vote on a GOP plan after the elections, "when Republicans hold the Senate & win back the House." (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

With Democrats controlling the House, any attempt to dismantle the law could not pass Congress.

Still, Trump last week appeared to commit his party to a new push for a plan to replace the health law.

"We are working very hard on that," Trump said as he was heading out to a Michigan rally.

He said Republicans "are going to work together to come up with something that's really spectacular."

In his late-Monday tweets, Trump claimed Republicans are developing a plan with cheaper premiums and deductibles that "will be truly great HealthCare that will work for America."

Challenges to the 2010 law are making their way through courts.

Last week, the Trump administration told a federal appeals court it wants the entire Affordable Care Act struck down, an outcome that could leave millions of people uninsured and reignite a winning political issue for Democrats.
SECAUCUS, N.J. (AP) - Authorities say two northern New Jersey boys successfully crashed their high school's Wi-Fi network on multiple occasions to get out of taking exams.

The two Secaucus High School freshmen are charged with computer criminal activity and conspiracy. Authorities say the 14-year-olds used an app or a computer program to compromise the network, and apparently took requests from other students to bring it down.

The boys' names have not been released. The charges stem from an investigation that began after school officials notified police last Thursday.

Secaucus Schools Superintendent Jennifer Montesano says the school's Wi-Fi network has been restored and is now fully operational. But she declined further comment.

Since much of the school's curriculum is internet-based, the lack of Wi-Fi connection disrupted the students' daily assignments.

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This story has been corrected to say that students, not schools, crashed the network
LOS ANGELES (AP) - "Inside Edition" anchor Deborah Norville will undergo surgery to remove a cancerous thyroid nodule from her neck.

The 60-year-old host says in a video a viewer reached out a long time ago and told her she had seen a lump on her neck. Norville says she had it checked out and a doctor said it was a thyroid nodule.

Norville says it was nothing until recently, when the doctor said it was a "very localized form of cancer." Norville says she will not need chemotherapy.

She asked viewers to pray for her and her surgeon.

Norville has anchored "Inside Edition" since 1995.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) - Officials in Russia say an explosion inside an elite military academy in the country's second-largest city has wounded four people.

An unidentified explosive device went off early Tuesday afternoon inside the prestigious Mozhaisky Academy in St. Petersburg, which trains officers for the army's missile defense unit, according to acting governor Alexander Beglov.

Russia's top investigative body says that it has launched a criminal inquiry into conspiracy to murder.

Authorities didn't immediately give other details.

Several windows were shuttered on the second floor of the building, and dozens of cadets were being led out of the gated compound.

A local news website, Fontanka, reported that the blast was caused by an improvised explosive device with an equivalent of 200 grams of TNT.

Soldiers guard an entrance while students evacuate from the Alexander Mozhaysky Military Space Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Russian news agencies are reporting a blast has occurred inside the prestigious Mozhaisky Academy in St. Petersburg which trains officers for missile defense troops. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Soldiers guard an entrance as an ambulance drives into the Alexander Mozhaysky Military Space Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Russian news agencies are reporting a blast has occurred inside the prestigious Mozhaisky Academy in St. Petersburg which trains officers for missile defense troops. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

A soldier guards an entrance while students evacuate from the Alexander Mozhaysky Military Space Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Russian news agencies are reporting a blast has occurred inside the prestigious Mozhaisky Academy in St. Petersburg which trains officers for missile defense troops. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Military students evacuate from the Alexander Mozhaysky Military Space Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Russian news agencies are reporting a blast has occurred inside the prestigious Mozhaisky Academy in St. Petersburg which trains officers for missile defense troops. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

Servicemen walk in front of the Alexander Mozhaysky Military Space Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. Russian news agencies are reporting a blast at an elite military academy in Russia's second-largest city. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Orders to U.S. factories for big-ticket manufactured goods fell 1.6% in February, the biggest drop in four months, reflecting a plunge in the volatile commercial aircraft category. Demand in a key sector used to track business investment decisions also declined in February.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that the February decline came after a small 0.1% rise January and was the weakest showing since a 4.3% fall in October. Orders in a category that serves as a proxy for business investment plans edged down 0.1% in February after a 0.9% advance in January.

The manufacturing sector has been strained for the past few months, reflecting a global economic slowdown and rising trade tensions which have hurt U.S. exports. But there have been more hopeful signs recently.

The Institute for Supply Management reported Monday that its manufacturing index rose to 55.3 in March, up from a reading of 54.2 in February, with employment gains in manufacturing a key driver of the increase. Analysts said factories are hiring to make sure they can meet demand in the coming months.

The report on new orders for durable goods, items expected to last at least three years, showed that much of the overall weakness came from a 31.1% plunge in orders for commercial aircraft, a drop that followed health gains in the past two months.

Orders for motor vehicles and parts dipped a small 0.1% following a 0.5% decline in January.

FILE- In this Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019, file photo, unsold 2019 Escape sports-utility vehicles sit in a long row at a Ford dealership in Broomfield, Colo. On Tuesday, April 2, the Commerce Department releases its February report on durable goods. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

Demand for machinery fell 0.3% while orders for computers and electronic products fell 0.3%.

U.S. manufacturers have faced a number of challenges over the past year including trade wars begun by President Donald Trump. Trump is trying to pressure China and other nations to open their markets to more U.S. exports, but Trump's imposition of tariffs on foreign goods has prompted other countries to levy retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products.

U.S. and Chinese negotiators are scheduled to meet in Washington this week to continue looking for a way to reach a trade deal that would remove the threat of higher tariffs.
NEW YORK (AP) - When Ashley Yore and Derek Ultican were planning their wedding, the question of the garter and bouquet tosses didn't come up.

"It just wasn't something I ever wanted to do," said the 33-year-old Yore, who lives in Tampa, Florida. "Maybe because a lot of our friends are married already. We're just not a super-traditional couple. We wanted everyone to be part of the party and enjoy themselves."

They're not alone. According to The Knot's 2018 Real Wedding Study, many couples are going their own way when it comes to longstanding traditions. They're incorporating more personal touches, paying closer attention to their carbon footprints, and embracing fashion trends that have trickled from the runways to wedding halls.

Just 33% of more than 14,000 U.S. brides and grooms surveyed by the bridal site went the time-worn garter route, down from 41% in 2016. As for bouquets, 45% tossed, down from 53% in 2016.

"I do think there's an element of women feeling empowered and saying, you know what, this bouquet toss for whoever's going to get married next is a little cliche, or the garter feels a little unnecessary," said Lauren Kay, deputy editor of The Knot. "Couples are just more focused on the guest experience."

FUNCTIONAL IS FINE

FILE - In this April 23, 2018, file photo, a model wears a creation from Pronovias during Barcelona Bridal fashion week in Barcelona, Spain. From dumping the bouquet and garter tosses to statement hats instead of veils, today's brides and grooms are going their own way. Some have their eyes on eco-conscious celebrations. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)

Yore and Ultican, who is also 33, married oceanside March 2 in St. Pete Beach, Florida, with a reception at the pink, castle-like Don CeSar hotel. Their chuppah, the traditional Jewish canopy used during marriage ceremonies, was made of bamboo trees that were planted in their backyard a few days later.

"This really important piece of our wedding can now flourish in our home," Yore said. "That was really special."

Her mom made their party favors, little mason jars filled with mixed nuts flavored with cinnamon sugar. Each one had a photo label of the couple with the message: "We're nuts about you." They were special not only because they came from mom, but because Ultican loves the snack.

Such functional favors are hot on the handmade site Etsy. This year, couples are sending guests away with gifts they actually might want, rather than generic items of yore. According to Etsy, searches so far this year for such things as "wine favors," ''soap favors" and "honey favors" were on the rise.

The 35-year-old Ivory Davis (formerly Weems) married 34-year-old information technology specialist Jonathan Davis in Cancun, Mexico, on Oct. 20. They combined their escort cards with their party favors - shot glasses emblazoned with "We Came. We Conquered. We Cancuned," and "Viva Las Davis," which was the hashtag they encouraged guests to use when posting on Instagram and other social media during their celebration.

The best part: The shot glasses were filled with a tequila from Cancun and served throughout the reception at the tequila bar they set up.

"We wanted (guests) to take a shot to start the celebration of our union," said Ivory Davis, a flight attendant based in Los Angeles.

ECO-FRIENDLY

Etsy trend expert Dayna Isom Johnson noted a rise in sustainable wedding touches, with searches on the site for eco-friendly bridal items numbering more than 107,000 in the past four months alone, including for reusable straws, biodegradable confetti and vintage decor.

Bethany Pickard owns a boutique wedding and event planning company, Modern Kicks, in New York's Hudson Valley. She has seen a rise in couples looking to serve locally sourced food and cut down on paper products.

"They're doing chalkboard menus instead of one on paper for every guest," Pickard said. "And they're choosing vendors that can repurpose dishes and plates and things rather than trucking that stuff across the state."

A Brooklyn catering company, Purslane, guarantees carbon neutrality through reusable and compostable wares, the purchase of carbon credits and consumables sourced from nearby sustainable vendors.

"We do not send anything to landfills," said a partner, Amanda Braddock.

FASHION TRENDS

Isom Johnson said alternatives to veils are on trend, from huge show-stopping hats and tulle turbans to smaller accessories, such as ornate hair clips.

"I'm talking about statement hats to a simple velvet bow that they're tying in their hair," she said. "They don't want that traditional, cathedral-length veil."

Wedding dresses with sleeves have been making a comeback for several years, but Isom Johnson said it's all about statement sleeves these days. It's a way to bring a bit more glamour, romance and drama to a couple's big Instagram-worthy moment, she said.

"It's the '70s bell sleeve, the split sleeve and over-the-top lace. There are sleeves that are chiffony and whimsical," Isom Johnson said.

Capes and capelets have also taken off, she said.

MEANINGFUL SECRETS

Many couples are also looking to honor each other in private ways, perhaps following the cues of Meghan Markle and, later, her pal Priyanka Chopra when Chopra wed Nick Jonas.

Markle revealed last September that her May wedding dress included a small piece of a blue dress she wore on her first date with Prince Harry. When Chopra married Jonas in December, donning two wedding dresses for separate ceremonies, she included a secret of her own: a piece of the dress Jonas' mother, Denise, wore at her own wedding sewn into one of Chopra's gowns. The gown was embroidered with messages, including Chopra and Jonas' wedding date (Dec. 1), her parents' first names (Madhu and Ashok) and her hubby's full name: Nicholas Jerry Jonas.

The custom Purple Label black tuxedo Jonas wore also had a secret message inside the lapel: a small piece of lace from one of Chopra's looks, embroidered with the Urdu "My Jaan," for shared life.

Isom Johnson said brides can keep little secrets simpler through a tie bar, for example, with words of love on the back, or a private sentiment sewn into a seam of a dress.

"Today's weddings," she said, "are about letting the couple tell their personalized and unique love stories."

FILE - In this April 12, 2018, file photo, Bridal fashion from the Reem Acra collection is modeled during Bridal Fashion Week in New York. From dumping the bouquet and garter tosses to statement hats instead of veils, today's brides and grooms are going their own way. Some have their eyes on eco-conscious celebrations. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File)

FILE - In this April 23, 2018, file photo, a model wears a creation from Pronovias during Barcelona Bridal fashion week in Barcelona, Spain. From dumping the bouquet and garter tosses to statement hats instead of veils, today's brides and grooms are going their own way. Some have their eyes on eco-conscious celebrations. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
PRAGUE (AP) - A private Czech television is joining forces with CNN to create a news channel.

The Czech Prima Group and CNN International Commercial say the channel, CNN Prima News, will start continuous broadcasting in 12 months.

CNN Prima News will be the ninth channel the Prima Group operates. Its broadcast will include local news covered by Prima reporters together with international news from CNN.

Other CNN-branded channels have already been established in other countries, including Indonesia, Philippines, Turkey, Switzerland and Greece.

The Prima Group is the second-largest Czech private TV network.
BERLIN (AP) - German government statistics show crime dropped in the country last year, including violent offenses.

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said as he presented an annual crime report on Tuesday that "every crime is one too many, but objectively, this is the lowest level in decades."

Police agencies recorded more than 5.6 million cases in 2018, 3.6% fewer than in 2017. They included 185,377 violent crimes, a 1.9% decrease from the year before.

Despite the overall decline, the number of drug offenses recorded increased by 6.1% and there were 13.6% more crimes involving dissemination of illegal pornography. Seehofer said internet communication made both easier.

The overall case clearance rate of 57.7% was slightly higher than in 2017, when it was 57.1%. The clearance rate for solved murder and manslaughter cases was 96.1%.
HONG KONG (AP) - Panama sees a "big opportunity" in China's massive "Belt and Road" infrastructure initiative, President Juan Carlos Varela said Tuesday during a visit to Hong Kong amid ambitious plans and proposals for Chinese-built bridges and rail lines.

Varela said the initiative, which aims to weave a network of ports, bridges and power plants linking China with Africa, Europe and beyond, is a chance to exploit Panama's potential as a link between Asia and the Americas.

"The Belt and Road is all about connectivity and Panama is one of the most connected countries in the region. We have a very important airport, the Panama Canal and also the ports," Varela told reporters.

"So Panama is going to be part of that initiative because we see a big opportunity to connect Asia and America to Panama."

Panama is contracting with Chinese companies for a fourth bridge over the Panama Canal, as well as a third line for the Panama City mass transit system.

China has also submitted a $4.1 billion proposal to build a 391-kilometer (243-mile) high-speed rail line from Panama City to the town of David near its border with Costa Rica - a project to be carried out under the rubric of the Belt and Road. Varela has praised the project as economically viable because of the boost it would offer to the Panamanian economy.

Panama is also negotiating a free trade agreement with China and plans to open a consulate in Hong Kong, a semi-autonomous Chinese territory whose role as an Asian financial hub is similar to that of Panama's in Central America. Direct flights are also due to begin between Shanghai and Panama in coming months.

Panama switched diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China in 2017, citing the demands of its trade and finance-centered economy.
AURORA, Ill. (AP) - The mayor of the Illinois city of Aurora said he was "blindsided" when a convicted murderer and reputed member of the "Ripper Crew" registered as sex offender to live at a facility in the Chicago suburb.

Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin said he hopes Wayside Cross Ministries reconsiders its decision to house Thomas Kokoraleis, 58, who was released from prison last week . Irvin said he's concerned about community safety.

"Their decision suggests that they do not fully appreciate the impact Kokoraleis' mere presence will have on the community," Irvin wrote in a statement issued Monday. He said having Kokoraleis live at the facility "is a risk the people of Aurora shouldn't have to take."

The ministry's executive director, James Lukose, said in a statement posted on its website that it "did not seek out Thomas Kokoraleis upon his release from prison. He came to us seeking our help."

Lukose said the ministry hopes Kokoraleis becomes a productive member of society.

Kokoraleis was among four men accused of being part of the "Ripper Crew" satanic cult that killed as many as 20 Chicago-area women in the 1980s. He was initially sentenced to life in prison for the 1982 slaying of 21-year-old Lorraine "Lorry" Ann Borowski. Prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty on appeal in a deal that infuriated victims' relatives but allowed for his release last week.
ST. ANDREWS, New Brunswick (AP) - A conservation group in Maine and Canada says it's concerned about a recent uptick in the harvest of wild Atlantic salmon off of Greenland.

Atlantic salmon are extensively farmed, but the wild fishery has dwindled with the species population, and commercial harvest of the fish is largely shut down. However, Greenland retains an active fishery, as salmon fishing is important for subsistence in the vast, isolated country.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation says it's "surprised and disappointed" by recent catch statistics from Greenland that say its 2018 salmon catch was more than 88,000 pounds. The group says the harvest is twice the amount allowed under a deal it brokered with the North Atlantic Salmon Fund and the Greenland fishermen's union last year.

Atlantic salmon are considered endangered in the United States.
MOSCOW (AP) - A Russian prosecutor says that a Norwegian man jailed on espionage charges has acquired classified information on Russian nuclear submarines.

Frode Berg was arrested in Moscow in December 2017. His lawyer says that Berg, a retired Norwegian border inspector, is the victim of a setup.

Prosecutor Milana Digayeva told Russian news agencies on Tuesday as Berg's trial began that the Norwegian man was collecting information about Russian nuclear submarines. The case is being heard behind closed doors for secrecy reasons.

Digayeva said that Berg, who was allegedly on the payroll of Norwegian intelligence, was caught red-handed with the documents he had received from an employee of a military facility who was shadowed by Russian intelligence.
CAIRO (AP) - Egypt has sentenced more than 70 suspected members of the Muslim Brotherhood group to prison on terror-related charges.

The Ismailia criminal court on Tuesday sentenced nine of the defendants to 15 years in prison and 43 others to 10 years. Another 22 were sentenced to three to seven years, and 14 were acquitted. Nearly half of the defendants were tried in absentia.

The defendants were accused of burning police vehicles and attacking a coffee shop. The violence came in response to the dispersal of two mass sit-ins in Cairo in 2013, in which security forces killed hundreds of Brotherhood supporters.

The Brotherhood won a series of free elections following Egypt's 2011 uprising but was branded a terrorist group after the military overthrew an elected but divisive Islamist president in 2013.
HALFWEG, Netherlands (AP) - Ford warned Tuesday that it will reconsider its investments in Britain if the country cannot work out a deal to leave the European Union that guarantees smooth trading with the bloc.

At a glitzy unveiling of new cars with electric and hybrid engines, Ford of Europe Chairman Steven Armstrong warned of the potentially disastrous effects of a no-deal Brexit, in which the country leaves without a deal on future trade relations. That could mean tariffs and border checks that could seriously disrupt businesses, particularly the auto industry.

In such a scenario, Ford "will have to consider seriously the long-term future of our investments in the country," Armstrong told The Associated Press.

The warning came the day after British lawmakers voted down a series of alternatives to Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal with the EU. The EU's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, said the possibility of Britain leaving the bloc without a deal is becoming "more likely" by the day. Britain is due to leave in 10 days.

"We've been very consistent since the referendum that a hard Brexit, a no-deal Brexit, would be a disaster for the automotive industry in the U.K. and within that of course I count Ford Motor Company," Armstrong told The Associated Press. "So anything that puts tariffs or friction at the borders in place would be a significant inhibitor to our business. We've been very clear in saying that could cost us up to a billion dollars a year."

Armstrong said the company already is spending tens of millions of dollars preparing for the possible effects of a no-deal Brexit, which could clog ports and slow deliveries of components and cars between continental Europe and the U.K.

Ford of Europe Chairman Steven Armstrong is interviewed at a Ford event in Halfweg, near Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. At a glitzy unveiling of new cars with electric and hybrid engines, Ford's Europe boss Armstrong warned of the potentially disastrous effects of a no-deal Brexit, in which the country leaves without a deal on future trade relations. That could mean tariffs and border checks that could seriously disrupt businesses, particularly the auto industry. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)

"The best case for me would be that that money is actually wasted because we actually reach a deal," Armstrong said. "So I would encourage all parties concerned to figure out how to get us to a deal that guarantees frictionless trade because otherwise we will have to consider seriously the long-term future of our investments in the country."

Ford of Europe, based in Cologne, Germany, has 53,000 people working for it directly and 68,000 when joint ventures such as those in Russia and Turkey are included.

In January, Ford said it will drop an unspecified number of jobs in Europe as it seeks to make its business more consistently profitable. Ford is refocusing on commercial trucks and SUVs and dumping less lucrative models while shifting production to electric cars over the longer term.

"Brexit is not the reason for that, but it clearly is another factor that if we were to get a hard Brexit we would have to think seriously about what further steps we'd have to take," Armstrong said.

At Tuesday's event in a disused sugar factory on the outskirts of Amsterdam, Ford showed off 16 new electrified vehicles, from the compact Fiesta to the popular commercial Transit van. Eight of the models will go on sale before the end of the year.

"We're demonstrating really that our push for electrification through different kinds of hybrids all the way through full-battery electric vehicles is going to have an offer for anybody," Armstrong said.

Ford recently announced an alliance with Volkswagen to jointly develop the next generation of commercial vehicles.

It may not end there.

"There are other discussions going on on other areas that we could potentially collaborate," Armstrong said. "But thus far what we've announced and the progress we've made is all around light commercial vehicles and our small pickup trucks."

This March 25, 2019, photo shows the new Ford 2020 Escape in Warren, Mich. Ford is hoping to regain a dominant position in the compact SUV segment when it rolls out a revamped version of the Escape this fall. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

The all-electric Ford Transit equipped with solar panels on it's roof is presented during an event in Halfweg, near Amsterdam, Netherlands, Tuesday, April 2, 2019. At a glitzy unveiling of new cars with electric and hybrid engines, Ford's Europe boss Armstrong warned of the potentially disastrous effects of a no-deal Brexit, in which the country leaves without a deal on future trade relations. That could mean tariffs and border checks that could seriously disrupt businesses, particularly the auto industry. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) - A judge has given new life to a class-action lawsuit accusing Poland Spring of selling water that's sourced from wells, not springs.

The same federal judge in Connecticut last year dismissed the lawsuit, but he ruled last week that an amended complaint can proceed with claims in eight states: Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Poland Spring's corporate parent, Connecticut-based Nestle Waters North America, reiterated Tuesday that it's a "meritless lawsuit" and said the judge's decision doesn't undermine its confidence.

Nestle Waters says Poland Spring meets Food and Drug Administration's guidelines that allow "spring water" labels if the water is drawn from the same source as a natural spring and meets certain requirements for chemical composition.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Trump administration is blaming the Iranian government for damage from devastating floods that have killed at least 50 people.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Tehran's "mismanagement" of urban planning and emergency preparedness led to the disaster. He's rejecting allegations from Iran's foreign minister that U.S. sanctions against Iran are to blame.

Pompeo says the U.S. is sympathetic to the victims and is willing to provide assistance for flood relief efforts but only through the International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies.

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif late Monday said U.S. sanctions have prevented Tehran from getting badly needed equipment, including relief helicopters.

Iran has seen a decades-long drought but the latest flooding is also blamed on disregard for safety measures and construction near rivers.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Latest on Mormons repealing rules banning baptisms for children of gay parents (all times local):

12 p.m.

A group that represents members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with gay and lesbian children says the repeal of 2015 baptism rules is a good first step. But she says pain caused by the policy banning the baptism for kids of gay parents still lingers.

Lisa Dame with the Mama Dragons organization said Thursday the original 2015 rule banning the baptisms sent waves of heartache through LGBTQ members of the church and their families.

She says the reversal is an answer to prayers but that full healing will take time and noted that the church did not issue a formal apology for the 2015 policy.

The church's doctrinal opposition to same-sex marriage and sexual relations has not changed.

FILE - This Aug. 4, 2015 file photo, flowers bloom in front of the Salt Lake Temple, at Temple Square, in Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion. The surprise announcement Thursday, April 4, 2019, by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemnations from LGBTQ members and their allies. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

Dame is a heterosexual Mormon. She has five children, including a 33-year-old daughter who is a lesbian.

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10:55 a.m.

A religious scholar says the decision by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to repeal rules banning baptisms for children of gay parents and making gay marriage a sin eligible for expulsion marks a complete reset for the faith on LGBTQ issues.

Patrick Mason of Claremont Graduate University in California says the policy unveiled in 2015 was deeply unpopular among members of the faith, triggering displeasure and protests from many liberal and conservative members.

He says the policy hurt the church's image and relationship with many members.

Mason says the repeal erases the one major detour from a decade-long path by the faith to carve out a more open and compassionate position on LGBTQ issues while sticking to doctrinal opposition of gay marriage and intimacy between people in same-sex relationships.

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9:50 a.m.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion.

The surprise announcement Thursday by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemnations from LGBTQ members and their allies.

The church in a statement says it isn't changing its doctrinal opposition to gay marriage and still considers same-sex relationships to be a "serious transgression."

But people in same-sex relationships will no longer be considered "apostates" who must be kicked out of the religion.

The change also marks the biggest move yet by church President Russell M. Nelson, who has made a flurry of changes since taking over the faith in January 2018.

FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2015, file photo, people walk past the Salt Lake Temple after mailing resignation letters during a mass resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion. The surprise announcement Thursday, April 4, 2019, by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemations from LGBTQ members and their allies. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2015 file photo, Sandy Newcomb poses for a photograph with a rainbow flag as people gather for a mass resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion. The surprise announcement Thursday, April 4, 2019, by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemations from LGBTQ members and their allies. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
MOSCOW (AP) - The debate about a presidential runoff debate in Ukraine is escalating.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the comic actor who easily beat President Petro Poroshenko in the first round, is proposing that a debate between the two before Ukraine's April 21 presidential runoff be moderated by the candidate who came in third place, former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Zelenskiy on Thursday said that Tymoshenko could guarantee an honest debate because she doesn't support either candidate.

Tymoshenko, however, has consistently denounced Poroshenko for failing to rein in corruption and has run against him for president twice.

Zelenskiy wants the debate to be held April 19 in Kiev's Olimpiskiy Stadium, the country's biggest arena and said both candidates should take drug tests. Poroshenko's campaign spokesman said the president will wait for Zelenskiy at the stadium Friday morning for the tests.

Oleksandr Danyliuk, former Ukrainian Minister of Finance and advisor to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The thriving campaign of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be Ukraine's president may seem improbable, but his campaign adviser says the country has reached the point where it needs reforms from seemingly unlikely sources. Oleksandr Danylyuk spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, three days after the election first round in which Zelenskiy easily outpaced incumbent Petro Poroshenko. (AP Photo Efrem Lukatsky)

Oleksandr Danyliuk, former Ukrainian Minister of Finance and advisor to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The thriving campaign of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be Ukraine's president may seem improbable, but his campaign adviser says the country has reached the point where it needs reforms from seemingly unlikely sources. Oleksandr Danylyuk spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, three days after the election first round in which Zelenskiy easily outpaced incumbent Petro Poroshenko. (AP Photo Efrem Lukatsky)

Oleksandr Danyliuk, former Ukrainian Minister of Finance and advisor to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The thriving campaign of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be Ukraine's president may seem improbable, but his campaign adviser says the country has reached the point where it needs reforms from seemingly unlikely sources. Oleksandr Danylyuk spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, three days after the election first round in which Zelenskiy easily outpaced incumbent Petro Poroshenko. (AP Photo Efrem Lukatsky)

Oleksandr Danyliuk, former Ukrainian Minister of Finance and advisor to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The thriving campaign of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be Ukraine's president may seem improbable, but his campaign adviser says the country has reached the point where it needs reforms from seemingly unlikely sources. Oleksandr Danylyuk spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, three days after the election first round in which Zelenskiy easily outpaced incumbent Petro Poroshenko. (AP Photo Efrem Lukatsky)

Oleksandr Danyliuk, former Ukrainian Minister of Finance and advisor to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The thriving campaign of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be Ukraine's president may seem improbable, but his campaign adviser says the country has reached the point where it needs reforms from seemingly unlikely sources. Oleksandr Danylyuk spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, three days after the election first round in which Zelenskiy easily outpaced incumbent Petro Poroshenko. (AP Photo Efrem Lukatsky)

Oleksandr Danyliuk, former Ukrainian Minister of Finance and advisor to presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelenskiy, talks during an interview with The Associated Press in Kiev, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The thriving campaign of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy to be Ukraine's president may seem improbable, but his campaign adviser says the country has reached the point where it needs reforms from seemingly unlikely sources. Oleksandr Danylyuk spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, three days after the election first round in which Zelenskiy easily outpaced incumbent Petro Poroshenko. (AP Photo Efrem Lukatsky)

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko speaks during her press conference in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, April 2, 2019. Timoshenko has accused incumbent Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko of vote rigging in the first round of the March 31 presidential election, but she is not planning to challenge the results.(AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)
AURORA, Ill. (AP) - A convicted killer who has settled in a Chicago suburb said he's "willing to work hard to change my ways" and won't be a threat to area residents, decades after he was accused of being part of a satanic cult that killed women in the 1980s.

"I want no contact with the families," Thomas Kokoraleis said, referring to relatives of murder victims. "I want to just go on with my life and be left alone."

The 58-year-old spoke to the Aurora Beacon-News , less than a week after he was released from an Illinois prison after 36 years. He's staying at Wayside Cross Ministries in Aurora, which provides housing and other services to people who are trying to turn their lives around. Mayor Richard Irvin said he felt "blindsided" by news of Kokoraleis' arrival.

"I want to be a better Christian. And I will do my best to become a productive member of society," Kokoraleis said, wiping tears. "I will not be a threat to Aurora and their citizens. I swear to that. I am willing to work hard to change my ways."

Wayside Cross director James Lukose said he didn't seek Kokoraleis but believes he's in the best place to return to society. He traveled from prison last week with a sleep apnea machine and $15.

Kokoraleis' days are structured: Bible study, chapel and work in the Wayside warehouse. Lights go out at 10 p.m.

FILE - This undated photo provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections shows Thomas Kokoraleis. Authorities say Kokoraleis, who was convicted of murder as a suspected member of the notorious "Ripper Crew" that killed as many as 20 Chicago-area women in the 1980s, has been released from prison. A state of Illinois victim notification system alert was issued early Friday, March 29, 2019, saying 58-year-old Kokoraleis was discharged from the Illinois Department of Corrections. (Illinois Department of Corrections via AP, File)

"I wish he was someone else's problem," Lukose said. "But he came here to Aurora. So we will do all we can do within our powers and limitations to make his transformation into society complete."

Kokoraleis was among four men accused of being part of the "Ripper Crew" cult that killed as many as 20 Chicago-area women in the 1980s. He was convicted in 1984, but the result was overturned and he was granted a new trial.

Kokoraleis pleaded guilty to one murder in exchange for a 70-year prison term. He was eligible for release after serving 50% of the sentence, under rules that were in place at the time. His brother, Andrew, was executed.

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Information from: The Beacon-News, http://beaconnews.chicagotribune.com/
ATLANTA (AP) - A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said.

Both officers were in serious condition at an Atlanta hospital as police negotiated with the gunman in a bid to get him to let the 16-year-old go, authorities said.

"We're hoping he was going release the 16-year-old. He said he would, and we're just standing by waiting," Henry County police Capt. Joey Smith said at a Thursday afternoon news conference in the neighborhood south of Atlanta where the standoff unfolded.

"We do not want to make a dynamic entry into the home," Smith added. "With communication with the individual, at least he's talking - that's helpful. We're going to wait as long as we can."

The two wounded Henry County officers were being treated at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson said. Both officers are expected to survive, Smith said.

Police said they were called to a house in the community of Stockbridge about 10:45 a.m. Thursday on a "trouble unknown" call.

Women believed to be related to ones involved in a hostage situation react as law enforcement on the scene tried to console them in Stockbridge, Ga., Thursday, April 4, 2019. A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

The officers were shot after entering the home, Smith said, adding one of them was struck in the hand and the other in the torso and hip area.

"I think the less injured officer was able to aid the other and get him out of the house," Smith said.

One of the wounded officers was flown by helicopter to the hospital, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Stockbridge. Georgia's transportation department helped clear northbound lanes of Interstate 75 so the other officer could be quickly driven to the hospital.

As negotiations continued Thursday afternoon, residents were told to stay clear of the area as officers dealt with what police described as "a very fluid situation."

Henry County has endured multiple shootings of police officers in the past two years.

In December, Henry County police Officer Michael Smith was shot at a dentist's office and died of his wounds about three weeks later. Employees at the dentist's office had called police about a man who had been acting erratically, and Smith was shot as he confronted the man.

In February 2018, Locust Grove police Officer Chase Maddox, 26, was shot in the head and killed in the Henry County town he patrolled. Two Henry County sheriff's deputies were also wounded in that shooting as the three law officers tried to serve an arrest warrant at a home.

A woman believed to be related to ones involved in a hostage situation reacts as law enforcement on the scene tried to console them in Stockbridge, Ga., Thursday, April 4, 2019. A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Clayton County police officers work a scene where a gunman reportedly shot a few Henry County police officers in Stockbridge, Ga., Thursday, April 4, 2019. A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

A couple of people leave a scene where a gunman reportedly shot a few Henry County police officers in Stockbridge, Ga., Thursday, April 4, 2019. A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Henry County paramedics examine a woman near a scene after a gunman reportedly shot a few Henry County police officers in Stockbridge, Ga., Thursday, April 4, 2019. A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

Law enforcement officers console family members near a scene after a gunman reportedly shot a few Henry County police officers in Stockbridge, Ga., Thursday, April 4, 2019. A gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers remain barricaded in a home Thursday with a teenager who was considered a hostage, police said. (John Spink/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A national group that includes atheists and agnostics is objecting to Mississippi's new standard license plate design that has the phrase "In God We Trust."

The American Humanist Association sent a letter Thursday to the state's revenue commissioner and attorney general. It demands that Mississippi either set a new standard license plate design without a religious phrase or allow people to get another license plate design without paying an extra fee.

The association says it could sue Mississippi if the change is not made.

"Mississippi's law violates the First Amendment rights of atheists in accordance with firmly settled Supreme Court precedent," American Humanist Association attorney Monica Miller said in a news release. "The Supreme Court has made clear that the state cannot force motorists to display an ideological message they deem unacceptable on their license plates."

Revenue Commissioner Herb Frierson said Thursday he's asking lawyers to review the letter. Frierson said the design was chosen by a commission that included representatives from the governor's office, the state Department of Revenue, the attorney general's office and the treasurer's office.

The new standard license plate has been sold since January. The center shows the state seal, which includes "In God We Trust."

FILE - In a Thursday, May 10, 2018 file photo, Clay Chandler, director of communications for Gov. Phil Bryant, holds Mississippi's new standard license plate at the Capitol in Jackson, Miss. It will display the state seal that includes the phrase, "In God We Trust." The American Humanist Association, a national group that includes atheists and agnostics is objecting to Mississippi's new standard license plate design that has the phrase "In God We Trust." (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, Filw)

Mississippi offers several specialty license plate designs for $30 extra per year.

The American Humanist Association's letter to Mississippi officials cites a 1977 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a dispute over the phrase "Live Free or Die" on New Hampshire's standard license plate. People who were Jehovah's Witnesses sued the state, saying the phrase was "repugnant to their moral, religious and political beliefs."

The Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot force a person, as part of daily life, to display a phrase that violates their beliefs. Justices said the First Amendment protects "both the right to speak freely and the right to refrain from speaking at all."

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus .
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - Dan Robbins, an artist who created the first paint-by-numbers pictures and helped turn the kits into an American sensation during the 1950s, has died. He was 93.

Robbins, whose works were dismissed by some critics but later celebrated by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, died Monday in Sylvania, Ohio, said his son, Larry Robbins.

He had been in good health until a series of falls in recent months, his son said.

Robbins was working as a package designer for the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit when he came up with the idea for paint-by-numbers in the late 1940s. He said his inspiration came from Leonardo da Vinci.

"I remembered hearing that Leonardo used numbered background patterns for his students and apprentices, and I decided to try something like that," Robbins said in 2004.

He showed his first attempt - an abstract still life - to his boss, Max Klein, who promptly told Robbins he hated it.

This image provided by Larry Robbins shows a numbered outline of a self portrait of Dan Robbins. Family members say Robbins, an artist who created the first paint-by-numbers pictures and helped turn the kits into an American sensation during the 1950s has died. Dan Robbins' son says his father died Monday, April 1, 2019 in Sylvania, Ohio. He was 93. (Courtesy of Larry Robbins via AP)

But Klein saw potential with the overall concept and told Robbins to come up with something people would want to paint. The first versions were of landscapes, and then he branched out to horses, puppies and kittens.

"I did the first 30 or 35 subjects myself, then I started farming them out to other artists," said Robbins, who mainly stuck to landscapes.

While the Craft Master paint-by-numbers kits weren't embraced initially, sales quickly took off and peaked at 20 million in 1955. Within a few years, though, the market was flooded, sales dropped and Klein sold the company.

Together, Robbins helped create slices of Americana that are still collected and are found framed in homes across the nation. Palmer still sells at least two kits: one remembering the Sept. 11 attacks and the other depicting the Last Supper.

"We like to think dad was one of the most exhibited artists in the world," said Larry Robbins. "He enjoyed hearing from everyday people. He had a whole box of fan letters."

He noted his father's accomplishments are still on display at the Detroit Historical Museum, "right down from Henry Ford," his son said.

Robbins, who spent much of his life in the Detroit area, was modest about his work and didn't get too bothered by those who mocked the paintings.

Critics came to view the paint-by-numbers kits as a metaphor for a commercialized, cookie-cutter culture and fretted that they far outnumbered the original works of art hanging in American homes, said William Lawrence Bird Jr., curator of the 2001 exhibition at the National Museum of American History.

Some within the museum questioned the idea of celebrating the paint-by-numbers craze and its impact on art, at least until the crowds showed up, Bird said.

"He would say, 'I didn't think of this, Leonardo did,'" Bird said. "He was amused that people were collecting them."

When his paint-by-numbers days were over, Robbins continued to work in product development, including designing Happy Meal toys for McDonald's, Bird said.

Robbins, who wrote a book, "Whatever Happened to Paint-by-Numbers," said at the exhibition's April 2001 opening in Washington that his creation survived despite the critics.

"I never claim that painting by number is art," he said. "But it is the experience of art, and it brings that experience to the individual who would normally not pick up a brush, not dip it in paint. That's what it does."

Robbins is survived by his wife, Estelle, sons Michael and Larry, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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This story has been updated to correct the artist's name to Leonardo da Vinci, not Leonardo de Vinci.
NEW YORK (AP) - The New York Police Department has all the latest crime-fighting tools: body cameras, algorithms, even drones.

But it is now widely deploying a far simpler technology, a 5-foot (1-meter) piece of rope, to help officers deal with one of the diciest kinds of calls.

The department this year started training all 35,000 officers in a technique of using a length of rope to secure the door of a home where a distressed person is threatening harm, temporarily trapping them until backup arrives. The rope makes it virtually impossible for the person inside to burst through the door and cause harm.

The idea, commanders said, is to avoid having gun-toting officers, perhaps only lightly trained in dealing with such situations, in the same adrenaline-charged space as someone acting irrationally, waving a kitchen knife or a pistol.

Officers Jesse Trap and Paulton Chan used the rope last month when they responded to a call of a "person in distress" who had holed up in a Brooklyn apartment.

The door was chained but the officers were able to see that the man had an object that looked like a gun. Remembering a demonstration a sergeant had given them a few weeks earlier, they tied the rope to the handle of the apartment door and pulled tight to prevent the man from bursting into the hallway.

New York City Police Dept. Chief Robert Lukach, background center, and Capt. Ronald Zedalis, left, negotiate with Sgt. Kenneth O'Brien portraying a barricaded person during a tactical demonstration at New York City Emergency Service Unit headquarters at Floyd Bennett Field in New York, on Thursday, March 28, 2019. In 2019, the department started training all 35,000 officers in a technique of using a length of rope to secure the door of a home where a distressed person is threatening harm, temporarily trapping them until backup arrives. The rope makes it virtually impossible for the person inside to burst through the door and cause harm. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

"That gave us time to call for backup and gave us time to reassess the situation," Chan said. "We don't want the distressed person inside to hurt himself or come out and hurt the public. It gave us time."

Chan held the rope while Trap tried to speak with the man. Chan, protecting his hands from rope burns with gloves bought at Home Depot, said he felt the door wiggle as the man inside tried to open it.

The technique has actually been a mainstay for decades in the NYPD's emergency services unit, which has extra training and tools for dealing with people in distress and is often called in by patrol officers to try and diffuse potentially dangerous situations. But it is now being disseminated to the whole force.

The NYPD has changed how its officers interact with what it refers to as "emotionally disturbed people" after a rash of fatal encounters. The department fielded 180,000 calls for people in that state last year. Over the last three years, officers killed 14 people showing signs of emotional distress.

Some involved people who were shot by the police in their own homes and hadn't posed an immediate danger to anyone else until officers arrived, according to their families.

Robert Lukach, the deputy chief of the special operations unit, suggested to the department that providing all officers with a rope and a door wedge -another way to keep the door shut - could help calm those situations. Instead of rushing in and escalating the risk of violence, officers are using the rope to build a buffer and buy time.

Police also say that, by deescalating the situation, using the rope lessens the chances that the person inside will harm himself or herself.

"Now they're able to control that door and there's not a surprise all of a sudden that somebody comes out with a weapon and then they're confronted, and they have to make a split-second decision," Lukach said.

The department said it cost $114,000 for the citywide rollout of the kits, including the rope, wedge and a water-resistant pouch.

Lukach recently demonstrated the technique at an NYPD training facility mocked up to look like an apartment building hallway officers might encounter.

Lukach and Capt. Ronald Zedalis portrayed officers responding to a call like the one in Brooklyn, carefully securing the door with a rope while Sgt. Kenneth O'Brien acted out the typical responses of the person inside.

"I have a knife. Leave me alone!" O'Brien said.

"OK. Just stay in there, sir. Stay in there," Lukach responded after tying the rope to the door handle. "Don't try to come out. I have control of the door."

The rope's length allows officers to stand away from the doorway - and out of the area police call the "fatal funnel" because a gunman will tend to aim there if he or she decides to open fire.

Officers are instructed to make a loop and knot the rope tightly around the handle, then to pull it tight. Rope only works to secure doors that open inward. The NYPD uses wedges, which are basically door stops, for doors that open outward. The rope is always placed, never thrown like a lasso, onto a door handle. Officers will carry the rope in a kit in their cars.

"This is not the wild west," Sgt. Thomas Brogan said.

The Brooklyn standoff ended peacefully after about six hours. Police flew a drone outside the apartment window - in a first-of-its-kind use for the department - to confirm that the man was surrendering. The 49-year-old man, whose name was not disclosed by police, was taken to a hospital.

The object in the man's hand turned out to be a harmless imitation pistol.

"At the end of the day, we want to go home safe," Trap said. "We want everyone else to go home safe and we want the person to go home safe. The rope really offered us that opportunity to build something between us and the person and get them out nice and safe."

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Follow Sisak at twitter.com/mikesisak
ISTANBUL (AP) - The opposition party's mayoral candidate in Istanbul said Thursday's he's confident that the result of a recount of votes in the city will confirm his victory, and renewed an appeal to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help end the standoff.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ekrem Imamoglu said that while Erdogan's ruling party has the right to appeal the vote, an unprecedented move in Istanbul for a recount of ballots that were declared void was being carried out in an apparent effort to try and tip the vote in Erdogan's favor.

Imamoglu won the tight race for Istanbul in Sunday's local elections in a major upset for Erdogan, who rose to power as the mayor of the city of 15 million and has said that whoever wins Istanbul wins the whole of Turkey. The opposition Republican People's Party, or CHP, also gained control of the capital, Ankara, which was Erdogan's stronghold for decades.

The ruling party has contested the results in both cities, alleging irregularities. A recount is underway in several Istanbul districts.

On Thursday, Ali Ihsan Yavuz, a deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, said the difference in votes between the two parties had narrowed to around 19,000 on Thursday from the previous 25,000, with a multitude of ballots still to be recounted.

Imamoglu, who has called on electoral authorities to confirm his win, said his party estimates that the race could end in between 18,000 and 20,000 votes in favor of his party.

Backdropped by a poster of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, right, Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition, Republican People's Party's (CHP) mayoral candidate in Istanbul, poses for The Associated Press following an interview in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019. Imamoglu said he's confident that the result of a recount of votes in the city will confirm his victory and has renewed an appeal to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help end the standoff. Imamoglu won the tight race for Istanbul in Sunday's local elections in a major upset for Erdogan, who rose to power as the mayor of the city of 15 million and has said that whoever wins Istanbul wins to whole of Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

"I requested that (Erdogan) contribute to the election process and to intercede as soon as possible for the (results) to become clear," he said.

The ruling party says it is using its democratic right to appeal the vote and has called on Imamoglu to respect the appeals process.

Yavuz, the AKP official, has called the election "one of the most stained in our democratic history." That was in stark contrast with past statements from government officials, who dismissed allegations of foul-play in recent elections and insisted Turkey's electoral system is fair.

Asked whether he was concerned about possible manipulation of votes to ensure a victory for the ruling party, Imamoglu said: "We would be upset if (the recount) were to lead to a process of uncertainty."

Imamoglu, a 49-year-old former businessman and the little-known mayor of the Istanbul district of Beylikduzu, led a campaign during which he promised to build bridges in the highly polarized country. He even visited Erdogan in Ankara and asked for his vote too.

"We have a huge responsibility" to change Istanbul, he said. "If this success is achieved then changes in the political climate (in Turkey) may be cemented."

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Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed.

Backdropped by a poster of modern Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, right, Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition, Republican People's Party's (CHP) mayoral candidate in Istanbul, poses for The Associated Press following an interview in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019. Imamoglu said he's confident that the result of a recount of votes in the city will confirm his victory and has renewed an appeal to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help end the standoff. Imamoglu won the tight race for Istanbul in Sunday's local elections in a major upset for Erdogan, who rose to power as the mayor of the city of 15 million and has said that whoever wins Istanbul wins to whole of Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, in a first public appearance after Sunday elections in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019, listens as he visits an uncompleted museum dedicated to the July 15, 2015 coup attempt. Erdogan's ruling party is appealing the results of the local elections in Istanbul, where the opposition has a razor-thin lead. (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool)

Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition, Republican People's Party's (CHP) mayoral candidate in Istanbul, shakes hands with staff of his campaign in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019. Imamoglu said he's confident that the result of a recount of votes in the city will confirm his victory and has renewed an appeal to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help end the standoff. Imamoglu won the tight race for Istanbul in Sunday's local elections in a major upset for Erdogan, who rose to power as the mayor of the city of 15 million and has said that whoever wins Istanbul wins to whole of Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition, Republican People's Party's (CHP) mayoral candidate in Istanbul, smiles during an interview with The Associated Press in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019. Imamoglu said he's confident that the result of a recount of votes in the city will confirm his victory and has renewed an appeal to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help end the standoff. Imamoglu won the tight race for Istanbul in Sunday's local elections in a major upset for Erdogan, who rose to power as the mayor of the city of 15 million and has said that whoever wins Istanbul wins to whole of Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, center, in a first public appearance after Sunday elections in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019, listens as he visits an uncompleted museum dedicated to the July 15, 2015 coup attempt. Erdogan's ruling party is appealing the results of the local elections in Istanbul, where the opposition has a razor-thin lead. (Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool)

Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition, Republican People's Party's (CHP) mayoral candidate in Istanbul, talks to The Associated Press in Istanbul, Thursday, April 4, 2019. Imamoglu said he's confident that the result of a recount of votes in the city will confirm his victory and has renewed an appeal to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to help end the standoff. Imamoglu won the tight race for Istanbul in Sunday's local elections in a major upset for Erdogan, who rose to power as the mayor of the city of 15 million and has said that whoever wins Istanbul wins to whole of Turkey. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - In a Dec. 6, 2017, story about the death of a mother and her two children, The Associated Press misspelled one of the children's names. Her name was A'Layliah Fisher, not Alayah Fisher.

A corrected version of the story is below:

The Latest: Mother, 2 children found slain in Arkansas

Little Rock police say two young children and their 24-year-old mother were killed in their home and their father has been arrested on unrelated charges

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - The Latest on the deaths of two young children and their mother in Little Rock, Arkansas (all times local):

12:30 p.m.

Little Rock police say two young children and their 24-year-old mother were killed in their home and their father has been arrested on unrelated charges.

Police said Wednesday that officers responding to a reported suicide found the bodies of Mariah Cunningham, 5-year-old A'Layliah Fisher and 3-year-old Elijah Fisher on Tuesday afternoon.

Investigators determined that all three are homicide victims. The bodies have been sent to the State Crime Lab to determine the cause of death.

Jail records show 29-year-old Gregory Fisher was arrested early Wednesday for failure to appear and petition to revoke probation. No bail has been set. Police say he is not currently a suspect.

Police say Cunningham's missing car has been found at an undisclosed location in Little Rock.

Police initially described one child as 4-years-old.

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7:55 a.m.

Little Rock police have revealed little about the slayings of two children, aged 4 and 5, and a 24-year-old woman, except that the woman's missing car has been found.

Police said on Twitter that the car was found Tuesday, but didn't disclose where or other details. Authorities haven't released the names of the three victims.

Police spokesman Officer Steve Moore says investigators were called to an apartment Tuesday afternoon and found the bodies of the woman and a boy and a girl, likely her children. Moore did not say how the victims died or provide a motive.

A relative of the woman called the police after the children didn't show up at school and the relative was unable to reach the woman.
HAVANA (AP) - The Cuban government says a newsprint shortage is forcing at least six state-run newspapers to cut back on pages and circulation days in a potent sign of the cash shortage confronting the island.

The newspaper Granma said in Thursday editions that the Cuban Communist Party organ and several other papers are cutting back from 16 to eight pages on Wednesdays and Fridays. The changes take effect Friday. The newspaper of the Communist Youth League, Juventud Rebelde, will stop publishing on Saturdays.

Granma attributed the change to "difficulties in the availability of newsprint in the country," without providing details. Cuba has imported newsprint from China in recent years and the government has been suffering cash-flow problems forcing cutbacks in a wide range of imported products.

While the government has recently allowed much more fluid access to the internet and mobile data services, most Cubans still receive news from broadcast media and print newspapers.

The last major cutback in newsprint was during the "special period" of shortages and hardships that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. Cuba today appears far from a new "special period" but the island has been suffering increasingly frequent and long-lasting shortages of basic products including flour, cooking oil, chicken and eggs, all blamed on a shortage of hard currency.

The government does not release much basic economic information, but gross domestic product growth has largely been flat since 2016, due in large part due to the economic free-fall of Venezuela, Cuba's closest ally and source of highly subsidized petroleum for nearly two decades. Observers say the slow-moving diversification of Cuba's economy, with a tourist sector that drew 4.7 million visitors last year, billions in remittances from abroad and direct flights to countries around the world, offers some degree of protection from severe economic collapse.

FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2015 file photo, a man reads a copy of the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Granma, as a woman walks past, in old Havana. The Cuban government said on Thursday, April 4, 2019, that a newsprint shortage is forcing at least six state-run newspapers to cut back on pages and circulation days in a potent sign of the cash shortage confronting the island. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)

Nonetheless, in many parts of Cuba, state-run stores only stock goods like chicken or flour a few days a week, at most, and when those products appear, long lines form almost instantly outside the store, disappearing only when the product has been cleared off the shelves.

While some foreign companies are building hotels across the island and industrial facilities in a free-trade zone west of Havana, market-oriented reforms and plans to draw more foreign investment appear largely stalled and unable to make up for inefficiency, corruption, the collapse of Venezuelan aid and the effects of the 60-year-old U.S. trade embargo.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel has repeatedly called for greater efficiency from government agencies and companies.

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Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
NEW YORK (AP) - Amazon said Thursday that founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has finalized his divorce with wife MacKenzie, who will end up with a stake in the online shopping giant worth more than $35 billion.

In a tweet, MacKenzie Bezos said she is giving Jeff Bezos all her interest in The Washington Post, the newspaper that he bought in 2013, and Blue Origin, the space exploration company he founded.

"I'm grateful for her support and for her kindness in this process," Jeff Bezos said in a tweet Thursday. "And am very much looking forward to our new relationship as friends and co-parents."

The Bezoses, who have four children, first announced they were divorcing in January, just before the National Enquirer published a story that said Jeff Bezos was having an affair with a former TV host. He later accused the tabloid's publisher of threatening to publish explicit photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained private messages between himself and his lover.

When the divorce is complete, which is expected to happen in about 90 days, MacKenzie Bezos will have a 4% stake in Amazon. Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest people, will have a 12% stake in the company, valued at more than $108 billion on Thursday.

He'll be Amazon's largest shareholder, and he'll also keep voting control of MacKenzie Bezos's shares, according to a filling with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

FILE - In this March 4, 2018 file photo, Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie Bezos arrive at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. Jeff Bezos and MacKenzie, announced Thursday, April 4, 2019, in a series of tweets that they have finalized their divorce, ending a 25-year marriage that played a role in the creation of the online shopping giant. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)

The divorce ends a 25-year marriage that played a role in creating one of the world's most valuable companies.

The Bezoses met in New York in the early 1990s while working at a hedge fund. They married just six months after they began dating, Jeff Bezos has said.

Not long after that, he quit his job to start an online bookstore and the Bezoses took a cross-country road trip to Seattle, which was chosen for its high number of technology workers. While his wife did the driving, Jeff Bezos wrote a business plan. By 1995, Amazon was operating out of a garage, with MacKenzie Bezos helping out.

Amazon has grown way beyond those humble beginnings. It now produces movies, runs the Whole Foods grocery chain and has become the leader in voice-activated speakers. The company has become so large that it plans to build a second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia.

MacKenzie Bezos, a novelist, said in a tweet Thursday that she was "excited" about her future plans, but didn't say what they were.

"Grateful for the past as I look forward to what comes next," she said in the tweet.

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Follow Joseph Pisani at http://twitter.com/josephpisani
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) - A Somali police officer says a car bomb exploded near the gate of a police academy in the capital, Mogadishu, injuring six people on Thursday evening.

Capt. Mohamed Hussein said that the blast was apparently targeting the Gen. Kahiye Police Academy.

There were no immediate details about the type of blast which comes a day after Somali police warned against a potential attack by a suicide car bomber in Mogadishu.

Responsibility for the blast was not immediately claimed, but Somalia's Islamic extremist rebels, al-Shabab, frequently carry out such attacks in the capital.
PHOENIX (AP) - A 10-year-old girl was fatally shot and her father was wounded in their driveway in what may have started with a traffic dispute, Phoenix police said Thursday.

Sgt. Vince Lewis said the shooting that killed Summerbell Brown occurred Wednesday night when a man in a pickup truck who had been following the family's car fired several gunshots after they arrived at their home.

The girl's mother, who was in the front passenger seat, and sister were not injured.

The driver of the pickup then fled.

Lewis said the fact that the pickup was closely following the victims' vehicle might indicate there'd been a traffic dispute. He said there was no immediate indication that the family and the shooter knew each other.

"It's possible that this was a road rage that started earlier in the area prior to the victim's family arriving at home," Lewis told KTAR .

This photo provided by the Phoenix Police Department shows a security video photo of what is believed to be the suspects vehicle in a road rage incident in Phoenix, Ariz. where a 10 year old girl was fatally shot. Sgt. Vince Lewis said the shooting that killed Summerbell Brown occurred Wednesday, April 3, 2019 when a man in a pickup truck that had been following a family's car fired several gunshots after the family pulled into their driveway. (Phoenix Police Department via AP)

The father, Dharquintium Brown, told TV station KTVK-TV that the shooting occurred after he got out of the car to confront the man who was following his car. While police initially described Brown as critically wounded, he told the station he wasn't badly injured.

The girl was taken to a hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Brown, 37, called his daughter's death "heinous" when reached by telephone Thursday morning. He also said the family was working with police on a composite sketch of the suspect, but declined to comment further.

Police have since released footage from a nearby surveillance camera that shows a white pickup closely following the family's car around 5:45 p.m.

The shooter is described as a Hispanic man between 30 and 40 years old wearing a long-sleeve orange shirt. He was believed to be driving a white Ford F150 pickup with dark trim on the bottom. The vehicle has scrapes and damage on its left side above the rear tire, police said.

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This story has corrected to reflect police now say Brown's age is 37, not 30.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) - During a campaign trip to South Carolina, Democratic presidential candidate John Hickenlooper is meeting with church members who survived a racist massacre in 2015.

The former Colorado governor is scheduled to have dinner and a roundtable discussion Saturday with survivors of the shooting at Mother Emanuel AME, Hickenlooper's campaign announced this week. Nine black parishioners were slain as they prayed during Bible study at the church. The shooter, a white man who said he hoped that the killings would start a race war, is on federal death row .

The historic church in downtown Charleston has become a place of pilgrimage for some 2020 presidential candidates as they campaign in the state, home of the first primary in the South. Former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke stopped by during a recent visit to Charleston, as did Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who tweeted about her visit after the fact, calling for "commonsense gun safety reforms."

The location of Hickenlooper's meeting with shooting survivors hasn't been announced, and the campaign has not said explicitly if he plans to visit the church itself.

Hickenlooper is known as a staunch advocate for gun control legislation. Following the 2012 Aurora theater shooting, the then-governor called for and signed bills requiring universal background checks and limiting magazine capacity to 15 rounds.

"Unfortunately, the governor has firsthand experience with mass shootings," Hickenlooper spokewoman Lauren Hitt said, asked about the meeting with AME survivors. "He wants to sit down and hear about what they learned from the church shooting."

Former Democratic Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper smiles during a meeting with AmeriCorps members at a roundtable campaign stop in Manchester, N.H., Friday, March 22, 2019. Hickenlooper joined the 2020 Presidential race earlier in the month. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Ahead of his trip to South Carolina, Hickenlooper speaks Friday at the National Action Network's annual conference in New York before traveling to Montgomery, Alabama, for meetings with faith leaders and a visit to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which was recently constructed in dedication to victims of lynchings.

Following his dinner with AME survivors, the campaign said, Hickenlooper plans to meet with Democrats in Charleston County and attend Sunday morning services at Royal Missionary Baptist Church, a North Charleston congregation that has hosted several other Democratic presidential contenders in recent months.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP
ABBEVILLE, La. (AP) - Louisiana State Police say they're searching for a man suspected of shooting an Abbeville police officer.

Authorities say the female officer was shot after a traffic stop Wednesday night. Abbeville Mayor Mark Piazza tells local media that she was flown to a hospital and was in stable condition.

State police spokesman Thomas Gossen told reporters that the suspect is considered armed and dangerous. He says anyone with information on his whereabouts should call 911.

Abbeville is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Lafayette.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) - A congressman is chastising the University of Kansas for offering a course titled "Angry White Male Studies."

Kansas Republican Rep. Ron Estes was among those turning to social media, lamenting in a tweet that the university has "decided to offer a class that divides the student population."

The school's academic catalog says the course will chart "the rise of the 'angry white male' in America and Britain since the 1950s, exploring the deeper sources of this emotional state."

Humanities professor Christopher Forth, himself a white man, will teach the course this fall. Forth and a university spokeswoman didn't immediately return phone and email messages from The Associated Press.

Other colleges also have been exploring masculinity amid the #MeToo movement, including Duke University, which describes its "Men's Project" as being "dedicated to interrogating male privilege."
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - An Oklahoma county sheriff will not face a manslaughter charge in the death of an inmate who was left in a restraint chair for more than two days.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Thursday rejected special prosecutor Chris Boring's request to reinstate the charge against Garfield County Sheriff Jerry Niles, who is on paid leave.

The ruling upholds two previous rulings that there is insufficient evidence that Niles is criminally responsible for the June 2016 death of inmate Anthony Huff.

An autopsy found Huff's probable cause of death was chronic alcoholism. He had been arrested for public intoxication.

Niles still faces a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging a failure to provide medical care for Huff's symptoms of alcohol withdrawal, in addition to misdemeanor nepotism charges.
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - A doomed Ethiopian Airlines jet suffered from faulty readings by a key sensor, and pilots followed Boeing's recommended procedures when the plane started to nose dive but could not avoid crashing, according to a preliminary report released Thursday by the Ethiopian government.

The findings draw the strongest link yet between the March 10 crash in Ethiopia and an October crash off the coast of Indonesia, which both involved Boeing 737 Max 8 jetliners. All 346 people on the two planes were killed.

Both planes had an automated system that pushed the nose down when sensor readings detected the danger of an aerodynamic stall, and it now appears that sensors malfunctioned on both planes.

Boeing acknowledged that the sensor malfunctioned and CEO Dennis Muilenburg said Thursday a new software update would prevent future incidents. "It's our responsibility to eliminate this risk," Muilenburg said in a video statement. "We own it, and we know how to do it."

Thursday's preliminary report, based on flight data and cockpit voice recorders on the Ethiopian Airlines jetliner, showed that the faulty sensor touched off a series of events that caused the pilots to lose control of the plane. The report from Ethiopia's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau said the sensor problems began about a minute after the plane was cleared for takeoff.

It said air speed and altitude values on the left side of the Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max conflicted with data from the right sensor, causing flight control problems. Eventually the pilots couldn't keep the plane from plummeting to the ground, killing all 157 people on board.

FILE - In this Wednesday March 13, 2019 file photo, a grieving relative who lost his wife in the plane crash is helped by a member of security forces and others near Bishoftu, in Ethiopia, at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 on board. A preliminary report finds that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last month performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing but could not control the plane. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

The problems are similar to those reported on the Indonesian Lion Air flight that crashed last October. Investigators found that software on that plane took readings from the sensor and pointed the nose down. Thursday's revelations raise questions about repeated assertions by Boeing and U.S. regulators that pilots could regain control in some emergencies by following steps that include turning off an anti-stall system designed specifically for the Max, known by its acronym, MCAS.

The Max has been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which still needs to be approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators.

In a statement, Boeing said that to make sure unintended activation of the MCAS system doesn't happen again, it is developing software and "associated comprehensive pilot training" for the Max. The software update, Boeing said, adds layers of protection and will stop erroneous data from activating the system.

Ethiopian investigators did not specifically mention the MCAS, but recommended that Boeing review "the aircraft flight-control system related to the flight controllability." They also recommended that aviation officials verify that issues have been adequately addressed before allowing the planes to fly again.

At a news conference, Ethiopia's Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges said the Ethiopian Airlines crew "performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft."

However, it wasn't clear whether the Ethiopian pilots followed Boeing's recommendations to the letter.

The pilots initially followed Boeing's emergency steps by disconnecting the MCAS system by switching off power to a stabilizer on the tail, the report said. But they turned the system back on 32 seconds before hitting the ground and tried unsuccessfully to use it to point the nose up. Boeing's procedures instruct pilots to leave the MCAS disconnected and continue flying manually for the rest of the flight.

The report said multiple alarms went off as the pilots struggled to control the plane, indicating an even more complex situation than in the Lion Air crash, said William Waldock, a professor of safety science at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University. "It's similar in a lot of ways but perhaps more extreme," he said. "It seems likely they've got more things going on at once in a shorter time period."

The two pilots had just 159 hours of combined flying time on the Boeing 737 Max, a new aircraft that went into service in 2017. The 29-year-old captain had more than 8,000 flight hours overall, including more than 1,400 on older 737s, the report said.

The 25-year-old co-pilot had only 361 total flight hours - not enough to be hired as a pilot at a U.S. airline. He flew 207 of those hours on 737s, including 56 hours on Max jets.

Family members of crash victims said they were unsettled by the report's findings.

"Today's preliminary report suggests Boeing could have done better in notifying the problem with the aircraft system early on," said Konjit Shafi, whose younger brother, Sintayehu Shafi, died in the crash. "This is causing us a great deal of pain. It is so sad to learn that our loved ones would have been spared if this problem was detected on time."

Meanwhile, the family of a 24-year-old American woman killed in the crash sued Boeing on Thursday. The complaint, which also names Ethiopian Airlines and parts maker Rosemount Aerospace as defendants, alleged negligence and civil conspiracy among other charges.

"Blinded by its greed, Boeing haphazardly rushed the 737 MAX8 to market" and "actively concealed the nature of the automated system defects," the lawsuit filed on behalf of the family of Samya Stumo alleged. Stumo is a great grand-niece of consumer advocate Ralph Nader.

Nader called on consumers to boycott the MAX 8 and blasted the FAA for delegating so much responsibility in certifying the plane was safe to Boeing.

"Those planes should never fly again," Nader said. "If we don't end the cozy relationship between the patsy FAA ... and the Boeing Company, 5,000 of these fatally flawed planes will be in the air all over the world with millions of passengers."

Boeing is the focus of investigations by the U.S. Justice Department, the Transportation Department's inspector general and congressional committees. Investigations are also looking at the role of the FAA, which certified the Max in 2017, and declined to ground it after the first deadly crash in October. The agency was also reluctant to ground the planes after the Ethiopian Airlines crash and was among the last agencies to do so.

The FAA, which must certify the 737 Max is safe before it can go back into the air, said in a statement that the investigation is still in its early stages.

"As we learn more about the accident and findings become available, we will take appropriate action," the agency said.

___

Associated Press Writers Carlo Piovano in London, David Koenig in Dallas, Tom Krisher in Detroit, Noreen Nasir in Chicago and Bernard Condon in New York contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Wednesday March 13, 2019 file photo, relatives react at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed near Bishoftu, in Ethiopia, just after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 on board. A preliminary report finds that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last month performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing but could not control the plane. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

FILE - In this Thursday March 14, 2019 file photo, Ethiopian relatives of crash victims mourn at the scene where the Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed near Bishoftu, in Ethiopia, just after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 on board. A preliminary report finds that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last month performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing but could not control the plane. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

FILE - In this Monday March 11, 2019 file photo, rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, or Debre Zeit, south of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 on board. A preliminary report finds that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last month performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing but could not control the plane. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

FILE - In this March 11, 2019, file photo, wreckage is piled at the crash scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, Ethiopia. A published report says pilots of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed followed Boeing's emergency steps for dealing with a sudden nose-down turn but couldn't regain control. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

FILE - In this March 11, 2019, file photo, rescuers work at the scene of an Ethiopian Airlines flight crash near Bishoftu, Ethiopia. A published report says pilots of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed followed Boeing's emergency steps for dealing with a sudden nose-down turn but couldn't regain control. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)

FILE - In this March 14, 2019, file photo, workers walk next to a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane parked at Boeing Field, in Seattle. A published report says pilots of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed followed Boeing's emergency steps for dealing with a sudden nose-down turn but couldn't regain control. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

FILE - In this March 27, 2019, file photo, a worker enters a Boeing 737 MAX 8 airplane during a brief media tour of Boeing's 737 assembly facility in Renton, Wash. A published report says pilots of an Ethiopian airliner that crashed followed Boeing's emergency steps for dealing with a sudden nose-down turn but couldn't regain control. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

FILE - In this Sunday March 10, 2019 file photo, family members of the victims involved in a plane crash react at Addis Ababa international airport. The Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 on board. A preliminary report finds that the crew of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed last month performed all the procedures recommended by Boeing but could not control the plane. (AP Photo/Mulugeta Ayene, File)
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Thursday repealed rules that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and that labeled same-sex couples as sinners eligible for expulsion - marking a reversal of policies condemned as jarring detours from a push by the faith to be more compassionate about LGBTQ issues.

LGBTQ church members and groups that support them expressed relief about what they called an important step forward for the faith. However, they also said they were angry about the harm the 2015 policies had caused and the lack of an apology by church leaders.

In a statement posted online, church leaders described the changes as "very positive policies" that should help "affected families." The faith's highest leadership group, known as the First Presidency, made the decision after "fervent, united prayer to understand the will of the Lord on these matters," the statement said.

The faith widely known as the Mormon church said it is not changing its doctrinal opposition to gay marriage and still considers same-sex relationships to be a "serious transgression."

"We want to reduce the hate and contention so common today," the statement said.

The rules approved by global church leaders in 2015 had prohibited baptisms for children living with gay parents until the children turned 18 and disavowed same-sex relationships.

FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2015 file photo, Sandy Newcomb poses for a photograph with a rainbow flag as people gather for a mass resignation from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion. The surprise announcement Thursday, April 4, 2019, by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemations from LGBTQ members and their allies. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

With the change, children of gay parents can now be baptized as long as their parents approve the baptisms and acknowledge that the children will be taught church doctrine.

People in same-sex relationships will no longer be considered "apostates," a term the religion uses for people who teach inaccurate doctrine or publicly defy guidance from church leaders. Apostates can be kicked out of the religion.

That label was widely condemned by LGBQT members and allies as being demeaning and hurtful to people who already struggle to find acceptance in the faith.

"It was a stigma. It was like wearing a Scarlet letter," said Nathan Kitchen, a gay Mormon father of five children from Gilbert, Arizona. "You are cut off, you are a pariah."

Kitchen said he cried when he heard the news about the new policies. Kitchen, also the president of an organization called Affirmation that supports LGBTQ church members, said the old policies had fueled painful custody battles as straight parents tried to ensure their children could be full members of the faith.

Wendy Montgomery, an Arizona mother of a gay son, said she's pleased the rules have been changed but believes the harm caused by the previous policies can't be undone. The lifelong church member left the religion after the 2015 policy was instituted.

"It deeply wounded and traumatized every single LGBQT Mormon that I know," said Montgomery, a member of a mothers group called "Mama Dragons" that advocates for parents with LGTBQ members of the faith.

The announcement came two days before Saturday's twice-yearly church conference in Salt Lake City. It was unclear if church leaders will speak more about the changes during speeches at the conference.

Erika Munson, co-founder of the Mormons Building Bridges LGBTQ advocacy group, said there's a "great feeling of being heard" because the changes came after an outcry from church members.

"We saw the church correct a mistake in record time," Munson said. "Usually these things take maybe 100 years or more."

The move undoes the one major detour from a decade-long path by the faith toward more compassion on LGBTQ issues while sticking to doctrinal opposition of intimacy between people in same-sex relationships, said Patrick Mason, a religion professor at Claremont Graduate University in California who studies the faith.

The policy seemed to harm the church image and touched a nerve with liberal members and conservative, orthodox members, he said.

"That policy always seemed out of step," Mason said.

Membership growth in the religion has stagnated in recent years, and young members opposed the policies at much higher rates than older members, said Jana Riess, who surveyed members of the religion for her book, "The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church."

Faith leaders had previously explained that the 2015 rules were designed to protect children by not putting them in a potential tug-of-war between the beliefs of same-sex couples raising them and teachings and activities at church.

Church President Russell M. Nelson, then a member of a governing body that helps the president lead the church, defended the policy in a 2016 speech in which he said a revelation received by then-President Thomas S. Monson and other leaders gave them "spiritual confirmation" that the rules were the right thing to do after many states legalized gay marriage.

The speed at which church leaders and Nelson in particular changed course on the issue was rare and surprising, said Matthew Bowman, an associate professor of history at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, who studies the faith.

"It seems to indicate that ultimately they decided it was doing more harm than good," Bowman said.

FILE - In this Nov. 14, 2015, file photo, people walk past the Salt Lake Temple after mailing resignation letters during a mass resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion. The surprise announcement Thursday, April 4, 2019, by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemations from LGBTQ members and their allies. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2018, file photo, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints President Russell M. Nelson looks on following a news conference, in Salt Lake City. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is repealing rules unveiled in 2015 that banned baptisms for children of gay parents and made gay marriage a sin worthy of expulsion. The surprise announcement Thursday, April 4, 2019, by the faith widely known as the Mormon church reverses rules that triggered widespread condemnations from LGBTQ members and their allies. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - A Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients prior to abortions is constitutional, a divided federal appeals court declared Thursday.

The ruling by a panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a victory for Kentucky's Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, a staunch abortion opponent. The 2017 law was enacted soon after the GOP took complete control of Kentucky's legislature. The statute drew an immediate challenge from the state's last remaining abortion clinic, and a lower court judge struck it down.

The 2-1 ruling Thursday reversed the lower court. The appeals court panel's majority opinion said the law doesn't violate a doctor's First Amendment rights.

Bevin's office called it "a major pro-life legal victory" and said it was a historic day.

In a prepared statement, Bevin applauded the ruling and said, "I am grateful to be governor of a state that values every human life, and we are committed to continue our fight on behalf of the most vulnerable among us."

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project, called the ruling "not only extremely disappointing but also alarming."

FILE - In this March 26, 2019, file photo, Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin speaks with the media during an event about the new Interstate 165, formerly William H. Natcher Parkway, at Stryker Logistics in Bowling Green, Ky. A divided federal appeals court declared Thursday, April 4, that a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients prior to abortions meets constitutional standards. (Bac Totrong/Daily News via AP, File)

In an emailed statement, she said, "Regardless of how you feel about abortion, such extreme political interference in the doctor-patient relationship should be a cause of serious concern to anyone seeking medical care."

Kentucky is one of many Republican-dominated states seeking to enact restrictions on abortion as conservatives take aim at the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

Energized by new conservatives on the Supreme Court, abortion opponents in multiple states hope to ignite new legal battles that could prompt the justices to revisit Roe v. Wade.

Kentucky's law, known as House Bill 2, requires doctors to describe the ultrasound in detail while the pregnant woman listens to the fetal heartbeat. Women can avert their eyes and ask to have the sound of the heartbeat turned off. Doctors failing to comply face fines and can be referred to the state's medical-licensing board.

"Because H.B. 2 ... requires the disclosure of truthful, non-misleading, and relevant information about an abortion, we hold that it does not violate a doctor's right to free speech under the First Amendment," Judge John K. Bush wrote in the majority opinion.

ACLU attorneys, representing the abortion clinic in Louisville, contended the law violates doctors' First Amendment rights by forcing them to deliver "ideological" messages to their patients, even when it's against a patient's wishes.

Bush, a Kentuckian appointed to the appeals court bench by President Donald Trump, also said the information provided by the ultrasound is "pertinent" to a pregnant woman's decision-making.

"The information conveyed by an ultrasound image, its description, and the audible beating fetal heart gives a patient greater knowledge of the unborn life inside her," he said. "This also inherently provides the patient with more knowledge about the effect of an abortion procedure; it shows her what, or whom, she is consenting to terminate.

"That this information might persuade a woman to change her mind does not render it suspect under the First Amendment," he added.

In a sharply worded dissent, Judge Bernice B. Donald said the law would require doctors "to violate their professional and ethical obligations." The judge also called the law a "restriction on speech that has no basis in the practice of medicine."

Donald said the majority decision "opens the floodgates to states in this circuit to manipulate doctor-patient discourse solely for ideological reasons."

In Kentucky, the ultrasound law is just one front in a bitter legal feud over abortion.

In a related development, the ACLU is disagreeing with Kentucky's Democratic attorney general over how to challenge a restrictive state policy as they both seek to ensure that the state's only remaining clinic providing the procedure remains open.

In a legal brief supporting the EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville, Attorney General Andy Beshear has urged a federal appeals court to rule against a regulation that imposes stricter standards on mandatory agreements between an abortion clinic and a hospital and ambulance service, but not against the law underlying the regulation.

That runs counter to arguments by the ACLU, which says unless the law is struck down, it will remain an ongoing threat to the clinic. The ACLU is urging the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a lower-court decision invalidating both the state law and the regulation.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump and immigration (all times local):

3:05 p.m.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says Democrats will sue to prevent what they say is President Donald Trump's "stealing" of billions of dollars from federal programs and diverting it to building barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The legal challenge has been expected ever since Trump declared a border emergency so he could shift more money to constructing the wall he's promised since his presidential campaign. He acted after Congress approved less than he demanded for the wall project.

Pelosi says Trump's emergency declaration was a "sham." The California Democrat says money transfers to the wall have "undermined our democracy" and flout "the vote of the bipartisan Congress, the will of the American people and the letter of the Constitution."

Congress voted to block the emergency declaration but Trump vetoed that measure.

President Donald Trump speaks during the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Thursday, April 4, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

__

12:50 p.m.

President Donald Trump is threatening to slap tariffs on cars produced in Mexico unless the country does more to stop migrants trying to enter the U.S.

Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday that if that "powerful incentive" but "less drastic measure" doesn't work, he'll go through with his standing threat to close the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Republican president had threatened last week to close the border this week unless Mexico immediately halted "ALL illegal immigration coming into the United States." He has since praised the country for doing more.

Trump also is threatening tariffs if Mexico doesn't halt the flow of illegal drugs across the border. And he says he's giving Mexico "a one year warning" to comply.

He says: "I'll do it. I don't play games"
ATLANTA (AP) - The Latest on the shootings of two Georgia police officers (all times local):

3:15 p.m.

Police say a gunman suspected of shooting two Georgia police officers is holed up in a house with a teenager who is considered a hostage.

Henry County police Capt. Joey Smith said at a Thursday afternoon news conference that negotiators have been speaking with the gunman to try and get him to release the 16-year-old.

Authorities say both officers were in serious condition at an Atlanta hospital after being wounded by gunfire in Stockbridge, just south of Atlanta.

Police said they were called to the neighborhood about 10:45 a.m. Thursday on a "trouble unknown" call. Smith said they were shot after entering the home. He said one officer was shot in the hand; the other was shot in the torso and hip area.

___

1:15 p.m.

Authorities say two officers have been wounded in a shooting south of Atlanta, where police have poured into a neighborhood and blocked off roads.

Grady Memorial Hospital spokeswoman Denise Simpson says the two injured Henry County officers were being treated there Thursday afternoon. Simpson said she was unable to discuss the severity of their injuries.

The circumstances of the Thursday morning shooting were not immediately known. Henry County police said the scene was in Stockbridge. The city is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Atlanta.

The Georgia Department of Transportation said in a brief statement that it had been working to keep the northbound lanes of Interstate 75 clear as the injured officers were taken north to Grady.
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ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) - A top Croatian court has increased to six years the corruption sentence against former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader and ordered his immediate imprisonment.

Sanader was transferred to a Zagreb prison on Thursday evening after the court upheld prosecutors' appeal of the 2017 sentence of four and one-half years in prison for corruption in a 2009 property sale in Zagreb.

Sanader served as prime minister from 2003 to 2009. He is the highest-ranking official tried for corruption in Croatia.

The former premier has faced several corruption trials that are in various stages of proceedings. He has denied any wrongdoing, claiming that charges against him are political.

The court also ruled that Sanader must return over $2 million in gains from corruption.
A black activist who says he took control over one of the nation's largest neo-Nazi groups was barred Thursday from participating on the group's behalf in a federal lawsuit over the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Joel Hoppe ruled that James Hart Stern cannot represent the National Socialist Movement because he is not an attorney and didn't comply with the court's order to hire one. Instead, the magistrate is allowing a lawyer based in Burke, Virginia, to represent the neo-Nazi group and its longtime leader, Jeff Schoep.

Schoep has claimed Stern essentially tricked him into transferring leadership. Stern said he wanted to use his position as the group's president and director to undermine its defense against the lawsuit filed over bloodshed at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"My goal is to shut it down," he said Thursday.

Stern had asked the federal court in Virginia to issue a judgment against the NSM before the case is tried. Now he says he is pursuing other ways to put the Detroit-based group out of business. Stern sued Schoep and three other group leaders last month in Riverside, Calif., court records show.

Stern filed the suit himself, without an attorney. It seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and asks the court to bar Schoep and others from interfering with Stern's efforts to maintain NSM websites.

FILE - This June 14, 2012, file photo shows James Hart Stern, of Jackson, Miss., at a news conference in Jackson, Miss. The activist who says he took control over one of the nation's largest neo-Nazi groups has been barred from participating on the group's behalf in a federal lawsuit over the violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

Neither Schoep nor his attorney, W. Edward ReBrook IV, immediately responded to phone calls seeking comment Thursday.

In a March 18 email to the magistrate judge, ReBrook said Stern is not, "in my legal opinion and in operational fact," in any way affiliated with the National Socialist Movement.

"He is not a named defendant, is not the president of NSM, has never been a member of NSM, and does not speak for NSM," ReBrook wrote, adding that his client plans to file counterclaims against Stern.

Michigan corporate records show Stern replaced Jeff Schoep as the group's leader in January. However, corporate records that Schoep signed in March name a different president.

In a phone interview last month, Schoep said he already was preparing to step down as the group's leader when Stern persuaded him hand over its reins in an effort to reduce the party's legal liability.

"He has that piece of paper, but he is absolutely not recognized as the leader of the National Socialist Movement," Schoep said of Stern.

NSM members used to attend rallies and protests in full Nazi uniforms, including at a march in Toledo, Ohio, that sparked a riot in 2005. More recently, Schoep tried to rebrand the group and appeal to a new generation of racists and anti-Semites by getting rid of such overt displays of Nazi symbols.

Stern served a prison sentence for mail fraud at the same facility as onetime Ku Klux Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, who was convicted in the "Mississippi Burning" killings of three civil rights workers. Killen died in January 2018.

In 2012, Stern claimed Killen signed over to him power of attorney and ownership of 40 acres of land while they were serving prison terms together. A lawyer for Killen asked a judge to throw out the land transfer and certify that Killen and his family owned the property.

___

Associated Press reporter Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, Calif., contributed to this report.
DETROIT (AP) - The city of Detroit reached an $8.25 million settlement Thursday with the family of a 7-year-old girl accidentally killed by a police officer during a 2010 raid.

Detroit Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia announced the settlement with the family of Aiyana Stanley-Jones four days before a civil trial was to begin.

"Aiyana's death was a tragic loss for her family and has been a heavy burden on our community. We believe today's settlement is fair because it balances the needs of Aiyana's family and our responsibility for the city's finances. We hope this resolution will provide everyone involved a measure of closure," Garcia said in a statement.

The girl was shot in the head while she slept on a couch. Joseph Weekley, a member of an elite police unit, was the first officer through the door of her home during a chaotic search for a murder suspect. He says he accidentally fired his gun during a struggle with Aiyana's grandmother.

The family's attorney, Geoffrey Fieger, said the settlement should allow the family, the city and Weekley to move on from the tragedy. He said the settlement "won't provide full justice. The only full justice would be to bring Aiyana back and I can't do that."

The settlement still needs approval from the Detroit City Council.

FILE - In this June 18, 2013 file photo, Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley stands in Judge Cynthia Hathaway's courtroom at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice during his criminal trial in the 2010 killing of Aiyana Stanley-Jones during a police raid in Detroit. The city of Detroit has reached an $8.25 million settlement with the family of Stanley-Jones, who was accidentally killed by Weekley during a 2010 raid. City attorney Lawrence Garcia announced the settlement with the family of Aiyana Stanley-Jones on Thursday, April 4, 2019 four days before a civil trial was to begin. Weekley says he accidentally fired his gun during a struggle with Aiyana's grandmother. (John T. Greilick/Detroit News via AP, File)

The Michigan Supreme Court last September cleared the way for a trial or settlement when it declined to hear an appeal after two courts ruled a jury could decide whether Weekley's actions amounted to gross negligence.

Weekley was charged with involuntary manslaughter, but a judge dismissed that charge during a second trial in 2014.

Chauncey Owens, whom police were searching for in the raid, was eventually arrested in a second-floor unit of the duplex where the girl and her family lived. Owens was later convicted of murder in the death of 17-year-old Je'rean Blake, who was fatally shot outside a convenience store days before the raid. The girl's father, Charles Jones, was convicted of second-degree murder for providing the gun used to kill Blake.
RIPLEY, W.Va. (AP) - A West Virginia man has been sentenced to life in prison without the chance for parole for sexually abusing and killing his girlfriend's 10-month-old baby.

News outlets report a Jackson County Circuit Court judge sentenced 33-year-old Benjamin Taylor of Cottageville to life for first-degree murder, 40 years for death of a child by child abuse, and at least 10 years for sexual abuse by a guardian or custodian. The first two sentences are to run consecutively.

A sheriff's deputy testified Taylor had blood on his torso and a wet spot on his pants when officers went to the home in Fairplain in October 2016.

Taylor testified he consumed several beers while the girl was under his care but could not recall what happened to her the night of her death.
NEW YORK (AP) - Memoirist no more? It's hard to believe, but "Save Me the Plums" just might be the last such narrative for Ruth Reichl.

Her latest, after "Tender at the Bone," ''Comfort Me with Apples" and a lifetime's worth of others, has Reichl taking on her decade as editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, and it comes nearly as long after the 70-year-old magazine was abruptly shut down on her watch.

This is Reichl's side of the story, part ode to the friends she made at Gourmet (she thanks late publisher Si Newhouse) and part plain talk about 2009, the year of the end for the iconic monthly and a painful time for the magazine industry as a whole.

The multiple James Beard-winning and bestselling Reichl was credited with modernizing Gourmet while she was treated to a level of luxury served up by Conde Nast that took some getting used to. That after her stint - and disguises - as restaurant critic for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

At 71, Reichl has been far from idle. She's been at her typewriter, as always, putting out her first novel, "Delicious!", and most recently a cookbook, "My Kitchen Year." And she's been cooking, joyously, for the people who matter most, friends and family.

Oh, and she still tweets delectably to her 1.3 million followers: "It's spring! Ecstatic birds flit through sunny skies. Deer leap through the woods. Hot biscuits. Strawberries. Happy."

This cover image released by Random House shows "Save Me the Plums: My Gourmet Memoir," by Ruth Reichl. (Random House via AP)

Our conversation with Ruth Reichl:

AP: When did you start writing this book?

Reichl: I guess I kind of started writing it right after the magazine closed, or at least thinking about writing it at that point. I was so devastated. It took me a while. But I then decided I would write a novel first, that I would just go away and imagine myself into another place. It actually worked. I had a lot of fun writing that novel and just leaving reality behind.

Maybe three years ago I thought, now it's time. It's time to write the Gourmet book.

AP: Is it also time to finally write off the paper media industry, including magazines?

Reichl: I think it's way too early for that. I think we're in this revolution and none of us really knows how it's going to come out. There are all these surprising moments in this. People thought that digital books were going to kill books. It hasn't happened.

People want paper media. We're still in that place now where we're figuring out what's better digitally and what's better tactually. What do you really want to hold? Gourmet was something you could dream about. It wasn't just information. We still need that.

AP: You transformed Gourmet. How did Gourmet transform you?

Reichl: I went in there as kind of a Cinderella. I was an ordinary person and suddenly I am dropped into this place where anything is possible, and you live like a rich person for a while. You have hair and makeup people show up at your house in the morning and fluff you for the day. It's really, really fun and it's kind of exciting.

But I got to this point where I realized what really mattered to me was the magazine, my staff, the wonderful things that we could do there. The rest of that stuff was just unnecessary.

AP: You took a transformative, on-the-cheap trip to Paris near the end. You harkened back to your hippie past at Berkeley and flew economy for the first time in a long while. When was the last time you flew economy as you did on that trip?

Reichl: Uh, this morning. Otherwise it's a lot of money for a few hours. I was on stage the other night and somebody was talking about Uber and I said it's really cheap if you do Uber Pool. And he looked at me and he said boy, you really still are a Berkeley hippie, aren't you?

AP: Do you miss being a boss?

Reichl: I miss that enormous pleasure of the collaboration and what happens when you work with a group of people and somebody has an idea and somebody else takes it and says I can make it better. As a group, you build something. I miss that. I really miss that.

AP: How has the experience of cooking changed for you now that you're a civilian?

Reichl: I find a deeper pleasure. Being someone who spends most of my time writing means I have time to cook. Being at Gourmet I was really trying to balance family life and work life. There were times when I would not even take my coat off before I was throwing things into the pan.

I still gain enormous amounts of pleasure from cooking.

AP: Do you have a favorite thing to cook?

Reichl: I mostly cook for other people. I get up in the morning and I say to my husband, what do you want for dinner? That gives me great pleasure. If people are coming over I think, oh, Peter really loves blueberry pie, so I'll make a blueberry pie.

AP: What does Ruth like to cook just for Ruth?

Reichl: So much of cooking for me is about aroma. I love the way chicken soup smells when it's cooking. It fills the house and calms you down. That's a real pleasure for me.

AP: Do you make matzo balls?

Reichl: I've never made a matzo ball in my life.

AP: So what's next?

Reichl: I'm about to write another novel and I have a contract to write a third.

AP: Will they be food themed?

Reichl: One of them is food themed and one of them is not. But I always go to the food place. It's just in my DNA.
BOSTON (AP) - Massachusetts, led by a Republican governor, has become the first state to approve money to offset the potential loss of federal funding to women's reproductive health organizations since the Trump administration adopted a new rule in February meant to bar federally funded family planning clinics from making abortion referrals or sharing office space with abortion providers.

The Massachusetts law sets aside $8 million in state dollars to close any gaps in federal Title X funding for health clinics that could lose funding by the proposed change - derided as a "gag rule" by critics.

Gov. Charlie Baker, who signed the bill, said this week the measure "ensures women's health providers across Massachusetts will continue to have access to these critical funds." The bill was passed overwhelmingly in the Democrat-controlled Massachusetts House and Senate.

Baker is the first governor to sign such legislation.

In 2017, in anticipation of the Trump administration rule, Maryland passed a similar law meant to protect funding for Planned Parenthood. The Maryland bill became law in 2017 after Republican Gov. Larry Hogan decided not to veto it.

On Thursday, Maryland also became the first state to pass a bill that would reject federal money for family planning services if the new rule, which is being challenged in court, takes effect. Other Democratic-leaning states, such as Washington and Oregon, may take similar steps.

Dr. Jennifer Childs-Roshak, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, said a loss of federal funding could affect about 75,000 patients who rely in part on services funded by Title X. She said the program, in place since the 1970s, provides no- or low-cost services including testing for sexually transmitted diseases, birth control and pap smears.

Of the Title X funds that come into the state, Childs-Roshak said Planned Parenthood receives less than 20%, with the rest going to other clinics that offer similar health services.

Childs-Roshak said there never had been any Title X funding for abortion coverage, adding there are "very specific rules about how to manage inventory and keep everything separate." The Trump administration's actions, she said, were meant to please what she described as a "minority extreme view."

"The Trump/Pence administration is obsessed with Planned Parenthood, and not in a good way," Childs-Roshak said. "They are obsessed with abortion."

Religious conservatives and abortion opponents have welcomed the new rule. They argue that Title X funding has been used to indirectly subsidize Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion provider in the U.S.

Krystal Linn, 39, lives in Southbridge and is a parent to seven children - both biological and foster - ages 6 to 17.

"I have been a Planned Parenthood patient since I was about 14 years old," Linn said. "My first experience was getting birth control."

Over the years, Linn has had a range of health care needs met through the agency. Much of that care, Linn said, would have otherwise been too costly.

"I was able to have children on my own time," Linn said. "I'm almost 40 years now. My concern now is more for the generation coming up. Without Planned Parenthood or providers like Planned Parenthood, what would they do? I had that benefit."

Massachusetts is also part of a multistate lawsuit led by state attorneys general in 20 mostly Democrat-controlled states, including Connecticut and Rhode Island, challenging the ruling.

During the 2018 fiscal year, Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey's office said, Massachusetts received $4.3 million in Title X funding.

That allowed 96 service sites in the state to offer services including pregnancy testing, contraceptive services, routine gynecological care, cervical and breast cancer screenings, infertility services, treatment for STDs, and health education, she said.

The federal lawsuit, filed last month in Oregon, alleges the new regulations are unconstitutional, violate federal law, and threaten the health and well-being of millions of low-income women and families, Healey said.
SEATTLE (AP) - The national chain Motel 6 agreed Thursday to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Washington state claiming names of hotel guests were improperly provided to immigration officials for two years, the state attorney general said.

The information led to targeted investigations by U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, who went after people with Latino-sounding names, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said.

Some people staying at seven Motel 6 locations in the state were detained or deported, he said.

"Motel 6's actions tore families apart and violated the privacy rights of tens of thousands of Washingtonians," Ferguson said in a statement. "Our resolution holds Motel 6 accountable for illegally handing over guests' private information without a warrant."

The company said in an email that it will enforce its guest privacy policy, which prohibits the sharing of guest information except in cases where a judicially enforceable warrant or subpoena is present or local law requires release of the information.

The company has also implemented controls to ensure corporate oversight and compliance in cases where law enforcement requests are made.

FILE - This Jan. 3, 2018 file photo shows a Motel 6 in SeaTac, Wash. The national chain Motel 6 agreed Thursday, April 4, 2019, to pay $12 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Washington state claiming names of hotel guests were provided to immigration officials for two years, according to Attorney General Bob Ferguson. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)

"The safety and security of our guests, which includes protecting guest information, is our top priority, and we are pleased to be able to reach resolution in this matter," the company said.

The agreement applies to all Motel 6 locations nationwide. The company also agreed to provide training to employees to protect guest privacy, Ferguson said.

In a separate lawsuit filed in Arizona, the company agreed in November to pay up to $7.6 million to Latino guests who said hotel employees shared private information with immigration officials.

In Washington state, Ferguson said Motel 6 gave ICE information on a daily basis about a total of 80,000 guests without a warrant between 2015 and 2017.

In one case, a Seattle man who stayed at a Motel 6 near SeaTac was stopped in a parking lot by ICE agents as he wrapped Christmas presents for his four children. He was detained and deported several days later, Ferguson said.

The man was the sole provider for his family and his wife has struggled to support the children, he said.

In another case, a Vancouver father who had lived in the U.S. for more than 20 years was detained after staying at a Motel 6 on a trip to pick up supplies for his grocery business, Ferguson said. He also was deported, leaving behind his wife and six children.

Ferguson filed the lawsuit in King County Superior Court last year, claiming the company's disclosures violated the state's Consumer Protection Act and a law against discrimination.

The company must also create an online tool for guests to report incidences where they believe the hotel chain has shared guest information.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A week after reaching a $270 million settlement with the maker of OxyContin, Oklahoma's attorney general Thursday dropped some claims in its lawsuit against other drugmakers in an effort to force them to pay the cost of the nation's deadly opioid crisis.

Attorney General Mike Hunter's office filed a motion that dismisses claims of fraud and deceit, unjust enrichment and violations of the state's Medicaid laws against about a dozen drugmakers. Hunter said dismissing those claims does not reduce the amount of damages the state is seeking.

Hunter's office will continue to pursue allegations that the companies created a public nuisance, which he says is the most important allegation against the drugmakers.

"We're going to be ready for trial, and we're going to hold these defendants responsible for the damage they've done to the state and its citizens," Hunter said.

Opioids, including heroin and prescription drugs, were a factor in a record 48,000 deaths across the U.S. in 2017, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Oklahoma recorded about 400 opioid deaths that year.

Public nuisance claims are included in many governments' cases against drugmakers, said attorney Ryan Duplechin, who works for the Montgomery, Alabama-based Beasley Allen. The law firm is representing Alabama and Georgia in national opioid litigation and is not affiliated with Oklahoma's lawsuit.

Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter answers questions during a news conference Monday, April 1, 2019, in Oklahoma City. A $270 million settlement between the state of Oklahoma and the maker of OxyContin received high praise last week as an innovative way to help combat opioid addiction. Hunter is now facing bipartisan backlash from Oklahoma lawmakers who say he overstepped his authority and circumvented their role. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

Governments are using public nuisance claims to try to recover the cost of deaths, treatment and crime linked to opioid abuse, Allen said. Lawyers representing similar cases are closely watching Oklahoma's.

"If there's a plaintiff's verdict in one case, then that drives up the value of all the other cases," he said.

Sabrina Strong, an attorney for Johnson & Johnson and its subsidiaries, which are among the companies being sued, said in a statement that dismissal of the claims shows they were groundless.

"We will continue to defend against the remaining baseless and unsubstantiated allegations," Strong said. Trial of the state's lawsuit is scheduled to begin on May 28 in Norman, about 17 miles (27 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City.

Other defendants in the case include Dublin, Ireland-based Allergan and New Jersey-based Teva Pharmaceuticals USA.

By dismissing all but the public nuisance claim, Hunter said the state's motion will result in a bench trial before a judge instead of a jury. The companies have until Tuesday to respond to the state's motion.

Hunter said trying the case before a judge and not a jury should reduce the number of pretrial motions filed by the companies and give both sides more time to prepare for trial.

"We've got a handful of lawyers and they've got hundreds, so it was an important strategic decision with regard to preparing for trial," Hunter said.

Hunter's office settled allegations against drugmaker Purdue Pharma for $270 million on March 26 in the first such agreement following a wave of nearly 2,000 lawsuits against the company that had threatened to push it into bankruptcy.

Nearly $200 million will go toward establishing a National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa, while local governments will get $12.5 million.

Some Oklahoma lawmakers allege Hunter violated a state law that requires him to place settlement money received by his office into the state treasury. But Hunter said the law doesn't apply because his office never technically received the settlement money, per Purdue Pharma's wishes.

In settling, Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma denied any wrongdoing in connection with what Hunter called "this nightmarish epidemic" and "the worst public health crisis in our state and nation we've ever seen."

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This version of the story corrects the city in Alabama to Montgomery in the 6th paragraph.

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Associated Press writers Sean Murphy and Adam Kealoha Causey in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has appointed a four-star officer to take another look at the military's investigation into the 2017 attack in Niger that killed four U.S. soldiers, and review whether additional punishments should be meted out.

In a statement Thursday, the Pentagon said the investigating officer will do a "new, narrowly-scoped review" and give Shanahan recommendations on whether the reprimands already made were appropriate. The officer's name was not released.

Officials have said that nine individuals have been held accountable for lapses in training and other mission preparedness. The punishments have largely been letters of reprimand. But officials and members of Congress have questioned whether more senior officers should be disciplined. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel actions.

The initial investigation found multiple failures leading up to the October 2017 attack, but determined that none of those shortfalls directly caused the overwhelming enemy ambush and firefight, which also killed four Nigerien troops, wounded a number of forces from both countries, and sent troops running for their lives.

That investigation report came out last May, detailing a series of "individual, organizational, and institutional failures and deficiencies that contributed to the tragic events." But it concluded that "no single failure or deficiency was the sole reason" for what happened.

It said the U.S. forces didn't have time to train together before they deployed, and did not do preparatory battle drills with their Nigerien partners. And the report said lax communication and poor attention to details led to a "general lack of situational awareness and command oversight at every echelon."

Since then, administrative actions - mainly the letters of reprimand - were taken against nine individuals, including Maj. Gen. Marcus Hicks, who was serving as the commander of special operations forces in Africa at the time. He was the most senior officer punished, leading some to question whether other more senior leaders had unfairly escaped unscathed.

In addition, a number of troops, including those killed, have been recommended for valor awards, mainly Silver Stars and Bronze Stars. But none of those have been announced either.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week, Rep. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., peppered Shanahan with questions about the lengthy delay in any announcements and when final decisions would be made.

Shanahan said he was aware that his predecessor, Jim Mattis, had received final recommendations and had been reviewing them. But, Shanahan said, "I did not find that sufficient. So, I convened my own review so I can insure from top to bottom as the appropriate accountability."

Gallego said he wanted to be sure the Pentagon review didn't simply place all the blame on junior officers and let senior officers "off the hook."

"These families and the American public deserve to know exactly what happened, and the junior officers that are being reprimanded right now should know that there's going to be equal reprimands, especially for general officers, should they have done anything wrong," said Gallego.

Shanahan responded that the fundamental reason he is doing his own review is to be certain there is a full accounting, from the troops on the ground to the most senior officer.

The U.S. military in Africa has taken a number steps to increase the security of troops on the ground, adding armed drones and armored vehicles and taking a harder look at when American forces go out with local troops. Gen. Thomas D. Waldhauser, head of U.S. Africa Command, has said that the U.S. has cut the response time needed for medical evacuations.

U.S. Special Operations Command has made changes in pre-deployment and readiness training, and addressed other staffing and decision-making shortfalls. The changes include insuring that forces conduct training together before they deploy and the exercises must be evaluated by a senior officer.

The review found that a large personnel turnover after training but before deployment led to some of the problems with the team in Niger.
DALLAS (AP) - The arrest of nearly 300 people at a Dallas-area technology company was one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade and punctuates the push by the Trump administration to target companies employing people who federal authorities say are not authorized to be in the U.S.

With a helicopter watching overhead, about 200 law enforcement officials descended Wednesday on CVE Technology Group in Allen, a city about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Dallas, and detained more than two thirds of the people at the technology repair plant.

The 280 people arrested for working in the United States illegally came from 15 different countries on multiple continents and were employed refurbishing used cellphones, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Thursday. Another 125 people were working there legally, authorities said.

Most of the group were given a date to appear in immigration court and released for "humanitarian reasons," such as being the sole caregiver for a child, but 110 people are being held in federal detention centers in Texas, said Special Agent in Charge Katrina Berger.

"Businesses that knowingly hire illegal aliens create an unfair advantage over their competing businesses," Berger said. "In addition, they take jobs away from U.S. citizens and legal residents, and they create an atmosphere poised for exploiting their illegal workforce."

Berger referred questions about whether anyone with the company would be fined or face criminal charges to federal prosecutors. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Texas declined to comment on the ongoing investigation.

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials stand outside CVE Group in Allen, Texas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people at the North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

CVE Technology Group did not immediately respond to a Thursday phone message seeking comment.

Family members of CVE workers who were arrested say the raid was a heavy-handed tactic against people simply working to provide for their families.

Valerie Trevino told The Dallas Morning News that her mother, Graciela Velazquez, moved from Mexico 25 years ago and has worked for the company for years. Trevino said her mom doesn't have a criminal record

"It's insane to just get people who are working to make a living," she said. "They've done nothing wrong besides work. My mom's worked her entire life here. So other than that, I mean what really is her crime?"

The Texas raid was the latest in a series of high-profile busts of businesses around the country as part of an immigration crackdown under President Donald Trump. Critics say the raids break up hard-working families and make it even harder for businesses to find employees in a tight labor market. ICE frequently touts the raids as major operations to break up criminal enterprises, but rarely releases names of the immigrants arrested, making it difficult to see what comes of their cases.

Eight of the people arrested Wednesday already had a final order to be deported and nine had re-entered the country after an earlier deportation, Berger said.

ICE started receiving tips that CVE was knowingly hiring people not authorized to work in the country more than a year ago, Berger said. Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, began an audit in January of CVE records that confirmed hiring irregularities, according to the statement.

The large enforcement action in North Texas came as immigration officials say they are being strained by the large number of migrants crossing the southern border.

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a bus from LaSalle Corrections Transport departs CVE Group in Allen, Texas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people at the North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, people react outside CVE Group after a bus from LaSalle Corrections Transport departed the facility in Allen, Texas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people at the North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

In this Wednesday April 3, 2019 photo, family and friends of detainees gather outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people on Wednesday at CVE Technology Group in Allen, a city about 15 miles northeast of Dallas, in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Shaban Athuman/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
BERLIN (AP) - The suspected New Zealand mosque gunman sent money to a French far-right group and once bought a ticket to Bavaria's "fairytale castle," German police said Thursday.

The Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed that it briefed German lawmakers Wednesday on its investigation into ties the alleged Christchurch mosque attacker had to Germany.

The closed-door briefing included information German police had about money that the suspect, Brenton Harrison Tarrant, transferred to the Generation Identity group in France. The far-right group which espouses a white nationalist ideology has spread to other European countries since its founding in 2012.

Federal police declined to elaborate, but the German news agency dpa reported that Tarrant transferred 2,200 euros ($2,470) in September 2017.

Austrian authorities have already said Tarrant donated 1,500 euros ($1,680) to Generation Identity's sister organization, the Identitarian Movement of Austria. The group's head, Martin Sellner, has confirmed he exchanged emails with Tarrant but denies involvement in the attack.

New Zealand police have said that Tarrant will face 50 murder charges and 39 attempted murder charges in his second court appearance on Friday.

FILE - In this Monday, March 25, 2019, file photo, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern discusses a top-level inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the massacre in two Christchurch mosques on March 15, during a press conference in Wellington, New Zealand. Australia's Parliament has passed legislation that could imprison social media executives if their platforms stream real violence such as the New Zealand shootings. (AP Photo/Nick Perry, File)

German police said Tarrant used his credit card last November to pay for a ticket to Neuschwanstein Castle - a popular tourist destination near the Austrian border commissioned by Ludwig II of Bavaria in the 19th century.

Tarrant at the time was traveling around Europe with stops including Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Estonia.

Tarrant in 2014 also made a payment to a German living in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, police said. It was unclear what the purpose of the payment was. Federal police said their investigation is ongoing.

FILE - In the March 15, 2019, file photo, a man rests on the ground as he speaks on his mobile phone across a road from mosque following a shooting in central Christchurch, New Zealand. Police said a man accused of Christchurch mosque attacks will face 50 murder charges and 39 attempted murder charges on Friday, April 5, 2019. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - A plan to kill California sea lions to save an endangered run of fish on a river that cuts through Portland, Oregon, appears to be working just months after wildlife officials began euthanizing the giant marine mammals, biologists said Thursday.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife began killing the sea lions in January after getting permission from federal authorities late last year. They have killed 16 so far, including three on Wednesday, said department spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy.

In the same period, 2,400 steelhead fish have reached the upper Willamette River and its tributaries to spawn this spring - the most in three years and double last year's tally, the agency said.

Less than 30 years ago, the number of steelhead making that journey was at least 15,000 a year but pollution and the construction of dams on key rivers reduced that number dramatically.

Sea lions have been eating an additional 25% of all returning steelhead at that spot in the Willamette River south of Portland, said Shaun Clements, ODFW's senior policy analyst.

"We've definitely been able to reduce predation this year and provide some relief to the fish," he said. "We're saving considerable numbers of them."

FILE - In this March 14, 2018, file photo, a California sea lion peers out from a restraint nicknamed "The Squeeze" near Oregon City, Ore., as it is prepared for transport by truck to the Pacific Ocean about 130 miles away. The male sea lion was released south of Newport, Ore., in a program designed to reduce the threat to wild winter steelhead and spring chinook salmon in the Willamette River. Wildlife officials say a plan to kill California sea lions to save an endangered run of fish on an Oregon river is working. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says that 2,400 steelhead reached the upper Willamette River to spawn this spring, the most in three years. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus, File)

Clements added that other factors, such as better conditions in the Pacific Ocean, are also contributing to larger numbers of steelhead making it over the falls this year.

After a weeklong lull, state biologists are now killing a second wave of sea lions that have traveled to the base of the falls to munch on another salmonid species, the spring chinook.

The spring chinook run is also listed under the Endangered Species Act and biologists estimate sea lions are eating up to 9% of the returning adults each spring, Clements said. Up to 40 sea lions are preying on the chinook, he said, while only 12 were going after the steelhead.

The adult male sea lions, which weigh nearly 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms) each, have learned that they can loiter under Willamette Falls, a horseshoe-shaped waterfall south of Portland, and snack on the vulnerable steelhead and salmon as the fish power their way upriver to the streams where they hatched.

Steelhead start life as freshwater trout and then travel to sea from inland rivers, grow to adulthood as steelhead in the Pacific Ocean and then return to their natal river to spawn. They can grow to 55 pounds (25 kilograms) and live up to 11 years.

The sea lions breed each summer off Southern California and northern Mexico, then the males cruise up the Pacific Coast to forage. Hunted for their thick fur, the mammals' numbers dropped dramatically but have rebounded from 30,000 in the late 1960s to about 300,000 today because of the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

With their numbers growing, the dog-faced sea lions are venturing ever farther inland up the Columbia River and its tributaries in Oregon and Washington. The two states have had a similar program in place for years to kill California sea lions that eat threatened and endangered salmon at the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

The latest permit from the National Marine Fisheries Service says the targeted sea lions must have been observed eating at least one steelhead near Willamette Falls between Nov. 1 and Aug. 15 or have been observed in the same stretch of river on two consecutive days in that period.

Individual sea lions are identified by trained observers who look at brands on their back or tags on their flippers.

The animals are being euthanized by a veterinarian by lethal injection in the same way that dogs and cats are put down, Wright said. Their flesh goes to a rendering plant.

Before a sea lion is killed, the state must find out if there is a zoo or aquarium that wants the animal. If so, Oregon wildlife managers must hold the sea lion for 48 hours before killing it.

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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus

FILE - In this April 24, 2008, file photo, crews work to move a captured sea lion into another cage on the Columbia River near Bonneville Dam in North Bonneville, Wash. Wildlife officials say a plan to kill California sea lions to save an endangered run of fish on an Oregon river is working. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says that 2,400 steelhead reached the upper Willamette River to pawn this spring, the most in three years. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

FILE - In this March 14, 2018 file photo, a California sea lion designated #U253 heads towards the Pacific Ocean after being released in Newport, Ore. Wildlife officials say a plan to kill California sea lions to save an endangered run of fish on an Oregon river is working. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says that 2,400 steelhead reached the upper Willamette River to spawn this spring, the most in three years. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)

FILE - In this March 14, 2018, file photo, a California sea lion waits to be released into the Pacific Ocean in Newport, Ore. Wildlife officials say a plan to kill California sea lions to save an endangered run of fish on an Oregon river is working. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife says that 2,400 steelhead reached the upper Willamette River to spawn this spring, the most in three years.. (AP Photo/Don Ryan, File)
HOUSTON (AP) - A growing number of lawsuits are springing from the ashes at a Houston-area chemical plant that caught fire this week killing a worker .

Two plant employees filed separate state suits Wednesday against KMCO LLC, claiming the company failed to maintain a safe work environment or give them proper training ahead of the Tuesday fire in Crosby.

Harris County, where the plant is located, also sued the company Wednesday under state environmental laws.

Randy Villaloboz and Arturo Martinez are each seeking more than $1 million in damages. The county asked for unspecified civil penalties.

KMCO said Thursday that two workers remain hospitalized in critical condition after the fire. Authorities haven't released its cause .

The company said it's focused on caring for workers and protecting the environment and will address legal claims at the "proper" time and place.
HOLLY SPRINGS, N.C. (AP) - A principal at a North Carolina charter school says a teacher is being disciplined but still working after she placed masking tape over a student's mouth.

Southern Wake Academy principal David Thomas confirmed the incident in a letter sent to parents Thursday and posted on the school's website. The letter said the incident occurred in March.

Thomas said school administrators contacted the student's parents and met with the teacher. He said the teacher's actions were inappropriate but not intentionally malicious.

The principal said the teacher, who he would not name, was placed on a disciplinary action plan for the remainder of the school year.

Thomas said no grievances were filed and no other incidents occurred. He didn't immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Thursday afternoon.
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - An ethics committee has recommended a three-month, unpaid suspension for a New Jersey judge who told a woman she could "close your legs" to prevent a sexual assault.

The committee released its recommendation to the state Supreme Court Wednesday in the case of Superior Court Judge John Russo, who sits on the bench in Ocean County in southern New Jersey. He has been on administrative leave since 2017.

The woman appeared before Russo in 2016 seeking a restraining order against a man she said sexually assaulted her. According to a transcript of the exchange, when the woman described her encounter with the man, Russo asked her, "Do you know how to stop somebody from having intercourse with you?"

When the woman answered affirmatively and said one method would be to run away, Russo continued, "Close your legs? Call the police? Did you do any of those things?"

In court filings and at a hearing, Russo has disputed that he violated judicial rules, saying he was seeking more information and wasn't trying to humiliate the woman.

A message seeking comment about the committee's recommendations was left with Russo's lawyer.

In this Oct. 17, 2018 photo, Superior Court Judge John F. Russo appears for his hearing before the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct at Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton, NJ. An ethics committee has recommended a three-month, unpaid suspension for Russo. The committee released its recommendation to the state Supreme Court Wednesday, April 3, 2019, in the case of Russo, who sits on the bench in Ocean County in southern New Jersey. He has been on administrative leave since 2017. (Tanya Breen/The Asbury Park Press via AP)

Russo's conduct "was not only discourteous and inappropriate, but also egregious given the potential for those questions to re-victimize the plaintiff," the panel wrote Wednesday.

The panel also concluded Russo violated rules of conduct on other occasions, including when he ruled on an alimony case in which he acknowledged he knew both parties.

In that case, according to the complaint, Russo reversed an order by another judge who had issued a bench warrant for the man unless he paid $10,000 in back alimony. Russo ultimately reduced that to $300.

In addition to the suspension, the panel recommended that Russo be required to attend training on "appropriate courtroom demeanor."

Russo will have a chance to respond to the panel's recommendation in advance of a final hearing on the matter in July.
MEXICO CITY (AP) - The World Trade Organization sees a "challenging" and "difficult" road ahead for international trade liberalization due to the current political climate.

WTO director-general Roberto Azevedo said Thursday he's confident Mexico and the United States can sort out their current trade difficulties, which include a border-crossing slowdown, U.S. threats to close the border and the still-pending ratification of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.

But the fight to expand free trade "is going to be challenging, is going to be difficult, above all because of the political conditions we have in the world today."

Mexico's Economy Secretary Graciela Marquez said a labor reform bill has been sent to Mexico's Congress this week. Some U.S. legislators said they wouldn't ratify the free trade agreement, negotiated last year to replace the old NAFTA, until Mexico passes a labor reform bill.

The bill is expected to assure workers can freely vote for the union representation by secret ballot. Pro-company unions in Mexico have a long history of keeping wages down and workers voiceless in union affairs.

Marquez also said that the border slowdowns - caused by the re-assignment of some U.S. border agents to processing waves of incoming migrants - had most acutely affected shipments of Mexican fresh vegetables headed north.

FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2019, file photo, Border Patrol agent Vincent Pirro looks on near a border wall that separates the cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, in San Diego. A surge in family arrivals, largely from Guatemala and Honduras, has led Border Patrol agents to shift attention from preparing criminal cases to caring for children. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

"Of course Mexico is going to lose, Mexican exporters are going to lose," Marquez said. "But in the end, the ones who are going to be affected are U.S. consumers, because soon they won't find fresh vegetables on store shelves."
BOSTON (AP) - In a scheme to get doctors to write prescriptions in exchange for cash, a wealthy drug company founder put patients at risk to guarantee his business' success, a federal prosecutor told jurors Thursday in his closing arguments in the closely-watched trial.

Meanwhile, an attorney for Insys Therapeutics Founder John Kapoor sought to poke holes in the government's case, calling its two star witnesses liars with conflicting stories and accusing prosecutors of targeting Kapoor so just so they can tout a high-profile conviction.

"The story cannot be true and they don't care because they have had their eye on this man, and these people for years," Attorney Beth Wilkinson said. "They want to show that they can take the guy at the top ... and they don't care if the other guys make up their story," she said.

Kapoor and four other former executives of the Chandler, Arizona-based company are charged with conspiring to pay doctors millions of dollars in the form of fees for sham speaking events about the drug - a highly addictive fentanyl spray meant for patients with severe cancer pain.

Prosecutors said Insys staffers also misled insurers about patients' medical conditions and posed as doctors' office employees in order to get payment approved for the costly opioid.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nathaniel Yeager told jurors that Kapoor and the others targeted reckless prescribers and tracked how much money the company got in return for the bribes because they were consumed by their own financial gain.

FILE - In this Jan. 30, 2019, file photo, Insys Therapeutics founder John Kapoor leaves federal court in Boston. He is one of four former company executives accused of scheming to bribe doctors into prescribing a powerful fentanyl painkiller. Lawyers are delivering their closing arguments Thursday, April 4, 2019, in the trial. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

"First, do no harm became: First do what you're told. First, do what you agreed to do. First, before the patient, take care of us," Yeager said.

One of the government's star witnesses was the company's former vice president of sales who's cooperating for the chance at a lighter sentence. Alec Burlakoff, who pleaded guilty, told jurors last month that Insys sought out as "business partners" doctors who were known to write lots of prescriptions for people who didn't need it.

"Pill mills for us meant dollar signs," Burlakoff said. "It was not run the other way. It was run to the pill mill."

Wilkinson said Burlakoff was the one plotting the scheme with doctors and that he and former CEO Michael Babich are lying in order to protect themselves.

She also blasted prosecutors for trying to paint the drug as dangerous, arguing that it legitimately helped people suffering from serious pain. Kapoor invested heavily in the company because he truly believed in the power of the drug, she said.

"He had every reason to believe that this was good for patients. And he put his money where his mouth is," she said.

Closing arguments are expected to continue Friday in the case, which began in January.

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Follow Alanna Durkin Richer at http://www.twitter.com/aedurkinricher
WASHINGTON (AP) - Rejecting a plank of President Donald Trump's foreign policy, the House on Thursday invoked never-before-used powers to demand that his administration withdraw support from the Saudi-led war in Yemen . The Senate passed the same resolution in March with bipartisan support.

Trump is expected to issue a veto of the measure , his second as president, and Congress does not have the votes to override him. But the action was nonetheless a milestone for lawmakers, who have shown a renewed willingness to assert their war-making powers after letting them atrophy for decades under presidents from both parties.

"The president will have to face the reality that Congress is no longer going to ignore its constitutional obligations when it comes to foreign policy," said Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Yemen was plunged into a civil war in September 2014, when rebels known as Houthis swept into the capital and overthrew the country's internationally recognized government. The Saudi-led coalition began fighting the rebels months later in a campaign that Saudi Arabia said was aimed at curbing Iranian influence. At the time, the Houthis were allied with forces backed by Iran; in the years that followed, Iran's role in the conflict has grown.

The conflict has been a bloody stalemate for years. Thousands have been killed in Saudi airstrikes on civilian infrastructure, and millions are on the brink of starvation. The war has devastated the economy of Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country. The vast majority of the population cannot afford food to eat.

Two lawmakers who have led the charge for the war powers resolution, Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have displayed photos of emaciated Yemeni children when they have given speeches on the Senate floor.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., center, meets with House Rules Committee Chair James McGovern, D-Mass., right, after the House voted to end American involvement in the Yemen war, rebuffing the Trump administration's support for the Saudi-led military campaign, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 4, 2019, though President Trump is expected to veto it. It's the first time Congress has invoked the decades-old War Powers Resolution to try and stop a foreign conflict. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

"This is a moral stain on this nation, every day that we continue to take part in this war," Murphy said after Thursday's vote.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee, a Republican who championed the measure, said it "is long past time that we end U.S. involvement in this unauthorized, unjustified, and immoral war that has caused immense human suffering."

While the U.S. has trained Saudi soldiers and sold the kingdom arms for decades, direct support to the Saudi coalition began in 2015, during the Obama administration, with intelligence sharing, logistical support and inflight refueling. The Pentagon ordered an end to inflight refueling last November.

Support for the coalition carried over into the Trump administration, which has made Saudi Arabia a central ally in efforts to disengage from the Middle East and take a hard line on Iran. On his first international trip as president, Trump visited Riyadh, where he emphasized business ties between the two countries. Home to key American military bases, Saudi Arabia also remains one of the top buyers of American arms and Trump has made it a priority to loosen weapons export controls.

As it has done in the past, his administration on Thursday defended the alliance with Saudi Arabia as a foreign policy imperative. Navy Cmdr. Rebecca Rebarich, a Pentagon spokeswoman, warned that curtailing U.S. military support could make the country's problems worse.

"New restrictions on the limited U.S. military support could still increase civilian casualties, jeopardize cooperation with our partners on counterterrorism, undercut UN-led peace negotiations at a critical point, and embolden Iran to increase its support to the Houthis which raises the risk for regional conflict," Rebarich said. "We need to continue to work with our partners to minimize civilian casualties and expand urgent humanitarian efforts throughout Yemen.

The White House statement threatening a veto said the bill raises "serious constitutional concerns." It also argued U.S. support for the Saudis coalition does not constitute engaging in "hostilities," meaning the War Powers Act doesn't apply.

Those arguments were echoed by House Republicans.

Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the measure "does nothing to address the humanitarian crisis in Yemen" and argued the lawmakers were abusing the authority under the War Powers Resolution, which was enacted in 1973.

"This radical interpretation has implications far beyond Saudi Arabia," McCaul said. He warned that the measure could "disrupt U.S. security cooperation agreements with more than 100 countries."

Debate over U.S. support to the military campaign flared late last year after the killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi by agents of the kingdom. Lawmakers from both parties said Trump had not condemned Saudi Arabia strongly enough, citing the president's apparent dismissal of assessments from U.S. intelligence agencies that the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the killing.

A resolution to withdraw U.S. support from the war passed the Senate in December, and was revived this year after Democrats took the House majority.

Final passage Thursday came despite a procedural gambit from House Republicans related to support for Israel, an issue that has been a point of tension for Democrats in recent months. GOP leaders proposed adding language condemning the international boycott movement against Israel and efforts to delegitimize the country.

Democrats called the amendment a ploy to kill the Yemen resolution and rallied against it.

"This is about politics, this is about trying to drive a wedge into this caucus where it does not belong," said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., to applause from Democrats.

As the resolution headed to the White House, supporters in both parties made a final plea for Trump to sign it. A letter signed by Lee, Sanders, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and members of the House cited Trump's desire to avoid "costly and never-ending conflicts across the globe."

By signing the resolution, the lawmakers wrote, the president could "set a new precedent" and take on "entrenched opposition to foreign-policy restraint."

Asked about the resolution late Thursday, Trump was noncommittal.

"I'll take a look at it," he told reporters at the White House.

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Associated Press writers Lolita Baldor and Deb Riechmann contributed from Washington

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For more coverage of the war in Yemen from the AP, go to: https://apnews.com/YemenDirtyWar

FILE - In this Feb. 13, 2019 file photo, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel D-N.Y., left, speaks with Ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas during the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing in Washington. The House has voted to end American involvement in the Yemen war, rebuffing the Trump administration's support for the Saudi-led military campaign. The bill goes to President Donald Trump, who's expected to veto it. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

From left, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and House Rules Committee Chair James McGovern, D-Mass., speak to reporters after the House voted to end American involvement in the Yemen war, rebuffing the Trump administration's support for the Saudi-led military campaign, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 4, 2019, though President Trump is expected to veto it. It's the first time Congress has invoked the decades-old War Powers Resolution to try and stop a foreign conflict. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Rules Committee Chair James McGovern, D-Mass., reads how the House voted to end American involvement in the Yemen war, rebuffing the Trump administration's support for the Saudi-led military campaign, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 4, 2019, though President Trump is expected to veto it. It's the first time Congress has invoked the decades-old War Powers Resolution to try and stop a foreign conflict. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) - The Latest on legal wrangling over abortion in Kentucky (all times local):

4:45 p.m.

A federal appeals court has upheld the constitutionality of a Kentucky law requiring doctors to perform ultrasounds and show fetal images to patients prior to abortions.

The 2-1 ruling Thursday by a 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel is a victory for Kentucky's Republican Gov. Matt Bevin. The 2017 law was challenged by the state's last remaining abortion clinic.

The law was struck down in a lower court, prompting Bevin to appeal.

The majority opinion said the law doesn't violate a doctor's First Amendment rights. It also said ultrasounds provide "relevant information."

Kentucky's law would force doctors to describe the ultrasound while the pregnant woman listens to the fetal heartbeat. Women could avert their eyes and ask to have the sound of the heartbeat turned off

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3:20 p.m.

An abortion-rights group is disagreeing with Kentucky's Democratic attorney general over the validity of a state law that could determine if the state's only abortion clinic stays open.

The disagreement stems from a legal brief filed by Attorney General Andy Beshear supporting EMW Women's Surgical Center in Louisville.

Beshear urged a federal appeals court to strike down a regulation on "transfer agreements" between an abortion clinic and a hospital and ambulance service in case of emergencies. But Beshear urged the court to not strike down the law underlying the regulation.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold a ruling that struck down both the law and regulation.

Beshear is an abortion-rights supporter who is running for Kentucky governor this year.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on U.S.-China trade talks (all times local):

4:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump says the U.S. is "rounding the turn" in trade negotiations with China.

Trump is meeting Thursday afternoon with China's top trade negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He.

Trump says "progress is being made at a very rapid pace," but adds that there's still "a ways to go."

U.S. and Chinese negotiators are engaged in their ninth round of talks to resolve a dispute over American allegations that Beijing is using predatory tactics, including cybertheft, in a campaign to challenge U.S. technological dominance.

President Donald Trump speaks during the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council meeting in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Thursday, April 4, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Trump has slapped tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese products. In retaliation, China has targeted $110 billion in American imports.

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12:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump says trade talks with China are "moving along very nicely."

Trump made the comment hours before he was scheduled to meet Thursday afternoon with China's top trade negotiator, Vice Premier Liu He. The two countries are working to end a standoff that has shaken financial markets and darkened the outlook for the world economy.

Despite his upbeat assessment, Trump cautioned that "if it's not a great deal, we're not doing it."

U.S. and Chinese negotiators on Wednesday began their ninth round of talks to resolve a dispute over American allegations that Beijing is using predatory tactics, including cybertheft, in a campaign to challenge U.S. technological dominance.

Trump has slapped tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese products. In retaliation, China has targeted $110 billion in American imports.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding swept through the area.

People who live in the affected Nebraska and Iowa towns have had to adjust to boiling water before drinking it or relying on bottled water while officials work to repair the damage. The challenges each town faces after last month's flooding differs, but they share the goal of restoring safe drinking water service quickly.

Last month's flooding caused more than $3 billion damage in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas and Missouri when spring rain and melting snow combined to overwhelm area rivers and inundate towns and land. But the damage is still being tallied.

In Glenwood, Iowa, officials used a boat this week to reach one of their three wells inside the water treatment plant and make repairs, while the other two wells remain underwater. But getting a well up and running is only part of the process. Glenwood City Administrator Angie Winquist said the city's water pipes and towers need to be flushed and refilled before the water can be tested.

"It will be at least a couple more weeks, but that's better than a couple months," Winquist said.

Restoring drinking water is so time consuming, in part, because of all the steps required to ensure the water is safe. For instance, once the damage has been repaired and the system refilled, the water must test clean several times on different days.

Jeff Vonder, right, an employee of Omaha's Municipal Utilities District, hands Kim O'Connor of Pacific Junction, Iowa, a jug of water he had filled from MUD's emergency water supply tanker, in Glenwood, Iowa, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

So Glenwood will continue trucking in more than 6,000-gallon tanks of water to provide the roughly 275,000 gallons its residents are using each day.

Across the Missouri River in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, officials said it could be six months before they get their water treatment plant operating again. Fortunately, that Omaha-area city was able to connect to a nearby rural water system, but it doesn't have the same capacity, meaning residents must continue conserving water.

About 50 miles further south, the flooding forced Peru State College to close for two days. Students were able to return because the campus itself wasn't flooded, but the city's water still isn't drinkable.

Peru State spokesman Jason Hogue said more than 900,000 gallons of bottled water has been donated to the school since the flooding began. The city has been trucking water in from two nearby cities because its water plant remains flooded, but the water has to be boiled before it can be consumed.

Perhaps the biggest problem for some Peru State students and employees is that road closures have drastically increased their commute.

Hogue said it used to take about 30 minutes to drive to Hamburg, Iowa, but now it's more like 2 hours. The school has offered discounted housing on campus to affected students and employees.

Hamburg was also hard hit by the flooding, and much of the town remains flooded because the water flowed behind a damaged levee and can't return to the river on its own.

An emergency well was dug for Hamburg, but the boil order remains in effect.

Hamburg School Superintendent Mike Wells said the water system isn't operating at full capacity, so half the school has flush toilets while the other half has to use portable toilets outside.

"The kids think they have it pretty tough," Wells said. He joked that some have been trying to tell their grandparents about how bad they have it by using outhouses at school.

The school's gym has been converted to a store of sorts where Hamburg residents can come to get supplies and help, and that will likely continue through the summer. Wells said the school is doing more outside activities and some dance in the classroom for exercise.

After the flooding, 20 of Hamburg's 161 students transferred to schools in other towns. Another 32 are commuting to Hamburg to finish out the school year.

Wells said losing that many students would be a blow to his district, but he's optimistic the town will recover.

"We have a strong community," Wells said. "This will give us the opportunity to do things better."

Leanne Achenbach of Bartlett, Iowa, carries donated water to her car at the Glenwood, Iowa, Resource Center Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Adam Wilson of Glenwood, Iowa, walks away with buckets filled with water from Omaha's Municipal Utilities District's emergency water supply tanker, in Glenwood, Iowa, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

The Glenwood, Iowa, water plant stands in flood waters Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Glenwood's wells and water-treatment plant were inundated by flood waters and are now being repaired and tested. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

A resident loads jugs of water filled from Omaha's Municipal Utility District's emergency water supply tanker into the trunk of his car, in Glenwood, Iowa, into the trunk of his car into the trunk of his car Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

A tanker drives by a "Boil Water" sign at the entrance to Glenwood, Iowa, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Glenwood's wells and water-treatment plant were inundated by flood waters and residents are being asked to boil their water. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Flood waters from the fields and the town of Pacific Junction, Iowa, are pumped away to a drainage channel that leads back to the Missouri River Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

The Glenwood, Iowa, water plant stands in flood waters as corn stalks washed by the floods cover the surrounding area Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Glenwood's wells and water-treatment plant were inundated by flood waters and are now being repaired and tested. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

A "Boil Water" sign is seen at the entrance to Glenwood, Iowa, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Glenwood's wells and water-treatment plant were inundated by flood waters and residents are being asked to boil their water. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

Utility workers travel by boat past grain bins in the flooded town of Pacific Junction, Iowa, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

An employee cleans the pump room at the Glenwood, Iowa, water plant Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Glenwood's wells and water-treatment plant were inundated by flood waters and are now being repaired and tested. Several communities along the Missouri River continue to struggle to restore drinking water service weeks after massive flooding disrupted life in the towns and caused significant damage(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
LONDON (AP) - A new eight-part Netflix series chronicling life on Earth and the threat posed by climate change has received a royal sendoff at London's Natural History Museum.

Prince Charles lauded the "Our Planet" series and its narrator David Attenborough at the world premiere Thursday night. He was joined by sons Prince William and Prince Harry.

Charles praised Attenborough, 92, for helping to "lift the veil of ignorance from our eyes about the intricate and integrated beauty of our home."

He also said he is proud of his sons William and Harry for sharing his passion for working to restore "the balance of nature," joking that he thought they had been ignoring him when he told them about the importance of the natural world but found out when they reached adulthood that they had actually been listening.

The ambitious Netflix series, produced in conjunction with the World Wildlife Fund and Silverback Films, was four years in the making and involved 600 crew members filming in 50 countries and on each continent.

The first segment featured astonishing footage detailing the variety of the world's wildlife and chronicling the sound and fury as 75 million tons of glacial ice collapsed into the sea off Greenland.

Britain's Prince Charles gives a speech during the global premiere of Netflix's "Our Planet" at the Natural History Museum in London, Thursday April 4, 2019. (John Sibley/Pool via AP)

Introducing the series, Attenborough cited Charles Darwin's warnings that "we break nature's connections at our peril."

On a more positive note, the longtime TV broadcaster - who was speaking directly beneath the museum's celebrated skeleton of a blue whale - said the population of many types of whales are recovering after prolonged periods of decline.

"What we did to save the whales we must do for all of nature," Attenborough said.

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This story has been corrected to show that the name of the group is World Wildlife Fund.

Britain's Prince William and David Beckham during the global premiere of Netflix's "Our Planet" at the Natural History Museum in London, Thursday April 4, 2019. (John Sibley/Pool via AP)

From left, Britain's Prince William, Sir David Attenborough, Prince Harry, and Prince Charles meet on the steps of the Natural History Museum in central London, for the premiere of a new series of Our Planet, Thursday, April 4, 2019. (Photo by Joel C Ryan/Invision/AP)

Britain's Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry and British naturalist David Attenborough attend the global premiere of Netflix's "Our Planet" at the Natural History Museum in London, Thursday April 4, 2019. (John Sibley/Pool via AP)

Britain's Prince Harry talks with guests during the global premiere of Netflix's "Our Planet" at the Natural History Museum in London, Thursday April 4, 2019. (John Sibley/Pool via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - A man who masterminded a $100 million Ponzi scheme and escaped from a federal prison in California may have fled to South America and federal officials have named his boyfriend as a person of interest in the case, according to court records reviewed by The Associated Press on Thursday.

Frederick Darren Berg was serving an 18-year prison sentence when he walked away from the federal prison camp in Atwater, California, in December 2017.

Since then, investigators have been focusing their attention on his boyfriend, Darrell Ray Blankenship, a flight attendant who authorities say may have had access to a private jet and frequently traveled to Chile, according to court documents.

Earlier this week, federal agents sought a search warrant for his electronics and communication and they suspect he's been talking to Berg since his escape, the records said.

Blankenship has not been charged with a crime or formally accused of wrongdoing. He did not immediately respond to a message left Thursday at a cellphone number listed in court papers.

In a statement, the U.S. Marshals Service said Berg was "responsible for the largest fraud scheme ever prosecuted in the Western District of Washington" and has more than 10 years left on his sentence.

This image provided by the U.S. Marshals Service shows part of the wanted poster for Frederick Darren Berg. Federal agents believe Berg, the man who masterminded a $100 million Ponzi scheme and escaped from a federal prison in California, may have fled to South America. Court records reviewed by The Associated Press detail the investigation into the 2017 escape of Berg. The documents say the U.S. Marshals Service has named Berg's former boyfriend, Darrell Ray Blankenship, as a "person of interest" in connection with the escape. Blankenship has not been charged with a crime. (U.S. Marshals Service via AP)

"While we cannot discuss an active and open investigation, we still encourage the public to report any tips or sightings to us," Deputy U.S. Marshal Michael A. Garcia said, referring tipsters to the agency's website .

A few weeks after Berg's escape - in the first three weeks of 2018 - Blankenship posted several photos that investigators believe were taken at a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, including one that showed three men sitting on a lounge chair and one of them had the same hairline as Berg, court records said.

During that same time, Blankenship also sent a message to Berg's mother with a note that read, "hello from Rio," according to the documents. Investigators also obtained a message that Blankenship allegedly sent to a tarot card reader in February 2018 that was signed "Darrell and Darren."

Months later, deputy U.S. marshals tracked down a tipster - a mutual friend of Berg and Blankenship - who showed them Instagram messages he received from Blankenship. One of the messages said Blankenship had "just heard from Darren" and that he was fine.

Berg pleaded guilty in 2012 to wire fraud, money laundering and bankruptcy fraud charges for scamming hundreds of people. Federal prosecutors in Washington state alleged that Berg began the nearly decade-long scam in 2001 and used investors' funds to sign contracts, buy real estate and make loans, all while promising there would be profits to repay the investors.
SAN DIEGO (AP) - As the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy hits its anniversary, the promise to criminally prosecute everyone who crosses the Mexico border illegally has been forced to evolve. Today the reality is families come first.

A surge in family arrivals, largely from Guatemala and Honduras, has led Border Patrol agents to shift attention from preparing criminal cases to caring for children in detention facilities, driving families to border stations and performing hospital watch on the growing number of migrants who require medical attention.

"We are spending so much time and effort and money to care for families," Border Patrol spokesman Ross Wilkin said. "The numbers are through the roof."

Caring for children traveling alone is also taxing resources, as is a new administration policy to return asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. immigration courts, Wilkin said.

The effects can be seen in the diminishing impact of one of the Trump administration's hallmark immigration policies.

In San Diego, just seven migrants filed into the jury box of a wood-paneled courtroom Wednesday in the clothes they wore a day earlier. That's when agents found some of them hiding in a large drainage pipe and thick brush in a rugged, remote area. It was a stark contrast to September, when up to 40 went through the jury box every day, 20 at a time.

FILE - In this March 14, 2019, file photo, Jose Fermin Gonzalez Cruz holds his son, William Josue Gonzales Garcia, 2, as they wait with other families who crossed the nearby U.S.-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas, for Border Patrol agents to check names and documents. A surge in family arrivals, largely from Guatemala and Honduras, has led Border Patrol agents to shift attention from preparing criminal cases to caring for children. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

Court was canceled in San Diego on March 27 for the first time since zero tolerance was introduced in California in July, several months after it was announced nationally, because prosecutors did not file any cases, said Jami Ferrara, who represents defense attorneys on a court panel to address the policy.

In McAllen, Texas, only two people were sentenced at a hearing Monday, according to a person familiar with courthouse operations who was not authorized to speak with the media and spoke on condition of anonymity. That person's account was confirmed by attorney Efren Olivares of the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Last year, during the peak of family separations caused by zero tolerance, judges sentenced dozens at a single hearing.

Customs and Border Protection referred 8,998 cases for criminal prosecution along the Mexican border in February, down 12% from 10,252 in January and 23% from 11,652 in October, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Prosecution referrals plunged 35% in the Southern District of California from October to February and 34% in the Southern District of Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, which includes McAllen.

Numbers for March were unavailable, but the drop may be even larger. Olivares and the person familiar with the McAllen courthouse estimated that prosecutions for illegal entry there dropped from around 500 a week in February to about 100 a week in March.

Zero tolerance was announced April 6, 2018, by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who vowed to prosecute first-time offenders who enter the country illegally with crimes punishable with up to six months in jail, though typically the sentences were only a few days. Data on whether the strategy deters people from crossing is limited and inconclusive, with figures from 2012 showing 10% of migrants arrested for misdemeanor illegal entry had been caught in the previous year.

The policy backfired when thousands of children were separated from their parents and the government lacked tracking systems to quickly reunite them. Trump retreated in June amid an international uproar, six days before a federal judge ruled that families could be split only in limited circumstances, like child safety concerns. Since then, the policy has applied only to single adults.

While families and children traveling alone account for more than six of 10 Border Patrol arrests, more single adults are also coming. There were 23,451 single-adult arrests in February, up 7% from 21,918 in October.

Prosecutions have held relatively steady in El Paso, Texas, which has suddenly emerged as the border's second-busiest area for illegal crossings. On Wednesday, seven women and 18 men stood in front of a judge wearing blue or green prison jumpsuits and orange foam shoes. The women stood handcuffed, the men with chains around their waists and shackles between their feet.

One by one, all pleaded guilty to illegal entry, and within 10 minutes of the beginning of the hearing the judge was turning to sentencing.

Prosecutions have dropped in Arizona and New Mexico, though not nearly to the extent of California and South Texas. In downtown Tucson, the court recently introduced Friday hearings for illegal entry cases. On most days, about 70 people are prosecuted, with only about 30 on Fridays.

Prosecutions in McAllen, the epicenter of last year's family separations, fell dramatically on March 11, said Olivares, who questioned whether the surge in families was entirely to blame and suggested it helps bolster the administration's narrative of a border spinning out of control. He has closely monitored the courthouse over the last year.

"The government declared a national emergency, and there were no facts to support that," he said.

Rick Barlow, a former Border Patrol sector chief in San Diego, said it typically takes an arresting agent a couple of hours to prepare a case for criminal prosecution. Additional agents are assigned to a prosecutions unit.

"It's not a simple processing piece," he said. "It's quite time-consuming."

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Merchant reported from Houston. Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio in El Paso, Texas, and Astrid Galvan in Phoenix also contributed to this report.

FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2019, file photo, Border Patrol agent Vincent Pirro looks on near a border wall that separates the cities of Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego, in San Diego. A surge in family arrivals, largely from Guatemala and Honduras, has led Border Patrol agents to shift attention from preparing criminal cases to caring for children. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

FILE - In this March 14, 2019, file photo, a Border Patrol agent talks with a group suspected of having entered the U.S. illegally near McAllen, Texas. A surge in family arrivals, largely from Guatemala and Honduras, has led Border Patrol agents to shift attention from preparing criminal cases to caring for children. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
BURGAW, N.C. (AP) - A mistrial has been declared in the sentencing hearing for a North Carolina man found guilty of first-degree murder, meaning he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

News outlets report a Pender County jury convicted 56-year-old James Bradley last week in the 2013 slaying of Elisha Tucker, whose body was found bound in duct tape and wrapped in trash bags in a shallow grave. But the jury deadlocked on Thursday despite deliberating over two days on Bradley's sentence, meaning a life sentence was automatic.

Bradley had already been found guilty of second-degree murder in the presumed death of Shannon Rippy Van Newkirk, whose body has never been found after she disappeared five years ago. Authorities found Tucker's body while they were searching for Van Newkirk.
DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) - Daytrotter has closed its venue space and recording studio in Iowa and is relocating to Atlanta.

The lease on the Davenport studio expired at the end of March and the company was no longer making a profit hosting live shows there, Matt Lundberg, a senior vice president of Daytrotter's majority owner and online music retailer Wolfgang's Vault, said Wednesday. It closed March 30, the Quad-City Times reported.

Daytrotter is moving to Atlanta to be closer to its partner, Paste Magazine, an online publication that hosts Daytrotter's catalog of more than 7,000 band sessions, Lundberg said. The Atlanta venue will be open by July 1.

Since 2006, burgeoning indie bands and veteran acts have been recording tracks at Daytrotter. The venue's alumni include Wilco, The National, Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver, the Alabama Shakes and Macy Gray.

The studio was first located in downtown Rock Island and it moved to downtown Davenport in 2016.

After it relocated, Daytrotter started to host live concerts. Lundberg said it was an "exciting opportunity" in 2016, but it never proved economically worthwhile. The live shows stopped by late May 2018 and numerous staff members were let go the following month.

"We have never been successful in making an economic go of it," Lundberg said then. "We knew we had to do something. We were losing money every time we were using it."

Kyle Carter, executive director of the Downtown Davenport Partnership, said the closing was a result of business decisions and it is not likely to have an effect on the city's local market.

Co-founder Sean Moeller left Daytrotter after the move to Davenport. Moeller said the studio's impact is cemented in the Quad City music scene.

"Daytrotter was founded by Quad-Citizens, and its impressive legacy is well documented," Moeller said. "To my knowledge, the company as a whole continues to record and stream music even though its local presence has moved. We should continue to celebrate its local legacy and enjoy the thriving Q-C music scene."

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Information from: Quad-City Times, http://www.qctimes.com
DALLAS (AP) - The Latest on immigration agents arrest of nearly 300 people at a Texas company (all times local):

4:50 p.m.

Immigration officials say the nearly 300 people arrested at a Texas technology repair company came to the U.S. from 15 different countries on multiple continents.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it has released nearly two-thirds of the more than 280 people who did not have legal authorization to work in this country. They worked at CVE Technology Group refurbishing used cellphones.

Special Agent in Charge Katrina Berger says 110 of the people are being held in federal detention centers in Texas. The rest were given a date to appear in immigration court and released for "humanitarian reasons," such as being the sole caregiver for a child or having a serious illness.

Berger says her staff conducted the large operation without drawing agents from other jurisdictions.

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials stand outside CVE Group in Allen, Texas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people at the North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

A phone message seeking comment with CVE was not immediately returned.

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3:15 p.m.

A raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that federal authorities are touting as the largest in a decade was the latest in a series of similar enforcement actions under the Trump administration over the last two years.

About 200 law enforcement officials descended Wednesday on CVE Technology Group in Allen, a city about 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Dallas.

Approximately 280 people who work for the technology repair company were taken away in buses. Each will face deportation proceedings.

The Texas raid was the latest in a series of high-profile busts of businesses around the country as part of President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

Critics say the raids break up hard-working families and make it even harder for businesses to find employees in a tight labor market.

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a bus from LaSalle Corrections Transport departs CVE Group in Allen, Texas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people at the North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, people react outside CVE Group after a bus from LaSalle Corrections Transport departed the facility in Allen, Texas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people at the North Texas technology company in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News via AP)

In this Wednesday April 3, 2019 photo, family and friends of detainees gather outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Dallas. Immigration agents arrested nearly 300 people on Wednesday at CVE Technology Group in Allen, a city about 15 miles northeast of Dallas, in what authorities say is one of the largest enforcement actions of its kind in a decade (Shaban Athuman/The Dallas Morning News via AP)
MILWAUKEE (AP) - A Milwaukee man charged with killing the mother of his child and suspected of killing their 2-year-old child appeared at a court hearing restrained in a wheelchair, shackled and wearing a shock device.

Thirty-five-year-old Dariaz Higgins is accused of fatally shooting 24-year-old Sierra Robinson and wounding another woman on March 11. The body of Higgins' daughter, Noelani Robinson, was found in a ditch in Minnesota four days after Higgins was arrested on March 13. Authorities say the child died from head trauma. Her death remains under investigation.

Defense attorney Alejandro Lockwood objected to the restraints at Thursday's hearing and his client "being treated like an animal." Court officials said Higgins has been acting up in jail.

During the hearing prosecutors added a charge of attempted first-degree intentional homicide to the original charges of first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree recklessly endangering safety.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A former vice squad officer in Ohio was charged Thursday with fatally shooting a woman who was sitting in his unmarked police vehicle in what the man says was an act of self-defense.

Columbus police say Andrew Mitchell shot and killed 23-year-old Donna Castleberry in August 2018 after she stabbed him in the hand during an undercover prostitution investigation.

Mitchell, 55, was indicted on one count each of murder and voluntary manslaughter. Mitchell's attorney, Mark Collins, said Thursday that Mitchell will plead not guilty.

Collins said the burden on prosecutors is to prove Mitchell wasn't acting in self-defense, and added that an internal Columbus police review determined the shooting was a proper use of force.

"He was stabbed first," Collins said. "There's no dispute about that."

The Columbus police department respects the decision to charge Mitchell, who resigned from the agency last month in bad standing, said Tom Quinlan, the acting chief.

This undated photo provided by the Department of Justice shows Columbus vice squad Officer Andrew Mitchell. The former vice squad officer in Ohio was charged Thursday, April 4, 2019, with fatally shooting a woman who was sitting in his unmarked police vehicle in what the man says was an act of self-defense. (Department of Justice via AP)

"Andrew Mitchell's actions have cast a long shadow over the Columbus Division of Police," Quinlan said. "I am taking concrete actions to restore the public's trust."

Mayor Andrew Ginther said that prosecuting Mitchell is "essential both to protect our community and to support the many honorable officers whose reputations he has unfairly tarnished."

Castleberry's family has said that she had struggled with drugs and was likely working the streets as a prostitute at the time she was shot. She left behind two young daughters.

"There is no happy ending in this situation, but maybe there can possibly be a slightly better ending than what it could have been and this is a start," said Castleberry's cousin, Mary Laile.

The shooting happened in a parking lot behind an apartment building in an area known for prostitution. A month earlier, Castleberry had been arrested nearby on a misdemeanor soliciting charge after offering to have sex with an undercover officer for $50, according to court records.

A witness, Kaitlin Patton, previously told The Associated Press that she walked up to Mitchell's car after hearing several shots and saw Mitchell pushing Castleberry's folded-over body into the rear seat. Catching sight of Patton, Mitchell told her he was a police officer, that he'd been stabbed, and to call 911.

A coroner's report shows Castleberry was shot three times.

Police say Mitchell was under investigation for criminal misconduct before the shooting. He was relieved of duty with pay in October.

Mitchell is also facing federal charges filed last month on allegations he forced women to have sex with him under threat of an arrest, pressured others to cover up crimes and lied to the FBI by saying he'd never had sex with prostitutes. He has pleaded not guilty and Collins, his attorney, has described the allegations as unfounded. The FBI searched Mitchell's house Sept. 26.

The federal indictment accuses Mitchell, a 30-year veteran, of arresting two different women and forcing them to have sex with him before he would release them.

Later, during the federal investigation, Mitchell lied when he told the FBI he'd never had sex with a prostitute, since Mitchell knew "he has had sex with numerous prostitutes, including having paid women money for sex," according to the indictment.

Federal prosecutors also say multiple women who were tenants of Mitchell's rental properties traded sex for free or reduced rent from him, some of whom work as prostitutes and most of whom are drug addicts. All "are vulnerable members of our community," prosecutors said in a filing last month.

Collins has disputed these arguments, noting that Mitchell has not been charged with such crimes.

The charges against Mitchell were the latest mark against the embattled vice squad, which has also been under scrutiny since last year's arrest of porn actress Stormy Daniels. Charges against her were dropped hours later. The police department disbanded the unit last month, saying vice-related crimes will be handled differently and with a more community-based approach.

Earlier this year, Daniels sued several Columbus police officers for $2 million over that arrest. Daniels' federal defamation lawsuit alleges that officers conspired to retaliate against her because of her claims she had sex with Donald Trump before he became president.

Last month, an internal police investigation concluded Daniels' arrest was improper, but not planned or politically motivated.

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Follow Andrew Welsh-Huggins on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A special coroner's jury in California ruled the deaths of two women and their six adopted children was a murder-suicide after hearing testimony that one of the women had searched death by drowning online and the other deliberately stepped on the gas, sending their SUV plunging off a cliff.

Jurors deliberated for about an hour Thursday before returning the unanimous verdicts that Jennifer and Sarah Hart killed themselves on March 26, 2018, in Mendocino County. The jury decided the six children, 12 to 19, died at the hands of another and not by accident.

Authorities had indicated they believed the crash was deliberate but wanted a jury to make official findings.

A coroner's inquest is generally used in cases involving in-custody deaths or officer-involved shootings where public interest is high and the need for transparency critical, said Mendocino County sheriff's Capt. Gregory L. Van Patten.

The deaths drew national attention, partly because the women were alleged to have abused their children. The body of Devonte Hart, 15, who was black and had gained attention when he was photographed in tears while hugging a white police officer during a 2014 protest in Portland, Oregon, has not been recovered.

Jurors were instructed to choose from four manners of death for each of the eight people: natural causes, suicide, accident or an intentional act by another. They sat through nearly two full days of testimony.

FILE - In this March 29, 2018 file photo, Deputy Bill Holcomb looks down the cliff near the crash site near Mendocino, Calif., as search and rescue volunteers scour the area behind him on and resume looking for children, still missing after their parent's SUV plunged into the ocean Monday. A California Highway Patrol investigator testified Thursday, April 4, 2019 that Sarah Hart searched whether death by drowning was relatively painless hours before her wife drove an SUV off a cliff, killing them and six adopted children in waters below. A special coroner's jury in Mendocino County is trying to determine whether the March 2018 deaths were murder-suicide or accidental. (Kale Williams/The Oregonian via AP)

"It is my belief that both Jennifer and Sarah succumbed to a lot of pressure," sheriff's Lt. Shannon Barney said Thursday. "Just a lot of stuff going on in their lives, to the point where they made this conscious decision to end their lives this way and take their children's lives."

The crash happened days after authorities in Washington state opened an investigation into allegations of neglect. The bodies of both women were found in the vehicle, which landed below a cliff located more than 160 miles (250 kilometers) north of San Francisco.

The Hart family had fled their Woodland, Washington, home March 23 after a visit from social workers that day.

Sarah Hart searched suicide, drowning, Benadryl dosages and overdose methods on the internet throughout the drive to California, California Highway Patrol investigator Jake Slates said. She also queried whether death by drowning would be painful. Authorities recovered the deleted searches from her phone.

"They both decided that this was going to be the end," Slates said. "That if they can't have their kids that nobody was going to have those kids."

The bodies of siblings Markis, Jeremiah and Abigail were found the same day near the car. Weeks later, the body of Ciera Hart was pulled from the Pacific Ocean. Hannah Hart was eventually identified through a DNA match.

Slates said that Jennifer Hart, who rarely drank, had a blood alcohol level over the legal limit and may have been "drinking to build up her courage." Sarah Hart had 42 doses of generic Benadryl in her system and the children also had high amounts of the sleep-inducing drug in their bodies, he said.

A neighbor of the Harts had filed a complaint with the state, saying the children were apparently being deprived of food as punishment. No one answered when social workers went to the family's home.

A witness who was camping by their vehicle says he heard their car rev up and peal out around 3 a.m. March 26.

Sarah Hart pleaded guilty in 2011 to a domestic assault charge in Minnesota over what she said was a spanking given to one of her children. Oregon child welfare officials also investigated the couple in 2013, but closed the case without taking any action.

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This version corrects story to show Sarah Hart was conducting internet searches
MEXICO CITY (AP) - The wife of convicted drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has launched an appeal to fashion designers to propose designs for a clothing line named after her husband.

Emma Coronel posted a message on her Instagram account this week saying "I invite clothing designers who are starting out and who want to join the project, to work with me."

Coronel has dubbed the line "El Chapo Guzman: JGL," but she has had a little trouble registering her husband's name as a trademark. Authorities say the fact that it's the name of a criminal "violates public order, morality and good manners."

She has also struggled with exactly what contribution to fashion could be made by a short, stocky man who was best known for fleeing through sewers in a filthy tank-top T-shirt.

Coronel wrote that "my goal is to project my style and Joaquin's, but to please everybody."

Coronel urged aspiring designers to write to Mariel Colon Miro, her designated representative for the undertaking.

FILE - In this Jan. 17, 2019 file photo, Emma Coronel Aispuro leaves Brooklyn federal court, in New York, after attending the trial of her husband Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. The convicted drug lord and his wife have stylish future plans: Creating clothing with the brand name "El Chapo." The New York Daily News reports on Friday, March 29, 2019, that 61-year-old Guzman and his 29-year-old wife, Aispuro, are working together on the project. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen, File)

Colon Miro wrote Thursday that "we have received a lot of responses from designers who are interested in forming part of the project. We are very happy with the response."

"We are still not going to give out details about the look, because we want it to be a surprise," Colon Miro wrote. "The line will be offered online for the moment, so that people around the world can buy it."

El Chapo was found guilty in February of murder conspiracy charges, drug trafficking, money laundering and firearms possession. He's awaiting sentencing and could spend the rest of his life in prison.

FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2014, file photo, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman is escorted to a helicopter in handcuffs by Mexican navy marines at a navy hanger in Mexico City, Mexico. The convicted drug lord and his wife have stylish future plans: Creating clothing with the brand name "El Chapo." The New York Daily News reports on Friday, March 29, 2019, that 61-year-old Guzman and his 29-year-old wife, Emma Coronel Aispuro, are working together on the project. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - A Republican-led Iowa Senate committee failed Thursday to advance a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights for felons, killing one of GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds' top proposals ahead of a legislative deadline.

Reynolds has advocated strongly for the policy for convicted felons saying she believes in redemption. She gained significant support from a diverse group of advocates that rarely join together including religious groups, the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence and conservative leaning policy organizations like Americans for Prosperity.

"I am disappointed in today's setback, but I will not give up the fight for Iowans who deserve a second chance," she said in a statement. "There's more work to do, but I am committed to getting this done."

The resolution passed with bipartisan support in the House 95-2 last week. It had to win approval of the Senate this year and pass again in the Legislature in 2021 or 2022 before going to voters.

Failure to get through the Senate Judiciary Committee means it fails to get through Thursday's legislative deadline that requires House bills to pass a Senate committee to survive.

Committee Chairman Brad Zaun, a Republican from Urbandale, pulled the measure from the Thursday afternoon committee agenda. He said he promised Reynolds he'd bring it up in his committee but didn't have votes in the Republican caucus to advance it. The committee has 10 Republicans and five Democrats.

"Personally, I have some concerns about just automatic reinstatement of felons' voting rights, but I promised her I would go to caucus and after having a long discussion during caucus we as a group decide we were not going to move it out of committee," he said.

Some lawmakers want to require total repayment of restitution before rights could be restored, a hurdle many felons could never cross. Others wanted language to exclude those convicted of murder, rape or child molestation from ever getting voting rights back.

Zaun said failure to get the bill through doesn't speak to Reynolds' influence within her own party.

"I've been down here a long time and there's been many governors that didn't get everything they wanted," he said.

Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen said Democrats agreed with the governor and applauded the strong support in the House.

"It is shameful that Sen. Brad Zaun and other Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee killed this priority legislation for the 2019 session," she said.

Petersen called on the governor to use her authority to issue an executive order and return voting rights to felons that way. Reynolds has said the change should be permanent and not at the whim of one person.

In 2005, Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack signed such an executive order and restored voting rights to convicted felons upon completion of their sentence but Reynolds' predecessor Republican Gov. Terry Branstad reversed it in 2011.

Since then Iowa voter registration is canceled upon conviction of a felony. Rights can only be restored by the governor.

Only Iowa and Kentucky have such strict requirements.

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Follow David Pitt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/davepitt
TOKYO (AP) - Tokyo prosecutors arrested Nissan's former chairman Carlos Ghosn on Thursday for a fourth time on fresh allegations that cut short his brief time outside detention.

Ghosn was taken from his apartment in Tokyo early in the morning to the prosecutors' office and then sent to the Tokyo Detention Center, the same facility where he spent more than three months following his arrest in November. He had been released on bail just a month earlier.

It's unclear how long Ghosn may be detained under the latest arrest.

"My arrest this morning is outrageous and arbitrary," Ghosn said in a statement issued Thursday. "It is part of another attempt by some individuals at Nissan to silence me by misleading the prosecutors. Why arrest me except to try to break me? I will not be broken. I am innocent of the groundless charges and accusations against me."

Prosecutors defended the move, saying the latest allegations are a new case requiring precautions to prevent Ghosn from destroying evidence. They allege $5 million in funds sent by a Nissan subsidiary to an overseas dealership were diverted to a company controlled by Ghosn.

"We now have a totally different case, and we are only doing what we think is right," Shin Kukimoto, deputy chief prosecutor at the Tokyo District Prosecutor's Office, told reporters.

A car which is believed to be carrying Nissan former Chairman Carlos Ghosn leaves an apartment building early Thursday, April 4, 2019 in Tokyo. Japanese prosecutors took Nissan's former Chairman Ghosn for questioning Thursday, barely a month after he was released on bail ahead of his trial on financial misconduct charges.(Takuya Inaba/Kyodo News via AP)

"As a result of our investigation, we have a new case in which he must be detained, and we have appropriately obtained an arrest warrant from the court," he said.

Ghosn, 65, was first arrested on Nov. 19 on charges of under-reporting his compensation. He was rearrested twice in December. The multiple arrests prolong detentions without trial and are an oft-criticized prosecution tactic in Japan's criminal justice system.

The allegations in the most recent arrest cover three money transfers from 2015 through last year, according to the prosecutors.

Kukimoto said the new allegation of breach of trust is different from an earlier charge made in January. The companies where the money was transferred to, the motives, and the alleged scheme are all different, he said. He refused to identify the three companies allegedly involved but said one company was in effect owned by Ghosn.

Unlike an earlier case, in which Ghosn caused damage to Nissan to benefit himself and a business partner, this time it was merely "for his own personal benefit," Kukimoto said.

French prosecutors also are investigating Ghosn's financial activities at Nissan's French alliance partner Renault SA, where he was chairman and CEO until his arrest. Ghosn is one of France's most famous executives, and each development in his legal saga is closely watched by the French government, a key Renault shareholder.

A statement from the Japanese prosecutors' did not mention Oman, but the new allegation appears related to an investigation by Renault into payments to a major dealership in the Middle Eastern country, some of which are suspected of having been channeled for Ghosn's personal use.

Renault said Wednesday that it had turned over information about those payments to French prosecutors.

Ghosn predicted a new arrest in a French television interview conducted hours before the prosecutors appeared at his apartment. He told broadcaster TF1 that he had never been "above the law," but acknowledged that he "pushed things to the limit" to improve Nissan and Renault. The interview was filmed Wednesday but aired Thursday.

Prosecutors also seized the passport of his wife Carole along with her computer and cellphone, including sensitive exchanges with attorneys, the family's French lawyer told The Associated Press in Paris. Japanese prosecutors would not comment when asked why the wife was targeted.

Ghosn was an auto industry star, having transformed Nissan over two decades from near bankruptcy into one of the largest automaking alliances in the world.

Nissan, a co-defendant on the charges of under-reporting compensation, declined comment on the criminal proceedings.

However, company spokesman Nicholas Maxfield said in a statement that "Nissan's internal investigation has uncovered substantial evidence of blatantly unethical conduct."

The maker of the March subcompact, Leaf electric car and Infiniti luxury models will hold a shareholders' meeting next week to oust Ghosn from its board.

The maximum penalty upon conviction on charges of under-reporting compensation and breach of trust is 15 years in prison. It is unclear when Ghosn's trial may begin. Preparations for trials in Japan routinely take months.

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Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter at https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

On Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/yurikageyama/?hl=en

A car which is believed to be carrying Nissan former Chairman Carlos Ghosn leaves an apartment building early Thursday, April 4, 2019 in Tokyo. Japanese prosecutors took Nissan's former Chairman Ghosn for questioning Thursday, barely a month after he was released on bail ahead of his trial on financial misconduct charges.(Takuya Inaba/Kyodo News via AP)/Kyodo News via AP)

Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, center, leaves his lawyer's office in Tokyo, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. Ghosn, facing financial misconduct charges in Japan, says he will hold a news conference on April 11. (Sadayuki Goto/Kyodo News via AP)

In this April 3, 2019, file photo, former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, center, leaves his lawyer's office in Tokyo. Japanese prosecutors took Nissan's former Chairman Ghosn for questioning Thursday, April 4, barely a month after he was released on bail ahead of his trial on financial misconduct charges. (Sadayuki Goto/Kyodo News via AP, File)

In this April 3, 2019, photo, former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn returns to his residence in Tokyo. Japanese prosecutors took Ghosn for questioning Thursday, April 4, 2019, barely a month after he was released on bail ahead of his trial on financial misconduct charges. (Mizuki Ikari/Kyodo News via AP)

FILE - In this April 20, 2018, file photo, then Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn speaks during an interview in Hong Kong. Japan's court has denied the prosecutor's request to extend detention of ex-Nissan chair Carlos Ghosn. Ghosn, facing financial misconduct charges in Japan, says he will hold a news conference April 11. Ghosn said Wednesday on his new verified Twitter account he is getting ready to tell the truth. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)

In this April 3, 2019 photo, former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn in a car leaves his lawyer's office in Tokyo. Japanese prosecutors took Ghosn for questioning Thursday, April 4, 2019, barely a month after he was released on bail ahead of his trial on financial misconduct charges. (Takuya Inaba/Kyodo News via AP)
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - After generations of breathing life into Venezuela's crowded capital, the tree-covered slopes of El Avila mountain looming above Caracas are being transformed into a public bath amid worsening power failures that are disrupting life in the crisis-wracked country.

Every day, hundreds of people without running water hike up from the city on Avila's winding trails to bathe, wash clothes and collect water to carry home. To the dismay of environmental activists who fear the damage will be irreversible, people are littering its slopes and creeks with shampoo and water bottles, food wrappers, cardboard and old clothes.

Wildfires in recent weeks that charred swaths of the drought-stricken mountain have compounded the damage, threatening to leave long-term environmental scars on the land declared a national park six decades ago.

School bus driver Gorge Eglis Escalante and his teenage daughter dragged a pink basket of dirty clothes to a secluded spot recently. Spigots in their Chacaito neighborhood ran dry nearly a month earlier.

"I never would have imagined doing this here," Escalante said while soaking a shirt in a bucket of stream water and detergent after scrubbing it on a rock. "We have the government to thank for this."

Residents of Caracas have been crowding waterways in the park of 315 square miles (81,800 hectares) every day since Venezuela's power grid failed March 7, knocking out lights as well as the pumps that move water to homes.

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a man get undressed before he bathes in one of the streams that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. El Avila National Park, which for decades has been the icon and lung of the capital, has now been transformed into a large public bath where hundreds of people come every day to take a bathe and collect water. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

The nationwide blackout, and others that have followed, comes as President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Juan Guaido struggle over power. The opposition, which blames Venezuela's economic collapse on mismanagement and damaging policies by the socialist government, is trying to oust Maduro with backing from the United States and some 50 other nations.

Officially given the indigenous name "Waraira Repano," or "Sierra Grande," the park is home to dozens of birds and other species, such as opossums, bats, squirrels, pumas, foxes, porcupines and deer.

The wildlife relies on its pristine brooks and creeks for water and the animals put their nests and burrows amid the vast stretch of trees and shrubs that is now being invaded by humans.

Liquor store clerk Jonathan Lopez said he began visiting Avila at dawn two weeks ago to bathe and collect water after his poor 23rd of January neighborhood lost electricity.

"It gives you the shivers," he said of his bath in the crystal-clear Chacaito stream, scooping water with his hands to rinse soap from his head and body while standing thigh-deep. "But you have to put up to get by."

Nearby, a thin man wearing jeans and a light blue sweat shirt filled plastic bottles with water. Then he unzipped his trousers and tried to urinate unnoticed in the stream.

Wildfires that have hit the park lately and the influx of people have put the mountain in a "high risk" situation, said Jose Manuel Silva, director of Venezuela Verde, a charity dedicated to environmental protection.

"It's having a big impact on Avila," Silva said.

But there is little that can be done to protect the park amid Venezuela's economic crunch, he said. He noted that state agencies have had to dramatically reduce numbers of park rangers and firefighters. And, he added, it's impossible to stop the influx of people searching for water - a basic human necessity.

Doing rounds at Avila, a National Parks Institute official said authorities are aware of the trash piling up and the environmental damage.

But the official, who insisted on speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to comment, said his work is now limited to guaranteeing that people who come to Avila for water "don't get out of hand."

Lopez, the liquor store clerk, conceded that he is also concerned about the treasured park's fate. Near his makeshift bath, somebody had left behind old clothes hanging on bushes.

Even the soap and laundry detergents he uses will take a toll, Lopez said. But he said he has few other options to get cleaned up.

"You don't truly appreciate the things you have until you've lost them," he said.

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Fabiola Sanchez on Twitter: https://twitter.com/fisanchezn

In this Tuesday, April 2, 2019 photo, a woman bathes in one of the streams that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. Generations living in Venezuela's capital have cherished Avila, a towering tree-covered mountain that breathes life into the crowded city below. This natural treasure has now been relegated, at a time of the country's deepening crisis, to an outdoor bathroom. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this March 18, 2019 photo, flames rise from El Avila National park in Caracas, Venezuela. The recent fires as well as the massive visits generated due to water scarcity have put El Avila in a situation of "high risk," said Jose Manuel Silva, director of Venezuela Verde, a charity dedicated to environmental protection. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

Angel Sanchez bathes in one of the streams that comes down from El Avila National Park, during interruptions in running water in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, April 3, 2019. The park's invasion by desperate Caracas residents alarms environmentalists who fear it will leave irreversible damage. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a man washes clothes in a stream that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. Hundreds living in Caracas without running water each day hike from their homes up Avila's winding trails to bathe, wash clothes and collect water to carry home. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, an abandoned bra lays on a rock near a stream that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. Hundreds living in Caracas without running water are littering the park's slopes and creeks with shampoo and water bottles, food wrappers, cardboard and discarded clothes. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a man collects water from a stream that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. The park's invasion by desperate Caracas residents alarms environmentalists who fear it will leave irreversible damage. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a girl attempts to carry two containers full of water collected from a stream that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. Hundreds living in Caracas without running water each day hike from their homes up Avila's winding trails to bathe, wash clothes and collect water to carry home.(AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this Tuesday, April 2, 2019 photo, a woman fills containers with water collected from a stream that comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. It's become common to see hundreds of people carrying empty bottles, bath towels and laundry baskets deep into El Avila, tired of going without or standing in longs lines to take advantage of scarce supplies in town. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, soft drink bottles filled with water collected from a stream that comes down from El Avila National Park lay o the ground in the park, in Caracas, Venezuela. A National Parks Institute official admitted that the authorities are well aware of the trash people are leaving behind and the environmental damage. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)

In this Wednesday, April 3, 2019 photo, a stream comes down from El Avila National Park in Caracas, Venezuela. The national park spanning 315 square miles (81,800 hectares) has drawn of hundreds of visitors daily starting March 7 when a massive blackout hit nationwide, taking down with it water services. (AP Photo/Fernando Llano)
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - An Albanian national who talked about joining ISIS and attacking random people to avenge a shooting at a New Zealand mosque was arrested at a gun range in Montana, authorities said Thursday.

Fabjan Alameti, 21, appeared before a U.S magistrate judge Thursday on charges of possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance and making false statements involving international and domestic terrorism.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch ordered him detained for further proceedings.

Alameti's federal public defender, John Rhodes, said he is working on a proposal for his client's release. He declined further comment.

Authorities first interviewed Alameti in 2018, and he later made pro-ISIS comments on Facebook, FBI Special Agent Matthew Duermeier said in a sworn statement filed with the court.

Starting in January of this year, Alameti spoke with a federal informant about fighting with the terrorist organization in Iraq and Syria and plotting an attack in the U.S. against a military facility, recruitment center, government building, "gay club" or Jewish temple, Duermeier said.

This April 4, 2019, photo released by the Missoula County Sheriff's Office shows Fabjan Alameti, 21. Alameti, who federal agents say talked about joining ISIS and attacking random people to avenge a shooting at a New Zealand mosque, has been arrested at a gun range in Montana. He appeared before a U.S magistrate judge Thursday to hear the charges of possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of a controlled substance and making false statements involving international and domestic terrorism. (Missoula County Sheriff's Office via AP)

But Alameti also later said he would not carry out an attack on U.S. soil because the country had granted him citizenship, the FBI agent's statement said.

Alameti told the informant he moved from his home in the Bronx to Bozeman last month because he hated his life in New York City, he was having family issues and he had a job interview in Montana, where it was easier to buy a gun, Duermeier said.

Alameti was traveling to Montana by bus on March 15 when a gunman opened fire in a Christchurch mosque and killed 50 people.

He asked the federal informant to send him a link to the video of the shooting because it would fuel him. "I will attack random people to avenge the blood," Alameti told the informant, according to Duermeier.

Once in Bozeman, Alameti looked at guns in pawn shops and Wal-Mart, and he bought an air rifle. He was kicked out of a hotel for smoking marijuana and hospitalized on March 25 for apparent acute alcohol intoxication, Duermeier said.

After he was released, he went to the Bozeman police department to pick up his belongings, where was interviewed by an officer. In that interview, Alameti denied being linked to anyone who asked him to travel overseas, said he never expressed a desire to harm Americans, never expressed a desire to fight the U.S. military overseas and never expressed a desire to fight for ISIS, Duermeier said.

On Tuesday, another federal informant recorded Alameti saying while buying marijuana that he could die the following day and said he wanted to "shoot up" the hotel that he had been kicked out of. He said he wanted to go to a gun range the following day and shoot a rifle that he had seen in a pawn shop, the FBI agent's statement said.

On Wednesday, Alameti showed up at the firing range, paid $35 to rent an M1A rifle and was arrested when he took possession of it, Deurmeier said.

The federal charge on which he was arrested says it's illegal to possess a weapon while using drugs, and the false statement charge apparently is related to the answers he gave Bozeman police during his interview.
LONDON (AP) - It might just be enough to kill your buzz: A new study challenges the idea that a drink or two a day could actually be good for you.

In a study conducted in China, the researchers found that moderate drinking slightly raised the risk of stroke and high blood pressure. They weren't able to figure out, though, whether small amounts of alcohol might also increase the chances of a heart attack.

People who have a drink or two a day have long been thought to have a lower risk of stroke and heart problems than nondrinkers. But scientists were unsure if that was because the alcohol was beneficial or if the people who didn't drink had other health issues.

"The claims that alcohol has some magical, protective fix ... has no particularly serious scientific basis," said Richard Peto, of the University of Oxford, one of the study's senior authors.

Peto said their findings should apply to other populations beyond China and to any alcoholic drinks like beer or wine, even though the study participants mostly drank spirits. The research was published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet .

For their research, the Chinese and British scientists took genetics into account. They focused on two variants common among East Asians that can make drinking unpleasant. For those with the variants, drinking alcohol can result in quickly turning red, a fast heart rate, nausea or headaches.

FILE - This Monday, July 10, 2017 file photo shows different shaped glasses of wine in Sonoma, Calif. According to a large genetic study released on Thursday, April 4, 2019, drinking alcohol raises the risk of high blood pressure and stroke, debunking previous claims that moderate drinking was protective. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Because such gene variations occur randomly, the researchers were able to design the equivalent of a randomized study. Much of the previous research on alcohol and health effects has relied on studies that can't prove cause and effect.

The scientists tracked more than 500,000 people across China, following them for a decade. They recorded their medical history, including whether they smoked or exercised, and how much they drank. A third of the men reported drinking most weeks, compared with few of the women.

About 160,000 of the participants had the two gene variants. Among the men in that group, drinking ranged from none to up to four drinks a day. The researchers looked at how many had strokes or heart attacks, and compared them to participants without the variants and to the women with the variants.

Overall, the study found alcohol increases the stroke risk by about one-third for every four additional drinks per day. The researchers found no protective effects for moderate drinking. For people who drink up to two drinks a day - which would qualify as moderate drinking - scientists said they would have an increased stroke risk of about 10% to 15% when compared to nondrinkers. There weren't enough heart attacks among the participants to be able to draw a conclusion about heart risks, the researchers said.

In a journal commentary, the authors called for stricter controls on alcohol, saying its risks have been underestimated.

"The alcohol industry is thriving and should be regulated in a similar way to the tobacco industry," wrote Shiu Lun Au Yeung and Dr. Tai Hing Lam of the University of Hong Kong.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House said Thursday that Democratic efforts to obtain President Donald Trump's tax records are "political games."

A House committee chairman formally asked the IRS Wednesday to provide six years of Trump's personal tax returns and the returns for some of his businesses as Democrats try to shed light on his complex financial dealings and potential conflicts of interest.

The request by Massachusetts Rep. Richard Neal, who heads the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, is the first such demand for a sitting president's tax information in 45 years. The unprecedented move is likely to set off a huge legal battle between Democrats controlling the House and the Trump administration.

Neal made the request Wednesday in a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, asking for Trump's personal and business returns for 2013 through 2018. He asked for the documents in seven days, setting an April 10 deadline.

Trump told reporters Wednesday he "would not be inclined" to provide his tax returns to the committee. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Thursday morning that the White House "is not interested in playing a bunch of political games like the Democrats in Congress clearly want to spend their time doing."

Asked again later Thursday for his response to Neal's demand, Trump didn't provide a direct answer.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders talks with reporters outside the White House, Thursday, April 4, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

"They'll speak to my lawyers; they'll speak to the attorney general," Trump said at the White House, referring to Attorney General William Barr, whom he appointed.

Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec declined to comment.

An IRS spokesman said the agency had no comment on Neal's request.

Democrats insist that obtaining Trump's tax filings falls within their mandate of congressional oversight. Republicans have denounced it as a political witch hunt and invoked privacy concerns.

"We have completed the necessary groundwork for a request of this magnitude, and I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal and oversight rights," Neal said in a statement Wednesday evening.

Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the senior Republican on the Ways and Means panel, denounced the move as "an abuse of the tax-writing committees' statutory authority."

"Weaponizing our nation's tax code by targeting political foes sets a dangerous precedent and weakens Americans' privacy rights," Brady wrote in a letter Wednesday to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS. "As you know, by law all Americans have a fundamental right to the privacy of the personal information found in their tax returns."

Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House GOP leader, said "a lot of Americans are shocked" that Congress can review tax returns, "whether it's a blue collar worker or president of the United States."

The legal battle set to ensue could take years to resolve, possibly stretching beyond the 2020 presidential election.

Trump broke with decades of tradition for presidential candidates by refusing to release his income tax filings during his 2016 campaign. He has said he won't release them because he is being audited, even though IRS officials have said taxpayers under audit are free to release their returns. Trump claimed at a news conference following the November election that the filings are too complex for people to understand.

The IRS has a policy of auditing the tax returns of all sitting presidents and vice presidents, "yet little is known about the effectiveness of this program," Neal said in the statement. "On behalf of the American people, the Ways and Means Committee must determine if that policy is being followed, and if so, whether these audits are conducted fully and appropriately."

Neal continued, "In order to fairly make that determination, we must obtain President Trump's tax returns and review whether the IRS is carrying out its responsibilities."

Neal is one of only three congressional officials authorized to make a written request to the Treasury secretary for anyone's tax returns. The Internal Revenue Service is part of the Treasury Department. A rarely used 1924 law says the Treasury chief "shall furnish" the requested material to members of the Ways and Means Committee for them to examine behind closed doors.

A spokesman for Mnuchin didn't respond to requests for comment.

Mnuchin suggested in testimony to Congress last month that he would protect Trump's privacy if the House Democrats requested his tax returns. "We will examine the request and we will follow the law ... and we will protect the president as we would protect any taxpayer" regarding their right to privacy, Mnuchin said.

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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Alan Fram, Mary Clare Jalonick, Darlene Superville and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

In this April 2, 2019, photo, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., arrives for a Democratic Caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington. Neal, whose committee has jurisdiction over all tax issues, has formally requested President Donald Trump's tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., arrives for a Democratic Caucus meeting at the Capitol in Washington, on April 2, 2019. Rep. Neal, whose committee has jurisdiction over all tax issues, has formally requested President Donald Trump's tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service for the past 6 years. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
NEW YORK (AP) - On a single day last fall, over 200 people accused but not convicted of small-time, misdemeanor crimes sat in New York City's infamous Rikers Island jail because they couldn't pay bail. Nearly half were behind bars for lack of $2,000 or less, according to city statistics.

Few or none would be there under a newly approved overhaul of the state's bail system, which will no longer let judges put a price on freedom for most people awaiting trial on misdemeanors, nonviolent felonies and certain robbery and burglary charges.

The state budget that passed this week includes new bail rules that could affect thousands of people statewide. It's among criminal justice changes that also will require prosecutors and defense lawyers to show each other certain evidence early in a case, altering deadlines seen as some of the most eve-of-trial latest in the nation.

Civil rights groups and defense lawyers see the measures as a turning point in a state where they say a progressive reputation hasn't matched reality for the accused.

"These reforms help transform New York from a laggard to a leader on justice," New York Civil Liberties Union executive director Donna Lieberman said.

But the Democrat-led overhaul has drawn opposition from Republican lawmakers and some law enforcement officials who say it could jeopardize public safety.

"If anyone believes crime doesn't pay, they should visit New York," state Assembly Republican Leader Brian Kolb said in a statement.

People arrested in New York and other states are sometimes held until trial, particularly in major, violent felony cases. But in many cases, defendants are either released outright or offered a chance to get out by putting up bail money as a guarantee they'll return to court. If they don't, they forfeit the money.

Critics say bail punishes poor people who are, by law, presumed innocent, and presents a public safety paradox: Some major-crime suspects get out because they can pay high bail, while low-level defendants who can't pay small sums stay in jail.

Cities such as Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York have cut back on cash bail in recent years, as have states including New Jersey and New Mexico. Some places have eliminated it altogether: California last year became the first state to do so, deciding to free many suspects while barring release altogether in major violent felony cases. The law is now on hold until a 2020 referendum.

Washington D.C. eliminated cash bail back in the 1990s.

New York's reckoning over bail has been whetted by distressing cases.

A former U.S. Marine and homeless Rikers inmate, Jerome Murdough, sweltered to death in 2014 in a 100-degree cell while being held on $2,500 bail in a trespassing case. Kalief Browder, who was a teenager at the time, spent three years at Rikers on $3,000 bail before the charge against him - stealing a backpack - was dropped in 2013.

Browder's suicide two years later helped prompt officials to cut down on using money bail in the city. Defendants were released without it in more than three-quarters of cases citywide last year, according to the New York City Criminal Justice Agency . The city-linked nonprofit says 86% of people freed without bail made all their court dates in 2017, the last year available.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has estimated the new state law will keep about 90% of defendants out of jail at least until their case gets resolved.

Among other things, it requires police to release people with court appearance tickets in most misdemeanor and some felony cases, rather than hold them until they go before a judge.

State data show two-thirds of the 408,000 people arrested last year were accused of misdemeanors.

Some advocates for arrestees say the state needs to go further and eliminate money bail altogether.

"Money is not what leads to people coming back to court," says Paul Goldberg, who runs the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund.

The charity pays modest bail, averaging $1,100, for 1,200 or more New York City misdemeanor defendants each year, and offers them reminders and transportation help to get them to court appearances. Ninety-five percent make every date, Goldberg said.

But some prosecutors, judges and lawmakers say bail remains a needed tool in some cases and the new law doesn't do enough to protect the public.

"We believe this is a dangerous mistake," six New York City and suburban district attorneys, all Democrats, wrote in an op-ed in the Daily News last week. They suggested the law might allow detention of someone who amassed weapons but didn't have a known, specific target.

Prosecutors also note that some suspects in major crimes are initially arrested in minor ones, and bail can help ensure they stick around while authorities build a case.

As other states begin to assess the outcomes of reducing the use of money bail, the New Jersey judiciary this week released a largely upbeat report . It noted declining a jail population with little change in reoffense or court appearance rates.

But while there has been progress on the state's goal of shrinking racial disparities in jail, black men are still overrepresented, the report said.
CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand (AP) - A New Zealand judge on Friday ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two Christchurch mosques undergo two mental health assessments to determine if he's fit to stand trial.

High Court judge Cameron Mander made the order during a hearing in which 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared via video link from a small room at the maximum security Paremoremo prison in Auckland.

Mander said nothing should be read into his order for the mental health assessments, as it was a normal step in such a case. Lawyers said it could take two or three months to complete.

The judge said Tarrant was charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder. Police initially filed a single, representative murder charge before filing the additional charges this week.

Tarrant was wearing handcuffs and a gray-colored sweater when he appeared on a large screen inside the Christchurch courtroom, which was packed with family members and victims of the shooting, some in wheelchairs and hospital gowns and still recovering from gunshot wounds.

Tarrant had stubble and close-cropped hair. He showed no emotion during the hearing. At times he looked around the room or cocked his head, seemingly to better hear what was being said. The judge explained that from his end, Tarrant could see the judge and lawyers but not those in the public gallery.

Tofazzal Alam, a survivor of the Linwood Mosque shootings, speaks to the media outside the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Tarrant spoke only once to confirm to the judge he was seated, although his voice didn't come through because the sound was muted. It wasn't immediately clear if his link had been deliberately or inadvertently muted.

The courtroom was filled with more than two dozen reporters and about 60 members of the public. A court registrar greeted people in Arabic and English as the hearing got underway. Some of those watching got emotional and wept.

In the March 15 attacks, 42 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven were killed at the Linwood mosque and one more person died later.

The day after the attacks, Tarrant dismissed an appointed lawyer, saying he wanted to represent himself. But he has now hired two Auckland lawyers to represent him, Shane Tait and Jonathan Hudson. The next court hearing was scheduled for June 14, and the mental health findings would determine whether he is required to enter a plea then.

Outside the courtroom, Yama Nabi, whose father died in the attacks, said he felt helpless watching.

"We just have to sit in the court and listen," Nabi said. "What can we do? We can't do nothing. Just leave it to the justice of New Zealand and the prime minister."

Tofazzal Alam, 25, said he was worshipping at the Linwood mosque when the gunman attacked. He felt it was important to attend the hearing because so many of his friends were killed.

Alam said he felt upset seeing Tarrant.

"It seems he don't care what has been done. He has no emotion. He looks all right," Alam said. "I feel sorry. Sorry for myself. Sorry for my friends who have been killed. And for him."

A man in a wheelchair is escorted from outside the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant, undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A man in a wheelchair is escorted from outside the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant, undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Shane Tait, left, a lawyer acting for Brenton Harrison Tarrant, talks with media outside the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

People leave at the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant, undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Shane Tait, a lawyer acting for Brenton Harrison Tarrant, walks outside the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

Shane Tait, left, a lawyer acting for Brenton Harrison Tarrant, talks with media outside the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)

A armed police office stands guard outside the entrance to the High Court in Christchurch, New Zealand, Friday, April 5, 2019. A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques, 28-year-old Brenton Harrison Tarrant, undergo two mental health tests to determine if he's fit to enter pleas in the case. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The Latest on a former Ohio vice officer charged with murder and voluntary manslaughter (all times local):

7:25 p.m.

A defense attorney says a former vice squad officer in Ohio will plead not guilty to murder and voluntary manslaughter charges brought after the officer fatally shot a woman who was sitting in his unmarked police vehicle.

Columbus police say officer Andrew Mitchell shot and killed 23-year-old Donna Castleberry in 2018 after she stabbed him in the hand during an undercover prostitution investigation.

A grand jury on Thursday charged Mitchell with murder and voluntary manslaughter.

Mark Collins, Mitchell's attorney, said Thursday the burden on prosecutors is to prove Mitchell wasn't acting in self-defense.

This undated photo provided by the Department of Justice shows Columbus vice squad Officer Andrew Mitchell. The former vice squad officer in Ohio was charged Thursday, April 4, 2019, with fatally shooting a woman who was sitting in his unmarked police vehicle in what the man says was an act of self-defense. (Department of Justice via AP)

Collins also says an internal Columbus police review determined the shooting was a proper use of force.

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6 p.m.

A former vice squad officer in Ohio has been charged with fatally shooting a woman who was sitting in his unmarked police vehicle in what the man says was an act of self-defense.

Columbus police say officer Andrew Mitchell shot and killed 23-year-old Donna Castleberry in 2018 after she stabbed him in the hand during an undercover prostitution investigation.

A grand jury on Thursday charged Mitchell with murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Mitchell's attorney has defended his actions, saying it was a proper use of force.

Mitchell is also facing federal charges of forcing women to have sex with him under threat of an arrest, pressuring others to cover up crimes and lying to the FBI by saying he'd never had sex with prostitutes. He has pleaded not guilty.

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Follow Andrew Welsh-Huggins on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/awhcolumbus.
Hong Kong: Govt probes primary school

The Government will monitor the implementation of remedial measures adopted by a primary school that is suspected of misappropriating funds collected from pupils for overseas trips.

Secretary for Education Kevin Yeung told reporters today that the Education Bureau started looking into the case of Baptist (Sha Tin Wai) Lui Ming Choi Primary School before it was reported by the media.

He said the scope of investigations also includes whether the school complied with government guidelines in tendering procedures and staff promotions.

We did find out that there were some irregularities, and so we have already issued a letter to the Incorporated Management Committee and advised them that they had breached some of the guidelines and they had to have some remedial actions.

And they actually have replied to us that they would take some remedial actions.

At this stage, we will be following up and make sure that what they have promised us to do will be implemented and followed up closely.

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
NEW YORK (AP) - Attorneys for Michael Cohen are asking members of Congress to help keep him out of prison.

In a letter sent to lawmakers Thursday, Cohen's legal team said he is still sorting through documents in his personal files that might be of interest to House Democrats investigating President Donald Trump, including emails, voice recordings, images and other documents on a hard drive.

"To date, Mr. Cohen has located several documents that we believe have significant value to the various congressional oversight and investigation committees," wrote the attorneys, Lanny Davis, Michael Monico and Carly Chocron.

They said Cohen, Trump's former lawyer and fixer, has been going through the documents alone, without any help, and if he reports to prison May 6 as scheduled, he won't be able to finish reviewing the material.

They asked the lawmakers to write letters saying that Cohen was cooperating and that "the substantial trove of new information, documents, recordings, and other evidence he can provide requires substantial time with him and ready access to him by congressional committees and staff to complete their investigations and to fulfill their oversight responsibilities."

If any lawmakers were to write such a letter, it could be useful if Cohen petitioned the court to delay his prison report date.

FILE - In this March 6, 2019 file photo, Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, returns to testify on Capitol Hill in Washington. Attorneys for Cohen have asked members of Congress to help keep him out of prison. In a letter sent to lawmakers Thursday, April 4, 2019, the lawyers said Cohen is still sorting through documents that might be of interest to House Democrats investigating his former boss, President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

The letter was sent to U.S. Representatives Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters and Elijah Cummings

Cohen, who pleaded guilty last year to tax evasion, fraud, lying to Congress and campaign finance violations, has already received one short delay on medical grounds while he recovered from shoulder surgery.

In their letter to lawmakers, Cohen's lawyers said they were still holding out hope that federal prosecutors in New York would not only back another delay in the start of his prison term, but agree to reopen his case and advocate for a lighter sentence. He has been sentenced to a three-year term.

"It is our hope that the authorities in the Southern District of New York will consider this total picture of cooperation by Mr. Cohen, verified by your letter and the important new evidence he has made available or could make available to assist the government, and the particular facts involved here to grant Mr. Cohen a reduced term following the rules and procedures of the Southern District of New York."

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney in Manhattan declined to comment.

New York prosecutors previously advocated for a tough sentence, saying the crimes were serious and that the help Cohen had provided to ongoing investigations wasn't as valuable or as complete as Cohen had claimed.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) - Australia's prime minister said on Friday his government was working with international aid workers to repatriate three orphaned Australian children of a convicted terrorist from a Syrian refugee camp.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia would only help the children of extremists - not adults - return from the war zones of Syria and Iraq.

"Where there are Australians who are caught up in this situation, particularly as innocent children, then we will do what I think Australians would expect us to do on their behalf," Morrison told reporters.

The government has previously refused to help Australians who have joined Islamic State fighters in the Middle East then changed their minds.

The three survivors of former Islamic State group fighter Khaled Sharrouf's five children who were brought by their mother Tara Nettleton to Syria in 2014 contacted their Sydney grandmother Karen Nettleton last month, Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.

The grandmother immediately traveled to the crowded al-Hawl refugee camp in northeast Syria where 17-year-old Zaynab, Hoda, 16, and Humzeh, 8, have been since they fled the Islamic State fighters' last stand in the Syrian village of Baghouz.

Zaynab is heavily pregnant and has her own two children with her, Ayesha, 3, and Fatima, 2. Both Zaynab and Hoda have shrapnel wounds, ABC reported.

Morrison said his government is working with the Red Cross to get the children out of Syria to a country with an Australian diplomatic post.

Once the children have been identified and their citizenships confirmed, they would be issued with travel documents to Australia, Morrison said.

Karen Nettleton was negotiating with Kurdish authorities who control the camp to get them out, ABC reported.

The grandmother said she feared that her eldest granddaughter and her unborn baby might not survive if she gives birth in the camp.

"They're just kids. They're Australian children. They're orphan children. They're my children. They're not going to be a risk to anyone," Nettleton told ABC.

The siblings' father in 2017 became the first dual national to be stripped of Australian citizenship for actions contrary to his allegiance to Australia.

Sydney-born Sharrouf slipped out of Australia in 2013 on his brother's passport because his own had been canceled because of a conviction for his part in a thwarted terrorist attack plot in Australia. He was left with Lebanese citizenship.

Sharrouf horrified the world in 2014 when he posted on social media a photograph of his young son clutching the severed head of a Syrian soldier.

Then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described that image as "one of the most disturbing, stomach-turning, grotesque photographs ever displayed."

Sharrouf's wife died in Syria of medical complications a year after she arrived in Islamic State territory with their children.

Sharrouf and his two eldest sons Abdullah, 12, and Zarqawi, 11, were killed in an air strike near Raqqa, the Islamic State-group's stronghold in Syria, in August 2017, the ABC reported.
HAGATNA, Guam (AP) - The governor of Guam has signed into law recreational use of marijuana on the U.S. island territory.

Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero signed the bill Thursday - a week after the Legislature narrowly passed the legislation that allows people ages 21 and older to possess up to an ounce (28 grams), the Pacific Daily News reported .

"We must regulate this illicit drug that is the most widely used drug in our society," the governor said. "We have to take it and control it, monitor its use and effects, benefit from its medicinal efforts, allow our people to live in a safer environment."

People won't be able to legally purchase marijuana until regulations are developed by the new Cannabis Control Board and approved by the Legislature.

The board has up to year to form the rules. The law tasks the nine-member board with overseeing cannabis testing, manufacturing, licensing and packaging.

Guam also needs a cannabis testing facility before sales can begin, Sen. Clynt Ridgell said.

FILE - In this Jan. 31, 2017 photo, agriculture regulators from seven different states and Guam tour a Denver marijuana growing warehouse on a tour organized by the Colorado Department of Agriculture in Denver. The governor of Guam has signed into law recreational use of marijuana on the U.S. island territory. The Pacific Daily News reports Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero signed the bill Thursday, April 4, 2019, a week after the Legislature narrowly passed legislation that allows people ages 21 and older to possess up to an ounce. People won't be able to legally purchase marijuana until regulations are developed by the new Cannabis Control Board and approved by the Legislature. (AP Photo/Kristen Wyatt, File)

"This has been and continues to be a community issue, but the fight is not over yet," Ridgell said in a statement. "I invite the public to remain focused on continuing to provide input in the development of the rules and regulations by the Cannabis Control Board for safe, adult use cannabis."

The law allows growing as many as six plants for personal use. It prohibits people from using marijuana in public or driving under the influence.

Under the law, employers can still enforce drug-free workplaces.

"Nothing changes in the policies of our workplace as responsible businesses and agencies," the governor said. "We must continue to enforce zero-tolerance of substance abuse in the workplace."

Guam voters approved medical marijuana in 2014.
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) - The lives and futures of more than 19 million Bangladeshi children are at risk from the colossal impact of devastating floods, cyclones and other environmental disasters linked to climate change, according to a report by the United Nations children's agency released Friday.

The UNICEF report said the estimate includes hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar who are living in squalid camps in Bangladesh's coastal district of Cox's Bazar.

The report says that because of the impact of climate, families across Bangladesh, a low-lying delta nation crisscrossed by more than 130 rivers, have migrated to big cities from villages after losing their livelihoods to increasing salinity in arable land, flooding, or river bank erosion. It documents children being forced into sex trafficking or marriage to survive.

Around 12 million of the most affected children live in and around the powerful river systems which regularly burst their banks, UNICEF's Dhaka spokesman, Jean-Jacques Simon, told the AP.

"In the big cities ... thousands of children arrive every day with their parents ... who are quite vulnerable to all kinds of exploitations," Simon said.

Another 4.5 million children live in vast coastal areas regularly struck by powerful cyclones, including almost half a million Rohingya refugee children living in fragile bamboo and plastic shelters, according to the report.

FILE - In this June 4, 2018, file photo, Bangladeshi children sit on garbage piled up by the river Buriganga in Hazaribagh area in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A new report by the United Nations children's agency says the lives and futures of more than 19 million Bangladeshi children are at risk from colossal impacts of devastating floods, cyclones and other environmental disasters linked to climate change. The UNICEF report released Friday, April 5, 2019 said the tally includes Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar who are living in squalid camps in southern Bangladesh.( AP Photo/A.M. Ahad, File)

An additional 3 million children live further inland, where farming communities suffer from frequent and severe periods of drought.

Bangladesh's 6 million climate refugees could more than double by 2050, according to the report.

"The threats are real," said Saleemul Huq, a senior fellow of the London-based International Institute for Environment and Development.

"The children are vulnerable as Bangladesh has remained dangerously exposed to adverse impacts of climate change despite its good record of resilience," Huq said.

Bangladesh, a nation of 160 million people, has a history of violent cyclones and floods, with a mega cyclone in 1970 killing about 300,000 people in the southern region of what was then east Pakistan. Bangladesh won independence the following year in 1971.

Another powerful tropical cyclone struck southeastern Bangladesh and killed at least 138,000 people in 1991. Storm surges have continued to inundate vast areas across the coast, destroying homes and pushing saline water inland, though the loss of life has decreased sharply.

The report says that since the early 1990s, investment and action - both in disaster preparedness and risk reduction programs - have made vulnerable communities more resilient to the dangers of climatic shock.

The country has been lauded by global partners including the U.N. for building thousands of cyclone shelters and a vast network of hundreds of thousands of trained volunteers to evacuate people and give them basic medical support during major storms.

Bangladesh has also built flood-protection embankments across the country, but its geography means it remains vulnerable to floods and sea level rise.

The most recent major flooding of the Brahmaputra River in 2017 inundated at least 480 community health clinics and damaged some 50,000 hand-pumped tubewells, essential for meeting communities' safe water needs, the report said.

In spite of these disasters, Bangladesh is one of the world's five fastest-growing economies, averaging more than 6% annual growth over the last decade, the World Bank said in a report Thursday. It predicted 7.3% growth for the current fiscal year ending in June.

But despite the government's ambitious development agenda, the impacts of climate change are forcing families deeper into poverty and displacement, the report said. In the process, children's access to education and health services is severely disrupted.

"Climate change is deepening the environmental threat faced by families in Bangladesh's poorest communities, leaving them unable to keep their children properly housed, fed, healthy and educated," UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, who visited Bangladesh last month, was quoted as saying in the report.

"In Bangladesh and around the world, climate change has the potential to reverse many of the gains that countries have achieved in child survival and development," Fore said.

FILE - In this June 1, 2016, file photo, a Bangladeshi boy walks out of a toilet at a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A new report by the United Nations children's agency on Friday, April 5, 2019, says the lives and futures of more than 19 million Bangladeshi children are at risk from colossal impacts of devastating floods, cyclones and other environmental disasters linked to climate change. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 13, 2017, file photo, Rohingya Muslim girl Afeefa Bebi, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh holds her few-hours-old brother as doctors check her mother Yasmeen Ara at a community hospital in Kutupalong refugee camp, Bangladesh. A new report by the United Nations children's agency says the lives and futures of more than 19 million Bangladeshi children are at risk from colossal impacts of devastating floods, cyclones and other environmental disasters linked to climate change. The UNICEF report released Friday, April 5, 2019 said the tally includes Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar who are living in squalid camps in southern Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)

FILE- In this Oct. 18, 2017, file photo, Rohingya Muslim women, who crossed over from Myanmar into Bangladesh, stand holding their sick children after Bangladesh border guard soldiers refused to let them journey towards a hospital and turned them back towards the zero line border in Palong Khali, Bangladesh. A new report by the United Nations children's agency says the lives and futures of more than 19 million Bangladeshi children are at risk from colossal impacts of devastating floods, cyclones and other environmental disasters linked to climate change. The UNICEF report released Friday, April 5, 2019, said the tally includes Rohingya refugee children from Myanmar who are living in squalid camps in southern Bangladesh. (AP Photo/Dar Yasin, File)
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke is comparing the rhetoric used by President Donald Trump to describe immigrants to the rhetoric used in Nazi Germany.

At a town hall in Iowa on Thursday, O'Rourke called out "the rhetoric of a president who not only describes immigrants as rapists and criminals but as animals and an infestation," in response to a question on how he would address attacks from Republicans.

The former congressman from Texas says, "Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich. I would not expect that in the United States of America."

O'Rourke says he will avoid using similar rhetoric because "if we descend into that pettiness and meanness and those personal attacks, I'm not sure that we can win."

The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Democratic presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke speaks during a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday, April 4, 2019. (Justin Wan/Sioux City Journal via AP)

Democratic presidential candidate and former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke enters the room during a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, on Thursday, April 4, 2019. (Justin Wan/Sioux City Journal via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday asked a judge in California to block the Trump administration from building a border wall using funds obtained through his national emergency declaration.

The court papers say President Donald Trump has overstepped his executive powers by diverting funds from the Department of Defense for a border wall and the threat is pressing because efforts by Congress to stop him have failed, and building plans are starting to come into focus. Lawyers asked for a hearing as soon as possible.

Trump has said he will shift $3.6 billion from military construction to erecting border barriers and plans are taking shape. Congress has voted to provide less than $1.4 billion for border barriers, leaving Democrats and some Republicans fuming that Trump is abusing his powers by ignoring Congress' constitutional control over spending.

New sections of wall using the funding will be built in Arizona and New Mexico - areas not covered by Congress' allocation.

"Now that the President has started raiding military funds and vetoed Congress's rejection of his emergency, it's urgent that the court stop his unconstitutional power grab," ACLU attorney Dror Ladin said in a statement.

Congress had approved a resolution annulling the national emergency that Trump declared at the U.S.-Mexico border in February. That included passage by the Republican-led Senate, in which 12 GOP senators - nearly 1 of every 4 - joined Democrats in blocking him.

FILE - In this Dec. 2, 2018, file photo, Honduran migrants climb over a section of the U.S. border fence from Playas of Tijuana, Mexico, before handing themselves in to border control agents. A surge in family arrivals, largely from Guatemala and Honduras, has led Border Patrol agents to shift attention from preparing criminal cases to caring for children. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

Trump vetoed that measure almost immediately. But then the Democratic-led House failed to override the veto.

The request to block the construction Thursday was part of a legal challenge filed in February on behalf of the Southern Border Communities Coalition and the Sierra Club environmental group, a day after Trump's declaration. In addition, a group of 16 states, including California, New York and Colorado, have also filed against the emergency declaration on similar grounds.

Trump has dismissed all legal action as an effort to stall important priorities through "activist" left-leaning judges who lack border experience.

Separately, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it was about to begin construction as early as Thursday on approximately 13 miles of levee construction in the Rio Grande Valley using funds that were allocated in 2018.

Right now there is about 654 miles of barrier built along the 1,954-mile border with Mexico. The majority was constructed under George W. Bush's administration.
HELENA, Mont. (AP) - An Alaska man who was imprisoned for plotting to kidnap David Letterman's son 14 years ago has been arrested.

The Independent Record reported Thursday that Kelly Allen Frank was charged Wednesday on suspicion of misdemeanor assault.

Helena police say Frank followed another individual to a vehicle and threatened to kill him March 23.

Frank was arrested in 2005 on charges of plotting to kidnap the former talk show host's infant son and the boy's nanny and extort $5 million while working as a painter at Letterman's home west of Choteau. The newspaper reports he received a 10-year prison sentence in a plea agreement.

Court records indicate Frank is scheduled to appear in municipal court Friday. It was not immediately clear if he has an attorney.

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Information from: Independent Record, http://www.helenair.com
HONOLULU (AP) - Hawaii lawmakers on Thursday killed a proposal that would have banned flavored electronic smoking devices and e-liquids, saying they suspected teenagers would continue to get the products online even if sales were prohibited.

Supporters said the bill was needed to fight an alarming surge in teenage vaping. Hawaii would have been the first state in the nation to impose such a ban if it was enacted.

Rep. Sylvia Luke, chairwoman of the House Finance Committee, said it's a "really tough issue" and members understood the need to curb teenage vaping. But the committee deferred the bill, which means the measure won't meet a Friday deadline to move to the full House during the current legislative session.

The committee passed another bill that would raise fines for underage possession of e-cigarettes and raise taxes on e-cigarettes and e-liquids.

Rep. Chris Todd said he thought his colleagues would support a flavor ban if they had hard evidence it would be effective. He said to consider the measure again next year, lawmakers would need data on where people get their electronic cigarette products, be it online or from local retailers.

Rep. Scot Matayoshi said raising fines will help deter underage smoking. But he hopes lawmakers find a way to impose a flavor ban next year.

"I don't feel like that the rights of adults to smoke flavored e-cig liquid outweighs our obligation to protect kids from getting addicted to a substance that's made to be addicting," Matayoshi said.

A 2017 Hawaii Health Department study found 16 percent of middle schoolers and 26 percent of high school students were current users of e-cigarettes. The number of high school students experimenting with vaping jumped four-fold between 2011 and 2015, the study said.

The National Youth Tobacco Survey found youth vaping surged 78 percent between 2017 and 2018 across the U.S.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Arkansas lawmakers have sent the governor legislation requiring women to wait 72 hours before having an abortion, one of the strictest waiting periods in the country.

The majority-Republican Senate on Thursday approved the proposal to expand the current waiting period of 48 hours by a 29-5 vote. The bill now heads to Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who plans to sign it into law.

The bill requires the waiting period between when women are counseled by a physician about the procedure and undergoing it. The legislation will make Arkansas the sixth state with a 72-hour waiting period, joining Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Utah.

The measure is among a flurry of abortion restrictions Arkansas lawmakers approved this year, including an 18-week abortion ban that Hutchinson signed into law last month.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Opinion surveys two weeks ahead of presidential and legislative elections in the world's third-largest democracy show Indonesian President Joko Widodo and his ruling coalition maintaining a large lead over the rival camp.

Four nationwide surveys conducted in the second half of March show Widodo between 13 and 20 percentage points ahead of former special forces general Prabowo Subianto, though undecided voters are as high as 20%.

The race has tightened modestly since late last year, but pollsters say Widodo, who has had a commanding lead for months, especially in populous East and Central Java, is headed for victory in the April 17 election.

Widodo, the first Indonesian president from outside the Jakarta elite, has campaigned on progress in upgrading inadequate infrastructure and reducing poverty. He narrowly defeated Subianto in the 2014 president election.

Far behind in the polls, Subianto and his team have recently resorted to questioning the integrity of the upcoming vote, apparently setting the groundwork for a repeat of his unsuccessful challenge to the 2014 results.

Subianto's ultra-nationalistic campaign has focused on what he sees as Indonesia's weakness in the world relative to its vast land area rich in natural resources and population of more than 260 million.

FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2018, file photo, Indonesian presidential candidates Joko Widodo, left, and his running mate Ma'ruf Amin, show the ballot number that will represent them in the 2019 presidential election, during a draw at the General Election Commission office in Jakarta, Indonesia. Opinion surveys two weeks ahead of presidential and legislative elections in the world's third-largest democracy show Widodo and his ruling coalition maintaining a large lead over the rival camp. (AP Photo/Achmad Ibrahim, File)

He has highlighted significant problems facing the country including poverty and particularly the tragedy of stunting - malnutrition in children younger than 5 that causes lifelong physical and mental impairment.

But the government has been able to show progress in alleviating those long-standing crises.

The U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization and other international agencies said earlier this week that the percentage of Indonesian children suffering from stunting fell to 30.8% from nearly 38% between 2013 and 2018.

During the same period, the reduction in the number of hungry and malnourished people, including children, has come to a standstill in many other parts of Asia, according to the agencies that included UNICEF, the World Health Organization and World Food Program.

Meanwhile, the Pew Research Center, in research released Thursday, said Indonesians are increasingly optimistic about their country's current and future economic situation.

As of last summer, two thirds of Indonesians said the economy was doing well compared with almost the same number saying it was doing poorly before Widodo was elected in 2014.

The March opinion surveys showed the coalition of parties that has coalesced around Widodo since his election would gain about 60% of the vote compared with 37% for the parties allied with Subianto.

Religion has not figured in the election campaign as prominently as expected in the predominantly Muslim nation. Widodo at least partially neutralized criticism he is insufficiently Muslim by naming a conservative cleric, Ma'ruf Amin, as his running mate.

Personality differences also appear to have worked in Widodo's favor.

Subianto, an elite figure linked to human rights abuses during the Suharto dictatorship, is a powerful speaker but has often appeared volatile and emotional during the campaign. Widodo has cultivated a friendly common man persona that has roots in his lower middle-class background.
HAGATNA, Guam (AP) - The Vatican's decision to uphold its conviction of the U.S. territory's ousted Archbishop Anthony Apuron for sexually abusing minors marks a sorrowful chapter in church history, the current archbishop of Guam, Michael Byrnes, said.

"The church does not rejoice when members of the church plummet from grace and are found guilty of grave wrong. In this case, egregious sin of child abuse. It's a deep and sorrowful shame," Byrnes said at a news conference in Guam on Friday.

While the Vatican exiled Apuron from the Pacific island and barred him from presenting himself as a bishop, it stopped short of defrocking him. The Vatican announced the decision Thursday. It cannot be appealed.

"As a church, what we can do in all cases of this kind is to forthrightly acknowledge sin to mete out penance and punishment of the sinner for his own salvation," Byrnes said. "On our part, we'll do everything in our power to ensure that this horrible harm inflicted to the innocent is never repeated.

"I extend our deepest apologies to the local men and their families who suffered irreparable harm by Anthony Apuron in the past."

Byrnes apologized to the victims and their families.

"I will pray for my brother, Anthony, too, as I do for his victims. With humility, I ask for the faithful to also assist Bishop Apuron in prayer and penance, that he may find grace in repentance and mercy for his soul."

Victims and their advocates denounced the sentence as inadequate. The ousted bishop continues to maintain his innocence.
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AP) - Libya's Parliament speaker in the east said Wednesday no peace deal can be reached right now between rival factions in his country because the capital, Tripoli, has been "kidnapped" by armed groups.

Aguila Saleh, speaker of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives, told The Associated Press in the Egyptian city of Alexandria that the self-styled Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Hifter has stepped in to "liberate" Tripoli.

Hours later, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a cease-fire, saying there is still time "to avoid the worst which would be a dramatic bloody battle for Tripoli."

The U.N. chief, who visited Libya on Friday, said after briefing the Security Council behind closed doors that the situation is "very dangerous" and stressed that there is no military solution.

"It is very clear for me that we need to restart a serious political dialogue and a serious political negotiation, but it is obvious that that cannot take place without fully stop of the hostilities," Guterres said.

Germany's U.N. ambassador, Christoph Heusgen, the current Security Council president, said the secretary-general's call for a cease-fire "was echoed" by council members who also urged talks and a return to the political track.

FILE - In this Friday, March 18, 2011 file photo, then Libyan senior Rebel commander Khalifa Hafter leaves a press conference in the court house in the center of Benghazi, eastern Libya. Libya has been plunged into chaos again, with forces loyal to a polarizing military commander marching on the capital and trading fire with militias aligned with a weak U.N.-backed government. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus, File)

Libya slid into chaos after a NATO-backed uprising that toppled and later killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. Elections were held shortly after Gadhafi's demise, but failed to bring stability.

The oil-rich North African country is now governed by rival administrations - a U.N.-backed government in Tripoli and the west and Hifter and his supporters in the east. Libya has also become a haven for armed groups, including several from neighboring countries and a major conduit for African migrants hoping to reach Europe.

Hifter's Libyan National Army forces launched a major military offensive earlier this month aimed at capturing Tripoli, clashing with rival militias that support the U.N.-backed government there.

The escalation has threatened to plunge the fractured nation deeper into chaos and ignite civil war on the scale of the 2011 uprising that toppled Gadhafi.

"The capital has been kidnapped.... the military (LNA) has stepped in with only one goal, which is to root such groups out of the capital," Parliament speaker Saleh said.

He said it would be impossible to hold next week's U.N.-planned peace conference, given the current conditions.

A U.N-supported national conference set for mid-April was to forge a political roadmap that would restore order in Libya, where lawlessness has fed Islamic militancy, human trafficking and instability in the wider region. Moving toward parliamentary and presidential elections was a key goal of conference.

U.N. envoy Ghasan Salame announced Tuesday that the National Conference scheduled for April 14-16 is being postponed because it can't be held "against the backdrop of artillery bombardment and air raids."

The International Organization for Migration said, meanwhile, that the escalation in violence in and around Tripoli has resulted in the displacement of more than 5,800 people who have fled their homes.

Germany's Heusgen said Security Council members expressed concern at the plight of displaced people and refugees, the humanitarian situation, and the need to respect human rights.

___

Associated Press writers Samy Magdy in Cairo and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Police have launched a murder investigation after a man believed to have been in his 20s was stabbed.

Officers said they found the victim with stab injuries in Kentish Town, north-west London, after being called at about 8.30pm on Monday.

He was pronounced dead at the scene near the junction of Grafton Road and Vicars Road, despite the efforts of medics.

The killing came on the same day the Prime Minister hosted a summit on knife crime at Downing Street.

Theresa May said the issue is deep-seated and will require a cross-society effort to tackle it.

A murder investigation is underway after a man, aged in his 20s, died following a stabbing in #GospelOak #KentishTown #Camden https://t.co/AI1x3IUKjQ pic.twitter.com/1TSKHkKLhY  Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) April 1, 2019

However, police officers, teachers and nurses criticised Government plans to make them accountable for failing to spot warning signs of violent crime among young people.

We cannot simply arrest ourselves out of this problem, Mrs May said.

The summit was convened after days of violence across the country, including a slew of serious stabbings in Edmonton, north London, from Saturday night into Sunday morning, as well as the death of a 40-year-old motorist at the wheel of his vehicle in Clapham, south-west London, and a 29-year-old fatally stabbed on Thursday afternoon in Toxteth, Liverpool.

Hours later and police were responding to another fatal stabbing in the capital.

A friend of the Kentish Town victim told the Evening Standard: He was loved. He has everyone out here, every culture in the area was out for him.

Hes not lived his life yet.

No arrests have been made in connection with the killing.

While formal identification is yet to take place, the mans next-of-kin have been informed.

Police activity near the junction of Grafton Road and Vicars Road after the fatal stabbing (John Stillwell/PA)

A post-mortem examination is due to be carried out.

Anyone with information can contact police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

Police tape blocked off the crime scene, where a blue police tent sat in the middle of the road.

A small group of floral tributes were placed beneath a row of small candles by the manned police cordon.

A message attached to a bouquet of white flowers read: Long time I havent seen you but it was always love when I did. Rest easy bro.

A message on another floral tribute said: Always in our hearts. Going to miss you my bro. To the young king. Gone but never forgotten.

There was a strong presence of uniformed officers including a group who could be seen looking around a childrens play area and into bushes and window boxes near Vicars Road.

A woman, who would not give her name but said she was the victims cousin, said: He was not like other bits around here. He had a good home, a good girlfriend and he had things going for him.

Everyone (friends and family) was down here last night.

He was not the sort of boy to get into trouble. He kept himself to himself.

She said she saw him the previous day when he was outside talking to neighbours about how much weight he had lost and how he was looking forward to the summer.

She said his father died more than a year ago and he had lost a lot of weight then.

Police activity near the Grafton Road junction with Vicars Road after the fatal stabbing of a man in his 20s.

Shocked mother-of-four Stephanie Phillips, 28, said she knew the victim when he was young, and described the current threat of knife crime as petrifying.

She said: I knew him when he was a child. He was just a normal child. I remember when he was young he loved sports. He loved life. He was always dancing and singing and smiling.

It (the killings) feels like it is never going to stop until the police do something about it. There has got to be something done. They just need to be caught and for something to be done about it.

Ms Phillips, of Highgate, north London, added that it feels like something that someone from another area must have done because people in this area would not do this to people from the area.

She added: It also terrifying as well. I do not want my children growing up here. It is awful. It is not a nice place at the moment. It used to be a lovely community.

A volunteer at the Church of St Martin, which is close to the scene, said: There is shock and you just think when will it ever end?.

The woman, in her 60s, who would only give her name as Margaret, said: It (the killings) is just not in the inner city, it can be anywhere.

Life is not precious to the young ones. It is just tragic. I am sorry for the family.

It is not tackled enough. There is not enough police. It feels like there is another life gone and that is it, but I also feel you could have said the same 10 years ago.

It could be anybody this happens to  it is just a situation where it is there but for the grace of God as you could be just innocently walking down the road for something to happen.

Claude Mampuila, 54, who said he was the victims uncle, said the family  originally from Congo  had lost someone special.

He said: We cannot believe it. He was someone special for our family.

He was always laughing, dancing and happy with people. He was not any trouble and very good.

At the moment we are not coping very well. We are sad at the moment.

The family came here from the Congo for protection  there was a war there  and now this has happened in London.

We were thinking if you come to this country you are protected, but it is not safe at all.
Aides to Joe Biden are striking a more aggressive tone as the former vice president faces scrutiny over his past behaviour toward women.

In a statement, Biden spokesman Bill Russo blasted right wing trolls from the dark recesses of the internet for conflating images of Mr Biden embracing acquaintances, colleagues and friends in his official capacity during swearing-in ceremonies with uninvited touching.

The move came on a day in which a second woman said Mr Biden had acted inappropriately, touching her face with both hands and rubbing noses with her in 2009.

The allegation by Amy Lappos, a former aide to Democratic Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, followed a magazine essay by former Nevada politician Lucy Flores, who wrote that Mr Biden kissed her on the back of the head in 2014.

Lucy Flores has accused Joe Biden of inappropriately kissing her on the back of the head (Michelle Rindels/AP)

The developments underscored the challenge facing Mr Biden should he decide to seek the White House.

Following historic wins in the 2018 midterms, Democratic politics is dominated by energy from women.

The allegations could leave the 76-year-old Mr Biden, long known for his affectionate mannerisms, appearing out of touch with the party as the Democratic presidential primary begins.

Ms Lappos said that she and other Himes aides were helping out at a fundraiser in a private home in Hartford, Connecticut, in October 2009 when Mr Biden entered the kitchen to thank the group for pitching in.

After he finished speaking, he stopped to talk to us about how important a congressional staff is, which I thought was awesome, Ms Lappos said.

She said she was stunned as Mr Biden moved toward her.

He wrapped both his hands around my face and pulled me in, said Ms Lappos, who is now 43.

I thought, Oh, God, hes going to kiss me. Instead, he rubbed noses with me.

Joe Biden has not yet declared if he will run for the White House (Niall Carson/PA)

Mr Biden said nothing, she said, then moved off.

She said the experience left her feeling weird and uncomfortable and was absolutely disrespectful of my personal boundaries.

The Hartford Courant first reported Ms Lappos assertion.

Mr Russo did not directly respond to Ms Lappos, instead referring to a Sunday statement in which Mr Biden said he does not believe he has acted inappropriately during his long public life.

The former vice president said in that statement: We have arrived at an important time when women feel they can and should relate their experiences, and men should pay attention.

And I will.

Mr Biden has not made a final decision on whether to run for the White House.

But aides who were not authorised to discuss internal conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity said there were no signs that his team was slowing its preparations for a campaign.

Asked about the accusations against Mr Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: I dont think that this disqualifies him from running for president, not at all.

She declined to elaborate.

Mr Bidens potential Democratic rivals have not rushed to back him up.

Over the weekend, presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand came closest to calling out the former vice president.

Ms Warren said Mr Biden needs to give an answer about what occurred.

Ms Gillibrand said: If Vice President Biden becomes a candidate, this is a topic hell have to engage on further.

Ultraviolet, a womens advocacy group, tweeted: Joe Biden cannot paint himself as a champion of women and then refuse to listen and learn from a woman who says his actions demeaned her.

Good intentions dont matter if the actions are inappropriate.

Do better, Joe. And thank you @LucyFlores for coming forward.
The prime ministers of Greece and North Macedonia have engaged in selfie diplomacy during the first official visit by a Greek leader to the neighbouring country following decades of strained relations over a name dispute.

North Macedonia premier Zoran Zaev held up a mobile phone while standing beside Greek counterpart Alexis Tspiras, snapping the historic selfies outside the main government building in the capital Skopje.

The selfie taken by Zoran Zaev (Boris Grdanoski/AP)

The former Yugoslav republic officially changed its name earlier this year from Macedonia to North Macedonia, settling a dispute with Greece that lasted nearly three decades.

We have lost a lot of time and now we must rapidly catch up, Mr Tsipras told reporters at a joint news conference. We want to build a strong bond of trust and stability.

When I used to take a plane to Europe, the pilot would avoid the air space of what was the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia. Now we will no longer have this nonsense. We might fly around here just to say hello.

Handshakes for the two delegations (Boris Grdanoski/AP)

Leaders and ministers from the two countries signed multiple friendship agreements to establish embassies in both capitals, ease trade barriers and for the Greek military to police North Macedonias air space.

Mr Tsipras traveled to Skopje with 10 cabinet ministers and more than 100 business representatives.

North Macedonia is due to become the next member of Nato after Greece dropped its objections.

Mr Tsipras and Mr Zaev both faced strong domestic opposition to their agreement reached last summer to normalise relations, resolving the emotive issue tied to national identity in the two countries.

The two leaders embrace (Boris Grdanoski/AP)

Greek opponents of the agreement staged several large rallies in Athens and other cities to try to press the government to abandon the deal.

Greece opposed the use of the name Macedonia, arguing that it posed a threat to its own administrative region of Macedonia as well as the regions ancient history and heritage that includes the legacy of the warrior king Alexander the Great.

Distrust among Balkan nations over borders, ethnic minorities and national narratives dates back more than a century when countries in the region fought the Ottoman Empire and each other to establish and expand new nations.

That hostility was maintained by wars that only ended in the late 1990s following the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

Western governments enthusiastically backed the deal, wary of rival influence in the Balkans by Russia, which views Natos expansion as a threat.

It is a milestone to be leaving all these difficulties behind, Mr Zaev said. We have showed Europe and the world that with bold decisions anything is possible.
Tech companies have only shifted superficially in their approach to privacy since the start of the fake news inquiry, a committee chairman has said.

The ongoing threats to democracy will be combated by a sub-committee on disinformation which will be headed up by Damian Collins, Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe.

Mr Collins said the lack of action was unacceptable and vowed that the body, set up by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee (DCMS), would continue to apply pressure.

It will also build on knowledge gained from the inquiry, which began in September 2017 and culminated in a final report released in February.

I am pleased to announce that @CommonsCMS has today launched a Sub-Committee to continue Parliamentary scrutiny of threats posed by disinformation. There is a strong public interest in continuing this work. More information can be found here: https://t.co/7Yjn0W6Mk1  Damian Collins (@DamianCollins) April 2, 2019

The 18-month probe made headlines throughout 2018 for its revelations around the effects of social media on society, Facebooks handling of users data and how the official Brexit campaigns broke electoral law during the 2016 EU referendum.

Mr Collins said: As we stated at the time, our report on disinformation and fake news was not the final word on the matter.

Social media apps displayed on a mobile phone screen (Yui Mok/PA)

We believe that theres a strong public interest in establishing the sub-committee to continue probing ongoing threats posed by disinformation to democracies, a threat that hasnt disappeared with the end of our inquiry.

We look forward to continuing the highly important work that we have begun.

Since beginning our investigations, tech companies have only shifted superficially in their approach to privacy, and only for the benefit of their own PR.

Its unacceptable and we must keep up the pressure for them to shift their approach to ensure people and their rights are protected.

In Februarys report, the DCMS said ethics guidelines were needed to set out what is and what is not acceptable on social media.

The latter includes harmful and illegal content that has been flagged to the platforms by users or identified by the companies themselves.

If tech companies fail to meet their obligations under the code, then an independent regulator should be able to launch legal proceedings against them and have the power to issue large fines, the MPs said.

The committee also called for a comprehensive review of the current rules and regulations surrounding political work during elections and referenda, and separately urged the Government to put pressure on social media companies to publicise instances of disinformation.

Announcing the sub-committee on Tuesday, the DCMS said it would enable them to protect people from the insidious onslaught of disinformation and digital disruption.

It will hold evidence sessions in May with Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright and Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.

Part of its role will be scrutinising the Governments response to the DCMS report in February and a white paper on online harms which is due in the near future.

It will also meet with representatives from other countries in Canada at the end of May.

Lucas Graves, senior research fellow and acting director of research at Oxford Universitys Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, praised the new sub-committee as a vital step in developing measured, thoughtful, evidence-based responses to the challenge posed by various forms of online disinformation.

He said: Its fair to say that theres been more heat than light in this debate, and theres a great deal we still dont know about the influence of online disinformation in real-world politics.

To strike the right balance between limiting the spread of bad information and protecting open and pluralistic debate isnt easy, and we need to understand the evidence first. I hope the sub-committee will make that their focus.

The announcement comes as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who turned down an invitation to appear before the inquiry three times, flies to Ireland for a meeting with politicians at his companys Dublin office.

On Saturday Mr Zuckerberg published an opinion piece in the Washington Post calling on governments and regulators around the world to devise new rules for the internet.
An Egyptian province on the Red Sea is to impose a ban on disposable plastics, prohibiting everything from single-use straws to plastic bags in an effort to fight pollution and protect the environment.

The ban will apply to restaurants, supermarkets, grocery stores, pharmacies and on cruise ships that dock off the shores of the province, called Red Sea.

It will also apply to hotels in the resort of Hurghada, the provincial capital, and elsewhere in the province.

Plastic spoons, forks and knives, cups and dishes will also be among the banned items.

Divers collect plastic and other debris in the sea off Egypt (Thomas Hartwell/AP)

Its a fight against the sea of plastic that people carelessly discard, provincial governor Ahmed Abdallah said. And it all ends up in the Red Sea.

The ban will come into effect from June, he said, adding that it was first proposed by the Hurghada Environmental Protection & Conservation Association to protect the provinces threatened and endangered species.

The organisation said it will launch campaigns across the province to clean up islands, beaches and famous diving areas around Hurghada, one of Egypts most popular beach resorts and diving centres.

Mr Abdallah accepts the campaign will be an uphill battle, and did not elaborate on how the ban will be enforced. His hope is that by saying no to plastic, Egypt will draw more environment-conscious tourists.

In 2017, Egypt launched an EU-funded initiative to encourage people to limit their use of plastic bags and to shift to more environmentally friendly alternatives. The country produces 970,000 tons of plastic waste per year.

The Red Sea (Thomas Hartwell/AP)

The environmental affairs agency said last year that Egyptians use around 12 billion plastic bags a year, causing severe problems to the Nile River and the countrys two seas  the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Single-use plastics have added to the problems, as have items like coffee stirrers, plastic bags, straws and bottles.

Egypts vital tourism industry has been hit hard by extremist attacks and political turmoil following the 2011 Arab Spring uprising that toppled long-time autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

The once multibillion-pound tourism industry, a vital pillar of the countrys economy and source of work for millions of people, has been decimated.

The sector suffered a further blow after an Islamic State bombing brought down a Russian passenger plane over the Sinai peninsula in 2015, killing all 224 people on board.

Egypts government has tried to lure tourists back by promoting new archaeological discoveries and boosting security around historical sites.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has put forward proposals to cancel Holyroods upcoming recess in case MSPs have to respond to a no-deal Brexit.

The UK is set to leave the European Union next Friday unless a deal can be agreed or a further extension is granted by the other 27 nations.

Ms Sturgeon and her senior ministerial team met after MPs at Westminster again failed to find a way forward in the Brexit process, with her spokesman saying the priority is not recess, the priority is dealing with Brexit.

A series of indicative votes were held in the Commons on Monday but there was no majority support for any of the options available.

In those circumstances, the First Ministers spokeswoman said: We think it is prudent for Parliament to be ready to sit next week.

We should certainly be prepared, willing and able to sit. That is our proposal from Cabinet.

Business in the Scottish Parliament is currently scheduled to finish on Thursday for the two week-long Easter recess.

Ms Sturgeons spokesman said: The First Ministers view, endorsed by Cabinet, is if we are in the same position this time next week as we are at the moment  i.e. facing going over the cliff of a no-deal  then the FMs view is it would unacceptable for the Scottish Parliament to be in recess.

Any decision to cancel recess would be taken by Holyroods parliamentary bureau, which determines day-to-day business in the Scottish Parliament.

The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh (David Cheskin/PA)

Parliamentary Business Minister Graeme Dey will put forward the proposal that the option should be open for Parliament to sit next week, Ms Sturgeons spokesman said.

Who knows where things are going to go over the next view days but certainly the FMs view and Cabinets view is we cant be in a situation where we are about to go over the cliff edge of no-deal with Parliament and MSPs in recess, he said.

The First Ministers view is clearly MSPs should not be on holiday when the biggest, most momentous, potentially most damaging issue to hit Scotland and the UK since the Second World War is about to take place.

A Scottish Parliament spokeswoman said later: The bureau considered the issue at its meeting today and will be considering it further before the close of business on Thursday.
A neo-Nazi could be facing a life behind bars for plotting the murder of Labour MP Rosie Cooper while being investigated for grooming young boys for sex.

Jack Renshaw, 23, bought a 19in (48cm) Gladius knife to kill the West Lancashire MP and exact revenge on a female police officer who interviewed him, the Old Bailey heard.

The plan was scuppered by whistle-blower Robbie Mullen, who was at a meeting in a pub when Renshaw announced that he was going to kill Ms Cooper in July 2017.

Jack Renshaw plotted to kill MP Rosie Cooper (Steve Parsons/PA)

It came just a year after Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed and shot by a fellow far-right extremist, Thomas Mair.

Renshaw, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, had admitted making preparations to kill his local MP and making a threat to kill police officer Victoria Henderson.

But he denied membership of banned extreme right-wing group National Action along with Andrew Clarke, 34, and Michal Trubini, 36, from Warrington.

A jury at his retrial was discharged, having failed to reach verdicts after more than 48 hours of deliberations and prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said he could not seek a third trial.

It can be reported today that Renshaw is a convicted paedophile who was jailed last June for 16 months after he groomed two underage boys online.

Jurors at Preston Crown Court found him guilty of four counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

He also received a three-year prison sentence two months earlier when he was found guilty of stirring up racial hatred after he called for the genocide of Jewish people.

National Action leader Christopher Lythgoe, 32, of Warrington, and his right-hand man Matthew Hankinson, 24, from Merseyside, who were present when Renshaw outlined his plans, were convicted of membership last year.

Adam Thomas and his partner Claudia Patatas (West Midlands Police/PA)

National Action is the first extreme right-wing group to be proscribed by the Government since the Second World War.

In December 2016, it was banned by the then home secretary Amber Rudd over its support for the murder of Batley and Spen MP Ms Cox.

Lythgoe reacted to the news by telling members that they would just shed one skin for another.

The North West contingent continued to meet in pubs and train together at a new mixed martial arts gym in Warrington, it was alleged.

Meanwhile, disillusioned Mr Mullen, 25, began leaking information about National Action to campaign group Hope Not Hate.

By July 2017, Renshaw was on police bail for making hate speeches and under investigation for child sex offences.

He decided on suicide by cop rather than face a seven-year stretch in prison.

He bought a large machete to take revenge on a female investigating officer and kill his local MP.

Renshaw unveiled his plan at the Friar Penketh pub in Warrington on July 1 2017 to Clarke, Hankinson, Lythgoe and Mr Mullen.

Earlier that day, he had met convicted National Action members Darren Fletcher, 28, Adam Thomas, 22, and his partner Claudia Patatas, 39, in Liverpool.

After the pub meeting, Mr Mullen, from Widnes, Cheshire, reported the threat to Hope Not Hate and Renshaw was arrested.

Mr Mullen, who was granted immunity from prosecution, told jurors: He said he was going to kill his local MP, Rosie Cooper. I said Are you sure? and he said Yeah.

He said he would kill her, then try to take some hostages to lure the police officer that was investigating him to try to kill her because she was the reason behind it all.

He said his mind was made up. He had bought a machete.

Renshaw said he would wear a fake suicide vest so he would be killed by police, Mr Mullen added.

The defendant declined to give evidence in his retrial, but in his first trial last year explained his reasons for targeting Ms Cooper.

He said: I wanted to send a message to the state that if you beat a dog long enough it bites  she just happened to be my local MP.

Giving evidence, warehouse worker Clarke said: National Action was immature. I was tired of it. I was thankful for the ban.

He told jurors a Swastika bookmark found in his sisters loft was a joke and he only went to the Friar Penketh on July 1 on a whim.

He said: Renshaw said something about an MP when I was drunk but I do not remember what he said. Whatever Renshaw was doing I heard it but I did not really pay attention because I was drunk.

Office worker Trubini, who qualified as a teacher in Slovakia, admitted a shared ideology about white nationalism and opposition to multiculturalism.

But he said: I would not jeopardise my job to be a member of a group that had no real impact.

Trubini insisted he was politically naive and having tried to read Mein Kampf, found it boring and badly written.

As she discharged the jury from returning verdicts, Mrs Justice McGowan said: You have obviously worked very hard. You have obviously been very diligent. You have obviously worked your way through all the material so we understand and respect the decision you have made.

She remanded Renshaw into custody to be sentenced on May 17.

Hope not hate chief executive Nick Lowles praised the bravery of Mr Mullen in foiling the plot but criticised police for being too slow to act.

He said: We all owe a great debt of gratitude to Robbie Mullen, our source inside this Nazi gang, for his bravery.

National Action was part a new, more extreme breed of neo-Nazis that vilified Jews, celebrated and encouraged violence and lauded Hitler. They wanted to ignite a race war in Britain.

While we welcome the various prosecutions which have taken place, the authorities and police have been too slow to act and missed too many warning signs about the changing nature of the far-right terror threat.

The Christchurch terrorist attack shows that there is a global network of far-right activists who are inspiring each other to launch violent attacks. This is no time for complacency about the threat we face from far-right terrorism.

Matthew Collins, Hope not Hates head of intelligence, said: We continually warned that National Action had not stopped recruiting and training after its ban in December 2016 and we were proven right when Robbie Mullen first came to us in April 2017.

At the time, police didnt seem to have any idea that the group was still active, despite its ban. I can only pay tribute to Robbies persistence, which helped prevent the murder of an MP.

Mr Mullen thanked the organisation, saying: By reporting Jack Renshaws murder plot and giving evidence in this court my life has changed. I had to walk out of my job, I was forced to move home and I have to live with a target on my back.

But I know I had no other choice. Jack Renshaw was days away from trying to kill an MP, Rosie Cooper.

I now want to get on with the rest of my life  I hope that in doing so, and rebuilding my life, I can encourage others to take a different path than I did.

Ruth Smeeth MP, who warned Ms Cooper after learning of the danger, said it had been a truly shocking case.

She said: Two years after the devastating murder of my colleague Jo Cox, we narrowly averted what could have been another appalling crime.

I cannot overstate Hope not Hates role and what might have happened had Robbie Mullen not been able to report Jack Renshaws plans. We all owe Robbie a huge debt of gratitude for what he did.
The sister of missing Co Down woman Lisa Dorrian broke down in tears at the site where her sister was last seen 14 years ago as she urged anyone that could help to find her to come forward.

Joanne Dorrian made the plea as her family revisited the caravan park where Lisa was last seen alive 14 years ago.

A new large-scale search operation is under way at an airfield beside Ballyhalbert Caravan Park on the Co Down coast.

Police search the airfield in Ballyhalbert, Co Down (Rebecca Black/PA)

The 25-year-old was last seen alive at the caravan park on February 28, 2005. Police believe she was murdered.

Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy said the new searches have been nine months in the planning, with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) working with the National Crime Agency (NCA).

He said they are using both new information and new techniques to comb the area.

The Dorrian family watched on as Mr Murphy said although 400 searches have taken place across Northern Ireland for Lisa, he believes the answers to her murder remain in Ballyhalbert.

Joanne was tearful as she described how hard it has been for the family to come back to where her sister was last seen alive.

PSNI Detective Superintendent Jason Murphy, with Joanne Dorrian, sister of missing Co Down woman Lisa Dorrian and her father John Dorrian (Rebecca Black/PA)

We have been without Lisa for 14 years, she said.

Coming back to Ballyhalbert is really, really difficult.

When Lisa first went missing we walked these fields, in the days after she went missing we thought we were just looking for her because she had ran out in the night, and maybe fallen and passed away in the cold. Then we knew police were looking at a murder investigation.

People cant imagine what this feels like, what it feels like not knowing where she is. My mum passed away a few years ago, she never got the answers that she needed, it ruined her life and it has ruined our lives. None of us have been the same ever since this happened.

To think that Lisa could be here where we are today, its just so hard to imagine. We are grateful for everything the police are doing to find Lisa, to give her what she deserves. This is for Lisa, this is not for us.

The people who know where Lisa is knew Lisa, they knew the kind of person that she was, she knew the funny person that she was, and I just ask them to remember that.

If they can come forward and please just help us to get some sort of peace, thats all that we can ask for.
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is discussing the regulation of social media with senior politicians in Dublin.

He arrived at the Merrion Hotel in the city on Tuesday afternoon where he is meeting Hildegarde Naughton, James Lawless and Eamon Ryan, three members of the International Grand Committee on Disinformation and Fake News.

He also visited the technology giants offices in the Republic.

Facebooks European headquarters is in the Irish capital.

Their spokesman said: During their discussions the deputies will raise a number of concerns, including: the regulation of social media, transparency in political advertising and the safety of young people and vulnerable adults.

The committee is made up of international parliamentarians and investigates issues like data privacy, safety, security and sharing.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg is to discuss regulation of social media with senior politicians in Dublin (Chris Ratcliffe/PA)

The trio, who are also members of the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, have been vocal in demanding the regulation of social media platforms in recent years.

Irelands Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon has a number of inquiries ongoing into Facebook and associated organisations.

In a blog post published on Saturday, Mr Zuckerberg called for increased government oversight of the internet in areas like harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.
Nearly three-quarters of Scottish schools responding to a parliamentary survey have said difficulty recruiting teachers is constraining subject choice.

The survey was carried out for an inquiry by Holyroods Education and Skills Committee into the extent and basis for any narrowing of subject choice following curriculum reforms.

The Curriculum for Excellence redesign removed Standard Grades in favour of new national qualifications and introduced a three-year senior phase.

A total of 86 of Scotlands 350 local authority mainstream schools responded to the survey, which was emailed out earlier this year, as well as the grant-maintained Jordanhill School.

Of these, 31% said difficulties recruiting teachers with the required subject specialisms constrained their subject offering in fourth year a great deal.

A further 41% said it was constrained to some extent, while 17% found a little constraint and 10% said it did not constrain them at all.

Nine respondents made comments about staffing constraints, with one saying: Increasingly choices in the senior phase are driven by what we can staff due to very challenging recruitment difficulties in the north-east rather than the schools rationale for our senior phase curriculum.

Capacity in the school timetable was the next biggest concern regarding limiting of subject choice in S4, with 22% of schools saying this constrained them a great deal.

Around one in four (39%) said this constrained them to some extent, 32% said a little and 6% not at all.

More than half (57%) of schools responding offer a maximum of six subjects in fourth year but 16 of these schools are aiming to increase this.

Nearly a third (30%) offered seven subjects in S4 and 11% offered eight subjects.

A total of 14 schools commented on a narrowing choice of subjects, with one school saying this restricts pupil choice and progression routes, and undermines the viability of subjects.

Another said it was told to move to six subjects by its local authority very much against the will of the school community  it has reduced choice and caused problems for some pupils.

Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman Liz Smith raised concerns (Andrew Cowan/Scottish Parliament/PA)

Liz Smith, Scottish Conservative education spokeswoman said: Many experts have told us that subject choice in Scottish schools has narrowed significantly under the SNP.

Now schools themselves have told the Scottish Parliament that a lack of teachers is an additional constraint.

She said the delivery of the Curriculum for Excellence is undermining Scottish education, and added: The evidence which has been submitted to the Education and Skills Committee lays bare the extent of the subject choice problem under the SNP  something which is bound to have a detrimental impact on the ability of young people to get the qualifications they both want and need.

Her Liberal Democrat counterpart Tavish Scott said teacher numbers have fallen by more than 3,000 since the SNP took power.

He said: Young people should be able to gain the combination of qualifications that is right for them.

Instead, schools are telling us that pupils choices, and therefore their ambitions, are being limited by the lack of teachers.

A Scottish Government spokeswoman said: Wherever possible, schools should ensure that young people can choose their preferred subjects.

However, where a subject cannot be offered by the school, national guidelines encourage flexibility, enabling schools to consider alternative approaches that best meet learners needs and aspirations.

She said teacher numbers in Scotland are at their highest since 2010 but the Government recognises the teacher recruitment challenges and has increased the target for teacher training and made this more accessible.
A former soldier investigated over the shooting of 13 civilians in Londonderry has criticised the Government as gutless.

The 77-year-old known as Sergeant O said a statute of limitations should be introduced to prevent future historical investigations from taking place.

He said it should apply to events in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Northern Ireland.

Soldiers take cover behind their sandbagged armoured cars while dispersing rioters with CS gas in Londonderry, where a civil rights march resulted in 13 men being shot dead (PA)

Sergeant O was one of 17 former members of the Parachute Regiment to have their actions following a civil rights march in Derry in 1972 examined.

Last month, Northern Irelands Public Prosecution Service (PPS) announced it will prosecute one of the 17, a man known as Soldier F.

The decision to prosecute just one sparked disappointment among some of the families of those killed.

But it also prompted anger among a number of military veterans.

Thirteen civil rights demonstrators were shot dead on January 30 1972, a day which has become known as Bloody Sunday.

Top row, left to right, Patrick Doherty, Bernard McGuigan, John `Jackie Duddy and Gerald Donaghey, bottom row, left to right, Gerard McKinney, Jim Wray, William McKinney and John Young, who were killed on Bloody Sunday (Bloody Sunday Trust/PA)

Soldier F 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 an interview with Forces News, Sergeant O said it was a relief to be told he would not be put before a judge, and that his claims that he had not done anything wrong had finally been proved right.

He described serving in Northern Ireland in the 1970s as utterly hell on wheels with riots every night of the week, but he insisted that he has no regrets.

Part of the United Kingdom was in upheaval and it was our job to try to calm it down. We did it to the best of our ability, he said.

Ive been often castigated for it was a job well done. It was well done. Id do it again, the exact same way.

Sergeant O revealed that at one stage he and his family were placed under police protection.

He maintains the IRA knows where he is.

I would like to say no but Im not that naive. They know a certain amount. The IRA, or the Irish contingent, whoever they are if they want to come for me, then theyll come, he said.

Sergeant O also said he backs the campaign for a statute of limitations to be introduced to prevent historical investigations taking place.

The Government is entirely gutless, he said.

They should draw a line under it as theyve done for the IRA terrorists. Theyre fine, theyre waving their letters of comfort. They should do the same for the British Army. Not only for Ireland but for Afghanistan and Iraq.

Wipe the slate clean and say get on with your life.

Meanwhile, large numbers of bikers are expected to roar into London next week to protest against the prosecution of Soldier F.

Rolling Thunder ride organiser Harry Wragg said: Our ride is not directed at the victims, it is directed at the British Government.

Our argument is with the Government, not the victims of Bloody Sunday or any other event.

He added: Where are they pulling the evidence from, why are the British Government allowing this to happen?

Participants in the demonstration on April 12 are due to travel from across the UK, including the Lake District, Wales and the home counties.

They had planned to travel to Westminster but that date coincides with the new no-deal Brexit date.

It is uncertain whether they will be allowed to proceed to Parliament, the organiser said.

Bloody Sunday helped galvanise support for the Provisional IRA early in the Troubles.

An image of a Catholic priest waving a bloodstained handkerchief as he tried to help a victim to safety went around the world.

A public inquiry conducted by a senior judge shortly after the deaths was branded a whitewash by victims families and a campaign was launched for a new public inquiry.

Relatives sought to right the wrongs of false claims that their loved ones had been armed.

A fresh probe was eventually ordered by then prime minister Tony Blair in 1998.

A decade-long investigation by Lord Saville concluded that the troops killed protesters who posed no threat.
The owner of retail chain Boots has warned over UK store closures as it looks to slash costs amid the most difficult quarter in the groups history.

US-based Walgreens Boots Alliance said it had started taking decisive steps in the UK to cut costs, including reviewing its near-2,500 Boots retail stores.

The group revealed it is looking at poor performing shops as well opportunities for consolidation.

It follows the groups announcement in February that 350 jobs are at risk in its Nottingham head office amid plans to trim HQ staff costs by 20%.

It is also looking at ways to overhaul its pharmacy business.

The details come as owner Walgreens Boots Alliance reported a 2.3% drop in like-for-like UK retail sales in its second quarter to February 28, while comparable pharmacy sales dropped 1.5%.

The owner of retail chain Boots has warned over UK store closures as it looks to slash costs amid the "most difficult" quarter in the groups history.

Tough trading in the US also saw the wider group warn over full-year earnings, with boss Stefano Pessina branding it the most difficult quarter we have had since the formation of Walgreens Boots Alliance.

The group is now expecting underlying earnings per share growth to be roughly flat in the current financial year, a hefty downgrade on its previous guidance of 7% to 12% growth.

Global underlying net earnings slumped 14.3% to 1.2 billion US dollars (1919 million) in the second quarter.

But sales rose 4.6%, or 6.7% with foreign exchange movements stripped out.

The international division including the UK saw second quarter earnings drop 8.9%, or 1.2% lower on a constant currency basis.

Mr Pessina admitted the group did not take action swiftly enough to offset challenging conditions.

But he outlined plans to turn around it fortunes, including ramping up global cost cutting targets by around another 500 million US dollars (383 million) to more than 1.5 billion US dollars (1.1 billion) by 2022.

He also plans to make a number of senior hires to speed up efforts to boost its digital capability and transformation.

Mr Pessina said: Our response was not rapid enough given market conditions, resulting in a disappointing quarter that did not meet our expectations.

He added: We are going to be more aggressive in our response to these rapidly shifting trends.

We are focusing on our operational strengths and addressing weaknesses.

Walgreens Boots Alliance was formed in 2014 after Walgreens bought the 55% stake in UK and Switzerland-based Alliance Boots that it did not already own.
A pensioner is recovering after a fire was deliberately started at her North Lanarkshire home in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The 73-year-old was woken up at about 4am by her smoke alarm at the property on Woodstock Drive, Wishaw.

She went into the hallway and found the carpet at the front door was alight.

The woman managed to get out of the door and alert a neighbour, who called emergency services.

Police said she was left badly shaken by the shocking incident, which they are treating as wilful after a joint investigation with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.

Detective Constable Gerry Hattie said: To deliberately start a fire at the door of an elderly woman is absolutely shocking and extensive inquiries are under way to find the despicable individual or individuals involved.

The woman managed to get out of the door and alert a neighbour, who called emergency services (Jane Barlow/PA)

There is no apparent reason why this woman would have been targeted and thankfully she had a working smoke alarm to alert her to what was happening.

She has been left extremely frightened and upset, and I am calling on anyone who can assist us in finding out who is responsible to please come forward.

The victims upper flat is accessed directly by stairs outside the property and I would appeal to anyone who was in the area of Woodstock Drive in the early hours of this morning, and noticed anyone hanging around or acting suspiciously, to get in touch.

He added: I would also urge any motorists with dashcams who were in the vicinity to check their footage in case they have captured anything which could be of significance, such as someone running away or a car driving at excess speed.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Wishaw CID via 101, quoting incident number 0323 of Tuesday April 2 2019.

Alternatively, you can call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 where details can be given in confidence.
The Scottish Governments decision to allow women to take abortion pills at home is fundamentally flawed because it is not consistent with legislation, a lawyer representing an anti-abortion group has told a court.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has returned to the Court of Session to appeal after it lost its legal challenge against the move last May.

Morag Ross QC, representing the SPUC, said the decision to allow abortions at home is flawed in two fundamental respects because it approved treatment outwith the presence of a registered medical practitioner and because a pregnant womans home is not a meaningful class of place.

The court heard the Abortion Act of 1967 regulated abortion in key areas including that it be carried out by 24 weeks by a registered medical practitioner and it be carried out in an NHS hospital or another place approved by the Secretary of State.

Following the Scottish Governments decision, women in Scotland can now take the drug misoprostol at home, provided they have first taken the drug mifepristone in a clinic 24 to 48 hours beforehand.

Ms Ross said: What the respondents (the government) are trying to do is to give the place parameters, they just take the place parameters and they want to give it enough flexibility to permit the class of place to extend to a patients home but in order to do that they need to rely on retrospective suitability.

The appeal will be heard at the Court of Session in Edinburgh (Jane Barlow/PA)

They need to do that in order to justify carving out a place and making it suitable.

But reading suitability into place is just nothing, its a distraction, so this suitability idea, this idea that place is determined by suitability is trying to add an extra layer, which is not there in the act.

The SPUC believes the decision by ministers to enable women to self-administer misoprostol is unlawful and a threat to their health.

Judge Lady Wise rejected the groups arguments following a hearing at the Court of Session last May.

The SPUC returned on Tuesday to the Edinburgh court, where the case is being heard by the Lord Justice Clerk Lady Dorrian, Lord Menzies and Lord Brodie.

Lord Menzies asked: Before the decision, if a woman wished to have an abortion she could go to a clinic and if the doctor was satisfied she had satisfied the criteria then she would be given medication at the clinic and if she goes away for 24 hours she would then be given another medicine at the clinic and once the second part of the medicine is administered the treatment is complete.

What you take exception to is that Scottish ministers do not have the power to allow the second part of the medicine to be taken in an environment where the woman feels most comfortable?

Ms Ross replied: Yes.

Lord Menzies said: I have difficulty in understanding why its outwith the power of the Scottish ministers to allow her to take that pill at home rather than in a clinic.
A man in his 30s has been arrested over a knife attack in an area that has seen a series of random stabbings.

The suspect was held on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm in Edmonton Green on Tuesday, after a man, also in his 30s, was left in a critical condition.

The victim suffered life threatening injuries when he was stabbed in Fairfield Road, Enfield, north London at around 5am, yards from the scene of a previous attack.

Investigators are trying to work out if the latest stabbing is linked to four others that took place over the weekend.

Police investigating the stabbing of a man in #Enfield this morning have arrested a man in his 30s on suspicion of GBH in the #EdmontonGreen area - he is in custody. Work continues to determine if the incident is linked to the incidents from the weekend.https://t.co/Q3Qai6uR3I  Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) April 2, 2019

A video obtained by the Press Association shows a man being arrested outside Lidl supermarket in Edmonton Green at around 10am on Tuesday.

Shop worker Fatma Oruc, 17, said: There were police officers surrounding a man and he was black. He was wearing a hoodie.

They stayed for five to 10 minutes and handcuffed him and he was taken away.

Employees at furniture store Dogtas said the man arrested was tall, black and skinny, wearing a green hoodie with a grey sweatshirt underneath, dirty blue jeans, and blue trainers.

He did not appear to say anything or make any effort to get away from officers.

Detective Superintendent Luke Marks said: I am aware that events from the weekend have caused a huge amount of worry and concern among the community and that this incident will cause further alarm.

While at this stage the incident has not yet been formally linked, the location and manner of this attack will be of concern to the public.

Our advice continues that the public remain vigilant, and to contact police regarding anyone acting suspiciously.

You will see additional uniformed patrols in the Edmonton area; if you have any concerns, please speak with my officers immediately.

The Times reported that local schools had banned children from leaving the grounds during their break time as a safety measure.

The latest stabbing follows attacks on four people in the Edmonton area of Enfield over the weekend that left two critically hurt and one with potentially life-changing injuries.

Police forensics officers on Aberdeen Road in north London, after four stabbings between Saturday evening and Sunday morning in the Edmonton area, which police are treating as linked (PA)

Police believe that a single male suspect who may have mental health issues was acting alone in the attacks, and there is nothing to suggest they are terror-related.

The suspect is described as a skinny black man who is approximately 6ft 3ins tall and wearing dark clothes.

Two men who were previously arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm remain in custody, and investigators have until later on Tuesday to interview them.

A 45-year-old woman became the first victim when she was stabbed once in her back at about 7pm on Saturday in Aberdeen Road, and left in a critical condition.

Then at 12.15am police were called to Park Avenue where a 52-year-old man had been injured with a knife. He has since been discharged from hospital.

The third attack was on a 23-year-old man just before 4am near Seven Sisters Tube station.

He is in a critical but stable condition.

The fourth attack occurred at about 9.40am on Sunday in Brettenham Road where officers found a 29-year-old man with a stab injury to the back.

His injuries are potentially life-changing, but not life-threatening.
The practice of Royal Navy submarines flying the Jolly Roger is at the centre of a new exhibition dedicated to the pirate flag.

The National Museum of the Royal Navy has put on display a selection of the flags including one seized from a pirate ship in the 1790s.

The original skull and crossbones flag was not coloured black and white as is commonly thought but was actually blood red to signify that no mercy would be given once the pirates boarded a ship.

A Jolly Roger once flown by HMS Safari during the Second World War is unfurled (Andrew Matthews/PA)

The skull and cross bones came from the symbol used in ships logs, where it represented death onboard.

And the name of the flag Jolly Roger is thought to have come from the French phrase joli rouge meaning pretty red.

But it was not only pirate ships that have flown the Jolly Roger, Royal Navy submarines adopted the practice since the First World War after a critic likened their crew to pirates.

On display at the exhibition at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard is a Jolly Roger flown by the Second World War submarine HMS Safari.

Each action a submarine carried out had its own symbol which was sewn on to the flag and was sometimes painted over to make it weather proof.

Victoria Ingles, senior curator at The National Museum of the Royal Navy said: The iconic Jolly Roger has become associated with the representation of pirates as swashbuckling rogues, cool rebels and fun childrens characters but this exhibition exposes the dark side behind these stereotypical images.

In reality, pirates commit brutal acts of violence and disrupt trade, which is why the Royal Navy still actively seeks to suppress their activities.

Yet, despite fighting piracy, the practice of flying a Jolly Roger has also become tradition within the submarine service in response to a critic who likened them to pirates.

These flags are a unique visual record of a boats combat activities as well as a striking piece of folk art.

Handcrafted, they are as much a symbol of pride and also poignant reminder of the impact of war.

The role of the Royal Navy in combating piracy is chronicled in the exhibition from the Jolly Roger belonging to Admiral Richard Curry which was seized at the end of the 18th century up to modern-day efforts.

Exhibition staff hang a Jolly Roger from HMS Unison (Andrew Matthews/PA)

The display starts on April 6 and is being held alongside a Horrible Histories Pirates exhibition.
A doctor has faced criticism after suggesting young children should be screened for psychopathic behaviour in the wake of the Alesha MacPhail murder.

Dr John Marshall, head of forensic clinical psychology services at the State Hospitals board for Scotland, argued certain behavioural traits can be found in children as young as five.

These traits can include being cruel to animals or their peers, being hurtful, lying constantly and being distant from their parents.

Aaron Campbell abducted, raped and murdered six-year-old Alesha (Police Scotland/PA)

Dr Marshall was one of the psychologists who assessed 16-year-old Aaron Campbell, who was sentenced last month to a minimum of 27 years in prison for murdering the six-year-old last July.

In an article for The Scotsman he suggested early intervention could be key to divert budding psychopaths and make sure what happened to poor Alesha never happens again.

Speaking to the Press Association, he revealed he had expected a backlash to the suggestion.

Dr Marshall said: One colleague has really criticised me saying I should never say you can identify psychopaths under five and I agree with that  you cant.

But there are temperamental risk factors which increase the likelihood or probability of heading on that pathway. Thats different.

What Im arguing for is that we are better at assessing those risk factors.

A lot of professionals involved in child mental health have real issues with this stuff  you would dare describe a child at five as having callous and unemotional traits, such a terrible thing to say, youre damning them with that label.

But my argument is if we ignore that and dont support families who have children like that then were taking huge risks, huge gambles.

To be criticised so heavily so heavily for that, it just seems like Im saying whats blatantly obvious.

Aleshas mother Georgina Lochrane (Andrew Milligan/PA)

In the article he calls it a major public health issue and likened the idea of tackling it to how obesity is perceived.

Dr Marshall said: If youve got a problem with obesity at 16 you can track that back to over-eating and earlier obesity and so on, its kind of obvious you can track things backwards.

I think theres a misunderstanding that Im sort of saying you can identify psychopaths much earlier on.

Im not saying that, Im saying you can identify children at risk.

He added: Genetic factors are important, temperament is important, I think were not paying enough attention to those other factors.

It could also be a relief for parents to know that  parents might feel that theyre blamed for their childs early temperament.

If we come to the conclusion those temperamental traits are present then those families will be issued with support around parenting, theyll need longer term support.

Campbell snatched Alesha from her bed as she slept at her grandparents home on the Isle of Bute and finally admitted his crime in a psychological report prepared ahead of his sentencing in March.

Dr Marshall also pointed out you dont become a psychopath on your 16th birthday and said the traits were entrenched and chronic by that age.

Lord Matthews, sentencing Campbell at the High Court in Glasgow last month, said social work and psychologist reports had painted a clear picture of a cold, callous, calculating, remorseless and dangerous individual.

He said the teenager had shown a staggering lack of remorse and told him: Not once did I detect a flicker of emotion from you.

In the psychologists report, Campbell also described his reaction to seeing Alesha as a moment of opportunity.

When asked about Campbell, Dr Marshall said: Its rare for sadistic rapes and murders to take place generally speaking but people who are much older  Im talking older teenagers  who have got psychopathic traits might be much more involved in a lot more offending than other offenders.

They might be involved in different types of offending as well  sexual and violent offending, robbery etc  so it might be more varied.

They might be much more engaged in bullying and coercive control of victims.

Its highlighted because of the extreme nature of it but that type of murder is so rare.
Virgin Atlantics flying lady emblem will not feature on new aircraft, the airline has announced.

The carrier said it is replacing its traditional image with a diverse range of men and women representing modern Britain on its new A350-1000 fleet.

Among the people wearing a red leotard in the new artwork will be a black man and woman, and a gay man.

Virgin Atlantic said it will be the first airline to have male figureheads on its aircraft.

The airline says it is `representing modern Britain with the new images (Virgin Atlantic/PA)

The flying lady was based on pin up girls made famous by Alberto Vargas in the 1930s and 1940s.

Virgin Atlantics announcement comes a month after it emerged the airline has stopped telling female cabin crew they have to wear make up. It has also started providing them with trousers as part of their standard uniform, rather than only if requested.

The carrier has pledged to tackle its gender pay gap and increase diversity and inclusion.

It is aiming to have a 50/50 gender split in leadership roles, as well as 12% black, Asian and minority ethnic group representation across the company, by 2022.

The flying lady has been an integral part of the airlines branding (Steve Parsons/PA)

Nikki Humphrey, senior vice president of people at Virgin Atlantic, said: The saying goes you cant be what you cant see and that has never been truer than the aviation industrys glamorous image in the past.

We have been working for a number of years to tackle our gender pay gap, create an inclusive workplace and increase the diversity of our workforce, through the development of our springboard scheme for women, as well as the launch of engineering apprenticeships.

By introducing our new flying icons I hope it encourages people from all backgrounds to feel at home flying with us, but also working with us.
An MP who was the target of a neo-Nazi murder plot has called for more action to protect democracy as her would-be assassin faced life behind bars.

Jack Renshaw, 23, bought a 19-inch (48cm) Gladius knife to kill West Lancashire MP Rosie Cooper and exact revenge on a female police officer who was investigating him for child sex offences.

The plan was scuppered by whistle-blower Robbie Mullen, who was at a meeting in a pub when Renshaw announced that he was going to kill Ms Cooper in July 2017 and reported the threat to Hope not hate.

Jack Renshaw plotted to kill MP Rosie Cooper (Steve Parsons/PA)

It came just a year after Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed and shot by a fellow far-right extremist, Thomas Mair.

Renshaw, from Skelmersdale, Lancashire, had admitted making preparations to kill his local MP and making a threat to kill police officer Victoria Henderson.

But he denied membership of banned extreme right-wing group National Action along with Andrew Clarke, 34, and Michal Trubini, 36, from Warrington.

A jury at his retrial was discharged, having failed to reach verdicts after more than 48 hours of deliberations and prosecutor Duncan Atkinson QC said he could not seek a third trial.

A few moments ago a trial finished at the Old Bailey. Now that the trial is over, were able to finally tell the full story of how HOPE Not hate smashed the banned terror group National Action and foiled a murder plot. pic.twitter.com/cttixMTixb  HOPE not hate (@hopenothate) April 2, 2019

Afterwards, Ms Cooper said: I was targeted, not as Rosie Cooper the person, but as Rosie Cooper the MP.

I was to be murdered to send a message to the state. Our way of life, our democracy and our freedoms are being attacked by the likes of Renshaw and extremist groups like National Action.

Weve got to do so much more to protect our democracy, to ensure that good, dedicated, hard-working public servants are not put off entering public life because they fear for their safety, or indeed their lives. We really must do more to protect our way of life.

Hope not hate chief executive Nick Lowles praised the bravery of Mr Mullen, but criticised police for being too slow to act.

He said: National Action was part a new, more extreme breed of neo-nazis that vilified Jews, celebrated and encouraged violence, and lauded Hitler. They wanted to ignite a race war in Britain.

While we welcome the various prosecutions which have taken place, the authorities and police have been too slow to act and missed too many warning signs about the changing nature of the far-right terror threat.

The Christchurch terrorist attack shows that there is a global network of far-right activists who are inspiring each other to launch violent attacks. This is no time for complacency about the threat we face from far-right terrorism.

It can be reported today that Renshaw is a convicted paedophile who was jailed last June for 16 months after he groomed two underage boys online.

Jurors at Preston Crown Court found him guilty of four counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

He also received a three-year prison sentence two months earlier when he was found guilty of stirring up racial hatred after he called for the genocide of Jewish people.

National Action leader Christopher Lythgoe, 32, of Warrington, and his right-hand man Matthew Hankinson, 24, from Merseyside  who were present when Renshaw outlined his plans, were convicted of membership last year.

Adam Thomas and his partner Claudia Patatas (West Midlands Police/PA)

National Action is the first extreme right-wing group to be proscribed by the Government since the Second World War.

In December 2016, it was banned by the then home secretary Amber Rudd over its support for the murder of Batley and Spen MP Ms Cox.

Lythgoe reacted to the news by telling members that they would just shed one skin for another.

Meanwhile, disillusioned Mr Mullen, 25, began leaking information about National Action to campaign group Hope Not Hate.

By July 2017, Renshaw was on police bail for making hate speeches and under investigation for child sex offences.

He decided on suicide by cop rather than face a seven-year stretch in prison.

He bought a large machete to take revenge on a female investigating officer and kill his local MP.

Renshaw unveiled his plan at the Friar Penketh pub in Warrington on July 1 2017 to Clarke, Hankinson, Lythgoe and Mr Mullen.

Earlier that day, he had met convicted National Action members Darren Fletcher, 28, Adam Thomas, 22, and his partner Claudia Patatas, 39, in Liverpool.

Describing the meeting in the Friar Penketh, Mr Mullen, from Widnes, Cheshire, told jurors: He said he was going to kill his local MP, Rosie Cooper. I said Are you sure? and he said Yeah.

He said he would kill her, then try to take some hostages to lure the police officer that was investigating him to try to kill her because she was the reason behind it all.

He said his mind was made up. He had bought a machete.

Giving evidence, warehouse worker Clarke said: National Action was immature. I was tired of it. I was thankful for the ban.

Office worker Trubini, who qualified as a teacher in Slovakia, said: I would not jeopardise my job to be a member of a group that had no real impact.

After the jury was discharged, Renshaw was remanded into custody to be sentenced on May 17.

Matthew Collins, Hope not hates head of intelligence, said: We continually warned that National Action had not stopped recruiting and training after its ban in December 2016 and we were proven right when Robbie Mullen first came to us in April 2017.

At the time, police didnt seem to have any idea that the group was still active, despite its ban.

Ruth Smeeth MP, who warned Ms Cooper after learning of the danger after being altered by Hope not hate, said it had been a truly shocking case.

She said: Two years after the devastating murder of my colleague Jo Cox, we narrowly averted what could have been another appalling crime.

I cannot overstate Hope not hates role and what might have happened had Robbie Mullen not been able to report Jack Renshaws plans. We all owe Robbie a huge debt of gratitude for what he did.

Mr Mullen said: By reporting Jack Renshaws murder plot and giving evidence in this court my life has changed. But I know I had no other choice. Jack Renshaw was days away from trying to kill an MP, Rosie Cooper.
Cheltenham racecourse has been granted a permanent High Court injunction banning ticket touts from the track.

Jockey Club Racecourses (JCR) was given a temporary injunction in October, and returned to court on Tuesday to make the ban permanent.

Giving judgment in London, Judge Penelope Reed QC ruled that the interim injunction ought to be made final.

She said the temporary injunction had been effective in almost eradicating touts from Cheltenham.

She added that touts have been involved in violent incidents and non-violent anti-social behaviour, and referred to evidence from local police that touts and those who control them are often engaged in money laundering.

Judge Reed concluded: I am satisfied that the ticket touts operating at Cheltenham racecourse are trespassers and therefore the claimant is entitled to have the interim injunction made permanent.

Cheltenham Festival (Paul Harding/PA)

Speaking outside court, Ian Renton, JCRs south west regional director, welcomed the judgment.

He told the Press Association: In the last two years, the biggest complaint we had from our racegoers was the nuisance caused by touts, so to have actually removed the nuisance is great for us.

Mr Renton added that he was sure other racecourses and sporting bodies would consider following suit.

Certainly other racecourses are looking at the actions we have taken, and we had other sporting bodies down during the festival to look at how it was progressing with us, he said.

JCRs barrister John Steel QC earlier told the court that the interim injunction had a quite remarkable effect during last months Cheltenham Festival.

He said there would usually be as many as 150 touts active each day of the festival.

He added: The number of touts that were viewed by both Mr Renton and also other officials at Cheltenham was down to fewer than a handful and, literally, on some days during the festival there were none on the racecourse itself.

He submitted that the cost of touting to JCR across all its racecourses is estimated to be between 1 million and 1.5 million per year, none of which is recoverable.

He also said Gloucestershire Constabulary and Cheltenham Borough Council were fully supportive of the applications being made today, and had been pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of the temporary injunction.

Mr Steel added that the general racing community, as well as the sporting community, will be very interested in this judgment.
Scottish politicians have reacted with dismay at the news controversial vaginal mesh implants could be used in the NHS in England again once certain conditions are met.

Vaginal mesh was banned across the UK last year due to safety concerns, with hundreds of Scottish women suffering chronic pain from the implants used to treat bladder and bowel conditions.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) in England has published new guidelines saying the devices could be offered in certain situations and as long as more information is recorded.

Despite the updated advice for surgeons in England, the Scottish Government indicated it had no plans to allow the implants to be reintroduced in Scotlands health service.

Former Scottish health secretary Alex Neil said: The NICE guidelines published today are extremely disappointing.

These guidelines dont reflect the reality across the UK, where so many womens lives have been destroyed by the use of mesh.

Vaginal mesh, which is banned in Scotland, could be used once again in England after new health watchdog guidance (University of Sheffield/PA)

Further, it doesnt recognise the expertise outwith the UK that could be better learnt from so there is greater access to full mesh removal surgery here.

Its a poor report and it certainly isnt putting patients at the centre of consideration.

Scottish Conservative interim leader Jackson Carlaw said: This is an astonishing decision and a betrayal to the many women whose lives have been ruined by this procedure.

Quite how NICE has managed to reach this verdict is a mystery and brave campaigners will very understandably be demanding answers.

In Scotland, we have a moratorium on mesh implants, and I urge the Scottish Government to keep this in place.
The family of a teenager abducted and murdered almost 25 years ago have vowed never to stop looking for her body.

Arlene Arkinson, 15, disappeared in August 1994 following a night out.

An inquest into her presumed death concluded on Tuesday in Belfast after more than a decade of stop-start hearings.

A coroner will deliver his findings on a future date.

Arlenes sister Kathleen said: She was 15 when she went missing, she would have been 40 now on 20 April.

Arlene was from the village of Castlederg in Co Tyrone.

Arlene was last seen in a car driven by Robert Howard - the chief suspect and convicted child killer and rapist died in prison in 2015 aged 71 (Kent Police/PA)

She went missing after attending a disco at Bundoran in Co Donegal in the Irish Republic.

She was last seen in a car driven by Robert Howard.

The chief suspect and convicted child killer and rapist died in prison in 2015 aged 71.

Howard was charged with murdering the 15-year-old, but acquitted in 2005.

The jury was not told the predator, originally from County Laois in the Republic, had a history of sexual violence.

By the time of his trial, he was already serving a life term for killing and raping London teenager Hannah Williams.

Efforts to recover Arlenes body have failed.

Ms Arkinson said: It was us that suffered, dragged through the mud, what the police gave us was unbelievable but we are still standing here and I will be here until Arlene is found.

I will never give up looking for Arlene and I would like to thank the public for their prayers and keep Arlene in their prayers.

Her barrister Henry Toner QC told the coroners court lines of inquiry had been investigated as far as they could be and evidence-giving had been concluded.

Mr Toner confirmed the family knew Arlene was dead and believed she was murdered by Howard.

He said the family had suffered so much since 1994, and the extent of Arlenes suffering would never be known.

The inquest opened in November 2007.

The barrister said: This extended process has added to the suffering of those who loved Arlene.

This is the final day of hearings but their suffering will continue long beyond the conclusion of this inquest.

He said some witnesses who gave evidence to the inquest were not honest in their accounts.

He added: Some came to defend lies they told 20 years ago and the family have no thanks for those witnesses.

This inquest has heard sufficient evidence to establish such truth about Arlenes death as can be found.

Judge Brian Sherrard said he had drawn up draft conclusions, but it would be the autumn before they were ready for delivery.

A special hearing will be convened in Omagh courthouse, close to the scene of Arlenes disappearance.

The coroner said: This has been a very long process and the effort of course at all stages and now is to allow our community as a whole, and the Arkinson family in particular, to understand the loss of Arlene, who was of course a valued member of our community.
Former Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has told Health Secretary Jeane Freeman she should lift her head from a spreadsheet and look at the reality of health and social care funding.

Speaking at Holyrood on Tuesday, Ms Dugdale suggested integration joint boards (IJBs) across Scotland are facing funding shortfalls, causing services to be cut to the bone.

The Labour MSP claimed the Edinburgh Integration Joint Board had been forced to make 11.6 million worth of cuts for the coming financial year and could still face a further funding black hole of 12.6 million

Amount of money NHS Lothian has spent keeping people in hospital that dont need to be there:  17.6m



Amount of money Edinburghs IJB needs to cut from health and social care to balance its books:  12.6m



  Kezia Dugdale (@kezdugdale) April 2, 2019

Ms Freeman said a total of 711 million, representing a 29% increase on last year, had been committed to health and social care in the budget for 2019-20.

I dont accept that this Government has done anything other than absolutely prioritise the health budget, including health and social care, she said.

What I require integration authorities to do is to look at how they reform the delivery of their services in order to get the best value and deliver what patient care needs.

That is both the health board and the local authority.

The point of integration is to devolve those decisions to integration joint boards who should be best placed to determine what their local population needs with that significant additional funding from this government.

Kezia Dugdale has urged the Health Secretary to `lift her head from a spreadsheet (Andrew Milligan/PA)

Ms Dugdale said: Can I say to the Cabinet Secretary that she needs to lift her head from a spreadsheet and look at exactly whats happening in the real world.

In order to balance its books, Edinburgh is considering cutting mental health services and slashing its drug and alcohol partnership funding.

If Edinburgh cant afford to stand still, how on earth will 2,000 of my constituents get the help they desperately and urgently need?

Ms Freeman responded: It is a bit ironic to have someone from the Labour Party suggest that I live in the real world  trust me, I live in the real world and it would be helpful to move away from the rhetoric.

The Health Secretary also urged MSPs to focus on the plan agreed between the Scottish Government, Cosla (Convention of Scottish Local Authorities) and councils to help increase the pace and the delivery of integrated health and social care.

Ms Freeman said: Every single one of our IJBs needs to improve what they are doing but Cosla and I have committed to direct action to intervene and support where that is necessary.

But once again this Chamber has to remember that if you want to devolve decision-making to local bodies, like IJBs, you have to allow those decisions to be made and not constantly want the Government to jump in and fix things because you dont like what the local decisions are.

We have to allow that local flexibility but where that does not meet the overarching priorities of this Government then of course we will actively assist them to do so.

Scottish Conservative MSP Miles Briggs suggested there was a growing financial crisis across IJBs in the country.

This isnt about fixing things, its about stopping them being smashed in the first place, he said.

Across Scotland were seeing proposals to close care homes for alcohol and drugs partnerships, and primary care transformation funds to drive forward GP reforms, all being raided.

The integration of health and social care is something we all agree with across this Chamber but this is putting that at risk.

This isnt how it was supposed to be.
German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will do everything she can to prevent a no-deal Brexit.

Speaking after Brexit talks with Irish premier Leo Varadkar in Dublin, the chancellor said the European Union member states will stand together until the very last hour.

Ms Merkel made the comments at Farmleigh House in the capital on Thursday afternoon.

Speaking alongside Mr Varadkar, she said: Every step of the way we will stand together, we will walk together.

We do hope that the intensive discussions that are ongoing in London will lead to a situation by next Wednesday, when we have a special council meeting, where Prime Minister Theresa May will have something to table to us on the basis of which we can continue to talk.

We want to stand together as 27. Until the very last hour  I can say this from the German side  we will do everything in order to prevent a no-deal Brexit; Britain crashing out of the European Union.

But we have to do this together with Britain and with their position that they will present to us.

We will simply have to be able to do this. We have to be successful and we hope for a solution that we can agree together with Britain.

Angela Merkel with Leo Varadkar (Maxwell Photography/PA)

I heard that you have the same saying as what we say in Germany: Where theres a will theres a way.

We are working on this and we have very good partners in the Commission, with Michel Barnier and Jean-Claude Juncker who are putting everything into finding a good ending, finding mutual solutions, so we will find this together.

We still hope, obviously, for an orderly Brexit.

Taoiseach Mr Varadkar said that any further extension to Article 50 must have a credible and realistic way forward.

I thought it would be important for the Chancellor to hear directly from people from Northern Ireland and the border region, people for whom the border is a very real issue & with direct experience of conflict before the Good Friday Agreement. pic.twitter.com/kSVoIhAUYs  Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) April 4, 2019

Matters continue to play out in London and I think we need to be patient and understanding of the predicament that they are in, he added.

Mr Varadkar restated that the EU was prepared to amend the Political Declaration if the UKs red lines shifted.

Both Ireland and Germany want to have a future relationship with the UK which is close and comprehensive and as deep as possible, and we would like to see the Withdrawal Agreement ratified so that we can begin the negotiations on a new economic and security partnership without further delay, he said.

But he added: There is very little time left and we have to prepare ourselves for all outcomes.

Chancellor Angela Merkel (Brian Lawless/PA)

Earlier the two leaders took part in a round-table discussion with 15 people from Northern Ireland and the border area about the impact a no-deal scenario could have on their lives.

They heard from some victims of violence, as well as farmers and business people.

It comes as efforts intensify to find a way through the Brexit impasse.

Its a real privilege to welcome Chancellor Angela Merkel to Ireland today. Were meeting people from Ireland North and South to hear why we must avoid the return of any hard border and secure an orderly #Brexit pic.twitter.com/22HrwvUpIP  Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) April 4, 2019

The UK Government and the Labour Partys negotiating teams are locked in intensive talks in the hope of agreeing a position which could win a majority in the House of Commons in the coming days to allow Theresa May to request a short delay to Article 50.

Mr Varadkar held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Mr Varadkar met French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris (Christophe Ena/AP)

Discussing his meeting with Mr Macron, Mr Varadkar said he was really heartened by the enormous support that France continued to demonstrate towards Ireland, and by Mr Macrons statement that Ireland would never be abandoned by France or by the EU.

Whatever issues arise, if there is no deal, they are very much seen as shared problems, ones that Ireland will try to resolve with our partners in France and the European Commission, he added.

Its not a questions of a big stick or us being put under undue pressure, but there are reasonable questions being asked as to how we will protect the integrity of the single market and the single union.
As Nato celebrates its 70th birthday it remains vital to international security, according to a senior British officer.

Lieutenant General Tim Radford, who is the commander of the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) based at Imjin Barracks in Gloucester, said Nato would remain the pillar of stability in an uncertain world.

He spoke as Nato foreign ministers met in Washington to celebrate the organisations anniversary.

The Nato 70 parade taking place in Gloucester (SSgt Mark Nesbit RLC/ARRC Production/PA)

Nato is facing challenges from Russia, China and Iran, while the US wants its allies to boost their defence spending.

Lt Gen Radford, who was speaking during a military parade at the barracks to mark the milestone, said: While the last 70 years have seen unparallel change, Nato is as vital to global security today as it ever was.

Nato is an alliance united by shared history, shared values and shared goals. Together we work to prevent conflict and to preserve peace.

Our world is changing and Nato is changing too.

Nato has kept our nations and our peoples safe by being agile and by adapting to new security challenges.

The 23 nations serving at the UK-led headquarters paraded under their own flags (SSgt Mark Nesbit RLC/ARRC Production/PA)

And throughout this transformation, our unity and our resolve to defend our values remains unchanged.

Its because of this, Nato will remain a pillar of stability in an uncertain world.

All 23 nations serving at the UK-led headquarters braved the torrential rain to parade under their own flags.

Major General Maurizio Boni, deputy commander of ARRC, said: We are facing uncertainty and so we need strength to face the uncertainty, and that strength is Nato.

We are facing 360 degree threats and thats why we need that strength against that uncertain future because we cannot predict what threats pose the biggest threat.

Nato is facing challenges from Russia, China and Iran (SSgt Mark Nesbit RLC/ARRC Production/PA)

He described the ongoing uncertainty around Brexit as no issue at all.

We are concerned with making Nato relevant in the 21st century, he added.

Major General Jez Bennett, chief of staff at ARRC, said Brexit had no impact on Nato at all.

He added: It may benefit the UK because Nato is an important means of British influence with the EU states and could become even more important as a result.
Talks between the Government and Labour to break the Brexit logjam have been productive and will continue on Friday, Downing Street said.

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyns negotiating teams met for four-and-a-half hours in the Cabinet Office on Thursday for detailed talks.

The talks are aimed at finding a consensus Brexit position ahead of a crunch summit of European Union leaders in Brussels on April 10.

David Lidington, effectively the deputy prime minister, led the Governments negotiating team with Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, Chief Whip Julian Smith, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Theresa Mays chief of staff Gavin Barwell.

On the other side of the table were shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey along with senior Labour officials.

A Downing Street spokesman said the detailed and productive technical talks were supported by civil servants.

The Government and the Opposition hope to meet again tomorrow for further work to find a way forward to deliver on the referendum, mindful of the need to make progress ahead of the forthcoming European Council, the spokesman said.

Any decision on an extension to Brexit in order to prevent the UK crashing out of the EU on April 12 will be taken by EU leaders at that summit.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks on Brexit in Dublin (Brian Lawless/PA)

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was still hopeful that a no-deal Brexit could be avoided as where theres a will theres a way.

Speaking in Dublin alongside Irish premier Leo Varadkar, she said: We will simply have to be able to do this. We have to be successful and we hope for a solution that we can agree together with Britain.

Mr Varadkar said: Matters continue to play out in London and I think we need to be patient and understanding of the predicament that they are in.

But of course, any further extension must require and must have a credible and realistic way forward.

The talks in Westminster between the Government and Opposition have highlighted divisions within both the Tory and Labour ranks.

Backbench Labour MPs have issued a warning to Mr Corbyn not to include a second Brexit referendum in any compromise deal thrashed out with Mrs May.

Arriving for the talks in Whitehall, shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir confirmed that a confirmatory referendum was among the ideas on the table for discussion.

Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer is heading Labours negotiation team (John Stillwell/PA)

But a group of 25 Labour MPs wrote to Mr Corbyn warning that a second public vote would divide the country further and add uncertainty for business.

They warned: A second referendum would be exploited by the far right, damage the trust of many core Labour voters and reduce our chances of winning a general election, they warned.

Alongside some of my Labour colleagues I have written to @jeremycorbyn to encourage him to engage with the Government to achieve a Brexit deal.



This would show that we are respecting the referendum result as Labour has promised. pic.twitter.com/psHfayhJjP  Kevin Barron (@KevinJBarron) April 4, 2019

Signatories included veteran backbenchers Sir Kevin Barron, Dennis Skinner and Ronnie Campbell, former minister Caroline Flint and MPs for Leave-voting areas of the North and Midlands including Gloria De Piero, Sarah Champion and Gareth Snell.

They said the policy adopted at Labours autumn conference made clear there was no need for a public vote if the party secures its preferred customs union deal, which was now within reach.

The letter reflects deep fissures within Labour over whether to demand a confirmatory vote as part of any compromise.

Deputy leader Tom Watson has said: I dont think our party would forgive us if we were to sign off on a Tory Brexit without that kind of concession.

This really did happen. My thanks to @10DowningStreet for hosting me to speak up for the 48% and UKs remain community. Still not much the wiser about what red lines have changed and whether customs union could be inserted but shes in need of persuasion of #peoplesvote pic.twitter.com/Y6kh4hcyNq  Rupa Huq MP (@RupaHuq) April 4, 2019

And referendum-supporting Labour MP Rupa Huq met the Prime Minister to make the point that potentially hundreds of Opposition MPs could be prepared to back a Brexit deal if it was subject to a public vote.

Meanwhile, a string of Cabinet ministers signalled that Tories could be prepared to compromise on Labours key demand of a customs union arrangement with the EU  an idea loathed by Brexiteers.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said avoiding a customs union was not an article of faith, while Chancellor Philip Hammond said Tories should be ready to look at it.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock told BBC Radio 4s Today programme that he preferred Mrs Mays deal to a customs union, but added: I have spoken about the problems of a customs union and I dont think its as good for the country. But I also want to deliver Brexit.

With time running out before Mrs May must inform European Council president Donald Tusk of the UKs proposal, Downing Street appeared to indicate that it may not be necessary for MPs to approve any consensus deal ahead of the summit.

The PMs official spokesman said the important thing was to provide the leaders of the other 27 EU states with clarity on the way forward, in order for them to feel able to offer a further extension to the Brexit process.

Mrs May will be expected to spell out the UKs plans in a letter to Mr Tusk in sufficient time for the other 27 leaders to consider them before they gather in Brussels on Wednesday evening.

.@HayteratLords proposed a motion to consider all stages of the #EUWithdrawal5Bill in one day. Several members suggested changes to her motion. (2/6)  House of Lords (@UKHouseofLords) April 4, 2019

The House of Lords was debating a backbench Bill designed to stop the UK crashing out of the EU next week, after it cleared the Commons in a single day on Wednesday.

To avoid the prospect of peers having to sit through the night, Chief Whip Lord Taylor of Holbeach announced a deal had been reached with Labour to hold the Bills committee and report stages, and third reading, on Monday.

But ministers have warned that the legislation, tabled by Labours Yvette Cooper and passed by the Commons with a majority of just one vote, could create the risk of an accidental no-deal Brexit because it gives MPs a vote on any extension obtained by Mrs May next week.

Mr Barclay told the Commons the measure could backfire if MPs reject the proposed delay, as there would be no time to renegotiate it before the deadline for departure on Friday.
Roberto Pereyra is a doubt for Watfords FA Cup semi-final against Wolves at Wembley on Sunday due to a hip injury.

Pereyra has been unable to train since the 4-1 Premier League victory over Fulham on Tuesday and his fitness is being monitored closely by the Hornets.

The skilful Argentina international has played a key role in Watfords successful season and boss Javi Gracia is confident he will be given the green light to play.

Pereyra felt some pain but I think he can be ready for the next game, said Gracia, who withdrew the 28-year-old at half-time against Fulham as a precaution.

Roberto is an important player for us but if he is not available I have other players ready and waiting for the chance to play.

Tom Cleverley is definitely out because of a calf problem, but Isaac Success and Adalberto Penaranda could recover from respective knee and hamstring problems in time.

Watfords Roberto Pereyra is a doubt to face Wolves (Adam Davy/PA)

In this moment, we have Tom Cleverley, Isaac Success, Adalberto Penaranda and Roberto Pereyra not training with the team, Gracia said.

Pereyra and Success will train on Friday and we will see. They are doubts. Cleverley is out and I dont know how much time he will need. In the next days it is not possible for him to play.

Watford are battling with Wolves to finish the Premier League season in seventh place, with a spot in the Europa League the prize on offer.

Their immediate concern is their Wembley showdown, however, as Gracia looks to continue an outstanding campaign by reaching the FA Cup final.

Well decide in the next day the best XI, but Im always asked about changes and what players I will put in the first XI. I just always try to choose the best XI and this game is no different, Gracia said.
German chancellor Angela Merkel said she was moved by the stories of people living in Irish border communities who were affected by the Troubles.

Ms Merkel met with a panel of 15 people from Protestant and Catholic communities, both unionists and nationalists, from both sides of the border.

Speaking in Dublin, she said: Today was a very important experience for me. I come from a country that for many, many years was divided by a wall.

I lived behind the Iron Curtain so I know only too well what it means once borders vanish.

I thought it would be important for the Chancellor to hear directly from people from Northern Ireland and the border region, people for whom the border is a very real issue & with direct experience of conflict before the Good Friday Agreement. pic.twitter.com/kSVoIhAUYs  Leo Varadkar (@LeoVaradkar) April 4, 2019

She added that everything needs to be done to ensure a peaceful co-operation continues.

After all, a heavy death toll has been taken here throughout the Troubles, she said.

What I have heard here will encourage me to explore ways and means to ensure this peaceful co-existence continues, she added.

Representatives from the Irish border communities who met with the chancellor say they were impressed by her knowledge of the issue.

Ms Merkel travelled to Dublin on Thursday to meet with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in Dublins Farmleigh House to discuss Brexit, and show solidarity with Ireland amid the Brexit negotiations.

An Taoiseach and Chancellor Merkel participating in a tete-a-tete at their meeting in Farmleigh House this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/nCMjViwApQ  MerrionStreet.ie (@merrionstreet) April 4, 2019

The border issue has remained a point of contention during the Brexit impasse, as an open border on the island of Ireland is a key component of the Good Friday Agreement.

Peter Sheridan, chief executive of Co-operation Ireland and a former assistant chief constable with the PSNI, who mediated the meeting, says Ms Merkel reflected on her own life growing up in East Germany.

She absolutely understood the personal messages that people gave her, Mr Sheridan said.

I think anyone who was there couldnt help but be impressed by her. She understood the passion of people, and the very personal stories people shared with her this afternoon.

Peter Sheridan (centre) speaking to the media following a meeting with the chancellor (Brian Lawless/PA)

She reflected her own understanding and her own background and what it was like to be behind a wall.

You also couldnt help but be impressed about the range of people around that table today who were there speaking about their own personal experiences.

I have no doubt that the chancellor went away well informed about the impact and the people part of this, not just the technical part of it  were trying to put people in the middle of all this.

Patricia Mac Bride, a magistrate in Londonderry, and a former Commissioner for Victims and Survivors of the Northern Ireland conflict said everyone who met with Ms Merkel was confident she took their words on board.

Patricia Mac Bride speaking to the media (Brian Lawless/PA)

It was clear from the meeting today that the Chancellor has a very thorough understanding of the issues Irish citizens face living in the north, the issue around denial of rights, issues around citizenship for people living in Northern Ireland and the border counties.

She understands the challenges a hard border would bring to this island, and I am certain she will take those messages into the meeting next week with the EU27 and what she heard today will be strongly reflected.

The group also included peace workers from Derry and Belfast who lost close family members in bomb attacks, a Unionist farmer and haulier from Inishowen in Donegal, a businessman from Co Monaghan and a GP from Donegal who now lives in Derry.
Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has finalised his divorce from wife MacKenzie, giving her a separate stake in the online shopping giant.

Ms Bezos will get 4% of Amazon when the divorce is approved, which is expected to happen in about 90 days.

Before the separation, Mr Bezos had a 16% stake in Amazon worth more than 140 billion dollars, making him one of the worlds richest people.

In a tweet, Ms Bezos said that she was giving up all of her interests in The Washington Post, the newspaper that Mr Bezos bought in 2013, and Blue Origin, the space exploration company he founded.

She added: Excited about my own plans. Grateful for the past as I look forward to what comes next,

Mr Bezos said in a tweet on Thursday: Im grateful for her support and for her kindness in this process and am very much looking forward to our new relationship as friends and co-parents.

Jeff Bezos and wife MacKenzie Bezos have finalised their divorce (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

The couple announced they were divorcing in January, just before the National Enquirer published a story saying Jeff Bezos was having an affair with a former TV host.

Bezos later accused the tabloids publisher of threatening to publish explicit photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained his private messages.

Hell still be the companys biggest shareholder when the divorce is complete, with a 12% stake in Amazon.
Police have launched an appeal to find a five-month-old baby boy missing from Sutton Coldfield.

The child is believed to be with James Dempsey  a man known to the childs mother  West Midlands Police said.

The 35-year-old is believed to be driving a silver Vauxhall Astra with the registration NH05 OWP.

The vehicle was last seen on the A45 heading towards Coventry just before 1am on Thursday.

The force is urging anyone who may have information to contact them on 0800 056 0944.

#UPDATE | The missing baby boy has been found safe and well. A 35-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of child abduction and is currently in custody. A huge thank you to everyone for all your support. pic.twitter.com/aKHF59zYRm  Birmingham Police (@brumpolice) April 4, 2019

Detective Chief Inspector Ian Ingram said: I am concerned for the safety of this baby and am appealing for help to find him.

Police had been searching for a 35-year-old man (PA)

His family are anxious and worried about the baby boy and just want him home safe and well.

I am appealing directly to James to contact us or the babys family so we can arrange for him to be reunited with his mother  or to take the baby to a place of safety, such as a hospital.

They could still be in the Birmingham area but its also possible that theyve travelled elsewhere in the country, which is why we are appealing to the public for help.

I would ask everyone who is out and about this evening  wherever you are  to please keep your eyes peeled for Dempsey.

Mr Ingram urged members of the public to share the appeal on social media to help raise awareness.

To contact West Midlands Police with information call 0800 056 0944 or 999.
The crew of the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed shortly after take-off last month performed all of the procedures recommended by Boeing when the plane started to nose dive but could not save it, according to a preliminary report released by Ethiopias government.

The report was based on data from the recorders of the Boeing 737 Max 8 Boeing declined to comment pending its review of the report.

The Max 8 has been under scrutiny since a Lion Air flight crashed off the coast of Indonesia under similar circumstances in October.

The Ethiopian Airlines jet crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa on March 10, killing all 157 on board.

The pilots initially followed Boeings emergency steps by disconnecting the MCAS system, but for an unknown reason, they turned the system back on, an official familiar with the crash investigation told The Associated Press.

(PA Graphics)

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because at the time, Ethiopian investigators had not released their preliminary report.

Boeings procedures instruct pilots to leave the MCAS system disconnected and continue flying manually for the rest of the flight.

Ethiopian investigators did not address that issue at the news conference, saying only that the pilots had done what they were supposed to.

At a news conference, Minister of Transport Dagmawit Moges said the Ethiopian Airlines crew performed all the procedures repeatedly provided by the manufacturer but was not able to control the aircraft.

However, it wasnt clear whether the Ethiopian pilots followed Boeings recommendations to the letter in dealing with the system repeatedly pointing the nose down.

However, Moges told The New York Times after the press conference that the pilots turned MCAS on and off, but she couldnt say how many times. That will be addressed in the final report, she said.

The Max has been grounded worldwide pending a software fix that Boeing is rolling out, which still needs approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and other regulators.

The family of a 24-year-old American passenger on the Ethiopian jet has sued Boeing in Chicago.

Samya Stumos family is filing against Boeing (Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

The complaint is alleging negligence and civil conspiracy among other charges.

The American who was killed, Samya Stumo, is the great niece of consumer advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

Blinded by its greed, Boeing haphazardly rushed the 737 MAX8 to market and actively concealed the nature of the automated system defects, the lawsuit alleges, demonstrating a conscious disregard for the lives of others.

Youve let us down. Youve killed people when youve let us down, said Adnaan Stumo, the victims brother, addressing Boeing during a press conference in Chicago.

Boeing is facing several other suits, including seven filed in Chicago earlier by one law firm alone claiming the flight-control system was defective and that Boeing failed to warn airlines about it or fully train pilots.

The Max 8 has been under scrutiny since a Lion Air flight crashed off the coast of Indonesia under similar circumstances in October.

Ethiopian investigators did not specifically mention the MCAS, but recommended that Boeing review the aircraft flight control system related to the flight controllability.

They also recommended that aviation officials verify issues have been adequately addressed before allowing the planes to fly again.

A worker enters a Boeing 737 Max 8 airplane (Ted S. Warren/AP)

The report said air speed and altitude values on the left side of the 737 Max conflicted with data from the right sensor, causing flight control problems.

The problems are similar to those reported on an Indonesian Lion Air flight that crashed last October.

Investigators found that software on the plane took readings from the sensor and pointed the nose down.

Thursdays revelations raise questions about repeated assertions by Boeing and US regulators that pilots could regain control in some emergencies by following steps that include turning off an anti-stall system designed specifically for the Max, known by its acronym, MCAS.

Boeing is the focus of investigations by the US Justice Department, the Transportation Departments inspector general, and congressional committees.

Investigations are also looking at the role of the Federal Aviation Administration in the US, which certified the Max in 2017 and declined to ground it after the first deadly crash in October.

The FAA said in a statement that it is continuing to work toward a full understanding of what happened and will take appropriate action as findings become available.
A five-month-old boy missing from Sutton Coldfield has been found safe and well, police said.

An appeal was launched on Thursday evening to track down 35-year-old James Dempsey  a man known to the childs mother.

West Midlands Police announced at about 10.15pm that the baby had been located.

It said that a 35-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of child abduction and is being held in custody.

#UPDATE | The missing baby boy has been found safe and well. A 35-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of child abduction and is currently in custody. A huge thank you to everyone for all your support. pic.twitter.com/aKHF59zYRm  Birmingham Police (@brumpolice) April 4, 2019

West Midlands Police launched an appeal for information on the whereabouts of Dempsey at about 7.15pm.

The force said Dempseys silver Vauxhall Astra had last been seen on the A45 heading towards Coventry just before 1am on Thursday.

Police had been searching for a missing baby (Joe Giddens/PA)

Detective Chief Inspector Ian Ingram said previously: I am concerned for the safety of this baby and am appealing for help to find him.

His family are anxious and worried about the baby boy and just want him home safe and well.

He added: I am appealing directly to James to contact us or the babys family so we can arrange for him to be reunited with his mother  or to take the baby to a place of safety, such as a hospital.
A man has been charged with the murder of a shopkeeper who was stabbed to death during a robbery at his newsagents in north-west London.

Alex Gunn, 31, has been charged with killing 54-year-old Ravi Katharkamar as he opened Marsh Food and Wine in Pinner on March 24.

Mr Katharkamar was found by a member of the public collapsed inside the shop suffering from stab injuries and police were called at about 6am.

Despite the efforts of emergency services he was pronounced dead at the scene 45 minutes later.

Investigators said previously that his attacker fled with a shop till.

Detective Chief Inspector Simon Stancombe of the Mets Homicide and Major Crime Command described the murder as a vicious and unwarranted attack on a completely innocent man.

A man has been charged with the murder of shopkeeper Ravi Katharkamar (Katharkamar family/ PA)

He called for information from anyone who might have noticed someone trying to use lots of loose change in the days after the killing.

Mr Stancombe was also trying to trace a black Vauxhall Astra parked on Cecil Park before the murder and driven away at speed immediately afterwards.

Gunn is due to appear at Willesden Magistrates Court on Friday.

The Met said that Gunn previously appeared at the same court on Monday charged with burglary, theft from a motor vehicle, possession of an offensive weapon and driving while disqualified.

A 44-year-old man arrested in connection with the murder on March 28 has been released under investigation.
Having one or two alcoholic drinks per day does not reduce the risk of having a stroke, scientists have said.

It has previously been suggested that moderate drinking could have a protective effect, however new research dismisses these claims.

A study, published in journal The Lancet, found that consuming just a couple of drinks per day could boost the risk of a stroke by as much as 15% compared to people who abstain.

Researchers from Oxford University, Peking University and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences looked at more than 160,000 men and women in China as part of the study.

The group were asked about their alcohol intake and followed up for 10 years.

Moderate alcohol consumption does not protect against strokes, the authors say (Kirsty OConnor/ PA)

Genetic variation in East Asian populations means some people are less tolerant to alcohol, finding it causes an unpleasant flushing reaction.

They are therefore predisposed to drink less.

However other factors such as educational background and levels of physical activity do not differ across these different genetic groups.

This allowed the scientists to compare the risk of stroke in population groups with different alcohol intakes, but with other similar risk factors.

They found that, among men, genetics that decreased alcohol intake also reduced blood pressure and stroke risk.

They concluded that alcohol increases the risk of having a stroke by around a third (35%) for every four additional drinks consumed per day, compared to non-drinkers.

Moderate drinkers, consuming one or two drinks per day, were at a 10% to 15% higher risk.

In their study, four drinks was the equivalent of around 280g of pure alcohol.

Professor Zhengming Chen, co-author from the Nuffield Department of Population Health, at the University of Oxford, said: There are no protective effects of moderate alcohol intake against stroke.

Even moderate alcohol consumption increases the chances of having a stroke.

The findings for heart attack were less clear-cut, so we plan to collect more evidence.

Trends seen in previous research, based on observational data, had indicated that moderate drinkers may be better off than non-drinkers, the authors said.

However they suggest this could be because those who abstain are often people who have stopped for health reasons, and therefore may already be in ill health.

Professor Sir Richard Peto, from the University of Oxford, said: This is for the first time reliable evidence as to what really is the cause and effect relationship.

The authors believe the findings apply to both men and women, and to populations across the world.

Dr Kate Holmes, assistant director of research at the Stroke Association said: This study helps to bust the myth that moderate drinking reduces your risk of having a stroke.

Alcohol not only increases blood pressure but can also cause weight gain, irregular heartbeat, diabetes and liver damage. Our advice is always to try and find ways to cut down on your drinking.

A spokeswoman for the Alcohol Information Partnership said: We encourage people to be able to make sensible, well-informed decisions about drinking based on evidence and their own circumstances.

Drinking in the UK has been falling for more than a decade and most people drink within the new lower government guideline.
A 4.4 million funding boost for regeneration projects in Scotland has been announced by Historic Environment Scotland (HES).

The investment, part of the eighth round of the Conservation Area Regeneration Scheme (CARS), will be split across four towns: Inverkeithing (1,007,700) Hawick (1,314,800), Lochgilphead (969,700) and Mauchline (1,119,800).

CARS is a regeneration initiative designed to direct funding to town centres that would benefit from heritage-led redevelopment.

Since its inception, 43 million has been awarded to communities across the country, resulting in more than 140 new businesses and more than 460 jobs created in areas of high unemployment.

HES chairwoman Jane Ryder said: One of the great merits of the CARS scheme is that it is locally led and allows local authorities to invest in priority properties they have identified and help communities to unlock the potential of their historic assets.

Culture Minister Fiona Hyslop said: This grant funding has been protected by the Scottish Government and supports towns and cities across Scotland to regenerate and improve their built environment benefiting Scotlands diverse heritage assets and communities.

Jane Ryder in Inverkeithing to announce the funding (Historic Environment Scotland/PA)

This contributes to their social fabric and community cohesion.

It also boosts the economy as the funding supports local businesses in carrying out repairs and improvements.

The announcement comes as HES launches its new corporate plan for 2019 onwards, Heritage For All, and a new historic environment policy, which sets out how areas will be managed for current and future generations.

Alex Paterson, HES chief executive, said: Heritage for All sets out a new way of looking at our historic environment reflecting the voices of people across Scotland, what that means to them and setting out a collective vision for the historic environment. This is a new plan, developed in a new way, with new perspectives.
A disorderly Brexit would have immediate economic implications affecting most areas of activity, the Central Bank of Ireland has warned.

But it added that economic growth is still expected to remain positive in the event of the UK crashing out of the European Union.

In its second quarterly bulletin, the Central Bank warned of the heightened levels of risk and uncertainty over Brexit.

The bulletin examines recent trends in the domestic economy and provides the Central Banks forecasts for the Irish economy and its views on domestic economic policy issues.

The report shows that the strong economic performance in the past year is expected to moderate slightly this year.

It adds that if a Brexit agreement is reached, the outlook for growth in the Irish economy remains positive, but warned of some uncertainty over a less favourable international economic environment

The bulletin also said economic growth is expected to be 4.2% this year, falling to 3.6% in 2020.

The unemployment rate will drop to 5.4% and 5% for 2019 and 2020 respectively.

The Central Bank forecasts that underlying economic activity will continue to grow at a relatively solid pace in coming years.

(PA Graphics)

The rate of global and euro area economic activity has weakened since last autumn and prospects for growth in Irelands main trading partners have been lowered further in recent months, with risks to the international economic outlook.

The central forecasts are based on a Brexit deal being reached and a transition period coming into effect until the end of 2020.

Given the unprecedented nature of Brexit, there is considerable uncertainty around outcomes.

The Central Bank has previously published analysis of the possible effects of an orderly exit under World Trade Organisation rules, a free trade area-like agreement and a no-deal Brexit.

Mark Cassidy, the Banks director of economics and statistics, said: The outlook for the economy remains broadly positive, though, following the strong performance of recent years, we expect growth to moderate in 2019 and 2020.

Mark Cassidy (Central Bank of Ireland/PA)

This moderation reflects both the impact of a weaker international economic environment and reduced potential for growth in the domestic economy. We now expect growth of 4.2% this year and 3.6% next year.

We have previously warned about the immediate and significant effects of a no-deal Brexit scenario on the Irish economy.

Our analysis suggests that a disorderly, no-deal Brexit could reduce the growth rate of the Irish economy by around four percentage points in the first year and by a further two percentage points in the second year.

This would imply that while there would still be positive growth this year and next, it would be materially lower than in the central forecasts, though, given the unprecedented nature of a disorderly Brexit, a good deal of uncertainty attaches to these estimates.

While Brexit continues to dominate the public agenda, there are other immediate risks to the economy.

The international economic outlook has weakened since the publication of the last bulletin.

Irelands position as a small, highly open economy and the important role of multinational firms within the economy means the evolution of global economic and trading conditions and movements in major exchange rates will have an important bearing on Irish economic performance.
Top-level talks aimed at finding a way out of the Brexit deadlock will continue between the Government and Labour on Friday.

The discussions are taking place as Prime Minister Theresa May faces a week of hectic diplomacy as she battles to keep her EU withdrawal agenda on track.

The dialogue with Labour comes amid reports that EU officials are considering offering the PM a flexible extension  or flextension  to the Article 50 timetable.

European Council president Donald Tusk is preparing to put the option to EU leaders at a crunch summit next Wednesday in a bid to prevent the UK crashing out of the bloc on April 12, according to the BBC.

As Government talks with Labour on EU withdrawal went into another day, the issue of a new Brexit referendum continued to be a focus of attention.

President of the European Council Donald Tusk will be in attendance at a crunch summit next Wednesday (Rick Findler/PA)

Ministers have considered the possibility of giving MPs a vote on holding a referendum on a deal as part of the talks with Labour, the Daily Telegraph reported.

It is understood the Government could set out proposals to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a letter on Friday.

And Mrs May faced a continued challenge to her authority from Parliament as the House of Lords debated a Bill aimed at extending the Brexit process in a bid to avoid a no-deal scenario.

The remaining stages of the European Union Withdrawal (No.5) Bill will be considered by peers on Monday, threatening a new political headache for the PM if it is approved.

The Bill, brought forward by backbenchers including Labours Yvette Cooper, allows Parliament to determine the length of any Brexit extension the Prime Minister should request at the EU summit on April 10.

If the European Council proposes a different extension, Mrs May would be required to return to the Commons to obtain MPs approval.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the Bill would leave the PM with little room to manoeuvre.

Referring to the Bills impact on a no-deal option, the Attorney General told the BBC: It rules it out the Prime Minister would have little choice but to accept the extension that shes offered.

Mr Cox said if the talks with Labour failed there would be repercussions.

He said: The problem, then, would be that we would be in an extension. Its likely to be a long one, by which I mean longer than just a few weeks or months.

Remaining Lords stages of the #EUWithdrawal5Bill are expected to take place on Monday 8 April (5/6)  House of Lords (@UKHouseofLords) April 4, 2019

Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh predicted a number of her colleagues could quit the party over the issue of a new referendum.

Ms McDonagh told the BBC: There is going to be outrage if we dont get a second vote.

Would it be the thing that made me leave the party? I dont think so, there are other issues for me.

But, would it make some of my colleagues in the parliamentary Labour Party? Yes, a number have said to me that would be the moment that they would leave.

However, a number of Labour MPs representing Leave areas have come out against the idea of a confirmatory referendum.

Mrs May will be expected to spell out the UKs plans in a letter to Mr Tusk in sufficient time for the other 27 leaders to consider them before they gather in Brussels for the summit.

Talks between the Government and Labour lasted four and a half hours on Thursday.

David Lidington, effectively the deputy prime minister, led the Governments negotiating team with Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, Chief Whip Julian Smith, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Theresa Mays chief of staff Gavin Barwell.

On the other side of the table were shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey along with senior Labour officials.

Labours victor in the Newport West by-election, Ruth Jones, said she is against a no-deal exit from the EU.
Labour held on to Newport West in a by-election battle which saw turnout slump.

The partys Ruth Jones took 9,308 votes, giving her a majority of 1,951 over the Tories, with Ukip in third place.

The contest was triggered by the death of veteran MP Paul Flynn and came against the backdrop of Brexit battles at Westminster.

Mrs Jones paid tribute to her predecessor in her victory speech, saying: This by-election has taken place because of the sad passing of Paul Flynn, our friend.

There have been many tributes to him over the weeks, but one saying stood out to me: Everyone knew someone helped by Paul Flynn. These words have been an inspiration to me during this campaign.

The city has long been a Labour stronghold and voted Leave by a margin of 56% to 44% in the 2016 in-out referendum.

Mrs Jones had been the clear favourite to succeed Mr Flynn, who held the Newport West seat for 32 years, winning with a majority of 5,658 and more than half the vote in 2017.

Voter turnout was 37.1%, down from 67.5% in the 2017 general election, with parties blaming poor weather including rain and hail on Thursday.

The poll took place in the wake of Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn meeting face-to-face at Westminster for talks on a possible cross-party Brexit compromise.

Mrs Jones, who campaigned for Remain in the lead-up to the EU referendum, said the country should not accept a damaging Tory Brexit or a no-deal outcome.

Ukips Neil Hamilton, the highest profile name taking part in the contest, sought a return to the Commons more than two decades after being ousted as an MP in the 1997 general election following his involvement in the cash-for-questions scandal.

Ukip candidate Neil Hamilton with his wife Christine during the by-election (Andrew Matthews/PA)

The partys leader in Wales took 2,023 votes, well up on the partys showing in 2017.

Mr Hamilton had hoped to benefit from the Brexit effect in the Leave-voting city and campaigned saying the by-election would provide a chance to send a clear message to Westminster over its handling of the UKs exit from the EU.

Conservative candidate Matthew Evans, who gained 7,357 votes, had hoped to improve on his partys performance at the 2017 general election, when the Tories finished second.

Mr Evans has been a councillor for the Allt-yr-yn ward in Newport Council for 20 years as well as serving as opposition leader, having served as mayor of the city between 2008 and 2012.

Mrs Jones is a former president of the Wales Trade Union Congress (TUC) and was defeated at two previous parliamentary elections for Monmouth in 2015 and 2017 by Conservative David Davies.

Mr Corbyn welcomed the victory, stating: Ruth will be a fantastic successor to Paul Flynn and will take up the tireless work he carried out for this community.

Tonights result sends a clear message that the people of Newport and Wales are fed up of austerity which has robbed the Welsh economy of 1 billion through needless cuts, and shows support for Labours alternative.
Ministers should prioritise divorce law reform and introduce a kinder separation process as soon as possible, a lawyers campaign group says.

Resolution, whose members specialise in family court issues, has repeated a call for the introduction of no-fault divorce.

Chair Margaret Heathcote says she will outline concerns in a speech at Resolutions annual conference in Manchester on Friday.

Ms Heathcote said there is a danger that reform will fall by the wayside because MPs are tied-up with debating Brexit.

She said: If youre separating, and youre faced with having to make unnecessary and unhelpful accusations against your ex on the divorce petition, there is nothing more important than this reform in the law.

Resolution says no-fault divorce will bring England and Wale into line with countries including Australia and the United States.

Ministers should prioritise divorce law reform, campaign group says PA/Anthony Devlin

Ms Heathcote said Lord Chancellor David Gauke had indicated that plans were in place to introduce legislation.

But she added: Were grateful to the Lord Chancellor for his support on this issue, and hope he makes good on his plans soon.

However, things change quickly in Westminster, and with the current degree of uncertainty, were asking him and his colleagues to make sure this change happens as soon as possible.

Otherwise, every day that passes sees thousands of couples at risk of needless acrimony and denied the right to a kinder divorce process.
A New Zealand judge has ordered that the man accused of killing 50 people at two New Zealand mosques undergo two mental health tests to determine if he is fit to enter pleas in the case.

High Court judge Cameron Mander made the order during a hearing in which 28-year-old Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant appeared via video link from a small room at the maximum security Paremoremo prison in Auckland.

Tarrant was wearing handcuffs and a grey-coloured jumper when he appeared on a large screen inside the Christchurch courtroom, which was packed with family members and victims of the shooting, some in wheelchairs and hospital gowns and still recovering from gunshot wounds.

Tarrant showed no emotion during the hearing.

An armed police office stands guard outside the entrance to the High Court in Christchurch (Mark Baker/AP)

At times he looked around the room or cocked his head, seemingly to better hear what was being said.

The judge explained that from his end, Tarrant could see the judge and lawyers but not those in the public gallery.

Tarrant spoke only once to confirm to the judge he was seated, although his voice did not come through because the sound was muted.

It was not immediately clear if his link had been deliberately or inadvertently muted.

A man in a wheelchair is escorted from outside the High Court in Christchurch (Mark Baker/AP)

Judge Mander said nothing should be read into his order for the mental health assessments, as it was a normal step in such a case. Lawyers said it could take two or three months to complete.

The courtroom was filled with more than two dozen reporters and about 60 members of the public. A court registrar greeted people in Arabic and English as the hearing got under way. Some of those watching got emotional and wept.

The judge said Tarrant was charged with 50 counts of murder and 39 counts of attempted murder. Police initially filed a single, representative murder charge before filing the additional charges this week.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern meets members of the Muslim community following a national remembrance service (Mark Baker/AP)

In the March 15 attacks, 42 people were killed at the Al Noor mosque, seven were killed at the Linwood mosque and one more person died later.

The day after the attacks, Tarrant dismissed an appointed lawyer, saying he wanted to represent himself. But he has now hired two Auckland lawyers to represent him, Shane Tait and Jonathan Hudson.

The next court hearing was scheduled for June 14, and the mental health findings would determine whether he is required to enter a plea then.

Outside the courtroom, Yama Nabi, whose father died in the attacks, said he felt helpless watching.

We just have to sit in the court and listen, Mr Nabi said. What can we do? We cant do nothing. Just leave it to the justice of New Zealand and the prime minister.
Sandwiched between a Starbucks and a pub, an unremarkable office block has a secret: it has been the London home of spy agency GCHQ for more than 65 years.

Unknown to the public, intelligence officers have worked to protect national security from the drab-looking building since 1953.

Now the site, on Palmer Street, opposite St Jamess Park Tube station in Westminster, has finally been unmasked.

The organisation known as Britains listening post has only now been able to confirm the location after it moved out of the base.

GCHQ director Jeremy Fleming said: As we depart our Palmer Street site after 66 years, we look back on a history full of amazing intelligence, world-leading innovation, and the ingenious people who passed through those secret doors.

Then, as now, its a history defined by the belief that with the right mix of minds, anything is possible.

Inside GCHQs former offices in Palmer Street, Westminster (GCHQ/PA)

GCHQ was established on November 1 1919 as a peacetime cryptanalytic unit made up from staff from the Admiraltys Room 40 and the War Offices MI1(b).

During the Second World War, GCHQ personnel moved to Bletchley Park where they decrypted German messages, most famously by breaking Enigma communications.

In the early 1950s, the service moved its headquarters from the London suburbs of Eastcote to Cheltenham, meaning a suitable location was needed in the centre of the capital for the handling of secret paperwork and as a regular base for its director.

After a search, the Ministry of Works provided a newly built, Government-leased building on Palmer Street.

GCHQ moved into its secret London home in the spring of 1953, housing a range of different teams there over the following decades.

The agency said: The Palmer Street hub has played its part in significant events over the years, such as the 2012 London Olympics, working with our partners, MI6, MI5 and the Metropolitan Police to counter terrorist activities and serious and organised crime whilst keeping ministers up to date with security briefings.

The future plans for the building, which has been sold privately, are not known.

While no longer operating from the Palmer Street site, GCHQ will maintain a London presence.

As well as its Cheltenham HQ, the agency has offices in Bude in Cornwall, Scarborough, Lincolnshire and Harrogate.

The GCHQ building in Cheltenham (GCHQ/PA)

Later this year, it will open a new secure facility in Manchester.

GCHQ works alongside MI5, MI6 and law enforcement to protect the UK from threats including cyber attacks and terrorism.

It has embarked on a transparency drive in recent years after coming under intense scrutiny in the wake of Edward Snowdens revelations about intelligence techniques.

In 2016, GCHQ became the first of the countrys spy agencies on Twitter.

Ever wanted to encrypt messages with Enigma and decode them with the Bombe? Give our new features in #CyberChef a try!https://t.co/OxLcQQbePa pic.twitter.com/mobUICOze4  GCHQ (@GCHQ) April 3, 2019

It expanded its social media presence last year by opening an Instagram account.

The agency is marking its centenary throughout this year.
A significant proportion of employers have revealed an increase in their gender pay gap as the deadline for reporting the information ended, it has been suggested.

Most of an expected 10,000 organisations published their gender pay comparison by midnight on Thursday.

An analysis of the figures will be made on Friday, as well as details of those firms who missed the deadline.

Companies employing more than 250 workers who did not provide information on any pay difference between men and women face a fine.

A handful of councils, NHS trusts and universities have already missed the March 30 deadline for public sector organisations.

Peter Cheese, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, said: Its disappointing that many employers are still not providing a narrative or action plan.

A significant proportion of employers have revealed an increase in their gender pay gap, it has been suggested (Philip Toscano/PA)

Organisations that simply provide their numbers are failing to meet the increasing appetite and expectation for transparency amongst all stakeholders, including employees, investors, and regulators.

Financial figures would never be given without any explanation for them, and gender pay gap reporting should be no different.

He added that submissions had suggested that a significant proportion of companies have reported an increase to their gender pay gap.

Some of this may be from businesses initially focused on bringing more women into entry-levels roles in order to build a pipeline of female talent.

This is a genuine commitment to lasting change and we must welcome these efforts even if it does mean the numbers do initially go up instead of down.

TUC general secretary Frances OGrady said: Big employers clearly arent doing enough to tackle the root causes of pay inequality and working women are paying the price.

Government needs to crank up the pressure.

Companies shouldnt just be made to publish their gender pay gaps, they should be legally required to explain how theyll close them, and bosses who flout the law should be fined.

We cant allow another generation of women to spend their whole working lives waiting to be paid the same as men.

Jenny Gilruth, an SNP MSP in the Scottish Parliament, said: The gender pay gap is smaller in Scotland than it is in the UK, but our economy could benefit by a further 15 billion if we had the powers to fully eradicate that gap between male and female workers.

The evidence is clear: better opportunities for women to participate fully in our economy means improved performance overall.

We have the opportunity to achieve more in Scotland when it comes to equality than the painfully slow progress Westminster has delivered.

Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, said businesses cannot close the gap by themselves, adding: Many of the causes lie outside the workplace including a lack of affordable, high-quality childcare and better careers advice.

Companies and Government working together remains the best way to deliver the long-term, lasting change thats needed.

Minister for Women Victoria Atkins said: Whilst the latest figures show that the national gender pay gap is at a record low, there is still much work to be done to achieve real gender equality in the workplace. We want businesses to take responsibility for tackling their pay gaps effectively.

Diversity makes good business sense. Businesses should use the data to understand the causes of their pay gap and then commit to tackling it for good.
Theresa May is to write to European Council president Donald Tusk on Friday with the UKs request for a further delay to Brexit, a Downing Street source has said.

The extension request could be for up to a further year, amid reports that EU officials are considering offering the PM a flexible extension  or flextension  to the Article 50 timetable.

Mr Tusk is preparing to put the option to EU leaders at a crunch summit next Wednesday in a bid to prevent the UK crashing out of the bloc on April 12, according to the BBC.

Top-level talks aimed at finding a way out of the Brexit deadlock will continue between the Government and Labour on Friday.
Theresa May is to write to European Council president Donald Tusk on Friday with the UKs request for a further delay to Brexit, a Downing Street source has said.

The extension request could be for up to a further year, amid reports that EU officials are considering offering the PM a flexible extension  or flextension  to the Article 50 timetable.

European Council president Donald Tusk is preparing to put the option to EU leaders at a crunch summit next Wednesday in a bid to prevent the UK crashing out of the bloc on April 12, according to the BBC.

Top-level talks aimed at finding a way out of the Brexit deadlock will continue between the Government and Labour on Friday.

(PA Graphics)

The discussions are taking place as Prime Minister Theresa May faces a week of hectic diplomacy as she battles to keep her EU withdrawal agenda on track.

As Government talks with Labour on EU withdrawal went into another day, the issue of a new Brexit referendum continued to be a focus of attention.

Seamus Milne, shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey and Shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer after leaving the Cabinet office (Jonathan Brady/PA)

Ministers have considered the possibility of giving MPs a vote on holding a referendum on a deal as part of the talks with Labour, the Daily Telegraph reported.

It is understood the Government could set out proposals to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in a letter on Friday.

And Mrs May faced a continued challenge to her authority from Parliament as the House of Lords debated a Bill aimed at extending the Brexit process in a bid to avoid a no-deal scenario.

The remaining stages of the European Union Withdrawal (No.5) Bill will be considered by peers on Monday, threatening a new political headache for the PM if it is approved.

The Bill, brought forward by backbenchers including Labours Yvette Cooper, allows Parliament to determine the length of any Brexit extension the Prime Minister should request at the EU summit on April 10.

If the European Council proposes a different extension, Mrs May would be required to return to the Commons to obtain MPs approval.

Attorney General Geoffrey Cox said the Bill would leave the PM with little room to manoeuvre.

Referring to the Bills impact on a no-deal option, the Attorney General told the BBC: It rules it out the Prime Minister would have little choice but to accept the extension that shes offered.

Mr Cox said if the talks with Labour failed there would be repercussions.

He said: The problem, then, would be that we would be in an extension. Its likely to be a long one, by which I mean longer than just a few weeks or months.

Remaining Lords stages of the #EUWithdrawal5Bill are expected to take place on Monday 8 April (5/6)  House of Lords (@UKHouseofLords) April 4, 2019

Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh predicted a number of her colleagues could quit the party over the issue of a new referendum.

Ms McDonagh told the BBC: There is going to be outrage if we dont get a second vote.

Would it be the thing that made me leave the party? I dont think so, there are other issues for me.

But, would it make some of my colleagues in the parliamentary Labour Party? Yes, a number have said to me that would be the moment that they would leave.

However, a number of Labour MPs representing Leave areas have come out against the idea of a confirmatory referendum.

Talks between the Government and Labour lasted four-and-a-half hours on Thursday.

David Lidington, effectively the deputy prime minister, led the Governments negotiating team with Brexit Secretary Steve Barclay, Chief Whip Julian Smith, Business Secretary Greg Clark and Theresa Mays chief of staff Gavin Barwell.

On the other side of the table were shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer and shadow business secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey along with senior Labour officials.

Labours victor in the Newport West by-election, Ruth Jones, said she is against a no-deal exit from the EU.
A woman accused of killing her husband in a hammer attack has pleaded guilty to his manslaughter after her murder conviction was quashed.

Georgina Challen, known as Sally, admitted killing 61-year-old Richard Challen on August 14 2010 but pleaded not guilty to murder.

She was jailed for life for the murder of the former car dealer following a trial at Guildford Crown Court in 2011.

Richard Challen, who was killed by his wife Georgina Challen, known as Sally (Surrey Police/PA)

But her conviction was quashed and a retrial ordered at the Court of Appeal in London in February, in light of new evidence relating to Challens state of mind at the time of the killing and the issue of coercive control.

Challen, 65, of Claygate, Surrey, who has been held at HMP Bronzefield, appeared at the Old Bailey by video-link on Friday.

Wearing a black blouse, she spoke to confirm her identity and enter her plea.

Mr Justice Edis confirmed the trial would be transferred to the Old Bailey as he set a timetable for the case.

Prosecutor Joel Smith pointed out the size of the public gallery in Court One, saying it was a better venue given the attention this matter has attracted so far.

Challen, a former Police Federation worker, was supported in court by her son, David Challen.

Mr Justice Edis set a further hearing for June 7 and a trial on July 1 if necessary.
Australias prime minister has called an election on May 18 that will be fought on issues including climate change, asylum seekers and economic management.

We live in the best country in the world, Scott Morrison told reporters after advising the governor-general to authorise the election.

But to secure your future, the road ahead depends on a strong economy. And thats why there is so much at stake at this election, he added.

This morning I visited the Governor-General to advise him to call an election on 18 May. pic.twitter.com/jEunOOBxwR  Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) April 10, 2019

Mr Morrisons conservative coalition is seeking a third three-year term. But Mr Morrison is the third prime minister to lead a divided government in that time and only took the helm in late August.

Opinion polls suggest his reign will become one of the shortest in the 118-year history of Australian prime ministers on election day.

The polls suggest centre-left opposition leader Bill Shorten will become the eighth prime minister since the country plunged into an extraordinary period of political instability in 2007.

The election pits Mr Shorten, a former labour union leader who has presented himself as the alternative prime minister for the past six years, against Mr Morrison, a leader who the Australian public is still getting to know.

Time to deliver a fair go for Australia. pic.twitter.com/5zVNFEJHko  Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) April 10, 2019

Mr Morrison is seen as the architect of Australias tough refugee policy that has all but stopped the people-smuggling traffic of boats from south-east Asian ports since 2014, overseeing the secretive military-run Operation Sovereign Borders during his time as minister for immigration and border protection.

The policy has been condemned by human rights groups as an abrogation of Australias responsibilities as a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention.

Asylum seekers from the Middle East, Africa and Asia would typically disable or sink their boats when intercepted by patrol ships in waters north of Australia so that the Australian crews would have to rescue them rather than turn the boats away.

Under the new regime, the asylum seekers were placed in motorised life boats that were towed back to Indonesia. The Indonesian government complained the policy was an affront to Indonesian sovereignty.

Australian Labour Party leader Bill Shorten (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

The government has also maintained a policy adopted in the final months of a Labour government in 2013 of sending boat arrivals to camps on the Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Those who attempt to reach Australia by boat are told they will never be allowed to settle there.

Mr Morrison remains proud of virtually stopping people-smuggler boat traffic and has a trophy shaped like a people-smugglers boat in his office inscribed with I Stopped These.

Labour has promised to maintain the policy of banishing boat arrivals to the islands, but says it would give priority to finding permanent homes for the asylum seekers who have languished in island camps for years.

The conservative coalition argues that the boats would start coming again because a Labour government would soften the regime.

Climate change policy, meanwhile, is a political battlefield in a country that is the worlds largest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas and has been one of the worlds worst greenhouse gas emitters on a per capita basis because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired power generation.

Disagreement over energy policy has been a factor in the last six changes of prime minister.

Its on.



Labor is united. Labor has a plan. Labor is ready.



Labor will deliver a fair go for all Australians.



Are you with us?



Find out more about our Fair Go Action Plan at https://t.co/Y5Y2486sKv #auspol pic.twitter.com/Vg1UGFQwQR  Australian Labor (@AustralianLabor) April 10, 2019

Labour prime minister Julia Gillard introduced a carbon tax in 2012, but Conservative prime minister Tony Abbott scrapped it two years later.

The coalition is torn between politicians who want polluters to pay for their greenhouse gas emissions and those who reject any measures that would increase household power bills.

The government aims to reduce Australian greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030, while Labour has promised a more ambitious target of a 45% reduction in the same time frame.

The government warns that Labours emissions reduction plan would wreck the economy.

The coalition also argues that Labour would further damage the economy with its policy of reducing tax breaks for landlords as property prices fall in Australias largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.

Our plan will build our economy, without increasing taxes, securing the future for all Australians. #BuildingOurEconomy pic.twitter.com/Ao8p6WPeDb  Scott Morrison (@ScottMorrisonMP) April 10, 2019

Mr Morrison boasts that the conservative administration John Howard led delivered 10 annual surplus budgets and paid off all federal government debt before the government changed at the 2007 election.

The government brought forward its annual budget blueprint by a month to April 2 and revealed a plan to balance Australias books in the next fiscal year for the first time in 12 years.

Labour promised to deliver a surplus budget in the year starting July 1, but has yet to detail how it would achieve this goal.

Labour has also promised to spend an additional 2.3 billion Australian dollars (1.3 billion) over four years on covering treatment costs of cancer patients.
By Gul Yousafzai

QUETTA, Pakistan, April 12 (Reuters) - A bomb hidden between bags of potatoes at an outdoor Pakistani market killed at least 16 people on Friday, half of them ethnic Hazaras, officials said, in an attack apparently aimed at minority Shi'ite Muslims.

At least 30 people were wounded in the blast in the southwestern city of Quetta, capital of resource-rich Baluchistan province, officials said.

Baluchistan is the focus of the $57-billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor, a transport and energy link planned between western China and Pakistans southern deepwater port of Gwadar.

The attack came after a lull of at least a year in violence against the mainly Shi'ite Hazara minority in Baluchistan, though there have been isolated shootings.

The blast took place at Hazar Ganji, a fruit and vegetable market on the outskirts of Quetta.

"I have confirmation of 16 martyrs - eight belong to the Hazara community, seven others who worked here, and one is from the Frontier Constabulary," a city police official, Abdul Razzaq Cheema, told reporters.

The explosive device was hidden between sacks of potatoes, he said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility.

Hazaras have been frequently targeted by Taliban and Islamic State militants and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. They have been heavily targeted in Afghanistan in attacks claimed by an affiliate of Islamic State.

Friday's bloodshed came two days after authorities freed Ramzan Mengal, a top leader of a banned sectarian group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), Cheema said.

Mengal had been detained for three months under maintenance of public order regulations, he said.

The LeJ has worked both with al Qaeda and Islamic State in Pakistan and has claimed several coordinated attacks in Baluchistan against what it terms Shiite heretics.

Ethnic Baluch separatists are also battling what they call unfair exploitation of the province's gas and other resources.

In 2013, three bombings killed more than 200 people in Hazara neighbourhoods, prompting security forces to escort Hazara buses to the market. The same practice was followed on Friday, but the blast took place in the market.

"Targeted for their religion by sectarian armed groups, (Hazaras) have suffered many such tragedies over several years. Each time there are promises that more will be done to protect them, and each time those promises have failed to materialise," Omar Waraich, an official of rights group Amnesty International, said in a statement.

"Prime Minister Imran Khans government has made important commitments to protect all religious groups. Those commitments must translate now into policies to effectively protect the Hazaras of Quetta, ending more than a decade of bloodshed." (Additional reporting by Asif Shahzad Islamabad; Writing by Syed Raza Hassan and Nick Macfie)
SOFIA, April 12 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

-- Hundreds protested in the central city of Gabrovo after three Roma men attacked and beat a shop assistant in the city. The attackers were moved to a custody in another city after some of the protesters tried to storm the police custody premises. (24 Chasa, Trud, Sega)

24 CHASA - Bulgaria expects to seal a deal to buy eight new F-16 fighter jets for its air force next month, deputy Defence Minister Atanas Zaprianov said.
By Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI, April 12 (Reuters) - Since its launch in 2014, Mobius Motors, Kenya's only home-grown automaker, has only produced around 50 test vehicles.

Mobius is among a number of African firms hoping for a slice of the continent's largely underdeveloped market for new cars.

As global car giants, including Japan's Toyota and Germany's Volkswagen have stepped up efforts to tap the vast market, local players including Kiira Motors of Uganda, Ghana's Kantanka and Nigeria-based Innoson Motors, are also making a push.

They face the same obstacles as their big-name peers, notably the dominance of cheap second-hand imports, but without the deep pockets and infrastructure to overcome them.

"It is not an easy journey to be on," said Joel Jackson, the 34-year old London-born founder of Mobius Motors.

He first dreamt of building a car in Africa for African drivers a decade ago when he travelled across Kenya for his job with a forestry company.

Mobius produces a boxy, no-frills SUV designed for both the challenges of Africa's rugged driving conditions and the modest budgets of African consumers.

The entry-level version is priced at 1.3 million shillings ($12,897), half the going rate for a second-hand SUV model imported from Japan.

And though prospective customers have placed more than 400 orders, paying a $300 advance on their cars, Jackson is still crisscrossing the globe to raise financing for a full production launch that is already nearly a year behind schedule.

"A large chunk of the money is going into production operations but equally there is a lot of investment in the research and development of the vehicle itself," he said.

Nigeria's Innoson is fairing a bit better, selling 10,000 vehicles in its first eight years of operations, according to its website.

Kiira, which is 96 percent state-owned, is building a $40-million assembly plant in southern Uganda that will have the capacity to produce 5,000 cars per year. But the company has built just three prototype vehicles since 2011.

Rodney Muhumuza, Kiira's business development manager, said while the company was benefiting from state support, it would require private equity at some point. The biggest challenges at the moment, however, are policy-related, he said.

Total auto sales in the East African Community - a common market including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and South Sudan - are on track to double to 500,000 vehicles per year within the next decade, he estimates. And he wants them to be new, locally built cars.

But to make that happen, governments must unite to favour domestic production by curbing cheap second-hand imports from countries like Japan and harmonising tax rates to keep down the prices of vehicles produced in neighbouring countries.

"If there can be fiscal and non-fiscal incentives within the region to really facilitate local value addition ... that will be great," he said. "That is really a very good market." ($1 = 100.8000 Kenyan shillings) (Editing by Joe Bavier and Anna Willard)
By Ulf Laessing and Ahmed Elumami

TRIPOLI, April 12 (Reuters) - Gunfire and blasts echoed through downtown Tripoli in the small hours of Friday as the eastern Libyan LNA force pushed against the forces of the internationally recognised government around the disused international airport and the Ain Zara district.

Fighting between the eastern force of General Khalifa Haftar and troops loyal to the Tripoli government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj has displaced 9,500 people in the capital, the United Nations said.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) said it had made contingency plans in case "thousands if not hundreds of thousands" were displaced.

Haftar's push on Tripoli in Libya's northwest is the latest turn in a cycle of factional violence and chaos dating back to the 2011 uprising that overthrew veteran dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

After sweeping up from the desert south, Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) has have been held up in the southern suburbs of Tripoli, about 11 km (7 miles) from the centre.

The U.N. humanitarian agency OCHA said 3,500 people had left their homes in Tripoli in the previous 24 hours, and that 90 percent of those who had requested evacuation could not be moved to comparatively safer areas.

Late on Thursday, the European Union urged the LNA forces to stop their offensive.

As well as the toll on civilians, the renewed conflict threatens to disrupt oil supplies, increase migration across the Mediterranean to Europe, derail a U.N. peace plan and encourage Islamist militants to exploit the chaos. Libya is a main transit point for migrants who have poured into Europe in recent years, mostly trafficked by smuggling gangs.

The LNA forces swept out of their stronghold in eastern Libya to take the sparsely populated but oil-rich south earlier this year before heading towards Tripoli, where Serraj's U.N.-backed government sits.

Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain, WHO representative in Libya, told a Geneva news briefing by telephone from Tripoli that he feared outbreaks of tuberculosis, measles and diarrhoeal diseases due to poor sanitation, especially among the displaced.

The WHO said it had two weeks of medical supplies available for Tripoli's hospitals.

Haftar was among the officers who helped Gaddafi seize power in a 1969 coup before parting ways with him later. Critics call Haftar another strongman in Gaddafi's mould.

He has so far resisted U.N. pressure to accept a power-sharing settlement to stabilise Libya, using his leverage as an ally of the West in attempts to stem Islamist militancy in North Africa. (Additional reporting by Tom Miles, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Kevin Liffey )
ZURICH, April 12 (Reuters) - Two of out three Swiss voters support tightening gun controls in line with changes to European Union rules, a poll released on Friday showed, potentially heading off a clash with Brussels.

The restrictions, which apply to non-EU member Switzerland because it is part of Europe's Schengen open-border system, have raised hackles among Swiss shooting enthusiasts ahead of a binding referendum on May 19.

Failure to adopt the rules could force Switzerland to leave the passport-free Schengen zone and the Dublin joint system for handling asylum requests.

After militants killed scores in Paris and elsewhere in 2015, the EU in 2017 toughened laws against purchasing semi-automatic rifles like the ones used in those attacks, and made it easier to track weapons in national databases.

Friday's gfs.bern poll for broadcaster SRF showed 66 percent of eligible voters questioned support tougher gun controls while 33 percent opposed the change. The margin of error was 2.9 percentage points.

The initial EU proposal provoked an outcry because it meant a ban on the long Swiss tradition of ex-soldiers keeping their assault rifles.

Swiss officials have negotiated concessions for gun enthusiasts who take part in the country's numerous shooting clubs, but any restrictions imported from the EU go too far for right-wing activists concerned about Swiss sovereignty.

Gun rights proponents complain the rules could disarm law-abiding citizens and encroach on Switzerland's heritage and national identity that includes a well-armed citizenry.

Switzerland has one of the highest rates of private gun ownership in Europe, with nearly 48 percent of households owning a gun.

But that harks back to a long tradition of self-defence and to the Swiss policy of near-universal conscription, and gun-related crime is low.

In a separate referendum also on May 19, voters will decide on a corporate tax overhaul whose passage the finance minister has described as "existential" for Switzerland as a business hub.

The gfs.bern poll showed 54 percent of voters support the revamp, a much tighter outcome than the comfortable majority predicted in a separate Tamedia survey this month. (Reporting by Michael Shields; editing by John Stonestreet)
By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - The Federal Aviation Administration met for three hours on Friday with representatives from the three major U.S. airlines that fly now grounded Boeing 737 MAX airplanes and their pilots' unions to discuss two fatal crashes and the path forward.

More than 300 Boeing 737 MAX jets have been grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes, one in Indonesia in October and one in Ethiopia last month.

At the meeting with American Airlines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines Co, the FAA discussed the preliminary reports from both crashes and Boeing's proposals for a software upgrade and new pilot training, said Dennis Tajer, spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association which represents American's pilots.

American Airlines said in a statement it was "confident in the direction the FAA is heading. Well continue to work collaboratively with the FAA, Boeing and the Allied Pilots Association in this process."

Tajer said pilots were pleased with the "very good briefing" and said pilots need to be satisfied in the training and software upgrade. He said the FAA sought pilots' input.

"We have to unground the confidence in this airplane," Tajer told reporters outside FAA headquarters.

American and United have canceled flights through early June, while Southwest said Thursday it would remove its 34 737 MAX jets from its flying schedule through Aug. 5, leading to around 160 daily flight cancellations during the revised summer schedule.

Tajer said everyone is focused on getting the plane back in service safely. "We take off out watches and put the calendars in the drawer," he said.

Boeing said it has reprogrammed software on the 737 MAX to prevent erroneous data from triggering an anti-stall system that is under mounting scrutiny following the two deadly nose-down crashes. On April 1, Boeing said it delayed submitting the proposed revisions to the FAA for approval.

The FAA said the meeting is to help "the FAA to gather facts, information, and individual views to further understand their views as FAA decides what needs to be done before returning the aircraft to service." The FAA added it "continues to gather all available information and data in considering the return of the 737 MAX to service."

The agency is also convening a joint review with aviation regulators from China, Europe, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Ethiopia and other countries.

Federal prosecutors, the Transportation Department inspector generals office and a blue-ribbon panel are also reviewing the planes certification. (Reporting by David Shepardson Additional reporting by Tracy Rucinski Editing by Alistair Bell)
CARACAS, April 12 (Reuters) - Ecuador said on Friday it is holding a programmer linked to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in custody pending possible charges of interfering in private communications, a day after ending Assange's seven-year asylum in its London embassy.

Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo said prosecutors could file charges against Ola Bini, who she said lives in Ecuador and had visited Assange in the London embassy a dozen times.

President Lenin Moreno in recent weeks had accused WikiLeaks and Assange of violating his privacy by publishing family photos of him. WikiLeaks denies the accusation, and says Moreno was trying to stifle reporting of corruption allegations against him.

"He is detained for the purposes of investigation. This is a detention that took place in recent hours, ordered by judges of course, and requested by state prosecutors," Romo said in televised comments. "This person is very close to WikiLeaks."

Romo, who on Thursday had announced the detention of an unidentified individual, did not provide further details.

On his website, Bini describes himself as a software developer who works for the Quito-based Center for Digital Autonomy, which focuses on digital privacy and security. The site does not mention WikiLeaks.

Bini and the Center for Digital Autonomy did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Romo said the government had information that Bini had traveled on several occasions with Ricardo Patino, who was Ecuador Foreign Minister when Assange was granted asylum in 2012 during the government of former President Rafael Correa.

Patino via Twitter said he does not know Bini.

Romo said two Russian citizens were also under investigation but had not been arrested.

Moreno's government accused WikiLeaks of being behind an anonymous website that said Moreno's brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a United Nations agency.

Moreno, who was Correa's vice president but fell out with him after taking office in 2017, denies wrongdoing. (Reporting by Alexandra Valencia and Jose Llangari; Writing by Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Richard Chang)
By Sarah Shearman

OXFORD, England, April 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - F ilms telling the stories of innovators in Africa have the power to transform the way people see the continent and drive social change, Oscar-nominated actor Chiwetel Ejiofor said on Friday.

Ejiofor's comments came as he appeared at Britain's leading conference on social entrepreneurship, the Skoll World Forum, to discuss his latest film, "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind".

The film, which he directed, starred in and for which he wrote the screenplay, is based on the true story of William Kamkwamba who helped save his Malawian village from drought by building a power-generating windmill from scrap.

Highlighting young people who identify and find solutions to local problems was important to encourage social businesses, said Ejiofor, who won a BAFTA award and Oscar nod for playing Solomon Northup in the Oscar-winning film "12 Years a Slave".

"Telling authentic stories about who people are, not just what they are, will enrich the cultural space in a very radical way," he said on the final day of the four-day forum in Oxford.

"The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" was partly financed by Participant Media, a U.S. film company that aims to advance social missions through movies, and launched on Netflix in 2019.

Participant was founded in 2004 by billionaire and former eBay president Jeff Skoll, who set up Skoll World Forum, and is behind the Academy Award-winning film "Roma" which tells the story of an indigenous Mexican domestic worker.

Social entrepreneurs typically tackle social and environmental problems with commercial strategies.

The sector has grown significantly in the past decade although there is no comprehensive data to show the size of the social enterprise sector across Africa.

There are about 26,000 social enterprises in Ghana and 40,000 in Kenya, according to 2016 estimates by the British Council, a partly state-funded body that promotes British culture overseas. Ejiofor, 41, who was born in London to Nigerian parents, said he believed the film industry was at a tipping point where more movies that aim to change perceptions and deliver social impact will be made.

"It has taken a bit of time to get to a point whereby we can really start to engage with stories like this, but I feel like we are really on the cusp of being able to do that in an aggressive and a more open way," he said (Reporting by Sarah Shearman @Shearmans. Editing by Belinda Goldsmith Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking and slavery, property rights, social innovation, resilience and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories)
Following is a summary of current health news briefs.

Ebola spread concentrated in Congo, not a wider emergency: WHO

An outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that has killed more than 700 people and is continuing to spread does not constitute an international emergency, the World Health Organization said on Friday. Declaring the epidemic a "public health emergency of international concern" would have signaled that greater resources and international coordination are needed.

China's Ant Financial amasses 50 million users, mostly low-income, in new health plan

A mutual health aid plan launched by Ant Financial Services Group, the dominant fintech player in China, has amassed more than 50 million users and is aiming for 300 million within two years, the company said late on Thursday. The plan, dubbed Xiang Hu Bao or literally "mutual protection," is marketed on Ant Financial's flagship mobile payment app Alipay and provides participants a basic medical coverage with the risks and expenses distributed across all members.

U.S. FDA approves Johnson & Johnson's bladder cancer drug

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved Johnson & Johnson's treatment for patients with a form of bladder cancer. The green signal to the drug, Balversa, makes it the first approved treatment for bladder cancer that targets a genetic alteration known as FGFR3 or FGFR2, the FDA said.

Female firefighters' health needs often unaddressed

Women firefighters, particularly in North America, are less likely to have access to female-specific personal protective equipment and appropriate strength training and conditioning support, according to a new study. In addition, women reported numerous counts of sexism on the job, and others talked about logistical issues such as sanitary conditions and toilet facilities, especially when tackling fires for several hours, researchers wrote in Women's Health Issues.

U.S. CDC says ground beef possible source of E.coli outbreak

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday preliminary information suggested ground beef could be responsible for a recent E.coli outbreak that has spread across six states. No common supplier, distributor, or brand of ground beef has been identified yet and the CDC said the investigation was ongoing. (http://bit.ly/2KwyHhl)

French court finds Bayer's Monsanto liable for farmer's sickness

A French court has ruled that Monsanto was liable for the sickness of a farmer who inhaled one of its weedkillers, in another legal setback for the Bayer-owned business over health claims. In the latest stage of a decade-long legal tussle, the appeals court in Lyon on Thursday found in favor of farmer Paul Francois' claim that Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller had made him sick and that the product's labeling had been inadequate.

Top cancer hospitals' outcomes may be better than affiliates'

Patients often assume that surgical outcomes at all hospitals in a healthcare network are equally good. But a new study comparing outcomes from top-ranked cancer hospitals to their affiliates finds significant differences when it comes to complex cancer surgeries. Researchers found that the likelihood of surviving a complex cancer surgery was greater at top-ranked cancer hospitals compared to affiliated hospitals that shared their "brand," according to the study published in JAMA Network Open.

Disease outbreaks feared in Libya, as supplies stretched: WHO

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday that it feared outbreaks of infectious diseases due to dirty water and people fleeing fighting nearing Tripoli, where it has about two weeks of emergency supplies for hospitals and health facilities. After a week of fighting, 75 people have been killed and 323 wounded, including seven civilians killed and 10 wounded, Dr Syed Jaffar Hussain, WHO representative in Libya, told a Geneva news briefing by telephone from Tripoli.

Bayer says to comply with court mediation order in glyphosate case

Bayer said on Friday it would comply with a U.S. federal judge's order to enter mediation with a plaintiff who claims the company failed to warn against an alleged cancer risk from its Roundup weedkiller. Bayer has seen billions wiped off its market value since August, when a first U.S. jury found Bayer liable because Monsanto, acquired by Bayer for $63 billion last year, had not warned of the alleged risk from Roundup, which is based on active ingredient glyphosate.

Novo Nordisk and Gilead team up to test fatty liver disease treatment

Novo Nordisk and Gilead Sciences will join forces on a clinical trial combining drugs from the two pharmaceutical firms to treat a progressive fatty liver disease known as NASH. The clinical trial will be a study combining Novo Nordisk's semaglutide drug and Gilead's cilofexor and firsocostat for treatment of patients with Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), Novo Nordisk, best known for its diabetes drugs, said on Friday.
On February 27, in an unprecedented move, Pakistan closed its airspace entirely for all domestic and international flights. The IAF strike on a JeM camp in Balakot, Pakistan, reportedly necessitated this virtual barricading of Pakistani airspace.

Its intriguing how Pakistans civil aviation authority took extreme caution in reopening its airspace  only in phases.

And its over one and a half months now  but no, their airspace is not fully opened.

Instead, on April 9, the authority actually extended the general closure of the countrys airspace to international transit flights until April 24, Wednesday (15.00 local time).

Since the initial closure was owing to the escalation of India-Pakistan tension, it can be assumed that the extension of the closure, too, is part of the security measures Pakistan has put in place while its going hammer and tongs accusing India of plotting an attack between April 16 to April 20  a claim that has been rubbished by Indias ministry of external affairs.

Pak's FM, Shah Mahmood Queishi, claims India will attack Pakistan between April 16 to April 20. (Photo: Reuters)

The apparent opening date (April 24) is significant as, by that time, India will complete three phases of the Lok Sabha Elections.

So, what exactly is happening over Pakistan airspace now?

On March 26, exactly 28 days after it imposed the full closure, Pakistan opened its airspace and its national carrier  PIA  resumed its flights across the country. Embargos on international flights were also lifted, but for those flying only in and out of Pakistan  not those transiting through Pakistan airspace.

Also, PIAs operations to India, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are stalled.

Isnt this already wreaking havoc on the economy?

According to Gulf News, Indias loss is possibly more as Indias Western operations are much more than Pakistan's. Yes, there are reports claiming losses of about Rs 60 crore which Air India apparently incurred till March 16 because of this airspace closure  Air India flies 66 weekly services to Europe and 33 to the US, and most of these flights use Pakistani airspace.

To avoid Pakistani airspace, the flights have to take a longer route, over the Arabian Sea  which is naturally escalating flight time and cost.

The same is the situation with east-bound flights originating from Afghanistan. According to Tolo news, Afghanistan has lost $8 million in one month as now, they have to use Iran's airspace. Fares have gone up, but that couldn't arrest revenue losses.

Mohammad Qasim Wafaeezada, Afghanistan's Civil Aviation Authority chairman, said more than 250 flights used to cross through Pakistan daily  the number has been reduced to nine now.

As far as India-Pakistan airspace is concerned, there are 11 entry-exit points. Not all of them are closed. Pakistan is treading cautiously while opening them.

A north west bound air route between Pakistan and Indian airspace for all international flights has been open since 1700 hrs dated 04-04-2019 thru NOTAM No 395.  PCAAOfficial (@official_pcaa) April 5, 2019

According to Flightradar24, an international flight tracker, some of the transit lines along the red line (photo) are open.

Many of the transit routes are along this red line. (Photo: FlightRadar24)

A Delhi to Istanbul flight this morning using Pakistan airspace where the transit route is open. (Photo: FlightRadar24)

A Delhi to Moscow flight this morning. (Photo: FlightRadar24)

But it's clear Pakistan is not going to open up its airspace in entirety in a rush and its slow wait-and-watch policy will also need to be closely watched.

Also Read: Why Pakistan closing off its airspace is such a major step


The Rafale fighter jet of the Qatar Air Force (Photo: Dassault Aviation)

NEW DELHI (PTI): French Ambassador Alexandre Ziegler on Thursday dismissed as "fake news" reports that a batch of Pakistani pilots was trained on Rafale fighter jets being procured by Qatari Air Force.



American aviation industry website ainonline.com reported that the first batch of pilots trained on the Rafale fighter jet for Qatar in November 2017 were "Pakistani exchange officers".



"I can confirm that it is fake news," Ziegler tweeted.



French diplomatic sources said no Pakistani pilots ever trained on Rafale jets in France.



There were concerns in the Indian military establishment over the report by the US-based website as India was also procuring 36 Rafale jets from France at a cost of Rs 58,000 crore.



It is learnt that the government got in touch with the French government after the report and Paris conveyed to New Delhi that no Pakistani pilots were trained on Rafale jets in France.



In 2015, Qatar sealed a US$ 7 billion deal with French aerospace major Dassault Aviation to buy 24 Rafale jets, and later the gulf nation ordered another batch of 12 fighters.



The first Rafale jet was delivered to Qatar by Dassault Aviation few months ago.



Pakistan and Qatar have robust political and military ties.


11 hours ago

Is FedEx A Buy Before Earnings?

There Are Reasons To Be Wary Of FedEx FQ2 Results If you are thinking FedEx (NYSE: FDX) is going to have a strong quarter you are probably right. The company is forecasting a 10% increase in holiday deliveries that, when coupled with all the price increases, should deliver revenue growth in the mid-teens at least if not up into the 20% range.

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Fortis Inc. operates as an electric and gas utility company in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean countries. It generates, transmits, and distributes electricity to approximately 433,000 retail customers in southeastern Arizona; and 98,000 retail customers in Arizona's Mohave and Santa Cruz counties with an aggregate capacity of 3,233 megawatts (MW), including 59 MW of solar capacity. The company also sells wholesale electricity to other entities in the western United States; owns gas-fired and hydroelectric generating capacity totaling 65 MW; and distributes natural gas to approximately 1,048,000 residential, commercial, and industrial customers in British Columbia, Canada. In addition, it owns and operates the electricity distribution system that serves approximately 572,000 customers in southern and central Alberta; owns 4 hydroelectric generating facilities with a combined capacity of 225 MW; and provides operation, maintenance, and management services to five hydroelectric generating facilities. Further, the company distributes electricity in the island portion of Newfoundland and Labrador with an installed generating capacity of 143 MW; and on Prince Edward Island with a generating capacity of 130 MW. Additionally, it provides integrated electric utility service to approximately 67,000 customers in Ontario; approximately 270,000 customers in Newfoundland and Labrador; approximately 31,000 customers on Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands; and approximately 15,000 customers on certain islands in Turks and Caicos. The company also holds long-term contracted generation assets in Belize consisting of 3 hydroelectric generating facilities with a combined capacity of 51 MW; and the Aitken Creek natural gas storage facility. It also owns and operates approximately 91,000 circuit Kilometers (km) of distribution lines; and approximately 49,500 km of natural gas pipelines. Fortis Inc. was founded in 1885 and is headquartered in St. John's, Canada.

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Manulife Financial Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, provides financial products and services in Asia, Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company operates through Wealth and Asset Management Businesses; Insurance and Annuity Products; And Corporate and Other segments. The Wealth and Asset Management Businesses segment provides mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, group retirement and savings products, and institutional asset management services through agents and brokers affiliated with the company, securities brokerage firms, and financial advisors pension plan consultants and banks. The Insurance and Annuity Products segment offers deposit and credit products; individual life, and individual and group long-term care insurance; and guaranteed and partially guaranteed annuity products through insurance agents, brokers, banks, financial planners, and direct marketing. The Corporate and Other segment is involved in property and casualty insurance and reinsurance businesses; and run-off reinsurance operations, including variable annuities, and accident and health. It also manages timberland and agricultural portfolios; and engages in insurance agency, portfolio and mutual fund management, mutual fund dealer, life and financial reinsurance, and fund management businesses. Additionally, the company holds and manages oil and gas properties; holds oil and gas royalties, and foreign bonds and equities; and provides investment management, counseling, advisory, and dealer services. Manulife Financial Corporation was incorporated in 1887 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

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One Media iP Group Plc engages in the acquisition and exploitation of mixed media intellectual property rights for distribution through the digital medium and traditional media outlets in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe, and internationally. Its mixed media products include music, video, spoken word, and digital books. The company also licenses music content for use in TV and films, advertising, video games, and corporate websites. In addition, it provides sync library, which enable music supervisors and production makers to access, search, and review the library to find the music for the most exacting brief; Point Classics Compact product for agencies, production companies, schools, games companies, radio stations, and other sectors; technical copyright analysis tool, a software as a service platform for automating the time-consuming task of monitoring digital music releases; and Harmony IP, which allows composers/master rights owners to participate in an IP equity release programme of their music. Further, the company manages audio and video content across a range of YouTube channels. It operates through approximately 600 online digital stores. The company was formerly known as One Media Publishing Group Plc and changed its name to One Media iP Group Plc in October 2012. One Media iP Group Plc was founded in 2005 and is based in Iver Heath, the United Kingdom.

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Bristol Chemists Tim Harrison (Director of Outreach) and Jonny Furze (Outreach Assistant) took time out of their busy schedule to work with 77 second and third year chemistry undergraduates at USIM. The initial training session was followed up when small groups from the trained students assisted Tim Harrison in the delivery of the internationally established lecture demonstration A Pollutants Tale to senior school students.

Outreach Project Director Muhammad Zamir Othman (USIM), a postgraduate of the Diamond Group at Bristol, is already heavily engaged in outreach with his students preparing and delivering primary school science workshops across Malaysia. Othman wants to develop USIMs chemistry outreach portfolio through lecture demonstrations to further support the teaching of chemistry in schools.

The link with Bristol ChemLabS was originally formed by chemist Musa Ahmad 10 years ago before he become Vice Chancellor of USIM.

A Pollutants Tale is a lecture demonstration concerning atmospheric chemistry and climate change. It was created jointly by Harrison and Dudley Shallcross 14 years ago. The lecture, or its primary school equivalent, 'Gases in the Air has been given an estimated 2500 times to audiences across 28 countries, approaching a third of a million people in total. The lecture has also been adopted and adapted by universities and science centres in South Africa.
Stantec Inc. provides professional consulting services in the area of infrastructure and facilities in Canada, the United States, and internationally. The company provides consulting services in engineering, architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, surveying, environmental sciences, project management, and project economics. It also offers water, transportation, and public works; transportation planning and traffic engineering; and resource assessment, mine development, reclamation, hydrology, and geotechnical and infrastructure engineering services, as well as urban planning, traffic assessments and optimization, environmental impact assessments, and public consultation services. In addition, the company provides structural, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and hydraulics engineering services. It serves urban regeneration, infrastructure, education, public and private sector, tourism and leisure, and waste and water sectors, as well as office and commercial, residential, and retail and town centers. The company was formerly known as Stanley Technology Group Inc. and changed its name to Stantec Inc. in October 1998. Stantec Inc. was founded in 1954 and is headquartered in Edmonton, Canada.

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Victoria Oil & Gas Plc engages in the exploration, development, and production of oil and gas in the United Kingdom. The company holds 57% interest in the Logbaba gas and condensate project, which covers an area of 20 square kilometers located in Cameroon; and 75% interest in the Matanda Block covering an area of 1,235 square kilometers located in Cameroon. It also supplies gas and gas condensate to industrial customers through a 50 kilometers pipeline in Douala. In addition, the company is involved in the sale of hydrocarbons and related activities. Victoria Oil & Gas Plc was incorporated in 2004 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.

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The following companies are subsidiares of V.F.: 1994 Inc. Ltd., 530 Park Ave 10-F LLC, 530 Park Ave 14-H LLC, ALL'CROWN SA, Administradora Mexicana de Servicios S de RL de CV, Administradora de Servicios Honduras S.A., Altra Footwear, Altra LLC, C.C.R.L. LLC, Chapter 4 Corp, Cherry SAS, Ciliegia Srl, Corporacion Distribiduidora de Dickies S de RL de CV, Cutler de Mexico SA, Czech Distribution Services s.r.o., DSI Enterprises LLC, Dickies de Honduras SA de CV, Dickies de Parras S de RL de CV, EAGLE CREEK EUROPE LIMITED, Eagle Creek, Eagle Creek Inc., GFYS LLC, GREENSPORT MONTE BIANCO, Horace Small, INVERSIONES INMOBILIARIES AUSTRALES SA, INVERSIONES VF CHILE DOS LTDA, INVERSIONES VF CHILE LTDA, IW Apparel LLC, IW Holdings LLC, IW Panama Trading S. de R.L., IceBreaker, Icebreaker Apparel LLC, Icebreaker Australia Pty, Icebreaker Australia Retail Pty, Icebreaker Europe Limited, Icebreaker Holdings Limited, Icebreaker Licensing LLC, Icebreaker Limited, Icebreaker Merino Clothing Europe Ltd., Icebreaker New Zealand Limited, Icebreaker Pure Merino GmbH, Imagewear Apparel Corp., Industrial Laundry Services LLC, Industrias Coahuila de Zaragosa S de RL de CV, JanSport Apparel Corp., Kipling Apparel Corp., Kipling Belgium, Kipling Holdings LLC, Kirsche GmbH, Kodiak Group Holdings CO., Lee Bell Inc., Lucy, Lucy Apparel LLC, Majestic Athletic Official Store, Mo Industries Holdings, NII Sales - Texas LLC, Napapijri, North East Rig-Out Limited, North Elm Properties LLC, RED KAP DE MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, RKI HONDURAS S de RL, Reef Holdings Corporation, Rock & Republic, SERVICIOS Y PROMOCIONES TEXTILES LTDA, South Cone, South Cone Inc, Supreme, Supreme Holdings Inc., Supreme Intermediate Holdings Inc., T.I. Venture Group Inc, TBL INVESTMENTS HOLDING GMBH, TBL Licensing LLC, THE NORTH FACE ITALY SRL, THE NORTH FACE SAGL, THE RECREATIONAL FOOTWEAR CO., TIMBERLAND EUROPE BV, TIMBERLAND HK TRADING LTD., TIMBERLAND LUXEMBOURG HOLDING ASIA S.A.R.L., TIMBERLAND UK LTD., The North Face, The North Face Apparel Corp, Timberland, Timberland Asia LLC, Timberland IDC Ltd., Timberland International LLC, VANS MADEIRA LDA, VANS SPAIN SL, VF (J) FRANCE SAS, VF (J) NEDERLAND BV, VF (J) NETHERLANDS SERVICES BV, VF APPAREL PORTUGAL LDA, VF ASIA LTD, VF Apollo Investments Limited, VF Apollo Singapore Pte. Ltd., VF Asia Sourcing Ltd, VF Austria GMBH, VF BRANDS MALAYSIA SDN BHD, VF BRANDS TAIWAN LTD., VF Belgium BV, VF Brands Pte. Ltd., VF CH Apollo Sagl, VF CH Holdings GmbH, VF CH Imagewear Canada GmbH, VF CH MEXICO INVESTMENTS SAGL, VF CH-MEX Holdings LLC, VF CHINA LTD., VF CIS LLC, VF COMERCIALIZADORA LTDA, VF CZECH SERVICES SRO, VF CZECH SRO, VF Corporation, VF DE ARGENTINA SA, VF DO BRAZIL LTDA, VF EGE GIYIM SANAYI VE TICARET LIMITED SIRKETI, VF EUROPE BV, VF GERMANY TEXTILE-HANDELS GMBH, VF Germany Services GMBH, VF HELLAS EPE, VF HOLDING SAGL, VF HOLDINGS MEXICO LLC, VF Hong Kong Limited, VF IB Holdings LLC, VF IMAGEWEAR DE MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, VF IMAGEWEAR MAJESTIC (UK) LTD, VF INTERNATIONAL SAGL, VF INVESTIMENTOS DO BRAZIL LTDA, VF IP Holdings LLC, VF ISRAEL (APPAREL) LTD, VF ITALIA SRL, VF ITALY SERVICES SRL, VF Imagewear Canada Co., VF Imagewear Inc, VF Intellectual Property Services Inc, VF International Holding GmbH, VF Investments Holding GmbH, VF Investments Netherlands BV, VF JEANSWEAR ARGENTINA SRL, VF JEANSWEAR ESPANA SL, VF Japan KK, VF KOREA LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANY, VF LUXEMBOURG SARL, VF Management Service Italy S.r.l., VF NL Holdings CV, VF NL Imagewear B.V., VF NORTHERN EUROPE LIMITED, VF NORTHERN EUROPE SERVICES LIMITED, VF Norway AS, VF OUTDOOR (CANADA) CO, VF OUTDOOR MEXICO S DE RL DE CV, VF OUTDOOR SERVICES S DE RL DE CV, VF Outdoor LLC, VF PANAMA SOURCING SERVICES S. DE R.L., VF PARTICIPACOES DO BRASIL LTDA, VF PERU SA, VF POLSKA DISTRIBUTION SP ZO O, VF Playwear Dominicana SA, VF Playwear LLC, VF Receivables LP, VF Receivables Services LLC, VF SAGEBRUSH ENTERPRISES LLC, VF SALES SAGL, VF SERVICIOS DE HONDURAS SA, VF SERVICIOS EL SALVADOR LTDA. DE CV, VF SHANGHAI SOURCING LIMITED, VF SOURCING THAILAND LTD, VF Scandinavia ApS, VF Services LLC, VF Servicios de Guatemala Srl, VF Servicios de Nicaragua Srl., VF Shanghai Enterprise Company, VF Shanghai Limited, VF Singapore Overseas Services Pte Ltd, VF Solutions LLC, VF Sourcing India Private Limited, VF Sweden AB, VF Switzerland Enterprises GmbH, VF Taiwan Limited, VF Transglobal GmbH, VF Treasury Services LLC, VFSE Investments LLC, VFSLA Commercial Services LLC, VFSLA Servicios S. de R.L. de C.V., Vans, Vans Inc, W-D APPAREL COMPANY LLC, W-D Licensing LLC, WD Europe SAS, WD Supply Holding Limited (HK), Walls Cayman Limited, Walls Holding Company LLC, Walls Industries LLC, Williamson Industries Ltd., Williamson-Dickie APAC Holding Company Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Apparel Trading (Shanghai) Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Canada Co., Williamson-Dickie Europe GmbH, Williamson-Dickie Europe Holdings Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Europe Ltd., Williamson-Dickie HK Holding Company Ltd., Williamson-Dickie Holding Co-Mexico S de RL de CV, Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Company LLC, Williamson-Dickie Middle East FZE, Wooster GK, Workwear Sourcing S. de R.L., World Jeans VF Asia Ltd, Worldwide Workwear Ltd., and Ying Tao Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd..
NEWTOWN BOROUGH >> The Newtown Borough Police Department is alerting the community that someone claiming to be Detective Brian Webb with the Newtown Borough Police Department and assigned to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force is attempting to scam local residents. The phone call appears to come from the borough's police department phone number. "This is a scam," said...
North American Construction Group Ltd. provides mining and heavy construction services to the resource development and industrial construction sectors in Canada and the United States The company's Heavy Construction & Mining division offers constructability reviews, budgetary cost estimates, design-build construction, project management, contract mining, pre-stripping/pit pioneering, overburden removal and stockpile, muskeg removal and stockpile, site preparation, air strip construction, site dewatering/perimeter ditching, tailings and process pipelines, haulage and access road construction, tailings dam construction and densification, mechanically stabilized earth walls, dyke construction, and reclamation services. Its Equipment Maintenance Services division provides fuel and lube servicing, portable steaming, equipment inspections, parts and component supply, major overhauls and equipment refurbishment, onsite haul truck brake testing, onsite maintenance support, under carriage rebuild, machining, hose manufacturing, and technical support services, as well as welding, fabrication/repairs, weld certification, and inspection services. As of December 31, 2020, the company had a heavy equipment fleet of 626 units. The company was formerly known as North American Energy Partners Inc. and changed its name to North American Construction Group Ltd. in April 2018. The company was founded in 1953 and is headquartered in Acheson, Canada.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Becton, Dickinson and: (Bard Istanbul Healthcare Limited Company), Accuri Cytometers, Accuri Cytometers Inc., Adaptec Manufacturing Singapore, Alverix, Alverix Inc., Atto Bioscience, BD Holding S. de R.L. de C.V., BD Infection Prevention BV, BD Kiestra BV, BD Kiestra Total Lab Automation, BD Rapid Diagnostic (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., BD San Luis Potosi S.A. de C.V., BD Switzerland Sarl, BD Ventures LLC, BD West Africa Limited, BDX INO LLC, Bard (Thailand) Limited, Bard ASDI Inc., Bard Access Systems Inc., Bard Acquisition Sub Inc., Bard Australia Pty. Limited, Bard Benelux N.V., Bard Brachytherapy Inc., Bard Brasil Industria e Comercio de Produtos Para a Saude Ltda., Bard Canada Inc., Bard Chile S.p.A., Bard Czech Republic s.r.o., Bard Devices Inc., Bard Dublin ITC Limited, Bard EMEA Finance Center Sp.z o.o., Bard European Distribution Center N.V., Bard Finance B.V. & Co. KG., Bard Financial Services Ltd., Bard Finland OY, Bard France S.A.S., Bard Global Holdings I LLC, Bard Global Holdings II LLC, Bard Global Holdings III LLC, Bard Healthcare Inc., Bard Healthcare Science (Shanghai) Limited, Bard Hellas S.A., Bard Holding SAS, Bard Holdings Limited, Bard Holdings Netherlands B.V., Bard Hong Kong Limited, Bard IP Holdings Inc., Bard India Healthcare Pvt. Ltd., Bard International Holdings B.V., Bard International Inc., Bard Korea Ltd., Bard Limited, Bard MRL Acquisition Corp., Bard Malaysia Healthcare Sdn. Bhd., Bard Medica SA, Bard Medical Devices (Beijing) Co. Ltd., Bard Medical R&D (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Bard Medical SA (Proprietary) Limited, Bard Mexico Realty S. de R.L. de C.V., Bard Norden AB, Bard Norway AS, Bard Pacific Health Care Company Ltd., Bard Peripheral Vascular Inc., Bard Poland Sp. z.o.o., Bard Productos Plasticos e Medicos Ltda., Bard Reynosa S.A. de C.V., Bard S.r.l., Bard Sdn. Bhd., Bard Shannon Limited, Bard Singapore Private Limited, Bard Sourcing Office Singapore Pte. Ltd., Bard Sweden AB, Bard UK Newco Limited, Bard de Espana S.A., Becton Dickinson (Gibraltar) Holdings Ltd., Becton Dickinson (Gibraltar) Limited, Becton Dickinson (Gibraltar) Management Limited, Becton Dickinson (Mauritius) Limited, Becton Dickinson (Pty) Ltd., Becton Dickinson (Thailand) Limited, Becton Dickinson A.G., Becton Dickinson A/S, Becton Dickinson Argentina S.R.L., Becton Dickinson Asia Holdings Ltd., Becton Dickinson Asia Limited, Becton Dickinson Austria GmbH, Becton Dickinson Austria Holdings GmbH, Becton Dickinson B.V., Becton Dickinson B.V. Saudi Limited Company, Becton Dickinson Benelux N.V., Becton Dickinson Biosciences Systems and Reagents Inc., Becton Dickinson Canada Inc., Becton Dickinson Caribe Ltd., Becton Dickinson Croatia d.o.o., Becton Dickinson Czechia s.r.o., Becton Dickinson Dispensing Belgium BVBA, Becton Dickinson Dispensing Denmark A/S, Becton Dickinson Dispensing France SAS, Becton Dickinson Dispensing Ireland Limited, Becton Dickinson Dispensing Norway, Becton Dickinson Dispensing Spain S.L.U., Becton Dickinson Dispensing UK Ltd., Becton Dickinson Distribution Center N.V., Becton Dickinson East Africa Ltd., Becton Dickinson Euro Finance Sarl, Becton Dickinson Europe Holdings S.A.S., Becton Dickinson France S.A.S., Becton Dickinson GSA Beteilgungs GmbH, Becton Dickinson Global Holdings I Inc., Becton Dickinson Global Holdings II LLC, Becton Dickinson Global Holdings IV LLC, Becton Dickinson Global Holdings V LLC, Becton Dickinson Global Holdings VII LLC, Becton Dickinson Global Holdings VIII LLC, Becton Dickinson Global Services Centre Sdn. Bhd, Becton Dickinson GmbH, Becton Dickinson Guatemala S.A., Becton Dickinson Hellas S.A., Becton Dickinson Holdings Limited, Becton Dickinson Holdings Ltd., Becton Dickinson Holdings Pte Ltd., Becton Dickinson Hungary Kft., Becton Dickinson India Private Limited, Becton Dickinson Industrias Cirurgicas Ltda., Becton Dickinson Infusion Therapy AB, Becton Dickinson Infusion Therapy Holdings UK Limited, Becton Dickinson Infusion Therapy Systems Inc., Becton Dickinson Infusion Therapy Systems Inc. S.A. de C.V., Becton Dickinson Infusion Therapy UK, Becton Dickinson Insulin Syringe Ltd., Becton Dickinson International Holdings II Pte Ltd., Becton Dickinson International Holdings III Pte Ltd., Becton Dickinson International Holdings Pte Ltd., Becton Dickinson Israel Ltd., Becton Dickinson Italia S.p.A., Becton Dickinson Ithalat Ihracat Limited Sirketi, Becton Dickinson Korea Holding Inc., Becton Dickinson Korea Ltd., Becton Dickinson Ltd., Becton Dickinson Luxembourg Finance S.a.r.L., Becton Dickinson Luxembourg Global Holdings Sarl, Becton Dickinson Luxembourg Holdings II S.a.r.L, Becton Dickinson Luxembourg Holdings III S.a.r.L, Becton Dickinson Luxembourg Holdings V S.a.r.L., Becton Dickinson Malaysia Inc., Becton Dickinson Management GmbH & Co. KG, Becton Dickinson Matrex Holdings Inc., Becton Dickinson Medical (S) Pte Ltd., Becton Dickinson Medical Devices (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Becton Dickinson Medical Devices (Suzhou) Co. Ltd., Becton Dickinson Medical Products Pte. Ltd., Becton Dickinson Medical Technology (Jiangsu) Co. Ltd., Becton Dickinson Netherlands Global Holdings II C.V., Becton Dickinson Netherlands Holdings B.V., Becton Dickinson Netherlands Holdings II B.V., Becton Dickinson Norway AS, Becton Dickinson O.Y., Becton Dickinson Overseas Services Ltd., Becton Dickinson Pakistan (Pvt) Ltd., Becton Dickinson Penel Limited, Becton Dickinson Philippines Inc., Becton Dickinson Polska Sp.z.o.o., Becton Dickinson Portugal Unipessoal Lda., Becton Dickinson Pty. Ltd., Becton Dickinson Research Centre Ireland Limited, Becton Dickinson Rowa Germany GmbH, Becton Dickinson Rowa Italy Srl, Becton Dickinson S.A., Becton Dickinson Sample Collection GmbH, Becton Dickinson Scot Financing L.L.P., Becton Dickinson Scot Financing L.P., Becton Dickinson Sdn. Bhd., Becton Dickinson Slovakia s.r.o., Becton Dickinson Sweden AB, Becton Dickinson Sweden Holdings AB, Becton Dickinson Switzerland Global Holdings SarL, Becton Dickinson Technology Campus India, Becton Dickinson U.K. Limited, Becton Dickinson UK Financing I Limited, Becton Dickinson UK Financing II Limited, Becton Dickinson Venezuela C.A., Becton Dickinson Venture LLC, Becton Dickinson Verwaltungs GmbH, Becton Dickinson Vostok LLC, Becton Dickinson Worldwide Investments Sa.r.L., Becton Dickinson Zambia Limited, Becton Dickinson and Company Ltd., Becton Dickinson de Colombia Ltda., Becton Dickinson de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Becton Dickinson del Uruguay S.A., Benex Ltd., Biometric Imaging, Bridger Biomed Inc., C. R. Bard, C. R. Bard (Portugal) - Produtos e Artigos Medicos e Farmaceuticos, C. R. Bard Do Brasil Productos Medicos Ltda., C. R. Bard GmbH, C. R. Bard Inc., C. R. Bard Netherlands Sales B.V., CME America LLC, CME Ltd., CME Medical (UK) Limited, CME UK (Holdings) Limited, CRISI Medical Systems, CRISI Medical Systems Inc., Caesarea Medical Electronics, Cardal II LLC, Care Fusion Development Private Limited, CareFusion, CareFusion (Barbados) SrL, CareFusion (Shanghai) Commercial and Trading Co. Limited, CareFusion 213 LLC, CareFusion 2200 Inc., CareFusion 2201 Inc., CareFusion 302 LLC, CareFusion 303 Inc., CareFusion Asia (HK) Limited, CareFusion BH 335 d.o.o. Cazin, CareFusion Corporation, CareFusion D.R. 203 Ltd., CareFusion France 309 S.A.S., CareFusion Israel 330 Ltd., CareFusion Italy 312 S.p.A., CareFusion Manufacturing LLC, CareFusion Mexico 215 S.A. de C.V., CareFusion Netherlands 328 B.V., CareFusion Netherlands 503 B.V., CareFusion Netherlands 504 B.V., CareFusion Netherlands Financing 283 C.V., CareFusion Resources LLC, CareFusion S.A. 319 (Proprietary) Limited, CareFusion Solutions LLC, CareFusion U.K. 244 Limited, CareFusion U.K. 305 Limited, CareFusion U.K. 306 Limited, Carmel Pharma AB, Carmel Pharma Inc, Cato Software Solutions, Cell Analysis Systems Inc, Cellular Research, Cellular Research Inc., Clearstream Technologies Group Limited, Clearstream Technologies Limited, Clontech Laboratories Inc, Corporativo BD de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Cubex, Cytopeia, DLD (Bermuda) Ltd., DVL Acquisition Sub Inc., Davol Inc., Davol International Limited, Davol Surgical Innovations S.A. de C.V., Difco Laboratories Incorporated, Distribuidora BD Mexico S.A. de C.V., Dutch American Manufacturers (D.A.M.) B.V., Dymax Corporation, Embo Medical Limited, Enturia de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Enturican Inc., FJ International Inc., FlowCardia Inc., FlowCardia LLC, FlowJo LLC, Franklin Lakes Enterprises L.L.C., GSL Solutions, Gamer Lasertechnik GmbH, GenCell Biosystems, GenCell Biosystems Ltd., GeneOhm Sciences, GeneOhm Sciences Canada ULC, Gentest Corporation, Gesco International Inc., Gesco International LLC, HandyLab Inc, HandyLab Inc., IBD Holdings LLC, Iontophoretics Corporation, JoHome LLC, Kabushiki Kaisha Medicon (Medicon Inc.), Liberator Health and Education Services Inc., Liberator Health and Wellness Inc., Liberator Medical Holdings Inc., Liberator Medical Supply Inc., LifeBond, Limited Liability Company Bard Rus, Loma Vista Medical Inc., Loma Vista Medical LLC, Lutonix Inc., Med-Design Corporation, Med-Design Investment Holdings Inc., Med-Safe Systems Inc., MedChem Products Inc., Medafor Inc., Medegen LLC, Medinservice.com Inc., Medivance Inc., NAT Diagnostics, NAT Diagnostics Inc., NOW Medical Distribution Inc., NOW Medical Distribution LLC, Navarre Biomedical LLC, Navarre Biomedical Ltd., Neomend Inc., Nippon Becton Dickinson Company Ltd., Omega Biosystems Incorporated, P.R.C. (Isialys) Societe a responsabilitie limitee (Societe a associe unique), PT Becton Dickinson Indonesia, PharMingen, PreAnalytiX GmbH, Pristine Access Technologies Inc., ProSeed Inc., Procesos para Esterilizacion S.A. de C.V., Productos Bard de Mexico S.A. de C.V., Productos Para el Cuidado de la Salud S.A. de C.V., Puls Medical Devices AS LC, PureWick Corporation, Roberts Laboratories Inc., Rochester Medical Corporation, Rochester Medical Ltd., Saf-T-Med, Safety Syringes, Safety Syringes Inc., Sendal S.L.U., SenoRx Inc., SenoRx LLC, Shield Healthcare Centers Inc., Sirigen, Sirigen II Limited, Sirigen Inc., Sistemas Medicos ALARIS S.A. de C.V., Specialized Cooperative Corporation, Specialized Health Products Inc., Specialized Health Products International Inc., Specialized Health Products International LLC, Staged Diabetes Management LLC, Straub Medical, Straub Medical AG, Surgical Site Solutions Inc., TVA Medical, TVA Medical Inc., Tepha, Tepha Inc., Tri-County Medical & Ostomy Supplies Inc., TriPath Imaging, TriPath Imaging Inc., Vas-Cath Incorporated, Vascular Pathways Inc., Velano Vascular, Velano Vascular Inc., Venetec International Inc., Venetec International LLC, Y-Med Inc., Y-Med LLC, and ZebraSci Inc..
Boliden AB, a metals company, explores for, mines, smelts, and recycles metals. It operates in two segments, Business Area Mines and Business Area Smelters. The company mines for zinc, copper, lead, gold, silver, nickel, and tellurium deposits. It operates the Aitik, the Boliden Area, and Garpenberg mines in Sweden; Tara mine in Ireland; and Kylylahti and Kevitsa mines in Finland. The company also produces zinc and lead ingots, copper cathodes, and gold bars and silver granules; sulphuric acid, zinc clinker, sulphur dioxide, and palladium concentrates; copper, lead, nickel, and zinc concentrates; and by-products comprising copper sulphate, zinc clinker, iron sand, copper telluride, selenium, nickel matte, crude nickel sulphate, and platinum group metal concentrates. In addition, it recycles copper and precious metals from electronic scrap; lead from used lead-acid batteries; and metals from waste products. Further, Boliden AB extracts silver from zinc concentrates. The company sells its products principally to industrial customers, as well as to base metal dealers and international metal stocks, such as the London Metal Exchange in Sweden, other Nordic region countries, Germany, the United Kingdom, other European countries, North America, and internationally. Boliden AB was founded in 1924 and is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

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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..
The following companies are subsidiares of Fidelity National Information Services: 11601 Roosevelt Boulevard Realty LLC, AFSF II AIV Investors D-LP, AGES Participacoes Ltda., AKC Insurance Company LLC, Advanced Portfolio Technologies Ltd., Alphakinetic Ltd., Armed Forces Financial Network LLC, AssetExchange, Automated Securities Clearance LLC, Best Payment Solutions Inc., Bibit Spain S.L., Bitpay Payments KK, C&E Holdings Luxembourg S.a.r.l., CPRS Holdings Inc., Canadian Envoy Technology Services Ltd., Capco, Central Credit Services Limited, Certegy Canada Company, Certegy Card Services B.V., Certegy Dutch Holdings B.V., Certegy France Limited, Certegy SAS, Certegy UK Holdings B.V., Chex Systems Inc., Clear2Pay, Clear2Pay (Shenzhen) Company Limited, Clear2Pay APAC Pte. Ltd., Clear2Pay APAC Pty Ltd., Clear2Pay BV, Clear2Pay Belgium BV, Clear2Pay China Limited, Clear2Pay France SAS, Clear2Pay Germany GmbH, Clear2Pay Limited, Clear2Pay Nanjing Co. Limited, Clear2Pay Nederland BV, Clear2Pay Poland Sp. z o.o., Clear2Pay Scotland Holdings Limited, Clear2Pay Scotland Limited, Clear2Pay Spain S.l., ClearTwoPay Chile SpA, Complete Payment Recovery Services Inc., Compliance Coach, Credit Management Solutions, Decalog (UK) Limited, Decalog N.V., Envoy Services Bulgaria Limited, Envoy Services Ltd. (Asia) SDn BHD, Envoy Services Pty Ltd., Envoy Services South Africa (Pty) Limited, F.I.S. Systems (Middle East) Limited, FIS (Switzerland) SA, FIS (Tunisia) I SARL, FIS (Tunisia) II SARL, FIS Ambit Holdings Pty Ltd, FIS Apex (International) Limited, FIS Apex (UK) Limited, FIS Asia Pacific Inc., FIS AsiaPacRim Holdings Ltd., FIS Australasia Pty Ltd., FIS AvantGard LLC, FIS Banking Solutions UK Limited, FIS Bilgisayar Hizmetleri Ticaret Limited Sirketi, FIS Brokerage & Securities Services LLC, FIS Business Integration (UK) Limited, FIS Capital Markets UK Limited, FIS Capital Markets US LLC, FIS Card Services (Caribbean) Ltd., FIS Card Services (Thailand) Co. Ltd., FIS Consulting Services (Ireland) Limited, FIS Consulting Services (UK) Limited, FIS Denmark ApS, FIS Derivatives Utility Services (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., FIS Derivatives Utility Services (UK) Limited, FIS Derivatives Utility Services LLC, FIS Energy Solutions Limited, FIS Financial Solutions Canada Inc., FIS Financial Systems (France) SAS, FIS Foundation Inc., FIS GCS LLC, FIS Global Business Solutions India Private Ltd., FIS Global Execution Services (Ireland) Limited, FIS Global Execution Services Limited, FIS Global Holdings S.a.r.l, FIS Global Recovery Services India Private Limited, FIS Global Solutions Philippines Inc., FIS Global Trading (Deutschland) GmbH, FIS Global Trading (Hong Kong) Limited, FIS Global Trading (Iberica) S.L. Unipersonal, FIS Global Trading (Nederland) B.V., FIS Global Trading (Portugal) Unipessoal Lda, FIS Global Trading (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., FIS Global Trading (Suisse) SA, FIS Global Trading (UK) Limited, FIS Healthcare Trustee Limited, FIS Holdings (Germany) GmbH i.L., FIS Holdings Limited, FIS Holdings Mauritius, FIS Insurance Services Limited, FIS International Subsidiaries Holdings Inc., FIS Investment Systems (UK) Limited, FIS Investment Ventures LLC, FIS Investor Services LLC, FIS Japan KK, FIS Kingstar Cayman Islands Limited, FIS Korea Ltd., FIS Management Services LLC, FIS Management Services Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., FIS Pakistan (Private) Limited, FIS Payment Solutions & Services India Private Limited, FIS Payments (Ireland) Limited, FIS Payments (UK) Limited, FIS Pensions Limited, FIS Romania SRL, FIS SG (Italia) S.r.l., FIS SG International Holdings LLC, FIS SG Systems Philippines Inc., FIS Sherwood Systems Limited, FIS Solutions (India) Private Limited, FIS Solutions LLC, FIS Solutions Software (India) Private Limited, FIS Systeme GmbH, FIS Systems (Hong Kong) Limited, FIS Systems (Luxembourg) S.A., FIS Systems (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., FIS Systems (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., FIS Systems Canada Inc., FIS Systems International LLC, FIS Systems Kenya Limited, FIS Systems Limited, FIS Systems NZ Limited, FIS Systems Pty Ltd, FIS Systems South Africa (Pty) Limited, FIS Systems de Colombia S.A.S., FIS Technology (Beijing) Co. Limited, FIS Technology Services (Poland) Sp. z o.o., FIS Technology Services (Tunisia) SARL, FIS Technology Services Singapore Pte. Ltd., FIS Treasury Systems (Europe) Limited, FIS Treasury Systems (UK) Limited, FIS UK Holdings Limited, FIS Vietnam LLC, FIS Worldpay (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, FIS Worldpay Jersey Limited, FIS-SG Holding Corp., FNIS Istanbul Danismanlik Limited Sirketi, FV General Partner LLC, Fidelity Holding Ltda., Fidelity Information Services (Hong Kong) Limited, Fidelity Information Services (Iberia) S.L.U., Fidelity Information Services (Israel) Ltd., Fidelity Information Services (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd., Fidelity Information Services (Thailand) Limited, Fidelity Information Services Front Arena AB, Fidelity Information Services GmbH, Fidelity Information Services Holdings B.V., Fidelity Information Services India Private Limited, Fidelity Information Services International Holdings Inc., Fidelity Information Services LLC, Fidelity Information Services Limited, Fidelity Information Services Operations GmbH, Fidelity Information Services SARL, Fidelity Information Services Slovakia s.r.o., Fidelity Information Services de Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Fidelity International Resource Management Inc., Fidelity National Card Services Inc., Fidelity National Global Card Services Inc., Fidelity National Information Services (Netherlands) B.V., Fidelity National Information Services C.V., Fidelity National Information Services Inc., Fidelity National Participacoes e Servicos de Informatica Ltda., Fidelity National Servicos de Tratamento de Documentos e Informatica Ltda., Fidelity National Servicos e Contact Center Ltda., Fidelity Participacoes e Servicos Ltda., Financial Insurance Marketing Group Inc., GL Settle Limited, GL Trade (South Africa) (Proprietary) Limited, GL Trade CMS (Thailand) Limited, GL Trade Software DOO, GL Trade Solutions CMS (Thailand) Limited, Glesia S.r.l., GoCart LLC, Information Services Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Integrity Treasury Solutions Europe Limited, Integrity Treasury Solutions Inc., Integrity Treasury Solutions Limited, Integrity Treasury Solutions Pty Limited, Link2Gov Corp., Memento, Metavante Corporation, Metavante Payment Services LLC, Metavante Technologies Inc, Metavante Technologies Limited, Minorca Corporation NV, Monis Management Limited, Monis Software Limited, NYCE Payments Network LLC, Oshap Software Industries Ltd., Oshap Technologies Ltd., PT FIS Systems Indonesia, PT Fidelity Information Services Indonesia, Panther Holdco 2 Inc., Panther Holdco Inc., Payment Brasil Holdings Ltda., Payment Chile S.A., Payment Trust Limited, Paymetric Inc., Pazien Inc., People's United Merchant Services LLC, Platform Securities Holdings Limited, Platform Securities International Limited, Platform Securities International Nominees Limited, Platform Securities LLP, Platform Securities Nominees Limited, Platform Securities Services Limited, Reech Capital Limited, Reliance Financial Corporation, Reliance Integrated Solutions LLC, Reliance Trust Company, Rocket Partners Holdings LLC, Sanchez Computer Associates Pty Limited, Secondco Limited, Ship Holdco Limited, Ship Luxco 2 S.a.r.l., Ship Luxco 3 S.a.r.l., Ship Midco Limited, Solutions Plus Consulting Services Limited, SunGard, SunGard Data Systems Beijing Co. Ltd., SunGard Global Services (Tunisia) III, SunGard Global Trading (Australia) Pty. Ltd., SunGard India Sales Private Limited, TP Technologies N.V., Tayvin 346 Limited, Transax Limited, Trax BV, Valuelink Information Services Limited, Valutec Card Solutions LLC, Virtus Fund Services, Virtus Group LP, Virtus LP Holdings LLC, Virtus Partners Fund Services Cayman Ltd., Virtus Partners Fund Services Holdings Company, Virtus Partners Fund Services Ireland Limited, Virtus Partners Fund Services Luxembourg S.a.r.l., Virtus Partners Ireland Ltd., Virtus Partners Ltd., Virtus Trade Settlement LLC, WebTone Technologies, Worldpay, Worldpay (HK) Limited, Worldpay (NZ) Limited, Worldpay (UK) Limited, Worldpay AP Ltd., Worldpay Argentina SRL, Worldpay B.V., Worldpay Canada Corporation, Worldpay Cayman Holdings Limited, Worldpay Company LLC, Worldpay Do Brasil Processamento De Pagamentos Ltda., Worldpay Finance Limited, Worldpay Gaming Solutions LLC, Worldpay Governance Limited, Worldpay Group Limited, Worldpay Holdings (Barbados) SRL, Worldpay Holdings Brasil Participacoes Ltda., Worldpay ISO Inc., Worldpay India Private Limited, Worldpay Integrated Payments Canada LLC, Worldpay Integrated Payments LLC., Worldpay Integrated Payments Solutions Inc., Worldpay International Group Limited, Worldpay International Holdings Limited, Worldpay International Limited, Worldpay International Payments Limited, Worldpay International Solutions Limited, Worldpay K.K., Worldpay LLC, Worldpay Latin America Limited, Worldpay Limited, Worldpay Marketing Consulting (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Worldpay Payments (Barbados) SRL, Worldpay Processing Services SRL, Worldpay Pte Ltd., Worldpay Pty Ltd., Worldpay S.a.r.l., Worldpay Services Company, Worldpay Services SRL, Worldpay Solutions SRL, Worldpay Technology Bucharest S.R.L., Worldpay Treasury Solutions SRL, Worldpay US Inc., Worldpay eCommerce LLC, Worldpay eCommerce Limited, Xpede, YES-Secure.com Limited, YESpay International Limited, Zenmonics Inc., Zenmonics Software Private Limited, eFunds Corporation, eFunds Holdings Limited, eFunds International Limited, i DLX International B.V., and mFoundry Inc..
10 Wall Street analysts have issued "buy," "hold," and "sell" ratings for Hammerson in the last year. There are currently 6 sell ratings, 3 hold ratings and 1 buy rating for the stock. The consensus among Wall Street analysts is that investors should "hold" Hammerson stock. A hold rating indicates that analysts believe investors should maintain any existing positions they have in HMSNF, but not buy additional shares or sell existing shares.

View analyst ratings for Hammerson or view top-rated stocks.
The following companies are subsidiares of D.R. Horton: 10700 Pecan Park Austin Inc., 11241 Slater Avenue NE LLC, 2 C Development Company LLC, 8800 Roswell Road Bldg. B LLC, 91st Avenue & Happy Valley L.L.C., ANN & 215 LLC, Austin Data Inc., BP456 Inc., C. Richard Dobson Builders Inc., CH Funding LLC, CH Investments of Texas Inc., CHI Construction Company, CHM Partners L.P., CHTEX of Texas Inc., CV Mountain View 25 Inv LLC, Cane Island LLC, Continental Homes Inc., Continental Homes of Texas L.P., Continental Residential Inc., Continental Traditions LLC, Crown Operating Company Inc., Cypress Road L.P., D.R. Horton - CHAustin LLC, D.R. Horton - Colorado LLC, D.R. Horton - Crown LLC, D.R. Horton - Emerald Ltd., D.R. Horton - Georgia LLC, D.R. Horton - Hawaii LLC, D.R. Horton - Highland LLC, D.R. Horton - Indiana LLC, D.R. Horton - Iowa LLC, D.R. Horton - MV LLC, D.R. Horton - Nebraska LLC, D.R. Horton - Permian LLC, D.R. Horton - Regent LLC, D.R. Horton - Terramor LLC, D.R. Horton - Texas Ltd., D.R. Horton - WPH LLC, D.R. Horton - Wyoming LLC, D.R. Horton BAY Inc., D.R. Horton CA2 Inc., D.R. Horton CA3 Inc., D.R. Horton CA4 LLC, D.R. Horton Commercial Inc., D.R. Horton Cruces Construction Inc., D.R. Horton Inc. - Birmingham, D.R. Horton Inc. - Chicago, D.R. Horton Inc. - Denver, D.R. Horton Inc. - Dietz-Crane, D.R. Horton Inc. - Greensboro, D.R. Horton Inc. - Gulf Coast, D.R. Horton Inc. - Huntsville, D.R. Horton Inc. - Jacksonville, D.R. Horton Inc. - Louisville, D.R. Horton Inc. - Midwest, D.R. Horton Inc. - Minnesota, D.R. Horton Inc. - NNV, D.R. Horton Inc. - New Jersey, D.R. Horton Inc. - Portland, D.R. Horton Inc. - Torrey, D.R. Horton Inc. Foundation, D.R. Horton Insurance Agency Inc., D.R. Horton LA North Inc., D.R. Horton Life Insurance Agency Inc., D.R. Horton Los Angeles Holding Company Inc., D.R. Horton Management Company Ltd., D.R. Horton Materials Inc., D.R. Horton Realty LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Atlantic County LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Central Florida LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Delaware LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Georgia Inc., D.R. Horton Realty of Melbourne LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Northwest Florida LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Southeast Florida LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Southwest Florida LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Tampa LLC, D.R. Horton Realty of Virginia LLC, D.R. Horton Seabridge Marina Inc., D.R. Horton Serenity Construction LLC, D.R. Horton Urban Renewal LLC, D.R. Horton VEN Inc., D.R. Horton  Corpus Christi LLC, DBC54 LLC, DHI Commercial - Lakeview LLC, DHI Commercial - Signal Butte LLC, DHI Commercial - Tamarron LLC, DHI Commercial Inc., DHI Communities Construction LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Arizona LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Colorado LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Florida LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Iowa LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Nevada LLC, DHI Communities Construction of North Carolina LLC, DHI Communities Construction of South Carolina LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Texas LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Utah LLC, DHI Communities Construction of Virginia LLC, DHI Communities II LLC, DHI Communities Inc., DHI Engineering LLC, DHI Insurance Inc., DHI Mortgage Company, DHI Mortgage Company GP Inc., DHI Mortgage Company LP Inc., DHI Mortgage Company Ltd., DHI Ranch Ltd., DHI Realty of Alabama LLC, DHI Realty of Mississippi LLC, DHI Title GP Inc., DHI Title LP Inc., DHI Title of Alabama Inc., DHI Title of Arizona Inc., DHI Title of Florida Inc., DHI Title of Minnesota Inc., DHI Title of Nevada Inc., DHI Title of Texas Ltd., DHI Title of Washington Inc., DHI Verandah South Shores Communities LLC, DHIC - Bridges LLC, DHIC - Brittmore LLC, DHIC - Carolina Forest LLC, DHIC - Desert Peak LLC, DHIC - Durbin Creek LLC, DHIC - Freestone LLC, DHIC - Hammock Landing LLC, DHIC - Heritage LLC, DHIC - Horizon Uptown LLC, DHIC - Jacobs Reserve LLC, DHIC - Lakeview LLC, DHIC - Lipoma LLC, DHIC - Minton Cove LLC, DHIC - Mountain Vista LLC, DHIC - Naco LLC, DHIC - Northshore LLC, DHIC - Prairie Village LLC, DHIC - South Creek LLC, DHIC - Tamarron LLC, DHIC - Valley Vista LLC, DHIC - Varina Gateway LLC, DHIC - Waterleigh II LLC, DHIC - Waterleigh III LLC, DHIC - Waterleigh LLC, DHIC - Westridge LLC, DHIC LLC, DHIC  Glendale LLC, DHIC  Grove West LLC, DHIC  South Park LLC, DHIC  Westinghouse LLC, DHIR - Aspen Vista LLC, DHIR - Avian Pointe LLC, DHIR - Emerald Lakes LLC, DHIR - Fosters Ridge LLC, DHIR - Gulf Stream LLC, DHIR - Parkview at Lynn Haven LLC, DHIR - Poplar Terrace LLC, DHIR - Properties I LLC, DHIR - Rock Ridge LLC, DHIR - Sunset Village LLC, DHIR - Village at Hickory Street LLC, DRH - ARK LLC, DRH - ASG LLC, DRH - HWY 114 LLC, DRH Cambridge Homes LLC, DRH Capital Trust I, DRH Capital Trust II, DRH Capital Trust III, DRH Colorado Realty Inc., DRH Construction Inc., DRH Energy Inc., DRH FS Mortgage Reinsurance Ltd., DRH Land Opportunities I Inc., DRH Land Opportunities II Inc., DRH Mountain View LLC, DRH Oil & Gas Inc., DRH Opportunities I Inc., DRH Properties Inc., DRH Realty Company Inc., DRH Realty of Iowa LLC, DRH Regrem L LLC, DRH Regrem LI LLC, DRH Regrem LII LLC, DRH Regrem LIII LLC, DRH Regrem LIV LLC, DRH Regrem LV LLC, DRH Regrem VII LP, DRH Regrem XII LP, DRH Regrem XIV Inc., DRH Regrem XIX Inc., DRH Regrem XLIX LLC, DRH Regrem XLV LLC, DRH Regrem XLVI LLC, DRH Regrem XLVII LLC, DRH Regrem XLVIII LLC, DRH Regrem XV Inc., DRH Regrem XVI Inc., DRH Regrem XVII Inc., DRH Regrem XVIII Inc., DRH Regrem XX Inc., DRH Regrem XXI Inc., DRH Regrem XXII Inc., DRH Regrem XXIII Inc., DRH Regrem XXIV Inc., DRH Regrem XXV Inc., DRH Southwest Construction Inc., DRH Tucson Construction Inc., DRHI Inc., Deer Valley Office Park LLC, Desert Ridge Phase I Partners, Emerald Creek No. 4 L.P., Emerald Realty of Alabama LLC, Emerald Realty of Central Florida LLC, Emerald Realty of North Florida LLC, Emerald Realty of Northwest Florida LLC, Emerald Realty of Southeast Florida LLC, Emerald Realty of Southwest Florida LLC, Encore II Inc., Encore Venture Partners II (California) L.P., Encore Venture Partners II (Texas) L.P., Encore Venture Partners L.P., Express Realty of Central Florida LLC, Express Realty of North Florida LLC, Express Realty of Northwest Florida LLC, Express Realty of Southeast Florida LLC, Express Realty of Southwest Florida LLC, Forestar Group, Forestar Group Inc., Founders Oil & Gas II LLC, Founders Oil & Gas III LLC, Founders Oil & Gas IV LLC, Founders Oil & Gas LLC, Founders Oil & Gas Operating LLC, GP-Encore Inc., Georgetown Data Inc., Germann & McQueen L.L.C., Grand Title Agency LLC, Grande Realty Incorporated, Grande Realty of Pennsylvania LLC, Greywes LLC, HPH Homebuilders 2000 L.P., Hadian LLC, KDB Homes Inc., Kaomalo LLC, Lexington Homes - DRH LLC, MRLF LLC, Martin Road Lake Forest LLC, McQueen & Willis LLC, Meadows I Ltd., Meadows II Ltd., Meadows IX Inc., Meadows VIII Ltd., Meadows X Inc., Melody Homes Inc., Pacific Ridge - DRH LLC, Rielly Carlsbad LLC, Rielly Homes Madison LLC, SFTEN LLC, SGS Communities at Grand Quay L.L.C, SHA Construction LLC, SHLR of California Inc., SHLR of Nevada Inc., SHLR of Washington Inc., SRHI LLC, SSHI LLC, Schuler Homes of Arizona LLC, Schuler Homes of California Inc., Schuler Homes of Oregon Inc., Schuler Homes of Washington Inc., Summerlin Pkwy & Cimarron LLC, Surprise Village North LLC, The Club at Cobblestone LLC, The Club at Hidden River LLC, Tierra Financial Advisors LLC, Travis County Title Company, Treasure Assets LLC, Venture Management of South Carolina LLC, Vertical Construction Corporation, WPH-Camino Ruiz LLC, WPH-Copper Canyon II LLC, WPH-Copper Canyon LLC, Walker Drive LLC, Western Pacific Brea Development LLC, Western Pacific Housing - Mountaingate L.P., Western Pacific Housing - SDG LLC, Western Pacific Housing - Westlake II L.P., Western Pacific Housing Inc., Western Pacific Housing Management Inc., Western Pacific Housing-Antigua LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Broadway LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Canyon Park LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Carrillo LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Communications Hill LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Copper Canyon LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Creekside LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Lomas Verdes LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Lyons Canyon Partners LLC, Western Pacific Housing-McGonigle Canyon LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Norco Estates LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Pacific Park II LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Park Avenue East LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Park Avenue West LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Playa Vista LLC, Western Pacific Housing-River Ridge LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Terra Bay Duets LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Torrey Meadows LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Torrey Village Center LLC, Western Pacific Housing-Windemere LLC, and Wilson Parker Homes.
South32 Limited operates as a diversified metals and mining company primarily in Australia, Southern Africa, North America, and South America. The company has a portfolio of assets producing alumina, aluminum, bauxite, energy and metallurgical coal, manganese ore and alloy, ferronickel, silver, lead, and zinc. It also exports its products. South32 Limited has a strategic alliance agreement with AusQuest Limited for exploration opportunity under at its Morrisey nickel-copper project. The company was formerly known as BHP Coal Holdings Pty Limited and changed its name to South32 Limited in March 2015. South32 Limited was incorporated in 2000 and is headquartered in Perth, Australia.

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AB Volvo is the parent company of the Volvo Group. The Volvo Group is a manufacturer of trucks, buses, construction equipment, diesel engines, and marine and industrial engines. The Volvo Group also provides solutions for financing and service. Its segments include Trucks, Construction Equipment, Buses, Volvo Penta, Group functions & Other, and Financial Services. The Company's brand portfolio consists of Volvo, Volvo Penta, UD, Terex Trucks, Renault Trucks, Prevost, Nova Bus and Mack. In addition to vehicles and machines, its offering includes a range of services, such as insurance, rental services, spare parts, preventive maintenance, service agreements, assistance services and information technology (IT) services. Its product range is divided into Vehicles and Services. The sale of new vehicles, machinery and engines comprise Vehicles, as well as the sale of used vehicles and machines, trailers, superstructures and special vehicles. Its Services include the sale of spare parts.

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Domtar Corporation designs, manufactures, markets, and distributes communication papers, specialty and packaging papers, and absorbent hygiene products in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and internationally. It operates through two segments, Pulp and Paper, and Personal Care. The company provides business papers, including copy and electronic imaging papers used in inkjet and laser printers, photocopiers, and plain-paper fax machines, as well as computer papers, preprinted forms, and digital papers for office and home use. It also offers commercial printing and publishing papers, such as offset papers and opaques used in sheet and roll fed offset presses; publishing papers, which include tradebook and lightweight uncoated papers for publishing textbooks, dictionaries, catalogs, magazines, hard cover novels, and financial documents; and converting papers for envelopes, tablets, business forms, and data processing/computer forms. In addition, the company provides papers for thermal printing, flexible packaging, food packaging, medical packaging, medical gowns and drapes, sandpaper backing, carbonless printing, labels and other coating, and laminating applications; and papers for industrial and specialty applications, such as carrier papers, treated papers, security papers, and specialized printing and converting applications. Further, it offers absorbent hygiene products, including absorbent briefs, protective underwear, underpads, pads, washcloths, and body patches under the Attends, Indasec, IndasSlip, and Reassure brands; and baby diapers, training and youth pants, and bed mats under the Comfees, Chelino, Nene, and Bambino brand names. The company serves merchants, retail outlets, stationers, printers, publishers, converters, and end-users. Domtar Corporation was founded in 1848 and is based in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

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Dunelm Group plc engages in the retail of homewares in the United Kingdom. The company offers furniture for bedroom, living room, dining room, and office; sofas and chairs; bean bags; bed frames, mattresses, divan beds and bases, and headboards, as well as kids beds; and bedding products, such as bed linens, duvets, pillows, protectors, and baby and kids beddings. It also provides curtains, and poles and tracks; blinds; rugs, runners, and door mats; mirrors; cushion pads, covers; throws; seat pads; pictures and frames, wallpapers, and accessories; lighting products, including ceiling and wall lights, lamp shades, floor and table lamps, and outdoor lights; kitchen products, such as cooking, dining, utility, and electrical products; and storage products for home, clothes, and kitchen, as well as travel and luggage products. In addition, the company offers towels and bathmats, bathroom accessories, and bathroom furniture; kids accessories and toys, and nursery furniture and products, as well as travel, safety, and wellbeing products; garden furniture and storage, and garden dAcor products; and Christmas trees and lights, wreaths and garlands, baubles and tree decoration, and novelty products. It operates 173 superstores and 2 distribution centers, as well as sells its products through an online store at dunelm.com. Dunelm Group plc was founded in 1979 and is based in Syston, the United Kingdom.

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John Hancock Multifactor Mid Cap ETF's stock was trading at $31.37 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, JHMM stock has increased by 73.6% and is now trading at $54.47.

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Edinburgh Dragon Trust plc is an investment trust. The Company's objective is to achieve long-term capital growth through investment in the Far East with the exception of Japan and Australasia. The Company's assets are invested in a diversified portfolio of securities in quoted companies spread across a range of industries and economies in the Asia Pacific region, excluding Japan and Australasia. The Company invests in various sectors, including automobiles; aerospace and defense; air freight and logistics; banks; capital markets; chemicals; construction materials; consumer products; diversified telecommunication services; food and staples retailing; food products; household products; industrial conglomerates; insurance; Internet software and services; information technology (IT) services; machinery; multiline retail; pharmaceuticals; real estate management and development; road and rail, and tobacco. Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Limited is the Company's investment manager.

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The following companies are subsidiares of ABB: A88 for Electrical Industries (ABB ARAB) S.A.E., AABB Business Services Sp. z o.o., ABB (China) Investment Limited, ABB (China) Ltd., ABB 0y, ABB A/S, ABB AB, ABB AG, ABB AS, ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd, ABB Australia Pty Limited, ABB Automacao Ltda., ABB Automation GmbH, ABB Automation Products GmbH, ABB B.V., ABB Beijing Drive Systems Co. Ltd., ABB Beijing Switchgear Limited, ABB Beteiligungs- und Verwaltungsges. MbH, ABB Bulgaria EOOD, ABB Canada EL Holding GmbH, ABB Capital AG, ABB Electrical Control Systems S. de R.L. de C.V., ABB Electrical Industries Co. Ltd., ABB Electrical Machines Ltd., ABB Electrification Canada ULC, ABB Electrification Norway AS, ABB Elektrik Sanayi A.S., ABB Eletrificacao Ltda., ABB Engineering (Shanghai) Ltd., ABB Engineering Trading and Service Ltd., ABB Finance (USA) Inc., ABB Finance B.V., ABB France, ABB Global Industries and Services Private Limited, ABB Group Investment Management Pty. Ltd., ABB Holding AS, ABB Holdings (Pty) Ltd., ABB Holdings B.V., ABB Holdings Inc., ABB Holdings Limited, ABB Inc., ABB Inc., ABB India Limited, ABB Industrial Solutions (Bielsko-Biala) Sp. z o.o., ABB Industrial Solutions (Klodzko) Sp.z o.o., ABB Industries (L.L.C.), ABB Information Systems Ltd., ABB Installation Products Inc, ABB Installation Products International LLC., ABB Investment Holding 2 GmbH, ABB K.K., ABB Limited, ABB Ltd., ABB Management Services Ltd., ABB Mexico SA. de C.V., ABB Motors and Mechanical Inc, ABB N.V., ABB Norden Holding AB, ABB Pte. Ltd., ABB S.A., ABB S.p.A., ABB SAS, ABB Schweiz AG, ABB Shanghai Free Trade Zone Industrial Co. Ltd., ABB Shanghai Motors Co. Ltd., ABB South Africa (Pty) Ltd., ABB Sp. z o.o., ABB Stotz-Kontakt GmbH, ABB Treasury Center (USA) Inc., ABB Xiamen Low Voltage Equipment Co. Ltd., ABB Xiamen Switchgear Co. Ltd., ABB Xinhui Low Voltage Switchgear Co. Ltd., ABB s.r.o., APS Technology Group, ASTI Mobile Robotics, Asea Brown Boveri S.A., Asea Brown Boveri S.A.E., Asea Brown Boveri SA. de C.V., B + R Industrie-Elektronik GmbH, B&R Holding GmbH, B&R Industrial Automation, B&R Industrial Automation GmbH, Baldor Electric Company, Busch-Jaeger Elektro GmbH, Chargedot, Codian Robotics, Cylon Controls, DynaMotive Ltd., ELBI Elektrik, Edison Holding Corporation, Envitech Energy, Epyon, GE Industrial Solutions, Gomtec, Gresin Grupo Estudios Industriales, Industrial C&S Hungary Kft., Industrial C&S of RR. LLC, Industrial Connections & Solutions LLC, KEYMILE - Business, Kuhlman Electric Corp., Lorentzen & Wettre, Los Gatos Research, Mincom, NUB3D S.L., Newave Energy Holding, Newron System, Power-One, Powercorp, RGM - Rail vehicle power business, SVIA, Spirit IT, Thomas & Betts, Trasfor, Tropos Networks, Validus DC Systems, Vectek Electronics, and Ventyx.
The following companies are subsidiares of Franklin Resources: AdvisorEngine, AdvisorEngine Inc., Alumcreek Holdings LLC, Athena Capital Advisors, Balanced Equity Management, Balanced Equity Management Pty. Limited, Benefit Street Partners, Bissett & Associates Investment Management, Brandywine Global Investment Management Europe Limited, CCPF GP Holdco No.2 Limited, CCPF No.2 (GP) Limited, CCPF No.2 LP, CP Industrial Management LLC, CP Intermediate Holdco Inc., CRM Software LLC, Clarion Gramercy (Deutschland) GmbH, Clarion Gramercy (UK) Limited, Clarion Gramercy Limited, Clarion Partners Europe Ltd., Clarion Partners Holdings LLC, Clarion Partners LLC, Clarion Partners Securities LLC, Clarion REIM South America Holdings LLC, Clarion REIM South America Invsetimentos Imobiliarios Ltda, ClearBridge RARE Infrastructure (North America) Pty Limited, ClearBridge RARE Infrastructure International Pty Limited, Darby - Hana Infrastructure Fund Management Co. Ltd., Edinburgh Partners, FT FinTech Holdings LLC, FT Opportunistic Distressed Fund Ltd., FTC Investor Services Inc., FTCI (Cayman) Ltd., FTPE Advisers LLC, Fiduciary International Holding Inc., Fiduciary Investment Management International Inc., Fiduciary Trust (International) Sarl, Fiduciary Trust Company International, Fiduciary Trust Company International of Pennsylvania, Fiduciary Trust Company of Canada, Fiduciary Trust International LLC, Fiduciary Trust International of California, Fiduciary Trust International of Delaware, Fiduciary Trust International of the South, Franklin Advisers GP LLC, Franklin Advisers Inc., Franklin Advisory Services LLC, Franklin Marketplace Loan GP LLC, Franklin Mutual Advisers LLC, Franklin SystematiQ Advisers LLC, Franklin Templeton Alternative Investments (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Asset Management (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Asset Management (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Franklin Templeton Asset Management Mexico S.A. de C.V. Sociedad Operadora de Fondos de Inversion, Franklin Templeton Austria GmbH, Franklin Templeton Capital Holdings Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Chile SpA. V., Franklin Templeton Companies LLC, Franklin Templeton Digital Advisory Services GmbH, Franklin Templeton Fund Management Limited, Franklin Templeton GSC Asset Management Sdn. Bhd., Franklin Templeton Global Investors Limited, Franklin Templeton Holding Limited, Franklin Templeton International Services (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton International Services S.a r.l., Franklin Templeton Investment Management (Shanghai) Limited, Franklin Templeton Investment Management Limited, Franklin Templeton Investment Services GmbH, Franklin Templeton Investment Services Mexico S. de R.L., Franklin Templeton Investment Trust Management Co. Ltd., Franklin Templeton Investments (Asia) Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments (ME) Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments Australia Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments Corp., Franklin Templeton Investments Japan Limited, Franklin Templeton Investments Poland sp. z o.o., Franklin Templeton Investments South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Franklin Templeton Investor Services LLC, Franklin Templeton Investimentos (Brasil) Ltda., Franklin Templeton Luxembourg S.A., Franklin Templeton Magyarorszag Kft., Franklin Templeton Management Luxembourg S.A., Franklin Templeton Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Co. Limited, Franklin Templeton Private Equity LLC, Franklin Templeton Services (India) Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Services LLC, Franklin Templeton Servicios de Asesoria Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Franklin Templeton Slovakia s.r.o., Franklin Templeton Social Infrastructure GP S.a r.l., Franklin Templeton Strategic Investments Ltd., Franklin Templeton Switzerland Ltd., Franklin Templeton Trustee Services Private Limited, Franklin Templeton Turkey Advisory Services A.S., Franklin Templeton Uruguay S.A., Franklin Venture Partners (Talos Cayman GP) LLC, Franklin Venture Partners LLC, Franklin/Templeton Distributors Inc., ITI Capital Markets Limited, K2 Advisors, LM (BVI) Limited, LM Holdings 2 Limited, LM Holdings Limited, LM International Holding LP, Legg Mason & Co (UK) Limited, Legg Mason & Co. LLC, Legg Mason (Chile) Inversiones Holdings Limitada, Legg Mason Asset Management Australia Limited, Legg Mason Asset Management Hong Kong Limited, Legg Mason Asset Management Singapore Pte. Limited, Legg Mason Australia Holdings Pty Limited, Legg Mason Holding (Switzerland) GmbH, Legg Mason Inc., Legg Mason Investment Funds Limited, Legg Mason Investments (Europe) Limited, Legg Mason Investments (Switzerland) GmbH, Legg Mason Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Legg Mason Partners Fund Advisor LLC, Legg Mason Royce Holdings LLC, Onsa Inc., RARE IP Trust, RARE Infrastructure Limited, REDROSE Caesar S.a r.l., Random Forest Capital, Random Forest Capital LLC, Rensburg Sheppards plc, Riva Financial Systems Limited, Royce & Associates GP LLC, Royce & Associates LP, Royce Fund Services LLC, Royce Management Company LLC, TSEMF III (Jersey) Limited, TSEMF IV (Jersey) Limited, Templeton Asset Management (Labuan) Limited, Templeton Asset Management (Poland) TFI S.A., Templeton Asset Management Ltd., Templeton Global Advisors Limited, Templeton Global Holdings Ltd., Templeton International Inc., Templeton Investment Counsel LLC, Templeton Restructured Investments III Ltd., Templeton Restructured Investments IV Ltd., Templeton Restructured Investments L.L.C., Templeton Turkey Fund GP Ltd., Templeton Worldwide Inc., Templeton do Brasil Ltda., Templeton/Franklin Investment Services Inc., WHITEROSE Caesar S.a r.l., Western Asset Holdings (Australia) Pty Ltd, Western Asset Management (Brazil) Holdings Limitada, Western Asset Management (Cayman) Holdings Limited, Western Asset Management Company Distribuidora de Titulos e Valores Mobiliarios Limitada, Western Asset Management Company LLC, Western Asset Management Company Limited, Western Asset Management Company Pte Ltd., Western Asset Management Company Pty Ltd, and Winfield & Company.
KB Financial Group, Inc. engages in providing financial services through its subsidiaries. It operates through the following segments: Corporate Banking, Retail Banking, Other Banking Services, Credit Card, Life Insurance, Investment and Securities business. The Corporate Banking business segment provides services such as loans, overdrafts, deposits, credit facilities and other foreign currency activities. The Retail Banking business segment offers services such as private customer current accounts, savings, deposits, consumer loans and mortgage loans. The Other Banking business segment provides services relating to banking business besides corporate banking and retail banking services. The Credit Card business segment offers services such as domestic as well as overseas credit and debit card operations. The Investment and Securities business segment provides services such as investment banking and brokerage. The Life Insurance business segment provides products such as life insurance and wealth management. The company was founded on September 29, 2008 and is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Mohawk Industries: A&S Energie NV, A&U Energie NV, Aladdin Manufacturing Corporation, Aladdin Manufacturing Of New York LLC, Aladdin Manufacturing of Alabama LLC, Alsace Logistique S.A., Avelgem Green Power CVBA, Avon Pacific Holdings Ltd, B&M NV, BGE Mexico S. de R. L. de C.V., Berghoef GmbH, Berghoef-Hout B.V., Bienes Raices y Materiales del Centro S. de R.L. de C.V., C.F. Marazzi S.A., Canterbury Spinners Ltd, Carpet Foundation Ltd, Cevotrans BV, Ceramus Bahia S/A  Produtos Ceramicos, DT Mex Holdings LLC, DTM/CM Holdings LLC, Dal Italia LLC, Dal-Elit LLC, Dal-Tile Chile Comercial Limitada, Dal-Tile Colombia S.A.S., Dal-Tile Distribution Inc., Dal-Tile Group Inc., Dal-Tile I LLC, Dal-Tile Industrias S. de R.L. de C.V., Dal-Tile International Inc., Dal-Tile Mexico Comercial S. de R.L. de C.V., Dal-Tile Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Dal-Tile Operaciones Mexico S. De R.L. De C.V., Dal-Tile Peru SRL, Dal-Tile Puerto Rico Inc., Dal-Tile Services Inc., Dal-Tile Shared Services Inc., Dal-Tile Tennessee LLC, Dal-Tile of Canada ULC, Daltile, Daltile, Dekaply NV, Durkan, Dynea NV, Eliane Argentina Sociedad Anonima, Eliane S/A - Revestimentos Ceramicos, Emilceramica India Pvt Ltd., Emilceramica S.r.l, Emilgermany GmbH, Emilgroup Asia Ltd, Explorer S.r.l., F.I.L.S. Investments Unlimited Company, Feltex Carpets Ltd, Feltex Carpets Pty Ltd, Feltex New Zealand Ltd, Fibremakers Australia Pty Ltd, Flooring Foundation Ltd, Flooring Industries Limited S.a r.l., Flooring XL B.V., Floorscape Limited, Godfrey Hirst & Co Pty Ltd, Godfrey Hirst (Singapore) Pte Ltd, Godfrey Hirst Australia Pty Ltd, Godfrey Hirst Group, Godfrey Hirst NZ Ltd, Hytherm (Ireland) Limited, IVC BVBA, IVC Far-East Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., IVC France S.a r.l., IVC GROUP LIMITED, IVC Green Power NV, IVC Group, IVC Group GmbH, IVC Luxembourg S.a r.l., IVC Rus OOO, IVC US Inc., International Flooring Systems S.a r.l., International Vinyl Company - Vostok OOO, KAI Group, KAI Keramica Ltd, KAI Mining EOOD, KERAMA CENTER OOO, Kerama Baltics OOO, Kerama Export OOO, Kerama Marazzi OOO, Kerampromservis (LLC), Khan Asparuh - Transport EOOD, Khan Asparuh AD, Khan Omurtag AD, Koninklijke Peitsman B.V., Kraj Kerama OOO, MG China Trading Ltd., MI Finance SRL, MUD (Holding) Brazil Ltda., Management Co EAD, Marazzi Acquisition S.r.l., Marazzi Deutschland G.m.b.H., Marazzi France Trading S.A.S., Marazzi Group, Marazzi Group F.Z.E., Marazzi Group S.r.l., Marazzi Group Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., Marazzi Iberia S.L.U., Marazzi Japan Co. Ltd., Marazzi Middle East FZ LLC, Marazzi Schweiz S.A.G.L., Marazzi UK Ltd., Mohawk Assurance Services Inc., Mohawk Australia Pty Ltd, Mohawk Canada Corporation, Mohawk Capital Finance S.A., Mohawk Capital Luxembourg SA, Mohawk Carpet Distribution Inc., Mohawk Carpet Foundation Inc., Mohawk Carpet LLC, Mohawk Carpet Transportation Of Georgia LLC, Mohawk Commercial Inc., Mohawk ESV Inc., Mohawk Europe BVBA, Mohawk Factoring II Inc., Mohawk Factoring LLC, Mohawk Finance S.a r.l., Mohawk Foreign Acquisitions S.a r.l., Mohawk Foreign Funding S.a.r.l, Mohawk Foreign Holdings S.a r.l., Mohawk Foreign Investments Inc., Mohawk Global Investments S.a r.l., Mohawk Holdings International B.V., Mohawk Industries Inc., Mohawk International (Europe) S.a r.l., Mohawk International (Hong Kong) Limited, Mohawk International Capital N.V., Mohawk International Financing S.a.r.l, Mohawk International Holdings (DE) LLC, Mohawk International Holdings S.a r.l., Mohawk International Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk International Netherlands B.V., Mohawk International Services BVBA, Mohawk KAI Luxembourg Holding S.a r.l., Mohawk KAI Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Capital S.A., Mohawk Luxembourg Financing S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Holdings S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Investments S.a r.l., Mohawk Luxembourg Pacific S.a r.l., Mohawk Marazzi International BV, Mohawk Marazzi Russia BV, Mohawk New Zealand Limited, Mohawk Operaciones Mexicali S. de R.L. de C.V., Mohawk Operations Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk Pacific Investments S.a r.l., Mohawk Resources LLC, Mohawk Servicing LLC, Mohawk Singapore Private Limited, Mohawk Trading (Shanghai) Co. Ltd, Mohawk Unilin Luxembourg S.a r.l., Mohawk United Finance B.V., Mohawk United International B.V., Mohawk Vinyl Financing S.a r.l., Molber Beheer B.V., Monarch Ceramic Tile Inc., P.F. Onroerend Goed B.V., PF Beheer B.V., Pergo, Pergo (Europe) AB, Pergo Holding BV, Pergo India Pvt Ltd, Polcolorit S.A., Premium Floors Australia Pty Limited, RR Apex LLC, Rata International Pty Ltd, Recubrimientos Interceramica S. de R.L. de C.V., Riverside Textiles Pty Ltd, S.C. KAI Ceramics SRL, Sibir Kerama OOO, SimpleSolutions USA LLC, Soft Step (Australia) Pty Ltd, Spano Group, Spano Invest BVBA, Spano NV, Stroyagromekhzapchast ChaO, Stroytrans OAO Orelstroy, Summit Wool Spinners Ltd, The Flooring Federation Ltd, Tiles Co OOD, Unilin (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd., Unilin ApS, Unilin Arauco Pisos Ltda., Unilin BVBA, Unilin Beheer BV, Unilin Distribution Ltd., Unilin Distribution Ukraine LLC, Unilin Finland OY, Unilin Flooring India Private Limited, Unilin Flooring SAS, Unilin GmbH, Unilin Holding BVBA, Unilin Insulation BV, Unilin Insulation SAS, Unilin Insulation Sury SAS, Unilin Italia S.R.L., Unilin North America LLC, Unilin Norway AS, Unilin OOO, Unilin Panels SAS, Unilin Poland Sp.Z.o.o., Unilin SAS, Unilin Spain SL, Unilin Swiss GmbH, Unilin s.r.o., World International Inc., Xtratherm, Xtratherm Limited, Xtratherm S.A., and Xtratherm UK Limited.
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.

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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.
Netlinkz Limited provides cloud network solutions in Australia, New Zealand, and China. The company provides Virtual Invisible Network based software that allows organizations to connect over a mesh-network. It also provides secure networking consulting services to its resellers, partners and customers; and design and execution of secure network migration and deployment services. In addition, the company engages in the sale, licensing, and support of network security solutions. It sells its products through reseller primarily in Wuxi. The company was formerly known as iWebGate Limited and changed its name to Netlinkz Limited in October 2016. Netlinkz Limited was founded in 2004 and is based in Darlinghurst, Australia.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Procter & Gamble: "Procter & Gamble Services" LLC, "Procter & Gamble" LLC, Agile Pursuits, Agile Pursuits Franchising, Arbora, Arbora & Ausonia, Arborinvest, Billie, Braun (Shanghai) Co., Braun GmbH, Braun-Gillette Immobilien GmbH & Co. KG, Celtic Insurance Company, Compania Procter & Gamble Mexico, Compania Quimica S.A., Corporativo Procter & Gamble, Cosmetic Products Pty. Ltd., Detergent Products B.V., Detergent Products SARL, Detergenti S.A., Eurocos Cosmetic GmbH, FPG Oleochemicals Sdn. Bhd., Fameccanica Data S.p.A., Fameccanica Industria e Comercio Do Brasil LTDA., Fameccanica Machinery (Shanghai) Co., Fater S.p.A., Fountain Square Music Publishing Co., Gillette (China) Ltd., Gillette (Shanghai) Ltd., Gillette Aesop Ltd., Gillette Australia Pty. Ltd., Gillette Canada Holdings, Gillette Commercial Operations North America, Gillette Diversified Operations Pvt. Ltd., Gillette Egypt S.A.E., Gillette Group UK Ltd, Gillette Gruppe Deutschland GmbH & Co. oHG, Gillette Holding Company LLC, Gillette Holding GmbH, Gillette India Limited, Gillette Industries Ltd., Gillette International B.V., Gillette Latin America Holding B.V., Gillette Management LLC, Gillette Nova Scotia Company, Gillette Pakistan Limited, Gillette Poland International Sp. z.o.o., Gillette Poland S.A., Gillette U.K. Limited, Gillette del Uruguay, Giorgio Beverly Hills Inc., Hyginett KFT, Industries Marocaines Modernes SA, LLC "Procter & Gamble Novomoskovsk", LLL "Procter & Gamble Distributorskaya Compania", Laboratorios Vicks, Liberty Street Music Publishing Company, Limited Liability Company 'Procter & Gamble Trading Ukraine', Limited Liability Company with foreign investments Procter & and Gamble Ukraine, MDVIP, MERCK KGAA NPV, Marcvenca Inversiones, Modern Industries Company - Dammam, Modern Products Company - Jeddah, New Chapter, New Chapter Canada Inc., Olay LLC, Oral-B Laboratories, P&G Distribution Morocco SAS, P&G Hair Care Holding, P&G Industrial Peru S.R.L., P&G Innovation Godo Kaisha, P&G Israel M.D.O. Ltd., P&G K.K., P&G Northeast Asia Pte. Ltd., P&G Prestige Godo Kaisha, P&G Prestige Service GmbH, P&G South African Trading (Pty.) Ltd., PGT Health Care (Zhejiang) Limited, PGT Healthcare LLP, PPI ZAO, PT Procter & Gamble Home Products Indonesia, PT Procter & Gamble Operations Indonesia, Phase II Holdings Corporation, Procter & Gamble (Chengdu) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (China) Sales Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (East Africa) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Egypt) Manufacturing Company, Procter & Gamble (Enterprise Fund) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Consumer Products Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Enterprise Management Service Company Limited, Procter & Gamble (Guangzhou) Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Health & Beauty Care) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Jiangsu) Ltd. China, Procter & Gamble (L&CP) Limited, Procter & Gamble (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, Procter & Gamble (Manufacturing) Ireland Limited, Procter & Gamble (Shanghai) International Trade Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble (Singapore) Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Acquisition GmbH, Procter & Gamble Administration GmbH, Procter & Gamble Algeria EURL, Procter & Gamble Amazon Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Amiens S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Argentina SRL, Procter & Gamble Asia Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Australia Proprietary Limited, Procter & Gamble Azerbaijan Services LLC, Procter & Gamble Bangladesh Private Ltd., Procter & Gamble Blois S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Brazil Holdings B.V., Procter & Gamble Bulgaria EOOD, Procter & Gamble Business Services Canada Company, Procter & Gamble Canada Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Chile , Procter & Gamble Chile Limitada, Procter & Gamble Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Commercial LLC, Procter & Gamble Commercial de Cuba S.A., Procter & Gamble Czech Republic s.r.o., Procter & Gamble DS Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Danmark ApS, Procter & Gamble Detergent (Beijing) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Deuttschland GmbH, Procter & Gamble Distributing (Philippines) Inc., Procter & Gamble Distributing New Zealand Limited, Procter & Gamble Distribution Company (Europe) BVBA, Procter & Gamble Distribution S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Eastern Europe, Procter & Gamble Ecuador Cia. Ltda., Procter & Gamble Egypt, Procter & Gamble Egypt Distribution, Procter & Gamble Egypt Holding, Procter & Gamble Egypt Supplies, Procter & Gamble Energy Company LLC, Procter & Gamble Espana, Procter & Gamble Europe SA, Procter & Gamble Export Operations SARL, Procter & Gamble Exportadora e Importadora Ltda., Procter & Gamble Exports, Procter & Gamble Fabricacao e Comercio Ltda., Procter & Gamble Far East, Procter & Gamble Finance (U.K.) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Holding Ltd., Procter & Gamble Finance Management S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Financial Investments LLP, Procter & Gamble Financial Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Financial Services S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Finland OY, Procter & Gamble France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH, Procter & Gamble Germany GmbH & Co. Operations oHG, Procter & Gamble GmbH, Procter & Gamble Grundstucks-und Vermogensverwaltungs GmbH & Co. KG, Procter & Gamble Gulf FZE, Procter & Gamble Hair Care, Procter & Gamble Hellas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Holding (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Holding France S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Holding GmbH, Procter & Gamble Holding S.r.l., Procter & Gamble Holdings (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Home Products Private Limited, Procter & Gamble Hong Kong Limited, Procter & Gamble Hungary Wholesale Trading Partnership (KKT), Procter & Gamble Hygiene & Health Care Limited, Procter & Gamble Inc., Procter & Gamble India Holdings, Procter & Gamble Indochina Limited Company, Procter & Gamble Industrial - 2012 C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial Colombia Ltda., Procter & Gamble Industrial S.C.A., Procter & Gamble Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Costa Rica, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Guatemala, Procter & Gamble Interamericas de Panama, Procter & Gamble International Operations Pte. Ltd., Procter & Gamble International Operations SA, Procter & Gamble International Operations SA-ROHQ, Procter & Gamble International S.a.r.l., Procter & Gamble Investment Company (UK) Ltd., Procter & Gamble Investment GmbH, Procter & Gamble Italia, Procter & Gamble Japan K.K., Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan Distribution LLP, Procter & Gamble Kazakhstan LLP, Procter & Gamble Korea, Procter & Gamble Korea S&D Co., Procter & Gamble Lanka Private Ltd. Sri Lanka, Procter & Gamble Leasing LLC, Procter & Gamble Levant S.A.L., Procter & Gamble Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Belgium N.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Berlin GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing GmbH, Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Procter & Gamble Manufacturing SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Marketing Romania SRL, Procter & Gamble Marketing and Services doo, Procter & Gamble Maroc SA, Procter & Gamble Mataro, Procter & Gamble Mexico Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Mexico Inc., Procter & Gamble Middle East FZE, Procter & Gamble Nederland B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Investments B.V., Procter & Gamble Netherlands Services B.V., Procter & Gamble Nigeria Limited, Procter & Gamble Nordic, Procter & Gamble Norge AS, Procter & Gamble Operations Polska Sp. z o.o., Procter & Gamble Overseas India B.V., Procter & Gamble Overseas Ltd., Procter & Gamble Pakistan (Private) Limited, Procter & Gamble Partnership LLP, Procter & Gamble Peru S.R.L., Procter & Gamble Pharmaceuticals France SAS, Procter & Gamble Philippines, Procter & Gamble Polska Sp. z o.o, Procter & Gamble Portugal - Produtos De Consumo, Procter & Gamble Product Supply (U.K.) Limited U.K., Procter & Gamble Production GmbH, Procter & Gamble Productions, Procter & Gamble Productos de Consumo, Procter & Gamble RHD, Procter & Gamble RSC Regional Service Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Retail Services BVBA, Procter & Gamble S.r.l., Procter & Gamble SA (Pty) Ltd, Procter & Gamble Satis ve Dagitim Ltd. Sti., Procter & Gamble Seine S.A.S., Procter & Gamble Service GmbH, Procter & Gamble Services (Switzerland) SA, Procter & Gamble Services Company N.V., Procter & Gamble Services Ltd., Procter & Gamble Share Incentive Plan Trustee Ltd., Procter & Gamble South America Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Spol. s.r.o. (Ltd.), Procter & Gamble Sports and Social Club Ltd., Procter & Gamble Sverige AB, Procter & Gamble Switzerland SARL, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Limited, Procter & Gamble Taiwan Sales Company Limited, Procter & Gamble Technical Centres Limited, Procter & Gamble Technology (Beijing) Co., Procter & Gamble Trading (Thailand) Limited, Procter & Gamble Tuketim Mallari Sanayii A.S., Procter & Gamble UK, Procter & Gamble UK Group Holdings Ltd, Procter & Gamble UK Parent Company Ltd., Procter & Gamble Universal Holding B.V., Procter & Gamble Verwaltungs GmbH, Procter & Gamble Vietnam, Procter & Gamble d.o.o. za trgovinu, Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.C.A., Procter & Gamble de Venezuela S.R.L., Procter & Gamble do Brasil S/A, Procter & Gamble do Brazil, Procter & Gamble do Nordeste S/A, Procter & Gamble-Rakona s.r.o., Progam Realty & Development Corporation, Redmond Products, Richardson-Vicks Real Estate Inc., Richardson-Vicks do Brasil Quimica e Farmaceutica Ltda, Riverfront Music Publishing Co., Rosemount LLC, SPD Development Company Limited, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics GmbH, Scannon S.A.S., Series Acquisition B.V., Shulton, Surfac S.R.L., Sycamore Productions, TAOS - FL, TAOS Retail, Tambrands Inc., Temple Trees Impex & Investment Private Limited, The Art of Shaving - FL, The Dover Wipes Company, The Gillette Company, The Gillette Company LLC, The Gillette co., The Procter & Gamble Distributing LLC, The Procter & Gamble GBS Company, The Procter & Gamble Global Finance Company, The Procter & Gamble Manufacturing Company, The Procter & Gamble Paper Products Company, The Procter & Gamble U.S. Business Services Company, This is L., US CD LLC, Vidal Sassoon (Shanghai) Academy, Vidal Sassoon Co., WEBA Betriebsrenten-Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Walker & Company Brands, and iMFLUX Inc..
WEX Inc. provides financial technology services in North America, the Asia Pacific, and Europe. It operates through three segments: Fleet Solutions, Travel and Corporate Solutions, and Health and Employee Benefit Solutions. The Fleet Solutions segment offers fleet vehicle payment processing services. Its services include customer, account activation, and account retention services; authorization and billing inquiries, and account maintenance services; premium fleet services; credit and collections services; merchant services; analytics solutions with access to web-based data analytics platform that offers insights to fleet managers; and ancillary services and tools to fleets to manage expenses and capital requirements. This segment markets its products directly and indirectly to commercial and government vehicle fleet customers with small, medium, and large fleets, as well as with over-the-road and long haul fleets; and indirectly through co-branded and private label relationships. The Travel and Corporate Solutions segment provides payment processing solutions for payment and transaction monitoring needs. Its products include virtual cards that are used for transactions where no card is presented and that require pre-authorization; and prepaid and gift card products that enables secure payment and financial management solutions with single card options, access to open or closed loop redemption, load limits, and with various expirations. This segment markets its products directly and indirectly to commercial and government organizations. The Health and Employee Benefit Solutions segment offers healthcare payment products and software-as-a-service consumer directed platforms for healthcare market, as well as payroll related and employee benefit products in Brazil. The company was formerly known as Wright Express Corporation and changed its name to WEX Inc. in October 2012. WEX Inc. was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Portland, Maine.

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HYSACAM Archives

Suspected Separatists are still in keeping of three workers of the waste disposal company, HYSACAM, although they have released the truck and its driver.

A source at the City Council announced that late Thursday, these Amba Boys, freed the truck driver and let him take along the truck. Contrary to earlier reports which stated that they were three workers in number, the group took along four. The whereabouts of the other three are not known.

They were kidnapped around the waste dump site in Mankon, on Thursday, to the dismay of city council officials and the citizens, who are now expressing fear, over the future of waste disposal within the city of Bamenda.

Since the arrival of HYSACAM, commended efforts have been done by the group, to clean up the city of Bamenda, to the acknowledgement of the population.

As the Anglophone crisis intensified, the company has on several occasions complained of being attacked by separatists, as they carry out their activities. In January 2019, the company suspended its activities within the city of Bamenda. A press statement narrated how the company was exposed to violence, perpetrated by armed separatists in the North West. They announced they had lost close to FCFA 1Billion in both the North West and South West regions.Suspected separatists, damaged the bridge, connecting the city to the waste management center This grounded HYSACAMs activities for 15 days with no way to carry out with waste collection and disposal in Bamenda. The main bridge leading to the dump site in Mbelewa- Mile Four Nkwen in Bamenda 3 subdivision was broken by unidentified gun men, trying to restrict the movement of cars into certain parts of Bafut thus rendering the dump site inaccessible to trucks of the company.

Only military intervention, led by General Agha Robinson, freed the town from smell, emanating from filth, as many people dumped dirt all over major junctions of the city. HYSACAM however resumed work in Bamenda, thanks to the efforts of both council and administrative intervention, until yesterdays kidnappings.
Un vehicule blinde de l'armee patrouille dans l ville de Buea, dans la region du Sud-Ouest du Cameroun en proie a u AFP/Archives/MARCO LONGARI

The arrests have been many, so too has been stories of gunshots in Buea in the last few days. Residents in neighbourhoods like Tole, Mile 16, Bomaka and Muea have reported long periods of sustained gunshots and mass arrests. Kidnappings have also been reported, though all those kidnapped by separatists within this period are believed to have been freed.

After intense gunshots on April 9, a corpse was discovered around the Mile 16 market Wednesday morning. Locals say the deceased is a certain Ernest Babeh from Yoke in Muyuka who has been extorting money from locals in the name of Ambazonia.

On Thursday April 11, 2019, security forces raided Bomaka and Wonya Mavio neighbourhoods in Buea in an apparent attempt to weed out separatists. Bomaka is under security siege today. Many have already been transported in the infamous white hilux. We are just afraid of what may happen next. Pray for us, a frightened Bomaka local said Thursday evening.

As at today, we learnt that most of those arrested have been released.

In a similar development, gunmen pictured as separatists Ambazonia fighters have released two public figures kidnapped in different locations across Fako Division South West Region of Cameroon under circumstances linked to the Anglophone crisis.

The duo comprising the First Deputy Mayor of the Idenau Council in the West Coast Sub Division Emmanuel Penda emerged from the unknown recently after spending one week in the keeping of his abductors. Penda was abducted from his municipality in the night of April 1st breaking 2nd.

His abductors are known to have taken him to towards the hinterlands of Mbomboko in Mbonge Sub Division. It remains unclear if a ransom was paid for his release.

While Penda was back to normal life, Justice Mbua Fritz, president of the Bangem High Court in Kupe-Muanenguba Division was kidnapped at gunpoint Monday April 9th. He went missing at the Mile 15 locality of Buea.

At nightfall Wednesday, news emerged of the release of the magistrate from the unknown. Justice Mbua is known to have been forced to move to Buea from Bangem given the insecurity across the North West and South West Regions that has affected even the judiciary.

The release of Mbua and Penda empties the account of public figures known to be in the hands of unknown gunmen. Fako Division is currently grappling with separatists-imposed lockdown which expires this Saturday April 13th.

The lockdown, according to Chris Anu, Secretary of Communication and Spokesperson of the Ambazonia Interim Government, was meant to frustrate the Limbe Festival of Arts and Culture, FESTAC, which began on April 6 and has since gone on hitch-free. The closing ceremony of the festival is built for Saturday, April 13 at the Limbe Community Field.

Going by Anu, such events like FESTAC should not be taking place in times of war, and especially at a time when people are mourning their loved ones. He added that the Interim Government had earlier informed the authorities of Limbe to put such a celebration on hold.

But popular show of defiance to the lockdown and the dictates of separatists may well be a message that the people of Limbe have taken their destinies into their hands.
Pimco Total Return ETF's stock was trading at $110.14 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization. Since then, BOND stock has decreased by 0.3% and is now trading at $109.80.

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The following companies are subsidiares of Travelers Companies: 10762962 Canada Inc., 350 Market Street LLC, 8527512 Canada Inc., Aetna Life and Casualty Co, American Equity Insurance Company, American Equity Specialty Insurance Company, Aprilgrange Limited, Arch Street North LLC, Auto Hartford Investments LLC, Bayhill Restaurant II Associates, Camperdown Corporation, Constitution State Services LLC, Discover Property & Casualty Insurance Company, Discover Specialty Insurance Company, F&G UK Underwriters Limited, Farmington Casualty Company, Fidelity and Guaranty Insurance Company, Fidelity and Guaranty Insurance Underwriters Inc., First Floridian Auto and Home Insurance Company, Gulf Underwriters Insurance Company, IHP Capital Partners Fund VIII L.P., Northbrook Holdings Inc., Northfield Insurance Company, Northland Casualty Company, Northland Insurance Company, Phoenix UK Investments LLC, SPC Insurance Agency Inc., Select Insurance Company, Simply Business Holdings Inc., Simply Business Inc., St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Company, St. Paul Guardian Insurance Company, St. Paul Mercury Insurance Company, St. Paul Protective Insurance Company, St. Paul Surplus Lines Insurance Company, Standard Fire Properties LLC, Standard Fire UK Investments LLC, TCI Global Services Inc., TPC Investments Inc., TPC U.K. Investments LLC, The Automobile Insurance Company of Hartford Connecticut, The Charter Oak Fire Insurance Company, The Dominion of Canada General Insurance Company, The Family Business Institute LLC, The Phoenix Insurance Company, The St. Paul Companies Inc., The Standard Fire Insurance Company, The Travelers Casualty Company, The Travelers Home and Marine Insurance Company, The Travelers Indemnity Company, The Travelers Indemnity Company of America, The Travelers Indemnity Company of Connecticut, The Travelers Lloyds Insurance Company, TravCo Insurance Company, Travelers (Bermuda) Limited, Travelers Brazil Acquisition LLC, Travelers Brazil Holding LLC, Travelers Casualty Company of Connecticut, Travelers Casualty Insurance Company of America, Travelers Casualty UK Investments LLC, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America, Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of Europe Limited, Travelers Commercial Casualty Company, Travelers Commercial Insurance Company, Travelers Constitution State Insurance Company, Travelers Distribution Alliance Inc., Travelers Excess and Surplus Lines Company, Travelers Global Inc., Travelers Indemnity U.K. Investments LLC, Travelers Insurance Company Limited, Travelers Insurance Company of Canada, Travelers Insurance Designated Activity Company, Travelers Insurance Group Holdings Inc., Travelers Lloyds of Texas Insurance Company, Travelers London Limited, Travelers MGA Inc., Travelers Management Limited, Travelers Marine LLC, Travelers Participacoes em Seguros Brasil S.A., Travelers Personal Insurance Company, Travelers Personal Security Insurance Company, Travelers Property Casualty Company of America, Travelers Property Casualty Corp., Travelers Property Casualty Insurance Company, Travelers Seguros Brasil S.A., Travelers Syndicate Management Limited, Travelers Texas MGA Inc., Travelers Underwriting Agency Limited, Ultramar Travel Management, United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company, Xbridge Limited, Zensurance Brokers Inc., and Zensurance Inc..
Pr Elvis Ngolle Ngolle Archives

Prof Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Central Committee Member of the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement (CPDM) has admitted that the ongoing situation in the countrys North West and South West regions is slowing down routine political activities.

The political scientist and coordinator of his partys academy regretted that it has reached a point where some vital institutions do not function anymore.

I will not call it crisis but difficulties because crisis is a situation where vital institutions do not function anymore, the ex-minister of forestry and wildlife said.

He posits that: Politically speaking, normal political activities have found difficulties taking place. At the recent elections for instance, campaigns did not take place with fanfare as was the case before this period. Since then, voters registration has been timid and on elections day, voters find it difficult to show up and exercise their civic rights at polling stations because of insecurity. Political actors are constantly under threats especially from secessionists as people have lost trust in each other.

Prof. Ngolle Ngolle however claims that President Paul Biya who has been ruling Cameroon since 1982 is handling the situation in the English-speaking regions with tact and has always given privilege to dialogue.

Hear him: In spite of these challenges which the President of the Republic and National President of our great party, H.E. President Paul Biya is addressing with tact and wisdom, Cameroon that strives to become emergent by 2035 is forging ahead in unity and diversity as a sovereign nation.

Despite the fact that what were purely corporate problems from the start in the North West and South West regions have been transformed into political issues, the Head of State has always given privilege to dialogue as a way out.

That is why on March 24th 2019, the CPDM celebrated its victories since 1992, its preservation of power since 1992, the fact that, Cameroon has remained a united country, the fact that it is still a majority political party in the country and the fact that it recently won the Senate and Presidential elections. I think that celebration is the natural rights for everyone and that is why, celebration at the CPDM, is not an exclusive or limited issue because we always open it up to other sympathizers, well-wishers and even those who do not belong to political parties.
Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Small-Cap ETF's stock was trading at $87.78 on March 11th, 2020 when Coronavirus (COVID-19) reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, VSS stock has increased by 50.8% and is now trading at $132.35.

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Western Asset High Income Opportunity Fund Inc. is a closed ended fixed-income mutual fund launched and managed by Legg Mason Partners Fund Advisor, LLC. It is co-managed by Western Asset Management Company and Western Asset Management Company Limited. The fund invests in the fixed income markets of the United States. It seeks to invest in high-yielding corporate debt obligations. The fund seeks to maintain an average duration of around four years with an average credit quality of B. It benchmarks the performance of its portfolio against the Barclays Capital U.S. Corporate High Yield 2% Issuer Cap Index. The fund was formerly known as High Income Opportunity Fund. Western Asset High Income Opportunity Fund Inc. was formed on November 16, 1993 and is domiciled in the United States.

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Unum Group is engaged in providing financial protection benefits. It operates through the following segments: Unum US, Unum International, Colonial Life, Closed Block and Corporate. The Unum US segment comprises of group long-term and short-term disability insurance, group life and accidental death and dismemberment products, and supplemental and voluntary lines of business. The Unum International segment engages in the operations of UK business, which includes insurance for group long-term disability, group life, and supplemental lines of business that include dental, individual disability, and critical illness products; Poland business primarily includes insurance for individual and group life with accident and health riders. The Colonial Life segment includes insurance for accident, sickness, disability products, life products, and cancer and critical illness products. The Closed Block segment consists of individual disability, group and individual long-term care, and other insurance products no longer actively marketed. The Corporate segment refers to investment income on corporate assets and other corporate income and expenses not allocated to a line of business; and interest

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Adolphe Lele LAfrique Archives

The Governor of the North West region, Adolphe Lele Lafrique has blasted reports of a military raid in Meluf, Bui Division, that led to the killing of five civilians, including someone with a disability.

In a press statement this Thursday April 11, governor Lele stated that the information is false and intends to discredit genuine efforts made by government for the return of normalcy to the region.

He reminded the population that following government's creation of the commission of Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration, many youths have been dropping their weapons, while some continue to attack state forces and commit crimes against civilians. His statement indicates that security forces have been targeting only separatists hideouts and not civilians, while the military has always remained profession in its missions.

He urged social media users to exercise restraint on the information they circulate on platforms, in order to give a chance for peace, security and stability in the North West region.

The Human Rights Watch(HRW) on Monday said Cameroon soldiers, gendarmes, and members of the Rapid Intervention Brigade (BIR) carried out a deadly attack on the North-West region village of Meluf on April 4, 2019, killing five civilians.

The report stated that government forces killed five civilian men, including one with a mental disability, and wounded one woman. It continued that three of the bodies were later found mutilated, including one that had been decapitated.

Following these attacks, the group called on Cameroonian authorities to investigate the countrys security forces alleged to have carried out these killings, and prosecute those responsible. The attack on Meluf, a village in Built Division of the North West, forced many civilians into the bushes.

"Government forces are committing abuses against people living in the Anglophone areas of Cameroon, said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. Civilian and military authorities should make it clear that these types of abuses will not be tolerated and hold commanders responsible.
Des agents d'HYSACAM Archives

Suspected separatists have kidnapped three workers of the waste disposal company, HYSACAM around the waste dump site in Mankon this Thursday, taking along one of their trucks.

Council officials are expressing fear over the future of waste disposal in Bamenda, as a result of this action.

Since the arrival of HYSACAM, commended efforts have been done to clean up the city of Bamenda, to the acknowledgement of the population. As the Anglophone crisis intensified, the company has on several occasions complained of being attacked by separatists, as they carry out their activities.

In January 2019, the company suspended its activities within the city of Bamenda. In a press statement, it explained the company was exposed to violence, perpetrated by armed separatists in the North West. They announced they had lost close to FCFA 1Billion.

Suspected separatists, damaged the bridge, connecting the city to the waste management center This grounded HYSACAMs activities for 15 days with no way to carry on with waste disposal in Bamenda.

The main bridge leading to the dump site in Mbelewa- Mile Four Nkwen in Bamenda 3 subdivision was broken by unidentified gun men, trying to restrict the movement of cars into certain parts of Bafut thus rendering the dump site inaccessible to trucks of the company. HYSACAMs Communication Officer, Funwi Jude said their man power and machinery is ready to keep Bamenda clean but they couldnt access the dump site . The company also announced that same thing was done in Buea on the 2nd of December 2018.

In Kumba, separatists burnt down two new brand trucks of theirs, that had just been commissioned. HYSACAM employees all over Anglophone regions, were threatened and some received calls to contribute to the war.

With the suspension of its activities for months within Bamenda, all parts of the town became a dumpsite. The almost beat city, became dirty, with citizens dumping dirt at the centre of the town, and at most junctions. It took the intervention of council and government officials to convince the company to resume work, until this attack. The company extended its suspension to February following the destruction of their equipment by separatists and as a result, the army stepped in to clear accumulated filth within the city.
Simo Njonou Jean-Paul, SONARA General Atia Azohnwi

The General Manager of the National Refining Company SONARA, Jean-Paul SIMO NJONOU has published a communique announcing the imminent creation of an Anglophone section in the SONARA College in Limbe. The communique states that the Anglophone section is to effectively go operational come the start of the 2019-2020 school year.

The communique states that the Anglophone section is to effectively go operational come the start of the 2019/2020 school year. This, according to SIMO NJONOU is in line with the policy of Living Together and Multiculturalism, advocated by the Head of State, President Paul Biya.

The General Manager states I have instructed the Director of the SONARA College, the Director of General Affairs and that of Administration and Human Resources, to take all necessary measures aimed at ensuring the opening of an Anglophone Section at the SONARA College.

The SONARA boss continues that I invite all workers with children enrolled in class six of the English-speaking sub-system of the SONARA School, to serenely prepare for the start of the 2019/2020 academic year, by contacting officials of the SONARA College.

The SONARA College it should be recalled is a school for students whose parents are workers of the National Refining Company, and the institution has been operating for decades now. In the past, it was a strictly francophone institution, where in students of the Anglo-saxon system of education did not have the privilege of attending, even if their parents were SONARA workers.

With this innovation brought in by SIMO NJONOU, it will of course place workers kids under the same canopy, irrespective of where they hail from in Cameroon. In Limbe, the news of the innovation has been received with mixed feelings.

While some inhabitants question why such an initiative is being taken only now, after many years since the institution came into existence, others have congratulated the new SONARA GM for what they consider a powerful stride necessary in the present context and pray all hands be put on deck to ensure the initiative see the light of day, come September.

Many have expressed delight with this new move. They see it as an initiative worth praising.  It is long overdue. At the time the school was created, Francophone schools were rare. Now that it has gobe bilingual, it opens the space for many more children to get quality education,  David Ngomba, a local said.
Mme Pauline Nalova Lyonga (au centre) au lycee bilingue de Deido, 11-04-2019. getty images

Cameroons Secondary Education Minister, Nalova Lyonga on Thursday April 11 visited Government Bilingual High School (GHBS) Dedio-Douala Littoral Region 12 days after the stabbing of a student Breliot Tsanou on campus.

Minister Nalovas visit went underway at a time when students are still on Easter Break. In the course of the day, the Secondary Education boss paid tribute to the murdered student by placing a flower at the spot of the incident.

The minister later visited the home of the Tsanous in the Bepanda neighbourhood of the same city to console and encourage the family.

She has since come under criticism for not taking the present measures since the incident happened on March 29th. Within the public space, arguments have erupted as to why the minister did not issue an official public statement or rush to the campus to assess the incident.

Critics say todays visit to the college will be of minimal effect since students are on holidays. The minister in a brief exchange with tutors and administrators of the college called for the strengthening of security and discipline on campus.

The minister is quoted as telling the teachers that moments of sharing report cards is not a time to mislay the disciplinary measures in place. She insisted that, school authorities must see into it that students come to school, enter the class and return home after collecting their report cards.

Despite the criticisms, the former Vice Chancellor of the University of Buea is said to have been held back to ensure the successful staging of the 21st edition of the national school games popularly known by its French acronym as FENASCO A for the college category.

Breliot Tsanou, 17 was stabbed on campus. He was rushed to the Deido District Hospital but later died. He was buried last weekend in his native Fongo Tongo village in the West Region.

Public Health Minister Manaouda Malachie has since the incident suspended three nurses of the facility for three months. Days after, the director was fired. These sanctions came after pictures of the deceased in the theatre surfaced on the social media.
Kamto et compagnie archives

The Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) of detained Professor Maurice Kamot has seized the Administrative Courts to reverse the April 5 decision of the Minister of Territorial Administration banning nationwide protests the opposition political party had envisaged from April 6 to April 13, 2019.

Yakouba Mamadou, First Vice President of the CRM party said in a statement that instead of going frontal on the Yaounde regime, they have decided to seek legal redress to overturn Minister Atanga Nji Pauls decision. He went on to suspend an April 13 nationwide protest initially planned by the party.

We thank and congratulate you [CRM members and sympathizers] for your enthusiastic militancy and support. We are equally aware of your mobilization towards the nationwide demonstrations planned for April 13. In this light, we have noted with consternation the illegal decision of the Minister of Territorial Administration contained in an April 5, 2019 communique prohibiting our protests. We have decided to attack the said decision before the law courts, the communique dated April 11, 2019 reads in part.

Yakouba Mamadou adds that while the Administrative Court decides on the matter and true to the republican spirit that guides their actions, the public demonstrations initially planned for April 13 will thus take place on a later date.

The CRM First Vice National President says theirs is a struggle to install an authentic democracy founded on a consensual electoral process that respects the choices of the electorate, protects liberties and fundamental rights, protection of the public wealth of the country, and restoration and preservation of peace in the country especially a return to normalcy in the restive North West and South West regions.

Yakouba Mamadou calls on CRM militants to remain mobilized and vigilant especially against those who are organizing a coup against democracy, peace and stability of Cameroon.

In a similar development, Olivier Biboum Mishack spokesperson of Kamto disclosed Wednesday April 10 that, he had filed a suit at the Littoral Administrative Court in that light. On the same date, another similar legal challenge against the ministers decision was tabled at the Administrative Court of the Center Region. The MRC is arguing that, the preserve to ban protest marches rest with local administrative authorities and not the minister.

In his April 5 communique, Territorial Administration Minister, Atanga Nji Paul accused the CRM of engaging in activities that threaten public peace and order, likely to provoke a political uprising in Cameroon.

On Tuesday April 9, hundreds of supporters of the MRC dared Atanga Nji as they flooded the vicinity of the Mfoundi High Court same day Kamto was expected for hearing on a habeas corpus which his lawyers had filed in a battle to get his immediate release. Yet both the detained leader and his counsels boycotted the court session. The court ruled in their absence rejecting the release plea.
Des soldats de l'armee camerounaise patrouillent a Buea, le 3 octobre 2018. AFP/Archives/MARCO LONGARI

Reports from Buea, say a joint military patrol team on Sunday, April 7, allegedly shot dead one of theirs, Merlin Ndamen Njatang, whom they took for an armed separatist.

The Buea-based news site, Atlantic Chronicles revealed that the chunk of gendarmes, police officers and members of the Rapid Intervention Battalion, had been wrongly informed about the presence of an armed separatist, also known as Amba boy, in a nearby shop. They are said to have shot their target immediately on sight, without doing any investigations or preliminary checks.

A source, friend to the deceased, is said to have narrated how in the evening hours of Sunday, April 7, Njatang, alongside four colleagues, had patrolled the town in a white Hilux and later came to share a beer at a popular drinking spot beside CONGELCAM in Bonduma, Buea. From there, they drove down to the Police Station in Molyko, where he was expected to take another shift, as security guard.

He left for food in a nearby store, dropping his military jacket down, and had just his trousers and a black t-shirt on. His gun was slung on his back, as he left to buy some things from a nearby store. Little did he know that security forces had surrounded the area. He was shot around 9pm that Sunday.

They shot at his car, several times, shattering the windshields and windows. He was rushed to hospital that night but couldnt survive the wounds sustained from the bullets.

Born in Bamenda, 34-year-old Njatang hails from Bagante in the West region, and is married with four children.
Vodafone Idea's Rs 25,000-crore rights issue opened on April 10 at a price of Rs 12.50 per equity share.

New Delhi: Malaysia-based Axiata Group has "renounced" its right to entitlement of Vodafone Idea shares under the Rs 25,000-crore rights issue, sources said.

Axiata Group, which held 8.1 per cent (valued at Rs 3,771 crore) stake in the telecom major, was entitled to receive 87 equity shares for every 38 shares held by eligible shareholders of the company on the record date, April 2, 2019.

"Malaysia's Axiata Group this morning (Friday) renounced its shares entitlement in Vodafone Idea rights issue to large international and domestic entities," sources aware of the development told PTI.

While the Malaysian group will stay invested in the telecom major, the renouncement of entitlement will expand the shareholder base of Vodafone Idea.

Vodafone Idea's Rs 25,000-crore rights issue opened on April 10 at a price of Rs 12.50 per equity share.

Promoter shareholders -- Vodafone Group and Aditya Birla Group -- have reiterated to the board that they intend to contribute up to Rs 11,000 crore and up to Rs 7,250 crore, respectively, amounting to a total of Rs 18,250 crore, as part of the rights issue.
SpiceJet is committed to working closely with government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience.

New Delhi: Low-cost airline SpiceJet is planning to induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NGs on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a no- objection certificate to import the aircraft.

The planes will join SpiceJet fleet in the next 10 days if regulatory approvals come on time, the airline said in a statement.

The airline had grounded 12 Boeing 737 MAX planes following a directive by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation after the fatal crash of an Ethiopian Airlines plane in which 157 people were killed.

New inductions of aircraft will enable the budget carrier to expand international and domestic operations and reduce cancellations.

This is the first lot of Boeing 737-800 NGs that we are inducting in our fleet," said SpiceJet's Chairman and Managing Director Ajay Singh said. "The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector."

"SpiceJet is committed to working closely with government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience, Singh added.
In the national capital, gold of 99.9 per cent and 99.5 per cent purities fell by Rs 170 each to Rs 32,850 and Rs 32,680 per 10 gram, respectively.

New Delhi: Gold prices on Friday fell Rs 170 to Rs 32,850 per 10 gram, registering its second day of decline due to subdued domestic demand, according to the All India Sarafa Association.

Silver also followed gold by declining Rs 350 to Rs 38,200 per kg on decreased offtake by industrial units and coin makers.

Traders said reduced demand from local jewellers as well as retail buyers led to the fall in gold prices.

However, in the international market, spot gold was trading marginally higher at USD 1,295.50 an ounce, while silver was up at USD 15.13 an ounce in New York.

On Thursday, the yellow metal had fallen by Rs 50.

In the national capital, gold of 99.9 per cent and 99.5 per cent purities fell by Rs 170 each to Rs 32,850 and Rs 32,680 per 10 gram, respectively.

However, sovereign gold held steady at Rs 26,400 per piece of eight gram.

Silver ready slumped by Rs 350 to Rs 38,200 per kg, while weekly-based delivery dropped Rs 333 to Rs 37,227 per kg.

On the other hand, silver coins held flat at Rs 80,000 for buying and Rs 81,000 for selling of 100 pieces.
Multilingual actor, producer and director Prakash Raj is contesting as an independent candidate from Bengaluru Central competing with PC Mohan of the BJP and Rizwan Arshad of Congress in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. People will vote in Bengaluru Central constituency on April 23.

While actress-politician Khushbu is campaigning for Rizwan Arshad, the Congress candidate for Bangalore Central, actor Vishal bats for Prakash Raj, urging people to vote for him. Incidentally, Vishal who is currently shooting for his upcoming film in Khushbus husband Sundar Cs direction in Turkey has sent a video clip praising Prakash Raj.

Prakash Raj

In the video he says, In the present political scenario, it is not an easy proposition to stand as an independent candidate and win an election. You need lot of guts and good intentions to serve the society. That way, I find my dear elder brother Prakash Raj as the most deserving candidate to stand, to win and to do good for the people.

Vishal adds, Prakash is a different actor, a different human being and a different social activist. He has always raised his voice for both good and bad things happened in the society. He has all the capacity and capabilities to win this election. He is standing in Bengaluru Central constituency in the Parliament elections in Serial No 14 with Whistle symbol. Yes, I am going to whistle for you.

I am sure people would also whistle for you. I am confident that you would win this election and do good to the people of your constituency.
Rating:

Cast: Nandita Das, Manav Kaul, Saurabh Shukla, Kishore Kadam, Omkar Sad Manakpuri, Yusuf Hussain

Director: Soumitra Ranade

Thirty-nine years after Albert Pinto, a proud car mechanic with ready rage and biker swag, made his space in the Indian lexicon, a namesake has appeared on our screens claiming to be similarly angry, and asking us, yet again, to figure out why.

Sayeed Mirzas Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai? wasnt a great film. It was political, had a few powerful moments  especially the scenes with Smita Patil and Rohini Hattangadi  but it had the most significant of cracks forming in the ego of its protagonist in the most subtlest of ways. It also had a context, and was rooted.

Writer-director Soumitra Ranades Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyun Aata Hai? (APKGKAH? ) is cut from a different, patchier cloth.

His film opens on a very angsty note. Its as if Albert Pinto (Manav Kaul) is on rollers and the mindless momentum of the world is propelling him forward. Maybe. Who knows?

And as hes moving, looking lost, a song plays  Maut tera intezaar  almost providing a caption for the scene and what is to be. In earnest service of this calamitous note, the film ignores other, mundane details. In fact, Ranades APKGKAH? doesnt really care for the details of places, people and time much. It likes to juggle stuff, keep things vague.

This APKGKAH? constantly flits between the present and the past, with each one having at least two segments that throw more questions than clarifying light on what has happened.

One segment is in a police station where a cop, Pramod Naik (Kishore Kadam), is listening to Stella (Nandita Das), Alberts mother and brother, to try and piece together fragments of his personality, his anger, his depression for clues to where he may be, what was his pareshani, where he may have disappeared to?

And then theres the road trip with Nayar (Saurabh Shukla).

Albert and Nayar are strangers in a jeep where one is playing with an empty gun while the other is holding on to the bullets. They are on their way to an assignment, one that Albert picked himself after chucking away his life in Mumbai.

And yet, wherever he goes, a piece of the life he left behind appears.

Slowly, with snatches of visuals, conversations and angry bursts from the past, pieces of the present start making sense and we start becoming somewhat less confused about what may have tripped Alberts fuse and burnt all his internal wiring. It seems, sudden tragedy led to deep ennui and a worldview where everything and everyone seemed wrong. The world itself seemed to be split between three kinds of people  the drunk drivers who are in charge and keep on crushing and killing the sad, sleeping dogs. And the crows who watch all this and, the moment they can, swoop down to feed on the dead dogs. Albert didnt want to be a cawing crow, it seems

APKGKAH? demands a lot of attention. We must watch and listen carefully to make sense of it all. But thats not easily done because we dont care enough  especially not about Albert Pinto. And thats partly because of the way his character has been written, and partly because of the very theatrical way in which he has been played by Manav Kaul.

While everyone around Albert, especially Stella and Nayar, are people we feel we could connect with, we want to avoid Albert because he is either having an epic meltdown or is railing angrily and rather irritatingly at all ills of the world  from consumerism to corruption, middle class complacency to 24x7 media madness.

The films title, then, is really a poser from the filmmaker to us  not just in the context of the film, but in the context of searching our social conscience and connecting with Albert Pintos anger, and perhaps being a little angry ourselves.

Problem is that Ranades APKGKAH? is not a well made film.

While it experiments with the narrative style and manages that quite well, its dialogue  especially between Stella and Albert  are embarrassingly

stilted.

Though the movie travels around a lot, their scenes together are in crammed spaces and there isnt much fluidity to them. They are stagey and feel artificial.

Also, though the segment at a dhaba where Albert meets a sex worker stands out, Nandita and Manav have zero chemistry.

In fact, every time Das is playing another character, she brings it to life with her twinkling charm. She comes across as much more real when shes playing women who are essentially figments of Alberts imagination than when she is playing Stella.

Saurabh Shukla drives the film around and yet, with his real, crude speak, and a natural performance, he grounds it.

Sayeed Mirzas Albert Pinto Ko had a context  post-Emergency, in the midst of the mill hartal in what was then called Bombay. It also had some very fine Christian characters.

Ranades APKGKAH? is a bit lapata and none of the characters are interesting enough.

And while its interesting to see how, in these 39 years, Christians may have been completely divested of all signs of their identity except, perhaps, Stellas dresses, no character gets fully formed because the film is not really interested in them. Ranades Albert Pinto Ko is only interested in expressing its gussa. And that made me gussa.
Umm Yasser started hiking when she was a child and knows the mountains and the valley by heart. (Photo: AP)

Egypt: Amid a stunning vista of desert mountains, a Bedouin woman, Umm Yasser, paused to point out a local plant, and she began to explain how it was used in medicine to the group of foreign tourists she was guiding.

Umm Yasser is breaking new ground among the deeply conservative Bedouin of Egypts Sinai Peninsula. Women among the Bedouin almost never work outside the home, and even more rarely do they interact with outsiders. But Umm Yasser is one of four women from the community who for the first time are working as tour guides.

It is against our culture, but women need jobs, the 47-year-old Umm Yasser said. People will make fun of us, but I dont care. Im a strong woman. They are part of Sinai Trail, a unique project in which local Bedouin tribes came together aiming to develop their own tourism.

Founded in 2015, the project has set up a 550-kilometer (330-mile) trail through the remote mountains of the peninsula, a 42-day trek through the lands of eight different tribes, each of which contributes guides.

The project has been successful in bringing some income to the tribes, who often complain of being left out of the major tourism development of the southern Sinai, home to beach resorts and desert safaris.

Until now, all the projects guides were men. Ben Hoffler, the British co-founder of the Sinai Trail, felt it was not enough. How can we be credible calling this the Sinai Trail if the women arent involved? Even after years of trying by Hoffler, almost all the tribes still reject women guides. Only one of the smallest, oldest and poorest tribes, the Hamada, accepted the idea.

There are some conditions. The tourists can only be women, and the tours cant go overnight. Each day before the sun sets, the group returns to the Hamadas home village in Wadi Sahu, a narrow desert valley. The organisers also urge the tourists to photograph the guides only when they are wearing a full veil over the face that covers even the eyes with mesh.

Umm Yasser was the first to join. She said she started hiking when she was a child and knows the mountains and the valley by heart. She convinced the families of three other women to allow them to work as guides.
New York: After the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in London, his lawyer was quick to characterise it as an assault against the rights of journalists all over the world who seek to uncover secrets. But was it quite that clear? Does WikiLeaks do journalism, or is it something else?

The answer wasnt evident when the organisation burst into public consciousness at the top of this decade with the release of government documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems even less so now.

Launched in 2006 as the vision of Australian computer hacker Assange, WikiLeaks produced raw data, not stories, things like Sarah Palins personal emails or membership rolls of neo-Nazi organisations. The thousands of memos, cables and other documents about US war efforts revealed when Assange allegedly conspired with Chelsea Manning to break into a Pentagon computer took WikiLeaks to another level.

Some viewed Assange as a hero, others as a traitor. Either way, it was a heady time. WikiLeaks was considered a new type of news organisation, fuelled by the power of the Internet and democratisation of information.

There is a desperate need for our work, WikiLeaks member Sarah Harrison explained in a 2016 column in The New York Times. The world is connected by largely unaccountable networks of power that span industries and countries, political parties, corporations and institutions. WikiLeaks shines a light on these by revealing not just individual incidents, but information about entire structures of power.

The organisations methods can be and sometimes are seen as a threat to the journalisms traditional gatekeepers of power. But journalism has encompassed many traditions over the decades and centuries. WikiLeaks has been an influence in two positive trends for journalism over the past decade, says Lisa Lynch, a journalism professor at Drew University who has written about the organisation.

It emphasised the importance of data-driven journalism, an increasingly valuable tool. Since WikiLeaks was often willing to work with traditional outlets in how it released data, it encouraged news organisations to cooperate more in chasing stories. The 2016 Panama Papers investigation that revealed the offshore financial havens of political leaders showed what can happen when journalists team up.

Despite utopian ideals, though, real life is more complicated. Information isnt always merely information, government files can reveal wartime informants and put peoples lives in danger. And information can be weaponised through decisions about what to reveal and what not to reveal. For example: Many people saw Assanges decision to publish the private emails of Hillary Clintons campaign chairman as a sign of cosiness with Russia and a contributing factor in Donald Trumps election as president.

Yet some of historys most prominent journalists have been advocates as well, and have expressed clear points of view. Upton Sinclair, a progressive muckraker in the early 20th century, made no secret of the fact that his expose of the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, was an attempt at jump-starting reform. I aimed at the publics heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach, he wrote later.

Today, news outlets across the political spectrum, from The National Review to Mother Jones, from Fox News to MSNBC, are considered to be journalism, albeit delivered from a distinct vantage point. Add into the mix the rise of blogging and social media, which permit anyone with an internet connection to use the term journalist and be immediately and globally amplified and the result is ambiguity about who is a journalist and who isnt.

In that environment, Assange, too, presents an ambiguous image. I had trouble seeing him as a journalist from the start, said Columbia University journalism professor Todd Gitlin, a frequent writer about the media. But he certainly was a publisher. It turns out he was not just any old publisher, he was a publisher with a distinct angle. And his angle is anti-democratic.

Certainly Assange, a prickly personality who may never be forgiven by many Democrats for WikiLeaks role in the 2016 election, doesnt cut a sympathetic figure. Does that disqualify him from the mantle of journalist, though? People feel very differently about WikiLeaks now than they did in 2010, Lynch said. Theres no doubt about that. I feel very differently about WikiLeaks now. But that doesnt mean Im not just as concerned about what happens to WikiLeaks going forward.

She added, If we start drawing boxes around who is or isnt a journalist in court and the conversation becomes about the way WikiLeaks used information, then we might end up with unintended consequences.

David Boardman, dean of Temple Universitys communications school and chairman of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said one key thing sets WikiLeaks apart from news organisations are the accusations that Assange acted illegally with Manning to obtain the war documents. I consider it something different, said Boardman, the former executive editor of The Seattle Times. I dont consider it a journalistic organisation.

Boardman considers the US governments case against Assange, as it is now outlined, as narrowly based upon his actions with Manning and thus not threatening to journalists. Others consider this a narrow reading of the case, one fuelled perhaps, by a discomfort with Assanges methods and the idea of whether he should be considered a journalist at all.
The local oil is used to treat to cure muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynaecological and neurological problems. (Photo: AFP)

Baki: Sulfiya, a Russian woman in her 60s, has travelled to Azerbaijan's north-western city of Naftalan in the hope that crude oil baths at a local sanatorium will end her years of suffering from polyarthritis, a disease affecting the joints.

"This is so pleasant," she enthuses, despite the reek of engine oil. Her naked dip in oil heated to just above body temperature lasts 10 minutes, after which an attendant scrapes the brown oil off her skin and sends her into a shower.

The native of Russia's Tatarstan region said she and her friends "have long dreamed of coming" for treatment in Naftalan. The petroleum spa resort in the oil-rich Caucasus country is a draw for visitors despite its proximity to Nagorny Karabakh, a region disputed between Azerbaijan and Armenia in a long-running armed conflict.

After 10 days of bathing in crude oil Sulfiya says she now feels "much better" and has even reduced her medication for the polyarthritis that she has had for 12 years.

"It is a gift from God," agrees 48-year-old Rufat, an Azerbaijani journalist and opposition party member who is undergoing treatment in the sanatorium called Sehirli, or "magic" in Azerbaijani.

Azerbaijan's vast oil deposits were discovered in the mid-19th century, making what was at the time part of the Russian Empire one of the first places in the world to start commercial oil production.

Oil exports to markets all over the world are the largest sector of Azerbaijan's economy, but the crude that comes from subsoil reservoirs in Naftalan is not suitable for commercial use.

Instead the local oil is used to treat to cure muscular, skin and bone conditions as well as gynaecological and neurological problems. According to a legend, which spa staff readily tells clients, the healing properties of Naftalan's "miraculous oil" were discovered by accident when a camel left to die near a pool of oil was cured.

The small town of Naftalan some 300 kilometres (185 miles) from the capital Baku became a popular health resort for Soviet citizens in the 1920s. "In the past, when there weren't any hotels or sanatoriums, people would come to Naftalan and stay with locals," said one of the doctors at the Sehirli sanatorium, Fabil Azizov, sitting in her office under a portrait of strongman President Ilham Aliyev.

"But as time passed, sanatoriums were built and treatment methods developed."
During investigation, the NIA arrested Rustam Sk, Amirul Hoque, Mohammed Hakim, Saddam Hussain, Syed Imran and Md Akbar Ali, and filed four chargesheets including three supplementary chargesheets against them for conspiring and trafficking high-quality FICN from Bangladesh. (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: The National Investigation Agency, Hyderabad, on Friday filed a supplementary chargesheet against one of the accused persons in the case of trafficking of high quality Fake Indian Currency Notes from Bangladesh to Bengaluru. This is the fourth supplementary chargesheet filed by the NIA in the case, where about Rs 5,01,500 of FICN were caught at the Vishakhapatnam railway station in 2015.

On September 2015, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence personnel arrested one Saddan Hossain, a resident of Assam, travelling in a train with fake Indian currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination. The notes were handed over to Hossain at Malda and he was asked to take them to Bengaluru. The case was later handed over to the NIA for a probe.

During investigation, the NIA arrested Rustam Sk, Amirul Hoque, Mohammed Hakim, Saddam Hussain, Syed Imran and Md Akbar Ali, and filed four chargesheets including three supplementary chargesheets against them for conspiring and trafficking high-quality FICN from Bangladesh.
The test made India the fourth country in the world after the US, Russia and China to have the ASAT capabilities. (Photo: AFP)

New Delhi/Washington: India is concerned about the threats it faces in space, the Pentagon has said, defending the country for acquiring anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test capabilities.

On March 27, India achieved a historic feat by shooting down its own low-orbit satellite with a ground-to-space missile, making the country a space power.

The test made India the fourth country in the world after the US, Russia and China to have the ASAT capabilities.

The first lesson from the Indian ASAT is just the simple question of why did they do that. And the answer should be, I think to all the committee looking at it, is that they did that because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space, US Strategic Command Commander General John E Hyten told members of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

And therefore, they feel they have to have a capability to defend themselves in space, Hyten told Senate Armed Services Committee while responding to a question from Senators on the need for India to do anti-satellite missile test, and the debris it generated in the space.

After Indias test, NASA termed as a terrible thing the countrys shooting down of one of its satellites, saying it created about 400 pieces of orbital debris, endangering the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had said about 60 pieces were tracked and out of which 24 are going above the apogee of the ISS.

Hyten advocated for the development of some kind of international norms of behaviour in space.

And where those norms of behaviour should begin, from my opinion, is with debris, because as the combatant commander responsible for space today, I dont want more debris, said the top Pentagon commander.

Raising the issue, Senator Tim Kaine said India announced last month that it had successfully conducted a test of an anti-satellite weapon.

So, they had something in low earth orbit. They used an anti-satellite weapon to down, and it resulted in - the estimates right now 400 pieces of debris, 24 which are large enough to potentially pose a threat to the International Space Station, he said.

There have been other instances like this. There was a Chinese - a similar effort in 2007 that led to the catalogued 100,000 pieces of debris, many of which are still observing in debris fields that pose danger to other assets in space, he said.

There was a collision in 09 between a working US satellite and a sort of defunct Soviet era satellite that -kind of a fender bender that produced debris. Then this debris causes challenges, he added.

If we think that space is going to be more of a traffic jam, more satellites for all kinds of purposes up there, what should we be thinking about as a Senate in this committee or in Foreign Relations about sort of the rules? he asked.

What should the rules environment be, and what should we be doing to try to promote rules? India is an ally. Were not talking about an adversary doing something. Were talking about them testing some capacity, but then that creates challenges for all kinds of uses of space. How should we be solving problems like that? Kaine asked.
According to sources, the meeting has been called after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked the secretary of the department to review issues concerning Jet Airways. (Image: File)

New Delhi: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has called an urgent meeting to discuss the crisis in private airline Jet Airways, which is facing acute financial woes.

According to sources, the meeting has been called after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked the secretary of the department to review issues concerning Jet Airways.

Read: Jet extends suspension of international ops till Monday

Crisis-hit Jet Airways is facing acute financial crunch and has grounded several of its flights and stopped international operations.

The drastic measure was announced after the airline informed the exchanges that it was forced to ground 10 more planes due to non-payment of rentals to the lessors.
The letter was sent to the President on Thursday, the day 2019 Lok Sabha elections began. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Rashtrapati Bhavan sources have denied receiving any letter supposedly written by armed forces veterans to the President requesting his intervention in the increased instances of politicisation of armed forces.

A letter, allegedly signed by 156 veterans -- among whom are former Army, Air Force and Navy chiefs-- has been circulating on social media, saying: " ...we write to bring to your attention, as the Supreme Commander of India's Armed Forces, some concerns which have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel of our Forces."

It referred to "unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes...".

The letter was reportedly sent to the President on Thursday, the day 2019 Lok Sabha elections began.

Among the veterans whose signatures are seen at the end of the letter- are three former Army chiefs - General (retired) SF Rodrigues, General (retired) Shankar Roy Chowdhury and General (retired) Deepak Kapoor, four former Navy chiefs and former Air Force chief NC Suri.

There is a controversy now that a letter has been signed by these top officials.

Former Army chief General (retired) SF Rodrigues tweeted:

Gen SF Rodrigues: Dont know what it(purported letter written by armed forces veterans to Pres)is all about.All my life,we've been apolitical.Aftr,42 yrs as officer,it's a little late to change.Always put India first.Dont know who these ppl are,classic manifestation of fake news pic.twitter.com/Cgpo57sVhq  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Former Air Force chief NC Suri also said, "This is not Admiral Ramdas letter (purported letter written by armed forces veterans to President) and it has been done by some Major Chaudhary. He has written this and it was coming on WhatsApp and emails."

"To put an end to it, I wrote that armed forces are apolitical and support the politically elected goverment. And no, my consent has not been taken for any such letter. I dont agree with whatever has been written in that letter. We have been misquoted," Suri added.

Major General Harsha Kakkar said: Yes, I had given my consent for being a signatory to the letter. I had given my consent only after knowing the contents of it.

Recently, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adiyanath referred the armed forces as Modiji ki Sena, which triggered a controversy. Opposition and former Army officials said that apolitical entities such as armed forces should not be dragged into politics.

The letter was shared widely in social media. Reacting to the letter, Congress tweeted:

Modi may try to use soldiers for votes, but it's clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP.

156 Veterans of the Indian Armed Forces including 8 former Chiefs of Staff write to the President of India urging him to act against Modi for trying to use soldiers for votes. https://t.co/NHUVDH2BeY  Congress (@INCIndia) April 12, 2019

The signatories expressed concerns over photos of Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman at election campaigns. The Election Commission asked the parties not to use the images of armed forces personnel in campaigns.

Here is the full text of the letter:

"Dear Shri Ram Nath Kovind Ji,

We, the signatories,are Armed Forces Veterans who have served in the defence of our nation in various appointments, in peacetime and in operational and war zones over the past several decades.

The apolitical and secular nature of Indias Armed Forces has been an article of faith for every soldier, sailor and airman. Indias Armed Forces have loyally upheld the democratic principle of civil control over the military. Their military professionalism on and off the field, combined with the devotion to duty in protecting Indias territorial sovereignty and national integrity, remains widely appreciated.

The soldiers, sailors and airmen of the Armed Forces owe allegiance to the Constitution of India, of which you, as President of the Indian Union, are the legal custodian. It is for this reason that the President is also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and we serve and execute orders at the will of the President and as decided from time to time by the Executive  that is, the Government of the day.

You would be aware that those in active service (men and women of all ranks in the Army, Navy and Air Force) cannot speak out, even on matters which might affect their interests adversely, since they are subject to military law and are governed by the parliamentary Acts of their respective Service.

However, we Veterans being in continuous touch with our own military fraternity, as also with serving personnel at all levels, have a finger on the pulse, so to speak. And it is for this reason that we write to bring to your attention, as the Supreme Commander of Indias Armed Forces, some concerns which have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel of our Forces.

We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be Modi ji ki Sena. This is in addition to media pictures of election platforms and campaigns in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms; and posters and images with pictures of soldiers and especially of Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, displayed.

We do appreciate that complaints by some senior retired personnel, including a written submission from a former Chief of the Naval Staff to the Chief Election Commissioner, have elicited a prompt response. Indeed a notification has been issued asking for an explanation from those responsible for these statements, including from the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. However we regret to state that these do not appear to have resulted in any substantive change of behaviour and practice on the ground.

With the General Elections round the corner, and given the prevailing environment where political parties and candidates seem to be acting in total disregard of the declaration of the model code of conduct, we fear that such incidents may only increase as polling day draws near.

We believe that you will surely agree that any such misuse of the Armed Forces established under the Constitution of India and under the supreme command of the President of India, would impinge adversely on the morale and fighting efficiency of the serving man or woman in uniform. It could therefore directly affect national security and national integrity.

We therefore appeal to you to ensure that the secular and a-political character of our Armed Forces is preserved.

We hereby respectfully urge you to take all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas.

This communication is copied to the Chief Election Commissioner of the Election Commission of India for information and action.

We, the undersigned, endorse the above.

Yours Faithfully"

Keep yourself updated on Lok Sabha Elections 2019 with our round-the-clock coverage -- breaking news, updates, analyses et all. Happy reading.
Coimbatore: More than 900 student delegates in the age group of 12 - 18 years old from over 50 schools in and around south India are participating in the three-day South Indian Model United Nations Conference SIMUN 2019. The third edition of the conference is co-hosted by the Indian Public School, Coimbatore and organised by International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme students and the alumni network of the school. The conference that began on Friday was inaugurated by Commissioner of Police, Tirupur Mr. Sanjay Kumar who also participated as chief guest. Chairman and managing director of the Indian Public School Ashok Kumar was guest of honor.

Uniting Minds, Creating Leaders is the theme for the third edition of SIMUN. The conference seeks to highlight the importance of bringing in young talents opinions, thoughts, and experiences in such a way that they portray themselves as global citizens and aspire to be leaders to achieve sustainable development.

Our committees seek to develop the world socially, economically and politically to create a better future for all of us, not just for those with access to capital or political influence. These committees not only reflect a detailed replica of UN procedures, technology, intensity and ambiance, but also aim to give a deep insight into the art of diplomacy, the values of collaboration and compromise, skills in public speaking, research, and debate. For each and every participating delegate SIMUN tries to instill the belief that youth will empower the future, thus producing more world leaders who are the need of the hour, a source from the school told DC.
New Delhi: Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman has condemned the submission of a letter to President Ram Nath Kovind by a group of retired senior defence personnel regarding political parties using the militarys image for their electioneering.

Two senior officers said they have not given consent, worrying that fake letters being signed by vested groups. It is condemnable. The Rashtrapati Bhawan has also said that they have not received the letter (sic), Ms Sitharaman said.

According to the veterans the letter was mailed to the official email ID of Rash-trapati Bhavan with a copy to the Election Commission.

The letter appealed to the President, the Supreme Commander of Armed Forces, to ensure that the secular and apolitical character of the Armed Forces is preserved. The apolitical and secular nature of Indias Armed Forces has been an article of faith for every soldier, sailor and airman, it said.

The veterans urged the President to urgently direct all political parties to desist from using the military for political purposes or to further their political agendas.
Sainath, said Mandavi was targeted by Maoists because he was part of the process of development of Bastar. (Representional Image)

Bhopal: The Darbha division of CPI (Maoist) has owned responsibility for killing of local BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi, terming it a retribution for strengthening road and communication networks in the region by the state government.

A statement issued purportedly by secretary of Darbha Division functioning under Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of CPI (Maoist), Sainath, said Mandavi was targeted by Maoists because he was part of the process of development of Bastar.
While growing up in and around Chamarajpet in the city, he chased his dreams and became a versatile filmstar with a career spanning the film industries of the south and Bollywood. Now a newly anointed politician, Prakash Raj, makes no bones about how little he thinks about Prime Minister Narendra Modi with his popular #JustAsking, leaving you in no doubt about his views. Although he enjoys a friendship with Telangana Chief Minister, K Chandra shekhar Rao, not many expected him to take a plunge into politics himself and were surprised when he announced his decision to contest from the Bengaluru Central parliamentary constituency as an independent these polls. With the whistle as his symbol, the actor, who clearly sees himself as some sort of a whistleblower, has come out with a manifesto that talks about involving people in building a better Bengaluru with focus on protecting its environment, improving its education, healthcare system, transport, empowering women and caring for the old. While disappointed at the Congress fielding a candidate against him, he remains undeterred, claiming Dalits, backward castes and minorities are upset with its neglect of their communities and see in him a more credible alternative. Excerpts from an interview with VINAY MADHAV

Between Prakash Raj, the boy born and brought up around Chamarajpet and the filmstar, which of these avatars is helping you these elections?

Over the last two decades I have grown and people have seen me in varied roles in different languages. But the last few years have also seen me in the role of a columnist who has his own perceptions on various issues like farming, health, education and so on. They see a courageous person, who doesn't live on the myth his roles have created. I am known for what I am more than as an actor as I am ready to be unpopular and show my dissent. They see my courage and a man, who has wide knowledge of literature. The man in the movies is only one aspect of me. This has helped in the meetings I have had with around 300 groups and in reaching out to upto five lakh people. They know that I am someone different, a person with a vision. That should help me.

Are you disappointed with the Congress? After taking Prime Minister Narendra Modi head -on through your #JustAsking, you had requested the party not to field a candidate against you in Ben galuru Central. But it did.

I did not ask them to give me the seat, but they should have. The truth is they are the other face of the same coin. They claim to be secular , but look at the ground realities of the Muslims, Christians and other downtrodden, the housing and water problem. They are merely using them as votebanks. You will be surprised to see how my citizen movement takes away the votebank, they have been sitting on so comfortably for years.

Although you were the first to announce your candidature for Bengaluru Central, most of the media's focus is on the BJP and Congress. Are you upto the challenge?

That's exactly what is happening in the absence of alternatives, but I am not paying this much attention. A movement like mine cannot be gauged. I always believe that election is a festival of the conversation between the contestant and the people, who vote. I realized at my Town Hall meeting that people are going to be surprised at the lakhs in Bengaluru Central, who want an alternative, someone to come and talk to them.

This is your first encounter with electoral politics. How does it feel?

I feel liberated. Every citizen should have basic food, water and a secure job. Having a career should be about participating in the nation building process. But somewhere we have gone off track and everyone is running after power and pushing his or her ideology. There can be differences in ideology, but every political party , leader and government must make sure to provide the people a basic quality of life. (In its absence) We see so much of frustration , dismay and nothingness around. Civic bodies and society need to come together to address these problems. We cannot always be in a denial mode and treat everything as if it belongs to the outpatient wing when there is a need for specialised ICUs.

It's often said that bad politicians are not born, but created by good people , who don't vote.

They are not good people, but lazy people. Look at Bengaluru Central, 45 per cent did not vote (the last time) and this is why the wrong people are elected. The result is growth of slums and poor job security. I have been having long conversations with such people and I hope they will come (to vote), because citizens need to come together to usher in change.

Keep yourself updated on Lok Sabha Elections 2019 with our round-the-clock coverage -- breaking news, updates, analyses et all. Happy reading.
Salem: Asserting that States should not be ruled by direct orders from the Prime Minister's office (PMO), Congress President Rahul Gandhi said that his party, working with the DMK will restore the rights of the States, ensure that the country's cultural pluralism was not undermined and leave the continuance of issues like National Eligibility-Cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for medical college aspirants, to the State governments.

The suicide by the girl medical aspirant Anitha of Ariyalur district in Tamil Nadu in protest against the NEET finds a mention in the Congress party's manifesto for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and no other student should die over such an issue in Tamil Nadu or in other States, Rahul said addressing a huge joint rally with DMK president M K Stalin here on Friday in support of the DMK-Congress led alliance candidates for Salem, Kallakurichi, Erode, Karur and Namakkal constituencies.

Only the State governments should decide whether NEET is necessary or not and we have made this clear in our manifesto, Rahul Gandhi said.

We believe in consultations with the people to help solve their problems but neither Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor BJP do not believe in any such consultations with the people, he said, and cited how Modi demonetizing high value currencies had overnight struck a destructive blow to the Indian economy. The demonetization decision was not discussed with anybody, but Modi regime extended favours to two industrial groups, he charged.

Taking a dig at Mr. Modi's 'Make-in-India programme, Rahul said, you take any product in the market today, it has the label 'Make in China'. The Congress party, if elected to power, will completely restructure and simplify the GST and do away with the Gabbar Singh Tax, he stressed. The 'Nyay' or minimum income guarantee programme to the poor will be a frontal attack on poverty, he added.

Explaining the rationale of the DMK-Congress-led alliance in Tamil Nadu, Rahul Gandhi said the BJP believed only in one culture, one singular idea of Idea and one history, while the reality was that India is a multi-cultural, multi-lingual society. We want to protect and nurture this pluralistic society and hence Congress and DMK has joined together to create a strong and prosperous India that respects its pluralistic ethos, he elaborated.

Rahul charged the BJP government and the Prime Minister with running Tamil Nadu by the PMO, from Nagpur (RSS headquarters), stifling the voice and culture of Tamils; but we respect the distinct culture and ancient history of the Tamil society. When Tamil Nadu farmers were on a prolonged fast at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, the Prime Minister did not even bother to meet them, Rahul said. He also listed the key features of the Congress manifesto, including jobs creation and strengthening Panchayati Raj.

Speaking at the rally, the DMK president, M K Stalin, reiterating his optimism that the DMK-Congress alliance would sweep all the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, said present indications are that my declaration that Rahul Gandhi will be the next Prime Minister gains strength by the day.

Highlighting the important aspects of the DMK's poll manifesto, Mr Stalin said though Mr. Modi was now saying they would fulfill the aspirations of the people after being in government for five years, the overall mood among the people is to send the Modi government packing home.

He charged that Prime Minister Modi had done nothing beneficial for the poor people in the last five years.

Senior leaders of Congress and DMK, the TNCC president K S Azhagiri, the contesting candidates in the Lok Sabha and Assembly bye-elections from this region were among those who participated.
Political pundits said that the voter turnout in the recent polls dipped due to last minute developments pertaining to fielding of candidates by all political parties. (Representational Image)

Hyderabad: Khammam topped the voting for the LS elections with 75.28 per cent while Hyderabad stood at the bottom with 44.75 per cent, as per the revised figures released on Friday. The overall polling percentage stood at 62.69 per cent.

Surprisingly, the Khammam LS constituency recorded 82.55 per cent in 2014 polls and even though the polling percentage dipped by seven percentage it still stood on the top.

Political pundits said that the voter turnout in the recent polls dipped due to last minute developments pertaining to fielding of candidates by all political parties. They said that voting percentage in Hyderabad, Secun-derabad, Malkajgiri and Chevella has been consistently decreasing in successive election since voters desperately waiting for a change in leadership.

The voters have been expressing their dissent by staying away from the elections. Experts said the low turnout in current election was an expression of dissent by voters against all political parties. Hence the overall polling percentage remained at 62.69 in current elections while it was 70.89 in 2014 polls.

During the current election every constituency seen a dip when compared to 2014 polls. They also said that a whopping number of 15 lakh common voters residing in Greater Hyderabad and parts of Nizamabad, Mahbubnagar and Khamman have decided to vote in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh to decide fate of political parties.

This gives them a choice to vote for the MLA candidate at the local level and MP candidate who would fought for the trivial issues like special category status, setting up steel plant Kadapa and Dugarajapatnam port. These issues have encouraged common voters to opt for AP rather than voting for stable government in Telangana.
Hyderabad: A letter written by many senior retired defence officers, including eight chiefs, to the President Ram Nath Kovind, the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, complaining against political parties politicising the military, has created a flutter. The letter primarily conveyed concern over the growing misuse of the forces in electioneering.

The letter bears the signatures of 156 veterans, including three Army chiefs, four Admirals and an Air Chief Marshal, all retired. However, at least three of them said their consent was not taken: former Army chief General S.F. Rodrigues (retd), and Air Chief Marshal N.C. Suri (retd) and former Army vice-chief Lt. Gen. M.L. Naidu (retd).

Major Priyadarshi Chaudhary (retired), who drafted the letter, told this newspaper that the consent of all the signatories was taken a week ago. He has displayed proof on his social media handle.

The letter said: We refer to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit of military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be Modi ji ki Sena. Party workers are also seen wearing the military uniform and posting images with pictures of soldiers and especially of Wg Cmdr Abninandan Varthaman.

With the elections around the corner and given the prevailing environment where political parties and candidates seem to be acting in total disregard of the declaration of the model code of conduct, we fear such incidents may only increase as polling day draws nears, the letter said.

Explaining how the letter came to be drafted and sent to the President, Maj. Chaudhary (retd) told Deccan Chronicle: We (a group of veterans) saw increasing misuse of the forces by the leaders after the surgical strikes of 2016. We started feeling disquiet about the way the Armed Forces were being dragged into politics.

Major Priyadarshi Chaudhary (retired) said that the resentment increased after the Pulwama terror attack. While the bodies of our CRPF jawans had still not reached their homes, the BJP had put up posters stating, Votes usko do jo surgical strikes karen (Vote for those who carry out surgical strikes). How much more insensitive can they be, Maj. Chaudhary said.

Then Balakot (the air strikes) happened. The BJP and the Aam Aadmi Party started using Wg Cmdr Varthamans posters in public rallies and asking for votes, he said. It became worse when Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath referred to the Indian Army as Modi ji ki sena. He said that was when former Navy chief Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas (retd) wrote to the Election Commission complaining about the sequence of events and the poll panel issued a caution.

Then the PM once again dragged the forces into the electioneering. We had no choice but to use the institutional grievance mechanism, for us it is the Supreme Commander. The serving personnel cannot protest as their right to speech is abrogated. Therefore we used the right mechanism, Maj. Chaudhury (retd) said.

Asked about the three former chiefs who denied giving consent, Maj Chaudhary (retd), said, We drafted the letter a week ago and circulated it in our groups and those who agreed (gave consent), their names were added to the list and it was sent to the President. I have submitted the proof of their concurrence.

The internal chat put out by Maj. Chaudhary (retd) purports to show Gen. Rod-rigues (retd) saying on April 4: I endorse the appeal to the Supreme Commander.

Air Chief Marshal Suri (retd) said, according to the purported chat, I am of the firm view that the armed forces must continue to be apolitical and oriented to serve the country through the democratically elected government. It is in this context that I endorse the appeal to the Supreme Commander.

Messages showing resentment against politicial parties have been in circulation for a while among groups of veterans who have held high-ranking posts. Sources said the intent to submit a letter to the President was also in circulation for a week. I recei-ved the letter on Whatsapp but I didnt give my consent. Only those who agreed were added, said a retired IAF officer based in Hyderabad.

Many former defence chief have confirmed endorsing the letter, former Army chiefs Gen. Deepak Kapoor and Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury. Former Navy chief Admiral Sureesh Mehta told a news website that he had signed the letter.
New Delhi: In a controversial remark, Union minister Maneka Gandhi has told Muslims to vote for her as they will need her once the Lok Sabha elections are over.

We are not Mahatma Gandhis children that we keep giving and not get anything in return, she said in Sultanpurs Muslim-dominated Turabkhani area on Thursday.

District poll authorities issued her with a show cause notice.

Meanwhile, BJP MP from Unnao Sakshi Maharaj too has threatened to curse all those who do not vote from him. Sakshi Maharaj has been fielded from Unnao constituency in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

A saint has come to your door. When a saint comes to beg and isn't given what he asks for, he takes away all the happiness of the family and curses it. I am quoting from sacred scriptures. I am not asking for money or land, Sakshi Maharaj was quoted as saying.

Besides district poll authorities, the EC in Delhi is also examining the transcript of Maneka Gandhis speech.

Ms Gandhi, the BJP candidate from Sultanpur Lok Sabha constituency, claimed she is all set to win and told the Muslim audience that you might need me tomorrow.

I am winning. I am winning because of the help and love of the people, Gandhi said at the meeting in the constituency earlier held by her son Varun Gandhi.

But if my victory is without the Muslims, I will not feel very good, she said, adding she will be left with a bitter feeling. If Muslims come for some work after this, I will think why bother, what difference will it make.
Manager said that they asked her to leave as they don't allow pets. (Photo: ANI | Twitter)

Ahmedabad: An American woman is facing difficulty to find accommodation for her 14 pets and is currently staying in Silver Springs hotel here with six puppies, six cats, one female dog, and a goat.

Her pets have become a problem for hotel manager Pradeep Agarwal, who has complained of nuisance and foul smell. She even had a tiff with the hotel manager when he asked her to leave the place.

Talking to ANI, Pradeep Agarwal, the hotel manager said, "She came around 3 AM on April 9 and the security guard allotted her a room. Next morning I got to know she has pets and when I asked her to vacate the room, she denied by saying that she has booked and paid room for till April 11."

"Before I tried calling the police, the woman called someone may be from the US Embassy or from police. Police Inspector of Kagdapith, reached our hotel to look into the matter. Generally, the inspector does not come on one call, so she must have called at Embassy", the manager claimed.

He added, "Police tried to help her out but I do not think any arrangement has been done for her yet."

Refusing to reveal her identity, the woman said, "I rescued this female dog in January 2015 in Uttarkashi and this goat in March 2015. I am trying to find a loving and caring family for my pets. Someone assured me to help but he is late and the hotel management wants me to vacate this place".

The woman added, " I can not leave the pets here. I am trying to vacate this place till then I am waiting for help."

"I am arranging for something to solve the issue," she added.
Modi also alleged that Congress does not give much importance to national security. (Image: ANI twitter)

Koppal: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday termed the ongoing Lok Sabha polls as "Rashtravad (nationalism) vs Parivarvad (dynastic politics)" and "nation first vs family first".

"The 2019 election is between nationalism and dynasty politics, country first and family first," the Prime Minister said while addressing an election rally here.

Modi also said that it is necessary to teach a lesson to those who are advancing Pakistan's propaganda just to harm him.

He also added that it is necessary to be "beware" of those seeking evidence of (airstrike) by the brave forces "just for the sake of few votes".

The Prime Minister accused Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy of insulting the armed forces for saying that those who go into armed forces are people who cannot afford the two-time meals.

"You (Kumaraswamy) can't escape saying your statement was misinterpreted. You said what was there in your heart. It is such an insult to the armed forces of the country," the Prime Minister said.

"I want to ask you, is it not an insult to the armed forces of this country?" he said adding that those making such remarks should be ashamed of themselves. "Doob maro sena ka apman karne walon," Modi said.

He termed Janata Dal (Secular) and Congress as symbols of dynastic politics and cut off from the public. "Both these parties are close to the "family" and equally distant from the people. They don't care about your and the country's requirements. All they care for is their own and family's needs. Their only mission is 'commission (bribery)'," Prime Minister said.

He added, "When you begin to care for family, middlemen like Quattrocchi 'Mama' and Michel 'Mama' get nurtured". From Bofors to chopper scams like sins are done there."

Modi also alleged that Congress does not give much importance to national security. "This is the reason why there is a scam in every defence deal they concluded. This is the reason why they kept providing low-quality weapons to our forces. This is the reason why our soldiers are not given adequate facilities. This is the reason why they did not provide bullet-proof jackets to our jawans," he said.

"Congress-JD(S) is against nationalists and those guarding the country. They are not ashamed of standing with those who shout slogans "Bharat tere tukde honge". They are with those who want to break Jammu and Kashmir away from the country," Prime Minister said.

He also accused the Karnataka government of not giving enough importance to Humpy, the capital city of Vijayanagara empire. "They (Karnataka government) have money to commemorate (Tipu) Sultan but they don't have money to remember the pride of Humpy," the Prime Minister said.

Taking a jibe at the Congress-JD(S) coalition government in Karnataka, the Prime Minister said, "When Congress was in power, there was Mr 10 per cent. Now when both are together, Karnataka is running on 20 per cent."

Criticising Kumaraswamy for saying that he will retire from politics if the BJP government comes to power at the Centre, he said, "I am told that son of HD Deve Gowda has said, if the (BJP) government is formed at the Centre then he will retire from politics. Do you have faith in them? Do they ever tell the truth?"

"In 2014, Deve Gowda himself had claimed that if Narendra Modi becomes the Prime Minister, then he will retire from politics. Did father take retirement? Will son retire? Forget retirement, they are giving tickets to their family members," Modi said.

The Prime Minister termed him being "near to Kishkindha" just before Ramnavami as "coincidence".

"The motto of Shri Ram's servant Hanuman and Sabri's devotion is embedded here. With these emotions only, your "Pradhan Sevak" has tried to serve you humbly. It is due to your blessings and cooperation that India's work is echoing loudly from land to space," he said.

Prime Minister Modi also repeated his jibe of Congress committing a "Tughlaq Road Chunav Ghotala".

"Congress looted money of children and pregnant women to get votes. From Madhya Pradesh, hundreds of crores were sent to Delhi to be used in the election. This money was to be used for malnourished children, for clinching the hunger of innocent children but the Congress is so cruel that they even snatched food from children," Modi alleged.

"Till now we used to hear about "Congress' hand" in defence deal. Now they are looting the food from children too. This blot can never be washed off," he said.

Modi also alleged the Congress cannot understand the problems of poor people. "These people were born with a golden spoon. They ruled the country for three generations but they cannot understand the problems of poor people," he said.

Modi also promised to work on the water issue in the next five years just like he worked on the cleanliness drive during the last five years.

He also accused the Karnataka government of failing to waive farm loans within 24 hours as it had promised.

Lok Sabha polls in Karnataka is scheduled to be conducted in two phases on April 18 and April 23. The results will be announced on May 23.

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Anil Sharma has been under pressure from his own party after his father, former Union minister Sukh Ram quit the BJP and joined the Congress along with Aashray Sharma (Photo: File)

Shimla: Himachal Pradesh Power Minister Anil Sharma resigned from his post today, days after the Congress fielded his son Aashray Sharma as its candidate from the Mandi Lok Sabha constituency.

Anil Sharma has been under pressure from his own party after his father, former Union minister Sukh Ram quit the BJP and joined the Congress along with Aashray Sharma.

He refused to campaign for the BJP candidate who is contesting against his son for the Lok Sabha seat, and even suggested that he was willing to quit the ministry over it.

Sharma told reporters that though he has now resigned from the ministry he remains with the Bharatiya Janata Party. He is the BJP MLA from the Mandi segment of the Lok Sabha constituency and the party expected him to campaign for its candidate Ramswaroop Sharma.

Sharma had said he will keep away from Mandi and will campaign neither for his son nor the BJP candidate.

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The Delhi High Court on Friday sought response of the Centre on a plea which has challenged the constitutional validity of the recent Aadhaar Ordinance on the grounds that it was brought to 'overturn' the Supreme Court decision regarding the use of Aadhaar by the private sector. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday sought response of the Centre on a plea which has challenged the constitutional validity of the recent Aadhaar Ordinance on the grounds that it was brought to "overturn" the Supreme Court decision regarding the use of Aadhaar by the private sector.

A bench of Chief Justice Rajendra Menon and Justice A J Bhambhani asked the Ministry of Law to indicate its stand by July 9, the next date of hearing.

The matter came up before the bench as the apex court on April 5 had directed the petitioners, both lawyers, to first move the high court.

A five-judge Constitution bench of the apex court had in September last year declared the Centre's flagship Aadhaar scheme as constitutionally valid but struck down some of its provisions including its linking with bank accounts, mobile phones and school admissions.

The court had held that while Aadhaar would remain mandatory for the filing of Income Tax returns and allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN), it would not be mandatory to link Aadhaar to bank accounts and telecom service providers cannot seek its linking for mobile connections.

According to the petitioners, Reepak Kansal and Yadunandan Bansal, the ordinance allows the private sector to use the Aadhaar infrastructure through the back door by amending the Indian Telegraph Act.

The petition has said that the ordinance amends the Telegraph Act to provide for voluntary use of Aadhaar for identity verification.

It has claimed that this allows telecom companies to use Aadhaar ID for identity verification. The petitioners also contended that there was "no extraordinary situation" which required passing of such an ordinance.

President Ram Nath Kovind had last month given his assent to the Aadhaar Ordinance that allowed voluntary use of Aadhaar as ID proof for obtaining mobile SIM cards and opening bank accounts.

The ordinance was necessitated because Rajya Sabha could not approve a Bill after its passage by Lok Sabha. The Cabinet had approved the promulgation of the ordinance to give effect to changes proposed in Aadhaar and two others legislations.

The amendments provide for stiff penalties for violation of norms set for the use of Aadhaar and violation of privacy. It bans storing of core biometric information as well as Aadhaar number by service providers in cases of individuals who have voluntarily offered the national ID as a means of authentication.

However, the amendments make it clear that anyone not offering Aadhaar cannot be denied any service, be it opening of a bank account or obtaining a mobile phone SIM card.
Tamil Nadu: The Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) will help Indias 20 per cent poor people without harming the economy, said Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Madurai on Friday.

Some months back we started a process of trying to figure out how much money we can give to the poor people of the country. I asked P Chidambaram some months back that give me a number and do not give me a long list and a big theory, he said.

I asked how much money we can give to the poor without harming the economy. The answer was Rs 72,000 per year to 20 per cent of Indias poorest families, said Rahul, asserting that Congress manifesto represents the voice of Indias people.

Gandhi, who was addressing an election rally, said: People appreciated our manifesto. In our discussions during the manifesto building process, people told us about NEET. They don't like its imposition on Tamil people. They told us of a young Tamil girl Anitha who committed suicide due to this.

If you read our manifesto, you will find a line in her memory. The line sayswe will not impose NEET on the youngsters of this state. It seems like a small line in the manifesto but it is actually an expression of the people of Tamil Nadu, he said.

He said that the 2109 Lok Sabha elections are a clash between two ideologies.

The Congress party is in favour of different ideas, different history, perspectives, different languages, different culture should live happily together and all voices must be heard. RSS and BJP say that only one idea should govern India, he said.

Cong manifesto is not Man Ki Baat, its Kam ki Baat: Rahul Gandhi

Taking a veiled dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's radio talk programme, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday evening's rally at Theni said his party's manifesto was not the "Man Ki Baat of one megalomaniac" but talked about work of the nation.

Addressing an election rally in this southern town in Tamil Nadu, he claimed Congress manifesto for the Lok Sabha polls was the voice of the entire nation and he was happy that many people lauded it.

"Congress manifesto is not the "Man Ki Baat of one megalomaniac this is Kam ki Baat (a talk about work) of the nation," he said.

He accused the Prime Minister of pursuing "negative economics" and said people's purchasing power collapsed and it led to goods left lying in factories.

In an apparent reference to allegations that the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu was subservient to the BJP, the Congress president said he was surprised Modi was 'convinced' he can run the state from Delhi.

"He has no idea of Tamil Nadu. I don't think this man has read anything about Tamil history. I dont think he understands Tamil language. He certainly does not under stand the Tamil spirit."

Also, may be a "few books of Karunanidhi ji. The gentleman has no idea of what Tamil Nadu is...I am confident our alliance is going to win," he said.

Rahul mocks PM's Make in India, says Made in China rules

Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Friday afternoon mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi's "Make in India" slogan, saying the country's market was now flooded with Chinese products in a rally at Tamil Nadu's Salem.

"He gave you an empty slogan called Make in India but wherever we look we see Made in China products," he said. Be it phone, shoes or shirt "you see made in China," he added. "Now we want real made in India and real made in Tamil Nadu," Gandhi said.

Under Modi, "Make in India" if a young Tamil entrepreneur wanted to start a business he had to knock on the doors of different government offices where "he had to pay bribes," the Congress chief alleged. "By the time he got his permissions the business is already failed," he said.

They could take the permission once the business was established and till such time the focus could be on making the business work and consolidating it, Gandhi said. "Once your business is established take permission."

"But when Tamil farmers are protesting in Jantar Mantar, he has not got even one word to say. They have to take off their clothes and still, he does not pay any attention. He does not have the decency to call them and ask them why they were upset."

The Prime Minister could also be seen sitting with Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya, but not with any poor person, he alleged. "There is not a single picture of the Prime Minister with a poor farmer or owner of a small business," the Congress chief charged.

Tamil Nadu will not be ruled from Nagpur, Stalin will be CM: Rahul

Earlier on Friday in a public rally in Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri, Rahul Gandhi slammed the Modi led-BJP government for indulging in hate politics against the people of the state and claimed he would launch a surgical strike on poverty if brought to power.

BJP wanted to indulge in hate politics against the people of Tamil Nadu. Without love, we cannot win the hearts of the people of this state, said Rahul Gandhi here.

Accusing the ruling party in the state, Rahul promised Tamil Nadu would be ruled from here and M K Stalin would be the CM.

We will not allow Tamil Nadu to be ruled from Nagpur. The state will be ruled from here, and Stalin will be the chief minister of the state, said Rahul Gandhi while concluding his address to the public in the state.

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Kolkata: Condemning Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for begging for votes in the name of military forces in the Lok Sabha Election Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Friday cautioned them to not to repeat their appeals. She also rallied her support behind more than 150 military veterans including eight chiefs who complained of 'politicisation of forces' by the BJP in a letter to President Ramnath Kovind.

Banerjee's warning to came a day after the ex-servicemen's move.

Addressing an election campaign rally at Kurseong in Darjeeling the West Bengal Chief Minister said, "Not only the Gorkha Regiment, we are proud of each and every regiment because our army have done so much for our country. But we will not follow the footsteps of Modi who begs for votes in the name of army during the polls. The army is the above all like the sky."

Sending a strong message to Modi she added, "Do not bring disrepute to their name. I have found that several persons who once served the army even those who were the chiefs said that whatever is happening in the name of the army is not right. I condemn it. I am with them." Referring to the PM, BJP chief and president BJP MP of Darjeeling Banjerjee noted, "Modi, Shah and Ahluwalia, you will come and go. But those who protect the country are also ready to sacrifice their lives. This is their tradition."

She told them, "Do not compare anything with them. Do not make your political identity to them. Their identity is the highest in the country." Echoing Ms Banerjee her nephew and Trinamul MP of Diamond Harbour Abhishek Banejree told a rally at Rajganj in Jalpaiguri, "Only three days ago the PM prayed for votes for the army. I do not think anyone can be more inferior, shameless and brutal than the person who uses the martyrdom of the brave soldiers for own political interest."

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Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Congress saying that the party has not left a single chance to pass 'derogatory' remarks on her in the past five years. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani on Friday launched a scathing attack on the Congress saying that the party has not left a single chance to pass derogatory remarks on her in the past five years.

In the last five years, the Congress leaders did not leave a single chance to insult and pass derogatory remarks about me. I only have one message for them: the more you insult me, the more you attack me, the harder I will work against Congress in Amethi, Irani told ANI here.

Dubbing Union minister Smriti Irani a "serial liar", the Congress on Friday alleged that she has "falsified records" of her educational qualifications and submitted contradictory affidavits to the Election Commission for which she should be disqualified.

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi took a jibe at her and said, "A new Hindi serial is going to come - Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi. Its opening line will be Qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ek degree aati hai, ek degree jaati hai, bante affidavit naye hain. (Qualification versions also changes, get moulded in new forms, one degree comes and the other goes, new affidavits get created)."

This is not the first time that Smriti's educational degree has been a subject of controversy.

Priyanka Chaturvedi also accused Irani of misusing her influence and power as a Union minister. "Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had been rubbishing Opposition's claim that she is not a graduate, on Thursday accepted that she enrolled for an undergraduate course in Delhi University but did not complete it," Chaturvedi said.

She should step down and also be disqualified from contesting the polls, Chaturvedi said. "We have no issue with the fact that Smriti Irani is not a graduate. The issue here is that she has lied repeatedly on oath and to the courts. People of India will see through these lies and give a befitting political reply to a 'serial liar'!"

It is clear that she has not only "falsified records" of her degrees but has submitted contradictory affidavits to the EC for which she is guilty of offence under Section 125A read with Section 33 of the Representation of Peoples Act, Chaturvedi said.

There was no immediate reaction from the BJP over the issue. Union minister and BJP candidate from Amethi Lok Sabha seat Smriti Irani on Thursday submitted to the Election Commission that she did not complete her graduation from Delhi University.

Read: In election affidavit, Smriti Irani says she is not a graduate

In her affidavit filed during her nomination, Irani, who is contesting against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, said she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993.

Irani has said she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I) - a three-year degree course - from Delhi University's School of Open Learning in 1994.

In her affidavit for 2014 polls, she had reportedly said she graduated from the university in 1994, triggering a row over the veracity of her claim, with opposition parties alleging she was not a graduate.

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Mumbai: A video of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi is being shared on social media in which she is addressing a gathering of Muslims in Uttar Pradeshs Sultanpur. She is heard saying that they should vote for her or else she may not be inclined to their requests.

Maneka Gandhi said: "This is important. I am winning. I am winning because of the love and support of people. But if my victory is without Muslims, I won't feel that good. Dil khatta ho jayega (Things will become sour). Then when a Muslim comes to me for work, I think let it be, how does it matter. It's all give and take, isn't it? We aren't all sons of Mahatma Gandhi, are we? (laughter). It's not that we keep on giving and then losing in the election. This victory will happen with or without you."

Later in the video, she said that she has already won the elections and they would need her.

This is your chance to lay the foundation. When the election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work we will see... I don't see any divides, I see only pain, sadness and love. So it is up to you," she added.

Gandhi, the MP from Pilibhit, began her campaign from the Sultanpur seat about 10 days ago. Currently, the seat is held by her son Varun Gandhi. Varun has shifted back to Pilibhit, a seat he won in 2009.

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Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said he will meet Election Commission (EC) on Saturday over the issue of malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the ongoing general elections. (Photo: File)

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said he will meet Election Commission (EC) on Saturday over the issue of malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in the ongoing general elections.

"Tomorrow I am meeting Election Commission and I am going to discuss the anomalies and technical problems EVMs are facing. Nobody knows what is happening in EVMs," Naidu told reporters here.

Yesterday, after polling in a few districts of Andhra Pradesh was disrupted briefly due to malfunctioning of electronic voting machines Naidu had requested the EC for an extension of polling time in the state to compensate for the time lost due to technical glitches in EVMs.

On Thursday, voting took place for all the 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh and for its 175 Assembly seats. The results will be out on May 23.

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Tirupur: The Tirupur parliament constituency has become the venue of a tough battle for the AIADMK and Communist Party of India (CPI), while political parties intensified their campaign, amid the Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) and Makkal Needhi Maiyam (MNM) also expected to play a key role in this election in deciding the winning candidate from this hosiery hub.

The AIADMK hold the Tirupur constituency and refused to give it up for its ally BJP due to its strong presence in the region and considering winning records in past elections. The former Minister MSM Anandan is contesting from Tirupur. Meanwhile the DMK alliance has put up a strong candidate of its CPI ally, K Subbarayan an experienced and former MP, to contest from the industrial hub.

The AIADMK is mainly emphasizing on Narendra Modi as the PM candidate, to attract voters of Tirupur industrial sector and MSM Anandan is promising for better growth and development of knitwear sector.

However, the impact of Goods and Services Tax (GST) and demonitisation will play crucial role in deciding the victory of AIADMK. An industrialist, said, "while big players of knitwear manufacturing sector may cope with the negative fallout of GST and demonetization, the small and medium sector have been completely affected by the changes. Many small scale industries could not survive under the twin impact and majority of SMEs are still struggling to overcome the negative impact of GST and demonetisation. It will go against the AIADMK and BJP alliance. The Tirupur North and Tirupur South areas are tough for AIADMK."

However, he noted that AIADMK believes in its strong support base in other four Assembly segments in Tirupur parliament constituency. "The Assembly constituencies of Gobichettipalayam, Bhavani, Perundurai and Anthiyur continue to be the major areas, where AIADMK has a stronghold. They hope for getting votes from rural areas, where still names of MGR and Jayalalithaa have impact."

The CPI comes with severe criticism against Prime Minister, Narendra Modi during campaigns to reap the votes from Tirupur industrial hub. Commenting on the trend, K S Babuji, general secretary of South India collar Shirts and Inner wear Small scale Manufacturers, said, "though AIADMK alliance came up earlier and attracted voters, the DMK and CPI, CPI(M) alliance has also projected strong candidate and campaigning for getting votes by using the wave against Modi. Now it has become a tough battle for both the parties. The minority votes also will be a major support for DMK alliance to increase their wining prospects."

The Makkal Needhi Maiyam (MNM) candidate V S Chandrakumar and Amma Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (AMMK) candidate S R Selvam will also be a key factor in deciding the trend in Tirupur constituency, said observers.

Suresh Kumar, a job work unit owner, said, young voters might increase vote bank for MNM and it is expected to get some significant votes. Meanwhile, the AMMK has brought S R Selvam from Gobichettipalayam to attract the Nadar community votes, since the population of that community is high in the Gobichettipalayam, Perundurai, Anthiyur and Bhavani areas. If the votes are scattered among these parties, the fight between AIADMK and CPI will get even more tough.
According to the Chief Ministers Office, the state government had proposed to the State Election Commission that the process for the zilla and mandal parishad elections may go on from April 22 to May 14.

Hyderabad: Politicians will have to get busy with another campaign, this time for the local body elections.

With the clearance from the Election Commission, state government is taking steps to conduct elections to the zilla parishad and mandal parishad in Telangana state before May 23  the results day for the Lok Sabha elections.

According to the Chief Ministers Office, the state government had proposed to the State Election Commission that the process for the zilla and mandal parishad elections may go on from April 22 to May 14. However, the results should be announced only after the announcement of the Lok Sabha election results. Recently, the State Election Commission sent its proposals to the government, expressing its preparedness to conduct these elections.

The Election Commission of India also agreed to the proposal to conduct these elections after completion of elections to the LS in the state.

In this backdrop, Telangana state Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao held discussions with the officers concerned on Friday at Pragathi Bhavan.

In March this year, the state government notified reserving chairperson posts of four zilla parishads for STs, six each for SCs and BCs. According to the notification, 50 per cent of the total 32 zilla parishad chairperson posts have been reserved for women and this was decided by drawing lots in the presence of representatives of political parties as per the provisions of the TS Panchayat Raj Act, 2018.

Bhadradri Kothagudem, Mahbubabad, Adilabad and Kumurambheem Asifabad ZP chairperson posts are reserved for ST candidates and chairman posts of Mancherial, Warangal urban, Karimnagar, Nagarkurnool, Jayashankar Bhupalpally and Khammam are reserved for SCs.

Peddapalli, Narayanpet, Jagtial, Jogulamba Gadwal, Medak and Kamareddy zilla parishad chairman posts are reserved for BCs.

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Koppal: Turning the heat on the coalition government in Karnataka, PM Narendra Modi on Friday charged that the previous "10 per cent commission" government of the Congress had been replaced by a "20 per cent commission government" as the Congress and JD(S) had joined hands.

Addressing an enthusiastic BJP rally at Koppal, Mr Modi slammed CM H.D. Kumaraswamy for insulting the forces by remarking that those who cannot afford two square meals a day, join the Army. "What kind of thinking is this, Kumaraswamy ji?," he asked.

The PM heaped ridicule on PWD Minister H.D. Revanna who had said he would retire if Modi was re-elected saying his father Deve Gowda had said the same thing during the 2014 elections.
Hyderabad: TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Friday told the Election Commission that the complaint against his March 17 Karimnagar speech was truncated and misled the poll panel on its contents.

Mr Rao, replying as party president, submitted his reply to the notice issued by the EC on a complaint filed by VHP state president M. Rama Raju who stated that he had made derogatory comments against Hindus.

Mr Raos counsel J. Ramachandra Rao, the additional advocate general, accompanied by MLC Srinivas Reddy, submitted the reply to additional chief electoral officer Jyothi Buddha Prakash. It said the phrases used by Mr Rao were aimed at promoting secularism.

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5G promises super-fast connections, which evangelists say will transform the way we live our lives, enabling everything from self-driving cars to augmented-reality glasses and downloading a feature-length film to your phone in seconds.

They may look like regular cows, but a herd of Friesian dairy cattle at a British farm are internet pioneers and they are enjoying the benefits of 5G connectivity before you. Cisco Systems Inc, which is developing network infrastructure for the emerging technology, has set up 5G testbeds to trial wireless and mobile connectivity in three rural locations.

5G promises super-fast connections, which evangelists say will transform the way we live our lives, enabling everything from self-driving cars to augmented-reality glasses and downloading a feature-length film to your phone in seconds.

While it is being used in pockets of pilot studies around the world, the first near-nationwide coverage is not expected in countries such as China, Japan or the United States until 2023, according to industry analysts.

For the cows, among the 5G-connected gadgets, they are wearing is a collar that controls a robotic milking system.

When the cow feels ready to be milked it will approach machine gates that will automatically open. The device recognises the individual to precisely latch on to its teats for milking, while the cow munches on a food reward.

At the government-funded Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI Centre) in Shepton Mallet, in southwest England, around 50 of the 180-strong herd is fitted with the 5G smart collars and health-monitoring ear tags.

The gadgets do not harm the cows and the monitoring allows handlers to see any signs of distress.

We are testing the ability of 5G to transmit the data from our sensors much quicker, and not via the farms PC and a slow broadband internet connection, said Duncan Forbes, Project Manager at the Agri-Epi Centre.

And the significance of that is it means that this sort of technology could be taken up ... not just on farms but on rural communities right across the country.

The working dairy, set up by Agri-EPI with the support of Britains innovation agency, uses a range of technology; including automated brushes that rotate when the cow rubs up against them, sensor-operated curtains that open depending on the weather, and a smart feeding system that automatically delivers food in the barn via ceiling-mounted rails.

We can connect every cow, we can connect every animal on this farm, Ciscos Nick Chrissos said.

Thats what 5G can do for farming  really unleashes the power that we have within this farm, everywhere around the UK and everywhere around the world.

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This basically means you will be able to do real-time collaboration in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, without worrying about the original format. (Photo: ANI)

Online editing is a pain if you have to cross-collaborate using Microsoft Office suite and Googles own Docs and other productivity apps.

Until now, you had to convert a Microsoft Office into Googles format before you could edit, comment, or collaborate inside Docs. This is all set to change.

Now Google has announced that it is adding native support for Microsofts Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats - .docx, .docx, .dot, .xls, xlsx, .xlsm, .xlt, .ppt, .pps, .pot, and .pptx, The Verge reports.

This basically means you will be able to do real-time collaboration in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, without worrying about the original format.

Google also announced that it will allow users to create and collaborate on Googles productivity apps through Dropbox Business as well.

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5Gs leading role in internet-connected products ranging from self-driving cars and smart cities to augmented reality and artificial intelligence. (Photo: AP)

Chinas Huawei Technologies said on April 11, the security of its telecoms network equipment was as tight as any, and hit back at the US government for briefing Washingtons allies against it.

Huawei, the global market leader, is the target of a campaign by Washington, which has barred it from next-generation 5G networks due to concerns over its ties to the Chinese government and says Western countries should block its technology.

The issue is crucial because of 5Gs leading role in internet-connected products ranging from self-driving cars and smart cities to augmented reality and artificial intelligence.

We are probably the most tested vendor in the world, Huaweis cybersecurity director Sophie Batas told journalists at its new cybersecurity centre in Brussels.

She criticised comments by Robert Strayer, US State Department deputy assistant secretary for cyber, international communications and information policy, who told journalists on April 10, that countries adopting risk-based security frameworks for 5G would lead to Huawei being banned.

I have difficulty believing that a government like the United States organised a press conference yesterday to single out one particular company, and I wonder why it is going so far, she said.

The two countries are also embroiled in a long-running trade dispute.

Batas said there was a range of tests customers could do on Huawei products at the centre and similar facilities in several countries, as well as hiring independent third-party evaluators.

She said law firms Zhong Lun, Clifford Chance and Ernst & Young had looked into Chinas intelligence laws and concluded that did not allow Beijing to install backdoor features in a companys equipment.

Last month, Germany set tougher criteria for vendors supplying telecoms network equipment there but stopped short of singling out Huawei, instead of saying the same rules should apply to all vendors.

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Assange was offered refuge in 2012 by Ecuadors then-president Rafael Correa, but his relationship with Ecuador soured under Correas successor Lenin Moreno, who has said Assange violated the terms of his asylum. (Photo:AP)

British police dragged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of Ecuadors embassy on Thursday after his seven-year asylum was revoked, paving the way for his extradition to the United States for one of the biggest ever leaks of classified information.

Hours after the frail-looking Assange, with white hair and a long beard, was carried head-first by at least seven men out of the London embassy and into a waiting police van, US officials announced he had been charged with a single count of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

As he was being hauled out of the embassy in a dramatic scene shortly after 0900 GMT after Ecuador terminated his asylum, the Australian-born Assange was heard shouting, This is unlawful, Im not leaving.

British Prime Minister Theresa May hailed the news in parliament, to cheers and cries of Hear, hear! from lawmakers.

But in Washington, President Donald Trump, who in 2016 said I love WikiLeaks after the website released emails that US authorities have said were hacked by Russia to harm his election opponent Hillary Clinton, told reporters he had no opinion on the charges against Assange.

I know nothing about WikiLeaks. Its not my thing, Trump said.

Assange gave a thumbs up in handcuffs as he was taken from a police station to a London court, where he pronounced himself not guilty of failing to surrender in 2012.

Judge Michael Snow called Assange, wearing a black jacket and black shirt, a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests and convicted him of skipping bail. Sentencing will be at a later date.

Police said they arrested Assange, 47, after being invited into the embassy following Ecuadors withdrawal of asylum. He took refuge there in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was later dropped.

Assange was carried out of the building - located behind the luxury department store Harrods - carrying a copy of Gore Vidals History of The National Security State, which he continued reading in court.

In Washington, the US Justice Department said Assange was charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer as part of a 2010 leak by WikiLeaks of hundreds of thousands of US military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and American diplomatic communications. Legal experts said more US charges could be coming.

The indictment was made secretly in March 2018 and unsealed on Thursday. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted, with legal experts saying more charges were possible.

Ecuador suspended Julian Assanges citizenship and accused him and others at WikiLeaks of collaborating in attempts to destabilise the Andean nations government.

Assange was offered refuge in 2012 by Ecuadors then-president Rafael Correa, but his relationship with Ecuador soured under Correas successor Lenin Moreno, who has said Assange violated the terms of his asylum. Ecuador accused Assange of leaking information about Morenos personal life.

Lawyers for Assange said he may risk torture and his life would be in danger if he were to be extradited to the United States.

The arrest, after years holed up in a few cramped rooms at the embassy, represented one of the most sensational turns in a tumultuous life that have transformed the computer programmer into a fugitive wanted by the United States.

The whole House will welcome the news this morning that the Metropolitan Police have arrested Julian Assange, arrested for breach of bail after nearly seven years in the Ecuadorean embassy, May said.

Ecuadors foreign minister said his country was not aware of any active extradition requests for Assange before it terminated his asylum. Supporters of Assange said Ecuador had betrayed him at the behest of Washington, illegally ended his asylum and engineered a dark moment for press freedom.

Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges, Barry Pollack, a lawyer for Assange, said in a statement reacting to the US indictment.

His admirers have hailed Assange as a hero for exposing what they describe as abuse of power by modern states and for championing free speech. His detractors have painted him as a dangerous figure complicit in Russian efforts to undermine the West and US security, and dispute that he is a journalist.

Under the guise of transparency, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have effectively acted as an arm of the Russian intelligence services for years, US Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a Republican, said. Hopefully, he will now face justice.

The Kremlin said it hoped Assanges rights would not be violated.

WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret US diplomatic cables that laid bare critical US appraisals of world leaders, from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.

Assange made international headlines in 2010 when WikiLeaks published a classified US military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters in Baghdad that killed a dozen people, including two Reuters news staff.

Assanges US indictment arose from a long-running criminal investigation dating back to the administration of former President Barack Obama. It was triggered in part by WikiLeaks publication in 2010 of US military reports about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the diplomatic communications - disclosures that embarrassed the United States and strained relations with allies.

The Justice Department said Assange was arrested under an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain.

The indictment said Assange in March 2010 engaged in a conspiracy to assist Manning, formerly named Bradley Manning, in cracking a password stored on US Department of Defence computers connected to a US government network used for classified documents and communications.

Mannings lawyers demanded the release of the former intelligence analyst, jailed last month after being held in contempt by a judge in Virginia for refusing to testify before a grand jury, and said continued detention would be purely punitive.

A Swedish lawyer representing the alleged rape victim said she would push to have prosecutors reopen the case, but a retired senior prosecutor and chairman of NGO Victim Support Sweden said that may be difficult.

Britain said no person was above the law.

Julian Assange is no hero, he has hidden from the truth for years and years, British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said.

Its not so much Julian Assange being held hostage in the Ecuadorean embassy, its actually Julian Assange holding the Ecuadorean embassy hostage in a situation that was absolutely intolerable for them.

Friends of Assange said his solitary existence in the embassy was tough on him.

It was a miserable existence and I could see it was a strain on him, but a strain he managed rather well, said Vaughan Smith, a friend who had visited Assange. The thing that was most difficult for Julian was the solitude.

He was very tough, but the last year in particular was very difficult. He was constantly being surveilled and spied upon. There was no privacy for him, Smith said.

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. The website published secret official information, infuriating the United States and other countries. WikiLeaks said Ecuador had illegally terminated his political asylum in violation of international law.

Assanges critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom, said Edward Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor who fled to Moscow after revealing massive US intelligence gathering.

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The Democratic lawmaker said he would offer more bills in the next month or two, ideally with Republican colleagues as a co-sponsor. (Photo: AP)

US Senator Mark Warner, who co-sponsored legislation this week to ban deceptive practices by social media companies, said on April 11, he was eyeing additional bills aimed at limiting hate speech and allowing users to move their data across platforms.

The Democratic lawmaker said he would offer more bills in the next month or two, ideally with Republican colleagues as a co-sponsor.

The additional legislation could focus on hate speech, data portability, which gives social media users the ability to easily take their data to another site, and transparency about who or what is on the other side of an internet conversation, Warner said in an interview with Reuters.

On April 9, Warner joined with Republican Senator Deb Fischer to introduce a bill to bar online platforms like Facebook Inc or Alphabet Incs Google from misleading people into giving personal data to companies or otherwise tricking them.

It would also ban online platforms with more than 100 million monthly active users from designing addicting games or other websites for children under age thirteen.

Warner is eager to increase transparency on social media platforms.

Shouldnt we have the right to know whether were being contacted by a human being versus a bot when youre on social media? he said.

Issues of engagement and data collection are key for social media companies since they use information gathered about users to sell advertisements, a key source of profit.

Warner noted the real-life implications of hate speech on social media, pointing to mass killings in New Zealand and Pittsburgh.

In a massacre in New Zealand, a gunman opened fire in two mosques on March 15, killing fifty people as he broadcast the attack live on Facebook. Last year, eleven people were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The man accused in the killings had made aggressive anti-semitic comments in online forums.

Some of the proposed legislation could be rolled into a federal privacy bill being drafted in Congress. That bill was prompted by Californias data privacy law that imposes fines of up to USD 7,500 on large companies for intentional failure to disclose data collection or delete user data on request, or for selling others data without permission. It takes effect next year.

I want technology to stay. I want the social media platforms to stay, Warner said. But I do think the days of the wild wild west where anything goes, people just arent going to allow it.

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The Pentagon says the restrictions are not a blanket ban. (Photo:AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump's controversial ban on transgender Americans in the military comes into force on Friday following a protracted legal battle.

Trump's administration has insisted that there is "too great a risk to military effectiveness and lethality" to allow transgender people to serve -- reversing a policy enacted under his predecessor Barack Obama.

The Pentagon says the restrictions are not a blanket ban, but they would bar many if not most people who identify as transgender from enlisting in America's armed forces.

The policy -- which has undergone various iterations since Trump first announced it on Twitter in July 2017 -- has been widely criticized by rights activists and has been repeatedly challenged in court.

The US Supreme Court ultimately ruled in January that the policy could take effect pending the outcome of ongoing litigation.

Under the latest version of Trump's policy, no one who has transitioned to another gender, been diagnosed with "gender dysphoria" or who requires hormone treatment will be able to enlist.

But currently enlisted troops who have already transitioned or have requested gender reassignment surgery prior to Friday will be allowed to remain in the military.

For Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a research institute focusing on sexual minorities in the military, the policy amounts to a transgender ban.

"When (the Department of Defense) disqualifies all applicants with a history of gender dysphoria (unless they renounce transgender identity for years) and all applicants who have ever received treatment for gender dysphoria, that is a ban," Belkin said.

The policy "depends on directly banning the transgender people who are immediately identifiable and threatening the rest, forcing them to remain silent and invisible," he said.

"It is 'don't ask, don't tell' all over again," said Belkin, referring to the policy under which gay service members had to hide their sexual orientation or face dismissal from the military.

Under the Obama-era policy, transgender recruits were to start being accepted by July 1, 2017. The Trump administration postponed that date to January 1, 2018, before deciding to reverse the policy entirely.

The Pentagon estimates that 9,000 people who identify as transgender are currently serving in the military, out of a total of 1.3 million active-duty personnel. Of this figure, a thousand say they have undergone gender reassignment surgery or want to do so.

But according to transgender rights activists, the figure is higher.

"As many as 15,000 transgender service members stand to lose their jobs," Army Staff Sergeant Patricia King, who is transgender, told ABC News this week.

"For those of us who are grandfathered in because we've already come out and we already have a diagnosis, there's the possibility for systematic discrimination," King said.

The new policy is "indefensible," Meghan McCain, daughter of the late senator John McCain, wrote on Twitter.

"This discriminatory policy will lead Transgender service members, patriots who have decided to serve their nation, to live in the shadows," she wrote.
Musks comment comes after Amazon hired a SpaceX executive, Rajeev Badyal, who was earlier fired by the SpaceX CEO. (Photo:AP)

California: Amazon a few days earlier confirmed that it was working on a project to launch a network of satellites for super fast internet services. The news of the launch irked Jeff Bezos competitor Elon Musk.

Responding to the news report on Amazons satellite launch on Twitter, Mr Musk tagged the Amazon CEO calling him a copycat by using a cat emoticon in his tweet.

SpaceX, which is owned by Elon Musk, is among several other companies that are looking to deliver internet to remote areas.

Last Year, SpaceX launched two test satellites that aimed to put over 4000 satellites into orbit. According to recent news coming from Amazon, their highly anticipated Project Kuiper will put 3236 satellites in low orbit that would provide high speed broadband connectivity, low-latency to underdeveloped and unserved communites around the globe.

Musks comment comes after Amazon hired a SpaceX executive, Rajeev Badyal, who was earlier fired by the SpaceX CEO. Badyal is now managing the ongoing satellite project for Amazon.

According to news agency AFP, several companies have been attempting to use space-based internet systems since the 1990s including one backed by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Saudi royal family investors.
Craig, 74, faces up to 10 years in prison for charges of making false statements and violating a lobbying law. (Photo:AP)

Washington: Greg Craig, a former White House counsel in the Obama administration, was charged on Thursday with lying about work he performed in 2012 for Ukraine in a case that grew out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Craig, 74, faces up to 10 years in prison for charges of making false statements and violating a lobbying law.

He is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his work on a 2012 report aimed at justifying the prosecution of a political enemy of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-aligned president of Ukraine at the time.Craig's lawyers declined immediate comment.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the New York law firm that produced the report, agreed in January to turn over the USD 4.6 million it was paid and retroactively register as a foreign agent, as part of a settlement with the Justice Department

Skadden produced the 187-page report at the behest of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trump's presidential campaign who is currently serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence for lobbying violations and financial crimes.Manafort was apparently happy with Craig's work

"You are THE MAN, he wrote Craig in an email after the report received favourable media coverage, according to the indictment.The report was meant to be an objective review of the Ukrainian government's prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, the country's former prime minister who was convicted in 2011 on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.

It was used by Yanukovych's government to justify Tymoshenko's pretrial detention to the European Court of Human Rights and influence U.S lawmakers

Yanukovich was one of Manafort's main lobbying clients.According to the indictment, Craig covered up aspects of his work in order to avoid registering as a foreign agent under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a rarely enforced law that was enacted in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda.

Had Craig complied with the law, he would have been forced to reveal that the report was funded by a private Ukranian citizen, not the government, and disclose that Skadden was simultaneously helping out with Tymoshenko's prosecution on other charges

"That would do enormous damage to the credibility" of the report, Craig wrote in an email to other Skadden attorneys, according to the indictment.Craig privately had reservations about Tymoshenko's treatment but left them out of the report, the indictment said."Evidence of criminal intent - i.e., that she intended to commit a crime - is virtually non-existent," he wrote in a memorandum that was not included in the report, according to the charges.The case stems from Mueller's 22-month investigation into whether Trump's presidential campaign worked with Russia to influence 2016 election.

That probe led to charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former key Trump allies, but Attorney General William Barr said last month that Mueller did not find enough evidence to charge Trump or others with criminal conspiracy.Barr also said that he decided there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice

He is expected to release a redacted version of Mueller's final report to Congress next week.
Lawyers for Assange did not respond to requests for comment. (Photo: File)

Ecuador/Washington: Ecuador's decision to abruptly end Julian Assange's seven-year asylum in its London embassy on Thursday followed a long deterioration in relations, driven in part by suspicions he was secretly fuelling corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno.

British police on Thursday arrested the WikiLeaks founder, who sought asylum in the Andean nation's diplomatic mission during the government of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa - who saw Assange as a hero for leaking secret US documents.

By contrast, Moreno took a dim view of Assange when he took office in 2017, ordering the Australian hacker to cut back his online political commentary, stop riding his skateboard in the halls of the embassy and clean up after his pet cat.

Moreno's government accused WikiLeaks of being behind an anonymous website that said Moreno's brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a UN agency.

Moreno denies wrongdoing.

The leaked materials, dubbed the "INA Papers," contained private photographs of Moreno and his family. After the release of the materials, Moreno said that Assange had no right to "hack private accounts and phones," without directly accusing him.

WikiLeaks tweeted about the reports but, in messages and statements to Reuters, strongly denied that Assange was responsible for the leaks or had anything to do with their initial publication.

Embassy Behaviour

Ecuadorean government figures on Thursday publicly described what they called Assange's unacceptable and ungrateful behaviour in the embassy. The government said it had spent USD 6.2 million on his upkeep and security between 2012 and 2018.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said Assange had been using a mobile phone that was not registered with the embassy and had warned the ambassador in January that he had installed panic buttons that he would activate if he considered his life at risk.

"It's strange that Assange has insisted on being the victim," Valencia told Ecuador's National Assembly.

The interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, told reporters on Thursday that Assange had been "allowed to do things like put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature."

Valencia told the congress that embassy cleaning staff described "improper hygienic conduct" throughout Assange's stay, adding that a lawyer representing Assange had attributed the issue to "stomach problems."

Lawyers for Assange did not respond to requests for comment. Vaughan Smith, a friend and founder of London's press Frontline Club who visited Assange late last week, told Reuters he believed the faeces allegation was false.

"Julian has been under stress but seemed in a balanced frame of mind every time I have seen him. It doesn't seem in character," Smith said.

Staffing Change

Friends of Assange who visited him inside the embassy over the last several months say that since Moreno became president, almost the entire embassy staff was replaced.

The foreign ministry named a new ambassador after Moreno took office and fired one official, Fidel Narvaez, seen as close to Assange.

While embassy staffers were friendly to Assange during Correa's presidency, Moreno's new diplomats were polite to visitors but hostile to Assange, his friends said.

In early February, according to Ecuadorean government memos released by Assange's supporters, Ecuador complained to Assange that he had deliberately pointed a studio lamp at a security camera the embassy had installed in a room where Assange was receiving visitors.

Later that month, the ambassador sent Assange a memo complaining that he had "shown once again an unacceptable behaviour" by playing a radio loudly while meeting visitors. "This action disturbed the work being carried out by the embassy," the ambassador said.

Assange had taken refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was later dropped.

US officials announced after his arrest on Thursday that he had been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, paving the way for his extradition.

Correa, in an interview with Reuters in Brussels, said Moreno had given Assange "to his executioners."

Asked whether he had worked with Wikileaks to leak the INA documents, he did not directly respond. He said the documents showed the "rottenness" within Moreno's family.

"I apologise on behalf of the Ecuadorean people. A government like that - such a treacherous, treacherous president - does not represent us," Correa said.

Valencia declined to comment on criticisms of Moreno.

Correa is embroiled in a legal battle with prosecutors pursuing a case involving the kidnapping in 2012 of an opposition lawmaker. An court in Ecuador last year ordered him to be imprisoned pending a trial and issued an international arrest warrant. Correa denies the charge.
Moon was in Washington for talks that he hoped would help put denuclearization with North Korea back on track. (Photo:AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump said he and South Korean President Moon Jae-in will discuss North Korea during their White House meeting on Thursday, including potential additional summits with the North's leader, Kim Jong Un.

Trump said good things have come out of negotiations with North Korea even though Washington did not get what it wanted from the meetings with Kim. He said great progress was made and that he got to know and respect the North Korean leader.

Moon was in Washington for talks that he hoped would help put denuclearization with North Korea back on track after a failed summit between the United States and North Korean leaders in February.

Ahead of his trip, aides to Moon stressed the need to revive U.S.-North Korea talks as soon as possible after a second summit between Trump and Kim collapsed in Hanoi on Feb. 28.

Trump extended his wishes to Kim in remarks with Moon by his side, while Moon told Trump that there was a dramatic turnaround in the situation on the Korean Peninsula after Trump's first meeting with Kim.

Moon said he believed Trump's diplomacy has led to a reduction in military tension and he believes the issues can be resolved through dialogue.
Vatican City: Pope Francis, in a dramatic gesture after an unprecedented retreat at the Vatican, knelt to kiss the feet of South Sudan's previously warring leaders on Thursday as he urged them to not return to a civil war.

He appealed to President Salva Kiir, his former deputy turned rebel leader Riek Machar, and three other vice presidents to respect an armistice they signed and commit to forming a unity government next month.

"I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward. There will be many problems but they will not overcome us. Resolve your problems," Francis said in improvised remarks.

The leaders appeared to be stunned as the 82-year-old pope, who suffers from chronic leg pain, was helped by aides as he knelt with difficulty to kiss the shoes of the two main opposing leaders and several other people in the room.

His appeal was made even more pressing as anxiety grew in South Sudan that Thursday's coup in neighbouring Sudan might put at risk the fragile peace deal that ended South Sudan's brutal five-year civil war.

The Vatican brought together South Sudanese leaders for 24 hours of prayer and preaching inside the pope's residence in an attempt to heal bitter divisions before the country is due to set up a unity government.

"There will be struggles, disagreements among you but keep them within you, inside the office, so to speak," Francis said in Italian as an aide translated into English. "But in front of the people, hold hands united. So, as simple citizens, you will become fathers of the nation."

Sudan, which is predominantly Muslim, and the mainly Christian south fought for decades before South Sudan became independent in 2011. South Sudan plunged into civil war two years later after Kiir, a Dinka, fired Machar, from the Nuer ethnic group, from the vice presidency.

About 400,000 people died and more than a third of the country's 12 million people were uprooted, sparking Africa's worst refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The two sides signed a power-sharing deal in September calling on the main rival factions to assemble, screen and train their respective forces to create a national army before the formation of a unity government next month.

In his prepared address earlier on Thursday, Francis said South Sudan's people were exhausted by war and the leaders had a duty to build their young nation in justice.

He also repeated his wish to visit the country along with other religious leaders to solidify the peace.

Others who attended the retreat were the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who is spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican community, members of the South Sudan Council of Churches, and other Catholic and Presbyterian Church leaders from Africa. Welby had proposed the idea of the retreat to the pope.
Quetta: At least 21 people were killed and 50 others injured in a suicide bombing at a crowded market in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province on Friday, in an attack believed to be targeting the Shiite Hazara ethnic minority community.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and ordered an inquiry. The explosion at around 7:35 AM took place in the busy wholesale market area of Hazarganj in Quetta where Hazaras and other traders come daily to buy fruits and vegetables to later sell at their shops in other parts of the city. Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that the blast, which occurred when the vegetable and fruit sacks were being loaded onto trucks by the traders, targeted the Hazara ethnic community.

However, Home Minister Ziaullah Langove, in a press conference, said that the blast was not targeting "a specific community". "Our guess is that no specific community was targeted. Marri Baloch and Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were among those killed as well.

The numbers of the Hazara community were just greater," Langove said. He also described the blast as a suicide attack. Officials said that 21 people have been killed and 50 others injured in the blast.

An Edhi welfare trust rescue official at the scene of the blast said he had counted around 21 bodies being taken to hospitals. At least eight of those killed in the bomb blast are from the Hazara community, Cheema said.

The security forces fear the death toll may rise, GEO News reported. Buildings located nearby were also damaged in the blast, police said. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Cheema said that due to the blast, security has been provided to shopkeepers and traders at the market. "Traders who come from other parts of the city to buy fruits and vegetables at the market are escorted by police and Frontier Corp personnel," the officer said.

Cheema said around 70 traders had come to the market in different vehicles and were escorted by the FC and Police. He said that the police and FC personnel had put up blocks at the entrance and exit of the market.

"The security forces are here, police are here. What more can we do? We secure them (the community) and travel back and forth with them. If something is hidden in a shop, then the shopkeepers will need to be probed," the officer said.

Hazaras make up a significant minority group in Pakistan and most of them live in Quetta. This is not the first time that the Hazara community has been targeted by militants in the province. Qadir Nayil, a Hazara community leader, asked the government to ensure better protection.

"Once again our people were the target and once again we will have to bury our dear ones," he said. There have been similar terror attacks in the Hazarganj area of Quetta in the past. The market serves as a wholesale market for fruits and vegetables.

Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal condemned the attack and assured that the elements involved in the attack and those leading them would be proceeded against. "People who have an extremist mindset are a menace to the society. We must foil the conspiracy to disrupt peace," he said.

Nearly half-a-million Hazaras have settled in Balochistan, many of them after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan. The National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) last year stated that 509 members of the Hazara community were killed and 627 injured in various incidents of terrorism in Quetta from January 2012 to December 2017.

NCHR official Fazeela Alyani earlier said that all these lives were lost in Quetta. According to the NCHR, targeted killings, suicide attacks and bomb blasts have inflicted harm to daily life, education, and business activities of ethnic Hazara community members in Balochistan's largest city Quetta.

Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan's largest and poorest province, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies.
The Election Commission on Thursday asked the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi to bar the NaMo TV from airing any political content or publicity material which were not cleared by the Media Management and Monitoring Committee (MCMC) set up by him in the National Capital Territory.

The EC acted after the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi, Ranbir Singh, confirmed that the content being aired on the NaMo TV has not been pre-certified by the MCMC constituted by his office.

The commission wrote to the CEO Delhi underlining that as long as the Lok Sabha elections were not over and the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) was in force, all political advertisements and all recorded programmes with political contents must be pre-certified by the MCMC before being telecast.

The MCC came into force on March 10 when the EC declared the schedule of five-phase polling for the elections to the Lok Sabha as well as state assemblies of Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim and Odisha. The first phase polling took place on Thursday and the last phase would be held on May 19, while the counting of votes would begin early on May 23.

Further, any political publicity materials/contents, being displayed on electronic media without the requisite pre-certification from competent authority (MCMC in this case) should be removed immediately and any political content shall only be permitted strictly in accordance with the ECI instructions in this regard, the EC said in a communique to Singh.

The commission directed CEO Delhi to ensure implementation of its instructions and send a compliance report immediately.

The NaMo TV had a quiet launch on March 31.

It has since been airing mostly Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speeches in the election rallies as well as other contents that are in favour of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) wrote to the EC raising the question if a TV channel could be launched exclusively to publicize Prime Minister's political speeches in election rallies at a time when the MCC was in force. The Congress too questioned the launch of the NaMo TV just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting conveyed the EC that the NaMo TV is an advertisement platform made available by the Direct-to-Home broadcast service providers.

The poll-panel stated that it was told that the NaMo TV / Content TV was a platform DTH operator offered to the Bharatiya Janata Party in exchange of payment.

The EC had earlier asked CEO Delhi to check if the content aired on the NaMo TV was pre-certified by the MCMC. The CEO Delhi replied to the EC that while the logo of the NaMo TV had been cleared by it, the content aired on the TV had not been pre-certified by its MCMC.
BJP president Amit Shah Friday described the recent Naxal attack in Dantewada, wherein a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed, as a "political conspiracy" and sought a CBI probe into it.

Addressing an election rally in Dongargaon town in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, he also sought to know whether Congress chief Rahul Gandhi supported National Conference leader Omar Abdullah's demand for having a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir.

"Our MLA Bheema Mandavi was killed in the Naxal attack. I pay my tribute to him and pray that the departed soul rests in peace. It was not a normal incident and it seems to be a political conspiracy," Shah said.

"Mandavi's wife has demanded a CBI probe into the attack. If the chief minister (Bhupesh Baghel) do not want to hide anything, he should get the incident probed by the central agency. A neutral probe should be carried out into the attack," he said.

On April 9, Mandavi, an MLA from Dantewada, and four police personnel were killed when Naxals blew up their vehicle with an IED near Shyamgiri village in the district.

Shah also targeted Baghel for banning the CBI from investigating any fresh cases in the state without seeking the state government's consent.

"Why is Bhupesh Baghel so afraid of the CBI? The Raman Singh government had never banned the CBI," he said.

Slamming Omar Abdullah over his demand for separate PM for Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP chief said Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker was alive.

"Omar Abdullah has advocated for a prime minister in Kashmir. Do you think it is possible that a country can have two PMs? They wanted to separate Kashmir from India.

"Rahul Gandhi is silent over it. He should clarify whether he supports or opposes Abdullah's statement," Shah said, adding, "Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive."

Taking a dig at the Congress, the BJP leader claimed sadness gripped the grand old party and Pakistan following the air strikes over terror camps in Balakot in retaliation to the Pulwama terror attack.

"During the 10 years of UPA rule, when terror attacks happened, no reply was given. But when Pulwama terror attack took place, the Indian Air Force carried out air strike and demolished the terror camps inside Pakistan," he said.

"When the entire country celebrated the air strike, there was grief in Pakistan and in the office of Congress," Shah claimed.

The BJP has fielded its state general secretary Santosh Pandey in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency. The constituency will go to polls in the third phase on April 23.
As promised in the budget, the centre has carved a separate department for fisheries out of the Ministry of Agriculture and has released Rs 500 crore in the initial stage to implement welfare schemes for fishermen community, BJP National Joint Organising Secretary B L Santhosh said on Thursday.

In the next new government, the department for fisheries will have a separate minister, Santosh said during a fishermens meet, organised by BJP Fisheries Cell, at Sudheendra Hall in Canara Girls High School in Dongarakeri.

One of the objectives of the Modi-led central government is the development of people who are in the lower strata of the societal pyramid. The prime minister has ensured the progress of people from all walks of life, he added.

Laying thrust on the development of fishermen community, the central government has initiated Ocean Smart programme, which provides the information on the availability of fish in the sea, based on latest technology. The programme benefits around five lakh fishermen, Santhosh said.

He, further, said, Many programmes which were not taken up or stagnant during the tenure of the UPA-led central government were successfully completed by the NDA-led government. As many as 18,600 villages have been provided with power connection while 9.70 crore households have been provided with toilets.

A fund of Rs 6.07 lakh crore was provided to the beneficiaries of 453 government schemes, through direct benefit transfer (DBT). Subsidies were credited to the bank account of the beneficiaries. These measures prevented a colossal scale of corruption.

Members of fishermens association submitted a memorandum to Santhosh requesting facilities to fishermen on par with the farmers.

Santhosh said that the central government had now considered fisheries as an industry to ensure more facilities to the community. The members have also urged centre to scrap road cess for vehicles transporting fish and also to increase the quantity of kerosene for traditional fisheries boats in the budget.

Kaup MLA Lalaji R Mendon said there was a need to implement regulations to ensure facilities to traditional boat fishing.

The management of fisheries ports should be handed over to fishermen. He, meanwhile, urged fishermen community to stay united and fight for their causes.

Ullal Town Municipal Council President Babu Bangera, KFDC former chairman Ramachandar Baikampadi, leaders Nithin Kumar, Pratap Simha Nayak, Gopalakrishna Herale and Shobhendra Sasihitlu were present.
Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indian democracy is at stake. All secular forces should unitedly fight him, said JD(S) Supremo and former PM H D Deve Gowda.

Campaigning for the Congress-JD(S) coalition candidate (his grandson) Prajwal Revanna at the APMC ground, in Kadur on Thursday, he said that the prime minister had not responded to the woes of the states coconut growers.

Deve Gowda said that PM Modi had been underplaying the questions posed by AICC president Rahul Gandhi.

The JD(S)-Congress alliance was inevitable to oust autocratic Narendra Modi, said Gowda adding that he and Siddaramaiah would carry out joint campaigns in Mandya, Mysuru and Chamarajanagar.

Speaking on the occasion, former CM Siddaramaiah said that the BJP had been cheating people with fake assurances. BJP needs to be taught a lesson by voters, he remarked.

Where was Chowkidar Modi when Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi plundered the wealth of the nation and fled the country? The chowkidar was shooting a film when Pulwama attack took place, Siddaramaiah alleged.

He said: Modi did not respond to the pleas by the all-party delegation which requested him to waive farm loans taken from nationalised banks. Instead, he waived loans availed by businessmen. He preaches patriotism but wishes Nawaz Sharif by going to Pakistan. Modi is the first prime minister who has lied the most .

Siddaramaiah termed the parliamentary election a war between BJP and secular forces. He said that coalition candidates would win all 28 parliamentary seats in the state. He stated that the coalition government would release necessary funds for permanent irrigation projects in Kadur.

Former MLA Y S V Datta said that the occasion was historic as it had both Deve Gowda and Siddaramaiah on one platform. Both leaders are known for their foresightedness, he lauded.

Datta said that during Gowdas tenure hundreds of villages in Kadur were upgraded under PMGSY. Yeddyurappa who won the bypolls in 2010, did not keep up his promise of adopting Kadur. Siddaramaiah as an opposition MLA then had released over Rs 800 crore to Kadur taluk, Datta said and urged the government to sanction Rs 840 crore under Gondi project for the rejuvenation of lakes in Kadur.

Beginning his speech, Siddaramaiah, instead of uttering the name of the district in-charge minister K J Georges; wrongly uttered: Dharme Gowda. However, he immediately corrected his mistake and mentioned Georges name.

When Siddaramaiah mentioned that he had come to Kadur many times earlier, somebody from the crowd asked him why he wasnt in Kadur when Anand contested the elections.

A furious Siddaramaiah shouted: It was I who gave Anand a ticket. I did not have the time to come campaigning. Shut up! Or I will slap you.

Continuing in a lighter vein, he later said that the BJP candidate from Hassan was with Congress earlier.

Three days before he joined the BJP, he had assured that he would not quit Congress. I knew he was a Kallyettu (lazy bull or fraudster), said Siddaramaiah

The crowd burst out laughing at his remark.
By the Times Staff

UPPER DARBY  Township police were questioning a 14-year-old student Thursday afternoon after a single bullet was found on the floor of an Upper Darby High School classroom.

The discovery prompted school officials to call a lock down, which began about 2:15 p.m. and was lifted after all classrooms were searched about 45 minutes later, according to Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood.

No one was being threatened, Chitwood said. The school called the lock down  deciding to err on the side of caution.

While the student being questioned was alleged to have been seen with the projectile, Chitwood noted, Being in possession of a bullet by itself is not a criminal offense.
The battle has been joined.

And the stakes could not be higher.

Hanging in the balance are thousands of jobs at the countys biggest employer, the sprawling Boeing plant along Route 291 in Ridley Township.

The job of fighting to save those jobs has fallen squarely into the lap of U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-5 of Swarthmore.

The Army has put a huge program to upgrade its Chinook helicopter fleet  the pride of the Boeing plant  in the crosshairs. Defense officials are looking to delay  and possibly scrap  the plan, saying the Army is moving in a new direction. What theyre really saying is that they believe the Army already has too many Chinooks. Now they want to cut costs, shifting spending into more tech-savvy systems, as well as assault helicopters, robotic vehicles, digital-based weapons systems.

Its old workhorse, the Chinook, used to ferry troops and equipment for decades, is being pushed into the background.

Local officials fear it could result in a lot of jobs at the Ridley plant being pushed out the door.

Its not the first time a Boeing product has suddenly found a target on its back. For years the Pentagon and officials in the administration of George W. Bush tried to kill off the V-22 Osprey, the unique rotorcraft that can take off like a helicopter, then fly like an airplane. Its now an integral part of the U.S. Defense. That is due largely to a long tradition of Delaware County representatives in Congress going to bat for the program, starting for decades by Republican 7th District U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon. The tradition was handed off to his successors, Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Meehan.

Now its Scanlons turn. The district number has changed  its now the 5th District, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and a lawsuit that tossed out the old congressional district boundaries. The job has not.

First she fired off a letter to the House Armed Services and Appropriations committees.

Thursday Scanlon got her chance to make her case in person to her fellow legislators on Appropriations.

The Swarthmore Democrat testified that the upgrade program  and the Chinook itself  is not only crucial to the regions economy, but also to national security.

I understand that the Army must make tough decisions, but delaying the production of the Block II program is not in the best interest of national security, Scanlon told members of the committee. Delaying or ending this program without having a suitable replacement would have significant consequences both in terms of cost and military readiness.

Scanlon stressed the quality, craftsmanship  and the value  of the work done in the Ridley plant.

The production facility is home to more than 4,000 skilled men and women who build the finest heavy lift helicopter in the world, the freshman legislator testified. These men and women, and the dedicated supply chain across the nation, deliver the Chinook to the Army, on average, 53 days ahead of schedule.

There is a certain amount of Not In My Back Yard going on here. Everyone points to the Pentagon budget and urges them to adhere to the bottom line. Until the ax falls close to home. Thats when we all feel a twinge of NIMBY mode.

But Scanlon made solid arguments in her testimony, stressing the Armys own position in July 2017 that attests to the need for the Chinook. The Army referred to it as a critical requirement for the Army. Just 20 months later, the Army is looking to reverse course.

In case she needs reinforcements, Scanlon has lots of people standing behind her. United Aerospace Workers Union Local 1069, which represents the bulk of the Boeing workers, has been involved in a letter-writing campaign.

Not surprisingly, the three Republicans seeking the three seats on Delaware County Council in November also had some ideas. They fired off a letter to Scanlon urging her to contract power New Jersey Democrat U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, chairman of the House Armed Services Committees Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee. They suggested holding a field hearing at the Delco plant.

There are 4,600 jobs on the line  good-paying jobs jobs, the ticket to a solid, middle-class life for generations of Boeing workers at the Ridley plant.

But the truth is theres a lot more involved.

As Scanlon pointed out in her testimony, the offshoots connected to the Chinook program are tied to more than 20,000 jobs and more than 200 suppliers in 38 states.

Scanlon suggested many of those suppliers and small businesses could face the very real risk of closure should the Army carry through on its plan to delay the project.

Yes, the stakes are high.

Boeing has been here before.

The fight has been joined.

We can only hope Scanlon is as successful as her predecessors.
SALT LAKE CITY  PBS' "Les Miserables" miniseries, set to premiere April 14, takes a grittier look at the well-known story that, despite its many, many adaptations, proves it deserves to be told again, according to actor David Oyelowo, who plays the driven Inspector Javert.

When Oyelowo, perhaps best known as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 2014's "Selma," was first approached with Andrew Davies' script, he was unsure of the project.

"I thought, 'We've just had a film (in 2012) that was very good come out of 'Les Miserables.' So, what's the point in doing another one?' Then I, soon after reading the script, realized that this is a far more immersive, in-depth look at what Victor Hugo had actually written in his original 1,500-page novel," Oyelowo said in an interview with the Deseret News.

For his all-star, six-part adaptation, noted TV and film writer Davies ("Pride and Prejudice") took a closer look at the motives and backstories of Hugo's characters, working to help audiences better understand characters they already know and love  characters like Jean Valjean, played by Dominic West, Fantine, played by Lily Collins and Oyelowo's Javert.

Oyelowo, too, returned to the original book. Through close readings of Hugo's French novel, Oyelowo gained helpful insight into the motives of Javert, whose determination to hunt down Jean Valjean can be difficult to relate to.

"Victor Hugo gives (readers) a lot of clues as to why he is what he is. He's a guy who was born in prison to criminal parents and really hates that side of himself and has somehow attributed that to Jean Valjean," Oyelowo said. "I always knew that Javert was never going to be a sympathetic character, necessarily, but to find a way where there was a degree of empathy the audience could have for him on the basis of seeing more of him, in a more dimensional way, was something that I was very keen to delve into."

Along with bringing Hugo's characters to life, PBS' "Les Miserables" also focused on making the setting realistic, even if the story's backdrop of poverty-ridden streets and prisons permeated with grime might be, at times, hard for audiences to watch.

"We take the approach of going the opposite direction of any kind of  sanitized or polite version you may ever have seen," Oyelowo said. "It's very dirty. It's very gritty. You can feel the smell of the place. You can feel the real dirt of the place."

This production also has a more diverse cast than past adaptations. Oyelowo said this is important because previous productions of "Les Miserables" and other period pieces set during the early 19th century have contained misrepresentations about the prevalence of people of color during that time in Europe. PBS' production tries to present a more accurate balance and diversity.

All of this has contributed to a "Les Miserables" that Oyelowo hopes audiences will find relatable. He pointed out the series' many themes that societies still face today, such as the gap between the rich and the poor and Jean Valjean's disproportionate 19-year prison sentence for stealing a loaf of bread. Even in the story's revolutionary backdrop Oyelowo sees comparisons to contemporary protests around the world.

And apart from "Les Miserables'" relevent social issues, Hugo's characters have a vitality to them that makes them feel like real people, something this new production aims to highlight  especially with Javert, Jean Valjean and the young mother Fantine. The PBS version shows more of Fantine's backstory as a wide-eyed girl before she falls through the cracks of society.

"I think Fantine in particular  and especially as played by Lily Collins  is a character that engenders a lot of sympathy and empathy.  We all can identify with wanting to fall in love, wanting to trust," Oyelowo said. "A very dramatic and hard-to-watch scene is when Fantine is having her teeth pulled. You can't watch because of what's literally happening, but you can't look away because she's doing it for her daughter."

Similarly, Oyelowo said we can all relate to the hero Jean Valjean who goes from seeing himself as a sinner to embracing redemption. And on the opposite side, there's Oyelowo's character Javert, an unforgiving man who dismisses the very idea of redemption. During the course of his study and filming, Oyelowo saw in these three characters elements of each of us.

"We have these sides to all of us: the innocent, the judgmental, the sinner seeking salvation," Oyelowo said. "I think that's why this story resonates throughout the ages because it goes to the heart of who and what we are as human beings."

"Les Miserables" on Masterpiece airs on KUED on Sunday, April 14, 8 p.m. MST
It is ironic that at a time of concern about partisan gridlock, the growing partisan polarization in the nation and the resulting incivility and divisiveness of that polarization, the Utah State Legislature and Gov. Gary Herbert have injected more partisanship into a place where it has not been before and should not be. I am referring to the Utah State School Board.

At the end of this past session, without much time for public comment (as usual), the Legislature passed a bill that made the State School Board a partisan office. The governor signed the bill to make it law. Now, the decision of who will be nominated for a position on the State School Board will be in the hands of party conventions.

Plus, this all happened in the midst of a lawsuit initiated the last time the Legislature and the governor did this. A state district judge ruled that the earlier legislation was unconstitutional. The Utah Supreme Court has yet to rule. But wisdom would have suggested the legislature wait until that decision had been rendered. When the legislature failed to use such wisdom, it was incumbent on the governor to be the leader who stood up to the legislatures haste. But he failed to do that.

Why are partisan school board elections a bad idea? They mix the ills of Utahs partisan election system with education policy and administration. Fortunately, one part of government that has been separated from the caucus/convention system and the partisan rhetoric of campaigns is the selection of those who manage our state school system. That is what citizens want, according to recent surveys of Utah voters.

Now, State School Board candidates will have to cater to partisan convention delegates and primary voters. They will have to espouse partisan positions to get a nomination and then satisfy partisans to remain in office. Also, this type of election will reduce competition. Now, it is common to have two candidates running in a general election for a nonpartisan State School Board office. But under a partisan system, it is quite likely only one candidate will emerge  a Republican in Republican-dominated areas and a Democrat in Democratic-dominated districts. Even if there is token competition, between straight-party voting and excessive partisanship, only one candidate will be viable.

The real losers will be the voters who will be robbed of actual choice in who serves on the State School Board. The decision will be in the hands of party activists, not ordinary voters. The Legislature and the governor effectively have disenfranchised most voters in the state (those who do not attend party conventions or vote in party primary elections).

Beyond the election, there is the issue of governance. Now, under the current nonpartisan system, school board members who seek to be reelected must appeal to a majority of all voters in the general election. Under the new system, they will have to satisfy the extreme partisans. Not surprisingly, their policy positions as school board members will reflect their new important constituency.

Of course, this is exactly why Republican legislators supported this bill. They want the State School Board to be a partisan office, not one that challenges party orthodoxy. Their own constituencies (the Republican Party activists) urged them to pass this bill so the State School Board will not be an independent body. Instead, it will be an arm of the Republican Party.

The United Utah Party strongly opposes this legislation. Yes, if this is the system Utah is operating under, we will find candidates to run and serve on the State School Board. But we protest the fact that we would even be involved; these races should not be partisan. We reiterate that parties do not belong in the process of electing school board candidates.

We call on the legislature in its next special session to reverse this action. And we urge the public to join us in this call.
SALT LAKE CITY  Will Gov. Gary Herbert's veto of a bill dealing with filling unexpected congressional vacancies be overridden by Utah lawmakers or will his action spur a deal?

A poll of state lawmakers is expected to get underway this week to determine if there's enough support to consider calling an override session of the Legislature before the May 13 deadline.

But at the same time, there's also an effort by the governor and GOP legislative leaders to come with compromise legislation on the controversial topic that would make a vote to override SB123 unnecessary.

"We have to resolve this problem," Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, said, whether or not the required two-thirds of lawmakers in both the House and Senate agree to an override session.

Adams said it's not clear the Senate can meet that threshold, so a better solution might be to see if he, the governor and House Speaker Brad Wilson, R-Kaysville, can find common ground on new legislation.

"Let's have talks and we'll see," the Senate leader said.

House Majority Whip Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said the veto cannot stand.

"The hope is to maybe come together and have some sort of a compromise with the governor. But if not, I hope there's a veto override," Schultz said. "We've got to do something. We've got to get the congressional elections process put into statute."

He said it's the Legislature's job, not the governor's, to put together that process, and it needs to get done one way or the other.

"I know the president, the speaker and the governor, they're talking," Schultz said. "I think it's important we have something sooner than later. So if there can't be an agreement that comes together, I'll certainly push through a veto override."

The sponsor of SB123, Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, said he preferred to see his bill prevail but had no idea whether there will be an override session or compromise legislation that could be approved in a special legislative session.

"Everyone feels like we need a process and conversations are ongoing," McCay said.

His bill sets up an abbreviated process for electing a replacement to fill a congressional vacancy that occurs between elections and passed the Senate with a vote of 19-8, one vote shy of the two-thirds needed for an override.

The House approved the bill 52-10, two votes beyond the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. Of course, even if enough lawmakers agree there should at least be an override session, they may vote differently on the bill.

The governor took issue with the bill because he said it "significantly limits participation and choice in elections to fill vacancies" in the U.S. House, limiting "the ability of Utah voters to choose their congressional representatives."

Herbert's office had no comment on the compromise talks.

SB123 eliminates the signature-gathering process for getting on a primary ballot that the Utah GOP sued the state over and lost. Instead, the bill calls for political party delegates in the congressional district to advance two candidates to the ballot.

What to do when one of Utah's four representatives in Congress resigns became an issue in 2017, when then-Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, announced he was stepping down from his seat just months after his re-election.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers cried foul when the governor set up a special election to fill the 3rd Congressional District vacancy without calling the Legislature back into session to approve the process.

The governor's process included allowing candidates to gather voter signatures rather than competing for delegate support through the traditional caucus and convention nominating system.

The alternate route to the ballot was put in place in 2014 by a law still referred to as SB54 that has split the state Republican Party. Lawmakers argued that in the case of a special congressional election, allowing signature-gathering took too much time.

The winner of the 2017 election to fill Chaffetz's seat, Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, chose to both collect signatures and compete at convention. He lost the delegate vote, but won both the primary and general elections. He was re-elected last year.

Rich McKeown, co-executive chairman of Count My Vote, said there has been a consistent attack and erosion on SB54, even after the U.S. Supreme Court declined earlier this year to hear the lawsuit attempting to undo it.

Lawmakers tried to circumvent the signature gathering option with SB123, he said, an option created as a compromise with backers of the 2014 Count My Vote initiative that would have established a direct primary election.

McKeown also questioned how much support there still is for SB123 at this point.

I think based on our tallies and counts theyll not be a sufficient number to override that veto, he told the Deseret News and KSL editorial boards earlier this month. Im not even sure theyll give it a shot given the numbers.

Results of the poll on whether to hold an override session are expected late next week or early the following week. By law, an override session must be called within 60 days of the end of the general session.

Contributing: Dennis Romboy
SALT LAKE CITY  The year is already shaping up to be one of the worst for measles outbreaks across the nation.

And while the highly contagious respiratory disease has yet to hit Utahns, "we're only one airline flight within a case coming here," said Dr. Tamara Sheffield, medical director for community health and prevention at Intermountain Healthcare.

"Utahns don't need to panic, but rather carefully consider their vaccination status," she said, adding it isn't too late to get the vaccine. "If we're not getting vaccinated, we're putting other people at risk."

New York City health officials have made vaccinations mandatory in its hardest hit communities, threatening fines up to $1,000 for noncompliance, The Associated Press reports. An executive order issued there has also banned unvaccinated children from indoor public spaces to help prevent further spread of the highly contagious disease.

If we're not getting vaccinated, we're putting other people at risk.  Dr. Tamara Sheffield, medical director for community health and prevention at Intermountain Healthcare

"Our goal is not to fine anyone," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said, calling the situation "a public health emergency."

"Our goal is to get people vaccinated," he said. "But we're also trying to help everyone understand there is urgency here.  The reason the city government is empowered in a public health emergency is to save lives."

Measles outbreaks have appeared in 19 states since the beginning of the year with the growing number of cases contributing to the now-second-largest outbreak in the United States since measles was eliminated in 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

The states that have reported cases to the CDC are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

The federal agency says that disease transmission for the recent cases likely originated in countries where measles is more common  throughout Europe, Asia, the Pacific and Africa and the Philippines  places people commonly visit. It encourages people to check CDC travel advisories online before traveling to any foreign location.

Nearly 90,000 people in the world die from the disease every year, the CDC reports.

In order to prevent an outbreak in your community, you have to have a 97 percent herd immunity rate.  Dr. Tamara Sheffield, medical director for community health and prevention at Intermountain Healthcare

Sheffield said symptoms of measles include coughing, runny nose, sneezing and a high fever, which leads to a head-to-toe rash four days later. It is transmitted through the air and on surfaces and is contagious before and after bumps show up, which is why it transfers so quickly from person to person.

"It's the most highly infectious vaccine-preventable virus that's out there," Sheffield said. The virus can exist up to two hours after an infected person leaves the room and a person can be infected for 14 days before symptoms appear.

Babies and people with immune-compromised conditions who cannot be immunized against measles, she said, can develop serious complications from contracting measles, including brain swelling, which can lead to brain damage and even death.

"In order to prevent an outbreak in your community, you have to have a 97 percent herd immunity rate," Sheffield said.

A growing number of vaccine exemptions are being filed at school districts across the state, with the majority of exempting parents in Utah claiming personal reasons over religious or medical reasons. The result is that 95.6 percent of Utah children from kindergarten to 12th grade are adequately immunized against measles, according to a 2018 report from the Utah Department of Health.

"When individuals are not vaccinated, there is a high likelihood of catching the disease," Sheffield said. "You have to have high levels of protection to prevent an outbreak."

So far this year, 465 people in America have been infected, according to the CDC. In all of 2018, 372 people were infected; and the biggest outbreak since eradication of the disease in the U.S. was in 2014, when 667 cases were reported.

The last time a measles outbreak popped up in Utah was in 2015, after some Utahns traveled to Disneyland in California, where the disease was spread to many communities and countries.

It is too early to know if the highly contagious respiratory disease spread during recent spring break travels, and the Utah Department of Health was reporting no cases as of Thursday.

Sheffield said that before 2000, millions were infected every year across the world. The MMR vaccine, she said, is "one of the most highly effective vaccines in terms of protection and it is lifelong."

If vaccine exemptions continue to increase throughout Utah, Sheffield said the disease will re-emerge as a bigger threat, leading to increased hospitalizations, death and disability. And, if that's not enough of a reason to be vaccinated, she said, the public cost of tracking cases and quarantining their contacts with exposure to the disease can be extraordinary.
CLEARFIELD  A Layton man died Thursday, a day after he was punched during an argument at a Clearfield convenience store, police said.

Officers were called to a Chevron at 680 N. Main Wednesday on a report of a fight between a customer and the store owner, according to a statement from the Clearfield Police Department. When they arrived, they found the customer unconscious.

The customer was identified as Brandon Stufflebean, 39.

He was taken to a hospital in critical condition with a head injury and died Thursday afternoon at Davis Hospital and Medical Center.

Multiple witnesses and the store owner, who is cooperating with investigators, reported that Stufflebean came into the store and an argument began between him and employees "over the purchase of a drink," police said.

"The argument escalated into a physical confrontation and the victim was punched once in the face causing the injury," according to the police statement.

Officers had not made any arrests in connection to the incident as of Thursday afternoon.

The Davis County Attorney's Office will review the case to determine whether to file criminal charges after receiving reports from the Utah State Medical Examiner's Office and from police.
PROVO  A Denver man accused of threatening to become a mass shooter by "killing as many girls as I see" admitted Thursday to a reduced charge as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

Christopher Wayne Cleary, 27, pleaded guilty in 4th District Court Thursday to making a terroristic threat, a third-degree felony, deputy Utah County attorney Chad Grunander confirmed.

Cleary was originally charged with a second-degree felony, which carries up to 15 years in prison. He now faces a maximum potential sentence of zero to five years.

Cleary was arrested during a trip to Provo on Jan. 19, the same day women's marches were held in Provo and Salt Lake City. Earlier that day, authorities in Colorado told Provo police about his threatening Facebook posts.

"All I wanted was a girlfriend," he wrote, according to a police affidavit. "All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me I'm 27 years old and I've never had a girlfriend  this is why I'm planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter cause I'm ready to die and all the girls the turned me down is going to make it right by killing as many girls as I see."

Cleary told investigators that he was "upset and not thinking clearly" when he made the posts and that he had deleted them because he received threats from people who saw them, according to the affidavit.

Cleary is on probation in Colorado for stalking and threatening women there, according to charging documents.

Sentencing is scheduled for May 23.
Pilgrimage was among the most important spiritual practices of the Middle Ages. And, although it was difficult, costly and often took months of hard travel, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem was the supreme form of medieval piety. Although early medieval Jerusalem was controlled by Muslim lords, these rulers generally encouraged Christian pilgrimage, just as countries today encourage the tourist trade. But pilgrimage could be a dangerous journey; many pilgrims to Jerusalem suffered illness, hunger and injury; others were assaulted and robbed by brigands. Some died along the way.

The Christian clergy of Jerusalem  who lived as a generally tolerated minority among the Muslim majority  established care centers for European pilgrimages. In Latin, pilgrims were often called hospes, meaning stranger or guest; hence our term hospitality  caring for guests. A hospice was thus a place for caring for medieval travelers and pilgrims. These hospices served as hotels, restaurants and hospitals for the pilgrims, along with a chapel for prayer and dormitories for monks. Sick or injured pilgrims were cared for by the monks of these hospices, who often also served as tour guides.

Since European pilgrims spoke many different languages, different pilgrim hospices were established for different European ethnic groups. Indeed, this practice still exists in Jerusalem today, with the Austrian Hospice on the Via Dolorosa a noted example.

In the 1070s, the invasion and migration of the Middle East by Turkish nomads caused many disruptions on the pilgrim road to Jerusalem, with highwaymen and raiders preying on unfortunate pilgrims. This anarchy was one of the causes of the Crusades, which sought not just to capture Jerusalem but to safeguard the pilgrim routes as well. In the unsettled conditions in Palestine following the First Crusade, however, pilgrims continued to be robbed or enslaved.

Some Benedictine monks in Jerusalem, who had been knights before taking their monastic vows later in life, became tired of simply trying to heal pilgrims who had been assaulted on their way to Jerusalem. They thus decided to patrol the pilgrim route between the seaport of Jaffa and Jerusalem, protecting pilgrims from brigand attacks. These ex-knights-turned-monks soon organized themselves into the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, better known as the Hospitallers  that is, the knights of the hospital or pilgrim hospice.

While never abandoning their role of medical treatment for pilgrims, these Hospitallers increasingly dedicated themselves not to healing sick or injured pilgrims but to preventing them from being injured in the first place. In this, these knights were soon joined by another militarized monastic group known as the Templars. Together they formed the so-called Military Orders, monastic organizations dedicated to fighting the enemies of God. As such, they became the primary defenders of the Crusader states in the Middle East, providing knights for Crusader armies and garrisoning dozens of the most dangerous and costly Crusader castles for nearly two centuries.

As the Crusader principalities slowly collapsed between the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and that of the last Crusader stronghold of Acre, Israel, in 1291, the Hospitallers suffered an identity crisis. They had clearly failed in their primary mission of protecting pilgrims, the Crusader states, their castles and Jerusalem itself. But they were determined to continue their wars against the Muslims, whom they viewed as enemies of Christianity. They continued their military operations from new headquarters on Rhodes (1310-1522) and Malta (1530-1798).

During these centuries, they became an important naval power in the Mediterranean. As inveterate enemies of Muslims and the Ottoman sultans, these monks became pirates and slavers, raiding Muslim shipping territories in North Africa and the Middle East and perpetually feuding with famous Barbary corsairs such as Barbarossa and Dragut.

In 1565, the Ottoman Turkish sultan Suleiman the Magnificent determined to capture and destroy the Knights of Malta, as they were then known. In one of the most remarkable sieges in history, the Hospitallers defeated the Turks and preserved their island. They were finally demilitarized over two centuries ago, when Napoleon captured Malta in 1798 on his way to Egypt and plundered their treasure.

But this thousand-year-old Order of the Hospital of St John survives still today. The once feared warrior-monks have returned to their original charitable functions, now funding medical and ambulance services in England and Palestine. And they can still be found in Palestine, where today they run an eye hospital in old Jerusalem, in the Muristan  Arabic for hospital  where their headquarters once stood 900 years ago (see www.stjohneyehospital.org/our-impact/muristan).

Daniel Peterson founded the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, chairs The Interpreter Foundation and blogs on Patheos. William Hamblin is the author of several books on premodern history. They speak only for themselves.
CAIRO  Sudan's defense minister, who led the overthrow Thursday of autocratic ruler Omar al-Bashir, has had his assets blocked by the U.S. Treasury since 2007 for supporting and managing militias accused of carrying out genocide in the country's Darfur conflict.

In a televised statement, Gen. Awad ibn Ouf declared that the military had removed and arrested al-Bashir and that it will rule the country for the next two years as part of a transitional council along with the powerful security and intelligence agencies.

His appearance made him the face of military rule, and the general is likely to become the country's formal leader, though the makeup of the council has not yet been announced. That has stunned and angered protesters who have been holding rallies for months demanding al-Bashir's ouster and the establishment of civilian-led democracy.

Ibn Ouf, in his mid-60s, is a longtime insider in the leadership of al-Bashir's 30-year rule. He rose up in the ranks to become chief of Sudan's military intelligence and was made defense minister in 2015. Al-Bashir named him as a vice president in February.

He was among other Sudanese officials placed on a U.S. sanctions list for his role in the bloodshed in the western region of Darfur. Al-Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide over the conflict in which 200,000 people were killed.

The Darfur conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government of discrimination. The government in Khartoum was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes in militias known as the Janjaweed and unleashing them on civilian populations. The militias became notorious for massacres and rapes. Government officials denied the charges.

In 2007, the U.S. Treasury Department blocked ibn Ouf's assets along with two other Sudanese officials for their role in "fomenting violence and human rights abuses in Darfur."

It accused them of acting as "liaisons" between the government and the Janjaweed. It said ibn Ouf "provided the Janjaweed with logistical support and directed attacks."

At the time, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. said, "Even in the face of sanctions, these individuals have continued to play direct roles in the terrible atrocities of Darfur."

George Clooney and John Prendergast, co-founders of The Sentry, an investigative initiative created to uncover the financial networks behind conflicts in Africa, singled out ibn Ouf for his role in Darfur and said al-Bashir's ouster is not enough.

"Removing the leader of a violent, corrupt system without dismantling that system is inadequate. The next steps are crucial," the two said in a statement. They urged the international community to help Sudan to have a new president who "reflects the will of people."
CAIRO  The Sudanese military on Friday swiftly replaced the country's transitional leader linked to the Darfur genocide after street rallies against him and said that it wouldn't hand over ousted President Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity.

Thousands of jubilant protesters celebrated in the streets after Defense Minister Gen. Awad ibn Ouf, who was name de facto leader after overthrowing al-Bashir on Thursday, announced he was stepping down as transitional leader. He named a reputable army general as his successor.

Ibn Ouf said he would be replaced by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, general inspector of the armed forces, as head of the transitional council, which will rule the country for two years until elections.

"I am confident he will steer the ship to safe shores," he said of Burhan, adding he was stepping aside to "preserve unity" of the armed forces.

Burhan's record appears to be cleaner than the rest of al-Bashir's generals, and he is not known to be implicated in war crimes or wanted by international courts. He was one of the generals who reached out to protesters at the week-long encampment near the military headquarters, meeting with them face to face, and listening to their views.

Chants rang out across the sit-in where tens of thousands have been rallying in front of the military headquarters to protest the military takeover of power after al-Bashir's ouster. "Revolutionaries, we will continue our path," the protesters shouted as they danced and clapped.

Earlier Friday, another top general, Omar Zein Abedeen said that the 75-year-old al-Bashir would not be extradited to the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, saying doing so would be "an ugly mark on Sudan."

"Even rebels carrying weapons, we don't extradite them," he told reporters at a news conference in Khartoum.

Zein Abedeen said Sudanese courts would hold al-Bashir "accountable," but did not specify what charges he could be prosecuted on. After his arrest, the military denounced him and his government for corruption, maladministration and "lack of justice."

The developments point to the sensitivity of the Darfur conflict for the military that arrested al-Bashir after four months of deadly street demonstration against his 30-year rule.

The protesters rejected ibn Ouf's leadership because he was head of military intelligence during the brutal campaign to suppress the Darfur insurgency in the 2000s. The United States has imposed sanctions on him since 2007, saying he armed and directed pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed, accused of widespread atrocities against civilians and rapes during the conflict.

The move also underscores the limits on the reach of the International Criminal Court. On Friday, ICC judges rejected a request by the court's prosecutor to open an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan and alleged crimes by U.S. forces there, in part because the U.S., Afghan government and Taliban are not expected to cooperate.

In the Darfur conflict, rebels among the territory's ethnic Central African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of discrimination and oppression by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government. The government responded with a scorched earth assault of aerial bombings and unleashed the Janjaweed. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes.

Along with al-Bashir, the ICC has indicted two other senior figures in his regime  Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, who was interior and defense minister during much of the conflict, and Ahmed Haroun, a senior security chief at the time who last month was named by al-Bashir to run the ruling National Congress Party.

Both were among those reported by the Sudanese media to have been arrested Thursday in a sweep by the military against al-Bashir's inner circle. Zein Abedeen confirmed the media reports Friday without specifying the two men.

An ICC spokesman declined to comment on al-Bashir's case. On Thursday, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urged the Sudanese military to hand over the ousted leader. "Victims of the gravest crimes in Darfur should not have to wait any longer for justice," said Jehanne Henry, associate director at Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, Zein Abedeen sought to reassure protesters who, while celebrating al-Bashir's removal, oppose the military's seizure of power. After ousting the president, the military announced it would rule the country for two years through a transitional council. It also suspended the constitution, dissolved the government, declared a three-month state of emergency and imposed a night-time curfew.

Protest organizers have vowed not to end their street action until a civilian transitional council is formed, saying rule by military commanders who for years were al-Bashir loyalists is just an extension of his regime.

The curfew and state of emergency have raised fears the military could eventually disperse the sit-in by force. But at least initially, it appears to be trying to persuade protest organizers to end the campaign.

Speaking at a news conference aired live on state TV and flanked by other uniformed officers, Zein Abedeen insisted the army has no ambition to hold the reins of power for long.

"If within a month, Sudan became able to run itself without chaos, we are ready to leave even after a month. The maximum is two years," he said. He said the military would only appoint the defense and interior ministers in any transitional government and would not interfere.

"This was not a coup," but a "tool of change," he said. "We came ... to guide the country forward."

But protest organizers rejected the military's assurances, calling them "deception and farce."

The Sudanese Professionals Association, which has spearheaded the four months of demonstrations against al-Bashir, said the "coup leaders ... are not eligible to bring change," and repeated demands for the "immediate handover of power to a civilian transitional government."

At the sit-in, the mood was festive. Some protesters brought in mattresses, fans and even air conditioners, while others swept the streets to keep them clean, signaling they intend to stay long-term. As thousands of Muslim worshippers lined up in the street to hold prayers, Christians among the protesters held blankets over them to shade them from the sun in a show of solidarity.

There were also signs of cracks among al-Bashir's former loyalists. On Friday, the commander of Sudan's feared Rapid Support Force, a paramilitary force, expressed support for the protesters, saying the forces will not "accept any solutions rejected by the Sudanese people" and called for dialogue so Sudan would "avoid slipping into chaos."

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Associated Press writer Sarah el-Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
SALT LAKE CITY  Heres a look at the news for April 12.

Utah is just one airline flight away from the most highly infectious vaccine-preventable virus thats out there, experts say.

President Donald Trumps nominee to follow Ryan Zinke as Interior secretary was confirmed in the Senate. Heres how Utah Sens. Mitt Romney and Mike Lee voted.

Will Utah Gov. Gary Herberts veto be overridden or replaced by a new compromise?

The rise of Utah Jazz rookie Grayson Allen comes ahead of playoff series against the Houston Rockets.

There are more than 100 events to celebrate Easter in Utah this week and next.

A family apologizes for horrible events that led to Utah mans shooting death.

A look ahead to your weekend:

A look at our most read stories:

News from the U.S. and world:
SALT LAKE CITY  A second man has been charged in connection with a homemade explosive that went off at a northern Utah home.

Joshua Daniel Keith, 22, of Providence, Cache County, was charged Friday in 1st District Court with two counts of recklessness using an incendiary device, a second-degree felony, and reckless endangerment, a class A misdemeanor.

The charges come a day after Jeffrey Randy Toombs, 21, of Providence, was charged with the same crimes.

According to charging documents, both men were injured Tuesday near 400 E. 100 South in Providence when a homemade explosive went off in a residential area.

"Toombs had shrapnel wounds to his right forearm. The other male, Joshua Daniel Keith  was receiving medical attention and preparing for emergency surgery. Keith had severe injuries to his hand, torso and eye," the charges state.

Toombs told investigators that Keith "was manufacturing a homemade 'blasting cap' at Toombs residence," and that "he and Keith had an ATF license to manufacture explosives. As they were packing the explosive into a shell casing, the device unintentionally detonated while in the garage," according to charging documents.

Cache County sheriff's deputies who responded to the home found a bottle of hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, a primary explosive used in blasting caps.

"The amount of explosive located was enough to cause substantial injury or death," the charges state.

Toombs told investigators that Keith was packing the explosive substance into spent rifle casings when the "device detonated in his hand causing the injuries to both Keith and Toombs," according to charging documents.

The explosive materials were purchased in Salt Lake City, the charges state. Prosecutors noted in charging documents that even though both men had ATF licenses, "the ATF license does not allow manufacturers to manufacture destructive devices by placing explosive material inside a container. Joshua Keith and Jeffery Toombs went beyond manufacturing an explosive by packing the explosive into a container.

"This risk is a gross deviation from common practices or standard of care in manufacturing explosives," the charges continued. "Bomb technicians have determined this device to be a destructive device."

Toombs was booked into jail while Keith remained in the hospital. An arrest warrant was issued for Keith so he will also be booked into jail once he is released from the hospital. Investigators requested both men be held on no bail, noting there is a possibility that other explosive devices exist at the house.

"Law enforcement has reason to believe that there are additional locations where explosive materials are stored and those locations have not yet been processed and the explosives have not been secured. Law enforcement are awaiting service of federal search warrants as well as specialized teams to secure and remove these explosives," the charges state. "The release of Joshua Keith from jail would pose a substantial risk to the public based on the fact he could have immediate access to explosives and explosive materials."
SALT LAKE CITY  One Utah Latino community leader thought a plan the White House considered to release detained immigrants into sanctuary cities, particularly Democratic strongholds, wasn't real news.

"I wasn't even sure I was listening to an Onion story or something because it's just preposterous," said Richard Jaramillo, president of the Utah Coalition of La Raza. "I don't think anyone is really taking it as a serious proposal."

The Onion is a satirical news outlet whose articles cover real and fictional current events.

The idea of pressing immigration authorities to embrace the plan  which critics called an effort to use migrants as pawns to go after political opponents  was first reported in the Washington Post.

"I think the administration has been using the immigrant and refugee community in their political agenda for quite a while," Jaramillo said. "We see that there's not a lot of concern for the humanity of these people."

The White House pitched the idea to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last November and again in February as the Trump administration struggled with a surge of migrants at the border, according to report.

The plan suggested both transporting migrants who were captured at the border and those being held in facilities to sanctuary cities where local officials don't cooperate with federal immigration enforcement authorities. Salt Lake City is not considered a sanctuary city.

I wasn't even sure I wasn't listening to an Onion story or something because it's just preposterous. I don't think anyone is really taking it as a serious proposal.  Richard Jaramillo, president of the Utah Coalition of La Raza

Department of Homeland Security lawyers quickly rejected the proposal, and it was dropped, according to news reports.

President Donald Trump confirmed officials have talked about the idea in a tweet Friday, and acknowledged at least part of the plan is still on the table.

"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only.  The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!" he wrote.

Jaramillo called it more "posturing" and "showmanship from the commander in chief" but not a viable policy or solution to immigration issues.

Transporting immigrants on buses or trains would "evoke a lot of imagery to Japanese internment," he said.

Utah's only Democrat in Congress, Rep. Ben McAdams, said, "Human lives should not become pawns in partisan political games. Its wrong."

"We need leaders who can sit down together and find bipartisan solutions to the serious issues at the border and agreement on reforms to fix our broken immigration system," he said.

Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, didn't address Trump's proposal directly when asked for comment about it Friday.

"The only way were going to fully address the current illegal immigration crisis is by the president and leaders of both parties putting politics aside and working on a legislative solution," he said.

Romney said a long-term fix must secure the border, institute mandatory e-verify, update asylum and trafficking laws to "stem the ballooning abuse by immigrants from Central America."

"We also need to address the problem of sanctuary cities, which put public safety at risk by refusing to cooperate with federal law enforcement," he said.

Sen. Mike Lee, who has traveled to the border and proposed solutions to the issue, declined to weigh on the president's idea.

Luis Garza, executive director of Comunidades Unidas, said it's "very concerning" to see the White House consider the plan, though not surprising.

"It really looks like the administration is willing to play with people's lives to score political points," he said.

Families being held at the border are already going through a difficult process and for them to be dropped off wherever the Trump administration wants is "incredibly inappropriate and really dehumanizing," Garza said.

Such an idea goes against not only Utah values but American values, he said.

At least two versions the plan were considered. One would have sent people already in detention and being held elsewhere to places with Democratic opponents of the president, while the other would have transported migrants stopped at the border directly to San Francisco, New York City, Chicago and other cities, the Associated Press reported.

ICE Deputy Director Matt Albence denied that the White House pressured immigration officials to implement the idea.

"I was asked my opinion and provided it, and my advice was heeded," he said in a statement.
SALT LAKE CITY  A man who was told to leave his gun in the car while attending a party was charged Friday with opening fire on party guests, according to court documents.

Isacc Brandon Trujillo, 18, of West Valley City, a documented gang member, was charged Friday in 3rd District Court with eight counts of discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony; and possession of a firearm by a restricted person, a third-degree felony.

On March 16, Trujillo went to a party at 739 S. Jeremy St. and allegedly brandished a handgun, according to charging documents.

"The other partygoers told Trujillo he had to put his gun in his car and could not have the gun inside the house," the charges state.

Trujillo walked out and came back and claimed he "got rid of the gun but would not tell partygoers where the gun was," according to documents.

Outside the house, Trujillo was asked to leave the party. That's when Trujillo reached toward his ankle, the charges state. Fearing he was reaching for a gun, three people at the party jumped on Trujillo attempting to get the gun away from him, according to charging documents.

"Trujillo was able to get the gun from his ankle and insert a magazine," the charges state.

Trujillo then opened fire, striking one person in the hand, according to charging documents. When interviewed by police, Trujillo claimed he was "jumped" while outside the house, the gun fell out of his pants and he was able to grab it and fire several round, according to court documents.
SALT LAKE CITY  The Public Service Commission issued a $100,000 penalty and ordered the shutdown of a 21-mile natural gas pipeline near Moab after state regulators found several operational and emergency violations in an inspection two years ago that they say continue to persist.

The action against Pacific Energy & Mining taken Wednesday by the commission was requested by the Utah Division of Public Utilities after its pipeline safety team conducted a 2016 inspection and found numerous violations of state law.

By April 2018, the division filed the enforcement action against the pipeline operator and ultimately, it proved 11 ongoing state code violations.

The 16-inch steel pipeline runs from the company's processing plant near the intersection of Ruby Ranch Road and Power Line Road to the Williams pipeline tap near the Archview Resort northwest of Moab.

Although it is a lightly populated area, the division says the pipeline's safe operation is critical given its proximity to a regional airport, a public campground and outdoor recreation activities.

Natural gas is part of Utahs economic success and the Division of Public Utilities is committed to minimizing safety risks of natural gas facilities. (The company's) practices left us with no confidence in its pipelines integrity. Though we are aware of no immediate risk to the public, continued operation is a danger to the public until regulators can be assured of safe practices, said Chris Parker, division director.

When the case was presented to the commission last year, company President Tarik Ahmad said the pipeline didn't fall under the division's regulatory authority.

"We are a small company that has run this for a long time and we were never regulated. It is a gathering system. It is not a transmission line," he said.

Parker had argued that when Pacific took ownership of the pipeline, operational changes put it within the state's jurisdiction, which he said was agreed to by all parties.

In a filing with the commission last year, Ahmad disputed state jurisdiction.

"(Pacific Energy & Mining) is not a transmission company. Rather it gathers the gas and delivers the same to the gas meter at its own property and equipment before it is transferred to Northwest Pipeline," Ahmad wrote.

In August of last year, the Public Service Commission issued an order disagreeing with the pipeline operator's nonjurisdiction arguments.

The Hazardous Facility Order issued this week by the commission states the pipeline operator failed to fix the majority of the problems identified in the inspection.

Parker said its relatively rare for the division to seek penalties or request a shutdown.

"In our view they did not make a good faith effort in complying with the law," he said. "Our main goal is to get people to comply."

The pipeline operator can appeal the Public Service Commission order.
SALT LAKE CITY  Utah outdoor gear specialist Cotopaxi has upped the ante on its commitment to "Do Good," announcing Friday the launch of a new charitable effort, the Cotopaxi Foundation.

While the company has from its start dedicated 1 percent of annual profits to help address poverty and build community development programs, and subjects itself to a set of rigorous social and environmental standards as a Certified B Corp., the new program formalizes partnerships and programs supported by the company's revenue contributions.

Cotopaxi co-founder and CEO Davis Smith said the new effort represents an elevation of the company's work to make a positive impact on the broader world.

"When we launched Cotopaxi five years ago, it was our dream to build a brand that would inspire adventure and move people to do good, Smith said in a statement. Launching our own foundation will allow us to take an even greater stand in championing the causes at the core of our mission.

"At this stage of our maturity, Cotopaxi is thrilled to take this next step toward doing its part to equalize opportunity and build complete communities.

According to a Cotopaxi press release, the company will give a portion of its revenue to the foundation to support initiatives and humanitarian partners such as the International Rescue Committee, United Nations Foundation and Escuela Nueva, which provide health, education and financial assistance in Latin America and the U.S. The foundation will also launch its own programs and events through the Cotopaxi Questival adventure race series to facilitate social innovation challenges and large-scale volunteering.

In an interview last year with the Deseret News, Davis highlighted that experiences from his childhood, including spending time in Latin America and seeing firsthand what poverty and struggle looks like, illuminated his path forward.

"I grew up loving the outdoors but also had a deep passion and empathy for people," Smith said. "I saw over and over again, my entire childhood, how lucky I was. The people I saw every day were just as smart as me, just as hardworking and just as ambitious, but had no opportunity. From that time, I knew I wanted to play a role in changing things for the better."

Besides being a champion for the causes it supports, the company is also building a global reputation and customer base for thoughtfully designed and constructed outdoor gear, including clothing, backpacks, bags, tents and more.

Cotopaxi co-founder, oresident and Chief Operating Officer Stephan Jacob told the Deseret News last year that there have been easier, cheaper directions to take at nearly every juncture of building Cotopaxi's products and market reach, but the company has stuck to the harder path which as it turns out may also prove to be the most sustainable and successful option.

"It's a commitment we've made as a brand  doing good is intrinsic, inseparable," Jacob said. "We've shown that you can build a sustainable, profitable, at-scale business that still does things the right way and you don't have to compromise."
SALT LAKE CITY  A northern Utah man accused of not properly taking care of the livestock he was hired to oversee is facing charges after 46 cows starved.

Jeremiah Daniel Kingston, 29, whose home address is listed in court records as the ghost town of Washakie, Box Elder County, was charged along with Natural Choice LLC in Plymouth. Both were charged in 1st District Court with wanton destruction of livestock, a second-degree felony.

According to charging documents, Kingston and his company were contracted to care for 585 cows, "which included responsibilities to 'supervise supply of water to livestock,' 'moving of livestock around pastures as needed,' and 'put forth reasonable efforts to minimize death, loss, and theft.'"

But Kingston failed to provide enough food, water and shelter for the livestock, the charge state.

"Conditions became so deplorable for the cattle that 46 died due to starvation, many were incapable of walking, numerous cows became unable to produce milk, and many have permanent physical alterations, impairments, or conditions that have ruined the breed line," according to charging documents.

Witnesses also observed Kingston "attempting to hide dead cows by dragging them into bushes and covering them with sticks and brush," the charges state.

Other ranchers pointed out to Kingston numerous times about the poor conditions, but he "consciously chose to ignore the warnings. The aggregate value of the effected livestock is over $300,000," according to charging documents.
GothenbUrg, Sweden  April 12, 2019 -- Cobham announced today that its LEON3FT processor technology is used on the VESTA-1 nanosatellite developed and operated by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL). SSTL, a UK based company specialising in agile space platforms, has recently confirmed the successful commissioning and operation of VESTA-1, a 3U nanosatellite technology demonstration mission that will test a new two-way VHF Data Exchange System (VDES) payload developed by Honeywell for the ExactEARTH advanced maritime satellite constellation. The satellite was launched into a 575 km sun-synchronous orbit as part of Spaceflights SSO-A SmallSat Express Mission atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base on December 3, 2018.

Cobham congratulates the SSTL team for successfully launching and commissioning the VESTA-1 spacecraft. We are very proud that the fault-tolerant LEON3FT processor technology is used in the flexible nanosatellite satellite platform, bringing reliability and extensive flight heritage from traditional space mission to this new breed of miniaturized spacecraft, said Sandi Habinc, General Manager, Cobham Gaisler. "Our processor Intellectual Property core is the key element in the single-event upset (SEU) tolerant on-board computer of the VESTA-1 spacecraft. Also our LEON/SPARC software port is deployed with the VxWorks operating system as part of the flight software. Our processor offering thus covers both the hardware and the software, allowing our users to focus on their application development.

The LEON3FT processor was selected for the VESTA-1 nanosatellite On-Board Computer (OBC) and SGR-Ligo GNSS receiver as it met the requirements for a low power, FPGA embedded SEU tolerant processing platform. Naturally for nanosatellite applications, power consumption and board area are important criteria. Embedding the LEON3FT processor with custom Attitude Determination and Control System (ADCS), platform Controller Area Network (CAN) controller and IP communications protocol logic, et al, into a single flash-based FPGA resulted in a high reliability COTS nanosatellite OBC that consumes less than 1 Watt, said David Cooke, Principal Engineer, SSTL. With a bespoke Board Support Package (BSP) for the nanosatellite OBC, we were able to re-deploy our heritage OBC flight software onto the LEON3FT platform in a very short timeframe. The result is an SEU tolerant, low power nanosatellite OBC running SSTL proven CONOPS software.

The development of VESTA was co-funded by the UK Space Agency through its National Space Technology Programme (NSTP) which stimulates the growth and development of the UK space sector through investing in technology development. The project was led by Honeywell.

For more information about Cobhams processor and software products, please visit www.cobham.com/Gaisler

About Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL)

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) is the world's leading small satellite company, delivering operational space missions for a range of applications including Earth observation, science, communications, navigation, in-orbit debris removal and servicing and beyond Earth infrastructure. SSTL designs, manufactures and operates high performance satellites and ground systems for a fraction of the price normally associated with space missions, and employs 450 staff working on turnkey satellite platforms, space-proven satellite avionics, optical instruments and mission concepts.

Since 1981, SSTL has built and launched more than 60 satellites for 20 international customers, as well as providing training and development programmes, consultancy services, and mission studies for ESA, NASA, international governments and commercial customers. Our innovative approach is changing the economics of space.

Headquartered in Guildford, UK, SSTL is part of Airbus. www.sstl.co.uk

About Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions (CAES)

CAES provides critical solutions for communication on land, at sea, and in the air and space, by moving data through off-the-shelf and customized products and subsystems including RF, microwave, and high reliability microelectronics, antenna apertures and motion control solutions.

Cobham Advanced Electronic Solutions supplies defence, aerospace, security, medical, and industrial markets. Cobham Gaisler is a part of CAES.

About Cobham

Cobham offers an innovative range of technologies and services to solve challenging problems in commercial, defence and security markets, from deep space to the depths of the ocean.

We employ around 10,000 people primarily in the USA, UK, Europe and Australia, and have customers and partners in over 100 countries, with market leading positions in: wireless, audio, video and data communications, including satellite communications; defence electronics; air-to-air refuelling; aviation services; life support and mission equipment.






The HTC phone scores a compute benchmark score of 6979 on the benchmarking website.

HTC may not be as good as it was before but it seems that the company is doing whatever it can to stay in the market. In December, the company launched the HTC Desire 12s in Taiwan and now its likely working on a new mid-range device. A phone, with model number 2Q7A100 powered by Qualcomm's upper mid-range Snapdragon 710 chipset, has been spotted on Geekbench website. The processor is complemented by 6GB RAM.

The phone is seen running Android 9 Pie and having a compute benchmark score of 6979 on the benchmarking website. Compute Benchmark measures the performance of the CPU at performing common compute tasks, for example, image processing. As mentioned above, the HTC Desire 12s was launched at the companys home soil, and it has Qualcomm snapdragon 435 SoC - an entry-level chipset.

In July last year, a report said that the company has wrapped up its business in India. As a result, nearly 70 members of the team who handled various operations in the country had reportedly resigned from their posts. The Taiwanese giant, however, planned to sell virtual reality devices online, while the remaining India business was said to be controlled from Taiwan.

In November, things took a u-turn and a media report said that the smartphone brand may return to the Indian market with a new business strategy. It was speculated that HTC was in talks with homegrown players Micromax, Lava and Karbonn to return to the country, and earn royalty in return. The company now sells a few old models it had launched last year on e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.

Counterpoint Research found that Xiaomi and Samsung led the market with 28 percent and 24 percent share in the calendar year 2018. They were followed by Vivo, Oppo and Micromax on third, fourth and fifth spots, with 10 percent, 8 percent and 5 percent share respectively. HTC, Lava and Karbonn were among the remaining brands that captured the 25 percent of the total market share.

Related Read:

41 smartphone brands exit, 15 entered India in 2018: Report
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EVERETT, Mass. (AP)  Wynn Resorts is proposing Massachusetts regulators require the company ban its founder from its resorts as a condition of keeping its state casino license.

The company also suggests the Massachusetts Gaming Commission impose other conditions to further distance the company from its namesake, such as prohibiting company executives from having social contact with Steve Wynn.





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By NARIMAN EL-MOFTY

Associated Press

ABU ZENIMA, Egypt  Amid a stunning vista of desert mountains, a Bedouin woman, Umm Yasser, paused to point out a local plant, and she began to explain how it was used in medicine to the group of foreign tourists she was guiding.

Umm Yasser is breaking new ground among the deeply conservative Bedouin of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Women among the Bedouin almost never work outside the home, and even more rarely do they interact with outsiders. But Umm Yasser is one of four women from the community who for the first time are working as tour guides.





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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP)  Members of New Mexico's congressional delegation are renewing a call for the creation of a formal buffer around a national park held sacred by Native Americans.

A measure reintroduced Tuesday would prevent future leasing or development of minerals on federally owned land within a 10-mile radius of Chaco Culture National Historical Park.





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OLYMPIA (AP)  Legislation requiring panic buttons for isolated workers including hotel housekeepers and janitors has passed its second floor vote in Washington's Legislature.

The bill is intended for workers whose jobs require mostly working alone; the devices would summon help from other workers or management.





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Rail Vikas Nigam makes a lacklustre market debut

Shares of Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) made little gains in its stock market debut on Thursday with the stock closing at Rs19.05, up by a marginal 0.26 per cent from its issue price of Rs19 per share.

The initial public offer (IPO) with a price band of Rs17-19 per share was open for subscription from 29 March to 3 April.

The RVNL issue, the first central public sector enterprise (CPSE) to be divested in the current fiscal, was subscribed 1.83 times and was expected to raise about Rs481 crore.

According to analysts, the valuation of the wholly-owned government company was reasonable or fair and they expected the stock to fare well in the market.

With the issue, the government stake in the company is down 12.2 per cent.

According to Canara Bank Securities Ltd, the issue is fairly priced. As of 31 March 2018, the company had an earnings per share (EPS) of Rs2.73 and net asset value (NAV) of Rs18.83. The company would trade at 6.96 times PE for FY18 earnings," it said in a report on 28 March.

It, however, added that with the proposed review of the current practice of awarding railway work on nomination basis, the current strong order book and proven execution record may not help the PSU.

While RVNL is expected to finish orders worth approximately Rs30,000 crore in the next two-three years, there is some uncertainty with regard to flow of orders.

The outcome may have bearing on size of the future order flow and margins. Nevertheless, Rail Vikas commands better bidding prospects due to the proven past record," Canara Bank Securities added.

As of 31 December 2018, the companys order book stands at Rs77,504 crore (10.2 times of FY18 revenue), which includes 102 on-going projects. Currently, the ministry of railways is a major client for the company. Over FY15-18, it has reported revenue and net profit CAGR of 34.2 per cent and 19.2 per cent, respectively. The company executes projects by raising funds via special purpose vehicle (SPV) route on project specific basis and strategic stakeholders. Its entire borrowing on books is a pass through entry, where railway ministry services the entire debt.

RVNL undertakes railway projects including laying of new lines, doubling, gauge conversion, railway electrification, metro projects, workshops, etc. The company generally works on a turnkey basis and undertakes the full cycle of project development from conceptualisation to commissioning, including design, estimates, and award of contracts, project and contract management, etc.

RVNL has completed 72 projects of a total value of Rs20,567.28 crore and are currently implementing some projects. During the financial year ended 31 March 2018, it completed a total of 885.50 km of project that include 315.20 km of doubling and 425 km of railway electrification.
With a skeleton fleet, Jet Airways halts international flights

Jet Airways on Thursday discontinued all international services after the beleaguered airline reported an operating fleet of 12 aircraft, the smallest fleet among schedule domestic carriers. Civil aviation regulations require a domestic airline to have a minimum of 20 planes to be eligible to fly abroad.

Jet is operating 12 aircraft today, according to DGCA sources. These include 7 wide body (six B777s and one Airbus A330), 3 Boeing 737s and two turboprop ATRs.

With its fleet strength depleting on a daily basis and oil companies refusing to fuel even operating aircraft, Jet Airways is close to a shutdown.

Meanwhile, bidding for the airline is gathering pace with Etihad Airways also joining the fray. Reports citing sources say Jets Gulf-based partner has submitted expression of interest and intends to bid for 49 per cent stake, now that Naresh Goyal is no more at the helm.

While Jet Airways is yet to confirm it has suspended international operations, industry sources said, "The airline has suspended west bound international flights from Thursday night, till Friday morning." These includes flights to London and Amsterdam.

According to regulations, an airline needs to have a minimum fleet of 20 planes to operate international flights.

Domestically, another executive added, the airline may operate a much truncated flight schedule on Friday, and mostly from Mumbai. The exact number couldn't be verified.

With cash hardly coming in and lenders failing to transfer Rs1,500 crore in emergency funding, the airline fears more grounding of planes.

Banks have transferred only about Rs250 crore of the proposed Rs1,500 crore fresh funding.

Apart from Etihad and Naresh Goyal himself, a clutch of private equity players including TPG, and Air Canada are reported to be among the possible bidders.
PM Modi honoured with Russia's highest civilian award

Russia has honoured Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the countrys highest civilian award, 'Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle', for promoting a special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India. Russian President Vladimir Putin today signed the decree conferring Modi with the highest state decoration, its embassy tweeted.

Moscow is honouring Prime Minister Modi for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between the two countries.

"On April 12, Narendra Modi was decorated with the `Order of St Andrew the Apostle for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India and friendly relations between the Russian and Indian peoples," the Russian Embassy said in a tweet.

This is the second international honour for the PM this month after he was awarded the United Arab Emirates' highest civilian award, the Zayed Medal, as a mark of appreciation for his efforts to boost ties between the two nations.

This comes less than two months after the prime minister was awarded Seoul Peace Prize by the South Korean government in recognition of his service to international cooperation, global growth and human development.

In October 2018, Modi received the United Nation's highest environmental honour, the Champions of the Earth Award, from secretary-general Antonio Guterres for his "unprecedented pledge to eliminate all single-use plastic in India by 2022". He was among the six winners of the award.

The prime minister also received the first-ever Philip Kotler Presidential Award on 14 January, 2019. However, the award was surrounded in a controversy as critics questioned its authenticity. However, Kotler later stated that he took the final decision on giving the award to Modi after a committee in his organisation voted on possible contenders.

The Order of St Andrew the Apostle is the highest order of the Russian Federation. Established in 1698, the honour was the first and highest order of chivalry in the Russian Empire. During the Soviet rule, the award was abolished. It was reinstated in 1998.
Astronomers successfully obtain first ever image of a black hole

The very first image of a black hole has been obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a network of eight radio telescopes on four different continents designed for this purpose.

Black holes are extremely dense cosmic objects. Their gravitational attraction is so strong that nothing, neither matter nor light, can escape from them. Despite their huge mass and tremendous impact on their environment, black holes are very small bodies, making them particularly difficult to detect. However, due to its exceptional mass and relative proximity to Earth ('only' 55 million light years away from us), the black hole at the centre of the M87 galaxy was a perfect target for the EHT.

In 2017, the network connected eight observatories on four continents for the first time. Using an interferometry technique that makes use of the rotation of our planet, it forms a huge virtual telescope with a theoretical aperture the size of the diameter of the Earth. This required extremely precise synchronisation of the eight radio telescopes, using high-precision atomic clocks. This technique enabled the EHT to achieve a sensitivity and spatial resolution (20 microarcseconds) never previously achieved: it would enable someone in Paris to read a newspaper located in New York! The black hole was observed by the EHT on 5, 6, 10 and 11 April 2017. Around four petabytes of data were recorded, which were then processed by dedicated supercomputers in Bonn (Germany) and Haystack (United States).

The Institut de Radioastronomie Millimetrique (IRAM), founded in 1979 by the CNRS and the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (MPG, Germany)1, played a key role in this result via its 30-metre telescope, located near Granada (Spain). This is the most sensitive single antenna in the EHT network and the only observatory in Europe to participate in the 2017 observation campaign: without it, it would have been impossible to obtain this first image of a black hole.

The image clearly shows a ring-like structure with a dark, circular central region: this is the shadow of the black hole standing out against a bright background, exactly as predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity. The shadow, caused by the gravitational bending of light, provides a huge amount of information about the nature of these fascinating objects, and enabled the researchers to measure the black hole's enormous mass: 6.5 billion times that of our Sun, located in a region 20 billion kilometres across, approximately twice the size of our Solar System.

The orange halo is made up of superheated matter, hot gas and plasma, that surrounds the black hole. Its light is deflected and intensified by the black hole, which acts like a lens. The asymmetry between the bright area at the bottom of the ring and the less bright region at the top is a clear signature of the deformation of the image caused by the presence of the black hole, and corresponds exactly to the predictions of the scientists' numerical simulations.

Research institutions as well as European funding have played a decisive role in this global project, thanks to the participation of leading European telescopes and the support of the European Research Council (ERC) for the BlackHoleCam project, which received 14 million in European funding. In addition to IRAM, France also contributed to the EHT with the ALMA Observatory in Chile, in which it participates as a member of the ESO.

At the end of 2018, NOEMA, IRAM's second observatory, located on the Plateau de Bure in the French Alps, joined the EHT network. Its ten extremely sensitive antennas make it the network's most powerful telescope in the northern hemisphere. Two new antennas will be added in two years' time. IRAM's NOEMA facility will further enhance the EHT network's sensitivity and the quality of the images it will provide over the next few years.

The list of telescopes in the EHT network: ALMA, APEX, the IRAM 30-metre telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, the Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano, the Submillimeter Array, the Submillimeter Telescope and the South Pole Telescope.
The director of Miss Universe Ireland, Brittany Mason and the reigning Miss Universe Ireland, Grainne Gallanagh launched the 2019 search for finalists for this year's competition which takes place in the Round Room of the Mansion House on Thursday August 1.

Hailing from Buncrana, Grainne is the ninth Irish woman in history to make it to the final round of Miss Universe securing a place in the top 20.

This was the first time ever that Ireland made it to the finals in two consecutive years, with Gallanagh mirroring the achievement of Miss Universe Ireland 2017, Cailin Aine Ni Toibin.

Due to this historical achievement, Ireland is now 1 of 5 countries in the world to currently hold a back to back finalist placement. We are hoping that the third time is a charm and we will bring our first ever Miss Universe crown home this year.

Grainne has achieved monumental success since walking away with the Miss Universe Ireland crown with approximately 70,000 in prizes. She proudly represented Ireland at events like London Fashion Week and The Brits.

The Buncrana native has also just signed with London Modelling agency, BMA Models and will be the first Irish born and bred model to walk in Miami Swimweek this summer as her last official role as Miss Universe Ireland.

During her reign Grainne, who is a fully qualified nurse, raised vital awareness and funds for the Womens Health Clinic in Donegal, speaking at events and educating her followers about important issues surrounding women's health. She hopes to utilise her network platform as Miss Universe Ireland to one day open her own Women's health centre employing an all female staff.

First Round applications to compete as one of up to 30 finalists for the title of Miss Universe Ireland 2019 are being accepted from now until May 17 2019. The online application form and further requirement details can be found here: http://missuniverseireland. eu/apply-2019/.

To keep up to date on all information surrounding Miss Universe Ireland, follow @missuniverseireland on social media.
One Raphoe-based shopkeeper who planned for a no-deal Brexit and stockpiled many products has said that the recent extention has wrecked his plans.

Edward Coyle who owns and runs the Centra in Raphoe, six miles from the border, has been stockpiling UK-made items, such as, Jacobs Custard Creams, Heinz Beans and garlic bread, for months in anticipation of a no-deal Brexit.

Since the deadline has been pushed back to October, his goods will expire unless he sells them, which may in turn impact his supply chain.

We were ready for March 29 and we were ready on April 12. Now this delay has wrecked our plans, Mr Coyle told the Belfast Telegraph.

Mr Coyle said he and other businesses in the Republic were taking no chances when it came to products manufactured in the UK and had filled warehouses with essentials to avoid empty shelves.

The businessman said that Brexit may happen in June and is wondering about how to manage that situation should it happen: It can happen in June when they review it, so how do I prepare? How do I manage that?

He said that now he will have to sell off all the products he had stockpiled and will stockpile again for October.

But my worry is that Brexit can happen at any time, he said.

The items that Mr Coyle stockpiled were items that cant be guaranteed to have on shelves if a no-deal Brexit happens.

Custard Creams are only sold in the British Isles and manufactured there, the same applies to Heinz beans. There is only one factory in the North that makes all the garlic bread for the entire island of Ireland which may also cause issues in terms of Brexit.

The businessman said he would hate to see the UK exit the EU.
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Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) recently facilitated a Rural Conversation in conjunction with the Royal Irish Academy aimed examining ways of enhancing social cohesion among communities in rural Ireland.

The consultative rural stakeholder event was the second of three Rural Conversations, hosted in three Higher Education Institutions around the island of Ireland. More than 70 representatives attended the event including academics, local government, policy experts and representatives from rural communities across the North Leinster South Ulster region. Outputs from the event have been used to help to inform the development of future Government policy on rural development in Ireland.

This event was opened by Dr Michael Mulvey, President, DkIT. During his opening address, DkIT President, Michael Mulvey, PhD, said: The topic of social cohesion which is today's focus is very relevant to a college like DkIT. Whilst we draw students from North Dublin the bulk of our students are from Louth, Meath, Cavan, Monaghan and increasingly Armagh and Co. Down. It is a region that has integrity of its own and we endeavor to act and lead and serve this region in an integrated way whilst at the same time respecting that it spans two jurisdictions.

Other speakers included Professor Aine Hyland, MRIA, Mr William Parnell, Assistant Secretary General from the Department of Rural and Community Development and Professor Colette Henry, Head of Department of Business Studies who coordinated the event with the Royal Irish Academy. Speaking at the event she added:

In Ireland, rural areas account for 57% of the population. Research highlights that economic downturns have greater detrimental impacts on rural communities with immediate impact on unemployment and potential emigration of skilled labour. It vital that government policy and infrastructure empowers rural communities and supports them to navigate periods of instability. This is particularly important in our own border region with uncertainty surrounding BREXIT.

During her presentation, Colette highlighted the role of Higher Education in supporting rural communities including skills provision, particularly in the areas of business, manufacturing, agri-food and veterinary. She also highlighted the importance of schools outreach and the promotion of new programme areas such a robotics and data science in ensuring that we meet the skills requirements for our communities in the future.

Attendees of the Rural Conversation were asked to provide feedback under these questions:

- What are the key positive and negative factors impacting social cohesion in rural communities?

- Which cohorts within rural communities are most affected by a lack of cohesion among and between community segments (e.g. youth, elderly, new citizens, etc.), and how are they impacted?

- What actions need to be taken in order to enhance cohesion and strengthen social support structures for all rural dwellers?
Mum of two and successful business owner, Adala Bolto, has launched her first two fitness studios in Surry Hills and Neutral Bay under the brand Zadi.

This has all happened in only the past 7 months and Zadi is already receiving franchisee enquiries every week as well as a 20% growth month on month.

Adala Bolto, who is now 40, created ZADI training as she spotted a gap in the market to build a strong female focused brand that was results and technology-driven but also created an experience for clients.

Zadi studios are designed with The experience in minds they are set up as a female only nightclub.

Adala shares why Zadi has been so successful already, where the brand is heading in future and how she balances being a mum with being a new fitness studio owner.

How have you built a business that is growing 20% each month?

Im very proud of the great growth ZADI has had since our launch in such a competitive market.

We wanted to be unique from the start, finding a niche gap amongst all the other offerings and we set out to stand out. This was a very deliberate approach and the key to attracting our ideal members instead of wanting to appeal to everyone.

We made sure that the foundation laid at the start was consistent in our brand messaging, language and images. We stuck to our core beliefs and promoted our unique selling points.

By knowing our ideal members behaviours and interests, we then used social and digital platforms as well as partnerships and local marketing in a staged campaign from teasers all the way to launching our service.

From its creation, ZADI was to be a franchise model so we chose one location (Neutral Bay) as a prime example of a franchise studio with the ideal demographic and the other (Surry Hills) for brand positioning. Everything was chosen for success as a brand and a franchise business.

Where do you see Zadi in the future, for example the next 2 to 5 years?

In 2 to 5 years I see ZADI with many locations across Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane as well as internationally. We wont just be focused on growth in Australia, ZADI is a brand and product that can be rolled out in many other countries to meet the demands of a fast growing sector globally.

What are your top three tips for balancing business growth with being a mum of two?

Im not sure if Im doing the greatest job at balance in this start up phase, but, the kids are still talking to me! But my tips to balancing both are:
One person died and tens of thousands lost power as the second "bomb cyclone" in a month brought snow and wind to the central U.S. Wednesday and Thursday.

The storm dumped snow on Colorado Wednesday, canceling hundreds of flights at Denver International Airport before moving through the plains to the upper Midwest, where it covered some parts of the region with up to two feet of snow, the Associated Press reported. Heavy snow fell in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Minnesota and Wisconsin, The Independent reported. Whiteout conditions were also reported in parts of Nebraska and Kansas, according to the Associated Press. "We're calling it historic because of the widespread heavy snow," South Dakota meteorologist Mike Connelly told the Chicago Tribune, as The Independent reported. "We will set some record."

The storm claimed at least one life when a Colorado man lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a snow plow, AccuWeather reported. The weather site projected the storm would cost $3 billion in economic damages. It led to road closures and forced the cancellation of almost 1,000 flights across the region. Conditions prompted Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to declare a state of emergency Thursday night. Blizzard conditions in Minnesota led to more than 500 crashes, the Minnesota State Patrol said, according to the Associated Press. "It's a mess out here. And that is an understatement," Minnesota State Patrol Lt. Gordon Shank said. A video posted on social media by the Minnesota Department of Transportation showed every power line down along a stretch of Highway 59, NPR reported.
Scientists have some bad news for those who catch a case of hay fever each spring: allergy season is beginning earlier and becoming more intense due to climate change.

A recent study published in Lancet Planetary Health found that areas around the world that are already susceptible to airborne pollen have seen increased pollen counts over the last 20 years, which the researchers say follow disruptions in the global average temperature driven by climate change.

The international team of researchers analyzed records of pollen counts dating back more than 20 years for 17 locations across the Northern Hemisphere and compared them with changes in minimum and maximum temperatures due to climate change. They found that 12 of the locations showed significant increases in pollen and 11 locations saw an increase in pollen season that averaged 0.9 days each year.

Vox reported that the increase in severity of allergy season is one of the more visible ways climate change is putting a burden on public health, as the antihistamines used to treat allergies cost billions of dollars each year in direct medical expenses. Seasonal allergies already affect nearly 50 million Americans and 30 percent of the global population, according to Smithsonian.com  a figure that could grow as the climate continues to shift from historical norms.

"Places where we haven't seen environmental allergies like in Arizona are now seeing an increase in allergies," Dr. Saira Sheikh, director of clinical trials in the division of rheumatology, allergy and immunology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who was not involved in the study, told USA Today.

"There's no relief anywhere," Sheikh said.
A French appeals court ruled Thursday in favor of a farmer who has been in a decade-long fight with Monsanto since he fell ill after inhaling a now-banned weedkiller.

Paul Francois, 55, said he suffered neurological damage after inhaling Monsanto's Lasso in 2004. He sued the company arguing that the labeling on the product had been inadequate. Courts ruled in his favor in 2012 and 2015, but France's top court overturned those rulings and ordered a new hearing.

"We are all happy to have won but it came at a heavy price," Francois told reporters, according to Reuters. "It's a big sigh of relief. It's been 12 years of fighting, 12 years during which I had to put my whole life on hold."

Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in 2018, told BBC News it was considering options including an appeal.

"We are currently reviewing the decision of the court," a company spokesperson said.

Thursday's decision follows a series of legal setbacks for the company since it acquired Monsanto. Two juries in the U.S. have now ruled in favor of plaintiffs claiming that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the company's Roundup weedkiller, caused them to develop cancer. There are more than 10,000 similar lawsuits pending.

Bayer's chief executive said the company was "massively affected" by the lawsuits, Reuters reported, which are partly responsible for the loss of 30 billion euros (approximately $33.9 billion) of its market value since August 2018.

Lasso has a different active ingredient, monochlorobenzene, that was found in Fracois' body after he inhaled the weedkiller. Francois said he suffered memory loss, headaches and difficulty speaking that forced him to stop working, BBC News reported.

Lasso was banned in France in 2007 and had been prohibited in Canada as early as 1985 and in Belgium and the UK in 1992, AFP reported. Francois is asking for 1 million euros (approximately $1.1 million) in damages, arguing that Monsanto was aware of the dangers of the product and should have done more to warn users of potential hazards.

The court in Lyon, France agreed, saying the label should have included "a notice on the specific dangers of using the product in vats and reservoirs," AFP reported.

"The plaintiff's assumed technical knowledge does not excuse the lack of information on the product and its harmful effects  a farmer is not a chemist," the court ruled.

Bayer disagreed that Monsanto had done anything wrong.

"Plant protection products are among the products whose evaluation and authorisation are the most strictly regulated in the world," a Bayer spokeswoman told BBC News. "They are safe when used as directed."

The court Thursday ordered Monsanto to pay 50,000 euros (approximately $56,570) for Francois' legal fees but did not rule on the overall compensation. That will be decided in a later ruling, AFP reported.
The Senate voted to confirm former oil-and-gas lobbyist David Bernhardt as Secretary of the Interior Thursday, despite calls from Democrats and government watchdogs to investigate his past conduct, The New York Times reported.

The confirmation vote was 56-to-41, making Bernhardtwho has so many conflicts of interests he has to write them on an index card to make sure he doesn't deal with former clientsthe least popular Interior Secretary in 40 years, the Center for American Progress (CAP) told The Washington Post. The second least popular was Ryan Zinke, President Donald Trump's first pick to lead the Department of Interior (DOI), who resigned last year amidst a series of ethics investigations. A CAP analysis showed that Bernhardt bested his former boss in another respect: he has the most conflicts of interests of all 31 Trump cabinet-level nominees. "It still amazes me," New York Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said of Bernhardt's nomination, as The New York Times reported. "Donald Trump campaigns on cleaning up the swamp and he does exactly the opposite when in office. An oil and gas lobbyist as head of the Department of Interior? My God. That's an example of the swampiness of Washington if there ever was one. And when are Donald Trump's supporters going to understand this?" Bernhardt worked for the DOI under President George W. Bush, contributing to efforts to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development. He then spent seven years as a lobbyist with several fossil fuel clients including Halliburton; another of his clients was the powerful California utility Westlands Water District. Trump nominated him to serve as deputy secretary at DOI in April 2017, he was confirmed in July of that year and he has been acting as interior secretary since Zinke's resignation in December of 2018.

Democratic lawmakers and watchdogs have called for investigations into three of Bernhardt's reported actions, according to The New York Times.

While at Interior, he reportedly acted to weaken endangered species protections for a California fish, an act that would benefit Westlands Water District. He continued to lobby on behalf of Westlands Water District up through the month of his April 2017 nomination, despite the fact that he had told the federal government he was no longer lobbying at that time, The New York Times reported. He blocked an about-to-be-released report detailing the risks posed by pesticides to more than 1,000 endangered species. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden said he was shocked by that last revelation, reported in March. Shortly before, Bernhardt had come to Wyden's office and promised to abide by ethical standards. "Why would you come to my office and lie?" Wyden asked Bernhardt during his confirmation hearing, The Washington Post reported. Three Democratic Senators broke ranks with their colleagues to approve Bernhardt's confirmation: Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Krysten Sinema of Arizona and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico. Heinrich said that, since one-third of land in New Mexico is owned by DOI, it was important for the state to have a confirmed head of the agency, The New York Times reported. "I need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to the Secretary of Interior on a regular basis. I'm not going to be able to get the Interior Secretary I wanted. We didn't win in 2016," he said, according to The New York Times. "But in New Mexico, I'm going to put my state and protection of public lands in my state first." Heinrich had been the target of a campaign by the Western Values Project urging him to change his mind.
By Kaitlin Grable

Under the restless surface of our seas, hundreds of miles from land, there's a world of giants and hunters; ancient lifeforms and lost cities.

These waters beyond national borders are home to creatures even more varied than in the tropical rainforests. They contain the highest and longest mountain range anywhere on our planet, and trenches deep enough to hold Mount Everest. They're the highways for whales, turtles, albatross and tuna on their cross-planet migrations.

Protecting these natural wonders is simply the right thing to do. But this isn't just about conscience. It's about survival. The oceans produce half of our oxygen, and food for a billion people. And because they soak up huge amounts of carbon dioxide, they're also one of our best defenses against climate change. Our fate is bound to the fate of our oceans. If they don't make it, we don't either.

Sea Lions near Hopkins Island

A Rescue Plan for Our Oceans

Now though, there's a ray of hope. Scientists have drawn up a rescue plan for our oceans  and we're going to throw everything we've got at making it happen. Are you in? The ocean rescue plan is bold, and brilliantly simple: we cover the planet in ocean sanctuaries, putting a third of the oceans off-limits to fishing, mining and other destructive industries. If the rescue plan goes ahead, it'll be one of the biggest conservation efforts in human history, creating millions of square kilometers of new protected areas. Here's the problem: at the moment, there's no way to create new sanctuaries outside countries' national waters. We can't protect these huge areas of the ocean without an international agreement on how this protection would work. Governments have started work on a UN Ocean Treaty, and if they get it right it'll give us the tools we need to make these sanctuaries happen.

Errera channel in the Antarctic

Join Us on an Epic Voyage The open oceans are some of the least studied  and least regulated places on Earth, and to properly protect them we need to know more about what's happening out there. So this week, a team of scientists, photographers and campaigners is setting out on an epic journey from the North Pole to the South Pole to document a year in the life of our oceans, and build the best possible case for a strong UN treaty. Sailing on Greenpeace's swiftest and largest ship, the Esperanza, they'll be conducting crucial ocean research and protection  exposing the threats, peacefully confronting the villains and championing the solutions. The team at sea needs as many people as possible on land to make sure their findings can't be ignored. Will you join the campaign?

Coral Reef Nauru in the Pacific Ocean

Ocean Sanctuaries Work All over the world, wherever a proper ocean sanctuary is created, the results are dramatic. Habitats recover. The fish come back. Life finds a way. But because sanctuaries work so well, the people who profit from dumping and plundering our seas are working hard to water down the treaty. It's up to us to make sure nature and ordinary people have a voice in this too. When we work together we can change the world. From stopping Shell's oil drilling in the Arctic, to getting the world's largest tuna company to clean up its act for people and the planet, we know how to stand up for our seas  and win. But now it's time to go even bigger. Over the next year, this mission will need all the courage, cunning and creativity we can find. But today, it just needs your name. Sign the petition to get started.

Kaitlin Grable is the social media associate for Greenpeace USA.


At the beginning of this year, the National Conference of State Legislatures predicted there was a chance that more than half of states could finally overhaul the antiquatedand, advocates say, often inequitableformulas that have been dictating their K-12 funding for years.

The political and fiscal environment was ripe: Many states were flush with cash, teachers were demanding more money for schools in general along with salary increases, and there was widespread agreement among district administrators that funding formulas were both outdated and insufficient in fairly distributing school aid.

But balancing state and local resources, deciding which districts should get what, and figuring out how to distribute money in a way that will spur academic achievement is tricky.

While theres a strong chance that states such as Maryland and Texas are likely to see major changes to state spending patterns as a result of decisions made this legislative season, others, such as Idaho and Nevada, have had a hard time getting funding formula replacement efforts off the ground.

Virtually every legislator gets involved with school funding formula debates since they each have vocal constituents at risk of gaining or losing state aid. And anti-tax advocates, parents, and teachersgroups with get-out-the-vote prowessare among those at the forefront. Getting hundreds of legislators on the same page with a funding formula is a political feat.

Heres a snapshot of some of the most animated political battles this legislative season to replace, update, and legally grapple with school funding formulas. These situations remain politically fluid, and in some of these casesand in other states funding bills have failed even to make it out of legislative committee or withered early in the legislative session.

Idaho

The prospects appeared high earlier this year for Idaho to push through a new funding formula. Its current formula is more than 25 years old. But early in the process, the effort stumbled after teacher groups, school administrators, legislators, and school funding advocacy groups couldnt agree on teacher pay, weights for some student groups, and whether to base school funding on attendance or enrollment. Instead, lawmakers this year are expected to pass a watered-down bill that will require the state to start collecting more-accurate enrollment data. Because the state is so rural, many students take some courses online, as well as at charter schools and at traditional public schools, making money distribution especially complicated. Before the states legislative session ended March 28, lawmakers pledged to tackle approving a new funding formula during next years legislative session.

Kansas

Kansas funding formula has been under legal scrutiny for several years, and the states supreme court last year demanded that the state increase the amount of money it provides to schools or risk having the entire funding formula deemed unconstitutional, forcing the states schools to shut down. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly April 6 signed a bill that would provide $90 million for each of the next three years to the states public schools. The question now is whether that amount will satisfy the states supreme court. Lawyers for the four school districts that sued the state in the Gannon v. Kansas funding lawsuit, have said the state will fall $270 million short of what districts need to provide an adequate education. The court will hear the latest twist in this case on May 9.

Maryland

Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, as of now is faced with signing or vetoing a newly passed measure that would over the next two years contribute $850 million more in state revenue toward schools. Its seen in the state as a down payment on a new funding formula being pushed by a legislature-appointed commission. The new money is to be used for increasing teacher pay, expanding prekindergarten programs, and establishing more wraparound services in high-poverty schools. All are things recommended by the commission chaired by William Kirwan, the former chancellor of the University of Maryland system. Legislators couldnt agree on several other recommendations, including how they would be able to afford a $3.8 billion funding increase by 2030, but they have committed to attempting to replace the entire funding formula next year.

Massachusetts

Hundreds of parents, teachers, and advocates packed a hearing in late March at the state capitol on school funding. Three bills coursing through the legislature could alter the way the state distributes its K-12 money for the first time in more than 25 years. One bill, pushed by Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, would provide $1.1 billion more for schools over the next seven years and give the states department of education more oversight of underperforming schools. Another, dubbed the Education PROMISE Act, would implement several spending provisions that a bipartisan state-appointed commission recommended last year, and add $1 billion over a yet-to-be determined number of years. And a third, much looser proposal, named An Act Relative to Updating the Education Foundation Budget, pledges that the state will replace its funding formula by 2024, but would commit no new state aid for schools. Several proposals were killed at the last minute during last years legislative session after lawmakers couldnt agree on new spending patterns. The states legislative session ends May 8.

Ohio

In the middle of this years session, a task force made up legislators, district superintendents, and school finance officers proposed what it called the Fair School Funding Plan . Districts had long complained that the states existing formula doesnt distribute money to the districts most in need of state aid and that it unfairly punishes districts that have a significant number of students who transfer to charter schools. The proposal would, according to its architects, provide more money to districts serving more-impoverished students. But it quickly ran into trouble when lawmakers calculated that wealthier districts would stand to gain more per pupil that poorer districts. The plan would require the state to increase overall state funding for schools by 10 percent over the next two years. Legislators are still debating components of the bill. The states legislative session runs throughout the year.

Nevada

With both the legislature and governorship now under Democratic control, lawmakers are gathering steam to replace a school funding formula that is almost 50 years old. At this point, proposals havent been formalized into a bill, those close to the process have told local media . The approaches being debated would not increase the amount of money the state contributes to public schools, but would change which districts get more money. Currently, every district gets the same amount of money, no matter what type of student its educating. Those crafting the legislation are considering giving more money to schools that teach students who require more resources to educate, such as impoverished students, English-language learners, and those with disabilities. Reports suggest the legislation will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Texas

Lawmakers are barreling through the lawmaking process on House Bill 3, which would upend Texas decades-old Robin Hood funding formula, which takes money from property-rich districts and distributes it to property-poor districts. The bill would increase per-pupil spending to $6,030 from $5,140 and increase school spending by $9 billion over the next two years. The bill gained more support from districts and teachers after a provision was included to tie teacher pay and a portion of districts revenue to test scores. If passed, the states property tax would decrease and districts would rely more on sales and oil tax revenue.
This is a story of how I got schooled.

Last November, I was a high school social studies teacher. Then I won an election to the state legislatures House of Representatives. I was part of that angry teacher wave that stormed the Oklahoma Capitol last spring, and this was my way of continuing the fight to secure better education policy in our state.

If only it were that simple.

After winning the election in November, I was given a one-month deadline to draft my first bills. How do you write a bill? Surprisingly, a career in teaching U.S. government does little to prepare you for that. The workings of a state bureaucracy and its budgetary process are quite arcane and idiosyncratic. I started out by borrowing ideas from others. I filed a bill to amend a law on teacher mentoringbased on suggestions from another teacher-legislator who had just lost her re-election bidand a bill on behalf of the Oklahoma Education Association to take the A-F letter grade out of our states annual school evaluation report.

See Also: I Was Tired of How Politicians Treated Teachers. So I Became a Politician 

In government there exists a concept known as the iron triangle. It describes the confluence of bureaucrats, lobbyists, and politicians around whom policy gets made (or unmade). I soon received a 101 course in how that works. Not too long into the term, I received a visit from the state superintendent of education and some of her policy team. They had invested a great deal of time in developing the system and didnt want it changed.

I argued that the A-F system oversimplified what goes on in our schools, unfairly stigmatizes schools in poor neighborhoods, and encourages apples-to-oranges comparisons. No dice. My bill disappeared from the committee agenda.

My mentoring bill had a more tortured history. It made the committee calendar. I went around promoting the bill to my colleagues, only to discover that lobbyists were working against me. It turns out the Chamber of Commerce, an alliance of state business interests, opposed my changes to the lawthe very law they had sponsored the year before.

The 'we' my lobbyist friend referred to did not include me, or most of the rank-and-file teachers. That's part of the problem."

No matterI brought the bill to committee and debated points with veteran lawmakers. With the help of some other newly elected educators, the bill was passed out of committee. The next step was getting it on the floor calendar. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum: My bill disappeared. The Republican leadership placed a hold on the bill saying my amendment to the law was premature. I was advised by lobbyists from the Cooperative Council for School Administrators to go ask the Chamber of Commerce if we could work out our differences.

I met the legislative liaison for the chamber in a gleaming steel and glass monument to the oil industry. She told me that the Chamber of Commerce found it premature to amend the mentoring bill. Data gathered from other states, she explained, show that this law creates incentives for teachers over the long term. Though she did concede that we have no vote on this.

I learned a lot from the process. On one level, I had behaved like a bull in a china shop. With little knowledge of the process, I had threatened existing policies and interest groups. I learned that the proper way to go about things is to bring together the interested partiesthe three corners of the iron triangleand negotiate a policy that suits everyone.

But I also realized that the we my lobbyist friend referred to did not include me, or most of the rank-and-file teachers. Thats part of the problem. Decisions about policy are made in closed rooms. Education reform is outside-in and top-down. This is probably one of the major causes of the demoralization of our profession.

The next month, the state superintendent gave an open presentation to legislators on the A-F evaluation system that I had tried and failed to replace. The letter grade, she said, was only a small part of the publicly accessible dashboard of useful data on each school. However, when I had previously polled a number of principals in my urban district about the system, they only ever told me their schools letter grade, not the other information touted in the dashboard. They all felt stigmatized.

In the presentation to lawmakers, the state superintendent praised the use of absenteeism in the assessment, saying it measured the degree of trust families had in their schools. I wondered how the teachers in those low-performing schools in working-class neighborhoods would feel about that. The principals I talked to all objected to the use of chronic absenteeism as a benchmark.

For comparison, a high school with graduation rate of 80 percent received a D, while a statewide online virtual charter school with a 44 percent graduation rate received a C, in part because they could count completion of online tasks as attendance.

There was a nice lunch provided for the legislators who attended that presentationcourtesy of the Chamber of Commerce.
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The first direct visual evidence of a supermassive black hole and its shadow was revealed live at an international media conference in Brussels, Belgium on 10 April 2019. The South African media was part of the conference via a video link hosted at the University of Pretoria.

The black hole is at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55-million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6,5-billion times that of the sun.

The image was received by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration, designed to capture images of a black hole.

University of Pretoria astrophysicist Prof. Roger Deanes research groups role was to create a highly realistic simulation of this complex Earth-sized instrument, understand its limits, and test algorithms that recover the black hole shadow. This sophisticated software is also being used to demonstrate how the EHT will be dramatically enhanced if expanded onto the African continent. Our role shows that the University of Pretoria is a global player, forming part of an exceptionally talented and ambitious team of international astronomers to produce this historic result, prof Deane said in a video conference arranged after the official announcement. The new UP Astronomy Group aims to make leading contributions with MeerKAT science programmes, and with the Square Kilometre Array.

The EHT links telescopes around the globe to form an Earth-sized virtual telescope with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. It is the result of years of international collaboration, and offers scientists a new way to study the most extreme objects in the universe predicted by Einsteins theory of general relativity during the centennial year of the historic experiment that first confirmed the theory. We are giving humanity its first view of a black hole, a one-way door out of our universe, said EHT project director Sheperd Doeleman from the Centre for Astrophysics, Harvard and Smithsonian. This is a landmark in astronomy, an unprecedented scientific feat accomplished by a team of more than 200 researchers.

One hundred years ago, two expeditions set out for the island of Principe off the coast of Africa and Sobra in Brazil to observe the 1919 solar eclipse, with the goal of testing general relativity by seeing if starlight would be bent around the limb of the sun, as predicted by Einstein. In an echo of those observations, the EHT has sent team members to some of the worlds highest and most isolated radio facilities to once again test our understanding of gravity.

The EHT observations use very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) which synchronises telescope facilities around the world and exploits the rotation of our planet to form one huge, Earth-sized telescope observing at a wavelength of 1,3 mm. VLBI allows the EHT to achieve an angular resolution of 20 micro-arcseconds, enough to read a newspaper in New York from a sidewalk cafe in Paris.

We have achieved something presumed to be impossible just a generation ago, said Doeleman. Breakthroughs in technology and the completion of new radio telescopes over the past decade enabled our team to assemble this new instrument designed to see the un-seeable.

Although the telescopes are not physically connected, they are able to synchronise their recorded data with atomic clocks, hydrogen masers, which precisely time their observations. These observations were collected at a wavelength of 1,3 mm during a 2017 global campaign. Each telescope of the EHT produced enormous amounts of data, roughly 350 terabytes per day which was stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives. The data was flown to highly specialised supercomputers, known as correlators, at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and MIT Haystack Observatory, to be combined. They were then painstakingly converted into an image using novel computational tools developed by the collaboration.

About four years ago, Prof. Deane started working with the team on the Event Horizon Telescope. Growing up in Welkom in the Free State, he developed a passion for astronomy from an early age when he was dazzled by the excellent view of the Milky Way. Downplaying his contribution to the capturing of the first image of a black hole, the 36-year-old Associate Professor of Physics said, Im still blown away by the image. It hasnt really worn off yet. Im just proud and honoured to play my small part in this amazing international team.

Prof. Deane said that as with any major physics experiment, one needs to understand the effects that the instrument itself may have on the data. In the case of the EHT, we built a simulation package that physically modelled a number of non-desirable effects that prevent one from seeing any sort of black hole shadow feature. The EHT observes very short wavelengths, about 1 mm, which means the distance between two consecutive peaks of light is 1 mm. This is about 200 times smaller than the wavelength of light that MeerKAT observes, and presents many challenges to the telescope design, data processing and analysis. Just a small amount of water vapour in the atmosphere could completely erase the signature of the black hole shadow. This is why the EHT stations are at very high altitudes in some of the driest places on Earth. There are a multitude of other aspects involved to accurately model an instrument as sensitive and complex as this telescope. We incorporate as much of this information as we can physically model in software. This accurate simulation of the telescope enables astronomers to better understand the real observations, discriminate between theoretical black hole shadow models, and insights into the characteristics and performance of the telescope itself allows scientists to accurately predict the impact of adding new antennas in the global network, as is planned for the African Millimetre Telescope (AMT) project in Namibia.

The first image of a black hole is a significant milestone for the EHT, but much lies ahead as the team works towards testing Einsteins theory of general relativity. To do so, they will need to continue to improve the images through array expansion in Africa and elsewhere with improved algorithms.

Prof. Deane says his group is now focused on three things:

Expanding its simulations to model the case where light from the black hole may have preferred orientation.

Thinking about how polarised lenses reduce the suns glare from the sea.

Performing detailed simulations on new prospective sites, and exploring a range of probabilistic modelling techniques to extract the properties of the black hole shadow.

When Prof. Deane joined UP in January 2018, there were no other astronomers at the institution. By July, we should have scaled up to approximately 14. We are hoping to finalise a joint South African Radio Astronomy Observatory-UP South African Research Chair Initiative in radio astronomy by then as well.

Over 100 UP students registered for the first-year astronomy course in 2019, a dramatic increase, so there is clearly a need to grow the number of faculty positions in astronomy to deal with the teaching and postgraduate student supervision demand.

The UP-Astronomy groups science-driven approach is in keeping with the realisation that this new era of complex, big data telescopes requires technical expertise and new algorithmic approaches. A significant part of his research groups work is focused on machine learning with the UP Computational Intelligence Research Group in the Department of Computer Science, and instrumental work in collaboration with UPs Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering Department.

Looking ahead, Prof. Deane is excited about growth in astronomy, saying that, South Africa has an increasing number of astronomy-related success stories to help spur our youth into science and technology careers. I think our government, through the Department of Science and Technology, has been very strategic in that regard, with payoffs that will be far-reaching and long-lasting.

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Mexico City, Apr 11 (EFE).- Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's new exhibition here, "Resetting Memories," seeks to link his homeland to Mexico, two nations whose peoples share a history of suffering from state violence.

The exhibition will open Saturday at the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) on the campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

"(The exhibit) portrays historical violence in two distant countries but with a common history that is the story of humanity," curator Cuauhtemoc Medina said Thursday at a press conference.

Ai's presentation comprises two elements, Wang Family Ancestral Hall (2015) and LEGO portraits: The Ayotzinapa Case (2019), that interact with each other.

The first thing the visitor sees is a 400-year-old wooden structure with characteristically Chinese floral embellishment that belonged to the Wang family during the Ming Dynasty.

Knocked down during China's communist revolution, Ai bought the pieces and had several Chinese carpenters travel to MUAC to re-assemble the structure using traditional techniques that do without screws or nails.

The second project is composed of the portraits of the 43 students from Ayotzinapa teachers college who were abducted on Sept. 26, 2014, in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero.

The portraits were made by UNAM students using 1 million Lego pieces.

Ai, an artist and political maverick who frequently clashed with the Chinese government and was arrested in 2011, said the he has always been interested in Mexico, but had "little knowledge" about the Latin American country.

When he arrived in Mexico, he visited the Miguel Agustin Pro Juarez Human Rights Center, where he met the parents of some of the missing students of Ayotzinapa.

It was "just at that moment," Ai said, that he decided to begin the research culminating in the Ayotzinapa project.

The exhibition includes fragments of statements from relatives and friends of the 43 missing students and the handful of survivors of the events of September 2014, which the artist is using to create the documentary "To be."

Ai currently lives in Berlin, driven from China by the hostile response he had when he set out to investigate the deaths of thousands of students in the 2008 earthquake.

The artist doggedly sought answers and his persistence antagonized powerful people in China.

In China "there is no university like this (UNAM) where there is freedom," and the artists who remain in the Asian nation can't address controversial issues, Ai said.

By Ines Amarelo

Relacionados Ai Weiwei conecta la historia de violencia gubernamental de Mexico y China
Manx students hold third protest over climate change

School children from across the Isle of Man are staging a third strike over climate change.

Students will be are protesting outside Tynwald at midday.

They are calling for more action to be taken to tackle the problem as part of the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement.

The Isle of Man Student Climate Network say the Manx government needs to take more action when it comes to climate change.
Eating With My Ex wants Manx couple for new series

A reality show that helps people settle unfinished business with their ex is looking for ex-couples from the Isle of Man to apply.

BBC Three series Eating With My Ex follows ex-couples as they meet over a meal to have a frank and honest conversation about their past relationship.

The Bafta-nominated show is now casting for its third series and is seeking people from all walks of life who would like closure with a former partner.

Some people want an apology, some want a reunion, others just want closure - but whatever the outcome the format is incredibly moreish.

Alongside the often awkward and revealing questions being served up, Eating with My Ex delivers plenty of heart-warming, funny and authentic encounters.

If you want to reunite with an old flame and are available for filming over the summer, you can apply to take part in the show here.
Plight of plastic on the environment



MTTV / Paul Moulton

Protesters of all ages demonstrated outside Tynwald today over climate change.

The group including young students were calling for more action to be taken by the Manx government over the issue.

Today's event had a focus on reducing the use of plastic.

Speaking to MTTV, Archibald Elliot from The Isle of Man Student Climate Network believes we can all make a difference:

Media

Archibald Elliot Clip
75 police officers arrested over FETO probe

Over 80 suspects accused of receiving rank promotion exam questions beforehand in the ongoing probe.

Turkish security forces arrested 75 police officers on Friday over alleged links to the Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETO), the terror group behind the defeated July 15 coup in 2016 in Turkey.

75 POLICE OFFICERS WERE ARRESTED

Police sources said 75 FETO suspects were arrested in nationwide operations as they were accused of obtaining illicit access to the questions of a police promotion exam in 2010. Ankara prosecutors previously issued arrest warrants for 84 police officers 13 currently serving in an ongoing probe. Some 41 were arrested in capital Ankara during Friday's operations.

The suspects were promoted to the rank of commissar, allegedly receiving the exam questions beforehand, the General Directorate of Security said in a statement. Efforts for the capture of the remaining suspects are ongoing.

FETO and its US-based leader Fetullah Gulen orchestrated the defeated coup of July 15, 2016, which left 251 people martyred and nearly 2,200 injured. Ankara also accuses FETO of being behind a long-running campaign to overthrow the state through the infiltration of Turkish institutions, particularly the military, police, and judiciary.
EU pays 2B to support refugees in Turkey

1.5 million refugees were reached through monthly cash transfer for basic needs, says EU Facilities for Refugees in Turkey.

EU has paid out more than 2 billion (2.3 billion) to support refugees and host communities in Turkey, according to the third annual report of EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey.

2 BILLION HAVE BEEN PAID

The implementation of the facility further accelerated in 2018 and its 6 billion budget (for 2016-2019) has now been fully mobilized, the report said. "Since the facility's launch in March 2016, 84 projects in the areas of humanitarian assistance, education, healthcare and socio-economic support were contracted and are delivering tangible results on the ground and improving the lives of refugees and host communities in Turkey," it said.

According to the report, some 1.5 million refugees were reached through monthly cash transfer for their basic needs, 470,000 children attended school and over 5 million primary healthcare consultations delivered.

The EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey was set up in 2015 in response to the EU Councils call for additional funding to support Syrian refugees in Turkey.

The facility mainly focuses on humanitarian assistance, education, health, municipal infrastructure, and socioeconomic support. Turkey currently hosts almost 4 million registered refugees out of which nearly 3.6 million are Syrians.
FM: French decision on 1915 events invalid for Turkey

Turkeys foreign minister on Thursday dismissed a French declaration on the 1915 events during the Ottoman Empire era as invalid.

On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron signed an order declaring April 24 a day to commemorate events between Turkey and Armenia.

"WE WILL TAKE THE NECESSARY MEASURES ON THIS ISSUE"

"This decision has no validity for us at all. We will take the necessary measures on this issue," Mevlut Cavusoglu told a joint news conference alongside his Dutch counterpart Stef Blok in Amsterdam. Cavusoglu said Ankara has already started taking some initiatives on the issue. He said Macrons declaration flies in the face of European Court of Human Rights rulings on the issue, dismissing it as "Populism. Nothing else." He called France making judgements on the issue tragicomic, adding that instead, it should be looking at its own history.

"Not even 25 years have passed since the Rwandan genocide. Neither we, nor they, have forgotten what France did in Algeria, Africa, and other places," he said, referring to massacres and misdeeds from French colonial history.

France occupied Algeria for 132 years, until July 5, 1962, when the country declared its independence from colonial rule, after seven years of fighting against the French invaders. During the course of the struggle for independence, some 1.5 million Algerians were martyred, while hundreds of thousands more were injured, went missing, or were forced from their homes. Since its independence, Algeria has repeatedly asked France to acknowledge its colonial-era crimes.

Cavusoglu said it is "unacceptable" for a country which did such things to try to pass judgement on another country. He said even liberals are being affected by the far-right movements which have been spreading throughout Europe.

Turkey's position on the issue is that the deaths of Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1915 took place when some sided with invading Russians and revolted against Ottoman forces. A subsequent relocation of Armenians resulted in numerous casualties. Turkey objects to the presentation of the incidents as "genocide" but describes the 1915 events as a tragedy in which both sides suffered casualties.

"WE HAVE TO WORK TOGETHER IN ORDER TO STOP THIS FLOW"

Ankara has repeatedly proposed the creation of a joint commission of historians from Turkey and Armenia plus international experts to tackle the issue. Cavusoglu also said the PKK terror group is trying to use the Netherlands as a center for drug trade, which the group is doing from northern Iraq. "We have to work together in order to stop this flow," he said.

Blok, for his part, said he is positive about future of Turkish-Dutch relations and the two countries have "very strong" relations. He said Netherlands is the largest foreign investor in Turkey.

Responding to a question about discrimination being faced by the Turkish community in the Netherlands, Blok said: "Discrimination is not acceptable in the Netherlands, anyone who feels discriminated should go to the police, should go to a court." After the joint press conference, Cavusoglu also attended the opening ceremony of Turkey's Consulate General in Amsterdam.
Germany approves arms deliveries to Saudi Arabia

After the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Germany has stopped exporting weapons to Saudi Arabia. The sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia has been started again.

Saudi Arabia, for which there has been a stop of arms deliveries following the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, does not get German armaments directly. However, parts will be delivered to a French company that exports the final product to the Kingdom. The coalition had argued for months over such so-called community products.

THE OPPOSITION DISAPPROVED OF THIS DECISION

The controversial export license concerns the Ulm-based transport equipment manufacturer Kamag, which is exporting "technology for semi-trailer production" to France, whose "final destination" is in Saudi Arabia. Three more exports go to the United Arab Emirates. These are accessories for artillery positioning radar systems of the type "Cobra", which originate from German-French production. There are also software updates for these systems, which are already stationed in the emirate.

The opposition harshly criticized the new permits. "The announced just a few days ago export stop was simply a cynical deception maneuver," said the Greens security politician Agnieszka Brugger. "A federal government that so irresponsibly deals with dangerous arms exports must be brought to its senses with a strict and binding arms export law," she said.

France, in particular, had complained about the attitude of the German government because important arms exports could not take place because of the lack of parts from Germany. In a notable guest contribution, the French ambassador accused the government of being unreliable.

The dispute had burdened the German-French relationship. Now, the agreement seems to have been implemented in the Grand Coalition, and at least exports have been approved to a lesser extent.

In addition, the Federal Security Council has approved, among other things, 18,000 mortars for Indonesia, three Dingo 2 armored wheeled vehicles to Qatar and 3,000 portable anti-tank weapons to Singapore. The volume of export permits has not been quantified by the Ministry of Economy and refers to company secrets.
Germany calls for peaceful solution to Sudan crisis

Germany government urges all parties to refrain from violence, expresses support for the civilian transitional government.

Germany on Friday called for a peaceful solution to crisis in Sudan following the ouster of longtime President Omar al-Bashir.

"WE NEED A PEACEFUL SOLUTION"

We are calling on all sides to exercise restraint, as we need a peaceful solution to the crisis, which fulfils the expectation of the Sudanese people for a political change, Christofer Burger, deputy spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said. It is important that the protests can proceed peacefully, and any use of violence against demonstrators is not acceptable, he said, at a regular news conference in Berlin. Burger underlined that Germany, together with its EU partners, would support a credible political process, which would hand over power to a civilian transitional government.

Sudans military announced on Thursday the removal of President Omar al-Bashir, following months of popular demonstrations against him. It also announced the imposition of a two-year "transitional phase" to be overseen by the Military Transitional Council (MTC).

We have no ambition for power, an MTC-appointed political committee said in a statement issued Friday. Our priority is the country's stability. On Thursday evening, Defense Minister Awad ibn Auf was sworn in as MTC chairman.

Opposition parties and professional associations, meanwhile, have reacted to the move by expressing their total rejection of what they describe as a "military coup". In a joint statement released Thursday evening, Sudans leading professional syndicate and several opposition parties voiced their refusal to replace one military coup with another. Al-Bashir came to power in 1989 on the back of a military coup against the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.
Russia supports Turkey against US pressures over S-400s

US threatening ally Turkey over its decision to buy S-400 missile defense, says Russian Foreign Minister.

Russias foreign minister on Friday criticized the US putting pressure on Turkey over its decision to buy a Russian S-400 missile defense system.

VIOLATION TO INDEPENDENT POLICIES

Speaking at the Diplomatic Academy in Moscow, Sergey Lavrov said the US uses methods of power pressure to make countries fall in line with its policy. According to him, Washington uses pressure not only against "countries who pursue independent policies" but also against "its closest allies." "The situation with threats against NATO member Turkey for Ankara's decision to strengthen its defense capacity by purchasing Russian S-400s is an example, there are many others," he said.

Washington has balked at Turkey's purchase of the Russian S-400, and last week suspended delivery of parts and services for F-35 fighter jets. Congressmen and the US vice president have threatened to cancel the F-35 sales over the S-400 deal.

US officials have suggested Turkey buy the US Patriot missile system rather than the S-400, arguing it is incompatible with NATO systems and would expose the F-35 to possible Russian subterfuge. Turkey has responded that it was the US refusal to sell it Patriots that led it to seek other sellers, adding that Russia offered it a better deal, including technology transfers.

The S-300 a predecessor to the current system is used by NATO countries Bulgaria, Greece and Slovakia. Their deals with Russia did not provoke criticism from Washington.

S-400 missile system VIDEO
Turkish FM urges Sudan to manage transition 'peacefully'

Transition process in Sudan should be done peacefully and meet people's expectations, says Turkish Foreign Ministry Mevlut Cavusoglu.

Turkey has called on Sudan to manage the transition process "peacefully" after the removal of Omar al-Bashir from the presidency.

"NECESSARY MEASURES SHOULD BE TAKEN"

"We hope that this transition process will be conducted peacefully, with a view to meeting the expectations of the Sudanese people and within the framework of constitutional democracy and national consensus," the Foreign Ministry said in a press release on Thursday. "The basic desire of the people of Sudan is the establishment of peace and stability in the country and the adoption of measures which would enable overcoming the economic difficulties," it said, adding that Sudan's security and stability are crucial for the stability of the region. The ministry added that Turkey will continue to stand by the Sudanese people to ensure the country's stability, welfare, and security.

Earlier Thursday the Sudanese military announced the removal of President Omar al-Bashir, who had ruled Sudan since 1989, and the imposition of a two-year "transitional phase". Defense Minister Awad ibn Auf also announced in a televised statement the imposition of a one-month curfew along with a three-month nationwide state of emergency. He also announced the suspension of Sudans 2005 Constitution and the dissolution of the Sudanese presidency, parliament, and council of ministers.

A military council, he said, would be drawn up to run the countrys affairs during the post-Bashir interim phase. Sudanese opposition parties and professional associations voiced their "total rejection" of what they called a "military coup." Al-Bashir came to power on the back of a 1989 military coup against the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.
US press avoids calling Assange journalist

In an article published by CNN, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was called an activist instead of a journalist.

British police dragged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange out of Ecuadors embassy on Thursday after his seven-year asylum was revoked, paving the way for his extradition to the United States for one of the biggest ever leaks of classified information.

US HYPOCRISY

Police said they arrested Assange, 47, after being invited into the embassy following Ecuadors withdrawal of asylum. He took refuge there in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden.

In the latest article by CNN International, Assanges arrest was reflected as a valid ground for the crimes being committed by an activist.

While US media organs accuse Turkey as being violated the freedom of the press at every turn, now it does the same.

Assange's claim that he is a journalist is false, as he has proven time and again. That he is not a journalist, however, will not preclude authoritarian governments from using his case to thwart the legitimate media, it said.
April 9, 2019--Air pollution from diesel engines may worsen allergy-induced lung impairment more when tiny particles are filtered from the exhaust than when they are not, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

This surprising result may be due to the fact that some particle-depletion technologies, including the one used by the researchers, increase the amount of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the exhaust. NO2, which is subject to national air quality standards, has been shown to reduce lung function and may be a cause of asthma in children.

In "Particle Depletion Does Not Remediate Acute Effects of Traffic-Related Air Pollution and Allergen," Denise J. Wooding, MSc, and co-authors report on a randomized, controlled study of 14 non-smoking adults who were sensitive to at least one of three common allergens.

"We previously demonstrated that diesel exhaust augmented allergic responses as well as airflow declines in those genetically susceptible, but we wondered if removing particles from the exhaust would lessen these effects," said senior study author Chris Carlsten, MD, MPH, professor, head of respiratory medicine and Canada Research Chair in Occupational and Environmental Lung Disease at the University of British Columbia.

In this cross-over study, all 14 participants at various times were exposed in a laboratory to air with just the allergen, the allergen plus diesel exhaust and the allergen plus filtered diesel exhaust. They all also breathed air with no diesel exhaust or allergen, which served as the control.

After each exposure, the participants underwent a commonly used test called methacholine challenge to determine how a patient responds to an inhaled allergen. Neither they nor those conducting the study were aware of which exposure they had undergone before being tested.

The researchers also measured numbers of white blood cells, which marshal the body's immune response but can "overreact" to allergens, causing breathing problems.

The study found:

The particle-depleted diesel exhaust produced by HEPA filtration and electrostatic precipitation generated higher NO2 levels than unfiltered diesel exhaust.

Exposure to filtered diesel exhaust and allergen impaired the amount of air participants could forcibly exhale in one second (FEV1) more than allergen alone and more than unfiltered diesel exhaust and allergen.

Increasing levels of white blood cells were associated with declining FEV1 scores, suggesting that white blood cells "play a meaningful role in reducing lung function in the context of these exposures."

The effects of filtered diesel exhaust on lung function and on white blood cells were more pronounced in those participants who were genetically susceptible to oxidative stress, which occurs when there is an imbalance of free radicals and antioxidants in the body.

"The take-home message," said Dr. Carlsten, "is that technologies that remove particulate matter from diesel exhaust cannot be simply assumed to be beneficial to health, especially in susceptible populations."

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About the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine

The AJRCCM is a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Thoracic Society. The Journal takes pride in publishing the most innovative science and the highest quality reviews, practice guidelines and statements in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. With an impact factor of 15.239, it is one of the highest ranked journals in pulmonology. Editor: Jadwiga Wedzicha, MD, professor of respiratory medicine at the National Heart and Lung Institute (Royal Brompton Campus), Imperial College London, UK.

About the American Thoracic Society Founded in 1905, the American Thoracic Society is the world's leading medical association dedicated to advancing pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine. The Society's 15,000 members prevent and fight respiratory disease around the globe through research, education, patient care and advocacy. The ATS publishes three journals, the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the American Journal of Respiratory Cell and Molecular Biology and the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

The ATS will hold its 2019 International Conference, May 17-22, in Dallas, Texas, where world-renowned experts will share the latest scientific research and clinical advances in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine.

About UBC

The University of British Columbia is a global center for research and teaching, consistently ranked among the top 20 public universities in the world. Since 1915, UBC's entrepreneurial spirit has embraced innovation and challenged the status quo. UBC encourages its students, staff and faculty to challenge convention, lead discovery and explore new ways of learning. At UBC, bold thinking is given a place to develop into ideas that can change the world.

About AllerGen NCE

AllerGen NCE Inc. is a national research network dedicated to improving the quality of life of people suffering from allergic and related immune diseases. Funded by the Government of Canada through the federal Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) Program, the Network is hosted at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON.
The BfR and BZfE have jointly formulated these as hygiene rules for commercial kitchen staff. The leaflet, which has been thus far published in 13 languages and for which there is great demand, has now been updated.

People of many different nationalities work in the German catering sector. For this reason, the leaflet "Hygiene Rules in the Catering Sector" has already been translated from German into twelve other languages, such as English, Turkish and Russian. To make selected measures of risk communication available in the native languages of refugees, the leaflet is also now available in Arabic and Persian (Dari, Farsi). The contents of all language versions have been updated.

Hygiene rules in the catering sector involve personal body hygiene, the proper handling of food and the cleanliness of the facilities. If these rules are followed, foods can be protected from pathogens and consumers from foodborne diseases. The goal is to prevent the transfer of pathogens from humans to food on the one hand, and from food to food on the other. Heating kills off germs in food. It is also important to ensure that food is kept heated at the appropriate temperature and that already heated foods are chilled quickly and sufficiently before storage so that any surviving pathogens cannot propagate.

The BfR and BZfE have published more detailed information on this subject in the leaflet "Hygiene Rules in the Catering Sector". The leaflet is now available in 13 languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Persian, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese) and can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the BfR and BZfE. The German version can also be ordered in print from the BfR:

https://www.bfr.bund.de/de/publikation/merkblaetter_fuer_weitere_berufsgruppen-61521.html

http://www.bzfe.de/inhalt/hygieneregeln-in-der-gemeinschaftsgastronomie-32098.html

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About the BfR

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) is a scientifically independent institution within the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) in Germany. It advises the Federal Government and Federal Laender on questions of food, chemical and product safety. The BfR conducts its own research on topics that are closely linked to its assessment tasks.

About the BZfE

The Federal Centre for Nutrition (BZfE) is a competence and communication centre for nutritional matters in Germany. It provides professional information relating to all aspects of eating and drinking - scientifically sound, economically independent and above all close to everyday concerns.

The Federal Centre for Nutrition belongs to the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) and supports the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) in the performance of its duties.

This text version is a translation of the original German text which is the only legally binding version.
This switch has to do with the Institute of Child Nutrition which opened at MRI in February 2019. Research is to be conducted there, in the future, into the early influences which determine the risk of overweight and nutrition-related diseases. The scientists will also be examining the nutritional behaviour of children and adolescents from their birth until the age of 18.

The Institute of Child Nutrition aims at developing strategies for national breastfeeding and nutritional monitoring. They are also to conduct further research on the preventive health effects of breastfeeding for both mother and child. The affiliation of the National Breastfeeding Committee with the Institute of Child Nutrition will facilitate the practical exchange of scientific information and ideas in future.

The main task of the National Breastfeeding Committee is the promotion of breastfeeding in Germany from a health political and social point of view. The Committee advises the national government, issues directives and recommendations and supports initiatives to remove existing obstacles to breastfeeding.

With the establishment of the National Breastfeeding Committee, the national government endorsed the Innocenti Declaration on the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding, thereby fulfilling a requirement of the 45th World Health Assembly of 1992. The breastfeeding committee was founded at the Robert Koch Institute in 1994 and transferred to the former Federal Institute for Consumer Health Protection and Veterinary Medicine (BgVV) in 1999. The National Breastfeeding Committee has been attached to the BfR since 2002.

The switch brings with it a change to the contact e-mail address for inquiries to the breastfeeding committee: stillkommission@mri.bund.de

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For more information: https://www.mri.bund.de/de/themen/nationale-stillkommission

About the BfR

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) is a scientifically independent institution within the portfolio of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) in Germany. It advises the Federal Government and Federal Laender on questions of food, chemical and product safety. The BfR conducts its own research on topics that are closely linked to its assessment tasks.

About MRI

The Max Rubner-Institut (MRI), Federal Research Institute of Nutrition and Food, focuses its research activities mainly on consumer protection in the food and nutrition sector. It advises the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) in these areas. Important fields of research are the nutrition of infants, children, adolescents and adults, prevention of nutrition-related diseases, nutritional behaviour, nutritional-physiological and health value of foods and food safety and quality.

This text version is a translation of the original German text which is the only legally binding version.
A 5-year 30 million UK Department for International Development-funded program is aiming to improve the livelihoods of 565,000 smallholder farmers and their families in Uganda, Malawi and Nepal by stimulating investment in emerging agri-markets

A new five-year 30 million UK Department for International Development (DFID) funded programme is aiming to improve the livelihoods of 565,000 smallholder farmers and their families in Uganda, Malawi and Nepal by stimulating investment in emerging agri-markets.

The Commercial Agriculture for Smallholders and Agribusiness (CASA) programme, a key part of which is led by NIRAS in partnership with CABI and Swisscontact, will see at least 4 million of additional investment mobilised into six agricultural market systems and the growth of SME agribusinesses resulting in at least 3,000 jobs in the three countries - Uganda, Malawi and Nepal.

At least half of those to benefit from the programme will be women farmers and at least 30 percent of whom are living on under $2 a day. It is expected that those participating will see their incomes increased by up to 80 a year as well as positive changes in nutrition, climate resilience, with women being empowered at business, and household level.

CASA will focus on supporting sesame and beans in Uganda, poultry and aquaculture in Malawi and dairy and vegetables in Nepal.

Ultimately, CASA aims to improve the livelihoods of farmers by facilitating their equitable engagement in expanding commercial markets while enhancing the sustainability and climate resilience of farming systems and supporting the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems.

NIRAS will assume the overall responsibility for programme management of the programme's work in these three countries and also its global learning and influencing activities. The consortium will draw upon extensive experience in gender mainstreaming. For example, NIRAS have implemented multiple 'gender help desks' as part of a previous collaboration with the EU, EBRD and SIDA.

Kristina Mastroianni, NIRAS' Technical Director for Agriculture and also CASA's Programme Director, said, "The programme is a unique opportunity to achieve real systemic change through researching concrete practices of value chain development and showing investors what a great business case smallholder farming systems can be."

CABI's expertise in communications and engagement activities will also help place knowledge into the hands of investors in agribusiness by reaching at least 1,000 government, donor or business stakeholders face-to-face through three Smallholder Investor Summit events in East and Southern Africa and Nepal.

Dr Dennis Rangi, CABI's Director General - Development, said, "By working together to foster the importance of agriculture as a business, we can make a difference in empowering smallholder farmers, both male and female, to increase their yields and improve their livelihoods and ultimately strengthen local, national and global food chains and food security for all."

Swisscontact will draw on years of global inclusive markets systems experience, including women's economic empowerment and through their active engagement in the regions will ensure a cost effective and fast approach to building the design and implementation capacity as well as confidence of the country teams.

Ailsa Buckley, Swisscontact's Senior IM mentor for Central, East and Southern Africa believes, "CASA is the perfect opportunity for us to partner with system actors to demonstrate sustainable and scale-able business models that promote smallholder aggregation and agri-investment."

In addition, some of the innovations and achievements of the programme will be covered by SciDev.Net - the world's leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis about science and technology for global development.

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Additional information

NIRAS

NIRAS' history is rooted in the agriculture sector for 45 years, originally owned by the Swedish and Danish farmers' association. NIRAS has successfully delivered over 300 million worth of TA to climate smart, gender mainstreamed and nutrition sensitive agriculture and agribusiness programmes in more than 180 countries.

http://www.niras.com

CABI

CABI leads the delivery of research and communications drawing on their status as a world leader in agriculture with a strong scientific reputation and vast track record. It is also the parent organization of SciDev.Net, an independent news network focusing on science in the global South.

http://www.cabi.org

Swisscontact

Swisscontact's Inclusive Markets approach ensures efficient, effective and trust-based engagement with female and male smallholder farmers and their organisations, SMEs, advocacy and regulatory partners in each market system.

http://www.swisscontact.org

About NIRAS

Owned by a foundation and a percentage of its employees, NIRAS is an international multi-disciplinary consultancy firm with Nordic roots and values creating sustainable development solutions for a better, more equal, and stable world. We work across a broad spectrum of areas including construction, energy, water, environment, and infrastructure to rural development, the process industry, economic development, geodata, as well as urban planning. Our mission is to deliver tailored, innovative, value-creating, and results-driven solutions to enable our clients and partners, achieve their goals. We achieve this by providing transformative support for positive change, addressing root causes, and magnifying impact through flexibility in implementation, capturing SDG-linked results, and celebrating successes.

We collaborate with international development organisations, donors, governments, institutional investors, and the private sector to design, manage, and evaluate projects and services that create opportunities for people to improve their lives and live in safe, equal, well-governed, and climate-resilient societies. We do this in partnership with our country offices and our extensive network of experts to ensure a comprehensive, results-driven approach that is both contextually sensitive and produces innovative outcomes for maximum value. NIRAS applies the highest ethical standards wherever we operate, be it in fragile, post-conflict, least developed, emerging, or middle-income economies.

About CABI

CABI is an international not-for-profit organization that improves people's lives by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.

Through knowledge sharing and science, CABI helps address issues of global concern such as improving global food security and safeguarding the environment. We do this by helping farmers grow more and lose less of what they produce, combating threats to agriculture and the environment from pests and diseases, protecting biodiversity from invasive species, and improving access to agricultural and environmental scientific knowledge. Our 49 member countries guide and influence our core areas of work, which include development and research projects, scientific publishing and microbial services.

We gratefully acknowledge the core financial support from our member countries (and lead agencies) including the United Kingdom (Department for International Development), China (Chinese Ministry of Agriculture), Australia (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research), Canada (Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada), Netherlands (Directorate-General for International Cooperation, and Switzerland (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation). Other sources of funding include the fees paid by our member countries and profits from our publishing activities which enable CABI to support rural development and scientific research around the world.

About Swisscontact

Swisscontact promotes economic, social and ecological development by giving people the opportunity to improve their living conditions on their own. In its project work, Swisscontact facilitates access to vocational training, promotes local entrepreneurship, creates access to local financial services and supports the efficient use of resources with the aim of effectively promoting income and employment.

Swisscontact was founded in 1959 as an independent foundation of personalities from the Swiss economy and science. It is exclusively active in international cooperation and has been carrying out its own and mandated projects since 1961. Since its foundation, Swisscontact has been close to the private sector. In 2018, Swisscontact was active in 36 countries with around 1,200 employees. The Foundation's registered office is in Zurich.

About SciDev.Net

SciDev.Net is the world's leading source of reliable and authoritative news, views and analysis about science and technology for global development.

Our Mission is to use independent journalism to help individuals and organisations apply science to decision-making in order to drive equitable, sustainable development and poverty reduction. SciDev.Net is part of CAB International (CABI) - a not-for-profit organisation that improves people's lives worldwide by providing information and applying scientific expertise to solve problems in agriculture and the environment.

SciDev.Net operates editorially independently from CABI with its content overseen by an independent Editorial Advisory Committee whose role is to ensure our editorial independence protocol is adhered to. The protocol is available on request.

Media enquiries

Wayne Coles, Communications Manager, CABI, email: w.coles@cabi.org Tel: +44 (0)1491 829395
Engineered T cell immunotherapy, such as chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) and T cell receptor T cell (TCR-T) therapy, has emerged as a potent therapeutic strategy for treating tumors.

However, the genetic manipulation of primary T cells remains inefficient, especially during the clinical manufacturing process. There's an urgent need to develop a reliable method for the preparation of engineered T cells.

A research team, led by Prof. CAI Lintao at the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and other collaborators developed a "safe, efficient and universal" technique based on bioorthogonal chemistry and glycol-metabolic labeling for viral-mediated engineered T cell manufacturing. Their findings were published in Advanced Functional Materials.

In this strategy, the functional azide motifs were anchored on T cell surfaces via the intrinsic glycometabolism of exogenous azide-glucose, thus serving as an artificial ligand for viral binding. The complementary functional moiety dibenzocyclooctyne (DBCO)/-conjugated PEI1.8K (PEI-DBCO) was coated on the lentiviral surface, which strengthened the virus-T cell interaction through DBCO/azide bioorthogonal chemistry.

"We found that this artificial chemical receptor effectively facilitated viral binding to T cells and elevated the transduction efficiency of the lentivirus from 20% to 80% without any effect on T cell proliferation and activity," said CAI. "This artificial chemical modification was also appropriate for introducing other heterologous genes into T cells, including GPF, CAR and TCR, indicating a great potency for universal T cell engineering."

The technique has been demonstrated to be safe for human primary T cells as well, without interference from cell expansion or antitumor functions. When put into the CAR-T preparation, the PEI-DBCO/azide-glucose system significantly increased the yield of CAR T cells and boosted their antitumor effect both in vitro and in the B lymphoma xenograft mouse model with a low dose of CAR-T cells, thus reducing clinical adverse effects.

"This artificial chemical labeling strategy is an effective, safe and easy upgrade for viral-based gene manipulation of human primary T cells, thereby showing great potential for clinical engineered T lymphocyte manufacturing, including CAR-T and TCR-T cell therapy," said CAI.

Prof. CAI, the corresponding author of the paper, was selected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) on March 25 at the American Academy of Sciences in Washington, a nonprofit organization founded in 1991, for his contributions involving optical probes and biomimetic drug delivery systems in the fields of nanomedicine and cancer theranostics.

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Couples who attempt to stop smoking together have a sixfold chance of success

Lisbon, Portugal - 12 April 2019: Kicking the habit works best in pairs. That's the main message of a study presented today at EuroPrevent 2019, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1

"Quitting smoking can be a lonely endeavour," said study author Magda Lampridou, of Imperial College London, UK. "People feel left out when they skip the smoke break at work or avoid social occasions. On top of that, there are nicotine withdrawal symptoms. Partners can distract each other from the cravings by going for a walk or to the cinema and encouraging replacement activities like eating healthy food or meditating when alone. Active support works best, rather than nagging."

Half of coronary patients smoke and 90% of people at high risk of cardiovascular disease are smokers. ESC cardiovascular prevention guidelines advise against tobacco in any form, and people who stop smoking generally halve their risk of cardiovascular disease.2 "Smoking cessation interventions should incorporate couples where possible to achieve a smoke-free household," said Ms Lampridou.

This study evaluated the supporting role married or cohabiting partners might have in smoking cessation. The study enrolled 222 current smokers who were at high risk of cardiovascular disease or had suffered a heart attack. Partners were also recruited: 99 were current smokers (45%), 40 ex-smokers, and 83 never-smokers.

Couples attended one of four preventive cardiology programmes: EUROACTION, EUROACTION plus, MyAction Galway, and MyAction Westminster. At the start they were asked about current smoking status, history of smoking, and previous quit attempts. Smoking status was validated with a carbon monoxide breath test. During the 16-week programme, couples were offered nicotine replacement therapy with patches and gum. In one programme, participants could choose the prescription drug varenicline instead.

At the end of the programme, 64% of patients and 75% of partners were abstinent - compared to none and 55% at the start, respectively. The odds of quitting smoking at 16 weeks were significantly higher (5.83-fold) in couples who tried to quit together compared to patients who attempted it alone.

"Previous research has shown that ex-smokers can also positively influence their spouse's attempts to quit, but in this study the effect was not statistically significant," said Ms Lampridou. "As for non-smoking partners, there is a strong risk that they will adopt their spouse's habit." Ms Lampridou noted that research is needed to confirm the findings in smokers who are otherwise healthy.

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Authors: ESC Press Office

Tel: +33 (0)4 8987 2499

Mobile: +337 (0) 8531 2036

Email: press@escardio.org

Follow us on Twitter @ESCardioNews

The hashtag for EuroPrevent 2019 is #europrevent.

Sources of funding: None.

Disclosures: None.

References and notes

1 The abstract 'Do married or cohabiting partners or significant others help or hinder cardiovascular patients in quitting smoking?' will be presented during Poster Session 2: Risk Factors and Prevention - Tobacco on Friday 12 April at 08:30 to 18:00 WEST in the Poster Area.

2 Piepoli MF, Hoes AW, Agewall S, et al. 2016 European Guidelines on cardiovascular disease prevention in clinical practice. Eur Heart J. 2016;37:2315-2381. doi: 10.1093/eurheartj/ehw106.

About the European Association of Preventive Cardiology

The European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC) is a branch of the ESC. Its mission is to promote excellence in research, practice, education and policy in cardiovascular health, primary and secondary prevention.

About EuroPrevent

EuroPrevent is the leading international congress on preventive cardiology and the annual congress of the European Association of Preventive Cardiology (EAPC) of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).

About the European Society of Cardiology

The European Society of Cardiology brings together health care professionals from more than 150 countries, working to advance cardiovascular medicine and help people lead longer, healthier lives.

Information for journalists attending EuroPrevent 2019

EuroPrevent 2019 will be held 11 to 13 April at the Lisbon Congress Centre (CCL) in Lisbon, Portugal. Explore the scientific programme.
The European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) estimates that 9 million cases of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) occur across Europe each year--with around one in 15 patients in acute care hospitals and one in 24 residents in long-term care facilities having at least one infection on any given day, according to the most comprehensive assessment of HAIs in Europe to date, being presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Amsterdam, Netherlands (13-16 April).

Importantly, the findings also reveal low microbiological testing rates that vary widely between countries, suggesting that more must be done to protect patients and residents from these preventable complications.

A microorganism was reported for just over half (53%) of the HAIs in acute care hospitals. For 11% of the microorganisms reported, antimicrobial susceptibility testing results were not available on the day of the survey. In long-term care facilities, over three quarters of infections had no documented microbiological results. In long-term care facilities overall, only 19% HAIs had a microbiological test result available in the facility to guide treatment and control. In acute care hospitals, the figure was 53%.

"Our analysis shows that healthcare-associated infections still pose a major public health threat in European countries and healthcare institutions", says Pete Kinross from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. "Culture-directed antibiotic treatment is an important aspect of the treatment and control of these kinds of infections. The variability of microbiological testing suggests poor availability of information for effective treatment, as well as alertness to potential outbreaks."

This study is based on data from two ECDC point prevalence surveys of HAIs and antimicrobial use in both acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities in European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) countries between 2016 and 2017.

In 2016, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) estimated that the burden of HAIs (eg, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, Clostridium difficile infection) in European acute care hospitals exceeded the combined burden of all other infectious diseases under surveillance by ECDC such as influenza, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis combined [1]. However, these estimates did not take into account infections in other healthcare facilities.

In these latest ECDC surveys, trained staff used standardised questionnaires to collect data from voluntarily participating acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities (eg, general nursing homes, residential homes) on every patient/resident who was present on the day of the survey.

In total, 310,755 patients from 1,209 acute care hospital in 28 EU/EEA countries and 117,138 residents from 1,798 long-term care facilities in 24 EU/EEA countries were included in the analyses.

The findings show that on any given day in 2016-2017, 98 166 (6.5%) patients in acute care hospitals and 129 940 (3.9%) residents in long-term care facilities had at least one HAI.

However, much of the difference in national HAI rates in acute care hospitals is explained by their different rates of testing blood samples. Essentially, countries with lower test rates (e.g. Hungary, Lithuania, Romania) detect fewer HAIs compared to those with higher testing rates (e.g. Belgium, Finland, United Kingdom).

Respiratory tract infections (particularly pneumonia) were the most common, accounting for a quarter of all HAIs in hospitals and a third in long-term care facilities, followed by urinary tract infections (almost a fifth and a third, respectively).

Pete Kinross says: "Healthcare-associated infections in acute care hospitals are responsible alone for more deaths in the EU/EEA than all other infectious diseases under surveillance. It is crucial to apply recommendations and guidelines available in both acute care hospitals and long-term care facilities, since our study showed that there are as many healthcare-associated infections in long-term care facilities as there are in acute care hospitals."

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New research being presented at this year's European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (13-16 April), suggests that mode of delivery influences the development of the microbial composition of the gut (i.e. the gut microbiota) in infants, independently of a mother's use of antibiotics. This, in turn, may affect infants' respiratory health during the first year of life.

The prospective Microbiome Utrecht Infant Study (initiated by the Spaarne Gasthuis hospital in Hoofddorp in collaboration with the University Medical Centre Utrecht, the Netherlands) involving 120 infants, found that children born by caesarean section (C-section) had a delay in the normal development of their gut microbiota, and a higher abundance of potentially harmful bacteria, compared to infants delivered vaginally--which could be the mechanism driving the increased risk in respiratory infections.

Over 1000 different types of bacteria live in the gut, where they elicit important functions for health, for example helping to digest food, stimulating the development of the immune system, and protecting against infection.

After birth, infants become colonised by an increasing diversity of gut microbes until a relatively stable state is reached. The pace and pattern by which infants acquire their gut microbiome is thought to have a substantial impact on health in later life. Disruption of the normal development of the gut microbiome has been linked with a range of diseases including irritable bowel disease, asthma, allergies and cancer.

Previous research indicates that early life microbiota development is influenced by mode of delivery, although it has been suggested that this depends mostly on maternal antibiotic exposure.

To assess the independent effects of mode of delivery, Marta Reyman, from the Wilhelmina Children's Hospital, Utrecht, the Netherlands, and colleagues analysed the gut microbiota development in 46 C-section and 74 vaginally delivered infants using stool samples collected 10 times during their first year of life. Antibiotic administration to mothers undergoing a C-section was postponed until after clamping of the umbilical cord. Maternal stool samples were also examined 2 weeks after delivery.

Analyses showed that gut microbiota composition differed significantly between C-section and vaginally delivered infants in the first year, which was most pronounced shortly after birth. This was accompanied by measurable faecal seeding (transfer of maternal vaginal microbes) from mother to child in vaginally delivered infants, but not in children born by C-section.

In infants born by C-section, the gut microbiota was less stable and the development of the health-promoting bacterial species Bifidobacterium spp. was delayed compared to vaginally delivered children. Additionally, infants born by C-section had much higher levels of potential pathogenic gut bacteria, irrespective of length of hospital stay after birth, feeding type, and antibiotic use.

Interestingly, the researchers also found that the gut microbiota early in life was associated with the total number of respiratory infections over the first year.

"Our findings suggest that mode of delivery affects the developing infant gut microbiota, independent of a mother's use of antibiotics during birth. Compared to vaginally delivered infants, children born by C-section have different trajectories of bacterial colonisation, which could have implications for their future respiratory health", says Marta Reyman, who is the PhD student on this study. "Further research and larger studies will be needed to fully understand the consequences of these changes. The insights gained might help to design strategies to prevent health-related problems following birth by C-section."

The major limitation of this study is the use of 16S rRNA based sequencing, which does not allow annotation of bacteria on species level, or generate results based on genetic content of microbial communities.

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The fate of individual cells in the body is relevant in many ways. Researchers want to study developmental processes and understand how diseases progress. "Experiments generate large data sets, which is to say big data," explains Professor Fabian Theis, Director of the Institute of Computational Biology (ICB) at Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen and professor of Mathematical Modelling of Biological Systems at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Researchers gather information not only about cells per se** but also about their interactions with other cells and other tissue types. "Previously, however, it was not possible to model complex processes at the cellular level in a clear and comprehensible manner."

PAGA interprets big data

So far, researchers have taken two approaches to data analysis. Either they searched for cells with similar properties and grouped them (clustering), or they described the timing of cells along their developmental pathways (trajectory inference). "If you look at the data through these very different lenses, divergent and unclear interpretations inevitably arise," adds Alex Wolf, who until recently headed a machine learning team at the ICB. "PAGA does everything that clustering and trajectory inference can do in a single analysis, with a single method and with a single consistent modeling approach." Depending on the desired resolution, the tool groups cells by type (such as skin cells) and biological state (such as cells in undergoing mitosis) and reveals transitions between cell types and states.

Use in research

In recent months, several articles have been published that show the possibilities PAGA opens up. Mireya Plass of the Max Delbruck Center of Molecular Medicine within the Helmholtz Association together with Wolf and colleagues reconstructed the first cellular lineage tree of an adult animal*** - an achievement the journal Science hailed as one of the foremost scientific breakthroughs of 2018****. Recently, a team headed by Blanca Pijuan-Sala of Cambridge University used PAGA to reconstruct the developmental processes of a mouse embryo*****. Other papers show that PAGA delivers important results in a clinical context. Using PAGA to determine the lineages of intestinal cells, researchers at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard gained an understanding of the different cellular contributions to chronic inflammatory bowel disease******. Theis also sees great future potential in the tool: "Basically, any biological phenomenon that can be attributed to a cellular process can be analyzed with PAGA as soon as the data are available."

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Further information

Original publication:

Wolf FA et al (2019): PAGA: graph abstraction reconciles clustering with trajectory inference through a topology preserving map of single cells, doi: 10.1186/s13059-019-1663-x, Link: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-019-1663-x; doi.org/10.1186/s13059-019-1663-x

* PAGA is short for partition-based graph abstraction (PAGA), a method that reconciles various approaches such as cell grouping by properties and development over time.

** This includes the transcriptome (the sum total of all active genes), the proteome (the sum total of all proteins formed), morphology (the appearance of a cell) and the epigenome (the sum total of all changes to DNA and histones, special protein in the cell nucleus).

*** Plass M et al (2018): Cell type atlas and lineage tree of a whole complex animal by single-cell transcriptomics, doi: 10.1126/science.aaq1723

**** Link: https://vis.sciencemag.org/breakthrough2018/

***** Pijuan-Sala B et al (2019): A single-cell molecular map of mouse gastrulation and early organogenesis, doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-0933-9

****** Smillie CS et al, Rewiring of the cellular and inter-cellular landscape of the human colon during ulcerative colitis, doi: 10.1101/455451

Related News:

01.04.19

New machine learning model describes dynamics of cell development https://www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/en/aktuelles/latest-news/press-information-news/article/46086/index.html

As German Research Center for Environmental Health, Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen pursues the goal of developing personalized medical approaches for the prevention and therapy of major common diseases such as diabetes mellitus, allergies and lung diseases. To achieve this, it investigates the interaction of genetics, environmental factors and lifestyle. The Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen has about 2,300 staff members and is headquartered in Neuherberg in the north of Munich. Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen is a member of the Helmholtz Association, a community of 19 scientific-technical and medical-biological research centers with a total of about 37,000 staff members. https://www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/

The Institute of Computational Biology (ICB) develops and applies methods for the model-based description of biological systems, using a data-driven approach by integrating information on multiple scales ranging from single-cell time series to large-scale omics. Given the fast technological advances in molecular biology, the aim is to provide and collaboratively apply innovative tools with experimental groups in order to jointly advance the understanding and treatment of common human diseases. https://www.helmholtz-muenchen.de/icb

The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of Europe's leading research universities, with around 550 professors, 41,000 students, and 10,000 academic and non-academic staff. Its focus areas are the engineering sciences, natural sciences, life sciences and medicine, combined with economic and social sciences. TUM acts as an entrepreneurial university that promotes talents and creates value for society. In that it profits from having strong partners in science and industry. It is represented worldwide with the TUM Asia campus in Singapore as well as offices in Beijing, Brussels, Cairo, Mumbai, San Francisco, and Sao Paulo. Nobel Prize winners and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde, and Rudolf Mobauer have done research at TUM. In 2006 and 2012 it won recognition as a German "Excellence University." In international rankings, TUM regularly places among the best universities in Germany.https://www.tum.de/

Contact

Communication Department

Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen -

Deutsches Forschungszentrum fur Gesundheit und Umwelt (GmbH)

Ingolstadter Landstrae 1

85764 Neuherberg

Germany

Phone: +49 89 3187-2238

E-Mail: presse@helmholtz-muenchen.de

Scientific Contact

Dr. Dr. Alexander Wolf

Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen

Institute of Computational Biology (ICB)

Ingolstadter Landstr. 1

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SEATTLE - Many African nations have made substantial progress in vaccinating children against life-threatening diseases, however, within countries wide discrepancies remain, according to a new scientific study.

The proportion of children receiving the full infant series of three vaccinations against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus (DPT3) increased in almost three quarters of districts in Africa between 2000 and 2016. In 29 of 52 nations studied, however, coverage with DPT3 varied by more than 25% at the district level, highlighting substantial variation within countries.

The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and conducted by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, was published in the international medical journal The Lancet.

"Despite substantial gains in coverage, progress was far from universal," said Dr. Jonathan Mosser, the lead author on the study. "Routine childhood vaccinations are among the most successful and cost-effective public health interventions, substantially contributing to children living beyond their fifth birthdays. We continue to see wide areas of low coverage at the local level, however, illustrating that targeted improvements are needed to ensure that all children have access to lifesaving immunizations."

The study, "Mapping diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine coverage in Africa, 2000-2016: a spatial and temporal modelling study," maps nations in fine-scale, 5x5 kilometer increments, so that health officials nationally and locally can identify gaps in vaccine coverage and target interventions with precision, tailoring health policy decisions at local levels.

Using data from nearly 900,000 children, this analysis provides the first annual estimates of childhood DPT3 coverage across the entire African continent. It measures each community against the Global Vaccine Action Plan benchmark of reaching 90% national coverage and 80% in every district. These goals were established in 2012 by WHO member nations, as well as other organizations, including UNICEF, the Gates Foundation, and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, a public-private health partnership committed to increasing access to immunizations in poor countries.

Of the 52 countries studied, only Morocco and Rwanda are estimated to have already met the district-level goal of 80% coverage. In contrast, on the local level, areas of DPT3 coverage at or below 25% were found in several countries, including Nigeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, and Angola. Moreover, dropout rates exceeding 25% were identified in portions of Nigeria, Angola, Chad, Mali, Guinea, Liberia, Equatorial Guinea, Central African Republic, South Africa, Somalia, and Ethiopia.

"National estimates can mask subnational pockets of low coverage, leaving children in at risk for preventable diseases and death," Mosser said. "Our study offers insights for nations' health ministers and other decision makers to better understand local patterns of vaccine coverage and to identify where to improve vaccine delivery systems."

An official with the Gates Foundation underscored the value of the study and its geospatial mapping techniques.

"We know that there are many children not getting the vaccines they need, but there's a real lack of detail about where those children are," said Violaine Mitchell, director of Vaccine Delivery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "These maps are a critical step forward in revealing important detail on where the unvaccinated children are so that tailored strategies can be developed to reach them and truly achieve equitable coverage."

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The study is the latest in a series of IHME papers as part of the institute's Local Burden of Disease (LBD) project, which produces estimates of health outcomes and related measures covering entire continents at a fine resolution. The project is seeking additional collaborators, including academics, researchers and others, to contribute data and to evaluate draft papers. For more information, please contact the LBD Engagement Team at gbdsec@uw.edu.

Media contacts:

IHME: Dean Owen, +1-206-897-2858 (office); +1-206-434-5630 (mobile); dean1227@uw.edu

About the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is an independent global health research organization at the University of Washington that provides rigorous and comparable measurement of the world's most important health problems and evaluates the strategies used to address them. IHME makes this information widely available so that policymakers have the evidence they need to make informed decisions about how to allocate resources to improve population health.

About the Local Burden of Disease project

The Local Burden of Disease project at IHME aims to produce estimates of health outcomes and related measures that cover entire continents, but to do so at a very fine, local resolution. Such estimates allow decision-makers to target resources and health interventions precisely, so that health policy decisions can be tailored for local areas rather than entire countries. Combining local detail with broad coverage - producing 5x5 kilometer estimates for entire continents and, eventually, the world - would give health officials everywhere the tools to make locally informed decisions and, in the process, help all people live longer, healthier lives. The Local Burden of Disease project is led by Dr. Simon I. Hay, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at the University of Washington and Director of Geospatial Science at IHME.
Heavy rain over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean is a good indicator that temperatures in central California will reach 100F in four to 16 days, according to a collaborative research team from the University of California Davis and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Climate Center in Busan, South Korea.

The results were published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on April 12, 2019.

Heat waves are common in the Central California Valley, the 50-mile-wide oval of land that runs 450 miles from just north of Los Angeles up to Redding. The valley is home to half of the nation's tree fruit and nut crops, as well as extensive dairy production, and heat waves can wreak havoc on agricultural production. The dairy industry had a heat wave-induced economic loss of about $1 billion in 2006, for instance. The ability to predict heat waves and understand what causes them could inform protective measures against damage.

"We want to know more about how extreme events are created," said Richard Grotjahn, corresponding author on the paper and professor in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California Davis. "We know that such patterns in winter are sometimes linked with areas of the tropics where thunderstorms are enhanced; we wondered if there might be similar links during summer for those heat waves."

The scientists analyzed the heat wave data from June through September from 1979 to 2010. The data were collected by 15 National Climatic Data Centers stations located throughout the Valley. From these data, the researchers identified 24 heat waves. They compared these instances to the phases of a large, traveling atmospheric circulation pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO).

The MJO manifests as heavy rain that migrates across the tropical Indian and then Pacific Oceans, and researchers have shown that it influences winter weather patterns.

"It's well known that tropical rainfall, such as the MJO, have effects beyond the tropics," said Yun-Young Lee of the APEC Climate Center in Busan, South Korea. She is the paper's first author. "So, a question comes to mind: [is] hot weather in the Central California Valley partly attributable to tropical rainfall?"

Lee and Grotjahn found that, yes, enhanced rainfall in the tropics preceded each heat wave in specific and relatively predictable patterns. They also found that hot weather in the Valley is most common after more intense MJO activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and next most common after strong MJO activity in the Indian Ocean.

"The more we know about such associations to large-scale weather patterns and remote links, the better we can assess climate model simulations and therefore better assess simulations of future climate scenarios," Grotjahn said.

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This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the APEC Climate Center in the Republic of Korea.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Indiana University Philanthropic Venture Fund, which invests in IU-related ventures, has invested $200,000 in Confluence Pharmaceuticals LLC.

Confluence Pharmaceuticals is a Carmel, Indiana-based company that develops novel, clinically discovered, therapeutic treatments for core social and communication impairments related to fragile X syndrome and autism spectrum disorder.

Confluence Pharmaceuticals CEO Steve Johns said the company is targeting its lead asset, a product for the treatment of fragile X syndrome to improve important functionality including communication, social interaction and self-care.

"Today, no medication exists to treat these core impairments," Johns said. "Early pilot studies have demonstrated the potential of our product to improve focus, communication, social withdrawal and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder."

Confluence Pharmaceuticals will use the investment to accelerate clinical development and regulatory activities.

What they're saying

Confluence Pharmaceuticals licenses intellectual property developed at Indiana University through the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office.

"We are delighted to have Indiana University broaden its relationship with us and become an investor as we enter the next stage of our development," Johns said. "We look forward to continuing our collaborative relationship and utilizing the supportive resources IU brings to the development of this much-needed therapy."

The IU Philanthropic Venture Fund was launched in February 2018. Teri Willey is the fund manager and executive director of the IU Research and Technology Corp.

"We, too, are delighted to be supporting the team at Confluence in their efforts to bring this critical therapy to patients, and to have Confluence as our 10th investment since launching the fund a few months ago," Willey said.

About Indiana University Research and Technology Corp.

IURTC catalyzes entrepreneurial activities at Indiana University and provides support for IU innovation-based startup companies. It advises and connects IU startups to capital and commercialization partners, industry mentors, and leadership talent. It also develops appropriate programming and startup space to accelerate company growth.

About Indiana University Philanthropic Venture Fund

The IU Philanthropic Venture Fund is an Indiana University-affiliated venture fund launched in 2018 through the vision and generosity of IU alumni and friends supporting IU discoveries best developed through a new venture. The fund is managed by IURTC staff who work with the IU Innovation and Commercialization Office, alumni, faculty, and staff, as well as the venture and economic development communities, to identify and develop IU-related opportunities for investment.

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New Orleans, LA - Research led by Michael Lan, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics and Genetics at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine, found that a compound named 5'-iodotubercidin (5'-IT) suppresses the growth of neuroblastoma cells and identified a potential new therapeutic approach for the disease. The paper, currently available online here, will be published in the April 12, 2019, issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Neuroblastoma is the most common non-brain solid tumor in children. It is a cancer of neuroendocrine cells - cells that have characteristics of both nerve cells and hormone-producing cells. Neuroblastomas start in immature nerve cells, called neuroblasts, of the sympathetic nervous system. They form when there are abnormal changes in the genes controlling the development of these young cells into specialized cells. While some neuroblastomas resolve on their own, others can be fatal. The objective of the research was to find a new drug for the treatment of aggressive neuroblastoma tumors.

Dr. Lan's laboratory studies a DNA-binding protein, INSM1, made from the gene that regulates the development of immature or undifferentiated neuroendocrine cells. INSM1 is activated by another protein called N-Myc, and both are overproduced in neuroblastoma.

"Too much N-Myc occurs in roughly 30% of neuroblastoma tumors and strongly correlates with advanced-stage disease and poor outcome," Lan notes. "INSM1 has emerged as a critical factor in neuroblastoma cell growth."

The researchers were looking for a compound that would suppress excessive INSM1 and discovered that 5'-IT inhibits INSM1 protein expression and also affects cellular signaling molecules leading to neuroblastoma cell death.

"Taken together, we developed a unique INSM1 promoter-driven reporter assay to identify drugs that specifically inhibit INSM1 promoter activity," concludes Lan. "The identification of new signaling pathways that control the proliferation of aggressive neuroblastoma suggests new options for combination therapy of neuroblastoma patients."

According to the American Cancer Society, neuroblastoma accounts for about 6% of all cancers in children. There are about 800 new cases of neuroblastoma each year in the United States. The average age of children when they are diagnosed is about 1 to 2 years. In rare cases, neuroblastoma is detected by ultrasound even before birth. Nearly 90% of cases are diagnosed by age 5. In about two of three cases, the disease has already spread to the lymph nodes or to other parts of the body when it is diagnosed.

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The research team also included Chiachen Chen, PhD, Mary B. Breslin, PhD., Jessie J. Guidry, BS, in the Departments of Pediatrics, Genetics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine.

The research was supported by National Cancer Institute the Louisiana State University Research Enhancement Program, LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine and Children's Hospital, New Orleans.

LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's flagship health sciences university, LSU Health New Orleans includes a School of Medicine, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, Nursing, and Graduate Studies. LSU Health New Orleans faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSU Health New Orleans research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSU Health New Orleans faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu, http://www.twitter.com/LSUHSCHealth or http://www.facebook.com/LSUHSC.
BAR HARBOR, MAINE - Novo Biosciences Inc., has achieved several major milestones in its mission of bringing its breakthrough drug candidate, trodusquemine (aka MSI-1436), to market as a potential regenerative medicine treatment for heart disease and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Trodusquemine is a repurposed drug candidate that has already been shown to be well tolerated by patients.

"Trodusquemine holds significant potential for the treatment of some of our most devastating diseases," said Kevin Strange, Ph.D., Novo's CEO. "Our recent progress on the path toward clinical trials gives hope to the millions of patients who face limited treatment options."

Novo has demonstrated that trodusquemine stimulates the regeneration of heart muscle tissue in mice after an artificially induced heart attack. Trodusquemine is the only small molecule known to stimulate regeneration of the adult mammalian heart. Heart disease is the nation's leading cause of death, but treatment options are limited to efforts to prevent a secondary heart attack and to organ transplantation for patients who have suffered heart failure.

Voot Yin, Ph.D., Novo's chief scientific officer, was awarded a two-year, $1.5 million Small Business Innovation Research grant in 2017 from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, an institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to study trodusquemine in the pig, the animal model whose heart most closely resembles that of a human. The pig study is the critical next step in moving trodusquemine into clinical trials in patients who have suffered an acute heart attack. Early results from these studies are "very encouraging," according to Strange.

Novo has also demonstrated that trodusquemine strikingly slows heart and skeletal muscle degeneration in a mouse DMD model. DMD is a neuromuscular disease caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. It is characterized by rapidly progressing muscle weakness and wasting due to degeneration of skeletal, smooth and cardiac muscle. DMD is irreversible and patients typically die in early adulthood. Because DMD is designated an orphan, or rare, disease, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) offers fast-tracked approvals and other incentives to drug developers.

In a recent Pre-Investigational New Drug (PIND) meeting with the FDA, Novo was informed that its studies in the mouse DMD model provided sufficient proof-of-principle evidence of trodusquemine's efficacy in slowing heart and skeletal muscle damage. Strange said, "We are extremely encouraged by this conclusion. We've got more work to do, including developing a dosing regimen for juvenile DMD patients and defining toxicity in juvenile animal models, but the path to potential clinical trials is now defined clearly."

Trodusquemine recently attracted the attention of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), another institution within the NIH. Yin was awarded a $100,000 pilot grant to study the efficacy of trodusquemine as a potential regenerative medicine therapy for diabetic kidney disease on February 28. The one-year, proof-of-concept grant is funded by the NIDDK-sponsored DiaComp (Diabetic Complications Consortium) Pilot and Feasibility Program. DiaComp supports R&D aimed at protecting and restoring the function of organs affected by the complications of diabetes.

Novo scientists will study trodusquemine in mice with multiple, severe, kidney abnormalities that closely resemble human diabetic nephropathy, a complication of diabetes that leads to kidney disease. As with heart disease, the treatment options for chronic kidney disease are limited. More than 200,000 diabetic kidney disease patients undergo long-term dialysis or kidney transplant annually. But dialysis is costly and time consuming and the demand for donor organs for transplantation far exceeds supply.

The discovery of trodusquemine reflects Novo's pioneering R&D strategy, which was the subject of a "marquee" article, "A Shot at Regeneration," in the April 2019 edition of Scientific American, one of the world's most prestigious media outlets. Scientific American is published in 14 languages and has a combined worldwide print and online circulation of nearly 20 million.

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About Novo Biosciences

Our scientists use a unique, rapid and cost-effective strategy to develop breakthrough drugs to regenerate damaged organs and tissues. These drugs spur the body to heal itself by triggering powerful mechanisms of self-repair and regrowth that lie dormant in our genes. It's a bold, new approach with the potential to transform the way we treat human disease. For more information, please visit novobiosciences.com.
In the 2018 movie Infinity War, a scene featured Dr. Strange looking into 14 million possible futures to search for a single timeline where the heroes would be victorious. Perhaps he would have had an easier time with help from a quantum computer. A team of researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and Griffith University in Australia have constructed a prototype quantum device that can generate all possible futures in a simultaneous quantum superposition.

"When we think about the future, we are confronted by a vast array of possibilities," explains Assistant Professor Mile Gu of NTU Singapore, who led development of the quantum algorithm that underpins the prototype "These possibilities grow exponentially as we go deeper into the future. For instance, even if we have only two possibilities to choose from each minute, in less than half an hour there are 14 million possible futures. In less than a day, the number exceeds the number of atoms in the universe." What he and his research group realised, however, was that a quantum computer can examine all possible futures by placing them in a quantum superposition - similar to Schrodinger's famous cat that is simultaneously alive and dead.

To realise this scheme, they joined forces with the experimental group led by Professor Geoff Pryde at Griffith University. Together, the team implemented a specially devised photonic quantum information processor in which the potential future outcomes of a decision process are represented by the locations of photons - quantum particles of light. They then demonstrated that the state of the quantum device was a superposition of multiple potential futures, weighted by their probability of occurrence.

"The functioning of this device is inspired by the Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman," says Dr Jayne Thompson, a member of the Singapore team. "When Feynman started studying quantum physics, he realized that when a particle travels from point A to point B, it does not necessarily follow a single path. Instead, it simultaneously transverses all possible paths connecting the points. Our work extends this phenomenon and harnesses it for modelling statistical futures."

The machine has already demonstrated one application - measuring how much our bias towards a specific choice in the present impacts the future. "Our approach is to synthesise a quantum superposition of all possible futures for each bias." explains Farzad Ghafari, a member of the experimental team, "By interfering these superpositions with each other, we can completely avoid looking at each possible future individually. In fact, many current artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms learn by seeing how small changes in their behaviour can lead to different future outcomes, so our techniques may enable quantum enhanced AIs to learn the effect of their actions much more efficiently."

The team notes while their present prototype simulates at most 16 futures simultaneously, the underlying quantum algorithm can in principle scale without bound. "This is what makes the field so exciting," says Pryde. "It is very much reminiscent of classical computers in the 1960s. Just as few could imagine the many uses of classical computers in the 1960s, we are still very much in the dark about what quantum computers can do. Each discovery of a new application provides further impetus for their technological development."

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Men tend to act less interested, while women tend to act a little more interested in sex

When heterosexuals have casual sex, previous research indicates it is typically the woman who sets the boundaries. If she's not interested, usually nothing will happen.

"When men and women in the study met, about half of the men said they were interested in having sex with the woman, whereas most women were uninterested initially," says Associate Professor Mons Bendixen at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's (NTNU) Department of Psychology.

So the women in the study basically have little interest in having casual sex at first - unless they find the man really attractive.

But a man who gives the impression of wanting to have sex with anyone, anytime, is definitely not what most women are looking for. That could be why men acted way less interested in sex than they really were.

"Men who are overly eager do not come across as attractive," says Professor Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair in the same department.

The whole thing is a tactical game, say the researchers, and the new NTNU research suggests that men and women's real intentions may be different from the signals they send each other.

Bendixen is the first author of a recent study dealing with the sexual signals that men and women send to each other.

Do women really want to have sex?

Men who report being the most interested in having sex reduce their signals of interest more.

Evidence from the study suggested that women, on the other hand, might pretend to be a little more interested than they actually are.

"We think this may be to keep the man's attention a little longer," says Kennair, but this study does not speak to that directly.

Or perhaps the strategy gives her more opportunity to assess the quality of the guy. And as long as the woman does not seem to be excluding the possibility of sex, men across the board are willing to spend more time with her - and enabling her to check out whether he's a good choice.

And, if a man is of high quality, that could actually shift the woman's interest, so that an initially uninterested woman becomes truly interested in the man.

"The exception to this general sex difference is when the woman is as interested as the man. In this case, women also pretend to show less interest."

"Both men and women who are truly interested in a partner might be trying to 'play it cool.' In economic terms, it's about supply and demand. The most in-demand people are not the most available - they are a rare commodity in the mating game," says Professor Martie Haselton of UCLA.

"By playing it cool, women and men can also avoid some of the sting of rejection if their partner is not actually interested in them," says Haselton.

University intro week leads to more sex

The researchers collected two rounds of data from students at NTNU. The survey included questions such as when they last met with a potential sexual partner, and whether they eventually ended up having sex.

The first round of data collection took place in the spring, when most students are busy studying. The second round was in the autumn, right after the start of the semester and the introduction week activities.

The researchers found a significant difference between the two rounds. Sexual relationships were far more common during the autumn introduction week.

Women choose the most attractive guys

"Among singles, we found differences between men and women when it came to who ended up having sex," says Bendixen.

Women were much more likely to have sex if they thought the potential partner was attractive. This was consistent with previous findings.

They were also far more likely to have sex if they were new students. Female students who had been at university for a while were much more selective.

"More than half of the new female students who had met an attractive partner the last time they were at a pub or at a party ended up having sex with him," says Bendixen.

"This behaviour is probably related to two factors: one is the absence of 'daughter-guarding' or 'sister-guarding'" once students arrive at university," says Kennair.

Fathers - and siblings - might keep a watchful eye on young women's sexual behaviour and dissuade them from having casual sex. This can be explained by evolutionary biology. But new students in a new city no longer have those same obstacles hindering their free sexual expression.

"The second factor has to do with the perception of increased competition for the men," Bendixen says.

Female students outnumber male students. So in a lot of groups it can seem like there's some competition for the men.

In this kind of a situation, women are more willing to have sex. The few guys that are available are simply perceived as more attractive.

Some get a lot - a lot get none

The most important factor in whether men had sex was how many sexual partners they have had previously. This could contribute to their being perceived as sexually attractive and available.

"It's really the same reason for both men and women - the man's sex appeal - that decides whether they end up having sex," says Kennair.

So there's a lot for some, and much less for the rest. Once a woman decides to have casual sex, she usually chooses the man she finds most sexually attractive.

Other studies show that long-term relationships function slightly differently. In this case women may have to lower their expectations a bit, because the most attractive men are often already taken or because they are able to pursue short-term relationships instead of long-term ones.

"A lot of women have had sex with more attractive partners than the men they end up with in long-term relationships," says Kennair.

"In our research, women did not appear to act coy in general; rather both sexes downplay their signals if they are very interested. These are novel findings," Bendixen notes. "Further, men do not pursue women that send signals of low interest."

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Reference: APA PsycNET: Adjusting signals of sexual interest in the most recent naturally occurring opposite-sex encounter in two different contexts. Bendixen, Mons Kennair, Leif Edward Ottesen Biegler, Robert Haselton, Martie G.
A leading public health expert says the UK should learn lessons from systematic violence reduction work in Cali, Columbia to tackle rising rates of knife crime on British streets. The work in Columbia resulted in significant reductions in homicides between 1995 and 2018.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Professor John Ashton describes how, faced with a horrendous toll of over 1,000 drug related homicides each year, the Mayor of Cali, public health professor Rodrigo Guerrero and his colleague Dr Alberto Concha-Eastman, adopted a classical public health model to tackle the problem.

The model is based on an understanding and detailed mapping of time, place and person with appropriate interventions to match. Interventions in Cali included restriction of alcohol sales in the affected neighbourhoods and access to weapons, police surveillance and enforcement using 24 hour courts, tackling organised crime, together with a holistic approach to poverty reduction, increased educational and employment opportunity and the mobilisation of communities, including especially the mothers of young men, fearful that their son would be next in the mortuary.

In 1995 the homicide rate in Cali per 100,000 inhabitants was 100. This reduced to 47.3 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018.

Professor Ashton says: "The current popular refrain for a public health response to violence is being linked to recent efforts in Glasgow which seem to be having some impact. However, the roots of this approach can be traced to systematic work in Cali over the past 30 years.

"The UK is now at a stage which requires stronger community organisation and participation linked to whole systems action, if knife crime and street violence is to be reduced. We have much to learn from our colleagues in Cali."

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The Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM) is a leading voice in the UK and internationally for medicine and healthcare. Published continuously since 1809, JRSM features scholarly comment and clinical research. JRSM is editorially independent from the Royal Society of Medicine, and its editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi.

JRSM is a journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and it is published by SAGE Publishing.

Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 1000 journals and over 800 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. A growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company's continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC and Melbourne. http://www.sagepublishing.com
DURHAM, N.C. (PRWEB) April 09, 2019 -- Stem cells collected from the patient's own bone marrow holds great interest as a potential therapy for osteoarthritis of the knee (KOA) because of their ability to regenerate the damaged cartilage. The results were released today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM).

KOA is a common, debilitating disease of the aging population in which the cartilage wears away, resulting in bone wearing upon bone and subsequently causing great pain. In its end stages, joint replacement is currently the recommended treatment. In the first clinical trial of its kind to take place in Canada, researchers used mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs), collected from the patient's own bone marrow under local anesthesia, to treat KOA.

The study was conducted by a research team from the Arthritis Program at the Krembil Research Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, led by Sowmya Viswanathan, Ph.D., and Jaskarndip Chahal, M.D. "Our goal was to test for safety as well as to gain a better understanding of MSC dosing, mechanisms of action and donor selection," Dr. Viswanathan said.

It involved 12 patients, aged 45 to 65, with moderate to severe KOA. They were divided into three groups, with each group receiving a different dose of MSCs. (Each patient was injected with his or her own cells.) The researchers then followed the patients for the next 12 months, using analytical methods that included imaging, biomarkers, molecular fingerprinting and the patient's own assessment of how he or she felt.

At the end of the 12-month period, the team noted significant improvements in the patients' pain levels and quality of life. The study also showed that the MSCs were safe at all the doses tested and that the higher the dose, the more effective the outcome.

Dr. Viswanathan said, "We also obtained novel insights into a potential anti-inflammatory mechanism of action of these cells in osteoarthritic knee joints. We noted that donor heterogeneity is an important factor, and our assembled panel of genes helps us identify cells which are potent in osteoarthritis. These are important findings which we hope to translate into a larger, powered clinical trial as part of our next steps."

"Furthermore," added Dr. Chahal, "we have been able to show that through an anti-inflammatory mechanism of action, such patients have an improvement in pain, function and quality of life. This sets the stage for the future of cell-based therapy and trials in Canada."

"This clinical pilot study advances the field of stem cell research for patients with arthritis, showing safety, and giving insights into potential therapy efficacy guidelines", said Anthony Atala, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "We look forward to larger scale trial results."

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The full article, "Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Patients with Osteoarthritis Results in Overall Improvement in Pain and Symptoms and Reduces Synovial Inflammation," can be accessed at https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sctm.18-0183.

About STEM CELLS Translational Medicine: STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM), co-published by AlphaMed Press and Wiley, is a monthly peer-reviewed publication dedicated to significantly advancing the clinical utilization of stem cell molecular and cellular biology. By bridging stem cell research and clinical trials, SCTM will help move applications of these critical investigations closer to accepted best practices. SCTM is the official journal partner of Regenerative Medicine Foundation.

About AlphaMed Press: Established in 1983, AlphaMed Press with offices in Durham, NC, San Francisco, CA, and Belfast, Northern Ireland, publishes two other internationally renowned peer-reviewed journals: STEM CELLS (http://www.StemCells.com), celebrating its 37th year, is the world's first journal devoted to this fast paced field of research. The Oncologist (http://www.TheOncologist.com), also a monthly peer-reviewed publication, entering its 24th year, is devoted to community and hospital-based oncologists and physicians entrusted with cancer patient care. All three journals are premier periodicals with globally recognized editorial boards dedicated to advancing knowledge and education in their focused disciplines.

About Wiley: Wiley, a global company, helps people and organizations develop the skills and knowledge they need to succeed. Our online scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journals, combined with our digital learning, assessment and certification solutions, help universities, learned societies, businesses, governments and individuals increase the academic and professional impact of their work. For more than 200 years, we have delivered consistent performance to our stakeholders. The company's website can be accessed at http://www.wiley.com.

About Regenerative Medicine Foundation (RMF): The non-profit Regenerative Medicine Foundation fosters strategic collaborations to accelerate the development of regenerative medicine to improve health and deliver cures. RMF pursues its mission by producing its flagship World Stem Cell Summit, honouring leaders through the Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Action Awards, and promoting educational initiatives.

AlphaMed Press

919-680-0011

Heather Sherman

Krembil Research Institute

416-603-5294

heather.sherman@uhn.ca
When heavy rain falls over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean, it is a good indicator that temperatures in central California will reach 100F in four to 16 days, according to a collaborative research team from the University of California, Davis, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Climate Center in Busan, South Korea.

The results were published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on April 12.

FROM PREDICTION TO PROTECTION

Heat waves are common in the Central California Valley, a 50-mile-wide oval of land that runs 450 miles from just north of Los Angeles up to Redding. The valley is home to half of the nation's tree fruit and nut crops, as well as extensive dairy production, and heat waves can wreak havoc on agricultural production. The dairy industry had a heat wave-induced economic loss of about $1 billion in 2006, for instance. The ability to predict heat waves and understand what causes them could inform protective measures against damage.

"We want to know more about how extreme events are created," said Richard Grotjahn, corresponding author on the paper and professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. "We know that such patterns in winter are sometimes linked with areas of the tropics where thunderstorms are enhanced. We wondered if there might be similar links during summer for those heat waves."

The scientists analyzed the heat wave data from June through September from 1979 to 2010. The data were collected by 15 National Climatic Data Centers stations located throughout the Valley. From these data, the researchers identified 24 heat waves. They compared these instances to the phases of a large, traveling atmospheric circulation pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO.

The MJO manifests as heavy rain that migrates across the tropical Indian and then Pacific Oceans, and researchers have shown that it influences winter weather patterns.

TROPICAL RAINFALL AND CALIFORNIA

"It's well known that tropical rainfall, such as the MJO, has effects beyond the tropics," said Yun-Young Lee of the APEC Climate Center in Busan, South Korea, the paper's first author. "So a question comes to mind: Is hot weather in the Central California Valley partly attributable to tropical rainfall?"

Lee and Grotjahn found that, yes, enhanced rainfall in the tropics preceded each heat wave in specific and relatively predictable patterns. They also found that hot weather in the valley is most common after more intense MJO activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and next most common after strong MJO activity in the Indian Ocean.

"The more we know about such associations to large-scale weather patterns and remote links, the better we can assess climate model simulations and therefore better assess simulations of future climate scenarios," Grotjahn said.

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This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the APEC Climate Center in the Republic of Korea.
Substituting fishmeal in aquaculture feeds with plant ingredients may not be as beneficial for the environment as many predict, according to new research from an international team of experts.

Manufacturers of commercial fish feed are increasingly substituting fishmeal - a powder made from fish - with crop-based ingredients in a move driven by economic incentives and a desire to improve the sustainability of aquafeed.

While this approach is widely recognised as being more environmentally friendly, the new study - led by PhD researcher Wesley Malcorps, from the University of Stirling's Institute of Aquaculture - challenges this popular theory.

The multidisciplinary team researched the trade-offs between marine and terrestrial resources as a result of adopting this common practice in shrimp feeds. The researchers focused on the shrimp industry, as it is one of the dominant consumers of fishmeal in the aquaculture sector.

The research found that the substitution of fishmeal with plant ingredients merely moved pressures from finite marine resources to land-based food production systems, with environmental repercussions. The experts involved in the work are now calling for a "paradigm shift" in thinking around the relative sustainability of aquafeed ingredients.

Mr Malcorps said: "Substituting fishmeal for plant ingredients is considered by many to be environmentally sustainable, as it reduces dependency on finite marine resources. However, this would shift resource demand from the oceans onto the land, potentially adding pressure to the land-based food production systems, which are already under pressure to meet global demand for food, feed, biofuels, and biobased materials. In turn, this would affect the environment and biodiversity, as well as the availability and prices of crops.

"In addition, the nutritional requirements of certain aquatic species may limit the amount of fishmeal substitution due to essential nutrients, which are variable or imbalanced in terrestrial plant ingredients. Furthermore, increased inclusion of plant ingredients in aquafeed could also affect the nutritional value of farmed seafood."

Fishmeal is manufactured predominantly from small pelagic fish, as well as fish processing waste. Currently, the waste element makes up, on average, between 25 and 35 percent of the product; however, this share is on the increase.

Over the years, in response to fishmeal price increases, the product has been increasingly substituted for plant ingredients. In 2000, 19-40 percent fishmeal was included in shrimp feed, however, that fell to 11-23 percent in 2014.

The study modelled incremental fishmeal substitution, from 20-30 percent to zero, by plant ingredients - such as soybean meal concentrate, rapeseed meal concentrate, pea protein concentrate and corn gluten meal - which are typically included in modern feeds for the two main shrimp species produced globally, whiteleg shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) and black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon).

The team then assessed the impact this could have on marine and terrestrial resources, such as fish, land, freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorus.

The research found that complete substitution of 20-30 percent of fishmeal totals - depending on the species - could lead to an increasing demand for freshwater, of up to 63 percent; land, of up to 81 percent; and phosphorus, of up to 83 percent.

"These are significant increases, as only a small proportion of the feed is actually substituted," Mr Malcorps explained. "Our findings suggest this approach would lead to additional pressures on essential agricultural resources, with associated socio-economic and environmental effects as a trade-off to pressures on finite marine resources. It could lead to competition for land and other terrestrial resources, causing social and environmental conflicts that, in turn, may affect the resilience of the global food system."

Aquafeed generally utilises only a small percentage of global crop production, however, with aquaculture one of the fastest growing food sectors, the experts warn additional pressures on crucial terrestrial resources "may become more obvious" over the coming decades.

Mr Malcorps added: "Our model highlights the need for a paradigm shift in the definition of sustainable shrimp feed. Additionally, the model may be equally applicable to other intensively farmed species with similar scenarios of marine and terrestrial feed ingredient requirements.

"An excessive dependency on the use of plant ingredients for aquaculture could lead to deleterious effects on the environment and indirectly impact human health by altering the nutritional value of the aquaculture products."

Mr Malcorps suggests finding an "optimal balance" between marine and terrestrial resources in aquafeed; strategically include high quality fishmeal; improving the use of fish by-products and food waste in feeds; and investigating the potential for novel ingredients - such as microbial biomass, algae and insect meals - to be included.

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The multidisciplinary team included industry and academic experts from across the world, including: MatureDevelopment BV (Netherlands); Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Belgium); Mexico Aquaculture Research Inc; Association of International Seafood Professionals (Australia); Aquaculture without Frontiers (USA); Universidad Tecnologica del Mar de Tamaulipas (Mexico); IFFO, The Marine Ingredients Organisation (UK); Utrecht University (Netherlands); University of Zurich (Switzerland); and Harper Adams University (UK).

The study, The Sustainability Conundrum of Fishmeal Substitution by Plant Ingredients in Shrimp Feeds, is published in Sustainability.
Researchers at the University of York have shown that costly external NHS hospital inspections are not associated with improvements in quality of care.

The results have prompted researchers to call for less resource-intensive inspections, allowing trusts to continue with their own internal assessments and focus on making impactful improvements in a realistic timeframe.

The team found that rates of falls resulting in harm to patients, and rates of pressure ulcers following treatment, were improving prior to external inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which exists to monitor and regulate services, and encourage improvement in quality of care. After inspection, however, rates of improvement were slower.

Dr Ana Cristina Castro, from the University of York's Department of Health Sciences, and lead author of the study, said: "Since 2013, CQC inspection teams regularly visit NHS Trusts over several days, with more than 150 inspection measures, and rate them against legally enforceable standards of care.

"This creates a significant pressure on staff before and during the inspection period, and also significant costs, not just of the CQC inspectors but also the NHS staff who are diverted from other activities.

"We calculated that one CQC inspection costs a hospital between 169,000 and 420,000 depending on its size and the preparatory activities performed.

"We suggest that a less resource-intensive approach should be considered so that all staff can focus appropriately on longer-term improvements."

The CQC regulate NHS and independent hospitals, conducting regular comprehensive inspections to observe care and examine records. Researchers at York investigated the impact of these inspections in 150 NHS Trusts in England.

The team looked at monthly data over four years on falls with harm and pressure ulcers and how they changed in relation to two regimes of inspection - one that relied on a significant input from NHS staff and lengthy visits and a second which was less resource intensive.

Researchers compared both inspection regimes with trusts that were not inspected at all during this period. Neither inspection system was associated with improvements in rates of falls, nor cases of pressure ulcers. In fact, the rate of improvement was worse compared to those trusts that did not get inspected.

Karen Bloor, Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the University of York's Department of Health Sciences, said: "CQC provides a broad system of regulation, monitoring quality of care and hopefully incentivising improvements. But inspection and regulation is costly, and cannot substitute for professionalism and health care teams working together to monitor their own performance."

Researchers argue that given that several methods of inspection have been implemented and then replaced over a 20-year period - each with an increasingly complex and burdensome process - that reducing the administrative burden should be tried and tested instead.

Trevor Sheldon, Professor of Health Services Research and Policy also at the University of York's Department of Health Sciences, is author of an editorial published alongside the research paper. He said: "Research shows us that questionable effectiveness and high burden of health service inspection is not only true of the NHS, but also of health care systems internationally.

"The research shows that inspection regimes, like CQC, need to rethink their approach; health service and government leaders need to focus less on the methods of monitoring and more on promoting and supporting the many efforts that already exist nationally and within trusts to improve quality.

"The question that remains is, what is the right dose of oversight that will help improve quality of care, without adding to an already overburdened staff workload?"

The research is published in the Journal of Health Services Research and Policy.

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The origin of giant apatite-iron oxide ores of the so-called 'Kiruna-type' has been the topic of a long standing debate that has lasted for over 100 years. In a new article, published in Nature Communications, a team of scientists presents new and unambiguous data in favour of a magmatic origin for these important iron ores. The study was led by researchers from Uppsala University in Sweden.

Despite globally increasing demand for rare metals, iron is the overall most important metal for modern industry. Over 90 % of Europes total iron production comes from apatite-iron oxide ores, also referred to as Kiruna-type ores, named after the extremely large and iconic Kiruna iron ore deposit in northern Sweden. Today the Swedish deposits at Kiruna and Malmberget are the largest and most important iron producers in Europe, and Kiruna-type deposits represent an iron source of global importance. These deposits also have a large future potential for production of sought-after and critical rare earth elements (REE) as well as phosphorous, another element deemed critical for Europe's future development.

The origin and actual process of formation of Kiruna-type ores has remained highly controversial for over 100 years, with suggestions ranging from a purely low-temperature hydrothermal origin to sea floor precipitation to a high-temperature volcanic origin from magma or high-temperature magmatic fluids. To remedy this problem, a team of scientists from Uppsala University, the Geological Survey of Sweden, the Geological Survey of Iran, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, and the Universities of Cardiff and Cape Town, led by Uppsala researcher Prof. Valentin Troll, employed Fe and O isotopes, the main elements in magnetite (Fe3O4), from Sweden, Chile and Iran to chemically fingerprint the processes that led to formation of these ores.

By comparing their data from Kiruna-type iron ores with an extensive set of magnetite samples from volcanic rocks as well as from known low-temperature hydrothermal iron ore deposits, the researchers were able to show that more than 80 % of their magnetite samples from Kiruna-type apatite-iron oxide ores were formed by high-temperature magmatic processes in what must represent volcanic to shallow sub-volcanic settings. The new results constitute an important advance in our understanding of Kiruna-type ores and will be of help for the interpretation of, and future exploration for, apatite-iron oxide deposits worldwide.

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In a paper to be published in the forthcoming issue in NANO, a team of researchers from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Hunan University of Science and Technology have proposed a novel strategy for the synthesis of non-precious metal catalysts in zinc-air batteries that do not compromise its electroactivity, affordability and stability.

As a green and sustainable energy generator, zinc-air battery has attracted great attention from researchers due to its high specific energy, high current density, low cost, and environmental friendliness. Yet it is not without its drawbacks. The slow oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) of its cathode has become an obstacle to its commercial application. One possible solution is to use platinum (Pt) and Pt-based catalysts, but its high cost and scarce availability make it less ideal. In addition, alkaline KOH (or NaOH) is generally used as the electrolyte, but it leads to the generation of carbonates (CO 3 2-) due to the dissolution of CO 2 in the electrolyte as well as the spontaneous corrosion of the anodic zinc in strong alkaline media. This has the effect of slowing down the ionic conductivity of the electrolyte and battery life. Therefore, a neutral electrolyte should be used instead. To complement this, a non-precious metal ORR catalyst that can also perform in a neutral electrolyte needs to be found.

A team of researchers from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Hunan University of Science and Technology introduced a novel strategy for the synthesis of non-precious metal catalysts with outstanding electroactivity for oxygen reduction reaction in neutral electrolyte. They prepared Ni/Co-doped C-N hollow nanotube composite catalysts (C-N, Co/C-N, Ni/C-N and Ni-Co/C-N) by a facile pyrolysis of Ni/Co salt, dicyandiamide and glucose. A corresponding zinc-air battery was assembled in a neutral medium using the prepared sample as the catalyst of the air electrode, showing superior discharge performance and stability.

The as-synthesized Ni/Co-doped C-N composites display a curly tubular structure, resulting in a tremendous active surface area and stability. A neutral zinc-air battery utilizing a 0.5 molL-1 KNO 3 solution has been assembled by using the prepared composite catalyst coated on carbon paper as an air cathode, and Zn plate as an anode. The battery with the cathode catalyst Ni-Co/C-N delivers the open circuit voltage of 1.13 V and the maximum power density of 65 mWcm-2. The constant discharge current density of 50, 100 and 150 mAcm-2 can last 202, 93 and 11 hours respectively. A stable voltage plateau appears at various discharge current densities. The neutral zinc-air battery can be repeatedly discharged after replacing the zinc anode, showing the high stability of the cathodic catalyst and broad application prospects as a mobile power source.

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This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21875062).

Corresponding author for this study is Qingfeng Yi, yqfyy2001@hnust.edu.cn.

For more insight into the research described, readers are invited to access the paper on NANO.

IMAGE

Caption: NiCo-doped C-N hollow nanotube composites prepared through direct pyrolysis of Ni/Co salt, dicyandiamide and glucose, present excellent performance as the cathode catalysts of neutral Zn-air battery.

NANO is an international peer-reviewed monthly journal for nanoscience and nanotechnology that presents forefront fundamental research and new emerging topics. It features timely scientific reports of new results and technical breakthroughs and publishes interesting review articles about recent hot issues.

About World Scientific Publishing Co.

World Scientific Publishing is a leading independent publisher of books and journals for the scholarly, research, professional and educational communities. The company publishes about 600 books annually and about 135 journals in various fields. World Scientific collaborates with prestigious organizations like the Nobel Foundation and US National Academies Press to bring high quality academic and professional content to researchers and academics worldwide. To find out more about World Scientific, please visit http://www.worldscientific.com.

For more information, contact Tay Yu Shan at ystay@wspc.com.
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Local researchers are dissecting the tiny brains of genetically modified fruit flies, looking for the key to understanding how Alzheimers disease progresses.

A team of scientists at a UT Health San Antonio research lab are using the flies to test whether a drug thats been approved for HIV and hepatitis B could be used to prevent the disease, which strips away a persons memory and erodes the ability to think.

If their work pans out, assistant professor Bess Frost, whos leading the team, hopes to push the innovation into the marketplace. But the odds are against her.

Frost will have to figure out whether her findings can be commercialized, keeping in mind that drugs intended to combat Alzheimers have an almost 100 percent failure rate in clinical trials.

And if she decides to move ahead, shell have to ask herself: Will she be able to license her work to one of the big pharmaceutical companies? Or should she consider starting her own company with the help of investors?

Frost is one of hundreds of faculty investigators at UT Health San Antonio in the South Texas Medical Center who are grappling with questions that are essentially about business  something most researchers arent prepared for.

Shes turned to UT Healths Office of Technology Commercialization to determine whether her fruit fly research has commercial appeal as intellectual property.

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Bringing new medical technologies to market can take years, and the successes are few  but the ones that break through often save lives and prove profitable.

John Gebhard, a UT Health assistant vice president who runs the office, said he wants to fast-track the medical discovery process by establishing TechNovum, a technology commercialization accelerator.

I do everything with the patient in mind, he said.

He often visits Boston, known as the main biotech hub of the United States, and hopes to bring some of that energy to San Antonio.

The new TechNovum program is supported by the San Antonio Life Sciences Institute, a joint program of UT Health San Antonio and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

John Fritz and Sean Thompson, both of the Office of Technology Commercialization, will be co-directors of the accelerator, a rigorous entrepreneurial program that includes weekly courses and guest speakers for at least eight teams of founders.

TechNovum runs from June through October and will culminate in two demonstration days, one for the community and another for accredited investors, in which the founders make a business presentation of their products.

The Office of Technology Commercialization hosted a Science Technology Investor Reception on Wednesday night at the UT Health campus to discuss the new accelerator.

Dr. Ramon Cestero, a trauma surgeon and professor at UT Health, was among several inventors at the event. He said he wouldnt have known where to start without the office.

He said he pitched a new medical device to about 15 groups of potential investors with the help of Fritz, who has helped inventors try to drum up investor interest more than 150 times.

The idea for Cesteros invention, an adjustable surgical retractor, came to him on the battlefield during multiple combat surgical deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Navy.

OnExpressNews.com: Few doctors in San Antonio offer a medication for opioid addiction

He filed his patent in 2015 and had enough time to complete a Master of Business Administration before finding a company interested in licensing his design.

Terms of the agreement are confidential, but Cestero will serve as a medical adviser for the venture with Minneapolis-based health care firm Advanced Surgical Retractor Systems LLC.

John Hanak, a managing director of Purdue Ventures, which is affiliated with Purdue University in Indiana, was the guest speaker at the reception Wednesday night.

Hanak talked about how Purdue Foundry, a startup accelerator established in 2013 by the university, helps transform innovators into entrepreneurs by providing business model development, market analysis and more. The university is credited with helping launch more than 225 startups and generating millions of dollars in investments.

San Antonio has the potential to succeed in this area, Hanak said, adding: There is so much medical research going on here, and there is so much interest in making this a life sciences center that its just a matter of time before it happens.

TechNovum is considered an accelerator, similar to entities like EPIcenter, RealCo and Build Sec Foundry that have recently started in San Antonio to encourage entrepreneurship.

Nothing is competitive in this space  it has to be collaborative to keep that ecosystem going, Hanak said. Whats important to us is making sure that these technologies are getting into the market for the benefit of humanity.

Innovators looking to have their medical discoveries commercialized say they ultimately want to help improve the lives of others.

Frost, 37, who was recruited from Harvard Medical School to start her lab at UT Health San Antonio, says she hopes to develop drugs that can delay the harmful biological changes that come with aging in the human brain.

Alzheimers disease is one of the largest social and economic challenges our society will face in the next 50 years, she said. Its a really big problem that is difficult to tackle.

Alzheimers is the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States, with an estimated 5.8 million people in the country living with the disease. According to the Alzheimers Association, the number is expected to reach nearly 14 million by 2050.

Frost and her colleagues think their fruit fly model might help speed up the testing of drugs targeting Alzheimers.

Unfortunately, drugs that are discovered using traditional approaches often fail when introduced into animal models and humans, she said. Incorporating fruit flies into the drug discovery pipeline has the potential to significantly increase the discovery rate of high-quality lead compounds.

If Frost is right, shell likely need help from TechNovum or an organization like it to commercialize her discovery.

Laura Garcia covers the health careindustry in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her stories and more local coverage on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | laura.garcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @Reporter_Laura
Austin-based Royal Blue Grocery is opening a downtown store  its first in San Antonio  on Saturday, bringing more retail to an area dominated by tourist attractions and shops.

The grocery chain is leasing 3,000 square feet in the Savoy Building at 122 East Houston Street from Weston Urban, a local developer. The store will sell produce, dairy and other grocery items and grab-and-go meals such as salads, with some seating inside and outside. Hours are 7 a.m. to midnight.

Royal Blues bodega-style stores in Austin, Dallas and now San Antonio aim to bridge the gap between a supermarket and a convenience store, co-owner Craig Staley said.

Most of the San Antonio stores traffic is expected to come from downtown workers and tourists, though more people are moving to the center city, he said. Eventually, Staley hopes to open more Royal Blue locations here.

The grocerys opening is a huge vote of confidence in the work that the community has been doing downtown, said Randy Smith, CEO of Weston Urban, a real estate developer focused on the inner city. Five years ago, its unlikely the business would have come, he said.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio apartment market showed signs of slowdown last year but downtown developments bring bright spots

Its an outsized moment of progress for us, Smith said.

Royal Blue was initially hesitant to come to the Alamo City, in part because its different from the other cities where theyve set up shop.

Austin is easy to figure out, Staley said. Its a neighborhood with a bunch of high rises. San Antonio is much bigger.

Royal Blue told Weston Urban thanks, but no thanks a few times, he said, but the developer kept pursuing the company. Learning more about Weston Urbans efforts downtown helped convince them, and having a landlord thats invested in the area is also crucial, Staley said.

When we build a store, we want it to be there for decades, he said.

The store was initially slated to open in September, but renovations and preservation of the building, which dates back to the 1800s, ended up taking a while.

There were lots of surprises, Staley said.

madison.iszler@

express-news.net
Border lawmakers on Friday urged U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to recapitalize the San Antonio-based North American Development Bank under the renegotiated NAFTA.

NADBank was created under the 1994 NAFTA, now known as the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, to tackle pollution problems along the largely impoverished U.S.-Mexico border.

On ExpressNews.com: Read about how San Antonio scored headquarters for the "NAFTA bank."

Its since administered funding for 255 projects for an investment of $9.7 billion in water, sewage, roadway, landfill and other projects. At its founding, only about 22 percent of wastewater flows were being treated in border areas, compared with about 90 percent now.

On ExpressNews.com: Read an Express-News interview with NADBank Managing Director Alex Hinojosa

The bank is equally capitalized by the U.S. and Mexico. Leaders are seeking $225 million from each nation, to be phased out over time, totaling $450 million. The bank has historically been able to leverage $21 in private and/or public financing for every $1 invested.

They also want authorization to expand the banks charge to include natural gas and border infrastructure projects. Efforts to approve the new funding on Capitol Hill so far have stalled.

We ask for you support to use this opportunity to obtain the necessary authorization for the Banks capital increase, lawmakers, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn and Democratic U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, wrote in a letter to Lighthizer. This expansion of project sector eligibility and financing will no doubt assist our country to continue to be leaders in international trade and commerce with Mexico.

Fridays letter comes as roadblocks still threaten passage in Congress of the three-nation agreement  which proponents see as crucial to the agriculture and automotive industries as well as cities such as Laredo, McAllen and San Antonio that have seen economies boosted by NAFTA trade.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has indicated the House will not move on the USMCA unless Mexico passes and implements major labor law reforms.

Cuellar on Tuesday told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram he planned to take lawmakers to Mexico later this month so they can hear directly from Mexican policymakers.

There are some Democrats who have questions  what is Mexico going to do?, he said. So Im trying to set up a trip and invite some of the members to go there so they can hear from them personally.

Canadas Ambassador to the U.S., David MacNaughton, on Monday told agricultural journalists meeting in Washington, D.C., that Canada wouldnt sign the agreement until the U.S. lifts steel and aluminum tariffs imposed on Canada and other nations.

Canada and the United States do over $2 billion in trade a day, he said, and Canada is the largest market of U.S. agricultural and other goods.

It is frankly totally unpalatable for Canada to move ahead with what is allegedly a free trade agreement under the guise that Canada is a national security threat, MacNaughton said.

Lynn Brezosky is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering trade, agriculture and the economy. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lbrezosky@express-news.net | Twitter: @lbrezosky
The decision to move a storied childrens amusement venue is being rushed without their consultation and will cause more parking headaches at Brackenridge Park, an organization that manages the city parks development said Thursday.

Brackenridge Park Conservancy officials also said they werent consulted about Kiddie Parks relocation, and that its being rushed.

The San Antonio Zoo is taking over Kiddie Park and moving it to the zoo this summer after construction and limited parking made it difficult for visitors to access. The attraction, co-owned by Rad Weaver and his family along with Brent Conger, will be relocated from Broadway and East Mulberry to a slice of land near the San Antonio River.

On ExpressNews.com: Kiddie Park is moving to the San Antonio Zoo

But the leaders of the nonprofit conservancy, which has a management agreement with the city to consult on the parks development, are worried about what they describe as a rapid decision-making process without public input.

They said they have asked for a copy of the zoos lease and are also talking to City Council members and looking at possible legal action.

What we have serious concerns about (is) where the zoo is moving it and the process that was not followed to look at what the best location for the Kiddie Park is, executive director Lynn Osborne Bobbitt said.

The organization wasnt apprised of the relocation plans until mid-March, when a member of the Parks and Recreation Department told them about it, Bobbitt said. They asked to meet with representatives from the zoo and Kiddie Park. The parties met April 1 to discuss the plan.

On ExpressNews.com: New rhino habitat at San Antonio Zoo offers expanded interactive environment

They later sent a letter to the zoo and Kiddie Park owners outlining their concerns. The group said they were told the parties would be willing to discuss the move with them until June 1, when the attraction is slated for relocation.

This is essentially a revenue opportunity for the zoo and for Rad Weaver, said Joe Calvert, the conservancys president. Rad is solving his parking problem with public property.

Weaver and Tim Morrow, the zoos CEO, dispute the timeline. Both said they have kept the conservancy updated on plans since December.

The board and members of the conservancy are not only our neighbors, we consider them our friends, Morrow wrote in an email. We have always been completely transparent and open with the conservancy anytime we have interaction with the park.

The groups have a revenue-sharing agreement that will end in 10 years, when the zoo becomes the sole owner. Its a win for the community and the zoo, Weaver said.

I guess no good deed goes unpunished, he said. I am essentially donating the park to the zoo over time and loaning them the money to move the rides into the zoo. I could keep the park where it is and personally make more money in the near-term, but the experience for the customers would be much worse.

This is a great solution for the Kiddie Park, not for me or my family, he added.

The conservancy worked with the zoo and other groups to push for a parking facility to serve the zoo, Brackenridge and other nearby attractions, Calvert said. In 2017, voters approved a city municipal bond that provides for a parking garage.

But Kiddie Park visitors will want to park as close to the attraction as they can, and the conservancy has been told the venue will bring another 125,000 people into the area annually, Calvert said. Perhaps it should be located next to the new garage, he suggested.

In a previous interview, Bobbitt said she was also worried about noise and Kiddie Park disrupting a quiet part of Brackenridge.

Its looking at the whole park as an entity, she said.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
Argo Group International Holdings is firing back at a San Francisco activist hedge fund waging a proxy fight against the specialty insurer.

In a letter to shareholders today, Bermuda-based Argos board asked for their support to prevent the short-term interests of Voce Capital Management from disrupting the steady growth and superior shareholder returns the insurer  which has its U.S. headquarters in San Antonio  has generated.

Voce has nominated five candidates to serve on the board of the publicly traded Argo, agitating for change to rein in management and eradicate (a) wasteful, spendthrift culture.

Voce, a small hedge fund with about $250 million in assets, is Argos fourth-largest shareholder. Voce holds 1.9 million shares, or a 5.6 percent stake, valued at more than $139 million based on its trading price of $73.21 in early trading today.

On ExpressNews.com: Voce makes big bet on forcing change at Argo

Shareholders will get their say on May 24, when Argo holds its annual meeting in Bermuda. The company employs about 200 people in San Antonio.

Argos board accused J. Daniel Plants, Voces founder and chief investment officer, of disseminating various poorly researched claims with little regard for the truth about the insurer and its management.

Faced with the challenge of attacking a company with best-in-class performance, a well-articulated business plan for future financial performance, and sound governance, the campaign orchestrated by Mr. Plants has resorted to poorly researched personal attacks on your Board and our CEO Mark E. Watson III.

Voce has knocked Argo for its anemic results by one measure of profitability and for excessive and shockingly inappropriate corporate expenses and perks.

Argo is a midsize player in a niche field of insuring complex or hard-to-price risks other insurers wont touch. Argo paid Disney on a life insurance claim following Carrie Fishers death in late 2016. She was slated to reprise her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode IX.

The Deal Pipeline, a transaction information service, in February speculated that its possible Voce wants the nearly $2.5 billion insurer to sell itself  in light of a recent wave of mergers and acquisitions, and activism that have swept the industry.

In its letter, Argos board said the companys shareholder returns over the last year, three years and five years have exceeded those of its peer group and the S&P 500.

The board accused Voce of running a misleading media campaign with spurious allegations.

Voce has charged that Argos corporate assets are being grossly misspent to further Watsons personal endeavors, including art collecting, architecture, auto racing, sailing competitions and travel.

The board replied that the sponsorships are effective marketing tools that provide exceptional client relationship-building opportunities at a modest cost. All of the pieces of artwork Argo has purchased for its worldwide offices cost less than $1 million combined, the board added.

As for Voces criticism of managements use of corporate aircraft, the board said executives pay for their own flying expenses.

The board said it has made efforts to meet with Voces nominees but has been rebuffed.

We have to believe that this reckless behavior is simply Mr. Plants modus operandi, as evidenced by his conduct in previous campaigns, the board said.

A Voce spokesman didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Argo marks at least the 11th proxy fight for Voce.

Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | pdanner@express-news.net | Twitter: @AlamoPD
Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix, will speak at a rally put on by Tech Bloc next month.

The industry advocacy group is hosting Hastings in partnership with KIPP Texas Public Schools, a nonprofit network of public charter schools. He is a board member at KIPP.

At the May 3 event, to be held at the Charline McCombs Empire Theater downtown, Hastings will discuss the expansion of the streaming company, the media industrys future, tech philanthropy and public education.

The free rally starts at 6:30 p.m. and is open to the public. Tickets were booked quickly, but people can still register for a wait list through Eventbrite. Tech Bloc is working to accommodate more people.

The organization has held several rallies over the years and hosted figures such as Nolan Bushnell, the founder of ATARI, and Robert Hammond, founder of the High Line in New York City.

These leaders have a lot of lessons learned and knowledge to share with our local tech community and youth who might be inspired by a chance to meet and hear from them, said David Heard, CEO of Tech Bloc.

Bringing people such as Hastings to San Antonio is also a way to introduce them to the city and highlight its small but growing tech community, Heard added.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
After Melissa Cazares graduated from Memorial High School on the citys West Side, she left San Antonio to attend Texas State University. But the financial toll was hard on her father. The self-employed tile worker is the sole source of income for his family of five, she said, and he was sending her money for tuition and on-campus housing.

He wanted to sacrifice because he was proud of her, the first in their family to attend college, Cazares said, but to save money, she returned home and enrolled in Alamo Colleges to complete her basic courses, planning to transfer to the University of Texas at San Antonio.

Cazares, now 22, has been diligent about mapping out her courses, said Monica Ruiz, a senior undergraduate admissions counselor for UTSA who has an office at San Antonio College and has helped Cazares make sure all her credits transfer to the university.

More than 3,000 students will transfer to UTSA this year, among the roughly 3.7 million nationally who are expected to move from one college to another, according to estimates from The National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students.

About 40 percent of UTSAs more than 32,000 students transferred there from elsewhere, most of them from the Alamo Colleges District, the universitys president, Taylor Eighmy, has said.

The numbers, locally and nationally, have been increasing. Affordability is often a reason. But a 2017 U.S. Government Accountability Office report found some transfer students end up spending more in the long run because previously earned credits dont follow them to a new school. On average, students lost 13 credit hours  a semesters worth and about 43 percent of the credits they had accumulated, according to the report.

UTSA has long had partnerships with community colleges, especially with the Alamo Colleges, to smooth the transition and was trying to improve transfer recruitment efforts and found incoming students were looking for a way to evaluate their credits before applying, said Lisa Blazer, interim vice president for strategic enrollment.

We werent really equipped to be able to handle that with our recruiters, Blazer said.

What came from that effort was an online transfer calculator that was launched this spring, in time for students who may be looking to transfer to UTSA this summer or fall. It allows them to input the courses theyve taken at their community college, or other university, to see if they would count toward the degree they wish to pursue at UTSA.

Cazares plans to pursue a bachelors degree in psychology with a minor in art so she can work in art therapy. She recently met with Ruiz, her admissions counselor at SAC. They plugged in the community college classes Cazares plans to take over the summer and the credits she earned from testing out of Spanish requirements.

After about 15 minutes, the results showed that Cazares will be able transfer with the maximum possible number of credits she could obtain before going to UTSA. Shell only need to take 54 credit hours at UTSA, Ruiz said.

Oh, wow, thats pretty good, Cazares said.

Shes worked at Peter Piper Pizza to help her family and pay for school, but recently left to start work as an art instructor at Palacio del Sol, a downtown apartment complex for senior citizens run by the nonprofit Mexican American Unity Council.

Like Cazares, three out of four UTSA students work while going to school, according to Eighmys testimony before the Texas Senates finance committee in February. About a quarter of UTSA students work full-time.

Though Eighmy was there to discuss higher education funding, lawmakers asked him to talk about UTSAs efforts for transfer students.

Were discussing the advancement of our youngsters, first-generation, underprivileged, our veterans, to make sure when they invest money and time, that its not being wasted, said Sen. Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton.

Looking to the future, Eighmy said, UTSA and the Alamo Colleges are working to establish a joint admissions program so students can be on both campuses at the same time and graduate in four years with an associate and bachelor degree. Eighmy described it as a super version of dual enrollment.

Increasing students time to graduation to four years instead of the current state average of about five or six years will also drive down student loan debt, he said, adding, Were going to make great progress in that regards and I want to be held accountable for that.

Krista Torralva covers several school districts and public universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | Krista.Torralva@express-news.net | Twitter: @KMTorralva
AUSTIN  Lawmakers are again trying to undermine Agriculture Commissioner Sid Millers consumer protection efforts, this time by taking away his power to oversee gasoline quality.

Despite Millers objections, the Texas Senate passed a bill 27-4 on Thursday that would shift regulation of motor fuel quality and metering to the state Department of Licensing and Regulation. A similar bill won committee approval in the House earlier this month and is expected to be brought to the floor in the coming weeks.

The move comes amid frustration from the Texas Food and Fuel Association that Millers agency is ratcheting up enforcement measures and inspection fees for vendors despite a low percentage of valid fuel complaints. Of 1 billion fuel transactions in Texas last fiscal year, there are just 187 transactions in which a problem was found, such as water in the gas, said Paul Hardin, president of the association representing gas stations and convenience stores.

The cost of the inspections varies depending on location, according to Hardin, ranging from $250 in urban areas to more than $500 in rural Texas.

Hardin has said his organization has found Miller to be vindictive. The group endorsed his opponent in the 2018 Republican primary election.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

The industry is regulated by an elected position and a lot of times the industry is used  as political hay during the re-election process, said Hardin, who added that elected officials can be seen on television talking about quality of fuel at gas stations, but theyre not talking about the eggs they found cracks in at the grocery stores.

Miller counters that the association is not to be trusted and shifting responsibility for overseeing gas quality to a new agency will screw consumers.

As Ive always said, here at TDA there are three things we do not tolerate: liars, cheats and horse thieves, Miller wrote in a letter. I can add TFFA to this list.

For subscribers: Heres why Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller is missing three key endorsements in his re-election bid

Lawmakers last tried to water down Millers oversight of gas stations in 2017, requiring a third party to investigate gas stations for the Department of Agriculture after three complaints about a vendor are filed in a year. Miller opposed that law, complaining it allowed gas stations to cheat at least three people before the state can step in. He then required gas stations to pay for the inspections since they are no longer performed directly by the department.

That same year, Miller caught heat for how he enforced laws overseeing barbecue restaurant scales. He began enforcing a long-ignored law requiring pitmasters to weigh food on a scale where customers can read the weight for themselves. Barbecue restaurant owners complained, saying they would have to undergo costly renovations to meet those standards. They convinced lawmakers to rewrite the law in 2017 to exempt scales weighing food that people are buying to eat immediately. When Miller was tasked with enforcing the law, he determined that the exemption would only apply to establishments where food to-go is not sold  meaning it would not apply to the vast majority of barbecue restaurants.

For subscribers: Texas Ag commissioner, BBQ pitmasters battle over a weighty issue

The agriculture commissioners job is largely to promote local products such as cattle and cotton, although the job also requires the commissioner act as a consumer watchdog to ensure people get their moneys worth when buying Texas products. The Department of Agriculture regulates scales for some 17,7000 retailers, including grocery stores, coffee shops and jewelers. The agency also inspects meters at airports used to fuel planes, gas station pumps and liquefied petroleum gas meters for filling small tanks for backyard gas grills.

Miller has positioned himself as a staunch defender of consumer protections since he was elected to lead the Department of Agriculture in 2014.

This is isn't about personalities or politics. This is about big money lobbyists pushing bad bills that protect their industry at the cost of every Texan that fills up at the pump, Miller said in a written statement to the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News.
The power of music to bring people together and transcend boundaries has motivated the famed cellist and global humanitarian Yo-Yo Ma since he began performing nearly six decades ago.

Beyond the lyrical notes he plays on his cello, he strives to use culture and art to make a better world.

His most recent foray in this endeavor is the Bach Project, begun last year. Over two years, Ma is performing Johann Sebastian Bachs six suites for solo cello in 36 locations on six continents. Hes already visited places as disparate as Montreal and Mumbai.

In addition to the concerts, the project features Days of Action that seek to harness music and culture to bridge divides and heal in a divisive time.

The goal is to find commonalities in the issues we all face, from border crossings of one sort or another to changing populations, he said in an interview Friday. And Bach is my calling card, the best I have to offer.

Ma is scheduled to play a sold-out concert Friday night at Trinity Universitys Laurie Auditorium, and on Saturday will bring the project to Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, for cross-border performances and community conversations. The concerts are presented by ARTS San Antonio.

About the performances The 8 p.m. Laurie Auditorium concert will be simulcast at both the Mission Marquee Plaza, 3100 Roosevelt Avenue, and at Texas A&M International University in Laredo. The Mission Marquee show will kick off an hour before Ma is slated to take the stage at Trinity. Urban-15's Carnaval de Santo will perform, as will the winners of the music portion of KPAC's annual Sounds Like KPAC teen talent competition: violinist Nicholas Garcia-Hettinger, who is a student at Brandeis High School; and the Saxalorian Quartet, a saxophone ensemble based at Churchill High School that includes Ian Weidman on soprano sax, Craig Jaffe on alto sax, Ricky Dixon on tenor sax and Abbi Stewart on baritone sax. The Day of Action in Laredo will end with a free pachanga at Tres Laredos Park, from 2 to 7 p.m., that will include a performance at 4 p.m. by Ma, the Laredo Philharmonic and mariachis of "Rapsodia," a piece by Laredo composer Colin Campbell about the power of music to bring people together. See More Collapse

Ma, 63, the son of Chinese immigrants who emigrated from Paris to New York when he was a child, said the events in los dos Laredos get to the very heart of the Bach Project.

This is about bringing understanding, what we do when we want to find out what the truth is, said Ma, who during the interview was warm, funny and humble. That is at the basis of culture and the trust that exists between people.

As he talked of borders and the struggles associated with them, Ma kept the discourse elevated and hopeful, never once descending into partisan attack or even mentioning the name Trump, arguably the fount of so much discord around the issue.

On Saturday, Ma will give a short performance at 9 a.m. at Tres Laredos Park on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Gateway to the Americas International Bridge, which connects Laredo to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. He will give a repeat performance at Plaza Juarez in Nuevo Laredo at 11 a.m.

Both are free and open to the public.

On ExpressNews.com: Yo-Yo Ma brings Bach project to San Antonio

The cellist had been scheduled to play on the Juarez-Lincoln International Bridge, which connects the two cities, but the concert was moved to the park to avoid disruption and delays at the U.S.-Mexico border.

As it has in other locales, the Day of Action will feature meetings with artists, students, civic leaders and others, conversations that aim to celebrate the cultural life of the area and explore ways culture can be used to build a better future, Ma said.

The heated rhetoric around immigration made the stops in San Antonio and at the border  the only Texas destinations in the Bach Project  a natural choice, Ma said.

From the beginning of this project, I wanted to go to places that are difficult, he said. I wanted to experiment with myself and learn what happens when you just see and talk to people.

Ma said people too often get caught up in fear about places that is not based in reality  something he personally experienced before when he hesitated about performing in countries or cities with dangerous reputations. But once on the ground, surrounded by members of the community, those fears dissipated in the light of connection, he said.

He hopes the conversations in Laredo and Nuevo Laredo will forge collaborative, creative solutions envisioned by those living on the area.

Ill be talking and listening very specifically, and will report back to whoever wants to hear about what we found, he said.

Previous Bach Project performances and actions days have taken place at Washingtons National Cathedral, Montreals Maison Symphonique, Mumbais National Center for the Performing Arts and Mexico Citys Plaza de la Republica.

Ma has been involved in activism and various efforts to use music and art to transform communities for decades, long before the current project. For example, in 1998, he founded Silkroad, a global collective of artists who create music, perform together and work with museums and universities to develop training programs for teachers, students and musicians.

Silkroad has commissioned more than 100 new works from various composers and arrangers and released seven albums, most recently a collection of music recorded for The Vietnam War, the documentary by Ken Burns.

On ExpressNews.com: Yo-Yo Ma delights San Antonio audience

Ma, who has recorded more than 100 albums and won 19 Grammy Awards, said performing all six suites for solo cello is akin to climbing Mount Everest.

He performed them 25 years ago at Carnegie Hall and likened the experience to a spiritual journey, for himself and the audience.

Why did he choose Bach for his world-spanning project? The composer, like Shakespeare, is timeless, he said.

What we love about Shakespeare is that he includes all of what we humans do, he said. Every kind of human foible, what we go through again and again. Frivolity, hubris. Comedy and tragedy. What Shakespeare and Bach do is they examine all sides of human nature without saying, I know everything. Bach tells the story empathetically but he doesnt make himself important.

Ma spoke of seeing the Berlin Wall years ago, and how there were bouquets of flowers placed every 50 feet along the wall, marking where someone was shot and killed trying to climb over it.

I thought at that time that every U.S. citizen, every young person, should go to the Berlin Wall and actually experience what people are willing to die for in order to go someplace else, he said.

Im in no way putting those two walls,  the Berlin Wall and that along the U.S.-Mexico border  side by side. What I want to say is we should be extra careful about how we treat one another across borders. Not just the invisible lines between socioeconomic or ethnic divides, but those lines you create. We will pay the consequences for that long after.

Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje is a general assignment reporter covering breaking news, cultural trends and interesting people and goings-on around San Antonio and Bexar County, as well as all across South Texas. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | mstoeltje@express-news.net | Twitter: @mstoeltje
Prosecutors revealed Thursday that the man accused in the death of King Jay Davila is not the boys father, portraying him as a criminal with a violent past who purposely injured the infant.

Still, Jasmine Gonzales, Kings mother, defended her fiance, Christopher Davila, 34, who police said confessed to killing the boy and burying him in a field.

During testimony at a bail hearing for Davila, Gonzales, 24, described him as a good man who worked hard as a forklift operator to support his four children from previous relationships. She is now pregnant with his child.

Hes not the same person that he was before, Gonzales said, referring to Davilas past affiliation with Tango Orejon, a San Antonio-based prison gang.

She did not speak specifically about Kings death. The boy, who died in January, would have turned 1 on Thursday.

During the court hearing, Davilas lawyer asked a judge to reduce Davilas $1.25 million bail, arguing the amount is excessive, considering that Davila is not a flight risk. Davila faces five charges, including injury to a child, tampering with evidence and concealing a corpse. He could get life in prison if convicted.

The proceedings took a shocking turn after prosecutors asked Gonzales if Davila is Kings father, as he has claimed in the past. Gonzales paused before answering.

No, Gonzales responded, offering no further explanation.

In the end, Magistrate Judge Andrew Carruthers agreed with prosecutors and declined to lower Davilas bail. For Davila to be released, Davilas family will have to come up with $125,000 to cover the standard 10 percent that is charged by a bondsman.

Gonzales testimony contradicts her claims in a San Antonio Express-News report last month, in which Gonzales estranged husband said he believes he is the boys father.

I know that baby boy is my son, not his, Martin Gonzales said during an interview from a prison in Northeast Texas. Thats my blood, I know it.

On ExpressNews.com: Man in prison says he is King Jays father

Martin Gonzales said he was stunned to find out that Jasmine had filed court papers last summer seeking to divorce him and declare Davila the boys father.

Gonzales said he doesnt remember signing the documents. The papers bear the notary stamp of someone who died almost a year earlier, which renders them invalid.

Jasmine Gonzales declined to comment for the story, except to insist Davila is Kings father.

Since Davila was arrested in January, he has maintained that King died in an accident. In an exclusive letter to the Express-News in February, Davila wrote that he was experiencing back pain the day of the accident. He said he went into the garage to smoke marijuana, leaving his son unbuckled in a car seat on the edge of the bed.

Once I was done I came back inside and layed (sic) down and pulled the blanket a little, Davila wrote. Thats when he fell.

Davila said he got up quickly to pick up King, who was already unresponsive. He says he did not call 911 because he panicked and he did not want to lose custody of his other sons.

Davila, his mother, Beatrice Sampayo, 64, and his cousin, Angie Torres, 45, staged a kidnapping at a gas station to mislead police, according to authorities.

On ExpressNews.com: In a letter from jail, Davila says he is hurt by his actions

Earlier this month, a Bexar County grand jury indicted Davila. One charge alleges that Davila hit King with an unknown object or against an unknown object, resulting in Kings death. An initial autopsy showed King died of a blunt-force trauma injury.

Sampayo and Torres were also indicted on charges of evidence tampering.

Conflicting accounts

Jasmine Gonzales, who is nine months pregnant with Davilas fifth child, appeared relatively calm throughout her testimony Thursday. She wore a bright red T-shirt, the same color as Davilas prison-issued jumpsuit.

Throughout the hearing, Gonzales provided few details for the judge, giving one-word answers. She said she didnt want to testify but was doing so to support Davila.

Davila remained emotionless throughout the hearing, stopping only once to wipe tears from his eyes at the mention of King.

According to Gonzales, Davila took home $600 or $700 a month as a forklift operator at Universal Forest Products before he was arrested. She said his employer withheld a portion of his paycheck to cover child support for his four children.

Later, during cross examination, prosecutors clarified that Davilas employer withheld wages from his paycheck because he had failed to pay child support, resulting in active warrants for his arrest.

Prosecutors also questioned Gonzales about Davilas lengthy criminal history, including 10 arrests  mainly in 2009  for arson, assault of a family member, aggravated robbery, possession of a criminal instrument and various drug charges.

Are you aware of his family violence assault arrest? Samantha DiMaio asked at one point.

I heard about it, Gonzales answered.

Were you aware that she was pregnant at the time he assaulted her? DiMaio asked, not referring to the victim by name.

No, Gonzales responded.

Did you hear about how he punched her in the face?

I didnt hear about that either, Gonzales said.

Later, DiMaio asked whether Gonzales was aware that Davila had failed to appear in court for several of those charges. Gonzales said she was not.

So it would be fair to say youre not really very up to date and familiar with whether or not he would appear in court? DiMaio asked.

About his past? No, Im not, Gonzales said. But from him now, from what I know of him, I know for sure that he will appear for court. Cause hes not the same person that he was before.

Behrens objected to prosecutors claims, pointing out that Davilas criminal history is nearly 10 years old and that Davila is no longer a gang member. Of one of the cases in which Davila is accused of failing to appear in court, Behrens said Davila appeared the following day.

In the end, Carruthers did not offer an explanation for declining to lower Davilas bail.

Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton
The Docket is weekly podcast with courts and crime reporter Elizabeth Zavala as she breaks down the trials in the Bexar County courthouse. The Docket is produced by Joy-Marie Scott and Chance Dorland.

Listen and subscribe on: Apple Podcasts Google Play Stitcher TuneIn iHeart Radio All Episodes

A San Antonio woman is on trial, accused of murdering her boyfriend in 2017 after an argument. Testimony revealed that she had told police the boyfriend was being a jerk.

Laura Flores Messick is on trial in the death of Chason Montez DeOca, a decorated Army veteran who served in Iraq. She confessed to police after the incident that she shot him after they argued and then took a kitchen knife and cut his neck to see if he was dead.

The case, which started this week, is being heard in the 175th state District Court, with Judge Catherine Torres-Stahl presiding. If convicted, Messick faces up to life in prison. The sentence would be determined by the judge.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio woman on trial for murder allegedly shot boyfriend for being a jerk

Elizabeth Zavala covers county and state courts in San Antonio. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ezavala@express-news.net | Twitter: @elizabeth2863
Two years ago, Melissa Cabello Havrda narrowly missed out on the opportunity to represent the district where she grew up.

In the 2017 race for City Councils District 6, the attorney came up 435 votes short against Greg Brockhouse, an ex-mortgage-bank executive and consultant who would go on to become one of the most vocal critics of the status quo at City Hall.

Undeterred, Havrda decided to launch another bid for the West Side district. In doing so, she entered a race devoid of incumbents  the seat became vacant after Brockhouse decided to challenge Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

But Havrda is not the only familiar face in the race for District 6. Voters with long memories may also recognize Robert Herrera, who is running for the seat he held for a controversial single term more than 20 years ago.

They will be joined by two political newcomers: an accountant who worked part-time under two District 6 councilmen and an after-school program specialist for Northside Independent School District.

On ExpressNews.com: Eight vie for open seat in San Antonios City Council District 2

District 6 candidates Mario Adame Age: 32 Occupation: After school program specialist, Northside ISD Family: Single Education: Bachelor's in education, University of Texas at Austin In his own words: "I answer to the residents. That's how democracy works. Not on my beliefs will I act, but based on the beliefs of the community." Melissa Cabello Havrda Age: 44 Occupation: Attorney, partner at Casner and Cabello Havrda, PLLC Family: Married; three children Education: JD, St. Mary's University School of Law; MBA, University of Texas at San Antonio; bachelor's, St. Mary's University In her own words: "A lot of citizens in San Antonio are doing everything they can to get better, everything they can to get a leg up, and the system is just not working for them." Andy Greene Age: 58 Occupation: Certified public accountant; also worked part-time for councilmen Greg Brockhouse and Ray Lopez Family: Married; three grown children Education: Bachelor's in accounting, Le Moyne College In his own words: "I know how City Hall works. I know how the process of working with the other council members works. I think I'm the best person to carry that forward into the District 6 position." Robert Herrera Age: 63 Occupation: Part-time staffer for Congressman Vicente Gonzalez Family: Married; three children (one deceased), two grandchildren Education: Attended South Texas College In his own words: "I learned how to work the budget. I learned how to lobby for certain people to help you out on council. I also learned that you have to be transparent." See More Collapse

These are the candidates for District 6, in the order they will appear on the ballot.

Mario Adame, 32, works as an after-school program specialist at a community learning center in Northside ISD. Adame interacts on a daily basis with low-income students and their families, connecting them with programs and services.

Adame, who has self-published three books of poetry, said his experiences working with youth and working-class families is the driving force behind his decision to pursue the District 6 seat.

As a city, we need to highlight their priorities, he said, including creating safe home environments, improving public education and exposing children to job training early on.

He also identified a lack of reliable internet access and the disconnect between school districts and families as problems he would like to address in the district.

As a member of City Council, Adame said his top priorities would be visibility, accountability and transparency.

According to campaign finance records, Adame had raised $1,080 in contributions and spent a little more than $1,400 as of March 25.

Melissa Cabello Havrda, 44, is an attorney focusing largely on disability law as a partner at the law firm Casner and Cabello Havrda, PLLC.

Havrda said her decision to represent disabled individuals and to run for City Council both stem from a story she revisits often. Walking through her grandfathers neighborhood as a child in the Culebra Park area, she recalls asking him why there were no sidewalks. She said he responded in Spanish, They dont care about us.

As a little girl, it sparked a fire in me and it really has led me to practice law where I focus on helping people who normally dont have access to justice, Havrda said. It also led me to run for City Council for people like him, to make sure every citizen is being heard.

If elected, Havrda said, she would like to focus on reducing property taxes, addressing traffic and transportation issues as well as public safety, three of the most common complaints of residents in the district. She said she would also prioritize the growth of small, local businesses on the West Side.

The groundwork that her team laid during her campaign against Brockhouse two years ago seems to be paying dividends now, Havrda said, adding that she feels confident about the race.

Havrda has earned the support of several prominent elected officials at the local and state levels, including Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, county commissioners Sergio Chico Rodriguez and Justin Rodriguez, former mayor Ed Garza and state representatives Diego Bernal, Ina Minjarez and Jose Menendez, according to her campaign website.

Havrda has outraised her opponents by a wide margin, campaign finance records indicate. She garnered $12,170 in contributions and had more than $2,300 in cash-on-hand as of the March 25 financial filing deadline.

On ExpressNews.com: Three challenging Gonzales in San Antonio City Council District 5 race

Andy Greene, 58, is a certified public accountant with his own practice. For a decade, he also worked on a part-time basis for Brockhouse and former councilman Ray Lopez.

For years Greene advised both councilmen on budgetary matters and infrastructure projects, experience he said acquainted him with the inner workings of City Hall and the neighborhoods of District 6. He also acted as a liaison with 13 neighborhoods in the district, he said.

I know the district in and out, he said. I know how to work with the folks that are trying to get things done within San Antonio.

Greene, who previously served as the campaign manager and treasurer for Lopez, has also been closely involved with improvements in Northside ISD for two decades. He served on the last three bond issue campaigns for the school district, including last year, when Northside voters overwhelmingly approved a $848.9 million bond package, the districts largest ever.

As a council member, Greene would look to address what he called abysmal call times in the district, something he said could be accomplished by expanding and improving substations, along with working to train and retain police officers.

He also said rising appraisals are a problem, as is traffic in the fast-growing district. Acknowledging that voters have opposed rail, he said he would be supportive of anything thats going to get people moving.

Greene raised $3,630 in contributions and had more than $3,600 in cash-on-hand, according to campaign finance records.

Robert Herrera, 63, does part-time constituency work for U.S. Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from McAllen. Previously, Herrera worked in federal civil service, including for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, at then-Kelly Air Force Base and for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

He was known as Bobby Herrera when he served as the District 6 councilman from 1995 until 1997, when he lost a reelection bid after a string of personal scandals that included legal troubles. Bexar County court records indicate he received probation and fines for two different instances of driving while intoxicated, once in June 1990 and again in August 1998. He received probation in both cases, according to records.

Herrera, who was in his late 30s when he was elected to City Council, said during a meeting with the Express-News editorial board that he was single and young during his council tenure. He has also said that he matured after his son, Bobby Jr., died in a car accident in 2003.

When I came on, I was young, fairly young, Herrera said. I was single at the time and doing all kinds of things maybe I shouldnt have.

However, he said, the experience taught him how the system works at City Hall, his way around the city budget and how to work with others to get things done.

During the editorial board meeting, Herrera said the city should improve transportation by making VIA buses accessible to more people and introducing further regulation of e-scooters. He was supportive of a property tax cap and said state legislators should undo the citys sick leave policy and nondiscrimination ordinance.

Herrera had not filed a campaign finance report as of Tuesday.

Lauren Caruba covers health care and medicine in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | lcaruba@express-news.net | Twitter: @LaurenCaruba
Some 6,000 paper lanterns were supposed to take flight Saturday, lighting up the night sky above the Alamo City Motorplex, but Cibolo put the kibosh on the event  at least temporarily.

Whether theyll ever take flight remains up in the air.

Officials say theyre concerned about fire dangers, littering and negative impact on livestock and wildlife from rice-paper lanterns powered by an open flame. At least 29 states have banned sky lanterns.

Spencer Humiston, owner of the Night Lights Sky Festival based in Salt Lake City, said hes confident that the event in Cibolo will take place on the rescheduled date, June 1. Hes sold some 6,200 tickets, totaling about $200,000.

Last summer, he started a search for a new location because the Central Texas racetrack hed used wasnt big enough anymore. Thats when he found the Alamo City Motorplex, with a listed address of 3641 S. Santa Clara Road in Marion. Humiston hired a local lawyer and determined that Marions code of ordinances permitted releasing the lanterns. They are about 2 feet tall, made of rice paper, bamboo and string, and powered by a small flame.

Humiston said his company made several attempts to contact the Marion Fire Department but never heard back. Still, the company pushed on for the original March 23 date. But inclement weather forced a postponement of the Night Lights Sky Festival to this Saturday.

On Tuesday, Humiston found himself standing before the Cibolo City Council, making a quick and futile plea.

I found a great track  the Alamo City Motorplex  over there in Marion, Texas, I thought, he told the council, shortly after having met with Cibolo public safety officials.

While Marions ordinances were permissive, Cibolos are not.

In the past, weve just flat told people no because we classify them as a firework, said Lee Perry, the Cibolo fire marshal.

After some discussion, officials decided that Cibolo could issue a permit if Humiston agreed to certain provisions, including that every lantern be labeled with Humistons contact information and tethered so they couldnt drift off the racetrack property.

On ExpressNews.com: Deemed an aircraft hazard, egrets on San Antonio urban lake will be asked to leave

Tethering was a nonstarter for Humiston.

I was like, I would never do that. I would never have people flying sky lanterns over their heads, he said.

The suggestion of tethering the lanterns comes from an international fire code not yet widely adopted.

I cant imagine how catastrophic that would be, Humiston said.

Humiston used to be a lawyer based in Thailand for a large international law firm. A friend came to visit, and their families headed to a lantern festival in the northern part of the country. Enchanted, the friend returned to the U.S. and launched a lantern festival company. Disenchanted with his law career, Humiston decided to help his friend and eventually took over the company, he said.

In the five years hes been running the events, the former lawyer says hes become a foremost expert on flying paper lanterns.

He said hes put on 150 lantern festivals across the U.S., including six near Dallas and three outside Austin.

Humiston said his companys internal standards are far safer than whats generally recommended, particularly the tethering. The lanterns arent launched if wind speeds exceed 10 mph, and they use a fuel source that burns out in four minutes. The lanterns dont travel far, and he says 99 percent of them are recovered.

The company has permission from surrounding property owners of the raceway to enter their land to recover the lanterns and will pay landowners or make donations to local charities to retrieve lanterns that fall on their property.

Fire marshal Perry said there are still concerns about fire hazards, littering and environmental effects. If Humiston doesnt want to comply with the requirements, hell have to seek permission from the City Council.

What exactly that means is unclear. Options appear to include amending the city code or potentially issuing a special use permit. City officials also want Humiston to get buy-in from area residents and references from other places where he has held festivals and to demonstrate support from nearby Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph and the Texas Department of Transportation because of the proximity to Interstate 10.

On ExpressNews.com: 13 things to see and do this weekend in San Antonio

Humiston is optimistic that hell have all the support he needs in time for the councils next meeting, which is later this month.

He seemed unfazed by an online petition by Care2, which had been signed online by nearly 37,000 people as of Thursday night. The petition notes that sky lanterns have been banned in 29 states and says theyre both a fire hazard and dangerous to the environment. That includes the biodegradable ones used by the Night Lights Sky Festival.

Judit Green, a San Antonio-based urban wildlife biologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said the string in the lanterns, if consumed by animals, could be fatal. It could also cause birds to get tangled in trees or other vegetation and die  something shes witnessed on bird surveys shes done.

Anytime youre releasing materials, she said, youre putting litter out into the environment.

The concerns, Humiston said, are overblown  at least for his event. He cites the companys strong recovery efforts and designs that ensure the lanterns dont travel far. And he said he invites his critics to come out and observe the festival.

Its my company. I feel pretty passionate about it, he said. I think we do a good job, and I really believe in the event. It makes me deeply happy. People love it.

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
Julian Castro spoke for 17 minutes in the hot late-afternoon sun at his People First rally Wednesday. But the speech really came down to one key moment.

Just today, the former San Antonio mayor told the modest but enthusiastic Hemisfair Park crowd of about 400 true believers, there was a headline in the Washington Post, that said, Why is Julian Castro the only 2020 Democrat that has an immigration plan?

The very thought of that headline compelled Castro to open up a megawatt grin that carried an uncharacteristic hint of mischief.

Thats a good question, he said, before rolling the words around again to make sure they had their proper effect. That is a GOOD question.

Castro liked the question, in part, because he had a ready answer that put a flattering glow on an underdog presidential campaign that has done most of its early flying under the radar of the national press.

Without denigrating the nearly 20  or is it 200?  fellow Democrats seeking the nations highest office, Castro made it clear what distinguished him from the field.

When it comes to challenging President Donald Trumps draconian border policies  which have included separating young children from their parents and forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico  Castro said, over and over, Im not afraid.

OnExpressNews.com: At San Antonio rally, Castro blasts Trump, calling for 'compassion and not cruelty' in immigration

If, in that assertion, you hear the implication that other Democrats might be afraid, well, Castro wont try to disabuse you of that notion.

Wednesdays rally was Castros best shot thus far at taking Trump head-on, the way Castros fellow Democratic presidential hopeful, former El Paso Congressman Beto ORourke, disrupted Trumps February border rally with a counter-rally a few blocks away.

To be sure, Castros event couldnt match the inherent dramatics of ORourkes theatrical coup.

ORourke got a prime-time, split-screen face-off with Trump. Trumps Wednesday visit to the San Antonio area, however, was for a private fundraiser and he split town more than five hours before Castro took the stage at Hemisfair Park.

Nonetheless, Castros People First gathering worked well in the context of a bustling, 10-day period in which his campaign has received its first concentrated dose of national media attention. Beginning with the April 2 rollout of his immigration program, Castro has appeared on MSNBC, Real Time With Bill Maher, Pod Save America and his very own CNN town hall.

At every stop, the message is the same one he trumpeted Wednesday afternoon: compassion over cruelty, putting people first.

Castros immigration plan recommends treating illegal border crossings like civil  rather than criminal  violations, a Marshall Plan for Central America, raising refugee limits and reconstituting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In truth, Castro was not the first Democratic presidential contender to offer a comprehensive immigration program. But theres a kind of karmic justice to him getting credit for that distinction.

ORourke actually presented a 10-point plan nearly two months before Castro, in a lengthy Feb. 8 piece he published on the online platform Medium. (ORourkes program included the extension of citizenship to Dreamers, an increase in visa caps, increased investment in Central America and an end to the war on drugs.)

READ ALSO: Father of Castro twins describes their relationship

But because ORourke presented his proposals a month before entering the presidential race, and because he buried them in a blog post, few took notice.

ORourke generally overshadows Castro with superior pizazz and showmanship. In this case, however, it was Castro who bested ORourke on the salesmanship front.

Castro also has taken the People First concept of his immigration plan and made it the theme of his entire platform, applying it to his support for universal Pre-K, debt-free higher education, Medicare for All and a higher minimum wage.

It would be a considerable stretch to say this is do-or-die time for Castro. As he noted during Wednesdays speech, were 44 weeks away from the first votes being cast in the Democratic race. (But whos counting? he joked.) If hes registering around 1 percent in most national polls of Democratic voters, that merely puts him in roughly the same space occupied by Jimmy Carter in 1975 and Bill Clinton in 1991.

But Castro needs to get eyeballs focused on his campaign and the sooner the better. Thats why his immigration rollout has been so important to his candidacy.

Castro doesnt bowl you over with the electricity of his personality. He grows on you with his poise, assurance, nuanced thinking and basic decency. Hes not love at first sight. Hes respect that grows into friendship and slowly develops into something deeper.

At this point, Castro really isnt running against any particular opponent  not even Trump.

Hes running against anonymity, battling against obscurity, fighting for relevance. At Hemisfair Park, you could hear, in each exclamation from his road-weary voice, Castro asserting that relevance.

Gilbert Garcia is a columnist covering the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | ggarcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @gilgamesh470
Hundreds of bright pink-clad Planned Parenthood supporters stormed the steps of the Capitol on Thursday in opposition to advancing anti-abortion bills in the Texas Legislature.

We face significant threats from the Legislature this session, said Ken Lambrecht, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Greater Texas. We need each and every one of you here today to speak up and to be loud and clear because powerful politicians are determined to undermine health care access.

One such threat is legislation in the Senate and House that would block any state or local governmental entity from doing business  including donations, land sales, leases and other transactions  with an abortion provider or one of its affiliates. Its one of 30 priority bills for Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

The bills sponsor, Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, has said its meant to ensure that Texans who do not support abortion wont see their tax dollars supporting what she calls the abortion industry.

The Senate passed the bill 20-11 last week, and it now advances to the House. The crowd booed when Lambrecht mentioned the bill on Thursday.

For subscribers: Senate votes to ban government contracts with abortion providers

Boo is right, Lambrecht said. The legislation has broad implications and would jeopardize health care in all of our communities that we serve across Texas, including here in Austin where weve had our East Seventh Street health center leased from the city of Austin for a dollar a year for more than 40 years.

Organizers said there were about 700 people at the rally, where they also denounced House Bill 16, called the Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. The bill would open doctors to civil penalty if they fail to try to save the life of a baby that survives an abortion, though experts say such a situation is rare. The bill is on its way to the House floor.

Yvonne Gutierrez, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said the proposed legislation attacks physicians who perform abortion and spreads misinformation about the procedure itself.

Planned Parenthood has been a trusted, reliable health care provider for more than 100 years, and guess what? Were not going anywhere, Gutierrez said. This is about our health care, our rights, our future.

For subscribers: Anti-abortion bills stack up in Austin as groups press Gov. Abbott to lead charge

Rep. Ana-Maria Ramos, D-Richardson, made impromptu remarks at the rally about her experience receiving care from Planned Parenthood when she became pregnant at 15. She said the organization helped her avoid a repeat teen pregnancy.

I was able to have that baby at 15, but you know what, go on and finish my GED, community college and go to law school because of Planned Parenthood, Ramos said. So thank you. Your investment and your fight are for little girls like me that are out there today in our communities. Continue to fight because we need you.

Richardson resident Julie Malcom said she came with about 40 others on one of two buses from the Dallas area early Thursday morning to fight against anti-abortion legislation.

Planned Parenthood provides the full spectrum of health care for all families, and that shouldnt be threatened, Malcom said.
Photo: File photo

If anyone needs further proof cowboys can be a little bit crazy, look no further than the Big Rig Productions Extreme Rodeo.

Not only will they be riding some of the biggest, nastiest bulls in the country, they will be playing poker with them and one cowboy will even taunt a bull for fun.

Jamie Gilowski, rodeo organizer, said the event being held this Saturday at the Armstrong IPE grounds will feature bronco riding, bare-back riding and the fan favourite, bull riding.

With the Extreme Rodeo, we do bring some of the most high-energy and dangerous sports, said Gilowski.

The Five-Man Ring of Fear will see cowpokes placed in a 10-foot by 10-foot ring while a Mexican fighting bull is released.

This bull is bred to chase and hurt you, said Gilowski.

Another event will see four cowboys playing poker at a table while another Mexican fighting bull is released.

He wipes the table out and last man sitting wins, said Gilowski.

Bullfighter Ronnie Delaroo will be putting his skills to the test against a large, angry bull.

He's the one that protects the bull riders. That's what I used to do, that's what got me into this a professional level, said Gilowski. Ronnie is going to be freestyling a bull while it tries to chase him down.

Along with the horse and bull events, will be the running of the pigs.

It's more of a comical-type thing, said Gilowski. It's like the Kentucky Derby, they have their own little chute they come out of.

The pigs will be auctioned off to the public, and while the winner will not be able to take the pig, they will be able to take some of the winnings home.

A portion of the money raised will be donated top Vernon Search and Rescue.

The action starts at 6 p.m., with the gates opening at 4:30 p.m.

There will also be a dance directly after the rodeo with the Dirt Road Kings.

Tickets are available at Eventbrite, Cowboy's Choice in Vernon, Hornby Equipment in Armstrong, Auto Wear and Accessories in Enderby and Horse Barn in Kamloops.
AUSTIN  A conservative group is buying radio ads in San Antonio and other Texas cities urging Republican leaders to back legislation that could stop cities and other local governments from removing historic monuments including those that celebrate the Confederacy.

The ads from the Conservative Response Team call on Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen to act now on a bill to stop leftist cities from destroying monuments, renaming schools and airbrushing our past. The organization didnt respond to requests for comment.

Efforts to remove Confederate imagery in Texas and nationwide gained momentum after a woman was killed during racially charged protests in Charlottesville over a statue of Robert E. Lee. In San Antonio, a Confederate statue in Travis Park was taken down in 2017 and Lee High School was renamed.

This year, the states preservation board, headed by Abbott, voted to remove a Confederate plaque in the Capitol that long angered critics for its inaccurate claim that slavery wasnt an underlying cause of the Civil War.

Those moves, however, have angered some. Several bills filed this session would seek to stop the removal or alteration of historic monuments.

Texas should not shy away from any of its history. We should continue to learn from it, Rep. James White, R-Hillister, said during a hearing this week on his bill. It would bar the removal of any monuments older than 40 years old, while requiring certain approvals for any changes made to newer memorials.

Opponents of the bill argue that the decision should be left to city and county officials, school boards and communities. A spokesman for the city of San Antonio testified the measure could have unintended effects, including blocking the city from relocating memorials during construction or modifying monuments in need of repair.

With the legislative session already halfway over, its not clear whether the bills will gain traction in the House and Senate. Republican leaders are largely focused on efforts to reform school finance and rein in property taxes.

The State Preservation Board includes both Bonnen and Patrick, who voted in favor of removing the plaque in January. Several other Confederate monuments remain standing on the Capitol complex, though theres been virtually no discussion about removing or altering those.

One of the ads singling out Patrick calls on residents to contact the Republican and tell him its time to be the conservative he campaigned to be.

Patricks office didnt respond to a request for comment. But he recently told Fox4 news: We do nothing for anyone by tearing down our past.

The Conservative Response Team, which public records show spent at least $5,000 on radio ads in San Antonio and Houston in February, is a Missouri-based nonprofit that doesnt have to disclose its donors. It bills itself on Facebook as ready to fight back anywhere, anytime against leftist kooks who want to attack our values and destroy America. Federal tax forms from 2016 show that its president is Dallas investor and Republican donor Christopher Ekstrom.

The conservative group has been active in other fights over Confederate symbols, including in South Carolina where the it ran robocalls in 2015 ahead of a decision to remove the Confederate flag from the state house grounds.

Allie Morris covers politics and policy in Austin. Read her on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | amorris@express-news.net | Twitter: @MorrisReports
AUSTIN  Legislation passed Thursday by the Republican-led Senate would likely undo San Antonios ordinance requiring private businesses to provide paid sick leave to employees.

The bills author, Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said the change is needed to ensure predictable regulation across Texas and maintain a strong economy. His bills would prevent cities from requiring businesses to offer their employees certain benefits or paid time off for holidays, vacations or sick days.

A piecemeal patchwork ... hurts businesses and ultimately it hurts employees, Creighton said.

After the vote, the Texas AFL-CIO criticized the move as stripping workplace benefits from Texans.

An overwhelming majority of Texans support local power to provide a fair shot for working families, Texas AFL-CIO President Rick Levy said in a statement.

Texas Take: Get the latest news on Texas politics sent directly to your inbox every weekday

Senate Democrats raised concerns the bills would also undermine cities anti-discrimination ordinances that are meant to protect gay, lesbian and transgender Texans in the workforce. Those fears recently prompted a coalition of business groups, including Google, Amazon and Facebook, to criticize the bill.

Creighton, however, said those concerns are unwarranted and nothing in the bill would stop a city from adopting non-discrimination policies. The Senate ultimately rejected efforts by Democrats to include that guarantee in the bills, which passed 18 -12 along party lines.

It remains to be seen whether a similar debate will sour the bill in the House, where it heads next. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has voiced strong support for legislation that would bar cities from mandating businesses give employees paid sick leave. He hasnt weighed in on the controversy over non-discrimination ordinances.

San Antonios paid sick leave ordinance took effect Jan. 1, but enforcement isnt set to begin until this summer. With the legislation looming, a City Council committee is looking into how to implement the policy, which has drawn opposition from the business community. It was adopted by the city council in August after a petition drive.

No federal law requires employers to provide paid sick leave, though at least 10 states do, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

amorris@express-news.net
It is important to publicize names of credibly accused priests who were in San Antonio, even if their alleged abuses took place in other regions. Although no claims of abuse were made locally, it is naive to conclude there were no incidents. Statistics show that 1 in 10 victims of sexual abuse will report their abuse, and studies confirm that most sex offenders have more than one victim.

The attorney general of Pennsylvania put it best when he said, We are sick over all the crimes that will go unpunished. We are going to name their names, and describe what they did ... because that is what the victims deserve.

In the case of a priest on Januarys list, Galeb Mokarzel, who was credibly accused of sexual abuse and housed near two schools in San Antonio, Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller replied that he had no power over religious orders.

The independent lay commission report in January not only released the names of credibly accused clergy, but it also published recommendations for the archdiocese. The full report is available online. It recommends that the archbishop have appropriate authority over religious order clergy, as well as clergy outside the diocese, in cases of alleged abuse.

This lay commission consists of your fellow citizens, working long hours after their regular jobs, making sound recommendations to keep our children and vulnerable adults safe. Archbishop Garcia-Siller has not moved forward yet with these recommendations. Instead, he is in defensive mode, unwilling to change the status quo. Who will hold him accountable? The lay commission has done its due diligence. It is time we demand the changes that are needed. Read the commissions recommendations. Write to the bishop asking for these changes.

If you have been abused by clergy, and you are ready to report that abuse, it is time to skip the middle man of the church. The church is still in risk-and-liability mode when it comes to abuse issues. Please report the abuse to SAPD; even if the abuse was years ago, or your abuser has died. You can make an anonymous information report, that allows for tracking if other claims have been made. They can also provide reimbursement for counseling through victim assistance funds. I have not met a survivor who regretted reporting; and the reason they report: to keep others safe from the abuse and its damaging aftermath.

You can join SNAPs local peer support group or just go to the website and get inspiration from other survivors: snapnetwork.org/.

Patti Koo is a SNAP volunteer leader in San Antonio and lives in Canyon Lake. Koo can be contacted through email at snappkoo@gmail.com.
Low cost carrier Wizz Air handled just over 324.000 passengers on its Macedonia services during the first quarter of the year, extending its dominance on the market where it now accounts for 67.4% of all travellers to and from the country. It was followed by Turkish Airlines in a distant second place with an 8.4% passenger share, then Germania Flug with 4.8% of the market, Austrian Airlines with 4.7%, Edelweiss Air with a 2.6% share, and Pegasus Airlines with a 2.5% traveller share. Wizz Air is set to further grow, with four new routes to be launched from Skopje over the course of the summer, where it will station its fifth aircraft. The budget carrier has already introduced four new routes from Ohrid so far this year.

Busiest airlines in Macedonia - Q1 2019





Destination PAX Wizz Air 324.089 Turkish Airlines 40.391 Germania Flug 23.081 Austrian Airlines 22.600 Edelweiss Air 12.502 Pegasus Airlines 12.021

Wizz Air's strong results have also solidified passenger growth at both Skopje and Ohrid airports. The country's busiest handled 454.448 travellers during the first quarter, an increase of 5.6% on the same period last year, while Ohrid St Paul the Apostle Airport welcomed 26.397 passengers through its doors, up a notable 63.9%. Istanbul remained the most popular destination from Macedonia (if both Ataturk and Sabiha Gokcen airports are accounted) with 10.9% of all passengers flying to or from Turkey's largest city. It was followed by Zurich with an 7.5% market share, then Basel at 5.7%, Malmo at 4.9%, Vienna at 4.8% and Memmingen at 3.6%.





Commenting on the results, the General Manager of operator TAV Macedonia, Alper Ersoy, said, "We finished the first quarter of 2019 with almost half a million passengers at Skopje and Ohrid airports. Skopje Airport registered expected passenger growth of 5.6%, which will be higher in the second and the third quarters of the year, due to the opening of four new routes. At Ohrid Airport we marked incredible passenger growth of 64%. We expect to maintain the high traveller growth rate at Ohrid Airport, which will reach new heights. TAV Macedonia, together with all aviation-related governmental bodies, will continue to work on the development of the route network at both airports. At the same time, customer satisfaction will remain one of our top priorities, focusing on improvement and innovation of services for airlines and passengers".
Photo: Contributed

The Central Okanagan Board of Education and BC Liberals are both sounding the alarm over a troubling increase in vaping among youth in the province.

At Wednesday's meeting, the board agreed to send a letter to parents and guardians of students, expressing concerns regarding "students' use of vaping products."

The board was told school staff have echoed those concerns.

The board will also bring forward a late motion to the BC School Trustees Association AGM on the topic of vaping and its dangers.

At the same time, Kamloops-South Thompson Liberal MLA Todd Stone introduced the Vulnerable Adolescents Protection from E-cigarettes Act in the legislature.

The bill includes amendments to the current Tobacco and Vapour Products Control Act, including a ban on flavoured vaping products, stricter retail controls, restricting the sale to adult-only tobacco stores, vape stores and approved pharmacies, and tougher penalties for non-compliance.

Vaping and e-cigarette use is quickly becoming an epidemic among the youth of British Columbia, said Stone. Recent Canadian estimates suggest that a third of students in grades 10 through 12 are vaping, outpacing tobacco use at an alarming rate. By enticing youth with sugary flavouring, tobacco companies are lining their pocketbooks as a generation of kids succumb to nicotine addiction."

He says government needs to act now.

Kelowna-Lake Country MLA Norm Letnick said that while e-cigarettes are touted as a safer alternative to smoking, they are still laden with toxins like formaldehyde and contain highly addictive nicotine.
STAMFORD  The third man inside a Manhattan apartment where a 26-year-old Stamford man was brutally murdered by two men was sentenced to prison on Friday.

Max Gemma received six months in prison for covering up a grisly murder, in which two men  James Rackover and Lawrence Larry Dilione  killed Westhill High School graduate Joey Comunale in November 2016.

Rackover was found guilty of murder in the second degree in December and was sentenced to 28 years to life in prison.

Earlier this year, Dilione was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

On Friday, Gemma apologized to the Comunale family for his interactions with police, in which he misled them about Comunales whereabouts.

Today Max took responsibility for his statements to the police in the aftermath of a horrible crime committed by James Rackover and Lawrence Dilione, said Gemmas attorney Mark Bederow, in an emailed statement.

However, Bederow drew a clear distinction between Gemmas actions and those of Dilione and Rackover.

To be clear, as the DAs investigation confirmed, Max had nothing whatsoever to do with the violence committed by Rackover or Dilione, or their attempt to clean the crime scene and to conceal Joseph Comunales body, he wrote.

Comunale had just met Dilione and Gemma outside a New York nightclub and accompanied him and five others to Rackovers Sutton Place apartment on Nov. 13, 2016. Dilione and Rackover were close friends at the time.

While inside the apartment, Dilione and Rackover beat, stabbed and attempted to dismember Comunale, then threw his body out of a 30-foot-high window. Police said they then drove 60 miles to Oceanport, N.J., where they buried the body in a shallow grave.

ignacio.laguarda@stamfordadvocate.com
GREENWICH  Police Chief James Heavey cited the bus crash on King Street Tuesday afternoon as a model of inter-departmental cooperation between emergency services and offered a word of thanks for the medical teams that responded.

The bus crash sent ten people to the hospital and required a major response from police, fire and emergency medical units. Public-works employees were also part of the reponse team.

The accident is currently under investigation.

Heavey wrote the following statement:

Members from each of the Greenwich Emergency Services (Fire, Police, EMS, and Dispatch), as well as mutual aid assistance from Stamford EMS, contributed to an excellent outcome at a Mass Casualty Incident on 4/9/2019.

To sum it up: we took the call; sent the right people and equipment; the scene was made safe; victims were treated and transported from the scene; the investigation was conducted; the crash scene was cleaned up; the roadway was re-opened within a few hours. By the time it was over, every aspect of a complicated and dangerous crash scene was buttoned up with a high degree of efficiency.

The private nature of a medical call often precludes public recognition of our partners in the Emergency Medical Services. We have the honor of being designated as the Town of Greenwich First Responder and work hand-in-hand with GEMS and we can attest to their high level of dedication, professionalism, and compassion.

A special thank you is in order for GEMS Paramedic Supervisor Erin Rickard who was the EMS Commander on the scene and embodied all of those qualities!
FAIRFIELD  The South Benson Marina is a valuable town asset, but its nearing the end of its lifecycle and some changes are necessary, officials say.

The Parks and Recreation Commission contracted Race Coastal Engineering, a Stratford-based waterfront consulting firm, to examine the condition of the marina last year.

Among the marinas deficiencies? An aging infrastructure that dates back to the 1980s, faulty docking methods for all boats and inadequate slip and fairway widths.

Additionally, the marina is not fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and security, which used to be 24 hours a day, is now limited.

While there are plans for a long-term reconfiguration of the marina, those are still months away before theyre set.

We are so early in the process we dont know what our final recommendation will be, Scott Walker, chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission, said regarding a long-term plan.

Walker said there has been a back-and-forth with Race Coastal Engineering regarding design options for the overall remodeling, resulting in the so-called Option 11.

Option 11, as of now, would allow for every slip to have a finger dock  facilitating boarding and docking  wider fairways and ADA-compliant ramps.

Improved docking methods and more space between boats comes at a trade-off, however, because fewer boats would be able to be stationed at the marina.

Our next step is to present Races findings along with Option 11 to the boating community on April 23, where we will get their feedback and incorporate that information and determine our next steps in the planning process, Walker said.

Feedback from the upcoming April 23 meeting  a starting point in the planning process  may lead to another draft of the marina redesign, Walker noted.

As of press time, a location had not been set for the April 23 forum.

First Selectman Mike Tetreau suggested Walker make a presentation to the Board of Finance and the Representative Town Meeting.

Please get on the Board of Finance and RTM agenda, get some feedback from those two boards and have your meetings with the boaters, please, Tetreau said at an April 3 Board of Selectmen meeting. Wed like to have all that feedback and have a healthy discussion on this.

Dredging of the marina has also been a constant concern for local boaters. The South Benson Marina Channel was last dredged in 2013, a year after Superstorm Sandy.

An application is currently being processed and dredging is expected to take place later this year  funding for the work is in place, part of a $700,000 appropriation made in 2017.

I would expect that we will have a formal recommendation to make to the town at some point later this spring or summer, Walker said regarding a reconfiguration plan for the marina.

humberto.juarez@

hearstmediact.com
FAIRFIELD  Two priests who once served in a local parish and at Sacred Heart University were added to the list of credibly accused clergy for sexual abuse of minors in the Bridgeport Diocese.

Bishop Frank Caggiano, in a March 22 statement, added 10 names to a list of nearly 30 priests, living and dead, who are accused of sexual abuse and at some point served in the Diocese of Bridgeport.

It is with much regret and concern for all those who are survivors of sexual abuse that I must announce that the following ten clergy who served in the Diocese of Bridgeport have been added to our list of Credibly Accused Clergy, Caggiano wrote.

Rev. John Draper and Rev. William Fletcher are among those added to the list. Both served at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish at 1719 Post Road, according to Caggianos statement.

Draper served at the local parish in 1963, according to Tremont Sheldon Robinson Mahoney, a Bridgeport law firm that has represented dozens of abuse victims in lawsuits against the diocese since 1993.

Draper was ordained in 1953 and died in 1966 at the age of 39. According to Caggiano, he is credibly accused of a single allegation of sexual abuse with an altar boy of undisclosed age in 1958.

A full review was conducted in 2019  53 years after Drapers death  and the allegation deemed credible.

Fletcher, ordained in 1944, served in various parishes in Connecticut, including St. Thomas Aquinas, where he served from 1958 to 1963, according to a website that cites the Official Catholic Directory.

A St. Thomas representative, when reached by phone Thursday, said the Rev. Victor Martin, pastor of the local parish, was unavailable for comment.

Fletcher also spent most of his career at Sacred Heart University until his death in 1988, according to Caggiano.

A report from 2006 said Fletcher taught anthropology and sociology at SHU and chaired the universitys cultural affairs committee.

At 2 p.m. Thursday, Kim Swartz, an SHU representative, said the universitys Human Resources records did not go back to the 1970s  when Fletcher was reportedly at SHU  and could not confirm questions about Fletchers tenure.

The single allegation against Fletcher involved a then-14-year-old girl back in 1964 when he was serving at St. Margaret Mary Parish in nearby Shelton. The victim sued the Bridgeport Diocese in 2006, alleging Fletcher molested and sexually assaulted her, according to reporting at that time.

In October last year, Caggiano appointed Robert Holzberg, a retired state judge, to delve into allegations that the diocese had covered up sexual abuse by priests for years.

The St. Thomas of Aquinas online homepage, near the bottom right, displays a message that includes a hotline number in both English and Spanish, an email address and online link for survivors who wish to discuss past incidents of abuse or their experience with the Diocese in regards to such abuse.

As a part of Retired Superior Court Judge Holzbergs investigation into clergy sexual abuse of minors and the Diocesan response to that abuse, a hotline has been established for those who wish to communicate with the Judge and his team, the message reads.

Only last month, the Bridgeport Diocese settled a case for $3.55 million to five men who claimed they had been sexually abused by priests when they were children.

humberto.juarez@

hearstmediact.com
Photo: Prague Cafe Facebook

A Penticton cafe is frustrated after being broken into three times in as many nights this week.

The Prague Cafe across from Marina Way Beach was hit by a burglar Sunday, and then twice on Tuesday night.

Owner Michal Gjurisic says the first thief stole a cell phone that was used to play music in the business and cash out of the till on Sunday.

The first break-in Tuesday happened shortly after midnight, when a man used parts from a windshield wiper to jimmy his way into the cafe. He stole some food and took off. Shortly after, a different man visited the store and simply opened the door that had been broken by the previous burglar.

Wednesday morning we walked in here, no food, our fridge was empty. All cans, drinks were stolen, Gjurisic said, adding the attached condo building was also broken into.

He called the thefts frustrating and has now spent several hundred dollars to upgrade the locks and security system at the cafe.

He said vagrancy has become a big issue in the area in the past two weeks. In his estimation, more than 40 people make their way to Esplanade Park every night.

Seasonal homeless shelters closed in Penticton at the end of March and the City of Penticton cleared out a camp in Esplanade Park Monday, where it estimates 20 people were living.

Gjurisic doesnt blame people struggling with homelessness, but he says there are others that spend the nights prowling the streets for other reasons.

A four oclock in the morning, who's biking around with a backpack? he asked. People that dont go to work.

Gjurisic is hopeful the increased security at the cafe will prevent future thefts, noting the previous five years at the location have been pretty good for them.

The Penticton RCMP says the break-ins remain under investigation.

"So far, no suspects have been identified, mainly due to them covering their faces. However, we are following up on some leads, Const. James Grandy said.

We have reached out to the downtown business association asking businesses make sure they lock their door, leave no cash in their registers, and also remove any highly valuables from view overnight.
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Theresa May and the EU have confirmed that the UK will remain within the bloc until 31 October, with the option to leave earlier if the PM secures support for a Brexit deal.

European Council president, Donald Tusk said: This extension is as flexible as I expected and a little bit shorter than I expected but it is still enough to find the best possible solution. Please do not waste this time.

The Prime Minister, who had wanted a shorter delay, said the UK would still try to leave the EU as soon as possible.

Whilst not welcomed by all, this extension of the Brexit process to late October will avoid an abrupt no deal scenario and will calm the farming industry's fears over the consequences of such an exit.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) said that in a political debate which has become 'heated and polarised' the announcement by May provides 'welcome breathing space'.

CLA President Tim Breitmeyer said: While the continued uncertainty is unsettling, this should be balanced against having enough time to nurture a post-Brexit relationship with the EU which delivers as free and frictionless trade as possible. This has to be the ultimate goal.

The extra time needs to be used wisely. We need a more consensual approach to negotiations in both Westminster and Brussels than has been the case to date, so a deal can be collectively delivered which meets the needs of farming and the wider economy, he said.

The Food and Drink Federation (FDF) added that the sector is 'mightily relieved' that the 'threat' of a no-deal Brexit has been lifted.

Ian Wright, FDF Chief Executive said: The additional time must now be used wisely. Government and Parliament simply must give us a coherent plan to lead us out of our current mess.

It must be a way forward that allows us to make progress in resolving the future of our relationship with the EU, taking full account of the needs of food and drink businesses.

The National Sheep Association (NSA) said it is 'cautiously embracing' the news, adding how the announcement provides sheep farmers 'more certainty' surrounding meat sales this spring and summer.

However, it remains unhappy with the uncertainty floating over the sector. NSA Chairman Bryan Griffiths said: It's vital we have the EU markets available to sell our produce and this extended unfettered access, in which we wont have to face tariffs this season, is greatly appreciated by the sheep industry.

Meanwhile, four UK farming unions have written to major European agricultural groups stating that a no-deal exit from the EU would be 'economically disastrous'.

In a joint letter, the unions have pleaded with their counterparts in Europe seeking support in avoiding a no-deal scenario as the UK faces ongoing division amongst politicians and continued uncertainty.

The Presidents of the NFU, NFU Scotland, Ulster Farmers Union and NFU Cymru say it is in 'every nations interest' that the UK avoids a 'catastrophic, disorderly' exit of the UK from the EU.
An annual dinner which aims to give Staffordshire farmers and the local rural community a financial boost has raised nearly 9,200.

The annual Staffordshire dinner, held at the county showground, raised a whopping 9,197 for the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI).

Organised by the Staffordshire committee, the event welcomed 260 guests for a three course meal.

Alastair Sneddon from Bagshaws was the guest speaker and Mike Williams led the auction.

Members of the Staffordshire young farmers ran a raffle, which contributed to funds raised.

Kate Jones, RABI regional manager for the West Midlands, said: The Staffordshire committee worked hard to sell tickets and source prizes for the raffle and auction.

We are delighted with the amount made at this event, especially considering the increased financial support RABI is giving in Staffordshire.

So far this year, the charity has given out around 24,600 to farming people in the county, compared to 14,600 for the same period last year.

RABI is a welfare charity which aims to change farming people's lives for the better. It offers financial support for people in hardship of all ages.

Last year, the charity paid out more than 1.4m in regular grants to financially support retired, elderly, and disabled farmers.
Photo: Contributed Teresa Sanders of FILL

The finalists have been named in Community Futures' 2019 Enterprize Challenge.

The seven finalists are competing to win nearly $34,000 in prizes at the finalists pitch, awards and challenger showcase on April 24.

The entrepreneurs who presented their first pitch all brought their best. The depth of skills, knowledge and passion delivered truly blew us away. It was a hard task for the judges to narrow the group of challengers down to the final seven," says Community Futures' Kazia Mullin.

The final pitch and showcase will take place at the Vernon Performing Arts Centre. A new People's Choice award will also be debuted, as chosen by the audience.

Everyone is excited to hear the final pitches, says Mullin. Its going to be a great evening.

The Community Futures Enterprize Challenge is presented by VantageOne Credit Union and another 14 organizations sponsor the event to make the challenge and its prizes possible.

The finalists are:

The Boarding House Cafe, Marilyn Courtenay

Board game lovers and early breakfast diners will eat, drink and be merry at The Boarding House Cafe. By opening early and staying open later than most coffee houses, The Boarding House gives residents a more flexible place to enjoy exceptional desserts, all-day meals and a great selection of board games.

Fort Knox Security, Tylor Herold

Growers and retailers in the Okanagans emerging cannabis industry can rely on specialized security services by Fort Knox. Covering produce facilities, micro producers and medicinal and retail outlets, Fort Knox gives cannabis business owners complete protection and peace of mind.

FILL, Teresa Sanders

A plastic-less lifestyle is made easier with FILL, a household goods store that lets customers refill everything from shampoo to dish soap, and purchase zero-waste products such as lunch containers and wooden toothbrushes . Customers will appreciate the chance to gauge their efforts with the FILL environmental calculator, which highlights the plastic theyve saved from landfills and waters.

Monashee Health Collective, Dr. Steven Piper

Monashee Health Collective offers the support so residents can enjoy a long and active life. With a team of like-minded healthcare professionals, Monashee provides assessment, treatment, education, training, recovery and outcome measures to inspire movement and quality of life.

Sugarbees Ice Cream Company, Kayley Letendre

Taste the Okanagan with real ice cream handmade from pure and local ingredients. Discover the mouth-watering bliss of rich, French-style ice cream blended right here.

Therabyte Inc., Ashley & Michael Reina

Rehab therapy practitioners now have a solution to improve clinical research and treatment workflow with Therabyte. A cloud-based web application, Therabyte helps therapists and patients reach their goals at every stage of the treatment journey: intake, assessment, treatment, communication, reporting and billing.

Twilight Express Corp., Bonnie Godwin & Ashley Beauvois

When Enderby and area residents with mobility challenges need to get to medical appointments and do shopping, Twilight Express Corp. has its van doors open. This 14-seater handi-van with an approved wheelchair lift supplements community shuttles with on-demand service and also provides transportation for seniors, river floaters, special events and medical patients.
The search to find UK food and farmings unsung heroes launches today as the British Farming Awards 2019 opens for entries.

With the agricultural industry contributing more than 24 billion to the UK economy, the role of our British farmers, families and rural businesses has never been so paramount.

Amid ongoing Brexit battles and daily political grappling, the British Farming Awards 2019 offers a timely reminder there are certainties in the countrys provision of food and drink through our dynamic and innovative farmers and producers.

Organised by AgriBriefing and supported by Morrisons, there are 14 categories in total.

Alongside farmings core sectors  dairy, beef, sheep, arable and machinery  there is also a celebration of talented youngsters coming into the industry and a reminder of the contribution rural businesses are making to the UKs tourism, textile, wedding, retail and wildlife sectors  just to name a few.

Ben Briggs, editor of Farmers Guardian, said: With so much change and uncertainty characterising the current era of agriculture, the British Farming Awards are a timely celebration of the innovation and skill at the heart of the farming industry.

Whether it is about boosting the profile of your business, acknowledging the hard work of your staff, or celebrating great on-farm ideas, the British Farming Awards provides an unrivalled platform to shout about our fantastic farming industry.

Andrew Thornber, Trading Director at Morrisons said: Morrisons is the single biggest supermarket customer for British farmers, so we are proud to support the British Farming Awards.

Our business model is based on buying direct from British farmers wherever possible and we believe this approach strengthens British agriculture and supports farming communities.

To enter or nominate an individual who is doing an exceptional job and deserves recognition for their efforts, simply visit www.britishfarmingawards.co.uk to nominate or enter.

Entries close on Friday, July 12, 2019.
A Munich court has rejected a complaint by an angry couple who complained against their neighbour's noisy cow bells.

A couple from Holzkirchen, near Munich, first sued in 2015, and despite losing their latest attempt on Wednesday (10 April), they plan to appeal again.

They said that they felt disturbed by their neighbour, farmer Regina Killer, over the cowbell noise and the smell of cattle manure coming from the farm.

The court heard a recording of the bell noise, measuring over 70 decibels - comparable to a vacuum cleaner - at the couple's bedroom window.

But this wasn't enough to convince the court, which eventually rejected the complaint.

The case has re-ignited a debate about Bavarian identity, a fiercely patriotic region in south Germany.

A leading Bavarian politician, Ilse Aigner, said 'the cow - with its bell - is part of our rural way of life'.

Mrs Killer told Suddeutsche Zeitung that 'this is a matter of our traditions' and 'if it goes on like this, it'll be the end of Bavaria'.

It follows a similar case in the UK. Last year, a West Yorkshire resident complained to Leeds councillors that his life is 'blighted' due to nearby 'bellowing' cows.
A French court has ruled that Monsanto is liable for the sickness of a farmer after he accidentally inhaled fumes from its now-banned weedkiller product Lasso.

The appeals court in Lyon ruled in favour of 55-year-old cereal farmer Paul Francois on Thursday (11 April).

He said he began experiencing memory loss, headaches and blackouts after inhaling fumes while using the product.

The court rejected Monsanto's appeal on Tuesday 9 April. However, it is still unknown how much the chemical company will pay out.

The court ordered the company to pay 50,000 for Mr Francoiss legal fees.

In its ruling, the court said that Monsanto should have produced a notice on the specific dangers of using the product in vats and reservoirs.

The plaintiffs assumed technical knowledge does not excuse the lack of information on the product and its harmful effects  a farmer is not a chemist, it added.

Mr Francois has fought a ten-year long legal battle against the US company, which has since been bought out by Germany's Bayer in a major deal last year.

He had already won previous lawsuits against Monsanto in 2012, which was the first ruling of its kind against Monsanto anywhere in the world, and in 2015.

Meanwhile, in the US, Monsanto is facing thousands of lawsuits over people's exposure to its best-selling weedkiller glyphosate.
Farmers and landowners negotiating terms with telecoms companies looking to renew sites for masts have been urged to express caution following a recent tribunal case.

In the case, Cornerstone Telecommunications Infrastructure (CTIL) proposed a single payment of 26 to the landowner for land rights sought, based on a vacant possession land value of 10,000.

As the tribunal observed, this did not take into consideration the consequences for a landowner having to give someone full access over their land.

The tribunal found force in evidence that many rural landowners have well founded reservations about allowing an operator to have relatively unrestricted access over their land.

Reference was made to evidence of difficulties which had been experienced in practice owing to breaches of bio-security, operators vehicles becoming stranded, or interference with sporting rights; and risk factors of that sort might weigh in the hypothetical parties minds when negotiating consideration.

The tribunal noted: We are not persuaded that the tiny sums suggestedtake into account the understandable reluctance of rural landowners to lose control of their land to the extent that entry into an agreement for Code rights is likely to entail.

The case has raised several issues over the new Electronic Communications Code.

Eifion Bibby of Davis Meade Property Consultants, said everyone operating in this sector, including landowners, telecoms firms, land agents and valuers will be advised to be mindful of this guidance.

The government has been promoting the need for more cost effective telecom sites to boost coverage but since the Code was introduced we have seen extreme examples, he said.

For instance one client of mine who previously had been offered 4,650 per annum to host a telecom mast was offered a one-off payment of 32 for 10 years.

Mr Bibby said comparable rental evidence for alternative agricultural land use agreements, will no doubt be useful in supporting valuation methodology to establish, by means of market transactions, what may make a landowner a willing small site provider.
Pork from Britain will be showcased at Chinas most important meat trade exhibition next month  as the industry looks to build on record levels of exports in 2018.

British exporters will attend SIAL China, which runs from 14  16 May in Shanghai, supporting the UK pig sector as it looks to grow exports, not only to China but across all Asian markets.

It follows a fruitful year for global pig meat exports, with the UK shipping a record total of 347,000 tonnes, worth around 490 million  an increase of 12,000 tonnes and 19 million compared to the previous year.

Pork from Britain is now exported to around 97 countries. In January this year, China was the UKs biggest buyer  taking 7,800 tonnes of pig meat.

AHDB Head of Asia Pacific, Jonathan Eckley said: Despite a challenging start to the year, an increase in demand resulted in a strong year for UK pork exports with encouraging figures both within the EU and further afield in destinations such as the USA, China and the Philippines.

The Asian market is a key focus for export work, being a region which is experiencing extraordinary growth both in terms of population and affluence.

While it presents many possibilities for our red meat sector, it is not without its challenges. Therefore, its crucial that we have a strong presence in the region in order to capitalise on the opportunity it holds, he added.

SIAL China is a unique trade show with a mix of international and national exhibitors. The exhibition sets the benchmark for overseas companies stepping into Asia and China as well as providing valuable market insights, trends and innovations of the regional food and beverage industry.

With 3,500 exhibitors expected at this years event, SIAL China will provide pork producers from Britain with the opportunity to build new and existing relationships with major players from the retail and food service sector.

The current situation on the domestic Chinese market is driving demand for imported pig meat.
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.
Special note by guest editors: Taniya Sanyal's story is a huge inspiration in breaking gender stereotypes and showing the world that women are equal if not more competent to be appointed as firefighters by the Airports Authority of India. It is a fine example of how any dream is possible to achieve if one has the confidence in their abilities, focus and the will to put in the hard work necessary to attain their goals. Such women are also heroes for the younger generation since they are sure about what they want and how to go about it, whether it's the training or parental support or how to deal with the society when certain people say, "It is impossible."

Next Story : All about Divya Jain's amazing educational initiative

Last year, Taniya Sanyal, born and brought up in Kolkata, made historyshe became the first woman firefighter to be appointed by the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Till 2018, AAI recruited only men as its firefighters, but the rules were relaxed last year and Sanyal, who had always wanted to pursue a challenging and offbeat path, became the lone woman candidate to storm the male bastion. The moment I saw the advertisement for this position in a newspaper, I grabbed the opportunity, recalls the 27-year-old firefighter, who now trains both men and a handful of women aspiring to be firefighters with the AAI.After she cracked the online written test for the job, Sanyal was called to Bhubaneswar for medical, physical, and driving tests. To clear the tests, she started working out and running so that she could pass the physical endurance tests that required firefighting aspirants to run, climb ladders, and carry a 40kg sandbag for a distance of 60 metres, among other things. Needless to say, Sanyal passed all the tests with flying colours.After a rigorous training at the Fire Training Centre, New Delhi, Sanyal was posted at the Kolkata Fire Training Centre as a trainer. At present, she is training 61 aspirants from Bengaluru airport. Apart from this, Sanyals job also requires her to help evacuate people in life-threatening situations using mobile high-performance vehicles, fight fires with a range of equipment such as hoses, foam branches, and monitors, participate in organised drills for fire control, and rescue work; conduct fire safety inspections; inspect fire alarm boards; test and maintain fire vehicles and other equipment; operate Fire Control Centres at airports; and observe aircraft arrivals and departures, among other things.Asked about the fitness and mental alertness levels required for her job, Sanyal says, Mental alertness is of utmost importance. Airport fire service is not only about firefighting, but also about rescue operations on aircraft. As per the International Civil Aviation Organisation rules, our response time is 138 seconds. So, you can imagine the kind of mental alertness we need.To stay fit, Sanyal prefers to do free hand exercises over training with equipment in a gym. In any case, the intense physical activities at work help her stay in shape. She elaborates, My day starts at six every morning. I conduct physical training sessions, parades, technical learning classes, and teach trainees to handle fire equipment such as hoses, ladders, and other firefighting paraphernalia.She signs off, Apart from physical barriers, women need to cross their mental barriers as well. Believe in yourself, set targets, and tell yourself that you can achieve whatever you want in life. And thats the motto Sanyal has always followed in her own life.***This article has been guest-edited by students Deeptha Dinakar, Kavya Pullanoor, Enakshi Debnath, N.K Nekha Shree and Harshith Shetty.
Photo: The Canadian Press A flare stack lights the sky from the Imperial Oil refinery in Edmonton.

Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifting into an upcoming federal campaign.

"It's pretty clear this issue is warming up politically," said Ragan, head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions.

"We have been sorry to see that there's a bunch of stuff out there that is either misunderstood or poorly explained. There are a bunch of myths out there."

The commission has just published a report on carbon tax misconceptions.

The worst, Ragan said, is that a carbon tax doesn't work.

"If you look at B.C., if you look at California, if you look at the U.K, if you look at Quebec, these policies do work. What they don't do is work overnight."

At least five different published studies have found British Columbia's carbon tax, introduced in 2008, has cut overall emissions, reduced per capita gasoline use by seven per cent, improved average vehicle efficiency by four per cent, cut residential natural gas use by seven per cent and diesel use by more than three per cent.

Meanwhile, the province enjoyed about three per cent annual economic growth between 2012 and 2017.

Other jurisdictions that have successfully used carbon taxes to reduce emissions include Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, several U.S. states, the U.K. and the European Union.

Three separate studies found B.C.'s tax either didn't affect jobs or added them. A fourth found a small decrease in jobs for less-educated workers. Studies in the U.S. or the U.K. found little or no impact on job numbers.

The commission's report finds that far from hurting families, 70 per cent of Canadian households will receive more in carbon tax rebates than they pay.

Energy economists such as Mark Jaccard at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University argue that regulations get faster, bigger results and are politically easier to enact. The big cuts to Canada's carbon emissions, he said, have come from closing coal-fired power plants and clean fuel rules.

"Some people will tell you you have to have carbon pricing," he said on a recent podcast. "That's not true. You could do it all through regulations."

You could, concedes Ragan. But that would cost the economy more. Besides, he said, bringing in carbon taxes gives governments an opportunity to cut other levies such as income tax.

Albertans who believe the province could escape a carbon tax by rescinding provincial legislation may also be mistaken.

Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary law professor, said all Ottawa would have to do is pass an order in council to bring Alberta under the same federal tax that recently came into effect in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. None of those provinces had its own tax.


Huma Qureshis just gotten back from a week-long vacation in California and shes discovered theres magic in its air

Words: Sharmeen Hussain | Photographs: Taras Taraporvala



California is magical. With a dash of the weird and wonderful. The glowing peaks of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the rolling hills of Napa Valley, and the towering granite mountains in Yosemite National Park all come together in the Golden State to give visitors more than they bargained for. Here are Huma Qureshis top tips for an indulgent holiday in California...
A new initiative to spread the benefits of tourism to rural communities, by linking Mugla regions artisan food producers with hotels and other tourism businesses, was officially launched last Thursday (4th April) at the Mugla Chamber of Commerce (MUTSO) headquarters.

Semsi Toprak, Programme Coordinator at the Travel Foundation at the project launch

Flavours from the Fields

Flavours from the Fields is a TUI Care Foundation project being delivered by the Travel Foundation and FETAV, with support from the Mugla Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mugla Village Cooperatives Union among other stakeholders mainly from the tourism and productive sectors.

Over three years, the project will work with cooperatives and producers of products based on honey, olives, fruits and other locally-grown ingredients to increase sales by supplying to hotel kitchens, restaurants and gift shops.

Research carried out for the project suggests that currently only 5-10% of the value added foods (such as oils and jams) bought by hotels in Mugla region are produced locally.

Some of the project activities will include:

supporting producers to develop and market new products that are suited to the tourism sector,

brokering buying agreements between producers and tourism businesses and encouraging hotels to buy from small, local suppliers,

promoting regional delicacies to tourists  for instance through tasting events in hotels.

The aim is to get at least 50 hotels and other tourism businesses in the Mugla region buying new local products, generating 200,000+ in sales.

Welcoming the project, deputy Governor of Mugla Mehmet Fikret Cavus said:

In the 80s when Tourism began to evolve in Turkey, tourists were in the town and cities together with the locals. Locals and tourists were familiar with each other and had cultural interaction. But over time, this cultural interaction began to decline. While tourists were searching for the cheaper way to take a vacation, we began to condemn them to 5-star hotels. The cultural dimension of tourism is an important element for people to recognize each other and to prevent alienation. This project may help to bring back the close relations between tourists and local people.

Chairman of the Turkish Village Cooperatives Union Eray Cicek said.

Unfortunately, farmers cant earn significant incomes with the production of raw materials in Turkey and value-added products provide better income options. Usually families operate their own small farms and try to market their produce through intermediaries and cant get decent prices they deserve. Our cooperatives can play a significant role in this project and can organize the processing and distribution of products.

Chairman of Mugla Chamber of Commerce and Industry Mustafa Ercan said.

We are proud to host the launch event of such a project which will support the livelihoods of local farmers. There is plenty of raw materials available in our region for the implementation of the Flavours from the Flavors project. The important thing here is to support local producers and provide the necessary promotion and encouragement for these local products to be preferred. With this project, farmers and producers in our province will be able to have more secure and sustainable livelihoods.

Mr Semsi Toprak, Programme Coordinator at the Travel Foundation, said

We have been very pleased with the early support and interest in this project. We have identified significant potential to increase supply to the tourism sector, and Im confident that hotels will see the benefits of buying local produce, as they have done with our earlier project, Taste of Fethiye. We have the right partners in place and welcome new partners along the way, and we hope to have our first sales very soon.

Mr. Frank Oostdam, Treasurer at TUI Care Foundation, said:

We are managing 30 projects in 25 countries and this is a project which our organization adopts 100 percent as both vision and mission. We believe that tourism is a very effective sector in launching and promoting different projects in destinations. Together with our partners we aim to bring together holiday makers and local products in this project. The launch event was well attended by local chambers of commerce, hotelier associations, tour operators and producer cooperatives and unions. Guests were given the chance to meet some of the producers involved in the project and sample their products. For instance, apiculture products from Karabogurtlen Village Cooperative and olive oils from Derekoy Village Cooperative

About TUI Care Foundation

Building on the potential of tourism as a force for good, the TUI Care Foundation supports and initiates partnerships and projects, which create new opportunities for the young generation and contribute to thriving communities all over the world.

Connecting holidaymakers to good causes, the TUI Care Foundation fosters education and training initiatives to open up new opportunities and perspectives for young people, the protection of the natural environment in holiday destinations and sustainable livelihoods in thriving destinations where local communities can benefit even more from tourism.

TUI Care Foundation works global and acts local  it builds on strong partnerships with local and international organisations to create meaningful and long-lasting impact. The charitable foundation values transparency and the efficient use of funds. Therefore 100% of the donations go to destination programmes with all administration costs of the foundation covered by TUI. TUI Care Foundation was founded by TUI, the worlds leading tourism business, and is based in the Netherlands.

https://www.tuicarefoundation.com/

About the Travel Foundation

The Travel Foundation is a charity that works in partnership with leading tourism organizations to improve the impacts of tourism and shape a positive future for destinations. Since we were set up in 2003, we have worked in 26 popular holiday destinations around the world. Our head office is in the UK and we have a global network of project managers. We have been working in Turkey, with a focus on the Fethiye region, since 2010, on projects including Taste of Fethiye and http://mavidalgaprojesi.com/

www.thetravelfoundation.org.uk

Thank you to Semsi Toprak for providing us with the information for this article
It's A Wrap-up

Salman shared this picture and captioned it as, "Finally #maheshwar schedule over #dabangg3 @prabhudheva @arbaazkhanofficial @nikhildwivedi25."

We must say that the superstar is looking handsome in a pair of black formal trousers and a blue shirt with Chulbul Pandey signature moustache and sunglasses.

Hud Hud Dabangg!

Earlier, the actor had posted a close-up shot from the title track of the film. The picture featured Salman stroking his moustache while there are sadhus in the foreground. This time, even his leading lady Sonakshi Sinha is a part of the track.

Dabangg 3 Inspired By Real-life Incidents?

This time, Kannada superstar Kiccha Sudeep will be playing Salman's nemesis in the film. Buzz is that the actor will be essaying the role of a land mafia in the Salman Khan-starrer.

A Bangalore Mirror report had quoted a source as saying, "Sudeep and Salman have been planning to team up on a film since a long time and things have finally fallen in place. The two will engage in Tom and Jerry kind of skirmishes in Dabangg 3. Sudeep's character has shades of grey."

Sonakshi Throws Light On Rajjo From 'Dabangg 3'

"She is that same loudmouth who likes to speak her mind. Since the story has two parallel tracks - one in the present day and one in the past - the audience is going to see two versions of Rajjo."
Interesting, Isn't It?

Randeep Hooda, who is known for his intense roles in films such as Kick, Sultan and Sarabjeet, is now gearing up for something entirely different in his next film. The actor will essay the role of a love advisor in Imtiaz Ali's next film.

The Cat Is Out Of The Bag

The actor will be seen in a very different role than what he has done before and will be doling out his wisdom to Kartik Aryan's character in the film.

In this Imtiaz Ali directorial, Kartik's character falls in love with Sara's but is unable to woo her. So, he takes help from Randeep's character.

Lights, Camera & Action

When quizzed about Randeep's character, a source close to production spilled the beans, "Rumours of Hooda playing sara's father is not true but he will be playing love advisor of Kartik who shows him the right path to get Sara." Randeep will be heading to Udaipur for a week for the shoot of the film.

What's The Name?

While the makers are yet to officially announce the title of the movie, rumours are rife that this Kartik-Sara starrer has been titled 'Aaj Kal'. The actor duo recently wrapped up the Delhi shooting schedule.
The makers of PM Narendra Modi biopic have moved the Supreme Court after the release of the film was stalled by the Election Commission. In a recent interview to TOI, the movie's producer Sandip Ssingh has revealed that he is suffering losses because of the latest development, ''My losses as a producer started the day my release was moved forward by a week from April 5 to April 11. Tell me, the release of which other film has been pushed twice?''

He further added, ''We fought legal battles in the Bombay, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh High Courts and were cleared for release. The Supreme Court dismissed a plea seeking a stay on the film. Then came the EC notice, a day before the release, and stopped us in the tracks. My distributors are being questioned by exhibitors who were going to release 'PM Narendra Modi' with a lot of prints, in India and overseas.''

Sandip went on to reveal, ''We had a premiere planned at PVR, Juhu, to which over 1,500 guests had been invited, along with a media screening, when the news of the EC's decision reached us. We cancelled Thursday's screenings and the media went crazy. My team and I were with our lawyers till 10pm. We read the EC notice repeatedly, with my lawyers wondering what to do. We eventually decided to follow the law, like I always have.''

'The producer also justified why he wanted the movie to release on April 5, ''Even before a film rolls, the Khans, Salman, Shah Rukh and Aamir, announce a date, whether it's Christmas, Diwali, Holi or Independence Day, and no one questions them. They are stars and need their films to do well. As a producer, I thought April 5 was a good date for better box-office collections. Elections come once in five years, festivals every year. People should understand that an individual producer is risking crores on this project.''

Most Read: When Salman Khan MOCKED Vivek Oberoi After The Press Conference: I'm So Petrified I Have To Run Away
Though Yash had gained a lot of popularity in Sandalwood even before KGF, this film rose his fame to another level. Besides his impeccable acting, what grabbed the most attention was his long beard! Yash's look went on to set a new trend among the mass. However, his wife and actress Radhika Pandit had a different opinion all together. In an interview, she revealed that she just couldn't stand all the facial hair on Yash's face, which means that she thoroughly disliked the look. She also said that she had forgotten how her husband looked!

Previously, Radhika told Bengaluru Chronicle in an interview, "I had almost forgotten how my husband looked! I thank the Kirataka team, because of whom the beard and the long hair has finally gone." We can understand why the wife of the KGF star felt so towards her husband's appearance.

But, Yash too said he wasn't a huge fan of the long beard. "It has seen all three seasons since the film started. I always loved sporting a beard, but never this long. As an actor, I always go an extra mile, especially when it requires me to change my physical appearance to best suit the characters I will be portraying. In fact, I am afraid that people have forgotten how I look without my beard and the long hair," he said.

Yash's Subtle Mockery At Kumaraswamy's Two Marriages Goes Viral; CM & KGF Star's Tiff Gets Uglier!

Though he got rid of it after wrapping up the shoot for KGF, the actor has been sporting the famous look yet again for KGF Chapter 2. Recently, he was even chosen to be the brand ambassador for the Brand Beardo. He shared the news with fans by sharing a picture on Instagram with the caption, Glad to be the part of "#Beardo family! @beardo.official #BeBeardo" - (sic)
A 61-year Malayalam TV actress, best-known for her comic roles, has filed a rape complaint with the Kerala Police against a 37-year-old man named Siya. In her complaint, she claimed that he befriended her over the phone and gifted her a smartphone before exploiting her on several occasions.

"He, friend of one of the serial crew, made friendship with this actress at the shooting location of the serial. As per the complaint, he began to rape her from October. She was raped by the accused at serval places including at Thottapally and at her house in Kayamukulam," said a police official.

She also claimed that Siya shot her intimate videos using a smartphone and shared them with her husband and his neighbours.

"He also recorded the sexual acts in his phone. She does not know the native place of the accused. First, he told her that he was hails from Malappuram. Later, he told her that he was a native of Ernakulam. The accused forwarded the intimate videos to his friends, her husband and relatives through WhatsApp after he left for abroad," added the cop.

Following the actress' complaint, the police filed an FIR and began preliminary investigation. According to reports, the cops have confirmed that the accused is currently working abroad. One is likely to get more clarity about the controversy in the days to come.

Source: Times Of India
Rating: 3.5 /5 Star Cast: Fahadh Faasil, Sai Pallavi, Atul Kulkarni, Prakash Raj, Renji Panicker Director: Vivek



Athiran's trailer was able to capture the minds of the viewers. It revealed that the film will have a mystery angle with psychological elements too. It assured that a tricky film is in store. Did Athiran turn out to be that box of surprises? Has the film managed to have the same brilliance that the teaser and trailer carried? Read Athiran review here to get answers for all of these.

Plot

Athiran's plot revolves around a peculiar mental asylum headed by Dr Benjamin. Nithya is one of the inmates of this asylum. A doctor named Kannan Nair visits this hospital for inspection as instructed by Trivandrum Medical College. What happens rest has been unveiled in the film.

Screenplay & Direction

When someone like PF Mathews is helming the scripting department, quality content is assured. The story of the film is by the director himself and it is a refreshing plot as far as Malayalam cinema is concerned. Those who are used to a whole lot of Hollywood movies with similar concept might find some resemblances form the films that they have. Nevertheless, the script refuses to be silly and does keep your intelligence involved. The mystery quotients have been wrapped up within most of the scenes, which helps in the movement of the film. However, there are some points where one could predict what's going to happen next.

Vivek, the debutant director has done a convincing job. It is not easy to package a film, which has its premise setup in an entirely different arena. He has been able to convince the audiences about the proceedings. The tricky narrative is impressive through which he holds the audiences till the end, where the mysteries get unveiled. The best part is that he overcomes some of the predictability with the intensity in which he has conceptualised some of the sequences.

Performances

The ever dependable Fahadh Faasil delivers a solid performance as Kannan Nair. He scores in each and every frame. Sai Pallavi does a fabulous job as Nithya. It is one of the well-written female characters of recent times and she has made the best use of the solid character that she received. Atul Kulkarni is completely convincing as Benjamin. Surabhi and Lena's performances deserve special mention. It is nice to see Prakash Raj in such a role, but it is poorly written to some extent.

Other Aspects

Anu Muthedathu's cinematography works deserve a special mention. He has been able to give that vintage feel with his frames itself. Songs by Jayahari are decent. Ghibran's BGM suits the mood of the movie extremely well. The editing work is indeed a tricky one in this film, which has worked out well.

Verdict

Athiran isn't a routine entertainer but it remarkably keeps us hooked with the intelligence in the narrative. It definitely offers a unique experience for Malayalam movie audiences.
Washington, D.C.--(Newsfile Corp. - April 11, 2019) - The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two former directors of investments at Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC for their roles in its massive Ponzi scheme. The defendants, California-based Ivan Acevedo and Dane R. Roseman, were separately arrested and charged by criminal authorities, along with Woodbridge owner Robert H. Shapiro.

The SEC previously charged Woodbridge and Shapiro, and Woodbridge's highest-earning unregistered brokers. In January, a federal court in Florida ordered Woodbridge, related companies, and Shapiro together to pay $1 billion for operating this Ponzi scheme.

According to the SEC's complaint, although Acevedo and Roseman were not registered in any capacity with the SEC, they were responsible for fraudulently raising at least $1.2 billion from more than 8,400 retail investors, many of them seniors, and together received more than $3 million in transaction-based and other compensation.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Acevedo oversaw Woodbridge's fundraising for Woodbridge's securities from 2012 until his departure in 2015, when he was succeeded by Roseman. According to the complaint, the defendants were responsible for hiring and training Woodbridge's sales force, approved fraudulent marketing materials and sales scripts, and helped create the false appearance that Woodbridge was a legitimate operation when in reality it was a Ponzi scheme that used money from new investors to pay existing investors.

"Instead of telling investors the truth - that Woodbridge's third-party lending business was a sham almost from inception - we allege that Acevedo and Roseman worked diligently to perpetuate this sham by preparing and disseminating false marketing materials to induce more investments, keeping this massive Ponzi scheme afloat," said Eric I. Bustillo, Director of the SEC's Miami Regional Office. "The SEC is committed to continue to hold responsible parties accountable in this far-reaching scheme."

The SEC's complaint charges Acevedo and Roseman with violating the securities registration, broker-dealer registration, and anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws, and seeks disgorgement of allegedly ill-gotten gains, with interest, and financial penalties.

The SEC's investigation, which is continuing, was conducted by Scott A. Lowry, Russell Koonin, Christine Nestor, and Mark Dee in the Miami Regional Office, with assistance from David Baddley, and supervised by Jason R. Berkowitz, Fernando Torres, Thierry Olivier Desmet, and Glenn Gordon. The litigation will be led by Ms. Nestor and Mr. Koonin under the supervision of Andrew O. Schiff. The SEC appreciates the assistance of the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida, the Miami field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigations.

The SEC's Office of Investor Education and Advocacy has issued an Investor Alert to help seniors identify signs of investment fraud and, in conjunction with the Division of Enforcement's Retail Strategy Task Force, another Investor Alert about Ponzi schemes targeting seniors. The SEC strongly encourages investors to use the agency's Investor.gov website to check the backgrounds of people selling them investments to quickly identify whether they are registered professionals.
Photo: IMDB.com

A Utah filmmaker who co-founded the Sundance Film Festival and produced an Oscar-winning movie in the mid-1980s has been charged with sexual abuse of a young girl.

Sterling Van Wagenen, 71, is accused of inappropriately touching a girl on two occasions between 2013 and 2015, according to a probable cause statement filed with the charges on April 4. The alleged abuse occurred in two northern Utah cities when the girl was between the ages of 7 and 9, online court records show.

Van Wagenen's attorney, Steven Shapiro, declined to comment. Van Wagenen didn't return an email and phone call. He has not yet entered a plea to one count of felony sexual abuse of a child.

Van Wagenen co-founded a Utah film festival that came to be known as Sundance Film Festival with Robert Redford and was the Sundance Institute's founding executive director, according to his biography page on the University of Utah website, where he was a part-time instructor until his recent resignation.

Sundance Film Festival officials didn't immediately return an email and phone message seeking comment. His affiliation with the organization ended in 1993 when he left the advisory board, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Van Wagenen, who posted $75,000 bail, is scheduled to be in court on May 2 for a scheduling hearing. The case was reported to police by child protective services after the girl told her parents about the alleged abuse.

Van Wagenen produced the 1985 film, "The Trip to Bountiful," a story of an elderly woman who longs to return to her home that earned the late actress Geraldine Page an Oscar for her starring performance.

He also directed the 1992 film "Alan & Naomi" about the trauma of the Holocaust on children and was a producer of the 1991 movie "Convicts" starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones.

More recently, he was a director of the 2009 documentary called "Learning from the Light: The Vision of I.M. Pei" about a well-known architect and an executive director of the 2018 historical tale "Jane and Emma" about a black woman's friendship with the wife of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints.

Van Wagenen resigned from his part-time instructor position at the University of Utah's Film and Media Arts Department on Feb. 15 after being put on administrative leave on Feb. 5, university spokesman Chris Nelson said. He said the university can't provide any more details other than to say he had worked at the university since October 2012.

Van Wagenen's resignation came after a man came forward to accuse Van Wagenen of molesting him as a boy in 1993. No charges have been filed in that case, which was made public by a website that serves as a watchdog for The Church of Jesus of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church.

The church-owned Brigham Young University in Utah employed Van Wagenen as a film instructor from 1993 to 1999, and he was director of content for its broadcasting arm, BYUtv, from 2007-2010, university spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said. The school received no reports of sexual misconduct from his time there, Jenkins said.
Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc / Index: AIM / Epic: EOG / Sector: Oil & Gas

12 April 2019

Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc ("Europa" or "the Company")

Interim Results

Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc, the AIM traded Ireland and UK focused oil and gas exploration, development and production company, announces its interim results for the six month period ended 31 January 2019.

Operational highlights

Ongoing negotiations regarding farm-in agreements to three Irish licences (LO 16/20, FEL 1/17 and FEL 3/13) with a major international oil company: expect Europa to be fully carried on a well on each licence expect Europa to retain a material interest in each licence the Board is confident of concluding the farm-ins in the coming months however, there can be no guarantee that the current negotiations will lead to completed agreements final investment decision awaited from the major's head office

Site surveys for wells at Inishkea, Kiely East and Edgeworth - targeting summer 2019, are under application subject to regulatory approval

and Edgeworth - targeting summer 2019, are under application subject to regulatory approval Successfully executing strategy to manage the decline in production at onshore UK fields workover of the WF6 well at West Firsby utilising a drain hole jetting technique - WF6 is currently producing 6 boepd net to Europa having previously produced zero oil 90 boepd produced in H1 2019 (H1 2018 97 boepd)

Final phase of discussions with the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines ("ONHYM"), in respect of securing a petroleum agreement in Morocco

Financial performance

Revenue 0.9 million (H1 2018: 0.8 million)

Pre-tax loss of 0.4 million, (H1 2018: pre-tax tax loss of 0.5 million)

Net cash used in operating activities 0.3 million (H1 2018: cash from operating activities 16k)

Cash balance at 31 January 2019 : 4.4 million ( 31 July 2018 : 1.8 million)

: 4.4 million ( : 1.8 million) Successfully raised 4.3 million (before expenses) from existing and new shareholders including BGF Investment Management Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Business Growth Fund ("BGF") approximately 33% of the shares in the Company now owned by institutions, a further 9.5% are held by the Board



Post reporting period events

Wressle planning appeal submitted to Planning Inspectorate on 5 February 2019 and draft bespoke programme issued by the Inspectorate on 13 February

and draft bespoke programme issued by the Inspectorate on 13 February Gross un-risked prospective resources at the Inishkea gas prospect in LO 16/20 confirmed as 1.5 tcf with one in three chance of success (RNS 26 February 2019 )

) Transferred operatorship of PEDL143 to UK Oil & Gas PLC as announced on 14 March 2019

Europa's CEO, Hugh Mackay, said: "The last six months have been a highly active period for Europa, not just in terms of the progress we are making to advance our industry-leading licence position offshore Ireland, which to date has estimated gross prospective resources of 6.4 billion barrels of oil and 1.5 tcf of gas and where negotiations are ongoing for a farm-in for three licences with a major international oil and gas company. In addition, we completed a 4.3 million fund raising, which increased the institutional representation on our shareholder register to over one third. We also restored production at the WF6 well at West Firsby and moved closer towards landing a high impact new venture in Morocco.

"The momentum behind the Company has continued post period end with the completion of a major piece of exploration work at our flagship Inishkea gas project. I look forward to providing further updates on our progress during the second half, a period which will see the resumption of drilling activity in the South Porcupine Basin at CNOOC International's Iolar prospect. Success here would be a value trigger event for Europa, as it would significantly de-risk our drill-ready prospects in the basin, specifically, the 280mmboe Kiely East and 225mmboe Edgeworth targets."

For further information please visit www.europaoil.com or contact:

Hugh Mackay / Phil Greenhalgh Europa +44 (0) 20 7224 3770 Matt Goode finnCap Ltd +44 (0) 20 7220 0500 Simon Hicks finnCap Ltd +44 (0) 20 7220 0500 Camille Gochez finnCap Ltd +44 (0) 20 7220 0500 Frank Buhagiar / Susie Geliher St Brides Partners Ltd +44 (0) 20 7236 1177

The information communicated in this announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014.

Chairman's Statement

Our objective is to create a significant liquidity event for our shareholders through successful drilling of our high impact exploration portfolio in Atlantic Ireland. I am pleased to report that the six months under review has seen us take significant steps towards presenting our shareholders with a series of potential liquidity events. On 20 November 2018, we announced that we were negotiating farm-in agreements with a major international oil and gas company in respect of Licensing Option ('LO') 16/20 in the Slyne Basin and Frontier Exploration Licences ('FEL') 1/17 and 3/13 in the South Porcupine Basin. We continue to have positive engagement with the potential farminee and remain confident of the completion of these agreements or similar ones with other potential farminees who are active in our virtual and physical data rooms. We believe that the political environment in Ireland, in particular the Climate Emergency Measures Bill, may be causing potential investors, including farminees, to slow down their investment decisions.

The Climate Emergency Measures Bill (the "Bill") is a proposal to limit future oil and gas exploration in Ireland which is progressing through the Irish legislature. If put into law this Bill would stop the issuance of any new licences for the exploration of fossil fuels. The Bill is opposed by the Irish Government. We do not know if it will pass into law and should it do so when that might be, and in what form. The impact on existing exploration licences is also not clear.

Europa has honoured its work commitments and obligations to the Irish Government and naturally we hope that our investment will be recognised and honoured. Europa is an active member of the Irish Offshore Operators' Association ("IOOA" www.iooa.ie). IOOA believes that in order to shape a coherent, realistic, fully-costed and structured national policy and plan to transition to a low carbon future, that a new and informed energy conversation needs to begin. IOOA is actively engaged in this matter and further information can be found at https://www.iooa.ie/value-of-the-indigenous-oil-and-gas-industry-to-ireland/

Offshore Ireland

Our industry-leading licence position offshore Ireland is comprised of six licences covering an area of 4,985 km2 and encompassing all the play types and basins being targeted by the major operators who have already entered the region, such as Exxon, CNOOC International, Equinor, TOTAL, Woodside and Cairn Energy. To date, we have identified over 30 prospects across our licences which, potentially hold combined Gross Mean Un-risked Prospective Resources ("GMUPR") of over 6.4 billion barrels of oil equivalent and 1.5 tcf of gas. Following completion of technical work programmes, we are now focused on securing partners with whom we can drill wells to prove up this 'company-making' prospectivity.

The volumetrics involved and the quality of the work we have undertaken have generated considerable interest among the blue-chip operators as evidenced by their activity in our data rooms. As mentioned earlier, we are currently negotiating farm-in agreements with a major international oil and gas company in respect of LO 16/20, FEL 1/17 and FEL 3/13. A final investment decision is awaited from the major's head office. Meanwhile, we continue to run data rooms and market the opportunities to others. We have submitted applications to the relevant authorities for three site surveys in Atlantic Ireland for our flagship Inishkea prospect, Kiely East and Edgeworth. Our aim is to be in a position to drill all three prospects from 2020 onwards, subject to funding and the regulatory approval process.

Post period end on 26 February 2019, we announced a new prospect inventory for LO 16/20 including gross mean un-risked prospective dry gas resources of 1.5 tcf and a 1 in 3 chance of success for the Inishkea prospect. Together with a location in a play that has been proven by the nearby Corrib gas field, proximity to existing gas infrastructure, comparatively shallow water and lying in a country that needs more gas, the volumetrics are the final piece in the jigsaw which confirms Inishkea's status as Europa's flagship project.

Onshore UK

Our UK production assets in the East Midlands continue to generate a valuable revenue stream for the Company. First half production averaged 90 boepd generating revenue of 0.9 million, 12% higher than H1 2018's 0.8 million thanks to higher oil prices and initiatives we undertook to manage the decline at the West Firsby oil field. These included the successful workover of the WF6 well where we, in conjunction with a third party, pioneered the use of a drain hole jetting technique onshore UK. WF6 is currently producing 6 bopd net to Europa having previously produced zero oil. Based on the technical success of the workover we intend to evaluate additional suitable opportunities to use this technology in other wells leading to higher oil rates than would otherwise have been possible.

We are keen to grow our production incrementally - via workovers such as WF6, and by bringing new discoveries on line. Wressle in North Lincolnshire, with an initial targeted gross rate of 500 bopd, would more than double Europa's existing net production to over 200 bopd. The planning appeal process formally commenced post period end on 13 February 2019 and a planning inquiry date will be announced in due course when a Planning Inspector will consider the partners' new proposals for the development. Other proposals have previously been recommended for approval by the Council's Planning Officer and supported by expert third party review undertaken on behalf of the Council.

New Ventures

A Strategic Review was completed during the review period. This identified areas and basins where the expertise of our technical team could be applied to replicate the excellent work carried out in our offshore Ireland licences. In line with this, over the course of the half year under review we have been in discussions with the National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines (ONHYM) to secure a petroleum agreement in Morocco. These discussions are nearing completion and we are confident we will soon be in a position to provide further details on what we believe is an exciting opportunity to acquire acreage which, in terms of 'company-making' potential, is similar in scale to our offshore Ireland portfolio. We have also established a new Board Strategy Committee, to review and approve value-accretive new venture opportunities within our areas of interest.

Corporate

During the period, we successfully raised 4.3million from existing and new shareholders. Following the fundraise, BGF are the largest shareholder in Europa, with an equity share close to 15%. One third of the Company's shares are now held by institutions and the Board holds a further 9.5%. This is a significant increase in institutional representation in Europa's shareholder register and we view this as an endorsement of our asset base, strategy to monetise our assets, and finally the efforts of our excellent team.

Outlook

As at 31 January 2019, Europa's cash balances stood at 4.4 million (31 July 2018: 1.8 million). Our UK production, which averaged 90 boepd over the course of the half year period, generated 0.9 million in revenues. In Ireland, we have mapped combined gross mean un-risked prospective resources of 6.4 billion barrels oil equivalent and 1.5 tcf gas across our six licences. We estimate our Inishkea prospect, which lies close to the producing Corrib gas field, has a 1 in 3 chance of success.

Compare all the above with our current market capitalisation and the value case for Europa, in our view, speaks for itself. Our job is to realise the huge potential of our asset base, while at all times managing risk. Drilling offshore Ireland alongside heavyweight partners is how we intend to achieve this. With favourable terms under negotiation with a major operator that could lead to the funding of up to three high impact wells, we are confident we are on course to offer our shareholders the series of potential liquidity events.

Simon Oddie

Chairman

11 April 2019

Operational review

Offshore Ireland: Exploration

Europa holds six licences in Atlantic Ireland which, in aggregate, cover an area of over 4,985 km2, include six play types in three basins and contain over 30 prospects and leads that potentially hold gross mean un-risked prospective resources of 6.4 billion barrels oil equivalent and 1.5 tcf gas.

To date six prospects have been de-risked to drill-ready status including the Inishkea gas project in LO 16/20 in the Slyne Basin; Kiely East in FEL 2/13 and Edgeworth in FEL 1/17 in the South Porcupine Basin. Inishkea is regarded by Europa as its flagship project due to its location in a play that has been proven by the Corrib gas field, its potential to be larger than Corrib, its proximity to existing processing facilities, and Ireland's need for more gas supplies.

Activity during the half year period has been centred on securing farm-out partners to fund drilling activity. As announced in November 2018, Europa is currently negotiating farm-in agreements with a major international oil and gas company in respect of LO 16/20, FEL 1/17 and FEL 3/13. A final investment decision from the major's head office is awaited. Subject to a positive outcome, the terms agreed would see Europa hold material interests in up to three wells. To ensure wells can be drilled at the earliest opportunity, Europa has submitted applications for three site surveys in summer 2019 for the Inishkea, Kiely East and Edgeworth prospects. Subject to successful conclusion of this work and finalisation of funding, all three prospects could be drilled from 2020 onwards.

Drilling activity in the region is due to recommence in summer 2019 with a well targeting the Iolar prospect in FEL 3/18 in the Porcupine basin operated by CNOOC International, together with its partner ExxonMobil. Exploration success at Iolar potentially de-risks 1 billion boe in five prospects in Europa's Porcupine portfolio including Kiely East (280 mmboe) and Edgeworth (225 mmboe).

Slyne Basin: LO 16/20

LO 16/20 is located next to the producing Corrib gas field in the Slyne Basin and contains the Corrib North gas discovery. LO 16/20 represents low risk exploration in a proven gas play.

During the half year, technical work was undertaken to further de-risk Inishkea and calculate prospective resources for Inishkea. This work included Pre-Stack Depth Migration ("PSDM") reprocessing of 770 km2 of 3D seismic data over Inishkea and the Corrib gas field. The geophysical interpretation arising from the PSDM data has been benchmarked and calibrated against newly released Ocean Bottom Cable 3D seismic data over the Corrib gas field. Post period end in February 2019, the Company announced prospective resources for Inishkea, the details of which are provided in the table below:

Licence Prospect Play Gross Un-risked Prospective Resources

(billion cubic feet) Low Best High Mean LO 16/20 Inishkea Triassic gas 244 968 3,606 1,528

Inishkea is a large fault bounded Triassic structure that lies 11km to the northwest of the Corrib gas field. The reservoir is Triassic age sandstone sourced from the underlying Carboniferous. The trap is provided by a combination of Triassic Uilleann Halite top seal and fault seal. Engineering studies demonstrate strong positive economics for a range of porosity outcomes, including outcomes significantly poorer than Corrib. Europa's view of porosity at Inishkea is supported by velocity data from new PSDM data. Given the Company's confidence in trap and reservoir quality and the nearby producing Corrib gas field, the Company has assigned a one in three chance of success to Inishkea based on in-house technical work.

A drilling location for a first exploration well on Inishkea (18/20-H) has been identified. There is a robust, low risk tie on seismic data for the Corrib Sandstone reservoir back to the Corrib gas field. Europa intends to acquire a site survey in summer 2019 (subject to regulatory consent), which would enable a well to be drilled at this location in 2020 (subject to funding and regulatory consents). Operations planning for both the site survey and engineering design of the exploration is in progress.

The Corrib North structure containing the 18/20-7 gas discovery well drilled by Shell in 2010 may be upgraded to contingent resources pending further engineering evaluation. Based on the interpretation of historic 3D and 2D seismic, discovered Gas Initially In Place ("GIIP") is provided in the table below:

Licence Prospect Play Gross discovered GIIP

(billion cubic feet) Low Best High LO 16/20 Corrib North Triassic gas 5 41 208

South Porcupine Basin: FELs 1/17, 2/13 and 3/13

Europa operates three licences in the South Porcupine Basin, FELs 1/17, 2/13 and 3/13. An aggregate of 4.3 billion barrels of oil equivalent (boe) of gross mean un-risked prospective resources have been estimated across nine priority prospects on these three licences based on the results of reprocessed PSDM 3D seismic data originally acquired in 2013. These include firm drilling targets Edgeworth in FEL 1/17, Wilde in 3/13 and Kiely East in 2/13. The table below summarises the Gross Un-risked Prospective Resources ("GMUPR") across selected prospects in FELs 1/17, 2/13 and 3/13 in the South Porcupine Basin:

Licence Prospect Play Gross Un-risked Prospective Resources mmboe* Low Best High Mean FEL 1/17 Ervine Pre-rift 63 159 363 192 FEL 1/17 Edgeworth Pre-rift 49 156 476 225 FEL 1/17 Egerton Syn-rift 59 148 301 167 FEL 3/13 Beckett mid-Cretaceous Fan 111 758 4229 1719 FEL 3/13 Shaw+ mid-Cretaceous Fan 20 196 1726 747 FEL 3/13 Wilde Early Cretaceous Fan 45 241 1082 462 FEL 2/13 Kiely East + Pre-rift 52 187 612 280 FEL 2/13 Kiely West + Pre-rift 23 123 534 225 FEL 2/13 Kilroy+ Cret. Slope Apron 37 177 734 312 Total 4,329

*million barrels of oil equivalent. The hydrocarbon system is considered an oil play and mmboe is used to take account of associated gas. However, due to the significant uncertainties in the available geological information, there is a possibility of gas charge.

+ on block

Following the completion of the PSDM programme and release of the new prospect inventory, Europa opened a virtual data room for prospective farminees for its three operated South Porcupine licences in July 2018. As mentioned previously, Europa is negotiating with a major international oil and gas company in respect of FEL 1/17 and FEL 3/13.

The 2019 CNOOC International well in FEL 3/18 will drill the Iolar prospect, which the Company understands is a pre-rift play. Europa has five pre-rift prospects in FEL 2/13 and FEL 1/17 with combined GMUPR of just over 1 billion boe. If Iolar is successful there may be positive technical and commercial read across resulting in a de-risking of Europa's prospects.

South Porcupine Basin: LO 16/19

LO 16/19 is located on the west side of the South Porcupine basin. A farm-out agreement for LO 16/19 was secured with Cairn Energy in April 2017, as a result of which Cairn was assigned operatorship of and acquired a 70% interest in the licence in exchange for funding a work programme worth up to US$6 million. This included the acquisition of 3D seismic in 2017. The final processed dataset was delivered in Q4 2018 and a prospect inventory based on this is expected to be published in 2019.

Padraig Basin: LO 16/22

LO16/22 is located in the Padraig Basin on the eastern margin of the Rockall Trough. Padraig is a remnant Jurassic basin. Based on Europa's restoration of the conjugate margin prior to the spreading of the Atlantic seafloor, the most relevant analogue is the conjugate margin play offshore Newfoundland in the Flemish Pass basin and which hosts the 300 million barrel Bay du Nord oil discovery.

Structures of significant size have been mapped on 2D seismic acquired in 1998, along with multiple leads in Triassic gas, pre-rift and syn-rift hydrocarbon plays. Gross mean un-risked indicative resources are estimated to be approximately 500 million boe for the syn-rift oil play and potentially 5tcf of GIIP in the Triassic gas play. Work is underway to mature the leads, which lie in water depths ranging from 800m to 2,000m, to prospect status.

UK - Onshore Production

East Midlands: West Firsby; Crosby Warren; Whisby-4

Europa produces from three oilfields in the East Midlands: West Firsby (100% working interest); Crosby Warren (100%); and the Whisby-4 well (65%). During the six months to 31 January 2019, an aggregate 90 boepd were recovered from the three fields (H1 2018: 97 boepd) with all the oil transported by road to the Immingham refinery.

During the period, initiatives were undertaken to manage the decline at the West Firsby oil field including a workover of the WF6 well utilising a drain hole jetting technique for the first-time onshore UK. The workover involved jetting sixteen 90m length drain holes. Having previously produced zero oil, WF6 is currently producing 6 bopd net to Europa.

UK - Development

East Midlands: PEDL180 (Wressle); PEDL182 (Broughton North)

The Wressle conventional oil field on PEDL180 was discovered by the Wressle-1 well in 2014. During production testing in 2015, Wressle-1 flowed oil and gas at a combined flowrate of 710 boepd from three separate reservoirs: the Ashover Grit, the Wingfield Flags and the Penistone Flags. In September 2016, a Competent Person's Report provided independent estimates of Reserves and Contingent and Prospective oil and gas resources for the Wressle discovery of 2.15 million stock tank barrels classified as discovered (2P+2C). Reservoir engineering analyses indicate an initial production flow rate of 500 bopd gross from the Ashover Grit interval at Wressle. At this rate, Europa's existing production would be over 200 bopd and would generate significant cash flows for the Company.

Following the Planning Inspectorate's decision to reject an appeal by the partnership against North Lincolnshire Council Planning Committee's decision to refuse planning permission for the Wressle oil development in January 2018, the operator Egdon Resources submitted a new planning application for the development of Wressle in July 2018. Despite being recommended for approval by North Lincolnshire Council's planning officers, the application was rejected by the Council's Planning Committee in November 2018.

In January 2019, an application to extend the existing planning consent for the Wressle site by a year, was approved by the Planning Inspector on appeal after the original application for an extension was refused by North Lincolnshire Council's Planning Committee in August 2018. This was despite having been recommended for approval by the Council's Planning Officer. The extension to the existing planning consent to 24 January 2020 is expected to allow sufficient time for the Planning Inspector to determine an appeal against the Council's rejection of the Wressle development application. Following this, post period end, the operator submitted the relevant appeal documentation. A draft bespoke timetable for the appeal process, which will involve a planning inquiry, was issued on 13 February by the Planning Inspectorate.

Europa has a 30% working interest in licence PEDL180 in the East Midlands which holds the Wressle oil discovery, alongside Egdon (operator, 30%), Union Jack Oil (27.5%), and Humber Oil & Gas Limited (12.5%).

The Broughton North exploration prospect on PEDL182 lies adjacent and north of PEDL180. In 1984, a well drilled by BP discovered oil at Broughton. In the CPR, Broughton North was assigned gross mean un-risked prospective resources of 0.6 million boe and a geological chance of success of 50%.

UK - Exploration

Weald Basin: PEDL143 (Holmwood)

In September 2018, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, refused an application to extend the site lease. Acting on behalf of the partnership, Europa withdrew its application to extend planning permission to drill the Holmwood exploration well from the Bury Hill Wood site, which has since been re-instated. The remaining prospectivity of PEDL143 is now being evaluated which, in addition to the established Portland sandstone reservoirs, includes the Kimmeridge Limestone, an emerging play in the Weald Basin. On 14 March Europa announced that it was in the process of transferring operatorship to UK Oil & Gas PLC. Regulatory consent has been obtained.

East Midlands: PEDL299 (Hardstoft)

PEDL299 contains the Hardstoft oil field which was discovered in 1919 by the UK's first ever exploration well. Hardstoft produced 26,000 barrels of oil from Carboniferous limestone reservoirs in the 1920s. Gross 2C contingent resources of 3.1 million boe and gross 3C contingent resources of 18.5 million boe in the Hardstoft structure were identified in a CPR issued by joint venture partner Upland Resources. The application of modern production testing and drilling methodologies could lead to commercial oil flowrates being achieved. Europa's interest in PEDL299, which is restricted to the conventional prospectivity including Hardstoft, is 25%, alongside Upland 25% and INEOS, the operator, 50%.

Cleveland Basin: PEDL343 (Cloughton)

PEDL343 contains the Cloughton gas discovery, which was successfully drilled by Bow Valley in 1986 and flowed a small amount of gas to surface on production test from conventional Carboniferous sandstone reservoirs. Europa regards Cloughton as a gas appraisal opportunity with the critical challenge being to obtain commercial flowrates from future production testing operations. Europa holds a 35% interest in PEDL343 alongside Arenite 15%, Third Energy 20% (operator), Egdon Resources 17.5% and Petrichor Energy 12.5%.

East Midlands: PEDL181

PEDL181 is exposed to the hydrocarbon potential of the Humber basin. The licence has technical synergy with the adjacent PEDL334 which was awarded to an Egdon Resources-led group in the 14th Round for the purpose of conventional and unconventional exploration.

New Ventures

As announced in January 2019, Europa is in the final phase of discussions with The National Office of Hydrocarbons and Mines ('ONHYM') regarding securing a petroleum agreement in Morocco. The Company continues to evaluate new ventures within its established areas of interest which include greenfield exploration and brownfield re-development projects in North Africa, Western Europe, and Central Europe.

Financials

Average daily H1 2019 production was 90 boepd compared to 97 boepd in H1 2018 following:

Natural decline at three production sites

Incremental production added from the West Firsby 6 workover starting in January 2019 which is currently producing 6 bopd net to Europa

There was a 14% increase in average realised oil price to US$67.7 per barrel (H1 2018: US$59.2). Foreign exchange movements positively impacted revenues by 5% as US Dollar sales converted to Sterling at US$1.29 (H1 2018: US$1.35)

Conclusion and Outlook

Our objective is to drill-up our portfolio of high impact prospects in Atlantic Ireland at the earliest opportunity. Several workstreams are being advanced concurrently to ensure we are in a position to achieve this, including securing partners for our South Porcupine and Slyne Basin licences, and undertaking site surveys in summer 2019 for our drill-ready prospects Inishkea in the Slyne Basin, and Kiely East and Edgeworth in the South Porcupine Basin. Much progress has been made. Notably with an offer received from the NW European division of a major international oil and gas company to farm-in to three licences. Subject to final negotiation and an investment decision awaited from the major's head office, Europa will be funded for up to three high impact wells including one targeting 1.5 tcf of gas at Inishkea next to the Corrib field. Furthermore, this is not all high-risk wildcat exploration. We rank Inishkea as having a one in three chance of success. We also note that other companies are active in the South Porcupine: CNOOC International intend to drill the Iolar prospect in summer 2019 and ENI have applied for consent to acquire a site survey on Dunquin South in summer 2019. These are exciting times for Atlantic Ireland.

Outside Ireland, we will continue to support the operator's efforts to gain approval to develop the Wressle oil field. If successful, Wressle will more than double our existing production to over 200 bopd which, at current oil prices, would generate a valuable revenue stream for the Company. Elsewhere we are close to finalising a petroleum agreement in Morocco in line with our strategy to diversify our portfolio, and where we can deploy the same technical skillset and expertise..

Hugh Mackay

CEO

11 April 2019

Qualified Person Review

This release has been reviewed by Hugh Mackay, Chief Executive of Europa, who is a petroleum geologist with over 30 years' experience in petroleum exploration and a member of the Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain, American Association of Petroleum Geologists and Fellow of the Geological Society. Mr Mackay has consented to the inclusion of the technical information in this release in the form and context in which it appears.

Licence Interests Table

Country Area Licence Field/

Prospect Operator Equity Status UK East Midlands DL003 West Firsby Europa 100% Production DL001 Crosby Warren Europa 100% Production PL199/215 Whisby-4 BPEL 65% Production PEDL180 Wressle Egdon 30% Development PEDL181 Europa 50% Exploration PEDL182 North Broughton Egdon 30% Exploration PEDL299 Hardstoft INEOS 25% Exploration PEDL343 Cloughton Third Energy 35% Exploration Weald PEDL143 Holmwood UKOG 20% Exploration







Ireland

South Porcupine FEL 2/13 Doyle: Aw/Ac/Ae/B/C, Kilroy, Keane, Kiely East, Kiely West , Lead F Europa 100% Exploration FEL 3/13 Beckett, Wilde

Shaw Europa 100% Exploration FEL 1/17 Ervine, Edgeworth, Egerton,PR3 Europa 100% Exploration LO 16/19 2 leads Cairn 30% Exploration Slyne LO 16/20 Corrib North discovery, Inishkea Europa 100% Exploration Padraig LO 16/22 6 leads Europa 100% Exploration

Financials

Unaudited consolidated statement of comprehensive income

6 months to

31 January 2019 6 months to

31 January

2018 Year to

31 July 2018

(audited) 000 000 000 Revenue 859 778 1,634 Cost of sales (855) (670) (1,365) Impairment of producing fields - - (142) Exploration write-off - (46) (1,289) ------ ------ ------ Gross profit 4 62 (1,162) Administrative expenses (375) (429) (967) Finance income 27 6 10 Finance expense (93) (136) (171) ------ ------ ------ Loss before taxation (437) (497) (2,290) Taxation credit/(charge) - 168 (341) ------ ------ ------ Total comprehensive loss for the period attributed to the equity shareholders of the parent (437)

(329)

(2,631) ====== ====== ====== Pence per share Pence per

share Pence per

share Earnings per share (EPS) attributable

to the equity shareholders of the parent



Attributable to the equity shareholders of the Basic and diluted EPS (note 4) (0.13)p (0.11)p (0.87)p

Unaudited consolidated statement of financial position

31 January 2019 31 January

2018 31 July

2018

(audited) 000 000 000 Assets Non-current assets Intangible assets 6,759 6,534 5,959 Property, plant and equipment 621 813 668 Deferred tax asset - 508 - ------ ------ ------ Total non-current assets 7,380 7,855 6,627 ------ ------ ------ Current assets Inventories 26 19 20 Trade and other receivables 300 512 471 Cash and cash equivalents 4,435 2,306 1,771 ------ ------ ------ 4,761 2,837 2,262 ------ ------ ------ Total assets 12,141 10,692 8,889 ====== ====== ====== Liabilities Current liabilities Trade and other payables (918) (883) (1,299) ------ ------ ------ Total current liabilities (918) (883) (1,299) ------ ------ ------ Non-current liabilities Long-term provisions (2,826) (2,652) (2,735) ------ ------ ------ Total non-current liabilities (2,826) (2,652) (2,735) ------ ------ ------ Total liabilities (3,744) (3,535) (4,034) ------ ------ ------ Net assets 8,397 7,157 4,855 ====== ====== ====== Capital and reserves attributable to equity holders of the parent Share capital (note 3) 4,447 3,014 3,014 Share premium 21,009 18,481 18,481 Merger reserve 2,868 2,868 2,868 Retained deficit (19,927) (17,206) (19,508) ------ ------ ------ Total equity 8,397 7,157 4,855 ====== ====== ======

Unaudited consolidated statement of changes in equity

Share

capital Share

premium Merger

reserve Retained

deficit Total

equity 000 000 000 000 000

Unaudited Balance at 1 August 2017 3,014 18,481 2,868 (16,888) 7,475 Total comprehensive loss for the period - - - (329) (329) Share based payments - - - 11 11 ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Balance at 31 January 2018 3,014 18,481 2,868 (17,206) 7,157 ====== ====== ====== ====== ======

Audited Balance at 1 August 2017 3,014 18,481 2,868 (16,888) 7,475 Loss for the year attributable to the equity shareholders of the parent - - - (2,631) (2,631) Share based payments - - - 11 11

------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Balance at 31 July 2018 3,014 18,481 2,868 (19,508) 4,855 ====== ====== ====== ====== ======

Unaudited Balance at 1 August 2018 3,014 18,481 2,868 (19,508) 4,855 Total comprehensive loss for the period - - - (437) (437) Issue of share capital 1,433 2,546 - - 3,979 Issue of share options - (18) - 18 - Share based payments - - - - - ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ Balance at 31 January 2019 4,447 21,009 2,868 (19,927) 8,397 ====== ====== ====== ====== ======

Unaudited consolidated statement of cash flows

6 months to

31 January 2019 6 months to

31 January

2018 Year to

31 July 2018

(audited) 000 000 000 Cash flows (used in)/from operating activities Loss after taxation (437) (329) (2,631) Adjustments for: Share based payments - 11 11 Depreciation 47 69 72 Impairment of producing field - - 142 Exploration write-off - 46 1,289 Finance income (27) (6) (10) Finance expense 93 136 171 Taxation charge/(credit) - (168) 341 Decrease in trade and other receivables 22 101 69 Increase in inventories (6) (5) (6) (Decrease)/increase in trade and other payables (35) 161 73 ------ ------ ------ Net cash (used in)/from operating activities (343) 16 (479) ====== ====== ====== Cash flows used in investing activities Purchase of intangibles (1,002) (1,081) (1,336) Buy back of part interest in licence - (160) - Interest received 5 6 10 ------ ------ ------ Net cash used in investing activities (997) (1,235) (1,326) ====== ====== ====== Cash flows from/(used in) financing activities Proceeds from the issue of share capital 3,961 - - Increase/(decrease) in payables relating to share capital issue costs 14 (16) (16) Option based equity movement on share issue 18 - - Finance costs (2) (2) (3) ------ ------ ------ Net cash from/(used in) financing activities 3,991 (18) (19) ====== ====== ====== Net increase/(decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 2,651 (1,237) (1,824) Exchange gain/ (loss) on cash and cash equivalents 13 (48) 4 Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 1,771 3,591 3,591 ------ ------ ------ Cash and cash equivalents at end of period 4,435 2,306 1,771 ====== ====== ======

Notes to the consolidated interim statement

1 Nature of operations and general information

Europa Oil & Gas (Holdings) plc ("Europa Oil & Gas") and subsidiaries' ("the Group") principal activities consist of investment in oil and gas exploration, development and production.

Europa Oil & Gas is the Group's ultimate parent Company. It is incorporated and domiciled in England and Wales. The address of Europa Oil & Gas's registered office head office is 6 Porter Street, London W1U 6DD. Europa Oil & Gas's shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange AIM market.

The Group's consolidated interim financial information is presented in Pounds Sterling (), which is also the functional currency of the parent Company.

The consolidated interim financial information has been approved for issue by the Board of Directors on 11 April 2019.

The consolidated interim financial information for the period 1 August 2018 to 31 January 2019 is unaudited. In the opinion of the Directors the condensed interim financial information for the period presents fairly the financial position, and results from operations and cash flows for the period in conformity with the generally accepted accounting principles consistently applied. The condensed interim financial information incorporates unaudited comparative figures for the interim period 1 August 2017 to 31 January 2018 and the audited financial year to 31 July 2018.

The financial information contained in this interim report does not constitute statutory accounts as defined by section 435 of the Companies Act 2006. The report should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements of the Group for the year ended 31 July 2018.

The comparatives for the full year ended 31 July 2018 are not the Company's full statutory accounts for that year. A copy of the statutory accounts for that year has been delivered to the Registrar of Companies. The auditors' report on those accounts was unqualified and did not contain a statement under section 498 (2) - (3) of the Companies Act 2006.

Given the current cash balance and cash inflow from the Group's producing assets, the Directors have concluded, at the time of approving the consolidated interim financial information, that there is a reasonable expectation, based on the Group's cash flow forecasts, that the Group can continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future, which is deemed to be at least 12 months from the date of signing the consolidated financial information. Accordingly, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the consolidated interim financial information.

2 Summary of significant accounting policies

The condensed interim financial information has been prepared using policies based on International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS and IFRIC interpretations) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board ("IASB") as adopted for use in the EU. The condensed interim financial information has been prepared using the accounting policies which will be applied in the Group's statutory financial information for the year ended 31 July 2019.

This results in the adoption of various standards and interpretations, none of which have had a material impact on the interim report or are expected to have a material impact on the financial statements for the full year.

3 Share capital

6 months to 31 January 2019 6 months to

31 January 2018 Year to

31 July 2018

(audited) Allotted, called up and fully paid ordinary shares of 1p Shares Shares Shares Start of period 301,388,379 301,388,379 301,388,379 Issued in the period 143,303,220 - - ---------------- -------------- -------------- End of period 444,691,599 301,388,379 301,388,379 ========== ========= ========= 000 000 000 Start of period 3,014 3,014 3,014 Issued in the period 1,433 - - ------ ------ ------ End of period 4,447 3,014 3,014 ====== ====== ======= Ordinary shares issued

On 10 December 2018 at 6p issue price

Number

of shares Raised

net of costs

000 Nominal value

000 Placing 133,333,338 3,684 1,333 Open offer 9,969,882 277 100 ------ ------ ------ 143,303,220 3,961 1,433 ====== ====== ======

4 Earnings per share (EPS)

Basic EPS has been calculated on the loss after taxation divided by the weighted average number of shares in issue during the period. Diluted EPS uses an average number of shares adjusted to allow for the issue of shares, on the assumed conversion of all in-the-money options.

The Company's average share price for the period was 3.51p which was below the exercise price of all 25,637,898 outstanding share options (H1 2018: 5.74p which was below the exercise price of all 25,164,440 outstanding share options).

The calculation of the basic and diluted earnings per share is based on the following:

6 months to

31 January 2019 6 months to

31 January

2018 Year to

31 July 2018

(audited) 000 000 000 Losses Loss for the period attributable to the equity shareholders of the parent (437) (329) (2,631) ====== ====== ====== Number of shares Weighted average number of ordinary shares for the purposes of basic and diluted EPS 342,665,937 301,388,379 301,388,379 ====== ====== ======

5 Taxation

Consistent with the year-end treatment, current and deferred tax assets and liabilities have been calculated at tax rates which were expected to apply to their respective period of realisation at the period end.

6 Post reporting date
The Board of Directors of Hexagon Composites ASA ("Hexagon Composites" or the "Company") has decided to provisionally award up to 2 492 438 Performance Share Units ("PSUs") to executives.

The PSU allocation is in accordance with the Board of Director's compensation policy for the senior executive management. This policy is described in "Declaration to the Annual General Meeting of Hexagon Composites ASA concerning determination of Salary and other remuneration to the CEO and other Management", which will be presented for shareholder approval at the Annual General Meeting on 24 April 2019 (the "AGM").

The PSUs are non-transferable and will vest on 11 February 2022 subject to satisfaction of the applicable vesting conditions. The actual number of PSUs to be allocated will depend on 2019 performance and attain minimum zero and maximum 2 492 438. Each vested PSU will give the holder the right to receive one share in the Company at an exercise price corresponding to the par value of the shares being NOK 0.10.

The total number of outstanding options, RSUs and PSUs are now 2 800 000, 100 000 and 2 492 438 respectively.

Of the maximum 2 492 438 provisionally awarded PSUs, maximum 1 058 186 PSUs have provisionally been awarded to primary insiders as listed below:

Primary insider: Title Max potential PSU award[1] Min. award Holding Options Holding Shares Baik, Seung President Agility Fuel Solutions 139 930 0 Bandele, David CFO 93 286 0 230 000 68 949 Chudzick, Heiko EVP Operations 93 286 0 80 000 Engeset, Jon Erik [2] Group President & CEO 136 986 0 370 000 201 315 Haberli, Frank VP Strategic Projects 34 982 0 180 000 40 365 Kleschinski, Michael President Hexagon Purus 93 286 0 230 000 3 700 Rashilla, Rick VP Hexagon Purus 93 286 0 180 000 58 000 Schimenti, Jack EVP 93 286 0 230 000 98 803 Siedlecki, George CFO Hexagon North America 93 286 0 180 000 21 853 Smith, Jon President Hexagon Mobile Pipeline 93 286 0 Stavheim, Skjalg Sylte President Hexagon Ragasco 93 286 0 230 000 65 419

[1] equals total holding of PSU rights. [2] The shares are held by Dionysos AS, a company 100% controlled by Jon Erik Engeset

For more information:

David Bandele, CFO, Hexagon Composites ASA

Telephone: +47 920 91 483 | david.bandele@hexagongroup.com (mailto:david.bandele@hexagongroup.group)





Hiva Ghiri, VP Investor Relations, Hexagon Composites ASA

Telephone: +47 958 66 790 | hiva.ghiri@hexagongroup.com (mailto:hiva.ghiri@hexagongroup.com) This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5 -12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

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: Hexagon Composites ASA via Globenewswire


EUROCASTLE INVESTMENT LIMITED

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

International Administration Group (Guernsey) Limited

Company Administrator

Attn: Mark Woodall

Tel: +44 1481 723450

Eurocastle to Release First Quarter 2019 Financial Results on 17 May 2019





Guernsey, 12 April 2019 - Eurocastle Investment Limited ("Eurocastle" or the "Company") today announces that it will release its financial results for the three months ended 31 March 2019 on Friday, 17 May 2019 before the market opens. In addition, management will host an earnings conference call at 2:00 P.M. London time (9:00 A.M. New York time) later that day. All interested parties are welcome to participate on the live call. You can access the conference call by dialing first +1-844-492-7988 (from within the U.S.) or +1-478-291-0293 (from outside of the U.S.) ten minutes prior to the scheduled start of the call; please reference "Eurocastle First Quarter 2019 Earnings Call or conference ID number 7576415"

A webcast of the conference call will be available to the public on a listen-only basis at www.eurocastleinv.com. Please allow extra time prior to the call to visit the site and download the necessary software required to listen to the internet broadcast. A replay of the webcast will be available for three months following the call.

For those who are not available to listen to the live call, a replay will be available until 11:59 P.M. New York time on Monday, 17 June 2019 by dialing +1-855-859-2056 (from within the U.S.) or +1-404-537-3406 (from outside of the U.S.); please reference access code "7576415".





ABOUT EUROCASTLE

Eurocastle Investment Limited is a publicly traded closed-ended investment company that focuses on investing in performing and non-performing loans and other real estate related assets primarily in Italy. The Company is Euro denominated and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam under the symbol "ECT". Eurocastle is managed by an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC, a leading global investment manager. For more information regarding Eurocastle Investment Limited and to be added to our email distribution list, please visit www.eurocastleinv.com.
MILAN and WARSAW, Poland, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The glass works of art of the KROSNO brand and the SAKRED collection, created in cooperation with Karim Rashid, were presented at Fuorisalone 2019 in Milan. As part of the HUMAN SPACES exhibition organized by Interni Magazine, the installation inspired by KROSNO glass and designed by Mariusz Miekos and Dorota Koziara will be presented in the spaces of Universita Statale, Ca'Grande until 19th April. The opening of the installation was attended by Karim Rashid, world-famous designer and author of the first collection for KROSNO D'SIGN.

The KROSNO GLASS exhibition in Milan is a story about glass, which is an inseparable element of human everyday life. The main theme of the event is Human Spaces - objects or spaces present in human life and contributing to the well-being of their owners. The KROSNO exhibition of glass works of art is presented in the historic, 15th-century spaces of the University of Milan and will last until 14th April. The installation "Sakred Geometry" by Mariusz Miekos refers to the glass construction of the cone known from the Sakred collection and was developed with the utmost care to fit into the style of beautiful and historic university spaces.

The opening of the first KROSNO glass exhibition in Milan is not only a presentation of the most important and never before shown products of the Polish glassworks, but also a reveal of the prestigious SAKRED collection by KROSNO D'SIGN. Its author is world-famous designer Karim Rashid, who refers in his projects to three foundations of sacred geometry: circle, line and triangle, energy, relation and balance. KROSNO D'SIGN is a brand that combines not only the exceptional quality of KROSNO products, but also unique design that meets the tastes of lovers of exceptional interiors.

As the author says about the Krosno glass collection, SAKRED is a pure geometry of the cylinder and cone, the most universal forms of the world, the simplest and timeless shapes concealing the soul. The various combinations of these colourful forms give everyday life a sense of strength, stability and purity.

The installation "Sakred Geometry" inspired by the SAKRED collection was created by Mariusz Miekos, an architect. The exhibition, where you can see glass works of art from the resources of KROSNO glassworks, is the work of Dorota Koziara, a designer known in Poland and abroad. Dorota is one of the designers who started cooperation with KROSNO D'SIGN brand.

About KROSNO

KROSNO is a synonym of top quality since 1923. It is one of the largest manufacturers of household glass products in Poland, and an esteemed supplier to over 60 global markets. The KROSNO brand represents a wide range of products that stand out with their functionality, the quality of craftsmanship and timeless design.

KROSNO is famous in international markets for its flagship traditional manual glass-forming technology. However, customers also value glass products formed mechanically, whose quality is excellent and which are offered at competitive prices. For businesses around the world, KROSNO creates custom-made products, offering a full range of services, from design to the end product.

KROSNO products are manufactured at the Krosno Glass glassworks, located in south-eastern Poland. The plant has efficient production lines that allow to form glass mechanically. The company prides on its impressive furnaces with infrastructure designed for melting and forming the most beautiful glass products, hand-made by artist-smelters.

Monika Podsiadlo

monika.podsiadlo@hkstrategies.com

+(48) 605 122 594

Video: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/870560/Krosno_Milan_Expo.mp4

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/870561/Krosno_Milan_Expo.jpg

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/870562/Krosno_Milan_Expo.jpg






Today, CNH Industrial N.V. shareholders approved the resolutions concerning:

2018 EU-IFRS Annual Report

Dividend of 0.18 per common share

Re-appointment of the executive directors and (re-)appointment of the non-executive directors

Re-appointment of independent auditor

Replacement of the existing authorization to the Board of the authority to acquire common shares in the capital of the Company

London, April 12, 2019

CNH Industrial N.V. (NYSE: CNHI / MI: CNHI) shareholders at the Annual General Meeting ("AGM"), held today in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, approved the Company's 2018 EU-IFRS Annual Report (including the Company's 2018 statutory financial statements) and a dividend of 0.18 per common share, equivalent to a total distribution of approximately 244 million. The dividend will be paid on May 2, 2019.

Suzanne Heywood and Hubertus Muhlhauser were re-elected as executive directors. Leo W. Houle, John Lanaway, Silke C. Scheiber, Jacqueline A. Tammenoms Bakker and Jacques Theurillat were re-elected as non-executive directors; Alessandro Nasi and Lorenzo Simonelli were elected as non-executive directors. In addition, Ernst & Young Accountants LLP was reappointed as independent auditor of the Company.

Shareholders also replaced the existing authorization for the Board to repurchase up to a maximum of 10% of the Company's common shares issued as of the date of the AGM. The authorization is an instrument available to the Board of Directors, but places no obligation on the Company to repurchase its own shares.

Full details of the resolutions approved today and the executive directors' speeches are available on the Company's website).

***

The dividend will be paid on May 2, 2019. The record date for the dividend will be April 24, 2019 on both the MTA and the NYSE and the outstanding common shares will be quoted ex-dividend from April 23, 2019.

Shareholders holding the Company's common shares on the record date that are traded on the NYSE will receive the dividend in U.S. dollars at the official USD/EUR exchange rate reported by the European Central Bank on April 17, 2019.

***

Concurrently with the AGM, the Company published its 2018 Sustainability Report. This Report was prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards, the main international framework for reporting on governance, environmental and social themes, and the AA1000 AccountAbility Principles Standard.

To view the 2018 Sustainability Report online, please visit the following link: www. cnhindustrial.com/2018_sustainability_report

CNH IndustrialN.V.

Media contact:

CNH Industrial Corporate Communications

Email: mediarelations@cnhind.com

Attachment
AEDAS Homes has entered the BTR market through a strategic alliance for the turnkey development of 500 units for rent across the Madrid region

This strategic alliance is through a fund managed by an affiliate of Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES), a leading global alternative asset manager

AEDAS Homes is the first Spanish listed homebuilder to sign an agreement under the BTR scheme. BTR is expected to capture a significant market share of the newly built housing market thanks to its strong benefits to developers and residential property platforms

MADRID, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- In April 2019, AEDAS Homes entered into a strategic alliance through a fund managed by an affiliate of Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) for the development of approximately 500 build-to-rent homes in four projects located in Madrid.

AEDAS Homes consolidates its positioning as a leading pure homebuilder-player in the Spanish market, securing and de-risking its Business Plan by accessing untapped demand of renters with no commercial risk.

The agreement will result in a 20% increase in the number of units launched to the market in 2019, bringing forward the launch of these projects 3 years and improving AEDAS Homes' cash flow, EBITDA visibility and overall de-risking AEDAS Business Plan. The Agreement will also improve the supply and demand dynamics of the Madrid rental residential market, favoring the rental housing offer of the municipalities where the projects will be developed..

David Martinez, the CEO of AEDAS Homes states that, "we have finalised this agreement at a moment in which the market is questioning the capacity of some residential to achieve their targets. At AEDAS Homes, we want to take this opportunity to confirm our Business Plan. This initiative will allow us to increase the number of units we launch onto the market this year by 20%, demonstrating the strength of our land bank and our management capacity."

Deloitte, Garrigues and CBRE have acted as advisors in the Transaction.

The first development

The first project signed, that AEDAS Homes will develop as part of this strategic alliance, will be built in Torrejon de Ardoz, one of the most active real estate markets in the Madrid region due to its large population and dynamic economy, forming part of the most significant logistics corridor in Spain. With planning permission already in place, the construction is scheduled to start next month, and the project is expected to be delivered in 2021.

A business opportunity

"This initiative is in addition to the projects we are planning to launch this year - it will accelerate our ramp-up phase and in turn, generate greater value for our shareholders by increasing the rate at which we turn over our assets," David Martinez explained. He pointed out that these types of developments make accessing housing easier - mainly for for young people - while meeting a growing demand for rental units and leading to greater market professionalism.

The CEO concluded by saying that, "given the concentration and location of our excellent land bank, we will explore further opportunities in the Build to Rent sector as long as the conditions bring value to our company. Any potential projects should not only improve our asset turnover and financial returns, but also must have development margins in line to what we would require from any new investment."

About AEDAS Homes

The developer AEDAS Homes became a listed company in Madrid on October 20, 2017, with a market capitalization of over 1.5 billion and is a leader in the nation's residential development industry. The company plays a key role in the new cycle of the Spanish real estate sector, which must be marked by professionalism and adherence to rigorous standards.

AEDAS Homes has the highest-quality land bank in Spain, according to analysts, since most of this land is classified as ready-to-build. The company has a portfolio with more than 1.8 million square meters to build over 15,000 homes in the nation's key real estate markets and economic centres, and their surrounding areas: the Centre, Catalonia, the East & Balearic Islands, Andalucia and Costa del Sol.

For more information:

https://www.aedashomes.com/en

AEDAS Homes corporate video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyf0TgNmyY

About Ares Management Corporation

Ares Management Corporation is a publicly traded, leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $131 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2018 and 18 offices in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Since its inception in 1997, Ares has adhered to a disciplined investment philosophy that focuses on delivering strong risk-adjusted investment returns throughout market cycles. Ares believes each of its three distinct but complementary investment groups in Credit, Private Equity and Real Estate is a market leader based on assets under management and investment performance. Ares was built upon the fundamental principle that each group benefits from being part of the greater whole. For more information, visit www.aresmgmt.com.

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ROCKVILLE, Maryland, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --Growing focus on efficient fuel management systems and digital disruption in finance industry drove fuel card transactions to over US$ 1 trillion in 2018, according to a new study by Fact.MR. Gains continue to be steady in 2019, with transaction value likely to grow at 6.5% in 2019.

According to the study, the fuel card market has been gaining steady growth on account of multipronged factors, notably increasing importance of fleet management and fuel management services. Stringent fuel efficiency laws and regulations are being imposed by governing bodies, which is influencing businesses to incorporate fuel management systems and limit their fuel consumption.

Request For Sample Report- https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=265

Trucking Industry Holds Significant Share in the Fuel Card Market

Fact.MR finds that undergoing digital transformation and environmental regulations have triggered adoption of fuel cards for optimizing fuel consumption among truck fleet operators. Fact.MR opines truck fleet operators currently account for nearly 70% transactional value of fuel cards globally.

Robust freight demand, triggered by the rapidly-growing e-commerce sector, has fueled the growth of the trucking industry around the world. As a result of increasing manufacturing output and discretionary spending, leading truck fleet operators have expanded in terms of fleet size and bulk fuel purchasing.

Fleet management teams have discovered the efficiency, simplicity, and productivity of fuel cards for accounting fuel expenses of the company. Leading players in the trucking industry are implementing digital fleet management systems, which involve the use of fuel cards, in order to improve profitability of their businesses. The study finds that digitization trend in the rapidly-expanding trucking industry has boosted the uptake of fuel cards, contributing to the burgeoning growth of the fuel card market.

Browse Full Report on Fuel Card Market with In-depth TOC- https://www.factmr.com/report/265/fuel-card-market

Shift to Electric Vehicles Likely to Induce Shifts in Status-Quo

Strict regulations to control harmful emissions and growing environmental concerns among consumers has accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles across the world. While most fuel cards are used for conventionally-fueled vehicles, the electrification of the automotive industry could pose critical challenges for fuel card market players.

However, leading stakeholders in the fuel card market have adopted strategies to leverage first-mover advantages by introducing a proprietary fuel card system that can be integrated with electric vehicle charging stations. With the implementation of next-generation technologies, large companies in the fuel card market are offering electric vehicle fleet cards. Innovative electric vehicle fuel cards can provide similar controls as conventional fuel cards to track when and where drivers are plugging in electric vehicles to be recharged.

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Offering High-level Payment Security Remains Focus for Market Players

The fuel card industry has cross the trillion dollar mark and market leaders have established their customer base of leading oil companies as well as large fleet management organizations. According to the Fact.MR study, commercial fleet holds around 87% of the revenue share of the fuel card market. Thereby, offering high-level security to fuel transactions made by fuel card has become the most important focus area for fuel card market players.

According to the study, market leaders are concentrating their efforts of making fuel card transaction smarter than before to offer more security and control to fleet managers over their fuel expenses. Top-tiered companies are aiming for efficient security assistance and other services to balance the simplicity of using fuel cards, in order to attract end-users from all the industrial sectors.

The Fact.MR report tracks developments in the fuel card market for the period 2018-2028. According to the report, the fuel card transactions are likely to grow at 6.8% CAGR through 2028.

To Buy Fuel Card Market Report, Check- https://www.factmr.com/checkout/265/S

Popular Retail Industry Market Reports from Fact.MR

Menswear Market- Fact.MR envisions the global menswear market to collect a US$540.4 bn by the end of 2022. Among demographics, the 26-35 segment could display a higher CAGR of 5.2% during the forecast period 2017-2022.

Footwear Market- Riding on the back of aforementioned trends, Fact.MR sees large promising avenues in the global footwear market and anticipates the market to rise at a CAGR of 4.5% during the forecast period of 2017-2022.

About Fact.MR

Fact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized retail industry market reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 12, 2019) - Miramont Resources Corp. (CSE: MONT) (OTCQB: MRRMF) (FSE: 6MR) ("Miramont" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has received final assays from its 3,679-meter diamond drill program at its Cerro Hermoso polymetallic project located in southern Peru. Results include 249 m of 0.68 gpt Au equivalent including 1.95 m of 28.4 gpt Au equivalent in hole CH-009 (please refer to a table of results below and a nearby plan map showing the location of drill holes).

Highlights:

Drilling tested three principal targets, the Central Breccia Zone (holes CH-004, CH-005, CH-006 and CH-009), the Stockwork Zone (holes CH-001, CH-002 and CH-003) and the Carbonate Replacement Zone (holes CH-007 and CH-008).

Significant mineralization was encountered in the Central Breccia Zone. Hole CH-009, drilled eastward, encountered 249 m of 0.68 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 103 m including 1.95 m of 28.4 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 153.55 m and a second interval of 59 m of 0.44 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 393.5 m and continuing to the end of the hole. Hole CH-005, situated approximately 100 m north of and parallel to CH-009, encountered 45 m of 0.58 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 378 m. Hole CH-006, situated approximately 250 m southeast of CH-009 and drilled westward, encountered 8.5 m of 2.97 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 308 m including 1.5 m of 15.69 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 315 m. Collectively, holes CH-009, CH-005 and CH-006 demonstrate the presence of a mineralized system within the diatreme that appears open to the northeast, east and southeast under an area of post-mineral cover. The eastern margin of the diatreme lies approximately 600 m beyond the end of these two holes, leaving considerable room for further exploration. A large, sub-surface magnetic feature situated approximately 400 m northeast of hole CH-009 may be an intrusion, potentially related to mineralization.

Holes CH-001, CH-002 and CH-003 in the Stockwork Zone encountered narrow intervals of anomalous mineralization. Miramont sees limited potential for broader zones of mineralization in this area. Similar short intervals of anomalous mineralization were encountered in holes CH-007 and CH-008 targeting the Carbonate Replacement Zone, indicating limited potential in this area.

Miramont is currently undertaking a thorough review of results from drilling at Cerro Hermoso with the intent of determining the best path forward.

Dr. Quinton Hennigh, Miramont's Chairman said: "First pass drilling has confirmed the presence of a large mineralized system at Cerro Hermoso. Mineralization within the Central Breccia Zone appears open to the northeast, east and southeast as well as at depth. A nearby magnetic anomaly suggests the system is driven by a buried intrusion. Over the coming weeks we plan to compile, review and interpret all data from the latest program."

The table below presents anomalous intercepts in all nine diamond drill holes completed at Cerro Hermoso. Some intercepts from holes CH-001 through CH-006 were previously reported in a news release dated March 28, 2019.

Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length

(m) Au (gpt) Ag (gpt) Zn (%) Pb (%) Cu (%) Au eq

(gpt) CH-001 31.80 35.30 3.50 0.02 8.5 0.03 0.12 0.12 0.39 CH-002 2.40 5.20 2.80 0.01 39.2 0.05 0.05 0.03 0.60 CH-003 1.30 3.30 2.00 <0.01 67.7 0.06 0.17 0.01 0.97

32.90 34.10 1.20 0.02 7.3 0.05 0.33 0.07 0.41

107.00 111.00 4.00 <0.01 21.3 0.13 0.06 0.01 0.40 CH-004 17.00 51.00 34.00 0.05 4.2 0.07 0.04 0.01 0.18

121.00 125.00 4.00 0.88 3.4 0.16 0.40 0.02 1.25

141.80 143.70 1.90 0.11 216.6 0.04 0.01 0.01 2.82

156.70 159.60 2.90 1.15 3.1 0.10 0.16 0.03 1.38 CH-005 35.00 39.00 4.00 0.19 3.7 0.09 0.06 <0.01 0.33

73.00 75.00 2.00 0.47 1.2 0.06 0.07 <0.01 0.56

95.00 105.00 10.00 0.19 0.9 0.10 0.05 0.01 0.31

129.00 133.00 4.00 0.15 0.9 0.21 0.08 0.01 0.36

174.50 178.50 4.00 0.01 0.6 0.07 0.17 <0.01 0.15

228.00 232.00 4.00 0.11 0.9 0.15 0.08 0.01 0.28

256.00 262.00 6.00 0.05 1.5 0.15 0.08 <0.01 0.21

378.00 423.00 45.00 0.03 1.5 0.40 0.48 0.02 0.58 CH-006 34.00 36.00 2.00 0.13 10.4 0.11 0.11 0.02 0.42

96.40 98.00 1.60 0.14 110.0 0.16 0.27 0.04 1.79

308.00 316.50 8.50 2.74 1.4 0.14 0.17 0.02 2.97 includes 315.00 316.50 1.50 14.75 6.1 0.61 0.58 0.11 15.69 CH-007 125.80 172.00 46.20 0.02 0.5 0.10 0.05 <0.01 0.12

184.00 190.00 6.00 0.02 <0.5 0.32 0.11 <0.01 0.30

200.00 202.15 2.15 0.36 1.4 0.04 0.02 0.13 0.62

265.70 267.70 2.00 0.33 2.6 0.40 0.67 0.05 1.03 CH-008 90.20 91.80 1.60 0.56 56.3 0.04 0.03 0.02 1.33

134.80 136.00 1.20 0.22 350.0 0.16 0.30 0.36 5.33 CH-009 21.80 85.00 63.20 0.18 2.0 0.12 0.08 0.01 0.34

103.00 352.00 249.00 0.26 6.2 0.34 0.17 0.02 0.68 includes 153.55 155.50 1.95 17.65 658.0 1.11 1.22 1.04 28.70

393.50 452.50* 59.00 0.02 1.1 0.37 0.29 0.01 0.44

* End of hole

Au eq calculated using 81.25 gpt Ag = 1 gpt Au, 1.4237% Zn = 1 gpt Au, 2.1518% Pb = 1 gpt Au, 0.6485% Cu = 1 gpt Au)

Analytic Protocols and QA/QC

Assays were completed first by SGS and then by ALS Laboratories in Peru. Future samples will be analyzed by ALS as primary laboratory. Miramont follows rigorous sampling and analytical protocols that meet industry standards. Core samples are stored in a secured area until transport in batches to either SGS or ALS prep labs in Arequipa, Peru. Sample batches include certified reference materials, blanks, and duplicate samples are then processed under the control of ALS or SGS. ALS samples are analyzed using the ME-ICP61 (a technique that provides a comprehensive multi-element overview of the rock geochemistry), while gold is analyzed by AA24 and GRA22 when values exceed 10 gpt. Over limit silver, copper, lead and zinc are analyzed using the OG-62 procedure. SGS samples are analyzed using the ICP 40B method while gold is analyzed by FAA515. Over limit silver, copper, lead and zinc are analyzed using the AAS41B procedure.

National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Quinton Hennigh, P.Geo., Chairman of Miramont and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Miramont Resources Corp.

Miramont is a Canadian based exploration company with a focus on acquiring and developing mineral prospects within world-class belts of South America. Miramont's two key projects are Cerro Hermoso and Lukkacha, both located in southern Peru. Cerro Hermoso is a diatreme-hosted copper dominant polymetallic prospect. Lukkacha is a classic copper-porphyry prospect.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

MIRAMONT RESOURCES CORP.

"Quinton Hennigh"

Quinton Hennigh, Chairman

For more information, please contact the Company at:

Telephone: (604) 398-4493

Facsimile: (604) 815-0770

info@miramontresources.com

www.miramontresources.com

Reader Advisory

This news release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, fluctuations in market prices, successes of the operations of the Company, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such information will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required under the applicable securities laws.

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.





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Meet OKEx at Paris Blockchain Week on 16-17 April

VALLETTA, Malta, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- OKEx, a Malta-based world-leading digital asset exchange, announced the launch of Euro (EUR), Turkish Lira (TRY), and Russian Ruble (RUB) markets on its C2C fiat-to-token trading platform. In view of the great demand for digital asset trading around the world, OKEx is set to fulfill the role of the trailblazer in driving mass adoption of digital assets globally. Investors in Europe can now enjoy additional options for trading digital assets with fiat currencies. When trading on OKEx, they will be able to enjoy a comprehensive range of trading services, including C2C, spot, margin, and derivatives, with unparalleled convenience and security at one stop.

"We strive for building a robust crypto ecosystem, that's why we will never stop expanding and pushing crypto adoption forward. We are so thrilled about the expansion as our C2C platform is fostering the buying and selling of digital assets across Europe with the newly supported currencies," said Andy Cheung, Head of Operations of OKEx. "This is a big step forward. Given the recent Bitcoin price rally, the whole crypto market is giving a strong signal. We have good faith in the growth and development of blockchain technology under this bullish trend."

New Currencies - Euro, Turkish Lira and Russian Ruble added to C2C Trading

Euro (EUR), Turkish Lira (TRY) and Russian Ruble (RUB) markets are now available on OKEx C2C platform. Users can now place orders with self-selected exchange rates and payment methods to buy or sell Virtual Financial Assets with fiat currencies, enjoying a low-volatility market and zero transaction fee*. OKEx C2C trading service has been one of the most popular offerings. It offers a decentralized platform for the buying and selling of Bitcoin (BTC), Tether (USDT), Ethereum (ETH), and Litecoin (LTC). To trade on the C2C platform, users have to complete a few simple steps, including KYC level 1 verification, as well as linking a valid local bank account and a mobile number.

In order to enhance the user experience, OKEx now offers multi-lingual support with currently ten different languages - English, Turkish, Deutsch, Traditional Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Thai, Vietnamese and Indonesian - on its website.

Global Recruitment of C2C Designated Merchants

For digital asset beginners, C2C trading is an ideal platform for them to tap into the digital asset market. For professional users, a designated merchant program is specifically designed for them with exclusive privileges, including:

Traffic incline: Traffic inclined from OKEx's trading platform and other official channels

Private customer support: exclusive customer support for merchants

Premium label: An exclusive "V" label on the username to indicate high credibility

Diverse privileges: Support for a wide array of trading services, advertising opportunities, and flexible trading services

Priority display on order books

Ability to freely set filters for counterparties

For more information about Global Recruitment of C2C Designated Merchants, please visit here.

To learn more about OKEx C2C Trading, please visit here .

*Except for CNY market

About OKEx

OKEx is a world-leading digital asset exchange headquartered in Malta, offering comprehensive digital assets trading services including token trading, futures trading, perpetual swap trading and index tracker to global traders with blockchain technology. Currently, the exchange offers over 400 token and futures trading pairs enabling users to optimize their strategies. The platform provides a safe, reliable, and stable environment for digital asset trading, serving millions of customers from over 200 countries and regions.

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FREMONT, California, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a new market intelligence report by BIS Research, titled "Global Next-Generation Sequencing Market - Analysis and Forecast, 2018-2024", the global next-generation sequencing (NGS) market was valued at $4.25 billion in 2017, and is projected to grow over $9.92 billion by 2024. The global next-generation sequencing market is expected to grow at a significant CAGR of 13.18% during the forecast period from 2019 to 2024. The growth is aided by the impressive development in the field of non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT), companion diagnostics (CDx), liquid biopsy, and precision medicine.

BIS Research event: Webinar on Precision Medicine on April 30, 2019

BIS Research is conducting a webinar on Advancing Precision Medicine through Informatics on 30th April 2019 at 1:30 PM to 2:00 PM PDT with Simon Lee, chief commercial officer at Jintel Health, a precision medicine platform headquartered in the U.S., as the guest speaker. Jintel Health applies advanced analytics and machine learning on large clinical and genomic datasets, to enable precision medicine. The webinar aims at identifying and analyzing the current trends in the precision medicine market and addressing the advancements occurring in health informatics. Some of the key points to be highlighted in the webinar are recent advancements in health informatics, key elements of informatics in precision medicine, business impact of data integration and informatics, and informatic strategies that are leading to success in precision medicine.

Webinar Registration: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/4315547886513/WN_VJO9WZBCQVGjhoSpKiObQA

In 2018, the U.S. Congress approved the allocation of additional $2 billion for the National Institutes of Health's (NIH's) annual budget for 2019. This allocation includes a $86 million fund for research on precision medicine. The recent success of NIPT, liquid biopsy, and CDx, along with their increasing demand, has propelled the growth in the number of research studies undertaken for discovery of biomarkers. Further, this growth in demand has enticed several investments aimed at the development of new non-invasive methods of diagnosis. Both the physicians and patients, globally, have acknowledged the potential of the non-invasive methods and have started adopting them with complete confidence. Next-generation sequencing is the future of DNA research, and the applications of this technology have the potential for enhancing individualized patient care.

Browse 30 market Data Tables and 174 Figures spread through 287 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Global Next-Generation Sequencing Market"

Some of the most significant advancements have been made in the quality and quantity of the genomic data generated through NGS. The advancements achieved with regard to the quality of the data generated through NGS have enhanced the depth of the information which can be derived on a patient's unique genotype. Hence, NGS creates an opportunity to expand the understanding of biomedicine, reshape clinical care, and improve human health. Initiatives such as National Cancer Moonshoot and Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), taken by the U.S. are prominent steps toward promoting precision medicine.

Sequencing is an important and unavoidable phase in the development of the diagnostic methods. Its benefits have increased the demand for sequencing methods and has positively impacted the growth of the NGS market. The diagnostic procedures, which were initially based on the PCR technologies, are now experiencing a shift toward the NGS technologies due to their abilities such as massive parallel sequencing and high accuracy. Growing demand for non-invasive diagnostic methods and developments of disruptive technologies enabling non-invasive diagnosis, are bolstering the growth of the global next-generation sequencing market. Apart from the investments from conglomerate companies, many government organizations are also contributing significantly to the research on non-invasive methods.

According to Pushplata Patel, an analyst at BIS Research "North America is the leading contributor to the global next-generation sequencing market. Its contribution to the global market has been estimated to be more than 48% in 2018. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at an impressive CAGR of 17.25% during the forecast period from 2019 to 2024. Currently, the Asia-Pacific market is estimated to contribute approximately 18.95% of total global market value."

BIS Research Report: https://bisresearch.com/industry-report/next-generation-sequencing-market.html

Research Highlights:

South Korea is anticipated to witness a high growth in the demand for NGS products during the forecast period.

is anticipated to witness a high growth in the demand for NGS products during the forecast period. Currently, the pharmaceutical field is acknowledged to be the major contributor to the global next-generation sequencing market and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13.22% during the forecast period.

The commercialization of portable technologies in the near future is expected to disrupt the dynamics of the market. The key players of the market are improvising their product portfolio to handle the shift in the dynamics of the market.

The next-generation sequencing software segment is expected to witness a robust CAGR of 23.25% during the forecast period.

This market intelligence report provides a multidimensional view of the global NGS market in terms of market size and growth potential. This research report aims at answering various aspects of the global NGS market with the help of key factors driving the market, threats that can possibly inhibit the overall market growth, and the current growth opportunities that are going to shape the future trajectory of the market expansion.

Request for a Sample: https://bisresearch.com/requestsample?id=668&type=download

Furthermore, the competitive landscape chapter in the report explicates the competitive nature of the global market and enables the reader to get acquainted with the recent market activities, such as product launches, regulatory clearance, and certifications, partnerships, collaborations, business expansions as well as mergers and acquisitions, among others. The research report provides a comprehensive analysis of the product sales and manufacturers, trend analysis by segments and demand analysis by geographical regions.

This report is a meticulous compilation of research on more than 70 players in the market ecosystem and draws upon insights from in-depth interviews with the key opinion leaders of more than 20 leading companies, market participants, and vendors. The report also profiles 15 key companies, namely 10x Genomics, Agilent Technologies, Inc., bioMerieux SA, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Inc., Danaher Corporation, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, GenapSys, Inc., Illumina, Inc., New England Biolabs, Inc., NuGEN Technologies Inc., Oxford Nanopore Technologies Limited, Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc., PerkinElmer, Inc., QIAGEN, and Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Key questions answered in the report:

What are the major market drivers, challenges, and opportunities in the global NGS market?

How did the NGS market evolve and what is its scope in the future?

How are the sub-segments such as instruments, kits and consumables, and software of the product type segment of the global next-generation sequencing market expected to grow during the forecast period?

How are the sub-segments such as reversible terminator sequencing, ion torrent semiconductor sequencing, single molecule real time sequencing (SMRT), nanopore sequencing technology, and others of the technology segment of the global next-generation sequencing market expected to grow during the forecast period?

How are the sub-segments such as pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, agricultural and animal research, forensics, and others of the application segment of the global next-generation sequencing market expected to grow during the forecast period?

Which region among the North America , Europe , Asia-Pacific , Latin America , and Rest-of-the-World is expected to lead the market during the forecast period from 2018- 2024?

, , , , and Rest-of-the-World is expected to lead the market during the forecast period from 2018- 2024? What are the influencing factors that may affect the market share of the key players?

What is the influential stake held by the sequencing technology providers in the global NGS market?

What is expected to be the impact of commercialization of the portable sequencers on global healthcare industry?

What are the required features for an instrument to make $100 per genome sequencing a reality?

per genome sequencing a reality? What is the industry's best value chain practice?

Which are the leading raw material providers to the players offering NGS kits and consumables?

Which are the key service providers of the NGS market?

What is the funding scenario for the emerging companies that are investing substantial amount into the development of propitious technologies or products for bringing forth the evolution of the NGS market?

Related Reports:

Global Liquid Biopsy Market - Analysis and Forecast, 2018-2028

Global Companion Diagnostics (CDx) Market - Analysis and Forecast, 2018-2025

Global Molecular Diagnostics Market - Analysis and Forecast, 2018-2028

Global Precision Medicine Market - Analysis and Forecast, 2018-2028

About BIS Research:

BIS Research is a global B2B market intelligence and advisory firm focusing on those emerging technological trends which are likely to disrupt the dynamics of the market.

With over 150 market research reports published annually, BIS Research focuses on high technology verticals such as 3D Printing, Advanced Materials and Chemicals, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Healthcare, Electronics and Semiconductors, Robotics and UAV, and other emerging technologies.

Our in-depth market intelligence reports focus on the market estimations, technology analysis, emerging high-growth applications, deeply segmented granular country-level market data, and other important market parameters useful in the strategic decision-making for senior management.

What distinguishes BIS Research from the rest of the players is that we don't simply provide data but also complement it with valuable insights and actionable inputs for the success of our clients.

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Photo: RDKB An aerial shot of flooded Grand Forks in spring 2018.

South Okanagan-West Kootenay MP Richard Cannings spoke passionately in the House of Commons Thursday in support of increased federal disaster aide to help areas in his riding that have been hard-hit by floods in recent years.

He used the example of Grand Forks, painting a picture of the city that saw record flooding and widespread damage.

"Much of the historic downtown of Grand Forks was under water, and whole neighbourhoods were inundated," Cannings said. "About 3,000 people were forced to flee their homes, about 1,500 buildings were evacuated throughout the regional district and more than 500 were damaged. Many remain empty today."

Grand Forks is working on an infrastructure plan covering multiple years to make their community more resilient to flooding, spending its own money and getting help from the Province of B.C.

"However, local residents and agencies are relying on the federal government for a major part of the funding, primarily through an application to the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. Without this funding, the future

will be very difficult and uncertain for Grand Forks and the surrounding region," Caninngs said.

Karen McCrimmon, parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, offered sympathy to those in the flooded regions, and said the federal government is working on relief for the 2018 flood season.

"Public Safety Canada is working closely with provincial officials to help Grand Forks and the other communities recover from the recent flooding as quickly as possible," she said.

Cannings said recovery is helpful, but that funding should be put in place to help communities ensure devastating floods don't happen again.

"We also encourage efforts in federal-provincial agreements under Public Safety Canada to support the delivery of permanent solutions such as land acquisition immediately following flooding disasters," Cannings said. "We are all waiting to hear that the federal government will bring that better future to Boundary Country."

McCrimmon said the federal government is "moving forward" with these kinds of initiatives.
ALBANY, New York, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The competitive landscape in the global refinery catalysts market is extremely consolidated, reports Transparency Market Research (TMR). However, the market depicts a highly organized competitive dynamics due to the active participation of a handful of leading players. ExxonMobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Sinopec corp., and Royal Dutch Shell Plc are the top four companies in the global refinery catalysts market.

In this highly consolidated landscape, prominent players are scattered across the globe, especially in many regional markets. These companies have substantial clout over the refinery catalysts market, thanks to their huge product portfolios. They are launching innovative products for catering to a wide range of consumers. On the other side, many small-scale vendors in the global refinery catalysts market benefit from emerging lucrative opportunities. To this end, they intend to collaborate with top players for recalibrating their strategies, and tap into new revenue streams. Topmost companies are focusing on incorporating advanced technologies into their current offerings in order to accentuate their footprint in the refinery catalysts market.

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According to TMR experts' estimation, the global refinery catalysts market is expected to attain revenue worth US$17.0 bn by the end of 2024. The market was valued at US$11.4 bn in 2015. The growth of the market is prophesized to occur at a CAGR of 4.60% during the assessment period from 2016 to 2024.

Among various types of materials, the cobalt nickel segment accounts for the maximum share in the market. This is due to their increased usage as a primary material for removing unwanted impurities from petrol and diesel. On the regional front, Asia Pacific is expected to continue its dominance in the global refinery catalysts market throughout the assessment period due to the increased demand for transportation fuels.

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Governments' Strict Regulations in Controlling Vehicular Emissions Stoke Demand

Refinery catalysts are mainly used by various petroleum refineries and are highly utilized in cracking process. Such catalysts are key determinants of rates of the chemical processes that convert the refined petroleum products to numerous liquid products such as gasoline, diesel, and kerosene. These end products are often called as reformates. The growth of the global refinery catalysts market is majorly fueled by the soaring demand for transportation fuels, which boosts the consumption rate of refinery catalysts. Moreover, rising demand for refined products has also led the global refinery catalysts market to witness a significant growth.

Furthermore, growing governments' approach in setting norms in regulating the vehicular emissions acts as a key factor behind the substantial growth of the global refinery catalysts market. This is because of the refinery catalysts' role in increasing the sweet fuel production, which results in lowering the sulfur quantity. This lesser quantity of sulfur production highly impacts the environment in a positive way. Thus, such advantage is another factor propelling expansion in the global refinery catalysts market.

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Under-usage of Refining Products May Hamper Market's Growth

Refining products are not highly being used in many developed economies such as Europe. Thus, the under-usage of a wide array of refining products in such economies is a major concern in the global refinery catalysts market, and it is likely to its growth. Nonetheless, rapid implementation of governments' norms in emission control across various developing economies, including those in Europe as well as emerging economies such as India and China, is expected to provide impetus to the global refinery catalysts market in coming years.

The review is based on a market research report by TMR, titled, "Refinery Catalysts Market ( Material Type - Zeolites, Molybdenum, Cobalt, Nickel; Physical Form - Powders, Beads and Extrudates; Refining Unit - Fluid Catalytic Cracking Unit, Hydrocracking Unit, H-Oil Unit, Hydro treating Unit, Catalytic Cracking Unit, Alkylation Unit) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2016 - 2024".

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The segmentation of global refinery catalysts market is based on:

Refining Unit

Fluid Catalytic Cracking

Hydrocracking

H-Oil

Hydrotreating

Catalytic Reforming

Alkylation

Material

Zeolites

Molybdenum

Cobalt

Nickel

Others (including platinum, etc.)

Physical Form

Powders

Beads

Extrudates

Region

North America

U.S.



Canada



Europe

Germany



France



Italy



Spain



U.K.



Rest of Europe



Asia Pacific

China



India



ASEAN



Rest of Asia Pacific



Middle East & Africa

GCC



Nigeria



Rest of Middle East & Africa



& Latin America

Brazil



Mexico



Rest of Latin America

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https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/refinery-process-additives-market.html Petroleum Coke Market: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/petroleum-coke-market.html

https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/petroleum-coke-market.html Refinery Service & Maintenance Market: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/refinery-service-maintenance-market.html

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HARLOW, England, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Haag-Streit UK (HS-UK), the leading manufacturer and distributor of gold-standard optometry and ophthalmic equipment, is pleased to have supported The Royal College of Ophthalmologists (RCOphth) on a recent initiative to move the FRCOphth Part 2 Oral Examinations to independent venues.

With NHS hospitals under increasing pressure, the RCOphth made a decision to move the FRCOphth Part 2 Oral Examination away from a clinical setting to minimise the impact on NHS eye clinics. The use of external locations led to the College's need to purchase a range of ophthalmic equipment for students to utilise during the exams.

HS-UK supplied the College with everything they needed for students to complete their exams, including six new Haag-Streit BI 900 LED slit lamps. HS-UK was also very pleased to be able to donate four refurbished BQ 900 LED slit lamps, to allow the College to acquire sufficient equipment for their initiative, within budget.

Alongside the slit lamps, HS-UK also supplied a range of supplementary testing items, including; ophthalmic lenses, test charts, ophthalmoscopes and retinoscopes.

The equipment will primarily be used to facilitate the FRCOphth Part 2 Oral Examinations, which happen in April and November every year. The exam is one of four that trainee ophthalmologists need to pass in order to achieve the Fellowship of The Royal College of Ophthalmologists.

Grahame Wood, HS-UK National Sales Manager, said, "We were delighted to be able to partner with The Royal College of Ophthalmologists on this important project. It was a fantastic opportunity for HS-UK to work alongside the College, assist with the delivery of the exams, and to support the next generation of ophthalmologists."

Dylan Costello, Head of Examinations, The Royal College of Ophthalmologists, said "This move has been a great opportunity for the RCOphth to invest in the latest, state-of-the-art equipment for examination candidates to use, providing them with an improved experience."

Dylan continued, "By using an industry leader, such as Haag-Streit UK, we can ensure that examination candidates have access to the best equipment available, therefore continuing to deliver an important and robust examination for the consultant ophthalmologists of the future."

For further information on this project or any of the HS-UK product portfolio, please call (01279) 883807 or email info@haag-streit-uk.com.

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BENGALURU, India, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- "We have completed the first year of our transformation journey with strong results on multiple dimensions including revenue growth, performance of our digital portfolio, large deal wins, and client metrics. This is a reflection of our increased client relevance stemming from our focus on digital, positioning, and long-standing client relationships," said Salil Parekh, CEO and MD. "Our planned investments have started yielding benefits. As we look ahead into fiscal 2020, we plan to deploy various measures of operational efficiencies across the business."

41.1% YoY

33.8% FY

Digital CC growth





11.7% YoY

9.0% FY

CC growth





21.5% Q4

22.8% FY

Operating margin





2.1% CC

2.4% Reported

QoQ growth



$1.57Bn Q4

$6.28Bn FY

Large deal signings

FY 19 revenues grew by 7.9% in USD; 9.0% in constant currency

FY 19 operating margin at 22.8%

Q4 19 revenues grew year-on-year by 9.1% in USD; 11.7% in constant currency

Q4 19 revenues grew sequentially by 2.4% in USD; 2.1% in constant currency

Q4 19 Digital revenues at $1,035 million (33.8% of total revenues), year-on-year growth of 41.1% and sequential growth of 9.7% in constant currency

(33.8% of total revenues), year-on-year growth of 41.1% and sequential growth of 9.7% in constant currency Announces final dividend of INR 10.50 per share

FY 20 revenue guidance in the range of 7.5%-9.5% in constant currency

FY 20 Operating margin guidance in the range of 21%-23%

1.Financial Highlights -Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

For the Quarter ended March 31, 2019

Revenues were $3,060 million, growth of 9.1% YoY and 2.4% QoQ



Operating profit was $658 million, decline of 5.1% YoY and 2.6% QoQ#



Basic EPS was $0.13, growth of 1.6% YoY and 15.5% QoQ

For the Year ended March 31, 2019

Revenues were $11,799 million, growth of 7.9% YoY



Operating profit was $2,696 million, growth of 1.4% YoY



Basic EPS was $0.51, decline of 8.2% YoY*@

# Includes additional depreciation and amortization expenses of $12 million for Panaya and Skava for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.

* Includes reduction in fair value and carrying value of Panaya and Skava, respectively which resulted in reduction in EPS by $0.02

@ Includes impact on account of conclusion of an APA with the US IRS which has led to increase in EPS of $0.05 for the year ended March 31, 2018.

"We had another quarter of over $1.5 bn large deal TCV in Q4, as a result of which FY 19 TCV doubled over FY 18. Realization per billed employee was steady which reflects increasing usage of automation in core services and faster growth in newer digital services," said Pravin Rao, COO. "Overall attrition remains high and we are continuing our focus on arresting the same."

"Cash generation in FY 19 was strong and Dividend Per Share increased by 4.5%. During the quarter, we completed the payout of special dividend in January and initiated the share buyback program," said Nilanjan Roy, CFO. "We had another quarter of forex gains thanks to our proactive hedging strategy."

2.Capital Allocation

During Q4 19, completed payment of special dividend of INR 4 per share announced in January, 2019.

Initiated buyback from March 20, 2019 after receiving all requisite approvals. Out of total buyback size of INR 8,260 crore , the company has bought back shares worth INR 1,546 crore so far.

after receiving all requisite approvals. Out of total buyback size of INR , the company has bought back shares worth INR so far. For the Financial Year 2019, the Board has recommended a final dividend of INR 10.50 per share ( $0.15 per ADR*). After including the interim dividend of INR7 per share, the total dividend for Financial Year 2019 will amount to INR17.50 per share.

*US$1 = INR 69.16 as at March 31, 2019

3.Client wins & Testimonials

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE), a world leader and a pioneer in the renewable energy industry, has signed a seven-year global partnership with Infosys to enable an end-to-end IT Transformation program towards a digital future and industry leadership.

Alan Feeley, SGRE CIO, said, "Infrastructure & applications outsourcing deals are the norm in our business worlds already today. When considering our (SGRE) desired IT operating model for the future, we were looking for a partner that brings a careful balance of innovation, operational excellence and sustainable commercial viability. With Infosys, we are very confident that these attributes were at the core of their operating culture. We are very excited to partner with Infosys on this journey of modernization and were impressed by Infosys Next Generation Application & Infrastructure Management Framework, their agility & focus on delivery excellence, and a clear understanding of our business strategy."

With a vision to provide safe and reliable utility services and improve the customer service of about 800,000 people in the Indianapolis area, Citizens will transform its customer service by leveraging 'Infosys Preconfigured Accelerator for Customer Experience (PACE)', an industry leading framework tuned for Oracle Utilities Customer to Meter (C2M) platform.

Curtis Popp, Vice President of Customer Operations at Citizens Energy Group, said, "At Citizens Energy Group, we're excited to be working with Infosys and Oracle to implement a new CIS and accomplish our strategic goals, including improved customer satisfaction and employee engagement. The experience and expertise of Infosys employees is paramount to the success of this complex project."

Kraft Heinz has selected Infosys to deliver rich digital experience for their recipes and brands to their consumers.

"Kraft Heinz has partnered with Infosys to launch new capabilities delivering rich consumer experience. We are becoming more relevant to our consumers by enabling capabilities like Shoppable Recipes, Rich Brand Experience, Personalized Recommendations, Seamless Social Media Integration. We are just getting started.," said,Leandro Balbinot, CIO Global Digital Growth, Kraft Heinz Company.

"Movement Mortgage is committed to providing loan officers, real estate agents and our borrowers with technology and a digital infrastructure that delivers an innovative, user-friendly experience on every platform and in every channel, both today and in the future. We're pleased to have selected Infosys as our strategic partner across these key business functions. Infosys' expertise in Digital Transformation, Cloud Technologies and Mortgage and Retail Lending will help Movement continue to spearhead industrywide transformation that improves the mortgage experience for everyone and makes the dream of homeownership more accessible than ever before," said Casey Crawford , CEO, Movement Mortgage



is committed to providing loan officers, real estate agents and our borrowers with technology and a digital infrastructure that delivers an innovative, user-friendly experience on every platform and in every channel, both today and in the future. We're pleased to have selected Infosys as our strategic partner across these key business functions. Infosys' expertise in Digital Transformation, Cloud Technologies and Mortgage and Retail Lending will help Movement continue to spearhead industrywide transformation that improves the mortgage experience for everyone and makes the dream of homeownership more accessible than ever before," "In partnership with Infosys, we are modernizing our collection processes with real-time insights into delinquency rates, better risk segmentations and customized contact & calling strategies." said Julie Signorille , Consumer Banking, Chief Operating Officer, Citizens Bank.

Recognition:

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Healthcare Services 2019

Infosys positioned as a leader in SAP HANA and S/4 HANA Services - NEAT 2019

Infosys positioned as a leader in RPA & AI in Banking - NEAT 2019

Infosys positioned in Customer Experience (CX) Shortlist (Constellation ShortList Global Customer Experience (CX) Services)

Infosys positioned as a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Professional and Managed Services, Worldwide

Infosys positioned as a leader in Advanced Digital Workplace Services - NEAT 2019

Infosys Lex Wingspan shortlisted in Constellation ShortList Learning Marketplaces for Q1 2019

Infosys positioned as a leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide IT Service Management Implementation Services 2019 Vendor Assessment

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 High-tech sector service providers

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Microsoft AI Services 2019

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Enterprise Blockchain Services 2018

About Infosys

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements mentioned in this release concerning our future growth prospects and our future business expectations are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Audited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet as at

(Dollars in millions except equity share data)



March 31, 2019 March 31, 2018 ASSETS



Current assets



Cash and cash equivalents 2,829 3,041 Current investments 958 982 Trade receivables 2,144 2,016 Unbilled revenue 777 654 Prepayments and other current assets 827 662 Income tax assets 61 - Derivative financial instruments 48 2

7,644 7,357 Assets held for sale(A3)(A4) - 316 Total current assets 7,644 7,673 Non-current assets



Property, plant and equipment 1,931 1,863 Goodwill 512 339 Intangible assets 100 38 Investment in associate - - Non-current investments 670 883 Deferred income tax assets 199 196 Income tax assets 914 931 Other non-current assets 282 332 Total non-current assets 4,608 4,582 Total assets 12,252 12,255 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY



Current liabilities



Trade payables 239 107 Derivative financial instruments 2 6 Current income tax liabilities 227 314 Client deposits 4 6 Unearned revenue 406 352 Employee benefit obligations 234 218 Provisions 83 75 Other current liabilities 1,498 1,036

2,693 2,114 Liabilities directly associated with assets held for sale(A3)(A4) - 50 Total current liabilities 2,693 2,164 Non-current liabilities



Deferred income tax liabilities 98 82 Employee benefit obligations 6 7 Other non-current liabilities 55 42 Total liabilities 2,852 2,295 Equity



Share capital- INR 5 ($0.16) par value 4,800,000,000 (2,400,000,000) equity shares authorized, issued and outstanding 4,335,954,462 (2,173,312,301), net of 20,324,982 (10,801,956) treasury shares as at March 31, 2019 (March 31, 2018), respectively 339 190 Share premium 277 247 Retained earnings 11,248 11,587 Cash flow hedge reserve 3 - Other reserves 384 244 Capital redemption reserve 10 9 Other components of equity (2,870) (2,317) Total equity attributable to equity holders of the company 9,391 9,960 Non-controlling interests 9 - Total equity 9,400 9,960 Total liabilities and equity 12,252 12,255

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Audited Condensed Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income for the



(Dollars in millions except equity share and per equity share data)



Three months ended March 31, 2019 Three months ended March 31, 2018 Year ended March 31, 2019 Year ended March 31, 2018 Revenues 3,060 2,805 11,799 10,939 Cost of sales 2,028 1,793 7,687 7,001 Gross profit 1,032 1,012 4,112 3,938 Operating expenses







Selling and marketing expenses 174 147 638 552 Administrative expenses 200 172 778 727 Total operating expenses 374 319 1,416 1,279 Operating profit 658 693 2,696 2,659 Other income, net(B3) 94 100 411 513 Reduction in the fair value of Disposal Group held for sale(A3) - (18) (39) (18) Adjustment in respect of excess of carrying amount over recoverable amount on reclassification from "Held for Sale"(A4) - - (65) - Share in net profit/(loss) of associate, including impairment(A2) - - - (11) Profit before income taxes 752 775 3,003 3,143 Income tax expense(A1)(B4) 171 204 803 657 Net profit 581 571 2,200 2,486 Other comprehensive income







Items that will not be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:







Re-measurements of the net defined benefit liability/asset, net - 6 (3) 9 Equity instruments through other comprehensive income, net - 1 10 1 Items that will be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:







Fair valuation of investments, net 3 (2) - - Fair value changes on derivatives designated as cash flow hedge, net (2) - 3 (6) Foreign currency translation 74 (164) (560) 18 Total other comprehensive income/(loss), net of tax 75 (159) (550) 22 Total comprehensive income 656 412 1,650 2,508









Profit attributable to:







Owners of the Company 580 571 2,199 2,486 Non-controlling interests 1 - 1 -

581 571 2,200 2,486 Total comprehensive income attributable to:







Owners of the Company 655 412 1,649 2,508 Non-controlling interests 1 - 1 -

656 412 1,650 2,508 Earnings per equity share(A1) (A5)







Basic ($) 0.13 0.13 0.51 0.55 Diluted ($) 0.13 0.13 0.51 0.55 Weighted average equity shares used in computing earnings per equity share(A5)







Basic 4,347,129,592 4,346,554,120 4,347,130,157 4,510,664,644 Diluted 4,353,023,863 4,349,617,024 4,353,420,772 4,515,147,740

NOTES:

A. Notes pertaining to previous quarters / periods

During the quarter ended December 31, 2017 , on account of the conclusion of an Advance Pricing Agreement ("APA") with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service ("IRS"), the Company has reversed income tax expense provision of $225 million which pertains to previous periods. During the year ended March 31, 2018 , the Company has written down the entire carrying value of $11 million in its associate DWA Nova LLC. In the three months ended March 2018 , Kallidus and Skava (together referred to as "Skava") and Panaya, were classified as "Held for Sale" resulting in a reduction in the fair value amounting to $18 million and $39 million in respect of Panaya for the year ended March 31, 2018 and three months ended June 30, 2018 , respectively. During the three months ended December 31, 2018 , the Company declassified Panaya and Skava from "Held for Sale" and recognized an adjustment in respect of excess of carrying amount over recoverable amount of $65 million in respect of Skava during the year ended March 31, 2019 . Share numbers and EPS have been adjusted for September 2018 bonus issue.

B. Notes pertaining to the current quarter

The audited condensed consolidated Balance sheet and Statement of Comprehensive Income for the three months and year ended March 31, 2019 have been taken on record at the Board meeting held on April 12, 2019 . A Fact Sheet providing the operating metrics of the Company can be downloaded from www.infosys.com. Other income includes $7 million for each of the quarter and year ended March 31, 2019 , and $41 million for the year ended March 31, 2018 towards interest on income tax refund. During the quarter ended March 31, 2019 , on account of the conclusion of an Advance Pricing Agreement ("APA") in an overseas jurisdiction, the Company has reversed income tax expense provision of $14 million which pertains to previous periods.

IFRS-INR Press Release: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2018-2019/q4/Documents/IFRS-INR-press-release.pdf





Fact Sheet: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2018-2019/q4/Documents/fact-sheet.pdf

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The global colonoscopes market is expected to post a CAGR of about 5% during the period 2019-2023, according to the latest market research report by Technavio

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005018/en/

The global colonoscopes market will post a CAGR of about 5% during the period 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

The demand for minimally invasive surgeries is increasing significantly owing to the severe complications associated with traditional open surgeries. Minimally invasive surgeries are associated with lower anesthesia requirement, faster recovery time, smaller incisions, shorter hospital stays, reduced healthcare costs, and fewer post-operative complications. Thus, an increasing number of patients and surgeons prefer minimally invasive surgeries. Minimally invasive surgeries remove part of the affected area in colon and rectum through ostomy for benign colon and rectal conditions, including diverticulitis, colon polyps, IBD, and rectal prolapse. Thus, the rising demand for minimally invasive surgeries will drive the growth of the global colonoscopes market during the forecast period.

As per Technavio, the emergence of virtual colonoscopes will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This global colonoscopes market 2019-2023research report also analyzes other important trends and market drivers that will affect market growth over 2019-2023.

Global colonoscopes market: Emergence of virtual colonoscopes

In recent times, the market has witnessed the emergence of virtual colonoscopes that provide improved patient compliance and adherence compared with conventional colonoscopes. Virtual colonoscopes identify abnormalities in the colon and the rectum using CT or rviR1 to generate 2D and 3D images of the intestine. It is a minimally invasive approach that does not require the insertion of the colonoscope to the entire length of the colon. Some of the other advantages of virtual colonoscopes include increased accessibility, improved detection, low procedural time, and high safety when compared with conventional colonoscopes.

"The prevalence of intestinal disorders such as constipation, anal fissures, hemorrhoids, perianal infection, colitis, colon polyps, IBS, and cancer, is increasing rapidly. The increase in the prevalence of intestinal diseases has led to an increase in the number of diagnostic procedures. The availability of advanced minimally invasive diagnostic solutions such as colonoscopes, helps to simplify and expedite the diagnostic process. This will drive market growth during the forecast period," says a senior research analyst at Technavio.

Global colonoscopes market: Segmentation analysis

This market research report segments the global colonoscopes market by product (instruments and accessories, and colonoscopes), end-users (hospitals, ASC, and others), and geography (Asia, Europe, North America, and ROW).

The hospitals segment held the largest colonoscopes market share in 2018. The availability of well-trained professionals and the rising number of hospital admissions are the two factors contributing to the growth of the hospitals segment, which will drive the use of colonoscopes for the diagnosis of GI abnormalities.

The North America region led the market in 2018, followed by Europe, Asia, and ROW respectively. The market in North America is primarily led by the US owing to extensive health insurance coverage, the increase in R&D expenditure of vendors, high adoption of technologically advanced products, and the growing prevalence of GI diseases.

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The global critical care ventilators market is expected to post a CAGR close to 7% during the period 2019-2023, according to the latest market research report by Technavio

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005021/en/

The global critical care ventilators market will post a CAGR close to 7% during the period 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

The growing influx of patients in critical care units and intensive care units has led hospitals to partner with tele-ICU providers to provide better treatment and patient care facilities. Furthermore, companies are collaborating with hospitals to obtain assistance in conducting pre-clinical and controlled clinical trials and achieve regulatory approval for their products such as critical care ventilators. These factors are expected to boost the adoption of critical care ventilators during the forecast period.

As per Technavio, the growing focus toward non-invasive ventilation in critical care will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This global critical care ventilators market 2019-2023research report also analyzes other important trends and market drivers that will affect market growth over 2019-2023.

Global critical care ventilators market: Growing focus toward non-invasive ventilation in critical care

Non-invasive ventilation is known for providing ventilatory support without using invasive artificial airways such as an endotracheal tube or tracheostomy tube. The use of this method of ventilation is increasing for acute and chronic respiratory problems in both home settings and critical care units, largely due to the development of nasal ventilation, which provides ventilatory assistance with convenience, comfort, safety, and at a lesser cost than invasive ventilation. Also, it has proved useful in patients with respiratory failure due to COPD exacerbations, acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema, or immunocompromised states. Thus, the positive response and effective use of these non-invasive ventilators for the critical care unit will drive the market growth during the forecast period.

"Apart from the growing focus on non-invasive ventilation in critical care, the growing number of OEMs, the expansion of product portfolio through new launches, and the growing need for critical care ventilators during chronic disease treatment and surgeries are some of the other major factors that will drive the growth of the market," says a senior analyst at Technavio.

Global critical care ventilators market: Segmentation analysis

This market research report segments the global critical care ventilators market by product (mounted ventilators and portable ventilators) and geographical regions (Asia, North America, Europe, and ROW).

The North American region led the market in 2018, followed by Europe, ROW, and Asia respectively. However, during the forecast period, Europe is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to the rise in the number of new product launches and an increase in the number of surgical cases.

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Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Market segmentation analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market size and forecast

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation

Geographical Segmentation

Regional comparison

Key leading countries

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005021/en/

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Technavio Research

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UK: +44 203 893 3200

www.technavio.com
Fornebu, Norway - April 12, 2019: Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of REC Silicon ASA (REC) will be held at Hotel Continental, Stortingsgaten 24/26, Oslo, Norway on May 9, 2019 at 16.00 CET.Please find attached Notice of the General Meeting and the Recommendation of the Nomination Committee. The documents are also available at http://www.recsilicon.com/investors/agmYou may register your attendance and submit advance voting prior to the meeting by accessing the website.For further information, please contact:James A. May II, Chief Financial OfficerPhone: +1 509 989 1023Email: james.may@recsilicon.comNils O. Kjerstad, IR ContactPhone: +47 9135 6659Email: nils.kjerstad@crux.noAbout REC SiliconREC Silicon is a leading producer of advanced silicon materials, delivering high-purity polysilicon and silicon gas to the solar and electronics industries worldwide. We combine 30 years of experience and proprietary technology with the needs of our customers, with annual production capacity of more than 20,000 MT of polysilicon from our two US-based manufacturing plants. Listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (ticker: REC), the Company is headquartered in Fornebu, Norway.For more information, go to: www.recsilicon.comThis information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.

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.
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - April 12, 2019) - Wildflower Brands Inc. (OTCQB: WLDFF) (CSE:SUN) announces the availability of a CannabisNewsAudio Publication titled, "Increasing Growth, Acceptance Move CBD Market Toward Mainstream."

To hear the CannabisNewsAudio version, visit: http://cnw.fm/gbS9W

To read the full editorial, visit: http://cnw.fm/yIc4m

If the past few years have been fruitful, the future looks even brighter for CBD. Soaring sales, growing acceptance within mainstream sports, and the recognized influence of some of the major players within the broader cannabis industry all point to positive movement forward for CBD. And as companies overcome the challenges offered by distributing a previously obscure product to a broad market, the industry looks set to soar.

Of course, all this expansion comes with significant challenges. As the market grows and evolves, CBD companies must find ways to distribute products to a sector that didn't exist a decade ago. The infrastructure most other industries take for granted is being built from scratch.

Fortunately, the companies moving into this space are willing to adapt and move quickly to support their expansion. This involves forging alliances with other players within the cannabis sector to increase their combined reach. Wildflower has recently done this through a delivery fulfillment agreement with HelloMD, a leading digital healthcare platform for cannabis doctors, consumers and brands. The deal will allow Wildflower to potentially reach more customers through HelloMD's expansive e-commerce platform.

About Wildflower Brands

Wildflower Brands is a company headquartered in Vancouver building reputable brands and quality products that incorporate the synergistic effects of plants and their extracts. For more information, visit the company's website at www.WildflowerBrands.co

About CannabisNewsWire (CNW)

CannabisNewsWire ("CNW") is a specialized information service that (1) aggregates cannabis news, (2) provides CannabisNewsBreaks that quickly updates investors in the space, (3) enhances corporate press releases, (4) helps companies with distribution and optimization of social media, and (5) delivers comprehensive corporate communication solutions. CNW is uniquely positioned in the cannabis market with a strong team of journalists and writers who can help private and public companies reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public through our ever-growing dissemination network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets. CNW is bringing unparalleled visibility, recognition and content to the cannabis industry.

For more information please visit https://www.CannabisNewsWire.com

Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the CannabisNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by CNW, wherever published or re-published: http://CNW.fm/Disclaimer

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements.

Corporate Communications:

CannabisNewsWire (CNW)

Denver, Colorado

www.CannabisNewsWire.com

303.498.7722 Office

Editor@CannabisNewsWire.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/44050
SpendEdge, a leading provider of procurement market intelligence solutions, has announced the completion of their procurement market intelligence engagement for a pharmaceutical company.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005222/en/

Procurement market intelligence engagement for a pharmaceutical company. (Graphic: Business Wire)

Project background

The client wanted to develop a proper control mechanism that can optimize business processes and minimize excessive costs for the company. The time decided to achieve this business objective was three months.

Objective 1: The company wanted to reduce the turnaround time for the Purchase Requisition (PR) to Purchase Order (PO) process.

The company wanted to reduce the turnaround time for the Purchase Requisition (PR) to Purchase Order (PO) process. Objective 2: They were keen to overcome cultural barriers restricting global standardization and scalability of their business operations.

They were keen to overcome cultural barriers restricting global standardization and scalability of their business operations. Interested in gaining more information? Request a free demo from our experts and analyze the factors impacting the procurement cycle.

"Procurement market intelligence solutions are crucial for companies to classify critical-to-quality factors and reduce any excessive costs involved with energy, overhead, materials, labor, transportation," says a procurement expert from SpendEdge.

Key findings and solutions offered

In a span of three months, the client a well-known pharmaceutical company was able to centralize and standardize the transactional procurement process to eliminate disruptions in the supply chain. The efficiency of processes was analyzed to measure the effectiveness of service delivery results. The solution offered helped them to:

Reduce the cycle time of Purchase Requisition (PR) to Purchase Order (PO) process from 0.5 days to 2 business days.

Achieve cost savings on categories predominantly using plastic polymers.

Having a process that can reduce the turnaround time for PR to PO process is imperative for companies to stay competitive and meet the changing customer demands. Request a free proposal and access our complete portfolio of procurement market intelligence solutions today!

Outcome: SpendEdge helped the client to consolidate suppliers who can meet their rapidly evolving consumer demands. This improved the visibility of productivity, service levels, and helped them to realize cost savings on categories using plastic polymers. The services offered also enabled them to establish contracts having provisions for raw material price adjustments to deal with supply market fluctuations.

To access the complete case study on procurement market intelligence, get in touch with our experts here!

About SpendEdge:

SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions.

Request free proposal to know more, https://www.spendedge.com/request-free-proposal

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005222/en/

Contacts:

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

US: +1 630 984 7340

UK: +44 148 459 9299

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us
In the first three months of 2019, the company broke ground on 520 new units

The home builder closed out March with construction permits in hand for 35% of its 2021 deliveries, or 846 of the 2,438 units scheduled for that year

David Martinez , CEO of AEDAS Homes: "Our first quarter operational results confirm the strength of our Business Plan"

MADRID, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- AEDAS Homes, a leading residential developer in Spain's new real estate cycle, has reported its first quarter operating figures in the monthly Newsletter sent to the investor community.

The company shared the progress being made on construction works on the 1,055 units it plans to deliver this year, which are, on average, 80% complete across the home builder's developments.David Martinez, CEO of AEDAS Homes, stressed that this figure is, "clear confirmation of the company's operating capacity." He then pointed out that, "the fact that construction works are so far along shows the level of effort and hands-on management approach that our team of professionals takes, so that we will reach - as we have so far - all of our targets for scheduled deliveries."

The significant progress on construction works for 2019 is precisely what has allowed the completion of 6 developments (Galera Sun, in Estepona, Costa del Sol; Hacienda del Mar II and Brisas, in Alicante; Nou Eixample Mar, in Vilanova i la Geltru, Barcelona; and the first phases of Jardines Hacienda Rosario, in Seville; and Villas del Arco Norte, in Dos Hermanas, Seville), for a total of 603 units. Overall, the developer closed out the first quarter with 3,407 units under construction, having broken ground on 520 new units in the first three months of 2019.

Visibility on its business

Moreover, the developer continues to offer a high level of visibility on its business targets, having already sold 83% of the 1,055 deliveries slated for 2019. Looking ahead to 2020, 100% of the 1,986 units scheduled for delivery are now under construction, and 55.3% have been sold. In just the first three months of 2019, the company closed 300 sales.

Added to all this is the fact that the company now has in hand construction permits for 35% of the homes it expects to deliver in 2021, that is, as of 31 March it had already secured planning permission for 846 of the 2,438 homes to be delivered throughout 2021.

"Our first quarter operational results once again confirm the strength of our Business Plan and guarantee that we are on the right track towards the run-rate targets we committed to: 3,000 units launched onto the market each year, from 2020 onwards, and 3,000 units delivered annually, starting in 2022," David Martinez, CEO of AEDAS Homes, explained.

About AEDAS Homes

The developer AEDAS Homes became a listed company in Madrid on October 20, 2017, with a market capitalization of over 1.5 billion and is a leader in the nation's residential development industry. The company plays a key role in the new cycle of the Spanish real estate sector, which must be marked by professionalism and adherence to rigorous standards.

AEDAS Homes has the highest-quality land bank in Spain, according to analysts, since most of this land is classified as ready-to-build. The company has a portfolio with more than 1.8 million square meters to build over 15,000 homes in the nation's key real estate markets and economic centres, and their surrounding areas: the Centre, Catalonia, the East & Balearic Islands, Andalucia and Costa del Sol.

For more information:

https://www.aedashomes.com/en

AEDAS Homes corporate video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyf0TgNmyY
Photo: Crime Stoppers

A Penticton judge took the rare step Friday of challenging a joint submission put before him by Crown and defence for sentencing of a woman who led police on a high speed chase in a stolen pickup full of drugs.

Bree-anne Alicia Buhler, 25, pleaded guilty Friday to charges of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle and possession of stolen property in connection to a high-speed police chase through West Bench and the PIB reserve.

Court heard on Nov. 6, 2018 at about 1:45 p.m. RCMP responded to a F150 pickup travelling south down Highway 97 between Summerland and Penticton, driving erratically. The same truck had been stolen out of Kaleden earlier that morning.

An officer waiting for the truck just outside of Penticton at the Channel Bridge attempted to stop the truck with a spike belt, but it avoided it and fled up West Bench Hill Road at an estimated 60 kilometres an hour.

The truck managed to avoid two more spike belts deployed by police in north end of the West Bench residential neighbourhood by driving off road and down embankments.

RCMP then set up a fourth spike belt and road block at the corner of Westhills and Green Mountain Roads and managed to puncture a single front tire.

The chase continued west down Green Mountain at between 80 and 100 kilometres an hour during which time the truck was swerving into the oncoming lane, forcing other motorists to pull off the road. The chase eventually ended about three kilometres east of Shingle Creek Road after the damaged tire completely disintegrated.

Buhler was arrested as the lone occupant of the vehicle and 3.8 grams of heroin and a scale were found in the truck. When she was being booked into cells shortly afterwards, she began vomiting profusely. At the hospital, healthcare workers found multiple packages of heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine stashed in her vagina.

Crown prosecutor Ann Lerchs and defence lawyer James Pennington presented Judge Gregory Koturbash with a joint submission, or plea deal, that would have amounted to 210 days in jail and 12 months probation.

Your counsel has probably told you that with joint submissions, I can only go outside of a joint submission and impose a greater sentence if the sentence that's being recommended is so far out of line that its inappropriate, Koturbash told Buhler, telling her she was fortunate because he would be inclined to impose a much more severe sentence.

Defence lawyer James Pennington stood to debate Koturbash's characterization of the chase and its danger to the public, referring to some areas where the chase occurred as out in the boonies.

I would still expect people to be there, potentially walking their dogs or out and about, Koturbash pushed back, adding Buhler was fleeing police with a tire thats deflating and a full pharmacy onboard inside her vagina.

Pennington backed down, admitting his clients driving particularly once on Green Mountain Road, was clearly dangerous.

All of this is clearly dangerous this is over the top aggravating circumstances, responded Koturbash.

The judge noted Buhler was on probation at the time of the offence. She was sentenced to 14 months in prison in 2017 for a property-crime spree spanning the Southern Interior.

Koturbash requested case law from the Crown and defence to support the 210 day joint submission, but they did not have any prepared.

Seems to be a light touch for what is an extremely aggravating case, Koturbash remarked.

Because Buhler remains in custody for a separate set of charges out of Kelowna, the lawyers and judge agreed to adjourn the sentencing to allow them to produce case law in support of the plea deal.
Calgary, Alberta--(Newsfile Corp. - April 12, 2019) - Trican Well Service Ltd. ("Trican") intends to release its First Quarter 2019 results on Thursday, May 9, 2019 before the opening of the market.

The Company will host a conference call on Thursday, May 9, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. MT (1:00 p.m. ET) to discuss the Company's results for the 2019 First Quarter.

To listen to the webcast of the conference call, please enter the following URL in your web browser: http://www.gowebcasting.com/9942.

You can also visit the Investors section of our website at www.tricanwellservice.com/investors and click on "Reports".

To participate in the Q&A session, please call the conference call operator at 1-800-319-4610 (North America) or 1-403-351-0324 (outside North America) 10 minutes prior to the call's start time and ask for the "Trican Well Service Ltd. First Quarter 2019 Earnings Results Conference Call".

The conference call will be archived on Trican's website at www.tricanwellservice.com/investors

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Trican provides a comprehensive array of specialized products, equipment and services that are used during the exploration and development of oil and gas reserves.

Requests for further information should be directed to:

Dale Dusterhoft

President and Chief Executive Officer

E-mail: ddusterhoft@trican.ca

Robert Skilnick

Chief Financial Officer

E-mail: robert.skilnick@trican.ca

Phone: (403) 266-0202

Fax: (403) 237-7716

2900, 645 - 7th Avenue S.W.

Calgary, Alberta T2P 4G8

Please visit our website at www.tricanwellservice.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/44055
The global cheddar cheese market is expected to post a CAGR close to 4% during the period 2019-2023, according to the latest market research report by Technavio

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005237/en/

Technavio has published a new market research report on the global cheddar cheese market from 2019-2023 (Graphic: Business Wire)

A key factor driving the growth of the market is the increased demand for convenience foods. The rising urban population is inculcating new habits developing preferences for international food patterns. Hence, various supermarket and hypermarkets are increasing their stock of convenient packaged food. For instance, convenient forms of cheeses such as slices, cubes, sticks, spreads, dips, crumbles and shreds are making them popular among masses, as they can be consumed readily and easily. Hence, the growing demand for convenience foods encourages vendors to expand their cheddar cheese offerings in the RTE segment, which, in turn, drives the growth of the global cheddar cheese market.

As per Technavio, the increasing marketing initiatives will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This global cheddar cheese market 2019-2023research report also analyzes other important trends and market drivers that will affect market growth over 2019-2023.

Global cheddar cheese market: Increasing marketing initiatives

Vendors in the global cheddar cheese market are following integrated marketing communication by using newspapers, magazines, and social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, to sell their products. These communication channels are playing a key role in generating product awareness among people globally. For instance, in 2018, Pilgrim's Choice, a brand of Ornua Co-operative, as a part of its marketing campaign, asked people to share their cheese dreams on social media and promised to turn them into advertising. This creative strategy lends a note of fun and authenticity to the brand and increases consumer's interests for its products. Such marketing initiatives are expected to increase during the forecast period, which will result in increased sales of cheddar cheese.

"Apart from the increasing marketing initiatives, the growth in the expansion of cheese production facilities is another major factor driving the growth of the global market. Dairy products manufacturers are expanding their capacities and are building new processing plants to explore new market opportunities in cheese products and meet the increased demand of customers. They are focusing on increasing their production capabilities and capturing major market share to improve competitive advantage and drive the growth of the market," says a senior analyst at Technavio.

Global cheddar cheese market: Segmentation analysis

This market research report segments the global cheddar cheese market by distribution channel (online and offline) and geographical regions (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America).

The European region led the market in 2018, followed by North America, APAC, South America, and MEA respectively. However, during the forecast period, the APAC region is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to the rise in disposable income that is resulting in changing consumer preference for global cuisine, the high growth potential of the dairy industry, and the improving retail sector.

Looking for more information on this market? Request a free sample report

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more.

Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Market segmentation analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market size and forecast

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation

Geographical Segmentation

Regional comparison

Key leading countries

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 10,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at media@technavio.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005237/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

www.technavio.com
JOHANNESBURG, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Sasol has officially opened yet another colliery in its host province of Mpumalanga, where it beneficiates coal into high value fuel and chemical products at world scale.

Meaning 'success' in isiZulu, Impumelelo is one of three world-class mines Sasol has constructed in the last decade as part of its R14 billion mine replacement programme and includes Thubelisha and Shondoni. The inauguration was attended by Minerals Resources Minister Gwede Mantashe.

With an investment of R5, 6 billion, Impumelelo will have the capacity to produce 10,5 million tons per annum. The colliery currently employs 1760 people, most of them from nearby communities in Mpumalanga.

"In addition to sustaining some 4000 jobs, the new mines are critical to securing coal supply to Sasol Secunda Synfuels Operations up to at least 2050," said Sasol Joint President and CEO Bongani Nqwababa.

A unique feature of the mines is the investment in technologically-advanced measures that Sasol has made to ensure the safety of its employees as well as the environment.

"These include Proximity Detection Systems on our production electrical trackless machines, which warn and eventually stop the machine from operating when a person is too close," said Nqwababa.

Another technology measure that the mines have is an electronic trigger LED flickering light system to enhance the underground safety precautions. This system visually draws miners' attention when there is movement in the roof. Other investments are in a variety of noise reduction technologies.

Sasol's mining business, which falls under its upstream portfolio, is the third largest producer of coal in South Africa with an output of some 40 million tons per annum. The business contributes 13% to Sasol's earnings and is integral to the global integrated chemicals and Energy Company's long-term sustainability.

About Sasol:

Sasol is a global integrated chemicals and energy company. Through our talented people, we safely and sustainably create superior value for our customers, shareholders and other stakeholders. We integrated sophisticated technologies in world-scale operating facilities to produce and commercialise commodity and specialised chemicals, gaseous and liquid fuels, and lower-carbon electricity.

Alex Anderson, Head of Group Media Relations

Direct telephone: +27 (0) 10 344 6509; Mobile: +27 (0) 71 600 9605;

alex.anderson@sasol.com

Matebello Motloung, Senior Specialist: Media Relations

Direct telephone: +27 (0) 10 344 9256; Mobile: +27 (0) 83 773 9457

matebello.motloung@sasol.com
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 12, 2019) - International Lithium Corp. (TSXV: ILC) (the "Company" or "ILC") announces that it has decided to prioritize exploration on in its 100%-owned Raleigh Lake project in Ontario, Canada in the first half of 2019. Based on this decision, the Board of the Company has decided not to contribute to the funding of operations on the Company's interest in the Mariana project in Argentina in the first half of 2019.

As a result of cash calls made up to the present date, the Company's share in Mariana will reduce from 17.246% to 15.392% by the end of April 2019. A budget of US$ 4.25 million has been set by the manager for May and June 2019. If expenditure indeed reaches that level, the Company's share in Mariana would reduce further to 13.607%. The Company retains a back-in right entitling it to increase this percentage by a further 10%, i.e. to 23.607%.

Commenting on this decision, John Wisbey, CEO said, "One of the most important decisions a Board has to make is about the allocation of capital, and at this point we feel that if we are successful in proving the scale of the Raleigh Lake deposit, the investment in that project is likely to bring a bigger gain to shareholder value than investment in any of our other projects. We continue to have confidence in the Mariana project following a successful preliminary economic assessment (PEA) in December 2018, and we will be liaising closely with our partner, Ganfeng Lithium, on its plans for Mariana over the next few months."

About International Lithium Corp.

International Lithium Corp. has a significant portfolio of projects, strong management, and a strategic partner and key investor, Jiangxi Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd., ("Ganfeng Lithium") a leading China-based lithium product manufacturer.

The Company's primary strategic focus is now on and on the Raleigh Lake project in Canada and the Mariana project in Argentina.

The Raleigh Lake project, consisting of 3,027 hectares of adjoining mineral claims in Ontario, is now regarded by ILC management as ILC's most significant project in Canada. It is 100% owned by ILC, is not subject to any encumbrances, and is royalty free.

The Company has a strategic stake in the Mariana lithium-potash brine project located within the renowned South American "Lithium Belt" that is the host to the vast majority of global lithium resources, reserves and production. The Mariana project strategically encompasses an entire mineral rich evaporite basin, totalling 160 square kilometres that ranks as one of the more prospective salars or 'salt lakes' in the region. Current ownership of the project is through a joint venture company, Litio Minera Argentina S. A., a private company registered in Argentina, which will shortly be owned 84.608% by Ganfeng Lithium and 15.392% by ILC. In addition, ILC has an option to acquire 10% in the Mariana project through a back-in right.

Complementing the Company's lithium brine project at Mariana and rare metal pegmatite property at Raleigh Lake, are interests in two other rare metal pegmatite properties in Ontario, Canada known as the Mavis Lake and Forgan Lake projects, and the Avalonia project in Ireland, which encompasses an extensive 50-km-long pegmatite belt.

The ownership of the Mavis Lake project is now 51% Pioneer Resources Limited ("Pioneer") and 49% ILC. In addition, ILC owns a 1.5% NSR on Mavis Lake. Pioneer has an option to earn an additional 29% by sole-funding a further CAD $8.5 million expenditures of exploration activities, at which time the ownership will be 80% Pioneer and 20% ILC.

The Forgan Lake project will, upon Ultra Lithium meeting its contractual requirements pursuant to its agreement with ILC, become 100% owned by Ultra Lithium and ILC will retain a 1.5% NSR on Forgan Lake/Georgia Lake.

The ownership of the Avalonia project is currently 55% Ganfeng Lithium and 45% ILC. Ganfeng Lithium has an option to earn an additional 24% by either incurring CAD $10 million expenditures on exploration activities or delivering a positive feasibility study on the project, at which time the ownership will be 79% Ganfeng Lithium and 21% ILC.

With the increasing demand for high tech rechargeable batteries used in electric vehicles and electrical storage as well as portable electronics, lithium has been designated "the new oil", and is a key part of a "green tech", sustainable economy. By positioning itself with solid strategic partners and projects with significant resource potential, ILC aims to be one of the lithium and battery metals resource developers of choice for investors and to continue to build value for its shareholders.

International Lithium Corp.'s mission is to find, explore and develop projects that have the potential to become world class lithium, and rare metal deposits. A key goal is to become a well funded company to turn that aspiration into reality.

On behalf of the Company,

John Wisbey

Chief Executive Officer

www.internationallithium.com

For further information concerning this news release please contact +1 604-449-6520

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.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

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Jet Airways was getting 50 percent of its revenue from international operations when it was operating in full swing.

On Thursday, the beleaguered Jet Airways announced that it was suspending all international flights with immediate effect. The only international flights which have departed since midnight are those which are returning to India from the airlines key gateway of Amsterdam and London.

Ironically, this came on the day when Etihad is said to have formally submitted its expression of interest (EoI) to State Bank of India (SBI) for increasing stake in the airline and infusing the much-needed funds.

From a fleet of 123 aircraft and many more on order, the airline today is operating a fleet of 2 B737 and 7 ATRs and may operate a few widebody aircraft like the B777 or A330 on the domestic circuit between major metros. The fall has been rapid, to say the least.

While its domestic schedule has been in a disarray for a long time, the airline was relatively stable with its widebody operations to the West with flights to Amsterdam, London, Paris and Toronto operating as per schedule.

The airline closed reservations for flights to Paris CDG where it operated from Mumbai and Chennai and cancelled all flights with immediate effect. This was followed by flights to London  where the airline operated from Mumbai and Delhi as well as all flights to Amsterdam which sees a mini-hub of Jet Airways with flights from/to Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Toronto.

This was the last set of widebody flights which the airline was operating after it had pulled out of Hong Kong and Manchester. It has seen the regional flights first shifted to the B737 aircraft and later curtailing schedule followed by a complete pullout. This included flights to Dhaka, Singapore, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Doha, Dammam, Riyadh, Kathmandu, Jeddah and Kuwait.

Why did the airline keep operating the widebody aircraft that are more expensive than the narrowbody aircraft, which could be used for more flights, on the domestic sector? The airline was getting 50 percent of its revenue from international operations when it was operating in full swing.

The airline owns most of the widebody fleet, unlike the narrowbody fleet which has majorly leased and the lessors have enforced the grounding for lack of payment. While the airline may default on the loan for these owned aircraft, no bank has yet hypothecated the aircraft for a delay in loans. The one aircraft which was grounded in Amsterdam for not paying the cargo agent was linked to fees and not loan default.

The widebody aircraft, though expensive, gave the airline the much-needed foreign exchange, which would help fund the immediate oil, route navigation and other charges.

It was also easy to compete on routes with lesser capacity and feed on partners than the domestic sector which has cut-throat competition.

Till Jet Airways was pushed to the wall, the airline thus continued to operate its widebody fleet and its Amsterdam and London operations which help transfer passengers both inbound and outbound from partners at KLM, Air France, Virgin Atlantic and Delta.

The skeletal schedule that the airline operates today sees less than 100 departures across its network. Compare that with market leader IndiGo, which is operating 100+ departures out of each of the metro cities, one knows how wide the gap is today.

A quick search on the Jet Airways' website shows that the airline intends to operate only four departures from Mumbai  one each to Amritsar and Bengaluru while two to New Delhi  while the airline plans to operate a larger chunk of its flights from New Delhi where the ATR operations are now based.

From Delhi, the airline expects flights to Jaipur, Bhopal, Indore, Dehradun, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jodhpur and Mumbai. For the rest of the stations, they are unlikely to see any departures today or in the near future till the funds trickle in.

While the airline intends to have these operations, a lot also depends on the supply lines. The last few days have seen oil companies stop fuel supply at airports leading to disruptions. Any more such disruptions could further truncate the airline's operating schedule for the day, causing massive inconvenience to the passengers who have already booked their tickets.

Passengers, who have shown faith in the airline, would be worried a lot. The airline is neither adhering to its schedule nor is it certain about the flights it would operate. Even horrific is the case of international travellers who have little options to explore with many running around to get out of the Eurozone before their visa expires.

In such an event, it could be prudent for the passengers to stay away from cheap fares which the airline may offer until the funding situation is normalised and the airline returns to a stable schedule.

SBI, which leads the consortium of bankers handling the crisis-hit airline's rescue deal, has extended the deadline for submitting the EoI to Friday and by the end of the day, all the speculated names including that of Naresh Goyal could be out in the public.

Yet, it is time when funds are infused, hands are exchanged, a new board is constituted, and the airline shows some glimmer of hope. However, it could take a few years to return to its fleet and network of what it was just half-a-year ago.

(The writer is founder of aviation analysis blog Network Thoughts)
Jet Airways was the largest domestic carrier operating in the international sector with a hub in Amsterdam, where a cargo agent had taken possession of an aircraft this on Tuesday demanding bill payment.

Mumbai: Jet Airways, facing its worst existential crisis in its over 25-year-old history, on Friday extended suspension of its international operations till next Monday due to severe liquidity issues.

Incidentally, the stake sale bid invited by the SBI-led consortium of bankers, which manages the day-to-day operations of the airline, also closes by the end of the day on Friday, after being extended by two days.

Airline founder Naresh Goyal, the UAE carrier Etihad Airways, Air Canada and the country's national investment fund among others are reported to have submitted bids, according to media reports.

On Thursday, the airline had announced temporary grounding of its international operations for the day - Jet Airways was the largest international airline from the country till the financial crisis. It had also suspended operations to the entire Eastern and Northeastern markets as Jet Airways was forced to ground 10 more aircraft following default of lease rentals.

This has left Jet Airways with no large aircraft while it had just 14 planes for domestic operations as of late Thursday.

"Jet has decided to extend suspension of its international operations till Monday, due to severe cash crunch," airline sources told PTI on Friday.

Jet Airways was the largest domestic carrier operating in the international sector with a hub in Amsterdam, where a cargo agent had taken possession of an aircraft this on Tuesday demanding bill payment. This led to the cancellation of the Amsterdam-Mumbai flight that day.

On Thursday, Jet Airways flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled were cancelled for operational reasons," Jet Airways had said, adding it had also cancelled the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight on Friday.

On the domestic front, all Jet Airways operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states were suspended till further notice. Following this, there would no Jet Flights flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region, travel industry source had told PTI.

Jet Airways had also said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stood cancelled till further notice due to "operational reasons."

As of Thursday, the airline had just 14 planes  way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back. Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330  generally used for long-haul international operations.

The remaining six planes were, three B737s, which are largely used for flying on domestic routes besides on short-haul international destinations and the rest three are regional ATRs.

With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola had told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet Airways can continue to fly on international routes.

The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations.
Jet Airways board met in Mumbai and discussed 'operational' issues, while airlines' strategic partner Etihad Airways submitted initial bids for a higher stake

Mumbai: Bracing for a possible shuttering, Jet Airways Thursday grounded services across the eastern and northeastern markets including to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region.

The airline also suspended its international operations for a day, while 10 more planes were forced out of the fleet.

In related developments, its board met in Mumbai and discussed "operational" issues, while airlines' strategic partner Etihad Airways submitted initial bids for a higher stake in the crippled carrier.

However, founder Naresh Goyal, who had also planned to participate in the bids and was expected to put in bids Thursday, did not do so till late evening, the sources said.

Goyal owns 50.1 percent in the airline, most of which is pledged with lenders. Goyal had last month agreed to pare down his stake to 25.5 percent for an emergency fund of Rs 1,500 crore from the lenders, and leave the board but the process is yet to be completed due to procedural delays.

The government has tried to rescue the airline, fearing more job losses ahead of the hustings, which has seen the banks led by state-run State Bank agreeing to bail out the career by acquiring a majority stake.

In the eventuality of Jet going down, it will be the seventh airline to shutter operations in the past five years as operators like Air Pegasus, Air Costa, Air Carnival, Air Odisha, Air Deccan, and Zoom Air went belly up.

Moreover, the airline informed the exchanges late in the evening that it was forced to ground 10 more planes due to non-payment of lease rentals.

"Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled for April 12 are cancelled for operational reasons," said an airline source close to the development.

The airline will also not operate the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight on 13 April, the source added.

"All Jet operations to and from the eastern and northeastern states are suspended till further notice. Following this, there are no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region," a travel industry source told PTI.

When contacted, Jet said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stand cancelled till further notice due to "operational reasons."

As of Thursday noon, the airline had just 14 planes--way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back.

"Jet flight 9W 615 Mumbai to Kolkata and 9W 675 from Kolkata to Guwahati on 12 April are cancelled due to operational reasons. Similarly, 9W 676 from Dehradun-Kolkata-Guwahati service has also been cancelled until further notice," Jet said in a statement, adding passenger refunds are being processed.

With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet can continue to fly on international routes.

The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations.

Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330-- generally used for long-haul international operations.

The remaining six planes were, three B737s, which are largely used for flying on domestic routes besides on short-haul international destiantions and the rest three are

regional ATRs.

The board held its meeting in the backdrop of a drastic reduction in operations due to the grounding of its almost entire fleet owing to default on rentals payment to

lessors, the source said.

"The board, which was earlier scheduled to discuss a host of issues including the name of a former SBI chairman AK Purwar as the interim chairman, among others, could discuss only issues related to operations," the source said.

The meeting remained inconclusive, as "there did not seem to be any urgency on additional funding on the part of the bankers," the source said.

"Etihad Airways has also submitted bids for more stake purchase ahead of the 12 April deadline. However, Goyal, who was anticipated to put in his bid, did not do so," the source added.

SBI Caps, on behalf of the lenders, had issued the expressions of interest on 8 April, and had Wednesday extended the deadline for submission of initial bids by two days to 12 April.

The lenders are offering a minimum of 32.1 percent and a maximum of 75 percent equity in the carrier to any investor either individually or in consortium.
Country-wise, North America has the highest number of active business jets at 13,685, followed by Europe, Russia and the CIS (ex-Soviet republics) countries at 2,879 each.

Mumbai: The city airport leads Dubai and Tokyo by a wide margin in private jet departures at around

1,516 outbound aircraft movements in 2018, which is 8.28 percent higher than the Gulf city at 1,400, and 20 percent over those in the Japanese capital at 1,202, finds a report.

It can be noted that Mumbai has been the world's busiest single-runway airport handling close to 1,000 flights a day for the third year in a row in 2018, after Gatwick near London, while the Dubai airport is the world's largest aviation hub.

The top rank is held by New York, thanks to the city being home to the world's largest number of rich people, with 66,968 private jet departures in 2018, while Mumbai is ranked 146, according to a study on the travel trends of ultra-high networth individuals by Knight Frank on Friday.

The nation's financial capital is home to the maximum number of the rich in the country.

Country-wise, North America has the highest number of active business jets at 13,685, followed by Europe, Russia and the CIS (ex-Soviet republics) countries at 2,879 each.

Britain, France, the UAE and Germany are the other top destinations, according to the study.

The study finds that proximity and season are the key factors for the rich to choose their travel destinations.

Accordingly, most Americans visit Canada or Mexico, while Australians head towards New Zealand.

Similarly, June is the most favoured time for travel aboard for both the Americans and the French, while for the British it is April.
The Supreme Court had earlier expressed displeasure at the replies of Malvinder and Shivinder to its directive to submit a plan for paying Rs 4,000 crore to Daiichi Sankyo, as awarded by a Singapore tribunal.

New Delhi: Japanese firm Daiichi Sankyo told the Supreme Court on Thursday that former Ranbaxy promoters, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh who owe it Rs 4,000 crore, have diverted funds despite several orders asking them to maintain their stakes in Fortis Healthcare Ltd.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna reserved order on Daiichi's contempt plea against the former Ranbaxy promoters and others.

Senior advocate F S Nariman, appearing for Daiichi, alleged that the Singh brothers diverted funds despite several orders by the Supreme Court to maintain their stake in Fortis Healthcare Ltd.

He said that they reduced their stakes in Fortis Healthcare Holding from more than 40 percent on 11 August 2017 to less than 1 percent now.

The apex court had earlier expressed displeasure at the replies of Malvinder and Shivinder to its directive to submit a plan for paying Rs 4,000 crore to Daiichi Sankyo, as awarded by a Singapore tribunal.

It had threatened to send them to jail if found that they have violated the apex court's order.

On 14 March, the Supreme Court asked them to submit a concrete plan for paying Rs 4,000 crore to Daiichi Sankyo as directed by a Singapore tribunal and had asked them to consult their accountants as also financial and legal advisors and apprise it by today.

The bench considered the submissions of the lawyers representing Malvinder and Shivinder on their plans to give money for honouring the arbitral award.

"Their nearly Rs 6,300 crore has been siphoned off by some 'baba'. These children have been duped," Kapil Sibal had said, adding that let the properties of the contemnor be sold under the instruction of the court.

The Japanese firm has filed a contempt plea against the Singh brothers, saying that it was promised some shares of Fortis Healthcare by them and sought the recovery of Rs 3,500 crore as directed by the tribunal.

The top court, on 14 December last year, had ordered status quo with regard to the sale of controlling stakes of Fortis Healthcare.

The board of Fortis Healthcare had approved in July a proposal from IHH Healthcare to invest Rs 4,000 crore by way of preferential allotment for a 31.1 percent stake.

The Malaysian IHH Healthcare Bhd became the controlling shareholder of Fortis Healthcare Ltd by acquiring a 31.1 percent stake in the company.

Daiichi had bought Ranbaxy in 2008. Later, it had moved the Singapore arbitration tribunal alleging that the Singh brothers had concealed information that Ranbaxy was facing probe by the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice, while selling its shares.

Daiichi had to enter into a settlement agreement with the US Department of Justice, agreeing to pay $500 million penalty to resolve potential, civil and criminal liability.

The company had then sold its stake in Ranbaxy to Sun Pharmaceuticals for Rs 22,679 crore in 2015.
Hundred Indian fishermen, arrested by Pakistan, arrived in Gujarat's Vadodara on Thursday after being released through Attari-Wagah border earlier this week.

These fishermen are from the state's Veraval region and were caught by Pakistan coast guard for crossing the international sea borders.

They were kept in Karachi jail for over one-and-a-half years before being released on April 8.

Speaking to ANI, one of the fishermen said, "Many of us accidentally cross the border while some go to that side knowingly for catching fish. I was in Pakistan for about 17 months. We were always confined in a particular cell and were never allowed to venture out. We were clearly told to stay in the definite cell for our own safety."

Another fisherman, Vikram, said, "I was caught accidentally while we were sleeping on the boat. The boat accidentally crossed the border."

The fishermen took a train journey to come to Vadodara.

Ramesh Kumar, Assistant Director, Fisheries Department said, "These fishermen were released from Pakistan on April 8. Our team had gone to Amritsar to receive them and brought them here by a train."

On April 5, Pakistan had announced that it will be releasing 360 Indian prisoners upon completion of their sentences, starting April 8.

The decision comes after India sent a note verbale to Pakistan on Tuesday, urging it to make necessary arrangements for an immediate release and repatriation of Indian prisoners who had completed their respective prison sentences.

-ANI
Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director, SpiceJet said this is the first lot of Boeing 737s that the airline is inducting in its fleet.

New Delhi: SpiceJet on Friday announced it will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease to bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline's international and domestic presence.

The announcement comes at a time when airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of around 90 percent of cash-strapped Jet Airways' 119-aircraft fleet.

The availability of flights was also hit by pulling out of SpiceJet's 12 "737 MAX" aircraft in March over safety concerns following an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on 10 March.

"SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a no objection certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft," the airline said.

"Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet fleet in the next ten days," it added.

The airline said the new inductions will not just bring down flight cancellations to nil but also help in SpiceJet's aggressive international and domestic expansion plans.

Under dry lease, the lessor provides the airline with the aircraft but without any crew member, while under wet lease, the lessor provides the aircraft along with complete crew.

Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director, SpiceJet said this is the first lot of Boeing 737s that the airline is inducting in its fleet.

"The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience," he said.

Earlier this week, Indian aviation watchdog DGCA had asked all airlines to come out with individual medium-term plan by Wednesday on enhancing availability of domestic flights, a move aimed at curbing rising airfares.

In its fleet, SpiceJet had 12 "737 Max" aircraft. On 12 March, the DGCA announced its decision to "immediately" ground the Boeing 737 Max aircraft that were being used by airlines in India.

A 737 Max aircraft operated by the Ethiopian Airlines crashed near Addis Ababa on 10 March, killing 157 people, including four Indians.

This was the second such crash involving the 737 Max aircraft in less than five months.
As cane harvests jumped, domestic sugar prices fell 20 percent over the past two years, with sugar mills often complaining about prices falling below their production costs.

New Delhi/Mumbai: Indias money-losing sugar mills have run up a record $4.38 billion in arrears to 50 million cane farmers, who have gone unpaid for their produce for more than a year, industry and government sources said on Thursday.

Years of bumper cane harvests and record sugar production have hammered domestic prices, hitting mills financial health to such an extent that monies owed to farmers, who form an influential voting bloc, have ballooned to an all-time high.

Farm leaders say Prime Minister Narendra Modis government has not done enough to help them get the cash owed them. Modis office did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The prime minister publicly promised farmers  in 2014 and 2017  to help them get their payments within 15 days of selling their produce to sugar mills, said MV Singh, convener of the Rashtriya Kisan Mazdoor Sang, or National Forum of Farmers and Labourers.

Despite the promise, Modis government has done little to ensure timely payments, Singh said.

The unpaid dues affect growers in the key cane-producing states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Punjab, Haryana and Karnataka.

Of the $4.38 billion in unpaid dues, mills in Uttar Pradesh, Indias top cane-producing state, owe Rs 10,800 crore ($1.56 billion), the industry and government sources said, citing their calculations based on cane prices and the volumes bought by sugar mills.

In Uttar Pradesh, top producers such as Mawana Sugars Ltd, Bajaj Hindusthan Sugar Ltd and Simbhaoli Sugars Ltd, as well as unlisted Modi Sugar Mills, Wave Industries and Yadu Sugar Ltd, owe the bulk of arrears to farmers, according to the industry and government sources.

Along with the fact that sugar prices are much below the cost of production, huge inventories worth Rs 80,000 crore are adversely affecting mills paying capacity, said Abinash Verma, chief of the Indian Sugar Mills, the producers body.

The high inventories are keeping domestic sugar prices depressed and increased storage costs. Mills have started losing money and are finding it difficult to pay the farmers.

As cane harvests jumped, domestic sugar prices fell 20 percent over the past two years, with mills often complaining about prices falling below their production costs.

Most cane growers are barely able to scrape through and its sad that neither the state governments nor the Modi administration have done anything, said Pushpendra Singh, president of the Kisan Shakti Sangh, a farmers association.

Falling farmer incomes and job scarcity have made Modis re-election bid more complicated than anticipated.

Out of 545 seats in Indias lower house of parliament, cane farmers are key voters in 164 of the constituencies.

The government took a clutch of measures, including incentives for exports and creation of buffer stocks to help trim inventories and prop up prices so that mills can pay farmers, said a federal food ministry official who did not wish to be identified in line with government policy.

The measures have yielded few results so far, giving little relief to either farmers or mills, said the sources.
Although Uber's user base includes customers of other services as well as ride-sharing, Ubers 91 million is nearly five times the 18.6 million announced by rival Lyft Inc.

New York: Uber Technologies Inc has 91 million users, but growth is slowing and it may never make a profit, the ride-hailing company said on Thursday in its initial public offering filing.

The document gave the first comprehensive financial picture of the decade-old company which was started after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night and has changed the way much of the world travels.

The S-1 filing underscores the rapid growth of Ubers business in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders.

The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future and it may not achieve profitability. Uber lost $3.03 billion in 2018 from operations.

The filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission revealed Uber had 91 million average monthly active users on its platforms, including for ride-hailing and Uber Eats, at the end of 2018. This is up 33.8 percent from 2017, but growth slowed from 51 percent a year earlier.

Uber had not disclosed the latest user numbers before, and the figure indicates the scale of the business. Although its user base includes customers of other services as well as ride-sharing, Ubers 91 million is nearly five times the 18.6 million announced by rival Lyft Inc.

Uber in 2018 had revenue of $11.3 billion, up around 42 percent over 2017, again below the 106 percent growth the prior year.

Uber set a placeholder amount of $1 billion but did not specify the size of the IPO. Reuters reported this week that Uber plans to sell around $10 billion worth of stock at a valuation of between $90 billion and $100 billion. Investment bankers had previously told Uber it could be worth as much as $120 billion.

Uber would be the largest IPO since that of Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2014, which raised $25 billion.

Although Uber is no longer targeting a $120 billion valuation in the IPO, some stock bonuses to Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi and other company executives are only triggered when that valuation is reached.

Adverse events

Uber will follow Lyft in going public. Shares in its smaller rival closed at $61.01 on Thursday, 15 percent below its IPO price set late last month, a development which has sent chilling signal for other tech start-ups looking to go public.

After making the public filing, Uber will begin a series of investor presentations, called a roadshow, which Reuters has reported will start the week of April 29. The company is on track to price its IPO and begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange in early May.

Uber faces questions over how it will navigate any transition towards self-driving vehicles, a technology seen as potentially dramatically lowering costs but which could also disrupt its business model.

One advantage Uber will likely seek to play up to investors is that it is the largest player in many of the markets in which it operates. Analysts consider building scale crucial for Ubers business model to become profitable.

In addition to answering questions about the companys finances, Uber CEO Khosrowshahi will be tasked with convincing investors that he has successfully changed the culture and business practices after a series of embarrassing scandals over the last two years.

Those have included sexual harassment allegations, a massive data breach that was concealed from regulators, use of illicit software to evade authorities and allegations of bribery overseas. Khosrowshahi joined Uber in 2017 from Expedia Inc to replace company co-founder Travis Kalanick who was ousted as CEO.

Uber said in its filing its ridehailing position in the United States and Canada was significantly impacted by adverse publicity events and that its position in many markets has been threatened by discounts from other ride-hailing companies. A #DeleteUber campaign surged on social media in 2017 after a public relations crisis, which Uber said in its filing meant hundreds of thousands of consumers stopped using its platform within days.

Uber said its market share fell in most regions last year, although the rate of decline has slowed. The company claims more than 65 percent market share in the United States and Canada, compared to Lyfts stated 39 percent in the United States.

Uber is reserving some shares in the IPO for drivers who have completed 2,500 trips among other criteria.
A judge must now decide following an oral consideration in coming weeks if Vijay Mallya's appeal can proceed to a full hearing.

London: Embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya has submitted a "renewal application" in the UK High Court, making another attempt at appealing against his extradition to India to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crore.

The 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) boss failed in his first attempt at an application seeking "leave to appeal" in the court last Friday and had five business days to renew that application to seek a brief oral hearing before a high court judge, where his lawyers will further plead his case against being extradited to India.

"A renewal form has been received and will be listed in due course," a High Court official said on Friday.

UK home secretary Sajid Javid had signed off on a Westminster Magistrates' Court order for Mallya to be extradited to face the Indian courts back in February.

Mallya then filed an application for permission to appeal against that decision in the high court, which was refused by Justice William Davis, giving him a week to apply for oral consideration via a renewal application.

The case will now be listed in the coming weeks for a hearing before a judge, where Mallya's legal team and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)  arguing on behalf of the Indian government  will go head to head to reiterate factors for and against the businessman's extradition to Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai.

As per legal procedure in the UK, Mallya's first written "leave to appeal application had been passed on Justice Davis, who was to make a decision on the basis of papers submitted and rejected that application "on papers".

A judge must now decide following an oral consideration in coming weeks if Mallya's appeal can proceed to a full hearing.

Meanwhile, the businessman remains on bail on an extradition warrant executed by Scotland Yard in April 2017. At the end of a year-long extradition trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London last December, Judge Emma Arbuthnot had ruled that the flashy billionaire had a "case to answer" in the Indian courts.

The judge found there was "clear evidence of dispersal and misapplication of the loan funds" and accepted a prima facie case of fraud and a conspiracy to launder money against Mallya, as presented by the CPS on behalf of the Indian authorities.

The court had also dismissed any bars to extradition on the grounds of the prison conditions under which the businessman would be held, as the judge accepted the Indian government's assurances that he would receive all necessary medical care at Barrack 12 in Mumbai's Arthur Road Jail.
The Board of Intermediate Education Andhra Pradesh (BIEAP) will declare the AP Inter 2019 results on Friday, 12 April. The time for announcement, however, has yet to be confirmed.

AP Inter Results 2019 | The Board of Intermediate Education Andhra Pradesh (BIEAP) will declare the AP Inter 2019 results on Friday, 12 April. The results can be checked on bieap.gov.in and other websites. The time for the announcement is set for 11 am, according to reports.

Students can also access their Class 11 and Class 12 exam scores through third-party web portals such as examresults.net or manabadi.com.

More than 9 lakh students appeared for the Class 11 and Class 12 exams in the February and March. The Andhra Pradesh first year exam was held from 27 February to 16 March. The 2nd year exams were held from 28 February to 18 March.

Steps to check the AP inter board exam results 2019:

1. Visit the official website bieap.gov.in

2. Click on the link that says AP 1st, 2nd year inter result 2019

3. Enter your AP inter hall ticket number and other required details

4. The Class 11 and Class 12 exam results will be displayed on the screen

5. Download the results

6. Take a printout of the same for future reference

Soon after announcements of the board exam results, BIEAP will release the upcoming compartment examination schedule for candidates who fail to secure passing marks in major subjects.

Follow LIVE updates on the Andhra Pradesh Intermediate exams here
On 10 April, a statement signed by over 900 artists was doing the rounds on social media appealing to the citizens of India to vote for BJP ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha Elections.

Renowned Bharatnatyam dancer Geeta Chandran, whose name was on the list of 900 artists who urged the public to vote for the BJP in the Lok Sabha polls in a joint statement, has claimed she was put on the list without her consent, according to a report in The Times of India.

Speaking to the Times of India, Chandran said Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, chairman of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) invited senior artists for a meeting on 8 April to commemorate the Hindu New Year. While discussing various topics, the artists decided to ask the public to vote as they felt it was "one of the duties of all citizens."

She further told the newspaper, "They then mentioned endorsing the current government and its successes. Many of us present felt that the democratic principle of 'secret ballot', that is our constitutional right, would be violated if we agreed to those points, especially since most of us were not members of any political party. There was no formal signing!"

When Firstpost reached out to Chandran for comment, she responded, "I have said what I wanted to say."

Meanwhile, filmmaker Anurag Kashyap posted to Twitter screenshots of WhatsApp messages purportedly sent on 8 April by Gouraksha Dhotre, president of All India Cine Worker's Association (AICWA), inviting artists to send in their names to "answer the artists" from the film industry who urged the public to vote against Modi and his "divisive politics". Kashyap told Firstpost: "He (Dhotre) is the head of the worker's union. People who come on shoot representing a party and check cards. I guess he texted everyone on his phone without checking. He is one of those guys who sends a text every morning: either they are good mornings or propaganda messages. Loads of people like that." (sic)

Dhotre also heads the All India Media Employees Association. Speaking to Firstpost, Dhotre said, "A few days ago, some 600 people including Anurag Kashyap, Naseeruddin Shah signed a statement, but no one knew who all the others were. Later, the list was made public. So, in response to that, we sent out a message asking people from the film industry  if they support Prime Minister Narendra Modi  to send us an email from their personal IDs saying 'I will vote for Modi'. Only those who sent the email had their names included on the list." Dhotre added that the organisation handling the communications will soon update the list, which now has more than 1,400 names.

Dhotre, addressing Chandran's claims and Kashyap's remarks, added: "We haven't reached out to anyone in person or put any pressure whatsoever. We also sent Kashyap a message saying 'why does he think people should not vote in favour of Modi?' He can do his voting on his own, right? I don't know what Chandran said. But we have only included the names of people who have sent us an email. In fact, there are many people who have reached out to us asking why their names haven't featured in the list. We informed them that all the new entries will appear in the updated list soon."

Over 900 artists, including Pandit Jasraj, Shankar Mahadevan, Vivek Oberoi, Anuradha Paudwal, Koena Mitra, Payal Rohatgi, Rahul Roy, Abhijeet Bhattacharya and Alok Nath, signed the statement, which was doing the rounds of social media.

Firstpost sent a questionnaire to the ICCR seeking a statement on artists' names being added to this campaign/appeal. This article will be updated if and when the council responds.
The BITSAT 2019 admit card will carry the details of candidates name, signature and photograph, BITSAT 2019 application number, entrance test time and date, test centre address, date and slot of exam.

BITS Pilani will release the admit card or hall ticket for Birla Institute of Technology and Science Admission Test (BITSAT), 2019 on 12 April (today) on its official website.

Eligible candidates can visit the official website bitsadmission.com to download the admit card.

Note that the admit card will only be available once a candidate has successfully booked a test slot. Hence, candidates need to book their BITSAT 2019 slot before downloading their hall ticket.

To download the BITSAT 2019 admit card, the candidate will have to log in to their account on the website using their application number and date of birth. The link to download the admit card is expected to be activated at 5 pm today, reports The Times of India.

Steps to Download BITSAT 2019 Admit Card:

Step 1: Visit the official website of BITSAT bitsadmission.com

Step 2: Click on the link that says BITSAT 2019 admit card.

Step 3: Fill in your log in credentials like email ID, username, application number and password in the provided fields.

Step 4: Select date of birth and gender.

Step 5: Now click on Submit to proceed.

Step 6: The admit card will be displayed on the screen.

Step 7: Download it from a relevant link and take a print out for future use.

The BITSAT 2019 admit card will carry the details of candidates name, signature and photograph, BITSAT 2019 application number, entrance test time and date, test centre address, date and slot of exam along with exam instructions for BITSAT 2019.

It is advised that a candidate checks that all the information on the hall ticket is correct. Without the hall ticket a candidate will not be permitted entry to a BITSAT test centre and to sit for the entrance exam. Therefore, candidates are required to keep the document safely until the admission process ends.
Its safe to say that the non-criminalisation of marital rape remains the biggest blot on the face of fundamental rights jurisprudence in India.

The legal community was shocked when the former Chief Justice of India, Justice Dipak Misra, at a conference at KLE Societys Law College in Bengaluru said that marital rape should not be criminalised in India it will create absolute anarchy in families and our country is sustaining itself because of the family platform which upholds family values.

This claim, which has raised furore, comes from the judge who had in the recent past passed judgments that have upheld the civil rights of the citizens of the country and have made India move on a progressive path. It was Justice Misra who was at the centre of the judgments that decriminalised homosexuality, allowed women to enter the Sabarimala temple, struck down Section 497 of the IPC which pertained to adultery, upheld the right to die with dignity as well as delivered Hadiya and Khap panchayat judgments that helped develop a jurisprudence of transformative constitutionalism.

However, the existence of marital rape in a country like India, whose Constitution upholds all the basic civil rights, is unacceptable. The offence of marital rape gets its validation as Exception 2 to the offence of rape under Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code, which reads as follows:

Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under fifteen years of age, is not rape.

The origins of the exception can be traced down to the Victorian era during which Sir Matthew Hale, in a 17th century judgment, had stated that the husband cannot be alleged guilt-ridden of rape committed by himself upon his lawful wedded wife, for by their shared nuptial consent and contract, the wife gives herself to the husband which she cannot withdraw. The United Kingdom has since progressed and made it a crime after a judgment of 1991 and subsequently by an Act of 1994, but India is still struggling with the colonial hangover while trying to find shelter in the argument of the institution of family for the continuing existence of such a heinous crime.

In India, any law or provision of the law, which stands in direct contravention to the Constitution, is struck down as being ultra vires to it. Marital rape, as a concept, goes against the letter and spirit of Article 14  Right to Equality, and Article 21  Right to life and personal liberty of the Constitution. Article 14 protects individuals from unequal treatment in the country. It therefore prevents any unjust and unreasonable classification of people. The exception of marital rape creates an unreasonable and arbitrary classification between the women based on their marital status as it allows for the violation of the bodily autonomy of married women by their husbands. Therefore, Article 14 is violated by the existence of the exception of marital rape.

Article 21 of the Constitution of India, which guarantees the right to life and personal liberty, has various facets. Right to a dignified life, right to good health and right to privacy form a formidable part of it. Marital rape directly contravenes all these rights. The fundamental right to live with human dignity is one of the most vital characteristics of the right to life which acknowledges the independence of an individual. The Supreme Court has held in many cases that rape infringes upon the victim's right to life and the right to live with human dignity. Therefore, by logical extension, forceful sex by a husband with his wife should be considered as rape and a violation of the womans right to live with human dignity.

The right to good health has been recognised by the court as being imperative for the life and liberty of an individual. Marital rape infringes upon the right to good health of a victim as the forceful act causes grave psychosomatic injury as well as bodily harm to the victim. It subjects her to deep emotional stress. Further, the Supreme Court has only last year recognised the right to privacy of an individual. The right to bodily autonomy, a part of which is the sexual privacy of the wife, has been recognised as a facet of the right to privacy. The forceful act of sex by a husband violates the personal bodily autonomy and therefore is against the constitutional mandate of privacy.

Hence, its safe to say that the non-criminalisation of marital rape remains the biggest blot on the face of fundamental rights jurisprudence in India.

The end to the immunity to the offence of marital rape is long overdue in India. The problem that is faced by our country is that due to the ingrained patriarchy, the offence of marital rape is taken to be an acceptable social norm. This is quite visible in a report by the UN that pointed out that 69 percent of Indian women agree to the domestic violence which they are subjected to, which includes the times when they refuse to have sex with their husbands.

To make an argument that criminalising marital rape will break down the institution of marriage is itself ridiculing and trivialising the institution to an extent where an abusive relationship is confused to be the same as that which rests on the bonds of real love and affection.

India today has to rise above the sexist notion of wifely duty of acting as a chattel for her husband, as other than being morally wrong, it is also against constitutional morality and therefore legally untenable.

Raghav Pandey is an Assistant Professor of Law at Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai and Neelabh Bist is a Fourth Year student of Law at Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai.
A dissatisfied educated youth population can impact the social, economic and religious fabric of a society like Indias

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Issue 12 of Firstpost print.

When Vineet Chauhan graduated from Neelkanth Institute of Engineering and Technology, Meerut, with a B.Tech in 2016, he did not think that he would be looking forward so keenly to the 2019 general elections. Working for the local Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate  his family has long been a supporter of the party  in his village in western Uttar Pradeshs Kairana parliamentary constituency has given a bit of structure to his days, which are otherwise spent in some pursuit of meaning.

I dont know what it is to be busy. Outside of my student life, I have never known what it is to have important work to do, says 25-year-old Chauhan who has been looking for a job, but with no luck.

Everyone from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Congress president Rahul Gandhi has been working hard to reach out to Indias first-time voters, promising employment and entrepreneurial opportunity. But underemployed, under-educated, Indias Timepass Generation has become cynical about politics and is putting its faith in TikTok and tequila shots.

There are 55 million people in the labour force with a graduate or higher degree, according to the State of Working India, 2018 report, released by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University. Almost one in six is unemployed and Chauhan falls in this category.

The facts, terrifying in their starkness, just keep piling up. Unemployment in the category of people with a graduate or higher degree is three times the national average. And more than 60 percent of the unemployed are in the 15-25 age group.

The problem is as much the unavailability of jobs as the kind of employment opportunities that this workforce feels are commensurate with their skills and degrees. Chauhan has travelled from Meerut to Delhi to Chandigarh in search of a job, but at best, he was offered entry-level positions at private companies at a starting salary of Rs 6,000 to Rs 8,000. His family spent upwards of Rs 5 lakh on his graduation. Everyone keeps asking me, What are you doing? Lage hue hain bas (Im trying), he says.

In 2004-05, Craig Jeffrey, director of the Australia India Institute in Melbourne, worked with a large number of young people who had acquired qualifications but been unable to secure work and lacked the skills to start businesses or find lucrative jobs in the private sector. Jeffrey, in an email interview to Firstpost, describes these young people as being in a limbo, stuck somehow between the modern and traditional, urban and rural, childhood and adulthood. During the course of his research, he came across one word over and over again, timepass. It became the title of his book, Timepass: Youth, Class and the Politics of Waiting in India.

At 46, Vijendra Singh is a little older than the people Jeffrey would have interviewed for his book, but he understands the phenomenon all too well. Only he doesnt call it timepass. Samay pathra sa gaya hai, he says, the closest approximation of which is that time has fossilised for him. He holds a diploma in engineering but never got down to looking for work as the family came into money during the property boom in Ghaziabad. We did the usual things: build a big house, buy big cars. Then money ran out.

ALSO READ: Lack of jobs is a very real challenge

Singhs day begins at dawn with a game of badminton with other men of his village. Then we sit and chat. Politics? Sure, he chuckles. The conversation usually centres on who drank what last night, who will drink what tonight. Then we nap. Then we go for a walk. Then people assemble and start drinking. I realised later in life that youngsters need jobs to keep them grounded. It gives you your identity.

Singh is a native of Sadopur village, in Ghaziabad. He and neighbour Jagbir Singh run the Ambition Library, which is akin to a study centre for the local youth. The idea was to provide a space for youngsters to prepare for government exams rather than while away time in the village. A lot of people active in student political groups come from this area. They would pile these boys up in jeeps every time they needed some muscle flexing in Delhi. The centre is meant as an alternative to all of this, says Vijendra.

Girls and boys from various academic backgrounds come to the centre. From MBAs to B.Com graduates, they are all there, everyday, in a bid to crack government service exams because that is where the real job security lies. I am an MBA and even worked in a private firm for some time. But I was being paid a pittance and the workload was too much, says Bhim Singh Nagar. He is hoping to clear the SSC exams in June.

The truth of the matter is that even if you are a Group D employee, it is better than earning 1 lakh in a private company, says Aakash Nagar (no relation to Bhim Singh). Aakash has a B.Tech degree from the Hi-Tech Institute of Engineering and Technology, Ghaziabad. He is a remarkably self-aware 22-year-old with strong views on the education system. Quality education in this country is of very low quality. He is under no illusion about the value of his engineering degree or what he may have learnt in the classroom. There is no push on understanding but rather about getting the degree. And colleges dont help you in getting a job.

The engineering college boom in India was triggered by government education loans. The proliferation of institutes with next to no quality control has long been an area of concern. According to the National Employability Report  Engineers, 2019, prepared by Aspiring Minds, only 3.84 per cent of Indias engineers are employable in software-related jobs. And while India may be under the impression that Silicon Valley runs on engineers trained here, the US has a much higher proportion of engineers, almost four times, who have good programming skills. MBAs are not far behind. A study by ASSOCHAM had found that only 7 per cent of Indias business school graduates are employable.

The Annual State of Education Report, 2017, established that quality of education in the 14-18 age group of Indian students remains a matter of grave concern. We have generations that are growing up into an aspirational life but we are not able to guarantee a standard of living for them. Be it school level or higher, we are not doing well. Our failure to provide for the youth of the country can lead to social unrest. We may as well be sitting on a ticking time bomb, says professor Amit Basole, an economist at the Azim Premji University.

By 2020, India is expected to be the youngest nation in the world with half of its population under the age of 25. It is this section that will shape the future of the country. But their own future remains uncertain. Pushpendra Singh, a 29-year-old with an M.Com degree had made up his mind in school itself that he wanted a private job. He comes from a family of farmers and, while they were never poor, money was always a concern. He ticked all the boxes he thought were needed to do well: a degree, an additional skill course. But that wasnt enough. I was working in a sugar factory in Nagpur at a salary of 15,000 out of which rent alone was 5,000. I wasnt saving any money and eventually had to return home. Home is a village some distance away from Bareilly. He apologises for the way he speaks, a patina of local dialect with Hindi thrown in. I used to speak like city people when I studied in Bareilly. Now, I talk like everyone else in the village, he says ruefully. Singh understands the concept of timepass very well though he says not all days are like that. There are seasons when we are busy and then there are seasons when we are not. Playing cards and going to neighbouring villages to meet relatives are the two principal ways in which he and other young men in the locality spend their time. The elders taunt us, ask us why are we not working, why are we doing tapribaazi (goofing off). Its humiliating but I dont have an answer for it.

An increasingly dissatisfied educated youth population will have a big impact on the social, economic and religious fabric of a society like Indias. The recent agitation by Jats and Patidars, traditionally well-off communities, for reservation can be seen through this lens.

In the Ambition Library centre, for instance, there is deep resentment against caste-based reservation with students feeling that it should be stopped once a family has managed to lift itself up by the bootstraps. We dont get a foot in the door otherwise, says Aakash. Unemployment and underemployment, especially after the NSSO data leak, had the potential to be the biggest electoral issue for these elections but neither the government nor the Opposition is interested in highlighting it. The youth of the country, on the other hand, feels completely abandoned, says Anupam (who goes by only one name) of Swaraj India. The party has started a Yuva Halla Bol campaign against the SSC paper leak that also works with young people on issues of unemployment.

While unemployment has become a simmering concern, Anupam is right when he says that the mainstream political parties arent really addressing it. The Congress in its manifesto has promised a new ministry of industry, services and employment apart from filling in all the 20 lakh vacancies in government jobs. The BJP has not made any concrete claims, for its part, but has vowed to increase investment for job creation. But how will the issue end up impacting voting behaviour of the unemployed youth in the coming weeks? Voting behaviour still seems to be dictated by caste concerns rather than economic ones. Most of the people interviewed by Firstpost did not seem to hold the government or any party directly responsible for the mess they find themselves in.

In the current cycle of elections, the unemployment issue has manifested itself in rallies for reservation. Political mobilisation still follows caste lines, says Basole.

Lack of employment can bring about a strong sense of dislocation as well as identity crises, particularly in a society as hierarchical as India where secure, sustained employment is often seen as a ticket out of penury. Increasingly, this has also started impacting the wedding prospects of young men, with most families and girls preferring a stable government job as opposed to farming or even private sector employment. Faced with the lack of all these factors, can caste and religious identities start taking hold, leading to unrest?

Youth bulge and its impact on society has been a subject of much research with one extreme view, as posited by German demographer Gunnar Heinsohn, stating that there are links between violence and an increasingly young population. This theory, however, has been contested. Professor Jeffrey feels that there is also evidence to show that educated unemployed or underemployed young people can play constructive rolesthe world has changed so much since middle-aged Indians were growing up. In this context, young people in their twenties often play a key role as a type of intermediary generation. They advise their younger peers on issues such as career choices, education, health care, relationshipsyoung people act under the radar to assist youth in their neighbourhoods.

A prime example of this would be someone like Ashish Patwa, a resident of Gorakhpur. Patwa holds several degrees (BA, MA, B.Ed, I have done it all) but works in his fathers cotton store as he says he never had good enough grades to really qualify for anything. I advise young men on career options and choices quite a bit. My degrees give me a certain standing in society and I do feel that they have expanded my horizon.

The leaked NSSO data reveals that unemployment in India was at a 45- year high of 6.1 per cent in 2017-18. In such a scenario, Vineet Chauhan is hoping that his involvement with the local politician may lead to employment opportunities before existential crisis swallows him whole. Everyone needs astitva (a sense of being). Without work, life is meaningless.
Fish production is a growing business, one that has consistently received the Centres support. But in rural Uttar Pradesh, poisoning is one of the most common problems fish farmers face

On the morning of 27 March, residents of the village of Mudari in Mahoba woke up to their worst nightmare  a veritable sea of dead fish floating in their village pond. Littering the surface of the pond, the fish had been painstakingly farmed by the colony of fishermen in Mudari, who rely solely on fish farming for their subsistence.

There is no life left in the lake, you cant even hear the noise of the fish anymore, said Shivdin, the pond committees chairman, echoing a sentiment shared by many in the Mudari village, where the soundscape of life includes the sound of gently floating fish, We had cast a net yesterday, but we caught nothing. There are no signs that there are fish in this lake now, I think they are all dead. As the head of the local committee, he kept track of all the fishermen involved in fish farming, as well as the quantum of fish seed they were putting into the pond. According to his estimates, 6.5 lakh fish seeds had been released into the lake, More than four lakh of those must have survived and have been living in the lake ever since.

Four lakh fish dying overnight is unarguably a suspect occurrence anywhere, and in Mudari, there was a suggestion of malicious intervention. This cannot be natural causes, said Shivdin, Someone killed the fish by pouring in poison of some sort. It must have been diluted, because otherwise, animals who rely on this lake for water would have also died. Kheliya, another fisherman and village elder, agreed. You can also see the condition they're in, he said, pointing to the lake, This has nothing to do with the food. We've been feeding them the same thing ever since I've been a boy. He speculated, It's definitely some strange medicine, a chemical, which was poured into the lake.

Bharat Singh, a fisherman, also believed it was poisoning. He had a growing list of concerns, We need to ask if our business is viable in this lake, whether it is a danger to other animals, to our children, if the fish themselves are now too poisonous to eat. The stink in the lake is unbearable, and its becoming difficult to cross it with our boats. He concluded, Whoever put the poison in the water must have done it out of jealousy or contempt for us.

Fish production is a growing business, one that has consistently received the Centres support; most recently, this support manifested in the form of the Rs 3000 crore Blue Revolution program piloted by the Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries. Even before the Blue Revolution was instated, the development has been leasing out ponds, lakes and reservoirs, especially in rural India, to encourage fish farming  which includes growing fish seed and caring for them until they mature, and then catching them. Known as aquaculture or freshwater fish farming, it is often an alternative income source for fishermen. In Uttar Pradesh, all 375 ponds under the purview of the state fisheries department are currently being leased. Our committee is named in the contract which is valid for ten years, said Shivdin, We pay an annual fee of Rs 2500 as determined by the gram sabha.

Like in most of the state, aquaculture often makes up for a major part of the income of local communities. According to Shivdin, they had only just released the fish seed. We have sold nothing, he said about the possibility of recovering losses from caught fish sales. To make matters worse, he explained, They are all dead, and this is no season for breeding. We will find no fish seed right now. It will now just stay empty. What should have been a profitable, sustainable model of business has left 15 families, by Shivdins estimates, without a source of income and without a contingency plan. Our seed should be valued by the government. Why else would we have taken responsibility for this lake? Shivdin said, frustrated. But after a moment of looking at the lake again, the stench of death inescapably in the air, he said quietly, How will I provide for my family now with this lake?

Poisoning is one of the most common problems faced by fish farmers in rural Uttar Pradesh. The villagers, all suspecting foul play, reached out to the Kulpahad Tehsildar SM Sharma to conduct an investigation into the matter. Our reporter spoke with Kulpahads Kutval Bijender Singh who promised that now that the matter had been brought to their attention, swift action would be taken. Depending on their findings, he said, further action will be taken.

Khabar Lahariya is a women-only network of rural reporters from Bundelkhand.
A dedicated cadre is irreplaceable. Only a sustained campaign can bring in the votes, not sponsored social media hype

Social media is now well integrated into Indian politics and its newest political avatar is the IT cell, which generates paid-for trends. But, such trends cannot impact elections. Only a sustained campaign works and that is why a dedicated cadre and network of volunteers is irreplaceable, even in the age of social media.

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) model is a good example of effective use of social media. AAPs volunteers, not bots, sustained a narrative on social media, influencing the poll outcome. Another instance is the online buzz created for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2014.

Sponsored social media has none of the shelf life a volunteers-led political campaign has. Two political outfits can boast of such a network: the BJP and the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). Arguably, its cadre is the reason why the CPM was the second-biggest outfit until the BJP crashed the party in 1984.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) emerged as the third-largest party after the 2014 election. It is her party cadre, and not her social media presence, that makes Mayawati critical to the mahagathbandan (grand alliance) in Uttar Pradesh. In the Kairana, Noorpur, Phulpur and Gorakhpur bypolls, the BJP lost even though its vote share was intact. It was the strength of BSPs cadre that caused the upset.

Of course, the BJP is organised differently. The differentiator is the partys ideological parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). The RSS keeps a distance from the BJP but at the same time, its outfits have their own extensive social network in the real world.

Todayand most people fail to understand thisthe RSS argues that it does not even want a government that favours it. The RSS says it is happy to deal with any government as long as its keeps away from its affairs.

The RSS-BJP ties have had their moments. In 2004, the sarsanghchalak, or RSS chief, Sudarshan and former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee didnt see eye-to-eye. And this is what differentiates 2004 from 2019.

Today, the RSS is in sync with the BJP, and for good reason. The 2004 defeat kept the BJP out of power for 10 years and the RSS felt the pinch. Second, the Hindu terror cases alarmed it. It was better, the RSS concluded, to have a government that was not anti-RSS, even if the prime minister was not someone they would pick.

Also, the RSS has no reason to be upset with Narendra Modi. He and sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat have given each other enough space, unlike Vajpayee and Sudarshan. The RSS does not interfere much in government and expects the BJP to do things which it sees as critical.

Modi has delivered on that front -- the triple talaq bill, which some see as a move towards uniform civil code, and setting the ball rolling on Ram Mandir, to name a few.

Dont forget it was the RSS that propelled Modi to the Centre. He is a child of the RSS, a full-time pracharak, and that he will never forget. As long as he propagates their values, the RSS will let him be. The RSS also understands that in Modi they have the best vote-catcher they can hope for.

Today, the BJP has a cash-rich and well-oiled poll machinery but that was not always the case. The RSS collects money annually but its pracharaks subsist on little  they are encouraged to win enough trust to be allowed in kitchens, so that they dont starve.

The Congress once had this advantage, when its Seva Dal reached out to tribals and the Dalits. It is sourly missing the Dals outreach. The Congress has become so dependent on election funding that an income-tax raid paralyses the party.

It took the RSS decades of work before it found the right leader in Modi. Of course, the BJP may get into trouble later. The party is lucky that there is a parallel network and Modi, which together make a formidable combination. Take for instance, Tripura. It is not Modi or BJP president Amit Shah who swung the state but a full-time pracharak who spent his life working in the Northeastern state.

Today, the RSS has created a scenario that no party can appear to be anti-Hindu The Congress has gone soft saffron. Green flags at party president Rahul Gandhis rally in Wayanad became a liability as BJP volunteers created a green buzz on WhatsApp. These volunteers believe in BJPs ideology and are not paid for.

Consider the Congress Nyay scheme, a great disruptor but its not buzzing. If it had come from Modi, his supporters might have even called the 2019 election by now. Bhakts, or whatever you choose to call them, once convinced, go on and on. The bottomline: if you want to do kirtan, someone has to play the manjeera.

(Yashwant Deshmukh is a psephologist and founder of CVoter)
Those students who successfully qualify in the JAC class 8 board exam will be promoted to class 9.

JAC class 8 Result 2019: Jharkhand Academic Council (JAC) will declare the class 8 board exam result today (12 April, Friday). The JAC will release the class 8 result on the official website of the board : www.jac.nic.in.

JAC is one of the few education boards that conduct board examinations for class 8 in the country. Students who appeared for the examinations are advised to check their result through the official website only. Students can visit either of these websites : www.jacresults.com, www.jharresults.nic.in, www.jac.jharkhand.gov.in, or www.jac.nic.in

Steps to check and download the JAC class 8 Result 2019

Step 1: Visit the official website of the board : www.jharresults.nic.in

Step 2: Click on the result link provided for class 8th board examination.

Step 3: Enter the credentials like your roll number/registration number and other details correctly.

Step 4: Click on Submit to view your result.

Step 5: Download it from the relevant link and keep it for further use.

According to a report in The Indian Express, this year, over 5.56 lakh students appeared in the examination. JAC class 8 board examinations were conducted in February this year.

Students who successfully qualify in the JAC class 8 board exam will be promoted to class 9. Students who fail in the board examination will be given a chance to appear in the compartmental examination for class 8.

The council is yet to announce details on this, reports NDTV.
Walking into the sunset, LK Advani is forced to confront the ruthless, unscrupulous and inexorable course of history and politics

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Issue 12 of Firstpost print.

I am growing old and it is time for the younger generation to step forward. BJP president LK Advani, then 68, will go on to repeat these words during the 35-day Suraj (good governance) Yatra of 1996 but his party would hear nothing of it.

A few weeks earlier, Advani had been chargesheeted in a hawala case, accused of receiving slush funds. At the partys Ashoka Road headquarters in Delhi, the atmosphere was tense as senior leaders gathered for a meeting late January.

Advani had resigned as the Lok Sabha member from Gandhinagar, much against the wishes of party colleagues. He also vowed not to contest an election till cleared of the charges, forcing the BJP to field his friend and party senior Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Gandhinagar for that years national election. Party general secretary KN Govindacharya hailed Advanis move as a great gesture which will internalise values of ethical and moral rectitude within the party.

This was Advani at the pinnacle of his political career, a leader who thought nothing of sacrificing personal ambitions for the party he had helped built from scratch. A leader who put party before self.

Fast forward to March 2019. The BJPs first list names party president Amit Shah as its Gandhinagar candidate for the April-May Lok Sabha election, signalling the end of the electoral journey for 91-year-old Advani.

On 4 April, Advani broke his silence in a telling blog post. In reiterating the BJPs predominant principle of nation first, party next and self last, Advani chose not to mention his Gandhinagar successor, Shah. The bitterness is hard to miss as he asks the party to introspect and not to see political rivals as enemies. As the BJP gears up for another poll battle, aiming for a famous win, the man who made it possible is now a diminished leader, way past his glory days but unwilling to accept the changed reality.

The timing of the blog post, in which he also says that the party never looked at its adversaries as anti-nationals, is not lost on anyone. Coming in the middle of an intense and highly polarised campaign, Advanis musings are timed to embarrass the party.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his protege, moved swiftly to take the sting out of the veiled attack by endorsing Advanis message through a tweet. But rivals saw an opening. The insult to the patriarch, they said, was yet another example of Modis dictatorial attitude.

But only if they knew, or cared to remember, that Advani was often accused of unilateralism and that, too, by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP.

In the BJP, as well as its forerunner, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS), Advanis exercised complete control and that, too, for decades -- from 1970s to 2013.

His position as undisputed leader took a knock for the first time in 2004, after the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance couldnt retain power. Voters just didnt take shine to the BJP even though Advani led an aggressive campaign.

So tight was his grip over the party that Advani assumed the role of the Leader of the Opposition, pushing aside an ageing and frail Vajpayee in a carefully orchestrated move by his lieutenants. The two were good friends but the relationship was tested. Vajpayee went on to be the prime minister, which Advani was forced to support.

The year 2004 marked a turning point for Advani. He was suddenly a man in a hurry. He managed to upset the Sangh Parivar when he usurped the BJP presidents position vacated by M Venkaiah Naidu. Advani was not only the leader of the Opposition but also the BJP chief, defying the partys one man, one post principle. I dont see any rancour. On the other hand, my position is strengthened by holding both the posts, he had said when asked by this writer if he knew of the bitterness his decision had caused.

His control of the party was complete but cracks were appearing elsewhere. He began facing hostility from Sangh Parivar constituents. He had a run-in with the founder of RSSs trade union wing, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, who refused to interact with him.

Ashok Singhal, whose Vishva Hindu Parishad virtually laid the ground for Advanis Ram Rath Yatra that catapulted BJP to the national stage, was equally bitter. Singhal refused to share stage with Advani at a dharm sansad (religious congregation) of Hindu saints and leaders at Haridwar soon after the 2004 defeat.

The strain between the Sangh Parivar and Advani was there for everyone to see. Yet, Advani, an astute politician and strategist, completely misread the signs. He was confident of overriding any challenge. After all, he was the BJP chief and the younger generation of leaders he had groomed was in awe of him.

It was this confidence, or hubris if you would, that saw him make arguably the biggest mistake of his political career. During a visit to his birthplace of Karachi in June, 2005, Advani described Pakistans founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular leader and an ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity. His attempt to reinvent himself and soften his hardline image backfired spectacularly. The BJP, still coming to terms with the poll defeat, was stunned and struggled to explain its chiefs change of heart.

Not just the party, Advani, too, was in for a shock. He thought the party would play along. But as the crisis snowballed, Advani asked his junior party colleagues to hold a press conference to defend his statement. Sushma Swaraj refused. The RSS, already upset with his transgressions, pinned him down by engineering a chorus of protest from leaders like Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie.

Upset over lack of support, Advani on his return handed over his resignation letter to BJP general secretary (organisation) Sanjay Joshi. Though aware of his clout, the RSS and the BJP Generation Next decided to ease out Advani until Narendra Modi, the-then Gujarat chief minister, intervened. Modi prevailed and Advani continued as the BJP chief for another year before passing on the baton to Rajnath Singh in 2006. Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh, too, played down Advanis Jinnah remark.

The damage, however, was done. At the national executive in Chennai, which came before he relinquished charge, Advani alluded to RSS interference in the BJP and suggested it desist the temptation. That was harsh coming from someone who had grown up in the Sangh. Advani was 14 when he joined the RSS.

After Chennai, it was downhill all the way. But, Advani was never the one to give up easily and fought for every inch of political space. Much of his clout was lost but he was still Advani, the man who had pushed the BJP from the margins to the centre stage of Indian politics. When the 2009 general election came, the Sangh Parivar coined the Advani for PM slogan, looking to draw a contrast between a powerful prime ministerial candidate against a weak Manmohan Singh.

Even before the first vote was cast, Advani had lost the perception game. His flip-flops, including the Jinnah comment, had battered his strongman image. The BJP lost and Swaraj, another of his proteges, was the Leader of the Opposition in the new Lok Sabha.

But, Advani was not done. He got himself appointed the chairman of the BJPs parliamentary party, along the lines of a similar position created in the Congress for Sonia Gandhi.

In October 2011, he made another attempt to burnish his credentials of a popular leader. He launched another nationwide rath yatra from Chhapra, in Bihar, which was flagged off by chief minister Nitish Kumar. Advani chose Bihar instead of Gujarat, as he tried to play Kumar against Modi to prove his wider acceptability within the NDA fold, which would have brought him closer to the big prize: prime ministership.

The yatra didnt do much for him, but he continued to dominate the BJP till 2013. Then he made the mistake of not attending the partys national executive at Goa, where Modi was picked to lead the campaign for the 2014 election. The Modi era had dawned.

Advani persisted with resistance to the shift, even when Modi was proposed as the prime ministerial candidate. But the Modi wave not only swept away the Opposition but also the Advani era as the BJP won a majority on its own for the first time.

The partys decision to name Shah and not Advani from Gandhinagar is the corollary of gradual marginalisation of the leader who redrew Indias political landscape by defining it along pseudo-secularism and minoritism lines. Advani was not only the BJPs longest-serving president but also the most powerful.

He was ruthless too. The first decision he took as the Bharatiya Jana Sangh chief was to sack its former president Balraj Madhok for working against party interest.

His pairing with Vajpayee was formidable and the duo practically ran the party. Advani was instrumental in convincing the RSS leadership to allow the BJSs merger with the Janata Party to join the Morarji Desai government in 1977. His role as information minister in the Janata Party government was much appreciated. He, along with Vajpayee, again took the lead in breaking away from the Janata Party on the issue of dual membership  allegiance to the government or the Sangh Parivar  and anti-RSS stance of socialist colleagues.

The BJP was born on April 6, 1980, with the RSS as its ideological parent.

Though Vajpayee was the first BJP chief, Advani was considered ideologically closer to the RSS. Unlike Vajpayee, Advanis politics was perfectly in sync with that of the RSS.

Even his unilateralism was seen as aligned with the greater goal of the Sangh Parivar. He was seen as disciplinarian, no-nonsense and a complete party man. The impression conformed to the Sangh Parivars credo of primacy to organisation over individual.

In his autobiography My Nation My Life, which came out in 2008, Advani says, I am also troubled by the fact that this spirit of camaraderie and mutual trust, idealistic and goal-oriented approach to party work, is something that has got diluted over the years.

His words almost echoed a passage in the 1940 novel Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. Protagonist Rubashov, who played a vital role in the Bolshevik revolution, says, The party is the embodiment of the revolutionary idea in the history. History knows no scruples and no hesitation. Inert and unerring, she flows towards her goal. At every bend in her course, she leaves the mud which she carries and corpses of the drowned. History knows her way. She makes no mistakes. He who has not absolute faith in history does not belong in the partys ranks. Rubashov is eventually executed for treason by a regime that espoused the cause of proletarian dictatorship.

History is ruthless and individuals, irrespective of their stature, are but a footnote. Advanis marginalisation is nothing but the march of time. The Sangh Parivar, too, has its own code for people and events. At their meetings, RSS volunteers often sing Manushya tu bada mahan hai, an ode to human strength and greatness. But, at the same time, they are reminded about human fragility and fallibility.

So, to err is perfectly human. And that is the lens through which Advani will be examined. His indiscretions will go down as transient and will count for little when weighed against his contribution to the Sangh Parivar. History, at least that of the Sangh Parivar, will be kind to Advani. There is no disputing his place in its pantheon.
Lok Sabha Election 2019 LIVE updates: Addressing a rally in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon, BJP president Amit Shah said, 'MLA Bhima Mandavi's (who lost his life in a Naxal attack on 9 April) death smells of a political conspiracy. I want to tell chief minister of Chhattisgarh, if you have nothing to hide, then order a CBI inquiry into Mandavi's death.'

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The central government and the Election Commission have taken contrary stands in the Supreme Court over political funding, with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of the donors of electoral bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing the names of donors for transparency.

The Centre had appealed to let the system of electoral bonds continue till the end of the Lok Sabha elections. Now that the Court has set a deadline that comes well after the 27 May announcement of results of the polls, the system effectively will continue through the election process.

The Supreme Court pronounced a key verdict on electoral bonds in which it asked political parties to reveal by 30 May, how much money they have respectively received through such bonds. The apex court also held that the issue of electoral bonds needed lengthy hearing.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address rallies at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra (11 am), Gangavati in Karnataka (3 pm) and Kozhikode in Kerala (6.30 pm).

Lekhi told the SC bench that the Congress president, in his remark over the top court's verdict in the Rafale case, had said, "Supreme Court has said, chowkidaar chor hai (in its verdict)".

BJP MP Meenaakshi Lekhi has filed a contempt plea against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks on the recent Supreme Court verdict in the Rafale case

On Smriti Irani writing in her poll affidavit that she enrolled for an undergraduate course in Delhi University but did not complete it, Chaturvedi said, "A new serial is going to come, Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi. Its opening line will be 'Qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ek degree aati hai, ek degree jaati hai, bante affidavit naye hain."

The Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi held a press conference in which she hit out at the BJP over the issue of politicisation of the armed forces and Smriti Irani's qualifications. Listing all the instances in which the BJP leaders have used the armed forces in their poll pitch, Chaturvedi said, "Political parties using armed forces is wrong."

Bihar recorded voter turnout of 50 percent, the lowest among the 18 states and two union territories which went to polls Thursday, the Election Commission said.

Two seats in West Bengal, Cooch Behar and Alipurduar, went to poll in the first phase. The state will have polling in all seven phases.

West Bengal Thursday recorded a polling percentage of 81 per cent, while Bihar recorded 50 per cent voter turnout in phase one of Lok Sabha elections.

The prime minister hit out at the Congress-NCP alliance as well. "Today, on the one hand, the Congress and NCP has given you hollow promises and on the other hand the NDA has made good on its promises. During the Congress-NCP government, bomb blasts took place across Mumbai. In the last five years, blasts have stopped in Maharashtra," he said.

"In the last five years, a strong, decision-making government, a public partner, has been seen in India. Prior to that, there were reports of scams and scandals. Today the world is seeing India as a superpower," Narendra Modi said in his rally in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra.

Speaking at Ahmednagar, Narendra Modi steered clear of asking voters to cast their ballots in the name of the Army or the martyrs, after running into quite some controversy after repeatedly mentioning them in earlier speeches. He, however, repeated his earlier promises of a water ministry and rang up the old slam of a scam operating out of the Gandhi family's 'Tughlaq Road' residence. "Congress has stolen money meant for pregnant women just days after coming to power in Madhya Pradesh," he said.

The letter urges President Ram Nath Kovind to take all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas.

On Thursday, over 150 armed forces veterans  including three former army chiefs, four former navy chiefs and a former air force chief  wrote to the President and Commander-in-Chief to complain about the manner in which political parties have been repeatedly using armed forces for political gains ahead of the Lok Sabha election.

Reports have said that Rashtrapati Bhavan sources have denied receiving any letter supposedly written by Armed Forces veterans to the President.

The news agency reported that General SF Rodrigues, the first signatory of the letter, has said, "Dont know what it (the purported letter written by Armed Forces veterans to the President) is all about. All my life,we've been apolitical. After 42 years as officer, it's a little late to change. We always put India first. I dont know who these people are, it is a classic manifestation of fake news," he said.

ANI has reported that two of the signatories of the circulated letter sent to the President by Army veterans have denied having signed this letter.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said during his rally at Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri, "We will never ever let the people of Tamil Nadu be ruled by Nagpur. Tamil Nadu is going to be ruled from Tamil Nadu and MK Stalin is going to be the chief minister of Tamil Nadu."

Air Chief Marshal NC Suri, another signatory of the alleged letter has said that he was misquoted in the letter, which he alleges was written by "some Major Chaudhary."

"Do you remember the previous ten years of the earlier remote-controlled government? Scams and delays in decision-making were the order of the day. You need to now choose between imandar chowkidar and bhrashtachari naamdar," Modi said.

Speaking at Ahmednagar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday targeted Congress president Rahul Gandhi, asking voters to choose between "imandar chowkidar" and "bhrashtachari naamdar". Addressing an election rally to campaign for Ahmednagar and Shirdi Lok Sabha candidates, Modi also said the world has recognised India as a super power in the last five years.

"Not just I, but my entire staff saw this," she added.

"Kishore asked for him (Nitish Kumar) to be declared the prime ministerial candidate, even after JD(U) had joined hands with the BJP. We had to throw him out of the house. He is a liar," she said.

Rabri Devi, on Friday, told News18 in an interview that JD(U) leader Prashant Kishor had visited Lalu Prasad's hope as many as five times, to broker a deal through which Nitish Kumar and his party could make their way back to the mahagathbandhan in Bihar.

Significantly, Shah brought back the BJP's favourite language slam against Naveen Patnaik, who cannot speak in Odia. "Naveen babu has ruled Odisha for 19 years, but still can't talk in Odia to his people," he said.

Speaking at Odisha's Keonjhar, BJP chief Amit Shah said on Friday that governments of Congress and Biju Janata Dal have wrecked Odisha. "Due to the complete lack of employment opportunities in Odisha, its youth has to migrate to other states to earn their livelihood," he said, also highlighting alleged water scarcity issues and the problem of paucity of teachers in schools.

Shah also promised effective utilisation of Odisha's rich natural resources and said a medical college has been built from money sent to the state by the Centre. "Under District Mineral Fund, an additional Rs 1,600 crore has been allocated to this district," he said.

Speaking at Naveen Patnaik's turf of Odisha on Friday, BJP chief Amit Shah made a host of promises to the Keonjhar audience, reciting not just schemes for tribals but also for farmers. "All forest produce will be procured at MSP by the government from the tribals. GST will not be levied on tendu leaves," he said, to applause.

"Not even a single one is in jail," he added. Rahul said when his party is voted to power, no farmer "is going to be put in jail for not paying back his bank loan, it is not fair that the richest people do not go to jail but farmers go to jail for the same offence."

Rahul Gandhi on Friday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging he ran his government for 15 of his friends and he wondered why no big-ticket defaulters of bank loans like Vijay Mallya were not in jail. The Congress chief said the ones like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, after taking bank loans, failed to return it and ran away from the country.

Another complaint was regarding the polls in Bengal. "Trinamool Congress goons prevented people from voting in West Bengal on Thursday. We demanded that repolling be done and that two CAPF soldiers be stationed at every booth in West Bengal," Naqvi said.

Taking over from him, Sitharaman said, "Rahul had erroneously said even on Thursday that Supreme Court has admitted to the fact that Narendra Modi siphoned off Rs 30,000 crore to his friend Anil Ambani. Where did that happen? Did Supreme Court ever say this?"

A delegation of the BJP, led by Union ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Nirmala Sitharaman, met the Election Commission to raise complaints on several charges. Addressing a press conference after the meeting, Naqvi slammed the language used by Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Rafale documents admissability order. "Congress has crossed all limits," he said. Rahul had said, "Supreme Court has pronounced the verdict, chowkidar is a chor."

Another complaint was regarding the polls in Bengal. "Trinamool Congress goons prevented people from voting in West Bengal on Thursday. We demanded that repolling be done and that two CAPF soldiers be stationed at every booth in West Bengal," Naqvi said.

Taking over from him, Sitharaman said, "Rahul had erroneously said even on Thursday that Supreme Court has admitted to the fact that Narendra Modi siphoned off Rs 30,000 crore to his friend Anil Ambani. Where did that happen? Did Supreme Court ever say this?"

A delegation of the BJP, led by Union ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Nirmala Sitharaman, met the Election Commission to raise complaints on several charges. Addressing a press conference after the meeting, Naqvi charged the language used by Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Rafale documents admissability order. Rahul had said, "Supreme Court has pronounced the verdict, chowkidar is a chor."

AAP had earlier said that the party is not interested in tying up with Congress in Delhi alone.

"AAP wanted to have an alliance in other states also, which is not practical. Every state is different; we will announce the seats tomorrow or day after tomorrow. If they are ready for an alliance in Delhi with Congress, we are ready even today," Chacko said.

Congress leader PC Chacko said on Friday that the door is open for Aam Aadmi Party to forge an alliance with the party in Delhi.

Speaking in the aftermath of a Congress press conference in which the party's spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi spoke on Smriti Irani finally clearing up her lack of college education, the BJP leader said these 'attacks' only egg her on to work harder 'against the Congress'.

Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday said the purported letter sent by Army veterans to the president was "fake." "Two senior officers said they haven't given their consent. It is worrying that fake letters are being signed by vested groups. It is condemnable. Rashtrapati Bhawan has also said that they have not received the letter," she said.

AAP leader Gopal Rai said during a press conference that the party has formed an alliance with the Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) in Haryana for Lok Sabha elections. JJP will contest on 7 seats and AAP will contest on 3 seats in the state.

In March, Sukh Ram rejoined the Congress along with his grandson Aashray Sharma ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The development had led to speculation on the fate of Anil. State BJP president Satpal Singh Satti had then said, "It is up to Anil Sharma whether to remain a Himachal Pradesh minister or quit. He should make his stand clear."

Addressing a rally in Karnataka's Gangavathi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi targetted Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy. " HD Deve Gowda ji ke bete ne kaha ki kendra mein agar phir sarkar ban gai toh vo rajneeti se sanyaas lelenge. 2014 ke chunav mein swayam Deve Gowda ji ne kaha tha agar Modi ji PM banenge toh main sanyaas le lunga. Unhone liya kya? Beta sanyas lega kya? (JD(S) leader HD Deve Gowda's son said that if NDA forms the government in the Centre again, then he'll retire from politics. In 2014 election, Deve Gowda had said that if Modi becomes the prime minister then he'll retire from politics. Did he retire? Will his son retire?)"

"Fulfilling their individual and family's greed is their priority. And what is their mission? Commission," he said.

"This is an election between 'nation first' and 'family first'. Congress and JD(S) are detached from people and attached to their own family," Narendra Modi said in Karnataka's Gangavathi.

In Gangavathi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "In the first phase of election, the wave of BJP and its allies will sweep the opposition. The situation in West Bengal is chaotic. It's a sign of an imminent change"

Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha lashed out at Maneka over the video on Twitter and wrote, "WHOA!!! Just hear #ManekaGandhi talking to Muslims; it's a shocker!!!!"

In a video doing rounds on social media, Union minister Maneka Gandhi, is allegedly seen telling Muslims in Sultanpur to vote for her. "I am going to win because of the love of the people. But if I win without the votes of the Muslims, then I won't be too happy. I will not be inclined to be responsive when you come to seek jobs," she is heard saying in the video.

In January, the Jhargram district magistrate had denied the party permission to land BJP chief Amit Shah's helicopter near the venue, citing security concerns. Later, Shah's scheduled rally was cancelled, but the party said it was due to his poor health.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi's chopper has been denied permission to land in Siliguri in 14 April, when he is scheduled to address a rally there.

"Tomorrow (Saturday), I'm meeting the Election Commission. I'm going to discuss the anomalies and technical problems EVMs are facing. Nobody knows what is happening in EVMs," he told reporters. Faulty EVMs had reportedly hampered the polling in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, leading to delays in the voting process at over 300 booths in the state.

Addressing a rally in Tamil Nadu's Theni, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, "If we give Rs 15 lakh per person, we will destroy the economy, but we can give Rs 3.6 lakh per year, we will not destroy the economy. In fact it will strengthen it."

"Modi will be upset because he will not be able to give thousands of crores of rupees to Anil Ambani. He'll be upset because Indians won't fight with each other. Narendra Modi is the element of hate among Indians. The moment Indians get along, Modi will get down. We are not going to fight Modi's hatred with hatred. We're going to fight it with love and affection toward each other by respecting each other."

"Narendra Modi started a negative economic cycle. He pulled the petrol out of the engine and switched off the engine. And he gave the keys of the vehicle to the 15 rich businessmen of the country," Rahul Gandhi said in Theni, while praising his party's NYAY scheme.

"Throughout history, only the people of Tamil have decided the future. There is no force in this universe that can make the Tamil people do what they don't want to do. With hatred and anger, you can't make Tamil people do anything, but with love and affection, you can. We're not going to stand here and let him disrespect the Tamil people, their language or their spirit. We're not going to let him impose his half-baked ideas on Tamils. "

In Theni, Rahul Gandhi said, "Narendra Modi is convinced he can run Tamil Nadu from Delhi. He is convinced that just because he can pressurise the Tamil Nadu government, he can decide what happens in Tamil Nadu. I don't think this man has read anything about Tamil history. He certainly doesn't understand the Tamil spirit. I think I will send him a book on Periyar.

Addressing a rally in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon, BJP president Amit Shah said, "MLA Bhima Mandavi's (who lost his life in a Naxal attack on 9 April) death smells of a political conspiracy. I want to tell chief minister of Chhattisgarh, if you have nothing to hide, then order a CBI inquiry into Mandavi's death."

The party gave a memorandum to EC over Irani's contradictory affidavits, demanding that she should be disqualified from contesting. "Modi, BJP chief (Amit Shah) and other leaders of the ruling party are shamelessly and openly, for the first time in 70 years, are dragging the forces into cheap politics," Singhvi told reporters.

A Congress delegation, comprising Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Surjewala, made several representations such as over Union minister Smriti Irani's "contradictory affidavits" to the Election Commission on her educational qualifications and a web series on Modi.

The Congress on Friday moved the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in the political domain by using them to seek votes.

"If it's within our powers, we will make the sedition law even more stringent. We will make such a strict law that it would send shivers down their spine."

Speaking at a gathering in Gandhidham city of Kutch district in Gujarat, he said, "Congress is saying that they will repeal the sedition law. I want to ask you all, should we forgive those anti-nationals who are trying to break the unity and social fabric of our country?

Attacking Congress over its poll promise of repealing the sedition law if elected to power in the Lok Sabha election, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh Friday said here that the BJP government would make the law even more stringent.

Addressing a poll rally here for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency, Banerjee claimed that "regional parties have become important, we will together form the government."

She said unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she does not ask for votes in the name of the soldiers. Banerjee, an important leader of the anti-BJP bloc, claimed that it will be difficult for the BJP to cross 100 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha election.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee expressed solidarity with army veterans conveying outrage over alleged use of armed forces for political purposes and asked the BJP leadership not to build their identity riding on the sacrifices and achievements of the soldiers.

WHOA!!! Just hear #ManekaGandhi talking to Muslims; it's a shocker!!!! Worse, she says "you will need me, and I will have booth-wise details". #BJP ko harana hamara zimmedari hain. They are threatening our fellow Indians for votes. @ECISVEEP ; Please take action ASAP! https://t.co/rGSCup0w55

Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha lashed out at Maneka over the video on Twitter and wrote, "WHOA!!! Just hear #ManekaGandhi talking to Muslims; it's a shocker!!!!"

In a video doing rounds on social media, Union minister Maneka Gandhi, is allegedly seen telling Muslims in Sultanpur to vote for her. "I am going to win because of the love of the people. But if I win without the votes of the Muslims, then I won't be too happy. I will not be inclined to be responsive when you come to seek jobs," she is heard saying in the video.

In January, the Jhargram district magistrate had denied the party permission to land BJP chief Amit Shah's helicopter near the venue, citing security concerns. Later, Shah's scheduled rally was cancelled, but the party said it was due to his poor health.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi's chopper has been denied permission to land in Siliguri in 14 April, when he is scheduled to address a rally there.

Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu: Tomorrow I'm meeting Election Commission, I'm going to discuss the anomalies and technical problems EVMs are facing. Nobody knows what is happening in EVMs. #LokSabhaElections2019 #AndhraPradeshElection2019 pic.twitter.com/889JVGZQ1q

"Tomorrow (Saturday), I'm meeting the Election Commission. I'm going to discuss the anomalies and technical problems EVMs are facing. Nobody knows what is happening in EVMs," he told reporters. Faulty EVMs had reportedly hampered the polling in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, leading to delays in the voting process at over 300 booths in the state.

Addressing a rally in Tamil Nadu's Theni, Congress president Rahul Gandhi said, "If we give Rs 15 lakh per person, we will destroy the economy, but we can give Rs 3.6 lakh per year, we will not destroy the economy. In fact it will strengthen it."

"Modi will be upset because he will not be able to give thousands of crores of rupees to Anil Ambani. He'll be upset because Indians won't fight with each other. Narendra Modi is the element of hate among Indians. The moment Indians get along, Modi will get down. We are not going to fight Modi's hatred with hatred. We're going to fight it with love and affection toward each other by respecting each other."

"Narendra Modi started a negative economic cycle. He pulled the petrol out of the engine and switched off the engine. And he gave the keys of the vehicle to the 15 rich businessmen of the country," Rahul Gandhi said in Theni, while praising his party's NYAY scheme.

"Throughout history, only the people of Tamil have decided the future. There is no force in this universe that can make the Tamil people do what they don't want to do. With hatred and anger, you can't make Tamil people do anything, but with love and affection, you can. We're not going to stand here and let him disrespect the Tamil people, their language or their spirit. We're not going to let him impose his half-baked ideas on Tamils. "

In Theni, Rahul Gandhi said, "Narendra Modi is convinced he can run Tamil Nadu from Delhi. He is convinced that just because he can pressurise the Tamil Nadu government, he can decide what happens in Tamil Nadu. I don't think this man has read anything about Tamil history. He certainly doesn't understand the Tamil spirit. I think I will send him a book on Periyar.

Addressing a rally in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon, BJP president Amit Shah said, "MLA Bhima Mandavi's (who lost his life in a Naxal attack on 9 April) death smells of a political conspiracy. I want to tell chief minister of Chhattisgarh, if you have nothing to hide, then order a CBI inquiry into Mandavi's death."

The party gave a memorandum to EC over Irani's contradictory affidavits, demanding that she should be disqualified from contesting. "Modi, BJP chief (Amit Shah) and other leaders of the ruling party are shamelessly and openly, for the first time in 70 years, are dragging the forces into cheap politics," Singhvi told reporters.

A Congress delegation, comprising Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Surjewala, made several representations such as over Union minister Smriti Irani's "contradictory affidavits" to the Election Commission on her educational qualifications and a web series on Modi.

The Congress on Friday moved the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in the political domain by using them to seek votes.

"If it's within our powers, we will make the sedition law even more stringent. We will make such a strict law that it would send shivers down their spine."

Speaking at a gathering in Gandhidham city of Kutch district in Gujarat, he said, "Congress is saying that they will repeal the sedition law. I want to ask you all, should we forgive those anti-nationals who are trying to break the unity and social fabric of our country?

Attacking Congress over its poll promise of repealing the sedition law if elected to power in the Lok Sabha election, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh Friday said here that the BJP government would make the law even more stringent.

Addressing a poll rally here for the Darjeeling Lok Sabha constituency, Banerjee claimed that "regional parties have become important, we will together form the government."

She said unlike Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she does not ask for votes in the name of the soldiers. Banerjee, an important leader of the anti-BJP bloc, claimed that it will be difficult for the BJP to cross 100 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha election.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee expressed solidarity with army veterans conveying outrage over alleged use of armed forces for political purposes and asked the BJP leadership not to build their identity riding on the sacrifices and achievements of the soldiers.



Lok Sabha Election 2019 LATEST updates: Addressing a rally in Chhattisgarh's Rajnandgaon, BJP president Amit Shah said, "MLA Bhima Mandavi's (who lost his life in a Naxal attack on 9 April) death smells of a political conspiracy. I want to tell chief minister of Chhattisgarh, if you have nothing to hide, then order a CBI inquiry into Mandavi's death."

A day after Andhra Pradesh went to polls, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said, "Tomorrow (Saturday), I'm meeting the Election Commission. I'm going to discuss the anomalies and technical problems EVMs are facing. Nobody knows what is happening in EVMs," he told reporters.

In a video doing rounds on social media, Union minister Maneka Gandhi, is allegedly seen telling Muslims in Sultanpur to vote for her. "I am going to win because of the love of the people. But if I win without the votes of the Muslims, then I won't be too happy. I will not be inclined to be responsive when you come to seek jobs," she is heard saying in the video. Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha lashed out at Maneka over the video and tweeted, "WHOA!!! Just hear #ManekaGandhi talking to Muslims; it's a shocker!!!!"

Addressing a rally in Karnataka's Gangavathi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi targetted Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy. "JD(S) leader HD Deve Gowda's son said that if NDA forms the government in the Centre again, then he'll retire from politics. In 2014 election, Deve Gowda had said that if Modi becomes the prime minister then he'll retire from politics. Did he retire? Will his son retire?)"

Former Union minister Sukh Ram's son Anil Sharma tendered his resignation as Himachal Pradesh minister on Friday. In March, Sukh Ram rejoined the Congress along with his grandson Aashray Sharma ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. The development had led to speculation on the fate of Anil. State BJP president Satpal Singh Satti had then said, "It is up to Anil Sharma whether to remain a Himachal Pradesh minister or quit. He should make his stand clear."

Congress leader PC Chacko said on Friday that the door is open for Aam Aadmi Party to forge an alliance with the party in Delhi. "AAP wanted to have an alliance in other states also, which is not practical. Every state is different; we will announce the seats tomorrow or day after tomorrow. If they are ready for an alliance in Delhi with Congress, we are ready even today," Chacko said.

AAP had earlier said that the party is not interested in tying up with Congress in Delhi alone.

A delegation of the BJP, led by Union ministers Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and Nirmala Sitharaman, met the Election Commission to raise complaints on several charges. Addressing a press conference after the meeting, Naqvi charged the language used by Congress chief Rahul Gandhi in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Rafale documents admissability order. Rahul had said, "Supreme Court has pronounced the verdict, chowkidar is a chor."

Rabri Devi, on Friday, told News18 in an interview that JD(U) leader Prashant Kishore had visited Lalu Prasad's hope as many as five times, to broker a deal through which Nitish Kumar and his party could make their way back to the mahagathbandhan in Bihar.

"Kishore asked for him (Nitish Kumar) to be declared the prime ministerial candidate, even after JD(U) had joined hands with the BJP. Not just I, but my entire staff saw this," she said.

Speaking at Odisha's Keonjhar, BJP chief Amit Shah significantly brought back the BJP's favourite language slam against Naveen Patnaik, who cannot speak in Odia. "Naveen babu has ruled Odisha for 19 years, but still can't talk in Odia to his people," he said.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said during his rally at Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri, "We will never ever let the people of Tamil Nadu be ruled by Nagpur. Tamil Nadu is going to be ruled from Tamil Nadu and MK Stalin is going to be the chief minister of Tamil Nadu."

Speaking at Ahmednagar, Narendra Modi steered clear of asking voters to cast their ballots in the name of the Army or the martyrs, after running into quite some controversy after repeatedly mentioning them in earlier speeches. He, however, repeated his earlier promises of a water ministry and rang up the old slam of a scam operating out of the Gandhi family's 'Tughlaq Road' residence. "Congress has stolen money meant for pregnant women just days after coming to power in Madhya Pradesh," he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his rally at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra, hit out at the Congress-NCP alliance. "Today, on the one hand, the Congress and NCP has given you hollow promises and on the other hand the NDA has made good on its promises. During the Congress-NCP government, bomb blasts took place across Mumbai, in Pune, on a train. In the last five years, since the BJP came to power, blasts have stopped in Maharashtra," he said.

BJP MP Meenaakshi Lekhi has filed a contempt plea against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks on the recent Supreme Court verdict in the Rafale case. Lekhi told the SC bench that the Congress president, in his remark over the top court's verdict in the Rafale case, had said, "Supreme Court has said, chowkidaar chor hai (in its verdict)".

SC has agreed to hear the contempt plea on April 15.

A day after Phase 1 of the Lok Sabha elections, the Supreme Court pronounced a key verdict on electoral bonds in which it asked political parties to reveal by 30 May, how much money they have respectively received through such bonds. The apex court also held that the issue of electoral bonds needed lengthy hearing.

The Centre had appealed to let the system of electoral bonds continue till the end of the Lok Sabha elections. Now that the court has set a deadline that comes well after the 27 May announcement of results of the polls, the system effectively will continue through the election process.

The central government and the Election Commission have taken contrary stands in the Supreme Court over political funding, with the government wanting to maintain the anonymity of the donors of electoral bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing the names of donors for transparency.

Meanwhile, with six phases of the elections still to go, leaders of parties, both big and small, are eager to make the most on the campaign trail.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to address rallies at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra (11 am), Gangavati in Karnataka (3 pm) and Kozhikode in Kerala (6.30 pm). Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah will address a rally at Keonjhar in Odisha.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi too will be in the south. He is expected to hold a public rally at 11 am in Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri district. Rahul is then expected to address meetings at Salem district (around 1 pm), Theni district (3.45 pm), and Madurai district (5.30 pm).

Sources, News18 had reported, had said that concerns have been raised to the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee and the party's central election committee about the lack of booth level co-ordination in Thiruvananthapuram constituency. Thiruvananthapuram is where Shashi Tharoor is contesting against BJP's Kummanam Rajashekaran and C Divakaran of the Left.

Congress is also expected to come up with a statement on its alliance with Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi.
In Tangmarg, in the backdrop of snow-capped mountains, voters walked up to the polling stations past the heavy patrol of the forces. Elsewhere, in the northern Kashmir constituency of Baramulla, polling that began on a dull note picked up during the day

Tangmarg: He took part in the funeral of a local militant of Hizbul Mujahideen in May 2016. He had faced detention at a police station in 2009 for being part of ant-India protests. On Thursday, 25-year old, Bilal Ahmad, turned up at the Batpora polling station, which lies on the highway in this tourist town, to cast a vote "to end excesses by government forces in Kashmir".

The road outside the polling station that saw 74 people, including 11 women, turn out to cast their votes from among 878 eligible voters, had seen massive protests following the killing of Burhan Wani in July 2016. But as the sun beat down on the children who played in a nearby ground, people trickled into the polling station.

Across the main tarmac road, the brother of local Hizbul Mujahideen militant, Bilal Ahmad Bhat, reminisced that people turned up in massive numbers for his funeral in May 2016, when he was killed after falling from a hill while crossing the border in the Poonch area of Jammu. His two other associates had surrendered. The militant was active for over a year before his death and had taken up arms after graduating while he displayed his inclination for "freedom" from very early on, said Sajad Ahmad Bhat. "Bilal used to lead the prayers for many years at a local mosque and was sympathetic towards separatists before he took up arms," he said.

But the voter queues here were in contrast to the solidarity that the people had shown with the militant's family and the protests after the civilian killings following Burhan's death.

In Tangmarg, in the backdrop of snow-capped mountains, voters walked up to the polling stations past the heavy patrol of the forces. Elsewhere, in the northern Kashmir constituency of Baramulla, polling that began on a dull note picked up during the day. By 1 pm, the polling percentage in the districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora was 15.1, 30.8 and 20.9 percent respectively. Two hours later, the percentage was 19, 38.7 and 26.1 percent respectively.

The people, including women and the elderly, turned up to vote amid a shutdown in most of the parts of the region as well as in Kashmir in response to the call given by the separatists to boycott the elections. The voters said they cast their ballots for change: To ensure development and reject corruption. But the common reason that the people gave was that they voted for an end to "atrocities by government forces in Kashmir".

"The authorities are harassing us. The police is randomly arresting youths. We want this to stop and I repose faith in the candidate for whom I have voted," said Bilal.

Women made their way through an iron gate to cast their vote at the Kunzer polling station, where armed forces personnel watched the movement of people closely. Those donning headscarves and some of whose wisps of grey hair showed up queued outside the polling station to cast their votes. By 11 am, the votes polled at Kunzer were 128, which rose to 173 within a few hours from among the 650 who were eligible to vote.

Manzoor Ahmad Shiekh, 24, who was arrested for being part of the anti-India protests following the killing of Wani, said he voted to "reject those who promoted massive corruption in the employment of favourites".

"Those who were highly qualified were left out of employment in government departments," he said. His view was supported by another voter, Shabir Ahmad Shiekh, who said that he voted also "to ensure that there was development through the building of better infrastructure".

The turnout that was low when polling started, began to pick up at the Ferozpur polling station. By around 10.30 am, as many as 79 votes were cast of the total 956 at one polling station, while at another, the polling percentage was 17.9 from a total of 932 people who were eligible to vote.

"We have voted for change. We were witness to the excesses that were committed on the people during PDP-BJP rule. Hundreds of youths were blinded through the use of pellet shoguns. President's Rule is martial law, which should end," said Hilal Ahmad Shah, 30, who works as a private teacher. Talking about the recent decision of the government to ban civilian traffic on the Srinagar-Jammu highway for two days a week, he said that "it was nothing but draconian".
Videos tom-tom the Balakot strikes even as BJP workers move door-to-door verifying implementation of welfare schemes

To create and refresh a brand, even a political one, needs constant work by an organisation. To sell the ideas that a brand personifies also requires paraphernalia, including slogans and signature tunes. At Kathphori, a village in the Firozabad Lok Sabha constituency of Uttar Pradesh, efforts are underway to transform a somewhat dented political brandPrime Minister Narendra Modiinto a harbinger of hope that can continue to attract voters to the BJP.

Dharmendra Kumar, a grocery store owner at Kathphori, is a walking, talking example of how a political organisation can inculcate hope in a man wallowing in hardship, and persuade him that the grim reality surrounding him can be vanquished with his vote.

Dust envelopes the dilapidated streets of Kathphori, where a highway is under construction. Much like his surroundings, Kumars future looks shaky. Varsha, one of his five daughters, graduates from college this summer, but he doesnt expect her to find employment. He has heard of the ruling partys recent embarrassmentan official report recording a 45-year peak in unemployment.

Nevertheless, he plans to back the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the third consecutive time in the Lok Sabha elections.

This village has not changed, but it is the country that is my priority in the forthcoming elections, Kumar says. When it progresses, so will the villages. Only Modi can make this happen.

The idea that a BJP led by Modi can trump any rival on the development plank is one that the party is going all out to promote in the region. Vikas ka mudda and Modi ki yojana (the development plank and Modis plan) can challenge any party, says Surendra Gupta, party spokesperson in Agra.

Agras Taj Mahal is just about an hour from Kumars village. All across this belt the BJP has been holding dozens of programmes. Earlier this week, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj met the BJPs cyber warriors here and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) held 90 combined shakhas that focused on the Muslim community (one talking point was foreign invaders). have been moving door-to-door, checking on the implementation of schemes.

Kumar belongs to the Teli Rathore caste, which comes under the backward category. In the state-wide scheme of things, the BJP drew support in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and in the 2016 assembly elections from non-Yadav backward group members such as he, in addition to those belonging to upper castes.

Jagdish Singh, Kumars friend and also a trader, says, The unemployment crisis will take ten years to solve. Therefore, Modi needs two more terms. To them, there is no contradiction in the BJPs campaign to save the girl child by educating her and Varshas imminent unemployment. Not all will get government jobs, Kumar says.

For the BJP, Kumar and Singh represent voters who have to be taken to the polling booth on April 18 and 24 when the three constituencies in this regionAgra, Fatehpur Sikri and Firozabadare scheduled to vote. It wants more voters like them, who, despite their own suffering, have been persuaded to make sacrifices for their notion of a greater common good.

We want the voting percentage to rise, says Gupta. Our workers are not asking for votes for the BJP but simply that they must vote, he says.

The canvassing for votes is concealed in the messages being promoted by the BJP. In a series of videos, the party brings up the Air Forces recent actions in Balakot and the fight against corruption, both key to its campaign. Observers say this election is a battle of chemistry versus mathematics, in which the prime minister faces a numerically powerful opposition.

In 2014, the BJP secured 5.83 lakh votes in Agra and 4.2 lakh in Fatehpur Sikri (Agra rural). The combined votes won by the Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) exceeded the BJPs by roughly 70,000 in Fatehpur Sikri, while in Agra the BJP had a greater vote-share than that of all its competitors together.

In urban areas of this region the party hopes to draw non-Jatav Dalits and retain those Dalit voters who migrated to it from the BSP in 2014. The question is, can the Muslims, a section of the Jats, and the Dalits consolidated around Mayawatis BSP, counter this?

Hindutva has undoubtedly split Dalit unity, making them political sub-castes who only unite briefly when there is a crisis, says Kanwal Bharti, a Dalit thinker and writer. He calls the political splintering of the Dalit identity a counter-revolution without any revolution and while he expects the SP-BSP-RLD alliance to perform better than the BJP in the election, the non-Jatav Dalit vote will remain with BJP.

The alliance, on paper, has a distinct advantage in Uttar Pradesh, with the caveat that the SP may transfer only 70% of its votes to the BSP. A strike rate in which Akhilesh Yadav will be better off than the BSP is possible, says one psephologist.
More than 9 lakh students had appeared for the Class 11 and Class 12 exams in February and March. The AP inter 1st year exams were held from 27 February to 16 March. The 2nd year exams were held from 28 February to 18 March

AP Inter Results 2019 | The Board of Intermediate Education Andhra Pradesh (BIEAP) declared the results of 1st and 2nd year, 2019 intermediate exams on Friday. Students can check the results on the official website  bieap.gov.in. Students can also check their exam scores on third-party web portals such as examresults.net or manabadi.com. While the pass percentage of 1st year exams stood at 60 percent, the 2nd year pass percentage is 72 percent. Girls outshone the boys in intermediate exams across Andhra Pradesh.

The overall pass percentage stands at 72 percent in intermediate (general) across Andhra Pradesh.

More than 9 lakh students had appeared for the Class 11 and Class 12 exams in February and March. The Andhra Pradesh inter 1st year exams were held from 27 February to 16 March. The 2nd year exams were held from 28 February to 18 March.

Girls pass percentage in AP 2nd-year intermediate exams (general) is 75 percent while boy's pass percentage is only 68 percent, reported The Times of India.

Krishna Jilla is the top performing district of the state with the highest performance of 81 percent this year.
In the last week of March, a new channel called Content TV that was undergoing a test run for more than six months was launched as NaMo TV (that was an extension of the NaMo app owned by the BJP) on all major DTH platforms

On 13 April, 2004, the Supreme Court of India in Ministry of Information and Broadcasting versus M/s Gemini TV Pvt Ltd and Others passed an order that became the basis of regulating the political advertisements by registered political parties during polls. The order in clear terms stated that all political advertisements "proposed to be issued on TV channels and cable networks by any registered political party/any group or organisation/ association/ individual candidate shall be pre-certified by the designated certification committee at various levels to be constituted by the Election Commission of India".

Following the apex court judgment, the Election Commission issued an order on 15 April, 2004 directing the chief electoral officers (CEO) of all the states and Union Territories to constitute such a committee. Since then, during every election, a committee called the Media Certification and Monitoring Committees (MCMC) is set up by the EC. And, similarly, on 25 February, the EC ordered the constitution of an MCMC at the district- and state-level.

According to the Election Commission, the MCMC is responsible for "previewing, scrutinising, verifying and certifying all advertisements by contesting candidates or political parties before being inserted in the electronic media and to check the cases of paid news". And the alleged disregard for the committee's directive has now landed NaMo TV, the 24-hour channel exclusively featuring Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders' speeches, in deep trouble.

In the last week of March, a new channel called Content TV that was undergoing a test run for more than six months was launched as NaMo TV (that was an extension of the NaMo app owned by the BJP) on all major DTH platforms such as Dish TV, Videocon d2h and Tata Sky. The channel prominently telecast speeches of Modi which led Opposition parties to allege that the BJP has violated the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) by telecasting political content without the approval of the MCMC.

The Election Commission sought a clarification from Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and chief electoral officer (CEO) of Delhi. The I&B ministry clarified its position that the channel does not come under its purview as it is an 'advertisement platform'. According to some reports, Delhi's poll body told the Election Commission that it approved the logo of NaMo TV, but as the "political content" that was submitted for approval was primarily old speeches of Modi, that had already been aired, it did not require prior certification.

However, an officer in charge of polls on condition of anonymity told Firstpost that this defence is not right. According to the officer, whether old or new, any political content that can be used for campaign purposes needs to be clarified by the MCMC. Following complaints from Opposition parties, the election watchdog barred NaMo TV from telecasting any political content without prior permission. In a letter to Delhi's CEO, the Election Commission has clearly stated, "As NaMo TV/Content TV is sponsored by a political party, all recorded programmes of political content displayed on the channel/platform will be covered under the purview of the Commission's Order".

And it adds that "any political publicity materials/contents, being displayed on electronic media without the requisite certification from competent authority (MCMC in this case) should be removed immediately and any political content shall only be permitted strictly in accordance with the Election Commission's instructions in this regard".

While the Election Commission has censured NaMo TV and barred it from telecasting any "political content" without certification, on Friday morning, NaMo TV was telecasting Modi's speeches and some voter awareness campaigns. According to the Election Commission, the MCMC certifies the political nature of advertisements before inserting in below mentioned Electronic Media: Bulk SMS/voice messages, TV channels/cable network radio/FM channels, cinema halls/AV displays in public places and social Media.

According to a training manual of the Election Commission, "Pre-certification of the political nature of advertisement shall be disposed of and applicant will be informed about the decision of the MCMC within 24 hours of receipt of application, if the application is received by noon (unless there are compelling reasons not to do so)".

In case of compelling reasons too, the maximum time for certification, whether denied or approved, is 48 hours. According to the Election Commission, the following considerations should be taken into account for certification keeping in mind the Supreme Court order:

1. Any cable operator is prohibited for transmitting any advertisement which is not in conformity with prescribed programme code and advertisement code and is likely to promote enmity on grounds of religion, race, caste etc.

2. Any advertisement carried in cable service shall be designed so as to conform to the laws of the country and should not offend morality, decency and religious susceptibility of subscribers.

3. No advertisement shall be permitted that derides race, caste, color etc and is against the provisions of Constitution of India.

4. And most importantly, the MCMC must monitor the political advertisements in electronic media for checking whether the telecast/broadcast has been conducted only after certification of the MCMC.

NaMo TV has come under the scanner for allegedly flouting the fourth rule, ie telecasting political content without prior certification of the MCMC. However, NaMo TV is still on the air and telecasting Modi's speeches. A little before noon on Friday, NaMo TV was telecasting a live speech of Modi at an election rally in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra.

And this can mean only two things: Either NaMo TV has received the approval of the MCMC or this is an absolute violation of the Model Code of Conduct. The possibility of NaMo TV getting the approval and required certification cannot be denied as the maximum time for granting such certification is 24 hours as stated earlier.
Modi has been conferred with the award for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Thursday awarded the 'Order of St Andrew the Apostle' by Russia for exceptional services in promoting bilateral ties, a Russian embassy official said.

The Order of St Andrew the Apostle is the Russia's highest civilian honour, the official said.

Modi has been conferred with the award for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russia and India, the official said.

This comes less than two months after the prime minister was awarded Seoul Peace Prize by the South Korean government in recognition of his service to international cooperation, global growth and human development.

In October 2018, Modi received the United Nation's highest environmental honour, the Champions of the Earth Award, from secretary-general Antonio Guterres for his "unprecedented pledge to eliminate all single-use plastic in India by 2022". He was among the six winners of the award.

The prime minister also received the first-ever Philip Kotler Presidential Award on 14 January, 2019. However, the award was surrounded in a controversy as critics questioned its authenticity. However, Kotler later stated that he took the final decision on giving the award to Modi after a committee in his organisation voted on possible contenders.

With inputs from agencies
China's major photo agency Visual China Group (VCG) pulled its website offline on Friday after the company came under fire on social media over its alleged abuse of copyright.



The row started when VCG users found the first available picture of a black hole included in the company's photo library. The company claimed copyright on the image, which means users have to pay the company if they want to use it. On its website, the company said it got the image from the European Southern Observatory, the owner of the image.

The image of a black hole on the VCG website. The company claimed copyright over the image. [Photo acquired from Weibo]

But according to a statement released on the observatory's website, their images can be used free of charge provided they are clearly credited. The observatory said it never received a request from VCG for copyright of the black hole image, and that it was illegal for VCG to claim ownership and sell the image.

The company soon came under attack from several other directions. The Communist Youth League of China took to Weibo to question VCG's right to claim copyright over China's flag and emblem. And companies including Xiaomi and Phoenix New Media announced that their logos or company photos were watermarked by VCG without their permission.

VCG apologized on Thursday for selling images of the national flag and national emblem, saying that the images were provided by contractors and had been removed from its website.

Late Thursday night, the director of VCG was summoned by Internet regulators in Tianjin and told to amend its website. The company announced early on Friday that its website would be suspended until the amendments had been made.

The company's share price has plummeted since the controversy erupted. Its shares, which are traded on the Shenzhen market, have fallen by the maximum daily limit.




Mumbai-based activist Anil Galgali had filed an RTI query with the PMO requesting the nature and details of the expenses incurred on the foreign as well as domestic visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union council of ministers since May 2014

Mumbai: The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) has said that it does not keep records of the expenses incurred on the domestic visits of the prime minister.

Mumbai-based activist Anil Galgali had filed an RTI query with the PMO requesting the nature and details of the expenses incurred on the foreign as well as domestic visits of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union council of ministers since May 2014.

Replying to his query, Under Secretary and CPIO of the PMO Praveen Kumar stated that the documentation of the expenses incurred on domestic visits of the prime minister is not part of the maintaining records and info related to the expenditure on domestic visits does not come in the purview of a single authority because such domestic visits are organised by the different public authorities.

Kumar also replied that the prime minister's tours related to the poll campaigns are not official ones and the PMO does not have to incur any expenditure on these visits and therefore, details cannot be provided.

On the prime minister's foreign visits and expenses incurred on these, the PMO advised Galgali to go through the PMO's website to get the details.

For information related to Union council of ministers' expenses on their foreign tours, the PMO transferred Galgali's query to M&G as well as Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) citing that the information sought more closely to them.

Galgali said, "Following PMO's advice, I went through PMO's portal, but did not find any records of the prime minister's unofficial domestic visits and the expenses."

Modi has recently visited several states including Maharashtra, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Assam and Jammu and Kashmir to address poll rallies.

According to the PMO website, the expenses on domestic visits of the prime minister are met out of the budget of Ministry of Defence, while the expenses on foreign tours of the prime minister are met out of the budget head "Cabinet Ministers Maintenance of PM's aircraft Other charges".

According to the PMO website, Modi had made 49 foreign trips since May 2014 till 22 February, 2019. It also lists the expenses incurred on chartered flights on these 49 foreign trips.
These letters may roughly be divided into two categories  proactive, that urge Indians to defeat forces of 'divisiveness and hatred' and entreat voters to throw out Narendra Modi-led BJP government and reactive, that repose faith in Modi's leadership.

If elections are here, can open letters be far behind? They are coming in all shapes and sizes, from all corners of the nation. From individuals and groups in various vocations, and even from a convicted and jailed political leader whose bail plea has recently been rejected by the Supreme Court. These letters may roughly be divided into two categories  proactive, that urge Indians to defeat forces of divisiveness and hatred and entreat voters to throw out Narendra Modi-led BJP government and reactive, that repose faith in Modis leadership.

So far, the proactive camp that consists chiefly of "impartial intellectuals", "progressives" and "liberals" are outnumbering their ideological opponents with the sheer volume of their response and the righteous indignation of their letters. We are being told that unless the BJP is ousted, democracy cannot be saved. The interesting thing about this campaign is that it is intensely political under an apolitical garb.

The authors, filmmakers, artists who issue such open letters call themselves "liberals" or progressives and yet they step up before any major election to provide intellectual horsepower to those that they support with alacrity and consistency. The act of openly naming and shaming a legitimate political party robs these worthies the right to be called neutral, this piece in The Print argues.

Filmmakers, numbering over a 100, came under a 'Save Democracy' platform to issue a statement in March that India has changed for the worse ever since the Modi government came to power and fascist forces may strike us hard with all its might if we dont choose wisely in the coming Lok Sabha election".

They were shortly followed by 600 theatre personalities and actors who took it upon themselves the sacred duty of advising their fellow unlettered countrymen whom to vote for and whom not to. The gist of the letter is similar. Unless the Dark Lord (read Modi) is defeated in polls, forces of darkness and barbarism will reign and drive equality and social justice away. In the joint statement issued by signatories such as Naseeruddin Shah, Girish Karnad, Konkona Sen Sharma and Lillette Dubey (among others), they appealed to the public to vote against the BJP and its allies to save the Constitution and even song, dance and laughter that is under threat from bigots.

The writers were not to be left alone. About 200 authors including Arundhati Roy and Amitav Ghosh urged the voters to reject "...hate politics. Vote out the division of our people; vote out inequality; vote against violence, intimidation and censorship."

The subtext is that India was the land of milk, rose and honey before 26 May, 2014, where censorship, intimidation and inequality were alien concepts. Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasreen or VS Naipaul may disagree though. Interestingly, Amol Palekar, one of the signatories of the letter, had his Marathi film Thang by the CBFC in 2006 when Congress was in power.

186. @INCIndia initially CENSORED, REFUSED to broadcast on national television the late Shashi Kapoor's iconic and landmark film New Delhi Times, directed by @rameshfilms. https://t.co/uOvDE4eB90 pic.twitter.com/6pMECgyIWJ  Anand Ranganathan (@ARanganathan72) December 4, 2017

Then there were scientists, 199 of them, who appealed to the all Indian citizens to remember our constitutional commitment to scientific temper and to vote against inequality, intimidation, discrimination, and unreason in elections.

About 70 organisation launched voter-outreach campaigns in 50 cities across India highlighting the failures of Modi government in creating jobs. These were, according to reports, mostly Leftist units. Not to left behind, 108 economists and academicians slammed the Modi government for interfering with unemployment data and subverting the statistical institutions. These included global experts.

In between, former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav who is now serving jail term after being convicted in fodder scam and has recently been denied bail by the Supreme Court wrote a letter from the prison asking supporters to "fight and save democracy". It is amusing enough that a politician jailed in a corruption case is calling for democracy to be saved during the holding of general elections, whats even more interesting is the unfettered access he has to social media while serving jail time. Lalus letter was uploaded on Twitter.

Finally, the icing on the cake from a letter written purportedly by retired army chiefs and veterans from armed forces and sent to the Presidents office protesting against unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be "Modiji ki Sena" (a remark made by Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath during a poll campaign)."

The Congress wasted no time in taking aim at the BJP, saying that the armed forces have spoken against the politicisation of the military attempted by the BJP to win elections.

Modi may try to use soldiers for votes, but it's clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP.

156 Veterans of the Indian Armed Forces including 8 former Chiefs of Staff write to the President of India urging him to act against Modi for trying to use soldiers for votes. https://t.co/NHUVDH2BeY  Congress (@INCIndia) April 12, 2019

Then came the interesting part. The Presidents office denied receiving any such letter. A Rashtrapati Bhavan source said that they have received no such letter.

Then some of the signatories of the letter to the President, that included former Army chief General SF Rodrigues and former Air Force chief NC Suri, denied on Friday that they have given their consent or signed such a letter. Former army chief General Rodrigues called it fake news.

Gen SF Rodrigues: Dont know what it(purported letter written by armed forces veterans to Pres)is all about.All my life,we've been apolitical.Aftr,42 yrs as officer,it's a little late to change.Always put India first.Dont know who these ppl are,classic manifestation of fake news pic.twitter.com/Cgpo57sVhq  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

#WATCH Goa: General SF Rodrigues who is mentioned as the first signatory in the purported letter written by armed forces veterans to President, denies signing it. pic.twitter.com/h1PNBCV909  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Former air chief Suri said he never gave consent for any such letter.

Air Chief Marshal NC Suri to ANI: This is not Admiral Ramdas letter (purported letter written by armed forces veterans to President) & it has been done by some Major Chaudhary. He has written this & it was coming on WhatsApp & emails. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/hWeg3apB4M  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Air Chief Marshal NC Suri to ANI: To put an end to it,I wrote that armed forces are apolitical&support the politically elected govt. And no, my consent has not been taken for any such letter. I dont agree with whatever has been written in that letter. We have been misquoted. 2/2 https://t.co/pAU6L6CZ54  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Suris words were reiterated by former army vice-chief Lt General ML Naidu, who said his consent has never been taken.

Former Army Vice Chief Lt General ML Naidu( who is mentioned at 20th in the list of armed forces veterans who purportedly wrote letter to President): No, my consent has not been taken for any such letter and neither have I written any such letter. (file pic) pic.twitter.com/v8H35Hp2WN  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Amid the confusion, certain issues are clear. In the battleground of general elections where the stakes are so high, everything can be legitimized as a political weapon. The logic behind writers, filmmakers, scientists and even retired armed force personnel being made a part of the insidious political war is that they bring credibility into a political campaign. The strategy is to catch the electorate unguarded. Voters may give such an apparently apolitical appeal more credence than campaign rhetoric from politicians.

The trouble with this concept is that it undermines the intelligence of the electorate and condescendingly assumes voters to be a susceptible lot who could be swayed by any narrative. This has historically proven to be counterproductive. All that such righteous indignance from self-important progressives achieves that it highlights how deracinated and disconnected they are from reality and how utterly delusional they are about the extent of their influence.

If anything, such insidious messaging in the age of social media manages to achieve quite the opposite by triggering a counter-polarisation. It makes Modi appear larger than life and induces ordinary voters  who look at these pompous highbrows with disdain  solidify their resolve to vote for Modi.
Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that they had met EC officials over Congress president Rahul Gandhi's comments regarding the Rafale issue.

A delegation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lodged three major complaints with the Election Commission (EC) on Friday. Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that they had met EC officials over Congress president Rahul Gandhi's comments regarding the Rafale issue.

In the context of the first phase of the Lok Sabha election held on Thursday, the ministers also alleged that Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers had engaged in "rigging and booth capture" during the voting process in West Bengal.

"We have lodged three clear complaints with the EC, the first of which is the way Congress president Rahul Gandhi has used defamatory language against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP government. He has been spreading lies repeatedly by calling the prime minister a 'chor' in connection with the Rafale deal issue, despite the Supreme Court's order in the matter," Sitharaman said.

The ministers said that the party had taken "objection" to Rahul "misquoting" the Supreme Court's order on Wednesday, when the bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi rejected the preliminary objections the government raised to petitions seeking a review of the 14 December judgment in the Rafale case. The ministers claimed that Rahul, in response to the apex court's judgment, said, "Supreme Court has said, chowkidar chor hai".

Naqvi added on Friday that the Congress follows the motos of "fake, fabricated, and fraud" of "jhut meva jayate" He also called Rahul the "chief of the gaali gang".

On Wednesday too, Sitharaman had criticised Rahul's response and accused the Congress president of committing contempt of court by passing "false" statements about the Supreme Court verdict. Sitharaman hit out at Rahul for saying that the Supreme Court accepted that "chowkidar chor hai" through his Twitter account and in his comment on the development in the media.

She further said that the Congress leader said at a public rally that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was proven guilty of corruption in the Rafale deal and giving Rs 30,000 crore to Anil Ambani, who is the chairman of the offset partner in the deal Reliance Defence.

We all know (the) Congress president probably doesn't even read even half a paragraph. By saying that the court has said 'Chowkidar chor hai,' these (statements) verge on contempt of court, Sitharaman said, adding that Rahul is showing signs of frustration.

"The person who itself on bail, violating every norm of political decency alleging things which the court has never said. He has lost all sense of decency by causing contempt of court, Sitharaman had said.

On Friday, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi moved the Supreme Court seeking contempt action against Rahul for attributing his remarks on the recent Rafale verdict to the apex court.

Naqvi also targeted the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC on Friday and said, "Instances of rigging, poll capture, and gundagardi were done by TMC's gundas. We have demanded before the EC that at least two security personnel be posted at every booth, and in some booths where women were not allowed to vote, there should be re-polling in those constituencies."
A bench of justices SA Bobde and S Abdul Nazeer said: 'The petitioner (Sao) is directed to surrender before the additional judicial commissioner  7, Ranchi, by 15 April, 2019. The instant applications for modification and the miscellaneous applications stand disposed of accordingly'.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday directed former Jharkhand minister Yogendra Sao to surrender before a court in Ranchi by 15 April in cases related to rioting and inciting of violence.

A bench of justices SA Bobde and S Abdul Nazeer said: "The petitioner (Sao) is directed to surrender before the additional judicial commissioner  7, Ranchi, by 15 April, 2019. The instant applications for modification and the miscellaneous applications stand disposed of accordingly".

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for Sao, said that there was no clarification in the apex court order of 4 April, as to where he should surrender. He said if the top court directs, Sao can surrender in Ranchi.

Advocate Tapesh Kumar Singh, appearing for Jharkhand government, said that Sao can surrender before the court of additional judicial commissioner in Ranchi.

He said all the case records have been transferred to Ranchi in compliance with the apex court order.

The apex court order came on a plea of Sao seeking clarification and modification of the order on the place of his surrender.

The apex court had on 4 April, trashed Sao's plea seeking to campaign for the Congress for the Lok Sabha polls and cancelled his bail, saying he has violated the bail conditions.

Sao became a minister in the Hemant Soren-led UPA government in Jharkhand in 2013. He is an accused in over a dozen cases of rioting and instigation of violence.

The BJP-led state government had moved the apex court seeking cancellation of the bail to Sao and his MLA wife Nirmala Devi. It had claimed that they both violated bail conditions imposed by the top court.

Both Sao and Devi were granted bail on 15 December, 2017, by the top court and directed to stay in Bhopal as a bail condition.

They were allowed to visit Jharkhand only for court hearings under police protection after intimating the Bhopal superintendent of police.

The top court had rejected their plea allowing the couple to visit Jharkhand for a month for electioneering, saying they were influential persons and do not deserve any indulgence. "You both have failed the trust we reposed upon you. We are disappointed by your conduct. You don't deserve any indulgence," it had said.

The bench, however, had refused to cancel the bail of Devi and said that her deviations in bail conditions are not substantial keeping in mind that she was a legislator.

The top court had transferred the trial of 18 cases against Sao and Devi to Ranchi from Hazaribagh district in Jharkhand.

It, however, refused to allow the plea of Devi to let her stay in Patna instead of Bhopal.

The bench had said it is satisfied that there has been breach of bail conditions imposed on Sao as his "unauthorised presence" was found in Jharkhand while he was directed to stay in Bhopal.

It was found that Sao left Bhopal on several occasions without any intimation to local authorities despite direction from the court and his presence in Jharkhand during the corresponding period was not disputed, the court had said.

"We are satisfied that the conditions reposed by the court in its December 15, 2017, order has been breached. We therefore cancel the bail...," the bench had said.

Jharkhand government counsel Tapesh Kumar Singh has claimed that since Sao was granted bail on 15 December, 2017, out of 253 days he has lived in Bhopal only for 25 days.

He had said Sao used to leave Bhopal without any intimation to local authorities despite direction from the court.

Singh claimed that Sao had even threatened a police officer who is a witness in one of the cases, and an arrest warrant is pending against him.

Both Devi and Sao were accused in a case relating to violent clashes between villagers and police in 2016 in which four persons were killed.

Devi, a Congress MLA, had led an agitation against NTPC authorities for their alleged attempt to forcibly evacuate villagers from Barkagaon without giving them due compensation or rehabilitation, according to police.
The purpose of art is to question and provoke but there is a growing intolerance in society and organised groups pose a serious danger to the right to free speech and expression, the Supreme Court said on Thursday.

New Delhi: The purpose of art is to "question and provoke" but there is a growing intolerance in society and organised groups pose a serious danger to the right to free speech and expression, the Supreme Court said on Thursday.

The observation was made in a judgement in which the apex court imposed Rs 20 lakh fine on the Mamata Banerjee government over not allowing the screening of satirical film Bhobishyoter Bhoot in West Bengal.

There was clear abuse of public power by the authorities, it said, underlining that State does not "entrust freedoms" to the people but they inseparable from "our existence".

"Contemporary events reveal that there is a growing intolerance: intolerance which is unaccepting of the rights of others in society to freely espouse their views and to portray them in print, in the theatre or in the celluloid media. Organised groups and interests pose a serious danger to the existence of the right to free speech and expression," said a bench, comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Hemant Gupta.

"If the right of the play-wright, artist, musician or actor were to be subjected to popular notions of what is or is not acceptable, the right itself and its guarantee under the Constitution would be rendered illusory.

"The true purpose of art, as manifest in its myriad forms, is to question and provoke," it added.

The top court said that art in an elemental sense reflects a human urge to question the assumptions on which societal values may be founded and in questioning prevailing social values and popular cultures, every art form seeks to espouse a vision.

"Underlying the vision of the artist is a desire to find a new meaning for existence. The artist, in an effort to do so, is entitled to the fullest liberty and freedom to critique and criticise. Satire and irony are willing allies of the quest to entertain while at the same time to lead to self-reflection.

"We find in the foibles of others an image of our own lives. Our experiences provide meaning to our existence. Art is as much for the mainstream as it is for the margins. The Constitution protects the ability of every individual citizen to believe as much as to communicate, to conceptualize as much as to share," the bench said.

It said that public power must be conscious of the fact that we live in a democracy simply because the Constitution recognizes the inalienable freedoms of every citizen.

The apex court said that the power has been entrusted to the state by the people under a written Constitution and the state holds it in trust and its exercise is accountable to the people.

"The state does not entrust freedoms to the people: the freedoms which the Constitution recognises are inseparable from our existence as human beings. Freedom is the defining feature of human existence. Freedoms are not subject to power.

"Public power is assigned by the people to government. Ours is a controlled Constitution, a Constitution which recognizes the fullest element of liberty and freedom and of the answerability of power to freedom. The views of the writer of a play, the metre of a poet or the sketches of a cartoonist may not be palatable to those who are criticised," the bench said.

It said that those who disagree have a simple expedient of not watching a film, not turning the pages of the book or not hearing what is not music to their ears.

"The Constitution does not permit those in authority who disagree to crush the freedom of others to believe, think and express. The ability to communicate ideas' is a legitimate area of human endeavour and is not controlled by the acceptability of the views to those to whom they are addressed.

"When the ability to portray art in any form is subject to extra constitutional authority, there is a grave danger that fundamental human freedoms will be imperiled by a cloud of opacity and arbitrary state behaviour," the bench said.
On 2 April last year, residents had poured on to the Delhi-Dehradun highway running perpendicular to the village to protest the dilution of the SC/ST Act. Similar agitations had been held across the country. But the demonstration at Shobhapur took a violent turn.

Editor's note: This is part of a multi-article series on the jobs crisis in the three states crucial to Lok Sabha election 2019: Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

***

In the heart of a village located on the outskirts of Meerut stands a forlorn two-storey building with a picture of Dr BR Ambedkar. The complex is deserted. One has to wade through broken bricks that lay scattered on the ground floor, before heading up the stony staircase that has no railing. It is a library for which the Dalit residents of the village had pooled together money and then constructed.

On a sweltering April afternoon, two boys are busy studying in the library in the midst of empty chairs. Jogendra Kumar, in charge of the library, says over 200 students used to frequent the premise. "Hardly 35 are left now," he adds, "The rest have left one after another following 2 April, 2018." Ravinder Singh, 23, is one of the few students who stayed back. "We are studying hard to land a government job," he says, "We have to kiss our dream goodbye if there is an FIR registered against us. Who would take the risk?"

The village in question is Shobhapur of Meerut district in the western region of Uttar Pradesh. The village is predominantly Dalit, with Gurjars and Brahmins making up the rest. On 2 April last year, residents had poured on to the Delhi-Dehradun highway running perpendicular to the village to protest the dilution of the SC/ST Act. Similar agitations had been held across the country. But the demonstration at Shobhapur took a violent turn.

Superintendent of Police (Crime) BP Ashok, who was put in charge of the case two months after the incident, says the riots erupted because of inflammatory posts on social media. "(The riots) did not have a leader," he says, "Social media triggered the unrest." Ravinder had also participated in the rally. "There were 300 or 400 of us protesting peacefully," he says, "But the police lathi-charged us. And then all hell broke lose."

The riots resulted in severe damage of public property, a police post being set on fire and the death of a young Dalit boy  Ankur Jatav, aged 25.

The same evening, a list went viral on WhatsApp. It carried the names of 83 Dalit residents of Shobhapur, implying they were responsible for the violence. The first name on the list was of Gopi Pariya, a 28-year old boy. On the very next day, he was shot dead.

It sent shivers down the spine of the others that found themselves on the list. Ravinder was one of them. "I fled the village, and was on the move for 20 days," he recollects, "I did not spend more than a day at one place. I was scared. I could not think straight. The atmosphere in the village was horrifying." An eerie silence still prevails over Shobhapur, evident during a recent visit. The people in the village look over their shoulders when they walk around. After Gopi's murder, another list hit WhatsApp groups. This time, it comprised names belonging to the Gurjar residents of Shobhapur.

In December 2018, Ashish Gurjar, one of the people reportedly identified as being behind Gopi's death, was shot dead in the village. The police has arrested Gopi's father and brother for the murder. Four months later, in March 2019, another boy was murdered. His name was Monu Gurjar, and the police has arrested four people in connection with that murder.

So far, Ashok says, over 200 FIRs have been filed. In about 30 of them, the police have filed charges. In 34 FIRs, they have filed a closure report.

Ravinder, who is about to conclude his BEd degree, is back in the village because his parents are old, and he has to look after them. "The rest will never come back," he says, "Nobody knows how long this war between two communities will continue. In any case, it is difficult to get a job these days. If we happen to find ourselves in the middle of this fight, a government job is out of the question. And even private employers prefer to stay away from those with controversial past."

Residents of the village say they wonder who will be the next to have an FIR filed against her/him. Manohar Singh, 45, sitting across the road from Gopi's home, says he has sent his 17-year old son to Delhi a month back. "We were waiting for him to finish his Class 12 exams," he says, "He has not decided what he wants to do but we have told him to settle down away from Meerut. What if we get embroiled in the matter?"

Manohar says the entire money he spent on his son's education will go down the drain if he stays here. "I want him to get a job, and settle down," he says, "Not live amidst caste tensions where he cannot concentrate on his career."

Apart from students, several workers or those who were self-employed have found it difficult to go about their work after 2 April last year. Labourers say it is difficult to find work while being on the move. They complain that no political party has bothered to pacify the situation, and they are most upset with the Bahujan Samaj Party. Rajiv Kumar Rana, who owns a gym in Shobhapur that goes by the name Lord Buddha Fitness Point, says in a telephonic interview that 124 boys have enrolled at the gym but only eight to 10 come and train now.

Rajiv had to be contacted by phone because he was away in Bulandshahr  70 kilometres from Meerut. His father, Ram Kisan Rana, 79, says he is busy figuring out if he can get his kids admitted in a school in Bulandshahr. "His wife is a teacher at a school over there," he says, "Rajiv plans to shut the gym and relocate. The gym will not work with people leaving. He will figure out what to do once he relocates. There is no future in this village."

First Person

Gopi Pariya also owned a factory where they made badminton racquets. With Gopi being dead, and his father and brother in jail, the factory is shut. They hired five to seven labourers in a full-time capacity, along with families in Shobhapur that would help package the racquets. Kusum, 35, was one of them. As a result of the caste conflict that led to the shutdown of the factory, she now has to look for work elsewhere, which is irregular and unreliable.

What did you do?

The racquets need to be packaged. We sew the net, tape the handle and then it is ready to be sold.

How much money did you get for that?

I made Rs 5 for every dozen racquets. We packaged around 200 a day. I used to work with other suppliers, but since he (Gopi) was from the same village, I thought it would be better to work with him.

What do you do now?

I work with others who make badminton racquets. But it is irregular work. My 18-year old daughter also helped me. She also made some money by the side. She does not do anything now.
From Durban To Tomorrow, features 5 formidable voices from 5 different countries talking about their journeys in their fight for human rights in health.

Reports suggest around 12.4 lakh deaths in India in the year 2017 were attributed to air pollution. In the year 2018, 2.15 million new cases of tuberculosis were noted in India. According to a report by IndiaSpend, as of 2017, the population-doctor ratio in India was 11,082:1, which is 25 times higher than the WHO recommendation (10000:25). With these staggering statistics and a huge economic divide in the country, it is not difficult to compute the odds that a patient with lesser privileges in the socio-economic equation has almost no chance of getting proper treatment.

Shouldn't it be their right  a basic human right? That's the question filmmaker Dylan Mohan Gray explores in his latest documentary, From Durban To Tomorrow, that features five frontline advocates from different parts of the world spearheading the battle for a future driven by rights in the sector of global public health. On 3 April, a special advance screening of the documentary was organised at Mumbai's Godrej Culture Lab where the filmmaker was in conversation with Meena Saraswathi Seshu, General Secretary of the Sampada Grameen Mahila Sanstha (SANGRAM), who is also one of the pivotal voices in Gray's film.

Gray's previous film Fire in the Blood (2013) depicted how American pharmaceutical giants monopolise over the market to an extent that they obstruct the access to low-cost ARVs (antiretroviral drugs) used in the treatment of HIV/AIDS in parts of Africa and the global south. Fire in the Blood, which is now available on Netflix, was premiered at Sundance and has won several accolades at various global platforms. It is touted to be one of the longest running (theatrical release) non-fiction film in the history of Indian cinema.

From Durban To Tomorrow features five formidable voices from five different countries  Vuyiseka Dubula from Durban, Mouslihou Diallo from Guinea, Vanessa Lopez from Spain, Peter Sarosi from Hungary and, of course, Meena Seshu from India  talking about their journeys in the united fight for human rights in health. In an environment where many gains have been lost due to societal negligence and a feeling of despondency lurks around, Gray believes the most important thing is to give the message that some people haven't given up.

"Many have lost hope in this battle because they have been beaten down, disrespected, discouraged and have been deprived of any social status... These five characters are among those and it is important to talk to people who have resolved to continue fighting and to hear them out  what their perspectives are, what their views are, what their sources of hope are," he explains and adds that one of the ideas of doing the film in this format was also to shoot in countries that generally are not discussed and at the same time create a sense of commonality between people in different parts of the world. He says it was important for the film to have a balanced representation of women, people of colour as they are primarily the ones affected by the issues in concern. "Even if they work for different issues, the struggles are very similar and the obstacles and adversaries are very similar in nature. We wanted to see where their journeys go when they have devoted their lives to these causes," he adds.

***

Meena Seshu is of the opinion that Gray's film brings across the up and the down of the AIDS epidemic and the response to it. "When HIV hit us, both the government and the society didnt know what to do. Then slowly they started creating money and resources to respond to that epidemic. But unfortunately, now we are that low where the state doesnt think HIV epidemic is worth a fight. Theres a lot of despondency around that, I think, we all are responding to in various parts of the world in our own ways," she says.

For the past 25 years, Seshu, through her NGO SANGRAM, has been fighting for social justice among marginalised communities who have been discriminated against for their sexual preference, sex work, HIV status, gender, caste and religious minority. Her "collectivisation" model has enabled many from the margins to come to the forefront as one collective voice and fight for their rights. "It was necessary to organise them because otherwise, they cannot look for safe-working conditions, they cannot look for better health options and they cannot fight for what is their right as health," Seshu explains and adds how this collectivisation model also enables women to articulate that sex work is work, it is not oppression or exploitation. According to her, just like exploitative practices exist in all other workplaces, similarly, they exist in sex work. "Sex workers are not any different from other people! Its just they are so marginalised by both the society and the state  the state criminalises and the society calls them 'bad women'  that it has its own stigma. Hence, theres the need for inculcating the idea of self-worth and dignity, and that creates a huge difference," she points out.

Despite the continuing success of the collectivisation model in pockets of the community-welfare groups, Seshu feels there's a sense of fragmentation seeping in, especially in the rat race to grab fundings from the government or other foundations. "Since the pot of gold is too little, we all are trying our best fight for it. In that, we are often being pitted against each other and that is a huge problem. We have to create a system where we can talk to each other; build that solidarity and look at that pot of gold to decide how to use it where it is most required," remarks Seshu and reiterates the need for creative spaces and constructive forums.

"We really need to come together as a force just like we started back then  fighting HIV as a community that has been wronged by the state and the society by either ostracising us or criminalising us."

Having worked with sex workers in the rural districts of western Maharashtra and north Karnataka for many years, Seshu feels she had to unlearn and let go off a lot of usual notions around sex, sex work and sexuality, and instead learn from real life to see what it means living and surviving in the margins and fighting back for a life. "Sex work is very contentious. While the feminists are obsessed with the sex part of it, the workers are obsessed with the work part of it. The workers are constantly trying to create safe working conditions with tools like condoms, medications etc. For the feminists, the conversation is always around rape, violence; the sex-positive feminists also talk about pleasure. But, the centre of discussion between the feminists and the workers is very polarised and that is a problem," comments Seshu, a feminist herself, who also points out that over the years she has observed many sex workers to be active feminists themselves.

"When I started working with sex workers, I couldnt believe how contemptuous they were about the mens sexual power. That really made me look up and take notice of what this is about," Sethu recalls her initial days as a counsellor in the health clinics, and continues, "Married women came to us upset and crying because their husbands wouldnt use condoms knowing they are HIV positive. On the other hand, for these sex workers, it was sex with condom or no sex at all. Who has the power then  these women or the 'married' women?"

***

From Durban To Tomorrow has been commissioned by a consortium of foundations from the United States which are very active in issues of health and specifically some of the areas touched upon in the film  improving lives of sex workers, drug users, LGBT and other marginalised communities, and improving communications around health. On why films focussing on health awareness are important and who/how these films are funded (given it requires a humungous amount of data gathering, fact checking and travelling with the production unit), Gray feels it is the lack of investigative journalism that has paved paths for documentaries to bring out these stories.

"If you want to tell a story in depth, it takes time especially when you have got to bring in peoples perspectives from different parts of the world. That has pretty much disappeared from the landscape of journalism and exists in only a few odd places. It used to be standard fare, now it is not," Gray states and further adds, "These foundations, earlier, would participate with journalists and bring out bigger stories/features; they would commission reports that will be very carefully covered by the media. But they have suddenly stopped. Instead, making films or supporting films which are already working towards those causes have a much deeper impact in those focus areas. A lot of these foundations have done a 180-degree turn in terms of how they view a film as a tool and the potential impact it can have."

Gray's film is 40-minutes long  an unusual length for a documentary feature  and took nearly two-and-a-half years in making. Given the constraint of featuring five people from five different countries, language obviously came across as a huge barrier, especially while editing the film. But Gray maintains that all such obstacles can be compensated with a thoughtful execution in terms of portrayal of characters and communities: "It is very important to show beauty in the world, especially in the places where people have been conditioned that there is no beauty. That, I feel also humanises those communities and those individuals (not that they need to be) who are often dehumanised in the media."

"We have to realise that everybody has the same concerns and there are commonalities of human existence and everybody goes through it."

Films like From Durban To Tomorrow which strongly talks about issues pertaining to health awareness  both nationally and globally  also aim at opening discussions around the policies and ideologies of the current governments around the world. Ahead of the Lok Sabha Elections this month, both Gray and Seshu stress that public healthcare system needs to be strengthened in India, like everywhere else. "Unfortunately health is not on the agenda of both the citizens as well as the government. We as citizens dont look at health as a right but as a matter of fate. That needs to be changed. There is a vast gap between healthcare providers and healthcare receivers. We [healthcare activists] are arguing for a patients' rights charter which must apply for both public as well as private hospitals," suggests Seshu.

"It is important that healthcare policies are formulated driven by health rather than driven by social attitude. If you want to have a responsive healthcare system and make health a right, you have to ensure that public health care is the leader and not a poor brother. The private providers are obviously here to make money; their packaging is better. Actually, the mindset that one has paid more and hence has received better is fundamentally wrong," says Gray, alluding to how public healthcare is often subverted by the nexus of politicians and global pharmaceutical companies. He points out how people use the phrase 'Health as a Human Right' very easily without giving a lot of thought to what it means. "It is simply put: human right to well-being, dignity and respect. It needs to be built first in our own communities. It is a very good litmus test not just in the political arena, but also in the social arena. What we expect for ourselves, should be the same for others too."

Watch the trailer of From Durban To Tomorrow:



FDTT TRAILER 1 from Dylan Gray on Vimeo.
The high-stakes battle for power in the state and the Centre unfolded across Andhra Pradesh, which simultaneously elected its Lok Sabha and Assembly representatives on Thursday, with widespread violence between party workers of regional giants

Tirupati: The high-stakes battle for power in the state and the Centre unfolded across Andhra Pradesh, which simultaneously elected its Lok Sabha and Assembly representatives on Thursday, with widespread violence between party workers of regional giants  the Telugu Desam Party and YS Rajashekar Congress Party. Allegations of distribution of money and EVM malfunctions, the scale of which is under debate, drew considerations from the Election Commission regarding repolling in certain constituencies. A total of 2,395 candidates battled it out for 175 Assembly seats.

Voting percentage had touched 75 percent across the state by 6 pm, and was expected to rise to 80 percent as polling was still underway and long queues were reported in some booths. In some constituencies like Puthalapattu, the inter-party clashes turned so violent that polling had to be stopped at 3 pm. The decision about repolling here and at any other places will be taken on Friday, in consultation with the Election Commission of India, the state's Chief Electoral Officer, Gopalakrishna Dwivedi said in the post-poll press conference.

EC in the dock

Even without the fact that it had allowed itself to be drawn into the state's political drama, the EC had a rather terrible polling day of putting out defences against allegations of large-scale EVM failures. The night before Phase 1, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu met with Dwivedi at the secretariat in Velagapudi, Amaravati. During the meeting, Naidu protested against the alleged bias by the EC in favour of the Opposition YSRCP, especially in the transfer of key officials. Naidu also accused the EC of playing into the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On polling day, YSRCP chief YS Jaganmohan Reddy pointed to this meeting to allege that the chief minister was threatening the EC.

Naidu has demanded repolling at places where EVMs did not work. He told the local media that 30 percent of the devices malfunctioned and as a result, polling started up to three hours late at many places. "Even technologically advanced countries are not using EVMs... a voter doesn't get the satisfaction of voting through ballots when they are voting on the EVMs. They don't ensure transparency. EVMs are not correct for the voting process. Today, there are reports of EVM malfunctioning from many booths," he said.

"Some news channels are reporting that 30 percent of the EVMs are not working, which is not correct. In total, we have 45,959 booths, and we are using around 92,000 EVMs, of which we have got 344 issues and 25 are still pending," said Dwivedi.

But embarrassingly, he could not cast his vote due to technical issues with the EVM at the Undavalli polling station in Tadepalli, which falls under Mangalagiri Assembly constituency, despite making it there at 7 am. He went later on in the evening to cast his vote after the EVMs there were restored.

Bloody ballots

Sporadic incidents of violence between party workers continue to be reported across the state with casualties on both sides. YSRCP workers allegedly attacked Speaker of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly, Kodela Sivaprasada Rao, who went to inspect a polling booth in Guntur's Sattenapalle constituency. Another TDP minister's husband and sister were injured in a violent clash between factions in Atahobilam in Kurnool. Allegations against opposing party workers came thick and fast from Narasraopet, Eluru in West Godavari, Jammalamadugu in Kadapa District and Mydukur.

A viral video of the alleged attack by Eluru TDP MLA Badeti Bujji on YSRCP party workers in West Godavari district's Sanivarapupeta grabbed the nation's attention  diverted as it was with the first phase of polling held across 20 states and Union Territories  to the brawling between the two biggest state parties. A bloodied party worker was seen asking, "Is it right for an MLA to do this? Is he an MLA or a rowdy? Why does he have a gunman? To beat people up? We have come here to vote. Four people came in a car to hit us."

In another dramatic incident, Jana Sena Party Assembly candidate Madhusudan Gupta damaged EVMs at Gooty in Anantapur district, ostensibly protesting the alleged partisan manner in which polling officials were conducting duties. The police arrested him.

Now and five years ago

The electoral outcome in Andhra Pradesh is set to become a watershed in moulding the course of national politics and is a 'Do or Die' battle for both Naidu and Opposition leader Jaganmohan Reddy. For Naidu, who is gearing up to hand the reins of Andhra Pradesh reign to his son, Nara Lokesh, in order to be able to play a bigger role in the national level if the opportunity arises, a strong showing in his own backyard is imperative.

Jagan, who narrowly missed the bus in the 2014 state elections (TDP had a narrow lead of less than one percent over its rival in votes polled), cannot afford to sit in the Opposition for another five years. The son of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister and popular Congress leader YSR Reddy, may find it difficult to keep his flock together without power. But over the past five years, YSRCP has been steadily gaining strength, probably best evidenced by the mass exodus from the TDP ahead of the election, when 23 of MLAs and three MPs switched to the YSRCP. Also by expertly egging on the TDP to take on alliance partner BJP over the granting of special status to the state, Jagan forced the TDP out of the Central government. YSRCP now promises to deliver what TDP couldn't despite its cosy relationship with the Centre and ministerial berths in the Union government.

Jagan is intent on scuttling Naidu's national aspirations by aligning with Telangana chief K Chandrashekar Rao, who is batting for a federal front. The TRS and YSRCP, having openly exhibited their camaraderie initially, toned it down and desisted from open overtures. TRS supremo, KCR, however, by promising to support special category status for Andhra Pradesh the day before the campaign ended, tried to blunt the flak being faced by the YSRCP from anti-Telangana forces.

Taking a cue from Telangana's Assembly elections last year, when the TDP was routed from the state after a vociferous TRS campaign that branded it an "Andhra party", Naidu has been dubbing his rival Jagan, KCR and Modi as anti-Andhra forces to stoke regional sentiment.

However, the TDP chief weathers strong anti-incumbency, and no longer has the support of former NDA partner BJP or the Pawan Kalyan-led Jana Sena Party, both of whom are contesting independently. The BJP, which won four Assembly seats and two Lok Sabha seats in 2014, has taken a hit in popular support with the TDP and YSRCP making special category status their main campaign plank. The TDP, which rolled out a slew of schemes essentially transferring money from the public exchequer to the people, is banking on them to beat any anti-incumbency working against it.

"But the anti-Telangana sentiment being stirred by the TDP may not be a game changer in 2019. The exaggerated fears expressed during Telangana agitation have been blunted. The voters across Andhra Pradesh have more affinity to Hyderabad than Amaravati with no stakes attached to the place for now. In this milieu, reports of a huge shift in voters by those settled in Telangana to TRS were not surprising. The umbilical cord that binds the Telugu people across the regions cannot be wished away," said veteran journalist A Raghava Sharma. Testament to this is the lakhs of voters from across Telangana who travelled south over the past two days, braving traffic snarls along the highway and overcrowded trains and buses.

The TDP has steered clear of aligning with Congress in the state, although it still vouches for alliance with the Congress-led UPA at the Centre. It has learnt its lesson from its alliance with the Congress in the Telangana Assembly election. Further, the TDP was started by its patriarch, the late NT Rama Rao, with an anti-Congress sentiment. Either way, the Congress is barely holding on in the two Telugu states and Andhra voters are essentially punishing the party for bifurcating the state.

The authors are freelance writers and members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters

With inputs from Nagaraja Gali
It happened in 2013 and 2014. In May 2013, Karnataka threw out the BJP government in the state and brought the Congress back to power. Exactly a year later, the state rewarded the BJP with 17 of 28 Lok Sabha seats.

For the third time in two months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Karnataka on Tuesday and addressed a couple of adrenaline-pumping rallies. As he did before, he left the local BJP leaders smiling. They know he is their ultimate Brahmastra, inflicting electoral strikes on unsuspecting rivals and diverting votes in his party's direction. They also know Karnataka is the only state in the South where BJP will probably get seats in double digits. Besides, they know that when the going gets tough for the BJP, Modi gets going.

The BJP had for long lived in a fool's paradise, dreaming that Karnataka would be its "gateway" to the South. But for a variety of reasons, most of which are of its own making, the party had made little headway in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Kerala. Instead of the gateway of its hallucinations, Karnataka, has remained just a half-opened gate. Even in Karnataka, it has nothing to boast of except for Modi's personal appeal.

Even in 2014, when the BJP won 17 of Karnataka's 28 Lok Sabha seats, Modi made four visits to the state and addressed a dozen rallies. And it was only after he descended on the scene in the final stage of the 2018 Assembly election campaign that things began to look up for his party. With his own brand of rabble-rousing, he demolished  well, almost  the divisive caste politics and cheap populism of the Congress government of the then chief minister Siddaramaiah. It was another story that after a clumsy attempt by the BJP to form government, a hastily stitched-up alliance of the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular) snatched power.

Yet the 2018 Assembly election was a mixed bag for parties. The BJP won more seats, but fewer votes than the Congress. If you tally the votes that the different parties polled in each Lok Sabha constituency in 2018, it would be like this in comparison with 2014:

Party 2014 Lok Sabha Poll 2018 Assembly poll LS seats won Vote share (%) Leads in LS seats Vote share (%) BJP 17 43.4 13 36.34 Congress 9 41.2 11 38.14 JD(S) 2 11.1 4 18.3

This is the result the state will produce now if the voting trend continues in the same way as in 2018 and if the Congress and JD(S) fought the BJP separately as they did last year. But in the upcoming Lok Sabha poll on 18 and 23 April in the state, the two parties are fighting the BJP as a coalition.

So if you look at the votes polled by the Congress and the JD(S) separately and then together in the 2018 election, here is how the distribution of votes and seats would compare:

Party If Cong, JD(S) fought 2018 poll separately If Cong, JD(S) fought 2018 poll as alliance Leads in LS seats Vote share (%) Leads in LS seats Vote share (%) BJP 13 36.34 7 36.34 Congress + JD(S) 15 (11 +4) 56.44 21 56.44

But such an extrapolation is more of an academic exercise that can point to a possible range of permutations, than any indicator of a probable outcome. It goes without saying  but it needs to be said anyway  that voting seldom, if ever, happens this way. If, in the unlikely case it does work that way in this month's Lok Sabha election, the Congress-JD(S) leaders can turn up their collars and do a tap dance on the streets, expecting 21 seats for themselves, leaving only seven for the BJP against its 2014 score of 17. But they can't  and won't  do that for three good reasons.

Three things that may change the result

First, the Lok Sabha election is taking place nearly a year after the Assembly poll. If Harold Wilson had thought "a week is a long time in politics", a year is 52 times longer, enough for people's voting choices and the issues that influence those choices to change several times over.

Second, an alliance between two parties does not automatically mean the voters of the two parties vote for their common candidate. Such a "transfer of votes" is rarely smooth even in the best of circumstances. Enough has been said about the squabbling between the Congress and JD(S), which makes such a transfer of votes quite messy. Things have come to such a pass that, in some constituencies, it has become a dogfight between Vokkaligas (the upper-caste of JD(S) leader HD Deve Gowda) and Kurubas (the backward class to which Congress leader Siddaramaiah belongs).

But all things considered, it is nobody's case that the Congress-JD(S) alliance is a complete washout. Despite their ding-dong battles, the two parties together can fare better than if they were fighting separately.

Third, Karnatakas history of dual-voting is something that can give the BJP hope in this election. As noted in this article, Karnataka has on several occasions voted for one party at the Centre and another in the state, or picked a party to rule the state different from the one ruling at the Centre. Conversely, the BJP can now hope, the state will vote for a party at the Centre, different from the one or ones ruling the state.

It happened in 2013 and 2014. In May 2013, Karnataka threw out the BJP government in the state and brought the Congress back to power. Exactly a year later, the state rewarded the BJP with 17 of 28 Lok Sabha seats.

The BJP knows this can happen again, and hopes to improve its 2014 tally of 17. The party is aware that there is nobody who can deliver this other than Modi. It's not surprising that the party has lined up six Modi rallies in Karnataka over the next eight days.

The author tweets @sprasadindia
A Congress delegation comprising Ahmed Patel, KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Randeep Surjewala and Shaktisinh Gohil, made the representations to the Election Commission and demanded immediate action.

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday moved the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in the political domain and over Union minister Maneka Gandhi's remarks on Muslims.

The Congress also made representations to the poll panel against a web series on Modi, Union minister Smriti Irani's "contradictory affidavits" on her educational qualifications, alleged "hate speeches" by BJP leaders, malfunction of EVMs, and complaint against government official for violation of election guidelines in Bihar's Munger.

A Congress delegation comprising Ahmed Patel, KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Randeep Surjewala and Shaktisinh Gohil, made the representations to the Election Commission and demanded immediate action.

The Congress raised the issue of the remarks made by Maneka Gandhi with the Election Commission, Surjewala told reporters.

The party demanded that an FIR be registered against Maneka Gandhi and her nomination be cancelled, Surjewala said. Addressing an election rally on Thursday in Uttar Pradesh's Sultanpur, Maneka told Muslims to vote for her as they will need her once the Lok Sabha elections are over.

"We are not Mahatma Gandhi's children that we keep giving and not get anything in return," she said in Muslim-dominated Turabkhani area of the constituency.

The Congress also asked the Election Commission to issue directions to the prime minister for "deliberately" invoking defence personnel during his speech in Latur, Maharashtra, as a part of his election campaign propaganda.

"Modi, BJP chief (Amit Shah) and other leaders of the ruling party are shamelessly and openly, for the first time in 70 years, dragging the forces into cheap politics," Singhvi told reporters outside the poll panel's office in New Delhi.

"Dragging the armed forces in political crossfire, asking for votes and doing cheap politics (using the forces), only Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have done this," he said.

Singhvi said the Congress has asked the Election Commission to stop such violations and also requested the Commission to not just censure or pull up those violating the Model Code of Conduct (MCC), but dock the person guilty of violation a day of campaigning.

"If the person makes another violation, he/she should be barred from two days of campaigning, similarly three and four days for third and fourth violation," he said.

Singhvi said the Election Commission should also put a stop on the web series on Modi, citing the commission's order stalling a biopic on the prime minister.

The Congress also complained to the poll panel on alleged "hate speeches" of Modi, Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath during their rallies in Nanded, Nagpur and Meerut, respectively, on 9 April.

"At all three of the aforementioned rallies, the concerned individuals employed the use of hateful, communal and divisive language against the Congress and its president Rahul Gandhi," the party said in its memorandum submitted to the commission.

"As evidenced by the events of the last month (March), these individuals will not be silenced by a simple censure or rebuke...We hope that the ECI appreciates the seriousness and on this occasion, intervenes decisively," the Congress said.

The party also demanded urgent and necessary directions to all chief electoral officers, booth level officers and other election officials to ensure proper functioning of EVMs during the polls.

It urged the commission to initiate immediate investigation into the malfunctioning of EVMs and other issues reported from various states during the first phase of polling on 11 April.
Congress on Friday announced that it will fight the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi alone but maintained that it is still willing to form an alliance with AAP.

New Delhi: The Congress on Friday announced that it will fight the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi alone but maintained that it is still willing to form an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party, provided the tie-up is restricted only to the national capital.

Congress' in-charge for Delhi PC Chacko said the party will go it alone in Delhi since the AAP has taken an "impractical stand" by demanding seats in Punjab, Haryana, Goa and Chandigarh.

He, however, said, "We are still ready (for alliance) if AAP is willing to have an alliance in Delhi alone. We want to fight the BJP together."

"We are compelled to go on our own as AAP is going back on its stand," Chacko told reporters in New Delhi.

"We are not able to form an alliance as they have taken a difficult and impractical proposition. Congress is going to fight the election in Delhi on its own," he said, adding that the party will come out with a candidate list in a day or two.

He said the Congress has adopted a policy to form alliances with parties to defeat the BJP and it was being followed all over the country.

Chacko said there was a suggestion from the AAP to form an alliance in Delhi. "We have been fighting face-to-face in Delhi. We have fought the municipal election, we fought the Assembly election and we have fought the Parliament election. So, naturally, there was political bitterness between us," he said.

Despite that bitterness, the party responded to the AAP's proposal of an alliance in Delhi as it was a political necessity, the Delhi Congress in-charge said.

"Congress president Rahul Gandhi gave me an assignment and clearance to go and discuss with the AAP and we persuaded the leadership of Delhi as well," he said.

Citing the vote shares of each party in the 2017 civic polls, Chacko said the Congress had won 31 seats, the AAP 49 seats and together the parties had 80 seats in Delhi.

He said while the Congress' vote share was 21 percent, the AAP got 26 percent and together, the total vote share was 47 percent.

Chacko said there are seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital and with 47 percent votes together, the Congress on pro-rata basis was eligible to get 3.13 seats, which was rounded off to three seats. The AAP had 26 percent votes and their pro-rata seat share comes to 3.87, rounded off to four seats, he added.

"So, four seats to AAP and three seats to the Congress was our understanding in the discussion I held with Mr Sanjay Singh. In spite of the reservations of the Congress leaders of Delhi, we thought it is a political necessity that we should be able to come to an understanding to defeat the BJP wherever possible," Chacko said.

"Delhi is an ideal situation where the AAP and the Congress can come together and defeat the BJP on all seats. We had the discussion with this understanding. We arrived at a pact also, but then they raised Haryana and Punjab and some other states," he said.

"We only want to clarify that it was the instruction of the Congress president to me to have an understanding with the AAP because we want to have understanding with other like-minded parties to defeat the BJP," the Delhi Congress in-charge said.

"We did not want to create any problem. We said 'if you have started work in some places, we are ready to leave it also.' So, then we discussed about our corresponding strength in Delhi on the basis of each other's strength," he added.

The AAP had on Wednesday rejected the offer of the grand old party for a tie-up in Delhi.

All the routes of alliance with the Congress have been closed, AAP's Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh had said.

The Congress was eager for tie-up with the AAP in Delhi.

The AAP, in turn, wanted such an alliance to extend to Haryana and Punjab as well.

The talks between the two sides derailed after they failed to reach an agreement over seat-sharing in Delhi and Haryana.
The plea moved by advocate Sanjiv Kumar has also sought a direction to book them under various charges, including sedition and inciting hatred, of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday refrained from hearing a plea seeking direction to the Election Commission to bar Jammu and Kashmir politicians Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti from participating in the Lok Sabha election as they have allegedly made "seditious" statements.

The court asked the petitioner to move the appropriate forum with his grievance after which the petition was withdrawn.

"Dismissed as withdrawn," said a bench of Justices S Ravindra Bhat and Prateek Jalan.

The petition filed by a lawyer alleged that the "seditious and communal statements" given by the three leaders were against the Constitution, adding that the court or the EC should bar or impose conditions on their entry into the Lok Sabha.

All the three leaders are former chief ministers of Jammu and Kashmir. The petition has arrayed the EC, the Union of India, the Delhi Police, National Conference (NC) president Farooq Abdullah, his son Omar Abdullah and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti as parties to the petition.

The plea moved by advocate Sanjiv Kumar has also sought a direction to book them under various charges, including sedition and inciting hatred, of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

"Issue directions to the respondent number 1 (EC) to ban the NC and the PDP from Lok Sabha election 2019 as respondent number 4 and 6 (the three leaders) are presidents of their respective parties and represent their parties and their ideologies," it alleged.

"Will it not be a mockery of democracy to allow those people and parties to participate in the Lok Sabha election when people/parties openly call for sedition to divide Mother India on the basis of religion (Muslim majority) and two prime ministers (for Jammu and Kashmir and the rest of India)," it said.
The choice of Bihar Mahagathbandhan candidates for Darbhanga, Madhubani and Siwan Lok Sabha seats raises questions about the secularism practised by non-BJP parties and the responses to it by Muslim voters

The RJD-led mahagathbandhan in Bihar (having a total of 40 Lok Sabha seats) stitched an alliance with the Congress (nine seats), CPI-ML (one seat of Arrah), Jitan Manjhi-led Hindustani Awam Morcha or HAM (three seats), and Mukesh Sahni-led Vikassheel Insan Party or VIP (three seats) and Upendra Kushwaha-led Rashtriya Lok Samata Party or RLSP (five seats).

The last three formations/leaders have been in alliance with the BJP, not long ago, and respectively represent Musahar (Mahadalit), Mallah (fishermen or Ati Pichhrha), and Koeri (Upper OBC) castes. The RJD seems to have firmed up a cross-caste alliance, broad-basing it beyond the Yadavs, but the alliance appears to have taken its captive electorate, Muslims, for granted.

Muslim candidates have received nominations only from Congress, RJD. The RLSP, HAM and VIP (part of the RJD-led mahagathbandhan) have not nominated even a single Muslim candidate just as the BJP. In fact, the RLSP expelled its Muslim face for raising voice for a ticket. And though the JD(U) and Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) are part of the NDA led by BJP, each have fielded a Muslim candidate.

Muslim representation in mahagathbandhan

The RJD preferred to leave the Owaisi-led AIMIM which has got a significant presence in Kishanganj  one of the poorest districts of India with around 66 percent of Muslim votes.

The RJDs argument of leaving the AIMIM out of the alliance was the latter being an "exclusionary and identitarian formation". But that fails to impress since the RJD has endorsed an RSS cadre as mahagathbandhan member VIPs nominee for the Madhubani Lok Sabha seat and that too at the cost of its own Muslim nominee Abdul Bari Siddiqui, Lalus confidante and one of the tallests leaders in RJD.

Siddiqui has been shifted to Darbhanga, thus almost decimating another tall RJD leader, MAA Fatmi. A former Union minister of state for HRD, Fatmi is supposed to have developed his clientele and patronage networks in the Darbhanga-Madhubani region. Hence, he could have been a formidable candidate for the Darbhanga seat.

Madhubani used to elect CPI, and then the seat moved to Congress, before it was taken over by BJP's Hukumdeo Yadav. In the 2019 polls, Hukumdeo's son Ashok Yadav, is contesting as BJP candidate. RJD had lost the seat in the last two Lok Sabha polls with narrow margins.

The RJD has also ignored the share of non-Ashraf leaders in Bihar, such as Ali Anwar Ansari and Dr Ejaz Ali  the Muslim faces of social justice.

Ansari, along with Sharad Yadav, had resigned from the Rajya Sabha and left the JDU after the Nitish Kumar-led party rejoined the NDA in 2017. Sharad was offered to contest two seats by the RJD. He kept one (Madhepura) to himself and handed out another to someone else, ignoring Ansari.

The RJD also left the CPI out of the Bihar mahagathbandhan because the Left party wanted the Begusarai seat. Let it be noted that in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the RJDs Muslim candidate Tanvir Hasan had lost the Begusarai to the BJP with four times greater margin than his counterpart in Madhubani. Despite that, the RJD refused to concede the Begusarai seat to CPI-ML, a member of the Bihar mahagathbandhan.

The RJD also refused to concede the Siwan Lok Sabha seat to CPI-ML, despite the latter having a significant presence and a high probability of the poor from backward castes and Dalits shifting towards CPI-ML. Instead, the RJD has fielded Hina Shahab, wife of the convicted gangster-legislator Shahabuddin, against JD(U)s Rajput candidate Kavita Singh, wife of a strongman Ajay Singh of Hindu Yuva Vahini. Though Shahab supposedly has significant Muslim support, she lost the last two elections in Siwan.

Before the dominance of the BJP, Siwan strongman Shahabuddin was supposed to be a mercenary of the upper caste landlords against the CPI-ML. In March 1997, a JNU student leader named Chandrashekhar and Shyam Yadav of CPI-ML were killed, allegedly by the gunmen of Shahabuddin.

The choice of candidates for the Darbhanga, Madhubani and Siwan Lok Sabha seats in Bihar raise questions about first, the secularism practised by non-BJP forces and second, responses to it by the Muslim communities.

The "secular cunning" and silenced Muslims

Does RJD (and other self-professedly secular forces) need a Muslim leader, whose religious identity could be exploited politically for window-dressing, but who must not be vocal, assertive and have his/her independent mass-base? Does Tejaswi want to use Siddiqui to outsmart Fatmi and by doing so, push Siddiqui out of the regional politics, and thus relieving him off the plum ministries in the state cabinet?

In 2015, there was a grudge among Muslims that Siddiqui, by virtue of his seniority in the RJD, deserved more for giving up the post of deputy chief minister to a novice like Tejaswi. Why did the RJD display its strong favour to a meek, submissive, Tanvir Hasan (of Begusarai), and pushed out Fatmi, who has won Darbhanga Lok Sabha more than once?

RJD, even parachuted down alleged BJP man Syed Faisal Ali from to Sheohar in north Bihar. Many see it all as RJDs systematic attempt at decimating vocal and assertive leadership, of its captive voters, Muslims.

CPIs Begusarai candidate Kanhaiya Kumar has been campaigning in the constituency since 2016-17, and it had become a thing of common knowledge that RJD's Hasan might have to compete with Kanhaiya in Begusarai. RJD's choice of Hasan as Begusarai candidate raises several questions.

Why did not Hasan display his leadership and mobilisational capabilities in the face of Kanhaiyas strident campaigning?

Hasan did not even visit and speak on the Sitamarhi lynching in October 2018. Why did he stay complacent? Was it because, he had recently managed to get elected to the state Legislative Council merely on the basis of his religious identity? And if so, why must Muslims have leaders who are rubber-stamps of their respective parties and imposed from above, rather than emerging out of agitational processes from the below?

Why do Muslims turn up in huge numbers when they are called to protest against misogynistic and emotive issues like triple talaq, as they did on 15 April, 2018, when Wali Rahmani of the Muslim Personal Law Board gave a call to that effect, but, they wont speak up as enthusiastically on issues of livelihood? Muslims didn't bring out any rallies against series of hate-crimes perpetrated by both the majoritarian right as well as by the men in uniform?

Also, why do the civil society groups working for Muslim victims face more problems than those working in the name of religion and piety?

Understanding the Owaisi politics in Bihar

One of the explanations for the resurgence of AIMIM in Hyderabad in the 1980s was its politics of meaningful interventions in the domains of education, trade, and local bodies. It extended substantial benefits to the Muslims, and stitched alliances with the Dalits in urban local bodies elections. However, one wonders, why the AIMIM didnt take similar approach in Seemanchal (four districts of eastern Bihar with very high Muslim concentration, such as Purnea, Araria, Kishanganj and Katihar)? The region is adjacent to the four northern districts of West Bengal with even higher Muslim concentration, for example, North and South Dinajpur, Malda and Murshidabad).

Intriguingly, the AIMIM has not attempted at experimenting with Dalit-Muslim alliance in the local bodies elections in these districts of Bihar and West Bengal. In October 2018, AIMIM struck an alliance with Prakash Ambedkar in Aurangabad, but that was all.

Muslim voters seem to rationalise that AIMIM, their own party, will bargain for the commmunity in the legislative arena. However, they should recall history. In 1937, the Congress governments in Uttar Pradesh and in other Muslim minority provinces such as Bihar, Bombay, Madras and the Central Provinces, took office with nearly all the Muslim legislators sitting in the opposition.

The lesson to the exclusivist Muslims was: the 'safeguards' designed to protect the interests of Muslim minorities, such as reserved seats, separate electorates and weightage (more seats than their percentage of the population) did not guarantee Muslim parties or politicians a share of political power. If the Congress won enough non-Muslim seats, it could shut them out of office and rule as if "they didn't exist.

This is something Asaduddin Owaisi may never like to let his followers know.

Kishanganj has got many longstanding genuine grievances: its historical backwardness and poverty has not been taken care of by the state and the politicians representing it. Many times high profile outsiders represented it, including journalist MJ Akbar and Syed Shahabuddin (1935-2017), the diplomat turned politician, and BJPs Shahnawaz Husain.

Now, there is a strong local sentiment for a Surjapuri (a numerically preponderant linguistic community) candidate in Kishanganj.

The anguished and tiny educated middle class Surjapuris have been articulating Kishanganj's deprivations in education, health, and other developmental issues, on social media. Their disillusionment with the political formations is unmistakable.

With the menacing rise of Hindu right, and the secular forces (national and regional) abandoning Muslims to their fate, Owaisis articulation (in a measured constitutional language, inside the Parliament and on television news channels) does find a resonance with a section of hopeless, helpless and beleaguered, but aspirational Muslim youth in the constituency.

In public rallies, Owaisi, however, does turn out to be more of a rabble-rouser. He never talks of caste among Muslims. On gender, he is clearly on the side of misogynist mullahs, persisting with the instant triple divorce. In February 2018, he was the host of Muslim Personal Law Board plenary, which did not bring even a model nikahnama, despite its promise to do so.

Its Bihar face, Akhtar-ul-Iman, is articulate in chaste Urdu. He was twice elected MLA from Kochadaman (in Kishanganj  2005 and 2010). He hopped from RJD, to JDU (to contest the 2014 Lok Sabha unsuccessfully), and then to AIMIM, on whose symbol he lost the Assembly election in 2015.

Since AIMIM is a Muslim-exclusive party, it may happen that the Hindu minority of Kishanganj would vote for (a) either for the JDU candidate Mahmood Ashraf or for the Congress candidate, Javed Azad. Ashraf is is said to be playing his sub-sectarian (maslaki) card. He identifies himself as a Barelwi, a bete noire of Deobandi sect (Barelwis possibly outnumber Deobandis in Kishanganj). Azad on the other hand is the sitting MLA from (Kishanganj). His late father was a minister in Bihar many years ago.

This is in the eastern end of Bihar, where "Muslim-exclusive" AMIM may be a choice of a segment of Muslims.

Deepening majoritarianism

Towards the western end of Bihar, Arrah seems to offering a somewhat contrasting picture to election-watchers.

This seat is contested by BJPs Raj Kumar Singh, a Union minister in the Narendra Modi cabinet. CPI-MLs Raju Yadav (a product of student-youth movements) will be taking him on as the mahagathbandhan candidate. Raj earned fame as Indias home secretary when he busted terror acts of some Hindu extremists. Ironically, he joined the BJP, after retiring from the services.

Majoritarain communalisation has been underway across Bihar, more specifically in Arrah. The saffron outfits are trying to organise 'kalash yatras' (processions in which young girls from Dalit families drape chunris (scarves) and walk carrying kalash (religious urns) on their heads as a pretext for provoking communal tensions between Dalits and Muslims.

'Shiv Charcha' is another such activity indirectly communalising subaltern caste women, not to say of the expansion of Hindu Yuva Vahini in the Rajput dominated villages of Saran, adjacent to the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanaths home turf, Gorakhpur.

On 6 November, 2017, the guard at a Saraswati Shishu Mandir (RSS chain of schools) in Bahiyara village, Koilvar Block, attempted to rape a Dalit girl child who had gone for defecation. He shot and injured the girl. Later, the guard also beat up with the butt of his rifle the girls uncle and elder sister who reached the spot.

This school is owned by billionaire BJP Rajya Sabha MP Ravindra Kishore Sinha and is allegedly built on forcibly captured government land allotted to Dalits. RK Sinhas name also appears in the Paradise Papers leak. During his Arrah visit, Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief had stayed at Sinhas house.

A lout from the Rajput caste had also attempted to rape a Dalit girl child at Joga Kharaicha village in Sahar. On 17 January 2018, feudal criminals shot and killed newspaper vendor Yogendra Prasad Tatwan at Karnamepur in Shahpur. His cousin brother had also been murdered in October 2017.

The CPI-ML claims to have been fighting out all such communal and feudal-criminal forces against several odds. In Arrah, it is fighting against Hindu communalism and criminals, and upper caste feudal atrocities against Dalits; in Siwan, CPI-ML (out of the mahagathbandhan) is up against Muslim communalism of safeguarding a convicted gangsters crumbling empire.

It would be interesting to watch the electoral outcome in the western and eastern flanks of Bihar, the two geographical (as well as ideological) parts of Bihar as much as it would be to watch in the rest of Bihar. What is clear though is that Bihar continues to be grappled with a curious mix of crime, caste and communalism, much like few other parts of India.

The author is a professor of History at Aligarh Muslim University and author of Muslim Politics in Bihar: Changing Contours (Routledge)
Congress president Rahul Gandhi Friday said his party's manifesto was not the 'Mann Ki Baat of one megalomaniac' but talked about work of the nation

Madurai: Taking a veiled dig at prime minister Narendra Modi's radio talk programme, Congress president Rahul Gandhi Friday said his party's manifesto was not the "Mann Ki Baat of one megalomaniac" but talked about work of the nation.

He invoked Tamil pride in his election rallies at Krishnagiri, Salem, Theni and this temple city, assuring the people of Tamil Nadu that his party listens to their voice.

This was reflected in the assurance in the party's manifesto to not impose NEET, which is strongly opposed by Congress allies, including DMK, he said while highlighting his party's showpiece minimum income guarantee scheme "NYAY".

As many as 22 lakh jobs in the government sector, ten lakh jobs in panchayats, 33 per cent quota for women in central government jobs and reservation in Parliament and state legislatures were among other key assurances.

Accusing the Prime Minister of not having the "decency", to listen to Tamil Nadu farmers when they protested in Delhi in 2017, Gandhi said he, however, met them and "hugged them," and assured to listen to them.

The Congress, if its comes to power, would ensure that every single farmer will be apprised of what the central government intended to do for them at the start of the year like the extent to which the Minimum Support Price will be raised, and compensation for crop damage, he said.

"We will make it illegal to put any farmer in jail for default on loan," he said.

The election of 2019 was a clash of vision between two different ideologies, he said.

While his party stood for unity in diversity and "all voices must be heard," Gandhi said the RSS and BJP say that only one idea should govern India.

Hitting out at BJP, he said they obviously have not read the history of the Tamil people. "They don't understand Periyar, Karunanidhi (Dravidian stalwarts) and Kamaraj."

He claimed demonetisation and GST 'destroyed' the small and medium industries in Tamil Nadu and 30,000 MSMEs had to shut down and "50 lakh jobs were lost."

"We are going to defeat Narendra Modi in the coming election and after a while (DMK president M K) Stalin is going to be the chief minister of Tamil Nadu as well," he said reiterating his earlier assertions.

Gandhi assured the middle classes will not be burdened to fund the Nyay scheme and indicated it would by taxing the super rich.

"I want to make it cryctal clear to middle classes that the money is not going to come from you. Modi has been giving thousands of crores to his favoured few....that is where the money is going to come from. There is no shortage of money in this country," the Congress chief said.

Senior leader P Chidambaram alleged Dalits and minorities lived in fear, economy lay in tatters and societal peace was disturbed and the nation faced a huge threat on India's internal security.

Earlier, in the Salem rally, Stalin alleged the AIADMK government did not allot space in the Marina beach for burying late DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi last year and his party had to approach the Madras High Court to get permission.

He hailed Congress manifesto as the super hero, his party's manifesto hero and BJP's manifesto as "zero."

Referring to Stalin's remarks Gandhi said, "your father was not an ordinary person, he represented the voice of the Tamil people." And, hence, it was an insult of the voice of the Tamil people.

He mocked at Modi's "Make in India" slogan, saying the country's market was now flooded with Chinese products.

Modi had hurt the youth in the last five years, giving "huge amounts of money from the banks to the richest people but not to them."

"He gave you an empty slogan called Make in India but wherever we look we see Made in China products," he said.

He referred to the Congress' proposal for entrepreneurs and said they no longer have to take permission from any government department for first three years after starting their business.

Accusing Modi of running his government for 15 of his friends, Gandhi said he wondered why no big-ticket defaulters of bank loans like Vijay Mallya were not in jail.

The Congress chief said fugitives like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, after taking bank loans, failed to return it and ran away from the country.

"Not even a single one is in jail," he added.

Gandhi said if his party was voted to power, no farmer "is going to be put in jail for not paying back his bank loan, it is not fair that the richest people do not go to jail but farmers go to jail for the same offence".
Baramullas Uri district witnessed a substantial 57 percent turnout, a categorical rejection of calls for the election boycott.

Jammu: If the turnout at the first phase of polls in Jammu and Kashmir is something to go by, the intrepid voters of the state have defied the boycott called by pro-Pakistan separatists and ultras by coming out to vote in impressive numbers, considering the climate of violence and uncertainty gripping the state. Of the six Lok Sabha constituencies in the state, Baramulla and Jammu went to polls Thursday, drawing out voters from some of the most terror-affected areas, amid reports of malfunctioning EVMs in many parts of the state.

The twin constituencies together  with a combined total of 33 lakh voters  recorded 57.35 percent voter turnout in the first phase, according to Jammu and Kashmirs chief electoral officer Shailendra Kumar. A total of 4,489 polling stations were set up in twin constituencies. Thirty-three candidates were in the fray in both the constituencies. In the Jammu parliamentary constituency, spread over 20 Assembly segments in four districts, 24 candidates were in the fray while in Baramulla, spread across 15 Assembly segments in three districts, nine candidates contested the poll.

Kashmir shows up

Baramulla constituency registered 34.71 percent polling, five percentage points down from last General Elections. One of its three districts and a terror hotbed, Kupwara registered 51.7 percent votes. Among the celebrity voters was Shah Faesal, a former IAS officer and J&K Peoples Movement founder. The newly-minted politician cast his vote in Lolab.

Baramullas Uri district witnessed a substantial 57 percent turnout, a categorical rejection of calls for the election boycott. Uri is, of course, the site of the terror attack on an army camp on September 2016 that had prompted the Indian Army to launch surgical strikes against Pakistan.

Isolated incidents of unrest were reported in the state. A teenage boy died when a group of persons resorted to stone pelting on the security forces returning from Kupwaras Langate area. Security forces fired on the unruly mob, killing the 13-year-old boy. Youngsters also came out in large numbers in Dangerpora of Bandipora, claiming that they were fed up of the Governors Rule in Jammu and Kashmir. Internet services were suspended in Baramulla where a woman in Pattan was injured when supporters of separatists pelted stones on voters for disobeying the call for poll boycott.

Jammu voters settle scores

Jammu recorded 72.16 percent, better than the 67.99 percent it had witnessed in 2014.

Rajouri and Poonch districts in Jammu constituency, which have bared continuous shelling and ceasefire violations by Pakistan, polled 65.7 percent and 70.4 percent votes. Ceasefire violations by Pakistan have remained one of the burning issues in the entire Jammu region. Many lives have been lost during the past some years in shelling from across the border. Ramesh Chaudhary, sarpanch of Kalal village in Rajouri district says that the people of the area voted to bring such a government at the Centre "that can stop these ceasefire violations by giving a befitting reply to Pakistan".

Multiple reports of malfunctioning EVMs in Rajouri and Poonch were also received due to which polling was delayed at some of the polling stations. When a button on an EVM failed to work at a polling station in Shahpur of Poonch, former chief minister Omar Abdullah was quick to post the video of the presiding officer of the polling station on his Twitter account, claiming Congress symbol button not working in Poonch polling stations. This could not be verified.

Bashir Ahmed, a presiding officer at a polling booth in Shahpur, said, Experts visited the polling station and rectified the fault. At the time the machine was issued to us, it was working perfectly. He couldnt confirm if it was indeed the Congress button that was not working.

Raman Bhalla, Congress candidate from Jammu said that there was a large-scale malfunctioning of EVM machines in Rajouri and Poonch area where the core vote bank of the Congress was present. People started protesting soon after polling started when they found that the Congress button on EVMs is not working at many places, said Bhalla.

Reports of EVM malfunction were also received from Manjakot and Thanamandi areas of Rajouri district. Former minister and Congress MLA from Rajouri, Shabir Ahmed Khan alleged that the machines in Muslim dominated areas were deliberately made non-functional so that the secular forces could not vote against the BJP.

Reports of these EVM failures aside, the Election Commission was able to, for the first time, allow troops deployed in the remote and inhospitable terrains of state to download their ballot paper online, vote and forward the ballot to their respective electoral returning officers through the post. The facility was provided at Siachen glacier and the LOC.

BJP state president Ravinder Raina was issued a notice by the Election Commission after he was filmed asking an elderly voter in Gandhi Nagar about her preference, in violation of polling rules.

Former chief minister and president of PDP Mehbooba Mufti on her Twitter alleged, a voter in Jammu was manhandled by BSF personnel because he refused to cast his vote for BJP. However, her claims rested on a video in which some people were seen protesting and raising slogans against the BJP, a former ally of PDP.

Major candidates in the fray in Jammu include Jugal Kishore of BJP, Raman Bhalla of Congress, Bhim Singh of National Panthers Party and Lal Singh of Dogra Swabhiman Sangathan. Jugal Kishore of BJP was the winner in 2014 and had bagged 6,19,995 votes against his rival Madan Lal Sharma of Congress who was able to get 3,62,715 votes. Lal Singh had won last Assembly polls on BJP ticket but later turned rebel. He is now contesting from Jammu as well as Udhampur constituency that will go to the polls on 18 April. Raman Bhalla is also a former MLA of Congress and a popular leader of Jammu. In the Baramulla parliamentary constituency, major candidates include Haji Farooq Ahamed Mir of Congress, Mohammad Maqbool War of BJP, Abdul Qayoom Wani of PDP, Mohammad Akbar Lone of NC, Raja Aijaz Ali of J&KPC. Engineer Rashid is one of the independents contesting the poll. While Lone is a former speaker of Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly, Rashid is a leader known for his secessionist stand.

The author is Ludhiana-based freelance writer and a member of 101Reporters.com.
The Shashi Tharoor camp feels that some of these mandalam committee leaders may have joined hands with the BJP to help Kummanam Rajasekharan.

Opinion poll surveys predicting chances of an electoral breakthrough for the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha election in Kerala has sparked speculations about chances of cross-voting against the party candidates in constituencies where its winning chances are high.

Speculations are most rife in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency where the latest AC Nielson-Mathrubhumi News survey has predicted a clear edge for BJP nominee Kummanam Rajasekharan. The party is also expecting possibilities of cross-voting in the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency where the survey has found a close fight between K Surendran and sitting Congress MP Anto Antony.

Senior BJP leaders including state president PS Sreedharan Pillai alleged that the Left Democratic Front (LDF) which is found trailing behind the two front runners in the two constituencies might resort to cross-voting in favour of the Congress candidates to deny his party a seat in the Lok Sabha.

BJP that won the lone Assembly seat from Nemom segment in the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha constituency in the 2016 Assembly polls, had forced Kummanam, one of the most towering leaders of the party in the state, to quit as Mizoram governor and to enter the fray to give BJP the much-needed electoral breakthrough in the state. Kummanam had shared the concern about cross-voting even before he started the campaign.

Senior party leaders believe that the traditional rivals have been resorting to the unethical practice as they consider BJP as their number one enemy. The party had attributed the defeat of former Union minister O Rajagopal at Thiruvananthapuram by 15,470 votes in the 2014 polls to such cross-voting by the LDF.

Allegations regarding cross-voting came to the fore after the BJP gained the strength to either win the elections or influence the outcome. In the earlier days when the party stood no chance to win the elections, there were allegations of vote trade in exchange of benefits.

This slowly gave way to overt and covert deals for mutual benefit. It was the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) that was mostly at one end of these deals. Rajgopals victory from the Nemom segment in the 2016 Assembly polls was termed by the LDF as a result of such a deal.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had alleged that the UDF had transferred their votes to Rajgopal in exchange of the BJP votes to defeat their candidate TN Seema in the Vattiyoorkkavu segment. A sharp drop in the UDF votes from 20,248 in 2011 to 13,860 in 2016 lent credence to the allegation. Rajagopal had won the seat by little over 6,300 votes while the Vattiyoorkkavu seat by former state Congress chief K Muralidharan by a margin of 7,622 votes.

This came a quarter century after the first covert deal between the Congress and the BJP ended in a fiasco. The first experiment was attempted in 1991 when the BJP supported the UDF candidate in the Vatakara Lok Sabha constituency in exchange of support to its candidate in Beypore Assembly constituency. The experiment fizzled out as the LDF won both the seats.

The infamous deal which later came to be known as 'Kolibi' (Congress-League-BJP) alliance was confirmed by M Ratna Singh, who contested the Vatakara election as an independent fielded by the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the second largest constituent of the UDF, in his autobiography entitled Epilogue.

The autobiography published in 2014 revealed that the Congress had struck the deal with the BJP with the nod of the then party president Rajiv Gandhi, who wanted to defeat LDF candidate KP Unnikrishnan, who was his bete noir.

The experiment became a permanent embarrassment for the UDF and BJP with the LDF alleging unholy nexus between the two in every succeeding election. The CPM has come up with such an allegation this time too.

CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan alleged that the deal was struck between the RSS and the Congress to ensure the victory of Kummanam Rajasekharan in Thiruvananthapuram and the UDF candidate in Vatakara. He said that the BJP had fielded weak candidates in five Lok Sabha constituencies as part of the deal.

Congress candidate Shashi Tharoors complaint that a section of the Congress election machinery in Thiruvananthapuram was not cooperating with him is seen by the CPM as a vindication of their allegation regarding the unholy alliance.

In a report submitted to the party high command, Tharoor said that over 25 mandalam committees had either stopped working for him or slowed down their activities. Most of these committees are dominated by workers of the Nair Service Society (NSS), a socio-cultural organisation of the upper caste Nair community, which is being wooed by the BJP in the wake of the Sabarimala struggle.

The Tharoor camp feels that some of these mandalam committee leaders may have joined hands with the BJP to help Kummanam. Acting swiftly on Tharoors complaint, Mukul Wasnik, AICC general secretary in-charge of Kerala has taken it up with senior leaders like AK Antony, Ramesh Chennithala and Oommen Chandy.

Tharoor, who won the debut election from Thiruvananthapuram by a whopping margin of 99,998 votes in 1999 had faced a stiff challenge from the BJP in his second stint. This time his camp is most worried about the tilt of Nair votes towards the BJP.

Same is the situation in Pathanamthitta, where Anto Antony had witnessed a deep drop in his victory margin in the 2014 polls. The two will find the going tough if there is a Hindu consolidation in favour of the BJP.

Though the poll surveys found LDF candidates are found languishing in the third position in both the constituencies, how far they will sacrifice to keep their bitter enemy away from the Lok Sabha has to be waited and seen as Rahul Gandhis entry in the electoral fray in Wayanad has angered them.

The pre-poll survey has also raised fears in the BJP camp about minority consolidation against them. This can tilt the electoral scales since minorities account for 33 percent of the population in Thiruvananthapuram district and 42 percent in Pathanamthitta district.

Sensing the danger, the BJP is trying to pool maximum Hindu votes that went to the LDF and the Congress. The BJP president said that the party will put in place counter strategy to tide over the minority consolidation and cross-voting.
Several political experts presently argue that there is no 'Modi wave' in the ongoing election.

Several political experts presently argue that there is no 'Modi wave' in the ongoing election. The irony is that these experts had missed the Modi wave in 2014 too. It was only after the results that they accepted that such a wave existed.

However, if a wave election wave is defined as a vote being cast in the name of Modi as the prime ministerial candidate, it appears that a wave has started to form.

To understand this, one has to listen to the voices of voters, rather than the cacophony of campaigning. Some political analysts argue that this is not a national election, but a sum of state-level contests. This myopia emerges from focusing only on the narratives of political parties. Analogically, if a consumer wants to buy a car will you determine which car he buys based on car advertising or on understanding his decision matrix?

The fact is that either the BJP or its allies have a presence in almost every state. A large number of Opposition leaders are speaking about fighting against Modi  be it Mayawati, Akhilesh Yadav, Chandrababu Naidu or Ajit Singh. The Congress president also punctuates his speeches with attacks on Modi. While voters keep hearing Modi's name in the Opposition's campaign, they do not get an answer to the question  if not Modi, then who? The car analogy again; one campaign says buy the car branded PM but the other only asks that you don't without offering another brand of car. The alternative is missing.

For instance, Mayawati has exhorted voters to vote for the BSP so that Modi does not become the prime minister. However, she has not stated as to who from the BSP will become the prime minister. Thus, voters have to choose between a prime ministerial candidate and a nebulous notional alliance.

The Congress' inability to reach a seat-sharing arrangement with the SP-BSP combine is confusing even voters likely to vote on caste and community lines. For instance, in Saharanpur, the Congress has put up Imran Masood against Haji Fazlur Rehman of the BSP, and the two candidates are likely to eat into each other's vote share.

In several states which went to polls in the first phase, voter turnout was lower than that in 2014. This may mean that winning margins will shrink, and they will shrink more in seats where there is a triangular fight.

Therefore, every single vote will count. A strong Congress candidate in Uttar Pradesh will eat into the SP or BSP's votes, and this may give the edge to the BJP. The 'mahagathbandhan' may not be able to consolidate votes in crucial states like Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. On the other hand, the NDA has stitched a strong alliance, and arrived at a seat-sharing arrangement. In Bihar, it even gave five of its seats to its alliance partner, as it feels that the latter party has a better chance.

These three factors in the Opposition camp  the lack of a clear prime ministerial candidate, the lack of consolidation of votes, and the view of Modi as a common enemy  may contribute to a wave which will enable Modi. All waves start in small ripples and remain undetected initially, till they rise to their crescendo. Good political leaders intuitively understand this; they are able to read the crowd's mind, and influence it.

Congress' proposed NYAY scheme will have an impact only if the poor believe that they will actually get this money. Voters will need trust the Congress on delivering such a huge give away. And trust is something which the UPA has lost; it's unlikely to recover this in the next 45 days. NYAY will also drive away middle-class urban voters, as the scheme, which will cost Rs 3,60,000, will mean additional taxes for them.

The wave in favour of the NDA will be further strengthened if Nirav Modi or Vijay Mallya is brought back during the election phase.
Rabri Devi's revelation came close on heels of Lalu in his recently-published autobiography, claiming that Kishor  now the JD(U) national vice-president  had met him as an emissary of Nitish with the proposal that the chief minister's party be re-inducted into the Grand Alliance.

Patna: Former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi on Friday dropped a bombshell by claiming that poll strategist Prashant Kishor had met her husband Lalu Prasad with the proposal that the RJD and Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's JD(U) merge together and the new entity thus formed declare its "prime ministerial candidate" ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

If Kishor denies having met Lalu with such a proposal, he is speaking a "blatant lie", she said.

"I got infuriated and asked him to go away as I had no trust left in Nitish Kumar following his betrayal," the RJD national vice-president, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the Legislative Council, told a regional news channel in Patna.

Nitish had in 2017 walked out of the Grand Alliance, which was formed upon his party's partnership with the RJD and the Congress. He rejoined the BJP-led NDA.

"All our staff and security personnel deployed here are witnesses. He called on us at least five times, mostly here (her 10, Circular Road residence), and one or two times at paanch number (5, Deshratna Marg  the bungalow allotted to her younger son Tejashwi Yadav)," Rabri Devi said.

"Kishor was sent by Nitish with the proposal  'merge both parties and declare a prime ministerial candidate'. He came in broad daylight, and not clandestinely in the dark of the night," she asserted.

Rabri Devi's revelation came close on heels of Lalu in his recently-published autobiography, claiming that Kishor  now the JD(U) national vice-president  had met him as an emissary of Nitish with the proposal that the chief minister's party be re-inducted into the Grand Alliance.

Kishor, who became a full-time member of the JD(U) in September 2018, took to Twitter admitting that he had met Lalu "many times" before joining the party, but added, "If I were to tell what all was discussed, he (Lalu) would be quite embarrassed".

Products of 1974 "JP movement", Lalu and Nitish had long association with each other before they separated in mid-90s.

As a key strategist, Nitish used to be known as "Lalu's Chanakya" after the latter became the leader of the opposition in 1989 in the Bihar assembly after death of veteran socialist leader Karpoori Thakur.

He had also played an important role in making Lalu the Bihar chief minister in 1990.

But, by 1994, differences had started to crop up between the two top leaders of Mandal campaign, that led to providing reservation in government jobs to the OBC.

Nitish walked out of Janata Dal to form Samta Party with socialist icon George Fernandes.

Three years later, Lalu broke away from the party to form Rashtriya Janata Party (RJD) in 1997. The same year, Lalu lost the chief minister's chair because of his alleged involvement in the fodder scam but in an unexpected move made wife Rabri Devi the chief minister.

Nitish's Samta Party formed an alliance with the BJP in the 1996 general election.

After a protracted fight, Nitish managed to finally remove RJD from the power in 2005. Since, then Nitish has been serving as chief minister except for a brief period in 2014, when he had quit the post after his party got a drubbing in the hands of Narendra Modi's BJP and appointed Jitan Ram Manjhi on the seat.

Nitish and Lalu joined hands in 2015 and defeated the BJP in Bihar Assembly election. But, they parted company again in July 2017 over graft charges against RJD supremo's son Tejashwi Yadav.

Rabri Devi also expressed displeasure over Nitish's claim that the RJD supremo keeps talking to Kishor from jail, saying, "Even we do not get an opportunity for a telephonic talk with him (Lalu). And what about the claim by Anant Singh that while he was in jail, Lalan Singh (minister) used to arrange his telephonic talks with Nitish?"

A mafia don-turned-politician who represents Mokama Assembly segment, Anant Singh was earlier considered close to the Bihar chief minister, but fell out with him prior to the 2015 Assembly polls.

His wife Neelam Devi is contesting the Lok Sabha polls as a Congress candidate from Munger, where she is pitted against JD(U)'s Lalan Singh  a state minister and close aide of the chief minister.

Anant Singh made the claim in a recent interview to a local news portal.
'I want to ask you all, should we forgive those anti-nationals who are trying to break the unity and social fabric of our country?,' Rajnath Singh asked.

Gandhidham (Gujarat): Attacking the Congress over its poll promise of repealing the sedition law if elected to power in the Lok Sabha election, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh Friday said here that the BJP government would make the law even more stringent.

He was speaking at a gathering in Gandhidham city of Kutch district in Gujarat.

"Congress is saying that they will repeal the sedition law. I want to ask you all, should we forgive those anti-nationals who are trying to break the unity and social fabric of our country?" he asked.

"If it's within our powers, we will make the sedition law even more stringent. We will make such a strict law that it would send shivers down their spine," Singh said.

The senior BJP leader also attacked former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah over his demand for a separate prime minister for the region.

"I want to tell these leaders that if you continue to raise such demands, then we will be left with no other option than to abrogate Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution. We don't want such an India," said Singh.

He also blamed former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru for the Kashmir crisis.

"Had Pandit Nehru given full powers to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to handle the issue, we might have got a solution at that time," said Singh.

Speaking on the performance of the Modi government, Singh said, "I do not want to claim that we have uprooted corruption completely. However, our government has definitely taken some decisive steps towards that direction."

The minister claimed that nobody could doubt the commitment and integrity of Modi.

Singh alleged that although India was capable of making anti-satellite missile way back in 2007, the then prime minister Manmohan Singh had stopped the scientists from doing so.

"At that time, only Russia, China and the US had that technology. When scientists approached Manmohan Singh for a green signal, he stopped them saying such a step would upset those three countries. But when scientists approached Modi, he immediately gave a go-ahead," Singh said.

Polling for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats will be held on 23 April in Gujarat.
The ruling on electoral bonds came a day after the top court rejected the Centre's appeal to let it continue using the funding system till the end of Lok Sabha Election 2019

Delivering its verdict on the legality of electoral bonds scheme, the Supreme Court on Friday asked all political parties to disclose details of donors and furnish money received through them to the Election Commission by 30 May. Parties are to hand over these details of donations received till 15 May in sealed envelopes, reported News18. The court also said that bank account details of the parties should be given.

Breaking: Supreme Court directs all the Political parties to disclose to the Election Commission in sealed covers all the particulars relating to donations received through electoral bonds by May 30, 2019.  Bar & Bench (@barandbench) April 12, 2019

The apex court further said that the issue requires detailed and lengthy hearing. The case is being heard by a three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, along with Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna.

The ruling came a day after the top court rejected the Centre's appeal to let it continue using the funding system till the end of Lok Sabha Election 2019. The government had argued that it was not necessary for voters to know the identity of contributors.

The Centre and the Election Commission (EC) had taken contrary stand in the matter with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of donors while the election watchdog vouching for transparency.

The plea filed by Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), and represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, had challenged the validity of the scheme and sought interim relief, including that either the issuance of electoral bonds be stayed or the names of the donors be made public to ensure transparency in the poll process.

The EC had, in fact, raised concerns as early as 2017, the same year when Union minister Arun Jaitley first floated the idea of electoral bonds in his Budget 2017-18 speech. The poll panel had written a three-page letter on 26 May, 2017, saying that amendments have been made in the Finance Act, 2017, which brought changes in the Income-Tax Act, the Companies Act, 2013 and the Representation of People Act (RPA), 1951, to provide launch of these electoral bonds. The amendments, the commission noted, could have "serious impact on transparency".

The Centre had on 4 April further opposed the EC and justified the changes in law saying it was "a pioneer step" to bring poll reforms "ensuring transparency" and "accountability" in political funding.
tech2 News Staff

At its Next@Acer event in New York, Acer unveiled the new Helios 700 gaming laptop. The laptop now features support for new Intel CPUs, Nvidias relatively new RTX graphics cards and, the piece de resistance, a sliding keyboard of sorts that apparently improves airflow. The venerable Helios 300 was also updated and now supports Nvidias RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It also gets a choice of 15-inch or 17-inch 144-Hz displays.

The new Helios 700 can handle Intel Core i9 CPUs, up to 64 GB of RAM and Nvidia RTX 2080 GPUs. These GPUs are the Max-Q variants and are less powerful than their desktop counterparts, but these are also the most powerful graphics cards you can get on a mobile device. These cards are already available on MSI and ASUS laptops, so Acer isnt exactly first to the party.

The rest of the specs include a 17-inch FHD 144 Hz IPS display with support for G-Sync  Nvidias tech for reducing visual tearing in games. I/O includes two Thunderbolt 3 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, and several USB 3.1 Type A ports.

But this is all boring stuff. Just google RTX laptops and youll be flooded with options. What sets the Acer Helios 700 apart is its unique keyboard and unusual audio setup.

First, the keyboard. Unlike regular laptop keyboards, you can simply slide the keyboard towards yourself, opening up more vents for the laptop. When this HyperDrift keyboard is moved, the laptop automatically switches to a Turbo mood that boosts the fan speed as well as performance. Its a really cool idea and we certainly hope it works well in real-world usage. Better yet, the WASD keys are analogue, they can sense multiple stages of pressure, which should make a big difference in casual games. The keycaps can also be replaced.

And the goodies dont stop there. Acer even managed to squeeze in a 5.1 surround sound setup into this beast.

The Predator Helios 700 will go on sale at $2,699 in April and the Helios 300 at $1,199. Both devices will first go on sale in the US and theres no word on when these are coming to India.
Reuters

The arched stone-built hall in Jerusalem venerated by Christians as the site of Jesus' Last Supper has been digitally recreated by archaeologists using laser scanners and advanced photography.

The Cenacle, a popular site for pilgrims near Jerusalem's walled Old City, has ancient, worn surfaces and poor illumination, hampering a study of its history.

So researchers from Israel's Antiquities Authority and European research institutions used laser technology and advanced photographic techniques to create richly detailed three-dimensional models of the hall built in the Crusader era.

The project helped highlight obscure artwork and decipher some theological aspects of the second-floor room, built above what Jewish tradition says is the burial site of King David.

"We managed, in one of the ... holiest places in Jerusalem, to use this technology and this is a breakthrough," Amit Re'em, Jerusalem district archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority, told Reuters of the project, which began in 2016.

Re'em pointed to reliefs of what he described as the symbols of the "Agnus Dei", a lamb that is an emblem of Christ, and the "Lion of Judah" on keystones in the hall's vaulted ceiling.

"It tells the story of this room," Re'em said.

"It delivers the message of the Last (Supper) Room, Christ as a Messiah, as victorious, as a victim - and the lion, the lion is a symbol of the Davidic dynasty. They combine together in this room."

Some archaeologists have questioned whether the room is the actual venue of the Last Supper, the final meal which the New Testament says Jesus shared with disciples before his crucifixion.

Ilya Berkovich, a historian at the INZ research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences who worked on the project, said the endeavour opens "incredibly new horizons" with enormous potential.
Reuters

Apple, already the subject of EU antitrust scrutiny, on Thursday became the target of a Dutch investigation for allegedly favoring its own apps on its popular App Store.

Dutch competition agency ACM suggested the investigation may be expanded to Googles Play Store in future because of similar business practices by the company. Both services are lucrative money spinners for Apple and Google.

The investigation was triggered by Dutch apps for news media which provided indications of possible anti-competitive behavior by the iPhone maker during the agencys study into app stores, ACM said.

ACM will investigate, among other aspects, whether Apple acted in violation of the prohibition of abuse of dominance, for example, by giving preferential treatment to its own apps, the Dutch enforcer said in a statement.

The investigation will also look into Apples requirement that app developers use its payment systems for in-app purchases and pay a 30 percent fee in the first year, and also difficulties app developers face in using all functionalities of an iPhone.

ACM is calling on app providers to come forward if they experience any problems with Apples App Store, but also if they experience similar problems with Googles Play Store. ACM will use that information in its investigation, the Dutch watchdog said.

Apple said it treats all app developers equally.

We are confident (ACMs) review will confirm all developers have an equal opportunity to succeed in the App Store, the company said in a statement.

Google declined to comment.

The European Commission, which is looking into Swedish music streaming service Spotifys complaint that Apple abuses its position, said the Dutch investigation was in line with its own case.

The study and the announced follow-on investigation complement the Commissions decision on Google Android and the Commissions ongoing assessment of Spotifys complaint against Apples business practices, the EU executive said in a statement.
Reuters

Boeing Co's chief executive said on Thursday that a software update designed to prevent disasters like two recent fatal crashes involving its 737 MAX is working, with about two-thirds of the fast-selling jetliner's customers having seen the fix in simulator sessions.

In his first public speech since an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX crash that killed all 157 aboard on March 10, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said additional tests are expected in the coming weeks as the planemaker works to regain the confidence of its customers and the flying public.

Boeing, fighting its biggest crisis in years, has been developing an upgrade to software that is under scrutiny in the Ethiopian Airlines accident and a Lion Air 737 MAX crash that killed all 189 on board on 29 October.

The world's largest planemaker is under pressure to convince MAX operators and global regulators that the aircraft, which was grounded worldwide in March, is safe to fly again.

Muilenburg said he recently joined one of 96 test flights during which Boeing crew performed different scenarios that exercised the software changes in multiple flight conditions over 159 hours of air time.

"The software update functioned as designed," he said, without indicating when Boeing will deliver the fix to international regulators for their review, which is expected to last around 90 days.

Boeing is working to address a glitch when separate software is integrated into the system that was uncovered during an internal review, raising questions on how long before it submits the upgrade for certification.

Initial accident investigation reports show a 737 anti-stall system triggered by bad data from a key airflow sensor was "one link in a longer chain of events" in the two crashes, Muilenburg said at a leadership forum in Dallas.

"We know we can break this chain link. It's our responsibility to eliminate this risk."

Last week Boeing cut its monthly 737 production by nearly 20 percent, signalling it did not expect aviation authorities to allow the plane back in the air anytime soon.

Chicago-based Boeing has not received any new orders for the 737 MAX since the crash in March, nor it could make deliveries of the grounded aircraft.

The 737 MAX has been considered the likely narrowbody workhorse for global airlines for decades to come. There were more than 300 MAX jetliners in operation at the time of the Lion Air crash and about 4,600 more on order.

Muilenburg joined Boeing in 1985, became CEO in July 2015 and chairman of the board in March 2016.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson, additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; writing by Tracy Rucinski; editing by Susan Thomas and Phil Berlowitz)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
tech2 News Staff

As Election season begins in full swing, social media platforms like Facebook, and Twitter where a lot of misinformation campaigns are being conducted, are pulling down posts that violate Election Commission's model code of conduct (MCC).

As per a report by IANS, a total of 503 posts have been pulled down by the social media giants. EC Director General Dhirendra Ojha told reporters that of these, 500 posts were removed by Facebook alone. Twitter and WhatsApp removed two and one posts respectively after getting complaints.

"Resolution of eight complaints with Facebook and 39 with Twitter is still awaited," he added, as per the report.

Facebook's Product Management for Civic Integrity division Samidh Chakrabarti has called Indian elections a "top priority," and has said that the company in a "tremendous amount of efforts over the last two years" to prepare for the polls.

The Election Commission of India is trying to rein in social media giants such as Google, Twitter, and Facebook to prevent the release of user data and to curb the spread of politically motivated manipulative information.

Social media companies have presented a "Voluntary Code of Ethics for the General Elections 2019" to the election monitoring body, a new requirement this year.

"We are working hard to prevent bad actors from interfering with elections on Facebook," Chakrabarti said, adding that Facebook has tripled the number of people working on safety and security to 30,000.

India reportedly has the highest number of Facebook users in the world, with more than 300 million. That is about a third of the 900 million people eligible to vote in 2019.

With inputs from AP
tech2 News Staff

Even after PewDiePie seemingly conceded defeat to T-Series in the subscriber war recently, we still don't see any end to this dramatic relationship between the two. While we thought the last jab at the arch-rival would be PewDiePie's last move, but T-Series has once again got Felix Kjellberg all riled up.

T-Series filed a petition with the Delhi High Court against some of PewDiePie's music videos (read: the diss songs Bitch Lasagna and Congratulations). Now, the court has reviewed these videos and have found them offensive, and have ordered YouTube to pull them down.

Bar&Bench reports, "The Delhi High Court has directed YouTube to remove two songs published by Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie from its platform. The interim order was granted by a Single Judge Bench of Justice Jayant Nath in a suit preferred by T-Series owner Super Cassettes Pvt Ltd., seeking to permanently restrain Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, better known as PewDiePie, from uploading the songs titled T-Series Diss Track/Bitch Lasagna and Congratulations."

PewDiePie vs T-Series: Delhi High Court directs YouTube to remove defamatory songs @pewdiepie @TSeries https://t.co/BCBFkvTQSb  Bar & Bench (@barandbench) April 11, 2019

Reportedly, the court noted that it found the content of the video and the comments on it abusive, vulgar and also racist in nature and that it would be best that it is taken off Youtube.

It was further pointed out that on 7 October 2018, PewDiePie had apologized for posting the first video (T-Series diss video/Bitch Lasagna) when he said that the video was purely for fun and that he wasn't planning to make any more of such videos. However, despite that assurance on 31 March 2019, he uploaded another one called Congratulations, after T-Series was announced the YouTube King.

In the music video, PewDiePie accuses T-Series owner Bhushan Kumar of multiple immoral acts, also referring to a Times of India report which talks about an ongoing investigation against the owner for [sic]alleged evasion of huge tax and siphoning off hundreds of crores to foreign countries to purchase properties in the names of his employees.

The Swedish YouTuber has been often slammed by various media outlets for racist jokes and recommendations. Now, PewDiePie, like many YouTubers, incorporates pranks and stunts into his videos.

As of 1 April 2019, T-Series had nearly 92,120,908 subscribers, with Kjellberg's just behind at 92,099,251 subscribers.
Reuters

US Senator Mark Warner, who co-sponsored legislation this week to ban deceptive practices by social media companies, said on Thursday he was eyeing additional bills aimed at limiting hate speech and allowing users to move their data across platforms.

The Democratic lawmaker said he would offer more bills in the next month or two, ideally with Republican colleagues as a co-sponsor.

The additional legislation could focus on hate speech, data portability, which gives social media users the ability to easily take their data to another site, and transparency about who or what is on the other side of an internet conversation, Warner said in an interview with Reuters.

On Tuesday, Warner joined with Republican Senator Deb Fischer to introduce a bill to bar online platforms like Facebook Inc or Alphabet Inc's Google from misleading people into giving personal data to companies, or otherwise tricking them.

It would also ban online platforms with more than 100 million monthly active users from designing addicting games or other websites for children under age 13.

Warner is eager to increase transparency on social media platforms.

"Shouldn't we have the right to know whether we're being contacted by a human being versus a bot when you're on social media?" he said.

Issues of engagement and data collection are key for social media companies since they use information gathered about users to sell advertisements, a key source of profit.

Warner noted the real-life implications of hate speech on social media, pointing to mass killings in New Zealand and Pittsburgh.

In a massacre in New Zealand, a gunman opened fire in two mosques on March 15, killing 50 people as he broadcast the attack live on Facebook. Last year, 11 people were shot to death in a Pittsburgh synagogue. The man accused in the killings had made aggressive anti-Semitic comments in online forums.

Some of the proposed legislation could be rolled into a federal privacy bill being drafted in Congress. That bill was prompted by California's data privacy law that imposes fines of up to $7,500 on large companies for intentional failure to disclose data collection or delete user data on request, or for selling others data without permission. It takes effect next year.

"I want technology to stay. I want the social media platforms to stay," Warner said. "But I do think the days of the Wild Wild West where anything goes, people just aren't going to allow it."

(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Peter Cooney)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
tech2 News Staff

YouTube, in an effort to bring back faith with its ever-growing community of creators, has had introduced two new growth measures which have been introduced over the past two years to reward high-quality content. However, in typical YouTube fashion, the company has still not worked out on how to use these measures.

As per a report by Bloomberg, one of the metric tracks the total number of time users spend on a video including reading and posting comments. The second one focuses on "quality watch time," which the report does not elaborate upon. The objective, as per the report, is to stem criticism of the platform and rank videos that are overall engaging the users more.

YouTube is unclear on when it plans to use these metrics to sort out good content from bad but the report says that it will make these metrics vital to its recommendation engine. YouTube is said to rely on human moderators as well as software to find out which of the videos meet the company's quality standard.

The company came under fire recently when a recent report by Motherboard revealed that even days after the Christchurch massacre, some extremist content still remains on the platform.

Motherboard apparently reached out to YouTube with the issue, to which it said that the platform has "demonetised the videos, placed them behind a content warning, removed some features such as likes and comments, and removed them from recommendations", but it decided to leave the videos online.
Shubham Agarwal

India has a few chaotic weeks ahead of itself. Mired in a deluge of misinformation and uncertainty, about 900 million of its citizens will take to local polling booths for casting their votes. Votes that will decide which political group will govern the worlds largest democracy for the next five years.

And in an effort to leave no stone unturned, political parties are going all out in their quest to persuade every possible voter. Online promotions, as youd guess, are yet again at the forefront and play a pivotal role in shaping public opinion. To avert misuse and keep the spurt of partisan content in check, tech giants are, therefore, forced to pull overtime.

In anticipation of the general elections, Indias most active social and advertising networks  Facebook, Google (+YouTube), and Twitter have announced a slew of new policies and tools for bringing more transparency as well as scrutiny to political promotions on their platforms.

But are those enough? We dive deep to find out and explore how some are trying to game them.

How does one become an electoral ad buyer on Facebook, Google, and Twitter?

To publish an advertisement that qualifies as political, all these services require advertisers to go through an extensive application process. Its designed essentially to verify the advertisers identity, confirm that theyre operating from India, and paying through an India-based funding address.

To do that, the advertiser, which can be anyone from a political party to an individual, must submit one of the accepted government-issued photo documents including a passport, voter ID, driving license, and PAN card.

In addition, they are asked for an attestation from the Election Commission which says that the advertiser is legally authorized to run political ads. Theres also a step to validate ones address. The account can either choose to have someone visit their home/office or receive a postal code which then theyll have to enter online while applying. Based on who you are, youll have to upload a couple of additional proofs. For instance, political parties must send in their registration document.

Once someone is through the verification stage, publishing ads aren't simply about clicking a button either. Every political promotion they wish to conduct online will first need to be registered with the Election Commission of India (ECI) which falls in line with the revised Model Code of Conduct.

The pre-certificate generated from there will then have to be submitted to the online platform. Plus, all the political ads will have a disclaimer for easily identifying who paid for it and which page or profile ran it.

While the application processes are largely identical across these platforms, the differences start sticking out when we discuss user-facing ad transparency tools. These apps let anyone browse a services ad library and look into a host of statistics such as who has distributed the most number of ads, how much a particular account has spent, where they have spent, how wide their reach is, and much more.

Checking a political party or candidates ad expenditures online

Facebook

Facebook arguably has the most sophisticated ad transparency tool. It allows you to read the Ad Library Report which reveals the top spenders, search for specific keywords or pages, view precise expenditure details, and browse through all the political ads since February 2019. Whats more, you can inspect the breakdown of a particular ad, how many impressions it garnered and its gender as well as geographic analysis.

So, lets say youd like to inspect the Indian National Congress. On the landing page, you can type the name, select from the suggestions, and youll have all the information at your disposal in seconds.

Google

Googles offering, on the other hand, sorts its data by advertisers or candidates instead of letting you look up, for instance, a candidates YouTube channel. One feature exclusive on Google is that it has a section which displays every political advertisement hosted on its platforms. Facebook restricts that functionality to the advertisers list.

Apart from that, Google offers all the trappings you would expect such as the ability to browse an advertisers activities, charts depicting when did they shell out the most, and the works.

On Googles ad transparency tool, if youd like to view the Congress partys statistics, you can either choose from the advertisers list or search from the option present above the table.

Twitter

Twitters tool, by far, is the least capable of this bunch. Its biggest shortcoming is that you can only access up to a weeks worth of data, unlike Facebook and Googles months of archival data. Despite being a social network, you also cant search for keywords. In addition, there are no listings for the most active advertisers, nor will you find geographic breakdowns. You can only view the authorized accounts, their promoted tweets, impressions, and how much they have spent.

For looking into the Congresss activities on Twitter, say, you can either scroll through the list of campaigning advertisers or search from the field present at the top right corner.

Both Congress and BJP have no promoted tweets on Twitter, though. There are only a handful of candidates who have merely spent a couple of hundred dollars.

Twitters policies also seem a bit frail compared to the rest. For instance, while browsing my feed, I came across a political advert with no disclosures and the account wasnt present in the list of authorized advertisers.

Where are Indias political parties spending the most?

The silver lining is, however, that partisan content on Twitter is hardly on the same scale as Facebook or Google. And that is expected given Twitter only has less than 35 million users in the country. Facebook and Googles expansive reach is a significantly more appealing medium for advertisers and that shows in the numbers.

Since February 2019, political advertisers invested Rs 8.6 crores on Google and a staggering Rs 12 crores on Facebook at the time of writing. The Bharatiya Janata Party led the charts on all these platforms. However, on Google, Telangana's Telugu Desam Party remained ahead.

Political smoke and mirrors: theres more to it than meets the eye

But these campaigns arent as straightforward as they seem. Parties at both sides rely on unscrupulous methods to push their propaganda. Its most sweeping example can be conspicuously found on the advertiser leaderboards.

The page at the third spot on Facebooks Ad Library spent a whopping Rs 1.05 crores (as of 10 April). Titled My First Vote for Modi, its neither popular with 75k likes, nor officially affiliated to the BJP. On top of that, the page was created on 17 January.

The situation gets even more complicated when you drop by its Instagram profile. There, it lampoons over the opposition with memes featuring their leaders. One of the posts is an image of two female content creators (who dont look 18) endorsing the BJP without any tags to their profiles whatsoever.

My First Vote for Modi is just one such unofficial page spending lakhs on advertisements. Whether theyre backed by the parties they support is not known for now. But considering the patterns, we wont be surprised if they were.

Its quite possible parties segregate their funds through these several mysterious channels so that officially they dont seem as aggressive. Case in point: the actual BJP page stands at the seventh position Facebook with investments less than half that of My First Vote for Modi.

Furthermore, IT cells of these political groups are known to manage hundreds of fake accounts to disseminate and promote their campaigns. Facebook itself brought several of them to a halt a couple of days back. One of them was The Indian Eye, which had 2.6 million follows and was linked to Silver Touch, an Ahmedabad-based IT firm responsible for developing the NaMo and Rashtrapati Bhavan apps.

Polling for Indias 17th Lok Sabha elections is just a few days away now. While tech companies such as Facebook and Google have come up with solutions to quell inappropriate political behaviour, its clear they still have miles to go. Their platforms are constantly being abused to spread fake news and propaganda-infused content. What used to be the battle for truth has transformed into a contest where the one who succeeds at cleverly manipulating the most people wins.

The best we can do is spread awareness, point people in the right direction, and go out and vote.

The author is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad. He tweets from @phonesoldier
tech2 News Staff

In yet another win for Elon Musks SpaceX, the companys Falcon Heavy rocket successfully completed its first commercial mission and actually stuck its landing. To recall, this was the same rocket that launched a Tesla into space in 2018.

Blasting off from the historic Pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Centre at 4.05 am early this morning, the spacecraft deployed its Arabsat-6A satellite payload and successfully returned to Earth (it didnt blow up). Pad 39A is the launch pad that played host to the historic Apollo missions as well as NASAs Space Shuttle program.

Arabsat-6A is a Saudi Arabian communications satellite that is designed to serve the Middle East, Africa and Europe.

The Falcon Heavy platform comprises three Falcon 9 stages. The central or core stage consists of two stages: the upper portion of the core stage holds the payload  the satellites and whatever else that needs to be placed in orbit. While SpaceX has successfully recovered the booster stages before, this is the first time that it also successfully recovered the core stage.

Liftoff of Falcon Heavy pic.twitter.com/3oALJPOMBa  SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 12, 2019

Falcon Heavy design

The three stages are each powered by nine Merlin 1D rocket engines (thats 27 engines in total) and the upper stage is powered by a single, modified Merlin 1D engine designed to operate in the vacuum of space.

All 27 engines fire up at launch but the nine of the core stage go idle after the first few seconds. They fire back up once the boosters have expended their energy and dropped off.

Since the booster stages expend the bulk of their energy and detach earlier on in the flight, its easier to recover them. The core stage, on the other hand, fires much later and is travelling much faster. This also means it needs more fuel to return safely and thus, leads to an interesting conundrum.

SpaceX can either recover the centre stage and limit the payload to 8,000 kg (this is cheaper) or it can discard the centre stage and thus deliver a record-breaking 16,000 kg payload to GTO (geosynchronous transfer orbit). For the sake of comparison, Indias GSLV Mk III can only take a 4,000 kg payload to GTO.

SpaceX is still working on a plan for recovering the upper stage and fairing assembly.
India remains vulnerable to disease outbreaksnatural or intentionaland should invest in biodefence capabilities

Last June, German police arrested a man planning a terror attack by releasing large quantities of the biological toxin ricin, said to be 6,000 times more poisonous than cyanide. The raids on a block of flats in Cologne blew the lid off our worst fears: non-state actors laying their hands on bioweapons.

Technology has always changed war and its arsenal. Scientists, security experts and diplomats are increasingly talking about biological weapons when they discuss strategies to prevent proliferation of conventional and nuclear weapons. While biological attacks have been rare since the end of World War II, isolated incidents have been reported. The anthrax letters, which killed five people in the US following 9/11, is one such incident.

The renewed attention to biological warfare also stems from advances in gene editing technologies. CRISPR-based technologies have allowed humans to edit genomes and manipulate organisms with precision at a low cost. The use of these technologies in humans, plants, animals and micro-organisms has spread rapidly. CRISPR has broken out of labs into garages and DIY kits. This democratisation of science has triggered concerns about the misuse of technology to create pathogens that can be weaponised.

A simple genetic tweak to a pathogen, for instance, can render it resistant to drugs or vaccines. A drug-resistant pathogen can rapidly spread disease in even a vaccinated population. In 2002, scientists used cutting-edge technology to recreate the polio virus from scratch by using data available in the public domain. The combined power of freely available knowledge and cheap tools have the intelligence community concerned.

In 2016, the then-director of US National Intelligence, James Clapper, added gene editing to the list of threats posed by weapons of mass destruction and proliferation in its annual worldwide threat assessment report. Two years later, experts at the Biological Weapons Convention discussed the potential for abuse of advances in gene editing. The convention is a multi-lateral treaty that prevents the development, stockpiling and use of biological agents. Even with 182 state-parties as signatories, the treaty has failed to guarantee the non-proliferation of biological weapons. Perhaps, it is because the convention does not have the authority to check if countries have destroyed their bioweapon stockpiles.

Many countries, including the US, the UK, France and Japan, have had bioweapon programmes. Countries such as North Korea and China are reported to be covertly developing bioweapons. While a disarmament dialogue continues, there is a suspicion that many countries may be weaponising biological agents. Add to this mix new technologies such as gene editing, artificial intelligence and robotics and you have a fearful scenario: future bioweapons may no longer be natural in origin and could even be made at home. An artificially created Ebola epidemic or an airborne hepatitis strain could cause havoc within days.

Not just humans, bioweapons can destroy agriculture, leading to starvation as well as crippling of a countrys economy. Newly discovered delivery systems such as gene drive, which alters DNA and set in motion genetic changes in a population, or the Insect Allies, a programme developed by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for delivering viruses to plants for peaceful purposes, can also be hijacked to transfer harmful agents across populations.

Scientific tools and advances in biology have lowered the barriers for state and non-state actors to pursue biological weapons. A common ailment like flu can be easily contained in developed countries through robust vaccination and a responsive primary health care programme. But the same ailment can be disastrous for a country like ours.

India has a weak primary health care system particularly in rural areas. It also has many densely populated areas where an infection can spread quickly. Hygieneboth personal and socialis poor with spitting and urinating in public almost a norm. Vaccination rates are low and Indias climate is conducive for infections. Considering this medley of factors, India remains vulnerable to disease outbreaksnatural or intentionaland should invest in biodefence capabilities.

New-age technologies might threaten developed countries, but increased focus and discussions on bioterrorism may be enough for non-state actors to experiment with bioweapons anywhere in the world.

India needs to take a lead position at the biological weapons convention and work with other countries to push for effective checks. For instance, the convention needs to have a scientific board to advice members on new threats and remedial measures.

Given Indias vulnerability to disease outbreaks, investing in a strong primary health care system is paramount. The 2018 Nipah incident in Kerala exposed gaps in our health care response. Transparent protocols governing early responses to diseasesparticularly to the unusual ones have to be established.

Point-of-care diagnostics and novel ways of disease detection need to be explored to quickly identify the pathogen and respond. Public awareness on hygiene and response to an outbreak would help prevent a serious incident. Non-proliferation of biological agents should be Indias primary focus, followed by early detection and, finally, containment. As these measures can also mitigate our high infectious disease burden, investing in them is urgent and completely justifiable.

(Shambhavi Naik is a research fellow with Takshashilas Technology and Policy programme)
In a 2007 study, two criminal justice experts concluded it was time to debunk the hypothesis that porn contributes to increased sexual assault

Harder, we can imagine the wife moaning, our minds shaped by pornographic cliche, as her young lover takes her in a frenzy of lust, even as her boorish, ale-sodden husband snores like a horse in the next room. The lovers companion, meanwhile, has made his way into the bedroom of the familys fair-haired young daughter, whose large breasts and buttocks hed been staring at all day. Terrified, she almost cries out, but its too late  and before daybreak, she is his loyal sex-slave.

In March, the United Kingdom announced plans to make age-verification passes mandatory to access adult websites, a bid to protect us from this kind of distasteful smut. To access adult content, internet users will have to purchase passes that will be sold online on uploading appropriate legal identification or at newsstands for a modest 4.99 (approximately Rs 450).

Except, this distasteful smut isnt distasteful smut; it is Geoffrey Chaucers The Reeves Tale, one of the most venerated texts in the literary canon, translated from Middle English into Porn-ese.

I have thries in this shorte nyght

Three times in this short night

Swyved the milleres doghter bolt upright,

I screwed the millers daughter upright

Britains so-called Porn Pass has widespread social approval in that country. Like in India, there is growing concern over the impact porn has on young adults. Pornography has been blamed, with some justification, for legitimising sexual violence. Democracies across the world are considering the Porn Pass-model to regulate access to digital content.

Film ratings systems  the model the Porn Pass intends to replicate in the digital world  seek to safeguard children from damaging content. That aim is laudable.

But the Porn Pass also gives governments the power to fence-off content, and monitor who accesses it, raising the risk of police rule over culture and the arts.

Filth  explicit representations of sex, deviance, even excrement  are, indisputably, a part of our cultural inheritance. Lucius Apuleius Metamorphosis, written between 124CE and 170CE, and the only Roman novel in Latin to have survived in its entirety, has its protagonist transformed into an ass, who among other things, accompanies a catamite priest on his journeys, is subjected to sexual advances by a legionnaire, and is made to have public sex with a murderess.

Literary worth  quality that separates Metamorphosis from smut  is a curious, shifting thing: a film documenting Lucius the Ass bizarre journey would, more likely than not, never pass the censors.

The Tudor writer John Heywoods 1533 morality play, Play of the Wether  a powerful satire on monarchy, and case for religious moderation  has no shortage of sexually-perverse innuendo and humour: There is good spedde the devyll and all they grynde! But whether that the hopper be dusty, Or that the mylstonys be sumwhat rusty, By the mas, the meale is myschevous musty!



The hopper, an inverted-pyramid shaped funnel that receives the seed grain, is an obvious metaphor for the penis; the meale the result of the entire botched grinding operation. The grinder, simply put, has put his tool to the wrong hole.

The sexually-explicit isnt, of course, just part of the European canon. Pre-Islamic poet Imraul Qais, for example, described the contentment of love as hugging, kissing, and belly-lapping/then hair-pulling and body-rocking that floods the eyes. Even following the rise of Islam, the tradition continued: Abul Ala al-Maarris magnificent Epistle of Forgiveness, despite its religious themes, is charged with bawdy, irreverent humour.

Explicitly-sexual themes, in Indian tradition, feature not just in poetry, like Amrus famous Sanskrit poetry, but in the great temple architecture of Khajuraho and Konark. In the 19th century, though, obscenity replaced religious heresy as a threat to the moral order. Europe was awash with pornographic work, fixated on transgressions of the eras two great taboos  race and class. Governments saw this as a major threat to order and society.

Literature, too, came under assault. DH Lawrences Sons and Lovers, and James Joyces Ulysses were among the masterpieces assailed for obscenity.

In 1963, United States supreme court judge Potter Stewart sought to distinguish highbrow obscenity from what he called hard-core pornography with this pithy dictum: I know it when I see it.

The phrase inspired cartoonists across the country, but did little to bring definitional clarity.

Is the threat that governments could end up censoring literature and the arts, using our fears about porn, a worthwhile price to pay to protect society? For one, the evidence on a casual relationship between porn and violent sexual behaviours is mixed. Two government commissions in the United States  one made up, in the main, of liberal experts and the other packed with religious anti-porn crusaderscame to very different conclusions.

In an authoritative 2007 study, criminal justice experts Christopher Ferguson and Richard Hartley concluded that it was time to discard the hypothesis that pornography contributes to increased sexual assault behaviour. Their meta-analysis concluded porn could make those already prone to violent behaviour more likely to carry out crimes but not those without the propensity.

The United States, the worlds largest consumer of pornography, has seen its rape rate decline even as internet resources became more widely available  from 42.5 per 100,000 population to 30.7 in 2017.

Perhaps more important is the notion that what we read, or what we watch, needs policing by government. There is no simple causal linkage between consuming ideas to acting on them.

Terrorism researchers who spend their working hours reading jihadist manifestos, for example, are not known for their propensity to become suicide-bombers.

Theres some irony in what Porn Pass walls off, and what it doesnt: the United Kingdom doesnt, for example, censor misogynist youth culture, advertising which sexualises young adults or violent video games.

Protecting young people from harm is vital, but decisions on what ideas children ought be exposed to  whether sex in film, or violence in the news  should rest with parents, not bureaucrats. There are plenty of digital tools that allow parents to regulate what their children can access.

From Salman Rushdies Satanic Verses to VS Naipauls An Area of Darkness or Joseph Lelyvelds Great Soul, Indians have already seen their intellectual life savaged by governments who pass off their pursuit of power as public interest. Ideas do not kill. Forcing us not to engage with them wont stop anyone who does.
With Islamabad playing a crucial role in peace talks with the Taliban, which may ultimately result in the withdrawal of the 14,000 US troops from the war-torn Afghanistan, the Trump administration seems to be reviewing its aid policy to Pakistan

Washington: The US is currently undergoing a review of its assistance to Pakistan which is expected to be finalised soon, a top Trump administration official has told lawmakers.

The relations between Pakistan and the US nosedived after US President Donald Trump in 2018 accused Islamabad of giving nothing to Washington but "lies and deceit" and providing "safe haven" to terrorists.

With Islamabad playing a crucial role in peace talks with the Taliban, which may ultimately result in the withdrawal of the 14,000 US troops from the war-torn Afghanistan, the Trump administration seems to be reviewing its aid policy to Pakistan.

"We're undergoing a review of our assistance in Pakistan that we hope will be finalised soon. And we'll then report to you in terms of what will be going forward," United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Mark Green told members of House Foreign Affairs Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

In September, the Trump administration cancelled $300 million in military aid to Islamabad for not doing enough against terror groups like the Haqqani Network and Taliban active on its soil.

Trump also criticised Pakistan in a Twitter post back in November, saying Islamabad was not doing enough to stop terrorism.

"As with all of our programmes, we have the programme metrics that we use. One thing we're trying to do more of is to shift from outputs to outcomes. So, we have our roadmap with 17 objective metrics that help us measure capacity and commitment in each country where we work or want to work, like Pakistan," Green said in response to another question on Pakistan.

"So more and more we're trying to make sure that we're able to make a difference on the outcome side, hasting the capacity of our host country partners to take on these challenges themselves, although in Pakistan is daunting," he said, responding to a question from Congressman Brad Sherman.

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is spearheading efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban with the help of Pakistan to end the 17-year Afghan war, America's longest.

"In spite of our aid to Pakistan, conditions in the Sindh Province of South Pakistan continued to deteriorate in many areas. Schools and hospitals are getting worse in many areas as is water availability," Sherman said.

"We see the Hindu minorities subject to persecution to force conversions and forced marriages. What is USAID doing to ensure that assistance to Pakistan is improving the lives of ordinary people in Sindh?" he asked.

Sherman hoped that the USAID will focus on the women and children and especially the minority religions in Pakistan's Sindh province.

"USAID has played an important role in Pakistan, particularly with its education system. Are there ways that charitable organisations can partner with USAID to support that work?" the Congressman asked.
By Jose Gallego Espina and Lizbeth Diaz SAN DIEGO/TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - At least 60 Central American asylum seekers who were waiting in Mexico for their cases to be heard have been allowed to stay in the United States since Monday's court ruling to halt a Trump administration policy of sending them back across the border. The admissions occurred even though the U.S. District Court ruling does not come into effect until Friday, and despite the fact the ruling does not clearly apply to the hundreds of people returned to Mexico.

By Jose Gallego Espina and Lizbeth Diaz

SAN DIEGO/TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) - At least 60 Central American asylum seekers who were waiting in Mexico for their cases to be heard have been allowed to stay in the United States since Monday's court ruling to halt a Trump administration policy of sending them back across the border.

The admissions occurred even though the U.S. District Court ruling does not come into effect until Friday, and despite the fact the ruling does not clearly apply to the hundreds of people returned to Mexico.

The number and outcomes of the cases were confirmed by a migrant attorney and a Reuters reporter who have attended court proceedings in San Diego this week.

The administration has indicated it will appeal the ruling, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether there has been a policy change.

But the stance of the DHS in the cases in a San Diego court shows the U.S. government is already allowing some migrants coming in from Mexico to stay in the United States as their individual cases come up.

A source at Mexico's National Immigration Institute said on Thursday that around 1,400 people have been returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy (MPP) since January, most of them to the border town of Tijuana, where many said they feared dangerous conditions.

The policy was stepped up in the days before the ruling, Mexican government statistics show.

No-one appears to have been sent back under the policy since Tuesday, the day after the ruling, said the Mexican immigration source, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

The court ruling clearly applied to the 11 plaintiffs in the civil liberties lawsuit as well as future asylum applicants, but the status of those already in Mexico was left unclear.

Not one of 20 asylum seekers who crossed the border from Tijuana on Wednesday for court hearings in San Diego was returned to Mexico, however. At one hearing, a Guatemalan man asked specifically whether he would have to go back to Tijuana.

"Definitely, he will not be returned to Mexico," said Pamela Ataii, the DHS lawyer.

Another migrant told Judge Scott Simpson that he was scared to go back, to which Simpson responded: "You are lucky, because I don't think thats going to happen."

Luis Gonzalez, supervising immigration attorney with the Jewish Family Service of San Diego, who attended court on Tuesday, said he knew of 13 people who had hearings that day who had been released and one who was detained in the United States.

"Our understanding so far is that families under the MPP programme are now being released into the United States after coming to court," Gonzalez said.

El Salvadoran Gabriela Orellana, 26, and her two children were among those allowed to pursue their cases in the United States.

"I am here, thank God, in a shelter in San Diego," she said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

President Donald Trump's administration has argued that asylum seekers who are released into U.S. territory often do not show up at their hearings, a contention at odds with federal statistics which show that the majority do appear.

Carmen Rivera, who said she was fleeing gangs in El Salvador, had given up hope of receiving U.S. asylum after she was sent back to Mexico. She told Reuters she decided weeks ago not to attend her court hearing in San Diego.

After the ruling this week, however, she changed her mind.

"Im excited to know that we have this opportunity, because to return to Mexico, to Tijuana, is very dangerous, she said from a shelter close to the border fence in Mexico, where many migrants were camped out in tents.

"Thank God, things changed."

(Additional reporting by Andrew Hay, writing by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Julie Marquis and Sonya Hepinstall)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Alexandra Valencia and Mark Hosenball QUITO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ecuador's decision to abruptly end Julian Assange's seven-year asylum in its London embassy on Thursday followed a long deterioration in relations, driven in part by suspicions he was secretly fuelling corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno.

By Alexandra Valencia and Mark Hosenball

QUITO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ecuador's decision to abruptly end Julian Assange's seven-year asylum in its London embassy on Thursday followed a long deterioration in relations, driven in part by suspicions he was secretly fuelling corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno.

British police on Thursday arrested the WikiLeaks founder, who sought asylum in the Andean nation's diplomatic mission during the government of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa - who saw Assange as a hero for leaking secret U.S. documents.

By contrast, Moreno took a dim view of Assange when he took office in 2017, ordering the Australian hacker to cut back his online political commentary, stop riding his skateboard in the halls of the embassy and clean up after his pet cat.

Moreno's government accused WikiLeaks of being behind an anonymous website that said Moreno's brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a U.N. agency.

Moreno denies wrongdoing.

The leaked materials, dubbed the "INA Papers," contained private photographs of Moreno and his family. After the release of the materials, Moreno said that Assange had no right to "hack private accounts and phones," without directly accusing him.

WikiLeaks tweeted about the reports but, in messages and statements to Reuters, strongly denied that Assange was responsible for the leaks or had anything to do with their initial publication.

EMBASSY BEHAVIOUR

Ecuadorean government figures on Thursday publicly described what they called Assange's unacceptable and ungrateful behaviour in the embassy. The government said it had spent $6.2 million on his upkeep and security between 2012 and 2018.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said Assange had been using a mobile phone that was not registered with the embassy and had warned the ambassador in January that he had installed panic buttons that he would activate if he considered his life at risk.

"It's strange that Mr. Assange has insisted on being the victim," Valencia told Ecuador's National Assembly.

The interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, told reporters on Thursday that Assange had been "allowed to do things like put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature."

Valencia told the congress that embassy cleaning staff described "improper hygienic conduct" throughout Assange's stay, adding that a lawyer representing Assange had attributed the issue to "stomach problems."

Lawyers for Assange did not respond to requests for comment. Vaughan Smith, a friend and founder of London's press Frontline Club who visited Assange late last week, told Reuters he believed the faeces allegation was false.

"Julian has been under stress but seemed in a balanced frame of mind every time I have seen him. It doesn't seem in character," Smith said.

STAFFING CHANGE

Friends of Assange who visited him inside the embassy over the last several months say that since Moreno became president, almost the entire embassy staff was replaced.

The foreign ministry named a new ambassador after Moreno took office and fired one official, Fidel Narvaez, seen as close to Assange.

While embassy staffers were friendly to Assange during Correa's presidency, Moreno's new diplomats were polite to visitors but hostile to Assange, his friends said.

In early February, according to Ecuadorean government memos released by Assange's supporters, Ecuador complained to Assange that he had deliberately pointed a studio lamp at a security camera the embassy had installed in a room where Assange was receiving visitors.

Later that month, the ambassador sent Assange a memo complaining that he had "shown once again an unacceptable behaviour" by playing a radio loudly while meeting visitors. "This action disturbed the work being carried out by the embassy," the ambassador said.

Assange had taken refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was later dropped.

U.S. officials announced after his arrest on Thursday that he had been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, paving the way for his extradition.

Correa, in an interview with Reuters in Brussels, said Moreno had given Assange "to his executioners."

Asked whether he had worked with Wikileaks to leak the INA documents, he did not directly respond. He said the documents showed the "rottenness" within Moreno's family.

"I apologise on behalf of the Ecuadorean people. A government like that - such a treacherous, treacherous president - does not represent us," Correa said.

Valencia declined to comment on criticisms of Moreno.

Correa is embroiled in a legal battle with prosecutors pursuing a case involving the kidnapping in 2012 of an opposition lawmaker. An court in Ecuador last year ordered him to be imprisoned pending a trial and issued an international arrest warrant. Correa denies the charge.

(Reporting by Alexandria Valencia in Quito and Mark Hosenball in Washington, Additional reporting by Bart Biesemans in Brussels and Carlos Vargas and Helen Murphy in Bogota; Writing by Angus Berwick and Brian Ellsworth; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Rosalba O'Brien)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Fellow free-speech activists and American whistle-blower Edward Snowden had a message for journalists covering Assange's arrest, as he informed them that the United Nations had formally ruled Assange's 'detention to be arbitrary, a violation of human rights.' 'They have repeatedly issued statements calling for him to walk freeincluding very recently,' Snowden said.

The arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by the British police on Thursday after Ecuador abruptly revoked his seven-year asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy has invoked reactions from across the globe. While his supporters have called the move 'illegal', Ecuador and UK authorities have justified it by citing various violations done by him over a period of time since he took refuge the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Fellow free-speech activists and American whistle-blower Edward Snowden had a message for journalists covering Assange's arrest as he informed them that the United Nations had formally ruled Assange's "detention to be arbitrary, a violation of human rights." "They have repeatedly issued statements calling for him to walk freeincluding very recently," Snowden said.

The NSA whistleblower shared a December release from the UN's Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, which noted that UN human rights experts had repeatedly demanded that the UK abides by its international obligations to allow Assange to "walk free from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London."

Images of Ecuador's ambassador inviting the UK's secret police into the embassy to drag a publisher of--like it or not--award-winning journalism out of the building are going to end up in the history books. Assange's critics may cheer, but this is a dark moment for press freedom. https://t.co/ys1AIdh2FP  Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 11, 2019

Meanwhile, the UN office also shared a statement from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which said that "states that are based upon and promote the rule of law do not like to be confronted with their own violations of the law, that is understandable." "But, when they honestly admit these violations, they do honour the very spirit of the rule of law, earn enhanced respect for doing so, and set worldwide commendable examples," the group said in its statement.

Immediately after Assange's arrest, Wikileaks tweeted to lend him support. "This man is a son, a father, a brother. He has won dozens of journalism awards. He's been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 2010. Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to dehumanise, delegitimize and imprison him. #ProtectJulian," it said.

Former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa also slammed his country's current leader, Lenin Moreno, branding him "the greatest traitor in Ecuador and Latin American history" for having "allowed the British police to enter our embassy in London to arrest Assange. Moreno is a corrupt man", Correa tweeted. "But what he has done is a crime that humanity will never forget."

However, in a video statement posted on Twitter, Moreno explained that his decision to withdraw asylum for Assange came in response to "the discourteous and aggressive behaviour" of Assange. "The hostile and threatening declarations of its allied organization, against Ecuador, and especially the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable," Moreno said. "For six years and 10 months, the Ecuadorian people have protected the human rights of Assange and have provided for his everyday needs at the facilities of our Embassy in London," he said. "When I became President of Ecuador, I inherited this situation and decided to adopt a protocol to set the daily life rules at the Embassy, which is the [least] anyone may expect from a guest hosted at his own house. Ecuador has fulfilled its obligations in the framework of international law."

Meanwhile, British home secretary Sajid Javid said that Assange was "rightly facing justice" after the arrest, thanking the Metropolitan Police and Ecuador for their roles. "No one is above the law," he said.

Former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont tweeted that he was "deeply shocked" by the arrest, asserting that "human rights, and especially freedom of expression, are under attack once again in Europe," with the hashtag #FreeJulianAssange.

On the other hand, actress and activist Pamela Anderson also attacked Ecuador's leadership, as well as the British and American governments.

"I am in shock," Anderson said following Assange's arrest. "How could you Equador? (Because he exposed you.)" "How could you UK? Of courseyou are America's b**** and you need a diversion from your idiotic Brexit bullshit," she said. "And the USA? This toxic coward of a president. He needs to rally his base? You are selfish and cruel. You have taken the entire world backwards," Anderson tweeted, before calling all three countries "devils and liars and thieves."

Among major political reactions in the US, Hillary Clinton said: "It's clear from the indictment that came out that it's not about punishing journalism." "It's about assisting the hacking of the military computers, sealed information from the United States government. And, look, I'll wait and see what happens with the charges and how it proceeds, but he skipped bail in the UK, in Sweden had those [rape] charges which have been dropped in the last several years. But, the bottom line is that he has to answer for what he's done, as has been charged."

"I do think it's ironic that he may be the only foreigner that this administration would welcome to the US," Hilary remarked.

Meanwhile, a Democratic congresswoman who is running for president Tulsi Gabbard criticized the Justice Department's indictment of Assange, saying it puts the US government on a "dangerous and slippery slope" in its treatment of journalists and all Americans.

"I think what's happening here is, unfortunately, it is some form of retaliation coming from the government saying, 'Hey, this is what happens when you release information that we don't want you to release,' " Gabbard said in an interview to CNN. "And I think that's why this is such a dangerous and slippery slope, not only for journalists, not only for those in the media, but also for every American that our government can and has the power to kind of lay down the hammer to say, 'Be careful, be quiet and fall in line, otherwise we have the means to come after you.' "

The online file storing and sharing website Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom tweeted the fight for his freedom kicks into high gear. Whereas, HM So, a Korean-American author, argued that the Assange arrested was a bad look for Western society.

The ACLU also released a statement on Assange's arrest. Any prosecution by the United States of Assange for Wikileaks publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating US secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for US journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public's interest, Ben Wizner, ACLUs Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said in a statement.

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, also condemned the arrest of Assange. "We strongly condemn the detention of Julian Assange and the violation of freedom of expression. Our solidarity is with this brother who is persecuted by the government for revealing its human rights violations, murders of civilians and diplomatic espionage," he tweeted.

Whereas, British foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt thanked the Ecuadorean government for their cooperation with the Assange arrest. Julian Assange is no hero, he has hidden from the truth for years and years. Its not so much Julian Assange being held hostage in the Ecuadorean embassy, its actually Julian Assange holding the Ecuadorean embassy hostage in a situation that was absolutely intolerable for them," he said.

British prime minister Theresa May also said that Assange's arrest proved that "no one is above the law."

A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said the country wants Assanges rights to be observed, but couldnt comment on the overall case. We of course hope that all of his rights will be observed, Peskov told reporters

Australia's foreign minister Marise Payne said: Assange will continue to receive the usual consular support from the Australian Government. Consular officers will seek to visit Assange at his place of detention.... I am confident, as the United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt publicly confirmed in July 2018, that Assange will receive due process in the legal proceedings he faces in the United Kingdom.
The battle between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the American government was always going to be epic, involving concepts like free speech, journalists rights, national interests, even treason.

London: The battle between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the American government was always going to be epic, involving concepts like free speech, journalists rights, national interests, even treason.

As Assange settles into his first night in British custody , his allies and enemies alike are gearing up for what promises to be a long, dogged legal slog, not only over his possible extradition to the US but over how US courts should view his actions, which sharply cleave public opinion.

Yet in a way, Assange has been fighting this battle for much of the past decade. The struggle has taken him through a mansion arrest in the English countryside; a dramatic escape into the Ecuadorian Embassy in London; a multimillion-pound UK police siege of the embassy that has strained government coffers; and even a bizarre attempt to turn him into a Moscow-based diplomat.

Whatever happens now, one thing is clear: Assange, who was dragged out of the embassy and arrested Thursday by British police after Ecuador withdrew his political asylum, is not going anywhere soon. Extradition to the United States could take years more.

Assanges saga kicked off in November 2010, when his publication of 2,50,000 confidential US diplomatic cables that month left American officialdom apoplectic. Joe Biden, then-US vice president, compared Assange to a high-tech terrorist. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, called for him to be hunted down by US troops like an al-Qaida operative.

Tempers at the top eventually cooled  Palin would later apologise to Assange after he began publishing material about US Democrats. As a candidate, President Donald Trump startled many Americans by repeatedly praising WikiLeaks.

But in the US intelligence community, the rage against Assange lingered. On the sidelines of a conference a few years ago, a former senior National Security Agency official told an Associated Press journalist that all he wanted was a couple of minutes alone with Assange in a dark alley, grasping his hands together as if he were crushing a mans windpipe.

Assange seemed to sense that the release of the diplomatic cables, which also enraged and embarrassed other countries around the world, were the point of no return.

Its often forgotten that Assange once travelled easily to the United States, appearing at the National Press Club in Washington on April 2010 to present Collateral Murder, the title he chose for the camera footage that captured American helicopter pilots laughing as they fired at a crowd of civilians they mistook for Iraqi insurgents.

Shortly after his visit, his source for the video  an American Army intelligence analyst now named Chelsea Manning  would be arrested after an ill-advised online confession. Assange dropped out of sight, likely aware that the government now had spools of conversations between him and Manning, including the one that now forms the centrepiece of the Justice Departments newly unveiled indictment against Assange for conspiracy to hack into a US government computer.

For a while, Assange gravitated to the Frontline Club in London, the convivial journalists hangout where he dropped one media bombshell after another in collaboration with the Guardian newspaper and other media outlets. But staying in Britain, a close ally of the United States, was risky.

In a fateful move, Assange decided to scope out Sweden, a country with powerful press protections and where he had already located some of WikiLeaks servers. The expedition would prove to be a disaster.

Two women he stayed with there would soon go to the police with allegations of sexual assault and rape. The prosecution nearly tore WikiLeaks apart and threated the upcoming publication the US diplomatic cables.

With Sweden out of the question and Cablegate sure to enrage the Americans further, Assange looked to Moscow. A document published by AP last year showed he considered the idea of getting a Russian visa through his friend and sometimes WikiLeaks collaborator, Israel Shamir.

Assange would eventually get the visa, Shamir said later, but it came several weeks too late. Sweden had already applied for an Interpol Red Notice, something akin to an international arrest warrant, making travel all but impossible. That left Assange little choice but to turn himself in on 7 December, 2010, to British authorities.

Things only got more surreal from there. Assange was granted bail at the country mansion of Frontlines founder, Vaughan Smith, receiving a stream of well-heeled and rebellious visitors in rural Norfolk while his London legal battle against extradition went all the way to Britains Supreme Court.

When that court finally turned him down, Assange dyed his hair, popped in coloured contacts and skipped bail, fleeing to the Ecuadorian Embassy.

From there, he carried on as before, albeit in a more constricted space. When AP visited him in 2012, he occupied a back room in the embassy scattered with laptops, some marked Do not connect to the internet. When discussing an upcoming leak, Assange took a reporter into the corridor between his office and the bathroom, speaking in a whisper in a bid to baffle the high-tech surveillance thought to be deployed against him.

The embassy stalemate dragged on for years, costing the British government millions in policing costs. But it didnt stop Assange from publishing new material, notably in 2016, when his disclosure of US Democratic Party documents stolen by Russian hackers hurt Hillary Clintons presidential election campaign.

But if Assange had hoped for leniency from Americas new president, he would soon be disappointed. Twitter messages between WikiLeaks and Trumps eldest son, Donald Jr, showed the group lobbying him to get his father to suggest that Australia appoint its native son Assange to be its ambassador to the US.

Instead, the Trump administration promoted him to public enemy; in a 2017 speech, then-CIA director Mike Pompeo described WikiLeaks as a hostile non-state intelligence agency.

Meanwhile, Assange wasnt getting much more satisfaction from his Latin American host, which was increasingly embarrassed by its houseguests publications. The government of Ecuador tried all kinds of creative solutions to break the embassy impasse, including an abortive attempt to send Assange to Russia under diplomatic cover.

When it became clear that the WikiLeaks founder wasnt leaving  and that he wouldnt curb his publications to suit Ecuadors diplomatic interests  the government looked for a way to wash its hands of him.

Tensions had been building for more than a year, but the Thursday morning raid in London was still a surprise. WikiLeaks had issued one of its periodic warnings that Assange was at risk, but at a Wednesday press conference, his longtime lieutenant, Kristinn Hrafnsson, told journalists that Assanges eviction from the embassy had been averted.

Its not clear what comes next, but it will almost certainly be complicated. The interactions quoted in the US indictment are nothing new  Assanges instant message exchange with Manning has been in the public domain ever since the latters court-martial  so Assanges high-powered legal team has had years to prepare their arguments. And Britain has generally tended to favour accused hackers fighting extradition to America.

Lauri Love, a friend of Assanges who was accused of penetrating US government networks, was last year spared extradition after Britains high court ruled in his favour. British hacker Gary McKinnon, accused of breaking into US military and space networks, won his fight against extradition in 2012 after a decade-long struggle. Assanges fight may not take a decade, but hes unlikely to see the inside of a US courtroom anytime soon.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's seven-year hideout in Ecuador's London embassy came to an end on Thursday when British police dragged him out and arrested him based on an extradition request put across by the US.

Editor's note: This article was originally published on 12 April, 2019. It is being updated and republished to reflect the latest development in the case.

Swedish prosecutors on Monday reopened their investigation into a rape allegation against WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who is currently in prison in London for breach of bail conditions on the charge. "I have today taken the decision to reopen the preliminary investigation, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Eva-Marie Persson told reporters.

The 47-year-old transparency activist's seven-year hideout in Ecuador's London embassy came to an end in April when the British police dragged him out and arrested him based on an extradition request put across by the US.

The drama came after Ecuador  under pro-US president Lenin Moreno, increasingly frustrated with Assange's stay  pulled its asylum and cancelled his citizenship after earlier curbing his internet and mobile phone access.

Assange had sought asylum there to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation that he denied, and has since been dropped. His arrest is but one chapter in a story which began with WikiLeaks' first big reveal in 2007 and then underwent numerous twists and turns, spanning several countries and navigating their own sets of laws.

2007:

November: WikiLeaks, founded by Assange a year ago in 2006, posts its first key secret document  a US Army manual of standard operating procedures for soldiers overseeing Al Qaeda suspects who were held captive at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba.

2008 to 2010:

WikiLeaks gains notoriety for a number of prominent releases, including videos from the 2007 Baghdad airstrike which saw the death of Iraqi journalists, the official Afghan and Iraqi war diaries in which the latter recorded over a lakh deaths, US diplomatic cables and 779 secret files relating to prisoners of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

2010:

August: Assange travels to Sweden to deliver a talk. The Swedish Prosecutor's Office issues an arrest warrant and says there are two allegations: one of rape and one of molestation against Assange. The warrant is withdrawn the next day. Assange denies the charges.

September: Swedish director of prosecution Marianne Ny reopens the rape investigation.

November: Swedish police issues an international arrest warrant for Assange through Interpol. By then he has fled to London.

December: Assange surrenders to British police, is remanded in custody during the extradition hearing, after which he is given bail against a payment of 240,000 in cash and sureties by his supporters.

2011:

November-December: The High Court upholds a lower British court's claim that Assange should be extradited to Sweden. He wins the right to petition directly to the Supreme Court in this regard, reported BBC.

2012:

May: UK's Supreme Court rules that Assange should be extradited to Sweden over the rape charge.

June: Assange seeks refuge at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

August: Ecuador grants asylum to Assange, where he seeks political asylum. UK, however, says it is legally bound to extradite Assange to Sweden and therefore cannot grant him safe passage to Ecuador.

2013 to 2014: The intervening years pass by without incident, as WikiLeaks continues releasing documents. Periodically, Assange says he is likely to leave London soon.

2015:

August: Sweden drops investigation into allegations of molestation and unlawful coercion, leaving only the rape accusation against Assange to be investigated.

2016:

February: A United Nations committee rules that Assange;s detention has been "arbitrary".

November: Assange is questioned over the rape allegation at the Ecuadorian embassy by Swedish authorities in a two-day interview.

2017:

May: Sweden drops the investigation into Assange's rape charges.

October: CIA director Mike Pompeo says the US is "working to take down" WikiLeaks.

December: Ecuador grants Assange citizenship.

2018:

October: The Ecuadorean embassy issues Assange a set of house rules. These include cleaning his bathroom and taking better care of his cat. The WikiLeaks founder, in turn, says he will launch legal action against Ecuador for violating his rights and freedoms. It claims the government of Ecuador has refused Assange visits by lawyers.

2019:

February: Assange, who is Australian by birth, is granted a new passport by the country. This would allow him to return to Australia.

2 April: Ecuador president says Assange has "repeatedly violated" the conditions of his asylum.

10 April: Ecuador cancels his citizenship.

11 April: British police arrest Assange at the embassy, saying Ecuador had informed them that his asylum had been withdrawn. He is held for breaching his 2010 bail conditions and also on a US extradition request.

1 May: Assange is sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching bail.

2 May: The legal process for his extradition to the US starts in a London court, Assange vowing to resist.

13 May: Swedish prosecutors say they are reopening the 2010 rape investigation.

With inputs from agencies
WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish police on Thursday detained one man in central Warsaw after another died of stab wounds, but there was no suspicion of a terrorist motive or further danger to citizens, a spokeswoman said. Police were informed at 6:55 p.m. (1655 GMT) that a man was lying bloodied on a street in central Warsaw, but paramedics were unable to revive him

WARSAW (Reuters) - Polish police on Thursday detained one man in central Warsaw after another died of stab wounds, but there was no suspicion of a terrorist motive or further danger to citizens, a spokeswoman said.

Police were informed at 6:55 p.m. (1655 GMT) that a man was lying bloodied on a street in central Warsaw, but paramedics were unable to revive him.

(Reporting by Joanna Plucinska; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Dwindling funds, lack of support from global powers and strained ties with locals have put the Rohingya in a spot

Donor fatigue, an exasperated government, a community in despair and increasingly strained ties with the locals have come to define the Rohingya refugee crisis in Bangladesh. This complex picture is seldom discussed in the media, which is driven by developments of the day. A combination of events is making the situation worse.

Since August 2017, Bangladesh is providing food and shelter to almost 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims who fled ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. The government has recently made it clear that it will not accept any more refugees, though a small number of Rohingya are still arriving in Bangladesh.

Snaking queues of hundreds and thousands of desperate people scrambling to cross the border, which prompted a global outcry in 2017, have dried up; so has the media attention. The sense of urgency evoked by the crisis, described as the worst humanitarian disaster by the United Nations, has vanished. Condemnation of the Myanmar military and the civilian authorities, including Aung San Suu Kyi, has not led to concerted international action. It is business as usual not just for the principal backers of the Myanmar government, China and Russia, but also for other regional and global powers.

That a genocide was in the making for quite some time while the international community was cheering democratisation of Myanmar is no longer a revelation. Yet, no responsibility has been fixed, nor lessons learnt. The long-drawn process of holding the Myanmar regime accountable for the genocide has started at the International Criminal Court (ICC). A team from the ICC prosecutors office recently visited the refugee camps. The ICC is conducting a preliminary examination, far from an investigation, let alone a trial.

The developments offer little comfort to the refugees living in squalid conditions in the makeshift camps in the hill districts of Coxs Bazaar. Twenty-one months since the crisis began, the plight of the Rohingya has worsened despite the efforts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration and several international NGOs. Even the most optimistic now concede that an imminent repatriation is an unrealistic expectation.

In March, the UN secretary generals special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, said she saw no immediate solution to the crisis. The Bangladesh government has been saying the same since early this year. Yet, the funds to help the Rohingya are dwindling. According to UNHCR officials, only 14% of the $920 million needed under the third joint response plan (JRP) had been pledged by various countries until late March. In 2018, only 64% of the requested $951 million were received. If funds dont come, Bangladesh and the UNHCR will be in a spot by the end of the year.

Donor fatigue, along with their own missteps, have put the Bangladeshi

authorities in a serious problem. It recently revived the proposal for a safe zone inside Myanmar. Suggested by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in her UN general assembly address in September 2017, the proposal was not pursued vigorously by Bangladesh. Of course, the likelihood of the UN approving it was slim, thanks to China and Russia.

So, instead of building a global coalition to pressure Myanmar, Bangladesh opted for a bilateral agreement in September 2017, sidestepping the international community. The agreement set a two-year time frame for repatriation. Myanmar has found ways to block the return of the Rohingya, who it sees as illegal migrants from Bangladesh, and Dhaka cant force a repatriation. The agreement, for all intents and purposes,

is dead.

A perturbed Bangladesh is now turning to Western nations at the UN for a solution, but help is unlikely to be forthcoming. Bangladeshs close friends, China and India, have not come to its aid either. Neither country, for instance, has contributed to this years JRP. Worse, some Rohingya who took shelter in India decades ago, have crossed into Bangladesh, fearing that Indian authorities will send them back to Myanmar.

Turkey and the countries of the Gulf and West Asia, too, have failed to come good on aid.

Faced with international criticism and refugees resistance, the Bangladesh government has decided to go slow on a plan to relocate about 100,000 Rohingya to a remote flood-prone island called Bhasan Char (floating island), where several houses have been constructed. The UN has given a conditional nod to the relocation plan.

But, there is also apprehension that the move will send a message that Bangladesh has, in fact, accepted the refugees, and the government is very sensitive to such signalling.

The uncertainty only adds to the refugees problems. The camps have only 1,200 educational centres for 381,000 children below the age of 14. This means that the young are deprived of education and also a chance to develop skills that will help them lead a better life. The problem was thrust into public glare when early this month some Rohingya children were expelled from schools outside the camps.

With little to do in the camps, youth are turning to drug abuse and smuggling. Considering that these camps are on the Myanmar-Bangladesh yaba drug smuggling route, this does not portend well for the country. Even before the refugee crisis, the Rohingya were vulnerable to human trafficking; the situation has only worsened.

But, the biggest problem is the growing animosity between the refugees and local residents. Increasingly worried about their interests, the locals have demanded that the Rohingya be sent back or dispersed throughout the country, a demand unlikely to be supported by the international community or the government.

Their concerns are borne out by the 2019 Global Report on Food Crises of the Global Network against Food Crises, which says the locals in Coxs Bazar are facing increased food insecurity due to the Rohingya influx.

Sporadic clashes between the locals and the refugees are a matter of concern for the stability in the camps and nearby areas.

The crisis is worsening, even as the international community watches from the sidelines. The lip-service of compassion is not enough, it reminds us that the world is failing the Rohingya.

Hopelessness, uncertainty, despair and lack of resources are creating a generation which can be ignored only at our peril.

(Ali Riaz is a distinguished professor of political science at Illinois State University)
By Roberta Rampton and Soyoung Kim WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but said in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that Washington would leave sanctions in place on Pyongyang. Trump and Moon, in the Oval Office, discussed the possibility of Moon having an inter-Korean summit with Kim soon as a way to boost dialogue between the United States and North Korea on denuclearization

By Roberta Rampton and Soyoung Kim

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but said in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that Washington would leave sanctions in place on Pyongyang.

Trump and Moon, in the Oval Office, discussed the possibility of Moon having an inter-Korean summit with Kim soon as a way to boost dialogue between the United States and North Korea on denuclearization.

North Korea, which has suspended nuclear tests and missile launches, has been pressing for sanctions relief but has not taken meaningful steps towards dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore last June, building good will but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

"It could happen. A third summit could happen. And its step by step. Its not a fast process. I've never said it would be. Its step by step," Trump said.

Asked by reporters whether he was prepared to ease some sanctions on North Korea, Trump said he and Moon were discussing "certain humanitarian things" and the possibility of South Korea helping the North with food. He did not rule out participating in a three-way summit with both Kim and Moon.

Of sanctions, he said, "We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that at this time."

Moon said he does not view the summit that collapsed in Hanoi as a failure, but part of a longer process. He said he agreed with Trump on the ultimate goal of total denuclearization by North Korea.

"The important task that we face right now is to maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook regarding the third U.S.-North Korea summit to the international community, that this will be held in the near future," Moon said.

A South Korean statement issued after the meeting, which included a working lunch, said Moon told Trump he will push to hold another summit soon with Kim.

"The two presidents agreed that the top-down approach will continue to be indispensable in the peace process on the Korean peninsula. In this regard, President Trump stressed that the door was always open for dialogue with Chairman Kim," the statement said.

A South Korean official said nothing has been decided about the timing and location of a next inter-Korean summit.

Moon told Trump he will contact the North in earnest to talk about holding an inter-Korean summit soon, the official said. Trump asked Moon to brief him as early as possible on North Koreas latest thinking.

Ahead of his trip, aides to Moon stressed the need to revive U.S.-North Korea talks. Moon has put his political reputation on the line in encouraging the negotiations.

He has stressed the need to offer North Korea concessions, but Washington appears to have hardened its position against a phased approach sought by Pyongyang in which gradual steps would be rewarded with relief from punishing sanctions.

Trump said he was open to a step-by-step approach but would need to see details.

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen. Things could happen. You could work out, step by step, pieces. But at this moment, were talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," he said.

On Thursday, North Korean state media said Kim had told a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Wednesday that he would push forward with efforts to make the economy more self sufficient "so as to deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring (North Korea) to its knees."

Last month, a senior North Korean official warned that Kim might rethink a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests in place since 2017 unless Washington makes concessions such as easing sanctions.

On Wednesday, North Korea's state media said Kim had chaired a politburo meeting on Tuesday to discuss ways to make progress under the "prevailing tense situation."

NECESSARY DETERRENT

Kim and Moon met three times last year and Kim promised to visit South Korea in return for the South Korean leader's visit to Pyongyang in September. Analysts said a fourth Kim-Moon meeting could encourage another meeting between Kim and Trump.

Moons top nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon said on Friday that sanctions were necessary to deter North Korea from making bad decisions but could not solve all unresolved problems.

(Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Joyce Lee, Josh Smith, and Hyonhee Shin in Seoul; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Neil Fullick, James Dalgleish and David Gregorio)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
By Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new chief of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) named the United States' top airport-security official, David Pekoske, his acting deputy on Thursday, as President Donald Trump overhauls the leadership of the domestic-security agency. The move, by Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who took office on Wednesday, temporarily fills a leadership vacuum at the top of DHS, which is responsible for everything from border protection to disaster response.

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new chief of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) named the United States' top airport-security official, David Pekoske, his acting deputy on Thursday, as President Donald Trump overhauls the leadership of the domestic-security agency.

The move, by Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan, who took office on Wednesday, temporarily fills a leadership vacuum at the top of DHS, which is responsible for everything from border protection to disaster response.

But it also places further strains on an agency of 240,000 employees, many of whose top leadership posts were unfilled even before Trump's management shakeup.

McAleenan remains in charge of U.S. Customs and Border Protection even as he assumes responsibility for all of DHS.

Likewise, Pekoske will continue to head the U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which screens airline travellers, while he serves as the No. 2 official at DHS. Both men are serving on a temporary basis.

In recent weeks, Trump has interviewed several candidates for DHS secretary, an appointee who must be confirmed by the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.

Trump has forced out top DHS officials over the past week as the agency tries to stem rising numbers of immigrants arriving at its southern border, many of them families fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. DHS said it arrested or denied entry to more than 103,000 people along the border last month, more than double the figure for March 2018.

Trump has grown increasingly frustrated as DHS officials have told him that dramatic immigration changes he wants are not possible under current law, several sources say.

DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen announced her departure on Sunday after clashing with Trump over border security. Her deputy, Claire Grady, stepped down on Tuesday.

Trump is trying to force out L. Francis Cissna, who oversees legal immigration programs as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, as well as John Mitnick, the top DHS lawyer, according to a source familiar with White House deliberations.

Leadership is also in flux at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Ten other top positions are either vacant or filled on a temporary basis.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

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By Susan Cornwell LEESBURG, Va. (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Democrats are accusing Republican President Donald Trump of aggravating a crisis situation at the southern U.S.

By Susan Cornwell

LEESBURG, Va. (Reuters) - U.S. House of Representatives Democrats are accusing Republican President Donald Trump of aggravating a crisis situation at the southern U.S. border, saying he has not used funds available to help deal with a surge of migrants and exacerbated the problem with his attempts to crack down.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that bipartisan immigration reform, which has eluded Congress and the White House for years, is still the solution. It is in fact "inevitable," Pelosi said on the sidelines of a Democratic party meeting in Leesburg, Virginia.

In Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, also called for bipartisan discussions on immigration. But he focused on toughening U.S. asylum law, a move that Democrats likely would oppose.

Democrats have not proposed a comprehensive immigration bill since taking the majority in the House this year. Republicans still hold the Senate.

Instead, Democrats last month proposed legislation offering a pathway to citizenship for more than 2 million undocumented immigrants who were brought illegally to the United States as children. Known as Dreamers, they face possible deportation.

The House Democratic bill would also help immigrants from countries hit by civil conflicts or natural disasters who have temporary protected status, known as TPS.

U.S. officers arrested or denied entry to over 103,000 people along the border with Mexico in March, a 35 percent increase over the prior month and more than twice as many as the same period last year, according to data released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection this week.

The steady increase in migrant arrivals, which has been building over the past several months, is driven by a growing number of children and families, especially from Central America.

Trump has threatened to close the border, saying the United States is "full." He has urged the building of a wall on the southern border since before he became president in 2016. Recently his ire has been directed at his own officials, Congress, and Latin American countries, who he says have not done enough to stop their citizens from travelling to the United States.

Pelosi, asked Thursday what should be done at the border, said the bipartisan legislation Trump signed to end a government shutdown in February included money for judges and humanitarian aid "to bring order to the border," but Trump has not used the funds.

Although a bipartisan effort at comprehensive immigration reform by Democrats and Trump last year failed, Pelosi said such an overhaul still had a chance.

"I'm not giving up on the president on this," Pelosi said. "I still say to him, 'We've got to have comprehensive immigration reform'."

Representative Pramila Jayapal, speaking to reporters later, said the Trump administration had manufactured a crisis at the border in part by "stripping away" legal routes to immigration, such as by stopping asylum seekers at legal ports of entry.

Trying to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers, the administration has been sending more people back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be heard by U.S. courts.

Representative David Cicilline said the Trump administration had exacerbated a challenging border situation by not spending money that was appropriated for border facilities and personnel, as well as by cutting off aid to Central American countries for sending migrants to the United States.

Cicilline, who runs the House Democrats' policy and communications committee, denied Democrats were simply "looking on helplessly" at the problems.

"But the administration has responsibility in all these areas. And we can appropriate funding and we can pass legislation but ultimately they are responsible for executing the immigration laws in this country," he said.

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by James Dalgleish)

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By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he was still trying to determine the best way to respond to the October murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate, but described the kingdom as an important U.S. ally against Iran

By Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he was still trying to determine the best way to respond to the October murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate, but described the kingdom as an important U.S. ally against Iran.

"We're trying to figure out the best way to" respond, McConnell said at a roundtable meeting with reporters.

"Obviously what clearly happened is outrageous and unacceptable. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia's an important ally against the Iranians. So it is a difficult problem to figure out exactly the most appropriate response."

Members of Congress, including some Senate Republicans as well as Democrats, have been clamouring for Republican President Donald Trump to take a stronger line against Saudi Arabia.

They are concerned not just about the death of Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Washington Post columnist killed in October at a Saudi consulate in Turkey, but also the heavy toll on civilians of the war in Yemen, where a Saudi-led coalition is battling Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

A CIA assessment has blamed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for ordering Khashoggi's killing. Riyadh denies the prince had any involvement in the murder.

Lawmakers have introduced legislation seeking to impose sanctions on Saudi officials, but they have failed to advance in the Senate.

McConnell would not say whether he foresaw votes on those measures. "It's a tough situation," he said.

McConnell also predicted that the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority, would sustain Trump's expected veto of a resolution that would end U.S. involvement with the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen.

The war powers resolution passed the House of Representatives last week, in a historic rebuke of Trump's policy of continued support for Saudi Arabia. Having already passed the Senate, the measure was sent to the White House, where Trump is expected to issue the second veto of his presidency.

It was the first time both chambers of Congress supported a War Powers resolution, which limits the president's ability to send U.S. troops into action without the consent of Congress.

"I think the veto will be sustained," McConnell said.

McConnell said he did not agree with this use of the war powers act, because the United States does not have troops on the ground in Yemen. The U.S. military is providing targeting assistance to the Saudi-led coalition.

Overriding a veto requires two-thirds majorities in both the Senate and House.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Richard Cowan; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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The label blocks Trumps successor from returning to the nuclear accord with Iran, complicates diplomatic effort to resolve differences and changes the rules of engagement in Syria

The stakes in West Asia couldnt be higher.

A year after President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 agreement that curbed Irans nuclear programme and imposed harsh economic sanctions, Tehran remains defiant and unwilling to bend to Washingtons demands.

Suspicion that US intent is to force a regime change in Tehran rather than forcing Iran to curb its ballistic missile programme and support for militias in Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen was heightened this week when Trump designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organisation.

It is the first time that the US has labelled a branch of a foreign government a terrorist entity, one that effects millions of Iranians who get conscripted.

Todays unprecedented move to designate the IRGC as a Foreign Terrorist Organization demonstrates our commitment to maximize pressure on the Iranian regime until it ceases using terrorism as a tool of statecraft, John Bolton, Trumps national security adviser, tweeted April 8.

The label effectively blocks Trumps successor from returning to the nuclear accord, complicates any diplomatic effort to resolve differences and changes the rules of engagement in theatres such as Syria, where the US and Iranian forces operate in a close proximity.

Through this, some US allies are seeking to ensure a US-Iran war or to, at a minimum, trap them in a permanent state of enmity, said Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council, referring to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The designation is likely to embolden advocates in Washington, Saudi Arabia and Israel of a more aggressive covert war against Iran that would seek to stoke unrest among the Islamic Republics ethnic minorities, including the Balochs, Kurds and Iranians of Arab descent.

Moreover, the risk of an accident or unplanned incident leading to a military confrontation has also been heightened by Irans response, declaring the US military a terrorist entity.

The US move and the Iranian retaliation can put US military personnel in the Gulf and elsewhere in the region in harms way.

The designation also rules out tacit US-Iranian cooperation on the ground, as was seen in Iraq in the fight against the Islamic State and in Afghanistan. That collaboration involved the IRGC.

The move also piles economic pressure on Iran because the IRGC is not only an army but also a business conglomerate, with interests in construction, engineering and manufacturing.

It is unclear how the terrorist label will affect the IRGC, which, already heavily sanctioned, does much of its business in cash and through front companies.

The US policy, even before the April 8 move, raised the spectre of a nuclear race in West Asia. Saudi Arabia was gearing up to build its own programme, citing fears that Iran could return to its pre-2015 enrichment project.

The Guards goes to the heart of the Iranian regime. It was formed to protect the regime immediately after the 1979 revolution when the new rulers had reasons to distrust the military of the toppled shah.

Some six weeks before he was overthrown, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavs top commanders on the New Years Eve in 1978 discussed crushing the revolution. The shah refused to endorse the plan. He feared that large-scale bloodshed would dim the chances of his exiled son ever returning as the shah.

The IRGC has since emerged as a pillar of Irans defence strategy which seeks to counter perceived covert operations by the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel by supporting proxies across West Asia.

It is a strategy that has proven both effective and costly. Irans failure to address fears that the strategy is an effort to export its revolution and topple the regions conservative regimes, particularly in the Gulf, have raised the cost.

The revolution unleashed a vicious cycle that saw the Gulf states fund the Iran-Iraq war in which up to one million people died. Saudi Arabia waged a four-decade long $100 billion campaign to globally propagate ultra-conservative, anti-Shia and anti-Iranian strands of Islam. Attempts were also made to stoke ethnic tensions in Iran, which hit back by supporting violent attacks against Americans, Israelis, Jews and regime opponents in various parts of the world.

Barbara Slavin, an Iran expert at the Washingtons Atlantic Council think tank, described the US decision as gratuitous and provocative. It will also put countries such as Iraq and Lebanon in even more difficult situations as they have no alternative but to deal with the IRGC. It will strengthen calls by pro-Iran groups in Iraq to expel US troops, she said.

(James M Dorsey is a senior fellow at Singapores S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies as well as its Middle East Institute)
United States Steel Corp. ( X -1.65% ) is hoping that 2018 marked a transitional year, from a high cost, old-style steelmaker to a modern business with a refreshed vision and strategy. In fact, the company unveiled a new version of its corporate strategy in July 2018, which puts its focus on what management considers three critical success factors: winning in more profitable markets, improving its position on fixed costs, and nurturing and supporting the best talent. To put those goals into action, U.S. Steel is also in the midst of a multi-year Asset Revitalization Program (ARP).

A three-pronged strategic direction

The new strategic direction is focused less on increasing capacity and more on profitability, partially through customer and employee relationships. U.S. Steel wants to focus on the most attractive markets, such as high-strength automotive coated products. And by investing in its customers, it aims to grow relationships where it can collaborate on new product solutions like the thinner, lighter, yet stronger products which help automotive manufacturers lighten vehicle weight to improve fuel mileage. This adds value toward customer success and allows the company to try and differentiate itself among competitors.

Internally, U.S. Steel believes it can "move down the cost curve" to improve profitability. By improving its financial position and maintaining a strong balance sheet, it intends to invest in new technologies that help improve operational efficiencies, further aiding cost improvements. Even after almost doubling 2018 capital spending versus 2017, and reducing debt by over $300 million, there remained $1 billion of cash on the balance sheet and over $1.8 billion available under existing credit facilities at the end of 2018. The ARP, which we'll look at in more detail below, also plays a key role in future investments, along with better reliability and improved productivity through maintenance activities. The company has already hit 2020 targets set for equipment reliability improvement.

The third strategic arm is investing in employees and talent. Management believes "this will help us reinforce a culture where accountability, fairness and respect are foundational, and high performance and diversity in all its forms are valued and celebrated." In fact, beginning Apr. 2019, U.S Steel has announced enhanced benefits for its workforce that reflect a "culture of caring and inclusivity". Enhanced benefits in areas like parental and bereavement leave, domestic partner coverage, gender reassignment procedure coverage, infertility coverage and a vacation day purchase program are progressive for the industry. These programs roll out to the non-represented workforce, as the represented workforce operates under a new four year labor contract agreement between the USW and the company that was signed this past fall.

Optimizing existing assets

With the first and third arm of its strategic plan focusing on customers and employees, respectively, the second arm is using the multi-year Asset Revitalization Program to capitalize on internal improvements. The ARP kicked off in 2017 as a plan to invest $2 billion through 2020. As CEO David Burritt put it on the most recent fourth-quarter conference call:

It's not about capacity additions for us, it's about utilizing our assets in the most effective and efficient way possible, and that's why we're able to do the revitalization program and how we're getting the extra tons and not by adding excess capacity but instead capitalizing on what we have.

This strategy is in contrast to what some of its competitors have recently announced with new greenfield projects coming in the next few years.

Besides the capital spending (which is broken down into $1.5 billion of capital expenditures and $0.5 billion expense), the company is tracking the program using three other metrics, and management believes it is on, or ahead of, targets in each area:

The plan is to achieve these goals by investing in several, smaller projects. The bigger, single-impact capital spending plans, including potentially restarting a new Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) project at its Fairfield, Ala. plant, a new state-of-the-art continuous galvanizing line for high-strength automotive steels at its PRO-TEC joint venture with Japan's Kobe Steel in Ohio, and new lines in their Slovakian European operation for high-tech electrical steels, are not included in the ARP spending. By taking on more incremental improvement projects with this program, the company believes it will be able to realize the improvements without disrupting operations and negatively impacting customers.

New buyback shows support for strategy

All of this work is meant to position U.S. Steel for success through the inevitable business cycles of the industry. Management showed confidence in its plans by announcing a new $300 million stock buyback authorization as of Nov. 1, 2018. Through Jan. 2019, it has exercised $100 million of that, or over 2% of outstanding shares. As management stated in the latest 10-K: "We believe effectively executing our strategy will secure our position as an industry leader by reducing our vulnerabilities during down cycles, accentuating our advantages in up cycles, and enabling the creation of value -- and the related rewards -- for all U. S. Steel stakeholders through business cycles." The real proof will come when the operations are faced with the next down cycle, and we see how performance and results compare to the past downturns. Look for higher highs and higher lows in earnings through the business cycle as proof of a sustainable improvement.
Quote: 2017KR Originally Posted by Thank you. I went to sunroof doctor and for $135 I can get the replacement parts and its about 12 screws for the entire thing and I dont have to remove my headliner. You have made my day that much better and more ammunition against my local dealer. There is no way it should cost 17 times the parts in labor.

Well hopefully this will help you to understand why the sunroof issue is the way it is. Ford does not care about you as a consumer period... Ford made the decision that they did not want to go to the expense to maintain a logistical world wide inventory ofto keep your sunroof repaired. Not cost effective for them. It breaks then new assembly at whatever level they deem appropriate.This does not mean that the actual manufacturer of the product (not Ford) will not make spare parts available to the aftermarket sales and repair industry. Now yes I have had 5 different heated steering wheels form various manufacturers fail over the years. Expect mine to last anywhere from 1 to 3 years, just the nature of the beast on that one.
It was a far cry from "I love WikiLeaks!"

U.S. President Donald Trump declared on Thursday that "I know nothing about WikiLeaks" after its disheveled founder Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to face charges, a stark contrast to how candidate Trump showered praise on Assange's hacking organization night after night during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with South Korean President Moon Jae-in in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, April 11, 2019, in Washington. Trump declared that "I know nothing about WikiLeaks" after its disheveled founder Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to face charges, a stark contrast to how candidate Trump showered praise on Assange's hacking organization night after night during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.[Photo: AP/Evan Vucci]

Asked about Thursday's arrest, Trump said at the White House, "It's not my thing. I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I've been seeing what's happened with Assange and that will be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, who's doing an excellent job. So, he'll be making a determination . I know nothing really about him."

"It's not my deal in life."

But WikiLeaks was Trump's deal in 2016 as he welcomed the political boost his campaign got and cheered on the release of Clinton campaign emails.

On the same October day that the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, revealing that Trump had bragged in 2005 about groping women, WikiLeaks began releasing damaging emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Trump and his allies, facing a tough battle in the campaign's final month, seized on the illegal dumps and weaponized them.

"WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks," Trump said in Pennsylvania.

"This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove," Trump said in Michigan.

"Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks," Trump said in Ohio.

Julian Assange gestures as he arrives at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, after the WikiLeaks founder was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police and taken into custody Thursday April 11, 2019. Police in London arrested WikiLeaks founder Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy Thursday, April 11, 2019 for failing to surrender to the court in 2012, shortly after the South American nation revoked his asylum .[Photo: PA via AP/Victoria Jones]

All told, Trump extolled WikiLeaks more than 100 times, and a poster of Assange hung backstage at the Republican's debate war room. At no point from a rally stage did Trump express any misgivings about how WikiLeaks obtained the emails from the Clinton campaign or about the accusations of stealing sensitive U.S. government information, which led to the charges against Assange on Thursday.

Assange for years has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for WikiLeaks' role in publishing thousands of government secrets. He was an important figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Democratic groups.

When asked about Assange in 2017, Trump said he did not "support or unsupport" WikiLeaks' move to release hacked emails and that he would not be involved in any decision for the U.S. government to arrest Assange.

"I am not involved in that decision," whether or not to arrest Assange, Trump told The Associated Press then, "but if they want to do it, it's OK with me."

The Justice Department now has charged Assange with taking part in a computer hacking conspiracy, accusing him of scheming with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to break a password for a classified government computer.

The single charge of computer intrusion conspiracy carries up to five years in prison, though the Justice Department can add additional charges depending on the evidence it gathers. Manning was ordered jailed last month for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, suggesting that prosecutors are still at work.

It was unclear why the Assange charge, which was brought under seal last year, was made public at this time and why he was taken into custody now  weeks after Mueller's investigation had concluded. None of the allegations in the case relate to Russian election interference or WikiLeaks' role in publishing emails stolen from Democrats by Russian intelligence operatives.

An indictment against 12 Russians last year described WikiLeaks' role in publishing hacked emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Though the indictment said WikiLeaks had worked to coordinate the release of information, there was no allegation that the organization solicited the hacking of Democratic email accounts or worked with Russians.

Assange's arrest provoked passionate responses overseas, and from some who had expressed concern about whistleblower protections, but the initial bipartisan reaction in Washington was relief.

"I'm glad to see the wheels of justice are finally turning when it comes to Julian Assange," tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally. "In my book, he has NEVER been a hero. His actions - releasing classified information - put our troops at risk and jeopardized the lives of those who helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan."

And Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, said he hoped the British courts would quickly transfer Assange to U.S. custody "so he can finally get the justice he deserves."

Assange's lawyer has previously said he planned to fight any U.S. charges against him. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped. British police said Assange had been arrested Thursday for breaching his bail conditions and in relation to the U.S. arrest request.
Hampton by Hilton Opens New Property in Kittery, Maine

New hotel located near the Kittery Outlets, Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Fort Foster State Park

April 12, 2019 // Franchising.com // KITTERY, Maine - Hilton's (NYSE: HLT) Hampton by Hilton, the global upper-midscale brand known for its commitment to providing unmatched guest service, today announced the opening of its newest property, Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery. Owned and developed by Two International Group, Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery features 83 spacious rooms and offers travelers value-added amenities with the spirit of Hamptonality.

At Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery, guests will have a worry-free stay with comfortable spaces that are intuitively designed to feel familiar and inviting, said Cathi Tingley, general manager. Hampton by Hilton guests can confidently expect quality accommodations backed by a satisfaction guarantee.

Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery is located at 271 US Route 1 nearby the Kittery Outlets, Kittery Trading Post, Roberts Maine Grill, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and Fort Foster State Park. The property features modern design, a fitness center, an indoor pool, an outdoor patio and meeting space.

Every Hampton by Hilton guest will enjoy the brands signature free, hot breakfast with healthy options; On the Run breakfast bags; and free WiFi in every room. Hampton continues to lead the pack in terms of guest experience, with guest happiness being the number one priority, backed by the 100% Hampton Guarantee.

Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery is part of Hilton Honors, the award-winning guest-loyalty program for Hiltons 17 distinct hotel 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 cant be found anywhere else and free standard WiFi. Members also enjoy popular digital tools available exclusively through the industry-leading Hilton Honors mobile app, where Hilton Honors members can check-in, choose their room and access their room using a Digital Key.

For more information or to make reservations, please visit Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery or call +1-207-439-0751.

Read more about Hampton by Hilton at www.hampton.com and newsroom.hilton.com/hampton.

About Hampton by Hilton

As the number one ranked lodging franchise for the past 10 years, according to Entrepreneur, Hampton by Hilton, including Hampton Inn by Hilton and Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton, serves value-conscious and quality-driven travelers at more than 2,430 properties with more than 250,000 rooms in 25 countries and territories. High-quality accommodations and amenities, such as complimentary WiFi, free hot breakfast, and On The RunTM breakfast bags, contribute to Hampton by Hilton ranking as a leader in its segment. Hampton by Hilton Team Members deliver friendly, authentic, caring and thoughtful service defined as Hamptonality, with guest happiness being the number one priority, backed by the 100% Hampton Guarantee. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits. For more information about Hampton by Hilton, visit www.hampton.com or newsroom.hilton.com/hampton and connect on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

Media Contact:

Cathi Tingley

General Manager

Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton Kittery

+1 207 439 0751

SOURCE Hampton by Hilton

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Events for Faith Focus should be submitted at least two weeks in advance. Rick Cousins can be reached at rick.cousins@galvnews.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.
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Compared to visiting a theme park in the day, strolling through one when the sun sets brings on a different feel. The disparity is so contrasting that the simple overlay of moonlight can make it seem like one is in an entirely new park altogether. Especially if it is a theme park that you have visited before.





So if you have never visited a theme park come nightfall, here is your chance! Universal Studios Singapore is extending its operating hours till 10pm on Fridays, Saturdays and select public holidays  complete with a special line-up of night-only programmes.





What exactly changes as the sun sets?

Hollywood Dreams Light-Up Parade

Night Sessions (Live Bands)

Pop-up Food Stalls





Explore Universal Studios Singapore in a new (moon) light

Fireworks Spectacular





But the BEST endorsement of Universal After Hours probably came from the monkies' response when the fireworks ended - they DID NOT want to leave!





Looks like we have to make another trip back then! 

Useful Information

Sesame Street  and associated characters, trademarks and design elements are owned and licensed by Sesame Workshop.  2019 Sesame Workshop. All rights reserved. Shrek, Madagascar, Puss In Boots and all DreamWorks Animation elements  2019 DreamWorks Animation L.L.C. All Rights Reserved. Woody Woodpecker  Walter Lantz Productions.  Universal Studios. All rights reserved. Jurassic Park TM &  Universal Studios/Amblin Entertainment. All rights reserved. Battlestar Galactica TM Universal Studios &  2019 Universal Cable Productions LLC. All rights reserved. UNIVERSAL STUDIOS, UNIVERSAL STUDIOS SINGAPORE, Universal Globe logo, and all Universal elements and related indicia TM &  2019 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Plenty, as the monkies and I found out.The Hollywood Dreams Parade first premiered at Universal Studios Singapore in 2011 and since then, it has kept things fresh for visitors by enhancing the parade floats, incorporating new music and dance routines as well as new props and costumes.Now, Universal Studios Singapore has updated the parade with its biggest - and most glamourous - transformation yet... a NIGHT parade, complete with illuminated floats!The parade starts at The Lost World, and makes its way through Ancient Egypt, Sci-Fi City, and New York, exiting at Vine Street just before The Brown Derby. If you ask me, the New York area is the best location to catch the parade procession.Expect to see floats and dancers illuminated with neon hues and LED magic with performers rocking along the streets of the park.The crowd was grooving along with characters from Madagascar and dancing to a tribal drumbeat - everything felt so festive and cheery!The monkies' fave? Characters from the fairytale wonderland of Far Far Away like Shrek and Puss in Boots.I had seen the daytime version of the Hollywood Dreams Parade and I definitely prefer the night version because everything just seems so much more vibrant and visually engaging.Somehow, the light and sound effects of the Jurassic Park and Revenge of the Mummy floats are immensely accentuated during the night parade - further enhancing the experience!The parade ends off on an upbeat note, with an infectious musical number.I think I can speak for my monkies when I say all of us love this night parade: the music is catchy, the floats are impressive, and there is a downright fun energy to it. It is exactly the kind of parade that hypes you up and puts a smile on your face.Oh, and of course we get reminded not to head home too early lest we miss the fireworks. But more on that later.What's After Hours fun without some music? Chill out with live performances of pop & rock songs and original numbers from local bands like OK Ready and 53A.With all the radio-friendly hits that the bands dish out, it will be extremely hard not to sing along. And there is absolutely no need to feel shy - chances are you will not be the only one!No night party will be complete without food so start licking those lips! Choose from street food like Lollipop Wings, Popcorn Chicken Cone, Golden Cheese Potato and Curry Fishballs.Psst, those Lollipop Wings were the monkies' fave!Personally, I feel each themed section of the park becomes more mysterious and mesmerising at night.Riding an outdoor attraction, like rollercoasters, at night can also offer such a totally different experience. Launching into the cool night on Battlestar Galactica: CYLON feels exhilarating in a unique way.Did I mention the rides remain open until 10pm too???As an added bonus, with the sun down the Singapore nights are significantly cooler too... which makes queuing for rides a much more palatable proposition. Although I have to say that when we were there, the queues for the rides were all noticeably shorter! Another plus point, WOOT!And that includes queuing up for photo opportunities with the characters too.There's nothing quite like ending the day (and night) with a spectacular display of fireworks.Synced to a dramatic musical score, the whole experience was truly breathtaking.- During Universal After Hours, operating hours at the theme park will be extended until 10pm on Fridays, Saturdays and select public holidays.- Universal After Hours is included with your theme park admission or Annual/Season Pass.- Singapore Residents enjoy online discounts for the After 5pm Adult Ticket and Dining Bundle at S$75 (U.P. $79), which comes with S$16 worth of meal vouchers.- More information can be found at www.rwsentosa.com/universal-after-hours
Google Nexus 6P owners will receive up to $400 as class action settlement News oi-Karan Sharma Google and Huawei have decided that they will pay $400 as a class action settlement to Google Nexus 6P owners. Here's how you can claim.

Google Nexus 6P if you remember the smartphone which was launched back in October 2015. The smartphone comes with all the top-notch hardware at the time. But later it was reported that users were facing bootloop, in which Nexus 6P was simply shutting down without any warning. Back in 2017, a lawsuit was filed against the company by law firm Chimicles & Tikellis. It seems that the owners of the Nexus 6P are going to get justice because Google and Huawei have decided to settle the class-action by paying up to $400 to eligible Nexus 6P owners.

The settlement is all depending on the court for the approval, but it seems that it's going to happen anytime soon. The company will be paying a total amount of $9.75 million. To redeem the $400 payment owners need to submit proof which states that you have experienced bootloops and unexpected shutdown issues on your smartphone.

By proving documentation of bootloops, you can get $325 settlement. If you submit the documentation shutdown issue then it will get you $150 settlement. By submitting both the proofs you can avail $400 settlement.

What if you don't have documentation?

Don't worry even though, if you don't have proper documentation but if you claim to have these issues then still you will get $75 from the settlement. If you have exchanged the device with a Pixel XL then you will be getting a maximum of $10. Do note that, there will be a deadline and some instruction to claim the settlement, as soon as it gets approved by the court.

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Samsung Galaxy A70 India launch could be imminent News oi-Abhinaya Prabhu Samsung Galaxy A70 might be launched in India with 6GB RAM and 128GB storage space.

Earlier this week, Samsung hosted an event to unveil a slew of its Galaxy A series smartphones. One of the devices launched by the company is the Galaxy A70. At the time of launch, the company did not divulge the details regarding its pricing and availability. Now, it looks like this device could be launched in India sometime soon.

In a recent development, Samsung India has hosted a microsite listing for the Galaxy A70 hinting that its India launch is imminent. Recently, the company revealed that it is in plans to launch new Galaxy A series devices every month in 2019 and this microsite listing reaffirms the same.

Notably, the listing of this new Samsung smartphone on the official website shows 6GB RAM and 128GB storage space tipping that this variant could be launched in the country. However, the details regarding a specific launch date and pricing haven't been divulged by the company. Given that the Galaxy A series phones will replace the Galaxy J series devices that are affordable, we can expect this one to also be priced reasonably. From its pricing in China, we can expect this device to be priced under Rs. 30,000.

Samsung Galaxy A70 specifications

To recall, the Samsung Galaxy A70 was launched with a 6.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a FHD+ resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels. It features an Infinity-U display and an optical in-display fingerprint sensor. Under its hood, this new offering from the company employs a Snapdragon 675 SoC coupled with 6GB RAM and 128GB (in the official listing). There is a microSD card slot supporting up to 512GB of additional storage space.

On the photography front, the Galaxy A70 comes with triple rear cameras with a 32MP primary sensor with f/1.7 aperture, an 8MP ultra wide-angle secondary sensor and a third 5MP depth sensor. At the front, there is a 32MP selfie camera with an aperture of f/2.0 housed inside the notch. The device runs Android 9 Pie topped with One UI. It gets the power from a 4500mAh battery with 25W fast charging support via USB Type-C port.

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Samsung Galaxy J6 joins list of Android Pie smartphones News oi-Sandeep Sarkar The Android Pie update for the Galaxy J6 comes with a build version J600FNXXU3BSD1.

Samsung has rolled out the Android Pie update to one more Galaxy J smartphone. The latest Samsung smartphone to join the Android Pie bandwagon is the Galaxy J6. This comes following the update rollout for Galaxy J8 smartphone. In addition to the latest Android version, the update also brings along the latest security patch for the device.

Samsung has pushed out the new update for Galaxy J6 as an OTA and the update notification will be available on the respective smartphones. Notably, the update is being rolled out in batches and will be available for a handful of users at the beginning. The Android Pie update for the Galaxy J6 comes with a build version J600FNXXU3BSD1. It weighs around 1.2GB in size.

Coming to the changelog, the update as mentioned earlier, brings along the March 2019 Android security patch. It is worth noting that the Galaxy J8 has received April 2019 Android security patch with the Android Pie update. It is unknown when Samsung will release the April 2019 Android Security patch for the Galaxy J6. Besides, the device now gets OneUI skin which brings along some new features in the mix.

To recap, the Samsung Galaxy J6 was launched last year with an Exynos 7870 processor, under the hood. The processor is clubbed with Mali T830 GPU. The device comes in dual RAM and storage configurations including 3GB/4GB RAM and 32GB/64GB internal storage. The native storage is expandable via microSD card slot.

The display up front is a Super AMOLED panel measuring 5.6-inch. It offers a screen resolution of 720 x 1480 pixels. The front of the device houses an 8MP camera lens for selfies and video calling. The rear panel features a single 13MP camera with an f/1.9 aperture for photography. A non-removable 3,000mAh battery unit powers the smartphone.

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Gianforte discusses drought conditions with farmers and ranchers at Farm Equipment Sales in Glasgow in this July 2017 archive photo.

In an interview with the Glasgow Courier to discuss trade negotiations in China on April 12, Congressman Greg Gianforte said he was "seriously considering" a run for Governor in 2020. This marks the first public comment made by the two-term Congre...
Tiny, individual, flexible ribbons of crystalline phosphorus have been made by UCL researchers in a world first, and they could revolutionise electronics and fast-charging battery technology.

Since the isolation of 2-dimensional phosphorene, which is the phosphorus equivalent of graphene, in 2014, more than 100 theoretical studies have predicted that new and exciting properties could emerge by producing narrow 'ribbons' of this material. These properties could be extremely valuable to a range of industries.

In a study published in Nature, researchers from UCL, the University of Bristol, Virginia Commonwealth and University and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, describe how they formed quantities of high-quality ribbons of phosphorene from crystals of black phosphorous and lithium ions.

"It's the first time that individual phosphorene nanoribbons have been made. Exciting properties have been predicted and applications where phosphorene nanoribbons could play a transformative role are very wide-reaching," said study author, Dr Chris Howard (UCL Physics & Astronomy).

The ribbons form with a typical height of one atomic layer, widths of 4-50 nm and are up to 75 m long. This aspect ratio is comparable to that of the cables spanning the Golden Gate Bridge's two towers.

"By using advanced imaging methods, we've characterised the ribbons in great detail finding they are extremely flat, crystalline and unusually flexible. Most are only a single-layer of atoms thick but where the ribbon is formed of more than one layer of phosphorene, we have found seamless steps between 1-2-3-4 layers where the ribbon splits. This has not been seen before and each layer should have distinct electronic properties," explained first author, Mitch Watts (UCL Physics & Astronomy).

While nanoribbons have been made from several materials such as graphene, the phosphorene nanoribbons produced here have a greater range of widths, heights, lengths and aspect ratios. Moreover, they can be produced at scale in a liquid that could then be used to apply them in volume at low cost for applications.

The team say that the predicted application areas include batteries, solar cells, thermoelectric devices for converting waste heat to electricity, photocatalysis, nanoelectronics and in quantum computing. What's more, the emergence of exotic effects including novel magnetism, spin density waves and topological states have also been predicted.

The nanoribbons are formed by mixing black phosphorus with lithium ions dissolved in liquid ammonia at -50 degrees C. After twenty-four hours, the ammonia is removed and replaced with an organic solvent which makes a solution of nanoribbons of mixed sizes.

"We were trying to make sheets of phosphorene so were very surprised to discover we'd made ribbons. For nanoribbons to have well defined properties, their widths must be uniform along their entire length, and we found this was exactly the case for our ribbons," said Dr Howard.

"At the same time as discovering the ribbons, our own tools for characterising their morphologies were rapidly evolving. The high-speed atomic force microscope that we built at the University of Bristol has the unique capabilities to map the nanoscale features of the ribbons over their macroscopic lengths," explained co-author Dr Loren Picco (VCU Physics).

"We could also assess the range of lengths, widths and thicknesses produced in great detail by imaging many hundreds of ribbons over large areas."

While continuing to study the fundamental properties of the nanoribbons, the team intends to also explore their use in energy storage, electronic transport and thermoelectric devices through new global collaborations and by working with expert teams across UCL.
US files 'conspiracy' charges against WikiLeaks founder

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 09:12PM

United States officials have announced that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion.

British police arrested frail-looking Assange at the Ecuadorean embassy in London on Thursday after his seven-year asylum there was ended by the country's authorities.

US Justice Department announced in Washington shortly after Assange's arrest that the whistle-blower had been charged with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a US government computer.

The Australian-born Assange, 47, pronounced himself not guilty to the London court district judge Michael Snow, who called the whistle-blower a narcissist.

Assange's lawyers warned that their client, who is computer programmer by profession, may risk torture and his life would be in danger if he were to be extradited to the United States.

"There is evident political persecution which started precisely with the massive publication by WikiLeaks in 2010 of cables and very serious information" which Assange had published, including a trove of classified Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq," Spanish lawyer Baltasar Garzon, who is coordinating Assange defense, said on Thursday.

"The threats against Julian Assange for political reasons, persecution on the part of the United States, are more current than ever," Garzon , who is a high-profile human rights investigator, added.

Barry Pollack, an Assange lawyer, who had previously said pressing criminal charges for publishing truthful information was unlawful ,expressed concern about the impact of the charges filed against Assange. "Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges," Pollack said.

Russia: Assange's arrest is violation of freedom of speech

Russia's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described Assange's arrest as a violation of journalists' rights and freedom of speech.

"I think journalism organizations should have their say because the situation is unprecedented," she said, adding that Moscow will raise this issue in the international organizations.

Assange's arrest now paves the way for Assange's extradition to the US and trial there for publishing classified US government documents.

His lawyers have previously warned that their client could face 35 years in prison or capital punishment in the US.

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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrested in UK, faces US charges

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:02AM

British police have arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where the Australian whistleblower had been living since 2012.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) said in a statement on Thursday that it had arrested Assange after being "invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorean government's withdrawal of asylum."

Assange has also "been further arrested on behalf of the United States authorities" after he arrived at the police station in central London, the MPS said in a statement.

An agitated, frail-looking Assange with white hair and a white beard was carried out of the embassy by at least seven men to a waiting police van.

"I can confirm that Julian Assange is now in police custody and rightly facing justice in the UK," British Home Secretary Sajid Javid said on Twitter.

Javid was due to make a statement to parliament later in the day on the arrest of Assange, the opposition Labour Party said on Twitter.

WikiLeaks condemned the move, accusing Ecuador of breaching international law by withdrawing Assange's asylum.

"Ecuador has illegally terminated Assange political asylum in violation of international law," the whistleblowing website said on Twitter.

WikiLeaks had recently warned that Assange was likely to be expelled from the embassy soon.

Assange took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in London in 2012 after facing a warrant for arrest following allegations of sexual assault and rape from the Swedish government.

He has denied the allegations, and the investigation was closed last year.

WikiLeaks said the Australian computer programmer is wanted by the US government for publishing classified documents related to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that were leaked by American whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Assange is considered a hero by some for exposing the abuse of power by the US and other nations and for championing free speech.

Ecuador's president, Lenin Moreno, said in July that he was planning to withdraw asylum protection for Assange and evict him from its UK embassy.

He said Thursday that London guaranteed Assange would not be extradited to a country that has the death penalty.

"In line with our strong commitment to human rights and international law, I requested Great Britain to guarantee that Mr Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty,"

Assange's relationship with his hosts collapsed after Ecuador accused him of leaking information about Moreno's personal life.

Britain will not extradite WikiLeaks Assange to the United States if he faces the possibility of the death penalty there, UK junior foreign minister Alan Duncan said.

"It is our broad policy in all circumstances, so it equally applies to Julian Assange, that he will not be extradited if he is going to face the death penalty. So that will apply to him," he said.

A senior member of Germany's opposition Left party says Europe must not allow Assange to be extradited to the United States for trial.

Sevim Dagdelen said in a statement that the withdrawal of Assange's political asylum by Ecuador and his subsequent arrest by British police was a "scandal, a violation of international law, and at the same time a severe blow to independent journalism."

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Assange Appears In London Court After Arrest, U.S. Announces Charges

By RFE/RL April 11, 2019

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested at the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, where he had been holed up since 2012.

Authorities said the 47-year-old Australian was arrested on April 11 for failing to surrender to the court and following a U.S. extradition request.

The judge pronounced Assange guilty of the bail charge and remanded him in custody to face sentencing at an unspecified later date.

The charge carries a sentence of up to a year in prison. Assange also faces a separate hearing on the U.S. extradition request on May 2.

Assange appeared later in the day at a London court, where he pleaded innocent to the charge of failing to surrender to a Swedish arrest warrant and skipping bail.

The U.S. Justice Department announced shortly after Assange's arrest that he had been charged with conspiracy in trying to access a classified U.S. government computer with former U.S. intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010.

Manning was arrested in 2010 for disclosing hundreds of thousands of confidential documents, videos, and diplomatic cables to Assange's anti-secrecy website Wikileaks.

The Justice Department said that Assange faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, if convicted.

Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno said his country withdrew Assange's asylum after he "repeatedly violated international conventions."

WikiLeaks said that Ecuador terminated Assange's political asylum "in violation of international law."

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia later announced that Assange's Ecuadoran citizenship was suspended.

Assange took refuge in London's Ecuadoran Embassy in 2012, when he skipped bail to avoid extradition to Sweden to face sexual-assault and rape allegations.

The case was dropped last year, but he was still subject to a British arrest warrant for violating the terms of bail in 2012.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, AFP, and the BBC

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/wikileaks -founder-assange-arrested- in-london/29874569.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.

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UN experts warn Assange arrest exposes him to risk of serious human rights violations

11 April 2019 - Independent UN rights experts on Thursday said the arrest of Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange by police in the United Kingdom, after the Ecuadorian Government decided to stop granting him asylum in their London embassy, exposed him to "the risk of serious human rights violations", if extradited to the United States.

Special Rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, Agnes Callamard, tweeted that in "expelling Assange from the Embassy" and allowing his arrest, it had taken Mr. Assange "one step closer to extradition". She added that the UK had now arbitrarily-detained the controversial anti-secrecy journalist and campaigner, "possibly endangering his life".

Mr. Assange took refuge inside the embassy in 2012, to avoid extradition to Sweden by the UK authorities where he faced charges, since dropped, of sexual assault. But he also faces US federal conspiracy charges, relating to the leak of a vast number of Government documents to his Wikileaks website, by the former US intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning. The US argues that publication by the investigative site, endangered the lives of its citizens working overseas.

According to reports, the UK will now assess whether to extradite the Australian national to the US, where he faces up to five years in prison. The UK has reportedly given assurances in writing to the Ecuadorian Government that Mr. Assange will not be extradited to a country where he could face torture, or the death penalty.

After appearing in a central London courtroom on Thursday, Mr. Assange was found guilty of failing to surrender to the court in 2012, and now faces up to 12 months in prison.

The UN independent expert on the right to privacy, Joe Cannataci, issued a statement following the arrest, saying that "this will not stop my efforts to assess Mr. Assange's claims that his privacy has been violated. All it means is that, instead of visiting Mr Assange and speaking to him at the EmbassyI intend to visit him and speak to him wherever he may be detained."

In a statement last Friday, Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, said he was alarmed by reports that an arrest was imminent, and that if extradited, Mr. Assange could be exposed to "a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial, and the prohibition of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."

UK urged to 'abide by international obligations'

Last December, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, urged the UK to "abide by its international obligations" and allow Mr. Assange safe passage out of the embassy.

"States that are based upon, and promote the rule of law, do not like to be confronted with their own violations of the law, that is understandable. But when they honestly admit these violations, they do honour the very spirit of the rule of law, earn enhanced respect for doing so, and set worldwide commendable examples," said a statement released by the Working Group.

In December 2015, the Working Group concluded in its opinion No. 54/2015 that Mr. Assange  who at the time had a European arrest warrant issued against him for an allegation of crimes committed in Sweden  was being arbitrarily deprived of his freedom and demanded that he be released.

"Under international law, pre-trial detention must be only imposed in limited instances. Detention during investigations must be even more limited, especially in the absence of any charge" said the experts. "The Swedish investigations have been closed for over 18 months now, and the only ground remaining for Mr. Assange's continued deprivation of liberty is a bail violation in the UK, which is, objectively, a minor offense that cannot post facto justify the more than 6 years confinement that he has been subjected to since he sought asylum in the Embassy of Ecuador."

"Mr. Assange should be able to exercise his right to freedom of movement in an unhindered manner, in accordance with the human rights conventions the UK has ratified," the experts added.



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US Charges WikiLeaks Founder Assange After London Arrest

By VOA News April 11, 2019

The U.S. on Thursday unsealed charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a computer hacking conspiracy linked to the release of hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. documents, just hours after British police dramatically arrested him at the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he had been holed up for nearly seven years.

The indictment of Assange stems from one of the largest breaches of classified information in U.S. history, the 2010 WikiLeaks release of a vast cache of U.S. military records from its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, assessments of suspected terrorists held by the U.S. at its prison in Guantanamo, Cuba, and 250,000 State Department cables.

The U.S. accused Assange of conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning before declaring herself a woman, to crack a password stored on U.S. Defense Department computers to hack into a government network of classified documents and communications known as the Secret Internet Protocol Network. Cracking the password, the government said, allowed Manning to log on to computers under a username that did not belong to her, initially making it more difficult for authorities to determine the source of the illegal disclosures.

The government said that Assange and Manning engaged in real-time discussions as she transmitted classified records to Assange that WikiLeaks then disclosed. During one exchange, according to the indictment, Manning told Assange, "After this upload, that's all I really have got left." To which Assange replied, "Curious eyes never run dry in my experience."

Following the exchange, the indictment alleged that Manning accessed the State Department cables that WikiLeaks later publicly released.

U.S. President Donald Trump often cheered WikiLeaks during the last weeks of his 2016 campaign for the White House as it released hacked emails reflecting badly on his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. But after the charges were filed against Assange, he told reporters at the White House he knew "nothing about" WikiLeaks and did not have any opinion about the case.

Assange, 47, is charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and, if convicted, faces a five-year prison term.

He had taken refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 in order to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault charges.

Sweden later dropped its investigation, but Assange remained at the embassy over fears Britain might extradite him to the United States in connection with WikiLeaks' publication of classified U.S. government documents.

British officers said they arrested Assange at the embassy in connection with a June 2012 British warrant for "failing to surrender to court," but that the action was taken after a U.S. extradition request.

The police said they were invited into the embassy by Ecuador's ambassador after the Ecuadorian government withdrew Assange's asylum.

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno issued a video statement Thursday explaining his country's decision, saying it had "reached its limit" on his behavior.

"Today I announce that the discourteous and aggressive behavior of Mr. Julian Assange, the hostile and threatening declarations of his allied organization against Ecuador, and especially the transgression of international treaties, have led the situation to a point where the asylum of Mr. Assange is unsustainable and no longer viable," Moreno said.

He listed a series of alleged transgressions by Assange during his time at the embassy, including installing electronic equipment that was not allowed, blocking security cameras, mistreating guards, and accessing embassy security files without permission.

Moreno said most recently, WikiLeaks released Vatican documents, and that before and after the release key members of the organization visited Assange, pointing to his continued relationship with a group "interfering in internal affairs of other states."

The Ecuadorian leader also said that in line with his government's respect for human rights, he requested Britain not extradite Assange to any country where he might be subject to torture or the death penalty, and that Britain had "confirmed it in writing, in accordance with its own rules."

In a Twitter post, WikiLeaks said Ecuador "illegally terminated Assange's political asylum in violation of international law."

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Assange: From Trump Cheers to US Criminal Charges

By Ken Bredemeier April 11, 2019

Less than a month before Donald Trump was elected as the U.S. president in 2016, he said, "WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks," as the anti-secrecy group released another cache of emails hacked by Russian operatives from the computers of Democratic officials that were damaging to Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton.

"Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks," Trump said four days before the election.

But on Thursday, the Justice Department that is part of Trump's administration accused WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange of conspiring in 2010 with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to disclose hundreds of thousands of confidential military records from the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 secret State Department cables.

Assange was arrested by British police in London Thursday, and unceremoniously hauled out of the Ecuadorian embassy where he had been living in asylum for nearly seven years. It was an arrest British authorities said was at the behest of the United States, which wants to put him on trial on the computer hacking charge, and possibly other allegations.

The actions of the 47-year-old Assange, the one-time Australian hacker using his genius IQ to tap into the databases of high-profile organizations, have often been met with such conflicting assessments. Depending on what he has been disclosing over the last decade, he has been hailed as a champion of truth or vilified as a publicity seeker endangering lives of people by disclosing confidential information.

Assange started WikiLeaks in 2006, but his first worldwide notoriety occurred four years later, with the release of the first documents Manning stole from U.S. government computers, with what U.S. prosecutors say was Assange's help to Manning to crack a password and gain access to the files.

Some of the video footage WikiLeaks released captured the world's attention, showing U.S. soldiers killing 18 Iraqi civilians from a helicopter.

In May 2012, the British Supreme Court ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault, accusations Assange has long denied and said were the result of consensual sexual relations with two women.

A month later, he took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy, with the Quito government granting him asylum there.

Sweden eventually dropped the assault investigation, but Assange remained at the embassy, fearing that if he walked out Britain, would detain and then extradite him to the U.S., which is what the U.S. is now trying to do. Britain had charged him with failing to surrender to a court in 2012 and said if he left the embassy, he would be arrested.

Ecuador also grew weary of Assange's behavior at the diplomatic mission and his role in the disclosures of more documents, especially insider files from the Vatican released earlier this year, and granted British authorities the right to enter its compound on Thursday after he had spent nearly seven years there.

Plainclothes officers grabbed Assange as he shouted in protest, "UK must resist!" and hustled him into a waiting police van.

In parliament, to a round of cheers, British Prime Minister Theresa May said of Assange's arrest, "No one is above the law."

Assange's lawyers say he will fight extradition to the U.S.

Assange's U.S.-based attorney, Barry Pollack, criticized the Justice Department charges, saying they were "an unprecedented effort by the United States seeking to extradite a foreign journalist to face criminal charges for publishing truthful information."

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Proposed budget balances current, future readiness

By Sean Kimmons, Army News Service April 10, 2019

WASHINGTON -- Budget plans strive to balance current and future readiness by maxing out combat training center rotations and funding new technology, senior leaders told lawmakers Tuesday.

At $182.3 billion, the proposed fiscal year 2020 budget shifted funds to support 32 CTC rotations, four of which will go to National Guard units -- twice as many as in recent years.

Efforts to extend One Station Unit Training from 14 to 22 weeks for combat arms Soldiers will also continue. Besides extensive training on weapons, the new OSUT increases medical skills allowing graduates to come out certified as emergency medical technicians.

"It's now, I like to say, the longest and toughest in the world," said Army Secretary Mark T. Esper about infantry OSUT while testifying before the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee on Capitol Hill.

The budget has funds to sustain 58 brigade combat teams and six security force assistance brigades.

Prepositioned stocks, which include equipment like fighting vehicles and tanks in Europe, South Korea and other locations around the world, see a boost as well as other readiness initiatives.

"We're looking at some adjustments based on what the National Defense Strategy tells us to do to make sure we are in locations that allow us the highest degree of readiness should a conflict happen," Esper said.

By 2022, the Army expects to reach its highest levels of readiness in at least 66 percent of its regular Army and 33 percent of Guard and Reserve units.

"With continued, consistent, predictable Congressional support, we can reach those levels of readiness," said Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley.

Much of the budget is geared toward the Army's six modernization priorities after senior leaders freed up $30 billion over five years from nearly 200 legacy programs.

"In short, this budget will increase the Army's lethality in the near term and set conditions for increased lethality of the Army in the future," Milley said.

The top modernization priority --- Long-Range Precision Fires -- is heavily focused on to reclaim overmatch against near-peer competitors.

"We are a fires-based Army," Milley said. "In order to gain freedom of maneuver, you have to have fires and movement."

Plans are to develop a long-range hypersonic weapon, extended range cannon artillery, long-range cannon and precision strike missile, also known as Prism.

"All of those programs in combination, both the acquisition piece of it and the fires piece of it, will reestablish U.S. dominance in fires" Milley said.

The Army plans to invest $1.2 billion over the next five years toward a hypersonic weapon, which is being developed in collaboration with the Air Force and Navy.

A flight test of a land-based hypersonic missile, which can travel five times the speed of sound, is expected in fiscal 2023, Esper said.

"It's a game-changer," he said. "It is a very difficult system to defend against due to its maneuverability and due to its speed and profile."

To speed up the time it takes to get new technology in Soldiers' hands, the Army is moving from an industrial-based model to one that is more tailored to its needs.

"Not everyone needs everything at the same time," Milley said. "It's contrary to the Army instinct. Army instinct is everyone has got the same uniform, same haircut, everything is the same."

Last summer, the Army Futures Command was stood up as part of the Army's largest reorganization in decades to oversee modernization efforts. The command's cross-functional teams are now streamlining an outdated acquisition process to quickly procure new gear.

An example of how the Army may buy equipment in the future is the next-generation squad weapon. Only about 100,000 of those rifles --- enough for roughly 10 percent of the total force -- will initially be purchased for Soldiers who engage in close-quarters combat, Milley said.

"By the time you field an entire Army, that may be 10, 20, 30 years and that technology is no longer valid for the original need, but yet we keep buying it," the general said. "We're shifting to a different acquisition and procurement model."

With the emergence of near-peer threats, the secretary said the Army must start moving on these new technologies and continue those efforts with consistent funding.

"This is not a one-year FY 20 and we're done," he said. "It's going to occur for many, many years to shift this big ship called the U.S. Army to where we need to be."

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April 10, 2019

News Release

Press Operations

Release No. NR-084-19

U.S. and UAE Hold 4th Joint Military Dialogue

Senior delegations from the United States and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) met Apr. 9-10 in Washington, D.C. for the fourth meeting of the Joint Military Dialogue (JMD).

The JMD is the premier bilateral defense forum for coordinating defense cooperation, identifying shared security objectives and consulting on a wide array of strategic issues.

The delegations discussed a broad range of defense challenges, including counterterrorism; border and maritime security; air and missile defense; and security cooperation.

The United States and UAE remain committed to a strong bilateral relationship built on common interests and mutual respect. The defense relationship has served as one of the key foundations of the broader strategic partnership for nearly 40 years. The UAE reflects the mutual commitment to cooperation and consultation based on shared priorities.

Specific discussions focused on efforts to counter regional threats, expand planning and training regimes, and the U.S.-UAE Defense Cooperation Roadmap.

The United States welcomed the Emiratis' willingness to burden-share and lead in supporting joint regional security objectives.

The U.S. delegation was led by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood. The UAE delegation was led by Vice Chairman of the Armed Forces Lt. Gen Eisa al Mazrouie.



https://dod.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1811503/

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Italian Eurofighter scrambled for an intercept over Montenegro

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

Apr 10, 2019

RAMSTEIN, Germany -- Italian Air Force Eurofighter aircraft were launched for the first time to execute a NATO Air Policing mission over Montenegro.

In the morning of 9 April 2019 Italian Air Force Eurofighter based at Gioia del Colle Air Base some 20 km south of Bari, Italy, was launched by NATO's Combined Air Operations Centre at Torrejon, Spain. The mission was to intercept a civilian airliner that lost communications with civilian air traffic control over Croatia and was heading south towards Montenegro and Albania.

Two Eurofighter aircraft who are on alert to protect NATO airspace over Italy, Albania and Montenegro under the auspices of the Alliance, successfully intercepted the aircraft only a few minutes later. The Eurofighter pilots a visual check of the aircraft to rule out illegal action, technical or any other issues.

It was established that the loss of communications was related to a misunderstanding between civilian air traffic control and the airliner crew. After resuming regular contact with the civilian controllers, the airliner continued to proceed to its destination to Hurghada, Egypt.

Story by Allied Air Command Public Affairs Office

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April 11, 2019

News

By C. Todd Lopez

Defense.gov

Reserve Components Are Focused on Readiness, Leaders Say

WASHINGTON -- Readiness was a top priority for both the National Guard and the services' Reserve components when planning budgets for fiscal year 2020, their leaders told Congress yesterday.

During a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, the chiefs of all four service reserve components and the National Guard Bureau briefed lawmakers on the status of the components they lead, and some of the priorities that went into developing their budget request for fiscal 2020.

Air Force Gen. Joseph L. Lengyel, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said the three priorities for the National Guard included preparing to fight overseas, defending the nation and building partnerships. Each of those missions supports the national defense strategy, he said.

Lengyel also told lawmakers that for the National Guard to be ready to do what it needs to do  to be deployable, sustainable and interoperable with the active component of the Army and Air Force -- "we require such things as appropriate levels of full-time support, and replacing and upgrading old, worn-out facilities. We require parity in equipping our force through concurrent and balanced modernization and recapitalization of our force along with our active components."

Service Plans

Army Gen. Charles D. Luckey, chief of the Army Reserve, highlighted "Ready Force X" in his submitted testimony.

"This construct, Ready Force X, remains the way in which we focus energy, optimize our process, and prioritize our resources to deliver capabilities at the speed of relevance for a major war," he said.

Ready Force X, or RFX, Luckey said, begins at the individual soldier level.

"While many aspects of collective readiness at the unit level can be tuned up quickly upon mobilization, the key individual soldier requirements of physical fitness, medical readiness, tactical discipline, professional education, and fieldcraft proficiency must be 'baked in' to the entire force," he said. "Put simply, at a profound level, we are all in RFX."

Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard W. Scobee, chief of the Air Force Reserve, said his focus is to "prepare to operate in tomorrow's battlespace while providing excellent support to our airmen and their families."

In the past year, Scobee said, the Air Force Reserve activated its first cyber wing and its first intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance wing, which is expected to help the service further expand its support off those missions.

Vice Adm. Luke M. McCollum, chief of the Navy Reserve, said recapitalization of aging hardware "is critical to ensuring the highest levels of readiness and interoperability with the active component."

A No. 1 priority there, he said, is recapitalization of the Navy Reserve's Maritime Patrol and Reconnaissance Force capability. Two Navy Reserve units, one at Whidbey Island, Washington, and the other at Jacksonville, Florida, currently operate P-3C maritime patrol aircraft. Plans are to replace those with the P-8A Poseidon aircraft.

"Recapitalization of the two RC squadrons currently operating the legacy P-3C's, through FY 2022, with additional P-8A aircraft, aircrews and associated military construction, will buy down warfighting risk," McCollum said in his written statement.

The budget request seeks funds to help accomplish that, McCollum said, as well as other Navy Reserve priorities such as avionics upgrades for the C-130T aircraft, 40-foot patrol boats and the Joint Reserve Intelligence Centers.

Maj. Gen. Bradley S. James, commander of Marine Corps Forces Reserve, told senators how they could contribute to a "more ready and lethal Marine Reserve force."

First, he cited continued support of the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Appropriation, and he asked for "greater spending flexibility within this appropriation in order to procure critical shortfall items, and modernize equipment and systems."

Second, he highlighted the timeliness of the fiscal 2019 budget and said the predictability has a positive impact in the training of Reserve Marines.

"I would like to thank you for this year's appropriations," he told the panel. "On average the Marine Corps Reserve [members] only have 38 training days a year, which places an increase in importance on adequate and timely appropriation."

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NATO conducts largest medical exercise

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

11 Apr. 2019

26 NATO Allies and 13 partners are currently participating in exercise Vigorous Warrior 2019, NATO's largest medical exercise in its history. Held in Romania, the exercise brings together more than 2,500 participants and offers a unique opportunity to test medical responses to military incidents, from small arms fire to radiation exposure.

"Vigorous Warrior 19 is NATO's biggest military-medical exercise so far. It allows all 39 participating NATO and partner nations to exercise together in a realistic Article 3 and 5 scenario, provide a never-before-seen opportunity to train along civilian assets, and the experiences we gather during the exercise will inform NATO's medical realm for years to come," said Colonel Dr. Laszlo Fazekas, Director of the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine.

The Vigorous Warrior exercise series is organised by the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine together with a different host nation every two years.

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Taliban ban WHO, Red Cross in Afghanistan, citing 'suspicious' activity

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 06:22PM

The Taliban have banned the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from operating in Afghanistan, citing "suspicious" activity.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid was cited by Reuters as saying on Thursday that the militant group was no longer guaranteeing the security of the workers enlisted with some organizations, including the United Nations health body and the Red Cross.

Mujahid claimed the organizations had stopped complying with their agreements with the militants, while he alleged irregularities during the vaccination processes carried out by them.

"They are acting suspiciously during vaccination campaigns," he said.

Fighting across Afghanistan has created a "complex situation" and some charitable organizations are not operating in accordance with the situation, the spokesman vaguely explained.

ICRC spokesman Robin Waudo acknowledged the announcement and said they had suspended their activities in the country "due to the withdrawal of security guarantees."

"Therefore, we are now in the process of contacting the [Taliban] to initiate a bilateral and confidential dialog in view of the statement," he told AFP.

Jin Ni, a WHO spokeswoman in Afghanistan, told the agency that officials "acknowledge the reports and are working on better understanding the situation."

The Taliban had banned the ICRC from operating on the Afghan soil last August, but the aid group resumed its activity in October after talks.

Afghanistan is one of the few countries in the world, where easily-preventable polio is on the rise.

The Taliban's five-year rule over at least three quarters of Afghanistan came to an end following the US-led invasion of the country in 2001. But 18 years on, Washington is still entangled in the war and is now seeking a truce with the militants.

However, the militants have continued to carry out their attacks, especially against Afghan security forces, despite holding several rounds of peace talks with the United States in recent months.

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Sudan military says former president detained, held in 'secure place'

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 02:15PM

After nearly three decades in power, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has been removed from power and detained by the army, Defense Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf says.

"I announce as minister of defense the toppling of the regime and detaining its chief in a secure place," Auf said in a statement broadcast on state TV, adding that the military will rule Sudan directly for a two-year transition period before fresh elections.

"We have replaced him with a transitional military council for two years and have suspended Sudan's 2005 constitution," the defense minister said.

Auf declared a three-month state of emergency and imposed a one-month curfew from 10 pm to 4 am. He said the country's airspace would be also closed for 24 hours and border crossings sealed until further notice.

The military council has also declared a nationwide ceasefire, which includes the war-torn regions of Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan where Bashir's government had long been battling ethnic minority rebels, Auf said.

Army vehicles carrying troops were seen deploying across the center of the capital Khartoum from early Thursday. Troops raided the offices of the ideological wing of Bashir's ruling National Congress Party.

Thousands of people packed the streets of Khartoum to protest against the army's announcement that Bashir would be replaced by a military-led transitional council, a Reuters witness said.

The mood among protesters who earlier celebrated Bashir's expected departure had turned to anger, and many chanted, "Fall, again!" -- adapting an earlier anti-Bashir chant of "Fall, that's all!", Reuters added.

According to State news agency, SUNA, Sudan's National Intelligence and Security Service on Thursday also announced the release of all political prisoners across the country,

Witnesses said one of those released was Mohammed Naji Elasam, a spokesman for the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), the main organizer of protests being held across Sudan since December. Elasam had been detained for more than three months.

Protesters have spent five nights defiantly camped outside the sprawling headquarters complex, which also houses Bashir's official residence and the defense ministry.

They had earlier stormed the buildings of the powerful intelligence services in two eastern cities after officers refused to release political prisoners.

Later on Thursday, the government of Egypt expressed its "complete support" for the people of Sudan and their army in the political transition to follow the ouster of Bashir.

Cairo voiced its full belief in "the ability of the brotherly Sudanese people and their loyal national army to overcome the challenges of this critical stage... in order to achieve stability, prosperity and development," a Foreign Ministry statement said, stressing that Egypt respects Sudan's sovereignty and its national decisions.

Sudan has been struggling with protests since December 17, when an anti-government campaign erupted over price hikes and shortages of food and fuel. That initial public display of anger quickly spiraled into calls for the 75-year-old Bashir to resign.

The embattled president declared a state of emergency, dissolved the central government, and replaced state governors with security officials, but the protests did not stop.

In January, Bashir lamented that he had fallen for advice from unknown parties to normalize ties with Israel in order to ensure stability in his country, but had seen the situation spiral out of hand.

Last month, London-based Middle East Eye reported that the head of Mossad had met with his Sudanese counterpart in Germany as part of a secret plan by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to oust Bashir.

Iran: Sudan's developments internal affair of country

Meanwhile, Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday that the Islamic Republic's principled position toward developments in Sudan was not to interfere in other countries' internal affairs.

Bahram Qassemi emphasized that what is going on in Sudan is an internal affair of that country.

"Iran has always sought and will always seek stability and security of Muslim countries and we hope all Sudanese sides would pursue their demands while exercising self-restraint and taking advantage of the policy of interaction and dialogue through peaceful means," Qassemi noted.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman also expressed hope that calm and stability would soon return to the African country.

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Castro: Cuba won't abandon Venezuela despite US blackmail

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 09:50AM

Cuban Communist Party leader Raul Castro says his country will never cease supporting its ally Venezuela under pressure by the United States, which has threatened Havana with more sanctions over its support of the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The 87-year-old former president of Cuba made the remarks during a speech at the National Assembly of People's Power, the country's parliament, on Wednesday, adding that the island nation had been boosting its defense preparedness in recent months in view of heightened US hostility.

"We will never abandon our duty of acting in solidarity with Venezuela," Castro said. "We reject strongly all types of blackmail," he said at the parliament, where legislators had convened to enact the new Cuban constitution.

"The Venezuelan and Chavista government is writing admirable pages of resistance," he said.

Venezuela has been in political turmoil since US-backed opposition figure Juan Guaido declared himself "interim president" late in January.

The administration of US President Donald Trump, which immediately recognized Guaido's self-proclamation, has repeatedly threatened to use military force to topple Maduro's government. Washington has also been using economic pressure to topple Maduro. It has confiscated Venezuela's US-based oil assets in an attempt to channel revenue from them to Guaido.

Additionally, Washington has been encouraging other countries to impose sanctions on Maduro's administration and ease penalties on the Venezuelan officials who recognize Guaido.

Elsewhere in his comments, Castro told lawmakers that Havana had also been adopting its own economic measures to contend with Washington's tightening of the decades-old US trade embargo against Cuba.

'Cuba is not afraid!'

Separately on Wednesday, US Vice President Mike Pence told the United Nations Security Council that Washington would announce further action against Havana over its support for Maduro. The White House has accused Cuban security and intelligence officials of propping up Maduro's government, an allegation Havana denies.

"Cuba is being blamed for all evils, using lies and the worst kind of Hitlerian propaganda," Castro further said. "We have told the US administration Cuba is not afraid and will continue building the future of the nation without outside interference."

On April 4, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the White House had extended by two weeks a ban on US lawsuits against foreign firms conducting business in Cuba, without giving a reason for the move. It was seen, however, as an attempt to punish Havana over its support for Caracas.

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Sudan's Omar al-Bashir steps down: Minister

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 06:45AM

A Sudanese government source says President Omar al-Bashir has stepped down and that consultations are underway to form a transitional council.

Adel Mahjoub Hussein, the Sudanese minister of production and economic resources in North Darfur, told the Dubai-based al-Hadath TV on Thursday that, "There are consultations to form a military council to take over power after President Bashir stepped down."

The announcement brought thousands of Sudanese to the center of the capital, Khartoum, cheering in jubilation and chanting anti-Bashir slogans.

Organizers had also arranged for protesters to gather outside the Defense Ministry, where people chanted, "It has fallen, we won," in an apparent reference to Bashir's government.

Reports said that Bashir was at the presidential residence and under "heavy guard."

Military to make 'important' statement soon

Sudan's military has said it will make an "important" statement soon. Troops are deployed to key roads and bridges in Khartoum, amid speculation that a coup attempt could be underway against the embattled president after months of anti-government protests across the Northeast African country.

"The armed forces will present an important statement shortly. Be ready for it," a short notice on state television read, without giving further details.

Soldiers raid offices of Bashir-linked group

In a separate development on Thursday, a team of Sudanese soldiers purportedly raided the offices of a group linked to Bashir's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Khartoum. The soldiers raided the offices of the Islamic Movement, the ideological wing of the NCP, on Thursday morning, according to witnesses speaking to AFP.

Sudan has been struggling with protests since December 17 last year, when an anti-government campaign erupted over price hikes and shortages of food and fuel. That initial public display of anger quickly spiraled into calls for the 75-year-old Bashir to resign.

The embattled president declared a state of emergency, dissolved the central government, and replaced state governors with security officials. But the protests did not stop.

Opposition figures have urged the military to help negotiate an end to Bashir's nearly 30-year rule and a transition to democracy.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over his alleged role in genocide in the Darfur region. He denies having had a role.

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Venezuela slams US for urging UN to recognize Guaido as new president

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 02:26AM

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has denounced as "arrogant" US Vice President Mike Pence for calling on the UN Security Council to recognize opposition leader Juan Guaido as the new president of the Latin American state.

In a televised speech on Wednesday, Maduro said Pence made "a fool of himself at the UN Security Council" by making such a move.

"I cannot understand his arrogance and self-importance, his racial supremacism," Maduro said.

During an emergency Security Council meeting on Wednesday, Pence said Washington was preparing a resolution to legitimize Guaido.

"The time has come for the United Nations to recognize interim president Juan Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela and seat his representative in this body," Pence told the council, adding that he had drafted a resolution on Venezuela.

Pence also announced that the US government will provide other $60mn in humanitarian aid to Venezuela.

The remarks drew reaction from Russia's UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia, who accused Washington of provoking an artificial crisis in Venezuela to overthrow its legitimately elected leader and replace him with a US pawn.

The US vice president's comments came as the administration of President Donald Trump and Congress are working to increase pressure on the government of Maduro by introducing new sanctions and enticing Venezuelan officials to defect to the opposition figure.

Larry Kudlow, the top White House economic adviser, claimed at a press conference last week that the US would pump dollars into the Venezuelan economy once it "gets rid of" Maduro.

Kudlow said Washington was already working with banks and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a plan to improve Venezuela's economy.

"We call it Day Two. It would be a rescue plan, it would be a restructuring plan, it would be a plan to put cash into the country," he said at the briefing, which was arranged by The Christian Science Monitor.

Venezuela has been in political chaos since Guaido declared himself "interim president" in late January. He has received backing and encouragement from the US government along the way.

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Afghan Government Says Talks With Taliban Delayed Until April 19

By RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan April 11, 2019

The Afghan government says talks with the Taliban that were meant to start on April 14 in Qatar have been rescheduled to begin five days later.

Abdul Hadi Arghandewal, a member of the Afghan leadership council for reconciliation, said more discussions on the Afghan negotiation team were needed -- pushing the start of the talks in Doha back to April 19.

The planned meeting has been seen as a significant step toward finding an end to Afghanistan's long war and allowing the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country.

Government envoys are participating in talks as part of a larger group of prominent Afghans.

The Taliban says it will speak with government representatives but recognize them only as "ordinary" Afghans.

Arghandewal said the council will announce the members of the Afghan negotiating team in the next three to four days.

Taliban officials have confirmed they are aware of the delay but did not provide more details.

With reporting by AP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghan- government-says-talks-with-taliban-delayed- until-april-19/29874168.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.

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Democrats Furious At Attorney General's 'Spying' Claim About Russia Probe

By RFE/RL April 11, 2019

Democratic lawmakers have questioned U.S. Attorney General William Barr's independence from President Donald Trump, saying his support for Trump's remarks about "spying" during the 2016 presidential election campaign undermine his position.

In testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 10, Barr said he thought U.S. intelligence agencies conducted "spying" operations against Trump's 2016 election campaign team.

"I think spying did occur," Barr told Congress, without presenting evidence.

In later testimony, Barr appeared to backtrack -- saying he wasn't certain that any wrongdoing occurred and was only interested in ensuring proper procedures were followed.

"The question is whether it was adequately predicated, and I am not suggesting that it wasn't adequately predicated," he said.

Barr's appearance before the committee was his second in Congress since Special Counsel Robert Mueller completed his report on March 22 about Russian interference in the U.S. election.

Barr has not yet released the nearly 400-page report, but he has summarized the findings in a four-page letter to Congress that was made public on March 24.

Democrats have said his summary is not enough. They have expressed concerns that Barr, recently appointed by Trump, is attempting to cover up negative findings about the president.

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the Associated Press after Barr's testimony she was "very concerned" about his handling of Mueller's report.

She also accused Barr of doing Trump's political bidding in his testimony at the April 10 Senate hearing.

"He is not the attorney general of Donald Trump. He is the attorney general of the United States," Pelosi said. "I don't trust Barr. I trust Mueller."

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called on Barr to either produce evidence to back up his "spying" claim or retract his testimony.

"AG Barr admitted he had no evidence to support his claim that spying on the Trump campaign 'did occur,'" Schumer said in a Twitter post.

"AG Barr must retract his statement immediately or produce specific evidence to back it up," Schumer added. "Perpetuating conspiracy theories is beneath the office of the Attorney General."

Democratic House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Fox News that Barr's loyalties had been compromised.

"He is acting as an employee of the president," Hoyer said. "I believe the attorney general believes he needs to protect the president of the United States."

Trump, who has previously raised the spying allegation without presenting any evidence, said on April 10 that the investigation into possible links between his campaign team and Russia was an "attempted coup," and "an attempted takedown of a president."

"What they did was treason, what they did was terrible, what they did was against our constitution," Trump said without specifying who he was accusing of treason.

Barr has said that Mueller's full report on his investigation, minus some redactions, will be presented to Congress next week.

Pressure is now mounting on the attorney general ahead of his release of a version of Mueller's report.

In her remarks to the Associated Press, Pelosi amplified demands from lawmakers to see the full document, adding that it was only a "matter of time" before the full report is made public.

"We will see it," she said.

With reporting by Mark Najarian in Washington, AP, Reuters, Fox News, The New York Times, and CNN

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/democrats-furious -at-attorney-general-s-spying-claim- about-russia-probe/29874125.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.

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Turkey Condemns French, Italian Recognition Of Armenian Genocide

April 11, 2019

Turkey has strongly condemned separate moves by France and Italy to officially recognize the mass killings of Armenians at the beginning of the 20th century as genocide.

French President Emmanuel Macron on April 10 signed a decision which he announced first in February setting April 24 as a day of annual commemoration.

Macron's move marked the fulfillment of a 2017 presidential campaign promise.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in an April 11 statement that Macron had used this promise to win Armenian votes during elections.

"It is inevitable that France's attitude, which is far from amicable, will impact its relations with Turkey in a negative way," the statement said.

France, which is home to an estimated 500,000 ethnic Armenians, officially recognized the World War I-era mass slaughter and deportation of up to 1.5 million Armenians as genocide in 2001.

At least 22 other countries, including Germany, have taken a similar step.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during that period, but contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematically orchestrated and constitute a genocide.

On April 10, Italy's lower house of parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, also adopted a motion to officially recognize the killings as genocide.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry condemned Italy's move, too.

"It is not surprising that this motion was drafted by the Lega [Nord] Party, led by Matteo Salvini, who is committed to sabotaging relations between Turkey and Italy," the statement said.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/turkey- condemns-french-italian-recognition-of -armenian-genocide/29875300.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.

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Sudan Defense Minister: Longtime Leader Detained, Army Seizes Power

April 11, 2019

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has been ousted and arrested following nearly four months of protests against his 30-year rule, the defense minister says.

Speaking on state television on April 11, Awad Ibn Ouf said that Bashir had been detained "in a safe place" and that a military council will oversee a two-year transitional period followed by elections.

The announcement came as tens of thousands of people marched through the capital, Khartoum, some shouting that the "regime has fallen."

Reports said that troops had deployed at key sites in the city, and raided Bashir's Islamic movement, which is linked to the ruling party.

Protests against Bashir, who took power in a coup in 1989, have been under way since December.

They were originally sparked by price hikes and cash shortages, but they quickly turned into rallies against Bashir's rule.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for calm in Sudan and expressed hope that "whatever the outcome, Russian-Sudanese relations" will be a priority for Khartoum.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said in January that "representatives of Russian private security companies, who have nothing to do with Russian state bodies, are operating" in the African country.

The "task" of the private security firms "is limited to training staff for the military and law enforcement agencies of the Republic of Sudan," said ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.

She made the comments after a story in the British press alleged that Russian mercenaries were helping Sudanese authorities crack down on the country's mass street demonstrations.

Based on reporting by the BBC, Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/turkey- condemns-french-italian-recognition-of -armenian-genocide/29875300.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.

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Armenian Court Keeps Ex-President Kocharian In Pretrial Detention

By RFE/RL's Armenian Service April 11, 2019

YEREVAN -- An Armenian court has rejected an appeal by former President Robert Kocharian to end his pretrial detention.

Kocharian was arrested in December, more than four months after being charged with overthrowing the constitutional order during the final weeks of his decade-long rule that ended in April 2008.

He has dismissed the accusations as politically motivated.

A Yerevan court last month granted a request by the Special Investigative Service (SIS) to extend by two months Kocharian's pretrial detention.

The ex-president is accused of ordering security forces to use force against opposition supporters who protested against alleged fraud in a disputed presidential election in February 2008.

Eight protesters and two police officers were killed when security forces quelled the two days of protests that began on March 1, 2008. The crackdown came after Kocharian declared a three-week state of emergency.

Kocharian says the accusations are part of incumbent Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian's political "vendetta" against him.

Pashinian played a key role in the 2008 protests and spent nearly two years in prison because of that.

He has strongly defended the criminal case against Kocharian and denied orchestrating it.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/armenian- court-keeps-ex-president-kocharian-in- pretrial-detention/29874704.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.

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Sudanese Army Arrests President Al-Bashir

Saudi Press Agency

Thursday 1440/8/6 - 2019/04/11

Khartoum, April 11, 2019, SPA -- Sudanese Defense Minister Awad bin Auf announced today, on Sudan government-run TV, the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir, who is also Chairman of the ruling Sudanese National Congress Party (NCP), under custody in a safe place, declaring the start of a two-year transitional power period under a military council under his own leadership.

In a statement issued here, he called for the release of all political prisoners throughout the country, declaring a three-month state of emergency and suspension of the constitution.

He also dissolved the presidential institution, parliament, states' council and cabinet, reassuring the states of the world that Sudan abides by international agreements.

--SPA

17:07 LOCAL TIME 14:07 GMT

0016

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Sudan Transition Underway

Press Statement

Morgan Ortagus

Department Spokesperson

Washington, DC

April 11, 2019

The United States is closely monitoring the situation unfolding in Khartoum. The recent demonstrations clearly articulated the will of the Sudanese people to end Omar al Bashir's rule. We commend the Sudanese people for maintaining peaceful demonstrations since December 2018. Sudan has the opportunity to set itself on a new path  one that must include legitimate democratic elections, respect for human rights, and a civilian-led government.

The United States strongly supports a peaceful and democratic Sudan. We call on the transitional government to follow the will of the people, work in an inclusive way with all representative parties, and commit to a speedy handover to civilian rule.

We condemn the abuse of force by security services that has resulted in the death of more than 20 civilians. We call on all armed parties to show restraint, avoid conflict, and remain committed to the protection of the Sudanese people.

The U.S. government in the coming days will discuss the situation with government officials and a range of Sudanese stakeholders to encourage a democratic transition. In the interim, we have suspended further Joint Review Committee discussions on Phase II, a process designed to expand bilateral ties with Sudan in six key areas: severing ties with North Korea, expanding counterterrorism cooperation, resolving internal conflicts, expanding humanitarian access, protecting human rights, and addressing outstanding legal claims related to victims of terrorism. These talks were scheduled for the last week of April.

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Statement of Treasury Secretary Mnuchin Following Fifth Finance Ministers' Meeting on Venezuela

U.S. Department of the Treasury

April 11, 2019

Washington  U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin issued the following statement following the fifth finance ministers' meeting on Venezuela:

"I welcomed Finance Ministers to the Treasury Department today to discuss Venezuela's dire economic and humanitarian situation. This was the fifth such meeting, and the first since more than 50 countries recognized Interim President Juan Guaido as Venezuela's legitimate Interim President. Participants in the meeting included officials from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Guyana, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Panama, Portugal, Peru, Spain, and the UK.

"Previously, Finance Ministers have examined the involvement of Maduro regime insiders in diverting funds from the subsidized food program, and the regime's use of illegal gold mining to help Maduro maintain power. Today, the Ministers reviewed steps taken since January to increase financial pressure on the Maduro regime and additional steps to support the democratically elected National Assembly and Interim President Guaido.

"The Ministers then discussed plans for future economic support of Venezuela. We welcomed to this discussion Dr. Ricardo Hausmann, whom Interim President Guaido has designated as coordinator of his economic advisors. The Ministers considered Interim President Guaido's economic policy vision to stabilize Venezuela's financial system, root out public corruption, and spur economic growth.



"The Ministers also agreed to support robust engagement by the international financial institutions to assist Interim President Guaido's government as it prepares for new elections. The Ministers acknowledged that there may be a long and costly process of rebuilding Venezuela after many years of poor economic policies and kleptocracy.

"The Ministers discussed that very significant trade finance is needed to restart Venezuela's private sector. We are committed to work with partners to prepare these mechanisms and we are prepared to work with Venezuela to provide technical assistance and capacity building.

"The Ministers agreed to monitor developments in Venezuela closely. We will continue to support Venezuela in its transition to a legitimate government as soon as possible to meet the people's aspirations for a better life and democratic future."

####

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Women must be at 'centre of peacekeeping decision-making', UN chief tells Security Council

11 April 2019 - Women's rights, voices and participation must be at "the centre of peacekeeping decision-making", United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council on Thursday, describing them as "central to sustainable solutions" to challenges facing the Organization worldwide.

Through its landmark resolution 1325 on women and peace and security, the Council reaffirmed the participation and involvement of women, which the UN chief hailed as "a key element in the maintenance of international peace and security". He also noted the UN's "essential system-wide effort" to enhance women's representation at all levels and in all arenas, through his Strategy on Gender Parity.

"This is not just a question of numbers, but also of our effectiveness in fulfilling our mandates", he stated, citing evidence that more women peacekeepers lead to more credible protection responses that meet the needs of all.

In patrol units women can better access intelligence to provide a holistic view of security challenges, and at checkpoints they promote a less confrontational atmosphere, he said.

Within troop contingents they lower incidences of sexual exploitation and abuse; yield greater reporting of sexual and gender-based violence; and can access local women's networks, leading to more inclusive peace processes.

'Step towards parity'

The Secretary-General thanked the more than 150 Member States who have signed on to his Action for Peacekeeping (A4P) initiative, which calls for women's participation in every stage of peace operations, and integrates a gender perspective into all analysis, planning, implementation and reporting.

And he was grateful to the States who, at last week's Ministerial on Peacekeeping, launched the Elsie Initiative to break down barriers to increasing women's participation in peace operations.

In support of the UN's commitments in these areas, Mr. Guterres noted a range of actions, including the Gender-Responsive Peacekeeping Operations Policy, which "commits us to promoting leadership and accountability both for gender equality and for the women, peace and security agenda".

Flagging that since December 2015, the number of women in uniform has increased by only around one per cent, he spelled out that "this is clearly not enough".

"This year", he informed the Chamber, "we rolled out the Uniformed Gender Parity Strategy", which, among other things, targets by 2028 a range of 15 to 35 per cent of women's representation, including military, police and justice and corrections personnel.

While acknowledging that it "has been more challenging", Mr. Guterres vowed "to press ahead", adding that "keep on track, we need assistance from you, the Member States".

He asked for a greater focus on women in battalions and formed police units and for the sustained recruitment and deployment of women within national services.

Noting that for the first time in UN history the senior leadership is close to achieving gender parity, Mr. Guterres reiterated his commitment to sustaining that progress: "We need to bring the same spirit to our peace operations", he stressed. "This is crucial for our effectiveness, credibility and reputation".

'Pushing gender equality'

The first female Force Commander and current Head of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) mission, Major General Kristin Lund told the Council that the "momentum of pushing gender equality must be kept".

As Force Commander of the UN mission in Cyprus, she teamed up with Lisa Buttenheim, the Special Representative at the time. "For once I did not need to convince my boss that gender was important" she said. "Both of us had gender equality in our spine".

The Major General enumerated some examples of her work in increasing the number of women, helping them in missions and reaching out to local communities.

Noting many reasons why the armed forces have a difficulty keeping women in the ranks, she outlined frequent obstacles thrown up by male culture in military settings, giving the example of how "posters with half naked women" hang in mission gyms.

"How many women do gym in bikinis?" Ms. Lund asked rhetorically, saying that under her command in Cyprus "womanized posters vanished".

She also mandated that the all-male teams in military skills competitions had to have females.

"Gender is on the top of my agenda", she said, adding that she initiated a female military network, engaged women to become more visible and increased the number of female observers.

Troop and police contributing countries "must do more" she said.

"We, out in the field, need to be able to reach out to the whole society. Only you can make that happen", the Force Commander concluded.

Diversity is a strength

Chairing the meeting, German Federal Minister of Defense, Ursula von der Leyen said: "Women are no better peacekeepers than men, but they are different. And this diversity is a strength".

Pointing out that Resolution 1325 has been in effect for almost 20 years, she maintained that it is "still far from full, effective and meaningful participation of women in peace operations".

To change that, Ms. von der Leyen suggested, among other things, to have successful female mentors to share their stories to younger women; have more women in national forces for deployment to international peacekeeping missions; and assess national barriers that keeps more women from joining peace operations.

"The peacekeeper's blue helmet symbolizes protection and security", she said. "Let us make this helmet be worn by more women. For the sake of peace".

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One of the sellers in that deal was Byron Trotts BDT Capital Partners, which bought an undisclosed stake in Lou Malnatis in 2016. The equity investment was expected to enable Lou Malnatis to expand into other parts of the U.S.including the Phoenix area, where the company now has three restaurants.
Sudan's Omar al-Bashir Ousted by Military

By VOA News April 11, 2019

The longtime president of Sudan, Omar al-Bashir, was ousted by the military Thursday after four months of mounting demonstrations against his rule.

Speaking on national television, Sudan's defense minister, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf, announced what he called "the toppling of the regime." He said al-Bashir had been arrested and was in a safe place.

The defense minister said a transitional military council will run the government for the next two years. He also declared a three-month state of emergency, the suspension of the constitution and the dissolution of parliament.

Earlier, a Sudanese military source told VOA that al-Bashir, 75, had been put under house arrest.

Tens of thousands of people poured into the streets of Khartoum on Thursday to celebrate the president's ouster, dancing and chanting anti-Bashir slogans. Later in the day, some protesters denounced the army statement and said they rejected the idea of a military-led ruling council.

Sudan's powerful National Security and Intelligence Service said it would release all political detainees throughout the country, according to a report on state media. Witnesses, however, said protesters attacked intelligence buildings in two eastern cities, Port Sudan and Kasala, because releases failed to materialize.

The U.S. State Department said Washington "strongly supports a peaceful and democratic Sudan." In a statement released Thursday, it called on "the transitional government to follow the will of the people, work in an inclusive way with all representative parties, and commit to a speedy handover to civilian rule."

The U.S. Embassy has advised Americans in Sudan to avoid areas of demonstrations.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Thursday that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expected "the democratic aspiration of the Sudanese people will be realized through an appropriate and inclusive transition process.''

The protests began Dec. 19, with demonstrators accusing al-Bashir's government of economic mismanagement that has sparked skyrocketing food prices, and fuel and foreign currency shortages.

Al-Bashir, who came to power in an Islamist coup in 1989, imposed a nationwide state of emergency Feb. 22 in an attempt to suppress the protests after an initial crackdown failed. The government said weeks ago that 31 people had been killed, but the group Physicians for Human Rights estimates the death toll is at least 60.

Pressure on al-Bashir mounted this week as tens of thousands of protesters held a five-day sit-in outside army headquarters in Khartoum. On Tuesday, soldiers protected the crowd from riot police, a signal that the army did not support al-Bashir.

Al-Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in connection with atrocities in the western region of Darfur.

I

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Sudan Military's Post-Bashir Plan Gets Rocky Reception

By VOA News April 11, 2019

A plan by Sudan's military to take over the country's government is getting a cold reception from protesters and the international community, who want to see the African nation take steps toward democracy.

Sudan's defense minister announced the takeover on state television Thursday, after the army ousted the country's longtime president, Omar al-Bashir, following months of demonstrations against his 30-year iron-fisted rule.

Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf said a transitional military council will run the government for the next two years. He declared a three-month state of emergency, the suspension of the constitution and the dissolution of parliament.

Earlier, a Sudanese military source told VOA that al-Bashir, 75, has been put under house arrest.

Protesters want civilians in charge

Many protesters, initially excited by the fall of al-Bashir, became angry when they realized Sudan would be under military rule. New demonstrations broke out Thursday afternoon in the capital, Khartoum.

One protester, Suha Ahmed, said Bashir opponents will not accept two more years of military rule. "After 30 years of the rule, we'll still be at a sit-in, until our demands are responded to with a transitional civil government, for a free, democratic, stable Sudan," she told VOA.

"The army announcement was disappointing," said another protester, Mohamed Ali. "Because it didn't fulfill all missions of the revolution, I ask protestors to sit-in in front of army headquarters till the achievement of Sudan's revolution," he said.

Protester Mutaz Mohamed noted that Defense Minister Ibn Auf, like al-Bashir, has been accused of war crimes in Sudan's Darfur region.

"Ibn Awf is wanted by the ICC [International Criminal Court]. How come you replaced a wanted one with another wanted one?" he asked.

The Sudan Professionals Association was one of the key organizers of the recent anti-Bashir protests. Spokeswoman Sarah Abdeljalil, who is based in the United Kingdom, says the SPA is not optimistic about Thursday's events.

"We don't think that anything has happened that is positive," she told VOA. "It's a regression rather than progression. It's a coup. We have never supported a coup. We were very clear in our statement for the last three to four days that we would never support a coup. We will support a military council that will work in parallel to the civil government in the transitional period."

International disapproval

In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, said "the military takeover is not the appropriate response to the challenges facing Sudan." He urged all parties to remain calm and exercise restraint.

The United Nations Security Council is due to hold closed-door talks about the Sudan situation on Friday. Britain's deputy ambassador to the U.N., Jonathan Allen, condemned the military's transition plan as inadequate.

"We need to see much faster transition. We need to see civilian rule now. That's what the protesters have been calling for and that is what we need to do," Allen told reporters.

Professor Hassan Hajji, a political science lecturer at the University of Khartoum, said Sudan's next rulers will face some major challenges.

"First we have the economy which has deteriorated in the last year or so. This is the main concern now for most of the Sudanese people, how to meet their minimum needs for the families," said Hajji. "The other challenge is ... how to bring the military groups in Darfur and in the Nuba Mountains and in the Southern Blue Nile to the peace process. How to maintain peace in Sudan is also another challenge for the coming military rule."

Hajji said he doubts the now ex-president will be sent to the ICC for trial.

"In Sudan, a large number of people, they want other ways of settling the grievances that took place in the previous era," he told VOA. "Some people are suggesting that we should follow South Africa's path or the Moroccan, or perhaps Truth and Justice [Commission], where people will try to solve this by traditional Sudanese and African means."

Naba Mohideen contributed to this report from Khartoum; Margaret Besheer from New York and Salem Solomon from Washington.

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Awad al-Karim Ahmad Muhammad Ibn Auf

Sudans Defence Minister, Lt Gen Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, who was sworn-in as interim president of Sudan and head of the military transitional council, announced that he had steppped down after little more than a day in office. His successor, Lt Gen Abdelfattah Burhan, Inspector-General of the Armed Forces, was sworn-in as new interim president on the evening of Friday 12 April 2019.

Lt. Gen. Awad al-Karim Ahmad Muhammad Ibn Auf [aka Ibnouf], Minister of Defense of Sudan, was once characterized as a "younger, more radical version" of Al-Bashir. AUF, Awad Ibn (a.k.a. AUF, Awad Muhammad Ibn; a.k.a. AUF, Mohammed Ahmed Awad Ibn; a.k.a. AWF, Awad Ahmad Ibn; a.k.a. AWF, Awad Ibn; a.k.a. NAUF, Awad Mohammed Ahmed Ebni; a.k.a. OAF, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn; a.k.a. OUF, Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn); DOB circa 1954; nationality Sudan.

On 23 August 2015, he was appointed as Defense Minister. Ibn Auf was appointed as vice president 23 February 2019 by the long-time ruler, while also retaining his defense portfolio. Protests against al-Bashir, who took power in 1989 and is wanted by the International Criminal Court, erupted in December over rising food prices. They quickly evolved into demands for the 75-year-old's departure.

At 1:45 pm 11 April 2019, General Awad Ibn Auf announced the takeover of the Government by a military council. He announced three months of state of emergency, a curfew from 10 pm to 3 am, and closure of the airport and all land borders for a 24 hour period. According to reports in Arabic-language media, about 100 officials have been detained by the military, while Bashir has been put under house arrest.

Awad ibn Auf was sworn in as chairman of the new Military Transitional Council following the overthrow of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Ibn Auf took the constitutional oath in the capital Khartoum in a ceremony presided over by Chief Justice Abdul Majid Idris which was broadcast live on state television. Kamal Abdul-Marouf Al-Mahi, chairman of the Joint Staff Command, was sworn in as deputy chairman of the council.

But protesters were unsatisfied by the move, with some reportedly chanting, The first one fell, the second one will, too. The Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) restated its demand for power to be handed immediately to "a transitional civilian government". The SPA, which had spearheaded months-long anti-government protests, said "What happened was that the masks merely changed, it is the same regime that the people revolted against, seeking to remove it from its roots... We are still in the path of true revolution our martyrs have shed their blood in pursuit for freedom and justice".

The Alliance for Freedom and Change, one of the groups involved in organising the anti-Bashir protests, accused Ibn Auf of engineering a "coup" and "bringing back the same faces and the same institutions which our people rose against". Hajouj Kouka, a member of the anti-government Girifna resistance movement, said Ibn Auf's announcement was a "slap in the face". Kouka said: "The three-month state of emergency and two years transition is not what we were fighting for. This [Ibn Auf] is exactly who we are fighting, he was the vice president under Bashir and he is the system we were fighting."

The opposition Sudanese Communist Party slammed Ibn Auf's statement on the changes in the country's government, labeling them as a military coup and calling on the people to continue rallying until their demands are met. "This statement amounts to a state coup We stand against military coups, and we demand those who led the coup to transfer power to the [opposition] forces of the [Alliance for] Freedom and Change. We call on the people to continue rallies in all the Sudanese cities until their demands are met", the party's political bureau wrote.

Russia will continue its cooperation with Sudan no matter which party assumes control of the African country, Leonid Slutsky, the head of the Russian lower house's International Affairs Committee, told reporters 11 April 2019. "Whoever comes to power in Sudan, they will undoubtedly seek cooperation with Russia. I am confident that we will maintain relations with this country in the most active way", the lawmaker said.

The United States on 11 April 209 urged Sudans army to bring civilians into government after ousting veteran leader Omar al-Bashir, saying an announced two-year timeline was too long. The United States calls on transitional authorities to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters. The Sudanese people should determine who leads them and their future and the Sudanese people have been clear and are demanding a civilian-led transition, he said. The United States position is the Sudanese people should be allowed to do so sooner than two years from now, he said.

The solution to Sudans crisis will come from protesters and not the military, the head of the political committee of the transitional Military Council that overthrew President Omar al-Bashir said on 12April 2019. In a press conference, Lieutenant General Omar Zeinalabdin, the head of the political committee of the transitional Military Council said: "We are the protectors of the demands of the people and that is by consensus from the political entities." He added: "We are not greedy for power." He said the Military Council plans to hold a dialogue with the protesters who have been camped out outside the ministry of defense. But the military council warned it would tolerate no breaches of security after protesters defied a night-time curfew to keep up a sit-in demanding immediate civilian rule.

Ibn Awf was born in a village in the village of Qari north of the capital Khartoum. He joined the military college to graduate as a lieutenant in the 23rd batch. He received military training in Egypt, worked with artillery and worked as a teacher at the College of Command and Staff.

Ibn Auf was a member of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) and a companion of Bashir's path before his overthrow. Loyal to the Islamic movement, he was close to the 1989 coup against al-Sadiq al-Mahdi's government , which allowed him to rise and step in military posts to serve as director of the security apparatus and director of the military intelligence.

In 2005, a UN fact-finding mission on the situation in Darfur concluded that Awad bin Auf was among those responsible for the deteriorating situation there. UN reports revealed that he was a link between the Sudanese government and the Janjaweed during the war in Darfur.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury 29 May 2007 blocked the assets of three Sudanese individuals, including two high-ranking government officials and a rebel leader, for their roles in fomenting violence and human rights abuses in Darfur. Ahmad Muhammed Harun, Sudan's State Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, was accused of war crimes in Darfur by the International Criminal Court in the The Hague.

Sudan's head of Military Intelligence and Security, Awad Ibn Auf, was also designated, along with Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a rebel group that had refused to sign the Darfur Peace Agreement.

Harun and Auf are among Khartoum's senior leadership and had acted as liaisons between the Sudanese government and the Government-supported Janjaweed militias, which have attacked and brutalized innocent civilians in the region. The two individuals also provided the Janjaweed with logistical support and directed attacks. Hundreds of thousands of people had been killed and more than 2.5 million people had been displaced by violence and war since 2003.

Auf was believed at that time to be the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Sudanese Armed Forces. Formerly, Auf was Sudan's head of Military Intelligence and Security and has acted as liaison between the Sudanese government and the Government-supported Janjaweed militias, which have attacked and brutalized innocent civilians in the Darfur region. He has also provided logistical support for the Janjaweed and directed attacks.

In late 2008 plotting and deal-making within the National Congress Party (NCP) for a transition of President Omar al-Bashir from power had intensified but hit a predictable snag on the key issues of sequencing and personalities. There seems to be consensus within the regime that Al-Bashir "should go soon, preferably before an ICC arrest warrant is issued," to a gilded exile in Saudi Arabia from where, presumably, he could not be extradited to The Hague. The search focused on identifying an acceptable army general who would be agreeable to the different factions within the Islamist elite. Some saw the most likely military candidate SAF Deputy Chief of Staff General Adad Auf, but that "this would be much worse" than President Bashir due to Auf's well-known hardline tendencies.

Following his retirement from the army in 2010, as part of an institutional shake-up, Ibn Auf took a diplomatic role at the ministry of foreign affairs. Because of his role in improving Sudanese-Eritrean relations after he chaired the security committee for negotiations between the two countries, Ibn Awaf was chosen to assume the position of Director of Crisis Management at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was awarded the title of Ambassador after retiring from the army. He spent time in diplomatic posts in Egypt and Oman. He was appointed Consul General of Sudan in Cairo and then Ambassador to the Sultanate of Oman.

He returned to the heart of the Khartoum political establishment in 2015. He took the post of Minister of National Defense in 2015, by a presidential decree issued by Bashir, after the presidential elections that year, which was won by Bashir. During his tenure as Minister of Defense, he worked to strengthen the arming of the Sudanese army with modern weapons and quality, and was known for his support for the participation of his forces in the coalition led by the Saudi-UAE alliance in Yemen.

Regard to the stalemate in Yemen, he is known for his defense of the participation of Sudanese forces in Yemen, stressing on several occasions Khartoum's insistence on the survival of its soldiers in Yemen within the coalition of support for legitimacy in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia. He told a news conference in 2018 that the Sudanese armed forces' participation in Yemen was "a moral duty and obligation".

Just days before the overthrow of Bashir, the Minister of Defense had a striking statement in which he stressed that the armed forces are the safety valve of the country, and will not overstate its security, unity and leadership. Sudan will be a trust in the armed forces and its history will not forgive its leaders.

During his meeting with the leaders of the armed forces, Ben Awf said that there are parties that are trying to exploit the current situation to create a rift in the armed forces and to cause strife between the components of the security system in the country, stressing that this will not be allowed, no matter what the sacrifice. He stressed in these statements that the armed forces are not against the aspirations of citizens, but will not allow the country to slide into chaos, and will not tolerate any manifestation of security chaos.

Representative Eliot L. Engel, Chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, made the following statement 11 April 2019 regarding the coup in Sudan: While Omar al-Bashir will no longer terrorize the people of Sudan, I am concerned that Awad Ibn Auf, part of Mr. Bashir's inner circle, has proclaimed himself the head of a two-year transitional military government. Surely the Sudanese government's numerous victims have not forgotten his role in gross human rights abuses, for which he was sanctioned by the United States in 2007. Moreover, Mr. Auf has stood at Mr. Bashir's side as the regime has detained and tortured thousands of peaceful protesters, and as its security forces have killed over 60 people since December 2018. I am deeply skeptical that Mr. Bashir's cronies can spearhead true political and economic reform and accountability for past human rights abuses."

Co-Chairs Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA), of the bipartisan Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, issued the following statement 11 April 2019 regarding the coup in Sudan: We welcome, with guarded optimism, the news that Sudanese President and longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir has been ousted and call for calm to prevail. We are nonetheless concerned by the statement by General Awad ibn Auf, who is subject to U.S. sanctions for his reported role in Darfur atrocities, that a two-year military government will be formed, the constitution suspended, and a three-month state of emergency declared, as this falls far short of the demands of the Sudanese people to chart a new, inclusive and democratic future."







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Two Romanian Cybercriminals Convicted of All 21 Counts Relating to Infecting Over 400,000 Victim Computers with Malware and Stealing Millions of Dollars

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, April 11, 2019



A federal jury today convicted two Bucharest, Romania, residents of 21 counts related to their scheme to infect victim computers with malware in order to steal credit card and other information to sell on dark market websites, mine cryptocurrency and engage in online auction fraud, announced Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department's Criminal Division and U.S. Attorney Justin E. Herdman of the Northern District of Ohio.

Bogdan Nicolescu, 36, and Radu Miclaus, 37, were convicted after a 12-day trial of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to traffic in counterfeit service marks, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit money laundering and 12 counts each of wire fraud. Sentencing has been set for Aug. 14, 2019 before Chief Judge Patricia A. Gaughan of the Northern District of Ohio.

According to testimony at trial and court documents, Nicolescu, Miclaus, and a co-conspirator who pleaded guilty, collectively operated a criminal conspiracy from Bucharest, Romania. It began in 2007 with the development of proprietary malware, which they disseminated through malicious emails purporting to be legitimate from such entities as Western Union, Norton AntiVirus and the IRS. When recipients clicked on an attached file, the malware was surreptitiously installed onto their computer.

This malware harvested email addresses from the infected computer, such as from contact lists or email accounts, and then sent malicious emails to these harvested email addresses. The defendants infected and controlled more than 400,000 individual computers, primarily in the United States.

Controlling these computers allowed the defendants to harvest personal information, such as credit card information, user names and passwords. They disabled victims' malware protection and blocked the victims' access to websites associated with law enforcement.

Controlling the computers also allowed the defendants to use the processing power of the computer to solve complex algorithms for the financial benefit of the group, a process known as cryptocurrency mining.

The defendants used stolen email credentials to copy a victim's email contacts. They also activated files that forced infected computers to register email accounts with AOL. The defendants registered more than 100,000 email accounts using this method. They then sent malicious emails from these addresses to the compromised contact lists. Through this method, they sent tens of millions of malicious emails.

When victims with infected computers visited websites such as Facebook, PayPal, eBay or others, the defendants would intercept the request and redirect the computer to a nearly identical website they had created. The defendants would then steal account credentials. They used the stolen credit card information to fund their criminal infrastructure, including renting server space, registering domain names using fictitious identities and paying for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) which further concealed their identities.

The defendants were also able to inject fake pages into legitimate websites, such as eBay, to make victims believe they were receiving and following instructions from legitimate websites, when they were actually following the instructions of the defendants.

They placed more than 1,000 fraudulent listings for automobiles, motorcycles and other high-priced goods on eBay and similar auction sites. Photos of the items were infected with malware, which redirected computers that clicked on the image to fictitious webpages designed by the defendants to resemble legitimate eBay pages.

These fictitious webpages prompted users to pay for their goods through a nonexistent "eBay Escrow Agent" who was simply a person hired by the defendants. Users paid for the goods to the fraudulent escrow agents, who in turn wired the money to others in Eastern Europe, who in turn gave it to the defendants. The payers/victims never received the items and never got their money back.

This resulted in a loss of millions of dollars.

The Bayrob group laundered this money by hiring "money transfer agents" and created fictitious companies with fraudulent websites designed to give the impression they were actual businesses engaged in legitimate financial transactions. Money stolen from victims was wired to these fraudulent companies and then in turn wired to Western Union or Money Gram offices in Romania. European "money mules" used fake identity documents to collect the money and deliver it to the defendants.

The FBI investigated the case, with assistance from the Romanian National Police. Senior Counsel Brian Levine of the Criminal Division's Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section (CCIPS) and Assistant U.S. Attorneys Duncan T. Brown and Brian McDonough of the Northern District of Ohio prosecuted the case. The Office of International Affairs also provided assistance in this case.

Topic(s):

Cyber Crime

Financial Fraud

Component(s):

Criminal Division

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

USAO - Ohio, Northern

Press Release Number: 19-372

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Treasury Sanctions Lebanese Money Launderer Kassem Chams Who Moves Money on Behalf of Narcotics Trafficking Organizations and Hizballah

April 11, 2019

Washington  Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) identified Lebanese national Kassem Chams and designated the Chams Money Laundering Organization as Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers (SDNT) pursuant to the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (Kingpin Act). OFAC also designated Chams Exchange, a money service business located in Chtaura, Lebanon.

OFAC also identified Kassem Chams and the Chams Money Laundering Organization as an affiliated network of Hizballah pursuant to the Hizballah International Financing Prevention Amendments Act (HIFPAA).

"Kassem Chams and his international money laundering network move tens of millions of dollars a month in illicit narcotics proceeds on behalf of drug kingpins and facilitate money movements for Hizballah. We are targeting the financial infrastructure of these narcotics traffickers as part of this administration's unprecedented campaign to prevent Hizballah and its global terror affiliates from profiting off violence, corruption, and the drug trade," said Sigal Mandelker, Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. "Treasury continues to aggressively use its tools to cut off global support networks used by Hizballah to finance its nefarious activities."

Lebanese narcotics money launderer Kassem Chams is the owner of Chams Exchange, which launders drug proceeds throughout the world on behalf of narcotics trafficking organizations and facilitates money movements for Hizballah. Chams moves money to and from Australia, Colombia, Italy, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Spain, Venezuela, France, Brazil, and the United States as part of his narcotics money laundering activities. The Chams Money Laundering organization moves tens of millions of dollars a month for designatednarcotics traffickers, such as the Colombian criminal group La Oficina De Envigado and Lebanese drug money launderer Ayman Said Joumaa. Joumaa was designated under the Kingpin Act in 2011 for laundering the proceeds of narcotics-related and other illicit activitiesas much as $200 million per monththrough various channels, including bulk cash smuggling operations and Lebanese money exchange houses. Joumaa's network is also linked to financing Hizballah. La Oficina de Envigado was designated under the Kingpin Act in 2014. Operatives for La Oficina play a major role in organized criminal activity, including narcotics trafficking, both within and outside of Colombia. Transnational criminal groups from outside of Colombia, including Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel, have come to rely upon operatives of La Oficina for support in trafficking narcotics throughout the world.

These OFAC sanctions are part of a joint effort with DEA's Project Cassandra, which targets Hizballah's global criminal support networks that operate as a logistics, procurement and financing arm for Hizballah and which are involved in the global movement of large quantities of narcotics and proceeds from narcotics sales. The DEA has determined that the Chams Money Laundering Organization launders a large portion of drug proceeds through Lebanon, which also benefits Hizballah.

The Chams Exchange operates under license and the supervision of the Central Bank of Lebanon (BdL) despite U.S authorities long suspecting it of being a significant third party money laundering operation. Treasury is committed to working with BdL to eliminate access to the Lebanese financial system by narcotics traffickers, money launderers, and terrorist groups such as Hizballah.

Today's OFAC designations were conducted in coordination with the DEA Special Operations Division's Counter Narco-Terrorism Operations Center, the DEA New Jersey Division, and the DEA Office of Global Enforcement, with assistance from the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

Today's actions are part of ongoing efforts under the Kingpin Act to apply financial measures against significant foreign narcotics traffickers and their financial associates worldwide. Since June 2000, more than 2,100 entities and individuals have been named pursuant to the Kingpin Act for their role in international narcotics trafficking. Penalties for violations of the Kingpin Act range from civil penalties of up to $1,466,485 per violation to more severe criminal penalties. Criminal penalties for corporate officers may include up to 30 years in prison and fines up to $5 million. Criminal fines for corporations may reach $10 million. Other individuals could face up to 10 years in prison and fines pursuant to Title 18 of the United States Code for criminal violations of the Kingpin Act.

The Treasury Department continues to prioritize disruption of the full range of Hizballah's illicit financial activity and has designated more than 40 Hizballah-affiliated individuals and entities since 2017.

As a result of today's actions, any assets of the designated individual or entities in the United States or in the possession or control of a U.S. person must be blocked and reported to OFAC. OFAC's regulations generally prohibit all dealings by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of blocked persons.

For identifying information on the individual and entities designated today, click here.

To view the Kingpin Act chart on individuals and entities designated today, click here.

For more information about the Kingpin Act, click here.

####

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April 11, 2019

News

By Jim Garamone

Defense.gov

Defense Leaders: Space Force Would Build, Accelerate American Space Capabilities

WASHINGTON -- A United States Space Force would build on and accelerate the advantage the U.S. Air Force has given the American military in space, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick M. Shanahan told the Senate Armed Services Committee today.

Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson; and Air Force Gen. John Hyten, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, joined Shanahan in testifying before the committee.

The United States is dominant in space now, but that margin could shrink, the defense officials said in their testimony. Establishing the U.S. Space Force will enable the Defense Department to gather up the disaggregated parts of the military space effort in one organization and change what has become a "slow, bureaucratic approach," Shanahan said.

Five Senate-confirmed DOD officials are now responsible for more than 10 organizations developing space capabilities, Shanahan pointed out. This system fails to integrate across the department and capture the cost synergies of standards, the secretary said.

Competitor Capabilities

The department needs to move fast, because potential adversaries are moving quickly, too, the chairman told the senators. "Last month, I testified before you that China and Russia had developed capabilities to contest our ability to operate in all domains," Dunford said. "This includes space, which is now a fully contested warfighting domain along with sea, air, land and cyberspace."

China and Russia have taken significant steps to challenge American dominance in space. They have reorganized their armed forces and developed robust space-based capabilities, included space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. "These steps provide the ability to more effectively target U.S. and allied forces," the chairman said. "China and Russia are also capable of searching, tracking and characterizing satellites in all Earth orbits in support of space and counter-space operations."

China and Russia recognize the benefits of space in the economic and military spheres, and they are adapting, Dunford said.

"Space is no longer a sanctuary," he added. "Traditionally, the Air Force has been the principal driver of our efforts in space,  and our capabilities in space are second to none. But our current organizational construct was built before space was a contested domain."

After looking at studies and trends, the chairman told the committee, he is convinced that there must be change to maintain the competitive edge.

"In the past, we have often affected change in the wake of failure," he said. "Today, we have an opportunity -- and I would argue, an imperative -- to change based on our ability to anticipate. We have an opportunity to look to the future and posture ourselves to seize and hold the high ground of space."

DOD is establishing U.S. Space Command for operational control, and the next step is establishing the U.S. Space Force, the chairman said. "Taking the next step to create the Space Force will allow us to develop and maintain a singular focus on developing the people, the capabilities, the doctrine and the culture we'll need to maintain our competitive advantage in space," he said.

Status Quo Not Sufficient

Shanahan told the committee that the bottom line is that "the next major conflict may be won or lost in space."

"There is widespread agreement the status quo is not sufficient: Change is required to stay ahead," he said. "Approached correctly, this is an opportunity for a generational improvement. Future space capabilities should be system engineered from the start to include launch, commercial innovation, the network, the satellite, the ground segment, user equipment and cybersecurity."

A dedicated Space Force would build a professional development system that recruits technical talent, and educates airmen in space from the beginning their careers to produce the quantity and quality of leaders needed, the secretary said.

"Organizing and equipping includes force design and force development," Shanahan said. "This means understanding the domain, the technology and warfare deeply enough to design and deliver future capabilities, ensuring space power today and in the future."

Part of the build is the Space Development Agency, which will develop and deliver the next generation of space-based communications and Earth observation, while existing organizations continue current efforts, Shanahan told the senators.

"We need to outpace the threats in space, not simply keep up with them," the secretary said. "Because our current system isn't organized to move fast enough, the Space Force will consolidate, elevate, and focus our efforts for results."

Shanahan asked the committee to authorize the U.S. Space Force in the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. "America has enduring interests in space," he said. "And just as the U.S. Navy ensures freedom of navigation of the seas, America's Space Force must now ensure the freedom to navigate the stars."

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Senate Armed Services Committee recognizes importance of space while offering divergent views on Space Force

By Charles Pope, Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs / Published April 11, 2019

WASHINGTON (AFNS) -- The Senate Armed Services Committee acknowledged April 11 that maintaining U.S. superiority in space is a national imperative but expressed skepticism that creating a Space Force as a new, sixth branch of military is the best approach for achieving that goal.

The hearing was one of the first  and most high profile to date  focusing solely on the administration's plan to create a Space Force within the Air Force as a new branch of the military to confront emerging threats in space. Chairman James Inhofe, R-Okla., set the tone at the outset, saying he had two primary questions: How much will the Space Force cost and how will it "fit" into the military's larger operations, mandates and strategic goals?

While Inhofe said the first question has been answered, "I'm still waiting for answers to the other question."

Indeed, questions about the Space Force's form and function and whether it provides crucial new capabilities or duplicates existing ones dominated the two-and-a-half-hour long hearing. Those same questions are likely to dominate debate in coming months as Congress considers the issue.

The hearing featured testimony from Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph F. Dunford and Gen. John E. Hyten, commander of United States Strategic Command.

In making the case for the Space Force, Shanahan echoed observations that have been made repeatedly by Wilson and other senior military and civilian leaders.

"We currently maintain an advantage relative to these competitors, but our space enterprise was built for a strategic environment that no longer exists and our margin of dominance is quickly shrinking," he said, specifically noting actions by Russia and China.

"We must not wait until we experience conflict in space to adapt our posture," he said in testimony prepared for the hearing. "As other great powers become more competent and capable in space, America burdens increased risk because we will not have sufficient time to 'hammer out' what will be needed and how to do it if contingencies arise."

By the end of the hearing, only one senator  freshman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.  voiced unequivocal support. "I may be an outlier on this committee," she said, "but I totally get why you need Space Force. I fully understand why you need to make this a priority and to focus on this."

For her part, Wilson reprised a primary argument for why a Space Force is necessary in an era of great power competition and at a time when space has moved from an open and uncontested environment to one that is highly contested and militarily crucial.

"America is the best in the world at space, and our adversaries know it," Wilson said. As she did on April 9 in a major speech to the 35th Space Symposium in which she outlined the Air Force's "clear-eyed assessment" of the changing nature in space, she told the committee that the Air Force closely examined "a range of options" for ensuring dominance in space and, after that review, "landed on the Space Force."

More broadly, Wilson told the committee that President Donald Trump deserves credit for his focus on space and "elevating this issue and making this a kitchen table conversation."

Wilson also told the committee that creating a Space Force is important because it will have a unity of purpose and focus and it will "identify a culture as part of a joint warfighting culture."

Wilson pointed out that the Air Force has created a plan that will allow the Space Force to be operational within 90 days after legislation creating it is signed into law. She also highlighted how the Air Force has moved aggressively to streamline the procurement process and make it more nimble. Changes made to date in discarding unnecessary acquisition practices have cut 21 years out of space programs alone.

Even so, many on the committee were not convinced.

"All of us would agree that space is essential to the security of the United States," said ranking member Jack Reed, D-R.I. "We must prepare accordingly. The question is, how?"

Reed voiced concern that, in his view, the organizational structure for the Space Force is "top heavy." "Why didn't you think harder about coming up with a leaner structure?" he asked.

Reed also asked why the National Reconnaissance Office and assorted intelligence agencies with responsibilities for space were not folded into the Space Force.

Shanahan responded that, "the bias is toward speed" which meant the proposal includes "stakeholders we have control of."

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said, "It's agreed (Space Force) is a necessity but there's no agreement for how to sort it out."

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he was "undecided but skeptical." "How is it that adding a box to an org chart is going to give us a qualitative military edge?"

Hyten responded that while currently senior military leaders and commanders have responsibility for space, they also have other demands. That fractured approach, he said, must be resolved now that space is highly contested.

With a Space Force, he said, "there will be somebody in the Pentagon focusing all attention, all the time, on space."

One thing most agreed on was the need to concentrate on space.

"Everyone loses if war extent expands into space," Wilson said. "But we are developing the capabilities to deter and, if necessary, to fight and win in the space domain as we do in all other domains so that our adversaries will choose wisely to deal with our diplomats and not with our war fighters, and that's what this is about."

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AFSPC Commander highlights Joint, Coalition warfighters at Space Symposium

By 2nd Lt. Kristen Shimkus, Air Force Space Command Public Affairs / Published April 11, 2019

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AFNS) -- The leader of Air Force Space Command and the Joint Force Space Component Command spoke to members of the international space community, industry and media at the 35th Space Symposium April 9.

Throughout his speech, Gen. Jay Raymond honored past pioneers in space and military history, and highlighted the achievements of young AFSPC, JFSCC and international partner space operators who are the future of space.

"Today, what I would like to do is honor the past, present and the future as I introduce our real competitive advantage," Raymond said.

The general personally recognized Airmen and joint and coalition warfighters from throughout the command who have emulated the spirit of prominent space and military leaders such as Gen. Susan Helms, former astronaut and 14th Air Force commander, and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.

"The advances we have made collectively are remarkable and this is absolutely the most exciting time to be in the national security space enterprise," Raymond said.

Over the last year, AFSPC has taken numerous steps to ensure the U.S. maintains freedom to operate in space. For example, AFSPC and the Air Force Weapons School have established an Enlisted Space Warfighter Advanced Instructor Course for space, Raymond said.

He introduced the Airmen who will make up the initial cadre of this new course.

"They all represent the finest enlisted operators that we have in the command, across all of our mission areas," Raymond said. "Every single one of these Airmen chose to come to space as their first choice when they enlisted in the Air Force. These six Airmen are trailblazers and we're glad you're on our team."

The command has also increased activity with coalition partners. This August, AFSPC will integrate coalition partners into the Space Flag exercise for the first time.

"Today we are working hard to not only develop joint warfighter partners, but also, as the chief and secretary highlighted, developing the international partnerships needed for coalition warfighting," he said. "We are clearly stronger together."

Raymond took a moment to thank Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson on behalf of everyone at AFSPC for her strong leadership, and for all that she has done for both the Air Force and the national security space enterprise.

Raymond surprised the audience during his presentation with a live video feed from the International Space Station featuring NASA Astronaut and Air Force Col. Nick Hague.

Hague said his view of Earth during his first spacewalk drove home the lesson he learned throughout his Air Force career.

"It's not about one individual, but collective accomplishments and we accomplish things together as a team. It took thousands of people to make those spacewalks go well.It's thanks to themit's thanks to the team that we accomplish great things," said Hague.

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'We're Going to Have a Space Force Someday,' General Says

By Carla Babb April 11, 2019

The general in charge of the U.S. military's space assets told a skeptical Congress on Thursday that creation of a Space Force was inevitable.

"So, we're going to have a Space Force someday," U.S. Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I think what the committee has to decide is when."

Hyten said the Pentagon has a history of creating a military service to deal with "every physical domain we have, when it becomes contested."

Others' progress

"Our competitive advantage in space has eroded," said Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explaining that China and Russia have built capabilities to counter the U.S. in space to include "jamming, cyber operations, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities and ground-based anti-satellite missiles."

Hyten and Dunford urged Congress to "get ahead of the problem" of space defense, rather than waiting and responding to a catastrophe.

If approved, the Space Force would be the sixth military service branch and the first created since 1947.

The administration's Space Force proposal faced bipartisan skepticism during the hearing.

Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, said he was "genuinely undecided" on whether to approve a Space Force, in part because he said the status quo on space defense was working well.

"I don't think it's broken. ... You're doing a good job. Why are we going to 'fix' it?" King asked Pentagon officials.

Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, acknowledged that "the threat is real" in space, but said it was "risky" to allow the Pentagon to create another bureaucracy "without more robust budget details."

Sen. Joni Ernst, an Iowa Republican, said she needed "some convincing that there is a necessity for a sixth branch" of the military.

Higher priority

Hyten, who is the top-ranking commander for space defense as commander of U.S. Strategic Command, bluntly told committee members that space defense would never be his top priority, since he also oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal.

He said commanders of the new U.S. Space Command would be able to solely focus on space defense, while the top general of the proposed U.S. Space Force would be able to solely focus on building new space assets and developing space war fighters.

Acting Secretary of Defense Pat Shanahan said the new organization within the Pentagon would allow the military to "consolidate and concentrate" on space defense, "instead of coordinating across more than 10 organizations."

"The next major conflict may be won or lost in space," Shanahan said. "Approached correctly, this is an opportunity for generational improvement."

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Lukashenka Lambasts Moscow For 'Sanctions,' Threatens To Suspend Russian Oil Flow To Europe

By RFE/RL's Belarus Service April 11, 2019

MINSK -- Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has lambasted Moscow for what he called "sanctions" against Belarusian goods and hinted he could block Russian oil deliveries to Europe.

Speaking at a cabinet meeting in Minsk on April 11, Lukashenka said Russia had "closed" its market for a number of Belarusian goods.

"They [Russia] are under [Western] sanctions themselves... but they use the same weapon in fighting against their closest allies," Lukashenka said.

On April 10, Russia's agricultural oversight agency, Rosselkhoznadzor, announced that apples and pears from Belarus will be barred from Russia's market.

That move comes amid growing pressure from Moscow for Belarus to further integrate with Russia.

Lukashenka has recently criticized increases in the price of Russian energy as part of Moscow's efforts to persuade his country to abandon its independence.

In his remarks on April 11, Lukashenka ordered the government to start pipeline repairs "if necessary," a move, he said, that would suspend Russian oil deliveries to Europe via Belarus.

"They hit us on our left cheek and we offer them the right one, what is this?" Lukashenka asked the government members and ordered them to outline "corresponding measures" as a response to Moscow's "sanctions" by "next week."

Belarus is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union (EES) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization, regional groupings that observers say Russian President Vladimir Putin uses to bolster Moscow's influence in the former Soviet Union and to counter the European Union and NATO.

With reporting by BelTA

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/lukashenka- lambasts-moscow-for-sanctions-threatens-suspend- russian-oil--europe/29875077.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.

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Official results of Israel's elections were published on Thursday night, showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party has beaten the main rival, the Blue and White party.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waves to his supporters after polls for Israel's general elections closed in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, April 10, 2019. [Photo: AP/Ariel Schalit]

The results were released by the Central Election Committee after two days of counting ballots and delays caused by computer malfunctions, according to the committee chairman, Judge Hanan Melcer.

Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party won 36 seats while the centrist Blue and White, led by an ex-army chief, gained 35 seats, the results showed.

Netanyahu now needs to form a governing coalition with at least 61 members in Israel's 120-seat parliament, or the Knesset. He already said he intends to build a coalition with right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.

His likely partners include Shas, with eight seats, and United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, both Jewish ultra-Orthodox parties.

The United Right, a new alliance of pro-settler lists and another likely partner in Netanyahu's coalition, gained five seats.

Israel Our Home, led by Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right politician and Netanyahu's former defense minister, gained five seats.

Kulanu, a center-right party, gained four seats.

Overall, the right-wing bloc includes 65 seats.

The Labor party, Israel's largest opposition party which had 18 seats in the recent parliament, gained only six seats this time.

Meretz, a left-wing party, lost one seat and will enter the parliament with four seats only.

Hadash-Ta'al, an alliance of Arab parties, won six seats, and Ra'am-Balad, another Arab party alliance, won four seats.

The Blue and White party, Netanyahu's main challenger in the elections, admitted defeat on Wednesday night, vowing to serve as a "fierce opposition" to Netanyahu.

The results mean Netanyahu is heading for a record fifth term in office and would become Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
Auto parts suppliers, which employ nearly 900,000 people nationally and 40,000 in Illinois, are letting jobs go unfilled, and some have reported selling their businesses and shuttering factories, said Ann Wilson, senior vice president of government affairs at the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association in Washington, D.C. They are squeezed not only by higher domestic steel prices but because they are paying high tariffs on certain specialty metals they can only get abroad, and those that import component parts like motors and sensors for further manufacturing are confronting tariffs on those goods too, she said.
Xi encourages ethnic minority people to create better future

Global Times

Source:Xinhua Published: 2019/4/11 11:43:04

President Xi Jinping has encouraged people of an ethnic minority group living in a remote area of southwest China to make concerted efforts to build a good homeland, guard the border, and create a better future.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks Wednesday when answering a letter from people of the Dulong ethnic minority group in Dulongjiang Township, Gongshan County of Yunnan Province.

In the letter, the Dulong people informed Xi that they were lift out of poverty as a whole group in 2018 and villagers are enjoying a better life.

Xi said he was very glad to hear the good news and congratulated the Dulong people.

"Letting the people of all ethnic groups have a good life has been my aspiration as well as our common goal," he wrote.

After the founding of the New China in 1949, the Dulong people bid farewell to the primitive life. They have now shaken off the long-standing poverty.

"This vividly demonstrates that people's dream to live a happy life will surely come true with the strong leadership of the Party and the concerted efforts of the broad masses of the people," Xi said.

"Poverty eradication is only the first step, better days are yet to come," he noted in the letter.

The Dulong, one of China's smallest ethnic groups, live along the deep gorges of the Dulongjiang River in Yunnan. This area was listed as one of the least developed regions in the country.

The six administrative villages in Dulongjiang Township eradicated poverty as a whole last year.

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Kim: North Korea must deal blow to countries imposing sanctions

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 07:34AM

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un says his country must deal a "serious blow" to those countries that seek to break Pyongyang with sanctions by reaching self-reliance.

Kim said achieving self-reliance would frustrate the sanctions, the North's official KCNA news agency on Thursday quoted him as saying before top officials of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.

"We must deal a serious blow to the hostile forces who are mistakenly determined to bring us to our knees with sanctions by advancing the socialist construction to a high level of self-reliance that fits our circumstances and state, based on our own power, technology and resources," the North Korean leader said.

He stressed self-reliance and a "self-supporting national economy" as the "bedrock" of North Korean socialism and "the eternal lifeline essential to the destiny of our revolution."

North Korea is under a series of harsh sanctions, mainly imposed by the United States but also by the United Nations Security Council.

Diplomacy initiated by the North's long-time rival South Korea in 2018 initially raised hopes for peace on the Korean Peninsula, where the US has heavy military presence and where tensions with Pyongyang ran particularly high in 2017.

Seoul both diplomatically engaged Pyongyang and brokered diplomacy between the US and North Korea. US President Donald Trump and Kim met once in June 2018, and another time in late February, when they reached an impasse at the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi. The two sides differed over the timing and manner of denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and the lifting of the sanctions  which have been sticking points since they started negotiating.

The US has refused to offer any sanctions relief in return for several unilateral steps already taken by North Korea. Pyongyang, on the other hand, has suspended its missile and nuclear testing, demolished at least one nuclear test site, and agreed to allow international inspectors into a missile engine test facility.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, whose efforts kicked off diplomacy with the North and who has acted as a go-between, is in Washington on his third official visit and is about the meet with his American counterpart later on Thursday with the objective of helping resuscitate talks.

Additionally, the North's Supreme People's Assembly, the country's parliament, will convene on Thursday, and a more detailed announcement  possibly a policy shift  could be announced.

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Trump: Third Summit With North Korea's Kim 'Could Happen'

By Steve Herman April 11, 2019

Sitting alongside South Korea's president at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump expressed willingness to hold another summit with North Korea's leader to try to reach a sweeping denuclearization deal.

"A third summit could happen," said Trump. "It's step-by-step. It's not going to go fast."

There are various "smaller deals that could happen," Trump responded to a reporter in the Oval Office when asked if he would accept any agreements shy of denuclearization.

"But right now, we're talking about the big deal," which is "we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons."

Trump, responding to another reporter, said he has decided not to toughen sanctions on Pyongyang, but wants the existing "sanctions to remain in place."

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in his remarks, described the process as still moving forward. Moon has been a booster of the summits between the leaders of the United States and North Korea, which have never established diplomatic relations.

The South Korean president told Trump that the first summit the U.S. president held in Singapore with Kim in June of last year led to a significant reduction of tension on the Korean peninsula and there is a need for a third summit to be held.

"Now peace has prevailed," Moon, speaking in Korean, told Trump. "We believe you will be able to solve this problem and the dramatic turnaround is solely due to your strong leadership."

Trump declined to say if he had been in communication with Kim in recent weeks.

"Kim Jong Un will be the winner of the Trump-Moon meeting," according to Professor Sung-Yoon Lee of the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

"We coordinate so closely with them regularly and the relationship is just ironclad," State Department Deputy Spokesman Robert Palladino said about Moon's government when questioned at a briefing about the differences in approach to North Korea that are evident between Seoul and Washington.

Lee told VOA the U.S. and South Korean presidents still "stand far apart on a host of issues," including Kim's intentions, South Korea's desire to lessen sanctions on the North, the share of costs Seoul should pay for hosting U.S. troops, differing views on the assertiveness of China, and the lack of military and intelligence cooperation between Seoul and Tokyo.

"Regardless of diplomatic niceties expressed at the summit this week, Moon's stance will continue to harden against Trump's," Lee predicted.

Trump has held two summits with Kim  the most recent one in February in Hanoi, ending early with no agreement as the North Koreans demanded sanctions relief and the U.S. delegation called for North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons.

"It is important that we regain the momentum on denuclearization talks that was lost at the Vietnam summit, and today's talks are an important step," California Democrat Ami Bera, who is co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Korea, told VOA. "We must continue to work in lock-step with our South Korean partners to find the best possible path forward. It is also vital that Congress be given an opportunity to weigh in on the process and assert its oversight authority over any agreement the administration reaches."

Moon has been a proponent of incremental measures toward denuclearization, with the United States using the relaxation of some sanctions as a way to entice North Korea to negotiate and begin to take steps of its own.

U.S. Senator Cory Gardner told VOA's Korean service it would be a mistake for the United States to give Kim what he wants without making firm demands in return.

"I don't support relieving pressure until we have that denuclearization or concrete steps toward it," said Gardner, a Colorado Republican who chairs the Senate's foreign relations subcommittee on the East Asia-Pacific region.

VOA Korean Service reporter Joeun Lee contributed to this report.

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World's Largest Election Gets Underway in India

By Anjana Pasricha April 11, 2019

India began the mammoth task of choosing its next government as voters lined up at polling booths stretching from the violence-wracked region of Kashmir in the north to eastern and central states.

In an election that has been billed as a referendum on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to emerge as the single largest party, but fall short of the commanding majority it won in 2014.

Modi's main challenger is Rahul Gandhi, the head of the opposition Congress Party whose hope for a surge in support rests on his promise of tackling poverty.

More than 140 million out of the country's 900 million voters were eligible to cast ballots in Thursday's contest for 91 out of 543 parliamentary constituencies.

The world's largest democratic exercise presents dramatic contrasts: from polling stations guarded by heavily armed security personnel in violence-wracked regions such as Kashmir and Chattisgarh to a festive atmosphere in other places. At one polling station in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, voters were greeted with the beat of drums.

Just before polls opened, Prime Minister Modi, who has made national security his key plank, called on people to vote in "record numbers" and made a special appeal to India's staggering 85 million voters who joined the electoral rolls this year. "I specially urge young and first-time voters to vote in large numbers," he tweeted.

"I am excited. I am a part of this democracy now. I have the right to choose and to go with some government I want," said a smiling Neelisha Singhal, a 20-year-old college student as she waited for her turn to vote.

The polls take place against the backdrop of concerns among minority communities that religious tensions have aggravated under BJP rule with rising numbers of attacks by fringe Hindu groups targeting Muslims. It has stoked fears among critics that the BJP wants to impose a Hindu nationalist agenda.

Faimudadin, 40, a voter in western Uttar Pradesh, who came out early to cast his vote hopes that opposition parties will join hands to form a government. "I want a change. I want development."

Others like Seema Verma in Gaziabad on New Delhi's outskirts are voting to give Modi a second term in office. "The government has a done of lot of good work. I am satisfied with its performance."

On the campaign trail, Modi has been firing up nationalist pride emphasizing his action in ordering an airstrike inside Pakistan to target an alleged militant training camp following a terror attack in Pulwama in Kashmir in February. In remarks that were slammed by critics, he called on first-time voters at a rally on Tuesday, "Can your first vote be dedicated to the courageous soldiers who did the Balakot air strike? Can your first vote be in the name of the courageous martyrs who lost their lives in Pulwama?"

The party that won power in 2014 on its promise of "good days to come" has brushed aside questions on its poor record of creating jobs and improving the rural economy.

The main opposition Congress Party hopes to tap into disgruntlement over rising unemployment and distress in the countryside where two thirds of India lives. Congress party head Rahul Gandhi, joined by his sister Priyanka Gandhi on the campaign trail, has also accused Modi of destroying India's secular traditions. Rahul Gandhi's hopes of returning to power rest on stitching up alliances with powerful regional parties.

Several states such as Andhra Pradesh and Telangana that went to the polls are governed by regional parties. These parties are expected to play a key role in forming the next government as the BJP may not secure a clear majority.

The polls were mostly peaceful but scattered violence was reported. One person was killed and four injured in a clash in the southern Andhra Pradesh. In Chattisgarh suspected Maoist rebels detonated an explosive devise early Thursday, but no injuries were reported. Election officials said people in the state turned out in large numbers to vote despite a call to boycott the polls.

The polls will wrap up on May 19 after moving across the country over six more days. Votes will be counted on May 23rd.

If the BJP emerges as a frontrunner, "it will be a mandate drawn by populist nationalism and fusing this with some kind of religious polarization," says political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. "Then it means that this politics is getting endorsed."

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Violence in Libya Could Give IS Renewed Opportunities

By Rikar Hussein April 10, 2019

As conflict continues to escalate between the forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar and the United Nations-recognized government in the capital of Tripoli, experts warn Islamic State militants could take advantage of the security vacuum and resurface on the battlefields of Libya.

The unrest in Libya flared up last week when rebel leader Haftar ordered the Libyan National Army from the east to move on Tripoli in a "victorious march" against the Government of National Accord (GNA).

Haftar's forces have since conducted multiple airstrikes, including on Tripoli's Mitiga airport, as clashes continue near the gates of the capital.

According to the World Health Organization, the fighting over the past three days has cost at least 47 lives, with 181 others injured. The clashes have also displaced more than 2,000 people from their homes.

U.N. children's agency UNICEF warned that more than a half-million children could be at "direct risk" if the violence lingers.

Meanwhile, experts who watch jihadist movements in Libya say the turmoil near Tripoli and the risk of the country falling into a broader civil war could create a vacuum that IS militants would exploit to re-emerge after their defeat in 2016.

Libya 'reset'

Jason Pack, founder of Libya Analysis, said the IS group in Libya has been able to "reset," moving through three phases of recovery, reorganization and re-engagement during the past two years. He said the militant group is now ready to come back stronger and make new territorial gains as Tripoli clashes draw security forces away from other parts of the country.

"I think this current offensive is great for jihadists," Pack told VOA. "I see IS and jihadism in Libya now on the verge of making a huge breakthrough, just like they did in 2012-2015 after killing (U.S.) Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, and then jihadism flourished in many outlets in Libya."

The U.S. ambassador was killed in September 2012 when the U.S. mission in Benghazi came under a militant attack by Ansar al-Sharia  an Islamist group whose members mostly pledged allegiance to IS after controlling the city of Sirte in 2015.

IS was cleared from Sirte and other populated areas of Libya by late 2016 in a campaign that took months and considerable aerial support from the U.S.

The group has since withdrawn to isolated desert areas and shifted its tactics from controlling land to guerrilla insurgency.

Through its low-level attacks on Libyan forces and local infrastructure, the group is hoping to use a war of attrition to prevent any future progress in Libyan state-building, Pack said. As such, through low-cost and high-impact attacks, it poses a greater threat to Libyan state-building processes in 2019 than it did in 2016.

IS more recently has increased efforts to target key government institutions, including the 2018 attacks on the Libyan Foreign Ministry, the National Oil Corp. and the High National Electoral Commission. Its low-profile attacks have mostly targeted security forces and local leaders in remote areas.

The group Tuesday claimed responsibility for an attack on al-Fugaha in southeast Tripoli, killing three men, including the town's local council leader and its security official. The town, under Haftar's Libyan National Army, suffered another deadly IS attack last October.

"That attack on April 9 shows that already ISIS is able to tactically take advantage of the LNA troops being deployed to for this offensive in the north. It shows what's likely to happen if this fighting continues, that there will be a vacuum, and IS is perfectly positioned to take advantage of that," Pack, of Libya Analysis, said.

Lawless environment

Some experts warn that Libya's southern desert areas are particularly vulnerable to IS re-emergence because of their lawless environment. The vast territory has also served as a safe haven for al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram, and the opposition fighters from Chad, Mali and Sudan.

Haftar's LNA forces earlier this year launched a large-scale attack on the Fezzan region, which made IS supply networks in the south more complicated.

WATCH: Libyan Strongman Gen. Khalifa Haftar

Hady Amr, an expert with the Brookings Institution who served as deputy head for the Middle East at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the clashes in Tripoli could easily undo the progress made against the jihadists in the distant areas of the country.

"While militant Islam has proven effective at adaptation, and while religion continues to have an appeal in a scary and rapidly transforming world, it is most likely to be most effective in the far-flung areas of Libya," Amr told VOA.

"It rises up and seeks to exploit the vacuum created by new developments when other factions are in conflict," he added.

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UN Chief Calls for Cease-Fire in Libya

By Margaret Besheer April 10, 2019

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an end to the fighting that erupted last week between Libyan political rivals for control of the capital, Tripoli.

"It's still time to stop. It's still time for a cease-fire to take place, for a cessation of hostilities to take place and to avoid the worst, which would be a dramatic bloody battle for Tripoli," Guterres told reporters late Wednesday after he met behind closed doors with the 15-nation U.N. Security Council for more than two hours.

"It is still time to recognize there is no military solution. Only political solutions can apply to situations like the one in Libya," he said.

Guterres visited Libya last week. Just hours after he departed the country, forces loyal to Gen. Khalifa Haftar advanced from their positions in the east on Tripoli, which is controlled by the U.N.-backed Presidential Council and Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj. Guterres met with both men during his mission.

"It is obvious that my appeal for an offensive not to take place and for the hostilities to stop was not heard," the U.N. chief said. "But I think that when one looks at the situation today, it is clear that we have a very dangerous situation, and it is clear that we absolutely need to stop it."

National conference canceled

The fighting has scuttled U.N. plans for a national conference Sunday to bring the warring parties together. The U.N. said Tuesday that it is postponing it, as violence is overshadowing the political process.

On Wednesday, fighting centered on the suburbs south of the capital, with thousands of civilians fleeing their homes for safety. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) says more than 5,800 people have been displaced in this latest round of violence.

Residents in the city report Haftar's warplanes were buzzing neighborhoods and firing at them. Fighting was also reported at what had been the country's international airport.

The U.N. has expressed concern at the use of explosive weapons in densely populated areas and called on the parties to abide by international law and to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals.

Fears for region

U.N. officials fear the violence in Libya could destabilize the entire Middle East by sending more refugees fleeing to Europe across the dangerous Mediterranean, disrupting oil production, and allowing terrorist groups such as Islamic State to take advantage of the chaos.

South Africa's U.N. ambassador, Jerry Matjila, told reporters after the meeting that the Security Council is united in supporting the U.N. chief and his special envoy, Ghassan Salame, to get the parties back to the negotiating table.

Matjila also expressed concern about how the worsening situation could reverberate on the African continent.

Fears for Africans

"Also, our concern is Africans, about what might happen in the Sahel if the issue is not resolved," he said. "We are also concerned about migrants who are trapped in some cities in Libya, and we need to give those migrants at least a corridor to go out to safety."

There are thousands of African migrants who have tried to transit through Libya across the Mediterranean to Europe. Many are in overcrowded detention centers in Libya.

Libya has been in political and economic chaos since longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown and killed in 2011.

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Haftar's army downs Libyan govt. military plane

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 01:45AM

The so-called Libyan National Army (LNA), headed by renegade Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, has shot down a military aircraft operated by the UN-backed government of Libya en route from the city of Misrata, an official says.

"The reports have just emerged that the Libyan National Army shot down a military aircraft that departed from Misrata," LNA spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari said at a news conference in Benghazi on Wednesday.

Media reports say the Aero L-39 Albatros plane, a Czech-made training jet often used in a ground attack role, belonged to the Government of National Accord (GNA) and was shot down over Qasr Bin Ghashir south of Tripoli.

Libya has been the scene of increasing violence since 2011, when former dictator Muammar Gaddafi was killed in a NATO military intervention that followed a popular uprising. Gaddafi's ouster created a huge power vacuum, leading to chaos and the emergence of numerous militant outfits, including the Daesh terrorist group.

The GNA is the internationally-recognized government of Libya seated in Tripoli. But it has been unable to exercise state powers over the entire Libyan territory, where militia groups have been active since an uprising against the then-dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Another major power faction that lays a claim to power is based in the city of Tobruk, in Libya's east. It has its own quasi-army, led by self-styled General Khalifa Haftar.

Last week, Haftar ordered his forces to advance on the capital, in what seems to be an attempt to unseat the GNA.

The political process and risks further escalation with serious consequence on their way to Tripoli, Haftar's forces have overtaken several oil fields and towns, but have faced stiff resistance from forces loyal to the GNA near Tripoli, where they have been stopped. The situation is deadlocked, and fighting continues despite international calls for an end to hostilities.

The fighting between rival domestic forces continues near the capital Tripoli and elsewhere, and that prompted the UN to postpone a conference in Libya that had been meant to discuss the possibility of holding elections in the country.

France blocks EU call to stop Haftar's offensive

Meanwhile, France on Wednesday blocked a European Union statement which called on Haftar to halt his forces' offensive in Libya.

The draft statement, seen by Reuters, would have said that the military attack launched by Haftar on Tripoli was "endangering the civilian population, disrupting the political process and risks further escalation with serious consequences for Libya and the wider region, including the terrorist threat."

France and Italy disagree on how to handle the latest escalation in the troubled North African country.

France, which has oil assets in eastern Libya, has provided military assistance in past years to Haftar in his eastern stronghold, Libyan and French officials say.

Italy, the former colonial power and a big player in Libya's oil sector, has supported UN-backed Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj.

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Russia's 'Sovereign Internet' Bill Moves Forward In State Duma

By RFE/RL April 11, 2019

The lower chamber of Russia's parliament has passed in the second of three votes a controversial bill that would effectively disconnect the country's Internet from the global network.

Lawmakers in the State Duma on April 11 voted 320 to 15 to pass the proposed legislation that critics say is part of an effort by President Vladimir Putin's government to increase state control over the Internet and facilitate censorship.

The so-called "sovereign Internet" bill would require Russian web traffic and data to be rerouted through points controlled by the state, and for the creation of a domestic domain-name system.

Backers of the bill say it will make what they call the Russian segment of the Internet -- known as the RuNet -- more independent. They argue it is needed to guard Russia against potential cyberattacks.

Critics say the bill would deal a serious blow to Internet freedom in Russia.

The legislation would require the installation of specialized equipment that would make it easier to block websites banned by the government with greater efficiency.

Earlier this week, the chief of Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, said the bill would in fact target a popular messaging app.

Aleksandr Zharov told the TASS news agency on April 9 that the bill "prevents the spread of banned information."

"It's obvious that one of the elements of this prevention will be fighting against" online resources including the Telegram messaging app, Zharov was quoted as saying.

At least four online news outlets, including the Rossiiskaya Gazeta government daily, deleted his remarks, according to a Telegram channel monitoring efforts by Roskomnadzor to block the messaging app.

In April 2018, Russia blocked Telegram after the popular messaging app refused to comply with a Russian court order to give security services access to users' encrypted messages.

Amnesty International said that blocking Telegram -- used by senior government officials and Kremlin foes alike -- would be "the latest in a series of attacks on online freedom of expression" in Russia.

Many Russians took to the streets a year ago to protest Kremlin efforts to silence the messaging app.

With reporting by The Moscow Times, Reuters, and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s- sovereign-internet-bill-moves-forward-in- state-duma/29874549.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.

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Damascus reserves right to retake occupied Golan Heights by any means: Official

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 05:27PM

A Syrian official says Damascus reserves the right to re-establish control over the Golan Heights, which the Israeli regime has been occupying for more than half a century, stating that a military option to regain the area could not be ruled out.

"The Golan Heights is an integral part of the Syrian territory. We have the right to return this land at any time and by any means, which we consider necessary. In my opinion, the only language, which Israel understands is the language of force and resistance," the director of the Golan Heights Department in the Syrian government, Midhat Saleh, told Russia's Sputnik news agency on Thursday.

Saleh then hoped that the international community would come up with an effective mechanism to put an end to the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights.

"We are now at war with Israel, and we have the right since Israel does not recognize international resolutions and UN Security Council resolutions, and the United States supports Israel in this case.

"We have the right to return the Golan Heights in the most befitting way for us, either through war or popular resistance. This is our right guaranteed by international resolutions," the official said.

Saleh further noted that all decisions and resolutions on the occupied Golan Heights had not been implemented for more than 50 years, and had simply remained on paper.

He went on to say that over half a million people had been displaced from their original homes in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and were now living in other parts of Syria, while only 26,000 Syrians were still living in the territory.

On March 25, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation, formally recognizing Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The announcement came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in a statement, called the US decision a "blatant attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Syria.

"The liberation of the Golan by all available means and its return to the Syrian motherland is an inalienable right," according to the statement carried by Syria's official news agency SANA, which added, "The decision ... makes the United States the main enemy of the Arabs."

The Arab League also condemned the move, saying "Trump's recognition does not change the area's status."

Iran, Iraq, Russia and Turkey also condemned the US move.

In a tweet, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif expressed "shock" at Trump's move and Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said "this illegal and unacceptable recognition does not change the fact that it (the Golan Heights) belongs to Syria."

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry also said on Twitter that the US plan "contravenes international law."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also said that Trump's recognition of the Golan Heights annexation "violates the UN Charter."

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said it was impossible for Turkey to accept the US decision on the Golan Heights.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community. The regime has built dozens of settlements in the area ever since and has used the region to carry out a number of military operations against the Syrian government.

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Russia warns of 'catastrophe' at Syrian refugee camp in US-controlled region

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 10:10AM

Russia has raised alarm at the "catastrophic" humanitarian situation at a refugee camp, situated in a territory controlled by US-backed militants in northeastern Syria, saying the daily death toll has hit 20.

Major General Viktor Kupchishin, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Syrian Reconciliation, said on Wednesday that the Syrians are living in "unbearable" conditions at the al-Hawl camp in Hasakah Province.

"According to a female refugee, who managed to flee the al-Hawl camp on the territory controlled by the US-led coalition, the humanitarian situation in the camp is catastrophic. Between 10 and 20 people die each day, including children," he said.

Citing a woman who had managed to escape from the refugee camp, the Russian general said that seven children have lost their lives there in the past week due to the "lack of medicines, food and unbearable living conditions."

"The total number of children who have died in al-Hawl camp has increased to 235," he added.

Kupchishin further called on international organizations to take measures in order to alleviate the suffering of people residing at the refugee camp.

The shelter was initially supposed to take in over 10,000 refugees, but it has now grown to be one of the biggest camps east of the Euphrates River with more than 76,000 people living there.

Kupchishin also noted that Damascus has been offering resettlement schemes and temporary shelters to the displaced Syrians.

"The Syrian government offers security guarantees to temporarily displaced persons and a simplified procedure to restore their identity documents," he said.

However, he added, the US-led coalition forces have failed to cooperate with Damascus in that regard.

Last month, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sounded the alarm over the rapidly deteriorating situation at the al-Hawl camp.

During a visit to the camp, ICRC President Peter Maurer said he was "shocked" by the stories "of children and women dying in big numbers because of all the difficulties."

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UN Urges De-Escalation of Military Crisis in Syria's Idlib

By Lisa Schlein April 11, 2019

A senior U.N. official is appealing to Russia and Turkey as guarantors of a de-escalation agreement in Syria's Idlib province to prevent a further intensification of fighting in this rebel-held enclave. The official briefed journalists in Geneva on a meeting of the International Syria Support Group's Humanitarian Access Task Force.

More than three million civilians live in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib. Most are trapped in the enclave with nowhere to go in the event of a full-fledged war between Russian-backed Syrian forces and rebels.

A 2018 de-escalation zone agreement mediated by Russia, Turkey, and Iran succeeded in maintaining an uneasy peace in this volatile area, but the lull appears to be breaking down.

U.N. Senior Humanitarian Advisor for Syria Najat Rochdi said the United Nations has been receiving troubling reports during the past few weeks of increased military activity and attacks in Idlib.

Rochdi said 106,000 people have fled their homes since February and at least 190 people have been killed as a direct result of increased fighting.

"We have a regional plan for up to 900,000 people who could be affected in northwestern Syria if limited military action takes place. But many more people will be affected. Any large-scale military offensive in the northwest will put thousands of lives at risk and affect an even larger number of people and very likely overwhelm our humanitarian partners," she said.

Rochdi said recent talks by Russia and Turkey regarding the resumption of patrols in the area give her some hope a devastating conflict might be averted.

Rochdi also said another area of great concern is the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Al Hol camp in al-Hasakah governorate in northeast Syria. She said the camp's population exceeds 73,000 in an area originally intended for 41,000 people.

Most of those arriving in the camp have fled the Islamic State group's last stronghold in Deir ez-Zor Governorate. Rochdi said 92 percent of the camp inhabitants are women, children and the elderly. She said there are no males over the age of 15.

Rochdi said people are extremely vulnerable and most who arrive in Al Hol are malnourished and suffering from a wide range of health problems. She said referral hospitals are overwhelmed and cannot accept any more patients. Other pressing needs, she said include shelter, water and sanitation and hygiene.

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UK PM May admits 'huge frustration' over Brexit delay

Iran Press TV

Thu Apr 11, 2019 05:00PM

British Prime Minister Theresa May has defended her decision to delay Brexit, though admitting it has created a "huge frustration" among many people in the UK, as some members of her own party repeating their call for her to resign.

May told the House of Commons on Thursday that she was still committed to deliver Brexit despite the current political standoff in Parliament that caused her to delay Britain's planned withdrawal for another six months.

"Mr Speaker, I know the whole country is intensely frustrated that this process to leave the European Union has not still been completed," May said in her statement.

She again regretted that the parliament had on three occasions rejected her Brexit deal.

May said, however, that Britain as a whole had to accept a mechanism for divorce to avoid remaining in the EU for a longer period that would need the country to hold European Parliament elections in May.

"The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear. I believe we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest," she said.

The comments came just hours after May managed to convince EU leaders to give the UK another extension to its Brexit negotiation period.

Britain had been expected to leave the EU at the end of last month. The new extension came after London missed a fresh deadline for leaving the bloc on April 12.

May's statement to the Commons came as rebel lawmakers in her Conservative Party said she had to resign so that Britain could find a way out of the political statement with a new prime minister.

Leader of the opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn also called the latest delay to Brexit a "diplomatic failure" for May's government.

"The prime minister has stuck rigidly to a flawed plan and now the clock has run down, leaving Britain in limbo and adding to the deep uncertainty of business, workers and people all across this country," said Corbyn in the parliament on Thursday.

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PM statement at the European Council: 11 April 2019

Prime Minister Theresa May's press statement at the EU Council.

11 April 2019

I have just met with Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, where I agreed an extension to the Brexit process to the end of October at the latest.

I continue to believe we need to leave the EU, with a deal, as soon as possible.

And vitally, the EU have agreed that the extension can be terminated when the Withdrawal Agreement has been ratified  which was my key request of my fellow leaders.

For example, this means that, if we are able to pass a deal in the first three weeks of May, we will not have to take part in European Elections and will officially leave the EU on Saturday, 1st June.

During the course of the extension, the European Council is clear that the UK will continue to hold full membership rights, as well as its obligations.

As I said in the room tonight, there is only a single tier of EU membership, with no conditionality attached beyond existing treaty obligations.

Let me conclude by saying this.

I know that there is huge frustration from many people that I had to request this extension.

The UK should have left the EU by now and I sincerely regret the fact that I have not yet been able to persuade Parliament to approve a deal which would allow the UK to leave in a smooth and orderly way.

But the choices we now face are stark and the timetable is clear.

So we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest.

Tomorrow I will be making a statement to the House of Commons.

Further talks will also take place between the Government and the Opposition to seek a way forward.

I do not pretend the next few weeks will be easy or that there is a simple way to break the deadlock in Parliament.

But we have a duty as politicians to find a way to fulfil the democratic decision of the Referendum, deliver Brexit and move our country forward.

Nothing is more pressing or more vital.

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Brexit Delay Gives Britain Respite, Enrages May's Critics

By Henry Ridgwell April 11, 2019

Pro- and anti-Brexit supporters have vowed to step up their campaigns after European Union leaders gave Britain a six-month extension to the process of leaving the bloc.

The extension of the so-called Article 50 process averts immediate concerns of Britain leaving without an exit agreement with the European Union. The new deadline is October 31.

The delay could mean Britain will take part in EU elections scheduled in May. And there are still few signs that British lawmakers will approve Theresa May's proposed Brexit deal, further prolonging the political chaos.

EU Council President Donald Tusk announced the extension early Thursday.

"During this time the course of action will be entirely in the UK's hands," he told reporters. "It can still ratify the withdrawal agreement, in which case the extension will be terminated. It can also reconsider the whole Brexit strategy, that might lead to changes in the political declaration, but not in the withdrawal agreement. Until the end of this period the UK will also have the possibility to revoke Article 50 and cancel Brexit altogether,"

He added a message for Britain: "Please do not waste this time."

Addressing British lawmakers in parliament Thursday, Prime Minister Theresa May renewed calls for compromise.

"The choices we face are stark and the timetable is clear.I believe we must now press on at pace with our efforts to reach a consensus on a deal that is in the national interest."

If the British parliament ratifies the Brexit deal it can leave the bloc before October.

EU member states are due to hold European Parliament elections beginning May 23. If Britain is still a member it must take part  and that would likely exacerbate deep divisions, says Alan Wager of the UK in a Changing Europe Program at Kings College London.

"The European elections are going to be fought not just on the machinations of what these MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] might do, but on issues of identity, on issues of anger," he said.

Theresa May's deal has been rejected by dozens of pro-Brexit lawmakers in her own party who want a looser relationship with Brussels, among them Jacob Rees-Mogg.

"People expected to leave on March 29 and here we are heading towards Halloween.There's some symbolism in that I think," he said Thursday.

After failing to win over her own hawkish MPs, Prime Minister May is taking a different approach  reaching out to the opposition Labour Party to try to get the deal voted through. Labour's price is a closer relationship with the European Union and possibly a second referendum.

"As we get further and further and deeper and deeper into the hole that Brexit has created, the idea of a referendum as the only route out is gaining some currency among MPs and is gaining some support in the country at large," said analyst Wager.

While the European Union is urging Britain to use the extra time wisely, the British parliament broke Thursday for a two-week recess.

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New Ukraine Poll Gives Zelenskiy Huge Lead Over Poroshenko Ahead Of Runoff

By RFE/RL April 11, 2019

The first independent poll taken since the first round of Ukraine's presidential election suggests that political newcomer Volodymyr Zelenskiy enjoys a commanding lead ahead of next week's runoff against incumbent Petro Poroshenko.

The Sociological Group "Rating" said its polling early this month pointed to 51 percent popular support for sitcom star Zelenskiy, who exploded onto the political scene late last year, versus 21 percent for Poroshenko.

The race was even more lopsided for Zelenskiy among respondents who intend to vote in the second round of the election on April 21 -- 61 percent to 24 percent.

A skirmish among the candidates' supporters outside Zelenskiy's campaign headquarters on April 9 highlighted rising emotions since the two men emerged from the record field of 39 candidates in the March 31 first-round election.

Poroshenko, a 53-year-old confectionery billionaire and former cabinet minister, has battled unpopularity throughout much of his five-year term over perceived failures to tackle runaway corruption and nepotism or implement reforms.

But appeals to his wartime experience and his push for a successful break for the Orthodox Church of Ukraine from its Russian counterpart propelled Poroshenko to a second-place finish on March 31.

Zelenskiy's 30.24 percent to Poroshenko's 15.95 percent put him in the driver's seat, however.

Zelenskiy's storybook candidacy so far began with a starring role in a TV comedy about a schoolteacher whose viral anticorruption rant thrusts him into the presidency.

His message has drawn in young voters in particular but also resonated among Ukrainians attracted by bans on official posts for those convicted of corruption and a candidate willing to outsource ideas for cabinet appointments.

Zelenskiy was leading Poroshenko "in all age groups" and "among the residents of the east, south, and center" of the country, with a tossup in the western region, "Rating" said of its most recent poll.

Preelection polls suggested that Ukrainians' highest priorities are a peaceful end to five years of war against Russia-backed separatists in the east, national unity and reconciliation, and the fight against corruption.

It is unclear whether voters will get to see the candidates square off face-to-face before round two, as both sides have publicly consented to a stadium debate but so far failed to agree on a date.

Zelenskiy's critics have accused him of skirting details of how he would tackle Ukraine's political, financial, and social ills.

Poroshenko has painted his opponent as an inexperienced political hand and a potential "puppet" of Russia and the foreign-based Ukrainian oligarch whose TV station airs Zelenskiy's programs, Ihor Kolomoyskiy.

But Ukrainians appear hungry for new faces and ideas, with 83 percent calling for "radical" change in the latest "Rating" poll.

Poroshenko's negative ratings have consistently been higher than Zelenskiy's, too.

Worryingly for a post-Soviet country still trying to burnish its democratic credentials, more of the "Rating" poll's respondents (39 percent) expected "significant falsifications" in the runoff than "insignificant" ones (37 percent).

But the OSCE's international election observers generally gave passing grades to the March 31 vote. They called the process "competitive" and said "voters had a broad choice and turned out in high numbers" despite "some procedural problems." They also noted Ukrainian authorities' inability to organize voting "in [Russia-annexed] Crimea and certain parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are controlled by illegal armed groups."

The third-place finisher in the first round, former Prime Minister and three-time presidential also-ran Yulia Tymoshenko, accepted that tally but complained that Poroshenko reached the second round "in an unfair way."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/new-ukraine-poll- gives-zelenskiy-huge-lead-over-poroshenko- ahead-of-runoff/29874734.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.

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Ukraine's President Creates Anti-Corruption Court

April 11, 2019

Ukrainian President Pedro Poroshenko, who has been repeatedly accused of turning a blind eye to corruption, has ordered the creation of a special anti-corruption court.

"By setting up the anti-corruption court, we are completing the creation of an independent anti-corruption infrastructure," Poroshenko said on April 11 during an official ceremony in Kyiv where he signed a decree to appoint judges to the new High Anti-Corruption Court.

"Today ... 38 new judges will take up their duties in a completely new court," Poroshenko said.

The creation of the court has been a longtime demand of both the United States and the European Union.

Poroshenko has been accused of failing to tackle graft or rein in influential magnates.

The exposure of a military embezzlement scheme that allegedly involved top Poroshenko associates as well as a factory controlled by the president has badly dented his popularity.

Poroshenko has denied any links to the scheme.

The creation of the High Anti-Corruption Court comes ahead of the April 21 presidential runoff where Poroshenko will be facing comic actor Volodymyr Zelenskiy who has a commanding lead in some polls.

Based on reporting by AP and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-s- president-poroshenko-creates-anti- corruption-court/29875480.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.

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New York, NY, April 03, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today announced that Shwetak Patel of the University of Washington and Google is the recipient of the 2018 ACM Prize in Computing for contributions to creative and practical sensing systems for sustainability and health. Before Patels work, most systems for monitoring energy and health required expensive and cumbersome specialized devices, precluding practical widespread adoption. Patel and his students found highly creative ways to leverage existing infrastructure to make affordable and accurate monitoring a practical reality. Patel quickly turned his teams research contributions into real-world deployments, founding companies to commercialize their work.



The ACM Prize in Computing recognizes early-to-mid-career computer scientists whose research contributions have fundamental impact and broad implications. The award carries a prize of $250,000, from an endowment provided by Infosys Ltd. Patel will formally receive the ACM Prize at ACMs annual awards banquet on June 15, 2019 in San Francisco.



Despite the fact that he is only 37, Shwetak Patel has had significant impact on the field of ubiquitous computing for nearly two decades, said ACM President Cherri M. Pancake. His work has ushered in some really exciting possibilities in the areas of sustainability and health. The widespread adoption of systems where individuals can monitor their health with smartphones could revolutionize healthcare  especially in the developing world. Shwetak Patel certainly exemplifies the ACM Prizes goal of recognizing work with fundamental impact and broad implications.



Infosys is proud to support the ACM Prize in Computing, which this year recognizes Shwetak Patel for his trailblazing work in ubiquitous computing, said Pravin Rao, COO of Infosys. Beyond breaking new conceptual ground through research in many areas, Shwetak Patel is especially adept at rapidly bringing his ideas to the public via new products that are accessible and affordable. Patels vision for ubiquitous computing is to enhance our everyday world with sensing, data processing and computation. The way in which his digital health initiatives combine AI with sensors and mobile computing is also very exciting and will likely have a significant impact on health care around the world for many years to come.



Patels research closed the gap between science fiction and reality in many applications in ubiquitous computing for sustainability and health.



Monitoring Energy and Water Usage in the Home



With the emergence of embedded computing systems over the past few decades, a longstanding goal has been to use embedded devices to gain a more fine-grained understanding of home water and energy usage than is available by simply reading a monthly utility bill. In industry, one proposed solution has been to develop smart appliances in which items such as refrigerators or televisions would be fitted with special meters so that that their energy consumption could be monitored. Rather than having smart devices throughout the home, each with its own meter, Patel recognized that a homes electrical system (and later its plumbing system) can be reconsidered as a network capable of capturing and transmitting information. Patels insight was that each appliance, as it uses power, generates and transmits information as noise (perturbations) on the circuit. Patel then developed a method to disambiguate (separate and catalog) which rooms, appliances, and times of day energy was being used. Patel engineered the system so that an entire home could be monitored with just one meter for electricity and one meter for plumbing. Zensi, Inc., the startup he formed to commercialize his work, was sold to Belkin, which subsequently opened a 25-person R&D lab in Seattle to conduct further sustainability research alongside Patel in his team. In developing these products, Patel also became an electrician and plumber.



Low-Powered Home Sensors



Building on his work on sustainability in residential environments, Patel next developed a new approach for wireless sensor nodes in the home, which dramatically reduced power consumption of each node while continuing to cover the whole home. Patels Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure (SNUPI) nodes contain an ultra-low-power transmitter that extends its range by coupling its wirelessly transmitted signal to the existing powerlines. SNUPI was a core component of Patels next startup, WallyHome. Through its network of low-powered sensors WallyHome monitors temperature, humidity and any potential water leakages. For example, if an event(such as a dishwasher leak) occurs in the home, the homeowner will receive an instant text on their mobile phone. While WallyHome was purchased by Sears Holding Company in 2015, Patels research in smart home sensing has informed much of the growing smart home industry, including companies like Google, Next, and Samsung.



Digital Health



More recently, Patel has leveraged sensors already on mobile phones (such as cameras and microphones) for physiological sensing and the management of chronic diseases. These technologies include SPiroSmart and CoughSense, which monitor lung function; BiliCam, which detects neonatal jaundice in newborns; HemaApp, which monitors hemoglobin levels; OsteoApp, to screen for osteoporosis; and BPSense, which monitors blood pressure. Patel has been working closely with Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation to share these technologies throughout the developing world. His work using a microphone for respiratory monitoring has already been deployed in parts of India and Bangladesh, and HemaApp is being used in Peru to screen for childhood anemia. He also commercialized some of these technologies, which were acquired by Google.



Biographical Background



Shwetak N. Patel is the Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, where he directs the Ubicomp Lab, which develops innovative sensing systems for real-world applications in health, sustainability and novel interactions. He is also a director at Google working on health care.



Patel earned his Bachelors and PhD degrees in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology. His numerous honors include receiving a MacArthur Fellowship, a Sloan Fellowship, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), MIT TR-35 Award, and a National Academy of Engineering Gilbreth Award. Patel is a Fellow of ACM.



About the ACM Prize in Computing



The ACM Prize in Computing recognizes an early to mid-career fundamental innovative contribution in computing that, through its depth, impact and broad implications, exemplifies the greatest achievements in the discipline. The award carries a prize of $250,000. Financial support is provided by an endowment from Infosys Ltd. The ACM Prize in Computing was previously known as the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences from 2007 through 2015. ACM Prize recipients are invited to participate in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, an annual networking event that brings together young researchers from around the world with recipients of the ACM A.M. Turing Award, the Abel Prize, the Fields Medal, and the Nevanlinna Prize.



About ACM



ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is the worlds largest educational and scientific computing society, uniting computing educators, researchers and professionals to inspire dialogue, share resources and address the fields challenges. ACM strengthens the computing professions collective voice through strong leadership, promotion of the highest standards, and recognition of technical excellence. ACM supports the professional growth of its members by providing opportunities for life-long learning, career development, and professional networking.



About Infosys



Infosys is a global leader in technology services and consulting. We enable clients in more than 50 countries to create and execute strategies for their digital transformation. From engineering to application development, knowledge management and business process management, we help our clients find the right problems to solve, and to solve these effectively. Our team of 199,000+ innovators, across the globe, is differentiated by the imagination, knowledge and experience, across industries and technologies that we bring to every project we undertake. Visit https://www.infosys.com/ to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise thrive in the digital age.

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Las Vegas, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BioPower Operations Corporation, a Nevada corporation (the Company) announced today that its Board of Directors has approved, and that the Company has entered into a Binding Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) from WPP Energy GmbH, a private Swiss Company (WPP), to acquire a 90% interest in the Company, "OTCMKTS Symbol "BOPO" (the Transaction). Pursuant to the MOU the parties agreed to negotiate and enter into a definitive agreement to set the terms of the Transaction in accordance with the MOU.



There can be no assurance that a definitive agreement can or will be entered into or that the Transaction will close as planned, or at all.

ABOUT WPP

Headquartered in Geneva Switzerland, WPP is seeking to be a repository for disruptive green energy technologies, aiming to make electricity available at lower costs and to reduce landfill waste by up to 97%.

WPP intends to build, own, license, operate and maintain these advanced technologies and enters into strategic joint venture partnerships for the purpose of accelerating the deployment of important environmentally friendly technologies for the benefit of the entire world.

WPP intends to transmit its energy and biofuel production, and that of its partners, into WPP's upcoming Global Green Energy Futures Contract Trading Platform using Blockchain Technology.

For more information on WPP Energy please visit https://wppenergy.com/

Contact:

Robert Kohn

+1 954.892.0200

www.BioPowerCorp.com

Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements, which can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as estimates, believes, anticipates, intends, expects and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to be materially different from those described herein as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. These forward-looking statements are based on the Companys current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting the Company will be those anticipated by the Company. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond the control of the Company) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly 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.
Washington, D.C., April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nate Powell-Palm might not be a farmer now if it were not for organic. The organic Montana farmer told members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture on Wednesday that the organic way of farming has given him and other farmers the opportunity to use sustainable agricultural practices, earn premium prices for their crops and stay in farming  and flourish  as a result.

Testifying at a hearing on Economic Opportunities for Farmers through Sustainable Agricultural Practices, Powell-Palm of Cold Springs Organics in Gallatin Valley, Montana, said that when farmers can receive a premium in the market for sustainable practices, its a win-win.

The Organic Trade Association member, who raises 875 acres of certified organic wheat, field peas, straw, cattle and hay in his operation in southern Montana, stressed the importance of the organic certification process in the United States in ensuring that farmers engaging in sustainable practices are fairly compensated.

Its this transparent, rigorous certification process that allows farmers to be economically compensated for clearly defined land stewardship practices, he said.

He continued: In order for this opportunity to stay available to farmers like myself, USDA must be accountable to advancing organic standards and to emphasizing continuous improvement in the organic public-private partnership.

Powell-Palm, a first-generation farmer, told lawmakers about his journey in agriculture and to organic. He got an early start in agriculture, getting involved in 4-H in grade school and raising a steer at the tender age of nine. He said that from that young experience on, he was determined to get into the cattle business. He first landed in the world of organic in 2008 when  as a teenager -- he applied for and received organic certification from the Montana Department of Agriculture, becoming the states youngest organic certified farmer.

The premium prices he received for his organic, grass-fed cattle enabled him to lease larger pieces of land and expand his operation. His all-organic operation now grows hay for his cattle, various grains and legumes, and a few years ago he entered into a contract arrangement with Annies Mac and Cheese, a subsidiary of General Mills, to provide organic yellow peas and other rotational crops for a new line of pasta that uses all the rotational crops used by Montana organic farmers.

I chose organicand everything I have just shared with you is possible because of the trust consumers place in the organic seal, he said.

As we see throughout the country, the challenges of farming, including climate change, are resulting in farmers being forced to give up their agricultural heritage and profession. But we do have a solution: certified organic farming, Powell-Palm said in his prepared testimony.

The Organic Trade Association (OTA) is the membership-based business association for organic agriculture and products in North America. OTA is the leading voice for the organic trade in the United States, representing over 9,500 organic businesses across 50 states. Its members include growers, shippers, processors, certifiers, farmers' associations, distributors, importers, exporters, consultants, retailers and others. OTAs Board of Directors is democratically elected by its members. OTA's mission is to promote and protect ORGANIC with a unifying voice that serves and engages its diverse members from farm to marketplace.

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TORTOLA, British Virgin Islands, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Orca Exploration Group Inc. ("Orca" or "the Company") announces its financial results for the year ended December 31, 2018. All currency amounts are in United States dollars unless otherwise stated.

The Companys revenue for 2018 decreased by 5% to $57.8 million from $60.8 million in 2017. The decrease is the result of lower power sales volumes, higher Tanzanian Petroleum Development Corporation ( TPDC ) Profit Gas share (1) and a lower current income tax adjustment. Additional Gas (1) deliveries and sales for 2018 averaged 39.9 million MMcfd, a decrease of 4% over 41.6 MMcfd in 2017. The decrease in Additional Gas volumes for 2018 was primarily the result of reduced nominations of natural gas volumes by the Tanzanian Electric Supply Company Limited ( T A NESCO ). The decrease in volumes was partially offset by a 7% rise in the weighted average price for Addition Gas in 2018 to $5.17/mcf from $4.84/mcf in 2017.

) Profit Gas share and a lower current income tax adjustment. Additional Gas deliveries and sales for 2018 averaged 39.9 million MMcfd, a decrease of 4% over 41.6 MMcfd in 2017. The decrease in Additional Gas volumes for 2018 was primarily the result of reduced nominations of natural gas volumes by the Tanzanian Electric Supply Company Limited ( ). The decrease in volumes was partially offset by a 7% rise in the weighted average price for Addition Gas in 2018 to $5.17/mcf from $4.84/mcf in 2017. The Company recorded a net income attributable to shareholders of $13.3 million for 2018 compared to a net loss attributable to shareholders of $2.5 million in 2017. The increase in net income attributable to shareholders for 2018 was primarily a result of the increase in finance income as a result of the reversal of the provision for doubtful accounts of $15.9 million related to the collection of TANESCO arrears previously provided for being offset by increased stock based compensation costs and increased interest expense.

The Companys net cash flows from operating activities for 2018 decreased by 40% to $28.8 million from $48.2 million in 2017. The decrease for 2018 from 2017 is primarily due to payments for stock based compensation, together with the decrease in cash inflow associated with changes in non-cash working capital.

The Companys adjusted funds flow from operations (2) for 2018 increased by 15% to $19.3 million from $16.7 million in 2017. The increase between years is primarily a result of reduced general and administration expenses and an increase in interest income on bonds. The decrease in revenue between years was offset by the decrease in current corporate income tax expense.

for 2018 increased by 15% to $19.3 million from $16.7 million in 2017. The increase between years is primarily a result of reduced general and administration expenses and an increase in interest income on bonds. The decrease in revenue between years was offset by the decrease in current corporate income tax expense. Working capital increased 21% to $84.2 million as at December 31, 2018 compared to $69.6 million as at December 31, 2017. The increase is primarily due to the cumulative cash collections from TANESCO for current deliveries and arrears offset by an increase in stock based compensation during the period. The closing cash at December 31, 2018 was $64.7 million (December 31, 2017: $122.3 million). The decrease in cash is primarily a result of the investment in short-term bonds of $66.8 million at December 31, 2018 (December 31, 2017: $ nil).

At December 31, 2018 the current receivable from TANESCO was $ nil (December 31, 2017: $5.7 million). During 2018, the amounts received from TANESCO continued to be in excess of the revenue recognized for gas sales to TANESCO. As a result, during 2018 $15.9 million of cumulative excess receipts over sales invoiced were allocated to the long-term arrears together with the associated reversal of the provision for doubtful accounts. The TANESCO long-term receivable at December 31, 2018 was $58.5 million (with a provision of $58.5 million) compared to $74.4 million (with a provision of $74.4 million) at December 31, 2017. Subsequent to December 31, 2018 the Company has invoiced TANESCO $15.6 million for 2018 gas deliveries and TANESCO has paid the Company $18.0 million.

(1) Profit Gas is defined within the Principal Terms of the PSA and Related Agreements and Additional Gas is defined within the Nature of Operations both included as part of the Management Discussion & Analysis.

(2) Adjusted funds flow from operations is a non-GAAP financial measure. See Non-GAAP Measures.

On January 16, 2018 the Company sold 7.9% of PAE PanAfrican Energy Corporation ( P A E M ) to a wholly owned subsidiary of Swala Oil & Gas (Tanzania) plc., ( Swala ) for a net sales price of $21.0 million based on a net enterprise value of $265.0 million as at January 1, 2017 (the effective date). The consideration received by the Company was $15.7 million in cash ($17.0 million less a purchase price adjustment of $1.3 million reflecting Swalas share of cash flow from the effective date of the transaction until closing) and $4.0 million of Swala convertible preference shares. The agreement provided Swala with the right to acquire up to a maximum of 40% of PAEM based on the same terms and conditions. Subsequent to December 31, 2018 the Company terminated this right in accordance with the terms of the agreement.

) to a wholly owned subsidiary of Swala Oil & Gas (Tanzania) plc., ( ) for a net sales price of $21.0 million based on a net enterprise value of $265.0 million as at January 1, 2017 (the effective date). The consideration received by the Company was $15.7 million in cash ($17.0 million less a purchase price adjustment of $1.3 million reflecting Swalas share of cash flow from the effective date of the transaction until closing) and $4.0 million of Swala convertible preference shares. The agreement provided Swala with the right to acquire up to a maximum of 40% of PAEM based on the same terms and conditions. Subsequent to December 31, 2018 the Company terminated this right in accordance with the terms of the agreement. Orca anticipates Additional Gas sales volumes will be between 60  75 MMcfd in 2019. This will be accompanied by a drive to reduce general and administrative costs despite an increase in headcount at the corporate level. The Company also plans to work towards resolving several outstanding issues with respect to cost recovery, tax and production sharing agreements terms that are documented in the notes to the financial statements.

The Board of Directors of Orca has called a shareholders meeting to be held on May 29, 2019.

Financial and Operating Highlights

YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31 % Change (Expressed in $000 unless indicated otherwise) 2018 2017 2018 vs 2017 OPERATING Daily average gas delivered and sold (MMcfd) Additional Gas 39.9 41.6 (4)% Industrial 13.0 12.6 3% Power 26.9 29.0 (7)% Average price ($/mcf) Industrial 8.26 7.71 7% Power 3.68 3.60 2% Weighted average 5.17 4.84 7% Operating netback ($/mcf) (1) 2.76 3.00 (8)% FINANCIAL Revenue 57,766 60,832 (5)% Net cash flows from operating activities 28,752 48,154 (40)% per share - basic and diluted ($) 0.82 1.38 (40)% Net income (loss) attributable to shareholders 13,270 (2,500 ) n/m per share - basic and diluted ($) 0.38 (0.07 ) n/m Adjusted funds flow from operations (1) 19,255 16,742 15% per share - basic and diluted ($) 0.55 0.48 15% Capital expenditures (excluding transfers) 5,843 1,545 278% AS AT DECEMBER 31 2018 2017 Working capital (including cash) 84,182 69,575 21% Cash 64,660 122,322 (47)% Investment in short-term bonds 66,837 - n/m Long-term loan 53,900 58,518 (8)% Outstanding Shares ('000) Class A 1,750 1,750 0% Class B 33,506 33,506 0% Total shares outstanding 35,256 35,256 0% Weighted average Class A and Class B shares 35,256 34,858 1%

(1) Operating netback and adjusted funds flow from operations are non-GAAP financial measures. See Non-GAAP Measures.

The complete Audited Consolidated Financial Statements and Notes and Management Discussion & Analysis may be found on the Companys website www.orcaexploration.com or on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com .

Reserve Presentation

Orca is pleased to announce that its latest corporate reserve presentation is available on the Company's website (www.orcaexploration.com).

Orca Exploration Group Inc.

Orca Exploration Group Inc. is an international public company engaged in natural gas exploration, development and supply in Tanzania through its subsidiary PanAfrican Energy Tanzania Limited, as well as oil and gas appraisal in Italy. Orca trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the trading symbols ORC.B and ORC.A.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Abbreviations

Mcf thousand cubic feet MMcfd million standard cubic feet per day

Non-GAAP Measures

The Company evaluates its performance using a number of non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) measures. These non-GAAP measures are not standardized and therefore may not be comparable to similar measurements of other entities.

Adjusted funds flow from operations represents net cash flows from operating activities less interest expense and before changes in non-cash working capital. Management uses this as a performance measure that represents the companys ability to generate sufficient cash flow to fund capital expenditures and/or service debt.

THREE MONTHS ENDED DECEMBER 31 YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31 $000 2018 2017 2018 2017 Net cash flow from operating activities 4,085 12,882 28,752 48,154 Base interest expense (1,591) (1,594) (6,249) (6,250) Participatory interest expense (342) (1,031) (4,745) (3,809) Finance income re TANESCO arrears and VAT recovered (1,359) (90) (16,227) (90) Changes in non-cash working capital 5,605 (10,105) 17,724 (21,263) Adjusted funds flow from operations 6,398 62 19,255 16,742

The Companys adjusted funds flow from operations for the quarter ended December 31, 2018 was $6.4 million (Q4 2017: $0.1 million). The increase in adjusted funds flow from Q4 2017 to Q4 2018 is a result of increase in deliveries and revenue between quarters and the consistent TANESCO payments resulting in recording 100% of TANESCO deliveries in revenue versus 90% in Q4 2017. The Companys adjusted funds flow from operations for the year ended December 30, 2018 was $19.3 million (year ending December 31, 2017: $16.7 million). The increase in adjusted funds flow from operations between years is primarily a result of recording 100% of TANESCO deliveries in revenue for 2018 versus a reduced percentage for deliveries in 2017 combined with recording all the deferred revenue at December 31, 2017 as revenue in 2018. This offset the decrease in revenue from lower in deliveries for the year compared with 2017.

Operating netbacks represent the profit margin associated with the production and sale of additional gas and is calculated as revenues less processing and transportation tariffs, government parastatals revenue share, operating and distribution costs for one thousand standard cubic feet of additional gas. This is a key measure as it demonstrates the profit generated from each unit of production and is widely used by the investment community.

Adjusted funds flow from operations per share is calculated on the basis of the adjusted funds flow from operations divided by the weighted average number of shares.

Net cash flows from operating activities per share is calculated as net cash flows from operating activities divided by the weighted average number of shares.

Forward-Looking Information: This news release contains forward-looking statements or information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. More particularly, this news release contains, without limitation: forward-looking statements pertaining to the following: the Company's expectations regarding Additional Gas volumes in 2019. As a consequence, actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Although management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievement since such expectations are inherently subject to significant business, economic, operational, competitive, political and social uncertainties and contingencies.

These forward-looking statements involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Companys control, and many factors could cause the Companys actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by the Company, including, but not limited to, the potential negative effect on the Companys rights under the PSA and other agreements relating to its business in Tanzania as a result of the Act and other recently enacted and future legislation, as well as the risk that such legislation will create additional costs and time connected with the Companys business in Tanzania; risks regarding the uncertainty around evolution of Tanzanian legislation; the impact of general economic conditions in the areas in which the Company operates; industry conditions; changes in laws and regulations including the adoption of new environmental laws and regulations, impact of new local content regulations and changes in how they are interpreted and enforced; and unanticipated changes to legislation and the effect on the Company's operations, including, but not limited to, the Act and the Natural Gas Pricing Regulation. In addition, there are risks and uncertainties associated with oil and gas operations. Therefore the Companys actual results, performance or achievement could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these forward-looking statements and, accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by these forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits the Company will derive therefrom. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive

Such forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions made by the Company in light of its experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors the Company believes are appropriate in the circumstances, including, but not limited to, that the Tanzania National Natural Gas Infrastructure Project ("NNGIP") is completed; the TPDC, the Ministry Energy and Mines and the Company are able to agree on commercial terms for future incremental gas sales and the Company can expand Songo development beyond the existing Songas infrastructure and supply gas to the NNGIP; that there will continue to be no restrictions on the movement of cash from Mauritius or Tanzania; that the Company will have sufficient cash flow, debt or equity sources or other financial resources required to fund its capital and operating expenditures and requirements as needed; that the Company will have adequate funding to continue operations; that the Company will successfully negotiate agreements; receipt of required regulatory approvals; the ability of the Company to increase production at a consistent rate; infrastructure capacity; commodity prices will not further deteriorate significantly; the ability of the Company to obtain equipment and services in a timely manner to carry out exploration, development and exploitation activities; future capital expenditures; availability of skilled labour; timing and amount of capital expenditures; uninterrupted access to infrastructure; the impact of increasing competition; conditions in general economic and financial markets; effects of regulation by governmental agencies; that the Companys appeal of various tax assessments will be successful; that the enactment of the Act in Tanzania will not impair the Companys rights under the PSA to develop and market natural gas in Tanzania; current or, where applicable, proposed industry conditions, laws and regulations will continue in effect or as anticipated as described herein; and other matters.

The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws.
Georges GAUDRIAULT, Scientific Director of DEINOVE, will give a talk at the ECCMID, at the Therapeutics pipeline corner, on this coming Sunday, April 14 th , in Amsterdam.

He will describe the progress of the DNV3837 program, including new data and the design of the upcoming Phase II clinical trial in severe gastrointestinal infections caused by Clostridium difficile.

ECCMID is the world's premier Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases event.

DEINOVE (Euronext Growth Paris: ALDEI), a French biotech company that uses a disruptive approach to develop innovative antibiotics and bio-based active ingredients, announced that Georges GAUDRIAULT will give a presentation at the 29th Annual Congress of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from 13 April to 16 April).

He will introduce the DNV3837 antibiotic program at the Therapeutics pipeline corner which will be held on Sunday, April 14th, from 12:15 to 1:15pm. He will highlight new pre-clinical data and will provide information on the upcoming Phase II clinical study.

ECCMID is the world's premier Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases event. It brings together experts from many fields to present their latest findings, guidelines and experiences to an audience of over 12,000 colleagues. It will take place in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from 13 - 16 April 2019.

The details of the presentation will be disclosed at the end of the meeting.





ABOUT THE DNV3837 ANTIBIOTIC CANDIDATE

DNV3837  a prodrug of the DNV3681 molecule (also known as MCB3681)  is a narrow-spectrum, hybrid oxazolidinone-quinolone synthetic antibiotic targeting only Gram-positive bacteria. It is developed as a highly active 1st line treatment targeting Clostridium difficile.

It has demonstrated significant efficacy and superiority to reference treatments (fidaxomicin in particular) against isolates of C. diff., regardless of their virulence (including the hyper virulent strain NAP1) or their resistance to other antibacterial drugs.

DNV3837 is administered intravenously and is able to cross the gastrointestinal barrier, allowing it to precisely target the infection site. Several Phase I trials (on approx. on hundred healthy volunteers) have shown a high concentration of the antibiotic in stools, a strong marker of its presence in the intestine. It has also demonstrated its ability to eliminate C. diff. bacteria without altering the gut microbiota in the long term, a definite advantage for patient prognosis. It has also shown an acceptable tolerance profile.

FDA granted the DNV3837 program with Qualified Infectious Disease Product (QIDP) designation and Fast Track status.

The Phase II study is scheduled to begin mid-2019. It will be a multicenter trial with a major part taking place in the United States. DEINOVE has chosen Medpace as its Clinical Research Organization (CRO)1 to prepare and oversee the trial.

ABOUT DEINOVE

DEINOVE is a French biotechnology company, a leader in disruptive innovation, which aims 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 unsuspected possibilities 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-infective agents : 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 bioMerieux, the Institut Pasteur and Naicons (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 bioMerieux, the Institut Pasteur and Naicons (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 being planned.

Within the Euromedecine science park located in Montpellier, DEINOVE employs 62 employees, and has filed more than 310 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

coralie.martin@deinove.com



Media

ALIZE RP

Aurore Gangloff / Catherine Megelas

Ph.: +33 (0)1 44 54 36 66

deinove@alizerp.com







1 A CRO is a service provider dedicated to biomedical research for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, as well as for research organizations.





Attachment
Vast Resources plc / Ticker: VAST / Index: AIM / Sector: Mining

12 April 2019

Vast Resources plc

(Vast or the Company)

Placing and Subscription to raise 600,000 before costs

Vast Resources plc, the AIM-listed mining company, is pleased to announce that it has raised in aggregate 600,000 before costs through a placing (the Placing) and subscription (the Subscription) of 444,444,444 ordinary shares of 0.1p in the Company (Ordinary Shares) at a price of 0.135p per Ordinary Share (the Placing and Subscription Shares). The Placing was for 407,407,407 Ordinary Shares and was undertaken by the Companys joint broker SVS Securities plc. The Subscription was for 37,037,037 Ordinary Shares of which 7,407,407 were taken up by Andrew Prelea and 29,629,630 were taken up by Roy Tucker, directors of the Company.

222,222,222 of the Placing and Subscription Shares were issued under existing authorities available to the Board relating to Baita Plai Polymetallic Mine (Baita Plai) and for general corporate purposes and 222,222,222 of the Placing and Subscription Shares were issued under existing authorities available to the Board relating to exploration for and mining of diamonds in Zimbabwe as approved by Shareholders on 11 March 2019.

The Placing and Subscription will be applied as to 300,000 to maintain the Companys operations at Baita Plai and for general corporate purposes prior to the receipt of more substantial funding post the proposed restructuring of the Company (subject to the approval of shareholders at the forthcoming General Meeting of the Company on 23 April 2019), and as to 300,000 for working capital at the Heritage Concession in Zimbabwe which will include preparation for immediate mobilisation on signing of the joint venture contract with the Chiadzwa Community Trust.

Admission of and Dealings in the Placing and Subscription Shares

The issue of the Placing and Subscription Shares is conditional on their admission to trading on AIM ("Admission"). Application is being made for the Placing and Subscription Shares to be admitted to trading on AIM and it is expected that Admission will become effective and dealing in the Placing and Subscription Shares will commence on or around 17 April 2019. The Placing and Subscription Shares will rank pari passu with existing Ordinary Shares.

Following Admission, the total issued share capital of the Company will be 7,945,171,311. The above figure of 7,945,171,311 may be used by shareholders as the denominator for the calculations by which they will determine if they are required to notify their interest in Vast under the FCA's Disclosure and Transparency Rule.

Following Admission the Ordinary Shares held by Andrew Prelea and Roy Tucker will be 39,179,476 and 69,569,992 respectively representing 0.49% and 0.88% respectively of the total enlarged share capital of the Company.

**ENDS**

For further information, visit www.vastresourcesplc.com or please contact:

Vast Resources plc

Andrew Prelea (Chief Executive Officer)



www.vastresourcesplc.com

+44 (0) 20 7236 1177



Beaumont Cornish - Financial & Nominated Adviser

Roland Cornish

James Biddle



www.beaumontcornish.com

+44 (0) 020 7628 3396 SVS Securities Plc  Joint Broker

Tom Curran

Ben Tadd



www.svssecurities.com

+44 (0) 20 3700 0100 SP Angel Corporate Finance LLP  Joint Broker

Richard Morrison

Caroline Rowe



www.spangel.co.uk

+44 (0) 20 3470 0470



St Brides Partners Ltd

Catherine Leftley

Juliet Earl



www.stbridespartners.co.uk

+44 (0) 20 7236 1177

The information contained within this announcement is deemed by the Company to constitute inside information as stipulated under the Market Abuse Regulations (EU) No. 596/2014 (MAR).

Notes

Vast Resources plc, is an AIM listed mining company with mines in Romania and Zimbabwe focused on the rapid advancement of high quality brownfield projects by recommencing production at previously producing mines in Romania and finalising its Chiadzwa Community Development Trust joint venture on the Heritage Concession (Block T1A of the Marange Diamond Fields) in Zimbabwe.

The Companys portfolio includes an 80% interest in the Baita Plai Polymetallic Mine in Romania, where work is currently underway towards developing and recommissioning the mine on completion of funding.

Vast Resources owns the Manaila Polymetallic Mine in Romania, which was commissioned in 2015, currently on care and maintenance, and is focused on its expansion through the development of a second open pit operation and new metallurgical complex at the Carlibaba Extension Area.

1.

Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated

a)

Name:

Andrew Prelea

2.

Reason for the notification

a)

Position/status:

Chief Executive Officer

b)

Initial notification/Amendment:

Initial notification

3.

Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor

a)

Name:

Vast Resources Plc

b)

LEI:

213800QXLO766CMGCQ60

4.

Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted

a)

Description of the financial instrument, type of instrument:

Identification code:

Ordinary shares of 0.1 each

b)

Nature of the transaction:

Purchase of ordinary shares

c)

Price(s) and volume(s):

Price(s) Volume(s) 0.00135 7,407,407

d)

Aggregated information:

Aggregated volume:

Price:

Price(s) Volume(s) 0.00135 7,407,407

e)

Date of the transaction:

11-04-2019

f)

Place of the transaction:

AIM, London Stock Exchange

1.

Details of the person discharging managerial responsibilities/person closely associated

a)

Name:

Roy Tucker

2.

Reason for the notification

a)

Position/status:

Director

b)

Initial notification/Amendment:

Initial notification

3.

Details of the issuer, emission allowance market participant, auction platform, auctioneer or auction monitor

a)

Name:

Vast Resources Plc

b)

LEI:

4.

Details of the transaction(s): section to be repeated for (i) each type of instrument; (ii) each type of transaction; (iii) each date; and (iv) each place where transactions have been conducted

a)

Description of the financial instrument, type of instrument:

Identification code:

Ordinary shares of 0.1 each

b)

Nature of the transaction:

Purchase of ordinary shares

c)

Price(s) and volume(s):

Price(s) Volume(s) 0.00135 29,269,230

d)

Aggregated information:

Aggregated volume:

Price:

Price(s) Volume(s) 0.00135 29,269,230

e)

Date of the transaction:

11-04-2019

f)

Place of the transaction:

AIM, London Stock Exchange
English Lithuanian

Siauliu Bankas AB, company code 112025254, address Tilzes st. 149, Siauliai, Lithuania.

Siauliu bankas AB (hereinafter - the Bank) on 11 April 2019 signed options contracts with the employees of the Bank and the Bank's subsidiaries, who are paid an annual variable remuneration in accordance with the procedure established by legal acts and the Bank's internal documents, a part of which shall be paid in the Bank's shares.

Options contracts are continuous, options implementation date is provided for the second Friday in April of each year. Depending on the employee's performance results, the Bank shall have the right to assign each year a certain number of shares to the employee for the financial year and confirm the proportional part (one third) of the number of shares assigned during the previous years and still not transferred to the employee.

On the basis of signed options contracts employees as a part of annual variable remuneration for the year 2018 are granted the option right to receive the assigned and later approved (every year by proportional part, taking into account the results of the evaluation of the activities of the employee) number of the Banks shares free of charge (only paying the employees taxes) on 15 April 2022. For the results of the year 2018 employees are granted the options rights to 2,792,096 shares of the Bank.





Additional information shall be provided by

Deputy Director of Markets and Treasury Department

Pranas Gedgaudas, tel. +370 41 595653

pranas.gedgaudas@sb.lt
English Lithuanian

Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba, AB identification code 302648707, registered office placed at Elektrines str. 21, LT-26108 Elektrenai, Republic of Lithuania (hereinafter referred to as the Company). The total number of registered ordinary shares issued by the Company is 648 002 629; ISIN code LT0000128571.

On 12 April 2019, the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of the Company approved the Annual Report of the Company for the year 2018 and the Annual Financial Statements of the Company for the year 2018, audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers, UAB, the Companys auditor.

Information on the operational results of the Company for the year 2018:

LIETUVOS ENERGIJOS GAMYBA FINISHED 2018 WITH GOOD FINANCIAL RESULTS AND A NEW STRATEGY

Despite the unfavourable natural conditions and market unpredictability, last year Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba, a part of Lietuvos Energija group, managed to maintain decent financial performance indicators and provide reliable power regulation and reserve services.

The sales income of Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba decreased by 14.5% and amounted to EUR 125.9 million due to the lower production volume and income from the regulated activity of Elektrenai Complex. If compared to 2017, the adjusted EBITDA margin remained stable (34.4%) while profitability ratios, such as the margin of the operating profit, gross profit margin, net profit margin, and the return on equity have been significantly better due to higher sales revenue in Kaunas A. Brazauskas HPP, improved commercial results in Kruonis PSHP, and effective management of the repair and maintenance expenses in Elektrenai Complex. Lower amortization and depreciation costs as well as positive revaluation of the emission allowances also added up to the increased profitability. The net profit of the Company reached EUR 29.6 million  44.5% more if compared to 2017.

Last year, our performance was significantly affected by natural conditions and planned maintenance works. Compared to 2017, electricity production in Kaunas HPP has shrunk by one-fourth due to and arid summer. One of the units in Kruonis PSHP has been unavailable for half a year because of heavy maintenance works. In total, the amount of electricity produced in our plants decreased by one-fifth if compared to the previous year. However, due to favourable wholesale electricity prices in the power exchange market, our financial performance results remained positive, explains Rimgaudas Kalvaitis, CEO at Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba.

According to him, 2018 has also been marked by an increasing scope of the ancillary services  the demand for power regulation services nearly doubled, requests for the secondary reserve have intensified. The company also successfully provided tertiary and strategic reserve services. Providing effective and reliable ancillary services remains among our top priorities for the upcoming year as well, comments R. Kalvaitis.

In 2018, a total of 0.88 TWh of electricity has been generated and sold in the power plants owned by Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba  23% less if compared to 2017 (1,15 TWh).

At the end of 2018, Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba updated its strategy, adopting a document that reflects the ambitious strategy of Lietuvos Energija group LE 2030, announced last spring. Our mission and vision remain the same, with strategic generation laid down as the main priority of Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba. Maintaining, modernising and developing sufficient and reliable local power generation capabilities, we primarily aim to contribute to successful synchronization of the Baltic countries with the continental European network by 2025. Groups investments in both existing and new power generation facilities should reach EUR 600 million in the next 12 years,  says R. Kalvaitis.

The updated Companys strategy foresees that Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba will also significantly contribute to the implementation of the overall Groups vision by developing innovative technologies and green energy generation capabilities. This is to be done by exploiting the Companys owned hydropower capabilities in Kaunas and Kruonis, providing maintenance services for the RES power plants, and developing innovative solutions such as pilot projects of solar energy plants and energy storage systems within the available infrastructure. The Company continues preparation for the Kruonis PSHP modernisation project, considering possibilities to install a fifth hydro-unit. Last year, the project received partial funding from the European Commission for further infrastructure research and feasibility study.

Key interim Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba performance indicators for 2018:

The sales income of Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba decreased by 14.5% when compared to 2017 and amounted to EUR 125.9 million. It was mainly affected by the lower production volume and income from the regulated activity of Elektrenai Complex.

of Lietuvos Energijos Gamyba decreased by 14.5% when compared to 2017 and amounted to EUR 125.9 million. It was mainly affected by the lower production volume and income from the regulated activity of Elektrenai Complex. The adjusted EBITDA decreased by EUR 8.9 million, compared to 2017, while the adjusted EBITDA margin remained comparatively stable  34.4% (36.1% in 2017). The EBITDA has been negatively affected by the lower volume of regulated services at Elektrenai Complex, yet partly compensated by the higher sales revenue in Kaunas A. Brazauskas HPP and improved commercial results in Kruonis PSHP.

decreased by EUR 8.9 million, compared to 2017, while the adjusted EBITDA margin remained comparatively stable  34.4% (36.1% in 2017). The EBITDA has been negatively affected by the lower volume of regulated services at Elektrenai Complex, yet partly compensated by the higher sales revenue in Kaunas A. Brazauskas HPP and improved commercial results in Kruonis PSHP. Profitability ratios, such as the margin of the operating profit, gross profit margin, net profit margin, and the return on equity have been significantly better in 2018 than in 2017. The Companys gross profit amounted to EUR 35.2 million while net profit reached EUR 29.6 million  44.5% more than in the previous year. Net profit growth was mainly determined by lower amortization and depreciation costs as well as positive revaluation of the emission allowances.

amounted to EUR 35.2 million while net profit reached EUR 29.6 million  44.5% more than in the previous year. Net profit growth was mainly determined by lower amortization and depreciation costs as well as positive revaluation of the emission allowances. In 2018, the company incurred EUR 21.0 million in operational expenses  5.4% (EUR 1.14 million) more than in 2017. Increased maintenance expenses of the combined cycle unit in Elektrenai Complex acted as the main reason for this.

 5.4% (EUR 1.14 million) more than in 2017. Increased maintenance expenses of the combined cycle unit in Elektrenai Complex acted as the main reason for this. During 2018, the Company invested EUR 5.0 million in non-current tangible and intangible assets, the lions share of which has been assigned for the major repair works in Kruonis PSHP. As a comparison, the number amounted to EUR 1.9 million in 2017.

Berta Jasiukenaite, Public relations project manager, +370 694 60771, berta.jasiukenaite@le.lt

Attachment
TORONTO, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lydian International Limited (TSX:LYD) (Lydian or the Company) today announced the Administrative Court of the Republic of Armenia ruled in favour of Lydian and instructed the Armenian Police to remove trespassers and their property from the Companys Amulsar Project site and assure Lydian free passage to Amulsar.



On September 20, 2018, Lydian filed an appeal with the Administrative Court of Armenia to have the Police enforce the rule of law and remove protesters trespassing on Company property and denying all road access to the Amulsar Project. The Court ruling, announced April 10, 2019, supports Lydian Armenia CJSCs complaint against a decision made by the local police that there was no basis for the removal of protesters, their vehicles, tents, and trailers to allow Lydian to access the Amulsar Project site.

The Court ruling stated that the right to assembly is not absolute and may not be exercised anywhere, in this case, on private property without the consent of the legitimate owner. Therefore, the police are required to remove the trespassers and their property from the Companys Project site. The courts ruling is effective one month after the date of publication unless appealed prior to that date. At this time, the blockades remain in place and the protestors remain on site. Lydian is seeking the polices immediate enforcement of the courts ruling.

Joao Carrelo, President and CEO of Lydian, stated: Lydians Amulsar Project has been illegally blockaded since June 22 last year. While we respect individuals right of free expression, we strongly believe this cannot be exercised in an illegal manner at the expense of the rights of others, meaning in this case Lydians shareholders, lenders, employees, community members, and other stakeholders. Lydian has initiated several legal actions in Armenia since July 2018 to protect the rights of the Company. This is a long overdue step that we hope will become an important milestone towards the abolishment of unlawfulness and discrimination that Lydian has been facing since June 2018. We look forward to the prompt implementation by the police of the Courts ruling.

Lydian fully reserves all rights and remedies to address any disputes under Armenian and international law. To the extent that Armenian authorities fail to implement the decision of the Administrative Court of the Republic of Armenia and do not remove trespassers from the Amulsar Project site, Armenia will continue to be in breach of its obligations under Armenian and international law.

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:

Joao Carrelo, Chief Executive Officer

+1 720-307-5079 Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer

+1 720-307-5087

Or: moreinfo@Lydianinternational.co.uk

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 effective date of the courts ruling; the successful enforcement of the courts ruling by the Jermuk Police; the potential appeal of the courts ruling, which may delay its effective date or potentially result in the overturning of the courts ruling; the Companys ability to have continued access to the Amulsar site in the future; the Companys ability to remove the illegal blockades and permanently re-enter the site; our plans, objectives, prospects, expectations and intentions; the timing of development of the Amulsar Project; the commitment to and implementation of good international industry practices; the expected gold production from, and life of mine of, the Amulsar Project; the expected mining methods at the Amulsar Project. 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; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development; risks associated with obtaining and maintaining the necessary licenses and permits and complying with permitting requirements, including, without limitation, approval of the Armenian government and receipt of all related permits, authorizations or other rights, 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.
Longmont, Colorado, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- First Nations Development Institute ( First Nations ) today announced 13 new grantees under the second year of its three-year Native Language Immersion Initiative (NLII). First Nations launched the initiative in late 2017 as a three-year project to help stem the loss of Indigenous languages and cultures through community-based programs that support new generations of Native American language speakers.



The National Endowment for the Humanities ( NEH ) provided a $2.1 million challenge grant, which First Nations was required to match with $700,000 of additional funding each year over the three-year period. In the first year (2018), the match was met through the support of Kalliopeia Foundation , Lannan Foundation and NoVo Foundation . In the second year (2019), these three foundations returned to generously underwrite the match again, plus First Nations raised the final $100,000 for the second year from individual donors across the U.S.

The United Nations recently declared 2019 The International Year of Indigenous Languages to increase awareness and appreciation of Indigenous languages and their contributions to the worlds rich cultural diversity. There are currently about 150 Native languages spoken in the U.S., many of them spoken only by a small number of elders. Native communities are at a critical juncture when it comes to the retention and perpetuation of their languages, and some suggest that without targeted language preservation and restoration efforts, there may only be 20 Native languages spoken by 2050.

The following 13 grantees were awarded up to $90,000 each in funding to build the capacity of and directly support their Native language-immersion and/or culture-retention program:

1. Chickaloon Village Traditional Council, Chickaloon, Alaska, $90,000  This project will expand upon current efforts to revitalize the Ahtna language at the Ya Ne Dah Ah or Ancient Teachings Tribal School. With this grant, the tribe will create new culture and language curriculum to meet Alaskas requirements in the areas of history, science and social studies.

2. Euchee Yuchi Language Project, Inc., Sapulpa, Oklahoma, $90,000  The project will restore the vitality of the Yuchi language through The Yuchi House, a year-round language-immersion program for students grades K-12. Additionally, this grant will be used to produce an archive of Yuchi language videos and assist with tribal language instructor certification.

3. Friends of the Akwesasne Freedom School, Rooseveltown, New York, $89,320  This teacher training program will increase the capacity of current and new teachers of the Kanienkeha (Mohawk) language. Master language educators will develop a training program for 10 new elementary school teachers and teacher aides that focuses on the Akwesasne Freedom School's unique language curriculum.

4. Keres Childrens Learning Center, Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico, $90,000  This project will provide expansive professional development to nine teachers through one-on-one and group training sessions on language acquisition, language immersion, cultural knowledge and advocacy. Additionally, this funding will be used to purchase supplies and other materials for elementary classrooms that have recently doubled in sized.

5. Nisqually Indian Tribe, Olympia, Washington, $70,836  This project will help preserve and promote tribal traditions through the development of a Nisqually Lushootseed-specific language curriculum. With this grant, the tribe will develop and publish 200 new resources, including Lushootseed alphabet and language books. Additionally, the tribe will train up to four more Lushootseed language teachers and create a Lushootseed font application.

6. Northern Arapaho Tribe, Fort Washakie, Wyoming, $90,000  This project will support the development of a master-apprentice language program to educate and empower Northern Arapaho tribal members. Tribal elders will develop Arapaho language curriculum (i.e., Arapaho words, phrases, stories, history and conversational pieces) that they will share with prospective Arapaho language teachers who will, in turn, share that knowledge with students.

7. Oneida Nation, Oneida, Wisconsin, $89,954  This project will increase the number of proficient first-language speakers within the Oneida community by creating an immersion-only classroom that utilizes the current On^yoteaka Tsi Nitwaw^not^ and Head Start As it Happens curriculum. Twenty students will participate in this language program. Their parents are also required to attend bi-monthly classes and pass a basic assessment to foster an at-home language environment for their children.

8. Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, $90,000  This project will build the organizational and professional capacity of the Yaqui Language Immersion Program. Eleven teachers will engage in the study and practicum for their professional development as language instructors.

9. Salish School of Spokane, Spokane, Washington, $90,000  This project will provide Salish training to four interns recruited and hired from among parents of current students at the Salish School of Spokane. Interns will participate in 60 hours of evening/weekend Salish classes per year, with the goal of eventually hiring them as Salish immersion instructors.

10. Standing Rock Community Development Corporation, Fort Yates, South Dakota, $90,000  The project will utilize the newly created immersion curriculum to pilot educational best practices in the classroom, create an immersion teacher training strategy, increase access to high-quality professional development, and leverage existing staff and resources to transition from a program of Sitting Bull College to a community serving school through the Standing Rock Community Development Corporation.

11. Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, Porcupine, South Dakota, $90,000  This project will provide 26 language instructors with professional development training. Additionally, this grant will be used to open a second Lakota Immersion Childcare Center to provide immersion education to 15 more Lakota students.

12. Wolakota Waldorf Society, Kyle, South Dakota, $86,174  This project will utilize new and existing resources to provide language immersion to 50 to 60 children in grades K-8. With this grant, it will set up an outdoor classroom to introduce students to indigenous plants. It will develop curriculum to teach words and phrases about traditional plants, fruits, tools and ecology. It will also be used to provide professional development training, and encourage parent and community engagement.

13. Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project, Mashpee, Massachusetts, $90,000  This project lays the groundwork to expand the Wopanaaks language immersion school to the 8th grade. The school currently serves students from pre-K through 4th grade. With this grant, the school will partner with five regional colleges and universities to provide comprehensive state and tribal language teacher certification. This will allow the school to recruit and hire new language teachers.

About First Nations Development Institute
TORONTO, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Blueberries Medical Corp. (CSE: BBM) (OTCQB: BBRRF) (FRA: 1OA) (the Company or "Blueberries") a Latin American licensed producer of medicinal cannabis and cannabis-derived products, is pleased to announce that the Companys executive management team will attend and present at GMP Securities 2019 Global Cannabis Conference on April 16, 2019 at The Ritz-Carlton, Toronto.



The GMP Securities Global Cannabis Conference will explore current investing trends, industry perspectives on consumer trends and key developments. This full day event includes company presentations, panel discussions and one-on-one meetings with senior management teams. The conference will also provide the opportunity for key industry participants and institutional investors to network and interact with a diverse group of highly regarded experts, leaders and visionaries from leading public and private cannabis companies. Details of the Companys presentation are below:

Presenter: Dr. Patricio Stocker, Chief Executive Officer

Date: Tuesday April 16, 2019

Time: 2:10 PM

Location: Presentation Room B (The Wellington Ballroom, 4th Floor), The Ritz-Carlton, Toronto

Dr. Stocker will discuss his extensive experience in cannabis cultivation in Colombia, his vision as well as the Companys recent operational developments including the Companys Colombian operations, entry into Argentina, extraction facility build-out and their strategic global relationships.

Having recently completed our public listing, we are keen to increase market awareness and this conference will provide us an excellent platform for a formal introduction to the institutional investment community, stated Dr. Patricio Stocker, Chief Executive Officer of the Company. As we continue to execute on our operational plans and position ourselves as leaders in Latin America, we believe there is a great opportunity for investors to participate in the growth of our company.

About Blueberries Medical Corp.

Blueberries is a Colombia-based licensed producer of naturally grown, premium quality cannabis with operations located in the Bogota savannah of central Colombia and is also in the process of developing a Joint Venture with an Argentinian state-owned company for the development of a medicinal cannabis in Argentina. Led by a specialized team with proprietary expertise in agriculture, genetics, extraction, medicine, pharmacology and marketing, Blueberries has received all licenses required for the cultivation, production, domestic distribution, and international export of CBD (cannabidiol) and THC (tetrahydrocannabinol)-based medical cannabis in Colombia. Blueberries combination of leading scientific expertise, agricultural advantages, and distribution arrangements has positioned the Company to become a leading international supplier of naturally grown, processed, and standardized medicinal-grade cannabis oil extracts and related products.

Additional information about the Company is available at blueberriesmed.com. For more information, please contact:

Camilo Villalba, Chief Operating Officer

Tel: +57.313.483.0131

Email: cvillalba@blueberriesmed.com

Jessika Angarita, Pacta Relations

angarita@pactarelations.com

Tel: +1 (305) 877 4710

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as expects, or does not expect, is expected, anticipates or does not anticipate, plans, budget, scheduled, forecasts, estimates, believes or intends or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results may or could, would, might or will be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward looking statements relate, among other things, to: the timing and receipt of the final stock exchange approval for the commencement of trading of the Blueberries Shares on the CSE, and future expansion plans.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as 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 materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; expectations regarding the size of the Colombian and international medical cannabis market and changing consumer habits; the ability of the Company to successfully achieve its business objectives; plans for expansion; political and social uncertainties; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on cultivation, production, distribution and sale of cannabis and cannabis related products in Colombia or internationally; and employee relations. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.
Minneapolis, MN, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today, Cambria Company LLC, the leading producer of American-made quartz surfaces, announced that it filed and settled a patent infringement lawsuit in federal court against Cosmos Granite & Marble, NC, LLC (Cosmos), a distributor of quartz surface products.



The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, alleged unauthorized use and sale of Cambrias patented Brittanicca design, which are prohibited by law.

As part of the confidential settlement of the lawsuit, Cosmos agreed to stop selling the accused product (Calacatta Savona).

"We are pleased with the favorable end to this matter, as the settlement underscores the importance of Cambrias intellectual property position, said Rebecca Shult, Executive Vice President, General Counsel at Cambria. Defending our intellectual property rights is necessary for Cambria to continue to innovate. We will continue to invest in innovative designs and technology and will vigorously defend those investments.



As a leader in quartz surface products, Cambria holds dozens of issued patents and patent applications worldwide, as well as other extensive intellectual property rights covering its designs and technology.







# #

About Cambria:

Cambria Company LLC, headquartered in Le Sueur, MN, is the leading domestic producer of quartz surface products. It is a family-owned, American-made company that employs more than 2,000 people across North America.
Company announcement 8/2019

The board of directors of the Company hereby convenes an ordinary general meeting of the Company, to be held on:

Thursday 25 April 2019 at 14:00 CET

at the headoffice of the Company, Gyngemose Parkvej 50, 2860 Sborg, Denmark.

Agenda:

Election of chairman. Report on the activities of the Company. Proposal from the Board of Directors to prepare the Company's annual report in English. Presentation of the annual report with the auditors report for approval and discharge of the Board of Directors and the Executive Board. Resolution on the appropriation of profit or treatment of loss according to the approved annual report. Election of members to the Board of Directors. Election of auditor(s). Proposal from the Board of Directors to amend the Articles of Association of the Company.

The complete notice and proposals are attached to this company announcement.

Attachments
French English

MONTREAL, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- NanoXplore Inc. (NanoXplore or the Corporation) (TSX-V: GRA and OTCQX: NNXPF) is pleased to announce that the Corporation has been recognized as the 2019 winner of the IDTechEx Graphene & 2D Materials Award for the Most Significant Advancement in Graphene, CNT, or 2D Material for Commercialization.



The award was presented at the IDTechEx Show in Berlin, Germany, by Dr. Richard Collins (Senior Technology Analyst  IDTechEx) and adjudicated by Dr Nikolaus Nestle (BASF SE  Materials Physics and Analytics) and Ivan Buckley (Director of Business Development -Graphene@Manchester at The University of Manchester). One of the judges commented: NanoXplores bold scale-up of graphene production should finally tear down the idea that graphene is just too expensive to be used as an additive in polymer composites for real-world applications.

Soroush Nazarpour, CEO and President of NanoXplore, commented after receiving the award: We are thrilled to be recognized by IDTechEx as a global leader in the commercialization of graphene. This award further validates our graphene technology and why we are in the process of building a 10,000 tonnes/year production facility. The construction of the facility is on time and budget, and we expect phase one of commissioning to occur during calendar Q1 of next year (2020). We are proud of everyone in our team and thank them for their diligent effort as we thrive to enable graphene to become a viable solution for high-volume commercial applications. We would also like to thank all our shareholders for supporting NanoXplore and IDTechEx for this milestone event.

About IDTechEx Show

IDTechEx Show, a two-day exhibition in Berlin, Germany, presents the latest emerging technologies across multiple emerging technology sectors that include 3D Printing, Electric Vehicles, Energy Harvesting, Energy Storage, Graphene, Internet of Things, Off Grid Energy Independence, Printed Electronics, Sensors & Wearable Technology. The exhibition showcases over 200 exhibiting companies from 60 countries, many demonstrating their technologies in action.

The next IDTechEx Graphene & 2D Materials award ceremony will be held in Silicon Valley in Santa Clara, CA on November 18 & 19, 2019. For more details. visit www.IDTechEx.com/USA .

About NanoXplore Inc.

NanoXplore is a graphene company, a manufacturer and supplier of high-volume graphene powder for use in industrial markets. Also, the company provides standard and custom graphene-enhanced plastic and composite products to various customers in transportation, packaging, electronics, and other industrial sectors. NanoXplore is headquartered in Montreal, Quebec with nearly 400 employees supporting manufacturing facilities across Canada, the U.S., and Switzerland.

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.

For more information, please contact:

NanoXplore Inc.

Liam Farrell

Vice President of Corporate Development

Farrell@nanoXplore.ca




"We're discovering people when it's way too late," he said, noting numerous cases were buried in secret and never reported to authorities. "Given the average number of cases we're seeing now, this is not going to be over for at least another six months or more."
PERTH, Australia, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Perseus Mining Limited (Perseus or the Company) (TSX & ASX: PRU) is hosting a conference call to discuss its March 2019 Quarterly Report, which is anticipated for release around 8.30am AEDT on Tuesday April 16, 2019.



Call Details

Australia: Tuesday April 16, 2019

(Perth  7am)

(Sydney  9am)

Canada: Monday April 15, 2019

(Toronto  7pm)

(Vancouver  4pm)

UK: Tuesday April 16, 2019 (London  12 midnight)

Conference ID: 101452

Listen online: https://edge.media-server.com/m6/go/perseus-mar19-call

Audio access dial in numbers:

Australia: +61 2 9007 8048

Hong Kong: 800 968 273

Singapore: 800 101 2702

Canada/USA: 1855 624 0077

New Zealand: 0800 452 795

United Kingdom: 0800 051 1453

To register a question, press *1 on your phone and to withdraw your question is *2.

The conference call will feature Managing Director Jeffrey Quartermaine and General Manager Business Development and Investor Relations Andrew Grove. The audio cast can also be accessed via Perseus website at www.perseusmining.com .

To discuss any aspect of this announcement, please contact:
PALO ALTO, Calif., April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ImpriMed, the cutting edge creator and researcher of custom, precision cancer treatment for canines, announced today that it has raised a total of $4 million in funding with participation from Draper Associates, Murex Partners, Plug & Play Ventures and the Stanford-StartX Fund. This financing includes $3.7 million in seed funding led by Draper Associates, and a previously unannounced $330 thousand pre-seed round led by Plug & Play Ventures.



ImpriMed uses precision medicine techniques to help veterinary oncologists to find out appropriate chemotherapies for individual dogs with cancer. Measuring hundreds of different drug responses on the patients fresh biopsy samples, ImpriMed observes how the live cancer cells react, before actual drug treatment. Their platform screens the most effective treatment options and excludes out non-effective ones as evidenced by testing, and provides this information to veterinarians to be administered to each specific patient as appropriate. Currently, lymphoma is the specific form of cancer that ImpriMed is focusing on treating in dogs.

Most human and veterinary precision medicine in the cancer field focuses on genomic information to predict drug responses of each patient, said Hye Ryeon Lee, Co-founder and COO of ImpriMed. Genomic data is invaluable, but it is nearly impossible to take into account all the complicated and complex interactions inside the cancer cells solely based on the genetic information. Here at ImpriMed, we obtain with functional data to show how each patients cancer cells react to various drug treatments, as well as collecting the genomic information. Lee emphasized that combining functional data with genomic data will provide clinicians much more powerful prediction and more relevant information which can be implemented for safer and more effective treatments.

ImpriMed will get us to a cancer cure faster, said Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Partner of Draper Associates. The data ImpriMed will be able to gain from their work on pets will allow cancer treatment development to accelerate at a much faster, while also helping the pets of the world.

ImpriMed will use the new funding primarily to roll out their clinical trial, which will be performed primarily at SAGE Veterinary Centers in the Bay Area. This trial will refine processes and techniques that will enable this ground-breaking technology to start saving the lives of hundreds of dog cancer patients.

Weve already set up clinical relationships with most specialty animal hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area, and now our service is available nationwide, stated Sungwon Lim, Co-founder and CEO of ImpriMed. When doctors and hospitals reach out to us, we systematically set up our service workflow to minimize related administrative burdens on physicians and technicians.

The company aims to help treat more than 500 dogs by 2020, and is offering their service for free of charge for a limited time before completing their clinical trial.
Lakeside Process Controls Celebrates Recognition as one of Canadas Most Admired Workplace Cultures in 2018



Mississauga, ON, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries (OCNI) is proud to congratulate Lakeside Process Controls on its recognition as one of Canadas Most Admired Cultures in 2018. As a successful innovative solutions provider to both OPG and Bruce Power for over 50 years, Lakeside displays a continuous effort to create customer value by addressing process automation challenges through creativity, teamwork and dedication. This event at the Lakeside office in Mississauga celebrates not only Lakesides recent recognition as one of Canadas Most Admired Workplace Cultures, but also its important contributions to the Canadian nuclear industry as well as the high value and sustainable jobs it has created in the local community.

Quotes:

We are a firm believer in the importance of employee engagement and its inherent link to organizational productivity and success. The secret to our success is our people, so we put in tremendous effort to create and maintain our corporate culture of continuous improvement and learning. This puts us in the right position to deliver the best customer value. With Emerson as our partner, we have solved many unique automation challenges in the nuclear industry over the past 50 years. We look forward to continuing this legacy working with OPG and Bruce Power. Greg Houston, President and CEO, Lakeside

Lakeside Process Controls sets a wonderful example of an innovative company that has flourished here in Ontario by attracting top talent that supports the high performance of Ontarios nuclear fleet while contributing to the high-tech economy here in Mississauga. I am also pleased to recognize Lakesides important role on the Board of OCNI for the past six years. Ron Oberth, President and CEO, OCNI

For more than 50 years, Lakeside Controls Ltd. has offered an array of innovative automation services here in our community and across the country. On behalf of the House of Commons, I would like congratulate Lakeside Controls Ltd. for being recognized as one of Canadas Most Admired Workplace Cultures and for its integral contributions to the nuclear industry. I am proud to have them here in Mississauga-Streetsville and I look forward to seeing them build on their history of leadership and innovation in Canadas nuclear sector. Gagan Sikand, MP for Mississauga-Streetsville

As, Member of Provincial Parliament for Mississauga-Streetsville, I would like to congratulate and acknowledge Lakeside Controls on receiving the award for Canadas Most Admired Cultures in 2018. I applaud their continuous positive contributions to the Canadian nuclear industry as well as commend their efforts in creating well-paying sustainable jobs in our community. The corporate model that lakeside Control rests on, empowers each employee to create and add value whilst allowing for the effective execution of management goals. Nina Tangri, MPP for Mississauga-Streetsville

Im proud of the work that Lakeside Controls does in Mississauga, the high quality jobs they have created, and the role they play in our nuclear industry in Ontario. Our nuclear stations power our province and depend on the highly skilled people at Lakeside to keep them operating smoothly and safely. I congratulate Lakeside for their commitment to fostering an award-winning corporate culture and for being a being a world-class employer in our City. I wish them many more years of success in Mississauga. Bonnie Crombie, Mayor of Mississauga

OPG would like to congratulate Lakeside Process Controls on its recognition as one of Canadas Most Admired Cultures in 2018. For over 50 years, Lakeside has been an important contributor to not only OPG but to the entire Canadian nuclear industry. We look forward to our continued work with Lakeside as we undertake completion of the largest, clean energy project in Canada, the refurbishment of Darlington Nuclear. Robby Sohi, Chief Supply Officer, OPG

Bruce Power truly values its strong partnership with Lakeside Process Controls as it allows us to secure Made in Ontario solutions we need to successfully complete our Major Component Replacement projects, extending the life of our site to 2064, said Richard Horrobin, Bruce Powers Vice President and Managing Director of Supply Chain. We are proud to work with caring and innovative companies like Lakeside and congratulate them on being named one of Canadas Most Admired Workplace Cultures in 2018. Richard Horrobin, Vice President & Managing Director, Supply Chain, Bruce Power

Lakeside Process Controls is a provider of innovative automation solutions on various nuclear projects including the OPG Darlington Refurbishment, Continued Operations at OPG Pickering and the Bruce Power Major Component Replacement. Lakeside is an employee-owned Canadian company that operates as a member of the Emerson Impact Partner Network in Ontario (excluding the Ottawa Valley), Manitoba, and the Kivalliq region of Nunavut.

Organization of Canadian Nuclear Industries (OCNI) is an association of more than 200 Canadian suppliers to the nuclear industry that employ more than 14,000 highly skilled and specialized engineers, technologists, and trades people. OCNI companies design reactors, manufacture major equipment and components, and provide engineering services and support to CANDU nuclear power plants in Canada as well as to CANDU and Light Water Reactor (LWR) plants in offshore markets.

For Further Information Contact:

Ron Oberth, President and CEO, OCNI

Tel: (905) 839-0073 or (647) 407-6081, ron.oberth@ocni.ca

Attachments
Partnership includes $10,000 donation to fund iBIO STEM programming for girls in grades three through eight, plus discounted rates for iBIO members at upcoming CPhI North America event in Chicago

NEW YORK, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CPhI North America, an industry-leading event that brings together the complete North American pharma supply chain, today announced a new partnership with Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization (iBIO). Through the partnership, CPhI North America will donate $10,000 to the iBIO EDUCATE Center , which delivers industry-led STEM programs to teachers and students, to support STEM programming for girls. In addition to this donation, iBIO members will also enjoy a significantly discounted rate for attending the upcoming CPhI North America event, being held in Chicago from April 30 to May 2 at Lakeside Center, McCormick Place.

iBIO is an association that represents more than 85,000 life science employees at member companies, universities, service providers, and venture firms throughout Illinois. The partnership with CPhI North America invites iBIO members to make new connections and renew old ones by taking advantage of a 30 percent discounted attendee rate. IBIO members can register at https://chemical.connect.ubm.com/2019/ using promotional code 30IBIO.

CPhI North Americas $10,000 donation to the iBIOs EDUCATE Center will specifically be used to fund iBIOs Stellar Girls and STEM Girls Camp. Both programs work to introduce girls in grades three through eight to careers in STEM. Stellar Girls does this through after-school programming, and the STEM Girls Camp does this through a five-day summer camp.

Were delighted to support iBIO in its Stellar Girls and STEM Girls Camp initiatives as part of CPhI North Americas dedication to the promotion and growth of female interest and success in the biopharma field, commented Joseph Marks, Brand Director, CPhI North America. As an industry-leading event committed to inclusivity and equality, were also proud to present the third annual Women in Leadership Forum , an integral component of CPhI North America, which this year focuses on the theme From Manager to Leader, and will see senior leaders from the pharmaceutical industry sharing inspirations and defining moments in their leadership journeys to date. CPhI North Americas Women in Leadership Forum takes place Thursday May 2, from 8.00am to 11.00am. At the Forum, iBIO will be presented with a $10,000 donation check to support the educational work for girls outlined above.

iBIO and CPhI North America share many of the same values, creating a hub for talent to blossom in the biopharma and biomanufacturing fields, and promoting equal opportunities and education, added John Conrad, president and CEO of iBIO. Were excited that Illinois, home to the second highest concentration of biopharma companies in the United States outside of the Philadelphia/New York/New Jersey triangle, is hosting this years event. Were delighted that CPhI is lending support to our STEM programs, and were focused on making sure that our community knows about this conference and that they take advantage of the discounted offer, are attending the events and maximizing their networking opportunities. Our role an industry host is to act as a conduit of that information for them, and for visiting companies, as well.

To learn more about CPhI North America, please visit https://CPhINorthAmerica.com .

About iBIO

The Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization (iBIO) is a life sciences industry association that represents the 85,000 life sciences employees at member companies, universities, service providers and venture firms. iBIO promotes the industrys value to the public and policymakers; connects innovators to investment and talent; stimulates collaboration and fosters the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs to transform patient lives through groundbreaking research and works to grow the Illinois economy. For more information, please visit www.iBIO.org .

About CPhI

CPhI drives growth and innovation at every step of the global pharmaceutical supply chain from drug discovery to finished dosage. Through exhibitions, conferences and online communities, CPhI brings together more than 100,000 pharmaceutical professionals each year to network, identify business opportunities and expand the global market. CPhI hosts events across Europe, Asia and, now, North America and co-locates with iCSE for contract services, P-MEC for machinery, equipment & technology, InnoPack for pharmaceutical packaging and Bioprocessing for biopharma. CPhI provides an online buyer & supplier directory at www.CPhI-Online.com . For more information, please visit www.CPhI.com .

CPhI is organized by UBM, which in June 2018 combined with Informa PLC to become a leading B2B information services group and the largest B2B Events organizer in the world. To learn more and for the latest news and information, visit www.ubm.com and www.informa.com .

About UBM Americas

UBM Americas, a part of UBM plc, delivers events and marketing services in the fashion technology, licensing, advanced manufacturing, automotive and powersports, healthcare, veterinary and pharmaceutical industries, among others. Through a range of aligned interactive environments, both physical and digital, UBM Americas increases business effectiveness for customers and audiences through meaningful experiences, knowledge and connections. The division also includes UBM Brazil's market leading events in construction, cargo transportation, logistics & international trade, and agricultural production; and UBM Mexico's, construction, advanced manufacturing and hospitality services shows. For more information, please visit www.ubmamericas.com .
Acumen Research and Consulting, a global provider of market research studies, in a recently published report titled 2,5-Furandicarboxylic Acid (FDCA) Market (By Type: 0.98, 0.99; By Application: Chemical, Pharmaceuticals, Scientific Research) - Global Industry Analysis, Market Size, Opportunities and Forecast, 2018 - 2025.



LOS ANGELES, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The global 2,5-Furandicarboxylic Acid (FDCA) market is expected to reach the market value of around $850 million by 2025 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of around 11% in terms of revenue during the forecasting period 2018  2025.

Swift expansion of production capacities by chemicals companies globally, is contributing to the rapid development of the market. Continual research and development activities on leveraging the bio-based properties of FDCA are expected to produce beneficial avenues for these companies.

Free Download Sample Report Pages for Better understanding@ https://www.acumenresearchandconsulting.com/request-sample/1284

Varied Applications of Product to Fuel Market Growth

The promising utilization of FDCA in the production of bio-based plastics has made the compound a massive business opportunity in the packaging sector, globally. The application is supported by surging movements of governments in a various countries toward bio-based plastics to battle the expanding issue brought about by plastics contamination. To this end, governments have likewise been dynamic in giving motivating forces, strikingly offering expense discounts, to chemical organizations for the creation of green packaging.

Environmental Friendly Nature To Boost The Market Growth

Developing buyer alertness about the mounting distress of insufficient dumping of bioplastics has additionally been a potential power driving the uses of FDCA in the production of ecological well disposed plastics. The rising stipulate for bio-based and reasonable packaging in different parts of the world is fueling the utilization of FDCA in different bio-based applications. Moreover, frequent variances in the costs of petrochemicals utilized in the plastics fabricating industry have likewise considerable prospects in the FDCA market.

View Detail Information with Complete TOC@ https://www.acumenresearchandconsulting.com/2-5-furandicarboxylic-acid-fdca-market

Customer Preference and Economic/Political Environmental Change

Consumers are expecting green chemical which are less likely to affect the environment at a relative lower prices. Whereas in healthcare industry, consumers are more concerned about the premium quality products driven by health concerns. However, people across the globe are aware about the quality of health related products and not willing to compromise in it. Thus, the major preference of the customers is quality of the product. Overall, 2, 5-fureanmdicarboxylic acid market is the dependent market on the application industries. The market trends get change as per the change in application industries (pharmaceuticals and chemical). Currently, an economic condition of all major countries is nearly stable. However, in African countries due to economic fluctuations, the market is expecting a steady growth. Though in 2015 and 2016 the economies of the countries like America, U.K, India and others have fluctuations which are disturbed the market growth. However, there were signs of revival in 2017 and 2018. Currently the market is expecting a very healthy growth in this region owing to the increasing demand for the automotive vehicles, and increasing per capita income of the people.

Insights on Market Segment

Global 2,5-Furandicarboxylic Acid (FDCA) market is segmented by type, application and geography. Based on different types, the market is segmented into 0.98, 0.99. Also, by application 2,5-Furandicarboxylic Acid (FDCA) is further bifurcated into chemical, pharmaceuticals, scientific research. Based on geography market is further classified into Europe, North America, China, India, Japan, Southeast Asia, ROW.

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Key Players

The players profiled in the report include Tokyo Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., R&D Synbias Ltd, Eastman Chemical Company, SATACHEM, Toronto Research Chemicals Inc., Avantium Technologies, and more.

Manufacturers are concentrating on new item improvement and development methodologies. For example, Novamont SpA makes bioplastics and biochemicals through the mix of science and farming. It likewise fabricates Celus-Bi, another line of creative and biobased elements for the beauty care products division that have applications in close to home and family items. Besides, the organization has contributed around US$120 Mn to change over a relinquished plant close to Rovigo in Italy's Po River delta to start industrial production of bio-butanediol one of a chemical composite.

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Sanchez has cooked traditional Mexican, regional Mexican and Mexican-French fusion in the past. At the 75-seat Mercado Cocina, expect simplicity  Sanchez called it a return to family  but a lot more regional breadth. Most people know only one type of Mexican food, said Sanchez, who said she intends to do a little something about that.
There are mixed-use projects sprouting up all over the country, but so far at least, there is nothing quite like Crosstown Concourse in Memphis, Tenn. It is designed to be a self-contained community -- a vertical urban village -- in a single high-rise building a few blocks north of downtown.Within the 14 stories of an old Sears warehouse, it is possible -- or soon will be possible -- for a resident to see a doctor, fill a prescription, buy groceries, go to the bank, obtain child care, visit an art exhibition, go to the theater, sample a craft beer, practice woodworking or exercise at a YMCA. If you have children, they can attend a charter school without going outside. All of this in a project that, in addition to private money, has received substantial funding from both the city of Memphis and surrounding Shelby County.The developers of Crosstown Concourse love to talk about its self-sufficiency. You dont have to leave the building if you dont want to, one of them said recently. It sounds like hyperbole, but some of the residents say the same thing. I have to make myself go out sometimes, one of them told mycolleague Scott Beyer, whose excellent blog post on Crosstown Concourse led me to look into the subject.Theres no doubt that the place is interesting. But it does raise the question of whether this is what we would wish the next wave of urbanism to be like.It seems pretty clear that there is such a thing as a high-rise community. Think about the Upper West Side of Manhattan, for example. Apartment and condo dwellers there live in the same buildings for decades, managing to befriend each other and share a common bond with the support staff they see every day. The community they achieve also seems bound up with the retail commerce that clusters densely on the streets below. On those Manhattan streets, its possible to satisfy virtually all of ones daily needs without walking more than a block or two. In a sense, its an indoor/outdoor relative of Crosstown Concourse. But if these Manhattan villagers were confined to the corridors of their apartment buildings, would life have the same pleasant coziness? Im not so sure.Still, we may be moving in that direction, a little bit at a time. As mixed-use projects take shape in and around every big city in the country, they seem to be concentrating more and more functions in more and more compact spaces.Any number of cities can serve as examples. The Gateway project in Minneapolis is going to have 530,000 feet of office space on 16 floors, plentiful retail opportunities, 280 luxury hotel rooms and 22 condominiums. Developers in Denver are working on a 1,000-foot skyscraper in the middle of downtown with condos, restaurants, a hotel and shops. CalPERS, the huge California public pension fund, wants to put up a 30-story tower in Sacramento with -- sorry to repeat myself -- a full range of apartments, shops and offices.Will you be able to get a haircut or buy a Phillips-head screwdriver in these buildings? I dont know; probably not. But I think they all signify a trend in which mixed use is coming to mean not just a couple of uses but many under a single giant roof.As fanciful as it might seem, the vertical village has some attractive selling points. Its another step away from the rigid single-use zoning that characterized virtually all American cities for the last hundred years. It imposes the density that New Urbanist thinkers have been dreaming about for a generation, if perhaps in exaggerated form. It certainly promises to take cars off the street.Its also a little bit scary.Urban thinkers have been pondering the relationship between tall buildings and community since the invention of elevators made skyscraper life a reality more than a century ago. The legendary architect and urban planner Le Corbusier thought the ideal city -- the Radiant City, as he called it -- would be composed of huge skyscrapers with living and working units, surrounded by parkland and accessible only by automobiles. He thought the high-rises of Manhattan were too small and too close together, and proposed tearing many of them down to create more parks. He thought this was a way to foster civic well-being. I dont know why.What I do know is that the high-rise projects that took their inspiration from Le Corbusier were destroyers of community, not creators of it. Brasilia, the Brazilian capital built in the 1950s on the basis of Corbusian ideas, turned out to be a flop when it came to human sociability. It consisted of elegant skyscrapers with no place for people to congregate or even converse. For the most part, it still doesnt have them. Much more tragic were the high-rise public housing clusters that became a fixture of mid-century urban life in America. Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, Cabrini-Green in Chicago and their counterparts all over America were the antithesis of community.One can object that mid-20th-century skyscraper urbanism was only tangentially related to the vertical village because it didnt have much appreciation for mixed uses. Le Corbusier paid lip service to the idea, but the architects and planners who took after him essentially designed modernist residential boxes, physically separated from any form of traditional neighborhood. Not only was there no commercial life inside a place like Cabrini-Green, there was none anywhere near it.But a few experiments in high-rise urbanism did make some effort at mixed-use principles. The best-known was Detroits Renaissance Center, built around a 73-story hotel on a podium with a shopping mall, cafes, banks and brokerage offices. When it opened in 1977, it was described proudly by its promoters as a city within a city. What it turned out to be was a fortress within a city. Tenants could conduct their daily lives inside the center, but they were also cut off from the larger community and even from the streets and sidewalks around them. The Renaissance Center has since been modified to create more contact with the outside world, but few would defend it today as an icon of urban community. It is vertical, but its no village.But what if there really were a skyscraper that residents never needed to leave? We dont have any specimens of that in real life. We have a good one in fiction, though: It happens to be a dystopia.Steven Millhauser won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997 for his novel, about an entrepreneur who builds a 30-story hotel that is meant to exceed the variety of ordinary existence. It was more than a hotel, Millhauser wrote. It was a complete and self-sufficient world. The actual city was not merely inferior, but superfluous.Visitors and tenants emerged from their elevators on one floor to find themselves in a wooded pseudo-countryside. Another floor evoked a mountainside, with caves as lodging units. A temple featured young women in tunics reciting poetry 24 hours a day. A pleasure park was bathed in artificial moonlight.Im probably not revealing anything shocking when I tell you that the Hotel Cosmo was a spectacular failure; Dressler goes bankrupt in the end. Its all a fantasy, of course. But I remember finishing the novel with a shudder and a sense of relief that nobody could possibly try anything like that in real life.Certainly the developers of Crosstown Concourse wouldnt imagine it in their wildest dreams. Still, there are legitimate questions about just what sensible limits of mixed-use development might be. Those questions dont have much to do with dystopian visions, as compelling as those visions can be. They have to do with ferreting out the most important things that the emerging mixed-use constituency actually wants.First on the list, I would argue, is walkability. The growing cohort of urban millennials seems to have a deep-seated desire to stroll from place to place as they go about their daily routines. A vertical village is walkable in a way -- you dont need a car to get from the lobby to the third floor -- but it isnt the walkability that Manhattans Upper West Side or Back Bay in Boston or Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia or even South Lake Union in Seattle are able to provide.Beyond walkability, theres the appeal of simply being outside. Among the present roster of mixed-use developments, its the ones with a prominent outdoor component that are doing best, even in places with uncomfortable summers, such as Houston, or frigid winters, like Milwaukee. The big downtown malls located entirely indoors, even the most carefully planned among them, are having trouble.All of this tells us something about what the mixed-use future may be, or perhaps should be. I think we ought to experiment with vertical villages. We ought to develop more places like Crosstown Concourse and see what their potential is. Personally, Ill be interested in checking them out. We just need to keep in mind that there are two sides to the coin.
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.
More important, they and their writers understood the cardinal rule of television: It is all about the characters. Even as their budgets increased to jaw-dropping amounts (from an average of $6 million per episode in Season 1 to a reported $15 million per episode in the final season), allowing them to create all manner of eye-popping spectacle, they realized that the shows real power comes from neither fire nor ice but its people. The look on Aryas face when she hears that both Jon Snow and Sansa are at Winterfell. The moment Jaime tells Brienne the truth about why he became the Kingslayer. The dark banter between Tyrion and Varys.
Despite scores of protesters both outside and inside the legislative chambers Wednesday, Ohio lawmakers approved what both sides are labeling the strictest abortion law in the nation.The controversial "Heartbeat Bill" was approved by the Senate 18-13, shortly after the House passed it 56-39.While Ohio has reached this stage twice before, the measure was vetoed both times by Gov. John Kasich. But new Gov. Mike DeWine has promised to sign the bill, which would ban abortions, except to save the life of the woman, once a fetal heartbeat is detected. It was unclear Wednesday how quickly the legislation would reach DeWine's desk or how long he would wait to add his signature.Cincinnati Right to Life labeled the measure "the nation's strongest pro-life bill," while Senate Democrats said it "would become the most extreme abortion ban in the country."Once DeWine signs the bill, it faces a certain court battle; similar measures in other states have been put on hold by federal judges who question their constitutionality.But backers say the new lineup on the U.S. Supreme Court -- with possibly another appointment or two by President Donald Trump -- could uphold such a law.While the Senate's action Wednesday was quick, the House vote came after a few hours of contentious debate.The audience, filled with proponents of abortion rights, broke into loud shouts of protest after the vote, unfurling a banner reading "This is not a house of worship!" Protesters in the upper galleries started chanting "Not the church, not the state, patients must decide their fate." Many Democratic women lawmakers, all wearing pink, were visibly emotional after the demonstration.As majority Republicans beat down every Democratic attempt to soften the anti-abortion bill, protesters outside the House chambers could be heard chanting "my body, my choice."In response to the protests, Mike Gonidakis, head of Ohio Right to Life, tweeted: "The Bible teaches and warns us that this world will condemn us and hate us for following God. Today is a prime example at the Statehouse."Democrats' slew of amendments included ones to add exceptions for cases of rape or incest and for African-American women; to support statewide paid maternal leave; and mandate that, in solidarity, men donate blood and bone morrow when needed."The passage of this six-week ban on safe, legal, accessible and affordable abortion is not the will of the majority," Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, said in a prepared statement."It is the act of the minority which abused their authority to gerrymander Ohio's legislative districts to give them the power to force their out-of-touch ideology on our state. We will work day and night to upend this attack on democracy to ensure that Ohio will once again have fair elections that result in elected officials that share our values and support reproductive freedom."Several Republican representatives offered religious arguments in support of the bill. Rep. Tim Ginter, R-Salem, read Scripture that, he said, justified restricting abortion access. As he did, a woman in the gallery waved a flag and a cross. House Health Committee Chairman Derek Merrin, R-Monclova -- who said Tuesday in committee that abortion rights are not a religious issue -- said his faith instructed him that abortion is wrong."This is not a Democrat or Republican issue," said Middletown Republican Rep. Candice Keller. "This is not a religious issue. This is an issue of humanity and morality. ... Every child has the right not to be killed. ... They were endowed by their Creator with that right."Democrats argued for the health and well-being of the mother, often sharing personal testimony."Women will be forced to make the decision between enduring financial hardship and dangerous, illegal, self-induced abortive care," said Sen. Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, who said her great-grandmother bled to death after a self-induced abortion. "These are real-life decisions. This is not black and white."The House Democratic leader, Rep. Emilia Sykes of Akron, said her standing in Ohio should not be dependent "by what comes out of my vagina.""But yet today as I stand here as the minority leader -- a woman minority leader of this caucus -- it is more than clear that I am a second-class citizen in this state," she said to applause from the gallery.Opponents of the bill say this is another step toward the GOP-controlled legislature's ultimate agenda: a total ban on abortions.Iris Harvey, president of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio, said, "We will stand against the onslaught of attacks on Ohioans and will use everything at our disposal to protect their access to safe, legal abortion."In an emailed statement, Gonidakis acknowledged that passage of the bill represents "the next incremental step in our strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade" -- the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.Margie Christie, president of the Right to Life Action Coalition of Ohio, said, "After nine years of diligent effort, we believe this measure will pass constitutional muster and correct the erroneous Roe decision."Three House Republicans voted against the ban: Stephen Arndt of Port Clinton, Rick Carfagna of Westerville and Gayle Manning of North Ridgeville. Four Senate Republicans cast a "no" vote: Matt Dolan of Chagrin Falls, Stephanie Kunze of Hilliard, John Eklund of Chardon and Nathan Manning -- Gayle's son -- of North Ridgeville. Otherwise, the voting was along party lines.
New York City employers could soon be barred from testing prospective job candidates for marijuana as a condition of employment under a bill passed nearly unanimously by the City Council.The bill, introduced by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, however, would exempt safety, sensitive security jobs and those tied to a federal or state contract or grant from the policy.The legislation passed Tuesday comes as the city and state have both gotten behind legalizing marijuana for recreational use.Over the summer, de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced the NYPD would issue criminal summonses instead of arrests to people caught smoking pot in public.They said the shift in marijuana enforcement would reduce the overall number of pot arrests by about 10,000 per year."We need to be creating more access points for employment, not less- and as we move toward legalization, it makes absolutely no sense that we're keeping people from finding jobs or advancing their careers because of marijuana use. This legislation, like the Fair Chance Act before it, is good for both employers and prospective employees. It expands the pool of applicants by preventing people from being shut out. I thank Speaker Corey Johnson and my colleagues for moving quickly to pass this bill," Williams said.Minority Leader Steven Matteo (R-Mid Island) was the only councilman to vote against the legislation. He argued that private businesses should have the right to decide whether test prospective candidates for drugs."Private businesses should have the power to determine their own hiring practices -- not just in deciding what skills and experience are relevant to certain positions, but also whether the use of a specific drug could have an adverse impact on a prospective employee's ability to perform," the Mid Island councilman said.The bill will still need to be signed into law by Mayor Bill de Blasio, who in a report released by his administration last year, started that the city would support barring public and private employers from denying people employment if they test positive for pot or because of prior marijuana arrest convictions.
The new director of the state ethics commission plans to subpoena bank records from the campaign of 2018 Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams and groups that raised money to help her in last year's nationally watched race.Former Douglas County prosecutor David Emadi, who started his new job Monday, also said his office will soon decide whether to prosecute the campaigns of Atlanta mayoral candidates.Emadi's predecessor, Stefan Ritter, was accused of stalling investigations after the commission audited campaign reports from the organizations last year.Ritter, who was also accused of watching porn at work, resigned earlier this year.Abrams is expected to announce soon whether she will run for the U.S. Senate or president next year, or run for governor in 2022.Lauren Groh-Wargo, Abrams' former campaign manager, said, "The Abrams campaign worked diligently to ensure compliance throughout the election and, had we been notified of any irregularities, would have immediately taken action to rectify them."The new ethics chief -- a Kemp donor and former Republican Party leader -- is using his power to threaten and lob baseless partisan accusations at the former Abrams campaign when they should be focused on real problems like the unethical ties between the governor's office and voting machine lobbyists instead."While not getting into specifics of the commission's investigation, Emadi made general remarks about the cases after being introduced to reporters by ethics commission Chairman Jake Evans on Thursday."Those investigations are all moving forward," Emadi said. "What I can say about the investigation into the Abrams campaign is, in the relatively near future, I expect we will be issuing subpoenas for bank and finance records of both Miss Abrams and various PACs and special-interest groups that were affiliated with her campaign."More than a dozen "independent groups," mostly funded by out-of-state donors, were created in Georgia last year to help support Abrams' effort. Emadi said he expects the documents the commission will review will be "voluminous," likely meaning the investigation will take time.He also said all the filings from the mayoral candidates "are under investigation.""In the relatively near future, I expect we will make the decision (whether) to go forward with prosecution on a case-by-case basis," Emadi said.The agency, formally known as the Georgia Government Transparency & Campaign Finance Commission, is charged with collecting campaign finance, vendor gift and lobbying expenditure reports; registering lobbyists; issuing advisory opinions; and dispensing penalties for violations.Emadi was accused of partisanship in his plans to investigate Abrams and the mayoral candidates. The candidates he mentioned being under investigation are Democrats, and he is a former officer in the Douglas County Republican Party who once worked briefly for GOP House Speaker David Ralston. He also donated $600 last year to Republican Brian Kemp's successful campaign for governor. Kemp narrowly beat Abrams in last year's election.The commission also audited the campaign filings of Republican gubernatorial candidates, but staffers say they found no violations. The commission is still investigating separate ethics complaints that partisans filed last year against the Kemp and Abrams campaigns.Emadi vowed to prosecute wrongdoers, no matter the party affiliation, and he said he won't even vote while serving in the job."I fundamentally believe that to be a neutral arbiter, to be an impartial umpire calling balls and strikes, you can't affiliate with any of that," Emadi said. "This is an inherently political position, but as a former prosecutor, I am comfortable and I have been comfortable making decisions that people may not like. I may not be everyone's best friend, but I am OK with that."The investigations into the Abrams and mayoral campaigns came out of audits of contribution and expenditure reports candidates and political groups have to file when they raise and spend money on campaigns. The audits were part of an effort by Ritter to be more proactive in reviewing reports after years during which most complaints were filed following investigations by the media or opposing campaigns.Top commission staffers filed complaints against Ritter in December, saying that potential violations that those audits found were sat on by the agency. Ritter denied wrongdoing when asked about the complaints filed against him.The officials did not detail what the potential campaign finance violations were, and neither did Emadi.However, in her complaint, one of the commission's top deputies, Bethany Whetzel, said she and another staffer "met with Mr. Ritter and informed him that we had found evidence of several violations by the Abrams campaign.""Mr. Ritter was visibly disappointed with the violations uncovered related to the Abrams campaign and directed us not to proceed with any subpoenas until we could meet with the candidate to discuss her filings," Whetzel said. "Mr. Ritter never met with the candidate."The Abrams campaign raised a record $27.6 million for her run for governor. Her fundraising prowess was particularly impressive considering tens of thousands of donations came from across the country, many in small amounts, such as $5 or $10."Independent groups," which are not legally allowed to coordinate with candidates, spent millions more, with most of the money coming from out-of-state donors, such as San Francisco Democratic megadonor Susan Sandler, who put $5.6 million into an organization called Power PAC that supported the Abrams campaign.
Parents of students killed and injured in the 2018 mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School have filed more than 20 lawsuits, alleging negligence by the Broward Sheriff's Office, the Broward County School Board and Henderson Behavorial Health and "willful and wanton negligence" against former BSO school resource officer Scot Peterson and campus monitor Andrew Medina.A phalanx of lawyers representing the victims' families said Wednesday that they were forced to sue after BSO and the School Board reneged on their initial commitment to help resolve financial claims for their losses. The teams of attorneys and families decided to go to court after learning that the School Board hired lobbyists in Tallahassee to thwart their efforts to collect damages in a claims bill before the Florida Legislature.Lawyers would not disclose the exact amount sought by the parents.A Broward County Public Schools spokesperson said BCPS doesn't comment on pending lawsuits. BSO said the same in a Wednesday afternoon email.Peterson's attorney, Joseph DiRuzzo, said, "We are confident that any lawsuit related to the Parkland shooting lacks merit; we will vigorously contest the factual and legal assertions made therein."Attorney Todd Michaels, who is representing the family of deceased teacher Scott Beigel, said the BSO and School Board initially said they wanted "to help bring justice.""What we've learned in the past 14 months is that they have no intention to help," Michaels said at a news conference at the Fort Lauderdale law firm of Kelley/Uustal. "They hired a law firm to lobby behind the scenes against the interests of the victims."Broward County Public Schools Chief Public Information Officer Kathy Koch disagreed with that. While having no comment on the substance of the lawsuit, Koch said BCPS brought in lobbying law firm GrayRobinson to help with the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Victims' Compensation Fund. She claims neither BCPS or GrayRobinson worked against the fund."In the early Fall 2018, representatives of BCPS met with several of the plaintiffs' attorneys to discuss the concept of a victim's compensation fund and hired GrayRobinson to write the first draft of the legislation," Koch wrote. "The first public conversation about the concept was in December 2018 at the joint delegation meeting between the Broward Legislative Delegation and the Broward County School Board,to which BCPS invited three family members of victims to speak about the concept and the School Board expressed its support. The School Board placed this item on its legislative platform in February for the 2019 Legislative Session."Mitch Dworet, whose son Nicholas was killed and son Alexander survived being shot, said his life and family will never be whole again."He was injured, he saw children killed and he lost his brother," Dworet said of his son Alexander. "This is a life sentence for me, every day, for 14 months. I want accountability ... there were failures. ... If you have children, you cannot imagine the life that I lead now."Lisa Olson, whose son William was injured in the school shooting, said her family also wants accountability."My son couldn't go to school today," she said, "and we have many days like that now."The suits say the School Board should have known how dangerous confessed shooter Nikolas Cruz was, and failed in 14 different ways to prepare accordingly.BSO is accused of negligence because, the suit argues, deputies didn't follow school active-shooter policy, which the suit says states "the officers' first priority is to stop the killing. Officers must go directly to the sounds of the gunfire and attempt to neutralize the attacker."The individual officer blamed for much of that inaction, both by then-Broward Sheriff Scott Israel last year and by the lawsuit, is Peterson.Peterson is accused of negligence for "not immediately entering or attempting to enter the high school for the purpose of locating and neutralizing Nikolas Cruz" as well as ordering "via radio transmission a lockdown of the school which precluded students from leaving (while he failed to enter as required by procedure), while almost simultaneously, ordering other responding officers to not even approach the site of the shooting, much less enter as established BSO policy required, thus prolonging the killing spree that continued inside."Similar accusations were made against Medina. The suit says though he saw Cruz on campus, radioed a security guard to "be careful" of Cruz and heard shots, he set the table for the tragedy when he "breached his duty" and "willfully disregarded school policies.""Medina did not follow one of the longstanding requirements upon which students, faculty and staff are trained to call a "Code Red" when there is suspicious activity, including hearing gun-shots fired," the suit says. "Medina owed a duty to all the students, faculty, and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas ... to monitor the campus for dangerous and unusual activity, to alert the appropriate authorities when a dangerous or unusual activity occurs, and to call a "Code Red" alarm when appropriate."Henderson treated Cruz as a behavioral healthcare patient in several programs since 2009. The suit claims Henderson should have warned the school board and the Douglas High community that Cruz was a danger and is partially at fault for Cruz being "improperly transferred to MSDHS -- a school that he could not handle and for which he was not suitable."Also, the suit claims, "Throughout Henderson's provision of behavioral health services to Cruz, Henderson failed to effectively treat Cruz for depression and, in fact, provided treatment to Cruz which exacerbated and fueled his depression" which fueled violent actions, such as the mass shooting.
The city of Chicago has officially sued "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett to reimburse the costs of its investigation into his alleged attack in January.The city's law department filed a civil complaint on Thursday in the Circuit Court of Cook County "that pursues the full measure of damages allowed under the false statements ordinance," a spokesman said in a statement to The Times."This follows his refusal to reimburse the City of Chicago for the cost of police overtime spent investigating his false police report on January 29, 2019," the statement said.The action, obtained by The Times, requests the recovery of the roughly $130,000 that the investigation is said to have cost, as well as legal fees."[T]he City respectfully requests that the Court: A. Find that the City incurred necessary costs investigating and responding to Defendant's [Smollett's] statements made in violation of the MCC [Municipal Code of Chicago]; B. Order Defendant to pay the City's response costs in an amount to be proven at trial; C. Order Defendant to pay the City a penalty in amount equal to the City's litigation and collection costs and attorney's fees; and D. Award such further relief as this Court deems just and equitable," the document said.It's the latest development in the ongoing case against the actor, who in January reported to police that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack. Chicago police later claimed that the attack was a hoax and that Smollett orchestrated it to advance his career. Those allegations eventually led to a 16-count indictment, which was dropped last month and parts of the case were sealed.Smollett's attorneys did not immediately respond to The Times' request for comment.Last week, when the city threatened the lawsuit to recover the cost of its investigation, Smollett's defense attorney, Mark Geragos, said that Smollett "will not be intimidated into paying the demanded sum."If the city proceeded with litigation, he said, he would demand access to the city's entire investigation file, including information that hadn't been previously disclosed to his team, along with depositions from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Eddie T. Johnson, among others.
Last week, corrections officials faced a backlash after banning nonprofit groups from mailing used books to prisoners. This week, their math is raising eyebrows.In defending the ban, the Washington Department of Corrections (DOC) said last week it was a necessary step to tamp down on contraband that ended up in inmates' hands. The agency cited a rise in illegal items, including 17 instances last year in which contraband was reportedly found in books.But information on those 17 separate instances, provided this week by DOC at the request of The Seattle Times, tells a different story.A dozen of those instances didn't actually involve books at all.Another case involved a shank apparently discovered on a bookshelf at the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton, Mason County. An offender found it -- and then reported it to an officer.The information on three of the four remaining instances involving contraband detail suspected drugs that were discovered in books. While narrative accounts of those incidents provided by the DOC indicate inmates holding contraband inside the books, none say whether the items in question had entered the prisons inside the books.Last Friday, after a week of uproar over the ban, DOC Secretary Stephen Sinclair announced the agency would make sure used books could still enter prisons in some fashion. Sinclair is expected to attend a meeting this week between the agency and the Seattle nonprofit group Books to Prisoners to discuss how to do that, according to DOC spokesman Jeremy Barclay."At the end of the day, the secretary is interested in being involved in a way that maintains our relationship with external books donors," Barclay said Friday."The sooner the better, of course, so that we can get this back on the right path," Barclay added, saying that more than one meeting may be held.For decades, nonprofit groups like Books to Prisoners have sent used publications to prisoners who write them requesting titles or types of reading materials.Critics of the ban included Gov. Jay Inslee, who said last week, "Most of these folks are going to become our neighbors and we want to reduce recidivism rates, and education and the like is very, very important."The ban would have largely left prisoners with only one alternative to receive books, through the Washington State Library's Institutional Library Services program, which stocks the prison libraries. That program does not have new anticipated funding or a plan to make up for the books that would have been lost under the ban.According to a mid-March memo explaining the ban, prison mailrooms didn't have the resources to screen books entering facilities for contraband.The instances provided by DOC this week detail three cases last year of suspected narcotics discovered in prisoners' books:* In May at Monroe Correctional Complex, officers discovered "a small clear plastic bag with black powdery substance" that they believed to be heroin in an offender's book.* In September at Coyote Ridge Corrections Center, an officer discovered what was believed to be a strip of an opioid known as Suboxone, which can be used to treat drug addiction, within a book. It was found after an offender asked to exchange the book with his cousin in a different cell.* In December at Monroe Correctional Complex, a guard monitoring cameras spotted an offender placing something into a book box, with another offender then retrieving a book. Corrections officers discovered what they believed was marijuana and match heads in a bag inside that book.In a fourth instance, an offender was found in a dayroom with contraband, including Suboxone, pornographic photos and a tattoo gun. It was unclear whether any of those items were hidden inside a book he also had with him, according to the account.The information did not provide the titles of the books in question.The other dozen cases cited by the DOC came from a database search of incidents using keywords like "books" and "contraband," said Barclay.That search returned 12 instances that contained those words, according to Barclay -- but didn't actually involve books.One of those involved an inmate "'book'ed for being found with contraband," he said.Another instance, Barclay said, was "an individual was caught with contraband by officer Booker."
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Kentucky Governor Vetoes Pension Bill

Newsoms Idea to Avoid More Bankrupt Utilities

Many states that lobbied against federal tax reforms limit on a certain tax deduction are now benefiting from a potential effect of that 2017 policy change.Tax reform capped the state and local taxes (SALT) that filers can deduct from their federally declared income at $10,000. High-tax states like California, New Jersey and New York have sued to block that change because their state and local taxes can be twice that amount for residents.But as more people turn to municipal bonds, seemingly as a way to lower their federal tax burden, the result is lowerborrowing rates for state governments, which saves money for them.Case in point: Connecticut recently planned on selling $850 million in bonds to investors, but the demand was so great that the state upsized its sale to $1 billion for the same cost of borrowing. California, New Jersey and New York are seeing similar demand for their bonds, according to financial analysts.Federal tax reform, however, likely isn't the only factor playing a role in the better borrowing costs for governments. The muni bond supply this year has been below the five-year average. The increased demand, combined with the low-supply environment, means that most states coming to the market are getting favorable rates on their bonds because it's a sellers market.Still, analysts see at least one sign that tax reform is driving this increased demand: In high-tax states, local governments are receiving more favorable rates when compared with local governments in low-tax states.Analysts are watching to see what happens to demand when tax season wraps up next week.A lot of the push [in buying muni bonds]so far has been on the presumption that there is more [demand] in these states with the SALT effect, says Kimberly Olsan, senior vice president of FTN Financial. Im not really going to be able to quantify that until next week passes.The SALT cap means that many people in higher-tax states can't deduct all their state and local taxes from their income on their federal tax returns. The expected result is that their income will increase and therefore so will their federal taxes owed. Reports so far have indicated that thousands of tax filers either owe taxes this year or are receiving smaller refunds.That's where municipal bonds come in.They act as a tax shelter for income and can lower a person's federal tax burden. The increase in demand for them is outpacing the supply and that is generating a lower cost of borrowing for governments. The result is that governments are either paying less than they expected on the bond debt or they are borrowing more for the same initial cost. Either way, taxpayers get an indirect benefit because their government is getting more bang for its buck.Still, there are big questions looming about federal tax reform's long-term impact on government debt.Rudy Salo, a public finance attorney at Nixon Peabody, notes that the bonds being issued now were long ago approved by voters. If voters in higher-tax states are feeling the pinch from federal tax reform, they may be less likely to approve future bonds that would raise their taxes.Theres a possibility the next time a school bond goes up in a high-tax state, voters will be thinking twice, Salo says. They may not be as willing anymore because they may not get to deduct that [tax hike] anymore.Gov. Matt Bevin vetoed a bill in Kentucky that opponents warned could have ultimately bankrupted the state employees pension fund.The controversial bill allowed regional colleges, universities and other quasi-government institutions to leave the state's troubled pension system without immediately paying off their debt. Instead, they could pay it off over 25 years. Employers leaving the fund would be required to provide other retirement options for their employees, such as a 401(k).Regional college presidents and other proponents of the legislation said it would have given them much-needed budget relief from an upcoming spike in their annual pension bill.In his veto message, Bevin said the measure violated the moral and legal obligation the state has to the affected retirees and that he would call for a special session to address the issue.When Californias largest utility filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, many warned that it could be the first domino to fall as deadly wildfires and ensuing liability lawsuits have become more frequent in the West. Now, Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to pitch his solution that could help investor-owned utilities like the bankrupt PG&E stay solvent while also making fire victims financially whole.At issue is a California law known as inverse condemnation, which essentially holds utilities responsible for wildfire damage caused by their equipment -- whether the companies acted negligently or not. PG&E is facing $30 billion in potential wildfire liabilities and filed for bankruptcy in January. According to NPR affiliate KQED , Newsoms proposal to be released Friday will include establishing a state reinsurance fund to act as a financial backstop for utilities. And hes proposing streamlining the California Public Utilities Commission so that the regulatory agency can deal more quickly with issues of safety and liability.
The U.S. Web Design System 2.0 Has Arrived

Washington, D.C., Launches New Engagement Platform for Urban Forestry

Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program Offered in Arkansas for First Time

A Data Map About Game of Thrones

U.S. Senate Democrats have introduced new legislation aimed at tackling digital equity.Dubbed the Digital Equity Act of 2019 , the legislation was introduced Thursday by a group led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. The main thrust of the bill is that it seeks to foster better digital inclusion across the country, by creating new investments from the federal government in projects that promote digital equity at the state and local levels. A group of nine senators co-sponsored the bill, and in a press release, Murrays office noted that a companion to it will soon be introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives.The bill, as presently constituted, would create an annual $125 million formula grant program for all 50 states as well as for Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, aimed at the creation of digital equity plans. In addition, there would be another $125 million grant program aimed at supporting related projects undertaken by groups, coalitions and others. The last actionable measure within the bill would be tasking the National Telecommunications and Information Administration with evaluating digital equity work and giving policymakers at all levels of government detailed info about projects that are most effective.Regardless of whether the bill passes, just being introduced marks a milestone in the fight for digital equity, which means ensuring that all members of a given community have equal access to health care, education and employment through technology. As technology  and the Internet, specifically  has become an increasingly vital part of modern life, digital inclusion efforts have accelerated along with it.Traditionally, however, these efforts have been the work of organizations and activists at the local level. Public libraries have long been on the frontlines, with local governments in recent years starting to join in as conveners, advocates and even occasionally financers. More major cities across the country have also started to dedicate full-time staff positions to this work.A support bill being introduced at the federal level brings the nation closer to major steps such as treating high-speed Internet access as a utility rather than a luxury, or placing digital skills training within school curriculums right alongside things like literacy and algebra.The announcement from the senators emphasizes the importance of digital equity by citing the Pew Research Center , which reports that one in five teens in the United States have said they have had challenges completing homework assignments due to not having adequate Internet access.Technologists at the federal level launched the U.S. Web Design System 2.0 this week, billing it as a new foundation for the future of our design system.They also noted that the main goal of the new system is to make it easier for projects to integrate the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS), ultimately using it to support governmental missions and better serve users.The USWDS, for the uninitiated, is a library of code, tools, and guidance to help government teams design and build fast, accessible, mobile-friendly government websites backed by user research and modern best practices. This 2.0 version is, as the name implies, an update to that system, one that introduces new features.The USWDS has become commonplace since it was created by the U.S. Digital Service in 2015, crafted by an advisory board of representatives from several government agencies. In less than four years, it has gone on to power nearly 200 federal government websites. This new version of the system, the technologists note, was created over the past two years. During the process, developers spoke with users across the government, interviewing project teams, soliciting public feedback and through GitHub.Some of the main features that are new in this version include things like easier incremental adoption, practical design tokens, an accessible color system, expressive theming, powerful utility classes, a simplified layout grid, and an overarching framework that has been crafted with adaptation in mind.Along with the new version, developers have also released detailed information about the new functionalities.The Washington, D.C., District Department of Transportation Urban Forestry group has a new urban forestry engagement platform.The platform was created as part of a partnership with SymGEO as well as other local government agencies such as Open Data DC and the Washington, D.C., Office of the Chief Technology Officer. What it does is give residents information about everything that the urban forestry department does.With a long history of caring for the extensive forest canopy in DC, the Urban Forestry group has meticulously assembled data sets and applications to help in their forest management mission and to communicate with a variety of audiences, developers explained in an announcement.Having the new Esri Hub technology gives them a digital platform designed to take the disparate things that the urban forestry department does and turn them into a cohesive story that residents can easily read and understand.This story includes a pretty wide range of information, from the departments past to its current role and what might be its future. Perhaps most interestingly for those in the civic tech space, the platform also goes on to detail things like the flagship data set of the urban forest group, which is its public tree map , a visualization of info about the citys vast urban tree canopy. In addition, the platform is rich with interesting statistics, many of which have to do with the number of trees that have been and continue to be planted in the nations capital.The Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program, a free seven-week computer science class for girls in the 10th and 11th grade, is now being offered in Arkansas for the first time.The program, which aims to get young women involved in a field that has long been dominated by men, teaches participants things about computer science, how to find tech jobs, and how to work with the discipline to be a changemaker. Each of the seven weeks covers projects related to computer science, including art, storytelling, robotics, video games, apps and more. There are also guest speakers, networking with female engineers, field trips and a final project to be shared with the class.The program takes places across the country and has for some years, but this is the first summer it will be available in Arkansas for the participants at the high school level.More information is available on the programs website Finally, the popular HBO showreturns this Sunday for its final season, and in honor of the event, technologists have created a data map about the fictional world it takes place in.The map, which can be found here , explores the topography of the world ofwith data layers such as roads, rivers, kingdom boundaries, lakes, landscape and more. It also features roads and cities as mentioned in the novels and the show. So, get ready for the big day by spending time in your office playing with this  in the service of civic tech, of course.
(TNS)  A $435,169 National Science Foundation grant will help create an advanced automation program at Gadsden State Community College.The money will be used to create an automated industrial line, with programmable logic controllers, a robot and conveyor system, as well as develop curriculum for the program. A new advanced short-term certificate in mechatronics and robotics will also be offered as a part of the schools Industrial Automation Program.Gadsden State will also work to establish articulation agreements with four-year universities offering engineering or applied engineering Programs.Its the latest move by Alabamas community colleges toward training for high tech jobs. The system last month inked a deal to expand students access to aerospace, manufacturing and defense industry training.The equipment and the program curriculum will train skilled technicians in advanced manufacturing to help close the skills gap and fulfill the needs of Alabamas advanced manufacturing workforce, Gadsden State President Martha Lavender said.The program will train students in operating, troubleshooting and maintaining intelligent machines and computerized smart equipment.Several Alabama companies assisted in securing the grant, with Fehrer, Rainsville Technology Inc., Kronospan, KTH Leesburg LLC, Tyler Union Quality Water Works and Honda Manufacturing of Alabama offering letters of support.Pam Johnson, dean of institutional effectiveness, grants and special projects, said the program will benefit not only students but displaced or underemployed workers, and enhance the recruitment of women into advanced technical fields.We want to propel the two-year college system to a new level in training manufacturing technicians by applying the advanced curriculum to a new level of teaching integrated skills on intelligent line-based manufacturing systems, she said.
In the last five years, Segal turned himself into an in-demand trumpet player, arranger and producer. He released Surf under his former stage name, Donnie Trumpet; collaborated with his old music-school friends on the jazz-dusted songs of the JuJu Exchange (the 2017 album Exchange) and worked with everyone from Kanye West to Frank Ocean. Fox has been busy too, with projects involving Lil Wayne, Kehlani and DRAM, among others.
This past weekend, the rollover of the global GPS system caused New York Citys official wireless network to crash. The network hasnt been revived yet, though officials say they expect to have it back up and running by this weekend.It turns out that the outage, caused by what's known as the GPS Rollover , could have been avoided. There was plenty of advance notice of the reset of the Global Positioning System  a satellite system run by the U.S. Air Force that provides geolocation and time signals for devices and networks across the globe.The systems reset  which took place Saturday, after nearly four decades of continuous use  had been warned about in a memo issued by the Department of Homeland Security approximately one year earlier, which cautioned federal, state, local, and private sector organizations of the need to plan for the event by installing needed updates to hardware and software.However, despite the advanced warnings, the New York City Wireless Network, also called the NYCWiN, was disrupted by the rollover, causing many city agencies that rely on it to lose various functions. Multiple news outlets have reported that transit officials lost remote access to the citys traffic lights, and that many of the citys traffic cameras and police license plate readers suffered malfunctions. The city also did not initially disclose to the public that the system was down, according to the New York Times Stephanie Raphael, the communications director for the citys IT and Telecommunications Department, providedwith a statement regarding the outage:Elements of our private wireless network have been disrupted by a worldwide GPS system update. Were working overtime to update the network and bring all of it back online. No critical public safety systems are affected by this brief software installation period, and weve taken several steps to make up for the disruption to the few isolated tools affected. We are testing the equipment right now and expect to have NYCWiN back up this weekend.Phillip Walzak, the deputy commissioner of public information for the NYPD, similarly reported that the citys public safety operations were largely unaffected.Systems managed by the NYPD are not experiencing any issues, Walzak said. NYCWiN supports only a limited number of NYPD applications, including some of its fixed position license plate readers (LPRs), he added.Walzak further commented that the NYPD always maintains contingency plans to prevent any single point of failure, and since the outage occurred over the weekend, the NYPD has deployed mobile LPR readers to targeted locations across the city to ensure continued service to the public.The NYPD has not experienced disruption to operations, investigations or services during the outage, and continues to monitor the situation closely and collaborate with partner city agencies.
(TNS)  U.S. Rep. Lloyd Smucker's net neutrality bill may face a roadblock as members of the Democrat-led committee where it sits are touting a bill of their own that's probably doomed.The Lancaster Republican introduced legislation Monday, April 8, that would amend Title I of the Communications Act of 1934 to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or throttling lawful content on the Internet."The Internet should be a free space, Smucker said. Commonsense regulation can be helpful and protect consumers, but oppressive federal strong-arming benefits no one, especially not the Internet.On Wednesday, while Smucker's bill sat in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the House overwhelmingly passed Democratic legislation dubbed the Save the Internet Act of 2019 by a 232-190 vote. It's expected to be dead on arrival in the GOP-run Senate.Smucker's pitch may appeal to the Senate Republicans, who tend to be more skeptical about regulatory edicts. It includes some of what the Democrats are fighting for, but caps the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).Title I has been in effect since 2017, when the FCC repealed Obama-era policy classifying broadband service providers as common carriers under Title II  satisfying GOP calls to end alleged federal regulatory overreach and boost investments in high-speed Internet.The move reversed the ban on throttling, blocking and paid prioritization of lawful content. It also came with a transparency rule forcing companies to disclose management practices, which didn't actually prohibit them from the tactics.Smucker's legislation would let broadband providers maintain the Title I classification that deems them as information services, include the former ban and codify the transparency rule.It would also limit the power of the FCC by letting the Federal Trade Commission retain its enforcement over anti-trust and anti-competition laws, which Smucker said is a "commonsense" approach different from the likely-doomed Democratic bill.Smucker's legislation doesn't have a Senate companion bill. And a spokesman for the House committee wouldn't say whether its members might consider the proposal.The Democrats are instead focused on the recently-passed legislation by Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pennsylvania, which would repeal the FCC's 2017 ruling and reinstate the Obama-era Title II classification in totality.The bill "charts a new course for net neutrality and would put in place 21st Century rules for a 21st Century Internet," Doyle said.The Democrats bill would prohibit the FCC from altering rate setting, unbundling Internet service provider networks and levying additional taxes on broadband access.Sen. Ed Markey, D-Massachusetts, is sponsoring a companion bill in the Senate, where it sits in the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
The cloud is a powerful tool for driving digital transformation, but risks abound at every step of the journey. Public-sector IT leaders must assess where they stand in the cloud adoption curve and plan how to optimize their infrastructure costs.
(TNS)  The Los Angeles Police Department pioneered the controversial use of data to pinpoint crime hot spots and track violent offenders.Complex algorithms and vast databases were supposed to revolutionize crime fighting, making policing more efficient as number-crunching computers helped to position scarce resources.But critics long complained about inherent bias in the data  gathered by officers  that underpinned the tools.They claimed a partial victory when LAPD Chief Michel Moore announced he would end one highly touted program intended to identify and monitor violent criminals. On Tuesday, the departments civilian oversight panel raised questions about whether another program, aimed at reducing property crime, also disproportionately targets black and Latino communities.Members of the Police Commission demanded more information about how the agency plans to overhaul a data program that helps predict where and when crimes will likely occur. One questioned why the program couldnt be suspended.There is very limited information on the programs impact, Commissioner Shane Murphy Goldsmith said.The action came as so-called predictive policing using search tools, point scores and other methods  is under increasing scrutiny by privacy and civil liberties groups that say the tactics result in heavier policing of black and Latino communities. The argument was underscored at Tuesdays commission meeting when several UCLA academics cast doubt on the research behind crime modeling and predictive policing.Last week, the group of 68 UCLA professors and graduate students signed a letter to commissioners raising concerns about PredPol, the technology company partially developed by UCLA anthropology professor P. Jeffrey Brantingham.There is no universal agreement or acceptance of the empirical merit and the ethics of the research upon which the policing program is based, the letter stated, adding that it reflected some of the most troubling legacies of the discipline of anthropology and of social science more generally.In a statement, Brantingham said: UCLA provides a great environment to conduct research because it represents a diversity of opinion and encourages vigorous debate. Its clear that we share the same passion for finding fair and effective solutions that help keep communities safe.The PredPol software used by the LAPD is designed to predict where and when crimes will likely occur over the next 12 hours. The softwares algorithm examines 10 years of data, including the types of crimes, dates, locations and times.As commissioners debated the data program for three hours, activists repeatedly shouted, Shut it down.Last month, an audit by Inspector General Mark Smith found the data programs lacked oversight and that officers used inconsistent criteria to label people who were likely to commit violent crime. Moore ended that component.Smith also said there was insufficient data to determine if PredPol helped to reduce property crimes.But Goldsmith and fellow Commissioners Dale Bonner and Eileen Decker faulted the audit for not providing more details about the location-based program.They questioned its effectiveness and wanted specifics on how future results would be measured and released to the public. They also asked Moore to provide details on training and how the agency would monitor against possible abuses of targeting black and brown communitiesDepartment officials plan to meet with a commission subcommittee to provide more details.Bonner asked Moore why the agency could not suspend the program until it develops a formalized plan and resolves all problems.Moore insisted the program is needed to fight crime.To abort this because of criticism in this room is an overreaction, Moore said, adding the agency is trying to build community trust around the program.Its almost like working on the car as youre driving down the freeway, Bonner replied. Moore disputed the notion.The department is working to develop precision policing manuals tailored to its four geographic commands and will incorporate the inspector generals recommendations into them, Moore said.To improve accountability, Moore tasked Deputy Chief Robert Arcos, who heads the Office of Operations, to oversee the program. Arcos told commissioners that he and other police leaders are committed to making the program successful and transparent.After the audit was released last month, the public had two weeks to offer input. Smith said he received 819 responses. Many used similar language urging that the programs end. Still, activists pointed out that no responses supported keeping the program.The community is completely unified in the opposition, one woman told commissioners.When the commission declined to approve the departments path forward to use predictive policing  instead requesting more information on its usefulness in stemming property crimes  activists stood and chanted in solidarity. Commission President Steve Soboroff recessed the meeting until calm could be restored.Seven UCLA professors and graduate students spoke, urging commissioners to stop the LAPD from using PredPol because it inflicts harm on the citys poorest residents.Its a predatory policing program that should be dismissed and dismantled, professor Jemima Pierre told commissioners.Another criticized Smith for not disclosing that two academic studies cited in the audit were completed by Brantingham.It shouldnt be evaluated by the person who created it, professor Jessica Cattelino said.Moore said the department is open to more examination of the program and would make changes if irregularities surface. He credited the program for helping lower crime rates in recent years.The agencys primary goal, he said, is to keep the city safe, not apprehend people. He said he understands the concerns about racial biases, but said officers work daily to build community trust.We will continue to work with all our communities, Moore said, adding the department will also seek more research on data policing.
The North Dakota legislation authorizing a new unified approach to cybersecurity was signed into law Thursday by Gov. Doug Burgum.The governor, a former Microsoft executive, said Senate Bill 2110 would go far toward protecting the state's digital infrastructure.This important investment in 21st-century critical infrastructure recognizes the increasingly digital world in which we live and the growing nature of cybersecurity threats, said Burgum. A unified approach to cybersecurity strengthens our ability to protect the state networks 252,000 daily users and more than 400 entities from cyberattacks."On average, officials estimate the state sees roughly 5 million cyberattack attempts each month.The bill gives authority to the states Information Technology Department (ITD) to define cybersecurity for all of the states public entities  including cities and counties, state agencies, school districts and institutions for higher education.Previously, all of those entities were responsible for providing their own cybersecurity  a fact that many security experts view as a liability. By creating one unified strategic framework, officials say they will be able to ferret out security gaps, while also bringing everybody together onto the same page strategically.The collaborative effort on this legislation clearly reflects a whole-of-government approach by North Dakotas leaders, enabling the state to effectively address millions of monthly attacks and identify potential gaps in cybersecurity, CIO Shawn Riley said in a statement.The bills passage comes at a time when Burgum has also sought to spike the states IT spending  asking for $16.4 million to aid the new centralization process in his 2019-21 fiscal budget proposal.At the same time, Burgum has also asked for the creation of a new IT office that will assist with cybersecurity efforts. That office would cull 145 employees from 17 different cabinet agencies, bringing them together to pursue solutions to the state's security risks.
I remember Counsellors Row. It wasnt pretty. And as far as Burke is concerned these days, that former investigator isnt alone in his thinking. Im hearing the same thing from others. And Im sure Burke is hearing it too.
For one to show up, as this one has, along the lakefront, is stunning, said Neise, a former photographer for Lincoln Park Zoo who now works for the American Birding Association. Its mind-blowing that this bird has been able to successfully navigate the heavy traffic and other dangers of the inner city, essentially walking and running along streets, alleys, and through parks.
Greening said hes had several clients who were assaulted by fake Uber or Lyft drivers in Chicago. There are people out there who want to victimize others, and when they can catch people off guard, they are going to take advantage of that, he said.
The city elections effectively put a hold on any new charges being brought as part of the sweeping City Hall probe. But there have been plenty of other developments since the case against Burke was first brought, most notably the stunning revelation that Solis had been cooperating with the FBI for nearly three years and wore a wire to record Burke in his office.
Contributed Photo / Contributed Photo

One of my first jobs as a summer college replacement at Greenwich Time was to take some papers from the then editor, Ted Yudain, up to Albert Wheeler Johnstons house. Johnston had just bought Greenwich Time, and the local Daily News Graphic. Four years later, he became its publisher, and in 1943 he bought the Greenwich Press and eliminated it.

In 1904, Johnston became the owner of land in middle country Greenwich and hired Theodore E. Blake, an architect, for the English house he wanted. English houses were most popular in those days, as they still are. Blake was associated at that time with the New York firm of Carrere and Hastings, and was known for his part in designing the New York Public Library, the United States Senate and the House of Representatives buildings. He also designed the Rosemary School in Greenwich, and he knew well our town, as his family had lived here for more than 200 years.
TORRINGTON  A new group of workers will be drawn to the city once the next generation of internet connectivity is available in the region, Gov. Ned Lamont said Friday.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Northwest Connecticut Chamber of Commerce, to a crowd of more than 300, Lamont said We will be the first state in New England to have 5G internet service.

You will have the highest speed in downtown as anywhere, else in the state. You should have access to urban amenities even in the smallest towns. It will make Torrington relevant to a new generation, Lamont added.

The statement is similar to a presentation Lamont gave to a much smaller crowd at the chambers offices, two weeks before he was elected governor.

At that forum he said the lack of reliable internet service affects entrepreneurship in the region.

Lamonts remarks at the awards luncheon at Chatterley's Banquet Facility were followed by a question and answer session. He responded with a clear statement of support to a question about the legalization of marijuana in Connecticut.

Well put regulations in place and stop dangerous substances from going in to products sold on the street, he said. Additionally, there is a disrespect for the law, Lamont said, by those who buy pot despite it being illegal to do so.

He said even though the use of marijuana has been decriminalized. it is unfairly applied, to segments of the population.

The wave of proposed legalization in surrounding states means a thoughtful approach such as whats being done in Rhode Island by Gov. Gina Raimondo, can set the tone for Connecticuts move to legalization, Lamont noted.

Moving to the topic of jobs, a chamber member noted his clients are concerned about the minimum wage increase to $15. It may force them to leave the state, the member said.

We will compete on the same playing field with nearby states, Lamont answered. He noted that the move to providing higher wages will come about the same time, as New York, New Jersey and other nearby states.

The governor said that he spoke with single moms who work more than one job to make a living wage. Fifteen dollars means a lot to them, Lamont said.

Following the governors remarks, the chamber inducted Karen Kuhl of Greer Village Senior Community, and Paul Patch, a retired executive from O&G Industries into the organizations Hall of Fame.

Both have contributed countless hours of their time to our Chamber and deserve our utmost praise, the recognition noted.

The governor started his visit to Litchfield County at a meeting with the Northwest Hills Council of Governments, where members spoke about the regions successes and concerns.

There is a recognition that there is a lot of history about the local needs of the city and small municipalities, said council member Mayor Elinor Carbone.

Were grateful (Lamont) is listening. We talked about how efficiently municipalities run in the region, she said.

Members of the council told the governor that they have cooperatively designed ourselves, Carbone said, to share services and supplies. We need to find ways to not lose our characters as individual municipalities, she added.

The list of talking points shared with Lamont included the statement that We are proponents of voluntary regionalism and have already regionalized many municipal functions (schools, health districts, emergency dispatch), the list said.

While, right now the city is relatively held harmless, Carbone said by state legislation, there are proposed measure that, if passed could adversely effect Torringtons budget.

For instance, there have been some proposals on property tax reform that, if passed, would have a devastating impact on our Towns, the councils list of issues notes.

It is a cause for concern, Carbone said. Lamont heard from the COG about it. She added that she was glad there was more of a dialogue with Lamont than previous governors.

It was positive and constructive, council Executive Director Rick Lynn said about Lamonts visit. It was the first time a sitting governor has ever attended a COG meeting.
Though the Illinois State Police respects the rights of citizens to express their opinions in a lawful manner, any planned event designed to intentionally impede normal traffic flow is dangerous to the innocent motoring public, District 15 acting Capt. Dominic Chiappini said in the statement. Violators who choose to endanger the public by participating in events that violate Illinois law, could potentially be held liable for traffic crashes occurring as a result of their actions, and will be subject to the enforcement of applicable laws.
LAS CRUCES, N.M. - This land is sacred, says Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, looking out the window of a minivan at the vast desert that stretches across the U.S.-Mexico border. Tumbleweeds blow over the road; scattered clouds of opaque dust hang thick in the air. She has lived here, under the jagged shadow of the red Organ Mountains, almost her entire life.

The 34-year-old congresswoman from New Mexico's 2nd District, Torres Small knows this place better than most. She was 9 years old when she first climbed "the Needle" - the highest point in the Organs - scrambling to hoist herself over the rocks as her dad identified plants and insects. She brought her friends to the same mountain range for her 12th birthday, showing them how to ford a river and spelunk a cave. Years later, it was where her husband proposed.

"All these very intimate moments are connected to the land," she says. Torres Small has amber eyes and curly black hair, glossy from a fresh coat of serum - traits her dad says she inherited from her Native American great-grandmother. "You feel that spirit here."

Since she was elected in November, Torres Small has driven these roads with more than a dozen different members of Congress. They come down, smartphone cameras at the ready, to tour Torres Small's district: the epicenter of the fiercest political debate in the country, straddling 180 miles of the most remote stretches of the southern border. They want to see the wall, the detention centers. They ask about Jakelin Caal Maquin and Felipe Gomez Alonzo, the two migrant children who died, at ages 7 and 8, while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in December, after walking hundreds of miles through the desert.

Jakelin came into the country through Torres Small's district; Felipe died there.

It hasn't been easy for Torres Small, a moderate Democrat, to talk about immigration in a way that appeals to both sides of her solidly purple district: to the immigration advocates who accuse Border Patrol of actively contributing to the deaths of Jakelin and Felipe, and to the agents who say they did everything they could to save them. On Capitol Hill, it can be even harder to have nuanced conversations about the border. Torres Small is one of only a handful of members who champion centrist immigration policies: more Border Patrol agents, but with a clearer asylum process. Walls in some places, but not all.

"The whole abolish ICE tagline ... I don't know when Democrats became a party of disorder," Torres Small says. "If you don't like the laws, let's work to change them. But not enforcing them? That doesn't make sense."

In Congress, Torres Small has earned an important platform from which to direct discussion on the border. She is the only member from a border region to serve on the House Homeland Security Committee and is the chair of the oversight, management and accountability subcommittee. In March, when she questioned then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen at a hearing to address the Trump administration's immigration policies, she was commended for her uniquely nonpartisan approach.

As President Donald Trump doubles down on border security as his signature political issue, Republicans are moving further right, and Democrats further left. Each pole is missing something important, Torres Small says. Could she be the one to chart the middle course?

---

On a sunny day in late February, Torres Small has come home to lead her fourth congressional delegation at the border. She's here to meet with Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, the newly elected member from El Paso, and Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the chair of the Homeland Security Committee.

When she's at home, constituents often ask why as one of six millennial congresswomen, she's not more prominent in the news. Why does she have 671 Instagram followers, compared with her colleagues' tens of thousands? You're also a young, charismatic freshman woman in Congress, they'll say. Why aren't you out there with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

"They want to see me being a part of what's going on in Washington. They want to be able to cheer me on." Torres Small gets quiet, and glances toward the mountains, hazy in the evening dust.

"But I'd much rather be out here."

To win election last year in this moderate, Republican-leaning district, Torres Small had to convince voters that she wasn't a "radical Washington Democrat," and won by a slim margin.

To win again, Torres Small knows she'll have to bring a strong centrist voting record to the race: In February, she was one of only seven Democrats to oppose a bill mandating enhanced background checks for gun owners. In a closed-door meeting with House Democrats a few days later, Ocasio-Cortez allegedly threatened to put her moderate colleagues "on a list" that she would circulate among liberal activists if they didn't vote with the party, according to several people who were in the room. Torres Small stood up in response, urging Ocasio-Cortez to consider the political reality of representing a moderate district. Even the mildest progressive statement, for Torres Small, could be turned into a candidacy-crippling sound bite.

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It's 8:30 at night, and the conference room at the El Paso Airport Courtyard Marriott is lit up under harsh fluorescents. Wearing what her staffers call her "New Mexican Power Suit" - a blazer, blue jeans and square-toed cowboy boots with pink and orange stitching up the sides - Torres Small takes her seat at the head of the table, next to Escobar and Thompson. Tomorrow, the three members will meet with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Border Patrol. Tonight, they're meeting the immigration advocates.

As they go around the room, each of the 12 advocates, affiliated with various immigration nonprofit groups around the area, offer similar perspectives: Enforcement doesn't work. ICE and Border Patrol agents abuse children and lie about it. The government should cut off all their funding.

"For the record, this is the first meeting (of my trip to the border)," Thompson says. "I could have done a lot, but I need this as my introduction to El Paso and the issue - because I know what I'll get tomorrow." Thompson laughs, eliciting knowing chuckles from Escobar and the advocates.

Torres Small does not join in.

It can be frustrating, how quickly the left jumps to demonizing Border Patrol, Torres Small says. Of course there are agents who abuse their power - who issue hateful threats or sexually abuse the migrants they detain. But mostly, she sees kindness: agents buying Happy Meals for migrant kids with their own money or complaining about detention center facilities to people higher up the chain.

"People, rightfully so, defend the humanity of migrants crossing the border without documentation. We should take the same umbrage when people dehumanize agents," she says. "We're all just people caught up in this broken system."

Torres Small wants more people to come into the country legally, and she supports issuing more work visas and simplifying the asylum process. But she also wants to secure the border. The best way to do that, she says, is not by building a continuous wall, but by hiring more Border Patrol agents and making sure they have all the resources they need. Her first bill, introduced with Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, who also represents a border region, asks Congress to find new ways of attracting agents to rural posts.

When talking to Torres Small about border security, there is one particular phrase that comes up a lot: "We need a clear and moral immigration system." (In a 30-minute conversation, she says it three times.) The tag line, taken straight from a campaign ad, is hard to argue with. It's also extremely vague, somehow appealing to many on both sides of an issue where the sides agree on almost nothing. There aren't many of those types of phrases. So Torres Small says it again, and again, and again.

The morning after Jakelin died, Torres Small drove two hours from Las Cruces to Lordsburg, where Jakelin had been taken for medical attention, and another 90 minutes to Antelope Wells, where she had entered into the United States from Mexico.

Antelope Wells is the most remote port of entry on the southern border, with dozens of miles of empty desert on either side. The closest town is Hachita, 45 miles away, with a population of 49. Lordsburg, home to just under 2,500 people, has the nearest hospital.

Torres Small wanted to drive the path to experience how long Jakelin had to travel, feverish and vomiting, after walking over 2,000 miles through Mexico.

She drove, jiggling over a cattle guard every couple of miles, passing only a handful of cars that weren't white pickup trucks marked Customs and Border Protection. When she arrived, the gate was closed, barbed wire strung high over the top. The ground surrounding the facility was blanketed with spiky yellow straw, a few cactuses dotted here and there.

When Jakelin died, many on the left immediately blamed Border Patrol, accusing the agency of mistreatment or neglect. Democrats have called for an independent investigation. Torres Small has stood with them.

But Torres Small also understands that the nature of the land makes this complicated. On her last trip to Antelope Wells, she discovered that the port has only one bus to transport migrants to hospitals and intake centers. Jakelin arrived at the port with 162 people, too many for one bus. And so she had to wait - not only the hour and a half it took to drive to the hospital, but the extra three hours it took for the bus to go and come back the first time. In the meantime, Border Patrol agents tried to take her pulse with an oximeter, they told Torres Small. But they didn't have one small enough to fit a child's finger.

"They feel incredibly defensive because they feel under attack," Torres Small says. "But with the vast majority of agents I've spoken to ... when they see these kids, they see their children."

The night before she sets out with Thompson and Escobar, Torres Small rides along Interstate 10, an elevated highway that snakes between two cities on opposite sides of the border: Juarez, Mexico, and El Paso. For at least a few moments, she says, you can see the border wall from the road.

Torres Small is happy that so many of her colleagues want to come to her district. But sometimes she feels like the trips just serve to further divide the border conversation. So far, only Democrats have participated in her delegations. For this particular trip, she'd worked hard to recruit two Republicans. They had both agreed to come but had backed out at the last minute.

She plans to keep inviting them.

As the car swings around a bend, Torres Small points toward a cluster of lights below the highway.

"You should be able to see the border, somewhere around there," she says.

The wall in El Paso is a series of steel beams, five inches apart. In the daytime, it's an imposing structure, three times her height, forever separating the two sides.

But tonight, in the dark, she can't quite make it out.
/ Westport PD

GREENWICH  Police closed their investigation into a rash of larcenies from cars in the Riverside section of town last year with an arrest.

Xavier Medel, 19, of Manhattan Ave., Bridgeport, was charged with burglary and larceny this week.
In an ongoing proposal for Google and Huawei to make a settlement could pay out affected Huawei Nexus 6P owners up to $400 as the resulting settlement nears for the class-action lawsuit first filed for the devices stuck in bootloops or with battery issues which date back to 2017.

The settlement is awaiting final approval by the court, but it proposes that both Google and Huawei would be liable for a $9.75 million settlement for a lawsuit first filed in April of 2017. The proposed settlement cites that some affected users could be compensated up to $400 with proper documentation of the issue.

Meanwhile, those who didnt document the issue could be compensated with a minimum of $10. Of course, keep in mind these numbers arent concrete as the settlement is in its final stages of approval. Google began replacing Nexus 6Ps under warranty with Pixel XL devices in September of 2017.

Google Nexus 6P (2015)

A few years ago now, there was a major issue among owners of the Huawei-built Google Nexus 6P. A software glitch caused some devices to be stuck in a bootloop, unable to start the OS. Even a factory reset was not enough to repair the problem. An unofficial fix was invented by a couple of XDA members almost two years ago. There was also a battery issue that caused the Nexus 6P to shut off with a fully charged battery.

If you were an affected owner of the Huawei-made Nexus 6P, keep an eye out for the results of the settlement, you will likely be contacted by email or a letter in the mail.

The Nexus 6P was one of Googles two final Nexus devices that were released in 2015. It was manufactured by Huawei and aside from being the first smartphone I ever reviewed, it had a 5.7 display with 1440p resolution, 3GB of RAM, and an octa-core Snapdragon 810. It also featured Huaweis super-fast rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and a 12MP camera. The phone had a 3,450 mAh battery but its endurance was about average.

Sources: Proposed long-form notice | Proposed settlement | Via
The Realme 3 was introduced in the beginning of March, and the event finished with a teaser of the Realme 3 Pro. The time for the Pro iteration has come and the phone is launching on April 22, as already confirmed. Today the company CEO for India Madhav Sheth posted another teaser, reminding that the Realme 3 Pro will be all about speed.

See you on 22nd April. pic.twitter.com/UfomufNovY  Madhav Sheth (@MadhavSheth1) April 12, 2019

The company has kept silent on any specs, but thanks to photos, uploaded by Sheth, we expect a selfie camera with more than 12 MP sensor, likely a 25 MP unit like the Realme U1. We also expect to see HDR capabilities from the main shooter. The phone is also said to run Fortnite at 60fps, something that the Redmi Note 7 Pro cannot do.



Realme 3 Pro in the hands of the brand's CEO

So far, only flagship chipsets like Snapdragon 855 and Kirin 980 support the 60fps mode, introduced by Epic Games, so the Snapdragon 675 in the Redmi device cannot make it. There are 10 days to the event and we are currently playing the guessing game which chipset will power the Realme 3 Pro to provide the promised Pro awakening speeds.

Source
Spiegel, 62, lamented that he never got his day in court in the cases. He has owned a condo in the building for 25 years, and he enjoys the very comfortable lifestyle there and likes the views of Lake Michigan. The issues started when there was a dispute over the makeup of the executive board for the association, he said.
ESCATAWPA, Miss. -- The Moss Point School District in conjunction with Merchant & Marine Bank cut the ribbon on their newest Little Free Library in Escatawpa on Thursday.

According to Stephanie Packer, communications director of M &M, the ribbon-cutting displayed the partnership between the MPSD and the city.

This is our second little free library and our goal is to place literacy in the area in which it is needed, Packer said. Everyone comes to the bank -- and you come to the bank with your children, so stop in, get a book, keep it going, bring it back, if you keep it, drop it off at another little free library. Our overall goal is to try to get a library at each of our 12 branches in the Mississippi area.

Anthony Herbert, District Operations Director for the MPSD said support and equal partnership between the Kiwanis Club and the school district was essentially a no-brainer.

When we received the call about the little library, we saw it as a great opportunity to partner both with our maintenance department and art classes at the high school, Herbert said. Casie Duffy and her art class agreed to helping us paint it and had it painted within 48 hours.

Little Free Library is a 501 nonprofit organization that aims to inspire a love of reading, build community, and spark creativity by fostering neighborhood book exchanges around the world.

While small in stature, this Little Free Library will be coming to more Mississippi Merchant & Marine banks, according to communications manager Stephanie Packer.Tyler Carter

In 2009 Todd H. Bol created the first Little Free Library book exchange and placed it in his Hudson, Wis., front yard in tribute to his mother, who was been a teacher.

Ten years later, his idea has snowballed into a worldwide book-sharing movement. There are now more than 80,000 Little Free Libraries in all 50 states and 90-plus countries, from Argentina to Zambia.

May 17, the nonprofit will celebrate a decade of improving literacy of children across the world.
The new law, which was passed with strong bipartisan support in the House and Senate and takes effect immediately, makes it abundantly clear that we have turned the page here in Illinois, the Democratic governor said during a bill-signing event at the Capitol, where he was joined by legislators and labor leaders.




Haiti - FLASH : Members of the General Staff of the FAd'H in Mexico





As part of an official visit, a Haitian delegation led jointly by the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Defense, Jean Harry Toussaint and Lieutenant General Jodel Lessage Commander-in-Chief ai of the Armed Forces of Haiti (FAd'H), composed of members of the General Staff and Defense Ministry officials, is currently in Mexico until April 14, 2019, in order to finalize the modalities and the agenda of Phase II of the bilateral military cooperation Mexico-Haiti.



According to this agenda, 3 activities will be realized during the month of April:



A seminar on "Civil Protection, Human Rights and Gender Equity" for members of the Haitian Armed Forces as well as those of civil society;



Training in Mexico as a basic individual principle of a second group of 35 executives;



The training in Haiti of 30 NCOs instructors.



In addition to finalizingthe Phase II, the delegation will take this opportunity to explore new opportunities related to the implementation of Phase III.



During their stay, the members of the delegation will have the opportunity to visit :



The facilities of the State Secretariat of National Defense of Mexico;



The School of Military Engineering;



The Firearms and Ammunition Manufacturing Plant;



The Military Center for Health Sciences (CEMICSA) and the NCO School of La Puebla.



These visits will allow the delegation to further explore the Mexican defense system.



A few days before the release of the first Promotion of soldiers in Haiti https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26689-haiti-army-250-aspiring-soldiers-of-the-fad-h-in-training.html , the Ministry of Defense authorities are working hard to establish a modern army in Haiti.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26831-haiti-army-15-young-professionals-in-military-training-in-mexico.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26804-haiti-washington-minister-joseph-outlines-haiti-s-defense-strategy.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26689-haiti-army-250-aspiring-soldiers-of-the-fad-h-in-training.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-25768-haiti-army-the-minister-of-defense-signs-a-military-cooperation-agreement-with-mexico.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - Social : 40 Haitian boat-people intercepted in the Bahamas





On Tuesday, following reports, the HMBS Durward Knowle of the Royal Bahamas Defense Force (RBDF) under the command of Lieutenant Bertram Bowleg intercepted a 35-foot Haitian sailboat on the South coast of Little Inagua Island in the archipelago of the Bahamas.



The search of the island and its surroundings by members of the RBDF allowed to find and arrest 40 illegal Haitian migrants (34 men and 6 women) in irregular migratory situation.



The Haitians, all of whom appeared to be in good health, were taken aboard a Defense Force boat and taken to Matthew Town on Great Inagua Island where they were handed over to the immigration authorities for investigation and ulterior treatment.



With these 40 new migrants, more than 300 illegal Haitians have been apprehended since the beginning of this year by the RBDF.



Recall that nearly 70,000 immigrants (18% of the population of the Bahamas) live in the archipelagos of the Bahamas, most of them in an irregular situation, including at least 50,000 Haitians, according to the information available.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27022-haiti-social-2nd-flights-of-haitians-expelled-from-the-bahamas.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26829-haiti-flash-shipwreck-off-the-islands-of-abaco-16-dead-and-15-haitian-survivors.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26979-haiti-social-towards-an-exodus-of-haitians-in-the-bahamas.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-26723-icihaiti-security-rescue-of-31-haitians-by-the-us-coast-guard.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-26633-icihaiti-social-130-haitian-boat-people-intercepted-off-the-bahamas.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-26594-icihaiti-bahamas-4th-boat-of-illegal-haitian-migrants-intercepted-in-7-days.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-26565-haiti-bahamas-16-haitian-boat-people-intercepted-east-of-south-beach.html



S/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





Miragoane : arson at Jacques Privert high school

On the night of Wednesday 9 to Thursday 10 April, unidentified individuals set fire to classrooms at Jacques Privert high school in Miragoane. Thanks to the vigilance of local residents, the fire has been under control, the lit tires wrapped in tarpaulin have been extinguished and the damage remains limited, said High School Director Ronald Derosier. Note that this is the 4th arson attempt in this high school.



ECLAC : 2% growth for Haiti

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) today lowered its average growth estimate for the Caribbean and Latin America this year to 1.3% from 1.7% forecast last December. Indicating that for Haiti growth will be 2.0%. As for our Dominican neighbors, they will continue to dominate economic growth in Latin America and the Caribbean with a growth rate of 5.5%.



CEDEL Haiti wins the "Elevator Pitch" competition

The Investment Facilitation Center (CFI) congratulates the team of CEDEL Haiti, led by entrepreneur Rock Andre, for his brilliant participation in the "Fericom 2019" which allowed Haiti to win the first place in the International Competition "Elevator Pitch". The winning idea is called "Coding the Future" and aims to introduce technology education in secondary schools by capitalizing on the entrepreneurship clubs in schools set up by CEDEL HAITI. We are proud to have been able to support their participation.



Construction of a seed treatment center

Launch in the commune of Ferrier, in the Nord'East department, of the construction of a seed treatment conditioning center. This Center, equipped with state-of-the-art modern equipment, will be responsible for making quality seeds available to farmers.



The lottery complied with the CSC/CA

The General Directorate of the Lottery of the Haitian State brings to the attention of all, that following the correspondence of the Superior Court of Accounts and Administrative Litigation (CSC/CA) of March 21, 2019 https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-27266-haiti-news-zapping.html relating to the PetroCaribe file where 107 million Gourdes were awarded in March 2013 to the Lottery, which it handed to the members of the Court on 9th April 2019 all the documentation related to their request.



Reminder : Kazal Exhibition

The doors of Maison Dufort, which hosts the first exhibition of Kazal, will remain open until April 16, 2019 for guided tours with the photographers of this project: Edine Celestin Fabienne Douce Ray-ginald Pakle Louissaint Mackenson Saint Felix George Harry Rouzier Moses Pierre Let us recall that this photographic exhibition, retraces in an unprecedented way the memories of the dictatorship of Francois Duvalier in Haiti See also : https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-27290-icihaiti-photos-exhibition-kazal-memoirs-of-a-massacre-under-duvalier.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















Andre Segura, the legal director of the ACLU of Texas, believes the federal government needs to be more transparent. The public has a right to know the agents name, whether the agent is still on duty and the circumstances of the shooting, he said, and to see any video of the incident. The ACLU wants to see all border patrol agents wear video cameras and for each case of force to be thoroughly investigated.
Havre Police Department

Officers made an arrest on Fifth Street Thursday at 8:20 a.m. and Michael James Gregori, named in the dispatch log as being involved in the call, was listed in the jail roster as being held on pending felony charges of possession of dangerous drugs and possession with intent to sell.

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A Second Street caller reported possible vandalism at a residence Thursday at 9:01 a.m.

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A newer iPhone and case were reported lost by an 11th Avenue caller Thursday at 10:29 a.m.

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Kyle Steven Winn of Havre, 31, was issued a summons on charges of endangering the welfare of...
Six kilometers is the average distance women and children in the developing world walk for water that is often unsafe to drink, World Vision reports.

Havre resident April Taber has launched her own team that will walk the six kilometers May 4 as part of World Visions Global Walk for Water event.

Taber said she first got involved with World Vision by sponsoring a child in 2014. She first wanted to do the 6K walk, but there was no team in Montana to join.

This year there are two teams in the state, but they are four to five hours away, she said. I wanted to get Havre involved...
Comfort and safety

You know, Lord, comfort and safety, thats our motto. Its so easy to hide our heads in the sand, pretending there are no problems. Were like everyone else, arent we, Lord, wanting to wash our hands of the whole affair. One chap with that attitude is written about in the Gospels. The scene, so long ago, was dramatized in the city of Jerusalem.

We picture the event which unfolds involving Pontius Pilate, the governor (recorded in Matthew 27). Pilate, a procurator, was in the judgment hall of the palace. A crowd watched the proceedings, their eyes on Pilate and Jesus. Pilate was de...
Farmer and businessman Bob Quinn said that in 1978, when he returned home from California to the family farm in Big Sandy with his with his wife and children, he simply intended to make a living on his family's farm. What he did though, was become a leader in organic farming in North America, start an international grain business with an ancient grain he brought back to prominence from one jar of seed stock and become a leading advocate in the movement to change standard practices in business, agriculture and the food industry.

Quinn, along with co-author Liz Carlisle, wrote about his expe...
Editors note: This version corrects that the grant proposal is only in planning stages and still has to be presented to the Hill County Park Board for approval, that the committee does not spend anything as it is an advisory committee and that Lou Hagener is a community member who participated in Thursdays meeting.

The Hill County Park Boards Finance and Planning Committee Thursday discussed advising the Hill County Park Board to create a matching grant program to help groups fund park projects, saying work has begun drafting a letter that could be sent out announcing this grants...
Hill County Commissioner Mark Peterson and Havreite Bob Sivertsen asked Thursday at a Montana Department of Transportation meeting with local officials if counties could put weight restrictions on county roads.

We are going to look at it, talk about it and see what can be done, Peterson said during the meeting in the Blaine County Library in Chinook.

He said the issue came up Wednesday at a public meeting about the countys plan to apply for a $25 million BUILD grant. The restrictions discussed would apply to trucks such as those which are hauling grain and fertilizer. He said th...
I have a TIF deal going with the city, and he is the chairman of the finance committee, Cui wrote about Burke in an August 2017 email to his own real estate attorney, asking permission to hire Burkes firm. He handled (sic) his tax appeal business card to me, and I need his favor for my TIF money. In addition, I need his help for my zoning etc for my project. He is a powerful broker in City Hall, and I need him now.
Snowbird boaters must get inspection when returning to Montana

From Fish, Wildlife and Parks

Boaters anxious to get on the water after a long, cold winter are reminded to ensure their watercraft are Clean, Drained and Dry to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species.

Montana remains vigilante in stopping the spread of aquatic invasive species that can devastate aquatic habitats, ruin fishing and boating opportunities, and damage pipes and pumps used for agriculture and industry.

Boaters who have used their watercraft in any water outside of Montana must have the boat inspected before launching. Snowbirds must seek out a watercraft inspection...
Technology is helping the police fight crime more effectively. We see the need for CPD, like any enterprise, to collect and study data, with the caveat that its only as good as its own accuracy and upkeep. In the digital age, serious, ongoing attention needs to be paid to privacy and reputation. A shareable computer file can be passed around and live practically forever, unlike an old-school paper list or series of notes stored in a desk drawer.
A controversial new tourist attraction opposed by a host of Irish personalities, including actor Gabriel Byrne, has been turned down by An Bord Pleanala.

The planning watchdog has refused permission for Waterways Ireland to turn the 115km-long Barrow Blueway into a hardcore multi-use leisure track.

A bitter row has raged for several years between Waterways Ireland and people living beside the Barrow river as it snakes through Kildare, Laois and Carlow counties.

Historic

Last year, Carlow County Council refused Waterways Ireland permission to turn the historic grassy walkway - which dates from the 12th century - into a leisure track.

Kildare and Laois county councils, however, were in favour of the development.

Expand Close Moya Doherty and Gabriel Byrne both opposed the plan / Facebook

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Whatsapp Moya Doherty and Gabriel Byrne both opposed the plan

Waterways Ireland sought to have Carlow's decision overturned, but the planning board has blocked the move.

Usual Suspects actor Byrne, Moya Doherty and John McColgan of Riverdance fame, environmentalist Eanna Ni Lamhna and broadcaster Olivia O'Leary were opposed to the development.

The grassy walkway stretches from Kildare to Carlow, passing through Laois and the towns of Rathangan, Monasterevin, Vicarstown, Athy, Carlow, Leighlinbridge, Bagenalstown, Goresbridge, Graiguenamanagh and St Mullins.

Waterways Ireland has been given the green light for the new track along the canal section north of Athy, Co Kildare.

Green Party spokesperson and Kilkenny councillor, Malcolm Noonan, welcomed the announcement.

"Among the reasons for refusal was the potential impact of the pathway on the River Barrow," he said. "Well done to all those who campaigned to conserve the ecology of the natural river banks."

Waterways Ireland has yet to comment on the decision. Byrne, known for his roles in Hereditary and the Lies We Tell, and who lived in the area for several years, was overjoyed at the news.

Disrupt

"I think to damage what has been there for several hundred years, to damage the banks and disrupt the species would be something that anyone who cares about the environment wouldn't want to see.

"It is a part of the country I absolutely adore.

"I think Waterways Ireland do tremendous work, but my fears were that this new surface would have a detrimental effect on the environment.

"It has an incredibly complex eco-system with flora, fauna and wildlife."
A 36-year-old woman has been jailed for 10 years for trying to murder a civil servant as she walked home from work.

The judge described the victim, Fionnuala Burke, as brave and said it was "lucky that she is still with us".

Laura Kenna, of no fixed address, was found guilty last month by a Central Criminal Court jury of attempting to murder Ms Burke in Lower Drumcondra Road, Dublin, on January 3, 2017, and of assault causing serious harm.

Kenna had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. It was her second trial for attempted murder, after a jury failed to reach a verdict in October.

Stabbed

The trial heard that Ms Burke, who worked for the Department of Social Protection, was walking home when she noticed Kenna sitting on a wall outside a house.

As Ms Burke approached, Kenna jumped up, pushed her back, stabbed her body and slashed her face and neck.

Kenna then told Ms Burke that she would let her go if she handed over her handbag.

The jury was shown photographs of a large, deep cut across Ms Burke's neck which had penetrated muscle and cut through the thyroid gland.

Kenna later told gardai: "I sliced her like you would a goat."

Ms Justice Tara Burns said yesterday that Kenna's admissions had been graphic and had demonstrated an attempt to kill.

She described the attack as vicious, horrifying and frightening, and said it was "unimaginable in an ordered society".

"[Ms Burke] seems a very young woman and I'm very impressed by [her] victim impact report," said the judge.

"[It] can only be described as a very restrained report in light of the attack and the very significant and horrendous injuries she sustained."

She said it was clear that Ms Burke had not recovered from her injuries.

"The victim impact report, in a very mild manner, outlines the psychological impact it had on her," she said. She added that she was impressed with the "non-contentious manner"' in which she had outlined her suffering and her loss of safety and security.

"In relation to this assault, clearly she was a very, very unlucky woman to have been the random victim of this accused," said the judge.

"She is very lucky that she is still with us and doesn't have more significant injuries.

"In light of the attack she was subjected to and the injuries sustained, the outcome could have been very different."

Significant

Justice Burns said it was clear that Kenna was suffering from a significant mental health condition at the time, which might have gone untreated for up to six years. She has since been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and is being detained in the Central Mental Hospital.

The judge said that a headline jail sentence of 17 years was appropriate for the crime. However, after having regard to the mitigating factors of remorse, admissions and not requiring the victim to give evidence, she imposed a shorter term.

"Ms Burke, I wish you well in your future life," said Justice Burns before leaving the bench.

"You're a very brave young woman."
Former INLA man Dessie 'The Border Fox' O'Hare has been jailed for seven years for his part in the assault of one man and false imprisonment of another during the eviction of a family from their Dublin home.

Sentencing him, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said O'Hare had been a "front man" in the attack and an "enthusiastic participant" in a "vicious assault".

He said the "violent side" of O'Hare's personality was "not in remission" and the threat to society posed by his "disposition to violence" had not completely abated.

O'Hare (62), of Slate Rock Road, Newtownhamilton, Co Armagh, pleaded guilty to assaulting John Roche, causing him harm, at The Towers, Garter Lane, Saggart, Co Dublin, on June 9, 2015. He also admitted falsely imprisoning Martin Byrne at Rathcoole and Saggart.

At the Special Criminal Court, O'Hare was given a 10-year sentence for false imprisonment, with three years suspended, and a concurrent three-year sentence for the assault.

The non-jury court heard O'Hare told gardai he was employed by businessman Jim Mansfield Jr to evict the Byrne family. Mr Byrne worked for the late Jim Mansfield Snr, who owned the Citywest Hotel.

He also lived in a house at The Towers, which became the subject of a dispute involving Jim Mansfield Jr.

Gang

The court heard Mr Mansfield Jr went with Mr Byrne to a meeting with two former INLA members - O'Hare and Declan 'Whacker' Duffy - and that when Mr Mansfield left the room, five more men came in.

Mr Byrne was forced into a car, assaulted and taken to his home. He pleaded to be given a few days to leave his home, but O'Hare told him he was to "get out right now".

The gang of seven men also assaulted John Roche, who had earlier refused to let them on to the premises. He was punched, kicked and stamped on while on the ground and O'Hare could be seen on CCTV kicking him four times.

Mr Justice Hunt said while O'Hare's actions were primarily directed toward Mr Roche, he continued to play a "supervisory role" in the imprisonment of Mr Byrne.

The damage done to the Byrne family was significant and members were still under witness protection, he said.

In mitigation, the judge noted the accused had pleaded guilty and made a written expression of remorse.

Mr Justice Hunt said the case indicated that "the violent side of Mr O'Hare's personality is not in remission".

"The threat represented to society by Mr O'Hare's disposition to violence has not completely abated," he added.

O'Hare had previous convictions for possession of a firearm in 1977 and assaulting a garda in 1979. He was given a 40-year jail sentence in 1988 for false imprisonment and assault causing grievous bodily harm. As a result of the Good Friday Agreement, he was released in October 2008.

Duffy was jailed for six years last year after pleading guilty to assaulting Mr Roche.

He also admitted falsely imprisoning Mr Byrne. Three other men have also been jailed for the attack.
Dean Masterson had 101 prior convictions to his name

A "prolific" offender caught selling stolen Ferrero Rocher chocolates in Dublin city centre told gardai he was trying to make "a bit of money" for his girlfriend's birthday.

Dean Masterson (30), described by a judge as a "recidivist criminal", already had 101 prior convictions when he was caught with the chocolates.

Judge John Hughes jailed him for a year.

Masterson, of Kilkieran Road, Cabra, pleaded guilty to possessing stolen property and other separate offences.

Dublin District Court heard that gardai saw the accused engaged in what appeared to be the sale of confectionery on Moore Street at 6.45pm last October 24.

They found Masterson in possession of seven boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

They had been stolen and when the accused was asked what he was doing, he said it was his girlfriend's birthday and he was "trying to make a bit of money".

Abusive

He was charged with possessing stolen property but not with stealing the chocolates. Gardai were not able to identify the owner.

In an earlier incident, on October 6, gardai were called to Penneys on O'Connell Street where the accused was detained for shoplifting.

He had stolen 21 of clothing and accessories and was stopped as he left the store.

Masterson was arrested for threatening, abusive and insulting behaviour at Cow's Lane, Dublin 2, last May 25.

Gardai saw him and another man in a heated argument, and could hear the accused demanding money. He failed to calm down and was arrested.

Masterson was already in custody when he appeared in court.

Judge Hughes backdated the sentence to last November.
A taxi driver who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting three female passengers had his licence revoked six weeks ago, it has emerged.

Mansoor Uddin (41), a married father-of-three who attacked three young women in two weeks, had his case adjourned on Tuesday for a psychological report to be prepared.

The court heard that, as part of his bail conditions, a female passenger was not permitted to be a front-seat passenger in his taxi.

However, it has since been confirmed that Uddin had his licence to drive a taxi revoked on February 28 - the day he pleaded guilty to the offences.

In a statement yesterday evening, a garda spokesperson said: "In February of this year a male taxi driver pleaded guilty and was convicted in the Criminal Courts of Justice on three charges of sexual assault.

"Following the conviction, Garda Sergeant Aoife Cronin, National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI), formally Blackrock Garda Station, immediately referred the matter to the Garda Superintendent Carriage Office, Dublin Region.

"On February 28 the Small Public Service Vehicle Licence was revoked with immediate effect for this male driver."

The clarification from gardai came amid public concern over the issue.

Outrageous

The Dail was told yesterday that it was "outrageous" and "frightening" that a taxi driver who pleaded guilty to sexual assault could be allowed to continue to carry female passengers as part of his bail conditions.

The remarks from Sinn Fein TD Donnchadh O Laoghaire came after Uddin's case made headlines nationally.

Uddin, of Castleway, Adamstown, Lucan, Co Dublin, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to sexual assault on January 30, 2016, and two sexual assaults on February 16, 2016.

The case has been adjourned until May 8.

However, one of the bail conditions was that a female passenger is not permitted to be a front-seat passenger in Uddin's taxi.

He wasn't named in the Dail but the issue was raised by Mr O Laoghaire during Leaders' Questions being taken by Tanaiste Simon Coveney.

Mr O Laoghaire outlined details of the case and said the man had pleaded guilty.

"I accept that court decisions and sentencing are the remit of the judiciary and I will not be commenting in a way that influences that," he said, adding that he wanted to raise the issue of women's safety.

"How can any woman feel safe in a taxi, no matter where they are seated, that's being driven by a man who has pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault?"

Ceann Comhairle Sean O Fearghail said it was "highly irregular" for TDs to engage in any sort of discussion about a matter still before the courts.

Mr O Laoghaire said he accepted that but argued that the question he asked related to legislation and who was entitled to drive a taxi.
Aintree Grand National-winning trainer Gordon Elliott has appeared in court as a witness after the CAB seized one of his stable's former stars.

The CAB claims that Labaik, the winner of the Supreme Novices Hurdle at the 2017 Cheltenham Festival, was bought with the proceeds of crime by drug dealer John Boylan.

The CAB told the High Court that an examination of Mr Boylan's finances showed a discrepancy of 750,000 between his income and his expenditure.

This was contested by Mr Boylan, of Rathcoole, Co Dublin, who said his earnings were not the proceeds of crime.

Mr Boylan (32), who is resisting the CAB's efforts to gain his assets, has brought his own proceedings against the CAB.

He is claiming losses arising out of an injury sustained by Labaik when it was raced at Punchestown after the CAB gained control of its passport. He said he had planned to sell the horse after its Cheltenham success when its value increased, but the sale had to be aborted after CAB seized the passport.

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The court heard last week that Mr Elliott and bloodstock agent Aidan O'Ryan, neither of whom has any connections with criminality, each took a 5pc interest in the horse when it was bought in 2016.

It is Mr Boylan's case that the horse should not have run in Punchestown, and that as 90pc owner, the decision should have been his.

However, the CAB said the decision to race the horse was taken by Mr Elliott and that this was allowed to stop the asset depreciating. It also said the injury to Labaik was as likely to happen during training as it was during a race.

Mr Elliott, who at the weekend trained Tiger Roll to back-to-back successes in the Grand National, said it was his decision to run at Punchestown.

He said he had never had any direct dealings with Mr Boylan, but agreed with his assertion that Labaik was a "quirky horse" who would not run all the time.

On Mr Boylan's view that the Punchestown race was not suitable for the horse, Mr Elliott said "everyone has an opinion".

Worthless

On the horse's injuries, Mr Elliott said: "I could not guarantee that he will ever come back 100pc."

Asked to put a value on the horse, Mr Elliott said it would have been worth about 150,000 before Cheltenham.

"I would have valued him after the Supreme Novice at 250,000-300,000, but as for now, I'm not saying he is worthless, but not very much."

Ms Justice Stewart has reserved judgment in the case.
The family of tragic death-smash driver John Nulty lay flowers at the crash site

A family has paid tribute to a "beloved great-grandfather" who tragically died in an early-morning car crash while driving to hospital.

John 'Pops' Nulty (72) was on his way to keep a medical appointment when his car was involved in a collision with another vehicle in Drumcondra Road Lower, Dublin.

The driver of the other vehicle was 34-year-old mother-of-two Rachael Coughlan.

Both were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.

The emergency services were alerted to the incident at 6.30am on Friday, March 22.

The bodies of Mr Nulty and Ms Coughlan were taken to Dublin City Mortuary in nearby Whitehall.

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Post-mortem examinations were subsequently carried out on both bodies.

Yesterday, relatives of Mr Nulty, who lived in Pinewood Green Road, Balbriggan, Co Dublin, laid floral tributes at the horror crash site.

They also laid a photograph of a smiling Mr Nulty.

One tribute read: "Dear Pops, Our hearts were shattered the day you were taken from us. We will miss you forever."

Gardai are continuing their investigation into the crash and will prepare a file for the coroner.

Officers attached to Mountjoy Garda Station are investigating the circumstances surrounding the fatal crash and are appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Investigators believe the vehicles collided head-on.

Forensic

However, senior gardai sources stressed that examinations into the accident are at an early stage and that enquiries are ongoing.

Drumcondra Road Lower was sealed-off after the accident as members of the Garda Technical Bureau carried out an examination of the scene.

Forensic collision investigators also attended the crash site.

Ms Coughlan, who is originally from Dublin's north inner city, is survived by two young sons.

Gardai have appealed for anyone with information in relation to the crash to come forward.

Gardai are appealing to motorists with dashcams or anyone travelling on Drumcondra Road Lower between 6.15am and 6.45am on March 22 to contact Mountjoy Garda Station on 016668600.

Alternatively, they should call the Garda Confidential Line on 1800-666-111 or any garda station.

So far this year, 48 people have died on Irish roads, prompting gardai to express concern about the rise in fatal incidents.

"Road deaths have increased by nearly 30pc in 2019," said a gardai statement.

"This upward trend must be addressed immediately and An Garda Siochana appeal to every road user to re-double their efforts and to use the road as safely as they possibly can."
And Clinton was on the minds of AOCs conservative critics. She was widely mocked for adopting what some called a blaccent before a mostly black audience in Selma, Ala., in 2007. The Drudge Report called her Southern Fried Hillary. Many of her mockers conveniently omitted the rest of her quote, in which she pointed out that the words come from a well-known freedom hymn composed by the Rev. James Cleveland. But why let facts get in the way of an amusing partisan attack?
Last Sunday you asked for a transparent and fulsome subject-matter hearing on the Lincoln Yards and The 78 project tax subsidy proposals. Earlier this month you said Foxx owed Chicago a more "fulsome" explanation of how her office handled the Smollett case. You also cited the need for a fulsome grand jury report" in a federal reinvestigation of three Chicago police officers acquitted in state court of covering up the actions of another officer in the shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
South Africa: Team dispatched to deal with African Swine Fever

The North West Rural, Environment and Agricultural Development Department has dispatched a team of veterinarians and animal health technicians to deal with the case of African Swine Fever (ASF) reported in Doornhoek farm near Lichtenburg Town.

The ASF case was confirmed this week through the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) Transboundary Veterinary Laboratory, following a rigorous diagnostic sampling conducted by the veterinarian officials within the department.

Department spokesperson Emelda Setlhako said that out of 36 free ranging pigs the affected farmer had - 29 had already died before being reported to the state veterinary office. The rest of the live pigs were put down by the farmer on advice of the state veterinarian.

Upon further investigation by the Provincial Veterinary Services, the significance of this outbreak is that, it is both 10km outside the World Organization for Epizootic diseases (OIE) recognised African swine fever control zone in the North West and away from Molemane Game Reserve, Setlhako said.

As per the Animal Disease Act 35 of 1984, the farm is currently been placed under quarantine and no animal or animal products are allowed to come in or go out of the farm.

The purpose of the quarantine exercise is to confine the disease at the index farm and prevent it from spreading to neighbouring farms through movement of infected material.

The outbreak has been reported to the World Animal Health Organisation so that the countrys trading partners know about the status.

Strategy to prevent further spread

Setlhako said the department has since been in talks with the South African Pig Producers Organization (SAPPO) to come up with a collaborative strategy to prevent the further spread of the disease, and work together on the ground to achieve efficient and effective control.

To determine the extent of the spread, veterinary authorities within the department are currently hard at work on the ground contacting all neighbouring farms to ensure that the outbreak is dealt with, she said.

Working together with SAPPO, the department will also conduct a comprehensive survey to determine the extent of the spread of the disease around the adjacent farms, including Molemane Game Reserve.

Post the immediate activities, the same team will undertake to conduct awareness campaigns to the immediate community and afar. Training will prepare the communities for future prevention strategies about ASF, Setlhako explained.

The department has advised farmers to keep strict biosecurity measures in their farms and avoid feeding raw swill to pigs, during this outbreak period.

Pig owners are further requested to prevent workers from moving from farm to neighbouring farms as their clothes may carry the virus along with them. Any mortalities that are sudden and excessive should be reported to the nearest State Veterinary office.

Swine fever and symptoms

African swine fever is an acute viral disease (ASF) of domestic pigs that shows high fever and high mortality and extensive hemorrhaging of internal organs and the skin of the ears. Death can be as high as 100% within a short space of time and can spread very quickly between contact pigs.

Other clinical signs may include poor appetite, depression, difficulty in breathing and diarrhoea. Pigs may show bleeding from the nose or rectum. Chronically infected pigs show symptoms of weight loss, intermittent fever coughing, skin ulcers and arthritis.

African swine fever is not infective to humans, so there is no risk of it being transmitted to humans.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
As COVID hospitalizations rise, Hogan preps state for surge

The governor of Maryland on Wednesday announced additional steps to coordinate hospitals across the state as COVID-19 cases surge again.
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(JNS)-The Hebrew word "haggadah" means "narration" or "telling." As the Passover seder's instruction manual, the haggadah is perhaps the most important tool for fulfilling the Passover mitzvah of telling the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt (a mitzvah that is mentioned six times in the Torah).

The Rambam (Maimonides) in his Mishneh Torah explains that relating the miracles and wonders that were done for our fathers in Egypt on Passover night is a positive commandment, and that it is a mitzvah to inform our children about it. Many interpret this to mean that telling the Passover story is actually two mitzvahs: a mitzvah to tell the story among adults and a mitzvah to teach children about the story.

ArtScroll and Maxwell House have done their parts to make a simple seder manual accessible and inexpensive. But sometimes just reciting the words of the seder isn't enough to engage seder participants-or even to help them to understand the Passover story.

"What I learned is that my family had never really understood the service they had been using for many, many years," says Barbara Bayer of Overland Park, Kan., who about 30 years ago decided to write a haggadah, which she continues to revise each year. "I went to simple sources that told the story simply and succinctly and the family loved it and still does."

Making your own haggadah is not as complicated as one might think. For starters, there are many Web platforms that allow you to create a customized seder manual by providing curated sources from across the Jewish community. Haggadot.com, for instance, offers readings, artwork, and video clips to enliven the seder. The clips can be assembled in one of the website's templates.

Other sites, such as livelyseders.com, allow users to download an English translation of the complete traditional Ashkenazi haggadah text, which can be cut and pasted to create your own piece. Jewishfreeware.org carries a range of editions of haggadot, each one directed to specific interests and needs, in terms of the haggadah's length and rituals of choice. All the files are downloadable and some are editable.

Once you've found your base, personalizing the haggadah for your seder experience can be loads of fun and really creative, according to those who do it.

Renee Goldfarb of Solon, Ohio, says one year she set up a laptop, projector, and screen at the Passover table and showed a relevant video for each of the 15 steps of the seder. Suzanne Levin-Lapides, on the other hand, compiled her family haggadah from the texts of various seders for women she had attended in her Baltimore community, adding an orange to her seder plate as a symbol of feminism as well as the inclusion of LGBT individuals and other marginalized groups within the Jewish community.

At the Katz family home in Kemp Mill, Md., the Passover seder has been turned into a play by their 12-year-old daughter, Abigail.

"My daughter likes to do fun things around the holidays," says Jill Katz with a chuckle of pride.

In this case, Abigail, who was 7 when she wrote the first version of her family seder, realized that among her family's many guests, not everyone came from the same background. She says she wanted to create something that would make seder participation fun for everyone.

"Basically, it is like a script and everyone has a part," says Abigail. "People take turns explaining what we do at each part of the seder and act out stuff also, like the splitting of the sea and the 10 plagues."

The play's actors-each assigned a seat at the table and a number based on what part they'll be reading that evening-serve as narrators. Those who don't know Hebrew are given English parts. Sometimes, everyone works together.

"We have two cloths for the splitting of the sea story. Everyone goes in a line and then people take turns being Moshe and they take a fake staff and put it into the cloths and then they split them. It's really fun," Abigail says.

Rachel Shekhtman of Kochav HaShachar, Israel, has an idea she adapted from one of her children's school projects: dress up your children and their friends before the seder, and take pictures of them as different characters or acting out various scenes. Then, print the photos and create a haggadah in which the youths become the Passover story's stars.

"Let's say [you're dealing with] the four sons or the 10 plagues-make cheap costumes, get some toy frogs or red food coloring to dye some water, and take pictures as you go," Shekhtman explains. "Talk to them about what they are acting out as you take the pictures. Then when they get to that part of the haggadah, they will remember what they learned and make the connection between the lesson and the text."

She adds, "They'll see themselves in the haggadah."

If you're aiming for something more traditional-and less about the little ones-Yosef Silver of Overland Park has an idea. He keeps a do-it-yourself seder file on his computer, which he updates with new insights every year. Part of the experience is finding passages and interpretations from across Jewish perspectives that still jibe with his Orthodox traditions.

Each year, when his new haggadah file is ready, Silver sends a copy via Dropbox to his guests so they can review it and add their own thoughts in advance of the big day. One of the highlights of Silver's expanded seder is a fifth cup of wine, added as an expression of redemption.

"I think people need to think more out of the box," says Jill Katz. "People are often set on, 'You have to say this and that.' Even if you are rigid with the law... it is important to understand what you are saying. The halacha (Jewish law) is that you are supposed relate to the story you are telling, and that is what people should keep in mind."
(JNS)-How hard can making matzah be? Mix flour and water, and bake.

Actually, there are various ways that one can go about producing matzah-and the results are all a little different.

When you're standing in the supermarket just before the holiday trying to choose matzah, it might help to know what you are looking at. It's not just the orange box versus the blue box, or even hand-made versus machine-made. According to leading kashrut supervisors at the Star-K and Orthodox Union (OU) kosher-certification providers, there can be differences between the flour, the baking process, and even the time it takes for the matzah to be produced.

The flour

Rabbi David Stein, head of the Star-K in Israel, says the differences between matzah start even before the wheat is harvested. There are three types of flour: shmurah mi'sh'as k'tzirah (made from grains that have been supervised from the time of their harvesting until the actual baking of the matzah), shmurah mi'sh'as techina (made from wheat guarded from the time it is milled into flour), and shmurah mi'sh'as lisha (watched from the time the flour is mixed with water).

In all three cases, the "watching" aspect ("shmurah" in Hebrew) is meant to ensure that the wheat does not get wet and transform into chametz (a leavened product). The longer the grains are watched, the more kosher-and generally, the more expensive- the matzah will be.

Hand vs. machine

The most obvious difference between types of matzah is how the matzah is produced: hand and machine are the two most common types. Rabbi Moshe Elefant, chief operation officer of the OU's kashrut department, says hand-made matzah precisely reflects that description.

"This is the way it was always done before the advancement of machinery, and the way it is still done in many communities," Elefant says.

The reason that many people still opt for hand matzah is for the intention behind the process, explains Elefant. Not only is it a Torah commandment to eat matzah on Passover, but according to some opinions, the Torah requires us to perform the act of making matzah "l'shmah," for the sake of the mitzvah.

"Many people prefer hand matzah for the seder because the baker has to have that intent of making matzah and a machine does not have the ability to have intent," says Elefant.

Yet making matzah is an inexact science, Stein says, explaining that not all machine matzah or all hand matzah is made the same. "If you don't know where you are getting your hand matzah, it is better to get machine matzah," he says.

There are three types of machine matzah as far as the level of kashrut is concerned, but much more variation in hand matzah practices. Stein says the Jewish sages teach that it takes at least 18 minutes for matzah dough to become flour. The kashrut level of matzah changes depending on how careful the factory is about these 18 minutes.

In the most lenient factories-the so-called "regular" machine matzah factories-the matzah-making machine isn't cleaned almost all day long.

"Some regular factories will have someone standing there with a vacuum cleaner that will clean the dough as it falls off," says Stein. "Some don't, and the machine goes straight through the cycles without cleaning. Really, anything that falls would be botul ('insignificant' in Jewish law), but this is not the best situation."

The next level of machine matzah is 18-minute matzah. This is matzah produced in a factory where the machinery is designed to be dismantled and thoroughly cleaned every 18 minutes.

In either case, there is always a team of dough kneaders who ensure the dough not being fired is constantly needed; as long as the dough is being kneaded, it will never become chametz.

A final and strictest level is matzah "chabura." According to Stein, in this situation, all dough must make it into the oven within 18 minutes, whether or not it's being kneaded. After 18 minutes, the machinery and all of the tools, bowls, and other materials are thoroughly cleaned.

"These people make sure there is no chametz left over," says Stein. "The price of this level-and each different level-is significantly different."

Today, most machine matzah consumed around the world is imported from Israel, where there are dozens of matzah factories. Only one machine matzah factory-the facility of Manischewitz-exists in the United States, according to the OU.

Non-traditional traditions

There are some smaller communities, especially variant sects of Hasidim, that add extra levels of stringency to their matzah baking practices. For example, according to Stein, there are those who mill their matzah by hand.

"This is not a very popular chumra (stringency)," says Stein, noting that today this is mostly practiced by the Sanzer Hasidim of Kiryat Sanz, in the Israeli city of Netanya.

Another stringency is "kefirah shel yad," hand-reaped matzah.

Finally, there are those who hold that the matzah eaten at the seder must be made in the afternoon on the same day Passover starts. The holiday begins on the 14thday of the Hebrew month of Nissan, when the Passover sacrifice was brought to the Jewish Temple. The matzah being baked that afternoon models the time of the sacrifice. Such an enterprise requires great care.

"People who do this will start at chatzot (mid-day)," says Stein, who does this himself in his synagogue in Rehovot, Israel.

Alternatives

Today, there is a growing community of gluten-free individuals who cannot eat matzah made of wheat flour and water. For those people, oat matzah is produced. Stein says he knows of no hand-made oat matzah factories, but that the product is becoming plentiful on the grocery store shelves.

"It is very difficult to eat oat matzah if something isn't done to take the bitterness out," says Stein. "The oat matzah is very expensive."

Sephardim eat a softer version of Ashkenazi matzah. There is "nothing theoretically wrong with this," says Stein.

"Ashkenazim don't eat it because we are afraid. The Ashkenazi minhag (custom) is to eat only matzah that is crisp and thin," he says.

Egg matzah-which is no longer made with eggs, but rather with apple juice or grape juice, according to Elefant-is another type of matzah that Sephardim love and Ashkenazim should stay away from, unless there are extenuating circumstances.

"The halacha (Jewish law) says that other liquids mixed with chametz make the flour rise quicker," says Elefant. "Avoid it, if you don't have to have it." The same goes for chocolate-covered matzah.

"On Pesach, we try to avoid foods that are chametz or can become chametz with one exception: matzah," Elefant says with a chuckle.

He continues, "Pesach is a holiday of customs and traditions. Each family and community has its own traditions that are passed down from generation to generation. One thing remains consistent: matzah... The matzah we eat is forever."
The last shot Beresheet sent of landing before crashing onto the moon's surface.

The Israeli SpaceIL spacecraft Beresheet - Hebrew for Genesis - is on the moon, but not in the way that was hoped. Beresheet snapped its first "selfie," with the help of NASA, as it was landing, 22 kilometers (13.67 miles) from the surface. Then it was over. Apparently it crashed on the moon's surface after traveling 47 days and 6.5 million kilometers (4,038,912.75 miles) through space.

In the last few moments before it was to land, communication was lost, then recovered. Then the main engine failed and recovered, only to have complete communication lost in the final moments of the landing.

"We had a failure in the spacecraft, we were unable to land successfully," a SpaceIL engineer said during the live stream. Still the crowd in the control center applauded the attempt.

"If at first, you don't succeed, you try again," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in front of the SpaceIL team and viewers. "Three superpowers have launched spaceships to the moon and little Israel is now the fourth country to accomplish this," he added.

SpaceIL chairman Morris Kahn said he "doesn't regret for a moment" the decision to back the Israeli spacecraft Beresheet.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrives at the control center for the Beresheet landing on April 11, 2019

"We have a lot to be proud of," he said.

President Reuven Rivlin, who had invited children to his residence in Jerusalem to watch the Beresheet moon landing, reassured the children that this "is a big and excellent achievement - that has not yet been accomplished. There is no need to be disappointed. We need to praise what we accomplished."

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine also sent regrets of the failed moon landing via Twitter: "While @NASA regrets the end of the @TeamSpaceIL mission without a successful lunar landing, we congratulate SpaceIL, Israel Aerospace Industries and the state of Israel on the accomplishment of sending the first privately funded mission into lunar orbit."

"A[n Israeli] spacecraft will land on the moon - whole," said Netanyahu, predicting that it will happen in two to three years.
Burd-Thomas, whose mother is former Yorkville Mayor Valerie Burd, recalled a story in her speech at the womens conference about when she was 10 years old and her mother said there was an open position for alderman on the Yorkville City Council. Her natural thought was that her father should run for office.
Laurie Cardoza-Moore has called on President Trump to have Ilhan Omar's connections to the subversive Muslim Brotherhood thoroughly investigated.

"If an organization which seeks the demise of America has managed to infiltrate Congress, it might be time for the commander-in-chief to take action," Cardoza-Moore, president of Proclaiming Justice to The Nations and show host of the program "Focus On Israel," stated to 4,000 media professionals at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in California earlier this week.

"Tens of thousands of American patriots have signed our petition to have Ilhan Omar ousted from Congress over her anti-Semitism and connections to the subversive Muslim Brotherhood. I have personally requested that the attorney general and speaker of the House investigate these ties; which pose a real threat to the security of America. We cannot afford to be silent, with terror supporters in Congress," she said.

In a direct message to the president, Cardoza-Moore added: "I want to thank you for having the courage to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israel's rights to the Golan Heights. I am also making a plea; two weeks ago we petitioned Attorney General Barr to launch a full and thorough investigation into Ilhan Omar's ties to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and her fundraising activities for CAIR and Islamic Relief USA. We have also petitioned Speaker Pelosi to remove Ilhan Omar from Congress because of these associations and her anti-Semitic attacks. President Trump, I am respectfully asking you, Sir, to charge AG Barr to execute this request. Ilhan Omar has repeatedly made anti-Semitic statements that could incite violence against our Jewish communities and the State of Israel."

Proclaiming Justice to The Nations, a 501c3 non-profit organization, was established to educate Christians about their biblical responsibility to stand with their Jewish brethren and Israel against the rise of global anti-Semitism. "Focus On Israel" reaches a global weekly audience of over 2 billion viewers.
(JNS)U.S. special envoy Jason Greenblatt blasted the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations for aiding and abetting the Palestinian financial payments towards terrorists and their families.

In a closed-door U.N. Security Council meeting on Friday, instigated by Indonesia and Kuwait, Greenblatt defended Israels choice last month to reduce Palestinian tax revenues due to the P.A.s pay to slay initiative, which has been a primary obstacle in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, sources told The Washington Free Beacon.

The Trump administrations Mideast peace plan, which Greenblatt and others have been crafting for almost the past couple years, is expected to be released after Israeli elections on April 9.

The time has come to make it clear that the Palestinian Authority, if it aspires to the status of a government, it must behave like one, reportedly said Greenblatt. It is unacceptable for the Palestinian Authority to pay these terrorists and their families a reward for criminal acts.

The United States was the only Security Council member to back the Israeli move while the rest called on the Jewish state to unfreeze and allocate the remaining tax revenues.

It is entirely inappropriate to focus on Israel as the source of this crisis, said Greenblatt. It is the Palestinian Authority that has chosen to manufacture the current crisis.

The Palestinian Authority is refusing to accept over $150 million in revenue to protest the fact that $11 million is being withheld, only to make a political point, he added. Does that sound like a governing authority that is concerned with the welfare of its people?

Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat slammed Greenblatts remarks as patronizing and disingenuous, and defended the payments.

The welfare of thousands of families has now become at tool for the Israeli government and the Trump administration to dehumanize Palestinians, while whitewashing the effects of the Israeli occupation over millions of Palestinian lives, wrote Erekat on Sunday in Haaretz.

Such payments are a social responsibility; they also contribute to the costs of reinserting released prisoners back into society, among other important considerations, he added.

Erekat also said that the Palestinian leadership has taken a position of principle by not accepting Israeli piracy. We either receive all the money that under signed agreements is legitimately ours, or we wont accept it. No step will be taken that may legitimate such gangster-style tactics of the Israeli occupation.
(JTA) - Benjamin Netanyahu appears likely to win a fifth term as Israel's prime minister as right-wing parties apparently have maintained their majority in the nationwide elections held Tuesday.

With more than 95 percent of the vote counted, Netanyahu's Likud party and the opposition Blue and White party are virtually tied with more than 1 million votes apiece. According to Israeli news websites, each party is likely to win 35 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, or parliament.

Despite the tie, Netanyahu appears to have won the election overall, as his right-wing allies won a solid majority of votes. Israel is governed by coalitions of parties, so the total number of the right- and left-wing blocs matter more than the size of the biggest party.

In total, right-wing parties won 65 seats, while centrist and left-wing parties took 55 seats. That math gives Netanyahu a clear path to forming another governing coalition. A total of 11 parties will likely enter the Knesset.

"The right-wing bloc, led by Likud, won a decisive victory," Netanyahu tweeted Tuesday night as results rolled in. "I thank the citizens of Israel for their trust. I will begin assembling a right-wing government with our natural partners tonight."

Netanyahu faced a fierce challenge from Blue and White, a new party led by former Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. The prime minister was hounded as well by an impending indictment for fraud, bribery and breach of trust.

He spent the final days of the race in what pundits called a "gevalt" campaign, warning his voters that unless they turned out, a left-wing government would be established. On Saturday night, he promised to annex West Bank settlements in the coming term in an effort to shore up his right-wing base.

But if the coalition math holds, Netanyahu is poised to become Israel's longest-serving prime minister. He has held the office for a decade consecutively, in addition to his initial three-year term in the late 1990s. This election also saw Likud increase its seats in Knesset to 35 from 30 - the most held by the party since 2005.

The 35-seat tie also represents a new high for the opposition. The largest party in the outgoing Knesset, called the Zionist Union, held 24 seats, six fewer than Likud. Alongside Gantz, Blue and White is led by Yair Lapid, a centrist and former news anchor who entered the Knesset in 2013.

Gantz had yet to concede the race as of early morning Wednesday in Israel.

Haredi Orthodox parties also succeeded on Tuesday. United Torah Judaism and Shas, which represent Ashkenazi and Sephardi haredi voters, respectively, each won eight seats.

Further down the list, the election featured some surprises. Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, two prominent figures on the right, may not serve in the next Knesset, as their New Right party finished with less than 3.25 percent of the vote - the threshold for entering the parliament. Likewise, the Zehut party, which combined far-right nationalism with libertarianism - and favored legalizing marijuana - appears likely to fall short of the threshold despite garnering significant media attention during the campaign.

The Union of Right-Wing Parties, a slate that includes the extreme-right Jewish Power, won five seats. So did Israel Beiteinu, the right-wing party led by Avigdor Liberman that caters to Russian speakers. Kulanu, a center-right party focused on economics, won four seats.

On the left, the Labor Party, which dominated Israeli politics decades ago, won just six seats, an all-time low. Meretz, which is further to the left, picked up four seats. The Arab-Israeli parties, Hadash-Taal and Raam-Balad, won a total of 10 seats.

The numbers may change a bit on Wednesday, as the votes of Israeli soldiers have yet to be counted.

Likud won a slim plurality of votes in Jerusalem, Israel's largest city. Blue and White garnered more than 45 percent of the vote in Tel Aviv.

Here are the results by party, according to Israeli news websites:

Likud  35

Blue and White  35

Shas  8

United Torah Judaism  8

Hadash-Taal  6

Labor  6

Israel Beiteinu  5

Union of Right-Wing Parties  5

Meretz  4

Kulanu  4

Raam-Balad  4
The Jewish Pavilion celebrated the festival of Purim with youth and elders together at Brookdale Dr. Phillips assisted-living facility last month with interactive story telling, singing, dancing, and more.

- Cantor Lance Rhodes, program director
WASHINGTON (JTA)-Trump administration officials have been silent and notably leak-free about what exactly is in the Middle East peace plan that Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, is shaping-until now.

In speeches to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, it became clear that the plan will likely not accommodate a Palestinian state, or at least the sovereignty that attaches to statehood.

David Friedman, Trump's ambassador to Israel and one of three members of the peace team, in his AIPAC speech outlined why Israel should seize the opportunity of the still-to-be-seen peace plan: It allows Israel to maintain security control of the West Bank, and a future U.S. administration might not be so understanding.

"Can we leave this to an administration that may not understand the existential risk to Israel if Judea and Samaria are overcome by terrorists in the manner that befell the Gaza Strip after the IDF withdrew from this territory?" he asked, using the preferred Israeli name for the West Bank. "Can we leave this to an administration that may not understand the need for Israel to maintain overriding security control of Judea and Samaria and a permanent defense position in the Jordan Valley?"

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency asked Jason Greenblatt, Trump's top Middle East negotiator and the third member of the Kushner peace team, whether this meant that Israeli control of the West Bank was in the deal, as opposed to a Palestinian state making its own defense and foreign policy decisions.

"I'm not going to address speculation of what may or may not be in the plan," he replied in an email. That was like his replies to many previous inquiries from reporters about anonymously leaked details. This time, however, the question was about on-the-record remarks by one of the plan's architects to a hall packed with 18,000 activists.

The next day, House Appropriations Chairwoman Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo three times if the Trump administration believed in the two-state solution. Each time he demurred.

Instead, Pompeo in his Hill testimony referred to the other big Israel and territory news: Trump's formal recognition of Israel's sovereignty in the Golan Heights, which like the West Bank was captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

"We believe this increases the likelihood that we get resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians," Pompeo said. "We think it speaks with the clarity that takes this away from any uncertainty about how we'll proceed."

Tamara Cofman Wittes, a top Middle East policy official in the Obama administration, said she was able to read two possible meanings into what Pompeo meant by "clarity."

"One is that [it] relates to the content of the Trump peace plan," suggesting that the plan will recognize Israel's claim to at least part of the West Bank, said Cofman Wittes, a senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. "The other is that it relates to what will happen if the Trump peace plan is not accepted" by the Palestinians-the United States would greenlight an Israeli annexation.

(Spoiler alert: The Palestinians, already snubbing administration officials since Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2017, are not likely to accept a plan that keeps Israeli troops in the West Bank.)

Pompeo, asked whether the United States would now recognize other countries' annexation of occupied lands, said "absolutely not." (A number of pundits have said the Golan recognition could embolden Russia to do the same in Crimea.) However, in defending recognition of the Golan as Israeli territory, Pompeo seemed to set out the case Israel could invoke in annexing the West Bank.

"Israel was fighting a defensive battle to save its nation, and it cannot be the case that a U.N. resolution is a suicide pact," he told reporters Thursday, apparently referring to Security Council Resolution 242 immediately following the 1967 war, which established the land-for-peace principle in the Israeli-Arab conflict.

It was a message that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed almost precisely the day before.

"There is a very important principle in international life," he said. "When you start wars of aggression, you lose territory, do not come and claim it afterwards. It belongs to us."

"It sounds like the Trump administration has no interest in advancing a contiguous completely sovereign Palestinian state," Dahlia Scheindlin, a policy fellow at Mitvim-The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies, told JTA.

That would be consistent with policies that Scheindlin said the Netanyahu government is advancing: expanding existing settlements, creating greater access between the settlements and Israel within the Green Line, and limiting Palestinian construction of Area C of the West Bank, the area that is still under total Israeli control.

A version of this post first appeared in The Tell, Ron Kampeas' weekly newsletter on Jewish news from Washington. Subscribe to it here.
(JNS)He has engaged in crude anti-Semitism, according to the Anti-Defamation League. He has consistently impugned the loyalty of American Jews, said the American Jewish Congress. And he has compared Israel to the Nazis, which according to the U.S. State Department, is anti-Semitic.

Yet, irony of ironies, longtime Democratic Party official James Zogby has emerged as one of the most prominent voices in the party defending Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and denying that her remarks about Jews being disloyal were anti-Semitic.

Zogby is a longtime leader of various anti-Israel groupsfirst the Palestine Human Rights Campaign, then the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and currently the Arab American Institute.

At the same time, he has also been prominent in Democratic Party leadership circles. He was deputy manager of Jesse Jacksons 1984 and 1998 presidential campaigns. In 1995, he was appointed co-convener of the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Committee. He served as Senior Advisor on Ethnic Outreach for both Al Gores presidential campaign in 2000 and Barack Obamas first presidential campaign, in 2008.

Since 2001, Zogby has been a member of the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee. In 2006, he was also named co-chair of the DNCs Resolutions Committee. As a member of that committee, in 2012 he objected to the insertion of language affirming that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and helped draft the pro-Palestinian language that appeared in the 2016 party platform.

After Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar recently accused Jews of being disloyal to America and paying members of Congress to support Israel, Zogby leaped to her defense. In a series of articles, interviews and a recent conference call for the news media, together with J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami, Zogby has insisted that there was nothing anti-Semitic about Omars statements, and that the whole controversy is the fault of racist Zionists.

Because [Omar] has dared to challenge the way supporters of Israel have worked to silence debate on U.S. policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she has become a victim of incitement and hate crimes, and the target of legislation meant to shame her, according to Zogby.

He says that Ms. Omar didnt slander Jews; she merely challenged the power of AIPAC to intimidate politicians and silence debate on Israel/Palestine. As a consequence, the poor congresswoman has endured shameful bigoted assaults on her as a Muslim woman.

Zogby has actually gone so far as to implicitly praise Omars statements about Jews, characterizing her remarks as the discussion Omars courage has helped to open.

I wonder how much of this is related to Zogbys own history of making anti-Semitic remarks. Perhaps he sees Omar as a kindred spirit.

During the 1982 Lebanon War, Zogby compared Israel to the Nazis and described Israeli military actions against terrorists in southern Lebanon as a Holocaust, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The official U.S. State Department definition of anti-Semitism includes drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

In 1991, Henry Siegman, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, wrote that Zogby had consistently impugned the loyalty of American Jews by suggesting that they put the interest of Israel ahead of the interests of the United States, and their lobbying activities in support of Israel subvert the democratic process. Such accusations are the standard fare of anti-Semitism.

In 1999, Zogby publicly charged that there were too many Jewish employees in the State Department. The ADL characterized his statement as crude anti-Semitism.

All this is an addition to Zogbys long list of other outrageous statements, including accusing then-Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres of carrying out state-sponsored terrorism; praising Hezbollah terrorists as the Lebanese armed resistance; and justifying Palestinian terrorist attacks against Israel as desperate acts of striking out against the master.

Not to mention such other lunatic statements by Zogby as his accusation that Israel ethnically cleansed [the land] of Arabs (when there are obviously still several million Arabs residing in Judea, Samaria and Gaza); and his recent declaration that celebrity chef Rachael Ray committed cultural genocide against the Palestinians because she referred to hummus as an Israeli food.

If the Democratic Party leadership wants to convince the public that it rejects Congresswoman Omars statements, it should start by disowning James Zogby and removing him from all positions in the party. Having an unrepentant anti-Semite publicly defending an anti-Semitic congresswoman, while continuing to hold positions in the party leadership, isnt going to do the trick.

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. His book, A Fathers Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror, has just been published.
(Rabbis Without Borders via JTA)There are two funny images I like to circulate this time every year as we approach the Passover holiday. The first is a cartoon of a truck with large text on the side reading Mortys Passover Cleaning. On the drivers side door is the word chametz inside a circle with line struck through it. Underneath the large Mortys Passover Cleaning text on the side of the truck it reads: Orthodox $89.95, Conservative $49.95; Reform $19.95.

The second image is of a persons office cubicle completely covered in aluminum foileven the desk chair, computer, keyboard and mouse. Most likely this photo was taken of the scene of an office prank, but I like to circulate it with the question, Do we go overboard when it comes to Pesach cleaning?

Lets look at the first photo. Is there some truth to this? I always maintain there has to be some truth to a joke for it to be funny, so lets say that on the whole, yes, Orthodox Jews would spend more money for Passover cleaning than Conservative Jews and Conservative Jews would spend more money for Passover cleaning than Reform Jews. Perhaps this image strikes us as offensive, but well unpack that in a moment.

I remember as a kid before we got granite countertops watching my mother cover all the countertops in tin foil and then redoing this process each morning of the holiday because some of the tin foil had ripped the night before, causing little sections of the white Formica counter to be revealed. This was done despite the fact that our house was completely spotless after having been thoroughly cleaned for the holiday. The thinking was that the counter is of a porous material and would have retained some of the hametz from the year, which would contaminate our Passover food.

We all spend exorbitant amounts of money on this eight-day holiday (only seven in Israel) to get special food that has been labeled kosher for Passover. We take spring cleaning to the next level, and then up a few more levels to make sure there is no hametz in our homes. We stockpile enough kosher for Passover food to feed an army, as if were planning to never return to a grocery store again or that the supply of matzah may run out.

Are our intentions misguided?

Most rabbis encourage congregants to fully embrace the strictures of Passover, and I certainly want everyone to observe the holiday with fervor and joy. But I question what can only be characterized as the intense OCD-like tenacity with which we tackle the minutiae of Passover observance.

After all, our ancestors in Europe werent buying kosher for Passover bottled water!

Rabbi Jason Miller is an educator, entrepreneur, social media expert and blogger. He is president of Access Computer Technology, a computer consulting firm based in Detroit, and is the founder-director of Kosher Michigan, a kosher certification agency.
(JNS)The virulently anti-Israel movement known as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement is roiling through college campuses, overflowing into city councils, encroaching into corporate boardrooms and now chomping at the essence of Israels special niche in the world: its travel and tourism industry. Everywhere, the boycotters have been asking to isolate Israel. BDS even convinced Airbnb to stop listing Jewish locations in Judea and Samaria, also known as the West Bank (a term invented after Jordan invaded in 1948, when the United Nations partition suggestion failed to create two states). In Ireland, a bill advancing through Parliament may criminalize visiting the old city and even purchasing lunch or a keepsake.

Whereas similar boycotts against other countries have inflicted withering effects on national economies, in Israel, it simply hasnt worked. The opposite is true. Yes, boycotters are busy demonizing Israel. Yet despite this, Israels tourism industry has rocketed to a singular triumph and now employs tens of thousands. Flights are packed, with new nonstop flights being added across the globe. Even though new luxury hotels are going up as fast as the Mideast sun will dry concrete, rooms remain in high demand and, therefore remain scarce and expensive. Israel has become world-famous for creative cuisine and trendy eateries, so if you want to get a table at one of the most popular restaurants, youll need to book weeks in advance.

Travel and tourism to Israel has dramatically changed. Its not just synagogue sisterhoods and Jewish organizations. Swelling up from Israels Startup Nation is top chef culture and the hard-won penetration of markets beyond America and West Europe, coupled with its sophisticated travel industry, which combine to make Israel a destination for the entire world. Traditional Jewish-American travelers from Miami to Seattle must now compete with Silicon Valley techies, Chinese students, Indian tourists, East European Christian pilgrims and diverse businessmen and women from across the planet. The numbers are multiplying.

In 2016, 2.9 million total worldwide visitors visited Israel. By the close of 2018, that number had boomed to 4.1 millionand the totals keep climbing. Within the coming decade, Israel expects to employ 98,000 people in its tourism sector.

When Israeli tourism prospers, so does the Palestinian community. Christian pilgrims make a beeline for Bethlehem. Thus, tourism breeds economic interdependence and strengthens co-existence.

Arrivals stream in from everywhere.

Today, most North American travelers to Israel are not Jewish; they are Christian, often seeking biblical discovery. From North America, Jews comprise about 40 percent to 45 percent of the travelers, while Christians generally hover at about 60 percent year to year, according to official estimates. While the Jewish-Christian percentages remain the same, the growth spurt for North America has seen the overall numbers increase by 42 percent since 2016.

In 2009, only 20,000 Indians visited Israel, reports Israels tourism office in New Delhi. Some years ago, Israel hosted Indian travel agents knowing that in India, such agents book most of the travel. Reciprocal travel programs tapped such markets as Indias Kerala Christians. Dramatically improved diplomatic relations between New Delhi and Jerusalem combined with thrice-weekly direct Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner servicewhich was granted special Saudi flyover permission, saving more than two hourshas created a steady flow of Indian visitors. This year, Israel expects more than 80,000 Indian arrivals, with travel officials working to achieve a further 65 percent increase. That may happen if, as planned, the Israeli film industry entices Bollywood producers to use Israeli locations.

In 2015, only 30,000 tourists visited Israel from China. But when direct flights between Ben-Gurion International Airport and numerous Chinese cities were added, the number more than trebled to 100,000-plus annually. Today, China is Israels greatest growth market. Celebrity Chinese chefs are now flown in, and Chinese-speaking guides are easily found.

Air connections are the lifeblood of Israels tourism, as well as its international viability.

Nowadays you can fly nonstop to Israel from numerous North American cities. From New Yorks JFK, Delta is launching a twice daily nonstop. From Newarks Liberty, United also flies nonstop twice a day. From Washington, D.C.s Dulles International Airport, United will soon inaugurate thrice weekly direct service. From Toronto, Air Canada offers daily nonstop flights. From Montreal, Air Canada will fly twice weekly during the summer. From San Francisco, United flies daily, primarily for the surging nexus to Silicon Valley.

North American carriers all compete with El Al, which is by far the dominant carrier linking our continent with Israelboasting 45 nonstop flights weekly that carry more than 50,000 passengers per month. For many Israel-bound travelers, El Al is the one and only carrier. And it has vastly improved. With the exception of the Jewish Sabbath and holidays, Israels star-emblazoned national carrier flies day or night, rain or shine, good news or bad news, rockets or not. Its unique extra security, where young security staffers at the airport ask intense personal questions to evaluate risk, are sometimes viewed as a mix between reassurance, ritual and a Jewish guilt trip. Youre coming to Israel? Why now? Or the classic: Who do you know in Israel? Answer: Everyone.

El Al has conquered labor problems, on-board religious tiffs, and more to expand and enhance its daily service to and from multiple U.S. cities. Not only can you fly El Al nonstop direct from New York, Newark and Miami, but now also from Boston, Los Angeles, Toronto, and this summer, from Orlando, Las Vegas and San Francisco. In spring 2020, Chicago service will begin.

Israels tourism triumph would not have been possible without an airline triumph as well. That triumph in the skies has finally happened.

Edwin Black is The New York Times bestselling author of IBM and the Holocaust and many other books. He can be found at www.edwinblack.com.
(JNS)Discussions about intersectional theory used to be confined to the fever swamps of the far left. But this ideathe idea that seeks to link the struggle for civil rights in the United States with the Palestinian war on Israels existence and every other cause that can be falsely portrayed as one of the underprivileged against the privilegedhas now gone mainstream.

The latest evidence of the success of this attempt to dress up anti-Semitism in the clothing of human-rights advocacy arrives with the new edition of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, which includes an article titled, How the Battle Over Israel and Anti-Semitism Is Fracturing American Politics by Israel critic Nathan Thrall.

Thralls object is to justify BDS campaigns that anchor the debate about the subject in Black-Palestinian solidarity and the effort to view the war on Israel through the racial justice prism. The result is an 11,000-word essay that seeks to subtly paint Zionism as inherently racist and efforts to destroy Israel as idealistic efforts to defend human rights. The articles thesis is also to portray the pro-Israel movements effort to push back at anti-Semitic attacks as tainted by prejudice against African-Americans and fueled primarily by the heavy-handed efforts of Jewish donors to manipulate the Democratic Party.

One of Thralls primary sources is former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, who seeks to depict the struggle for the future of the Democratic Party as one that will be determined by whether its leaders learn to overcome the fear factor about losing the support of Jewish donors.

Thrall, an author of a book seeking to justify U.S. pressure on the Jewish state, gives a deeply sympathetic hearing to Rhodes account of how the worries of Democratic politicians about retribution from the donor class (i.e., Jews) inhibited the Obama administrations efforts to hammer Israel even more than it did.

The article also amplifies Rhodes specious claim that Obamas inability to persuade Israels supporters to back him on the issue was due to racial prejudice. He claims that supporters of Israel assumed that Barack Obama was pro-Palestinian because he was black. Rhodes thesis, which Thrall endorses, is that this alleged fear of Obama was the result of the pro-Israel communitys understanding that the Jewish state really was an oppressor. According to Rhodes, Obamas critics were acknowledging, through your own fears, that Israel treats the Palestinians like black people had been treated in the United States.

This argument has it backwards. Jewish Democrats bent over backwards to maintain their faith that Obama had been sincere in his professions of support for Israel when he ran for president in 2008, in spite of evidence to the contrary, both then and later. Far from being prejudiced against him, most American Jews stuck loyally to Obama, despite his belief that more daylight was needed between Israel and the United States. They even supported his efforts to appease an Iranian regime that was bent on genocide.

The assumption that Palestinians and Israeli Arabs are treated the same way as the African-American victims of Jim Crow in the pre-civil-rights era in the South is a big lie. Israeli Arabs have equal rights under the law. Nor does the nation-state law passed last year by the Knesset impinge on any of their rights. The standoff about the future of the West Bank is because the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected offers of peace and statehood. They would have had attained independence long ago had they been willing to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state, no matter where its borders might be drawn. Those who accept these fallacious arguments are either ignorant of the conflict or expressing their own anti-Semitic mindset.

Thats the problem with the BDS movement. Its supporters are not so much against alleged Israeli oppression as they are about the existence of Israel since they view the presence of even one Jewish state on the planet as one too many.

One example is the Jewish Voice for Peace groups Deadly Exchange protest mentioned by Thrall. It depicts the exchange programs that allow U.S. law enforcement and first responders to get Israeli training as responsible for police murders of blacks in American cities. That is a classic anti-Semitic blood libel. Yet it is presented by Thrall as one more example of how idealists are rejecting Israel.

Accepting the notion that there is a natural affinity between the effort to achieve equal rights for African-Americans and Palestinian efforts to destroy Israel requires a willingness to ignore the truth about Israel and that of the movement to destroy it.

More to the point, the article presents criticism of the anti-Semitic invective of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as the result of racism.

The reason why Obama was criticized for his Middle East stands had nothing to do with his race, and everything to do with his refusal to accept that hatred for Israel and anti-Semitism was the obstacle to peace, not the pro-Israel communitys racism or Israels intransigence. If Omar is singled out for criticism, its not because shes black or Muslim, but because, like the BDS movement she supports, shes guilty of flagrant anti-Semitism.

There was a time when intersectional myths seeking to conflate anti-black racism with Zionism and the Jews would be dismissed as prejudiced anti-Semitic claptrap that didnt deserve a hearing in a prominent forum like the Times. But that was before some on the left began their successful efforts to divide the Democratic Party and to legitimize anti-Semitism.

In the battle for the soul of the Democratic Party, it is Israels foes that have embraced hate, not its defenders. It is they who talk about Jewish money, while trying to delegitimize the Jewish state and whitewash its enemies. Liberals who wish to reclaim their partys integrity, and that of the flagship publication of their movement, have an uphill struggle in front of them.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNSJewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
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Even as she helps Henry Pratt Co. get back on its feet these past eight weeks, Lewis insists her work is far from done outside those company walls. As a Kane County Board member who is chairwoman of the Public Health Committee, shes already put mental health at the top of the agenda. But its also an issue shes taken straight to the soul of the city, where real change needs to take place to make sure this never happens in Aurora again, she insists.
Recently around 75 devout Hindus came together in Mannar district of Sri Lanka from each Divisional Secretariat to discuss the matters related to preventing forceful conversions, invasions of other religions in Hindu temples and worship places and in Local and Provincial elections, Hindus voting to Hindu candidates who are committed to protect Hindu Dharma. Hindus from Australia, Canada and India had also participated. Financial help for the field work was given to devout Hindus who engage in above activities to protect Dharma.

It was emphasized that each Hindu household will have the Nandi (sacred bull) flag and a Holy book of Bhagavat Geeta will also be donated to them. Everyone together determined to prevent forceful conversions of Hindus. They are also preparing in order to be eligible for visiting Sanatan ashram in Goa to understand and study about protecting and preserving Hindu Dharma.
Britains Prince Harry announced on Wednesday he is teaming up with US celebrity talk show host Oprah Winfrey on a documentary series for Apple about mental health.

The Duke of Sussex, who is set to become a father this month, will jointly create and executive produce the upcoming mental health-themed show with Winfrey, according to Kensington Palace, his official residence.

I am incredibly proud to be working alongside Oprah on this vital series which we have been developing together for several months, the prince said in a statement.

Our hope is that this series will be positive, enlightening and inclusive -- sharing... the opportunity for us to understand ourselves and those around us better.

Tech titan Apple, which will air the multi-part documentary, recently launched into the television streaming market to take on Netflix and Amazon.

The partnership with Winfrey, who has decades of experience as one of Americas foremost talk show hosts, will focus on both mental illness and mental wellness, Kensington Palace said.

Its creators hope to inspire viewers to have an honest conversation about the challenges each of us faces, and how to equip ourselves with the tools to thrive, it added.

No details were released on a timeframe for the new documentary series.

Harry -- whose American wife Meghan is weeks away from giving birth to the couples first child -- has advocated on mental health issues alongside his other charity work in recent years.

He has previously revealed that for a long time he struggled to cope with the death of his mother Diana in a Paris car crash in 1997, and sought professional help a few years ago.

After a decade in the British army -- serving two tours of duty in Afghanistan -- the duke launched in 2017 the Heads Together mental health initiative with his brother Prince William and sister-in-law Kate.

It was spearheaded by their philanthropic and charitable arm The Royal Foundation.

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Malaika Arora has left a cryptic message on the importance of a soulmate as her Instagram stories. The actor-TV host, who is rumoured to be in a relationship with actor Arjun Kapoor, said that one meets a person with whom one has an immediate connection and over time develops a love so strong and deep that one wonders if one had ever loved anyone like that before.

She wrote, A person with whom you have an immediate connection the moment you meet  a connection so strong that you are drawn to them in a way you have never experienced before. As this connection develops over time, you experience a love so deep, strong and complex that you begin to doubt that you have ever truly loved anyone prior.

She continues, Your soul mate understands and connects with you in every way and on every level, which brings a sense of peace, calmness and happiness when you are around them. While Malaika and Arjun have never spoken about their relationship, they have never denied it either. The duo is often spotted on dinner dates together or partying with common friends.

Also read: Tara Sutarias Student of the Year 2 poster out, Twitter asks which school has this uniform. See pic

Since last month, there has been a strong rumour that the couple will get married in April. It will be a church wedding in Mumbai. While Malaika and Arjun have been tight-lipped about it, Arjuns father, producer Boney Kapoor has refuted them saying that there is no truth to them. He spoke to Amar Ujala publication.

Earlier this month, Malaika was in Maldives for a vacation with her girl gang and posted many pictures from the island nation. Sometime later, Arjun too posted pictures from his holiday in Maldives, fuelling rumours that the couple was holidaying together. They were spotted at the Mumbai airport few days later, leaving the premises together.

While Malaika remains busy with her advertisement assignments and many public appearances, Arjun is working on his next film, Panipat, being directed by Ashutosh Gowariker. Based on the Third Battle of Panipat, the film stars Arjun as Sadashiv Rao Bhau, commander-in-chief of the Maratha expeditionary forces who fought the invading army of the Afghan King Ahmad Shah Abdali in 1761.

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Actor Salman Khan, in a new interview, has said that he will always maintain a clean image as far as his production ventures are concerned, adding that content these days, especially on web platforms, is shocking.

Salman told DNA, One thing is clear in my mind. I just want to make clean, entertaining films. The actor said that because of his upbringing, he has decided to move into the Barjatya zone with his films. Salman recently produced Notebook, in which actors Pranutan Bahl and Zaheer Iqbal were launched. Previously, Salman had launched his brother-in-law Aayush Sharma in LoveYatri.

He said, Im constantly wondering if Im doing the right thing or the wrong thing because there are bizarre trends today. The kind of films that are being made (especially some of the stuff on web platforms) are shocking! I cant even watch the stuff, but people are watching it.

Bollywood actor Salman Khan attends the wedding reception of Azhar Morani and Tanya Seth. (PTI)

He said he understands if people want to watch such content in privacy, but he cant manage it even when hes alone. He said he still gets awkward when a kissing scene happens, and hes with others. See it whichever way you want, but I will put my heft behind clean cinema, he said.

Salman continued, Instead of ones and twos coming in to watch movies, Id rather want our banner to have films where people know they will have the naughtiness, humour, action and romance, but all of us can watch them together. Thats what I want to keep it to. If theres ever an A rated picture, then it will be because of action. Im not for kissing and nudity in films at all.

Also read: Salman Khan says Im surviving on mediocre talent and luck, adds Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir know their craft

Salman has two releases lined up for 2019. Eid will see the release of Bharat, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar and starring Katrina Kaif, and Decembers Dabangg 3, which reunites him with Sonakshi Sinha.

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Actor Salman Khan has said that his contemporaries Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan are both legends, and they will bounce back from recent professional setbacks. But he is more worried about himself, because he has been surviving on good luck and mediocre talent.

In an interview to DNA, the actor spoke about his rivalry with Aamir and Shah Rukh. Together, theyre the Three Khans of Bollywood. But in 2018, all three delivered big budget misfires. Aamir and Shah Rukh starred in Thugs of Hindostan and Zero, while Salman drove the Race franchise off track. The films were produced on a combined budget of more than 600 crore, but could manage a collective 800 crore worldwide.

Salman said, It is not as if Aamir or Shah Rukh are choosing bad or worse films. There are times when the movies Ive chosen, to the best of my knowledge, havent worked. And then one film works and youre back. SRK is a legend, as is Aamir. A bad movie here or there may happen, but they will always come back.

Actor Salman Khan during Celebrity Cricket League in Chandigarh. (IANS)

Salman said that it is he who should be worried, because both Aamir and Shah Rukh are known for their craft, although hes heard people saying theyre not so sure about me.

Im surviving on mediocre talent and luck. Actually, I dont know what Im surviving on, but Im surviving, he said, adding that he is aware of his ups and downs, but is grateful for the rock solid fanbase he has built over the years. Salman pointed out that Tubelight, the only recent film of his that is considered to be a bonafide flop, made 110 crore domestically. Repeating a theory he has offered before, the actor said, We thought that Tubelight (same combination of Kabir Khan and me) will be a beautiful film, after our much-appreciated superhit, Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015). But for an Eid release, the public wanted to see something happy. In Tubelight, they all cried. They were like, What the hell! Youve ruined Eid!. They went into depression.

Also read: Salman Khan has a theory as to why Tubelight flopped, says he opposed releasing it on Eid

He said that the films reputation has grown post the theatrical release. Today, when the film comes on digital and satellite, people love it and wonder why it didnt work, he said.

Salman has two releases lined up for 2019. Eid will see the release of Bharat, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar and starring Katrina Kaif, and Decembers Dabangg 3, which reunites him with Sonakshi Sinha.

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Actor Salman Khan has completed his shooting schedule in Maheshwar, Madhya Pradesh for his upcoming film Dabangg 3. The actor took to Instagram to make the announcement.

Sharing a picture of himself in the Chulbul Pandey mode, Salman wrote: Finally #maheshwar schedule over #dabangg3 @prabhudheva @arbaazkhanofficial @nikhildwivedi25. Salman looks debonaire, sporting a pair of black formal trousers and a blue shirt with Chulbul Pandey signature moustache and sunglasses. Flags flutter in the background as outlines of temples dot the screen.

There is palpable excitement among his fans for the third offering of the popular Dabangg franchise. On April 5, Salman had shared a close-up picture from the completion shoot of the song Hud Hud Dabangg of the film. As he strokes his moustache, we also see sadhus in the foreground. On April 4, Salman had shared a video clip of him reaching the shoot venue in Indore and being greeted by a sea of fans. Sharing the video, he has written, Namaste, Salaam Alaikum, Hello and a big thank you to all my fans & the police of #madhyapradesh #maheshwar #dabangg3 @PDdancing @arbaazSkhan @Nikhil_Dwivedi. Salman was seen waving to a crowd on the banks of river Narmada.

Also read | Tara Sutarias Student of the Year 2 poster out, Twitter asks which school has this uniform. See pic







Dabangg 3 also stars Sonakshi Sinha, who will reprise her role as Rajjo. Speaking about returning to the popular franchise, Sonakshi told PTI, It is great to be back to Dabangg series. I hope it continues to be made. It is first of its kind that came in 2010. It started a new trend in films. It is a cult film. It can be continued for a long time.

Elaborating further on her character Rajjo, she said, Rajjo is in my blood, I can play Rajjo in my sleep too. We have just started shooting, I joined the team for the title song. When a film works, the character also works. The thappad se darr nahin lagta... dialogue worked a lot for me. Till today, people ask me to say it. It is great for a heroine to have a dialogue that has become iconic.

Dabangg 3, being directed by Prabhudheva and produced by Arbaaz Khan, will see Kannada actor Sudeep as the antagonist. While Dabangg was directed by Anubhav Kashyap, Dabangg 2 was helmed by Arbaaz.

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The Tashkent Files

Cast: Shweta Basu Prasad, Naseeruddin Shah, Mithun Chakraborty

Director: Vivek Agnihotri

Rating: 1/5

Truth is a luxury

12 angry men -- correction, 6 men and 3 women but all very angry and not afraid to show it -- sit down in a closed room to decide if former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died of natural causes or whether he was murdered. Director Vivek Agnihotri picks his menagerie carefully; he is in maximum impact mode this election season, after all. There is a historian and a journalist, a judge and a woman with multiple NGOs on her CV, a former intelligence operative and a scientist, an industrialist and two politicians.

The above line about truth just about sums up what happens in the dimly lit room where fact and fiction are happily muddled up to serve you a concoction so lethal it can either send your blood pressure soaring or send you off to sleep. I would suggest the latter course in case you find yourself with a ticket of The Tashkent Files; it saves you a headache later.

Watch Tashkent Files trailer:

Also read: Student of the Year 2 trailer: Tiger Shroff has his eyes on the prize; Ananya Panday, Tara Sutaria have eyes on him. Watch

Tashkent, referring to the Uzbekistan capital -- formerly a part of the USSR -- is where Indias second prime minister died the day he signed an important treaty with Pakistan after the 1965 war. While officially his death is said to be due to a heart attack, conspiracy theories have suggested poisoning. Either Google it or watch The Tashkent Files  every whack-a-doodle conspiracy theory finds a play at both.

To take a stab at the film story, thin as it is, a low-on-scruples journalist Ragini (Shweta Basu Prasad) gets a call from a Deep Throat who is a big fan of Kaun Banega Crorepati. After playing fastest-fingers-first with her on the phone, he sends her a super secret dossier on PM Shastris death. There are no Pentagon Papers inside, only every theory or RTI query that is already out there on the internet.

Mithun Chakrobarty plays a politician in the film.

Ragini gets her scoop but the political machinations are already underway. A manipulative home minister (Naseeruddin Shah) sets up a committee to look into her claims and heading it is Tripathi (Mithun Chakrobarty), a politician looking for mudda for the next elections. What happens next is best summed up by Naseers crooked leader, Only idiots are afraid of the truth. One should be scared of rumours because if they are not stopped, they become such irrefutable truth that even the truth starts looking like lies. We, the audience, get all kinds of rumours  said at a high octave over and over again. Inside this committee room, nobody speaks, they shout. Instead of conversation, they deliver declamatory speeches. The closer we get to the climax, the shriller the tone becomes. To make sure the theories have a facsimile of truth, statements made by PM Shastris family members  wife Lalita, Anil Shastri and Sunil Shastri  are referenced; works of his press secretary Kuldip Nayar and journalist Anuj Dhar are mentioned.

Pankaj Tripathis character delivers a communal speech that is painful to watch.

The Tashkent Files is a propaganda film primarily and makes no bones to hide the fact. Mithuns character seems to be talking for the director when he calls historians liberal terrorists, NGOs social terrorists, judges judicial terrorists and media TRP terrorists. While presstitutes, liberal siculars and war of narratives crawl out of social media onto the big screen in this film, the choicest of shots are saved for the Congress and Indira Gandhi. Emergency is alluded to repeatedly and claims made by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin about the agency paying bribes to an unnamed senior leader and her cohorts run as a scroll. The director claims India was colonised again in the 70s and it would have never happened if Shastri was still at the helm. While Indira Gandhi is never mentioned by name, the references are too blunt to be ignored.

Political propaganda is not the worst of its sins, alas. A communal speech by Pankaj Tripathis character is painful to watch; he warns of a certain community poisoning the entire country and attacking India with its army. He is shut down but the harm has been done. Maine itni zyaada gandgi ek saath isse pehle kabhi nahi dekhi, he is told. If this film ever needs an epitaph, this is it.

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George R.R. Martin, the 70-year-old writer behind HBOs blood-spattered epic Game of Thrones, has created a multitude of fantasy worlds spanning medieval pasts to distant sci-fi futures.

Portly, with a white beard, glasses and usually wearing a cap, Martin has been described as Americas Tolkien and says he was inspired by the British fantasy masters The Lord of the Rings as a teenager.

He grew up poor but his rich imagination and prolific output -- including the five novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series that became televisions Game of Thrones -- saw him listed by Forbes magazine as the 12th highest-paid author in 2016.

Heavy on violence and sex, the books about noble families vying for the Iron Throne were released between 1996 and 2011 and already bestsellers before they were adapted for television.

His skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today, Time magazine wrote in 2011.

- Imagination unbound -

Martin started on the first in the series in 1991 aiming to write something just as big as my imagination, he told Time in 2017.

From the mid-1980s he had worked as a Hollywood television screenwriter, including on The Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast.

The reaction to his first drafts would be, George, we love it, but its five times our budget ... the big battle you have where theres 10,000 people on a side, make that a duel between the hero and the villain, he told Time.

He could abandon such limitations when he dedicated himself to prose from the mid-1990s.

Im going to have all the characters I want, and gigantic castles, and dragons, and dire wolves, and hundreds of years of history, and a really complex plot, and its fine because its a book, he recalled thinking.

The first in the famous series, A Game of Thrones, was published in 1996.

He thought it was essentially unfilmable until he was approached by directors and writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in 2006. Game of Thrones launched on HBO five years later.

- Genius of George -

The show could not be without the mad genius of George, Benioff said in 2018, when accepting one of its 47 Emmys.

Translated into 47 languages, the books have sold more than 85 million copies and fans have been impatient for the sixth and seventh novels promised since 2011.

Their huge popularity means that Im very conscious I have to do something great, and trying to do something great is a considerable weight to bear, he told The Guardian newspaper in 2018.

- Anyone could die -

George Raymond Richard Martin was born on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, his father working as a docker.

We were poor, he told PBS television in 2018. We never went anywhere in the summer, we just stayed in the same old place. But books took me everywhere.

At 13 he became hooked on by J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings, learning from the killing of the wizard Gandalf that the sudden death of key characters is a twist that can work.

The minute you kill Gandalf, the suspense of everything that follows is a thousand times greater because now anybody could die, he told PBS.

As a child he wrote monster stories, selling them to friends for a nickel, then superhero tales for school fanzines.

Martin graduated in journalism from Northwestern University in Illinois in 1971, becoming a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War.

- Sci-fi fascination -

Passionate about medieval history and mythology, he started publishing in the 1970s, winning prizes for his science fiction short stories.

Other top titles have included the science fiction novella A Song for Lya (1976), fantasy mystery Armageddon Rag (1983), horror Nightflyers (1985) and an extensive superhero series Wild Cards from 1987.

He has lived in Santa Fe in New Mexico for four decades and he married Parris McBride, his second wife, in 2011.

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Jet Airways India Ltd.s fleet has shrunk by almost 90 percent as the cash-strapped airline struggles to find funds to operate, forcing the nations oldest surviving private airline to drastically curtail its scheduled flights amid a hunt for a new investor.

The carrier, once Indias biggest by market capitalization, was forced to ground 10 more jets after it failed to pay lease rentals on time, Jet said in a stock exchange filing Thursday. That means the carrier is now operating fewer than 20 planes, compared with a fleet of 124 as recently as January.

Jet Airways, which broke into the monopoly of state-run Air India Ltd. in the early 1990s, had successfully managed to hold its own in a tough market before a slew of budget airlines started offering ultra-low fares about a decade back. The airline has since lost market share, piled up a debt load of more than $1 billion, and fallen behind payments to banks, staff and leasing companies.

The company suspended the traditionally lucrative, west-bound, long-haul international flights until Friday morning, a spokeswoman said late on Thursday. It had already stopped operations to several domestic and overseas destinations including Singapore. The spokeswoman didnt respond to a call and a text message on Friday.

Jet Airways creditors have extended a deadline for potential buyers to declare their interest in purchasing a controlling stake until Friday evening. Finding a buyer for Jet Airways is crucial to the legacy of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as he faces an election that began April 11 after holding power for five years.

Indias aviation minister Suresh Prabhu has asked the top bureaucrat in his ministry to review issues related to the airline and take necessary steps to minimize passenger inconvenience and ensure safety, according to a Twitter post.

Jet Airways shares fell as much as 1.6 percent to 257 rupees in Mumbai on Friday. They had fallen 67 percent last year.
There are an estimated 2.8 million Americans of Indian descent (2010 census). Most of them are prosperous, highly educated and, notably, not known to get into trouble. They dont break the law, pay their taxes and, now increasingly, run for public offices. They have often been called the model minority. But not every one of them has contributed equally to creating that gold standard, and their numbers, unfortunately, may be growing. They are not doctors, IT engineers, business leaders or academics that Indians have come to be associated with. They are scammers.

Twenty-four men and women from India (and of Indian descent) were convicted in July 2018 for defrauding thousands of Americans of millions of dollars through telephone frauds. They targeted the elderly, preying on their vulnerabilities and insecurities. The scam was run from well-staffed call centres in India. Victims were approached on phone by callers impersonating federal income tax officials. They threatened victims with arrests if they did not pay up tax dues. This is just one of the many scams that are being tracked by US law enforcement. The cons, who were sentenced up to 20 years in jail, were a mix of Indians merely residing in the United States or those who had become American citizens. Some of those in the latter category, were ordered to be stripped of their citizenship after their sentence and sent back to India.

Another bunch of scammers, based in India and operating with Indian American accomplices, targeted elderly Americans in what is called phone tech support fraud, according to an announcement from the US Department of Justice in March about a countrywide takedown of such frauds carried out jointly by multiple law enforcement and government agencies. A pop up ad on the computer screen would warn the victim, in stern language and tone, about a virus attack that could compromise the system and access personal information. Victims were asked to call a telephone number on the screen for help. Many people fell for it, and paid large sums of money to fix the phony problem.

These operations were so well organised and sophisticated that US law enforcement officials have compared them to the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia. Attorney General William Barr drew that comparison during an unrelated hearing on Capitol Hill on April 9. Nationals of many other countries have been involved in these frauds but Americas top law enforcement officer mentioned only India as the source of most of them  they are actually  international criminal organisations, a lot of them come out of India.

And there are visa frauds, which he didnt talk about, but other officials have. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reported multiple cases of visa fraud, including those involving H-1B but not confined to it. An Indian American in Florida state pleaded guilty in March for running a marriage fraud along with an accomplice. They recruited American citizens to marry Indians, mostly those who had overstayed their visa or the student exchange programme, to stay on as Americans naturalised by marriage. They had performed 80 such marriages, the USCIS said.

The number of these cons is growing, and with the attorney general turning the focus on such scams run out of India, more cases can be expected to be brought to light. While they cannot, and should not be allowed to, define the larger community of Indian Americans, the questions that a larger crackdown could entail will be unsettling. The issue of the fraud on the elderly that drew Barrs response implicating India came in answer to a question from a Republican congresswoman, which was echoed later by a Democrat. It might not be long before things go from unsettling to cringeworthy.
Today, the Supreme Court issued an interim order on the constitutional challenge to the governments electoral bond scheme. The electoral bond scheme is a method of political funding that was introduced in early 2018. The schemes salient features include donor anonymity, the elimination of caps on corporate donations, and the loosening of other regulations (such as revealing donations in corporate profit and loss statements). After three days of hearing, the court ordered that all political parties submit details of the donations to the Election Commission by May 30, in a sealed cover.

This order is a disappointment. It is regrettably ironic that in a petition founded on the publics right to know who funds political parties, the court has ordered that information be provided in a sealed cover, safe and secure from the voting public. More than that, however, if there was any doubt about the unconstitutionality of electoral bonds, it should have been washed away after the last three days of oral argument before the court. This is because the Attorney-General K. K. Venugopal  charged with defending the scheme  had no defence apart from doubling down and simply saying that the public has no right to know who funds political parties, as long as the funding is legitimate.

As a constitutional argument, this ranks alongside the then Attorney-General Niren Des notorious claim during the Emergency that citizens could be shot with impunity, or the present Attorney-Generals own, more recent argument, that the Indian Constitution does not guarantee a fundamental right to privacy. Not only is it blatantly contrary to many years of the Supreme Courts own precedent on how the voters right to information is integral to free and fair elections, and an element of Article 19(1)(a), but it is also profoundly dangerous and anti-democratic: as the old idiom goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune.

In a democratic system that does not have publicly-funded elections (such as ours), it therefore becomes crucially important for the public to know who funds political parties, in order to critically evaluate whether that partys policies are designed to actually serve the public good, or whether they are written to benefit its funders. Indeed, in order to understand the deleterious effects of big money on politics, one need look no further than the United States: it has been repeatedly documented, for example, that there is an almost complete overlap between American politicians who vote against gun regulation, and funding from the National Rifle Association (and this is only one example among many).

To break the matter down into its essentials: if a big, multinational corporation (A) donates a huge amount of money to a political party (B), and on coming to power, that political party rewrites the rules in relevant sectors (such as, for example, environmental regulations) benefiting that corporation, then that entire set of transactions must be open to public scrutiny. Secrecy in political funding ensures an asymmetry of information that goes to the root of the democratic process, and the fairness of elections.

The Attorney-Generals only real argument in court was that black money was eliminated, since donations were now routed through the State Bank of India. As the judges themselves noted, however, this does very little to prevent circuitous payments that escape regulatory scrutiny. More than that, however, black money fails to explain far too much. Black money cannot explain donor secrecy, or in fact, that this secrecy works only one way: through the state-owned SBI, the government is always in a position to know donor details. The electoral bond scheme thus favours the ruling party of the day (made clear by the fact that an overwhelming percentage of the funds through electoral bonds have come to the BJP). Nor can black money explain the removal of caps on corporate donations, the removal of the requirement that a corporation must be three years in existence to donate (thus opening the door to shell companies), and the removal of the requirement that corporations set out their donations in their profit-and-loss statements. All these, and more, provided excellent reasons for the Supreme Court to strike down  or at least stay  the scheme until its final decision.

The courts own justification for its order seems to be that it is a weighty matter that requires detailed consideration. This, however, is self-serving: the challenge was filed more than a year ago, and the court had ample time to hear it in detail before the ongoing general elections, given its weightiness.

During the Constituent Assembly debates, BR Ambedkar famously said that the Constitution must guarantee not only one man, one vote, but also, one man, one value. An electoral system that allows limitless, anonymous corporate donations to political parties skews the process irrevocably, and makes a mockery of one man, one value. While todays order does nothing to correct that, one can only hope that eventually, when it hears this weighty matter, the Court will heed its own jurisprudence stressing on the right to know, as well as Ambedkars words, and strike down the electoral bonds scheme. Better late than never, after all.

Gautam Bhatia is an advocate in the Supreme Court

The views expressed are personal
Delhiites rejoice. In a weeks time, work will begin to redevelop 115 hectares of sewage sludge ponds into the citys seventh natural reserve, the South Biodiversity Park.

Currently, the area next to the DND flyover, just behind Kalindi Colony on the western bank of Yamuna riverreceives wastewater from nine unauthorised colonies, the biggest of which is Kilokri Village, and has become a mosquito breeding ground.

A team of scientists, led by ecologist CR Babu, who heads the Centre for Environmental Management of Degraded Ecosystems (CEMDE) at Delhi University, is slated to work on the project.

The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), which owns the land, has allocated about 2 crore for the project which has a five-year deadline.

The decision was announced on Thursday at a meeting of the Yamuna Pollution Monitoring Committee, set up by the National Green Tribunal (NGT), headed by former Delhi chief secretary Shailaja Chandra and expert member BS Sajwan. Officials from the DDA, Delhi Jal Board and the South Municipal Corporation of Delhi (SDMC) were also present at the meeting.

The 115 ha area near DND, which is a part of the Yamuna floodplain, will be revived through the Constructed Wetland System (CWS) employed successfully at Neela Hauz lake in 2017. This is a completely natural sewage water treatment method which uses specific plant species and microbes to purify grey water, Babu said.

At present, the site is full of grass and water hyacinth. It is being used as an illegal dump for construction debris and as an open defecation ground by slum dwellers, a DDA official said.

This (CWS) rules out the need for an expensive sewage treatment plant. The biodiversity parks we are creating across the city are not just to sanitize polluted areas, but to turn them into rich forests that revive wildlife, birdlife and flora of the region, the DDA official said.

Similar projects are being planned at the Hindon Cut and Rajghat Drain, he added.

At present, the Capital has six biodiversity parksthe Yamuna Biodiversity Park at Wazirabad, the Kamla Nehru Ridge near Civil Lines, the Aravalli Biodiversity Park at Vasant Vihar, Tilpath valley near Sainik Farms, one behind Tughlakabad Fort and the Neela Hauz Lake.

Thursdays meeting was called on a complaint filed by the Kalindi Residents Welfare Association president Sanjay Narayen, who had alleged inaction by authorities regarding the vacant 115 hectares of land, which had become a heavy mosquito breeding ground.

Colony resident Paresh Nath said, We have been pursuing the issue in National Green Tribunal since 2015.
AP Inter Result websites crashed

Currently, most of AP Inter result websites are not opening. The links will possibly open in a while.

AP Inter Results: Girls outperform boys

Girls performed better than boys in the Andhra Pradesh Intermediate exam results. In the second year, the pass percentage for girls is 75% and for boys it is 69%. Only 9,340 students got 10/10 grade in II year.

AP Inter results: How to check

Students can check their results by visiting the Board of Intermediate education, Andhra Pradesh website at results.apcfss.in.

How grading system benefits students

For the first time, Andhra Pradesh Inter results were declared in grading points system; as such, the students will not be able to know the marks they have obtained in the examinations. Interestingly, only 9,340 students got 10/10 grade points.

Apply for AP Inter Supplementary exam before April 24

The advanced supplementary examinations for the failed students will be held on May 14 and the last date for payment of fees is April 24, the BIE secretary said.

Krishna district topper with 81%

Out of 13 districts in the Andhra Pradesh, Krishna district topped with pass percentage of 81% in second year and 72 per cent in first year.

Government colleges of AP achieve pass percentage of 65.7%

While government colleges achieved a pass percentage of 65.70, government- aided institutions achieved 66 per cent and private colleges 78 per cent results.

AP Inter Result 2019: Number of students who appeared is over 10 lakh

In all, 10,17,600 students appeared for the examinations, including 5,07,302 for the first year and 5,10,298 for the second year.

AP Inter advanced supplementary exams will be held on May 14

Andhra Pradesh Inter advanced supplementary exams to be held on May 14

Krishna district tops in Andhra Pradesh Inter Results

Krishna district of Andhra Pradesh has topped in the AP Inter Result performance

AP Inter Result 2019 is based on grade points system

Results of Andhra Pradesh Intermediate Board exam is based on grade points system.

Girls out perform boys in AP Inter Exam

In second year, girls pass percent is 75 per cent while for boys the pass percent is 69.

10.17 lakh candidates appeared

Total 10,17,600 students appeared for exams. In 1st year 507302 and in 2nd year 510298 candidates appeared for the exam

Pass percentage for 1st year is 60% and 72% for 2nd year

Pass percent is 60% for 1st year, 72% for 2nd year. Girls outscore boys.

3.3 lakh candidates failed and 52 thousand were marked absent

Out of the 10.17 lakh candidates, 3.3 lakh candidates failed while 52 thousand were absent.

AP Inter Results declared

Andhra Pradesh Inter results for general and vocation courses declared .

AP Board Inter Result to be out in a few minutes

AP Board Inter Result to be out in a few minutes. The Andhra Pradesh Board officials will address a press conference at 11 am.

AP Board press conference to begin soon

Andhra Pradesh Intermediate Board officials will begin the press conference soon. The results will be out at 11 am today.

AP Board officials will declare the results in half an hour

AP Board officials will declare the results in half an hour. The result is scheduled at 11 am today at AP Board office.

Media persons arriving for press conference

Media persons have started arriving for the AP Inter Press Conference. The AP Board officials will begin at 11 am today.

AP Inter Result 2019: Press conference to begin soon

Andhra Pradesh Board officials will address a press conference at 11 am today to declare the results. 10 lakh students are waiting for their results.

AP Inter Results to be declared in an hour

Andhra Pradesh Inter results will be declared in one hour. The result declaration is scheduled at 11 am today

Andhra Pradesh Board will declare results of vocational courses also

Andhra Pradesh Board will declare the AP Inter 1st, 2nd year general as well as vocational courses today at 11 am.

In 2018, pass percentage was 73.3%

Last year, in 2018, the pass percentage was 73.3%. Over 10 lakh candidates are waiting for their results this year.

2nd year vocational course candidates can get their results on SMS

2nd year vocational course candidates can get their results on SMS. Type - APVOC2REGISTRATION NO and send it to 56263

2nd year general course candidates can get their results on SMS

2nd year general course candidates can get their results on SMS. Type- APGEN2REGISTRATION NO and send it to 56263

1st year vocational course candidates can get their results on SMS

1st year vocational course candidates can get their results on SMS. Type APVOC1REGISTRATION NO and send it to 56263

1st year general course candidates can get their results on SMS

1st year general course candidates can get their results on SMS. Type - APGEN1REGISTRATION NO and send it to 56263

AP Inter practical exam was conducted in February

Andhra Pradesh Board had conducted the practical exams from February 1 to 20.

Over 4 lakh candidates took the AP 2nd year exam

This year 4.8 lakh candidates had appeared for the AP Inter 2nd year exam 2019 while 5.25 lakh candidates had appeared for the 1st year exam this year.

5.2 Lakh students took the AP Inter 1 st year exam

5.25 lakh candidates had appeared for the AP Inter 1st year exam 2019

Last year also the result was out on April 12

In the year 2018 also, the AP board declared the inter results on April 12. This year as well, the result will be declared on April 12.

AP Board 2nd year inter exam commenced on Feb 28

AP Board Inter 2nd year exam had begun on Feb 28 with Language Paper II.

AP Board Inter exam commenced on Feb 27

AP Board Inter 1st year exam had begun on Feb 27 with Language Paper.

Around 10 lakh candidates have appeared for the exam

According to reports, around 10.06 lakh candidates have appeared for the AP inter exam 2019.

AP Board Inter Results to be declared at 11 am today

Andhra Pradesh Inter 1st and 2nd year results will be declared at 11 am today.
Dalcollo, who formerly lived in DuPage but had recently been a Kentucky resident, was convicted on a sex charge in Ohio in 2015, and was on probation when he was arrested here. Authorities said he removed an ankle monitor in Ohio before catching a bus to DuPage County in the days before the alleged assault.
The Andhra Pradesh Board of Intermediate Education announced the results of Intermediate first and second year examinations 2019 on Friday. The results were announced at around 11am in a press conference in the AP Board office, conference hall, Room no 209, Block 3 AP Secretariat, Amaravathi.

AP INTER RESULTS 2019 DECLARED

A total of 10,17,600 students appeared in the exams, in which 5,07,302 appeared for the Ist year and 5,10,298 appeared for the IInd year exam. The pass percentage is 60% for 1st year and 72% for 2nd year.

The results of Andhra Pradesh Intermediate Board exam is based on grade points system. In the second year, girls pass percentage is 75% while for boys it is 69%.

Girls performed better than boys in the Andhra pradesh Intermediate exam results. In the second year, the pass percentage for girls is 75% and for boys it is 69%. Only 9,340 students got 10/10 grade in II year.

Krishna district has topped in the results. The pass percentage was 89% in second year, 72% in first year. In the first year, 64% girls passed and 56% boys passed.

The Inter advanced supplementary exams will be held on May 14. This is the first time results have been declared within 24 days of completing the exams.

Andhra Pradesh Board results Live Updates

In the year 2018, Andhra Board of Intermediate Education had announced its first and second year exam results on April 13. 62% of the students passed the first year examination while the pass percentage for second year was 73.33%.

AP Inter 1st, 2nd Year Result 2019: How to check

Visit the official website of Andhra Pradesh Board of Intermediate Education at bieap.gov.in

Click on the link for AP Inter first year results or AP Inter Second year results

Enter your hall ticket number in the given field

Click on submit

The result will be displayed on the screen

Download the same and take a print out for future reference.
The Andhra Pradesh Board of Intermediate Education has declared the Intermediate first and second year examinations 2019 results.

Students can check their results by visiting the Board of Intermediate education, Andhra Pradesh website at results.apcfss.in

Here are the direct links to check the AP inter results 2019:



First Year General results

First Year Vocational results

Second Year General results

Second Year Vocational results

A total of 10,17,600 students appeared in the exams, in which 5,07,302 appeared for the Ist year and 5,10,298 appeared for the IInd year exam. The pass percentage is 60% for 1st year and 72% for 2nd year.

The results of Andhra Pradesh Intermediate Board exam is based on grade points system. In the second year, girls pass percentage is 75% while for boys it is 69%.

Girls performed better than boys in the Andhra pradesh Intermediate exam results. In the second year, the pass percentage for girls is 75% and for boys it is 69%. Only 9,340 students got 10/10 grade in II year.

Krishna district has topped in the results. The pass percentage was 89% in second year, 72% in first year. In the first year, 64% girls passed and 56% boys passed.

The Inter advanced supplementary exams will be held on May 14. This is the first time results have been declared within 24 days of completing the exams.

The Andhra board released the results on its official websites at bieap.gov.in. Candidates can also visit results.cgg.gov.in and check their results easily.

Last year, Andhra Board of Intermediate Education had announced the first and second year exam results on April 13. Sixty two per cent of the students passed the first year examination while the pass percentage for second year was 73.33%.
From New Yorks Fifth Avenue to Paris Place Vendome, Louis Vuitton sells its handbags at some of the worlds swankiest locations - but the brand is increasingly betting on pop-ups in off-beat spots as one way to keep shoppers hooked.

The label, which drives the bulk of sales and profits at French luxury group LVMH, plans to hold 100 temporary events to sell its wares this year, up from 80 last year, the conglomerates financial director said on Thursday.

This is the privileged way and the main way to drive innovation, Jean-Jacques Guiony told analysts after the conglomerate posted a pick-up in first-quarter sales, beating analyst forecasts.

This trend in pop-up stores is extremely important, and we will continue to develop that because it enables us to be talking in a different way to our clients ... important and it adds flexibility with our network.

Vuittons retail shake-up comes as luxury brands experiment with ways to attract younger shoppers, who are increasingly propelling sales growth in a sector that has long been notoriously rigid in its approach, and slow to move into selling online for instance.

At the lower-end of the fashion scale, high street labels like H&M are grappling with shifting shopping habits, albeit often taking a different tack, such as sprucing up cluttered stores with a more luxurious feel.

At Vuitton, recent pop-ups include one in Londons exclusive Mayfair neighbourhood to highlight its menswear line, with a Wizard of Oz themed space featuring a yellow brick road staircase, and which shoppers had to book tickets to attend.

With revenues of over 10 billion euros ($11.27 billion), Louis Vuitton is the worlds biggest luxury brand by sales, with privately-owned Chanel clipping at its heels, and Kerings star brand Gucci on a mission to overtake it.

In its bid to stay ahead, Vuitton has also invested in new designers, betting on Virgil Abloh, a DJ and founder of high-end streetwear label Off-White, to help jazz up its mens clothing lines.

LVMH, which is notoriously tight-lipped about Vuittons performance, said on Thursday that the sales growth rate in mens and womenswear was at a very, very high level in the first quarter.

Its a small part of Vuittons total business but it creates a lot of buzz and is important to drive store traffic and to help Vuitton sell more accessories, RBC Capital Markets analyst Rogerio Fujimori said of the mens collections.

Clothing only represents around 5 percent of the brands sales, the brokerage estimates, with three quarters of revenues coming from high-margin handbags and luggage. ($1 = 0.8875 euros)

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Eight former service chiefs and over 100 veterans have written to President Ramnath Kovind, the supreme commander of the armed forces, expressing concern about the use of the military and referring to a recent operation to garner votes in the Lok Sabha election 2019.

The general elections kicked off on Thursday with polling on 91 of the 543 seats to the Lok Sabha.

The veterans have said the Indian military is apolitical in nature and structure and that Indias Armed Forces have loyally upheld the democratic principle of civil control over the military.

The letter was signed by former army chiefs General SF Rodrigues and General Deepak Kapoor, former air chief marshal NC Suri and former navy chief Suresh Mehta among many others.

Also read: Yogi Adityanaths Modi Sena remark sets up row; Opposition seeks apology

New agency ANI, however, reported that General SF Rodrigues has denied signing the letter.

The veterans released the letter to the media late in the night after round one of the seven-phased Lok Sabha election 2019 had ended on Thursday.

It particularly referred to the phrase, Modi ji ki Sena used by Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath during a political rally in Ghaziabad in March.

The unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the Armed Forces to be Modi ji ki Sena, the letter says.

The Election Commission had asked already asked the chief minister to be more careful in future.

The Election Commission had also asked political parties not use photographs of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who shot down a Pakistan Air Force Jet over the Line of Control before being captured by Pakistan on February 27.

The veterans also referred to photographs of the election campaign in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms; and posters and images with pictures of soldiers and especially of Indian Air Force Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, displayed.

They expressed concern that the EC directive did not appear to have resulted in any substantive change of behaviour and practice on the ground.

They also say in the letter that political parties are disregarding the model code of conduct and expressed apprehensions that such incidents may only increase as polling day draws near.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Thursday submitted a status report in a Delhi court on the alleged leak of a supplementary charge sheet filed in the AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam.

The central agency also submitted in a sealed cover a pen drive containing a video of the person who allegedly leaked the charge sheet to media.

It contains video footage and also discloses the source (of leak), special public prosecutor for ED, DP Singh told the court of special judge Arvind Kumar.

The report was submitted in response to an application filed by Christian Michel, alleged middleman arrested in the case, seeking a free and fair trial.

The application filed on April 5 had also alleged that the ED clandestinely leaked the charge sheet to media before the court could take cognisance of it, to sensationalise the issue.

The court had, during last hearing, sought response of the agency on the application.

The agency has contended that Michels plea is not maintainable. In its supplementary charge sheet filed last week, it alleged that Michel admitted to paying kickbacks to the politicians, civil servants and defence officials to secure the deal. The central agency has claimed, it has established the money trail of 70-million euro bribes, which were paid over the years using a circuitous route and shell companies, to swing the deal in favour of Anglo-Italian firm, AgustaWestland.

Michel was arrested by the ED on December 22 last year after his extradition from Dubai. He is among the three alleged middlemen being probed by ED and CBI in the case. The others are Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa.

The ED, in its charge sheet filed against Michel in June 2016, had alleged that he had received 30 million euros (about Rs 225 crore) from AgustaWestland.

The CBI, in its charge sheet, has alleged an estimated loss of 398.21 million euros to the exchequer in the deal that was signed on February 8, 2010 for the supply of VVIP choppers worth 556.262 million euros.
A man and her daughter were hacked to death by a family member after a dispute over a small piece of land in West Bengals Murshidabad district on Thursday night, police said.

The incident took place in Balarampur-Hossainpara village under Bhagabangola police station, about 227 km from state capital Kolkata.

We have received a complaint of murder against four persons, but all the accused persons are on the run. Raids are continuing to nab them, officer-in-charge of Bhagabangola police station Utpal Das said.

Farman Sheikh, 50, was killed by his elder brother Jeker Ali with a sickle when he went to his house to get the documents for the land. When Farman Sheikhs 20-year-old daughter Shakila Bibi rushed to the rescue of her father, she also was murdered.

Farmans wife Tuluara Bibi and their mentally-challenged son Halim Sheikh were also attacked. They have been admitted to Murshidabad Medical College and Hospital with serious injuries.

According to a relative of the victims, the land over which the father and daughter were killed measured about 2,880 sq ft on which vegetables were cultivated. However, Das could not specify the size of the plot under dispute and said he was yet to see the title deed that was in the possession of the accused.

Jeker illegally retained control over a plot of land of Farman Sheikh, who used to request his brother to hand over possession to him. But his plea fell on deaf ears, Farman Sheikhs sister-in-law Parula Bewa said.

Parula said a quarrel began when Farman went to his elder brothers house to fetch the land title deed. Suddenly Jeker Ali, his wife Anguara Bibi and their son Manirul Sheikh pounced upon Farman with sickle and clubs. Sheikh died on the spot, Parula claimed.

When Shakila Bibi came to know that her father was attacked, she rushed to her uncles house. But her uncle and his family members killed Shakila as well, said Parula.

After she was told that her husband and daughter were murdered, Farmans wife Tuluara Bibi rushed to the spot with her son Halim Sheikh. But Jeker Ali and his family attacked them too, alleged Parula.

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Vice-Admiral Bimal Verma, the top navy officer overlooked by the government for the navy chiefs position, has filed a statutory complaint to defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman against his supersession, two people familiar with the move said on Thursday.

The government last month had appointed Vice-Admiral Karambir Singh as the next navy chief, overlooking Verma. Verma has requested that his complaint be decided in 10 days, said one of the people cited above.

He petitioned the Armed Forces Tribunal against the order on Monday. But the principal bench of the AFT asked him to withdraw his plea, saying he should raise the issue of his supersession with the defence ministry first.

Verma, who heads the Andaman and Nicobar Command in Port Blair, would have been the senior-most officer in the navy on May 31 when Admiral Sunil Lanba retired. But the government last month decided against appointing him and opted for Singh. Singh currently heads the Visakhapatnam-based Eastern Naval Command.

Earlier, when General Bipin Rawat was named army chief in December 2016, the NDA government did supersede two lieutenant generals who were senior to him. The previous UPA government also did not go by the seniority in 2014 when Admiral Robin Dhowan superseded a senior officer to become the navy chief.
The slugfest between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reached the doorsteps of the Election Commission of India (EC) on Friday with both parties accusing each other of violating the model code of conduct (MCC).

The main opposition party moved the EC over several issues, including the alleged repeated politicisation of the armed forces by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah in their election rallies despite the poll panels clear guidelines on the issue.

The BJP petitioned the commission to take action against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for the language used by him following the Supreme Courts order on the admissibility of leaked Rafale deal documents.

The court ruled that it could consider the documents in dealing with review petitions filed against its December order, which rejected petitions calling for a probe of the deal.

Also Read | Election Commission examining PM Modis Balakot air strike remarks

Gandhi had said, Supreme Court has pronounced the verdict, chowkidar is a chor [the watchman is a thief].

A Congress delegation, comprising senior leaders Ahmed Patel, KC Venugopal, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Jairam Ramesh, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Shaktisinh Gohil, also handed to the EC a representation regarding Union minister Smriti Iranis contradictory affidavits on her educational qualifications.

Alleging that she had falsified records of her educational qualifications, they demanded that Irani be disqualified from contesting and proceedings initiated against her for filing a false affidavit, which attracts up to six months imprisonment, and/or a fine.

Ek mantri bhi kabhi graduate thi [a minister was also a graduate once], this is a new film and series running in the country, Surjewala told reporters after meeting the EC.

But Irani, who is contesting against Congress president Rahul Gandhi, was quick to hit back. I have a message for them... as much as you try, I will work for Amethi against the Congress. No matter what you say, the more you harass me, the harder Ill work, she said.

On whether action can be taken on Iranis previous affidavit by the poll panel, a former chief election commissioner said on the condition of anonymity that anyone wishing to complain can take it up with the appropriate court of law. The EC cannot take a decision on this, he said.

The Congress also called for a first information report (FIR) to be registered against Union minister Maneka Gandhi, and the rejection of her nomination papers for the Sultanpur seat in Uttar Pradesh, over a speech in which she said Muslims in the constituency should vote for her in case they wanted jobs, seen as a veiled threat against the minority community.

The Congress also moved the commission against the Prime Minister and BJP chief Amit Shah for allegedly dragging the armed forces into the political domain by using them to seek votes. PM Modi, BJP chief and other leaders of the ruling party are shamelessly and openly, for the first time in 70 years, dragging the forces into cheap politics, Singhvi told reporters.

Dragging the armed forces in political crossfire, asking for votes and doing cheap politics, only Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have done this, he said.

Singhvi said the Congress urged the EC to stop such violations and not just censure those violating MCC, but also dock those guilty of violation on the day of campaigning. If the person makes another violation, he/she should be barred from two days of campaigning, similarly three and four days for third and fourth violation, he said.

The Congress leader said the EC should also put a stop on the web series on Modi, citing the commissions order stalling a biopic on the prime minister.

A BJP delegation, led by defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman and senior leader MA Naqvi, submitted a memorandum to the EC over Gandhis false and baseless statement after the Supreme Court order on Rafale documents.

Rahul had erroneously said even on Thursday that Supreme Court has admitted to the fact that Narendra Modi siphoned off ~30,000 crore to his friend Anil Ambani. Where did that happen? Did Supreme Court ever say this? Sitharaman told reporters after meeting the EC.

The BJP told the poll body that Gandhis tweets and statements had been widely published in electronic, print and social media. He has made the above mentioned statements deliberately without verifying the truth and are not only false and baseless, but also presumptive in nature and clearly prohibited by the MCC, the party said.

The BJP delegation also demanded a re-poll in West Bengals Cooch Behar Lok Sabha seat alleging that the ruling Trinamool Congress indulged in malpractices during polling.

The polls were held there on Thursday with a voting percentage of 81%.

The delegation complained to the EC that rigging was carried out in booths where state police personnel were on guard, and the poll panel failed to provide adequate security to the voters.

The party also sought a re-poll in various polling booths of the districts of Senapatl, Ukhrul, Tamenglong and Chandel in Outer Manipur parliamentary constituency alleging unprecedented and disproportionate rigging and booth capture by NSCN(IM) cadres in the Naga dominated areas.

In several places in Ukhrul and Senapati, BJP workers, ADC members and leaders have been kept under house arrest by the NSCN (IM) cadres. They were not allowed to cast their votes or get their supporters to cast votes. At several polling stations, BJP polling agents were not allowed access to the polling stations, the BJP told the poll panel.

Jagdeep Chhokar of the election watchdog Association for Democratic Rights (ADR) also said the recurrence of MCC violations calls for stringent action.

These violations have become rampant and it seems the EC cannot keep up. They need to take exemplary action in some cases so that it deters the others, he said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched a scathing attack against the Left Democratic Front and the United Democratic Front at a rally in Kozhikode in Kerala and said that both the LDF and UDF had failed the people of Kerala.

For decades, the communist LDF and communal UDF have dominated Kerala politics, but have miserably failed the people of Kerala. BJP presents an alternative that is inclusive, democratic and compassionate. I especially urge first time voters to give us a chance so that we can provide the kind of governance you deserve, the prime minister said.

Alleging that both the UDF and LDF were different only in name, he said that both political outfits were the same in terms of their deeds.

Both have taken turns to loot the state. UDF has a full dictionary of scams, LDF is no better. Why have so many ministers resigned on corruption charges. Since May 2016, backdoor appointments have been taking place in PSUs, but there is no vision for industrial development in the state, he said.

Electing the Congress and Communists is like giving a licence to their leaders to engage in top-level corruption, he said, and then went on to refer to the recent IT raids being conducted in Madhya Pradesh, which he called the national Tughlak Road scam.

Referring to the Congress government in MP, the prime minister said that the party had got the opportunity to form a government in the state after a very long time and instead of focusing on development, the leaders had used their time to grab money.

He said that bags full of crores of rupees were found in the scam and mentioned that the money that was looted had been meant to provide nutrition to women and children.

Keralas peaceful culture is under attack from both the LDF and UDF. Kerala is a land of harmony but the Congress and UDF have brought in widespread political violence in the state. Several patriotic BJP and RSS workers have been attacked and killed for serving the nation. In Kozhikode, I want to ask outdated Communists and fake liberals why they are silent on the wave of political violence in the state? PM Modi said.

Drawing a parallel with Tripura he said, Look at what happened in Tripurathere too the fear of Communists was very high. They tried to hide their poor governance but the people saw through their farce and placed their faith in the BJP. From barely any presence in the state, we formed the government with a majority. The same thing will happen in Kerala.

Attacking the opposition parties on the issue of womens empowerment, the prime minister said, The Communists as well as the Congress have blatant double standards when it comes to empowering women. The so-called defenders of womens rights are at the forefront when it comes to holding on to the barbaric practice of Triple Talaq.

Talking about the UDF and LDF he said, They are trying to turn the state of Kerala into a laboratory of their mischief and in doing so they are insulting the sentiments of the people. They call themselves the champions of free speech and expression but they deny the same to the people of Kerala.

Urging the people of the southern state to vote for the BJP as an alternative PM Modi said, We believe in sab ka saath sab ka vikas. At the Centre, we do not see the caste and creed of the people while making policies. We make policies for all.

When the infrastructure of roads and Railways doubles, it connects every Indian. Development can never be seen through the narrow prism of votebank politics, the PM said.

In a veiled reference to Congress president Rahul Gandhi who is also contesting from Wayanad in the Lok Sabha polls, the PM said, Beware of those who come to Kerala not to serve the people of the state but to serve themselves. Top political leaders are coming to Kerala for their own political bailout. Ask them to show their credentials and what they have done in the constituency they belong to. They will have nothing to say.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has sought the governments permission to prosecute former Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University, Naseem Ahmad, and a serving professor, Nazim Ali, in connection with alleged irregularities in the appointment of an assistant finance officer in AMU in 2005.

Ahmad, a retired 1972-batch IAS officer, headed the institution between 2002 and 2007. The agency filed a case against him in January last year.

CBI officials familiar with the matter said the investigation against Ahmad is complete, following which a sanction to prosecute him has been sought from the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry. The ministry will forward the request to the President, who is the appointing authority of VCs in central universities.

Requesting anonymity, a CBI officer said the agency found that Ahmad was not competent to relax the qualifications for appointment of an assistant finance officer and that he deviated from the advertised qualifications and approved the candidature of Shakaib Arsalan without informing the AMU executive council.

Ahmad clearly violated the AMU Act, which states that the VC doesnt have discretionary powers, the officer cited above said.

The agency plans to file a charge sheet against Ahmad as soon as the prosecution sanction is accorded.

When contacted, Ahmad said, I have already told CBI what I had to. I will defend myself in the court.

Other than the HRD ministry, CBI has approached the Uttar Pradesh government seeking sanction against Nazim Ali, an economics professor at AMU who was registrar of the university when the alleged irregularities took place, former finance officer Yasmeen Jalal Beg and Arsalan.

Beg and Arsalan were named in the CBI FIR along with Ahmad, but Alis connivance in the case was unearthed during the probe, another CBI officer said on condition of anonymity.

When contacted, Ali said, I was made registrar on a temporary basis for a very short period. The CBI officer had asked me about this appointment but I dont even remember who this person is. I had no role in it.

Before filing the FIR, CBI initiated a preliminary enquiry (PE) in 2017, which revealed that the vacancy for the posts of assistant finance officer and deputy finance officer were advertised by AMU on January 1, 2004 and that there were 22 applicants. Of the 22 applicants, nine were found eligible for the post of assistant finance officer but Arsalan was not among them.

Arsalan submitted a representation that his degree of chartered accountant was not being considered equivalent to a post-graduate degree in the short-listing process, despite an AMU notification recognizing these degrees as equivalent. He then requested that he be considered for the interview scheduled on February 3, 2005.

Arsalans position was approved by the Vice-Chancellor on behalf of the AMU executive council.
Hot Shots, which moved to the Wheaton area last year from Lombard, is defending itself against a county lawsuit filed in February. In the suit, DuPage officials alleged that Hot Shots is actually an adult business and that an undercover sheriffs deputy paid to engage in sexual activities with employees.
The Election Commission of India came under fire from parties across the political spectrum for alleged irregularities in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections on April 11.

In many cases, the criticism had to do with malfunctioning of electronic voting machines (EVMs) at various places.

Andhra Pradesh chief minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo N Chandrababu Naidu called ECI the most useless institution in the country and a branch office of the (ruling) Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for turning the elections into a big farce.

Naidu claimed that 35% EVMs malfunctioned during the polling in Andhra Pradesh on Thursday, insisting that the voters had to suffer, and some of them waited till early hours of Friday to cast their votes.

Andhra Pradesh went to the polls for 175-member state assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats on Thursday. The ruling TDP fought an intense battle with the main opposition YSR Congress Party.

The EVM issue has become a sticking point in Indias politics with opposition parties, including the Congress, Samajwadi Party (SP), Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Trinamool Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (CPI), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), demanding, ahead of the elections, either a return to the ballot paper or increasing the number of voter verifiable paper audit trail machines (VVPATs) whose resuklts would be matched with those shown by EVMs.

Naidu said he would leave for New Delhi along with his party MPs and ministers on Saturday to file a review petition in the Supreme Court seeking an increasing in this number. The Supreme Court on Monday directed the EC to match 5% of VVPATs with EVM counts, following a petition filed by Naidu and leaders of 21 other opposition parties.

The organisation run by people like TN Seshan has to become puppet in the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Naidu told reporters in Amaravati. Seshan, a former Chief Election Commissioner was feared by political parties for his neutrality and no-nonsense style.

In Lucknow, BSP chief Mayawati claimed that EVMs malfunctioned in Uttar Pradesh during the first phase of polling, resulting in many votes cast going into the BJPs account.

I was told that in the first phase yesterday, police and official machinery was misused besides malfunctioning in EVMs as a result of which the votes being cast in favour of elephant were going in the account of lotus (BJPs poll symbol), she said in a statement.

Polling was held for eight seats of western Uttar Pradesh on Thursday.

Mayawati said the matter was brought to ECs notice on Thursday itself and the poll panel needs to find a solution to peoples satisfaction to ensure that there is no complaint in this regard in the remaining six phases of polling.

If the poll panel does not initiate any strict step, the ongoing election process would be of no use, Mayawati said and hoped that something concrete will be done in this regard.

The BJP too accused the ECI for failing to provide enough security to voters in West bengal where, it alleged, there was wholesale rigging. It demanded a repoll in the states Cooch Behal seat which saw a voter turnout of 81%.

Defence minister Nirmala Sitharaman said ECI wasnt acting against Congress President Rahul Gandhi for levelling charges against the Prime Minister concerning the Rafale Deal in which, she added, neither the Supreme Court nor the Comptroller and Auditor general had found anything wrong.I feel let down by the Election Commission. They looked the other way in spite of our complaints.
I was a minor then but now I feel that I should have stopped people as no human being should be killed for (killing) an animal, said one of the suspects in the lynching of 55-year-old Mohammad Ikhlaq in Bisada in September 2015. This is for the first time that any of the 18 suspects in the case have expressed remorse over the lynching.

Four years after the brutal murder of Ikhlaq, the incident and subsequent arrest of villagers continued to haunt the locals as they stepped out to exercise their franchise in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections on Thursday. Bisada comes under the Gautam Budh Nagar parliamentary constituency, where Union minister Mahesh Sharma is trying to retain the seat he won in 2014.

Now 20, the suspect, however, clarified that he did not attack Ikhlaq, he was only there. I was in jail for around a year and currently I am out on bail. I didnt attack Ikhlaq but I was there. I feel that the incident could have been avoided. But, our village will vote for the party who will stand for Hindus, he said.

We knew Ikhlaqs family well and never had any issues. Today, I feel that neither he was wrong nor were we, but still I feel extremely uncomfortable whenever I think about the incident. They were not our enemies. Everything happened in the spur of the moment. Nobody could think much at that time, he said.

UP chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had started his poll campaign from Bisada.

Villagers are still upset with the Samajwadi Party, which was in power in the state when the lynching took place. People are upset that while eighteen people, including three juveniles, were arrested from the village, the state government provided financial aid to Ikhlaqs family. Local residents also complained about media highlighting the incident too much.

Earlier our village was known for its Rajput community. Now, it is known for the murder of Ikhlaq, said Niranjan Singh, 50, who runs a sweet shop in the village market.

Of the 18 arrested, one suspect died in the jail while the remaining are out on bail. I was in jail for 21 months. But I never felt embarrassed because the villagers support us and know that we are innocent. We want a party which will stand for Hindus, said Shree Om, 26, one of the suspects in the case.

After being abandoned by his family, the house of Ikhlaq now lies unattended. Two other adjacent houses, which belonged Ikhlaqs brothers, have also been abandoned.

Two of my nephews have been booked for the murder of Ikhlaq. We were friends with Ikhlaqs family as they lived next door. I have caste my vote, keeping the rights of Hindus in mind, said Manju Devi, 42, who lives near Ikhlaqs house.

After a mob lynched Ikhlaq, 55, and beat up his son, Danish, on the suspicion of consuming and storing beef, his family shifted to Delhi to stay with Sartaj  Ikhlaqs elder son who is with the Indian Air Force.

The UP government later provided the family a flat in Greater Noida, but they continue to live in Delhi. Ikhlaqs family members have not visited Bisada in the last two years.
Jet Airways, facing its worst existential crisis in its over 25-year-old history, Friday extended suspension of its international operations till next Monday due to severe liquidity issues.

Incidentally, the stake sale bid invited by the SBI-led consortium of bankers, which manages the day-to-day operations of the airline, also closes by the end of the day Friday, after being extended by two days.

Airline founder Naresh Goyal, the UAE carrier Etihad Airways, Air Canada and the countrys national investment fund among others are reported to have submitted bids, according to media reports.

On Thursday, the airline had announced temporary grounding of its international operations - Jet was the largest international airline from the country till the financial crisis - when it had also suspended operations to the entire Eastern and Northeastern markets as Jet was forced to ground 10 more aircraft following default of lease rentals.

This has left Jet with no large aircraft while it had just 14 planes for domestic operations as of late Thursday.

Jet has decided to extend suspension of its international operations till Monday, due to severe cash crunch, airline sources told PTI Friday.

Meanwhile, the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) called an urgent meeting to discuss the crisis that Jet Airways, which is facing acute financial woes, is undergoing, news agency PTI reported.

Saying that the airline was working to minimise guest inconvenience, a Jet Airways spokesperson said, ...The airlines management and its key stakeholders including its consortium of lenders, continue to work closely towards resolving the current situation.

Jet was the largest domestic carrier operating in the international sector with a hub in Amsterdam, where a cargo agent had taken possession of an aircraft this on Tuesday demanding bill payment. This led to the cancellation of the Amsterdam-Mumbai flight that day.

Thursday Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled were cancelled for operational reasons, Je had said, adding it had also cancelled the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight Friday.

On the domestic front, all Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states were suspended till further notice. Following this, there would no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region, travel industry source had told PTI.

Jet had also said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stood cancelled till further notice due to operational reasons.As of Thursday, the airline had just 14 planes--way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back.

Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330-- generally used for long-haul international operations.

The remaining six planes were, three B737s, which are largely used for flying on domestic routes besides on short- haul international destinations and the rest three are regional ATRs.

With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola had told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet can continue to fly on international routes.

The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations
The Kashmir issue has to be settled and cannot keep boiling like it is as its resolution and peace with India will be tremendous for the region, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has said.

Khan made the remarks in an interview with the BBC, during which he also said the two neighbours could only settle their differences through dialogue.

His comments came as Indians began voting in a general election, weeks after a suicide attack in Kashmir by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed had triggered tensions.

Asked by the BBC what message he wanted to send to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and India, Khan said the Kashmir issue has to be settled and cannot keep boiling like it is.

The number one tasks of the two governments is how are we going to reduce poverty and the way we reduce poverty is by settling our differences through dialogue and there is only one difference, which is Kashmir, he said.

Khan also spoke about the dangers of confrontation between the two countries. Once you respond, no one can predict where it can go from there, he said.

Referring to New Delhis air strike on a JeM facility at Balakot after the Pulwama suicide attack and Islamabads retaliatory strikes, Khan said that if India had come back and then again attacked Pakistan, Pakistan would have no choice but to respond.

He added, So in that situation, two nuclear armed countries, I just felt it was very irresponsible.

Khan denied that Pakistan is allowing militant groups to operate from its territory and said no previous government had done more to clamp down on terrorist groups. However, he indicated everything depended on a solution to the Kashmir issue and if India and Pakistan can find that, everything else could be easily sorted out.

During an interaction with foreign media earlier this week, Khan had suggested there would be a better chance of peace if Modi is re-elected. Perhaps if the BJP a right-wing party  wins, some kind of settlement in Kashmir could be reached, he had said.
Kawal, a village in Muzaffarnagar that was the scene of the murders that triggered the 2013 riots in the district, went to the polls peacefully in the first phase of the national polls on Thursday. Peace has prevailed here since the riots though at a heavy cost.

The riots left 60 people dead and nearly 50,000 displaced. In August 2013, members of the Jat community of nearby Malikpura village, around 4 km from Kawal, allegedly killed Shahnawaz, a Muslim youth, after an altercation. In retaliation, a mob from Kawal killed two Jats  Sachin and his cousin, Gaurav. This sparked the violence.

In February, a local court sentenced all seven accused from Shahnawazs family to life in prison for murdering the two. On the other hand, Shahnawazs murder case involving six accused has made little headway. The police are yet to file charges against the six accused despite several judicial interventions, including non-bailable warrants and summons.

Mohammad Saleem, 65, Shahnawazs father, said he has lost everything. The Jats came and killed my son. None of my children was here except Shahnawaz. They had left for Chennai, where we had a small cloth business, when they got a call that my son has been killed, he said.

He added eight men killed his son. A mob killed two of their men while the others fled. Our boys have been sentenced for life. They include my own sons and the rest are my nephews. Meanwhile, nothing has happened to them. First, the court issued warrants then non-bailable warrants after which they were asked to be summoned. The police do not do anything.

Residents said there were other reasons for the altercation. There were rumours that Shahnawaz was involved in teasing the sister of [one of the slain Jats] which led to the altercation. No one would tolerate this. They were at fault, said Kirshanpal Saini, a local businessman.

Several leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), including Muzaffarnagar Parliament member Sanjeev Balyan, were named in 125 cases during the riots.

Muslims account for Muzaffarnagars 41% population while 57% are Hindus mostly from Other Backward Classes, Dalits, Kashyaps, Brahmins and Thakur communities.

Saleem said there has been a lot of political pressure on the police since the beginning. There is pressure on the police by Sanjeev Balyan and other BJP leaders. They are violating the court orders.

After the riots, Saleem said many Muslim families fled to nearby villages some of whom returned later. Kawal still has a sizeable Muslim population.

Saleem said there has been political pressure on the police.

They looted Muslim families homes. Some houses were even destroyed the day they did the last rites of the two Jat boys. The government put so much pressure on us, Sarkar ki takkar nahi li jaati kisi se. Sarkar ki takkar toh Sarkar hi le sake.( No one can challenge the government), he says.

BJPs Dr Sanjiv Balyan, who had won by a large margin in 2014, remains confident of the support of the dominant Jat population in the region. The community, however, is likely to split its vote with RJD chief Ajit Singh, former union minister and Jat leader. Balyan, on Thursday, also raked a controversy by alleging that the identities of burqa-clad voters was not being verified by Election Commission officials.

Though Kawal comes under the jurisdiction of Muzaffarnagar district, its Lok Sabha constituency remains Bijnor. As per the official census of 2011 and population data from 2019, Muslims, who form a significant 43.04% of the total population of Bijnor, play an important electoral roll.

In Bijnor, Congress fielded Nasimuddin Siddiqui, the former BSP MLA who was expelled by BSP chief Mayawati in 2017. Siddiqui is contesting against BSPs Malook Nagar and sitting BJP MP from the region Kunwar Bharatendra Singh.

Saleem says the Muslims of the village will support the Gathbandans candidate instead of Siddique.

Muslim and Hindu vote will go to the Gathbandhan. We suffered a lot under this government. Businesses were shut after demonetisation. No one is happy. I am an old man, I have seen life and have some experience. If this country has to be saved then the government must be changed. It is not about every household, this is not a fight of yours or mine, it is about the country. If this country has to be saved, Modi has to go, he says.

I was born here, he says with tears welling in his eyes.

My father, and brother were born here, my children will live here, and their children will be too. Is this not our country? If we will not love it then who will? What is Pakistan to us? What relationship do we have with them? No, this is our country, we have to die here and live here. We will sacrifice everything including our life for it, but will not let any misfortune come to it, he says.

Saleem has a little over a month to file an appeal against the district courts order.
Union minister Maneka Gandhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate for the Sultanpur, found herself in a controversy on Friday over what was seen as a veiled threat to Muslim voters. At an election rally in Muslim-dominated Turab Khani village, Gandhi said Muslims would not get jobs if they didnt vote for her. She also said she wouldnt like to win the election without the support of Muslim voters, which her son Varun Gandhi represented in the 16th Lok Sabha. A clip of her speech went viral on social media, and opposition parties slammed her for what they saw as a communal speech.

Hardeo Pandey, additional district magistrate of Sultanpur, said sub-divisional magistrate, Sadar, has issued Gandhi a notice directing her to submit a reply.

In her speech, Gandhi said: I am winning the election due to love and support of the people. I will not feel good about a victory without the support of Muslims. My feelings will get hurt. If Muslims then come to me asking for work, then I will think let it be, how does it matter? Dil khatta ho jayega (my heart will turn sour). After all, a job is a deal.

Gandhi said Muslim voters need to understand it was a give-and-take relationship. We are not progeny of Mahatma Gandhi. Its not that we keep giving and then losing in the election. When an election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work...we will have to see the polling. You all are all my well-wishers and remain my supporters. I do not see any divide, who belongs to which community. I see only pain, sadness and love. So it is for you to decide, she said.

Sultanpur is one of the 80 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh. Gandhi swapped her Pilibhit seat with Varuns Sultanpur. Sultanpur will go to polls in May 12.

This is not only a clear-cut violation of the model code of conduct but also an offence of criminal intimidation under the Indian Penal Code...and a corrupt practice under the Representation of the Peoples Act..., Samajwadi Party spokesperson Abdul Hafiz Gandhi said of the speech.

Maneka Gandhi could not be reached for a comment.

These days a terrified opposition fearing a certain loss is seeing communal in anything we say or do. I havent heard Manekajis speech but let me tell you one thing. She is no new comer but a veteran of many political battles and who commands great respect, UP BJP spokesperson Harish Srivastava said.
The Delhi government on Friday alleged that the North Delhi Municipal Corporation illegally demolished the second under-construction mohalla clinic in three days without prior notice in west Delhis Karol Bagh.

The latest clinic, which the Delhi government alleged was demolished late on Thursday night, was being built on Pyarelal Road in Karol Bagh. Earlier on Thursday, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government had accused the north civic body of illegally demolishing a mohalla clinic on Har Dayal Singh Road in the same locality.

North Delhi Municipal Corporation mayor Aadesh Gupta termed the governments allegations as false and baseless. Gupta said Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal was misleading the people with a new lie every day.

AAP MLA from Karol Bagh, Vishesh Ravi, said on Friday that the north civic body, which is helmed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), demolished an under-construction mohalla clinic on Pyarelal Road in Karol Bagh area on Thursday night. This is the second incident when the North MCD has razed a mohalla clinic in Karol Bagh area. The first one was pulled down around two days ago on Har Dayal Singh Road without any prior notice. This action is politically motivated, Ravi said.

He added that if the civic body was of the view that the ongoing construction work was not as per norms then they should have given a prior notice ordering construction activities to a halt. He said it was, however, illegal to go selectively after mohalla clinics in the name of encroachments.

Later in the day, Delhi health minister Satyendar Jain said on Twitter, BJPs MCD demolished another under-construction mohalla clinic at midnight. The Delhi government kept raising its voice against North MCDs malicious intent since yesterday.

A number of AAP supporters led by Ravi also staged a protest at the Karol Bagh zone deputy commissioner office on Friday. They submitted a memorandum to stop deliberately targeting AAP governments popular health-care scheme.

A part of the flagship project of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government, there are about 200 mohalla clinics across the city. Currently, three mohalla clinics are functional in Karol Bagh area and 10 more are being constructed at different places in the vicinity.

Addressing a press conference on Friday, Gupta said that it was false propaganda, which was being run on social media that the north civic body demolished mohalla clinics. The PWD has clear directions that wherever there is a road with a width of 60 feet or more permission to install a mohalla clinic has to be sort from the traffic police and municipal corporations. Why have they not obtained the no-objection certificates for the clinics? Gupta said.

Gupta alleged that the AAP government wanted to paralyse the Delhi civic bodies by withholding the funds meant for them.
One person was killed and three others were injured when a mob attacked them for allegedly cutting flesh of a dead bull in Jharkhands Gumla district, police said on Thursday.

Tension prevailed in Jairagi and Jurmu villages following the incident, which took place on Wednesday.

Deputy inspector general Chotanagpur zone, Amol V Homkar, who visited the spot on Thursday, said a special investigation team headed by the district superintendent of police was constituted to probe the matter.

He said a group of people spotted four persons cutting flesh of a dead bull and started beating them up. One of them, Prakash Lakra (50), died, he said.

The three who suffered injuries  Belasiyus Tirkey (60), Janavarius Minj (45) and Peter Kerketta (50), all from Jurmu village  were admitted to Gumla Sadar Hospital.

Police and district administration officials reached the spot to diffuse the situation.

Superintendent of police Anjani Kumar Jha said that he could not provide complete details of the case as the matter was under investigation.

Requesting the residents of both villages to maintain peace and harmony, the SP said that the people involved in the incident would be identified and arrested.

Police have seized samples of meat from the crime spot, and the same would be sent for forensic examination, he added.

An officer from Dumri police station said that a mob from Jairagi village had attacked the four as they were chopping the dead bull. Someone had spread a rumour that the bull was killed by them, the officer added.

(With agency inputs)
BJP president Amit Shah Friday described the recent Naxal attack in Dantewada, wherein a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed, as a political conspiracy and sought a CBI probe into it.

Addressing an election rally in Dongargaon town in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, he also sought to know whether Congress chief Rahul Gandhi supported National Conference leader Omar Abdullahs demand for having a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir. Our MLA Bheema Mandavi was killed in the Naxal attack. I pay my tribute to him and pray that the departed soul rests in peace. It was not a normal incident and it seems to be a political conspiracy, Shah said.

Mandavis wife has demanded a CBI probe into the attack. If the chief minister (Bhupesh Baghel) do not want to hide anything, he should get the incident probed by the central agency. A neutral probe should be carried out into the attack, he said.

On April 9, Mandavi, an MLA from Dantewada, and four police personnel were killed when Naxals blew up their vehicle with an IED near Shyamgiri village in the district.

Also Read: BJP legislator, 4 security personnel killed in Maoist attack in Dantewada

Shah also targeted Baghel for banning the CBI from investigating any fresh cases in the state without seeking the state governments consent.

Why is Bhupesh Baghel so afraid of the CBI? The Raman Singh government had never banned the CBI, he said.

Slamming Omar Abdullah over his demand for separate PM for Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP chief said Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker was alive.

Omar Abdullah has advocated for a prime minister in Kashmir. Do you think it is possible that a country can have two PMs? They wanted to separate Kashmir from India.

Rahul Gandhi is silent over it. He should clarify whether he supports or opposes Abdullahs statement, Shah said, adding, Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive. Taking a dig at the Congress, the BJP leader claimed sadness gripped the grand old party and Pakistan following the air strikes over terror camps in Balakot in retaliation to the Pulwama terror attack.

During the 10 years of UPA rule, when terror attacks happened, no reply was given. But when Pulwama terror attack took place, the Indian Air Force carried out air strike and demolished the terror camps inside Pakistan, he said.

When the entire country celebrated the air strike, there was grief in Pakistan and in the office of Congress, Shah claimed.

The BJP has fielded its state general secretary Santosh Pandey in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency. The constituency will go to polls in the third phase on April 23.
The Supreme Court on Friday declined an interim stay on the sale of electoral bonds, but ordered all political parties to provide details of the amounts they had received and identities of the donors in a sealed cover to the Election Commission of India by May 30, in a move towards greater transparency in political funding.

A submission by the Centre that the apex court should not interfere with the scheme at this stage and wait until after the 17th general elections that are underway to examine whether it has worked or not was ignored by a three-member bench comprising Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi and justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, who delivered the ruling a day after the first phase of polling .

Opposition parties praised the interim order, which came in response to a petition filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-government research organisation. Funding through electoral bonds has been tilted heavily in favour of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since this form of political funding took effect in January 2018. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) said the court order was a defeat for the BJP.

ADR claimed that electoral bonds promoted opacity in political funding by letting donors remain anonymous, and sought a stay on their sale.

The top court, while declining a stay, said the question of transparency required a detailed hearing to finally settle it.

The rival contentions give rise to weighty issues which have a tremendous bearing on the sanctity of the electoral process in the country.

Such weighty issues would require an in-depth hearing which cannot be concluded and the issues answered within the limited time that is available before the process of funding through the electoral bonds comes to a closure, as per the schedule noted earlier, it said, putting off the matter for final disposal at a later date.

Electoral bonds are issued by State Bank of India (SBI), for specific amounts ranging from ~1,000 to ~1 crore, for a certain number of days in a year. The donor, either an individual or a local or foreign company, buys the bonds and transfers them to the account of a political party, where they are converted into donations.

Only political parties registered under section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, and which have secured not less than 1% of votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, shall be eligible to receive electoral bonds.

The electoral bonds are valid for only 15 days from the date of issue. No payment is to be made to any payee political party if the bond is deposited after expiry of the validity period. The bond deposited by an eligible political party in its account is to be credited the same day.

On Thursday, the top court said it would examine in detail the changes made in income tax, electoral and banking laws to bring them in consonance with the electoral bond scheme and ensure the balance does not tilt in favour of any political party.

It also directed the finance ministry to reduce the window for purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days in April-May and said it would fix a date later for final disposal of ADRs petition.

Its a halfway house order, considering that the petition was filed 18 months ago and it came up for hearing now. As the court could not have had a full hearing, it has salvaged whatever is possible by ensuring that EC has the data on political donors and the commission can act upon the data if so ordered at a later date, said Sanjay Hegde, a senior advocate at the Supreme Court

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and the election commission have submitted divergent views in writing to the court on the subject of electoral bonds. The government justified the bonds on grounds that they promoted transparency in political funding.

The commission said the legal changes made to enable the sale of the bonds would have serious repercussions, making election funding opaque, and Indian elections vulnerable to foreign interference. Through its lawyer, Rakesh Dwivedi, it said secrecy allowed in the electoral bonds scheme legalises anonymity.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist), in a petition, claimed that the non-disclosure clause would undermine Indian democracy.

The government on Thursday told the court, through attorney general KK Venugopal, that it is not necessary for voters to know the identities of political donors. In my opinion, voters have the right to know their candidates. Why should they know where the money of political parties is coming from, he argued.

Donors have the right to privacy upheld by the courts, the governments top legal officer said, arguing that the main purpose of electoral bonds was to curb black money, or untaxed, unaccounted-for wealth .

The BJP was the biggest beneficiary of electoral bonds in 2017-18, receiving bonds worth around ~210 crore of the ~215 crore sold .The Congress, which earned ~199 crore of income in 2017-18, received only ~5 crore in the form of electoral bonds.

The BJP should reveal the murky flood of money which it earned through the 95% electoral bonds having gone to one party. Financial dominance of the single party decimates the very concept of a level playing field and, as I told you the other day, a level playing field is the heart of free and fair elections, said Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

BSP chief Mayawati called the Supreme Courts interim ruling a shameful defeat for the BJP which it said will now have to reveal from where it gets its major donations. The BJP has suffered another major jolt and a shameful defeat, she wrote on Twitter.

Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi took a swipe at the BJP and said the ruling would expose the nexus between the saffron party and its suited-booted friends.

We welcome this judgment coming from the Supreme Court. We have always maintained that transparency in political funding, transparency in governance must be adhered to, she told reporters.

The BJP said on Friday that it would wait for the final judgement of the Supreme Court on electoral bonds. Whatever is the order of the Supreme Court, it has to be complied with and it is always complied with. As far as issues raised by the government are concerned, they have been placed before the court for its consideration. And we will await the final judgment, BJP spokesperson and Supreme Court lawyer Nalin Kohli said.

(Agencies contributed to this report)
The allegations surfaced after the victim, now in her mid-30s, came forth after talking about assaults in counseling, she said at the February sentencing. She and the second victim, who are related, reported the alleged assaults to police in 2015.
Over 2,200 Sikh pilgrims from India arrived here on Friday to celebrate Baisakhi festival at Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal city of Pakistans Punjab province. The pilgrims, who arrived at Wagah railway station by two special trains, were received by Secretary of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) Tariq Khan and Pakistan Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Sardar Tara Singh.

The ETPB looks after the holy places of the minority community in the country.

Gurdwara Panja Sahib has a handprint of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, on a boulder of the shrine.

A total 2,206 Sikh pilgrims have arrived here from India on two special trains. After immigration they left for Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hasan Abdal in Attock district, about 40 km from Rawalpindi, ETPB spokesman Amir Hashmi told PTI.

Baisakhi is celebrated to mark the beginning of a new harvest season. Under the framework of the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974. Every year, a large number of Sikh pilgrims from India visit Pakistan to observe various religious festivals and occasions. He said special security arrangements have been made for them and elite force and rangers are deployed along with them for their security.

Hasmi said the pilgrims will also visit other gurdwaras in Punjab province, including Gurdawa Janamasthan Nankana Sahib, during their 10-day stay here.

They will leave for India on April 21, he added.

Talking to reporters, leader of the Indian delegation Sardar Varmindar Singh Khalsa expressed the hope that the government will issue visas to a large number of Indian Sikh pilgrims on the occasion of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. We are anxiously awaiting that occasion and hope the government will issue maximum number of visas to the pilgrims, he said, stressing that people-to-people contact between the two countries would help in improving ties between the neighbours.

India and Pakistan have announced opening the Kartarpur Corridor on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a rally in Keralas Kozhikode on Friday amid a controversy over BJP president Amit Shahs comparison of Wayanad, the second seat where Congress president Rahul Gandhi will contest the Lok Sabha election, with Pakistan.

All the 20 parliamentary constituencies in Kerala will go to polls in the third round of seven-phased Lok Sabha election on April 23. The votes will be counted on May 23.

The Prime Minister will be addressing workers of three north Kerala districts, Kozhikode, Wayanad and Malappuram at 6.00 pm during the rally named Vijay Sankalp. He is likely to talk about the Congress presidents choice of the second seat and the controversy over the Sabarimala temple.

Also read | Rahul Gandhi files nomination papers from Keralas Wayanad seat

The BJP chief had stirred a controversy with his comment in Nagpur two days ago that one cant make out whether Wayanad is in India or Pakistan, prompting the LDF to seek action against him for allegedly creating communal divisions.

He was referring to the green flags of the Indian Union Muslims League (IUML), a Congress ally in Keralas United Democratic Front, that greeted Gandhi on his road show in Wayanad last week. Some social media users had mistaken the flags to be Pakistans national flag.

The IUML is the second largest partner in the United Democratic Front (UDF), behind only the Congress, and wields influence in most of north Kerala constituencies including Wayanad. At least three assembly constituencies of Wayanad fall in Muslim-majority Malappuram district.

LDFs Wayanad constituency convener CK Sasindran submitted a complaint to the state chief electoral officer and chief election commissioner on Thursday, seeking action against Shah.

He insulted the people of Kerala and Wayanad. Wayanad has a glorious past. Its erstwhile king Pazhassi Raja was the first to take on the British in south India and got martyred. It is better for Shah to browse through the history of the district before mouthing strange things, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan said, slamming Shahs speech.

The Congress also criticised Shahs remarks.

Even a King Cobra doesnt have as much venom as Shah. He is diverting real issues by raising venomous propaganda, All India Congress Committee general secretary KC Venugopal said.

The Muslim League too attacked the BJP president, saying it doesnt need a certificate from a person like Amit Shah.

Modi may also talk about the Sabarimala temple issue. After the September 28, 2018, Supreme Court verdict, which allowed women of all ages to worship at Sabarimala hill temple, the state had witnessed widespread violence and sniffing an opportunity the BJP had hijacked the issue. Though the state electoral officer had warned not to use the religious issue for votes, it remained the most talked about topic in the state.

During his last visit to the southern state in February, Prime Minister Modi had attacked the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) government, saying its handling of the Sabarimala issue was a most shameful.

Thanks to the raging controversy at the hill temple at least six constituencies in the state are facing a stiff three-cornered contest for the first time. The emotional issue has stirred the political scene of the state but it remains to be seen how the desperate BJP, an also-ran in the state, will benefit from the churning.

Amit Shah is planning to camp two days in the state, including Wayanad. His dates will be announced by this weekend, said Krishnadas.

Rahul Gandhi will also visit Wayanad on April 16 and his sister and Congress general secretary on April 18.
The Supreme Court collegium on Friday recommended the elevation of Justice Aniruddha Bose, Chief Justice of Jharkhand High Court and Justice AS Bopanna, Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court as judges of the Supreme Court.

The two new appointments has now taken up the number of judges in the Supreme Court from 27 to 29.

The apex court has a sanctioned strength of 31 judges.

According to a resolution signed by the top five judges of the Supreme Court and published on its website, the Supreme Court collegium took into account merit, seniority and representation to high courts.

While recommending the names of Mr Justices Aniruddha Bose and AS Bopanna, the Collegium has taken into consideration, apart from their merit and integrity, combined seniority on all-India basis of Chief Justices and senior puisne Judges of High Courts. The Collegium has also kept in mind the desirability of giving due representation on the Bench of the Supreme Court, as far as possible, to all the High Courts, reads the supreme court collegium.

Justice Aniruddha Bose was appointed as a Judge of the Calcutta High Court on January 19, 2004, and was elevated as Chief Justice of Jharkhand High Court on August 11, 2018. Justice Bose stands at number 12 in the combined seniority of High Court Judges on all India basis.

Justice AS Bopanna was appointed as a Judge of the Karnataka High Court in 2006 and was elevated as Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court in 2018. Justice Bopanna stands at number 36 in the combined seniority of High Court Judges on all India basis.

This is the second time in the recent past that the Supreme court collegium - responsible for appointments to the apex court- has given the seniority principle a go-by while making appointments to the top court.

Earlier, on January 10, Justice Sanjiv Khanna who stood at number 33 in all india seniority was appointed as a Supreme Court judge. The appointment had stirred a controversy at that time.

Then the Bar Council of India and the Delhi Bar Association had issued strongly worded statements suggesting that the collegiums recommendation went against the seniority principle.
The Supreme Court on Friday turned down a plea for interim stay on electoral bonds. The top court directed the political parties asking them to furnish details of money received through electoral bonds and identity of the donors by May 30.

The details of donation received by the political parties have to be submitted in sealed cover. The court said the Election Commission of India will keep the record of the money received through electoral bonds by the political parties.

The Supreme Court also directed the finance ministry to reduce window of purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days in April-May. The court further said it would examine in detail the changes made in law and ensure that balance does not tilt in favour of any party.

Watch: Explained: Electoral bonds, the controversy & SCs latest order

The ruling came on a petition challenging the validity of electoral bonds, which allows anonymous donations to political parties. The government on Thursday had told the court that it is not necessary for voters to know the identity of contributors.

This is an interim direction with the top court stating that time is not sufficient to have a detailed hearing on the matter. The Supreme Court, however, observed that the contentions submitted by both parties give rise to weighty issues and have a tremendous bearing on the sanctity of the electoral process.

A bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi was hearing the plea filed by the CPI(M) and Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR), a non-governmental organisation. The bench concluded the hearing on Thursday and reserved its order on the plea.

The NGO, which has challenged the validity of the scheme, has sought interim relief, including that either the issuance of electoral bonds must be stopped or the names of the donors made public to ensure transparency in the poll process.

The CPI(M) in its petition claimed that the non-disclosure clause would add to the woes of Indian democracy. A bench headed by the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra issued a notice to the government in the case in October last year.

Also read: Supreme Court reserves order on electoral bonds after government says its a policy decision

On Thursday, the government had also seemed to suggest that such transparency in election funding was impractical. Attorney general KK Venugopal said donors would be victimised if their details are made public.

He had added that this was against the right to privacy asserted by the nine-judge bench judgment in the Puttuswamy case. The central argument of the governments top law officer was that the main purpose of electoral bonds was to curb the use of black money in elections.

Earlier, the AG argued that in the absence of state funding of elections, private contributions were the only source for political funding.

The Election Commission informed the bench that it has received information from political parties on how much donations they have received in the form of bonds and handed over details to the court.

The Election Commission and the central government have submitted their divergent views on the issue in writing to the court. The government has justified the bonds, saying it will promote transparency in political funding and according to the commission, the changes made in the law would have serious repercussions, making election funding opaque, and, further, making Indian elections vulnerable to foreign interference.

Electoral bonds were introduced after changes in the Finance Act 2017 as well as related amendments in the Income Tax Act, the Reserve Bank of India Act, and the Representation of People Act. Individuals, as well as foreign companies, can buy electoral bonds.

When the bonds were announced in 2017, the poll body differed with the Centres view that their introduction would make the process transparent.

The government notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018 on January 2, 2018. As per provisions of the scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person, who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India. A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.

Only political parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than one per cent of votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, shall be eligible to receive electoral bonds.

Electoral bonds shall be encashed by an eligible political party only through a bank account with authorised bank.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was the biggest beneficiary of the electoral bond scheme in 2017-18, receiving bonds worth around Rs 210 crore of the Rs 215 crore issued. As per the audit and income tax reports submitted by the party to the Election Commission, it earned Rs 210 crore through electoral bonds.

The Congress, which earned Rs 199 crore as income in 2017-18, got only Rs 5 crore in donations from electoral bonds.
A man, suspected to be a thief, died after he was allegedly bound and thrashed by workers at an outer north Delhi farmhouse he had entered early Thursday, the police said.

The police responded by nabbing three workers and booking them for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and illegal confinement. Gaurav Sharma, deputy commissioner of police (outer-north), said the suspected thief did not die of the beating.

Doctors have told us that he was a smack (heroin) addict and that he died after displaying withdrawal symptoms. The injuries on his body seem to be sustained from injuries days earlier, Sharma said.

The FIR registered after the death has mentioned multiple linear abrasions on the back of the dead man who remains unidentified, but is believed to have been in his mid-20s.

The alleged incident took place at a farmhouse in Ghogha village in Narela. According to Sharma, the farmhouse mainly serves as a wood godown and is fenced with wooden planks.

Thieves had struck at this farmhouse two-three times in the past. That had kept the workers alert, Sharma said.

The police subsequently registered a case and arrested two adult workers, Vinod and Rahul, and apprehended a minor.

On Wednesday night, the farmhouse was being guarded by three workers  a woman, her son and nephew. The thieves would sneak into the farmhouse at night and steal items after filling them in sacks. This has happened thrice in the past, the woman told a news channel.

She said the thieves struck again around 2.30am on Thursday. There were two men who had entered the farmhouse. We immediately switched off the lights and waited to catch them. They picked up a box from the farmhouse and were preparing to leave when I asked my son and nephew to catch them, the woman said.

One of the two suspects managed to escape, but the other was caught. We locked him up in a room, but did not beat him up, the woman said. He was beaten up by other workers who arrived in the morning, the woman added.

The FIR also mentioned that the suspect had been tied up during his time in captivity.

Finally, it was the supervisor of the farmhouse who called the police around 10am after arriving at the spot, the DCP said. But when were taking him away, his health deteriorated, because of which we rushed him to a hospital. He was declared dead on arrival, the FIR said.

Dr Manoj Jungwal, chief medical officer of the emergency department of Narelas Satyawadi Raja Harish Chandra Hospital, said the cause of the death would be known only after the autopsy report.

I was told that the patient had been beaten up and that he was also a drug addict. However, we cannot say how he died. It will be clear only after the autopsy report, Dr Jungwal said.

The incident comes less than a month after a woman suspected of theft at a factory in outer-north Delhis Samaypur Badli was allegedly lynched. At that time, another woman who had escaped a similar fate by locking herself in a bathroom, had been booked for theft and arrested.
Amid gloom-and-doom predictions on the impact of climate change, a global research study has, for the first time, projected that a global transition to 100% renewable energy is possible by 2050 across all sectors, including power, heat generation, transport and desalination, provided there is political will to achieve it.

The study underlines that it is possible to achieve the target under the 2015 Paris Agreement to keep rise in global average temperatures within 2 degrees Centigrade over pre-industrial levels.

The study, released on Friday by Berlin-based Energy Watch Group and Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology in Finland, has used a modelling exercise to simulate the complete transition to renewable energy in nine major world regions. The modelling computes the most cost-effective mix of technologies based on locally available renewable energy sources.

Dedicated to Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg and her #FridaysforFuture movement that calls for school strikes for climate, the study is based on four and half years of research and modelling computations by 14 scientists. It states that the transition will require mass electrification of all sectors.

Electricity generation in 2050 will be four to five times higher than in 2015, which will cut dependence on fossil fuels. In fact, electricity will meet 90% of the energy demand in 2050, compared to fossil fuels meeting 89% of the energy demand in 2015.

South Asian countries, including India, will have a world record share of 95% solar photo-voltaic electricity generation by 2050, according to estimates by the study. In Eurasia, onshore wind energy generation will be among the highest worldwide.

The study also suggests that a global energy system dependent completely on renewable energy will be cheaper than the current system, falling from approximately 54/megawatt hour (MWh) in 2015 to 53/MWh by 2050. This transition will lead to a decline in annual global greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector from 30 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2eq) in 2015 to zero by 2050.

The studys results show that all countries can and should accelerate the current Paris Climate Agreement targets, said Christian Breyer, professor for Solar Economy at Finlands LUT. A transition to 100% clean, renewable energies is very realistic  even today, with the technologies currently available.

The report shows that its technically and financially possible to transition to 100% renewable energy for all the sectors, especially when the costs are comparable to conventional energy systems. However, there needs to be enough safeguards to manage variability and the scale of deployment of these technologies, which will be critical to manage costs, said Karan Mangotra, associate director and climate specialist at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI).

The sectors which are harder to abate will find it challenging to go 100% renewable. The report, however, does give a direction that any country on the verge of making decisions on energy systems should look at investments in renewable energy, said Mangotra.

Heat supply in 2050 will be dominated by heat pumps (to move heat from one place to another using a compressor). The study also talks about synthetically produced gas and fuels to meet energy needs, transport and heating.

The study shows that the whole world can make the transition to a zero emission energy system. That is why all political powers around the world can and should do much more to protect our climate than they currently envision, said Hans-Josef Fell, former member of the German Parliament and president of the Energy Watch Group.

The study is significant because the community of climate scientists has been calling for such an unprecedented transition. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes Global Warming of 1.5 degree C report had said that countries have to make unprecedented transitions in all sectors to avoid devastating consequences of climate change and keep global warming within 1.5 degrees over pre-industrial levels. Commitments to cut down carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, submitted by 195 nations under the Paris agreement, will fail to keep global warming under 1.5 degree, the report had said.

Researchers have recommended enabling direct private investment in renewable energy, feed-in tariff (fixed prices to be paid to all renewable energy generators) laws, phase-out of all state subsidies to fossil fuel, and nuclear energy generation and introduction of carbon and radioactivity taxes to enable such a transition.
A day after an FIR was lodged in the 3,000-crore e-tendering case, three officials of Osmo IT Solutions were arrested by the economic offences wing (EOW) on Thursday, police said.

EOW superintendent of police (Bhopal), Arun Mishra, said police have arrested the firms directors Vinay Choudhary and Varun Chaturvedi, and its marketing head Sunil Golwalkar.

Mishra said the computer emergency response team report had pointed out that the tampering in the e-tendering had been done in the Osmo office. They are in our custody and we are questioning them. We have also seized hard disks and analysing the server data of the company, Mishra said, adding, the search operation was still going on in the offices of Osmo in Man Sarovar Complex, Bhopal.

The case relates to how some firms allegedly illegally managed to hack the e-procurement portal to see the e-tenders before the bid was to be opened and then make favourable changes in the bid.

EOW officials said that in 2016, OSMO IT Solutions had been asked to do a performance testing on why the e-procurement portal was working so slowly. For that purpose a Demo department was created in mid-2016 for training and practice for the department officials and bidders.

Later when the scam broke, an internal inquiry by Madhya Pradesh state economic development corporation (MPSEDC), who hosted the e-tendering portal, found that the user ID given to OSMO (PT_4) was used repeatedly to access the e-procurement portal to change the tender document and the CERT report verified that the changes had been made from the offices of OSMO.

In a related development, the EOW has decided to expand the scope of the e-tendering scam and has decided to scrutinize all the e-tenders that had been floated through MPSEDC since 2014 of all the government departments, which is likely to run into hundreds, said officials.

We are contacting all the departments and taking data from MPSEDC. So far we had been investigating only nine tenders from five departments, but since we are sure that a crime has been committed, it is logical that we expand the ambit of our investigations and include all e-tenders floated so far.

The e-tendering scam relates to how some firms allegedly illegally managed to hack the e-procurement portal hosted by the MPSEDC to see the e-tenders before the bid was to be opened and then make changes in the bid so that the favoured company illegally becomes the lowest bidder and gets the contract. In the FIR lodged yesterday, cases had been registered against five departments and eight companies, which included OSMO IT Solutions.
The Supreme Court on Friday issued a notice to West Bengal government on a petition filed by a member of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs accusing the local police of stopping customs officials from discharging their official duties.

Rajkumar Barthwal, who filed a PIL on behalf of the customs officials, narrated an incident of March 15 in which local police allegedly entered the restricted area at Kolkata airport and objected to the questioning of the wife of sitting Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee.

The local police allegedly forced the customs officials to let the woman leave through the green channel, meant for flyers who have no dutiable goods to declare. The customs department stopped her and her sister on their return from Bangkok and asked them to get their bags checked.

An SC bench agreed to hear the matter despite West Bengal raising preliminary objections. Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the state government, said a PIL cannot be filed by a sitting board member.

At this, the bench said: We want to go deeper into this. We want to know what is going on in West Bengal.
Union minister Smriti Irani on Friday hit back at the Congress following its attack on the BJP candidate from Amethi Lok Sabha seat over her qualification as mentioned in the affidavit filed along with the nomination papers for elections.

They have attacked me in every possible way in the last five years. There is no abuse that they have not hurled at me for being a woman. I only have one message for them, the more you will insult me, the more you attack me, the harder I will work against the Congress in Amethi, said Irani.

The Union minister was responding to the remarks made by Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, who targeted Irani drawing an analogy with a TV serial  Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, in which she played the lead character before entering politics.

Chaturvedi said, A new serial is going to come - Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi. Its opening line will be qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ek degree aati hai, ek degree jaati hai, bante affidavit naye hain (qualification changes with time, gets moulded in new forms, one degree comes and the other goes, new affidavits are signed).

The Congress leader was referring to the affidavit that Irani has submitted while filing her papers for the Amethi Lok Sabha seat on Thursday. In her affidavit, Irani said she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I) - a three-year degree course - from Delhi Universitys School of Open Learning in 1994.

In her affidavit for 2014 polls, Irani had reportedly mentioned her highest qualification as graduate from the Delhi University in 1994. This had led to a row with the Opposition parties contesting her claim.

Chaturvedi on Friday said, Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had been rubbishing Oppositions claim that she is not a graduate, yesterday accepted that she enrolled for an undergraduate course in Delhi University but did not complete it.

We have no issue with the fact that Smriti Irani is not a graduate. The issue here is that she has lied repeatedly on oath and to the courts, the Congress spokesperson said.

Irani is fighting against Congress president Rahul Gandhi at Amethi Lok Sabha seat. She has been campaigning against Gandhi accusing him of neglecting the development-related issues in his constituency.

Gandhi had defeated Irani in 2014 Lok Sabha election in a closely contested fight by a margin of 1.07 lakh which was considerably lower than his victory margin of 2009 when he secured 3.70 lakh more votes than his nearest challenger.

Irani has stepped her attack on Gandhi after he decided to contest from a second Lok Sabha seat in Keralas Wayanad parliamentary constituency. While Gandhi said he chose Wayanad to send a message of unity to the people of south India, Irani said the Congress president was filed nomination from a safe seat out of the fear of losing in Amethi.
Senior RJD leader Mohd Ali Ashraf Fatmi, who has represented Darbhanga Lok Sabha seat four times but has been denied a ticket this time, announced on Thursday he would file nomination for the Madhubani seat on April 18, the last date for filing of nominations for the fifth phase of Lok Sabha polls to be held on May 5.

Fatmi posted this message from his Twitter handle while making an appeal to his supporters to remain present along with him on the occasion.

Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP), a constituent of the Grand Alliance in Bihar, has already announced Badri Kumar Purbe as its candidate for Madhubani, which was allotted to the party as part of the seat deal along with Khagaria and Muzaffarpur.

From the NDA side, BJP has already announced to field Ashok Yadav, the son of sitting MP Hukmdeo Narayan Yadav.

Senior Congress leader and former union minister Shakeel Ahmad has also fuelled speculation that he would contest from Madhubani. Ahmads close supporters have claimed he is likely to file nomination as an Independent on April 16.

Fatmi, also a former union minister, was hopeful of contesting from Madhubani as a VIP candidate and had dropped hints to this effect at a large meeting of supporters in Darbhanga on April 3.

However, the VIP decided to field Badri Purvey, considered an RJD import.

Interestingly, in 2015, Fatmis son Dr Faraz Fatmi was elected MLA from Keoti assembly segment in Darbhanga district, which is part of the Madhubani parliamentary seat. He had defeated BJPs Ashok Yadav, who is now contesting from Madhubani as the NDA nominee.

A senior local leader of BJP and patron of Maa Janki Sena, Mrityunjay Jha, has also declared to contest as Independent from Madhubani.

Unlike Madhubani, Darbhanga seat has witnessed a smooth replacement of aspirants since Fatmi shifted focus to Madhubani in anticipation of seat swapping arrangement with RJD leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui, who currently represents Alinagar assembly seat in Darbhanga and has now been fielded by his party for Darbhanga Lok Sabha seat.

Sitting Darbhanga MP Kirti Azad, who quit BJP and joined Congress, has been fielded by the party from Dhanbad in Jharkhand.

Siddiqui is pitted against BJPs Gopaljee Thakur, a former MLA from Benipur.
An Indian Head Park man was killed after the SUV he was driving crashed into the back of a semitrailer truck late Thursday on the Tri-State Tollway in the Hinsdale-Western Springs area, according to the Illinois State Police.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday continued his spate of attacks on the Congress saying that the party is not concerned about protecting the interests of the nation. PM Modi said the people have given a new slogan, remove Congress to remove poverty.

In the past five years, the world has seen a strong and decisive government. Before that there was a remote-controlled government for ten years when news of scams was the order of the day, said PM Modi, who was addressing an election rally in Maharashtras Ahmednagar.

PM Modi said, Today, the world identifies the present government as a strong one. You are going to decide the furure course in the election. You have to decide what you want, an honest chowkidar or a corrupt naamdaar (a reference used by the prime minister for Congress president Rahul Gandhi). You have to decide if you will vote for the heroes of Hindustan or advocates of Pakistan.

In his election speech, the prime minister did not mention Balakot air strike by the Indian Air Force directly but made a veiled reference to it while targeting the Congress-led Opposition camp. He alleged that under the previous UPA government, permission was not given to the armed forces to attack terror camps across the Line of Control.

PM Modi also hit out at Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, an influential leader in Maharashtra and former defence minister. Pawars NCP was in alliance with the Congress in the UPA government. The two parties are contesting the Lok Sabha elections in alliance in Maharashtra.

The prime minister said the Congress and the NCP are supporting those parties advocating separation of Jammu and Kashmri from India and having two prime ministers in the country.

Taking a jibe at Pawar, PM Modi said, I have no hopes from the Congress but what has happened to Sharad Rao Pawar, who is from the land of legendary Chhatrapati Shivaji (a medieval ruler in Maharashtra)You quit the Congress on the issue of nationalism. For how long will you maintain silence on the demand for two prime ministers in the country?

PM Modi said his government has taken decisive action to combat terrorism. He said, Under Congress-NCP government, the nation only received pain. There were Mumbai terror attacks and Pune bomb blastsYou have seen the government of this chowkidar. Where have those bomb blasts gone?

The prime minister said, This chowkidar has created fear among the terrorists that a single misdeed by them will be accounted forthey will be taken out from the deepest hole.

Ahmednagar, the venue of PM Modis election rally, will go to the polls on April 23 in the third phase of the Lok Sabha elections. Maharashtra sends a total of 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha.

Polling for seven Lok Sabha seats of Maharashtra was held on Thursday. The state will vote in three more phases on April 18, April 23 and April 29 for the remaining 41 Lok Sabha seats. Votes will be counted on May 23.
PM Modi warns Kerala of people who are on bail and are coming to Kerala for bail out

Beware of people who are on Bail for Tax theft, they are coming to Kerala to get a bail out.

Ask them what they have done in their current seat when they demand your vote in Kerala : PM Modi in Kerala

Opposition non serious on national security: PM Modi in Kerala

Speeches of the leaders in opposition have been quoted in Pakistan to bring Indias image down. The opposition is actually non serious for national security: PM Modi in Kerala

Want to ask outdated communists & fake liberals, why are you silent on political violence in Kerala: PM Modi in Kozhikode, Kerala

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kozhikode, Kerala: I want to ask outdated communists & fake liberals, why are you silent on political violence in Kerala, what are your compulsions? I assure my fellow BJP Karyakartas, your struggles wont go in vain. Their bullying wont weaken us, reports news agency ANI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Kozhikode, Kerala: I want to ask outdated communists & fake liberals, why are you silent on political violence in Kerala, what are your compulsions? I assure my fellow BJP Karyakartas, your struggles won't go in vain. Their bullying won't weaken us pic.twitter.com/ohMiUbEzSR  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

People of Kerala will repeat Tripura in Kerala very soon: PM Modi in Keralas Calicut

In Tripura the government used every means possible to disturb BJP, they even used violence to keep there failures away from light, but the people of Tripura in polls kicked them out of power, BJP was given power with immense majority, same is bound to happend in Kerala: PM Modi in Kerala

LDF and UDF same parties with different names: PM Modi at Kerala rally

For years the kerala was dominated by left and congress. But both failed the state, Bjp is only alternate here. LDF and UDF their difference is only names.

Both looted the state. They were in race to indulge in corruption, development, there is no agenda for both. Many industrial units like Mavoor Gwalior Rayons were closed long back.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses poll rally in Keralas Calicut

Prime Minister Narendra Modi addresses poll rally in Kerala.

PM Modi addresses public meeting in Calicut, Kerala. Dial 9345014501 to listen LIVE. #ModiHiAayega https://t.co/7yoNhB5sQV  BJP (@BJP4India) April 12, 2019

PM Modi feels if he controls CM, he controls the entire state: Congress President Rahul Gandhi

Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Madurai, Tamil Nadu: Mr Narendra Modi feels that just because he can control the Chief Minister, he controls this state. We dont want to control this state, we want people of Tamil Nadu to control this sate.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Madurai, Tamil Nadu: Mr Narendra Modi feels that just because he can control the Chief Minister, he controls this state. We don't want to control this state, we want people of Tamil Nadu to control this sate. pic.twitter.com/kdXxvRskN9  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Demonetisation took away the money, NYAY will bring it back in economy: Congress President Rahul Gandhi

Demonetisation took money away from your pockets, which later resulted into unemployment in the economy. Factories had to be shut down as there was no money in the economy to buy commodities, but our NYAY scheme will return the money back to your pockets: Congress President Rahul Gandhi at Tamil Nadus Madurai

Congress President Rahul Gandhi addresses poll rally in Tamil Nadu

Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Madurai, Tamil Nadu: We say power must be in the hands of the people, they say power must be in the hand of one man.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Madurai, Tamil Nadu: We say power must be in the hands of the people, they say power must be in the hand of one man. https://t.co/4pxj7QKv4x  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

The fight is for the spirit of Tamil Nadu: Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Tamil Nadus Theni

It is the fight for Tamil Nadus spirit, it is fight between two visions.

Now it is upon people of Tamil Nadu what they chose, either the vision which sees Tamil Nadu being ruled from Nagpur or the one where People of Tamil Nadu decides their policies: Congress President Rahul Gandhi

Next budget of Congress government dedicated to farmers: Congress President Rahul Gandhi

In 2019 will do some dramatic things for the farmers of the nation, we want to remove fear from their hearts, we want farmers to understand that their government stands for them.

If we come to power our next budget will be dedicated to the farmers: Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Tamil Nadus Theni

Lok Sabha election is about nation first or family first: PM Modi

While speaking at Gangavathi rally in Karnataka, prime minister Narenda Modi said that this Lok Sabha elections is about nation first or family first.

Karnatakas CM disrespected our soliders: PM Modi

Karnatakas CM said that those who dont get food twice a day, they join Indian forces. Now tell me, isnt that disrespectful to our soldiers? Is this how you are going to ask for votes?

On May 23, fir ek baar Modi sarkar: PM

May 23 is the day when Modi sarkar will return once again and the farmers will get their dues.

They are pushing the Pakistan propaganda so that it harms Modi: PM

They are pushing the Pakistan progaganda so that it harms Modi. But there is a wave across the country favouring the return of his government.

In 2014, Deve Gowda had said he will quit politics if Modi becomes PM: Narendra Modi

HD Deve Gowdas son said that if we form government in the Centre again, he will quit politics. In 2014, Deve Gowda himself had said that he will quit politics if Modi ji becomes the PM, but did he quit politics? so, will his son quit politics, too?

Krishna Tirath quits BJP, rejoins Congress

Former union minister Krishna Tirath has quit BJP and rejoined Congress. She had joined BJP in 2015, before which she was a member of Congress.

Delhi: Former Union Minister Krishna Tirath quits BJP,rejoins Congress pic.twitter.com/zIrO0FuuMl  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Will give youngsters 3 years to register startups: Rahul Gandhi

We will encourage youngsters to establish startups. We will provide three years to the youngsters, they can get their startups registered once they are established, said Rahul Gandhi in Tamil Nadu.

We will bring about the real made in India, made in TN: Rahul Gandhi

Narendra Modi has hurt you over the years. He has given a slogan made in India, but all we see is made in China. It was all a farce. We will bring about the real made in India and made in Tamil Nadu, said Rahul Gandhi while addressing a public rally in Salem.

Modi government not interactive: Rahul Gandhi

One morning, Modi decides to destroy the economy, and brings about a note ban. Did he as anyone? No. Because even a 12-year-old would have told him that there is something wrong with the decision, said Rahul Gandhi in Tamil Nadu.

Our manifesto not prepared in closed room: Rahul Gandhi

When we were in the process of preparing out manifesto, someone mentioned Anitas name. The young girl who ended her life because of the NEET issue. So our manifesto talks about ensuring no more Anitas end their lives. We let the people of Tamil Nadu decide. Our manifesto was not prepared in closed room, said Rahul Gandhi at his rally in Salem.

Not only Karunanidhi, but voice of Tamil people insulted: Rahul Gandhi

Stalin mentioned that his father was insulted. But if anyone sits down and reflects, they will realise that they insulted not only Karunanidhi, but the voice of Tamil people, said Rahul Gandhi.

PM takes a jibe at Congress Sharad Pawar

I have no hopes from the Congress but what has happened to Sharad Rao Pawar, who is from the land of legendary Chhatrapati Shivaji (a medieval ruler in Maharashtra)You quit the Congress on the issue of nationalism. For how long will you maintain silence on the demand for two prime ministers in the country? PM Modi said during his rally in Ahmednagar.

All but Rahul, Pak hailed PMs decision to avenge martyrs: Amit Shah

After Narendra Modi government avenged 40 of our soldiers, only two units were disappointed. One, Rahul Gandhi and company, and two, Pakistan. Should we talk to those who bombed 40 of our soldiers? Or should we simply bomb them? Whatever Congress partys policy is, we believe those who shoot at us deserve to be bombed, said Amit Shah at his rally in Keonjhar, Odisha.

Amit Shah addresses public meet in Odisha

The Modi government has worked a lot for the development of Odisha. Make Narendra Modi the Prime Minister again, and he will establish the much awaited steel plant in Keonjhar, said Amit Shah in Odisha.

TN will no more be ruled from Nagpur : Rahul Gandhi

We will not allow Tamil Nadu to be ruled from Nagpur. The state will be ruled from here, and Stalin will be the chief minister of the state, said Rahul Gandhi while concluding his address to public in Tamil Nadus Krishnagiri.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Krishnagiri: We will never ever let the people of Tamil Nadu be ruled by Nagpur. Tamil Nadu is going to be ruled from Tamil Nadu & MK Stalin is going to be the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. pic.twitter.com/GJlZ8qs3Lk  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Will give 33% reservation to women in central jobs: Rahul Gandhi

A quota is promised in Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and State legislature to women. As many as 33 percent of the central jobs will be reserved for women. Our alliance is the alliance of the people and we believe in social justice and secularism, said Rahul Gandhi.

All poor families will get 72,000 yearly: Rahul Gandhi

 72,000 will be given to all poor families every year under the scheme Nyay Yojana. The money given to these families will be given to the women of these households. There will be no discrimination on region or language, said Rahul Gandhi.

I want to carry out surgical strike on poverty: Rahul Gandhi

Modi had promised 15 lakh in everyones bank account. But I knew it was not possible and wanted to know how much could actually be put into everyones account. I wanted real numbers, not big theories. I am not for destroying the economy. I want to carry out a surgical strike on poverty, said Rahul Gandhi while addressing a public meeting in Tamil Nadu.

BJP indulges in hate politics against people of TN: Rahul Gandhi

BJP wanted to indulge in hate politics against the people of Tamil Nadu. Without love, we cannot win the hearts of the people of this state, said Rahul Gandhi in Krishnagiri.

Congress siding with those who want to separate J&K from India: PM

The Congress is siding with those who are saying they will separate Jammu and Kashmir from India. But I do not expect anything better from the Congress, as they are the ones who gave birth to this separatist ideology, said PM Modi in Ahmednagar.

PM Modi in Ahmednagar: Congress, NCP aise logon ke sath khade hain jo keh rahe hain ki J&K ko Bharat se alag kar denge. Mujhe Congress ke logon se koi umeed nahi hai kyunki ye paap unhi ki paidawaar hai. (1/2) #Maharashtra pic.twitter.com/7uC41nIDhz  ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Voters will not accept Congress weak stance on terrorism: PM

I want to ask the first time voters whether they accept the previous governments weak stance on terrorism. Only if our country remains safe, will the countrymens future be secure, said PM Modi at Maharashtra rally.

10 years of remote government were difficult: PM in Ahmednagar

The world witnessed a decisive, strong government in India in the past five years. Before that, ten years of remote government were difficult to survive...now people have seen the real face of the Congress party, said PM Modi at Ahmednagar rally.

PM Modis rally begins in Ahmednagar

PM Modis first public meeting of the day began at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra. Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, started the event by addressing the huge crowd gathered for the rally.

May 19 last day of polling, results on May 23

The last day of polling is on May 19, and the counting of votes for all 543 Lok Sabha seats will be taken up and results declared on May 23. A total of nearly 900 million people are eligible to exercise their franchise in the seven-phase general election.

First phase of polling largely peaceful: EC

The Election Commission of India (ECI) said the first phase of elections, in which 140 million voters had been eligible to participate, was largely peaceful and the voter turnout varied.

Amit Shah to campaign in Odisha, Chhattisgarh

BJP national chief Amit Shah will address public meetings in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. The first one is scheduled at 12:30 pm, and the second at 4 pm.

Rahul Gandhi to address public meets in Tamil Nadu

Congress chief Rahul Gandhi is going to address four public meetings in Tamil Nadu. The first one is scheduled at 11 am in Krishnagiri, second at 1 pm in Salem, third at 3:45 pm in Theni and fourth at 5:30 pm in Madurai.

PM Modi to hold rallies in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is going to address four public meetings today. The first meeting is scheduled to be held at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra at 11 am, second at Gangavathi in Karnataka at 2 pm, and third at Kozhikode in Kerala at 6.30 pm.
A day after officially calling off a potential alliance with the Congress in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Thursday said it will fight the ongoing Lok Sabha elections in Haryana with the Jannayak Janata Party (JJP).

The two parties sealed a sea-sharing deal for Haryana on Thursday night, senior leaders of the AAP said, adding that a formal announcement on the same will be made on Friday.

Senior leaders from both the parties said they have plans to contest on all 10 seats in Haryana without disclosing the exact seat sharing formula. As far as our strongholds are concerned, I would list Gurgaon (Gurugram), Faridabad, Ambala and

Karnal, senior AAP leader Gopal Rai said.

Gurgaon (Gurugram) and Faridabad are satellite towns for Delhi and they have a mixed composition of voters, similar to Delhi, in terms of class, caste, groups, etc. We can apply the same poll strategies there. In Ambala and Karnal, we have a huge base of cadres, who have done intensive groundwork in the past year. So, the party stands a good chance, he said.

Confirming the alliance, JJP leader Digvijay Chautala said, Our ideology matches with that of the AAP, not the Congress. Now, that the negotiation for seat sharing with Congress has been called off, we will definitely support the AAP.

The two parties are expected to come up with a list of candidates by April 15, a day before the window for filing nominations open in the state, AAP leaders said.

While some AAP leaders said that the seat sharing deal was settled at 6:4, some others said it was 7:3. In both cases, the AAP keeps the larger share. Leaders of JJP did not comment on the formula.

Haryana goes to the polls in a single phase on May 12, the same day as Delhi. Currently, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance has seven seats in Haryana, followed by the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) on two seats and the Congress on one.

On Wednesday, senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh had said that the party will not tie-up with the Congress anywhere, including

the national capital.

According to him, it was Congress refusal to offer seats to the AAP in Haryana which had acted as the proverbial last nail in the coffin for the talks of an alliance between the two parties.
The Congress on Thursday finalised its candidates for four out of the seven seats in Delhi for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, senior party leaders said.

Delhi Congress in-charge PC Chacko on Thursday evening said the partys chief election committee had decided on candidates from Chandni Chowk, Northeast Delhi, Northwest Delhi and New Delhi constituencies.

In a meeting of the committee, convened by Congress president Rahul Gandhi, it was decided that senior leader Kapil Sibal will represent the party from Chandni Chowk, Ajay Maken from New Delhi, JP Agarwal from Northeast Delhi and Raj Kumar Chauhan from Northwest Delhi .

Apart from Chauhan, who is a former legislator from Mangolpuri in Northwest Delhi, all other candidates have formerly been MPs from their respective constituencies.

In 2014, Sibal, Maken and Agarwal had lost their seats to BJP candidates.

The names have been finalised for four seats. The names for the remaining three seats are yet to be decided. That will be done in a day or two, Chacko said.

He said candidates will son be named in the remaining three seats South, West, and East Delhi.

The leaders could not come to an agreement for the remaining three seats. But that will be done soon, he added.

Chacko had earlier met the partys state president, Sheila Dikshit, at her residence on Thursday to shortlist candidates.

The names were presented before the election committee.

He said the omission of three seats was not indicative of a decision on the alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in the elections. Chacko said, I do not want to talk about the alliance unless a decision is taken. But it is protocol that we submit the names of Congress candidates from all seven seats.

Although Congress leaders are keeping quiet about the fate of the alliance, AAP leaders Wednesday said talks with the Congress had been called off after the latter refused to take the seat-sharing partnership beyond Delhi.

The AAP has officially opted out of an alliance with the Congress. We will contest the Lok Sabha polls on our own. This message has been conveyed to the Congress now, senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh had told reporters Wednesday.

The AAP wanted an alliance with the Congress in Haryana, Punjab and Delhi, and were willing to offer three seats to

Congress in Delhi in return for two seats for itself and three for Jannayak Janata Party (JJP) in Haryana. The Congress, however, was willing to offer AAP and JJP one seat each in Haryana.

Senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel also met Dikshit at her residence Wednesday and asked her to wait for two more days before going ahead with Plan B in case the alliance with the AAP does not work out
The Congress on Friday announced that it will contest all seven Lok Sabha seats of Delhi alone. Party in-charge for Delhi PC Chacko blamed the Aam Aadmi Partys leadership for the failure of not having an alliance against the BJP in the national capital.

Even today, we are ready for an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party with seat sharing arrangement of three seats to the Congress and four to them, Chacko told a press conference in New Delhi.

Chacko said that in the talks with the AAP, represented by Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, the two parties arrived at an understanding on seat-sharing.

In the last election held in Delhi, the Indian National Congress received 21 per cent vote while the Aam Aadmi Party secured 26 per cent votes. Together we won 47 per cent votes. On pro rata basis, the Congress should get 3 seats while the Aam Aadmi Party should contest on four seats in Delhi. This was the understanding in talks with Sanjay Singh, he said.

Chacko said after pact was arrived at during the talks for alliance, the AAP leadership suggested to have seat-sharing understanding in Haryana and Punjab also. But the Congress did not agree to the AAP condition saying that the political situation is different in those states.

The day before yesterday, a statement from the AAP came that the Congress is not ready for an understanding. This is not true, said Chacko adding, We are compelled to go on our own as AAP is going back on its stand.

The Congress leader admitted to the opposition by the Delhi unit of the party. Delhi Congress chief Sheila Dikshit had expressed her reservations over alliance talks with the AAP, which came into existence opposing the grand-old-party during UPA regime over the issue of Lokpal and fight against corruption.

Sheila Dikshit, who was the Delhi chief minister for 15 years, was defeated by AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal in 2013 Delhi assembly polls. The AAP, which came second in 2013, formed a government with outside support of the Congress. The government, however, lasted only 49 days.

In the next assembly election held in 2015, the AAP won 67 of 70 assembly seats in Delhi. The Congress failed to win a single seat while the BJP came second with 3 MLAs in Delhi assembly.
Sporting a Tommy Hilfiger T shirt, Qaiser Imam, 23, looks like any other youth you see in cities. But Alam, an intermediate pass out, has no employment, except tilling his fathers land at Gachipara, around 15 km from the town of Kishanganj, the bordering district of Bihar which also shares border with Nepal and Bangladesh.

Alam is not alone. Manzar Alam, 27, a graduate in political science, looked for a job, but failed. Today, he runs a small grocery shop and doubles as a marginal farmer for a living. I tried for jobs, but did not get one. I have lost all hope now, he says.

Kishanganj, where Muslims account for 70% of the population, is one of the poorest districts in India, having a per capita annual income of Rs 9,928 (as per figures of economic survey 2018-19) with a literacy rate of 57.04%. The total number of voters in the Kishanganj Lok Sabha constituency is 16.52 lakh.

The constituency goes to polls on April 18, but the voters are hardly excited about it. We will remain poor, no matter how many elections are held. Nobody thinks of farmers, is a common refrain.

And farm distress is visible as one travels into the interiors of the district. A hub of jute production till mid-80s, abundantly supplying fibre to jute mills in Kolkata, the district has seen a slow and steady decline of the patwa cultivation due to poor returns and high input cost. An attempt by former MP Syed Shahanawaj Hussain to start a jute processing plant in 2003 has come a cropper. The project never took off. Locals say the businessmen lobby scuttled the project as it would have given more money to farmers and cut the middlemen.

At Arrahbari, 22 km from Kisganganj town and located in Pothia block under Thakurganj assembly segment bordering Nepal, farmers admit they are no longer in jute business. They now sow maize as it is more profitable and easy to sell. Abdool Gafoor, 55, sitting in a small hutment, misses his days as a jute grower, having inherited it from his father.

Now, I grow maize on my six bighas of land. It pays me more than jute, though the rates are not good for the cash crop, he says.

The central government does not pay attention to farmers needs. They talk big but never deliver, he says.

What have they done? The rate of paddy has not gone up. I barely managed to get Rs 800 per quintal as against the market price of over Rs 1,500. The same is the case with maize. I get only 700-800 per quintal whereas the input cost is heavy, says Mazrul Haque, a small farmer also having around six bighas of land.

Haque, however, does acknowledge that PACS (primary agricultural credit societies) run efficiently and he and many others got their payments quickly by selling their produce in last couple of years. He also has good words to say about roads in the district and entire Seemanchal, also comprising Araria Purnea and Katihar, crediting Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for the improvement.

Incidentally, the Dr Kalam Agricultural college, a dream project of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar established in 2015 and named after Indias 11 President Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, stands as a new landmark just 5 km away..

The institute envisages to provide new agricultural knowhow to increase production of conventional crops, along with tea, pineapple and jute, to local farmers in Kishanganj. The district, once promised to be developed as tea hub like Siliguri in neighbouring West Bengal, has not yet become a big success though tea plantations have sprung up in large parcels of land.

Prices of raw tea leaves did shoot up to Rs 18 per kg around five to 10 years back, but now it only sells at Rs 9-10 per kg. Tea is quite an expensive crop and plantations require big money, said, Irfan Ali, who has a small plantation on three acres. Irfan lives near the institute at Arrahbari. Many farmers say higher government subsidy could promote the cash crop.

Across the district, sentiments among the farmers are gloomy, a reason perhaps why the district continues to witness mass migration to cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Every household in this districts has one or two males living outside. There are no jobs and agriculture is not remunerative, says Akbar of Chakla panchayat close to Bahadurganj , another assembly segment of Kishanganj constituency. The other segments are Baisi, Amour , Kochadhaman.

Congress candidate and sitting Kishanganj MLA Dr Mohammed Jawaid says, The Modi government is anti-farmers. They have only compounded the woes of farmers by bringing in wrong policies leading to rise in price of fertilizers and other material while support price has been low. Poor areas like Kishanganj are facing the brunt, he said.

Former MLA and candidate of AIMIM ( All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) Akhtarul Iman is more blunt. The BJP and Congress have never cared for Seemanchal, including Kishanganj. They only cared for votes of Muslims. Farmers here have been reeling under poverty for decades with illiteracy and migration rampant. Infant mortality is high and people here die of various ailments due to poor water quality. I am raising these issues, he said.

However, JD(U)s candidate Syed Mahmood Ashraf maintains that the BJP government at the Centre and JD(U)-BJP dispensation in Bihar had ushered in development by giving all help to farmers.

Our government has taken many steps to ameliorate the condition of farmers, like setting up of Dr Kalam agricultural institute or strengthening the PACs. Farmers in Kisganganj and adjoining areas are now getting a good price for maize, with Supual becoming a hub. There will be more infrastructure in place for giving market to raw materials like jute, tea and maize in coming days, he said.

As the election date draws near , farmers like Abdool Ghafoor appear to take the promises with a pinch of salt. They will only seek votes just before the poll day and then they will vanish, he says, showing the disinterest among common voters in the constituency, with a vast rural populace dependent on their farms battling poverty and backwardness amid a picturesque landscape with flowing rivers and Himalayas close by.
Did you get Rs15 lakh in your accounts? Are your children among the two crore the government promised jobs to? Have your farming incomes doubled? Have the costs from cooking gas to diesel come down ?, asks Supriya Sule, two-term Member of Parliament (MP) of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and daughter of party chief, Sharad Pawar, to a small crowd of primarily women in Bhor city, 197 km from Mumbai.

Majority of women mouth a no, prompting Sule to urge them to not vote for a government that has only lied to them. This battle is between their lies and our truth, she stresses.

The campaign is starting to pick up and Sule is leaving nothing to chance as her Baramati constituency and home turf of the Pawars goes to polls on April 23. In Bhor, her campaign meetings include many women voters and she is clearly popular among them.

Supriyatai has been very accessible. Everyone in Bhor knows their MP, because she has been visiting us often in the past five years. I admire the way she speaks and conducts herself. I dont think there is any doubt about the work she has put in as a Parliamentarian. She will win, but it is not going to be easy poll battle for her this time, said Snehalata Gadkar, a government servant and among those who had gathered for one of the meetings to hear Sule. Gadkar, is clear that she will vote for Sule.

Before Sule made her political debut from Baramati constituency in Pune district in 2009, her father was the MP from the family borough since 1991. In the 2014 Modi wave, however, Sules victory margin came down to around 69,000 votes, from more than 3 lakh.

As Baramati constituency goes to polls on April 23, there many like Gadkar, who say 2019 battle may also not be a walkover for Sule.

Heres why.

Sule is pitched against Kanchan Kul, wife of Rashtriya Samaj Paksha (RSP) legislator from Daund Assembly segment (falls within Baramati Lok Sabha constituency), Rahul Kul. Kanchan is fighting on the BJP ticket and has clearly been propped up by the party to pose a challenge to the Pawars domination. While Kanchan is a political novice, she is married into a well-known local political family, associated with the NCP in the beginning. Kuls father-in-law, Subhashrao and mother-in-law, Ranjana, have been NCP MLAs from Daund. In Daund, the poll battle is being described as one between Baramatis daughter versus Daunds daughter-in-law.

Rahul Kul, who is directing his wifes campaign, has an axe to grind against the Pawars. In 2009, he was defeated as a NCP candidate by a party rebel and independent, following which he quit the party.

Many here, including people from the Congress, are fed up of his politics of propping up some leaders and then ensuring they fall when its not convenient for the Pawar family. On ground, we have direct support of three legislators and indirect support of other opposition leaders as

well.

The Baramati constituency in Pune district includes six Assembly constituencies of Bhor, Khadakwasala, Daund, Indapur, Purandar and Baramati. Of this, the BJP-Sena-RSP have three seats and NCP-Congress have three seats.

He added, But, more importantly, other than Baramati city, the Pawars have not been able to develop this constituency. We stand for inclusive and all-round development here. My wife may be a political novice, but she comes from a political family.

Sule told HT, Let the best candidate win. I am going to people on the strength of the work I have done in the past five years and I am proud of it. My constituency is among the best performing across the country for almost all government schemes. With the PM planning a campaign rally in Baramati, I know BJP is putting all its might here.

Shiv Sena minister Vijay Shivtare, who is an MLA from Purandar and an opponent of Pawar, is also helping Kul in her campaign. The BJP has also reached out to senior Congress leader Harshvardhan Patil who lost the last Assembly election to the NCP candidate in Indapur segment under Baramati constitiency. The NCP chief Pawar too held a meeting with Patil to seek his support for Sule.

There is indeed a perception that the patronage of Pawars has been more for their home town of Baramati than other areas and this could help the Kuls.

For the first time, we have a contestant from Daund, the wife of a local MLA, who is popular. When we compare Daund to Baramati, we realise our taluka is not as well developed vis-a-vis industry, colleges, schools etc. So, Kul will get support definitely. I am not sure if it is enough to topple Supriyatai, who is a good contestant. Her victory margin will definitely reduce. This is not an easy contest, said Vinod Shelke, a Daund farmer and a restaurant owner here.

Shelke has not yet made up his mind about who to choose.

While Modi factor continues to have some traction in the urban areas here, there is no doubt that the poll battle in Baramati will be fought for or against Sule.

There is indeed a perception that patronage of Pawars has been more for their home town of Baramati than other areas and this could help the Kuls.

For the first time, we have a contestant from Daund, wife of a local MLA, who is popular. When we compare Daund to Baramati, we realise our taluka is not as well developed vis a vis industry, colleges, schools etc. So, Kul will get support definitely. I am not sure if it is enough to topple Supriya tai, who is a good contestant. Her victory margin will definitely reduce, this is not an easy contest, said Vinod Shelke, a Daund farmer and a restaurant owner here.

Shelke has not yet made up his mind about who to choose.

While Modi factor continues to have some traction in the urban areas here there is no doubt that the poll battle in Baramati will be fought for or against Sule.
Describing the Election Commission as the most useless institution in the country and a branch office of the BJP, Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said the Commission had failed to conduct hassle-free elections in the state.

Andhra Pradesh went to polls for the 175-member state Assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats on Thursday. The ruling TDP fought an intense battle with main opposition YSR Congress.

I have never seen such an institution in my four decades of political life. The Commission has been completely subverted by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The organization run by people like T N Seshan has become a puppet in the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the chief minister alleged, addressing a press conference at Amaravati.

He said if nobody contests, the EC might even go to the stage of helping one to become a MLA if he offered 5 crore as bribe. He vowed to fight it through all legal platforms.

Naidu said he would be leaving for New Delhi along with his party MPs and ministers on Saturday to file a review petition in the Supreme Court for increasing the number of VVPATs for counting. The apex court recently directed the EC to count five per cent of VVPATs, following a petition filed by Naidu and leaders of 21 other parties.

He said he would also meet all the national leaders to pitch for his demand to conduct the elections using ballot papers. He also announced that he would stage a dharna, if necessary, in front of the EC, in protest against the Commissions failure to conduct smooth elections.

Stating that the country had lost faith in the EVMs, Naidu pointed out that from the first hour of polling, there had been large scale complaints on malfunctioning of EVMs. As many as 4,343 EVMs had gone out of order. You sent people in the name of repairing them or replacing faulty EVMs. Who are these repairers? What are their qualifications? Have you appointed them? Do you have powers to appoint? What is the guarantee that those men did not manipulate the EVMs in the name of repair? the TDP president questioned.

He also charged the EC with exercising its abnormal powers in transferring the state chief secretary, intelligence chief, three superintendents of police and several police officials, without any rational explanation. He questioned how the EC could appoint L V Subrahmahmanyam, an IAS officer who was a co-accused in YSR Congress president Y S Jaganmohan Reddys criminal case as chief secretary. How can Subrahmanyam go to the Director General of Police when the polling was going on? he asked.

Naidu pointed out that due to the ECs failure in arranging fool-proof EVMs and inefficient staff, people had to stand in queues for several hours. In some places, polling did not commence till afternoon. When the law provides for re-poll in such booths where EVMs do not function for several hours, the EC did not bother, he alleged.

He pointed out that there was unprecedented violence at many places, resulting in the death of two persons. Many contestants were attacked by workers of rival parties, the EC did not make adequate arrangements for protecting law and order. If people dont want us, they will vote against us. But who are you to misuse your powers to work for our defeat? he asked.

Naidu, however, expressed the confidence that his party would come back to power despite all the alleged misdeeds of the EC. People stood against the atrocities of the EC. They asserted their right to vote. They returned to the polling booths twice, thrice, to thwart the mischief of EC officials, he claimed.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday made a strong pitch for MK Stalin, the leader of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) as the next chief minister of Tamil Nadu at an election rally in the state.

Gandhi said Stalin will head the next government in Tamil Nadu, which will vote for a new assembly in 2021. The Congress is fighting the Lok Sabha polls in alliance with the DMK on 40 seats in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

Our alliance is the alliance of the people of Tamil Nadu. Both parties believe in freedom, justice and freedom of speech. We will never ever allow the people of Tamil Nadu to be ruled by people from Nagpur, said the Congress president taking a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological connection with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. The RSS is headquartered in Maharashtras Nagpur.

Gandhi said, Tamil Nadu is going to be ruled from Tamil Nadu. Stalin is going to be chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu goes to the polls on April 18 for 39 parliamentary seats in the second phase of the seven-phased Lok Sabha elections. Simultaneous polling for 18 assembly constituencies in the by-election will also be held the same day.

In his election speech, Gandhi reiterated the Congresss promise to give 33 per cent reservation to women in central government jobs and quota in legislatures if the party comes to power in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.

We are going to give reservation to women in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha after we form government at the Centre. We are going to reserve 33 per cent central government jobs for women, said Gandhi, who was addressing an election rally at Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu is witnessing a straight contest between the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-BJP- Pattali Makkal Katchi alliance and the DMK-Congress alliance.

The AIADMK, which is in power in Tamil Nadu, is contesting on 27 of 39 Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Nadu. The BJP has fielded candidates on seven Lok Sabha seats while the PMK is contesting in five parliamentary constituencies in the state.

In the Opposition camp, the Congress is contesting nine Lok Sabha seats in Tamil Naud while the DMK has fielded its candidates on the rest 30 seats in the state. The Congress is contesting the lone Puducherry Lok Sabha seat.
Film: Gangs of Madras

Director: CV Kumar

Cast: Priyanka Ruth, Ashok Kumar, Velu Prabhakaran, Daniel Balaji, Aadukalam Naren

Rating: 2/5

Well-known producer CV Kumar, who took the directorial plunge a couple of years ago with the highly ambitious Maayavan, returns with an extremely gritty and violent tale of revenge and survival in his second directorial venture Gangs of Madras, which is centred around a woman (Priyanka) who goes all out to avenge the murder of her husband. As much as the film tries to take itself seriously, one rarely gets invested in the story of Rasia, despite Priyankas earnest efforts to sell her character.

Also read | Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyon Aata Hai movie review: A pointless, witless remake

The plot revolves around Ibrahim (Ashok Kumar) and Rasia (Priyanka) who meet in college, fall in love and get married. Fresh out of college, Ibrahim lands a job to handle the accounts of Rawther (Velu Prabhakaran), one of the citys most-wanted gangsters. Everything is going well for Ibrahim and Rasia, who are madly in love and dream of living a life filled with promise.

But life takes a detour when Ibrahim is killed in a shootout, and Rasia learns through a close friend that he was killed for a reason. The incident leaves Rasia filled with vengeance and whether or not she takes revenge on all those responsible for her husbands death forms the crux of the story.

For a story about gangsters and shootouts, Gangs of Madras never succeeds in creating the right mood to get us invested. Unlike most gangster films, the fact that this tale of revenge is headlined by a woman makes it interesting but not stand-out, and this is precisely why the film falls flat even before it can take off. Priyanka gives it all to her character and she is really convincing as the woman who is consumed by vengeance, and wont stop at anything till she makes those pay for her husbands death. Unfortunately, the writing is a big a let-down and no other character other than Rasia is fully developed.

Gangs of Madras stars Priyanka Ruth in the lead role.

For instance, Rawther is introduced as the most-dreaded gangster but theres no back story to his rise and how he built his empire. Everything is so conveniently written, were forced to believe whatever gets showcased on screen. After her husbands death, Rasia leaves to Mumbai where she takes someones help to get herself trained. The training process lasts a song and upon her return to Chennai, she goes on a killing spree. Is it really so easy to lay a finger on ruthless gangster? Rasia kills two policemen in cold blood in public and theres no investigation into the killings.

The film is graphically violent. After a point, the violence turns into torture and its excruciatingly painful to watch. Kumars influence of Quentin Tarantinos Kill Bill is evident through the lead character Rasia, but shes no Uma Thurman. Gangs of Madras can be best described as a poor mans Kill Bill that meets torture porn.

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The United States, France and the United Kingdom are reported to have posted a deadline for China to lift its hold on their proposal for a UN Security Council body to blacklist Masood Azhar, founder of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad, which has claimed responsibility for the Pulwama terror attack in February.

The three powers want China to allow the UNSC designation of Azhar tentatively by April 23, or they will move to the next step by moving a formal resolution for discussion, vote and passage at the UNSC, according to a report in The Times of India, which could not be verified independently.

In response to a request for comment, the United States said, We decline to comment. A response was awaited from the permanent mission of France, which had taken the lead in introducing the fourth proposal yet to designate the JeM terrorist. The US and the UK jointly sponsored the proposal.

Moved before the 1267 sanctions committee of the UN Security Council after Pulwama, the proposal stalled after a technical hold was put on it by China, which blocked all three previous attempts acting on behalf of Azhars host country Pakistan. Under the rules, China could keep the hold in place for six months and then three more.

But, out of patience, the US, the UK and France are determined to force Chinas hand this time by going around the sanctions committee, whose opaque operational rules of confidentiality and anonymity allowed China to block the designation without explaining its reasons or taking responsibility for it.

The three powers moved a draft resolution before the Security Council late last month to trigger informal discussions on the designation with the understanding amongst themselves that China cannot be allowed to take forever to decide. It had a choice now: relent, or protect a terrorist from designation in full view of the world.

Beijing bristled at being pushed and complained the three powers were setting a bad precedent by going around the sanction committee. But it was met with even more determination and resolve.

The United States said it was prepared to utilize all available resources to blacklist Azhar.

Discussions have been on since. And Beijing has claimed it is working hard to resolve the issue. Some progress has been reported indeed but the US, the UK and France and India, which is not a member of the UNSC, are unwilling to let Beijing run the clock on it, as it has done before.

The next stage of the plan put into motion by the three powers after China put the hold early March was to move a formal resolution before the

and seek an open debate and vote, in a rare move to blacklist a man whose outfit was designated a terrorist organization in 2001.

There has been no reaction from China yet to the reported ultimatum.
The United States turned down nearly a third of all new H-1B petitions processed in the first quarter of the 2019 cycle, continuing the squeeze on the work visa programme that started in 2017 with the Trump administrations Buy American, Hire American executive order.

An analysis of the database of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) by the National Foundation for American Policy, a non-partisan think tank, showed 32 per cent of initial (technical term for new applications as opposed to extensions or continuing) H-1B petitions were denied in the first quarter of the 2019 cycle (October-December).

The denial rate was 24 per cent in fiscal year 2018, quadrupling from 6 per cent in 2015. It never exceeded 8 per cent from 2010 to 2015, the Obama years. The first-quarter denial rate for FY 2018, to match the first quarter rate for 2019, was not available.

According to the analysis, all of the 27 companies listed by the USCIS as top H-1B employers, which include leading American IT firms such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple, saw an increase in their H-1B denial rates for initial employment over the 2015-2019 period. All but 4 of the 27 companies also saw an increase in denials for initial employment between FY 2018 and the first quarter of FY 2019.

The full trend will be known for FY2019 after September.

If the goal of the Trump administration is to make it much more difficult for well-educated foreign nationals to work in America in technical fields, then USCIS is accomplishing that goal, said Stuart Anderson, executive director of the National Foundation for American Policy.

Indians are the single-largest beneficiaries of H-1B visas, accounting for more than 70 per cent of 85,000 visas granted every year; 65,000 in the open category and 20,000 for foreign students enrolled in US institutions of higher education. Petitions for the 2020 cycle were accepted earlier this month and the cap was reached within five days, as before. Applications for advanced degree group are still being accepted.

USCIS spokesperson Jessica Collins said in a statement, As part of our efforts to fulfil President Trumps Buy American and Hire American executive order, USCIS has made a series of reforms designed to protect US workers, increase our confidence in the eligibility of those who receive benefits, cut down on frivolous petitions, and improve the integrity and efficiency of the immigration petition process.

It is incumbent upon the petitioner, not the government, to demonstrate that he or she meets the eligibility under the law for a desired immigration benefit. USCIS continues to adjudicate all petitions, applications, and requests fairly, efficiently, and effectively on a case-by-case basis to determine if they meet all standards required under applicable laws and regulations.
Ecuadors decision to abruptly end Julian Assanges seven-year asylum in its London embassy on Thursday followed a long deterioration in relations, driven in part by suspicions he was secretly fuelling corruption allegations against President Lenin Moreno.

British police on Thursday arrested the WikiLeaks founder, who sought asylum in the Andean nations diplomatic mission during the government of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa - who saw Assange as a hero for leaking secret U.S. documents.

By contrast, Moreno took a dim view of Assange when he took office in 2017, ordering the Australian hacker to cut back his online political commentary, stop riding his skateboard in the halls of the embassy and clean up after his pet cat.

WATCH: UK arrests Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange after Ecuador rescinds asylum

Morenos government accused WikiLeaks of being behind an anonymous website that said Morenos brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a U.N. agency.

Moreno denies wrongdoing.

The leaked materials, dubbed the INA Papers, contained private photographs of Moreno and his family. After the release of the materials, Moreno said that Assange had no right to hack private accounts and phones, without directly accusing him.

WikiLeaks tweeted about the reports but, in messages and statements to Reuters, strongly denied that Assange was responsible for the leaks or had anything to do with their initial publication.

Embassy Behaviour

Ecuadorean government figures on Thursday publicly described what they called Assanges unacceptable and ungrateful behaviour in the embassy. The government said it had spent $6.2 million on his upkeep and security between 2012 and 2018.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said Assange had been using a mobile phone that was not registered with the embassy and had warned the ambassador in January that he had installed panic buttons that he would activate if he considered his life at risk.

Its strange that Mr. Assange has insisted on being the victim, Valencia told Ecuadors National Assembly.

The interior minister, Maria Paula Romo, told reporters on Thursday that Assange had been allowed to do things like put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature.

Valencia told the congress that embassy cleaning staff described improper hygienic conduct throughout Assanges stay, adding that a lawyer representing Assange had attributed the issue to stomach problems.

Lawyers for Assange did not respond to requests for comment. Vaughan Smith, a friend and founder of Londons press Frontline Club who visited Assange late last week, told Reuters he believed the faeces allegation was false.

Julian has been under stress but seemed in a balanced frame of mind every time I have seen him. It doesnt seem in character, Smith said.

Staffing Change

Friends of Assange who visited him inside the embassy over the last several months say that since Moreno became president, almost the entire embassy staff was replaced.

The foreign ministry named a new ambassador after Moreno took office and fired one official, Fidel Narvaez, seen as close to Assange.

While embassy staffers were friendly to Assange during Correas presidency, Morenos new diplomats were polite to visitors but hostile to Assange, his friends said.

In early February, according to Ecuadorean government memos released by Assanges supporters, Ecuador complained to Assange that he had deliberately pointed a studio lamp at a security camera the embassy had installed in a room where Assange was receiving visitors.

Later that month, the ambassador sent Assange a memo complaining that he had shown once again an unacceptable behaviour by playing a radio loudly while meeting visitors. This action disturbed the work being carried out by the embassy, the ambassador said.

Assange had taken refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault investigation that was later dropped.

U.S. officials announced after his arrest on Thursday that he had been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, paving the way for his extradition.

Correa, in an interview with Reuters in Brussels, said Moreno had given Assange to his executioners.

Asked whether he had worked with Wikileaks to leak the INA documents, he did not directly respond. He said the documents showed the rottenness within Morenos family.

I apologise on behalf of the Ecuadorean people. A government like that - such a treacherous, treacherous president - does not represent us, Correa said.

Valencia declined to comment on criticisms of Moreno.

Correa is embroiled in a legal battle with prosecutors pursuing a case involving the kidnapping in 2012 of an opposition lawmaker. An court in Ecuador last year ordered him to be imprisoned pending a trial and issued an international arrest warrant. Correa denies the charge.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)
China will dispatch millions of youth volunteers in the next two years to develop villages, state media says, raising the spectre of Chinese leader Mao Zedongs methods when he launched the Cultural Revolution five decades ago, triggering massive social and economic upheavals.

The Communist Youth League (CYL) announced this week that more than 10 million young volunteers will be mobilised to help promote cultural, technological and medical development in rural areas by 2020 and to fill in the vacuum in villages created by the outflow of talented and young workers.

These young volunteers will be sent to rural areas, especially old revolutionary base areas, regions of extreme poverty and areas where ethnic minority groups live to promote local development and improve personal skills, read the document released by the CYL, and quoted by the nationalistic tabloid, Global Times.

It was referring to the regions, which were the bases for the Communist Party of China (CPC) before the emergence of new China.

The report did not say how the volunteers will be chosen or persuaded or whether it will be mandatory for some to head to the villages.

The rising level of urbanisation in China has made more young people migrate from rural areas or less-developed regions to developed areas that have better resources and better income. This drains rural areas of their labour force, the report said.

The Global Times article itself referenced the Cultural Revolution while talking about the new move.

In the 1960s-70s, under the influence of the Cultural Revolution, (1966-76) the Party sent millions of urban teenagers to rural areas to live and participate in the so-called Down to the Countryside Movement, it said.

Eminent historian of modern China Zhang Lifan said while speaking to the Hindustan Times that the new decision  like the decision taken by Mao five decades ago  could have been prompted by the economic situation.

I commented during the Two Sessions (Parliament session in March) this year that the biggest problem in China at the moment is employment. The Sino-US trade war and changes in economic structure have led to the collapse of a large number of enterprises. The so-called farmers returning to the countryside to start a business argument is to cover up unemployment, Zhang, considered an outspoken critic, said.

This years college graduates of 8.6 million (the number was 8.2 million last year) were unable to find employment and have to get to the countryside. In the Cultural Revolution, it was also because of the fact that there were tens of millions who could not find employment, he added.

Zhang said the move is similar to the Cultural Revolution but President Xi Jinping lacks the strength of Mao. Xi himself spent seven years in a village in the poor northern province of Shaanxi from the age of 16.

It is like the move to the countryside in the Cultural Revolution. But the leader lacks the strength of Mao. If a revolution is launched, it will lead to the CPC losing power, he said.

Users on the Twitter-like Weibo social platform reacted warily, news agency AFP reported.

Many evoked the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when Mao sent millions of young intellectuals into often primitive conditions in the countryside, while universities were closed for a decade, the report said.

Has it started again? wondered one user named WangTingYu.

We did that 40 years ago, wrote Miruirong.

Sometimes history advances, sometimes it retreats, noted KalsangWangduTB.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has piled more pressure on Prime Minister Theresa May to tender an apology on behalf of the state for the April 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, for which she and her ministers have so far confined themselves to expressing deep regret.

Corbyn wrote in a letter to May on Thursday that it is not enough to condemn the massacre and express shame. He called upon her to tender a full, clear and unequivocal apology in the House of Commons earlier this week.

Corbyn wrote: In government, Labour would apologise for this shameful moment in our history. And as Sikhs across the globe celebrate the creation of the Khalsa and organise events for the first ever UK Sikh Heritage Month, it is time for the UK government to address this formative moment in our shared histories and make a full apology for the massacre.

The centenary of the event that many historians consider a turning point in Indias freedom struggle is being marked by several events in India, the UK and across the globe, including one in the House of Lords on Saturday, for which leading individuals have travelled from India.

Corbyn wrote to May: The apology should be tp the victims of the massacre, their families and descendants, the people of Punjab and the worldwide Sikh community, recalling that two years ago campaign group Sikh Federation UK had demanded such an apology.

The UK government has had plenty of time to reflect on an appropriate response, he wrote, also referring to foreign secretary Jeremy Hunts observation in October 2018 to a parliamentary committee that he would reflect on the issue of tendering the apology.

On Wednesday, May made a brief statement in the House of Commons, reiterating the governments long-standing expression of deep regret.

She said: The tragedy of Jallianwala Bagh in 1919 is a shameful scar on British Indian history. As her majesty the Queen said before visiting Jallianwala Bagh in 1997, it is a distressing example of our past history with India.

We deeply regret what happened and the suffering caused. I am pleased that today the UK-India relationship is one of collaboration, partnership, prosperity and security.

Raj Loomba, member of the House of Lords, and the Jallianwala Bagh Centenary Commemoration Committee, have organised an event on Saturday in the parliament complex, for which individuals such as Vikramjit Singh Sahney, president of the World Punjabi Organisation and Manjit Singh GK, former president of the Delhi Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, have travelled from India.
US defense department on Thursday told lawmakers that India conducted an anti-satellite test because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space, adding to growing support and acceptance of a development that raised concerns in some quarters about the spatial debris it left behind.

The first lesson form the Indian ASAT is a simple question  why they do they do that, General John Hyten, head of the US strategic command, said in response to a question at a congressional hearing about Space Force, a newly created wing of US military favored by President Donald Trump.

Its a simple answer, the general added, they did that because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space and  they feel they should have a capability to defend them from space.

Before the general could proceed to his second point, Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat who had initiated the exchange with a question, offered, a justification that India itself hadnt used or cited yet publicly. I think they have a second concern as well. There are no rules about such tests as of now. and there will one day be rules and as often it happens, the senator continued, and when these rules are generally written they benefit those that already have the technology.

And then we establish non-proliferation rules for everyone that doesnt, he said drawing a parallel, without naming it, to the Non-Proliferation Treaty that India has refused to sign because it allowed countries with nuclear weapons at the time discussions began about the pact  1967 is the cut-off year  to continue to hold on to them as officially declared nuclear-weapon states, and prohibited the rest from acquiring them. India first tested a nuclear weapon seven years after, in 1974.

They are concerned abut the weaponization of the space and they want to get in their first, the senator said, so when rules are created, they (India) are grand-fathered in (exempted from a new law or regulation) . Senator Kaine is a strong supporter of US-India relations, and had begun his questioning by calling India an ally, though it is not one by a treaty or a pact.

General Hytens second point was about setting up some king of international norms of behavior in space and those norms should begin by addressing the question of debris  I dont want more debris.. He went on to suggest that though the United Nations has been the forum where these issues have been debated so far, the United States should take the lead, along with its allies.

Issues about debris were pointed out by many US government agencies in response to the March 27 testing. NASA tracked 400 pieces of them and said 60 of them were larger than 10 cm in diameter and 24 of them had risen above the apogee of the International space station, increasing the risk of it being hit by debris by 44%.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine called the testing a terrible, terrible thing and suspended ongoing cooperation with ISRO. But he was out of step with the rest of the Trump administration. the very next day, he informed the Indian space agency the cooperation will continue uninterrupted, per guidance from the White House.

The state department had set the tone saying i the first US response that it took note of Indias statement regarding debris and that stated, As part of our strong strategic partnership with India, we will continue to pursue shared interests in space and scientific and technical cooperation, including collaboration on safety and security in space.

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Disastrous midterm campaign tour was a shortcut to impeachment

ABOARD THE BALTIMORE & OHIO train departing Buffalo, New York, for President Andrew Johnsons 1866 mid-term campaign swing, General of the Army Ulysses S. Grant was drunkand not mildly, but falling-down, all-the-way-in-the-bag drunk. A companion saw Surgeon General Joseph Barnes go up to Grant to feel his pulse; Barnes found the Civil War hero so drunk he tumbled down on him. Gideon Welles, Johnsons dyspeptic secretary of the Navy, reported that as the train was rolling to Cleveland, Ohio, Grant became garrulous and stupidly communicative. Grants aide, Maj. Gen. John Rawlins, and New York Tribune reporter Sylvanus Cadwallader, both of whom previously had seen him in this condition, quickly separated him from the presidential party. Gen. Grant had to be taken into a baggage car; compelled to lie down on a pile of empty sacks and rubbish and remain there, Cadwallader later reported. Gen. Rawlins and myself stood guard over himevery mile of the way; locked out all callers for him; and protected him from observation as far as possible.

Grant and his minders were part of the contingent accompanying President Andrew Johnson on his Swing Around the Circle, an August 27-September 15, 1866, midterm campaign outing designed to promote the presidents moderate, conciliatory Reconstruction policies. Johnson and his entourage traveled from Washington, DC, to New York City, north to Buffalo, west to Chicago, and south to St. Louis,

returning to the capital by way of the Ohio Valley. The first few stops went well but gradually audiences grew more hostile, baiting the thin-skinned Johnson. Defensive, taking out personally against opponents, Johnson traded catcalls with hecklers, horrifying onlookers with behavior no president ever had displayed. Johnsons vitriol on the Swing Around the Circle foreshadowed the rage-ridden final two years of his accidental presidency.

At Cleveland, rather than risk the effects on Grant of an impending two-day run to Detroit, Michigan, Barnes and Rawlins bundled the general onto a vessel that would get him to Detroit overnight. This may have been Grants last drunk, almost certainly triggered by his entanglement in an epically ill-conceived political campaign excursion.

Many Radical Republicans had greeted Johnsons ascent by assassination with optimism, thinking he would go along with their program for enfranchising formerly enslaved African-Americans and putting the former Confederacy through a reconstructive, even punitive shake-up. In the question of colored suffrage, the President is with us, Massachusetts Republican Senator Charles Sumner wrote a colleague. I had looked for a bitter contest on this question, but with the President on our side it will be carried.

Johnson instead preferred reconciliation. A longtime loather of his home regions planter class, the president enjoyedperhaps too muchseeing circumstance turn his former social betters into supplicants. Observed Ralph Waldo Emerson, Andrew Johnson, wont to look up to the planters as a superior race, cannot resist their condescensions & flatteries [and was] an easy victim for their caresses.

As Johnson showed willingness, even eagerness, to pardon former Confederates, the Republican-controlled Congress balked, during 1866 overriding 15 of 29 Johnson vetoes. These included the Civil Rights Act, which declared all persons born in the United States, regardless of race, color, or previous condition of involuntary servitude, to be citizens. That April 9, 1866, override vote was the first of an American president in more than 20 years. On July 16, 1866, Congress also overrode Johnsons veto of the Freedmens Bureau Reauthorization Act, which granted aid to former slaves, such as food and housing, oversight, education, health care, and employment contracts with private landowners. Major white supremacist violence erupted across the South, notably in New Orleans. On July 30, whites there attacked African-Americans protesting recently imposed Black Codes, as postwar legislation that curbed blacks civil rights were known. Rioters injured 150 blacks, 44 fatally, and killed four whites.

In spring 1866, Navy chief Welles and Secretary of State William Seward, looking ahead to the fall elections, undertook to put Johnson in front of voters. The two planned a politicking foray to Chicago. The nominal goal was to unveil a memorial to Democrat Stephen A. Douglas, who had died of typhus in 1861; the real point was to rally voters to the presidents cause in November. Johnson took to the idea, pushing for more whistle stops as a means of enlisting northern Republicans to support him. He saw the junket as a way to exploit tensions between the partys Radical wing and more moderate members to his own benefit.

Claiming not to care who rode along, only that we should have plenty of company, Johnson nonetheless latched onto the idea of inviting Ulysses Grant. The newly appointed general of the Army had been refusing to align with either the White House or Congress. Johnson aggressively wooed the Union hero, even crashing a reception the Grants were holding and inserting himself between the general and his wife as they were greeting invited guests.

A wary Grant dodged Johnsons overtures about climbing onto the bandwagon, finally deciding it would be indecorous any longer to object, according to a confidant. Other Union military figures jumped to join in, such as the hero of Mobile Bay, Admiral David G. Farragut, and flamboyant Brevet Brig. Gen. George Armstrong Custer. Cabinet members signed up: Seward, Welles, and Postmaster General Alexander Randall. At the last minute Secretary of War Edwin Stanton begged off, citing a sick wife. Johnsons personal entourage included his daughter Martha and son-in-law Senator David Patterson, who held Johnsons former seat representing Tennessee; two secretaries; a security man; and Surgeon General Barnes. The only foreigner aboard was Matias Romero. The 29-year-old Mexican ambassador, in the course of lobbying for American support to evict the French from his country, had ingratiated himself with both Grant and Johnson.

At 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, August 28, 1866, Johnson and party departed Washingtons Baltimore and Ohio railroad station. Along with special sleeping and commissary cars, the B&O had laid on a car for the pressthough Johnson had no interest in propitiating reporters he saw as pro-Congress and anti-Johnson, whether they represented major dailies or boondocks weeklies. Throughout the trip, no one got advance copies of Johnsons remarks, often extemporaneous and often featuring hostile responses to catcalls. Reporters had no tables to facilitate note-taking, and often were shut out of banquets and other social events organized as part of the presidential progress, coverage of which was unprecedented and skewed. With few exceptions, noted The Nation, the press of the country has sided with Congress in the issue raised by the President.

After a pause at Annapolis, Maryland, the presidential train arrived in Baltimore to great enthusiasm. Seward and Welles had engineered a crowd of 100,000 to cheer Johnsons amicable stance toward the former Confederate states. Johnson did not speak, but everywhere he went in the Maryland port city he was mobbed. Another large crowd turned out in Wilmington, Delaware, whose city council boycotted the fete. Philadelphias mayor being conveniently out of town, a delegation from the Merchants Exchange met the president at the station. Johnson briefly lambasted absent city leaders and Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical Republican House member from Pennsylvania, before retiring for the evening. The next morning his train departed for New York.

En route, unsolicited advice showered Johnson. Late to board, Senator James Doolittle (R-Wisconsin) exhorted the president to eschew extemporaneous speeches. Johnson had taken care in writing not to provide enemies with ammunition, Doolittle said. But what you have said extemporaneouslyhas given them a handle to use against you, the other politician added. Welles had said much the same when planning the trip, to the same result. He manifestly thought I did not know his power as a speaker, Welles recorded in his diary.

New York City, the nations largest urban center, greeted Johnson in style. Accompanied by two cavalry regiments and ranks of New York City police officers, the president rode past 200,000 cheering onlookers to City Hall, where he reviewed a parade. That evening at Delmonicos, addressing editor Horace Greeley, power broker Thurlow Weed, and financier Cornelius Vanderbilt among 250 banquet guests, Johnson made an impassioned plea for his moderate Reconstruction policies. The defeated Confederate states, he argued, are not fit to be a part of this great American family if they are degraded and treated with ignominy and contempt. He received a standing ovation.

Riding the rails north along the Hudson, the party paused at Manhattanville so Custer and his wife could board. At Albany, the atmosphere turned grim when New York Governor Reuben Fenton refused to introduce Seward to the legislature. Johnson spoke anyway, expressing what would become a motif for the tripthe slander and calumny [of] a mercenary and subsidized press. In Auburn, Sewards home town, a boy running alongside Grants carriage fell under the wheels; the accident cost him a leg. I am getting very tired of this expedition and of hearing political speeches, Grant wrote to wife Julia. I must go through however. He was not alone in his discomfort. Matias Romero bemoaned the torment which this journey has become. As the train was crossing northern New York, Johnson kept slamming newspapermen as mendacious and unprincipled writers whose primary goal was to traduce and vilify him. At Buffalo, former president Millard Fillmore lauded Johnson as a rock in the midst of an ocean, against which the waves of rebellion dashed in vain.

As the presidential party was preparing to leave Buffalo for Cleveland, Johnson clashed with a heckler. Keep quiet till I have concluded, the president told his interlocutor. Just such fellows as you have kicked up all the rows of the last five years. This confrontation previewed events in the Midwest, where Johnson and his policies were unpopular. Ohios Radical Republican Senator Benjamin Wade accused Johnson of consigning the great Union, or Republican partyto the tender mercies of the rebels we have so lately conquered in the field.

Johnsons troupe, absent Grant and handlers, reached Cleveland around 8 p.m. on Sunday, September 2. After a meal, Johnson addressed an unruly crowd. The president was frequently interrupted by cheers, by hisses and by cries, apparently from those opposed to him, noted a local reporter. When Johnson challenged listeners to place a finger upon one act of minein violation of the Constitution, the crowd roared NEW ORLEANS! a reminder of the white supremacist violence that had bloodied that citys streets only months before. Some shouted, Hang Jeff Davis!

Why dont you hang him? Johnson replied. Why dont you hang Thad Sevens and [abolitionist] Wendell Phillips? Johnsons companions wondered why he didnt simply shut up. When Doolittle criticized the presidents deportment, Johnson shot back, I dont care about my dignity and delivered what one paper called the most disgraceful [speech] ever delivered by any President of the United States. The New York Times said its editors greatly regretted Johnsons casual dismissal of his dignity.

In Detroit, Johnson could have basked in the ardor of an upbeat crowd of 30,000 but instead he focused on a few hecklers. Asked about his annual salary of $25,000today more than $356,000Johnson angrily asked, Has it been increased since I came into office? He excoriated the Republican-controlled Congress for raising members salaries to $4,000. In the morning, before departing for Chicago, Johnson and party got an embarrassing reminder of the political stakes in play when black waiters at their hotel, in a protest against the presidents civil rights policies, refused to serve them breakfast.

Chicagoans, who had embraced Lincoln, felt little warmth for Johnson. Governor Richard Oglesby and the Chicago common council boycotted his visit, which drew respectful crowds that were smaller and much more subdued than those elsewhere. The Douglas memorial dedication in Chicagos Bronzeville neighborhood, the junkets ostensible point, had no excitement. Accompanied by Mayor John Blake Rice and representatives of fraternal organizations, Johnson followed General John Dixs lengthy recounting of the Little Giants achievements with brief remarks, saying that were Douglas to rise from his grave, he would proclaim, The Constitution and the Unionthey must be preserved.

The Swing Around the Circle had been under way for nine days and many participants patience was wearing thin. I am disgusted with this trip, Grant told Sylvanus Cadwallader, a remark that made the front page of the New York Herald. I am disgusted at hearing a man make speeches on the way to his funeral. Mexican minister Romero, correctly intuiting that his continued presence would cost the Mexican independence movement Radical Republicans support, told Seward he was feeling sick. Within a few days Romero was gone. Turning south toward St. Louis, the presidential train stopped in Springfield, Illinois, so passengers could visit Lincolns tomb. Deciding the Johnson campaign was played out, the New York Herald recalled its reporters. A heckler called Johnson a traitor. I have been calledJudas Iscariot. If I have played the Judas, who has been my Christ? Johnson asked. Was it Thad Stevens? Was it Wendell Phillips? Was it Charles Sumner? Are these the men that set themselves up and compare themselves with the Savior of man? A New York Tribune headline summed up the event: The Presidents Trip From Springfield to St. Louis: He Denies That He Is Judas Iscariot.

Grant grew exasperated. I have never been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political stump speeches of Mr. Johnson, Ulysses wrote to Julia. I look upon them as a national disgrace. In Indianapolis, raucous boos and jeers greeted Johnsons attempt to speak, prompting Custer to admonish the crowd, Hush, you damned ignorant Hoosiers! Johnson gave up and retreated to the hotel, where a melee broke out. Gentlemen, I am ashamed of you, Grant told the roisterers. Go home and be ashamed of yourselves. Gunfire between pro-and anti-Johnson factions killed one man. A slug lodged in the wall of Johnsons empty hotel room.

Grant heard a rumor that someone was offering $1,000 for Johnsons assassination. He decided it was true. Other rumors swirling had the Grand Army of the Republic, a group for veterans of the Civil War and a harsh critic of Johnson, organizing riots and plotting to kidnap Grant, Seward, and Farragut.

What one New York City newspaper dubbed the mortifying spectacle of the President going aboutdenouncing his opponents, bandying epithets with men in the crowd, and praising himself and his policies continued for five days after Indianapolis. Custer left the party in Steubenville, Ohio; Seward, besieged by diarrhea, had to stay over in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where for a time he hovered near death. During a stop in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, a platform constructed over a dry canal collapsed under the weight of 400 onlookers, killing at least six and injuring many more. Johnson wanted to stay to console the people, but train schedules forbade that. To help survivors, he contributed a check for $500about $8,400 today. Critics pounced. The president had manifested anything but a humane feeling in moving off at the very height of the peoples distress, a local editor wrote. The 18-day Swing Around the Circle ended as it had begun, with a warm reception in Baltimore. Grant went home. Seward was still in Harrisburg. The leg to Washington ended near dark on September 15 amid excited crowds jamming the B&O terminal and lining the route to the White House. Of the luminaries who had begun the junket, only Welles and Farragut remained.

The Swing Around the Circle was an unalloyed disaster. Little-known beforehand, Johnson now was cemented in the national awareness as a demagogue. In his memoir, William Crook, the presidents bodyguard through the trip, remembered that Johnsons abrasive encounters on the journey were immediately telegraphed over the country. After this there was no possibility of stemming the tide of unpopularity. They lost the President the elections. The President figured in the public mind as almost a monster.

A few skeptics blamed Seward. Abolitionist Lydia Maria Child, who characterized Johnson as a braying ass, speculated that the wily fox, Seward, encourages him to bray on purpose to disgust the people and so give himself a chance to saddle and ride the new party. The New York Herald asked if the Mephistopheles Secretary still has ambition to take the Presidential chair and if he accordingly had planned the grand tour for the purpose of damaging the President.

But most blame accrued to Johnson. The Potter County Journal, a small Pennsylvania paper, editorialized: If he would stay in the White House, keep his mouth shut, and not make a fool of himself, disgusting friend and foe alikethe President of the United States might

command some respect.

When Congress sought to remove Johnson from office in 1868, the tenth article of impeachment directly referred to the notorious campaign swing, describing certain intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous haranguesagainst Congress. Former Union General Benjamin Butler, who co-managed the House impeachment proceedings, argued that Johnsons speeches during the presidential trip had been too incendiary. We are too apt to overlook the danger which may come from words, Butler said. But words may be and sometimes areliving things that set the world on fire. For lack of support, the article was not brought to a vote.

The sole beneficiary was Ulysses Grant. General Grants presence and name excited much more enthusiasm than Johnsons presence and name, Matias Romero wrote. [Crowds] interrupted the president when he has wished to speak and cheered the general to the point of proclaiming him the next president. Grants father embarrassingly touted his son for the presidency. In a letter to The New York Times soon after the trip, Jesse Grant wrote, If there should seem to be the same necessity for it two years hence, as now, I expect he will yield. His days on the trip left Grant more politically astute. Realizing Andrew Johnsons administration was doomed, the general vowed never again to let the president exploit his popularity but did not cut the president dead. In August 1867, Johnson was trying to force Edwin Stanton to resign as secretary of war and to remove Generals Phil Sheridan and Dan Sickles as military commanders overseeing Reconstruction in New Orleans and the Carolinas. Getting rid of these three Union stalwarts, the general warned Johnson by letter, would be more than the loyal people of this country (I mean those who supported the Government during the great rebellion) will quickly submit to. As usual, Johnson ignored Grant. His impeachment brought into bleak bloom the seeds he had planted during his self-destructive Swing Around the Circle.

This feature is an online exclusive for American History Magazine. For more stories, subscribe here.
Inadequate technical information concerning modifications to the fabled F-86 led to a series of major takeoff accidents.

In the spring of 1953, while I was a U.S. Air Force pilot with the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing (FIW) in South Korea, the new and improved North American F-86F Sabre began to arrive in fighter units. Along with increased engine thrust and certain aerodynamic modifications came the need to follow new techniques and procedures. Unfortunately, a breakdown in the information flow from North American Aviation (NAA) to the pilots resulted in several major avoidable accidents.

One of the first mishaps occurred on June 24 at Kimpo Air Base (K-14) as the Korean War was winding down when a new F-86F overran the runway during a routine test flight after an engine change. Pilot 1st Lt. Sam Jackson, of the 336th Fighter Interceptor Squadron (FIS), later told accident investigators that during his takeoff roll there were no abnormalities in either the exhaust gas temperature or aircraft acceleration. At one hundred knots I exerted a slight back pressure on the stick, which normally was sufficient to raise the nose to takeoff attitude, Jackson said. Yet there was no change in the relative position of the nose of the aircraft. After several attempts to lift offand by then with what should have been plenty of ground speedhe aborted the takeoff and elected to catch the newly installed runway overrun barrier cable (which was later improved and designated the BAK-12 Arresting System).

At the time, K-14s runway was 6,000 feet longthe shortest jet fighter airstrip in South Koreaand U.S. Army engineers were in the process of constructing extensions at both ends. I was unaware that earth-moving equipment had been preparing the overrun for resurfacing, Jackson told the Accident Board. In addition, there had been heavy rains creating mud and potholes.I slowed somewhat and made a good cable pickup near the centerline of the runway. I saw the nylon tapes fly as I engaged the cable and started off the paved end of the runway.



The remains of 1st Lt. Sam Jacksons F-86F lie in the runway overrun at Kimpo. (Courtesy of John Lowery) The remains of 1st Lt. Sam Jacksons F-86F lie in the runway overrun at Kimpo. (Courtesy of John Lowery)

As the Sabrejet entered the overrun, however, its nose wheel immediately hit a pothole and snapped off. Simultaneously, the barrier cable broke loose from the anchor chain on the right side, causing the aircraft to cartwheel and shed its wings as the burning fuselage rolled almost upside down in the muddy overrun.

Burning fuel poured down on me and I was burned everywhere except my hands and feet, the pilot told investigators. Fortunately a field grade officer and a sergeant were just passing the end of the runway. Using an ax and a knife, they were able to break the canopy, cut Jackson loose and pull him to safety.

In November 1953, again at K-14, 334th FIS pilot Lieutenant Donald Showen was unable to rotate his F-86F for takeoff and was forced to make a high-speed abort. His story was familiar: I was leading a flight of four. Upon brake release my wingman and I accelerated normally to rotation speed. I then eased back on the stick, but the nose wheel seemed stuck to the runway.Then I aimed for the middle of the runway and took the runway overrun barrier in textbook fashion. The barrier cable caught my main landing gear; and, except for some bent landing gear door fairings, there was no damageother than to my ego.

Thanks to the newly paved overrun, Showens abort was a textbook example of the benefits of the arresting system in preventing rejected-takeoff accidents. Still, the reason why the aircraft failed to rotate to a takeoff attitude could not be explained. Consequently, the newly appointed flight commander was demoted to line pilot.

Because the upgraded General Electric J47 turbojet installed on new F-86Fs was equipped with a fixed-area tail pipe, the combination of engine RPM and exhaust gas temperature (EGT) was used to provide a direct indication of thrust output. At 100 percent RPM, the tail-pipe temperature had to be 690 degrees Celsius for the engine to produce maximum rated thrust. If the EGT was low, the tail-pipe diameter needed to be slightly reduced. This was accomplished by an Air Force engine technician installing one or more metal segmentsuniversally referred to as ratson the inside lip of the tail pipe. Each segment would slightly increase the turbine discharge pressure, which in turn increased the EGT. Still, what the technicians and pilots often didnt realize was that the precise location of the segments on the tail-pipe lip was critical to a successful takeoff.



The cause of 1st Lt. Jackson's accident was traced to improper installation of tail-pipe segments in his Sabres J47 engine, the correct configuration of which is reflected in this Dash-1 diagram. (HistoryNet Archive) The cause of 1st Lt. Jackson's accident was traced to improper installation of tail-pipe segments in his Sabres J47 engine, the correct configuration of which is reflected in this Dash-1 diagram. (HistoryNet Archive)

North American later had an explanation added to the pilots Dash-1 (operators manual). It stated that the tail-pipe segments were needed to adjust the exhaust outlet area to produce as near as possible a stabilized exhaust gas temperature of 690 degrees C at 100% rpm during ground run-up.The initial segments are installed at the bottom of the tail pipe. As additional segments are needed, they are installed as symmetrically as possible, starting from the bottom of the tail pipe [emphasis added]. Initial segment installation beginning at the top of the tail pipe is not recommended, because it will reduce the down-tail load. Down-tail loading aids nose wheel lift-off and is a reaction caused from the tendency of the jet exhaust stream to cling to the upper fairing shelf aft of the tail pipe.Whenever this down-tail loading is reduced or lost, nose wheel lift-off speed will increase substantially.[T]hus, if the tail-pipe segments are improperly located, an excessive ground run will be required for take-off. Although clearly an understatement considering that experienced pilots had been unable to get their F-86F to rotate for takeoff at any speed, this information resolved the problem and the accidents stopped.

The Accident Board investigating Lieutenant Jacksons crash had at first blamed it on pilot error, but with the new information provided by NAA regarding improper placement of the engine tail-pipe segments, the reason for his mishap was changed to cause unknown.

A second modification that caused several accidents involved the new extended-leading-edge wing on the F-86F-30. Although the Sabres aerodynamically operated leading-edge wing slats had proved beneficial in the takeoff and landing phase, during high-altitude encounters with MiG-15s they were problematic, as they caused early pre-stall buffet with an accompanying instant loss of airspeed. To correct this deficiency, NAA test pilots suggested replacing the leading-edge slats with fixed extensions. This, they theorized, would lower the pre-stall buffet boundary at high altitudes and concurrently decrease the airplanes turning radius. Thus, in August 1952, project engineers removed the leading-edge slats from three Sabres and perfected the extended-leading-edge modification (also installing a wing fence).

Total wing area was increased from 287.9 to 302.3 square feet, with the aerodynamic slats replaced by 6-inch extensions at the wing root, tapering to 3 inches at the wing tipthe so-called 6-3 extended wing. At high altitude the new wing design worked perfectly. Now pilots could cruise comfortably at 49,000 feet and .9 Mach.

Yet the new 6-3 extended-wing Sabres were quickly plagued by takeoff accidents. And, as with the tail-pipe mods, the problem was traced to a lack of information.

During the early spring of 1953, when the first 6-3 wing Sabres began to arrive at K-14, onsite NAA technical representatives had verbally advised the 4th FIW pilots of an increase in the new aircrafts stall speed. This required an approximate 20-knot increase in the aircrafts takeoff and landing airspeeds.

On the west side of K-14, the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing had received its first camera-equipped RF-86A in late 1952. Because the 67th TRW was equipped with Lockheed RF-80s, its lone Sabrejet was temporarily based with the 334th FIS for logistic support. The airplanes sole pilot, 1st Lt. Elliott B. Jack Sartain, even bunked with us 334th pilots.

Then, in April 1953, a new extended-wing RF-86F-30 arrived, and Lieutenant Sartain and the two camera-equipped Sabres were relocated across the field to the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. However, lacking a factory technical representative, the 15th TRS was out of the NAA information loop. Because the pilots Dash-1 showed no airspeed changes, the squadrons pilots and leadership were unaware of their new Sabres increased takeoff and landing speeds. Thus, on June 3, they had the dubious distinction of suffering one of the first extended-wing Sabrejet takeoff accidents.

It was the first photorecon combat mission for the new RF-86F, and Sartain was scheduled as wingman to flight leader Captain James H. Howell Jr., who would fly the squadrons wing-slat-equipped RF-86A. Captain Howells Sabre had two 120-gallon wing pylon tanks, while Sartains RF-86F was fitted with 200-gallon tanks. In an effort to keep the fuel load equal, the squadrons maintenance officer had serviced Sartains airplane with a partial load of 120 gallons in each of the two pylon tanks.

At 1555 hours Howell and Sartain taxied for takeoff. Both pilots lined up on the runway, increased power to 100 percent RPM and simultaneously released brakes and began their takeoff roll. As he accelerated through 100 knots, Howell rotated the nose of his aircraft for liftoff and shortly thereafter became airborne.

Those of us who witnessed the incident saw Sartain become airborne approximately halfway down the runway, in an extremely nose-high attitude. The Air Force accident report stated, The aircraft climbed to approximately five feet in the air and continued down the runway without gaining altitude or an appreciable increase in airspeed. The problem was referred to as getting behind the power curvelifting off too close to the airplanes stall speed, which created aerodynamic drag that exceeded the available engine thrust.

At the far end of the runway, Army engineers were busily extending K-14s 6,000-foot airstrip to a more usable 12,000 feet. Consequently, the work area was congested with heavy equipment, and numerous Army and some Air Force civil engineering personnel were pouring concrete into the framed outline of the runway extension.

Upon reaching the end of the runway, the struggling Sabre clipped the right overrun barrier stanchion. Then, still in an extreme nose-high attitude, it continued for another 1,000 feet, hit the blade of a 13.5-ton Tourneaudozer and exploded like a giant napalm bomb. Sartain and four Army engineers were killed, and several soldiers were severely burned.



F-86Fs of the 336th FIS operate out of Kimpo in 1954. Note the fixed leading edge and fence (at right) on "Charlotte Anns" wing. (Lt. Ken Ewing via Eric Yocum) F-86Fs of the 336th FIS operate out of Kimpo in 1954. Note the fixed leading edge and fence (at right) on "Charlotte Anns" wing. (Lt. Ken Ewing via Eric Yocum)

Meanwhile, on the east side of the field, in the 4th FIW combat operations auditorium, a meeting was in progress. NAA chief test pilot Bob Hoover was explaining to a gathering of F-86 pilots the abnormal takeoff characteristics of the extended-wing Sabrejet. At 1540, just 15 minutes prior to Sartains conflagration, the 67th TRW had received notification of this critically important meeting.

Worse yet, tests showed that on takeoff roll with the 200-gallon wing pylon tanks only partially filled, the fuel pooled in the back of the tanks as the aircraft accelerated. The weight of that fuel put the airplane aft of its center-of-gravity limitation. This exacerbated the Sabres abnormally nose-high attitude and contributed directly to Sartains inability to recover. That information had also been omitted from both the maintenance manual and the pilots Dash-1.

In the ensuing investigation, the Accident Board was blunt in its findings and recommendations, placing the cause squarely on Air Material Command. The board noted that the pilots manual had been published without any information on the changed characteristics of the extended-wing airplanes. This had led the 15th TRS to schedule an extended-wing Sabre to fly the wing of a slat-equipped aircraft. Meanwhile, the same type of accidents began occurring throughout the Air Forceand pilots became afraid of the airplane.

Yet, with the information finally published, the pilots now fully understood the modified Sabres characteristics. The accidents stopped and the aircraft went on to become the most widely used Western-produced jet fighter in the world. Ultimately it was adopted by 25 nations, five of whichCanada, Japan, Spain, Italy and Australiamanufactured their own aircraft. Once the Sabrejets secrets were uncovered, it became one of the few jet fighters with no bad habits, and was revered by everyone who flew it.

John Lowery served with the 334th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at K-14 in 1953. He finished his Air Force career as a lieutenant colonel with 1,000 hours in the F-86A, E and F. Since retiring he has authored 13 books, including Life in the Wild Blue Yonder, which is recommended for further reading, along with The North American Sabre, by Ray Wagner.

This feature originally appeared in the May 2019 issue of Aviation History. Subscribe here!
On Dec. 31, 1877, amid the Russo-Turkish War of 187778, some 25,000 Russian soldiers under General Joseph Gourko advanced on the Bulgarian village of Tashkessen. Waiting for them from the vantage of three knolls were a few thousand bedraggled Ottoman soldiers under Valentine Baker, a disgraced expat British officer. Sent to delay the advancing Russians, Bakers Turks faced desperate odds.

The Russians had made slow progress in Bulgaria since declaring war on the Ottoman empire that spring. But their capture of Plevna in early December after a five-month siege freed up tens of thousands of troops, with whom the Russians renewed their southern offensive toward Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. By months end Gourkos army had outflanked Turkish defenders in the Balkan Mountains, leaving in its wake Shakir Pashas entrenched army of 16,000 hungry, poorly supplied soldiers. Guided out of the mountains by local Bulgarians, Gourkos columns raced toward Sofia to cut off Shakirs line of retreat. The pashas only hope of escape was Bakers delaying force at Tashkessen.

The Englishman conspicuously marched his Ottoman troops back and forth to dupe the enemy into thinking he had a much larger force. Reluctant to assault Bakers line until reinforcements arrived, the Russians held off for four critical days, providing Shakir precious time to evacuate his army. Meanwhile, the pasha sent reinforcements to Baker, boosting the latters strength to nearly 3,000 men.

When pressed, Baker planned to fall back to the head of Tashkessen Pass. There he would wedge his battalions into the gap, much as Spartan King Leonidas 300 had done at Thermopylae in 480 bc. He hoped the stronger position and broken ground leading to it would sufficiently delay the Russian advance.

On December 31 Gourkos 25,000 Russians tried to force their way past Bakers left flank, just as Persian King Xerxes had at Thermopylae. Baker extended that flank and managed to hold position. When Russian numbers proved overwhelming, Baker ordered his battalions back as planned, with his cavalry covering the withdrawal. The advancing Russians fell into disarray while climbing the broken terrain toward the pass. On reaching Bakers second line they renewed their attacks, but they were disjointed and lacked sufficient artillery support, nullifying their advantage.

The Turks withstood repeated assaults. Finally, after 10 hours of fighting, Baker and his surviving troops slipped away in darkness to rejoin Shakirs army, which had fled south. Though Baker had suffered some 800 casualties, he had spoiled Gourkos chance to destroy Shakirs army.

The war ended in March 1878 with a Russian victory, and the action at Tashkessen was all but forgotten. In an 1892 lecture on Tashkessen to the Military Society of Ireland, British Col. Sir John Frederick Maurice said In my judgment a knowledge of the facts of this little incident is in itself much more valuable to an officer than any theories we can lay down about it.
Half Moon Bay, CA (94019)

Today

Windy at times with rain. Low 49F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Windy at times with rain. Low 49F. Winds SW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch.
There might be a perception that comedy is easy and you can just go around, flap your arms, yell a lot and act wacky and people will find it funny. If you want to be funny youve got to be more controlled. You have to think about timing and how the lines are going to work, he said.
His store took the place of gentlemens clubs for women. There were women in the 1890s who would come almost everyday to Marshall Fields. Theyd come at 10, shop for a little, have lunch and in the afternoon there would be a fashion show or cooking demonstration and then theyd go home before kids got home. That was their social life, she said.
Police, armed with a search warrant, went to a home Tuesday in the 400 block of Burnham Avenue in Calumet City after a package containing the switches was mailed to that address, according to the release. Murphy fled from the home and was taken into custody following a short foot pursuit, according to the release.
Pipeline

12 April 2019

The new luxury centrepiece of Montreal's Golden Square Mile, Four Seasons Hotel Montreal will officially open on May 8, 2019.

With 169 guest rooms, 19 suites and 18 Four Seasons Private Residences, Montreal's Four Seasons is an emblematic place where sensuality meets intelligent design and where guests are invited on a journey of discovery through enchantment and inspiring social connections.

In this noteworthy update, Four Seasons Hotel Montreal and the onsite MARCUS - the debut Canadian restaurant by visionary Chef Marcus Samuelsson - are confirming reservations for dates beginning May 8, 2019.

Highlight - The Social Square:

The third-floor lobby level of the new hotel is the Social Square, an open-concept series of spaces where fashionable Montrealers can mix with international visitors. The Social Square sets the stage for unforgettable moments, unexpected connections and a journey of discovery of multifaceted experiences. Luxury shoppers will also delight in direct indoor access to the newly opened Holt Renfrew Ogilvy.

The Social Square includes the new MARCUS Restaurant + Terrace and MARCUS Bar + Lounge, celebrated Chef Marcus Samuelsson's brasserie concept. Open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner, focal points will be sustainable seafood, a raw bar, local vegetables and grains as the culinary team works closely with local producers and growers.

With interiors designed by Atelier Zebulon Perron , MARCUS flows through the third-floor lobby level. On the expansive all-season heated terrace, guests can delight in panoramic views while dining, drinking and socialising.

Highlights - World-Renowned Services and Amenities:

The Hotel will enchant guests around the clock with world-renowned Four Seasons services including special programs for parents and pets, and luxury valet service so guests arrive in style. There's a 24-hour fitness centre by celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak, skylit indoor pool, sauna and luxurious spa (including fully private VIP rooms). The Hotel's stunning 450-person Palais des Possibles ballroom features a sweeping terrace overlooking Montreal. Blending intelligent design with sensual, sumptuous materials, guest rooms have both drama and class, with floor-to-ceiling windows, chaise longues and remarkable free-standing bathtubs (in certain rooms).

With interiors designed by Paris-based Gilles & Boissier in collaboration with Montreal-based architect and designer Philip Hazan, the lobby of Four Seasons Hotel Montreal features white marble, gold elevators and pink and grey velvet walls that demand to be touched.
Appointment

12 April 2019

Hilton (NYSE:HLT) today announced the appointment of Armin Molavi as Vice President of Global Media Strategy and Execution. In his role, Molavi will lead the ongoing transformation of Hilton's media team and work with partners across the globe to build out the company's media center of excellence.

Reporting to Hilton's Chief Marketing Officer Kellyn Kenny, Molavi will join Hilton's marketing leadership team and oversee the company's media strategy and executions teams around the globe.

Prior to Hilton, Molavi spent nearly two decades working inside agencies where he led consumer engagement programs and media strategy for major consumer product, retail, travel and financial companies. He most recently served as the North American Head of Strategy for Havas Media.

Molavi holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in marketing from the University of Massachusetts and has also served on the boards of startup and non-profit organizations, including the Gay Men's Domestic Violence Project.

Molavi will be based at Hilton's global headquarters in McLean, Va.
Press Release

11 April 2019

It has been announced that Dubai's Department of Tourism & Commerce Marketing (Dubai Tourism) will once again be the destination partner for HITEC Dubai 2019 taking place on November 12-13. Building on last year's success, the Middle East's largest hospitality technology exhibition and conference that is co-produced by Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) and Naseba, will be held in Dubai at a twice larger venue - The Festival Arena by InterContinental Dubai Festival City. The annual business-to-business (B2B) exhibition is expected to welcome more than 2,500 trade visitors and industry stakeholders over the two days giving Middle East buyers, currently worth over USD 75 billion, access to the world's leading hospitality technology solution providers and experts.

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Issam Kazim, CEO of Dubai Corporation for Tourism and Commerce Marketing, said: "We are pleased to support HITEC Dubai again as it continues to put the spotlight on technology in hospitality. As a city that strives to be at the forefront of innovation across all sectors, it is vital that we host events like this, focusing on technologies that could redefine and enhance the visitor journey and experience. Driven by the city's leadership and guided by Dubai's Tourism Vision 2025, we understand that a tourism industry that is able to provide smart, seamless and sustainable experiences for visitors is one primed for success. We look forward to continuing to work with HITEC Dubai and our stakeholders and partners to ensure this is delivered."

Frank Wolfe CAE, CEO of HFTP, said: "We are glad that Dubai Tourism is endorsing HITEC Dubai for the third successive year. Last year we saw more than 200 percent increase in the attendance. As Dubai has firmly established itself as a global technology hub emerging as one of the fastest growing smart cities in the world and we are very excited to be part of its success. With the targeted growth in tourism and events such as Expo 2020 Dubai, the hospitality industry will inevitably continue to evolve and, therefore, will need more technology to be successful. HITEC Dubai will give an opportunity to regional hospitality buyers to learn about and introduce the latest technologies into their organisations."

HITEC Dubai's Advisory Council Chairperson Laurent A. Voivenel, Senior Vice President, Operations and Development for the Middle East, Africa and India for Swiss-Belhotel International, said, "We are very excited about HITEC Dubai that will introduce new technologies, ideas and innovations in our industry designed to elevate the experience of guests as well as optimise business processes and operational efficiency. We are eager to see how advancements in areas of artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR) and biometrics, etc can take us to a new level of enablement and transformation of customer experiences."

According to recent industry reports, Dubai attracted $21.66 billion worth of foreign direct investment in high-end technology transfers in three years. This consequently earned the emirate the top rank globally in 2018 in the share of FDI in technology transfers like artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics.

About Naseba

Naseba offers global business facilitation services. The company creates growth opportunities by bringing together people, partners and ideas. It helps clients raise capital, enter new markets, secure partners, close sales and educate workforces. Naseba's goal is to create opportunity and add economic value at every stage of its client's journey. It does this through three key areas: investor services, commercial services and leadership services. Since inception in 2002, Naseba has facilitated deals totalling billions of dollars for its clients. The company has connected over 100,000 global executives through more than 1,000 proprietary business platforms and is an expert in growth markets.
Press Release

12 April 2019

NAY PYI TAW, Myanmar - Hilton (NYSE: HLT), together with the United States Embassy, jointly held a groundbreaking ceremony for the Embassy's U.S. liaison office in the capital city of Myanmar today. The groundbreaking ceremony took place in the presence of Ambassador Scot Marciel and Union Minister U Kyaw Tin, Union Minister for International Cooperation, Myanmar. When it completes in 2020, the U.S. liaison office will be housed within Hilton Nay Pyi Taw, which represented Hilton's entry into Myanmar when it opened in 2014.

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"Over the past century, Hilton's journey to bring the light and warmth of hospitality to the world was made possible through the support of our partners all around the globe. This partnership with the U.S. Embassy marks a milestone for us and it gives us great honor to be the first hotel in Asia Pacific to host a U.S. liaison office. We are delighted to have the opportunity not only to provide a warm and secure space for partners and colleagues of the U.S. Embassy to conduct business from on a daily basis, but for Hilton Nay Pyi Taw to deliver the Hilton experience to their guests and partners when they visit," said Alan Watts, President, Asia Pacific, Hilton.

The U.S. liaison office will serve as the official presence of the U.S. government in Nay Pyi Taw, facilitating increased engagement between U.S. diplomats and the Government of Myanmar. The upcoming opening of the U.S. liaison office further demonstrates the long-term commitment of the United States to its bilateral relationship with Myanmar.

"This is a special year for Hilton as we celebrate our 100th anniversary and the pioneering spirit that has taken us to more than 100 new countries and territories around the world. In addition to being a place of respite for our guests and meeting place for the community, it is truly a significant moment in our heritage for us to be chosen to house key conversations fostering the relationship between the governments of the United States and Myanmar. From providing education opportunities to the local population through our Hilton Vocational Training Center in Nay Pyi Taw, to our aim to reduce and eventually eliminate single use plastics in our hotels, we are committed to continue delivering on "The Hilton Effect" in the communities where we operate," added Watts.

Nay Pyi Taw is the capital of Myanmar and the third most populous city in the country with nearly 1 million people. As the seat of the Union Parliament, the Myanmar Cabinet and government ministries, the city hosts a growing number of foreign embassies and international organizations. The United Nations' Myanmar headquarters in Nay Pyi Taw houses 12 of the 17 UN agencies in the country. Other international organizations that maintain a strategic base in Nay Pyi Taw include the Asian Development Bank, Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Bank.

The Bangladesh Embassy and an interim liaison office for the Chinese Embassy are also located in Nay Pyi Taw, with more foreign embassies expected to move into the capital soon.

Hilton currently operates three hotels in Myanmar: Hilton Nay Pyi Taw, Hilton Mandalay and Hilton Ngapali Resort & Spa. The company has three hotels in the development pipeline which will open in Inle Lake, Bagan and Yangon over the coming years.
Performance

12 April 2019

HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee  The Canadian hotel industry recorded positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 31 March through 6 April 2019, according to data from STR.

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In comparison with the week of 1-7 April 2018, the industry reported the following:

 Occupancy: +6.3% to 60.9%

 Average daily rate (ADR): +5.9% to CAD150.81

 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +12.6% to CAD91.87

Among the provinces and territories, Nova Scotia reported the largest jump in RevPAR (+33.8% to CAD84.46), due primarily to the highest rise in occupancy (+28.7% to 63.4%).

Ontario posted the only double-digit lift in ADR (+11.2% to CAD161.27).

Quebec experienced the only other double-digit increase in occupancy (+12.2% to 59.9%) as well as the second-largest increase in RevPAR (+21.2% to CAD92.13).

The Northwest Territories saw the steepest declines in occupancy (-12.7% to 46.3%) and RevPAR (-14.2% to CAD76.76).

Newfoundland and Labrador posted the largest drop in ADR (-5.8% to CAD119.73) and the second-largest decrease in RevPAR (-9.1% to CAD54.33).

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.
Specifically, Pritzkers amendment deletes these lines from the Illinois Constitution: A tax on or measured by income shall be at a non-graduated rate. At any one time there may be no more than one such tax imposed by the State for State purposes on individuals and one such tax so imposed on corporations.
Performance

12 April 2019

HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee  The U.S. hotel industry reported positive year-over-year results in the three key performance metrics during the week of 31 March through 6 April 2019, according to data from STR.

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In comparison with the week of 1-7 April 2018, the industry recorded the following:

 Occupancy: +0.4% to 68.7%

 Average daily rate (ADR): +1.5% to US$130.79

 Revenue per available room (RevPAR): +1.9% to US$89.90

STR analysts note that performance growth was lifted due to comparison with Easter Sunday and the days immediately following in 2018.

Among the Top 25 Markets, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota-Wisconsin, posted the largest jump in RevPAR (+55.1% to US$106.96), driven by the highest lift in ADR (+41.6% to US$158.33). The market saw the second-largest increase in occupancy (+9.5% to 67.6%).

Chicago, Illinois, experienced the only double-digit rise in occupancy (+11.0% to 70.4%) and the second-largest jump in RevPAR (+22.8% to US$97.58).

Atlanta, Georgia, posted the second-highest lift in ADR (+15.9% to US$121.00).

Miami/Hialeah, Florida, registered the steepest decline in RevPAR (-18.0% to US182.37), due primarily to the only double-digit drop in ADR (-12.2% to US$224.37).

Norfolk/Virginia Beach, Virginia, experienced the largest decrease in occupancy (-9.7% to 64.8%).

Download STR's U.S. hotel review here.
Performance

12 April 2019

LONDON  STR's preliminary March 2019 data for hotels in Sydney indicates lower performance.



Based on daily data from March, Sydney reported the following in year-over-year comparisons:

Supply: +2.7%

Demand: +1.3%

Occupancy: -1.3% to 87.2%

Average daily rate (ADR): -6.8% to AUD230.94

Revenue per available room (RevPAR): -8.0% to AUD201.36

The absolute occupancy level would be the lowest for a March in Sydney since 2014. The decrease in ADR marks the first year-over-year decline in the metric for any March since 2009. STR analysts partially attribute the lower performance levels to a steady rise in supply and shifts in demand to lower average rate properties in submarkets of Sydney. Additionally, the year-over-year comparison was impacted by a high ADR event on 14-16 March 2018, when Sydney hosted the Australian-ASEAN Business Summit.

STR will release full March results later this month.
The rumours that Amazon's Alexa products are secretly listening to its customers has now finally proven to be true since a new report conducted by Bloomberg, that has spoken to employees who do the job. Workers in Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania are hired on full-time by Amazon to review demands made by customers when asking Alexa to do something.

According to the publication, each employee works nine hours a day, listening to Echo owners homes and offices, which equals to as many as 1,000 audio clips per shifts. The point of the job is to better understand demands made by humans to eliminate gaps in Alexa's understanding to make her responses more coherent and better.

A few employees tell the publication how a few overheard happenings by Echo owners can be boring, like someone singing in the shower, while some can be disturbing such as a sexual assault one employee overheard.



Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

Since the idea of a product listening in on your personal conversation is scary enough, a spokesperson from Amazon responded to the report, explaining how "security and privacy of our customers personal information" is taken very "seriously."

We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order [to] improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone," the spokesperson detailed.

We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.

Read the full report here.
Since it first lurched out of the boroughs to take the world by storm, hip-hop has had a very clear set of governing principles that were meant to be upheld at all costs. Built on a foundation of respect and authenticity, these two traits-- along with an awareness of the founding four elements-- were regarded as pre-requisites for a successful career. Paying homage to the past was not only advised but near-mandatory. Referred to in the same way as a warriors code, any departures from these sacred commandments would lead to either verbal or physical consequences as you strove to keep your honor intact.

Tupac posing at KMEL Summer Jam, 1992 - Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Spearheaded by a new generation of brash and uncompromising artists, these closely-held values are now being degraded from a cultural necessity to a form of outdated scripture. In many ways, this era of indignation and dismissal of the past was instigated by the divisive Lil Xan. Regarded with wariness from the outset, devout hip-hop fans soon had all the relevant evidence to bestow a cultural death sentence on young Diego. Xan declared, without a hint of irony, that the late Tupac Shakurs output was boring music and he quickly incurred rap musics collective wrath because of it. An irrevocable trespass in the eyes of many, the hip-hop community quickly vocalized their outrage and the debate reached its peak when Waka Flocka and T.I decreed that Xan was banned forevermore. Amid all of the uproar, a few scattered voices leaped to his defense and presented a case for clemency.

No stranger to incensing hip-hop fans in his own right, one of the most vocal combatants of the persecution of Lil Xan was his peer and friend Trippie Redd. Relayed over Instagram Live, Trippie believed all of the criticism to be not only unwarranted but irrational:

Do you see who he is? Of course he dont like 2Pac  He dont necessarily gotta like 2Pac to be Hip Hop, nigga. If he think that shit boring, he think that shit boring. That shit is not a part of this new era anyway.

What Trippie couldnt have known is that his remarks have captured the spirit of a generational shift towards disregarding hip-hops longstanding code of conduct. A week before Kodak Black gained the worlds ire with his blatantly disrespectful comments about Nipsey Hussle and Lauren London, the ever-contentious rapper echoed the sentiments of Lil Xan from a year earlier. Once again, the dangerously unfiltered nature of Instagram Live brought Kodaks barbed tongue to the fore and led to the Project Baby unloading his views on why Biggie and Pac are so revered:

People tryna say, oh, I can't put myself in the category with 2Pac and them," Kodak told his Instagram Live audience. "Actually, I'm better than them n***as. You know why? Like, 'cause, I live what I rap about. Them n***as was just like, them n***as was just legends 'cause they died."

The Notorious B.I.G at the Billboard Music Awards, 1995 - Larry Busacca/WireImage/Getty Images

In the past, no rapper on the come-up wouldve dared to say something so sacrilegious in fear of alienating their audience and thus lightening their pockets. For this new, defiant generation, they dont seem to be emulating the stringent self-policed headspace of hip-hops past, rather, another rebellious subculture entirely. Formed on the same DIY spirit that empowered todays internet-spawned artists, the ideology of the UK punk scene of the late 1970s bears a striking resemblance to the impudence of hip-hops new breed. Disenchanted with the pomposity of the worlds biggest rock outfits, the architects of punk regarded the technical wizardry of prog or psychedelia as a pollutant and instead stripped guitar music back to its bare bones.

Conceived of as the antidote to Led Zeppelin, Yes, King Crimson and Pink Floyd among others, the difference in their ethos and sound would soon serve to undermine these fully-established acts. Where the globe-trotting artists of the day were increasingly enamored with complex musical theory and pretentious concept albums, the bands of the emergent underground were working with a maximum of three chords and made their lyricism and melodies punchier and more conversational. Sound familiar?

The Sex Pistols performing live in Copenhagen, 1977 - Keystone/Getty Images

In order to fully illustrate this analogy, the focus will hinge upon two of punks most incendiary and beloved bands: The Sex Pistols and The Clash. Concentrated around the Kings Road in London, these two bands made a name for themselves by embodying the unrest and discontent that its youths were experiencing. Although they may not be the first British punk band, the ragtag group of snarling misfits known as the Sex Pistols rejected the status quo and were even banned from their native UKs airwaves for tracks such as the treasonous God Save The Queen. Hounded by the press and the law at every turn, their notorious profanity-laden interview with Bill Grundy courted the same sort of widespread outrage that the unvetted Instagram Lives of todays hip-hop artists contend with. Away from the music, their desired destruction of the past bled into their clothing as they donned t-shirts declaring I HATE PINK FLOYD. Years on from his tenure as an agent of chaos, The Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten conceded that Pink Floyd have done great stuff and that he loves their seminal Dark Side Of The Moon LP.

Coinciding with The Sex Pistols rise was the formation of The Clash. Born of ethnically diverse areas such as Ladbroke Grove and Brixton, the four-piece of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, and Topper Headon took the fast-paced barrage and weaponized it to take on social inequalities. In spite of this, they found plenty of time to take aim at the rock music ruling class, seen as an extension of the machine, on 1977. As blatant as any diss track, the tracks chorus sees Joe venomously bellow No Elvis, Beatles Or The Rolling Stones. No matter how scathing it sounded, the late Joe Strummer would later admit that hearing The Rolling Stones in his boarding school dorm room was instrumental in pursuing music as his key concern in life.

Vince Staples performing at ComplexCon, 2018 - Earl Gibson III/Getty Images

Through these historical examples, our current hip-hop artists disdainful renouncement of the past may be easier to comprehend. By vilifying the very artists that theyd grown up on, punk music was unshackling the expectations of what came before them and they were free to forge their own legacy. Unbounded by comparisons or supposed influence, their motivations to destroy and rebuild ensured that they contributed their own distinct fragment to the rich tapestry of musical history. Informed by that same desire to stand on their own two feet, Vince Staples labeling the 90s greats as overrated and Lil Uzis vehement refusal to freestyle over a DJ Premier production has a great deal more validity than just cultural naivety. Just like Lil Yachtys claims that older hip-hop people dont understand evolution or 03 Greedos insistence that theres no onus to pay homage to 2Pac, theyve all made a concerted effort to distance themselves from the past.

Thus, could it be that the perceived disrespect from new rappers doesn't come from a place of ignorance but rather, may be informed by an ambition to surpass their predecessors and claim their own spots on the hip-hop Mt. Rushmore? Far from being something to revile, this unwillingness to treat the genre with the solemn, unchangeable respect of a war memorial is pivotal in ensuring that hip-hop doesn't end up at a creative standstill or fall victim to complacency.
At the top of the year, Nas accused Kelis of violating their custody deal when she took their son to Columbia. Nine-year-old Knight was supposed to spend new years with his father, but Kelis kept her son in Columbia with her and did not return until January 14th. According to The Blast, Kelis is now headed to trial since she pleaded not guilty to 20 counts of contempt.



Shareif Ziyadat/FilmMagic/Getty Images

The trail is set for June 20th and the "Milkshakes" music maker is facing a hefty amount of fines and if the case worsens, possibly jail time. In the court documents filed by Nas, he claimed his ex to have violated their custody agreement 17 times since January of 2018.

"In or around December of 2018, Petitioner (Kelis) moved to Cartagena, Colombia and took the minor child without my consent, he wrote in official documents. Apparently, Kelis wanted to live on a farm with her son and Colombian husband. "On Christmas, Petitioner informed me by text message that although her plan had been to bring the minor child back to me in Los Angeles for New Years, the plan had changed. She then stated that the new plan was to come back on January 4, 2019.

Kelis didn't return until 10 days later and Nas said he wasn't able to get a hold of his son for the whole duration of the trip.
Nipsey Hussle's memorial was held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles yesterday where thousands of people gathered to pay their respects to the fallen artist. Family members, church members and other hip hop artists such as Snoop Dogg, YG and more all shared words about how unique and special Nipsey was to them.

We just posted about Lil Wayne's tribute to Nipsey and now his daughter, Reginae Carter, has shared a few words thanking the Victory Lap artist for all his love and protection. Reginae's brother, Cameron, became Nipsey's step-son when he and Lauren London got together. Just yesterday, Cameron shared a touching message of a dream he had where Nipsey came to him and showed him what heaven was like.

"On the night of April 2nd, I had a dream I was in a paradise," Cameron explained. "I was in paradise and I was playing in the ocean water when Ermias popped up right behind me. He said 'Waddup killa,' cause that's my nickname to him. I turned around and I yelled his name and I gave him a hug. Shortly, he was gone but it was still cool, I guess. I told my mom about the dream and after I told her, I was thinking about it and I realized that Ermias told me what heaven was like. He told me it was paradise."



Prince Williams/Wireimage/Getty Images

As for Reginae's words on Nipsey, the 20-year-old wrote: "My mom always told me growing up her and I are a package deal ! And whoever she dates or Marry has to accept us as a whole . Hearing my little brother talk about you tells me you accepted Lauren and Kam as a whole . You loved and protected them both ai I love that! Youll always be respected and never forgotten!"

https://www.instagram.com/p/BwIWqz4ha_3


It's a brand new day for Wendy Williams. Yesterday, it was announced that the talk show host did what many of her fans have been expecting for months now: She served her estranged husband Kevin Hunter with divorce papers. Their relationship has been riddled with rumors of his infidelities, including that he allegedly had a child with his mistress. Williams has tried to stay ahead of the rumors by using her talk show to address them head-on, but that hasn't kept her name out of headlines.

Williams has stated that she's been calling a sober living house home for the last few months as she's receiving treatment to help battle her addiction issues, but now that her 20-year marriage is officially making its way toward the finish line, TMZ reports that she's searching for a new, permanent, home. Williams and Hunter lived at their New Jersey residence for years, but TMZ states that Williams is looking to make her way to the Big Apple, specifically searching for new digs in Manhattan.



Robin Marchant/Getty Images

Although these rumors regarding Williams' marriage have stormed the news media, cheating isn't something that was recently introduced. In Williams' 2001 memoir, Wendy's Got Heat, she shared that Hunter had an affair shortly after she gave birth to Kevin Jr. "In those forty-five seconds my woman's intuition kicked in and I knew he was on the phone with a lover," Williams wrote. "No woman deserves this." She added, "I wanted to kill him. I mean really kill him. For real. I wanted to kill him more because I was in the process of breaking my Number One Rule: No Cheating."

She also wrote in the memoir that she hired a private investigator to follow her husband and retrieved details about his affair. The two worked through that major hiccup in their marriage, but Williams did say that she made a vow to leave if he ever did anything like that again.
Sunnova Energy Corp., led by a charismatic chief executive, has become one of the nations most ardent public advocates for solar power, leasing rooftop systems to thousands of homeowners with the promise of providing them with low-cost electricity.

But Sunnova, in business for less than a decade, is losing some of its glow as customers from New Jersey to California say the company installed defective panels, ignored requests to fix them and delivered the power at higher costs than promised. Regulators in Puerto Rico found the company enrolled customers in expensive power plans by attaching signatures to contracts they hadnt signed. And the Better Business Bureau, which once gave Sunnova its top score, is in the process of revoking the companys accreditation because of the problems in Puerto Rico.

Joanna Mares is still kicking herself that she and her husband listened to the Sunnova salesman who knocked on their door five years ago in Menifee, Calif., a town about 75 miles from San Diego. No money down, no maintenance worries and theyd be getting checks from the utility company by selling the excess power. Whats not to like?

But the system had problems from the beginning after circuits were water damaged, requiring panels to be replaced. The transformer was off for more than a year, meaning the solar system wasnt sending power back to the grid. And the cost? The Mares, both retired, were paying about $1,500 a year for power, but now theyre are paying nearly $3,200 a year, Joanna Mares said. And theyve yet to get a check from the local utility company.

I fell for it hook, line and sinker, said Mares, 67.

The residential solar industry, benefiting from state mandates for renewable energy, has been on a tear, selling homeowners on the benefits of going green while lowering power cost. The industry has capitalized on billions of dollars raised by Wall Street to sell and install solar systems and then earned billions of dollars from federal tax credits by retaining ownership of the systems. Between 2012 and 2015, the residential market grew 60 to 70 percent a year, according to Austin Perea, senior analyst with research firm Wood Mackenzie. The industry installed 1 million systems by mid-2016 and is on track to reach 2 million soon, he said.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Solar farm divides ranching community

But there is little regulatory oversight of an industry that relies on door-to-door sales that promise big electricity savings, but then puts customers in iron-clad contracts that leave little recourse when savings dont materialize or panels leak, consumer advocates say. Buyers, they said, are often attracted by the promise of reducing their carbon footprint and dont scrutinize the solar deals as much as they do other purchases.

Its a new industry with a sort of a halo around it, said Daniel Stevens, executive director of Campaign for Accountability, a watch dog group in Washington.

Sunnova said in a statement that it is committed to transparency and responsible business practices everywhere it operates. Mares has not contacted the company recently, Sunnova added, and it has no reason to believe she is unhappy.

Early beginnings

Sunnovas founder and top executive John Berger, a Harvard MBA with dark hair and a chiseled face, touts the environmental friendliness, low cost and disruptive influences of solar power at energy conferences and university symposiums. Residential solar can put a mini-utility on everyones rooftop, he says, changing the role of utilities and regulators as homeowners take charge of their own power.

Solar is going to rip apart the energy business as we know it, said Berger at the recent industry conference CERAWeek by IHS Markit.

Berger worked early in his career at Enron, founded residential solar company SunCap Financial in 2010 and later sold it to NRG Energy. He launched Sunnova in 2012.

By then, the industry had hit upon a way to get more homeowners into solar power. Instead of having to spend $20,000 or more to buy and install their own panels, homeowners could lease a system with no money down and no maintenance worries over the typical 25-year life of a rooftop solar system. Homeowners would make monthly payments to solar companies, which, in turn, would retain ownership of the solar systems and claim federal tax credits of 30 percent.

Two years after getting its start, Sunnova announced $145 million in outside investor funding. By then, according to a company press release, Sunnova was providing solar to more states and U.S. territories than any other company. Sunnova continued to rapidly expand, raising nearly $1 billion in a three-month period in 2017, according to a company announcement.

Sunnova, which has 65,000 customers in 22 states plus Guam, Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, has raised $2.5 billion from investors since 2012, according to Sunnova. Customers save an average of 20 percent on their energy bills, according to Sunnovas web site.

Sunnova and other residential solar companies are mostly financiers, raising money from investors, but leaving most of the details of selling, installing and maintaining solar systems to a network of contractors known as channel partners. But when panels leak or unexpected charges show up on bills, customers said they find themselves caught between the solar companies, which refer them to the contractors, and the contractors advising them to call the solar company.

In Puerto Rico, where Sunnova has installed some 10,000 solar systems since 2013, more than 400 customers have filed complaints with the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, which regulates electricity for the island, according to the Center for Investigative Journalism, a nonprofit news organization that first reported Sunnovas problems in Puerto Rico. Some customers said they never got the savings they were promised. Others said the equipment didnt work. Still, others said signatures authorizing credit checks were put on contracts without permission.

In a report, regulators determined that Sunnova, which dominates the residential solar industry on the island, violated the rights of consumers by forcing them into expensive arbitration to resolve the disputes instead of allowing homeowners their legal rights to seek remedies through the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.

Sunnova has challenged the Puerto Rico Energy Bureaus conclusions, pointing to the policies and training materials it supplies for local partners responsible for sales. The company also provided transcripts of calls confirming customer purchases and supplied the software that reflected time stamps when customers received, opened and signed their solar contracts. Sunnova said it has been at all times ready to address and resolve claims by its customers.

Related: Biggest solar investments in Texas in places with regulated utilities

Using arbitration contracts is fully within the companys legal rights, according to Sunnova.

Sunnova also had problems with its contractors in Puerto Rico. One of them, Maximo Solar Industries, sued Sunnova, accusing Sunnova of withholding payments for installation services and forcing several installers in Puerto Rico out of business, according to court documents. Maximo is asking for millions of dollars for reimbursement of unpaid bills and damages.

Maximo said in a statement that it tried everything to get repaid, including making a visit to Sunnova headquarters in Houston.

Sunnova said it would not comment.

Second generation

Joe Forkner, 58, said he called and emailed Sunnova about a dozen times without much success after a storm in February caused extensive water inside his home near San Diego from leaks caused by the solar panels. The previous owner tried to get Sunnova to fix the installation problems and now Forkner, who assumed the Sunnova lease when he bought his $400,000 house, is trying, too.

Sunnova offered to reinstall the panels for $9,000, an offer Forkner rejected because the initial installation problems, which he believes caused the damage, were never fixed . Another time, Sunnova said theyd pay if the companys damage team determined the company was responsible.

But Forkner can no longer use his kitchen because of the water damage. Tarps cover holes in the roof. He wants the lease dissolved and he wants the panels off the roof.

Im not going through this again, he said.

Sunnova said that it has tried, with its local dealer, to address Forkners problems, but Forkner has not cooperated.

The Better Business Bureau has logged 153 complaints about Sunnova, mostly about installation problems, the use of contractors and buyers not getting the savings they were promised. Most come from California along with Maryland, Hawaii, New York and New Jersey. Only a few are from Texas, which has been slow to adopt residential solar.

Until recently, the bureau gave Sunnova its top rating because the number of complaints isnt unusually high considering the companys 65,000 customers. And Sunnova typically responds quickly to consumer complaints.

But the membership committee of the Better Business Bureau, a group of 10 business leaders in the Houston community, voted unanimously on Thursday to revoke Sunnovas accreditation, a designation that a company adheres to the bureaus standards of business ethics, said Denisha Maxey, senior director of dispute resolution. The committee cited the recent finding by regulators in Puerto Rico.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Transmission is latest front in fossil fuels v. renwables

Later this month the bureaus board is expected to make a final decision on Sunnovas accreditation.

We hate to hear when a customer is not satisfied with their Sunnova experience, Sunnova said in a statement. Our goal is to go above and beyond the call of duty for our customers.

Al Morgan, 64, said he was paying about $200 a month for electricity at his home in Vincentown, N.J., an unincorporated community about 30 miles from Philadelphia, and liked the idea of going solar to save money. But now hes paying at least $300 a month since Sunnova sold him on a solar system a year ago. And wet spots are popping up on his ceiling where solar panels have leaked.

Morgan said he asked Sunnova for a copy of his power purchase agreement and was stunned to see someone else signed his name and the name of his daughter, who also is on the contract. Sunnova said that its representatives called and confirmed with Morgan that he had reviewed and understood the terms of the contract.

Morgan has filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. He said he feels like hes handed over this roof to Sunnova so the company can sell the excess power to the utility and collect a federal tax credit.

Even when the panels are making money I am losing money, he said. It all goes to Sunnova.

lm.sixel@chron.com
(CNN)  Chrissy Teigen called out Ivanka Trump for a "complete lack of empathy" in regards to the Trump administration's child separation on Wednesday night at the House Democrats' annual retreat.

"It's a painful thing to see that and it's a painful thing to see such a complete lack of empathy," Teigen said when asked by Melissa Harris-Perry, a former MSNBC host, how images of separated children affected her.

"When it comes from people, like Ivanka, I will say, that can post all day pictures of her children that are just in her home and 'oh my daughter is having trouble in her crib' or 'my daughter is doing this' and 'my daughter is doing this,' there are children out there that don't have that opportunity," she continued.

Teigen, who has been an outspoken critic of Trump, discussed how the current administration has impacted her mental health. She joked that she and her husband, John Legend, have very different social media personalities, but said she needed to step away from constantly discussing issues of the day for her own well-being.

"I couldn't read the messages that I was being sent because, of course, Donald more than anything he says and does, he opened a world, opened up a window to all these people that felt like it became OK to be just as nasty as him, and it made it acceptable and I didn't want to be a part of that anymore," she said.

She said that she typically likes to make light of things, but "but it's hard to find the funny when there's so much sad and when there's so much agony and pain and people being treated horribly."

The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment.

Later in the discussion, the moderator noted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has helped demonstrate the importance of saying "no" and asked Teigen what word she hoped women would start using more frequently.

"F*** you," she said bluntly.

The audience broke into laughter and Teigen then turned to the speaker and said, "I'm so sorry, Speaker Pelosi."

"Sometimes you don't got to say it, you just walk out," Legend said.

"By the way, you don't have to say it ... it is not a word, it's not a sentence, it's a mindset," Teigen said.

The power couple was also asked about reparations, which Legend called "a long overdue" conversation.

At the National Action Network conference last week, multiple 2020 candidates expressed support for H.R. 40, a House bill that would establish a congressional panel to study the possibility of reparations for descendants of slaves. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former Rep. Beto O'Rourke and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have all said they would be in favor of the legislation.

On Monday, Sen. Cory Booker announced that he would be taking the lead on this issue in the Senate and would introduce legislation as a result of "overt policies fueled by white supremacy and racism that have oppressed African Americans economically for generations," he said in a statement.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Chrissy Teigen blasts Ivanka Trump's 'complete lack of empathy' on child separation."
I dont even know them. Ive just waved to them before, he said. But after several days going by a lot of people were reaching out to me because they know what I do. I talked to my wife and said, Lets get something out. The least we can do is get some monetary donations together. Its nice to see the community come together.
The number of out-of-state law firms that opened new offices in Texas grew significantly in 2018, but the actual number of lawyers working at big corporate firms operating in the state declined last year.

Nearly half of all corporate attorneys practicing in Texas now work for a law firm headquartered outside of the state.

Citing a thriving economy and dozens of corporate relocations to Texas during the past five years, more than 15 national and regional law firms launched new offices in Dallas, Houston and Austin in 2018. A couple dozen others have opened outposts in Texas since 2012.

Exclusive new Texas Lawbook research shows, however, that out-of-state law firms have relocated only a miniscule number of lawyers from their other offices to their Texas operations and that the states corporate law community has witnessed almost no growth in its pool of legal talent since the Great Recession ended in 2009.

There were 6,750 full-time attorneys working at the 50 largest corporate law firms operating in Texas last year - down from 7,003 lawyers in 2017, according to Texas Lawbook research.

Top 10 law firms in Texas By number of attorneys Law Firm 2018 TX Lawyers 2017 TX Lawyers Vinson Elkins 430 409 Norton Rose 393 408 Baker Botts 370 374 Jackson Walker 351 359 Haynes and Boone 331 350 Thompson & Knight 296 289 Winstead 291 291 Locke Lord 283 296 Bracewell 228 231 Hunton AK 213 296 See More Collapse

More than 44% of those 6,750 Texas business lawyers are now employed by law firms headquartered outside the state - triple the number from 2014, which was the first year that The Texas Lawbook started keeping track of such data.

The number would be 50%, except that The Texas Lawbook still credits Norton Rose Fulbright - a global firm that is the result of Fulbright & Jaworskis 2013 merger with London-based Norton Rose - as having its U.S. headquarters in Houston.

A seismic shift has taken place in the Texas legal market, and the entire law firm landscape has changed, says Chicago-based legal industry consultant Kent Zimmermann. But the pool of lawyers for the law firms to chose from seems stagnant and is certainly not growing at the pace that we would expect for such a thriving business economy as Texas.

As a result, the same lawyers are just jumping firm to firm in a law firm version of musical chairs, Zimmermann says.

There is no better evidence of the transformation that has taken place than the 2018 annual Texas Lawbook survey of the 50 largest corporate legal operations in Texas.

Only 22 of the 50 largest law firms by lawyer count operating in Texas are now headquartered in the state. In 2014, 38 of the 50 were based in Texas.

The numbers are partially skewed by three major law firm mergers that took place last year: Houston-based Andrews Kurth combined with Virginia-headquartered Hunton & Williams; Dallas-based Gardere merged with Milwaukees Foley Lardner; and Detroit-headquartered Clark Hill joined with Strasburger & Price of Dallas.

As a result, 664 corporate attorneys who worked for those three Texas firms in 2017 are now employed by out-of-state firms. All three of the newly merged firms - Hunton Andrews Kurth, Foley Gardere and Clark Hill Strasburger - are ranked in the top 15 in this years survey.

Twenty-six of the top 50 legal operations in Texas grew their lawyer head count in 2018, according to Texas Lawbook research. Twenty firms thinned out their ranks, while four have exactly the same number of attorneys as they did in 2017.

To be sure, the nine largest corporate law firms - Vinson & Elkins, Norton Rose Fulbright, Baker Botts, Jackson Walker, Haynes and Boone, Thompson & Knight, Winstead, Locke Lord and Bracewell - operating in the state are Texas legacy firms and remain a huge force in the business communities of Dallas, Houston and Austin.

Those nine Texas firms employ 2,973 lawyers, which is exactly six more attorneys than work at the 28 out-of-state firms combined.

For the second year in a row, Houston-based V&E remained the states largest corporate legal operation. V&E added 21 attorneys during 2018 to have 430 lawyers practicing in their Austin, Dallas and Houston offices.

Norton Rose Fulbright, which held the top spot for more than a decade, shed 15 lawyers last year and dropped to second with 393 attorneys practicing in the state.

Baker Botts, Jackson Walker and Haynes and Boone round out the top five.

Seven of the 10 largest law firms operating in Texas saw their lawyer headcount drop in 2018. Two firms - V&E and Thompson & Knight - added attorneys. Winstead had exactly the same number of lawyers in 2018 as they did in 2017.

The Texas Lawbook survey found that 25 of the top 50 corporate law firms grew in size in 2018 and that only seven of those 25 firms are Texas-based. The rest are headquartered outside the state.

Eight law firms - all of them based out of state - increased their number of lawyers in Texas significantly.

In pure numbers, Kirkland & Ellis added the most attorneys in 2018 - 81. The Chicago-founded law firm opened a Dallas office last year and jumped from being ranked 19th in lawyer count in 2017 to 11th in 2018.

Sidley and Winston & Strawn each added 20 lawyers and jumped into the top 20 for the first time. DLA Piper grew by 40 attorneys and leaped from 40th to 25th in the ranking.

For the full version of this article, please visit TexasLawbook.net.
CASA does essential work for so many children and families who depend on CASA to get them through difficult situations and to succeed, said Dan Duffy, president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America. He thanked Kane County judges, supporters and volunteers, who are truly our heroes for all the hard work they do, he said.
Superintendents from lauded charter school networks are among the 20 highest-paid charter school leaders in the Houston area. However, that list also includes another superintendent who found himself embroiled in controversy over the last week.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Charter school superintendent, IT employee charged with embezzlement

Houston Gateway Academy Superintendent Richard Garza was charged with embezzlement last week, along with another school employee. They were accused of siphoning $250,000 from the school for themselves and using some of the money to buy a car and condominium, according to earlier reports in the Houston Chronicle.

A grand jury in the U.S. District Court's Southern District of Texas charged him with one count of conspiracy, two counts of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, three counts of wire fraud and two counts of engaging in monetary transactions involving criminally acquired property.

Garza is the second highest-paid charter school superintendent for the Houston region this year with a $207,982 salary, according to 2018-19 data from the Texas Education Agency.

Gateway schools were also in trouble with the TEA in 2013, when the agency found out the schools were charging parents to enroll their children in violation of state law, according earlier reports.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Two Houston charter school pioneers seeking new campuses

Other schools with the highest-paid leaders have been praised for performance.

Several campuses in the Harmony Public Schools network earned among the highest accountability scores in the state last year, according to earlier reports. Harmony schools last year averaged a state accountability score of 84, equivalent to a "B" grade.

Three superintendents in the network area among the top 20 highest paid charter school leaders in the Houston region.

YES Prep Public Schools has also been praised for its work educating mostly poor minority students.

Its superintendent, Mark DiBella, is the highest-paid charter school leader in Houston with a $270,000 salary.

>>>Click through the slideshow above to see the top 20 highest paid charter school leaders in the Houston region

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.
A Houston man accused of gunning down his employee who was taking a shower Wednesday night admitted to the cocaine-fueled shooting, claiming he was angry about the victim sleeping with his wife, according to court documents.

Edwin Figueroa, 23, had already assaulted 22-year-old Rafael Nunez days earlier after learning that Nunez allegedly had an affair with his wife, according to a probable cause statement read aloud in court Friday morning.

Now Playing: Edwin Figueroa, 23, is accused of shooting 22-year-old Rafael Nunez on Wednesday, April 10, 2019, after finding out Nunez was allegedly having an affair with his wife. Video: Harris County Office of Court Management

But that beating wasn't enough revenge for Figueroa, he allegedly told police officers. Prosecutors said he confessed to drinking beer, snorting cocaine and purchasing a pistol before driving to Nunez's apartment in the 10400 block of South Drive in southwest Houston.

BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: Get your Houston breaking news alerts delivered to your inbox

He broke down Nunez's door around 10:20 p.m. as the victim was taking a shower, prosecutors said. He opened fire, striking Nunez several times before fleeing the scene, police said.

RELATED: Man arrested after allegedly exposing himself outside of woman's home and attempted to break in

Paramedics rushed to the apartment to try and save Nunez. He was apparently conscious and, while being wheeled into an ambulance, told the medics that his "boss" shot him, police said.

He later died in surgery at Memorial Hermann Southwest Hospital.

Officers found Figueroa nearby and detained him. Houston Police Department homicide detectives interviewed Figueroa, who then allegedly made the confession, police said.

He told the detectives Nunez was his friend of four years, they said. Figueroa was charged with first-degree felony murder and is being held in the Harris County Jail with a $100,000 bail amount, records show.

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
Officials from the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association said Friday they would seek union members' approval of a 3.5-year phase-in of Proposition B if the city meets certain conditions.

After meeting with the union to discuss the terms, however, Mayor Sylvester Turner released a statement saying the provisions were "not consistent" with discussions held at the meeting.

Union president Marty Lancton said he had in fact laid out the union's terms to the mayor, which include a guarantee that no firefighters will receive layoffs "before, during or after implementation of Proposition B."

"We said it implicitly and explicitly," Lancton said.

EDITORIAL: Firefighters won, and we must suffer the consequences. Join the conversation at HoustonChronicle.com.

The mayor acknowledged the union delivered a copy of the letter, but accused Lancton of publicizing it before the meeting. Lancton also said this was untrue.

Aside from the no-layoff guarantee, union officials said any phase-in agreement would have to be ratified through a collective bargaining agreement.

Lancton also said Turner's administration must provide the firefighters with "complete access to city financial and budget information" and implement "complete parity," including base and incentive pay, with Houston police officers.

The two sides were scheduled to meet again next week before Houston City Council considers a measure at its Wednesday meeting that would authorize 220 firefighter layoffs.

The layoffs are part of Turner's plan to account for the cost of Proposition B, the voter-approved charter amendment requiring the city to pay firefighters the same as police of corresponding rank and experience.

In his response to Lancton, Turner called the union's release of the letter a "tactic," but the mayor said he would "nevertheless be prepared to meet again next week."

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 Houston has ended its relationship with a well-known lobbying firm in Austin after learning that it also represents cable and telecommunications companies pushing the Texas Legislature to eliminate millions of dollars in fees they pay to cities for using their right of way.

The decision to stop using HillCo Partners to lobby on Houstons behalf comes amid Mayor Sylvester Turners increasingly vocal calls for state lawmakers to reject a bill that would limit the fees companies pay cities to lay cable and telephone lines.

HillCo lobbyists represent the Texas Cable Association and Charter Communications, Texas Ethics Commission records show.

Turner has asked Houston residents to lobby lawmakers against the bill, warning the city would lose $17 million to $27 million in annual revenue if the bill becomes law. Asked whether the city has stopped using HillCos lobbying services over the apparent conflict, a mayoral spokesperson responded, Yes.

Bill Miller, a HillCo principal and the firms co-founder, declined comment earlier this week.

Texas Ethics Commission filings show HillCo represented the city through April 1.

HillCo partners is no longer representing the City of Houston during this session, Bill Kelly, Houstons government relations director, said in a statement. The accomplishments between Houston and HillCo included landmark pension reform that has become a national model. Houston looks forward to continuing to work on issues at the Texas Legislature during this session.

Texas cities commonly hire lobbying firms to advance their interests and defend against legislation they view as unfavorable. For the 86th legislative session, which ends May 27, the city hired HillCo on a contract worth aas much as $662,000.

Turner spokeswoman Mary Benton said the city will continue to contract with other lobbyists. City employees from various departments also will continue to help the four-person government relations team as subject matter experts.

The bill  Senate Bill 1152  has drawn intense criticism from Turner and the leaders of other cities, who say it would cut into general fund revenues used to fund public safety and many other day-to-day operations. They also note that the bill does not compel companies to pass savings on to customers.

The bills proponents, including its author, Republican state Sen. Kelly Hancock, say the legislation would eliminate what amounts to a double tax on companies who pay cable franchise fees and right-of-way access line fees, despite cable and phone services being transmitted over the same lines. The bill would eliminate the lesser of the two charges.

San Antonio officials also oppose the bill, though the city has not hired any lobbyists who also represent cable companies, Government and Public Affairs Director Jeff Coyle said.

Meanwhile, Hancocks home city, North Richland Hills, is among HillCos clients who appear to still be using the firms lobbying services.

Such conflicts are not uncommon among large lobbying firms that may represent dozens of companies and industries, in addition to local governments.

During the last couple legislative sessions, the debate has escalated over the use of tax dollars for lobbying in Austin, with state Rep. Mayes Middleton, R-Wallisville, introducing a bill this session that would bar local entities from spending public money to directly or indirectly influence or attempt to influence the outcome of any legislation pending before the legislature.

Benton declined to say whether the mayor, who represented Houston for 27 years in the Texas House, planned to become more personally active in Austin now that the city has cut ties with its primary lobbying firm. The mayor recently has shown signs that he is willing to use his connections in the Legislature, as he did in 2017 to push through a massive pension reform package. HillCo also represented the city during that session.

On Wednesday, Turner declined to hold his post-city council news conference to travel to Austin on undisclosed business, and he penned an op-ed in the Chronicle Tuesday laying out his opposition to proposed property tax reform that would require cities, counties and other local entities to gain voter approval before increasing property tax revenues more than 2.5 percent above the prior year.

Turner has been a salesperson for the city in the Legislature, theres no question, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston. The fact that he was part of the body and has relationships with so many members across the aisle, that gives him credibility.

Reporter Andrea Zelinski contributed to this story.
AUSTIN  A plan to slow the escalation of property taxes in Texas has been stalled for months, but Republicans in control of the Legislature say they are not giving up on it.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a radio interview on Thursday that tax relief has been bottled up for months because he doesnt have the votes to get the idea even considered by the Texas Senate. For any bill to be taken up by the Senate, at least 19 of the Senates 31 members must agree.

Patrick said hes been stuck at 18 votes since the start of the session in January.

Right now we have 18 and we are working on No. 19, Patrick told host Chad Hasty on KFYO New Talk Radio in Lubbock.

Patrick said while its been frustrating, he will keep pushing.

One way or the other, we will get to where we need to be, he said.

Texas Take: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Property tax reform has been the No. 1 priority for Gov. Greg Abbott, Patrick and House Speaker Dennis Bonnen. They have put their support behind a plan that would prevent cities and counties from raising property tax revenues by more than 2.5 percent in any given year without a vote by the public. Currently, cities and counties can raise taxes as much as 8 percent before voters have a chance to weigh in.

Both the House and Senate leaders have been working behind the scenes to strike a compromise. The House removed provisions from its version of the legislation that would have applied the 2.5-percent cap to school districts as well. The Senate plan still has schools included, but lawmakers were preparing a backup plan this week that could also omit school districts.

After a visit to meet with Senators on Thursday, Abbott told reporters school districts "absolutely" need to be included in property tax reform. But he declined to answer further questions about the plan or a proposed tax swap that would hike sales taxes to buy down school property taxes.

"The information will be pretty clear pretty soon, he said Thursday, without elaborating.

For subscribers: Gov. Abbott, top lawmakers push to raise sales tax to 7.25 percent, reduce property taxes

Abbott, Patrick and Bonnen threw their weight behind the proposed tax swap Wednesday. It would bring the state sales tax to 7.25 percent, the highest in the nation along with California, according to the Tax Foundation, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. The revenue, estimated to be roughly $5 billion in the first year, would be used to buy down school property taxes. When combined with local sales taxes, most Texans would be paying a sales tax of 9.25 percent.

Republicans touted the swap, arguing that sales tax gives residents more control of their tax bills than property taxes do. Democrats in the Legislature, however, argued the sales tax hike would hit poor residents the hardest.

While Patrick said polls show voters support the concept, some legislators say the plan is coming late in the session, leaving them little time to assess the idea and consult with their constituents. There are six weeks remaining in the legislative session. Bonnen said Thursday that House members will resume property tax deliberations on Monday.

Patrick pledged to keep pushing. He noted that if they cannot get the reforms passed during the regular session, the rules would change in a potential special session that could make the bill easier to be voted on in the Senate. During special sessions, Patrick needs only 16 votes to bring a bill to the floor for a vote.

Staff writer Allie Morris contributed reporting from Austin.
President Donald Trump claims our country is full. Its a premise that appears to support the administrations hostility toward asylum seekers, its rejection of refugees, and its efforts to limit legal migration.

By any objective measure, the president is mistaken. There are about 45 million foreign-born people in the United States, including about 11 million who are undocumented. Each year the U.S. grants permanent resident status to about a million, yet America continues to need immigrants for it to grow and prosper.

If Trump paid attention when he visited Houston Wednesday, he might have looked around our city and seen the strength that comes with immigration.

This is one of the most diverse areas in the country, a place where more than 140 languages are spoken and about 1 in 4 of us are foreign-born. Most immigrants here come from Latin America, but many others are from Asia. They are part of our citys vibrancy, a cultural and culinary richness for which we are increasingly, and justly, famous. If immigrants are a threat to our nation and a danger to native-born Americans, how do you explain Houston?

Our city is thriving  were the fourth largest in the U.S. and growing fast  and migrants help drive the economy, providing labor from a wide range of skills; from the doctor at the medical center to the carpenter at the construction site.

Even the citys resilience and strength in the face of adversity arebuttressed by our diverse population, said Joel Kotkin of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism.

After Harvey a lot of people were saying, Oh, Houstons dead, but its better than ever, he said. A lot of that energy comes from migrants and immigrants. Countries and cities that attract new people are the ones that do well.

The United States is lucky to remain the worldstop destination for immigrants. Without those new people the economy would suffer. The nations birth rate is at a 30-year low and not enough babies are being born to replace the population. America, without immigration, is inviting a labor crisis over the next decade.

Even more newcomers are going to be needed if we want to keep the Texas miracle alive.

Texas population is growing about twice as fast as the nation as a whole, with immigration a key reason why, said Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

That so many residents of other states have moved here has helped a lot, too, but Pia said its been immigration that played the largest role. Theres no way we can sustain this growth premium without it, she said. About 40 percent of growth between 2000 and 2017 has been international immigration.

Despite immigrations role in helping states such as Texas thrive, Trumps anti-immigration rhetoric has found a wide audience. This is hard to explain until we consider the pace of cultural and other change in America over the past decade or two.

Polling after the election found that the strongest support for Trump came from voters who said immigration was the most important issue facing the country. But 66 percent of Trump voters also agreed that the 2016 contest represented the last chance to stop Americas decline.

For many Trump voters , including many white evangelicals, the country was changing much too quickly, leaving them desperate to turn back time, said Robert P. Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute.in Washington, D.C.

You can see this with support for same-sex marriage, another controversial topic, Jones said. In 2008 it was 40 percent; by 2016, its only 4 in 10 oppose. A complete flip. If you are a white conservative evangelical Christian, that is a head-spinning amount of change in a short period of time.

Trump understood that to stand out in the primary he could exploit and even deepen that sense of alienation. He zeroed in on immigration and it worked beautifully. By doubling down in the general election, he squeaked out a victory.

Once he was president, Trump could have taken a different approach  something hes flirted with from time to time, as when he claimed to love dreamers and to want 'the largest numbers ever of legal immigrants. But his actions have repeatedly belied his words.

Now, with asylum-seekers pooling at the border, hes again playing up our divisions and acting as though following our nations asylum laws is somehow at odds with enforcing our border laws. As Trump slipped in and out of Houston this week, he seemed utterly determined to miss the obvious truth of this city: Immigration is rocket fuel for Houstons growth and it could be fuel for the rest of the nation, too.
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Bucharest - The International Air Transport Association (IATA) urged the Romanian government to focus on aviation competitiveness as a means to strengthen the economy of Romania. In addition, Romanias Presidency of the European Union gives it a powerful opportunity to push policies for stronger aviation competitiveness across the whole of the EU.

Air transport is a key enabler of economic activity in Romania, supporting 107,000 jobs and contributing EUR 2.3 billion to the economy. Ten million passengers departed from Romanias airports in 2017. This figure, however, could rise by 50% by 2037, supporting an additional 23,000 jobs, if Romania enhances the conditions on which its aviation sector can be competitive.

Air Transport Competitiveness in Romania

IATA published a competitiveness report on Romanian aviation which demonstrates a gap between the nations competitiveness level (ranked at 4.7) and the overall European average (ranked 5.9). Based on the report findings, IATA highlighted three priority areas:

1. Passenger facilitation

2. Expanded terminal capacity

3. Reduced infrastructure costs.

In addition, airspace modernization is identified as a crucial element to support future growth and efficiency.

Leading an agenda for stronger European aviation

The Romania Aviation Day brought together key stakeholders to hear from leading policy-makers such as Dragos Titea (Romanian Secretary of State for Transport), Henrik Hololei (Director General for Mobility and Transport, European Commission), Catalin Radu (Deputy Director, ICAO Air Navigation Bureau), Maria Magdalena Grigore (Romanian State-Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), Mikolaj Wild (State Secretary in Poland Ministry of Infrastructure), and Romanian MEPs Claudia Tapardel and Marian Jean Marinescu.

Minister Cucs keynote speech highlighted his countrys priorities for its Presidency of the European Council. Under the motto Cohesion, a common European Value he explained how competitiveness, innovation and digitalization, connectivity, climate and sustainability were all lines of action for transport policy under Romanias Presidency.

In his keynote address, Rafael Schvartzman highlighted the benefits of modernizing European airspace and the important economic and environmental benefits it would create.

His key recommendations included:

For States, ANSPs and staff associations to look at how air traffic management staff are deployed this summer to avoid some of the significant delays air travelers suffered last year (Air Traffic Management (ATM) delay in Europe doubled in 2018 and is set to get even worse in 2019).

Europes airspace infrastructure to be modernized and investments aligned between Airlines and Service Providers.

For governments to treat air transport and air traffic management as a truly global business. Europes inconsistent ATM Service levels create delays, and haphazard and indirect flight routings, which all lead to wasted time and higher costs for passengers and airlines. The additional fuel burn also generates an unnecessary increase in CO2 emissions.

Airspace modernization

Efficient ATM is a bedrock of a high-performance aviation sector. To complement the long-term aim of a Single European Sky to improve the safety, capacity, efficiency, and environmental performance of European airspace, IATA is working with several air navigation service providers on National Airspace Strategies (NAS).

At the Aviation Day the Romanian government announced that it would support the development of a NAS to support more efficient capacity in Romania and to help deliver Single European Sky objectives.

Romanian Air Traffic Services Administration (ROMATSA) and IATA will strengthen their existing cooperation for this initiative, which is aimed at delivering benefits to the travelling public and the wider aviation community, while supporting the economic growth and competitiveness of the Romanian aviation sector.

The main aspects of the strategy cover leadership and a collaborative stakeholder approach, airspace management, and technical modernization of the ATM system.

Mircea Bostina, Director General of ROMATSA, explained: "This week marks two landmark events for Romanian airspace, that will define our evolution in the decades to come. The new ATM system that became operational on the 8th of April implements new functionalities that increase capacity and flexibility, optimize airspace structure and align us with the latest technological developments.

The collaboration with IATA on developing and implementing a national airspace strategy is a natural and much needed step forward in bringing together all aviation stakeholders in Romania and setting together our priorities in order to meet customer demand, deliver on the SES high level goals and increase the competitiveness of the Romanian aviation sector and of the overall economy. We pride ourselves on having written aviation history in the past, but we are just as committed to embracing the future and rising up to the challenge of serving an ever-growing number of passengers at the highest standards of safety and efficiency.

Rafael Schvartzman, IATAs Regional Vice President for Europe, said: Romania has a great opportunity to transform its aviation sector if the right policy levers are pulled. Our recommendations are, first, to promote innovative technology and processes to move passengers quickly. Second, to invest in more capacity at airports and in air traffic management. And third, to ensure infrastructure charges are set in transparent consultation with users. If Romania can take these steps, its economic and social development will gain significantly from enhanced air connectivity.

The commitment to develop a national airspace strategy shows that the government is already taking the necessary steps to enhance the nations aviation competitiveness. Optimizing Romanias airspace will not only benefit Romania but the wider European network. We congratulate ROMATSA for its vision, and look forward to working with them to make airspace modernization a success.

The Romanian National Airspace Strategy will include:

Enhancement of coordination for more efficient flightpaths;

Airspace optimization at regional level as well as between regions;

Increased capacity while ensuring safety levels;

Improved punctuality of flights;

Better sharing of information across the European air transport network.

For more information, please contact:

Corporate Communications

Tel: +41 22 770 2967

Email: corpcomms@iata.org

Notes for Editors:
Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington is marking 100 days in office.

100 Days: An Interview With District Attorney Andrea Harrington



Andrea Harrington is sworn in as district attorney 100 days ago. She ran promising reform in the DA's office. PITTSFIELD, Mass.  It's been 100 days since the changing of the guard in the district attorney's office.

Andrea Harrington defeated incumbent Paul Caccaviello in November with a message of reform and change. She took the oath of office on Jan. 2 before a large crowd at the Berkshire Museum  and so began a new day in that office.

Earlier this week, Harrington announced the creation of a domestic violence task force. It was one of her campaign promises and one that she envisions as being preventative in nature to curb rising numbers of domestic and sexual violence cases.

But that had been only one of many promises she made and, on Tuesday, she said she's made plenty of inroads on the others.

"Prioritizing domestic and sexual violence felt like an obvious choice because of the dire statistics and the tragedies we've seen here in Berkshire County," Harrington said.

"That was something I talked about during the campaign and that piece was part of a campaign promise. That was a very clear thing. It is a public health crisis and there has been a vacuum in leadership and I am one of the few countywide elected officials and I just feel like I'm the person who is in the position to bring the community together to work for solutions."

Elizabeth Freeman Center Executive Director Janis Broderick said the number of restraining orders requested in the county has grown by 15 percent since 2015, with 1,107 filings in 2018. That rate is 36 percent higher than the state average. Stockbridge, Adams, Pittsfield, and North Adams ranked first, third, fifth, and sixth in 2017 among the highest rates of rape per population, she said, and Pittsfield Police refer about 800 cases a year to the non-profit organization.

Further, from 2015 through 2018, there have been six cases in which a woman was murdered by a husband or ex-boyfriend, she said. The last domestic murder prior to that was in 2009.

The task force will bring in training for law enforcement to recognize the signs of human trafficking better and when someone is at risk. The office will track cases at the moment of a report being filed rather than waiting for charges. Staff members will be trained in the address confidentiality program and Harrington is working with state officials to review domestic fatality cases and bring new services to the county.

The new program followed an announcement that the office would end its reliance on cash bail. Harrington said bail is intended to ensure people return for court, but too often people are being held pre-trial because they can't afford the bail.

"For so long, the way prosecutors were judged and the way they made decisions was fear based. If you don't ask for somebody to be incarcerated and they go out and do something terrible, then it feels like a failure to the community. That has driven a lot of decisions we've seen prosecutors making throughout the country," Harrington said.

"To be a prosecutor and stand up and say we aren't going to ask for cash bail, we aren't going to ask people to be held pre-trial unless they are dangerous or a demonstrative flight risk, it felt like a bold thing to do."

The courts ruled that judges can't set bail at a price too high for the defendant to afford. Harrington said that is difficult to determine, especially with people who live in the margins. The focus is going to be only asking for cash bail if the person has a demonstrated risk of leaving the area to avoid prosecution. For the more serious crimes, the District Attorney's Office is focusing on having the defendant be held if he or she is a danger to others.

"In the past, bail has been used to incarcerate people pre-trial. It is just the way it functioned," Harrington said.

Those two initiatives are now in place but new initiatives are only one area on which the office has been focusing its work in the last four months. The first step was building a new team.

"It's the most foundational component of all of the things we are going to accomplish in this office, having the right team in place," Harrington said.

"We have hired 10 ADAs that were new to the office. We've hired five additional people, non-attorney positions, some of them new positions to the office like Helen Moon is the director of new initiatives, Dina Guiel is the director of operations. Those are new positions. We hired a new director of victim services and the director of communications, which is new to this office to have somebody doing that full time."

Harrington said the team includes two Spanish-speaking assistant district attorneys and she is in the process of hiring for three more positions: a Spanish-speaking victim advocate, a juvenile diversion case manager, and a director of community outreach.

"Those are going to be essential to fill in order to accomplish what we want to accomplish," Harrington said.

The early work has included revamping the organizational structure of the prosecutor's office and putting new leadership in place.

Karen Bell was hired to take over as first assistant district attorney. The director of communications job was revamped and Dennis Yusko hired to head that. Richard Dohoney was brought on to become more of a manager and to head district court. Jeanne Kempthorne was brought on as chief of appeals, to serve as legal counsel, and to head the ethics office  the latter two roles are new to the Berkshire County.

"We changed the leadership in the office. It was important to have leaders who believed in the values and the mission that voters voted for," Harrington said.

Guiel, as director of operations, is currently in the process of reviewing and changing the policies and procedures that will guide the office. It is a job Harrington said is important to get everybody on the same page.

"We needed to have a person who was focused on that. This office processes around 7,000 cases per year so there is a lot of work going on every day and we need specific people working on the organizational piece but also new initiatives and prevention work," Harrington said.



Harrington with State Auditor Suzanne Bump not long after taking office. With new personnel in place, Harrington is bolstering their work with an array of training and educational sessions. Western New England College of Law professor Tina Cafaro was brought in to do a series of training sessions for assistant district attorneys including such things as dangerousness hearings to complement the move from cash bail. The team visited the House of Corrections and the Chicopee Women's Facility. The staff for different courts meets on a weekly basis to review cases and determine how to tackle them.

"We are really working on giving the ADAs the tools they need," Harrington said.

She is bringing in Adam Foss, an advocate for criminal justice reform, and Emily Bazelon, the author of the book "Charged," to discuss what the future of the criminal justice system can look like.

Meanwhile, the office is changing the way it reviews the work of an assistant district attorney. Harrington said she will be doing a pilot project in the fall with the organization Fair and Just Prosecution on how to evaluate the work of the district attorneys that reflect the 21st century prosecution.

"We are going to be providing our ADAs with the criteria for what they are going to be evaluated on," Harrington said.

Those efforts are setting the stage for a new culture in the office. Harrington is pushing for a shift from judging a prosecutor solely by the number of convictions to judging them on whether or not they made a just and fair decision.

Harrington said it is a shift to focusing more heavily on the "ethical and moral obligation" of a prosecutor rather than numbers.

"We make decisions every day. We sit around this table and we talk about what is the right thing to do? What's a fair thing? What's the just thing," Harrington said. "There have been two petitions for expungement (sealing or erasing a conviction or arrest) that we have supported and we are told this office has only ever opposed petitions for expungement. There have been cases that we have agreed for someone to go into treatment instead of seeking jail time. But we are also very aggressive with people who committed violence."

Harrington has also changed the way cases are assigned. She is midway into the process of creating a vertical prosecution model in which one prosecutor and one victim advocate are assigned to a case from the start to the end. Previously, a case could pass among many prosecutors.

"It's the norm in other offices but it is a change here in Berkshire County," Harrington said. "You are not invested in the case when it is not something you've been working on throughout the life of the case. It is difficult for the victims because they have to deal with different people all of the time."

She said as new cases come in, they are being assigned in that manner. She expects by July the entire caseload will be assigned that way. Harrington said when she took office there had been a significant backlog in cases that Bell has been focused on reducing.

With those pieces coming together, Harrington's team is focusing on more programmatic changes such as the domestic and sexual assault task force.

Moon was hired to head special projects and bring many of the initiatives Harrington had campaigned on to life. Her first task is to create a juvenile diversion program.

Harrington said such a program is mandated by state law but exactly how it will work in Berkshire County is being developed. Moon has been researching various models and reaching out to community partners who will serve a role in it. Harrington expects that to be in place within the next two months.

The juvenile program is also intended to be focused more on prevention. She envisions a school being able to refer a student to the office to get services, whether it be drug treatment or mental health treatment or anything else that they need.

"Our ultimate goal is a pre-arrest diversion program. We want a formal program. What is happening now is kids are being diverted informally, which in itself is not a bad thing, but we want to make sure that all kids are being treated fairly across the community," Harrington said.

"We want to make sure that kids on the west side of Pittsfield have the same opportunity for diversion and staying out of the criminal justice system as kids from Lenox."

Essentially, Harrington wants the community organizations to intervene with at-risk youth before they fall into the criminal justice system. Harrington said so often there are young people involved with firearms, drugs, or have mental health problems that could be helped before they go down the wrong path.

"We would be looking for the schools to be referring students to our diversion programs, really working hand in hand with them," Harrington said.

"I get a lot of reports from parents whose kids are being bullied. I think it is difficult for the schools because they don't want kids involved in the criminal justice system but there is a vacuum there that I think my office can help."

The office had a program focused on the schools that is being altered. She said the office will still teach classes on such things as sexting, consent, and bullying, but resource-intensive efforts of teaching and running programs in the school will be scaled back in favor of bringing in other service providers who can provide direct service to students.

"Historically the community outreach in this office really focused on providing direct service to the schools in the form of teaching classes. There are classes like the life skills class. The office put in a significant level of resources into this program. It is my goal to be more strategic about our approach to community outreach and engagement," Harrington said. "We are going to be looking to get help from other parts of the community to provide more of those direct services."

In the near future, Harrington says she wants to roll out more programs to address the opioid issue in the Berkshires. She wants to cut the demand for drugs down by getting more people into treatment and building a partnership with the probation system to make it more attractive for defendants to get help instead of a criminal record.

"If you are a person who wants to get help, we are going to help you get the resources you need," Harrington said.

She said she's been in conversation with the Massachusetts commissioner of probation about which type of programs can be used or piloted in the Berkshires to help create those pathways.

On the supply side, however, Harrington says her office wants to be aggressive in taking down large networks of drug dealers. She is calling on more law enforcement resources to be brought in to help limit the number of drugs being sold.

"We need more police officers. We need more state troopers. We've been working to make more connections with the FBI, the U.S. Attorney's Office was in here last week. We are really looking to utilize all of the resources that we can," Harrington said.

She added that she met with the Insurance Fraud Commission to discuss ways it can help with issues of doctors overprescribing.

Another promise Harrington made was to review un-indicted allegations of sexual assault. She said she has formed an internal working group to do that but is currently facing difficulties in identifying specific cases.

"Our files here are incomplete about cases that ultimately were not charged. So we are left in a position where we have to do a lot of work just to identify cases where there was an alleged sexual assault and nothing charged," Harrington said.

"We started by requesting from the State Police Crime Lab a list of all of the rape kits they have from Berkshire County. It is going to take them a little bit to get that to us. But it is going to be a good starting point and we can cross-reference that with our local police departments and hopefully get their investigative files in those cases."

One case Harrington or her office isn't touching is the one that became a talking point in the election. An attorney, who supported Harrington, went on the attack against the former administration for not prosecuting a case allegedly at Williams College. Harrington said she opted to shift that case to another prosecuting office for review to avoid any issues of perceived impropriety.

"Because that became such a feature of the campaign  not from my campaign but it is was an issue that was talked about in the press during the course of the campaign  we felt that it was really in the interest of justice that a prosecutor from outside this office takes a look at that case. I wouldn't want to be in the position where a defendant or a suspect had serious questions about if there was a bias or a conflict of interest on part of the prosecutor," Harrington said.

"We sent that out to a prosecutor in Suffolk County who is reviewing the materials in that case and submitting a report as to whether or not they believe there is probable cause to send it to a grand jury."

Meanwhile, data is also delaying the process for another promise Harrington had made: to more closely track and report on outcomes specifically when it comes to people of color in the justice system. Harrington said the case management system isn't equipped to easily track that information. That is an issue that is happening across the state and Harrington believes the state may upgrade the 25-year-old system to more easily keep that information.

"It can be used to track the kind of data I want to track but it is not easy to implement. Statewide, the Massachusetts District Attorney's Association, we are all being asked to provide a lot more and different kinds of data than we have in the past and everybody recognizes the current technology isn't going to allow us to do it in a way that is practical," Harrington said.

"We are starting to talk to the Legislature about an updated data tracking management system. It is not an easy project but I do expect that down the road it is something we will be able to solve at a statewide level."

A citizens advisory board is in the making. That was an initiative she believes will help provide the office with better feedback and more diverse viewpoints on the criminal justice system than ever before.

"We have looked at the way David Sullivan, the Northwestern District Attorney's office, runs his citizens advisory board. They meet quarterly. Once we get our domestic violence, sexual violence task force up and running and functioning, the next thing will be to start looking at the citizen's advisory board," Harrington said.

The district attorney said she is also looking to hasten the speed at which a case goes through the system. But, the office really only has control of the pace of the prosecutors.

"Justice delayed is justice denied. It is a huge goal to move things faster. Things in the courts here move much slower than we'd like. We are really taking responsibility for the prosecutors part in that," Harrington said.

When she took office, the court was flexible and allowed for additional time to get prepared for many of the larger cases. Harrington said now the office is all caught up and she expects the assistant prosecutors to be prepared for trial every day.

"We are really in a position now where we are pushing defense counsel to be ready for trial. We are ready for trial. We have trials we can go on every time we go into court. We really are pushing to have cases tried," she said.

But Harrington also said she isn't pushing too fast. There are cases with multiple murders coming up, and she'd rather have the assistant district attorneys completely ready before going to trial.

"It is more important that we do those right than just rushing them through," Harrington said.
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At a bilateral meeting with the Minister of Transport of France, Ms. Elisabeth Borne (left), ICAOs Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu appreciated the importance of French innovation to the future safety, security, and sustainability of the global civil aviation network. This was supported in a consecutive meeting with Mr. Damien Caze, Head Advisor of Environment, Transport and Energy to the Prime Minister of France.

In this regard, Dr. Liu emphasized key priority areas for ICAOs upcoming 40th Assembly, highlighting that safety must be on the forefront of ICAOs strategic objectives, while national priorities need to be aligned with the targets and timelines presented in the ICAO Global Plans for Aviation Safety (GASP), Security (GASeP), and Air Navigation Capacity and Efficiency (GANP).

Dr. Liu concurred with the French authorities that a collective approach is key to addressing the challenges presented by both the impending implementation of the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA), and the potential cybersecurity threats presented by the advanced digitalization of aviation operations.

She noted that the upcoming ICAO Innovation Fair and the ICAO World Aviation Forum, both key events leading into the 40th Assembly, would be excellent opportunities to engage the global aviation community on these themes and to explore the related opportunities presented by emerging innovations and technologies.

The implementation of these at the global level, Dr. Liu observed, would be predicated on the emergence of associated resourcing for ICAO, given the Organizations fundamental normative role.



The Secretary Generals mission to France, which took place on 8 and 9 April 2019, also provided her with an opportunity to discuss these points throughout a series of subsequent meetings with senior corporate leaders of Frances aviation industry.

During her visit to Airbus she was greeted by its CEO Mr. Guillaume Faury. The leaders exchanged fruitful insights on the role which innovation is now playing in revolutionizing how air services support citizens, businesses and societies, and surveyed examples of these applications in a series of Airbus showcases on forward looking strategies for future technological solutions.

Before concluding her mission, the Secretary General also visited BEA, the Civil Aviation Safety Investigation and Analysis Bureau of France.

Dr. Liu was joined throughout all of her meetings by the Director General of Civil Aviation of France, Mr. Patrick Gandil; the Permanent Representative of France to ICAO, Mr. Phillippe Bertoux; and ICAOs Regional Director for Europe and the North Atlantic, Ms. Silvia Gehrer.


It also alleged that officers chasing Walker at high speeds into Chicago created an unreasonably dangerous situation because Walker was being pursued for a minor traffic violation, it was dark at the time of the pursuit and the collision, the intersection and the path of pursuit were located in a densely populated area of the City of Chicago.
Seychelles moving towards a bluer economy

by Conor Fowler

April 10,2019 | Source: Future Directions

The Republic of the Seychelles is moving forward with its plans to develop a blue economy, based on the sustainable use of its ocean resources.



With an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of 1.4 million square kilometres of ocean, it is well placed to do that. Since 2017, the Seychelles Conservation and Climate Adaptation Trust (SeyCCAT) has annually dispensed a Blue Grants Fund, with money from the fund being granted to projects that are consistent with its five main strategic objectives.



SeyCCAT has been pleased with the implementation of those projects and, in 2018, supported seven main projects. The Blue Bond is another blue economy initiative being undertaken by the Seychelles Government, which is also being supported by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility, to aid the transition to sustainable fisheries and the protection of ocean space.



The World Bank defines the blue economy as a sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health.



The Seychellois initiatives are designed to achieve a developed, sustainable, ocean-based economy. Of the seven main projects that have been undertaken, one was the Aldabra Clean-Up Project. Aldabra is a small, outer atoll of the archipelago and a World UNESCO Heritage site. Through March 2019, 12 volunteers from the Seychelles Islands Foundation, in association with the University of Oxford, completed a five-week expedition to the uninhabited atoll to remove the accumulated rubbish that had been washed up on it.



At the same time, forty volunteers participated in a clean-up of eight other outer islands and, after four days, had already collected more than two tonnes of marine debris. While that is an impressive amount, it sadly speaks volumes about the magnitude of the problem.



In late 2018, the Seychelles launched the worlds first sovereign blue bond. The bond was developed to support sustainable marine and fisheries projects. During the launch, Vice-President Vincent Meriton stated that the bond will assist Seychelles in achieving a transition to sustainable fisheries while we sustainably develop our blue economy. The bond is valued at US$15 million ($22.6 million) over ten years and has international support, with guarantees from both the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility. Proceeds from the bond will be used to support the expansion of marine protected areas, improve the management of the countrys fisheries and further develop the blue economy.



While the initiatives are overwhelmingly positive, not everyone is happy with them. Local fishermen have responded negatively to certain restrictions that are being put in place. They are worried that the new initiatives could destroy the traditional industry that still employs 17 per cent of the population. In February 2018, the country designated one-third of its waters as protected areas, to try to ensure the longevity of its unique biodiversity. The government also signed into law a Bill that designated another 210,000 km2 of ocean as a protected area in which fishing is prohibited.



Keith Andre, Chair of the Fishermen and Boat Owners Association, which represents those involved in the fishing industry, is concerned that local fishing crews will lose their livelihoods by being forced to make way for fish farmers, fish ponds and aquaculture. While the new initiatives do seem to be well-supported, it is important that those who are currently working in the fishing industry are compensated and retrained if they are to lose their profession. It is a balancing act that will be important for the Seychellois Government to get right. Marine resources are critical to the growth of the economy and need to be protected and preserved. On the other hand, fisheries make up the second-largest sector of the economy, behind tourism.



In early 2018, the government approved the Seychelles Blue Economy Strategic Framework and Roadmap. If the initiatives discussed above are successful, the hope is that the framework will ultimately deliver:



-- more effective protection of Seychellois ocean space



-- increased investment in the diversification of ocean-based economic sectors



-- new oceanic research and innovation



-- the identification of feasible new and emerging maritime economic sectors

 Future Directions International 2019

Theme(s): Others.
WTO, IMF and World Bank leaders stress vital role of trade in reducing poverty

April 10,2019 | Source: WTO

WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo joined with IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva on 10 April to argue for renewed efforts to leverage trade as a force to reduce poverty. DG Azevedo argued that the current trade tensions could undermine recent progress in tackling poverty. We cannot afford to go down this path, he said.



The three leaders were speaking at a joint WTO-IMF-World Bank event in Washington DC titled Beyond Uncertainty: Leveraging Trade to Reduce Poverty, held alongside the World Bank-IMF Spring meetings.



The publication focuses on four constraints faced by the extremely poor  namely that they tend to live in rural areas, work in the informal sector, live in fragile and conflict-affected regions and face gender inequality.



The case studies underline the challenges the extremely poor face and identify ways to overcome them, including through the adoption of policies that maximize the contribution of trade to poverty reduction. The studies also highlight the ongoing gaps in data and research that constrain policy-making.



The publication is a follow-up to The Role of Trade in Ending Poverty, co-published by the WTO and the World Bank in 2015, which examined the challenges the poor face in benefiting from trade opportunities. The country-specific approach of this new publication complements the global perspective of the previous report.

 2019, World Trade Organization

Theme(s): Post Harvest Technology and Trade.
After serving in Glenview, Gregory went to Rome to further his studies, and returned to the states to teach at a seminary in Mundelein, Held explained. In 1983, he was made an auxiliary bishop of Chicago and served on the South Side of the city.
TOKYO - Dr Fatih Birol, the IEAs Executive Director, was in Japan today to meet with Prime Minister ShinzA Abe and other government ministers.

In his meeting with Prime Minister Abe, Dr Birol expressed appreciation for Japans strong support of the IEA over many years. Discussions focused on upcoming IEA contributions to the G20 Osaka Summit, particularly a major new report on Hydrogen energy.

Dr Birol also had a bilateral meeting with Foreign Minister Mr TarA KAno to discuss IEA inputs to Japans G20 Presidency, work on clean energy investment and progress with the IEAs open doors strategy to deepen engagement with emerging economies.

Dr Birol with Mr Hiroshige Seko, Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry of JapanDr Birol with Mr TarA KAno, Foreign Minister of Japan

He then met with Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Mr Hiroshige Seko. Their talks once again focused on the work the IEA is doing to support Japans G20 Presidency, including projects on Hydrogen energy, energy efficiency and clean energy investment.

Earlier in the day, Dr Birol met with Mr Hiroaki Nakanishi, Chairman of Keidanren, Japans Business Federation, discussing a range of issues including the upcoming B20 Summit and IEAs work on power grids.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has joined today several human rights and freedom of speech organisations to condemn the judicial harassment against Turkish Journalists Erol Onderoglu, Sebnem Korur Fincanc and Ahmet Nesin.

This is the joint statement:

The below-named freedom of expression organisations denounce the lengthy judicial harassment suffered by Reporters Without Borders representative and IPI member Erol Onderoglu, Turkeys Human Rights Foundation Chair Sebnem Korur Fincanc and journalist Ahmet Nesin and call for their full acquittal at the hearing on April 15, 2019, when a verdict is expected.

The three defendants are charged with engaging in propaganda for a terrorist organisation, incitement to commit a crime and praising criminal activities and those engaged in them for standing in as guest editors in the Editors-in-Chief on Watch solidarity campaign for the shuttered pro-Kurdish daily Ozgur Gundem.

We further denounce the ongoing detention and prosecution of scores of journalists in Turkey as an autocratic attempt to silence all dissenting voices and to prevent independent journalists from carrying out their profession.

We offer our support and solidarity to our colleagues Onderoglu, Korur Fincanc and Nesin, who have been subjected to a trial lasting almost three years, and we call on the Turkish government to cease such oppression of journalists, academics and writers.

This case is about an act of collegial solidarity that should never have resulted in criminal proceedings. Turkey must cease violating the rights of journalists to disseminate the news and of the public to receive balanced reporting,, Caroline Stockford, Turkey Advocacy Coordinator at the International Press Institute, said.

By targeting prominent human rights defenders, the authorities aim to decimate what little remains of civil society in Turkey. They will not succeed. We stand united with our colleagues and insist that this relentless judicial harassment cease, said Sarah Clarke, Head of Europe and Central Asia at ARTICLE 19.

When the very act of solidarity for repressed journalism is criminalised in Turkey, international solidarity for our colleagues becomes even more crucial. - Nora Wehofsits, Advocacy Officer at the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom (ECPMF)

International public opinion should know that Turkey is not merely Erdogans Turkey. Like Erol Onderoglu, Sebnem Korur Fincanc and Ahmet Nesin, there are many people and courageous initiatives that need to be heard about and be supported. This is why providing the international public with continuous and in-depth coverage on Turkey is so important today - Chiara Sighele, OBC Transeuropa.

We stand united in support of Erol Onderoglu, Sebnem Korur Fincanc and Ahmet Nesin. We promise that we will do our utmost to support the journalists and to put pressure on the Turkish government to cease the prosecution and detention of journalists, said Kjersti Lken Stavrum, Vice President of Norwegian PEN.

Ozgur Gundem has long been targeted by Turkish authorities for its journalism. Last month the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Turkey had violated the right to freedom of expression in systematically bringing terrorism-related criminal cases against Ozgur Gundems owner, Ali Gurbuz, between 2004 and 2005.

ARTICLE 19

Articolo 21

Association of European Journalists

CRNI (Cartoonists Rights Network International)

CPJ (Committee to Protect Journalists)

Danish PEN

ECPMF (European Centre for Press and Media Freedom)

EFJ (European Federation of Journalists)

English PEN

Freedom House

Front Line Defenders

German PEN

IFJ (International Federation of Journalists)

IPI (International Press Institute)

Norwegian PEN

OBC Transeuropa

PEN America

PEN Belgium/Flanders

PEN Canada

PEN Germany

PEN International

PEN Netherlands

P24 (Platform for Independent Journalism)

SEEMO (South East Europe Media Organisation)

Swedish PEN

Wales PEN Cymru
But Kovarik said the testing plan is superior to any previous proposals for local EtO monitoring, and that one of the main differences was Pfisters move to include not only the federal and local EPA in the process, but also to petition the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) to conduct a health risk assessment based on the outdoor air sampling results.
Imperial Valley News Center

Vice President Pence at a Special Session of the United Nations Security Council on the Crisis in Venezuela

New York - Remarks by Vice President Pence at a Special Session of the United Nations Security Council on the Crisis in Venezuela:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Mr. Secretary General, Mr. President, to all the members of the Security Council: I am here today, on behalf of the President of the United States of America, to discuss the ongoing crisis in Venezuela and to call on this body to stand up for democracy and the rule of law in that nation that has suffered so much.

Article 24 of the U.N. Charter confers on this Security Council the responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. As another American President said many years ago, The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. It is why this institution exists.

For six long years, the people of Venezuela have suffered under the heavy hand of oppression. The Maduro regimes socialist policies have shrunk their economy by nearly half. In what was once one of the wealthiest countries in our hemisphere, 9 out of 10 people now live in poverty. The average Venezuelan has lost more than 20 pounds through deprivation and malnutrition. Thousands of Venezuelan children are starving. And at this very hour, infants in hospitals across Venezuela are dying for lack of basic medical care.

And the Maduro regime, in the midst of this deprivation and suffering, has used violence and intimidation against anyone who opposes their actions. In the last three months, the regime has thrown at least 1,255 people into jail, without any due process of law, and killed at least 40 protestors. Thats the nature of the regime that were dealing with.

But the Maduro regime is not only a threat to the Venezuelan people; it is a threat to peace and security of the wider region as well. The rising desperation in Venezuela has fueled a mass exodus, the likes of which we have never seen in the Western Hemisphere. More than 3 million Venezuelans have now abandoned their beloved country. And if things dont get better, it is estimated that another 2 million are expected to follow before the year is out.

And traveling through the region, my wife and I witnessed the results of this deprivation firsthand. At a church in Manaus, Brazil, we spoke to families who had fled the deprivation in Venezuela. And Ill never forget when a father looked at me with his two young boys standing at his side and said how hard it was as a father to come home at the end of the day and say, Were not eating today. And as he said it, his two little boys looked up and nodded, recalling those days.

And then there was the day in Cartagena, Colombia, at another mission where Venezuelan people had fled the deprivation in their country. And a grandmother told me how it had gotten so bad in their small rural town, her grandchildren had had to rise at four in the morning to get a single ticket to purchase a piece of bread at four in the afternoon. The children were starving. And she gathered up her grandchildren and fled the country.

Those are the stories the world deserves to hear of deprivation.

And the truth is, those who stay behind are subject to crime, violence, and lawlessness. Thieves in Venezuela dont rob banks; they rob restaurants for food. Vicious gangs and so-called colectivos have turned the streets into warzones. And Venezuela now has the highest murder rate in the world, as more than 70 people are murdered every single day.

Venezuela is a failed state, and as history teaches, failed states know no boundaries. Drug traffickers, criminal gangs, even terrorists like Hezbollah, are exploiting the chaos in Venezuela to gain a foothold in the region and export crime and violence. Were we to let the crisis continue, the chaos and suffering will only spread.

The struggle in Venezuela is between dictatorship and democracy. Nicolas Maduro is a dictator with no legitimate claim to power, and Nicolas Maduro must go.

But for all of the suffering of the Venezuelan people, across Venezuela, in cities large and small, people are rising up. Theyre rising up against their oppression and deprivation. Today, those courageous Venezuelans will take to the streets again. And as President Trump said not long ago, the fight for freedom [in Venezuela] has [just] begun.

Just three short months ago, after Nicolas Maduro was sworn into his second term stolen in a sham election, the National Assembly  the only duly elected body in Venezuela  exercised its power under the constitution and recognized a new leader: Interim President Juan Guaido.

And all across the Western Hemisphere, nations have been standing up to declare their support for President Guaido. Last month, the Inter-American Development Bank voted to seat President Guaidos representative. Earlier this week, the G7 issued a statement saying the May 2018 presidential election lacked legitimacy and calling on the Maduro regime to, in their words, restore the authority of the National Assembly.

And just yesterday, the Organization of American States - the oldest regional organization in the world - voted to stand with the Venezuelan people and recognize the Guaido governments representative as the only true representative of Venezuela.

At President Trumps direction, the United States was proud to be the first nation to recognize Interim President Juan Guaido as the legitimate President of Venezuela. And today, 54 nations have joined us.

The Western Hemisphere has spoken with a clear voice. Nations across the world have spoken. Its time for the United Nations to speak.

In February, the United States introduced a resolution to this Security Council that called for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela and for the Maduro regime to allow all humanitarian aid to enter the country. The resolution was not approved. Two nations which continue to back this brutal regime used their vetoes to stop this body from taking action. And while Russia and China continue to obstruct the Security Council, rogue states like Iran and Cuba are doing all they can to prop up the Maduro regime.

For decades, Cuba has tried to create client states across our region. While normal countries export goods, Cuba exports tyranny and strong-arm tactics. Even now, Cuban military and intelligence services train and support and equip Venezuelas secret police as they silence opponents, jail and torture members of the opposition.

Last week, the United States took action to sanction ships transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba. And soon, at President Trumps direction, the United States will announce additional action to hold Cuba accountable for its malign influence in Venezuela.

And this week, in addition to Cubas action, Caracas received a delegation from Iran to begin direct air service between these two rogue capitals. This blacklisted airline is used to export terrorism by Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which President Trump formally designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization on Monday.

This is the company that Nicolas Maduro keeps. And these nations continue to prop him up even as he inflicts suffering on the Venezuelan people. Just two months ago, the dictator in Caracas actually danced while his own citizens were shot and truckloads of desperately needed food and medicine burned.

Unlike nations that are subsidizing the dictator in Caracas, under the leadership of President Donald Trump, the United States has been standing with the people of Venezuela, and we are committed to helping the families and communities that have been devastated by the Maduro regime.

At this point, the United States has sanctioned more than 150 government officials and organizations loyal to the dictator. Weve sanctioned state-owned businesses to prevent the Maduro regime from robbing the people of what is rightfully theirs. And as President Trump has said, we can be a lot tougher.

In addition, the United States has positioned more than 500 metric tons of food and humanitarian supplies on the Venezuelan border ready for immediate distribution. Weve provided $200 million in aid to support displaced Venezuelans and the host communities that support them. And today, at President Trumps direction, the United States is announcing an additional $60 million in humanitarian assistance to address this crisis.

The United States of America will continue to exert all diplomatic and economic pressure to bring about a peaceful transition to democracy in Venezuela. But all options are on the table.

Up to this point, while other international bodies have acted, the United Nations and this Security Council have refused to act. But now that nations across this hemisphere have spoken, the time has come for the United Nations to recognize Interim President Juan Guaido as the legitimate President of Venezuela and seat his representative in this body.

This body should revoke the credentials of Venezuelas representative to the United Nations, recognize Interim President Juan Guaido, and seat the representative of the free Venezuelan government in this body without delay.

With all due respect, Mr. Ambassador, you shouldnt be here. You should return to Venezuela and tell Nicolas Maduro that his time is up. Its time for him to go.

Members of this Security Council: The men, women, and children in Venezuela are suffering. Their economy has been destroyed. Their democracy has been destroyed. The people of Venezuela are paying the price. And soon, the region and the world will pay the price if we fail to act.

There can be no bystanders to this history. For the peace and security of our hemisphere, the world and the United Nations must stand with the people of Venezuela.

To that end, the United States is preparing a resolution recognizing the legitimacy of the government of Interim President Juan Guaido. And today, we urge every member of the Security Council and all U.N. member states to support this resolution. Stand with the Venezuela people as they rise up to restore freedom, democracy, and libertad to their nation. And this they are doing; they are rising up against intimidation and violence. Even today, the people of Venezuela are taking to the streets to march for freedom.

Despite all the hardship, they continue to march. Despite all of the oppression, they continue to march. Despite the opposition, they continue to march with courage and strength because theyre marching for freedom. And in the words of Simon Bolivar, A people that loves freedom will in the end be free.

But its time for the United Nations to act and for the world to stand with the people of Venezuela as they march to freedom.

History has taught us what happens when the civilized nations of the world allow oppression to go unchecked. When a brutal dictatorship arose in Europe, the world failed to respond. Millions of lives were lost in the Second World War. This very institution was forged in the aftermath of that war so that nations around the world could come together and confront dictatorship with one voice.

And so the United States is calling on the United Nations to live up to its very purpose: Reject the failed leadership of Nicolas Maduro, and stand with us, stand with nations across the world and across this hemisphere to help the people of Venezuela forge a brighter future.

As President Trump has said, quote, If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather power and strength.

So let us today rededicate ourselves to the mission upon which this body was founded: to maintain international peace and security. And we have confidence that if we do that, if we make every effort to be at peace, that the God of peace will guide us and bless us, today, tomorrow, and always.

So thank you, Mr. President, for the honor of addressing you today. May God bless the people of Venezuela. And may God bless you all.
Imperial Valley News Center

White House Press Secretary on Medicare for All

Washington, DC - Self-proclaimed socialist Senator Bernie Sanders is proposing a total government takeover of healthcare that would actually hurt seniors, eliminate private health insurance for 180 million Americans, and cripple our economy and future generations with unprecedented debt. Americans deserve relief from the empty promises of Obamacare.

The Trump Administration is working on realistic solutions to provide Americans with the options and control they want, the affordability they need, the ease they expect, and the quality they deserve, rather than forcing a government takeover of the healthcare system. We will protect people with pre-existing conditions, lower prices for care and prescription drugs even further, end surprise medical bills, and make sure Americans get the absolute best quality of care.
Imperial Valley News Center

Exposing Congressional Democrats Complete Government Takeover of Our Healthcare

Washington, DC - "We oppose efforts from Democrats to raid Medicare to fund socialism, robbing seniors of their benefits." ~ President Donald J. Trump

RADICAL GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER: Medicare for All is a total government takeover of healthcare that will end private insurance as we know it, hurt seniors, and cripple our economy.

Democrats are pushing to end private insurance as we know it, rob Americans of any choice in their own care, and put the wellbeing of patients in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. Their government takeover of healthcare would force the nearly 180 million Americans with private health insurance into government-run plans. Americans would face the threat of losing their doctor and any choice in their own care. Even the proposals that keep private insurance save it for only a wealthy few.

Congressional Democrats government takeover of healthcare will divert resources away from seniors who have paid into the system their whole lives. As seen in European single-payer systems, this radical proposal will likely lead to less care for seniors, hospital closures, fewer doctors, and long wait times. Twenty million seniors would lose their Medicare Advantage Plans.

American families would face massive tax hikes to pay for the extreme $32 trillion price tag of this plan. According to the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), these tax increases would lower household incomes by $17,000 annually after taxes and healthcare expenditures.



LESSONS FROM THE OBAMACARE DISASTER: Congressional Democrats lied to the American people about healthcare once, and they are doing it again.

Democrats told Americans they could keep their plan, keep their doctor, and would see large savings in premiums. Those all proved to be lies.

4.7 million Americans were told their plans were going to be canceled in the first year of Obamacare.

Even President Obama admitted families would have to make choices to keep their doctors.

Obamacare has burdened American families with devastating premium increases. Average individual market premiums more than doubled from 2013 to 2017. Average premiums on the Federal exchange rose by $2,600 from 2016 to 2017 alone.

Taxpayers are spending more than $50 billion a year on premium subsidies and individual market enrollment has increased by only about 3 million people from pre-Obamacare levels.

REAL SOLUTIONS FOR AMERICAN PATIENTS: President Trump and his Administration have taken action to help ensure Americans have access to affordable, quality care and lower healthcare costs.
Imperial Valley News Center

Executive Order on Promoting Energy Infrastructure and Economic Growth

Washington, DC - By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Purpose. The United States is blessed with plentiful energy resources, including abundant supplies of coal, oil, and natural gas. Producers in America have demonstrated a remarkable ability to harness innovation and to cost-effectively unlock new energy supplies, making our country a dominant energy force. In fact, last year the United States surpassed production records set nearly 5 decades ago and is in all likelihood now the largest producer of crude oil in the world. We are also the worlds leading producer of natural gas, and we became a net exporter in 2017 for the first time since 1957. The United States will continue to be the undisputed global leader in crude oil and natural gas production for the foreseeable future.

These robust energy supplies present the United States with tremendous economic opportunities. To fully realize this economic potential, however, the United States needs infrastructure capable of safely and efficiently transporting these plentiful resources to end users. Without it, energy costs will rise and the national energy market will be stifled; job growth will be hampered; and the manufacturing and geopolitical advantages of the United States will erode. To enable the timely construction of the infrastructure needed to move our energy resources through domestic and international commerce, the Federal Government must promote efficient permitting processes and reduce regulatory uncertainties that currently make energy infrastructure projects expensive and that discourage new investment. Enhancing our Nations energy infrastructure, including facilities for the transmission, distribution, storage, and processing of energy resources, will ensure that our Nations vast reserves of these resources can reach vital markets. Doing so will also help families and businesses in States with energy constraints to access affordable and reliable domestic energy resources. By promoting the development of new energy infrastructure, the United States will make energy more affordable, while safeguarding the environment and advancing our Nations economic and geopolitical advantages.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to promote private investment in the Nations energy infrastructure through:

(a) efficient permitting processes and procedures that employ a single point of accountability, avoid duplicative and redundant studies and reviews, and establish clear and reasonable timetables;

(b) regulations that reflect best practices and best-available technologies;

(c) timely action on infrastructure projects that advance Americas interests and ability to participate in global energy markets;

(d) increased regulatory certainty regarding the development of new energy infrastructure;

(e) effective stewardship of Americas natural resources; and

(f) support for American ingenuity, the free market, and capitalism.

Sec. 3. Water Quality Certifications. Section 401 of the Clean Water Act (33 U.S.C. 1341) provides that States and authorized tribes have a direct role in Federal permitting and licensing processes to ensure that activities subject to Federal permitting requirements comply with established water quality requirements. Outdated Federal guidance and regulations regarding section 401 of the Clean Water Act, however, are causing confusion and uncertainty and are hindering the development of energy infrastructure.

(a) The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shall consult with States, tribes, and relevant executive departments and agencies (agencies) in reviewing section 401 of the Clean Water Act and EPAs related regulations and guidance to determine whether any provisions thereof should be clarified to be consistent with the policies described in section 2 of this order. This review shall include examination of the existing interim guidance entitled, Clean Water Act Section 401 Water Quality Certification: A Water Quality Protection Tool for States and Tribes (Section 401 Interim Guidance). This review shall also take into account federalism considerations underlying section 401 of the Clean Water Act and shall focus on:

(i) the need to promote timely Federal-State cooperation and collaboration;

(ii) the appropriate scope of water quality reviews;

(iii) types of conditions that may be appropriate to include in a certification;

(iv) expectations for reasonable review times for various types of certification requests; and

(v) the nature and scope of information States and authorized tribes may need in order to substantively act on a certification request within a prescribed period of time.

(b) Upon completion of the consultation and review process described in subsection (a) of this section, but no later than 60 days after the date of this order, the Administrator of the EPA shall:

(i) as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, issue new guidance to States and authorized tribes to supersede the Section 401 Interim Guidance to clarify, at minimum, the items set forth in subsection (a) of this section; and

(ii) issue guidance to agencies, consistent with the policies outlined in section 2 of this order, to address the items set forth in subsection (a) of this section.

(c) Upon completion of the consultation and review process described in subsection (a) of this section, but no later than 120 days after the date of this order, the Administrator of the EPA shall review EPAs regulations implementing section 401 of the Clean Water Act for consistency with the policies set forth in section 2 of this order and shall publish for notice and comment proposed rules revising such regulations, as appropriate and consistent with law. The Administrator of the EPA shall finalize such rules no later than 13 months after the date of this order.

(d) Upon completion of the processes described in subsection (b) of this section, the Administrator of the EPA shall lead an interagency review, in coordination with the head of each agency that issues permits or licenses subject to the certification requirements of section 401 of the Clean Water Act (401 Implementing Agencies), of existing Federal guidance and regulations for consistency with EPA guidance and rulemaking. Within 90 days of completion of the processes described in subsection (b) of this section, the heads of the 401 Implementing Agencies shall update their respective agencies guidance. Within 90 days of completion of the processes described in subsection (c) of this section, if necessary, the heads of each 401 Implementing Agency shall initiate a rulemaking to ensure their respective agencies regulations are consistent with the rulemaking described in subsection (c) of this section and with the policies set forth in section 2 of this order.

Sec. 4. Safety Regulations. (a) The Department of Transportations safety regulations for Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) facilities, found in 49 CFR Part 193 (Part 193), apply uniformly to small-scale peakshaving, satellite, temporary, and mobile facilities, as well as to large-scale import and export terminals. Driven by abundant supplies of domestic natural gas, new LNG export terminals are in various stages of development, and these modern, large-scale liquefaction facilities bear little resemblance to the small peakshaving facilities common during the original drafting of Part 193 nearly 40 years ago. To achieve the policies set forth in subsection 2(b) of this order, the Secretary of Transportation shall initiate a rulemaking to update Part 193 and shall finalize such rulemaking no later than 13 months after the date of this order. In developing the proposed regulations, the Secretary of Transportation shall use risk-based standards to the maximum extent practicable.

(b) In the United States, LNG may be transported by truck and, with approval by the Federal Railroad Administration, by rail in United Nations portable tanks, but Department of Transportation regulations do not authorize LNG transport in rail tank cars. The Secretary of Transportation shall propose for notice and comment a rule, no later than 100 days after the date of this order, that would treat LNG the same as other cryogenic liquids and permit LNG to be transported in approved rail tank cars. The Secretary shall finalize such rulemaking no later than 13 months after the date of this order.

Sec. 5. Environment, Social, and Governance Issues; Proxy Firms; and Financing Energy Projects Through the United States Capital Markets. (a) The majority of financing in the United States is conducted through its capital markets. The United States capital markets are the deepest and most liquid in the world. They benefit from decades of sound regulation grounded in disclosure of information that, under an objective standard, is material to investors and owners seeking to make sound investment decisions or to understand current and projected business. As the Supreme Court held in TSC Industries, Inc. v. Northway, Inc., 426 U.S. 438, 449 (1976), information is material if there is a substantial likelihood that a reasonable shareholder would consider it important. Furthermore, the United States capital markets have thrived under the principle that companies owe a fiduciary duty to their shareholders to strive to maximize shareholder return, consistent with the long-term growth of a company.

(b) To advance the principles of objective materiality and fiduciary duty, and to achieve the policies set forth in subsections 2(c), (d), and (f) of this order, the Secretary of Labor shall, within 180 days of the date of this order, complete a review of available data filed with the Department of Labor by retirement plans subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) in order to identify whether there are discernible trends with respect to such plans investments in the energy sector. Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary shall provide an update to the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy on any discernable trends in energy investments by such plans. The Secretary of Labor shall also, within 180 days of the date of this order, complete a review of existing Department of Labor guidance on the fiduciary responsibilities for proxy voting to determine whether any such guidance should be rescinded, replaced, or modified to ensure consistency with current law and policies that promote long-term growth and maximize return on ERISA plan assets.

Sec. 6. Rights-of-Way Renewals or Reauthorizations. The Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Secretary of Commerce approve rights-of-way for energy infrastructure through lands owned by or within the jurisdiction or control of the United States. Energy infrastructure rights-of-way grants, leases, permits, and agreements routinely include sunset provisions. Operating facilities in expired rights-of-way creates legal and operational uncertainties for owners and operators of energy infrastructure. To achieve the policies set forth in section 2 of this order, the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, and Commerce shall:

(a) develop a master agreement for energy infrastructure rights-of-way renewals or reauthorizations; and

(b) within 1 year of the date of this order, initiate renewal or reauthorization processes for all expired energy rights-of-way grants, leases, permits, and agreements, as determined to be appropriate by the applicable Secretary and to the extent permitted by law.

Sec. 7. Reports on the Barriers to a National Energy Market. (a) Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the Secretary of Energy, shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, regarding the economic and other effects caused by the inability to transport sufficient quantities of natural gas and other domestic energy resources to the States in New England and, as the Secretary of Transportation deems appropriate, to States in other regions of the Nation. This report shall assess whether, and to what extent, State, local, tribal, or territorial actions have contributed to such effects.

(b) Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the Secretary of Transportation, shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, regarding the economic and other effects caused by limitations on the export of coal, oil, natural gas, and other domestic energy resources through the west coast of the United States. This report shall assess whether, and to what extent, State, local, tribal, or territorial actions have contributed to such effects.

Sec. 8. Report on Intergovernmental Assistance. State and local governments play a vital role in supporting energy infrastructure development through various transportation, housing, and workforce initiatives, and through other policies and expenditures. The Federal Government is, in many cases, well positioned to provide intergovernmental assistance to State and local governments. To achieve the policies set forth in section 2 of this order, the heads of agencies shall review existing authorities related to the transportation and development of domestically produced energy resources and, within 30 days of the date of this order, report to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy on how those authorities can be most efficiently and effectively used to advance the policies set forth in this order.

Sec. 9. Report on Economic Growth of the Appalachian Region. Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Energy, in consultation with the heads of other agencies, as appropriate, shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, describing opportunities, through the Federal Government or otherwise, to promote economic growth of the Appalachian region, including growth of petrochemical and other industries. This report also shall assess methods for diversifying the Appalachian economy and promoting workforce development.

Sec. 10. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
President Donald J. Trump Is Working Closely with Our Ally and Friend the Republic of Korea

Washington, DC - "I know that the Republic of Korea, which has become a tremendously successful nation, will be a faithful ally of the United States very long into the future." ~ President Donald J. Trump

STRENGTHENING OUR VITAL ALLIANCE: President Donald J. Trump is welcoming President Moon Jae-in of the Republic of Korea (ROK) to the White House.

President Trump and President Moon Jae-in will discuss a range of matters, including the latest developments regarding North Korea.

The ROK stands as one of the United States closest and most vital allies and friends. Together, our two countries have built an ironclad alliance based on shared values of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Our alliance remains the linchpin of peace and security not just on the Korean Peninsula, but across the region.

Under President Trump, the United States and the ROK have worked to further economic ties and jointly pursue peace on the Korean Peninsula.

Todays visit will help strengthen the friendship and alliance between the United States and the ROK.

WORKING IN CLOSE COORDINATION: President Trump is working closely with President Moon to advance peace and denuclearize North Korea.

Under President Trump, coordination and cooperation between the United States and the ROK on North Korea are stronger than ever.

President Trump and President Moon have made clear that North Korea should follow through on its commitment to final, fully verified denuclearization.

The ROK has been a vital partner in developing negotiations with Chairman Kim Jong Un.

The United States and the ROK have been prepared to explore economic development options for North Korea should the right conditions be met.

IMPROVING OUR TRADING PARTNERSHIP: Trade and investment with the ROK have improved under President Trumps leadership.
A new voice has joined the growing chorus of calls for tech regulation in Silicon Valley: U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Asked during a Thursday interview with Recode's Kara Swisher whether the "era of self-regulation" in the U.S. is over, Pelosi said, "It probably should be." She also hinted at plans for increased scrutiny on American tech giants and suggested that antitrust legislation could play a role. "I know there could be some clear lines that we see in our community, of companies that maybe could be easily broken up without having any impact, one on the other," Pelosi said. "I'm a big believer in the antitrust laws. I think that's very important for us to have them and to use them, and to subject those who should be subjected to it."

Pelosi also mentioned section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which states that internet platforms aren't responsible for the nature of the content they host, saying it could be removed in the near future. "It's a new era," she told Swisher, referencing a recent slew of tech regulations in the U.K.

Pelosi's statements echo another recent call for tech regulation, perhaps from a more surprising source: Mark Zuckerberg, who published a Washington Post op-ed on the subject in March. "Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech," Zuckerberg wrote. "And frankly I agree."
On any given day at Zola's office in Lower Manhattan, there's a high likelihood there will be cake.

There are the birthdays. The engagements. Sometimes it's a funfetti cake--other times it's the banana cake from Billy's Bakery, an office favorite that some employees jokingly have dubbed "the Zola cake." "We eat a lot of cake," concedes Shan-Lyn Ma, the co-founder and chief executive of Zola, a company built around helping people celebrate.

Ma founded Zola in 2013, along with three executives from Gilt Groupe, including founder Kevin Ryan, user-experience expert Nobu Nakaguchi, and chief technologist Felix Lung. Ma, an experienced product manager who'd been the first product lead at Gilt before becoming general manager of Gilt Taste, had an idea for rethinking the wedding industry. After focus groups of engaged and newly married couples revealed wedding registries as a consumer pain point, her concept for Zola was born.

For decades, Ma observed, registries had worked the same way: Couples would pace the entirety of home-goods stores with a scanner, zapping items to populate their wedding registry. More recently, the whole process had moved online, with everyone from Amazon to Williams Sonoma posting web-based registries. And startups had come in with various twists on the process, like Honeyfund (a honeymoon-fund site), or a promise to curate products or better-catalog them (Blueprint Registry, NewlyWish, and MyRegistry).

Ma's company entered the fray with a Millennial design aesthetic, curated experience, and intuitive navigation. It listed products from a hand-selected set of retailers, and let couples register for experiences or cash gifts. On the back end, Zola would buy items at wholesale and let the retailers ship directly, which meant great margins for them without the burden of inventory management. It didn't take long for the ex-Gilt team to persuade brands and retailers like Kate Spade and Crate & Barrel to work with them, despite the fact they were setting out to upend those very retailers' traditional registries. "It was [an industry] that hadn't really been touched by technology," says Ma.

But her goal from the start wasn't just to build a better wedding registry. It was also to guide couples through, and manage their entire process of, engagement, wedding planning, wedding, and even the first year of marriage. Considering couples spend an average of $33,000 on a wedding, a small slice of that, for millions of couples, would be a massive business.

In the company's first few years, Ma was able to raise significant funding: $10 million in 2015, and $25 million a year later. By 2017, Zola's registry was allowing couples to add products from other websites, and swipe right in its app to add a product to their registry. That year they also unveiled a free wedding website tool, which included guest-list management and a wedding to-do checklist synced to the app. "That blew up," says Ma, who then launched dozens of lines of paper wedding invitations, thank-you cards, and menus.

Meanwhile, she continued pursuing the larger opportunity well beyond the registry. Last May, she and her management team assembled a whopping $100 million round of venture capital funding. The company doubled in head-count, zooming past 100 employees, hiring technologists and project managers, mostly in its New York City office. The company also has offices in Montreal and Charlottesville, Virginia.

Now at Zola's Lower Manhattan office, there's a bit of anxiety about maintaining a breezy-but-fast-moving culture. Ma loves launching new products quickly, and her whole executive team likes moving at a rapid pace. "For us, the challenge is, how can we move as quickly as we did when we were a five-person startup?" says Ma.

It's a near-daily consideration--one Zola president and COO Rachel Jarrett has been focusing on. Zola's staff is 70 percent female, and half of the executive team is female. At weekly all-hands, there are occasional gratitude sessions in which staffers write notes to others they appreciate. It's not gushy; Ma says it can lead to constructive comments, and she sees it as exemplary of one of the company's values, which includes promoting real-time feedback, putting the customer first, and, less formally, "not hiring a-holes."

"If there is any question that this person might not be someone who assumes good intent of other people, or is maybe arrogant, we will not accept that," says Ma. Paul Hsiao, an investor from Canvas Ventures, says hiring fast is a continuing challenge for Zola--but that Ma's policy has paid off: "The team consistently under-promises and over-delivers."

Couples can now purchase all kinds of items on Zola--everything from cake toppers and bridesmaids' dresses to diamond rings. But one of the company's newest products, Real Weddings Inspiration, addresses the social media-induced anxiety now surrounding this particular life event. "What has really changed is that we live in the Instagram era, where everything about your wedding is posted by every guest there--almost the second that it happens," says Ma. "Everything I think is even more pressure-filled and more important, because so many more people than ever before see it."
Star Wars: Episode IX officially has a title  and The Rise of Skywalker is now due to hit cinemas later in the year.

The title was revealed on Friday at the Star Wars Celebration convention in Chicago, during which the film's trailer was also unveiled.

The announcement came after a panel of approximately one hour, which saw host Stephen Colbert chat with Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy, director JJ Abrams, and several cast members.

The title was unveiled at the same time as the trailer, with The Rise of Skywalker being displayed in large letters at the end of the two-minute clip.

Rey (Daisy Ridley), Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Finn (John Boyega) are all back for what has been presented as the final instalment of the saga. Palpatine also appears to be back, judging by his sardonic laugh, which can be heard at the very end of the teaser.

Star Wars films  ranked worst to best Show all 11 1 /11 Star Wars films  ranked worst to best Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 11. Star Wars: Episode II  Attack of the Clones (2002) The prequel trilogy has lived on in infamy, but the true low point of this low point in the Star Wars franchise must be Attack of the Clones, the dry, crusted middle of the cinematic sandwich. While Revenge of the Sith has some sense of completion and The Phantom Menace has some sense of wonder, all Attack of the Clones has is a CGI Yoda bopping about the screen like an unswattable fly while battling Christopher Lees Count Dooku. Its a film driven by unnecessary desires: from the space politics, to Boba Fetts backstory, to Padme and Anakins romance. The latter is the most insufferable, since George Lucas never had much of an ear for dialogue, as notoriously pointed out by Harrison Ford when he declared on set: George, you can type this s***, but you sure as hell cant say it. Which leads us to one of the worst line readings in cinematic history, when Hayden Christensens Anakin laments: I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating  and it gets everywhere. Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 10. Star Wars: Episode III  Revenge of the Sith (2005) Hollywood has increasingly made the assumption that darker means better when it comes to cinema  it explains why the Harry Potter films look like they were made while someone gradually turned down the dimmer switch on the studio lights. Of course, audiences know that darker sometimes means that your protagonist-turned-villain becomes a youngling-murdering, amateur street magician-looking sourpuss. Anakins arc here comes to a whimper of an ending, underlined by the much-derided decision to have Darth Vaders first moments onscreen involve him howling Noooooo! up to the sky like a mournful hound. That said, Ewan McGregor confirms here that he managed to escape the franchise largely unscathed, as this instalment sees him have the most fun with the clunky dialogue (see: Hello there! and I have the high ground!). Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 9. Star Wars: Episode I  The Phantom Menace (1999) The Phantom Menace escapes slightly ahead of the rest of the prequel trilogy, if only for the fact it remembers these films are meant to be fun once in a while. The pod race  its a good scene! Darth Maul is all looks, zero follow through  its embarrassing to act like youve won, only to be cut in half and sent hurtling down an exhaust pipe  but his inclusion in the film did introduce one of the best musical themes in Star Wars history, John Williamss Duel of the Fates. However, the space politics are a particular drag here, with all the talk of trade disputes, and, of course, it's obligatory to mention the terror that is Jar Jar Binks. Rex Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 8. Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) Although its the weakest of the new generation of Star Wars films, Solo still holds up as a fun romp worthy of Han Solos rascal reputation. Alden Ehrenreich picks up on enough of Harrison Fords mannerisms to sell the character without sliding into imitation, while Donald Glover is a scene stealer from the very moment he walks on screen as Lando Calrissian. Its a lost opportunity, then, that the film is otherwise slowed down by an impulse to offer backstory to as many aspects of Hans character as possible. Did we really need to know how we got the name Solo? Really? Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 7. Star Wars: Episode IX  The Rise of Skywalker Director JJ Abrams, like the hero of an ancient prophecy, was destined to make both enemies and allies with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. There will be arguments. And there will be arguments about the arguments. There will be obsessive deconstructions and over-interpretations of each frame and intake of breath. But, at the end of the day, this is still a Star Wars film in its very bones, muscle, and sinew. Whatever controversy Abrams might have brewed up with his artistic choices, he still captures magnificently the soul of this series: that unwavering hope that the powerless can win, despite the odds. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 6. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) Theres a lot to wrap up in the concluding chapter of the original trilogy. The result is a few odd turns for the sake of plot convenience. What does one do with a character as enigmatic as Boba Fett? Why, have him topple into the Sarlacc pit within the first 20 minutes! How does one put to rest the love triangle hinted at in A New Hope? Why, insert a revelation that Luke and Leia are, in fact, brother and sister! Even the second Death Star oddly feels sillier than The Force Awakens and its third attempt at a giant ball in space, since The First Order at least had the excuse that their obsessive admiration of the Empire may have clouded their judgement. That said, theres still plenty of charm to be found here and the Ewoks arent all that bad. Before you dismiss them as irritating merchandise opportunities, its worth remembering that they have absolutely no qualms about killing and eating people. Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 5. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) If Rogue One is any indication of Disneys plans for the franchise and its future, then theres no cause for concern. The first of the A Star Wars Story spin-offs, it shifts into gear with ease, soothing audiences by not straying too far from the familiar timeline while introducing a full set of new characters and a grittier tone. Stylistically, it feels more like a Vietnam War movie and is proof of how far a gifted director like Gareth Edwards can stray from the franchises usual formula and still feel grounded in the same world. Plus, you have to admire the guts it takes to deliver an ending like that Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 4. Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) Disney made a very smart move with The Force Awakens. As the first Star Wars film of a new generation, it not only had to make its own mark, but feel familiar enough that it welcomed fans back with open arms. The balance is hit perfectly here. Thats largely due to the films new trio of central heroes, who radiate the same kind of warmth, bravery, and spirit that carved a special place in peoples hearts when they were first introduced to the franchises original stars. Daisy Ridleys Rey, John Boyegas Finn, and Oscar Isaacs Poe honour Star Wars's past while striding into its unknown future. It also helps that the film has landed on a villain like Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), whose drive and complexity may see him surpass even Darth Vader by the end of his story in Episode IX. Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 3. Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi (2017) Any divisiveness the film attracted certainly proved one thing: heres a Star Wars film that actually took a creative risk. And what a bold, ambitious, and ultimately beautiful risk that was. Director Rian Johnson took the cinematic legacy presented before him and added a new richness to its textures. He allowed heroism to go beyond the clean divide between good and evil; through Luke and Rey, we were taught not to be ashamed of our doubts but to grow stronger because of them. We were taught not to use destiny as a crutch, but to know when to forge our own paths. The Last Jedi is a soulful film told through some of the most striking cinematography of the entire franchise. Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 2. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) Its the place where it all began. The Star Wars franchise has only become the success it is today because of how purely revolutionary the first instalment was as a piece of Hollywood filmmaking. It is, to this day, one of the most successful examples of the modern epic, endlessly imitated but so rarely with the same heart or ambition. George Lucas tapped into one of the most timeless qualities of storytelling: its ability to let us see and understand our own world through the eyes of another. Star Wars has become so iconic because, even on such a grand scale, we know and relate to the emotions at hand  fear, love, or a desire to do whats right. Rex Features Star Wars films  ranked worst to best 1. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) The Empire Strikes Back is remarkable in its ability to pursue real emotional stakes. Its closing moments, the final note to its symphony of sacrifice and tragedy, leaves us with the single, delicate emotion that is hope, blooming in the darkness as our heroes set out to save Han and restore the Rebel Alliance. What A New Hope built up by making us fall in love with these characters, The Empire Strikes Back recouped in sharing with us their pain and their fears. Darth Vaders reveal that hes Lukes father has, of course, found its place in history, but theres an equal sense of emotional resonance in the moment Leia and Han depart, moments before hes trapped in carbonite. When Leias I love you is returned by Hans I know  a line written by Harrison Ford himself  were reminded of how magical Star Warss sense of storytelling can be, condensing everything that these two characters feel for each other into five simple words. Rex Features

Carrie Fisher, who died in December 2016, also makes an appearance. Some deleted scenes from The Force Awakens have been used to further her character's story.

The Rise of Skywalker is scheduled to hit cinemas on 20 December, 2019.

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Dir: Tina Gordon; Starring: Regina Hall, Marsai Martin, Issa Rae, Justin Hartley, Tone Bell, JD McCrary. Cert 12A, 109 mins

In 1988, Penny Marshall made the fantasy comedy Big, in which Tom Hanks played a 12-year-old boy in an adults body. Tina Gordon has taken that concept and reversed it. In the writer and directors new film Little, a grown-up  Atlanta tech empress Jordan Sanders (Regina Hall)  ends up back inside her 13-year-old self.

Jordan is a thoroughly obnoxious, self-made businesswoman. She treats her employees as if theyre worms, and seems to have more affection for her Alexa-like app (her homegirl, as she calls it) than she does for human beings. She is wealthy, glamorous, power-crazed and single. Her drive to reach the top began in earnest when she was a bespectacled, frizzy-haired teenager at school, badly bullied for being such a nerd. Do you know what happens to smart people when theyre big? her parents said to console her when she was a tormented schoolgirl. They become the boss.

Little is fun in its own very scattergun, small-minded way. But Gordon, who co-wrote the screenplay with Tracy Oliver, gets herself into a bit of a tangle as she attempts to combine adult and kids themes in the same movie. When Jordan is trapped inside her 13-year-old body, she still has the same appetites for alcohol, sex and high living as her 38-year-old self. This makes for some uncomfortable and very strange scenes. She hits on her schoolteacher and gets too close to her adult boyfriend. Her biggest issue with being stuck back in her early adolescent body is that she has lost the natural teardrop boobs she spent so much money having implanted. She may be in a teenagers body, but that doesnt stop her marching through the office in her pink power suit, bossing around all her employees (who have no idea why there is a kid in their midst).

Best films of 2019 (so far) Show all 49 1 /49 Best films of 2019 (so far) Best films of 2019 (so far) The Favourite Macabre and fraught though The Favourite gets, this isnt so much a film about sex or power as it is about plain mischief. Its a hilarious, buffoonish pleasure, right down to the sets and costume design, and a breeze to spend 120 minutes with. Christopher Hooton Fox Searchlight Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Beautiful Boy Casting Chalamet as Nic was a very clever move. The young actor from Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird has a natural charm and charisma. He still engages an audiences curiosity and sympathy even when his behaviour is at its most selfish and erratic. Geoffrey Macnab Amazon Studios Best films of 2019 (so far) The House by the Sea Guediguians storytelling style is deceptive. At first, it seems as if this is low-key social realism in the Dardennes or Ken Loach mould, albeit set on the French Riviera. Gradually, though, we realise how stylised and theatrical his approach really is. Geoffrey Macnab Best films of 2019 (so far) Stan & Ollie Director Jon S Baird, whose previous film was scabrous Irvine Welsh adaptation Filth, wrings every last drop of pathos he can from his material. This is very much a case of the tears of the clowns. Geoffrey Macnab Entertainment One Best films of 2019 (so far) Vice Vice is bravura storytelling. McKay isnt only taking us through Cheneys life and career but is giving us a whistle stop tour through US politics from the Nixon administration almost right to the present day. Geoffrey Macnab Annapurna Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Can You Ever Forgive Me? Playing Lee Israel, McCarthy manages something very special: she makes a character who is odd, obnoxious, difficult and alcoholic seem lovable and even heroic. The rest of the world is at fault, not Lee. Geoffrey Macnab Fox Searchlight Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Green Book "Green Book flatters the audience about its own good sense and tolerance. It deals with racism and homophobia but still has a fairytale, fantasy feel to it. Whatever humiliations Don endures on their road trip, we know no real harm will ever come to him as long as Tony is at his side. Geoffrey Macnab Universal Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Velvet Buzzsaw The golden age of bonkers horror movies is gloriously evoked by Netflixs latest feature length presentation. Beginning as a satire of the arts world, Velvet Buzzsaw swiftly and gleefully descends into a savage splatter-fest, smeared in paint, viscera and garishly-bright blood. Ed Power Netflix Best films of 2019 (so far) If Beale Street Could Talk The setting is New York in the 1970s. Anyone who has watched Martin Scorseses Taxi Driver knows this was an era of violence, corruption and sleaze on a monumental level, but [Barry] Jenkins somehow makes the city seem like a modern-day Eden. Geoffrey Macnab Annapurna Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) All Is True Written by Ben Elton and directed by its star Kenneth Branagh, the film plays so fast and loose with the playwrights final years that they neednt have bothered fitting Branagh with a prosthetic nose  accuracy is clearly not the priority here. Alexandra Pollard Sony Pictures Classics Best films of 2019 (so far) The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part "The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part is the doomed progeny of a celebrated genius  brilliant but slightly stunted by the knowledge they will never live up to their predecessor. Clarisse Loughrey Warner Bros. Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Piercing Nicolas Pesces sleek and stylish horror comedy is repulsive and funny by turns. In adapting Ryu Murakamis cult novel, Pesce strikes just the right balance between humour and Grand Guignol-style shock tactics. Geoffrey Macnab Universal Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Capernaum "The best moments here are remarkable. Labaki elicits an astonishing performance from her young lead. Hes an irrepressible figure with such an inbuilt sense of moral decency the film seems upbeat and optimistic, even at its darkest moments. Geoffrey Macnab Sony Pictures Classics Best films of 2019 (so far) The White Crow "Ralph Fiennes combines thriller elements with poetic flashbacks to ballet legend Rudolf Nureyevs childhood and keeps a tight focus on the dancer. When he is most at risk, Nureyev makes decisions with his artistic future more in mind than his personal safety. As Fiennes reminds us again and again in what is his best film yet as a director, the 'white crow' will do anything to put himself in the limelight, the one place he is convinced he belongs." StudioCanal Best films of 2019 (so far) Border "Border reverses the perspective taken by most other horror films. In more conventional genre fare, Tina and Vore would be portrayed as malevolent outsiders, but in the world conjured up by director Ali Abbasi, the humans are the monsters. Tina is the innocent  a visionary who hardly understands her own powers but who can sense human venality and corruption wherever it appears." TriArt Film Best films of 2019 (so far) Fighting with My Family "Certain scenes feel very trite and predictable but the film gets you in a choke hold early on and wont let you go. It is far more gripping than its subject matter might suggest. Who ever would believe a story about a wrestling family from Norwich could have quite such heart and resonance?" James Field Best films of 2019 (so far) Us "Doppelgangers abound in Jordan Peeles weird, creepy and ingenious new horror film. As in his Oscar-winning 2017 feature Get Out, Peele leavens matters with ironic humour but the joking becomes increasingly uncomfortable once the main characters come face to face with dark shadows of themselves which wish them extreme harm." AP Best films of 2019 (so far) Avengers: Endgame "The Avengers cycle comes to a rich and very satisfying conclusion with Endgame, surely the most complex and emotional superhero movie in Marvel history. At 181 minutes, this is a veritable epic, but with so many characters and plot strands, it fully warrants its lengthy running time." AP Best films of 2019 (so far) Eighth Grade "Its a rare and precious feeling when a film completely dismantles you. Eighth Grade  the directorial debut of US comedian Bo Burnham  breaks down every delusion we have about ourselves and burrows deep into those parts weve made such an effort to lock away. You may cry. You may shudder as every awkward social interaction thats kept you up at night replays in your head all at once. You may feel the sharp pain associated with those moments when you feel completely isolated from the world. Burnham may have crafted a simple story about the most ordinary of teenage girls, but it speaks with the emotions of a true cinematic epic." A24 Best films of 2019 (so far) Vox Lux "Natalie Portman gives her fiercest, most memorable performance since Black Swan in Brady Corbets enjoyably subversive satire about a troubled pop star whose loss of innocence mirrors the fall from grace of the US itself. Portmans character, Celeste, is certainly one of the most objectionable figures she has played: a pampered, hard-drinking drug-taking floozy whose appearance and high-handed behaviour rekindle memories of Liz Taylor and Joan Crawford at their monstrous worst." Neon Best films of 2019 (so far) High Life Robert Pattinson gives one of his most striking performances as Monte, the death-row criminal in outer space, tricked into making a voyage described at one stage as a class-one suicide ride. The former Twilight star makes his shaven-headed, gaunt-faced character seem hyper naturally sensitive and feral at the same time. A24 Best films of 2019 (so far) Amazing Grace Amazing Grace is as uplifting a film as you will see all year. Its a concert movie filmed over two nights and featuring Aretha Franklin, the first lady of soul, performing gospel standards in a church in Los Angeles in 1972, with a huge backing choir and an enthusiastic congregation. Neon Best films of 2019 (so far) Aladdin Disneys live-action remake of its 1992 animated feature is a rip-roaring, old-fashioned matinee-style spectacle that turns out far better than we had any right to expect. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Booksmart Olivia Wilde is a visually inventive director, who keeps the tempo here so brisk that we hardly notice how glib the storytelling sometimes becomes. We can tell exactly how the film will end, but it still feels original both in its screwball energy and in the deft way it continually reverses stereotypes and gender cliches. Geoffrey Macnab Annapurna Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) Late Night Late Night is a caustic satirical comedy that turns into an unlikely tearjerker. Its by turns snide and uplifting, and often very funny too. Its writer/producer/star Mindy Kaling makes vicious observations about the inanity, narcissism and corruption of the mainstream US media at the same time as she celebrates the professionalism of many of those who work within it. The film has a glorious performance from Emma Thompson and a very sly one from Kaling. Thompson is at her most imperious as Katherine Newbury, a legendary entertainer, the only female in a male-dominated field, but one whose career is beginning to slide. Geoffrey Macnab Amazon Studios Best films of 2019 (so far) Gloria Bell Gloria Bell is somewhat exhausting  both unbearably intimate and at a constant remove  but it is endlessly pulled back into focus by Moore, who has a firm understanding of the delicate balance between contentment and yearning, joy and pain, recklessness and spontaneity. In a remake that could have felt indulgent in the hands of people less skilled, she more than justifies its existence. Geoffrey Macnab Curzon Best films of 2019 (so far) Toy Story 4 "The brilliance of the new film lies in the surefooted way it caters both for children too young to have seen its predecessors and for adults whove grown up (or grown older) watching the previous instalments. It takes some kind of genius for the Pixar animators to give such a searing emotional charge to a story in which one of the main characters is a single use plastic spork retrieved from the trash." Pixar/Disney Best films of 2019 (so far) In Fabric In Fabric feels like Peter Strickland at his most free and playful, drawing as much from the British sense of humour  dry and morbid to a fault  as from Italian glamour. Curzon Artificial Eye Best films of 2019 (so far) The Flood "Perhaps The Flood isnt quite the urgent, profound film a crisis of this scale deserves, but in a culture where refugees are so rarely shown any empathy in mainstream media, maybe this is the film we need right now." Best films of 2019 (so far) Midsommar "Ari Aster's follow-up to Hereditary serves up much of the same: its a break-up movie wrapped up in pagan horror. Its also bound to be one of this years most memorable films, proving that Aster is far from a one-hit wonder." A24 Best films of 2019 (so far) The Lion King "The Lion King is undoubtedly a technological marvel that, much like Avatar, will come to be viewed as a milestone in special effects history, yet its just as interesting to see how all this innovation has been employed." AP Best films of 2019 (so far) Varda by Agnes "For a film thats almost entirely narrated by Agnes Varda's own voice, it doesnt feel driven by ego, but by pure intellectual and emotional curiosity." Best films of 2019 (so far) Animals "Animals treats its subjects with patience and generosity. Youll find no life lessons here. Its main characters are free to pursue their desires, to whatever end." Best films of 2019 (so far) Blinded by the Light "Blinded by the Light offers not only a reminder of Springsteens lyrical genius, but of how hes always served as a beacon for the disenfranchised." Warner Brothers Best films of 2019 (so far) Good Boys Lined up against some of this years other more heartfelt offerings, including Booksmart, Good Boys offers further proof that putting a little humanity in our comedy always gets the best results. Best films of 2019 (so far) Hustlers "Hustlers is an electrifying response to the deluge of stories weve had over the years about very rich, very bad dudes. Finally, we can turn the tables on every film thats used women, specifically strippers, as decorative accessories to drape over businessmen as they conduct their illicit backroom meetings. Or, failing that, to shake their out-of-focus tits in the background of a shot." AP Best films of 2019 (so far) For Sama For Sama is one of the most profoundly intimate depictions of the Syrian conflict ever put to film. Its the push to help those on the outside process something so incomprehensible in the depth of its horrors. Republic Film Distribution Best films of 2019 (so far) Ad Astra The real drama here is not whether or not apocalypse can be avoided but whether Brad Pitts character can reconcile himself with his father and overcome his own extreme emotional repression. In other words, in spite of all the jargon and the hardware, this is an intimate family melodrama at heart. Thanks to Pitts performance and Grays delicate direction, it turns into a very moving one. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Best films of 2019 (so far) The Farewell Wrapped up in all the intricacies of immigrant identity and family politics, The Farewell is a comedy of warmth and bracing honesty. Simply put, its one of the best films of the year. A24 Best films of 2019 (so far) Judy This is Renee Zellwegers Judy. It doesnt belong to Rupert Goold, its director. Nor does it belong to Tom Edge, its screenwriter. Its a performance of such overwhelming force that it wrests authorship from every other hand that guided the films creation. Pathe Best films of 2019 (so far) Ready or Not As absurd and self-indulgent as Ready or Not can get, it doesnt mess around with its social commentary. The class system is the game we never asked to play, dont get a fair chance at, and have no hope of winning. Its a timeless metaphor. 20th Century Fox Best films of 2019 (so far) A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon Despite its mouthful of a title, A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon is an utter delight  proof that good storytelling and strong craft are what matters, however familiar the packaging. Studio Canal Best films of 2019 (so far) The Beach Bum Clearly, Harmony Korine is steered by his attraction to the theatrical, the absurd and the grimly nihilistic. The Beach Bum is all of that and absolutely none of it, too  a leisurely, neon-soaked stroll through chaos and hazy bohemia, full of slapstick and pathos. It is as much Korines most mature film as it is his most juvenile. Neon/Vice Best films of 2019 (so far) The Last Black Man in San Francisco Its a beautiful, frightening and tragic vignette of the urban nightmare, though The Last Black Man in San Francisco isnt really an angry film. Its less of a rallying cry against gentrification than a rumination on the kind of pained acceptance those who suffer its effects must face. A24 Best films of 2019 (so far) The Irishman Scorseses signature camerawork goes down like a glass of fine whisky, as smooth and as elegant as youd expect. The violence arrives in short, sharp shocks. Steven Zaillians screenplay even nails the mobster patter, with arguments about fish, tardiness, and business shorts that feel destined to one day be quoted to death. Netflix Best films of 2019 (so far) Le Mans '66 The films greatest trick is saved for its final reel. For much of its running time, youd be easily fooled into thinking Mangold had made a grand ode to the American dream. Its a film about an immigrant worker who, through perseverance and toil, gains the respect of one of the richest men in the country. And then the rug is pulled right out from underneath you. Le Mans 66 may relish in the high life, but its final moments feel devastatingly hollow. AP Best films of 2019 (so far) Marriage Story The film never loses its sense of humour and absurdity. Somehow, in spite of the bleakness of the subject matter, it feels more redemptive than despairing. Best films of 2019 (so far) The Report Adam Driver plays Jones, Annette Bening Senator Feinstein, and director Scott Z Burns captures the events in a cold, rigorously factual, and largely dispassionate manner. But thats the point. The Report chooses to value the truth over bombastic displays of morality. AP Best films of 2019 (so far) Knives Out Casting an ensemble film is a little like perfecting a cocktail blend, balancing flavours until they sing together in harmony. Knives Out hits the mark here: the actors all feel well-suited to their roles and they bounce off each other with ease. Lionsgate

Jordan is played as a 13-year-old by the talented Marsai Martin, who perfectly imitates Regina Halls mannerisms as the adult version of herself, while also capturing the schoolgirls awkwardness. She may be boss of a big tech company, but when she wanders into the dining hall at Windsor Middle School, no one will sit with her. She is mocked relentlessly by the other schoolkids, who stick straws in her very thick hair.

The writing here is a mixture of the witty and the banal. There are knowing jokes about Gary Coleman, the diminutive and very precocious star of TVs Diffrent Strokes. Jordan has a very vicious turn of phrase. At the same time, many of the one-liners here  about how its never too late to reinvent yourself, for example  sound as if they could have been taken straight from a Hallmark greeting card.

As well as a story about an adult colliding with her younger self, Little is an odd-couple movie. April (Issa Rae) is Jordans assistant and general dogsbody, told by her boss to be on call at all times. As good-natured as Jordan is mean, she plans Jordans diary, collects her laundry and soaks up her never-ending insults.

After Jordan downsizes, the power dynamic between the two women is reversed. Jordan becomes ever more dependent on April, whom everybody assumes is her mother. In the films oddest scene, when Jordan misbehaves and refuses to go to school, she ends up being spanked by April.

There is a sickly sweet sub-plot involving the other kids ostracised at the school. Jordan becomes their champion and teaches them how to boost their profiles on social media while facing down the school bullies. We know, almost from the opening moments of the film, that Jordan isnt really the monster that she seems to be. She acts tough and mean to protect herself, but theres a decent, kind-hearted girl lurking within her. It only takes a few plot twists to pull her to the surface.

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One hitch to the structure of the film is that we see relatively little of Regina Hall as grown-up Jordan. The film is generally at its best when she is on screen, behaving at her nastiest. This is one of those wish fulfilment fables in which a transformation, supposedly for the better, risks dulling the heroine. The more emotionally mature she becomes, the fewer laughs she elicits.
Tens of thousands of children and young people are expected to attend nationwide protests urging the government to introduce measures to address climate change and economic inequality.

Young people from the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement have organised protests in more than 70 towns and cities across the UK, in their third major demonstration this year.

Children are taking the day off school to call for the government to declare a state of climate emergency and implement a Green New Deal policy framework that would decarbonise the economy, and reduce social inequality.

Weve been angry for a long time, said Noga Levy-Rapoport, a 17-year-old student and protest organiser from London. Previously, we didnt have a platform  and there was no way to express our anger.

A whole generation has been ignored and now we arent going to stop pushing for change until the government takes action.

Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Show all 8 1 /8 Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London AFP/Getty Images Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London AFP/Getty Images Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London AFP/Getty Images Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London Getty Images Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London AFP/Getty Images Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London AFP/Getty Images Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London Reuters Tens of thousands of children protest climate catastrophe Students attend the YouthStrike4Climate demonstration against climate change in Parliament Square, central London REUTERS

An estimated 20,000 young people skipped school and attended protests organised by Youth Strike 4 Climate in February and in March an estimated 50,000 took to the streets.

Momentum is building, said Ms Levy-Rapoport. As the protests get bigger more people are hearing about the movement.

George Bond, a 16-year-old from Devon, who is active in the UK Student Climate Network said: To adequately address the climate crisis, we need bold and ambitious ideas that inspire people to think of a better world. A Green New Deal is one such solution.

With a promise of well-paid and secure jobs in the renewable and other green sectors, it would go a long way toward addressing the economic inequality that has disproportionately affected so many communities and regions around the UK as well as tackling climate change.

He added: Over the last three months attitudes have changed dramatically. The mainstream media and politicians are only just waking up to the power that young people have and what we can achieve.

The growing global youth movement to combat climate change has been galvanised by actions taken by the Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, who began a solo protest in Sweden last summer.

She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in March for her role in sparking climate protests in more than 100 different countries.

Jake Woodier is a campaign officer with UK Student Climate Network, an organisation that provides logistical support to the children organising protests in the UK.

The children are spread out across the UK and mainly organise online, he said. New technologies are allowing young people to organise on a global scale in a way that has never been possible in the past. This is the first generation that truly grew up with mobile technology and the internet and they are reimagining the way that it can be used.

Young people active within the UK Student Climate Network mainly communicate via mobile messaging applications and video conferencing technology, he added.

Protests earlier this year have seen police intervening as roads came to a standstill, activists scaled traffic lights and statues, and some sat in front of double-decker buses.

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Demonstrators are also campaigning for the voices of young people to be considered when it comes to policy-making and for the voting age to be lowered to 16.

Environment Secretary Michael Gove has previously spoken of his support for strikes, saying: "Collective action of the kind you're championing can make a difference, and a profound one."

The latest strikes come in the wake of a United Nations report which warned that limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels requires unprecedented action  including cutting global carbon dioxide emissions by almost half within 12 years.

Scientists have warned that the climate impacts, such as increased risk of flooding and extreme heat, will be become more severe as global temperatures rise beyond the 1.5C target.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12) - The Commission on Elections (Comelec) again warns against breaking campaign rules as election day draws nearer.

In an interview with CNN Philippines Friday, Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez said the way candidates behave during the campaign period shows how much  or how little  they value the law.

Jimenez added that punishment has been meted to people who have broken election laws, but for election campaign laws  specifically postering  he said there are pending cases.

"Again, if people think na mukhang walang ngipin ang Comelec sa pag-e-enforce ng batas, tandaan niyo na lang tuwing nakakakita kayo ng nagvi-violate na ganyan, e araw-araw naco-confirm na yung mga kandidato niyo walang paggalang sa batas," he said.

[Translation: Again, if people think that the Comelec has no teeth when it comes to enforcing the law, remember that every time you see someone commit a violation, it simply confirms every day that your candidate has no respect for the law.]

He compared the situation in other countries where candidates took it upon themselves to follow the law.

The Comelec has constantly reminded those running for office to follow the campaign laws as specified in Resolution 10488.

Included in the resolution are guidelines on the sizes of posters, common posting areas and concerns regarding blogs and campaigning via social media.

READ: Comelec: Register blogs, social media pages of candidates, political parties

In February, Comelec warned 40 senatorial candidates against illegal campaign posters.

Jimenez also commented on recent reports of musicians complaining that their work being used as campaign jingles without their consent.

Jimenez said the practice is illegal, however, not under election laws.

"That's the distinction we have to make. This is illegal under the intellectual property regimes, at hindi Comelec ang nagpo-police niyan [and it's not the Comelec that polices it]," he said.

Jimenez did say those artists whose works were used without permission should go to the proper agencies for resolution.
The support they provide the areas residents  including a scholarship foundation named after Edwin Montano and an emergency assistance fund that has given relief to locals, as well as other countries that have sustained natural disasters  began out of the need to assist each other.
Katie Bouman, the scientist who became a hero after helping to create the famous first image of a black hole, has repeatedly looked to shine a light on the colleagues that she worked with to do it.

Her new found fame has however led to a number of trolls suggesting she is receiving undue credit, and that more attention should be given to men.

Dr Bouman has won praise from all over the world for her help in creating the image, being tweeted about hundreds of thousands of times and even winning praise from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

In just about every discussion of the results, she has looked to highlight the work of the huge team of scientists who helped create the work. Though Dr Bouman worked on the algorithm that helped create the picture, she did so with a team and using data that came from astronomers who helped capture the radio signals that let the image be created in the first place.

No one algorithm or person made this image, it required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat," she wrote on Facebook soon after the results were announced.

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427  more commonly known as WR 124  and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead  sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later  having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. 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Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. 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Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

Still the interest she has received has led to attacks from some people who believe she is receiving too much credit for the work. That is despite the fact she has never claimed to be responsible, and has highlighted her colleagues at every opportunity.

Recommended Scientist Katherine Bouman becomes hero over first black hole image

Numerous fake accounts have been set up in her name that suggest she has attempted to claim undue credit for the work and that others  usually men  should be getting attention instead. A common claim suggested that a man had actually written "850,000 of the 900,000 lines of code that were written in the historic black-hole image algorithm", for instance, and was passed around social media along with pictures of Dr Boumer.

But Andrew Chael, the graduate student who has been repeatedly credited with doing that work, has tweeted that it a mischaracterisation of how the work was done and is a false understanding of what he himself did.

"So apparently some (I hope very few) people online are using the fact that I am the primary developer of the [software library that helped created the image] to launch awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend Katie Bouman," he wrote. "Stop.

"While I wrote much of the code for one of these pipelines, Katie was a huge contributor to the software; it would have never worked without her contributions and the work of many others who wrote code, debugged, and figured out how to use the code on challenging EHT data.

"With a few others, Katie also developed the imaging framework that rigorously tested all three codes and shaped the entire paper.

"As a result, this is probably the most vetted image in the history of radio interferometry. I'm thrilled Katie is getting recognition for her work and that she's inspiring people as an example of women's leadership in STEM.

"I'm also thrilled she's pointing out that this was a team effort including contributions from many junior scientists, including many women junior scientists. Together, we all make each other's work better; the number of commits doesn't tell the full story of who was indispensable.

"So while I appreciate the congratulations on a result that I worked hard on for years, if you are congratulating me because you have a sexist vendetta against Katie, please go away and reconsider your priorities in life," he concluded, before committing to stick around on Twitter and continue to post about black holes, "space, being a gay astronomer, Ursula K. Le Guin, architecture, and musicals".
The black hole that starred in the first ever photo to be taken of its kind has been given a name.

The now famous swirling void will be known as Powehi, a Hawaiian word which has been bestowed by a language professor.

And the name's meaning, chosen by University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian Professor Larry Kimura, is as fittingly dramatic as the picture and work that produced it.

It means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation" and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant. Po is a profound dark source of unending creation, while wehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the chant's descriptions of po, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

The world's first image of a black hole revealed Wednesday was created using data from eight radio telescopes around the world.

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427  more commonly known as WR 124  and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead  sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later  having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Yellowstone from space NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Saturn This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Worlds Apart Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station Nasa/Scott Kelly Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Pluto image Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way NASA & ESA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space An Astronaut's View from Space Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Giant Landform on Mars On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called draa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Expedition 39 Landing A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

"To have the privilege of giving a Hawaiian name to the very first scientific confirmation of a black hole is very meaningful to me and my Hawaiian lineage that comes from po," Kimura said in a news release.

A Hawaiian name was justified because the project included two Hawaii telescopes, astronomers said.

"As soon as he said it, I nearly fell off my chair," said Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea.

Dempsey was among 200 scientists who worked to capture an image of the massive black hole in the M87 galaxy nearly 54 million light-years from Earth.

Dempsey said Powehi is an excellent match for the scientific explanation provided to Kimura.

"We described what we had seen and that this black hole was illuminating and brightening the darkness around it, and that's when he came up with the name," she said.

Additional reporting by Associated Press
Leaving on shoes, asking for the Wifi password and using mobile phones at the dinner table, are the house rules that guests break the most, a poll has claimed.

The survey of 2,000 adults revealed polite guests should use a coaster when settling down a drink and always leave the toilet seat down.

Respecting privacy, refraining to swear and washing hands before sitting down for dinner also made the list, as did leaving the host to do the washing up, which those who were polled said was "rude."

Wherever we are, whatever we are doing, we always have the urge to stay online," said Richard Sinclair MBE, executive director of connectivity at Virgin Media, which carried out the survey. When visiting friends and family, research has shown that asking for the WiFi code is one of the first things people do. As is courtesy when visiting someone elses home, you should be mindful and always respect their rules to avoid any awkward situations.

The poll also found 71 per cent did not impose any particular rules for guests to follow, however, those who did follow such rules, said it was from a place of "respect".

White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Show all 16 1 /16 White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Comedian Michelle Wolf attends the Celebration After the White House Correspondents' Dinner Getty White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Comedian Michelle Wolf performs at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the 2018 White House Correspondents' Dinner Getty White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Comedian Michelle Wolf performs at the White House Correspondents Association dinner in Washington Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Comedian Michelle Wolf performs at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders on stage Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Comedian Michelle Wolf attends the Celebration After the White House Correspondents' Dinner hosted by Netflix's The Break Getty/Netflix White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Former White House advisor Gary Cohn arrives on the red carpet Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures White House Correspondents' Association President Margret Margaret Talev speaks at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jonathan Karl Getty White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Country musician Ty Herndon performs the National Anthem Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures CNN's Jake Tapper, Evan Perez and Jim Sciutto accept the Merriman Smith Award from ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Todd J Gillman and Michelle Wolf Getty White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi Reuters White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Comedian Michelle Wolf laughs during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner REUTERS White House Correspondents Dinner: in pictures Michelle Wolf attends the Celebration After the White House Correspondents' Dinner hosted by Netflix's The Break Getty/Netflix

More than 25 per cent of respondents found it it "impolite" when guests ask for the Wifi password during a visit and one in 10 had gone to the extreme of refusing to provide it, reasoning "theyve come for a visit, not to sit glued to their device."

However, homeowners said if they are to provide access to the Internet, guests should be willing to wait for 30 minutes before asking for the password.

But for those study participants who are frequent guests at the homes of friends and neighbours, said they strongly believed they were not doing anything wrong in particular.

Furthermore, one in five said they need to connect to their hosts Wifi because they feel compelled to check their emails.

The average respondent said they could go just 36 minutes after arriving at someones home before the temptation to check emails and social media overwhelms them.

 Protesters stage 'Brexit is a dog's dinner' rally outside Houses of Parliament

One in 10 admitted feeling compelled to check social media and a further 23 per cent said they go online because there was something on the internet they wanted to share with their host.

A quarter thought that being connected to the Internet at all times has simply become a "habit".

A third had visitors over at least once a week, with a tenth inviting guests round "most days".

SWNS
A university student has used a portion of her student loan to pay for dozens of boxes of sanitary products to help those on campus facing period poverty.

Daisy Wakefield, a third year Drawing and Print student at the University of the West of England (UWE) has been creating art surrounding the issue of period poverty throughout her degree.

As the president of the UWE feminist society, the student has also undergone extensive training surrounding the topic and has campaigned consistently for free access to sanitary products for students.

However, after the university allegedly failed to provide free sanitary products or respond to Wakefields emails regarding the issue, she decided to take matters into her own hands.

This week, the 22-year-old spent more than 100 purchasing enough sanitary towels and tampons to fill 40 boxes that she designed and handmade herself.

Period euphemisms around the World Show all 8 1 /8 Period euphemisms around the World Period euphemisms around the World Germany 'Erdbeerwoche': translates as 'strawberry week' iStock Period euphemisms around the World France 'Les Anglais out debarque' or 'The English have arrived' referring to past wars with England and possibly the British army's red coats Getty Images Period euphemisms around the World Brazil 'Eustou Com Chico' or "I'm with Chico' in reference to socialist Chico Mendes and possibly his gruesome assassination in the late 80's Getty Images Period euphemisms around the World Finland The Finnish affectionately refer to periods and pms as 'Hullum Lechman Tauti' or 'mad cow disease' Getty Images Period euphemisms around the World The United States Though there are many varied terms, a popular americans commonly refer to periods as 'Aunt Flo' iStock Period euphemisms around the World China In China you may hear 'its little sister to come in' iStock Period euphemisms around the World Denmark 'Der Er Kommunister i Lysthuset' or 'There are communists in the funhouse' Getty Images Period euphemisms around the World South Africa A famed colloquialism for a period in South Africa is 'Grannys stuck in traffic' iStock

Wakefield has since distributed the boxes across all UWE campuses with the hopes that the university will recognise the need to provide free sanitary products to its students.

Sharing a photo of the boxes of sanitary products on Instagram, Wakefield wrote: FREE SANITARY PRODUCTS FOR ALL!!!

After many emails saying Ill get back to you or Im not sure Im tired of @uwebristol not addressing the crisis that is period poverty in the UK.

Therefore, I, Daisy Wakefield have been forced to take matters into my own hands by supplying FREE sanitary products on all @uwebristol campuses.

"(Due to funding this with my student loan there is limited supply, so head to your nearest UWE bathroom soon if you are in need).

Wakefields post has since received hundreds of likes and comments from people praising her generous act.

Isn't it pathetic that you have to do this with YOUR STUDENT LOAN!!!!, one person commented.

Honestly it's mental! Well done though for being so selfless. Hopefully this kicks them into some kind of action!

Another added: Saw this in toilet today, this is amazing and hopefully UWE will address this immediately.

A third person wrote: Fantastic work Daisy !!! Well done, so proud of you.

Wakefield has since followed the post with a video showing her constructing and filling the handmade boxes for nearly six hours, before once again calling on the university to do more.

If one student using their student loan can provide, hand make and assemble 40 sanitary boxes, @uwebristol most definitely can, she wrote.

I believe in you @uwebristol PLEASE make positive change and supply FREE sanitary products for all students.

Speaking to The Independent, Wakefield explains she became passionate about ending period poverty roughly four years ago.

"You most likely know someone who is suffering from period poverty, which is why I felt I needed to do something.

"UWE and all Universities need to stop turning to charities and volunteers such as the Womens Forum to provide support and actually invest money to finally put an end to period poverty."

Wakefield explains that her underlying motivation is to destigmatize period poverty and menstruation as a whole.

"As a society we have been told to be quiet about our periods. So its no wonder people feel they cant speak up about suffering with period poverty when so many cant even talk about their period."

In response to Wakefield's campaign, a spokesperson for UWE tells The Independent: "Period poverty is a global issue and were pleased that UWE Bristol students are passionately advocating for change. The University does not currently supply free sanitary products on campus, though we would be pleased to meet with students to understand if there is an emerging need for this.

"All students can access the Blackbullion app to help their budgeting and our money advice service can provide vouchers in emergencies. Students paying home fees can access a student support fund and summer fund to cover composite living costs, and there is an emergency fund accessible to international students.

"Short term loans can also be arranged for any student with less than 100 in their back account."

Wakefields campaign comes just weeks after a new poll revealed that more than a quarter of women have been forced to miss work or school because they cannot afford period products.

The survey found 51 per cent of respondents had suffered from the problem, or knew someone who had, while more than two-thirds had been forced to use makeshift menstrual protection at some point.

It is estimated that the average women spends 4,800 on sanitary products during her lifetime.

In March 2019, the government announced a free sanitary product scheme across secondary schools and colleges in England in a bid to combat period poverty.

The scheme, which is due to start from September, was announced by chancellor of the exchequer Philip Hammond during todays Spring Statement.

In response to rising concern by headteachers that some girls are missing school attendance due to inability to afford sanitary products, I have decided to fund the provision of free sanitary products in secondary schools and colleges in England from the next school year, Mr Hammond said.

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On Wednesday 10 April, the first image ever taken of a black hole was released.

The picture, which shows a black hole surrounded by a hazy red and yellow circle, provides an unprecedented peek at one of the most mysterious entities in the universe.

One of the scientists involved in the development of the picture is Dr Katie Bouman.

The scientist received worldwide attention when a photograph of her watching the black hole image being assembled went viral on social media.

So who is Dr Bouman, and how was she involved in capturing the first image of a black hole? Here's everything you need to know:

Who is Dr Bouman?

Dr Bouman is an imaging scientist, credited as being one of a team of scientists behind the development of the first image of a black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy.

The 29-year-old graduated from the University of Michigan in 2011 with a degree in electrical engineering.

Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Show all 30 1 /30 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An image from Nasa's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) shows a 200,000 mile long solar filament ripping through the Sun's corona in September 2013 Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Nasa Celebrates 50 Years of Spacewalking For 50 years, NASA has been "suiting up" for spacewalking. In this 1984 photograph of the first untethered spacewalk, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless is in the midst of the first "field" tryout of a nitrogen-propelled backpack device called the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Hubble Cosmic Couple The spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427  more commonly known as WR 124  and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula - expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago Nasa's most stunning pictures of space The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launch The Soyuz TMA-15M rocket launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Monday, Nov. 24, 2014, carrying three new astronauts to the International Space Station. It also took caviar, ready for the satellite's inhabitants to celebrate the holidays Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth from the ISS From the International Space Station, Expedition 42 Flight Engineer Terry W. Virts took this photograph of the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Gulf Coast at sunset Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Black Hole Friday Nasa celebrated Black Friday by looking into space instead  sharing pictures of black holes Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space NuSTAR X-rays stream off the sun in this image showing observations from by NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Cassiopeia A c A false colour image of Cassiopeia A comprised with data from the Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes and the Chandra X-Ray observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Orion Capsule splashes down The Orion capsule jetted off into space before heading back a few hours later  having proved that it can be used, one day, to carry humans to Mars Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Earth Observations From Gemini IV in 1965 This photograph of the Florida Straits and Grand Bahama Bank was taken during the Gemini IV mission during orbit no. 19 in 1965. The Gemini IV crew conducted scientific experiments, including photography of Earth's weather and terrain, for the remainder of their four-day mission following Ed White's historic spacewalk on June 3 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Frosty slopes of Mars This image of an area on the surface of Mars, approximately 1.5 by 3 kilometers in size, shows frosted gullies on a south-facing slope within a crater. The image was taken by Nasa's HiRISE camera, which is mounted on its Mars Reconaissance Orbiter Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Yellowstone from space NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman shared this image of Yellowstone via his twitter account Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Saturn This near-infrared color image shows a specular reflection, or sunglint, off of a hydrocarbon lake named Kivu Lacus on Saturn's moon Titan Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Worlds Apart Although Mimas and Pandora, shown here, both orbit Saturn, they are very different moons. Pandora, "small" by moon standards (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) is elongated and irregular in shape. Mimas (246 miles or 396 kilometers across), a "medium-sized" moon, formed into a sphere due to self-gravity imposed by its higher mass Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Solar Flare An X1.6 class solar flare flashes in the middle of the sun in this image taken 10 September, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Mars Rover Spirit Nasa's Mars Rover Spirit took the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack Nasa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Morning Aurora From the Space Station Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station Nasa/Scott Kelly Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Launch of History - Making STS-41G Mission in 1984 The Space Shuttle Challenger launches from Florida at dawn. On this mission, Kathryn Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to perform a spacewalk and Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space. The crew of seven was the largest to fly on a spacecraft at that time, and STS-41G was the first flight to include two female astronauts Nasa's most stunning pictures of space A Fresh Perspective on an Extraordinary Cluster of Galaxies Galaxy clusters are often described by superlatives. After all, they are huge conglomerations of galaxies, hot gas, and dark matter and represent the largest structures in the Universe held together by gravity Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the Nasa Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower ESA/Hubble & NASA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Pluto image Four images from New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with colour data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced colour global view of Pluto Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Fresh Crater Near Sirenum Fossae Region of Mars The HiRISE camera aboard Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter acquired this closeup image of a "fresh" (on a geological scale, though quite old on a human scale) impact crater in the Sirenum Fossae region of Mars. This impact crater appears relatively recent as it has a sharp rim and well-preserved ejecta Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Hubble Peers into the Most Crowded Place in the Milky Way This Nasa Hubble Space Telescope image presents the Arches Cluster, the densest known star cluster in the Milky Way NASA & ESA Nasa's most stunning pictures of space An Astronaut's View from Space Nasa astronaut Reid Wiseman tweeted this photo from the International Space Station on 2 September 2014 Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Giant Landform on Mars On Mars, we can observe four classes of sandy landforms formed by the wind, or aeolian bedforms: ripples, transverse aeolian ridges, dunes, and what are called draa Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Expedition 39 Landing A sokol suit helmet can be seen against the window of the Soyuz TMA-11M capsule shortly after the spacecraft landed with Expedition 39 Commander Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos, and Flight Engineer Rick Mastracchio of NASA near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan (NASA/Bill Ingalls) Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Jupiter's Great Red Spot Viewed by Voyager I Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system and perhaps the most majestic. Vibrant bands of clouds carried by winds that can exceed 400 mph continuously circle the planet's atmosphere Nasa's most stunning pictures of space Chandra Observatory Sees a Heart in the Darkness This Chandra X-Ray Observatory image of the young star cluster NGC 346 highlights a heart-shaped cloud of 8 million-degree Celsius gas in the central region

The scientist later received her PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in electrical engineering and computer science.

What role did Dr Bouman play in capturing the picture of the black hole?

Three years ago, while still a graduate student at MIT, Dr Bouman led a project to develop a new algorithm that would lead to the construction of the black hole image.

The team of scientists that she led hailed from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and the MIT Haystack Observatory.

The new algorithm was dubbed CHIRP, which stands for Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Path priors.

When the development of the algorithm was announced in 2016, Dr Bouman compared photographing a black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy to "taking an image of a grapefruit on the moon, but with a radio telescope".

In April 2017, the scientist delivered a TED talk in which she spoke about how to take a picture of black hole, a feat that had not yet been realised.

"Although we have some idea as to what a black hole might look like, we've never actually taken a picture of one before," Dr Bouman said during her speech.

"However, you might be surprised to know that that may soon change."

How did Dr Bouman and her team capture the picture of the black hole?

In order to capture the picture of the black hole, Dr Bouman and her team required a telescope the same size as Earth.

"Instead of building an Earth-sized telescope, which is obviously impossible, we took telescopes that were already built for other purposes and we merged them together into one computational telescope," Dr Bouman said.

These telescopes were synchronised using a technique called very-long-baseline interferometry.

Very-long-baseline interferometry is a technique used in radio astronomy which allows astronomers to see detailed images of the universe.

The scientists then conducted complex analysis of the data they garnered from the telescopes in order to produce the first image of the black hole.

When did the photograph of Dr Bouman with the picture of the black hole go viral?

On Wednesday, Dr Bouman shared a photograph of herself on Facebook revelling in the phenomenal achievement.

"Watching in disbelief as the first image I ever made of a black hole was in the process of being reconstructed," the scientist wrote on Facebook.

Dr Bouman also shared a photograph of the team of scientists whom she worked with to create the image.

"No one algorithm or person made this image," the scientist stated.

"It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat."

Dr Bouman added that it had been an "honour" to work with all involved.

How have people reacted to Dr Bouman and her team's achievement?

As can be expected, Dr Bouman and the team of scientists involved in the development of the picture of the black hole have been congratulated on their impressive feat.

Take your rightful seat in history, Dr. Bouman! tweeted US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Congratulations and thank you for your enormous contribution to the advancements of science and mankind. Heres to #WomenInSTEM!

"Haven't seen Katie Bouman's name enough today associated with the black hole photo," tweeted Yale history professor Joanna Freeman.

"She created a key algorithm that enabled this to happen -- as a grad student (!). A woman of science who deserves to have her name known."

In a tweet shared by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, a photograph of Dr Bouman with hard drives containing black hole image data is placed alongside a photograph of computer scientist Margaret Hamilton.

"My daughter has a Lego set with Margaret Hamilton. Time for a second series to include Katie Bouman!" one person tweeted in response.

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Mothers milk isnt just for babies anymore.

Global chemical giants DowDuPont and BASF are investing millions to ramp up production of an indigestible sugar found naturally in breast milk. Infant formula makers like Nestle cant get enough of the synthetic ingredient. Now the companies are eyeing a potentially bigger customer: adults. DuPont estimates the annual market could reach $1bn (770m).

Human milk oligosaccharide is the third most common solid in breast milk, after lactose and fat. HMO escapes digestion, allowing it to reach the colon where it feeds beneficial bacteria. HMOs may explain why breast-fed babies tend to fare better than formula-fed, said Rachael Buck, who leads HMO research at Similac formula-maker Abbott Laboratories.

Its just been a fascinating treasure trove of benefits that weve uncovered, Buck said.

In babies, HMOs strengthen the developing immune system, helping fight infection and inflammation while aiding brain development, according to early research. New studies show those benefits may extend to people of all ages, fitting neatly into consumers growing fascination with probiotics  the good bacteria that can help keep a human body healthy.

Synthetic HMOs come from the formula industrys quest to manufacture a breast-milk substitute thats as close to the real thing as possible. The purported benefits are still viewed with skepticism by some in the scientific community  especially when they come at a premium price.

Never assume that the addition of a component of human milk actually makes the formula like human milk, said Steven Abrams, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on nutrition. Its not, said Abrams, a Dell Medical School professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

HMOs could lead to treatments for adult ailments such as irritable bowel syndrome, allergies and even the ageing brain, Buck said. An animal study at Abbotts labs showed that HMO stimulated the vagus nerve, a superhighway communicating from gut to brain, she said. This has the potential to help both brain development early in life and, later in life, brain decline.

Commercial production is typically accomplished through a fermentation process using giant vats filled with microbes genetically engineered to produce specific HMO varieties, such as 2FL.

DuPont plans to spend $40m building out its HMO production capacity this year, its second biggest capital investment after expanding a factory that makes Tyvek. Meanwhile, its partnering with Lonza Group AG to make enough product to meet current demand. DuPont will become a stand-alone company when it splits from DowDuPont on 1 June.

After two decades of research, Abbott was first to bring HMOs to the US baby nutrition market in 2016. Its now expanded to 15 countries. Nestle last year rolled out HMO formula in Gerber and other brands across 40 countries. HMOs nourish bacteria that train immune system cells, 80 percent of which reside in the gut, said Jose Saavedra, Nestle chief medical officer.

The health claims propelled about $600m in sales of HMO formula last year for each of Abbott and Nestle.

Among Abbotts customers was Heidi Haydock, a senior manager at Cardinal Health, who two years ago wasnt able to breast feed her newborn son because she was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. Concerned about the development of his digestive system, she fed him Similac with HMO.

With a mom who cant give breast milk, you kind of feel deficient, Haydock said. Being able to give the next best alternative made me feel better.

While some research indicates advantages to HMO-enhanced formula, its not clear that theres a long-term health difference, Abrams said. In the US, babies fed generic formulas, which are as much as 50 per cent cheaper, have outcomes every bit as good as those fed pricier formulas, Abrams said.

Even in nature, breast milk can vary depending on the different kinds of sugars produced by each mother. DuPont and BASF are focusing on making the most common version of HMO, which consists of the 2FL sugar. Thats where the benefits can be seen most clearly, according to Nestles Saavedra: Babies getting 2FL from their mothers have slightly lower rates of acute infection than babies whose mothers are deficient in that HMO.

BASF began scaling up production of 2FL earlier this year, and its studying how the different health effects of HMOs might be developed into a range of products beyond baby formula.

Our aim is to expand on our scientific know-how on specific health functions of HMOs to adults as well, said Stefan Ruedenauer, BASF director of human nutrition research and development. BASF will have a pipeline of science-driven products with substantial health benefits of HMOs in the near future.

Smaller rivals making the ingredient include closely held Jennewein Biotechnologie and FrieslandCampina of Germany.

 Omega 3 and vitamin D fail to protect against heart attacks or cancer in major trial which show supplements a 'waste of time'

Danish biotechnology company Glycom is targeting the adult digestive health market with HMO supplements it began selling in the US and Europe late last year. The company touts its Holigos IBS product as managing symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, including abdominal pain, constipation diarrhoea and bloating. It sells 28 doses on Amazon for $50.

HMO is just one part of DuPonts larger foray into digestive health, a loosely regulated market growing 20 per cent a year. The company sees an estimated $5bn annual opportunity developing gut-health products, though some experts question whether the supplements benefit everyone. DuPont is already a leader in probiotics, offering the widest variety of strains and operating the worlds largest probiotics fermentation plant, in Rochester, New York.

DuPonts is marketing its 2FL HMO, branded as CARE4U, to consumer manufacturers who can use it in adult supplements for digestive and immune health, said Ratna Mukherjea, global research and development leader at DuPont.

DuPont is researching how to produce more of the 130 or so HMO varieties found in breast milk as the company identifies those with the most potential health benefits, Mukherjea said. More HMO varieties are already in the commercial pipeline.

This is just the beginning for HMO, she said.

Bloomberg
Uber has warned it may not achieve profitability as it unveiled billions of dollars of losses ahead of a planned stock market floatation.

The ride-hailing app is targeting a $100bn (76bn) valuation despite losing $3bn last year and $8bn over its 10-year existence. Uber said it expects operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future as it continues its expansion.

In a filing with US regulators that revealed its financial health for the first time, Uber also said that its rapid growth has recently slowed.

The company had 91 million average monthly users across its platforms, including food-delivery app Uber Eats at the end of 2018 but growth slowed to 33.8 per cent from 51 per cent a year earlier.

Those users generated sales of $11.3bn last year, 42 per cent higher than in 2017.

Chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi said in a letter: Over the past 18 months, we have improved our governance and board oversight; built a stronger and more cohesive management team; and made the changes necessary to ensure our company culture rewards teamwork and encourages employees to commit for the long term.

Uber has come up against increasing resistance from local taxi operators and regulators around the world, and faced a number of scandals and legal hurdles that have the potential to drag on its future growth.

In the UK it has been locked in a legal fight over whether its drivers should be classified as workers employed by the company or self-employed people who are not entitled to rights such as holiday pay, paid rest breaks and the minimum wage.

 Uber drivers protest on the first day of Ubers Court of Appeal case

Ubers blockbuster listing on the New York Stock Exchange is expected to raise about $10bn to help fund further expansion.

Its closest rival, Lyft, listed its shares at the end of March but has seen its valuation crash 15 per cent since then, suggesting investors appetite for risky, loss-making technology firms may be drying up.
Scientists in China have placed human genes into the brains of monkeys, an experiment which appears to have made the primates more intelligent, according to a new study.

The animals performed better on a short-term memory test, and had shorter reaction times when compared to normal monkeys, according to an article about the research published in the National Science Review, a Beijing-based journal.

The research was led by the Kunming Institute of Zoology in southwest China and was intended to examine the genetic basis of the human brain and the evolution of human cognition.

Researchers implanted MCPH1, a gene which they think may play an important part in human brain development, into the brains of 11 rhesus macaque monkeys.

In doing this they created transgenic monkeys. The scientists involved said it was the first time such an experiment has been used to understand the genetic basis of human brain origin.

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

The team used lentivirus delivery to generate the monkeys, a technique which exposed the animal embryos to a virus carrying MCPH1, according to the MIT Technology Review.

Researchers noted that as well as better short-term memory, the primates brains also took longer to develop and had a similar development pattern to that of human brains.

The experiment has generated significant backlash from scientists in the west, who have criticised what they see as an unethical experiment.

You just go to the Planet of the Apes immediately in the popular imagination, Jacqueline Glover, a bioethicist at the University of Colorado, said.

To humanise them is to cause harm. Where would they live and what would they do? Do not create a being that cant have a meaningful life, in any context.

In January 2019, scientists in China cloned a group of five gene-edited macaque monkeys, in an experiment designed to help researchers understand human diseases.

At the time bioethicists criticised the approach, as some of the cloned monkeys and embryos only survived for a few days.

Primate research is tightly controlled, meaning it is unlikely such techniques will be widely applied.

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Another Chinese researcher  the disgraced Professor He Jiankui  faced global condemnation after he told the world he had created the first gene-edited babies in November 2018.
Julian Assange has been accused of smearing faeces on the walls of the Ecuadorian embassy where he lived for the last seven years.

Assange was hauled out of the embassy in London on Thursday after the South American nation revoked his political asylum.

The WikiLeaks founder was then brought before Westminster Magistrates Court, where he was quickly found guilty of breaching his bail conditions, while US officials charged him with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion  the first step in a battle to extradite him to the US.

Ecuadors president Lenin Moreno said he made the decision to evict Assange from the embassy after repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols, and he later called the Australian native a spoiled brat who treated his hosts with disrespect.

The Ecuadorian government said it had spent 4.7m on his upkeep and security between 2012 and 2018. His presence became an embarrassment to UK authorities, who kept a police presence outside the embassy for years, costing taxpayers millions in police overtime.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

Ecuadorian government officials publicly described what they characterised as Assanges unacceptable and ungrateful behaviour in the embassy.

When he took office in 2017, Mr Moreno ordered Assange to cut back on his online political commentary, stop riding his skateboard in the embassys halls and clean up after his pet cat.

Interior minister Maria Paula Romo said Assanges mental and physical health had deteriorated during his long stay in the embassy, and he began to act aggressively towards his hosts.

She said he had been allowed to do things like put faeces on the walls of the embassy and other behaviours of that nature.

Vaughan Smith, a friend of Assanges and founder of the Frontline Club in London, said he believed the allegation was false.

Julian has been under stress but seemed in a balanced frame of mind every time I have seen him. It doesnt seem in character, Mr Smith said.

 'I told you so' Julian Assange's lawyer relays message from the Wikileaks founder

Foreign minister Jose Valencia said Assange had been using a mobile phone that was not registered with the embassy and had warned the ambassador in January he had installed panic buttons he would activate if he considered his life at risk.

Its strange that Mr Assange has insisted on being the victim, Mr Valencia told Ecuadors national assembly.

Mr Valencia also told the congress that embassy cleaning staff described improper hygienic conduct throughout Assanges stay, adding that a lawyer representing Assange had attributed the issue to stomach problems.

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Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations that were later dropped.
Four men have been arrested at Luton Airport by counter-terror police on suspicion of being members of a banned organisation.

The men, all Sri Lankan nationals, arrived on an international flight on Wednesday evening and were arrested the following day.

Scotland Yard has said they are currently being held in custody at a police station in Bedfordshire.

A spokesman said: Police at the airport were made aware of the men the next day, Thursday 11 April, and subsequently stopped them under schedule seven of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Inquiries are ongoing.
Chicago historically was respected, indeed by many admired, as The City that Works, in several meanings of that word. Illinois poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg described the metropolis as the City of the Big Shoulders, a reference to the enormous industrial manufacturing base that created jobs and contributed significantly to long-term prosperity for the Midwest and America overall.
The draft domestic abuse bill fails to offer protection for women in Northern Ireland and tackle particular issues migrant women across the UK are facing, MPs have warned.

The landmark legislation introduces the first ever statutory definition of domestic abuse to include economic abuse and controlling and manipulative behaviour that is not physical.

But the Joint Committee on Human Rights has hit out at the landmark legislation in a letter to the government  raising alarm bells the bill does not currently meet the requirements of a pan-European convention tackling violence against women.

The Istanbul Convention is the most comprehensive legal framework that exists to tackle violence against women and girls, covering domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, female genital mutilation, honour-based violence and forced marriage.

Former prime minister David Cameron signed the convention in 2012 but it still has not been ratified almost seven years later  meaning it is currently in limbo and the UK is not legally bound to follow it.

Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Show all 12 1 /12 Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Rex Features Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Rex Features Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Rex Features Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Rex Features Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent Most beautiful 'bread and roses' costumes at the Women's March 2019 Angela Christofilou/The Independent

The UK is one of the last EU members  along with Bulgaria, Hungary and a handful of others  to ratify the convention. Turkey, Albania, Serbia and Romania are among the 33 countries that have ratified it.

Amnesty International welcomed the Joint Committee on Human Rights letter and called for the UK to urgently ratify the Istanbul Convention and ensure the domestic bill offers equal protection for all women.

Chiara Capraro, womens rights manager at Amnesty UK, said: This letter sheds important light on the unequal treatment of women across the UK.

The current bill neglects both women in Northern Ireland and migrant women. It seems that in the governments eyes, some lives matter more than others.

Recommended Austerity cuts blamed for UK failure to ratify Istanbul Convention

This bill is intended as a final step towards the UK ratifying the Istanbul Convention, but in its current form it not only falls short of the conventions requirements but risks dividing women into those who count and those who dont.

MPs from a range of political parties, campaigners and academics have been calling for the government to extend the domestic abuse bill to Northern Ireland. There had been plans for an amendment to the domestic abuse bill, with the aim of liberalising abortion laws in Northern Ireland, which has a ban on abortions in almost all cases  even rape or incest. However, the bill was published with provisions only for England and Wales.

Grainne Teggart, Amnestys Northern Ireland campaign manager, argued that the ultimate responsibility for implementing abortion reform rested with Westminster rather than the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

She added: We have seen time and time again the secretary of state for Northern Ireland hide behind the excuse of devolution but she has taken action on other issues.

It is all eyes on the UK government and their neglect of women in Northern Ireland. There is no barrier legally or constitutionally for the UK government legislating for abortion reform. Are they going to stand by women in Northern Ireland or not? We cant see our rights sacrificed for political expediency.

Recommended The reality for pregnant domestic violence victims in Northern Ireland

The DUP has consistently resisted change on abortion  even when very limited changes to the law were being considered allowing women abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities, they obstructed change. They are anti-abortion even in cases of rape and incest.

Ms Teggart said Amnesty commissioned research which found the DUP electorate favour liberalising of abortion laws  including support for decriminalisation.

The DUP do not represent their own voters on this matter. The relationship they now have with the Conservative Party compromises progress that we arguably otherwise would have had by now, she added.

Ms Teggart noted that domestic abuse victims who fall pregnant in Northern Ireland struggle to travel to England and Wales for an abortion due to not being able to escape abusive partners. They can then be forced to buy abortion pills illegally online and risk prosecution, she added.

Twelve abortions were carried out in Northern Ireland last year, official statistics show. Amnesty International is calling for liberalisation of the stringent rules  saying more than 900 women travelled to England and Wales for the procedure during the same period.

Campaigners have also warned the domestic abuse bill will not protect migrant women whose immigration status is being used as a weapon to abuse.

While guidance is already in place for police forces to support domestic violence victims, they often share data with the Home Office. As a result, the victims can be treated as suspects by immigration officials  something the new legislation fails to address by ensuring they could access support services such as refuges.

Instead, the government suggests some victims of domestic abuse may be best served by returning to their country of origin and, where it is available, to the support of their family and friends.

Amnesty is part of the Step Up Migrant Women coalition, led by the Latin American Womens Rights Service, which is working to ensure equal protection for migrant, refugee and Bame women survivors of domestic abuse who find it nearly impossible to seek protection due to restrictions on access to refuges, and for fear that reporting violence to the police could result in either detention or deportation.
Julian Assange kept a lot of secrets while he was cooped up in a cramped corner room at the Ecuadoran embassy in London. But as his seven-year tenure there ended ignominiously on Thursday, one final mystery captured the attention of the international community.

What will happen to Embassy Cat?

The asylum seeker's furry friend was Assange's only consistent companion during some of his lonely years as a self-styled political refugee.

The cat had a significant internet following of its own  though its views hewed suspiciously close to its human's  and it was apparently a fixture at the embassy, with a penchant for pouncing on Christmas tree ornaments and for defusing tension as the WikiLeaks founder tangled with a bevy of world leaders.

It was named for its famous home, but occasionally went by James or Cat-stro after the Cuban leader Fidel Castro's death in 2016.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

Embassy Cat's Twitter and Instagram accounts  with 31,000 and 5,000 followers, respectively  also monopolised the coveted market for cybersecurity-meets-cat puns (the cat was reportedly interested in counter-purrveillance).

So when police stormed the Ecuadoran embassy, arrested Mr Assange and took him into custody after a US federal court unsealed an indictment charging him with conspiracy, many worried about the fate of the feline.

Would the cat's asylum end, too? Or was it just beginning? Would someone adopt it, or would it also face extradition to the United States? Would it fall victim to a vast conspiracy? Did it know too much?

Is Julian Assange's cat going to be okay though? one person asked.

I do hope that someone looks after his cat, who must be very confused about all this, another said.

Julian Assange's cat sits on the balcony of the Ecuadoran embassy in London (REUTERS)

A third simply stated: Am worried about ... his cat.

While it is unclear exactly what happened to Embassy Cat, multiple sources have indicated that it long ago left its home.

Italy's la Repubblica newspaper reported in November 2018 that the cat was gone. But, according to the paper, its departure was for its own good, a benevolent gesture by its owner.

The author, who visited Mr Assange for the story, wrote that Not even the cat is there anymore ... Assange has preferred to spare the cat an isolation which has become unbearable and allow it a healthier life.

 Julian Assange arrest: Ecuadorian president Lenin Moreno explains why asylum terminated

Sputnik News, the Russian government-funded Kremlin organisation and diligent reporter of Embassy Cat developments, said it had contacted the Ecuadoran embassy about the cat and a spokesperson confirmed that it has been gone for months.

It is not here since September, I think, the official told Sputnik. It was taken by Mr Assange's associates a long ago ... It is not here. We are not a pet store, so we do not keep pets here.

James Ball, an early employee of WikiLeaks who defected after three months at the organisation, said on Twitter that the embassy gave the cat to a shelter ages ago. He also wrote that he genuinely offered to adopt it, though it doesn't appear that Mr Assange took him up on it.

But the person closest to Mr Assange to comment on Embassy Cat, a member of his legal team, said Mr Assange gave the cat to a family member after the Ecuadoran embassy threatened to take the pet to a shelter.

Recommended Abbott says extraditing Assange to US could breach his human rights

Ecuador also threatened to put Assange's cat in the pound, said Hanna Jonasson in a tweet. Incensed at the threat, he asked his lawyers to take his cat to safety. The cat is with Assange's family. They will be reunited in freedom.

In 2018, the Ecuadoran embassy gave Mr Assange a set of house rules that instructed him to clean his bathroom and take better care of his cat. The rules warned him that he must look after its well-being, food and hygiene, or risk losing it, the BBC reported.

If reports of the cat being mistreated are true, then it's likely happier in its new home, wherever that is, said John Bradshaw, a scholar and expert on cats, dogs and their relationships with humans.

It seems quite possible that the cat may not have been particularly attached to Mr Assange anyway, Mr Bradshaw told The Washington Post. If it's already been moved, I would guess that it is missing the Embassy more than it misses him.

Other media reports have suggested that the cat is less a companion and more of a public relations strategy. Mr Assange has told tabloids that the cat was a gift from his children, but a source who allegedly knows him well told the New Yorker something quite different.

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Julian stared at the cat for about half an hour, trying to figure out how it could be useful, and then came up with this: Yeah, let's say it's from my children, the source said. Everything is PR  everything.

As for the new owners, Mr Bradshaw advised them to keep the cat as an indoor-only pet, since it grew up as such in the embassy. If allowed outside after its repatriation, it may try to escape and return to its old home in the London neighbourhood.

It will probably try to get back to Knightsbridge, Mr Bradshaw said, and likely fall foul of the traffic.

Washington Post
Dozens of politicians have urged the government to prioritise action that would ensure Julian Assange is extradited to Sweden where he faces rape and sexual assault allegations.

A copy of a letter signed by 70 parliamentarians and sent to home secretary Sajid Javid was shared on social media by Labour and Co-op MP Stella Creasy.

The message, posted on Twitter, said: We are writing to request that you do everything you can to champion action that will ensure Julian Assange can be extradited to Sweden in the event Sweden make an extradition request.

This would be so the formal investigation into an allegation of rape can be concluded and, if appropriate, a charge can be made and any trial can take place.

We do not presume guilt, of course, but we believe due process should be followed and the complainant should see justice be done.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

We urge you to stand with the victims of sexual violence and seek to ensure the case against Mr Assange can now be properly investigated.

WikiLeaks founder Assange, 47, is facing rape and sexual assault allegations in Sweden.

The rape allegation has a limitation period which expires in August 2020, the letter adds.

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Assange also faces extradition to the US over allegations he conspired with former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a classified Pentagon computer.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn earlier this week called on the government to oppose Assanges extradition to the US, tweeting: The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

Assange spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought political asylum in 2012 after failing in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations, one of rape and one of molestation.

In May 2017, Swedens top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

Prosecutors in Sweden have since confirmed that, while the investigation has not been resumed, they are looking into the case.
New counterterror laws likened to thought crime by a United Nations inspector have come into force.

A raft of new measures mean people can be jailed for viewing terrorist propaganda online, entering designated areas abroad and making reckless expressions of support for proscribed groups.

The government also lengthened prisons sentences for several terror offences, ended automatic early release for convicts and put them under stricter monitoring after they are freed.

Sajid Javid said the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 gives police the powers they need to disrupt terrorist plots earlier and ensure that those who seek to do us harm face just punishment.

As we saw in the deadly attacks in London and Manchester in 2017, the threat from terrorism continues to evolve and so must our response, which is why these vital new measures have been introduced, the home secretary added.

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

MPs had urged the government to scrap plans to criminalise viewing information useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, which goes further than much-used laws that made physically collecting, downloading or disseminating the material illegal.

A report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights said the offence, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, is a breach of the right to receive information and risks criminalising legitimate research and curiosity.

A United Nations inspector accused the government of straying towards thought crime.

Professor Joe Cannataci said: It seems to be pushing a bit too much towards thought crimethe difference between forming the intention to do something and then actually carrying out the act is still fundamental to criminal law.

Original proposals said people would have to access propaganda on three or more different occasions to commit a terror offence, but the benchmark was removed meaning a single click is now illegal.

Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, the head of UK counterterror policing, previously told The Independent the law accounted for changes in online behaviour.

Five years ago everyone would download stuff and keep it on their hard drive  now they dont, he said in January.

The law has been controversial but it has come out of good, practical cases  were talking about people who are a serious threat here, not people who are researching academics or writing treaties trying to help us solve the problem.

Mr Basu said he did not expect an explosion in arrests and charges as a result of the changes, which target precursor offending to terror attacks.

It is now illegal to recklessly express support for, or publish images of flags, emblems or clothing in a way which suggests people are a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation.

The law has extended extra-territorial jurisdiction for a number of terrorism offences, including inviting support for a banned group and making explosives.

It will also see people entering designated areas abroad without a reasonable excuse jailed for up to 10 years.

The areas are yet to be defined by the government, but are expected to include territory controlled by terrorist groups and war zones.

The Independent understands that because the law exempts people who remain in such areas involuntarily, it cannot be applied to British Isis members captured in Syria.

It also cannot be applied retrospectively to hundreds of Isis supporters who have already returned to the UK. Only one and 10 have so far been prosecuted.

The government accepted amendments to create specific exemptions including humanitarian work, journalism and funerals after NGOs raised human rights concerns.

The full provisions that have commenced today:
Boris Johnson has come under fire from the press regulator after he inaccurately claimed that a no-deal Brexit was the most popular scenario among voters.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) ruled that the former foreign secretary breached accuracy rules in his Telegraph column when he said polls showed no deal was more popular by some margin than remaining in the EU or Theresa Mays Brexit deal.

A reader complained to Ipso over the weekly column, saying Mr Johnson, who is tipped as a future Tory leader, had failed to cite any evidence for his claim.

The Telegraph argued it was clearly comically polemical, and could not be reasonably read as a serious, empirical, in-depth analysis of hard factual matters.

The newspaper also pointed to five polls showing support for different Brexit scenarios.

Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris Show all 6 1 /6 Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris Phillip Hammond Chancellor Phillip Hammond said in an interview with the Mail that Boris has never been "a details man", won't be next Prime Minister and that his most notable policy achievement is the launching of Boris Bikes AFP/Getty Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris David Davis Speaking to Sophie Ridge on Sunday, former Brexit Secretary David Davis said "a lot of his ideas, I think, are good headlines but not necessarily good policies" PA Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris Ruth Davidson Speaking on Sunday Politics, Leader of the Scottish Conservatives Ruth Davidson has said that Boris' use of language in attacking the Prime Minister's Chequers plan was "not wise" and urged for a "period of silence" PA Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris Greg Clark Speaking at a fringe event at the conference, Business Secretary Greg Clark stated that Boris' idea to scrap HS2 and instead build a bridge to Northern Ireland was "completely the wrong approach" PA Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris Lord Digby Jones Speaking on stage in Birmingham, crossbench peer Lord Digby Jones branded Boris as "irrelevant" and "offensive" for his comments on business PA Conservative Conference: Tories line up to denounce Boris David Mundell Referring to Boris' recent 6-point Brexit plan, Scottish Secretary David Mundell stated that "these are things for headlines, not for the substance of negotiations" PA

But Ipso upheld the complaint, describing the piece as a significant inaccuracy, because it misrepresented polling information.

The watchdog said The Telegraph had not provided any data that supported the authors claim either that a no-deal Brexit was the option preferred by some margin over the three options listed, or that these represented all of the options suggested by pollsters.

Instead it had construed the polls as signalling support for a no deal, when in fact, this was the result of the publication either amalgamating several findings together, or interpreting an option beyond what was set out by the poll as being a finding in support of a no-deal Brexit, it added.

In an online correction, the newspaper said: This article previously said that of all the options suggested by pollsters  staying in the EU, coming out on Theresa Mays terms, or coming on World Trade terms  a no-deal Brexit was by some margin the outcome most preferred by the British public.

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In fact, no poll clearly showed that a no-deal Brexit was more popular than the other options. This correction is being published following a complaint upheld by the Independent Press Standards Organisation.

Mr Johnson is paid 275,000 a year to write the weekly column, according to the register of members interest, a sum he once described as chicken feed.

The leading Brexiteer often uses his pieces to express a view on the state of Britains departure from the EU, but he also sparked a major row when he compared Muslim women who wear burqas to letterboxes.
 Close Annuziata Rees-Mogg on joining the Conservative party during Brexit Party launch in Coventry

Theresa May faced fresh pressure as Nigel Farage launched the Brexit party on Friday ahead of the UK's anticipated participation in the European elections next month.

It came as cross-party talks to break the Brexit deadlock continued at Westminster with Labour's John McDonnell involved in discussions with the prime minister's effective deputy David Lidington.

Elsewhere, Julian Assanges mother accused Ms May of using her sons arrest as a distraction from the PMs Brexit dogs breakfast, after the Wikileaks founder was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy on Thursday.

Chancellor Philip Hammond told reporters in Washington on Friday that a second referendum was very likely to be put before parliament, although he admitted there would not be sufficient time before Britain is due to leave the EU.

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Uncertainty about the future of Brexit is affecting the mental health of a third of UK adults, a new survey has found.

Around 33 per cent of people said Britain's departure from the European Union has had a negative effect on their wellbeing, according to a poll by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP).

Older people were more likely to be affected by anxieties over Brexit with 37 per cent of over-65s saying it had a negative impact on their mental wellbeing, compared with just 28 per cent of 16-24 year-olds.

Louise Tyler, a counsellor based in Cheshire, said the UK's uncertain future had left people feeling powerless, which was directly impacting their mental health.

While some people may be genuinely worried about their job, some people may have uncertainty in life anyway, Ms Tyler said. Brexit just adds to it by making the stress in their lives worse.

Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Show all 15 1 /15 Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Nigel Farage has spent his political career campaigning for the UK to leave the EU. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Boris Johnson's support for Brexit took many by surprise before the EU referendum. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises The UK and EU are yet to agree on a withdrawal deal. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises This was taken from a 2012 speech delivered by Mr Davis. He does not currently support a second Brexit referendum. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Boris Johnson now supports a hard Brexit and resigned from the cabinet in 2018 over Theresa May's strategy. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises The US recently issued trade negotiation objectives for future talks with the UK. The country made clear that it expects access to the UK's agriculture industry, reviving the debate about chlorinated chicken. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Nigel Farage does not support the current campaign for a second Brexit referendum. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Despite this quote, in February 2019 Boris Johnson said a no deal Brexit "may yet be the best option for the UK". Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises The UK and EU are yet to begin negotiating a deal regarding their future relationship. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Theresa May announced that the UK would be leaving the Single Market in her Lancaster House speech in January 2017. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Theresa May triggered Article 50 on 29 March 2017. Her withdrawal deal is yet to be passed. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises A classic from the 2015 general election campaign. David Cameron resigned on 24 June 2016, following the EU referendum result. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises David Davis resigned from his post as Brexit secretary in July 2018 after disagreeing with Theresa May's negotiation strategy. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Michael Gove was one of the most influential Leave voices during the EU referendum campaign. Twitter/Led By Donkeys Brexit billboards: Campaigners remind MPs of past promises Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent backbencher, does not support a second Brexit referendum. He has called the use of this quote "fundamentally dishonest" as it was taken from a 2011 speech discussing the option of referendum before David Cameron entered negotiations with the EU. Such a vote was never held. Twitter/Led By Donkeys

She added that almost a quarter of her clients mention Brexit as a contributory factor to a decline in their mental wellbeing.

People do feel stuck and powerless. Weve had our say in the referendum, and yet we still dont have any power over the events. Those are the two main emotions; uncertainty and a sense of powerlessness to change anything.

Kate, 33, suffers from anxiety and depression. She says her symptoms have worsened since the results of the 2016 referendum, and she now experiences regular panic attacks and has trouble sleeping.

It really started to affect my mental health in the last few months after Meaningful Vote 1. I remember feeling really sick and anxious. Its got worse from there. A lot of it is all the lingering going backwards and forwards, she said.

A couple of weeks ago, I was watching BBC News and I just lay on the floor and curled up into a ball until my partner came home. My other stresses and worries were involved in that too, but Brexit really heightened it. I felt awful, she added.

While only 20 per cent of Conservative voters reported Brexit negatively impacted their mental health, this figure doubled to 43 per cent for people who backed Labour, and 47 per cent for those who voted for the Liberal Democrats.

Kate, who voted for the Liberal Democrats in the 2017 election, said that all her family are pro EU.

My aunt lives in France, and my dads a dairy farmer, said Kate. Hes very reliant on the single farm payment  thats a worry.

Hilda Burke, a psychotherapist and couples counsellor, said she frequently sees a learned helplessness around Brexit.

This is a state which develops when a person has accepted that they have lost control over a situation and thus give up trying, said Ms Burke. It can stem from one particular situation  Brexit in this case  but can spiral into a sense of being out of control in all aspects of ones life. In my clients, Brexit is often twinned with anxieties such as climate change or race/gender inequality. Often the client expressing such anxiety feels helpless and disempowered.

In treating her clients, Ms Burke tries to explore ways to make them feel more engaged and empowered".

Often taking steps - however small - to affect change can help to ease their anxiety and sense of helplessness, she said.
Nigel Farages new Brexit Party will heap pressure on the Conservatives as Europe is set to dominate the upcoming EU elections, a leading pollster has said.

The former Ukip leader has formally launched his partys campaign for the poll on 23 May, with a vow to challenge the establishment over its betrayal on Brexit.

Sir John Curtice, who predicted the shock 2017 election result, said the new Brexit Party and Ukip could snatch about 16 per cent of the vote if the poll takes place, with the Conservatives the hardest hit by such a surge.

Many Tories privately fear they will haemorrhage votes to Mr Farages new project amid widespread frustration amongst pro-Brexit voters over the fresh delay to Britains departure from the EU.

A new poll found the Brexit Party could capitalise on a drop in support for the Conservatives by scooping up 10.3 per cent of the vote, behind the Conservatives on 23 per cent and Labour on 37.8 per cent.

Pro-EU parties were less popular, with the Liberal Democrats on 8.1 per cent and Change UK, the new name of the Independent Group, polling at 4.1 per cent, according to the Open Europe survey conducted by Hanbury Strategy.

Sir John, a professor of politics at Strathclyde University, said voter turnout was often low for European elections but this poll could be treated as a replacement for a second referendum by the public.

He told the Today programme: Given that Brexit is seemingly consuming the nation  lots of people with very clear views on both sides of argument of Remain and Leave  that election on 23 May may end up being a surrogate for the argument about how people might vote in a second EU referendum and therefore might draw people to the polls because they will be keen to express their views on that subject.

Statista

Asked how the Brexit Party might fare, he said: We only have fragmentary evidence so far, but where we do... its pretty clear that support for Ukip/Brexit Party combined would be markedly higher than the already relatively high level that its reached  where they are already running at around 8 per cent in general election vote polls.

It could easily be double that or more in a European parliament election. Its the Conservative Party inevitably that has most to worry about that.

He said it was not clear whether Change UK or the Liberal Democrats will do particularly well, so Labour has somewhat less to worry about than the Tories.

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At the Brexit Partys launch event in Coventry, Mr Farage said the European elections campaign marked the start of a fightback against a political class which had betrayed the Brexit referendum result.

I do believe that we can win these European elections and that we can again start to put the fear of God into our members of parliament in Westminster, he said.

They deserve nothing less than that after the way theyve treated us over this betrayal.

Our task and our mission is to change politics for good.

He said his campaign was attracting growing support, raising 750,000 in small donations over the past 10 days.

He also introduced Jacob Rees-Moggs sister Annunziata as a prospective candidate and insisted more than 1,000 high calibre men and women had applied to be on the partys European candidates list.

The six-week campaign is now under way for the European elections on 23 May, even though Theresa May still hopes the UK will have agreed a Brexit deal by then.
Anti-Brexit campaigners have seized a website domain for Nigel Farages new party in a bid to disrupt his European election campaign.

The Led By Donkeys group claimed that the former Ukip leader forgot to register the URL for the Brexit Party before its launch.

The group has now set up its own page at thebrexitparty.com with the banner No Brexit Party  Nigel Farage Doesnt Represent Britain.

It features a series of Led By Donkeys tweets about their use of political billboards to taunt Mr Farage and the March to Leave from Sunderland to London.

Nigel Farage wants to register a huge victory in the European elections, but he cant even register his own website, the group said.

Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Show all 12 1 /12 Nigel Farage's most controversial moments Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he unveiled that 'breaking point' poster during the referendum Mr Farage was accused of deploying Nazi-style propaganda when he unveiled a poster showing Syrian refugees travelling to Europe under the next Breaking point. Users on social media were quick to compare the advert to a Nazi propaganda film with similar visuals and featuring Jewish refugees. The poster was particularly controversial because it was unveiled the morning of the killing of Labour MP Jo Cox Rex Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said hed be concerned if his neighbours were Romanian In May 2014 Mr Farage was accused of a racial slur against Romanians after he suggested he would be concerned living next to a house of them. I was asked if a group of Romanian men moved in next to you, would you be concerned? And if you lived in London, I think you would be, he told LBC radio during an interview. Asked whether he would also object to living next to German children, he said: You know the difference Bongarts/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the EU campaign was won 'without a bullet being fired' Nigel Farage has said the next Prime Minister has to be a Leave supporter AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he resigned as Ukip leader and came back days later After failing to win the seat of South Thanet at the general election, Nigel Farage stepped down as Ukip leader  as he had promised to do during the campaign. Days later on 11 May he un-resigned and said he would stay after being convinced by supporters within the party. Well see how long his resignation lasts this time AP/Matt Dunham Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he blamed immigrants for making him late Mr Farage turned up late to a 25-a-head meet the leader style event in Port Talbot, Wales in December 2014. Asked why he was late, he blamed immigrants. It took me six hours and 15 minutes to get here - it should have taken three-and-a-half to four, he said. That has nothing to do with professionalism, what it does have to do with is a country in which the population is going through the roof chiefly because of open-door immigration and the fact that the M4 is not as navigable as it used to be Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he wanted to ban immigrants with HIV from Britain Mr Farage has used his platform as Ukip leader call for people with HIV to be banned from coming to Britain. Asked in an interview with Newsweek Europe in October 2014 who he thought should be allowed to come to the UK, he said: People who do not have HIV, to be frank. Thats a good start. And people with a skill. He also repeated similar comments in the 2015 general election leadership debates Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he defended the use of a racial slur against Chinese people Defending one of Ukips candidates, who used the word ch**ky to describe a Chinese person, Mr Farage said: If you and your mates were going out for a Chinese, what do you say you're going for?" When he was told by the presented that he honestly would not use the slur, Mr Farage replied: A lot would Lintao Zhang/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said parts of Britain were like a foreign land The Ukip leader used his 2014 conference speech to declare parts of Britain as being like a foreign land. He told his audience in Torquay that parts of the country were unrecognisable because of the number of foreigners there. Mr Farage has also previously said he felt uncomfortable when people spoke other language on a train Screengrab Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the British army should be deployed to France At the height of trouble at Britains Calais border Mr Farage proposed a novel solution. The Ukip leader called for the British army to be sent to France to put down a migrant rebellion. In all civil emergencies like this we have an army, we have a bit of a Territorial Army as well and we have a very, very overburdened police force and border agency, he said. If in a crisis to make sure weve actually got the manpower to check lorries coming in, to stop people illegally coming to Britain, if in those circumstances we can use the army or other forces then why not AFP/Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said breastfeeding women should sit in the corner Mr Farage sparked protests from mothers after he told women to sit on the corner if they wanted to breastfeed their children. I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isnt too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that's not openly ostentatious, Mr Farage said. He added: "Or perhaps sit in the corner, or whatever it might be AFP/Getty Images Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said the gender pay gap exists because women are worth less At a Q&A on the European Union in January 2014 Mr Farage said there was no discrimination against women causing the gender pay gap. Instead, he said, women were paid less because they were simply worth far less than many of their male counterparts. A woman who has a client base, has a child and takes two or three years off - she is worth far less to her employer when she comes back than when she went away because that client base won't be stuck as rigidly to her portfolio, he said Getty Nigel Farage's most controversial moments When he said he actually couldnt guarantee 350m to the NHS after Brexit During the EU referendum campaign the Leave side pledged to spend 350 million a week on the National Health Service  claiming that this is what the UK sends to Brussels. Nigel Farage didnt speak out against this figure and also pledged to spend EU cash on the health service and other public services himself. Then the day of the election result he suddenly changed his tone, saying he couldnt guarantee the cash for the NHS and that to pledge to do so was a mistake Getty

Seven times hes failed to get elected to Westminster. But he did get himself a seat in the European parliament because at the time hardly any of us cared. Well, we do now. Nobody is more responsible than Farage for the diminished state of our nation.

The group, which has raised more than 270,000 through crowdfunding for its campaign, is calling on the public to register to vote to stop him getting re-elected in Brussels on 23 May.

Recommended Brexit party led by Farage to heap pressure on Tories at EU elections

Farage has unintentionally given birth to the biggest, most passionate pro-European movement this continent has ever seen, the group added This is our moment. This is your vote. Use it.

The official Brexit Party website uses the .org domain and urges supporters to register by paying a 25 annual fee.

Speaking ahead of the launch in Coventry, Mr Farage said his campaign was attracting growing support, raising 750,000 in small donations over the last 10 days.

He also claimed he will not allow the far right to tarnish the brand as they did with his former party.
A second referendum on Brexit is very likely to be put before parliament, Philip Hammond has said.

Speaking in Washington on Friday, the chancellor said a fresh public vote was a proposition that could and, on all the evidence, is very likely to be put to parliament at some stage.

However, he also said about six months would be needed to hold a referendum, and that there would not be enough time before Britain is due to leave the EU on the new deadline of 31 October.

Mr Hammond also stressed that the government was still opposed to a second referendum, although he said other Labour demands  such as a customs union with the EU  were up for debate.

The governments position has not changed, he said. The government is opposed to a confirmatory referendum and therefore we would not be supporting it.

Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Nigel Farage speaks at the launch of his new Brexit Party's campaign for the European elections Reuters Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Brexit Party candidate Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, speaks at the launch AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures A supporter waits for Farage to speak AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Supporters wait for Farage to speak AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Farage's socks Reuters Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Farage and prospective candidate Annunziata Rees-Mogg wait at the launch AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Supporters listen as Farage speaks AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Free T-shirts for all attendees AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Posters on the seats for supporters of the Brexit Party AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures A safety sign is pictured AFP/Getty

The idea of a new referendum was among several Brexit alternatives to Theresa Mays deal that were put to lawmakers in the last month  but which all fell short of a majority in parliament.

The prime minister has so far failed to get her own party behind the Brexit divorce deal she agreed with other European Union leaders last year. She was forced to ask the bloc for a delay and to start talks with Labour about how to break the impasse in parliament.

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Many Labour lawmakers have been putting pressure on their leader Jeremy Corbyn to include a new referendum in his demands in talks with the government.

Meanwhile, Mr Hammond has faced criticism from Brexit supporters for saying Britain should stay close to the bloc.

He also angered some recently by describing another Brexit referendum as a perfectly credible proposition.

[A second referendum] in the end is an issue about parliament and parliamentary numbers, and where the Labour Party ends up on this, he said.

Mr Hammond said he expected the government and Labour would strike a deal in the next couple of months.
Exhausted MPs have gone back to their constituencies for Easter recess but despite the promise of an extension to Britains departure from the EU, any Brexit breather is likely to be short-lived.

Campaigning is already underway for the European Parliament elections, with the UK gearing up to head to the polls on 23 May  nearly two months after Brexit was originally due to happen.

Theresa May previously said the public would find it unacceptable to elect 73 MEPs to Brussels nearly three years after the Brexit vote.
Jeremy Corbyn has said Julian Assange should not be extradited to the US following his forcible removal from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

The Labour leader urged the UK government to oppose the attempt to put the 47 year-old WikiLeaks founder to trial for obtaining classified information from former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.

Assange faces a maximum five year sentence if convicted of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion but officials are said to be considering bringing further charges.

Nearly 12 hours after Assanges arrest on Thursday morning, Mr Corbyn tweeted: The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

His statement accompanied a video posted by shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, who referred to the WikiLeaks founder as a whistleblower who was being pursued because he has exposed wrongdoing by US administrations and their military forces.

Ms Abbott said Mr Assanges extradition could be prevented on human rights grounds and cited the case of British hacker Gary McKinnon, whose deportation to the United States was blocked by Theresa May in 2012.

In a radio interview, she was asked repeatedly about allegations of rape made against Mr Assange in Sweden, replying: Those charges were never brought."

Prosecutors in Stockholm dropped the rape investigation in 2017 because they could not advance while Assange remained in the embassy, but are now considering reopening it.

Ms Abbott told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: We all know what this is about. Its not the rape charges, serious as they are, its about Wikileaks.

All that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military that was made public and that is what it is about.

She added: If the Swedish government wants to come forward with those charges, I believe that Assange should face the criminal justice system.

But if you're talking about the American extradition attempt - which is less about the threat he poses to security in American and more about the embarrassment about the things he has revealed about the American military and security services - but we would say just as in the end we blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon, we should block the extradition of Assange."

Theresa May and several cabinet ministers including home secretary Sajid Javid welcomed the arrest.

Assange spent seven years at the Ecuadorian embassy in London before being detained on a US extradition warrant and for breaching bail.

He was convicted of the bail offence on Thursday afternoon after appearing at Westminster Magistrates Court, where a judge branded Assange a narcissist, and faces up to a year in jail when he is sentenced at a later date.

Lawyers say the US extradition fight could last for years, given that his previous battle against extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations took 18 months.

Officials in Ecuador have also announced that an individual with alleged links to Assange was arrested while trying to board a flight to Japan on Thursday.

The man, said to be Swedish software developer Ola Bini, was held at Quito airport on suspicion of conspiring against the government, according to interior minister Maria Paula Romo.

Ms Romo told CNNs Spanish service: We have information on how WikiLeaks would have intervened in domestic politics.

Today a collaborator close to Julian Assange was arrested for investigative purposes. He has been living in Ecuador and was preparing to travel to Japan.

A tweet posted under the Twitter handle olabini on Thursday referred to a press conference given by Ms Paula Romo in which she claimed there were Russian hackers in Ecuador.

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Very worrisome news  this seems like a witch hunt to me, said another tweet on the account.

Ecuadors ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said that Assange had been disrespectful, continually a problem and interfered in elections, politics and the internal affairs of other countries during his stay at the embassy.
Ukip has selected an anti-feminist Eurosceptic YouTube commentator as a candidate should the UK take part in European Parliament elections next month.

Carl Benjamin, who posts online using the moniker Sargon of Akkad, is one of two candidates the Eurosceptic party named on Thursday to stand in the southwest region.

We went through an exhaustive process to sift over 190 potential candidates down to those the national executive committee representatives and I felt were most suitable, Ukip leader, Gerard Batten said.

This list is based on a number of factors that we felt would select candidates to fight for a real Brexit after the European elections. Ukips priority is to have MEPs who will fight to make Brexit happen.

Mr Benjamin has close to one million subscribers to his YouTube channel, on which he produces videos criticising feminism, left-wing politics and the European Union.

Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Show all 5 1 /5 Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Campaign group Led By Donkeys projected this statement by Nigel Farage on the Cliffs of Dover on the evening of April 4 @ByDonkeys / Twitter Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Campaign group Led By Donkeys projected this statement by former Brexit secretary Dominic Raab on the Cliffs of Dover on the evening of April 4 @ByDonkeys / Twitter Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Campaign group Led By Donkeys projected this message to the EU on the Cliffs of Dover on the evening of April 4 @ByDonkeys / Twitter Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Campaign group Led By Donkeys projected this message on the Cliffs of Dover on the evening of April 4 @ByDonkeys / Twitter Cliffs of Dover lit up in Brexit protest Campaign group Led By Donkeys projected this message on the Cliffs of Dover on the evening of April 4 @ByDonkeys / Twitter

He gained mainstream attention after being accused of promoting a series of rape threats from Twitter users against Labour MP Jess Phillips in 2016.

Ms Phillips had written: People talking about raping me isnt fun, but has become somewhat par for the course on the social media site, leading Mr Benjamin to reply: I wouldnt even rape you, Jess Phillips.

His followers went on to repeat his statement and Ms Phillips later tweeted: 600-odd notifications talking about my rape in one night. I think Twitter is dead.

A Ukip spokesman has previously condemned Mr Benjamins comments, telling The Independent at the time he joined the party the exchange with Ms Phillips was unpleasant.

Mr Benjamin is one of several prominent social media activists to join the party under the leadership of Mr Batten, who has been accused of pulling the party towards the hard right.

Mark Meechan, known as Count Dankula and noted for the court case surrounding a video he posted online of his girlfriends pug dog performing Nazi salutes, joined the party last year.

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Paul Joseph Watson, the editor-at-large of Alex Jones far-right InfoWars website and a YouTuber with more than 1.6 million subscribers, also joined the party in 2018.

Mr Batten has also come under fire for appointing anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson in an advisory role, a move that caused long-time Ukip leader Nigel Farage to quit the party.

The UK is likely to take part in European elections in May after EU leaders agreed to grant a flexible six-month extension to the Article 50 process on Wednesday.
The man who has become de facto leader of Sudan, after popular protests led to the overthrow of the country's autocratic ruler, has been on the US sanctions list since 2007 for links to atrocities during the countrys Darfur conflict.

In a televised address on Thursday, General Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf declared the military had removed and arrested president Omar al-Bashir and said a military council would rule the country for the next two years.

The defence ministers appearance made him the face of military rule, and he is likely to become the countrys formal leader.

Mr Ibn Auf announced a state of emergency, a nationwide ceasefire and the suspension of the constitution from a gold-upholstered armchair, and said Sudans airspace would be closed for 24 hours and border crossings shut until further notice.

The apparent military coup angered protesters who have spent months demanding the ouster of Mr Bashir and the establishment of a civilian-led democracy.

Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Show all 20 1 /20 Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum to demand that President Omar al-Bashir step down Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Alaa Salah leads the protest against President Omar al-Bashir Lana Haroun/Twitter Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters run from tear gas deployed by security forces as they take part in a demonstration to demand the departure of the Sudanese government EPA Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 Sudan Congress Party Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 10 Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Alaa Salah, a Sudanese woman propelled to internet fame earlier this week after clips went viral of her leading powerful protest chants against President Omar al-Bashir, addresses protesters outside of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters march on the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters pray as they rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters chant slogans as they march in protest against President Omar al-Bashir Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters climb onto a military vehicle beside soldiers during protests in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Security forces deploy tear gas to disperse protesters against the Sudanese government Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A wounded protester rests during a demonstration in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A Sudanese protester shows bullet cartridges as protesters gather in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters march on the military headquarters in Khartoum Sudan Congress Party Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters march on the defence ministry in Khartoum to demand that President Omar al-Bashir step down Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A Sudanese protester picks up waste during a demonstration in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty

Mr Ibn Auf, who is in his mid-60s, rose up the ranks to become chief of Sudans military intelligence and was made defence minister in 2015. He has been a key insider in the leadership of Mr Bashirs 30-year-rule and was named as vice president in February.

His assets have been blocked by the US Treasury since 2007 for supporting and managing militias accused of carrying out genocide in the western region of Darfur.

He was indicted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide over the conflict, in which 200,000 people were killed.

The conflict began in 2003 when ethnic Africans rebelled, accusing the Arab-dominated government of discrimination.

The government in Khartoum was accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes in militias known as the Janjaweed and unleashing them on civilian populations.

The militias became notorious for massacres and rapes. Government officials denied the charges.

 Shots heard amid fresh anti-gov protests in Sudan

In 2007, the US Treasury Department blocked Mr Ibn Aufs assets along with two other Sudanese officials for their role in fomenting violence and human rights abuses in Darfur.

It accused them of acting as liaisons between the government and the Janjaweed. It said Mr Ibn Auf provided the Janjaweed with logistical support and directed attacks.

At the time, treasury secretary Henry M Paulson, Jr said: Even in the face of sanctions, these individuals have continued to play direct roles in the terrible atrocities of Darfur.

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George Clooney and John Prendergast, co-founders of The Sentry, an investigative initiative created to uncover the financial networks behind conflicts in Africa, singled out Mr Ibn Auf for his role in Darfur and said Mr Bashirs ouster is not enough.

Removing the leader of a violent, corrupt system without dismantling that system is inadequate. The next steps are crucial, the two said in a statement on Thursday. They urged the international community to help Sudan to have a new president who reflects the will of people.

Additional reporting by agencies
Sudans defence minister Awad Ibn Auf has stepped down as head of the countrys transitional military council a day after former president Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in a coup.

Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan will be the new head of the transitional military council, Mr Ibn Auf said in a speech broadcast on state television on Friday.

He said he was stepping aside to preserve unity of the armed forces

Mr Ibn Aufs decision to resign comes after protesters refused to leave the streets despite the countrys long-time ruler Mr Bashir being removed as president on Thursday and arrested by the military.

Rashid Saeed, a spokesman for the main protest group, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), welcomed the move.

Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Show all 20 1 /20 Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum to demand that President Omar al-Bashir step down Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Alaa Salah leads the protest against President Omar al-Bashir Lana Haroun/Twitter Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters run from tear gas deployed by security forces as they take part in a demonstration to demand the departure of the Sudanese government EPA Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 Sudan Congress Party Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 10 Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Alaa Salah, a Sudanese woman propelled to internet fame earlier this week after clips went viral of her leading powerful protest chants against President Omar al-Bashir, addresses protesters outside of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters march on the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters pray as they rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters chant slogans as they march in protest against President Omar al-Bashir Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters climb onto a military vehicle beside soldiers during protests in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Security forces deploy tear gas to disperse protesters against the Sudanese government Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A wounded protester rests during a demonstration in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A Sudanese protester shows bullet cartridges as protesters gather in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters march on the military headquarters in Khartoum Sudan Congress Party Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters march on the defence ministry in Khartoum to demand that President Omar al-Bashir step down Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A Sudanese protester picks up waste during a demonstration in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty

He said: What happened is a step in the right direction and is a bow to the will of the masses, and we have become closer to victory.

The group has demanded for power to be immediately handed to a transitional civilian government, however the army has said the country will be under military rule for two years followed by elections.

Demonstrations began in December over rising prices and at least 38 people have died in the protests.

Ousted Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir. (AFP) (AFP/Getty Images)

Many of the protesters fear the armed forces are attempting what has become known in the Arab world as the Egyptian scenario, where the military ousts an unpopular president only to replace them with another from their own ranks.

Mr Ibn Auf was head of military intelligence during the Darfur conflicts in the 2000s.

The United States has imposed sanctions on him since 2007, alleging he was involved in atrocities committed during the Darfur conflict that began in 2003.

Mr Bashir faces genocide charges at the International Criminal Court (ICC) for his deadly campaign in Darfur.

The Sudanese army has refused to extradite the former president to the ICC, based in The Hague, Netherlands, and has said he will instead be tried at home.
Cubas leaders are developing ostrich farms  and may breed crocodiles and rodents too  because traditional meats and eggs are so scarce in the country.

State company Flora and Fauna is setting up seven farms housing the flightless African bird in an effort to feed the population.

An ostrich lays 60 eggs, and of those you get around 40 chicks, and from these 40 chicks per year you get four tonnes of meat  whereas a cow just gives birth to one calf and after a year its only a yearling, said Guillermo Garcia Frias, who heads the company.

He also talked up hutias  large rodents native to Cuba  for their level of protein higher than any other meat and high quality pelt, and revealed his company was also breeding crocodiles.

It has become hard to find cooking oil, flour, meat and eggs in the Communist-run country in recent months as the economy has declined, weakened by the decades-old US trade embargo, with a shortage of hard currency.

Cuba imports up to 70 per cent of its food because of inefficient central planning of the state-run economy but has had to cut back.

Communist Party leader Raul Castro warned on Wednesday of worsening shortages, but insisted the island would not return to the extreme deprivation of the 1990s.

The country is home to 10 species of hutia, which can weigh up to 8.5kg (19lb). Three of the species have become scarce, or extinct, in some parts of their historical range.

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Ostriches are already farmed around the world, particularly in South Africa. In the West, the meat is usually seen as a novelty.

Mr Garcia Frias has been widely mocked for his ambition, and jokes about it have gone viral on social media because Cubas food schemes have often failed to fulfil expectations.

In one meme, a flock of the birds from Cuba arrives at the Mexican-US border seeking asylum.

They should be focusing on chicken, a basic foodstuff that has disappeared, rather than something so unusual, said Elizabeth Perez, 22, a student who said she hadnt found chicken in the supermarket for a month.

Experts say feeding hungry or growing populations can be done by growing crops to feed directly to people rather than crops to feed livestock, which is an inefficient use of land and water measured by calorie output.

The United Nations Environment Programme has warned that rising meat consumption patterns are unsustainable.

Peter Stevenson, chief policy adviser of Compassion in World Farming, said: When it comes to exploring ways to reduce food shortage, we should focus on the most efficient practices, maximising the potential of the land to provide human food.

Farming animals that need to be fed on human-edible crops is one of the least efficient ways to produce human food.

With ostrich farming specifically  their nutrition consists mostly of grains that could be used directly for human consumption, while the slaughter practices in place may be incredibly inhumane, raising serious welfare concerns.

In addition are concerns over the rearing and farming conditions the ostriches would be kept in.
President Trump said he considered nominating his daughter Ivanka Trump to be president of the World Bank because shes very good with numbers, according to a new interview.

In an interview with The Atlantic published Friday, the president discussed his eldest daughter, and the various roles she would have been well-suited for in the Trump administration.

According to the president, who acknowledged that all his children have been very, very good, Ivanka, whom he reportedly refers to as Baby in meetings, is unique.

I even thought of Ivanka for the World Bank She wouldve been great at that because shes very good with numbers, Mr Trump said.

Referencing her admirable qualities, which include her great calmness and tremendous presence, the president also noted that his 37-year-old daughter would have been great at the United Nations - but that he did not nominate her to replace Nikki Haley as US ambassador to the UN because people would claim it was nepotism.

In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home Show all 13 1 /13 In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The front of the house Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The lobby Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The house exterior Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The patio Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The bedroom Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living area Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The Living Room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The kitchen Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The bathroom Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The living room Zillow In pictures: Ivanka Trump's Washington DC home The hall Zillow

If I did, theyd say nepotism, when it wouldve had nothing to do with nepotism, the president said. But she wouldve been incredible.

The president instead nominated undersecretary of the Treasury for International Affairs David Malpass for the position of president of the World Bank, who was confirmed last month.

Ivanka, who currently plays an active role in the White House as senior advisor to her father, is unpaid for her work and, despite her fathers opinions, has previously said she tries to stay out of politics.

I try to stay out of politics. [The presidents] political instincts are phenomenal, she told Fox & Friends in June 2017.

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If she were to run for president herself, however, her father thinks she would likely win.

I think shed be very, very hard to beat, Mr Trump told The Atlantic.
Students at one of Americas most prestigious universities have voted to increase tuition fees in order to pay slavery reparations  the latest reckoning with the institutions dark history.

Georgetown University, founded in 1789 by Jesuit priests, is today recognised as one of the leading colleges and law schools in the nation.

But its history is inextricably linked to slavery; the college relied on plantations in Maryland to help finance its operations in its early days, and in 1838 it sold 272 slaves to pay off debts  obtaining todays equivalent of $3.3m.

On Thursday, students at the university, located in Washington DC, voted overwhelmingly to increase tuition fees and used that money to establish a fund to benefits the descendants of the slaves who were sold.

The university values the engagement of our students and appreciates that 3,845 students made their voices heard in yesterdays election, said Todd Olson, vice president for student affairs. This student referendum provides valuable insight into student perspectives and will help guide our continued engagement with students, faculty and staff, members of the descendant community, and the Society of Jesus.

Independent Appeal: Modern face of slavery Show all 2 1 /2 Independent Appeal: Modern face of slavery Independent Appeal: Modern face of slavery 106065.bin SIMON DE TREY-WHITE Independent Appeal: Modern face of slavery 106064.bin SIMON DE TREY-WHITE

The students voted 2,541  1,304 for what has been termed the Reconciliation Contribution. This would increase each terms fees by $27.20, the figure symbolising the number of slaves that were sold in 1838, and modest enough for most students to meet.

Annual fees, which include tuition, board and lodging, and books, are currently $71,580. The vote by students is not binding, and authorities have not said whether they will enact the increase or help establish a fund.

Lee Baker, a descendant of Nace and Biby Butler, a married couple who are among the 272 enslaved people sold in 1838, told the student newspaper, The Hoya, the vote was very important.

The students remembered, recognised, and reignited awareness about descendants who literally made it possible for todays Georgetown University, they said.

 Fox News contributor Katie Pavlich: US doesn't get enough credit for ending slavery

Regardless of what happens, we will know that Georgetown University students practised solidarity and decided to ensure that such an historic injustice has a permanent lens for awareness, analysis and action.

Georgetown, one of many of the nations leading colleges that had links to slavery, has slowly been addressing its ugly past. In 2016, the New York Times published a major investigation into the role of slaves in securing the institution in its early days.

In 2017, it formally apologised for selling the slaves, and renamed a campus building after Isaac Hawkins, the first enslaved man listed in the 1838 sale.

The university itself owes its existence to this history, Adam Rothman, a historian at Georgetown and a member of a university working group examining the issue, told the newspaper.

The move comes as the issue of reparations for the centuries of slavery in the US, has become a more frequent part of the national conversation. The Associated Press said senator Cory Booker of New Jersey on Tuesday filed a bill to create a commission for studying reparation proposals.

Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California, have also expressed support of some kind of reparations.
Adolf Hitler would have loved social media as a way of spreading hate, according to Disneys chief executive Bob Iger.

Its the most powerful marketing tool an extremist could ever hope for, he told an event organised by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, a Jewish human rights organisation.

By design social media reflects a narrow world view filtering out anything that challenges our beliefs while constantly validating our convictions and amplifying our deepest fears, he added.

Social media allows evil to prey on troubled minds and lost souls and we all know that social news feeds can contain more fiction than fact, propagating vile ideology that has no place in a civil society that values human life.

He made the comments as he called on US politicians to reject hate in all forms in the run up to the 2020 presidential election.

Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Show all 7 1 /7 Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Walt Disney described his park on television in 1954 2018 Disney Enterprises, Inc Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history The original Disneyland sign on Harbor Boulevard welcomed guests from 1958 to 1989. Its bold colors, shapes, and kinetic exuberance make it an icon of midcentury design Collection of Dave DeCaro, davelandweb.com Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history The drawbridge to Sleeping Beauty Castle was lowered for the rst time on opening day, and only once since: when the redesigned Fantasyland opened on May 25, 1983. The castle sits at the center of Disneyland and is one of the worlds most recognizable structures, with spires that rise as high as 77 feet (about 24 m), but it wasnt the rst concept Walt had in mind. A palace for Cinderella and a castle for Robin Hood were considered in the planning stages Getty/The LIFE Picture Collection Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history In good company  Walt Disney is joined in 1964 by some of his most adored characters. Many starred in what Walt called classic stories of everyones youth that, in Fantasyland, had become realities for youngsters of all ages to participate in. Lawrence Schiller, Polaris Communications Inc Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history The buildings of the Rainbow Ridge mining town were designed by art director and set designer Bill Martin, who recalled they were a favorite of the Disneys: I remember that Walt and Lilly would often walk along the pathways between those little buildings when they stayed at the park overnight. Although the attraction is long gone, the little town can still be seen in the queue to the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad Collection of Dave DeCaro, davelandweb.com Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Monstro the Whale, from Pinocchio, guards the entrance to the Storybook Land Canal Boats. His giant blinking eye and spouting blowhole sometimes surprised guests posing for photos 2018 Disney Enterprises, Inc Walt Disneys Disneyland: A visual history Walt Disneys Disneyland  40 Taschen

Hate and anger are dragging us toward an abyss, he said as he accepted a humanitarian award at the tribute dinner in Los Angeles, Variety magazine reported.

In the last few years, we have been harshly reminded that hate takes many forms, sometimes disguising itself as more socially acceptable expression like fear or resentment or contempt. It is consuming our public discourse and shaping our country and culture into something that is wholly unrecognisable to those of us who still believe in civility, human rights and basic decency.

Next week the Disney boss is due to co-host a 2020 fundraiser for Democratic candidates for the US Senate.

I want to hear a pitch that isnt grounded in contempt of others, he said. I want to see a vision big enough to include everyone.

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The company has previously been dogged by allegations that its founder Walt Disney was antisemitic.

Several early films feature stereotypes common in the 1930s, including a Big Bad Wolf dressed as a Jewish peddler and Mickey Mouse dancing like a Hasidic Jew.

The late animator was linked to the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, an antisemitic organisation.

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Disney was also criticised for accepting a visit by Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to Hollywood to promote her film Olympia in 1938.

In 2014 Meryl Streep called the late animator a hideous antisemite who formed and supported an antisemitic industry lobby.
Chelsea Manning has said the arrest of Julian Assange  the man to whom she leaked classified information a decade ago  underscored her claim that her continued imprisonment represents judicial abuse.

Ms Manning, 31, was last month sent to jail indefinitely after she refused to take part in a Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks, and told judges she would accept whatever you bring upon me. The investigation is using secret hearings involving a grand jury.

I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech, she said, as the court ordered her to be held until she agreed to cooperate, or else the grand jury process was completed.

On Thursday, after Assange was arrested in London on behalf of the US where he was charged with conspiracy in relation to publishing the material Ms Manning provided, the former army intelligence analyst said through her lawyers, that developments had make her argument stronger.

The indictment against Julian Assange unsealed today was obtained a year to the day before Chelsea appeared before the grand jury and refused to give testimony, she said in a statement.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

The fact that this indictment has existed for over a year underscores what Chelseas legal team and Chelsea herself have been saying since she was first issued a subpoena to appear in front of a Federal Grand Jury in the Eastern District of Virginia  that compelling Chelsea to testify would have been duplicative of evidence already in the possession of the grand jury, and was not needed in order for US Attorneys to obtain an indictment of Mr Assange.

The statement added: Since her testimony can no longer contribute to a grand jury investigation, Chelseas ongoing detention can no longer be seriously alleged to constitute an attempt to coerce her testimony. As continued detention would be purely punitive, we demand Chelsea be released.

 Chelsea Manning says she had 'responsibility to the public' to leak a trove of classified documents

Ms Manning served seven years in jail between 20102017 after being charged with more than a dozen crimes, after leaking 750,000 classified, or unclassified but sensitive documents to WikiLeaks.

Among the information, was video footage showing US military helicopter attack on civilians in Baghdad that killed more than a dozen people.

Easier this month, it was revealed Ms Manning had been moved from administrative segregation at the Virginia jail while she is serving an indefinite sentence after refusing to testify to the grand jury probe.

The Associated Press said jail officials refused to confirm Ms Mannings status, but said administrative segregation was used for safety reasons and those inmates still had access to social visits, recreation and break time.
Those were really the three major issues going into the election, she said. People expressed a lot of dissatisfaction regarding those three. Any headway we can make I will do, but I realize it will certainly be challenging when only one (member of my slate) made it in.
A controversial bill which bans abortions before many women even know they are pregnant has been signed into law in Ohio.

The piece of legislation, which is one of the strictest abortion restrictions in the US, does not even allow women to end their pregnancy when they have been raped or in instances of incest.

Republican politicians also added a last minute addition that imposes a $20,000 (15,300) fine on doctors who violate the law when the bill passed the state House earlier in the week.

Ohio governor Mike DeWine signed the heartbeat bill into law on Thursday  making it illegal for women to receive an abortion once a heartbeat has been detected in the foetus.

This can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy  a point at which many women do not yet know they are pregnant.

Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Show all 7 1 /7 Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Derry Girls cast members Siobhan McSweeney and Nicola Coughlan (right) join MPS and women impacted by Northern Ireland's strict abortion laws PA Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Heidi Allen (second right) joins the protest PA Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster A luggage tag on a suitcase, symbolising the women who travel from Northern Ireland to England for terminations PA Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster The campaigners march across Westminster Bridge PA Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Counter-protesters Rebecca Morgan (left) and her daughter Helen, one, demonstrate in favour of Northern Ireland's current laws Getty Images Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Protesters supporting Northern Ireland's abortion laws at Parliament Square Getty Images Northern Ireland abortion protest in Westminster Demonstrators pull suitcases to symbolise the women who travel from Northern Ireland to England for a termination AFP/Getty Images

Mr DeWine broke with John Kasich, his predecessor who is a fellow Republican who vetoed heartbeat bills in 2016 and 2018, citing them as unconstitutional.

State representative Michele Lepore-Hagan, a Democrat, cried as she talked about the harm the legislation could do during Wednesdays House debate.

Im concerned that our kids are going to leave, that were going to lose a large amount of young people who dont want to live in an oppressive atmosphere, she said.

Kellie Copeland, director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, said lawmakers and the governor have nosedived the state into a dystopian nightmare where people are forced to continue pregnancies regardless of the harm that may come to them or their family.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio said it was planning a constitutional challenge to the law on behalf of Preterm Cleveland and three other Ohio abortion clinics before the legislation was signed.

Recommended Texas Republican proposes death penalty for women who have abortions

But the bills supporters are eager for a legal challenge and have long aspired to provoke a challenge with the potential to overturn Roe v Wade  the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalised abortion nationwide in 1973.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that states cannot ban abortion before a foetus is viable  about 23 to 25 weeks.

We literally crafted this legislation to be the arrow in the heart of Roe v Wade, Janet Folger Porter, who was behind the first version of the Ohio legislation, said in 2016. It is made to come before the United States Supreme Court.

Ohio Right to Life president Mike Gonidakis said: The heartbeat bill is the next incremental step in our strategy to overturn Roe v Wade.

The first version of the legislation was written by Ms Folger Porter  a far-right religious and anti-abortion activist  back in 2011 and introduced five times.

Victory! Faith2Action, the Ohio-based anti-abortion group that originated the heartbeat concept in 2010, said.

Seema Nanda, the chief executive of the Democratic National Committee hit out at the legislation  branding it the latest example of how the Trump administrations extremist, anti-women policies have emboldened legislators across the country to attack womens access to health care.

Ohio is the seventh state to pass legislation that bans abortion after a heartbeat is detected and legislation is pending in 11 other states. None of the signed bills have successfully become law so far.

But Alarm bells have been raised that Roe v Wade could be overturned or radically undermined with new conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Abortion opponents in other states have been emboldened to attempt to provoke new legal battles that could spark Supreme Court justices to revisit the key case. But critics argue the Republicans are unnecessarily launching legal battles that will prove to be expensive and futile  with taxpayers potentially footing the bill.

Earlier this week, Texas proposed a law that would criminalise abortions and make it possible for women to receive the death penalty for having an abortion.

However, the bill appeared to have failed by Wednesday night  with the Republican state representative who allowed a hearing on the legislation announcing his opposition to it.

Last week, legislation was introduced in Alabama that would make carrying out an abortion at any stage of the pregnancy punishable by 10 to 99 years in jail  even in cases of rape and incest.

The bill, which has more than 60 co-sponsors in the 105-member Alabama House of Representatives, equates legalised abortion to some of historys gravest atrocities  likening having your pregnancy terminated to the Nazi campaign of extermination that led to the mass murders of Jews and others during the Holocaust.
America is regressing to have the economic and political structure of a developing nation, an MIT economist has warned.

Peter Temin says the world's largest economy has roads and bridges that look more like those in Thailand and Venezuela than those in parts of Europe.

In his new book, The Vanishing Middle Class", reviewed by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Mr Temin says the fracture of US society is leading the middle class to disappear.

Volunteers from the Midnight Mission help feed the homeless and poor during its annual Easter/Passover celebration at Skid Row in Los Angeles, California (Getty Images)

The economist describes a two-track economy with on the one hand 20 per cent of the population that is educated and enjoys good jobs and supportive social networks.

On the other hand, the remaining 80 per cent, he said, are part of the US low-wage sector, where the world of possibility has shrunk and people are burdened with debts and anxious about job security.

Mr Temin used a model, which was created by Nobel Prize winner Arthur Lewis and designed to understand developing nations, to describe how far inequalities have progressed in the US.

When applied to the US, Mr Temin said that the Lewis model actually works.

Homeless men try to stay warm in a Manhattan church on an unseasonably cold day in New York City (Getty Images)

He found that much of the low-wage sector had little influence over public policy, the high-income sector was keeping wages down to provide cheap labour, social control was used to prevent subsistence workers from challenging existing policies and social mobility was low.

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. 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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. 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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. 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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

Mr Temin also claims that this dual-economy has a racist undertone.

The desire to preserve the inferior status of blacks has motivated policies against all members of the low-wage sector.

We have a structure that predetermines winners and losers. We are not getting the benefits of all the people who could contribute to the growth of the economy, to advances in medicine or science which could improve the quality of life for everyone  including some of the rich people," he writes.

Commenting on Mr Temins findings, Lynn Parramore, senior research analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, writes: Without a robust middle class, America is not only reverting to developing-country status, it is increasingly ripe for serious social turmoil that has not been seen in generations.

Female jail inmates are chained together as they bury cadavers at Maricopa County's pauper's graveyard in Phoenix, Arizona (Joe Raedle/Liaison)

Mr Temin says that education is the solution to offer everyone in society better opportunities and calls for investments in public schools and public universities.

He says: Knowing how to think, how to get on with people, how to cooperate. All the social skills and social capital  [are] going to be critically important for kids in this environment."
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the popular US congresswoman, has defended her colleague Ilhan Omar after a conservative US tabloid accused the Muslim politician of trivialising the 9/11 terror attack.

Ms Omar made a speech at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) event in Los Angeles on 23 March, in which she discussed the rise of Islamophobia in the US.

A brief line from her speech, some people did something, was used on the front page of The New York Post on 11 April. The quote had been placed over an image of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre.

Democrats were outraged  they said the quote had been taken out of context and the cover was a bad-faith attack on Ms Omar.

Im not going to quote the NY Posts horrifying, hateful cover, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter.

US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Show all 20 1 /20 US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Democratic candidate Ilhan Omar is celebrates with her husband's mother after she won a congress place, becoming the first Muslim woman to be elected into congress alongside Rashida Tlaib Reuters US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Democratic House candidate, from Kansas, Sharice Davids (left) and her mom Crystal celebrate after she won. Davids is the first lesbian Native American Congresswoman by beating Republican incumbent Kevin Yoder. Davids is one of several first-time female candidates that helped the Democratic Party takeover in the House of Representatives EPA US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Republican Marsha Blackburn celebrates after winning the race for senate in Tennessee. In doing so she became that states first female senator AP US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Supporters of Democratic House candidate Sharice Davids cheer and cry after learning she won EPA US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Ayanna Pressley beaome Massachusetts first black congresswoman by defeating 10-term Republican Michael Capuano AFP/Getty US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Republican candidate Young Kim has become the first Korean-American woman elected to Congress AP US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Democrat Jared Polis won his seat and became the USs first ever openly gay governor AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via AP US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Jean Kasselman (left) and Teresa Booker, supporters of Democratic candidate for Kansas' 3rd Congressional District Sharice Davids, react to election results Getty US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Republican Kristi Noem hugs a supporter after being announced as the new governor of South Dakota. Noem made history by being the first female governor of the state AP US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Gabierla Martinez and Cesar Delgado cheer on Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jared Polis REUTERS US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became the youngest women ever elected to Congress, representing New Yorks 14th congressional district AFP/Getty US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Democratic congressional candidate Rashida Tlaib celebrates with family and friends at her midterm election night party in Detroit after won and also became the nations first Muslim woman to congress alongside Ilhan Omar who was also elected Reuters US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Supporters of Democratic candidate for Kansas' 3rd Congressional District Sharice Davids react to election results Getty US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Already having become the first Native American woman to chair a state political party, Deb Haaland has now become the joint-first Native American woman to be elected to congress, alongside Sharice Davids Reuters US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Supporters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cheer during her election night party in the Queens Borough AFP/Getty US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Young Kim hugs her son Alvin after she won a seat in congress AP US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Supporters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cheer AFP/Getty Images US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Asma Mohammed and Ashley Fairbanks celebrate as results come in at Democratic congressional candidate Ilhan Omar's election night headquarters AP US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Democrat Deb Haaland hugs a voter REUTERS US midterm results: more diverse, more female and more progressive Supporters of Democratic House candidate from Kansas Sharice Davids cheer and cry after learning she won her race EPA

She continued: Heres 1 fact: [Ilhan Omar] is a cosponsor of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. Shes done more for 9/11 families than the GOP who wont even support healthcare for 1st responders- yet are happy to weaponize her faith.

The New York representative also criticised Republican Dan Crenshaw for attacking Ms Omar and not supporting the victim fund. It is set to close in December 2020 if congress does not reauthorise it.

You refuse to cosponsor the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, yet have the audacity to drum resentment towards Ilhan w/completely out-of-context quotes, Ms Ocasio-Cortez said.

In 2018, right-wing extremists were behind almost ALL US domestic terrorist killings. Why dont you go do something about that?

A report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published in January 2019, found that every terrorist murder in the US in 2018 was linked to right-wing extremism.

Ms Omar is one of the first two Muslim women to sit in congress and has frequently been targeted by right-wing US politicians and public figures.

At the CAIR event, the Minnesota representative criticised Donald Trumps attacks on Islam and Muslims.

She said: Many of us knew this would get worse, we finally have a leader, a world leader, in the White House who publicly says Islam hates us, who fuels hate against Muslims, who thinks it is okay to speak about a faith and a whole community in a way that is dehumanising, vilifying and doesnt understand  or at least makes us want to think he doesnt understand  the consequences his words might have.

Later in her speech, Ms Omar discussed the founding of CAIR, a Muslim civil rights activism group, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. At this point she used the phrase some people did something.

CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognised that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties, she said.

So you cant just say that today someone is looking at me strange and that I am trying to make myself look pleasant.

You have to say that this person is looking at me strange, I am not comfortable with it, and I am going to talk to them and ask them why. Because that is the right you have.

According to The Los Angeles Daily News, hundreds of protesters outside the CAIR event were shouting anti-Islam slogans such as Burn the Quran and Ilhan Omar go to hell.

Other Democrats, including Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley have also expressed support for Ms Omar.

The NY Post knows exactly what its doing  taking quotes out of context and evoking painful imagery to spread hate and endangering the life of Rep Omar. Shame on them, and shame on Rupert Murdoch, Ms Tlaib said, referring to the owner of the US tabloid.

 Support free-thinking journalism and attend Independent events

The controversy comes just days after a man was charged for threatening to kill Ms Omar, after placing a call to her office in which he called her a terrorist.
 Close Compilation of Donald Trump mentioning Wikileaks during 2016 election campaign

Donald Trump said his administration is indeed giving strong considerations to placing detained migrants in sanctuary cities, citing unwillingness by Democrats to change our very dangerous immigration laws, sparking nationwide backlash.

The presidents response to claims the White House had proposed sending detainees to sanctuary cities twice in the last six months came hours after White House officials said the idea had been proposed but ultimately rejected.

Mr Trump doubled-down on the possibility while speaking at the White House, prompting mayors of sanctuary cities to dismiss the presidents claims.

During his White House appearance Friday, the president also discussed the nations plans for implementing 5G wireless network.

According to the president and the FCC, the US will have the largest number of 5G networks of any country by the end of the year, a race Mr Trump said America must win.

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

In addition to bringing faster data speeds, the wireless industrys plans to invest millions into 5G networks would create 3m jobs and add $500bn to our economy, according to the president.

Recommended Trump says he considered Ivanka for World Bank president

Also on Friday, reports emerged that the president told the head of Customs and Border Protection that he would pardon him if he were sent to jail for violating immigration law.

Citing two officials, CNN reported Mr Trump made the comments to CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan during a visit to the border last week, claims the Department of Homeland Security has denied.

Ivanka Trump was also involved in controversy Friday after the president revealed in an interview with The Atlantic that he had considered nominating her for president of the World Bank because she is very good with numbers.

Follow events as they happened.
Donald Trump has confirmed he is considering placing undocumented migrants only in sanctuary cities, in an apparent attempt to create problems for Democratic politicians.

This week it was reported that White House officials had considered the plan to release migrants detained at the border into cities such as San Francisco, to retaliate against the presidents critics.

The Washington Post, which obtained internal emails that showed officials at the department of homeland security discussing the idea, revealed the issue was raised at least twice in the last six months.

Sanctuary cities are those where local officials decline to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation, the newspaper pointed out, and are invariably controlled by Democratic legislators.

The report said the legal department of the countrys immigration and customs enforcement agency, often referred to as ICE, had rejected the proposal.

Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Show all 23 1 /23 Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A group of migrants climb the US border fence in Tijuana AFP/Getty Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A group of migrants cross the dried up Tijuana river AFP/Getty Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Mexico police emerge from a cloud of tear gas Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Mexico police work to keep migrants from getting over the border with the US AP Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border US border patrol agents stand guard as migrant seek to cross the border at Tijuana Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Adults help a child over the US border fence AFP/Getty Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants near the US border in Tijuana Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants climb the US border fence in Tijuana AFP/Getty Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants clash with riot police as they near the US border in Tijuana Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A migrant is detained by US border patrol officers after illegally crossing the border Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A group of migrants cross the dried up Tijuana river Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Tear gas is deployed at the border Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A group of migrants make their way to the US border fence Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A migrant man wears a homemade gas mask Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants stand on the banks of the Tijuana river opposite the US border fence Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A group of migrants cross the Tijuana river Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants gather at the border crossing in Tijuana AP Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Tear gas is fired by border police to deter migrants EPA Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border A migrant covers his face as tear gas surrounds him Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrant families seek to cross the US border at Tijuana Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Mexico police try to stop migrants from crossing Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Migrants force their way through the border fence at Tijuana Reuters Migrants clash with authorities as they seek to cross the US border Reuters

However on Friday, Mr Trump claimed the idea was still being given strong consideration.

Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing illegal immigrants in sanctuary cities only, he tweeted.

He added: The radical left always seems to have an open borders, open arms policy  so this should make them very happy!

Mr Trumps tweet appeared to catch his staff by surprise. Abby Phillip, a White House reporter for CNN, wrote on Twitter that the White House JUST put out a statement saying the policy was no longer being considered. She added: Trump is now saying the opposite.

Later, speaking at the White House during an event on 5G, the president claimed he was being serious.

We are looking at he possibility, strongly looking at it to be honest with you, he said, saying he could give give California an unlimited supply of immigrants.

If they dont agree we night as well do what they say they want....well bring them to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it.

Reuters said the administration considered the plan in November last year as a caravan, made up mostly of migrants from Central American countries, travelled through Mexico towards the southern US border. The proposal emerged again in February during a standoff with Democrats over funding as the president sought to build a wall on the border, one of the signature issues of his 2016 election campaign and presidency.

The Post said a 16 November email broached the proposal, asking officials at different agencies whether members of the migrant caravan could be detained at the border, then bused to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities, where local officials refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

 US Sanctuary Cities: We in California have a responsibility to say 'no'

The idea of sanctuary cities first developed during the 1980s as a challenge to the US governments refusal to grant asylum to certain Central American refugees.

It has taken on new importance and energy since the election of Mr Trump, who has persistently positioned himself as an immigration hardliner, something that has intensified as the number of migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border has soared in recent months.

House speaker Nancy Pelosis district in San Francisco was one of those the White House considered targeting, the newspaper said

Ashley Etienne, a spokeswoman for Ms Pelosi, denounced the administration for its cynicism and cruelty over the plan.

Using human beings  including little children  as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable, and in some cases, criminal, she told Reuters. Americans have resoundingly rejected this administrations toxic anti-immigrant policies.
Donald Trump will have to release five years of tax returns if he wants appear on the Illinois 2020 presidential ballot, the state's senate has ruled.

The bill, which still requires approval by the Prairie State's House of Representatives, comes amid a growing row in Washington over Mr Trumps unprecedented refusal to make publicly available his income tax returns.

The US Treasury ignored a congressional deadline to release the documents earlier this week. Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin claimed the request by the House ways and means committee was politically motivated.

Mr Trump himself has claimed that he cannot release his tax returns because they are under audit, although technically there is nothing preventing him from doing so.

In Illinois, the bill would need to be signed into law by Democratic governor Jay Robert Pritzjer, if it passes through the House which is also controlled by Mr Trump's political rivals. Mr Pritzjer is yet to take a public stance on the issue.

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Tony Munoz, the state senator who sponsored the bill said: If you want to run for vice president or president of the United States, hey, whats wrong with providing your tax returns for the past five years?

The veteran Democrat added: If youve got nothing to hide, you shouldnt worry about anything. Thats how I see it.

But the move drew complaints from Republicans in the senate.

This is, quite frankly, with all due respect to the sponsor, an embarrassing waste of the senates time, said Dale Righter. This is being pushed by a far-leftist organisation from the city of Chicago that wants to be able to get up and chirp about the president of the United States."

Ilinois is not the only state where legislation to codify standard practices surrounding tax disclosures for presidential candidates is being advanced.

The Washington state senate last month approved legislation that would legally require all presidential candidates to release the last five years of their personal tax returns in order to have their names featured on both primary and general voting ballots.

New Jersey has also advanced a similar bill to the states general assembly that would force candidates to disclose their recent tax returns.
Today, as President Trumps transgender military ban takes effect, 14,700 people may lose their jobs because of their gender identity.

First announced via a series of tweets in 2017, President Trump said, Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.

As reported by the Palm Center, there are 8,980 transgender service people in active duty and 5,727 in the Selective Reserve.

The ban, which has been widely contested by LGBTQ+ groups and previously blocked from implementation by a federal judge, will potentially remove transgender individuals from service if there is a history of gender dysphoria and they are unable to prove stability in birth gender for 36 months prior to enlistment or have had prior gender transitioning.

Transgender military personnel must serve as their birth gender for the duration of their service.

'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range Show all 6 1 /6 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range The mug 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range The tee 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range The tee 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range The can cooler 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range The tee 'WITCH HUNT!' Trump cashes in on Mueller report with merchandise range The can cooler

There is limited exception for currently serving transgender soldiers who require gender confirmation surgery for the protection of their health, covering only about 900 service members.

Trumps plan will allow transgender military members who agree to serve as their birth gender for the rest of their tenure, without medical support for gender dysphoria, to remain in the military.

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The Navy has announced that off-duty transgender soldiers may live, and dress, in a way consistent with their gender identity.

Former Navy Seal and transgender woman, Kristin Beck, used Twitter to advocate for her fellow trans service members.

She said, in a series of tweets, Im not sure who fights for us. Our nation is adrift in a political war of Right vs Left and the military is a PAWN. She continues, FACT: The AMA has said repeatedly that there is no medically valid reason to exclude transgender individuals from military service. So this Blanket ban is based on FEAR... of what?
In a meeting with top national security advisors this week, Donald Trump discussed potentially increasing US military involvement at the United States-Mexico border to build migrant tent camps. As reported by NBC News, President Trump also enquired if the military could run the camps once migrants arrived.

This is currently prohibited by law under the Posse Comitatus act, which does not allow direct interaction between the armed forces and migrants, hindering Trumps continued efforts to be tougher on immigration.

This would not be the first time tent housing was provided for immigrants, as President Obama provided temporary accomodations in Donna, Texas in response to an influx of migrants in 2016.

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

Acting defence secretary Patrick Shanahan, the former Boeing executive who replaced General Mattis, was at the meeting. Shanahan was not averse to increasing troops to support the border as long as their mission fell within the parameters of the law.

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Department of Defense spokesperson, Lt Col Jamie Davis, said in a statement, As we said last year when we were looking at possible facilities at Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base, DOD could be involved in the possible construction of facilities to house immigrants. There are currently no new requests for assistance.

This potential plan comes forward after it was reported that the Trump administration had considered busing detained migrants into sanctuary cities and Nancy Pelosis home district in an attempt to pressure Democrats into funding his border wall.

Other potential plans for the southern border include the building of a new processing centre in El Paso, Texas, similar to the one in McAllen, where children were being kept in chain link cages.
Due to a court filing error, an 11-year-old child may be deported from the United States to El Salvador without her family.

Laura Maradiaga, accompanied by her mother and sister, illegally crossed the US-Mexico border in October from their home in El Salvador to seek a better life and get away from violence, according to immigrant rights advocate Cesar Espinosa of FIEL.

The family had attended all immigration court hearings, sans the hearing that was rescheduled during the government shutdown.

It was at that time that the family believes that Lauras case got lost in the court docket.

Lauras family received an order of removal against the girl this week.

Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy Show all 8 1 /8 Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy Mishawaka, Indiana AP Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy Washington DC AFP/Getty Images Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy New York Mayor Bill De Blasio speaks in Tornillo, Texas alongside the many other US mayors who have called for detained immigrant children to be reunited with their families AP Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy Albuquerque Mayor Tim Kelle leaves a teddy bear as a gift for detained immigrant children in Tornillo, Texas AP Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti leave sandals as gifts for detained immigrant children in Tornillo, Texas AP Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy San Diego, California EPA Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy US embassy, Mexico City AFP/Getty Images Families belong together protests over Trump immigration policy San Diego, California EPA

It is unclear why shes the only member of her family facing deportation.

This would not be the first time the Trump Administrations deportation policy has unfairly targeted children, as parents have been deported without their children and kids as young as three are being ordered to appear alone in immigration court.

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The Department of Justice confirmed to local news station KHOU 11 that a deportation notice was issued regarding Laura Maradiaga.

Lauras potential deportation comes at a time where the US State Department advises against travel to El Salvador due to crime, such as rape, robbery, assault, gang violence, and murder. It is designated as a high risk area, women and children may be particularly unsafe.

Recommended Trump suggests sending more troops to border to run migrant camps

As for how the child feels about her potential deportation? In a press conference on Thursday, April 11, Laura said I want to stay here. I feel safe here.
A Japanese schoolboy is under investigation for allegedly dealing uranium online and for making explosives.

The 16-year-old is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo on suspicion of violating the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

He has also been accused of producing erythritol tetranitrate (ETN), which is used in explosives, in August 2018 in violation of the Explosives Control Law.

Police said the boy was being questioned on a voluntary basis, along with several other people who are thought to have bought radioactive materials from him.

They believe he may have refined and sold uranium out of an interest in science.

Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Show all 12 1 /12 Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A woman stands near the grave of her brother, a "liquidator" or an emergency worker who fought the blaze at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, during a commemoration ceremony on the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster at the Mitino cemetery in Moscow Reuters Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Belarussian soldiers of an honor guard carry wreaths during a memorial service for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster in Minsk EPA Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A woman holds a portrait of her relative, a victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, as she visits the memorial during a commemoration ceremony in Kiev Reuters Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko lays flowers during a commemoration ceremony at a monument to "liquidators", emergency workers who fought the blaze at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Reuters Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A woman puts flowers to a monument to Chernobyl liquidators at Mitino Cemetery in Moscow AP Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Nataliya Khodemchyuk, 64, from Ukraine, a widow of Chernobyl liquidator Valery Khodemchyuk, sits at his grave at the Mitino Cemetery in Moscow AP Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A woman holds portrait of her relative, a victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, as she visits the memorial during a commemoration ceremony in Kiev Reuters Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Ukrainians light candles and lay flowers at the memorial for 'liquidators' who died during cleaning up works after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, during a ceremony in Slavutich city EPA Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A rescue worker which served during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster visits a memorial during a commemoration ceremony in Kiev Reuters Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster Women hold portraits of their lost husbands near a monument honoring people who were killed during cleanup efforts after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, during a memorial ceremony in Kiev EPA Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A woman lays flowers at the Chernobyl victims' memorial in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev Getty Images Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster A woman holds a photograph of her husband who died following the clean-up operations for the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear explosion, at the Chernobyl's victim monument in Ukraine's capital Kiev AP

The teenager came to the attention of authorities after the Nuclear Regulatory Agency discovered a substance advertised as uranium 99.9 per cent was being sold on a Yahoo online auction site.

In January 2018, the agency reported its findings to the Metropolitan Police Department, which tracked the transaction to the seller and several others, including the student, who had bought the substance.

Police confirmed it was uranium and searched the students home, where they also seized yellowcake, a type of uranium concentrate, the Japan Times reported.

The boy is suspected of manufacturing the substance from uranium ore and putting it up for sale online.

Several others who allegedly bought yellow cake from the boy are also under investigation.

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One security analyst has argued the boy was probably not a terrorist but actually a chemistry geek.

This is not a case of terrorism, even of the home-grown variety, Lance Gatling, founder of Tokyo-based Gatling Associates, told Japans Kyodo news agency.

To be honest, you would simply not believe what chemistry geeks will do ... [There are] probably a few dozen guys who have tried to fabricate sarin gas in their bathrooms.

He told the agency it was highly unlikely the boy had been able to create fissionable material and said the radioactivity of yellowcake uranium is extremely low.
In the 24 hours since British police arrested Julian Assange outside the Ecuadorian embassy, Russia has shown a defiant and mocking face to the west.

Speaking at his daily press conference on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the WikiLeaks founder was an independent informer who was being persecuted.

From our point of view, [the arrest] does not correspond with the ideals of free media or their immunity, he said.

Julian Assange and Russia have long faced accusations of collaboration  selectively releasing information that compromises Russias enemies.

US security services assert Russian hackers were responsible for obtaining emails that compromised Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential election bid and ended up on Assanges WikiLeaks.

In 2012, Assange also hosted a talk show on Russia Today (now RT), the English language channel funded by the Kremlin.

But Russia and WikiLeaks have denied accusations of collaboration. In todays conference, Mr Peskov described the claims of cooperation as a conspiracy theory.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

Throughout Thursday and Friday, Russian propaganda channels on TV and in print flagged what they described as western hypocrisy over Assanges detention.

The Time Will Tell talk show devoted a large part of its Thursday programme to the detention. What had happened was a personal and political tragedy, host Artyom Sheinin said; an injustice that touched everyone.

Two pictures appear on screens behind the host  one showing a fresh-faced Australian whistleblower from 2012, and another showing the aged, bearded outlaw who was dragged from the Knightsbridge embassy on Thursday.

Mr Sheinin told his audience that the footage of Assanges arrest was available only thanks to a Russian TV crew.

Everyone was silent apart from RT! he said. And they have the cheek to lecture us about press freedom!

Margarita Simonyan, RTs channels combative editor in chief, said that the arrest of her former employee was proof that hypocrisy had prevailed.

History will remember Assange as one of the greats, as a visionary, she said. He knew he would be extradited and that lots of awful things would be waiting for him  right up to the death penalty.

Ms Simonyan was not alone to suggest Assange was in danger of execution following extradition to the United States. Both of Channel Ones main talk shows, and most of the loyalist press repeated such assertions.

Ecuador and the United Kingdom have reportedly obtained assurances from Washington that the US would not press for the death penalty.
Motorists caught driving after consuming cannabis will no longer face having their licences immediately revoked in Germany.

A federal court in Leipzig ruled the licensing authority must now first determine, with a medical evaluation, whether the marijuana user is fit to drive, daily newspaper Deutsche Welle reported.

German law stated that a drivers licence could be revoked if they could not drive due to the consumption of alcohol or other drugs, and those caught with one nanogram per millimetre of THC in their bloodstream faced the instant loss of their licence.

A group of experts proposed in 2015 to increase the limit to three nanograms per millimetre because THC can remain in the bloodstream days after a person consumes cannabis.

But on Tuesday the Leipzig Federal Administrative Court ruled the limit should stay the same.

Cannabis around the world Show all 13 1 /13 Cannabis around the world Cannabis around the world Morocco Farmers destroy cannabis plantations under Moroccan police supervision in the northern Moroccan Larache region, pictured here in 2006 AFP/Getty images Cannabis around the world Colorado Growing business: Cannabis on sale at River Rock Wellness Sam Adams Cannabis around the world Oakland Oaksterdam in Oakland, California, is the world's only university dedicated to the study and cultivation of cannabis Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images Cannabis around the world Seattle A cannabis smoker marks the start of the new law by the Space Needle in Seattle Getty Images Cannabis around the world China Cannabis growing wild in China, where it has been used to treat conditions such as gout and malaria Cannabis around the world Uruguay Uruguay has voted to make the country the first to legalize marijuana AFP/Getty Cannabis around the world Colorado A groundswell of support from the public led to full legalisation in Colorado Getty Images Cannabis around the world Berlin A man smokes licenced medicinal marijuana prior to participating in the annual Hemp Parade, or 'Hanfparade', in support of the legalization of marijuana in Germany on August 7, 2010 in Berlin, Germany. The consumption of cannabis in Germany is legal, though all other aspects, including growing, importing or selling it, are not. However, since the introduction of a new law in 2009, the sale and possession of marijuana for licenced medicinal use is legal. Sean Gallup/Getty Images Cannabis around the world UK The UK latest figures show 2.3 million people used cannabis in the last year AP Cannabis around the world Amsterdam Tourists visiting Amsterdam will not be banned from using the citys famous cannabis cafes Getty Images Cannabis around the world Merseyside These 25 cannabis plants, seized in Merseyside police, could have generated a turnover of 40,000 a year Cannabis around the world San Francisco April 20, 2012: People smoke marijuana joints at 4:20 p.m. as thousands of marijuana advocates gathered at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California. The event was held on April 20, a date corresponding with a numerical 4/20 code widely known within the cannabis subculture as a symbol for all things marijuana. Reuters Cannabis around the world Spain A cannabis users' association will pay the town of Rasquera more than 600,000 a year for the lease of the land

Last year, a police officers organisation in Germany called for the decriminalisation of the consumption of cannabis.

Andre Schulz, head of the BDK organisation (the Association of German Criminal Officers), said the group favours a complete decriminalisation of cannabis consumers.

He said the current system prohibiting marijuana use stigmatises people and allows criminal careers to start, and argued the prohibition of cannabis was, viewed historically, arbitrary and is neither intelligent nor expedient.

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In the history of mankind there has never been a society without the use of drugs, he said. This is something that has to be accepted. My prediction is cannabis will not be banned for long in Germany.

However, he insisted the drug should remain off-limits for drivers.
Frances government has said it would consider offering Julian Assange political asylum if he were to ask the country for refuge.

The WikiLeaks founders French lawyer, Juan Branco, had appealed to president Emmanuel Macron to intervene in the case and prevent the hacker being extradited from a UK prison to the US.

Mr Branco said on Thursday Mr Macron should offer mediation and take this man under our protection, adding that Assange has a small child in France.

Frances minister for Europe, Amelie de Montchalin, said in a radio interview on Friday that the country had not received a request for help from Assange.

We should listen to what he wants to do, she said, before also adding we dont offer asylum to someone whos not asking for it.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

Despite Ms de Montchalins comments suggesting France would be open to at least considering an appeal for asylum from Assange, Mr Macron has yet to comment on the matter.

Assange was arrested in London on Thursday after the ambassador at the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had enjoyed political asylum for the past seven years, rescinded his asylum status.

He was then taken to Westminster Magistrates Court, where he was promptly found guilty of breaching his bail conditions in relation to a Swedish investigation into rape allegations.

The US has also charged Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion with former army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, a first step in what is likely to be a long extradition battle.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has called on the government to stop Assange being extradited to the US, a move WikiLeaks has claimed could see him spend decades in prison.

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The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government, the Labour leader wrote on Twitter.

Theresa May, home secretary Sajid Javid and foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt all said Assanges arrest on Thursday showed that no one is above the law.

Additional reporting by agencies
Russian security services locked down part of a Siberian city on Friday evening in what they said was an operation against a suspected Isis terror cell.

Police in Tyumen (population 670,000) cordoned off several streets to the west of the city centre, evacuating residents and cutting off electricity and street lighting.

Dramatic footage posted on social media shows dozens of armoured vehicles streaming the neighbouring streets.

In a brief statement, the local branch of the FSB said they had received information a group of terrorists had been planning an attack from one of the private houses in the area.

The official statement carried no other details, but Russian news agencies later quoted security sources reporting all of the suspected terrorists had been killed "following armed resistance."

This was the third suspected terror incident in the four months to strike the western Siberia region of Russia. Authorities have previously been accused of covering up the extent of the terror threat in the region.

On 31 December in nearby Magnitogorsk, for example, 39 people died after an explosion caused part of a multi-storey apartment block to collapse.

The official explanation was a gas leak, but this was later contradicted by multiple witness accounts and unnamed sources in the security services, who said it was a terror attack.
On 12 April, our Middle East Correspondent Richard Hall took part in a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" from Beirut.

For the last eight years he has been covering the Syrian civil war, reporting on the rise and fall of the brutal Isis caliphate and the devastating impact of the conflict on civilians  both the victims of Isis and those caught up in the battle to defeat it  as well as the refugee crisis sparked by the fighting.

Here are some the best questions put to our correspondent:

What do you think needs to be done to prevent another reboot of "Islamic extremist insurgency" in the region

Great first question! The insurgency has already restarted. Thousands of Isis fighters have gone underground and formed sleeper cells across Iraq and Syria in preparation for the caliphates defeat, and they are already carrying out attacks.

In parts of Iraq, Isis fighters are moving freely in towns and villages at night, and there has been an uptick in bomb attacks in Syria since the caliphates fall. Its important to note that the defeat of the Isis caliphate was just that  it lost its territory, but not its vast resources and its ability to operate. Isis was an insurgency for longer than it was a state.

In Syria, the Syrian Democratic Forces was able to defeat Isis in large part due to the support of the US military. But Donald Trump has signalled that the US doesnt want to stay there forever. The SDF is worried that they may struggle to maintain security in the recently recaptured areas of the country  areas that have been utterly destroyed by the war.

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

You may have seen interviews with people leaving Isis areas in the caliphates final days. Its clear that the ideology has not been completely defeated. The large number of civilian casualties caused by the fight to defeat Isis didnt help that.

More generally, stopping Isis in the long term requires removing the conditions that allowed it to rise in the first place. Isis was able to capitalise on legitimate grievances of the local population in both Syria in Iraq  everything from a weak state to rampant sectarianism, poverty, environmental change, you name it. It requires a huge international effort to give people in these devastated areas a chance to live a normal life.

What's food like in Beirut? How long does it take for you to research a story?

I could do an entire AMA on my love for Lebanese food. Lets just say its hard not to put on weight here.

It depends on the story really. Ive spent months on some, a day on others. I hope people can tell the difference!

What's the one thing that hasn't been reported that you would like more people to understand?

One thing Id like more people to realise is how clueless the people who decide our foreign policy really are. Most countries have a layer of highly skilled and knowledgeable diplomats and advisors, but the decisions are made very high up, by people with a very limited understanding of this part of the world in particular. The implications are often huge.

The media very rarely speaks about Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), so what is it like to live under their rule in comparison to living under ISIS? Are they as extreme and violent as ISIS? I noticed women living under HTS do not have to wear burkas or cover their faces.

Youre right about that. There has been far less coverage of HTS, largely because they have deliberately tried to avoid the spotlight. The group is a descendant of Al Qaeda, and Im sure youre all familiar with their beliefs.

In recent years it has dissociated itself from Al Qaeda, but the core beliefs remain the same. It has played a much smarter game than Isis in trying to achieve its goals. It has undoubtedly committed war crimes, but while Isis was broadcasting its gruesome atrocities to the world, HTS tried to keep a lower profile, and made itself invaluable to other rebel groups who might not share its beliefs.

Eventually, it came to dominate those groups and now rules over most of Idlib province. Despite its cleverness, HTS is an authoritarian group that a vast number of Syrians oppose.

What is the deal with the White Helmets? I have heard conflicting reports that they are either guardian angels saving people from rubble or dissidents backed by terrorist groups who serve as a front to fund extremism.

This question comes up a lot, so Im glad someone asked. The White Helmets have been the target of a coordinated propaganda campaign amplified by the Russian and Syrian governments, and pursued relentlessly by conspiracy theorists. I really dont blame you for being uncertain, given the effort that has been put into this campaign.

The theories surrounding them are so muddled that its worth going through them: One is that the White Helmets are funded by the British and US governments to fake atrocities in order to create the conditions to enact regime change (ie. remove Assad from power).

The group did receive funding from both, but there was already enough evidence of war crimes before the White Helmets came along, from a myriad of independent sources. The US and UK undoubtedly wanted Assad to go, and funded rebel groups to try to make that happen, but why on earth would they need to manufacture crimes that the world had already seen?

Recommended Syria civil war enters ninth year with new wave of violence on horizon

Another is that the White Helmets were a kind of conduit for funding extremist groups in Syria. The reality is that the US was funding rebel groups in Syria to counter the rising threats of these groups. When these efforts failed and weapons began ending up in the hands of extremists, the US got pulled back on that funding. The other is that a lot of White Helmets were actually extremists themselves, and were working with those groups.

Is it possible that some White Helmets were former fighters? Of course. Could some of them have exaggerated or manipulated scenes? Yes. This is an organisation of over 4,000 volunteers afterall. But to suggest the organisation is part of some grand conspiracy is absurd. These theories have been fuelled by grainy photographs of unknown figures in white helmets standing alongside fighters, poorly sourced reports from bloggers who gave up any impartiality a long time ago, and a constant drip, drip of propaganda from Russian state news outlets.

Why? The answer is pretty simple. While rescuing people from the rubble of buildings bombed by Russian and Syrian jets, they would also film the carnage. Their footage of these atrocities was extremely damaging to both, and countered the government narrative that this was a war against terrorists.

Ive maintained contact with a number of White Helmet volunteers over the years, and the vast majority are normal people who just wanted to do something to help.

What do you think will happen with Shamima Begum and other UK citizens who joined the so called Caliphate?

Thats what weve all been trying to figure out! Its really uncertain. The British government has made it very clear that they do not want these people to come back to the UK. That has left the Syrian Democratic Forces, which is holding all of these people, in a bit of a bind. They make the point that these people were radicalised in the UK, came to Syria to join a group that carried out heinous crimes, and now they have to pick up the mess.

There has been a suggestion that international courts would be set up in Syria to try and imprison all of the foreign Isis members / supporters, but thats incredibly unlikely because because it would require UN approval and Russia, a veto-wielding member, would block it on behalf of the Syrian government.

There is talk now of sending them to Iraq to face trial. But that would mean sending them to a country which has the death penalty, which could present significant legal challenges. That seems like the most likely option right now.

What will be the fate of the Kurds? will there be an Independent state of Kurdistan?

Thats what many people want, but I think an independent state is unlikely any time soon. The Syrian government has repeatedly stated that it will not stop until it regains control of the entire country, and it has a powerful ally in Russia to help it do so. The Syrian Kurds know they cant rely on the US to be there forever, and so they have to reach an agreement with Assad. They are pushing for some kind of autonomy in the areas they control (which is close to a third of the country), but so far the talks havent gone very far. SDF commanders are far more concerned about what Turkey will do right now.

Seeing the cultural differences between middle east and western society, do you think the epic refugee crisis and backlash was predictable? Also the poor, for many reasons, integration of those refugees?

The refugee crisis was inevitable because of the sheer level of destruction and killing in Syria, but I think the international community failed Syrians in their response. Instead of recognising the scale of the crisis and doing all it could to help people find safety, many European countries reacted with fear.

As for the question of integration, its a fault of the media that negative stories about refugees and migrants are amplified. Millions of people  who wanted nothing more than to find safety  have gone on to make great contributions to the communities in which they ended up. The countries that have made real efforts to welcome refugees have been rewarded for it.
Doctors in Papua New Guinea have warned they are facing a national problem as thousands of men suffer the effects of botched DIY penis enlargements.

Some doctors surgeries are overrun with men who have injected their genitals with an array of substances including silicon, coconut oil, baby oil and cooking oil.

A doctor in the countrys capital city Port Moresby said over the last two years his clinic had treated more than 500 men who were suffering the effects of ill-advised penis injections.

The results can be life altering, and range from painful ulcers which eventually burst, to swelling, and lumps on the penis and testicles, and in some cases lifelong impotence.

Speaking to The Guardian, Akule Danlop, a surgeon at a hospital in Port Moresby said: The bulk of them have abnormal, lumpy masses growing over the penis and sometimes involving the scrotum.

Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Show all 15 1 /15 Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' The festival is LGBT-friendly Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Everything is penis-related on the day of the festival Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' There are plenty of souvenirs for sale Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' There's a serious side to the festival too Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' But it has solid historical and religious roots Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Today, the festival includes a cross-dressing group carrying this giant pink penis Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' The festival's now become part of Japan's 'wacky' identity Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Phallic imagery abounds in Shinto Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' The Elizabeth Kaikan group carry the pink penis Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Thousands of people attend the festival Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' The Elizabeth Kaikan group carry the pink penis Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' The Shinto religion focuses on fertility Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' There's every kind of food in phallic shape Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' The serious part of the procession Selena Hoy Inside Japan's annual 'penis festival' Participants can wear anything from loincloths to full uniforms Selena Hoy

A good number are coming in with ulcers; they eventually burst open, said Danlop. Some of them have difficulty urinating because the foreskin is so swollen it cannot contract.

He said he had treated boys as young as 16, and men over 55, and the picture was the same across the country.

There are guys who are in respectable jobs like working at law firms, he said. Its right across PNG, its not only in Moresby.

He has had to operate on about 90 men to address swelling, abnormal lumps and to try and repair damage to erectile tissue.

Predominantly they regret what they have done, he said.

Mr Danlop also estimated the number of men who are undertaking these treatments is far higher than admissions figures indicate, as many men may be unwilling to seek medical help.

But the rising numbers coming to hospital is also problematic as they are draining medical resources.

Theres cancer, there are other conditions [that need treatment]. Its a bit frustrating to see these cases when you have other people who deserve [help] and then these people are causing themselves harm, they do it to themselves, he said.

Last year the BBC reported the NHS is having to fix issues caused by DIY penis fillers in the UK.

Two of the UKs largest cosmetic surgery groups for male sexual health said they have seen a massive increase in numbers of enquiries about penis fillers.

Two companies operating in the UK told the BBC in October last year they were receiving about 700 enquiries a month between them, compared to fewer than 10 a month in 2015.

At the time, Mr Asif Muneer, from the British Association of Urological Surgeons, said he would discourage people from having them, as they can lead to major complications.

A lot of the time, were having to remove the whole penis shaft skin, and regraft it with skin from elsewhere in the body.
Switzerlands highest court has overturned a nationwide referendum for the first time in the countrys history after it was found voters were not given sufficient information.

The country held a poll in February 2016 to decide whether married couples and co-habiting couples should pay the same tax, which was narrowly rejected by 50.8 per cent.

However, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled to overturn the result on Wednesday because of incomplete detail and a lack of transparency, and the vote can now be re-run.

The landmark ruling prompted comparisons to the 2016 EU referendum in Britain, where campaigners have long argued voters were not given the necessary information to make an informed decision.

The For the couple and the family  no to the penalisation of marriage referendum in Switzerland proposed married couples and unmarried couples living together should pay the same tax, as cohabiting partners are taxed separately rather than jointly meaning both can benefit from a tax-free allowance.

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

Prior to the referendum, the government reportedly told voters 80,000 married couples were penalised by the tax regime. However, the figure was later revised to 454,000 couples.

The federal court said: Given the tight outcome of the vote and the seriousness of the irregularities, it is possible that the result of the ballot would have been different.

The court said voters had been informed erroneously and in an incomplete way as they could not imagine that the number of couples affected by the married couples tax penalty was more than five times higher than the figure announced, The Guardian reported.

Parallels have been drawn with some of the election promises and information given during Britains EU referendum, where leading Leave campaigners later distanced themselves from claims that the NHS would receive an extra 350m a week if Britain left the EU.

The UK Statistics Authority said that was a clear misuse of official statistics  most notably because the figure did not take into account the money the UK got back from the EU after paying in to the budget.

After taking into account the rebate, the figure was believed to be closer to 250m, but the question remained whether the money would actually go the NHS.

The Leave campaign was also found to have broken legal spending limits during the EU referendum and was fined by the electoral watchdog.

The Christian Democrats welcomed the ruling in Switzerland, saying it was a decision in favour of the political rights of the Swiss electorate.
Boeing has completed 96 test flights on the 737 Max 8 jet upgraded with new software, as it struggles to regain the trust of airlines and global aviation regulators.

The planemakers CEO, Dennis Muilenberg, said that Boeing had flown 159 test hours on the upgraded jet, and that the new software had functioned as designed.

Speaking at the George W Bush Presidential Center Forum on Leadership in Dallas, Texas, he said that additional test and production flights would be undertaken in the coming weeks.

As we continue working closely with our airline customers and global regulators to return the 737 Max to service, Im focused on making the adjustments necessary to allow our teams to prioritise additional resources and focus on the recovery efforts, he added.

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

Boeing has been working on a software update to the troubled Boeing 737 Max ever since the jet was grounded worldwide following the Ethiopian Airlines crash on 10 March 2019. The plane crashed shortly after take-off from Addis Ababa on a routine flight to Nairobi, marking the second deadly crash of the 737 Max aircraft following the October 2018 Lion Air crash.

The preliminary report into the Ethiopian Airlines crash revealed a struggle between the pilots and the anti-stall technology, MCAS, installed in the 737 Max.

The Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau of Ethiopia (AIB) said that one minute after take-off from Addis Ababa, the airspeed and altitude values from the left air data system began deviating from the corresponding right side values. Before the 737 had been aloft for two minutes, a faulty sensor triggered a false warning of a potential stall, beginning a fatal chain of events. The captain and first officer did all they could, the report concluded, but they could not save the doomed jet.

In his remarks yesterday, Muilenberg added: The update will make the 737 Max even safer by preventing erroneous angle of attack sensor readings from triggering the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System, or MCAS, something that initial investigation reports indicate occurred in both Max accidents, as one link in a longer chain of events.

Well do everything possible to earn and re-earn that trust and confidence from our airline customers and the flying public in the weeks and months ahead.

We take the responsibility to build and deliver airplanes that are safe to fly and can be safely flown by every single one of the professional and dedicated pilots all around the world. My team and I are working closely with our customers to answer their questions, get their feedback and ensure those who operate the Max are prepared when the grounding is lifted and the fleet returns to flight.

Boeing has spoken to regulators and airlines in the US, Singapore, the UK and China, Muilenberg said, and more than two-thirds of pilots for airlines that fly the Max had participated in a simulator session that included the new software update.

It comes as Southwest Airlines, one of the biggest operators of the Max in the US alongside American Airlines, confirmed that it would ground its Max fleet until 5 August.

In a statement, Southwest said it was working to iron out its summer schedule, and would ground the troubled jet until that time to add further stability for customers booking vacations.

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While the timing for the return to service of the Max remains unclear, what is very clear is our commitment to operate a reliable schedule, it said.

Affected customers would be notified of the change in schedule, Southwest said, adding that the no-frills airline would reacommmodate their flights in advance.

Safety has always been our most sacred responsibility to both our employees and our customers, and we will continue to remain in full compliance with all FAA directives and any additional requirements necessary to return this aircraft to service.

Earlier this week, American Airlines said it would ground all Max jets until early June.
Every so often, Jack Sheldon from Jacks Flight Club selects a flight deal from the UK for Independent readers that you cant afford to miss. This week: return flights to Brazil for 371 return.

This week we have uncovered some brilliant fares to Brazil with Lufthansa and its partner airline Swiss, connecting via hubs in Germany and Switzerland. This opens up a number of airports across the UK and Ireland through short connecting flights.

How to book

Head to Google Flights and enter your departure city from those listed below with Rio de Janeiro as your destination. You may want to add a Star Alliance filter to the Airlines option, to help find the dates included in this deal.

Use Google Flights calendar tool to help you find the best travel dates (theyll show up in green).

This one is best booked directly with the airline and Google Flights will provide you with a link to book on Lufthansas website.

To

Rio de Janiero (GIG)

From

London (LHR)  371

Birmingham (BHX)  390

Manchester (MAN)  387

Edinburgh (EDI)  389

Glasgow (GLA)  390

Dublin (DUB)  433

When to fly

The lowest fares are available from April 2019 to January 2020, excluding July-August and the Christmas and New Year period.

When to book

These fares should be available for 2-3 days more days at least.
The Indian carrier Jet Airways appears to be on the point of total collapse, with almost all flights at its Mumbai airport base shown as cancelled or non-operational.

The last departure from Heathrow, which left on Thursday evening, landed at 10.51am on Friday, local time.

In March, a consortium of creditors, led by the State Bank of India (SBI), became the majority shareholders of Jet Airways after a debt-for-equity swap.

But most of the fleet has been grounded by the aircraft lessors.

A link between Manchester and Mumbai began only in November 2018 and was grounded in March.

Airlines that went bust Show all 12 1 /12 Airlines that went bust Airlines that went bust Air Berlin Air Berlin, which operated flights to and from Berlin Tegel, went bankrupt in 2017 Getty Airlines that went bust Small Planet Lithuanian airline Small Planet filed for insolvency at the end of 2018 Igor Dvurekov Airlines that went bust Monarch Airlines The airline ceased operations in October 2017 AFP/Getty Airlines that went bust VLM Antwerp-based VLM went bankrupt in September 2018 Flo Weiss Airlines that went bust Germania German airline Germania filed for insolvency in February 2019 Getty Airlines that went bust Kingfisher Founded in 2005 ceased flying in October 2012 AFP/Getty Airlines that went bust Cobalt Cobalt, based in Larnaca, Cyprus, stopped flying in October 2018 Steve Lynes Airlines that went bust Mexicana An airline that had been in operation since 1921, went bust in August 2010. It was Mexico's largest airline AFP/Getty Airlines that went bust WOW Air Icelandic Wow Air ceased operation in March 2019 Getty Airlines that went bust Primera Primera, known for its cheap transatlantic fares, went bust in October 2018 Getty Airlines that went bust Transaero A privately-owened airline founded in Russia, 1990 lasted until October 2015 Getty Airlines that went bust Malev After 66 years, Hungary's national airline went stopped flying in 2012 AFP/Getty

On a series of test bookings by The Independent, it appears that no further flights from Heathrow are planned; departures are offered via Abu Dhabi airport on Etihad Airways.

Etihad took a 24 per cent share in Jet Airways in 2013 as part of a wave of disastrous investments which have cost the UAE carrier billions of dollars.

Jet Airways is telling passengers: Due to operational reasons, our flight schedule has been impacted.

We realise that this has affected our guests travel plans and truly regret the inconvenience.

Jet Airways says its customer support teams are working around the clock to ensure that our guests are re-accommodated on to alternate flights or provided with a full refund.

It is promising refunds within 10 days, though with the airlines staff also going unpaid the evidence suggests that no cash has been paid out for weeks.

Going nowhere: Departures board for Jet Airways flights from Mumbai airport

Jet Airways was founded in 1993 as Indias first significant privately owned airline, competing with the poorly run state-owned Indian Airlines.

Initially Jet Airways flew domestic services, but within a decade expanded internationally with flights to destinations in the Indian sub-continent, and  in 2005  London Heathrow.

Services between Mumbai and Manchester began in November 2018, but were cancelled four months later.

Jet Airways had multiple daily flights from Heathrow to Delhi and Mumbai. It had a code-share agreement with Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin is saying: Due to the possible cancellation of Jet Airways services, we are offering our customers with connecting flights with Jet Airways the options to rebook, reroute or refund their tickets.

This applies to Virgin Atlantic ticketed bookings only.

Passengers who booked Jet Airways services on Virgin Atlantic and have yet to begin travelling can get a full refund.

They could rebook to a later date on Jet Airways, which looks an over-optimistic course of action.

On Heathrow-Delhi flights, they can switch to Virgin Atlantic on the same route.

Passengers can also switch to an alternative Virgin destination  subject to any fare difference being paid.
A month after a Germany-bound British Airways jet mistakenly flew to Edinburgh, a flight from Copenhagen landed in the wrong Italian city.

A Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) jet from the Danish capital, which was due to fly to the Tuscan city of Florence, actually landed 65 miles away in Bologna.

According to the airline, the new destination was decided before the plane took off.

When making preparations for departure, pilots discovered they did not have the correct flight route information for Florence and therefore had to find another airport in which to land.

The decision was instead made to fly to nearby Bologna, capital of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

Airlines that went bust Show all 12 1 /12 Airlines that went bust Airlines that went bust Air Berlin Air Berlin, which operated flights to and from Berlin Tegel, went bankrupt in 2017 Getty Airlines that went bust Small Planet Lithuanian airline Small Planet filed for insolvency at the end of 2018 Igor Dvurekov Airlines that went bust Monarch Airlines The airline ceased operations in October 2017 AFP/Getty Airlines that went bust VLM Antwerp-based VLM went bankrupt in September 2018 Flo Weiss Airlines that went bust Germania German airline Germania filed for insolvency in February 2019 Getty Airlines that went bust Kingfisher Founded in 2005 ceased flying in October 2012 AFP/Getty Airlines that went bust Cobalt Cobalt, based in Larnaca, Cyprus, stopped flying in October 2018 Steve Lynes Airlines that went bust Mexicana An airline that had been in operation since 1921, went bust in August 2010. It was Mexico's largest airline AFP/Getty Airlines that went bust WOW Air Icelandic Wow Air ceased operation in March 2019 Getty Airlines that went bust Primera Primera, known for its cheap transatlantic fares, went bust in October 2018 Getty Airlines that went bust Transaero A privately-owened airline founded in Russia, 1990 lasted until October 2015 Getty Airlines that went bust Malev After 66 years, Hungary's national airline went stopped flying in 2012 AFP/Getty

A spokesperson for SAS told The Independent: "Safety is always our first priority.

"During preparations by the gate it was discovered that the flight route information was missing. The decision to fly to a close by destination, Bologna, was made instead of cancelling the flight.

This in order to get the passengers to their destination as soon as possible. We apologise for any inconvenience to our passengers who are being taken care of and will be transported to Florence by bus from Bologna.

Last month, a British Airways flight to Dusseldorf landed in Edinburgh due to a mix-up with paperwork. Passengers did not realise the error until a Welcome to Edinburgh announcement was made.

After the mix-up, Ryanair then mocked British Airways with a Geography for Dummies book, saying that even it wouldnt flog Edinburgh as Germany.
One of the many benefits of 21st-century media is that readers can heckle within seconds of a story being published online.

So it proved when I wrote a story about a new record for the worlds longest domestic flight: the Hawaiian Airlines link from Boston to Honolulu.

During the routes first week of operation, two flights took 11 hours and 36 minutes to cover the 5,095 miles between the Massachusetts and Hawaii state capitals, meaning most passengers would have spent 12 hours on the plane. (Travelling in the opposite direction, the jet stream assisted a flight time of about 10 hours.)

But my assertion that the Airbus A330 flight was an aviation superlative unlikely to be broken for many years, if at all lasted about a minute.

Neil Morrow was first to claim supremacy for France, citing the link from Paris to Reunion.

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With many others making the same point, Rocco added: What about the 22-hour flight from Paris to Papeete [the capital of Tahiti]? Would that be considered domestic by the French? They will be voting for their MEP soon.

They are referring to the DomToms  departements doutre-mer and territoires doutre mer  which are politically part of France.

So we need to talk about why I believe links between metropolitan France and far-flung categories do not count as domestic flights.

First, allow me to dispatch the Tahiti services. Air France, Air Tahiti Nui and French Bee all fly from Paris to Papeete. But they refuel in California (the first two in Los Angeles, the last in San Francisco) so I regard them as a pair of international flights rather than a single domestic trip.

Next, what about the non-stop flights to the Indian Ocean Dom of Reunion?

Another reader asserts: Reunion is of equal status to any department in Metropolitan France. Every bit a piece of France as Hawaii is part of the US, just further away.

If I were to allow this, then France would take not just the first place but second and third too:

3  Marseilles-Reunion, 5,456 miles.

2  Paris Orly-Reunion, 5,802 miles.

1  Paris CDG-Reunion, 5,809 miles.

But I dont count these as domestic flights. Not because the most direct route from Paris to Reunion crosses the territory of Switzerland, Italy, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia  many internal flights use other countries airspace, such as Boston-Seattle over Canada and Zagreb-Dubrovnik, which spends almost all its flight over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

I rule out French overseas departments because they are outside the Schengen area (as is the UK) while metropolitan France is inside. And, to quote a traveller who returned to France from Reunion last weekend: Passport and customs both ways, just like going to the States. That doesnt happen between the mainland US and Hawaii. (Incidentally, I would also class links between the UK and the Channel Islands as non-domestic, because there is a customs check coming back.)

At the other end of the argument, Stefan Paetow objects to my classifying the Hawaiian Airlines flight as a domestic service, because of the time it spends over the Pacific  almost half the journey. According to ICAO, the UN regulation of aviation, international airspace begins 12 nautical miles (14 in the imperial measure) from the US shore.

Sorry Simon, but technically you leave the country, enter international airspace, then cross another countrys airspace before you re-enter the country, he writes.

Show me the longest never leaving domestic airspace, then we talk.

The longest flight within Russia is 4,203 miles from Petropavlovsk at the southern end of the Kamchatka Peninsula to Moscow. But if international waters are not to be counted, then it must be excluded. It flies over a patch of the Sea of Okhotsk and (depending on the prevailing winds) a sliver of Arctic Ocean.

Yuzhno Sakhalinsk (on Sakhalin Island north of Japan) to Moscow is excluded for the same reason.

Nicholas Gilroy nominates Vladivostok to Moscow as the longest domestic flight that remains over national territory  and, having made the trip, I concur.

The most direct route from the Russian far east city would cross into Chinese airspace within minutes of take off, and would fly over the Peoples Republic for over an hour. But instead Aeroflot initially follows the route of the worlds longest railway, the Trans-Siberian, which also happens to run from Vladivostok to Moscow.

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The thrice-daily flight spends the first half-hour of the journey flying north-northeast (getting further away from the Russian capital, as a dog-leg to avoid Chinese airspace). The official distance is 3,986 miles, but the reality is hundreds of miles longer  with an average flight time of eight and a half hours on the Boeing 777s and Airbus A330s used for the link.

To round off the discussion: one more category that may bring yet more heckles. Longest domestic flight using a narrow-bodied aircraft? I claim victory for Ural Airlines flight 366  from Vladivostok via the Siberian cities of Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg to St Petersburg.

You depart onboard an Airbus A320 at 10.55am, arriving four hours later at Irkutsk, where some lucky passengers get off and the plane refuels for the next four-hour hop to Yekaterinburg, the last city before the Urals. One more giant leap, taking three hours, and you are in St Petersburg. The overall journey time: 14 hours 20 minutes, far longer than the scheduled duration of the Boston-Honolulu trip that started this discussion.
I was a protester in Cairos Tahrir square in 2011, and so I have been following the Sudanese and Algerian uprisings with a ringing note of caution. I know exactly what might go wrong in the coming days.

There is a risk of miscalculation driven by overconfidence. The protestors managed to control the public space in their millions across Algiers and Khartoum, but now the political activists and affiliated politicians are becoming aware of their limited resources. How should they seek to run the countrys institutions?

The Sudanese and Algerians  unlike us Egyptians eight years ago  seem to be more clued up. They understand that although the military generals must be involved, the essence of their intervention is to defend all sorts of long-accumulated power put together during their former masters time in office.

This should be enough to put an end to any potential romantic, quixotic and unrealistic perceptions that the military might intend to deliver to the crowds their dreamed-of, rosy, democratic future.

The history of Arab uprisings has been both stupid and brutal  apart from when the generals stood aside. Putting the military in charge of the transitional period after a popular uprising means making the nation hostage to the soldiers will and one-eyed notion of patriotism. After a while, whoever opposes the militarys interests will soon be labelled unpatriotic.

Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Show all 20 1 /20 Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum to demand that President Omar al-Bashir step down Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Alaa Salah leads the protest against President Omar al-Bashir Lana Haroun/Twitter Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters run from tear gas deployed by security forces as they take part in a demonstration to demand the departure of the Sudanese government EPA Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 Sudan Congress Party Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 10 Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Alaa Salah, a Sudanese woman propelled to internet fame earlier this week after clips went viral of her leading powerful protest chants against President Omar al-Bashir, addresses protesters outside of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters march on the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters pray as they rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters chant slogans as they march in protest against President Omar al-Bashir Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters climb onto a military vehicle beside soldiers during protests in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Security forces deploy tear gas to disperse protesters against the Sudanese government Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters rally outside the military headquarters in Khartoum on April 8 AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A wounded protester rests during a demonstration in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A Sudanese protester shows bullet cartridges as protesters gather in Khartoum AFP/Getty Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Protesters march on the military headquarters in Khartoum Sudan Congress Party Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan Sudanese protesters march on the defence ministry in Khartoum to demand that President Omar al-Bashir step down Reuters Military HQ occupied by anti-government protesters in Sudan A Sudanese protester picks up waste during a demonstration in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum AFP/Getty

Sudan seems to be more at risk of following the fate of Egypt, where the army pushed Hosni Mubarak aside following the 2011 mass protests and led the country into a very messy transition and the bloodiest point in Egypts modern history. The generals would later create an unprecedented form of authoritarianism and whip away any hope for change.

The Egyptian uprising highlighted an underlying democratic aspiration among Arab nations, but after a number of setbacks, the Egyptian military became the real inspiration for all Arab generals. They have offered a blueprint for how to contain a powerful uprising and maintain power.

In Algeria, General Ahmed Gaid Salah has stuck to the constitution and rule of law in paving the way for a limited change within the regimes ranks. The Sudanese generals meanwhile, have torn the 2005 constitution apart, announced a state of emergency, curfew and formed a military council to simply replace President Omar al-Bashir, whom they arrested.

It is true that in Arab republics, people have been conditioned to value the generals position within the ruling elite. For many, the military is not just the fighting force, but also the supreme leader (even above the president, elected or not) who will guide the nation in times of despair. Both Sudan and Algeria will not descend into Syria-like chaos simply because the generals will do what they are there for. But their role must stop just there, and must not go any further.

Removing Abdelaziz Bouteflika and al-Bashir from power is not the end, it is the end of the beginning. Algerians will have a long battle ahead to stop already looming attempts by Bouteflikas men from overseeing a change-of-names-only operation. The Sudanese people will have to fight the militarys violent and incompetent vision for their own future.

There is hope in the fact that protesters in Algeria and Sudan proved that Arabs are not intimidated by the experience in Syria and Yemen, by which dictators elsewhere in the region stunt the people to head off the threat of protests. Algeria and Sudan have again opened Pandoras box, and triggered what might be a second wave of sweeping change around the Middle East.

People across the region are watching events in Sudan and Algeria closely. They are no longer distracted by Irans hostility (which has been used as propaganda by Gulf monarchies). The mood in the Middle East is once again for change, and dictators should be worried.

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And in that there is a chance that the Middle Easts fate might not be determined by the fight Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are willing to pick with Iran. Instead, perhaps it will be drawn by the success or failure of Sudan and Algerias near future. For the first time the Middle Easts destiny is in the hands of countries which are not part of the classic central sphere of the Arab club.

Both countries have a genuine chance of a complete transformation, but it is still the military maths in the equation that will set the rules for the future.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it, George Orwell once said. The Arab world so far proved him right. Lets hope the Sudanese and Algerians will show the opposite to be true.
For those who felt that one Rees-Mogg in public life was ample, the arrival of the even more Eurosceptic Annunziata may come as something of an unwelcome surprise.

Sister to the more familiar Jacob, Ms Rees-Mogg seems a marginally more with it character than her fogeyish sibling.

She is one of the exciting candidates being fielded by Nigel Farages freshly launched Brexit Party in the European elections. The nation looks forward to making her acquaintance, another intriguing cast member in the Brexit soap opera.

The arrival of the Brexit Party is much anticipated, and its agenda hardly needs spelling out. Mr Farage believes that Brexit has been betrayed, and he has returned to frontline politics to save it.

Brexit, after all, is Mr Farages baby, whether we like it or not. More than any of the other wizards of Leave, Mr Farage was the one who, with Ukip, spent years campaigning, seemingly hopelessly, to win an In/Out referendum on the EU.

Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Nigel Farage speaks at the launch of his new Brexit Party's campaign for the European elections Reuters Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Brexit Party candidate Annunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, speaks at the launch AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures A supporter waits for Farage to speak AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Supporters wait for Farage to speak AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Farage's socks Reuters Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Farage and prospective candidate Annunziata Rees-Mogg wait at the launch AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Supporters listen as Farage speaks AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Free T-shirts for all attendees AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures Posters on the seats for supporters of the Brexit Party AFP/Getty Farage launches his new Brexit Party: in pictures A safety sign is pictured AFP/Getty

An accomplished campaigner, Mr Farage was able to scoop the protest vote that might usually have gone to the Liberal Democrats when Nick Clegg led his party into coalition with the Conservatives, after 2010. People were being pummelled by austerity and the Great Recession; bewildered by the banking crisis and the unending troubles of the euro and the Greek economy; worried about migration.

Mr Farage, brilliantly  in purely technical terms  capitalised on such discontents to huge effect. He won the 2014 elections to the European parliament, after all. Fear of what he was about to inflict on the Tory base at the coming general election then panicked David Cameron sufficiently into promising the EU referendum. His unexpected overall majority at the 2015 general election removed the hope that the Liberal Democrats might conveniently veto it for him. The rest of the story is painfully well known.

So, Mr Farage can claim paternity of Brexit. He was arguing the toss about the CAP and sovereignty when Boris Johnson was styling himself as a Europhile mayor of London. Mr Farage was insulting EU officials in the European parliament while Michael Gove was studiously following his leaders advice to stop banging on about Europe. Theresa May was a famously reluctant Remainer at the 2016 referendum, while Mr Farage and his self-styled bad boys of Brexit were pulling any and every stunt to win the vote. Against his own expectations, Mr Farage triumphed.

Mr Farage and the Brexit Party should not therefore be underestimated as a political force. Mr Farage can still argue his case with a passion that beggars belief, but seems sincere. He apparently genuinely believes that a no-deal Brexit is the best option for the UK, and that such a move will lead to a golden age of peace and prosperity. Every one of the practical obstacles that confronted Ms May is dismissed as treachery, fiction or project fear. The Brexit unicorn is still being ridden by Mr Farage around the country, and is still attracting some fans.

Even so, the exhalation many feel about Brexit is morphing into a realisation that Brexit simply hasnt worked, and is hardly worth persevering with. It is certainly not worth risking millions of jobs to go through the whole process again under, say, a government led by Boris Johnson.

Mr Farage at least has the honesty to campaign in his own right in his own party. Others of his type have been busily infiltrating the Conservatives. Arron Banks, a long-time ally of Mr Farage, likes to think of the blukip movement as the SOE of British politics behind Vichy Tory lines blowing up their railways and going after MPs with deselections. With 25,000 members of Leave.eu behind enemy lines. Very happy to be under estimated.

The Eurosceptics, in other words, have not gone away, and are capable of making trouble for the other parties, one way or another.

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And yet, in truth, the stock of the Brexit Party and the rump of Ukip is devalued by the very disaster of Brexit. It is now a demonstrably failed project, whatever Mr Farage might pretend.

The Leave groups may prosper to the extent that they will, as ever, attract a protest vote, and Mr Farage will be able to do his turns in the chambers in Strasbourg and Brussels.

But, for now at least, the momentum seems to have drained away from Brexit. The Brexit partys over.
It is as shocking now as it was when it was first made public.

Footage taken by two US AH-64 Apache helicopters shows them attacking buildings in Baghdad, and then closing in a group of people. The people are not shooting, they are not even armed, though the US airmen claim they are. Two of them are journalists. Several are children.

When the Americans are given permission to attack, they respond with excitement. Light em all up.

The video shows the ghostly silhouette of someone running. Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards, says one airman. Somebody points out there is child who appears to have been injured. Well its their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.

The recording, filmed in July 2007 as the insurgency against the US and UK invasion of Iraq gathered pace, was many peoples first introduction to Wikileaks. The footage was obtained by army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, who  sickened at what was happening in the name of her country  leaked it to Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange.

At least a dozen people, including Reuters staff Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh, were killed in an incident the Pentagon claimed was justified.

If those killings were lawful under the rules of engagement, then the rules of engagement are wrong, deeply wrong, Assange said when Wikileaks released the video in 2010.

Key moments for Julian Assange Show all 9 1 /9 Key moments for Julian Assange Key moments for Julian Assange The situation today Assange was arrested after Metropolitan Police officers were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy on April 11 2019. How did it come to this? Ruptly TV Key moments for Julian Assange The break Assange shows the front page of the Guardian on July 26 2010, the day that they broke the story of the thousands of military files leaked by WikiLeaks AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Wanted A warrant for Assange's arrest was issued in August 2010 for counts of rape and molestation in Sweden AFP/Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Ruling The UK's Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to face trial Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Sanctuary Following the ruling, Assange was given asylum by the Ecuadorian governement over fears that his human rights would be violated if he were extradited, he has since remained in the embassy in London Getty Key moments for Julian Assange A friend in Pam Friend Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Assange at the embassy in October 2016. She has since spoken against his arrest Getty Key moments for Julian Assange Arbitrarily detained A UN panel found in 2016 that Assange had been arbitrarily detained and that he had not been able to claim his full right to asylum. It urged Sweden to withdraw the charges against him Getty Key moments for Julian Assange The cat ultimatum Last year, the Ecuadorian embassy threatened to revoke Assange's internet access unless he stopped making political statements online and started taking better care of James, his pet cat. Assange accused Ecuador of violating his rights Reuters Key moments for Julian Assange Arrest Assange was arrested on April 11 2019. Ecuador revoked his asylum status and invited the Metropolitan Police in to the embassy to arrest him. Reuters

Manning served seven years for leaking the video, much of that time spent in miserable solitary confinement. On Thursday, Assange was arrested at the Embassy of Ecuador in London, where he spent seven years having claimed political asylum.

He was detained by the UK government at the request of the US, who has charged him with conspiring with Manning. If extradited and convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.

Nobody need be an admirer of the 47-year-old Assange to be deeply disturbed by what played out on the streets of Knightsbridge, or disgusted by the role of the British government. If a person can be arrested for exposing what were very likely war crimes, what does it say about us as a society that we have allowed it to happen?

As Ewen MacAskill, defence and security correspondent of the Guardian, which has had a love-hate relationship with Assange, tweeted: Terrible precedent if journalist/publisher ends up in US jail for Iraq war logs and state department cables.

If Assange had only published what became known as the Collateral Murder footage, he would have been one of our eras most important whistleblowers. But he also provided more  cables from the US state department, and files relating to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Much of the material was published by newspapers around the world, which makes it harder to understand the glee with which many reporters appeared to react to news of Assanges arrest. In truth, mockery over his situation has been a constant theme of coverage of the Australian.

It is deeply wrong that a proper investigation was not carried out into allegations of sexual assault levelled at Assange by two Swedish women.

He declined to travel to Sweden amid fears he could be detained on behalf of the US, something that now appears less fanciful than it did at the time. Swedish investigators could have travelled to London. On Thursday, authorities in Stockholm revealed they had been asked to reopen the case. That is a very good thing.

Supporters of Assange told me last year they feared the US was determined to get him after Wikileaks 2017 release of Vault 7, which consists of thousands of files on CIA spying. A series of US officials subsequently said they viewed Wikileaks as a threat, among them Mike Pompeo who termed Wikileaks a hostile non-state intelligence service. Jeff Sessions said arresting Assange was a priority.

 WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson says Julian Assange's arrest is a 'dark day for journalism'

It seems the US was provided with this opportunity after Lenin Moreno was elected president of Ecuador in May 2017. He was less disposed to Assange than his predecessor, Rafael Correa.

The US played on this, seeking to develop closer military and diplomatic ties with the South American nation, a country which had long been wary of Washington.

The March 2018 decision to cut off Assanges internet connection came a day after a high-level US military visit to Ecuador. Last summer, Mike Pence became the first US vice president to visit Ecuador since 1987. He and Moreno specifically discussed Assange.

Assange may be a narcissist. He may have put people in danger by refusing to redact sensitive information. He may have helped Trump get elected, and he must be made to answer the allegations of sexual assault against him.

Yet those things must not cloud our view of what took place today, however difficult it is to place them aside.

A clear attack on the freedom of the press, on the freedom of whistleblowers to publish damaging information about powerful institutions, was carried out on the streets of London. And we all stood by and did nothing.
The British government shelved no-deal Brexit plans "with immediate effect" yesterday as Theresa May faced mounting pressure from Cabinet ministers, Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP to name a date for her departure.

Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary, told the civil service to "wind down" worst-case scenario no-deal planning after the European Union imposed a further six-month Brexit delay.

Crispin Blunt, a Eurosceptic Tory MP, said that the end of no-deal planning represented a "complete betrayal" of the referendum and described the move as a "dereliction of duty".

In the Commons yesterday, senior Eurosceptic Tory MPs urged the prime minister to quit amid mounting concern that Britain will have to participate in the May European elections.

The prime minister was confronted by MPs hours after returning from Brussels where she was forced by EU leaders to accept a Brexit extension until October 31. The DUP also threatened to withdraw support. Sammy Wilson, its Brexit spokesman, said continuing DUP support was not a "given" as the two-year confidence and supply agreement with the Tories came to an end.

Mrs May blamed the extension on MPs for refusing to support her deal as she told the Commons to use the 12-day Easter break as an opportunity to "reflect on the decisions that will be made swiftly on our return". She is expected to go on holiday herself next week.

Details of no-deal planning winding down emerged in an email from a senior civil servant obtained by Sky News. It said: "In common with the rest of government, we have stood down our no-deal operational planning... the objective is to ensure we wind down in a careful, considered and orderly way."

The prime minister has repeatedly suggested a no-deal Brexit is off the table, as it has been rejected by MPs. She appeared to pin her hopes of breaking the deadlock on talks with Labour and held a 10-minute meeting with Jeremy Corbyn shortly before Parliament broke for recess. A Labour spokesman said the talks would continue, but Downing Street warned talks with Labour to end the Brexit deadlock will not continue "for the sake of it".

Mrs May acknowledged that reaching agreement in talks with Labour "will not be easy" as it would require compromise on both sides, but said that it was in the "national interest" that they should try.

"This is not the normal way of British politics - and it is uncomfortable for many in both the government and opposition parties," she said.

Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would continue to engage "constructively" in the negotiations which he described as "serious, detailed and ongoing", but warned ministers would have to compromise if they were to succeed.

He hit out at what he said was an apparent attempt by International Trade Secretary Liam Fox to "scupper" the talks by trying to rule out a customs union - a key Labour demand.

Mrs May, however, suggested the two sides were not as far apart on the issue as was sometimes claimed.

"I think there is actually more agreement in relation to a customs union than is often given credit for when different language is used," she said.

During the debate in the Commons, Nigel Dodds, the DUP's Westminster leader, warned that his party would block any attempt to extend the current parliamentary session, due to finish in June. The Tories will rely on the DUP to prop them up to win a Commons vote approving the queen's speech. Failure to secure their support could collapse the government.

The DUP is increasingly concerned that Mrs May will opt to extend the current two-year session because of a dearth of domestic legislation and the risk it could lead to a general election.

Meanwhile, International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde said yesterday that a six-month delay of Britain's exit from the European Union avoids the "terrible outcome" of a "no-deal" Brexit that would further pressure a slowing global economy.

But Ms Lagarde said the arrangement would prolong uncertainty and would not resolve the issues between Britain and the EU.
For Peter and Jenny Young, diversification has always been a key factor in growing their business.

In 2004, a few years after taking over the family farm, they had a dairy herd of 65 cows farming 71.6ha of land, including 12ha of tillage.

They began to look at options for the future but concentrated on keeping costs down, out-wintering all cows on kale and Italian ryegrass.

From 2003 to 2006 they followed a once-a-day (OAD) milking programme to reduce the labour involved. "The OAD system is a great system and it is worth looking at," said Peter, with growing interest in the programme throughout the country.

For the farm, organic was an opportunity to increase production as Glenisk had spare capacity so they were not hampered by quotas.

It was 2004 when they began thinking about converting to organic before taking the leap in 2006. "Once you are in, you have to play by the rules; to get there, you have to make sure you are ready for them. We made a lot of silage, we made sure our Ps and Ks were up to date, our lime was good. So we basically got ourselves ready over two years to go into organic," he said.

Expand Close Peter Young talks to the group during Teagasc Organic Dairy Farm Walk. Photo Roger Jones. / Facebook

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Whatsapp Peter Young talks to the group during Teagasc Organic Dairy Farm Walk. Photo Roger Jones.

They moved from 50 to 100 cows and went into winter milk as it was a requirement for their supply to Glenisk. "We calved 20 or 25 cows, it was a token gesture of winter milk," he said, adding that they applied for grants for a milking parlour and roadways.

Now they have grown the total farming area to 107.5ha, with a spring calving herd of 170 cows and heifers, with oats also grown for the organic porridge market.

They bought in around 700-800 straw bales last year, which was another way of boosting Ps and Ks.

Lower stocking rate

"The market is the biggest challenge in organics, while management is also a challenge," he said. "You don't have the fertiliser bag, but you have a lower stocking rate, a lower output. You won't grow grass like a conventional farmer, you'll grow about 8-9t. We have access to dairy sludge.

"With dairying in particular, you are selling a lot of Ps and Ks out the farm gate," he added.

The farm is not driven by milk yields, as that would mean feeding more meal, with an organic barley, peas and beans mix coming in at 520/t last year. Last year, around 270kg was fed, normally it is in the region of 200kg.

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Whatsapp Jenny Young checks out the new calves. Photo Roger Jones.

After they exited winter milk in 2015, around 45pc of their pool went organic and the rest conventional. Last year, around 78pc went into organics. "You do need a 20pc premium on organic milk versus conventional milk over time to justify it," he said, with the average organic price working out at 42c/l last year.

Peter pointed out the Little Milk Company feels there is a strong market for organic cheese but there are difficulties in getting it produced.

"Organics, while it is growing, it is still a very small niche. There was potential," he emphasised, looking at the German and French market where a lot of the cheese is sold.

In the past they used a lot of New Zealand Friesian, plus used to use Jersey on heifers for ease of calving. However, a lot of high EBI Friesian bulls have been used in more recent times.

Expand Close On Farm were Joe Metcalfe, James Mc Donald, Peter Young , Tom Fallon. Photo Roger Jones. / Facebook

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Whatsapp On Farm were Joe Metcalfe, James Mc Donald, Peter Young , Tom Fallon. Photo Roger Jones.

New parlour

"We are not looking for extremes, we are looking for good fertility," he said, adding they have been seeking 400kg of milk solids in recent years. "Production is secondary, going in calf is first," he said. "I'm milk recording mainly for SCC rather than protein."

On the morning of their farm walk, they milked the cows through their new 280,000 24-unit parlour.

It is a 20-year investment, pointed out Peter, which they wanted set up to benefit labour and management.

"Too many times I've seen farmers put them in and in two or three years' time they want to add more units or expand it," he said, adding that the unit has capacity to go to 35 units.

"It is about reducing labour and being smart, and that is why the investment is there in the milking parlour," he said, with one person working full-time on the farm, and another part-time.

For the Youngs it is important that the premises, and the milking parlour, is a pleasant place to work for those milking.

Co-ops willing to pay a premium price for organic milk

Organic dairy is a small but growing sector within the Irish dairy industry. Farmers from all sectors travelled from across the country to see one of the highest stocked organic dairy farms in the country in operation on the Young family farm, near Athy, Co Kildare.

Teagasc organic specialist Dan Clavin said interest is growing strongly amongst farmers actively considering entering the organic sector, with a number now currently undergoing the 24-month conversion to organic following the recent Organic Scheme set up by the Department of Agriculture.

"There is a big difference in the market opportunities depending on the crop or the animals you have. There are five organic dairy co-ops who are more than willing to talk to farmers.

"We believe it is a very profitable way of farming," he said.

"It is an opportunity to cut down on labour possibly and supply a growing market."

However, there are challenges for those considering organic dairying. "Early grass is a challenge for nine years out of 10 in organics, this year being the exception. It is about making good use of slurry and white and red clover, which require high levels of management," he said.

The organics expert explained the current market is geared towards winter milk for fresh milk and yoghurts which is a high-cost system. However, demand for milk to manufacture cheese and other products is growing.

He pointed out there were a number of companies buying organic including Glenisk, Aurivo, Arrabawn, The Little Milk Company and The Village Dairy. "Stocking rate might be higher on a conventional farm so you need to get that higher price," he said.

Premium prices are available for organic milk and the winter milk price has been 55-60c/l for five months up to 2018. The summer milk price has ranged from 30 to 44c/l.

"It is possible in the future that there may be opportunities to supply milk into the spring market and that could come from organic baby infant formula," he said.

However, he points out it is a growing sector worldwide but would involve investment at processor level to deal with organic baby milk powder.

Applications

"If farmers can be offered a viable three or five-year contract, that is the main ingredient required for people to supply more spring milk," he said.

"The stocking rates are low so these farmers do need a contract."

There are 1,700 organic farmers, with 1,500 claiming the organic farming payment. A further 225 farmers applied in the last tranche that closed just before Christmas

Teagasc financial advisor James McDonnell advised farmers to look at where they want to be in 10 years' time before turning to organics. He pointed out many conventional dairy farmers have expanded beyond what they are truly capable of coping with.

He said farmers needed to consider that questions were being raised over whether the Nitrates Derogation would be in place into the future, and what the environmental limits would be.
The Irish Farmers Association have called on the Government and EU Commission to compensate beef farmers for Brexit losses which they say run to over 100m.

Despite the UK's exit from the EU set to be pushed back to October, Brexit stockpiles of beef in the UK are said to be weighing on prices on both sides of the Irish sea.

IFA has written to both Minister Creed and Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan outlining the details on the 101m losses.

Beef farmers have gone through a horrendous period of financial losses, mainly as a result of Brexit imposed market uncertainty, changes to the sterling exchange rate and price cuts.

"Some beef farmers are facing financial ruin.

"They cannot afford to carry this magnitude of loss and it is essential that the Government and EU Commission provide a direct support aid package for the farmers concerned.

Joe Healy said this is the real test for the Government and the EU Commission on their promises to support farmers through this most difficult period.

Farmers expect that they will honour the commitments they have made over the last number of months. They must now convert these commitments into real delivery and cover the Brexit losses farmers have already incurred to date.

Meanwhile Ulster Farmers Union president, Ivor Ferguson said it is good news for agriculture that a no deal situation on 12th April has been avoided.

However, he said this pattern of taking the UK to the Brexit cliff edge cannot continue.

"This further extension must be used constructively. The Prime Minister, her Government and the rest of Parliament must put the interests of the country first and agree a way forward for the UK to leave the EU with a deal before 31st October.

The continued uncertainty is damaging our agriculture industry. It is putting tremendous stress on farmers financially and mentally. We need immediate clarity about what our future business and trading relationship with the EU will look like to be able to plan accordingly, he said.
Irish building materials group CRH has hired Bank of America to launch the sale of its European distribution business in a deal valuing the unit at about 2bn including debt, sources familiar with the matter said.

The sale is expected to kick off next month and has already drawn interest from a series of buyout funds including Advent, Lone Star and CVC, the sources said.

Lone Star, which owns Nordic building materials supplier Stark, is also working on a similar deal to buy Saint Gobain's Raab Karcher business which specialises in providing building materials to the German market.

CRH, Bank of America, Lone Star, CVC and Advent declined to comment.

The sources said CRH has been closely monitoring Saint- Gobain's divestiture and was waiting for the auction to enter its final stages before putting its own distribution business on the block as it would appeal to the same bidders.

CRH is due to provide a trading update on April 24, with management possibly announcing plans to offload the unit which operates in Germany, France, Switzerland and the Benelux.

The division has core earnings of 181m and could fetch a valuation of about 2bn, representing a multiple of 11 times its core earnings.

Dublin-based CRH put the entire unit under review last year as part of a plan to streamline its operations and boost growth.

While the whole group had its core earnings up 7pc to 3.3bn last year, the European distribution business was underperforming, with core earnings down 1pc.

One of the sources said CRH needs to find a new owner who could turn around the division ahead of a possible recession that would have painful consequences for the building industry.

CRH has been ruthless in recent years in dumping businesses it did not feel were delivering high enough returns and chasing more attractive ones as it aims to improve its EBITDA margin by 300 basis points by 2021, a target announced a year ago.

CRH boss Albert Manifold said in February that the company had sold 35pc of all businesses it owned when he took over in 2013 and that over half of 2018's record year of profitability was delivered with businesses it acquired over the same period.

In 2017 the Irish firm sold its US distribution business, known as Allied Building Products, to Beacon Roofing Supply for $2.6bn in cash and used the proceeds to fund the 3bn purchase of Ash Grove Cement in 2018.
DUBLIN City University is planning a significant new student accommodation building, with 1,240 bedspaces.

It comes amid a surge in the number of such facilities being built around the capital.

The university is planning to build its new student accommodation unit on its campus, and the project is being progressed as a strategic housing development.

DCU has a student population of more than 17,000. Apart from its main campus in Glasnevin on Dublin's northside, it also incorporates three other institutions in the capital: St Patrick's College, Mater Dei Institute of Education, and the Church of Ireland College of Education.

A large number of student accommodation facilities have been built, or are planned or under construction, in the capital.

"The Dublin student market suffers from a severe structural under-supply of purpose-built student accommodation," noted the European arm of US property giant Starwood Capital recently.

Last year, Starwood committed to an 11.25m loan facility to finance the development of a 127-bedroom student accommodation scheme in Dublin.

Other investors and operators in the student accommodation sector include US real estate group Hines.

The company brands its student accommodation as Aparto.

In 2017, Hines splashed out 37.6m to buy the Montrose student residence beside University College Dublin.

In 2016, it paid 162m for four student accommodation sites that were either completed or under construction. The sites were bought by Hines on behalf of a group of German pension funds.

Last month, AIG Global Real Estate finalised a 46m-plus forward purchase of Lidl Ireland's North Quarter scheme in Ballymun, close to Dublin City University.
The Coffee Lab is a single initiative that ties together North Centrals core values of student-centered learning and purposeful collaboration, college President Troy Hammond said in a statement on the facility. College and coffee go hand-in-hand, and the new Coffee Lab will bring together students and faculty from a wide range of academic programs in business, humanities, science and the arts to explore the impact of coffee. Its a distinctive program with benefits that will extend to the community around us.
GRAFTON Group has acquired Dutch business Polvo for 131m on a debt-free and cash-free basis.

Polvo is one of the top three businesses in the specialist ironmongery, tools and ventilation systems market in the Netherlands. It operates from 51 branches.

Polvo reported revenue of 127.3m and adjusted operating profit of 10.6m last year, while it had gross assets of 64m at the end of 2018.

The purchase will be funded from Grafton's cash resources and loan facilities.

This acquisition increases Grafton's presence in the Netherlands, where it already owns the Isero tools store business. The combined businesses will have revenues in excess of 300m and will trade from 113 branches.

"This acquisition will complement our existing Isero business, increase our exposure to the attractive, fast growing Dutch market and support our strategy of creating a more balanced portfolio of businesses internationally," said Gavin Slark, CEO of Grafton. "Polvo is a long-established high-quality business and brand that gives Grafton a unique opportunity to materially increase its scale and consolidate its market leadership position in the Netherlands."

In Ireland Grafton owns the Woodies DIY chain as well as builders merchanting outlets Chadwicks and Heiton Buckley.
A High Court judge has warned of the consequences of taking bad advice from non-legally qualified persons.

Ms Justice Leonie Reynolds made the remarks when making orders granting a fund-appointed receiver possession of a commercial property at Six Cross Roads in Co Waterford.

The Judge said that parties in the case, who had no lawyers representing them, had been badly advised by persons with no legal qualifications, and would ultimately have to bear the large legal costs of any failed applications.

The action was brought against Paddy Early, Killea, Dunmore East, and Paul Kearney, Islandtarsney, Fenor, both Co Waterford, who are the owners of the property.

The action was also against Eamon O Neill, the Quays Waterford, who the court heard acted as a business consultant for the owners, and against CMD Early Dunmore East Ltd, a company of Roundabout Centre, Six Cross Roads, which it was alleged had an agreement with the owners to occupy the premises. The order for possession was sought by Ken Fennell, who was appointed a receiver over the property. The court was told that Mr Early and Mr Kearney were advanced 2.29m by Ulster Bank in 2008, for which the property was put up as security. The loan fell into arrears in 2011 and Promontoria Aran Ltd acquired the loan in 2015. Mr Fennell was appointed as receiver in 2016.

Mr Fennell claimed he was unable to obtain possession of the Six Crossroads Property and brought proceedings.

The defendants had opposed the application.

The matter was in court and adjourned on a number of previous occasions.

Yesterday, Ms Justice Reynolds, after being satisfied the defendants had no legal defence to the receiver's claim, made orders granting Mr Fennell, represented by Brian Conroy Bl, possession of the premises.

The judge then put a stay of one month on the order to allow the occupants time to find premises and adjourned the matter to a date in May.
Bank of Ireland's Gavin Kelly said the acquisition "strengthens" its portfolio

KBC Bank Ireland has sold its legacy corporate loan portfolio to Bank of Ireland.

The portfolio is valued at roughly 260m.

The sale will have a negligible impact on KBC Groups profit and loss and capital ratio.

Prior to closing of the transaction, KBC Bank Ireland will contact the corporate customers involved to inform them that their loan(s) is/are being transferred, and to confirm that existing legal and regulatory protections continue to remain in place with Bank of Ireland.

Bank of Ireland said the acquisition, which is expected to close in the coming months, was consistent with its plans to grow its lending volumes.

Gavin Kelly, CEO, Retail Ireland, Bank of Ireland, said: "This is a strong portfolio of performing commercial loans and it further strengthens our business banking portfolio."
Housing: The plans for 110 build-to-rent units are being backed by a company controlled by billionaire Paul Coulson, the CEO of Ardagh

A COMPANY linked to Celtic Tiger builder Bernard McNamara has been given the go-ahead for a 40m-plus development on the site of the well-known Swiss Cottage pub in Santry, north Dublin.

The plans for 110 build-to- rent units are being backed by a company controlled by billionaire Paul Coulson, the chief executive of packaging giant Ardagh.

Mr McNamara was involved in the group that paid 412m for the Irish Glass bottle site in Dublin's Ringsend in 2006.

The site was owned by a company controlled by Mr Coulson.

A company called Cinamol has secured permission from An Bord Pleanala for the development in Santry. It made the original application for the scheme at the site on behalf of MB McNamara Construction.

That firm is controlled by Mr McNamara and his family.

It's the latest project for Mr McNamara, who has been steadily expanding his involvement in construction activity again following the downturn. He's now involved in house-building projects in Dublin and Drogheda.

A former Fianna Fail councillor, Mr McNamara was once being billed as one of Ireland's boom-time construction billionaires.

He led a group of investors in the 140m acquisition of Dublin's landmark Shelbourne Hotel in 2004. They spent another 90m refurbishing and extending it. The hotel was sold to US investment firm Kennedy Wilson in 2014.

Mr McNamara went bankrupt in the UK in 2012, with debts of 1.2bn.

He had moved to Britain in 2011 and emerged from that bankruptcy in 2014.

The plans for the site in Santry were opposed by a number of locals.

Among the objectors was Social Democrats TD Roisin Shortall.

She complained about the height and scale of the proposed development, and insisted the design was not sensitive to the existing streetscape or surrounding neighbourhoods.

She claimed that the location for the scheme was fundamentally at odds with the criteria that would allow for such a development in a suitable location.

But An Bord Pleanala said that the scale of the development was acceptable given the requirement for housing and the location of the scheme on a key arterial route into the capital. It attached a number of conditions to the scheme.
Rabobank has agreed the sale of its remaining stock of Irish loans to distressed debt investors Goldman Sachs, CarVal and Cabot for 800m.

It is understood the loans are a mix of residential mortgages, farm loans, business debt and consumer credit, and have been sold at a steep discount.

The face value of whats owed is understood to be around 3bn but had been written down below 800m by the bank itself.

Rabobank bought former State lender ACC Bank in 2002, and largely pulled out of the Irish market after the crash, although it retains a corporate banking operation here under the Rabobank brand and focused on the food industry.

The Dutch lender said it has sold its portfolio of secured Irish loans formerly owned by ACC Loan Management (ACC) to a consortium of Goldman Sachs and CarVal Investors. Its unsecured loan portfolio is being sold to Cabot.

Rabobank said customers will shortly receive letters giving notice of the sale and details of the buyer of their loans, which the bank said is in line with the Central Bank of Irelands Consumer Protection Code.

Customers had been told last October and December of the possibility of a sale in 2019.
A central character of fantasy drama Game Of Thrones admitted suffering sleepless nights ahead of the final series.

Kit Harington plays Jon Snow, who has become one of the most influential figures in the fictional world of Westeros where the HBO programme is set.

Much of the show was shot in Northern Ireland and the eighth series had its UK premiere in Belfast on Friday evening.

Harington said: I am having sleepless nights about the whole thing, I really am.

The last two nights I have slept really badly because I am just a worrier.

I am a real worrier and there is a lot of pressure on this.

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I really hope we have done something that most of the people that follow this show, you cannot please everyone, that people will love.

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So I am nervous, but I am excited for people to see it.

Sophie Turner, who plays the character Sansa Stark, wore a striking white Louis Vuitton gown on the red carpet.

She described saying goodbye to Game Of Thrones, which she has been a central star in for 10 years, as sad but also liberating.

Ive spent 10 years doing it, we have kind of created and really nurtured these characters and now it is time to fly the nest on to other things and leave that chapter of our lives behind, but of course it is sad, she said.

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Carice van Houten, who acted the controversial priestess Melisandre, had been unwell but made her appearance on the red carpet, describing the premiere in Belfast as the most important one.

This is where the hard work was and this feels like a home show, and its with our friends and crew members who are half the show, its amazing what they did, so much hard work, she said.

Responding to a question about a Press Association story which reveals her character had spent the most time nude of all the females on the show, Van Houten said she would be hesitant about doing that much nudity again.

It was before I had my baby, its not my favourite thing in the world, but I think most of the time it helped the scene, and showed that she used her body as a weapon and not as much to do with sexuality, she said.

But if we had to shoot it all over again, Im not sure if I would have been so easy with it.

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Dublin actor Liam Cunningham, who plays the character Davos Seaworth, said the New York premiere last week had been a dry run for coming back to Belfast.

There are lots of cast here and crew we havent seen in a while so this is to say thank you to them for being so good to us, he said.

Im trying to not think about it, (the end of Game Of Thrones), its a bit like I am emigrating in three days time but I dont want to look in my mothers eyes because Im going, there is a bit of that, but Ill do my weeping on my own.

Cunningham hinted the eighth and final season will continue to be as challenging for viewers as the previous seven have been.

Like life, some things dont get resolved, some things do, thats all Im going to tell you, he said.

Crowded red carpet at the Waterfront Hall for the Game of Thrones premiere pic.twitter.com/cdgcQf21Z2  Rebecca Black (@RBlackPA) April 12, 2019

Game Of Thrones has put Northern Irelands scenery on small screens in over 200 countries across the world and has proved a boon for the local tourist industry with scores of bus tours shuttling visitors around many of the filming locations on a daily basis.

The HBO show is estimated to be worth 30 million to the economy in the region, while Tourism NI estimates it brought 120,000 visitors to Northern Ireland in 2016.

The eighth season will be shown in the UK at 2am on Monday April 15 on Sky Atlantic, and repeated at 9pm.
A woman has been jailed for 10 years for trying to murder a civil servant when she was walking home from work in Dublin two years ago.

The judge praised the victim, describing her as brave and "lucky that she is still with us".

Laura Kenna (36), of no fixed abode, was found guilty by a jury last month of attempting to murder Fionnuala Burke on Lower Drumcondra Road in the capital on January 3, 2017, and of assault causing serious harm on the same occasion.

Kenna had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to both counts, but this was rejected at the Central Criminal Court jury on March 5.

The trial heard Ms Burke, who worked for the Department of Social Protection, was walking home when she noticed a woman sitting on a wall outside a house.

As Ms Burke approached, Laura Kenna sprang up and pushed her back onto a grassy area. Kenna didn't say anything but started to stab her.

Ms Burke felt short stabs and could also feel her face being slashed, before she felt a dramatic slash straight across her neck. Kenna then spoke, telling Ms Burke that she'd let her go if she handed over her handbag.

The jury saw photographs of the large, deep cut across Ms Burke's neck. She required surgery and had other injuries to her face and body.

Kenna later admitted to gardai: "I sliced her like you would a goat."

Ms Justice Tara Burns said yesterday Kenna's admissions had been very graphic and had demonstrated an attempt to kill. "This was a shocking incident," she said.

She said it was clear Kenna was suffering from a significant mental health condition at the time, which might have gone untreated for up to six years.

A headline sentence of 17 years in prison was appropriate, said Ms Justice Burns. However, after having regard to mitigating factors, she imposed a 15-year term.

The last five years were suspended on condition she cooperate with a psychiatrist, abide by all treatment regimes and remain drug and alcohol free for the duration.
A Dublin businessman and his wife, who owe more than 1million in mortgage arrears on their family home, have lost their 2million Foxrock, Co Dublin, property which a judge handed back to the Governors and Company of the Bank of Ireland.

Barrister Tomas Keys told Judge Jacqueline Linnane in the Circuit Civil Court that Adrian Blanc, 36 Brighton Avenue, Foxrock, Co Dublin, and his wife, Lucille, owed 1,128,000 in arrears alone on a 2008 mortgage they had taken out over 15 years with ICS Building Society.

Mr Keys, who appeared with Emma Morrison of Whitney Moore solicitors for Bank of Ireland, said the Blancs had borrowed 1.7million from the society when their home was valued at 2.5million and used it to pay off an existing loan. ICS loans had been transferred to the bank in 2014 under the Central Bank Act.

Keys told the court that monthly repayments on the mortgage were 12,561 but nothing had been paid off the loan for three years up until November last year. For the past six months the Blancs had been making monthly payments of only 1,000 and arrears were mounting at the rate of 11,560 a month.

He said there was now an outstanding total debt of 1,764,000 and the Blancs had refused to sell or allow their home to be sold to pay off all or part of the debt and had, at every stage, attempted to inhibit the bank. When applying for costs after Judge Linnane had made an order for possession in favour of the bank, Mr Keys said not one inch has been given by the Blancs.

Mr Keys said that when the Blancs had asked the bank for an alternative repayment arrangement the bank had discovered that one or both of them were in arrears of 932,000 on a portfolio of several properties which had already been re-possessed by financial institutions.

When Mr Keys referred to a 2million judgment handed down against the Blancs in the High Court, their solicitor James Maher said that decision was currently under appeal. He said he could not understand why the court and counsel for the bank were showing such interest in the financial affairs of Mr Blanc when only the actual default in mortgage repayments should be the focus of the court.

Mr Keys said he was not sure if Mr Maher was aware of the significance of his statement considering that the significant default was not in dispute.

Judge Linnane said the banks possession proceedings was issued in September 2016 and since then there had been 12 appearances before either the County Registrar or the Circuit Court.

It was quite clear that when the loan was taken out the Blancs had a very prominent firm of solicitors, ORourke Reid, advising them as well as a mortgage broker and their accountants.

She said she thoroughly agreed with Mr Mahers contention that the courts focus should be on the default of repayments and not on any particular monetary claim not associated with the proceedings.

This was a re-financing loan to repay a debt with another financial institution and one of the conditions of the mortgage was that it was to clear off that debt, Judge Linnane said.

She said it was the default in repayments which entitled the bank to enforce its security by seeking possession of the Foxrock property. The bank wanted to reduce or clear the debt through the sale of the Blancs family home and in order to get the best price it required vacant possession.

It is acknowledged that there has been no payment whatsoever since 4th November 2015. Nothing but nothing has been paid off this loan until the recent 1,000 a month payments, the judge said.

It was quite clear there was undisputed extensive default in the case and quite clear that no alternative repayment agreement could have been entered into. Some of the claims made by Mr Blanc were without merit. The banks papers were in order and it was entitled to an order for possession with costs.

Judge Linnane, in the absence of a plea for a stay to allow the Blancs to find alternative accommodation, agreed with Mr Keys that it would in the normal run of events be some time before the Sheriff would be acting on the court order. Only Mr Blanc and his solicitor appeared in court.
The former chairperson of the Personal Injuries Board, Dorothea Dowling, and her cousin, Grainne O'Flynn, are contesting the alleged last will of their aunt Angela O'Loughlin, the High Court heard.

Ms O'Loughlin died, aged 90, in 2016 and had made another niece, Mary Dwyer and her husband Kenneth Dwyer, the main beneficiaries and executors of a December 2013 will she made.

Ms Dowling and Ms O'Flynn claim their aunt, who lived at Rathdown Park, Terenure, Dublin, had made another will in April 2013, in which the two of them were substantial beneficiaries.

They also claim the December 2013 will was made when their aunt was not of sound mind.

The Dwyers deny their claims and say the aunt was properly managing her affairs. They also have medical opinion supportive of their case.

The Dwyers brought High Court proceedings in 2017 seeking to have the December 2013 will proved, a procedure known as having it admitted to probate, after the defendant cousins entered caveats or warnings over the will.

The case came before Mr Justice Seamus Noonan in relation to applications by both sides seeking disclosure of documents and material necessary for the full hearing of the case.

The material sought by Ms Dowling related to correspondence, diary entries, video footage of the deceased between 2012 and 2014, medical records, bank account and savings/financial investments.

Some of it was provided voluntarily by the Dwyer side but they said no video footage existed and bank information was declined. They said her assets comprised her home, three bank accounts and a small number of prize bonds.

Ms Dowling had discharged her solicitors and represented herself at the discovery hearing. Mr Justice Noonan said cases such as this frequently turn on the opinion of medical experts regarding the capacity of the deceased.

The Dwyers had made it clear to the defendants they had medical opinion to support their case, the judge said.

Ms Dowling's request for documents in relation to the deceased's state of mind appeared to rest upon "Ms Dowling's own interpretation of various documents including medical records", the judge said.

Ms Dowling conceded she was not an independent medical expert but said she had a certain proficiency in deciphering medical records from her extensive litigation experience.

"The fact remains Ms Dowling is not a doctor and is not entitled to give opinion evidence on medical matters pertaining to the deceased's mental health", the judge said.

The case comes back to court next month.
A FORMER senator who kicked and spat at Gardai when they arrested him outside a popular Irish music festival has been handed a three month prison term.

James Heffernan (38), a former Labour senator and General Election 2016 candidate for the Social Democrats, boasted to Gardai that he had "a whole heap of porter, whiskey and gin".

Heffernan was convicted in January of multiple charges arising from his behaviour outside the 2016 Indiependence Festival in Cork.

The Limerick politician had denied a charge of drink driving, two counts of careless driving, three assault charges and one Public Order offence before Fermoy District Court.

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However, he was convicted of drink driving and was disqualified from driving for three years.

Judge Brian Sheridan warned Fermoy District Court that Heffernan seemed to have "a complete blanket denial" over what had happened that day.

The judge said the defendant's behaviour that day was of the "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde" nature.

He said that Heffernan seemed to blame everyone but himself for what had happened.

"It is a very sad situation - my overall impression is a total lack of reality (for the defendant). I think the whole case is denoted by a total denial of the situation."

Judge Sheridan also noted that, in light of the evidence, he would have expected some modicum of remorse from the defendant.

He said it was a very sad case given that Heffernan had shown huge potential in his life and career.

The court was told the teacher and politician had suffered from mental health issues as well as addiction problems.

Judge Sheridan was warned the defendant currently faced "utter destitution" and had "fallen from grace."

His personal life had "fallen off a cliff" and he was struggling to cope.

However, the judge said he felt, given the defendant's attitude to the proceedings, he felt a community service order was unsuitable.

Heffernan, a teacher by profession, was convicted of two common assault charges and one charge of assault causing harm.

He had vehemently denied delivering "a kung fu" kick to a Garda's back while officers were arresting him.

The teacher was arrested by Gardai three times in the space of 24 hours over July 31/August 1 2016.

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The court heard one Garda say that, after being arrested, Heffernan boasted he had "a whole heap of porter, whiskey and gin."

Previous evidence to the court had alleged Heffernan spat in the face of an arresting Garda with the officer later having to undergo precautionary blood tests.

Judge Brian Sheridan ruled in favour of the State following the two-day case and convicted Heffernan on a total of seven charges.

Judge Sheridan noted that Heffernan was stopped while driving with a 100mg blood alcohol level.

He disqualified him from driving for three years and fined him 500.

Judge Sheridan also convicted him of two counts of careless driving.

He imposed a fine of 400 for the two offences.

The judge said he was also convicting Heffernan on the three assault charges - two of common assault and one of assault causing harm.

Judge Sheridan noted a Probation and Welfare Service (PWS) report.

Inspector Tony O'Sullivan previously confirmed that the defendant had no previous convictions.

The former senator denied suggestions he ever spat at officers - and said he simply asked them to leave him alone outside the festival grounds.

Heffernan, identified in court as Seamus O'Heifearnain, asked for recognisances to be fixed in case of appeals.

The charges all related to July 31/August 1 2016 and involved locations at either the Limerick Road and Coolnanave area of Mitchelstown, not far from where the Indiependence music festival was concluding.

Judge Sheridan was told that security staff at the festival made the decision not to allow the defendant back onto the festival grounds.

However, the defendant insisted he was never on the festival grounds.

Gardai intervened when Heffernan was seen kicking security barriers which then fell onto the roadway.

Gardai said they initially asked the defendant's friends to take him away but, when he fell into the barriers, officers were worried he posed a danger to himself and others.

When informed he was being arrested, a Garda said Heffernan fell to the ground and pretended to be unconscious.

Gardai explained they had to physically lift him towards a parked patrol vehicle - with one festival security guard explaining the defendant refused to walk and dragged his feet along the roadway.

Security guard Keith Thompson told the court said he then saw the defendant kicking one garda and spitting at another.

In total, witnesses claimed Heffernan spat or kicked out at three Gardai.

Gardai said the defendant became even more aggressive in Fermoy Garda Station, kicking a garda in the mouth so that he was left bleeding from a cut lip.

He then spat in the face of Detective Garda Jim Fitzpatrick.

The detective, who is now retired, said he had to undergo a HIV test and wait three months for the results to come back all clear.

Judge Sheridan was told by Gardai that, at one point, it required four officers to deal with the defendant.

A few hours later, the defendant was said to be calm and coherent.

Gardai said he apologised to them and, on being released, told them they were all "sound as a trout."

However, Heffernan had to be arrested again a short time later, at 6.10pm on August 1, after being seen walking in a dangerous manner across the busy Fermoy-Mitchelstown road near Fermoy Park.

In respect of the drink driving charge, the court was told Heffernan was stopped by Gardai and taken to Fermoy Garda Station where a 100mg blood alcohol reading was obtained.

Heffernan of Baile na Lyna, Kilfinane, Co Limerick was elected as a

Labour Party senator to the 24th Seanad.

He had unsuccessfully contested the 2007 and 2011 General Elections in Limerick County for the Labour Party.

A graduate of the University of Limerick and a qualified primary school teacher, Mr Heffernan taught at schools in both Ireland and the UK.

He is also a former member of Limerick Co Council.

Mr Heffernan lost the Labour whip after he voted against the Fine Gael-Labour Government over the 2012 Social Welfare Bill.

He contested the 2016 General Election for the Social Democrats but, despite garnering over 3,000 votes, was not elected to the Dail.
With all of the concentration on student achievement, STEM, the art and the social-emotional well-being of our students, this is one more scenario where we have to make a choice of what not to do for our kids in lieu of providing two more days of PE at the elementary level, the school district officials wrote in their letter to Holmes.
A man who deliberately reversed his car into a garda patrol car to avoid arrest has been jailed.

John Langfield (35) drove at 200 km/h on the M7 motorway on a wet March night, weaving in and out between lanes.

The high-speed chase, which began in a housing estate in Kill, Co Kildare, ultimately came to an end when he performed a handbrake turn on the Nangor Road, in Clondalkin, Dublin, struck the same patrol car a second time and mounted a traffic island.

Langfield was arrested at the scene and apologised to gardai in a subsequent interview for his behaviour.

Langfield of O'Hogan Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to two counts of dangerous driving at Rochford Avenue, Kill, and the Nangor Road, Clondalkin, criminal damage of a patrol car and having no insurance on March 7, 2017.

Garda Darren Coller agreed with Marc Thompson BL, defending, that the garda operation that night had been focused on the other man in the car and not Langfield.

The father-of-three has 23 previous convictions, including a five-year suspended sentence for possession of drugs received in September 2009.

Judge Karen O'Connor said she accepted that Langfield was sincere in his remorse and suspended the final 18 months of a three-year prison sentence.

Gda Coller told Ronan Kennedy BL, prosecuting, that he and a colleague spotted two men in a Vauxhall Astra on Rochford Avenue and had turned their patrol car around to follow the vehicle and direct the driver to pull over.

This car and another patrol car boxed in the Astra.

Gda Coller said he was getting out of his car to approach the driver when he saw the reverse lights come on. Langfield reversed the Astra deliberately into the patrol car before the vehicle mounted a grass verge and took off at speed.

Langfield then failed to yield at a mini-roundabout and drove in excess of the 50km/h speed limit, before driving onto the M7 where he reached speeds of 200 km/h.

Gda Coller said Langfield then took an exit off the motorway and was on the Nangor Road when he pulled up his handbrake and attempted to turn the car around. He struck Gda Coller's patrol car a second time and mounted a traffic island.

Gda Coller said 1,400 worth of damage was caused to the patrol car and it was out of service for five days.

Gda Coller accepted a suggestion from Mr Thompson that Langfield apologised continuously for his behaviour and told gardai he would be pleading guilty.

Gda Coller further accepted that Langfield would have been under the influence of his passenger on the night.

Langfield took the stand to apologise again. He said he had 650 in court and he would get a further 750 to compensate for the damage he caused to the patrol car.

I was in a bad place at the time, he said.

Judge O'Connor, having noted Langfield's previous convictions, said he was not new to the system. He has been given a fair few chances in the past, she added.

Mr Thompson said his client had one conviction since his arrest for a public order matter but had otherwise not come to garda attention.

He accepted that Langfield had a bad history but asked the court to take into account the manner in which he had dealt with the offence.
A teenager who "viciously" slashed a Scottish tourist in face and chest with a Stanley knife has been jailed for two years.

Donegal Town Circuit Court heard that Sergee Kelly's victim Brody Williams (25) needed 57 stitches to wounds in his face and 17 stitches to his chest following the attack in Ballyshannon, Co Donegal.

Judge John Aylmer told Kelly (18), of Upper Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, that a suspended jail sentence would "send out the wrong message to young men who have recourse to assault with a weapon".

He added the offence "was far too serious to wholly suspend the sentence" and it was an "unprovoked assault".

The judge imposed a four-year jail sentence on the defendant, with the final two suspended.

Kicked

The judge said Kelly was part of a "gang who battered and kicked Brody Williams after he had rightfully remonstrated with them for anti-social behaviour".

Garda Christopher Sweeney had told the court the youths were smashing glass on the ground underneath the victim's flat at Assaroe Falls at the Rory Gallagher Festival in Ballyshannon when the victim asked them to stop. Mr Williams called down to the youths and seven of them attacked him, including the defendant.

Kelly, who was adopted from Belarus at the age of three, had pleaded guilty to a charge that he assaulted Mr Williams, a Scottish visitor to the Festival on June 2, 2017, causing him serious harm.

His victim suffered horrific injuries, leaving him permanently scarred, the court heard. The defendant was 17 when the offence occurred.

A harrowing victim impact statement gave graphic details of the life-altering injuries Masters graduate Mr Williams suffered. He was not able to come to court, but it was read out in his absence.

"I look and feel like a different person with a scar which doctors were too scared to treat," it read.

"I suffered life changing injuries for no reason or fault of my own and was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"I have a horrible reminder by looking in the mirror after I meet someone."

The statement added the victim suffered alopecia as a result of the stress, weight loss and panic attacks.
THE case against a man accused of nearly 400 counts of child sexual abuse in the midlands has been adjourned at the Central Criminal Court.

The accused (38), who was extradited to Ireland from the US last week, was remanded in custody in his absence today.

He faces a total of 394 charges related to the alleged abuse of two boys over a six-year period in the 2000s.

This morning was to be his first appearance before the Central Criminal Court after he was sent forward for trial from a district court in the midlands last Friday.

However, his barrister told Mr Justice Michael White the accused was not in court and would not be present today.

The judge adjourned the case to April 29, making an order for the man's production in court on the next date.

The man, who cannot be named, is charged with 210 counts of sexual assault, 177 counts of rape, three counts of assault causing harm and one count each of attempted rape, false imprisonment, harassment and criminal damage to property.

At a district court sitting last Friday, Judge Kevin Kilrane refused to grant bail and sent him forward for trial.

Detective Garda Damien McGovern that court sitting he arrested the accused by warrant at Dublin Airport following his extradition from the US.

He was formally charged at a midlands garda station later that morning.

Two books of evidence were served on him and he was sent forward to the circuit court in relation to one of the alleged victims and to the Central Criminal Court on the other.

Det Gda McGovern had objected to bail, citing the nature and seriousness of the charges. He said they carried potential sentences on conviction ranging from five years to life imprisonment.

The man's solicitor Frank Gearty had applied for bail on his behalf, saying the accused was presumed innocent and was prepared to abide by conditions.

The man gave evidence in support of his bail application, confirming that he would agree to conditions if granted bail.
On trial: Patrick Quirke at court with his wife Imelda as the murder trial reaches its closing stages. Photo: Courtpix

The jury in the Tipperary murder trial has been called upon to "use their common sense", relying on pathology, circumstance and the "most extraordinary circumstances" in which the body of Bobby Ryan was found "cocooned" in a run-off pit.

The prosecution has begun its closing speech, with Michael Bowman SC describing the case as "forensically barren", unable to identify the weapon, the location or even the time of Mr Ryan's death.

However, Mr Bowman said the jury would clear away the fog of innuendo and suggestion and arrive at a verdict.

"The human condition can only tolerate so much coincidence before we shake our head and say 'that is not coincidence - that is planned'," Mr Bowman said.

Patrick Quirke (50), of Breanshamore, Co Tipperary, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Bobby Ryan (52), a part-time DJ known as 'Mr Moonlight', on a date between June 3, 2011 and April 2013.

The barrister told the jury that inferences are very important in this case, as they are operating in a "forensically barren landscape".

However, he asked it to bring its critical faculties to bear, since "the human condition can only tolerate so much coincidence before we shake our head and say 'that is not coincidence....that is planned'".

"I want to recalibrate the case," said Mr Bowman, telling the jury: "It may be we have lost somebody in this trial.

"It may be we have lost our focus in terms of what we are doing here."

He said this case is about a man "living a quiet and peaceful and content life in a small village, a man who loved his job, a man who loved music, a man who loved to dance, who loved his girlfriend and who very dearly loved his two children".

"It is about a man who loved life, about a man who was universally loved and liked," Mr Bowman said of Mr Ryan.

"This case is about the fact that Bobby Ryan's life was taken. Who would want to take the life of such a man? To strip him naked of his worldly possessions and his dignity and leave his body to decompose in a sealed chamber on a farm in Fawnagowan?"

Mr Bowman claimed that murder was not Patrick Quirke's "first port of call" in this case, and that he had made "several attempts to scuttle the fledgling relationship between Mary Lowry and Bobby Ryan".

Ms Lowry's world had 'almost come crashing down around her ears' when Mr Quirke went to the Social Services to say Mary had "lost the run of herself in this new relationship, she's neglecting emotionally her own children and something has to be done about this".

The prosecution counsel suggested this was "attempt two" to scuttle the relationship because Mr Quirke knew that Ms Lowry would protect her children at all costs.

"Bobby stands no chance if the HSE gets involved and she has to choose and Mr Quirke knows it," he said.

Mr Bowman told the court that Ms Lowry had bared her soul before the court, with every element of her private life and her most intimate details exposed.

He said she had done this not to extract revenge on Mr Quirke, but to get justice for Bobby Ryan.

He reminded the jury that the discovery of Mr Ryan's body at Fawnagowan was the "single event that drove the family from their home never to return".

Mr Bowman said the initial missing persons search may have been flawed, but said "someone took the time to make sure no forensic trace was left behind".

"Maybe it's the case that whoever did this planned it," he said.

"Maybe the person or persons responsible took the opportunity to plan and execute this in a way that would afford them the comfort and belief they had evaded justice and gotten away with murder."

He described Mr Quirke's finding of Mr Ryan's remains as something staged "from pillar to post".

And he suggested the operation to agitate slurry was problematic, because Mr Quirke "seemed to be well organised" and yet "here he is embarking on a two-man job on his own in his casual clothes with no water in his brand new tanker which he could fill at home or en route from the river which is what everybody else does", he said.

Regarding the computer searches for human decomposition carried out on the Quirke family computer, Mr Bowman said: "It's Mr Quirke sitting at that computer - logic screams it."

Mr Bowman described the evidence of artificial insemination technician Breda O'Dwyer as "clear as a bell", saying she put Mr Quirke in the milking parlour when she's leaving, "not to mind when she's arriving".

The trial continues.
The teenage son of celebrity chef Rachel Allen was remanded to Cork Circuit Criminal Court on signed pleas of guilty to drugs charges involving both cannabis and cocaine at the world-renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School.

Joshua Allen (19), the eldest son of Rachel and Isaac Allen, appeared before Midleton District Court on a total of six charges contrary to the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1977.

Four of the charges involved possession and possession for sale or supply of drugs, namely cannabis and cocaine, at Ballymaloe Cookery School in east Cork on August 30, 2018.

The most serious count involved a charge brought contrary to Section 15(A) of the Misuse of Drugs Act that Allen, at Ballymaloe Cookery School, in Shanagarry, Cork, had possession for sale or supply of a controlled drug, cannabis, with a value over 13,000.

Two charges included possession of cannabis and possession of cannabis for sale or supply at Ballinamona, Shanagarry, on September 5, 2018.

The defendant, who turns 20 in November, currently lives at the Ballinamona address.

He arrived at Midleton District Court shortly before 10.30am flanked by his solicitor, Don Ryan. His parents were not in court.

The defendant, who appeared wearing a smart blue suit and shirt, did not speak during the hearing beyond confirming his identity.

He sat in the main gallery of the Midleton court.

Allen's case was first in the lengthy court list.

"The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has indicated that the matter be dealt with on indictment. The DPP has consented to the matter being sent forward on a signed plea of guilty. That is what is happening," Inspector Tony O'Sullivan said.

Mr Ryan confirmed the pleas to Judge Brian Sheridan.

"That is correct - he is going forward on signed pleas of guilty," he said.

Inspector Sean McCarthy said that, after being cautioned and charged yesterday, the defendant made no reply to gardai.

Judge Sheridan remanded the teen on bail to Cork Circuit Criminal Court on May 8.

Gardai had no objection to a remand on bail, though he will be required to sign on at a Garda station three times each week, surrender his passport and undertake not to apply for any new travel documents.

The defendant must also remain within the jurisdiction and live at Ballinamona, Shanagarry.

The teen left the court immediately after the hearing and was driven away in a 2019-registered silver Land Rover Discovery Sport.

He is the grandson of Darina Allen and the great-grandson of the late Myrtle Allen, founder of the Ballymaloe cookery empire in east Cork.

Allen was arrested last September after the controlled delivery of a parcel with a US postmark to an address in east Cork.

Rachel and Isaac Allen issued a statement at that time, saying they were "absolutely devastated" by what had happened.
Two men who were in joint control of 167kg of explosives found inside a car - enough to make a bomb three quarters as large as the one detonated in Omagh in 1998 - have been jailed for total of fifteen-and-a-half years.

Presiding judge Mr Justice Tony Hunt also told defendant John Brock (46), who has a previous conviction before the Special Criminal Court, that "the time has now come for him to cut this out" and that he could avail of an 18-month sentence reduction if he undertook to dissociate from dissidents.

Mr Justice Hunt said today that the explosives weighed between 23 and 24 stone and "the potential for death, injury and damage" was "very great indeed".

Armed gardai had found four bags of explosives in the boot of the black Skoda Fabia car and 18 expended detonators under the front passenger seat when they stopped the vehicle on the Naas Road three years ago.

John Roche (55) was today sentenced to seven years in prison, while his co-accused John Brock was jailed for eight-and-a-half years.

The two men were found guilty by the non-jury court earlier this month.

Roche, of Bridgefoot Street, Dublin 8 and Brock, with an address at Cushlawn Park, Tallaght, Dublin 24 had both pleaded not guilty to possession of 57kg of homemade explosives, consisting of ammonium nitrate fuel mix, and thirty-eight 2.5kg rolls of Kemegel industrial explosives at Naas Road, Dublin 12, on April 13, 2016.

Sentencing the two defendants this morning, Mr Justice Hunt said both men had possessed these explosives for the purposes of an unlawful organisation and this was an aggravating factor in the case.

However, the judge said that the court could not be satisfied that the men's involvement with the explosives extended beyond their transportation.

Having regard to the gravity of the offence, the judge said it was at the mid-level of the top range and the maximum sentence was 14 years in prison.

The appropriate starting point for this offence was ten years imprisonment, indicated the judge.

Passing sentence on Roche, Mr Justice Hunt said that the two mitigating factors in his case were that he had not contested the prosecution evidence during the trial and he was a man in his mid-fifties with health difficulties.

The court also took into account that he has no previous convictions.

Furthermore, the fact gardai accepted that Roche was not on "garda radar" either before or after this event was important, said the judge.

Sentencing Roche, Mr Justice Hunt said the court would reduce the headline sentence of ten years by three years and impose a sentence of seven years.

Referring to Brock, Mr Justice Hunt said that he did not have an "unblemished record" like his co-accused Roche. Brock was convicted for possessing firearms and ammunition in the Special Criminal Court in 2008 and was sentenced to six years in prison.

The judge said that Brock had approached the trial in the same manner as Roche and was therefore entitled to mitigation. The three-judge panel then sentenced Brock to eight and a half years in prison.

Following this, the court said there was an element of "recidivism" in Brock's case and the court would need some bond or undertaking from him to dissociate with members of dissident organisations if he wanted a further reduction of 18 months off his sentence.

Mr Justice Hunt told Brock's barrister that his client could have time to consider this but said that this was his second conviction for this offence and "it was time to stop".

"He can have eight and a half years or eight and a half years with 18 months suspended. The time has now come for him to cut this out," emphasised the judge.

Following sentencing, the two men gave little reaction before they were led away by prison officers.

Anne-Marie Lawlor SC, prosecuting, asked the court to enter a "nolle prosequi" in respect of IRA membership charges. This means the State will not be proceeding with the prosecution.

Both men were also charged with membership of an unlawful organisation, styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the IRA, on the same date.

Delivering judgment last week, the court found that it was totally incredible that Roche maintained that he knew anything about 167kg of explosives found inside his heavily laden car, including detonators sticking out from the passenger seat.

In relation to Brock who was a front-seat passenger in the car, the court found it was not reasonably possible that he was unaware of the bulky load and the detonators protruding from under his seat.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt said that the facts of the case proved that both men were "in joint control" over the substances found in the car and that they were guilty of having the explosives.
Much-needed doctors are quitting Irish hospitals for abroad because they are fed up with understaffing and lack of respect from senior medics, a damning new report has revealed.

They are leaving to join the health service in the UK and Australia to earn more money, have a better work-life balance and practise without having to do the non-medical tasks expected of them here.

The stark findings were revealed in the Medical Workforce Intelligence Report for 2016 and 2017 from the Medical Council, which regulates the profession.

It found 2,830 doctors left the register over that time. Of the 1,846 who responded to the survey, one in four who were uprooting were leaving consultant posts, once regarded as a job for life.

It comes at a time when hospitals here are struggling to fill up to 500 consultant vacancies as less of these Irish-trained doctors abroad are opting to return home. The report highlights the growing reliance on doctors from abroad to maintain services.

There were 2,714 doctors who enrolled on the medical register for the first time in 2016. Most were educated outside Ireland, were not specialists and came from countries including Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan and Romania as well as the United Kingdom.

For every two hospital consultants, there were three junior doctors.

President of the Medical Council Dr Rita Doyle said the report confirmed the challenge in recruiting and retaining Irish-trained doctors.

"This is leading to an over-reliance on overseas trained doctors, which is escalating as evidenced in this report.

"The cultural challenges within the Irish health system, which are highlighted in the report, also need to be addressed in tandem with an increase of health practitioner supply. Otherwise, retention will remain a growing issue."

The survey said many of those leaving are male doctors under 35 years of age, with worries about limited career progression one of the reasons driving them away.

The report has a number of recommendations, including looking at the most innovative measures used to tackle the same problem in other countries.

Commenting on the report, the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) and Irish Hospital Consultants Association said the 30pc gap in salary between newly recruited consultants and longer-serving colleagues makes Ireland a cold house for specialists.

IMO president Peadar Gilligan said it confirmed not only are Irish doctors leaving in "droves" but "we are now losing doctors who have travelled to Ireland to work here but who don't like what they are experiencing".

Dr Mary Horgan, president of the Royal College of Physicians, warned that "our doctors are among the most highly trained in the world and are being actively recruited by other health systems that offer flexibility, good work-life balance and tolerable work conditions. The Irish health system needs to accept this and step up to the challenge".

Surgeon Kenneth Mealy, who is president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said smaller hospitals were particularly suffering.

This is because jobs for surgeons in these hospitals are not seen as attractive because they require a diverse set of skills, with onerous rosters and limited access to other specialised facilities when required.

He called on the Government to soon deliver the promised three new hospitals concentrating on surgery for waiting-list patients. This would offer skilled surgeons viable career prospects, he added.
Jacinda Ardern embraces a member of the Muslim community following the national remembrance service for the victims of the March 15 mosques attack (New Zealand government/Mark Tantrum/AP)

AN ARMAGH teenager has been charged with making social media death threats to the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Matthew Burns (19), of Dundalk Road, Newtownhamilton, wearing a blue shirt and glasses appeared before Newry Magistrates Court on Friday.

A PSNI detective Constable from the crime cyber unit said he could connect the accused to the charges.

The accuseds parents and sister attended the court.

As the charges were read out, Mr Burns' mother held her hand to her head and closed her eyes.

Ms Ardern recently touched the hearts of the New Zealand people when speaking out after a mass shootings at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.

A Twitter message to the prime minster was said to have been made directly after the terrorist attack.

The court heard that a photo of a gun silencer was sent with the message: Youre next.

The defendant was further charged with making similar threats to the Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn.

The accused was arrested on Thursday and taken to Banbridge PSNI station for questioning.

Two dates of offending are said to have taken place on Twitter and Facebook in December 2018 and March 20, 2019.

During interview Mr Burns stated he had far-right political leanings and had negative sentiments towards minorities, Muslims and the LGBTQ community.

Volumes of similar posts towards minorities were said to be under investigation by the PSNI cyber unit.

An application was made to restrict reporting due to the defendants believed poor mental health and attempts at self harm indicating a suicidal nature.

District judge McGarrity rejected the application due to a lack of medical evidence before the courts.

The defendant was released on 500 bail to his parents custody with a 1000 cash surety with the condition that he has no internet connection and adheres to a curfew.

The magistrate warned Mr Burns: The police are going to be watching you...next time the courts may not be so sympathetic as today.

The case was adjourned to May 8.
As I take an early morning walk through a serene Hyde Park, it dawns on me just how much of London I have yet to explore.

Being a northern girl, I've spent plenty of fun-filled weekends in the capital, but, believe it or not, this is the first time I've walked through Hyde Park, and I am about to embark on my first visit to Kensington Palace.

The purpose of my visit is to preview the two new exhibits set to open on May 24 - the 200th anniversary of Queen Victoria's birth. With Kensington Palace being Victoria's place of birth, it seems an apt location to house these two new exhibits that consider not only her public persona, but also her private life - as a woman, daughter, wife, widow and mother.

Victoria: A Royal Childhood is a new permanent exhibition dedicated to the years Victoria spent at Kensington. In a re-presentation of the rooms occupied by a young Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, the exhibition follows her life from the day she was born through to the day she discovered she was Queen, and subsequently moved to Buckingham Palace.

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Featuring many original items from this era, the collection includes a scrapbook created by the princess' governess, Baroness Lehzen. On public display for the first time, this is a truly special item providing a fascinating insight into their special bond. It contains articles including locks of hair, childhood drawings and personal letters. Interactive displays, original artworks and furniture help to bring to life the rooms that a young princess called home, and where she was moulded into the future monarch.

Victoria: Woman and Crown is a temporary exhibition located in the palace's Pigott Gallery (currently housing Diana: Her Fashion Story). This collection examines the monarch's later years, taking a detailed look at the woman behind the crown, her role as a mother and her years spent mourning her beloved husband, Albert.

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To help illustrate the story, items from the Queen's wardrobe are set to go on display, many for the first time. Alongside her well-known black mourning garments, the curators at Historic Royal Palaces, with support from the Art Fund, have managed to acquire and painstakingly restore a number of original pieces, including a cotton petticoat, a pair of silver boots and a silk and lace cape.

Much of the restoration has been undertaken by an expert team based at Hampton Court Palace, and the results really are a sight to behold. As well as items from Victoria's wardrobe, there are also nods to her close relationship with India (she became Empress of India in 1876), and particularly with the Maharaja Duleep Singh, including one of his diaries and a pair of intricately embroidered slippers.

These two exhibitions are set to be a fitting tribute to one of the UK's most fascinating and influential monarchs.

Where to stay

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Kensington's Baglioni Hotel, situated on the edge of Hyde Park with a beautiful view of Kensington Palace and beyond, is an ideal location for exploring many of London's main tourist attractions.

It is also large enough to offer every guest amenity you could possibly wish for (including an idyllic spa), but is still small enough to feel like a home from home. The Brunello Bar at the Baglioni offers a superb range of naturally low ABV offerings, featuring botanicals and rich floral notes (My rhubarb cocktail was full of flavour yet light, refreshing and exquisitely presented).

The feast for the senses continued in the hotel restaurant where I enjoyed three courses of the finest Italian food, washed down with matching wines. Pumpkin flan, turbot with potatoes, olives and basil sauce, followed by tiramisu, transported me from a cold winter's night in London to a warm summer's evening on the Amalfi coast.

How to do it

Baglioni Hotel London (baglionihotels.com) has rooms available from 349/405 per night based on two adults sharing on a B&B basis, including taxes.

For more on Kensington Palace, visit hrp.org.uk/kensington-palace.
What would happen if one of the campaigners who have been taking to Berlin's streets to protest about rent rises came to Dublin to see how the Irish renters manage?

I am not sure they could cope with the shock.

Our pretend German, let's call her Helga, might have a look online to see what a single tenant of limited means can afford in our capital city.

Here's a swift flavour of what she might find; a two-bed city apartment for 2,650 a month perhaps; or here's one for only 1,050 - a week.

How about a one-bed then; there's a downright shabby but well-located one of those for 1,450 a month? Still too steep? How about subletting a bedroom in a shared house a couple of miles out of town for 1,000?

Meanwhile back in Berlin, where there's mass outrage over rents, an outlay of around 1,000 would even now get Helga a very pleasant renovated apartment measuring around 80 sq m (or a generous two-bed). Rental prices have doubled in Berlin in the past decade.

It was a legendarily cheap place to live at one time, and as many as 85pc of the city's residents rent their homes.

Now Berlin's housing activists are so angry about the rising cost of rental properties they want the city authorities to take back control of nearly 250,000 apartments that are currently in private hands. They want a referendum held to ban big landlords.

They are busily gathering signatures to make this happen.

Their single big enemy is a company called Deutsche Wohnen, which owns a staggering 111,500 apartments in the city (and which, incidentally claims it charges just 560 for an average 60 sq m apartment, which - if true - would qualify it as a heroic champion of cheap housing here).

Paul Alfred Kleinert, an author and translator who has lived in Berlin's fashionable Kreuzberg district for 33 years, told Associated Press last week that entire streets in his neighbourhood had been purchased by Japanese, Norwegian or American consortiums, with predictable outcomes for tenants.

The group wants the city to buy the apartments of any corporation that owns more than 3,000 units, arguing the price should be "determined with due consideration of the interests of the general public". The units would then be used as affordable homes administered by tenants and elected members of the public.

Profits would be put back into maintaining and modernising them, as well as building new housing.

It's hard to overstate how radical such a notion will sound to the average Irish ear. The United Nations has in recent weeks condemned Ireland for allowing multi- national funds to buy up vast swathes of properties and then rent them out at sky-high prices.

We learned this week that big corporations spent more than 1.1bn buying a record 2,923 Irish housing units last year, five times more than in 2017. Partly as a result of activity by so-called cuckoo funds, Irish rents are now predicted to rise by a further 17pc in the next three years.

But despite all of that, how many of us truly want to abandon the rules of the market?

Back in Berlin, there's actually every chance a clampdown on big corporations could ensue.

Residents, after all, already campaigned successfully against development at the empty former Tempelhof airport site (it's now a public park). A poll taken earlier this year found 44pc of Berliners think nationalising large landlords is desirable, while 39pc disagree.

It all reflects the reality that Germany has been a bastion of moderation and sense where rental housing is concerned, with the result that generations of Germans have been able to rent, reliably, in excellent conditions and for decades on end, without the fear of galloping costs or sudden expulsion.

It's been crucial, of course, as more Germans rent than own homes than do citizens of more or less anywhere. But it is food for thought as our own housing ownership rates fall.

The mere fact that practically all Germans can tell you precisely how many square metres they inhabit tells you a lot about how different the attitude is in Germany about housing compared to here.

In fact, all told, the German rental market is a different world of candour and transparency.

Apartments are priced first and foremost according to their dimensions. People approach the business of picking a place to live based on a careful and candid assessment of the value proposition of the plan. There are basic rules and standards about various other things that also affect pricing - does it have a kitchen (many apartments don't as owners assume you'll want to install your own as you'll be there for years)? Does the landlord cover all bills or not? And is the home an old building or a new one?

So landlords don't get to just pluck numbers out of the air when it comes to charging for accommodation; there are accepted rules about what things are worth and everyone knows them. And rents can't be raised during a contract without very good reason.

There's a rule across most of Germany that a new rental contract can't seek rent of more than 10pc of the average cost of renting in the area.

Equally tenants have to pay hefty deposits to move in and they are obliged contractually to take care of their properties. They have to give three months' notice, on average, if they want to move out.

They also have to redecorate apartments before they leave (and, as a result, wherever they move on to, the place will also have been newly painted).

It's against this backdrop that the unfamiliar phenomenon of rapid rental increases plays so poorly in Germany.

It's essentially a breach of a long tradition which has meant long stable tenancies and steady, but unremarkable, yields for landlords.

It has made for a more boring housing market, and it's also less lucrative, but it's one that allows people to live within their means.

No wonder Germans just won't stand for the brave new world of corporate landlords.

Well, good on them. There is sense in what they say.

As we grapple ineffectually with our own housing crisis, we could do worse than keep a beady eye on Berlin.
Bands interested in participating should send an application and a demo recording via a YouTube link or on a CD or flash drive. Entries can be emailed to Fred Gusel at fgusel@napervilleparks.org or mailed to or dropped off for Gusel at the Fort Hill Activity Center, 20 Fort Hill Drive.
The second extension to the Brexit deadline agreed by EU leaders on Wednesday night makes it likely that the UK will never leave the EU.

There are two questions about the new deadline of October 31.

Will the House of Commons vote for a deal by then? The answer to that is probably no. And will the EU allow a further extension after Halloween? The answer to that is probably yes.

The last time Theresa May tried to get her deal through parliament she was 30 votes short of the majority she needed. Since then at least one Conservative MP, Richard Drax, has decided that he was wrong to vote for her deal and says he would not vote for it again. She seems to have given up trying to persuade her Northern Irish partners in the DUP, so she needs at least 31 Labour MPs to support her deal.

However, it is hard to see why it would be in Jeremy Corbyn's interest to give her that support. The talks between the government and the opposition serve a purpose for Mr Corbyn in presenting him as a national leader prepared to engage in dialogue, but he does not want to agree a Brexit deal.

It would upset many Labour Party members and voters if he ended up facilitating Britain's exit from the EU. Even his most ardent supporters would question his aiding a Tory prime minister.

So I don't think the talks will come to anything. The prime minister can try to persuade Labour MPs to support a deal without Mr Corbyn's blessing - which doesn't count for much with many of them - but they have proved resolutely unpersuadable so far.

Two weeks ago, only five Labour MPs (and two former Labour MPs, Ian Austin and Frank Field) voted for the withdrawal agreement.

More Labour MPs might be tempted in the next few weeks by the prospect of cancelling the European Parliament elections, but they are unlikely to be blamed individually by their Leaver constituents if the elections go ahead.

So what else is going to change over the next six months? The Conservatives might have a leadership election, although a spokesperson for Mrs May has made it clear that she does not intend to go unless she gets her deal through.

Her MPs might get rid of her anyway. The rules of the 1922 Committee, which represents backbench Tory MPs, prevent another challenge to her leadership for a year since the last one in December.

But those rules can, of course, be changed by backbench Tory MPs.

Yet if she were to be replaced, presumably by a candidate advocating leaving the EU without a deal, that new prime minister would still be unable to get that proposition through the Commons. And, as Yvette Cooper has shown, the Commons can legislate to frustrate it.

So if by October the UK is still a member of the EU, what then? The other EU leaders, having granted an extension twice, would be most likely to do so again. Emmanuel Macron might huff and puff, but on Wednesday night he was persuaded to go along with the consensus view for a long extension.

The same arguments will apply next time. The EU will not want to be blamed for forcing a no-deal Brexit - not least because of the economic damage that it would do to Ireland, with whom all member states have declared undying solidarity.

They will be sick of the endless arguments about Brexit, but it will be six months since the last series of late-night crisis summits and other problems will have absorbed their attention.

They will put the cause of European unity first and say to themselves, again, that if the British cannot sort out their own political system, they will make a show of strategic tolerance.

And so the British have shown, as the anonymous legal blogger Spinning Hugo has argued, that it may not be possible to leave the EU at all under our current political system.

Both main parties are divided: the Conservatives have their no-dealer wing that won't vote for compromise, and Labour has its pro-EU wing that won't vote for any kind of Brexit. And neither party will vote in sufficient numbers for a Brexit proposed by the other.

I predict that Britain will still be in the EU in 2020. ( Independent News Service)
Cast your mind back six months to last October. Can you remember what was in the news? Probably not. You can be sure Brexit was in there but it seems a long time ago.

A scan back through the front pages shows it was the month when British Prime Minister Theresa May was making a fool of herself by arriving on stage at a rowdy Conservative Party conference to Abba's 'Dancing Queen'.

She was defending her strategy in the EU-UK divorce talks. So not much has changed there.

It was also the month DUP leader Arlene Foster was asked how red her Brexit red lines were.

On the backstop, she replied: "The red line is blood red, it is very red."

Her tune hasn't changed much. This week Ms Foster accused the prime minister of being "weak" and trying to force "people into a cul-de-sac".

Of course, there was other news too. At Leinster House, Denis Naughten resigned as communications minister amid controversy over his dinners with a businessman who is bidding for the National Broadband Plan.

We were weeks away from a decision being taken on the massive scheme that will bring high-speed broadband to all of rural Ireland. Six months on and we are still waiting for the Cabinet to sign the cheque.

Peter Casey was in the headlines on his way to finishing second in the presidential election. This week, he's back in the papers after entering the race for the European Parliament.

And tragically, it was the month when Emma Mhic Mhathuna lost her battle with cervical cancer. That scandal shows no sign of abating.

It all suggests that while the "terms and conditions" have changed over the past six months, we have not really crossed any of these topics off the political agenda.

There are unique reasons for why each of these stories are still running - but the trend suggests six months really isn't a very long time. When it comes to Brexit, the new deadline set for Mrs May to find an orderly way out of the Union for her country seems lengthy on paper.

Yet after the EU Council decided to push 'B-Day' back until Halloween, President Donald Tusk pleaded with the UK: "Please don't waste this time."

He said Britain still had all the options on Brexit available, from approving the stalled divorce deal, to changing its leave strategy to cancelling the departure altogether.

So much time and energy has been squandered with Conservative Party in-fighting. But what makes people think things will be any better when Mrs May tries to woo the Labour Party?

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said yesterday the second Brexit extension in the space of a fortnight represents "not only a diplomatic failure, but is another milestone in the Government's mishandling of the entire Brexit process".

His ultimate goal is to secure a general election, not drag Mrs May back from the cliff. It's difficult to see what incentive he has for giving her an easy way out.

The back and forth between the two parties in the coming weeks is likely to be comparable to what we saw between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail during the confidence and supply talks.

From the time of the election here it took seven weeks for those conversations to reach a successful outcome - in the national interest.

The EU is planning to carry out a review of progress in June at its regular summit - but Brexit will be down the agenda as leaders try to move on.

"June is not a cliff-edge, or a moment to take new decisions, it must be clear," Mr Tusk said.

"June is not for decisions about extension. My intention is even not to discuss, but only to inform member states about the situation."

As part of her bid to secure an extension, Mrs May told her colleagues the talks with Labour are going better than reported in the media.

If that is true, you would expect major progress by the end of June - especially as the prime minister had originally asked for the leave date to be set at the end of that month.

However, as we put Brexit on the backburner for now, it's worth remembering six months is actually a long time.
If Brexit was open to product placement, the makers of Botox would be ideal sponsors. Nothing has accelerated the ageing process like it.

It has lined the most youthful countenances; drilling cavernous circles around once sparkling eyes.

But with trademark optimism and the political world dissolving around her, Theresa May nonetheless sought only a "short delay" from Brussels.

What she got was a compromise; but few believe the six months granted - to sort things out - will be sufficient.

Fewer still feel that a longer delay would have made the desert bloom, given the barren thinking.

If there are any sunny uplands they can be found in the solace a crash-out looks less likely; and we can all stand down from the cliff-edge. For now...

The process has been doubly draining because, with so much time absorbed by it, so little has been spent on anything else.

When asked would six months be enough for the UK to get its act together, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar could only say he hoped so.

And yet it's hard to see how it can be.

Only an election or second referendum can break the deadlock. And according to University College London, the time between parliament deciding to hold another referendum and the vote would be a minimum of 24 weeks. MPs would need to get their act together immediately to stage it. Marshalling a majority within such a short window would be miraculous.

Yet parliament will not allow a no deal. This suggests either a continuing stalemate, or revoking Article 50. The political equivalent of locked-in syndrome.

If the behaviour at Westminster has proven anything, it is there is no need for running to stand still when you can achieve precisely the same end by crawling.

Mrs May's gritty resolve to stick about until Blighty can cut the painter with the EU, once and for all, may be commendable, but it looks less than likely it will be her call.

UK commentators are pretty much unanimous she is now more dodo, than phoenix.

Our own Government will also have to grin and bear it regarding any plans it may have entertained for calling an election.

The ties on the straitjacket of its Confidence and Supply arrangement with Fianna Fail have not loosened. Brexit is as reliable as a black-hole when it comes to bending time or betting on predictable outcomes.

In Brussels, Mrs May is known to have disowned hard-line Tory Eurosceptics. She made clear the United Kingdom was a "serious" country, which would not be distracted by some non-members of her government who were trying to give the "opposite impression".

No one doubts this. The importance of Britain as a powerhouse is not in question. But its ability to behave like one, politically, now is.

The next six months will give us an answer.
Local street artist Omin was invited to contribute to Derry recently to create a mural as part of the 'Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger' exhibition.

The invite came from Urban Villages (UV) Arts, the arts collective behind the Derry Girls mural which has been a huge talking point since it was painted ahead of the second series of the hit comedy show.

The mural trail forms part on an outreach project for' Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger', the acclaimed Famine-art exhibition, on show at Culturlann Ui Chanain, which has travelled from Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. The show has over 50 artworks commemorating the Great Famine.

Dundalk-based Omin travelled to Derry at the end of March to work on what has been his biggest mural to date.

The idea behind the mural trail is that it is inspired by the exhibition .

Omin admitted that it was 'a tough subject for any artist to embark on but on further research I kept getting drawn back to the large Battering Rams used to evict tenants from their homes during that period.'

The result is an eye-catching mural which incorporates Omin's trademark graphics and colour blocks as well as a powerful image recalling the brutality of that period of Irish history.

Omin says he enjoyed the process of creating the mural and paid thanks to the UV arts collective 'for the invitation, hospitality and help over the weekend! There was quite a bit of work to get the wall into shape...really appreciated.'

He also thanked 'all the taxi drivers and Derry natives who interacted and had the craic with us because it was basically painted above the taxi rank! And to Joe for letting me paint his van and incorporate it into the overall piece.'

The murals created in conjunction with the Famine-art exhibition are just the addition to Derry's growing body of street art which has emerged from the traditional political murals and is now becoming an attraction for locals and tourists alike.

Omin will be very much involved in Seek, a new contemporary arts festival, which is set to take place in Dundalk from June 15 to 22.

Organised in conjunction with the BIDS office, the event will see a crew of artists producing three large scale murals in town.

Along with murals which have recently been sponsored by the BIDS Office at Park Street (artist Sean McGuill) and off Clanbrassil St (Thinking Cap Design) and Colin O'Neill's mural at Quay St for the Tidy Towns, it will help put Dundalk on the map of Irish towns and cities with a vibrant street art scene. Belfast, Dublin, Limerick and Waterford have all embraced street art as a way of rejuvenating run down areas to make them more attractive for their own citizens as well as visitors.

Omin will also be showing is work with the North Louth Artists in their annual exhibition in The Basement Gallery which this year runs from May 17 to June 1.
The Dundalk woman who went to live in Islamic State controlled Syria has reportedly denied fighting for ISIS during her time living there.

Lisa Smith, a former member of the 27th Battalion, who went on to work for the Air Corps made a series of claims in the latest interview she gave from the Syrian camp where she is now stranded with her two year old daughter.

In an interview with 'The Mail On Sunday' she spoke of her desire to return to Ireland with her two-year-old daughter, whom she claims was born to a British father while living in IS territory, a man she says died in the last three months.

'For me, I want to go back to my country.' She described her daughter as 'my number one priority now, that's why I want to leave and take her home with me and get her educated. People here are not educated.'

In the interview she added: 'The only thing for me what I can do anyway is just live my life the way I live it, in my own home, with my daughter, and bring my daughter up.'

She went on to say: 'I don't want to cause problems for anyone, I don't want to mix, I'm still me, I'm still like a good neighbour, I'm still a good friend, I'm just still me.'

She also denied holding extremist views, 'I'm not, like, out to kill anyone, I don't believe in suicide attacks.'

When asked if she had actively fought for ISIS, she said 'No, I didn't do anything. I didn't even own a gun. My husband many times said to me, 'you want me to buy you one?' I said no.'

She added: 'I think anyone that knows me, you know in the army or outside the army or anywhere in my life, will know that, they know me, that I wouldn't pick up the weapon and fight and stuff like that.'

'I didn't do it, I didn't own a rifle, I didn't teach them anything.'

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has already indicated that Ms Smith would be permitted to return to Ireland if she wished. But he has said a security assessment would have to be carried out to make sure she is not a threat to anyone in Ireland.

Asked if she should face investigation in Ireland, she replied: 'I don't think I should be tried.'

'If they want to put an investigation on me, I have nothing to hide. The only thing I did was come here and, if that's my crime, like a lot of other people's, for coming here and realising I made a mistake.'
The Conifers sure to attract patrons at a Concert in conjunction with the Millstreet Trad weekend

Topping the bill at a Concert on Saturday night in the Wallis Arms Hotel are the exciting Conifers.

A group rooted in traditional music and song, the young band came together at the University of Limerick two years ago, members are geographically spread across different strongholds of traditional Irish music such as Clare, Donegal and Sliabh Luachra's own Bryan O'Leary is sure to bring his fans.

Bryan is grandson of the famous Johnny O'Leary of Toureencahill and plays Button accordion, joined on stage by Cathal O Currain on Fiddle, Bozouki and vocals; Felix Morgenstern, Bodhran; Conor O'Loughlin, Concertina and Marty Barry on Guitar and Vocals.

Incorporated into the weekend programme are workshops on Saturday and the Millstreet Fleadh Cheoil on Sunday, a long established event, which is a pathway to competing in Cork and Munster Finals and onto the prestigious traditional event of Fleadh Cheoil na hEireann.

"We are very excited to bring together a great line-up of tutors for the workshops as part of this year's Millstreet Trad Festival for what promises to be a hectic traditional weekend", said Chairperson, Claire O'Leary.
When the Office of Public Works (OPW) began making plans for the rejuvenation of Doneraile Court and Park, there was one man they turned to for advice on the direction they should take.

There is perhaps no-one alive more qualified to offer them help than Arthur Montgomery, who for almost 20-years was the curator at Doneraile Court under the auspices of the Irish Georgian Society. Born in England, Arthur moved to Mallow in 1955 and instantly fell under the spell of Doneraile Park and its stately pile.

"My mother was great friends with Lady Doneraile and I just adored the house. I used to cycle from Mallow down to the Park to look for the deer and then go for a cup of tea and a chat with Lady Doneraile. This was also my chance to look around the house and the wonderful items within it," said Arthur.

He explained that after Doneraile Park was sold to the Land Commission in 1969, the house came within a hairs breadth of walled up and forgotten.

"They handed it over to the Forestry Commission, who kept the 400-acre Park that we have today, while the remaining 200-acres outside the Park was set aside for commercial use. It was a good split that made sense," said Arthur.

While he said the House still acted as a magnet for visitors, slates began falling from the roof raising fears of an accident. The idea was subsequently mooted that the roof be removed, the doors and windows cemented up and the House passed onto the Monuments Commission, effectively consigning it to history.

"We were really lucky this did not happen, because there are very few houses like this left that have 400-acres of land surrounding it. The house really is the jewel in the crown of the Park and while this was one of many close shaves it has had over the years, thankfully it is still there today," said Arthur.

In 1976 the Irish Georgian Society came on board and funded a team who for the following 16-years worked to preserve the House. They opened it to the public by appointment and even manage to open a modest tea room in the building.

Arthur, who took up the position of caretaker in 1979, said that were it not for the involvement of the Irish Georgian Society the House would, most likely' not survived.

"Absolutely, it would not have been saved. It is as simple as that," he said.

When he left to work at Clonmeen House in Banteer in 1999, Arthur was not replaced and the House was essentially locked up again and the Park foreman charged with keeping it secure.

Given his long association with Doneraile Park, and in particular his deep emotional attachment to the House, Arthur was the obvious choice as an advisor to the OPW and he was only took happy to be asked to take on the role.

"There was an exciting strategic plan proposed by Duchas for Doneraile Park a number of years ago but that was called off, probably due to finances. We have been waiting and waiting for something else to happen since, so what is happening now and will happen in the future is tremendously exciting," said Arthur.

"I am delighted and deeply honoured to be able to play a role in that. Doneraile Park and Court have a magic of their own that is hard to explain. I think it is just wonderful that so many locals have become involved in the project. There is no doubt but these are exciting times for Doneraile Park and indeed the whole area," he added.
The Mallow Chamber host a breakfast briefing and information seminar for the local business community at the Hibernian Hotel this coming Friday morning from 7.30am.

Chamber president Pat Hayes said the seminar will focus on two important issues, the ongoing Garda backed 'Business Watch' initiative and an update on the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), which came into force last May.

"These are both matters of huge importance to the local business community and it is highly recommended that people attended the meeting," said Mr Hayes.

Keynote speakers on the day will include local community Garda John Fitzgerald who will give an overview of the Business Watch scheme and Philipa Jane Farley, the CEO of Cork-based consultancy ProPrivacy.

Mr Hayes said that crime accounts for a significant cost to our society, is a "serious threat" to economic development and can place a severe burden on local businesses.

"Direct losses from theft, attacks on property and vandalism can place the viability of many businesses at risk, as can the sometimes huge cost of taking preventative measures," said Mr Hayes.

"Most crimes against businesses are opportunist in nature and Business Watch aims to significantly reduced these opportunities. In his presentation, Garda Fitzgerald will speak about effective preventative measures that can be taken to help reduce and prevent crime in Mallow," he added.

Mr Hayes said that Ms Farley, who provides compliance advice and electronic training on data protection and electronic privacy and law matters businesses, will give a brief summary on data protection obligations for SME's.

"She will also give a snapshot of the current data protection landscape and an update on the development of cybersecurity governance in Ireland," he said.

"A member of the North Cork Business Alliance will also be giving a brief outline of what they do and the benefits of being aligned to their organisation," said Mr Hayes. The meeting is open to all members of the local business community and admission will be free.

For more information and to register interest in attending the meeting contact Liz O'Sullivan on 022 55660 or mail info@mallowchamber.ie.
"For too long Patrician Academy students have had to put up with being ignored by this government."

That was the simple but heartfelt message from the Academy's Student Council, which has written to Education Minister Joe McHugh expressing their frustration with the "harsh" conditions at their Mallow campus.

The letter, signed on behalf of the Student Council by its chair, 19-year-old leaving certificate student Eoghan Kenny, outlined how a large section of the school was severely damaged by fire in July 2016.

Following the blaze the school was left with no option but locate students away from the campus, holding lessons in the dressing rooms of the local GAA Complex, in a nearby national school and at the Gilbert Centre.

"In spite of our teachers best efforts, this situation was far from ideal and thankfully, this year, we have returned to the school campus," wrote Eoghan.

However, he pointed out that the prefabricated rooms some students are now working out of are too cold in the winter and, with weather starting to turn, are becoming too hot to work in as summer approaches.

"The prefabricated toilet facilities are rotting away, constantly flooding and are, quite frankly a health hazard and not fit for purpose," read the letter, which also pointed out that during a recent Whole School Evaluation inspectors from the department noted the lack of on-campus facilities.

It went on to point out that the school has had to fund its own gym and astro-turf pitch and cap the number of pupils entering the school due to space restrictions.

Directly addressing Minister McHugh, Eoghan wrote that the for almost three years "not one single block has been laid on the school site, illustrating the lack -lustre response from your Department."

"Do you really think that is good enough? If your son was a student in our school, would you think these sub-standard conditions were an acceptable environment to learn in? As a student body we feel the Government, and your department in particular has neglected our school," wrote student Eoghan.

"As an avid follower of politics, I regularly see you opening school buildings across country and as students we ask ourselves are we not equal to those students? And, if we are equal, why are we being subjected to such harsh conditions?"

The Corkman contacted the Department of Education and Skills in relation to the letter and in reply a spokesperson said the project for Patrician Academy was currently at architectural planning stage and that it was intended a planning application would be lodged with Cork County Council in the coming weeks.

"The school will be delivered under the Department's Design and Build programme and when complete, this project will provide a 500-pupil post primary school, incorporating two classes for children with special educational needs," it read.

However, Eoghan had pre-empted such a reply, writing that "through an email you may try to convince us that you haven't forgotten our school of that planning is underway".

"Until we see actual building progress being made, we cannot and will not, take your word for it," he wrote.

Speaking to The Corkman Eoghan questioned why it had taken so long to set the process of rebuilding the school in train.

"As I said in the letter, for far too long Academy pupils have had to put up with being ignored by this Government and while I myself will never avail of a new building I felt it was important that this situation needed to be highlighted for the sake of the pupils coming up behind my year," said Eoghan.

"As an entire student body, we are genuinely dismayed by the lack of activity, which is why we are pleading that something be done immediately to address the conditions here," he said.

Eoghan said that while it has been suggested in some quarters that students take their issue directly to the capital and march outside the Dail, he felt the correct approach would be to initially write to Minister McHugh suggesting that a department official come and view the conditions first hand.

"While there is now a commitment of sorts from the Department the timetable is at best vague and perhaps if the saw the conditions for themselves it may help speed the process up," said Eoghan.

"While morale is high in the school at the moment, this remains a considerable thorn in our side and can not be allowed to continue into another school year without some tangible movement on it," he added.

School principal Elaine O'Regan said she too had received an email from the Department to the effect that planning permission would be lodged by the end of this month, with a view to going to construction by quarter four of next year.

"There is now at least some progress on the dinner plate," she said. Ms O'Regan said she was not adverse to students making their own case to the Minister.

"We would always encourage all students with good intentions to be vocal," she said.
Brilliant amateur drama talent from North America is on its way to North Kerry, but they won't be acting in keeping with their native land.

No, they will be acting Irish instead, as the annual event that is the Acting Irish International Festival runs in Listowel in 2019 from Wednesday, April 24, next until Saturday 27.

Theatre groups from the Big Apple, Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Calgary will perform plays by Irish playwrights over the four days of the festival - at St John's.

The Festival kicks off with a performance of John B Keane's Moll courtesy of the Gaelic Park Players of Chicago - no pressure bringing it to the hometown! Other plays to feature during the Festival include 'Port Authority' by Conor McPherson, 'Spinning' by Deirdre Kinahan and 'Long Day's Journey into Night' by Eugene O'Neill. All plays will be adjudicated and festival awards will be presented at a special ceremony at Kerry Writers' Museum on Sunday, April 28.

The hosting of the event is a collaborative initiative between St. John's Theatre and Kerry Writers' Museum, with the support of Listowel Alliance and drama groups. "The staging provides a great opportunity to showcase all that Listowel and North Kerry has to offer to an international audience," chairperson Jimmy Deenihan said.
Junior Infants from CBS Primary School who helped Micheal Hayes and Anne Laide to turn the sod on the schools extension on Friday with principal Denis Coleman looking on. Photo by Joe Hanley

CBS is set to undergo a major transformation after Easter when work commences on the construction of a two-storey building containing four new classrooms, a special educational needs unit and administration area.

The project at one of Tralee's best known landmarks will be completed by the summer of 2020 when pupils and teachers entering the new extension can look forward to the most modern teaching and learning environment available.

A follow-up phase of development will see the removal of the prefab classrooms which will be replaced by a new fenced play area at the rear of the school where these classrooms are currently located.

"The safety of our children and staff is our number one priority. The school's original layout is from the 1950s - a time when the majority of children made their way to school on foot or on their bike, without their parents.

The world of 60 years ago was far less complicated and the yard, and school, were readily accessible to all," said Principal Denis Coleman.

The original application for building works began in 2007 but despite a number of delays, the patience of Mr Coleman, the Board of Management, the staff, children and their parents has been rewarded and the much-needed building works finally about to begin in a matter of weeks.
Danny and Johnny Healy Rae's plant hire firm has clinched the tender for the new 2-million Integrated Constructed Wetlands project in Lixnaw, set to begin building in September.

It's a project that will allow for the expansion of a village that is currently stymied by lack of capacity in the local waste water treatment system.

At present, there is capacity for waste from just 300 households, but the new project is expected to provide for capacity of up to 1,200 homes.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan toured the site of the proposed scheme on his Friday visit to Kerry, where he was thanked by a number of party colleagues for the part they say he played in progressing it as a member of cabinet.

"It was Phil Hogan who helped to get the funding approved, he was trying to progress the project for years as minister," one of the chief Fine Gael party members in Kerry and Lixnaw native Frank Quilter, told The Kerryman.

"We were very happy with his visit to Lixnaw and with the news that Johnny Healy Rae is to develop the project. Even though we're on different sides of politics it's good to see it going to a Kerry company who can get it done in the very near future," Frank said.

The contract for the build is expected to be signed shortly.

Mr Quilter added that the maintenance costs of the scheme would be a fraction of existing treatment schemes elsewhere reliant on much heavier infrastructure.

The wetland will consist of four ponds filtering waste water.

"This...Wetland will also feature a walking trail and has been carefully planned to integrate into the natural surrounding landscape," Paul Cremin of Irish Water explained on Friday, thanking the community for its support of the project.

Mr Cremin confirmed the wetlands would benefit from much lower capital and maintenance costs, and come with a projected 'operational' lifespan of up to a century.
There were well-placed celebrations recently for St Mary of the Angels in Beaufort, as the campus was named as one of just two initiatives to receive the maximum 10,000 allocation from the AVIVA Broker Community Fund.

A presentation recently took place at AVIVA's headquarters in Dublin, and Chairperson of St Mary of the Angels Parents and Relatives Group Jack Fitzpatrick was delighted at the recognition. However, the hard work of fundraising for upgrades to the Beaufort facility continue, and Mr Fitzpatrick is calling on cyclists to support St Mary of the Angel's in this year's Ring of Kerry Charity Cycle.

"We were delighted to receive the top award," he told The Kerryman.

"It is also very heartening to see a company of AVIVA's standing recognising Saint Mary of the Angels.

"But our aim is to reach 350,000 to add extra bedrooms to one of our houses; and adding a living room each to our two houses.

"We want to reach our goal this year and make Saint Mary of the Angels fully compliant with HIQA requirements.

"We're one of the main beneficiaries chosen for this year's Ring of Kerry cycle, and we'd be hoping to see people register for us."

The fund-raising was sparked by fears in recent years over a HSE plan to move residents into homes in the community, in line with the 'Time to Move on from Congregated Settings' policy.

Mr Fitzpatrick explained that the Beaufort facility - which currently has 74 residents, with 55 children attending St Francis' Special School - has in the past been guaranteed that residents will not be moved against their will or the will of their families, after a hard-fought campaign.

Gallivan Murphy Hooper Dolan (GMHD) Insurance put St Mary of the Angels forward for consideration, and Fergal Smith of GMHD was delighted that they went on to scoop the top allocation.

"We nominated them because we felt they were a worthwhile cause in our local area," Mr Smith said. "I'm delighted at the recognition AVIVA gave them."

To register for Saint Mary of the Angels in this year's Ring of Kerry Cycle, visit www.ringofkerrycycle.ie.
Listowel's public water supply is the subject of an urgent appeal by Irish Water (IW) this week over the continued presence of pesticides in the River Feale as the agency confirmed more detections in 2018.

The warning comes just two weeks after One detection involved a failure at an unnamed Listowel National School four times in excess of the EU guide limit.

Irish Water is now urgently calling on farmers to take great care when spraying.

Anglers long campaigning for answers on the contamination of the Feale by the pesticide have welcomed the IW appeal.

The FOI request that brought the most recent failures to light was carried out by Brosna/Mountcollins PRO Brendan Danaher, who said: "I welcome Irish Water's appeal this week as it acknowledges there is a problem in the first place when it comes to repeated failures for pesticide on the River Feale and, secondly, that it sets out a course of action. But a lot more work is required to address this problem fully and ensure the Feale and all other precious water courses are free of pesticide contamination," Mr Danaher said.

Irish Water emphasised that the pesticide breaches do not represent a threat to public health, being as they are at trace level. But they say it is 'imperative' that pesticide users take the utmost care in handling and using MCPA.

Irish Water said it detected 'exceedances' for the pesticide MCPA in the Listowel public water supply again in 2018. However, the agency said that there were no exceedances recorded in 2018 in the Brosna/Knocknagoshel and Lyreacrompane public water supplies - where previous failures were recorded.

"While there is no threat to public health, it is imperative that users of pesticides are mindful of best practice when spraying their lands," Irish Water stated.

It said it is now working in partnership with the National Pesticide and Drinking Water Action Group (NPDWAG) to appeal to farmers and other users of pesticides 'to ensure that best practice measures to protect drinking water quality are always followed.'

MCPA is widely used to control rushes on marshy land in farms and forestry. The latest Irish Water warning on the substance comes as the spraying season now gets underway.

"Efforts to reduce the incidence of detections are being coordinated by the NPDWAG which is chaired by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. All of the key stakeholders are represented in this group and include other Government departments and agencies; local authorities; industry representative bodies; farming organisations; water sector organisations; and amenity sector organisations."

Irish Water's Regional Drinking Water Compliance Specialist Deirdre O'Loughlin said: "Providing safe, clean drinking water for all is our first priority. In Ireland, the majority (82 per cent) of drinking water supplies come from surface water sources (water from rivers, lakes and streams). Such supplies are vulnerable to contamination from land and animal run-off."

Chair of the NPDWAG commented Dr Aidan Moody: "Users of pesticides should make sure that they are aware of the best practice measures that should be followed to protect water quality."

Irish Water say a single drop of MCPA is enough to breach drinking water limits as the regulations are so stringent. They urge farmers to read the product carefully before use; to use the right amount; to spray only in dry periods and to comply with all buffer zones, among many other recommendations.
The city of Chicago has filed a lawsuit against Jussie Smollett in a bid to recoup the costs of investigating a racist, anti-gay attack that authorities say was orchestrated by the Empire actor as a publicity stunt.

The 12-page civil lawsuit, filed in Cook County court on Thursday, is the latest volley in a legal battle that shows no signs of abating since Smollett reported that masked men had beaten him up on January 29 in Chicago, shouting slurs and wrapping a rope around his neck.

The citys resolve to take Smollett to civil court follows a surprising decision by prosecutors in March to drop all criminal charges accusing him of staging the incident, saying they believed they could prove the charges but that it was not worth the time and expense.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel denounced the decision as a whitewash of justice, and others criticised the Cook County states attorneys office for not requiring an apology and an admission of guilt from Smollett as a condition for tossing the case.

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The lawsuit comes after Smollett refused a demand that he send the city 130,106 US dollars (99,616) to reimburse Chicago for overtime as police sought to verify his account.

The lawsuit does not include a specific monetary figure, but suggests the amount the city will seek from Smollett will be higher than the 130,000 US dollars.

The complaint lacks the hard-hitting language in the citys letter to Smolletts lawyers earlier this month.

Smollett maintains he has told the truth from the beginning. Reached by phone on Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for his legal team said there was no immediate comment on the lawsuit.

His lawyer Mark Geragos said in a letter to the city last week that claims Smollett made the entire thing up were defamatory, accusing Chicago of trying to harass Smollett and pointing to the dismissal of charges as proof he was innocent.

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Unless the case is settled beforehand, the lawsuit would eventually go before a jury, which would have to decide if the city or Smollett is right.

Under the city code, Chicago could triple the amount the city originally demanded that Smollett pay to more than 390,000 US dollars (300,000). If Smollett refuses to pay after a verdict in the citys favour, his bank accounts could be frozen.

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Smollett admitted no wrongdoing, but agreed to do some community service before charges were dropped. He also agreed to forfeit 10,000 dollars (7,600) in bond money, which the city could use against him in the civil case as an implied admission of guilt.

Evidence sealed in the criminal case could be unsealed in the civil case and be presented at trial. Smollett could also be required to sit for depositions, forcing him for the first time to explain evidence that the city says shows he was lying.

To the citys advantage, the threshold for proof will be lower than in criminal court. The city will not have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt Smollett staged the attack in civil court, only that it is more likely true than not true that he did.

Among the risks for the city is that the civil litigation could end up costing far more in legal bills than it could ever hope to get from Smollett.
Sudan's ruler Omar al-Bashir - who has been in power for 30 years - was removed as president yesterday and arrested by the military.

The coup followed months of on-and-off popular protests that culminated in clashes between his loyalist security branches and the uniformed armed forces.

Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, the country's defence minister and army chief, declared a three-month state of emergency and said the military council would be in power for two years.

The country's airspace would also be closed for 24 hours.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese marched through the capital Khartoum in celebration, chanting anti-Bashir slogans.

Earlier, the country's state broadcaster was seized by the military as protesters gathered at a mass sit-in in front of the armed forces headquarters.

In a strongly worded statement, the main organisation behind the demonstrations, the Sudanese Professionals Association, said the military would reproduce the same "faces and institutions that our great people revolted against".

It urged people to continue the sit-in and to stay on the streets of cities across the country. "Those who destroyed the country and killed the people are seeking to steal every drop of blood and sweat that the Sudanese people poured in their revolution," said its statement.

State news agency Suna reported all political prisoners across the country would be released.

A son of Sudan's main opposition leader said Mr Bashir was under house arrest with Muslim Brotherhood leaders, according to Dubai-based al-Hadath news channel.

Mr Bashir took power in a 1989 coup and is wanted on international charges of genocide for his role in violence against non-Arab minorities in the Darfur region.

He had recently sided with Saudi Arabia, cutting the country's ties with Iran and supplying young men to fight the Saudi and United Arab Emirates' war in Yemen.

At the request of Gulf allies, the administration of US President Donald Trump removed Sudan from its list of sanctioned nations last year.
The Dalai Lama says he feels normal, almost normal after leaving a New Delhi hospital where he was treated for a chest infection.

The 83-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader spoke after he was discharged on Friday. He had been admitted to hospital on Tuesday after leaving Dharamshala to consult with doctors in the capital.

He is likely to return this week to the north Indian hill town that has been his headquarters since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

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Whatsapp The Dalai Lama was admitted to hospital on Tuesday (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)

The Dalai Lama usually spends several months a year travelling the world to teach Buddhism and highlight the Tibetans struggle for greater freedom in China.

But he has cut down on travel in the past year to take care of his health.

China does not recognise the Tibetan government-in-exile and has not held any dialogue with the representatives of the Dalai Lama since 2010. Beijing accuses him of seeking to separate Tibet from China.

The Dalai Lama denies being a separatist and says he merely advocates for substantial autonomy and protection of the regions native Buddhist culture.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen after was arrested by British police outside Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain April 11, 2019. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

An individual alleged to have links to Julian Assange has been arrested while trying to leave Ecuador, officials in the country said.

The man, said to be Swedish software developer Ola Bini, was held at Quito airport as he prepared to board a flight bound for Japan on Thursday.

Ecuadors interior minister Maria Paula Romo said a person had been arrested for allegedly conspiring against the countrys government.

The development emerged as Assange spent his first night in custody after being convicted of breaching bail following a dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had been holed up for seven years.

He is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer which, on conviction, could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, according to the US Department of Justice.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has called on the British Government to oppose any attempt to extradite him.

Ms Romo told CNNs Spanish service: We have information on how WikiLeaks would have intervened in domestic politics.

Today a collaborator close to Julian Assange was arrested for investigative purposes. He has been living in Ecuador and was preparing to travel to Japan.

British software developer Martin Fowler said he was very concerned to hear that my friend and colleague @olabini has been arrested in Ecuador.

WikiLeaks accused Ecuador of acting illegally in terminating Assanges political asylum in violation of international law on Thursday.

The Ecuadorian government had historically been sympathetic to Assanges cause, but a regime change two years ago heralded a less supportive approach.

The countrys ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said that in the time Assange had remained in the embassy he had been disrespectful, continually a problem and interfered in elections, politics and the internal affairs of other countries.

Mr Marchan added: He has said that we were spying on him, he has said we were lying, we were agents of the United States.

However, WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson said Assange had been thrown overboard by Ecuador, adding: I thought it was horrible to treat an individual like that. I thought it was disgraceful the Ecuadorians would go back on their word.

The US accuses Assange of assisting Chelsea Manning, a former US intelligence analyst, in breaking a password that helped her infiltrate Pentagon computers.

Mr Hrafnsson said a Grand Jury investigation included charges which could lead to decades in prison or even the death penalty under the Espionage Act 1917.

He told the Press Association: We believe this indictment presented in the extradition request is only a part of the story  that there will be more later, that will be added on, more charges.

Ecuadors president Lenin Moreno said the UK Government had given him a written assurance that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.

Foreign Office minister Sir Alan Duncan told the Daily Telegraph: We dont extradite anybody to a country where they might face the death penalty without that routine assurance. We restated our policy.

As an Australian citizen, Assange will have the countrys consular assistance available to him but will not get special treatment, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said.

He will get the same treatment as everyone else, he will get the same support as everyone else, he told ABC News.

While Theresa May and a number of ministers welcomed the arrest, Labour leader Mr Corbyn called on the Government to oppose extradition.

He tweeted: The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government.

Assange, with grey hair tied into a pony tail and sporting a long beard, appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court where a judge accused him of behaving like a narcissist and advised him to get over to the US and get on with your life.

He spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he sought political asylum in 2012 when he failed in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations, one of rape and one of molestation.

In May 2017, Swedens top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest on Thursday prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

She told The Times she was surprised and saddened that Mr Assange would be handed over to the US.

For me this was never about anything else than his misconduct against me/women and his refusal to take responsibility for this.

Too bad my case could never be investigated properly, but the arrest will not change this, the case has already been closed.

Prosecutors in Sweden have since confirmed that while the investigation has not been resumed, they are looking into the case.
Thumbs up: Julian Assange gestures to the media from a police vehicle on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates Court in London. Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

He looked like a hermit. His hair was white, long and straggly, as was his beard.

After spending 2,487 days in self-imposed confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, Julian Assange emerged at just after 10am yesterday into the sunlight and on to London's streets.

It was not, however, the triumphal exit he would have envisaged after almost seven years indoors, with only the occasional appearance on the embassy's balcony offering him fresh air.

Instead, Assange, 47 but appearing many years older, was dragged from the building in handcuffs and into a waiting police van.

"The UK must resist," he shouted as he was bundled away, his statement caught on video by a camera operator from Ruptly, a news agency subsidiary of the Russian government-funded news service RT.

Some 45 minutes earlier, police had arrived at the embassy in Hans Crescent, across the road from Harrods, to arrest the WikiLeaks founder.

Jaime Marchan, the ambassador, had invited the police into the building and told them he planned there and then to issue his unwelcome guest with documents showing his asylum status was being revoked with immediate notice.

While officers waited in a side room, the ambassador met with Assange and broke the news. Assange, dressed in a black suit and black shirt, did not take it well.

As police were summoned to make the arrest, Assange made a run for it. He bolted past the officers, attempting to reach the sanctity of his bedroom on a raised ground floor.

He didn't make it.

At Westminster magistrates' court yesterday, a few hours after the arrest, James Hines QC described the ensuing mayhem.

"At 10am, they [officers] had met Mr Assange. The officers tried to introduce themselves to him, intending to execute the arrest warrant, but he barged past them as he tried to return to his private room," he said.

"He resisted arrest, shouting 'This is unlawful' and had to be restrained. Officers were struggling to handcuff him. They received assistance from other officers outside and he was handcuffed, saying, 'This is unlawful I'm not leaving.'"

In the bedlam, Assange grabbed a book by the US essayist Gore Vidal and was clutching it for the cameras as he was taken outside and into the waiting police van.

From the embassy, Assange was driven to a police station in London's West End, assessed by medics and deemed fit to appear in court.

The arrest was announced by the Metropolitan Police, the first of a series of coordinated statements.

Ecuador had had enough of their guest. It didn't aid Assange that in 2017 his backer President Rafael Correa had been voted out of power in a general election and replaced by Lenin Moreno.

In a withering put-down, Mr Moreno said Assange had been "discourteous and aggressive" and his behaviour had made his continued asylum "unsustainable and no longer viable".

"The patience of Ecuador has reached its limit on the behaviour of Mr Assange," Mr Moreno said.

Threatened

He complained Assange had blocked security cameras, mistreated guards and as recently as two days ago had "threatened the government of Ecuador".

Maria Paula Romo, the Ecuadorian interior minister, went further, making claims that suggested Assange had descended into animal-like behaviour after seven years.

"During the government of the former president Rafael Correa, they tolerated things like Mr Assange putting faeces on the walls of the embassy and other types of behaviour of this kind that is far removed from the minimum respect a guest should have in a country which has generously welcomed him," said Ms Romo.

Just as Ecuador was denouncing Assange, the Met explained he had been arrested not only for failing to surrender to bail in 2012 - he was wanted in Sweden on rape charges - but also detained on behalf of the "US authorities" for extradition.

In Sweden, authorities said they had been kept in the dark over the planned arrest. The sex charges were dropped years after he had gone into hiding.

One of Assange's alleged Swedish victims said she feared reprisals.

"Too bad my case could never be investigated properly, but the arrest will not change this, the case has already been closed," she told 'The Times', adding: "I am fine, a bit nervous my family will be threatened again, but OK."

The arrest on behalf of the US took place at the police station at precisely 10.53am. Assange had always spoken of his fears the US government was after him and now it was happening. His detention was about to turn into an almighty political bust-up.

Just before 1pm, Assange was brought before the court.

Outside, his devotees had begun to gather, among them Dame Vivienne Westwood, the fashion designer.

They were incensed that a man they saw as a whistleblower, who had revealed astonishing secrets of America's war on terror, was in British custody. Pamela Anderson, the 'Baywatch' actress and regular visitor to Assange at the embassy, tweeted: "How could you Equador? (Because he exposed you). How could you UK? Of course - you are America's bitch and you need a diversion from your idiotic Brexit bull****."

In court, Mr Hines explained that Assange was accused in the US of conspiring with Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst based in Iraq, to "disclose classified documents".

Manning (31) is in jail in Virginia after refusing to answer question relating to Assange before a grand jury.

As the extradition hearing unfolded, US authorities were making public a previously sealed seven-page indictment in which it was alleged that in 2010 Assange "agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password" for Department of Defense computers.

Assange's barrister Liam Walker said his client was justified in failing to surrender because he knew the extradition attempt was "waiting in the wings".

In a move that incensed District Judge Michael Snow, Mr Walker then called into question the impartiality of Emma Arbuthnot, the chief magistrate of England and Wales, who had overseen a previous hearing.

Laughable

"His assertion that he has not had a fair hearing is laughable and I'm afraid his behaviour is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests," said Judge Snow.

With that, Assange was convicted for failing to surrender to bail while the extradition proceedings will drag on. He was led away and remanded in custody.

Outside court, his lawyer Jennifer Robinson told supporters: "Since 2010 we've warned that Julian Assange would face extradition to the US for his publishing activities. Unfortunately, today we have been proved right."

She added that Assange had asked her to thank his supporters and said: "I told you so." ( Daily Telegraph, London)
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex walk through the walled public Andalusian Gardens which has exotic plants, flowers and fruit trees during a visit on February 25, 2019 in Rabat, Morocco. (Photo by Facundo Arrizabalaga - Pool/Getty Images)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have announced they intend to keep the arrival of their baby secret.

Buckingham Palace released a statement saying Ms Markle and the prince "have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private".

"The duke and duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family," it said.

The announcement comes days after Kensington Palace launched an official Instagram account on behalf of the royal couple, which went onto break the record for the fastest time to gain one million followers.

Royal historian Sarah Gristwood said: "This is further evidence of the duke and duchess's very strong desire to do things their way."

Royal photographer Tim Rooke said he thinks the first time we may see the couple's newborn could be via their new Instagram account. ( Independent News Service)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 13)  Filipinos living abroad will get to cast their ballot earlier, as overseas voting begins Saturday.

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) announced the date earlier this year, adding the period for overseas voting would run from April 13 to May 13.

READ: Dates to remember for the upcoming elections

Speaking to CNN Philippines Friday, Comelec Spokesperson James Jimenez said Filipinos can vote by either go to Philippine Embassies in their countries, or opt to vote by mail

There are 1,822,739 registered Filipino voters overseas, with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia having the most at 326,551.

The United Arab Emirates comes second (226,950) followed by the United States (226,950).

According to Comelec, the 10 most vote-rich countries and territories are:

1. Saudi Arabia - 326,551

2. United Arab Emirates - 319,228

3. United States of America - 226,950

4. Canada - 98,185

5. Kuwait - 96,423

6. Hong Kong - 87,969

7. Singapore - 78,488

8. Japan - 76,166

9. Italy - 62,075

10. Qatar - 45,548

These countries make up almost 78 percent of all registered voters overseas.

The Philippine Embassy in Damascus, Syria, however, will have no elections due to the ongoing civil war in the country.

In a message to CNN Philippines, Jimenez confirmed elections in Iraq and Libya were suspended until further notice.

READ: DOLE: Forced repatriation of OFWs in Libya may happen 'anytime soon'
"If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade," Buttigieg said. "And that's the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if you've got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator."
Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published an analysis on the Catholic Church's clergy sex abuse scandal, blaming it on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and Church laws that protected priests.

The essay immediately raised eyebrows, seeming to interfere with or even contradict Pope Francis's own efforts to confront one of the most critical issues facing the Church.

One Church historian called Benedict's essay "catastrophically irresponsible", because it conflicted with Francis's own efforts to lead the Church out of the sex abuse crisis.

Benedict, in 2013, had said he planned to retire to a lifetime of penance and prayer and would leave Francis to guide the Church.

US Church analysts said the essay, published in the German monthly 'Klerusblatt', was both flawed in content and problematic on universal Church level, exacerbating existing divisions in the Church that have emerged between supporters of Francis and Catholics nostalgic for Benedict's doctrine-minded papacy.

In his introduction, Benedict said both the Vatican secretary of state and Francis had given him permission to publish it.

In the essay, Benedict traced the start of the clergy abuse crisis to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, citing the appearance of sex in films in his native Bavaria.

He also blamed the crisis on failures of moral theology in that era, as well as Church laws that gave undue protection to accused priests.

Benedict wrote that during the 1980s and 1990s, "the right to a defence (for priests) was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible".

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict reformed those laws in 2001 to make it easier to remove priests who abused children.
The high-profile former lawyer for Stormy Daniels, the porn star, has been charged with stealing millions of dollars from his clients "to fund a lavish lifestyle that had no limits".

Michael Avenatti (48) was charged in California with 36 counts of theft, tax avoidance, bank fraud and lying in bankruptcy proceedings.

One of his alleged victims was Geoffrey Johnson, a paraplegic man who won a $4m (3.5m) settlement four years ago, which he has yet largely to receive.

Mr Avenatti is accused of keeping most of the cash and telling his client the court had not yet paid out.

The man's attempts to buy a house were thwarted by Mr Avenatti and the man was cut off from his social security benefits two months ago as a result of the case.

Until last month, Mr Avenatti had only provided $124,000 over 69 payments to Mr Johnson, the indictment said.

Another alleged victim received a $3m settlement, only for Mr Avenatti to take $2.5m of it and buy a private jet. That jet was seized by police on Wednesday.

The charges are separate to his arrest last month in New York for allegedly trying to blackmail Nike for up to $25m. He has pleaded not guilty to those charges. Although Mr Avenatti was due a portion of settlement funds for his work, the charges said he paid only a fraction of the money clients were due in some cases and strung them along as they waited to be paid.

Nicola Hanna, attorney for the central district of California, said at a press conference yesterday that Mr Avenatti, if convicted, faces a 335-year jail term.

"Holding your client's money in trust is one of your highest duties. You do not steal your client's money," he said.

He alleged that Mr Avenatti would steal from his clients to cover up costs from his coffee business, car racing interests, bankruptcy proceedings and loan repayments.

"Money generated from one set of crimes was used to sustain another set of crimes, usually by obtaining settlements with the intent of stringing along claimants," said Mr Hanna.

Mr Avenatti, best known for representing Ms Daniels in lawsuits against US President Donald Trump, said on Twitter yesterday that he will plead not guilty to the California charges. "I look forward to the entire truth being known as opposed to a one-sided version meant to sideline me."
The incident occurred in Santa Fe on April 5. According to a police report, Monet -- whose surname is Monette -- was found inside her car in the parking lot of a liquor store.

"A DWI investigation was initiated due to an odor of alcohol coming from the suspects breath," the report reads. Monet "refused" to engage in a field sobriety test and "resisted deputies as they placed her in handcuffs."

"The suspect refused to submit to a breath test," the report continues.

Inmate details on Jenni Monet (Monette) from the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Facility.

But Monet, who is a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna, is disputing the charges, KRQE reports . She told the television station on Thursday that she was the victim of racial profiling.

"I am one of a majority of people who are victimized by this kind of racial profiling that exists on a daily basis," Monet told KRQE after an appearance at the Institute of American Indian Arts , during which she discussed the "Crisis in Covering Indian Country" in the morning.

Indianz.Com contacted IAIA, which is a tribal college operated by the federal government, on Wednesday after learning of the charges against Monet. No one from the institution returned a voice message or email about the incident.

"Neither was I drinking or driving at the time, and we're confident that the evidence that stands in my favor will vindicate me," Monet told KRQE, which obtained lapel video of the arrest, during which she accused deputies from the Santa Fe Sheriff's Department of racial profiling and police brutality.

According to the station, the video confirms that Monet refused field sobriety tests in the parking lot of the Cliff's liquor store. "I'm not walking any f***ing line for you. You hear me? I am not walking any f***ing line for you," she told the officers, KRQE reported.

As she was being arrested, she yelled at the deputies: "You f***ing fat-fingered f***!" and "You f***ing racist motherf***er. You f***ing white supremacist!" the station reported.

Monet's arraignment took place on Wednesday morning, according to court records , so it didn't interfere with her appearance at IAIA, one which she repeatedly promoted on social media . But her arrest did -- she was unable to attend an event at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on Sunday.

In a post on social media, the MIAC said the event was canceled "due to a personal emergency."

Monet was still in jail as of Sunday afternoon, so she couldn't make the 1pm event. She wasn't released until later in the evening, according to county records.

Today in Santa Fe at the lovely Insitute of American Indian Arts... pic.twitter.com/RmuofSkli4  Jenni Monet (@jennimonet) April 11, 2019

Monet's next court date is May 14, when a pre-trial hearing will take place, according to online records . She is allowed to leave the state but must use a device known as Soberlink, the records state.

Soberlink is a handheld cellular blood alcohol level tester, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

0219005630/Aggravated DUI, resisting evading obstructing an officer/4.5.19 Deputy Assigned: Blaine Lattin Commander Entering: CPL. Jared Mosher Suspect: Jenni Monette 42 Tucson AZ Location: 903 Old Pecos Trail, Santa Fe Deputies were dispatched to Cliff's Liquor Store on reference to a disorderly conduct where deputies made contact with the suspect seated inside her vehicle. A DWI investigation was initiated due to an odor of alcohol coming from the suspects breath. Suspect refused SFST's and resisted deputies as they placed her in handcuffs. The suspect refused to submit to a breath test she was booked.

The Santa Fe Sheriff's Department blotter incident from Monet's arrest follows:

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With the digital medium coming in, the world has become smaller. Netflix and Amazon have brought the finest content together on OTT platforms enriching the experience of the viewers who enjoy interesting pots and turns. But the newest one on the block which has paved way into the Indian market and shook the above is Hotstar. From acquiring the rights of Game of Thrones to getting real time series, Hotstar is exploding with enthralling shows and movies.One such show is Criminal Justice.

Inspired by the British series, the show is about giving justice to criminals who may or may not have committed the crime. The buzz around the Indian version proves Criminal Justice will see many more episodes. But before that, here's taking a look at why this should be your show for this season.

1. Vikrant Massey

The man who stunned you with his performance in Dil Dhadakne Do, Lootera, Mirzapur and A Death In The Gunj is back with another mega show. The series, Criminal Justice, revolves around Vikrant's character who was charged with murder after consuming drugs. The series takes you through his life in jail and how he will get out of the trappings of the legal system if proven innocent.

Vikrant has had a remarkably career growth. From making a debut with Balika Vadhu to a gripping show like Criminal Justice, Vikrant Massey definitely is making us proud with his choices.

2. Pankaj Tripathi

Hotstar/screengrab

Needless to say, the makers have handpicked some of the choicest actors. From one stellar actor to another. Pankaj Tripathi is seen playing the role of a lawyer who tries to help Vikrant Massey. Called as Madhav Mishra, Pankaj Tripathi floors you with his layered performance and powerful dialogues. His ole is the best part of the show.

3. Jackie Shroff

Hotstar/screengrab

For all Jackie dada fans, Bhidu has made a comeback with this extraordinary show. Playing the role of one of the inmates, Jackie is thrilled to be a part of the digital medium. In one of the interviews, Jackie was asked why we should watch Criminal Justice and he replied, 'If my wife, who sleeps early, watched the series at one go, then everyone should watch it. I am sure the suspense element will make viewers stay hooked to the series. Watch the series for the performances and hard work that each one has put.'

Well, it will be a delight to see the show with such underrated spectacular actors in one space.

4. Storyline

The story revolves around a taxi driver who has a one night stand with one of his passengers. When he wakes up the next day, Vikrant Massey witnesses his passenger's dead body next to him. The whole story is nail biting and will keep you wanting for more. Internet has already declared this as one one-go watch show and we can't help but agree.

5. Murder-mystery-drama - A genre we all need

Keeping the best for the last. This is a genre no one has really tapped on. Badla was one such film in Bollywood but Criminal Justice will surprise you in ways more than one. Vikrant Massey gets into the skin of the character. From showing emotional scenes to nudity, there are some portions from the jail that will jolt you up. The show is a perfect potboiler for a weekend binge. Directed by Tigmanshu Dhulia, who has given us cults like Paan Singh Tomar and Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster, the show promises to be one of a kind.

The show is already live on Hotstar and has opened to positive reviews.
2018 was a good year for cinema lovers. The content finally was declared the king and we saw several experimental and good stories, One such story was Shoojit Sircar's October. Starring Banita Sandhu and Varun Dhawan in lead roles, the film revolved around Dan (Dhawan)'s unrequited love and affection for a young woman called Shiuli who slips into coma after meeting an unfortunate accident.

Twitter

More than a year after the release, Film writer Juhi Chaturvedi, revealed the real-life inspiration for the character of Shiuli Iyer in Varun Dhawan-starrer October. She wrote an emotional post, where she shared that her mother was her real life Shiuli.

Twitter

Sharing a picture of her mother, she wrote,

My ma. real life Shiuli. 30 years of her illness: haemorrhage/depression/renal failure/transplnt/memory loss/cancer/coma made me a quasi nephro-onco-neuro-therapst/full time caregiver/writer & humour appreciator. To nt hv medical refrnce in wht I write is tuf bt Ive tried. Next:) pic.twitter.com/vaCotTPnaG  juhi chaturvedi (@writeonj) April 12, 2019

My ma. real life Shiuli. 30 years of her illness: haemorrhage/depression/renal failure/transplnt/memory loss/cancer/coma made me a quasi nephro-onco-neuro-therapst/full time caregiver/writer & humour appreciator. To nt hv medical refrnce in wht I write is tuf bt Ive tried. Next:)

Just to jog your memory a little, she had share similar details with DNA in an interview. She had said,

Twitter

I was in Class 2 or 3 when mom had a haemorrhage, she survived that. Then there was kidney faliure and transplant, cancer.... I almost grew up in hospitals and around doctors. It was like hum hi aadhe doctor khud ban gaye the. I was checking blood pressure when I was in class six. I guess if I wasnt in this profession, I wouldve ended up being a doctor. She passed away after 30 years of suffering, just before Vicky Donor released, but we managed to show it to her at home."

Juhi and Shoojit Sircar have collaborated for several films including Madras Cafe, Vicky Donor, Piku and October.
Dimly-lit jazz clubs playing tunes that seem to haunt you; faceless strangers with secret messages; talking cats, the bitter taste in your mouth after you've smoked too many cigarettes; scotch, neat; and ex-lovers who re-enter your life: the whole surreal, albeit elegant setting is at once overwhelming, like an acid trip, and at once a soothing salve for the soul. That's some Haruki Murakami magic right there.

Just like Murakami's characters, the reader, too, can feel suspended in that thin space between what's real and what's not. Anyone who's made his books their religion, will agree when I say there's a lot of the real Murakami in his protagonists, not that anyone would dare to know him so well or where he even lives. The 'notoriously reclusive' author has joked about 'biting fans who get too close.'

Instagram/graphikh1987 via graphikh.tumblr.com

Without giving too much away, here are nine times you might feel like a character in his novel:

1. Something happened, you can't tell how long back. You find yourself driving miles and miles, almost as if you're trying to escape something. Nah, you don't want to think about it right now. You stop at a diner, get some food in you then call a friend. Yes, they can let you stay in their father's house up in the hills. You're glad. Anything's better than the sleazy motels you've been sleeping in each night. Except the one night you had a chance encounter

2. It's late at night, you're sitting on a slide in the playground and look up at the sky. There are two moons that hang in the night sky. One you see almost every night, but where'd the other one come from. The other seems to hide behind the 'normal' moon, almost like it's shadow. You think you're hallucinating, but the second moon doesn't go away. The whole experience is unreal. Reality remains suspended in that moment.

Art station

3. It's 3 in the night and you can't sleep. And for some reason you're covered in sweat. Were you dreaming before? Or are you dreaming now? Waiting for sleep to come back is futile. You get out of bed and take a quick shower. The silent of the night is your ally and moving from one task to another is easy. You head to the kitchenette to fix yourself some dinner. There's leftover food in the fridge but it doesn't seem like it's fit to eat. You open a beer and sip on it while the rice you've now decided to cook, sits on the stove.

4. You still look back on your school days with a mix of emotions. You had good friends and you'd do everything together. But unlike you, your friends were named after colours. You didn't mind that though. The same friends left you with a gaping hole in your soul when they stopped talking to you altogether one day, just like that. Now every time you think about your friends, there's a dull ache that you feel to this day. You can't understand why they did what they did to you. There were no notes, no messages, no phone calls, not even angry outbursts to give you just a hint of whatever it is that you did that made them cut you off from the group.

Leonard Peng, The Chronicle via SFgate.com

5. You stumble across a lost painting in the attic and it was a double horned owl that lead you to it.

6. You wake up one day and feel like you're not yourself anymore. Like someone dismantled you then hurriedly put you back together again. What you're feeling is hard to describe in words... Is it loneliness that you're feeling? You feel all the gravity that once held you in your orbit has now gone and now you're floating in space like a lost satellite. 'Like a little lost Sputnik?

namakajiri.net

7. Garbage trucks in Japan playing Scottish music for some reason...

8. You can't explain why but you've developed this affinity towards cats. Others won't believe you when you tell them this but you've had entire conversations with cats. Such mysterious creatures, and so wise. And you're happy living like this, on your own, in your single-serving life with cats that explain to you what the universe holds.

Facebook/Haruki Murakami

9. You thought today would be a regular day at the library but it wasn't. You discovered a secret door that led to a secret, inner library. 'That's odd,' you think. A library within a library..? Why not put all the books outside?' It's a strange feeling. Like a dream within a dream.
The Election Commission (EC) issued a show-cause notice to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath for his "Ali and Bajrang Bali" remark while addressing a rally in Meerut. Earlier, during one of her speeches, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati appealed Muslims to vote for the opposition alliance in the state.

Adityanath had compared the Lok Sabha elections to a contest between 'Ali', a revered figure in Islam, and Bajrang Bali, the Hindu god Hanuman.

"Agar Congress, SP, BSP ko 'Ali' par vishwaas hai toh humein bhi 'Bajrang Bali' par vishwaas hai (If the Congress, Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party have faith in Ali, we have faith in Hanuman)," the Uttar Pradesh CM remarked.

His statement came after BSP chief Mayawati's speech at a rally in Deoband on April 7, where she had urged Muslims to back the alliance with Akhilesh Yadav's Samajwadi Party.

The EC has asked them to respond by Friday evening after finding both Adityanath and Mayawati prima facie guilty of violating the model code of conduct.

The EC asked Mayawati to give an explanation on why she should not face action for violating the poll code as well as Section 123(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, which bars candidates from asking people to vote for or refrain from voting on grounds of religion.

This is the second time Adityanath has been served a notice by EC. Last time, he was hauled up for his remark Modi ji ki sena while referring to the air strikes on Balakot in Pakistan.

The EC is understood to be in the process of examining the speech of PM at Latur in Maharashtra where he sought the vote of first time voters for defence forces, referring to action against terror camps in Pakistan. Repeated violation of the poll code may invite a tough warning or even a temporary ban on campaigning, reported The Times of India.
Its like selling a home, he said. Theres a part of you that aches, because you dont want to lose that. But you want to give it to someone who believes in the same things that you believe in.
Diwali, the festival of lights has turned into festival of pollution over the past few years. Bursting of crackers has choked the national capital and also turns away vulnerable pets. They have harmed both kids and the environment.

The Supreme Court therefore, last year laid down clear cut rules, giving a proper time frame during which the crackers could be burnt. Though, advisories are always issued to keep bombs and other firecrackers away from children, housing complexes and animals, these are seldom followed.

In India, rockets can be seen flying in any direction sometimes piercing through clothes in a residential balcony. Yet all of these incidents arent serious enough for the police to lodge a complaint. However, Indians living in Singapore cant get away with it.

Photo: Facebook/Jeevan Arjoon

An Indian-origin man in Singapore has been jailed for three weeks and fined 5,000 Singapore dollars for setting off fireworks close to a housing complex during Diwali celebrations in the country last year, PTI reported.

29-year-old Jeevan Arjoon purchased firecrackers from Little India shopping centre and illegally lit them at around 3:30 AM on November 06, 2018. The firecrackers shot up to the seventh floor of the building and reportedly were loud enough to be heard from the neighbouring public housing estate of Yishun.

Though, nobody was hurt and no damage to property was recorded, the firecrackers burnt for around five minutes. District Judge Marvin Bay said the detonation of fireworks can cause serious injuries and pose a risk of fire, noting that they were set off close to public housing.

Photo; BCCL/Representative Image

He added that bursting crackers during crack of dawn could create considerable tension among people, during times of war and terrorism. Jeevan, who was unrepresented, said in his mitigation that he was the sole breadwinner of his family and was taking care of his mother-in-law who was diabetic and blind.

However, Jeevan didnt have a pleasant record with the policemen. In the past he was charged for giving false information to a public servant two years ago. Later on, he was also convicted of putting the blame on someone else for the firework incident.
The letter requests the President to take all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas. Read more

Here's more top news of the day:

1) EC Issues Notices To Yogi Adityanath, Mayawati For Communalising Speeches In Election Rallies

The Election Commission (EC) issued a show-cause notice to Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath for his "Ali and Bajrang Bali" remark while addressing a rally in Meerut. Earlier, during one of her speeches, Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati appealed Muslims to vote for the opposition alliance in the state. Read more

2) 3,000 People Form Human Chain Because They Want A 100% Voter Turnout In Their Lok Sabha Constituency Ramanathapuram

Photo: ANI

The Election commission of India is running a nation-wide campaign called the Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation (SVEEP) program to create voter awareness. Read more

3) Russia Awards PM Narendra Modi With Country's Highest Civilian Honour 'Order Of Saint Andrew The Apostle'

PM Modi was awarded the order for "exceptional services in promoting special & privileged strategic partnership between" Russia and India, the Russian embassy in India wrote in a tweet. Read more

4) A Startling & Thought-Provoking Series On Animal Abuse Will Put Humans To Shame

Credit: Milk DoNg Comics

Artist Milk DoNg created an art collection series titled Murder Scene exposing the heart-shattering, yet incredibly significant art. DoNg has given to a voice to the voiceless, who have remained at the receiving end of human behaviour and greed. Read more

5) As Jet Airways Fleet Stays Grounded, DGCA Asks Other Airlines To Enhance Flight Availability

Airlines these days are facing a plethora of issues whether it be technical glitches, shortage of pilots, poor ATC personnel or something as huge as being debt-ridden. Due to all of these issues, the number of aircraft on the runway is decreasing and their fares are tremendously increasing. Read more
Moving beyond the grandiloquence of communal politics and rabid nationalism, India's youth, who constitute 65 per cent of the total population, are facing issues that either do not make it to the manifestos of the political parties or are mentioned in a way that seems unimportant.

For the millennial of this country, pollution, healthcare and deforestation are as big an issue as unemployment, education and taxes.

By 2020, youth will make up 34 per cent of the countrys population with a median age of 27.9 years. Forty-five million young people, having becoming eligible to vote as they turned 18, have been added to the countrys electoral roll since 2014, says an Election Commission data  meaning the voter list has been expanded by 5 per cent since 2014.

How young India votes will clearly be one of the conclusive factors in the upcoming Lok Sabha Elections 2019, the first-phase polling in which begins April 11.

Indian youth is of the opinion that instead of focusing on communities and religion, the political parties need to focus on reducing pollution and reining in the environment crisis along with ensuring womens safety, better education opportunities and good governance.

We asked Raghav Chadha, the 30-year-old Aam Aadmi Partys MP candidate from South Delhi and party's national spokesperson, questions that matter to the millennial:

Pollution is perhaps the most crucial issue for the people of this country, especially New Delhi in North India. How AAP plans to ensure that Delhites breathe clean air?

Raghav Chadha: Pollution is not a Delhi-specific issue but a prominent issue in North India. The air quality between March to October is Average to Moderate and suddenly between October end and November first week, it becomes Bad, even Severe. The huge number of factories, vehicles, landfills is relatively constant. Yet there is a massive decline in air quality and its essentially because of factors that are beyond direct control of the government. Stubble burning from neighbouring states of Punjab and Haryana are contributors towards severe air quality in Delhi-NCR. Another factor is duststorms in the neighbouring state of Rajasthan due to which the entire north Indian-belt reels under poor air quality.

BCCL

This happened last year too and airports were forced to shut down due to low visibility. The limited point Im trying to make here is that pollution doesnt understand boundaries or territorial jurisdictions. The pollution has less to do with the number of vehicles on road and this is proved by a recent IIT study, which states that vehicular pollution is just a small contributor to bad air quality in Delhi.

It is up to the governments in the states that can start taking note of such issue. So far, the only government in the country out of those in 25 states that has shown some will power to deal with the problem of air pollution is the Delhi Government.

The Delhi government came out with measures like Odd-Even, banning construction activities, installation of air purifiers, monitoring air quality index at most places in Delhi. All these measures show that we have got the willpower and we are trying to do the best in what we can do to curb the menace of air pollution in Delhi.

We need support from other states as well. A meeting was called in December and was headed by the Dr Harsh Vardhan, union environment minister, and all neighbouring states were invited. Only one minister showed up at the meeting and he was from Delhi government. No representative turned up from the states like Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan. The incident shows the intent of the Aam Aadmi Party and that how we are committed to resolving this issue.

Womens safety in Delhi is still considered a joke. A lot was promised to make Delhi safer for women, yet shocking headlines from the capital have failed to stop the dangers that women in Delhi face. How can the situation be made better?

Raghav Chadha: In Delhi, the law and order enforcement agency, the Delhi Police, is not under the ambit of Delhi government. As far as the enforcement of the law and ensuring security to women is concerned, the prime responsibility of that happens to be with the Delhi Police that reports to the Indian government and not the Delhi government. Having said that, the Aam Aadmi Party has tried to do whatever it can in this respect. The Delhi government has installed CCTV cameras at every nook and corner, every chaupal, every koocha of Delhi. Every lane and every colony is secured with CCTV cameras.

We have taken up initiatives like deploying bus marshals in every DTC bus and sensitising people on safety and security of women - whether it is having special classes for students in Delhi government schools over safety measures - the Delhi government is right at the helm of it.

BCCL

We are working on improving last mile connectivity so that women here face less transportation issues.

We say that we will, just how with the set of same principals we have revolutionised the education sector in Delhi, we will be able to revolutionise law and order in Delhi too. The Delhi Police will be made accountable to the people of Delhi. The law and order in Delhi is going to be the best in the world if Delhi gets full statehood.

Thousands of trees were cut in Delhi-NCR for developmental projects. There were massive protests too. What does your party and how you, as a candidate, plan to increase green cover in the capital, or at least ensure that no more trees are cut?

Raghav Chadha: The Central government indulged into large-scale deforestation in Delhi. The government of Delhi has tried to stop such unholy attempts by the government  the case in point being the NBCC, where the government constructed flats for bureaucrats. We protested within the government, we protested outside the government. We took to streets and protested and it shows that we are all for forestation and maintaining the green cover of the capital. We had adopted a large-scale tree plantation drive in September last year. The drive was part of a campaign to fight air pollution and plant lakhs of trees across Delhi.

The people of Delhi will vote and elect their candidate on Sunday, May 12, 2019.

#ITCounts is an Indiatimes initiative to move beyond the noise and the name-calling and focus on issues that really matter to our generation. We aim to be more about migration, pollution, LGBTQ rights, women's issues and healthcare than about Pakistan, political posturing and trolling.

If you have any suggestions/inputs/feedback or advice please hit us up at kabeer.sharma@timesinternet.in
Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on April 11. Assange had taken refuge in the embassy seven years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden over a sexual assault case that has since been dropped.

It has been reported that the sudden arrest was due to a long deterioration in relations between him and the Ecuadorian embassy. Assange had taken refuge in the embassy during the government of former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa who called him a 'hero' for leaking confidential documents of the United States.

Photo: Twitter

However, the current President Lenin Moreno was suspicious about his activities. Moreno assumed office in 2017 and believed that Assange was allegedly fuelling corruption allegations against him.

Moreno had asked Assange to stop his online political commentary, stop riding his skateboard in the halls of the embassy and clean up after his pet cat, Reuters reported. He even went on to accuse Wikileaks for being behind an anonymous website that claimed Moreno's brother had created offshore companies that his family used to fund a luxurious lifestyle in Europe while Moreno was a delegate to a U.N. agency.

BREAKING: #JulianAssange has been arrested. UK police was allowed to enter the embassy by Ecuador.

Ecuador blatantly lied about having no plans to betray him. pic.twitter.com/zBhkwEBuDI  Partisangirl  (@Partisangirl) April 11, 2019

While WikiLeaks tweeted about the reports, they denied Assanges role in it. The leaked material included private photographs of Moreno and his family, the President denied any wrongdoing in the case. After the release of the materials, Moreno said that Assange had no right to "hack private accounts and phones," without directly accusing him.

Photo: Reuters

The government even criticized Assanges behaviour in the embassy and accused him of using a mobile phone that was not registered with the embassy.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia even said that the cleaning staff has described improper hygiene conduct during his stay. Ever since Moreno has assumed charge, friends of Assange said that the entire Embassy staff had been replaced.

We're calling on the UK to refuse to extradite Assange to the US, where there is a real risk he could face #humanrights violations, inc. detention conditions that would violate the prohibition of torture & an unfair trial followed by possible execution --> https://t.co/GcVrnoqIsP  Amnesty Ireland (@AmnestyIreland) April 11, 2019

Playing loud music, stalling security camera with a studio lamp were some of the complaints that the Embassy had against Assange. U.S. officials announced after his arrest on Thursday that he had been charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, paving the way for his extradition.
When digital assistants are "listening" to you and trying to take orders for a task, they're also recording you. It's part of the deal so they can use those recordings to improve their capabilities. But would you be comfortable with other people listening to those recordings?

That's apparently what's happening with Alexa, Amazon's digital assistant, according to a new report in Bloomberg. The piece details how the company employs thousands of full-time workers as well as contractors from around the world to listen to all the recorded conversations.

Their jobs are to transcribe their recordings, and annotate them so they can be fed back into Alexa, so the digital assistant's skills can improve. This improves its speech recognition, as well as in some case contextual understanding.

This follows close on the heels of a report back in January, which revealed that Amazon owned smart doorbell Ring had given employees access to video recordings so they could manually identify cars and people to improve the algorithm. That was then used to improve the object recognition of the device's AI.

Bloomberg spoke to some of the Alexa listeners, who seem to situated everywhere from Boston, to Costa Rica, to India and Romania. Apparently, these workers say they sometimes end up listening to sensitive information, as well as conversations that were recorded by accident. Horrifyingly, two of the workers said they even listened to what sounded like sexual assault. They didn't do anything about it however, even reporting to the police, because Amazon insists it's only listening for the AI and not acting on people's lives.

Reuters

Amazon's defense to Bloomberg was even more unsatisfactory. A spokesperson insisted they only listen to "an extremely small sample" of all Alexa's recordings, and that they do not get any identifying information:

"We take the security and privacy of our customer's personal information seriously, the spokesperson said. "This information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone.
Being a worker in the construction industry is hands down one of the most exhausting jobs. Working long hours in searing heat can have that effect.

Most workers are forced to take a quick break at the construction site and these images of Chinese workers napping on transmission tower 160ft above ground is heartbreaking and shocking all at the same time.

YouTube /SCMP

Apart from needing the experience to sleep at such a high place, the pictures also highlight the poor plight of labourers.

According to the South China Morning Post report, the workers, wearing full-body safety harnesses attached to the pylon, were filmed snoozing comfortably on the narrow steel bars in Chenzhou, Hunan province.

"Since it's really tiring to climb up the tower, we would only climb back down to ground level for our lunch," one of the workers told SCMP.

They simply climb up the tower and take naps. The first time is always nerve-racking, but they slowly get used to the height.
Alia Bhatt (left) has also been signed for Ashwiny Iyer Tiwaris next after Panga. A pregnant Amy Jackson (right) and beau George Panayiotou will host an engagement bash in London May 5. (photo provided)
Prevent Child Abuse Lake County (PCALC) will sponsor its annual CHAIRish the Children Art Project and Silent Auction from 5-7 p.m. May 2 at the Indiana Welcome Center, 7770 Corinne Drive, Hammond. Lake County middle and high school students were invited to design and decorate child-size chairs for judging and display at the Welcome Center during April, which is observed nationwide as Child Abuse Prevention Month. The three top schools will be awarded prizes at the May 2nd event. In addition, local organizations also have been invited to participate by decorating chairs. All chairs will be available for purchase during a silent auction during the event. A suggested donation of $5 at the door will contribute to future child abuse prevention programming. More information is with Joy Heminger at 219-661-9181 or at joyhemi@yahoo.com.
Paul Monet Fontaine, aka Paresh Paul, has been charged with murder eight years after the disappearance of his mother, Promila Mehta-Paul. He has pleaded not guilty. (Munster Police photo)
Rohit Verma, an Indian American dean of external relations at the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, has been named founding provost of Vin University in Hanoi, Vietnam. In this photo, he shares the stage with Le Mai Lan, vice chairwoman of Vingroup and managing director of the Vin University project. (news.cornell.edu photo)
By Keith Nuthall

The European Unions Council of Ministers has accepted a proposal that producers and processors of industrial minerals should be allocated free carbon allowances under the EU emissions trading system (ETS) until 2030.

The decision, which supports a proposal from the European Commission (EC), has been made because of concerns that mineral production could move outside the EU if the industry were forced to buy such allocations, which is what is generally required.

The list of sectors qualifying for free emission allowances covers quarrying and mining of minerals; kaolinic clay production; and salt extraction.

It also includes the manufacture of all non-metallic mineral products, with the regulation specifically mentioning the manufacture of inorganic chemicals, fertilizers, nitrogen compounds, glass, refractory products, cement, lime and plaster, as well as ceramic tiles, flags and sanitary fixtures, clay bricks, tiles and other construction products.

It also covers the manufacture of vitrifiable enamels and glazes, engobes (slips such as are used to decorate pottery) and similar preparations for ceramics, enameling and glass.

The ETS is the cap-and-trade system that was established by the EU and imposes a maximum level of greenhouse gas emissions that can be released annually by industries covered by the scheme. These include industrial minerals miners, processors and manufacturers.

All companies are allocated allowances, or tradable permits, which give them permission to emit greenhouse gases up to their limit or cap - one tonne of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent amount of two more powerful greenhouse gases, nitrous oxide and perfluorocarbons, according to an EC report on the proposal.

Under ETS rules, most companies are increasingly having to purchase these allowances, rather than receiving them for free, which is what happened when the system was launched in 2005. The allowances are bought at the European Energy Exchange (EEX) in Leipzig, Germany, or at ICE Futures Europe (ICE), in London.

But there is concern that, for some sectors that emit a lot of greenhouse gases, the cost of purchasing these allowances could become so prohibitive that some companies might move their operations outside the ETS zone and into jurisdictions which do not apply such charges. The ETS zone covers the EU plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

If companies moved outside the zone, their greenhouse gases would still be released and the EU would lose employment and general taxation  a process called "carbon leakage."

So the EU has decided to grant free allowances to these sectors, which also include steel production, textiles, oil and gas, and some food manufacturing.

This move was also prompted by concerns about the customers of EU industrial mineral companies. "Allocation reduces the costs for European industries that can arise if they cannot pass on such costs through the supply chain," the EC report said.

High-emitting sectors already have free allocations of carbon allowances until 2020. Ministers have now agreed that they will be granted free allocations for 2021-30, with amounts to be determined according to their past emissions.

The amounts to be allocated will now be assessed using carbon data submitted by industries via their national governments.

The EC report said that 6.3 billion allowances were available for qualifying industries between 2021 and 2030. While the value of these allowances depends on market prices when sold, the report said that the sum "could be in the order of 100 billion [$113 billion]."

The mineral sector could command a large proportion of these allowances, with the EC report saying that the manufacture of cement alone accounts for about 19% of ETS industrial emissions.

The minutes for the Council meeting (general affairs) that took the decision on April 9, said: "The carbon leakage list has economic significance because free allowances have a substantial financial value."

These free allowances will now be distributed unless the European Parliament objects, but no objection is expected.
On April 11, Kenmare announced it had increased its ore mining by 19% year on year in the first quarter of 2019 (January-March), with heavy mineral concentrate production up by 15% over the same period.

The concentration of heavy mineral sands in the mined ore was down 10% year on...
Africa-focused mining junior Walkabout Resources announced on Thursday April 11 that it has signed a binding offtake agreement for graphite concentrate from its Lindi Jumbo project in Tanzania with minerals trader Wogen.

The offtake agreement, which will see Wogen purchase and market 10,000-30,000 tonnes per...
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Wednesday Hogs Close Red Barchart - Wed Dec 15, 4:23PM CST Lean hog trading through the midweek session left the board 70 to 95 cents weaker on the day. CMEs 12/13 Lean Hog Index was 8 cents weaker at $72.10. USDAs National Average Base hog price for Wednesday... HEG22 : 79.325s (-0.94%) HEK22 : 89.425s (-0.86%) KMZ21 : 87.350s (+0.17%)

Beans Close Firm Barchart - Wed Dec 15, 4:23PM CST Front month soybean futures closed fractionally higher to 3 cents in the black for Jan. Soymeal reversed after midday firmness and closed with 1.1% to 1.28% losses. Soybean oil futures also reversed from... ZSF22 : 1269-6 (+0.57%) ZSPAUS.CM : 12.2941 (+0.29%) ZSH22 : 1272-0 (+0.53%) ZSX21 : 1234-0s (+1.79%) ZSPX21US.CM : 12.3270 (+1.90%)

Cattle Fell Triple Digits Barchart - Wed Dec 15, 4:23PM CST The midweek cattle trading session closed with front month futures $0.87 to $1.77 in the red. For the December contract that left the board at $135, which is about $3-$5 below the cash market. There had... LEZ21 : 135.000s (-1.30%) LEJ22 : 140.925s (-0.76%) GFF22 : 163.425s (-0.70%) GFH22 : 164.475s (-1.16%)

Chart of the Day: Smith-Midland - All Time High Barchart - Wed Dec 15, 4:09PM CST The Barchart Chart of the Day belongs to the concrete products company Smith-Midland (NASDAQ: SMID ). I found the company by sorting Barchart's All Time High list first by the highest Weighted Alpha,... SMID : 40.19 (+8.53%)

Shootin' the Bull Swift Trading Company - Wed Dec 15, 2:50PM CST The lower trade today is believed in part by normal holiday trading, and potentially some of it due to anticipation of today's announcement from the Fed.
Pelfrey stepped down from her town council seat in 2016. Shortly afterward, a judge upheld a state law that banned elected officials from working for the government agency they oversee. Tara Pelfrey was named to fill her mothers 4th District seat on the town council.
Kozuszek has since filed a federal lawsuit against the county, claiming the vote was retaliatory because she unsuccessfully sought overtime for hours worked during the 2016 presidential election. The county council had previously determined that Kozuszek and her Republican counterpart, Sundae Schoon, were not eligible for overtime because their positions were salaried, and boosted their pay to $50,000 a year to compensate for the lost overtime.
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Outdated systems and processes are holding insurers back from offering a first-rate motor claims experience in line with consumers' expectations, say Steve Chapman and Daniel Lukich of loss assessor AAMC. They tell IB what can be done to improve the process
In recent times there has been a lot of talk about how technological advancements in the industry mean that consumers have a far wider choice and more information at their fingertips than they have ever had, said Richard Heilig, HCi CEO. Coupled with the growth of direct insurance in recent years, this can be seen as a potential challenge to the relevance of the role of the broker. However, this is only one side of the story  whilst there is undoubtedly more choice, arriving at the best possible cover can be a daunting task for business owners. We need specialists who understand insurance and their clients needs intimately and can help them navigate our complex industry. We believe that brokers are now more important than ever. And with intermediaries a core part of our business model, we must look for ways to support them.
A Sydney-based construction and restoration business specialising in insurance repair and strata work is on the hunt for a trade-qualified builder or carpenter to fill the newly created role as building estimator. You can apply here.

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Risk and insurance administrator, Ensure Recruitment

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Essendon Mazda is offering an entrepreneurial F&I professional a lucrative opportunity to join the Melbourne-based company as senior F&I business manager, tasked with mentoring and developing team members to maximise profits and deliver outstanding results. You can apply here.
It all began after a few weeks of working late nights, which turned into him missing his daughters ballet recitals.

At first, he shrugged these long hours and constant absences from home off as simply part of choosing such a competitive career.

Every time he questioned whether or not he should reconsider his career, he would immediately smash the thought  reminding himself that if he could just last for one more year, hed be up for partner.

Then, things started to spiral. As he noticed the bond with his children deteriorate and the relationship with his wife become both strained and distant, problems at home started to negatively impact his work.

He started pinning the blame on his firm and these bottled-up feelings of animosity made him short-tempered and downright mean to the rest of his team.

As his frustration grew hotter, he noticed he wasnt entirely present during meetings and was searching for every possible excuse to avoid doing his work  the work he had always been so incredibly passionate about.

A few Google searches made it obvious that he had been bitten by a nasty snake known as burnout. It wasnt terminal but it was certainly something that couldnt be cured with a pill or antidote.

If Arthur was going to reclaim his life and the work he was once passionate about, he would have to dig deep and make some serious changes both in himself and in his working environment.

The snake in the room.

While the phrase the elephant in the room is commonly used to describe a big problem that nobody wants to address  the problem of burnout deserves an alternative metaphor  the snake in the room.

Every office across the world suffers from the snake in the room to varying degrees.

Some companies snake is ultra-aggressive and will hiss and bite at anything that comes within arms reach. Then, there are others that have figured out ways to tame their snake somehow.

When you visualize the 30 person conference room table, the snake lives its slithering existence in the middle of it. While everybody sees it, nobody says anything. On occasion, the snake will lash out at someone and strike.

It bit Sue last month, Rick the month before that and oh crap Sandy looks like she has just been bitten too.

We cant necessarily see it when it will strike (burnout is complicated in that way), but we can see the snakes venom do its work.

The victim becomes quiet, short-tempered, unmotivated, uninvolved and lackadaisical.

Some people whove been bitten, dont realize theyve been bitten. Other people know something is wrong but try and ignore it. And, then, there are folks who just shut down entirely.

We need to talk more about burnout.

37%.

Thats how the percentage of American and Canadian office workers who experience burnout according to a study published in 2016.

The surveyed respondents claimed heavy workloads, constant pressure, and crazy deadlines as a handful of reasons.

While I am by no means a physician, I wanted to share a few tactics I use to prevent burnout from sinking its fangs into myself and my team over at JotForm.

Setting hard stops in your life.

Weve grown to subconsciously measure a persons worth based off how many hours they work, how much is on their plate and put simply  whether or not they are running around like a chicken with their head cut off.

With nearly 30% of employees working between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., as well as on the weekends, one thing is glaringly obvious  workers need to start setting hard stops in their workdays.

Over the past couple of decades, the entrepreneur and the startup have become more than a career and a business but a lifestyle.

And, in many ways, a religion.

The world as a whole now measures value in terms of busyness versus quality of work. In many ways, it has become something of a status symbol to be busy.

In The power of doing nothing at all, I wrote about the hidden power of making time in your life to do nothing.

It can be challenging  especially during the work week where we are constantly pummeled and bombarded with meetings, notifications and an ever-growing list of tasks.

Busy founders have started implementing Think Weeks into their annual schedules  week long periods they spend reflecting, reading, thinking and living outside the all-encapsulating world that is running a business.

You dont necessarily have to ban family and friends to retreat into a Think Week, though. Take me as an example.

Every year, I take at least a full week off from my company and head back to my hometown to help my parents with the olive harvest.

And for someone who cant take an entire week off of work once a year to do nothing, I recommend taking a slightly different approach  embracing the digital Sabbath..

Setting hard stops in your workday.

The setting hard stops approach should be applied to your workday as well.

Its now frowned upon for employees to work only 40 hours a week and is viewed as them doing the bare minimum  instead, its expected they work 50, 60 and even 70 hours-weeks if they truly believe in the company and its mission.

Most people might consider this unacceptable  especially if youre looking to create a burnout free work environment.

Countless scientific studies point to the same number when it comes to doing creative or complicated work that requires deep critical thinking  four hours.

No, this doesnt mean every company in the world should start cutting their office hours down to 20 per week  but it does mean we shouldnt be encouraging our employees to go over 40.

When youre self-employed, finding these hard stops can be increasingly challenging  especially when you take into consideration that it has become less a career and more a 24/7 lifestyle.

But, you running your own business doesnt let you off the hook either.

Ditching email and Slack after a specific time (perhaps 5 p.m.) or deleting the apps from your smartphone might obviously help you to set hard stops during your workdays.

You might also consider leaving your work laptop at work  this is a proactive way not to bring work home with you.

This, however, might lead to significant resistance and tension within your organization. If this is the case, the following insight can help:

Create a happier, healthier and more comfortable work environment.

Leaving work at work is only half the battle.

While youre at work, you need to figure out a way to bring back a sense of happiness and comfortability that you somehow lost somewhere along the way.

At JotForm, we have flexible hours for our employees. As I wrote in Why waking up at 6 am wont make you successful, everybody works differently and every person has a different internal prime time.

Those that like to sleep in and start their days later are more than welcome to come in later in the day.

And the early birds that get the most done in the morning can come in early while the office is still quiet.

This is just one example of how a workplace can create a happier, healthier and more comfortable work environment without spending thousands on ping-pong tables, cereal bars and kombucha on tap.

Its also important for employees to speak up and be open with their higher-ups and their teams on how they work best. Organizations are often more flexible than we give them credit for. But, employees have to be willing to ask.

If youre somebody that enjoys working from home a couple days a week  ask.

If you work better when youre fitting yoga into your day  ask.

If you want to work at a coffee shop one day a week  ask.

The bottom line is, in a results-driven world plagued by extreme hours, demanding workloads and stiff competition leaves one to wonder if our race to productivity isnt a race to the bottom  or rather a race to see who can run the furthest without burning out.

While the mainstream media celebrates the 80-hour hustle and encourages employees to sacrifice their personal time, energy and well-being for an organization its not a sane way to build a sustainable business.

It isnt productive. There is nothing productive about a workplace filled with a burnout workforce.

This was originally published here.
Vijil will take a new position as non-executive chairman of TransRe Latin America and will continue to serve on the companys board.

Javier has been an institution at TransRe since before I joined, said Mike Sapnar, TransRe president and CEO. I have always relied on his advice, and he is more than just a colleague. He is a mentor and, I am proud to say, a friend. I am delighted that he has accepted an ongoing role, both as a director of TransRe and as our non-executive chairman for Latin America and the Caribbean.

As part of the leadership transition, the company will merge its North America and Latin America divisions into TransRe Americas, which will be led by Ken Brandt, president.

Javier and I have worked closely with Ken for the past 14 years, Sapnar said. Ken has traveled extensively in the region, and as a senior executive and board member is very familiar with the portfolio and its importance to TransRe.

Succeeding Vijil as president of Latin America and the Caribbean will be Jorge Beltran, who will report to Brandt. Prior to joining TransRe, Beltran served as head of treaty business for Latin America at Validus Re. He has also held positions at Liberty Mutual, SCOR and Swiss Re.
ICNE, Insurance Center of New England, has hired two new employees to its independent agency.

Melissa Salois-Blood accepted the position of controller, and Jennifer Santiago was hired to fill the role of employee benefits account manager.

Salois-Blood has more than 11 years of experience working as a staff accountant for several businesses, including Robert Half International, a global human resources consulting firm, The Dowd Insurance Agencies Inc., and The Law Offices of Thomas Kokonowski LP.

Santiago, a twenty-year healthcare industry veteran, brings with her a range of professional experience in healthcare, insurance, claims support and employee benefits.

As the new group benefits account manager at ICNE, she will be in charge of developing and maintaining client relationships through customer service.

Santiago began her career in insurance with UniCare Life and Health Insurance as a claims associate. For the last thirteen years, she has worked as an account manager for USI Insurance Services LLC, where she was responsible for negotiating with insurance underwriters and carriers, analyzing and comparing insurance plans for her clients and assisting with open enrollment periods.

Salois-Blood and Santiago will both work out of ICNEs headquarters in Agawam, Mass.

Source: Insurance Center of New England

Topics Massachusetts
The insurance industry must wake up to the growing cost of secondary catastrophe perils, which amounted to more than 60 percent of the $76 billion price tag for insured natural catastrophe losses during 2018, according to Swiss Re Institutes latest sigma study.

Secondary perils are defined as small-to-mid-sized events or the secondary effects of a primary peril, said Swiss Re, explaining that they often are not modeled and receive little monitoring by the industry, despite their potential for severity.

Insurers need to develop their modelling capabilities to better assess the risk that these perils pose, said Swiss Res sigma report titled Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters in 2018: secondary perils on the frontline.

Examples of secondary events include river floods, torrential rainfall, landslides, thunderstorms, snow and ice storms, draught and wildfires. Secondary effects of a primary peril might be hurricane-induced precipitation, storm surges, tsunamis, and liquefaction and fire following an earthquake.

To highlight the growing costs of these secondary perils, Swiss Re said, the combined insured losses from natural catastrophes during 2017 and 2018 was US$219 billion, which is the highest-ever total for a two-year period. More than half of that total resulted from secondary perils, the report affirmed.

Last years insured loss total of $76 billion was the fourth highest on record, although there were no mega-loss generating events. Swiss Re noted that 62 percent of the overall total was due to secondary perils.

Large losses from secondary perils are occurring more regularly, said Edouard Schmid, Swiss Res group chief underwriting officer, in a statement. This is a trend the insurance industry must act on so that we can continue to underwrite catastrophe business sustainably.

The acceleration in secondary peril losses is due to urbanization and associated development of flood-prone areas along coast lines and on river plains, the report indicated. Other factors include development in areas vulnerable to fire risk, such as the wildland-urban interface, as well as long-term climate change, the report said.

Other findings in the report include:

Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters had an economic cost of US$165 billion during 2018, with around US$155 billion resulting from natural catastrophes and the remainder from man-made events.

Insurance covered about half (US$85 billion) of 2018s economic losses from natural and man-made disasters, creating a global catastrophe insurance protection gap of US$80 billion. (The insurance protection gap is the financial loss generated by catastrophes not covered by insurance.)

During 2017 and 2018, the global all-catastrophe protection gap of the past two years was $280 billion, with more than half of that resulting from independent secondary and secondary-effect peril events.

Approximately 13,500 people lost their lives or went missing in last years catastrophe events. Natural catastrophes claimed more than 9,800 victims, and man-made disasters resulted in roughly 3,600 deaths, up from around 3 000 in 2017.

There were 304 catastrophe events in 2018, which was level with the previous year. Of those, 181 were natural catastrophes (184 in 2017), and 123 were man-made disasters.

Source: Swiss Re

Topics Catastrophe Trends Market Swiss Re
Canadian insurer The Co-operators announced it has purchased Robinson & Associates Insurance Brokers in Niagara Falls and Ridgeway, Ontario.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The brokerages portfolio includes personal and commercial insurance policies, said The Co-operators in a statement. Any existing insurance coverage a client has will remain in effect for the current term of their policies.

This is our second Ontario broker acquisition of 2019, demonstrating our commitment to strengthen our agency distribution system in the region said Rob Wesseling, president and CEO of The Co-operators. This continued growth allows us to better serve our clients, helping them achieve financial security, and ultimately, peace of mind.

The Co-operators first Ontario broker deal of 2019 was the acquisition of Redfords Insurance Brokers in Pickering, Ontario, announced on Jan. 28.

The brokerages portfolio includes personal and commercial insurance policies. Any existing insurance coverage a client has will remain in effect for the current term of their policies.

About The Co-operators

Headquartered in Guelph, Ontario, The Co-operators Group Ltd. is a Canadian co-operative that offers home, auto, life, group, travel, commercial and farm insurance, as well as investment products.

Source: The Co-operators

Topics Mergers Carriers Agencies Canada
The letters we received from all over the world were filled with stories of tragedy, hope, and a unified yearning for change, she said. The letters spoke of the change they were inspired to be after watching my segment, or the random act of kindness they had performed because of my segment on TV.
A storm system known as a bomb cyclone slowly churned through the U.S. interior Thursday for the second time in a month, unleashing a blizzard that struck the Upper Midwest and creating hazardous fire conditions farther south.

The storm knocked out power Wednesday to thousands of homes and businesses in South Dakota, disrupted air and ground travel from Colorado to Minnesota and threatened to swell rivers in the Midwest that flooded after Marchs drenching.

Both storms are known as a bomb cyclone, a weather phenomenon that entails a rapid drop in air pressure and a storm strengthening explosively, said David Roth, a forecaster at the National Weather Services Weather Prediction Center in Maryland.

The latest storms impacts are likely to be similar to last months storm, Roth said. That blast dropped heavy snow and led to massive flooding in the Midwest that caused billions of dollars in damage in Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa and South Dakota.

Hopefully this time it will be a slow snowmelt, Roth said.

Particularly hard hit by the storm were eastern South Dakota and southwestern Minnesota, where up to 2 1/2 feet (0.61 meters) of snow was expected to fall, the National Weather Service said. Winds in excess of 50 mph (80.46 kph) also were expected, creating life-threatening conditions.

Were calling it historic because of the widespread heavy snow. We will set some records, said Mike Connelly, a weather service meteorologist in Aberdeen, South Dakota.

Transportation officials closed Interstate 29 from east central South Dakota to the North Dakota border, as well as a 270-mile (434-kilometer) section of Interstate 90 between Rapid City and Mitchell, South Dakota.

Numerous traffic crashes were reported in northeastern South Dakota, and the storm knocked out power to thousands of homes and businesses in Sioux Falls.

Officials in Colorado closed a 150-mile (241-kilometer) stretch of Interstate 76 from just northeast of Denver to the Nebraskaborder, and Gov. Jared Polis activated the National Guard in case troops are needed to rescue stranded motorists. Denver Public Schools announced delayed starts Thursday for some campuses due to weather.

About half of the daily flights at Denver International Airport were canceled on Wednesday.

Multiple crashes in Minnesota along a snowy stretch of Interstate 35 prompted officials to close about 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the highway about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Minneapolis.

In Nebraska, the State Patrol was sending additional troopers into the states panhandle, and officials closed Interstate 80 in that region.

This storm is going to be dangerous, Patrol Maj. Russ Stanczyk said.

An unusual but not rare weather phenomenon known as thunder snow  snow accompanied by thunder and lightning  was reported in central South Dakota.

Its essentially a thunderstorm, but its cold enough for snow, Connelly said.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem closed state government offices in 52 counties. Numerous schools around the state closed, along with several Black Hills National Forest offices in western South Dakota and eastern Wyoming.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts extended five weather-related executive orders until May 15 to help communities gain fast access to the states emergency resources. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said the National Guard stands ready to rescue any stranded motorists.

The weather service posted an ice storm warning into Friday morning for a portion of southern Minnesota, saying up to 3/4ths of an inch of ice could accumulate on power lines, leading to outages.

Strong winds associated with the weather system were creating dangerous wildfire and travel conditions in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. The weather service issued a high wind warning for the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.

Winds in excess of 50 mph (80.46 kph) were combining with low humidity and an unstable atmosphere to create critical fire conditions in the three states. Forecasters in New Mexico said the winds also would make travel difficult on north-south oriented roads such as Interstate 25. In southern New Mexico, the U.S. Armys White Sands Missile Range closed Wednesday because of the high winds.

Forecasters said this weeks storm will swell rivers again, though likely not to the levels seen last month due to the absence of a wet snowpack on frozen ground this time around.

Even moderate rises in the Missouri River will push more water into drenched Fremont County in southwestern Iowa, Emergency Manager Mike Crecelius said. Last months flooding swamped 455 houses and thousands of acres of farmland in his region.

The problem is that were not getting any time for the water to recede and things to dry out, so the levees cant be fixed; houses cant be fixed; crops cant be planted, he said.

Associated Press writers Nicholson in Bismarck, North Dakota; Colleen Slevin and Dan Elliott in Denver; Margery Beck in Omaha, Nebraska; Grant Schulte in Lincoln, Nebraska; Tim Talley in Oklahoma City; and Steve Karnowski in St. Paul, Minnesota, contributed to this story.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Oklahoma Minnesota Nebraska Mexico South Dakota
There will be no horse racing this year at South Dakota tracks for the first time in decades.

Aberdeen American News reports that Northeast Area Horse Racing announced Tuesday that the Aberdeen track will not host races in 2019.

The move comes two weeks after the states only other race track suspended activities this year in Fort Pierre. It also follows state legislators approving $120,000 over two years to help keep the horse racing industry afloat.

The Aberdeen organizations president, Bubby Haar, says they cannot meet the South Dakota Gaming Commissions new bond requirement, which is intended as insurance to cover losses or unpaid vendors.

Haar also expressed doubt that the states allocation was enough to sustain both racing locations. He has said races used to cost more than $300,000 per location, per season.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics South Dakota
Own a home? No doubt youve insured it. Very sensible of you. But if that home were, say, burned to the ground, then your insurance company probably wouldnt cover the cost of rebuilding it.

Dont feel too bad, though. Its only partly your fault.

Two-thirds of California wildfire victims are under-insured, according to Amy Bach, executive director of consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, speaking at a recent meeting of governor Gavin Newsoms wildfire commission, held in Santa Rosa. Shocking as that figure seems, it comports with anecdotes I picked up reporting on the aftermath of the recent wildfires earlier this year. Meanwhile, Sarah Paulson of Kevin Paulson Insurance Agency Inc. in San Diego, estimates maybe 60 percent of policyholders are under-insured.

Now a new study titled Minding the Protection Gap, just published in the Connecticut Insurance Law Journal, concludes the prevalence of under-insurance among American homeowners might be closer to 80 percent. Kenneth Klein, a professor at California Western School of Law, bases that estimate partly on a report from the California Department of Insurance, prepared in the wake of the 2007 wildfires, that recently became public record. Remarkably, this found that even when homeowners had purchased extended coverage, 57 percent of such policies fell short.

Summing up his study over the phone, Klein calls homeowner insurance a really weird market; people think they bought a Cadillac when they really bought a Yugo.

By and large, homeowners think they do have adequate coverage in the event of a catastrophe  and thats where they take a share of the blame. Standard policies havent offered guaranteed replacement coverage for several decades. But unless the homeowner takes the time to read the mind-numbing policy documents or ask the right questions, they generally assume theyre good if the sky falls.

Before piling onto this feckless homeowner, though, ask yourself a question: Do you know how much it would cost to rebuild your home? Didnt think so.

Most likely, youre relying on an estimate from your insurance agent. Typically, those are derived from sophisticated software tools such as Verisk Analytics Inc.s 360Value or CoreLogic Inc.s RCT. Insurance is the original big-data business, compiling myriad items of information to judge probabilities and costs; these tools are immense databases of such things as local labor rates, materials prices, storage costs and many other line items.

No software can accurately predict every contingency, though; especially if, for example, a wildfire burns down a whole neighborhood and surge pricing kicks in. More importantly, software doesnt write insurance, companies do. And the incentives in homeowner insurance tend to skew one way.

Only a small proportion of homes are sold each year, capping the size of the market for policies. Customers tend to be ignorant of the true cost of reconstruction. And when disputes arise, courts tend to effectively side with the insurance provider  after all, the homeowner signed up for the coverage stipulated in their contract. In short, the homeowner tends to bear all the risk of under-insurance while usually being ignorant of that risk. Plus, thinking catastrophe a very remote possibility, theyre more motivated to keep their monthly insurance bill low than to cure their ignorance.

So there can be little incentive for an insurance provider to invest time and money in a more-thorough assessment of a homes particular risks. Its tempting to instead enter fewer parameters to the software tools to estimate coverage and simply quote the most competitive premium they can. Klein ran an experiment on his own home, getting replacement-cost estimates from six insurers and two software tools, involving different levels of detail. They ranged from $512,000 to more than $1.1 million.

One way of addressing this problem is better-educating the customer, such as with tools alerting them to potential under-insurance. Meanwhile, Klein recommends requiring insurers to quote a price for guaranteed replacement coverage. Would those premiums be higher? Probably much higher, although providers could also compete on them. More importantly, they would signal to homeowners the true cost of protecting their home  and they could then choose to accept it or go with a lower quote for standard insurance, with the clear understanding they bear the risk of less-than-adequate coverage. This will reconnect risk creation and risk allocation, Klein writes.

Californias wildfires didnt create this market failure; just revealed it. The enormous claims arising from the past two wildfire seasons  some $25 billion  are having an impact on pricing and availability already. At that same commission meeting in Santa Rosa, Joel Laucher, chief deputy commissioner of the California Department of Insurance, said complaints about higher premiums or difficulty renewing coverage in the highest-risk counties have jumped by 224 percent and 573 percent, respectively, since 2010. Meanwhile, over the past five years, there has been a 51 percent increase in policies written for homes in wildfire-prone areas under Californias FAIR program  insurance so bare-bones the website states up top it should only be used as a last resort.

In many respects, the wildfires expose the true costs of climate change and how they intersect with peoples choices about where and how they live; choices often made out of necessity or made at a time when phrases like global warming seemed utterly abstract. Mitigating wildfire risk is, of course, central to addressing this, but so is reform of insurance, societys ingenious method of pooling risk. Pushing the industry to provide better incentives for, say, hardening homes and communities must be a priority for California  and, indeed, any other state facing rising risks from a changing climate. Making those risks, and their costs, crystal clear to consumers would be a good start.

Copyright 2021 Bloomberg.

Topics California Catastrophe Wildfire Homeowners
Patricia Ross, Raphael Strumlauf and Kate DeNeveu each have at least one thing in common: Theyre generally happy with their business insurance.

Each owns a business at the downtown pedestrian mall in Charlottesville, Va. Theyre all in their early 30s and theoretically fit the industry model of a younger customer that shouldnt care for the old model of buying insurance through an agent or broker. But each person continues to rely on an agent or broker. While some want more technology and the flexibility to use advances such as a customer portal, they say that the existing process generally works just fine.

A recent study from Accenture concluded that millennials and Gen X small businessowners prefer digital purchases and self-service rather than using the telephone or talking to an agent/broker face to face.

Ross, a gelato maker; Strumlauf, co-owner of a neighborhood grocer; and De Neveu, co-owner of a local comic book store, generally dont fit that template  something that one insurance insider said is not surprising.

The industrys latest research shows agency writers accounted for about 70 percent of commercial property/casualty net premiums written in 2017, and direct writers accounted for approximately 30 percent, said Michael Barry, head of media and public affairs for the Insurance Information Institute. Citing I.I.I. data, Barry said that this would indicate businesses favor doing business with independent agencies, brokers, general agents and managing general agents.

The Gelato Maker

Patricia Ross (most people call her P.K.), is the 35-year-old owner of Splendoras Gelato Cafe, located at a prominent spot midway through the red brick-paved pedestrian mall. Her store is painted in a yellow/mustard color that feels bright and sunny even on a dark, rainy day.

During a break in making a new batch of hazelnut sorbet, Ross explained she gets coverage through a broker that covers both product loss and workers comp for her business and 11 employees.

Shes been with her broker for eight years and said shes worked with two different individuals from the firm over that time, and shes quite happy with the outcome.

Theyre amazing, she said. They always help me whenever I have issues.

Ross said she doesnt mind that the forms are sometimes complicated.

I get an entire notebook every year, and it is at least 120 pages of what is and is not covered with my insurance premiumsThere are all these vagaries I dont need to have in my head because I have actual humans that are familiar with the industry and familiar with what my needs are as a small business, Ross said. I feel like brokers make things easy for me in a way that online facilitation doesnt necessarily offer.

Ross said shes not naive about her coverage and realizes that some clauses exist to prevent her from getting any money in any circumstance, but again, Ive got brokers on my side, so they will, in general, find a way for me to get some sort of compensation.

As an artisanal gelato maker, she said shes content using a traditional broker for her business needs.

At the same time, she has one request if carriers/brokers are reading: Please make insurance language more accessible. You just kind of glaze over in the middle of it when youre trying to read the contract, she observed.

(Listen to Splendoras owner Patricia Ross explain her insurance buying habits.)

The Grocer

Raphael Strumlauf is co-owner with his father, Steve, of Market Street Market, a small, well-packed grocery store housed in a light blue, 19th-century building just around the corner from the Charlottesville pedestrian mall. About 18 full- and part-time employees work at the store, which carries grocery basics plus extras such as a wide wine selection along with locally made sausage and baked goods.

Strumlauf, 31, speaking from a low-key office at the back of the store, said he found his current coverage about four years ago by getting a quote online. The service directed him to an agent about an hour away in Richmond, who later drove down and set him up with his current policy. Strumlauf needed new coverage after his previous carrier dropped the grocer following some major storms that knocked out power for three days, leading to a large claim.

Strumlauf said the insurance buying process is reasonably easy, despite the insecurities about what happens if theres ever need for a major claim.

In terms of the process, paying [for coverage] and dealing with the agent, its pretty minimal, he said. Once a year I just have to update our sales information and employee information and stuff like that. Aside from that, its fairly simple.

Strumlauf said hes fine dealing with an agent but does like the ease that doing business online brings him, even if it is just through email.

When you do it online, you can do it at your own speed, he said. If I am really busy, sometimes it is just easier to reply to an email with some facts or to sign in and update my credit card information or something like that, Strumlauf said. I can just do it when I have the time.

Strumlauf said his insurance process works just fine right now without any huge issues. At the same time, he said he wished insurance could be customized to exactly what you need.

I think the one big issue that I could find with it is the fact youre always paying for things you dont really need because they are bundled in, and theres this and that, he said. There are certain things youre required to have because of your lease or because of common sense, but its not always broken up or able to be tailored to exactly what you need.

(The owners of Market Street Market and Telegraph Art & Comics explain their business insurance preferences.)

Still, Strumlauf said he realizes, as a customer, you can have the deductible you want to have, and you can take a little bit more or less risk.

In dealing with agents, however, Strumlauf said he would also push to have an online portal as an option, so he could easily upload required documents.

The Comic Book Store Owner

Kate DeNeveu, 34, is co-owner of Telegraph Art & Comics with her husband, David Murray. The store is on one end of the pedestrian mall, with a cinema complex, coffee shop, restaurant and bars among its immediate neighbors. Inside, the store is multicolored, lined with new comics, graphic novels and custom cards, with posters, t-shirts and other art also for sale.

DeNeveu, who is technically a millennial, said she prefers to work with an insurance agent.

The first agent she found for their business was within walking distance, and they obtained their business liability coverage and signed necessary documents via email and other programs.

DeNeveu said the coverage is adequately high tech and works just fine.

Were really happy with what it is, she said. Its nice knowing that our inventory is protected and that our business is protected from lawsuit kind of stuff, she said while sipping coffee at some outdoor seating near her store. DeNeveu added she is not interested in obtaining insurance coverage online.

One of the reasons it would make me nervous to go online and do that stuff for myself is that I am not an insurance specialist. I dont really know much about it, she said. It was really nice to be able to talk to [an agent] who can advise us on what we need and who we trusted. That was a major part of it for us.

The added bonus: DeNeveus insurance agent helped her and her husband obtain homeowners coverage before they opened their store.

Im quite happy with how everything was done and our current status, insurance-wise, DeNeveu said.

I really hope we never have to use insurance, but were happy its there, DeNeveau added.

This article was originally published in Carrier Management magazine.

Topics Agencies Commercial Lines Business Insurance Small Business
A U.S. Appeals Court ruling last month in Puerto Ricos bankruptcy led Fitch Ratings on Thursday to place seven city, school, and health care ratings in states including Illinois and California on a watch list for potential downgrades.

The credit rating agency said the ruling by the Boston-based First Circuit Court creates uncertainty about full and timely repayment of special revenue obligations during bankruptcy of the related municipality.

The court determined payments on defaulted Puerto Rico Highways and Transportation Authority Bonds backed by special revenue are voluntary and not mandatory while bankruptcy is ongoing.

The March 26 ruling affirming a U.S. District Court decision surprised the $3.8 trillion U.S. municipal market, which had assumed that special taxes or revenue pledged to pay off bonds would continue to flow to bondholders during Chapter 9 bankruptcies. Fitch said its watch list contains special revenue bond ratings that are more than six notches higher than the issuers underlying ratings. The list includes AA-rated Chicago senior lien water revenue bonds, A-rated Chicago Board of Education limited ad valorem tax revenue bonds and AAA-rated dedicated tax general obligation bonds issued by the Sacramento and Oakland school districts in California. If the ruling becomes final, Fitch said the ratings would be downgraded to levels closer to the issuers underlying ratings.

Bond insurer Assured Guaranty Corporation, a plaintiff in the Puerto Rico case, this week petitioned the appeals court for a rehearing and said on Thursday it is assessing other options, including appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

(Reporting By Karen Pierog; Editing by David Gregorio)

Topics Carriers USA
Applying lessons learned after Hurricane Harvey, the Texas Department of Insurance has upgraded its procedures for collecting and reporting data following a disaster.

TDI recently released its new catastrophe data collection guidelines, which the department says will improve the data collection and reporting process.

After Hurricane Harvey, we heard from the insurance industry that we had requested data in ways that made it difficult to report, Insurance Commissioner Kent Sullivan said in a statement released by TDI. We also knew that we needed to be able to analyze that data much faster in the future.

Sullivan became insurance commissioner a month after Harvey made landfall in Texas in late August 2017.

Sullivan asked staff to undertake a process thats become the standard across the agency since his arrival  review best practices, modernize systems and processes, and communicate clearly with their audience.

This process means insurance companies know exactly what data were going to collect after a disaster, Sullivan said. They can prepare now and be ready to report quickly when needed.

TDI also upgraded its capabilities, adding Tableau software licenses, to speed the analysis of data.

After a disaster, its important that the agency and state leaders be able to quickly assess how insurance companies are responding, Sullivan said. Were now in a much better position to do that.

TDI catastrophe data call reporting guidelines are available online at https://www.tdi.texas.gov/company/documents/catastrophe-data-call-reporting-guidelines-2019.pdf.

Source: TDI

Topics Carriers Catastrophe Texas Data Driven
Assignment of benefits reform legislation progressed in the Florida legislature yesterday.

Lawmakers passed House Bill 7065, one of two key pieces of insurance industry-supported legislation  the other being its companion Senate Bill 122  that Floridas insurance regulator and industry and consumer advocates say would help stem the property insurance claims abuse that is leading to higher rates for consumers. Both bills tackle the number one issue that AOB reform advocates say is fueling the abuse: Floridas one-way attorney fee statute, Insurance Journal previously reported.

While Florida Insurance Commissioner David Altmaier in a statement Thursday called Florida unique for its long coastline, increasing population and complex insurance market, he added that Florida also has a unique attorney fee structure relating to AOB agreements. Altmaier stated the current one-way attorney fee structure incentivizes abusive litigation in Floridas insurance market.

As a result, Florida remains unique as we are one of the only states currently battling a cottage industry that profits off the systemic abuse of AOBs, he said. However, the impacts of this abuse are not so unique as every policyholder across our state is facing an insurance product affordability and availability crisis.

Following the approval of HB 7065, Altmaier applauded legislative leaders for their efforts.

Absent their continued diligence, Floridas unique AOB crisis is here to stay, he said.

The bill not only includes certain consumer protection provisions, but also addresses attorney fees by requiring the service provider to give an insurer and the consumer prior written notice of at least 10 business days before filing suit on a claim. The House bill also allows insurance companies to offer a residential or commercial property insurance policy or comprehensive or combined additional coverage motor vehicle insurance policy restricting, in whole or in part, the assignment of post-loss benefits under certain circumstances.

Its passage comes amid pressure from Floridas insurance regulator and Governor Ron DeSantis in what is now the seventh year the issue has been before state lawmakers.

After years of such bills being dismissed very early on in the legislative session, the momentum behind this years effort underscores the importance of this reform, Liz Reynolds, regional vice president, Southeast, National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies (NAMIC), said in a statement.

While NAMIC also commended the Florida House for taking this step forward, Reynolds added there remains work to be done.

Reynolds pointed to Senate Bill 754 as one example. The bill previously passed the Senate Banking & Insurance Committee in March and applies solely to windshield glass AOB abuse, however, a similar auto glass provision was stripped from the House bill that passed yesterday.

The amendment removing auto glass from HB 7065 will impair the bills effectiveness in addressing all AOB abuse, Reynolds stated.

Insurer trade group APCIA (the American Property Casualty Insurance Association) has also expressed its support of SB 754, as it has seen the number of AOB auto glass lawsuits skyrocket from 400 in 2006 to 20,000 in 2016.

APCIA praised the House for passing HB 7065 even without the auto glass provision.

This good public policy has the potential to stop these bad actors from preying on property policyholders and to free up our legal system that has seen AOB lawsuits make up more than half of all litigation filed against insurers statewide for eight straight years, said Logan McFaddin, APCIAs regional manager of State Government Affairs, in a statement.

McFaddin added that since 2013, there has been a 70% increase in AOB lawsuits, with 135,000 AOB lawsuits reported in 2018.

These AOB lawsuits are contributing to the rise in insurance costs, which affect Florida consumers and businesses, McFaddin stated.

Indeed, Barry Gilway, CEO, president and executive director at Citizens Property Insurance Corp., said in a statement that the passage of HB 7065 will help policyholders.

As written, this bill will result in lower 2019 rates for some of our policyholders and shorten the time it will take us to provide relief to all of our customers, he said.

Gilway added that Citizens actuaries are ready to incorporate these changes into their 2019 rate recommendations now pending before the Office of Insurance Regulation.

While not providing immediate premium reductions to all Citizens policyholders, the legislation would go a long way toward stabilizing rates and shortening the time it takes for Citizens to provide rate reductions to its policyholders, he added.

Supporters of AOB reform in Florida will look to the Senate next. SB 122 is currently waiting on a vote in the Rules Committee after previously passing the Judiciary and Banking and Insurance Committees in March.

Related:

Topics Lawsuits Legislation Auto Florida Property Market
A leaking gas line exploded Wednesday in a Durham shopping district, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen others as firefighters were evacuating people from buildings near the rupture, authorities said.

The blast reverberated across the North Carolina city  turning one building to rubble, shattering windows blocks away and filling the air with acrid smoke.

Jim Rogalski, 58, was working in his office across the street from the destroyed building when the explosion blew out the windows. At least four people working in cubicles by the windows suffered deep cuts, bloody head wounds and other injuries, he said.

There was lots of screaming Rogalski said. It was pretty frantic there for a little bit until help showed up.

Rogalski was seated one row away from the windows and wasnt hurt.

It was terrifying, he said. The whole building shook. Things started falling  ceiling tiles, and structure and glass and debris. Lots and lots of dust. It was tough to see beyond 20 feet or so.

The explosion came about 15 minutes after the offices human resources manager sent an email warning that the citys fire department was investigating the smell of gas and that workers shouldnt leave the building through the front door, he said as a friend gave him a ride home to Chapel Hill. Rogalski said he was forced to abandon his car in a nearby parking deck because authorities worried the blast may have weakened the structure.

Durham Fire Chief Robert Zoldos said the blast at 10:07 a.m. involved five buildings on the block and catastrophically damaged one. The leak had been reported during construction a half-hour earlier, prompting the evacuations.

On Wednesday afternoon, jagged roof beams jutted out of the collapsed building, along with bent sheet metal, bricks and wood. A massive stream of water from a ladder truck sprayed onto the remnants, draining down the street as firefighters walked past. Half of the caved-in roof cascaded into the rubble pile like a breaking wave.

Now that the fires have been contained, crews will begin search and rescue operations, Zoldos said at a news conference. No one is unaccounted for, the chief said, but theyll use dogs and listening devices to make sure no one is inside the rubble.

A total of 17 people were seen at hospitals  six in critical condition and one transported to a burn center  Durham EMS Assistant Chief Lee Van Vleet said. Zoldos said one firefighter was seriously injured and in surgery but expected to recover.

Zoldos said the cause of the explosion was still under investigation. A contractor boring under a sidewalk had hit a 2-inch gas line, causing the leak, Durham Police Department spokesman Wil Glenn said. Glenn linked the boring work to the explosion during a morning briefing, but Zoldos later said the cause was still under investigation.

Dominion Energy said in a press release Wednesday that subsidiary company PSNC Energy had received a call about third-party damage to a natural gas line in Durham. A PSNC worker responded, and the explosion occurred shortly thereafter. The company said additional crews arrived and shut off the gas.

Deputy City Manager Bo Ferguson said boring for a fiber communications network had been underway in the area, but city officials were working to confirm that and couldnt release the name of the contractor.

Blocks away, the blast shattered windows and blew at least one door off its hinges in the Brightleaf shopping district. Ed Rains was on a nearby street and couldnt see the blast but heard it. I thought someone had dropped a dumpster on the street, he said.

Tracy Telenko was at his desk in his third-floor Durham office when he heard the explosion and saw black smoke billowing up.

My first thought, because there was construction going on around my building, was something fell, somebody doing construction dropped something, he said.

Telenko said he went home after his boss told employees they could leave if they didnt feel safe in their office.

At nearby Durham School of the Arts, students were evacuated and classes dismissed for the day. Teacher Al Donaldson was walking through a hallway in a building about two blocks from the blast when he heard a loud noise, which concerned faculty and students.

We didnt know the origin at the time, he said. I was in the hallway, so I didnt so much feel it shake as experiencing a jarring sound.

The collapsed building is occupied by Prescient Co., which said in July 2017 that it was moving its headquarters from Arvada, Colorado, and expected to employ about 60 executives, engineering and sales workers in Durham. The company uses specialized software to design and build precise materials that allow builders to assemble multistory apartments, hotels and other commercial buildings faster and cheaper.

Emery P. Dalesio and Martha Waggoner in Raleigh; Tom Foreman Jr. in Charlotte; and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed to this story.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics North Carolina
A jury has awarded $3.6 million to a Colorado woman who claimed that deputies used excessive force when they arrested her and later shocked her with a stun gun while she was restrained.

The Denver Post reports the jury awarded the money to Carolyn ONeal on Wednesday, finding that Fremont County sheriffs deputies violated her right to privacy, used excessive force and retaliated against her.

The sheriffs office did not immediately return the newspapers call for comment.

ONeal sued the sheriffs office following the May 2014 arrest at the Canon City sober living facility.

Prosecutors later charged ONeal with resisting arrest and disorderly conduct. A judge dismissed the charges, finding that deputies did not have reason to arrest her.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Colorado
DENVER, CO - April 12, 2019 (Investorideas.com Newswire) The Grow-Off announced today its international expansion. In addition to its annual California and Colorado events, the grassroots company founded in Denver will expand the competition to Oregon and Canada.

The Grow-Off creates science-based contests to determine who truly grows the best cannabis, independent of human preference. Using genetically identical plants, farmers are judged based on quantitative lab results instead of subjective smoke outs. Data is collected during the grow process to discover what variables cannabis responds to both negatively and positively.

Once The Grow-Off collects data about which methods work best, the information is passed back to the growers. Additionally, The Grow-Off is experimenting with machine learning to see if well-grown cannabis can be identified from a photo.

"A computer doesn't have any bias about what cannabis should or shouldn't look like," says co-founder Jake Browne. "Being able to match physical characteristics with testing results and grow data is starting to yield some really interesting and valuable information."

The Grow-Off is already making an impact in legalized and developing markets. Placement services are being offered through The Grow-Off for cultivators and existing businesses looking to enter these emerging legal markets from Michigan to Macedonia.

"We realized that while we have a ton of data on growing, the most important part was the growers themselves," says CEO Samantha Taylor. "So many people need a grower but don't have a clue where to look. Here, we work with them every day and through our Grow Jobs platform we are able to help foster those invaluable connections."

In addition to contests, The Grow-Off also works with local communities by hosting events and contributing to organizations that work to provide food security and resources to non-violent cannabis offenders. The Grow-Off creates opportunities for those who were most impacted by the War on Drugs through mentorship programs aimed to help teach practical cultivation skills as well as supporting Students For Sensible Drug Policy nationally.

"It's important that we continue to support the next generation of cannabis advocates," says Taylor.

Each competition culminates in an awards ceremony and celebration open to all contestants, licensed cultivators, and VIPs. This exclusive happy hour gives everyone a chance to come together, enjoy light refreshments, performances, live tattoos, complimentary beverages, and of course, a bud bar.

If you would like to schedule an interview with The Grow-Off co-founders, Samantha Taylor or Jake Browne, please contact Alec Bell at alec@kipmorrison.com. To learn more about The Grow-Off or to attend an upcoming event, please visit www.thegrowoff.com.

Disclaimer/Disclosure: Investorideas.com is a digital publisher of third party sourced news, articles and equity research as well as creates original content, including video, interviews and articles. Original content created by investorideas is protected by copyright laws other than syndication rights. Our site does not make recommendations for purchases or sale of stocks, services or products. Nothing on our sites should be construed as an offer or solicitation to buy or sell products or securities. All investing involves risk and possible losses. This site is currently compensated for news publication and distribution, social media and marketing, content creation and more. Disclosure is posted for each compensated news release, content published /created if required but otherwise the news was not compensated for and was published for the sole interest of our readers and followers. Contact management and IR of each company directly regarding specific questions.

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At a round table in Texas, President Trump lamented that US troops at the border cant get a little rough because everybody would go crazy, cant act like they normally act  or like lets say, another military from another country would act. The U.S. Armed Forces are not hired thugs to be used to rough up non-violent civilians for political games, and expressing the desire to utilize them that way, disrespects the dignity and honor of our men and women in uniform.
Here are all the latest headlines this lunchtime...

GET INFORMED ...

IRELAND: Govt 'mismanagement' of National Children's Hospital 'beggars belief', says Micheal Martin.

IRELAND: Donegal shop owner says Brextension has 'wrecked our plans' for stockpiled custard creams.

IRELAND: Extra charges set for Airbnb homes in clampdown on regulations.

WORLD: Jacob Rees-Moggs sister to stand for Nigel Farages new Brexit Party.

BUSINESS: Woman glad to be back at workurges companies to participate in #JobShadowDay.

ANALYSIS: Leos political flaws become more evident as he becomes less popular.

SPORT: 'If Israel Folau doesnt want to be involved in a sport thats inclusive then he should go find another sport'.

... SOME DISTRACTION

SHOWBIZ: Arya Stark most murderous Game Of Thrones character, research shows.

VIRAL: Students use algorithm to predict Game of Thrones deaths.

VIRAL: Firefighters dig through soil to rescue dog stuck in rabbit hole.
So thats Friday nearly wrapped up. Heres some of the stories we published on irishexaminer.com today which we hope will help you make sense of it all this evening.

TO INFORM

John Delaney: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has criticised John Delaney's appearance at the Oireachtas Sport Committee

Love-triangle trial: Bobby Ryan's death was "callous, calculated, controlled murder" and the only verdict available is to find Patrick Quirke guilty of murder, lawyers for the State have told the Central Criminal Court.

'Little Leo': Ireland's ambassador to Britain has hit out at a British political magazine for saying "little Leo" should back down and "rejoin the commonwealth", accusing the publication of a "hostile" anti-Irish attack which should be consigned to the past.

Brextension: It was the week when Brexit was delayed again and when voters had to get their heads around the idea theyd be electing MEPs to join a European Parliament which they voted to leave almost three years ago.

Paul O'Connell: The commercial firm owned by Irish rugby legend, Paul OConnell last year enjoyed a bumper year as accumulated profits topped 2m for the first time.

Racist abuse: Ireland's Derrick Williams has spoken out about being on the end of online racist abuse from one of his club's own supporters.

TO ENGAGE

Climate change: Global problems need global solutions. But what you do personally can shift what's seen as 'normal', writes Steve Westlake

TO ENTERTAIN

Star Wars: JJ Abrams has said Carrie Fishers Leia will live in Star Wars: Episode IX through unused scenes from The Force Awakens that he has been able to integrate into the story.

Style counsel: With her sky-high energy and can-do attitude, its no surprise to hear fashion blogger Ciara ODoherty will soon be on our screens.

MOST READ

High Court: A mother and daughter who suffered soft tissue injuries when a car in which they were passengers rear-ended another vehicle in Wexford town have secured total damages of more than 72,000 from the High Court.
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan has announced Ireland's current re-entry visa system will be abolished as of next month.

Up to now, visa required nationals who live in Ireland and wish to travel to and from the country have been required to apply for a re-entry visa in advance of travel.

As of May 13, those individuals will be exempt from holding a visa providing they have registered for an Irish Residence Permit (IRP) or GNIB card.

Due to the need to notify airlines, ferry companies and immigratin authorities in other countries, the abolition will not take place until next month and the existing system will remain in place.

Any visa-required nationals will need a valid visa or re-entry visa until then.

Any applications for re-entry visas already submitted will be returned to applicants, and those intending to travel and return before the abolition will be provided with an in-person appointment where they will be issued with a re-entry visa free of charge.

Mr Flanagan said he was delighted with the change:

Visa required nationals will now be able to use their Irish residence permit or GNIB card to prove to airlines and immigration officials that they have a right to travel to Ireland.

"This will save over 40,000 people annually both time and money. I am committed to improving customer service in the immigration service and todays decision is the first of a series of improvements which I intend to announce over the coming year.
Baltimore RNLI carried out a medical evacuation last night from Sherkin Island off the coast of Baltimore, West Cork.

The volunteer lifeboat crew launched their all-weather lifeboat following a request from the Irish Coast Guard at 9.29pm to provide medical assitance and evacuation to an islander living on Sherkin.
The Government should not find it too difficult to meet its responsibility in facilitating the return of former Air Corps corporal Lisa Smith and her child from Syria, UN special rapporteur Fionnuala Ni Aolain has said.

Prof Ni Aolain, who is UN special rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights while Countering Terrorism, also said her office is deeply concerned at the arrest of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange in London.

Ms Smith, 37, widow of an Islamic State (IS) fighter, left Ireland several years ago and is now being held with her two-year-old daughter in al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria, close to the Iraqi border.

Her repatriation and that of her child is not insurmountable, given that hundreds of Europeans and other nationals who left to join IS are now being returned to their own countries, said Prof Ni Aolain at the Cuirt international festival of literature in Galway.

She said that while she was not directly involved in this case, her office is engaged with the issue of returning fighters and their partners, such as British teenager Shamima Begum, who has been rendered stateless by Britain.

Ms Smith is one of thousands of women and dependent children held in appalling conditions, and Ireland has an obligation to protect her and her child, she said.

Irish citizens arrested in other circumstances such as drug trafficking when abroad are offered consular assistance, and this does not involve condoning actions, she said.

Countries such as Russia, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, and Morocco are taking back hundreds of individuals and dealing directly with the Syrian Democratic Forces to do so, she said.

States including Ireland are obliged to prosecute persons who travel to join these groups under UN Security Council resolutions, and Irish prosecutors would be within their rights to assess if charges are appropriate, she said.

UN Security Council

However, this would depend on evidence of military involvement, which Ms Smith has denied in a recent interview with the Mail on Sunday.

Ireland has witnessed demobilisation and reintegration of people involved in armed groups as a result of the Troubles, and this learning is critical in handling current situations, she said.

Mr Assanges arrest is deeply concerning, she said, outlining two main concerns  the undermining of the principle of diplomatic protection, and Mr Assanges ability to have a fair trial if extradited to the US.

The increasing tendency of states to target human rights defenders, environmental activists, development and medical aid staff, and other members of civil society in the name of so-called counter-terrorism is also concerning, she said.

The single largest rise in violence last year was among white nationalist groups, many supported by recalcitrant white right-wing governments, she noted.

Too many governments spend time thinking about defeating terrorism rather than examining the causes, and there is a high degree of misplaced confidence in the use of military force, said Prof Ni Aolain.
The High Court has ruled in favour of a prisoner with incurable brain cancer who brought a challenge over the manner in which his application for temporary release was handled.

The case was brought by 37-year-old Jonathan Heaphy, who in 2016 pleaded guilty to nine offences under Section 7 of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, and was sentenced to seven years in jail, with three years suspended.

Mr Justice Donald Binchy ruled Mr Heaphy was entitled to a declaration from the court in regards to how his applications for temporary release in 2017 were handled.

Following his diagnosis Mr Heaphy from Kerryhall Road, Cork has undergone various treatments for his illness while serving his sentence.

After his surgery in 2017 he applied for temporary release from Cork Prison to facilitate his radiation and chemotherapy.

It was claimed there was a reduced risk of infection to Mr Heaphy if he was allowed a period of temporary release.

His applications were refused by the authorities, on grounds including that there was no evidence that the level of care he required was not available in the prison, and a review of that refusal was sought by Mr Heaphy's lawyers.

As a result, Mr Heaphy brought judicial review proceedings before the High Court, seeking his temporary release for the duration of his chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

The action was against the Irish Prison Service, Governor of Cork Prison, Minister for Justice and Equality, Ireland and the Attorney General.

It was claimed by Mr Heaphy the refusals were flawed because the Governor of Cork Prison had failed to refer a number of the requests for temporary release to the Justice Minister.

File image.

It was also claimed the prison governor was making decisions in respect of the applications for temporary release when he had no power to do so. The claims were denied.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Donald Binchy found the prison governor had acted outside of own powers when handling the applications for temporary release.

The governor had also usurped the statutory power of the Justice Minister and had acted in breach of the natural and constitutional justice, the Judge also found.

The Judge, who noted that Mr Heaphy is due to be released from prison in early June, also rejected the State parties' submission that the action was moot or pointless.

The findings of the court could have implications for other prisoners in ill health seeking temporary release, the court held.

The Judge said that Mr Heaphy was entitled to a declaration in his favour, the exact wording of which will be confirmed by the court at a later date.

Following the ruling Mr Heaphy's solicitor, Michael Halleron of Madden and Finucane welcomed the decision. His client remains in custody, and his chemotherapy has finished.

Notwithstanding this he said the issue raised in the case may not just affect his client in the future, but prisoners generally who apply for temporary release on grounds of ill health.
A Donegal shop owner who has been stockpiling custard creams and Heinz beans says the Brexit extension has put a spanner in the works.

According to the Belfast Telegraph, Edward Coyle who runs the Centra in Raphoe said the UK-made goods will now go out of date unless he sells them.

Mr Coyle, whose shop is just six miles from the border, said he was taking steps to avoid empty shelves after a hard Brexit.

He said: "I stockpiled UK products because I had to ensure my customers would have products. With the no-deal Brexit, there was a good chance that products wouldn't get across the border or would be delayed at ports.

"I can't have that, my job is to sell and I have to have products to sell."

However, now that a deal has been agreed to delay Brexit again, potentially until October 31, his goods will go out of date unless he sells them.

Mr Coyle said: "We were ready for March 29 and we were ready on April 12. Now this delay has wrecked our plans.

We have to sell off all the stuff that we had stockpiled and we have to stockpile again for October, but my worry is that Brexit can happen at any time.

It can happen in June when they review it, so how do I prepare? How do I manage that?"

He said many shoppers do not realise how many products with familiar brand names, are made in the UK.

Mr Coyle said: "Custard creams, Coca-Cola and garlic bread is made in Newry. These are things that aren't made in the 26 counties that we have to bring in.

"I suppose now since the advent of the global market people don't realise that the Irish products, the Irish brand names that they have all been buying are now no longer made in Ireland. they are made in the UK, so that is why I was forced to do this."
Landlords who rent out their properties on Airbnb face being hit with extra water, insurance, and commercial rates bill from July 1.

In a major clampdown on the regulations for short-term lettings, the new rules will also apply to so-called accidental landlords, despite concern from opposition parties that this would be unfair to those who found themselves in negative equity.

Fianna Fail housing spokesman Darragh OBrien had raised concern about the measures, which are designed to restrict the use of housing for short-term holiday lettings in an effort to increase the volume of available stock in the private market.

However, Housing Minister Eoghan Murphy said exemptions for accidental landlords are not possible.

Fianna Fail are changing their tune on this, said Mr Murphy. We cannot have a twin-track system.

"We support home sharing but not turning long-term rentals into holiday rentals.

Under amendments tabled by Mr Murphy at a committee yesterday, a person will still be able to let rooms in their own house or apartment year-round without planning permission as per existing planning exemptions. This includes B&Bs.

Landlords will also be able to rent out entire properties for up to 90 days per year, though they will be required to apply for commercial planning permission to do so.

If approved, lettings will not be permitted for longer than two weeks at a time and will be subject to rates and, potentially, extra insurance premiums.

In addition, water charges could also be applied, which would cost landlords a standing charge of 90 a year coupled with a 3.12 charge per 1,000 litres of water and wastewater utilised under a proposed charging system, it is understood.

Mr Murphy has indicated that in areas where there is a high demand for housing, there may be an effective ban on short-term lettings.

In major urban areas such as Cork, Dublin, and Galway, local authorities will be given powers to refuse planning permission for the properties to be let on a short-term basis.

The rules have been sharply criticised by Airbnb, which said homesharing did not cause the housing crisis and that claims the regulations were the solution were a false promise.

Legitimising homesharing with rules for the long term is good news for hosts in principle, however, there is no clear rationale for the rules being proposed here, Airbnb said in a statement.

There is no data to support a 90-night restriction on primary residences, which are by definition peoples homes, and not available on the long-term rental market.

Banning the use of secondary homes is also unlikely to significantly boost Irelands housing stock.

"This appears to be a cut and paste from regulations in other cities, without properly adapting them to the needs of Irelands residents and communities.

Housing charity Threshold welcomed the efforts to regulate the short-term letting market.

The charity claims converting secondary homes into short-term holiday lettings has removed thousands of properties from the rental market.

In an analysis of Airbnb data, we identified 5,762 Airbnb listings in Dublin alone; 41% of which were available as full-time holiday rentals, said Threshold CEO John-Mark McCafferty.

He said 60% of all listings were for entire homes available to let, meaning 3,457 housing units were potentially removed from the capitals housing stock on a permanent basis.

In one week, there were 2,452 Airbnb listings in Galway and 2,103 in Cork. Half of these were available as holiday rentals full-time.

The number of people who can be accommodated in Airbnb properties far exceeds the current 10,264 homeless figure, said Mr McCafferty.

These new restrictions will release badly needed housing onto the market and we believe it can have a positive impact for those families who are currently experiencing homelessness.

Additional reporting by Kevin ONeill
Gardai caught two people as they were assembling a drone outside a prison.

They had a quantity of drugs and mobile phones.

Officers made the discovery when they stopped a car near Castlerea Prison in Co Roscommon at around 11am yesterday.

They found the drone was in the process of being set and arrested two middle-aged suspects.

In addition, they recovered a small quantity of drugs, two mobile phones, and a watch phone.

A garda statement said: Gardai from Castlerea have arrested a male (46yrs) and a female (45yrs) following the interception of a drone, controlled drugs and a number of items.

At approximately 11am, gardai stopped and searched a car at Harristown, which is adjacent to Castlerea Prison.

During the course of the search, two mobile phones, a watch phone, approximately 440 tablets and cannabis herb (which are both subject to analysis) were recovered together with a drone which was in the process of being set up.

A male and female were arrested at the scene in connection with this investigation are currently detained at Castlerea Garda Station under the provisions of Section 4  Criminal Justice Act 1984.

The arrested pair can be held for up to 24 hours, excluding sleep breaks.

The threat posed by drones is a cause of concern among prison authorities, given incidents of drones being used to bypass security and smuggle contraband over prison walls.

In March, it was reported that six drones had been recovered by the Irish Prison Service over the previous 18 months after failed smuggling attempts.

Also last month, there were two drone attempts at Mountjoy Jail in the space of a week.
A 16-year-old Irish student who was travelling on the same Iberia Airlines flight that prevented a 15-year-old Spanish student from boarding has said that she was "overwhelmed" by the ordeal at Dublin Airport on Wednesday.

Leigha Plunkett from Co Cavan said that she and Spanish student Ameal were two of four people who were chosen "at random" to wait on standby at the departure gate to board the Iberia Airlines flight to Spain.

As the two waited with two other adult passengers to board the aircraft, Leigha said both minors were told by a member of staff: "I need to choose one of you to get on the plane", as only one seat was available. Leigha was chosen to fly.

She was travelling with another exchange student from Madrid named Alba who was staying with Leigha's family in Co Cavan.

Both girls' tickets were bought together and they were due to sit next to each other on the aircraft. Leigha, whose first time it was travelling without her family, was to spend two weeks in Madrid with Alba's family to improve her Spanish.

The 6.05am flight from Dublin Airport was booked by Leigha's mother Peggy in October. However, when they arrived at the check-in desk they were told that the flight had been overbooked by eight passengers and that Leigha would be on standby at the departure gate.

She was given the option of taking an alternative flight to Heathrow the following day where she would then have to catch a connecting flight to Madrid.

She decided to try to board the Dublin to Madrid flight that she had been booked onto and rushed to the departure gate, and was eventually allowed to board.

Her mother Peggy told us:

I didn't even get to say goodbye to my child with the panic to get her to the gate.

When Leigha got to the gate, everyone else boarded the plane, including a group of 50 Spanish children.

She said that the reason she was chosen to board the aircraft was that her luggage had already been checked onto the flight.

"It was really overwhelming because on one hand I was relieved to be getting on the plane but on the other, I felt bad because I was leaving behind the Spanish boy (Ameal) who couldn't get on," she said.

"I didn't even think to turn around to say anything to him because it was all so overwhelming."

Compilation of Leigha's Snapchat recordings as she took to the platform to highlight what had happened at the airport.

Peggy said that her daughter was very upset about leaving Spanish student Ameal behind.

"She was so upset that the boy didn't get on the plane. It wasn't 'Oh great I'm on the plane now' because she knew how upset the boy was," she said.

Leigha, who has since landed safely in Madrid, said that she suffers from eczema and that stress brings out the condition where patches of skin become inflamed and itchy.

"I've eczema all over my face after it," she told us.

Leigha did not know what had happened to Ameal after departing Dublin Airport and so she said it was brilliant to find out that he

Read More:

"I have a Snapchat vlog where I had been talking about what happened and one of my followers sent me the story about the boy," she said.

In her Snapchat recordings, she said that she "felt so bad" after she had been chosen to board the plane, leaving the others in the airport.

"It was horrible, it was actually horrible," she said.

"It was such a weird emotion...What if he had chosen the boy over me and I was in that situation? I don't ever want to be in that situation again.

Iberia Airlines has been contacted for comment.
NUI Galway has launched a new laboratory to research the generation of biofuels from organic waste.

Professor Piet Lens, a leading expert in environmental biotechnology, will lead a team of 25 PhD and post-doctoral researchers in the university's Department of Microbiology Programme, Innovative Energy Technologies for Bioenergy, Biofuels and a Sustainable Irish Bioeconomy.

They are aiming to develop new technologies to produce biobased renewable fuels (such as hydrogen from dairy effluent) that are generated from waste products (such as butanol from spent brewery grains).

It is hoped the fuels will be used to supporting the Governments strategy for an energy self-sufficient Irish bio-economy.

Besides hi-tech solutions, nature-based technologies will also be developed with the aim of tackling socio-environmental challenges such as climate change, water security, water pollution, food security and human health.

These pollution control technologies are based on processes as they occur in wetlands and algal ponds.

They will also aim to manufacture new biobased products such as fertilizers and bio-commodities (such as polylactic acid and bioplastic).

Professor Lens said: This is a fantastic opportunity for NUI Galway to develop new technologies that transform wastewater and waste into energy and bio-commodities. The investment of Science Foundation Ireland in this area is a response to the nations Climate Action Plan and ambitions to become a self-sustainable island for energy, where renewable biofuels are generated out of our wastes.
Difficulties filling up to 75 posts in the Central Statistics Office (CSO) are impacting on plans for a new national sexual violence survey, which is not due to commence until 2021.

CSO director general Padraig Dalton also told the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) it could be years before issues around the publication of Garda crime statistics would be addressed.

Mr Dalton said the agency currently has 30 vacancies  many open for more than a year and some for up to 15 months.

The agency has 860 staff, some of whom must also be transferred to other State agencies on secondment when required.

However, in total, the CSO is trying to fill 75 posts between now and the end of the year.

The vacancies vary in duration, said Mr Dalton. None of them would be much more than 12 months.

But some of them are 12 months and a lot of that is actually in the technology side, having difficulty recruiting on the technology side.

He said the difficulties in recruitment are impacting the CSOs work, as there is a growing demand for data.

It will limit our ability, said Mr Dalton. It is not limiting our ability too much at the minute because a lot of these posts are posts to help us meet new demands, like the Growing up in Ireland survey, [and] the sexual violence survey.

Generally, the inability to fill positions is slowing down some future projects, he added.

It has been 17 years since the last SAVI report was completed, which detailed the prevalence of sexual violence in a survey of more than 3,000 adults.

PAC member Catherine Connolly said the long timescale for the new SAVI report by the CSO is worrying.

I saw a timespan and it concerned me, she said. It is way out in the future.

A pilot for the survey will start in the summer of 2020, Mr Dalton said, but the full live survey will not begin until the following summer.

Work on a questionnaire is under way currently, he said.

Rape crisis support services recently warned that a rise in reported domestic violence crimes reflects the pressing need to update the SAVI report.

Meanwhile, Mr Dalton admitted that there are still problems with garda crime statistics.

Publishing of these statistics was put on hold recently amid concerns about the accuracy of the Pulse system data.

Mr Dalton confirmed that there is still a reservation around Garda crime figures.

Asked when the doubts around the statistics would be lifted, the CSO director general replied: Its not going to be lifted next year or in all likelihood the year after.

"Were talking about a number of years work required to address the issue. There is a pathway.

"We have an action plan in place with the guards.
Theres much to tempt collectors at Fonsie Mealys sale next week, says Des OSullivan.

OFFERING everything from a portrait of Lord Tracton to the Dennis silver tray which recounts in Victorian detail the sterling efforts of a magistrate in Wicklow to repress insubordination along the borders of Wicklow, Carlow and Kildare in 1822, the Fortgranite house contents sale by Fonsie Mealy next Tuesday offers much to tempt collectors.

A portrait of James Dennis, Lord Tracton of Tracton Abbey, Co Cork, Chief Baron of the Exchequer.

Among more than 850 lots are a Qing dynasty cabinet, medals from both world wars, and a Boer War letter from Winston Churchill.

Fortgranite in Baltinglass, Co Wicklow, was the home of the Dennis family for three centuries. They were originally Swifts, related to Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patricks, satirist and creator of Gullivers Travels, who changed their name to inherit an estate at Tracton in Cork. This inheritance was highlighted on these pages last week through lot 428, letters patent on vellum from King George III granting the title Baron Tracton to James Dennis, son of a timber merchant of Kinsale, who died childless in 1782.

The lavishly decorated Dennis silver tray.

The lavishly decorated Dennis silver tray, made in Dublin in 1822, was given by local bigwigs to Thomas Stratford Dennis .... for his conspicuous Zeal and active intrepidity as a Magistrate of their County And for his successful exertions in repressing the spirit of insubordination and contempt for the Laws which prevailed along the borders of the Counties of Wicklow Carlow and Kildare in the year 1822. That year marked an ongoing economic slump after the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a disastrous potato crop failure and agrarian unrest.

A carved hardwood Qing dynasty cabinet at Fonsie Mealys sale in Co Wicklow.

The hardwood Qing dynasty cabinet, bought in Hong Kong, is estimated at 2,000-3,000. A portrait of Esther Johnson is estimated at 7,000-10,000. She was Dean Swifts Stella and rumoured to have been his wife. Viewing is at Fortgranite, 11am-6pm tomorrow and 10am-6pm on Monday. The sale is at the Mount Wolseley Hotel, Tullow, Co Carlow, at 10.30am on Tuesday.
The death took place today of one of Mayo GAAs best-known supporters, John Durcan.

John, aged 75, of Coguala, Westport was known affectionately, far and wide, as St Patrick, having attended scores of Mayo games over the years dressed in the regalia of Irelands patron saint.

From 2004 on he became renowned as St Patrick, dressing up in green and red for games involving Mayo mens and womens teams, and in red and black for Westport Uniteds successful FAI Junior Cup run in 2005.

He also brought colourful banners and slogans everywhere he went.

St Patrick was never meant to last so long, John told The Mayo News in 2008.

The first banner I made was in 2004 and read Holly for Brolly in response to Joe Brolly who had been scathing in his criticism of some of the Mayo players.

The TV cameras and everyone loved it, and leaving MacHale Park after the match that day a woman from Castlebar said you could get great mileage out of that image  She convinced me that I should dress up as St Patrick the following week in a parade and raise money for charity  I havent looked back since, he added.

An army veteran, John served in the Irish Army for 36 years. He joined the army in 1960 and shortly afterwards, at the age of 17, he was sent on the first of two six-month tours of duty to the Congo.

He also did four tours to Cyprus and two in the Lebanon.

I did eight overseas trips  to hell and back stuff, Ill tell you, John said in 2008.

Even when ill in recent years, John still dressed up as St Patrick when the opportunity arose.

He had bravely battled ill-health for many years and remained in typically high spirits throughout.
Tackling inequality needs to be the cornerstone of the work to be done by the new president of the World Bank, writes Kevin Watkins.

David Malpass has taken over as World Bank president, and he carries some heavy political baggage.

He is, after all, the pick of US President Donald Trump, raising fears that he may use the position to open a new front in Trumps trade war with China, weaken the Banks leadership on climate change, and undercut multilateralism more broadly.

Malpass needs to address these concerns head-on. He should be judged not by his past, or by his links to the Trump administration, but by his delivery.

As leader of a 189-member multilateral institution with a remit to tackle some of the greatest injustices of our time, from poverty to extreme inequality and global warming, Malpass is stepping into one of the worlds most important jobs.

Whatever the circumstances of his appointment, the temptation to pass sentence on Malpass ahead of a fair trial should be avoided. His anti-multilateral instincts can be overstated.

As a senior US Treasury Department official, he helped engineer a 12bn capital increase for the World Bank last year.

He has also signalled an intent to keep poverty reduction at the heart of the Banks mission.

This weeks Spring Meetings provide an opportunity to put words into action on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the international communitys 2030 targets for eradicating poverty, improving health and wellbeing, expanding opportunity, and environmental sustainability.

Despite the extraordinary progress of the past two decades, the SDG warning signs are flashing. Recent World Bank estimates point to a sharp slowdown in the pace of global poverty reduction.

On current trends, some 600m people will remain below the official poverty line of 1.70 per day in 2030. Over 40% of those people will be African children.

Child survival data are similarly worrying. While the death rate of children under the age of five has been nearly halved since 2000, the SDG target of zero preventable child deaths is drifting out of reach.

On current trends, more than 3m children under five will die in 2030.

The report card on education is similarly bleak. In our increasingly knowledge-based global economy, there are still some 263m young people out of school.

One quarter of these young people are primary-school-age children  and the numbers are rising.

An even greater number of children are in school, but not receiving a quality education. For these children, the SDG commitment to expand opportunity has all the hallmarks of a bounced check.

Inequality lies at the heart of the looming shortfall regarding the 2030 targets. Without some hefty income redistribution in favour of the poor, there is no prospect that the poverty eradication goal will be achieved.

To its credit, the Bank has increasingly turned the spotlight on inequality.

But it has been curiously reticent about advocating for the redistributive policies in taxation, public spending, and regulation needed to narrow social disparities. bution, but that is what is needed.

There is legitimate cause for concern on this front. In his initial election manifesto, Malpass focused overwhelmingly on cutting taxes, while scrupulously avoiding any reference to the need for increased public spending in areas like health, education, and infrastructure.

This is a cure guaranteed to kill the SDG patient. Far from cutting taxes, the IMF estimates that developing countries will need to raise an additional 5% of GDP in tax revenues to achieve the SDGs.

The World Bank should be helping build the progressive and accountable tax systems needed to achieve this outcome.

At a time of shrinking aid budgets, the Bank should also be supporting more innovative approaches to finance.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, the United Nations special envoy for education, has called for the creation of an International Finance Facility for Education that would use loan guarantees to unlock $8bn (7.1bn) in new education financing for lower-middle-income countries, whose access to concessional finance is currently restricted.

Gordon Brown

This would help put 70m children in school. Health financing is another high-priority area.

Millions of children die each year as a result of treatable diseases like pneumonia, malaria, and diarrhea, because their parents cannot afford health fees, or because clinics lack trained health workers, drugs, and vital diagnostic equipment.

Under its former president, Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank championed publicly financed universal health coverage, and for good reason: there is no alternative route to providing quality health services to the poor.

Malpass should work closely with the WHO to drive this agenda, focusing on primary care services.

Malpass has the responsibility of overseeing one of the worlds largest sources of development finance  an institution staffed by dedicated professionals committed to transforming millions of lives by achieving the SDG targets.

He must not drop the ball.

Kevin Watkins is the CEO of Save the Children UK
The artists of the Beijing Dance Academy put on a successful show on Wednesday during the 24th International Baltic Ballet Festival, and are slated to give a master class in classical Chinese dancing on Thursday.

Introducing the dance show entitled "Beauty beyond Words" at VEF Culture Palace in Riga on Wednesday, the Chinese Embassy's Charge d'Affaires, Sun Yinglai, said that the "language of dance is universal, it does not need translation to be understood."

The show offers a rare insight for the audience in Riga into the philosophy, history, myths, beliefs and legends of various regions of China, he said.

The dancers took the audience on an exciting journey to the Mogao Grottoes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in northwest China's Dunhuang, which is home to a huge collection of Buddhist art, including more than 2,000 colored sculptures and 45,000 square meters of frescoes spread over 735 caves, and introduced the audience to the Dunhuang legends depicted in the murals of the Grottoes.

Lita Beiris, a former ballerina and founder of the International Baltic Ballet Festival, said she had been familiar with Chinese classical dance for a long time already and wanted to introduce Latvian audiences to this form of art.

"I found the colors and emotions of this show very inspiring ... The performance of our guests had everything, from classics to avantgarde -- acrobatics, smoothness of movement, ballet technique, martial arts," said Beiris, who is also the festival director.

"That's where I see the purpose of our festival -- to show everything that is unusual, unique, that comes to us from other countries. Classical Chinese dance is something special," Beiris said.

She noted that four artists from the Beijing Dance Academy already performed at last year's festival, but this time the Chinese dance school was represented by 36 dancers.

In the coming days, the Chinese artists are slated to perform their show in several other cities of Latvia.
Retired pope Benedict XVI has published an analysis on the Catholic Church's clergy sex abuse scandal, blaming it on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and church laws that protected priests.

The essay immediately raised eyebrows, seeming to interfere with or even contradict Pope Francis's own efforts to confront one of the most critical issues facing the church.

One church historian called Benedict's essay "catastrophically irresponsible", because it conflicted with Francis's own efforts to lead the church out of the sex abuse crisis.

Benedict in 2013 had said he planned to retire to a lifetime of penance and prayer and would leave Francis to guide the church.

US church analysts said the essay, published in the German monthly Klerusblatt, was both flawed in content and problematic on universal church level, exacerbating existing divisions in the church that have emerged between supporters of Francis and Catholics nostalgic for Benedict's doctrine-minded papacy.

In his introduction, Benedict said both the Vatican secretary of state and Francis had given him permission to publish it.

The Vatican press office confirmed it was written by Benedict.

In the essay, Benedict traced the start of the clergy abuse crisis to the sexual revolution of the 1960s, citing the appearance of sex in films in his native Bavaria.

He also blamed the crisis on failures of moral theology in that era, as well as church laws that gave undue protection to accused priests.

Benedict wrote that during the 1980s and 1990s:

"the right to a defence (for priests) was so broad as to make a conviction nearly impossible".

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict reformed those laws in 2001 to make it easier to remove priests who abused children.

Benedict took a hard line against clerical sex abuse as the Vatican's conservative doctrine chief, and later as pope, defrocking hundreds of priests accused of raping and molesting children.

"Why did paedophilia reach such proportions? Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God."

Francis has blamed the scandal on a clerical culture in the church that raises priests above the laity.

Villanova University theologian Massimo Faggioli said the essay was thin in its analysis by effectively attributing the scandal to the sexual revolution.

He said it omitted key cases, such as the Legion of Christ founder's paedophilia, which began well before then.

"If a pope emeritus decides to stay silent, it's one thing and can be defended. But speaking and telling a tiny part and a very personal version of the story, it's hard to defend."

"Everything we know in the global history of the Catholic abuse crisis makes Benedict XVI's take published yesterday very thin or worse: a caricature of what happened during in the Catholic Church during the post-Vatican II period - with all its ingenuities and some tragic mistakes," he tweeted.

Everything we know in the global history of the Catholic abuse crisis makes look Benedict XVI's take published yesterday very thin or worse: a caricature of what happened during in the Catholic Church during the post-Vat2 period - with all its ingenuities and some tragic mistakes  Massimo Faggioli (@MassimoFaggioli) April 11, 2019

Church historian Christopher Bellitto questioned if Benedict, who turns 92 next week, was being manipulated by others.

He said the essay undermined Francis's own efforts to steer the church out of the crisis.

Mr Bellitto said the essay omitted the critical conclusions that arose from the pope's February sex abuse summit in Rome, including that "abusers were priests along the ideological spectrum, that the abuse predated the 1960s, that it is a global and not simply Western problem, that homosexuality is not the issue in paedophilia".

"It is catastrophically irresponsible, because it creates a counter-narrative to how Francis is trying to move ahead based on the 2019 summit," he said.

"The essay essentially ignores what we learned there."

David Gibson, from Fordham University's Centre on Religion and Culture, agreed with that assessment.

"For a retired pope to try to undo the critical work of a sitting pope and on such a crucial issue seems ... bad," he said.

PA & Digital Desk
Food At The Pansodan, Sublime Flavors in an Architectural Gem

Inside the newly-opened restaurant, The Pansodan. / Marie Starr / The Irrawaddy

YANGONPassersby had been watching a chrysalis of a handsome colonial-era two-story red brick building with tall arched windows, decorative columns and wrought iron awning on Pansodan Street for months.

When The Pansodan opened on March 18 it was subject to a flurry of online hype. When I found the restaurant didnt have an official Facebook page yet I was even more intrigued and knew I had to go there to experience it for myself.

When I stepped into the self-described Burmese brasserie from the blazing April heat for a midweek lunch recently the place was buzzing. With few free tables downstairs, I went through the wood-panel stairwell to a table on the quiet mezzanine and lounged in a soft, oversized chair to watch the comings and goings of Yangons hottest new restaurant. A group of trendy millennials were catching up over lunch, a business lunch meeting with video chat was ongoing and a table of colleagues in matching shirts chatted and laughed.

With one of The Pansodans four investors being a famous local interior designer, and another the director of Pun + Projects, which operates a number of modern dining and drinking outlets around Yangon, its no wonder the design chosen for this space is classy and comfortable. Theres a wonderfully smart art deco theme running throughout. The double-height main floor is bright and airy with a mirrored bar, marble tabletops, wood-panel walls and stand-out symmetric floor tiles.

I was handed the menu, which features all the key dishes at the soul of Myanmar culture. Mohinga, coconut noodles and Shan noodles were listed alongside favorites adopted from our neighborspork bao, samosa, keema paratha and biryani. The sirloin beefsteak comes with a pickled tea leaf chimichurri sauce. (To save you googling it, thats an uncooked, garlicky sauce of South American origin.) The prices, on the other hand, are decidedly un-local, at 12,000 kyats for a prawn curry and a whopping 5,000 kyats for a tea leaf salad.

I asked the very attentive member of staff which dishes have been the most popular so far and ordered an appetizer of Burmese pate, the grilled chili chicken for the entree and a lime soda to wash it down. Having read rave reviews of the dish on the Instagram accounts of Yangons most famous foodies who were first in the door during the restaurants soft opening, I couldnt resist ordering the beef bone marrow too.

I enjoyed the lime soda, which was refreshingly tart and served with a bamboo straw. Then came the Burmese pate, which is chicken liver pate on a dash of balsamic vinegar reduction, topped with fried shallots and served with pickles and black pepper crisps. The pate was moist and flavorful and the pickles were an excellent pairing. The black pepper crisps were more like crackers and, unfortunately, too brittle to scoop up the pate, instead falling apart in my fingers.

The grilled chili chicken was an aromatic and generously sized portion of Myanmar chicken, which means its not from a battery farm and, similar to free-range poultry, theres less meat on the bone but much, much more flavor. The meat was wonderfully seasoned and moist and chili-lovers will be glad to hear it is hot, hot, hot!

Then came the beef bone marrow. I was a little intimidated when confronted with a halved chunk of beef bone on my plate but digging in, I found the jelly-like marrow to be packed with deep, rich flavors and the gloopy texture was counteracted nicely by the topping of crispy dried shrimp and toasted breadcrumbs.

Later, I was glad to have another occasion to meet a friend for after-work cocktails at the small but glamorous-looking bar in The Pansodan. The cocktail menu was not exhaustive but exciting, with innovative concoctions like the very refreshing Irrawaddy Fizz (Blanco vermouth, fresh watermelon juice, tonic, lime and yathabo) as well as some great twists on classic cocktails, like the Daiquiri Vert, which has absinthe and lime leaf. The signature drink, The Pansodan, was the most delicious by far: the vodka, lemongrass, lime and pineapple with a hint of fresh basil combined to make a light, multi-level flavor experience that I would come back for again and again. Apart from cocktails, the drinks menu has a good selection of favorite whiskey blends and bottles of wine priced upwards of 38,000 kyats.

Overall, I was glad to find The Pansodan lived up to the hype surrounding itespecially on the design and fantastic renovation work. With so much beautiful old architecture in downtown Yangon crumbling for a lack of funding for renovations, Im glad this gem on Pansodan Street will be preserved and loved by diners and snap-happy Instagrammers alike, all the while serving unfailingly delicious local cuisine and fantastic cocktails.
Burma Amnesty for Political Prisoners Eagerly Anticipated as Myanmar Ushers in New Year

Supporters welcome Nilar Thein of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society, who was released in an amnesty, at the gate of Insein Prison in April 2016. / Myo Min Soe / The Irrawaddy

YANGONTo mark the traditional New Year, which falls in mid-April, Myanmar people free birds and fish to make merit. For the government, releasing prisoners in the New Year period is customary.

Last year, President U Win Myint pardoned 8,541 prisoners in the New Year amnesty, including 36 political prisoners and 51 foreigners.

His predecessor as president, U Htin Kyaw, acquitted student protesters facing political charges and pardoned 83 prisoners in the 2016 New Year amnesty. Dozens of political prisoners were among those released.

How about this year? Will President U Win Myint pardon all political prisoners?

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), there are currently 45 political prisoners behind bars, while more than 300 individuals are facing trial inside and outside prison.

Myanmar will celebrate the New Year festival starting Saturday, and usher in the New Year on April 17. As the festival draws near, the families of detainees and political activists are hoping for good news.

Ma Pan Ei Mon, the wife of the jailed Reuters journalist Ko Wa Lone, said on Thursday that she is hoping her husband and his colleague Ko Kyaw Soe Oo will be released.

The two journalists have spent more than 15 months in detention since they were arrested in December 2017 while investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslim civilians involving Myanmar soldiers in Inn Din village in Rakhine States Maungdaw Township. The pair were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in September under the Official State Secrets Act. The verdict drew an international outcry and strong condemnation.

Aside from Ko Wa Lone and Ko Kyaw Soe Oo, there are many other political prisoners who were arrested and jailed because of a miscarriage of justice and they should all be released, Ko Aung Myo Kyaw of the AAPP said.

We hope for the release of all political prisoners. And thats what we have been demanding, he said.

Among the political prisoners are former child soldier Aung Ko Htwe, who was jailed in connection with a media interview he gave; Arakanese politician Dr. Aye Maung and author Wai Hin Aung, who were sentenced to 20 years in prison in March over speeches they made at a literary discussion; and two peaceful protesters, Lum Zawng and Zau Jat.

Nang Pu, Lum Zawng and Zau Jat of the Kachin National Social Development Association were sentenced to six months in December and fined 500,000 kyats ($333) for defaming the Myanmar military. They participated in protests demanding the government help trapped villagers amid fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and the military. Nang Pu was released from prison on April 5 because of her deteriorating health, but the other two remain behind bars.

Many of the other political prisoners were sentenced under the Unlawful Associations Act and the Telecommunications Lawtwo controversial laws that rights activists have demanded be repealed.

Ruling party lawmaker Ma Zin Mar Aung, who is also a former political prisoner, said that in prison the Myanmar New Year is one of those special occasions that every prisoner looks forward to with high hopes.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi once said that even one political prisoner is too many. We dont want to see political prisoners in this transition anymore, she said.

Under the previous military regime, thousands of political activists and politicians were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for their anti-government activities.

Thousands of political prisoners were released conditionally under former President U Thein Sein, meaning they faced having to serve the remainder of their initial sentences were they ever to be arrested again. In the 2018 amnesty, however, President U Win Myint issued a decree nullifying the conditional status of their release for those convicted on political charges by the previous governments.

Ko Aung Myo Kyaw of the AAPP said he hopes the political prisoners will be pardoned, as he had heard there could be a presidential amnesty on April 17. He added that those who are facing political charges should also be acquitted.

Last year, almost all political prisoners on the AAPPs list were released under the presidential amnesty.

Ma Pan Ei Mon said, For me, if he is released, I will be as happy as if I had won the lottery.
Burma Filmmaker Accused of Insulting Army Is Denied Bail, Sent to Prison

Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi is led away to Insein Prison from Insein Township Court on Friday morning. / Htet Aung San
Burma Naga Rebels Say Peace Talks May Suffer if Military Does Not Free Leaders

NSCN-K members attend the 21st Century Panglong Union Peace Conference in Naypyitaw in July. / Htet Wai / The Irrawaddy

YANGON  The National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K) says it will struggle to keep up peace talks with the Myanmar military if it does not release all members of the armed rebel group it has detained, including those on its negotiating team.

In early March, more than a month after taking control of the NSCN-Ks headquarters in Sagaing Region, the military arrested 10 of the groups political leaders and six fighters, including captains.

Five of the detainees were released on April 5, leaving the fighters and the five leaders charged under the Unlawful Associations Act in custody, NSCN-K liaison officer Juvlengthong (or Cue Hlaing Thong) told the Irrawaddy.

He said the six fighters were being held by the military and the leaders by the Khamti district police.

The five released were Eno Ngaitum, Eno Manglwan, Eno Athrom and Eno Longsa  the NSCN-Ks ministers for health, education and legal affair and deputy minister for agriculture, respectively  and Eno Tomthong, a member of the groups central committee.

Juvlengthong said further peace negotiations would be difficult as both Chairman U An Kam and Vice Chairman U Kyaw Wan Sein, who lead the NSCN-K peace committee, as well as our home affair minister are among the detainees.

Colonel Than Naing, spokesman for the militarys Northwestern Command, confirmed that the military released five of the detainees because, according to our initial investigation, they were not directly involved in the matter even though they are with the NSCN-K.

In late March, Presidents Office spokesman U Zaw Htay said the office was reviewing whether the charges against the five NSCN-K leaders still in custody were appropriate.

The military accuses the NSCN-K of supporting ethnic Assam and Manipur  also known as Kathae  rebel groups in eastern India. Though the NSCN-K denies the claim, the military says it took control of the groups training schools and arrested 36 people in ethnic Naga areas between January and March.

Juvlengthong said the group has written to the governments National Reconciliation and Peace Center, led by the State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the Office of the Commander-in-Chief asking them to intervene but have yet to hear back.

He said the NSCN-K entered into a bilateral ceasefire with the government and military in 2012 because it trusted them and withdrew from its headquarters peacefully when the military came to seize it in January, and so where very upset by the militarys latest moves.

A Naga affairs analyst who asked to speak anonymously said the military had invited the Manipur into Sagaing in the first place.

The Tatmadaw [military] tends to change its positions depending on the political landscape, the analyst told The Irrawaddy. If they want to blame, they can do so any time. So now they accuse the Naga armed group for political reasons.

Whether the NSCN-K leaders can legitimately be charged for supporting a group that is not officially designated an insurgent organization also remains an open question.

It is unclear how the government considers the Assam and Kathae rebels unlawful groups under Myanmar law, the analyst said.

U Aung Htut, chairman of Naga Tradition, Literate and Culture (Central), a non-government group, said the five NSCN-K leaders are due to appear in court on April 19.

He said his group has sent letters requesting their release to the Presidents Office, state counselor, military chief and ethnic affair minister but received to replies.

The five NSCN-K leaders can only be freed when the Tatmadaw drops the charges against them for the sake of peace and stability in the region, he said.

We raised the issues to respective authorities because we want stability in the Naga region and we hope for the best solution, he added. We just dont want any further instability because of this incident.

U Aung Htut said the fighters should not have been detained either because they only stayed behind at the groups headquarters when it was abandoned to the military in case the military needed their help.

Local sources say the military has imposed restrictions on movement in the area since taking over the base.

People do not dare to go to their farms, and roads between their villages and markets are closed, which makes it hard for them to buy basic food items such as rice, oil and salt. They cannot enjoy freedom to movement. It is a violation of their basic rights, the Naga affairs analyst said.

The Naga were granted a self-administered region under the military-drafted 2008 Constitution and run it out of Lahe Township. And while the NSCN-K signed a bilateral ceasefire deal in 2012, it has no interest in joining the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement. The armed group wants to bring the Naga on either side of the Myanmar-India border under one rule and has asked for tri-partite negotiations between it and both governments.

The Irrawaddys Chit Min Tun contributed reporting to this story.
Burma Two ABSDF Members Jailed for 2 Years for Unlawful Association

ABSDF members celebrate the groups 25th anniversary in Laiza, Kachin State in 2013. / The Irrawaddy

A court in Mohnyin Township, Kachin State sentenced two members of the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF) to two years in prison yesterday, the leader of the group said.

ABSDF chairman U Than Khe told The Irrawaddy on Friday, The verdict was unfair. We strongly condemn it.

U Aung Swe Oo and U Maung Oo were arrested in December last year and charged under the Unlawful Association Acts Article 17(1) after traveling to a conflict zone in Mohnyin Township to attend the funeral of a member of their organization. It is customary for senior members of the group to attend the funeral of a member who dies, in order to show support for the family.

At the time of their arrest, both men were carrying documents showing they were legally allowed to travel, U Than Khe said.

The ABSDF is an armed group. It signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the Myanmar government in 2015. U Than Khe said his organizations members were free to travel under the terms of the agreement.

The organization also signed a state government-level ceasefire in 2013. This agreement also entitles all members of the group to travel freely in the country, he said.

The ABSDF formed in 1988 after the nationwide uprising that year. Its members are based in different ethnic areas, U Than Khe said, adding that the government had violated its agreement to allow them freedom of travel.

The agreement made it very clear that all members of our organization could travel freely, he said.

We have found that there is no responsibility or accountability for [enforcing the] agreement; it is very weak. They [the government) should show accountability for our two colleagues based on our agreement. They should release them, he said.

He said the actions of the government and the Myanmar Army in this case would raise many questions for other ethnic armed organizations that are negotiating peace deals with the government.

This is the second time members of the ABSDF have been sentenced in prison. U Min Htay was jailed in 2017, also after being arrested in Kachin State.

U Than Khe said many members of the ABSDF were disappointed in the actions of the Myanmar Army, believing it demonstrated that the Army did not respect the peace agreement. Some of the members said it would be hard for them to trust the military in future peace negotiations.

We are an organization who worked for peace with them. But still they treat us badly. So Im really worried their actions will reduce peoples trust in peace negotiations, he said.
Guest Column Is Bangladesh Really Interested in Justice on Rakhine Issue?

ICOE members in Maungdaw, northern Rakhine State, in August 2018. / ICOE

Bangladesh has finally allowed the Independent Commission of Enquiry (ICOE) to visit the country. According to a press release on the ICOEs website, the Bangladeshi foreign minister has agreed in principle to meet with the commission next month. What is unclearand frankly, this must be the crux of the issueis whether Bangladeshi authorities will allow the ICOE to conduct evidence gathering in Coxs Bazar. No information on this is available on the ICOEs website.

However, informed diplomatic sources say that Bangladesh has not yet given the ICOEs Evidence Collection and Verification Team (ECVT) the green light to visit Coxs Bazar to collect evidence and data. This is a great disappointment to those seeking information on what really prompted the massive displacement of people from Myanmar to Bangladesh in the wake of clearance operations by the Myanmar military in northern Rakhine starting in late 2017 following a series of attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on security outposts.

It also reflects poorly on Bangladesh, which has in the past given access to the UN Fact Finding Mission, U.S. State Department Documentation Team and international NGOs to tour Coxs Bazar collecting evidence, statements, interviews and pictures, etc. If Bangladesh does not allow the ICOE to conduct its own investigation in Coxs Bazar, it could be seen as acting in bad faith. The natural question would be: Does Bangladesh have something to hide?

The ICOE was established just under a year ago by the Union Presidents Office. In a press release dated July 30, 2018, it stated that the ICOE was established as part of its national initiative to address reconciliation, peace, stability and development in Rakhine. The ICOE is made up of international and national members. The ICOE will investigate allegations of human rights violations and related issues, following the terrorist attacks by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), the statement reads. According to the terms published on its website, the ICOE is supposed to submit reports with recommendations to the Union President. The use of the plural reports indicates that ICOE may be preparing more than one submission to the President.

The world has only read reports documenting alleged atrocities that have purportedly taken place in Myanmar, by such organizations as Amnesty International, Fortify Rights, the UN Fact Finding Mission and others. It is resoundingly clear that those reports are based on narratives of people living in Coxs Bazar. The ICOE provides an opportunity to inform the world of the facts based on evidence. They should be allowed into Bangladesh to take evidence and do the necessary cross-verification and seek corroboration of the facts back in Myanmar. The ICOEs report should differ from other international organizations reports, which are based on peoples narratives in one country. It should be evidence-based, and that evidence should be verified. A one-sided, narrative-based report will do nothing to achieve the accountability and justice the world seeks.

Nyein Maung is a freelance researcher on Rakhine issues. The views and opinions expressed here are the authors alone.
Specials Myanmars First Christian Missionary Dies at Sea

Judson and his most significant work.

Adoniram Judson, the American missionary who first promoted Christianity in Myanmar, died 169 years ago today. Affectionately known as Saya Judson, he is remembered as Myanmars most significant missionary.

He arrived in Myanmar in 1813 at the age of 25 and spent years learning Burmese before beginning his preaching on Baptism.

He baptized his first Burmese convert, Maung Naw in 1819. Two years later, he baptized his first female Burmese convert, Ma Min Hla.

Judson is also remembered for compiling the first Burmese-English dictionary, English-Burmese dictionary, and the first Burmese grammar book. He translated the Bible into Burmese and also established a number of Baptist churches in Myanmar.

He faced many challenges in Myanmar and came under pressure from the authorities who were unhappy with his work in converting people to Christianity. He was regarded as a spy during the First Anglo-Burmese War, and was imprisoned at Inwa, then called Ava, for over a year.

Judson translated the Treaty of Yandabo, the peace treaty credited with ending the First Anglo-Burmese War.

He dedicated his life to his missionary work and eventually developed eyesight problems and headaches. He was advised by doctors to take a sea voyage, and on April 12, 1850, at the age of 61, he died onboard a ship bound for America. He was buried at sea in the Bay of Bengal.

The Judson College, the forerunner of the Yangon University, was named after him and the university campus is still home to Judson Church.

Judson was regarded as a Burmese man of letter by the local literati. A church which is still in use in Lanmadaw Township, Yangon, was named in honor of Maung Naw, his first convert.
Films as part of pop culture is powerful to help promote the understanding between peoples, playing an important role in the development of U.S.-China relations, a former U.S. diplomat said Wednesday during the 52nd edition of the WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival held.

According to David Firestein, founding executive director of the China Public Policy Center at The University of Texas at Austin, negative incidents in bilateral ties didn't extend from the political level to public opinion. "One of the reasons is that public opinion is shaped by more profound and deeper cultural influences," he said when speaking at the Asia seminar during the annual film festival in Houston.

"Movie is probably one of the most important ones," noted Firestein, who is also head of George H.W. Bush Foundation for U.S.-China Relations.

"I think movies in particular have a very powerful impact," by impressing people "in a vivid and profound way," he said.

Firestein said Chinese films used to play a limited role in shaping how Americans viewed China, but things are now changing.

"The movie industry has become very robust and very active in China," Firestein said. "The production values, the topic matter and the sort of artistic sense are coming more into alignment with what American movie goers are expecting."

"And as a result, I think the impact on how Americans look at China is going to be greater and greater," he added.

This year, the competitive WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival opened on Friday and will run through April 14. During the period, 10 major categories of competition, including over 60 new independent feature films and 108 award-winning shorts as well as documentaries and student projects from around the world, will be screened.

One of the world's oldest independent film festivals, WorldFest boasts discovering a long list of heavyweights including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Ang Lee.

The film festival received over 4,500 category entries from 74 nations and regions for its 2018 edition.
Friday, April 12th, 2019 (8:28 am) - Score 1,864

Fibre optic network builder Cityfibre has once again faced complaints from a pocket of residents in the village of Cambusbarron (arguably a suburb), which is part of the operators 10m deployment in Stirling (Scotland) of a new 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) broadband network; supported by UK ISP partner Vodafone.

At the start of this year we reported that locals in Cambusbarron had complained about a lack of communication and lack of respect from the operators contractors (here), which largely stemmed from disruption due to road closures and frustration after some locals felt as if they hadnt been well enough informed about the work that would be taking place.

Fast forward several months and the village is currently set to be one of the first areas to go live in Stirling at the end of this month, with Bannockburn, Raploch, Riverside, Braehead, Broomridge and the Bridge of Allan due to follow over the coming months.

Unfortunately locals in Cambusbarron, where work is still on-going, have kicked off again (Daily Record) to complain that theyre being left with a very untidy village due to a mix of gripes related to allegedly blocked drains (i.e. bunged up with construction materials), flooding in areas where such problems didnt exist before, gravel and rubble left on pavements (safety concerns) and mud on walkways.

Elaine Doherty, CityFibres City Manager for Stirling, said: Our construction team will shortly complete the build programme in Cambusbarron  making the area the first in Stirling to receive gigabit-capable full fibre internet directly to the home. We aim to carry out reinstatement works to a high standard and are working closely with our contractor and the councils roads team to ensure the Cambusbarron reinstatement is meeting these standards. Following completion, we will carry out a final walk through with the council and take action should any outstanding issues be identified. If residents have any concerns, we encourage them to contact us. Throughout our time in Cambusbarron we have engaged with a host of residents and businesses and it is clear that excitement for full fibre is high. We look forward to connecting the first residents at the end of April.

Deploying new fixed line broadband infrastructure is inevitably both a very expensive and highly disruptive civil engineering exercise, which will often attract complaints no matter who is doing the street works. In this case a quick look at the local area shows that Cityfibres work is very much widespread and still on-going across Cambusbarron, with most of the plans being due to finish by 23rd April 2019.

In the long run the ability to access affordable 1Gbps broadband speeds should make it all worthwhile and may even boost the value of local housing, as well as the economy.
Dr Richard Di Natale: "Foreign nations must not be able to extradite and charge journalists who have exposed their wrongdoing."

The Australian Greens have called on the Federal government to ensure that WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange is not extradited to the US after his arrest in London overnight.

Greens leader and Foreign Affairs spokesman Dr Richard Di Natale said the arrest marked a dark day for press freedom globally.

Assange was arrested at the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday night. He had been taking refuge there since June 2012 after having been granted asylum by Ecuador.

His arrest came after Quito withdrew his asylum and London Metropolitan Police were invited into the embassy to take him to jail.

Dr Di Natale said: Regardless of what you think about Assange as an individual, he is facing extradition to the US on charges relating to his work to shine light on potential war crimes  an act that won him Australias highest honour for journalism.

Seeking to punish Assange for exposing evidence of US atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan would put a chilling effect on moves towards open and more transparent democracy."

The US issued an indictment just hours after Assange's arrest, claiming he had conspired with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to assist in cracking a password on US Department of Defence computers on a network meant for classified information.

Said Dr Di Natale: "This is not a simple case of someone breaking local laws while overseas. If extradited to the United States, Assange will be on trial for alleged crimes he committed while not even in the country.

"Foreign nations must not be able to extradite and charge journalists who have exposed their wrongdoing. It sets a terrible precedent and would be a disaster for the free press."



He said Australia should do more than make a tokenistic offer of consular assistance.

"I call on the Foreign Minister [Marise Payne] to make the most of our so-called special relationship with the United States to ensure that Assange is not extradited to the US.



Its time the ALP showed some courage and stood up for a more open and transparent democracy instead of again falling into line behind the Coalition.
The sales of smartphones that use artificial intelligence for processing is forecast to increase from 190 million units in 2018 to 1.25 billion units in 2022, which is more than three-fourths of the total that will ship that year.

Analyst firm Counterpoint Research said one of the main reasons behind this forecast was the expected launch of several Android smartphones that used Qualcomm's 855 system-on-a-chip in 2019 and subsequent years.

The company said that while smartphone vendors had been using AI capabilities for some time, the processing had been done either in the cloud or else distributed across the various processors - CPUs, GPUs or digital signal processors.

At present, AI was being used mostly for camera-related applications like facial recognition and image enhancement. This was expected to spread to other applications over the next two years.

We see voice assistants as one of the first applications to benefit from device-based processing, said Gareth Owen, associate research director at Counterpoint Research.

Today, most voice processing in smartphones is cloud-based. However, voice assistants will be able to process commands quicker and respond faster with on-device processing. It also resolves privacy concerns.

Counterpoint said Apple and Huawei were the first two smartphone companies to include dedicated AI processors - the A11 and the Kirin 970 respectively - in their flagship devices launched in September 2017.

Two years later, virtually all SoC vendors were doing so, with Qualcomm, for example, offering an AI Tensor Accelerator in the Snapdragon 855s Hexagon DSP.

With Qualcomm joining the fray and incorporating hardware-based AI acceleration in its latest Snapdragon SoC for the first time, industry-wide adoption of AI silicon in smartphones is inevitable, said Peter Richardson, research director at Counterpoint Research.

And with Qualcomm keen to extend machine learning capabilities into its lower cost chips, plus the availability of AI SoCs for mid-range phones from other vendors, this trend will quickly extend to mid-range and even low-range smartphones."
New Zealands largest telco Spark has been hit with a fine of NZ$675,000 for making false or misleading representations in its customer invoicing, and when making a NZ$100 credit offer to new customers.

The telco was fined by the Auckland District Court after pleaded guilty and convicted in relation to nine charges under the Fair Trading Act for conduct that occurred during the period 2 June 2014 to 7 December 2017.

Eight of the charges relate to misrepresentations Spark made in customer invoices.

Sparks terms and conditions said charges would stop 30 days after customers gave notice to terminate their contracts. However, final bills sent to nearly 72,000 customers included charges for services beyond the 30-day termination period.

Customers rely on companies to invoice them accurately. Overcharging even a small amount to individual customers can result in businesses receiving large sums of money that they are not entitled to. In this instance customers overpaid $6.6 million, averaging an overcharge of $90 per person, said Commerce Commission commissioner Anna Rawlings.

Spark failed to take necessary steps to ensure its invoices were accurate. More than seven thousand customers still remain out of pocket despite refunds being made to a large number of others who were affected.

The other charge relates to promotional letters sent to prospective Spark customers, offering a $100 account credit if they joined Spark and subscribed to a particular broadband plan.

Commissioner Rawlings said the letters gave the impression that new customers could sign up online to receive the credit, when they could not. In fact, the credit would only be paid if customers telephoned Spark to sign up for the plan.

It is vital that businesses clearly disclose the terms of any offers made when marketing their products, she said.

In sentencing in the Auckland District Court, Judge Russell Collins said in relation to Sparks misrepresentations in customer invoices, It is commercial offending, and commercial offending must be met with commercial penalties.

Judge Collins said he accepted the conduct regarding the $100 credit was, a material omission, and the offending involved serious misrepresentation".

In addition to todays sentencing, the Commission has issued Spark with a warning relating to its failure to correctly apply a $300 welcome credit to the accounts of eligible customers.

Affected customers were issued with invoices seeking payment for services where payment was not due because Spark ought to have applied the promised credit to the customers accounts.

Spark identified and self-reported the welcome credit issue to the Commission, and subsequently identified all affected customers and correctly applied the credit to their accounts.

This is another example of the care businesses must take to ensure their billing and invoicing systems are accurate and that customers are not left out of pocket. We encourage all businesses to regularly review their systems and processes to ensure that their products and promotional offers are being delivered to their customers as intended, Commissioner Rawlings said.

The Commission said, in its view, Sparks conduct is likely to have breached the Fair Trading Act.

Commissioner Rawlings said a warning explains the Commissions view of Sparks conduct in this case and does not constitute a finding of non-compliance with the Fair Trading Act, and only the courts can decide whether a breach of the law has occurred.
Late last-year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was found to have exposed 2.3 million disaster survivors to identity theft and fraud by unnecessarily sending sensitive data to a government contractor administering FEMAs emergency lodging program. The contractor, who failed to flag for FEMA the data oversharing, was found by the agency to have 11 cybersecurity vulnerabilities in its data and network facilities, seven of which wont be remediated until 2020.

That same contractor currently supplies, and has since 2005, emergency lodging services to virtually all government agencies and sub-agencies, including the Department of Defense, the Coast Guard, the Department of Justice, the Department of Veterans Affairs, among others. Based on an investigation, its unclear if any determination has been made by the agencies that rely on the contractor for emergency lodging services whether they, too, were collecting or transmitting unnecessary sensitive data to the contractor. Its further unclear the degree to which the identified cybersecurity vulnerabilities leave the contractors facilities exposed to external threats or whether the personal data of all the other agencies personnel are inadequately protected on the contractors vulnerable network.

On March 15, the Department of Homeland Securitys Office of Inspector General (OIG), issued a report alerting that FEMA had violated the Privacy Act of 1974 and Department of Homeland Security policy by needlessly releasing to the federal contractor administering the agencys Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program the personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive personally identifiable information (SPII) of 2.3 million disaster survivors of hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, and the California wildfires in 2017.

Although the OIGs report redacted the contractors name, the contractor is a Wichita, Kansas-based company called Corporate Lodging Consultants, Inc. (CLC), which is owned by a publicly traded commercial payments company, Fleetcor. CLC describes itself as the nation's leading provider of workforce lodging rates and has been the federal governments sole official provider of emergency lodging services since 2005 under a blanket purchase agreement with the General Services Administration (GSA), a contract that is now on its third iteration. CLC did not respond to requests for comments.

FEMAs overcollection and transmission of the survivors SPII came about because a previous but now suspended program, call the TSA-Reimbursable Program (TSAR), required emergency lodging applicants to provide the SPII so they could be directly reimbursed by CLC. The privacy incident occurred because FEMA did not take steps to ensure it provided only required data elements to CLC. Moreover, CLC did not notify FEMA that the agency was providing unnecessary PII and SPII for eligible disaster survivors.

The collection and transmission of the survivors data, which encompassed 20 unnecessary data fields including full addresses, financial institution names, electronic funds transfer numbers and bank transit numbers, placed survivors seeking disaster-related housing under the TSA program at increased risk of identity theft and fraud. After sanitizing the unnecessary data from the contractors systems and after deploying a joint assessment team of cybersecurity personnel to the contractors facilities, FEMA discovered 11 security vulnerabilities in the contractors network, only four of which had been remediated as of March 2019. The contractor is developing remediation plans for the remaining seven vulnerabilities, which wont be fully implemented until June 30, 2020.

(Although we identified CLC as the contractor in early April, Dave Gershgorn at Quartz first went public with the contractors name on April 9 in this piece. We identified the parent company of CLC in the exact same manner as Gershgorn: through a search of the federal contracts database administer by GSA.)

Under the contract, CLC provides lodging negotiations and management services for the federal government, allowing agencies to centrally source, manage, pay, audit and report out on their emergency lodging response purchases. CLC has established relationships with more than 15,000 hotels in North America, and seeks to not only serve as a lodging facilitator for the government but also tries to negotiate lower-than-market rates for government clients.

According to its blanket purchase agreement with GSA, under which all eligible government entities can arrange for using CLC to provide emergency lodging, CLC is paid a per-room night fee according to a schedule that starts at $2.88 per room night and drops with bulk discounts, ending with a $1.92 per room night fee for government clients which request more than two million room nights per year. CLC bills the government at cost for the hotel and other lodging facility charges. Lodgers, however, are usually required to provide credit cards for incidental charges and damages to the room, or in some cases pay CLC directly with a government credit card, check or wire transfer.

Does PII and SPII data exposure go beyond FEMA?

According to the GSAs Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), CLC has since October 2007 (the earliest entry in the FPDS database) provided lodging services to thirteen different government agencies and 26 sub-agencies of the federal government, including FEMA, which is the largest government client by a wide margin.

The federal government agencies to which CLC has provided lodging services since 2007 include:

Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS)

Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Department of Commerce (DOC)

Department of Defense (DOD)

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

Department of Justice (DOJ)

Department of Labor (DOL)

Department of State (DOS)

Department of The Interior (DOI)

Department of Transportation (DOT)

Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

General Services Administration (GSA)

Although the data from the FPDS is difficult to analyze, since October 2007 the federal government has spent at least an estimated $100 million on CLCs services, with the total potential value of the government award since 2007 worth an estimated $1.9 billion. The vast majority of the government spending on CLC flows to the DHS, with most of that spending accountable by FEMA. However, the U.S. Coast Guard, which operates under DHS, has accounted for at least $11.7 million and potentially up to $66.4 million of DHSs spending with CLC. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, also operating under DHS, accounted for nearly $400,000 of the departments total.

Another arm of the government that relies on CLCs services is the Department of Justices Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which has spent at least $3 million and possibly up to $15 million on emergency lodging services through CLC since 2007. The Department of Veterans Affairs has spent an estimated minimum of $2.4 million and possibly up to $15.7 million arranging emergency lodging services through CLC. The Corporation for National and Community Services, which runs the Americorps and Senior Corps government volunteer programs, has spent at least $15.5 million and up to $18.4 million on CLC since 2007.

The risk, of course, is whether these other government agencies were, like FEMA, supplying unnecessary PII or SPII to CLC, exposing their workers to identity theft or fraud. You have to ask what other government agencies are sharing different data with [CLC], Dave Kennedy, CEO of cybersecurity firms TrustedSec and Binary Defense, says. More data might be at risk. Other government agencies should be conducting the same investigation.

Whether government workers from the other agencies were in fact exposed to identity theft or fraud is contingent on what information the other agencies supplied to CLC. There is a potential there for identity theft, Sara Jodka, head of the data privacy and cybersecurity practice at Dickinson Wright, says. It really depends on what data components you have.

The fact that most of these government agencies lodging requests reflect sensitive personnel in emergency situations could speak to exposure of data that might be not only a potential privacy violation but also a government security concern, particularly given the insecure nature of CLCs facilities. Each of those eleven vulnerabilities is a separate door that could take us into additional government information, Jodka said.

Matthew Hickey, co-founder and director of computer security company Hacker House, thinks the data housed by CLC might be of particular interest to foreign intelligence services seeking to harm U.S. interests. The agencies the contractor supplies services to makes the information high value for someone involved in espionage or seeking to blackmail U.S. government employees in an effort to obtain sensitive information, Hickey said in an email.

CSO asked whether DHS or FEMA in their joint investigation had made any efforts to determine whether the government users from these other agencies or even DHSs own other sub-agencies had unnecessary SPII stored on CLCs systems. We also asked whether DHS or FEMA had informed the other agencies of the vulnerabilities they found in CLCs systems. A FEMA spokesperson referred us to DHS. DHS did not respond to requests for this information.

What is the risk from the other 11 CLC vulnerabilities?

Other risks stem from the 11 vulnerabilities identified in CLCs systems. The fact that the cybersecurity specialists sent by FEMA and DHS found so many vulnerabilities, most of which cant be fixed for at least a year, indicate that the risks might be severe. Even without understanding the criticality of them, that means systemic larger issues, Kennedy says. Non-major issues are pretty quick to fix.

Hickey, however, has a slightly different interpretation. He says that if a vulnerability is not to be patched until 2020, it indicates that it may not put the information at a significant risk in the immediate future.

Requests to both DHS and FEMA for a copy of the joint assessment teams report outlining the vulnerabilities, or a list of what those vulnerabilities are, went unanswered. A FEMA spokesperson says via email that due to security concerns, FEMA will not provide further comment on the results of our assessment due to our responsibility to protect applicant data and the systems that house them. FEMA continues to work with the contractor to ensure compliance with the Departments cybersecurity requirements and overarching federal guidance on information security.

No survivor data was compromised--maybe

FEMA has repeatedly stressed that, as one spokesperson reiterated in an email, there has been no information to suggest that survivor data has been compromised. However, FEMA was only able to examine 30 days worth of potential intrusion activity because CLC did not maintain system logs past the previous 30 days. Kennedy said that sound industry practices typically require log retention for up to a year and that 30 days is insufficient for determining whether a compromise has occurred.

A memo from DHSs John Doolin, attached to the March 15 OIG report, states that on December 7, 2018, FEMA performed a unilateral contract modification to incorporate cybersecurity clauses into CLCs contract that require the company to implement robust cybersecurity practices in all phases of program administration and mandate the most current DHS privacy training as it relates to PII and SPII.

According to the summary of the contract modification available on the federal contractor system, the purpose of the modification is to incorporate two Cyber Hygiene Clauses into the Corporate Lodging Consultants Inc. contract but offers no details about those clauses. Requests to DHS, FEMA and GSA for a copy of the contract modification did not yield any information.

Why FEMA and DHS maintained such a high-level of secrecy around the name of CLC, redacting it from the report, and refused to discuss the vulnerabilities found in CLCs network, is a bit of mystery given how easily anyone can identify CLC as the redacted contractor. Any malicious actor with enough hacking chops who is interested in discovering CLCs vulnerabilities likely already has done so, leaving only the other government agencies and potential identity theft victims, in the dark. Keeping information secret doesnt protect anybody, Kennedy says.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12)  The President skipped a campaign rally for his Senate bets Friday.

President Rodrigo Duterte was scheduled to attend a campaign rally for the PDP-Laban party to be held at the Mindanao State University campus in Marawi City, but he was a no-show.

Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said this was due to bad weather.

"Not good weather for the flight to Marawi, so he cancelled it so opted to rest," Panelo said in a brief statement.

Duterte has been consistent in attending PDP-Laban sorties.

Usually held out in the open, he has also recently started talking behind bullet-proof glass during these gatherings.
Just days ahead of the 9th Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF), the "You and Me" Film Salon was held at the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia in Beijing on April 10, 2019. The event aims to enhance understanding, strengthen trust and promote cultural exchanges and cooperation between China and Estonia in film production.



More than 20 Chinese cultural enterprises, including China Film Co. Ltd, Perfect World Investment & Holding Group, and Huace Film and Television participated in the event.

The ambassador of Estonia, Marten Kokk, said China and Estonia have good relations and the two countries have stayed in close communication during high-level exchanges and visits.

"In general, bilateral relations between Estonia and China are very good. Our leaders meet quite often and Estonia has endorsed the Belt and Road Initiative," Kokk said.

In addition to the very close cooperation with China in terms of trade, the ambassador said that the two countries have also enjoyed very good cultural relations. He listed exchanges between the musical organizations of both nations and said that he hoped the two countries can "develop even more substantial cooperation in the area of film-making."

Estonia's Ministry of Culture and China's State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (Now the National Radio and Television Administration) signed an agreement on cinematographic cooperation in 2016 that simplifies the co-production of films and cooperation between film professionals of the two countries. The ambassador urged both nations to put the agreement to practice and said he hoped co-productions will take place in China and also by Chinese film makers in Estonia.

Ante Elken, cultural counselor for the Embassy of Estonia, introduced Estonia's geography, natural resources and economic and cultural conditions to guests in fluent Mandarin. She also elaborated on the current state of the country's film industry and showed guests some films that were shot in Estonia in recent years.

Elken also gave a detailed overview of the preferential policies passed by the Estonian government in the field of film co-production. She said that based on its policies, up to 30% of the filming costs incurred in Estonia are refundable. Elken also suggested that the easiest way for Chinese film-makers who are interested in making films in Estonia is to cooperate with a local film company, which can handle any complicated paperwork and formalities.

Peter Sallade, chief consultant for the European Union Film Festival, said that he was impressed by Chinese audiences' passion for European films. He added that their unique perspective has injected new vitality to European films.

The event, organized by the Embassy of the Republic of Estonia, was co-hosted by the European Union Film Festival, Jingzu Cultural Media (Beijing) Co., Ltd. and the Beijing Association of CBD Sophisticated Industry Promotion.
Student Takes Second Place at Physics Research Symposium

From left, Tao (Paul) Jin '19, Minzhao (Henryken) Liu 21, Professor Narendra Jaggi, Nicholas Milcik 20 and David Nico Lopez 21 attended the Illinois Section of American Association of Physics Teachers (ISAAPT)s Student Research Symposium.

April 11, 2019

BLOOMINGTON, Ill.  Four Illinois Wesleyan University physics students presented their research at the Illinois Section of American Association of Physics Teachers (ISAAPT)s Student Research Symposium, held on April 5-6 at the College of DuPage.

Mathematics and physics double major Tao (Paul) Jin 19, computer science and physics double major David Nico Lopez 21, mathematics and physics double major Minzhao (Henryken) Liu 21 and Hispanic studies and physics double major Nicholas Milcik 20 attended the symposium with Professor of Physics Narendra Jaggi.

Out of 16 papers from students across Illinois, Lius paper, A Computational Approach to the Analysis of Magnetoresistance Signatures of Magnetic Nano-Structures: Armchair and Brickwork Artificial Spin Ice, was awarded second place. Research was judged on methodology and originality, as well as oral and visual presentation.

The student research examined computational condensed matter physics, magnetoresistance in Artificial Spin Ice structures, and mathematical models of telomere shortening in cells.

Minzhao (Henryken) Liu 21

It is extremely rewarding in a professional, and also in a personal sense, for me to watch them grow in confidence and to recognize how much they have matured as scientists during the process of conducting research on a state-of-the-art project, Jaggi said. It seems likely that these papers will end up getting submitted for publication in professional scientific journals during the coming summer. If that does happen, it would constitute an extraordinary achievement for them.

One of the students, Henryken Liu, and Professor Jaggi are currently collaborating with scientists at the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center to try to explain the origin of a newly discovered type of magnetoresistance behavior in Topological Insulator based structures, which can lead to useful electronic devices.

By Rachel McCarthy 21
INTEGRITY MUSIC REVEALS DETAILS FOR MARTIN SMITH'S NEW ALBUM, IRON LUNG

Smith's Upcoming Project Touted As A Celebration of Life, Love, And Faith;

Self-Titled Single Is Third Instant Grat Song, Available Today

April 12, 2019

12 April 2019 - NASHVILLE, Tenn. (U.S.) | BRIGHTON (U.K.) - Integrity Music has officially announced May 10th as the release date for Martin Smith 's upcoming album, Iron Lung. As the follow-up to last year's live recording, Love Song For A City, and his last studio recording, 2014's Back To The Start, the acclaimed worship artist, songwriter, and producer is ready to debut his highly anticipated and most personal album ever recorded. "This record is about joy and wonder, and the grace to keep singing through the journey of life," Smith recently shared about the making of Iron Lung. "Its telling the story around my first breath as a child to the last breath of someone close to me. Iron Lung is a celebration of life, love, and faith." As a child, Smith was diagnosed with a serious case of bronchial pneumonia, which became so life and death that he was literally placed in an oxygen tent similar to an iron lung. As the medical device kept him alive, Smiths faith-filled parents prayed that if God would "let him make a noise," they would give their son back to Him and dedicate him to His service. The profound experience of their pain and turmoil heavily influenced Smith to title the album Iron Lung, as did the unexpected death of Smith's mother-in-law during the making of the album. His family's sudden loss deeply affected the recording of his vocals, as he poured out his heart as the lyrics were brought to life. The ten songs found on Iron Lung each declare that through trying times breath can feel heavy and immensely painful, but that joy and wonder can and will be found in the end. Iron Lung was produced by Gabriel Wilson (Bethel Music, John Mark McMillan). "Working with Martin Smith was, for me, the highest honor," Wilson says. "Martins desire to dive deep and write from a place hes never written before was truly an inspiration. His trust in me to capture the stories and sounds of Iron Lung is humbling, to say the least." As the follow-up to Iron Lung's pre-order instant grat singles that released in March, "Fire's Gonna Fall" and "Great & Glorious," the third and final instant grat song, "Iron Lung," makes its debut today to all digital sales and streaming platforms. "And I heard the sound of Your voice

I felt the breath in my lungs

I felt the joy in my bones

And I started to sing, I started to sing

I felt the wonder of love

I knew the kindness of God

I joined with the angels above

And I started to sing, I started to sing for You

Forever Ill sing, forever Ill sing for You" "Iron Lung" was written by: Martin Smith

 2019 exclusively published by Gloworks Publishing Limited c/o Bucks Music Group Limited (PRS) Iron Lung track listing: Iron Lung Great & Glorious Everybody is Broken Exalt Rise Up Runaway Fires Gonna Fall Wonder Hearts Always Be My Love Give Thanks For A Broken Heart ABOUT MARTIN SMITH : For three decades, the Brighton, U.K.-based Smith has been penning songs that bring fresh air to the lungs of the church, whether as a solo artist or a founding member of the ground-breaking band Delirious?. This includes favorites Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?, Waiting Here For You, I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever and History Maker. Smiths songs have connected generations and inspired and influenced worship leaders and worshippers alike. For more information, including music and tour updates, visit : For three decades, the Brighton, U.K.-based Smith has been penning songs that bring fresh air to the lungs of the church, whether as a solo artist or a founding member of the ground-breaking band Delirious?. This includes favorites Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?, Waiting Here For You, I Could Sing Of Your Love Forever and History Maker. Smiths songs have connected generations and inspired and influenced worship leaders and worshippers alike. For more information, including music and tour updates, visit MartinSmithMusic.com ABOUT INTEGRITY MUSIC : Integrity Music is part of the David C Cook family, a nonprofit global resource provider serving the Church with life-transforming materials. With offices in Nashville, Tennessee (US) and Eastbourne, East Sussex (UK), Integrity is committed to taking songs of substance to the local church and its leaders around the world. Integrity publishes many of the top songs in the Church, including Great Are You Lord, Revelation Song, Open The Eyes Of My Heart, In Christ Alone, 10,000 Reasons, Here I Am To Worship, The Lion And The Lamb, Great I Am, and We Believe, among others. Additional information is available at : Integrity Music is part of the David C Cook family, a nonprofit global resource provider serving the Church with life-transforming materials. With offices in Nashville, Tennessee (US) and Eastbourne, East Sussex (UK), Integrity is committed to taking songs of substance to the local church and its leaders around the world. Integrity publishes many of the top songs in the Church, including Great Are You Lord, Revelation Song, Open The Eyes Of My Heart, In Christ Alone, 10,000 Reasons, Here I Am To Worship, The Lion And The Lamb, Great I Am, and We Believe, among others. Additional information is available at integritymusic.com ###

For more info on Martin Smith, visit the JFH Artists Database.


Global creator community giant WeWork Wednesday officially launched its startup services platform WeWork Labs in China in its bid to expand presence in the burgeoning innovation and entrepreneurship market.



The platform started to pilot the program in China's economic hub Shanghai in 2018, with three locations now serving 46 Labs members.

The official launch came with WeWork Labs' tie-up with Tsinghua University, Peking University and Aliyun to develop exchange programs, train business professionals and help Chinese firms expand at home and overseas.

Designed to empower early-stage startups, WeWork Labs has extended its footprint to 32 cities in 15 countries since 2011. Building on WeWork's global resources, the platform offers the community education, connections and mentorship to help entrepreneurs.

"We have seen many incubators but do not see us as one of them," Roee Adler, senior vice president and global head of WeWork Labs, told Xinhua in an interview.

Roee said WeWork seeks no equity and sets no time limits for startups' growth, aiming to build an innovation platform that creates an enabling ecosystem with tailor-made programs and services for its members.

As entrepreneurs, it is important to stay curious and learn to understand the nuances of different cultures, Roee said. "The more you understand people, the more you can empathize and the more you might end up with meaningful relationships."

China's innovation and entrepreneurship activities have accelerated since 2015 as the government sees them as drivers for the economy's transition. A string of supportive policies have been issued to support maker spaces, incubators and companies to speed up innovation.

Roee observed that the Chinese innovation and entrepreneurship market has "mind-blowing speed and scale," which, despite short-term fluctuations, has a growth trajectory in long-term perspective and might grow more than tenfold in the next decade.

"Chinese enterprises have advanced consumer-oriented thinking and strong manufacturing capabilities. China's speed of getting from an idea to a product is unparalleled," he said.

Dylan Huang, who oversees WeWork Labs' Greater China operations, said the demand among Chinese start-ups for all-round support is strong, and the platform is committed to win-win cooperation and will leverage its global resources to facilitate exchanges between Chinese partners and their overseas counterparts.

WeWork Labs helped Whitmoore, a U.S. start-up, seek partnership and opportunities in China last year via its Global Satellite Program and will organize a study trip to Israel for Tsinghua SEM X-elerator's postgraduates to learn about the country's start-up ecosystem this year.

WeWork Labs' interest covers agriculture, sustainability, food and other fields that can improve people's quality of life. Huang said it will work with local governments and partners in China to foster sectors with competitive advantages.

The platform plans to expand into Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and other cities with eight to 10 new locations expected this year, according to Huang.
China on Thursday expressed the hope for smooth progress of negotiations on Free Trade Zone with Japan and Republic of Korea (ROK).



The 15th round of negotiations on China-Japan-ROK Free Trade Zone was held in Tokyo from April 9 to 12, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said at a press briefing, expecting positive results that will lay a solid foundation for a comprehensive, high-level and mutually beneficial agreement.

Since the 7th China-Japan-ROK leaders' meeting in May last year, cooperation among the three countries has steadily advanced and has shown a good momentum of development, Lu said.

China, Japan and ROK have firmly stood for free trade and actively promoted regional economic integration. This round of free trade zone negotiations shows the common resolve of the three countries to maintain the multilateral trading system and oppose protectionism and unilateralism, he added.

Noting this year marks the 20th anniversary of the China-Japan-ROK cooperation, Lu said the three countries are facing new development opportunities.

As the chairman of China-Japan-ROK cooperation in 2019, China is willing to work with Japan and ROK to successfully hold a series of important meetings and activities including the leaders' meeting, open a new chapter in cooperation of the three countries at a new historical starting point and open up a new dimension in East Asian cooperation, said the spokesperson.
A Chinese envoy said Thursday that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has charted a new course for international cooperation.



"The Belt and Road Initiative has charted a new course for international cooperation, tapped new drivers for world economic growth, built new platforms for relations among countries, and created substantial amount of job opportunities for countries along the route," Ma Zhaoxu, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told the UN General Assembly's high-level meeting to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

"The 82 overseas cooperative parks jointly built by China and the countries along the route have created nearly 300,000 jobs," he said.

Speaking of the second Belt and Road Forum on International Cooperation, which will be held in Beijing in late April, the Chinese envoy said, "We're confident that this forum will further energize the 'Belt and Road' cooperation and make a greater contribution to the promotion of decent work for all."

Talking about the world of work, the Chinese ambassador said that it is undergoing significant changes. "The new technological revolution, climate change and demographic restructuring represent both great challenges and new opportunities for the labor market."

Ma encouraged the international community to seize the opportunities "that technological advances have brought to the world of work."

"New forms of business generated by new technologies are becoming a main driver for job growth. We need to promote the transformation of employment, develop a new pattern of employment and open up new space for employment through innovation," he said.

The Chinese ambassador called for efforts to push forward supply-side structural reforms and create more green jobs.

"It is necessary to implement an innovation-driven strategy, deepen structural reforms, transform the dividends of reform and innovation into more and higher-quality job opportunities, to ensure decent work for all," Ma said.

He also urged promoting "silver-hair" economy as an active response to population ageing.

"China supports the ILO's governance initiatives, supports the examination of standard supervisory mechanism reforms, and strives to extend the goals of decent work and social justice to the ILO's new centenary," said the ambassador.

The General Assembly held the two-day meeting on April 10 and 11 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the ILO with "the Future of Work" as its theme.

Founded in Geneva of Switzerland in 1919, the ILO is a UN agency whose mandate is to advance social justice and promote decent work by setting international labor standards. It is the UN's first specialized agency, with 187 member states.
China and the United States will maintain close contact on economic and trade issues in several ways and continue their talks, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday.

The heads of both consultation teams have discussed the remaining issues, following the latest round of trade talks in Washington, said ministry spokesman Gao Feng.

In the ninth round of high-level consultations, they discussed technology transfers, protection of intellectual property rights, nontariff measures, the service sector, agriculture, trade imbalances and enforcement mechanisms, and they made new progress, Gao said at a regular news briefing.

The world's two biggest economies are intensifying their negotiations to iron out differences on certain issues. Gao said the two teams will continue their talks in a bid to implement consensuses reached by the countries' top leaders.

The presidents of China and the US agreed in December to halt the imposition of new tariffs, and instructed their economic teams to advance negotiations toward the removal of all additional tariffs and reach a mutually beneficial deal.

Last year, China-US trade disputes led to substantial tariff hikes on each other's imports, creating difficulties for companies around the world.

Small businesses in the Asia-Pacific region are more likely to expect a negative effect on their business from trade tensions, according to survey results released on Tuesday by accounting association CPA Australia.

Conditions for small businesses were slightly weaker across the region in 2018, with 2 percent fewer respondents reporting growth compared with the previous annual survey, said Derek Chan, president of the CPA Australia North China Committee. He cited global trade tensions as the primary reason for a general weakening in confidence.

The tensions go beyond tariffs. The US Commerce Department said on Wednesday it is adding more than 30 Chinese companies and schools to a red-flag list of "unverified" entities that US companies should treat with caution, according to a notice in the US Federal Register, Reuters reported.

Gao said such an action has a negative impact on Chinese companies' reputations and creates obstacles to normal bilateral trade.

China opposes the US using national security as an excuse and abusing export control measures for other purposes, Gao said.

China urges the US to correct its "wrong practices" in a timely manner, remove relevant enterprises from the list and facilitate trade and cooperation by companies from both countries, Gao said.

Aisin Nantong Technical Center, a Chinese subsidiary of a Japanese auto parts manufacturer, and Beijing Bayi Space LCD Materials Technology Co are on the list. Several others specialize in precision optics, electronics, machine tools or aviation.


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WINNEMUCCA, Nev., April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. (NYSE American: PZG) ("Paramount or the Company) announced today that it has entered into a royalty agreement with Franco-Nevada Corporation (Franco) (NYSE: FNV) (TSX: FNV) to sell a 2% Net Smelter Return Royalty (NSR) on its Sleeper Gold property (Sleeper) in Northern Nevada for cash proceeds of US$2 million, subject to customary closing conditions.

Proceeds from the royalty sale will be used to continue the permitting process and feasibility level work for Paramounts proposed Grassy Mountain Project (Grassy Mountain), an advanced-stage high-grade gold project, and to explore high priority targets which could add to Grassy Mountains existing mineralized material.

John Seaberg, Paramounts Executive Chairman, commented: We are excited to execute a transaction with Franco, an industry-leading, gold-focused, streaming and royalty company. Francos purchase of a NSR at Sleeper provides further validation of the assets quality and its potential. We are also pleased to have strengthened our balance sheet in a non-dilutive manner to our shareholders. As we advance both our Grassy Mountain and Sleeper projects, we believe this transaction will mark the beginning of an important long-term, strategic partnership for Paramount.

Paul Brink, President and COO of Franco, stated: We are pleased to support Paramount as it advances its projects. The Sleeper Gold property has tremendous potential and option value due to its large resource base and land package in a proven, gold-rich district.

To stay informed of future press releases, subscribe to our E-Alerts Program and to learn more about our projects visit the projects section of our website.

About Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

Paramount Gold Nevada is a U.S. based precious metals exploration and development company. Paramounts strategy is to create shareholder value through exploring and developing its mineral properties and to realize this value for its shareholders in three ways: by selling its assets to established producers; entering into joint ventures with producers for construction and operation; or constructing and operating mines for its own account.

Paramount owns 100% of the Grassy Mountain Gold Project which consists of approximately 4,450 hectares located on private and BLM land in Malheur County, Oregon. The Grassy Mountain Gold Project contains a gold-silver deposit (100% located on private land) for which results of a positive PFS have been released and key permitting milestones accomplished (see press release dated May 24, 2018). Additionally, Paramount owns a 100% interest in the Sleeper Gold Project located in Northern Nevada. The Sleeper Gold Project, which includes the former producing Sleeper mine, totals 2,322 unpatented mining claims (approximately 60 square miles or 15,500 hectares).

Safe Harbor for Forward-Looking Statements

This release and related documents may include "forward-looking statements" and forward-looking information (collectively, forward-looking statements) pursuant to applicable United States and Canadian securities laws. Paramounts future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other applicable securities laws. Words such as "believes," "plans," "anticipates," "expects," "estimates" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although these words may not be present in all forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements included in this news release include, without limitation, statements with respect to: production estimates and assumptions, including production rate and grade per tonne; revenue, cash flow and cost estimates and assumptions; statements with respect to future events or future performance; anticipated exploration, development, permitting and other activities on the Grassy Mountain project; the economics of the Grassy Mountain project, including the potential for improving project economics and finding more ore to extend mine life; and mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates. Forward-looking statements are based on the reasonable assumptions, estimates, analyses and opinions of management made in light of its experience and its perception of trends, current conditions and expected developments, as well as other factors that management believes to be relevant and reasonable in the circumstances at the date that such statements are made, but which may prove to be incorrect. Management believes that the assumptions and expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the conclusions made in the PFS; the quantity and grade of resources included in resource estimates; the accuracy and achievability of projections included in the PFS; Paramounts ability to carry on exploration and development activities, including construction; the timely receipt of required approvals and permits; the price of silver, gold and other metals; prices for key mining supplies, including labor costs and consumables, remaining consistent with current expectations; work meeting expectations and being consistent with estimates and plant, equipment and processes operating as anticipated. There are a number of important factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to: uncertainties involving interpretation of drilling results; environmental matters; the ability to obtain required permitting; equipment breakdown or disruptions; additional financing requirements; the completion of a definitive feasibility study for the Grassy Mountain project; discrepancies between actual and estimated mineral reserves and mineral resources, between actual and estimated development and operating costs and between estimated and actual production; and the other factors described in Paramounts disclosures as filed with the SEC and the Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta Securities Commissions.

Except as required by applicable law, Paramount disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document.

Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.

Glen Van Treek, President, CEO and Director

Christos Theodossiou, Director of Corporate Communications

866-481-2233

Twitter: @ParamountNV
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 12, 2019) - Miramont Resources Corp. (CSE: MONT) (OTCQB: MRRMF) (FSE: 6MR) ("Miramont" or the "Company") is pleased to announce it has received final assays from its 3,679-meter diamond drill program at its Cerro Hermoso polymetallic project located in southern Peru. Results include 249 m of 0.68 gpt Au equivalent including 1.95 m of 28.4 gpt Au equivalent in hole CH-009 (please refer to a table of results below and a nearby plan map showing the location of drill holes). Highlights: Drilling tested three principal targets, the Central Breccia Zone (holes CH-004, CH-005, CH-006 and CH-009), the Stockwork Zone (holes CH-001, CH-002 and CH-003) and the Carbonate Replacement Zone (holes CH-007 and CH-008).

Significant mineralization was encountered in the Central Breccia Zone. Hole CH-009, drilled eastward, encountered 249 m of 0.68 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 103 m including 1.95 m of 28.4 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 153.55 m and a second interval of 59 m of 0.44 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 393.5 m and continuing to the end of the hole. Hole CH-005, situated approximately 100 m north of and parallel to CH-009, encountered 45 m of 0.58 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 378 m. Hole CH-006, situated approximately 250 m southeast of CH-009 and drilled westward, encountered 8.5 m of 2.97 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 308 m including 1.5 m of 15.69 gpt Au equivalent beginning at 315 m. Collectively, holes CH-009, CH-005 and CH-006 demonstrate the presence of a mineralized system within the diatreme that appears open to the northeast, east and southeast under an area of post-mineral cover. The eastern margin of the diatreme lies approximately 600 m beyond the end of these two holes, leaving considerable room for further exploration. A large, sub-surface magnetic feature situated approximately 400 m northeast of hole CH-009 may be an intrusion, potentially related to mineralization.

Holes CH-001, CH-002 and CH-003 in the Stockwork Zone encountered narrow intervals of anomalous mineralization. Miramont sees limited potential for broader zones of mineralization in this area. Similar short intervals of anomalous mineralization were encountered in holes CH-007 and CH-008 targeting the Carbonate Replacement Zone, indicating limited potential in this area.

Miramont is currently undertaking a thorough review of results from drilling at Cerro Hermoso with the intent of determining the best path forward. Dr. Quinton Hennigh, Miramont's Chairman said: "First pass drilling has confirmed the presence of a large mineralized system at Cerro Hermoso. Mineralization within the Central Breccia Zone appears open to the northeast, east and southeast as well as at depth. A nearby magnetic anomaly suggests the system is driven by a buried intrusion. Over the coming weeks we plan to compile, review and interpret all data from the latest program." The table below presents anomalous intercepts in all nine diamond drill holes completed at Cerro Hermoso. Some intercepts from holes CH-001 through CH-006 were previously reported in a news release dated March 28, 2019. Hole ID From (m) To (m) Length

(m) Au (gpt) Ag (gpt) Zn (%) Pb (%) Cu (%) Au eq

(gpt) CH-001 31.80 35.30 3.50 0.02 8.5 0.03 0.12 0.12 0.39 CH-002 2.40 5.20 2.80 0.01 39.2 0.05 0.05 0.03 0.60 CH-003 1.30 3.30 2.00 <0.01 67.7 0.06 0.17 0.01 0.97 32.90 34.10 1.20 0.02 7.3 0.05 0.33 0.07 0.41 107.00 111.00 4.00 <0.01 21.3 0.13 0.06 0.01 0.40 CH-004 17.00 51.00 34.00 0.05 4.2 0.07 0.04 0.01 0.18 121.00 125.00 4.00 0.88 3.4 0.16 0.40 0.02 1.25 141.80 143.70 1.90 0.11 216.6 0.04 0.01 0.01 2.82 156.70 159.60 2.90 1.15 3.1 0.10 0.16 0.03 1.38 CH-005 35.00 39.00 4.00 0.19 3.7 0.09 0.06 <0.01 0.33 73.00 75.00 2.00 0.47 1.2 0.06 0.07 <0.01 0.56 95.00 105.00 10.00 0.19 0.9 0.10 0.05 0.01 0.31 129.00 133.00 4.00 0.15 0.9 0.21 0.08 0.01 0.36 174.50 178.50 4.00 0.01 0.6 0.07 0.17 <0.01 0.15 228.00 232.00 4.00 0.11 0.9 0.15 0.08 0.01 0.28 256.00 262.00 6.00 0.05 1.5 0.15 0.08 <0.01 0.21 378.00 423.00 45.00 0.03 1.5 0.40 0.48 0.02 0.58 CH-006 34.00 36.00 2.00 0.13 10.4 0.11 0.11 0.02 0.42 96.40 98.00 1.60 0.14 110.0 0.16 0.27 0.04 1.79 308.00 316.50 8.50 2.74 1.4 0.14 0.17 0.02 2.97 includes 315.00 316.50 1.50 14.75 6.1 0.61 0.58 0.11 15.69 CH-007 125.80 172.00 46.20 0.02 0.5 0.10 0.05 <0.01 0.12 184.00 190.00 6.00 0.02 <0.5 0.32 0.11 <0.01 0.30 200.00 202.15 2.15 0.36 1.4 0.04 0.02 0.13 0.62 265.70 267.70 2.00 0.33 2.6 0.40 0.67 0.05 1.03 CH-008 90.20 91.80 1.60 0.56 56.3 0.04 0.03 0.02 1.33 134.80 136.00 1.20 0.22 350.0 0.16 0.30 0.36 5.33 CH-009 21.80 85.00 63.20 0.18 2.0 0.12 0.08 0.01 0.34 103.00 352.00 249.00 0.26 6.2 0.34 0.17 0.02 0.68 includes 153.55 155.50 1.95 17.65 658.0 1.11 1.22 1.04 28.70 393.50 452.50* 59.00 0.02 1.1 0.37 0.29 0.01 0.44 * End of hole Au eq calculated using 81.25 gpt Ag = 1 gpt Au, 1.4237% Zn = 1 gpt Au, 2.1518% Pb = 1 gpt Au, 0.6485% Cu = 1 gpt Au)

Map 1

Analytic Protocols and QA/QC

Assays were completed first by SGS and then by ALS Laboratories in Peru. Future samples will be analyzed by ALS as primary laboratory. Miramont follows rigorous sampling and analytical protocols that meet industry standards. Core samples are stored in a secured area until transport in batches to either SGS or ALS prep labs in Arequipa, Peru. Sample batches include certified reference materials, blanks, and duplicate samples are then processed under the control of ALS or SGS. ALS samples are analyzed using the ME-ICP61 (a technique that provides a comprehensive multi-element overview of the rock geochemistry), while gold is analyzed by AA24 and GRA22 when values exceed 10 gpt. Over limit silver, copper, lead and zinc are analyzed using the OG-62 procedure. SGS samples are analyzed using the ICP 40B method while gold is analyzed by FAA515. Over limit silver, copper, lead and zinc are analyzed using the AAS41B procedure.

National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure

The technical content of this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Quinton Hennigh, P.Geo., Chairman of Miramont and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

About Miramont Resources Corp.

Miramont is a Canadian based exploration company with a focus on acquiring and developing mineral prospects within world-class belts of South America. Miramont's two key projects are Cerro Hermoso and Lukkacha, both located in southern Peru. Cerro Hermoso is a diatreme-hosted copper dominant polymetallic prospect. Lukkacha is a classic copper-porphyry prospect.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

MIRAMONT RESOURCES CORP.

"Quinton Hennigh"

Quinton Hennigh, Chairman

For more information, please contact the Company at:

Telephone: (604) 398-4493

Facsimile: (604) 815-0770

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.miramontresources.com

Reader Advisory

This news release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, fluctuations in market prices, successes of the operations of the Company, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such information will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required under the applicable securities laws.

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.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - April 12, 2019) - Miramont Resources Corp. (CSE: MONT) (OTCQB: MRRMF) (FSE: 6MR) ("Miramont" or the "Company") is pleased to announce appointment of Dr. Quinton Hennigh as Executive Chairman of the Company. Dr. Hennigh has served as non-executive Chairman since November 2017. As Executive Chairman, Dr. Hennigh will be responsible for overseeing the control and direction of Miramont. Dr. Hennigh is an economic geologist with more than 25 years of exploration experience with major gold mining firms, including Homestake Mining, Newcrest Mining and Newmont Mining. Currently, Dr. Hennigh is President and Chairman of Novo Resources Corp and serves as a director for Irving Resources Inc., TriStar Gold Inc., Precipitate Gold Corp and NV Gold Corp.

Mr. Tyson King has been appointed as President and Chief Executive Officer of the Company. Mr. King is a co-founder of Miramont and has served in senior management roles since its inception, most recently as Vice-President. Mr. King will be responsible for the day-to-day operations and management of the Company and will report directly to Dr. Hennigh. Mr. King has over 10 years experience in the management of publicly trading and privately held companies in the commodities and natural resources sector. He has been actively engaged in overseeing the operations of numerous companies and has provided consulting services in connection with exploration activities. Mr. King holds a BA in Economics from the University of Calgary.

"I am very pleased to have the opportunity to take on a more active management role in the operations of Miramont" said Dr. Hennigh. "I also look forward to working more closely with Mr. King, who has been a driving force behind Miramont from the outset. Our plans moving forward include a continued assessment of all data from Cerro Hermoso and advancing the highly prospective Lukkacha project. The Company will also focus on identifying new exploration properties in Peru which could be acquired on reasonable terms."

Miramont also announces that Mr. William Pincus will be leaving the Company and has tendered his resignation as President, Chief Executive Officer and a member of the Board of Directors of the Company. Quinton Hennigh, Chairman of the Board, noted: "The Board would like to thank Mr. Pincus for his service to the Company, especially helping establish Miramont as a Peruvian explorer. Mr. Pincus served with utmost integrity, candidness and forthrightness with all interactions with the board. We wish him well with his future endeavors."

About Miramont Resources Corp.

Miramont is a Canadian-based exploration company with a focus on acquiring and developing mineral prospects within world-class belts of South America. Miramont's key assets are located in southern Peru. The Cerro Hermoso property hosts a 1.4km diameter breccia pipe targeting gold - polymetallic mineralization, while the Lukkacha property is targeting porphyry copper mineralization.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

MIRAMONT RESOURCES CORP.

Quinton Hennigh

Executive Chairman

For more information, please contact the Company at:

Telephone: (604) 398-4493

Facsimile: (604) 815-0770

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

www.miramontresources.com

Reader Advisory

This news release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, fluctuations in market prices, successes of the operations of the Company, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such information will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required under the applicable securities laws.

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.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia and JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Platinum Group Metals Ltd. (PTM:TSX; PLG:NYSE American) (Platinum Group PTM or the Company) reports the Companys financial results for the six months ended February 28, 2019 and provides a summary of recent events and outlook. For details of the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the six months ended February 28, 2019 (the Financial Statements) and Managements Discussion and Analysis for the six months ended February 28, 2019 please see the Companys filings on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) or on EDGAR (www.sec.gov). Shareholders are encouraged to visit the Companys website at www.platinumgroupmetals.net. Shareholders may receive a hard copy of the complete Financial Statements from the Company free of charge upon request.

All amounts herein are reported in United States dollars (USD) unless otherwise specified. The Company holds cash in Canadian dollars, United States dollars and South African Rand. Changes in exchange rates may create variances in the cash holdings or results reported.

The Company is focused on completing a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) for the large scale, palladium dominant and bulk mineable Waterberg Project in South Africa (the Waterberg Project). The strong price outlook for palladium along with DFS optimization work have helped the Company to better estimate the potential mine scale for the Waterberg Project. Optimization work has determined that higher extraction rates for mineralized material are achievable by using tailings as backfill. See more details below in Outlook.

A technical committee of Waterberg JV Resources Pty Ltd. (Waterberg JV Co.) is overseeing the DFS with participation from all partners. A formal Mining Right Application has been filed and community consultation is ongoing. Power and water planning for the project is advancing well including work under a regional water co-operation agreement with the Capricorn Municipality and engineering and permitting work with power utility Eskom.

Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (Implats) made a strategic investment of $30.0 million in November 2017 to purchase a 15% stake in the Waterberg Project, from which the Company received $17.2 million for its 8.6% project interest sold. Implats may elect to increase its stake to 50.01% by additional share purchases from Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) for an amount of $34.8 million and a commitment to spend $130 million for development of the Waterberg Project. Implats will also have a right of first refusal to smelt and refine Waterberg Project concentrate.

Recent Events

Prior to April 2, 2019 common share purchase warrants representing 968,670 shares at a price of $1.70 each were exercised by holders. Proceeds to the Company totalled $1,646,739. The Companys two largest shareholders exercised approximately 91% of these warrants.

On March 7, 2019, the Company reported the transfer of a 9.755% interest in Waterberg JV Co. to Hanwa Co. Ltd. (Hanwa) by JOGMEC. Prior to the transfer JOGMEC held a 21.95% interest in the Waterberg Project. Hanwa was the successful bidder in a public tender process for Japanese companies conducted by JOGMEC. Hanwa is a leading Japanese trading company supplying a broad spectrum of products, including steel, non-ferrous metals, metals and alloys, food, petroleum, chemicals, machinery, lumber and many other items, to a diverse range of global customers.

On January 11, 2019, the Company paid $8.0 million to Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC (LMM) in partial settlement of a secured loan facility due to LMM. The amount paid represented net proceeds from the sale of 4.52 million common shares of JSE listed Royal Bafokeng Platinum Ltd. received by the Company in April 2018 upon completion of stage two of the sale of the Maseve Mine.

On November 16, 2018, the Company filed a National Instrument 43-101 technical report for an updated independent mineral resource estimate for the Waterberg Project. The report, entitled Technical Report on the Mineral Resource Update for the Waterberg Project Located in the Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa is dated October 22, 2018 (with the effective date of the mineral resources being September 27, 2018) and was prepared by Charles J Muller, B. Sc. (Hons) (Geology), Pr. Sci. Nat., of CJM Consulting (Pty) Ltd. A copy of the report can be found at www.sedar.com, at www.sec.gov and on the Companys website.

On October 25, 2018, the Company published an updated independent mineral resource estimate for the Waterberg Project on a 100% basis totalling 26.34 million ounces of platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold (together known as 4E) (242.5 million tonnes at 3.38 g/t 4E comprised of 63.04% palladium, 29.16% platinum, 6.37% gold and 1.43% rhodium), with 6.26 million 4E ounces recognized in the higher confidence Measured category. The updated resource assessment forms the basis for mine design, scheduling and capital cost estimation as part of the DFS. The Waterberg deposit is dominated by palladium and also contains copper and nickel. Inferred mineral resources are estimated at 7.0 million 4E ounces (66.67 million tonnes at 3.26 g/t 4E). The T zone Measured and Indicated mineral resources increased in grade from 3.88 g/t 4E in 2016 to 4.51 g/t 4E in 2018. All of the preceding was estimated at a 2.5 g/t 4E cut-off grade, which is the preferred scenario for the project.

On October 10, 2018, the Company announced that a recent Mining Right Application for the Waterberg Project had been accepted by South Africas Department of Mineral Resources. The application is supported by the Company and all of the Waterberg Project partners including Implats, JOGMEC and Mnombo Wethu Consultants (Pty) Ltd. The process of consultation under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 2002 and current Environmental Assessment regulations has commenced. Many public meetings have already been completed. Significant feedback from the meetings has been considered in the DFS designs. Local training and employment are key components of the project to maximize the value of the project for all stakeholders.

Results For The Six Months Ended February 28, 2019

During the six months ended February 28, 2019 the Company incurred a net loss of $9.5 million (February 28, 2018  net loss of $26.9 million). General and administrative expenses during the six-month period were $2.9 million (February 28, 2018 - $3.1 million), losses on foreign exchange were $0.6 million (February 28, 2018  $3.2 million) due to the US Dollar increasing in value relative to the Companys functional currency of the Canadian Dollar.

At February 28, 2019, finance income consisting of interest earned and property rental fees in the period amounted to $0.3 million (February 28, 2018 - $0.4 million), while a gain on marketable securities of $0.6 million was recognized in the current period (February 28, 2018 - $Nil). Loss per share for the period amounted to $0.32 as compared to a loss of $1.65 per share for the six months ended February 28, 2018.

Accounts receivable at February 28, 2019 totalled $0.2 million (February 28, 2018 - $2.8 million) while accounts payable and accrued liabilities amounted to $3.7 million (February 28, 2018 - $10.8 million). Accounts receivable were comprised of mainly of amounts receivable for value added taxes repayable to the Company in South Africa and amounts due from joint venture partners and related parties. Accounts payable at February 28, 2019 related mostly to ongoing work at the Waterberg Project with the decrease as compared to February 28, 2018 being primarily due to settlement of payables related to mine closure costs.

Total expenditures on the Waterberg Project, before partner reimbursements, for the six-month period were approximately $5.1 million (February 28, 2018 - $3.9 million). At February 28, 2019, $36 million in accumulated net costs had been capitalized to the Waterberg Project. Total expenditures by all parties on the property since inception are approximately $67 million.

For more information on mineral properties, see Note 4 of the Financial Statements.

Outlook

The Companys key business objective is to advance the Waterberg Project to development. The Waterberg project is dominated by palladium at a time when palladium supply is estimated to be in deficit. Mines with palladium as their primary economic mineral are rare.

Waterberg JV Co. is advancing the Waterberg Project to completion of a DFS. The DFS is being managed by Platinum Group and a technical committee with comprehensive input at all levels from the Waterberg Project partners.

The positive long-term market outlook for platinum group elements and the value increase created by higher extraction per mining level supports the DFS design change to utilize backfill. Backfill utilizes tailings and concrete to fill in mined out stopes to allow the extraction of mineralized material that would otherwise be left as support pillars. The Company expects that the mining extraction of pillars in the DFS versus the PFS design will have a positive effect on tonnes and ounces for reserves. Ancillary benefits include a reduced tailings foot print, as tailings are put underground in backfill, and increased safety and certainty on the production profile. Two twin declines systems are now planned in the working DFS design rather than three in the PFS design.

The DFS owners team, including representatives from Impala Platinum, have visited Canadian bulk underground mining operations and have worked closely with the independent mining engineering team at Stantec.

As a result of the DFS design optimization described above, additional time and budget are required to complete the DFS. Waterberg JV Co. has approved a change order for Rand 21.5 million (approximately $1.51 million) to fund the required work. The DFS is now targeted for completion in August 2019. The additional time and investment are warranted to achieve the production profile improvements in the DFS that are indicated by the design optimizations described above.

An environmental authorization and mining right application are also being advanced. Public consultation has occurred in a positive climate of mutual respect. Local involvement and personnel training are a key part of the design for a modern, safe, responsible mine operating at world class standards. The DFS team is working with NORCAT, a Sudbury, Canada based global training specialist, to incorporate local skills development into the DFS.

We are also pleased to report advancement on our co-operation agreement with the Capricorn Municipality for the supply of water to the project and planned increases in water delivery to the local community as a component of the mine plan.

The Waterberg JV Co. team is working very well together with value-add contributions coming from all partners, including senior team members from Impala working with Platinum Group Metals as Manager of the DFS. We look forward to the finalization of the DFS.

In the near term, the Companys liquidity will be constrained until financing has been obtained to repay and discharge remaining amounts of secured debt and for working capital purposes. The Company remains focussed on completing the Waterberg DFS. At the same time the Company has started reviewing several new business opportunities focused on platinum group element metals, including extraction opportunities and potential new uses. The Company will continue to work closely with its major shareholders and lenders. The Company continues to actively assess corporate and strategic alternatives with advisor BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc.

Qualified Person

R. Michael Jones, P.Eng., the Companys President, Chief Executive Officer and a shareholder of the Company, is a non-independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects and is responsible for preparing the technical information contained in this news release. He has verified the data by reviewing the detailed information of the geological and engineering staff and independent qualified person reports as well as visiting the Waterberg Project site regularly.

About Platinum Group Metals Ltd.

Platinum Group is the operator of the Waterberg Project, a bulk mineable underground palladium deposit in northern South Africa. Waterberg was discovered by the Company and has the potential to be a low-cost producer of palladium, platinum, rhodium and gold.

On behalf of the Board of

Platinum Group Metals Ltd.

Frank R. Hallam

CFO, Corporate Secretary and Director

For further information contact:

R. Michael Jones, President

or Kris Begic, VP, Corporate Development

Platinum Group Metals Ltd., Vancouver

Tel: (604) 899-5450 / Toll Free: (866) 899-5450

www.platinumgroupmetals.net

Disclosure

The Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE American have not reviewed and do not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this news release, which has been prepared by management.

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. securities laws (collectively forward-looking statements). Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, plans, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. All statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation, statements regarding the completion of a DFS by approximately July 31, 2019; Waterberg Projects potential to be a bulk mineable, low cost, dominantly palladium mine producing platinum and palladium based on a fully mechanized mine plan; the potential for the Company to obtain financing to repay and discharge remaining amounts of secured debt and for working capital purposes; new business opportunities; and corporate and strategic alternatives. Mineral resource and reserve estimates are also forward-looking statements because such estimates involve estimates of mineralization that may be encountered in the future if a production decision is made, as well as estimates of future costs and values. Although the Company believes the forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations and assumptions in such statements will prove to be correct. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including the Companys inability to generate sufficient cash flow or raise sufficient additional capital to make payment on its indebtedness, and to comply with the terms of such indebtedness; additional financing requirements; the Companys credit facility (the LMM Facility) with Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC (LMM) is, and any new indebtedness may be, secured and the Company has pledged its shares of Platinum Group Metals (RSA) Proprietary Limited (PTM RSA), and PTM RSA has pledged its shares of Waterberg JV Resources (Pty) Limited (Waterberg JV Co.) to Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC, a subsidiary of LMM, under the LMM Facility, which potentially could result in the loss of the Companys interest in PTM RSA and the Waterberg Project in the event of a default under the LMM Facility or any new secured indebtedness; the Companys history of losses and negative cash flow; the Companys ability to continue as a going concern; the Companys properties may not be brought into a state of commercial production; uncertainty of estimated production, development plans and cost estimates for the Waterberg Project; discrepancies between actual and estimated mineral reserves and mineral resources, between actual and estimated development and operating costs, between actual and estimated metallurgical recoveries and between estimated and actual production; fluctuations in the relative values of the U.S. Dollar, the Rand and the Canadian Dollar; volatility in metals prices; the failure of the Company or the other shareholders to fund their pro rata share of funding obligations for the Waterberg Project; any disputes or disagreements with the other shareholders of Waterberg JV Co., Mnombo Wethu Consultants (Pty) Ltd. or Maseve; completion of a DFS for the Waterberg Project is subject to economic analysis requirements; the ability of the Company to retain its key management employees and skilled and experienced personnel; conflicts of interest; litigation or other administrative proceedings brought against the Company; actual or alleged breaches of governance processes or instances of fraud, bribery or corruption; the Company may become subject to the U.S. Investment Company Act; exploration, development and mining risks and the inherently dangerous nature of the mining industry, and the risk of inadequate insurance or inability to obtain insurance to cover these risks and other risks and uncertainties; property and mineral title risks including defective title to mineral claims or property; changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada and South Africa; equipment shortages and the ability of the Company to acquire necessary access rights and infrastructure for its mineral properties; environmental regulations and the ability to obtain and maintain necessary permits, including environmental authorizations and water use licences; extreme competition in the mineral exploration industry; delays in obtaining, or a failure to obtain, permits necessary for current or future operations or failures to comply with the terms of such permits; risks of doing business in South Africa, including but not limited to, labour, economic and political instability and potential changes to and failures to comply with legislation; the Companys common shares may be delisted from the NYSE American or the TSX if it cannot maintain or regain compliance with the applicable listing requirements; and other risk factors described in the Companys most recent Form 20-F annual report, annual information form and other filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators, which may be viewed at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com, respectively. Proposed changes in the mineral law in South Africa if implemented as proposed would have a material adverse effect on the Companys business and potential interest in projects. Any forward-looking statement 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 statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

Estimates of mineralization and other technical information included herein have been prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101). The definitions of proven and probable 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 Industry Guide 7. In addition, the terms mineral resource and measured 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 historically have not been permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC pursuant to SEC Industry Guide 7. 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. Accordingly, descriptions of the Companys mineral deposits in this press release may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of SEC Industry Guide 7.
The service robots industry in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, grew rapidly last year, thanks to the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technologies and rising market demand, a white paper said.



"Service robots are becoming more intelligent, following the wide use of AI technologies," said Deng Zhongkai, director of the Shenzhen office of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

According to the 2018 White Paper on Shenzhen's Robot Industrial Development, which was released on Tuesday, the output value of service robots in Shenzhen increased 21.79 percent year-on-year to about 34 billion yuan ($5.06 billion) in 2018.

"Compared with the robots for industrial use, which saw slower growth last year, demand for service robots has increased rapidly in recent years," said Deng.

According to the white paper, Shenzhen's industrial robot output value grew 6.25 percent year-on-year to about 80.3 billion yuan in 2018.

"After years of development, a growing number of companies have used advanced technologies such as AI for development of service robots, making them more smart and human-oriented," said Deng.

According to Deng, the city has developed a healthy and sound industrial chain in the robotics sector.

"Moreover, many companies have built their brands in the robot industrial chains for epoxy resins, polishing and spraying," said Deng.

During the 7th China Information Technology Expo, which concluded in Shenzhen on Thursday, a robot called "Youxiaomei" was serving visitors with water and tea. The robot, developed by Shenzhen Excelland Technologies, is able to plan routes, avoid obstacles and take lifts, after being fitted with radar navigators.

According to Gu Zhenjiang, president of Shenzhen Excelland Technologies, which was founded in 2013, Youxiaomei has been used in about 1,000 commercial areas across China.

"The use of service robots could help companies, especially those in the service sector such as restaurants and commercial plazas, to reduce labor costs," said Gu.

Bi Yalei, secretary-general of the Shenzhen Robotics Association, said service robots will be widely used in daily lives.

"For instance, service robots could be used in the food delivery sector and some industrial processing lines, to replace workers," said Bi.
TORONTO, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lydian International Limited (TSX:LYD) (Lydian or the Company) today announced the Administrative Court of the Republic of Armenia ruled in favour of Lydian and instructed the Armenian Police to remove trespassers and their property from the Companys Amulsar Project site and assure Lydian free passage to Amulsar.

On September 20, 2018, Lydian filed an appeal with the Administrative Court of Armenia to have the Police enforce the rule of law and remove protesters trespassing on Company property and denying all road access to the Amulsar Project. The Court ruling, announced April 10, 2019, supports Lydian Armenia CJSCs complaint against a decision made by the local police that there was no basis for the removal of protesters, their vehicles, tents, and trailers to allow Lydian to access the Amulsar Project site.

The Court ruling stated that the right to assembly is not absolute and may not be exercised anywhere, in this case, on private property without the consent of the legitimate owner. Therefore, the police are required to remove the trespassers and their property from the Companys Project site. The courts ruling is effective one month after the date of publication unless appealed prior to that date. At this time, the blockades remain in place and the protestors remain on site. Lydian is seeking the polices immediate enforcement of the courts ruling.

Joao Carrelo, President and CEO of Lydian, stated: Lydians Amulsar Project has been illegally blockaded since June 22 last year. While we respect individuals right of free expression, we strongly believe this cannot be exercised in an illegal manner at the expense of the rights of others, meaning in this case Lydians shareholders, lenders, employees, community members, and other stakeholders. Lydian has initiated several legal actions in Armenia since July 2018 to protect the rights of the Company. This is a long overdue step that we hope will become an important milestone towards the abolishment of unlawfulness and discrimination that Lydian has been facing since June 2018. We look forward to the prompt implementation by the police of the Courts ruling.

Lydian fully reserves all rights and remedies to address any disputes under Armenian and international law. To the extent that Armenian authorities fail to implement the decision of the Administrative Court of the Republic of Armenia and do not remove trespassers from the Amulsar Project site, Armenia will continue to be in breach of its obligations under Armenian and international law.

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:

Joao Carrelo, Chief Executive Officer

+1 720-307-5079 Doug Tobler, Chief Financial Officer

+1 720-307-5087

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 effective date of the courts ruling; the successful enforcement of the courts ruling by the Jermuk Police; the potential appeal of the courts ruling, which may delay its effective date or potentially result in the overturning of the courts ruling; the Companys ability to have continued access to the Amulsar site in the future; the Companys ability to remove the illegal blockades and permanently re-enter the site; our plans, objectives, prospects, expectations and intentions; the timing of development of the Amulsar Project; the commitment to and implementation of good international industry practices; the expected gold production from, and life of mine of, the Amulsar Project; the expected mining methods at the Amulsar Project. 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; the speculative nature of mineral exploration and development; risks associated with obtaining and maintaining the necessary licenses and permits and complying with permitting requirements, including, without limitation, approval of the Armenian government and receipt of all related permits, authorizations or other rights, 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.
MONTREAL, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- OPUS ONE Resources Inc. (OOR  TSXV) and MAGNA TERRA Minerals Inc. (MTT-TSXV) are pleased to announce that they have entered into an Option Agreement (the Agreement) regarding Magna Terras Noyell Property located along the Douay-Cameron deformation corridor (south of the Casa Berardi Break) near the currently producing Vezza gold mine.

The Noyell Property (the Property), which covers an area of 2,536 hectares, is currently 100% owned by Magna Terra (the Optionor). Under the terms of the Agreement; Opus One (the Optionee) can acquire a 100% interest in the Property by paying Magna Terra a total amount of $500,000 (in cash, or in shares of the Optionee, or a combination of both at its sole discretion, subject to the issuance of a maximum of 7 million common shares of the Optionee) over a five (5) year period as follows:

on or before the date that is ten (10) days after the receipt of the required regulatory approvals (the Effective Date), the Optionee will pay to the Optionor an amount of $50,000;

on or before the first anniversary of the Effective Date, the Optionee will pay to the Optionor an additional amount of $50,000;

on or before the second anniversary of the Effective Date, the Optionee will pay to the Optionor an additional amount of $50,000;

on or before the third anniversary of the Effective Date, the Optionee will pay to the Optionor an additional amount of $50,000;

on or before the fourth anniversary of the Effective Date, the Optionee will pay to the Optionor an additional amount of $100,000; and

on or before the fifth anniversary of the Effective Date, the Optionee will pay to the Optionor a final amount of $200,000.

The Agreement remains subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange.

The Noyell Property is found within the Douay-Cameron deformation corridor (just south of the interpreted Casa Berardi Break) which hosts the Douay deposit, 35 km to the west of the property, and the currently producing Vezza Mine (past production approximately 800,000 tons @ 4,5 gpt Au), located some 8 km to the west of Noyell, according to Valere Larouche, Vezza Mine geologist.

Numerous gold occurrences have been discovered by drilling on the Property in the past twenty years, first by Cominco Ltd., then by SOQUEM, and then Normabec Mining Resources. Gold is found in three geological environments: 1) close or within sulphide facies Iron Formations and cherts. 2) within sheared metasediments and 3) within a graphitic fault. It shall be noted that the Vezza mine horizon (contact between a band of mafic volcanics and sediments) has not been properly explored (if present) on the Property.

The Property covers approximately 5 km of strike of the favorable stratigraphy. Two zones have been defined in previous drilling programs: the West and East zones. Historical mineralized intervals range from less than 1 gpt Au up to 14 gpt Au over a maximum width of 3 meters. (Source: Governement files; Examine)

During the course of winter 2007, 10 boreholes consisting of 2,892 total metres of drilling were completed [Examine], all in the eastern portion of the property (see table below). Significant results were obtained in several boreholes suggesting strong intersections of interest in the propertys mineralised structures. In December 2008 a magnetic Survey was completed on the claims staked in 2007 on the eastern part of the property (Examine). This Survey confirmed the iron formations that carry gold mineralization continued toward the East.

During the winter of 2011, Catlee Resources conducted an induced polarization survey (IPower 3D) on the eastern part of the property (claims staked in 2007, 18 kilometres of line). This survey confirmed that the mineralised zone, which was the focus of the most 2007 boreholes on the property, might continue through this portion of the property in the ESE direction, and could still be open to the east. (Source: Government files; Examine)

BEST RESULTS  2007 DRILLING CAMPAIGN Drill hole

NO2007-11 Interval

237.2 to 238.0

247.7 to 249.2

252.0 to 252.5

285.3 to 285.8 Grade over length

14.27 g/t Au over 0.8 m

6.79 g/t Au over 1.5 m

6.17 g/t Au over 0.5 m

17.49 g/t Au over 0.5 m Host

Qtz V.

Fe Fm.

Fe Fm.

Fe Fm. NO2007-12 274.0 to 274.8

282.8 to 286.5 5.66 g/t Au over 0.8 m

4.29 g/t Au over 3.7 m Schist

Fe Fm. NO2007-13 280.9 to 281.4

286.3 to 286.8

291.0 to 291.5 4.83 g/t Au over 0.5 m

19.97 g/t Au over 0.5 m

3.09 g/t Au over 0.5 m Schist

Fe Fm.

Qtz V. NO2007-14 242.1 to 242.6

255.2 to 256.0

258.8 to 260.0 2.88 g/t Au over 0.5 m

4.66 g/t Au over 0.8 m

7.89 g/t Au over 1.2 m Schist

Schist

Schist NO2007-10 312.0 to 315.0

366.0 to 367.0 5.33 g/t Au over 3.0 m

11.83 g/t Au over 1.0 m Fe Fm.

Sed. NO2007-05 279.3 to 280.1 4.49 g/t Au over 0.8 m Qtz V. NO2007-07 286.0 to 286.7 1.3 g/t Au over 0.7m Qtz V.

All other holes of the drilling program were either abandoned prematurely or not drilled. The 2007 samples were analyzed by FA with gravity finish at Expert Laboratory (certified) located in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. Mr. Pierre ODowd, a Qualified Person under NI 43-101 has verified the 2007 drilling, sampling and assay results reported in this release. A QAQC program was implemented during the drilling program and blanks and certified material (standards) were incorporated to the regular samples. The QAQC program was considered satisfactory by the QP.

Mr. Louis Morin, CEO, of Opus one states: "Opus One is pleased to acquire the Noyell Property as it already controls two strategically located properties in this highly favorable environment for gold Exploration: The Vezza Extension property that hosts approximately 10 km of strike of the Douay-Cameron corridor, just west of the Vezza gold mine, and the Vezza North property located just north of the latter and covers approximately 15 km of strike of the interpreted Casa Berardi Break. These two properties as well as the newly acquired one constitute a highly prospective package of projects along two well recognized gold bearing structures in the Abitibi. As for the Noyell Property, the Vezza mine horizon has not been properly explored on the Vezza Extension property. Recent drilling on the Property was aimed at geophysical anomalies rather than favorable contacts. "

Pierre ODowd, P. Geo, independent consulting geologist, acts as a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the technical information in this press release.

About OPUS ONE Resources Inc.

Opus One Resources Inc. is a mining exploration company focused on discovering high quality gold and base metals deposits within strategically located properties in proven mining camps, close to existing mines in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, north-western Quebec and north-eastern Ontario - one of the most prolific gold mining areas in the world. Opus One holds assets in Val-d'Or, Matagami and Chibougamau areas. Opus controls a 90% to 100% interest in the following projects:

Bachelor Extension property is adjacent to Bonterra Resources Inc.- Bachelor Gold Mine,

Vezza Extension and Vezza North are located few kilometers West and North of Nottaway Resources Vezza Mine.

Courvillle (90%) property is located east of Val DOr.

Fecteau property (option to earn 100%), located in the Urban-Barry greenstone belt, east of Osisko Minings Windfall Lake deposit, currently one of the most active exploration area in Canada.

For more information, please contact:

Louis Morin, CEO & Director

T (514) 591-3988

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Michael W. Kinley, CPA, CA

President, CFO & Director

T (902) 826-1579

F (902) 826-2550

C (902) 402-0388

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Visit Opus Ones website: www.OpusOneResources.com

About Magna Terra Minerals Inc.

Magna Terra Minerals Inc. is a precious metals focused exploration company, headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Magna Terra (MTT) has a significant interest in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina within the prolific Deseado Massif in southern Patagonia. With five district scale drill ready projects, and a highly experienced management and exploration team, MTT is positioned to deliver significant shareholder value through the potential for precious metals discovery(s) on its extensive portfolio. For detailed information regarding our projects, please visit the Companys website at: www.magnaterraminerals.com

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Magna Terra Minerals Inc.

Lewis Lawrick, President & CEO: 647-478-5307

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Website: www.magnaterraminerals.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.
Sudans army ousted veteran president Omar al-Bashir Thursday, but protestors against his iron-fisted rule swiftly rejected a coup and vowed to keep rallying despite an approaching night-time curfew.

In a sombre televised address, Defence Minister Awad Ibnouf announced the toppling of the regime and said Bashir had been detained in a secure place, bringing an end to his three decades in power.

A transitional military council will replace the president for two years, he said, adding that the countrys borders and airspace were shut until further notice.

He also imposed a curfew set to kick in at 10:00pm (2000 GMT) which the army later warned the public not to defy, even as thousands of protestors kept up their rally outside army headquarters Thursday evening.

Bashir, who swept to power in a 1989 coup, was one of Africas longest-serving presidents and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and war crimes.

Organisers of protests that have rocked Sudan since December vowed to press on until the whole regime was swept aside.

The protestors Alliance for Freedom and Change said the regime had carried out a military coup and kept the same faces protestors wanted to oust.

It urged demonstrators to continue their sit-in in front of army headquarters and across all regions and in the streets.

Thursdays announcement means we have not achieved anything, said Adel, a protestor outside the army headquarters, where defiant protesters have braved tear gas and gunfire to keep up a six-day sit-in.

We will not stop our revolution. We are calling for the regime to step down, not only Bashir, he said.

Activists outside the compound were seen urging others to spend the night there despite the curfew.

 Were not leaving 

Huge crowds of jubilant Sudanese had filled squares across the centre of the capital Thursday as the army promised an important announcement.

Chanting the regime has fallen, they poured into the open ground outside the army base.

But the festive mood later soured.

We are not leaving, we are not leaving. Just fall and thats all, they shouted after Ibnoufs announcement.

The opposition Sudanese Congress Party called for the establishment of a joint military and civilian council to rule for a four-year transitional period.

It also urged the army to give executive powers to civilians.

Washington echoed that call, urging Khartoum to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government.

The Sudanese people should determine who leads them and their future and the Sudanese people have been clear and are demanding a civilian-led transition, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters.

UN chief Antonio Guterres called for a transition that would meet the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people and appealed for calm and utmost restraint by all, his spokesman said.

That came after the African Union decried Bashirs military ouster, saying it was not the appropriate response to the challenges facing Sudan and the aspirations of its people.

Army vehicles carrying troops were seen deploying across the centre of Khartoum from early Thursday.

Troops raided the offices of the Islamic Movement, the ideological wing of Bashirs ruling National Congress Party, witnesses told AFP.

Martial music was played on state television as soldiers ordered the TV to halt its normal programming ahead of Ibnoufs announcement.

Outside army headquarters, dozens of joyful protesters early Thursday climbed on top of land-cruisers and armoured vehicles that had been posted to protect them from intervention by other branches of the security forces.

 Prisoner release 

The military council also said it was declaring a ceasefire across the country, including in war-torn Darfur.

But the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-AW) fighting government forces in Darfur denounced what it called a palace coup.

Meanwhile, Sudans feared National Intelligence and Security Service said it was freeing all the countrys political prisoners, state media reported.

But in the eastern cities of Kasala and Port Sudan, the releases failed to materialise, prompting protesters to storm NISS buildings, according to witnesses.

Demonstrators Thursday entered their sixth night defiantly camped outside the sprawling army headquarters complex in Khartoum, which also houses Bashirs official residence and the defence ministry.

Officials say 49 people have died in protest-related violence since the demonstrations first erupted in December.

Rights group Amnesty International said Bashir should now be handed over to the ICC so that victims of these unspeakable crimes can see that justice is done.

Neighbouring Egypt, where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in similar circumstances, said Thursday it supported the Sudanese people and the army in their political transition.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assanges seven-year hideout in Ecuadors London embassy dramatically ended Thursday when British police dragged him out and arrested him on a US extradition request.

Footage from the Russian video news agency Ruptly showed Assange  his worn face framed by a bushy white beard and shock of silver hair  being hustled out of the building by burly men in suits and pulled into a waiting police van.

The scene unfolded outside the plush central London building that has been Assanges refuge from the authorities since 2012.

No one is above the law, British Prime Minister Theresa May said to cheers in parliament.

The drama came after Ecuador  under pro-US President Lenin Moreno, increasingly frustrated with Assanges stay  pulled its asylum and cancelled his citizenship after earlier curbing his internet and mobile phone access.

British police said Assange had been initially arrested for breaching his bail conditions in 2012 and then further arrested on behalf of the United States, where he is wanted to face hacking charges.

His London lawyer Jennifer Robinson said Assange would be contesting and fighting his extradition.

Robinson said Assange had also told her to pass a message to his supporters that his repeated warnings about the risk of US extradition had been proved right.

He said: I told you so, Robinson told reporters and supporters, including fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, outside Westminster Magistrates Court.

 Im not leaving 

The pony-tailed 47-year-old Australian gave a thumbs-up sign to the press gallery in court and opened up a copy of Gore Vidals book History of the National Security State about the US military-industrial complex before his hearing began.

Judge Michael Snow pronounced Assange guilty of breaching his bail conditions by sheltering in the embassy and remanded him in custody to face sentencing at an unspecified later date.

He faces up to a year in a British prison and will have his separate extradition case heard on May 2.

Assange yelled this is unlawful and I am not leaving during the arrest, the court was told.

Police struggled to handcuff him but eventually lifted him out exactly an hour after entering the embassy.

Assange had long suspected that he was secretly wanted by Washington for his decision to publish a trove of classified Pentagon documents detailing alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

US authorities had steadfastly refused to confirm reports that they had issued a sealed indictment against Assange  until Thursday.

The US Justice Department said Assange was being charged with a computer hacking conspiracy relating to his work with former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in March 2010.

If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a Justice Department statement said.

 Guarantee against death penalty 

Assange will now be at the heart of a legal and diplomatic tug of war pitting him and his legions of supporters  including Russian authorities  against the US justice system.

His links to Russia continued through the years holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy.

WikiLeaks also published damaging emails stolen from Hillary Clinton and her Democratic Partys computer servers during her failed 2016 US presidential race against Donald Trump.

US intelligence agencies believe the hack was conducted by Russias military intelligence agency. Assange says he never knew the source of the politically-compromising material when he released it on WikiLeaks.

Assanges supporters fear that his extradition will be followed by more serious US charges such as treason  a crime that carries the death penalty in wartime.

Moreno insisted that he had asked Great Britain for the guarantee that Mr Assange will not be extradited to any country in which he could suffer torture or face the death penalty.

 Dangerous precedent 

Assanges case has opened up a bigger debate about security and free speech.

His supporters view him as a fearless exposer of injustices such as torture and alleged war crimes committed by US forces and then covered up.

Assanges critics accuse him of cosying up to authoritarian leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and putting US lives at risk.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said any prosecution by the United States of Mr Assange for Wikileaks publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional.

The Reporters Without Borders free speech group said Assanges arrest could set a dangerous precedent for journalists, whistleblowers, and other journalistic sources that the US may wish to pursue in the future.

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused Britain of strangling freedom and fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden  himself hiding in Moscow since 2013  said the arrest was a dark moment.

Bolivias leftist President Evo Morales condemned the arrest, tweeting that Assange was being persecuted by the government of the US.

Former Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa said it was an act of personal vengeance on the part of his successor Moreno.

Correa claimed to AFP that WikiLeaks a few days ago published a corruption case that revealed a secret bank account in Panama, allegedly in the name of the Moreno family.

Moreno for his part defended on Twitter the decision to withdraw asylum for Assange as due to repeated violations of international conventions and the protocols of daily life.

zak/rjm/boc

C.H. ROBINSON WORLDWIDE
Sudanese protesters angry that army commanders have taken control after removing veteran president Omar al-Bashir in a palace coup defied a night-time curfew to keep up four months of mass demonstrations on Friday.

Protest leaders dismissed the transitional military council formed by top brass after they toppled Bashir on Thursday, as the same old faces from the old regime which had ruled the country with an iron fist for three decades.

Demonstrators demanded a civilian body to lead the transition to democracy and bring an end to the multiple conflicts which have pushed the country into worsening poverty.

Most shops and offices were closed on Friday which is the day of prayer and rest in Sudan.

Vast crowds were expected to throng the streets of Khartoum and its twin city Omdurman after the main weekly Muslim prayers at noon raising fears of confrontation.

Washington called on the military council to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government.

The European Union urged the army to carry out a swift handover to civilian rule.

Sudans last elected prime minister, opposition Umma party leader, Sadiq al-Mahdi, who was overthrown by Bashir in a military coup in 1989, was expected to address supporters after prayers at one of Omdurmans most revered mosques.

Since returning to Khartoum from self-imposed exile, Mahdi has allied his party with the grass-roots who were the driving force behind the mass protests that preceded Thursdays coup.

The Sudan Professionals Association  a well organised umbella group of doctors, teachers and engineers  has called for a huge turnout at Fridays turnout as has the wider opposition Alliance for Freedom and Democracy.

 This is now our square 

Despite warnings from the new military council to respect the nightime curfew, the soldiers posted outside army headquarters made no move to disperse the protesters who camped out there for a sixth straight night on Thursday, demonstrators said.

Protesters were seen chatting with soldiers. They said their quarrel was with the commanders who had led the coup, not the rank and file.

There was no difference between last night and previous days and nights for us, said one protester who gave his name as Abu Obeida.

This is now our square. We have taken it and wont leave until victory is achieved.

We broke the curfew. We will continue doing it until we have a civilian transitional government.

Ibnouf said a transitional military council would replace the president for two years, adding that the countrys borders and airspace were shut until further notice.

He said the council was also imposing a 10 pm (2000 GMT) to 4:00 am (0200) GMT curfew.

State television later broadcast footage of him taking the oath to become head of the council, alongside his new deputy, army chief of staff Lieutenant General Kamal Abdelmarouf.

State television said there would be a fresh announcement from the military council on Friday.

Bashir, who swept to power in a 1989 coup, was one of Africas longest-serving presidents and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of genocide and war crimes.

Ibnouf apologised for the mismanagement, the corruption and the injustice that had led to mounting social inequality.

He also apologised for the regimes resort to strong-arm tactics to attempt to crush the protests which had led to the loss of peoples lives.

But his apology fell on deaf ears among the protesters, who had repeatedly defied bullets and tear gas to keep up their sit-in before the army stepped in.

Thursdays announcement meant we have not achieved anything, said another protester who gave his name only as Adel.

We will not stop our revolution. We are calling for the regime to step down, not only Bashir.

It was a far cry from the scenes of celebration that had initially greeted the armys announcement it would intervene on Thursday, when demonstrators cheered and hugged soldiers on the streets, some of whom joined the demonstrations.

 Utmost restraint 

The opposition Sudanese Congress Party called for the establishment of a joint military and civilian council to rule for a four-year transitional period.

It also urged the army to give executive powers to civilians.

UN chief Antonio Guterres called for a transition that would meet the democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people and appealed for calm and utmost restraint by all, his spokesman said.

That came after the African Union decried Bashirs military ouster, saying it was not the appropriate response to the challenges facing Sudan and the aspirations of its people.

The military council said it was declaring a ceasefire across the country, including in war-torn Darfur.

But the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA-AW) fighting government forces in Darfur denounced what it called a palace coup.

Sudans feared National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) said it was freeing all the countrys political prisoners, state media reported.

But in the eastern cities of Kasala and Port Sudan, the releases failed to materialise, prompting protesters to storm NISS buildings, according to witnesses.

Protesters have otherwise largely heeded the calls of organisers to refrain from attacking government official or buildings as they press their campaign for sweeping reform.
Thousands of Sudanese kept up months of protests to demand regime change Friday, a day after the military ended Omar al-Bashirs three-decade grip on power in a widely criticised coup.

Here is a timeline of the upheaval in the country.

 Bread protests 

Hundreds take to the streets in various cities on December 19, 2018 to protest the governments tripling of bread prices, some chanting, No to hunger.

The demonstrations spread and broaden into calls for Bashirs iron-fisted regime to quit.

Offices of his ruling National Congress Party (NCP) are torched in several towns.

The protests reach Khartoum on December 20, demonstrators chanting freedom, peace, justice.

Clashes break out as police try to disperse the crowds and eight demonstrators are killed in two cities.

 Bashir resists 

Bashir breaks his silence after six days of demonstrations, vowing real reforms on December 24.

On January 1, 2019, 22 political groups call for a new regime.

On January 9, thousands chant support for Bashir in Khartoum. But in the capitals twin city of Omdurman, there are more deaths in anti-government protests.

On January 13, protests spread to the war-torn western region of Darfur. Bashir tells supporters there: Demonstrations will not change the government.

 Emergency rule 

On February 21, security agents arrest several opposition activists as protesters try to march on the presidential palace.

Bashir declares a nationwide state of emergency on February 22, also dissolving the federal and provincial governments and appointing army and intelligence officers as provincial governors.

Two days later, he swears in a new prime minister as riot police confront hundreds calling for him to resign.

On March 1, Bashir hands his powers as chief of the ruling NCP to his deputy.

 Sit-in at army HQ 

On April 6, thousands gather for the first time outside the military headquarters in Khartoum and chant One Army, One People in a call for support.

They set up camp at the complex, which also houses the presidents residence, defying attempts by police to dislodge them with tear gas and gunshots into the air.

On April 9, police follow the militarys policy of non-intervention and order their forces not to take action against demonstrators.

State media report that 11 people including six members of the security forces have been killed in one day, raising the official death toll in the weeks of demonstrations to 49.

 Bashir ousted 

On April 11, the sixth day of the sit-in, Defence Minister Awad Ibn Ouf announces on state television that Bashir has been removed from power and detained.

A transitional military council will replace Bashir for two years, he says.

The countrys borders and airspace are shut. In a warning to protesters, Ibn Ouf announces a night-time curfew.

Later that evening he is sworn as chief of the military council now in charge.

 Regime coup 

Furious, the opposition accuse the regime of carrying out its own military coup, keeping in place the same old faces.

They demand civilian rule and for the entire regime to step down.

The African Union, EU, UN and United States back calls for a civilian and democratic government.

Thousands defy the curfew overnight into Friday, remaining camped outside the army headquarters, some chanting peace! justice! freedom!.

Addressing the media on Friday, the new military leaders pledge talks with all political entities on forming a civilian government.

They also warn they would not allow any breach of security anywhere, and rule out Bashirs extradition on an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court to face genocide and war crimes charges.
The Kosovo government said Friday it was drafting a law to punish the denial of war crimes committed by Serb forces, following several declarations by Serb officials.

Kosovo deputy prime minister Enver Hoxhaj said the government intended to punish such declarations by Kosovo Serbs.

In Serbia itself, President Aleksandar Vucic charged Wednesday that conclusions of an international probe into the killing of 45 Kosovar civilians in the village of Racak in January 1999 were fabricated.

For Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj, President Vucics denial of Racak massacre reveals the dangerous reality of Serbian nationalism.

There can be no reconciliation without accepting the truth of the past, he said in comments posted on Twitter.

Serb officials maintain that the fighting in Racak, southwest of Pristina, involved guerilla fighters from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The killings were a factor that led to a NATO intervention in Kosovo that forced Serb forces to withdraw from what was then a Serbian province.

Kosovo President Hashim Thaci reacted to shocking declarations by officials in Belgrade by saying they augured badly for reconciliation that has been urged upon both sides by the international community.

In early April, Haradinaj sacked Minister of Local Governance and Administration Ivan Teodosijevica over hateful language after he questioned a massacre in Racak.

Teodosijevic had also called the killing of Kosovo Albanian civilians in Racak a fabrication by Albanian terrorists who invented everything.

Two weeks earlier Haradinaj sacked another Kosovo Serb, deputy minister of justice Vesna Mikic, who said the NATO bombing campaign was genocide against the Serbian people.

More than 13,000 people died during the Kosovo conflict, of which around 11,000 were ethnic Albanian Kosovars and 2,000 Serbs.
Sudans UN envoy said Friday that a two-year transition period to civilian rule announced by the military council that seized power in the country could be shortened as protesters kept up their demands for change.

Addressing the UN Security Council, Sudans charge daffaires Yasir Abdelsalam offered assurances that the military council would support an inclusive civilian-led government.

The (military) council will be the guarantor of a civilian government to be formed in collaboration with political forces and stakeholders. No party will be excluded, said Abdelsalam.

The transitional period could be shortened depending on developments on the ground and agreements between stakeholders, he told the Security Council.

The military rulers who removed president Omar al-Bashir from office on Thursday have offered dialogue with all political groups on forming a civilian government.

Protesters, who took to the streets months ago to demand an end to Bashirs rule, have kept up their demonstrations, denouncing an army coup and calling for civilian rule.

The United States has called on Sudans army to bring civilians in the government, while Britains Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that a two-year transition is not the answer.

We need to see a swift move to an inclusive, representative, civilian leadership, Hunt said.

The Sudanese envoy said the military council was committed to leading a peaceful transition to civilian government and responding to the Sudanese peoples aspiration for change.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday called for a transition in Sudan that meets the democratic aspiration of the Sudanese people.

The Security Council was meeting to discuss the situation in Abyei, a territory disputed by Sudan and South Sudan.

The council will meet later Friday behind closed doors to discuss the dramatic developments in Sudan.

Bashir, who swept to power in a 1989 coup, was one of Africas longest-serving presidents. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes.

In Khartoum, the head of the councils political committee, Lieutenant General Omar Zain al-Abdin, confirmed that Bashir remained in custody, but said the council will never extradite him.
On April 12 each year, people around the world celebrate the International Day of Human Space Flight. It has particular historical significance because on this same day in 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut became the first person to go into the outer space and orbit the earth. This historic event opened a new doorway for future space missions. To honor this first successful human space flight and the beginning of a new era to foster further peaceful exploration missions for the benefit of mankind, the United Nations, in 2011, declared this date the International Day of Human Space Flight.



Similarly, on April 24, 2016, China celebrated its first space day to commemorate the country's first satellite launch on April 24, 1970. China's white paper on space activities, published in 2016, stated that China's space program is an intrinsic part of its economic revitalization and development goals.

In line with this ambition, China has been spending billions on its space exploration programs. It is worth noting that post-1961, many space missions were carried out successfully by the U.S. and Russia. China, on the other hand, was a late entrant in this field. It didn't send its first satellite into orbit until 1970. By then, the U.S. already had its first astronaut land on the moon. However, China's space exploration program received a major breakthrough in 2003 after Yang Liwei successfully orbited the Earth 14 times in 21.5 hours on the Shenzhou-5 spacecraft. This made China the third country  out of 60 nations that engage in space programs  to independently send humans into space.

Since then, China has been making big strides in space exploration as a result of its dedicated efforts in this area. Since 2003, following the successful completion of the Shenzhou-5 mission, China has carried out six Shenzhou manned missions and launched two space labs into the Earth's orbit. In October 2005, Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng spent five days in outer space while successfully completing 75 orbits of the Earth. Subsequently, in September 2008, the Shenzhou-7 mission was launched, marking the first time a three-person crew in China successfully carried out a spacewalk. And the most recent one with two persons aboard was launched in 2016. That latest mission achieved the first manned docking in space with the Tiangong-2 space station. The future Shenzhou-12 mission intends to dock with Tiangong-3, a large modular space station.

Notably, Tiangong is China's space station program which commenced in 1992 and had the ambition of establishing a modular space station. Under this mission, the first Chinese space laboratory, Tiangong-1 was launched in September 2011, and subsequently, Tiangong-2 was launched in September 2016. The project, after it is complete, will allow a team of three astronauts to live there for longer periods of time. This project has been scheduled for completion in 2020.

Similarly, in October 2007, the country launched another ambitious lunar exploration program (Chang'e) named after the Chinese Moon goddess Chang'e. This program had three phases, with each phase more advanced than the previous phase. The objective of the first phase was to simply reach lunar orbit. This task was successfully accomplished by Chang'e 1 and 2 in 2007 and 2010 respectively. The goal of the second phase included a soft landing and roving on the Moon, which was successfully achieved by Chang'e-3 and 4 in 2013 and 2019 respectively. In January this year, the Chang'e-4 made the first landing on the far side of the Moon.

Looking ahead, the future space ambitions of China include the third phase of the Chang'e mission, which aims to collect lunar samples from the south pole of the Moon and send them back to the Earth. This will be carried out by the Chang'e-5 and 6 lunar probes. Chang'e-7 will evaluate the resources on the south pole of the moon, including its landscape, composition and space environment, while Chang'e-8 will test the key technologies such as 3D printing. The program's ultimate ambition is to facilitate a manned lunar landing in the 2030s and possibly construct an outpost near the south pole of the Moon. The program, if successful, would make China the second country, after the U.S., to land an astronaut on the moon. Additionally, future space missions of China also include the docking of Tiangong-3, a large modular space station and sending a rover to Mars.



China's space dream is part of the dream to make the nation stronger. With the development of space programs, the Chinese people will take bigger strides in their exploration of space. Although there have always been many questions raised over expensive space exploration programs, the myriad of technological spin-offs such as navigation systems, accurate weather prediction, solar cells, communication devices, etc. are the results of space programs.

Space programs offer the possibility of providing alternative habitats for humans in future to avoid the danger of being crammed on a single planet, which is currently marred by limited resources and environmental degradation. Thus, exploring space is an opportunity not only to find a new world and build advanced technologies, but also to create a bigger and better future for humans, irrespective of race and nationality.

Although there is still a long way to go, given the determination of the Chinese government and hardworking ethos of the country's space agency, China seems to be on a right track to achieve its ambition of becoming one of the world leaders in space technology and exploration.

Rachana Gupta is an active blogger, poet and freenlance content writer.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors only, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.





If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12)  Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro "Teddy Boy" Locsin, Jr. again expressed dismay over the presence of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea, calling it an embarrassment to the Philippine government.

"What is disappointing is that despite our friendliness and uninterrupted friendship China continually embarrasses our govt (government) by swarming all over OUR exclusive economic zone," Locsin said in a tweet on Friday. He was asked by a netizen if he agrees that China's actions in the West Philippine Sea show that the East Asian giant has taken advantage of the Duterte administration's friendship.

"No. They came in when we were rude under PNoy. And when we were welcoming under GMA; and clueless under FVR," Locsin said, referring to the previous Presidents Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and Fidel V. Ramos.

This is the latest in a string of strong statements the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has made in response to the swarming of over 200 Chinese vessels around Pag-asa Island, one of the biggest islands in the disputed Spratlys in the South China Sea and seat of the Kalayaan municipal government under the province of Palawan.

The DFA called the deployment of Chinese vessels there "illegal," while Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo in a Malacanang press briefing said the vessels "have no business being there" and should go away. Earlier, Locsin also said he is not afraid of war as China "took" what "is ours" in the South China Sea.

China on Thursday responded by maintaining its claim that the Spratlys, which it calls Nansha Islands "are within China's territory, for which we have sufficient historical and legal basis." Earlier, Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Zhao Jianhua said Beijing is verifying reports that its vessels have been surrounding Pag-asa. He said the ships may be manned by "unarmed" Chinese fishermen, but Malacanang said reports from the military suggest militiamen have been deployed there.

Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea, but the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in July 2016 junked its nine-dash line claim and recognized the Philippines' sovereign rights in areas within its 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone, which the government calls West Philippine Sea. However, China continues to reject the landmark ruling.

Another netizen said Chinese vessels came in despite Duterte's "friendliness and subservience," and asked if the Philippines should enforce the tribunal's decision then.

"Why do add 'subservience'?" Locsin said. "Oh, the Tribunal does not expect us to enforce its decision: in fact the Tribunal opposes any enforcement because it means war."

Duterte has said he could not go to war against China but promised to bring the arbitration ruling up within his term. On April 4, the President said he would ask his soldiers to "prepare for suicide mission" if China does not heed his warning to lay off Pag-asa Island, but he later stressed he'd rather go into a compromise instead of an all-out war.
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Tourists view the scenery of the Slender West Lake during the Qingming Festival holidays in Yangzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, April 5, 2019. (Xinhua/Meng Delong)

Recently released statistics showed that traveling is increasingly becoming a regular part of life for millions of Chinese.

A second Chinese time-use survey by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed that the average daily leisure time in the country was one hour and five minutes last year, an increase of 25 minutes compared with 2008, when the survey was first conducted.

Traveling is now favored by a growing number of Chinese people as an important leisure activity. China saw 112 million domestic tourist trips during this year's three-day Qingming Festival holiday from last Friday to Sunday.

The number of domestic trips taken by Chinese residents during last year's holidays, which includes the Spring Festival, Qingming Festival, Labor Day and Dragon Boat Festival respectively rose 12.1%, 8.3%, 9.3% and 7.9% from a year earlier, according to statistics from the China Tourism Academy (CTA).

The NBS data showed that Chinese travelers made 5.54 billion trips within the country in 2018, more than twice that of 2008's figure of 1.71 billion. In addition, the total number of outbound trips reached 162 million, a marked contrast to only 45.85 million in 2008.

Over the past decade, China's outbound tourism registered double-digit growth, making it the largest source of tourists and tourism expenditure in the world.

Meanwhile, Chinese travelers are seeking to engage more with regional culture, manifested in the rising popularity of museums and red tourism sites.

Nearly 1 billion visits were made to more than 20,000 exhibitions held by 5,136 museums across China last year, according to the People's Daily, a state-run media outlet.

A CTA report also revealed that cultural creativity and smart technologies have made China's red tourism sites more appealing to young tourists, especially those of the post-80s, 90s and 00s generations.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) casts his ballot at a polling station in Jerusalem, April 9, 2019. Israel on Tuesday morning started day-long general elections across the country to choose its next parliament and decide the premiership. [Photo/Xinhua]

Official results of Israel's elections were published on Thursday night, showing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's party has beaten the main rival, the Blue and White party.

The results were released by the Central Election Committee after two days of counting ballots and delays caused by computer malfunctions, according to the committee chairman, Judge Hanan Melcer.

Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party won 36 seats while the centrist Blue and White, led by an ex-army chief, gained 35 seats, the results showed.

Netanyahu now needs to form a governing coalition with at least 61 members in Israel's 120-seat parliament, or the Knesset. He already said he intends to build a coalition with right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties.

His likely partners include Shas, with eight seats, and United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, both Jewish ultra-Orthodox parties.

The United Right, a new alliance of pro-settler lists and another likely partner in Netanyahu's coalition, gained five seats.

Israel Our Home, led by Avigdor Lieberman, a far-right politician and Netanyahu's former defense minister, gained five seats.

Kulanu, a center-right party, gained four seats.

Overall, the right-wing bloc includes 65 seats.

The Labor party, Israel's largest opposition party which had 18 seats in the recent parliament, gained only six seats this time.

Meretz, a left-wing party, lost one seat and will enter the parliament with four seats only.

Hadash-Ta'al, an alliance of Arab parties, won six seats, and Ra'am-Balad, another Arab party alliance, won four seats.

The Blue and White party, Netanyahu's main challenger in the elections, admitted defeat on Wednesday night, vowing to serve as a "fierce opposition" to Netanyahu.

The results mean Netanyahu is heading for a record fifth term in office and would become Israel's longest-serving prime minister.
CHILOQUIN, Ore.  One woman is dead after being struck by a vehicle along Highway 97 in Chiloquin on Tuesday evening, according to the Klamath County Sheriff's Office (KCSO).

Deputies responded to a report of the crash around 9:45 p.m. At the scene, they found that a driver had struck a pedestrian near the intersection of Chiloquin Boulevard (SR 422 South) and Highway 97.

29-year-old Angelica Jackson, the pedestrian, was pronounced dead at the scene.

"Initial investigation conducted by the Klamath County Sheriffs Office revealed there was no fault in the accident on the part of the vehicle operator," said KCSO in a statement. While the investigation remains underway, authorities believe that this may have been a suicide.

Personnel from Chiloquin Fire and Rescue assisted at the scene of the crash. KCSO said that no further information is available at this time "pending completion of the investigation in conjunction with the Oregon State Medical Examiners Office."
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that it was possible for him to hold a third meeting with the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Un.

Trump made the remarks while speaking to the media together with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting at the White House.

According to the full transcript provided by the White House, when asked by reporters if he plans to meet Kim for a third summit, Trump said that "it could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step."

"It's not a fast process; I've never said it would be. It's step by step," he said. "I enjoy the summits. I enjoy being with the Chairman. I think it's been very productive."

When asked if a three-way summit with Kim and Moon is also possible, Trump said "that could happen also."

For his part, Moon said that the personal diplomacy between Trump and Kim has brought "dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean Peninsula."

"Now peace has prevailed," he said. "Now we believe that you will be able to solve this problem through a dialogue."

Noting that "the Hanoi Summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement," Moon said that efforts need to be made so as to "maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook, regarding the third U.S.-North Korea Summit, to the international community that this will be held in the near future."

After ending the summit in Vietnam's Hanoi on Feb. 28 without an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that the DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Wednesday that for dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearization and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronized steps as a package solution.
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U.S. prosecutors said Thursday they have charged Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, with conspiracy to commit computer hacking.



The indictment alleges that Assange engaged in a conspiracy with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 to access a classified U.S. government computer, according to a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).

If convicted, Assange, 47, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

He was arrested by British police in London and carried out of the Ecuadorean embassy there on Thursday pursuant to an extradition treaty between the United States and Britain.

Assange is alleged to have assisted Manning in cracking a password stored on U.S. Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Network, a U.S. government network used for classified documents and communications.

Manning, who had access to the computers in connection with her duties as an intelligence analyst, was using the computers to download classified records to transmit to WikiLeaks, according to the DOJ.

Manning was convicted of espionage in 2013. Her prison sentence was commuted by then U.S. President Barack Obama in 2017.

Assange was granted asylum by Ecuador in 2012 while on bail in Britain over sexual assault allegations against him in Sweden and had remained in the Ecuadorean embassy in London until his arrest on Thursday.
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Im constantly awed by the fact that I get to be part of one of the best hospitals in the world, especially because as a kid, I grew up without health insurance.

These were the days before the Affordable Care Act; there was no penalty for going without health coverage. As a non-citizen, I was ineligible for Medicaid, and private health care was prohibitively expensive for my family. Fortunately, I was a healthy kid with a robust immune system, and I never had to go to the doctors office except for mandatory school physicals and vaccinations. When I rotated through my pediatrics rotation, I was struck by how many well-child visits that I had unknowingly missed.

But not having insurance meant that when my family had to pay, we paid big time. When I was in high school, my otherwise healthy dad developed an acute infection  just a stroke of terrible luck. He was whisked away in an ambulance, evaluated in the emergency room, and admitted to the hospital.

Fortunately, he made a full recovery, but the financial costs of the ambulance ride, the expertise of numerous medical providers, and the medications, were astronomical. It took months to negotiate the bill with the numerous parties  hospitals, physician groups, diagnostic services  that had contributed to his care. On the advice of a patient financial counselor, I wrote letters to various offices to beg for discounts. Fortunately, many recipients acquiesced, but even so, it took years to pay off the bills.

From this experience, I got the sense that health care was a privilege for those with the means to pay for it, like a good union or white-collar job. In a way, it sparked my interest in medicine because I wanted to be a doctor to those who needed my services the most.

So far, Ive been able to pursue this goal at Stanford. Im starting my third year as a specialty clinic coordinator at Arbor, one of two free medical clinics run by Stanford students under the guidance of residents and attendings who graciously volunteer time out of their busy schedule.

Even after the implementation of the ACA, the clinics waiting room is packed with people wanting to be seen. Some of our patients are undocumented residents who are ineligible for Medicaid or Medicare. Others are elderly parents of savvy graduate students and postdoctoral fellows visiting from developing countries for a rare opportunity to see their children and get care from U.S. physicians. Then there are people who are just down on their luck or between jobs and havent been connected to the social services available to them.

At the specialty clinic that I co-manage, I receive referrals from the general free clinic, call patients to make appointments, organize student and physician volunteers, and arrange supplies for various in-clinic procedures. Ive seen students and physicians help underserved patients by treating illnesses, preventing downstream consequences of chronic conditions, and coordinating a care plan to make sure that patients can get the follow-up that they need.

It is a team effort: The amazing attendings have volunteered for years to help patients and teach trainees, and the residents ensure one of their own is present to help every clinic date and that our supply closet is appropriately stocked. The medical students learn more about the specialty from the attendings and the residents, and, most importantly, patients get the care they need.

Some patients have been harboring their illnesses for years, using folk remedies or over-the-counter medications to treat their symptoms instead of going to see a physician. An ounce of prevention may be worth a pound of cure, but I understand their rationale because the same thing kept me awake at night as a kid: what if the doctors find something wrong with me or my parents, how will we be able to pay for the treatment? Maybe its better not knowing, but what if the condition gets worse and becomes more difficult and expensive to treat? How will we pay for the treatment?

Now that I have insurance and have more flexibility with my schedule during my research gap year, Im finally catching up on my health, including well-womans exams, recommended vaccinations, minor surgeries, and dental check-ups. Im acutely aware of how lucky I am that I can get care and follow-up from incredible Stanford providers, some of whom Ive worked with before (this is admittedly a bit awkward, but thats a story for another time), but many others still struggle to access even the most basic medical services.

Growing without health insurance helped me to understand the plight of many individuals who still face similar challenges, and as a medical student, I am awed and inspired by the physicians at Stanford who make time out of their busy schedules to help the underserved.

Yoo Jung Kim is a medical student who blogs at Scope, where this article originally appeared.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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Can someone please tell me the exact moment when fleece pajama bottoms became the fashion sensibility of America?

I cant pinpoint the moment exactly, but several years ago I began to notice that many of our ER patients were presenting for treatment wearing nice fluffy fleece bottoms. Men. Women. Old. Young. These fleece bottoms seemed to be enjoyed by a variety of the population. Most of these earlier bottoms for the younger patients were of superheroes and childhood figures, like kitties and ponies. For the older patients, it seemed like the characters from the adult-cartoons The Simpsons and The Family Guy were a big hit.

Being a new sort of fashion, I enjoyed the earlier era of these pajama bottoms. They seemed to be appropriate wear for some of our sicker patients who didnt have the energy to change out of their bed wear before coming to us for medical help. Especially the kids, who often had matching fleece blankets, I enjoyed the style of these pajamas and the apparent comfort they seemed to provide.

In no time, though, it seemed like these pajama bottoms began to be worn not only by the patient, but by family members. Little Sally, who was brought to our ER by her parents for vomiting and diarrhea, was not the only family member wearing cartoon pajama bottoms. So were Mom, Dad, and her older brother. Little Pony is my favorite! she exclaimed to me. I wonder if it was Moms favorite, too, since she bore matching bottoms. It all made some sense, though. It was 10 p.m., and everybody was probably either getting ready for bed or in bed when the decision to bring Sally in was made.

I should have gotten more suspect of this trend, though, when over the next few weeks to months, more and more people began showing up wearing fleece pajama bottoms. Even moreso, they were being worn sometimes not by the patients, but rather by their supportive family and friends. There sat Larry in his hospital bed, with chest pain and difficulty breathing, being supported at bedside by his adult son and daughter as well as his grandson. The grandson, of course, looked handsome in his wind pants and sweatshirt. His children, however, looked less put-together  his son wearing Steeler fleece PJ bottoms while his daughters were plastered with Lisa Simpsons face.

At 2 p.m. On a weekday. In the summer. With abundant sunshine outside.

Of course, Larry was lucky to feel the love of his family at bedside, regardless of their attire. The bigger picture wasnt lost on me. Yet, it was interesting to see the fashion pendulum swinging into an area where fleece bottoms were becoming acceptable wear at all hours and in all weather.

Although I initially thought so, I cant say that this trend is related to economics. Recently, at Walmart, we discovered a whole array of very cool, bright patterned fleece pajama bottoms. Cartoon characters, Marvel superheroes, sporting team emblems, camouflage, even imitation Burberry plaids  the selection was impressive. And the cost? $11.96 for the cheapest bottoms. And the rack next to them? Sweat pants for $6.00.

Goodbye yoga pants, khakis, jeans, and sweatpants. Fleece pajama bottoms might be here to stay. I never thought the day would come when I would rather see an old ratty pair of sweatpants on someone instead of SpongeBob fleece PJ bottoms.

Over the last few years, then, it has become common practice in our ER to treat people of all ages, from all walks of life, in all weather, in all type of medical emergency scenarios, wearing these bottoms as a staple to their outfit. It seems like Stewie Griffins big bald baby head on PJ bottoms can go with a nice pair of boots and a cable-knit, turtleneck sweater on a middle-aged woman. SpongeBob bottoms go great with a Dallas Cowboy T-shirt and a John Deere ball cap on a college kid. And Hello Kitty  well, Hello Kitty can pretty much write her own ticket to all the various outfits she ties together. She even purrs when paired with a half shirt that says Who needs brains when you have these. Yes, I am being serious.

Not only were these PJ bottoms being worn by patients and their families in our ER, but it seems that these fleece PJs are now a staple in public as well. Recently, I was in line at a local market during midday. Fourth in line at the check-out. And as I was assessing how long my wait would be, it suddenly struck me that the three people checking out in front of me were all in fleece pajama bottoms. The person in front of me, unfortunately, smelled and looked like he had just rolled out of bed. His hair was matted and greasy; his body smelled of yesterdays stale fart. It seemed as if his lack of effort to shower and be presentable in public was excused by wearing his Batman PJs in public. Being an eternal optimist, I was hopeful he was just delaying his shower until after he got his filet mignon cooking on the grill when he got home.

Standing behind those three, at that moment, I had a moment of serious introspection. I felt like the odd-man-out. I looked down at my clothes. A white t-shirt. Hudson jeans. Brown boots. Nike ball cap. Should I succumb and become a slave to fashion? Maybe, I wondered, a pair of My Little Pony bottoms, adult size medium, would make me feel more at peace with myself.

After sharing this story with my co-workers, they assured me that the marketplace and our emergency department are not the only privileged destinations of fleece bottoms these days. Kids are wearing these fleece PJ bottoms to school. All ages are wearing them to sporting events. To club activities. To parties. To movies. To family functions. It seems that there is no place immune to the progressive fashions of fleece PJ bottoms.

Oh wait! I dont recall any PJ bottoms on the red carpet while watching the highlights of the recent Oscars. Did I miss something? Maybe Glenn Close should have skipped her designer gown for a pair of Wonder Woman fleece bottoms. With Christian Louboutin heels, of course.

How do you all feel about this new trend? Have you witnessed similar encounters? If you work in a medical office or in the hospital, how rampant do you think this trend is becoming? Where else have you seen this trend pushing the limits? Most importantly, have you worn your PJ bottoms out in public yourself? Be honest!

I have seen people do double takes to get a second glance at some of the people wearing the newest PJ fashions. When the PJs are clean, they dont look so bad. When they look like they havent been washed in two weeks, well  second glance deserved. And when they stink like they havent been washed in two weeks, a wrinkle of the nose is just as well-deserved.

I can only imagine what our grandparents would say about this fashion trend, what with the strict dress code they had when they were growing up (some even in desperate times). Heck, I heard an elder physician at work exclaim recently when complaining about this trend, if I ever went out in public like that, I wouldnt have ever seen the light of day again. What has happened to people?

I guess at this point most of us are immune to the trend. Accepting of it. I do appreciate some of the eye-catching outfits that involve these PJ bottoms. Some of the designs and patterns are hip. And I appreciate the surprise factor of people wearing them, still. Of their courage, or maybe its their apathy, of wearing them in public and incorporating them into their everyday wear. And lets be honest, its kind of cool to see the same design being worn by an infant, her mother, and her grandmother at the same time.

Well, as long as they arent related to me 

As I said before, and Ill say it again, I love my job and my patients. For so many reasons. After all, where else would I get to meet an attractive, sophisticated, gray-haired elderly woman wearing a trim blouse with concise lipstick and well-placed rouge  and fleece pajama bottoms with marijuana leaves patterned on them.

I just love my hibiscus plants, she explained.

Enough said.

StorytellERdoc is an emergency physician who blogs at his self-titled site, StorytellERdoc.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
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In heavy rain, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his Croatian counterpart, Andrej Plenkovic, jointly pressed a glass-ball button to start the piling of the main pier of a long-awaited Croatian bridge being built by a Chinese consortium.

"I hope the Peljesac Bridge will be an excellent high-quality project that can withstand all rains and winds," said Li after pressing the button.

Li made the remarks while visiting the construction site of the bridge on the Peljesac Peninsula in southern Croatia with Plenkovic Thursday morning.

The Peljesac Bridge, 2.4-km long and 55-meter high, is designed to link the mainland of Croatia with its southernmost Dubrovnik-Neretva County, crossing the Mali Ston Bay over the Adriatic Sea and bypassing foreign territory.

In January 2018, a Chinese consortium led by China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) won the bid for the first phase of the Peljesac Bridge and its access roads.

It is the biggest transportation infrastructural project between the two countries since they forged diplomatic ties 27 years ago. Once completed, the bridge can potentially cut a three-hour journey to just two to three minutes.

Li said the Peljesac Bridge project, acquired by Chinese enterprises through fair competition and public bidding, follows market principles and abides by rules of the European Union (EU).

He called the bridge "a bridge of friendship" as it embodies the friendship of Chinese and Croatian peoples and is conducive to regional peace, stability and prosperity.

The bridge is also "a bridge of welfare" as it will help facilitate logistics, personnel exchanges and life of local residents so as to improve the country's social and economic development, the premier said.

The bridge is "a model of tripartite cooperation among China, Croatia and the EU," Li said, adding that Chinese enterprises will build the bridge with the best equipment and technology and build a high-quality project.

He also asked the Chinese consortium to make all efforts to ensure the completion of the project as scheduled so as to benefit the Croatian people at an early date.

The total value of the project is about 420 million euros (about 472 million U.S. dollars), of which 85 percent will be covered by the EU funds.

Hailing the bridge "a symbol of friendship and cooperation between Croatia and China," Plenkovic said it was Chinese friends that helped the Croatian people to turn their long-desired dream into reality.

Plenkovic said that the bidding process was open, fair and transparent and the Chinese consortium won the bid with the most reliable capability.

When completed, the bridge will not only greatly facilitate the travel of the Croatian people and improve local development, but also provide market opportunities for Chinese companies and set a good example for China-EU practical cooperation, said Plenkovic.

Li arrived in Dubrovnik Wednesday from Zagreb to continue his official visit to Croatia. He will attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) in the coastal city on Friday.
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Many people look at their 401(k) like it is a piggy bank. Since they often dont have any other savings, when they need a lump sum of money for a large purchase, the only account they have with a decent balance is their retirement account.

Since most people are not saving outside of their retirement plan, many people end up with an empty checking account, an empty savings account, no emergency fund, and maxed out credit cards. Then along comes something they need a large amount of money for, like the down payment on a house, a new car, a home remodel, a nice motorhome, a wedding, or money to live on due to a job loss. But the only account with a large balance is the office retirement plan.

So after thinking about it for a moment and realizing that retirement is a long way off and they really need the house right away, they decide to spend the money now. They also rationalize they can replace the money. So they approach the office manager asking to take money out of their retirement plan.

I was the gatekeeper of the retirement plan at a business for a few years, and I was amazed at how many employees wanted to raid their retirement account. None of them had a valid my life is in danger if I dont get some money quick reason to withdraw the money. The reason was always something they felt they had to do, and there was no other way for them to do it.

What about when someone left the company? There are only two good moves to make with retirement plan money when you leave a job. First, leave it where it is and let it grow in the retirement plan of the company you leave. Second, roll it directly into another retirement plan. Withdrawing the money to spend is never the right answer.

Every time one of these requests crossed my desk, I tried to convince them to leave the money alone and let it grow. They always thought they needed the money. It didnt matter that they were going to pay income taxes on the money and a 10% penalty for early withdrawal. They were willing to give up about 40% of the money to be able to spend it now and give up the tremendous amount of growth it would have, had they waited until retirement. I wasnt able to talk any of them into leaving the money in their retirement plan.

As an example, if a 35-year-old employee left the company and had $10,000 in her retirement plan, she could take it out and after taxes and penalties maybe have $6,000 to spend. If she left the $10,000 in the plan and it earned 8% for 30 years, at age 65, when she started withdrawals, she would have a balance of $110,000. If she followed the 4% rule and took out 4% a year, she could take out $4,400 a year, every year, for the rest of her life.

The tradeoff is, $6,000 now vs. $4,400 per year throughout her retirement. Leaving the money alone would also leave a nice chunk behind for her kids when she dies.

We need to get one thing straight, the money in our retirement plan is the money we are setting aside to live on during our retirement years, when we are no longer earning an income. This is not a piggy bank or an emergency fund that can be drawn from when extra money is needed.

I cant stress this enough. Too many doctors are pilfering their retirement plans to get them through lean times, to come up with the down payment for a house, or to live on between jobs. This is a huge mistake. These doctors end up at age 55 with no money in their retirement plan. I recently counseled a couple who had nothing in their retirement plan because they spent its $250,000 balance so they could maintain their lifestyle while closing one practice and starting another.

They still have 20 years left before they reach age 65. That move cost their future retirement a sum of just over $1,250,000 or $50,000 a year for every year they are retired. In exchange for giving that up, they took home about $150,000 in cash.

I liken this to flying in a plane with a nice parachute on board. All is well. You do not see an immediate need for the parachute as the plane is in great condition. You have not needed the parachute for the last 50 flights. Then you notice a hole in your pants and dont have the money to buy a new pair. So you cut a small piece of material out of the parachute to mend your pants. You dont really need the parachute right now and besides, the chute is so large that the little piece of material wont matter. You will repair the parachute later.

The pants repair worked out so well that you begin to mend all your clothes with the parachute material. After all, the parachute material was free since you paid for it a long time ago.

Then one day you are up in the plane when the engine catches fire. You need to abandon ship and jump out using that parachute that you have set aside for just such an occasion. Then you jump and pull the release and the chute comes out just like its supposed to. You notice your fall is not slowing and when you look up you see so many holes in the parachute that there is not enough material to slow your fall. You crashed to your death because you used the parachute for things it was not designed for. When you did need it, it wasnt there.

The money you are putting into your retirement plan has a definite purpose and you will need it when you retire. If you cant afford the down payment on your house without stealing from your retirement fund, then you cant afford to buy that house. Wait until you have saved up the money in an account that is earmarked for your down payment. Your retirement account is not for buying houses. Its for retiring.

There is never a need to raid your retirement account. There is always another way, but if you raid this account, you will not become resourceful enough to find the other way.

Unfortunately, retirement account rules make it entirely too easy to access the money. All you need to do is ask the fund gatekeeper, and the money is yours, minus taxes and penalties. You dont even need to state a reason.

Most people dont have enough money in their retirement plan already. And stealing from it makes matters even worse. Doctors who steal from their retirement accounts often set themselves back to ground zero. The most common amount I saw requested to be withdrawn from a retirement plan, was all of it.

It takes a long time to accumulate a substantial retirement plan balance. You need lots of deposits, compound interest for many years, and no withdrawals. Since the annual amount of money you can contribute is limited, there is no way to make up for a withdrawal from the account.

In case you are not clear of what the answer to the question in the title of this article is, no it is not OK to remove money from your retirement plan to buy a house. Either wait until you have saved enough for the down payment or buy a cheaper house. You cant afford to be stealing from the future you to buy stuff for the present you.

Cory Fawcett is a general surgeon and can be reached at his self-titled site, Dr. Cory S. Fawcett. He is the author of The Doctors Guide to Starting Your Practice Right, The Doctors Guide to Eliminating Debt, and The Doctors Guide to Smart Career Alternatives and Retirement.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
COOS BAY, Ore. -- In Coos Bay, 111 employees are being laid off due to the closure of a lumber mill on Thursday, Rick Kimble with Georgia-Pacific Wood Products said.

We will ship out the remaining inventory and will not be making any new lumber, Kimble said.

The employees will receive pay and benefits for 60 days, and severances will vary depending on each workers longevity with the mill.

Kimble said the closure is due in part to poor rail service in the area because 70 percent of the lumber goes out by rail. For the past year, a rail bridge has been out, forcing the mill to load the lumber onto trucks to an off-load center and re-load it onto rail cars.

This adds to the cost of the product that were making, Kimble said.

The cost of logs is more expensive at the site because of market conditions. Kimble said Coos Bay is a big export center for lumber being taken to Asia, so theyre competing with the export market in addition to other saw mills in the area.

The employees are mostly union members.
LINN COUNTY, Ore. -- A woman is facing charges after deputies said they discovered rotting animal remains on a farm southeast of Lebanon, and residents want more to be done to protect the other livestock on the property.

Lt. Michelle Duncan with the Linn County Sheriffs Office said 69-year old Carol Davidson was cited after dead animals were found on a property on Berlin Road. Duncan said the carcasses were still there last week.

Officials with Linn County Justice Center said Davidson is also facing 12 counts for not having licensed dogs.

Dogs, horses and goats were seen on the property as well as a woman who did not respond to requests for comment.

A woman who lives nearby who didnt want to give her name said 13 horses have died there over the past couple months.

She and other residents are worried about the animals' well-being. Much of the property is covered in mud, and residents said the animals are being kept in small pens that are exposed to the elements.

David Grandorff, who lives across the street, said animal control officers have become a common sight at the property.

Its unfortunate really, those animals, they deserve better living conditions, Grandorff said.

Duncan said they have seen no signs of animal neglect or abuse and are working with Davidson to take better care of the animals.
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Kalank promotion: Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt shake a leg at First Class in Jaipur



Alia Bhatt and Varun Dhawan are on a promotion spree for their upcoming film Kalank. The film has an ensemble star cast that includes Sanjay Dutt, Madhuri Dixit, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditya Roy Kapur and Kunal Kemmu. Varun and Alia visited Jaipur to promote their film on 11 April. During the outing, while Varun looked super-stylish in a champagne pink kurta which he teamed up with a white pyjama and black boots, Alia was seen donning a hot pink kurta with mirror work and floral embroidery all over.



The diva paired it up with a skirt and dupatta of the same colour. She accessorised her outfit with a pair of silver mirror chandbalis and a pair of gold heels. She tied her hair in a low messy bun and rounded off her look with a black bindi. Alia's minimal make-up made her look even more gorgeous.



The team visited in Raj Mandir Cinema and Jaipur University, where the students went crazy for them. The cast of Kalank have been busy promoting the film- from Super Dancer to The Kapil Sharma Show, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt, Sonakshi Sinha and Aditya Roy Kapur.

Read More...


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SBI Recruitment 2019: Apply now for 8,904 Clerk posts



The State Bank of India (SBI) has released a recruitment notification in order to fill 8,904 posts of Junior Associate (Customer Support & Sales) in clerical cadre in State Bank of India, on the official website- sbi.co.in. Interested and eligible candidates can apply for the same before May 3, 2019.



SBI Clerk Recruitment 2019: Required educational qualification:

Candidates should possess a graduation degree in any discipline from a recognized university or any equivalent qualification recognized as such by the Central Government.

Those who are in the final year/semester of their graduation may also apply provisionally subject to the condition that, if provisionally selected, they will have to produce proof of having passed the graduation examination on or before August 31, 2019.



Age limit:

Candidates should fall under the age bracket of 20 to 28 years.



SBI Clerk Recruitment 2019: Selection process

The candidates will be selected on the basis of the online test, preliminary exam and main exam.

The preliminary exam will consist of objective type questions for 100 marks and the test would be of 1-hour duration and will comprise of three sections- English Language, Numerical Ability, and Reasoning Ability.

The main examination will contain 190 questions comprising of 200 marks. The exam will be of 2 hours 40 minutes. The subjects included in the main examination are General/Financial Awareness, General English, Quantitative Aptitude, Reasoning Ability & Computer Aptitude. Read More...


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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday called on China and the Czech Republic to create a just and fair environment for their respective enterprises doing business in each other's country.



Li made the remarks during his meeting with Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who is in Dubrovnik to attend the eighth leaders' meeting of China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC).

Noting that this year marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the Czech Republic, Li said China is willing to enhance political mutual trust with the country, expand practical cooperation and strengthen people-to-people and cultural exchanges.

Bilateral practical cooperation enjoys a 70-year old tradition, noted the premier, saying that China supports competent Chinese enterprises to participate in infrastructure construction projects in the Czech Republic in compliance with rules and standards of the European Union.

China is willing to work with the country to explore new cooperation patterns, make joint efforts to improve trade balance, and promote practical cooperation in industrial field and nuclear energy, among others, he said.

China expects the Czech Republic to play a constructive role in promoting China-Europe cooperation, he added.

For his part, Babis said the Czech-China relationship has seen a steady development, and his country welcomes more Chinese investment.

He also called on the two sides to continuously promote practical cooperation in areas including energy and transportation infrastructure construction, and to enhance cultural and tourism cooperation as well as people-to-people exchanges.

Babis said he is looking forward to a stronger Czech-China relationship under the China-CEEC cooperation framework so as to contribute to the development of China-Europe relations.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) would remain in place, but he deemed it unnecessary to further increase them.

According to the accounts of White House journalists sent to media via email, Trump said while speaking to the media with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in at the White House that "we want sanctions to remain in place."

Saying the existing sanctions against the DPRK are on a "fair" level, Trump added that "I really believe something very significant is going to happen. We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that."

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Wednesday that sanctions against the DPRK should not impact humanitarian aid to the country as per relevant Security Council resolutions.

For dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearization and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronized steps as a package solution, he added.

The second summit between Trump and top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un in late February in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi ended without an agreement.

Trump told a press conference after the summit that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.
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New Zealand's new gun law officially took effect on Friday less than a month after the terror attacks on Christchurch mosques which killed 50 people.

Governor General Dame Patsy Reddy signed the law on Thursday night, which was the final step before it becomes law.

The New Zealand parliament passed the bill after its third or the final reading on Wednesday night. In acordance with the new gun law, possessing military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs) and assault rifles and associated parts will be illegal.

The new gun bill, namely the Arms (Prohibited Firearms, Magazines and parts) Amendment Bill, won overwhelming support in the parliament as it was passed by a vote of 119 to 1.

Possession of prohibited firearms could face a jail term up to five years, according to the bill.

The New Zealand government had vowed to ban MSSAs soon after the Christchurch terrorist attacks on March 15, which also injured 50 others.

The New Zealand government has also announced that a legal framework for the gun buyback will be established.
I remember when former Greenpeace president Patrick Moore rocked the world by turning pro-nuclear power in the mid-2000s. I was working for Casey Research at the time. Doug Casey was convinced uranium would go higher. Moores courageous decision to prioritize facts over fears was a boost to the narrative of the day. Doug was right, and uranium prices soared fro lows under $10 up to almost $140 per pound.

But Moore seemed very much to be a lone voice calling out in the wilderness. I can only imagine the hateful backlash he must have subjected himself to from his former colleagues and the world-wide fear-driven movement they have spawned. Frankly, I never expected his integrity to be emulated.

Thats why I was so fascinated when I recently stumbled on Michael Shellenbergers brief talks in favor of nuclear power. This guy isnt some corporate industry shill. Hes a hard-core environmentalist. But he also happens to think that the truth matters.

Shellenbergers talk on how he changed his mind about nuclear power is strong stuff.

His talk on how fear of nuclear power was engineered, and how it may end, is truly moving.

Michael Shellenberger shows a picture of a whale he saw breaching in front of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in California, while giving a TEDx talk on nuclear power.

But the real good news is that Shellenberger is not alone. If you simply type nuclear power into the search tool on YouTube, you get a screen full of links to videos that are neutral or positive. More and more people are at least willing to consider the question, rather than close their minds to any possibility that past fear-mongering might be wrong.

Thats great, but what really caught my attention was when NPR reported on the 40th anniversary of the Three Mile Island accidentand suggested in that article that the world might need nuclear power after all. Quite striking, given the source.

The cherry on top was to see an op-ed in the New York Times, that bastion of liberal media bias, arguing that climate change requires the world to embrace nuclear power.

Does this prove that the nuclear renaissance Patrick Moore seemed to be spearheading before Fukishima is back on track?

I cant honestly say that I know the answer is yes.

But remember that the moment a tide shifts is imperceptible. You cant see when the water stops rising and starts falling. This is only clear after the movement gains strength. And then the momentum is unstoppable.

If the climate change movement turns pro-nuclear, that renaissance will be a done deal. It will be an idea whose time has comeagain.

The impact on uranium prices would break all records.

And investors in the right uranium stocks will make fortunes.

How to play this?

Youre welcome to sign up for my free Speculators Digest weekly no-spam email list and track my take on various metals and commodities. I dont make stock recommendations, but I do tell you what Im investing in and why. Its quick, easy, and free.

If you want to know which uranium stocks Im buying, please subscribe to The Independent Speculator, my premium monthly newsletter dedicated to covering exactly what Im doing with my own money.

Whatever you do, please dont let fear of past disappointments in this space keep you from profiting from what may soon become the next unstoppable resource investment trend.

Caveat emptor,
SANTIAGO, April 12 (Reuters) - The global copper industry will be rocked by more disruptions this year than in 2018, contributing to a supply deficit as demand for the red metal continues to grow, the top executive of Chilean miner Antofagasta told Reuters.

Antofagasta CEO Ivan Arriagada said labor strife, extreme weather and unexpected project delays will knock as much as a million tonnes off the year's total copper production, versus 600,000 the previous year.

"We think this year there will be bigger disruptions than last, which was unusually tranquil," said Arriagada in an interview on the sidelines of CRU's World Copper Conference in Santiago.

Heavy rains in northern Chile's arid desert and two months of sustained protests by indigenous communities at MMG Ltd's Las Bambas mine in Peru are already weighing heavily on potential supply from South America, Arriagada said, bolstering the metal's price amid continuing global trade tensions. "We're going to have a supply deficit that will begin to show itself in the next 24 months, which will not only support the current copper price but also, send it upwards," said Arriagada.

Arriagada added that he expected the company's three scheduled contract negotiations this year to go smoothly.

WATER FOR ZALDIVAR

Antofagasta's top executive denied previous reports that the company was in conversations with global miner BHP to ensure water supply at its Zaldivar copper mine in Chile's northern desert. Zaldivar, a joint project by Antofagasta and Barrick , draws its fresh water from an aquifer beneath the Atacama salt flat, home to top lithium producers SQM and Albemarle .

Authorities last year said copper and lithium companies operating in the region were drawing more water than the aquifer could support. In 2018, Zaldivar applied for environmental permits to extend its operations and water supply thru 2031, an investment of about $100 million needed to maintain its current copper production capacity.

"Our expectation is that regulators will make a decision based on science and our objective data," he said. "We think we should receive the permit and that it will go well for us."

Arriagada added that he expected authorities to reach a decision on the key permit within 12 months.

(Reporting by Fabian Cambero and Dave Sherwood; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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!

The rise in the gold-silver ratio is unsustainable and will correct, says Richard Baker, editor of the Eureka Miners Report. This ratio measures how many ounces of silver it takes to buy an ounce of gold. A rising number means underperformance by silver, and vice-versa. Baker points out that the silver has hit levels not seen since November 2008 during the financial crisis. The ratio was 86.6 Thursday, well above its 10-year average of 66.2. This suggests silver is very, very cheap relative to the yellow metal, at least in historical terms, Baker says. The gold-to-copper ratio, although not extreme, is also elevated considering the safe-haven demand for gold has declined from earlier this year.

.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

FXTM: Pickup In Risk-Off Sentiment Would Underpin Gold

Look for gold to benefit if the outlook for so-called risk assets deteriorates, says Lukman Otunuga, research analyst at FXTM. Spot metal is above $1,290 an ounce, stabilizing after Thursdays sell-off. Meanwhile, markets are pushing the boundaries on risk sentiment as gold fell by over 1% on Thursday before bouncing off the $1,290 mark, the analyst says. Although the [International Monetary Funds] cut to its 2019 global growth forecast was a downer, investors are hoping that a not-too-distant U.S.-China trade deal and a stabilizing Chinese economy may weaken headwinds currently felt by the global economy. However, should the outlook take a turn for the worse, that could jolt risk-off sentiment and rally support for the safe-haven assets, including bullion. As of 8:32 a.m. EDT, spot gold was nearly steady, easing 40 cents to $1,291.50 an ounce.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

SP Angel: Platinum Near Longtime Highs; ETF Demand Surges

Platinum prices remain near the 11-month high hit at the start of the week, with holdings in platinum exchange-traded funds surging, says commodities brokerage SP Angel. These funds have added around 20 tonnes of metal this year, SP Angel points out. Prices have gained as expectations for tough wage negotiations this year in top producer South Africa raised the threat of supply disruptions, and platinums cheapness relative to sister palladium becomes more evident, SP Angel says. Platinum supply has outpaced demand for the past two years and the World Platinum Investment Council has forecast another global surplus this year of 680,000 ounces. However, that may change if the South African wage talks later this year break down and workers down tools for an extended period of time. Further, analysts point out, Anglo American Platinums chief executive has said there are no prospects of more new mines starting up in the foreseeable future. As of 8:32 a.m. EDT, spot platinum was $8 higher to $900 an ounce.

By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com

MKS: 100-, 200-Day Moving Averages Offer Support For Gold

Long-term moving averages below current prices offer chart support for spot gold, says MKS (Switzerland) S.A. As of 8:32 a.m. EDT, spot gold was 40 cents lower at $1,291.50 an ounce. Chinese demand, while remaining evident as the onshore premium edged above $17, did little to propel the yellow metal higher, rather providing an underlying level of support to restrict further declines, MKS says of the early-day activity in Asia-Pacific hours. Over the near term, price action will focus upon the 100 DMA [100-day moving average] at $1,287, while a break below this level would potentially bring the 200 DMA at $1,250 into play. Resistance levels initially cut in at $1,300; however, of greater importance is the recent high around $1,310.
LONDON, April 12 (Reuters) - A heady mix of fear about the global outlook and FOMO -- fear of missing out -- saw investment-grade (IG) bond funds attract their second biggest weekly inflows last week and also post their best Monday ever.

Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML), parsing weekly data from flow tracking specialist EPFR, said $11.3 billion had been pumped into IG-focused bond funds over the last week while $2.6 billion had left stocks funds.

A $12.8 billion outflow from mutual funds was the pain point in equities.

"Monday saw (the) largest daily inflow to IG bond funds ever," BAML analysts added, saying bonds saw the biggest inflows since June 2017.

Moving to commodities and equities, BAML analysts said that, in terms of returns, the asset classes had seen their best first-quarter starts ever.

At over 90 percent annualised returns, commodities are tracking the strongest in the past 100 years.

Benchmark Brent crude has risen by a third since the beginning of the year, while global stocks have risen 14 percent.

In equities, the bank kept its second-quarter target for the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 index at more than 3,000 points - a 3.9 percent upside from current levels.

(Reporting by Marc Jones; editing by Helen Reid and John Stonestreet)
(Adds quotes, details)

By Leika Kihara

WASHINGTON, April 12 (Reuters) - Any trade deal between China and the United States should be a long-lasting one that is consistent with multilateralism and addresses structural factors like intellectual property, a senior International Monetary Fund official said on Friday.

Changyong Rhee, director of the IMF's Asia and Pacific department, also said market optimism over the fate of trade talks between Washington and Beijing could mean that a failure to reach a deal could trigger a sharp market reaction.

"If there is no agreement reached contrary to market expectations, the market can react quite negatively because they already factor in some agreement will be reached," he told a news conference during the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington.

Increasing optimism that U.S. and Chinese negotiators are nearing a deal in their thorny trade talks has helped lift global stock prices, offering some relief to policymakers fretting about a growing global economic slowdown.

The United States and China have largely agreed on a mechanism to police any trade agreement reached, including establishing new "enforcement offices," U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Wednesday. But Rhee warned that the fate of trade negotiations remains uncertain and if the tensions persist, the damage could broaden beyond corporate sentiment and investment.

"Our general view is that trade tension has had a negative impact on Asia mostly still through the financial market ... rather than trade flows directly," he said.

"But as trade tensions escalate more, we are starting to see the trade flows affected."

For any trade deal between the two countries to be substantial, it must include confirmation that existing tariffs will not be increased "but even better, to be reduced," Rhee said.

It also needs to address structural issues such as fair trade, intellectual property rights and measures to open up markets, he said, adding that the agreement would otherwise be short-lived.

"A longer-lasting agreement is better," he said. "The agreement also should be consistent with multilateralism rather than bilateralism between the United States and China."

(Reporting by Leika Kihara Editing by Paul Simao)
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines)  It is illegal to buy and sell votes.

However, this has been the practice for many Filipinos.

For two decades now, politicians have been hiring Juan, not his real name, as a pook (local) leader tasked to buy votes during elections.

He said there are different ways to buy votes, including what he calls "gapangan."

Juan said on the eve of election day, pook leaders would visit a stronghold of his client's opponent.

Pook leaders would pay residents about 1,000 each to boycott the polls.

"Kakausapin namin kung ilan ang botante sa pamilya nila. Ilan kayong botante dito? 'Wag nalang kayo bumoto, babayaran na lang namin kayo. Kasi alam namin ang iboboto nila, kalaban namin," Juan told CNN Philippines.

[Translation: We ask them how many voters there are in their family. How many among you vote? Don't vote anymore, we will just pay you. Because we know that they will only vote for our opponent.]

He said someone from their group will stay in the barangay to make sure residents they talked to will stay in their houses on election day.

"May magbabantay na noon tapos ang bigayan noon yung malapit na matapos ang botohan," he added.

[Translation: Somebody will watch over the voters. The payment will be given after voting hours.]

Juan said another scheme on election day: pook leaders would ask voters to go to a certain area where they would list down their names and where they will be briefed before voting.

At the precinct, voters will be required to show who they voted for to the watcher in the precinct also hired by Juan's local candidate.

"Bago nila ihulog (yung balota), bukas yun. Makikita mo na kung sino binoto mo," Juan explained.

[Translation: The ballot should be open before they drop it in the machine. The watcher will then see who they voted for.]

He said even teachers, who serve as election supervisors and inspectors, are aware of this scheme.

"Kahit nga minsan mga teachers alam dahil nabibigyan din 'yun. Rapos pag nakaboto ka na, mag indelible ka na, pupunta ka na uli doon sa lugar na ano, saka ka babayaran," Juan said.

[Translation: Even teachers are aware of this scheme because they too are on the take. Then once you've cast your vote and your finger already has an indelible ink, you need to go to the meet-up place where you will be paid.]

For choosing Juan's mayor, each voter gets 1,000.

As for the watchers, they get about 300 each to make sure voters indeed shaded the circle in the ballot for Juan's candidate.

Watchers are also required to vote for the same bet.

"Ang kapalit pa noon, 'pag nanalo ang kandidato mo pwede kang maging empleyado ngayon ng munisipyo. 'Pag nag-apply ka, o roving watcher ako, matatanggap ka agad kasi nakatulong ka na. Legal na binili mo ang ano nya," Juan said.

[Translation: In exchange for working as a watcher, if your candidate wins, you can work as an employee in the municipal hall. If you apply, you can invoke that you served as a roving watcher during elections. You will be easily accepted because you helped the candidate. It's like a legal way of buying a vote.]

Sometimes, when the election is too close to call, Juan said, a so-called bidding war on voters takes place between opposing candidates.

"Kunwari malapit na oras ng election, noong umpisa ng bilihan siyempre magsa-start yan, 500. Malalaman mo na yung kabilang ano, nag-1,000. Magsisimula na 'yun, 1,000 na rin ang ano nyan, bilihan. hanggang sa mag-election," he added.

[Translation: For example, payoffs start at 500 at the beginning of the campaign season. However, once you find out that your opponent is buying votes for 1,000, the bidding war will begin. You will also buy votes for 1,000. This will go on until election day.)

Juan said there's nothing wrong buying votes.

He justified the act to counter the same scheme adopted by their opponents.

"Kung 'di namin gagawin 'yun, walang ibang gagawa, puro kalaban lang namin gagawa nun. Hindi namin ma-aawat. hindi namin makokontra ginagawang sabihin na natin, mali ginagawa ng kalaban naming kandidato. Tinatapatan lang namin na ganun," Juan argued.

[Translation: Even if we won't do it, our opponents will still buy votes. We cannot stop them. Let's say what we are doing is wrong. If we stop, we won't be able to block what they are doing. We are just trying to match what they are doing.]

Why sell votes

CNN Philippines talked to some residents who admitted selling their votes or claimed they know "someone" who sold his or her vote.

Some voters, who asked to remain anonymous, admitted to selling their votes. They admitted difficulty in saying 'no' when an offer is made to them.

Worse, some think accepting money in exchange for votes is acceptable.

Antonio* (*not his real name) said the transaction was fast and easy. He added he did not ask for it.

"Na-experience ko na rin 'yan 'yung pagkatapos bumoto, pasimple kang aabutan," he said. "Inabot sayo, hindi mo naman hiningi. Basta inabot lang sayo 'yun," he said.

[Translation: I experienced that too. After I voted, I was subtly given money]

Gloria* said she was invited by neighbors to go to a place where money was distributed. She said poverty is a factor to sell votes.

"Sabi sabi lang nila, punta tayo doon, meron daw dito abutan 'Yung iba kasi, e pera na 'yan e. hindi naman nila alam sino iboto ko. Tanggap lang sila nang tanggap," Gloria said.

[Translation: They said we should go there because they are giving away money there For some, that's money. They wouldn't know who we would vote for. That's why they just accept money again and again]

For Evelyn*, it's not wrong to accept money from politicians since these are public funds anyway.

"Pera din po 'yun ng bayan e. 'Di po ba? Pera 'yun ng bayan e. 'Di naman galing sa bulsa nila 'yun e," another one argued.

[Translation: Those are public funds, anyway. Those did not come from their own pockets.]

Some said they accepted the money but did not vote for the candidate.

But some said, they feel indebted to those who gave them money, so they vote for the bribe giver.

"Kung tumanggap ka ng pera, kailangan mo rin talaga sila iboto. Kawawa naman din kasi, nandun ka na sa kabila tapos binigyan ka," one said.

[Translation: If you accepted money from a politician, you need to vote for him/her. It would be pitiful not to vote for him or her after they gave you money.]

Based on a study the Ateneo School of Government (ASOG) on the prevalence of vote buying among the poor in Metro Manila, about 40 percent of the poor they surveyed said they saw vote buying take place in their community while only 20 percent admitted to selling their votes.

ASOG Dean Ronald Mendoza said this shows many Filipinos still know it is wrong to sell votes, that's why many are still not comfortable admitting to the act.

Of those who admitted selling their votes, two of three said they voted for the candidate who made the offer.

Mendoza said vote buying is more rampant in areas where the battle among candidates is close.

"We found also that only in the most contested areas are there very intensive vote buying. Yung pera ang ginagamit, at nakikita namin, kung saan malapit ang labanan, doon pera talaga ang pinapairal," Mendoza explained.

[Translation: That's where money is utilized. What we saw, where the competition is strong, that's where vote buying is rampant.]

From the regular rate of 500, Mendoza said payoffs can go as high as 1,500 to 2,000.

"I think vote-buying decides who wins in those intensely competitive areas," Mendoza said.

He said many Filipinos also sell votes because of lost faith in democracy. They would rather think of self benefits before that of the nation.

"People may sell their votes because they do not necessarily see the collective benefits trickling down to them There's a possibility that we have become very very parochial in our view of the democracy. Ano ba ang makukuha namin dyan? Ano ba ang magaganansya namin dyan? (What can we get from that candidate? What can we benefit from the candidate?) When you say amin (ours), it could be yourself, your immediate family, or your clan," Mendoza said.

Mendoza, however, urged voters to look past their personal benefit and consider the collective good when they cast their votes.

He said when the wrong persons win, all of us suffer from the consequences.

"Kung maling tao ang ilagay natin diyan (If you elect the wrong person into public office), the possibility is they will begin to rationalize, because I spent so much getting elected, then I must somehow get that back. And it's okay to get that back kasi sakin din naman ang takbo niyo e (because you will run to me if you need financial help)," Mendoza said.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Mostly cloudy and becoming windy with a few showers late. Low around 55F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 30%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy and becoming windy with a few showers late. Low around 55F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 30%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Kendallville, IN (46755)

Today

Windy. Showers developing overnight. Low around 55F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Windy. Showers developing overnight. Low around 55F. Winds SSW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Auburn, IN (46706)

Today

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low near 55F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low near 55F. Winds SSW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
Wendie Ayche (Wengie for short!) is the beloved Chinese-Australian YouTuber who is known for creating some stellar K-Pop-esque MVs over the past few years. Now, Wengie is stepping her game up as she begins to release hit songs with some of K-Pop's most hottest producers.

If you died after hearing BTS' "Euphoria" and could barely breathe after listening to TXT's debut single "Crown," then you will barely be able to press the repeat button after hearing Wengie's latest hits! Wengie released her first single back in 2017 with "Baby Believe In Me" in China. She then released her first English song "Cake" a year later in July. Now her latest video "Lace Up" involves her working alongside composers and lyricists such as Melanie Fontana, who is famous for creating many hit songs in the K-Pop world. But Melanie isn't her only secret weapon, she even worked alongside composers from TWICE and Girls' Generation lineup!

Keep reading and see what Wengie had to say about her YouTube career and some of her favorite K-Pop inspirations!

1. Was there ever a video you didn't expect to become so popular? If so, which one was it?

"It would have to be my first Chinese Music Video "Oh I Do". It was in a completely different language uploaded on my very old music channel where I used to do singing and dancing covers and surprisingly it was sooo popular! It's actually still the most viewed music video on my music channel. Fun fact to make that video we shot for 24 hours... straight!! It was well worth it, though!"

2. You seem to know the best trends to start and follow, can you predict any trends you think you want to start or try in 2019?

"I guess I know the trends because I literally watch so much YouTube personally!! So when I see something fun that I want to be a part of I just make a video trying it out or doing my own spin on it!! :) I think that's the best way to create content! The funny thing about trends is you never know whats going to be popular on YouTube, it is always a random thing!! However, I've recently enjoyed making animated story time videos! It's a new format and I had so much fun making the first one telling my story of how I was so shy as a child."

3. What made you get into music? Is there any Asian genre or artists that inspired your concept, look, and style?

"I've always loved music since I can even remember. It's something that really brought me out of my shell! I was always really shy and didn't know how to express myself, but music really allowed me to do that and made me feel alive! I didn't learn to play any instruments growing up (my parents couldn't afford the lessons) but realized the best instruments are the ones you were born with, your body and your voice!!! :) I have a diverse range of inspirations and styles and used to listen to C-Pop, J-pop and K-pop, of course! I'm really loving the K-Pop trends now including what BLACK PINK and ITZY are doing - it's super girl crush style but my love will always be HyunA, she's so sassy and confident. Definitely my girl crush~ :)"

4. You have released a lot of English songs lately. Do you prefer singing more in English or Chinese?

"I love both! Chinese has the added challenge of being so foreign (ironically) to me but I'm so blessed to have been able to learn my mother tongue. Well one of them I spoke Cantonese growing up and my songs are in Mandarin, however, I still find singing in English to be more fun because I know the language already. I can concentrate on showing more style/emotion which is something I'm continually trying to improve. When you sing in another language you're not familiar with most of your concentration is spent on just getting the words right!"

(This is so relevant and true... Our idols work hard for us!)

5. Are there any special producers or composers and even videographers that work with you on your musical career and projects often? Perhaps, you're the one writing all of the lyrics and creating the overall concepts/fashion?

"I'm really blessed to have worked with an all-star team! Melanie Fontana is the mastermind behind hits from BTS "Euphoria" and now TXT "Crown" alongside her husband. I can't forget the amazing producer, Lindgren, as well who is so fun to work with! Also, I've worked on a new song coming up with David Amber who produced "Yes or Yes" and "Heartshaker for TWICE, so I'm so excited to share that as well!!

I've worked with some amazing directors and videographers, Jared Lee for my first 2 singles Cake" and "Deja Vu" as well as Austin Saya for "Lace Up. But my proudest moment will probably be wholly shooting and producing "Ugly Christmas Sweater" with our own in-house team and my partner Max editing the whole thing! Our first time taking on a whole music video project ourselves was incredibly challenging but when it hit #1 trending on YouTube in the USA, as well as trending in 4 other countries, it was well worth it! Of course, I did the styling myself (For Ugly Christmas Sweater and Lace Up) - that's the most fun part! The not so fun part was painting every single present box you saw at the back of the set in our living room while my cats ran around getting paint on themselves XD."

6. Tell me about 'Lace Up' - do you think this is an entirely new concept for you or something familiar? Is there anything you changed or tried differently with this song's overall sound and concept?

"'Lace Up' is more storyline based and the first time I had an all influencer/music artist cast! It was extremely fun working with friends from YouTube like Matt Steffanina, Rebecca Zamolo, Cloe Cotour, Jun Curry Ahn and Susie Meow and other amazing musical artists and producers like Jessica Reynoso (new singer for the Black Eyed Peas), Sharlene an amazing Latina artist, and finally Shawn Wasabi and David Amber who Im working with on future projects!"

There you have it, everyone - now you know the ins and outs of the lovely Wengie... well, at least a lot more than you did before! Do you want to learn more about Wengie and see what K-Pop groups she would join, her favorite groups and songs, as well as future projects she is working on? Read the full interview here and check out her video message to fans as well!

PC: Rowan Daly
The Blue Limestone Cobblestone is a good paving stone product. At the daily life, we know the paving stone is widely use. For example, there with some granite and travertine products. What is advantages to use this product?

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What Surface Is Popular For This Product?

Generally speaking, this product can do in many surface type. For example, the popular has polish, honed, flamed. In addition, there also has sandblast, brushed,etc. To choose which type of surface that depends on request.

At first, we have to know your application. Of course, the designers or projector also decides the surface type.Our company always can do it as request.Indeed, this material with good performance for those surface.

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We know the every type of product price is depends on quantity,surface,etc. If you has this products project, welcome contact with us. Our company always can give you advises too. In short, we also quote in honest price.Of course, there also has other Chinese granite can choose.

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A cold front moved through Kansas Wednesday into Thursday causing temperatures to tumble from 80 degrees in some parts of the state to the 50s.

Some outdoor events in Wichita continued as scheduled while others were cut short by the colder weather.

Not too many fans showed up at Cessna Stadium for the two-day outdoor track meet. Those who did bundled up.

Kari Lindenmeyer came out to support her daughter. She said she pulled out her winter clothes just to stay warm.

"I think it really encourages her and you know just knowing that we're here to support her no matter what," she said.

Botanica closed early due to the cold but said it would resume normal hours on Friday.

Storm Team 12 Chief Meteorologist said overnight temps would dip below freezing meaning anyone with plants would want to make sure their covered or brought indoors.

The winds are expected to back down through the night and Friday afternoon should have some sunshine with highs in the 40s and 50s.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12)  Military officials from the Philippines and U.S. on Friday assured China it should not be worried by the sailing of a massive U.S. Navy warship in the disputed South China Sea.

Lt. Gen. Gilbert Gapay, Philippine exercise director for the Balikatan, said the presence of USS Wasp, an amphibious assault ship, in contested waters was purely for the joint military exercises.

"It just so happened there is an increase in participation of personnel and equipment used in this Balikatan and the presence is not really to agitate but purely for training so nobody should be alarmed," Gapay said on the last day of the joint drill.

Aside from the massive ship, the U.S. government also deployed its F-35 stealth jets during the Balikatan exercises which ran from April 1 to 12. The USS Wasp sailed alongside the Philippine Navy's BRP Tarlac in the annual wargames held in Subic Bay and the South China Sea. The Philippine Navy refused to disclose the exact locations.

Gapay added there are recommendations to further expand the Balikatan exercises to bring in more personnel and equipment next year.

His U.S. counterpart, meanwhile, said he sees no reason why the ship should not be allowed to sail in the global waterway.

"The United States will fly, sail, and operate everywhere international law allows. That's it," Lt. Gen. Eric Smith said.

When asked about USS Wasp on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said non-regional forces like the U.S. should "refrain from stirring up troubles in the calm South China Sea."

Although the U.S. is not a claimant country in the South China Sea, it conducts freedom-of-navigation operations in international waters around the disputed area and calls out China's alleged militarization in the region.

CNN Philippines' David Santos contributed to this report.
An endangered sea turtle that returned to a Maldives beach to lay eggs found the place concreted for Maafaru International Airport runway. The green turtle was born on the historical nesting site in Noonu Atoll islands and had come to the exact for laying eggs. Female sea turtles are known for laying eggs on the same spot they were born. According to reports, the sea turtle may have spent years to travel back to the back to lay eggs. The turtle was found to be in good health and was released into the sea.

Sea turtles usually undertake long journeys to lay their eggs on the exact spot they were born. Photo of the turtle with its eggs on the runway went viral after it was shared on social media. The picture is a clear portrayal of wildlife habitat loss or rather how humans encroach animal territory. The World Wildlife Foundation lists sea green turtles as endangered mainly due to loss of nesting beach sites, overharvesting of their eggs, hunting and being caught in fishing gears. Turtles From All Seven Oceans in The World Have Microplastics in Their Body! New Study Reveals Shocking Extents of Plastic Pollution.

Check out the photo of the turtle which laid eggs on the beach turned into a runway:

The Edition quoted a source as saying, "Despite the construction of the runway, the frequency with which turtles visit the island for nesting purposes has not decreased." The runway measuring 2,200 meters is still under construction Maafaru International Airport, which is slated to begin operations in May or June. The construction of the airport completed in August and now there are also plans for a hotel and resort. The runway which is funded by The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development, based in the UAE will be able to accommodate six jets.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 12, 2019 09:18 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).
Who gets to be an American? Its a question thats been asked and answered countless times before, but from the earliest days of this country, there have always been people who consider themselves more American than their neighbors. Under their definition, real Americans have certain traits in common: native-born, white, English-speaking, Christian. Everyone else is suspect: different. Less than. Other.

These simmering divisions are at the heart of The Other Americans, the latest novel from Los Angeles author Laila Lalami. The follow-up to her acclaimed The Moors Account, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Lalamis book is a stunning and necessary look at a country struggling with racism, resentment and the aftermath of war.

The novel opens with Nora, a composer living in Oakland, learning of the death of her father, Driss, who immigrated to the U.S. from Morocco years ago with his wife. Driss was leaving the diner he owned in Yucca Valley, Calif., when he was hit by a car that immediately sped away, and Nora tortures herself with questions about her fathers last minutes: Had he suffered? Had he called out for help? How long had he lain on the asphalt before his breath ran out?

Laila Lalami's "The Other Americans." Pantheon

Lalamis book alternates points of views among several characters, including Efrain, an undocumented immigrant who witnessed the hit-and-run but is afraid of going to the police; Jeremy, a sheriffs deputy and Iraq war vet who finds himself falling in love with Nora, his old high school classmate; and Coleman, the hard-nosed police detective investigating Driss death.

Determined to find her fathers killer, Nora finds herself learning more than shed bargained for about her late father, all the while navigating tense relationships with her mother and sister, and trying to reconcile her long-held beliefs with Jeremys military past: He wasnt the sweet kid I knew in high school; he had fought in a brutal war, a war I hated. Hearing about the terrible things he had seen or done in Iraq made me feel implicated ... I didnt know how to navigate back to my state of ignorance.

The Other Americans manages to be many books at once: a gripping literary thriller, a complex love story and a sharp critique of an America wracked by war and hatred, divided against itself, constantly near a breaking point. And Lalami succeeds admirably on all fronts: The novel is intricately plotted, up to its shocking but unforced end. There are no unnecessary plot twists; Lalami is an intelligent author whos not in love with her own cleverness.

Crafting a novel told through different points of view can trip up even the most seasoned authors, but all of the characters in the book are rendered beautifully, with dialogue thats both natural and compelling. Lalami switches effortlessly between characters like Driss, a Muslim-raised atheist who wants nothing more than to build a good life for his family, and Anderson, an elderly bowling alley owner who resents Driss and his family, complaining, Some people say I should be grateful for the business that the newcomers are bringing to the town, but the way I see it, theyre changing this place and wanting me to be grateful for it. They didnt ask if we wanted them there, they just came.

Lalami treats all of her characters with compassion, never condescending to them or treating them like simple archetypes and writes about them with the gorgeous prose thats marked all of her previous books. The Other Americans is a beautiful, compassionate novel from a writer with keen insight into the human condition and a rare gift for crafting perfect prose.

::

Laila Lalami

Pantheon, 320 pp., $25.95

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Laila Lalami at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: Lalami will appear at 10:30 a.m. on April 14 in conversation with The Times Carolina Miranda and author Luis Alberto Urrea.
The explosion on April 26, 1986, at the V.I. Lenin, or Chernobyl, Atomic Energy Station in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is thought to have vaporized one worker on the spot. Another 30, drenched in fatal doses of radiation, died gruesome, lingering deaths. As of 2005, as many as 5,000 additional cancer deaths were projected locally  among 25,000 extra cancer cases Europe-wide. Contamination rendered 1,838-plus square miles uninhabitable. And a spectral column of radioactive gases escaped into the atmosphere, setting people on edge from Stockholm to San Francisco. It was the worst nuclear accident in history and could have been far worse.

It also helped precipitate the demise of the Soviet Union. And this  the dissolution of the geopolitical entity in which it occurred  has contributed to its effacement: buried under the accretions of history like the radioactive debris smothered by absorbents during its cleanup. Thirty-three years later, what happened exactly at Chernobyl? This question is now the subject of a boomlet of interest in the English-speaking world. Last year, Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy published an acclaimed account of the accident; next month HBO will air a miniseries dramatizing it. And in Midnight in Chernobyl Anglo-American journalist Adam Higginbotham gives it the long-form narrative treatment. The result is a riveting, deeply reported reconstruction of a disaster rooted in the odd Ponzi-like unreality of late-period Marxism-Leninism, its culture of morbid secrecy and the arrogance of its technocratic elite. Shot through with Soviet machismo, Stakhanovite feats of industry and improvisation in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds, it culminates in a battle to prevent disaster from escalating into apocalypse that evokes the Red Army halting Hitlers Wehrmacht at Stalingrad.

Viktor Brukhanov (center, wearing sunglasses), Chernobyl plant Communist Party secretary Sergey Parashin (on the directors left) and other party chiefs from the power station and Pripyat lead the citys Victory Day parade on May 9, 1985. (Pripyat-city.ru)

Higginbotham situates Chernobyl in the crucial context of the mid-1980s USSR. Nuclear power had been anointed a flagship technology  testament to Soviet industrial prowess and a means for supplying electricity to the masses. Reflecting this exalted status, Chernobyl workers were housed in a purpose-built atomgrad, Pripyat, that with a sylvan setting and ample supplies (more than five different types of sausage) was a cut above the motherlands otherwise spartan workers quarters. On completion of an expansion in 1988, Chernobyl was slated to become the largest nuclear power complex on earth.

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But this was also a state five years from implosion and Chernobyl bore its pathologies in spades. Besides the dedicated priesthood of technologists attending to its reactors, the plant was freighted with idle workers guaranteed jobs under the full employment mandate plus Communist Party hacks. Glasnost and perestroika were stirring following the accession a year earlier of Mikhail Gorbachev as head of state, but the USSR still reeled from the gerontocracy that preceded him, during which Kremlin edicts became unmoored from reality. [T]he categorical dictates of Soviet bureaucracy were one thing, but Chernobyl dwelled in the gray netherworld of Soviet reality, cutting corners, skimping on safety, deferring maintenance  whatever was expedient to meet goals. And then there was the technology  capricious and unforgiving.

All this placed its human operators under crushing pressure. On the fateful night shift, performing a critical test, they were further beset by interpersonal dysfunction: an overbearing supervisor with imperfect technical know-how abetted by a culture of deference; cowed underlings; a rookie at the controls; and a concatenation of poor decisions.

A decaying piano still stands in a store in the abandoned town of Pripyat, near Chernobyl. (Cheryl L. Reed / Chicago Tribune / TNS)

Higginbothams description of what ensued next imprints itself on the mind. Moments before blowing, the distressed reactor emits a rising moan, the protest of a giant beast in anguish. Afterward, the spectacle of beautiful phosphorescence signals radioactive ionization of air. Workers gawking at a molten crater  the blazing throat of the reactor, are lethally irradiated where they stand. Another is temporarily struck blind by radiation.

More than 32 hours elapse before Pripyat is evacuated. During this time, the KGB having cut the phone lines, its 50,000-plus residents are in the dark about the gravity of the accident. An indicator of its ambient radiation though: a resident working on his tan observes that his skin gave off a burning smell and comes over oddly excited.

But theres no covering up what has gone down. Two days later Sweden detects elevated radiation and international alarm compels the Kremlin to come clean (not entirely; it conceals the extent of local fallout).

Thus, Chernobyl serves in part as a forcing-house for opening up Soviet society. But its also a throwback to an earlier heroic age. The cleanup becomes a point of pride; a project to restore Soviet prestige dinged by the catastrophic failure of a technology in which it professed global leadership. Thats not all thats at stake. Authorities fear a meltdown of radioactive matter that could leach into the water table or trigger another explosion. Worst case: Much of Europe becomes a nuclear wasteland.

Trucks polluted by radioactivity lie abandoned April 3, 1996, along the road to the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Tons of equipment used in the cleanup after the 1986 disaster remain in open and covered graves across the 30-kilometer (18-mile) zone around the station. (Yuri Ptakha / Associated Press)

Mounted on a war footing, the quest to avert this doomsday scenario and, later, entomb the reactor yields high drama. When a comrade balks at a perilous mission to drain water from under the stricken reactor, civil defense Capt. Piotr Zborovsky  who they call Moose  snarls, Dont bring out the beast in me, you bastard! When debris-clearing robots founder under radioactive assault, waves of troopsbio-robots  enter the breach, toiling for seconds at a time to minimize their exposure. More whimsically, toy robots fitted with dosimeters are deployed to scout radiation hot spots.

These efforts form part of a tour-de-force demonstration of command economy agency, dragooning up to 600,000 people and mobilizing materiel from across the USSR. The heroic Zborovsky receives a 1,000 rubles bounty  one-fifth the average price of a car; rank-and-file conscripts, braving radiation and in many cases enduring the enervating effects of radiation sickness, choose between a cassette player or watch. But, at $128 billion, the operation doesnt come cheap, dealing another blow to an already-tottering regime. Meanwhile the summary punishment of plant operatives and midlevel functionaries, exculpating Soviet brass, ranks among its final show trials, Higginbotham writes.

In this powerful work of reportage, Chernobyl and its aftermath emerge as the Soviet Unions last stand, containing all the pathologies and passion of that social experiment now lost to history: hubris, magical thinking, grotesque disregard for individual life, gaping inequity between the political class and the rest in a supposedly classless society, and sheer bloody-minded communal courage.

::

Midnight in Chernobyl

Adam Higginbotham

Simon & Schuster, 560 pp., $29.95

Adam Higginbotham at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: Higginbotham will appear at 1:30 p.m. on April 14 in conversation with Craig Mazin and Barry Glassner.
The University of California regents are wrestling with a question that should have an easy answer:

Should they approve an affiliation between UC San Francisco, one of the leading teaching hospitals in America, and Dignity Health, a Catholic hospital chain that openly discriminates against women and LGBTQ patients and requires its doctors to comply with religious directives, some of which run counter to medical science and ethical practice?

The easy answer, and the right answer, is no.

Dignitys adherence to Catholic Church directives affecting medical care, including a near-total ban on abortion, is hopelessly at odds with the values of a public institution such as UCSF. Whats worse, UCSF, by implicitly accepting Dignitys model discriminating against women and LGBTQ patients, would empower that models expansion.

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A lot of us believe this should not move forward. Daniel Grossman, UCSF medical professor

Its as if we would provide a crutch for that model not just to be sustained, but to grow, to flourish, to increase, Vanessa Jacoby, an associate OB-GYN professor at UCSF, told the regents on Tuesday. She pointed out that the church restrictions fall disproportionately on low-income women and LGBTQ patients.

Judging from that meeting of the regents health services committee, UCs governing board is flummoxed by the intricate ramifications of this proposal. The proposal also has roiled UCSF itself. While some of its clinicians are in favor of the arrangement, a petition drive in opposition has collected some 1,600 signatures from faculty, physicians, students, staff and alumni.

Were asking them to really rethink the affiliation, says Daniel Grossman, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UCSF and an organizer of the petition drive. A lot of us believe this should not move forward.

Grossman couldnt say what percentage of the UCSF community has signed the petition, since the net has been cast so widely.

Grossman points to one of the paramount problems with the proposal: The details are still not public. What is clear, however, is that UCSF faculty and doctors practicing at Dignity Healths four Bay Area hospitals would be bound to comply at those locations with the Catholic Churchs restrictions on abortion, sterilization procedures, treatments of transgender patients, and other services. That should be a deal-breaker.

UCSF says affiliating with the four Dignity hospitals is necessary to relieve a desperate capacity crunch at its 1,276-bed San Francisco medical centers, which it says had to turn away 855 patient transfers last year for lack of available beds. We dont have a good Plan B, Mark Laret, the chief executive of UCSF Medical Center, told the regents. Laret also said UCSF expects a revenue flow from Dignity to help offset its financial losses from caring for low-income San Franciscans.

UCSF has had clinical associations with Dignity hospitals for decades, covering specialties such as cardiology, pediatric burn services, neurosurgery and thoracic surgery. This proposal would mean a dramatic expansion of the relationship, however, covering Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City, and St. Francis Memorial and St. Marys Medical Center in San Francisco.

Of those, Dignity labels St. Francis and Sequoia non-Catholic hospitals subject to the churchs statement of common values, which bars direct abortions, physician-assisted suicide and fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF)  the only way, as the petition states, that gay and lesbian couples can conceive a biological child. St. Marys and Dominican are Catholic hospitals subject to the much more restrictive Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, a creation of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who are, obviously, all males.

The ERDs, as theyre known, ban direct abortions, IVF, contraceptives, assisted suicide and gender affirming care such as hormone treatments and surgeries for transgender patients, among other treatments. They treat life as beginning from the moment of conception. (Direct abortion is not a medical but a Catholic term, signifying the termination of a pregnancy by destroying a developing fetus any time after conception.)

The ERDs language about some of these therapies, all of which are legal, is uncompromising. They define abortion, assisted suicide and direct sterilization such as tubal ligation as intrinsically immoral. They place the ultimate judgment about whether to permit such procedures, regardless of a patients medical needs or desires, in the hands of local bishops, not doctors.

The issues this presents for doctors and their patients have become more urgent as Catholic hospitals have expanded their footprint in American healthcare, often through mergers with secular or non-Catholic institutions in which theyre the dominant partner.

Currently, they account for 1 out of every 6 hospital beds in the country. That gives abortion restrictions and other limitations on womens reproductive rights a backdoor route to expansion.

After a recently completed merger with Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, Dignity will be part of the second-largest private chain of hospitals in the U.S., with 142 facilities. It already was the largest chain in California, with 31 hospitals. The merged system is being renamed CommonSpirit Health.

The Catholic restrictions are being tested in court. According to a lawsuit brought by Rebecca Chamorro of Redding against Dignity and its Redding-based Mercy Medical Center, she was denied a tubal ligation to take place during a caesarean section at Mercy, even though performing the procedures together is the accepted medical standard of care because it means one surgical operation rather than two.

Adherence to religious doctrine bars these treatments at Catholic hospitals, including two of the four that would be part of a partnership with UC San Francisco. (Jacoby & Steinauer, UCSF)

Instead, the ERDs required her to wait at least several weeks to undergo the second procedure. Chamorros lawsuit is currently in its pretrial phase.

In a second lawsuit, Evan Minton, a transgender man, says that Dignitys Mercy San Juan Medical Center in Carmichael, Calif., canceled his hysterectomy two days before it was scheduled, when the hospital discovered he was transgender. His lawsuit on sex discrimination grounds was dismissed by a San Francisco Superior Court judge but is on appeal. Dignity acknowledged that it canceled the operation in observance of the ERDs, but said it arranged for the operation to take place a few days later at a non-Catholic Dignity hospital.

Doctors report that they often run into problems when religious overseers insist on balancing the threats to the lives of mothers even after it becomes clear that a fetus has virtually no chance of survival.

Managing miscarriages is a very gray area, says Lori Freedman, an expert at UCSF who has been conducting interviews with doctors at Catholic hospitals about their experiences.

In some cases, she found, the ethics committees wouldnt approve terminating a pregnancy even when the mother was facing death, as long as a fetal heartbeat could be discerned. One doctor reported pleading for permission to do so for a pregnant woman whose condition was so septic her temperature had shot up to 106 degrees. The ethics committee refused to allow him to terminate the pregnancy, even though this woman is dying before our eyes. The fetus died, but she survived, after spending 10 days in intensive care.

Critics observe that the UCSF deal, if approved, could become a model for affiliations between other UC medical campuses and Catholic hospitals in their areas. The ACLU of Northern California has questioned whether its even legal, given state and federal constitutional requirements for the separation of church and state, as well as state and federal anti-discrimination laws.

What has been especially dispiriting about UCSFs discussion of this deal is the lengths it has gone to sugarcoat the impact of the religious rules. During the regents meeting Tuesday, Laret referred to the rules as fostering care thats viewed as discriminatory.

No. Were not talking about conflicting views of discrimination. When a woman, unlike a man, cant receive the full range of legal treatments that meet the medical standard of care, or a transgender patient cant undergo a procedure that a woman can routinely receive, thats discrimination  full stop.

UCSF also hints, nudge-nudge, that some religious directives can be quietly circumvented by nimble doctors. At a regents health committee meeting on Dec. 11, Dana Gossett, the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at UCSF and a proponent of the affiliation, observed that there are usually workarounds for doctors to prescribe contraceptives, which the ERDs ban if theyre for birth control but allow if they address some other medical problem.

Every Catholic institution prescribes birth control, Gossett said, adding slyly, There are a lot of women out there with menstrual disorders there apparently. Of course, that would mean falsifying a patients chart. What sort of ethics is UCSF teaching its students?

Dignity told me in an emailed statement that at all of our hospitals, all healthcare decisions are made between patients and their doctors. The statement said that Dignity doesnt restrict a physicians ability to fully inform patients about treatment options and facilitate access to care, even if its not provided at one of our facilities. We dont believe that conflicts with the ERDs or the provision of evidence-based care.

UCSF administrators seem to think that by affiliating with Dignity, they might be able to limit its adherence to the church dictates, like a fifth column of science-based practitioners working from the inside.

Do we engage with the biggest healthcare system in the state of California, or do we say well have nothing to do with this system? Laret asked the regents.

Jacoby crisply disabused the regents of any such reverie. They never compromise their values, she said of Catholic healthcare systems. Theyre not allowed to change. Theyll never provide contraceptives. Theyll never do an abortion to our standard of care.

UCSF seems to be entering this affiliation as a junior partner, in effect bowing to Dignitys Catholic restrictions. Thats the opposite of what should happen with an institution as eminent as UC. The only reason to move forward with a relationship like this is to use it to get Dignity to expand its reproductive services, says Amy Chen, a senior attorney at the National Health Law Program.

RELATED: Hoags underhanded abortion ban 

Yet the authority in these relationships often seems to flow in the other direction. When Hoag Memorial Hospital in Newport Beach, a Presbyterian hospital, affiliated with the Catholic St. Joseph Health System in 2013, Hoags doctors were assured that nothing in their practices would change. That was a lie. Almost immediately, St. Joseph halted abortions at Hoag.

As Catholic hospital systems have expanded through affiliations, the bishops have demanded more control over their secular partners. The latest iteration of the ERDs, issued in 2018, states specifically that in any collaboration with non-Catholic partners, anything under the control of the Catholic institution must adhere to the ERDs. They also state that the Catholic institution cant allow its employees to assist or make referrals for immoral procedures.

How that would affect the work of UCSF clinicians working at Dignity locations isnt clear, but it would seem to contradict the assurances from UCSF that its own professionals work wont be impeded by the ERDs.

No one can deny that UCSF faces a critical challenge in meeting its capacity constraints, or that Dignity hospitals do good works, especially in delivering care to low-income patients.

But this proposal involves an unacceptable compromise of sound medical principles. UC has a chance to take a stand against the encroachment of religious ideology into medicine. If the University of California wont take that stand, who will?

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.
Former CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves forfeited $34.5 million in compensation last year after being forced from his longtime perch amid a sexual misconduct scandal.

Nonetheless, the longtime television executive received $12.5 million in compensation, including salary and stock, last year  down from $69 million in 2017, according to a regulatory filing Friday. The filing said that if he hadnt forfeited a chunk of his 2018 compensation pursuant to his separation agreement with the company, Moonves would have received $47.1 million for his eight months on the job last year.

He gave up $34.5 million in stock awards, CBS said in the filing.

Moonves, 69, left CBS in September. He had served as the companys CEO for 12 years and was perennially one of the most handsomely compensated executives in corporate America.

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Now he is fighting the companys decision to strip him of his $120-million severance package after he was forced out last year. In January, he exercised his right to demand binding arbitration over the matter.

Moonves resigned under pressure six weeks after the New Yorker magazine published an article that brought to light the accounts of six women who said Moonves forcibly kissed them in work settings in the 1980s and 90s. CBS engaged two outside law firms to determine whether Moonves violated the terms of his employment.

In December, the companys board of directors announced that it would not pay Moonves any of the severance package. The board determined that it was justified in firing him for cause because, it said, he committed willful and material misfeasance and failed to cooperate fully with the companys investigation.

The battle over Moonves pay was seen as a test of the power of the #MeToo movement against sexual mistreatment in corporate America, which came to prominence after the downfall of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

CBS is conducting a search for a new chief executive. One of the candidates vying for the job, acting Chief Executive Joseph Ianniello, received $27.4 million in compensation last year, up from $22.1 million in 2017. Until last fall, Ianniello was the companys chief operating officer.

Many on Wall Street expect CBS to eventually merge with cable programming giant Viacom Inc. Both companies are controlled by billionaire Sumner Redstones family.
The annual Seatrade Cruise Global mega-convention, which draws about 11,000 cruise industry participants, this year featured an unusual sight: As thousands watched Tuesday in the main hall of the Miami Convention Center, three cruise line presidents took the stage  and they were all women.

This event has been going on for more than 30 years and we finally made it onto the main stage, said Lisa Lutoff-Perlo, president and chief executive of Celebrity Cruises.

For the record: An earlier version of this story said that more than 1.1 billion people are employed worldwide by the cruise industry. The correct figure is more than 1.1 million.

The womens session brought up the rear in a series of opening remarks, but its very existence was a triumph of sorts. Women constitute 18% to 22% of the cruise industry workforce; 5% to 22% of cruise ship officers are women, depending on the line.

We have a lot of work to do, said Jan Swartz, president of Princess Cruises.

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Working in the cruise industry is a big lifestyle change, particularly in the deck and technical areas, added Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruises. But when we make decisions about what people want, there should be women at the table.

She was too short to be a flight attendant. Now she runs the worlds largest cruise line. 

At an earlier session during the four-day convention, a quartet of male cruise industry titans discussed a bright outlook for the industry.

Eighteen new cruise ships will be launched this year to serve an estimated 30 million cruisers. More than 1.1 million workers are employed worldwide, making an economic impact of $134 billion, according to the panel, made up of Richard Fain, chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises; Frank Del Rio, president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings; Arnold Donald, president and CEO of Carnival Corp; and Pierfrancesco Vago, executive chairman of MSC Cruises.

Theres nothing I see that suggests any kind of slowdown is on the horizon, NCLs Del Rio said.

The industry has been growing rapidly for the past decade. Last year, the number of passengers increased by almost 7% to 28.5 million, according to the Cruise Lines Industry Assn.

But the executives agreed that cruising has far to go to reach its potential.

More than 1.4 billion travel annually, but only 30 million people cruise, Carnivals Donald said. Thats not much: Las Vegas gets 40 million visitors a year, Orlando has 70 million.

Does that mean even bigger cruise ships are on the horizon?

Over time, all ships will get bigger, said Del Rio, whose biggest ship, the 4,004-passenger Norwegian Bliss, occasionally sails out of the Port of Los Angeles.

Vago, whose European-based cruise line MSC builds some of the worlds largest ships, agreed that the trend is up. MSC will launch 7,000-passenger ships in 2022.

Smaller ships are also on the way, however, Donald said. With a limited number of shipyards in the world, growth is constrained, he said. It takes a lot less time to build a small ship.

The cruise bosses also discussed environmental advances: We sail responsibly, Donald said. Nobody wants to go to a polluted marine environment.

And they talked about efforts to limit ship visits to overtaxed ports such as Venice, saying that there are misconceptions about the role cruise lines play: Only about 1 million of Venices annual 20 million visitors come on cruises, they said.

Looking forward, the industry executives expect increasing cruise travel in the future from millennials, who appreciate the experience of traveling, and baby boomers, with retirements on the horizon, Donald said.
When Rye Electric was founded in Orange County five years ago, it screened all prospective workers for drugs. If a test showed traces of cannabis, the applicant was nixed.

But the fast-growing construction company, which has a millennial-heavy workforce, has since adapted to the times. We still do the tests, Chief Executive Chris Golden said, but we choose to look the other way on marijuana.

Some 20 of the companys 150 workers were hired despite flunking a pre-employment screening for cannabis. We let them know they cant do it on the job and we trust them not to, Golden said. What are we going to say  you cant do something thats legal?

Marijuana use remains illegal under federal law. But California was the first state to defy federal prohibition, legalizing medical cannabis in 1996. A 2016 ballot initiative opened the way to recreational pot.

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With a growing economy and a low unemployment rate of 4.2%, many California companies face a shortage of qualified workers. Legal marijuana is making hiring even harder for those who take a strict stance on screening for drugs. So, increasingly, theyre not testing  or ignoring some of the results.

You watch whats going on in society. You look at recruiting, and you say, Weve got to adjust, said Marc Cannon, a spokesman for AutoNation, the largest U.S. car retailer. The company, with 26,000 employees nationwide and 55 California outlets, stopped screening for cannabis three years ago.

A lot of great candidates were failing the test, Cannon added. There are people who drink and are great workers, but they dont do it on the job. Marijuana is just like alcohol.

New Jersey-based Quest Diagnostics, compiling data on 10 million tests a year, reports an increase in workers testing positive for pot, especially in states where recreational use is legal.

In 2010, 1.6% of Quests urinalysis tests in California showed traces of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, marijuanas main active compound. By last year, the figure had risen to 2.5%. Some industries, including retail and warehousing, see higher rates.

Our data suggests recreational use of marijuana is spilling into the workforce, said Barry Sample, senior director for science and technology.

Quests numbers may vastly understate usage. People using marijuana are less likely to apply to work for employers who have drug testing, Sample cautions.

Today, nine other states and the District of Columbia permit recreational marijuana for adults. Thirty-three allow medical cannabis. Some jurisdictions have adopted employment-specific laws. Thirteen states prohibit workplace discrimination against medi-pot patients. And last week, the New York City Council moved to bar most businesses, nonprofits and city agencies, with some exceptions, from screening applicants for cannabis.

But Californias Proposition 64, which legalized recreational marijuana, explicitly allowed public and private employers to enforce policies prohibiting the use of marijuana by employees and prospective employees. And in a medical marijuana case, a 2008 state Supreme Court decision held that an employer may refuse to hire an applicant who tests positive for cannabis, even if it is legally prescribed for a disability.

Executives whose workers operate heavy machinery may feel they have little choice but to insist on marijuana screening.

Paola Bravo, president and CEO of S. Bravo Systems: We have machines that cut steel and could cut a limb off. So anyone with a trace of drugs is disqualified. If something happened, I would be held liable. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Last month, in the City of Commerce, Paola Bravo, president and chief executive of S. Bravo Systems, was hiring workers for her 150-employee factory, which makes containment tanks for gas stations. She was ready to offer jobs to five candidates who had aced their interviews, toured the bustling plant and tried on respirators.

But all five  in a single day  failed a drug test for marijuana and thus were not hired.

We have machines that cut steel and could cut a limb off, Bravo said. So anyone with a trace of drugs is disqualified. If something happened, I would be held liable.

A week after the five tested positive, six other candidates ghosted.

They like the pay, but you tell them to take a drug test and they just disappear, Bravo said. Where are we going to find people when everyone comes in with crap in their system?

Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, inhales what he said was marijuana on a live YouTube webcast on Sept. 6, 2018. (YouTube)

In a widely publicized incident last year, Elon Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, inhaled marijuana on a live YouTube webcast. I mean, its legal, right? Musk said, accepting a lit blunt from comedian Joe Rogan in a Los Angeles studio. But he added, Im not a regular smoker of weed.

Late last year, NASA announced it would review safety at SpaceX and Boeing. Companies with federal contracts, such as those in aerospace, are required to test under federal law. But officials told the Washington Post the review was prompted by Musks behavior.

Tesla conducts pre-employment drug tests for safety-sensitive positions, but its tests do not include marijuana in places where its legal.

Even when they dont pre-screen applicants, virtually all businesses require what employee handbooks call a drug- and alcohol-free workplace  workers arent allowed to drink alcohol or take drugs on the job. If someone is suspected of being drunk or high, companies reserve the right to send them out for a test.

But cannabis represents a conundrum. In the case of alcohol, blood tests measure impairment levels. But THC can show up in urine and in saliva  which is where it is most reliably measured  when the user is no longer high.

Marijuana can remain in the system and show up in a drug test for up to 45 days following use in regular users, the California Chamber of Commerce wrote members this year. There is no method to determine if an individual is impaired at the time the drug is found in that individuals system or if it was consumed at an earlier time and the individual is no longer impaired.

The chamber, which has fought legislation that would accommodate medical marijuana users, urged zero tolerance as the only policy that ensures workers are not impaired on the job.

In some industries, safety-sensitive workers  such as pilots, rail, bus and truck drivers, and workers in nuclear power plants  must be tested under U.S. Department of Transportation rules.

But overall, workplace drug screening is on the wane. Spurred by the Reagan-era drug war, it peaked in the late 1990s, when surveys showed some 80% of companies nationwide had adopted the practice, up from about 20% a decade earlier. By the mid-2000s, the number was down to about half.

Public support for legalizing marijuana, meanwhile, grew to 66% last year, up from 12% in 1969, according to Gallups annual polls.

Even before California legalized recreational pot, a lot of employers were shying away from draconian drug testing, said San Diego attorney Ryan Nell. His seminars on the topic attracted more than 500 human resources professionals at a series of January conferences.

Nell recently advised two Los Angeles advertising agencies that they didnt need to pre-screen for cannabis.

A lot of people are failing tests, he said. Employers need to ask: Do we really care? Unless there are safety concerns  like someone driving a car  a lot of times they dont care.

Goodwill employees sorted clothes in the production area of a Hollywood store in 2007. Drug tests are no longer required for retail jobs at the nonprofit. (Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times)

Goodwill Industries of Southern California trains workers for some 200 businesses. Small and midsize companies are testing less and less, said Joel Morgan, a director of workforce development for the nonprofit.

Its a dont ask, dont tell kind of a thing, he said. You cant have people show up high. But just because someone uses pot recreationally doesnt mean it will impact their work.

Larger Goodwill clients are generally more restrictive, he added, but one big employer  Goodwill itself  has pivoted. In February, after decades of drug testing, the organization stopped the screening for retail jobs at its 85 stores that employ more than 1,000 part-timers, a third of its workforce.

Other major retailers also test selectively. In 2014, Target, with 350,000 workers nationwide, scaled back from testing all applicants for drugs to just testing for safety-sensitive jobs such as security guards and warehouse machinery operators.

Kroger, parent company of Ralphs, Food4Less and FoodsCo, has 26,500 California workers and screens just a fifth of its job candidates, including managers and pharmacy workers. Our biggest challenge is the competition that currently exists for workers, spokesman John Votava said.

Other companies continue ordering up a standard five-panel test, which covers cocaine, methamphetamines, opioids and PCP as well as THC. But, like Rye Electric, they ignore the marijuana results.

Casco Contractors, an Irvine construction firm with some 60 employees, changed its policy in 2016. Last year, it hired two project managers whose tests showed cannabis use.

It used to be no-go if applicants tested positive for marijuana, said CEO Cheryl Osborn. But now it is legal in California. It has been de-stigmatized. It is a glass-of-wine kind of thing.

The two project managers have performed well. But like other employers, Casco reserves the right to test on the job. You have to have a good reason for suspecting someone is under the influence, Osborn said. If theres an accident, a drug test is mandatory.

Rye Electrics Golden said his company has had no accidents since changing his marijuana policy, and it hasnt influenced his employees work. But federal rules affect the jobs he bids on.

We stay away from public works and school projects, he said. A lot mandate no drug issues. And I couldnt guarantee all our workers are abstaining.

That doesnt mean hes happy with the compromises.

We dont condone marijuana usage, Golden said. If I had my way, it would still be illegal. Were struggling with it, like every business in California. Its a mess.

margot.roosevelt@latimes.com

Twitter: @margotroosevelt
The head of a Sherman Oaks firm accused of bilking thousands of investors in a $1.3-billion Ponzi scheme that fueled his luxury lifestyle was arrested Thursday, along with two associates.

Robert Shapiro, 61, the owner of the Woodbridge Group of Cos., and two other former company executives were accused of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and other violations of federal law in an April 4 indictment unsealed Thursday in the Southern District of Florida.

Shapiro, of Sherman Oaks, Dane R. Roseman, 35, of Encino and Ivan Acevedo, 42, of Chatsworth were arrested at their homes and pleaded not guilty in federal court in Los Angeles. Roseman and Acevedo were released on bond.

Shapiro  not to be confused with L.A. celebrity attorney Robert L. Shapiro  remained in custody. His home was searched at the time of his arrest, but the search warrant remains under seal.

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The Securities and Exchange Commission previously accused Woodbridge and Shapiro of civil violations of securities laws in 2017, and filed a new civil complaint against Roseman and Acevedo on Thursday. They were accused of violating securities registration, broker-dealer registration and anti-fraud provisions of federal law.

Ryan OQuinn, Shapiros attorney, said his client denies the allegations in the indictment and will vigorously defend himself in the appropriate forum.

Rosemans attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment Friday, and Acevedo could not be reached for comment.

Prosecutors said the Ponzi scheme was orchestrated from Woodbridges offices throughout the United States, including in Sherman Oaks, where it is headquartered, and in Boca Raton, Fla., where it was previously headquartered.

High-pressure sales tactics were used to secure money for what were promised to be low risk and conservative investments, but in reality the funds were funneled to real estate owned by Shapiro, according to the U.S. attorneys office.

Woodbridge eventually became financially insolvent, the scheme began to unravel, and Shapiro in 2017 considering filing for bankruptcy, prosecutors said.

Still, he, Roseman and Acevedo continued to sell the fraudulent investments without telling investors Woodbridge was on the verge of collapse, according to the indictment. From October to December of 2017, they brought in more than $52 million in investor money before filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2017.

Prosecutors said filing for bankruptcy caused investors to suffer substantial losses on their $1 billion in principal. At least 2,600 victims invested their retirement savings, totaling about $400 million.

Shapiro siphoned off $35 million for his own benefit, according to prosecutors, spending $3.1 million for chartering private planes and travel, $6.7 million on a home, $2.6 million on home improvements, $1.8 million on personal income taxes, $1.4 million for his ex-wife, and more than $672,000 on luxury automobiles.

Roseman received $2.5 million for himself and Acevedo received $1.1 million, prosecutors said.

The Securities and Exchange Commissions previous enforcement action in 2017 was settled in January for a total of $1 billion in penalties and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, the agency said. The defendants  Woodbridge, 281 related companies and Shapiro  did not admit or deny the allegations.

Woodbridge, according to the SEC, told investors it would use their money to make so-called hard money loans  a type of expensive, short-term loan thats secured by property and is often used by house flippers and other property developers. Instead, the SEC alleges, nearly all of the funds went directly into Shapiros and Woodbridges own projects.

The case has drawn attention because of some of the luxury properties owned by Woodbridge.

A document filed by Woodbridge in its 2017 bankruptcy case said the company, through limited liability companies, owned 138 properties ranging in value from $50,000 to $150 million. A Woodbridge representative said at the time that about 50 of those properties are in the Los Angeles area, and most of the rest in Colorado.

One property that was known to be among Woodbridges holdings is the historic Owlwood estate in Holmby Hills, a former home of actor Tony Curtis and singing duo Sonny and Cher.

Woodbridge acquired the property for $90 million and listed it in 2017 at twice that as a development opportunity. The home returned to the market in September 2018 at a reduced $115 million.

In December, another home acquired by Woodbridge  a modern mansion in the Mount Olympus area of Los Angeles  sold for $29.5 million.

Times staff writer Neal Leitereg and former staff writer James Rufus Koren contributed to this report.
More than 70 years after his death, Al Capones legacy still carries some weight in the Windy City. The mobsters former home in Chicagos South Side just sold for $226,000  more than twice the asking price of $109,900.

Capone bought the home in 1923 while working as the right-hand man to crime boss Johnny Torrio. He reportedly paid $5,500 for the two-flat brownstone and lived there with his wife and mother, whose names were on the deed, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Built in 1905, the Park Manor home holds six bedrooms and two bathrooms in about 2,820 square feet. It was listed as a multi-unit property, offering three bedrooms on each floor.

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Crown molding lines the octagonal living spaces, and other features include wood-trimmed windows, paneled walls and hardwood floors. Tile fills the kitchens, of which there are two.

Theres also a basement, an all-brick garage, a covered front porch and a second-story balcony. It sits on roughly a quarter of an acre.

Ryan Smith of RE/MAX Properties held the listing. Kief Mkrdichian of Century 21 Affiliated represented the buyer.

Capone spent seven years as a crime boss in Prohibition-era Chicago and is infamous for his alleged role in the Saint Valentines Day Massacre. He spent about eight years in prison for tax evasion before dying of cardiac arrest in 1947.

jack.flemming@latimes.com | Twitter: @jflem94
The Los Angeles Public Library on Friday released a new card design: a mythological Japanese child of superhuman strength whose fiery red body is attired in Dodger blue.

The art is the work of Gajin Fujita, a Los Angeles artist known for merging contemporary street art with the centuries-old style of Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. His card artwork centers on Kintaro, the folklore character also known as Golden Boy, usually depicted wearing a bib with the kanji character for gold. I gave him a twist, Fujita said.

The new Los Angeles Public Library card features a detail of the Gajin Fujita painting Guardian Angel. (Los Angeles Public Library)

The new library card will be available at all 73 LAPL locations while supplies last, officials said, declining to state a specific number. The Kintaro design is the librarys second limited-edition card; the first was by Shepard Fairey and Cleon Peterson and released in 2016.

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Fujita said the imagery comes from a painting titled Guardian Angel that he created a few years ago but that had languished unsold. It eventually went on view at the Los Angeles Municipal Gallery, run by the Department of Cultural Affairs, where library marketing chief Peter Persic saw it, Fujita said.

Library cards typically feature horizontal imagery, so in order to get a good, close-up look at Kintaros eye-blacked face, the new design will be the rare card with vertical imagery.

For Fujita, 47, an Otis College of Art and Design graduate who grew up in Boyle Heights and recalled going to the local public library as a boy to look at art books, the card represents something of a full circle.

Those were the first moments in my life where I could feel myself in another world, he said in an interview. That was the beginning of a stirring of my imagination.

Support our coverage of local artists and the local arts scene by becoming a digital subscriber.

See all of our latest arts news and reviews at latimes.com/arts.
The locale of Southernmost, presented by Playwrights Arena in Atwater Village, is as compelling as any character in Mary Lyon Kamitakis entertaining but limited new play.

Naalehu on the Big Island of Hawaii is distinguished as the southernmost town in the United States. For some, Naalehu may be paradise, but for Charlene (Amielynn Abellera), it was a suffocating backwater. She fled for San Francisco, her current home.

Charlene has reluctantly returned to Naalehu for the first time in five years with her lover, Jessica (Kimberly Alexander), who is anxious to meet Charlenes parents before she and Charlene marry.

REVIEW: Renee Taylor serves up the laughs in My Life on a Diet 

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Charlene almost immediately regrets the visit, despite a warm welcome from her loving mother, Becky (Sharon Omi), and goofy family friend Bruce (Aaron Ikeda). Charlenes problem lies with her stubborn father, Wally (Alberto Isaac), whose hard-headedness takes on lethal implications when a volcano erupts and Wally refuses to evacuate. This is where he was born, Wally says, and this is where he intends to die. However, if the lava flow blocks the only road out of town, he may get his wish sooner than later.

The exotic elements in Southernmost are well-served by Lily Bartensteins lighting and Jesse Mandapats sound, though Justin Huens set seems more like a stripped-down barracks than a convincing family home, however tropical or remote.

Director Jon Lawrence Rivera, the founding artistic director of Playwrights Arena, handles the ample comedy with a light hand, but he has a tougher time with the attempts at poignancy. Kamitakis boilerplate characters lack the essential coloration that would help them arrive at a singular point of catharsis the audience could fully share.

REVIEW: In Poor Yella Rednecks, humor and pathos in the struggles of Vietnamese immigrants 

The strain between Charlene and Jessica is problematic, particularly initially, although Abellera and Alexander hit their stride in subsequent scenes. And what exactly in Wallys past has made him so hidebound? A clue or two would be helpful. Its also odd that Bruce is the most full-fledged character, despite the fact that he is the most peripheral to the plot.

In a delightfully no-frills portrayal, Omi taps into mom Beckys essential simplicity and sweetness  just the right tack for a role that could have turned one-note. In all, a bit more back story could do wonders to deepen Kamitakis promising play, which, at present, falls short of its full potential.

=====

Southernmost

Where: Playwrights Arena at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Los Angeles

When: 8 p.m. Saturdays, 4 p.m. Sundays, 8 p.m. Mondays, extended through May 6.

Tickets: $30-$40

Info: (800) 838-3006, playwrightsarena.org

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Support our coverage of local artists and the local arts scene by becoming a digital subscriber.

See all of our latest arts news and reviews at latimes.com/arts.
The first teaser trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has finally been released, and it packs plenty of information into just two minutes.

In addition to revealing the upcoming films official title, the new footage offered the first real glimpse of what fans can expect from Episode IX, which, according to director J.J. Abrams, is set some time after the events of The Last Jedi.

The trailer premiered Friday morning during a panel spotlighting the movie at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago.

But what else can fans expect from the closing chapter in what has come to be known as the Skywalker saga? Here is everything that was revealed in the first The Rise of Skywalker trailer.

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Lukes lightsaber has been repaired

Rey (Daisy Ridley) in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Luke Skywalkers lightsaber was destroyed during the events of The Last Jedi when Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) fought over it.

Lukes lightsaber lives, said Ridley during the Celebration panel.

The familiar blue lightsaber was spotted immediately in the teaser as Rey takes on a TIE fighter.

Kylo Rens helmet is back

Kylo Rens helmet. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Kylo Ren lost his grandfathers lightsaber to Rey, but it looks like he might be getting his helmet back. Ren had destroyed his helmet earlier in the series in a fit of rage, but it appears someone is piecing it back together.

Lando is reunited with the Millennium Falcon

Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Lando Calrissian was once the owner of the Millennium Falcon, but years ago he lost the freighter ship to Han Solo in a high-stakes card game.

It looks as though Calrissian will once again be sitting in the pilots chair of the Falcon in The Rise of Skywalker, likely for the first time since the events in Return of the Jedi.

Leia and Rey reunited

General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher), right, and Rey (Daisy Ridley) in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Carrie Fisher, who died in 2016, appears posthumously in Episode IX from previously unused footage shot for The Force Awakens. And the trailer features what appears to be an emotional moment between Leia and Rey.

You dont recast that part and you dont suddenly have her disappear, said Abrams during the Celebration panel, explaining how he decided to move forward by writing scenes around the existing footage.

Leia exists in this film in a way thats mind-blowing to me, he said.

A new droid will debut

BB-8 and D-O in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (Lucasflm Ltd.)

The Rise of Skywalker appears to feature a new droid to steal fans hearts, much like BB-8 and R2-D2 already have through their appearances in Star Wars films.

Not much is known about the new droid, but Abrams did share during the movies panel that it is named D-O.

Someone is nostalgic

The medal of Yavin. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

One of the Medals of Bravery given to the heroes of Yavin such as Luke and Han is briefly seen during the teaser trailer. Perhaps it is Leia mourning her family.

Remnants of a Death Star

Finn (John Boyega), left, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Thats no moon. That appears to be the remnants of a Death Star.

Emperor Palpatine returns

(Lucasfilm Ltd.)

Familiar laughter is heard as the teaser fades to black to reveal the films title right after Luke, who is narrating the teaser, says No ones ever really gone.

Fans will recognize the laughter as that of the classic Sith villain Emperor Palpatine from the original trilogy.

And if there was any doubt that Palpatine might be appearing in The Rise of Skywalker, actor Ian McDiarmid appeared onstage at the Celebration panel as if to confirm that he plays some role in the upcoming film.

The trailer, of course, left many more questions unanswered, including which Skywalker is referred to in the title.

Watch the full teaser trailer below.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters Dec. 20.

tracy.brown@latimes.com

Twitter: @tracycbrown
Crypto

From its poster to its premise, the thriller Crypto is a classic case of bait-and-switch. The cast includes big names such as Kurt Russell, Alexis Bledel, Luke Hemsworth, Jill Hennessy and Vincent Kartheiser; but theyre all in supporting roles, each in the movie for about 15 minutes or less. And while the plot involves a crime related to the shadowy high-tech world of cryptocurrency, the action plays out like a generic shoot-em-up.

Beau Knapp stars as Martin Duran Jr., a promising young New York money-manager who turns his back on the simple life of his farming father Martin Sr. (Russell) and brother Caleb (Hemsworth). He inadvertently puts them in danger when his crypto-crazy friend Earl (Jeremie Harris) uncovers potential fraud at a small town art gallery, drawing the attention of violent creep Ted Patterson (Kartheiser).

Screenwriters Carlyle Eubank and David Frigerio (working from a Jeffrey Ingber story) throw in a few twists, and director John Stalberg Jr. elicits energetic performances from his star-studded cast. No one appears to be phoning it in.

But neither does anyone come up with a way to make Crypto special. Whatever the film has to say about the sketchiness of modern financial wheeling and dealing remains frustratingly non-specific. The characters all feel like theyve been copied and pasted from hundreds of other movies that end with armed standoffs in some featureless field or warehouse.

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The coveted currency may be shiny and new. The machinations of the heroes and villains are so old they creak.

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Crypto

Rated: R, for language throughout, some violence, sexuality and drug use

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Playing: Starts Friday, Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills; also on VOD

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Billboard

John Robinson in the movie Billboard. (Indie Rights)

Its a shame that writer-director Zeke Zelkers indie comedy Billboard is so choppy and directionless, because the movies heart is in the right place. A throwback to the shaggy slobs against the snobs pictures of the 1970s and 80s, the films like Meatballs or Stripes  but, alas, without a Bill Murray.

Billboard stars John Robinson as Casey Lindeweiler, the owner of a failing Allentown, Penn., AM alt-rock radio station, who decides to boost ratings by holding an old-fashioned endurance contest, offering a prize to whoever can live on a billboard the longest. As the public begins to pay attention to the stunt, the local politicians, a skeptical press and a corporate-owned rival station look for ways to sabotage it.

Zelkers cast is a fine mix of fresh faces and veteran character actors (including Heather Matarazzo, Leo Fitzpatrick and Eric Roberts); and kudos to him for using real locations around Lehigh County. But the film still falls flat. The contestants and the station employees never develop any more than the most superficial personalities; and the plot lurches from incident to incident, sometimes leaving huge, confusing gaps.

Billboard is meant to be the centerpiece of a multimedia project, which includes a web series that presumably fills in some necessary detail. But despite how good-natured this movie is, it just doesnt stand on its own. It has the right kind of soul, but a shapeless body.

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Billboard

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes

Playing: Starts Friday, Arena Cinelounge, Hollywood

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A Dark Place

Andrew Scott in the movie A Dark Place. (Shout! Studios)

The low-key, character-driven mystery A Dark Place (formerly known as Steel Country) is a handsome-looking picture with an accomplished cast and crew, which nonetheless feels a little off from start to finish. Maybe this subtle, persistent dissonance has something to do with the filmmakers choice to put three Irish actors in the leading roles, for a story set in western Pennsylvania.

To be fair, theyre good actors. Andrew Scott brings his usual jittery energy to the part of Donald Devlin, a developmentally disabled garbageman who becomes convinced a young boy on his route has been murdered. As he plays amateur detective, he locks horns with the local authorities, and creates problems for his work-friend Donna (Bronagh Waugh), and for Linda (Denise Gough), the mother of his daughter.

Screenwriter Brendan Higgins keeps the plot simple, creating space for whats ostensibly a study of modern life in the crumbling Rust Belt (albeit shot in rural Georgia). British director Simon Fellows and his cast though fail to bring a real lived-in quality to this material. A Dark Place is earnest enough, but it comes across as phony. Its hard to do a local color drama when everyones from out of town.

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A Dark Place

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 29 minutes.

Playing: Starts Friday, Arena Cinelounge Hollywood; also on VOD

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Rottentail

Corin Nemec in the movie Rottentail. (Ammo Content)

In the Easter-themed splatter-flick Rottentail, Corin Nemec plays Peter Cotton, a nebbishy fertility researcher who gets bitten by a mutated rabbit, and transforms into a hideous, bloodthirsty man-bunny. His timing is good, since Anna (Dominique Swain), a good-hearted classmate from his hometown Easter Falls, has just asked him to to help her bring down his former bully Jake (William McNamara), whos become a money-grubbing televangelist.

Directed and co-written by prolific genre filmmaker Brian Skiba (adapting a graphic novel), Rottentail is as goofy as it is gory  and its super-gory. Nothing in the movie is meant to be taken seriously: not the pokes at religion, and certainly not Nemecs squawking were-rabbit. The movies overlong and the humors too broad, but given that this would-be cult film is aimed at audiences who want something silly and trashy, its hard to fault Skiba for just mindlessly mashing those two buttons, over and over.

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Rottentail

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

Playing: Starts Friday, Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills; also on VOD

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Made Me Do It

Kyle Van Vonderen in the movie Made Me Do It. (Nathan Mielke / Indican Pictures)

Director Benjamin Ironside Koppin has described his micro-budget horror film Made Me Do It as a crazy experimental art piece mixed with an old school 80s slasher film, which  judging by the murky, muddled finished product  is like dropping a pile of random junk into a museum and calling it a sculpture. Though this movies meant to be the origin story for a Jason/Leatherface-like serial killer, the fragmented style  and the choice to have the murderer be mentally challenged  makes it hard to endure.

Made Me Do It shuffles among different visual styles, as it bounces between its villains backstory and one desperate night in the lives of the brother and sister hes targeted. The movie looks ugly and feels uglier, without much sense of a larger intent to mitigate the meanness. Koppins right that his movie is different from a typical slasher. Its far, far worse.

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Made Me Do It

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Playing: Starts Friday, Arena Cinelounge Hollywood

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calendar@latimes.com

@LATimesMovies
The 14-year-old black-ish actress Marsai Martin makes history as Hollywoods youngest executive producer ever with Little, the body-swap comedy she produced and stars in, out Friday.

The five-time NAACP Image award winner plays Jordan Sanders, a science nerd who realizes that one way to gain an edge over the bullies at school is to become one herself.

The film, distributed by Universal, flips the premise of Tom Hanks 1988 hit Big on its head: rather than jumping forward in age, an adult Sanders (played by Regina Hall) reverts to her high school self overnight following an altercation with an amateur magician.

Like Martin, Hall is also an executive producer on the project. And Insecure star and creator Issa Rae rounds out the cast in her first starring film role as April, Sanders long-suffering assistant.

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In addition to the three leads, it took the combined might of two other black women to get the project off the ground: director Tina Gordon and Girls Trip screenwriter Tracy Oliver.

Even in Hollywoods increasingly diverse climate, it is a rare feat for five black women to have the opportunity to work together in major roles both in front of and behind the camera.

It doesnt happen often, said Martin.

Rarely, said Rae. Unless its an Ava DuVernay project.

I cant think of a time, honestly, said Oliver. Even with Girls Trip it was me and a bunch of dudes behind the camera.

I have not had the experience of having three black female leads, added Gordon. It was great to be able to look to my left, right and just have so many different generations of black women in these roles. It was a first for me.

[People assume] when they see three black women on the posters, its supposed to be only for black girls. But this is for everyone to enjoy. Marsai Martin, star and executive producer of Little

It was this lack of opportunities for black women to work amongst each other in elevated roles that drove Martin to pitch the film at the precocious age of 10.

I wanted to create something where black women felt welcome, where we all could feel comfortable in who we are, she said. And to prove to other people that we can play different characters than the ones we play over and over again.

Its not for a certain audience either, she added. [People assume] when they see three black women on the posters, its supposed to be only for black girls. But this is for everyone to enjoy. Its definitely important to me, and I feel like it can be important to anyone who can learn from these things.

Although Big became an unexpected blockbuster 16 years before she was born, Martins parents introduced her to the comedy (which earned Hanks his first Oscar nomination in 1989 and was helmed by the late Penny Marshall  one of the few women to carve out a successful directing career in Hollywood).

They taught me about how they first met, the different places they used to go and of course, the films that they used to watch when they were younger, she said. One of them was Big. 

When Oliver, who calls Big one of her favorite movies, was tapped to reimagine the film from a black female perspective, she mined her own adolescent experience for inspiration.

I remember being in middle school and hating it and thinking how awful it was, she said. And as an adult, I dont want to go back there. I dont want to go back to the awkwardness of being a child and all the stuff we had to deal with growing up.

The film was stalled for years due to script delays and scheduling conflicts. Before signing on as director, Gordon  who previously helmed the Craig Robinson/Kerry Washington comedy Peeples  was brought on to work on a final draft of the script. For her part, she was inspired by the spotlight shining on bullies online, in the news and in the current administration.

I was thinking about ... how there was a lot of meanness in the world and in our government. I started thinking mainly about how bullies work. Little director and co-writer Tina Gordon

Director and co-writer Tina Gordon on the set of Little with stars Marsai Martin and Issa Rae. (Eli Joshua Ad/Universal)

I was thinking about the climate we live in and how there was a lot of meanness in the world and in our government, she said. I started thinking mainly about how bullies work.

After stumbling across an article that posited that bullies are formed around the time they themselves are bullied, I thought, Thats a story we could spin around,  said Gordon. I started thinking about how to make a bully, and thats sort of the nucleus of how I started spinning the story.

After meeting Martin, she further tailored the script to the actress strengths. I met Marsai and realized she had the comedic chops to really go toe-to-toe with Issa Rae, said Gordon. So I kind of moved the script to more of a buddy comedy with Issa.

The two actresses may be a generation removed, but their rapport shines through on-screen.

I was really nervous meeting her and getting to work with her because she is someone that Ive always wanted to work with and shes also a creator herself, Martin said of Rae. So I didnt see it as working with her just as an actor but also as This is the story I created; I hope you like it, [fellow] creator. Shes someone that I really look up to. And getting to know her throughout this whole film and getting to build our chemistry was incredible. I love her so much now.

I loved watching Marsai, said Rae. Theres just something so heartwarming about being in that first scene with her. From our first scene we shot together, the chemistry between us was clear.

(L-R)- April Williams (Issa Rae) is the put-upon assistant to both the big and little Jordan Sanders (Marsai Martin) in Little. (Universal Pictures)

All the women involved note that the entire production, from development to shooting, was incredibly collaborative. For Gordon, it was crucial to understand each actress process and allow them the space to run free.

They all come at comedy very differently, she said. Marsai is very prepared, Regina is improvisational, and Issa is very herself and has a very specific rhythm. So when they had scenes together, they helped each other with improvisation, they helped each other build their characters.

You handle each one differently, she added. Issa [is] very focused and more quiet before she starts the scene. Regina likes to try things in her first take and was taking big swings comedically. You have to let her run wild and you end up getting gold onscreen.

Because of Halls penchant for improvisation, many of the jokes that made it into the final version of the film were off the cuff. We pretty much played in every scene, said Gordon. Almost every scene there is some improvisation.

The great thing about working with Tina is she really let us have freedom, said Hall. We got to have fun and play around a lot, and thats a huge thing in comedy. Theres so many gems you find in just being able to improv and do something that you just feel in the moment is really funny.

We got to play with the page, agreed Rae. Tina Gordon really facilitated that and made sure it felt comfortable and open and collaborative. And Regina, when she was on set, she was just the best joke-pitcher ever. She was behind the scenes just throwing jokes out and giving notes.

(l-r) Issa Rae, Marsai Martin and director Tina Gordon are photographed for the upcoming switch comedy Little at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, Nev., on April 3, 2019. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Martins experience on Little inspired her to launch her own production company, Genius Productions. In February, it was announced that Genius signed a first-look production deal with Universal. A comedy starring Martin, with the working title StepMonster, is already in the pipeline.

Since I was already creating something as big as Little, I wanted to create more content, she said. Now that Im in a great circle and know my surroundings [in the industry] and Im getting older and more mature, I wanted to create more content for me and the young black girls after me. And for everybody who doesnt feel like they belong.

That spark of creativity struck preternaturally young for the teenager, who used to draw comics and make up stories to perform with her friends. Actually doing it for a living at such a young age and continuing to do what I love is absolutely amazing, she said. Im doing it not just for me but for everyone else coming up next.

That timing couldnt be more ripe, particularly in comedy.

Im in shock that there are so many opportunities for us [today], said Oliver, who has also reimagined the 1996 comedy hit The First Wives Club as an upcoming half-hour series for BET. It wasnt that long ago when Issa and I were doing The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl and we were literally told there was no way that someone who looked like her could be on television. This was pre-black-ish, pre-Insecure, pre-Atlanta. The landscape was completely white, and it was really discouraging. I think were all a little afraid that its going to disappear, but its been awesome to see.

We have all the opportunities at our fingertips, said Rae. Im just excited to see the different [roles] we can play and excited to collaborate with other funny black women just to see how we can broaden the genre.

Female comics are becoming more and more authentic and empowered to just be funny their way, said Gordon. So I feel like theres no going back; the genies out of the bottle.

Theres so much untouched territory; Im excited because so much hasnt been told, she added. Theres so many great, authentic comedic voices emerging. Im hopeful because theres been such a desert of those kinds of female comics that have been allowed to be on the big screen. At the bottom line, Hollywood is very numbers-driven  so I just hope that audiences come out for this so that we can make more.

sonaiya.kelley@latimes.com

follow me on twitter @sonaiyak
After eight films, the Skywalker saga will come to a close this December. And now the much anticipated upcoming Star Wars release has an official title: Star Wars  Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker.

Friday morning at the Star Wars Celebration fan convention in Chicago, Disney unveiled the new teaser for the ninth film in the franchise set a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that will hit theaters Dec. 19.

Directed by The Force Awakens helmer J.J. Abrams, The Rise of Skywalker picks up after the events of the Rian Johnson-directed The Last Jedi, which saw the emotional death of Jedi master Luke Skywalker and left the tenuous alliance between Rey and Kylo at an impasse, the balance in the Force decidedly shaken up.

Episode IX will pick up sometime after the events of The Last Jedi, teased Abrams during the films Celebration panel. This movie is about this new generation and what theyve inherited, the light and the dark, and asking the question as they face this evil  are they prepared? Are they ready?

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Producer and Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy echoed archival footage of George Lucas describing his vision of the Star Wars saga as a trilogy of trilogies, a series of three three-act plays.

Thousands of fans packed into the Wintrust Arena for the anticipated panel event, some holding up glowing lightsabers. The entire arena erupted as the first of many first-look images flashed on the jumbotron  featuring the reunited Force Awakens and Last Jedi squad of Rey, Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, C3P0 and BB-8.

Among those joining the panel were continuing franchise cast members Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo and Anthony Daniels. (Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyongo and Mark Hamill were among the Episode IX cast who couldnt make it to Chicago.)

The arena exploded in loud cheers at every glimpse and mention of the late Carrie Fisher, who will appear posthumously in Episode IX.

We all talked about how to move on, said Abrams. She was the best. She was glorious. She was amazing. We all just loved her.  It was impossible. There was no way. You dont recast that part and you dont suddenly have her disappear.

Episode IX will feature the late Fisher using previously filmed footage, including scenes opposite her real-life daughter, Billie Lourd. Abrams described the discovery that the footage could be used to continue Leias story: What if we could actually write scenes around her?

The result will be not a CG Leia, but Fisher herself onscreen in her iconic role. Princess Leia lives in this film in a way that is kind of mind-blowing to me, said Abrams.

Celebration attendees leapt to their feet to greet returning Star Wars icon Billy Dee Williams with a standing ovation. Williams, who last appeared in the franchise as Lando Calrissian in 1983s Return of the Jedi, will return to the galaxy as Calrissian in Episode IX.

Billy Dee Williams returns as Lando Calrissian in Star Wars: Episode IX. (Lucasfilm Ltd.)

How did I find Lando again? he cooed as a peek at Calrissian in Episode IX flashed onscreen. Lando never left me.

The Celebration crowd got special sneak peeks at character images, new creatures and stills from the film, including shots of Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose, newcomer Jannah and Chewbacca.

Naomi Ackie plays Jannah, who may or may not be the daughter of Lando. Listen, Lando is a very charming man, she quipped. He could have children all over this universe.

But it appears Lando is not the only character from the original trilogy making his return in The Rise of Skywalker.

Familiar laughter was heard as the teaser faded to black to reveal the films title, which seemed to tease the return of a classic villain. Then, after the footage was over, Ian McDiarmid himself took the stage to confirm with his presence that yes, Emperor Palpatine will be back in some form for Episode IX.

Abrams is also co-writer with Chris Terrio on the film that Abrams produced for his Bad Robot banner with Lucasfilms Kennedy and Michelle Rejwan.
Hollywood has yet to make #MeToo: The Movie, and Israel already beat it to the punch. In fact, when writer-director Michal Aviad began researching her Working Woman back in 2012, the only two major films on the subject [of sexual harassment] were Disclosure and Fatal Attraction. And both are about women harassing men.

There are no boiling bunnies in Aviads new film, which stars Liron Ben-Shlush and Menashe Noy and opens Friday in Los Angeles. When the film played the Toronto International Film Festival last fall, one press account referred to the living nightmare suffered by its married heroine, Orna (Ben-Shlush), after her ostensibly benevolent boss Benny (Noy) makes it clear he has sexual designs on her.

But the extremes of a nightmare are precisely what Aviad avoids: Her portrayal of sexual harassment on the job is of something subtle, insidious and which cant necessarily be expressed in words.

When I make a film, theres got to be something I need to learn, said Aviad, who studied and made films in San Francisco during the 80s and now teaches at Tel Aviv University. For this one, I read womens testimonies and went back to my experiences, and my friends experiences, but I couldnt pinpoint what exactly it looks like ...

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What are the proximities of the bodies? What are the silences? What kind of tension is there? And while writing and thinking about it, I realized its as much physical as psychological. Something that might best be addressed in film.

REVIEW: Working Woman is a sexual harassment drama that cuts close to the bone 

Liron Ben-Shlush and Menashe Noy star in Working Woman. (Kino Lorber)

Working Woman opens at a time when both Israel and the U.S. are reporting upticks in sexual harassment complaints; whether they can be credited to the #MeToo movement itself is, of course, a question. Equally unclear is whether the rightward, reactionary shift in each country has encouraged a rape-culture mentality in either.

Aviad, who agreed that Israel and the U.S. mirror each other in many ways, is not sure that theres a direct correlation between current politics and current harassment. But she conceded that the climate doesnt promote enlightened attitudes.

In Israel, the regime is horrible, she said. Horrible. And the more the regime is right-wing, the more militaristic it becomes, the more men have license to do anything they want  because they are heroes.

She said the laws both here and in Israel are good and have been since Anita Hill spoke out about Clarence Thomas. But I think my film has really nothing to do with Israel either, but rather millions around the world who are in the same situation.

Ben-Slush, who was four months pregnant (and didnt say anything about it) when she auditioned for Aviad agreed. (Shooting was postponed.)

I think that every woman, almost every woman, in Israel and in any other place in the world has a story of sexual harassment or being mistreated because of her gender, she said. Like every girl, l grew up thinking its part of being female. I know how it feels, sitting in a bus, as a teenager, with a stranger touching me, while blaming myself for wearing a short dress. I have experienced all sorts of those small incidents. I adapted this basic feeling of fear and self-blame to the character.

Orna certainly blames herself, and her guilt obscures her thinking. While her husband (Oshri Cohen) struggles to make a go of their new restaurant, Orna, with no experience, takes a job with her former commanding officer, Benny, at his real-estate development firm. (The Israeli army is like college here, Aviad said in New York. Its where you work together, bunk together, see each other all the time and keep loyalties 30 years later.).

Orna is immediately and instinctively brilliant, pulling off one difficult deal after another. But when Benny tries to kiss her, it isnt out of gratitude. And their dynamic irrevocably shifts.

Benny is not a monstrous character. He is in many ways sympathetic  which gives Working Woman much of its emotional complexity.

The whole Harvey Weinstein scandal blew up during the first week of shooting, said Noy (Gett, Big Bad Wolves). But it wasnt until a few weeks later, when the #MeToo movement started growing, that I realized the film was going to be released in a very sensitive period.

Nevertheless, he said, we agreed that the relationship between Benny and Orna will not be that of a predator versus prey.

It was important to me that this complexity would come through in every aspect of him, he said. Benny is a successful Israeli man, an ex-military officer, a real-estate entrepreneur  he is a middle-aged man, and the presence of a young, attractive, talented woman is waking up hidden emotions inside him.

Is he taking advantage of Orna? Is he just lusting after her? Is he falling for her? I wanted things to be unclear, vague; I wanted that both Orna and the audience not be able to tell whether Benny is falling in love or if he just gets carried away and loses control.

At this stage of late capitalism, Aviad said, Israel is exactly like the United States, in that a huge percentage of its commerce involves selling. Everyone is selling stuff and women are required to look attractive, which is another way of saying sexy, she said. And as soon as someone makes advances, its their fault for looking attractive.

Orna feels complicit in her own victimization because shes allowed herself to become indebted to Benny; to be afraid for her own career; to wear her hair long when Benny said she should let it down. Its no less real than the kinds of things Harvey Weinstein is alleged to have done, but its far harder for the victims to explain their pain, or even the offenses that caused it.

Two of the most beloved actors in Israel were accused of sexual harassment recently, Aviad said. We all know these guys personally; theyre not these movie villains. But you get an actor who flirts with an anonymous actress, she turns him down and then he tells the producer, I cant work with her. Its this kind of stuff.

The subtleties are far more interesting than Harvey Weinstein, because how many of these insane criminals exist? Its more people who are doing things that used to be OK, but now are not OK.

calendar@latimes.com
Its been Jon Snows throne to take from the beginning.

When Game of Thrones viewers first heard the term Snow and its coarse meaning  bastard  in the north, many were swayed to his side. In Season 1 they saw his love for his purported siblings, the lack of love from his purported stepmother, his prowess with a sword and how he adopted the runt of a direwolf litter, the albino Ghost, who grew into a fierce fighter. It all seemed pre-ordained.

Until it wasnt.

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Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had to throw viewers off the trail. For those who hadnt read the novels, it was easy to choose the good-hearted son of the good-hearted Ned Stark. Once the patriarch was beheaded, viewers waited for the return of the prodigal son  whod endured challenges from the Nights Watch commanders and his fellow Watch brothers, only to rise to the station of Nights Watch commander. Surely he was coming for them all, destined to rule having endured hardships and acquiring leadership qualities all while maintaining his easy-on-the-eyes naivete.

Then he was stabbed in the gut by men sworn to serve him. Repeatedly. Finally, he was stabbed in the heart by a child who once admired him and then left to lie bleeding in the snow on the cold ground of Castle Black.

Game of Thrones had struck again. No one was safe. Our watch had ended too.

Until it hadnt.

Jon Snow (Kit Harington) was resurrected by a magic we still arent too sure about. The Lord of Light saw fit to give him life again, and so should we all. His destiny was back on track.

After the grueling Battle of the Bastards, Jon was made King in the North by his countrymen. In meeting wannabe queen Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke), Sir Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) made it clear why Jon Snow is the best candidate to be ruler of the seven kingdoms in an epic speech that silenced everyone, including the Breaker of Chains.

Who has given more than Jon Snow? Ben Crompton, standing, and Kit Harington in a scene from Game of Thrones. (Helen Sloan / HBO)

FULL COVERAGE: The final season of Game of Thrones 

He was named King in the North not because of his birthright. He has no birthright; hes a damn bastard. All those hard sons of bitches chose him as their leader because they believe in him. All those things you dont believe in, he faced those things. He fought those things for the good of his people. He risked his life for the people. He took a knife in the heart for the people. He gave his own. The speech was not meant to push him as ruler of the seven kingdoms, but we didnt need to hear the rest to know that it will not be the last crown Jon Snow wears.

In his time as King in the North, weve seen how much he is willing to sacrifice for his people. Weve also seen, even before he has, that due to his parentage being Stark and Targaryen, he not only isnt a bastard, he has a unique bloodline that would give him dominion over the north and the south.

And he can touch dragons too.

Daenerys Targaryen has a powerful claim on the throne. Cersei Lannister has run the kingdom and been preparing for it her whole life. The Night King could take it all by force. But Jon Snow has all of the prerequisites to not only be king, but be loved as the ruler of the seven kingdoms.

If you dont have that love, you wont have the throne long anyway.

jevon.phillips@latimes.com

Follow me on Twitter: @Storiz
With Game of Thrones drawing to a close, streaming networks and cable outlets are racing to produce the next pop culture-defining blockbuster. Some echo the formula of the HBO series by drawing from existing fantasy or sci-fi novels while others draw from established franchises from the big screen.

Details on most of these shows are scarce but they share a couple common traits. Like Game of Thrones, all of these shows hope to bring the sensation of a summer movie spectacle into our living rooms, and they all bear the production price tags to match. But like the series they hope to emulate, only time will tell which of these shows is the true heir.

Game of Thrones is blockbuster TV. The forces against shows trying to top its success 

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Game of Thrones prequel

Odds of winning the crown: 2/1

Network: HBO

Premiere date: TBA

Whats it about? Possibly titled The Long Night (at least according to George R.R. Martins Twitter feed) the series is set thousands of years before Game of Thrones and promises to get into some of the dark histories of Westeros as well as the origin of the White Walkers and a few past mythologies the current series has only touched upon.

Whos in it? A host of British actors including Naomi Watts, Miranda Richardson and Josh Whitehouse.

Pros: People seem to like the source material, and this is co-created by Martin himself.

Cons: People really like the source material  if this doesnt hit that high bar, how long will audiences stick around? (Who are we kidding? A lot of them probably will.) But if Game of Thrones doesnt stick its landing a la Lost, its possible this show will have to do some extra legwork to win fans back.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian

Odds of winning the crown: 3/1

Network: Disney+

Premiere date: Late 2019

Whats it about? Executive produced by Jon Favreau (Iron Man), this much-anticipated series is the first live-action spinoff from the Star Wars universe to come to the small screen. True to Star Wars tradition, little is known beyond it being set somewhere between the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens and following a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy. Already there is talk of a second season.

Whos in it? Pedro Pascal (Oberyn Martell of Game of Thrones), Nick Nolte, Giancarlo Esposito, Gina Carano, Carl Weathers and Werner Herzog as a villain.

Pros: With a new franchise release every year and a new theme park world about to open, Disney is betting audiences cant get enough Star Wars  and it hasnt been wrong yet. Also, episodes will be directed by an interesting slate of directors, including Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok, What We Do in the Shadows), Rick Famuyiwa (Dope) and actress Bryce Dallas Howard.

Cons: Yet another monthly subscription fee for streaming audiences to go along with yet another Star Wars spinoff, and last years Solo proved that not everything Star Wars touches is a phenomenon.

Pedro Pascal is leading the cast as The Mandalorian, a Star Wars series about a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

FULL COVERAGE: The final season of Game of Thrones 

Lord of the Rings

Odds of winning the crown: 4/1

Network: Amazon

Premiere date: 2021, maybe

Whats it about? Hobbits, elves, orcs and the rest of J.R.R. Tolkiens Middle-earth, but details are otherwise scarce. The series is set in the Second Age, before the trilogy that began with The Fellowship of the Ring, when evil Sauron persuaded the elves to make 16 rings to split between the rulers of men and dwarfs while Sauron created that ring that caused so much trouble later on.

Whos in it? No one is saying, but given what we know about how elves age, Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett from Jacksons movies have potential for cameos. The prequel is being adapted by JD Payne and Patrick McKay, writers of the next Star Trek.

Pros: Peter Jackson proved theres a big audience for Tolkiens world, and much of the universe-building legwork is already done for the show. Plus, with Amazon reportedly projected to spend close to a billion dollars on the series production  its already spent $250 million just for the rights  the Seattle company will do everything it can to get a return on investment.

Cons: The prequel premise holds promise, but with two expensive and possibly definitive Tolkien trilogies already released, there is a question of whether yet another ring can unite them all.

His Dark Materials

Odds of winning the crown: 5/1

Network: HBO co-produces with BBC, which started work on the show in 2015

Premiere date: 2019, according to HBOs year-ahead previews

Whats it about? Adapted from a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman, the series involves a woman named Lyra searching for a kidnapped friend. In the process, she embarks on a world-spanning journey that involves kidnapped children, human souls manifesting as animals and a mysterious substance called Dust. Oh, and polar bears.

Whos in it? Dafne Keen (Logan), James McAvoy, Ruth Wilson, Lin-Manuel Miranda

Pros: The series has blockbuster-quality star power, and HBO has a bit of experience with building anticipation and buzz around a book series with a lot of clout in the fantasy community. The BBC is on board as well, having granted a second season before the first one has a premiere date.

Cons: Introducing audiences to a whole new world isnt easy, and the first book of His Dark Materials was already tried once with the 2007 film The Golden Compass, which  despite the star power of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig  flopped.

Author Philip Pullman, best-selling author of His Dark Materials. (Zuma Press)

Y: The Last Man

Odds of winning the crown: 7/1

Network: FX

Premiere date: 2020

Whats it about? Based on the acclaimed comic series from Brian K. Vaughan and artist Pia Guerra, the show  true to its title  follows the last surviving human with a Y chromosome (and his monkey) after a plague wipes out all men from the planet.

Whos in it? Barry Keoghan (Dunkirk), Diane Lane, Amber Tamblyn, Imogen Poots.

Pros: Vaughan and Guerras comic series is so well-loved its been a target for adaptation for years, and something about a show examining a world without men feels a little timely, doesnt it?

Cons: -- Acclaim in the graphic-novel world doesnt always guarantee success  though HBO has the bug as well with a new take on Alan Moores Watchmen from Damon Lindelof also due in 2019. And a basic-cable network hasnt broken through with a pop culture-defining hit since AMCs The Walking Dead, which spawned the less successful spinoff Fear the Walking Dead and has plans for multiple movies to be led by recently departed star Andrew Lincoln and a just-announced second spinoff series due in 2020.

A still from the upcoming Y, a new drama series coming to FX in 2020. (Macall Polay / FX)

See

Odds of winning the crown: 10/1

Network: AppleTV+

Premiere date: TBA

Whats it about? Set in a future version of Earth after a virus wipes out most of the population and leaves its survivors blind, the series stars Alfre Woodard and Jason Momoa, who both appeared at Apples big (if detail-deprived) presentation about its new streaming service last month.

Whos in it? Beyond Mamoa and Woodard, its a mystery.

Pros: The series has promising credentials with Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence on board along with showrunner Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), and Momoa escaped the shadow of Game of Thrones to become a star with Aquaman.

Cons: Apple is great at selling fans on buying its products, but can it persuade a big-enough audience to pay for yet another streaming service?

See stars Jason Momo and Alfre Woodard speak during an event launching Apple tv+ at Apple headquarters. (Noah Berger / AFP/Getty Images)

The Witcher

Odds of winning the crown: 25/1

Network: Netflix

Premiere date: 2019

Whats it about? Based on a series of books by Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski that has been translated into 20 languages, the show will follow a monster-tracking bounty hunter named Geralt, a morally ambiguous hero whos beginning to learn the humans he encounters may be the real monsters.

Cast: Henry Cavill

Pros: With magic, monarchy and monsters amid breathtaking European settings (Hungarys Vajdahunyad Castle appeared in a brief teaser), you cant get more in the world-building wheelhouse for Game of Thrones fans.

Cons: A fantasy tale from Poland informed by Slavic folklore may not be the easiest sell to a mass audience, and Netflixs ability to create a buzz strong enough to sustain an expensive series (see: Marco Polo) has yet to be proven.

Also in development: A Chronicles of Narnia series spinoff (Netflix); Anne Rices Vampire Chronicles (Hulu); Ringworld by Larry Niven, Greg Ruckas Lazarus and Neal Stephensons Snow Crash (Amazon); Isaac Asimovs Foundation (AppleTV+); Patrick Rothfuss Kingkiller Chronicle (Showtime); a second Star Wars series led by Diego Lunas character from Rogue One (Disney+); Nnedi Okorafors Who Fears Death; and J.J. Abrams Demimonde (HBO).

chris.barton@latimes.com

Follow me over here @chrisbarton.
In his introduction of Bob Iger, an honoree at Wednesdays National Tribute Dinner that benefited the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance, movie executive Jeffrey Katzenberg praised the Walt Disney Co. chairman and chief executive for taking the Disney story into its biggest, boldest and most ambitious chapters yet, referring to the recent 21st Century Fox acquisition.

However, on this night, he said, Iger was being honored for his humanitarian work.

When it comes to giving, its not just about giving of money. Its about giving of yourself, about showing up and being front and center.  Bob gives as a friend. Every single time I have reached out for him to help, he has always, always, well  said Katzenberg, the former DreamWorks Animation chief executive, before stopping to jokingly deliver the one exception. No matter how much I begged Bob, he just wasnt willing to run for president of the United States.

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In response, Iger said, As for the presidency, he promised me he would never bring that up again, particularly with my wife [Willow Bay] present.

The event

A view of the medals given to honorees Jeffrey S. Myers, Kurt Kleinmann and Florence G. Phillips. (Alex J. Berliner / ABImages)

The affair at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills honored Iger with its 2019 Humanitarian Award, while raising a record-setting $3.6 million for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance.

Medals of Valor went to Rabbi Jeffrey S. Myers for saving lives at the October attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh; Kurt Kleinmann, for shedding light on his familys heroism during the holocaust; and Florence Phillips for creating an English-language tutoring program for immigrants to the U.S.

Honoree Kurt Kleinmann speaks at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (Alex J. Berliner / ABImages)

The scene

Host Jimmy Kimmel, left, Dana Walden and Alan Horn. (Alex J. Berliner / ABImages)

On nights like this you need a little bit of humor, said Iger, after thanking participants and dispensing with jokes about his running for president.

Talk show host Jimmy Kimmel obliged, providing that humor on a charming, self-deprecating note, by saying, Last time I hosted an award show, that award show subsequently decided it no longer needed a host, referring to this years Academy Awards. And the ratings soared.

The crowd

Jeffrey Katzenberg, from left, Marilyn Katzenberg, Bob Iger, Rabbi Marvin Hier and Brian Grazer at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (Alex J. Berliner / ABImages)

In a crowd of Hollywood heavyweights, dinner chairmen included Katzenberg, Ron Meyer, Jim Gianopulos, Alan Horn, Brian Grazer, Richard Lovett and Tony Vinciquerra, while guests included J.J. Abrams, Katie McGrath, Jerry Bruckheimer, Ari Emanuel, Peter Rice, Chris Silbermann and Dana Walden.

Also onstage were Rabbi Marvin Hier, Rabbi Meyer H. May and board trustees Larry Mizel, Dawn Arnall and Rosalie Zalis.

The quotes

Honoree Bob Iger speaks at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. (Alex J. Berliner / ABImages)

Your mission has never been more relevant, your work never more important than it is today, Iger said of the organization. Yet today, we are losing ground. Hate and anger are dragging us toward the abyss once again. Apathy is actually growing  How often have you heard the question, What has happened to our country? Better yet, how often have you asked that same question yourselves?

As for social media, he said, Hitler would have loved social media. Its the most powerful marketing tool an extremist could ever hope for  The disruptive force of technology is transforming our world in many good ways but also in ways that make it far too easy to deny our shared humanity 

We must once again renounce and reject hate in all forms, he continued. It is possible to argue policy without attacking people. We used to know how to do that, but todays rancor has turned the common ground of our democracy into scorched earth. We have to change how we talk to each other and learn to disagree more productively, allowing our differences to peacefully co-exist  Maybe we should just start by reconnecting to those friends and family members that we havent spoken to since the 2016 election.

As for 2020 hopefuls making their case for early support, he said, I want to hear a pitch that isnt grounded in contempt of others. I want to see a vision that is big enough to include everyone. I want to be inspired by big ideas and innovative solutions by the personal courage and character of those who espouse it. Leaders must offer a plan for progress that works all of us.

The numbers

Burt Sugarman, from left, Sharon Davis, former Gov. Gray Davis and Bob Iger share a moment as the Simon Wiesenthal Center honored Iger with the 2019 humanitarian award. (Alex J. Berliner / ABImages)

The 800 guests paid from $750 each to $250,000 for two tables of 10, with proceeds going toward Simon Wiesenthal Centers mission to confront anti-Semitism, hate and terrorism, stand with Israel, and defend the safety of Jews worldwide.
The notice was emailed to parents of Pacific Grove Middle School students on March 27: In five days, outside educators from Planned Parenthood would be on campus, teaching sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders about sex.

The notice did not sit well with a mother of two middle school students in Pacific Grove, a charming seaside town on the tip of the Monterey Peninsula, north of tony Carmel.

I really dont want Planned Parenthood involved in our school, said the mother, a former home-schooler who described herself as a Christian who opposes abortion. She did not want to be named because, as she put it, Im just a normal mom with a normal family trying to raise my kids as I see fit. I dont want to get involved in any drama.

She contacted the Pacific Justice Institute, a Sacramento-based conservative Christian legal group that fights against what it considers infringements on parents religious rights. (Its opponents describe it as anti-gay.)

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The institutes attorney Matthew McReynolds promptly fired off a letter to Pacific Grove Middle School Principal Sean Roach, demanding the sex-ed course be canceled or postponed.

The school, alleged McReynolds, had violated the California Education Code by not giving parents adequate advance notice of the class, time to review the curriculum and the opportunity to opt out.

The letter then went a step further, attacking Planned Parenthood.

It need hardly be explained that Planned Parenthood, the nations largest abortion provider, is one of the most controversial organizations in America, McReynolds wrote. Depending on ones viewpoint, Planned Parenthood is either the embodiment of evil or the champion of reproductive rights.

Personally, I love Planned Parenthood. I am grateful every day for its unwavering commitment to public health, education and, yes, abortion services.

Still, I dont think anyone disagrees that parents should be informed about their childrens education, particularly on sensitive topics like sex.

As soon as Principal Roach received the Pacific Justice Institute letter, he told me, he realized that the school had indeed erred by failing to give parents adequate advance notice.

It was a clerical error, he said. He canceled last weeks program.

The Pacific Justice Institute declared a win.

Praise God! wrote Brad Dacus, the institutes founder and president. When it seems like the evil surrounding us is overwhelming, we can still obtain victories.

::

Its easy to forget that the debates over sex education in public schools never stop.

In 2016, the issue heated up after California updated its law on sex education, making our state one of the most progressive in the country.

The law requires schools to teach about the emotional aspects of sex, the possibility that people may have more than one sexual partner, same-sex relationships and different gender identities.

The law also requires students be given information about sexual assault and harassment, adolescent relationship abuse, intimate partner violence and sex trafficking. (My only question: What took us so long?)

Last year in the Bay Area, the Fremont Board of Education voted to scrap sex ed for fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders after parents complained at raucous meetings that the new education code went too far beyond the mechanics of sexual development and pregnancy. (After another outcry, the board restored the curriculum for fifth- and sixth-graders.)

In Orange County, where some parents mistakenly believed that sex toys are part of the curriculum, at least two school districts have refused to implement the law.

I have seen parents more fired up about this issue in the last year than I have had in the previous 15 years, McReynolds said. I think its honestly because of the changing nature of sex education, which has gone in a direction that parents find disconcerting.

Parents used to assume it was the birds and the bees and how bodies work. And now it seems like something thats pushing kids a certain direction, pushing certain viewpoints, especially with the fusion of gender ideology, gender expression and gender identity.

This is a prime reason so many conservative groups object to the new curriculum.

Lauren Walters, a regional program manager for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, oversees the sex-ed classes at Pacific Grove. She does not get defensive when challenged. I think its natural for parents to be concerned about what their kids are learning in school, she said.

Any school can ask her to give parents a preview of what their children will be taught, although Pacific Grove did not. Very few schools take us up on it, she said, and when they do, we find that not many parents come out.

I shared with her one concern of the middle school mom in Pacific Grove, who told me she objected to having Planned Parenthood on campus because, as the mom put it, they will tell your children they are allowed to leave school without your permission to get an abortion.

That sounded a little like right-wing paranoia to me. Except shes partially right: While California teenagers need permission to leave campus, they do not need their parents approval for birth control, abortions or prenatal care. (They dont need permission to get sexually transmitted diseases or pregnant, either, both of which are far more likely to happen in the absence of sex ed.)

We give comprehensive, medically accurate information, and part of that is pregnancy options, Walters told me. If someone has a positive test, there are three options: carrying on with pregnancy, adoption or abortion.

::

This week, Pacific Grove Middle School was closed for spring vacation.

The campus was empty, except for a trio of deer munching grasses under the cypress and eucalyptus trees.

From the schools front lawn, I could see ocean, whipped by a strong breeze into a froth of whitecaps. What a beautiful place to grow up.

I wouldnt say this issue has exactly roiled Pacific Grove, a placid community that is home to the historic Asilomar Conference Grounds and a monarch butterfly preserve.

In fact, Principal Roach seemed surprised to have been drawn into the culture wars at all.

This is the first pushback Ive encountered, he said.

Anyway, the kerfuffle is not the big victory touted by the Pacific Justice Institute in its fundraising appeal.

Before spring break, Pacific Grove Middle School parents received another email from Roach: The Planned Parenthood comprehensive sex-education curriculum has been rescheduled for the last week of April.

Parents who dont want their kids to participate can do what theyve always done: opt out.

robin.abcarian@latimes.com

Twitter: @AbcarianLAT
Tucked off a turn on Highway 101, down an unmarked fork in the road, the elusive gates of Hollister Ranch swung open to a 14,500-acre oasis  described by many as the last vestige of the old California coast.

Andy Mills waved to the guard and, familiar with every bump and turn, navigated his truck around the ranchs first narrow curve. He braked for a cow that ambled across the pavement. Three more grazed nearby.

These fellas have the right of way around here, said Mills, who lives and works on the ranch. This place is really quite something.

Here along the rolling hills west of Santa Barbara, where willows line the creek and cattle roam free, the verdant land unfurls to reveal a rugged coastline largely unspoiled by man. Few have stepped their toes in this sand, but those who have say it evokes a feeling so vast  even spiritual  that it must be experienced to be understood.

Thus the dilemma: The beaches abutting Hollister Ranch are special because they are so pristine. They are pristine because of the ranchs history of being so exclusive. Excluding the public, however, goes against the tenet that Californias beaches belong to everyone.

Owners have been on the defensive in the months since they reached a controversial deal with the state Coastal Commission that essentially capped the number of people  and type of people  who could visit these coveted beaches. Advocates have gone to court, and state officials are now vowing to find a way to open a public route through the ranch to the sea.

The stakes are high, the outcome now emblematic of access across all California beaches. But Mills and fellow residents fear the loss of this treasured land  and way of life  that theyve fought for decades to protect.

Can having both access and preservation, some wonder, be possible at a place like Hollister?

The story of this land begins with the Chumash, whose villages flourished among these ancient oak groves and canyons 35 miles west of Santa Barbara. Then came the Spaniards and after that, the Yankees.

By 1853, Colonel W.W. Hollister  born in Ohio, where he attended Kenyon College  had come west to the newly American California. He struck a few deals and eventually settled along the Gaviota coast, where his family ran a cattle operation for more than a century.

After Hollisters son died in 1961, there was talk about building planned communities  even creating artificial lakes  throughout the ranch. But the developer went bankrupt, and the mortgage company instead held a design competition.

View of Cuarta Canyon in Hollister Ranch. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Cattle graze in the pastures above Cuarta Beach in Hollister Ranch. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Left, many roads in Hollister Ranch are unpaved. Right, cattle graze in the pastures above Cuarta Beach. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

In came a Texas cattleman by the name Dick LaRue. He proposed preserving Hollister as a historic ranch  subdividing the land into 100-some-acre parcels but allowing only 2% of each parcel to be developed.

Two acres for your home and barn; 98 for the cattle, he declared. No fencing, no mansions. Low density would be the selling point.

Surfers cobbled together paychecks, lured by Hollisters famous surf breaks. Others chipped in for their slice of this untarnished paradise. Today, many roads remain unpaved, cell service is spotty, water is shared from a number of wells.

Jon Schleuss / Los Angeles Times

Any construction must blend into the environment. Owners are limited to 12 guests per parcel per day. Not part of the plan was the general public, who technically own  and have rights to access  the beach under California law. For decades, the ranch fought back attempts to open the coast to the general public. Access today is still on their terms.

The ranch represents a concept of land development that is a model for both landowners and environmentalists, according to a history book by the Hollister Ranch Conservancy. Given time, money and human sensitivity the integrity of a magnificent piece of land such as the Hollister Ranch can remain intact.

Hollister Ranch is one of California's most pristine stretches of coastline. Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Standing at the top of a ridge overlooking Cuarta Canyon, Beverly Boise-Cossart marveled at how a few weeks of rain had transformed the lush landscape. The sky that day was particularly clear  miles away, Point Conception poked through as a knob of land. A hawk flew overhead.

Reaching this vista required veering up onto a dusty, unpaved road that is often unpassable during the winter except by horse. Boise-Cossart loves this spot.

She squinted into the distance, first pointing to a coyote sprinting across the terrain, then to a white dot nestled into the curve of a different ridge  the only house visible from this vantage point.

This is what 50 years of residential development looks like here, said Boise-Cossart, who struggles with the growing debates over access.

Do we want access at all costs? she said. Once we lose this, we cant go back. We cant restore a place like this.

Beverly Boise-Cossart, left, talks with Kathi Carlson, one of the leading cowgirls for all the cattle on Hollister Ranch. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Mailboxes marked by parcel number in Hollister Ranch. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Cattle graze in the Cuarta Canyon above Cuarta Beach in Hollister Ranch. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Top, Beverly Boise-Cossart, left, talks with Kathi Carlson, one of the head cowgirls on Hollister Ranch. Left, mailboxes marked by parcel number. Right, cattle graze near a common road. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Her neighbors today include filmmaker James Cameron, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and musician Jackson Browne. More than 1,000 people now own a share of the ranch.

A timeshare to a cabin today goes for almost $1 million. A full parcel with a home was recently listed for more than $17 million.

Watch mega-pods of dolphins and the annual grey whale migration from the south-facing windows, the listing said. Ownership of this property allows you access to 8.5 miles of sandy private beach frontage.

Many residents, now under intense public scrutiny, have objected to their characterization as rich landowners who just want a private beach.

Were not all wealthy here, but the ranch is the most important thing to us, Boise-Cossart said. People will give up everything else to pay their assessments, to stay here. This is the core meaning of their lives.

When Boise-Cossart first moved to the ranch in 1977, she worked three days each week as ranch secretary, two days in construction. In the winter, she often trekked two miles in the mud to work.

Beverly Boise-Cossart, left, and Hollister Ranch attorney Steven Amerikaner cross a brush-covered creek to access Cuarta Beach at the ranch. Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Her husband, a carpenter, artist and surfer, also bought into the ranch in the early years  scraping together a $3,000 down payment for his share of a parcel. For four years, he lived in his van to pay off the rest.

Over the decades, theyve worked on the ranch and for the ranch, serving on various boards. Theyve raised children on this land, celebrated marriage, even said goodbye to loved ones. Recently, they welcomed the birth of a granddaughter.

Today, Boise-Cossart volunteers as the president of the ranchs cattle cooperative.

She pulled over one recent afternoon to catch up with Kathi Carlson, one of two cowgirls overseeing the cattle. Carlson had just spent the morning on horse shepherding some 300 cows with calves, as well as 650 stockers, out from the back hills.

Hollister is divided into 136 parcels, but Carlson sees the entire ranch as one giant pasture. She recognizes many cows by face and knows which babies are with which moms. If a cow is having trouble giving birth in the middle of the night, shes the first to saddle up.

It's like you have a really, really big house, and you've just got to keep it organized. Youve got this set of cow-calves here, the stockers here, the yearlings there, said Carlson, who fell in love with the ranch, left her job as a graphic designer for Patagonia in 2004 and has been working with cattle ever since. They get mixed up all the time and... you've got to straighten it all back again.

The two women chuckle and trade war stories. That time Boise-Cossart was driving home from a school board meeting, when a calf tripped and fell off an embankment  right onto the hood of her truck. Carlson, caught between a mother cow and baby last year, got her ribs broken.

So how do you put a public trail through a cattle ranch, they wonder? How many people know that an angry mother cow could be more aggressive than a mountain lion? What about the coyotes and wild pigs? And, her eyes widening, what about the bulls?

We try to put our bulls together so that they fight it out in the small corral first, Carlson said. But when they get into a fight over a girl cow, you can't get out of the way fast enough. They'll run into your car, they'll take a fence out, they'll go off a cliff fightin.

Who would be responsible, she wonders, if someone from the public got hurt?

And how do you keep visitors from wandering around? People here dont just go hiking on other peoples parcels, she said. Theres limited fencing, few boundaries, but unspoken rules and respect.

Signs warn of possible trespassing on Hollister Ranch Road. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Vehicles navigate the narrow curving Hollister Ranch Road. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) The gatehouse with guard. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) A young buck scrambles into the hills along Hollister Ranch Road. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times) Clockwise from left, signs warn of possible trespassing on Hollister Ranch Road. Vehicles navigate a narrow, curving road. The gatehouse with guard. A young buck scrambles into the hills along the main road. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Other ranch owners also worry how unfettered access could change this way of life. Some have pointed to the trashing of Joshua Tree when park rangers were off duty, and the mass trampling of Lake Elsinore during this years super bloom.

One need only to look up and down the coast pristine natural coasts with endangered species have given way to garbage strewn areas and parking lots, Grant Fowlie, a ranch owner, wrote to the California Coastal Commission. Essentially, we would be destroying this small area of beauty to create another couple miles of the same.

Those on the other side of the gate bristle at this demonization of the public. Nobody wants to run in and trash Hollister Ranch  we all care about the environment, said Susan Jordan of the California Coastal Protection Network, who has joined a coalition of trail and environmental justice groups in fighting for more access.

Read more: In big win for coastal advocates, judge refuses to approve deal that would limit the public from reaching Hollister Ranch beaches 

Coastal Commission Chair Dayna Bochco, in a public outburst last year, also pushed back at owners  calling them subtly elitist for worrying about losing such pristine land: You shouldnt be able to enjoy it any more than any other human being. You are no better of a steward than we are.

Logistical challenges are par for the course, she said. Officials have found ways to provide access  while balancing preservation  at Big Sur and other remote, rugged stretches of the coast. At Hollister, paved roads to the beach already exist for owners.

We would not have spent so much time and so many resources pushing for public access at Hollister if we didnt think it was possible, said Bochco, who recently met with owners and toured the ranch. Fortunately we have decades of experience doing this across 1,271 miles of California coastline, and there is a way to do it here too.

But the ranch is known for getting things its way. Since the passage of the California Coastal Act in 1976, owners have managed to avoid providing beach access for all.

First, they got an exception carved into the law allowing the ranch to bypass a requirement that each of its many owners provide a public route to the beach when developing their parcels.

Lawyers working for the ranch have been around for decades, finding ways to drag out legal battles in perpetuity. Recent tactics include trying to disqualify the judge who rejected their motions, and petitioning to the state Supreme Court.

But after decades of stops and stalls, state officials are now doubling down on a comprehensive access plan that could include a walking trail, bike path and shuttle to minimize traffic. A state lawmaker is pushing for a 2020 deadline.

Sunset at Alegria Beach on Hollister Ranch. Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Life on the ranch also has not been without controversy. In a 1992 lawsuit filed against the Hollister Ranch Owners Assn., a few residents alleged a culture where board members met secretly to make ranch-wide decisions, played favorites, imposed questionable fees and made life difficult for those who did not abide by their rules.

And critics recently questioned the ranchs claim to an agricultural tax break, as well as the environmental hypocrisy of driving on the beach. The president of Hollisters board responded that they had voted in December to prohibit beach driving, effective immediately.

Boise-Cossart has heard it all.

We inherited driving on the beach, she said. The Hollisters drove on the beach, and then toward the end of Hollister ownership, they let a certain elite group of surfers, the Santa Barbara Surf Club, come in and drive on the beach. So we still have some owners who are members of the surf club, who insist that it's their God-given right to drive on the beach  and we finally said no.

As for access, that stance was also inherited from the territorial surf culture, she said. But I think our attitude about public access has been changing.

We feel a real obligation to share this special place, said Beverly Boise-Cossart. But we want to make sure it's done right." Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Shes wary of the states plan, but would consider managed access like the Arroyo Hondo Preserve. There, guided nature hikes by the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County are offered to the public two weekends a month.

We feel a real obligation to share this special place, she said. But we want to make sure it's done right.

Out at the ranchs sprawling tide pool, the sun was setting as Boise-Cossarts daughter, Elise Cossart-Daly, wrapped up an afternoon of volunteer work.

Cossart-Daly, a civil rights and environmental lawyer, was tasked with expanding the Hollister Ranch Managed Access Program, which hosts tide pool trips for schoolchildren and tours for birders, botanists and researchers.

For years the ranch has also invited disabled veterans and other special-needs groups to visit an uncrowded beach, she said. Under the proposed expansion, the program would serve up to about 400 people a year. The tide pool trip would be offered at least 24 times a year for at least 20 students.

For me, it's really important to think about who will get access, she said, tiptoeing barefoot along the rocks as she pointed to barnacles and sand dollars. How do we balance preservation with ensuring that a wide array of people have access to this place? How do we create meaningful opportunities for these underrepresented groups?

Elise Cossart-Daly, a civil rights and environmental lawyer, was tasked with expanding the Hollister Ranch Managed Access Program, which hosts tide pool trips for schoolchildren. Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Its been empowering to grow up watching her mother make a name for herself on the ranch, she said, and to have the cattle operation led by two cowgirls. She sees them out in the pastures every morning on her way to work  "totally weathered, total bosses!" she said.

Cossart-Daly had left Hollister for a while  finishing school, experiencing a world with stable cell service. But she brought her now husband back to the ranch, where they found a home to rent.

On the way to giving birth to their first child, she had stopped on this beach, marveled at the uncrowded horizon, and envisioned sharing this world with her daughter.

She picked up a shell and got in the car. It was time to go to the hospital.
The head of a Los Angeles County business organization has accused a high-level advisor to Mayor Eric Garcetti of threatening to punish her group over its opposition to a tax proposal supported by the mayor.

The proposal  Measure EE on the June ballot  would raise money for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Garcetti has made passage of Measure EE a priority.

Tracy Hernandez, founding chief executive of the Los Angeles County Business Federation, known as BizFed, said Measure EE campaign manager Rick Jacobs told her during a phone call last month that BizFed members who campaign against the measure wont do any business in the city of L.A. for the next four years.

Hernandez said she took the comment to mean that BizFed members would be blocked from getting things done at City Hall.

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Jacobs denied Hernandezs account of their exchange. I am insulted that she would accuse me of being so trite as to use the old wont do business in this town line, Jacobs said.

Public fights are common during political campaigns. Still, the back-and-forth between Hernandez and Jacobs has been more acrimonious than other recent tax debates in Los Angeles.

Hernandez also said some BizFed members have called her to report that they have received calls from Jacobs with the same message  which Jacobs also denies. She declined to identify those members, saying they did not want to be named.

BizFed is the countys largest federation of business groups, representing more than 180 business associations and 400,000 employers, according to the group. BizFed and other business organizations, including the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, have formed a No on Measure EE committee to campaign against the tax.

In an interview, Hernandez said BizFeds members rely on contracts, permits and other approvals from the city. She said shes had a good relationship with Garcetti and worked with him to pass taxes for homeless housing and new transit lines.

Hernandez said the comments she attributed to Jacobs were unnerving. She said he repeated them several times during the call.

I was disgusted. Its mind-boggling, its terrible, Hernandez said.

In response, Jacobs said: Let me be very clear about what I said: Tracys job is to win friends and influence people for BizFed, and she is apparently paid $500,000 a year to do so. Working with a big tobacco strategist to wage war against our kids and against one of the mayors top priorities wont win BizFed many friends in L.A.

Matt Klink, a campaign consultant to the No on Measure EE committee, told The Times he worked for three years as director of governmental affairs for Philip Morris International in Europe.

Meanwhile, Courage Campaign, a progressive advocacy group founded by Jacobs, is targeting BizFed over its opposition to the tax and asking businesses to leave the group. Jacobs serves on the board of the Courage Campaign Institute, the groups education arm.

Measure EE, if passed with a two-thirds majority, would charge a 16-cent-per-square-foot tax on properties, including houses, storefronts and industrial buildings, in L.A. Unifieds jurisdiction. The tax would last 12 years. Supporters say the funds would be used to reduce class sizes and retain and attract teachers. Business groups argue the ballot measure is being rushed out to voters and doesnt include reforms to help the districts long-term financial woes.

Asked about the accusations against Jacobs, Garcetti spokesman Alex Comisar said: The mayors office doesnt coordinate with the campaign, so you will have to ask them.

A longtime player in Democratic politics, Jacobs raised millions in support of Garcettis 2013 mayoral campaign and was later given a top City Hall post. He led Garcettis 2017 reelection campaign and now fundraises for Garcettis causes, including his federal political action committee.

BizFed Chief Operating Officer Elizabeth Tulasi said Hernandez told her about the call with Jacobs shortly after it happened.

Days later, two L.A. city departments  the Port of Los Angeles and Los Angeles World Airports  contacted BizFed to cancel their memberships, Hernandez said. The port is listed as a gold level member on BizFeds marketing materials; those members pay $15,000 a year.

Gene Seroka, the ports top executive, didnt respond to a request for comment. LAWA spokeswoman Becca Doten said the airports department is a current member of BizFed and didnt respond to follow-up questions.

Jacobs said he didnt ask the port and airport to drop their BizFed memberships. The mayors office declined to comment on the two agencies.

Hernandez said that during the same phone call with Jacobs, he told her that if BizFed opposes Measure EE, people will say, BizFed hurts kids. Jacobs told The Times he did make a version of that comment.

Days later, tweets went out from Courage Campaigns BizFed Hurts Kids account, Hernandez said. Courage Campaign Executive Director Eddie Kurtz said in an interview that Jacobs and others flagged BizFeds opposition to the tax, prompting Courage Campaign to launch its offensive.
A Los Angeles Unified School District police officer was involved in a shooting Friday following a carjacking and vehicle collision in Westlake, officials said.

The incident, which did not happen on school grounds, took place shortly before 3 p.m. near the intersection of Alvarado and West 3rd streets, said Sgt. Julie Spry, a public information officer for LAUSD police.

A suspect has been taken into custody, Spry said.

Det. Meghan Aguilar, an LAPD spokeswoman, said the suspect was involved in a carjacking that led to a car crash in the vicinity of Alvarado and West 3rd shortly before the shooting occurred.

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The school police officer was not the victim of the carjacking or involved in the crash, according to Aguilar, who said both the suspect and the officer were hospitalized with injuries.

School police officials plan to hold a news conference near the shooting scene later Friday.

james.queally@latimes.com

Follow @JamesQueallyLAT for crime and police news in California.
Former West Covina Mayor Mike Spence, once a rising conservative political star who openly struggled with drug addiction, was found dead at an Inland Empire motel Thursday night, according to authorities.

The 52-year-old Spence rose to political fame as an outspoken critic of government assistance programs and taxes. A cause of death was still pending Friday, but an initial investigation indicates it could be due, in part, to a drug overdose.

Ontario Police Det. Fred Alvarez said Spence was found after police were alerted by staff to an unresponsive man in one of the rooms at the Folk Inn Ontario Airport on Vineyard Avenue. Paramedics found the man was not breathing and declared him dead at the scene.

Alvarez declined to say whether officers found drug paraphernalia inside the three-star hotel room typically used by tourists.

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West Covina leaders and community and conservative activists mourned his loss Friday.

We never thought he was shy about stating what he believed. When people learned what he was hiding, we were shocked but hopeful for Mike, said Robert Parry, a former publisher of the West Covina Guardian, who first got to know Spence in elementary school.

Parry said the community and California will miss Spences voice, but above all else it is family who will feel the loss. We are thinking of his wife and two kids.

Spence, who served for decades on the West Covina school board and City Council, openly battled addiction. He failed to be reelected to the council in November after being stripped of the honorary title of mayor five months earlier, following an incident in which he was found unconscious in a Costa Mesa Holiday Inn Express with controlled substances in the room.

A woman who told a 911 operator she was Spences friend informed the dispatcher he was overdosing on heroin and described a syringe in the room.

Orange County prosecutors opted to not charge Spence. In the aftermath, Spence said he felt that he had been discriminated against as an addict when the incident was made public.

Spence announced he would step down as mayor in June but remained a councilman.

The incident was hardly his first involving drugs, and he openly discussed his battle with addiction.

In 2016, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence stemming from a crash that left him seriously injured. Investigators said at the time that methamphetamine was discovered in Spences system after he crashed a rental car. He received three years of probation and was ordered to participate in a drug and alcohol program.

Born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley, Spence garnered a reputation for sticking to his conservative fiscal views. As school board president in the 1990s, he contended that subsidized school breakfasts were anti-family.

I realize what Im saying isnt politically correct, Spence said at the time. But for the last 40 years, we have spent bazillions on anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs, and it hasnt helped, he said in opposing a move by colleagues to introduce a reduced-price breakfast program.

In 2015 as a city coucilman, Spence pushed for a state audit of city financial books that subsequently revealed years of misspending and collections with little proper approval or oversight.

This gives us and the public a blueprint, Spence said of the results. It puts aside all the rumors and plainly sets out the problems.

richard.winton@latimes.com

Twitter: @lacrimes
Four people were shot in Watts on Thursday evening after the funeral procession for Nipsey Hussle had passed through the neighborhood, the latest in a recent uptick of violence in South Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said three men and one woman were shot near the intersection of 103rd and Main Street. One of the victims later died. The suspects drove away in a gray Hyundai.

We must stop this senseless violence, Moore said on Twitter.

The shooting occurred after the procession for the slain rapper had left Watts, and there are no indications at this time that the violence was connected to the memorial.

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Hussles killing on March 31 in front of his clothing store made international headlines. Moore and other community leaders have said his death is part of a larger increase in killings in the area.

In the week leading up to Hussles death, 11 people were slain in L.A.  more than double last years weekly average.

About half the killings occurred in South L.A. All of the victims were black or Latino.

Officials described the recent surge as possibly a back-and-forth between rival gangs.

At a meeting of the Watts Gang Task Force on Monday, Capt. Louis Paglialonga of the LAPDs Southeast Division described a recent surge in shootings in Watts that may be a back-and-forth between rival gangs.The beginning of the year had been quiet, Paglialonga said, with no homicides in Southeast until the beginning of March.

But after Denzel Gordon, 21, was killed in the Jordan Downs housing development on March 27, another man was killed near the Nickerson Gardens housing development the next day.

Investigators are unsure whether the second killing was a domestic dispute or retaliation for Gordons death.

On Saturday, Gordons friends held a carwash and vigil for him, Paglialonga said. Soon after that, a man who police think was a member of the Bounty Hunters, a Bloods gang, was killed in front of Nickerson Gardens. Later Sunday, Paglialonga said, two members of the Grape Street Crips were shot and wounded in Jordan Downs.

The LAPD has assigned extra officers to Watts to try to stem the violence, Paglialonga said.

We are in enforcement mode, Paglialonga said. My job is to save lives.

The night Hussle was shot, Moore noted on Twitter that the killing represented the latest loss in a troubling surge in violence. Since last Sunday, 26 victims have been shot & 10 homicides  thats 36 families left picking up the pieces. We will work aggressively with our community to quell this senseless loss of life.

There have no been reports of violence related to the Hussle procession, which drew tens of thousands to the streets of South L.A.

Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.
How does one manage to live 100 years?

I think physical and mental activity, you need them both, said Clifford Pedersen, who turns 102 in July. I used to run a lot in road races, and I used to ski a lot in the winter. And as far as the mental, I do puzzles.

Pedersen was one of 21 centenarians honored at a special luncheon in Seal Beachs Leisure World retirement community on April 9. Each centenarian received a corsage and a city certificate of recognition from the mayor, Thomas Moore. More than 220 friends and family members attended the sold-out event, sponsored by the Golden Age Foundation.

About 60 of Leisure Worlds 9,000 residents are 100 years old or older. Though the number of centenarians in the U.S. is growing, they are still relatively rare: the estimated 80,000 constitute only .02% of the population.

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Their longevity is especially remarkable when considering the average life expectancy in their birth year: in 1919, it was 53.5 years for men and 56 years for women.

It was not easy growing up 100 years ago, Moore told the audience. Im sure that among you are thousands of stories that would fascinate all of us.

Sporting a black fedora with World War II Veteran stitched on the crown, Pedersen recounted one of those stories with daughter Jo Maldonado at his side.

Before serving in the U.S. Army in Italy and Africa during World War II, Pedersen was part of 15,000 U.S. troops on board the liner and troopship RMS Queen Mary in 1942. In a tragedy that wasnt publicly reported until after the war, the Queen Mary collided with an escort cruiser, HMS Curacoa, outside of Ireland, killing 337 crew members of the Curacoa. The incident has been called one WWIIs best-kept secrets.

When asked what advice he would give to live a good life, Pedersen said to accept what comes your way without complaining too much.

Its an attitude characteristic of his demographic cohort, the Greatest Generation. People born between 1901 and 1924 are considered exceptionally resilient. Born in a time when electricity, cars, indoor plumbing, movies and radios were still catching on, they had to work through the crippling uncertainty of the Great Depression and the turmoil of WWII.

Gloria Serafano, who turns 100 on April 21 and attended the luncheon with her daughter Rose Marie Fenell, epitomizes the hardiness of her peer group. A second-generation Italian American born in Philadelphia, Serafano utilized resourcefulness, faith and a positive attitude to navigate the twists and turns in her century of life.

She left school at 15 to help her widowed mother support her four siblings and married at 18. After her first husband died in the early 1940s, Serafano struggled to make ends meet as a single mother of then-2-year-old Fenell.

A friend moved to California and urged her to come. Serafano got on a Greyhound bus and left the East Coast for the West. She found a job at an aircraft company in Downey, working as a real-life Rosie the Riveter. Though the term represented thousands of women who found work in manufacturing during the war, Serafano was an actual riveter, operating a riveting gun on P-38 bomber wings.

Before the womens rights movement [of the 1960s and 70s], Mom was a modern woman ahead of her time and didnt let anything get her down, said Fenell, who lives in Riverside County. Wherever she went, she belonged and excelled.

After the war, Serafano became a librarian for system development and engineering tech for the former Douglas Aircraft company in Downey. She found love and loss again, experiencing the deaths of three beloved husbands in her lifetime. When asked how she endured such difficulty and lived so long, Serafano credited her Catholic faith and her ability to love.

I live by one word: love, Serafano said. Your whole life should be all about love; dont hate anybody, because if you hate anybody, you wont be happy. Take each moment as a precious moment to live.

Aliese Muhonen is a contributor to TimesOC. Follow her on Twitter at @AlieseMuhonen.

For more news and features about Orange County, visit TimesOC.com or follow us on Twitter @timesocofficial.
Harry Reid needed to do something.

A swastika poster appeared at a Bernie Sanders rally in Henderson, Nev. Then there were the swastikas carved in dorm rooms at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Beyond his home state was the march of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., and the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

The 79-year-old Democrat  who served 30 years in the U.S. Senate, at one point as the majority leader  left office in 2017 after not seeking reelection but said he felt compelled to fight the rise of anti-Semitism.

On Thursday, he took an initial step, bringing in Deborah Lipstadt, who famously won a libel case against Holocaust denier David Irving in British courts in the late 1990s, and Jonathan Weisman, journalist and author of the book (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.

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Reid said that, with the number of Holocaust survivors dwindling, he thought it was important to keep speaking out on anti-Semitism for younger generations to understand how it can take root and grow in society.

It has raised its ugly head all across America, Reid said, noting that he didnt recall seeing it this fervent when he first was elected to the Senate in the 1980s.

His anxiety is justified, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Its most recent accounting of anti-Semitism nationwide showed that in 2017 there were 1,986 incidents  a 57% increase over the previous year and the second highest total since it began collecting the data in 1979.

The ADL has yet to release a tally for 2018, which saw the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history. In October at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, 11 worshipers were gunned down during Sabbath morning services, while seven more were injured.

In Pittsburgh, two gentle souls  victims of the synagogue shooting  are laid to rest 

The suspect arrested in the shooting had posted anti-Semitic rants online. Lipstadt said future attacks should not be looked upon as lone wolf incidents, but the acts of those inspired by what they see and read about in online forums and comments on social media platforms.

They may not know each other and they may not be getting an order from central headquarters, but theyre all reading the same stuff, Lipstadt said. Theyre all citing one another.

Weisman condemned the far right for using the term political correctness to excuse hate speech.

He blamed President Trump as contributing to a decline in the level of discourse in American society to the point that rudeness has become acceptable  providing some cover to anti-Semites and racists.

Trump had just been in Las Vegas five days earlier speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition and meeting privately with one of his biggest donors and supporters, Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Sheldon Adelson.

The president focused much of his attention on Israel and touted his moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem last year. He also highlighted a police officers heroic attempts to save Jews during the Tree of Life mass shooting and accused Democrats of having allowed the terrible scourge of anti-Semitism to take root in their party and in their country.

The panelists said they believe that anti-Semitism indeed has a toehold within the far left of the Democratic Party.

Both Weisman and Lipstadt noted the struggle the party has had over comments made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a Muslim and first-generation American whose election was embraced by fellow Democrats as a rebuke of anti-immigrant rhetoric and an example of the partys welcoming big tent.

But she has stirred controversy with critiques of U.S. policy toward Israel that used language widely interpreted as anti-Semitic.

Small desert town will remember Harry Reid even after he moves on 

Reid didnt say what his next step was in the fight against anti-Semitism, but he said he hoped people would fight hate speech whenever they heard it  whether it was at ballgames, concerts or even family gatherings.

Lipstadt agreed.

When you hear something, say something, she said. Not to change the minds of the people who are saying things  in most cases, thats like trying to push a boulder up a mountain  but to telegraph to the people at the table  that this is not tolerated.
The Las Vegas Catholic Diocese on Friday released the names of 32 clergy members and one volunteer it said were credibly accused of child sexual abuse and who had served in Nevada within the last several decades.

Bishop George Leo Thomas, who opened the broad investigation after becoming head of the diocese in 2018, said the church has been in secrecy and denial for a very long time.

The Las Vegas Diocese said of the 33 people listed, 21 are dead and the remainder had been removed from their positions, most before the investigation began.

A volunteer on the list was removed from his post just this year. The former priest had been accused multiple times of abuse in dioceses in other states, and the Diocese of Gary, Ind., showed hed been removed from the clerical ranks in July 2006.

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Thomas said all the information gathered on the accused had been turned over to law enforcement.

The Las Vegas release comes on the heels of another by the Catholic Diocese of Reno that listed 12 clergy members it said were credibly accused of sexually abusing children. The 12 named from Reno are also included in the Las Vegas list.

Its very important for me to be on record saying that Im very deeply apologetic  truly aggrieved  for the people who have been abused, and deeply saddened, and I want to offer on behalf of this diocese a heartfelt apology, Thomas said.

The Las Vegas Diocese does not know how many victims in total were abused by the clergy members, Thomas said, adding that would be the second part of the process.

He did say that since 1995, the diocese has paid out between $14 million and $15 million in settlement claims, counseling costs and attorney fees.

The victim survivor will be believed and beloved, Thomas said. I will do everything in my power to assist them.

Judy Larson, 72, with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said Thomas seemed to be sincere in his apology.

That was refreshing, she said. It wasnt just thoughts and prayers.

Pope condemns child abuse by priests but fails to issue zero-tolerance rule at summit 

Larson, who lives in Salt Lake City and works with victims throughout several Western states, said the naming of priests is crucial to give validation to the experiences of victims.

Larson said she was raped by a priest in Detroit as a 10-year-old. Her abuser was defrocked in the 1970s, she said, and was named by the Detroit Archdiocese as one who was credibly accused of abuse  but he was never criminally charged.

In Las Vegas, investigators for the diocese started work eight months ago and combed through records going back decades to look for and evaluate accusations.

The list showed some priests having served in as many as 13 parishes in their time in the diocese. Father William Duff, who died in 2005, moved around the most, serving all over the state, including in Reno, Elko and Las Vegas. Some of those listed, including the volunteer removed this year, were accused of sexually abusing minors in dioceses in other states but not in Nevada.

David Roger, a former Clark County prosecutor and district attorney who headed the investigation for the diocese, said the clergy on the list had been accused of a broad array of sexual misconduct against children.

Roger said the diocese used a standard of simply probable cause as being enough to level a credible accusation. It is a very low standard, said Roger, who led the Diocesan Clergy Oversight Review Board/Independent Review Board.

The release of the names is part of the Catholic Churchs continued struggle with abuse that went on for decades and remained largely unreported until it exploded with reports of abuse by clergy members in Boston under then-Bishop Cardinal Law.

Since the abuse was exposed in the Boston Globe, in events subsequently portrayed in the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, the Catholic Church has seen diocese after diocese across the globe reveal the names of abusers.

Just last month, Catholic Church officials in Poland released information showing there were more than 380 clergy who had abused in excess of 600 victims dating back to 1990.

And in December, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles added 54 names to the list of more than 200 clergy members who had been accused of sexual misconduct with children going back decades.

The Las Vegas Diocese spans five counties and consists of 28 parishes with 87 priests. The Reno Diocese also has 28 parishes and has 70 priests covering northern Nevada. Before 1995, there was only one diocese covering the state.

In a letter released Friday by the Las Vegas Diocese, Thomas wrote that some of the people named on the list had been criminally convicted, but that others were being accused publicly for the first time.

Thomas came to Las Vegas after serving in dioceses in Seattle and Helena, Mont. The Helena diocese also released names of accused abusers when he served there, about four years ago.

Often times, the pain and the grief and suffering that victim survivors feel is still in the present tense, Thomas said.

So it is very important for the church to listen very attentively to the hearts and minds of our survivors community and to make a very big step  and that is to live in transparency and truth.

Oakland diocese names 45 priests and other church officials accused of sexual abuse 
On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg blasts Vice President Mike Pences cultural and religious conservatism. But as the mayor of Indianas fourth-largest city, his tone toward the states Republican former governor was more muted.

During the four years in which they overlapped in Indiana politics, Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor, had a cordial relationship with Pence. The two collaborated on economic development issues. Buttigieg presented Pence with a South Bend promotional T-shirt that said I (heart) SB. And at ceremonial events, Pence would lavish Buttigieg with praise.

The relationship between the two men has come under scrutiny as Buttigiegs campaign becomes a surprise hit, raking in $7 million in donations during the first quarter. As he formally launches his White House campaign on Sunday, Buttigieg, who is gay, has emerged as a celebrated voice for LGBTQ equality and religious tolerance. And he has hardened his rhetoric toward Pence, using President Trumps vice president as a foil representing an oppressive opposition.

At a recent LGBTQ event, Buttigieg spoke of the importance of his marriage to his husband, Chasten, and framed his sexuality in religious terms.

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If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade, Buttigieg said. And thats the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if youve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.

He has previously called Pences religious conservatism a fanatical ideology.

By Buttigiegs own admission in his campaign autobiography, his relationship with Pence is complicated. In an interview with CNBC that aired Thursday, Pence said they had a great working relationship and criticized the mayors characterization of his religious beliefs.

He knows better, Pence said. He knows me.

The complex dynamic between Buttigieg and Pence reflects a connection born of political necessity between two men on the cusp of unlikely political and personal paths. And to some fellow Indiana Democrats, it was frustrating.

In a state with few influential Democrats, some hoped to tap into Buttigiegs burgeoning political celebrity to help them rebut Pence and his policies, according to two party strategists who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal debate. But they found he was often reluctant to take on Pence directly or forcefully.

RELATED: Whos running for president and whos not 

In early 2015, Pence was grappling with an HIV outbreak in southern Indiana and facing calls from political leaders, including some fellow Republicans, to respond by approving a needle exchange program for illicit drug users. Buttigieg, who was months away from publicly coming out as gay, was largely absent from that debate.

Pence caused a national uproar that year by signing a religious freedom law criticized as anti-LGBTQ. Republicans, including the mayor of Indianapolis, demanded that the governor and the GOP legislature fix this law and do so immediately. Buttigieg criticized state politicians for the most embarrassing incident and tweeted he was disappointed that Pence signed the bill.

But several weeks later, as the controversy raged, Buttigieg attended a Pence event in South Bend. The mayor told the South Bend Tribune, Im focused on how we can work together across city limits and across the aisle.

With respect to Pences worst blunder, his most difficult controversy, Mayor Pete was not leading the charge against him, said Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville in southern Indiana. If youre a Democratic mayor in a Republican state and you rely on friendly relations with the General Assembly, you dont necessarily want to be lobbing bombs all the time. But that should not preclude someone from speaking out forcefully on a pressing civil rights issue.

Buttigieg publicly revealed he was gay about three months after Pence signed the religious freedom law. In his book, Buttigieg acknowledged that he passed up the chance to urge Pence in person to veto the measure.

I wish I could say I made a good effort to talk him out of it, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind, he wrote, referring to a meeting in which Pence told Buttigieg and other mayors he planned to sign the legislation.

Then-Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, center, talks with South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg at an event in downtown South Bend in 2013. (James Brosher / South Bend Tribune)

Buttigiegs allies argue that as mayor, he had to maintain a cordial relationship with a governor  any governor  who held sway over money sorely needed in South Bend.

It doesnt help your city if you have an adversarial relationship with the sitting governor, and Mayor Buttigieg recognized that, said Greg Goodnight, the Democratic mayor of Kokomo, Ind., who supports Buttigiegs White House ambitions.

For example, one of Pences last major policy achievements as governor was a program that awarded funding to several regions for redevelopment, including $42 million for the greater South Bend area. During a ceremonial 2016 groundbreaking at a long-shuttered Studebaker factory, Buttigieg and Pence stood side by side and shook hands after scooping dirt with their shovels.

RELATED: After Trump, swarm of Democrats eye 2020 and think why not? 

Where they agreed on issues, like economic development, the mayor worked with then-Gov. Pence for the good of his constituents and his city, Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith said. Where they disagreed, the mayor stood up to him, like when Pence embarrassed the state of Indiana with anti-LGBTQ laws, or when he wanted to turn away refugees from the state, or when Pences policies hurt South Bends workers.

Still, some wish Buttigieg would play it less safe, particularly now that hes on a national stage. Tony Flora, president of the North Central Indiana AFL-CIO chapter, said the mayor says the right things but should expend more political capital.

I would look to Pete Buttigieg to be a louder voice and be more forceful, Flora said. He came to our rallies, signed petitions and did make public remarks, but he could have been a bit more substantive instead of just making speeches  taking some action and being more supportive.

Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is a lesbian, said she sympathized with the complicated situation Buttigieg was in as mayor, especially when he dealt with Pence.

The answer that I came to, and Im assuming Pete did as well, is that first and foremost, you are the mayor, said Parker, who is now the president and chief executive of Victory Fund, a group that works to elect LGBTQ candidates. You are not an activist. You are the mayor. And every time you speak, it has an impact on your city  for good or ill. And its something you have to navigate.
Many people, including some former admirers, have come to loathe Julian Assange. But you dont have to like the founder of WikiLeaks to worry about whether his federal indictment  unsealed Thursday after he was arrested at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London  portends a crackdown on freedom of the press.

That concern is eased to some degree  but not entirely  by the fact that the indictment doesnt charge Assange with a crime for publishing classified information on WikiLeaks. That would truly have been a frontal assault on what journalists do on a regular basis. Rather, the indictment alleges that Assange conspired in 2010 with Chelsea Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq, to crack a government password in search of secret material to divulge.

Thats an enormously important distinction. Journalists are rightly protected by the 1st Amendment even when they publish classified information that has been provided to them by leakers. But if Assange indeed crossed a line by conspiring to facilitate the theft of the information, thats a very different matter.

You dont have to like the founder of WikiLeaks to worry about whether his federal indictment portends a crackdown on freedom of the press.

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The alleged plan to crack the password was apparently unsuccessful, but WikiLeaks did release thousands of files Manning downloaded. Some of the disclosures, such as a 2007 video of an Apache helicopter attack that killed 12 civilians in Baghdad, qualified as whistleblowing. But others, including confidential diplomatic cables, undermined U.S. foreign policy without exposing any wrongdoing. Manning served seven years of a 35-year prison sentence before receiving a commutation of her sentence from then-President Obama.

More recently, WikiLeaks was responsible for the release of thousands of Democratic emails during the 2016 election campaign, emails that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III said were provided by Russian operatives. (Assange has denied any links to Russian intelligence.) In 2017, then-CIA Director Michael R. Pompeo described WikiLeaks as a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.

Whether one agrees with Assanges tactics or not, it would have been highly alarming if the Justice Department had chosen to prosecute him under the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to transfer sensitive defense information to any person not entitled to receive it. Treating the publication of such information as a violation of the Espionage Act could deter whistleblowers, keep the public in the dark about official wrongdoing and would put an unreasonable obstacle in the way of journalists.

The indictment unsealed Thursday fortunately steers clear of setting such a precedent. Although it alleges that Assange and Manning sought to hack a Defense Department computer in furtherance of a criminal act in violation of the laws of the United States, including provisions of the Espionage Act, the actual charge is that Assange conspired with Manning to commit the crime of computer intrusion.

Even if one regards Assange as a journalist, that doesnt exempt him from complying with a law against computer fraud. The burden is on the government to prove that he conspired to violate the law. Meanwhile, like any other criminal defendant, he is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

While it is a relief that Assange isnt being prosecuted for merely publishing classified information, the indictment nevertheless has some ominous implications. For example, it cites as part of the conspiracy that Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States. According to the indictment, Manning told Assange that after this upload, thats all I really have got left. Assange replied: Curious eyes never run dry in my experience.

Robert Mahoney, deputy director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, worried that this language might foreshadow broad legal arguments about journalists soliciting information or interacting with sources that could have chilling consequences for investigative reporting and the publication of information of public interest.

Whatever happens to Assange, that would be a tragedy.

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The PROTECT Act, the health insurance reform bill unveiled this week by 18 Senate Republicans, is aptly named, albeit not for the reason its sponsors suggest.

The bill pretends to be about safeguarding Americans with preexisting health conditions. But its really about protecting Senate Republicans from the stink caused by the Trump administrations efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a huge number of people  more than a quarter of non-elderly Americans  have preexisting conditions of the sort that would have led insurers to deny them coverage had the ACA not gone into effect. The ACA gave people who purchase their own health insurance expansive protection against such discrimination, making comprehensive coverage available and affordable to millions of Americans whod been either priced out or shut out by insurers.

The PROTECT Act would do nothing to address the biggest problems that would ensue if the ACA were obliterated by the courts.

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Thats one of the main reasons the public opposed GOP efforts in the last Congress to dump the ACA. Democrats pummeled Republicans over the preexisting conditions issue in 2018, providing some of the energy behind the blue wave that swept the GOP out of the House majority that year.

In a bizarre ruling in December, however, a federal judge in Texas declared the ACA unconstitutional in its entirety. After a group of Democratic state officials appealed, the Trump administration urged the appeals court to uphold the ruling and throw out every piece of the ACA.

Trumps move revived the debate over preexisting condition protections, reportedly to the surprise and chagrin of many congressional Republicans who did not want to have to defend themselves on this issue again. Theres little disagreement among lawmakers about the need to provide such protections; the publics demand for them is clear. The disagreement is over how to do it.

Thats where the PROTECT Act comes in. Designed to look like a life preserver for people with preexisting conditions if the courts ruled against the ACA, it would bar insurers from denying coverage to an applicant or raising a customers premiums based on that persons medical history.

But the bills protections are chimeric, as lead sponsor Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)  a gastroenterologist who is intimately familiar with the U.S. health insurance system  has to know.

If the ACA is repealed, insurers would no longer be required to offer comprehensive policies to all comers. All the PROTECT Act would do is encourage insurers to do something they did before the ACA: offer cheaper policies with thin coverage aimed at healthy customers, and considerably more expensive policies with comprehensive coverage for people who might actually need costly care.

In other words, it would allow insurers to go back to the bad old days of segmenting low-risk and high-risk customers, then designing their policies to attract the youngest, healthiest consumers.

But thats been the thrust of all the GOPs healthcare efforts in recent years. Their main objection to the ACA is that, in its effort to extend insurance to millions of uninsured Americans, it raised costs for younger, healthier people, especially those whose incomes are too high to qualify for the ACAs subsidies. Their proposed solution, however, has been to open the market to cheaper policies that cover fewer risks  often leaving consumers with much less protection than they thought they were buying.

The Trump administration has been particularly aggressive in promoting short-term policies  also known as junk plans  whose benefits are quite limited and often exclude coverage of preexisting conditions.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

Promoting cheaper, thinner plans may enable relatively young, healthy consumers to lower their premiums, but it inevitably raises the cost of comprehensive policies, pushing more healthcare costs onto people with preexisting conditions and risky jobs regardless of whether they currently need care. A better way to rein in Obamacare premiums would be to spread costs more broadly  for example, by having taxpayers pick up some of the tab for the most costly patients  while working more aggressively to reduce doctor and hospital bills, cut administrative costs and reduce the incentives to provide the highest volume of expensive care.

Beyond that, the PROTECT Act would do nothing to address the biggest problems that would ensue if the ACA were obliterated by the courts. About 15 million low-income Americans would immediately lose the insurance coverage they had gained through the ACAs Medicaid expansion. Millions more would lose the subsidies they receive through the ACA that make private insurance affordable.

The result would be chaos in the market for individual insurance plans, with an enormous number of Americans left without coverage. Perhaps the sponsors of the PROTECT Act think its their insurance policy in case the courts ultimately throw out the ACA. But its not much help for anyone else.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook
The New Hampshire state Senate voted Thursday to end the death penalty in the Live Free or Die state, following a similar vote in the state House of Representatives last month. Margins in both houses were large enough to overcome a veto should Gov. Chris Sununu try to block the measure, as is expected. Last year, he vetoed a similar measure, which the Legislature failed to override.

So its all over but the shouting, at least in New Hampshire.

California, of course, still has the death penalty, though Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced a moratorium for as long as hes in office  a significant though symbolic gesture, at least for now, given that the federal courts have shut down the execution chamber at San Quentin over legal issues with the states lethal-injection protocol. Newsom also withdrew the states proposed single-drug execution protocol, which adds yet another delay in the eventual resumption of capital punishment here.

Interestingly, conservatives across the country have begun to tip the balance on the death penalty and other efforts at criminal justice reform. A traditionally reflexive, hard-line law-and-order ethos has thawed for many, leading to sentencing reforms for lower-level crimes as well as efforts to end capital punishment on grounds, in essence, that it is expensive and likely to lead to the executions of some innocent people.

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So its all over but the shouting, at least in New Hampshire.

In fact, the New Hampshire vote, should it end where it seems to be headed in a ban on the death penalty, marks the third time in recent months in which capital punishment has run into a state wall. In addition to Newsoms moratorium, the Washington Supreme Court declared last year that states death penalty was unconstitutional because it is racially biased. That followed a 2014 moratorium by Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee.

In New Hampshire, the Legislatures move puts into law what had already been the practice. The state has only one person on its death row, and it has not managed to execute anyone since 1939.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, New Hampshire would be the 22nd state to formally end the death penalty. Including states that have a death penalty that hasnt been used in more than a decade, were at 31 states.

Meanwhile, about 45% of Americans say they believe that the death penalty is imposed unfairly, according to a Gallup poll from October, which Gallup said was an increase from previous surveys. Those who said they thought it was applied fairly dipped to 49%, the lowest level Gallup has recorded since 2000.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

As a matter of policy, support for capital punishment is 54% nationally, which the Pew Research Center says is near historic lows (Gallup has it at 56%, near historic lows for its polling as well).

In California, a recent Quinnipiac poll found that support for the death penalty had dropped to 41%, compared with 48% supporting a maximum penalty of life in prison without parole. That implies a seismic shift from 2016, when voters rejected a ballot measure to end the death penalty and voted instead for a regimen that would speed it up. (The courts have rejected key portions of the latter measure.)

As the Times editorial board wrote last month, Newsoms moratorium could prove to be a significant force in ending capital punishment in the state as a proposed 2020 ballot measure works it way through the Legislature.

Meanwhile, the will of the people has been shifting, the board wrote. Last year, California juries imposed only five death sentences, down from 11 the year before and from a peak of 43 death sentences in 1999. As more capital punishment cases get deeper reviews by opponents of capital punishment, more and more people  164 since 1973  are being exonerated and released from death rows nationwide, including five in California. Newsom already had expanded DNA testing in the highly questionable 1985 conviction of Kevin Cooper that could lead to a sixth exoneration. And about half of the exonerated nationwide are African American, evidence that the system disproportionally affects minorities.

Since that editorial appeared on March 13, a mere month ago, another death row exoneration was added to the list  Clifford Williams Jr., after spending 42 years in Florida prisons.

So there does seem to be a slow but significant shift away from capital punishment, a shift that has been too long in the coming. Among the leading nations of the world, we are among the last to abandon such barbaric acts by the government. Lets hope we join the world of the just and sane sooner rather than later.

UPDATES:

8:24: This post was updated to correct the year of New Hampshires last execution.
President Trump confirmed Friday that he is considering a new policy of placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only, as he wrote in a tweet. The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!

There are three main responses to that. The first is that the president is likely trolling to get a rise out of liberals and to elicit some fist pumps from his base, but its fundamentally impractical. How would the president move thousands of migrants from, say, El Paso, to San Francisco? And conservatives would be OK with that kind of spending? Plus, migrants dont have to remain in the jurisdiction into which the government releases them.

The second is that if Trump truly believes the people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum are dangerous threats to American neighborhoods, to concentrate them in areas where his political opponents hold sway is an egregious abuse of power. No president should intentionally undermine the public safety of communities, especially for political reasons.

The third is: Bring em on.

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Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

Numerous studies have found that immigrants  both those here legally and those without permission  commit crimes at lower levels than native-born Americans. So flooding sanctuary cities temporarily with asylum seekers would probably drive down local crime rates. The so-called sanctuary cities and states have staked out that position for a purpose  they welcome migrants as friends, neighbors and colleagues.

Dropping 10,000 asylum seekers on Los Angeles in one fell swoop could create a logistical problem, much as it has in El Paso, where the local capacity for resettling migrants awaiting deportation hearings has been overwhelmed. Yet if it happened, it probably wouldnt play out that way. Trump, who never misses a chance to malign migrants and stoke fear among the irrational, doesnt understand that just because he releases migrants into specific cities that they will stay there.

Bring em on.

Migrants  look the term up, Mr. President  move around and historically have wound up dispersed around the country where local support networks of friends, families and nonprofit groups are willing and able to help them. The governments requirement is that they stay in touch with the Immigration Court system, which, because successive administrations and Congresses have utterly failed to expand it to handle the work, can take years to resolve their cases.

At its heart, the administrations contemplation of this plan, and Trumps belligerent boasting of it, reveals its inability to craft policies to achieve its stated goal of a more secure border.

Trump blames Congress for the outdated immigration and asylum system, which is true as far as it goes. But Trumps ramped-up arrests have overstuffed detention centers. His government shutdown contributed to the immigration court backlog, with hearings that had been scheduled before the shutdown getting postponed, in some cases, for years.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

Trump has made immigration the centerpiece of his presidency, yet he has botched it at just about every turn. He fundamentally doesnt understand that tens of thousands of people are arriving at the border because, in most cases, they fear for their lives if they remain in their homes. Or they are fleeing deadening poverty. Pounding his chest and bellowing about a wall addresses none of that.

And neither does releasing migrants in the sanctuary cities and states. But it would at least drop the desperate into much more caring hands than they experience with the Trump administration.
The indictment unsealed in federal court against Julian Assange on Thursday accuses him of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to break passwords and gain access to top-secret government computers. If this is what Assange conspired to do, then he committed a federal crime, since hacking is not a 1st Amendment right  even if it was done for the noble purpose of exposing government wrongdoing.

Crucially, the indictment does not charge Assange with breaking the law for what was published on the WikiLeaks website. Under Supreme Court precedents, the press generally is protected by the 1st Amendment for what it publishes so long as it does not engage in illegal activity. For example, in New York Times vs. United States, the Supreme Court ruled in 1971 that the federal government could not stop newspapers from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a history of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, even though they were highly classified and had been illegally copied and removed from the Defense Department by an insider.

Similarly, in Bartnicki vs. Vopper, the court ruled in 2001 that a radio station and a radio talk show host could not be held liable when they broadcast a tape of a phone conversation that had been illegally intercepted and recorded. Notwithstanding the violations of the law, the 1st Amendment protected the media because none of its employees had participated in the illegality, and the conversation involved issues of importance concerning the local public schools.

Civil disobedience is not a defense to a crime; those who engage in it still must submit to punishment for their offenses.

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The Assange case is different. He is being prosecuted not for what was published, but for his alleged involvement in a conspiracy to illegally obtain that material. The Constitution does not give reporters the right to break into buildings or computers to gather information, even for very important stories. In the Pentagon Papers case, for example, Daniel Ellsberg was prosecuted for allegedly having leaked the documents, although his case was ultimately thrown out because of the governments misconduct in investigating him.

Some have decried Assanges arrest because the documents obtained by Manning and published by WikiLeaks contained information of vital public concern. Manning turned over 700,000 documents. Among them was evidence that, between 2002 and 2009, the federal government continued to hold some individuals as prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, even after they were found to have done nothing wrong and had long been cleared for release.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

The documents also revealed that U.S. authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and murder by Iraqi police and soldiers. The classified reports indicated that the United States knew, but never acknowledged, that 100,000 people were killed in Iraq following the invasion of the country.

In these and many other disclosures, Manning and Assange gave the public enormously important information. But that does not provide a legal defense for hacking into the computers. Assanges acts should be regarded as civil disobedience: breaking the law to achieve a greater good. Civil disobedience is not a defense to a crime; those who engage in it still must submit to punishment for their offenses.

Many of the same people who applaud WikiLeaks for publishing the Manning documents rightly decried the hacking of computers in the Democratic National Headquarters, which also led to documents disseminated by WikiLeaks. In both instances, a crime was committed  not in the publication of the documents, but in the hacking of the computers.

I confess that a part of me was rooting for Assange to remain in the Ecuadorean Embassy and avoid prosecution because of the importance of the material he brought to light. Still, if I were a judge sentencing Assange after a conviction, I would know that the law was justified in punishing him. That said, I would also take into account the public benefit of the documents he published.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean of the UC Berkeley Law School.
On Thursday in London, it was almost as though the metropolitan police, working with the Ecuadorian government, had hacked into Julian Assanges private space and exposed him and his secrets to disinfecting sunlight. (Literally disinfecting: Assanges lax personal hygiene has troubled the embassy staff for years.)

Assange was freed by force from the embassy redoubt he despised and defiled for seven years. The breakup should have been mutual, but no. An oatmeal-colored Assange  he seems to have made little use of the sunlamp and treadmill the embassy generously furnished for him  left his digs at 3 Hans Crescent kicking and screaming. And manacled.

The video of his arrest ricocheted around the internet. Somehow WikiLeaks itself, which usually loves the spectacle of hubris brought low, failed to publish it.

Assange now faces skipped-bail charges in the UK, as well as the possibility of extradition to the United States, where he has been indicted for alleged computer crimes  specifically, having helped U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning break into government computers in 2010.

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Exposing injustice was never Assanges end.

Though a prodigy programmer who has worked as a hacker for three decades, Assange, through his lawyers, now maintains that when he collaborated with Manning he was nothing but a journalist working a source, presumably one entitled to constitutional protections.

It should not be lost in the inevitable portrayal of Assange as a 1st Amendment martyr that he originally sought asylum from Ecuador not because of computer meddling but because of allegations that he had committed rape in Stockholm. Sweden, stymied by the protection offered him in the embassy, stopped pursuing the investigation in 2017; on Friday, the chief prosecutor said the case could be reopened.

Assange never claimed with any consistency that the sex-crime charges were trumped up by the global enemies of freedom. Instead, he affected irritation. He denied being a rapist but he admitted in his autobiography to being a male chauvinist pig. His Swedish accusers were bitter, he said, because he had spurned them. His ideology seems to include overman privilege with women as a sacred civil liberty.

Early on, when Assange was winning prizes from Amnesty International for exposing war crimes, he had a certain Byronic allure. Young men, after all, make good punks. Theyre feral, light on their feet, indifferent to others.

But few can carry off the pose past 40. Even swashbucklers like Assange get tired and scared, often very tired and scared, and seek the protections of other institutions  family life in the case of the gentrified punk or, in Assanges case, a prison of his own making until he wore out his welcome.

Assange styles himself as especially irritated by incarceration because he is someone who, in his words, has tried to give others liberty all their adult life. But did he try to spread liberty around, or to destroy it?

When Assange staged then-vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palins hacked Yahoo emails on WikiLeaks in 2010, he brought transparency to exactly nothing. The emails were banal and clerical, but he framed them as exposes and a testament to his own holy audacity. All the hacked emails did was help humiliate Palin, with the single goal of trapping her in fear and demonstrating that American institutions were at his mercy.

As Palin wrote on Facebook at the time, Violating the law, or simply invading someones privacy for political gain, has long been repugnant to Americans sense of fair play. As Watergate taught us, we rightfully reject illegally breaking into candidates private communications for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election.

With those words, Palin predicted Assanges far more consequential 2016 move: WikiLeaks wrangled and published the equally banal emails of then-presidential-candidate Hillary Clinton, which had been hacked, according to U.S. intelligence, by the Russian military expressly for political intrigue in an attempt to derail an election.

When mainstream media credulously published Assanges campaign against Clinton as if it were newsworthy, he showed he could control the fate of one partys candidate  and, moreover, that he had the news business and social media in his thrall.

Back in 2006, Assange justified the wholesale dumping of leaked material this way: The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership.

Garbage logic. Hacks and leaks are universally frightening, no matter the moral status of the people or entities that have been stripped bare. Neither Palin nor Clinton had dastardly secrets in their inboxes or sent mail, but never mind. Assanges spiteful hazing  pulling down peoples pants to reveal, shocker, their underwear  is a violation almost no one is immune to.

Exposing injustice was never Assanges end. It was, instead, to promote exactly the kind of panic that he could then argue, tautologically, was proof that those he had targeted were corrupt and deserved it.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

Perhaps now Assange the self-styled pig recognizes that he, too, deserves it. As he was dragged out of his once-safe haven Thursday, Wikileaks leader certainly looked fearful and paranoid.

Assanges 2006 blog post goes on to say that leak-induced fear and paranoia cause minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms  and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power.

Maybe 13 years ago Assange was foretelling not the undoing of governments, social institutions and the rule of law, but merely the undoing of WikiLeaks, which is known in various Justice Department indictments as Organization 1.

Fear has set in. Internal communications have turned inefficient. And after Assanges seven years in hiding, maybe theres even been some cognitive decline in WikiLeakss leadership.

And Organization 1 would seem to be experiencing a decreased ability to hold onto power.

Twitter: @page88
What if communications today were governed by a law passed before the telephone was invented? Or if transportation were guided by federal policy made before there were cars?

Thats exactly the type of anachronism in play regarding Americas key law governing the extraction of hard-rock minerals, such as gold, silver and copper, on public land. The Mining Act of 1872, which President Ulysses S. Grant signed, still sanctions destructive practices on what amounts to one-third of the countrys acreage and 46% of Californias. It can create toxic plumes and moonscape rubble in national forests, national monuments and Bureau of Land Management holdings that many regard as their favorite places on Earth. Thats one reason why pressure is mounting to change this antiquated 19th century legislation.



For the record: An earlier version of this op-ed misspelled author Char Millers last name as Miler.

Congress passed the Mining Act when sourdoughs were swinging pickaxes, and it remains largely intact even though grizzled prospectors chipping away at their claims have been replaced by equipment six stories tall that can decapitate a mountaintop in a few days. Regulations that govern resource extraction in the form of gravel pits, coal mines and oil and gas wells have been updated, and mining has been effectively stopped in national parks, but no such changes have occurred for hard-rock mining on other public lands. Instead, the 1872 law binds us to mistakes that have been clear for years.

From the beginning, the Mining Act was steeped in corruption because it was written by the very industry that benefited from its passage.

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For example, under the 1872 law its perfectly legal for foreign interests (many mining companies are based abroad) to stake claims on U.S. public land, and remove valuable economic minerals. These companies make billions of dollars in profit, but they dont have to pay a dime in royalties to our government for the privilege, costs and enduring problems of mining public land. Safeguards to protect water, air quality and wildlife are virtually absent from the Mining Act. State and federal environmental laws can be marshalled against mining companies to some degree but state law in particular is provisional, changeable, and the Mining Act still enshrines the right of corporations to scar our mountains, foul our streams and pollute our air. If environmentalists file lawsuits, companies can declare bankruptcy or retreat to offshore unaccountability.

The rationale for the Mining Acts sweeping support for extraction above all else is as dated as the law: The urgent need to open the West to settlement and commerce. The ethos of the 1870s wasnt sustainability, let alone conservation. From the beginning, the Mining Act was steeped in corruption because it was written by the very industry that benefited from its passage. It has become only more advantageous to contemporary mining corporations with time, technology and greedy globalism.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the 1872 law is responsible for polluting 40% of the headwaters of western waterways, creating 161,000 abandoned mining sites, and bequeathing to the public estimated cleanup and reclamation costs that top $50 billion.

A recent Associated Press investigation found that another legacy is 50 million gallons of hazardous pollution still seeping daily from abandoned sites into streams we rely on for clean water. One of those sites  Iron Mountain outside Redding in Northern California  dumped 6 tons of toxic sludge daily into Spring Creek before an EPA cleanup began. The EPAs efforts there continue to cost $5 million a year.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

That we continue to be poisoned by the toxic remains of old mines is tragic enough, but whats worse is that brand new operations can do business almost as if it were 1872. A foreign-owned mining company has proposed to strip mine nickel on the North Fork of the Smith River, which is protected as a wild and scenic river in California, but not in Oregon, at its headwaters, where the mine is planned. If the strip mine goes on line, it would pollute public water supplies, threaten redwood parks downstream, and endanger one of the countrys finest salmon streams, not to mention reversing restoration on the Smith that has already cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

House Natural Resources chair Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) will introduce bills in each house of Congress this year to reform the Mining Law. They are proposing sensible reforms to convert the hard-rock giveaways to a leasing program, charge royalties and reclamation fees, provide for enforcement of the law and for environmental protection, and give federal land managers the ability to balance mining with other uses. Californias representatives and senators should cosponsor these bills.

We need a 21st century mining law for 21st century conditions.

Photographer and writer Tim Palmer is the author of 19 books about rivers, including Field Guide to California Rivers. Char Miller teaches environmental history at Pomona College and is author of Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream.

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If you are combing the newspaper for profound truths, the obituaries are the place to start. Every one of them presents an inescapable fact of our lives: They end.

Simultaneously, though, obituaries also affirm life and the many varieties it takes. She loved drag racing. He was married nine times. In 1962, she served as Junior Miss Ohio.



For the record: An earlier version of this op-ed misidentified Dr. Paul Talalay as Norman Talalay.

I recently read the obituary of Dr. Paul Talalay, a molecular pharmacologist whose death at 94 was covered in the Baltimore Sun. Born in Berlin to Jewish parents, he was 9 in 1933 when his family used fake Haitian passports to flee the Nazis. At the height of his career at Johns Hopkins, Talalay did the research that brought broccoli into the limelight as a potential cancer preventative, doubling its sales and making national news of George H.W. Bushs antipathy for the vegetable. And if thats not interesting enough, theres more: He was a regular bit player in the films of John Waters, playing a porn patron in Polyester and a cabdriver in Hairspray.

There it all was: history, science, culture, politics. The things that make us human viewed through the prism of one mans life.

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An obituary distills the essence of a life.

Heather Lende, obituary writer for the Chilkat Valley News in Haines, Alaska, wrote a book about the joys of reading and writing about the dead, Find the Good: Unexpected Life Lessons From a Small-Town Obituary Writer. Compared to the rest of the paper, she says, the obituaries are downright inspirational.

Lendes skill is finding the details that reanimate the dead on the page. In her obituary of Evelyn Arbuckle, Lende described how the Ohio woman moved to Alaska in 1976 after surviving a small-plane crash that killed her husband and the pilot. She lived for two days on rainwater and blueberries, singing hymns to ward off bears. After her rescue, she credited God; her son credited her good winter coat. Years later, she won first prize at the Alaska State Fair for the wedding dress she sewed for his bride.

My own writing about the dead, in essays and books rather than obituaries, grew out of grief. I buried my father and a stillborn baby in my 20s. I was in my 30s when my husband died of AIDS.

I was a fledgling personal essayist back then, but already my subject was dead people. I found not just relief but joy in spending time in my head with the people Id lost and in bringing them to life on the page. The effect of the work on others seemed similarly counterintuitive. Sad, yes, but morbid, no; somehow, life-affirming.

Enter the Fray: First takes on the news of the minute 

Writing about the dead doesnt always illuminate the best aspects of humanity. Take James Whitey Bulger, a gangster whod murdered many people and was ultimately killed in prison. His obit in the New York Times reported Bulgers rules for living: Never sell angel dust to children or heroin in the neighborhood, trust only the Irish, never lie to a friend or partner, and above all, never squeal to the authorities. That concern for children had its limits, however. As this newspaper reported in Bulgers obituary, the crime boss once tried to take over a South Boston liquor store. During the negotiations, he set his gun down, lifted the proprietors toddler daughter into his lap and commented what a shame it would be not to see her grow up.

An obituary distills the essence of a life. New York Times music critic Jon Pareles wrote this about Prince: With deep bedroom eyes and a sly, knowing smile, he was one of pops ultimate flirts: a sex symbol devoted to romance and pleasure, not power or machismo. In the Los Angeles Times, Geraldine Baum wrote this about Jackie Onassis: She remained that Mona Lisa face that you could look at endlessly and see flashes of all her past faces  the sweet girl in riding jodhpurs, the First Lady in a tiara, the tear-smeared widow, the pampered wife. And finally the wide dark eyes, edged with fine wrinkles, watching a world that always was watching her. In recent years, Ive written two books of the dead -- short portraits of people who once were part of my life, including my mother and father, Philip Roth, David Bowie, a Realtor, a house cleaner, a dentist, young friends of my kids, and scores of others. I have had to use the words suicide and overdose more often than I would like; likewise cancer and Alzheimers. A gay friend who died in his 80s had a wonderful run, but he had just married for the first time when he went to the hospital for something minor and got a fatal infection.

This is how life goes, in the end. But youve spent enough time on the op-ed page. Turn to the obituaries.

Marion Winik is the author, most recently, of The Baltimore Book of the Dead. She will be appearing at the L.A. Times Festival of Books on Sunday at noon on a panel titled Memoir: Exploring Life in Small Passages.
To the editor: I take umbrage at the letter writer from Irvine who spoke of us folks in Orange County who dont want to make the drive to Los Angeles International Airport because of freeway traffic.

I am a 23-year resident of Huntington Beach, and I gladly drive to LAX for the savings and convenience of direct flights.

It is also noteworthy that the writer suggests expanding regional airports like those in Ontario and Long Beach, but he does not suggest the one closest to Irvine, John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana. It was NIMBYs like those in Irvine who actually voted down the conversion of Marine Corps Air Station El Toro into an international airport in 2002.

This means that people like me can experience the increasing private and commercial air traffic overhead into airports that are out of our control in L.A. County, like the already expanded Long Beach airport.

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Jeff Rokos, Huntington Beach

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Jesus was relieved that he and his 6-year-old had made it safely from Honduras to the United States. Then officials took his son.

He had turned himself and his child in to the U.S. Border Patrol last May after crossing the river that marks the border between Reynosa, Mexico, and McAllen, Texas.

Soon after, he was being interrogated at a detention center by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on why he had left Honduras and how he had come to be removed previously from the United States. They told him he was a criminal, he said, and accused him of lying about being the boys father.

They told me that the second I set foot into the United States, the U.S. government owned my son, Jesus recalled, speaking on condition that his last name not be used.

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ICE officers told Jesus to hand over the boy, and when he refused, they ripped him from his arms, he said. The boy tried to hold on to Jesus pants, kicking and screaming, but officers held the sobbing father back and put him against the wall, feet spread. His sons screams faded.

Ten months would pass before the two were reunified.

A year ago this month, the Trump administration chaotically unveiled its family separation policy. After two months of public outcry, President Trump signed an order to end separation. Now, he and some of his closest advisors talk of bringing it back in a new form. But the impact of the first go-round still reverberates from Central America to the White House, from detention centers in Texas to committee rooms in Congress.

Kirstjen Nielsen, the recently ousted Homeland Security secretary, and other officials face subpoenas from House Democrats over family separation. The Homeland Security inspector generals office has at least two dozen open investigations into border and immigration policy, which the inspector general recently identified as the part of the department at highest risk for abuse and mismanagement. And advocates for migrants say the administration has continued to quietly separate hundreds of families using different tactics.

The total number of children separated from a parent or guardian under Trump remains unknown.

In June, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego blocked family separation and ordered the administration to reunite all separated families within 30 days. The number of separated children in the original class covered by his order ultimately numbered roughly 2,800; more than 400 parents, including Jesus, were deported without their children.

But Homeland Security Department memos, inspector general reports, government data and court documents have shown that administration officials actually began separating families months before then-Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions announcement last April of zero tolerance for people crossing the border without authorization, resulting in potentially thousands more separations than previously known.

Recently, administration officials said they would need up to two years to review the cases of 47,000 unaccompanied minors taken into government custody between July 1, 2017, and Sabraws June 2018 order to determine how many had been separated from their parents.

The government is still refusing to take real responsibility for the damage they have done, said Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Unions lead attorney on the family separation case.

Asked Tuesday whether he would bring back family separation, Trump said, Were not looking to do that.

In the next breath, he falsely claimed that President Obama had started the mass separation policy and that he had stopped it  while he simultaneously argued that separation worked as a deterrent.

Once you dont have it, thats why you see many more people coming, he said. Theyre coming like its a picnic, because, Lets go to Disneyland.

Theyre coming like its a picnic, because, Lets go to Disneyland. President Trump

After more than two years of failing to achieve his political priority of deterring migration to the United States, Trump is doubling down on harsh policies.

His latest idea, pushed by domestic policy aide Stephen Miller, has been to force parents claiming asylum at the U.S. border to make a binary choice between deportation without their children or indefinite detention with them.

Nielsens insistence that such a move would violate the law and court orders angered the president and played a key role in his asking her to step down last Sunday. Her allies said she had an updated resignation letter in hand.

Border Patrol agents apprehended 92,607 people in March, the highest monthly total in more than a decade. More than 57% were families, primarily from Central America, with many seeking asylum.

Efforts to deter those migrants have split administration officials.

Jonathan White  the administrations point person for family reunification efforts at the Department of Health and Human Services, which cares for unaccompanied minors  flatly rejected any suggestion of bringing back zero tolerance.

I would never support the use of family separation, the systematic traumatization of children, as a tool of immigration policy, White said Tuesday in a Senate hearing.

White was among the officials who sounded an alarm as early as 2017, when his department observed a significant increase in the number of children arriving in its care, apparently separated from their parents. According to court records, other government documents and Whites testimony, he and his colleagues were told there was no policy of family separation.

In truth, the documents show, family separations were taking place then. And despite Trumps executive order last June, an unknown number of separations have continued, administration officials confirm.

Officials at the border take migrant children away from any relative who is not a parent, but they dont keep track of those separations. They maintain that those dont count as family separations, lawmakers say.

The practice could be separating many more children, as many groups arriving at the border include not just children and parents but also older siblings, aunts and uncles, and grandparents often looking to reunite with relatives already in the United States.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed that any children who arrived at the border with a relative other than a parent were separated and considered unaccompanied. Such cases are categorized as family relationship in question and not separately tracked, the agency said.

As part of a long-standing practice, officials also split parents from children in cases in which they can assert the parent poses a danger. Previously, that action was relatively rare. Now that rationale is being cited when a parent has been caught crossing the border before, even though he or she has no criminal record or history of violent behavior, according to lawmakers.

Customs and Border Protection maintains that in such cases separations are required. The agency did not provide data on family separations due to a non-parents accompaniment, or a parents nonviolent record of reentry, and did not provide further comment.

But officials have cited some of these cases as evidence to back up Trumps claim that the thousands of Central American families arriving at the border daily are engaging in a hoax or big fat con job.

Brian Hastings, the Border Patrols chief of law enforcement operations, told reporters Tuesday that, from April 2018 to March 25 of this year, his agents had identified more than 3,100 individuals in family units making fraudulent claims, including those who represented themselves as minors but were in fact older than 18.

Thats roughly 1% of all family units apprehended at the border in that period.

Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he had asked officials how many children had been separated from relatives other than parents, or from parents with a reentry record and no other disqualifying factors, but they had yet to provide the numbers.

They dont want anybody to hold them accountable, Castro said. You have an administration determined to get away with what they can and to test the legal limits.

Nielsen might be gone, but her forced exit and the presidents latest flirtation with family separation probably will fuel continuing investigations.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, said the Trump administration had refused to comply with requests for information on family separation, forcing the committee to subpoena Nielsen, Atty. Gen. William Barr and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. The administration has yet to hand over the full set of requested documents, he said.

The committees vote to issue subpoenas was bipartisan, underscoring frustration even among some Republicans.

Rep. Chip Roy of Texas was one of two Republicans on the committee to vote to subpoena Nielsen.

Its important to send a message to the administration, Roy said. Id like to know what happened on the child separation issue.  I havent seen everything I need to see.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said his panel would unanimously oppose bringing back family separations.

I think the administration found out thats just, first of all, politically unsustainable, he said.

Lawmakers and the inspector general already wanted to know how the family separation policy came about, what its effects were, and whether Nielsen and others were untruthful in sworn congressional testimony. Now Trump has left them to grapple with whether the administration ever truly intended to end the policy.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, has worked with every Homeland Security secretary since the department was created in 2002 and says the Trump administrations slow-rolling of oversight is unprecedented.

On Wednesday, he put Kevin McAleenan, the former Customs and Border Patrol commissioner and new acting head of Homeland Security, on notice, repeating a request for documents on family separation dating to January.

Homeland Security @SecNielsen did a fabulous job yesterday at the press conference explaining security at the border and for our country, while at the same time recommending changes to obsolete & nasty laws, which force family separation. We want heart and security in America!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2018

John F. Kelly, Trumps first Homeland Security secretary and former chief of staff, defended the administration and Nielsens actions on family separation, saying that Sessions surprised everyone with his zero-tolerance announcement.

Now, the president may have decided to do it anyway, Kelly said in an interview just before he left the White House at the end of last year. But I can tell you, he was not filled in.

An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, denied that, saying Sessions took the fall for a policy that had been discussed internally for months.

The official predicted that the controversy over family separation  still a front-page, loud issue  would continue to dog the White House. Its almost like Mueller-level interest, the official said, referring to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

For now, Jesus and his son are with a U.S. sponsor, and his family is applying for asylum together. But the trauma remains. He cries for almost everything, Jesus said. My son is not the same as before.

molly.otoole@latimes.com

Twitter: @mollymotoole
Pete Buttigieg was home recently, back in the Indiana city where he was born and serves as mayor. He was at the library on Main Street, at a book signing for his autobiography, and everything seemed familiar, the way its always been.

Only not.

People looked at me like I was some kind of celebrity, he said, and it was in South Bend, and I was thinking, You guys know me. Weve been in this very same room and youve been yelling at me about neighborhood stuff. It was like I was a different person.

Thats what it is like to be the breakout star of the 2020 presidential campaign and, for the moment, the hottest thing in American politics.

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The Democratic upstart with the inscrutable surname (pronounced BUDDHA-judge) and platinum resume  Rhodes scholar, business consulting background, Afghanistan war vet  has raised an impressive $7 million, begun climbing in polls and become the unlikely pace-setter for engagement on social media.

If Democrats think the way to beat President Trump is through contrast, Buttigieg offers a stark one.

There is, of course, his youth. He is 37. It will be 2054, he tells audiences, by the time he is as old as the president.

Theres his husband, Chasten, who has become a top campaign surrogate, with nearly a quarter of a million followers of his lively Twitter account.

Theres Buttigiegs distinctly unopulent upbringing as the son of Notre Dame professors, his Mr. Rogers haircut and Howdy Doody grin, and, perhaps more than anything, his brainy yet straightforward manner of speaking.

The obvious challenge for Buttigieg is thriving beyond what he himself calls this flavor of the month phase. He needs to rapidly grow his campaign, to compete against better established candidates with larger and more sophisticated operations. He must brace for harsher scrutiny from voters taking second or third looks, and a more thorough going-over by a less fawning media.

But consider where hes started and what hes attempting: If elected, Buttigieg would be the youngest president in U.S. history, the first openly gay chief executive and the first candidate ever to go directly from City Hall to the White House. Building on unexpectedly early success leaves little room for complaint.

Its a good problem to have, he said dryly.

::

As he prepares to formally declare his candidacy Sunday in South Bend, the two-term mayor has become ubiquitous on radio and TV, making it easier to list the shows Buttigieg has not appeared on, among them Sesame Street and Game of Thrones, than all he has.

The world has come to know his favorite books (which include Ulysses and The Little Prince), the fact he learned Norwegian to read a novel, as well as 10 things Buttigieg cant live without (durable wool socks and blue felt-tip pens are two of them).

If it all seems a bit over the top, he wouldnt disagree. Its weird, Buttigieg acknowledged, shortly before appearing at the art museum in Manchester, N.H., a much larger venue than originally planned but still too small for the 200 or so turned away.

He swept in on a tidal wave of hype, and before Buttigieg said a word, hundreds shouted his name  the Pete part, anyway  then renewed the whoops and cheers when he strode up a ramp to give the throng a better view.

Im probably not what you picture when youre thinking about your next president, Buttigieg said.

Yes, you are! a voice cried, and when the audience roared, Buttigieg responded with a happy bit of understatement.

Well, he said, were getting somewhere.

Its the electoral college, stupid. And the Supreme Court. And the filibuster ... 

::

Buttigieg doesnt shrink from attacking Trump and his administration. In a CNN town hall, the March appearance that launched his vertiginous ascent, Buttigieg was scathing in his criticism of Indianas devoutly Christian former governor, Vice President Mike Pence.

How could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn-star presidency? Buttigieg gibed. Is it that he stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump?

When he refers to Washington as a grotesque but mesmerizing spectacle, Democrats have no doubt who and what he means. We cant take our eye off that show, he said, and hundreds of partisans packed into a Concord, N.H., bookstore laughed knowingly.

But its a mistake, he suggests, to think that sort of bombardment will win back the White House.

What matters is our everyday life, he said, and our everyday life is subject to the decisions that are being made by people with power over our life, and thats what elections are all about.

He isnt bound at the feet by a history of Washington politics. I think thats a healthy thing for the country right now. Kathy Biberstein of Maine, on Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg delivers a short and punchy stump speech, heavy on Democratic catechism  the sanctity of Medicare, support for universal healthcare and legalized abortion, fighting climate change, reining in corporate political influence  but one largely devoid of specifics, beyond eliminating the electoral college in favor of a popular vote for president.

The omission, he says, is purposeful, serving as an implicit rebuke of past Democratic nominees who often seemed to emphasize bloodless 14-point programs over personal connection. (He doesnt mention Hillary Clinton or Al Gore, but both come to mind.)

He rejects the idea that you experience an election through kind of an escalating series of policy papers, as Buttigieg put it during an interview at a Frenchified cafe in downtown Manchester. Especially in a party where  80% of our messages are going to converge.

So many other things matter, he said, especially having a sense of who you are and what you care about.

The fact Buttigieg is quite unlike anyone who has ever contended for the White House  definitely the only left-handed, Maltese American Episcopalian gay millennial war veteran in the race, he jokes  leaves him thoroughly unfazed.

::

It may be presumptuous to seek the presidency a bare two years above the minimum-age requirement, but the youngest candidate in the Democratic field suggests he has greater standing than most.

This is, after all, the generation thats going to be on the business end of climate change for as long as we live, he told his Manchester audience. This is the generation that contributed most of the troops in the conflicts after 9/11 and has the most at stake in our figuring out a way to put an end to endless war.

This generation, if nothing changes, could be the first in American history to earn less than our parents if we dont do something different. So lets do something different.

For all his newness, Buttigieg is not above falling back on an old trope, the attack on Washington and denizens of its two major parties.

Better the hands-on mayor of a mid-sized city, he says when questioned about his credentials, than some elder whos spent decades marinating inside the Beltway. Better a problem solver than someone who worries about winning the day in some committee hearing. (Might he refer to the many congressional lawmakers vying for the nomination?)

Being gay isnt the centerpiece of his campaign. Hes not running to make a statement or champion LGBTQ rights. But Buttigieg doesnt downplay his sexual orientation. He tells audiences his marriage was possible by the grace of one vote on the Supreme Court, an observation that makes a larger point about Washingtons impact on the day-to-day lives of voters.

No longer a political winner: Silicon Valley is a minefield for 2020 hopefuls 

The combination of freshness and Middle American pedigree was intriguing enough that Maine resident Kathy Biberstein drove nearly five hours round-trip to catch Buttigieg in Manchester. While its far too early to commit to a candidate, the 60-year-old retired corporate attorney said, she appreciated someone who could think through ideas, not just throw barbs back at Donald Trump.

I still dont know if he can win, she said. But he isnt bound at the feet by a history of Washington politics. I think thats a healthy thing for the country right now.

Inevitably, there are stirrings of a Buttigieg backlash.

Buttiegieg with his husband, Chasten, and their dogs, Truman and Buddy. (Joshua Lott / Washington Post)

Critics on the left have questioned his liberal credentials, while the right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial page questions his moderation. Hes been forced to defend his past employment with the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm and to fend off accusations of racial insensitivity as mayor.

(He said he had nothing whatever to do with McKinseys complicity in the opioid crisis  my specialty was grocery prices, but I also worked on renewable energy  and expressed regret for having used the phrase all lives matter in a manner some perceived as denigrating the Black Lives Matter movement.)

Like a community theater troupe that suddenly finds itself on the big stage, Buttigiegs campaign has struggled to keep up with his new fame.

He showed up more than half an hour late for his appearance in Concord and prompted no small amount of grumbling when he spoke for barely 15 minutes, then posed for pictures.

A rushed speech, a photo line and no Q&A is not the way we do things around here, said Sarah Ovenden, 55, a travel consultant who drove an hour from Guilford, Vt., to share with Buttigieg her concerns about the national rail system. Thats very un-New Hampshire-ish.

A campaign spokeswoman said the cramped, overheated conditions were ill-suited to a prolonged appearance and promised Buttigieg would return often and answer many questions.

The biggest one: Can he quickly scale up to transform himself from curiosity into a serious contender for president?

We can now, Buttigieg told reporters, and we have to.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

@markzbarabak
A Trump administration regulation set to go into effect Friday bars transgender people from the military unless they correct deficiencies, a description the American Medical Assn. said Thursday is unfair and defies science.

The AMA told the Associated Press on Thursday the policy and its wording mischaracterize transgender people as having a deficiency. It said it also objects to the Defense Department classifying the need to transition to another gender among administratively disqualifying conditions that include those the Pentagon has labeled as congenital or developmental defects.

The new regulation strips transgender service members of rights they only recently secured under the Obama administration to serve openly and receive care if they choose to transition to another gender.

The Defense Department said its use of the word deficiencies is military lingo for when an individual fails to meet standards to maintain a lethal force. It is not a reference to gender dysphoria, a condition of extreme distress from not identifying with ones biological gender, Lt. Col. Carla Gleason said.

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The department says transgender people can serve if they remain in their biological sex.

The only thing deficient is any medical science behind this decision, AMA President Dr. Barbara L. McAneny said.

Decorated Army helicopter pilot Lindsey Muller was a plaintiff in one of four lawsuits that tried to block the policy from taking effect. But the final legal injunction was lifted in March, though new legal challenges are expected.

Muller said she and other transgender troops feel demoralized.

Under our ethical standards, we cant say anything derogatory against the administration, while we are being presented in a disparaging and derogatory light, said Muller, 37, who is based in Ft. Carson, Colo.

Troops like Muller, who began openly identifying as a woman in 2016, are worried they will be discharged. The administration says it will not boot service members who transitioned before the Pentagon issued its directive, though the government has also said it retains the right to eliminate that protection.

Muller said the policy will cost the armed forces far more in terms of losing experienced personnel like herself and training replacements than any costs associated with specialized healthcare for trans service members. She plans to retire from the military next year after serving 20 years.

Under the new policy, a service member can be discharged based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria if he or she is unable or unwilling to adhere to all applicable standards, including the standards associated with his or her biological sex, or seeks transition to another gender.

It said the discharge should come after an individual has been formally counseled on his or her failure to adhere to such standards and has been given an opportunity to correct those deficiencies.

The policy calls for troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria to be medically evaluated before discharging them to see if they qualify as having a disability. Otherwise gender dysphoria can be considered a condition that interferes with military service like sleepwalking, bed-wetting, motion sickness and personality disorders.

They can dress it up in whatever words they want, but when you carefully look at this, its total disrespect for these human beings by saying a core piece of them is not acceptable, former acting U.S. Army Surgeon Gen. Gale Pollock said.

Pollock signed a statement with three former U.S. surgeons general and two former military surgeons general, saying they are troubled by the Defense Departments characterization of the need to undergo gender transition as a deficiency, and by the addition of gender dysphoria to official lists of congenital or developmental defects that include bed-wetting and disturbances of perception, thinking, emotional control, or behavior.

An estimated 14,700 troops identify as transgender.

Military chiefs testified before Congress last year that they found no problems with transgender troops on morale or unit cohesion. Many have received medals since the armed forces welcomed them in 2016.

Transgender troops say the regulation mirrors the dont ask, dont tell policy that prohibited gay men and women from serving openly in the armed forces before Congress repealed it in 2010.
In an effort to kick-start low-income housing construction, Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to solicit bids from developers by the end of this year to build homes on at least three state-owned properties.

The proposal, announced Thursday, follows a January executive order to survey state lands to determine where housing could be constructed. State officials culled a list of nearly 45,000 state-owned parcels, finding 1,300 that could be viable for new homes.

My administration is using every tool at our disposal to combat the housing affordability crisis our families face, Newsom said in a statement.

Under the plan, the state would ask affordable housing developers for ideas to build low-income projects through long-term ground leases of state property. The first bid, a news release from the administration said, would go out no later than Sept. 30.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom threatens to cut state funding from cities that dont approve enough housing 

The effort takes aim at one of the major barriers to building low-income housing in the state: the rising cost of land.

From 2000 to 2016, land prices more than doubled in San Francisco and almost tripled in Los Angeles, according to UC Berkeleys Terner Center for Housing Innovation, which also reported that in 2016, it cost nearly $425,000 per unit to build low-income housing in California.

Newsom also announced Thursday that six cities  Chico, Fresno, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego and San Francisco  were working with the governors office to choose state property in their communities on which to build.

I applaud the governor for taking this important step towards addressing the states affordable housing crisis, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said in the release. Identifying and making state-owned land available for affordable housing will better enable communities, like Oakland, to meet our housing goals.

liam.dillon@latimes.com

@dillonliam
Gov. Gavin Newsom urged lawmakers on Friday to rethink existing rules on how California utilities pay for wildfires sparked by their equipment, but stopped short of embracing any specific solution to the political impasse over the amount of help the companies need to remain solvent.

Everybody has to participate, he said of who must pay the costs of fire response and recovery. All of us have to row in the same direction.

The governor traveled to the states emergency services center to unveil the final report of a strike team he convened in February to craft a comprehensive wildfire strategy for Californias energy sector. The effort was prompted by Pacific Gas & Electrics decision to file for bankruptcy protection in January after its top executives said the company could not pay the estimated $30 billion in damages from its role in deadly Northern California wildfires in 2017 and 2018.

The 52-page report recommends changes in state fire prevention and response, including updating some local building codes to include rules on defensible space and additional work to identify sufficient evacuation routes. It vows to hold PG&E financially accountable to fire victims and communities and urges a focus on clean energy production, suggesting government officials should consider a state-run program to buy electricity from sources that dont accelerate climate change and the conditions that have worsened Californias fire dangers.

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But Newsoms task force did not offer a specific recommendation on how to shoulder the significant financial impact of utility-sparked wildfires such as those that have ravaged California over the past decade. Instead, it proposed extending discussions with various stakeholders for an additional two months in hopes of reaching consensus on a new model for paying fire-related costs.

Nor would the governor offer any sense of what path forward he sees as most viable.

Im purposely not including my personal opinions because I actually want to accomplish something, he said Friday. And I believe its incumbent upon me to create the conditions where we can actually get something done, versus to assert a political frame.

Under state law, the current system to determine liability is based on the legal principle known as inverse condemnation, which holds a utility strictly liable whenever its equipment ignites a fire  regardless of whether the company is found to be negligent. That structure is guaranteed by a provision of the California Constitution; changing it would require voter approval or  if the governors advisors are correct  rare action by the California Supreme Court.

The report released Friday outlines key issues of helping victims and ensuring reliable electrical service that should be considered when revamping the process but concludes that a politically viable solution will take more time. It recommends that a state wildfire panel created last year bring forward a proposal later this summer.

And the governor said that hinges on the Legislature finding consensus  not him championing any particular approach. Newsom urged lawmakers to take action before they take their summer recess in mid-July.

We have 90 days, Newsom said. Im hopeful that they can meet this moment.

A discussion of how to structure future wildfire liability for Californias three investor-owned utilities  PG&E, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric  has dominated debate in the state Capitol for more than a year. The utilities insist that the existing doctrine is too punitive, particularly given the new normal of a long wildfire season.

The Next California: Natural disaster can define a California governors legacy 

In 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown urged the Legislature to limit the instances in which a utility is forced to pay the full amount of fire costs. Browns proposal would have given California judges the flexibility to weigh the public benefit of a utilitys services against the fire damage to private property.

But the termed-out governor found no takers. Legislative hearings on the topic were raw with emotion, as wildfire victims and local officials insisted such a change was tantamount to a utility bailout. They worried that the companies would drag out legal proceedings, leaving communities devastated by deadly blazes without the money needed to rebuild.

They accused the utilities of failing to adequately prepare for wildfire conditions  relying on outdated and dangerous equipment, including dilapidated wooden power poles, and letting fire-prone vegetation grow too close to power lines over wide swaths of rugged California terrain.

The final agreement last summer left the rules of inverse condemnation in place but offered utilities new methods to finance fire-related expenses by imposing a special surcharge on ratepayers that could be used for long-term borrowing. That option requires the California Public Utilities Commission to first perform a financial stress test of the utility to see whether new customer payments are needed. Early efforts to expand that process  allowing it to be used to pay costs for last years deadly fires  remain a political nonstarter in Sacramento.

We have a lot of work to do, said state Sen. Bill Dodd (D-Napa), an architect of last years agreement. Dodd said the governors approach to focus on the most immediate threat  likely to be junk-bond status and possible insolvency of one or more investor-owned utilities  makes sense.

What were trying to do first is provide that backstop, that protection for the utilities that the credit rating agencies are looking for, he said.

The Newsom report agrees that new liability rules could link utility fire costs to a determination of the companys fault: Where the utility acted negligently, recklessly, or with intentional misconduct, it would still be responsible for paying damages, including possible punitive damages.

But the change could have a profound effect on property owners and insurance companies. Costs from a fire in which a utility was not found to be at fault would have to be paid by an insurance policy or the property owners themselves. The insurance industry has a powerful lobby in Sacramento, one likely to argue that fewer homeowner policies would be written for those who live in high-risk regions. On Friday, insurance industry groups were silent on liability changes, choosing instead to applaud the reports mention of a possible new pooled insurance fund for those with no other alternatives.

Two other options outlined by the Newsom task force focus on special cash reserve funds for covering wildfire costs, a concept floated by legislators last year. One proposal would create a fund to serve as bridge financing for a utility to pay wildfire claims while CPUC regulators consider a long-term plan. The other envisions a utility-funded program to absorb some of the costs. It would also limit an insurance companys ability to defray its own fire-related payments by seeking reimbursement from the utility.

The report also addresses less-controversial topics. It reaffirms the governors commitment to remove fire-prone vegetation and calls for beefing up the wildfire prevention responsibilities of utility regulators. CPUC officials would be able to conduct new inspections and investigations of utility efforts. Other recommendations include additional laws to clarify when the agency can allow fire costs to be passed along to utility customers.

While the governor declined to embrace any specific path forward on paying wildfire costs, his administration hinted earlier in the week that its no longer feasible to place the entire burden on utility companies.

A memo from a former CPUC administrative law judge warned of large electricity rate hikes without new government action.

If wildfires persist at the levels we have experienced recently, and all customers of the major electric utilities had to bear the burden, average rates throughout California would have to increase by 50% in the first year, alone, Steven Weissman, now a UC Berkeley law professor, wrote to a top Newsom aide.

He also warned that higher electricity costs could force some high-tech companies to leave the state.

If California cannot offer reliable and affordable power, we risk losing our innovation economy to other states, he wrote.

john.myers@latimes.com

Follow @johnmyers on Twitter and sign up for our daily Essential Politics newsletter
The developer of a mixed-used development called First Street Village in downtown Burbank will have to wait several more days to learn the fate of his proposed project.

After about six hours of public comments and questions from council members, the City Council decided on Tuesday to table its deliberations regarding the proposed development on the southwest side of First Street between Magnolia Boulevard and Orange Grove Avenue.



For the record: A previous version of this story misstated the number of apartments in the proposed First Street Village project. The development is slated to have 261 units, not 241.

The proposed project would have three five-story buildings with a total of 261 apartments and 18,976 square feet of commercial space on the ground levels.

Council members are expected to continue their discussion on the matter at their meeting on June 6. A meeting will not be held on Tuesday in observance of Memorial Day.

Fred Ramirez, the citys assistant community development director, explained at length the parameters of the project, which is proposed to be built in three phases over a four-year period. The properties, which are owned by Tim Behunin, are sectioned off in three segments  a 147.5-foot-wide building at the corner of Magnolia and First, with an adjacent 152.5-foot-wide structure and another 152.5-foot-wide building at First and Palm Avenue.

Behunin is also the developer of the project.

The first phase will focus on the middle property, where 6,388 square feet of commercial space would be constructed on the ground level with 87 apartments on the upper floors.

The second phase would move to the First and Palm plot, where the developer proposes to build 6,436 square feet of commercial use on the first floor and 93 apartments above.

The last phase, which involves the smallest piece of property of the three, would have 81 apartments on the upper levels and 6,152 square feet of commercial space at the bottom.

In total, the development as proposed would include 112 one-bedroom units, 142 two-bedroom units and seven three-bedroom units. Under the proposed development agreement, staff is asking to dedicate 5% of the apartments to be deed-restricted as affordable units.

Ramirez said that each building will have similar amenities, such as a common open space, fitness center, rooftop terrace and lap pool. Additionally, there will be a pocket park and more than 80 trees and plants in and around each building.

The proposal includes 673 on-site parking spaces, with the majority of them located underground. Thirty-three bicycles spaces are also planned.

The proposed development agreement between the city and Behunin also proposes having three alcohol licenses for the project  two on-sale licenses for restaurants and one off-sale license for a possible grocery store.

Dozens of residents and business owners spoke during the council meeting, with most of them in favor of the project. Also, many of them said the First Street Village project is something Burbank has needed to offer those who work but do not live in the city as a housing alternative.

If we want people to serve the community, we have to welcome them to join the community, said Lee Wochner, chairman of the Burbank Chamber of Commerce. We have to provide a place for them to live, and currently, theres no place for our expanding workforce to live here in Burbank.

However, there were some concerns expressed about the projects proximity to the Golden State (5) Freeway, which is about 50 feet away. Resident Oscar Merlo cited a recent Los Angeles Times article that stated air-quality officials have warned against building homes near freeways due to possible health risks.

If were [going to allow the construction of this project], make sure that we protect ourselves, Merlo said. Make sure that we install the air filters that are best needed for this project.

anthonyclark.carpio@latimes.com

Twitter: @acocarpio
When musician David Washburn had the chance to play trumpet for one of the Star Wars films as part of John Williams orchestra, he savored the moment.

The first time playing the score, the first thing they put on our stand was the suite, Washburn said. The room was electric. When the movie came out  I was in college  it was the biggest thing musically we had ever heard in a movie. To be able to play it was a dream.

Washburn, 59, of Huntington Beach has been in the trumpet section of Williams orchestra for about 20 years, recording on a variety of soundtracks, including Star Wars films The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi.

Washburn has also performed with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for 25 years, currently as the principal trumpet player.

Hes recorded more than 500 film soundtracks over the years, including War for the Planet of the Apes, Spiderman: Homecoming, The Legend of Zorro, Troy, A Beautiful Mind, The Perfect Storm, Titanic and Deep Impact.

Washburn discovered he had a natural predilection for the trumpet as a child, possibly from his father, who played trumpet at the 1915 Worlds Fair in the Bay Area. Washburn seriously took up the instrument at age 11.

Washburn went on to attain his undergraduate music degree from the University of Southern California in 1980 and a masters degree from the New England Conservatory in Boston. During this time, Washburn said he didnt know if he would have the musical chops to make it professionally in the cutthroat industry.

I always knew I would play trumpet, but not necessarily at the professional level, he said.

Following his schooling, Washburn moved abroad to perform as the principal trumpet player of the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. A few years later he returned stateside, claiming the Los Angeles Chamber position.

Early in his career, Washburn began to serve as the principal trumpet player for James Horners orchestra. Horner, who died in 2015, was an Academy Award-winning film composer who scored Titanic, Apollo 13, Braveheart and Field of Dreams, among others.

Composer John Williams on the red carpet at the 2016 AFI Life Achievement Award Gala Tribute to John Williams at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. Huntington Beach resident David Washburn has played in Williams trumpet section for about 20 years. (File Photo )

Washburns reputation in the studio grew, and through word of mouth he landed a prestigious role in Williams trumpet section. Hes gone on to record about 20 movies with Williams, who is considered the greatest film composer of all time.

He is very friendly and supportive of the orchestra, Washburn said of Williams. He is very cordial with everybody, but knows what he wants when hes on the podium.

You know you are working with someone who is really special. You just enjoy the moment with him making great music.

The orchestra usually doesnt practice. Each musician arrives at the recording session with the ability to sight-read the music on the spot.

We rehearse right there and then by the second or third time we are recording, Washburn said. Sometimes we record the first take.

Although Washburn enjoys recording soundtracks for movies, he loves performing live for an audience.

His favorite piece to play is Bachs Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. Washburn is considered to be one of only a handful of trumpet players who can perform the complex composition.

Its taken me around the world, he said.

His ability to play at such a skilled level while still maintaining his trademark humility has endeared Washburn to his colleagues.

David is an incredible trumpet player and a beautiful musician, said Tereza Stanislav, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra assistant concertmaster. He has a warm sound and stunning virtuosity. Hes also an incredibly kind person. When he plays the trumpet, you can hear that in the warmth of his tone.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot
A woman who called 911 from a Costa Mesa hotel room where the mayor of West Covina was lying unconscious on a bed early May 4 told an emergency dispatcher that he may have overdosed on heroin, according to audio from the call released this week.

Officers responding to a medical-aid call shortly after midnight in a room at the Holiday Inn Express on Newport Boulevard found two people, one of whom was Michael Herman Spence, 51, according to Costa Mesa police and the 911 audio.

Police spokeswoman Roxi Fyad said this week that officers found controlled substance items at the scene. Authorities did not elaborate.

At the time, Spence was West Covinas mayor, a largely ceremonial role he assumed in late 2017. On Thursday, Spence announced he would step down as mayor June 1, but City Council members voted to make his resignation immediate. He will remain on the council until his term expires in November, he said.

Spence has spoken openly about his issues with alcohol and drugs since he was cited on suspicion of driving under the influence in 2016.

I want to apologize to the distraction that my personal failings have had on the city, he said during Thursdays council meeting.

No one has been arrested in connection with the May 4 incident, though Fyad said the Police Department plans to submit the case to the Orange County district attorneys office.

The woman in the 911 call, who identified herself as Spences friend, said he was unconscious and breathing erratically, taking gasps of air every 30 seconds. Eventually, she said, his body began jerking as if he were having a seizure.

Hes actually seizing out a little bit, oh my God, she said.

The dispatcher asked the woman what substance Spence may have overdosed on.

I would say heroin, the woman answered, adding that she knew he had used the drug in the past.

The woman also said a syringe was in the room.

Spence told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune that in early May he had been riding public transportation to the California Republican Party Convention in San Diego and spent the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Costa Mesa.

He returned to his room from dinner and was preparing to exercise at the hotel gym when he fell unconscious, he said. He woke up surrounded by people and was taken to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, according to the paper.

Spence pleaded guilty in 2016 to a misdemeanor DUI charge stemming from a crash in June that year that put him in a hospital with serious injuries. Authorities said he had methamphetamine in his system when his rental car slammed into a utility pole.

He was sentenced in December 2016 to three years probation and was ordered to complete a three-month alcohol and drug education program, according to Los Angeles County Superior Court records.

If somebody is having a medical emergency, call 911 no matter what, Spence said at Thursdays council meeting. I dont want that to be discouraged. I want people to get medical attention if they need it and not worry about whats going to happen.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN
Costa Mesa is taking distributors and manufacturers of opioid pain medication to court in a bid to recoup tax dollars it alleges were spent as a result of the addiction epidemic that has afflicted communities coast to coast.

In a lawsuit filed March 29, the city argues that the businesses intentionally flooded the market with opioids and pocketed billions of dollars in the process while making false statements designed to persuade both doctors and patients that prescription opioids posed a low risk of addiction.

Such actions, the city alleges, have not only caused significant costs but have also created a palpable climate of fear, distress, dysfunction and chaos among Costa Mesa residents where opioid diversion, abuse and addiction are prevalent and where diverted opioids tend to be used frequently.

Opioids include powerful legal prescription painkillers such as hydrocodone, morphine and oxycodone.

The lawsuit names about a dozen distributors and manufacturers as defendants, including Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, and certain members of the Sackler family that controls the company.

This epidemic has personally touched the lives of many members of our community, Mayor Katrina Foley said in a statement Thursday. Its time that we take action and put a halt to the lives being destroyed and the economic drain opioid addiction is placing on our community.

Purdue Pharma spokesman Bob Josephson wrote in an emailed statement Thursday afternoon that the company and the individual former directors of the company vigorously deny the allegations in the complaint and will continue to defend themselves against these misleading allegations.

The complaint is part of a continuing effort to try these cases in the court of public opinion rather than the justice system, Josephson wrote. He added that he believes the complaint disregards or fails to note facts about Purdues prescription medications and pertinent federal regulations.

Such serious allegations demand clear evidence linking the conduct alleged to the harm described, but we believe the city fails to show such causation and offers little evidence to support its sweeping legal claims, he said.

In the suit, Costa Mesa alleges it has seen increased costs in myriad areas as a result of the opioid epidemic, including medical and therapeutic care, counseling, treatment and rehabilitation services, public safety and code enforcement.

A particularly pressing issue from the citys perspective is the proliferation of local sober-living homes, which house recovering addicts, including those battling opioid dependence. Costa Mesa has the largest concentration of sober-living homes in Orange County, creating a plethora of nuisance issues for residents, multiple calls for service by police and fire and millions of dollars in legal fees, according to a city news release.

Also mentioned in the lawsuit is Costa Mesa fire Capt. Mike Kreza, who died in November after he was hit by a vehicle while riding his bicycle. The driver, Stephen Taylor Scarpa, 25, of Mission Viejo, was suspected of driving under the influence of drugs and has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder. Authorities allege he was in possession of pills prescribed by a Tustin doctor who faces federal charges of illegally distributing opioids and other narcotics by writing prescriptions to people without medical examinations.

Costa Mesa has been directly injured by the loss of Capt. Kreza, including costs for training and hiring a replacement, as well as pension and death benefits, the lawsuit states. These increased costs could have been  and should have been  prevented by the opioid industry.

Lawsuits such as Costa Mesas have become increasingly common. Last month, Purdue and the Sackler family agreed to pay $270 million to the state of Oklahoma to settle claims that aggressive marketing of OxyContin helped create the addiction crisis, according to the Associated Press. Nationwide, the company faces nearly 2,000 lawsuits, AP reported.

But Josephson said, We believe that no pharmaceutical manufacturer has done more to address the opioid addiction crisis than Purdue, and we continue to work closely with governments and law enforcement agencies on this difficult social issue.
Laguna Beach police officers and local dignitaries gathered Thursday morning to honor Police Department employees for their work in the past two years.

Officer Mike Short received the 2018 Officer of the Year award at the biennial banquet. He has had several positions in the department the past 14 years, beginning on the summer beach patrol team and moving up through the ranks to become a records specialist and patrol officer. He also has served on the drone, social media and crime scene teams. He is now the departments training officer, responsible for hiring, training and mentoring new recruits.

The 2018 Professional Employee of the Year award went to Jordan Villwock, the citys emergency management coordinator. Villwock has designed and coordinated active shooter training, the citys outdoor warning system and other emergency response exercises. He earned state and federal recognition for his designs of the citys hazard mitigation and evacuation plans. He also was honored as Professional Employee of the Year in 2013.

The 2017 Officer of the Year honor went to Cpl. David Gensemer, who serves in the detective division of the major crimes investigations unit. Gensemer demonstrates a hard work ethic and tenacity to solve cases, according to a Police Department news release. The 12-year member of the department has investigated home robberies, homeland security incidents and threats against residents.

Kristen Berry, the 2017 Professional Employee of the Year, is a support services supervisor who oversees dispatch, records, fleet maintenance and information technology. Berry supervises 18 employees while also serving as court liaison and the departments custodian of records. She was recognized as Supervisor of the Year in 2016 by the California Public Safety Dispatchers Assn.

The Laguna Beach Exchange Club presented Thursdays luncheon at Seven-degrees.
An Orange County Superior Court judge denied a request that lawyers for a Newport Beach doctor and his girlfriend accused of numerous incidents of sexual assault be granted access to internal communications from the county district attorneys office that they said would form the basis for an argument to have the case dismissed.

The decision by Judge Gregory Jones was released Thursday.

Attorneys for Dr. Grant Robicheaux and Cerissa Riley filed a motion in January seeking an order turning over communications among the district attorneys office, its forensic lab and the Newport Beach Police Department that might explain the information that former District Attorney Tony Rackauckas had when he answered a reporters question in September by saying there were videos showing possibly more than a thousand victims.

The request for all communications is overbroad, Jones said in his written ruling. It would include discussions, formal or informal, involving lawyers and/or staff, memorialized or fleeting, founded on conjecture or fact, from the courtroom to the coffee room to the restroom.

Robicheauxs attorney Philip Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, and Rileys attorney Scott Borthwick was unavailable to comment.

In a lengthy hearing April 5, defense lawyers argued for why they were moving to obtain the verbal and written communications. Cohen said he sought to determine whether Rackauckas, who was district attorney at the time of the September news conference, had been accurately informed of the contents of reviewed videos or had personally reviewed the videos, or made the statement with no knowledge of what the materials contained. The communications requested in the motion could have formed the basis for an argument that the prosecutions actions deprived the defendants of the opportunity for a fair trial by misrepresenting them to the media.

The case against Robicheaux and Riley includes seven alleged female victims.

Prosecutors said the wording of the reporters question prompted Rackauckas comment and suggested his estimate referred to the number of videos, not the number of victims. The district attorneys office called the comment a misstatement that has been corrected and said the case was never based on videos or other electronic evidence.

Robicheaux and Riley are scheduled to be back in court May 3.
After years of planning, the Orange County Sheriffs Department is preparing to roll out its first drone program under the watchful eye of civil libertarians who are raising concerns about the privacy rights of those who will be recorded by the devices onboard cameras.

Sgt. Bill Fitzgerald, who will oversee the program, said it will likely begin between May and June. The department will start with five drones and 24 pilots, 14 of them civilians.

The departments aviation support unit, which controls five helicopters, will run the drone program.

Fitzgerald said the department will continue to use its other aircraft, but the drones will allow for better efficiency in certain circumstances.

It saves time and money, Fitzgerald said. For air support, we get sent out whenever there is a homicide or serious crime. We send a helicopter and we have to take video and photos of the scene. That is something that a drone could do for a fraction of the cost.

The department will purchase five drones to begin the program. They will include two DJI Matrice 2010 RTKs, which cost about $13,000 apiece, and three DJI Mavic 2 Pros, which cost about $1,600 apiece.

Fitzgerald said having 24 pilots is more than most agencies. The number is considerable because of the departments use of unpaid civilian pilots.

We are looking for that enthusiast or hobbyist who knows drones inside and out, Fitzgerald said.

The San Diego County Sheriffs Department has 12 drones with 19 pilots  three of them civilians. The Los Angeles Sheriffs Department has six deputy pilots and one drone.

The Orange County department requires its reserve drone pilots to go through a training program and background check that takes about four to six weeks. They dont go through an academy like a reserve deputy.

Once civilians enter the unit, they become subjected to the same standards as full-time employees, Fitzgerald said.

The program may grow, but Fitzgerald said that depends on the demand.

Huntington Beach police will use 2 drones in yearlong public safety test program 

Drones are relatively new for Orange County law enforcement agencies. Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach and Irvine have programs.

With the addition of law enforcement drones, privacy concerns abound.

There is always a concern they can be used for dragnet surveillance, said Melanie Ochoa, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. We are generally opposed to the use of drones because we feel it is almost impossible for them not to be used that way. If they are used, we want to be sure that there is a policy in place that limits their use to extraordinary circumstances.

The sheriffs department will use drones when responding to hazardous material spills, bomb squad missions, traffic collisions, search and rescue missions, hostage situations, while serving search warrants, disaster response and recovery, for fire response and prevention and inspecting county property and facilities, as well as other uses.

Fitzgerald said the program will be regulated by the Federal Aviation Administrations Part 107 rules, which address commercial and personal drone use. The program will also be accredited by the Public Safety Aviation Commission, which develops standards of accreditation for operations performed by public safety aviation units. The commission works with the National Transportation Safety Board.

Fitzgerald said following the FAAs rule book and the accreditation will garner a higher degree of safety from the program compared to a certificate of authorization, or COA, which can be used by law enforcement agencies when setting up drone programs.

The COA was more designed when drones just came out, Fitzgerald said. We want our program to follow the FAAs rules. As a general rule, Part 107 is more restrictive than a COA.

However, Ochoa said Part 107 generally regulates the functional use of drones and doesnt address potential privacy issues.

Fitzgerald said the department addressed privacy concerns in its seven-page policy that honors residents reasonable expectation of privacy.

The policy states that a drone may be used when there is probable cause to believe that (1) the [drone] may record images of a place, thing, condition, or event; and (2) that those images would be relevant in proving that a certain felony had occurred or is occurring, or that a particular person committed or is committing a certain felony and use of the [drone] does not infringe upon the reasonable expectation of privacy.

Ochoa said an important part of maintaining privacy is minimizing the use of the drones. After reviewing the Orange County sheriffs policy, Ochoa said theres really no limitation on the use of these drones.

Ochoa also said shes concerned with how the agency plans to maintain the footage captured by the drones.

Drones have the ability to look into peoples homes, places of worship, and the maintenance of this data can be used to keep tabs on people who have engaged in protests the police dont like, Ochoa said. There are so many ways in which this type of surveillance can be misused. History has shown it almost always ends in misuse.

Fitzgerald said the cameras on the drones wont be turned on until operators are ready to take footage.

With that being said, you may not know where the right location is until that camera is on and you start flying it over, Fitzgerald said.

Photos and videos produced by the drones will be filed into sheriffs evidence and will be requested through the Orange County Crime Lab.
Brooke Weitzman believes the homeless crisis in Orange County is a solvable problem, the only obstacle a lack of resolve from local political leaders.

There are places where its a more complicated issue, where they dont have the land or the money, Weitzman said. But in Orange County, theres plenty of money and land. The only thing we are missing is the political will.

Weitzman, 35, of Tustin is co-founder of the Elder Law and Disability Rights (ELDR) Center, a Santa Ana-based nonprofit legal service for seniors and people with disabilities.

The firm is always embroiled in a number of homelessness-related cases because seniors and the disabled usually make up a significant portion of that population. Most notably, the firm filed a federal lawsuit in January with the intent of preventing officials from clearing an encampment at the Santa Ana River.

The ELDR Center is comprised of two full-time lawyers  Weitzman and co-founder William Wise, 61, of Los Angeles. The duo moved into a small office in Santa Ana in April 2017 after incorporating in late 2016. Before, theyd been working out of a coffee shop.

The lawyers employ the help of a few volunteers and law students from various universities including UC Irvine and Chapman. Theres also a part-time administrative assistant.

Brooke Weitzman, an attorney with the Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, addresses reporters during a news conference earlier this year at the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. (Luke Money / Daily Pilot )

Public advocacy work

Weitzman said their days can start as early as 5 a.m. and end as late as 10 p.m. But the schedule is emblematic of the drive that fuels Weitzman and Wise  whove sworn off the six-figure salaries at more traditional firms.

Weitzman chose to seek a future in law after an experience after high school working in homeless shelters during a stint with AmeriCorps at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

She left her New Jersey home to attend UC Irvine School of Law, graduating in 2014.

I decided after working in the shelters that the way to change things is through the law, not in the shelters, Weitzman said.

UC Irvines law school tends to steer students toward public advocacy work.

Carrie Hempel, associate dean for clinical education at UC Irvine Law and a former professor of Weitzmans, said Weitzman was legendary for her enthusiasm.

She has tremendous energy and an ability to think outside of the box to come up with creative solutions to legal problems, Hempel said. She has a deep devotion to public service.

The justice gap

Wise is a veteran of public legal service work, having spent about 30 years at the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, a pro bono firm based in Santa Ana. Weitzman spent a few years working at another pro bono Orange County firm, Public Law Center, before the duo decided to go out on their own.

Weitzman said she and Wise both realized they were turning away a certain portion of the population that couldnt qualify for pro bono work, but also couldnt afford a private lawyer. They felt the answer was the sliding-scale payment plan of the ELDR Center, which caters to the clients income. Homeless clients are not charged.

We felt we could create this to fill that justice gap, Weitzman said.

U.S. District Judge David Carter, with Brooke Weitzman, right, an attorney with the Santa Ana-based Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, surveys the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River in Anaheim in February. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times )

Currently the firm has about 60 open matters and still has to turn people away. Cases deal with elder abuse, end-of-life planning, disability rights and assisting homeless people with citations.

Weitzman said the firm is always on the lookout for federal cases with socially-conscious implications. The federal homelessness lawsuit involving the Santa Ana River camp is their primary engagement.

In that case the ELDR Centers lawsuit asked for a restraining order so the county couldnt move homeless from the sprawling riverbed encampment unless there were adequate alternative places for them to go. U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter granted the order, and then the county and the ELDR Center agreed that the homeless would be temporarily housed in motels.

At the latest hearing on Wednesday, Santa Ana, Huntington Beach and Anaheim agreed to 700 new shelter beds.

Mark Randall, 47, left, and his wife, Tonya Randall, 61, wait in line with others in February for a 30-day motel voucher from the Orange County Health Care Agency at the homeless encampment along the Santa Ana River in Anaheim. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times )

But, Weitzman said if the county isnt living up to its side of the bargain at any time, the firm may come back with a restraining order or seek a suspension of the enforcement of anti-camping and anti-loitering laws.

Hempel said the lawsuit has been instrumental in forcing local government to face the homeless crisis and make an effort to respond.

Someone had to bring a lawsuit to get the problem addressed, Hempel said. A case like this takes a lot of dedication, time and energy. I think the [ELDR Center] demonstrated tremendous courage in bringing the suit.

Jordan Hoiberg, of the Santa Ana-based Orange County Catholic Worker, said the group has worked with the ELDR Center on a number of occasions, serving as on the ground people.

The OC Catholic Worker  a homeless advocacy group  is a plaintiff in the federal lawsuit.

The homeless population is a maligned population, particularly in Orange County, Hoiberg said. Theres a lot of misconceptions that drive this. But, the firm is really filling an important gap.

While dealing with the demanding legal aspects of the job, Weitzman and Wise have been learning how to run their own organization. Weitzman said they are still figuring out how to retain funding and where to go for it. Once they get a handle on the business component, Weitzman said theyll be able to hire staff and grow the nonprofit.

While traversing the terrains of nonprofit legal work can be strenuous, the duo said they wouldnt have it any other way.

Of course I would like to pay my bills and live comfortably and not have roommates, Weitzman said with a laugh. But I went to this law school that taught me how to be a good lawyer. I am in a place where work desperately needs to be done. We arent trying to be a voice for the people who cant speak, but to make space for their voice. This was always the mission.

benjamin.brazil@latimes.com

Twitter:@benbrazilpilot
Hotel Laguna, which has been shuttered for a year after the previous operators lease ended during a legal tug-of-war, will see new life under the hand of local businessman Mo Honarkar.

Honarkars real estate investment firm, Laguna Beach Co., signed a 99-year lease agreement for the property, which has long been owned by Porterville company E.W. Merritt Farms. The lease went into effect Jan. 1.

Mark Orgill, a spokesman for the project, said Honarkar had been eyeing the property for a couple of years and is eager to get the hotel up and running again.

Our ambitions are to restore it to its grandeur and make it  a proud asset of the community, Orgill said. Were in a hurry. We know that it means a lot to the community, and its our No. 1 priority at this time.

Orgill said hes unsure when the hotel will reopen and that the property is being evaluated for interior renovation and exterior restoration. Workers are scrubbing the sidewalks and cleaning the facility at its prominent location at 425 S. Coast Hwy.

We intended just to clean some things up to make it so that its not an eyesore on the corner, Orgill said. We definitely want people to think theres something exciting on the horizon.

Laguna Beach businessman Mo Honarkar leased the Hotel Laguna property effective Jan. 1 and plans to reopen the shuttered hotel, according to a spokesman for the project. (Courtesy of Grant Puckett / Lagunabeachliving.com)

Hotel Laguna, notable for its red and white striped awning, has been closed since the end of 2017, when the lease of its last operator, Andersen Hotels Inc., ran out.

Laguna residents James Ray, real estate investor Joe Hanauer and filmmaker Greg MacGillivray  who publicly vied for the property for two years under the real estate entity Kimbark Group LLC  wished the new operator the best.

Our quest has been to not just reopen the hotel but to do everything needed to enable the hotel to regain its position as a critical and vibrant part of our downtown  the crown jewel of Laguna, the three said in a statement.

Hanauer, MacGillivary and Ray, along with Merritt Farms and Kimbark Group, were the targets of litigation by Andersen Hotels, which operated the 68-room facility for 32 years. Andersen alleged in a lawsuit filed in 2017 that Merritt Farms violated the lease terms with Andersen by failing to give it the right of first refusal to the property while trying to strike a lease agreement with Kimbark, MacGillivray, Ray and/or Hanauer. Andersen also alleged the defendants ruined its prospects to renovate the hotel.

Andersens complaint against Hanauer, MacGillivary, Ray and Kimbark Group was dropped, Hanauer said. A jury trial for the breach of contract lawsuit against Merritt Farms is set for April, according to the Orange County Superior Court website.

Andersens lawyer was not immediately available for comment Thursday.

Hotel Laguna, with its Spanish arches and bell tower, is one of the most recognizable buildings in Laguna Beach, attracting Hollywood celebrities and other dignitaries through the years.

The hotel, first built in the 1880s, was demolished in 1928 because of fire concerns. A more modern establishment was dedicated in 1930 and is the building people know today.

faith.pinho@latimes.com

Twitter: @faithepinho
Full-time student enrollment at Glendale Community College has dropped by 2.3% from the previous school year, putting it at risk of losing state funding if the trend continues, according to a recent report.

The loss works out to the equivalent of 346 full-time students, reflecting the current spring semesters enrollment data.

While the numbers frustrate school officials, theyre not baffling. A nationwide enrollment downtrend has plagued community colleges for the past few years, according to reports from the U.S. Department of Education and the National Student Clearinghouse.

State funding is based on enrollment, so that number is important, said Drew Sugars, the colleges director of communications and community relations. Each full-time student brings in about $5,150 from the state.

The decline doesnt lead to an automatic loss in funding, Sugars said. The state now considers the college to be in a stabilization phase. It has one to three years to show increased enrollment before cuts kick in.

The schools enrollment decreased two years ago by the equivalent of 772 full-time students. It then increased by 556 full-time students the following year. Even though it didnt fully rebound from the loss, it avoided funding cuts by showing positive gains, Sugars said.

According to the colleges enrollment analysis and data, 2009-10 was the last so-called peak enrollment year.

For funding purposes, the number of full-time students is calculated based on how many cumulative hours all students attend classes, representing a combination of full-time and part-time students.

When a college loses students and the money they bring in, you still have to pay for everything that makes that college [run], Sugars said, pointing out that a classroom with a few less students still commands the same costs, including the instructors salary and associated utilities.

Thats where things become a challenge, Sugars said.

The school receives about $78 million to $80 million annually from the state.

Additional revenue comes from out-of-state and international students, who pay more for tuition relative to in-state students. The $215 per unit they pay goes directly to the school, according to Sugars.

Last month, the board of trustees decided to not increase the nonresidential fee in order to hopefully draw more out-of-state and international students to the college.

School officials point to two primary reasons for the enrollment dip, both based on outside forces  an improved economy and a decrease in high school students overall.

The idea is that when jobs are plentiful, as they have been for the past few years, would-be students can get by without specialized degrees or certificates, according to Armine Hacopian, president of the colleges board of trustees.

When the economy suffers, students are more likely to go back to school to improve their marketability.

Ann Ransford, the boards vice president, underscored the effect of changing demographics, including a smaller pool of high school graduates.

Weve lost that whole bubble of kids from the baby boomers, Ransford said.

One step the college has taken to address the downtrend was to hire Sugars, according to Hacopian. Sugars was brought on about seven months ago.

Having a new communications and community relations director is really focusing on our goals, and thats why we created this new position, Hacopian said.

The college has gone a decade without a dedicated communications director, Sugars said.

Another strategy to address the problem has been to add relevant classes, Hacopian said.

Trustees voted unanimously last week to approve 18 new classes and 11 new programs.

New offerings that will be rolled out in the coming months include classes on gender and sexuality and the politics of race in the United States as well as a degree in Armenian language.

Community colleges have unique challenges, in that more of the students work and have families compared to four-year colleges and universities, making it more difficult for them to take on full course loads or see a program through, Hacopian said.

Sugars called the population high risk and more prone to dropping out, relative to their four-year counterparts.

It takes everyone working to be able to maintain and to keep students on our campuses, Hacopian said. Its not an easy task and theres no straightforward answer.

While Sugars is working on marketing strategies to entice new students into the fold, he said hes also looking into how to support the schools existing students so that they see their programs through and meet their goals.

Wed rather put energy into taking care of the students we have, not preparing to have less students, he said.

Lila Seidman is a freelance writer for Times Community News.
After nearly 70 years in business, the La Crescenta Motel continues to draw in travelers from around the world as well as film crews from all spectra of the TV universe.

The 11-room, L-shaped business at 2413 Foothill Blvd. has been a backdrop in shows such as the vampire-filled True Blood and more recently Mad Men.

NEWSLETTER: Stay up to date with whats going on in and around your neighborhood >>

But its a bit unclear how much longer it will be business as usual because the property was recently put up for sale with a price tag of $5.9 million.

Built around 1946 by Glen Hine  an aircraft mechanic during World War I  the motel used to be one of several in the area.

A black-and-white photo from the 1950s shows the La Crescenta Motel, which was known as the May Lane Motel up until ten years ago when it was sold. (File photo)

There were several motels along Foothill Boulevard, said resident Mike Lawler, a member of the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley. This is the last one remaining.

The property is a 46,000-square-foot lot surrounded by trees, abutting a residential neighborhood.

The motel was also originally known as the May Lane, named after Hines two children, Maynard and Alane.

Hine died in 1964, and the business stayed in the family for another four decades before it was sold in the early 2000s.

About 10 years ago, O.J. Rodriguez was hired as manager and has met everyone from actor Christian Slater to people from down under.

I get a lot of repeat customers from out of town. When its wintertime in Australia, they come here for 30 or 40 days, he said. They like a little bit of country, and they can just walk out their door and see green and trees and flowers. Its not like being on the third floor of the Hilton.

La Crescenta Motel manager O.J. Rodriguez talks about the ten years hes spent managing the motel. Rodriguez said demand is as strong as ever thanks mainly to a few decorating efforts to spruce up the retro look of the motel. (Roger Wilson / Staff Photographer)

Rodriguez said demand is as strong as ever thanks mainly to a few decorating efforts to spruce up the retro look.

However, just because the property is sold doesnt mean a closure will be happening anytime soon.

Plans dating back nearly a decade detail tearing down the structure and constructing a strip mall, but the current owner didnt follow through.

Robbyn Battles, a local resident and Realtor, said the motel has been up for sale several times before, and it likely hasnt sold yet because taking on the property would be a huge task. She doesnt believe the motel could stay a motel under a new owner because its too old and run down.

You have to realize the cost involved  the cost to purchase a property like that, develop it and then make money because thats what investors do. They buy properties to make money and that can be a very difficult sale and resale, Battles said.

A leveled lot, however, would be ideal for a new boutique hotel, but not necessarily a strip mall because La Crescenta is already home to many of those, Battles said.

Despite its age, the motel was never given any type of historic designation.

Even Lawler, speaking for himself and not the historical society, said he doesnt consider the motel historic and understands the need for new development.

Im not sure what that says about the Crescenta Valley, having a bunch of motels, he said. I dont think its terribly significant other than the nostalgic factor.

And nostalgia is what Rodriguez said he often hears from local residents.

He recalled a time when someone backed into the motels front sign and knocked it over, necessitating it be removed for some repairs.

During the time the sign was gone, Rodriguez said he got countless phone calls asking whether its disappearance meant the business had closed.

Theres a lot of sentiment, he said.

--

Arin Mikailian, arin.mikailian@latimes.com

Twitter: @ArinMikailian
Glendales future is looking more mobile.

A pair of mass transit projects, both in the early planning stages, could make it easier for residents to get around  and out of  Glendale without ever having to get into a car.

By 2024, riders should be able to jump onto a $267-million, Los Angeles Metro-helmed Bus-Rapid Transit system, or BRT, connecting Pasadena and North Hollywood via Burbank and Glendale, according to project manager Scott Hartwell, who described the project as light rail on rubber tires.

That effort could complement an electric-powered Glendale-Burbank regional streetcar, currently in a feasibility study, that would serve as a link between the city transit center and downtown area, according to the citys assistant director of community development, Bradley Calvert.

An update on both projects came before the City Council Tuesday, with officials weighing in on how theyd like to see the nascent projects develop, including their potential routes.

We dont want everything going in the same direction, Hartwell said of the importance of considering both projects together.

According to Hartwell, a tentative line is planned to connect downtown Burbank to Glendale via Glenoaks Boulevard. Then there are some options. The line could hop onto the 134 Freeway for a brief stretch before getting off and feeding into Eagle Rock  or head south on Central Avenue before continuing east on Broadway or Colorado streets.

Advantages of the freeway route would include a faster travel time and, in addition to that, you would avoid some of the potential impacts that you would have operating on the street, Hartwell said. The downside is you bypass all the destinations south of the 134, including the Americana at Brand, Glendale Galleria and the coming Armenian American Museum.

A proposed route for the streetcar would first connect the Larry Zarian Transportation to Lomita via Central, with Calvert calling it probably the best opportunity to increase ridership.

Then, similar to the BRT, there are options to be weighed. One potential route, a loop, would head northbound along Central, cross the 134 and come back south on Brand Boulevard. A second alternative would place both the north and southbound lanes on Brand.

While the loop option would minimize disturbances to Brand, it might be a little less intuitive [to use] for riders, said Calvert, who previously worked on a streetcar line in Atlanta.

Eventually, the streetcar could be expanded to connect to Burbank, Calvert said.

Metros BRT has secured funding through Measure M, a Los Angeles County voter-approved sales tax that supports transportation projects, and Senate Bill 1, the states gas tax increase.

Meanwhile, the streetcar, still in an earlier phase than the bus system, has no definitive funding source yet, according to city staff.

It is a very, very expensive project, City Manager Yasmin Beers said at the council meeting, pegging the cost at $25 to $28 million per mile. As currently envisioned, it would be nearly 5 miles long, Calvert said.

Glendale Mayor Ara Najarian said he was aware of several Chinese companies interested in pursuing a public-private partnership, in which the company would design, build, operate and maintain the rail and in return take the revenues and any other funding.

Because those companies are looking for high ridership to justify their investment, I think we need to look at the greatest ridership models  for our financial success, but as well as serving the public, Najarian said.

Ridership levels of the BRT could reach 30,000 people per day by 2042, Hartwell said.

Najarian, vice-chair of Metrolink and a Los Angeles MTA board member, has said improving Glendales mass transit options is one of his top priorities as mayor.

Another report on the streetcar is set to arrive in July, Calvert said.

This month, those overseeing the BRT will go before the Metro board to present their findings and ask for approval to go into the next phase  environmental review.

lila.seidman@latimes.com

Twitter: @lila_seidman
Five robbery suspects have been arrested and will answer to 60 felony counts stemming from multiple armed home invasion robberies  including two that took place in La Canada last December  that amassed $1 million in losses, sheriffs officials confirmed Tuesday.

Four adult males and one female were arrested last Thursday by officers from the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department, who worked with assistance from Torrance Police Department personnel to serve multiple search and arrest warrants.

Found during the searches were two firearms, masks, gloves, handcuffs, zip ties, police scanners, walkie-talkies, jewelry, cash and several items connoting gang affiliation.

Crescenta Valley Sheriff Capt. Chris Blasnek said Tuesday the local home invasion robberies that took place in La Canadas Flintridge neighborhood on Dec. 12, 2017 and then on the night of New Years Eve rocked the community.

This has weighed heavily on my mind for almost a year now, said Blasnek, adding that CV Station detectives shared details of the local crimes with various agencies. [But] we knew with persistence and good detective work we would find a break in the case.

Arresting detectives worked with a number of agencies in the jurisdictions hit by the crew, including the Los Angeles Sheriffs Departments Major Crime Bureau and its Burglary-Robbery Task Force.

Thought to be associated with a South Los Angeles gang, the suspects were connected to two home invasion robberies that took place in Palos Verdes Estates on March 2 and July 8 of this year. In both La Canada Flintridge home invasions, residents were tied up at gunpoint by the suspects, who demanded money and valuables.

In the Dec. 12 robbery, four adult men obtained illegal entry into a home on the 800 block of Inverness Drive, where two victims were tied up as the suspects ransacked the residence, stealing collectibles and electronics. At least one of the men was seen in possession of a firearm, according to reports of the incident.

On New Years Eve, at around 8:30 p.m., a woman was outside spraying a pan with Easy-Off cleaner on the porch of her home on the 800 block of Flintridge Avenue when she was approached by a black male adult wearing dark clothing and a ski mask.

With the woman in his custody, the man and two cohorts pushed their way into the house, where they tied up the victim, her husband and adult son. The suspects ransacked the house, stealing the victims wallets, some money and a 50-year-old .38 Special revolver, sheriffs reports indicated.

The suspects are 45-year-old Kelyon Thomas, Janalisa Estrada, 39, Dennis Coleman, 40, and 33-year-old Carlos Cisneros of Los Angeles, all of whom have prior robbery convictions against them, according to a press release issued Tuesday by the Palos Verdes Estates Police Department.

Also arrested last week was 46-year-old Wilmington resident James Carmicle. Evidence connects this robbery crew to a total of eight home invasions committed in La Canada, Rancho Palos Verdes, La Habra Heights, Playa Del Rey and Palmdale, according to the release.

It was a collaboration among a lot of agencies, Crescenta Valley Sheriffs Det. Alan Chu said Tuesday. Criminals will leave some kind of footprint somewhere, its just hard police work that we do. It was definitely a collaborative effort to get these people in custody.

Blasnek thanked La Canada residents and city officials for their continued support of the department, and urged citizens to educate themselves about AB-109 and Propositions 47 and 57  three fairly recent crime reform bills law enforcement officials say have made it harder to detain and prosecute criminals.

Vote carefully and really look at some of these laws, because were really being affected, Blasnek said. We need to stand together on this.

sara.cardine@latimes.com

Twitter: @SaraCardine
Mitch Marner scored twice, the second on a short-handed penalty shot to give Toronto the lead for good, and the Maple Leafs beat the Boston Bruins 4-1 on Thursday night in the opener of their first-round playoff series.

It was Torontos first postseason penalty shot in 20 years.

Frederik Andersen made 37 saves and William Nylander and John Tavares also scored for Toronto, which swiped the home-ice advantage in the best-of-seven series as it tries to advance through Boston for the first time in six tries.

Game 2 is Saturday night.

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Washington 4, Carolina 2

Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin combined to score three goals on the first eight shots, and the defending Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals survived a surge from Andrei Svechnikov and the Carolina Hurricanes to win Game 1 of their first-round series 4-2 on Thursday night.

Backstrom scored twice and Ovechkin scored on the power play to fire up a raucous sellout crowd in the first playoff game in Washington since celebrating the franchises first title in June. It looked like the Capitals would roll toward a statement victory against an opponent lacking playoff experience, but the pesky Hurricanes turned up the heat.

Mrazek bounced back from a rough start to make four huge saves early in the third period, while Svechnikov scored twice in his playoff debut to put some fear into the Capitals, who were outshot 29-18 and outplayed for long stretches. Braden Holtby made 27 saves and the penalty kill came up big on two late Carolina power plays to allow Washington to take a 1-0 series lead.

Calgary 4, Colorado 0

Matthew Tkachuk scored twice and Mike Smith made 26 saves for his first playoff shutout in nearly seven years, and the Calgary Flames blanked the Colorado Avalanche 4-0 on Thursday night in Game 1 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series.

Rookie Andrew Mangiapane and Mikael Backlund also scored as Calgary won its first playoff game since beating Anaheim 4-3 in overtime on May 5, 2015.

The shutout was Smiths first in the postseason since May 20, 2012, when he made 36 stops while with the Phoenix Coyotes to shut out the Los Angeles Kings in Game 4 of the Western Conference final. The Coyotes lost the next game and Smith hadnt played a playoff game since.
Hello, my name is John Cherwa and welcome to our horse racing newsletter as we head into a three-day racing weekend at Santa Anita.

Before we get to Jon Whites Derby rankings lets tell you about a couple of things that arent happening. (Oh, thats a great way to sell it.)

--First, the Caifornia Horse Racing Board postponed its Friday meeting to discuss what to do about Santa Anitas dates, should they become available. Just click here.

--And, the Jockeys Guild called off its no-whip Friday, which was billed as an experiment to see its impact on the races (and mutuel handle, although it never said that). Instead, the Guild settled for some love from the Thoroughbred Owners of California. Just click here.

Jon Whites Kentucky Derby rankings

Time to turn our attention to the Kentucky Derby. As always, were lucky to have the top expert Jon White take a look at whats happening there. Jon makes the morning line at Santa Anita, hes a licensed steward, and hes the pre-eminent historian on racing. Were lucky to have him. So, heres his Kentucky Derby rankings, brought courtesy of Xpressbet.com.

As the May 4 Kentucky Derby approaches, trainer Bob Baffert has managed to put himself in a position to take a serious run at tying the record for most Kentucky Derby winners by a trainer.

Baffert has won the Kentucky Derby five times: Silver Charm in 1997, Real Quiet in 1998, War Emblem in 2002, American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.

Ben Jones holds the record with six wins: Lawrin in 1938, Whirlaway in 1941, Pensive in 1944, Citation in 1948, Ponder in 1949 and Hill Gail in 1952.

Baffert strengthened his hand for this year's $3 million Kentucky Derby when he sent out Roadster to win last Saturday's $1 million Santa Anita Derby. Roadster went into the Santa Anita Derby with no Kentucky Derby points. He emerged from last Saturday's race with 100 points, more than enough to secure a berth in the Run for the Roses.

When Roadster dropped well back on the backstretch in the 1 1/8-mile Santa Anita Derby, it looked like he might not fire. His chances to get into the Kentucky Derby appeared in jeopardy. But he generated a sustained rally in the final three furlongs to get the job done. Finishing second was Game Winner, who also resides in the powerful Baffert barn.

According to Churchill Downs officials, a record number of points could be needed in order to get into this year's 1 1/4-mile Kentucky Derby. Since the points systems was instituted in 2013, Mo Tom's 32 points in 2016 were the most required to get into the Kentucky Derby.

Game Winner has accumulated 85 Kentucky Derby points, a sum that is sufficient to get into the race. Game Winner won last year's Breeders' Cup Juvenile and was voted a 2018 Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male.

Some are knocking Game Winner for having lost both of his 2019 starts. But it should be kept in mind that he has run well both times this year when finishing second. He lost a division of Oaklawn Park's Rebel Stakes on March 16 by a nose to Omaha Beach, then lost the Santa Anita Derby by just a half-length. And Game Winner might have won the Santa Anita Derby if not for a wider trip than Roadster.

Despite being winless in two starts this year, Game Winner definitely remains a big-time threat to win the Kentucky Derby. He moves down just one notch on my Kentucky Derby list this week to No. 3. Meanwhile, Roadster jumps up to No. 4 after being No. 8 last week.

Three horses on this week's Top 10 are entered in Saturday's $1 million Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park. They are No. 1 Omaha Beach, No. 6 Improbable and No. 7 Long Range Toddy.

A total of 170 qualifying points (100-40-20-10) are up for grabs in the 1 1/8-mile Arkansas Derby, which has attracted a field of 11. Improbable is the 8-5 morning-line favorite. Omaha Beach is 2-1. Long Range Toddy is 5-2.

Long Range Toddy is in good shape with 53.5 Kentucky Derby points. Omaha Beach and Improbable both could use a points-boost Saturday. Omaha Beach, based at Santa Anita with trainer Richard Mandella, has 37.5 points. Improbable has 25 points. Baffert's strong hand will become even much stronger in his bid for a sixth Kentucky Derby victory if Improbable does indeed collect enough points to get into the field.

The only other race to offer qualifying points toward the 2019 Kentucky Derby that still remains to be run is Saturday's $200,000 Lexington Stakes at Keeneland. A total of 34 qualifying points (20-8-4-2) are there for the taking in the 1 1/16-mile Lexington. Heading the field of 10 is Anothertwistafate, the 2-1 morning-line favorite.

Trained by Blaine Wright, Anothertwistafate finished second, a neck behind Cutting Humor, in the $800,000 Sunland Derby at 1 1/8 miles on March 24. Wright had hoped to go straight to the Kentucky Derby from the Sunland race with the colt. But Anothertwistafate is running in the Lexington because it appears he will need more than the 30 points he currently has in order to get into the Kentucky Derby.

Sueno is 5-1 on the Lexington morning line. He goes into Saturday's race with 28 Kentucky Derby points. Trained by Keith Desormeaux, Sueno finished third in the $1 million Louisiana Derby at 1 1/8 miles on March 23. Desormeaux won last years Lexington with My Boy Jack, who subsequently finished fifth in the Kentucky Derby.

War of Will is back on my Top 10 this week after his sharp four-furlong workout in 48.80 seconds at Keeneland last Saturday with jockey Tyler Gaffalione in the saddle. Trained by Mark Casse, War of Will won the Lecomte Stakes and Risen Star Stakes in New Orleans this year before finishing ninth as the 4-5 favorite in the Louisiana Derby.

In the first few strides of the Louisiana Derby, War of Will abruptly lost his footing. He came out of the race with a strained patellar ligament, according to Casse. But in what Casse has termed a small miracle, it appears War of Will is now fine physically and back on track for the Kentucky Derby.

War of Will was No. 4 on my Top 10 going into the Louisiana Derby. He returns to my Top 10 this week at No. 5.

Also new to the Top 10 this week are Tacitus, winner of the $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct last Saturday, and Vekoma, victorious in the $1 million Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland the same day.

Tacitus won the 1 1/8-mile Wood by 1 1/4 lengths despite getting knocked around early. Tacitus previously had won the $400,000 Tampa Bay Derby at 1 1/16 miles on March 9 for trainer Bill Mott.

Vekoma finished third in Gulfstream Park's $400,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes at 1 1/16 miles on March 2, his first defeat in three career starts. He rebounded from his loss in the Fountain of Youth to register a 3 1/2-length triumph in the 1 1/8-mile Blue Grass. George Weaver trains Vekoma.

Exiting my Kentucky Derby Top 10 this week are Cutting Humor (No. 7 last week), By My Standards (No. 9 last week) and Code of Honor (No. 10 last week).

Here are this week's rankings, courtesy of Xpressbet:

1. Omaha Beach (1)

2. Maximum Security (3)

3. Game Winner (2)

4. Roadster (8)

5. War of Will (NR)

6. Improbable (4)

7. Long Range Toddy (5)

8. Anothertwistafate (6)

9. Tacitus (NR)

10. Vekoma (NR)

NOTE: Last week's rankings in parentheses.

Santa Anita preview

As a reminder, this was a scheduled three-day racing week as next week will be. Sprints down the hill have been suspended for now, meaning about the only turf racing youll see is a mile on the turf. (There are three of them on Friday.) The field sizes are good, especially considering this was supposed to be the no-whip day, which was called off on Wednesday. There are eight races, starting at 1 p.m.

Cant get real fired up over the feature, an allowance optional claimer for Cal-bred fillies and mares going 6  furlongs on the dirt. The favorite, at 5-2, is Tapitha Bonita for trainer Bill Spwar and jockey Tiago Pereira. She has won two of 18 races, both claimers early last year. She was a $6,000 purchase at the Barretts sale.

Wandering Patrol is the second choice at 3-1 for Ben Cecil and Mario Gutierrez. She is one-for-two lifetime but hasnt raced since May of last year. She is a homebred for Paul Reddam. OK, folks, you figure it out from here. Post is around 4:15 p.m.

Here are the field sizes, in order: 8, 6, 5, 9, 11, 9, 7, 9.

Bob Ikes SA pick of the day

SIXTH RACE: No. 7 Acclimate (5-1)

Older gelding from the Phil D'Amato barn stretches back out around two turns and should do better in this mile turf event. He beat Cal-breds one back despite encountering some traffic trouble, has tactical speed to ensure a good trip and likes this course.

Sundays result: Dreams of Valor (9-1) fired big but was outkicked late and had to settle for second.

Bob Ike is a Partner/VP of Horsebills.com (here's a video) and the proprietor of BobIkePicks.com (full-card picks, 3 Best Plays and betting strategy).

Golden Gate weekend preview

Were back with our weekly look at the best racing at Golden Gate Fields. As with the last couple of meetings, were delighted to have race caller and all-around good guy Matt Dinerman as our host for previews and other musings. So, take it away, Matt.

Every winter, Golden Gate Fields lets its turf course rest from mid-January to early April. Well, turf action is back in the Bay beginning with Fridays seventh race, a $20,000 claimer for 3-year-olds. My top pick is 10-1 morning-line shot No. 6 Spider Jorgensen, coming off a third-place finish in a starter allowance race. The Nick Alexander homebred makes his turf debut and is bred to love the grass. He is by Grade I turf router Boisterous, out of the seven-time turf-winning dam Welken. Worth a shot. On Saturday, we have one turf race with 10 entrants. We are easing back into turf racing with minimal races on the grass this week, but it will become very prominent as the meet rolls on.

Another week and another $100,000 guarantee in the $1 Stronach 5 this Friday. Leg C of the wager goes as the fifth race 5 at Golden Gate: a field of 11, 3-year-old fillies sprint six furlongs in a maiden-claiming event. I made a strong case for 7 of the 11 entrants. Tough race. No. 4 Hong Kong Flew is probably the one to beat. She finished second in her past two races and finds a field that looks manageable. In fact, she outfinished No. 8 Chamboozel for second last time out and the aforementioned rival is 4-1 on the morning line in this race.

Golden Gate Fields Kentucky Derby hopeful Anothertwistafate runs in the Grade 3 Lexington Stakes at Keeneland on Saturday. Top North American jockey Javier Castellano rides for the first time. The Blaine Wright trainee worked a bullet 46 and 4 half-mile drill over the dirt at Sunland Park on April 4, where he has been stabled since finishing second in the Sunland Derby. He flew to Keeneland last weekend and, according to Blaine, is doing very well.

He shipped to Kentucky good, hes eating well and hes happy, said Wright, when I bumped into him after the Golden Gate races on Sunday. Our goal is to get into the Kentucky Derby and that is why we are running in this race at Keeneland. We need to pick up more [Kentucky Derby] points. Hes doing great and were looking forward to the Lexington on Saturday.

Anothertwistafate earned a start in the Preakness with a victory in the El Camino Real Derby, a race which offered the winner an all-fees paid entry into the Preakness for the first time. If Anothertwistafate were to lose in the Lexington Saturday, he would not have enough points to make it to Churchill Downs. If that were to happen, he would freshen up for the Preakness.

A reminder to all horsemen that nominations close on Thursday, April 18 for the eight stakes races on Gold Rush Weekend, April 27-28. Six stakes will be run on Saturday, led by the $250,000 Grade 3 San Francisco Mile on turf and the $100,000 California Derby for 3-year-olds on Tapeta. The Sunday program has two stakes, the Campanile Stakes and Silky Sullivan Stakes, both for California-bred or California sired 3-year-old fillies and 3-year-old colts and geldings, respectively. Each race is run at a mile on the turf. Ill be detailing more info on Gold Rush Weekend in next weeks newsletter  stay tuned.

Los Alamitos weekend preview

Its time to turn things over to marketing and media guru Orlando Gutierrez, who will tell us about the upcoming weekend at Los Alamitos. Orlando, the floor is yours.

Los Alamitos Race Course will host its first two races of the meet for 2-year-old quarter horses when 15 juveniles run on Friday night. The eight-race program starts at 6 p.m. Seven 2-year-old fillies will go in the fifth race, while eight 2-year-olds will race in the seventh.

Oklahoma-based Reliance Ranches LLC began its local 2018 campaign in great form thanks to terrific early wins from juveniles SC Coronada and SC Money Maker. Both runners won their first Los Alamitos starts before qualifying to the Grade 2 Robert Adair Kindergarten Futurity in early May.

Reliance Ranches has the filly Dreams Divine in the fifth race and the gelding Invader in the seventh. Dreams Divine and Invader have twice worked together in preparation for their races with the filly looking the more impressive of the two. Bradbury Racing's O Yes I Can, who had the fastest of 26 works on March 16, is among the top contenders in the fifth. In the seventh, EG High Desert Farms' Hawks Valentine figures to challenge in the seventh.

After giving longtime trainer Robert Bean his first ever stakes victory at Los Alamitos, the 4-year-old thoroughbred colt Candy Zip heads a solid field of eight in the $20,000 Wheatland Handicap at 870 yards on Saturday night. First post is 6 p.m.

Owned by the trainer, Candy Zip pulled away from talented Run Raging Rhino Run and Bound To Bet to score an impressive four-length victory in the Rossmoor on March 6. His winning time of 44.453 seconds is the meet's fastest at 870 yards. Candy Zip had previously run second to multiple local winner Oil at this distance. For Bean, scoring his first Los Alamitos stakes win was special, but the longtime horseman has enjoyed other memorable moments in racing.

For actor Jack Klugman, Bean hot walked multiple stakes winner Jaklin Klugman, who ran third to the filly Genuine Risk in the 1980 Kentucky Derby. Bean and Klugman were the co-breeder of the stakes winner Barbie Karen, who won the Lady Morvich Handicap at Bay Meadows and finished third in the Grade 3 Hillsborough Handicap in 1985. Candy Zip will be ridden by this track's all-time thoroughbred leading rider Ramon Guce from post eight. The field will also feature Barbra B Handicap winner Run Raging Rhino Run and Foxy Fresh, who posted a six-length win in her last start.

Recapping last weeks James Smith Memorial Handicap, Singles Cruise was a three-time stakes winner in Canada in 2018. Shes now a stakes winner at Los Alamitos after outdueling Callender by a nose to win Sundays James Smith at 12-1 odds.

Ed Burgarts LA pick of the day

SEVENTH RACE: No. 1 Hawks Valentine (3-1)

I loved the improvement from the first to second drills for this debuting freshman colt. In his last 12.3 gate drill when drawn on the inside of two horses, he reached out nicely during the final 1/16 after getting bumped in at the start and easily outworked his company. I suggest a win bet and also key in the exactas and trifectas over the 3,6,7.

Final thought

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Now, the star of the show, Fridays entries.
Portland, Ore., residents may be chanting, We are No. 8! We are No. 8! Which isnt quite as bad as it sounds, especially when you consider it will cost you but $177 round trip to get there on Alaska.

The city in the Pacific Northwest ranked 8th in the recently released U.S. News & World Reports 125 Best Places to Live in the USA.

To make the list, the publication said, A place had to have good value, be a desirable place to live, have a strong job market and a high quality of life. Portland had an overall score of 7.2, receiving a 6.7 for quality of life and a 6 for value.

Just above it: San Francisco, which got a 7.8 overall but a 4.9 for (surprise) value. Just below it: Seattle, which scored a 7.2 overall, 6.6 for quality of life and 5.9 for value. Kind of a bittersweet outcome.

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Still, being in the Top 10 isnt bad. (Austin, Texas, ranked first.)

If you want to check it out for yourself and fly out of Burbank, Alaska Airlines has just the ticket. Here are there details:

Fare: $177 round trip, including all taxes and fees, from Burbank to Portland, Ore., on Alaska.

Restrictions: Subject to availability. For travel Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturday from May 1-June 19. Buy your ticket by April 22.

Info: Alaska, (800) 252-7522

Source: Airfarewatchdog

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel
The Sudanese military on Friday swiftly replaced the countrys transitional leader linked to the Darfur genocide after street rallies against him.

The military also said it would refuse to send ousted President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir to the International Criminal Court, where he faces charges of crimes against humanity.

Thousands of jubilant protesters celebrated in the streets after Defense Minister Gen. Awad Ibn Auf, who was named de facto leader after Bashir was ousted Thursday, announced he was stepping down as transitional leader.

Ibn Auf said he would be replaced by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, general inspector of the armed forces, as head of the transitional council, which will rule the country for two years until elections.

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I am confident he will steer the ship to safe shores, he said of Burhan, adding that he was stepping aside to preserve unity of the armed forces.

Burhans record appears to be cleaner than the rest of Bashirs generals, and he is not known to be implicated in war crimes or wanted by international courts. He was one of the generals who reached out to protesters at the weeklong encampment near the military headquarters, meeting with them face to face and listening to their views.

Chants rang out across the sit-in where tens of thousands have been rallying in front of the military headquarters to protest the military takeover of power after Bashirs ouster. Revolutionaries, we will continue our path, the protesters shouted as they danced and clapped.

Earlier Friday, another top general, Omar Zein Abedeen, said that the 75-year-old Bashir would not be extradited to the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, saying that doing so would be an ugly mark on Sudan.

Even rebels carrying weapons, we dont extradite them, he told reporters at a news conference in Khartoum, the capital.

Zein Abedeen said Sudanese courts would hold Bashir accountable, but did not specify what charges he could be prosecuted on. After his arrest, the military denounced him and his government, accusing it of corruption, maladministration and lack of justice.

The developments point to the sensitivity of the Darfur conflict for the military that arrested Bashir after four months of deadly street demonstration against his 30-year rule.

The protesters rejected Ibn Aufs leadership because he was head of military intelligence during the brutal campaign to suppress the Darfur insurgency in the 2000s. The United States has imposed sanctions on him since 2007, saying he armed and directed pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed, accused of widespread atrocities against civilians, including rape, during the conflict.

The move also underscores the limits on the reach of the International Criminal Court. On Friday, ICC judges rejected a request by the courts prosecutor to open an investigation into allegations of war crimes, including accusations against U.S. forces, in Afghanistan  in part because the U.S. and Afghan governments and the Taliban are not expected to cooperate.

A woman protests Friday outside army headquarters in Khartoum. (Ashraf Shazly / AFP/Getty Images)

In the Darfur conflict, rebels among the territorys ethnic African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of discrimination and oppression by the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum. The government responded with a scorched-earth assault of aerial bombings and unleashed the Janjaweed. As many as 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes.

Along with Bashir, the ICC has indicted two other senior figures in his regime  Abdel Rahim Muhammad Hussein, who was interior and defense minister during much of the conflict; and Ahmed Haroun, a senior security chief at the time who last month was named by Bashir to run the ruling National Congress Party.

Both were among those reported by the Sudanese media to have been arrested Thursday in a sweep by the military against Bashirs inner circle. Zein Abedeen confirmed the media reports Friday without specifying the two men.

An ICC spokesman declined to comment on Bashirs case. On Thursday, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urged the Sudanese military to hand over the ousted leader.

Victims of the gravest crimes in Darfur should not have to wait any longer for justice, said Jehanne Henry, associate director at Human Rights Watch.

Meanwhile, Zein Abedeen sought to reassure protesters who, while celebrating Bashirs removal, oppose the militarys seizure of power. After ousting the president, the military announced it would rule the country for two years through a transitional council. It also suspended the constitution, dissolved the government, declared a three-month state of emergency and imposed a nighttime curfew.

Protest organizers have vowed not to end their street action until a civilian transitional council is formed, saying rule by military commanders who for years were Bashir loyalists is just an extension of his regime.

The curfew and state of emergency have raised fears the military could eventually disperse the sit-in by force. But at least initially, it appears to be trying to persuade protest organizers to end the campaign.

Speaking at a news conference aired live on state TV and flanked by other uniformed officers, Zein Abedeen contended that the army has no ambition to hold the reins of power for long.

This was not a coup, but a tool of change, he said. We came ... to guide the country forward.

But protest organizers rejected the militarys assurances, calling them deception and farce.

The Sudanese Professionals Assn., which spearheaded the four months of demonstrations against Bashir, repeated demands for the immediate handover of power to a civilian transitional government.

At the sit-in, the mood was festive. Some protesters brought in mattresses, fans and even air conditioners, while others swept the streets, signaling they intend to stay. As thousands of Muslim worshipers lined up in the street to hold prayers, Christians among the protesters held blankets over them to shade them from the sun in a show of solidarity.

There were also signs of cracks among Bashirs former loyalists. On Friday, the commander of Sudans feared Rapid Support Force, a paramilitary force, expressed support for the protesters, saying the forces will not accept any solutions rejected by the Sudanese people and called for dialogue so Sudan would avoid slipping into chaos.
Mexico is on track to record its most violent year in modern history, according to government statistics.

Mexicos president, however, says otherwise.

At a news conference Friday, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador contended that homicides had remained steady or fallen since he was sworn into office in December.

We have maintained the levels that existed previously or reversed the trend, he told Univision reporter Jorge Ramos, who had asked what Lopez Obrador plans to do about the countrys spiraling body count.

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Ramos challenged the presidents assertion, citing publicly available statistics from Mexicos Ministry of Public Security, long seen as the nations official source of homicide data.

According to the ministry, homicides were up 18% during the first three months of Lopez Obradors term compared with the same period a year earlier. They were also higher than in the final three months of former President Enrique Pena Nietos term.

Ramos said correctly that if current rates of violence continue, 2019 will be the bloodiest and most violent year in the modern history of Mexico, surpassing last-years record tally of 33,369 killings.

Lopez Obrador bristled at that claim, saying he had statistics that painted a different picture.

We have controlled the situation, according to our data, Lopez Obrador said.

The president did not cite his source, but proceeded to state what he described as the daily average of homicides for each month since he was sworn in. The numbers he shared  79 killings on average per day in December, 75 in January, and 83 in February  were about 18% lower than the totals reported by the Ministry of Public Security.

The president and the journalist eventually agreed to disagree, and moved on to spar over Lopez Obradors recent efforts to pressure a Mexican newspaper to reveal a source in a leaking scandal.

But the feud over homicide data quickly gained steam on news programs and on social media, with some questioning whether Lopez Obrador has a sufficient read on the considerable security challenges faced by Mexico.

If the president believes in the numbers he presented  he is deceiving himself, security analyst Alejandro Hope wrote on Twitter. If he does not believe in them, he is trying to deceive us.

Economist Valeria Moy called Lopez Obradors assertions delirious.

More than a dozen years after former President Felipe Calderon declared war on Mexicos drug traffickers, sending soldiers into the streets to fight them, violence is worse now than at any point since officials began releasing homicide data in 1997.

A recent report by the Citizens Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice found that 5 out of 6 of the worlds most violent municipalities were in Mexico.

The violence is particularly bad in Tijuana, where gangs are battling over control of a growing domestic drug market, and in states including Chihuahua, Colima and Guanajuato, where the rise of fuel theft has led to a sharp increase in killings.

On Thursday, the U.S. State Department updated its travel advisory for Mexico, underscoring the risk of kidnapping.

Lopez Obrador has repeatedly said that his strategy to combat crime is different than that of his predecessors, who relied heavily on the armed forces. On the campaign trail, he vowed to focus on economic development and scholarships to offer young people abrazos, no balazos  hugs, not gunshots.

But Lopez Obrador has sent thousands of troops to Tijuana and other parts of the country to reduce violence, and is also seeking to establish a crime-fighting national guard, which would be made up of former soldiers. Some critics have expressed concern that it is a continuation of the military-led strategy.

Friday was not the first time Ramos has ruffled the feathers of well-known interviewees.

In February, he and his news crew were briefly detained during a testy interview with Venezuelas embattled president, Nicolas Maduro. During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump had Ramos forcibly ejected from a news conference, telling him to go back to Univision.

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

Twitter: @katelinthicum
(CNN)  The reincarnation of the Dalai Lama must "comply with Chinese laws," the Chinese Communist Party government has said as the Tibetan spiritual leader recovers in hospital from a chest infection.

Asked about the 83-year-old Buddhist monk's hospitalization on Wednesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Beijing wasn't aware of the physical condition of the 14th Dalai Lama. But he added that there are "clear rules" regarding the reincarnation of "the living Buddha."

"Reincarnation of living Buddhas, including the Dalai Lama, must comply with Chinese laws and regulations and follow religious rituals and historical conventions," Lu said, adding that China respected religious freedom for all its citizens.

The Dalai Lama has lived in India since his self-imposed exile from Tibet in 1959 following the arrival of Chinese troops in the region, which Beijing claims has always been part of China.

Since then, he has become an international celebrity, winning a Nobel Peace prize and feted by some of the world's top leaders. He has also remained a perpetual thorn in the side of the Chinese government.

The Dalai Lama's private secretary Tenzin Taklha said Tuesday the aging monk had been hospitalized with a chest infection after returning to his home in Dharamsala, India, following a meeting in New Delhi.

On Thursday, Taklha said he would be released soon. "He had a chest infection and as suggested by doctors, he took some antibiotics. He is much better now," he said.

But the spiritual leader's illness has once again raised questions over what will happen to Tibetans and their religion when the Dalai Lama dies.

Last Dalai Lama?

It isn't completely clear whether the Dalai Lama will allow himself to be reincarnated after he dies. The Tibetan spiritual leader has hinted in recent years that he might be the last person to hold the title.

Previously, the title of Dalai Lama, the highest-ranking leader in Tibetan Buddhism, was bestowed on the reincarnation of a line of revered religious teachers, whose identity was chosen by their senior monks.

The 14th Dalai Lama was enthroned when he was four years old after being discovered by a delegation of monks.

Tibetan reincarnation expert Ruth Gamble, at La Trobe University's China Studies Research Center, said there was no requirement for the next Dalai Lama to be born in Tibet.

In a statement released by the spiritual leader in 2011, the Dalai Lama said it was inappropriate for the Chinese government to supervise his reincarnation.

"They say they are waiting for my death and will recognize a 15th Dalai Lama of their choice. It is clear from their recent rules and regulations and subsequent declarations that they have a detailed strategy to deceive Tibetans," he said.

The leader of Tibetan Buddhism said in his statement he would consult with his fellow monks when he was "about 90" on whether the institution of Dalai Lama should continue.

China is an officially atheist state. While the Communist government promises religious freedom to all citizens, there have been worrying signs of a growing crackdown on religion in the past decade.

In the western region of Xinjiang, as many as two million Muslim-majority Uyghurs have been placed in detention centers as part of a policy to eradicate their cultural and religious practices, according to the US state department.

In 2018, authorities tore down dozens of predominantly Protestant Christian churches through the country after ruling that they were built or run "illegally."

Reincarnation subject to approval

The Dalai Lama's fears of interference by Beijing in the reincarnation process are not without precedent.

In the 1990s, a process to find the reincarnation of the 11th Panchen Lama, another important religious leader in Tibetan Buddhism, ended in division and controversy after the Dalai Lama's chosen candidate disappeared and a successor selected by the Chinese government was put in his place.

But Gamble said the Dalai Lama would be under heavy social pressure to reincarnate and, in the end, it might not be up to him anyway.

"In some ways, it's not really his choice. If people go looking for him, they'll find him," she said. The most likely outcome was for two Dalai Lamas to emerge after the 14th holder of the title passes away, Gamble said -- one picked by the Tibetans-in-exile and one selected by Beijing.

Although he no longer calls for Tibetan independence, the Dalai Lama has continued to demand cultural autonomy for Tibet. China calls him a traitor and "a wolf in monk's robes."

He has also remained a point of tension between India and China. Nearly 100,000 Tibetan refugees live in India after fleeing China in 1959.

The Dalai Lama has faded from the spotlight in recent years. In 2018, he announced that he would be cutting back his international travel, citing age and exhaustion.

Asked in a recent interview with Reuters what might happen after his death, the Dalai Lama anticipated a possible attempt by Beijing to foist a successor on Tibetan Buddhists.

In the interview, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate said: "In future, in case you see two Dalai Lamas come, one from here, in a free country, one is chosen by Chinese, and then nobody will trust, nobody will respect (the one chosen by China). So that's an additional problem for the Chinese. It's possible, it can happen."

Article five of a Chinese government law, which lays out the "management measures" for Tibetan Buddhism, says the reincarnation of a living Buddha is "subject to an application for approval."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Dalai Lama's reincarnation must comply with China's laws, Communist Party says."
- A report has alleged that a Nigeria's former minister of petroleum resources allegedly blew $56m cash on a jet

- Four anti-corruption organisations had written to the EFCC demanding the seizure of the jet

- According to the groups, the jet was bought with proceeds of corruption relating to the fraudulent sale of OPL 245

Emerging report from The Nation indicates that about $56 million of the $1.09 billion Malabu oil block cash was used by a former minister of petroleum resources to buy a jet.

Legit.ng gathered that the aircraft has been traced to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

It was learnt that four anti-corruption organisations have petitioned the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) demanding the seizure of the jet.

READ ALSO: NAIJ.com upgrades to Legit.ng: a letter from our Editor-in-Chief Bayo Olupohunda

The disclosures were said to have been contained in the petition sent to the EFCC by the four groups.

The petition was signed by the chairman, Human Resource Development Centre (HEDA), Olanrewaju Suraju; Corner House director, Nick Hildyard; Re: Common director, Antonio Tricarico; and co-founder, Global Witness, Simon Taylor

They alleged that the jet was worth 56 million dollars.

In the petition, which was addressed to the acting chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Ibrahim Magu, the anti-corruption groups said the jet was bought with proceeds of corruption relating to the fraudulent sale of OPL 245.

They demanded the retrieval and forfeiture of the jet by the federal government through the EFCC.

The four anti-corruption crusaders, which attended the court proceedings in Milan, said their position was strengthened by findings from the on-going international corruption case taking place at the Milan, Italy Court."

READ ALSO: Name Emirs involved in banditry or face legal action - Zamfara council of chiefs tells defense minister

The petition read in part: The investigation focused on the sales of OPL245 to Eni and Shell. It also involves grievous allegations of corruption linked with several serving and former company managers, including Nigerian politicians.

Prosecutors in Milan were told by a former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent, Debra LaPrevotte and Ten. Col. Alessandro Ferri both involved in the investigations of the case, that 56 million USD of proceeds of corruption was used by the former minister for the purchase of a private jet in Oklahoma City, USA. The specific tail registration number of the aircraft was given as M-MYNA

What we heard from testimony in the court confirmed the information enclosed in a table produced by the FBI, and already disclosed as a public document in the court case, Crown vs. Malabu Oil and Gas, which was held at Southwark Crown Court in London, UK; namely that proceeds of the OPL 245 deal were used to purchase a Bombardier Global 6000 private jet with the registration number M-MYNA.

They alleged that the individuals connected to Tibit Ltd, a BVI company involved in selling several Bombardier 6000 jets, have been the subject of a court case with the Australian Tax Office, adding that the report related to the Panama Papers has also raised questions about the Bombardier sales.

Although the Nigerian government received only $210 million as Signature Bonus, about $1.092 billion was traced to a London bank account which was suspected to be slush funds allegedly used to bribe some middle men and politicians in the country.

A former president was accused of benefiting about $200 million from the Malabu oil deal. About $523 million of the $1.092 billion paid for the block was shared out as bribes to some former ministers and politicians.

Meanwhile, Legit.ng had previously reported that an Italian judge sentenced two defendants to a four-year jail term over their involvement in one of Nigerias biggest oil industrys corruption scandals.

The long-running case revolves around the 2011 purchase by Italian oil company, Eni, and Anglo-Dutch peer, Royal Dutch Shell, of OPL 245 offshore oil block (popularly known as Malabu oil scandal) for about $1.3 billion.

Nigerian Emeka Obi and Italian Gianluca Di Nardo were found guilty of international graft but their lawyers declined to comment.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng We have upgraded to serve you better

Nigeria Latest News: Federal High Court Grants Fayose Bail | - on Legit TV

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- The Emir of Kano has linked poverty level in Nigeria with the increasing population

- Muhammadu Sanusi II said as population continued to grow, there was no resource to cater for it hence the high level of poverty

- The prominent monarch called for demographic and economic transition to put an end to the trend

Emir Muhammadu Sanusi II of Kano state has attributed increasing poverty level to uncontrollable growth in the population of Nigeria.

The prominent monarch made this known on Thursday, April 11, while speaking at a discussion in Kano tagged: Leveraging on China-Nigeria Relations to Re-industrialise the Economy," Daily Trust reports.

Legit.ng gathers that the event was organised by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria.

The Emir, who lamented that there was no resources to cater for the growing population, suggested that the country needed to have a very major exercise in economic education.

READ ALSO: Israel converts historical Palestinian mosque to bar, events hall

He said: The people living in Northern Nigeria today are four-five times the number of people living in northern Nigeria in 1960 the land has not increased, resources have not increased, the revenues have not increased and there is no surprise that you are going to continue to have an increase in poverty.

I think this country needs to have a very major exercise in economic education many of the arguments in the public space do not suggest that we have sufficient understanding of economics.

"Few people for example can make direct connections between the increasing poverty that we see in Nigeria and wrong economic policies. Few people understanding that allocation of resources is a reflection of economic choice.

"If you spend N1.5trn subsidizing petroleum products that is 1.5trn out of education, 1.5trn out of health, 1.5trn out of power, 1.5trn out of infrastructure you have taken economic decision that having cheap petroleum is more important than having education, more important than having health."

The monarch advocated for demographic transition as a solution to the increasing poverty level. He added that there would not be economic transition if there was no rethink on how to curb the poverty challenge through a population reform policy.

He added: Decision that we have to make today are decisions that will have to aim at reducing the rate of growth in population; maybe unpopular today, but they are absolutely essential for the next generation. If we do not have demographic transition we are not going to have economic transition."

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In an earlier report by Legit.ng, Alhaji Aliko Dangote spoke about the widening gap between the rich and poor Nigerians. According to him, the gap was very alarming.

He further expressed concern that more than 60% of the population live in extreme poverty in the northeast and northwest of Nigeria, saying northern Nigeria will progress more if the 19 state governments would work together to close the widening development gap.

He called on the 19 northern state governors to invest more in the agricultural sector for the steady development of the region.

Nigeria Latest News: Emir Sanusi Says Mosques Should be Converted into Schools | Legit TV

Source: Legit
- The All Progressives Congress said Atiku was ineligible to participate in the 2019 presidential election

- The party said the PDP presidential candidate is from Cameroon and should not have contested in the election

- The ruling party told the tribunal to dismiss the suit by Atiku

The All Progressives Congress (APC) has filed a motion at the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja saying Atiku Abubakar has no right to challenge the result of the election as he was not a Nigerian.

Daily Trust reports that the APC said Atikus case lacked merit as he was a Cameroonian and therefore has no right to stand for election.

READ ALSO: Let south east lead National Assembly - APC PROs endorse zone

The lead counsel, Lateef Fagbemi faulted the candidacy of Atiku saying he was ineligible to participate in the election in the first instance.

He said Atiku was born on November 25, 1946, in Jada, Adamawa, in Northern Cameroon and is, therefore, a citizen of Cameroon and not a Nigerian by birth.

Channels TV reports that according to the party, while Northern Cameroon preferred a union with Nigeria, Southern Cameroon chose alignment with the mother country and that it was as a result of the plebiscite that Northern Cameroon, which included Adamawa, became a part of Nigeria.

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Meanwhile, Atiku replied the campaign office of President Muhammadu Buhari over claims that he should be in prison if the system was working well in Nigeria.

Atiku, Nigeria's former vice president, also dismissed as 'total fabrication' the allegation by the Buhari campaign office that he spent $30,000 to hire a US lobby group to persuade the US Congress to stop the inauguration of President Buhari.

NAIJ.com (naija.ng) -> Legit.ng. We have upgraded to serve you better.

2019 elections: Do you still trust INEC to conduct fair elections? - Nigerians speak| Legit TV

Source: Legit
Five members of the Money Rules Everything gang out of Bethlehem will face state racketeering charges, connected to criminal activities that include homicide, Lehigh Countys district attorney announced Friday.

Miles Harper, 20, and Alkiohn Dunkins, 20, are currently incarcerated -- Harper for shooting two men outside of the Lehigh Valley Mall and Dunkins for a robbery at Moravian College.

Also charged Friday are Yzire Jenkins-Rowe, 22, of the 300 block of East Locust Street in Bethlehem; Joseph Rodriguez-Valcarcel, 22, of the 200 block of Seventh Avenue in Bethlehem; and Zahmire Welcome, 20, of the 600 block of Ramblewood Lane in Freemansburg.

Each of the five men is facing charges of corrupt organizations and conspiracy to commit corrupt organizations.

It is a Lehigh County grand jury investigation, and the presentment has been sealed by presiding Judge Maria Dantos, the DAs office said in a news release.

The alleged criminal activity includes homicide, attempted homicide, robbery and drug dealing, from January 2015 through December 2018 in Lehigh, Northampton and Allegheny counties, prosecutors allege.

The case was investigated by Bethlehem Detective Blake Kuntz and Detective Kevin Mriss of the District Attorneys Homicide Task Force.

Prosecutors did not say which homicide or homicides, but in court paperwork previously said MRE members were connected to the murder of Tyrell Holmes.

Before Holmes was stabbed and his body set on fire, he sent a Snapchat message with the names of three people he believed might kill him.

The three names were of men who have been identified by police as members of the Money Rules Everything gang, based in Bethlehem. None of the three have been charged in connection with Holmes killing last April 24.

Bethlehem police said Holmes and several of his friends were involved in a drug rip robbery involving marijuana. Holmes could be identified as one of the five men who robbed the victim, and gang members became aware of that fact, according to police.

At the time, Holmes was living with Jenkins-Rowe and Dunkins on East Raspberry Street in Bethlehem, detectives previously said.

Harper was charged with attempted homicide in connection with a 2018 shooting outside the Lehigh Valley Mall that wounded two men. But he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, and the attempted homicide charges were dropped.

Harper was sentenced Friday to two to 10 years in state prison in that case.

Dunkins was found guilty in September of a drug rip robbery, where a drug deal is arranged and either the dealer steals the buyers money or the buyer steals the dealers drugs. Dunkins was a Moravian College student at the time of the robbery.

Dunkins went to trial in Northampton County, and was convicted of robbery, criminal conspiracy, receiving stolen property and simple assault. He was sentenced in January to five to 10 years in state prison.

Records show Rodriguez-Valcarcel was paroled April 6th from Northampton County Prison. He was sentenced in November 2017 to nine to 23 months in county prison, followed by two years of probation, after pleading no contest to receiving stolen property.

Police said a stolen gun and marijuana were found in a 2000 Ford Focus that Rodriguez-Valcarcel was driving in Bethlehem.

Welcome was accused of being part of an assault and robbery July 5th near Yosko Park on East Sixth Street in Bethlehem.

Welcome was paroled from Northampton County Prison in Jan. 11, after pleading guilty in December to robbery and being sentenced to six to 23 months in county prison.

District Attorney Jim Martin said that while the alleged criminal activity occurred in both Lehigh and Northampton counties, the cases will be prosecuted in Lehigh County.

Thats due in part because the Northampton County acts were part of one, larger criminal episode that occurred in both Lehigh and Northampton counties, according to the news release.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
President Donald Trump treated four World War II veterans to an Oval Office meeting Thursday, fulfilling a birthday wish for 95-year-old Allen Jones and giving three other veterans age 100 and older a day to remember.

One of the men, 101-year-old Floyd Wigfield, of Cumberland, Maryland, managed to win a promise from the president for a return flight on Air Force One following this June's ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. "We'll work that out," Trump said. "You'll like Air Force One."

Trump had met Jones at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention last year and Jones, of Cranston, Rhode Island, asked to spend his birthday with the president. Trump looked happy to oblige, joking with the men and their families, and asking each one to say a few words. When one of the guests presented Trump with a hat and suggested he tweet about it, the president deadpanned: "I don't tweet that much."

Sidney Walton, 100, of San Diego, and a medic in the war, told the president he joined the Army to fight Hitler, prompting Trump to reply: "That was a good reason."

Walton is on what his family called the "No Regrets Tour," a personal mission to visit all 50 states and the White House to educate Americans about World War II veterans.

Paul Kriner, 103, of Chambersburg, Pa., told the president he participated in 517 days of combat. The president told him he didn't look a day over 90.

Kriner and Wigfield are working with the Greatest Generations Foundation, which provides veterans with the chance to memorialize their stories and find closure by returning to visit where they served.

Trump described the men as great heroes, great warriors, highly respected.

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A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted eight people in a gang-related sex trafficking ring in Berks County that used threats of violence to force women and girls to perform sex acts for money, federal authorities report.

The Sevens gang, formed from members of other gangs including Crips, Bloods and Latin Kings, ran the operation out of a boarding house at 125-127 S. Fourth St. in Reading, paperwork out of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania says. The gang is named after the number of letters in the word loyalty, the paperwork says.

The location was raided March 15 by city vice officers, Berks County detectives and federal agents, according to reports in the Reading Eagle and from WFMZ, and three people were taken into custody.

Gang cofounders Shaquile W. Newson (top general) and Alexander M. Malave (general), guard Savion Garcia and money-maker Fatiema Bivens are in Lehigh County Jail, according to the U.S. attorneys office in Philadelphia. Gang member Michael Diaz-Walker is in the federal detention center in Philadelphia, the U.S. attorneys office said. Karvarise E. Person (general), Bryanna C. Concepcion (general) and Isaiah Rowe (guard) were not in custody.

All eight are charged with conspiracy to commit sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and sex trafficking of minors, court papers provided by the U.S. attorneys office say. If convicted, they each face life in prison with a mandatory minimum of 15 years behind bars, authorities said.

The operation ran from May 2018 into March of this year, authorities said.

The gang members used force, threats of force, fraud, coercion and an combination of such means to get women and at least two 17-year-old girls to perform sex acts in exchange for money, the federal grand jury concluded.

Newson gave orders and approved all the gangs activities while Malave, a Blood, ensured the rules were followed, court papers say. Person, a member of the Gangster Disciples, helped set rates and used force to ensure rules were followed, authorities said.

Concepcion recruited women, trained girls and women to engage in sexual encounters for money and posted advertising, authorities said.

Garcia and Rowe guarded the boarding house and were enforcers, watching for police on the block and making sure girls and women didnt flee, authorities said.

In addition to performing sex acts for money, Bivens forced -- or attempted to force -- others to do the same, authorities said.

Diaz-Walker assisted in the advertising efforts, took photographs and drove females to the scheduled encounters, authorities said.

In at least one case, a victim was forced into the boarding house and coerced to use drugs amid threats of violence, authorities said.

One person was told she would be stabbed if she didnt perform sex acts for money and return to the boarding house, authorities said.

A 17-year-old girl was forced to have sex with Newson and Garcia to test her sexual performance, authorities said. Sexually explicit photos of the girl were taken and posted in advertisements on the skipthegames.com website, authorities said. The girl was then taken to various hotels to cause her to engage in sexual encounters with unidentified men, the grand jury determined. For not obeying a command, the girl was dragged down a hallway in the boarding house and a knife was put to her neck, authorities said. She was locked naked in a room and kept there for days, authorities said. She was also forced to have sex while Person held a gun to her head, authorities said.

Homeland Security Investigations, city police and Pennsylvania State Police headed the investigation, the U.S. attorneys office said.

U.S. Attorney William McSwain said the three law enforcement organizations did invaluable work investigating this case.

McSwains office is ready to do more if called upon.

According to the indictment, these eight defendants are dangerous gang members who engage in the trafficking of women and girls by force and manipulation," McSwain said in a news release. ... We are thankful that the grand jury returned this indictment to get these people off the streets of this city. Sex trafficking, especially of minor children, is a pervasive problem that demands an aggressive response. We stand ready with our federal and local law enforcement partners to identify and dismantle gangs that perpetuate this abuse.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter@TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A traffic stop of a Latino motorist on Interstate 81 at Carlisle has become the linchpin of a newly-filed federal lawsuit claiming the Pennsylvania State Police have illegally been using racial profiling to enforce U.S. immigration laws.

State police have no legal grounds to pull over and unnecessarily detain drivers on the basis of their perceived ethnicity and troopers have exceeded their authority by abetting immigration enforcement, the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania contends in the complaint.

State police spokesman Ryan Tarkowski declined comment on the suit Thursday. He said the state police dont comment on pending litigation.

The ACLUs filing of the U.S. Middle District Court suit on behalf of three New York residents follows repeated criticism and media scrutiny of the involvement of state troopers in immigration law enforcement.

In late January, the state police unveiled a new policy that prohibits troopers from asking passengers in vehicles involved in traffic stops for identification for the sole purpose of determining if they are in the U.S. legally. Also, it bars troopers from detaining or arresting foreign nationals if their only offense is being in country illegally.

Formulation of those guidelines occurred at the urging of Gov. Tom Wolf following an investigation by ProPublica and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The ACLU contends in the federal lawsuit that the new policy falls short. That suit is based on what supposedly happened on I-81 in Cumberland County on April 9, 2017 when Trooper Luke Macke pulled over an SUV driven by Maria Marquez of Brentwood, NY.

Marquez claims Macke followed her vehicle for several minutes before activating his cruisers lights. When she pulled over, Macke told Marquez she had been speeding. Yet, she claims the trooper only asked for her drivers license, but not her registration and insurance cards.

Macke then asked Marquez if she had a green card, according to the suit. Ms. Marquez understood the request to be for documentation demonstrating her immigration status, it states.

Marquez gave Macke her U.S. government-issued work permit. He then turned his attention to her passengers and questioned them about their immigration status, the ACLU claims. It contends the trooper asked them if they were legal or illegal. The suit states that Macke told the passengers it was his right to ask for immigration papers. The trooper also said he was working with Immigration and he threatened to call the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service, the ACLU contends.

One passenger, Eduin Cambar Matute, Marquezs partner, gave Macke his Honduran identification card, his library card and a bank card, the suit states. The other, Marquezs adult son Lovos, produced his Salvadoran passport.

Macke then had Marquez get out of the SUV and questioned her about the immigration status of the two men, the ACLU claims. Marquez claimed the trooper never asked about any traffic violations.

About an hour after the stop began another trooper arrived and led the two men away in handcuffs, the suit states. Marquez claims Macke told her they were arrested because they did not have papers.

Only then did Macke give her a citation for speeding, Marquez contends.

The two men ended up in ICE custody in the York County Prison, were subject to removal proceedings and were released weeks later after posting thousands of dollars in bonds, according to the suit.

The ACLU contends Mack only stopped Marquezs SUV because of the race, color or Latino appearance of its occupants, an act that constitutes racial discrimination. Therefore the stop also violated the U.S. Constitutions prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, it claims.

The duration of the traffic stop amounted to an unlawful prolonged detention as well, the ACLU asserts.

Marquez and her passengers seek unspecified monetary damages and payment of their legal fees.
Pennsylvanias highways can be frightening places.

Now imagine that, according to Pennsylvania State Police, a Luzerne County man who was a third-party commercial license test examiner for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation gave out 142 licenses to truckers, bus drivers and others but allegedly never administered the safety tests.

And, when, after a year-and-a-half investigation, the state came to understand the scheme in which the tester took cash payments from the applicants at Luzerne County Community College in Nanticoke, 67 of the licensed drivers failed the retest, police said.

Michael Anthony Jordan, 51, of Larksville, a borough near Wilkes-Barre, was arraigned Thursday on one count of theft in addition to 25 counts each of violations concerning licenses, causing or risking a catastrophe, and tampering with public records or information, records show. He was freed in lieu of $25,000 unsecured bail and faces a preliminary hearing tentatively scheduled 11 a.m. April 24 in Luzerne County Central Court.

Jordan didnt answer a call for comment on Friday and court papers didnt list an attorney.

State police at the Wyoming barracks interviewed numerous CDL applicants who were supposed to be tested by Jordan between Jan. 1, 2016, and Dec. 31, 2017, a news release said. Jordan would falsify the examination reports , allowing the licenses to be issued, police said.

The community college, which lost income because Jordan took cash payments, was not aware of the fraudulent testing scheme and cooperated in the probe, police said.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Its clear neighbors of the proposed Palmer Point Apartments are no fans of the development.

They fought to convince the Palmer Township supervisors to reject the plan for 312 apartments at 3100 Charlotte Ave.

They sued Ashley Development after the supervisors approved the plan.

When they lost in court in June 2017, they gave up.

So why hasnt developer Lou Pektor started building the apartments?

He came before the township planning commission Tuesday night asking permission to phase in the development. According to planning commission Chairman Robert Blanchfield, Pektor wants permission to build some of the apartments before he makes good on a promise to put in a $1 million traffic light at Greenwood and Hartley avenues.

Township supervisor Jeffrey Young said Pektor wants to build as many as 192 of the apartments before the light goes up.

Protesters gather outside the Palmer Township building prior to a meeting to discuss the Palmer Point apartments proposal on March 29, 2016. (Rudy Miller | For lehighvalleylive.com)EXT

Pektor said Wednesday he doesnt want to have to wait for the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation planning process, which can take 12 to 18 months before work can even start on the light, according to the township engineer.

It would affect out construction timeline, Pektor said.

However, Pektor hasnt even applied yet for a permit to put up the traffic light, according to PennDOT spokesman Ron Young. An application made in November 2016 for the light has lapsed because no one acted on it, Young said Wednesday. Young said theres no normal timeline for construction of a traffic light, although PennDOT will respond to application requests within 30 days, he said.

Pektor said Thursday theres no point in applying for the light without an updated traffic study in place. Theres no point in asking for the light before the traffic study because the application will be rejected, he said.

Young, who attended the planning commission meeting, agreed that Pektor and his representatives didnt have much information on Tuesday about how the phased-in portion of the apartments would affect traffic in the area.

(Pektor) said he spent $54,000 with the engineer on traffic. Thats not a lot, Young said. Pektor is expected to come back with more details at a future planning commission meeting. The plan is tabled for now.

We just thought it was too sloppy, Blanchfield said. Pektor said Thursday he hopes to have the updated traffic data by June.

The traffic light was a non-negotiable term under which the supervisors granted approval for the development in March 2016. In exchange for the traffic light, Pektor got approval to exceed the 218 apartments hes permitted by right and is allowed to build three and a half stories high as opposed to the two and a half stories hes permitted by right.

Supervisors Chairman Dave Colver said there has always been an understanding that the development would be completed in phases. He and the other four members of the township board of supervisors will eventually decide the fate of Pektors phasing request. The planning commission gets a first look, then offers its recommendation to the township supervisors.

Increased traffic, crime and school-age children were among the concerns from neighbors when Ashley sought approvals the first time around. Then-Township Manager Chris Christman looked into their concerns and addressed them.

"I think it's our job to base decisions on facts, not hearsay," Colver said at the meeting when the supervisors approved the apartments.

The apartments are slated for the site of an abandoned industrial facility, the ITT plant. Pektor bulldozed the plant in 2018. After a study by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, tainted soil was trucked from the site in 2013.

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
If Jermaine Newsome endured racial epithets and was kicked and beaten by Easton police as he claims in his lawsuit, then why was he in such a good mood when he was booked at the Easton Police Department?

Thats an observation Easton city attorney David J. MacMain makes in the response he filed Tuesday to the lawsuit Newsome filed in federal court.

Newsome, 31, claims at least 15 members of the Easton police department participated in a raid Jan. 27, 2017, during which police allegedly told him n----r you have no rights," kicked him, stomped him and spit on him, according to the lawsuit his attorney filed in January.

Hours after the ordeal, however, hes grinning ear to ear in a photo attached as an exhibit by the city.

In the booking photo taken shortly after the incident, Newsome is smiling and there are no marks or other evidence of any injuries on Newsomes face, MacMains answer says.

City police deny attacking Newsome or using racial slurs against him, according to MacMain.

Newsome accuses police officer Brian Burd of stalking him and searching Newsomes girlfriends home without probable cause. The city says it searched the home based on evidence pulled from Newsome and his girlfriends trash and based on an inflammatory video Newsome allegedly posted to Facebook.

Newsome claims an police officer pulled him over for no reason on Jan. 2, 2017. Newsome said he made a spoof video of the incident, which offended Burd and made him obsessed with Newsome, the lawsuit says.

Eastons attorney responded that police gave Newsome a verbal warning to rectify issues with the vehicle during the traffic stop. According to the city, Newsome admitted on the spoof video that he was driving with no registration, valid inspection or insurance.

In fact, Newsome admitted in the video he had drugs and a gun on him during the traffic stop but police failed to search him, according to MacMain. The city includes still images from the video as exhibits. In the video Newsome holds up a bag with what appears to be marijuana and says hes getting ready to smoke, according to the citys response. He also says he considered shooting police, the response says.

These are images Jermaine Newsome allegedly shared of himself on social media. They're attached as exhibits by the Easton Police Department in a federal lawsuit filed by Newsome against the police. (Courtesy photos)Courtesy photo

These are images Jermaine Newsome allegedly shared of himself on social media. They're attached as exhibits by the Easton Police Department in a federal lawsuit filed by Newsome against the police. (Courtesy photos)Courtesy photo

Police found corner-tie baggies in the garbage on Jan. 19 and Jan. 26 outside the home at 131 S. 13th St. that Newsome shares with his girlfriend, the city response says. Based on the corner-ties commonly used to package cocaine and based on the Facebook video, police conducted the raid around 6 a.m. Jan. 27, 2017.

Newsome claims police stormed the home and upset young children inside. According to the citys response, police knocked and announced their presence repeatedly but no one answered the door. They decided to break in for fear that Newsome was destroying evidence or preparing to ambush them, the city response says.

Police admit they came away from the raid with just a small amount of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Newsome pleaded no contest to those charges and paid a $150 fine, the lawsuit says.

Newsome claims police shouted expletives as they entered the home. He claims they kicked his face, head and ribs as he lay on the ground. Police said Newsome resisted police officers attempts to cuff him. It took two officers to hold him down and a third to apply handcuffs due to his resistance, police said.

Eventually Newsome was seated on the couch to calm down, the city response says. Police applied a second set of handcuffs on Newsome when he complained his arms were sore, police said.

Newsome claims he was denied medical treatment after he was taken to the police station and he was forced to get himself to an emergency room. The city response says Newsome refused to answer when asked by an EMS worker whether he needed to go to a hospital.

Newsome calls the raid unreasonable and excessive in the lawsuit and says it stems from a department that fails to train its officers on the appropriate use of force and fails to discipline officers who dont follow the rules. MacMain denied the allegations.

The procedures of the city of Easton for training, evaluating and, when necessary, disciplining police officers have been reasonable and appropriate and have insured the protection of all rights, privileges, and immunity of all individuals, MacMain wrote.

The department underwent a rigorous accreditation process as a result of a grand jury investigation more than 10 years ago.

The city of Eastons policies and procedures have been thoroughly reviewed, scrutinized, and found to be lawful and worthy of professional accreditation by the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association Accreditation Commission, MacMain wrote.

Newsomes lawsuit was filed by Allentown attorney Robert E. Goldman. Goldman didnt return a message seeking comment Friday.

Burd is named as a defendant along with 14 other members of the Easton Police Department, the city itself, Mayor Sal Panto Jr. and City Administrator Luis Campos.

U.S. District Court Judge Edward G. Smith set a trial date of Jan. 24, 2020.

Jermaine Newsome was taken into custody just after 6 a.m. Jan. 27, 2017, on South 13th Street in Easton. (Tim Wynkoop | lehighvalleylive.com contributor)EXT

Rudy Miller may be reached at rmiller@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @RudyMillerLV. Find Easton area news on Facebook.
An elderly inmate of the Midland Prison Portlaoise who the FBI believes has been producing and selling child pornography for at least 30 years has lost a legal challenge to his pending extradition.

Daniel Mullan, a dual US Irish citizen, is wanted by the FBI to face trial in New York on charges related to the sexual exploitation and transportation of a minor as well as two counts of possessing child pornography.

Mr Mullan, who is fighting his proposed extradition to the United States from custody in the Midlands Prison, Portlaoise, was indicted by a Grand Jury in New York in September 2017, while serving a sentence for sexual offences in Ireland.

The High Court ordered his extradition to the United States in December, and the Court of Appeal upheld that decision on Friday, April 12.

Mr Mullans lawyers challenged his extradition on grounds that he suffered from a multiplicity of serious illnesses including sight loss, inability to walk, morbid obesity, atrial fibrillation, chronic cardiac failure, anxiety and cellulitis.

He was pushed in and out of court in a wheelchair and sat through the hearing with a blanket over his knees, wearing sandals, close to the judges as he is hard of hearing.

They also contended that extraditing a 79-year-old Irish citizen in poor health would be disproportionate and not in the public interest.

Dismissing Mr Mullans challenge, President of the Court of Appeal Mr Justice George Birmingham said the evidence put forward regarding Mr Mullan's health was "scant".

The fact of the matter was that Mr Mullan had spent a significant period of time in custody in Ireland and the Irish prison system had been able to cope, the judge said.

"There is no reason whatever to believe that the US Federal prison system would not be able to cope as well," he said, adding that reassurances were provided by an official from the US Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Mr Justice Birmingham the High Court judge was entitled to conclude that it would not be contrary to the public interest to extradite him.

He said the fact Ireland was a signatory to an international agreement with the United States meant there was always a degree of public interest in allowing individuals to be put on trial.

In Mr Mullans case, he said the public interest was enhanced by the seriousness of the alleged offences, being sexual offences directed at a minor.

He said Mr Mullan had put forward very little in respect of his private life.

While he is an Irish citizen, as well as a citizen of the United States, his primary connection to Ireland has been that he has been a prisoner in this jurisdiction.

He said none of the factors present, either viewed individually or cumulatively, required a refusal to extradite.

In conclusion, Mr Justice Birmingham, who sat with Ms Justice Maire Whelan and Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, said he was not prepared to uphold any of the grounds of appeal but would uphold the order to surrender.

Solicitor Cahir OHiggins, for Mr Mullan, sought a stay on the order for surrender, pending an application for a Supreme Court appeal, which was granted for seven days.

Mr Justice Birmingham said the stay, postponing surrender, would be for seven days to allow the filing of an application to the Supreme Court. If the application was made, the stay will continue until the Supreme Court decides to take the case or not. There is no automatic right of appeal to the Supreme Court.

Counsel for the Attorney General, Ronan Kennedy BL, was awarded costs against Mr Mullan.
A young Laois local election candidate who caused a storm of social media criticism after her comment on student nurses this week now says she did not mean offence.

Vivienne Phelan is seeking election for the first time in the Portarlington Graiguecullen Municipal District in the May 24 local elections.

Earlier this week, the vet tweeted that she was "fed up hearing about student nurses and their payment for placement".

"Vet students complete a lot of placement. Lots of travel costs. Lots of accommodation costs. No pay. Keeping up with the rent in Dublin at the same time. Not possible to get a part-time job unlike nurses."

Fed up hearing about student nurses and their payment for placement.



Vet students complete a lot of placement. Lots of travel costs. Lots of accommodation costs. No pay. Keeping up with the rent in Dublin at the same time. Not possible to get a part-time job unlike nurses.  Vivienne Phelan (@ViviennePhelan) April 8, 2019

It brought an angry response from thousands of people on social media. Some pointed out that all students need paid placement, and others said they would not be voting for Ms Phelan.

In response, Ms Phelan issued a new tweet on April 11, which stops short of an apology.

"I don't think my earlier tweet struck the right tone. I recently qualified as a vet and I'm all too familiar with the challenges vet students face. However, I shouldn't have compared two different professions that have different demands. No offence was intended."

I don't think my earlier tweet struck the right tone. I recently qualified as a vet and I'm all too familiar with the challenges vet students face. However I shouldn't have compared two different professions that have different demands. No offence was intended.  Vivienne Phelan (@ViviennePhelan) April 11, 2019

The public response is still resoundingly negative.

Damage is done Vivienne. Politicians should really think before tweeting  Phil O'Donnell (@philodon31) April 11, 2019
Laois priest Fr Sean Hyland from Portarlington will share his extraordinary story on the RTE Late Late Show this month after his appearance was rescheduled in March.

Fr Sean released his book Whisperings of My Soul last December and he told the Leinster Express he has been scheduled to talk about his amazing life story on the Late Late Show on Good Friday, April 19.

A fitting time for Fr Sean to tell his story but also one of the busiest weeks on a priest's calendar during Holy Week. Fr Sean said he was concerned he might not be able to make it due to demands in his own parishes of Clonbullogue and Rhode.

However, he said he has received great support from two priests who are mentioned in the book who are going to help cover the masses he will be missing and he really feels like this was meant to be.

He said there will be another man on the show with him and they will be discussing the theme of faith in adversity.

Fr Sean will get to celebrate mass up in Donnybrook, Dublin near the RTE studio.

In his book, Fr Sean explains and explores the explicit consolation, dreams and visions he received of his late wife Liz and his two young kids.

Before becoming a priest, tragedy struck Fr Sean and his wife, Liz, early in their marriage with the deaths of their two young children Seana and Kieran.

Lizs deep faith helped her survive the heartbreak, but Sean became an angry man after their devastating loss.

Fr Hyland explained why he wrote the book.

I lost my wife and earlier in life, we had lost our two children. Liz carried me through that and when she got sick, I prayed for support, it was kidney cancer and a long nine-month journey.

After the children died I had turned to the drink and I was terrified I would go back there.

I was always a pessimist and fell into self-pity but I prayed and I was given the strength, more strength than was natural for me.

I prayed and I got explicit consolation, dreams and visions of Liz and my children that they were safe and well, I knew this beyond doubt.

I have shared it with other people who are grieving or troubled and it comforts them. It is a gift that has been granted to more than me. That was the catalyst to write the book, my experience gave other people comfort, he said.

Fr Sean said he received help through many consolations of faith which let him know that his wife and children are close by and watching over him. In thanksgiving, he entered a seminary in Rome and has devoted the remainder of his life to God as a Catholic priest.
A Monasterevin man will be a guest on the Late Late Show tonight t to talk about the moving statues in 1985.

John Miller will join Ryan Tubridy to reflect on events of 34 years ago in which he witnessed the statue in Monasterevin grotto move.

John features in a new documentary about moving statues in the local grotto in Monasterevin.

John, who was 20 at the time, said his mum Lily came home from Bingo with the news.

According to the Irish Examiner John told his mammy that if it was f**** happening all over the place, it should be happening here. Mammy said wed go up to the grotto and see.

We went up in the car and pulled in. We werent there for five minutes when at the same time we both saw the statue turning.

It was turning to the right, towards the railway, but it wasnt the statue itself that was moving.

It seemed to be a figure that came down and made it appear as if it was moving; it was as if something was superimposed on the statue.

It frightened the bejaysus out of me because I didnt believe in this. I said to my mother, dont open your mouth about it. When they returned home, he says, he got into bed and I prayed and prayed; the hair stood up on my head.

Inevitably, word got out about the Millers experience:

Crowds started to appear. People were seeing different images  some reported they were seeing the devil, others were seeing images of Our Lady with tears rolling down. Everyone was getting a different image.

However, recalls John now, he continued to see exactly what hed seen the first night: I saw the same thing on subsequent occasions  a vision coming over the statue and turning to the left and the right. Every evening a nearby street light shone on the grotto, he recalls, and eventually people began to suggest that the shadow cast by this light was the cause of the strange images.

But then something unusual happened.

Suddenly the light went off for 15 minutes and everyone continued to see what theyd been seeing. The light came back on and everyones doubts were gone.

He added that sightings around the country that summer brought one hell of a lot of prayer back to communities around Ireland.

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Long standing Kildare County Councillor Kevin Byrne has indicated that he will not seek to contest the forthcoming local elections for health reasons.

A lifelong member of the party, trade unionist and councillor since 2003, Cllr. Byrne was unanimously selected by convention last September to contest the election, and the announcement that he is stepping back, believed to be made only last week to party members, has necessitated a hasty selection convention.

He currently represents the Celbridge-Leixlip Municipal District.

Nominations for that convention closed at noon today and will be contested by two candidates, former TD Emmet Stagg and local party member, Celbridge native, Ciara Galvin.

Ms Galvin currently works for SIPTU having previously worked in Brussels as an assistant to a member of the European Parliament.

Speaking of her decision to go forward she paid tribute to Cllr Byrne.

Ciara Galvin

Kevin's worked really hard for Celbridge for years. He's helped hundreds if not thousands of people as a councillor, but has always been very humble about it and focussed on helping people rather than seeking the limelight.

He's an absolute gentleman, something that everyone who meets him says.

We could really use a lot more politicians like him, and I think we're all genuinely sad that he's had to step down for health reasons.

I'd rather the selection convention on Monday wasn't necessary, but it can't be helped and I am looking forward now to setting out the kind of campaign I want to run.

As a new mum she admitted she had to think long and hard about putting her name forward. My baby Eabha is only three months old, and I know that election campaigns are tough, especially with only five weeks to go.

She said that if she did get the candidacy she would sit down with Kevin again and plan our transition and campaign.

"I really hope he'll still be involved. He's been a member of the local Labour party since 1965, so I reckon it'll take more than doctor's orders to stop him.

Emmet Stagg has in the past been a county councillor and a TD and has already been selected to run in the next general election for the party, having lost his seat a the last election.
Some of the proceeds of what gardai believe was a brothel run in Newbridge is to go to charity following a decision by the district court.

At Naas District Court on April 11, the State brought an application under the Police Property Act to forfeit to the State money which was found on the premises which gardai believe was previously run from a premises on the Cutlery road area in Newbridge.

After hearing the details, Judge Desmond Zaidan ordered that 500 each go to Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children cancer treatment section, Temple Street Children's Hospital and Sensational Kids.

The balance of a mix of currencies is to go to the Jack and Jill.

Sgt Jacob said that 1,700 plus currency from China, Hong Kong and the middle east were found. He said two women were said to be involved but were not charged with any offence.

Over the last six months gardai tried to contact them. They are believed to be out of the jurisdiction. He said there were other bank accounts found by gardai with huge amounts of money in them. He said there could be around 3,000 with an estimated 1,000 in Chinese currency.

The women who were arrested during the search, from Malaysia and of Chinese extraction, were not charged following consideration of the evidence by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Largy National School with its partner school, Kilbarron National School Ballyshannon recently participated in a Peace Prom in Belfast as part of a Peace IV CASE (Collaboration through Sharing in Education) initiative.

Peace Prom is a cross-border initiative  first begun in the 1990s  and it involves a shared orchestra between schools from each side of the Border. It has, over the years grown enormously; now involving thousands of children from hundreds of schools, north and south, forming both the orchestra and in more recent years a childrens choir.

Largy National School joined in with 3,000 plus other children in the Belfast Arena in the massive Peace Prom event. They sang and danced a medley of songs that the students had been learning all year in school.

For everyone who travelled from Largy the atmosphere was electric. Everyone enjoyed themselves immensely. There were also performances by guest dancers, soloists, the orchestra and other musicians.

Meantime the Education Authority in Northern Ireland and Leargas work in partnership to implement the Peace IV Collaboration through Sharing in Education (CASE) programme.

CASE is for primary and post-primary schools in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of Ireland.

Read Also: Cross-border youth groups stage play focussing on SL&NC Railway
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A FORMER Limerick senator has been sentenced to three months imprisonment for assaulting three gardai during an incident in North Cork two and-a-half years ago.

James Heffernan, 39, of Ballinlyna, Kilfinane was convicted, earlier this year, of assaulting the three gardai near Mitchelstown on July 31, 2016.

According to reports in the national media, the incident occurred shortly after he was ejected from the Indiependence music festival which was taking place at a site on the outskirts of the town.

During a sentencing hearing, this Friday, Judge Brian Sheridan said Mr Heffernan  who served on Limerick County Council for two years between 2009 and and 2011  was in complete blanket denial of his  Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde behaviour.

The judge said the qualified teacher blamed everyone but himself for what happened and believed he was a victim.

Nikki O'Sullivan BL, said her client was a very active contributing member of society until his career trajectory and personal life "fell off a cliff."

She said the former senator is making efforts to address his addiction and mental health issues and is being supported by his family.
BOBBY Ryan's death was callous, calculated, controlled murder and the only verdict available is to find Patrick Quirke guilty of murder, lawyers for the State have told the Central Criminal Court.

The defence says the prosecution evidence is thin and warned the jury of the dangers of accepting the evidence of Mary Lowry.

Mr Quirke, 50, of Breanshamore, County Tipperary has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Bobby Ryan, a part-time DJ known as Mr Moonlight. 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 has claimed Mr Quirke murdered Mr Ryan so he could rekindle an affair with Ms Lowry, 52,.

Finishing his closing speech to the jury of six men and six women Michael Bowman SC, for the prosecution, said for a guilty verdict he must rule out any rational theory that would be consistent with Mr Quirke's innocence.

Ruling out suicide, he said Mr Ryan met with a violent and brutal death. He ruled out accident saying accident does not have the hallmarks of concealment of a criminal act.

This body, he said, had been stripped naked for forensic reasons and his death was callous, calculated, controlled murder.

The prosecution can't identify a specific weapon or time of death but, he said, it is clear that he died after leaving Mary Lowry's home at 6.30am on June 3, 2011.

Mr Ryan's van was seen at Kilshane Woods at 8.30 that morning but according to his daughter the seat was in the wrong position and it was parked in gear so he was not the last person to drive it. His body was found 22 months later, not 60 yards from where he got out of bed that morning.

Taking the jury through the strands of evidence, he said each one would amount to nothing more than suspicion or something uncannily coincidental but it is the combined effect that is important. The evidence, he said, clearly communicates motive. The recovery of the body, he added, is anything but fortuitous but planned and designed.

He asked what are the chances that it is coincidence that Patrick Quirke was in love with and financially dependent upon Mary Lowry and was experiencing financial pressure due to investments in Ireland and abroad.

He is demanding money from Mary Lowry with increasing frequency and determination at a time when Mary Lowry is telling him she wants to finish with him and remove herself as his emotional and financial support.

Is it coincidence, he asked, that he is the same man who sent texts to Bobby Ryan pretending to be Mary Lowry and later called Mr Ryan to say he's been seeing Mary Lowry for three years, almost breaking up their relationship. The same man who then reports Mary Lowry for child neglect, his second attempt to compromise their relationship, counsel said. He tells Mary Lowry that she's not welcome at a family function and despite evidence to the contrary tells gardai that the Lowry family was "disgusted" with Mary's new relationship with Bobby.

The same man, Mr Bowman said, who claims Mary Lowry wanted to forgive him a 20,000 debt while she says that is not true.

On the day Bobby Ryan went missing the artificial inseminator Breda O'Dwyer noted that he was unusually late milking his cows, the only time in 15 years she had seen him milking when she arrived at about 9.30. On that date he was doing something else unusual, Mr Bowman said, taking his wife for a weekend away for her birthday.

When his love rival disappeared life fell back into routine for Mr Quirke, counsel said. He went away with Mary Lowry and wanted to take family holidays with her again. He tells gardai he accepts her relationship with Flor Cantillon, which began in March 2012, but according to Mary Lowry he was making inappropriate inquiries as whether they had become intimate and told her it was too early to start a relationship.

And then, Mr Bowman said, there is the coincidence that an external hard drive in Mr Quirke's home has recordings of Mary Lowry and Flor Cantillon. Mr Bowman asked: "Is it bad luck that this speaks contrary to what he suggests in interview to be the case."

In August 2012, following the tragic death of Mr Qurke's son, he berated Mary Lowry, counsel said, for not supporting him and told her: After all I've done for you.

He further asked whether it was bad luck that Mary Lowry's passport went missing and Patrick Quirke was blamed. He asked if it was bad luck that Mr Quirke had at that time a key for her home. Was it bad luck, he asked, that after being seen on CCTV at Mary Lowry's house on December 3, 2012 somebody in the Quirke household is on the internet at 3.36pm that afternoon looking for human body decomposition timeline and that his computer cache shows that a website relating to human decomposition was visited in July 2012.

He repeated the question in relation to Mr Quirke's statement to gardai when they asked about the internet searches and he said his son had died. Garfai pointed out that the cached website was visited prior to his son's death.

Is all this just bad luck? Mr Bowman asked.

Counsel continued in the same manner, asking if it is coincidence that as the clock was ticking down to his lease terminating at Fawnagowan he decided to empty slurry from the slatted cow shed and decides to draw water from a tank he hasn't looked into since 2008.

The tank, Mr Bowman said, is like a colander and doesn't hold water yet Mr Quirke said he could see the water being sucked out before discovering the body. Mr Quirke, he said, is one of only four people who know of the existence of that tank and he has had exclusive access to it since 2008.

In interviews he revealed, Mr Bowman said, that he knew the exact depth of the sludge in the bottom of the tank, one foot, and the approximate depth of the tank at five feet. This was something that could only be known, counsel said, by someone who had gotten into that tank.

He added: Bobby Ryan was murdered by somebody possessed of information and knowledge possessed only by Patrick Quirke. Patrick Quirke is guilty of the murder of Bobby Ryan on June 3, 2011. There is no other rational hypothesis consistent with innocence. The evidence has been laid painstakingly before you over the last 13 weeks. When you weave those strands together it is of sufficient strength to bear the burden and weight placed upon it. There is no room left to doubt and the only verdict available to you is one of guilty of murder.

Defence counsel Bernard Condon SC told the jury that the prosecution evidence was thin and that Mr Bowman had sought to do their job for them.

He warned them of the dangers of accepting beyond reasonable doubt the evidence of Mary Lowry.

He said the prosecution is based on theory and circumstantial evidence and there is no hard evidence. Circumstantial evidence, he said, is not a shortcut that allows you to adopt a theory unless you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt.

He asked them to apply their greatest skill: skepticism. This trial is about peoples' lives, he said, principally Pat Quirke's.

He said they must approach the trial coldly and dispassionately, like a scientist, and must start from the point that Pat Quirke is innocent. Using the analogy of a train he said the prosecution would have to push the train to the station of guilt.

It would be an uphill journey with many branch lines and many stations before that final one.

He said the evidence presented by the prosecution was grasping. There were hints, he said, of give a dog a bad name and hope that will hooch you up the hill a bit.

He said there some things that grabbed him, such as former Deputy State Pathologist Dr Khalid not being present when the body was removed from the tank. But, he said, the prosecution had adopted the approach of so what, nothing to be seen here, don't worry about that.

He pointed out that photographs had been lost by gardai, that a pathologist had described the pathology evidence as sub optimal, gardai had made fresh statements during the trial and fingerprints found in Bobby Ryan's van were not tested until week ten of the trial.

He said Mr Bowman had told the jury they could be clear on the time when Mr Ryan died but Mr Condon said nothing could be further from the truth.

He said the trial is forensically barren on what happened to the unfortunate Bobby Ryan. His last movements, interactions, events, we know nothing about.

The pathologist, he reminded them, said there would have been a lot of blood but there's no evidence of it and there's no evidence of a clean-up.

He asked: When were his clothes taken off, when, where, by whom? Throughout that area of the case, the centre of the case, you have nothing, absolutely nothing.

He said many of the allegations made by Mary Lowry, wouldn't last five minutes in a court where that allegation was being made on its own.

He said there was nothing to support her claim that Mr Quirke was in her porch when she came home one afternoon or that he took her passport. She also alleged he assaulted her but there is nothing to support that, nothing, he said.

He told the jury to look at each of these things and ask, am I satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt.

He said the prosecutions attempts to establish motive are of no consequence as a motive is not evidence that a person has killed. It is a step, he said, to say the motive is a motive to murder.

Turning again to Mary Lowry's evidence he reminded the jury that she told them she wants to solve this case.

He said: That's a very dangerous witness, engaged in a process they should not be engaged in. He said her evidence is highly questionable because it is given, through the prism of trying to solve the case.

He said the jury should be careful of her evidence and suggested that she had, from the start, put a spin on her evidence by saying that her late husband was not great friends with Mr Quirke. He said there was an element of revisionism in her evidence and that she doesn't want to accept things that make her look bad.

At the heart of much of what went on between her and Mr Quirke, he said, is a broken relationshp. He added: "Attached to that can be bitterness and anger and unhappiness and they get mushed up together and people who loved each other deeply can find themselves in the family law courts roaring abuse at each other.

He said the jury was being asked to accept her unreliable evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. He said there was a pettiness to the arguments between her and the accused including rows over her moving a ladder and him leaving muck in her driveway. He reminded them that his client looked up defamation and contacted a defamation solicitor when Mary Lowry accused him of stealing her passport.

He described their relationship as dysfunctional. They had an affair, he said, but, this is not a court of morality.

He also pointed out that the case had received "enormous press coverage", adding: I don't know why. I think there's a prurience to it.

Addressing Mr Quirke being seen on CCTV taking underwear from Ms Lowry's line, he said none of us are whiter than white when we conduct ourselves in private. He added: It doesn't look great but what does it really establish? He cautioned the jury against establishing anything profound from it, adding: They were in a sexual relationship and people have all sorts of sexual interests and so what, actually. There may be less to it than meets the eye as opposed to more to it than meets the eye.

Mr Condon will continue his closing speech to the jury on Monday in front of Justice Eileen Creedon.
DOZENS of people were forced to flee from a pub in Limerick city centre after a man wielding a hammer entered the premises, a court has heard.

Jeffrey Kelly, 27, of no fixed abode, was refused bail after he was brought before Limerick District Court having been charged in connection with an incident on April 3, last.

Opposing bail, Garda Mark OSullivan said it will be alleged the defendant and three other men entered the Old Quarter bar at Little Ellen Street at around 6.30pm.

He said Mr Kelly brandished a weapon  namely a hammer  during the incident and allegedly tried to strike one of the other three men.

The hammer, he said, was stolen from a nearby restaurant.

It is the garda case that the violent incident followed on from a dispute between the men which broke out on William Street a short time earlier.

Its not known what that altercation was about, said Garda OSullivan.

Judge Marian OLeary was told around 25 people were in the Old Quarter at the time and that many of them were having food.

The incident, Garda OSullivan said, lasted for a good number of minutes during which time customers ran out in fear.

He told Sergeant Donal Cronin that CCTV from the premises has been obtained as part of the garda investigation and that a hammer was recovered from the pub.

Mr Kelly, he alleged, was brandishing a sweeping brush at another man when he was arrested at Cecil Street a short time after the alarm was raised.

The court was told gardai were concerned the defendant would not attend court if released and that he would commit further serious violent offences.

Solicitor Sarah Ryan said her client gave an explanation and put a context on the incident when questioned following his arrest.

She said Mr Kelly is engaging with the homeless services in Cork and would live in Cork if required to as a condition of bail.

Ms Ryan also suggested it is possible some of all of the other three men may also be charged with public order offences.

Having considered the garda objection, Judge OLeary refused bail.

Investigations are ongoing and a file is to be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
IT WAS NOT the most wonderful time of the year for a member of hospital security when he got the sack for not working the night shift over Christmas as he was in an airport traveling abroad, the Labour Court has heard.

The worker, employed by Noonan Services Group Ltd, was a security operative based in UHL from October 21, 2017 until his dismissal on January 18, 2018, during his six-month probationary period.

On September 19 last, an adjudication officer found that his dismissal was procedurally unfair and awarded a once-off ex-gratia payment of 500.

The worker, represented by Siptu, appealed this decision on October 19 and a Labour Court hearing was convened on February 5.

The court heard that, prior to starting his job, the worker told the company that he had made arrangements to go to his home country for Christmas, between December 27 and January 16, 2017. The appellant attended work on Christmas Eve and finished at 7am on Christmas Day.

He was rostered to attend work a 12-hour shift starting at 7pm on December 26. However, he did not attend work for that shift and did not give advance notice to his supervisor that he was not available for work, the court heard.

When the companys security manager contacted the worker by telephone, he discovered that the worker was already at the airport and waiting for his flight.

The worker was advised to contact the security manager on his return on January 16 to arrange a performance review meeting. However, the worker did not return to Ireland until January 18, the Labour Court heard.

During a meeting on January 18, the security manager raised a number of issues with the worker, including his failure to attend his rostered shift on December 26, his failure to make contact on January 16, and specific incidents that had occurred in the workplace during December 2017.

The worker was dismissed immediately with payment in lieu of notice.

The worker appealed this decision but failed.

The union submitted that the company failed to comply with the code of practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures in effecting his dismissal.

The union sought compensation as is just and equitable to reflect what it alleges amounts to a lack of fair procedures by the company.

The company said that it became very apparent over the three months that the worker was unsuitable for the position. The court said the manner in which the company dealt with the workers performance issues leaves much to be desired.

He should have been informed in writing in advance of the issues that fell to be considered at the meeting of 18 January 2018 and he should have been expressly informed that his dismissal was a possible outcome of that meeting.

However, the court stated, the worker did himself no favours at all. The court determined that the worker contributed very significantly to his own dismissal, not recommending any compensation payable to the worker.
A MIDDLE-aged man is facing the prospect of homelessness after he was ordered to vacate council-owned lands where he has been living in a mobile home without permission.

Billy Hourigan of Gurt, Askeaton was prosecuted at Newcastle West Court for failing to comply with the terms of an enforcement notice which was served on him in November 2017.

Planning inspector Michael OBrien told Judge Mary Larkin the defendant has no permission to live in the mobile home and that the enforcement notice required him to remove it from the lands within 48 hours.

The lands, he said, were acquired by the local authority almost 40 years ago following the demise of the former town council.

Being questioned by solicitor Pat Enright, Mr OBrien agreed there are a number of sheds on the lands and that a septic tank was installed in the mid 1980s.

Mr Enright said there was a fair bit of background to the proceedings and he submitted his client has an entitlement to be on the site and to live in the mobile home.

In his evidence Mr Hourigan said he moved to the site in 1985 as he was living along the route of what is now the Askeaton bypass.

He said he came to an arrangement with the local authority which installed the septic tank to enable him to continue living at the site.

The court was told that while the defendant moved across the road to a house around 1990, he continued to use and maintain the site.

I used to clear it with a JCB, I kept animals there, he said adding that he owns the sheds that are currently on the site.

Judge Larkin was told Mr Hourigan returned to the mobile home around two years ago after was evicted from the house on foot of a court order.

I was locked out, I went back into the site and I have been there since, he said adding that his partner also lives there with him.

Solicitor Will Leahy, representing the local authority, said the seven-year rule was not a defence based on the defendants evidence and he submitted there was no evidence before the court confirming that Limerick County Council had installed the septic tank as was claimed.

Why would they put down a septic tank? he asked adding that historic planning documents relating to the septic tank make no reference to a mobile home.

Urging the court to rule in his clients favour, Mr Enright said he was very worried about falling into homelessness.

He even suggested that the case be adjourned for a year to allow Mr Hourigan get housing from the local authority.

While Judge Larkin said she had some sympathy for the defendants predicament, she said she is not a social worker and had to apply the law.

She placed a six-month stay on her order indicating she was reserving her decision regarding costs which amount to almost 4,500.
FORMER Mayor Cllr Stephen Keary has been accused of putting lives at risk by refusing to approve plans for road safety measures in Ballingarry.

There were heated exchanges at a meeting of the AdareRathkeale Municipal District on Tuesday when it emerged the council is proposing to reallocate some of the funding to a separate project in Askeaton.

Aidan Finn, senior executive engineer, confirmed 40,000 was previously allocated for works in Ballingarry which were to include speed ramps at Rylands where a pedestrian died last year.

However, Mr Finn said he has since secured 44,000 in funding through the Low Cost Safety Scheme and is proposing to use that money instead to install driver feedback signs, pedestrian crossings and to improve a number footpaths in Ballingarry.

Cllr Keary said he was opposed to any attempt to divert monies earmarked for Ballingarry to projects elsewhere saying, The location at Rylands is a priority, Im sticking by the 84,000, I will not be supporting anything else, he said, adding: You are not taking money from road safety measures in Ballingarry.

Cllr Adam Teskey supported his colleagues stance adding that people in Ballingarry still believe speed ramps are going in.

Cllr Ciara McMahon, who has indicated she will not be contesting next months local elections, interjected and accused her colleagues of playing politics with the peoples lives and the people of Ballingarry.

She noted the amount of money secured by Mr Finn for Ballingarry was greater than what was previously approved and asked what the argument was about.

There is a reason why people are sick of politicians calling to their doors, she said.

Cllr Richard ODonoghue, who expressed his support for the safety works, said the council had shovel-ready projects to save lives which were being delayed by Cllrs Keary and Teskey.

You are creating red tape  on your head it be, he said.

A special meeting has been called in the hope of resolving the matter.
LIMERICK legend Noni received the greatest hotel welcome letter when she checked into the Strand Hotel ahead of her attendance at the Mayors Ball.

Today FM presenter and comedian Dermot Whelan, who is responsible for unleashing Noni onto the nation, revealed details of the letter on social media this Friday afternoon.

Welcome to the daycent 4-star Limerick Strand Hotel on the Majestic River Shannon, you even have a balcony to have a gawk but be wide of the serpent on Sarsfield Bridge!, wrote Stephen OConnor, the hotels general manager.

We hope you enjoy your night at the Mayors Party  we said we would give you a few bars of chooocooooolaate to give out to the lads so you wouldnt look pure mean!, he added.

Among the gifts left for Noni ahead of her arrival was a pram full or chocolate and a Chicken Hut snack box  also full of chooocooooolaate.

St Gabriels School and Centre has been chosen as the official charity partner of this years Mayors charity ball.

The facility, located in Dooradoyle, is dedicated to the care and education of children with multiple physical disabilities.

The Mayors charity ball is set to be the social event of the year, as the annual charity spectacular prepares to celebrate all that is great on the Shannonside.

It is an occasion that celebrates life in Limerick and all we have to be proud of, Mayor of Limerick City and County cllr James Collins said.
The Hong Kong-based firm, also listed on the Singapore Exchange, is in talks with several property owners in India to set up its first luxury boutique hotel within the next one year, said Alexandra Yao, vice-president, development, Mandarin Oriental.

Mumbai, Delhi and Goa are the key entry markets, she said, adding palaces in Rajasthan are some of the properties that Mandarin Oriental would consider.

We have some potential partners that we are speaking with. Its something that we are putting a lot of effort into. For Mandarin, it is important to find the right location and the right partners. Our absence in the past was because we needed to find those two factors. In the last few years, India has been on top of our list," Yao added.

About a decade ago, Mandarin Oriental signed an agreement with real estate firm Maker group to set up its first hotel in India at Mumbais Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), said one person aware of the matter, requesting anonymity. However, the deal fell through as the project was delayed, he added.

A 4 May 2011, report by The Economic Times said Mandarin Oriental was in talks with Oberoi Realty Ltd to manage the Mumbai-based firms second hotel in the city.

Yao said the company will adopt an asset light model in India, signing management contracts with property owners instead of owning the hotels.

This is the model we will be following globally, going forward. Its easier to expand our footprint. There is high entry barrier in owning properties in a lot of countries where we want to be in," she said.

At present, Mandarin Oriental has 32 luxury hotels across Beijing, Singapore, Miami, London, Paris, Boston and Barcelona, among other places. About half of the hotels are owned by Mandarin, while the rest are joint venture partnerships, Yao said.

The changing lifestyle and growing consumer spending power in India have prompted the hotel brand to enter this hospitality market.

In the last few years, foreign tourists are finding it easier to travel to India with the introduction of e-visa. It has also become a lot easier for leisure travellers," she added.

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In this artist's concept, a supermassive black hole is surrounded by a swirling disk of material. The purplish ball of light above the black hole, a feature called the corona, contains highly energetic particles that generate X-ray light.

A black hole located 55 million light-years from Earth was recently the first to be captured in a close-up image. In another first, it received a name that's a lot more interesting than the ones that usually identify black holes.

The new name, "Powehi," means "embellished dark source of unending creation" in the indigenous Hawaiian language, and it was selected by Larry Kimura, a Hawaiian language professor at the University of Hawaii, Hilo (UH), according to a statement released by the university on April 10.

Kimura chose the name in collaboration with astronomers at two Hawaiian observatories that participated in the Event Horizon Telescope project (EHT), the international collaboration that produced the new image of the black hole. The Hawaiian words "po" and "wehi" describe concepts in ancient chants related to the creation of the Hawaiian universe, UH representatives said. [How Does a Black Hole Form?]

"Embellished dark source of unending creation" is certainly more evocative than the name commonly used for this black hole (or, indeed, any black hole). Located at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87 (M87), the black hole in the image is generally called "M87's black hole," or "M87*," with the asterisk at the end indicating that it's the center of the galaxy, experts told Live Science.

Other names for M87* are also ho-hum strings of letters and numbers: NGC 4486, UGC 7654, Arp 152 and 3C 274. While these are meaningful to astronomers, they don't exactly spark the imagination like the names of planets, moons, asteroids, comets and other cosmic objects that recall gods or other figures from ancient mythologies.

Why do some celestial objects get evocative, mythic names, while black holes  arguably among the most mysterious and exciting of all cosmic phenomena  typically don't?

Official recognition

For any space object's name to be officially recognized by astronomers around the world, the moniker first has to be approved by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), astronomer Morgan Hollis, a spokesperson for the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in the United Kingdom, told Live Science in an email.

Founded in 1919, the IAU established naming systems "so that objects can be unambiguously identified and everyone knows exactly which object is being talked about in a given research paper," Hollis said.

But while these conventions exist for stars, planets, asteroids and the like, no such protocols are in place yet for black holes. This is partly because they haven't been directly observable until now, according to Hollis.

"Plenty of theoretical studies have been done of course, but information was limited about specific black holes, and so naming wasn't really an issue," he said.

Only a number

Before the formation of the IAU, many objects in space became widely known as numbers in catalogs created by astronomers such as Charles Messier, who lived in France during the late 18th century and early 19th century. Messier and others documented their observations and numbered objects sequentially, and other astronomers started referring to those objects by their catalog numbers, said Vincent Fish, a research scientist at Haystack Observatory at MIT in Boston, and part of the team that imaged the M87 black hole.

Messier's catalog, published in 1771, contains 110 objects; 87th in the list is the galaxy M87. But other catalogs exist alongside Messier's, and many of their observations overlap, so the same galaxy  and the same black hole  can have multiple names, Fish told Live Science.

"It can be complicated sometimes when you know a source [of emissions] by one name and someone knows it by a different name, and it takes a while to figure out you're talking about the same source," he explained.

The M87 black hole, however, was already so well-known that the EHT team at Haystack Observatory simply referred to it as "M87," or occasionally "3C 274" (they did not have a special nickname for it, Fish said). [Historic First Images of a Black Hole Show Einstein Was Right (Again)]

What's in a name?

Over time, observations by more sensitive satellites swelled the ranks of suspected black holes; those that didn't have catalog names were usually referred to by their coordinates in space  "essentially, its celestial longitude and latitude"  known as the right ascension and declination, Michael Shara, a curator and professor with the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, told Live Science.

Those coordinate "names" also include a few letters at the beginning to show which satellite located the black hole, Shara said. And for now, that's the most practical approach for identification, as there are millions of X-ray sources that could represent supermassive black holes, he said.

However, there's certainly precedent for celestial objects acquiring more evocative names in addition to astronomers' letters and numbers, according to Fish. For example, the galaxy M104 is commonly known as the Sombrero Galaxy, for its resemblance to a wide-brimmed hat, while the nebula Barnard 3's horse-like appearance lent it the name Horsehead Nebula, he said.

Perhaps now that EHT has proved that directly imaging a black hole is possible, it may be time for the global community of astronomers to collectively reconsider how black holes will be named moving forward, Shara said.

However, even if Powehi does begin to catch on as the M87 black hole's new name, it won't be considered official without the recognition of the IAU, according to Shara.

"If it's to 'stick,' it'll require IAU backing  but I think its got a good chance, as two of the radio telescopes involved in the work are based in Hawaii," Shara said.

As an official name, Powehi would honor not only key instruments involved in the achievement, but also "the scientists and local community who all work together and help to make such groundbreaking scientific endeavors possible," Hollis said.

"The eventual name will no doubt be decided by consensus in the scientific literature, if the IAU don't step in," he added. "We'll have to wait and see."

Originally published on Live Science.
Heres the rundown: a new grocery store is opening downtown this weekend, Spurs fans can swing by a new store to grab gear and several new shops are coming to the area.

Austin-based Royal Blue Grocery is opening its first San Antonio location Saturday. The 3,000-square-foot shop at 122 E. Houston St. sells produce, dairy and other grocery items along with grab-and-go meals such as soups and salads. Hours are 7 a.m. to midnight.

On ExpressNews.com: Austin grocery chain opening downtown store, its first in San Antonio

18|8 Fine Men's Salons is also eyeing a spot in the same building, according to a filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR). The business has more than 50 hair salons nationwide, including several in San Antonio, according to its website.

A new Spurs Fan Shop is now open at The Shops at La Cantera, staff writer Madalyn Mendoza reports. People can snag gear and exclusive apparel collections there.

A Restoration Hardware store, a Quay Australia sunglasses shop and a build-your-own ice cream sandwich spot by The Baked Bear may also be headed to the outdoor shopping center soon, TDLR filings indicate.

Sol de Mexico, a Mexican restaurant that opened at 1725 Blanco Road in February, is closed, staff writer Paul Stephen notes.

H&M is opening a new store at Ingram Park Mall in San Antonio. Its expected to open this fall, according to a news release.

Several new businesses are headed to Quarry Village. Orangetheory Fitness is opening a 1,725-square-foot studio this fall, their tenth in San Antonio, according to a spokesperson for Reata Real Estate. John Moake of Reata represented the tenant.

Sundance, a luxury boutique selling clothing, accessories and home decorations, is also expected to open this fall. Don Thomas and Price Onken, both of Reata, represented the landlord.

A medical spa and anti-aging clinic is moving in this summer. Doll House MedSpa will offer hormone replacement therapy and other services. Thomas and Onken also represented the landlord.

Delias is looking to open a San Antonio location, its first restaurant outside the Rio Grande Valley, staff writer Chuck Blount reports. Work on the space at 13527 Hausman Pass is expected to be finished by years end, according to TDLR filings.

On ExpressNews.com: Famous McAllen tamales restaurant Delias coming to San Antonio

Julians Italian Pizzeria and Kitchen plans to open its third location in mid-May, its staff tell Blount. The shop will be located in a shopping center near the intersection of Bulverde Road and Loop 1604.

A new Burlington store may be opening this winter at The Rim shopping center, a TDLR filing shows. Work on the 34,585-square-foot store is expected to conclude in December.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
The Last Stone: A Masterpiece of Criminal Interrogation

By Mark Bowden

Atlantic. 342 pp. $27

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It's a story that still disturbs many longtime residents of the Washington (D.C.) area: On an early-spring morning in 1975, sisters Sheila and Kate Lyon - 12 and 10 years old, respectively - left their white stucco suburban house and walked to the nearby Wheaton (Md.) mall for pizza. They never came back. The girls' disappearance triggered one of the most protracted and agonizing police investigations in local history. "It wasn't just a mystery," as Mark Bowden explains in "The Last Stone," his new book about the case. "It was a regional trauma."

Bowden, the best-selling author of "Black Hawk Down" and many other books, was a 23-year-old reporter for the Baltimore News-American at the time. Assigned to cover the Lyon story, he interviewed the girls' parents (their father, John, was a well-known radio personality) and took a personal interest in the case. And like everyone else involved, Bowden could only look on with anguish as months, then years, then decades went by without a trace of the girls. "To me, the story was sad and beyond understanding," he writes. "As the decades passed I wrote thousands more stories, big ones and small ones. ... Few stories haunted me as this one did."

"The Last Stone" is Bowden's minutely detailed account of how this coldest of cold cases finally reached some semblance of closure. The mystery's bizarre unraveling began some 38 years after the disappearance, on a summer evening in mid-2013. Chris Homrock, the last remaining detective on the Montgomery County Police Department's "Lyon squad," stumbled onto a piece of evidence he didn't remember seeing before. It was a six-page witness statement, apparently mislaid for years, in which a teenager named Lloyd Welch claimed to have seen a man leading two girls away from the Wheaton mall on the day they vanished. Police had never taken the statement seriously; for one thing, it was unrealistically detailed, and the boy failed a polygraph test. But now, Welch's mention of a particular detail - that the man walked with a slight limp - piqued Homrock's interest. The detective's prime suspect (now deceased) had had a limp. Maybe Welch would be worth talking to again.

This turned out to be an understatement, especially once Homrock learned that the alleged witness was then serving a long sentence in a Delaware prison - for sexual assault of a minor. Convinced that Welch might be his long-sought break in the case, Homrock sent a team of detectives north to interrogate him. As hoped, the now-middle-aged convict proved more than willing to discuss the case. In fact, Welch talked with detectives for hours and hours, never insisting on a lawyer. The only problem was that everything coming out of his mouth seemed to be a lie. And as Bowden points out, "When someone lies that persistently, you stop listening to what he says and start wondering what he's up to." By the end of that first day of interrogation, detectives were convinced that Welch was more than just a witness to the crime.

The bulk of Bowden's book describes the "masterpiece of criminal interrogation" that enabled detectives to find a path toward truth through this wilderness of lies. Good cop/bad cop techniques were just the beginning. Welch's principal questioners - Dave Davis, Mark Janney and Katie Leggett - drew on every weapon in the interrogator's arsenal, "alternately flattering, reasoning, bargaining, confronting, empathizing" to force this compulsive liar to make something resembling a trustworthy statement. It took numerous long sessions spaced out over 17 months, but they finally learned how to do it. "You had to forget the narrative," Bowden explains. "The way to read Lloyd was to look past the story to its details."

Bowden had access to comprehensive records of most of the interrogation sessions, including some with members of the extended Welch family who also fell under suspicion at one point or another. But this bounty proves to be both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, the wealth of transcripts and recordings allows Bowden to re-create scenes and conversations in great detail and with (one presumes) near-perfect fidelity. But for a writer perhaps more obsessed with his subject than his readers will be, there is such a thing as too much material to work with. Bowden takes us through endless permutations of Welch's ever-changing story, leading us down every blind alley of obfuscation and pulling us into every whirlpool of internal contradiction. Much of the questioning of suspects could have been summarized to avoid sections like this:

"It's time," said Mark. "You've been carrying this a long time."

"I ain't been carrying nothing!"

"It's time to tell the truth."

"I AM telling the truth!"

"It's time to clear this up."

"This is clearing it up! Right here! I have done nothin'!"

This kind of wheel-spinning, combined with the likelihood that some readers will find the Welch clan difficult to stomach even in small doses, can make reading the book an unsavory experience at times.

Even so, this is a story of extraordinary persistence and the grimmest, least romantic kind of heroism there is, and Bowden tells it with the dexterity of an old pro, bringing coherence to a narrative that in other hands may have seemed merely muddled and infuriating. True, the book's conclusion is not entirely satisfying (one turns the last page with a lingering sense of unknowable truths and unpunishable monsters), but at least some measure of justice has been served by the end. If nothing else, one person involved will never be free to repeat his horrific crimes, whatever exactly they were. That may be all we can hope for in a case like this. "Such deliberate savagery was a thing beyond setting right, beyond the reach of justice, vengeance, forgiveness, or healing," Bowden eventually decides. "The only right response was despair. One could only embrace the sadness, and turn away."

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Krist is the author of nine books. His latest is "The Mirage Factory: Illusion, Imagination, and the Invention of Los Angeles."
Freedom's Detective: The Secret Service, the Ku Klux Klan and the Man Who Masterminded America's First War on Terror

By Charles Lane

Hanover Square. 348 pp. $26.99

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In May 1868, Hiram Whitley arrived in Columbus, Ga., to bring down the Ku Klux Klan. An undercover detective who worked for agencies of the federal government, Whitley came to Georgia at the behest of the U.S. Army, which was trying to protect African Americans' voting rights in the South after the Civil War. For the past month, the Army had failed to prosecute the Klansmen who had murdered George Ashburn, a prominent Republican official who supported Reconstruction legislation.

Whitley adopted new tactics. Abandoning due process, he had soldiers drag suspects and witnesses to an isolated fort, where he extracted confessions with both charm and cruelty. He soon produced 12 murder charges, including one against a conspiring Union Army soldier.

"Freedom's Detective" by Charles Lane revolves around the fascinating figure of Whitley, whom new President Ulysses Grant soon appointed to head the Secret Service, a federal agency created in 1865 to squelch counterfeit currency. Under Whitley, the agency also infiltrated and impaired the violent, politically motivated Klan. His story sharpens a paradox of the Reconstruction era. Whitley flouted ethics, curried partisan favor and violated civil liberties. At the same time, he promoted a more genuine American democracy.

Whitley was no idealist about racial equality - far from it. Before the Civil War, he posed as an anti-slavery zealot in Kansas, only to trick freedom-seeking slaves and collect bounties under the Fugitive Slave Act. During the war, he commanded a Union infantry unit composed of free black and mixed-race soldiers from New Orleans; his brutal methods almost triggered a mutiny, and the unit disbanded. After the war, during his 1868 investigation of the KKK in Georgia, he suspected a black man of withholding information about the Klan conspirators. Whitley blindfolded him and placed him in front of an artillery cannon. Upon pulling off the blindfold, he demanded details from the man, threatening him with execution.

A charismatic man with a goatee and intense blue eyes, Whitley reveled in skulduggery. As Secret Service chief, he employed small-time crooks to topple counterfeiting rings, reasoning that only underworld types could permeate these cabals. His style bore results: In 1871, he arrested Joshua Miner, the kingpin of a massive counterfeiting operation in New York City. Miner was also an esteemed Manhattan businessman with connections to Tammany Hall, the political machine of the Democratic Party.

Yet Whitley's tactics provided ammunition for his targets. Miner escaped prosecution after his lawyers raised doubts about the sketchy former criminals who informed for the Secret Service. Similarly, lawyers for the Columbus Klansmen played up the torture of prisoners under Whitley, and those men ultimately walked free.

Whitley rose to influence under the rule of Republicans, who controlled the White House and Congress. They were building the infrastructure of a federal government that included the Secret Service. They were also enacting reforms, such as the 14th Amendment, that enshrined civil rights for a new constituency of freedmen and their allies. The Democrats, by contrast, were the party of the urban machines and white Southerners - those most threatened by Whitley's crusades against corruption and political violence.

In 1870 Whitley's outfit came under the new Department of Justice, and Attorney General Amos Akerman secured Grant's approval for a Secret Service team to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.

"In all of American history," writes Lane, "there had never been a federal undercover operation to investigate civilians for alleged criminal violations of the constitutional rights of fellow citizens, much less whites' violations of African American rights." Whitley would serve as "spymaster, organizer, and supervisor of what amounted to a domestic anti-terrorism unit within the Secret Service."

Lane, an editorial board member of The Washington Post, tells dramatic stories of clandestine missions as the Secret Service moved into the South. In Moore County, N.C., the Klan prepared to lynch a white cotton trader who had supported the Union and joined the Republicans. But a federal agent had infiltrated that den. Before the noose tightened, federal troops swarmed in to make arrests. The Klansmen couldn't shoot their way out, because the agent had replaced their gunpowder with sand. The agent then dressed five soldiers in Klan robes and paraded them, handcuffed, through downtown Raleigh, a cheeky demonstration of federal power over secret mobs.

By the early 1870s, the Klan was on the wane, but Democratic politicians were grousing that the Secret Service violated the rights of those under its surveillance. Congress started scrutinizing its budget and curtailing its role. In the final years of Reconstruction, terrorist groups again surged throughout the South, and as the federal presence faded in the late 19th century, white supremacy reigned. (Not until 1901, after the assassination of William McKinley, did Secret Service agents serve as bodyguards for the president.)

Whitley shaped both the Secret Service's success and its decline. Despite his vigorous defense of black political rights, he trampled on ethical boundaries to court goodwill with Republican leaders. His agents gathered intelligence on political enemies of the Grant administration before the 1872 elections. They drugged the criminal, politically embarrassing stepson of a Cabinet official and then dumped him in Mexico City. Most damning, Whitley hatched a convoluted fake burglary attempt to discredit a Democratic critic named Columbus Alexander. When that scheme fell apart, Whitley was exposed. He had to resign in 1874. He spent his life's last, long act as the owner of an opera house in Emporia, Kan.

Bolstered by deep research into government documents and press accounts, "Freedom's Detective" paints an illuminating portrait of Whitley, an intriguing representative of Reconstruction's feats and fiascos. It does not, however, always cohere as a work of narrative history. Lane jumps back and forth in time while his protagonist is battling counterfeiters and Klansmen, and it can be difficult to keep Whitley's life in order. In the chapters on the Secret Service campaigns against the Klan, Whitley becomes less of a presence as his agents move into the thick of the action.

Moreover, although Lane deftly positions Whitley within American politics after the Civil War, the main figures are all white - even in the chapters on racially motivated violence. Lane is sensitive to the struggles of African Americans, but he could have fleshed out the perspectives of more black characters, which would have illustrated the true resonance of the Ku Klux Klan. Strangely, for a book stuffed with tales of racist brutality, "Freedom's Detective" might underplay the terror that animated the Reconstruction South.

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Goudsouzian is the author of "Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear" and "The Men and the Moment: The Election of 1968 and the Rise of Partisan Politics in America."
The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between

By Michael Dobbs

Knopf. 346 pp. $29.95

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Americans by and large do not deny that the Holocaust happened. They just are frighteningly fuzzy on the details. A national poll conducted last year found that nearly one-third of the respondents believed that 2 million or fewer Jews had died during the Nazi genocide, when the actual number is closer to 6 million.

Millennials display an even more shocking ignorance. Two-thirds could not identify Auschwitz as a concentration camp or an extermination camp; 22 percent had not heard of or weren't sure they had heard of the Holocaust at all.

Most Americans (80 percent) said they had not visited a Holocaust museum, even though there are nearly 70 such museums and monuments in states across the country.

I don't fit into those categories. I belong to that sliver of American Jews who could be criticized as too preoccupied with the Holocaust, periodically anxious that Germany 1938 could be just around the corner instead of a tragic moment consigned to history.

I've read numerous accounts of the Nazis' attempts to exterminate European Jews, with the vicious acquiescence of their neighbors. I've watched cinematic treatments of the Holocaust and listened to survivors' stories. I have visited the haunting remains of Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt, and seen the displays of human hair at Auschwitz, and trudged along the grim paths that led so many to their deaths.

But even for someone immersed in the catastrophe of what happened to the Jews in World War II, Michael Dobbs' new book, "The Unwanted: America, Auschwitz, and a Village Caught in Between," will still be a heartbreaking and timely read.

With a reporter's eye for narrative and a historian's attention to detail and context, Dobbs re-creates Jewish life in Kippenheim, a German village near the French border, on the eve of the Nazi onslaught. Then, thanks to a trove of carefully assembled archival material, photographs and oral histories, he follows these Jewish families through harrowing cycles of deportation and desperation as they attempt to flee to safety.

That is only part of the story, however. An equally important - and infuriating - narrative unfolds in the halls of American power, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt is presented again and again with the opportunity to take in these Jewish refugees but, more often than not, accedes to political expediency and public pressure by doing nothing. Even first lady Eleanor Roosevelt's valiant efforts to persuade her husband to sign a refugee bill for children alone were rebuffed. And this was before the full horrors of the Holocaust began.

Dobbs opens his story in November 1938 as 14-year-old Hedy Wachenheimer cycles to school in a nearby village on a day that would change her life forever. Caught in an avalanche of anti-Jewish violence, she is finally able to return to Kippenheim only to find her parents gone, as Nazi thugs ravaged Jewish homes and businesses. Her father and other men were arrested and sent to Dachau. She is eventually reunited with her mother and an aunt, who wait in fear for the violence to subside and her father to be released.

Though Jews had lived in Kippenheim peacefully with their neighbors for centuries, from then on, Hedy wanted only to leave Germany. "Tens of thousands of Jews squeezed into cupboards in attics and basements, or cowering under beds and bathtubs, in villages and towns across the Third Reich had precisely the same thought," Dobbs writes. "Any doubts about what they should do were swept away in an instant. A single hope remained: emigration."

That hope would be dashed as often as it was realized. "There were simply not enough visas available to satisfy the overwhelming demand," Dobbs writes. "By early 1939, half the Jews in the Third Reich had applied for an American visa."

Some Kippenheimers believed they had found salvation on a ship, St. Louis, which ended up sailing across the Atlantic and then back to Germany, as Cuba and the United States refused to accept the heartbroken refugees. A few, like Hedy, were able to escape to Britain through the Kindertransport program, which allowed persecuted children to enter on temporary visas.

Then, in October 1940, Hedy's parents and the other remaining Jews in Kippenheim were abruptly herded onto police trucks and driven across the border to Gurs, France, to a muddy, isolated encampment crammed with more than 10,000 dispossessed Germans. We often think of Nazi concentration camps in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland. Here was a concentration camp in what was supposedly "free" France, with conditions so dehumanizing that every day, 20 inmates died of disease and malnutrition.

Still, the Jews could not leave. Dobbs skillfully shows the dignity with which they confronted the mind-numbing bureaucracy and arbitrary cruelty of the French and German authorities. "However desperate their circumstances, the asylum seekers always took care to arrive for their long-awaited appointments in their best clothes," he writes.

There are times when Dobbs' precise recounting of the byzantine immigration process becomes tedious - but, of course, that was the point. As the world went to war and Western nations shut their doors, this is what the trapped Jews of Kippenheim faced, until the Nazis decided to exterminate them. In the end, Hedy's parents, Hugo and Bella Wachenheimer, and others from their village died in Auschwitz in 1942.

It's not possible to read "The Unwanted" without hearing its echoes today. So afraid were Americans of a "fifth column" of Nazi and communist refugees infiltrating our shores that an anti-immigrant U.S. senator said: "If I had my way, I would today build a wall about the United States so high and so secure that not a single alien or foreign refugee from any country upon the face of the Earth could possibly scale or ascend it!"

I hear its echoes, too, in the troubling resurgence of violent anti-Semitism in France, where its roots are so evidently deep and virulent. When I learn of how ignorant some Americans are about the Holocaust, I want them to read the story of Kippenheim's Jews, to confront the fact that a supposedly civilized nation can commit acts of genocide.

Some of the Jews of Kippenheim survived by pure luck. Others survived because of the moral courage of those who risked all to help them. And that is why their story must be remembered - and repeated - today.

At the end of his historical account, Dobbs returns to the village with one of those survivors and sees, on the street across from the synagogue, the home of the Valfers, another Jewish couple who were deported to Gurs and died in Auschwitz. It turns out that their house now belongs to a family of Kurdish refugees from Syria, who had fled their homeland during the brutal civil war. The story continues.

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Eisner is the Forward's writer at large and the Koeppel fellow in journalism at Wesleyan University.
WASHINGTON - In 1905, seven years before the end of China's Qing Dynasty, Alice Roosevelt, the daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, visited Beijing's Forbidden City. She met the ailing Empress Dowager Cixi, who presented her with a black Pekingese dog named Manchu.

Ignoring the Confucian maxim that "Women should not take part in public affairs," Cixi had made herself China's de facto ruler, taking control of state affairs and international relations. In the United States, meanwhile, anti-Chinese sentiment was rife, and Roosevelt's high-level visit could not smooth over the countries' differences over an immigration treaty. Roosevelt went home with Manchu, but China continued its boycott of U.S. products.

Was Cixi's power unusual for a woman in China? Who were the Qing Dynasty's previous powerful empresses? And what, anyway, is an "empress dowager"?

These are among the questions addressed in a superb exhibition at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. There are others, too, such as: What did Qing (pronounced "Ching") empresses look like? What things did they own, wear and use? And what do these things tell us about them, about imperial rule and about China in general?

"Empresses of China's Forbidden City, 1644-1912," the biggest show at the Sackler in a decade, comes to Washington 40 years after the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China. It is the fruit of a collaboration between two American museums and the Palace Museum in Beijing, also known as the Forbidden City.

It's a serious undertaking at every level: diplomatic, financial, scholarly and artistic. Almost all of the objects in the show have come from the Palace Museum. They include large-scale portraits, painted screens, silk robes, festive headdresses, handscrolls, fans, hair ornaments, bracelets, furniture and a heavy Buddhist stupa made from gold and silver.

The stupa, which is adorned with coral, turquoise, lapis lazuli and other semiprecious stones, was commissioned by the Qianlong Emperor in honor of his mother, the Empress Dowager Chongqing, after her death. Inside is a box with a lock of her hair. The Qianlong Emperor, who ruled over one of the largest empires the world had ever seen, micromanaged its creation, continually issuing new instructions, so that it ended up being twice as tall and far more elaborate than the original design.

The object suggests something more than just mourning, more than just "My dear mother, I loved her." It suggests reverence. It suggests power.

The Qing Dynasty lasted 268 years, from 1644 until 1912, when the Empress Dowager Longyu signed abdication papers on behalf of the 5-year-old Xuantong emperor - Puyi, the "Last Emperor."

Two hundred and sixty-eight years is a lot of ground to cover. So the exhibition curators - Jan Stuart of the Freer/Sackler and Daisy Yiyou Wang of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (where the show opened last summer) - narrowed their focus to five key women.

One of these, the Empress Xiaozhuang, was a wife, mother and grandmother of emperors and an influential political figure during the first years of the Qing Dynasty, which started when a Manchurian clan allied with disparate powers overthrew the Ming Dynasty.

Two others, the Empress Dowager Chongqing and the Empress Xiaoxian, were connected to the Qianlong Emperor (mother and wife, respectively). The final two, Empress Dowager Ci'an and Empress Dowager Cixi, were important figures during the final decades of the Qing Dynasty.

Still, the show is not directly about these women. It is about the objects from the Palace Museum and what they tell us about the roles of empress and empress dowager.

Although Chinese emperors had multiple spouses, known as consorts, each of whom was given one of eight ranks, there was only one empress at a time. Consorts could advance to a higher rank by bearing a son. Each son had an opportunity to become emperor, no matter the rank of his mother, so there was fierce competition among the consorts.

Each emperor's mother had special status as an "empress dowager." (That same title could also be given to the widowed primary wife of the emperor's father.) The empress dowager was ranked above the empress. She was second only to the emperor in the imperial family.

If the idea behind the show is to argue that Chinese women near the top of the royal hierarchy wielded power and influence, it also acknowledges that historical revisionism can go only so far. The first sentence in Wang and Stuart's catalogue introduction is: "By today's standards, the restrictions imposed on empresses in China's last dynasty are shocking."

These women, they go on, were the "inalienable possessions of the monarchy," their lives were controlled by stringent codes, and their freedom and opportunities were severely restricted. Their most important job was to produce children - above all, sons.

"Yet," they continue, "if you engage with these women on their own terms, and within their historical context and don't try to pull them into the present, their experiences prove enlightening as they made meaningful lives for themselves within - and sometimes beyond - the formal strictures of the court."

I can see why Wang and Stuart felt the need to say this. But I also wish we could move beyond the kind of moral vanity, failed imagination and forced infantilism that demands this kind of hand-holding. It's as if the idea of different cultures having different mores, and indeed the existence of history itself - which, let's face it, is one long litany of injustice - was too much for people to get their heads around.

Never mind. Wang and Stuart have done an exemplary job. Among the most moving things in the show is a poem by the artistically inclined Qianlong Emperor, inscribed in his own hand on precious, 11th-century brown paper. He wrote it months after the death of his wife, soul mate and childhood sweetheart, the Empress Xiaoxian. Heartbroken by the death of her 2-year-old son, Xiaoxian had fallen ill on a trip to eastern China with her husband.

The poem is titled "Expressing My Grief." It fulfills the promise of its title with poignant aplomb:

There are times when I find a brief respite,

Yet, before long, my feelings are affected

And I break down once more.

I can well believe that life is a dream,

And that all things are but empty.

The Qing empire was vast. It excelled at assimilating different cultural traditions, including Western-style pictorial influences. The Qianlong Emperor, in particular, was fond of an attractive hybrid of Western and Chinese picture-making known as "scenic illusion painting."

A lovely example in the show is a large painting of the emperor's young, chubby-cheeked son, the future Jiaqing Emperor, waving out at the viewer, while his mother, believed to be the third-rank consort, Ling, stands solicitously beside him. As in Velazquez's "Las Meninas," the implied viewer is the child's father - in this case the emperor himself.

The painting doubles as a view through a window. Trompe l'oeil window frames and tricks of perspective make it seem as if mother and child are in a room between the emperor's own (where we are) and a scenic exterior replete with bamboo grove, rocks and auspicious peonies. To reinforce the illusion and the dollhouse effect, the entire top half of the painting is given over to an empty room upstairs.

Among the show's most lustrous items are festive robes, or "jifu," worn by Qing empresses. A traditional duty of empresses was to oversee the production of silk, so these astonishing robes, made from patterned silk satin and embroidery and decorated with symbolic motifs, were special expressions of their influence. A hierarchy of colors dictated that yellow be used by only the most senior imperial women. Other colors and motifs were introduced, often in ways that broke with convention and expressed the special predilections of the wearer.

The most ubiquitous symbol in the show is the mythical phoenix. It is painted, embroidered on socks and silk fans, carved into stone seals and depicted in cloisonne screens. Said to alight on paulownia trees "only during times of just and proper rule," the phoenix was not exclusively associated with women. But it appears so commonly in objects connected with powerful women that, as you walk through the show, phoenix and empress come to feel virtually synonymous.

God knows why, but I happened to have Sinead O'Connor's great song "Troy" in my head when I saw the show. The song's raging, heartbroken mood is at odds with the show's ambiance of exquisite calm. And yet O'Connor's simple lyric, delivered with utmost drama at the song's climax, chimed uncannily with the exhibit's theme of female power suppressed in one sphere yet made manifest in others: "I will rise. And I will return. A phoenix from the flames!"

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"Empresses of China's Forbidden City, 1644-1912"

Through June 23 at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. 202-633-1000. asia.si.edu.
Patricia and Rosenda Ortiz managed to stay strong as guest speakers Thursday night for the Webb County Sheriff's Office 2019 National Crime Victims' Rights Week Candlelight Vigil.

They wanted the community to remember their loved one, Janelle Ortiz, 28, in a positive way.

"Every time we come to these vigils and events, it comes back to us and it hurts us very bad because we come back to the story and it reminds (us) of what happened," said Patricia Ortiz, Janelle's aunt. "I am very saddened to remember everything again. But we don't want to remember the tragic death. We just want to continue and celebrate his life."

READ ALSO: Laredo couple charged in connection with deceased child found in acid-filled container

Ortiz, a transgender woman, was one of four people killed in September in Webb County by then-U.S. Border Patrol agent Juan David Ortiz, according to authorities. The other victims were Melissa Ramirez, 29, Claudine Anne Luera, 42, and Griselda Alicia Hernandez Cantu, 34. Authorities said Ortiz was arrested after a fifth victim escaped and alerted law enforcement.

He has been indicted on charges of capital murder of multiple persons, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful restraint and evading arrest. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Rosenda Ortiz, Janelle's sister, said she sometimes does not like to talk about what happened.

"But we like to keep his memory alive in a good way," she said, noting that Janelle loved to sing and dance.

Patricia Ortiz said she wanted to remind victims of crime that help is out there, such as counseling.

"We're very appreciative with the Sheriff's Office because of what they did. They helped us with funeral expenses. We never thought about this program, but we're very grateful they are helping us in this tragedy," Ortiez said.

The Sheriff's Office has also been there for the Hernandez family.

"(They have) been a lot of help, (providing) moral support ... (We have) been treated like family. They have been good to us," said Angelica Hernandez Flores, sister of Grizelda Hernandez, 27.

Former Border Patrol agent Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles is accused of killing Hernandez and their son, Dominic Alexander Hernandez, 1, in April 2018 near Father Charles McNaboe Park in northwest Laredo.

RELATED: Laredo Border Patrol agent accused of killing lover, son smirks in court

Burgos-Aviles has been indicted on charges of two counts of capital murder. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Angelica Hernandez said the family has been there for each other in their time of need.

"I have a lot of family that is strong when I am usually not," she said.

Ramiro Hernandez, Grizelda Hernandez's father, said they have found a helping hand in the Sheriff's Office.

"There are no words to explain what happened," he said. "This is something that should not have happened. Sadly, it happened, and the Sheriff's Office has done well in helping us.

"On behalf of the Hernandez family, thank you (to the Sheriff's Office and the District Attorney's Office)."
Stafford Municipal School District

The Stafford Municipal School District was honored to welcome Texas Deputy Commissioner of Education Martin Winchester on Thursday afternoon. He toured the districts elementary, intermediate, middle and high school campuses. Deputy Commissioner Winchester met with Superintendent Dr. Robert Bostic, Board President Christopher Caldwell and Board Vice President Xavier Herrera, administrators, teachers and students.
In Houston, unlike El Salvador, Laura Maradiaga is not paralyzed with the constant fear of murder. The 11-year-old can walk to Fondren Middle School to study multiplication tables and English or relax with her mom, older sister and Lalo, the family dog, at the playground near their apartment.

Last year her mother, Dora Alvarado, said she realized that if Laura and her 15-year-old sister, Adamaris Alvarado, didn't flee El Salvador, they would die. Gang members had been killing their family members after one of Laura's relatives witnessed a murder and testified in court. Then Adamaris was accosted by a member of MS-13 who threatened to murder her and her family if she talked about the harassment.

"That's when Mom told us we were going to the United States," Laura said to the Houston Chronicle.

Laura and her family were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border on Oct. 5, 2018, and released to pursue their asylum claim. They've checked in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement every two weeks since November, a total of 10 appointments without missing a date.

Yet when the family appeared Wednesday in immigration court, Laura was abruptly given an order to be deported back to El Salvador - without her mother or sister. The move would separate an 11-year-old daughter from her family, they say, back to a place where her life is in danger.

The child's solo deportation is due to a clerical error, her attorneys argue, in part caused when the government shutdown earlier this year forced the court to reschedule her family's court dates.

During a Thursday news conference, Laura held her mother's hand in a vise grip, fighting off tears while saying she desperately wants to stay. "I feel bad because I don't want to be separated from my family," Laura said in Spanish. "I don't want to be taken away from my mom."

Laura's case comes as a flood of Central American migrants make their way to the border to seek asylum, while the Trump administration fights, so far unsuccessfully in court, to force those pursuing asylum to wait in Mexico. Last year the Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, made it significantly more difficult for asylum seekers like Laura's family to cite fears of gang or domestic violence as rationale to stay in the United States.

But Laura's family says the threat in El Salvador is real. At the news conference, Alvarado held up a printout of a Facebook post featuring a photo of the body of a 12-year-old girl who was recently found dead on a dirt road in the La Paz region of El Salvador, their old home.

"It's just violence for the sake of violence," Alvarado told the Chronicle.

Cesar Espinosa, executive director of Immigrant Families and Students in the Struggle, an immigration advocacy group supporting the family, told The Washington Post that Laura and Adamaris would face violent retaliation in El Salvador.

"She's terrified of going back and so is the family," Espinosa said. "It seems baffling to threaten to deport an 11-year-old while her immediate family is fighting their deportation cases."

Laura's legal counsel says her situation started with the government shutdown. The family was given a notice to appear in immigration court on Feb. 2, but with the government closed as President Donald Trump and Congress squared off over funding for his border wall, their date had to be rescheduled to March 12. When the family showed up for that hearing, the interpreter told them that Laura's name was not on the docket, said Silvia Mintz, the family's immigration attorney.

"The translator said, 'Do not worry, maybe Laura doesn't have court today,' " Mintz said.

Then, in late March, the family received a letter they couldn't read because they do not understand English. On Wednesday, the family returned to immigration court for their next hearing and, through another interpreter, found out that the letter was an order of deportation for Laura.

Judge Clarease Rankin Yates of the Houston Immigration Court had marked the girl as "not present" at the March 12 hearing. Neither Laura's mother nor sister are listed on the order, which is signed by Yates. "No good cause was given for Respondent's failure to appear at the hearing," the order reads. "Therefore, the Respondent has abandoned any and all forms of relief from removal."

Laura's attorneys say that either the interpreter at the March 12 hearing erred or the order is due to a Justice Department clerical mistake.

Either way, Espinosa said, it's the first time his organization has seen a child ordered deported without their family.

"I hope the judge can see it was a clear mistake on behalf of the court," Mintz said. "I don't think it was ill-intentioned, but it shows how overworked these courts are."

Espinosa added, "She should not have slipped through the cracks."

A request for comment to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the branch of the Justice Department that handled her case, was not returned late Thursday.

Mintz said she will file a motion to reopen the case, adding that the best-case scenario is that the court agrees to keep considering Laura's asylum case. The attorneys hope Laura can return to court by the end of the month, Espinosa said.

"It's a sad story that we're hoping for a happy ending, or at least a peaceful ending, where the family gets to stay together and not have an 11-year-old removed from her mother," Mintz said.

On Thursday, Laura told reporters she wants to be a police officer when she grows up, and is applying herself in school to better learn English. At the news conference, she clasped her mother's hand and said she never wanted to leave her side.

"I want to stay with her," Laura said.
Courtesy of Jamie Florio. For use only with CONNECTICUT-BABY

Courtesy of Jamie Florio. For use only with CONNECTICUT-BABY.

Courtesy of John Florio. For use only with CONNECTICUT-BABY.

Courtesy of John Florio. For use only with CONNECTICUT-BABY.

Baby Connor was born a tiny preemie in July, weighing just 11 ounces - about the size of a human heart and lighter than a can of soda.

He went home to Connecticut this week in what doctors called a triumph of medicine and the human spirit. It was extremely rare, they said, for an infant born so small to survive. His father could hold him in the palm of his hand when he was born.

"Connor is probably one of the smallest babies to have survived in the United States," said Dennis Davidson, chief of the infant and toddler unit at Blythedale Children's Hospital in Westchester County, New York.

On Tuesday, when Connor was discharged to go home with his parents, Jamie and John Florio, he weighed nearly 11 pounds - about 15 times his birth weight.

Jamie Florio, 29, said doctors and nurses told her that although Connor was the smallest baby they'd ever seen, he was also the feistiest.

"I believe that's what helped him to survive," she said. "He was the size of a newborn kitten. Stretched out, he was only nine inches long, from head to toe. But he was a fighter."

Davidson said Connor also has "a great social smile."

Then he deadpanned: "Discharge was based on the condition that they send us photos of Connor as he grows up."

Davidson said he expects Connor to thrive at home with his parents in Danbury, Connecticut.

"His parents have been unbelievably dedicated to observing the little nuances of his clinical conditions," Davidson said, which included chronic lung disease, neurodevelopment disorder and feeding issues.

To keep their spirits up during the nine months that their son was hospitalized, the Florios bought wee costumes for Connor at Build-a-Bear to celebrate every holiday and take photos.

On Valentine's Day, Connor was dressed up as a cupid, and on St. Patrick's Day, he was a leprechaun. On Thanksgiving, he was a pilgrim, and on Christmas, he was an elf. On Halloween, Jamie Florio found him a miniature doctor's uniform and a Superman costume.

In the days after Connor's discharge Tuesday, there was little time for the Florios to snap pictures.

"We're so happy to finally have him here, but it's more stressful now," said John Florio, who is about to return to his job as a middle school social studies teacher after taking a week off to celebrate Connor's homecoming. Jamie Florio, a special-education teacher, is just now beginning her maternity leave.

"We don't have a staff to take care of him now," John Florio said. "It's finally all up to us."

Connor was delivered in an emergency C-section birth and spent five months in the newborn intensive-care unit at the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital, followed by four months at Blythedale Children's Hospital.

It was during Jamie Florio's 25th week of pregnancy that doctors said Connor wasn't getting enough nutrients to thrive, and she was admitted to the hospital to be monitored. Something was wrong with Florio's placenta, and Connor hadn't been receiving enough nutrients to grow at a normal rate. One week later, doctors decided that an urgent C-section was necessary.

"We knew it was risky because we kept hearing, 'We'll do everything we can,' " Jamie Florio recalled. "Even though (Connor) was 26 weeks along, he was the size of a 20-week fetus."

When their tiny son was delivered, though, John Florio had a strong hunch that he would ultimately be healthy and strong.

"He came out kicking and screaming and swinging his arms," he said. "I could see that he had some strength in him."

Now at home, Connor will need a feeding tube for a while, but doctors say he will probably be taken off supplemental oxygen in a few weeks. Then the Florios can look forward to watching their feisty little boy reach new milestones.

"My hope in the future is that he has a normal childhood," said John Florio. "And of course, I can't wait to show all of his baby pictures someday to his prom date."
A Pennsylvania fugitive sarcastically suggested authorities offer pickup and delivery services to the county jail - so, they kindly obliged.

When the Greene County Sheriff's Office posted its "Top Ten Wanted" list on Facebook last month, one of the fugitives, Chloe Jones, replied beneath the post, "Do you guys do pick up or delivery??" She added four laughing emoji.

In their own satirical response, authorities announced this week that Jones, who was wanted for failing to appear in court in connection with a simple assault charge, had been arrested. She was taken into custody after a social media spat on the sheriff's office's Facebook page, where she taunted deputies and disclosed her recent whereabouts.

"Ms. Chloe Jones and her witty comments are taking a hiatus from our Facebook comments section due to the jail not having Internet for her to use," the post read.

Following Jones's snide remark to authorities, she started engaging with commenters on the sheriff's office's Facebook page who were telling her to "be an adult" and turn herself in to police.

Jones, from Waynesburg, Pa., alleged that the reason she did not show up in court was because she was in the trauma center at the Ruby Memorial Hospital, which is in Morgantown, West Virginia, near the Pennsylvania border.

"Like I said hard to show up in court when I'm sedated in the hospital," Jones wrote in the comment section. "I called my attorney and he said the warrant was already issued blah blah blah.. so of course I'm going to laugh when I'm sitting in the hospital and get on my Facebook and see that I made #2 most wanted for something that I couldn't control."

It's unclear who is representing Jones. The Greene County Public Defender's Office said she has not been assigned an attorney in the case.

Officials with the Greene County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that Jones, 21, was taken into custody Monday in Morgantown after authorities received an anonymous tip about her possible location. But it is not clear whether Jones's social media comments contributed to her arrest.

Deputies contacted officers with the Morgantown Police Department, who made the arrest. She is in custody in West Virginia, according to booking records.

"Our Facebook page has proven to be a valuable asset to our department in bringing wanted persons to justice," interim Greene County Sheriff Marcus Simms said in the statement. "We owe a great deal of gratitude to the citizens and law enforcement of our county and the surrounding counties."
After Bernie Sanders lost his primary campaign for president against Hillary Clinton in 2016, a Twitter account called Red Louisiana News reached out to his supporters to help sway the general election. "Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving towards the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016," the account tweeted.

The tweet was not actually from Louisiana, according to an analysis by Clemson University researchers. Instead, it was one of thousands of accounts identified as based in Russia, part of a cloaked effort to persuade supporters of the Vermont senator to elect Trump. "Bernie Sanders says his message resonates with Republicans," said another Russian tweet.

While much attention has focused on the question of whether the Trump campaign encouraged or conspired with Russia, the effort to target Sanders supporters has been a lesser-noted part of the story. Special counsel Robert Mueller, in a case filed last year against 13 Russians accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign, said workers at a St. Petersburg facility called the Internet Research Agency were instructed to write social media posts in opposition to Clinton but "to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

That strategy could receive new attention with the release of Mueller's report, expected within days.

Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that one of his campaign workers figured out what was going on, alerted the Clinton campaign and told them, "I think these guys are Russians." But Sanders said he never knew, and he later backed off his suggestion that his staff did. A spokesman referred questions to 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who said in an interview that Sanders "misspoke a little bit and conflated a few of the facts. . . . He did not know, I did not know, none of us knew" that Russia was behind the efforts.

Only recently, with the latest analysis of Twitter data, has the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign been documented on that social media platform.

A pair of Clemson University researchers, at the request of The Washington Post, examined English-language tweets identified as coming from Russia, many of which were designed to influence the election. It is impossible to say how many were targeted at Sanders supporters because many don't include his name. Some 9,000 of the Russian tweets used the word "Bernie," which were "liked" 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times.

But that was only one element of the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters, the researchers said. Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.

"I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton," said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis "give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought."

The Russian social-media strategy underscores a challenge that Sanders faces as he once again seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, this time in a crowded field. Many Sanders supporters believe he was treated unfairly by the Democratic Party and Clinton, a point the Russians sought to capitalize on as they worked to undermine Clinton in the November election.

Although Sanders later denounced the Kremlin's efforts and campaigned for Clinton, some Democrats believe he could have done more to smooth over tensions and encourage his supporters to support his onetime opponent. A former senior Clinton campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid publicly criticizing Sanders ahead of the 2020 primaries, said that there remains bitterness over the way Sanders repeatedly said the system was tilted against him.

Sanders said in May 2016 that party rules enabling Clinton to collect "superdelegates" did not meet the definition of "rigged," but he called it a "dumb process which certainly has disadvantaged our campaign."

The effort to promote Sanders as a way to influence the U.S. election began shortly after he declared his candidacy in spring 2015, according to Mueller's indictment of the Russians. Russia's aim was to defeat or weaken Clinton, who had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin when she had been secretary of state.

One reason that Sanders was on Russia's radar has been little noted: he, like Trump, opposed trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Russian President Vladimir Putin had been critical of the TPP, saying it was secretive and "hardly facilitates sustainable development of Asia Pacific."

During the primaries, Sanders gave at least three interviews to a Russia-controlled television network, RT, in which his trade stance was highlighted. The network in February 2016 criticized MSNBC for breaking away from Sanders after he said he was "helping to lead the opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership." The network posted a story headlined, "Bernie Sanders 'censored' by MSNBC while criticizing trade deal."

Around the same time that Sanders was featured on RT, Russian employees at the Internet Research Agency were given a document explaining how to influence the U.S. election. The workers were told to "use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump - we support them)," according to Mueller's indictment of the Russians.

The Twitter database shows the impact. The tweets sent from Russia, cloaked to look as though they came from Americans, included: "Bernie Sanders looks to black voters to boost his underdog campaign"; "Hillary Clinton's summer of drama creates openings for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden"; and "I'm for Bernie all the way!"

Then, in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee that suggested the party machinery was tilted against Sanders. The DNC computers were later revealed to have been hacked by Russia. The hack prompted Trump to stoke the divide among Democrats. "Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders," Trump tweeted July 23, 2016. ". . . On-line from Wikileakes [sic], really vicious. RIGGED!"

Russian trolls significantly increased their effort to persuade Sanders supporters to oppose Clinton in the general election. One of their methods was to try to convince African Americans that they couldn't trust her.

"#BlackMenForBernie Leader Switches to Trump! I will Never Vote for Hillary,Welcome aboard the Trump Train," said a tweet from an account that was said to come from Texas and was identified as "Southern. Conservative Pro God. Anti Racism." The account, actually operated by a Russian, had 72,121 followers. The message was liked 260 times and retweeted 295 times, according to the Clemson database.

Linvill, the Clemson researcher, said Sanders was seen as "just a tool" to the Russians. "He is a wedge to drive into the Democratic Party," resulting in lower turnout for Clinton, he said. The tweets suggested either voting for Trump or a third-party candidate such as Green Party nominee Jill Stein, or writing in Sanders's name.

While it is impossible to show a direct correlation between a Russian-based tweet and someone's vote in the United States, a post-election survey conducted for Ohio State University documented how false stories spread on social media may have caused a decline in turnout for Clinton. Only 77 percent of those surveyed who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 supported Clinton in 2016; 10 percent backed Trump, 4 percent voted for third-party candidates, and 8 percent did not vote, according to the YouGov survey.

In an effort to demonstrate how inaccurate information makes its way into the mainstream, the survey asked respondents about three demonstrably false articles that had been widely distributed. A quarter of respondents believed the false story that Clinton was in "very poor health," 10 percent believed that Trump had been endorsed by the pope, and 35 percent (including 20 percent of Obama supporters) believed that Clinton had approved weapons sales to "Islamic jihadists, including ISIS."

The Ohio State team concluded in a soon-to-be published final version of its report that "belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters." Obama voters who recognized all three stories as false voted for Clinton at a rate of 89 percent, while 61 percent who believed one of the stories was false voted for her, and 17 percent of those who believed two of the false stories supported Clinton.

Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, said Twitter had studied what happened during the presidential election and will apply those lessons as the 2020 campaign unfolds.

"Protecting the integrity of public conversation around elections is core to Twitter's mission," Roth said in a statement to The Post. "Since 2016, we've launched new policies, significantly scaled our enforcement against malicious automation, built strong partnerships within the industry and with government entities, and opened the largest public archive of potential information operations online, including thousands of Russian-linked accounts we have removed."

Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that the Russians "were playing a really disgusting role because they don't believe in anything. And all they want to do is sow division in this country, bring people against each other. So what they were saying is - in so many words - is Bernie Sanders is not going to win, so if you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, let me tell you, Hillary Clinton is a criminal, a murderer, a terrible person . . . crazy, all of these disgusting things."

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said "the Russians will strike again." As a result, he said, it is imperative for "everyone else, especially Democratic candidates, to work together and support each other to defend against these threats."

- - -

The Washington Post's Craig Timberg contributed to this report.
LONDON - The plush neighborhood of Knightsbridge, a high-rent hub of fancy retail and discreet diplomats, awoke Friday with one international curiosity fewer in its midst.

Julian Assange, the Australian bad boy and founder of WikiLeaks, had been dragged Thursday from the Ecuadoran embassy, where he had entertained the likes of Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson in the Victorian red-brick building a stone's throw from Harrods, the luxury department store. He was arrested to face a hacking charge in the United States.

"We heard the helicopter overhead," said James Smith, a local real estate agent. The scene outside the embassy was the dramatic climax of a seven-year diplomatic stalemate, as Ecuador revoked the anti-secrecy crusader's asylum and turned him over to British authorities.

Gone now are the demonstrators with "Free Assange" banners. But life goes on in Knightsbridge, Smith said. It is not as if residents saw their notorious neighbor, holed up in the embassy since 2012. From his corner room, where he lived with his Internet-star cat and used a treadmill to stay in shape, Assange had become a fading fascination.

But his coming legal battle puts him back in the spotlight.

Half of Britons had no opinion on Ecuador's decision to get rid of him, according to a YouGov poll. More than a third supported the move, and only one in seven wanted him to stay.

Now that Assange has lost his bolt-hole in Knightsbridge, the 47-year-old will battle extradition from a British jail. After his arrest, he was swiftly convicted Thursday of skipping bail in 2012, and he faces up to a year in prison for that offense.

U.S. prosecutors seek his extradition to face a federal charge of conspiring to hack into a Defense Department computer network in 2010. His attorney, Jennifer Robinson, warned that his arrest sets a "dangerous precedent" for press freedoms.

There are many questions. How long will the extradition process take? Likely years. Will Assange remain in prison as his case proceeds? Almost certainly. He will first be sentenced - probably six months to one year - for jumping bail. Finally, what about the cat? The Ecuadoran Embassy has not revealed what happened to the pet. An Italian newspaper suggested it was given to a friend months ago.

The issue of Assange's extradition instantly exposed divisions within British politics, already riven by the country's exit from the European Union, known as Brexit.

Prime Minister Theresa May said his arrest showed that "no one is above the law," while Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the government should oppose Assange's extradition. The left-wing leader said Assange was being targeted "for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Labour's spokeswoman for domestic affairs, Diane Abbott, said the request should be blocked on human rights grounds. She told the BBC that the U.S. government's true motivation for prosecuting Assange was its "embarrassment of the things he's revealed about the American military and security services."

Right-wing politician Nigel Farage, an ideological ally of President Trump, told the broadcaster on Friday he had visited Assange once in the embassy, swatting away the suggestion that he was a conduit between Trump and WikiLeaks. The American president, who once said he loved WikiLeaks, professed Thursday to "know nothing" about the group.

"He's going to be extradited, and that's the end of it," Farage said.

Assange's fight against extradition could keep him jailed in Britain for years, as the case winds its way through legal challenges in multiple courts, experts said.

Because of the seriousness of the charge and the fact that Assange has already skipped bail once - when Sweden sought his extradition to answer allegations of sex crimes during a visit there - he is likely do battle from a prison cell.

His new life will not be as comfortable as the previous years in the Ecuadoran Embassy, where he was free to drink wine, skateboard down the halls and receive guests. Until his exasperated hosts cut off his Internet, Assange was all over social media. In British prisons, mobile phones are prohibited and Internet access highly restricted.

Assange's lawyers vow they will fight the extradition order, from the Magistrates' Court to the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court - and possibly to the European Court of Human Rights.

Even if Britain manages to leave the European Union, Brexit will almost certainly include a lengthy transition period, which could put Assange in front of EU judges.

"It will be some years before a final decision is reached - at least a year and probably longer," said Amy Jeffress, a former Justice Department legal attache in London. "My over and under would be three years."

She said, "These cases can become very political in the U.K."

One high-profile terrorism case dragged on for 13 years before the defendant was finally extradited to the United States. Assange's previous battle against extradition to Sweden took 18 months.

Daniel Sternberg, a barrister specializing in extradition law at Temple Gardens Chambers in London, said he expects Assange to mount a vigorous challenge, pressing "every conceivable point."

He said the most relevant arguments would contest the forum of prosecution - reasoning that Assange's physical location when he engaged in the conduct of which he stands accused is more relevant than the country targeted by his activities.

Sternberg also said Assange's legal team is likely raise fears of human rights violations, should the WikiLeaks founder be destined for a federal "supermax" prison, where some inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell.

"Although this indictment is relatively limited, his lawyers might argue that there could be other charges waiting in the wings," Sternberg said.

Before the extradition order can move forward, Assange must first serve the sentence he was handed for failing to surrender to British authorities. His legal team could choose to expedite the extradition proceedings, but experts said that was unlikely.

From his British prison cell, Assange would have limited use of a landline telephone, on which he would be able to call previously approved numbers, Sternberg said. If he were given access to the Internet, it would be highly supervised, he said.

"The world will have to get used to hearing less of Assange, filtered by people who see him in prison or his lawyers," Sternberg said.

Opponents of extradition point to a decision in 2012 by May, who was home secretary at the time, to refuse to hand over Scottish computer hacker Gary McKinnon to the American criminal justice system. May cited medical reports indicating that McKinnon risked becoming a danger to himself if he stood trial in the United States.

But the current home secretary suggested his thinking about Assange's case was different. In the House of Commons on Thursday, Sajid Javid excoriated the Labour Party for defending Assange and echoed the prime minister's judgment. "There's no one in this country that is above the law," he said.

Moreover, the solicitor who represented McKinnon, Karen Todner, said May moved to limit the discretion of the home secretary to refuse to carry out extradition orders at the very same time that she refused to hand over her client, meaning Assange's fate is likely to rest entirely in the courts. Todner also represented Lauri Love, a British hacker whose extradition was blocked last year by the High Court of Justice, which found that conditions in a U.S. jail would be "oppressive" and that Britain was the rightful forum for his prosecution.

Todner said she thinks Assange's lawyers have a strong case to make that the request from U.S. prosecutors rests on "political offenses," which are barred as grounds for surrendering an alleged criminal under many extradition treaties, including the one between Britain and the United States.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Sweden said Thursday that they have received a request to reopen an investigation into Assange's conduct from an attorney for a woman who accuses him of rape.

Swedish prosecutors said they had not been alerted to Assange's arrest and learned of the developments in his case from media reports.

Sweden's director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, closed the probe two years ago, saying she could not proceed while Assange enjoyed safe haven in the Ecuadoran Embassy, but she noted that it would be possible to resume if he were expelled.

The investigation involves a 2010 complaint from a woman who says she met Assange at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm. She alleges he engaged in nonconsensual unprotected sex with her - an accusation he denies.

If Sweden asks for Assange's extradition, it will be up to Britain to decide in which order it heeds the requests, if at all, from the United States and Sweden.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the attorney for Assange's accuser, said in a statement to The Washington Post that she hopes Britain would send the WikiLeaks founder to the Scandinavian country first, if prosecutors there bring charges. Her client's case is more pressing than U.S. demands, she said, because the statute of limitations for the rape allegation expires in August 2020.

"I'm fighting for her rights to be remembered," Fritz said. "Getting justice and restitution is of utmost importance for her to be able to move on with her life."

- - -

The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima contributed to this report.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's plan to add four toll lanes to Interstates 495 and 270 would cut the time motorists sit in traffic by up to 35 percent, but it would require that up to 34 homes and four businesses along the Capital Beltway be demolished, a new state study found.

No homes or businesses would need to be taken along I-270, according to the study findings released Thursday.

However, up to nearly 1,500 properties along both highways would be "directly affected," meaning they would lose parts of backyards or other land, either permanently or temporarily during construction. Some of the properties also would end up with a closer noise wall, the study found.

People in nearly 4,600 homes, businesses, schools and other sites could hear more noise, although how much won't be known until further analysis is completed.

The study findings, presented at the first public workshop on the toll plan, provided an initial glimpse of how much the highways would need to be widened under seven traffic relief scenarios under consideration - six of which involve adding two to four toll lanes.

By comparison, the Purple Line required 172 homes and businesses to be demolished.

Maryland State Highway Administrator Greg Slater cautioned that the findings are "very preliminary" and show the worst-case scenarios. He said the companies that will design the lanes as part of a public-private partnership are expected to find ways to further reduce any widening, perhaps by tunneling or cantilevering some lanes over others.

"We know a number of folks out there are really frustrated with congestion," Slater said, "but we also don't want a solution that's really going to disrupt the lives of communities around the Beltway. They're really important to us."

The more than 500,000 motorists who use both highways daily but don't live or work near them would see significant improvement, the study found. All of the options would reduce the amount of time motorists spend in peak-hour traffic congestion by at least 20 percent, with some cutting it by 35 percent, according to the analysis.

If nothing is done by 2040, the study found, morning traffic on the Capital Beltway between College Park and Bethesda will average 14 mph, taking 43 minutes to travel about 10 miles. Under some tolling alternatives, that trip would drop to 13 minutes in the regular lanes and 10 minutes in the toll lanes.

In Prince George's County, the study found, morning Beltway traffic between Interstate 95 and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge would average 23 mph and take 67 minutes if nothing is done by 2040. Under some alternatives, that trip would take 50 minutes in the regular lanes and 44 minutes in the toll lanes.

The Maryland State Highway Administration is considering both high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, such as Virginia has built, and express toll lanes. HOT lanes allow high-occupancy vehicles to use them free or at a reduced cost, while express toll lanes cost the same for all vehicles.

Tolls, which haven't been set, would vary to keep the lanes flowing at or above 45 mph, officials said. Regular lanes would remain free, and Slater said the state is exploring ways for buses to use the toll lanes at no cost.

The two options that found the greatest travel time savings and other benefits include four toll lanes on each highway. One would add two HOT lanes in each direction to the Beltway. On I-270, the existing single high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes would be converted to HOT lanes, and an additional HOT lane would be built in each direction.

The other would add two express toll lanes in each direction on both the Beltway and I-270, in addition to retaining the HOV lanes on I-270.

Hogan (R) has touted toll lanes as the only way the state can afford to provide significant relief on some of the most congested highways in the state. He has said the lanes, which are estimated to cost $9 billion to $11 billion, would cost the state nothing because the private partner would finance their construction and build and operate them in exchange for keeping the toll revenue.

Maryland highway officials also have cast the proposal as the only way to expand the American Legion Bridge, one of the region's most notorious bottlenecks. Virginia already has added toll lanes to its section of the Beltway and I-95, leading some road proponents to argue that Maryland has lagged in easing motorists' daily misery.

Even so, Hogan's proposal has drawn criticism from transit advocates, residents in communities along the highways and some public officials in Montgomery and Prince George's counties who say the governor's proposal gives short shrift to transit alternatives and would affect too many homes and businesses.

The lanes probably would be built in phases, state officials said, beginning with the most congested part of the Beltway between the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia to I-95, including the American Legion Bridge. The rest of Maryland's portion of the Beltway east and south to Route 5, as well as I-270 between the Beltway and I-370, would be built at the same time, within two years of construction beginning on the first section.

The environmental and community impacts of those highway segments will be included in a future study, state officials said.

At the public workshop Thursday night, residents pored over maps showing the outlines of a potentially wider Beltway.

Judy Brenneman, who lives five blocks from the Beltway in New Carrollton, said she was surprised the project wouldn't take more homes. She said she didn't see any homes in her neighborhood that would be affected.

Brenneman, 68, said she's watched the region's traffic backups worsen over the past 30 years, even on Sunday afternoons when she picks up her grandchildren.

"I'm not against tolls as long as there are other options" to use the regular lanes, she said. "I assume the roads will be better because of it."

Many agreed the Beltway needs help. However, some residents said they wanted to know how much the tolls would potentially cost. Several cited Northern Virginia's new HOT lanes on Interstate 66, where the variable tolls average $35.50 during the peak of the 8:30 a.m. rush and have soared to as high as $47.50.

Jameela Charles, who lives in Clinton, said she would rather pay a higher gas tax to fund improvements.

"I don't think we should have to pay for roads that we've already paid for with our tax dollars," said Charles, 52, a real estate broker.

She said she's also concerned that the private companies that would build and operate the toll lanes would be driven by profits rather than what's best for motorists, especially those with lower incomes.

"People can barely afford rents, and now these tolls will be like Lexus lanes," Charles said. "People with higher incomes will be in the fast lanes, and poor people will be stuck over here."

But Joshua Walker, 34, a sixth-grade science teacher from Hyattsville, said traffic is too bad to hold off on potential improvements, especially if toll lanes would allow for faster, more reliable bus service.

"I've been saying for years that something has to be done about the Beltway because it's getting out of hand," Walker said.

He said he was opposed to tolls until he used the express toll lanes on Interstate 95 north of Baltimore.

"You don't even know you're in rush hour," Walker said.

And what about the potential impacts on some nearby homes?

"I'd say the greater good requires the Beltway to have more lanes," Walker said. "But I also don't have property bordering the Beltway that I've worked for all of my life, so I don't have that same emotional attachment."

Following the public workshops, the seven alternatives will undergo more-detailed analysis before the state recommends a preferred alternative. Public hearings on that recommendation are scheduled to be held early next year.
WASHINGTON - An American political consultant whose guilty plea marked the first confirmation that illegal foreign money was used to help fund Donald Trump's inaugural committee was sentenced to probation Friday by a federal judge who cited his cooperation with U.S. prosecutors.

W. Samuel Patten, 47, in August admitted steering $50,000 from a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician to Trump's committee in an investigation spun off from special counsel Robert Mueller 's probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Patten acknowledged he was helped by a Russian national who is a longtime associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the case was referred to prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in Washington and the Justice Department's national security division.

Before he was sentenced, Patten, accompanied in court by his wife, sister and friends and neighbors, thanked the judge for her handling of his case and asked for a sentence that would permit him to "continue in whatever way I can to serve my country."

In sparing Patten from prison, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson accepted prosecutors' request for leniency and noted no federal sentencing guideline directly applies to his offense of failing to register as a foreign lobbyist, which is punishable by up to five years in prison. Patten's defense sought probation citing the substantial assistance he provided in several ongoing, undisclosed investigations.

He was sentenced to three years of probation, 500 hours of community service and fined $5,000.

Patten's offenses were "not a technicality, and not an oversight," Jackson said in court, but serious offenses calculated to influence public policy and opinion in the United States for a foreign government "without telling the American people that it was those very Ukrainians paying you to do the talking."

"The whole point, and only point, of the FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) statute is to ensure transparency in the public policy and the political process," Jackson said. "If people don't have the facts, then democracy doesn't work."

Patten "earned the trust of the government and became a reliable and valuable resource" for Mueller's Russia investigation and prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office, Patten's attorney Stuart Sears said in sentencing papers.

Jackson referred to that assistance, noting Patten did not try to justify or blame his actions on others, "and more importantly, you've done everything in your power to make amends" by assisting prosecutors.

"This is not a picture of someone who's motivated by greed, someone who sells his services to the highest bidder, or someone who's looking for a cushy or comfortable situation," Jackson said.

Patten has been released on his own recognizance since pleading guilty Aug. 31.

Without that cooperation in the case, Jackson said she would have considered some prison time for Patten's lying in the Senate's Russia probe.

The judge also distinguished his case from Mueller defendant Paul Manafort's. The former Trump campaign chairman is was given a 7 1/2 year prison term for hiding tens of millions of dollars of income from undisclosed lobbying work for a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician. Manafort's term includes 30 months Jackson imposed for conspiracy to defraud the United States by abusing FARA and other laws.

"Just to clarify, my prior sentence for Paul Manafort was not" just for conspiring to violate FARA, but also to violate foreign bank account registration requirements,] income tax and money laundering laws, Jackson said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Fernando Campoamor-Sanchez agreed, saying Patten "really is in a different position [from other FARA cases], we believe in a positive way."

Patten admitted in court documents that he failed to register with the Justice Department while he worked on behalf of a Russia-aligned Ukrainian political party. Patten acknowledged arranging for an American to act as a "straw donor" to give the $50,000 in exchange for four Trump inauguration tickets for a Ukrainian businessman.

Trump's inauguration, which raised a record $100 million, was attended by an unusually large number of prominent foreign business leaders, particularly Russian moguls, but foreigners are barred from contributing to the event.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan, the attorneys general for the District and New Jersey, and the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees have launched separate investigations into the Trump committee and top officials in probes focused on donations and spending.

Sears, noted his client's past work promoting democracy abroad and promising start as a political consultant. "Without a doubt, Mr. Patten earned his felony conviction in this case, Sears said, but also earned a non-incarceration sentence. "He had a choice to make in this case, between his career and assisting the government. He chose his country . . . He sacrificed his career . . . in order to help the government and cooperate in this case."

In plea papers, Patten said he formed a company with a Russian national, identified as "Foreigner A," to engage in lobbying and political consulting services.

The company had received about $1 million since 2015 for its Ukraine consulting work, which included advising a Ukrainian party known as the Opposition Bloc as well as some of its members, one of whom is a prominent Ukrainian business executive identified only as "Foreigner B."

Prosecutors said Patten helped the business executive get meetings to lobby members of Congress in 2015 and helped him author an op-ed in February 2017 that appears to match a U.S. News & World Report article arguing Ukraine would do fine under President Trump.

The description of "Foreigner A" matches Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime Manafort associate charged in Washington along with Manafort with obstruction of justice and witness tampering. Prosecutors have said they believe that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence. Kilimnik has denied any such ties, and Patten said he had no idea such links were alleged.

The description of "Foreigner B" matches Serhiy Lovochkin, a Ukrainian business executive and politician who served as a top aide to former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician who was Manafort's chief client.

Patten told prosecutors that he worked with Kilimnik to help Lovochkin route the illegal donation to Trump's inauguration. Prosecutors do not say whether Kilimnik attended.

Patten also agreed that he misled the Senate Intelligence Committee when he testified before the panel in January.

Lovochkin's office has said he attended the inauguration but did not make the $50,000 payment.

Patten acknowledged to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he falsely minimized his contact with U.S. officials on behalf of foreign clients and manually deleted 200,000 emails from his Gmail archive folder, his attorney said in court filings. But he voluntarily provided materials that incriminated him, including over 1,300 pages of documents, Sears wrote.

Patten initially responded to the committee without receiving a subpoena and without consulting a lawyer, Sears said.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced that Mueller concluded his probe March 27 without further indictments, but the special counsel had been referring several matters to other prosecutors, including the U.S. attorney's office for the District.

Patten worked in the oil sector in Kazakhstan in the mid- to late 1990s and served as Maine campaign director for George W. Bush's 2000 presidential run. He also briefly worked at the State Department under Bush and as a political consultant in Iraq assisting officials there in the post-Saddam Hussein period.

In a 2017 interview with The Post, Patten said he met Kilimnik in Moscow more than 15 years ago, when Kilimnik was an employee of the International Republican Institute, a pro-democracy group affiliated with the U.S. Republican Party. Patten ran the office from 2001 to 2004. "I relied on him," Patten said in the interview.

Kilimnik left the IRI around 2005 to work for Manafort in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, eventually being named manager of Manafort's Ukraine office. Patten praised Kilimnik at the time as a person who helped Manafort navigate the complicated Ukrainian political scene.
North Dakota state lawmakers passed the first "heartbeat" bill in 2013 - a law that banned abortions after the detection of a fetal heartbeat, which can happen as early as six weeks, before a woman even knows she is pregnant.

Lower courts ruled it unconstitutional, based on the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade, and the high court refused to hear the appeal.

Iowa passed a similar bill in 2016, and a state judge declared it unconstitutional, too.

Despite this precedent, more than a dozen other state legislatures have introduced their own "heartbeat bills" this year. Governors in three states - Mississippi, Kentucky and, most recently, Ohio - have signed six-week bans into law. Soon, the governor of Georgia is expected to make his state's heartbeat bill law, too.

All are facing, or will face, legal challenges from pro-choice organizations.

They are not deterred. This was the plan all along.

"We know that the pro-abortion forces are going to sue, and that's part of the process," said Lori Viars, an antiabortion activist in Ohio, where the six-week ban she spent years promoting was signed into law Wednesday. "We want this bill to go to the Supreme Court. It was written for this purpose."

Though lawmakers have been introducing six-week abortion bans for years, it has taken nearly a decade of failed attempts for the movement to build the kind of momentum it has seen in the early months of 2019. Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate are seriously questioning the security of Roe - because mainstream antiabortion groups are adopting more radical positions and state abortion restrictions are reaching critical mass, because Donald Trump is president, because in two years he has appointed two conservative justices, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court.

"The shift in the Supreme Court opened these flood gates," said Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues director for the Guttmacher Institute. "What we're seeing now is legislators wanting to pass an extreme abortion ban because they're aiming at overturning Roe v. Wade."

That was what Janet Porter, the original architect of the nation's first heartbeat bill, always wanted.

The Ohio resident and longtime antiabortion advocate seeded the idea in 2010, at the funeral of her former boss at Ohio Right to Life, where she had worked for a decade. The man died before banning abortion nationwide, and Porter couldn't help but ponder all the work yet to be done.

"If we can't protect them all," Porter said she thought at the time, "let's protect as many as we can."

Three months and many meetings later, she had rallied an Ohio state lawmaker to introduce her brainchild. And eight years after that, it was finally signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine.

"I don't think we left any stone unturned to get this bill across the finish line," Porter said Wednesday. "It's a bill that I hope will be welcomed by the Supreme Court of the United States."

The American Civil Liberties Union has already promised to challenge the law in the lower courts, as they and other pro-choice groups have done for every other "heartbeat bill" that has passed in recent years. For the cases to reach the high court, an appeals court judge would have to uphold one of the bans - in direct defiance of federal legal precedent.

This process will likely take years, and it's unclear whether the Supreme Court would take up the case even if it did reach their desk.

"These bills are blatantly unconstitutional," said Elisabeth Smith, chief counsel for state policy and strategy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, one of several groups that have challenged antiabortion legislation in court. "With the change in the Supreme Court, abortion opponents are hoping that the Supreme Court will change decades of jurisprudence and decide a case differently."

"Hostile legislators introduce all these bills and hope for a different answer," Smith said, despite decades of court rulings that reinforce a woman's right to choose.

But years of state legislation restricting access to abortion, without outright banning it, has slowly whittled away at the kind of health care women can receive, and where they can receive it.

"What is going on with these abortion bans is totally void of legal thought, legal precedent, legal theory," said Georgia state Rep. Dar'shun Kendrick, a Democrat who represents a progressive district. Her colleagues in the state legislature passed a heartbeat bill there last month, and the law is awaiting Republican Gov. Brian Kemp's signature.

Hollywood celebrities have descended upon the state in recent weeks, calling on filmmakers with contracts in the state to withdrawal their business unless the law is vetoed.

"There has always been bills out there," said Kendrick, who has been a vocal opponent of the six-week ban in her state. "The difference is that now conservatives are empowered because of the president we have and the things he has said."

Just in the first quarter of 2019, 28 states have introduced legislation that would ban or restrict abortion in some way, according to the Guttmacher Institute. This includes proposals for required waiting periods before a woman can undergo an abortion procedure; mandatory ultrasounds; limits on abortion coverage in health-care plans; regulations on equipment and clinic facilities; regulations on admitting privileges for providers; parental consent; limits on abortion medication; and bans on the most common abortion techniques.

There are also proposals to limit abortion at 12 and 20 weeks.

Some states have gone so far as to introduce and pass so-called "trigger laws" - or laws that ban abortion altogether, but would only go into effect in the event that Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court. They are symbolic more than anything, Nash said, "except that right now everybody is pretty nervous about them."

At the same time, a number of progressive states have passed their own "trigger laws," but these protect abortion rights, rather than restrict them.

"All these state legislators are looking at the Supreme Court," Nash said.

What comes next for Porter and her heartbeat bill - now a heartbeat law - is just a matter of time, she said: "Stay tuned."
A student killed a Carrizo Springs High School counselor after he tried to grab his private part, according to an arrest affidavit.

The 50-year-old counselor, Carlos Pena, was found dead in his home in Asherton late Tuesday. John Michael Alvarado, 18, was arrested and charged with murder after he allegedly confessed to killing Pena.

Alvarado was released on bond Wednesday, according to a Dimmit County sheriff's deputy at the jail. Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace Alberto Esquivel had set the bond at $75,000. Esquivel had not returned requests for comment as of late Thursday.

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Law enforcement responded to Pena's home after Alvarado called 911.

"He told the investigators, the dispatcher, that he would be waiting ... out in front of the home, and that's where he was found, right where he said he was going to be," Dimmit County Sheriff Marion Boyd said, according to KSAT.

Pena was pronounced dead at the scene.

The arrest affidavit states that Alvarado, a Carrizo Springs High School student, admitted to killing Pena after the counselor made a sexual advance toward him, KSAT reported.

Alvarado punched his face and head multiple times and then stabbed him in the neck, torso and abdomen with a serrated pocket knife, the affidavit said, according to KSAT.

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Carrizo Springs Consolidated Independent School District said in a statement Wednesday it would be providing grief counseling to students and staff.

"Please keep the employee's family and our students and staff in your thoughts and prayers as we all work to understand and deal with this incident," the statement read.

It added, "We will provide no additional information or comment at this time. Please respect the families and their privacy while they deal with the present situation."
President Donald Trump moved aggressively Friday to take ownership of an internal White House plan to release immigrant detainees into "sanctuary cities" that his aides had sought to minimize a day earlier by saying it was shelved months ago after only informal consideration.

Directly contradicting his staff, Trump declared in a tweet that he was giving the plan "strong considerations," and, at an event later in the day, he sarcastically challenged Democrats in liberal jurisdictions to accept the immigrants with "open arms."

The president said that if Congress refuses to change immigration laws to allow his administration to more quickly deport a surge of asylum-seeking Central American families, "we'll bring - I call them the 'illegals' because they enter the country illegally - to sanctuary cities and areas and let those particular areas take care of it."

Specifically referring to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Trump added: "California is always saying, 'We want more people.' We can give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply. Let's see if they're so happy."

Since 1989, San Francisco has had policies aimed at limiting municipal cooperation with federal immigration authorities in certain cases, and California in 2017 adopted a "sanctuary state" law that implemented similar restrictions.

Trump's comments capped a frenzied two-week period during which the president threatened to close the U.S. border with Mexico only to pull back amid warnings such a move would deeply harm the economy. He then embarked on an overhaul of the leadership of the Department of Homeland Security that included the removal of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and a promise to staff the agency with people who would take a "tougher" approach on immigration.

The president's embrace of the sanctuary cities policy is another sign of his mounting frustration over his inability to stem the flow of migrants at the border after making a promise to crack down on illegal immigration the central theme of his 2016 campaign.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that the administration had been eyeing districts of political adversaries, including that of Pelosi, to release detainees. The disclosure of the plan - which was explicitly rejected in November and February by Homeland Security officials who feared it would create additional burdens for agents and potentially run afoul of legal provisions - drew widespread recriminations.

A White House official said Thursday that the proposal "was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion."

But on Friday, White House aides, according to people familiar with the discussions, began a new, preliminary review of whether there could be a way to move detainees to sanctuary cities should Trump decide to actually go through with the plan. A DHS official said the agency had not been instructed to move forward.

One senior aide described Trump's position as an effort to exploit the political "upside" of the controversy and draw a sharp contrast with Democrats on border enforcement. Trump's eagerness to do so reflected his confidence that coaxing his rivals into a deeper fight over immigration will help him in his 2020 reelection campaign.

Several aides said that there was a desire among some West Wing officials to move away from immigration after a week in which the president fired several senior DHS leaders in a sign of growing alarm over the spiking border crossings.

But Trump "wants to talk about it and will always take whatever position he thinks makes him look strongest," said a senior administration official, who like other aides spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Administration officials said that even Stephen Miller, the president's hawkish immigration aide, was concerned Thursday about the plan getting out and had tried to downplay it in the building. Communications officials, including press secretary Sarah Sanders and her deputy Hogan Gidley, sought to convince reporters that it was not under consideration anymore to keep the story from picking up traction.

But after seeing media coverage of the plan Friday morning, the president decided it was a good idea and he tweeted out his support, according to aides.

One person outside the White House who frequently talks with the president said that while Miller is widely viewed as the most forceful advocate for hard-line border policies that have, in numerous instances, been halted by federal courts, it is Trump who is most willing to "push the limits."

During a trip to the border town of Calexico, Calif., last week, Trump reportedly told then-Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan he should close the border, despite the president having said earlier in the week he would keep it open, according to CNN and the New York Times. He then told McAleenan, who is now the acting Homeland Security secretary, that he would pardon him if he ran into any legal problems resulting from the closure, although it was unclear how serious he was, according to the reports.

"At no time has the President indicated, asked, directed or pressured the Acting Secretary to do anything illegal," a DHS spokesman said in response to a question about the conversation between Trump and McAleenan. "Nor would the Acting Secretary take actions that are not in accordance with our responsibility to enforce the law."

A senior administration official said Trump has periodically mused about closing the border, even after saying he wouldn't, but added that they don't think he is seriously considering the move. "He's just frustrated as hell," the official said.

In his remarks at the White House on Friday, Trump vowed to send more military troops to the border, after having dispatched several thousand to support Border Patrol operations last fall ahead of the midterm election. Troops are not allowed under U.S. law to make arrests inside the United States, and they were confined to a support role, including such duties as erecting barbed wire.

"There are a lot of people with criminal records trying to get through," Trump said of the migrants, even though a majority are families with children.

DHS said 103,000 migrants, including nearly 60,000 family members, were taken into custody in March at the southern border with Mexico, a sharp increase from the total of 58,000 migrants detained in January.

House Democrats have begun internal discussions about launching an investigation into Miller's role in the White House's immigration policies, including potentially calling him to testify on Capitol Hill. Rep. Kathleen Rice (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said Miller needs to "make his case for these terrible policies to the American people instead of being this shadow puppeteer."

"If he's going to continue advocating for these policies and personnel change then he needs to come before the American people and explain himself," Rice said.

She added that the committee's leadership might soon request emails and documents from the White House and federal agencies that could shed light on Miller's role. Though his name was not on messages sent from the White House to pressure DHS to release immigrants into sanctuary cities, some agency officials said they believed he was among those who had initiated the request.

"Using human beings - including children - for perceived political gain, is reprehensible," Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), who is campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, wrote on Twitter.

"It is just grotesquely corrupt," Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said in an interview Friday. "Put aside the cruelty and inhumanity of using asylum seekers as pawns to retaliate against political foes. It is a profound betrayal of American values."

Blumenthal accused Trump of "weaponizing innocent families who are struggling to survive."

The White House proposal had been opposed by federal immigration enforcement officials who viewed it as unworkable, having no legal justification and likely to create strain on an agency already dealing with a crisis.

DHS generally releases immigrants in two ways: directly from one of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's immigration jails or, more recently, from Customs and Border Protection after they are apprehended and pass an initial security check.

ICE is required to release immigrants, including some with serious criminal records, if they cannot deport them. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that immigrants cannot be jailed indefinitely after they have a final deportation order and must be released after six months if their native country will not take them back.

Sometimes ICE officers or immigration judges release immigrants on bond. Under current practice, once detainees are released, they are generally free to settle wherever they choose, and they are required to inform the government of their address.

Most of the roughly 50,000 immigrants in federal custody have been apprehended at the southern border.

On Friday, San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said the president was engaged in "a politically motivated stunt."

"The fact that such a proposal is being peddled by the leader of the free world is an all-time low for American discourse," he said. "And it's the clearest sign yet that the president fully intends to chart a path to reelection on the back of racist rhetoric and policies intended to divide us."

- - -

The Washington Post's Seung Min Kim, Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti contributed to this report.
Reversing its earlier decision as well as a lower court ruling, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday decided the name of the state's lethal injection supplier can remain secret.

The ruling comes after years of legal sparring over whether the prison system should be forced to release the name of the pharmacy that provided sodium pentobarbital for executions back in 2014, when the lawsuit began.

"We conclude," the high court wrote, "based on the evidence in the record, that disclosing the source's identity would create a substantial threat of physical harm to the source's employees and others, and therefore need not be disclosed."

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice issued a statement saying they agreed with the decision, and Attorney General Ken Paxton heralded it as a win for the death penalty.

"The voters of Texas have expressed their judgment that the death penalty is necessary," he said in a statement, "and this decision preserves Texas' ability to carry out executions mandated by state law."

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, saw the ruling differently.

"Its factual conclusions are complete and utter nonsense," he said. "There is no evidence that anyone opposed to pharmaceutical involvement in producing execution drugs has made any credible threat against any individual. This opinion is an outcome looking for a justification and it has invented non-existent facts in order to find it."

The legal sparring started when the prison system refused to name its drug supplier in response to a public records request from attorney Maurie Levin and two other death penalty lawyers. The attorney general sided with prison officials in withholding the information, so Levin and her colleagues filed suit.

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Citing comments on the website of a previous lethal injection drug supplier in the Woodlands, a blog post - directed at a pharmacist - depicting an exploding head, and a professor's email to a pharmacy in Oklahoma suggesting that they beef up security, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice argued that releasing the supplier's name could cause "substantial threat of physical harm," according to court filings.

The trial court sided with the death row lawyers, and in 2017 an Austin-based court of appeals court did as well, deciding that isolated threats alone amounted to little more than speculation regarding the possible risk of harm. Afterward, the state appealed the case up to the Texas Supreme Court. In June, that court let the lower court's decision stand.

But days later, the state filed a motion for a rehearing, arguing that the suit was an attack on the death penalty that would have "potentially devastating consequences" for public safety.

The supplying pharmacy anonymously chimed in with an affidavit saying they'd no longer do business with the prison system if the company's identity were disclosed. The state went on to argue that there could be "grave consequences" for the pharmacy, which is a "soft target" in an "urban area, whose only defense is its anonymity."

Afterward, the high court reconsidered and set the matter for oral arguments in January. During the hearing, the court grappled with the likelihood of an attack on a pharmacy, should the name of the supplier be released.

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Arguing for the state, attorney Ari Cuenin called it "intuitive" that some might want to harm the entities responsible for providing the state's lethal drugs, but he conceded that it would be difficult to make claims about the likelihood of a hypothetical future attack. But, he said, the threat of such danger, along with the possibility of protesters, has been enough to dissuade companies in the past from continuing to sell drugs.

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The hearing came weeks after BuzzFeed News reported the name of an alleged lethal injection supplier in Houston, sparking repeated peaceful protests outside the small, family-owned gift shop and pharmacy.

In the Friday ruling, the high court drew parallels to another freedom of information case, one involving a newspaper's request for information regarding Texas Department of Public Safety expense vouchers relatings to then-Gov. Rick Perry's security detail. Unlike in that case, though - where the target of the threats was a known elected official already in the spotlight - in this case the identity of the entity that could receive threats is not publicly known and the threats are speculative.

"There is no evidence of a history of specific threats to that particular pharmacist or pharmacy because the source's identity has been kept confidential," the court wrote. "Thus, the question before us in this case is whether the mere fact that the public knows that the Department is receiving lethal injection drugs from some source, whoever it might be, is enough to conclude that a substantial threat of physical harm will come to bear on the source of the drugs if the identifying information is made public."

The court of appeals ruling said that "substantial" referred to the likelihood of harm, but the Texas Supreme Court decided that it referred to the "degree of potential threat of harm itself." The court also pointed to the legislature's later policy decision - a 2015 law banning the release of lethal injection supplier names - as "valuable" in informing the ruling.

The ruling also relied heavily on the three pieces of evidence the prison system trotted out earlier in the case - the blog post, the website comments, and particularly the email - as well as expert testimony from law enforcement. The court dismissed the department's references to protests after the disclosure of the Woodlands pharmacy's identity, pointing out that the demonstration never escalated to violence. But still, the other information presented did enough to establish the possibility of risk that the court sided with the prison system.

"This kind of overblown response to one harmless person's over-the-top email just shows how much courts have been willing to contort the law and distort reality in an effort to to facilitate executions that may or may not be properly conducted," Dunham said. "This is an alternate reality interpretation of the facts."

The death penalty attorneys involved in the case did not immediately offer comment on the decision.

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A 17-year-old boy has been charged with sexual assault of a child, accused of molesting a 2-year-old girl in her Houston home.

Mario Luis Guarchaj is charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child under 6 and is being held on a $100,000 bond.

Prosecutors at Guarchaj's probable cause hearing late Wednesday described gruesome details that led to his arrest.

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Police were called out to the child's home Tuesday night. The 2-year-old's mother had told police Guarchaj took the child into a bedroom while she was in the bathroom with maintenance men, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Guarchaj assaulted the girl, who is a relative, in a bedroom closet.

The mother later walked into a bedroom when she saw Guarchaj and the little girl on the same bed with one of the child's diaper straps hanging off, prosecutors said.

Guarchaj told the mother that she child had soiled herself, and insisted he had taken her to the bed to clean her. The mother took the child and saw she had not soiled herself, but was bleeding.

Throughout the probable cause hearing, Guarchaj's head starred down.

Guarchaj, a Guatemalan native, has been in the United States for a year and a half, according to his public defender. Recently, he was working as a butcher in Sugar Land.

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Border patrol agents in Texas discovered bundles of marijuana next to a baby strapped in a car seat near the Rio Grande, according to a news release from the agency.

After receiving a report of a Ford Escape filled with marijuana on Friday morning, Brownsville agents began following the suspected vehicle, according to the release.
The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks!

Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics.

The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc.

The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics.

The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates.

Access to college recruiters and advisors  its harder to line up higher education.

Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family.

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Predicting heat waves? Look half a world away

When heavy rain falls over the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean, it is a good indicator that temperatures in central California will reach 100F in four to 16 days, according to a collaborative research team from the University of California, Davis, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Climate Center in Busan, South Korea.

The results were published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences on April 12.

FROM PREDICTION TO PROTECTION

Heat waves are common in the Central California Valley, a 50-mile-wide oval of land that runs 450 miles from just north of Los Angeles up to Redding. The valley is home to half of the nation's tree fruit and nut crops, as well as extensive dairy production, and heat waves can wreak havoc on agricultural production. The dairy industry had a heat wave-induced economic loss of about $1 billion in 2006, for instance. The ability to predict heat waves and understand what causes them could inform protective measures against damage.

"We want to know more about how extreme events are created," said Richard Grotjahn, corresponding author on the paper and professor in the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources. "We know that such patterns in winter are sometimes linked with areas of the tropics where thunderstorms are enhanced. We wondered if there might be similar links during summer for those heat waves."

The scientists analyzed the heat wave data from June through September from 1979 to 2010. The data were collected by 15 National Climatic Data Centers stations located throughout the Valley. From these data, the researchers identified 24 heat waves. They compared these instances to the phases of a large, traveling atmospheric circulation pattern called the Madden-Julian Oscillation, or MJO.

The MJO manifests as heavy rain that migrates across the tropical Indian and then Pacific Oceans, and researchers have shown that it influences winter weather patterns.

TROPICAL RAINFALL AND CALIFORNIA

"It's well known that tropical rainfall, such as the MJO, has effects beyond the tropics," said Yun-Young Lee of the APEC Climate Center in Busan, South Korea, the paper's first author. "So a question comes to mind: Is hot weather in the Central California Valley partly attributable to tropical rainfall?"

Lee and Grotjahn found that, yes, enhanced rainfall in the tropics preceded each heat wave in specific and relatively predictable patterns. They also found that hot weather in the valley is most common after more intense MJO activity in the eastern Pacific Ocean, and next most common after strong MJO activity in the Indian Ocean.

"The more we know about such associations to large-scale weather patterns and remote links, the better we can assess climate model simulations and therefore better assess simulations of future climate scenarios," Grotjahn said.

###

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Department of Energy Office of Science, the United States Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the APEC Climate Center in the Republic of Korea.

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
(CNN)  Britain's Duke and Duchess of Sussex will keep details surrounding the arrival of their first child private, in a break with royal tradition of the past 40 years.

"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very grateful for the goodwill they have received from people throughout the United Kingdom and around the world as they prepare to welcome their baby," Buckingham Palace announced in a statement Thursday.

"Their Royal Highnesses have taken a personal decision to keep the plans around the arrival of their baby private. The Duke and Duchess look forward to sharing the exciting news with everyone once they have had an opportunity to celebrate privately as a new family."

Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal expert, told CNN that the announcement is a conscious decision by the couple to "do things their own way" and to savor this "important moment in their lives."

He acknowledged the huge global interest surrounding the birth of baby Sussex as the first child of American-born Meghan, and noted that it will "equal the birth of Prince George."

"It will also be the first biracial royal baby, which will mean a great deal to the Commonwealth, Britain and the wider world," he said.

The announcement means that Meghan will likely not appear for a photo call outside the Lindo Wing -- the private maternity ward at St. Mary's hospital in west London -- shortly after the delivery of her child, Fitzwilliams said.

She will consequently not follow in the footsteps of Princess Diana and the Duchess of Cambridge, who both stepped into the glare of the world's media with their newborns in arm only hours after giving birth.

Fitzwilliams said that Meghan is free to make this decision as her child will be seventh in line to the British throne, which "lifts the pressure." He noted that Kate did not enjoy the same freedom following the birth of Prince George, as he is directly in line to the throne and expected to one day be king.

Katie Nicholl, a royal expert and author of "Harry and Meghan: Life, Loss, and Love," told CNN that an official photo of the newborn is nevertheless expected to be released, but will likely be delayed until at least a day following the birth. The timing will also depend on "when the Duchess is ready to face the cameras and of course on how the birth goes."

Fitwilliams added that Meghan does not want to be "picked over" by the press in photos taken only hours after giving birth or endure the grooming required beforehand. "Although this may surprise some, as Meghan is so assured and so poised. She has such a flair for the theatrical," he said.

Meghan may eschew hospitals altogether and opt for a home birth at the newly renovated Frogmore Cottage in Windsor, provided that she does not experience any medical complications.

"I was told last year that Meghan favored a home birth, but she will take advice of her medical team once she goes into labor. If she isn't able to have her baby at home for whatever reason, it will likely be in a hospital in Windsor. She is hoping for a natural birth in any case," Nicholl said.

Royal birth traditions

While both Princess Diana and Kate opted for hospital births, it was previously tradition for heirs to the throne to be born in royal residences. "In some ways, Meghan is paying tribute to a bygone era when royal births were completely private," Nicholl said.

All four of the Queen's children were born at home; Princes Charles, Andrew and Edward at Buckingham Palace, and Princess Anne at Clarence House.

The Queen herself was delivered via Caesarean section in 1926 at her grandfather's home at 17 Bruton Street, Mayfair, and Prince Philip was born at Mon Repos villa on the Greek island of Corfu in 1921.

Buckingham Palace confirmed in October that Harry and Meghan were expecting their first child. At the time, they were in Australia on their first overseas tour as a married couple. The royal pair did not announce an exact due date and instead confirmed the baby will be born "in the spring of 2019."

With Meghan in the final stages of her pregnancy, speculation over the baby's gender and name has reached fever pitch.

Bookmakers have Diana (Harry's mother's name) and Victoria (Harry's great, great, great grandmother) as their hot picks for a girl, while for a boy, the popular royal names Arthur and Edward, as well as Philip (a nod to Harry's grandfather), top the lists.

Baby Sussex will become the seventh in line to the British throne, behind grandfather Prince Charles, uncle Prince William and his three children and Prince Harry.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Harry and Meghan will keep royal baby birth private."
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With Easter coming up, Clean Coasts and Irish Water are reminding the people of Longford not to pour gravy or fats oils and greases (FOGs) from the Easter roast down the sink.

The call comes as Irish Water reveals that almost 1,500 sewer blockages have been cleared across the country already this year. Thats 125 blockages every single week.

Also read: Longford is only county where no same-sex marriage was celebrated last year

FOG, as well as gravy, may seem like liquid when poured but once they reach the pipes they cool and can cause blockages in the sewer pipes in homes, businesses, the public sewer network, wastewater treatment plants and ultimately damage the environment.

"When FOGs combine with wipes and other sanitary items that shouldnt be flushed down the toilet, fatbergs can form. There have been almost 1,500 sewer blockages in the public sewer network so far this year caused by FOGs being poured down the sink and wipes and other inappropriate items being flushed down the toilet," Irish Water said.

Also read: Longford driver issued FCPN for illegal use of disabled parking bay

A recent survey revealed that 85% of people living in Ireland dispose of food items down the kitchen sink. The survey revealed that the kitchen sink is often treated as a bin for the disposal of melted fats, oils and greases, gravy and other sauces, milk, leftover food, smoothies, ground coffee, mayonnaise, salad dressing, ice-cream and scrapings from plates. The survey was conducted by Behaviour and Attitudes for the Think Before You Pour Campaign and was based on a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults who were interviewed at the beginning of December 2018.

In order to help tackle this problem, Irish Water is offering free GunkPots to the first 500 people who register on www.water.ie/thinkbeforeyoupour. A GunkPot is a reusable silicone container used to collect cooled cooking fats, oils and grease from roasting trays, pans and plates. Once hardened, the contents can be thrown into the correct bin and the GunkPot wiped clean, ready for reuse. A container such as an empty egg carton or yogurt pot can also be used to help prevent pipe blockages and protect the marine environment.

Also read: It's time we dealt with feuding local thugs says local representative following violent incidents in Longford town

Speaking about the campaign Donal Heaney, Wastewater Engineer, Irish Water said, We have cleared almost 1,500 sewer blockages already this year caused by FOGs being poured down the kitchen sink combined with inappropriate items such as baby wipes being flushed down the toilet."

"This demonstrates the size and scale of the challenge we face to keep the sewer network blockage free. Our message is simple. This Easter we want to remind the public not to use their kitchen sink as a bin. Think before you pour and use a GunkPot or a similar container to collect FOGs and help to prevent pipe blockages and protect the marine environment.

Speaking about the campaign, Michael John OMahony, Director, An Taisce Environmental Education Unit said: The prevention of blockages in our wastewater systems by FOGS is something that everybody can engage in. Think Before You Pour allows everyone to undertake small actions and changes that when combined can make huge impact on the operation of our waste water systems. I would encourage and remind everyone to think before you pour.
Disney has finally taken the wraps off its streaming service, Disney+. The service will launch on November 12, 2019 in the U.S. and follow overseas at a later date. Priced at $6.99 per month or $69.99 per year (a 20 percent discount), it appears to offer exceptional breath of content and value, which hast earned it high praise from both investors and cord-cutting fans online.

Everyone from exhausted parents to Star Wars fanatics is chomping at the bit to sign up, and Apple would do well to take notice as it fleshes out its own Apple TV+ service.

The Disney+ Offering

What does your $7 a month buy you with Disney+? In the first year, the service will offer over 500 movies, including 100 or more recent titles. Youll also have access to 7,500 television episodes, including lots of stuff from the recent Fox acquisition, such as every episode of The Simpsons and Malcom in the Middle.

Disney+ is going to have tons of content, new and old, for $7 a month.

But Disney+ isnt only about the back-catalog. Disneys lineup of original content made exclusively for the service looks stronger than expected. Marvels bringing its movie stars to the small screen with The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan), WandaVision (Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany), and Loki (Tom Hiddleston). The Star Wars stuff is coming in hot, with The Mandalorian helmed by Jon Favreau, and plans for a series with Diego Luna reprising his role as Cassian Andor from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

All told, Disney will stream 25 shows and series across its many brands in the first year, and double that by year 5. That will be bolstered by more than 10 original movies, including a live-action Lady and the Tramp.

Star Wars originals like The Mandalorian will bring fans flocking to Disney+.

Disney promises that content will be downloadable for offline viewing (critical for handing your iPad to the kids in the back seat of the car or on a plane), and quality will scale up to 4K with HDR where available.

Its a very extensive offering at a price below even the cheapest Netflix plan, and less than half the price of the plan that gives you 4K HDR quality ($15.99 per month).

Apple, take note

We know Apple TV+ is launching this fall, and we know Apples working on over 30 original shows and movies. Weve only gotten to see a very short sizzle reel of a handful of them. Certainly, a good percentage of these shows will not all be available at the launch of Apple TV+.

Apple cant compete with this wealth of big-brand content for $6.99 a month, and shouldnt try to.

But we still dont know some important details about the Apple TV+ service, such as the exact launch date or the price. As Apple firms up its plans, it would be wise to take note of the gauntlet Disney has thrown down with Disney+.

Disneys offering appears to have the same scope of original new content as Apples, only aligned around hit Disney-owned properties like Star Wars, Marvel comics, and Pixar, plus the ton of popular Fox stuff the company just acquired. Apples original content might be of the same or even superior quality, but Disneys mega-brands hold enormous value to consumers. Frankly, nobody remembers Amazing Stories.

And Apples going to have absolutely no back-catalog of existing content, as far as we know. It will not carry mega blockbuster movies that were recently in theaters, while Disney will stream Avengers: Endgame and Frozen 2 into your living room. Apple wont have thousands of hours of TV classics from Fox, ABC, and The Disney Channel.

If Apple thought it could charge $9.99 a month (as it does for News+ and Apple Music), that door has now been officially closed. Next to Disneys offering, it would just make Apple look incredibly greedy and out of touch with consumers.

Even matching Disneys $6.99 price seems like a tough sell at this point. Apple TV+ needs to come in at $4.99 a month or lessbut Apple would be wise to go further.

Bundles and discounts

Disney+ already looks like a great deal at $6.99, but the company has more up its sleeve. The $69.99 yearly subscription knocks almost 20% off the price, effectively making it $5.83 per month. The company also mentioned the potential to bundle Disney+ with Hulu (of which it owns 60 percent) and ESPN+. That would be very popular in the U.S., though those services arent available overseas.

Apple would be wise to follow suit and offer yearly subscription discounts for Apple TV+, just as it does with Apple Music. And bundling is a lever Apple could pull even more effectively than Disney. If Apple really wants to win, it should bundle Apple Music and Apple TV+ together for the same $9.99 price. (Spotify recently began offering Hulu included in its $9.99 price.) Apple can do so much more, though. With iCloud storage plans, News+, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, and Apple Music, Apple has a lot to work with. Apple shouldnt wait for a competitor to out-bundle them, it should take the lead.

The announcement of Disney+ is something of a litmus test for Apple. Apple isnt one to simply follow whatever its competitors do, but it shouldnt simply ignore them, either. The company has come under fire recently for price hikes on its products; as a premium brand, Apple will never be the low-cost leader, but the the most valuable company in the world is starting to earn a reputation for being greedy and overpriced. The Disney+ service is a barometer by which we can judge not just the Apple TV+ service, but Apples entire attitude toward price and value for its customers.
Overview of relevant legislation and statistics

Since September 1994, China has been taking customs actions against infringement of IP rights. In 1995, China issued the Regulations on Customs Protection of Intellectual Property Rights (hereinafter referred to as the regulations), and further amended the regulations in the years 2003, 2010 and 2018. In the meantime, the General Administration of Customs (GAC) issued the Measures for Implementation of the Regulation (hereinafter referred to as the measures) in 2004, which was also amended in 2010 and 2018.

Statistics reveal that, until February 20 2019, there were 45,928 valid IP rights recorded in total. Among them 40,517 were trademark rights, accounting for 88% of the overall recorded valid IP rights. The number of recorded patent rights and copyrights is 2,805 and 2,606 respectively, both accounting for 6% of the valid recorded rights.

Data released by the GAC in April 2018 shows that China Customs seized over 40.94 million articles suspected of IP infringement, 99.5% of which were based on ex-officio actions. Only 0.5% of seizures were initiated on the request of the IP right holder. The number of trademark rights was 5,401, and 40,319,315 detained products are suspected of infringing upon trademark rights, accounting for 98.48% of all the seizures.

The statistics above reflect three trends: 1) the number of trademark right recordings is much higher than for copyrights and patent rights. The main reason might be that trademark infringement is much more easily detected from the appearance of goods or packages; 2) more than 99% of actions are initiated ex-officio; 3) over 98% of seizures are related to trademark infringement which, to some extent, can explain the high number of trademark right recordings.

Customs protection procedures

1. IP right recordation

The precondition for active protection from customs is recording an IP right with customs. In China, IP rights protected in China as trademark rights (except for service trademarks), patent rights, and copyrights and the related rights thereof can be recorded with customs. Valid IP right recordation information will be shared between all local customs in China.

The applicant for the IP right recordation must be the IP right holder. A licensee is not allowed to record the licensor's IP right. For a company registered in China, it can conduct the recordation both by itself or through its attorney. A foreign company must apply for the recordation through its branch office in China or a Chinese attorney.

The GAC will decide whether to approve the recordation within 30 working days from the date of accepting all the filing documents for recordation. The recordation becomes effective from the approval date and will be valid for 10 years. However, if the valid term of the recorded IP right is less than 10 years, the recordation term will be the same as that of the IP right. The recordation can be renewed within six months before the expiration date of the recordation upon the request of the right holder. Each renewed term is 10 years. To ensure effective customs protection, right holders need to pay attention to the renewal of both the IP right and the recordation.

2. Detaining the suspected infringing goods and disposal

Depending on the different entities initiating the procedure, customs IP right protection can be divided into two types. One is ex-officio customs action or active protection. The other is passive protection where the IP right holder applies for detainment of the infringing products once finding any infringing products have been imported or exported.

1) Ex-officio customs actions (active protection)

For active protection, customs will suspend the goods during their routine check, if they find the goods suspected of infringing on recorded IP rights. Customs will then notify the IP right holder or its agent of the suspected infringement. If the right holder confirms the infringement, files an application to detain the goods, and provides a deposit as a guarantee, customs will formally detain the goods and make a final decision after further investigation.

If infringement is established, customs will normally make a decision to confiscate the infringing products and impose a penalty on the consignor/consignee. If customs finds no infringement, the detained goods will be released. If customs cannot decide whether infringement can be established, it will notify the right holder in writing. The right holder can then request the court to take measures to stop infringement and preserve the property. Customs should provide assistance if it receives a notice from the court. Customs will release the detained goods if it does not receive any court notice within 50 working days from the date of detaining the goods.

Before customs makes a decision, the right holder can withdraw its request. Then, customs will release the goods.

Disposal of infringing goods

There are several ways to deal with confiscated goods. Firstly, donating the infringing goods to relevant institutions, if they can be used for public welfare purposes. Secondly, the right holder may purchase the infringing goods. Thirdly, if the above is not applicable and the infringement features can be removed, with the right holder's consent, the infringing goods can be auctioned without the infringing features. The gains should go to the state treasury. If the above options do not work, the infringing products should be destroyed.

2) Customs actions pursuant to application (passive protection)

If the IP right holder discovers that the goods to be imported/exported are suspected of infringing upon its IP right, it may apply for detainment of the goods by customs.

In this situation, IP right holders should provide solid evidence to prove the infringement and deposit a guarantee equivalent to the value of the goods. Where the IP right involved has not been recorded in customs systems, documents to prove its identity and the ownership of the IP right should be provided. The right holder should provide a guarantee equivalent to the value of the goods for the possible losses caused by improper application, for the fee for storage and disposal of the goods.

The right holder may, within 20 working days from the date of customs detaining the suspected infringing goods, request the court to stop the infringement or property preservation. If receiving the court notice within 20 working days after detaining the goods, customs must provide assistance. Otherwise, customs must release the detained goods.

Counter-guarantee for release in cases involving patents

In a customs action involving patent rights, the consignor/consignee can request release of the detained goods by submitting an application and depositing a counter-guarantee. This is only applicable to actions involving patent rights.

3) Comparison between active protection and passive protection

To summarise, the main differences between active protection and passive protection are as follows:

Prior recordation  the prerequisite for active protection is that the IP right has been recorded with the GAC. However, recordation is not required for passive protection. If the IP right has been recorded, the process will be relatively simple for passive protection in that the applicant does not need to submit relevant IP right certificates when it requests customs to detain the suspected goods.

Guarantee  in active protection, the maximum amount of the guarantee shall not exceed RMB100,000. In passive action, the right holder must submit a guarantee equivalent to the value of the detained goods.

Substantial investigation  in active protection, customs will conduct substantive investigation and decide infringement or not. In passive protection, customs will only make decisions according to the application, without substantive investigation. The right holder needs to go through the judicial way to decide if infringement is established. Therefore active protection might save cost and make full use of administrative resources.

Time limit for filing a lawsuit  in active action, the right holder must file a lawsuit within 50 working days after customs formally detains the goods; in passive action, the IP right holder must file a lawsuit within 20 working days after receiving the notification of detaining the goods.

From the above, we can conclude that active protection is more beneficial for the IP right holder in terms of time and cost.

3. The characteristics of IP customs protection and connections with other legal means

Compared with civil litigation, customs protection of IP rights has the following characteristics:

Time efficient  in active protection, the right holder should submit the application for detaining of the goods to customs and provide the guarantee within three days after receiving a notice from customs. It is about two months for customs to make a final decision counted from the date of application for detaining goods.

Relatively low cost  now there is no official fee for recording IP rights with customs. In active protection, rights holders do not need to prepare too much evidence. The rights holders only need to pay a guarantee, storage fees and possible destruction costs if the infringing goods are eventually destroyed. Therefore, the attorney fee is relatively lower in active protection in comparison with the fee in civil lawsuits.

Customs help right holders to discover infringements  in active protection, customs can help right holders discover infringement when conducting routine checks, collect and fix evidence and provide clues and evidential support for the right holders to take further action. If the right holder files an infringement lawsuit after requesting the detainment of the goods, it may ask the court for property preservation against the detained goods.

Warning the infringers  since IP right recordation is publicly available, the exporters/importers may stop infringement to avoid troubles if they find the IP right they use has been recorded. Besides, in customs actions, if infringement is established finally, customs will confiscate the infringing products and impose a fine on the infringers and the decision will be made public. Thus this recordation can have warning and deterrent effects on those who conduct IP right infringement.

Therefore, IP right customs protection is very beneficial to combat cross-border IP right infringement.

New measures

Internet infringement governance

Based on the traditional investigation mechanism with the postal department, some customs departments cooperate with ecommerce platforms, using ecommerce platform big data to trace the source of infringing postal parcels, locating the source of the platform for sales, jointly launching Internet infringement governance, and strengthening the fight against cross-border ecommerce counterfeits. For example, after signing a memorandum of cooperation with Alibaba, Hangzhou Customs notified Alibaba Group of five batches of IP right infringement, involving 1,737 postal parcels. Alibaba Group verified and closed 35 infringing shops, while those involving criminal offences were transferred for criminal procedure.

Open information and joint punishment

Customs decisions are available to the public, which is convenient for IP right holders and may have a warning effect on infringers. The GAC also takes measures to execute joint punishment with other departments. For example, on November 21 2018, 38 departments including the National Development and Reform Commission, the People's Bank of China, the State Intellectual Property Office, and the General Administration of Customs etc. jointly issued the Cooperation Memorandum on Joint Punishment against Entities of Bad Faith in the Field of Intellectual Property (Patents). The target of the joint punishment is the entity conducting serious bad faith behaviour in the field of intellectual property (patents). When handling customs-related matters connected to entities exhibiting bad faith behaviour in the IP field (patents), customs must strictly supervise their import and export goods and strengthen inspection, supervision and verification.

With the enforcement of the new measures, we are confident that customs IP protection will be further strengthened.

Shirley FU Shirley Fu started her career in Sanyou IP in the patent management department. In 2005, after earning her masters degree in Australia, she joined the trademark team in Sanyou IP and started to focus on trademark work such as trademark registration, prosecution, review of refusals, oppositions, cancellations, invalidations and searching. Now, as an attorney, she focuses on litigious matters in the trademark and copyright fields.

Yakai Shi Yakai Shi has extensive experience in trademark infringement and administrative litigation, anti-counterfeiting actions, trademark portfolio management, copyright disputes, and other non-litigious work due to his many years of practice in the field of intellectual property. He has represented clients from China, Japan, Korea, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, as well as many other countries.

The material on this site is for law firms, companies and other IP specialists. It is for information only. Please read our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Notice before using the site. All material subject to strictly enforced copyright laws.  2021 Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC. For help please see our FAQs.

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A Brighton man known as the Incognito Bandit after being linked to 16 armed robberies was sentenced on Friday to under three years in prison for one armed robbery.

Albert Taderera, 36, was sentenced on Friday to 34 months in prison and three years of supervision, according to a news release from the U.S. District Attorneys Office in Boston. He also was ordered to pay restitution of $11,561.

Taderera, who evaded law enforcement for years, pleaded guilty in January to one armed robbery in Arlington in 2015, where he left with $11,000, according to court records. The charge typically carries a sentence of up to 25 years in federal prison.

Taderera got his nickname as police investigated 16 bank robberies in the Metro-West and Greater Boston areas in 2015, according to court records. He was arrested March 24, 2017, at the Dulles International Airport in Virginia just before boarding a flight to Johannesburg, South Africa.

Authorities spent years searching for the Incognito Bandit" after a series of bank robberies where the suspect demanded cash from the tellers and brandished a semi-automatic handgun before taking off. The FBI offered a reward for information leading to his arrest.

The robberies often happened in suburban areas where banks were surrounded by woods or foliage, authorities said. The suspect wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, dark pants, gloves, sunglasses and a face mask. He used dark-colored socks to cover his shoes. He was seen running into the woods or driving off in a black BMW.

Two years ago, Concord police saw a black BMW outside a local bank. The car matched the description. Officers noticed the cars registration had been revoked, and they towed it, according to court documents.

Authorities say Taderera called the tow company several days later to ask about his car. He was told the car was being held by police. The FBI learned the next day that he made plans to leave the country.

Taderera booked a flight to Dulles, then Ethiopia the morning of March 24, 2017, authorities said. He flew out of Boston and landed in Dulles, changing his flight so he could land in Johannesburg but was arrested before the flight.
Victor Penas brother said the 23-year-old woman his brother his accused of kidnapping and raping while he held her in his Charlestown apartment for three days is a pill head who is playing the victim.

Jose Pena, 39, lashed out at reporters following a dangerousness hearing for his younger brother in Suffolk Superior court on Thursday. He called the gathered press liars who focus on negative details.

She is a pill head, Pena said as he waited for an elevator.

Victor Pena, 38, was held without bail ahead of his trial on a kidnapping charge and 10 aggravated rape charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

William Barabino is representing Pena, who has been in custody since his Jan. 22 arrest. On Jan. 19 a 23-year-old woman went missing after a night at Hennessys bar on Union Street in Downtown Boston. Her disappearance sparked a massive citywide search

Boston police quickly zeroed in on Pena, who has a history of abusing and harassing women, and eventually found the woman locked in his Charlestown apartment.

The victim was highly intoxicated on the night of her disappearance. She and another man were escorted out of Hennessys bar that night. That man later left with friends, leaving the woman walking alone in the snow, prosecutors said.

From a distance it might have looked like they were walking arm and arm," Assistant Suffolk District Attorney Ian Polumbaum said in court in March. But up close on video that was discovered, it was obvious she was out of it and unable to walk on her own.

Boston Police Detective Mary Rooney said for three days Pena held the woman in his apartment and took more than 300 photos of her. Many of the photos were sexually explicit, and in some the woman appeared to be unconscious, prosecutors said Thursday.

Pena told the woman he was her savior and that he wanted to start a family with her, Polumbaum said. He fed her canned pineapple and alcohol and stole her cell phone, police said.

A ping from the 23-year-old womans cell phone led police to Penas apartment door in a Charlestown housing project.

Inside the apartment, detectives saw Pena standing in the hallway. The woman was standing next to Pena, crying with a horrified look on her face, according to police.

Jose Pena has said the woman went willingly. He said she was blacked out when she left with his brother.

They make it seem like she was the perfect girl who can play victim, he said.

Asked to comment on Jose Penas assertion that the 23-year-old woman was on drugs Barabino said he had nothing to say.

I will not comment on issues right now. I dont have any comment, he said. You will hear evidence of certain things. Ill leave it like that.

Barabino said he is focused on trial, where he will show that the woman did not reasonably communicate her lack of consent to Pena.

We know that on the first day she was seen in public kissing him. We know she went with Mr. Pena with him to his apartment. We know she woke up naked with Mr. Pena the next day, Barabino said. Then you have the next two to three days. We know there was relations. We know during those relations he said I love you repeatedly and we know she had said I love you repeatedly back.

Pena is to return to court May 9.
Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid may miss the beginning of the teams first round series against the Brooklyn Nets with soreness in his left knee. Its a continuation of the tendinitis that has bothered him throughout the year, and its the same knee which has historically been problematic for him.

The first hint of him possibly missing playoff time came yesterday from General Manager Elton Brand.

Sixers GM Elton Brand on Joel Embiid, who has been dealing with a knee ailment & will end up missing 15 games since the All-Star break for load management: "I'm optimistic he'll be ready for this weekend."



Reporter: Is there a chance that he won't be?



EB: "It's possible."  Michael Lee (@MrMichaelLee) April 10, 2019

And then today, Embiid himself said he might be in too much pain to play at the beginning of the Sixers playoff run.

Joel Embiid says he has been experiencing increasing pain in his left knee recently (which he says he started feeling when they got back from All-Star) & that whether or not he plays tomorrow will depend on how much pain he feels. #Sixers #NBAPlayoffs https://t.co/zIBZ0YV8lu  Serena Winters (@SerenaWinters) April 12, 2019

Whatever Ive been feeling the last couple days has been different. It still hasnt changed, everything was good on the scans and everything, but the pain level has just changed. It just got worse, Embiid told reporters in Philadelphia. I think everybody that knows me knows that I always want to be on the floor, and I always play through injuries and pain and everything, but if I cant go, that means its pretty painful.

There have been serious questions about Embiids participation in the All-Star game (he played 23 minutes). He missed the first eight games following the break with that knee soreness and 14 of the final 24 games of Philadelphias season.

Embiid has also played in seven back-to-backs this season, while playing four last year. This season he played 1822 minutes while only missing four games before the All-Star break. Last season, he logged 1381 minutes and missed 11 games prior to the break.

Whether the added workload had something to do with the knee issue hasnt been made clear by Philadelphias medical staff, but chronic tendinitis is the result of overuse and wear-and-tear on the body. Embiid is a giant at seven feet tall, and when a player of his size begins to deal with chronic knee pain, asking whether he has been overworked is a fair question.

The timing is also, obviously, bad for the Sixers, who face the Nets in the first round. Philadelphia has struggled containing explosive guards and DAngelo Russell has been one of the most potent this past season. Brooklyns defense has also been tremendous at limiting rim opportunities. Without Embiids strength in the post, the Nets can let Jarrett Allen do what he does best, protect the rim, and the rest can stay home on shooters. Essentially, Brooklyn would be able to borrow from the Boston Celtics strategy and sag way off Ben Simmons, dare him to shoot, and force everyone else into inefficient shots.

Embiid missing any extended time, or returning in a limited capacity, will make this series a popular upset pick. Even though Philadelphia has obviously better talent, missing Embiid makes this a tough matchup for Philadelphia.

The Sixers have put most of their eggs into this seasons basket. Theyve sapped their depth to make trades for Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris, both of whom are free agents. If the Sixers are perceived to have mismanaged Embiids minutes and knee soreness, and then lose one or both of those free agents, they could find themselves rebuilding their roster and starting over again.
BOSTON  A few years ago, Joanne Paul got divorced, lost her health insurance, became homeless and struggled to pay her medical bills.

She was accepted to MassHealth after a cumbersome process that took two appointments, long waits and an application that required her identification, birth certificate, social security card, tax form and proof of income.

A woman at the homeless shelter where she was staying asked why Paul was not receiving food stamps. Paul, who had not known she was eligible, went to apply, and had to provide many of the same documents she gave MassHealth.

I only wish I knew sooner that I was eligible, and the process could be done all at once at the same time, Paul said.

Advocates for poor people are renewing their push to require the state to develop a common application for state welfare programs.

A bill sponsored by Rep. Jay Livingstone, D-Boston, and Sen. Sal DiDomenico, D-Everett, S.678/H.1173, would require the state to develop a common application in which a person who is eligible could apply to both MassHealth and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, at the same time. The state would be required to start looking into whether it could develop a common application for other benefits, such as fuel assistance, housing subsidies and child care subsidies.

Advocates for the bill say it is a way to help close the so-called SNAP gap. The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute estimates that 741,000 people are on MassHealth and eligible for SNAP but are not receiving SNAP benefits. SNAP is paid for with federal money.

Massachusetts is one of the richest places in the world. We should not have people suffering from hunger insecurity, Livingstone said. For anyone who needs benefits, we should make it easier to get benefits as soon as possible.

Amanda Stewart, a pediatric emergency medicine doctor at Boston Childrens Hospital, said food insecurity is linked to a host of problems in children, from low birth weight to obesity to developmental delays. Kids who are hungry dont have the same chance to succeed in school as those who start the day with a full stomach, Stewart said at a Statehouse briefing on the issue.

Lawmakers have been wrestling with the issue for years. In 2016, the Senate Ways and Means Committee included a proposal in its version of the state budget to develop a common application for MassHealth and SNAP. But the provision was left out of the final budget.

In 2017, state officials launched an effort to help seniors who are eligible for food stamps enroll in the program.

Department of Transitional Assistance Commissioner Jeff McCue told The Republican at that time that developing a common application is incredibly challenging, since different programs have different standards for income, eligibility and household size.

According to the Executive Office of Health and Human Services, the office is currently working with a contractor to develop a plan to improve the administration of public benefit programs. The ultimate goal is to improve clients experience when applying for public benefits online and to create a platform where clients could apply for multiple programs, like MassHealth and SNAP, through a common platform.
Every weekday morning, Laura Lees alarm goes off at 4 a.m. She leaves her house in Hampden at 5 to meet a van pool in Ludlow. She and the other commuters drive to Boston, put in a full day of work, and meet the van to return home.

Lee gets home at 7 p.m. on a good day, leaving her only a couple of hours before its time to go to sleep so she can do it all again the next day.

At 60 years old, Lee said, Im too young to retire and way too old to be doing this.

The van pool is a symbol of the disparate economies in eastern and Western Massachusetts, and the lack of transportation between the two, said state Sen. Eric Lesser, D-Longmeadow.

This is a living, breathing manifestation of whats wrong with our economy in Massachusetts right now, said Lesser, who rode in the van pool on Wednesday to call attention to the plight of Western Massachusetts commuters.

Lesser is a staunch advocate for creating a passenger rail link between Boston and Springfield. The state Department of Transportation is studying the feasibility of the idea.

The group of van commuters  around six these days, down from nearly a dozen a year ago  meet each morning at 5:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a Ludlow McDonalds, off Exit 7 of the Massachusetts Turnpike. They get to Boston around two hours later, depending on traffic and weather.

The van leaves Boston at 4:30 p.m. and the crew arrives around 6:30 in Ludlow, where they pick up their cars and head home to Springfield, Chicopee or Hampden.

The group takes turns driving, and they split the cost of renting the van from Enterprise and parking in a Boston garage. They pay a little over $300 a month, which is less than the $363 a month they would pay if they drove to Worcester and took the commuter rail.

The commuters work in finance and for federal and state government. They have different reasons that keep them in Western Massachusetts even as their jobs are in Boston.

Lee, who works for the state, used to work in Springfield. But the Springfield office closed in 2016, and she was given a choice to relocate to Lawrence, Brockton or Boston.

Lee used to live in eastern Massachusetts and considered moving to the North Shore, but housing was too expensive. She likes the Hampden area.

Initially, she worked in Lawrence and stayed with a friend in Burlington from Sunday night through Friday. When the Lawrence office closed 13 months ago, she started commuting to Boston in the van.

Lee is considering taking a break from the van and again staying with her friend to avoid the constant sleep deprivation.

Although her children are grown and out of the house, the time lost with her husband, she said, is precious time you wont get back. Lee rarely sees her elderly mother because she does not want to drive to New York on the weekend.

Lee is looking for a job in Western Massachusetts, but cannot find anything comparable. She has worked for the state for 17 years and will get additional pension benefits if she stays.

None of us are young (in the van), and none of us can get jobs near home that are comparable, Lee said.

One woman Lesser interviewed on the trip said the commute has gotten worse in the 10 years she has been doing it. The van used to return to Ludlow 15 minutes earlier every day. Their experience fits in with statistics showing that traffic is worsening in the state.

The van illustrates the need for high-speed rail between Boston and Springfield, Lesser said. It also highlights the potential of another bill he has proposed, which would pay people up to $10,000 to move to Western Massachusetts and work remotely.

Lesser said it is a problem if the economy is so concentrated in Boston that people have to spend 20 hours a week in transit in order to work.

Thats terrible and completely preventable in 21st century America, he said.
BRIMFIELD -- A woman was seriously injured after being struck by a tree Thursday evening.

The woman was flown by helicopter to the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester at about 5:15 p.m. after the accident, Brimfield Fire Department officials said.

"(The) patient was flown to the hospital due to injuries and distance to the proper hospital," officials said.

Firefighters said they set up a landing zone, so they could rush the patient to the hospital.

The woman was clearing brush and trees on her property in the area of 65 Holland Road when a tree or log became dislodged and struck her, according to WesternMass News.
SOMERVILLE - U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat running for president in 2020, delivered donuts and coffee to picketing Stop & Shop workers in Somerville on Friday, and urged shoppers to take their business elsewhere.

Do not cross the picket line, Warren said. Understand people on the picket line are not just fighting for their families. Theyre fighting for all our families. Theyre fighting for basic fairness and equality in this country.

On Thursday, the unions representing 31,000 Stop & Shop workers across Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut voted to go on strike. Their contract expired in February, and they have been unable to reach a deal on a new one.

Warren shook hands with workers and encouraged them with a pro-union message.

This is a company that made $2 billion in profits, that then got a fancy tax break in Washington from the Republicans and now wants to squeeze our workers right here in Massachusetts, Warren told the workers. Well, were not going to put up with it.

Speaking to reporters, Warren reiterated the message that she has been campaigning on for years, that the wealthy are taking advantage of the working class. This is the problem all across this country is that those at the top think that they can just keep sucking out every bit of profit and leave nothing for the working people, the people who actually get out there and make it happen every day, Warren said.

What people are asking for here is theyre just asking for fair wages, theyre asking for health care benefits and just as shot at a decent retirement, she said.

Marc Perrone, the international president of United Food & Commercial Workers, said 243 Stop & Shop stores have shut down. Others, like the store in Somerville, are operating with limited hours and services.

Perrone said in an interview from the picket line that the biggest issue in negotiations is health insurance. Although the store offered a small wage increase, that would be more than outweighed by a proposed cut to health insurance benefits. When you look at the total package, it was going to be less money in their pockets, Perrone said.

Stop & Shop says employees health care premiums would still be below the national average and would increase by $2 to $4 a week. The wage package being offered is among the best UFCW retail contract in the country, according to the store. The company would continue to offer a defined benefit pension plan.

The exact contract being offered varies by union.

Kristen Johnson, a deli manager in Somerville and union shop steward, said she is particularly concerned about increased health care costs and changes the store is proposing for new hires.

Were asking our customers to please shop somewhere else until were back, until we have a fair contract, Johnson said.

The UFCW locals are affiliated with the AFL-CIO. Steven Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said, The goal is to have them come to the table with a reasonable process to be fair and equitable and have a little dignity for the employees.
Kimberley J. Roberts, Google strategy and operations manager with a history of promoting educational opportunities for young women, has been named speaker for Bay Path Universitys 122nd commencement May 19 at 4 p.m. at the MassMutual Center.

Roberts and George F. Kalf, a medical educator and researcher who established with his late wife, Jeanne, a Bay Path graduate, two scholarships at the college, will be awarded honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees.

A native of California, Roberts is based at Googles Mountain View headquarters there where she is said to oversee strategy, operations and communications for the web services and search engine giant with a goal of encouraging women and minorities into the field of technology.

She serves as well as chief of staff for the companys vice president of education and university relations and has helped foster its engineering education programming that looks to engage students and teachers.

Roberts is credited with the creation and implementation of Googles applied computing series for higher education students and faculty.

She holds an undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley, a masters degree from Mills College in Oakland, California.,and doctorate from the University of Virginia, all in English literature.

Prior to joining Google in July 2017, Roberts headed Garrison Forest School, an all-girls school in Maryland with a long-established partnership with Johns Hopkins University to encourage women to enter the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.

She has also served as assistant head of school and director of advancement at her alma mater, Castilleja School, an all-girls' school in Palo Alto, California, and spent nine years at the University of Virginia, teaching literature and serving as an adjunct assistant professor in the Studies in Women and Gender Program.

She co-founded and directed that universitys Young Women Leaders Program, described as a mentoring program for adolescent girls from under-resourced communities, and was the director of diversity and advocacy programs for the universitys Womens Center.

Kalf, who received the Presidents Award from Bay Path in 2015, is professor emeritus from Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia.

He holds a masters degree from Penn State and and a doctorate from Yale University, both in biochemistry, and has authored more than 70 research papers in his field.

He was influential in the development of Bay Paths Master of Science in Physician Assistant Studies program as well as the universitys Philip H. Ryan Health Science Center.

He and his life wife established two scholarships to help students to pursue their studies in the sciences - the Jeanne Williams Kalf 51 Endowed Scholarship and the Dr. George F. Kalf Endowed Scholarship.
NORTHAMPTON  The state is urging local ambulance services to branch out into preventive health programs that could reduce trips to hospital emergency rooms.

That includes assessing fall risks in seniors homes, ensuring safe disposing of syringes used by diabetics and heroin users, performing mass vaccinations and more.

There are some great opportunities for EMS companies to start doing some point-of-care testing, said Scott Cluett, manager of the states Mobile Integrated Health program. For instance, EMTs could screen patients for asthma, or make referrals to a primary care physician.

The Community EMS program is meant to get ambulance services working collaboratively with local public health officials and related organizations. Since the state started taking applications in October, six EMS providers in the eastern part of the state have already been approved to launch programs, including in Boston, Fall River and Brockton. Cluett hopes there will be 40 to 50 such programs proposed across the state by July.

Cluett was the featured speaker Thursday at the annual meeting of Western Massachusetts Emergency Medical Services, a nonprofit support organization for fire departments and private ambulance companies in the four western counties.

Community EMS, especially for our smaller, more rural towns, its a perfect fit, said Deborah Clapp, WMEMS executive director. EMS are trusted providers. Theyre already in peoples homes.

One benefit of Community EMS programs could be aiding public health nurses, who have limited time and resources. Community EMS could also bring health services to people without transportation or limited mobility.

Clapp said her organization is working with two consultants to assess needs in Western Massachusetts and develop programs in areas like fall prevention and opioid education.

Many first responders already carry nalaxone, a drug that can reverse the effects of opioid overdoses. Mark Miller, director of the state Office of Emergency Medical Services, said changes in federal regulations could allow first reponders to supply nalaxone to family members of opioid users to safeguard against future overdoses.

Community EMS program proposals must be reviewed and approved by the state, and must be recertified every two years, Cluett said. High-value categories the state hopes EMS providers will address include opioid abuse, housing stability, mental health and disease control.

Cluett said Community EMS programs will benefit public health and save money for the health care system as a whole.

As things stand today, ambulance services are reimbursed by Medicare only when they transport patients to an emergency room. But Cluett said the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is rolling out a new model that would reimburse EMS providers for treatment in the field and transportation to alternative destinations like urgent care centers  something he called a game changer.

Thursdays WMEMS meeting and luncheon was attended by about 75 people and included an award ceremony recognizing 12 people who helped save the life of Linwood Clark of Haydenville, who stopped breathing Jan. 31.

They were: Daryl Springman, Jason Connell and Alex Kassell of the Williamsburg Fire Department, Robert Reinke and Mitchell Cichy of the Williamsburg Fire Department, Drew Morse, Kim Dresser, Maryellen McQueston and Keith Cotnoir of Highland Ambulance, first responder Tim McQueston and dispatcher Wendy Pariseau of Northampton Control.

Clarks wife, Karthyn Warner, was also credited for dialing 911.

Her calling was what saved his life, said Highland Director Michael Rock.
State Police in New Hampshire and Vermont are searching for a man they believe shot and killed two people in Hinsdale, New Hampshire, a small town just over the Massachusetts state border.

Vermont State Police said second-degree murder arrest warrants have been issued for Derrick Shipee, a 28-year-old man living in Hinsdale. Shippee has ties to Southern Vermont as well.

The bodies of 29-year-old Neil Bolster and 19-year-old Aaliyah Jacobs were found in a Plain Rd., Hinsdale home Thursday as police conducted a well being check. Autopsies determined both had been shot to death.

Vermont State Police found the car they believe Shippee was driving Thursday night abandoned on property owned by his family in nearby Vernon, VT.

Shippee is described as standing 5-foot, 10-inches tall and weighing approximately 220 pounds. He has hazel eyes and brown hair, police said. The suspect is believed to be armed with a handgun.

Police are asking anyone with information about Derrick Shippee are asked to contact Vermont State Police at 802-722-4600.
The remains of three service members killed in Afghanistan this week have returned to the U.S.

Staff Sgt. Christopher K.A. Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania, and Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York, were killed after their convoy hit a roadside bomb near Bagram Airfield on Monday. Three other U.S. service members were wounded.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The three were assigned to 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve, which has its headquarters at Fort Devens, a Massachusetts base.

Their remains arrived Thursday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Their unit was deployed to Afghanistan as part of an effort to train Georgian soldiers to serve with NATO forces in Afghanistan.

All three men had been serving in Afghanistan since Oct. 2, 2018 and were scheduled to remain in the region until the end of May.

Slutman, an infantry rifleman who was activated as a reservist, entered the military in 2005, previously serving tours in Iraq and Mozambique. He spent 15 years as a New York City firefighter. He was honored after saving an unconscious woman from a fire in 2014, the New York Post reports.

Hines joined the Marines in 2006 and was deployed to Iraq from September 2008 to April 2009.

Hendricks enlisted in 2012. This was his first deployment.

"We feel and mourn the loss of these Americans with their families and loved ones. They volunteered to protect their country. We will continue our mission, said Gen. Scott Miller, Commanding General of Resolute Support and United States Forces  Afghanistan.

U.S. Marines spokesman Maj. Roger Hollenbeck said the circumstances surrounding the attack remain under investigation.

Our focus in the wake of this attack is to support the family, friends and loved ones of our fallen Marines, Hollenbeck said. These Marines are honored for their extraordinary bravery and for their direct contribution to the defense of this nation.
NORTHAMPTON  Daniel Hect, police chief for both Smith College and Mount Holyoke College, was placed on administrative leave Wednesday, according to a statements by the presidents of both schools that referred to questions of trust.

Smiths student newspaper, The Sophian, earlier published a story that says Mount Holyoke students found that Hect, using his Twitter account, had liked tweets that were almost exclusively in response to President Trumps tweets and included anti-immigrant, pro-gun rights and racist sentiments. Hects Twitter account has since been deleted, The Sophian reported.

Mount Holyoke President Sonya Stephens, writing on the colleges website, said social media is not the reason he was placed on leave. We are reviewing several concerns and cannot comment further on personnel issues.

Over the past few weeks, members of our community have expressed concerns about the ability of Chief Daniel Hect to develop the level of trust required to engage in community policing, Stephens wrote.

Smith President Kathleen McCartney issued a similar statement.

In recent weeks, members of our campus community have voiced a lack of trust in recently appointed Campus Police Chief Daniel Hect, McCartney wrote in a letter to students, faculty and staff.

Deputy Chief Ray LaBarre has been appointed acting chief, a role McCartney said he has had before.
SPRINGFIELD -- One resident was displaced and more than 20 dogs and cats were rescued after a house fire in the Pine Point neighborhood Thursday.

Firefighters quickly extinguished the fire in the kitchen at 106 Wilton St. One firefighter suffered a cut to his hand and was treated at the scene, said Dennis Leger, executive aide to Fire Commissioner Bernard J. Calvi.

The resident escaped safely but firefighters had to rescue the about 20 dogs and cats living in the home, Leger said.

The fire, which was reported at about 7:25 p.m., caused about $30,000 in damage, he said.

The American Red Cross of Western Massachusetts is assisting the resident, Leger said.

The Springfield Arson and Bomb Squad determined the fire was accidental and started on the stove top, Leger said.
SPRINGFIELD  A decade-long dream turned to reality on Friday when Springfield schools and local officials celebrated the opening of a $21 million, state-of-the-art Culinary and Nutrition Center that will serve 30,000 students daily.

City and school officials, students, and representatives of Sodexo food service company were part of a large crowd gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new center, at 75 Cadwell Drive, in East Springfield. The event included music from the High School of Science and Technology band, a flag-raising ceremony and raves from guest speakers.

Mayor Domenic J. Sarno said the opening was a "a historic day" in Springfield, culminating a cooperative effort in planning and financing by the city, School Department, Sodexo, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"This partnership is the first of its kind in the United States of America," Sarno said. "Springfield is known as the city of firsts. Once again, Springfield leads the way with first-of-its kind in the nation, cutting edge."

The new 62,000 square-foot center replaces a much smaller site, and will focus on fresh, nutritious meals for students, fresh fruits and vegetables including produce from local farms, approximately 40 new jobs, and advanced training for students, officials said.

Daniel Warwick, superintendent of schools, joined in praising the public-private partnership.

"What we're going to be able to do here is put out the best possible product, a nutritious breakfast and lunch and even dinners now in many of our schools, for our kids that is second to none in the entire country," Warwick said. "So we're very, very proud of that."

The city provides free breakfast and lunch to all students with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The city provided a $14 million bond for the project, with that cost being paid back over the 20-year bond period by the U.S. Department of Agriculture funds, with the financing arrangement described as unique in the country. Sodexo also contributed funds.

Mark J. Jeffrey, district manager for Sodexo, said planning for the center began 10 years ago as a one-page summary, and now serves as a benchmark for other systems to follow in the nation.

"What started as a vision to improve the quality of foods served in our breakfast program has resulted in the building of the culinary nutrition center designed to improve not only food quality but the total student and community school food service experience," Jeffrey said.

The program will change lives for generations to come, he said.

Liz OGilvie, chairwoman of the Springfield Food Policy Committee, said she is happy to have been part of the drive for the new program, summing up the results with the yelled word Wow! The provision of free, nutritious meals helps the students academically and in confronting poverty, she said.

This is an amazing, amazing, amazing day that will not sink in for us for probably 10 years from now, OGilvie said.

Robert Leshin, director of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Office for Food and Nutrition Programs, said the city has a fantastic program, reflecting the dedication of city and school officials to the students.

Various members of the City Council and School Committee, and local legislators were among the attendees.
The ninth and final episode in the Skywalker saga now has an official title: Star Wars: Episode IX  The Rise of Skywalker.

Disney and Lucasfilm revealed the title on Friday with a first show of the teaser trailer at Star Wars Celebration in Chicago.

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy and Star Wars: Episode IX director JJ Abrams were on hand for the event, which was live streamed to fans across the globe.

The movie arrives in theaters on Dec. 20 and may be the last big screen trip to a galaxy far, far away for a quite a bit.

Disney CEO Bob Iger told Bloomberg that the studio intends to take a break on new Star Wars movies, as it proceeds with some related television projects. (Episode IX will be the fifth Star Wars movie since Disney acquired Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012.)

We will take a pause, some time, and reset, he said, because the Skywalker saga comes to an end with this ninth movie. There will be other Stars Wars movies, but there will be a bit of a hiatus.

The trailer for the film showed Rey (Daisy Ridley) in action, the evil Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and the return of Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian. It ends with the eerie laugh of Emperor Palpatine, who was dispatched by Luke Skywalker in 1983s Return of the Jedi.

Ian McDiarmid, who played Palpatine in both the prequel and original trilogies, appeared on stage at the Chicago celebration after the the trailer was first shown and asked for it to be replayed.
LAWRENCE - Two people pulled over in a BWM with illegally-tinted windows were arrested for unlawful possession of a gun with an illegally-extended high-capacity magazine.

Mario Acosta, 23, of Haverhill, and a 17-year-old girl, whose name was not released because she is a juvenile, were charged with possession of a firearm without a permit, possession of a large capacity feeding device and possession of ammunition without a license, Massachusetts State Police said.

Trooper Steven Hanafin initially pulled over the driver of the BMW sedan at about 9 p.m., Wednesday, on Route 28 after he noticed the driver crossing marked lanes and that the cars windows were too dark, police said.

He and two officers who also responded to the traffic stop then located a Polymer80 9 mm handgun and an illegally-extended high-capacity magazine loaded with 30 rounds of ammunition in an investigation at the scene, police said.

After their arrests, a bail commissioner set bond at $25,000 for Acosta and $5,000 for the juvenile. He was arraigned at Lawrence District Court and the 17-year-old was arraigned at Essex County Juvenile Court Thursday, police said.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange doesn't like secrets. That's his gig, his mission statement, his reason for being. Plain and simple, with "simple" being the byword here.

Because not all secrets are created equal. Nor are all governments. But Assange doesn't discriminate, nor does he concern himself with such niceties. Or so he has long claimed. Because a secret is a secret, and secrets are bad, and that's all there is to it.

To call this view naive and immature -- though it surely is that -- doesn't go nearly far enough. Because it's also dangerous in the extreme.

Think North Korea and China wouldn't like to get their hands on some of our nation's top secrets? Think that wouldn't be a real problem? Think again.

Assange was arrested on Thursday, after having been holed up for more than six years in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He was charged with one count of conspiring with then-Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, now Chelsea Manning, to hack into a government computer network. That's it. One count. Nothing about violating the Espionage Act. Nothing about revealing government secrets.

Though this fact ought to calm those who like to portray Assange as some sort of a hero, it didn't. At least not straight out of the gate.

Instead, some who ought to know better defended Assange and fretted that his arrest will chill the work of legitimate news-gathering organizations. Of particular note, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who in the summer of 2013 revealed that our government had been secretly collecting records of phone calls, was quick to defend Assange after his arrest.

This doesn't help Snowden's case. At all. Snowden saw a wrong and tried to right it. Or at least to make it public. He does himself no service to link his efforts to Assange's blanket anti-secrecy campaign.

For years now, Daniel Ellsberg has also been defending Assange. It was Ellsberg, of course, who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, revealing a massive, years-long effort to deceive the American people about our nation's involvement in Vietnam. Plenty have endeavored to link Assange's WikiLeaks with Ellsberg. But in so doing, they leave out a critical detail: The Pentagon Papers were 47 volumes, but Ellsberg gave just 43 of them to The Times, deciding on his own to keep the other four out of view. Why? Because revealing them, he feared, could have created irreparable problems for the U.S. government. He used his judgment, and did what he thought was the right thing.

Think Assange would have done that? Yeah, right.

Further, it's likely not a coincidence that Assange's WikiLeaks has published secrets from the United States and other democracies, somehow deigning to skip over China and North Korea and other totalitarian lands. If Assange truly is opposed to secrecy, no matter what, how is it that he manages to steer clear of uncovering the doings of the world's most repressive regimes? Maybe in at least that one area, he does discriminate.

Even those who understand well that the United States has made some tragically bad decisions over the years should be able to see that our nation remains as the last, best hope on the planet for those who cherish liberty. Even those who believe firmly that our current president is not up to the job should still be able to acknowledge that our nation stands apart, and will eventually find a way to recover from the many messes the current administration has been creating.

Assange has at time been lauded by those on the right, and at others by those on the left. Who was cheering, and who jeering, depended on whose cause he seemed to be serving at any particular moment. Both sides would do well to take a breath, to turn down the volume a bit.

Assange was charged with conspiring to hack into a government computer network. Though some have sought to paint his Thursday arrest as chilling to journalists everywhere, he was charged with conspiring with Manning to commit a crime, not with doing the work of a journalist or of a whistleblower who has found something worthy of uncovering.

Assange is no journalist, and hes no hero. Those whod seek to portray him as either are blowing smoke.
SPRINGFIELD  A Hampden Superior Court jury on Thursday found Bairon Ubeda guilty on all charges in a case alleging he exploited two females while threatening to share nude photos of them online.

The jury began deliberating at about 10 a.m. Thursday and delivered verdicts at 2:30 p.m.

Sentencing is set for April 23 at 2 p.m.

Ubeda, 38, of Springfield, was charged with 14 counts, including child rape and extortion, in the trial before Judge John S. Ferrara.

Two Holyoke women testified they responded to solicitations via Facebook messaging for modeling work. They both submitted nude pictures of themselves to a person named Crystal and were told to meet with Ubeda. They said Ubeda threatened to distribute the nude photos if they didnt do what he wanted.

The assault, exploitation, and extortion the victims were subject to is abhorrent, District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said in a statement. The incredible courage exhibited by the victims in this case to bring the defendant to justice is heroic. I would like to thank Assistant District Attorney Amy Wilson for the skill with which she prosecuted this case to a just result.

Victim witness advocate Emily ONeil assisted Wilson in the case.

For an 18-year-old  who was 15 at the time she met Ubeda  there were two counts of rape of a child aggravated by a 10-year age difference, two counts of distributing material of a child in the nude and a count each of posing a child in the nude and trafficking a person under 18 for sexual services. The latter alleged Ubeda enticed or recruited the girl in a way that fits under the sex trafficking law, Wilson said.

The victim said Ubeda forced her to pose naked for photos and videos and raped her. She said the power Ubeda had over her was his threat to spread the nude photos she had submitted.

She ultimately went to her mother when Ubeda kept threatening to put the nude photos out on social media. She said Ubeda sent her on her phone two photo collages he had made with the nude photos he took of her and the nude pictures she submitted. Her mother took her to Holyoke police.

For the other woman, 32 years old, there were five counts of extortion, two counts of assault and battery and a count of larceny over $250. The woman testified she signed a contract with the man later identified as Ubeda. She had sex with him but then told him she wanted no more contact.

The woman testified Ubeda threatened to ruin her life by exposing the nude pictures if she didnt do what he said. He threatened to sue her and said the state Department of Children and Families would take her son away.

She testified she started paying Ubeda in 2014 and continued through early 2016. When she lost her job and could not pay him money, Ubeda demanded she have sex or do tasks like clean his home and do laundry.
According to the report, the globalaccounted for $34.69 million in 2016 and is expected to reach $44.22 million by 2023, registering a CAGR of 3.3% from 2017 to 2023.

Technological advances have played a significant role in the growth of the bone densitometer market. With the introduction of 3D-DXA, the efficiency of DXA scanning has been improved, and 3D models of bone 2D images can be constructed during periodic inspections. This helps a better understanding of the bone condition, bone shape, cortical bone thickness, and bone mineral density.

Rise in incidence of osteoporosis and vitamin D deficiency, rapid technological developments in the sector of bone densitometry, increase in geriatric population, and favorable reimbursement scenario in the developed countries have boosted the growth of the global bone densitometers market. However, risks associated with bone densitometers and high cost of bone densitometers hamper market growth. On the contrary, increase in awareness and rise in adoption of bone densitometers along with untapped opportunities in developing market are expected to create lucrative opportunities in the near future.

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Global bone densitometers market is divided on the basis of application, technology, end user, and geography. Based on application, the market is segmented into central scan and peripheral scan. The peripheral scan segment is projected to register a CAGR of 3.8% through 2023. The central scan segment is also expected to grow at a gradually by 2023. This is attributed to its effectiveness of reliable reference range, short scan times, rapid patient setup, and low radiation dose.

On the basis of technology, the market is divided into DEXA (Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry), ultrasound, and others. The ultrasound segment is estimated to grow at the fastest CAGR of 4.3% during the forecast period. However, the DEXA dominated the market is expected to continue its trend throughout the study period, owing to its high precision, safety for adults & children, and easy handling. Based on end user, the market is bifurcated into hospitals, clinics, and others. The hospital segment held the lions share in 2016, contributing nearly two-thirds of the market share.

The market is analyzed in various regions such as North America, North America, Europe, and LAMEA. The market in Europe held the largest share in 2016, contributing nearly two-fifths of the total market, owing to increase in incidence of osteoporosis, rise in patient awareness regarding the availability of treatment option. However, the market in the Asia-Pacific region is estimated to manifest the fastest CAGR of 5.3% through 2023.

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Global bone densitometers market report includes an in-depth analysis of the major market players including Demetech AB., BeamMed Ltd., Ecolight S.p.A., DMS Imaging (a division of the DMS group), Hologic, Inc., General Electric Company, Medonica Co. LTD, MEDILINK, Swissray International, Inc., and Osteometer MediTech, Inc.

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Allied Market Research provides a one-stop solution from the beginning of data collection to investment advice. The analysts at Allied Market Research dig out factors that help clients to understand the significance and impact of market dynamics. The company amplies the clients insight on the factors, such as strategies, future estimations, growth or fall forecasting, opportunity analysis, and consumer surveys among others. As follows, the company offers consistent business intelligence support to aid the clients to turn into a prominent business firm.

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Herbal supplements and remedies, sometimes called botanicals, have many active constituents, which are natural way of providing support for overall health and well-being. Also they can have drug-like effects.

Echinacea is used to prevent cold. Ginkgo is used to improve memory. Flaxseed is used to lower cholesterol level. The list of herbal supplements and remedies goes on and on. Herbal supplements and remedies including health care products and finished herbal products which extracted from herbs.

Herbal supplements and remedies are sold in many different forms  dried leaves for teas, powdered, as capsules or tablets, or in solution.

Scope of the Report:

Herbal supplements and remedies are mainly extracted from plants, which have many active constituents, and are natural way of providing support for overall health and well-being. Also they can have drug-like effects. In China, herbal has been used as medicine to cure people since thousands years ago and they are good at curing chronic disease in comparison with the western medicine. Especially in recent years, resistance to drugs, toxic and side effects and other weaknesses of western medicine are more and more obvious, however herbal can solve these problems very well. But in Europe and North America, especially in USA, herbal is not allowed to be sold as medicine but as health care products. However, it is researched that one in five people eat herbal supplements and remedies in past five years in USA. Consequently, the market of herbal supplements and remedies is promising and will have fast development in the following years.

The worldwide market for Herbal Supplements and Remedies is expected to grow at a CAGR of roughly 4.7% over the next five years, will reach 8780 million US$ in 2024, from 6670 million US$ in 2019, according to a new GIR (Global Info Research) study.

This report focuses on the Herbal Supplements and Remedies in global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.

Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers

NBTY(US)

Tsumura(JP)

Weleda(CH)

DSMNL

Natures Sunshine Products(US)

Madaus(DE)

Nutraceutical(US)

Arkopharma(FR)

Schwabe(DE)

Ricola(CH)

Blackmores(AU)

Dabur(IN)

Herbal AfricaZA)

Pharma Nord APS(DM)

SIDO MUNCUL(ID)

Natures Answer (US)

TwinLab(US)

Pharmavite(US)b

Arizona Natural(US)

Potters Herbals(UK)

Tongrentang(CN)

TASLY(CN)

Yunnan Baiyao(CN)

Sanjiu(CN)

Zhongxin(CN)

Haiyao(CN)

Taiji(CN)

Kunming Pharma(CN)

JZJT(CN)

Guangzhou Pharma(CN)

Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers

North America (United States, Canada and Mexico)

Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)

Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)

South America (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia etc.)

Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)

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Market Segment by Type, covers

Mono  Herb Type

Multi  Herb Type

Market Segment by Applications, can be divided into

Pharmaceutical Industry

Health Care Industry

Others

The content of the study subjects, includes a total of 15 chapters:

Chapter 1, to describe Herbal Supplements and Remedies product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market driving force and market risks.

Chapter 2, to profile the top manufacturers of Herbal Supplements and Remedies, with price, sales, revenue and global market share of Herbal Supplements and Remedies in 2017 and 2018.

Chapter 3, the Herbal Supplements and Remedies competitive situation, sales, revenue and global market share of top manufacturers are analyzed emphatically by landscape contrast.

Chapter 4, the Herbal Supplements and Remedies breakdown data are shown at the regional level, to show the sales, revenue and growth by regions, from 2014 to 2019.

Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to break the sales data at the country level, with sales, revenue and market share for key countries in the world, from 2014 to 2019.

Chapter 10 and 11, to segment the sales by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2014 to 2019.

Chapter 12, Herbal Supplements and Remedies market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2019 to 2024.

Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Herbal Supplements and Remedies sales channel, distributors, customers, research findings and conclusion, appendix and data source.

Table of Contents

1 Market Overview

2 Manufacturers Profiles

3 Global Herbal Supplements and Remedies Sales, Revenue, Market Share and Competition by Manufacturer (2017-2018)

4 Global Herbal Supplements and Remedies Market Analysis by Regions

5 North America Herbal Supplements and Remedies by Country

6 Europe Herbal Supplements and Remedies by Country

7 Asia-Pacific Herbal Supplements and Remedies by Country

8 South America Herbal Supplements and Remedies by Country

9 Middle East and Africa Herbal Supplements and Remedies by Countries

10 Global Herbal Supplements and Remedies Market Segment by Type

11 Global Herbal Supplements and Remedies Market Segment by Application

12 Herbal Supplements and Remedies Market Forecast (2019-2024)

13 Sales Channel, Distributors, Traders and Dealers

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by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, April 9, 2019

Truth in political advertising can be a fuzzy thing. But earned media? Even more linty.

The Washington Post says President Trump has uttered thousands of lies, mis-truths, half-truths and gaffes. Off-the-cuff, somewhat real-sounding remarks get attention.

It has netted Trump an approval rate of around 42%, according to fivethirtyeight.com. That is the earned media content.

Yes, other politicians lie, but the sheer number of Trump's lies  and his destruction of presidential norms  define scale.

As the presidential election season ramps up late this year and next, one can only imagine that political advertising  plagued in 2016 by Russian interference  will comprise a different mix. That may mean a new take on video/photo images. Research has shown TV consumers have a strong, visceral reaction to full-motion video advertising.

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Recently, a Connecticut state legislature approved a bill requiring disclosure in political advertising when photos have been doctored. The bill was a response to several mailers featuring altered photos of opponents, including one that played on anti-Semitic tropes, according to one report.

The Connecticut bill would seemingly need to add, somewhere, the advertising messaging had been changed.

Its not impossible to assume that if the bill became law it would also include TV advertising. Already, TV consumers are well aware of the usual TV political ad disclaimer about who approved a specific political message.

Maybe any possible law will have an audio descriptor attached, perhaps a fast-speaking voiceover professional. There may even be a small font, on-screen messaging -- a la pharmaceutical, legal,or other advertising required disclosures.

Some would say traditional TV political ads might have less impact in future elections because of gains -- good and bad -- made in social media. Yet political advertising continues to grow.

For example, the 2018 midterm elections were up 80% in ad spend to $5.25 billion for local TV broadcast, local cable and digital, according to Kantar Media.

New political marketing efforts are yet to be discovered. Money to be spent (and made) includes, Im guessing, new video and photo-enhancing technologies. Some will be good, but some will be on the worrisome, lying side of things.
by Ray Schultz , April 11, 2019

LiveRamp, an identity company, has acquired Faktor, a consent management specialist. Terms were not disclosed.

The acquisition will enable LiveRamp to further help clients comply with regulations such as the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act, the company says.

Faktor allows consumers to manage how their data is used, it adds.

With the acquisition of Faktor, we hope to send a powerful message to our customers, partners and the industry: that everyone should be informed and have control over how their data is used, states LiveRamp CEO, Scott Howe.

LiveRamps identity platform will be integrated with Faktors offerings, and will allow clients to manage consent and maintain transparency in the coming quarters, the firm says.

It adds that brands can leverage the integrated platform and cross-device privacy controls as a value-add for customers.
by Dave Morgan , Featured Contributor, April 11, 2019

Its that time of year again: the upfronts, when the large (and small) television network companies rent out theaters, ballrooms and stages across Manhattan to pitch their upcoming shows, stars and research data to thousands of TV ad media buyers. This kicks off what will be several months of negotiating tens of billions of upfront purchases of TV and video ad inventory for the second half of this year and the first half of next year.

Many people wonder why it still happens every year, much as it has for past decades. Many have already foretold its demise and -- and been wrong -- for many years. I for one believe that we still need the upfront in 2019. Here are just a few of my reasons why:

People are still watching TV, and theyre not just folks 65 to dead. Events drives news and news captures attention. In an industry very focused on the latest and greatest new, shiny object, many folks forget the vast majority of Americans (even millennials) watch quite a bit of it every day.

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The upfronts are heavily reported in business and trade publications that are read by folks in the industry, who are then reminded of the power and reach of TV.



Things change year over year in the TV advertising world. Last year at the upfronts, the merger of Discovery and Scripps Networks was less than two weeks old. This year, just days ago, Discoverys CEO David Zaslav and chief advertising sales officer Jon Steinlauf were able to introduce a theater packed full of ad buyers to a new, fully integrated Discovery with the kind of audience and content scale that used to only live within the big broadcast companies like NBCU or Fox. Both buyers and sellers need moments in time and stages to update everyone else on whats happened from one year to the next.

TV advertising is a futures market. In the world of TV advertising, particularly when it comes to the most popular networks and the most popular dayparts  think prime time  demand exceeds supply. When that happens, owners of the highly sought-after demand are in a great position to auction off their future supply in an auction that will help them lock in sales, price and certainty as efficiently as possible. As long as the demand/supply imbalance exists, buyers and sellers both will want to do upfront buying.

Everyone loves a great party. Face it. Upfronts are great parties, and everyone in the ad, marketing and media world loves parties. Upfronts are typically staged in beautiful and cool venues with lots of great food, wine and drinks. There is a tightly managed invite list, so you feel exclusive and special. You usually get fun tchotchkes, like when A&E gave out really nice speaker bars and Discovery gave out super-soft and snuggly stuffed wild animals. Plus, you get to mingle with real-life stars, and can post selfies to reinforce how fortunate you felt to be there.

OK, maybe I havent convinced you. Maybe you believe that data, science, software and automated real-time bidding are going to replace the TV upfronts any day now.



Maybe youre right! I do believe that technology is going to radically transform how our industry operates and how it buys, sells, measures, optimizes and transacts on all video advertising, including TV.

However, even after that happens, Im going to bet that the upfronts will still be here. What do you think?
by Wayne Friedman , April 12, 2019

Amid revealing details of its highly anticipated digital video platform Disney+, Walt Disney says it is considering bundling its three big streaming services -- Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu -- in a low-priced package to consumers.

Speaking at Walt Disneys Investor Day on Thursday, Kevin Mayer, chairman of direct-to-consumer and international, said the company will "likely bundle at a discounted price."

Mayer added Disney+ is set to launch as an ad-free service to U.S. consumers, November 12, at a low price of $6.99/month or $69.99 for year. This would be less than many other ad-free digital video platforms.

We believe this is an extremely compelling value proposition for consumers, he says.

For its new Disney+ service, company executives say every division of its major brands will be contributing to the new streaming platform with exclusive content.

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In the first year of operation, it will have more the 25 or more new exclusive TV series on the site and 10 or more exclusive movies. By year five, it will have 50 or more original new TV series.

Though the consumer interface will look similar to Netflix, Hulu, or other digital video series, Disney+ will be slightly different, including areas for specific Disney brands, such as Pixar, "Star Wars," Marvel, and National Geographic.

When a user hovers over a brand title, an animated image is set off  fireworks blasting behind the Magic Kingdom for the Disney title or a comic-book flip for Marvel. In somewhat of a different tack versus other digital platforms, subscribers can download all Disney+ content for offline access.

Disney users can select personalized avatars using characters from Disneys films and content, such as Buzz Lightyear.

At launch, Disney+ will have on its platform the recent Marvel Studios theatrical film hit Captain Marvel, as well as many other recent titles, including films from the Iron Man franchise.

Marvel will be starting a new TV series, as well as its first animated series. Disney+ will see almost 20 Pixar movies available on the first day of its operation, as well as number of Pixar theatrical shorts.

Disney+ will also have major classic animated features from its library: "Bambi," "The Jungle Book," "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Aladdin. It will be the exclusive home of "Frozen II" next summer.

Star Wars films make an appearance as well at launch -- including recent movies and Rogue One. Disney+ will also have a new Star Wars TV series The Mandalorian at the start of Disney+.

A massive marketing campaign will be launched for Disney+, using all its brands, as well as its theme parks, hitting 95% of its target audience, reaching 100 million U.S. homes.

Concerning its other direct-to-consumer businesses, Mayer says Disney says is looking to expand ESPN+ to Latin America and Hulu to international markets.

ESPN+, launched in April 2018, has limited advertising on its platform, with a $4.99 a month price tag. It has 2 million subscribers. Hulu has two on-demand services -- limited advertising ($5.99/month), and ad-free ($11.99/month).

Hulu now has a collective 25 million subscribers for all its on-demand services. Reports says Hulu with Live TV service priced at $44.99 monthly is at 2 million subscribers. Hulu, which started up in 2008, is now 60% owned by Disney, via its acquisition of Foxs business -- with 30% owned by Comcast Corp. and WarnerMedia, 10%.
by Wayne Friedman , April 12, 2019

Stock-market investors gave Walt Disney a strong, positive reaction to its Disney+ announcement -- its stock is up 10% in early Friday trading to $127.35.

For its Investor Day in Burbank, California on Thursday, Disney touted some aggressive growth for Disney+, it yet-to-be-launch on-demand streaming service. It estimates 60 million to 90 million worldwide subscribers in five years, around 20 million to 30 million coming in the U.S.

Two analysts -- Bernstein Research and MoffettNathanson Research -- estimate Disney+ will get to 55 million in five years -- at which time, they expect profitability.

Ultimately, when it comes to subscriber guidance, there are ample ways to secure them, including discounting and increased content-marketing investment, says Todd Juenger, media analyst at Bernstein Research,

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Disney said by 2024 it expects ESPN+ to grow subscribers to between 8 million to 12 million, from 2 million now. For its Hulu digital video platform (for all its on-demand services), it looks to get to 40 million to 60 million, from 25 million this year.

One big reveal was Disney+ pricing -- at a low $6.99 a month, much less than competitors like Netflix.

The disclosure of the low price point generated a collective gasp in the room, says Michael Nathanson, senior research analyst, MoffettNathanson Research.

One key concern is content licensing licensing. Disney executives talked up TV and movie content being exclusive to Disneys streaming service. Bernsteins Juenger wondered how this would affect the $7 billion to $8 million in content-licensing revenues for Disney.

The guidance from Disney calls for $2.5 billion of content licensing moving from third-party to internal. That still leaves roughly $5 billion by our estimates. We believe this is mostly Fox (TV and movies) and ABC content licensed primarily internationally. So its ultimate fate is tied to if and when Disney rolls out Hulu globally.
by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, April 12, 2019

The Department of Justice has asked a federal judge to throw out PEN America's lawsuit accusing President Trump of violating the First Amendment by retaliating against critics.

The accusations against Trump are too generalized to warrant further proceedings, the DOJ argues in papers filed this week with U.S. District Court Judge Lorna Schofield in the Southern District of New York. The DOJ adds that the writer's group PEN America hasn't shown that its members have been injured by Trump.

The government's papers come in response to a lawsuit filed in October by PEN America, which alleged Trump targeted Amazon, CNN, NBC and individual journalists, due to their critical coverage of him. The organization asked a federal judge to issue a declaratory judgment that Trump acted unconstitutionally, and an injunction prohibiting the federal government from retaliating against media organizations and journalists for their criticism of the White House.

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The organization's original complaint alleged that Trump repeatedly called for action to punish the online retailer Amazon because Jeff Bezos, its chief shareholder and CEO, owns the Washington Post,whose accurate coverage of his Administration the President finds objectionable.

Last year, Trump directed the Postal Service to review shipping rates charged to Amazon and other companies. In October, the Postal Service proposed a 12% rate increase for the shipping service used by Amazon and others.

PEN America's complaint also noted that Trump threatened NBC last year, following a news report about statements Trump made regarding nuclear weapons. With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country! he tweeted.

Earlier this year, PEN America beefed up its complaint with allegations relating to the White House's well-publicized dispute with CNN's Jim Acosta. Last November, after a contentious press conference, government officials revoked Acosta's press credentials. A federal judge subsequently ordered the government to restore Acosta's credentials.

The DOJ says in its papers that any alleged injuries suffered by PEN America or its members are too subjective and insufficiently imminent to justify a lawsuit. The government also says that the dispute over Acosta's press credentials has already been resolved.

Additionally, the government says PEN America isn't entitled to an injunction that would control the official, discretionary acts of a sitting president.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that such injunctive relief would be 'extraordinary' and beyond the power of the federal courts, DOJ argues.

PEN America CEO Suzanne Nossel countered this week that the organization believes its case is strong.

The threats and actions we are challenging are ongoing, and as they continue, our case grows more compelling, she stated. Among other examples, she cited a February Washington Postreport that the White House refused to allow journalists from The Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Los Angeles Times and Reuters to cover Trump's dinner with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un.

The organization is expected to respond in court next month to the White House's argument.
OTTAWA

April 11, 2019

Canada

Canada

Canada

December 2017

May 2018

December 2017

In 2014, Health Canada implemented risk mitigation measures to help protect bees and other pollinators from exposure to neonicotinoid-contaminated dust that occurs from planting treated seeds.

With these risk mitigation measures in place, the number of bee incidents in 2014, 2015 and 2016 were 70-80% lower than in 2013.

The Department continued to see a decline in the number of incidents reported during planting in 2017 and 2018.

Other factors (e.g., favourable weather conditions) might have contributed to the reduction in bee incidents, including deaths.

Canada

Canada

/CNW/ - Protecting the health and safety of Canadians and the environment is a priority for the Government of. This includes helping to protect the health of bees and other pollinators by minimizing their exposure to pesticides.After extensive research and review, Health Canada has completed its re-evaluations of the neonicotinoid pesticides clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam in relation to their potential impact on bees and other pollinators, and has released the final decisions for each. The scientific assessments show varying effects on bees and other pollinators from exposure to each of these pesticides. To protect bees and other pollinators, Health Canada has announced that it will be cancelling some uses of these pesticides, and changing other conditions of use such as restricting the timing of application. Remaining uses (e.g., treatment on canola seeds and greenhouse vegetables) are not expected to pose unacceptable risks to bees and other pollinators.In, all pesticides must undergo a rigorous, science-based review before being approved for sale. Healthalso regularly re-evaluates pesticides to make sure that they continue to meet modern health and safety standards.In 2012, Health Canada began re-evaluations of three neonicotinoids to address growing concerns around bee health. The Department issued proposed decisions for clothianidin, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam inand, respectively, and consulted the public and stakeholders. All comments and information received during the consultation periods were considered and helped inform the final decisions.These pollinator re-evaluations considered hundreds of scientific studies, from both manufacturers and published literature. Cancellations and new restrictions will be implemented over a two- to three-year period, in accordance with the Department's Policy on Cancellations and Amendments Following Re-evaluation and Special Review.The Department continues to evaluate the potential risks to aquatic insects from the use of neonicotinoids. Current research shows that these pesticides are detected frequently in waterbodies at levels that could be harmful to certain aquatic organisms. The Department expects to report on its findings at the end of 2019.Pollinator Protection Healthto consult on plan to phase out most uses of the neonicotinoids clothianidin and thiamethoxam Healthto consult on plan to manage agricultural uses of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid to protect aquatic insectsSOURCE Health Canada
OREGON, Ohio

April 12, 2019

Oregon

Sue Johnston

Oregon's

10:30 AM

Oregon

May 6th

10:30 AM

Oregon

Oregon, Ohio

April 17th

Oregon

the United States

the United States

/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Meridian Senior Living's Landings of Oregon Independent, Assisted Living, and Memory Care hosts two ongoing memory care workshops: Caregiver Cafe and Mini Dementia Workshops every month. These workshops are vital as the global impact of dementia is staggering. According to the Alzheimer's Association, as of 2015 there were 9.9 million new cases world-wide with one diagnosed every 3 seconds. With that in mind, all of us will be affected by Alzheimer's in one way or another and understanding about the disease becomes increasingly important to be able to capably deal with afflicted family members and loved ones.These two workshops are based on Meridian Senior Living's special memory care programming: Montessori Moments in Time (MMIT) to offer families and caregivers strategies to cope with challenging times. The goals of MMIT at Landings ofare to enhance living for those with memory challenges by using the five directional paths. Each directional path has the resident and family in mind to encourage independence and helps deal with the progression of Alzheimer's disease and other related dementias. These paths include Family Connections, Health and Wellness, Dining Experience, Life Engagement, and Team Promise. Family Connections focus on the well-being of our families through social gatherings, volunteer opportunities, support, and education. Health and Wellness is based on providing satisfying experiences, promoting independence, and encouraging positive behavior while maintaining respect and dignity. The Dining Experience leverages meals as a time to reminisce, create new memories, maximize independence, and promote socializing, all in an inviting environment. Life Engagement includes scheduled programs that support the whole person allowing residents to function at their highest potential, giving them a sense of purpose and overall well-being. Team Promise focuses on developing care partnerships through ongoing education and training."When someone in the family has dementia, it changes everything", states, VP Program Development. "We understand the challenges you face and know that it is essential for you to have support, education, and an understanding of how important it is to take care of yourself."The Caregiver Cafe program offers an opportunity for caregivers of loved ones who suffer from Alzheimer's or dementia to participate in a forum to ask questions while being surrounded by others going through their same situation. Landings ofonsite experts serve as a resource to better understand the loved one's condition. Caregiver Cafes are held the first Monday of every month atat Landings ofin room 808. Complimentary coffee and snacks are provided. The next Caregiver Cafe will be onatUnderstanding the challenges caregivers of those who suffer from Alzheimer's or dementia face daily, onsite experts run the free Mini-Dementia workshops that cover topics of importance to caregivers. Each month, the workshops cover a different topic regarding memory impairment. Past topics include: "What is Dementia?" and "Three Main Stages of Dementia." These workshops are free and are held the third Wednesday of every month at 12:00 noon at Toledo Lucas County Public Library:Branch in Meeting Room A, located at 3340 Dustin Road,43616. The next Mini-Dementia workshop "Engaging the Memory Impaired" will be onat 12:00 noon.Since there are limited spaces in these workshops, interested participants should call (419) 972-2772 to R.S.V.P. one day before the event. For more information about Landings of, visit: http://www.meridiansenior.com/oregon or call (419) 972-2772.About Meridian Senior Living: Meridian Senior Living, LLC, a privately held company, owns and operates senior housing communities across. With more than 7,000 beds, Meridian is currently the eighteenth largest senior housing operator in. Meridian prides itself on providing the highest quality care and affordable living options to residents in their own communities. Although large in scale, Meridian focuses its growth effort on building state-of-the-art properties in cities outside major markets. For more information on Meridian Senior Living, visit us online at http://www.meridiansenior.com.SOURCE Meridian Senior Living
Causes of Stuffy Nose / Congested Nose / Blocked Nose

Flu

Common cold

Sinusitis  Acute and chronic

Vasomotor rhinitis  The congestion or stuffiness in the nose results from causes other than allergies or infection. Sudden sneezing bouts and the resulting congestion are sometimes caused by alcohol, spicy food, air pollution, extreme emotions or a dry climate

Pregnancy

Churg-Strauss syndrome  This condition is characterized by inflamed blood vessels

Use of nasal sprays for more than 3 days

Deviation in the nasal septum  The nasal septum or the thin wall dividing the nose is pushed to one side due to a fall or a fight thus, causing narrowing of one side of the nasal passage. This results in breathing difficulty.

Polyps in the nose  Inflamed outgrowths of the tissues that line the nose.

Glare and brightness of lights

Cyclical or cluster headaches  Such headaches occur together frequently and are very painful.

Drug addiction

Enlargement of adenoids

Changes in hormone levels

Medicines for high blood pressure

Stuffy Nose / Congested Nose / Blocked Nose Home Remedies

1 cup of warm water + a pinch of baking soda +  tsp salt

A familiar aspect of a congested / stuffy / blocked nose is the inability to breathe in easily. It is an effort to get air to flow through the nasal passages. A stuffy nose occurs due to the inflammation of blood vessels in the tissues, which causes the nose to swell and results in breathing trouble. Often, mucus is discharged continuously from the nose resulting in a runny nose. If the excess mucus flows into the throat, it results in a sore throat or cough.A stuffy nose in babies is a problem since it is a deterrent to breathing or nursing for milk.. If one of the nasal passages gets blocked, the infant may have inserted something in that passage. Babies are also afflicted with ear pain and sinus pain when the mucus discharge blocks the eustachian tubes between the nose and the ear. It is also a discomfort for older children and adults.There are different causes for a stuffy nose. The causes are based on either an infection, or an allergy, or health conditions. Some of the causes are: Hay fever , soy allergy, peanut allergy, wheat allergy, milk allergy, pet allergy, shellfish allergy, dust mite allergy, latex allergy and food allergy.There is no treatment for a stuffy nose. The congestion in the nose subsides in due course of time. However, there are different ways to relieve a congested nose.In the case of children, the pillow should be raised to elevate the childs head and ease the discomfort of the congestion in the nose. The legs of the bed may also be raised where the head of the child is placed. When the nose is congested, it is difficult to breathe while lying down or while sleeping at night.Children above a year old may be given soups and other warm drinks. A teaspoon of honey may be given to treat coughing symptoms. Infants over 3 months old can be given apple juice, water or a hydrating solution. Fluids should be sugar-free.In dry climates, a humidifier is recommended to moisten the nasal passages and avoid the congestion of the nose.Inhaling steam 2 to 4 times a day helps in relieving the congestion and opens up the nasal passages for a short period of time. One can do this while in the shower. However, hot steam from boiling water should not be inhaled. One can add eucalyptus oil or menthol to the water. Traditional Chinese medicine recommends the use of menthol, moschus, and borneolum to ease the flow of air through the nasal passages.A warm, moist cloth can be applied to the face many times in the day.Adhesive strips can be placed on the nose to widen the nostrils and thus, facilitate the movement of air through the nose. Petroleum jelly may be applied below the nostrils to prevent the formation of dry skin under the nostrils. Mucus should be removed at regular intervals. Older children may be asked to blow their noses. However, an aspirator should be used for infants.A nasal saline spray is useful in relieving the congestion in the nose. A homemade saline spray can be prepared and utilized 3 to 4 times a day. A nasal saline solution can be prepared as follows:The solution should be prepared with exact measures to avoid any adverse reactions due to excess salt or baking soda. Nasal sprays can be used for 3 days continuously before discontinuing for the next 3 days.. However the physician may recommend certain specialized sprays for specific allergies. Allergic rhinitis can be treated with acupuncture . There have been many small studies that have observed a beneficial effect of acupuncture. However, the general efficacy of the treatment needs to be confirmed with larger sample studies.Avoid contact with irritants such as cigarette smoke Over-the-counter medications may assist in relieving the congestion in the nose based on the appropriate cause.. A pediatricians advice should be availed of with regards to over-the-counter medications. Antihistamines can be utilized if nasal congestion occurs due to an allergy. These drugs can make an individual feel drowsy.A stuffy nose can be dried up with the help of decongestants . However, the use of decongestants should be discontinued following a week if the symptoms persist and one should consult a physician.
Vivek Agnihotri's political drama 'Tashkent Files' starring Pallavi Joshi and Mithun Chakraborty released today. The movie tries to find the answer to the reason behind the mysterious death of PM Lal Bahadur Shastri.

The movie is not a commercial pot boiler but has garnered a lot of praise in the country and is also turning out to be a hit with the overseas audience. The public feels that besides being a greatly researched movie, it is also a good history lesson for all of us.

#TashkentFiles is not just a film; it is lesson of history & it will teach us about our past. So it must be watched & if you have children who are studying then it must be watched as a chapter from history which we weren't taught. Kudos @vivekagnihotri  Chowkidar Avinash Choubey (@avinashchoubey) April 12, 2019

Just loved it!@vivekagnihotri You are nailing an entire section of people in politics and civil soceity. More strength to you.





#tashkentfiles  Rajesh A. Singh (@PerlOPython) April 12, 2019

Got the opportunity to watch 'The Tashkent Files' last evening and I was mind blown!

Hats off to @vivekagnihotri for bringing out facts about Lal Bahadur Shastri's murder that were deeply buried. The matrix he explained is an absolute eye opener. Must watch film for all! pic.twitter.com/bYNAOu83fq  Chowkidar Priti Gandhi (@MrsGandhi) April 12, 2019

We often forget the heroes who were not glorified for their contribution to the nation and this movie asks all the right questions.

#TashkentFiles brilliant work done by the director and actors.

With the Tashkent files director @vivekagnihotri have asked some serious questions. @shweta_official stands out in this well crafted movie.  Rajat singh (@rajat_since97) April 12, 2019

I had the privilege to watch #Tashkentfiles at the special screening here in Mumbai. It is a brave movie that strikes the right cords. It gives into the history that has been shot down by the "the family" and their Romilaisque cronies. Must Watch.

Bravo @vivekagnihotri Sir  pic.twitter.com/SN7pr7FxzP  Chowkidar Dhaval Patel (@dhaval241086) April 12, 2019

Truth always has tentacles which never bow down

Truth is like pure water which always finds its way out

This weekend explore the truth which was hidden for decades

The mystery behind the death of one of the Greatest PM's Shastriji

Thanks you @vivekagnihotri #TashkentFiles  Vikas Raina #Chowkidar #KP4Modi (@rainavikas) April 12, 2019

While the movie was in murky waters with a lot of people blaming it for stirring unwanted political agendas, the 'aam admi' is hailing the work of the director and the actors for fighting through all of it and opening the minds of Indians.

The #TashkentFiles releases 2day. It's an important film. If we even call it 1 of the most important films in our history, then too it won't be an exaggeration.



It takes lot of courage 2 make a film like this & credit must go to Vivek Agnihotri. Please go & watch it.  Chowkidar hity (@hitykumar) April 12, 2019

In case this piques your interest as well, then you should do your homework, watch 'Tashkent Files' and form your opinion about the whether it is the only political drama that matters for now or not.
Jammu voted yesterday, in its first phase of the Lok Sabha elections and while it all went smoothly, there was more to casting votes in that space. There was unity and love amidst people while the elections were on and we know this because an 83-year-old woman by the name of Satya Devi came to cast her vote and the CRPF soldiers walked quietly with her, holding her hand while she was on her way to the ballots.

As the elderly woman was preparing to step on the ramp, the CRPF jawan told her 'dheere dheere aaiye', making it a remarkably endearing moment in the history of Jammy casting votes.

Watch the video here:

CRPF women personnel help an elderly lady to enter the polling booth. Gandhinagar, Jammu.



"Dheer Dheere aaiye," the soldier adds. @crpfindia pic.twitter.com/zn9rgn7Q9z  Pooja Shali (@PoojaShali) 11 April 2019

Satya Devi also held up an inked finger post voting.

 Indiatimes

Soon after this video made its way through Twitter, people sent their love and reactions, while praising CRPF.

Salute  NikhilSharma Ranyal (@NikhilS43216872) 11 April 2019

       INDIAN  Vikrant Singh (@_VikrantSingh) 11 April 2019

This should inspire everyone to vote!  Mr Certitude (@Swapzz) 11 April 2019

This is the true spirit of India !!! Youngsters watch this and make it a huge turnout all over India !!! Jai Hind !!

Also salute to our forces @crpfindia .  Kalpana Prasad (@KalpanaPrasad03) 11 April 2019

Wah...     400+ (.   )..New India (@b41eeb16ad18476) 11 April 2019

We hope many such instances around the country make it to social media to encourage more people, old and young to vote sensibly. J&K has 6 Lok Sabha seats but only Jammu and Baramulla elected members to the lower house of parliament yesterday.
Do you happen to remember that really hilarious scene in the TV series 'Friends', where Joey wears all of Chandler's clothes, including his boxers, just because they were in an argument? Well, of course, you remember, that scene. It's downright funny and we've seen it at least ten times already!

But here, you can still refresh your memory:

Why are we even taking about this scene? Well, because a woman did something similar with her clothes and we think she pulled off a 'Joey' pretty damn well! A woman in Manchester pulled off a Joey by wearing at least 4kg of clothes on her because the flight she was booked in gave her a tough time!

30-year-old Natalie Wynn was travelling to Fuerteventura via a flight with a friend and the airline official weighed her bag and found out it was 9.4 kilos, which was 3.4 kilos more than the actual limit. The woman was given no choice than to pay 65, which is INR 5,800. She obviously refused to pay such an exorbitant amount and started emptying her bags and wearing all her clothes one by one!

 Instagram

I put on four dresses, two pairs of shorts, I tied a dress around my neck, put a skirt on, I shoved two dresses down the dresses I had on, and two pairs of shoes as well, and a cardigan she told a popular international publication.

With so many clothes on, it wasn't easy for her to breath and it was significantly hot but people around her were cheering for her, so that gave her hope to travel wearing all her luggage!

There were people around us cheering us on because after I did it my friend decided she would do it too because her baggage was also overweight. We were definitely a sight walking on to the plane she added.

 Instagram

While other passengers did offer Natalie some space in their luggage for her clothes, the airline officials didn't allow that. So Natalie had no choice really but to face the heat and that too quite literally!

But as soon as she got on the plane, she started taking the extra clothes off one by one and it was quite a task. She had to do it because otherwise, she would have passed out from the heat!

 Instagram

This is seriously such a great reminder of the iconic show, which we still happen to catch once every while!

Looking at Natalie's dedication to resolve this matter by wearing all her clothes instead, one of the airline spokespeople said, "later this month we are increasing our hand baggage allowance to 8kg. This will hopefully help her travel a little less like Joey from 'Friends' next time!

 Instagram

Well, good job Nat! You actually changed some airline rules around by pulling off the Joey stunt. So proud of you!
Bollywood has been churning out some quality biopics and historical drama films. Be it Vicky Kaushal's 'Uri' or more recently, Akshay Kumar's 'Kesari', these kind of films based on true events and facts are a hit amongst Indian audience for obvious reasons.

 Hounourpoint

Not only do such films make us more aware, but they also instill a sense of patriotism and belongingness from time-to-time. It seems like another such biopic is in the pipeline and this one shall be based on the life of a 21-year-old Indian Army daredevil who single-handedly destroyed seven Pakistani tanks during the 1971 Indo-Pak war.

 Alchetron

The brave martyr's name is 2nd Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, and he is the reason why India won the war against Pakistan in 1971. However, before we tell you more about the biopic on Arun Khetarpal, let us tell you who he was and what he did for India's victory.

The Crowning Glory Of Battle of Basantar

Daredevil in the truest sense of the word, 2nd Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, was part of the Poona Horse regiment, and was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra for his unrivalled bravery and sacrifice for the nation in the Battle of Basantar which was during the 1971 Indo-Pak War.

 Hounourpoint

A courageous youngman of 21-years-old, Khetarpal had just joined the Indian Army as a 2nd Lieutenant when he was called on duty to the war front in 1971. Born in Pune on 14th October 1950, he came from an army background. His grandfather had served in the British Indian army during World War I while Arun's father, Brigadier M.L. Khetarpal, served in Indian Army's Engineering Corps until his retirement.

1971 Indo-Pak War

When war was finally declared between India and Pakistan in 1971, Arun's regiment was given the task to set up a bridgehead across the Basantar river. Close to Sialkot, the territory was of strategic importance for both sides. During the course of the war Indian troops reported alarming artillery onslaught from the Pakistani side and requested for tank support. Thus on December 16th, two Poona Horse tank troops (of which, one was under the command of 2nd Lt Arun Khetarpal) were moved towards Jarpal in Pakistan.

 Lazydesiauthor

Enroute the Basantar river crossing, they were attacked by Pakistani tanks. The Indian side retaliated effectively. However, during the battle, the other Poona Horse tank came under attack and the commander was killed. That left Khetarpal alone to fight off the Pakistani tanks.

2nd Lt Khetarpal Changes The Course Of History

Undeterred, Khetarpal led a strong counter-attack, that would eventually lead to his martyrdom and also give India the final push towards victory. Aboard a Famagusta JX 202, Khetarpal single-handedly destroyed five enemy tanks before getting hit by a shell.

 Wikipedia

A gravely injured Khetarpal was asked to withdraw at this point, but the 2nd Lieutenant refused to give up. He had told his commanding officer No Sir, I will not abandon my tank. My gun is still working and I will get these bastards!

Until his dying breath, Khetarpal managed to destroy a total of seven Pakistani tanks. This gave the Indian troops a much needed upper hand that not only led to an eventual victory for the Indian side, but was also the beginning of the end of war.

Biopic On Param Vir Chakra Khetarpal

 India today/Wikipedia

As per latest reports, it is being said that filmmaker Sriram Raghavan shall be directing the biopic on Khetarpal, which has been titled 'Ekkis'. It is also being said that the makers have approached Varun Dhawan to play the role of Khetarpal in the movie.
Acer just showed off its new gaming laptop that has a keyboard that comes out from the main body. According to the company, this design helps keep the laptop cool and the laptop is called the Predator Helios 700. The laptop comes with Nvidia's latest RTX 2080/2070 GPU and Intel's i9 mobile processors.

 BCCL

The extendable keyboard basically allows more airflow to the processor and GPU in order to prevent throttling and overheating. This design lets the Predator Helios 700 make more room for fans which are revealed when the keyboard is extended.

More airflow means that laptop will have more scope for overclocking, in theory. However, we will only know that once we get to test it ourselves. Along with the keyboard, the touchpad also slides out along with the keyboard at an angle so that it is comfortable to use.

 BCCL

Even the WASD keys on this laptop are raised and are pressure sensitive just like modern controllers. This will enable gamers to put the right amount of force to carry out activities in-game. For example, if you press the W key halfway, your character in your game will walk at a slower pace. Once pressed harder, your character will walk faster or run.

Continuing to deliver best-in-class performance, gamers can look to Acer's Predator Helios line for powerful and affordable gaming notebooks, said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Product Business, Acer Inc. They are innovative, future-proof and reliable thanks to advanced thermal technologies that keep them cool during intense gaming sessions.

 BCCL

In terms of display, the Helios 799 has a 1920X1080 resolution display with a refresh rate of 144Hz. The display has NVIDIA G-Sync support for better performance however we would have liked to see a 4K display. The laptop's price would increase considerably, however, a 4K variant would be a welcomed addition to the portfolio.

The Predator Helios 700 gaming notebooks will be available in North America in April starting at USD 2,699.99; in EMEA in July starting at EUR 2,699.00; and in China in June, starting at RMB 19,999.
Minister of Foreign Affairs Giorgos Katrougalos participated in the proceedings of the Ministerial Meeting of the Berlin Process, which was held in Warsaw on Thursday 11 April and Friday 12 April.

All leaders present welcomed the Prespa Agreement as a model for a European paradigm for resolving differences and a factor of stability in the region, while praising Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his North Macedonia counterpart for their courageous political decision.

During his intervention on bilateral issues in the Balkans, the Minister of Foreign Affairs presented the Greek foreign policy's positive agenda of cooperation and for the strengthening of the European prospects of the regions countries. He placed particular emphasis on undertaking initiatives, as well as on Greece's methodical approach to resolving the name dispute with North Macedonia, through which definitive resolution of a long-standing difference was achieved, strengthening the overall security and stability of Southeast Europe, while at the same time facilitating joint growth through regional interconnectivity plans with regard to infrastructure and energy.

On the margins of the Meeting, the Minister of Foreign Affairs met with the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Igor Crnadak, and of Kosovo, Behgjet Pacolli.
Urgent: Chinese Woman's Life in Peril Should The Netherlands Repatriate

If she returns to China, she could lose her life.

Photo: Chen Yan (right) with ChinaAid President Bob Fu.

NEWS PROVIDED BY

ChinaAid

April 12, 2019 April 12, 2019

AMSTERDAM, April 12, 2019 / Christian Newswire / -- A Chinese petitioner is on track to be repatriated by the Netherlands back to China, where she will likely face severe persecution and may even lose her life.

Chen Yan sought asylum in the Netherlands after she faced persecution for petitioning the Chinese Communist Party. Now, shortly after she protested during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang's visit to Brussels (see a Radio Free Asia video here ), the Netherlands is holding her in immigration custody and planning to send her back to China.

If this happens, her life will be in great peril.

Therefore, ChinaAid is calling on the Dutch government to not return Chen to China and urging all of its supporters to stand up and tell the Netherlands not to risk the life of an innocent woman.

Please click here to help people who are persecuted in China, like Chen Yan.

SOURCE ChinaAid

CONTACT: ChinaAid

Office phone: 432-689-6985

Media phone: 432-553-1080

Related Links
(CNN)  The U.S. Navy has announced it will drop criminal charges and instead issue censures in relation to the deadly 2017 collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a cargo ship, according to a press release from the Navy.

Charges against former commanding officer Cmdr. Bryce Benson and former crew member Lt. Natalie Combs will be withdrawn and dismissed, the release said.

"This decision is in the best interest of the Navy, the families of the Fitzgerald Sailors, and the procedural rights of the accused officers," the release said. "Both officers were previously dismissed from their jobs and received non-judicial punishment."

Last year, a statement from the Navy announced that one commander, two lieutenants and one lieutenant junior grade were facing charges including dereliction of duty, hazarding a vessel, and negligent homicide.

Seven sailors died aboard the Fitzgerald, a guided missile destroyer, when it collided with a cargo ship off the east coast of Japan on June 17, 2017.

In addition to Benson and Combs, the executive officer and senior non-commissioned officer of the ship were removed from their duties.

"We've lost trust and confidence in their ability to lead in those positions and they will not return to the ship," Vice Chief of Naval Operations Adm. William Moran told reporters at the Pentagon late Thursday. The 7th Fleet also said several junior officers were relieved of duty.

According to the release, a program to improve readiness and training to avoid future accidents "remains on track."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "US Navy drops charges against USS Fitzgerald leadership over 2017 collision."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12) Filipino-American actor Darren Criss flew halfway across the globe to visit the country close to his heart -- and roots. But it wasn't all rest and recreation for the award-winning artist.

In an Instagram post Thursday evening, Criss gave his social media followers a sneak peek of his environmental advocacy as he called for better waste management in the Philippines.

"So let's talk about waste management. Yeah, I know, it's not a very sexy topic- but that's exactly why it's such a massive issue in so many parts of the world," the former "Glee" star wrote on his page.

"I decided to take a trip to the Philippines, a country close to my heart, with my friends from (Global Citizen) to learn specifically about Metro Manila's waste and sustainability challenges."

The 32-year-old also urged local government units to implement zero waste programs in their respective communities.

"I met a lot of inspiring people who have made incredible strides towards creating a cleaner, greener future, but the obstacles they face are still overwhelming," the Broadway star added.

Criss, who has recently been vocal about getting in touch with his Filipino roots, recently visited El Nido, Palawan with his wife Mia Swier.

RELATED: LOOK: Darren Criss wears traditional Barong Tagalog in his wedding
LANSING  Judges could begin imposing stiffer punishments to certain repeat child abusers under legislation passed by the Michigan Senate this week.

Senate Bill Nos. 29-30 would set new maximum prison terms for people convicted of third- or fourth-degree child abuse following a prior conviction.

The maximum punishment for third-degree child abuse is currently two years. It would increase to five years for a second offense.

Fourth-degree child abuse is punishable by up to one year in jail. The legislation would increase the punishment to two years behind bars for a second offense.

Sentencing guidelines are advisory, so harsher sentences would not be required for judges.

Third-degree child abuse occurs when the abuser knowingly or intentionally harms the child physically.

The (cases) we see are usually the ones that fall into this category, Huron County Prosecutor Timothy J. Rutkowski told the Tribune. Such as a defendant spanking a child with a belt in Wal-Mart.

We deal with third- and fourth-degree cases more than first- and second-degrees, he added.

Fourth-degree child abuse is defined as neglecting a child or acting in a reckless manner that causes physical harm. It can also be defined as knowingly or intentionally committing an act that poses an unreasonable risk of harm, regardless of whether physical harm results.

This could be like leaving a child in a vehicle unattended, Rutkowski said in reference to the fourth-degree charge.

A child advocacy center provides a child-friendly and safe location in which law enforcement and Child Protective Services investigators can conduct interviews with children who are alleged victims of crimes.

Were trying to bring an advocacy center in our area so our family members wont have to travel great distances to be interviewed, Rutkowski said. The advocacy center would also open up other programming to assist victims and their families.

If you suspect a child is being abused or neglected, or if you are a child who is being mistreated, call the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services at 855-444-3911 at any time. The phone number is toll-free and allows you to report abuse or neglect of any child.

Locally, the Huron County CA/N Council is a non-profit agency that seeks to eliminate child abuse and neglect in the Thumb. It is one of 73 local child abuse and neglect prevention councils representing all 83 counties in Michigan.

For more information, or to learn about how you can volunteer, visit www.huroncountycancouncil.org.
PORT AUSTIN  Port Austin has always been a great place to visit, and recently, it has experienced a surge in tourism thanks to the hard work and creativity of its local business owners and community members.

But, this has created a problem: The village's successful tourism industry, restaurants and shops are all having trouble finding help.

Almost every establishment in the area has a "Help Wanted" sign sitting in its window. Because of this, local business owner Erica Bruce decided to try and fix the problem.

Bruce, who owns The Bank 1884 restaurant in Port Austin with her husband Casey, has teamed up with the local chamber of commerce to host a job fair at 6:30 p.m. April 18 at the Port Austin Visitor's Center. They will have over 20 booths with job opportunities from all over Huron County.

Those looking to find a job in the retail, restaurant, outdoors or hospitality industry are encouraged to attend. This will be a great place for someone looking for summer work or full time employment.

In addition to the job fair, the night before on May 17, the village will be shutting down State Street in front of Bank 1884. Here, they will serve dinner at a 64-foot long table on a red carpet with bands playing and drinks being served until midnight.

If you would like to offer a job at the job fair or buy tickets to the Banks street dinner, you can contact Erica Bruce at PortAustinProperties@hotmail.com.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12)  The anti-graft court on Friday found retired Lt. Gen. Jacinto Ligot, former military comptroller, guilty of perjury over false declarations in his Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN).

The Sandiganbayan convicted the former military official of six counts of perjury over false declarations in his SALNs from 1998 to 2003. He was originally charged with 11 counts of perjury.

The court sentenced him to imprisonment of at least six years.

Ligot declared he had assets amounting to 3.8 million as of 2003. However, it was found that other properties and accounts not declared in his SALNs reached about 54 million.

"The evidence thus far presented all indicate that accused Ligot willfully and deliberately asserted a falsehood in his SALN by consciously and knowingly omitting in his SALN the properties he knows to be in his and his wife's name," the April 12 decision read.

These properties include proceeds form a condominium unit, investments in the Armed Forces and Police Savings and Loan Association, improvements on a farm in Bukidnon, as well as a property in Tanay, Rizal.

The retired general posted a 72,000 bail pending an appeal on his conviction.

Ligot served for 33 years. He was involved in a corruption scandal in 2011, when another military official revealed a supposed incentive system called "pabaon" within the military organization.

Under the scheme, retiring chiefs of staff during the Arroyo administration were given hefty amounts in addition to the usual retirement benefits.

CNN Philippines Correspondent AC Nicholls contributed to this report.
HARBOR BEACH -- Harbor Beach Community Schools is hosting a 2019 Pirate Technology Expo on May 4.

The expo will have three main events: competitions, workshops and an IT/CS Job Fair.

Competitions will consist of a programming competition and a web design competition. The programming competition will be open to high school students and will consist of two levels of difficulty. The beginner level will be open to students who are just starting to learn their first semester of programming. Students in this difficulty level will be able to program in either Java, C#, or Python. Advanced difficulty is designed for students who have completed at least one semester of programming. Students in this difficulty level must code in Java. Students will compete in teams of two to three members each.

The web design competition will have students compete to design a fully functional and responsive website. Students will be presented with a scenario and must code their webpages to meet the scoring criteria. Students will compete in teams of one to two members.

Both competitions are free and are accepting registrations until April 26. The competitions start at 9 a.m. with team registration and wrap up at 1 p.m. with an awards ceremony. The top ten teams of either competition will earn certificates. The top three teams will receive individual ribbons, and the top team will receive a plaque for their school.

The workshops are free events open to the community. Explore different facets of technology and learn about real world applications of IT and computer science. There are workshops that are aligned for groups of all ages, so please come support our volunteers and check out what technology can do. The workshops will run in 30-minute segments starting at 10 a.m. and finishing at 2:30 p.m.

The IT/CS Job Fair is the final event of the day, running from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Current and past students, as well as community members, are welcome to come talk to the company representatives. Employers are welcome to attend even if they aren't hiring, as it is a great process for students to go through.

Have a team that you want to enter for a competition? Want to attend a workshop or host one? Or perhaps your company would like to attend the job fair? It is not too late to join this exciting event. There will also be registration/information desks at the high school entrance the day of the event.

Email David Roggenbuck at droggenbuck@hbpirates.org or call 989-479-3261 ext. 53439 for more information.
A third case of measles, linked to the outbreak in New York City, has been confirmed in Connecticut, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The person to contract it was an adult from New Haven County who was exposed to measles during the last week of March while on a visit to Brooklyn, N.Y. The department said the diagnosis is linked to the ongoing outbreak of measles in NYC, but not related to the two previously confirmed cases in Connecticut from January.

The latest measles patient in Connecticut had a rash on Thursday. The DPH said the infection period for the person was between April 7 and Friday. The case was isolated as of Friday.

The state DPH said its working with local health departments and health care providers to keep an eye on the break in New York and prevent it in Connecticut.

We are monitoring and investigating this case very closely, including working with our local health departments to follow up with any individuals that may have been exposed to measles, said Renee D. Coleman-Mitchell, state DPH commissioner. Science tells us that the single best thing anyone can do to protect themselves from this highly contagious virus is to get vaccinated.

Statewide vaccination rates are very high, according to the DPH, making a widespread measles outbreak a low risk. But anyone with a fever and a rash should avoid public settings and call their health care provider before going to the facility so workers can prepare for an possible incoming measles case.

The average incubation period of measles from contact until the onset of a rash is 14 days, with a possible range of 7 to 21 days. A person is considered infectious from four days before the rash onset and four days after.

The majority of people exposed to measles in Connecticut are not at-risk of developing the disease since most people have been vaccinated or have had measles in the past, before vaccination became routine, the DPH said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children get two doses of the measles vaccine. First doses start at 12- to 15-months-old and the second dose comes around the ages of 4 to 6.

One dose of the vaccine is about 93 percent effective at preventing measles if exposed to the virus. Two doses are about 97 percent effective. The vaccines does not cause the illness, the DPH said.

A typical case of measles starts with a mild to moderate fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and a sore throat. Three to five days after the start of these symptoms usually start on a persons face at the hairline and spreading downward to the rest of the body.

At the time the rash appears, a persons fever could spike to more than 104 degrees. The rash will typically last a few days and then be gone.

Between Jan. 1 and April 4, there have been 465 cases of measles have been confirmed across 19 states.

The states with reported measles cases are Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas and Washington.

In 2018, there were also three cases of measles reported in Connecticut.

This is the second-largest number of cases reported in the U.S. since measles was knocked out back in 2000, the state Department of Public Health said.

For more information about measles, visit www.cdc.gov/measles.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 12)  A ranking leader of the Abu Sayyaf group and eight other fighters were killed in a series of clashes with government troops in Patikul, Sulu on Thursday, the military said Friday.

A press release from Joint Task Force Sulu identified one of the casualties as Julie Ikit, described as the second-in-command and cousin of senior leader Radullan Sahiron. The elusive Sahiron is among the most wanted terrorists of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation, with a $1 million bounty on his head.

The military said fleeing Abu Sayyaf members left behind Ikit's body after a 45-minute firefight at Sitio Bud Taming in Barangay Panglayahan past 10:30 a.m. This was the first encounter that day between the 32nd Infantry battalion and some 120 Abu Sayyaf members led by Sahiron and Hatib Hajan Sawadjaan, the known successor of the late Isnilon Hapilon as the so-called "emir" of international terror group ISIS in Southeast Asia.

At around 3:45 p.m., the First Scout Ranger Battalion encountered the same group of Abu Sayyaf fighters at Sitio Kan Isnain, Barangay Kabun Takas, also in Patikul town. Authorities found another body of an Abu Sayyaf member as the other bandits withdrew.

Soldiers again engaged the Abu Sayyaf fighters at 5 p.m. and at 5:45 p.m. in the same town. Citing "reliable sources," the military said seven other Abu Sayyaf members died in four consecutive clashes and 19 others were "seriously wounded."

"The loss of Radullan Sahiron's Second in Command and the number of ASG (Abu Sayyaf Group) casualties during the series of encounters will have a dire effect on the ASG's morale and will to fight," the Joint Task Force Sulu's statement read.

It said it will continue to pursue the remaining Abu Sayyaf fighters as ordered by President Rodrigo Duterte. The Abu Sayyaf, notorious for kidnappings and beheadings, is among the terrorist groups cited by Duterte in justifying the need to impose martial law in Mindanao until December 31 this year. He has also ordered an all-out war against the group.
AUSTIN, Texas -- Lightning strikes during a severe storm Wednesday night damaged the runway at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, where extreme weather has kept officials on the defensive in recent weeks.

Still in the early stages of recovery from mid-March flooding, base engineers spent Thursday morning repairing nearly a dozen 3- to 5-inch gashes in the runway caused by lightning strikes, Col. Michael H. Manion, commander of 55th Wing, posted to Facebook.

In advance of the overnight storm, which produced quarter-inch-sized hail, the base on Wednesday evacuated eight of its fleet of C-135s, a fixed-wing reconnaissance aircraft. The base has about 45 aircraft and the remainder were housed in hangars overnight. The aircraft were scheduled to return Thursday afternoon following repairs to the runway, said Ryan Hansen, spokesman for the 55th Wing, which oversees operations at the base.

The damaged runway was just one of many repairs underway as the southeastern Nebraska base is still assessing damage caused by flooding that began March 15 when snowmelt in areas north of the base overwhelmed the banks of the Missouri River. Home to U.S. Strategic Command, the base sits just west of the Missouri River near the city of Bellevue. About one-third of the base sat underwater for days.

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"The recovery process is going to be very long," Hansen said.

The base is now in a 90-day assessment of facilities. Once complete, officials will have a better idea how many facilities can be retrofitted, renovated or must be demolished.

Officials are also monitoring for the potential for more flooding, Hansen said.

By Thursday morning, the risk of flooding had downgraded to barely minimal, said David Pearson, a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in the Omaha Valley.

"We see an increase in the river, but it's not going to get to a level that will impact the base directly," he said. "However, the challenge will be getting through this wet season over the next couple months. We can get into a rainy pattern and the river is already high.

"We are in a better spot than we were," Pearson said.

Offutt isn't the only Air Force base in recovery mode. In October, Hurricane Michael ravaged Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida, causing millions of dollars of damage.

The Air Force has said it needs nearly $5 billion to recover from natural disasters that occurred in fiscal 2019. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said last month that without Congress providing supplemental funding, the service will struggle to recover at the two bases and the entire service will take a hit to meeting critical facility upgrades and readiness requirements.

Looking to mitigate the damage of future natural disasters, a group of senators on Thursday introduced the Requiring Every American Defense Installation to Nullify Environmental Stresses for Security, or READINESS, Act of 2019. Sens. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Jerry Moran, R-Kan.; and Jack Reed, D-R.I., said the legislation will protect military bases from extreme weather events by requiring them to prepare for potential disasters and other risks posed by severe changes in environmental conditions.

If passed, the bill would require bases to create resilience plans that include current risks and threats to military resilience resulting from extreme weather, changes in sea level, flooding or wildfires, future risks and threats and risk mitigation projects, according to a news release from the senators about the READINESS Act. It also requires service secretaries to review resilience plans every five years.

"The Department of Defense has requested billions of dollars in emergency funds to fix bases that have been damaged by extreme weather and heavy flooding," Reed said in the statement. "We must be proactive about enhancing the resiliency of our military installations, thereby lowering disaster-related losses. This bill will ensure that our bases are planning for the impacts of extreme weather and will enhance the military's ability to wisely invest in building resilient systems and infrastructure that are better protected from severe storms, floods, and other impacts of climate change."

The Marine Corps is also struggling to recover after last year's particularly tough hurricane season. Hurricane Florence in September damaged large portions of Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
The Trump administration's policy prohibiting most transgender individuals from entering the military went into effect on Friday following a court ruling last month that removed the final barriers to enforcement.

The new policy comes nearly two years after President Donald Trump announced his plan to ban transgender troops on Twitter.

During a briefing with reporters, Pentagon officials said that the new policy grandfathers in transgender troops and those diagnosed with gender dysphoria, and any person with the diagnosis already under contract to enter the military.

Those members fall under a more permissive policy created under then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2016, and they will not be kicked out, said Tony Kurta, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Military Personnel Policy. That policy ordered the services to prepare to allow openly transgender people to enlist and serve in their preferred gender, provided they met all existing standards.

"For those who want to join the military, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria is presumptively disqualifying under the new policy just as it is and was under the 2016 policy," Kurta said Friday.

Those already grandfathered in will not be barred from reenlisting in the future, he said.

Under the new policy, those who identify as transgender must demonstrate "stability" in their biological sex for 36 months and meet all deployability standards. They must not have transitioned to the gender they identify with and must be willing to serve in the standards and norms associated with their biological gender.

Future diagnoses will be treated on a case-by-case basis, Kurta said.

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Those who do not meet the Pentagon's standards will be referred to a disability review board, where they may be recommended for medical or administrative discharge or early retirement. That includes individuals who are deemed by medical professionals to require surgery.

But "no actions will be taken solely based on gender identity," Kurta said.

During a months-long legal battle, the Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that "all individuals will continue to be treated with dignity and respect."

DoD previously estimated it had fewer than 9,000 active-duty service members who identify as transgender, based on a 2016 workplace survey.

From new data assessed in February, officials estimate that DoD now has roughly 1,400 service members who identify as transgender or have been recently diagnosed with gender dysphoria, Kurta said.

"Those 1,400 are in varying stages of their treatment," he said.

Kurta said "less than 10" are currently undergoing the gender reassignment process.

"Gender dysphoria is a very complicated condition" Kurta said, justifying why military medical providers and behavioral counselors are and have been involved in the process.

"Everyone's medical treatment is different. [But] we provide all necessary treatment to those in uniform," he said.

When asked whether the Pentagon is asking its behavioral health counselors to discourage individuals from transitioning in order to meet the department's readiness goals, Kurta said choices are being presented to individuals who exhibit gender dysphoria.

"We have not had any evidence of that ... [but] it is incumbent under the new system, with someone diagnosed with gender dysphoria, that we do need to lay out to them what the consequences of some of that treatment are," he said.

The review comes following recent court ruling that removed an injunction preventing the Trump administration from putting its transgender ban into place.

The Supreme Court had already allowed the ban earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge George Russell III wrote in March that there cannot be special rules for transgender people wanting to enlist or become officer candidates in Maryland, The Washington Post reported at the time.

Kurta said that the reason for the new transgender policy was not precipitated by Trump's tweet in 2017 but rather by service secretaries raising concerns to then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis about readiness stressors.

"That occurred prior" to Trump's tweet, Kurta said. He could not speak to what each of the branches concerns were.

Many lawmakers, transgender troops and former Defense Department officials took to social media Friday to condemn the new policy.

"Discriminatory & intolerant #TransMilitaryBan goes into effect today," wrote former Navy secretary Ray Maybus on Twitter. "The American principle has always been [about] what you can do, not who you are. Implementing this policy erodes our democracy & seriously weakens our military. Proud to #SupportTransTroops."

"This is not just an LGBTQ issue or a military issue. This is a human rights issue," tweeted Rep. Donald McEachin, a Democrat from Virginia. "Last month I proudly voted for HRes 124 to oppose and lift the #TransMilitaryBan. Today the ban goes into effect but we will continue to #FightTheBan and #ProtectTransTroops."

OutServe-SLDN, an LGBTQA civil rights and activist groups that represent members of the military called the action a setback for not just LGBTQA troops, but for all service members.

"This is a heartbreaking setback to the progress our community has achieved over the last decade. #TransMilitaryBan #SupportTransTroops #WeGotYour6," the group said. "We will continue to fight for open and authentic service."

The Pentagon will review the policy again in two years' time, Kurta said.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214.
As the Pentagon wraps up a sweeping three-year review of valor medals awarded in conflicts after Sept. 11, 2001, officials are preparing to roll out a new policy designed to ensure acts of military heroism receive the full recognition they deserve.

Expected to be announced this month, the new policy will trigger an automatic review at the higher headquarters level within 120 days for any Silver Star or service cross not reviewed by the appropriate service secretary. This will help ensure that troops are not inadvertently approved for lesser awards than they deserve, said Patricia Mulcahy, the Pentagon's director of Officer and Enlisted Personnel Management.

"The view is, at the highest levels is where you would see more of these higher-level awards," Mulcahy told Military.com. "And at a lower level, there are so few folks that do get the highest level of recognition that they might not be as familiar with it from a command perspective. So we're putting this additional review in."

The Pentagon's medals review was launched in 2016 under then-Defense Secretary Ashton Carter out of concern that, due to inconsistency or lack of knowledge in the process, some troops who served in post-9/11 conflicts might be missing out on honors they were due.

In all, officials said, some 1,400 awards were reviewed -- ranging from Bronze Stars with Valor to service crosses -- and 57 medals were ultimately upgraded. The upgraded awards included four Medals of Honor, including two for the famous 2002 Battle of Roberts Ridge in Afghanistan; 30 service crosses; and 23 Silver Stars. Several Army awards are still in the review process and have yet to be announced, officials said.

Those awarded the Medal of Honor as a result of the review include former Senior Chief Petty Officer Britt Slabinski, a former member of SEAL Team 6 who received the award in May 2018; fallen Air Force Tech. Sgt. John Chapman, who was posthumously awarded the medal in August 2018; former Army Sgt. Ronald Shurer, a medic who received the medal in October 2018; and Army Staff Sgt. Travis Atkins, who was posthumously awarded the medal last month.

Officials who spoke with Military.com said the review process did not reveal any trends indicating troops were being systematically overlooked for higher awards, but did indicate that familiarity with evaluating the most prestigious combat awards makes a difference.

"From an award criteria [standpoint], for the Distinguished Service Cross, Air Force Cross, Navy Cross, it does say for actions not warranting award of the Medal of Honor," said Doug Johnson, assistant director for Military Decorations and Awards Policy at the Pentagon. " ... And so by virtue of the way the criteria is written, you should be looking at it against the higher-level award criteria."

The new automatic review policy, he said, will ensure that awards that cannot receive full consideration at a lower level due to operational demands or other pressures make it to the desk of the relevant service secretary quickly, for closer examination.

"That way, that organization that does [award evaluations] regularly knows what that criteria is and can review what was approved downrange," Johnson said.

A breakdown in the medal awards process is what prompted a multi-part review of the system and of decided awards in the first place.

Then-Army Capt. William Swenson, who received the Medal of Honor in 2013 for heroism during the Battle of Ganjgal in Afghanistan in 2009, was subjected to a 19-month delay in receiving his award due to lost paperwork, prompting a public apology from then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

When the Pentagon announced Carter's medals review in 2016, it also rolled out a number of changes to the awards process. Among new requirements introduced then were a 45-day deadline for initiating nominations for awards following valorous action; a one-year time limit on presentation of awards below the Medal of Honor; mandatory notification of the applicable service's decorations and awards branch by the first general or admiral endorsing a Medal of Honor nomination; and a review by the appropriate geographic combatant commander on Medal of Honor nominations following a service secretary's recommendation.

The case of one upgrade, in particular, highlights the significance of the pains the Pentagon has taken to revisit medal awards and give each service member his or her due.

Shurer, a Green Beret medic who heroically triaged wounded troops during a brutal 2008 battle in Afghanistan's Shok Valley, saw his award upgraded by two degrees, from Silver Star all the way to Medal of Honor. He received his rightful award last year amid another battle -- with Stage 4 lung cancer.

"Mr. Shurer, it was passed on to me that he was very surprised the upgrade," Johnson said. "We did keep it close hold. ... It was a good news story that we were able to get him recognized."

-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @HopeSeck.
The general nominated to lead the Marine Corps defended his service's place within U.S. Special Operations Command after a think tank urged service leaders to ditch the mission.

Lt. Gen. David Berger told lawmakers this week that Marine Raiders are vital to U.S. Special Operations Command. He was responding to questions from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, about a recent report from the Heritage Foundation think tank, which promoted disbanding Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command.

MARSOC, which was created years after the other services stood up their special operations units, "developed further and faster than most thought possible," Berger said.

"We operate sort of as a joint force every day with the aviation, logistics and ground forces," he told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "So, it's a natural fit for them.

"I think that Special Operations Command and the joint force is better for them there," he added."

Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a retired Marine officer, released a report last month called "Rebuilding America's Military: The United States Marine Corps." The Marine Corps, he argued, must focus on a full return to its amphibious roots. Any programs that pull manpower or other resources from that mission should be realigned.

That includes MARSOC, he said, especially since the Army, Navy and Air Force already devote resources to SOCOM.

The idea prompted a swift rebuttal from veterans who'd served in the Marine Raider community.

Berger, who previously served in reconnaissance units, said the small unit leadership the special operations community depends on is a natural fit coming from the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps' 2020 budget request calls for increasing the number of billets assigned to the 13-year-old command.

That's not to say there isn't room for each service to look at what they need to provide to SOCOM going forward. MARSOC spokesman Maj. Nick Mannweiler said last month that Wood's recommendations were "one aspect of a much broader conversation on Marine Corps and joint operations in response to our evolving national security challenges."

-- Gina Harkins can be reached at gina.harkins@military.com. Follow her on Twitter @ginaaharkins.
The Marine Corps' Aging Amphibious Vehicle Fleet Will Be Kept Out of the Water

Eight Marines and a Navy corpsman died when an AAV sank hundreds of feet into the ocean during exercises on July 30, 2020.
The Pentagon on Friday wouldn't address whether or not its military members currently deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border should be exhibiting more force towards detained migrants, a suggestion made by President Donald Trump earlier this week.

"I would encourage you to talk to the White House" on the president's sentiments, Pentagon spokesman Charlie Summers told reporters during a briefing.

When pressed on the matter, Summers added, "we are in support of direction by the commander-in-chief. And that's simply, that's our role."

Trump on Wednesday said he'll put more troops on the southern border, where members of his administration say the situation is deteriorating with a new influx of migrants. He suggested Democrats are standing in the way of changing "horrible laws" that prohibit the military from getting "a little rough."

"I'm going to have to call up more military," the president said. "Our military, don't forget, can't act like a military would act. Because if they got a little rough, everybody would go crazy."

It was not immediately clear which laws Trump was referring to, or how he'd like to see U.S. troops acting while operating inside their own country. Currently, the federal law known as the Posse Comitatus Act prohibits military personnel from having direct contact with civilians, a provision that keeps the military from acting as a domestic law-enforcement agency.

Changing it would require an act of Congress.

Summers stressed the military remains at the border only to support the Department of Homeland Security, which has the "lead role" on detaining and housing migrants coming across the border.

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Meanwhile, the Pentagon says it has identified a new list of potential military bases that could house children if needed, but has not yet received a new request from DHS to begin housing Central American migrants, a defense department official told Military.com.

No migrant children or families are currently living on DoD bases, the official said on background.

The Army recently awarded nearly $1 billion in contracts to begin construction of 57-miles of new border barriers and the Pentagon is preparing to send more troops to the border if called upon.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told Defense News this week that, given the influx of migrants who are fleeing violence or their governments, more work for troops is likely.

"Strictly on the basis of the volume and how much the situation there has deteriorated, I would expect us to do more," Shanahan said. That could mean setting up temporary shelters, he added, and picking up other requests "consistent with things we've done in the past," he said in the interview.

Trump and Shanahan have not said how many more troops might be sent to the border.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @oriana0214.
The movie "American Sniper," based on former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's book of the same name, omits two incredible episodes from his life. I'd like to share these stories with you now in order to show another side of Kyle and to respond to some of the ongoing commentary about him.

First, some background: Kyle is one of the nine heroes profiled in my book "Valor: Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front," which tells true stories of heroism by American troops.

I interviewed Kyle when he was relatively unknown. Later, when he wrote his own book, Kyle told me that he largely omitted these episodes from his memoir, because he didn't want to leave me hanging. That alone says a lot about his character.

As we worked together on his chapter, I spent a bit of time with Kyle. Our interviews stretched over eight hours during one of his tours in Baghdad. We exchanged numerous emails to resolve outstanding issues and refine the text. Over that time, I caught glimpses into his mindset.

And it rocked my world.

Selfless Defender

His dedication to his fellow American troops was intense and overpowering. On several well-documented occasions, he deliberately put his life in grave danger to save other Americans. Protecting American lives, he told me, was his driving force.

So, when I heard some negative backlash about Kyle -- calling him "a hate-filled killer," "coward," or "mass-murdering [sic] sniper" -- I had to share my experience.

First, Kyle was a hate-filled killer. But not "a racist who took pleasure in dehumanizing and killing brown people," as one writer suggested in a British periodical.

That's not fair to him. Not at all.

In our interviews, Kyle certainly conveyed that he hated the insurgents, the Islamic fundamentalist militants against whom they were fighting, and that he was proud of killing many of them. There was no secret about that. He called them "savages" and spoke of them with unmistakable disdain. "They were complete dumbasses," he said to me. "Just idiots with guns."

When Kyle appeared on Bill O'Reilly's show in 2012, he said: "I'm killing [the insurgents] to protect my fellow Americans." When O'Reilly insisted that Kyle liked it, he responded, "It's not a problem taking out people that want your people dead. ... That's not a problem at all."

Forgive me, but that doesn't seem terribly damning in my view. Heck, I freely admit that I hate terrorists, too.

But Kyle never expressed to me any comparable views about Iraqi civilians. It was all about the terrorists who were beheading and torturing civilians (Iraqis and westerners alike).

No, the Kyle I knew was motivated by something far more noble -- defending innocent civilians and his American brethren. In fact, later in his 2012 interview with O'Reilly, the host asked whether he had any regrets, and Kyle said, "Yes -- it's the people I couldn't save." O'Reilly pushed him, saying: "The Americans you couldn't save? The allied forces?"

Kyle's response was telling: "The Americans, the local Iraqis, anyone who I witnessed violence coming down on them and I could not save them." That flies directly in the face of the bogus "racist" claim.

Heavy Contact and Saving the Injured

Two incidents during the Second Battle of Fallujah in November 2004 illustrate this selflessness, this willingness to put himself in grave danger for his comrades. I feel compelled to tell these stories because they reveal Kyle's dedication to saving lives, not just taking them.

The first episode occurred in early November 2004. It was during an overwatch mission, in which Kyle was providing rooftop cover for Marines clearing buildings below. The Marines encountered a group of enemy fighters, and "heavy contact" erupted. The enemy fell back and barricaded themselves into a house. The Marines were left exposed in the street.

Kyle and another SEAL sniper realized they were no longer effective from the rooftop, so they flew down the stairs to support the Marines. By this time, the Marines had barricaded themselves in a building across the street from the insurgents' house.

But two Marines had been shot and lay in the road, writhing in pain.

Kyle couldn't bear to see the Marines struggling helplessly in the street. "When you see an injured man, you do whatever you can to save him," he told me. As a Navy SEAL amongst a group of "young, 18-year-old kids" barely out of basic training, Kyle felt he had a special obligation. "It's beaten into your head throughout your training: 'You're the better, more effective warrior.'" That meant he had to get those Marines, no matter what.

Kyle and the other SEAL darted out into the street to the injured men, sprinting 20 yards into a torrent of gunfire. "You can hear the snaps. You know they're close," he said. "You just block it out."

Kyle scurried in front of the enemy's hideout and grabbed one of the injured Marines. The man was screaming in pain from gunshots to one arm and both legs, and worse, a devastating gut shot that somehow had slid below his body armor. With bullets filling the air, Kyle began to drag him toward safety.

Kyle focused on the man he was trying to save, doing his best to block out the rounds that danced at his feet and zipped by his head. "During the heat of it, you're not thinking about it. You know you could get hit at any moment, and they'll put another belly button in [your] forehead, ... but you just put your head down and go do it."

Kyle tugged, dragged and pulled the wounded man until they both fell backward into the alley, finally shielded from the guerillas' fire. He felt the Marine's blood all over his hands. He heard the man's anguished screams, "Don't tell my mom that I died screaming like this!" The screaming continued for a few more agonizing moments.

And then it stopped.

Kyle remembered those moments in excruciating detail. "I never met this kid before," he said bitterly, "and he wanted me to tell his mother how he died." Four years later, during our interviews, Kyle still couldn't shake the fact that he failed to save that kid's life.

Covering Fire and Refusing to Quit

The second story occurred just a few days later. Kyle was once again on overwatch in Fallujah, providing support from rooftops while Marines moved from house to house to clear large swaths of the city.

As the Marines plodded along, he heard enemy gunfire. He scrambled down to locate the shooters.

Kyle stumbled upon a Marine unit clustered at the end of an alley. They told him that a small group of Marines were barricaded in a house about 50 yards away at the end of the passage, and that a number of guerillas were in the house across from them, pinging away at the trapped Americans.

Kyle could see that every time the Marines moved -- even just to peek out the window -- a barrage of enemy gunfire erupted. They hopelessly were trapped. If they had tried to escape down the alley, they would have been gunned down.

Kyle knew he had to act. "Seeing those guys getting shot up, it would chew me up inside to know that I sat back in safety and didn't help them," he told me.

"I would rather die helping those guys out than have a coward's conscience the rest of my life," he said.

So Kyle ran down the alley. It was a broad passageway, 10 or 15 yards wide. The ground was paved and the walls were dense, made of stone or cement with stucco-like coating.

Kyle's plan was to go down the alley and provide suppressive fire, allowing the Marines to escape back to the top of the alley. That meant he would have to go directly in front of the enemy compound, effectively running into the middle of a firing range during target practice.

As he proceeded, insurgents started firing at him. Kyle fired back, trying to keep the heat off the trapped Marines. He ran out of ammunition and had to reload. Twice.

He finally arrived at the house. Facing the insurgent property and maintaining suppressive fire in that direction, he back-kicked the door to the Marines' house and shouted (in less than diplomatic terms) that they should vacate the area immediately.

The Marines scurried away, and Kyle prepared to follow them. As he started to move, he saw an injured Marine with multiple shots to his legs. He couldn't move. Kyle thought back to the man who had died in his arms a few days earlier and knew what he had to do. "I had to grab my guy," he told me, "and get the hell outta there."

Kyle ran to the injured Marine and grabbed him with his left hand. His right hand held the pistol grip of the sniper rifle, which he'd wedged between his chest and his left arm so that he could continue to shoot at the enemy and give himself a modicum of cover. In this contorted position, Kyle began to pull the injured Marine back up the alley.

They managed to pass the insurgent safe-house without getting hit. Then, halfway down the alley, Kyle heard the enemy fighters emerging. If they entered the alley, they would be right behind Kyle and the injured Marine.

His rifle was empty, and he had no more magazines. There was only one thing to do: sling his rifle on his back, grab the wounded man with both hands and "haul ass." As he dragged the man, the insurgents chased them and "got off a few rounds." Kyle felt bullets flying past and was sure he was going to get hit.

"I could see shrapnel coming off the wall," he told me. "Oh, yeah, I thought I was going to die." He was nearing the breaking point. "I was suckin' wind. My legs were burnin'. I thought I was going to puke. I felt like quitting," he said. "I felt like stopping and saying, 'F__ it. You win. You got me.'"

But he did not stop. "The inner drive just won't let you give up," he told me. Somehow, some way, he just kept running, kept lugging the injured man, kept dodging bullets.

Now, the clustered Marines began firing back at the guerillas. For a few nerve-racking seconds, Kyle was caught in a crossfire. Eventually, the Marines' firepower forced the insurgents back to their compound.

Kyle pulled the injured man the rest of the way. He survived.

Kyle literally saved his life.

So when I hear people (who never met Kyle) call him a mass murderer or a coward or a hate-filled killer, I can't help but think about those incidents in Fallujah, in which he willingly put himself in grave danger trying to save lives. That's the Chris Kyle I knew.

Mark Lee Greenblatt is the author of "Valor: Unsung Heroes from Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front" (Taylor Trade, 2014), which is available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble and independent bookstores across the country. Mark has been appeared on NBC, CBS, MSNBC, Fox News Radio, CSPAN-Book TV, Wall Street Journal TV, Forbes.com, and dozens of other media outlets.

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North of 60 Mining News  April 12, 2019

This hole, drilled at Dry Creek, cut 8.9 meters of massive sulfide mineralization averaging 6.5 percent zinc, 2.7 percent lead, 124 g/t silver, 0.7 g/t gold and 0.2 percent copper.

White Rock Minerals Ltd. April 9 reported that following the March 25 signing of a joint venture with Sandfire Resources, the two Australian companies are already gearing up for an exciting 2019 field season at the zinc-rich Red Mountain project about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Fairbanks, Alaska.

Two deposits already identified on the property  Dry Creek and West Tundra Flats  host 16.7 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.1 percent (1.49 billion pounds) zinc; 1.7 percent (630 million lb) lead; 0.2 percent (57.3 million lb) copper; 99 grams per metric ton (53.5 million ounces) silver; and 0.7 g/t (352,000 oz) gold.

A technical committee comprised of representatives from White Rock and Sandfire have approved an AU$6 million (US$4.3 million) program for 2019 that aims to drill as many new targets as possible across the 475-square-kilometers (117,375 acres) Red Mountain property.

"Having the technical and financial support of Sandfire Resources  a very successful explorer and developer of VMS deposits  is a strong endorsement to the quality and potential of our Red Mountain project," said White Rock Minerals CEO Matt Gill.

To help narrow down targets for the drills, the JV partners have decided to kick off the 2019 program with a 3,000-line-kilometer airborne electromagnetics survey. Expected to get underway by mid-April, this new SkyTEM survey will be the first modern high-powered time-domain electromagnetic survey at Red Mountain.

With the capability of identifying conductivity anomalies to depths of 400 meters, Red Mountain and Sandfire believe this geophysical survey could fast-track a significant new discovery.

"To be able to use a modern high-powered geophysics technique for the first time, not previously applied to this highly prospective field, is a great kick-off to this field season," said Gill.

Other work being carried out to develop targets for this summer's drilling include:

 satellite spectral analysis, including the assessment of hyperspectral data to identify and map alteration zonation ahead of field exploration;

 regional whole rock lithogeochemical analysis of tenement-wide rock chip samples collected in 2018 and accessed from the Alaskan geologic survey to identify regional alteration zonation to assist in prioritizing targets;

 detailed on-ground geological reconnaissance and soil geochemical sampling across regional target areas using a portable XRF (x-ray fluorescence) analyzer to deliver rapid target definition; and

 electrical ground geophysics across the regional targets using techniques that successfully mapped conductivity associated with mineralization at Dry Creek and West Tundra Flats.

The Hunter discovery will be the first target of the 2019 drill program, which is expected to get underway by the end of May.

Reconnaissance exploration carried out by White Rock crews in 2018 discovered a two-foot massive sulfide outcrop at Hunter rich in sphalerite (zinc mineralization) and galena (lead mineralization).

Further prospecting at this new zone about 5,200 meters southeast of Dry Creek mapped massive sulfide mineralization for about 500 meters along strike and identified evidence that this VMS target could extend for more than 1,000 meters.

White Rock Minerals Ltd. This two-foot massive sulfide outcrop rich in sphalerite (zinc mineralization) and galena (lead mineralization) was discovered at the Hunter prospect during White Rock's 2018 reconnaissance exploration at Red Mountain.

The discovery hole, HR18-01, cut 1.4 meters of massive sulfide averaging 17.4 percent zinc, 3.9 percent lead, 90 g/t silver and 1.6 percent copper, or 25.8 percent zinc-equivalent.

HR18-02, drilled from the same pad at a shallower angle, cut 1.8 meters averaging 13.8 percent zinc, 3.1 percent lead, 56 g/t silver and 0.9 percent copper, or 19.5 percent zinc-equivalent.

In addition to following up at Hunter, the 2019 drill program will test the best regional targets defined by the airborne geophysics; satellite defined alteration; 2018 stream geochemical anomalies; sampling; and ground geophysics.

White Rock is currently readying the camp for what is expected to be a busy 2019 field season at Red Mountain.

"We look forward to working with our strategic JV partner and progressing this highly prospective project with the commencement of this program and the subsequent news flow that should result," Gill said.

SHANE LASLEY
Sturgeon case shows NPS regulations do not apply to inholdings

The unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision in the John Sturgeon case will likely require the National Park Service to revisit its regulation of mineral activities on Native corporation inholdings within national park boundaries in Alaska.

Alaska is different - it has moose hunters on hovercrafts, many large national parks, and certain unique federal laws. On March 26, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held that National Park Service laws and regulations of general applicability do not apply to inholdings within Alaska's national parks. Sturgeon v. Frost, 587 U.S. ___ (2019).

While on a moose hunting trip twelve years ago, Sturgeon was repairing his hovercraft on a section of the Nation River within the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve (a unit of the National Park System) when park rangers ordered him to stop using the hovercraft in the preserve. Sturgeon left that day without the benefit of his hovercraft and without a moose.

He later sued, arguing that the Park Service ban on hovercrafts did not apply to the Nation River, a navigable river the bed of which is owned by the state of Alaska.

This case arose under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA).

When the federal government designated national park lands in ANILCA, it swept tracts of nonfederal lands  state, Alaska Native corporation, and private inholdings  within the park boundaries.

ANILCA provides that no state, Native, or private inholdings "shall be subject to the regulations applicable solely to public lands within [conservation system] units." Nonetheless, the federal government claimed that the Park Service could regulate the inholdings like park lands.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed with the Park Service and ruled that Park Service regulations do not apply to nonfederal inholdings within national parks in Alaska. Because the state of Alaska, not the United States, holds title to the submerged lands under navigable rivers running through national parks established after statehood, those submerged lands are not "public lands" under ANILCA. Second, the Supreme Court found that ANILCA also eliminated the Park Service's authority (that it has in the Lower 48 states) to enforce national park regulations on these non-public inholdings.

This case demonstrates that the U.S. Supreme Court will require the Park Service to recognize that Congress established different laws for Alaska.

This decision's broader impacts remain to be seen. The U.S. Supreme Court expressly did not address the Ninth Circuit's Katie John subsistence cases. It is also unclear what effect Sturgeon may have on patented or unpatented federal mining claims in national parks in Alaska under the Mining in the Parks Act of 1976. But this decision will likely require the Park Service to revisit its regulation of mineral activities on Native corporation inholdings within national park boundaries in Alaska.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was originally published by Stoel Rives LLP at JD Supra, a noted online source for legal content, and is being republished by North of 60 Mining News with minor format changes. Stoel Rives cautions that the information provided in this article may not be applicable in all circumstances and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI -- Former and current inmates of Michigans only womens prison say their jailers are responsible for a massive scabies outbreak that struck hundreds of inmates.

Rebecca Smith, 44, whos serving at least 25 years at the Womens Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Pittsfield Township for a 2010 murder conviction, filed a class-action lawsuit this week against the Michigan Department of Corrections, along with other unnamed inmates.

While the lawsuit claims the spread began in 2017, the MDOC didnt publicly acknowledge an issue with the parasitic mite until this year, when the facility temporarily closed to visitors.

The closure came after 39 prisoners were found to have the infestation amid a year-long rash outbreak at the prison, Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman Chris Gautz said in January.

As of January, 224 prisoners were slated to begin treatment with a 24-hour quarantine.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court Thursday, April 11 by Rochester Hills-based attorney Daniel Randazzo, says prison administrators failed to properly screen incoming inmates or treat those afflicted by the scabies mite.

The scabies infestation leads to relentless and unbearable itching, especially at night, the lawsuit says. "The rash results in scales, blisters, bleeding, and open sores caused by scratching.

The rash caused by scabies infestation is readily distinguishable from other skin maladies due to the appearance of track-like burrows in the skin, which are created when female mites tunnel under the surface of the skin.

Inmates say their guards disregarded their pleas for medical treatment, at times blamed inmates for washing clothing in their cells and in at least one case merely advised the (prisoner) change her soap.

Prison officials initially ruled scabies out through testing and dermatologist evaluations in February and March 2018, Gautz previously said.

The MDOC refused to comment on the lawsuit, under its policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

Full complaint:
UPDATE: Pittsfield Township fire officials cleared the scene at 1 p.m. Friday, April 12, after the remaining fuel in a propane tank burned out.

PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI -- Multiple exploding fuel tanks became clunky airborne bombs Thursday at the site of a welding company fire, Pittsfield Township fire officials say.

The fire began about 12:30 p.m. April 11, at Ann Arbor Welding Supply, 4811 Carpenter Road. Fire personnel spent the night monitoring one still-burning tank.

Fire crews cleared the scene about 1 p.m. Friday, April 12, after waiting nearly 24 hours for the remaining propane in one 2,000-pound tank to spew out and burn away, Pittsfield Township Public Safety Director Matthew Harshberger said.

The Western Wayne County Hazardous Materials Response Team Leader flew a drone above the scene that use thermal cameras to measure tank temperatures nearing 600 degrees, said Team Leader Michael Magda, who is also a captain with the Livonia Fire Department.

Emergency personnel on Thursday walked door-to-door evacuating residents and businesses in a one-mile radius surrounding the business. For most, the evacuation order was lifted about 5:30 p.m.

The first firefighters to respond found a 2,000-gallon propane tank on fire along with several smaller propane, butane and acetelyne tanks, the Pittsfield Township Public Safety Department said in a statement issued Friday.

" A second large propane tank and a 30,000-gallon butane tank were exposed to the fire, which prompted an isolation and evacuation ... due to the risk of a major explosion affecting a wide area," Pittsfield fire officials said. Smaller tanks also began to explode becoming projectiles and putting anyone at risk within the danger area.

" ... Once the area was deemed safe to work in, crews cooled the tanks and applied firefighting foam to the areas where flammable liquids were still burning."

The majority of the fire was safely under control by 5 p.m. Thursday and no serious injuries were reported. Two employees were treated for smoke inhalation and the cause remains under investigation, Harshberger said.

Ann Arbor Welding representatives told fire officials that an employee noticed a tank on fire in the yard outside the companys building. What caused it to catch fire remains under investigation.

He and other employees ran," Harshberger said. "The first explosion led to other tanks exploding and it went from there.

There was severe damage to the outdoor tanks and equipment, but the building suffered minor damage, according to Pittsfield Township fire officials.

Multiple Washtenaw County fire, medical, police and hazardous materials personnel assisted at the scene.
Humankinds first photographed black hole that captured the worlds attention this week has officially been christened with the name of Powehi.

The name comes from the University of Hawaii and language professor Larry Kimura, according to a news release from the school. For those wondering why the honor went to the University of Hawaii, the state is home to the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and Submillimeter Array, which are both part of the Event Horizon Telescope network.

Related: Check out the first-ever photo of a black hole captured by astronomers

Powehi, meaning embellished dark source of unending creation, is a name sourced from the Kumulipo, the primordial chant describing the creation of the Hawaiian universe, the release from the university reads.

Po, profound dark source of unending creation, is a concept emphasized and repeated in the Kumulipo, while wehi, or wehiwehi, honored with embellishments, is one of many descriptions of po in the chant.

Kimura added that it is awesome that we, as Hawaiians today are able to bridge the gap from its traditional, long-standing identity to this precious inheritance for our lives today.

Related: University of Michigan alum helps discover first image of black hole

NASA reported back on Wednesday, April 10 that scientists obtained an image of the black hole at the center of galaxy M87, outlined by emission from hot gas swirling around it under the influence of strong gravity near its event horizon.

The image shows the "shadow of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87, an elliptical galaxy some 55 million light-years from Earth.

NASA defines a black hole as an extremely dense object from which no light can escape. Anything that passes its point of no return will be consumed, never to re-emerge, as the black holes unimaginably strong gravity takes hold.

This is an amazing accomplishment by the EHT (Event Horizons Telescope) team, Paul Hertz, director of NASAs astrophysics division, said in a news release. Years ago, we thought we would have to build a very large space telescope to image a black hole.

"By getting radio telescopes around the world to work in concert like one instrument, the EHT team achieved this, decades ahead of time.

The Event Horizon Telescope is defined as a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes that are brought together through international collaboration. It was designed with the goal of capturing images of a black hole.
Update: Health officials on Thursday, April 11 said the Washtenaw County case was in fact a false-positive. More here.

LANSING, MI - The number of cases in a measles outbreak centered in Southeast Michigan continues to rise, with state health officials saying today the number of infected patients in Michigan has risen to 41.

There have been two new cases reported since late last week. Among those, Washtenaw County now has its first case of the disease. And a new case in Oakland County brings that areas total to 39. One case was earlier reported in Wayne County.

The patients range in age from an 8-month-old baby to a 63-year-old, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Measles is a highly-contagious disease which is spread through the air and by person-to-person contact.

MDHHS is working closely with the Oakland County Health Division and Washtenaw County Health Department to identify possible exposure locations for these latest cases, state health officials said.

What the state knows about exposure sites in the three counties:

Known exposure sites in Oakland County are listed at Oakgov.com/health.

Exposure locations are not yet available for the Washtenaw County case and will be provided as more information is learned at washtenaw.org/health.

There are no public exposure sites for the Wayne County case.

If you have not been vaccinated for the measles, health authorities are urging you to contact your local health department or your doctors office to ask about getting the vaccine.

The Washtenaw County Health Department is hosting a walk-in vaccination clinic on Tuesday, April 9. It will run from 9 a.m.  7 p.m. Another clinic on Wednesday, April 10, will run from 5 to 7 p.m. at 555 Towner Street in Ypsilanti.

The measles vaccine is highly effective and very safe. A single dose of measles vaccine protects about 95 percent of children, but after two doses, almost 100 percent are immune, MDHHS said. "The first of two routine childhood measles vaccine doses is given at 12-15 months of age. A second vaccine dose is given before the start of kindergarten, between ages 4 and 6 years.

MDHHS follows Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and does not recommend routine measles vaccinations for children less than 12 months of age unless there is a suspected measles exposure; there is thought to be an imminent measles exposure such as being in areas of known measles; or international travel planned.

State health officials are stressing that people cannot contract measles from the vaccine.

Michigan now has the highest number of measles cases since 1991, when 65 people had the disease.

Across the United States this year, there have been 465 cases of measles reported in 19 states.

Boy with measles. (Photo courtesy of CDC)Centers for Disease Control

What are the symptoms of measles?

Symptoms usually begin a week or two after exposure, but can appear up to 21 days after exposure and may include:

High fever (may spike to over 104F).

Cough.

Runny nose.

Red, watery eyes (conjunctivitis).

Tiny white spots on the inner cheeks, gums, and roof of the mouth (Koplik Spots) 2-3 days after symptoms begin.

A rash that is red, raised, blotchy; usually starts on face, spreads to trunk, arms, and legs 3-5 days after symptoms begin.

If symptoms develop, residents are urged to call their doctor or emergency room before arriving so they can take precautions to prevent exposure to other individuals, state health officials said.

For more information about measles, visit CDC.gov/measles.

For more information about Michigans current measles outbreak, visit Michigan.gov/MeaslesOutbreak.
An outright ban on deer baiting and feeding in the Lower Peninsula meant to stave off chronic wasting disease could be reversed under legislation considered by a Michigan Senate panel this week.

The states Natural Resources Commission approved the ban last year as part of a series of changes to deer hunting rules designed to limit the spread of chronic wasting disease, a contagious and fatal neurological disease found in deer, elk and moose. It went into effect Jan. 31, 2019.

State officials have defended the rule change, noting the nose-to-nose contact deer encounter at artificial feeding or baiting stations could hasten the spread of chronic wasting disease.

But some lawmakers arent convinced the practice of baiting or feeding animals is correlated to the diseases spread and should be allowed to continue. Senate Bill 37, sponsored by Sen. Curt VanderWall, R-Ludington, would lift bans on feeding the animals, and allow for baiting during open hunting season.

During a Senate Natural Resources Committee hearing this week, VanderWall told lawmakers chronic wasting disease is a very serious issue, but believes preventing baiting could hasten the ongoing decline of hunting in Michigan and curtail herd management efforts.

In my view, baiting is a tool that helps us manage the herd, he told lawmakers. Less hunters means less harvested, which is bad for herd management - it could even lead to an increase in CWD and other diseases."

The Department of Natural Resources opposes the bill. Craig Burnett, the agencys legislative liaison, said the decision to prohibit baiting in the Lower Peninsula wasnt taken lightly, and came after several consecutive Natural Resources Commission meetings dedicated to the matter.

It is our belief that it was the proper decision to ban baiting to help control the spread of the disease, he said.

Dr. Kelly Straka, state wildlife veterinarian for Michigans Department of Natural Resources, said research points to a higher likelihood of transmission in artificial feeding sites.

The science is out there indicating that these kind of practices on the landscape do in fact make things worse with disease transmission, do in fact lead to different contact rates between animals that would otherwise not normally contact each other, she said.

The bill prompted comments from people all over the state, many of whom expressed continued concern with the overarching ban.

Hillsdale resident Dave Wheeler, creator of Lucky Buck Mineral, said he believes the new ban could have the unintended consequence of deer congregating in fewer sites as they search for sodium sources.

The more sites you have, the more even distribution you have of these deer, and the more likely theyre not going to be traveling and infecting neighboring deer herds, he said.

The committee hasnt yet voted on the legislation to overturn the ban. To become law, Senate Bill 37 would need to pass the Senate, House and be signed by the governor.

Since the first free-ranging white-tailed CWD-positive deer was found in Michigan in May 2015, CWD cases have been confirmed in Clinton, Eaton, Gratiot, Ionia, Ingham, Jackson, Kent, and Montcalm counties. A CWD-positive deer was also found in the Upper Peninsula in Dickinson County in October of last year.

Its unclear whether the disease can be transmitted to humans, but as a precaution, hunters are advised not to consume meat from infected animals. The biggest worry now with CWD is the long-term health of the states deer population.

This week, the DNR and Michigan State University officials announced they are seeking grant proposals on research and education projects to address chronic wasting disease, including tracking the diseases persistence in the environment and developing new detection and field testing methods.
ANN ARBOR, MI  Tyler Collier remembers long nights of organizing and raising awareness about the black experience at the University of Michigan, and the development of the hashtag #BBUM on social media.

The hashtag was the work of Collier and UMs Black Student Union, used to encourage black students at UM to begin a conversation about race and diversity on campus in 2013.

The #BBUM movement gained national attention, eventually leading to meetings with UM administrators with a list of seven demands that included building a new, centrally-located William Monroe Trotter Multicultural Center.

After four town hall meetings and eight focus group sessions with university leaders in 2014 and 2015, crews broke ground on the project in 2017.

Collier and BSU organizers took a collective breath of relief when the new Trotter Multicultural Center opened to the public Thursday.

I just want everyone to know that this moment didnt come easy, he said. Nothing that is right and just comes easy.

The impact of student activism is on full display inside the new center, located just down the street from the Michigan Union on South State Street.

From images of the 1970 Black Action Movement strike outside Hill Auditorium to student Dana Greene kneeling on the campus Diag for more than 20 hours in 2017, Trotter aims to bring students together while reminding them of past activism.

Graduate student William Royster said it was humbling to see the center first-hand after his involvement with the Black Student Union helped lead to construction of the new multicultural center.

Seeing visuals on the wall of the Black Action Movement in the 1970s, which led to the creation of an African-American Studies program at UM, next to the recent work of the BSU illustrated the power of change, Royster said.

Its a really great experience seeing and being a part of the activism and seeing the fruits of that labor come to fruition, said Royster, who graduated from UM in 2016 and recently returned to pursue a masters degree in Data Science. These students  they didnt make the most popular decision. It was only popular after the sacrifice that they made.

The new $10-million, 20,000-square-foot center replaces the current center of the same name. The center features an added multipurpose room able to accommodate 300 people for banquets or conferences, and an alternative active-learning, classroom-style configuration for 130 students.

The main staircase is accented with 558 photos of current UM students to represent the diversity of the student body.

It just makes my heart full to be here and see that we have a space thats for us and by us and to see the university make strides to accommodate who we are, UM sophomore Ashley Hayes said.

UM President Mark Schlissel thanked the Black Student Union for its efforts in pushing for the new multicultural center, which he said will serve students of many cultural identities, fostering diversity at UM in a way that is inclusive and more visible.

The Trotter Multicultural Center is one way we can honor their important, ongoing legacy, Schlissel said of the BSU. As we celebrate, we must remember the ribbon we will cut today in no way represents the finish line.
YPSILANTI, MI - Eastern Michigan University gathered young students interested in the STEM fields at its bi-annual Digital Divas conference Friday, April 12.

The one-day conference gives young women the chance to connect with and learn from individuals in STEM careers. The event included guest speakers and breakout sessions with hands-on learning.

Farah Harb, EMU alumna and Global Education Programs Analyst for the Ford Fund, keynoted the conference, and Elise Buggs Sturdivant, director of Academic Success Partnerships at Eastern, was the welcoming speaker

Sessions offered STEM learning activities and networking with professional women and EMU students, who led some hands-on workshops. Session topics ranged from creating mobile applications to the unmanned drone industry.

The event drew around 500 young women from high schools across Southeast Michigan.
SOUTH LYON, MI - Scott and Kayla Purdy have been waiting a year for South Lyon Community Schools to develop a special education plan to meet their 7-year-old son Kaydens unique needs.

Unsatisfied with the response from school staff, the Purdys filed a formal complaint with the Michigan Department of Educations Office of Special Education in January.

After investigating the complaint, that office found South Lyon Community Schools violated special education regulations by failing to properly evaluate Kayden to determine if he was eligible for special education services and failing to develop an appropriate individualized education program for him.

The state determined the Purdys were not denied a chance to participate in developing their childs IEP as they alleged in their complaint.

Overall, the above violations rise to the level of a denial of a (free and appropriate public education), states the OSE report issued on March 18.

In response to the violations, the Office of Special Education issued a corrective action order that requires South Lyon Community Schools to conduct a meeting to develop an IEP for Kayden by May 3. The district also must revise its procedures for evaluating students for disabilities and developing IEPs by Oct. 15.

South Lyon Community Schools officials declined to elaborate on the specifics of the findings, but said they are taking steps to comply with the recommendations.

This is the only special education complaint filed against South Lyon Community Schools in the last two years, according to the MDE.

The Office of Special Education responded to 140 complaints in the 2017-18 school year and found violations in 117 of those cases, according to the MDE.

The Purdys still are not optimistic the district will provide the support Kayden needs to be successful in school. They say the district is putting budget concerns ahead of providing necessary services for their child.

We just want our child, who learns differently, to receive an education just like everybody else, Scott Purdy said.

Seeking support at a new school

Bursting into his house at the end of the school day, Kaydens first priority is to dive into a game of Minecraft. He has a natural aptitude for motorized vehicles like go-karts, and he likes Legos and reading to his 3-year-old sister.

Kayden has been diagnosed with anxiety, adjustment disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, which exhibits as aggressive behavior and unregulated emotions.

The Purdys notified South Lyon schools of Kaydens diagnoses and shared his medical records when they enrolled him in first grade in September 2017, after moving to the area from out-of-state, according to the OSE report.

Kayden had not received special education services as a kindergartner at his previous school, and he was not provided with special education services when he enrolled at South Lyon. He sees a therapist outside of school.

For the first seven months of the school year, Kayden did OK in his general education class. He spent time with the elementary schools social worker, who monitored his behavior, and received extra help with reading, according to the OSE report.

But as Kayden becomes more comfortable in an environment, hes more likely to act out, Scott Purdy said. He started having outbursts at school and acting aggressively toward the staff who tried to restrain him, the Purdys said.

In the OSE report, the Purdys said Kayden was asked to leave school 12 times that school year, and school staff say he was suspended four times and removed from school early three times.

If a school suspends a student with a disability 10 or more times in a school year, there is supposed to be a special review to determine if the students behavior is because of his or her disability. If it is, schools need to find alternative ways to address the situation other than traditional discipline policies.

Kayden was not granted that extra review process.

At the end of April 2018, the Purdys met with school staff to talk about Kaydens academic performance and behavioral issues, and they formally requested an evaluation to determine if Kayden was eligible for special education services.

When we requested an evaluation for IEP, they kept telling us it was out of the budget, Kayla Purdy said.

The OSE investigation found school officials gave the perception the parents were responsible for providing documentation of Kaydens disabilities, when its actually the schools responsibility.

The school social worker, school psychologist and a special education teacher evaluated Kayden, and in June 2018, the district determined Kayden did not have a disability and was not eligible for special education services.

That conclusion was not consistent with the information available, the OSE said.

Its a shock," Scott Purdy said. Were coming in with four years worth of documented medical records that we gave to you (school staff) on the very first day, and youre telling us that hes ineligible? That just blew our minds.

The Purdys did not agree with the school districts disability assessment, and they sought an independent education evaluation. In August 2018, South Lyons school psychologist revised a report on Kaydens eligibility to say he had an emotional impairment and other health impairments.

Struggling to find a solution

Going into the 2018-19 school year, Kayden had a plan outlining services and supports he needed, without being as formal as an IEP.

After receiving the results of the independent education evaluation, school staff planned to meet with the Purdys in November 2018 to implement an IEP for Kayden.

The Purdys rejected the proposal that called for Kayden to spend the majority of his time at school in a class for students with emotional impairments and have the school social worker visit him in class a few times a month.

The state later found the IEP did not appropriately address Kaydens needs because he should have more time with the social worker. And it was not accurate to say he would have full participation with students without disabilities given the time prescribed in the emotional impairment class.

So far this school year, Kayden has remained in a general education class, and his performance is deteriorating, Scott Purdy said.

At times, Kayden has been assigned a paraprofessional to give him individualized attention, Kayla Purdy said, and he can see the school social worker when he wants to.

Hes been suspended from school seven times so far and periodically suspended from riding the bus, the Purdys said.

The Purdys wanted to avoid medicating Kayden, but now theyve started taking him to a psychiatrist to see if theres a prescription that can help manage his behavior.

At home he doesnt have these problems, Kayla said. Its at school, and we dont know why.
FLINT, MI -- Defense attorneys for Flint airport stabber Amor Ftouhi have asked for a sentence less than the maximum federal penalty.

In a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday, April 11 with the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Michigan, Ftouhis attorneys seek a 25-year prison sentence. Sentencing guidelines on all counts call for a life sentence.

Ftouhi, 51, stabbed Bishop Airport Lt. Jeff Neville the morning of June 21, 2017 while the now-retired officer was on duty in the airport terminal.

He was found guilty in November 2018 on single counts of committing an act of violence at an international airport, interference with airport security and committing an act of terrorism transcending national boundaries.

Investigators said Ftouhi initially tried to buy a gun in Michigan, but he was not allowed because he was a Canadian citizen.

His statement to the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the day of the incident -- included with the memorandum along with drawings and letters from his children -- includes a passage on Ftouhi commenting that fighting the enemies of Allah during Ramadan would increase his chances of success and likelihood he would be accepted into Heaven.

Ftouhi repeatedly asked for FBI investigators to kill him while in custody and began to cry that hed failed his mission, according to the FBI statement.

The memorandum lays out Ftouhis upbringing to financial struggles that led him to move to Canada after he and his wife saw advertisements promoting immigration to Montreal for those seeking a better life with many job opportunities played on Tunisian television repeatedly.

It alleges Ftouhi became depressed about the situation, blaming discrimination, in part, for his job woes, and moved out of the familys home in late 2016 after being accused of cheating.

It was at this point in his life when he began to see the world through depression-laden eyes, and his views on politics and the political war in the Middle East changed and became a focus for him, reads the memorandum.

While the memorandum states Ftouhi had no ties whatsoever to any radical groups, it adds He blamed the United States for standing by and/or taking part in atrocities in the Middle East that he witnessed on televised news programs.

In his FBI statement, Ftouhi also listed the Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel governments as enemies of Islam and told investigators he celebrated the 9-11 attacks, praising Usama Bin Laden for organizing them.

He began to follow two sheikhs who support political activities in defense of Muslims worldwide, reads the memorandum, later adding while they were not jihadi, Ftouhi believed they were telling him he must act and fight his enemies, and that it was not enough to simply live a good, law-abiding life.

He also believed that if he ended his life by becoming a martyr, he could give his family the ultimate gift; a place in Paradise, states the memorandum, with Ftouhi implying in a Last Will and Testament left for his wife that hed found a solution to the familys plight.

In order to become a martyr, the memorandum states, Ftouhi believed he needed to be killed as a soldier of Allah by a uniformed enemy of Muslims which led him into the United States.

He researched gun laws in the closest state to Canada that would allow him to purchase a gun, but Ftouhi was denied a purchase at a gun and knife show at the Gibralatar Trade Center in Mt. Clemens.

Dave Lozon, an employee for Randy's Hunting Center in Bad Axe, was working at the show when he said Ftouhi tried to buy a gun, according to his testimony during the trial in November 2018.

Lozon testified that Ftouhi approached him and asked about buying a Rugar AR556 with a 30-round magazine.

"I asked if he had a driver's license, ID or concealed carry permit. He said, 'No, but I'm Canadian,'" Lozon told the court. "I believe he got a little bit aggravated about why couldn't he buy it if he had the money. I tried to de-escalate and walked away."

Ftouhi instead purchased a 12-inch serrated knife and traveled to a nearby McDonalds where he Skyped his wife. Hed told his family he was on a work trip, according to the FBI statement.

While at the restaurant, Ftouhi began to search for an airport that included the name international and found Bishop, choosing it as the site for the attack.

"He said there was significance in an international airport -- that the whole world would see what he did," Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Shadi Elreda, one of three agents who interrogated Ftouhi, testified at the trial. "He wanted all the Muslims to see what he did -- to not be afraid and to act against the enemy."

Ftouhi slept in his vehicle the nights leading up to the incident and only used cash at restaurants.

On the day of the attack, Ftouhi told investigators he entered the airport with backpacks to appear as if he was a traveler, went into a restroom, and then sat upstairs near a restaurant where he saw officers going in and out.

He then picked Neville after seeing him alone, the memorandum states.

When I went down to the ground I saw a large - I described it as a Rambo knife - a large knife in his hand, Neville said during court testimony.

"I put both hands on his wrist to try and keep him from raising the knife back up. I wouldn't let go," Neville said.

Following the attack that left Neville with two stab wound to his face and neck, he testified he was on his hands and knees because he thought he was about to pass out.

"I was watching this puddle of blood underneath me that was spreading and I just remember how weird that was," Neville testified. "I was staring at my arm - it was a (Concern Over Police Safety) bracelet. I was fixating on it to try and take my mind off it. I felt like if I laid down on my back, I might not get back up."

Witnesses testified during the five-day trial that Ftouhi shouted Allahu Akbar during the attack.

The memorandum argues when he uttered the phrase Mr. Ftouhi was the only one assigning meaning to his words and his behaviors and did so knowing the words would spark a sense of fear and send a message.

After stabbing Neville, Ftouhi was taken to the ground by officers and airport employees and into custody. He questioned why he wasnt killed after stabbing the officer, reads Ftouhis FBI statement.

He asked us if the officer was dead. I responded with I didnt know, said FBI Special Agent Elreda. He put his head down and was crying. He said his intention was to kill the officer.

Neville was released from the hospital five days after the incident. He officially retired in late February from Bishop Airport after serving with there since 2001. Neville worked for the Genesee County Sheriffs Office from 1982-99.

Hes spoken several times on the incident at local events, recounting the day and how it has changed his life.

Neville admitted during the Hundred Club of Genesee, Shiawassee and Lapeer Counties annual dinner in January 2018 that there have been some changes for him, including what he described as "euphoria" at simply still being alive.

"I've had a lot of time to think and go over this incident since then," he said. "I know that work is work, but life is a lot more than that. Make the most out of every day and appreciate the small things."

He's thought more about the importance of family after seeing his life flash before his eyes and worked on letting go of the negative feelings.

"Try not to be bitter or hate. I've come to the conclusion that hate must be the easiest emotion there is because people default to it very quickly," Neville said. "Don't buy into it. It's the easy way. It's a poison that will affect you negatively. Keep it out of your system if at all possible."

Ftouhi is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, April 18. His previous sentencing was moved from March 7 due to a scheduling conflict.
HUDSONVILLE, MI -- Beginning Saturday, April 13, West Michigan drivers will have a new roadwork project on I-196 to factor into their commutes.

The Michigan Department of Transportation will begin a project to reconstruct approximately five miles of westbound I-196 from Kenowa Avenue to 32nd Avenue in Hudsonville, according to a news release. The work is expected to continue through Aug. 20.

Weather permitting, lane closures for construction staging will begin at 7 a.m. Saturday, according to John Richard, MDOTs communications representative for the Grand Region.

Once the project is underway, westbound I-196 traffic will be shifted to the eastbound side of the roadway at Kenowa Avenue, Richard said.

All eastbound I-196 traffic will have to exit to eastbound M-6. The detour for drivers heading to the Grand Rapids area will be M-6 to northbound U.S. 131, Richard said, or drivers may choose to take local roads. There are exits from M-6 at 8th Avenue, Wilson Avenue and Byron Center Avenue.

The main detour is to send folks up 131, he said.

Also during the project period:

The westbound I-196 ramp to eastbound M-6 will remain open.

The westbound M-6 ramp to eastbound I-196 will be closed.

Through-traffic on westbound I-196 will not have access to 32nd Avenue.

Westbound M-6 traffic will have access to 32nd Avenue, and also will be able to continue west on I-196.

The project will include work on bridges at 22nd and 32nd Avenues, including new drainage, signs, traffic signals and bridge improvements.

The project cost is $22 million, according to the release, and will improve ride quality and extend the service life of the roadway.

Westbound I-196 is also under construction in downtown Grand Rapids, where the expressway is closed just before U.S. 131 for the reconstruction of the bridge over the Grand River and widening of the roadway.
(CNN)  Pope Benedict XVI has broken his silence in a rare essay on the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church, claiming that it was caused in part by the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the liberalization of the church's moral teaching.

In the 11-page analysis published today in a German magazine for priests, Klerusblatt, the former Pope also reveals some of the behind-the-scenes struggles between the Vatican and American bishops in handling the crisis and admits that the Vatican was initially overwhelmed in dealing with it.

Catholic News Agency first published the letter in English on Wednesday afternoon.

A top Vatican official has confirmed the essay's authenticity to CNN. Since his resignation in 2013, Benedict has rarely left his monastery high on a hill in Vatican City. In his farewell address as pope, Benedict promised to stay "hidden" from the world, though he has spoken out occasionally on church matters.

Nearly 92, Benedict appears to be frail but in relatively good health.

"Since I myself had served in a position of responsibility as shepherd of the Church at the time of the public outbreak of the crisis, and during the run-up to it, I had to ask myself  even though, as emeritus, I am no longer directly responsible  what I could contribute to a new beginning," Benedict wrote, in explaining why he is speaking out now.

But his comments on the sex abuse crisis seem certain to inflame tensions between conservative Catholics, who largely blame homosexuality and lax sexual ethics for the scandal, and liberals, who say there is no known connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

As word of Benedict's essay spread Wednesday evening, conservative Catholics hailed it, while others called it "embarrassing."

"This is an embarrassing letter. The idea that ecclesial abuse of children was a result of the 1960s, a supposed collapse of moral theology, and 'conciliarity' is an embarrassingly wrong explanation for the systemic abuse of children and its coverup," wrote Catholic theologian Brian Flanagan on Twitter.

Shifting standards

In the essay, Benedict asserts that the changes in traditional moral standards on sexuality both in society and within the Catholic Church laid the groundwork for the sex abuse crisis.

"Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of '68," he writes, "was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate."

Benedict says that this mentality also affected bishops and Catholic seminaries and caused, "the extensive collapse of the next generation of priests."

"There were  not only in the United States of America  individual bishops who rejected the Catholic tradition as a whole and sought to bring about a kind of new, modern Catholicity," he writes.

"In various seminaries homosexual cliques were established," he writes, "which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate in the seminaries."

Benedict cites one bishop who showed seminarians pornographic films, "allegedly with the intention of thus making them resistant to behavior contrary to the faith."

Liberal theologians who questioned the church's traditional norms on sexuality are also partly to blame, the former Pope says.

"There could no longer be anything that constituted an absolute good any more than anything fundamentally evil; there could be only relative value judgments," the former Pope said, characterizing the liberal position on morality.

Benedict also reveals that the Vatican's two investigations into U.S. seminaries, called Apostolic Visitations, were thwarted by cover-up.

"The Visitation that now took place [1983-1987]," he writes, "brought no new insights, apparently because various powers had joined forces to conceal the true situation."

The former Pope does not elaborate on who was involved in the alleged concealment.

"A second Visitation was ordered [2005-2006]" he writes, "and brought considerably more insights but on the whole failed to achieve any outcomes."

The 'absence of God'

Benedict also reveals a tug-of-war between the Vatican and U.S. bishops over zero-tolerance.

The Pope Emeritus says that Church lawyers in Rome "had difficulty" with the U.S. proposal for zero-tolerance and preferred that priests guilty of sexual abuse of minors receive only a temporary suspension.

"This could not be accepted by the American bishops," he writes, "because the priests thus remained in the service of the bishop and thereby could be taken to be still directly associated with him."

As a result, the former Pope writes, a new code of Church criminal law was created and cases of child sexual abuse were judged by the Vatican office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of which then-Cardinal Ratzinger was the head.

But Benedict admits that the prospect of full criminal trials for sex abuse was "overwhelming" for the Vatican.

"Because all of this actually went beyond the capacities of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and because delays arose which had to be prevented owing to the nature of the matter, Pope Francis has undertaken further reforms," he writes.

The former Pope says that since the 1970s "the situation in seminaries has generally improved," but that part of the answer to the crisis lies in returning to obedience and fidelity to Jesus' message.

A large portion of the essay laments the increasing loss of religious beliefs in society in recent decades, which Benedict says is at the heart of the sexual abuse crisis.

"Why did pedophilia reach such proportions?" he asks. "Ultimately the reason is the absence of God."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "Ex-Pope Benedict XVI breaks silence on church's sex abuse crisis and blames the sexual revolution and liberals."
KALKASKA COUNTY, MI  The former middle-school principal at Elk Rapids schools is accused of sending letters to administrators with false allegations of criminal conduct by another worker.

Terrence Starr, 57, who left Elk Rapids to become superintendent of Kalkaska schools, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Starr was charged with false report of a felony, intentional false report of child abuse and criminal slander, state police said.

He was arraigned Thursday, April 11, in Grand Traverse County District Court. He was released on a $2,500 personal-recognizance bond.

State police in the Houghton post began investigating in January 2018 after several letters were sent to Elk Rapids schools administrators suggesting criminal conduct on the part of an Elk Rapids school worker.

It resulted in the filing of a report of suspected child abuse or neglect with the state Department of Health and Human Services. The allegations were unfounded, police determined.

Police continued to investigate the source of the letters and determined Starr had written them, police said.

Kalkaska schools board of education recently learned of the criminal charges and placed Starr on paid administrative leave on Friday, April 12.

Staci Short, the principal at Kalkaska Middle School, was appointed acting superintendent, board president Rachael Birgy said in a statement.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Renowned designer Stephen Frykholm is the Festival of the Arts 2019 poster artist.

The poster announcement and unveiling Thursday came about two months before the festivals 50th celebration.

One of the longest-running festivals in the state of Michigan, Festival of the Arts will hold its 50th celebration on June 7, 8 and 9 in downtown Grand Rapids.

Steve was an obvious choice to create the 50th celebration poster, said David Abbott, executive director for Festival of the Arts. "He is a luminary in the design community and we knew he would create something unique and compelling to commemorate this milestone event.

Frykholm started his career at Herman Miller in 1970 as the companys first graphic designer. In 1986, he received the Carl F. Frost Award, Herman Millers highest recognition for an employee.

When Abbott asked Frykholm if he would design the Festival of the Arts poster this year, he said he couldnt say no, because its the 50th year of the festival.

It was also 50 years ago that the critically acclaimed Calder stabile was installed, and it is the epicenter of the festival," said Frykholm. "The large poster I came up with is simple and direct in its design and typography with a blue sky for optimism. I hope it inspires people to start their summer  and perhaps a sun tan  by attending the 50th Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts in June.

The Festival 2019 poster by designer Stephen Frykholm was unveiled Thursday, April 11.

This years poster will be available for sale in the festival store and at the gift shop at the Grand Rapids Art Museum during Festival of the Arts. Both signed and unsigned versions will be available at different price points.

Alexander Calders La Grande Vitesse was formally dedicated on June 14, 1969, and has since become the civic symbol of the city of Grand Rapids. Its installation inspired the first Festival of the Arts, a three-day community arts celebration held each year on the first full weekend in June.

The festival began in 1970 and was originally sponsored by the Arts Council of Greater Grand Rapids. It started with two stages, some artwork and a few food booths.

Today, the celebration covers much of downtown Grand Rapids with three performance stages, dozens of food booths, and endless art and activities for all ages.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  Three Grand Rapids-area state lawmakers want Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to stop an effort to dredge part of a 23-mile stretch of the Grand River between Grand Rapids and Eastmanville, saying the project could be potentially disastrous for West Michigan communities.

Dredging the river  in an effort to make it accessible to larger powerboats  could hurt fish and wildlife, carry ongoing maintenance and public safety costs, and may harm Native American and other historically significant sites, Rep. Rachel Hood, D-Grand Rapids, said in a letter sent to the governor this week.

In addition to Hood, the letter was signed by Rep. David LaGrand, D-Grand Rapids, and Sen. Winnie Brinks, D-Grand Rapids.

Please consider this letter a formal request to discontinue all current planned activities and expenditures pertaining to the study and implementation of the Grand River Waterway project, the letter states.

The Grand River Waterway project is being led by Dan Hibma, a West Michigan developer and husband of former Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land. He wants to make the Grand River accessible to power boaters looking to travel from Grand Rapids to Lake Michigan, a move that supporters say will boost tourism and could eventually generate an estimated annual economic impact of up to $5.7 million.

We are in the fact finding stage of the project to provide safe boating on the Grand River, Hibma said in a statement provided by his spokesperson, Michael Zalewski. "The Grand River between Fulton St. to the Bass River Recreational Area is hazardous for boaters. The river is in trust with the State of Michigan and there is a lot of positive interest by residents of Michigan to safely boat on the Grand River. "

The dredging would occur between downtown Grand Rapids and the Bass River inlet in Ottawa County.

The project received $3.15 million in state funding last year. The most recent portion, totaling $2 million, was included in a supplemental state budget approved during the waning days of last years lame duck legislative session. Those dollars were provided to the Department of Natural Resources to pay for the dredging work, and shall be spent only if sediment tests are satisfactory and necessary permits are issued, the state budget says.

That sediment testing, which will examine the soil beneath the river bed for hazardous substances, is currently underway.

We have no intention of pushing for a project that is environmentally harmful  but we wont actually have any scientific data about that until these tests are done, Hibma said.

But Hood said the sediment tests are just one area of concern. Other issues include the impact on fish and wildlife and ongoing maintenance expenses.

Channelizing the river is ecologically, economically irresponsible," she said, adding that the project would press expenses and liability onto public taxpayers.

Whitmers office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday morning.

Hood, in an interview with MLive.com, questioned the process under which the state appropriations were made. She said the money was approved with very little to zero public input, and that without broad public support, no project that fundamentally changes the river should be supported.

Hood is a longtime environmental advocate who formerly served as executive director of the West Michigan Environmental Action Council.

The project has drawn concern from residents in Ottawa County.

On Tuesday, the countys board of commissioners hosted a work session on the project, during which more than 20 residents spoke out against the idea. They raised concerns that opening the river to power boaters would disturb a peaceful area where people enjoy kayaking, canoeing and fishing, and that dredging the river could potentially stir up hazardous substances buried beneath the soil.

The countys sheriff and water resources commissioner also said the project would carry extra maintenance costs, such as additional police needed to patrol the area during busy summer months.

The projects supporters, including former Republican Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, have said that opening the river to power boaters who want to travel between Grand Rapids and Lake Michigan would boost tourism. Those additional visitors could eventually generate an estimated annual economic impact of up to $5.7 million, supporters say.

Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said she hasnt taken a stance on the project at this point. The Grand Rapids City Commission hasnt had any formal conversations with Hibma about his idea, she said.

As more information comes to my attention, as I become more familiar with the concerns that are raised and with the research that is done and more informed  at some point I may take a position, she said.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  The telephone line at the Grand Rapids police watch commanders office was designated non-recorded.

As it turned out, Line 3407 recorded damning conversations by police investigating a prosecutors wrong-way crash.

In a trial to begin Monday, April 15, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney in Kalamazoo will decide if the city intentionally recorded Lt. Matthew Janiskee or if the recordings were done inadvertently.

The trial comes two-and-a-half years after now-former Assistant Kent County Prosecutor Josh Kuiper crashed his 2014 Toyota Tacoma into a parked car while driving the wrong way on Union Avenue SE, south of Fulton Street.

Daniel Empson, who was retrieving a jacket from his PT Cruiser, was injured in the Nov. 19, 2016, crash.

At the scene of the 12:30 a.m. crash, Officer Adam Ickes called the lieutenants desk and said Kuiper was hammered. Janiskee told him to stop talking and to call back on the non-recorded line.

Lets pass him if we can, Janiskee, told the officer. Id like to pass him on sobriety just because.

Police put Kuiper through field sobriety tests but his breath and blood were not tested for alcohol. Sgt. Thomas Warwick, who was in the lieutenants office when Ickes called Janiskee, drove to the scene and took Kuiper home.

Ickes and Warwick were suspended but kept their jobs. Janiskee was fired. Kuiper, who resigned, was convicted of reckless driving, a misdemeanor. He was jailed two days, put on probation and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service.

Soon after the crash, the city filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking a declaratory ruling that it would not violate state or federal wiretapping laws by releasing five recordings of five calls on Line 3407.

MLive/The Grand Rapids Press filed a lawsuit in Kent County Circuit Court after the city would not provide the recordings under a Freedom of Information request.

A Kent County judge refused to release the recordings until ordered to do so by the state Court of Appeals.

One of Janiskees attorneys, Andrew Rodenhouse, said both sides generally agree on the evidence but differ on whether the recordings were intentional or inadvertent, and if a law-enforcement exception to federal wiretapping laws applies.

Even if the recordings were done inadvertently, or covered by a law-enforcement exception, it is up to the judge to determine if the city should have used the recordings, Rodenhouse said Friday, April 12.

The recordings were used in the Internal Affairs investigation and, after the state Court of Appeals ruling, released to the media, he said.

Janiskee is seeking monetary damages.

Capt. Michael Maycroft, president of Grand Rapid Police Command Officers Association, early on warned the city against disclosing or using the recordings because they potentially violated federal wiretapping laws, Rodenhouse and co-counsel Christopher Newberg wrote in court documents.

To this day, the City has not made any apparent attempt to investigate how Line 3407 came to be recorded or who was behind it, Janiskees lawyers wrote.

Police commanders looked at the non-recorded line while investigating how police handled Kuipers crash. On the recorded line in the watch-commanders office, Janiskee, upon being told Kuiper was intoxicated, told Ickes to stop talking and call back on the non-recorded line.

The Command Officers Association contends that evidence shows that human intervention would be necessary to change the record setting on the line thought to be unrecorded.

The City cannot prove that the recording setting on Line 3407 changed as the unintentional result of some technological upgrade, union lawyer Andrew Gordon wrote in a trial brief.

Attorney Scott Dwyer, representing the city, said testimony will show that the city intended to exclude Line 3407 from being recorded when a city-wide phone system was installed in 2010. Two substantial upgrades followed, in which human error could have resulted in all lines in the watch commanders office being recorded.

This Court will find no evidence, whether it be witness testimony or documents, substantiating Janiskees bare assertion that the City must have intentionally recorded Line 3407, Dwyer wrote.

Accepting such an inference is untenable without corroborating evidence, of which Janiskee has none.

The trial is expected to last up to five days.
MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI  A former employee who claimed he was passed over for a promotion that was given to his bosss lover has received a settlement from Muskegon County.

The county agreed to pay $210,000 to settle the lawsuit filed in December 2017 by Vernon Oard, who claimed he was passed over for a job due to sex and age discrimination.

Oard alleged that a woman who was hired as the county's Juvenile Transition Center director got the job "at least in part because" she was having an "ongoing sexual relationship" with her boss, then Circuit Court Administrator Eric Stevens.

Stevens ended up resigning after 20 years with the county.

The settlement amount will be paid by the countys insurer, the Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority, according to terms of the settlement agreement, which was obtained by MLive/Muskegon Chronicle through the Freedom of Information Act.

Oard, 58, will receive $132,320, while $77,679 will go to his attorneys for fees and costs.

Oard worked as the youth services director for Muskegon County's Juvenile Transition Center for four years, until he was laid off on Sept. 30, 2016, because the JTC was being moved to the administration of the Family Court Division of the Circuit Court, his lawsuit alleged.

Oard and a woman who had reported to him were among several candidates for the new position of juvenile court clinical director, essentially the director of the youth center for youthful offenders. Despite the fact Oard had more experience, the woman was hired, his lawsuit alleged.

During the times relevant to this Complaint, Mr. Stevens demonstrated a preference for hiring young women, i.e. women under 40 years of age, the lawsuit states.

Stevens resigned in April 2017 following an investigation into his behavior with female subordinates, court documents show. Two weeks after Stevens' resignation, the 32-year-old woman who beat out Oard for the Juvenile Transition Center job also resigned.

Stevens told MLive/Muskegon Chronicle that his resignation had nothing to do with the allegations against him, but rather because he had become worn out.

It was too much stress. It wasnt good for myself or my family, Stevens said, adding he had been exploring other options for 1  years.

He now works as an attorney for the Shon Cook Law firm, specializing in family and criminal law and civil litigation.

No one ever talked to him about the Oard lawsuit, which he still knows little about, Stevens said.

He denied doing anything wrong, and said he treated all staff fairly.

I feel like I havent had a voice, Stevens said.

Muskegon County Circuit Judge Timothy Hicks was deposed by Oards attorney in November 2018. Hicks spoke of the investigation into Stevens that was launched by the county and circuit court after an employee told Hicks she and several others were quitting over Stevens favoritism of certain female employees.

Hicks also said that Stevens had admitted to having a sexual relationship with a female employee after first lying about it.

We had confirmation now about some of these very, very disturbing things, Hicks said.

Hicks also said that Muskegon County Circuit Judge Kathy L. Hoogstra, who handles family court cases, felt that Stevens had rigged the system so the first woman would get the job.

Theyre absolutely untrue, Stevens said of the allegations. Theyre unfounded. Ive never been given an opportunity to address them.
CORUNNA, MI  The mid-Michigan deputy who faced down an armed man accused of shooting another policie officer has received a commendation.

On Thursday, April 11, Shiawassee County Sheriff Brian BeGole presented Detective Lt. Scott Shenk with the Medal of Valor for his role in the Jan. 22 arrest of Joshua M. Rosebush, who prosecutors say shot Saginaw Township Police Officer Jeff Koenig earlier that day.

The Medal of Valor is awarded only in exceptional cases, where members risk his or her life in performing a hazardous duty of an extraordinary nature that is above and beyond the call of duty, BeGole said during the presentation event.

The sheriff also presented Meritorious Service awards to Shiawassee County Central Dispatch employees Lt. Angela Norling, Kelsey Curtis, and Kristen Drake.

Rosebush, then 29, at about 2:15 a.m. on Jan. 22 was pulled over by Koenig for driving a white Dodge Ram pickup truck with its headlights off, police say. As Koenig walked up to the stopped vehicle, Rosebush is accused of shooting him in the jaw and shoulder with a handgun he had stolen out of another vehicle, then driving away.

Police have said Rosebush stole two more vehicles as he made his way south, passing through several counties.

In Shiawassee County, BeGole said, Dispatch Supervisor Kristen Drake (and) Dispatcher Kelsey Curtis turned their ears to the surrounding counties radio traffic and carefully monitored what was being said, so as any pertinent information could be passed on to the police agencies here in Shiawassee County.

As a result, Shenk mobilized several uniformed deputies to monitor traffic entering the east side of the county, BeGole said. In doing so, Shenk overheard radio traffic that a white van had been stolen from a Bristol Road gas station near I-475.

Suspecting Rosebush could be responsible, Shenk began patrolling I-69 in search of the van. Soon enough, Shenk spotted the van and drove beside it to get a description of the driver, which matched Rosebushs, BeGole said.

Shenk then began following the van from afar as he awaited backup, radioing information to Drake, Curtis, and Norling at Central Dispatch.

The van eventually turned off the highway, ran two stop signs and stopped in a residential driveway, all while followed by Shenk in his unmarked vehicle. After several minutes passed, Rosebush put the van in reverse and backed into a ditch, partially blocking traffic.

Lt. Shenk knew he had to act quickly for fear that one of the approaching drivers may become a victim to a carjacking or a hostage situation, BeGole said.

Shenk drew his gun and ordered Rosebush to exit the van with his hands on his head. Rosebush did exit the vehicle, put pointed a handgun at Shenk, police said.

Shenk fired two rounds, striking the suspect in the right side of his face. Backup soon arrived and Rosebush was arrested.

Detective Lt. Scott Shenk, BeGole said, addressing him, you acted quickly, boldly, with valor, and with great bravery. In an extremely stressful situation, you placed yourself in eminent danger and you risked your own life to protect others from harm in capturing an armed felon.

Shenk dabbed his eyes with tissues as BeGole spoke.

The sheriff commended the three dispatchers for acting with professionalism, calm demeanors and general concern for all involved.

Thank you very much to all of you. I think I speak on behalf the citizens on behalf of Shiawassee County, Saginaw County, Genesee County, that were all so proud of you, that you guys were able to assist in the capture of such a dangerous subject that could have resulted in getting others hurt or killed.

Koenig survived his shooting and testified in a March 7 preliminary examination. Shenk also testified in the first part of that hearing on Feb. 21.

Rosebush is facing 28 charges, the most serious are two counts of assault with intent to murder, a life offense. Though the more than two dozen charges span three counties, all matters have been consolidated for Saginaw County prosecutors to handle.

Rosebushs trial before Saginaw County Circuit Judge Andre R. Borrello is to begin June 25.
SAGINAW, MI  A 23-year-old man is charged with five felonies after prosecutors allege he opened fire on people outside a bar on Saginaws West Side, striking one person.

The shooting occurred July 15, 2018, at The Office Lounge, 2321 N. Michigan Ave. A fight erupted in the bars parking lot, during which Sonny I. Lopez shot at two brothers, prosecutors said.

The elder brother, age 29, was struck in the groin. His 27-year-old brother was not struck.

Prosecutors declined to discuss their theory on the motive.

Investigators developed Lopez as a suspect and authorities issued a warrant for him on Tuesday, April 9.

Lopez on Wednesday appeared in Saginaw County District Court for arraignment on two counts each of assault with intent to murder and felony firearm, plus one count of carrying a concealed weapon.

Lopez remains in jail on a $125,000 bond. He is to appear for a preliminary examination on April 25.
MIDLAND, MI  A new five-year contract between Dow and United Steelworkers Local 12934 protects about 450 bargained-for jobs in the Midland silicones division from being subcontracted out, according to a union official.

The company and the union, which had 692 members at the time of the vote Wednesday, April 10, reached the agreement after a series of negotiations, said Local President Mike Orvosh.

This will be the first contract that weve had with them since they bought out Dow Corning a couple years ago, Orvosh said Thursday, April 11.

We already had one attempt at this. The company had given a last, best and final offer and our membership had rejected it," he said.

Orvosh said the membership rejected Dows first offer because the union felt it did not protect bargained-for jobs from being subcontracted out and about 270 workers faced potential pay cuts of $3 to $11 per hour.

We went back to the table and we were able to ensure an additional 220 jobs would be protected union positions (for a total of about 450), Orvosh said.

Orvosh said the union bargained to increase the rate of 20 jobs between $7 to $9 dollars per hour from what Dow first proposed and an additional 40 jobs or so were raised $3 to 4 dollars per hour from what Dow proposed.

About 120 maintenance jobs currently held by union members are not protected union jobs.

Orvosh said some workers will receive raises but more will see their rates frozen for the next four years before facing potential pay cuts.

The advantage of that, the hope is, in that four years, youre able to advance to a higher paying job, where you never do have to take a pay cut, he said. It was a collaborative effort of trying to come up with an agreement that we could live with.

Orvosh said most of those nearly 700 union members are process operators. The union also represents analyst specialists who work in labs, maintenance crews who do skilled trades work and people who work in logistics. All of them are full-time employees.

The new pay ranges for these positions, effective Wednesday, are: $31 to $37 an hour for process operators, $33 to $35.50 an hour for maintenance crews, $30 to $34 an hour for lab workers and $16 to $26 an hour for the logistics workers.

A Dow spokesperson issued the following statement:

The Midland Silicones Operations Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) expired on March 18, 2019. Representatives from Dow Michigan Operations and United Steel Workers (USW) Local 12934 began negotiating a new CBA in good faith on February 11, 2019. The bargained for employees have voted to accept the new CBA which will ensure operations are sustainable, prepared for long-term growth and competitive in the Great Lakes Bay Region.

The contract is effective through 2023.
The US will send its THAAD systems to Romania this summer, where another massive missile defense site is undergoing modernization. This is the first time the systems have been deployed so close to Russian borders.

Fort Hood-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems will arrive in Romania in the coming months at NATOs request, according to the US European Command (EUCOM). The preplanned and temporary deployment will add to the existing Aegis Ashore missile defense compound built in the Romanian neighborhood of Deveselu.

THAAD is said to have been mobilized to allow NATO to perform some regular updates at the controversial Aegis Ashore site. EUCOM has notably said that the modernization will not add any offensive capabilities to the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System.

READ MORE: US deploys THAAD missile defense systems to Israel for very first time (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Russia, which has long opposed building ballistic missile facilities in eastern Europe, maintains that the Aegis Ashore could be used to launch offensive missiles  contrary to Western claims that this is a defensive weapon.

The Aegis features a powerful scanning radar and dozens of vertical canisters carrying missiles. Moscow believes the Romanian site could easily be converted into a cruise missile base that can attack targets inside Russia. In the case of a small-scale conflict that does not involve hundreds of missiles fired by each side, it would be a significant factor.

Aside from Romania, the US is set to build another site in Poland. The initial installation in Romania has 24 missile-carrying canisters stored in three prefabricated, eight-canister modules.

THAAD, designed by Lockheed Martin, is a land-based missile defense system able to shoot down short-, medium-, and intermediate-range rockets during descent.

It has previously been deployed in Guam, the UAE, Israel, and South Korea. Romania will be the very first European country to host those systems.

Also on rt.com US in preliminary talks with Berlin to place THAAD missile system in Germany  report

In some of those countries, people have been wary of hosting the missile defense systems. South Koreans, for instance, have frequently held large-scale protests demanding that their government opposes US plans.

Locals in Japan, which does not have any THAADs on its soil but accommodates a US missile defense command, have also vented their anger at the US military. Last year, local authorities in Kanagawa prefecture near Tokyo complained that it was disappointing to suddenly find out about building the command close to a busy train station.

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A French court has ruled that US agrochemical firm Monsanto, currently owned by German drug company Bayer, was liable for the sickness of a farmer who inhaled fumes from a weed killer made by the company.

The 55-year-old cereal farmer Paul Francois said he has suffered neurological damage, including memory loss, fainting and headaches, after accidentally inhaling Monsantos Lasso weedkiller in 2004 while working on his farm. He accused the company of not giving sufficient safety warnings.

Mr Francois justifiably concludes that the product, due to its inadequate labeling that did not respect applicable regulations, did not offer the level of safety he could legitimately expect, the court said in its ruling.

Also on rt.com Bayer must pay another $80mn in Monsanto Roundup cancer trial

Bayer AG, the German pharmaceutical company that acquired Monsanto last year, confirmed Thursdays ruling. It said that was considering its legal options, including an appeal.

We are currently reviewing the decision of the court, the companys spokeswoman told the BBC.

The court in Lyon rejected Monsantos appeal on Tuesday but did not rule on how much it might have to pay. The compensation will be determined in a separate ruling. Meanwhile, Monsanto was ordered to immediately pay 50,000 for Francoiss legal fees. The farmer is seeking about 1 million ($1.1 million) in damages.

Francois has fought a decade-long legal battle against the firm. He had won rulings against Monsanto in 2012 and 2015 before Frances top court overturned the decisions and ordered the new hearing in Lyon.

Also on rt.com Bayer boss calls Monsanto takeover good idea despite mounting lawsuits

We are all happy to have won but it came at a heavy price, Francois told reporters in Paris, adding: Its a big sigh of relief. Its been 12 years of fighting, 12 years during which I had to put my whole life on hold.

His lawyer Francois Lafforgue described the initial ruling as a historic decision. He said it was the first time a herbicide maker was found guilty of such a poisoning.

Lasso has been banned in France since 2007 and had already been withdrawn in some other countries.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
Chinese premier to meet leaders from E. Europe in Croatia after key summit with EU

Chinese premier to meet leaders from E. Europe in Croatia after key summit with EU

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang is meeting leaders from eastern and central Europe in Croatia on Friday to talk business, after a key summit with EU where he pledged opening up his countrys economy. The eighth annual 16+1 cooperation event hosted by the coastal city of Dubrovnik is an economic platform for Beijings investments in 11 eastern EU states and five Western Balkan countries. The grouping has been eyed cautiously in western European capitals as an attempt to divide and rule the bloc, a goal Li has denied, AFP reports. Eastern Europe is a core component of Beijings Belt and Road project, valued at up to $1 trillion and aimed at constructing land and sea links to allow Chinese exports to flow westward.Source : RT - Daily news
East Libya forces deploy warplanes to hit Tripoli govt positions  reports

East Libya forces deploy warplanes to hit Tripoli govt positions  reports

Eastern Libyan forces bogged down in street battles in a push to seize the capital Tripoli deployed warplanes on Friday to hit two government positions, Reuters reported. The Libyan National Army (LNA) force of Khalifa Haftar advanced on the coastal city of about 1.2 million people a week ago. Armed groups loyal to PM Fayez al-Serrajs internationally-recognized government have so far kept them at bay, with fierce fighting round a disused former airport about 11km (7 miles) from the center. On Friday, an LNA warplane bombed the camp of a force allied to Serraj in Zuwara, west of Tripoli towards the Tunisian border, according to an LNA military source and residents. Zuwara is near the Mellitah oil and gas plant, jointly operated by Italys ENI and state oil firm NOC.Source : RT - Daily news
Lunar plots are owned by around 40 million Earthlings, with some 20,000 of them from Russia, according to real estate company NDV.

According to the companys experts, land plots on the moon are the cheapest that one could legitimately purchase in outer space.

Companies operating in Russia are selling one acre of such land for 3,000 rubles ($47), which is less than a dollar per square meter. The owner is provided with a certificate of title.

Also on rt.com Fly me to the moon: Russia may soon send tourists to space on private shuttle

The plots are sold on the visible side of the moon, which allows for a land marking when the owner could see the boundaries of their plot and the neighboring one with the help of observation devices.

NDV experts noted that lunar real estate is not an asset, which means it cannot act as a pledge or be used for paying off debts.

In 1967, the UN prevented any country from owning land on the moon and the 1979 Moon Treaty further stated that all satellites must be used for the good of humanity and not a single country.

In 1980, US citizen Dennis Hope claimed ownership of the moon after saying he found a loophole in the UN Outer Space Treaty that prevented countries from owning land there  but did not similarly restrict individuals.

The so-called Lunar Embassy, which was established by Hope, claims that over one billion acres of moon have already been sold and distributed worldwide.

Also on rt.com Space mining will produce worlds first trillionaire

You can buy a piece of the moon or own land on Mars. As well as give the unique gift of property on the planet Venus, the Lunar Embassys website claims.

According to the firm, every single moon property comes with three documents: the Lunar Deed, the Lunar Map and the Lunar Codes, Covenants & Restrictions.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
Hillary Clinton didn't hold back her glee at the arrest of Julian Assange, mocking both the publisher who she blames for her failed presidential run and the man she lost to in a single "we came, we saw, he died"-level one-liner.

I do think it's a little ironic that he may be the only foreigner that this administration would welcome to the United States, Clinton quipped onstage at a speaking event in New York, chuckling at her own wit and basking in the audience's mirth.

The former First Lady and failed presidential candidate was asked about the Wikileaks founder's arrest during the talk  which also included her husband  by moderator (and former Clinton staffer) Paul Begala, who set the stage by quipping that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy after reminding Clinton that she had some familiarity with the work of Mr. Assange to audience guffaws.

While Clinton had promised her audience before the talk not to mention President Donald Trump by name  a trick she stole from former president Barack Obama  she had no problem making excuses for his government's actions.

It is clear from the indictment that came out that it's not about punishing journalism, it's about assisting the hacking of the military computer to steal information from the US government, she admonished. The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it's been charged.

Clinton infamously delivered the line We came, we saw, he died in reference to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who was brutally murdered during the NATO invasion of Libya that was one of the highlights of her tenure as Obamas secretary of state.

Also on rt.com I know nothing about Wikileaks. Its not my thing, says Trump following Assanges arrest

WikiLeaks published thousands of incriminating and embarrassing private email messages stolen from former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta and the Democratic National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 election, exposing extensive corruption and malfeasance on the part of the Clinton campaign. Many  including Clinton herself  believe the leak cost her the election.

While Assange faces extradition to the US on charges he conspired with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning to hack into a Pentagon computer in 2010  charges totally unrelated to the 2016 DNC and Podesta leaks  Clinton clearly believes the later leaks are a more serious crime. The DNC  which the leaked emails revealed she controls financially  filed a lawsuit against WikiLeaks last year, accusing the publisher of colluding with Russia and the Trump campaign to "undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency"  but never denying the emails' contents were genuine.

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It might be hard to believe, but NATOs bombing campaign to remove Muammar Gaddafi from power in Libya eight years ago has not led to a new era of peace and prosperity. In fact, it looks like a new revolution is on the way.

Blowing in from the east is warlord General Khalifa Haftar who used to be a Gaddafi ally, then he wasnt, then he went to live in the US near CIA HQ, and is now back trying to take power, with the backing of a whole range of allies. His opponent in Tripoli is the UN backed Government of National Accord which isnt really a government, or national or in accord with anything.

Normally it would just be a case choosing a side, and bombing the other one, but as ICYMI discovers, its not that easy in Libya anymore.

For more, follow #ICYMI on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
During a two-day retreat at the Vatican, Pope Francis stunned visiting dignitaries and onlookers alike with a grand gesture of humility by kneeling down to kiss the feet of South Sudans formerly warring leaders.

I am asking you as a brother to stay in peace. I am asking you with my heart, let us go forward, the 82-year-old pontiff told President Salva Kiir and his rival, the former rebel leader Riek Machar on Thursday.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan in 2011 but had been gripped by a bloody civil war since 2013 until a peace deal was finally signed in September of last year. Some 400,000 people were killed and millions displaced in the bitter and bloody conflict.

The spiritual retreat was held only hours after the military in neighboring Sudan removed former strongman President Omar al-Bashir from office after 30 years of ruling with an iron first.

Bashir, along with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, was a guarantor of the deal. It remains to be seen whether his ouster will imperil the peace deal.

Also on rt.com Pope Francis awkwardly jerks his hand away refusing to let people kiss his ring (VIDEO)

There will be fights among you, but let these be inside the office, Pope Francis told the men adding that their People are wearied, exhausted by past conflicts: Remember that with war, all is lost!

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As the modern military faces more complicated challenges and obtains advanced technologies, it requires a transition to a professional army, said President Vladimir Putin.

Compulsory military service slowly becomes a thing of the past, he said, adding that it takes time and appropriate financing to make it happen.

But this trend exists and we will move in this direction, Putin stressed.

However, many countries dont abolish compulsory military service completely because militaries have a lot of unskilled work to do, he added.

Also on rt.com From hypersonic glider to nuke subs: Meet Russian arms on brink of deployment (PHOTO, VIDEO)

In Russia a 12-month draft is mandatory for all male citizens aged 1827, with a number of exceptions. The term was reduced from two years in 2007-2008, though one year service is considered by many experts too short to obtain high military skills.

Earlier this week, Putin announced that a new super-heavy SS-28 Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) has entered the final test stage and will soon enter service.

The Sarmat is one of the top five weapons announced last March as Russias response to the US development of a global anti-ballistic missile system.

Other weapons including the laser weapon Peresvet and a nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missile (ALBM) Kinzhal (Dagger), have been already deployed.

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The operator of the Nord Stream 2 project has announced that 1,000km of the gas pipeline now stretches across the Baltic seafloor through Finnish, Swedish and German waters.

The new milestone was reached as some 20 vessels are currently engaged in the project, with nearly 1,300 people working on board the pipelay, pipe supply and survey vessels, Nord Stream 2 said on Thursday. The gas pipeline is now being installed in the Swedish Exclusive Economic Zone by two Allseas pipelay vessels, Solitaire, and the worlds largest construction vessel, Pioneering Spirit.

The news about progress with Nord Stream 2 almost coincided with a statement by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in which he admitted that Washingtons efforts to turn the EU against building the pipeline have been fruitless so far.

The Germans appear intent on continuing to build that pipeline We had done just about all we can to discourage the Europeans, primarily Germans, from building Nord Stream 2 and weve done that without success today, Pompeo said at Wednesdays Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing.

He was responding to a question from Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), who echoed Donald Trumps previous rhetoric against the project, calling it Putins pipeline and a trap for Germans.

Also on rt.com Germany not 51st US state: Trade lobby blasts US interference in Nord Stream 2 gas project

Nord Stream 2 is a 1,230km-long twin pipeline system designed to transfer Russian gas to Germany and further to other European consumers. The project is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2019.

The construction of the pipeline has attracted both support and vocal opposition from the European nations and beyond. Critics, including the US, which wants to sell its own gas exports to the EU, say that the Nord Stream 2 will make Europe dependent on Russian gas and called on Berlin to abandon the project. Germany shrugged off the criticism, stressing that the pipeline would only contribute to the diversity of the gas supply to Europe.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
Russia wont be returning to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe as long as its possible to discriminate against delegations based on taste or political preferences, the Federation Council chairwoman said.

The absence of Russia from the organization marks a real crisis in PACE, which affects the Council of Europe as a whole, Valentina Matvienko said.

They understand that a solution must be found, she pointed out, commenting on the recent PACE resolution, which called upon Russia to form a delegation and make its annual payment to the assembly.

Moscow has welcomed such positive signals and was ready to continue discussions, the chairwoman of the Russian parliaments upper house said. However, she noted that no decision has so far been made on the principal issue of discrimination.

The Russian delegation will return to PACE only after changes are made to the regulations, creating an equal and unified playing field for all national delegations, Matvienko stated. Russia is anxious to wait until this happens, she added.

Also on rt.com No PACE cooperation in 2019 due to anti-Russian hysteria  snr lawmaker

The rift between Moscow and PACE started in 2014 after Crimeas reunification with Russia and allegations of its involvement in the military conflict in Ukraine. Back then, the Russian delegation was deprived of its voting rights and banned from participating in the ruling bodies or monitoring missions of the organization.

Moscow insisted that PACE regulations contradict the charter of the Council of Europe, and proposed changes to make discrimination against national delegations more difficult. But the resolution was stalled by the UK, Ukraine and other members.

Russia responded by stopping all participation in PACE sessions and withholding its payments to the Council of Europe.

Also on rt.com Ruxit would be blow similar to Brexit  Council of Europe chief

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The general health of the worlds economy is being dragged down by ongoing political and economic disputes between Russia and the United States, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said, urging to resolve the differences.

Over the past several years there has been a sharp deterioration in relations between Moscow and Washington with many geopolitical experts seeing the current ties at their worst level since the Cold War. In 2014, the US and its Western allies introduced their first sanctions against Russia over the countrys alleged involvement in the Ukraine crisis and the reunification with Crimea. Since then, the penalties have been extended and expanded over alleged elections meddling and various other reasons.

Also on rt.com Russia-US trade turnover hit $25 billion & rising despite sanctions  Lavrov

This is not the best climate for business development I think that we need to strengthen our links, both economic and political links, between the US and Russia. This would be of benefit to the global economy and, to our countries, our people and our entrepreneurs, first and foremost, the Russian finance minister said in an interview with CNBC.

Earlier this year, Washington released the results of the two-year long investigation into whether the Russian government tried to interfere in the 2016 US presidential election. Special Counsel Robert Muellers report revealed no evidence of collusion between Donald Trumps presidential campaign and Kremlin.

We have never had any doubts in the conclusions of that report, on the one hand, Siluanov said when asked about probable relief among business community in Russia in the light of the Mueller report.

Also on rt.com Just business: British & US investors gobble up Russian government bonds

On the other hand, I think that it is not really about the results of that investigation, the problem lies with the overall state of relations between our two countries.

Earlier, the minister highlighted that the result of the probe would have no effect on Washingtons decision to lift the anti-Russia sanctions.

It is the change in the overall rhetoric in our relations that is the problem. We can see that the results of the report have had no effect, they have not led to any willingness to stop the sanctions that are coming out of the US, Siluanov said speaking at the International Monetary Funds (IMF) spring meeting.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
If youve seen the pictures of a frail Julian Assange being carried out of Ecuadors London embassy like a bearded battering ram by a gaggle of coppers, then you did so courtesy of video agency Ruptly.

Normally the identity of the video agency that provides news footage is not worthy of a story in itself, but Ruptly has one distinctive factor which sets it apart: its Russian. Even worse, its Russian and its a subsidiary of RT.

CNN appears so shocked that the footage of Assange being manhandled wasnt captured by leading UK broadcasters like the BBC, Sky News or Independent Television News (ITN) that it wrote a story headlined How a Russian-owned media outlet landed the first video of Julian Assanges arrest.

CNN explains away the gazumping embarrassment by insinuating that Russia Link + Assange = Conspiracy.

It uses an irrelevant quote from a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, and asks Ruptlys deputy head of news if she feels pressured by the Russian government. She says no, although I suspect she does feel pressure to film newsworthy events as they happen.

The adjectives CNN uses to describe Ruptly are worthy of exploration and explanation. In the headline, the agency is described as Russian-owned, which is another way of saying evil.

In CNNs tweet, Ruptly is a niche media outlet. Niche is a term used to describe something that is a bit forbidden, maybe a bit filthy. If you Google the term niche material at work, the IT department will be canceling your credentials within minutes.

CNNs Hadas Gold wrote: Ruptly, which has carved out a niche for itself by recording events around the world and selling the footage to other broadcasters, is a subsidiary of Russian state-backed media outlet RT.

I mean, if that is a niche, then its a pretty big one. Ive never heard Reuters or AFP or AP described as niche before.

And in CNNs online write up, Ruptly is described as obscure. This put-down suggests Ruptly is not one of us, not worthy of attention, not one of the chosen ones.

Responding to CNN, Ruptly said: We would like to point out that it is not exactly correct to call us a niche or obscure video agency. As an award-winning global multimedia agency, we provide news video, live events, and broadcast services to over 1,200 media clients worldwide, including some of the biggest names in news journalism. We have actually provided CNN with a number of materials since our launch.

So CNN is a fan of obscure, niche material too! Isnt that always the way?!

Also on rt.com WATCH Julian Assange dragged out of Ecuadorian embassy shouting 'UK must resist'

Just to clear up exactly how Ruptly got the footage, it stayed outside the Ecuadorian Embassy and filmed the door for days on end, even when all the other outlets went home. Thats it. Ruptly was there because the forthcoming arrest had been rumored for days, which was why the more well-known media outlets had also been there, but ultimately missed the money shot.

The Russian scoop is clearly embarrassing some members of the establishment media, but theres no need to take the blame anymore, just like with Brexit and Trump, you can just blame Russia.

By Simon Rite

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Sudans military council says new govt will be civilian

Sudans military council says new govt will be civilian

The new Sudanese government will be comprised of civilians, the head of the military councils political committee said on Friday, according to Reuters. The statement came a day after President Omar al-Bashir was deposed by the military. On Thursday, the United States urged Sudans army to bring civilians into government after ousting the veteran leader, saying an announced two-year timeline was too long. Washington has called on transitional authorities to exercise restraint and to allow space for civilian participation within the government, State Department spokesman Robert Palladino said. The US had been trying to mend relations with Sudan after years of tension with Bashir, who seized power in a 1989 coup.Source : RT - Daily news
Indonesia has issued a tsunami warning after a powerful 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sulawesi island.

A spokesman for Indonesia's Geophysical Agency issued the warning after the quake hit on Friday.

It struck 280 km (174 miles) south of the province of Gorontalo at a depth of 43 km (27 miles), according to the United States Geological Survey.

Some residents of the island have been advised to evacuate but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

Indonesia lies in the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, a vast area in the Pacific Ocean where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.

A 7.5-magnitude quake hit Sulawesi, triggering a tsunami which hit the city of Palu and killed more than 4,300 people last year.

MORE AS IT HAPPENS

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For years, three NATO states have had no trouble using Russian air defense systems, but Turkeys S-400 deal is a special case as its a risk to the US grip on Ankara and inflicts losses on its military industry, analysts told RT.

Not a single month passes without the United States unloading on Turkey, which seems to stay on course buying the top-notch S-400 anti-aircraft systems. Washington has already put on hold F-35 deliveries to the Turkish Air Force and warned that carrying on with the deal could jeopardize Ankaras ties with the US and NATO.

Following suit, some mainstream media rushed to explain how Turkeys industry will suffer if the S-400s reach Turkish soil. Others warned that having the F-35 and the S-400 within one military would compromise critical advantages of the fifth-generation fighter jet.

Military analysts who talked to RT said much of the fuss is about Ankara not bowing to Washington and NATO and pursuing its own interests.

Turkey demonstrates true sovereignty buying the S-400; this is unacceptable for the US.

The US is losing the lead and Russia is taking it, Igor Korotchenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine and member of the Defense Ministrys public board, said. The prospect of a NATO member buying from Russia damages US reputation ... and inflicts losses on the American military industry.

READ MORE: Turkey must choose between remaining NATO partner or buying Russian S-400  Pence

The S-400 is a danger to NATO aircraft because it can spot and engage F-35 and F-22, he explained.

But it is not uncommon for NATO member states to use high-tech Russian-made weaponry, including the S-400s predecessor. Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia  all US NATO allies  have the S-300 in their arsenals.

Also on rt.com Serbia wants to buy S-300 missile systems, talking with Russia & Belarus  president

Greece has installed them on the island of Cyprus, which became a turning point in its national defense strategy. Bulgaria and Slovakia are frequently using the system  designed at the height of the Cold War  during NATO live-fire exercises.

So, why is Turkey  which joined NATO in 1952 on par with Greece  under intense pressure while the other three are not?

Greece and other members have procured Russian anti-aircraft weapons long before 2014, i.e. before tensions between the US and Russia began to mount, explained Russian military expert Mikhail Khodarenok.

Khodarenok, a retired Russias Air Defense Troops officer, said enhanced firepower, resistance to jamming and extended reach all make the S-400 stand out among other surface-to-air missiles.

It has no rivals in terms of cost efficiency.

But what if the US is so fearful of the S-400 because it is less familiar to the Pentagon than the older-generation S-300? The American military had acquired a pair of S-300P and S-300V variants through Belarus and Ukraine after the USSRs collapse to study the systems capabilities  but this knowledge isnt up-to-date now, Khodarenok said.

The US has nothing of its [newer variants], he noted. Even knowing the enemy weapons in detail doesnt help much in the battlefield as suppressing anti-aircraft systems is about robust electronic jamming, not studying any specific type of hardware.

Ankara says the S-400 will help the country to defend itself, as Turkey faces threats coming from the Middle East. But at the same time, it is in talks with the US over the Patriot missiles  a near-peer analog to the S-300 family.

Avoiding putting all eggs in one basket, Turkey shows that it doesnt want to necessarily buy anti-aircraft systems from one vendor, Khodarenok suggested. He believes that the Russian deal will be limited to Turkey buying only a number of S-400 squadrons to cover only one important facility.

There will be no wholesale purchase of anti-aircraft systems to cover all of Turkey, while the S-400 debacle is far from over. The deal is done only after Turkish crews are trained in Russia, the launchers are tested and sent to Turkey, and, finally, all payments are made, he explained.

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China and the US are predicted to reap huge benefits should the UK leave the EU without a deal. This is because Europe will be left fractured by its divorce from Britain, Professor of Economics Richard Wolff told RT.

On Wednesday, Brussels agreed to extend the Brexit deadline until October 31, thus giving London an additional six months to find the best possible solution for leaving the bloc as UK PM Theresa May battles with MPs to agree on a deal. However, businesses inside Britain and all across Europe want this endless soap opera to be settled, Wolff explained to RTs Boom Bust show.

The worst thing is uncertainty around it, he told guest host Ben Swann. Nobody knows whether to make an investment in one part of Europe or another, because they dont know what Europe will mean in terms of where they can sell and where they can buy and what kind of profits they can make.

Meanwhile, a new UN research document titled No-deal Brexit: the trade winners and losers has warned that the UKs withdrawal will alter the ability of non-EU countries to export to the UK market, leaving space for other players to jump in. Chinese exports to the UK could therefore surge to $10.2 billion, while the US is expected to add $5.3 billion.

Also on rt.com Please dont waste this time: EU leaders agree to extend Brexit deadline until October 31

Such an outcome can be explained by the fact that British trade partners will have to literally choose sides amid the dramatic economic and political reorganization, the professor noted. For example, the Italians have already inked a deal of their own with Beijing.

If you fracture up Europe, if France or Germany begin to see that theyre gonna have to choose sides Its not clear which way theyll go: with the US, with Mr Trump, whom they dont like; with a destroyed Britain, which theyre watching; or with the ascending China, Wolff said. We could see a dramatic reorganization of the world, politically and economically, because one of the big power blocs, Europe, is literally falling apart.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT's business section
Amazon's voice assistant Alexa is used by millions across the world in their smart homes to play games or to listen to music. For the fear of invasion of privacy, many have also resisted these products. Their fear may not be far off as thousands of Amazon employees listen to recordings from Amazon Echo speakers to better Alexa for its users.

Many recordings are transcribed, annotated and put into the system to fill the loopholes in the software and its usage, Bloomberg reported. When developing software algorithms, a human role is often ignored, according to seven employees who have worked on it. Alexa needs help from humans to become the 'smart' device it is.

The team that works on Alexa has a mix of contractors and Amazon employees who work from various countries including Boston, India, Costa Rica and Romania. They have all signed non-disclosure agreements with the company. Working nine hours a day, each employee listens to nearly 1,000 audio clips, sources told the wire agency. The offices are discreet with no boards advertising Amazon's presence there.

Most of the times, the recordings are mundane. Some recordings are amusing like someone singing off key or a child screaming. When the team cannot ascertain what a particular word is, they use internal chat rooms to share files with each other. In some cases, they also heard violence or assault. In such cases, the employees are given a procedure to follow. But, two employees based in Romania said that they were told it was not Amazon's job to interfere.

Even background noise gets picked up by the speakers. In some cases, bank details and passwords are caught. Reviewers are then supposed to label them "critical data".

"We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order to improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems," a spokesperson said, adding that customers' privacy is the most important area for the company.

Users are given the option to disable the use of their voice recordings for product development. Even the recordings that are provided to employees do not have a name and address but only an account number and the device's serial number.

Amazon Echo debuted in 2014, popularising the use of voice assistants and smart homes. Quickly after that, Google launched its own version called Google Home. After that, Apple's HomePod entered the market. Many companies from China developed their own software. According to research, 78 million smart speakers were bought in 2018.

Even Siri, Apple's voice assistant, has human beings working behind the scenes to gauge if the Apple product is interpreting users' requests correctly. These recordings do not have any track-able personal information of the users.

Users around the world speculate whether someone is on the other end of the line. Reviewers have encountered many questions like, "Do you work for the NSA?" or "Alexa, is someone else listening to us?"
India imported about 5 percent more oil from Iran in the last fiscal year through March as companies raised purchases ahead of US sanctions against Tehran from November, preliminary tanker arrival data obtained from shipping and industry sources showed.

Despite Washington restricting India's purchases from Tehran, refiners shipped in about 479,500 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil in 2018/19 compared with about 458,000 bpd a year before, according to the data.

The United States introduced sanctions in November but gave a six-month waiver to eight nations, including India, which allowed them to import some Iranian oil.

India was allowed by Washington to continue to buy about 300,000 bpd oil until early May.

In March India's oil imports from Iran rose to about 405,000 bpd, about 56 percent higher than February, the data showed. March volumes were however about 6 percent lower than the purchase in the same month a year earlier.

A lack of ships delayed lifting of some cargoes to end-February, leading to higher arrivals in March, sources said. BPCL could not lift a cargo from Iran as tanker was not available, a company source said.

Since November, when India received the sanctions waiver, only state-run Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp, Hindustan Petroleum and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals have been buying Iranian oil.

India's overall imports from Iran in 2018/19 were lower than the 500,000 bpd that Iran was hoping to sell to its second-biggest oil client after China. Indian refiners raised purchases from Iran in April-October 2018, drawn to almost free shipping and extended credit offered by Tehran to boost sales.

In the first quarter of 2019, India shipped in about 40 percent less oil from Iran at about 313,400 bpd, the data showed.

The sources declined to be identified as they were not authorised to speak with media.

Indian refiners have not yet placed orders to lift Iranian oil in May pending clarity on whether Washington will extend a the sanctions waiver.

India wants to keep buying Iranian oil at a level of 300,000 bpd, Indian sources said last month.

Refiners placed orders to buy 8 million barrels in April but India would receive higher volumes as some delayed cargoes of March arrive at Indian ports this month.
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Distressed airline Jet Airways has suspended international operations until April 15, as a fund crunch continues to force the company to cut its operations.

However, sources confirmed the airline has received some more expression of interest (EoIs) before the deadline to participate in the bidding process ended at 6 pm today.

On April 11, the airline had curtailed international flights, including those to London and Amsterdam, saying the suspension will be effective until the morning of April 12.

But officials said there were no more funds to continue the international flights.

The development comes even as senior Jet officials are to brief officials at Ministry of Civil Aviation. The company officials have also been in talks with their lenders, raising hopes that the banks would transfer funds to the airline.

While the banks had promised Rs 1,500 crore in emergency funding, only about Rs 250 crore has been transferred so far.

Apart from international flights, Jet's domestic operations have also been severely impacted.

Hundreds of its employees gathered at the airline's headquarters on Friday afternoon, asking for clarity on the salary dues. Jet had deferred March salary payments to all its employees. Its senior management, pilots and engineers haven't been paid since January.

Sources added the banks may transfer just enough funds to pay the ground staff.

Meanwhile, Jet employees, including pilots, engineers and cabin crew, plan to have a 'Save Jet Airways Human Chain' at Terminal 3 of Delhi airport. This will be done for an hour from 3.30pm.
Zomato | The food ordering aggregator raised $250 million from Kora Management, Tiger Global and Temasek in August 2020.Zomato | The food ordering aggregator raised $250 million from Kora Management, Tiger Global and Temasek in August 2020. (Image: Zomato)

Migrant workers in India, who are joining the gig economy enabled by technology, will find New Delhi to be the most favourable destination, as per data compiled by human resources firm TeamLease Services. Bengaluru, the technology hub of India, is in the second place.

Food delivery apps Zomato and Swiggy, and cab aggregators Uber and Ola led this industry. It remains mostly unregulated, and job security and benefits are minimal. Since training for these jobs is readily available, especially with the success of hyper-local delivery companies, more workers have entered the gig economy.

"The speed at which you can convert a migrant into a skilled worker has gone up. In fact, we can see that Delhi has some 1.3 million Ola and Uber drivers. It took eight years for Ola and Uber to do this, while the entire Indian IT industry employs around 4 million people," R Srinivasan, a professor of strategy at the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru, told Mint.

The report said that around 1.3 million Indians migrated to five citiesBengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennaiin the six months till March 31 in search of jobs. This was 60 percent more in the six-month period that ended on September 30, 2018.

Industry experts think that not much has been done to develop the gig economy and protect those who work within it. Ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, parties from both sides released manifestos promising development to the startup and entrepreneurship industry. Policy experts have also argued that the next government must intervene with some changes in labour laws.

Mansi Kedia of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations has said that, while these gig economy workers are an extension of India's informal labour, at least there is a record of them now. "Now, with the tech companies coming in, there is data available on who these people are, where they are working, etc, making it possible to enable job security," she told the paper.

Rituparna Chakraborty, the executive vice-president of TeamLease, said that an estimated 56 percent of the new employment in India is being generated by the gig economy companies. "Blue-collared workers are not covered by the obligations under labour law and do not receive any statutory benefits, including safeguards such as a minimum wage," she added.

Cab companies do not put drivers on direct payroll due to legal liabilities, a lawyer said on condition of anonymity. He added that the government could appease these workers by offering tax rebates and concessions although this may impact the price of the service for the end customer.
Amol Agrawal

In its April policy, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said it is not necessary to activate CCCB at this point in time. CCCB stands for countercyclical capital buffers, a tool to safeguard the banking system. The RBI introduced this tool in February 2015, and since then the regulator announces its decision on CCCB in the first bi-monthly policy of the financial year.

Banking activity is largely seen as pro-cyclical which means bank financing rises and declines with the level of economic activity. This is problematic as it is at the time of downturns that economies need support from banks since other sources of finance dry up significantly. Apart from just banks, one can also raise finances from other resources during good times. Thus, banks need to do the opposite: apply restraint during good times and go for broke during bad times. This is the countercyclical approach.

However, counter-cyclicality is difficult to apply in principle. During good times, banks, too, want to join the growth story and, if reluctant, they might be pushed by their shareholders to do so. The former Citigroup chief executive officer, Chuck Prince famously said: When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing. These remarks came to haunt him during the 2008 crisis, but all he said was a reflection of the larger financial industry.

Under CCCB, banks are required to maintain a buffer as the economy is growing and then use the same during a downturn. Another linked purpose of the CCCB is that it becomes part of the macro-prudential toolkit of central banks and other regulators.

Before the crisis, one just looked at risks in individual banks (micro-prudential). Post the 2008 crisis, it was learnt that even if individual banks are doing fine, they could be creating problems at a systemic level. For instance, most US-based banks were increasingly reliant on the repo window for meeting their liabilities and they looked stable. However, at an aggregate level, this created a systemic risk as everyone was dependent on short-term borrowings which eventually led to the 2008 crisis. This resulted in a change in thinking that regulators also need to look at risks in the entire system. Interestingly, the Great Depression gave us macroeconomics whereas 2008 crisis gave us macro-prudential!

One crucial thing to understand is how the CCCB gets activated. In Feb 2018, the RBI gave the following guidelines for its estimation: The credit-to-GDP gap shall be the main indicator in the CCCB framework in India. However, it shall not be the only reference point and shall be used in conjunction with gross non-performing assets (GNPA) growth. The Reserve Bank of India shall also look at other supplementary indicators for CCCB decision such as incremental credit-deposit ratio for a moving period of three years (along with its correlation with credit-to-GDP gap and GNPA growth), industry outlook (IO) assessment index (along with its correlation with GNPA growth) and interest coverage ratio (along with its correlation with credit-to-GDP gap). While taking the final decision on CCCB, the Reserve Bank of India may use its discretion to use all or some of the indicators along with the credit-to-GDP gap.

The credit to GDP gap which is the main indicator is defined as the difference between credit-to-GDP ratio and the long term trend value of credit-to-GDP ratio at any point in time. Further, the RBI has specified two thresholds activating the CCCB: 3 percent and 15 percent. This means when actual credit to GDP is greater than the long-term trend by 3 percent, CCCB of 0 to 0.25 percent of risk-weighted assets (RWA) will be activated. The upper threshold is 15 percent greater than the long-term trend where maximum CCCB of 2.5 percent of RWA will apply. In the middle of this range, the regulator will keep prescribing a raise in CCCB from 0 to 0.25 percent of RWA till it reaches 2.5 percent.

There are statistical approaches to estimating long-term trend which can help in estimating the gap. However, BIS in its 2010 report said: simple moving average or a linear time trend could be used to establish the trend.

Applying a moving average of three years, the gap is clearly negative as of now. Perhaps, the only time CCCB would have been applied is in the period of 2004-08 when Indian banking suddenly shifted gears from lazy banking in 2002 (as mentioned by Rakesh Mohan former Deputy Governor of RBI in 2002) to crazy banking in 2004-08 (as suggested by some experts) Since then, the gap declined and has been negative since 2014-15.

BIS also announced that banks of member economies could begin building CCCBs as part of their capital plans. If activated, the banks would be asked to keep 0.625 percent of RWA in January 2016 and increase this year to reach 2.5 percent by January 2019. The above-explained activation would be discretionary and the power lies with the national regulator. RBI agrees to this BIS advisory and has asked Indian banks to start maintaining CCCBs. This became a bone of contention amidst banks as it required them to raise resources other than normal capital. The issue came up in a controversial RBI Board meeting in December 2018, where it was decided to delay the last tranche of 0.625 percent by a year. Obviously, only time will tell whether CCCBs are enough to both prevent and mitigate the next financial crisis.
Jet Airways' employees, including its ground staff, have called for a 'gathering' on April 12 at the airline's headquarters in Mumbai to enquire on their unpaid salary.

The All India Jet Airways Officers & Staff Association in a communique has asked its members to gather at 1.30 pm "to ascertain clarification on our unpaid salaries for month of March and about our job security."

The association added: "Let us express our feeling in open about our hardships faced due inability to meet our ends. For instance, routine expenses such as house rent, missing of EMI deadlines, transport expenses to and fro home and office etc."

Unrest among its employees comes on the last day to submit expression of interest for Jet Airways. Till now, Etihad Airways, which owns 24 percent stake in the cash-strapped airline, and a clutch of private equity players are said to have submitted EoIs.

Founder and former Chairman Naresh Goyal and Air Canada may also join the fray.

The airline, which now has 12 aircraft flying and has also considerably curtailed its international and domestic services, needs an urgent infusion of funds. It has debts of over Rs 8,000 crore. While the banks were expected to transfer Rs 1,500 crore, only about Rs 250 crore has been provided to the airline.

Jet Airways has suspended west bound international flights from Thursday night till Friday morning. These includes flights to London and Amsterdam.

According to regulations, an airline needs to have a minimum fleet of 20 planes to operate international flights.

Domestically, the airline may operate a much truncated flight schedule on Friday, and that too mostly from Mumbai.

Its pilots have also threatened to go on protest from April 15, if their dues are not cleared.

In a communication issued late on Thursday night, the pilots' union -- National Aviators Guild -- reiterated its earlier demand. "It is time to seek some answers. Hence, we request all pilots to gather at Siroya Centre on the 15th at 1000 hrs in full uniform," it said

Three months salaries are yet to be paid to the pilots, engineers and senior management.
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The employee union of Jet Airways, which is facing its worst crisis, Friday sought to register FIRs against airlines' founder Naresh Goyal, chief executive Vinay Dube and SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar for non- payment of March salary, even as passengers continue to bear the brunt of last minute cancellations and missing refunds.

The airline earlier in the day, the airline said its international operations would stand suspended till April 15, after it suspended all its overseas operations Thursday.

In the Capital, sources said the PMO has called for an urgent meeting to resolve the crisis at the airline, which is currently operating only 11 of its 123 strong fleet as lessors have grounded close to 90 planes so far since February. This forced the airline to ground its entire operations across the Eastern and Northeastern regions since Thursday.

Earlier in the day, over 200 employees, under union president and NCP lawmaker Kiran Pawaskar, took out a march from the airport to Jet headquarters Siroya Centre, in Andheri and met senior management,though they wanted to meet Dube.

Later, they went to the police seeking to register an FIR against Goyal, Dube and Kumar, SBI is the lead lender to the airline, who are wresting the control of the airline now.

"We have to inform you that Jet has not paid our March salaries of date. We call upon you to register offences for cheating, criminal breach of trust, misappropriation of funds and other offences under relevant sections of the law," Pawaskar, who heads the All-India Jet Airways Officers & Staff Association, said in a complaint to senior inspector of the suburban Sahar police station.

Before meeting the management, Pawaskar addressed the employees and blamed the government policies for the downfall of the airline. He also claimed that whatever the little money the airline is earning now is being used to make refunds to the passengers.

In the meanwhile, the stranded passengers at the Mumbai airport alleged that they are not getting refunds and are being forced to shell out much higher price for last- minute tickets.

"I had a flight to New Delhi this evening, but when I reached the airport I was informed that the flight was cancelled. When I sought the refund, I was told to collect it from my travel agent," said an aggrieved passenger.

However, the employees complained that due to the last minute cancellations, they are in the line of fire of the harried passengers.
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Well, it was a boring day of trade as benchmark indices consolidated in a narrow range, but bulls managed to push the index in green territory towards the close.

For the past few days, Nifty has been consolidating between a range of 11500 - 11700.

Now going forward a breakdown below 11500 or a breakout above 11760 will decide the trend, suggest experts.

Global cues, movement of crude oil prices, macro data as well as earnings are other factors which are likely to dictate the trend for markets ahead of election results.

The Indian rupee on Thursday climbed 19 paise to close at 68.92 against the US dollar, also marking a third straight session of gains, driven by sustained foreign fund inflows.

On the institutional front, FPIs were net buyers in Indian markets for Rs 476 crore while DIIs were net sellers to the tune of Rs 16 cr, provisional data showed.

Big News:

Earnings will be the big talking point  TCS and Infosys will declare their results.

All in all, 11 companies on the BSE will declare their results which include names like Infosys, TCS, Tinplate India, Mold-Tek Technologies etc. among others.

TCS is expected to report revenue growth of around 2.5 percent in dollar terms due to cross-currency tailwinds. Constant currency terms revenue growth is expected to be around 2 percent, sequentially.

For Infosys, brokerages expect Q4 to be better than third quarter due to ramp-up in large deals. According to them, constant currency revenue growth could be in the range of 1.7-2.1 percent for the quarter.

Technical View:

Nifty formed a Doji candle on daily charts.

The index closed tad below 11,600 and formed small bullish candle, which resembles a 'Doji' kind of formation on daily charts.

Unless the index emerges out of the trading range which appears to be 11,71011,550, a directional move can't be witnessed.

On the downside, it looks critical to sustain above 11,550 levels on closing basis breach of which shall strengthen the bearish sentiment.

Three levels: 11550, 11606, 11760

Max Call OI: 12000, 11800

Max Put OI: 11000, 11500

Stocks in news:

IT Stocks will be in focus as Infosys and TCS will declare their results for the quarter ended March later today.

Sun Pharma group's senior executive Abhay Arvind Gandhi and his wife Kiran have settled with Sebi a case related to insider trading in shares of Ranbaxy Laboratories in 2014. Both have paid a total of over Rs 70 lakh as settlement charges.

Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) Thursday hiked the prices of its popular model Alto K10 across the country following the addition of various safety features and the hatchback will be costlier by up to Rs 23,000 in Delhi-NCR.

Technical Recommendations:

We spoke to IIFL and heres what they have to recommend:

Bajaj Finserv: Buy| Target: Rs 7940| Stop Loss: Rs 7370| Returns 5%

BHEL: Buy| Target: Rs 80| Stop Loss: Rs 71| Returns 8%

Maruti Suzuki India: Buy| Target: Rs 7650| Stop Loss: Rs 7030| Returns 6.5%

: 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.
Here are stocks that are in the news today:

Results on April 12: TCS, Infosys, Alpha Hi-Tech Fuel, Ashika Credit Capital, Gangotri Textiles, GTPL Hathway, Integrated Capital Services, Infomedia Press, Minal Industries, Mold-Tek Technologies, Tinplate Company of India

Cipla launches Niveoli, Indias first extrafine ICS-LABA combination HFA inhale

Lumax Auto signed a joint venture agreement with Jopp Holding JmbH, Germany for manufacturing and sale of the automotive components

IDBI Bank: Bank reduced MCLR by 5-10 bps across various tenors w.e.f April 12.

Narayana Hrudayalaya has incorporated a wholly owned subsidiary company Narayana Health North America LLC in the State of Delaware, United States of America

Future Retail: Acuite Ratings & Research Limited has reaffirmed its rating on company's commercial paper at A1+.

Nitesh Estates approved the appointment of Rakesh Singh as chief executive officer of the company w.e.f. April 10,2019

AGC Networks Pte, wholly-owned subsidiary of AGC Network & AGC Networks Inc., wholly-owned Subsidiary of AGC Singapore, have jointly entered into a stock purchase agreement with COPC Holdings Inc. and Global Quality Assurance in USA to acquire 100% stake in the COPC Holdings for a purchase consideration of USD 5,500,000

ICICI Pru Life Insurance reduced stake in Coromandel International by 2.03 percent

Pasupati Acrylon has successfully commenced commercial production of second Line of cast Polypropylene Film (CPP) w.e.f. 26.03.2019

Prabhat Dairy: Company completed sale of its shareholding in wholly owned step down subsidiary, Sunfresh Agro Industries Private Limited (SAIPL) to Tirumala Milk Products Private Limited.

Jet Airways - additional ten aircraft have been grounded due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors

Jet Airways: Etihad Airways submits expression of interest to acquire substantial stake (up to 49 percent) in company - CNBC-TV18 sources. Etihad Airways currently holds 24 percent stake in Jet Airways.

DHFL - Brickwork revised rating on secured NCD worth Rs 29,000 crore to BWR AA- from BWR AA

Arvind SmartSpaces - Indian Ratings and Research (IRA) has assigned rating of IND A1 to short-term loan of Rs 100 crore

Future Consumer - CARE reaffirmed CARE A1 rating to the company's commercial papers worth Rs 100 crore

Bulk Deals on April 11

(For more bulk deals, Click Here)

Analyst or Board Meet/Briefings

Manappuram Finance: Company's officials will meet BOB Capital Markets on April 12.

Sterlite Technologies: Board to consider raising funds by issue of NCDs on private placement basis, March quarter earnings on April 23.

IDBI Bank: Board to consider issuing ESOPs to employees on April 16.

: Company's officials will meet Oldbridge Capital on April 12.
The last few months have been a bargain hunters market with investors picking up stressed stocks. But many of these bargains could be traps. In a two part series (Part-2), we dig into the pitfalls of investing in stocks considered cheap based on the price-to-book value metric.

- When the stated value of assets in the books is higher than their realisable value- When a companys balance sheet contains too many intangibles- When the company has huge contingent liabilities

- When a large part of the liability is shifted to the future

During times of stress in the market, investors hunt for bargains and one valuation yardstick used by most of them is price-to-book value. However, there are many pitfalls of using this measure, often ignored by investors.

We detail seven such ways in which P/B value as a tool of valuation can turn out to be a trap for bargain hunters. The first four are listed below, the rest will be discussed in Part 2.

In the last few years, many companies including Tata Steel, GMR Infrastructure and others took huge write-offs, knocking down the value of assets sitting in their books.

For example, in the September quarter of FY19, Hindustan Construction Company (HCC) reported a net loss of Rs 1,525 crore as against a profit of Rs 11 crore in the year ago quarter as the company wrote off its entire investments in Lavasa -- a subsidiary of HCC, which has been referred to the bankruptcy court. While HCC has a negative net worth and book value, had it happened to any healthy company the book value per share would have dropped significantly.

Tata Steel has written off its investment in Europe and took a hit because of the difference in realisable value compared to its stated value. Companies often indulge in a waiting game, postponing such value erosion till a day when it becomes unbearable. Whats more, not just fixed assets but the value of inventories and receivables too could be inflated in the books.

In March 2013, a well-known education company, Core Education, saw a big crash in its share price from about Rs 300 to Rs 60 a share, trading at 0.35 times its book value of about Rs 170 per share. Investors who thought it was a bargain relying on its book value lost out, as most of its assets were deployed in intangibles such as goodwill, which amounted to 72 percent of its FY14 net worth. Trading in the stock has currently been suspended and it last traded at Rs 1.77 a share in 2016.

In the Indian context there are many cases where the share of intangibles as a part of capital is high. And since earnings-based valuations are assigned to these companies, share prices drift far from reality.

Sanjay Bakshi, Professor at MDI Gurgaon said, Ben Graham cites an example in his book. He wrote about a person who owns five trucks and the business is doing well because there is a shortage of trucks and freight rates are high. Now imagine that he wants to sell his business. If the business was a listed company, then it might sell for, say, 15 times earnings in the stock market. But when you multiply earnings by 15, you get a valuation which is three times the replacement cost of the five trucks.

Bakshi added, By using this example, Graham showed the dangers of relying on price-to-earnings multiple for valuation in cyclical businesses with low-entry barriers. He wrote that in a private business no one will pay more than the depreciated value of the five trucks because thats what the businesses is really worth. There might be a small premium for goodwill in the business, but not much. And so Graham recommended the use of asset values as a sanity check over valuations models that only used earnings.

A book value which is supported by hard assets compared to intangible assets such as goodwill, trademark, patents and others needs to be factored in. In bad times, like in the case of Kingfisher Airlines, its brand had no real value. In such a case, the book value, which includes intangibles, would be misleading for investors. Hence, it is important to look for hard assets. Book values need to be supported by something tangible such as replacement value.

Citing another instance, Bakshi pointed out, There are some investors who look at low price-to-replacement cost of assets. Take the example of Bruce Flatt of Brookfield, which follows this philosophy of investing in hard assets. Brookfield is investing in many hard assets in India (pipelines, hotels, etc) today, where the replacement cost is much higher than the price paid even though the current earnings are low."

Jet Airways, which has negative net worth of Rs 7,139 crore, is sitting on contingent liabilities of over Rs 7,000 crore including several tax demands. Outside the balance sheet, there could be huge contingent liabilities, often overlooked by investors, sitting on its books in the form of corporate guarantees, possible future damages arising out of lawsuits or any other dispute that might result in a financial loss. In view of such liabilities and possible losses, the book value would be inflated, although the stock may be perceived to be cheap based on the stated net worth of the company.

Companies which do aggressive accounting may resort to such practices of postponing their liabilities. In this case, investors needs to adjust for the potential impact of contingent liabilities to get the actual value, Amit Mantri, a value investor and Fund Manager with 2point2 Capital PMS, said.

While accounting should ensure that the books reveal a true picture of the companys current affairs, financial engineers are often seen shifting their immediate liabilities to the future to shore up profits. Practices such as wrongly capitalising interest cost or showing it as debt in the Balance Sheet instead of deducting it from the Profit & Loss Account are not uncommon.

For instance, banks in the past used to restructure their stressed loans or provide fresh loans against stressed loans to a group company to regularise the account so that they can avoid immediate provisioning. When the banking norms changed, these hitherto hidden provisioning requirements made a sudden appearance, which led to severe erosion in the book value of banks.

Relying on stated book value can be risky because of improper accounting. For example, many state-run banks are today selling at low multiples of stated book value, but the correct book value is much lower," Bakshi added. Such stocks are traps for the unwary investor.

Click here for the part-2 of the article

Note: This article was originally published on 5th April 2019 for our premium subscribers. After this, the stock prices have changed and thus the valuation data mentioned in the article are only for the information purpose and needs to be adjusted in the current context

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PayU, online payment service provider and global internet and media group Naspers' fintech arm, acquired Wibmo that operates in digital payment security for $70 million.

The partnership will focus on accelerating its credit business in India and offline digital payment space. However, Wibmo, which is also in mobile payments space will continue to operate and serve all of its clients as a wholly-owned subsidiary of PayU.

The partnership will leverage Wibmos strength in financial services and PayUs merchant network. Wibmo currently works with 60 banks in India on digital payment security for card transaction and sees a transaction of close to 1.5 billion annually.

PayU can leverage this network to expand its credit business. Indias credit market for consumers is about $600 billion currently. Excluding the home and auto credit, the number is still $300 billion, which is a lot for a traditional financial institution to handle.

According to Aakash Moondhra, CFO, PayU Global, this offers a huge potential for companies like PayU.

PayU launched LazyPay, its credit business, in India close to 18 months back and is doing well. In a recent interaction with media, PayU India former CEO Amrish Rau the company was getting close to 1 lakh pay-later transactions per day with LazyPay.

Credit is the next growth engine for the company, Moondhra added. Moondhra said the company is looking to double its credit business both organically and inorganically in the coming years.

Another focus area is the offline digital payments. While online digital payments is growing rapidly, Moondhra said offline digital offers huge potential as the country is transitioning from cash to digital payments.

Here too the partnership will help as they can leverage PayUs merchant network and Wibmos banking clients.

Apart from these synergies, Govind Setlur, founder and CEO, Wibmo, said Wibmo will use the funds to accelerate its growth in South East Asia and e-commerce business.

PayU has so far invested $500 million in the fintech space, including Wibmo. Moondhra said, PayU will continue to consolidate and expand value chain in the payment side. The company is also looking to explore other markets such as more of Africa and Latin America and foray into South East Asia, where its partner Wibmo already has a presence.
Shares of Fortis Healthcare climbed more than 4 percent intraday on April 12 after the company entered talks to sell its stake in Singapore-listed Religare Health Trust (RHT), just three months after it acquired the company's asset for Rs 4,650 crore.

RHT Health Trust Manager Pte. Ltd wishes to inform unitholders that it has been notified by Fortis Healthcare International Ltd that they have each commenced discussions with various parties to explore the possibility of a sale of their interests in RHT and the trustee-manager, respectively," Fortis Healthcare International, a subsidiary of Fortis Healthcare, said in a regulatory filing.

The transaction will help the healthcare company to raise funds as its acquisition by Malaysia's IHH Healthcare Ltd is in limbo.

At 1144 hrs, Fortis Healthcare was quoting Rs 142, up 4.03 percent on the BSE.
Zomato has released a report over the preferences of Indians across 200 cities where the food delivery platform is available. Read on to find out some exceptional orders placed by customers across India. (Image: Reuters - for representational purpose only)

In Bhagalpur and Gaya -- both located in Bihar -- delivery executives are giving a boost to environmental conservation. The cities have more delivery executives riding bicycles than motorbikes. (Image: Zomato)

In Guwahati, Assam, a delivery executive faced some difficulties when he reached the banks of the Brahmaputra river and had to cross it to deliver food to a river. The agent had to use a boat ride enroute to delivery the food. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

In the financial hub of Indore in Madhya Pradesh, which is known for its street food, more people ordered for midnight deliveries than compared to the financial capital of Mumbai. (Image: Moneycontrol)

Ooty, the scenic hill station of Tamil Nadu, registered the highest average transaction value across all the 200 cities. (Image: Pixabay)

A massive order was placed in India's pink city of Jaipur which was worth a whopping Rs 1,84,760. It was delivered in 415 boxes. (Image: Reuters)

In Alwar, Rajasthan, one customer had placed 292 delivery orders from 48 different restaurants at the same time. (Image: Zomato)

The highest delivery frequency was recorded in the Manipal locality of the coastal city of Udupi, in Karnataka. (Image: Zomato)

Ahmedabad in Gujarat was the city with the most number of orders among tier-II cities. In nearby Anand, pizza was the most preferred dish. (Image: Reuters)

Vijayawada in Adhara Pradesh witnessed the most number of breakfast orders across India. (Image: Reuters)
The Aam Aadmi Party is capable of defeating both the BJP and the Congress in the city and an alliance is possible with the grand old party only when it will be done on 33 Lok Sabha seats in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Goa, said AAP leader Gopal Rai Friday.

Earlier in the day, the Congress announced that it will fight the Lok Sabha polls in Delhi alone, but maintained that it is still willing to have an alliance with the AAP provided that the tie-up is restricted only to the national capital.

The AAP, in turn, wanted such an alliance to extend to Haryana and Punjab as well.

"We want alliance on all 33 seats with the Congress and not three seats in Delhi. We are capable of defeating the BJP and the Congress on our own in Delhi. If an alliance has to be there, it has to be on 33 seats (in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Goa and UT Chandigarh)," Rai said.

AAP's Rajya Sabha leader Sanjay Singh, who was holding alliance talks with the Congress, said, "Our sincerity to stop the BJP in Haryana is reflected by the fact that we became a junior partner to a four-month-old party (JJP) and agreed to contest only less than half of the seats in the state."

Singh said the AAP was eager for an alliance with the Congress in Haryana so that the BJP could be defeated on all the 10 seats.

"That's why we were prepared to give Congress three seats in Delhi. But they refused an alliance," he said.

Singh exuded confidence that the AAP would win all the seven seats on its own in Delhi.

However, sources said the AAP in a last-ditch attempt may offer a 5:2 seat sharing formula to the Congress in Delhi.

Earlier, the AAP was ready to give three seats to the Congress in Delhi but now it might consider giving it just two seats, the sources added.

Congress' in-charge for Delhi P C Chacko said the Congress will go alone in Delhi since the AAP has taken an "impractical stand".

He, however, said, "We are still ready (for alliance) if the AAP is willing to have an alliance in Delhi alone. We want to fight the BJP together."
current-affairs-trends Attention of people diverted, no one talks of mob violence, student murders, says Begusarai contestant Kanhaiya Kumar The North Bihar Lok Sabha seat is set to witness a close contest between BJP heavyweight Giriraj Singh, RJDs Tanveer Hasan and controversial student leader Kanhaiya Kumar
BJP president Amit Shah Friday said his party is confident of winning all the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh, despite winning only 15 of the 90 seats in the state assembly elections last year.

Addressing a poll rally in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, Shah said the BJP had won 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 and exuded confidence that this time the party will emerge victorious in all 11 seats.

In the last three Lok Sabha polls in 2004, 2009 and 2014 after the formation of Chhattisgarh, BJP had won 10 seats in the state every time.

BJP denied tickets to all its 10 sitting MPs in the state this time after suffering a massive defeat in last year's assembly polls.

The party has fielded its state general secretary Santosh Pandey in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency which will go to polls in the third phase of election in the state on April 23.

Shah also described the Naxal attack in which a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed as a political conspiracy and sought a CBI probe into it.

BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi and four police personnel were killed in the Naxal attack on Tuesday, two days before polling in Bastar Lok Sabha constituency.

Shah said the Naxal attack was not a normal incident and "it seems that it was a political conspiracy".

"The attack should be probed by the CBI," Shah said.

On demand for having a separate Prime Minister for Kashmir, the BJP chief said, "Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive".

When the Balakot air strike was conducted, Indians were happy but there was grief in Pakistan and the Congress office, Shah said.
The Congress is likely to announce the names of its candidates for all seven Lok Sabha seats in the national capital on Saturday and its Delhi unit president and former chief minister Sheila Dikshit may be fielded from East Delhi, sources said Friday. The central election committee (CEC) of the Congress finalised the names of its candidates for four seats Thursday.

"The list of all the seven candidates is expected to be released on Saturday," All India Congress Committee(AICC) in-charge of Delhi unit P C Chacko told PTI.

Former Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit's name is under "serious consideration" as the candidate from East Delhi, said a senior party leader, adding she may be fielded if her son Sandip Dikshit declines to contest.

The party has also short-listed the names of former Delhi minister Yogandnand Shastri and Olympic medal winner Sushil Kumar for the South Delhi parliamentary seat.

"In view of significance of Purvanchali voters in the national capital, the party can field former MP Mahabal Mishra from West Delhi that has a sizeable population of the community belonging to Eastern UP and Bihar," he said.

The party is likely to field former Union minister Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk, former Delhi minister Rajkumar Chouhan from North West seat, former state unit chief Ajay Maken from New Delhi and former MP J P Agarwal from North East Delhi constituency, the sources said.

The sources did not rule out the possibility of an alliance with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi despite leaders of both parties publicly talking tough.

As a last-ditch attempt to salvage possibility of the tie-up, the two sides may come on the table for talks, the sources said referring to Chacko's remarks at a press conference that "we are still ready (for alliance) if the AAP is willing to have an alliance in Delhi alone. We want to fight the BJP together."

AAP's Rajya Sabha leader Sanjay Singh, who was holding alliance talks with the Congress, said, "Our sincerity to stop the BJP in Haryana is reflected by the fact that we became a junior partner to a four-month-old party (Jannayak Janta Party led by Dushyant Chautala) and agreed to contest only less than half the seats in the state."

The AAP was eager for an alliance with the Congress in Haryana so that the BJP could be defeated on all the 10 seats, he said.

"That's why we were prepared to give Congress three seats in Delhi. But they refused an alliance," he said.

The AAP formalised its tie-up with JJP in Haryana where it will contest on three seats while the latter will field candidates on the remaining seven constituencies.
The city airport leads Dubai and Tokyo by a wide margin in private jet departures at around 1,516 outbound aircraft movements in 2018, which is 8.28 percent higher than the Gulf city at 1,400, and 20 percent over those in the Japanese capital at 1,202, finds a report.

It can be noted that Mumbai has been the world's busiest single-runway airport handling close to 1,000 flights a day for the third year in a row in 2018, after Gatwick near London, while the Dubai airport is the world's largest aviation hub.

The top rank is held by New York, thanks to the city being home to the world's largest number of rich people, with 66,968 private jet departures in 2018, while Mumbai is ranked 146, according to a study on the travel trends of ultra-high networth individuals by Knight Frank Friday.

The nation's financial capital is home to the maximum number of the rich in the country.

Country-wise, North America has the highest number of active business jets at 13,685, followed by Europe, Russia and the CIS (ex-Soviet republics) countries at 2,879 each.

Britain, France, the UAE and Germany are the other top destinations, according to the study.

The study finds that proximity and season are the key factors for the rich to choose their travel destinations. Accordingly, most Americans visit Canada or Mexico, while Australians head towards New Zealand.

Similarly, June is the most favoured time for travel aboard for both the Americans and the French, while for the British it is April.
The Congress demanded the resignation of Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, accusing them of suppressing facts before the Supreme Court and calling Rafale jet deal documents "stolen".

The Congress demand came a day after the apex court agreed to hear review petitions on the Rafale deal on the basis of secret documents leaked to the media.

The court also dismissed the government's preliminary objection to treat the sensitive documents as evidence by claiming privilege over them.

"The order of the Supreme Court in the Rafale Review Petition case is a huge rebuff to the central government which raised the specious plea of 'stolen documents'. We demand the resignation of the Defence and Law ministers who authorised the plea of 'stolen documents'," senior Congress leader P Chidambaram tweeted.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi said the two Union ministers "have tried to suppress these documents by calling them stolen and so instructing the law officer to argue before the court."

"Does not their act amount to deceit," Singhvi asked.

"I think the resignation of people who called them stolen and repeatedly asserted they were stolen should be called for and should be in order," he told reporters.

He, however, said he has no doubt that they do not intend to resign and neither the prime minister intends to ask for their resignation.

On Wednesday, Prasad dismissed suggestions that the apex court verdict was a setback to the Centre, saying the merit of the case was yet to be decided.

The Centre had submitted that the three privilege documents which were unauthorisedly removed from the Defence Ministry were used by the petitioners to support their review petitions.

Singhvi, however, said the court has held that the said documents are not fabricated.

"Is it not an act of deceit to say this to the Supreme court and seek to suppress them by recharacterising them as stolen," he asked.

"In a nutshell, this is a jumla sarkar, a feku sarkar. This is a sarkar of deceit, treachery, and of trying to fool all the people all the time, including our institutions like the Supreme Court," he alleged.

He claimed the "56-inch" Modi government received a "56-page shock" on the Rafale deal controversy from the apex court, referring to the 58-page court judgment on Wednesday.

Singhvi alleged that from day one, Modi government "lied" in the Supreme Court.

"...It is crystal clear that set procedures have not been followed in the Rafale deal and crony capitalism' has become the backbone of this scam. Therefore, A JPC investigation is the only possible solution to ascertain the real culprits," the Congress leader said.

"In the affidavit before the Supreme Court, Modiji said that negotiations on Rafale deal were held by the Indian Negotiations Team. Defence Ministry file notings now show otherwise. Parallel negotiations were actually held by PM Modi himself. This fact was deliberately withheld from the Supreme Court," Singhvi said.

The government has dismissed the allegations of any wrongdoing in the deal with France for 36 Rafale fighter jets.

On March 7, Singhvi said, the government's attorney-general told the Supreme Court that "secret" documents published by a newspaper and a few magazines on the deal were "stolen" from the Defence Ministry, but the very next day they claimed these "published" documents were only "photocopies".

"After yesterday's Supreme Court judgement, both these assertions are conclusively punctured. There are 3 sets of documents, which the Modi Government wanted to hide from the Supreme Court," he claimed.
Representative image

Subir Roy

Elections are not won on the basis of manifestos. Very few voters care to go through these long documents which promise all things to everybody. Yet, these documents do give a sense of what matters how much to which party and thus signal which way a party will be headed if it should come to power.

Nation and culture

The BJP manifesto highlights upfront the slogan Nation First to indicate what is of foremost importance to it. Other than having zero tolerance towards terrorism, it lists combating infiltration and left wing extremism as key goals. It reiterates its commitment to enacting the Citizenship Amendment Bill while promising to explain things to sections in the northeast who have apprehensions. (In contrast, the Congress manifesto has promised to withdraw this bill.) It also reiterates its commitment to revoking articles 370 and 25A of the constitution.

In the section entitled Cultural Heritage, the manifesto promises to explore all possibilities within the framework of the constitution to expeditiously construct the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and draft a uniform civil code without which there can be no gender equality. But on Sabarimala, which has been wracked by controversy over the entry of women, it will seek constitutional protection on issues related to faith and belief.

Jobs and Welfare

In sharp contrast the Congress manifesto foremost reiterates its pledge to create jobs. It will fill four lakh vacancies in the central government and institutions before March 2020, create 10 lakh seva mitra positions in local bodies and one crore jobs through two missions  water bodies restoration and wasteland restoration. It will also request state governments to fill vacancies with them estimated at 20 lakhs.

But the proposal in the Congress manifesto which has attracted the most attention is the minimum income support program, Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), which will target five crore families that make up the poorest 20 per cent of the population. Under this, Rs 72,000 will be transferred every year to the bank account of the woman in the family. The scheme which has been widely criticized by analysts as unaffordable will take up less than 2 per cent of GDP, says the manifesto.

Farm packages

Certain sectors get prominent treatment in both the manifestoes but the treatment is somewhat different. The BJP manifesto promise an investment of Rs 25 lakh crore to improve the productivity of the farm sector. Interest free Kisan credit card loans of upto Rs 1 lakh will be given and there will be a pension scheme for small and marginal farmers. The BJP also promises to build a national warehousing grid and introduce a village storage scheme for agricultural produce. It will enable the creation of 10,000 new farmer producer organizations through which farmers will be able to access inputs and markets.

Pointing to the travails of cultivators over the last few years, the Congress manifesto has promised to present a separate Kisan budget. This will give farmers freedom from indebtedness, as opposed to loan waiver, through remunerative prices, lower input costs and assured access to institutional credit. Significantly, the Congress will repeal the Agricultural Produce Market Committees Act and make trade in agricultural produce, including export and inter-state trade, free from all restrictions.

There is one point on which both the parties are agreed -- digitization of land ownership and land tenancy records. A specific aim of the Congress will be to recognize the ownership and rights of women farmers and ensure they get the benefit of schemes for farmers. The BJP proposes to go further and set up a system of title guarantee.

Infrastructure

It is to be expected that no manifesto will ignore infrastructure and both the parties try to give it due importance, with particular focus on urban infrastructure. The BJP will launch a national urban mobility mission to provide technology based solutions that will increase the use of public transport and bicycles, and enable people to walk more. It will integrate different public and private transport systems and put in place a common mobility card and common ticketing. It will provide piped water to every household and a new unified ministry of water that will take forward the linking of rivers.

To address the urban challenge the Congress proposes to build new towns which will have a new model of governance through directly elected mayors for five-year terms, an elected council and a separate administrative structure for each urban body. It will enforce the 74th amendment to the constitution and ensure the devolution of powers, functions and funds, thus making urban bodies financially independent. It promises a right to housing for the urban poor and a slum upgradation and transformation scheme to ensure basic services. Slums will be transformed by putting in place pucca houses, roads and other facilities.

Ideology

There is a lot that is common in both the manifestos (for example, promoting industry) and so these have been left out in this brief overview. But what stands out is a basic ideological divergence. The Congress is turning more social democratic and arguing that the specific entitlements that it is promising will become more affordable as the GDP grows and tax revenue rises. The BJP, on the other hand, is driven by its agenda of putting the Nation First and policy positions that flow from it.
Seeking to make the Lok Sabha polls a contest between him and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday asked voters to chose between 'imaandar chowkidar' and 'bhrashtachari naamdar'.

Gandhi has been hurling the "chowkidar chor hai" jibe at Modi to claim irregularities in Rafale deal, while the PM has been calling the Congress chief as 'naamdar' (dynast).

At a rally here to campaign for BJP-Shiv Sena alliance candidates of Ahmednagar and Shirdi Lok Sabha constituencies respectively, Modi said, "You have to decide the country's future and which direction will it take in this election.

"You have to chose between imaandar chowkidar and bhrashtachari naamdar. You also have to choose between heroes of India and supporters of Pakistan," he said.

Modi said in the last five years, people have seen that his government is a strong regime which takes decisions.

"You have seen Chowkidar's government which is strong and takes decisions. Scams and decision-making delays were the order of the day during the remote-controlled government (UPA) earlier," Modi said.

If people compare the Congress-led alliance with the NDA, the latter's "buland irade" (strong intentions) are visible, Modi said.

"During the UPA rule, bomb blasts were frequent in which farmers, middle class people and traders were killed. Blasts happened in trains, buses and stations. But under the Chowkidar's rule, where are the bomb blasts," he said.

"This is because the Chowkidar has instilled fear in minds of the terror perpetrators that even a single mistake would prove costly for them. The Chowkidar will find them from hell and punish them," Modi said, asking the crowd if it agreed with his policy of eliminating terrorists by going into

their territory and killing them.

Modi said the earlier government looked weak "in front of Pakistan and rest of the world".

"Our army wanted to take revenge but the (then) government kept quiet. This Chowkidar gave permission (to army) to kill terrorists by going inside their territory. Are you happy with this strong government," he said.

On the National Conference demanding Prime Minister's post for Jammu and Kashmir, Modi said, "the Congress and NCP are supporting those who demand that Jammu and Kashmir have a Prime Minister."

"I have no expectation from the Congress since it has stopped thinking about people long ago," he said. "This sin is the creation of that party," he added.

Modi said NCP chief Sharad Pawar had quit the Congress in the name of the country. "Sharad rao, how can you be silent on the two PM demand. Why are you silent? Is this acceptable to you?

"Your party's name is Rashtravadi but you see the country through a foreign lens after allying with the Congress again. Is the name Rashtravadi in your party to fool people," Modi said.

"How can you (Pawar) sleep despite being from the land of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj," he said.

Modi said the Congress wants to scrap the special powers of the armed forces. Reaching out to first-time voters, Modi said,"those born in the 21st century will be voting for the first time. Do you agree with the weak approach of previous governments and their compromising national security? Is this acceptable to you?"

Modi said he has been able to work on various development projects, including farmers welfare, because of people's support.

He expressed confidence that the "Modi sarkar" will be re-elected on May 23 when results of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls are declared. Modi said after being re-elected to power, his government would have a separate ministry for water management. He accused the Congress-NCP combine of being enemies of farmers.

Modi said the Congress needs to be decisively defeated to ensure poverty eradication, modern infrastructure and development of all sections of society.

Continuing his tirade against Rahul Gandhi, Modi linked the IT raids on aides of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath, claiming this was "Tughlak Road chunavi ghotala" (election scam).

Tughlak Road is the residence of a "naamdar neta" in Delhi where funds are being sent, Modi said. "Child nutrition funds given to Madhya Pradesh government are being used for elections. Habits of the Congress won't go. The Chowkidar is alert and that is why he could arrest the thieves," he said.

Notably, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath's residence as an MP is at 1, Tughlaq Road in New Delhi, while Congress president Rahul Gandhi's official residence as an MP is 12, Tughlak Lane in the national capital.

The Income Tax Department recently conducted raids on close aides of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister and Congress leader Kamal Nath and others in four states on Sunday.

The CBDT, that frames policy for the I-T department, had said the department has also detected a trail of Rs 20 crore suspect cash allegedly being moved to the "headquarters of a major political party in Delhi" from the house of an important person who lives on Tughlaq Road, home to many VIPs.

"Searches in Madhya Pradesh have detected widespread and well-organised racket of collection of unaccounted cash of about Rs 281 crore through various persons in different walks of life, including business, politics and public service," it had said.
Dubbing Union minister Smriti Irani a "serial liar", the Congress on Friday alleged that she has "falsified records" of her educational qualifications and submitted contradictory affidavits to the Election Commission for which she should be disqualified. Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi also accused Irani of misusing her influence and power as a Union minister.

"Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had been rubbishing Opposition's claim that she is not a graduate, yesterday accepted that she enrolled for an undergraduate course in Delhi University but did not complete it," Chaturvedi said.

She should step down and also be disqualified from contesting the polls, Chaturvedi said.

"We have no issue with the fact that Smriti Irani is not a graduate. The issue here is that she has lied repeatedly on oath and to the courts. People of India will see through these lies and give a befitting political reply to a 'serial liar'!"

It is clear that she has not only "falsified records" of her degrees but has submitted contradictory affidavits to the EC for which she is guilty of offence under Section 125A read with Section 33 of the Representation of Peoples Act, Chaturvedi said.

There was no immediate reaction from the BJP over the issue.

Union minister and BJP candidate from Amethi Lok Sabha seat Smriti Irani Thursday submitted to the Election Commission that she did not complete her graduation from Delhi University.

In her affidavit filed during her nomination, Irani, who is contesting against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, said she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993.

Irani has said she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I) - a three-year degree course - from Delhi University's School of Open Learning in 1994.

In her affidavit for 2014 polls, she had reportedly said she graduated from the university in 1994, triggering a row over the veracity of her claim, with opposition parties alleging she was not a graduate.
Congress chief Rahul Gandhi's poll assurance of NYAY is designed for "bankruptcy", Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri has said, claiming it will prove to be an "ANYAY" (injustice) against people of the country.

Puri, who is the Housing and Urban Affairs Minister in the Modi government, said Congress forgot to tell people that if it comes to power, the party is not going to implement it alone and needs state governments to chip in.

In an interview to PTI, the minister said states will have to implement Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY) in coordination with the Centre, seeking to know whether the Congress asked states, which will spend huge money, if they are ready for it or not.

Under NYAY, Congress has promised to deposit Rs 72,000 annually into bank accounts of 20 per cent of the poorest people across the country if it comes to power.

On April 8, Gandhi had said the concept of "NYAY" was at the core of its campaign for the Lok Sabha polls and built on the promises the party has made to the people.

Puri said the Congress policy is to always create debt as the UPA government had done by waiving farm loan worth Rs 70,000 lakh crores while the BJP's policy is totally different and its government at the Centre is depositing money into bank accounts of farmers, in reference to recent launch of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN)

"The NYAY is designed for bankruptcy while our scheme is totally different. As per our policy, if you are GST-registered trader, you will get pension after age of 60 years.

"If you are a farmer, you will get money into your bank account. All our schemes are in the nature of growth without taxes. Congress's NYAY is ANAY," Puri said.

The Congress only makes "non-serious promises" which are just to score political mileage in Lok Sabha elections, Puri said.

He sought to know where money will come from to fund the NYAY scheme and defended the BJP's manifesto which, according to him, majorly focuses on the middle class.

The NDA government has raised the income tax exemption from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh, and also, GST rates are coming down.

"We are providing relief to middle class, but they (Congress) are saying different thing," the UD minister said.

There are crores of beneficiaries of the central government's schemes in the country, which indicates people are actually being benefited.
BJP president Amit Shah on April 12 described the Naxal attack in which a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed as a political conspiracy and sought a CBI probe into it.

BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi and four police personnel were killed in the Naxal attack on Tuesday, two days before polling in Bastar Lok Sabha constituency.

Addressing a poll rally in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, Shah said the Naxal attack was not a normal incident and "it seems that it was a political conspiracy".

"The attack should be probed by the CBI," Shah said.

On demand for having a separate Prime Minister for Kashmir, the BJP chief said, "Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive".

When the Balakot air strike was conducted, Indians were happy but there was grief in Pakistan and the Congress office, Shah said.
In highly politically polarised West Bengal where the ruling TMC has locked horns with the BJP, three issues - National Register of Citizens, the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and infiltration - have taken centre stage in the election campaign for the Lok Sabha polls.

Employment generation, minority appeasement, corruption, TMC's role in forming the next government at the Centre, the veracity of air strikes at Balakot have also emerged as major issues.

BJP president Amit Shah has repeatedly stressed on introduction of NRC across India, specially in West Bengal and implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill if voted to power again, while TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has promised to oppose it tooth and nail.

The NRC got mired in a massive controversy after the names of around 40 lakh people, living in Assam for decades, were omitted from the complete draft that was released in 2018.

Banerjee has repeatedly claimed that the NRC and the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to weed out illegal migrants from Assam, will turn even bonafide Indian citizens into refugees.

Addressing election rallies in the state on Thursday, Shah raked up the infiltration issue, even describing illegal immigrants from Bangladesh as "termites".

"It is our commitment to bring in NRC across the country to chuck out each and every infiltrator. Unlike Mamata Banerjee, we don't treat infiltrators as our vote bank. For us national security is supreme," he said.

BJP national general secretary and Bengal minder, Kailash Vijayvargiya told PTI, "The issue of corruption, NRC in Bengal, infiltration and restoration of democracy are our major poll planks in the state to defeat the misrule of Mamata Banerjee and the TMC. A careful look will show you how these issues are affecting the masses of the state".

The three issues of NRC, Citizenship (Amendment) Bill and infiltration have found resonance at the grassroot level in the state, which has borne the brunt of large-scale refugee influx and continuous infiltration since Partition. Of the 4,096 km-long Indo-Bangladesh border, 2,216.7 km is in West Bengal.

"We are going to the masses with the message how the NRC and Citizenship (Amendment) Bill will affect the people and how the BJP is trying to mislead them on it. We are getting a good response and no one wants to become a refugee," TMC secretary general Partha Chatterjee told PTI.

The BJP, during its poll campaigns, has repeatedly stressed how infiltration is causing a strain on the country's economy, posing a threat to national security and that TMC is "aiding infiltration" as a part of its "minority appeasement" policies.

Referring to the reported communal flare-ups in the state in the last four years, the saffron party has pointed fingers at infiltrators and TMC's appeasement politics as the major reasons behind it.

According to the data released by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs in 2018, West Bengal witnessed 58 incidents of communal violence in 2017. It cited the communal flare-ups at Basirhat in 2017 and Asansol in 2018 as being the recent ones.

The minorities, comprising nearly 30 per cent of the electorate, are a deciding factor in nearly 12-14 Lok Sabha seats of the state, that every political party has tried to woo. Parliamentary seats near the Indo-Bangla border such as Raiganj, Coochbehar, Balurghat, Malda North, Malda South, Baharampore, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri, Joynagar, Basirhat, Bongaon have a very high density of Muslim population.

The TMC presently holds a great influence over the minority voters in the state and has been campaigning on how the BJP is trying to target Muslims in the name of NRC.

"The BJP is trying to target the Muslims in the state. But we will never allow them to do it," TMC minister and veteran party leader Firhad Hakim said.

BJP state president Dilip Ghosh said the party would take steps against illegal madrasas and not allow any appeasement in the state, if the party is voted to power.

The party has also made corruption a major poll plank in the state post Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scams and the Narada sting operation, which had purportedly shown some TMC leaders accepting bribes.

"The TMC is running one of the most corrupt governments. We have never seen such a scale of corruption other than in West Bengal," Ghosh said.

His views were echoed by Surya Kanta Mishra, state secretary of CPI-M, which is at the other end of the political spectrum and a political opponent of the TMC in the state.

The TMC has sought to counter the allegations of corruption by stating that the Saradha scam is a "sin" of the erstwhile Left Front regime. It has accused the BJP of indulging in demonetization, which it termed as the "biggest financial scam of independent India" and the alleged scam in the Rafale deal.

This is for the first time in the history of the state that minority appeasement, NRC and infiltration have become major poll planks.

Since Independence, elections have been fought on the basis of ideologies, policies of the government, restoring rights of the opposition parties, development, industrialization, unemployment and food security.

The CPI(M) and the Congress, which are fighting a bitter battle for political survival in the state, are stressing on the issues of employment generation and waiver of farmers loans. The Left party feels that the TMC and the BJP are playing a "fixed match" in West Bengal as both the parties want to polarize elections by projecting themselves as champions of the Muslims and the Hindus respectively.
Hitting out at the BJD government in Odisha, BJP president Amit Shah said on Friday the state is rich in natural resources, but its people continue to remain poor under the Naveen Patnaik-led dispensation.

Addressing a rally here, Shah said the BJD rule in the state was marked by misrule and corruption.

Taking a jibe at the chief minister, Shah said, "Even after 19 years of rule in Odisha, Naveen (Patnaik) babu cannot talk to his people in Odia."

He asserted that people across the country are raising slogans in favour of the BJP.

"From Kashmir to Kanyakumari, from Odisha to Gujarat, people are raising slogans in favour of Narendra Modi. We can hear Modi... Modi... chants everywhere," Shah said.

Slamming the opposition Congress, Shah said "Rahul Baba's party ruled the country for 70 years, but could not eradicate poverty."

"The BJP-led government, on the other hand, launched an era of development in the country, marked by speedy and concrete steps to eradicate poverty," he insisted.

Sharing his plans for the tribal-dominated district, the BJP chief said a steel plant will be set up here if the the saffron party is re-elected to power at the Centre.

"Under District Mineral Fund, Rs 1600 crore has been allocated to this district. If the BJP is voted to power again, all forest produces will be procured from the tribals at Minimum Support Price (MSP) and no GST will be levied on tendu leaves," Shah added.
Shekhar Iyer

Other backward castes (OBC) Rajput leader Alpesh Thakores exit from the Congress just 12 days ahead of polling in Gujarat is a shot in the arm for the Amit Shah-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It also marks the undoing of the Congress strategy of employing so-called caste cow boys who helped Rahul Gandhi restrict the BJPs victory in the December 2017 Gujarat assembly polls.

Along with Patidar youth icon Hardik Patel and Dalit messiah-of-sorts Jignesh Mevani, Thakore formed an uneasy triumvirate (due to caste equations) that shook the BJPs ground in a state that has seen only saffron rule since 1995. Consequently, the BJPs fifth straight win in the state was not without struggle. Its final seat tally of 99 seats (100 after Bavaliyas by-election victory) was the lowest in nearly two decades and the first time since 1998 that it slipped into double digits. However, it was enough to ensure a simple majority for the BJP whose campaign was led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But the message was clear. The BJP will not find it easy to bag all 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat like it did in 2014.

So, Shah had to work on the fence sitters in the Congress, apart from deciding to contest himself from Gandhinagar (replacing veteran L K Advani). That way he could re-energise the Gujarat BJP to try replicate its 2014 tally. It is in this context that Thakores exit, along with two other MLAs, boosts BJPs prospects.

Thakore, who is an MLA from Radhanpur, and his associates Dhavalsinh Zala (Bayad) and Bharatsinh Thakore (Becharaji), also resigned from the Congress. Strategically, Thakore has announced that he wont join the BJP but neither would he work for the Congress. The three did not quit their Assembly seats. Instead, they said they would seek unattached status in the House to avoid the anti-defection law.

After Thakore and his associates exit, the Congress strength in the Gujarat Assembly has dropped to 71 from 77 after the December 2017 polls. This is no small feat for Shah.

Why is Thakore important?

The 44-year-old leader, who once led a drive against alcoholism in the state, is the convener of the Gujarat Kshatriya-Thakore Sena (GKTS) as well as the OBC-SC-ST Ekta Manch (OSSM). In Gujarat, OBCs account for nearly 45 per cent of votes and the Thakores form a sizeable chunk of this segment.

That means the BJPs position stands improved in north Gujarat, particularly in the three northern constituencies of Sabarkantha, Banaskantha and Patan. This will also help the ruling party in the Unjha Assembly by-poll. Backward Rajput votes are important in the constituencies of Gandhinagar, Mehsana and Ahmedabad, East and West, and in nearly 40 of the 182 Assembly segments of Gujarat. In the 2017 assembly polls, Thakores role was cited for the Congress winning six out of nine seats in Banaskantha, five out of seven seats in Sabarkantha, and four out of five seats in Patan.

Alpesh Thakores departure is attributed to his desire to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Patan which was passed on to another Thakore candidate, senior Congress leader Jagdish Thakore. On April 9, the GKTS directed him to quit the Congress within 24 hours as the latter had failed to field adequate Thakore candidates in the LS polls. In fact, the buzz of his leaving the Congress had surfaced the first time in August last year and again last month when some Congress MLAs joined the BJP.

A few months ago, Rahul Gandhi had even spoken to Thakore when it was known that he was said to be negotiating with the BJP, which did not accede to his demand to make him a minister in the Gujarat Cabinet. After all, it was the Congress president who had inducted Thakore amid much fanfare in October 2017 two months before the Assembly polls.

Still, one cannot ignore the fact that Thakores departure has come after a series of departure of Congress MLAs towards the BJP. It began in July 2018 when its Koli leader Kunwarji Bavalia joined the BJP and became a cabinet minister within hours. He was re-elected from Jasdan (Rajkot) in November 2018. Later, two more MLAs joined the BJP. Of them, Jawahar Chavda (Manavadar-Junagarh) became a minister. The BJP is sure to reward the other MLA, Asha Patel (Unjha-Mehsana) too. They are veteran leaders who enjoy voter traction.

Counter to Hardik

The BJP worked on Thakore as a counter to Hardik Patel. The Patels and Thakors are not on the best of terms across Gujarat. If Hardik is the voice of the Patels in Saurashtra, Alpesh Thakore is a messiah for his community in north Gujarat. Despite his differences with Hardik, Thakore saw a better opportunity for himself in the Congress and joined the party ahead of the Gujarat elections. Now, more than a year later, Thakore sees more opportunities in openly aligning with the BJP.

The big picture is, of course, that the Congress can no longer seen to be able to ensure a balance between the Patels, who feels deprived of benefits given to Dalits and Other Backward Classes (OBCs), and the Thakores who are backward Rajputs. This is the message that the BJP wanted to drive home.

Whats more depressing for the Congress is that Hardik cannot contest the parliamentary polls due to his conviction in riot cases. That has left only the third caste-boy Jignesh Mevani --- to continue to work against the BJP. But he has been busy mobilising Dalit groups against Modi all over the country and not confined himself to Gujarat.
Congress President Rahul Gandhi Friday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging he ran his government for 15 of his friends and he wondered why no big-ticket defaulters of bank loans like Vijay Mallya were not in jail.

The Congress chief said the ones like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, after taking bank loans, failed to return it and ran away from the country.

"Not even a single one is in jail," he added.

Gandhi said when his party is voted to power, no farmer "is going to be put in jail for not paying back his bank loan, it is not fair that the richest people do not go to jail but farmers go to jail for the same offence."

He alleged the Prime Minister gave Rs 35,0000 crore to Nirav Modi, Rs 35,000 crore to Mehul Choksi and Rs 10,000 crore to Vijay Mallya.

During the last five years, Modi ran a government for 15 people and you know the names, he said.

"These are Anil Ambani, Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and they are Modi's friends," he said addressing a poll rally here.

Focusing on his party's Minimum Income Support Scheme 'Nyay,' he said it would give purchasing power to the people and that in turn would propel factories in Tamil Nadu and the overall economy.

Textile and silk hubs of Tamil Nadu, Tirupur and Kancheepuram "will become live," again and provide employment opportunities to youngsters, he said.

Gandhi said his party and its allies will never allow Tamil Nadu people to be ruled by Nagpur (the RSS) and expressed confidence that DMK chief M K Stalin will soon be the Chief Minister of the State.
Representative Image

The Supreme Court on April 12 allowed former Trinamool Congress MP Saumitra Khan, who is now a BJP candidate and facing a criminal case, to enter Bishnupur constituency in West Bengal for filing his nomination papers for Lok Sabha polls.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi asked Khan to approach the Calcutta High Court for seeking modification of the order banning his entry into Bankura district in which his constituency falls.

Khan is an accused in cases of allegedly taking money from students on the promise of giving them jobs.

The high court had in March extended the ban on Khan, who is contesting the election from Bishnupur parliamentary constituency on a BJP ticket, by six weeks.

The high court had said such a ban was required for a free and fair investigation of cases against Khan considering his political clout in the area.

After Khan joined the BJP, he was also named as accused in illegal sand mining case.
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The Shiv Sena on Friday advised its ally BJP to "speak less" on the Rafale deal, in which the Congress has alleged corruption, cautioning that unwanted statements may increase troubles for the national party.

The Sena also said the ban on NaMo TV could have been avoided had the BJP been satisfied with the coverage being given to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's campaign rallies on electronic channels.

The Uddhav Thackeray-led party sought to corner its senior ally over the recent clash between BJP workers in the presence of Maharashtra minister Girish Mahajan at a public rally in Jalgaon, where the party has changed its Lok Sabha candidate.

"The shocking video (of the clash) was seen across the country. The BJP inducted goons in the party and turned them into 'Valmikis'. However here, the experienced Valmikis turned into goons and indulged in violence.

"This is not only a blot on the campaigning of 'mahayuti' (the BJP-Sena alliance), but the time has come for the BJP to clarify its stand," the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

The Sena said the BJP, which calls itself a party with a difference, cannot justify this violence and dismiss the incident as one reflecting diverse opinions.

"At least on the Rafale issue, one needs to shed arrogance and talk with patience. Right from the defence minister to other leaders, people (in the BJP) are speaking whatever they like.

"This may increase troubles for the party and therefore we advise that the lesser spoken the better," the Sena said.

The Marathi daily noted the Supreme Court Wednesday rejected the government's contention that sensitive documents accessed by the media on the Rafale deal can't be treated as evidence and said it will examine the papers while reviewing its December 14 order giving a clean chit to the contract.

The Congress has alleged a massive corruption in the Rs 58,000-crore Rafale deal and its president Rahul Gandhi has repeatedly targeted the prime minister over the issue.

The Sena said along with the ban on release of a biopic on Modi, the Election Commission has also disallowed airing of political content on NaMo TV.

It is the BJP's internal matter if it needs a separate television for the prime minister's publicity, it said.

"Except one or two channels, every channel has become 'NaMo TV'. Modi's speeches are being given prominence and the ban on NaMo TV could have been avoided.

"The BJP has influence over electronic channels and the party is reaping its benefits,," the Sena said.

Citing the its own example, the editorial said the biopic on late Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray was released in January because the party did not want the EC to conclude that the film was made keeping elections in mind.
The Supreme Court Friday directed all political parties to furnish receipts of political funding received through electoral bonds and details of identity of donors in a sealed cover to the Election Commission.

In an interim order, the apex court also directed all political parties to provide details of the amount of the bond and bank account of donors by May 30 to the poll panel.

The apex court said it would examine in detail changes made in Income Tax law, electoral law and banking laws to make them in consonance with the electoral bond scheme and ensure balance does not tilt in favour of any political party.

It also directed the Finance Ministry to reduce the window of purchasing electoral bonds from 10 days to five days in April-May and said it would fix a date later for final disposal of the petition filed by an NGO.

The NGO has challenged the validity of the scheme and sought that either the issuance of electoral bonds be stayed or names of donors be made public to ensure transparency in the poll process.

The order was pronounced by a bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna.

The government had notified the Electoral Bond Scheme 2018 on January 2, 2018.

As per provisions of the scheme, electoral bonds may be purchased by a person, who is a citizen of India or incorporated or established in India.

A person being an individual can buy electoral bonds, either singly or jointly with other individuals.

Only political parties registered under Section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which secured not less than one per cent of votes polled in the last general election to the House of the People or the Legislative Assembly of the State, shall be eligible to receive electoral bonds.

As per the notification, electoral bonds shall be encashed by an eligible political party only through a bank account with an authorised bank.

The Centre and the Election Commission had taken contrary stands in the Supreme Court on Wednesday over political funding with the government wanting to maintain anonymity of donors of electoral bonds and the poll panel batting for revealing names of donors for transparency.

The bench on Thursday had reserved the order, saying if the identity of the purchasers of electoral bonds meant for transparent political funding was not known, then efforts of the government to curtail black money in elections would be "futile".

The Centre, through Attorney General K K Venugopal, had vehemently supported the scheme saying the purpose behind it is to eliminate the use of black money in elections and asked the court not to interfere with it at this stage and examine whether it has worked or not only after the elections.

However, advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR)', had said the scheme has nothing to do with the effort to curb black money and it opens the banking means also to donate by remaining anonymous.

During in an earlier hearing, Bhushan had claimed that the party in power was the major beneficiary of the scheme.

The EC, represented by senior lawyer Rakesh Dwivedi, had opposed Centre's submissions and said secrecy allowed in the electoral bonds scheme "legalises anonymity".

The bench had also observed, "If the identity of purchasers of bonds is not known then there will be greater ramification on the Income Tax law and all your (government's) efforts to curtail black money will be futile".

Venugopal had also said the anonymity of donors of electoral bonds is to be maintained for various reasons such as fear of repercussions on a firm or an individual if the other political party or group wins.

The Attorney General had also said: "Historically, black money is used in elections. This is a reformatory steps. The scheme can be examined after the elections."

In its affidavit, the Centre had said electoral bonds "attempt at bringing greater transparency, ensuring KYC compliance and keeping an audit trail in comparison to the earlier opaque system of cash donations.
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Attacking Congress over its poll promise of repealing the sedition law if elected to power in the Lok Sabha election, Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on April 12 said here that the BJP government would make the law even more stringent.

He was speaking at a gathering in Gandhidham city of Kutch district in Gujarat.

"Congress is saying that they will repeal the sedition law. I want to ask you all, should we forgive those anti-nationals who are trying to break the unity and social fabric of our country?" he asked.

"If it's within our powers, we will make the sedition law even more stringent. We will make such a strict law that it would send shivers down their spine. (Agar hamara bas chaley toh rashtradroh ko aur kadaa hum banayenge, taaki iss kanoon ki provisions ki yaad aate hee logo ki rooh kaanpe... aisa kanoon banayenge)," Singh said.

The senior BJP leader also attacked former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah over his demand for a separate prime minister for the region.

"I want to tell these leaders that if you continue to raise such demands, then we will be left with no other option than to abrogate Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution. We dont want such India," said Singh.

He also blamed former PM Jawaharlal Nehru for the Kashmir crisis.

"Had Pandit Nehru given full powers to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel to handle the issue, we might have got a solution at that time," said Singh.

Speaking on the performance of the Modi government, Singh said, "I do not want to claim that we have uprooted the corruption completely. But, our government has definitely taken some decisive steps towards that direction."

The minister claimed that nobody could doubt the commitment and integrity of Modi.

Singh alleged that although India was capable of making anti-satellite missile way back in 2007, the then PM Manmohan Singh had stopped the scientists from doing so.

"At that time, only Russia, China and the US had that technology. When scientists approached Manmohan Singh for a green signal, he stopped them saying such a step would upset those three countries. But when scientists approached Modi, he immediately gave a go-ahead," Singh said.

Polling for all the 26 Lok Sabha seats will be held on April 23 in Gujarat.
Conversations around elections kept Twitter buzzing over the last one month with over 45 million tweets being shared, the microblogging platform said Thursday. Prime Minister Modi emerged as the "most mentioned figure" during this first phase of the #LokSabhaElections2019 conversations on Twitter, it said in a statement.

Interestingly, national security ranked ahead of topics like religion, jobs, agriculture, and taxes and trade in the the election conversations.

"Polling started on Thursday morning for 91 seats in 18 states and 2 union territories and the conversation on the platform reflected this. Twitter recorded 45.6 million tweets related to the Lok Sabha elections from March 11, 2019, the day elections were announced, until April 11, 2019," the statement said.

Of the 45.6 million tweets recorded during this period, 1.2 million were tweeted on Thursday during phase one of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it added.

Twitter said politicians and political parties have been using its platform to communicate with citizens all over the country throughout the campaigning period.

"Campaigns, manifestos and announcements around policies and key social issues have accounted for some of the top-Tweeted moments as voters got ready to go to the polls," it added.

Apart from Modi, other personalities like Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra were top mentioned leaders.

"Indians in India and across the world have been engaging in dynamic conversations around the elections with relevant hashtags, replies and retweets, to discuss the topics that matter most to them. In the past month, leading up to elections, national security has emerged as the most talked about election-related topic on Twitter," the statement said.
RAKESH SHARMA

Union Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu, earlier on Friday, has ordered a review into matters related to the cash-strapped, debt-ridden, much-beleaguered Jet Airways. On Thursday, the airline had cancelled all its west-bound international flights from India until Friday evening citing operational issues, which is code for, "We do not have any money to keep working."

Take the case of Jet Airways' flight 9W231, a Boeing 777, from Amsterdam to Mumbai slated to depart on the 10th of April. The flight was cancelled. Reason cited by the airline? Operational. Translation? A European cargo services provider seized the plane over non-payment of dues. Reports from earlier this week had suggested that the Boeing 777 plane in Jet's fleet could be repossessed due to delayed repayments. Jet has defaulted payments worth more than $18 million to its global lenders, including Citibank, which had financed Jet's purchase of the 777s on the back of guarantees from Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of the USA.

Troubles on foreign shores and ports are the lesser of Jet's several concerns - closer home, Indian Oil had stopped fuel supply to Jet for at least three of the last eight days. On the 4th of April, alarm bells rang at their highest volume. "Jet Airways may not fly beyond April if it does not get 1,500 crore in a week," said headlines. The airline is 8,000 crores in debt; three months' salaries are yet to be paid to the pilots, engineers and senior management.

The saga of Jet Airways is one we are only too familiar with here on Moneycontrol. If you are not, here is a quick recap. Naresh Goyal and his role and stake in the airline, Etihad Airways, State Bank of India, unpaid lessors and staff, the Indian government... are all central topics in this saga, and in the past couple of days, there have been more developments. Those will be our topics of discussion as Jet, (all set to be gone?), is our story of the day. My name is Rakesh Sharma, and you are listening to Moneycontrol.

Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu, whose other job is Union Civil Aviation Minister (don't blame him; it's a hustle economy) wrote on Twitter this morning: " Directed Secretary to review issues related to #JetAirways. Asked him to take necessary steps to minimise passenger inconvenience and ensure their safety."

Passenger inconvenience is putting it mildly - the airline is operating nine planes today. At the peak of its operations, just under a year ago, that number was 123! The cash problems of the airline are now legion, but one statistic stands out - Jet owes more than Rs 3500 crores to passengers on account of flight cancellations alone.

The troubles of Jet have created a lacuna that has only been too gleefully filled by its competitors. According to a report on PTI, SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft." The additional aircraft are likely to join the fleet in the coming ten days, subject to approval by the regulatory authorities.

Suresh Prabhu's directive comes in the wake of several incidents. One among them being Jet Airways domestic pilots' body, the National Aviators Guild (NAG), deciding to go on strike over unpaid salaries on April 15, and protest in full uniform. "On March 25, a media announcement was made by the State Bank of India (SBI) that an interim funding of Rs 1,500 crore will be made to keep Jet Airways operational. Till date, we are awaiting the funds. Meanwhile, our airline is dying a slow death due to unpaid salaries of pilots and engineers for over three months," read the internal communication. The NAG had been seeking a meeting with the management since March 31 but had not received a communication about the same, which has clearly added to the anger of the Union, which reiterated, that the pilots had "gone over and above the call of duty to help keep the company afloat."

Until recently, Jet was the second largest airline by market share, and is now close to going under with burgeoning debts of over a billion dollars.

Public sector banks, led by State Bank of India, had given themselves 180 days to resolve the Jet Airways account even though the time limit had become irrelevant after the Supreme Court order that quashed an earlier Reserve Bank of India (RBI) circular on debt resolution. Jet first defaulted in loan repayment on the 31st December, which means, the 180-day period from default will end on the 30th of June. According to multiple reports, if attempts to bring in a strategic investor fails or is not completed by June 30, lenders may immediately initiate bankruptcy proceedings against Jet, SC quashing that circular notwithstanding.

Troubles seemed to begin in August last year when Jet failed to report its quarterly earnings or pay staff, including pilots. It later reported a loss of $85 million. The 26-year-old airline has posted losses in eight of the past 10 years and its share of the domestic passenger market has fallen to about 15.5 percent in 2018 from 22.5 percent in 2015. In February this year, it secured a $1.19 billion bailout from lenders to bridge a funding gap, but that has not plugged the hole it seems to be sinking into, with a nary a sight of take-off. Fluctuating global crude prices and a weak rupee, as well as fierce competition from budget rivals, have all been cited as reasons for the quagmire Jet finds itself in, but there are analysts who trace its troubles to the fateful purchase of Air Sahara. Analysts claimed it was mismanagement on Goyal's part. Then there are those that say an ambition for too much too soon - purchases of wide-body aircraft 13 years ago and ambitions for the international market - may also have been a reason for the course Jet finds itself on now. In 2013, when it seemed like shutters down for Jet, Etihad came to its rescue and bought a 24% stake in the airline. As part of the deal, Etihad also bought three pairs of Jet's landing slots at London's Heathrow airport and 51 percent stake in its frequent flyer program, Jet Privilege.

The lenders invited Expressions of Interest (EoI) from investors looking to pick up a majority stake in Jet. The deadline was set for the 9th of April, which has since been extend to end of play today on the 12th of April. Jet Airway's former chairman Naresh Goyal has said he has cooperated fully and facilitated the bank-led resolution programme for the company. On March 25, Mr Goyal had stepped down from the board of the airline and ceded majority control to the SBI-led consortium.

Clarifying on the EoI guidelines, the lenders said they have now allowed restructuring of the debt and infusion of funds by way of loans or acquisition of a minimum of 32.1% and a maximum of up to 75 per cent equity in the company to any investor either individually or in consortium. Indian rules cap foreign airline investment in domestic carriers at 49 percent, and the government is eager to see Jet remain with an Indian entity, sources have said. That narrows the list of potential investors, aviation financiers and leasing executives said.

Etihad, the gulf carrier, which owns 24% of Jet Airways and is the second largest stakeholder and whose stake can only go up to 49% according to the rules, has submitted its EoI on Thursday, as lenders led by State Bank of India have been trying to persuade Etihad to increase its investment to help revive the carrier. Etihad though has been insisting on an exemption from the takeover norm that requires investors to make an open offer for a further 20% stake if they exceed a 25% threshold. Apart from Etihad Airways, other interested players who have also submitted bids include private equity majors and sovereign fund National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF), Indigo Partners, and TPG Capital.

News now is that Goyal may not be ready to let go of Jet just yet. As we have discussed before, Naresh Goyal, the founder of Jet Airways, and his wife Anita Goyal last month stepped down from the board of the ailing airline, ceding majority control to the consortium, following reduction in their stake as per the resolution plan formulated by the lenders. He is said to be planning to bid for the airline, although no new reports confirming the same have emerged at the time of this being published. According to Business Today, "In a filing to the exchange, Jet Airways on Thursday said that Goyal, who owns a 51 per cent stake in the airline, has pledged over 2.95 crore shares or 26.01 per cent stake with state-owned Punjab National Bank."

NB.: We will keep you updated about who the potential suitors are, whether or not Naresh Goyal has submitted a bid, and what the outcome of the staff meeting was, as and when they trickle in. If Jet goes under, it will be the tenth to do so in just under six years, including the likes of Air Carnival, Air Pegasus, Zoom Air, Air Mantra, and of course, Kingfisher Airlines.
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven and Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) converse using a translator at the International Arctic Forum (Image: Reuters)

Russian President Vladimir Putin called his translator a bandit on Tuesday over inaccurate translation. He was engaged in a conversation with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven, when he made the comment.

The President was making attempts to strengthen Russias foothold in the Arctic at the international Arctic forum in Saint Petersburg, when the gaffe happened. Notably, Russia is trying to strengthen its ties with other states in the region, who were attending the meeting, such as Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, reported the Los Angeles Times.

He apprised the attendees of Russias efforts to build ports and other infrastructure in the Arctic. He also talked about expanding its icebreaker fleet while increasing cargo shipments along the Arctic sea route.

While talking about the $5 billion invested by Swedish businessmen in Russia, Putin referred to them as druzya (friends) twice, emphasising on the word.

Translated, Putins statement ideally should have meant: Approximately $5 billion has been invested by our Swedish friends; thats what they are -- our Swedish FRIENDS, who invested in the Russian economy.

However, when the translator interpreted the sentence in Swedish to Lofven, he used a neutral word -- partners  which sounds similar in English, Russian, and Swedish. And, it didnt escape Putins notice. He almost instantly objected to the use of the term, reported RT .

I said friends, and he translated it to partners, the bandit, said Putin jokingly. This time, the translator quickly corrected himself and repeated the presidents friendly sentiment as is. The statesman pointed out that the use of an amiable term was crucial since Russia regarded and treated the Swedish companies as friends. Over 500 Swedish companies have invested in the Russian economy so far.

Later, both the leaders went ahead with their talks about ensuring a good relationship between the two nations even in the face of varying interests and disagreements. The Swedish leader responded by dubbing Russia a very important country in the region, upholding their common interest in business.
US President Donald Trump has said he is considering a potential third nuclear summit with North Korea's leader. "We will be discussing that and potential meetings, further meetings with North Korea and Kim Jong Un," Trump said in the Oval Office at the start of talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.

A third summit would follow on Trump's historic breakthrough last year, when he met Kim in Singapore, and a follow-up this February in Hanoi that ended without progress in getting North Korea to give up nuclear weapons.

Both Trump and Moon are heavily invested in bringing North Korea out of the cold. But the unsuccessful summit in Vietnam was a setback for the two allies that has yet to be resolved.

At the White House, Trump insisted that a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff remains within reach, and that he continues to place considerable hope in his personal brand of diplomacy.

"I enjoy the summits, I enjoy being with the chairman," he said.

Kim is "a person I've gotten to know very well, and respect and hopefully, and I really believe over a period of time, a lot of tremendous things will happen. I think North Korea has a tremendous potential," Trump said.

The Vietnam summit ended without Trump being able to extract major concessions from Kim on the country's nuclear arsenal or Kim getting the reduction he wanted in heavy economic sanctions brought to pressure him into cooperating.

Despite the sanctions, Trump said Thursday that he supports unspecified South Korean moves to bring humanitarian relief.

"We are discussing certain humanitarian things right now. I'm OK with that, to be honest," he said.

Although the broader sanctions should "remain in place," he said he opposes any further tightening and noted that he had stopped planned new measures.

There was "the option of significantly increasing them..., but I didn't want to do that," he said.

Trump has emerged as an unlikely peacemaker in the Korean peninsula, reversing his initially bellicose approach with a determined effort to put Washington and Pyongyang on a historic path to reconciliation.

But the Hanoi meeting was a letdown. The two leaders cut their talks short, skipping a scheduled final lunch and the expected issuing of a joint statement.

In Washington, that outcome brought Trump praise from Republican legislators who'd worried he would give too much away in pursuit of big headlines.

Trump continues to face criticism that he is out of his depth in talks with Kim, and that sitting down with the dictator has yet to bring much benefit.

But he insists that while he retains an unusually good personal relationship with Kim, he will maintain a tough negotiating line.

"Sometimes, you have to walk," Trump said, slipping into his real estate dealer's lingo, after the Hanoi meeting.

For Moon, the aftermath has been even more complicated.

In his talks with Trump, he insisted that the summits have produced important results, especially "the dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean peninsula."

"In this sense, I believe that the Hanoi summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement."

But Moon has staked his presidency on concrete engagement with isolated North Korea, pushing for a resumption of South Korean tourism to the North's Mount Kumgang and operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where companies from the South used to be staffed by workers from the North.

Plans to unveil details of such projects on March 1, right after the Hanoi summit, had to be shelved and he is under pressure from opponents on the right. One lawmaker branded him the North Korean's "top spokesman." Kim himself has used the impasse to speak out against international sanctions and warn in colorful, defiant terms that his country will not bow to pressure.

The state-led economy will "deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring the DPRK to its knees," a state media report quoted him as saying on Thursday, using the acronym for the North's official name.

Shortly after the Hanoi summit, a series of satellite images emerged suggesting increased activity at the North's Sohae rocket site, triggering international alarm that the nuclear-armed state might be preparing a long-range or space launch.
US President Donald Trump on Thursday expressed a willingness to hold a third summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un but said in talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in that Washington would leave sanctions in place on Pyongyang.

Trump and Moon, in the Oval Office, discussed the possibility of Moon having an inter-Korean summit with Kim soon as a way to boost dialogue between the United States and North Korea on denuclearization.

North Korea, which has suspended nuclear tests and missile launches, has been pressing for sanctions relief but has not taken meaningful steps towards dismantling its nuclear weapons programme.

Trump and Kim have met twice, in Hanoi in February and Singapore last June, building good will but failing to agree on a deal to lift sanctions in exchange for North Korea abandoning its nuclear and missile programs.

"It could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step. It's not a fast process. I've never said it would be. It's step by step," Trump said.

Asked by reporters whether he was prepared to ease some sanctions on North Korea, Trump said he and Moon were discussing "certain humanitarian things" and the possibility of South Korea helping the North with food. He did not rule out participating in a three-way summit with both Kim and Moon.

Of sanctions, he said, "We could always increase them, but I didn't want to do that at this time."

Moon said he does not view the summit that collapsed in Hanoi as a failure, but part of a longer "process." He said he agreed with Trump on the "ultimate goal" of total denuclearization by North Korea.

"The important task that we face right now is to maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook regarding the third U.S.-North Korea summit to the international community, that this will be held in the near future," Moon said.

In a statement following the meeting, the White House said Trump reiterated to Moon that he has a good relationship with Kim and "noted the door remains open to dialogue."

PUSH FOR ANOTHER SUMMIT

A South Korean statement issued after the meeting, which included a working lunch, said Moon told Trump he will push to hold another summit soon with Kim.

"The two presidents agreed that the top-down approach will continue to be indispensable in the peace process on the Korean peninsula. In this regard, President Trump stressed that the door was always open for dialogue with Chairman Kim," the statement said.

A South Korean official said nothing has been decided about the timing and location of a next inter-Korean summit.

Moon told Trump he will contact the North in earnest to talk about holding an inter-Korean summit soon, the official said. Trump asked Moon to brief him as early as possible on North Korea's latest thinking.

Ahead of his trip, aides to Moon stressed the need to revive U.S.-North Korea talks. Moon has put his political reputation on the line in encouraging the negotiations.

He has stressed the need to offer North Korea concessions, but Washington appears to have hardened its position against a phased approach sought by Pyongyang in which gradual steps would be rewarded with relief from punishing sanctions.

Trump said he was open to a step-by-step approach but would need to see details.

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen. Things could happen. You could work out, step by step, pieces. But at this moment, we're talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons," he said.

On Thursday, North Korean state media said Kim had told a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea on Wednesday that he would push forward with efforts to make the economy more self sufficient "so as to deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring (North Korea) to its knees."

Last month, a senior North Korean official warned that Kim might rethink a moratorium on missile launches and nuclear tests in place since 2017 unless Washington makes concessions such as easing sanctions.

On Wednesday, North Korea's state media said Kim had chaired a politburo meeting on Tuesday to discuss ways to make progress under the "prevailing tense situation."

Kim and Moon met three times last year and Kim promised to visit South Korea in return for the South Korean leader's visit to Pyongyang in September. Analysts said a fourth Kim-Moon meeting could encourage another meeting between Kim and Trump.

Moon's top nuclear envoy Lee Do-hoon said on Friday that sanctions were necessary to deter North Korea from "making bad decisions" but could not solve all unresolved problems.
Q1. Wynk is India's first music streaming service managed by a telecom operator. Which company owns it? (Image: Reuters)

Answer: Airtel (Image: Reuters)

Q2. Identify the search engine

Answer: DuckDuckGo (Image: Reuters)

Q3. Which former actress is at present Google India's Head of Industry? (Image: Reuters)

Answer: Mayoori Kango (Image: Facebook)

Q4. Under is a natural progression of our experimentation with boundaries, Snhetta founder and architect, Kjetil Trdal Thorsen said: As a new landmark for Southern Norway, Under proposes unexpected combinations of pronouns and prepositions, and challenges what determines a persons physical placement in their environment. So what is so special about UNDER?

Answer: Under is the worlds largest underwater restaurant with a total seating capacity for 100 guests, its the first of its kind in Europe, and it also functions as a research center for marine life. (Image: Reuters)

Q5. After whom is this to be launched VANS collection named?

Answer: David Bowie (Image: Reuters)

Q6. Launched by PROTO, an India-based media skilling startup, this feature will do something of interest/solve an issue on Whatsapp. This is a research project commissioned and technically assisted by WhatsApp. What is this and what is it called? (Image: Whatsapp)

Answer: It's called 'Checkpoint Tipline'. It is a feature where people can check the authenticity of information received as the messaging giant looks to crack down on fake news ahead of the general election in the country.

Q7. Budweiser brought out this ad on International Woman's Day. This was one of 3 such ads. What was it planning to achieve?

Answer: Budweiser adapted its sexist ads from 50s and 60s to 2019 - This year, in honour of International Womens Day, Budweiser revisited three of their adverts from the 50s and 60s that they are not exactly proud of. The outdated ads portrayed objectified women in a subservient role to their husbands. But media and advertising was only a reflection of the world we lived in. Although todays reality is not perfect, weve come a long way in the battle with gender stereotypes and Budweiser took an opportunity to celebrate this and course-correct its work by modernising it and showcasing gender balance and womens empowerment. (Image: Reuters)

Q8. To which delicate bud of the pomegranate flower/ tree does this dress owe the origin of its name?

Answer: Anarkali - Anarkali Salwar suit is a form of women's dress originating from the city of Lahore in Pakistan.The word Anarkali literally means the delicate bud of the pomegranate flower/ tree. This name signifies the qualities of softness, vulnerability, innocence, and beauty associated with the women who wore Anarkalis. (Image: Reuters)

Q9. Who is talking about which individual's quirks? "Well, there was a year when X was only eating what he was killing. He made goat for me for dinner. He killed the goat. He killed it before. I guess he kills it. He kills it with a laser gun and then the knife. Then they send it to the butcher. Y further revealed that he did not kill the goat in front of him but he killed it before their meal. Y added that once the goat had returned from the butcher, X tried to cook it in the oven for 30 minutes and served it along with a salad." Name X and Y. (Image: Reuters)

Answer: X - Mark Zuckerberg Y - Jack Dorsey (Image: Reuters)

Q10. In 2017, Yahoo got acquired by Verizon. In 2018, what did a company called Smugmug buy from Verizon? (Image: Reuters)

Answer: Flickr (Image: Flickr)

Q11. The author of this book runs which bakery chain and what is her name?

Answer: Le15 Patisserie founded by Pooja Dhingra in 2010. A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, Paris, she wanted Mumbai have a taste of classic French patisserie. (Image: Facebook)

Q12. He is the founder of which fast company?

Answer: Ookla. The owner and operator of Speedtest.net, Ookla, was established in 2006 by a small team of internet and technology veterans. Ookla was acquired by Ziff Davis in 2014.

Q13. Which product did these 3 entrepreneurs from Bengaluru start?

Answer: Sharechat (Image: ShareChat)

Q14. Which famous pioneer of Art Nouveau designed this?

Answer: Alphonse Mucha

Q15. The company was founded by Daniel Ek, former CTO of Stardoll, and Martin Lorentzon, co-founder of TradeDoubler. The company's title, according to Daniel Ek, was initially misheard from a name shouted by Martin Lorentzon. Which company originated? (Image: Reuters)

Answer: Spotify (Image: Reuters)

Q16. Created by Guido van Rossum and first released in 1991, it has a design philosophy that emphasizes code readability, notably using significant whitespace. It provides constructs that enable clear programming on both small and large scales. Identify the language.

Answer: Python (Image: Reuters)

Q17. Which company came out with this brand of condoms - Dipper?

Answer: Tata Motors (Image: Reuters)

Q18. It was one of the most popular skimmed milk powder brand in India originally developed by Lipton India and later sold to other players. In 1999, the brand was sold to Nutricia. Identify the brand.

Answer: AnikSpray

Q19. It was set up in 1985 by Ravindra Kishore Sinha. Today the company is one of the largest manpower security firms in the Asia-Pacific region with sales in excess of Rs 10,000 crore. The company offers security services to bank, hotels, institutions, IT & ITES, residential colonies, Retail and commercial establishments. It also offers electronic security systems, consulting, housekeeping and security services like pre-employment verification & surveillance, Cash services which include transfer of cash and valuables and ATM replenishment and recruitment and training services. Identify the company. (Image: PTI)

Answer: SIS (Image: Facebook)

Q20. It was founded by Becken Bain, a German national. The company subsequently became part of Amalgamations Group in 1955. It began operations under the stewardship of late S Anantharamakrishnan. The company saw exponential growth and expansion under the leadership of late Chairpersons, Dr. A. Sivasailam and Ms. Jayshree Venkataraman. Identify the brand. (Image: Reuters)
And while we could imagine the kids would have gone bananas for the fast food feast, a lot of parents did not agree with how the kiwi mum catered the party and slammed her in the comments section of her post.

"Happy birthday, we got you a heart attack," one person said.

"New Zealand has a massive obesity problem and this is not helping. No seven year old needs food like this," another suggested.



But there were many who stood up for the mum, saying that the spread would have been for the whole family not just for the 7 year old and a handful of her friends.

"At least this mama paid for the kai unlike those bloody unruly tourists from the UK who did nothing but cause New Zealand a headache."


A 32-year-old Elyria man was convicted April 11 after a four-day trial in federal court for being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Gregory Raymores DNA was found on the .45-caliber pistol and 22 rounds of ammunition that were found in an alley near a Lorain bar during a May 2018 murder investigation. The pistol was not found to be the murder weapon, according to a release from the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Northern District of Ohio.

He was barred from possessing a firearm for multiple previous convictions, including for aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary, possession of drugs and being a felon in possession of a firearm, the release said.

Raymore is scheduled to be sentenced July 17.
The phenomenon has taken place amid an accelerating national economy that has seen unemployment at its lowest point in at least four decades. Consumer default rates have also stayed low, which has pushed banks to explore wider venues aside from domestic consumer lending.

Year-to-date up to March, values of short-interest positions in the Big Six gained 13% annually, with an average of 3.4% of their outstanding sales in shorts as of the end of March, S3 Partners LLC noted.

In particular, both CIBC and RBCs stocks went up by significant margins in 2019, at 7.4% and 11%, respectively. As of the end of the first quarter, CIBC has 6.4% of its stock in short-interest positions, while Royal Bank has the lowest proportion among the Big Six at 1.5% of its stocks.

Toronto-Dominion Bank CEO Bharat Masrani said that these investors have long been trying to short Canadian banks, to little avail.

I suspect the bet has not turned out too well if one has been trying it for 10 years, he stated.
A recent poll by immigration consulting company Envoy Global has found that nearly 40% of international tech employers are planning to expand into Canada, with more than 20% saying that they already have at least one Canadian office. Fully 65% are considering sending more professionals to Canada.

There are a number of tech firms, either based in California or international tech firms with significant offices in the United States, that have opted to open Canadian offices  the principal reason being that [they] can attract and keep workers in Canada, Toronto-based immigration lawyer Peter Rekai told Global News.

With processing times as short as 6 months for qualified applicants, Canadas Express Entry program introduced in 2015 helped pave an easier road for many of these foreign-born tech professionals, Rekai added.

If youre 30 years old and if you have [a masters degree] and youve already worked for four years, say, in India  you might even have a shot of applying [for permanent residence] immediately.
The RCMPs incapability of investigating money laundering via real estate and casinos  as well as a lack of capacity to prosecute transnational launderers  is among B.C.s longest known open secrets, according to both government insiders and industry analysts.

The observers were responding to B.C. Attorney General David Eby, who earlier this week expressed shock that the federal police is not acting on the provinces money laundering crisis, which has been estimated to ferry tens of billions of dollars in illicit cash every year.

What is happening is nothing, Eby said, as quoted by Global News. Police experts need to be recruited from across Canada for a specialized team that can start now. The money launderers here are already experts, theyre already rich, and now we know theyre better resourced.
To make it happen, more than half of respondents said they have already started saving to buy a home.

Its exciting to see Gen Z wanting to own a home for reasons like building their personal wealth over time, said D. Steve Boland, head of Consumer Lending at Bank of America. Despite their young age, this group is pragmatic and actively planning for their future. They recognize buying a home isnt easy and have a clear vision not only about where they plan to get help but also how they are willing to help themselves in order to make it happen.

Down payment is more important than a wedding or vacation

The BoA Homebuyer Insights Survey also reveals that 80% of Gen Zs prioritize saving for a down payment over saving for their dream wedding, 76% rank it above a spending spree, and 71% say its more important than a vacation.

Such is the desire for homeownership, that almost half are willing to get a second job to boost savings, 34% would choose a less expensive university to curb student loan debt, and 32% would move in with their parents or in-laws.

Nearly two-thirds of prospective Gen Z homebuyers think they will receive some financial help to buy, most likely from parents (21%), down payment assistance programs (17%) or other family members (15%).
Non-bank mortgage employment sank to its lowest level in nearly three years in February, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Non-bank mortgage companies slashed 2,900 jobs in February, bringing total employment in the sector down to about 320,000, according to the BLS.

Both banks and non-banks have announced large job cuts in the mortgage space over the past several months. Earlier this month, Ditech Holdings, which is undergoing bankruptcy for the second time, announced that it would shutter a Minnesota office, cutting more than 200 jobs.
WASHINGTON - A top executive at NRG Energy warned the Senate Thursday against committing to clean energy policies that inherently favored one technology over another.

Abe Silverman, a vice president and deputy general counsel at NRG, which has headquarters in Houston, said such a move risked driving up energy prices and sticking the nation with uneconomic power sources.

"If we don't have affordability we will fail," he said. "Clean energy is not exempt from the laws of economics."

POLITICAL SHIFT: Are Republicans wavering on climate change?

Silverman's comments came during a climate change hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, as Republicans there begin to work on bipartisan policies to decrease carbon emissions.

Among many Republicans though, skepticism is prevalent. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louis., questioned whether by shifting toward cleaner forms of energy lawmakers didn't risk driving up energy prices and pushing industries overseas.

"Some of what has been said does not seem to empirically hold up," he said. "It can't be, 'don't we wish this would be reality.' It has to be reality."

Arun Majumdar, co-director of Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy, questioned that premise, advising that as technologies like batteries and solar power expanded the costs of energy would decline.

"You will see the supply chain be established," he said. "Any new technology, as we do more the cost comes down."

But for now, many in the energy industry are awaiting a clear direction from the federal government on how to proceed.

Silverman suggested power market rules needed to be adjusted to promote carbon-free energy but without favoring one technology over another, criticizing recent state moves to create subsidies for struggling nuclear power plants.

"The environment doesn't care how a carbon free molecule of energy is generated," he said. "We need to focus on competitive choice, competition."
The Permian Basin continues to cement its role as the center of oil and gas activity, with Midland becoming the site for construction of a central tank battery.

Louisiana-based Danos has received a contract with a Texas-based independent exploration and production company  which Danos wouldn't identify, citing customer policy - for the tank battery. Danos will fabricate the piping and structural components and ship them to the installation site in Midland for assembly and construction.

The three-month project will use several of the family-owned oilfield service company's service lines, from fabrication in its Amelia Integrated Services Complex in Amelia, Louisiana, to project management, construction, automation, coatings and scaffolding. About 75 of the company's employees in Texas and Louisiana will be involved in the project.

Eric Danos, company owner, told the Reporter-Telegram by email that the company has completed similar projects in the Permian and has other, similar projects in its current backlog.

"We are investing heavily in local staff and infrastructure to build capacity for an even greater expected demand," Danos said. "One of our goals in the Permian is to fully integrate our project team's expertise with key customers to bring these types of projects to market even more efficiently than we are today."

He described the Permian as a very strategic market for the company, with more than 400 employees locally working with customers.

"Because of our company's commitment to developing great people in the Permian, we have continued to experience significant demand and growth in both our production and project businesses," he said.

Danos said the company worked with its customer to design this particular project to leverage the company's Amelia Integrated Services Complex for fabrication and testing.

"A large number of components will be built, tested and pre-fitted before shipping. This execution plan will reduce project costs by over 20 percent while also improving schedule and quality," he said.
An international speaker and change maker, Angela Maiers, is making her first visit to Midland early next week, hoping to change lives of local students, educators and other community members.

At Trinity School's eighth annual Sweetie and Hay Clay Peck Memorial Speaker Series on Tuesday, Maiers will present a question for all to ponder: "How big is your brave?" The free event will begin with a 5:30 p.m. wine and cheese reception in the Trinity Commons, and from there, Maiers said she hopes to make a positive impact on all with only her words and a slideshow.

The series memorializes the Pecks, who helped define the history of West Texas, according to a release from Trinity. He was an independent oil man, and she was a civic leader.

Their only daughter, Patti Peck Wood, and her late husband, Danny Wood, endowed the speaker series at Trinity to provide parents and students, as well as the wider community, the opportunity to learn more about the importance of positively influencing youth. And, for this year's event, Trinity decided Maiers could fulfill those expectations.

She said she will not focus on bravery versus cowardliness during her talk, but more the idea of bravery versus comfortability  because, she said, she believes the opposite of bravery is being comfortable.

"Brave is very hard to manage," Maiers said. "It doesn't fit in a nice, neat box. It doesn't follow the bell curve. We say we want courage, but we actually reward conformity, so we train kids to be comfortable, and then we settle into a comfortable life. You can be brave, and you can be comfortable, but you cannot be both."

Still, after presenting the same message many, many times, she said she has to push herself to be brave to speak to an audience.

"It doesn't matter if I've done it 5,000 times or 20,000," Maiers said. "Every time, it's different, because it's a different group, and it means something different to them, and I don't want it to be taken lightly."

And it has been thousands of times.

It all began in 2011, when she spoke at TEDxDesMoines, with a presentation centered around two words  "you matter." It went viral on YouTube, and since then, she has spoken with more than 1 million students in 78,000 classrooms across 100 countries, launched 170 social enterprises and helped pass 17 laws, according to the release.

For 28 years, she has been an educator, though she studied neuroscience to become a doctor.

"I quit medical school to become a teacher, because I knew that it was in my soul," Maiers said. "It wasn't a job to me. I always say, 'Passion isn't what you love to do. It isn't even what you're good at. I was good at neuroscience. Passion is what you must do, and the thought of doing it is like the thought of not breathing.'"

Today, however, she said she tells people her job is to "change lives" and "change the world."

When she first began the transition to public speaking, she was teaching 5-year-olds, she said.

"When you're surrounded by 5-year-olds, whatever lens you're looking through  of a parent, or of a teacher that wants to be there for kids, or a leader trying to make an impact  it really comes down to the fact that you can't make somebody understand how much they matter. You have to create the conditions for them to discover it themselves.

"That's where the talk arose, from just the concept that if we do matter, and really, really believe that, we understand our actions count and are counted on by others, (and) everything would change. After that talk, my whole life changed." Maiers said.

Once reaching that point, she discovered children wanted more than just to hear that they matter, but they wanted to do something because they matter, so that's when she created an "accidental nonprofit" called Choose2Matter, which stemmed from "one child who knew they mattered and had the power of the web to do something with it."

Since then, she has begun three initiatives: Choose2Matter, the organization that spreads the "You Matter" message; Genius Matters, a project that gives students a chance to work on their own passion project for one hour a week (the Genius Hour); and Mattergram, a creative, interpersonal message that individuals can send to one another to let them know they matter.

Even today, she said each of these programs and to be able to hear herself speak the words to others that they matter, nearly every day, impacts her life and reminds her how much she also matters.

The community will receive her message the night of the speaker series. She will talk to students the following morning and the educators the following afternoon.

"(Trinity) did a lot to make these three days happen," Maiers said. "I feel so honored to be there and to have a community take this message so seriously."
The Salvation Army of Midland will be able to touch more lives now that the agencys Emergency Shelter and Social Services Center, at 600 E. Wall St., is open.

A grand opening ceremony and ribbon cutting, followed by tours, were held Wednesday morning. The Salvation Armys annual banquet, A Restoration Celebration, was that night at Midland Country Club.

The facility will allow the agency to expand its capacity to provide more space for individuals and families, food assistance and other services for those in need.

During the morning ceremony, advisory board chair Laura Sales began with the introduction of special guests  including city councilman John Love III, Commissioner Barbara Howell and Lt. Col. Ronnie Raymer, both with the Salvation Army -- and praise for Capts. Jeremy and Michelle Walker, who supervise the Salvation Army of Midland.

They have been a driving force in this and a tremendous asset to Midland, she said.

Jeremy Walker, speaking after the grand opening, said, Were so excited, Im beyond words. Were looking forward to helping more folks in need the ability to touch more lives. Were tripling our capacity here and have these great features we didnt have before.

The new features include a laundry area, computers for clients to work on their resumes or search for apartments, family spaces where children can do homework and have access to private facilities for safety and an outdoor playground.

The agencys old building, where the thrift store is located, will remain for now.

The store is still attached, We and the board are looking at that right now figuring that out, Walker said.

Even though a grand opening ceremony was held, some finishing touches remain to be done on the center. Walker said tidying up and minor construction were required before opening the doors.

Were expecting to be in here fully and operation in the next several weeks, he said.

Barbara Mamoulides has been involved since the capital campaign was launched in 2016. She moved to Louisiana but returned to Midland for the ceremony.

Its been very clearly guided by God from day one five years ago. When we started, it was not the time to raise money, she said. We know the ups and downs are always going to be here but to see this and the companies and foundations who all supported us and have still given us a consistent support is exciting. There will always be people in need and there will always be people who can meet those needs and thats this story.
American flags lined the highway as Crosby residents waited Wednesday afternoon to see President Donald Trump's motorcade pull through.

Residents lounged in chairs under the sun outside the Newport subdivision. They wore red, white and blue and held signs emblazoned with Trump's name.

Deborah Adair, 46, sat in a chair among dozens of others. She had never voted until Trump decided to run, and she believes he's brought back hope to the country.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Trump signs executive orders to boost energy industry

"He's proven himself and taken care of the American people," said Adair.

Trump's trip comes just a week after the KMCO plant fire in Crosby. His visit so soon afterward, Adair said, shows that he's paying attention to the city.

"It means that he's watching," said Adair. "Even the smallest town like Crosby matters."

Kelly Mcmanus said he brought his family to witness the event because it was a "once-in-a-lifetime" opportunity. A blue Make America Great Again flag attached to his pickup truck flapped in the wind.

"He's a president of action, I believe," said Mcmanus. "He does what he said he was gonna do when running for president."

SKIPPED THE LEGE: Dan Patrick helps as Trump seeks tougher direction on border security

McManus, 44, who said he works in the chemical industy in LaPorte, said he never thought the president would make a trip to the small town.

"It's unbelievable," said McManus. "I never thought in a million years he would come to Crosby."

Alongside the highway, Jason Lecompte waved a sign supporting Trump as he and his family waited for the president's motorcade to drive past.

The 38-year-old Crosby native said he's seen positive changes from the president's administration, including helping the economy turn around.

Lecompte, who works in the oil and gas industry, said he used to work 80 hours a week, working a second job waiting tables.

"Regardless of the other politics of it, the economy has been so strong in the last couple years," said Lecompte. "I'm able to have 40 extra hours with my family and only have to work one job."

He notes that towns like Crosby, where many people work at chemical plants or at oil and gas facilities, have felt positive changes from the administration.

"Just having the presence of any president to come through here, it's an honor," said Lecompte. "I think it's something that the kids may never get to experience again."

Closer to the venue where Trump was set to speak, a small group of protesters waved signs and chanted, "Trump is never welcome here."

David Michael Smith drove from Galveston to protest Trump's visit. A member of the Houston Socialist Movement, the 64-year-old makes it a point to protest any time Trump visits Houston area.

"We oppose the racism, anti-immigrant hatred that he spreads, the bias he has towards Muslims," said Smith. "Wherever he goes, folks just like us, we're going to come out and oppose him."

A large crowd across the street waved signs and cheered as the president's motorcade turned in front of them.

Inside one of the cars, President Trump smiled and waved to the crowd.

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.
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April 12, 2019: This report focuses on the global Transportation Security Technology status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Transportation Security Technology development in United States, Europe and China.

In 2017, the global Transportation Security Technology market size was million US$ and it is expected to reach million US$ by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of during 2018-2025.

The key players covered in this study

 Shenzhen Security Electronic Equipment Co. Ltd.

 Mil-Spec Industries Corp.

 Sierra Monitor Corp.

 Kejo Limited Co.

 Modular Connections LLC

Download sample Copy of This Report at: https://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-transportation-security-technology-market-size-status-and-forecast-2018-2025/request-sample

Market segment by Type, the product can be split into

 Explosive Detection System (EDS)

 Explosive Trace Detection (ETD)

 Bottled liquids Scanner (BLS)

 Biometrics

Market segment by Application, split into

 Video Surveillance

 Biological & Chemical

 Nuclear & Radiological Detection

 Perimeter Intrusion Detection and Access Control

Click Here For Complete Report @ https://www.radiantinsights.com/research/global-transportation-security-technology-market-size-status-and-forecast-2018-2025

Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers

 United States

 Europe

 China

 Japan

 Southeast Asia

 India

 Central & South America

The study objectives of this report are:

 To analyze global Transportation Security Technology status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players.

 To present the Transportation Security Technology development in United States, Europe and China.

 To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies.

 To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.

In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Transportation Security Technology are as follows:

 History Year: 2013-2017

 Base Year: 2017

 Estimated Year: 2018

 Forecast Year 2018 to 2025

About Radiant Insights

Radiant Insights is a platform for companies looking to meet their market research and business intelligence requirements. We assist and facilitate organizations and individuals procure market research reports, helping them in the decision making process. We have a comprehensive collection of reports, covering over 40 key industries and a host of micro markets. In addition to over extensive database of reports, our experienced research coordinators also offer a host of ancillary services such as, research partnerships/ tie-ups and customized research solutions.

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Vice President Mike Pence is returning to Texas next week for a pair of fundraisers.

The Midland County Republican Women at their meeting Wednesday said the vice president will be in Midland for a fundraiser at an undisclosed time and place. The Texas Tribune on its website Thursday reported the Midland fundraiser is being hosted by top GOP donors from the area, including oilmen Tim Dunn and Kyle Stallings.

The Tribune also reported Pence will headline a fundraiser in Dallas, citing information from an invitation. Pences office did not respond to a request for comment, according to the Tribune. Admission for each event starts at $2,800 and goes up to $50,000 for a VIP reception, according to the Tribune. In Dallas, it costs $100,000 to be designated as a co-chair of the fundraiser. Proceeds will go toward Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee benefiting the Republican National Committee and Trumps re-election campaign.

RELATED: Residents line up to wait for Trump's arrival in Crosby

Trump was in Texas this week for fundraisers in Houston and San Antonio that were expected to bring in more than $6 million, according to the Tribune article.

Last month, the Reporter-Telegram reported leaders from Texas, including Midlander Don Evans, were working with the White House to bring President Donald Trump to the Permian Basin. That information was based on comments made during a Texas Transportation Commission.

J. Bruce Bugg Jr., chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, had said during the commissions March meeting that he was involved in multiple meetings in Washington with White House officials. The hope, Bugg said in the video of the meeting, is Texas leaders, including Evans, would host Trump in the Permian Basin. Bugg also said Trump is working in real time on an executive order that Trump would sign during a visit directing federal agencies provide more resources to the Permian Basin, the largest oil patch in the United States.

PSP officials said this week that there is no new information to report on a visit from Trump to the Permian Basin.
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The Global Sexual Wellness Market report is encompassed of unique market dynamics that support the industry growth along with the various market issues such as trends, growth path, revenue, prediction, and market size analysis which directly impact the market dynamic. The information is obtained and analysed from the past and current year to forecast the market covering in the next coming years. The Sexual Wellness industry experts were interviewed across the globe to gather the data which is then validated based on the secondary data. In-depth study of market segmentation and active major players involved in the Market has been outlined in the report.

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The following manufacturers are covered in this report, with sales, revenue, market share for each company:

Ansell Healthcare

Church and Dwight

Reckitt Benckiser

LELO

Doc Johnson

Karex Berhad

Lifestyles Holdco

Adam & Eve

Beate Uhse

BMS Factory

Fuji Latex

Good Clean Love

Lovehoney

The Female Health Company

Ann Summers

Sagami Rubber Industries

Tenga

Market size by Product

Sex Toys

Condoms and Female Contraceptives

Personal Lubricants

Erotic Lingerie

Pregnancy Testing Products

Other

Market size by End User

Online Stores

Retail Outlets

Market size by Region

North America

United States

Canada

Mexico

Asia-Pacific

China

India

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Table of Contents - Snapshot

Chapter 1 Study Coverage

Chapter 2 Executive Summary

Chapter 3 Breakdown Data by Manufacturers

Chapter 4 Breakdown Data by Product

Chapter 5 Breakdown Data by End User

Chapter 6 North America

Chapter 7 Europe

Chapter 8 Asia Pacific

Chapter 9 Central & South America

Chapter 10 Middle East and Africa

Chapter 11 Company Profiles

Chapter 12 Future Forecast

Chapter 13 Market Opportunities, Challenges, Risks and Influences Factors Analysis

Chapter 14 Value Chain and Sales Channels Analysis

Chapter 15 Research Findings and Conclusion

Chapter 16 Appendix

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"This movie, in addition to being the end to these three trilogies, is also its own movie. It's about the new generation," filmmaker J.J. Abrams told the flock of fans Friday at Star Wars Celebration 2019 in Chicago, shortly before introducing the teaser trailer.

"This movie" is "Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker."

And the teaser to this episode strongly suggests the degree to which the original trilogy characters might get less screen time - as that new generation of warriors fully ascends.

"This is your fight," we hear Luke Skywalker say in voice-over, as Rey (Daisy Ridley) is seen wielding a lightsaber on a desert surface.

The teaser was unveiled after CBS' Stephen Colbert moderated the opening panel at Star Wars Celebration, hosting such guests as "Episode IX" writer-director Abrams, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy and veteran "Star Wars" actors Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) and Billy Dee Williams (Lando Calrissian).

"I got lucky" to work with Abrams, Williams said, adding: "Lando never left me."

But Episode IX is about how the new generation has "inherited the light and the dark, and asking the question as they face the greatest evil, are they prepared? Are they ready?" Abrams said.

Among that new generation of actors, guests onstage in Chicago, were Ridley, John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), Joonas Suotamo (Chewbacca) and Naomi Ackie (a new character named Jannah).

Here were some of the takeaways from the panel and teaser:

1. Who is the next Skywalker?

Abrams is not above wicked misdirection, but the title reveal of "The Rise of Skywalker" combined with the footage stokes strong speculation that Rey will be revealed to be of Luke and Leia's bloodline.

2. Carrie Fisher's performance will be all her.

Leia will return in "Episode IX," despite Fisher's death since the trilogy's most recent film.

A "CG character was off the table," Abrams told the crowd, noting of Fisher: "She was glorious."

The director added: "You don't recast that part, and you don't suddenly have her disappear." Turns out, Abrams said, the filmmakers had enough unused footage of Leia from "The Force Awakens" to create a performance.

Abrams said the creative team asked themselves: "What if we could write scenes around her?"

"Leia lives in this film in a way that is kind of mind-blowing to me," he said, noting her daughter Billie Lourd appears in scenes, too.

3. After "Last Jedi" comes a hero's welcome for Kelly Marie Tran.

The Chicago crowd chanted Tran's first name, and the actress was clearly moved by the moment. The online harassment that Tran has endured was receiving a full-throated shout-down here, as fans voiced their embrace of their new and beloved Rose Tico.

When questioned by Colbert about further possible sparks between Finn and Rose, Tran coyly said: "Finn is a very eligible bachelor."

4. The sequel timeline doesn't match up precisely.

Abrams teased fans by saying that the ninth episode doesn't pick up exactly where the last one left off.

Teased Abrams: "Some time has passed."

5. There's a new robotic creature in town.

Abrams introduced a small rolling character that essentially looks like a megaphone on a wheel. But can it be embraced as being as winningly cute as BB-8?

6. And the new villain is ...?

Emperor Palpatine, previously portrayed by Ian McDiarmid, seems to make his return. His villainous laugh serves as the climax to the teaser.

"Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker" opens Dec. 20.
Democrats opposed to enhancing penalties for criminal violations werent successful in trying to stop representatives in the House from approving a measure to increase penalties for illegally passing a school bus.

State Rep. Darren Baileys House Bill 1873 would increase the fine for passing a school bus with its stop sign arm extended from $150 to $300 for the first offense and from $500 to $1,000 for the second offense.

This is a public safety bill suggested by a constituent to help save lives and protect our children and grandchildren from people who ignore the stop signs and safety gates opened on school buses, said Bailey, R-Louisville. These fines have not been increased for many years and just as all fines in law, these fines are intended to help stop people from putting children in danger.

Bailey referenced the deaths of three children in Indiana in October. In that case, the 24-year-old driver allegedly disregarded a stop sign arm extended at a school bus stop. She has also been charged with multiple counts of reckless homicide.

State Rep. Melissa Conyears-Ervin, D-Chicago, said people will lose their jobs because they wont be able to afford the fines and there should be more education about the issue. She said she supports keeping kids safe.

But this is not the way to do it to continue to increase fines without any education, Conyears-Ervin said. I am so offended.

Conyears-Ervin also opposed a measure that passed the House on Wednesday that would increase the fine for people found violating the law barring using electronic devices while driving for the same reason.

State Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Jacksonville, said theres no more education needed about the law.

This is something that is taught, its required to be taught in drivers education, Davidsmeyer said. My nephew just went through drivers ed and they know how serious it is to try to pass a stopped school bus.

State Rep. Will Guzzardi, D-Chicago, said the idea of trying to keep kids safe is noble, but he said enhanced penalties dont work.

Throughout the course of the last decades [weve seen] that raising penalties on behaviors doesnt deter those behaviors, it just punishes the people that do them more, Guzzardi said.

State Rep. Mark Batinick, R-Plainfield, said he was baffled by the opposition.

If they do this and theyre not educated after the first offense, theyre never going to be educated, Batinick said.

Batinick said other states impose higher fines and jail time for the first offense. Illinois doesnt require jail time for the offense, only a fine.

We are at the low end of fines for this, which is probably why it keeps happening because nobody cares, they just pay the fine, Batinick said. If that side of the aisle [is] concerned about $150 over school children, vote that way.

The measure passed 74 to 16 and now heads to the Senate.
Calaveras County deputy among the responders catches a quick rest in between helping the Butte County Camp Fire efforts Nov 8 2018 View Photos

Sacramento, CA  As California continues to address the growing threat of deadly wildfire disasters, more comprehensive approaches are beginning to get their due.

Back in March, Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency on wildfires in order to expedite forest-thinning projects and other programs, as reported here. His action built upon those of former Governor Jerry Brown, who called for doubling the amount of forestland treated each year by 2023. The state also significantly increased its related expenditures.

This week, national reporting by Associated Press and partner outlets is focusing on multi-prong efforts and approaches, policy trends, and proposed legislation in the works to address wildfire safety that extend beyond forest management and clearing defensible space. Among the areas addressed is how to make homes in higher fire hazard areas safe.

Fire disasters in 1980 and 1991 mandated the Department of Fire Protection and Forestry to begin mapping the states major fire risk areas and severity zones established based on terrain, vegetation, weather patterns, and other factors. Tighter building standards followed as state lawmakers passed legislation requiring fire-resistant roofs in these areas.

In 2008, the California Building Standards Commission rolled out Chapter 7A regulations that set strict rules for roofing, siding, windows, decks, and other materials for new homes. Still, many jurisdictions were able to set up looser local requirements.

A Focus On Fire-Safe Homes

In the wake of the states most recent deadly wildfires, experts interviewed stated that these regulations seem to be working in that they are protecting structures from the aggressive, windswept wildfires that are becoming more common.

Cal Fire estimates as many as three million homes across the state are located in fire hazard severity zones; a daunting number when considering potential retrofit measures. While it is impossible to know, it is probable that a majority of these residences existed before the tighter building regulations went into effect in 2008, especially in rural areas where new housing construction lags and fire hazards are generally worse.

Before he left office, Brown ordered the state fire marshal to develop a suggested list of low-cost retrofits by next January for the state to promote through education and outreach efforts.

In other related moves, while the state currently offers no financial incentives to retrofit older homes for fire safety, Democratic Assemblyman Jim Wood of Santa Rosa introduced AB 38 in the wake of the deadly Camp Fire. It seeks to create a $1 billion revolving loan fund to help homeowners retrofit their properties, offering low- and no-interest loans to help those who cannot otherwise pay for new roofs and other fire-safe improvement work.

Cal Fire is now also in the process of updating its fire hazard maps to incorporate data on wind and other climate factors. Once the maps are complete, any area that falls inside a designated very high fire zone will be mandated to comply with state building codes under another bill Brown signed into law last year.
Israel's "Beresheet" lunar spacecraft crash landing on the moon Thursday resulted in the loss of some queso.

Actually, what was lost was a copy of the secret queso recipe from Austin's Kerbey Lane Cafe. Since the moon isn't actually made of cheese, Austin city leaders and cafe folks were willing to send some up that way.

"Ok, so it *crash* landed, but we are still so proud to have been a part of this historic event!" the cafe posted on Facebook Thursday afternoon.

In February, Austin Mayor Steve Adler drew parallels between the cargo heading for the moon and the historic race to the lunar surface.

"We choose to send queso to the Moon - and maybe someday chips as well, not because these things are easy, but because they are hard," Adler said. "The challenge to eat queso in zero gravity is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, among other key challenges, like next time remembering the chips."

MISSION MOON: Go iniside HoustonChronicle.com's celebration of the historic moon landing

Built by an Israeli nonprofit, the probe was launched on Feb. 21 on the back of a SpaceX rocket. Also on board was a physical archive comprised of documents laser-etched onto a radiation-proof disk. A full copy of the English-language version of Wikipedia was included.

Kerbey Lane Cafe opened in 1980 in north Austin and has expanded to eight locations across the city ever since.

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.
Ken Janda, CEO of Community Health Choice abruptly stepped down on Thursday after more than a decade of leading the Houston insurance company. No replacement has been named, the company said.

Under Janda's watch the small, 22-year-old non-profit insurer has seen dramatic growth, now topping 400,000 members and expanding its reach across the region.

The decision to replace Janda apparently came last week during the company's regular board meeting. On Thursday it was announced in a company-wide email it had "reached a mutual agreement with CEO Ken Janda that he will step down effective immediately."

"The Board of Directors has begun the process of designating an interim CEO and launching a search for a successor who will continue to lead Community in fulfilling its core mission, which is to improve the health and well-being of under-served Texans by opening doors to health care and health-related social services," the email said.

The board has begun a search for an interim replacement and will launch a search for Janda's successor.

The insurance company began as local health plan for pregnant women and children covered under Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Plan in 1997. After passage of the Affordable Care Act and the company's offerings under the health law's federal exchange, the insurer saw significant growth, the company said.

RELATED: ACA enrollment closes amid fears that Texas will see big declines

Prior to joining Community Health Choice in 2018, Janda was Houston market president of Humana. In recent years he has emerged as a health policy expert in navigating the changing industry.

"Ken's knowledge of health care and how it works in Houston has been important to all of us," said Dr. Arthur "Tim" Garson, director of Texas Medical Center's Health Policy Institute, on Friday.

(This is a developing story.)
San Jose council members debated an unusual plan for the opening of a Chick-fil-A headed to San Jose International Airport next month: hanging a bunch of flags signaling LGBT and transgender solidarity around it, according to the Mercury News.

The fried chicken company's ownership and foundation has been criticized, as recently as last month, for donating to groups who take anti-LGBT positions, leading some cities around the country to halt plans to open new franchises.

In March, San Antonio City Council approved new vendors for the city's airport, including Smoke Shack, Local Coffee and a Spurs shop, but they rejected Chick-fil-A. Officials' quickly made national headlines, eliciting responses from people and elected officials like Sen. Ted Cruz and National Rife Association spokesperson Dana Loesch. This week, mayoral candidate and District 6 councilman Greg Brockhouse said he will use Robert's Rules of Order to force a council vote to put the Chick-fil-A contract on the city council calendar again.

RELATED: Concord city staff to recommend against zoning change for Chick-fil-A

Members of the LGBT community around San Jose have been similarly vocal about the opening, leading Mayor Sam Liccardo to say he "simply didn't think enough" about the controversy. He also noted the city cannot block a business from opening based solely on an owner's political views. San Jose is already home to two Chil-fil-A locations.

Now, some local leaders are attempting to find a solution to the ordeal by adding, well, lots of rainbows.

Former county Supervisor Ken Yeager, a member of San Jose State University's political science department who heads the LGBTQ-focused political action committee and was the city's first openly gay councilman, said Tuesday he'd like to see flags placed near the storefront "as a counter-signal to the discrimination supported by Chick-fil-A."

RELATED: Buttigieg likes Chick-fil-A's chicken but not its politics

But Councilman Raul Peralez suggested going further, by hiring LGBT workers to make it the "gayest Chick-fil-A in the country."

The city council broadly supported the ideas  in particular, they endorsed adding flags near the store  but in the end, this Chick-fil-A location may be short-lived anyway. City organizers voted to withhold a proposed two-year contract extension from 2026 to 2028 for airport vendors that do not open every day. That would directly affect Chick-fil-A; the company is famously not open on Sundays.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


Houston police have arrested a 17-year-old, and charged him with super aggravated sexual assault of a girl under 6 years old.

Mario Luis Guarachj was charged on Wednesday, according to court records.
A man was fatally shot by a Texas DPS trooper as the two were fighting in a creek Thursday near Boerne, according to authorities.

Lt. Jason Reyes, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, said the trooper, who has not been identified, stopped a Chevrolet Impala for a moving violation at 4:40 p.m. on Interstate 10 near mile marker 537, north of Boerne.

When the Impala pulled over, the driver got out and ran across I-10 and into a wooded creekbed, authorities said.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

The trooper chased the man and issued commands until he reached him at the creek, Reyes said.

The suspect refused to comply with our troopers commands and a fight began, Lt. Reyes said.

During the fight, the trooper fired his pistol and fatally shot the man, authorities said.

The man was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said.

As the two were struggling, a woman in the passenger seat of the Impala jumped into the drivers side and drove away, Reyes said.

RELATED: 16-year-old girl accused of fatally stabbing Madison High School grad may be tried as an adult

A second DPS trooper caught up to her and arrested her on I-10 near mile marker 545, authorities said.

Neither the woman nor the man have been identified.

The Texas Rangers are now investigating the incident, authorities said.

Jacob Beltran is a reporter covering San Antonio and Bexar County. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | jbeltran@express-news.net | Twitter: @JBfromSA
An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the victim's age as 24.

SAN ANTONIO  Police are investigating a suspicious death on West Side after finding a dead woman naked under a bridge.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office identified the woman as Natalie Chavez, 15. No cause or manner of death was available.

Officers were called to a creek on Vera Cruz around 10 a.m. after a man reported seeing a woman under the bridge with no clothes on.

When police arrived, they found the woman's body. SAPD spokesman officer Douglas Greene said the body showed signs of a struggle.

mdwilson@express-news.net

Staff Writer Jacob Beltran contributed to this report.


San Antonio police say a homeowner shot a man who was attempting to break into his vehicle early Friday morning on the city's North Side.

The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. on the 13900 block of Hunters Hawk near Huebner.
The two women fatally shot at a South Side apartment complex were identified by the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office Friday.

Janette Quiroz, 37, and her daughter, 18-year-old Bernadett Jean Quiroz, were both shot on Tuesday night at an apartment complex in the 100 block of Emerald Ash.
A pastor at Freedom Church of San Antonio was arrested Thursday after a girl detailed years of alleged sexual abuse she endured.

Kevin Garcia, 27, is charged with sexual assault of a child, according to Bexar County Jail records.

FIND OUT FIRST: Get San Antonio breaking news directly to your inbox

On Wednesday, a woman who attends the church called police to report the allegations against Garcia.

After a church service, the woman said she took a 15-year-old relative of Garcia out to eat and asked how she was doing.

"The (victim) revealed to the witness that (Garcia) has been molesting her since she was in the 7th grade," police wrote in the affidavit.

The witness told the girl's mother about the allegations, according to the affidavit. When the mother confronted Garcia about them, he allegedly denied the accusation and moved out of the house.

Police later interviewed the girl, who said Garcia regularly sexually assaulted her while she was sleeping.

RELATED: 36 child sex crime suspects arrested, indicted in Bexar County in March, records show

"The (victim) stated that she was always frightened and pretended to be asleep," police wrote in the affidavit.

Garcia's bond was set at $75,000, jail records showed. He posted bail and was released from jail Thursday, jail records showed.

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
Before we talk about Donald Trump and the U.S.-Mexico border, lets catch up on the contradictions.

Having been elected president in large part because he promised to take charge and end illegal immigration, Trump is now in retreat. Whereas he once boasted that border crossings were down, Trump now claims that the border is being overrun by a colossal surge that he cant stop. While normally critical of outsourcing, he is trying to pass on the job of ending illegal immigration to Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Also, while Trump has bashed repressive countries for stifling freedom, and last year reversed the Obama administrations policy to open up relations with Cuba, Trump now wants other Latin America countries to lock their doors and hold their own people hostage, denying them one of the most basic freedoms  freedom of movement. Lastly, for someone who rails against the snooty coastal elites while courting working-class voters in the Rust Belt, Trump becomes quite the elitist when deciding who gets to enter the United States and who gets turned away.

Its odd. For someone who cant stop talking about immigration and who clearly intends to put it front and center in his bid to win reelection, the president is constantly showing the world just how little he understands the subject matter.

For instance, Trump seems to have mistaken America for one of his luxury hotels. When he decides that many undesirables are coming in, he simply hangs out a sign announcing: No Vacancy.

He fails to grasp the complexities of illegal immigration, and he never talks about what fuels it: the hiring habits of U.S. employers. In a recent interview with Fox News, Trump bragged that he could change our countrys immigration laws in only 15 minutes. And after threatening to close the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border with the stroke of a pen, he had to back off when business leaders schooled him on the dangers of jeopardizing more than $1.7 billion in daily cross-border trade and retail spending.

Also, did Trump really oust Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for not stopping something that has happened for centuries  people crossing borders in search of a brighter tomorrow, even if it means doing so without an invitation?

If Trump thinks its fair to force out the secretary of homeland security for not stopping illegal immigration, whats next? Dismissing the secretary of housing and urban development for not ending homelessness? Canning the secretary of defense for not ending terrorism? Or getting rid of the attorney general for not ending crime? Pick your impossible task.

Trump also seems confused about who is immigrating  and what they bring to this country. First, the president accuses Mexico of not sending their best. Then, he laments that so many of the people taken in by the United States come from what he calls shithole countries. And just last week, he complained that nations in Central America are not giving us their finest.

What Trump doesnt understand is that America isnt a selective Ivy League university that you can get your kid into if your check has enough zeros. Rather, its a colony of bruised people with broken dreams. Its the land of second chances, where the poor and the desperate go when Plan A didnt pan out. Its the last stop for the unskilled and uneducated, the cheated and mistreated, the unconnected and unprotected.

The rich and famous dont usually come here. In fact, those folks tend not to leave their home countries because things are going well for them there. You dont leave a slot machine that is spitting out silver dollars.

But heres the twist. America always gets the best and the finest  the risk takers, the hard workers, the dreamers, the optimists. We get the brave and the sturdy. The weak, the timid and the dependent will often stay behind.

This was true with the English, Irish, Italians and Jews. Its true with the Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guatemalans and Hondurans.

Its the American story. The only difference is skin color. Unfortunately, thats all some people see.

Life is funny. If Trump and his elitism were running the U.S. immigration system in 1885 when his grandfather emigrated from Germany in what historians suggest was an attempt to avoid military service, Friedrich Trump might have been denied entry because he was thought to be of inferior stock.

There would be no Donald Trump. What a pleasant thought.

ruben@rubennavarrette.com
MDC congratulates the people of Sudan; urges AU to ensure a civilian transition

The MDC congratulates the people of Sudan for successfully pushing for the removal of long time dictator, Omar Al Bashir.

Despots must fall in no particular order. They defined African politics and defined it in a wrong way.

On his part, Al Bashir was involved in crimes against humanity.

He must be held accountable for the genocide and civil war. Everyone else who did the same must be subjected to the justice delivery system in line with International Law.

We are however, quick to mention that the AU must be worried that elections in Africa have ceased to be the basis of authority.

Modern functional states exist on the sole basis of liberal construct in which the masses are the masters of their own destiny by choosing those who govern them.

The focus must be to ensure a smooth civilian transition. The AU must urgently underwrite the process otherwise left on its own, the process may develop into a military State.

In Zimbabwe, the push for Mugabe to leave office which had gone for close to two decades was hijacked by the military and now the people have to fight again.

This pattern must not be allowed to happen as it will be bad for the citizens of Sudan. We speak from experience as this anarchy is bad for the continent.

MDC: Defining a New Course for Zimbabwe!

Jacob Mafume

MDC National Spokesperson

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POLICE in Bulawayo have arrested four Nedbank Zimbabwe bank tellers for allegedly defrauding their employer of nearly US$15 000.

Nedbank is a local unit of one of South Africas largest financial services groups.

The tellers would allegedly connive with clients to swap deposits of RTGS$ into US$ accounts thereby enabling the clients to withdraw US$ at a rate of 1:1 with the RTGS$.

Police arrested Mehluli Nyoni (31), Dumoluhle Dlomo (33) Joseph Chikwata (43) and Tafadzwa Nyakutomba (42) who are part of the banks 28 employees countrywide who allegedly used the same modus operandi to fleece the financial institution of over US$1,1 million.

Our sister paper, The Sunday Mail, exposed the million dollar scandal at the weekend.

Bulawayo police spokesperson, Chief Inspector Precious Simango, confirmed the fours arrest but declined to give details.

I cant comment on the issue anymore as it is being handled by our courts, said Chief Insp Simango.

However, The Chronicle managed to access reports detailing how the four bank tellers allegedly defrauded the financial institution.

The crime was exposed after Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor Dr John Mangudya announced a new monetary policy last year in October instructing banks to separate Foreign Currency Accounts from the RTGS ones.

On October 1, 2018, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe issued a Monetary Policy Statement directing banks to separate Foreign Currency accounts and RTGS accounts.

While checking the bank records and systems, Mr Njabulo Ncube the Nedbank Zimbabwe Forensic Risk Manager discovered that the accused persons during the course of duty in connivance with clients would receive deposits in RTGS and credit the amount to Foreign Currency accounts of the same clients.

This would give the same the clients access to foreign currency which they did not deposit. As a result the bank suffered foreign currency prejudice of US $14 492, said a source at the bank.

About 28 employees have been arrested in Harare, Bulawayo, Zvishavane and Chegutu as the bank cracks down on the alleged corruption.

Some of the employees that were implicated in the scam are reportedly on the run.

The scam was reportedly detected by the South Africa-headquartered parent of the local bank.

There are fears that creative transactions of this nature were an industry-wide practice.

 Chronicle

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While he got the world in hysteria and shock for the past weeks for being resurrected and dying again, all that Thabiso Proud Mlanje who is popularly known as Brighton Elliot Moyo has left are deep wounds among his family back in Zimbabwe that they do not know when and how they will be healed.

Thabiso who was 28 years old at the time of his death shocked his family because soon after they buried him at his late fathers homestead in Dandanda Village in Lupane under Chief Mabhikwa they were summoned by the police who revealed to them that he was wanted for fraud in connection with his resurrection back in South Africa.

We didnt know that he had died and resurrected. Trouble started after the funeral because the police arraigned us and told us that he had been wanted for fraud, said Thabisos father-in-law, Bernard Mayendayenda Sibanda.

A grief-stricken Bernard said his son-in-law had caused him so much trouble.

I am still in great distress because of what my son-in law did. I have had to deal with the police concerning his whole resurrection scheme and now since he is dead I have to answer questions I dont know. It causes me pain because I didnt know anything about what happened in South Africa. This man has put me and my family in so much trouble.

Thabisos grandmother Emily Moyo said it hurt her to see her grandson arriving home in a coffin after spending seven years without communicating with her.

I raised my grandson single handedly because both his parents died in Harare when he was young. I only managed to send him to Gegeme Primary School but he could not go further with his studies because of financial constraints. That is how he decided to go to South Africa to make a living. Now what pains me is that its been seven years since he went to South Africa and he had never set foot home or contacted me in those seven years. I only got to see him as a corpse. We buried him right next to his grandfather because when he was sick he kept telling his in-laws that he wants to lie next to his grandfather.

At the time of his death he was constantly vomiting blood, it was such a painful death. I wish someone could properly explain to me what was happening in South Africa because I hear he was once dead for three days and was resurrected by a pastor, said Moyo.

It is reported that all this drama is believed to have started sometime in February when Thabiso fell ill. Even after he was resurrected he did not properly recover. To make things worse soon after the resurrection miracle Thabiso and Pastor AlphLukau had a fraud case CR 506/ 02 /19 opened at Jeppes police station in South Africa. The two were jointly accused of performing a fake miracle.

Thabiso was scared of the police case so whenever his wife Simelweyinkosi Sibanda took him to the hospital he would sneak out.

But his health kept on deteriorating so Simelweyinkosi then decided to bring him back home in Zimbabwe on 8 March.

The couple stayed at Bernards homestead in Village 2 Insuza under Chief Mtshane.

As each day passed Thabisos health kept on worsening so the family took him to the Mbembesi Clinic in Insuza on 23 March.

Elliots brother and his wife

On 1 April he was transferred to St Lukes Hospital in Lupane. Unfortunately he died on 3 April and was buried on 5 April.

When asked about the resurrection miracle Simelweyinkosi vehemently denied being at her husbands resurrection though she is identical to a woman who is clad in a light pink dress, with short hair and shivering next to Thabiso when he is eating his food soon after the resurrection in one video clip.

I dont know anything about the resurrection thing because I was not there so I cannot comment on anything, the best person to talk would be his brother, said Simelweyinkosi.

However, Stanley Mlanje, Thabisos brother who permanently resides in South Africa but has been in Insuza for the past few days following the death of Thabiso did not waste time in confirming his brother was the one who is famously known as Elliot when B-Metro showed him a trending picture of Thabiso being resurrected by Pastor Alph Lukau.

Yes, this is my brother, I am looking at him, grinned Stanley.

He added: However, I cannot explain much on details surrounding his resurrection because I was not there. I also saw him trending on social media. About the fraud issue I cannot say much because the fact that he is my brother does not mean I would know everything about his dealings since he was an independent individual. I had so many questions to ask him about that whole resurrection thing but I couldnt because when I talked to him he was not so well so I thought I would ask him when he gets better. Just like everyone else, I still have questions for him but the most painful thing for me is that I will never get answers since he is dead, said Stanley.

Stanley added that since there were only two children in his family so he is the one who has to take care Thabisos children.

Thabiso left behind two children who are equally my children so I have to look after them, that is why I am here at my in-laws so that we can plan on how best to keep the kids, said Stanley.

The late Thabiso Proud Mlanje, aka Elliot Moyo s grandmother Emily Moyo, says she is devastated by the death of her grandson whom she saw arriving home in a coffin after seven years without a word from him.

I raised my grandson single-handedly after his parents both died in Harare when he was still young. I only managed to send him to school up to Grade Seven at Gegeme Primary School. He couldnt go further with his studies because of financial constraints. That is when he decided to go to South Africa to make a living, said Moyo.

She said what pained her most was that for the past seven years, Thabiso has been in South Africa he never communicated with her.

What greatly pains me is that its been seven years since he went to South Africa and he never returned home or contacted me in those seven years.

I only got to see him as a corpse. We buried him right next to his grandfather because when he was sick he kept telling his in-laws that he wants to lie next to his grandfather, she said with tears down her cheeks.

She added: At the time of his death I was told he was constantly vomiting blood; it was such a painful death. I wish someone could properly explain to me what was happening in South Africa because I heard he was once died and was resurrected by a pastor.

Villagers in Dandanda also expressed shock on how Thabisos dead body arrived in the village.

We were so shocked to see a speeding car with a coffin in broad daylight when the sun was so hot. In our village its not allowed to transport a dead body in the afternoon.

So we were just perplexed and wondered what could these people be hiding, said a granny who identified herself as MaNdlovu.

A number of villagers said they were also unaware that Thabiso became an overnight celebrity after the resurrection stunt.

It was shocking when we heard during his funeral wake that Thabiso once died and resurrected in South Africa and that the world knew about it except for us. I guess we never heard of the resurrection due to the fact that network is poor this side so we rarely communicate.

The other thing that also shocked us that the car carrying the coffin had only three people inside and it was speeding as if they didnt want fellow villagers to find out more about the dead person, said one villager who spoke on condition of anonymity.

 BMetro

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Patient readers, I am finishing up a round-up of on the arrest of Julian Assange, and so will throw out some conversation starters in the Politics section, then return later and finish up. lambert UPDATE All done!

Politics

But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? James Madison, Federalist 51

They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery. Frank Herbert, Dune

2020

Biden (D): Joe Biden May Be Less Electable Than He Looks [New York Magazine]. [Data for Progress] designed a survey to test whether Bidens advantage over Trump is sturdy enough to survive negative attacks. In other words, they did a meta-push poll. Results: After hearing all of the negative statements, one in eight of Bidens initial backers switched their preference to either Trump, someone else, or staying at home. As a result, Trump opened up a 39.4 to 34.2 percent lead (or 53.5 to 46.5 percent, among that subset of voters who were willing to pick between the two major party candidates). Notably, Bidens greatest liability in this survey was his support for bankruptcy reforms that aided credit companies at the expense of distressed consumers  an aspect of his record that has not yet featured prominently in mass media.  It will be interesing to see who picks this up and runs with it. Buttigieg (D) (1): Poll: Buttigieg busts out in Iowa [Politico]. The Monmouth University poll shows Biden, who hasnt officially entered the race, is the first choice of roughly a quarter of likely caucusgoers, 27 percent. Hes followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with 16 percent and Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., with 9 percent. That places Buttigieg marginally ahead of a handful of candidates who entered the race with more established profiles: Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) are at 7 percent, former Rep. Beto ORourke (D-Texas) is at 6 percent, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is at 4 percent and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) is at 3 percent.  One poll, 570 days is a long time in politics, yadda yadda yadda. Buttigieg (D)(2): A 2017 event with Mayor Pete previews what his attack line against Bernie Sanders may be. "Angry liberals don't win hearts and minds.I didn't win I didn't get 80% of the vote by being angry." pic.twitter.com/PseXOWoUjk  Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) April 11, 2019 Anger is the big taboo, isnt it? Buttigieg really was vat-grown to appeal to centrists, wasnt he? Sanders (D) (1): Sanders campaign organizes nearly 4,000 parties for April 27 [Politico]. Sen. Bernie Sanders army of volunteers has signed up to host about 3,900 organizing parties for his presidential bid, his campaign told POLITICO. The figure demonstrates the strength of Sanders volunteer operation, which includes a reported 1 million people who have agreed to rally support for his second attempt at the White House. The Sanders team is planning to provide its volunteers with specific tools to begin helping him. In 2016, his staffers trained volunteers to orchestrate their own phone-banking and texting efforts, resulting in 80,000 events, 85 million phone calls and 10 million peer-to-peer texts, according to his staff. The strategy, known as distributed organizing, was also utilized by ORourke in his unsuccessful Senate bid in 2018.  Not the same as AOCs tool, though, which allows workplace and venue contacts. Sanders (D) (2): Wonderfully clarifying: ThinkProgress, the propaganda arm of Neera Tanden's Center for American Progress, is now openly attacking the Democratic Party's presidential front runner. Guess the Saudis and the Waltons are getting their money's worth.@thinkprogress @neeratanden @amprog pic.twitter.com/GDyUaQfX3E  dsa otherkin caucus (@QueenInYeIIow) April 11, 2019 Sanders (3): I was OK with Barack Obama getting $65M book advance, but Bernie Sanders got $1M? This system is clearly very broken!   Clark Feels The Bern (@Clarknt67) April 11, 2019 Swalwell (D): I am running for President of the United States of America. I see you. I hear you. I'm for you. I AM you. pic.twitter.com/qRcrBvtdAD  Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) April 9, 2019 N-o-o-o-o-o. UPDATE Warren (D): Senator Warren joins striking Stop & Shop workers [Boston Globe (chuck roast)]. Warren was stepping into one of the largest labor disputes in recent years. Thousands of supermarket workers walked off the job Thursday afternoon, forcing the chain to temporarily close some stores. Some customers refused to cross picket lines. Warren was asked by reporters what message she wanted to send to the owners of the supermarket chain, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize. Be fair, said Warren, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.  Good to see a Democrat candidate join Sanders supporting unions. Remember when Obama promised to put on his comfortable shoes and picket? Good times. Yang (D): Beam him to the White House [Carroll Times-Herald]. In a phone interview today with The Carroll (Iowa) Times Herald, Yang said his campaign is working with a hologram company and could debut the technology  possibly in Iowa  as early as June. We are exploring rolling a truck out that would enable someone to see a hologram of me that is three-dimensional give my stump speech, Yang said as he traveled between campaign events in New Hampshire. And, also, if I were in a studio, which we could set up very easily, I could beam in and take questions live. The hologram appearances would allow Yang to see questioners and interact with people in real time, he said.  Also, the hologram could appear to stand on counter-tops, yet not violate local heatlh codes. CA: Bernie Sanders vs. Kamala Harris: These Dems are plotting sweeping Super Tuesday strategies [McClatchy]. Kamala Harriss top aides are privately meeting with local Democratic leaders from Alabama to Virginia. Bernie Sanderss team is lining up interviews with potential senior staffers in California and Texas. And Cory Booker is cultivating relationships with officials across the South. While early voting states get a lot of attention, many of the most formidable candidates in the 2020 presidential field are preparing for what comes after that  Super Tuesday, when voters in at least 12 other states are set to cast ballots in the Democratic primary. Super Tuesday 2020 falls on March 3, but early voting will start as early as Feb. 3 in California  the same day as the Iowa Caucuses.  Shows what a mess early voting is! IA: How to survive and thrive in Iowa  words of wisdom from former staffers [Roll Call].  Interviews with the Gephardt team  the ones who took down Howard Dean and, ultimately, brought us John Kerry and Bushs second term. So, a distinguished crew. ME: Manchin says he supports Collins reelection [The Hill]. Collins is a dear friend, Manchin said. I would go up and campaign for her  For America to lose someone like Susan Collins would be an absolute shame. I feel that strongly about this lady. Smiling, Manchin asked, Do you think my party would be happy?'  Hes not even a real Democrat! Oh, wait. ME: Susan Rice Will Not Run Against Susan Collins For Maine Senate Seat In 2020 [HuffPo]. Rice: In the course of weighing it all, Ive decided with my family that the timing really isnt right for us. I dont rule out running for office in the future. In Maine or beyond.  How ya gonna keep on down on the farm, after theyve seen DC. DNC launches hyper-local 2020 effort to shadow Trump on the trail [NBC]. Responding to criticism that Democrats were too focused on Trumps temperament and personal attributes during Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign, the partys main organizing arm says its making a major expansion of its opposition research team that will be hyper-focused on the impact of Trumps policies on local communities. Those include promises made to welders and pipefitters in Virginia Beach and Newtown, Pennsylvania, construction workers around Tampa, Florida and seniors struggling with high drug prices in Reno, Nevada. The Democrats database includes every single Trump rally in 2016, material that will be used to create digital and television ads of promises he made to local communities from Lansing, Michigan to Tallahassee, Florida.  As far as responding to criticism, it will be interesting to see if the Democrats have poisoned their own well. How Democratic Party insiders could make a comeback at the 2020 convention [Yahoo News]. [Elaine Kamarck, an at-large DNC member who is one of the partys foremost rules experts] argued that if the primary result was not conclusive, the public would welcome the superdelegates role. Theres a source of legitimacy to say, look, the voters didnt decide. And if the voters didnt decide, you cant rerun 50 elections, Kamarck told Yahoo News. The natural people to decide are the leadership of the party, and that would be the superdelegates. I think theres a legitimacy that people would be willing to accord it.'  Id welcome the clarity, indeed yes. Here come the Marines: Democrats running veterans to flip red congressional districts [McClatchy]. Scott Cooper, a 2020 Democratic candidate in North Carolinas 2nd Congressional District, is a retired Marine, Weve divided ourselves so much by political ideology. The military is a unique place. No one asks what party youre from, who your parents are, what god you pray to, who you choose to love, Cooper said. The best thing that came of that was I was required to work toward a common purpose with people I didnt like. There is no option in the military. Im not saying veterans are somehow the savior of the country. But to bridge those divides and reach across the aisle, those are the kind of people we need in our Congress today.'  So, bipartisanship through militarism

RussiaGate

FBI Mans Testimony Points to Wrongdoing Well Beyond Spying [RealClearInvestigations] (transcript). More important, [assistant director of the FBIs Counterintelligence Division Edward William Priestaps] testimony contains extensive indications of wrongdoing, including that the FBI and DoJ targeted Trump and did so with information it made no effort to verify. It paints a portrait of the Obama-era bureau as one that was unconcerned with political interference in investigations and was willing to enlist the help of close foreign allies to bring down its target. And, perhaps presaging a defense to Barrs claim that American officials had spied on the Trump campaign, it showcases the euphemisms that can be used to disguise spying.'  Im not master of the detail on any of this, but readers who have been following this story more closely may find the detail helpful. Especially Priestaps [redacted] trips to London. FISAs License to Hop [The Tablet]. From 2018, still germane. An explanation of the two-hop rule, which is in essence two degrees of separation, and the effect of the Carter Page FISA warrant: What this means in practice is that, under a single warrant, anyone Page had a text or phone call with in the Trump campaign during the brief months of his association with it in 2016, was fair game, as a direct connection, all the way through the end of the last warrant-extension period on Page in October 2017. The second-hop connections of those initial contactsmeaning everyone that those people had contact withare also fair game. In other words, its likely that almost everyone on the Trump campaign staff was included in the universe of first- and second-order contacts of Carter Page . The entirety of their correspondence is therefore also covered by the initial warrant, regardless of whether or not they ever met or corresponded with Carter Page, or whether that correspondence referred to him in any way, directly or indirectly Given the two-hop rule, we dont know the extent to which [Trump] and his team were actually under surveillance. But we can guess. And for the health of our republic, we should probably find out. The flimsy case for Russias role in Sanders to Trump crossover vote [Carl Beijer]. The Washington Post has just published an article about the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters  and help elect Trump. Once you wade through about 1500 words of background, however, the substance is quite thin: the Post asked two researchers to [examine] English-language tweets identified as coming from Russia. What did they find? 9000 tweets that used the word Bernie, and thousands of other tweets that were allegedly designed to appeal to his backers. Thats it. The article doesnt even indicate whether this was an exhaustive survey or whether they were just looking at a sample group, which means that we have no way of knowing the scale of the campaign. Taken at face value, however, these numbers are absolutely trivial. To say that they won Trump a single state, you would have to argue, for example, that three out of every five Bernie tweets flipped a Clinton voter. To say that they won him Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, you would have to argue that each Bernie tweet flipped Trump more than four votes.  9000 tweets. Really?

Health Care

Weve done a lot more than you would think: How the health-insurance industry is working to pull Democrats away from Medicare-for-all [WaPo], You have a new majority with a lot of new members, so its a whole new pool of folks to get in and talk to, said Robert G. Siggins, a senior policy adviser at the lobbying firm Alston & Bird who previously served as the chief of staff to a House Democrat. Siggins has lobbied on behalf of several private health-care companies. Youre really trying to get a sense of where theyre coming from, and provide information.' Bernie Sanderss plan to blow up the filibuster and pass Medicare-for-all, explained [Vox]. Sanders: I would remind everyone that the budget reconciliation process, with 51 votes, has been used time and time again to pass major pieces of legislation and that under our Constitution and the rules of the Senate, it is the vice president who determines what is and is not permissible under budget reconciliation. I can tell you that a vice president in a Bernie Sanders administration will determine that Medicare for All can pass through the Senate under reconciliation and is not in violation of the rules.  A good explainer.

Realignment and Legitimacy

Vetting Democrats Is Not Eating Our Own' [Connie Schulz]. This column began as a repeated refrain on my public Facebook page. Every time I post a story offering the slightest scrutiny of a Democratic candidate, accusations of eating our own swarm like fruit flies to a putrefied peach. We are vetting candidates, not consuming them.  Columnist, married to Sherrod Brown. Im a little dubious that white Christian nationalists are not a small-ish subset of white Christians, but that aside, this is an interesting thread: frankly, after two years of this admin and thousands and thousands of 'working class angry white men' essays, i think this more than anything out there is the reason 45 stays popular. white christian nationalists have been praying/organizing around this for decades. https://t.co/ck0MRJFaii  RustBelt Rebel (@RustBeltRebel) April 12, 2019 The feminist choice movement is the second 10%-oriented failure I can think of, the first being the environmentalist movement. Gay rights did not fail, and I cant help but think that coming out was the tactic that made the difference. As RustBeltRebel says: the movement happens in the church pews and in the movie theaters and in schools and play groups and local radio and welfare and unemployment offices and on the line and grocery co-ops and as ive said a hundred timestalking to the kid with the earbuds in at family table. Inside the International Socialist Organizations Dissolution After a Rape Cover-Up [Medium]. Since volunteer organizations are not courts of law and cannot deprive people of property or liberty, evidentiary standards used to guide disciplinary decisions must different (preponderance of evidence versus innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt). The punishments a volunteer organization can mete out  censure, suspension, expulsion  are far less devastating to an individual than jail time or fines and there should be far less reluctance to resort to punitive measures when interpersonal conflicts arise.  Lots of detail of an organizational implosion, which Im eliding in favor of one possible lesson to be learned. DSA (1): Heres What Happens at a Local DSA Chapter Meeting, or: Despite National Stereotypes, Clevelands Democratic Socialists are Organized and Mobilized [Cleveland Scene]. The meeting is run in accordance with Roberts Rules of Order. Items are discussed in an orderly fashion, motions are made, seconded and voted on via hand-raising. The agenda itself includes an outline of how the meeting is run and how discussions work. The chair explains these practices to the attendees, in case anyone in the audience isnt yet a member or isnt familiar with the practices. I look around. No one is on their phone. Theyre engaged in conversation with the people around them. Theyre leaning in, listening to each other and ensuring that no single person dominates the discussion. When this portion ends, the group collectively discusses the ideas, with some facilitation by the co-chair of the subcommittee. In short, it was exactly what an organized, agenda-driven meeting of like-minded individuals would be expected to look like. Whether DSA is an organization worthy of supporting on a substantive level, Im not here to say, but I can assure you that its meetings are structured and engaging and its members, despite the national headlines and the local safety concerns, are warm and kind. DSA (2): Our 4th #GreenNewDeal Principle is Decommodify survival. We all have a right to living wages, healthcare, childcare, housing, food, water, energy, public transit, a healthy environment, and other necessities to live our best lives.#TheFutureIsAPublicGood pic.twitter.com/cGjLVD3tJ4  DSA Ecosocialists (@DSA_Enviro) April 11, 2019 Decommodify survival. Not sure how that will focus group

Stats Watch

Retail: Amazon says it will soon accept cash at cashless stores [Associated Press]. Amazon, facing backlash from critics who say cashless stores discriminate against the poor, will soon accept cash at all its stores. The online shopping giant has more than 30 stores that dont accept cash, including its book shops and Amazon Go convenience stores. Amazon confirmed it is working to accept cash, but wouldnt say when that would happen. ritics say cashless stores discriminate against those that dont have credit cards or bank accounts.  Some confirmation!

The Bezzle: Uber unveils IPO with warning it may never make profit [Irish Times]. The S-1 filing underscores Ubers rapid growth in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders. The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to increase significantly in the foreseeable future and it may not achieve profitability.  Oh.

The Biosphere

GOP Tiptoes Toward Climate Plans as Ocasio-Cortez Turns Up Heat [Bloomberg]. The debate over the Green New Deal has demonstrated there is a growing appetite to address climate change, said Christopher Guith, acting president of the Chamber of Commerces Global Energy Institute. But whats needed is a better approach that harnesses Americas energy advantage and continued environmental progress without threatening economic growth, he said. The institute released polling results Thursday that Guith said prove the overwhelming majority of Americans support an energy agenda that drives innovation, lowers emissions and fosters economic growth. According to a chamber-commissioned telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters nationwide, 73 percent support a cleaner, stronger approach to energy that uses more American energy supplies and continues environmental progress.  Im sure this approach was taken with tobacco, at some point. Cleaner, stronger, but still with that great, smooth taste!

After a $14-Billion Upgrade, New Orleans Levees Are Sinking [Scientific American]. The $14 billion network of levees and floodwalls that was built to protect greater New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was a seemingly invincible bulwark against flooding. But now, 11 months after the Army Corps of Engineers completed one of the largest public works projects in world history, the agency says the system will stop providing adequate protection in as little as four years because of rising sea levels and shrinking levees.

Division of labor and brain evolution in insect societies: Neurobiology of extreme specialization in the turtle ant Cephalotes varians [PLOS One]. Strongly polyphenic social insects provide excellent models to examine the neurobiological basis of division of labor. Turtle ants, Cephalotes varians, have distinct minor worker, soldier, and reproductive (gyne/queen) morphologies associated with their behavioral profiles: small-bodied task-generalist minors lack the phragmotic shield-shaped heads of soldiers, which are specialized to block and guard the nest entrance.  Maybe thats how things will be on Mars, after all the mutations!

Letter from U.S. Scientists Opposing Repeal of the Clean Water Rule [American Rivers]. The Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have proposed a revised definition of Waters of the United States that excludes many of the streams, wetlands and adjacent waters that directly affect the physical, chemical and biological conditions of the nations primary jurisdictional waters, eliminating Clean Water Act protections for more than 18% of streams and 51% of wetlands nationwide without scientific justification.  If youre a scientist, you can sign the petition (though Ive never seen a field labeled Post-nominal credentials before!)

The 420

More like this, please:

Yesterday, my decision to dismiss misdemeanor marijuana possession cases was reported on. I believe it is time for prosecutors to purposely decarcerate & to use our prosecutorial discretion to provide restorative justice to our communities. I will remain a fighter for reform. pic.twitter.com/VFJ0Yp2XWW  Stephanie Morales (@AttyStepMorales) April 12, 2019

Health Care

Bernie Sanders on the role of insurance companies under Medicare for All' [CBS]. But when asked if his proposal is considered socialism, Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist, denied it. No. Actually it is not. Its similar to what the Canadians have, he said.  Its better. Canadians dont have dental. More:

Under Medicare for All, we cover all basic health care needs, so theyre not going to be there to do that. I suppose if you want to make yourself look a bit more beautiful, you want to work on that nose, your ears. They can do that, he said. So basically Blue Cross Blue Shield would be reduced to nose jobs? OKeefe asked. Something like that, Sanders said.

Awesome!

Health care CEO pay tops $1 billion in 2018 so far [Axios]. $1.1 billion is basically a rounding error within the $3.7 trillion U.S. health care system. But its also $157 million more than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spent in 2018 on chronic disease prevention.

Take it from an economist, Medicare for All is the most sensible way to fix health care [Gerald Friedman, USA Today]. There is an instinct among political pundits to confuse caution for practicality  an assumption that those who advocate for incremental change are being reasonable, while those pushing for bold reforms arent. Time to get real. As an economist who has spent decades studying our health care system, I can tell you that Medicare for All advocates are the only ones who are being reasonable, because theirs is the only plan that will control health care costs while finally achieving universal coverage. The problem with incremental plans, whether they are public options, buy-ins to Medicare or Medicaid, or pumping more money into subsidies in the Affordable Care Acts individual marketplace, is that they preserve the private health insurance system weighing down our health care. This may be why pundits and centrist politicians view those plans as reasonable, but it means that they are leaving the main reason for our systems dysfunction in place: the multipayer, for-profit financing model.

Offering Health Check-Ups in Barbershops Could Transform Health Care for Black Men in America [Pacific Standard].  Black men, because of both logistical barriers and mistrust, are often cut off from health-care systemsbut as he was thinking about haircuts one day, [Dr. Joseph Ravenell, an associate professor in the Departments of Population Health and Medicine at New York Universitys School of Medicine] says, a lightbulb went off. Barbers, he thought, as trusted confidants and community leaders, could become a powerful bloc to promote health in black communities. For three years, Ravenell worked with 17 barbershops around Dallas to measure thousands of blood pressures and encourage healthy habits. The results were striking: In barbershops where barbers measured blood pressure, the number of men in each shop who achieved their target blood pressures increased by an average of 20 percent.

Harvard-Affiliated Doctors and Single-Payer Healthcare Go Way Back [Harvard Crimson]. The connections between PNHP and Harvard go back decades. At the time of PNHPs formation in 1986, according to its members, Harvard provided an optimal home for the fledgling organization that was advocating for a then-radical proposal. For one, Massachusetts was in the midst of its own fight over single-payer healthcare. A group of seniors called the Gray Panthers was seeking to place a referendum on the ballot calling upon Massachusetts congresspeople to support national health insurance. PNHP was formed in part to prop up the seniors efforts, Himmelstein says.  Cool! The Gray Panthers have a place in history!

Another in the continuing series of health care rants. Thread:

Okay, time for a Healthcare rant. My company is changing providers come 5/1/19 and my premiums are about the same. Cool, no problem. Until I need to find if one of my current providers is covered.    (@GaronKae) April 2, 2019

You see so many of these threads. And theyre all stupid and horrible.

Class Warfare

Journal Club: Brain scans and behavior suggest oxytocin can change perceptions of fairness [PNAS]. Previous studies suggested oxytocin could have different effects on the prosocials and the individualists. It did, with selective impacts on the individualistic group. They began to prefer outcomes benefitting other people, based on their choices made in the scenarios in the fMRI. The scans confirmed amplified activity in their amygdalas. Oxytocins effects on naturally prosocial participants were not as straightforward. The most exciting aspect of this new finding is that oxytocin seems to selectively enhance prosocial behavior in people with individualistic social reference points by influencing this reference point, says Yale neuroscientist Steve Chang. And that this change is reflected in brain activations.'  Hmm.

News of the Wired

She went to the hospital for an infection. Doctors found four bees living in her eye, eating her tears. [Press-Herald]. Craving salt, the bees had been feeding off Hes tears, the doctor said at a news conference last week, later describing the odd medical diagnosis as a world first. The insects had made a new home inside the womans eyelid  that is, until they were all successfully removed alive.  After Tomb Sweeping Day

Aging and the prevalence of ironic action errors under avoidant instruction [PLOS One]. Our study is the first to investigate whether older adults are more prone than younger adults to making ironic motor errors (i.e., actions they have been instructed not to perform), or over-compensatory motor errors (e.g., moving more to the right when instructed not to move to the left). Surprisingly, however, older adults outperformed younger adults on the avoidant instruction task, producing fewer ironic and over-compensatory errors, and they performed similarly to the younger adults under cognitive load. Age-related decrements on the Simon but not the avoidant instruction task suggests that the two different types of motor tasks involve different subtypes of inhibition which likely recruit independent cognitive processes and neural circuitry in older age. It is speculated that the older adults superior ability to inhibit a prohibited action could be the result of age-related changes in distractibility .  I said Get offa my lawn!

It rhymes:

Computer scientist Katie Bouman and her awesome stack of hard drives for #EHTblackhole image data   reminds me of Margaret Hamilton and her Apollo Guidance Computer source code.  pic.twitter.com/MgOXiDCAKi  Flora Graham (@floragraham) April 10, 2019

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Yves here. Karl Marx and Friedrich Englels, who documented the abuses of the early Industrial Revolution, are well remembered today, not just as activists but also as journalists. Oddly, Thorstein Veblen, who identified many of the pathologies of the rich of the Gilded Age, is vastly less well known. Was it because the robber barons of his age had amassed so much wealth and power that they were better able to create a veneer of legitimacy than Victorian era factory owners?

This post picks up some Veblen themes that are particularly germane today, such as the notion that businessmen often operate as rentiers and predators.

By Ann Jones, who is at work on a book about social democracy in Scandinavia (and its absence in the United States) and is the author of several books, including most recently They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from Americas Wars  the Untold Story, a Dispatch Books original. Originally published at TomDispatch

Distracted daily by the bloviating POTUS? Here, then, is a small suggestion. Focus your mind for a moment on one simple (yet deeply complex) truth: we are living in a Veblen Moment.

Thats Thorstein Veblen, the greatest American thinker you probably never heard of (or forgot). His working life  from 1890 to 1923  coincided with Americas first Gilded Age, so named by Mark Twain, whose novel of that title lampooned the greedy corruption of the countrys most illustrious gentlemen. Veblen had a similarly dark, sardonic sense of humor.

Now, in Americas second (bigger and better) Gilded Age, in a world of staggering inequality, believe me, it helps to read him again.

In his student days at Johns Hopkins, Yale, and finally Cornell, already a master of many languages, he studied anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and political economy (the old fashioned term for whats now called economics). That was back when economists were concerned with the real-life conditions of human beings, and wouldnt have settled for data from an illusory free market.

Veblen got his initial job, teaching political economy at a salary of $520 a year, in 1890 when the University of Chicago first opened its doors. Back in the days before SATs and admissions scandals, that school was founded and funded by John D. Rockefeller, the classic robber baron of Standard Oil. (Think of him as the Mark Zuckerberg of his day.) Even half a century before the free-market economist Milton Friedman captured Chicagos economics department with dogma that serves the ruling class, Rockefeller called the university the best investment he ever made. Still, from the beginning, Thorstein Veblen was there, prepared to focus his mind on Rockefeller and his cronies, the cream of the upper class and the most ruthless profiteers behind that Gilded Age.

He was already asking questions that deserve to be raised again in the 1% world of 2019. How had such a conspicuous lordly class developed in America? What purpose did it serve? What did the members of the leisure class actually do with their time and money? And why did so many of the ruthlessly over-worked, under-paid lower classes tolerate such a peculiar, lopsided social arrangement in which they were so clearly the losers?

Veblen addressed those questions in his first and still best-known book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899. The influential literary critic and novelist William Dean Howells, the dean of American letters, perfectly captured the effect of Veblens gleeful, poker-faced scientific style in an awestruck review. In the passionless calm with which the author pursues his investigation, Howells wrote, there is apparently no animus for or against a leisure class. It is his affair simply to find out how and why and what it is. If the result is to leave the reader with a feeling which the author never shows, that seems to be solely the effect of the facts.

The book made a big splash. It left smug, witless readers of the leisure class amused. But readers already in revolt, in what came to be known as the Progressive Era, came away with contempt for the filthy rich (a feeling that today, with a smug, witless plutocrat in the White House, should be a lot more common than it is).

What Veblen Saw

The now commonplace phrase leisure class was Veblens invention and he was careful to define it: The term leisure, as here used, does not connote indolence or quiescence. What it connotes is non-productive consumption of time. Time is consumed non-productively (1) from a sense of the unworthiness of productive work, and (2) as an evidence of pecuniary ability to afford a life of idleness.

Veblen observed a world in which that leisure class, looking down its collective nose at the laboring masses, was all around him, but he saw evidence of something else as well. His anthropological studies revealed earlier cooperative, peaceable cultures that had supported no such idle class at all. In them, men and women had labored together, motivated by an instinctive pride in workmanship, a natural desire to emulate the best workers, and a deep parental concern  a parental bent he called it  for the welfare of future generations. As the child of Norwegian immigrants, Veblen himself had grown up on a Minnesota farm in the midst of a close-knit Norwegian-speaking community. He knew what just such a cooperative culture was like and what was possible, even in a gilded (and deeply impoverished) world.

But anthropology also recorded all too many class-ridden societies that saved upper-class men for the honourable employments: governance, warfare, priestly office, or sports. Veblen noted that such arrangements elicited aggressive, dominant behavior that, over time, caused societies to change for the worse. Indeed, those aggressive upper-class men soon discovered the special pleasure that lay in taking whatever they wanted by seizure, as Veblen termed it. Such an aggressive way of living and acting, in turn, became the definition of manly prowess, admired even by the working class subjected by it. By contrast, actual work  the laborious production of the goods needed by society  was devalued. As Veblen put it, The obtaining [of goods] by other methods than seizure comes to be accounted unworthy of man in his best estate. It seems that more than a century ago, the dominant men of the previous Gilded Age were, like our president, already spinning their own publicity.

A scientific Darwinian, Veblen saw that such changes developed gradually from alterations in the material circumstances of life. New technology, he understood, sped up industrialization, which in turn attracted those men of the leisure class, always on the lookout for the next thing of value to seize and make their own. When industrial methods have been developed to such a degree of efficiency as to leave a margin worth fighting for, Veblen wrote, the watchful men struck like birds of prey.

Such constant predation, he suggested, soon became the habitual, conventional resource of the parasitical class. In this way, a more peaceable, communal existence had evolved into the grim, combative industrial age in which he found himself: an age shadowed by predators seeking only profits and power, and putting down any workers who tried to stand up for themselves. To Veblen this change was not merely mechanical. It was a spiritual transformation.

The Conspicuous Class

Classical economists from Adam Smith on typically depicted economic man as a rational creature, acting circumspectly in his own self-interest. In Veblens work, however, the only men  and they were all men then  acting that way were those robber barons, admired for their prowess by the very working-class guys they preyed upon. (Think of President Trump and his besotted MAGA-hatted followers.) Veblens lowly workers still seemed to be impelled by the instinct for emulation. They didnt want to overthrow the leisure class. They wanted to climb up into it.

For their part, the leisured gents asserted their superiority by making a public show of their leisure or, as Veblen put it, their conspicuous abstention from labour. To play golf, for example, as The Donald has spent much of his presidency doing, became at once the conventional mark of superior pecuniary achievement and the conventional index of reputability. After all, he wrote, the pervading principle and abiding test of good breeding is the requirement of a substantial and patent waste of time. In Donald Trumps version of the same, he displayed his penchant for conspicuous consumption by making himself the owner of a global chain of golf courses where he performs his conspicuous leisure by cheating up a storm and carrying what Veblen called a conspicuous abstention from labour to particularly enviable heights.

Veblen devoted 14 chapters of The Theory of the Leisure Class to analyzing every aspect of the life of the plutocrat living in a gilded world and the woman who accompanied him on his conspicuous outings, elaborately packaged in constricting clothing, crippling high heels, and excessively long hair, to indicate just how unfit she was for work and how much she was still the mans chattel. Such women, he wrote, were servants to whom, in the differentiation of economic functions, has been delegated the office of putting in evidence their masters ability to pay. (Think POTUS again and whomever he once displayed with a certain possessive pride only to pay hush money to thereafter.)

And all of thats only from chapter seven, Dress as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture. Today, each of those now-century-old chapters remains a still-applicable little masterpiece of observation, insight, and audacity, though it was probably the 14th and last chapter that got him fired from Rockefellers university: The Higher Learning as an Expression of the Pecuniary Culture. How timely is that?

The (Re)tardiness of Conservatives

As both an evolutionary and an institutional economist (two fields he originated), Veblen contended that our habits of thought and our institutions must necessarily change with changing circumstances. Unfortunately, they often seem anchored in place instead, bound by the social and psychological inertia of conservatism. But why should that be so?

Veblen had a simple answer. The leisure class is so sheltered from inevitable changes going on in the rest of society that it will adapt its views, if at all, tardily. Comfortably clueless (or calculating), the wealthy leisure class drags its heels (or digs them in) to retard economic and social forces that make for change. Hence the name conservatives. That (re)tardiness  that time lag imposed by conservative complacency  stalls and stifles the lives of everyone else and the timely economic development of the nation. (Think of our neglected infrastructure, education, housing, health care, public transport  you know the lengthening list today.)

Accepting and adjusting to social or economic change, unfortunately, requires prolonged mental effort, from which the leisured conservative mind quite automatically recoils. But so, too, Veblen said, do the minds of the abjectly poor, and all those persons whose energies are entirely absorbed by the struggle for daily sustenance. The lower classes were  and this seems a familiar reality in the age of Trump  as conservative as the upper class simply because the poor cannot afford the effort of taking thought for the day after tomorrow, while the highly prosperous are conservative because they have small occasion to be discontented with the situation as it stands. It was, of course, a situation from which they, unlike the poor, made a bundle in an age (both Veblens and ours) in which money flows only uphill to the 1%.

Veblen gave this analytic screw one more turn. Called a savage economist, in his meticulous and deceptively neutral prose, he described in the passage that follows a truly savage and deliberate process:

It follows that the institution of a leisure class acts to make the lower classes conservative by withdrawing from them as much as it may of the means of sustenance and so reducing their consumption, and consequently their available energy, to such a point as to make them incapable of the effort required for the learning and adoption of new habits of thought. The accumulation of wealth at the upper end of the pecuniary scale implies privation at the lower end of the scale.

And privation always stands as an obstacle to innovation and change. In this way, the industrial, technological, and social progress of the whole society is retarded or perhaps even thrown into reverse. Such are the self-perpetuating effects of the unequal distribution of wealth. And reader take note: the leisure class brings about these results on purpose.

The Demolition of Democracy

But how, at the turn of the nineteenth century, had Americas great experiment in democracy come to this? In his 1904 book The Theory of Business Enterprise, Veblen zoomed in for a close up of Americas most influential man: the Business Man. To classical economists, this enterprising fellow was a generator of economic progress. To Veblen, he was the Predator personified: the man who invests in industry, any industry, simply to extract profits from it. Veblen saw that such predators created nothing, produced nothing, and did nothing of economic significance but seize profits.

Of course, Veblen, who could build a house with his own hands, imagined a working world free of such predators. He envisioned an innovative industrial world in which the labor of producing goods would be performed by machines tended by technicians and engineers. In the advanced factories of his minds eye, there was no role, no place at all, for the predatory Business Man. Yet Veblen also knew that the natural-born predator of Gilded Age America was already creating a kind of scaffolding of financial transactions above and beyond the factory floor  a lattice of loans, credits, capitalizations, and the like  so that he could then take advantage of the disruptions of production caused by such encumbrances to seize yet more profits. In a pinch, the predator was, as Veblen saw it, always ready to go further, to throw a wrench into the works, to move into the role of outright Saboteur.

Here Veblens image of the predatory characters who dominated his Gilded Age runs up against the far glossier, more gilded image of the entrepreneurial executive hailed by most economists and business boosters of his time and ours. Yet in book after book, he continued to strip the gilded cloaks from Americas tycoons, leaving them naked on the factory floor, with one hand jamming the machinery of American life and the other in the till.

Today, in our Second Even-Glitzier Gilded Age, with a Veblen Moment come round again, his conclusions seem self-evident. In fact, his predators pale beside a single image that he himself might have found incredible, the image of three hallowed multi-billionaires of our own Veblen Moment who hold more wealth than the bottom 160 million Americans.

The Rise of the Predatory State

Why, then, when Veblen saw Americas plutocratic bent so clearly, is he now neglected? Better to ask, who among Americas moguls wouldnt want to suppress such a clear-eyed genius? Economist James K. Galbraith suggests that Veblen was eclipsed by the Cold War, which offered only two alternatives, communism or capitalism  with Americas largely unfettered capitalist system presenting itself as a conservative norm and not what it actually was and remains: the extreme and cruel antithesis of communism.

When the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, it left only one alternative: the triumphant fantasy of the free market. What survived, in other words, was only the post-Veblen economics of John D. Rockefellers university: the free market doctrines of Milton Friedman, founder of the brand of economics popular among conservatives and businessmen and known as the Chicago School.

Ever since, America has once again been gripped by the heavy hands of the predators and of the legislators they buy. Veblens leisure class is now eclipsed by those even richer than rich, the top 1% of the 1%, a celestial crew even more remote from the productive labor of working men and women than were those nineteenth-century robber barons. For decades now, from the ascendancy of President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to Bill Clintons New Democrats in the 1990s to the militarized world of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to the self-proclaimed billionaire con man now in the Oval Office, the plutocrats have continued to shower their dark money on the legislative process. Their only frustration: that the left-over reforms of Veblens own Progressive Era and those of President Franklin Delano Roosevelts New Deal still somehow stand (though for how long no one knows).

As Galbraith pointed out in his 2008 book The Predator State, the frustrated predators of the twenty-first century sneakily changed tactics: they aimed to capture the government themselves, to become the state. And so they have. In the Trump era, they have created a government in which current regulators are former lobbyists for the very predators they are supposed to restrain. Similarly, the members of Trumps cabinet are now the saboteurs: shrinking the State Department, starving public schools, feeding big Pharma with Medicare funds, handing over national parks and public lands to developers, and denying science and climate change altogether, just to start down a long list. Meanwhile, our Predator President, when not golfing, leaps about the deconstruction site, waving his hands and hurling abuse, a baron of distraction, commanding attention while the backroom boys (and girls) demolish the institutions of law and democracy.

Later in life, Veblen, the evolutionary who believed that no one could foresee the future, nonetheless felt sure that the American capitalist system, as it was, could not last. He thought it would eventually fall apart. He went on teaching at Stanford, the University of Missouri, and then the New School for Social Research, and writing a raft of brilliant articles and eight more books. Among them, The Vested Interests and the Common Man (1920) may be the best summation of his once astonishing and now essential views. He died at the age of 72 in August 1929. Two months later, the financial scaffolding collapsed and the whole predatory system came crashing down.

To the end, Veblen had hoped that one day the Predators would be driven from the marketplace and the workers would find their way to socialism. Yet a century ago, it seemed to him more likely that the Predators and Saboteurs, collaborating as they did even then with politicians and government lackeys, would increasingly amass more profits, more power, more adulation from the men of the working class, until one day, when those very plutocrats actually captured the government and owned the state, a Gilded Business Man would arise to become a kind of primitive Warlord and Dictator. He would then preside over a new and more powerful regime and the triumph in America of a system we would eventually recognize and call by its modern name: fascism.
Join Dr. Michael Hudson, New Testament Scholar Dr. Aliou Niang, and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, Biblical Scholar and co-chair of the Poor Peoples Campaign for panel discussion on Michael Hudsons book, And Forgive Them Their Debts, at The Peoples Forum, 320 West 37th Street, New York, NY, from 6-9pm on April 15, 2019. From the announcement:

Debt plays a central role in upholding the economic and social order of the day. In the US, mounting debt and the crippling financialization of our lives is taken as fact. Our political leaders see no real problem and offer no serious solution. This was not always the case. Throughout antiquity, widespread debt-cancellation was understood as a moral and practical necessity. In a significant new book, And Forgive Them Their Debts, economist Michael Hudson traces the biblical demand against debt and the long history of economic jubilees. Counter to dominant history and theology, Hudson reveals how the Bible itself is concerned most with the moral failure of economic systems, rather than personal sin.

* * *

Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change PNAS. The reference point for normal conditions appears to be based on weather experienced between 2 and 8 y ago. Perhaps thats why global warming was such an ineffective frame.

Corporate America is failing to invest Gillian Tett, FT

Ubers IPO filing cant decide whether it loves or hates Travis Kalanick, and its pretty awkward Business Insider

Uber IPO prospectus shows ride-hailing revenues stalled FT. Well, maybe, for the investors, destroying public transportation is enough.

Stay Away From Teslas Eschaton

French officials call Project Gutenberg archive, 15 million ebooks, Grateful Dead recordings and Prelinger Archive terrorism, demands removal from Internet Archive Boing Boing

HSBC Sexual Harassment Case Shows Banks Struggles in MeToo Era Bloomberg

Brexit

Swiss court orders historic referendum re-run BBC

Syraqistan

Venezuela

US Threatens Venezuela at UNSC as IMF Freezes Funds Venezuelanalysis

Anxiety Grows Among Brazil Businessmen Over Delayed Economic Rebound Bloomberg

North Korea

The Plan to Resurrect the North Korea Nuclear Talks Defense One

By land, air, sea or elephant: 1 billion people across India, Indonesia and Australia prepare to vote by any means South China Morning Post

India

China?

Malaysias East Coast Rail Link back on track after government signs $14.5b deal with China Straits Times

Cambodia electricity shortage cripples small businesses Deutsche Welle

New Cold War

Trump Transition

Assange Arrest

2020

The farm industry is pushing for tighter right-to-farm laws across the country New Food Economy.

Class Warfare

NASA Twins Study results show how a year in space affects an astronauts DNA LA Times (DK).

The space race is dominated by new contenders Economist. From 2018, but interesting charts.

Tolkiens guide to contemporary politics Unherd

Video: Defying Gravity LRB. Adam Tooze on the exercise of American power. Starts off with lateral thinking on Geithner, a truly Napoleonic figure, but broadens out (!). Grab a cup of coffee:

For Davos Man, the new clarity in Washington is profoundly corrosive and upsetting.

Antidote du jour (via):

Sad:

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here
By Marshall Auerback, a market analyst and commentator. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute

Senator Elizabeth Warren made national headlines with her recently released plans to break up tech giants Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple, making it one of her signature proposals as she campaigns for the presidency. The notion should resonate and echo in our political memoryTeddy Roosevelt made his name as the trust-buster, for going after the great monopolies of the early 20th century in the name of the public interest. Twenty-first-century populist economics in America continues to be adorned the century-old piece of political syntax, break em up.

Warrens essential rationale is that these tech companies act as monopolies and need to be cut down in size in order to promote more competitive markets, via traditional antitrust instruments such as the Sherman Act. Furthermore, as legal scholar Kelsey Mullane highlights, Warren is also advocating new legislation that would regulate large tech platforms and the appointment of federal regulators who will enforce our antitrust laws and retroactively terminate anti-competitive mergers. The premise is that increased competition via vigorous antitrust activity and more regulatory activism will act as a spur to additional innovation, as it levels the playing field between large and small businesses.

Here is an even bigger goal implicit in Warrens call for an ambitious exercise of antitrust law. She wants to use it to address other social friction points, notably improving the quality of employment, mitigating wealth inequality, better protecting data privacy and enhancing national security. In short, her policies reflect an expansion of antitrust policy away from the narrow focus of the so-called Chicago School (which largely uses the metrics of economic efficiency and consumer welfare to determine whether to deploy antitrust remedies), toward broader philosophical concerns over monopolys effects on democracy itself. The notion being that the atomization process of a highly concentrated industry sector is a moment where the market can be refashioned with more equitable rules of play to consumers, employees and stockholders. How do these proposals stack up?

Elizabeth Warren is by no means the only presidential candidate to call for a breakup of big tech, but her proposals provide the most specificity in terms of what she aims to do. Her two most notable planks boil down to this:

Companies with an annual global revenue of $25 billion or more and that offer to the public an online marketplace, an exchange, or a platform for connecting third parties would be designated as platform utilities.

These companies would be prohibited from owning both the platform utility and any participants on that platform. Platform utilities would be required to meet a standard of fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory dealing with users. Platform utilities would not be allowed to transfer or share data with third parties.

In other words, the rationale for the breakup of tech companies in part turns on structural separation, as journalist David Dayen explains, which means that companies like Amazon or Google would not be allowed to both own the platform and also participate as a seller on that platform. The idea behind this separation is that it prevents the companies from controlling content via control of distribution, which can create long-term competitive distortions, even though in the short term, consumers might benefit from the lower prices offered by a large-scale retailer like Amazon. This logic moves beyond book retailing: It is what gave America separation of ownership of movie studios and movie theaters before online streaming provided by Amazon and Netflix started taking over.

Regulators,argues the legal scholar Lina Khan, cannot cognize the potential harms to competition posed by Amazons dominance if we measure competition primarily through price and output. Specifically, current doctrine [which largely is governed by consumer welfare considerations] underappreciates the risk of predatory pricing and how integration across distinct business lines may prove anticompetitive.

Fair enough. But it may still be useful to make a distinction between platforms for advertising and selling commercial goods (e.g., Amazon) and platforms for publication/speech/information (e.g., Facebook and Twitter). In the case of the former, the business models of these platforms depend on as many clicks or purchases as possibleon size. The larger the better. Consequently, if a company like Amazon becomes too restrictive via predatory practices, it will begin to reduce the number of clicks and undermine the basis for its pricing model. This need for size means that there are some constraints on these platforms being able to favor their goods or listings over those of others but, as Khan and Warren would argue, probably not enough, which is why competition should be encouraged via antitrust.

The problem with social media platforms that are publication or speech vehicles is somewhat different, as we are seeing with increasing censorship of some voices or viewpoints. It is unclear whether breaking up Facebook, and having multiple competing platforms, actually solves the problem of, say, dissemination of fake news. FCC oversight and regulation would seem to be a better way of dealing with this issue.

As far as the size metric itself goes, its hard to understand the rationale for a cut-off point of $25 billion in global revenues as a prima facie reason to break up the tech giants. According to Dayen:

Warrens campaign sees the $25 billion figure as a clean way to assist regulators with pinpointing market dominance. It has the benefit of a clear rule, said one senior campaign adviser, who was not authorized to speak on the record. We should presume if a company with over $25 billion in revenue is operating a marketplace, it has power and leverage.

But why should regulators make that sort of presumption in a globalized economy full of companies whose revenues vastly exceed that figure? Ford, GM, Toyota and countless other automobile manufacturers have global revenues well in excess of $25 billion. Seldom have we heard calls to break up Detroits Big Three despite global revenues in the hundreds of billions. Why? Because there is a widespread recognition that these companies are facing significant challenges in a global market dominated by similarly large competitors.

Likewise with some of the global food companies, such as Unilever or Nestle. Or consider the pet food industry, which is largely dominated by three suppliers. Should we be breaking up Big Cat Food, or is there something about a $25 billion global revenues metric that is intrinsic to Big Tech? By the same token, is it fair to make a presumption that businesses with much smaller revenues lack potentially abusive power and leverage?

No question, it is fair game for Dayen to highlight the incestuous linkages between some of the institutes and think tanks that are broadly supportive of Big Tech and oppose the Warren proposals (such as the American Enterprise Institute). After all, they serve as intellectual advocates for the business models of companies such as Google. But beyond pointing out the potential conflicts of interest, it would be helpful to gain a better understanding of the global revenue metric beyond it simply having the virtue of clarity.

Theres nothing in the economic literature on antitrust that would provide any kind of empirical gauge to assess whether there is something sacrosanct about a $25 billion figure. In that sense, the figure adopted by Warren evokes the arbitrary limitson debts and deficits established for fiscal sustainability rules in the European Monetary Unions so-called Stability and Growth Pact (which also have the virtue of clarity, even though the rules themselves are devoid of economic common sense).

In the same piece, Dayen writes:

Andy Kessler at the Wall Street Journal denied that antitrust law has anything to do with bigness. The idea that John Sherman, author of the Sherman Antitrust Act, was not concerned with bigness would come as news to Sherman, who once said, If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life.

In truth, however, the Sherman Act was conceived by its eponymous author in large part to avert more radical measures, as was noted by William Letwin in his seminal analysis of the Sherman Act, Law and Economic Policy in America. Much as FDR conceived of the New Deal as rescue for capitalism rather than an embrace of socialism, Sherman introduced antitrust lest Congress pave the way for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist. In the words of antitrust law Professor Daniel Crane: From the Sherman Act forward it is certain that antitrust has often been deployed as a foil to more interventionist forms of regulation. The ideological and political implications of that move are complex and not neatly housed in right/left categories. Sherman and his fellow trust-busters (such as the Roosevelts) may have been unwilling to endure a king over production, transportation, etc., but they were certainly willing to tolerate a number of archdukes.

And here we come to the tension inherent in Warrens antitrust proposals. Is the ultimate goal to break up these companies in order to foster greater market competition? If so, to what end, or is it simply enough to let markets be markets, even if market forces lend themselves precisely to the kinds of pathologies that Warren is seeking to eliminate?

As far as outcomes go, there is a benign assumption in the Warren proposals that increased competition levels the playing field between large and small businesses, which in turn helps to spur greater innovation. However, there is a significant body of research since the days of Joseph Schumpeter (the intellectual godfather of the economics of innovation) indicating that R&D spending and R&D productivity increase with scale. True, smaller firms have less bureaucracy and in theory can adapt their technology quicker to the needs of the marketplace. But a comprehensive examination of the empirical databy Professors Anne Marie Knott and Carl Vieregger at the University of Illinois leads to the following conclusion:

Not only do large firms (using the US Small Business Association definition of greater than 500 employees) conduct 5.75 more R&D in aggregate than small firms, they have 13% higher productivity with that R&D. However this merely captures the private returns to their R&D. A further benefit of large firm R&D is that it generates the spillovers upon which small firm innovation free-rides. (Emphasis added.)

The point of small firm innovation free-rides seems particularly salient, since smaller businesses are generally perceived in more benign terms politically than big multinational corporations. True, they do not suffer from the curse of bigness, but the myth of the plucky entrepreneur obscures the fact that in many instances smaller businesses are in reality the bad guys when it comes offering decent wages and a generous array of social benefits, such as health care provision or tolerance of unionization (the decimation of which has played a huge role behind the increase of wage inequality in our society).

Many businesses that are relatively small, and have minimal levels of concentration, are also marked by low productivity levels, productivity growth rates hovering around zero, and low real wages, according to an INET-supported studyby Professors Lance Taylor and Ozlem Omer. As a result, small businesses are often the first to protest increased regulation or burdensome mandates, such as those for additional health care provision or increased unionization. And that hardly makes them ideal candidates for the kinds of things Warren is aiming to achieve with her proposals.

By contrast, one of Warrens chief targets, Google, has just mandated that all its temporary and contractor workers based in the United States receive a $15 minimum wage by 2020 and comprehensive healthcare, including eight sick days and 12 weeks of paid parental leave, by 2022, according to a recent piece by Jillian DOnfro for Forbes.com. This echoes a recent move by Amazonto raise minimum wages to $15 per hour.

To be clear, there are many disturbing practices worthy of elimination in both Google and Amazon (hereand here). But it is also salient that both companies introduced the increased wages largely in response to mounting political pressure (Amazon explicitly acknowledged this), as opposed to waiting on legislation that would force the change. That provides some implicit support for the view that larger corporations generally have a greater economic capacity to enhance working conditions for their employees than smaller businesses (even if their motivations are to pre-empt even greater change that they strongly oppose).

The point is that greed, as opposed to affordability, has driven the big tech companies business decisions.

But what is the right legislative response? Is it to tackle the greed via vigorous antitrust enforcement or to introduce labor legislation that facilitates unionization and shifts the power balance back somewhat toward labor? Historically, unionization has proven to be a much more effective route toward greater income equality, as unions proved more successful in mitigating the gap between labor productivity and wages.

Frustratingly, Warren and her fellow Democrats in general evince little interest in tripartite labor-business-government models of the kind that worked so well during much of the postWorld War II period (before market fundamentalism assumed intellectual primacy), or structural interventions in the labor marketvia unionization or immigration policies, such as those embodied in Barbara Jordans Commission. In contrast to Trumps unthinking (and often racist) restrictionism, Jordans immigration proposals sought to balance the 21st-century employment requirements of U.S. businesses with protections for U.S. workers against unfair competition from foreign workers, with an appropriately higher level of protection for the most vulnerable in our society. Warren and her fellow Democratic presidential candidates admirably pay heed to the less fortunate via cash transfers from winners to losers with increased public provision. But they fail to consider whether the deregulated labor and goods markets that are hallmarks of todays antitrust propositions actually exacerbate the problems that create those vulnerabilities in the first place.

Likewise, in regard to the issue of data security, and data privacy, antitrust might not offer the best solution. The EU framework for data protection, or the California Consumer Privacy Act, have the makings of early-stage templates for consumer protections on these issues (although in the case of Facebook, this may be a case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, given that American Facebook users are abandoning it by the millions, the companys original sharing is rapidly declining, and its WhatsApp subsidiary, the takeover of which Warren seeks to unwind, is rapidly being superseded in quality by Chinas WeChat).

But what about the idea that we should all be thankful now [that] we have the option of using Google instead of being stuck with Bing, as Warren herself queriesin support of increasing competition among search engines? Network theory, as Ive written before, leads to a different kind of assessment, because the value of a search engine expands as an increasing number of other users use it, thereby enhancing its value to the user. The corollary also applies insofar as the benefits of a search engine diminish as the number of users decreases, as more search engines are created (and recall the earlier point about innovation and size, which suggests that more competitive choice does not necessarily mean that a better mousetrap is created). Given that these businesses have reached levels of sophistication and capacity, as well as unique periods of benign growth and talent agglomeration, they cant be easily replicated, so breaking them up via early 20th-century instruments, such as the Sherman Act, might not solve the problem.

If there is something inherent about network effects whereby online social networks like Facebook or search engines such as Google lend themselves to becoming natural monopolies, then the answer might be to regulate them as utilities, rather than breaking them up, as no less a figure than right-wing populist Steve Bannon has suggested.The advantage of the utility model of regulation is that it removes the determination of wages and prices of necessities from either markets or direct state control and put them in the more neutral realm of state-brokered bargaining (an approach earlier championed by both trust-buster Theodore Roosevelt and New Dealer Franklin D. Roosevelt).

Finally, it has to be asked whether it is wise to formulate antitrust policy on the basis of specific domestic requirements, while ignoring the challenges posed by global state-subsidized Chinese national champions: companies such as WeChat, Huawei, Alibaba or Baidu.

Well-crafted industrial policy is the kind of thing the American economy used to do rather well in fact before the deregulatory zeal of the Chicago School maligned any kind of national development strategies as something akin to rent-seeking crony capitalism. As a general rule, the more one uses antitrust to produce increasing domestic competition and less large companies, the more we may have to close the domestic market to international competition and provide export subsidies in order to compete globally. That wont fly under the World Trade Organization, but without national protectionism and an assertive geo-economic strategy, the more costly becomes the application of antitrust rules based on national considerations alone.

It is true, as Lina Khan acknowledges, If markets are leading us in directions that we, as a democratic society, decide are not compatible with our vision of liberty or democracy, it is incumbent upon government to do something. The question is what that something should be. The broader philosophical issue is whether antitrust works as an explicitly democracy- and pluralism-reinforcing institution, or whether these objectives are better achieved via other legislative measures (increased unionization, more progressive forms of taxation, utility-style regulation, campaign finance reform, institutional political reforms that encourage greater participatory democracy and minimize barriers to voting, to list a few examples).

Beyond that, it is worth pondering whether the Big Tech behemoths are a product or a cause of our current democratic dysfunction. The earlier existence of progressive tripartite-type deals amid an industrial backdrop of big companies, big unions and big government suggest that todays problems with Big Tech are symptomatic of the decay of some of the functioning stools on which Americas liberal democracy rested (declining unionization, increased political corruption), rather than the cause itself.

Unfortunately, in her efforts to act as a cheerleader for capitalismand market competition via aggressive antitrust remedies, Warren ignores other remedies of the kind embodied in the Treaty of Detroit. And her antitrust proposals acknowledge no role for possible utility-style regulation (ironically, that is coming from the populist right).

The problems she defines are real, but Warrens call to break up Big Tech is by no means the best route to the solutions she seeks to find.
Today (12 April 2019), the NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ms. Rose Gottemoeller illustrated NATOs achievements and priorities for the future, at an international conference entitled NATO at 70: no time to retire, organized by the NATO Defense College in Rome (Italy).

NATO Foreign Ministers gathered in Washington last week to mark the 70th anniversary of our Alliance and celebrate seventy years of peace and prosperity, Ms. Gottemoeller said. Weve grown in size since 1949  from 12 to soon 30 Allies. [] Spreading the area of peace and stability and enriching our Alliance with new voices, new experiences, and new capabilities; we have certainly modernized  with more women contributing in and out of uniform, as well as diverse nationalities and skillsets; and weve got a younger workforce today than the Alliance had when it was born; about 22% of civilian staff at NATO HQ are under 40, developing leadership for the future, she added.

The NATO Deputy Secretary General also highlighted what lies ahead for NATO. We are in a period of great power competition and the very values that underpin our liberal world order  freedom, democracy, the rule of law  are under strain. Tough task, but at seventy, NATO is in good shape. It remains the worlds most powerful military alliance and an anchor of stability in turbulent waters. It will steer us through this new, more tense and uncertain environment, she pointed out.

The Deputy Secretary General illustrated some of the main efforts already being carried out by NATO. We are strengthening our presence in the Baltic and the Black Sea regions; we are increasing the readiness of our forces and our resilience against hybrid and cyber threats; we are training, assisting and advising the Afghan forces to ensure the country never again becomes a safe haven for terrorists and we are also doing everything we can to create the conditions for peace; we are training and advising Iraqi security forces to ensure that ISIS can never return; and we are building the capacity of partners  Tunisia, Jordan  to fight terrorism.

The conference features NATO officials, representatives of member states and partner countries, and scholars.
(Natural News) Once upon a time, American newspapers and broadcast networks actually did report real news  bombshell, breakthrough stuff that was important and reflected the journalistic ethic of truth.

And while many journalists of the day favored liberal politics, you didnt know it because they werent overt about their political philosophies and their coverage of events did not contain evidence of any obvious bias.

For instance, the news media of the day covered the protests over the Vietnam War with detail and vigor as they occurred during a Democratic presidential administration  LBJ. They also covered scandals related to the war including the Pentagon Papers, as well as others tied to Republican administrations such as Watergate  Nixon.

In the modern age, however, old school mainstream journalism has been supplanted by Left-wing political advocacy posing as journalism. In the age of POTUS Donald Trump, this has become especially obvious, as documented at sites like NewsFakes.com and Journalism.news.

But there are still some outlets, if you will, that are doing the same kind of investigative work in exposing corruption as the American media of old, and one such organization is Wikileaks.

Founded by Julian Assange, Wikileaks has been loved and reviled by both Democrats and Republicans, depending upon whose political ox is being gored. Democrats loved Wikileaks when the organization was exposing CIA manipulation of public opinion leading to the Iraq War; Republicans loved it when it was exposing corruption related to Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign, in which she and the Democratic National Committee conspired to steal the nomination from Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Both sides of the aisle hated the organization when it published highly classified data about NSA and CIA operations stolen by a low-ranking U.S. Army soldier, then-PFC Bradley Manning, and an NSA contractor named Edward Snowden. (Related: SO corrupt: WikiLeaks Julian Assange was ready to give COMEY technical details on Podesta email hack but FBI head said NO.)

Assange and Wikileaks: Investigative journalism like American media used to do

But whatever people on either side of the political spectrum in Washington thought about Assange and his Wikileaks, one thing was certain: They werent fabricating stories or falsifying narratives in order to advance an agenda. They were simply publishing information that had been provided  information that Americans had every right to know about their government and the various administrations in charge at the time.

Some of the information we didnt have a right to know, such as when Wikileaks published the CIAs hacking tools and others used for electronic surveillance. These actually put our country at risk because they exposed for our enemies the tools our intelligence services utilize to keep us safe from things like terrorist attacks and enemy plots.

Nevertheless, throughout its tenure, Wikileaks has never been proven wrong. The documents the organization has released over the years have infuriated, relieved, excited, pleased, angered, and disappointed people  but they havent been proven to be forgeries or fakes.

Unlike the mainstream media in the United States, especially in the Trump age.

So why has Wikileaks founder Assange been arrested? And why now? What significance does the timing of his arrest hold? What is the point behind it? Why did the government of Ecuador, in whose London Embassy Assange had been living in exile since 2012, finally relent and allow British police to arrest and extradite him to the United States, where he will face charges of computer hacking?

Some believe that his arrest is the Trump administrations way of telling journalists (and all Americans) to be quiet and toe the line, according to 2020 Democratic presidential contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

The arrest of #JulianAssange is meant to send a message to all Americans and journalists: be quiet, behave, toe the line. Or you will pay the price.  Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) April 11, 2019

Perhaps thats true; time will tell. What is true is that love him or hate him, Assange has done the work journalists in the American mainstream media used to do, but no longer do because they are too busy advancing a Left-wing political agenda.

Here is Assanges last interview:

Sources include:

NaturalNews.com

TheGuardian.com
(Natural News) The Democrats and their sycophantic allies in the mainstream media are so afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome it has severely inhibited their abilities to think critically and logically.

That helps explain why they, at one point, actually considered attorney to the porn stars Michael Avenatti a viable candidate to run against POTUS Donald Trump.

Democrats and the fake news media arent saying that now, however: Avenatti, who has been ridden with scandal for months, has now been indicted by federal prosecutors over so many counts of fraud he faces hundreds of years in prison if convicted.

The Associated Press reported that Avenatti, 48, was charged by a Southern California grand jury in a 36-count federal indictment alleging he stole millions of dollars from clients, did not pay his taxes, committed bank fraud and lied in bankruptcy proceedings.

These charges are in addition to others filed in New York last month after he was arrested on two related counts for allegedly attempting to extort sportswear giant Nike for as much as $25 million. (Related: Michael Avenatti, former attorney of Stormy Daniels who tried to destroy Trump, charged with extortion threats against Nike.)

Avenatti, who came from relative obscurity to fame when he came to represent porn actress Stormy Daniels in lawsuits against the president, says hell plead not guilty.

I look forward to the entire truth being known as opposed to a one-sided version meant to sideline me, he said in a statement.

The Los Angeles Times noted further:

Avenatti stole millions of dollars from five clients and used a tangled web of shell companies and bank accounts to cover up the theft, the Santa Ana grand jury alleged in an indictment that prosecutors made public Thursday.

And, speaking to Avenattis alleged dearth of ethics and class, the Times noted further:

One of the clients, Geoffrey Ernest Johnson, was a mentally ill paraplegic on disability who won a $4-million settlement of a suit against Los Angeles County. The money was wired to Avenatti in January 2015, but he hid it from Johnson for years, according to the indictment.

Hell never live long enough to serve all of his time

Avenatti also stands accused of receiving $2.75 million as part of proceeds from another clients settlement but also hid that as well. The indictment claims that the porn attorney placed $2.5 million of that money into buying a private jet for Passport 420 LLC, which was a shell company he essentially owned.

But by then, according to prosecutors, Avenatti owed millions in back taxes, and his Newport Beach-based law firm, Eagan Avenatti, was just a few weeks away from going bankrupt.

Michael Avenatti allegedly stole from his clients, and he stole from the IRS, Ryan L. Korner, head of the Internal Revenue Service criminal investigations in Los Angeles, told the Times. The money was used to fuel a lavish lifestyle that had no limits, including making mortgage payments on a multimillion-dollar home in Laguna Beach and purchasing a private plane.

If convicted on all counts, Avenatti faces an impossible-to-serve 335 years in prison, just from the California charges. He faces up to 47 more stemming from his charges in New York.

Lets not forget this is the potential 2020 Democratic candidate who, according to Bill Scher at Politico, was capable of using his considerable media skills and political instincts to frame the contest around how far Democrats should go when wielding power, and to pressure his rivals to follow his cue.

Hes also the one HBO bomb-thrower Bill Maher of Real Time predicted could be the Trump of 2020, the guy whos the outsider, who blows through the regular politician because he looks different.

Avenatti even said of himself in September when contemplating a 2020 presidential run: If I decide to do this, Im going to surprise a lot of people.

And boy, has he.

Read more stories regarding President Trump and the insane Lefts attempt to take him down at Trump.news and LeftCult.com.

Sources include:

LATimes.com

APNews.com

TheNationalSentinel.com
(Natural News) The U.K. is planning to send an odd but effective form of humanitarian aid to war-torn countries: Batches of sterile medical maggots that can naturally clean the wounds of patients by eliminating rotten flesh and sterilizing the wounded area.

The maggots will be dispatched to South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and other countries that are currently undergoing civil war. Hundreds of people in those conflict areas have been grievously wounded during the fighting, and local medical supplies are sorely limited in number.

Maggots are the larval form of flies. The ones used for medicinal purposes are usually the larvae of green bottle flies (Calliphoridae), which lay their eggs within cadavers. The maggots of this genus of blowflies prefer to eat dead tissue and will not touch live flesh, making them perfect for disinfecting the wounds of living people.

The green bottle fly maggots are placed within easy reach of the wound of a patient. They will consume dead tissue, thereby preventing the flesh from festering and causing infections. Furthermore, the saliva of the maggots have antiseptic properties that kill disease-causing bacteria. (Related: Maggots versus antibiotics in the fight against infection.)

Maggot debridement therapy will make a comeback in war-torn areas

This approach is called maggot debridement therapy. Debridement is the medical term for the removal of dead, damaged, or infected tissue from the wound. Getting rid of the unhealthy tissue allows the body to focus its resources on healing the remaining tissue instead of having to also fight infection.

Maggot therapy was prescribed by traditional medicine for cleaning infected wounds. The Aboriginal people, who lived in Australia long before the arrival of white settlers, used the insect larvae to treat wounds for infection. So did soldiers fighting the trenches during World War I.

The practice fell into disuse with the development of modern antibiotics and pharmaceutical drugs. However, interest in maggot debridement therapy has been renewed in recent times.

The U.K. government is pouring $250,000 into what it called Project Maggot. They believe the biotherapy could help save the limbs of wounded people. By preventing secondary infections caused by injuries and operations, the maggots could head off the need to amputate limbs that have been overrun by gangrene.

People living through conflict and humanitarian crisis are still dying from wounds that could so easily be healed with the right access to care, said U.K. Parliament member Penny Mordaunt, who also served as the Secretary of State for International Development.

Maggot therapy can stop infections and prevent the need for amputation

Field hospitals participating in Project Maggot will raise batches of green bottle fly maggots. The newly lain eggs will be sterilized before undergoing artificial incubation for up to two days.

Maggots are ready for use the moment they emerge from their eggs. There are two ways to apply them: Directly placing the bugs on the wound or putting them inside a plastic bag that will be wrapped around an injury.

Sterile maggots are invaluable in areas whose medical facilities are either lacking or have been damaged or destroyed. A Live Science article described how the larvae can sterilize wounds faster and better than human surgeons.

Maggots can only be used for one treatment. Afterward, they will be placed in sealed containers and disposed off. This is to reduce the chances of the larvae spreading disease. Thankfully, maggots sterilize themselves during their metamorphosis into adult flies.

A successful breeding program will provide a field hospital with enough maggots to treat 250 wounds each day. Researchers at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia are working on a do-it-yourself starter kit that can be used by medical practitioners in remote communities.

Sources include:

LiveScience.com 1

LiveScience.com 2

DovePress.com
(Natural News) Seeing the clear writing on the wall, corporate monolith Amazon has decided to pack its bags and head for greener pastures, with recently leaked plans to completely flee its longtime hometown of Seattle by the year 2023.

According to reports, the Seattle City Councils recent attempt to impose a city-wide head tax, which would have billed Amazon and other large corporations some $275 per employee, per year, to pay for affordable housing  Amazon currently employs more than 45,000 people at its Seattle headquarters, which means it would have had to fork out nearly $12.5 million a year to the City of Seattle  was one of the last straws signaling to Amazon that its no longer welcome in the liberal enclave.

Sources say that Amazon wont be going far, however. The company is already moving some of its employees just across Lake Washington to nearby Bellevue  which is actually where Amazon was originally started, before Jeff Bezos decided not long after the company was formed to head to Seattle, where he believed hed find the strongest talent pool.

But because of how dramatically Seattle has changed in the interim, with its embrace of extreme Leftist politics that are highly unfavorable to companies trying to do business there, Amazon has decided to abandon its longtime roots and relaunch its operations elsewhere.

Amazon plans to relocate its entire Seattle-based worldwide operations team to Bellevue, Wash., by 2023, adding thousands of employees to its new campus just across Lake Washington, GeekWire recently revealed, citing an internal email it says it received from the company.

Moving a large and critical team away from Amazons Seattle headquarters is a significant relocation of employees on its own, but its also a weighty symbolic gesture  the clearest sign yet that the tech giant is cooling on its hometown while doubling down on a neighboring city, the report added.

For more related news, be sure to check out Liberalmob.com.

Anti-business but pro-free stuff: the epitome of the Lefts economic ignorance

There was once a time when Seattle was a booming, pro-business tech hub, drawing high-caliber talent from all across the globe. But things are now in rapid decline, as the citys uber-liberal constituency pushes for more bleeding heart policies that are systematically gutting the citys business sector.

Whether one likes Amazon or not, theres no denying that this major corporation has created tens of thousands of relatively high-paying jobs for Seattleites, most of whom will now be moving to pro-business Bellevue  leaving what will only amount to economic blight for Seattle in their wake.

Its a similar situation to what recently happened in Queens, New York, where the Queen of Stupidity, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), drove Amazon out of town before it even had the chance to set up shop.

This seems to be the New Leftist Way: to condemn the business community and drive it out of town, while simultaneously demanding that more free stuff be handed out to the public. None of the Leftist who advocate for such a paradigm ever have an answer as to how it will work economically, but they howl for it just the same.

It doesnt look like modern-day liberals will stop until every business is chased away and every major city becomes a giant homeless camp rife with drugs and crime, writes Brock Simmons for The Gateway Pundit, echoing this sentiment.

Im guessing all the folks who work for Amazon are less than happy with walking to work through needles / feces, aggressive homeless vagrants, ridiculously expensive cost of lunch, and so forth, wrote a commenter at The Gateway Pundit, pointing out some of the other common features of far-Left enclaves like Seattle that also contribute to their anti-business atmospheres.

Sources for this article include:

TheGatewayPundit.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Hoping to stumble upon something, anything, that might help them gain the upper hand amid the ongoing, socialism-induced collapse of their native land, a growing number of desperate Venezuelans is now resorting to looting dead peoples graves, new reports warn.

At Cementerio del Sur, for instance, the largest cemetery in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, most of the graves have already been dug up and ransacked. Folks are apparently stealing things like jewelry, gold teeth, and even dead peoples bones, which theyre then selling on the black market to others who use these remains in various religious rituals.

Stolen bones sell for use in rituals of the cult-like religion, Santeria, reports the United Kingdoms BBC News. Criminal gangs are also looking for gold teeth and valuable jewelry.

Video footage captured by BBC News shows some of the devastating wreckage left in the wake of all this grave digging, revealing toppled tombstones, dirt piles scattered all over the place, and all-around mayhem.

I come here every week, or every two weeks, laments Eladio Bastida, whose now-deceased wife is one of the bodies currently buried at Cementerio del Sur, in Spanish to BBC News. I keep watch. I worry Ill arrive one day and shell be gone.

When I buried her, you could just walk in here, he adds. But lately you can barely reach her grave, because every tomb has been opened and the remains taken out.

For more related news, be sure to check out Collapse.news.

Lawlessness now rules Venezuela, local man laments

Things used to be a whole lot different in Venezuela, back when society wasnt collapsing, and people were more grounded in their moral values  as opposed to just grossed in the political happenings of the day.

Speaking from his heart, Bastida basically told reporters that it pains him to witness this continued decline  but he also says hes confident that one day justice will be served.

This is a lawless land. There is no respect for anything here, Bastida laments. God will punish those people that are doing this.

The damage is so widespread, cemetery workers say they are unable to stop it, further reveals BBC News. Even the tombs of historical figures have been broken into, the news outlet adds, pointing to the grave of Romulo Gallegos, a revered Venezuelan novelist and former president, that was recently dug up and looted.

As for the country of Venezuela as a whole, things are hardly on the verge of improving anytime soon. Not only are cemeteries being destroyed left and right, but Venezuelans are repeatedly being left without power as a result of rolling blackouts, depriving them of basic services and sanitation.

While the Venezuelan government admitted back in 2016 that it has a major security problem on its hands as a result of this collapse, to which it responded by trying to increase police patrols, the situation is still much the same.

The theft in this cemetery has reached such a point that some families even write the words, this has been robbed, to prevent a repeat experience, says BBC News correspondent Will Grant. Grave robbing for gold teeth and bones with impunity. For the families affected, this is a metaphor for the country as a whole.

A man named Jorge Liscano actually wants to exhume his relatives remains from one of the last intact tombs at Cementerio del Sur before thieves get the chance to ruin it along with all the others.

This is the result of a social collapse, a lack of education, the loss of values in our homes and in our institutions, Liscano is seen stating in a BBC News video report of the situation. In recent years, this country has focused only on politics. We have forgotten about the things that make us human.

Sources for this article include:

BBC.com

Breitbart.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Nigerians have been eating editan (Lasianthera africana) and utazi (Gongronema latifolium) for thousands of years. It turns out that these locally-available and popular vegetables are rich in natural alkaloids that support the healthy function of the brain and prevent the onset of neurodegenerative diseases.

Plants synthesize alkaloids to repel herbivorous animals that graze on them. These phytochemicals often taste bitter and can prove to be toxic if ingested in large amounts.

Ironically, alkaloids and similar chemicals that drive off or kill certain animals will not harm other forms of life. The latter can even use the plant compounds for its own benefit.

This is the case for editan and utazi. Grown in southern Nigeria, the bitter-tasting leaves of the vegetables are not only consumed without harm, but also with relish. A popular vegetable soup dish is named after editan, and its leaves are also used in traditional African medicine.

A 2016 study by the Rivers State University Of Science And Technology found that editan provides important nutrients to the body. The study recommended further analysis of the chemical contents of the editan leaves and their specific effects on human health. (Related: Eating more citrus fruits is an easy way to prevent dementia.)

The antioxidant and neuroprotective potential of editan and utazi

Drawing from that and other earlier studies, researchers from the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA) examined the alkaloids found in the leaves of editan and utazi for potential modulating effects on neurodegenerative diseases. Other alkaloids were previously shown to slow down the onset of brain disorders, such as Alzheimers disease, by suppressing the actions of enzymes related to neurodegeneration.

For their experiment, they collected fresh editan and utazi leaves, which they processed into extracts with concentrated levels of alkaloids. The profiles of these phytochemicals were analyzed through a modified form of gas chromatography.

Both extracts underwent testing for their antioxidant activity. First, they were applied to ferrous ions (Fe2+) to determine their efficiency at chelating the iron-based particles. Next, the extracts were subjected to a free radical scavenging test.

Finally, an in vitro test evaluated the inhibitory potential of the alkaloids against enzymes that are associated with neurodegeneration. These enzymes were acetylcholinesterase, butyrylcholinesterase, and monoamine oxidase.

Eating these Nigerian vegetables will benefit your brain in so many ways

The researchers reported that the alkaloids found in editan and utazi possessed considerable antioxidant activity. Both extracts cleaned up considerable amounts of ferrous ions and free radicals that would otherwise harm cells and tissues.

Ferrous ions and free radicals trigger oxidative stress, a reaction that damages cells and tissues. If oxidative stress takes place in the brain, it could increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases.

Furthermore, the editan and utazi extracts displayed inhibitory effects against all three neurodegenerative enzymes. Increasing the dosage  and the amount of alkaloids  improved an extracts suppression of the enzymes harmful activities.

For editan, the minimum inhibitory concentration against acetylcholinesterase was 115.60 micrograms per milliliter (mg/ml), 169.48 mcg/ml against butyrylcholinesterase, and 73.72 mcg/ml versus monoamine oxidase. Utazi performed much better as smaller doses of its alkaloid could achieve the same effect as editan.

According to the gas chromatography analysis of the extracts, both editan and utazi contained large amounts of choline. An essential nutrient made from lecithin, choline plays important roles in the development and growth of the brain and the nervous system. It is the precursor to acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter that controls the activation of muscles.

The researchers concluded that editan and utazi contained natural alkaloids that protected against neurodegenerative diseases by halting harmful enzymes and reactions while also increasing choline levels in the body. They believe the consumption of these vegetables could help patients suffering from Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, and similar disorders.

Sources include:

Science.news

IOSJournals.org [PDF]

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

TAndFOnline.com
(Natural News) NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that residents do not own their own bodies. The city of New York can demand that all citizens be injected with literally anything the government declares to be a vaccine, even when those vaccines contain aborted human fetal tissue cells, toxic aluminum metals, inflammatory adjuvants and other dangerous, deadly chemicals.

This is the latest attempt by authorities in New York to obliterate human rights and roll out a medical dictatorship where citizens have zero rights to defend their own bodies against risky medial interventions that are demanded at gunpoint.

PJ Media, which has emerged as one of the best independent media websites covering liberty and individual rights, has published an especially noteworthy article on this issue. Authored by Megan Fox, the story is entitled, Mayor Bill de Blasios Mandatory Measles Vaccination Order Faces Legal Challenges.

We are republishing it here with full credit to the original author and PJ Media website. This in important read. Share everywhere.

Mayor Bill de Blasios Mandatory Measles Vaccination Order Faces Legal Challenges

by Megan Fox, PJMedia.com

In an unusual and extreme move, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency over a measles outbreak in the Orthodox Jewish community and is demanding forced vaccinations of everyone within four zip codes of the affected areas. Violators face fines up to $1000. This includes babies six months of age, even though the MMR is not recommended for anyone under twelve months of age.

The Childrens Health Defense will be filing a legal challenge to the order, which comes on the heels of a New York Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Rockland County ban on unvaccinated children in public spaces.

Childrens Health Defense (CHD) is supporting a legal challenge to this dangerous, unprecedented overreach. While the City has unquestionable authority to control disease outbreaks, it may not violate the bedrock principle of prior, free and informed consent to all medical interventions, including vaccines. This is a fundamental human right. The City may quarantine, isolate, trace contacts and strongly urge vaccination, but it may not impose such a draconian mandate without demonstrating necessity, reasonableness, proportionality, harm avoidance, non-discrimination, due process and equal protection. The Commissioner has failed to do this; the Citys actions violate New York State law.

CHD board member Mary Holland commented, I am shocked that Mayor de Blasio would resort to such police state techniques to control an outbreak of measles. I dont believe the Citys actions will withstand legal scrutiny. CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is confident their legal challenge will prevail.

This case goes beyond a dispute over religious freedom. Thanks to the Merck federal whistleblower litigation, we now know that Mercks MMR should have never been approved, much less mandated. To get its license Merck allegedly ordered its scientists to falsify efficacy data to fraudulently conceal the fact that the mumps component quickly wanes, triggering dangerous outbreaks in older populations where it can cause sterility in men and women. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 150 outbreaks resulting in 9,200 cases of mumps in fully vaccinated adults, dwarfing the recent measles outbreaks. We are confident that no American court will allow government bureaucrats to force American citizens to take risky pharmaceutical products against their will.

Merck is currently defending itself against claims of falsifying data brought by two former employees.

Medical corporation Merck & Co. will decidedly face the music in the ongoing class action and related anti-trust lawsuit involving its mumps vaccine  a product routinely given to babies and children for generations. The issue, which involves allegations of false compliance with FDA standards for vaccines, prompted a False Claims Act lawsuit: United States v. Merck & Co. This case was commenced by two virologists once employed with Merck, alleges a systematic and long-standing commitment by the company to lying about the efficacy of its mumps vaccination, thereby prompting possible exposure to liability under the federal False Claims Act.

Governor Cuomo voiced concerns about the legality of de Blasios emergency order to forcibly vaccinate conscientious objectors. Look, its a serious public health concern, but its also a serious First Amendment issue and it is going to be a constitutional, legal question, Cuomo said in a radio interview on WAMC. Do we have the right  does society, government have the right to say you must vaccinate your child because Im afraid your child is going to infect my child, even if you dont want it done and even if it violates your religious beliefs?

Some have asked how de Blasio is planning to determine who is or isnt vaccinated to enforce his order. According to the mayor, they will be using disease detectives. de Blasio explained, It parallels what a police detective does. If someone has symptoms, they will literally interview them to figure out everywhere theyve been, everyone they might have come in contact with, and then they go reach out to that whole network to make sure people are vaccinated. Its unclear whether make sure people are vaccinated means hold them down and inject them against their will.

Read more stories on liberty and individual rights at PJmedia.com. Stay informed about vaccine dangers and vaccine industry propaganda by reading Vaccines.news.


(Natural News) In an interview with the media on Tuesday following a meeting at the White House with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, President Donald Trump finally, thankfully, pushed back against the mainstream media lie that his administration and, in particular, his outgoing DHS secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, were responsible for caging migrant children.

POTUS told assembled media as the subject wavered, expectedly, into his immigration policies and Nielsens departure:

Obama separated the children, by the way. Just so you understand, President Obama separated the children. Those cages that were shown? I think they were very inappropriate. They were built by President Obamas administration, not by Trump. President Obama had child separation. Take a look.

The press knows it, you know it, we all know it. Im the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation. Now, Ill tell you something. Once you dont have it, thats why you see many more people coming. Theyre coming like its a picnic because lets go to Disneyland. We are not looking to do it. But President Obama had the law. We changed the law.

Thats absolutely true.

And whats also true, absolutely, is that the media all know it. CNN even did a piece in 2014 showing migrant children being housed in literal cages, as the following screenshot above proves.

Now, to be fair, Obamas administration didnt have much choice, either. The caging of children came in response to an influx of illegal aliens at our southwest border much like the migrant invasion POTUS Trumps administration is now dealing with. Children were put in separate facilities as required by law thanks to a Ninth Circuit court decision in the late 1990s known as the Flores settlement, which was also supported by that bastion of Left-wing legal groups, the ACLU.

But it was a horrific thing to have to do. And it did occur during Obamas watch  not Trumps. (Related: Study: U.S. is ALREADY home to one-fifth of the worlds migrant population, but thats not enough for open borders advocates.)

Obamas regime didnt put kids in cages to protect them

After the presidents very public reminder Tuesday that opponents of child caging should be directing their angst at his predecessor instead of him, CNN dutifully responded to an attack on their hero by claiming, unbelievably (unless youre a drone) that Obama did it because hes a compassionate guy who only sought protection for migrant kids, Zero Hedge noted.

After playing the clip of POTUS Trump pointing the child caging finger at Obama, CNN host Wolf Blitzer said, The President, in the Oval Office with the Egyptian President, he denied CNNs reporting and other reporting that he is thinking of reinstating zero-tolerance family separation policy. He repeated this accusation against President Obama. [] [Trump] stopped it after he authorized the zero-tolerance policy.

National Security Analyst Samantha Vinograd then responded, President Obama, when he separated children from their families, Wolf, it was for their protection. It was as if there was a risk of trafficking or other kind of harm that might have been incurred. But even if he did do that, why is Donald Trump saying that two wrongs make a right? Again, Obama wasnt right, but hes saying that because something is happening under President Obama, hes repeating it and upping the ante. Thats an incredibly poor excuse. Hes systemized that inhumane treatment that, again, Obama was doing to protect children.

Whats an incredibly poor excuse for a news network is CNN, whose crackpot analysts and guests constantly go out of their way to legitimize any and all of Obamas policies as well as those of his fellow Democrats but attack everything Trump and his administration do as nefarious, improper, or even illegal.

The facts are about as clear as they can get: The caging of children happened on Obamas watch, and there is zero evidence to support Vinograds ridiculous assertion that the caging was done to protect them.

Obama separation comments come around 3:10:

Read more about the fake news medias Left-wing push for open borders at NewsFakes.com and OpenBorders.news.

Sources include:

ZeroHedge.com

TheNationalSentinel.com

ConservativeDailyNews.com
San Francisco police Friday began releasing long secret files on use of force and misconduct cases under the requirements of a new state law, a month after the citys police officers union withdrew legal objections.

The first files released under Senate Bill 1421 disclosure requirements concerns a July 3, 2010 incident involving two plainclothes officers on patrol who saw a crowd with possible gang affiliations outside a North Beach strip club. Inspector John Jay Newman, then a 23 year veteran, told investigators he spotted a man who soon opened fire.

Newman got out of his car, sought cover and, when the man pointed the weapon at him, twice shouted, Police, drop the gun! before firing one shot. The man soon surrendered and was not injured.

I knew I was in danger, I didnt know where my partner was, I felt my life was threatened and I feared for my life, I took one shot from approximately 20 feet away, Newman recounted in one interview about the incident. Newman said although he knew the department policy on how to deal with active shooters involves withdrawing to a safe distance and calling in back-up before engaging the suspect, he had to act immediately because there werent enough officers to put that full policy into effect.

At least three people were injured in the incident by rounds that did not come from the officers gun, according to the investigative reports.

Six days after the incident, an internal police discharge review board unanimously agreed to allow Newman to return to duty.

The disclosure included several police reports and other accounts as well as the results of reviews by prosecutors and a firearm discharge review board, which all concluded that the shooting was within departmental policy.

However, in releasing the documents, the department redacted personal information of those involved, medical records, criminal history, or under a broad exemption related to disclosure of the record would pose a significant danger to the physical safety of the peace officer, custodial officer, or another person.

Dozens of pages are redacted on that broad exemption.

The documents have long been confidential, but are now being released due to the bill that requires the release of previously confidential records of police shootings as well as sustained allegations of lying and sexual misconduct. They show the level of review such incidents have by the Internal Affairs division, a discharge review board and the District Attorneys office.

The law mandated the files be released on Jan. 1, but triggered a series of lawsuits by police unions across the state.

The San Francisco police officers union had objected to the release of any files generated before the new law took effect in 2019, but withdrew its objection last month. On the same day, an appeals court ruled the law was indeed retroactive to records to incidents that occurred before the law went into effect.

The department says it will release more documents regularly as it finishes reviews required to comply with privacy provisions of state law.
A man suspected of being in the country illegally has pleaded not guilty to killing a Northern California police officer during a traffic stop in a case that has rekindled a debate over California's sanctuary law that limits law enforcement's cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

An attorney for Paulo Virgen Mendoza entered the not guilty plea to a murder charge in Stanislaus Superior Court, the Modesto Bee reported Thursday. Mendoza is charged with fatally shooting Newman Police Officer Cpl. Ronil Singh on Dec. 26.

Investigators say Singh suspected Mendoza of drunken driving.

Authorities say Mendoza was in the country illegally and was fleeing back to his native Mexico when he was arrested two days after Singh's killing near Bakersfield.

President Donald Trump seized on the case to call for tougher border security amid a fight with congressional Democrats over funding for a border wall, which has forced a partial government shutdown.

The sheriff leading the investigation blamed California's sanctuary law for preventing local authorities from reporting Gustavo Perez Arriaga to U.S. immigration officials for two previous drunken driving arrests. If he had been deported, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said, Cpl. Ronil Singh of the tiny Newman Police Department would still be alive.

The case was put on hold in January to determine if Mendoza was mentally fit to stand trial. On Thursday, a judge determined he was competent to stand trial after Mendoza was examined by a psychiatrist.

Mendoza is still identified in Stanislaus County jail records as Gustavo Perez Arriaga, an alias that he used when arrested. But he's referred to in court by his given name.

Prosecutors say Mendoza is eligible for the death penalty.
Last year, in the City of San Francisco, the Fire Department responded to 149,000 calls for help.

Each one of them, unique.

None, however, were quite like the call SFFD Paramedic Angela Castro answered in Bernal Heights, California on Friday in November.

"This call has impacted my life in such a way," Castro said, "I don't think I'll ever lose faith again."

To understand why the call had such the impact that it did, one first must travel back to Castro's childhood and one of the very reasons she became a paramedic. When Castro was just five years old, her father died of a heroin overdose in an SRO in the City's Tenderloin District.

She knows she was powerless as a little girl to save her father but thought, perhaps, that one day she could help save other people's family members when they were in need.

"I wanted to be there for somebody else's dad," Castro said.

So, beginning in 2010, Castro studied and trained to be a paramedic and in 2015 landed a job with her dream department: San Francisco. She was now in a position to help other families. On November 2, 2018, that is just what she was called to do.

"The call came in as an entrapment," Castro recalled.

After the emergency brake on her SUV failed, 57-year-old Linda Ruiz had become pinned between her vehicle and her home. Her pelvis was being crushed by the weight of the vehicle pushing down on her.

Castro and her partner were the first responders to arrive at the accident scene. It didn't look good for Ruiz.

"This is going to be bad," Castro recalled thinking. "I am either going to be holding someone as they die or doing anything I can (to save them)."

For the next 40 minutes, Castro and her partner kept Ruiz alive while dozens of other firefighters worked to safely lift the car off of her.

"It was difficult," Castro said, "because she was giving me her last rites, 'Tell my family this, tell my family that.'" Castro said she refused to do it. "If you give up hope, we'll all have no chance," she said to Ruiz.

Ruiz, to her credit, did not give up and eventually, Castro got her to the hospital. Ruiz was badly injured but alive.

It was what experienced rescuers call a "career call," one that is remembered for the rest of the first responder's life. "The Division Chief told me I wouldn't see another call like this for 50 years in San Francisco," Castro said.

Two weeks later, however, this unforgettable call morphed into an unbelievable one thanks to a call from Castro's sister.

"She was saying, 'Linda, that lady you saved? She's related to us! She's family!'" Castro recalled. "I went, 'Oh my God! Stop, just stop. You are kidding me!'"

Although they had never met, Ruiz is indeed related, by marriage to Castro.

The two women have grown close since the ordeal and promise to stay that way.

And, for Castro, a paramedic who got into the rescue business because she wasn't able to save her family ... finally did.

"Yeah, I did it. Totally. I did."
San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon on Thursday criticized President Donald Trump's tweet about considering sending "illegal immigrants" into sanctuary cities.

San Francisco is among the sanctuary cities in the U.S., where local authorities do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, denying information or resources that would help ICE round up people living in the country illegally.

With immigrants being less likely to commit crimes than the U.S. born population, and with sanctuary jurisdictions being safer and more productive than non-sanctuary jurisdictions, the data damns this proposal as a politically motivated stunt that seeks to play politics with peoples lives," Gascon said. "The fact that such a proposal is being peddled by the leader of the free world is an all-time low for American discourse, and its the clearest sign yet that the president fully intends to chart a path to reelection on the back of racist rhetoric and policies intended to divide us.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed also criticized the president's tweet, calling it another in a long line of scare tactics and half-baked ideas that are just about chasing headlines and distracting people from real issues."

"In San Francisco we are proud to be a sanctuary city and well continue to stand up for all our residents, Breed added.

But California Republican Committee member Harmeet Dhillon said Democratic leaders should be embracing the proposal:

"I dont really see why its being viewed as something negative, either for the immigrants or the city, since its a sanctuary city and we love immigrants here, so I dont really see the drama," Dhillon said.

Other Bay Area leaders fired back at Trump's tweet, with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf calling it "not American" and "petty politics."

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo tweeted:

"@realDonaldTrump plans to release detained immigrants to @CityofSanJose? We welcome any families willing to endure such extraordinary hardships and to take such tremendous risks to be a part of our great country. #VamosSanJose #WeAreSanJose."

Trump said Friday he is considering sending "Illegal Immigrants" to Democratic strongholds  just hours after White House and Homeland Security officials said the idea had been discussed but quickly rejected.

"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump tweeted. He added, "The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy - so this should make them very happy!"

Trump's tweets came in response to news that the White House had at least twice considered a plan to release detained immigrants into "sanctuary cities." Critics blasted the plan, supposedly rejected, as an effort to use migrants as pawns to go after political opponents.

They include New York City and San Francisco, home city of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who on Friday called the idea "unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face as a country, as a people, to address who we are  a nation of immigrants."

The idea of pressing immigration authorities to embrace the plan was discussed in November and then again in February as the Trump administration struggled with a surge of migrants at the border, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity to outline private conversations. Department of Homeland Security lawyers quickly rejected the proposal, according to the people, and it was dropped.

But not, apparently, by the president, who revived the idea in his tweets.

The plan, which was first reported by the Washington Post, is one of many ideas considered by an increasingly frustrated White House in recent months as President Donald Trump has railed against the growing number of Central American migrant families crossing the southern border. Officials say they are running out of options, and have proposed and recycled numerous ideas that have never come to fruition. Trump in recent weeks has discussed the idea of renewing his administration's controversial family separation policy. And he and aides are weighing forcing asylum-seeking families to choose between being detained together as their cases make their way through the courts or sending their children to government-run shelters.

There were at least two versions of the sanctuary city plan that were considered, according to one of the people familiar with the effort. One would have moved people who had already been detailed and were being held elsewhere to places with Democratic opponents of the president, while the other would have transported migrants apprehended at the border directly to San Francisco, New York City, Chicago and other spots.

Revelation of the idea drew immediate condemnation on Friday from Pelosi and other Democrats.

In a statement Pelosi said: "The extent of this administration's cynicism and cruelty cannot be understated."
An early-warning earthquake system is slowly being rolled out across the Bay Area thanks to scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.

The hope is to get people enough time to duck and cover before they feel the quake, but at a community question and answer session Thursday, the talk was also about preparing for the disaster after the shaking stops.

Doctor Jennifer Strauss explained how the early-warning system works. Scientists measure the time between two waves to confirm that a quake has happened, and thats how theyre able to send a warning.

The system is already being used by BART to slow down trains if theres a large quake detected.

Some in the audience were pessimistic about their readiness but Strauss said the good news is people are learning to be ready, and lots of improvements have been made the infrastructure and the planning over the last few decades.

"Utilities and other life lines have really worked hard since Loma Prieta to try to harden their infrastructure so that bad things dont happen, so thats very good," she said.

Strauss said theres been progress but a lot more needs to be done.

"Its going to get bad if we dont do nothing and all of our buildings are red tagged and yellow tagged," she said.
Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx has asked county Inspector General Patrick Blanchard to investigate her office's handling of the Jussie Smollett case, she announced Friday.

A former prosecutor, Inspector General Blanchard has been conducting independent inquiries for Cook County for over a decade, Foxx said in a statement. Ensuring that I and my office have the communitys trust and confidence is paramount to me, which is why I invited an independent review of this matter. I welcome this investigation and pledge my full cooperation and the cooperation of my office as IG Blanchard conducts his review.

Foxxs office decided to drop all charges against "Empire" actor Smollett, who was accused of staging his own hate crime. The decision sparked a war of words between city leaders and Smolletts legal team.

"I will tell you, Im not going anywhere," Foxx told a crowd at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition Saturday.

Politicians and faith leaders have previously pushed back on criticism over how Foxxs office handled the case.

"This is the same Kim Foxx who vacated 83 convictions that were wrongfully gained from a corrupt police officer who was planting drugs and guns on others," she recounted.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and suburban police chiefs gave her a no-confidence vote after her office dismissed all charges against Smollett even though Foxx recused herself from the case.

F.O.P. President Kevin Graham says "Ms. Foxx needs to resign and she should do it quickly."

While Foxx and her supporters are adamant that special treatment wasnt given to Smollett, the city is still seeking $130,000 from the actor to pay for the overtime CPD accumulated to investigate his case.

The city of Chicago's Law Department filed a civil complaint Thursday against Smollett under the city's false statements ordinance.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor who will be sworn in as Chicago's mayor on May 20, has also said during a pre-election debate that "the public has to have answers as to why these charges were dismissed." But she hasn't detailed any action she might take as mayor regarding Smollett.

The Smollett case and the city's effort to make him pay is unusual, according to several legal experts.

"We dont treat cases differently because of one celebrity, because I can ensure you the people of Cook County states attorney doesnt," Foxx said.
Rep. Tim Ryan announced Thursday that he is running for president, adding to the growing 2020 field of Democratic candidates, NBC News reported.

The Ohio congressman made the announcement online as he was set to appear on daytime talk show "the View." According to his campaign, he plans a kickoff rally with local union leaders in Youngstown, Ohio, highlighting his longstanding ties with the area's working class community.

Ryan is known for having challenged then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker of the House, for the leadership of the Democrats in Congress after the 2016 election. The attempt was unsuccessful, but he became a fixture on cable news.

His message is progressive and worker-friendly, and he's already made several trips to New Hampshire and Iowa.
What to Know State Rep. Stephanie Borowicz, Republican lawmaker from north-central Pennsylvania, upset fellow lawmakers with a fervent Christian prayer.

Pennsylvania's first Muslim woman elected to state office described Borowicz's prayer as "blatant" Islamophobia.

Borowicz said she was simply praying as she always does.

The Pennsylvania lawmaker who delivered a controversial prayer before a legislative session Monday that sparked backlash for its numerous references to Jesus, Israel and political leaders said she won't apologize.

"There was definitely some pushback to my prayer," Rep. Stephanie Borowicz said on a radio program of the American Pastors Network on Thursday. "But again, I stand by it. I don't apologize. And it was a privilege."

In her prayer, the Republican from north-central Pennsylvania went on for nearly two minutes  talking about Jesus, Israel, Gov. Tom Wolf, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln  before another lawmaker yelled something from the audience. The House Speaker then tapped her on the shoulder, and Borowicz finished the prayer.

The Christian invocation came the same day Pennsylvania's first Muslim woman was sworn into state elected office. Rep. Movita Johnson-Harrell, a Democrat from Philadelphia, officially took office shortly after the Borowicz's prayer. About 50 friends and family members, many who are also Muslim, were in the audience.

"It blatantly represented the Islamophobia that exists among some leaders  leaders that are supposed to represent the people, Johnson-Harrell told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star news site.

A fellow Philadelphia lawmaker, Rep. Jordan Harris, said Borowicz's prayer "weaponized" religion.

On Thursday, Rep. Kevin Boyle introduced a resolution "urging members of the House of Representatives who have the opportunity to offer a prayer in the course of a legislative session to craft a prayer respectful of all religious beliefs."

The Democrat who represents parts of Northeast Philadelphia and Montgomery County said "at bare minimum, anyone who does lead a prayer in the Statehouse should be respectful and inclusive."

"I walked out, probably halfway into it," Boyle, a Catholic, said. "I thought it became so highly over-the-top. Not just over-the-top about Christianity, it became quite political also."

Boyle, who has been in the legislature since 2011, said he's heard many prayers delivered before the start of House sessions in his eight years.

"There is not a prayer that comes anywhere close to this prayer, in terms of in-your-face Christianity," he said.

The tradition of a prayer at the beginning of House sessions dates back to before the Civil War. In fact, from 1865 until 1994, the House had a full-time chaplain. Later, a part-time chaplain gave opening invocations. In recent years, guest religious leaders gave the opening prayer. Now, the ritual is done by lawmakers themselves.

There are no official guidelines for the prayer in the House's "General Operating Rules." The only reference to it comes under Rule 17: Order of Business.

A spokeswoman for House Speaker Mike Turzai told NBC10 in an email that "any Member of the House may volunteer to offer the opening prayer and Members who volunteer are scheduled, based only on availability of session days."

"Previously, we had given guidelines to invited guest chaplains, encouraging them to offer an inter-faith prayer and to also refrain from making any political statements," the spokeswoman, Christine Goldbeck, said. "The Members who volunteer to offer the opening prayer are advised of the same."

Turzai reiterated that message to lawmakers following Borowicz's prayer, Goldbeck said.

Last year, a federal judge rejected Turzai's practice of refusing non-believers the chance to give the opening invocation before House sessions. House Republicans, who control the chamber, said they would appeal the ruling.

Borowicz told radio host Sam Rohrer, who is president of the American Pastors Network, that the prayer she gave in the State Capitol is one she says every day of her life.

"To have the privilege, no matter who was standing out in the crowd, Christians, Muslims, I dont  like (Christian evangelist) Franklin Graham said today  we dont change who we are standing in front of different groups," Borowicz said. "I prayed as I always did."

Rohrer, who represented parts of Berks and Lancaster counties for 18 years in the state House of Representatives, said in an interview with NBC10 after the radio show that Borowicz's prayer was in line with Judeo-Christian world views.

"While most people are looking and saying whats wrong with that prayer, we turn it around and say whats right with the prayer," Rohrer said. "I think when we see the kind of opposition to that, thats very recent. You go back a few years, maybe, and no one would have a problem with that prayer. So the question is: Whats changed, the prayer or our culture?"

Borowicz said she has prayed to Jesus with such passion since she was a little girl. The lawmaker's husband, Jason Borowicz, is an associate pastor at Crossroads Community Church in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania.

Calls to the church and emails to church leaders were not returned.

"My sister calls me everyday and we try to pray together every day after I read the Bible," Rep. Borowicz said on the radio program. "We pray for our nation. We pray for our president. We pray for our leaders. The same thing. We pray for Israel. The same things that I prayed for on stage. I had no idea it would cause controversy. It wasnt directed at anyone."
Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig was indicted Thursday on charges of making false statements and concealing information in a federal foreign lobbying investigation that intersected with the Russia probe.

Craig, 74, was charged in a two-count indictment that accuses him of willfully concealing material facts from the Justice Department about work he performed for the Ukrainian government. The indictment, announced by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, came a day after Craig's lawyers said he expected to be charged in the probe spun off from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

In a video statement, Craig said the prosecution against him was "unprecedented and unjustified" and that he's confident a judge and jury would agree.

"I did not participate in a scheme to mislead the government or conceal material facts," he said.

His attorneys had called the case a "a misguided abuse of prosecutorial discretion" and said the Justice Department's national security division pushed to indict Craig despite federal prosecutors in New York declining to bring charges, an assertion that couldn't immediately be verified. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment.

Craig's indictment is part of a Justice Department crackdown on unregistered foreign lobbying and consulting. Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating two prominent Washington lobbying firms in a similar probe, and Justice Department officials in Washington have been increasingly willing to prosecute people who they believe intentionally conceal their lobbying work from the government.

The scrutiny of Craig stems from an investigation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his work on behalf of a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. The charges come about three months after Craig's former law firm agreed to pay more than $4.6 million and publicly acknowledge that it failed to register with the government for its work for the Ukraine.

The civil settlement with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP laid much of the blame for the firm's conduct on Craig, who was a senior partner.

Craig, who is set to appear in federal court Friday, is a prominent Washington attorney and was the first White House counsel to former President Barack Obama. In private practice, his clients have included former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and James Cartwright, the former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was charged in a leaks investigation. He also led President Bill Clinton's White House legal team during his impeachment proceedings and defended Clinton during his Senate trial.

The work that drew the Justice Department's attention occurred in 2012, when Craig and Skadden were hired by the Ukrainian government to write a report on the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Ukrainian prime minister. Tymoshenko was a political opponent of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was a longtime Manafort patron.

The report was billed as independent, but critics have said it whitewashed a politically motivated prosecution.

In its settlement earlier this year, Skadden acknowledged it participated in a public relations campaign for the report and should have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA. The firm also acknowledged it had been paid $4.6 million for the report and not just $12,000, as the Ukrainian government had said at the time.

The indictment made public Thursday says Craig did not want to register under FARA because doing so could keep him or others at his law firm from getting government positions and because the filing would require him to disclose the millions paid from a "private, wealthy Ukrainian." The disclosures also would have undermined the authority of the supposedly independent report.

To help hide the private funding, Craig is accused of backdating and falsifying invoices at Manafort's request to make it appear the Ukrainian government was the sole funder of the report.

After the firm's work attracted the attention of the Justice Department's FARA unit in 2012 and 2013, the indictment says Craig misled officials about his interactions with reporters and his involvement with a public relations firm in securing news media coverage about his law firm's report.

When the Justice Department determined that Craig should register under the law, the indictment says, Craig resisted the idea. In an email titled "FARA," Craig wrote that the firm did not proactively disseminate the report to the media and instead provided it upon request to three media outlets that asked for it.

"The only time we responded, was to correct misinformation," Craig wrote. The firm then wrote a letter to the department's FARA unit containing Craig's false and misleading statements, which ultimately allowed for him and the firm to avoid registering, the indictment said.

Years later, when the subject came up again during the Mueller probe, the indictment says Craig repeated some of the same lies during an October 2017 interview with the special counsel's team.

Craig's lawyers deny that he lied to the government or his firm. They acknowledged that Craig spoke to reporters about the report but denied it was part of a public relations campaign that would run afoul of the law.

"I was always honest about the reasons for my contacts with the media," Craig said in the video posted Thursday on Twitter.

"I never discussed the finding of our report to any U.S. officials. I certainly did not lobby any US officials on behalf of Ukraine. I did not help Ukraine promote its spin when it released our report," he added.

On Thursday, his attorneys, William Taylor and William Murphy, called the indictment "unfair and misleading" and said prosecutors ignored exculpatory evidence. "Mr. Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA Unit because he had not done anything that required his registration. That is what this trial will be all about," they said in a statement.

FARA is a decadesold law meant to allow Americans to know when foreign entities are trying to influence public opinion or policymakers. The law, enacted in 1938 to unmask Nazi propaganda in the United States, requires people to disclose to the Justice Department when they advocate, lobby or perform public relations work in the U.S. on behalf of a foreign government or political entity.

In the last few years, the Justice Department has brought several high-profile prosecutions involving FARA. That includes a case against Manafort, who was recently sentenced to more than seven years in prison.
A federal appeals court put a judge's order on hold Friday shortly before it would have stopped the Trump administration from forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases move through U.S. courts.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the lower court ruling from taking effect. The three-judge panel set a Tuesday deadline for civil liberties groups to submit arguments on why the asylum policy should be on hold and a Wednesday deadline for the government to argue why it should remain in place.

Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco ruled Monday to halt the unprecedented change to the U.S. asylum system while the groups' lawsuit moves forward. He said the policy violates U.S. law by failing to evaluate dangers migrants face in Mexico.

The government called the ruling erroneous and said it endangers the public during a humanitarian crisis at the southern border. It wants the 9th Circuit to keep the policy in place while the lawsuit is litigated, which is expected to take months and possibly years.

Immigration attorneys argued that the policy was putting the lives of asylum seekers at risk by forcing them to wait in violence-plagued Mexico and said Seeborg's ruling was already having an effect.

Since the judge issued his order, immigration officials stopped returning asylum seekers south of the border after they attended their hearings in the United States, lawyers said.

"I haven't heard of anyone who's been sent back since the judge's order on Monday," American Civil Liberties Union attorney Judy Rabinovitz said.

She added later that she was hopeful Seeborg's ruling will go into effect in the end.

The order marked another defeat to President Donald Trump's intent to radically alter U.S. immigration policies. Families seeking asylum typically have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court.

The new policy started in January at the nation's busiest border crossing in San Diego and the government was starting to expand it.

At a Wednesday hearing in El Paso, Texas, Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney for Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, told a judge that his Salvadoran client feared returning to Mexico. The man was allowed to remain in the United States, signaling a change in the practice.

The Mexican government says more than 1,300 people were returned to Mexico under the program.

A lawsuit by 11 Central Americans and legal advocacy groups argues that the policy puts the lives of asylum seekers at risk by forcing them to stay in Mexico, where crime and drug violence are prevalent.

The Trump administration says the policy responds to a crisis at the southern border that has overwhelmed the ability of immigration officials to detain migrants. Growing numbers of families are fleeing poverty and gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.
Three years after the Obama administration told transgender individuals they could serve openly and have access to gender-affirming medical and psychological care, the Trump administration has reversed course, NBC News reports. The Pentagon on Friday began to implement a controversial new policy that critics say is essentially a dont ask, dont tell policy for trans service members.

Under the new policy, currently serving transgender individuals who have already received a diagnosis of gender dysphoria may continue to serve in their preferred gender, receive hormone treatments and undergo gender-affirming surgery. But after Friday, anyone with gender dysphoria who is taking hormones or has already undergone a gender transition will not be allowed to enlist. Further, any currently serving troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria after this date will have to serve in their sex as assigned at birth and will be barred from taking hormones or getting gender-affirming surgery.

When told that transgender Americans say youve given up on them, President Donald Trump said: You know what I'm doing? I'm protecting everybody. I want to protect our country.
Adventists from churches in Port Vila have been visiting the 101 Bangladeshi men twice every month, since February. Credit: Vanuatu Mission of Seventh-day Adventists
President Donald Trump said Friday he is strongly considering releasing "Illegal Immigrants" into Democratic strongholds to punish congressional foes for inaction on the border just hours after White House and Homeland Security officials insisted the idea had been rejected as fast as it had been proposed.

"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump tweeted. He added that, "The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy - so this should make them very happy!"

The reversal, which appeared to catch officials at the Department of Homeland Security off guard, came as critics were blasting Trump for the supposedly-rejected idea, accusing him of turning migrants into pawns to go after his political opponents. It comes as Trump has grown increasingly exasperated by a surge of Central American migrant families crossing the southern border and is looking for new ways to pressure congressional Democrats to change laws that he insists are making the problem worse.

Indeed, last week Trump urged his soon-to-be acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan to seal the southern border and told McAleenan he would pardon him if he were to find himself in trouble for blocking legal asylum-seekers, according to two people familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private exchange.

It was not clear whether the president was joking, and a Homeland Security spokesman said in a statement: "At no time has the president indicated, asked, directed or pressured the acting secretary to do anything illegal. " The reported conversation came during the president's trip last week to Calexico, California, a day after he announced he was delaying his threat to close the border because Mexico appeared to be stepping up its enforcement efforts.

Before Trump's tweets on Friday, both the Department of Homeland Security and a White House official had insisted in nearly identical statements that the sanctuary-cities plan had been floated but then flatly rejected.

But not, apparently, by the president, who emphatically revived the idea.

Asked about it by reporters, he said he was "strongly looking at" releasing migrant families into those communities.

"They're always saying they have open arms. Let's see if they have open arms," he said.

There were no indications, however, that officials were taking any steps to move forward with the idea or considered the president's words anything more than bluster.

"Sanctuary cities" are places where local authorities do not cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, denying information or resources that would help ICE round up for deportation people living in the country illegally.

They include New York City and San Francisco, home city of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who on Friday called the idea "unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face as a country, as a people, to address who we are  a nation of immigrants."

Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who chairs the House Homeland Security committee, said it "serves as a reminder that the Trump administration's reckless immigration agenda is not about keeping the country safe, but about partisan politics and wantonly inflicting cruelty. "

The idea of pressing immigration authorities to embrace the plan was discussed in November and then again in February as the Trump administration struggled with a surge of migrants at the border, according to three people who spoke on condition of anonymity to outline private conversations. Homeland Security and ICE lawyers quickly rejected the proposal, according to the people, on the grounds that it was complicated, too expensive and a misuse of funds, two of the people said.

The plan, which was first reported by The Washington Post, is one of a litany of ideas being tossed around by an increasingly anxious White House in recent months. Officials say they are running out of options, and have proposed and recycled numerous ideas that have never come to fruition. Trump in recent weeks, for instance, has discussed the idea of renewing his administration's controversial family separation policy  even as he's publicly declared he won't do that  and has threatened to completely seal the border despite opposition from many in his administration.

There have been at least two versions of the sanctuary city plan discussed: One to move people who have already been detained to places with Democratic opponents of the president, the other to transport migrants apprehended at the border directly to San Francisco, New York City, Chicago and other spots.

ICE arrests people in the U.S. illegally and also manages migrants who present themselves at border crossings and ask for asylum.

The surge of migrant families at the border has been taxing the system, and ICE says it no longer has the resourced to handle immigrants processed by the Border Patrol. As a result, more than 125,000 people have been released as they await court hearings  a practice Trump has derided as "catch and release."

With immigrant processing and holding centers overwhelmed, the administration has already been busing people hundreds of miles inland and releasing them at Greyhound stations and churches in cities such as Albuquerque, San Antonio and Phoenix.

Transporting large groups of immigrants to distant cities would be even more expensive for an agency already strapped for cash. Flights chartered by ICE cost about $7,785 per flight hour, according to the agency, and require multiple staffers, including an in-flight medical professional. The agency also uses commercial flights but requires that migrants to pay for those.

At the same time, many "sanctuary" communities would likely welcome the immigrants in question. Some of these cities have robust networks of nonprofit legal groups that could help them strengthen their legal cases to stay.

The Department of Health and Human Services said this week it had started scouting vacant properties that could be turned into facilities for holding migrant children in several cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and San Antonio.

Those facilities would be licensed by each state and likely take several months to be approved and opened, separating them from the rapidly expanding emergency shelter at Homestead, Florida, and the now-closed tent facility at Tornillo, Texas.

The Defense Department has also been reviewing a number of military bases to find a location that can house up to 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children as the U.S. braces for a surge of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border this spring.

Under the Trump administration, ICE has significantly stepped up arrests, including of people who have no U.S. criminal records. In response, some cities have banished ICE from jails where agents could easily pick up immigration violators. Police in New York, Baltimore and Seattle rarely, if ever, disclose information about when suspected criminals in the U.S. illegally will be released from custody.

Democrats have said they will tackle immigration bills, possibly as soon as they return from their spring recess, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has indicated an interest.
A Vermont fourth grader is expressing her frustration after her feathered friend became the butt of a joke on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live.

The joke featured her disabled pet chicken, Granite Heart, learning to walk with a custom wheelchair. The SNL joke suggested that instead of helping the animal walk, she should "just eat the chicken."

"Be more sensitive," said 10-year-old Alora Wood of Vermont.

Wood is disgusted at the thought of eating chicken for dinner.

"Never," she said, asking, would you put your pet on a plate?

"I know it was meant to be a joke, but what if it was a dog?" she added.

Wood does admit its cool to see Granite Heart grab the spotlight because her handicapped chicken has quite the story.

"She couldnt move around like all the other chickens and live a normal life," Wood explained.

Granite was born with a deformed foot and cant walk, but thanks to Wood and her family things are looking up.

They got Granite a custom wheelchair from Walkin Pets, a company in Amherst, New Hampshire that makes and sells pet wheelchairs to families around the world.

"I think its going to be easier for her when she learns to push with her foot," Wood said. "Shes still working on it but I think shell get it really soon."

Owner of Walkin Pets Mark Robinson feels badly that Wood was offended by the SNL joke, but for him, he says he was thrilled to see his wheelchairs on his favorite show.

"It was great, I loved it," Robinson said.

With their 15 minutes of fame, this fourth grader, and her feathered friend are proving that pets come in all shapes and sizes.

"Any creature, no matter how big, no matter how small, they deserve to have a perfect life," Wood said.

Click here for more information about Walkin Pets.
An investigation by the Peace Corps Inspector General has determined that the death last year of a suburban Chicago woman in the tiny island nation of Comoros was due to the botched diagnosis of an especially lethal case of malaria.

Twenty-four year old Peace Corps volunteer Bernice Heiderman of suburban Inverness died Jan. 9, 2018 in Comoros, a tiny nation off the coast of Mozambique. The agencys inspector general says she was stricken with the deadliest species of malaria when left untreated, and the dominant species in Comoros.

Despite the fact that the Peace Corps medical guidelines direct medical officers to assume that all volunteers serving in malaria-prone areas could become infected with the disease, the IG report says the medical officer in Comoros did not consider a diagnosis of malaria at any point, from Jan. 2, 2018, until Heidermans death seven days later.

Malaria test kits and treatment medication were available in Comoros to assist in diagnosing and treating Heiderman throughout her illness, but were not used, the report says. Our review found that if Heiderman had been diagnosed with malaria when her initial symptoms indicated a possible malaria infection, and had she received timely treatment, she could have made a rapid, full recovery.

The report further states that Heiderman had not been taking her required malaria prevention medications for several months prior to her death, and that the local medical unit had been unaware of that fact. But the investigation revealed that the on-duty medical officer had limited training in infectious diseases, and believed malaria required presence of a high fever, something Heiderman apparently did not have.

(The medical officer) never suspected malaria as a possible diagnosis, the report stated, adding that he remained anchored to his original diagnosis of a headache or gastrointestinal disorder, up until the evening before her death.

Heiderman had served as an English teacher at a middle school close to the capital city of Moroni since August 2016.

The IG report states that the Peace Corps conducted a thorough investigation to determine if Heiderman was murdered.

This investigation was related to concerns that Heiderman had expressed through text messages to her family and friends stating that she thought she was being poisoned, the report states. A pathologist conducted an autopsy toxicology test that did not uncover the type of poison that had been originally considered.

A former volunteer at the Field Museum of Natural History, Heiderman was a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago.
A 23-year-old mother of two says she was pressured to get an abortion at an Illinois hospital after a medical error put her baby at risk, a lawsuit filed Thursday said.

Reneizha Morris said she found out she was pregnant in November 2017 after she went to UnityPoint Methodist Center in Peoria for a separate medical reason.

But after she learned the news from doctors, she was injected with a drug that could cause birth defects in her baby, the lawsuit said.

"This is the kind of mistake that would happen in the 1960s," said her attorney, Thomas Mulroy III, with Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard. "The fact that this is happening in 2019 is unbelievable."

Mulroy said the hospital tried to cover up the error by pressuring Morris to have an abortion, which she ultimately did.

According to Morris attorney, the hospital gave Morris $2,000 in cash and a letter stating the money was for "a consultation" at a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood clinic.

Morris said she felt pressured in a series of meeting to terminate the pregnancy and the baby was ultimately aborted on Dec. 15 that year, the suit states.

"This case has one of the ugliest fact patterns I have ever seen, Mulroy said in a statement. A perfectly healthy fetus was given a deadly injection based on reckless communication. The hospital administration knew full well they would have been legally responsible for the considerable healthcare costs associated with the babys birth injury. The hospital purely had their own interests in mind and failed to take Reneizhas wishes into consideration.

The hospital said it could not comment on pending litigation.

No one should ever have to make that decision. I think about what happened every single day and I hope another woman will never have to feel the pain I have felt since this happened, Morris said in a statement.
Illinois State Police have arrested a 55-year-old man whom they say struck and killed Illinois State Trooper Brooke Jones-Story with his truck last month.

The man, identified as 55-year-old Craig W. Dittmar, was arrested on Thursday afternoon after the Stephenson County States Attorney approved felony charges against him in connection with the troopers death.

According to police, Jones-Story was inspecting a commercial motor vehicle on U.S. Route 20 on March 28 when a truck, which police say was driven by Dittmar, struck and killed her.

An Illinois State Police trooper was killed Thursday afternoon in a crash on Route 20 near Freeport, the department said. Trina Orlando reports.

Dittmar faces several felony charges, including two counts of Reckless Homicide, a Class 2 felony, and one count of Operating a Commercial Motor Vehicle While Fatigued and causing death. Bond has been set at $250,000, according to state police.

Jones-Story is one of three Illinois State troopers who have been killed in traffic collisions so far this year.
Illinois State Police are warning truck drivers against a planned slow roll protest on the Dan Ryan and Kennedy Expressways set for Friday morning.

A group of truckers plans to drive slowly in the lanes of Interstate 57 and Interstate 94, and cause massive congestion and backups, state police said.

The truckers hope to bring attention to regulations in their industry.

State police warned the group that backups are a significant contributing cause of traffic crashes, which lead to property damage, personal injury, and possibly death.

Police said they respect the rights of citizens to express their opinions, but that the plan to cause a traffic jam is dangerous to the innocent motoring public.

State police warned that participating drivers could be held liable for traffic crashes occurring as a result of their actions.

One group of truckers taking part in the protest said they are fighting for more flexible working hours, relaxed rules on electronic logging devices, more training for new semitrailer drivers and more truck parking and amenities along expressways.

Neither police nor the protesters have said which portion of the Tri-State the protest is planned for.
Newly elected Rep. Sharice Davids is most proud of setting up a congressional office in part of her Kansas district she said hadn't seen one for years. For Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath, her biggest victory was passing the gun background checks legislation she advocated for after her son's shooting death. And for New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her top achievement was the introduction of the landmark Green New Deal .

As the Democratic freshmen lawmakers round the first 100 days of their new majority in the House, they're taking stock of their accomplishments, noting the stumbles and marking their place as a front line of resistance to President Donald Trump.

"When I came here, I said the days of business as usual in the Congress are done, and I think that's what we've seen," said Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., a nurse and former Obama administration official, who took over a GOP-held seat in the Chicago suburbs.

The first 100 days is often a milestone for a new Congress  an automatic, if arbitrary, moment to assess the workings of the legislative branch. This year, it's even more noteworthy because of the historic nature of the freshmen class. It is two-thirds Democrat, with more women than men on that side of the aisle. It's also the most diverse ever , with many newbies swept into office in a blue wave that followed two years of Trump.

House Democrats set out an ambitious agenda with legislation on the kitchen table priorities that helped them win the majority  protecting the Affordable Care Act, imposing new ethics rules  while engaging in aggressive oversight of the Trump administration. Their investigations extend well beyond special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election as they dig into the president's business dealings and push for Trump's tax returns .

But with the spotlight comes high-profile setbacks. Democrats splintered over Ocasio-Cortez's climate change proposal and exposed party divisions over Israel's treatment of Palestinians. One new lawmaker, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, stunned some when, on Day One, she told supporters  using an expletive  that the new majority would impeach Trump.

Moreover, few of their bills will ever be signed into law. In fact, most are simply resolutions that are being panned by the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is providing backstop with his Republican majority to keep the measures from ever making it to Trump's desk.

McConnell said Pelosi's challenges resemble those Republicans have keeping their right flank in line. "I was almost tempted to call up my friend the speaker and say, 'Congratulations, you've got a Freedom Caucus on your hands,'" he told reporters Thursday, referring to the House's conservative group.

House Republicans gathered on the Capitol steps for their own 100-day event, ridiculing the new majority for catering to the liberal left and failing to keep their campaign promises.

"I have one question for the Democrats after their first 100 days: What have you accomplished?" Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said on Wednesday. "Name me one problem you have solved."

Another Republican, Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, warned that Democrats are veering toward socialism. As he did, a passer-by among the crowds of tourists outside the Capitol shouted, "I stand with Ilhan!"  a reference to outspoken freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

Democrats know they face challenges ahead, not only in avoiding the internal divisions that stymied House Republicans when they were in power but also in delivering on their campaign promises.

"For me personally, the biggest frustration has been that we're working on a lot of different things. But if you're just looking at the media, the narrative is not showing that," said freshman Democratic Rep. Katie Hill of California. "It makes it seem like all we're focusing on is the president and responding to whatever tweet of the day or the investigation and so on, but we're actually working on the issues that we were elected to do."

Tlaib said the most surprising thing to her so far has been the "lack of urgency" among some in Congress. As few joined her push to impeach, she said she thinks "we're going to look back and say we wish we did more."

Freshman Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat who will face a potentially tough re-election in New Jersey, says part of the majority's job is to at least show voters what's possible.

"There will be some things that stand no chance of enactment, and we knew that, but that's OK," Malinowski said. "Because one of our jobs is to give people hope that something better is possible if we do in 2020 what we did in 2018."

At House Democrats' retreat this week in Virginia, Ocasio-Cortez said their power lies in being able "to come in as a class."

Many of them say they know theirs is a historic moment, even amid the everyday challenges of being new on the job.

Underwood, who gathered the freshmen to make a video showcasing what they were most proud of, acknowledged the hurdles ahead.

"Moving forward, we will need to continue to work not just to pass bills in the House but do things that can gain broad support so that they can get enacted into law," she said.

"People in my community are looking for impactful change  they can feel a difference."

Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.
A Connecticut woman wants others to be aware after she and her husband lost hundreds of dollars trying to purchase puppies.

Losing a pet is like losing a family member. Amy Beaulieu and her husband know that first hand.

We lost our 13-year-old pug Penelope in October, 2018 and we were devastated, Beaulieu said.

It was a painful experience for the Beaulieus to put down their pug. In January, the couple spotted some adorable little pugs for sale online.

Were reading the website, texting back and forth with them. We picked two puppies, said Beaulieu.

On the companys website, Jasons Pug home, it details how the business raises pugs in their home posting these pictures of the pups.

When we asked if they ever used a website before to buy a pug, Beaulieu replied, Never.

Beaulieu said the male and female pugs cost $650 each.

I questioned as to why they were so inexpensive. He said it was because it was Texas and no ones willing to pay that much money for pugs in the South as compared to the Northeast, said Beaulieu.

The couple was instructed to send a $400 deposit through their United bank cash app.

Eventually, he called one time and I said I have some concerns about the texting and this sounds a little bit too good to be true. And he assured me, its fine were a family business. Everythings safe, said Beaulieu.

Beaulieu said she didnt hear anything after that.

We were pretty angry about it and felt a little bit naive too, added Beaulieu.

She filed a police report, a claim with her bank and the Better Business Bureau. Beaulieu said: We discovered his website on pet scam.

According to the BBB, 80 percent of sponsored pet advertisements may be fake and the internet may not always be the best way to purchase a pet. The agency says since January of this year, Connecticut consumers claim to have lost nearly $6,000 in online puppy scams, as reported through the BBBs Scam Tracker.

Beaulieu is now content with 4-month-old Milo and 12-week-old Apple. She purchased the pups through the American Kennel Club and wants to warn others before they buy a pet online.

When youre in a vulnerable situation after losing a beloved family pet, just be cautious, listen to, listen to your gut, and do thorough research, said Beaulieu.

NBC Connecticut Responds reached out to the alleged owner of Jasons Pub home multiple times for comment. Were still waiting to hear back.

The BBB serving Connecticut has this advice to help consumers avoid falling for a puppy scam.
Mohegan Tribal Police are investigating after skeletal remains were found in a wooded area on tribal land near Mohegan Sun in Uncasville.

Mohegan Tribal Police said a public works grounds keeping crew notified them Thursday that skeletal remains were found in a wooded area near Cove Road.

Mohegan Tribal Police said they are investigating, as well as the Connecticut State Police Major Crime Squad, New London County States Attorneys Office and Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
Stop & Shop and the workers' union have resumed negotiations as of Saturday. It comes on day three of the massive strike, with pay and benefits still sticking points.

Both sides were back at the negotiating table today. The companys stores in Connecticut continue to operate on a skeletal staff.

Workers in more than 240 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were back on strike Saturday after walking off the job Thursday afternoon amid a contract impasse.

On Friday morning, some of the stores posted signs with temporary store hours during the strike.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union said Thursday that the workers who walked off the job were from Locals 371 and 919 in Connecticut as will union members in Locals 328, 1445 and 1459 who work at Stop & Shop stores in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

After the strike started, Stop and Shop said it had closed some stores, locked the doors and deployed "corporate personnel as well as temporary replacement workers" and were working on reopening stores as soon as possible to "minimize any disruptions for our customers."

On Friday morning, signs were posted on some stores saying they would be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. "due to the union representing our workers calling a work stoppage."

A union representative said the strike is impacting all 90 stores in Connecticut, though stores with pharmacies are legally required to stay open.

People's United Bank said its Stop & Shop branch locations will continue to operate as usual for the duration of the strike, to the extent possible.

"Customer and employee safety is our first priority and we will continue to provide service with as minimal disruption as possible. We hope there is a quick and amicable resolution to the matter for both parties involved," the statement from People's United Bank said.

Photos: Stop u0026 Shop Workers in CT Go on Strike

Contracts for the five unions representing 31,000 Stop & Shop workers in the three states expired on Feb. 23 and Stop & Shop has around 7,500 workers in the state.

The strike comes after a union vote in Hartford in March to authorize a strike amid concerns of possible cuts to pay and benefits and many said they felt there was no choice other than to prepare to walk out.

Our 31,000 members who work at Stop & Shop work incredibly hard to provide the great customer service that has made the company billions of dollars in profit and the top grocery store in New England. Instead of a contract that recognizes the value and hard work that our members provide every day, Stop & Shop has only proposed drastic and unreasonable cuts to health care benefits and take home pay, while replacing real customer service with more serve-yourself checkout machines, a joint statement from the five unions that are striking says.

Stop & Shop released a statement on Thursday, saying the company was disappointed in the work stoppage.

Given that negotiations with assistance of the federal mediators are continuing, we are disappointed that the UFCW chose to order a work stoppage in an attempt to disrupt service at our stores. Stop & Shop has contingency plans in place to minimize disruption, a statement from Stop & Shop says.

Addressing the contract negotiations, Stop & Shop said it has proposed a good and reasonable offer to our union locals that includes across-the-board pay increases for all associates, continued Gold Level health care benefits for eligible associates and increased company contributions to the pension fund for current full- and vested part-time associates.

The hard-working men and women at over 240 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are standing together to tell Stop & Shop that it is time to do the right thing. The men and women who make Stop & Shop a success have earned and deserve affordable health care, a good wage, and the ability to retire with dignity. They have earned and deserve a good job that allows them to do what they do best: provide the very best customer service for New England communities," a joint statement from the unions says.

Stop & Shop said the company made several suggestions to the federal mediators Friday morning to encourage further bargaining and the mediators gave those proposals to the local unions late in the morning.

The Locals provided no counter proposals to the mediators and simply stated they were proceeding with their plans, Stop & Shop said.

The company said the unions proposed a contract that would increase the companys costs. This would make our company less competitive in the mostly non-union New England food retail marketplace.

What Stop & Shop workers dont deserve, and what no one who works hard in New England deserves, are unreasonable cuts while the company they work so hard for makes billions of dollars in profits. That is wrong and it sends a terrible message to every customer who truly depends on our Stop & Shop cashiers, stockers, bakers, deli clerk, and butchers," the joint statement from the unions says.

Many strikers told NBC Connecticut that they were out for their entire shift and plan to return Saturday. In some locations, the night crews are striking overnight.

A UFCW spokesperson said that all five local unions are committed to reaching an agreement, have remained at the negotiation table all week and are still at the table today ready to negotiate.

Stop & Shop has also posted information about negotiations on its website.
Its takeoff for new technology to fight fires.

In normal situations a manned helicopter wouldnt be able to fly over fire, Ryan Heilemann said.

A trio of University of Connecticut engineering students is getting a firefighting drone off the ground.

The idea is that you could put an approximate GPS coordinates of where a fire might be and the drone takes off and flies to those coordinates and then searches the ground until it sees a fire and then adjusts itself to fly directly over the fire and then it can drop its extinguishing mechanism right over the fire, Kerry Jones said.

The drone is part of a senior design project sponsored by Sikorsky. The large frame drone uses thermal imaging technology to identify and then help extinguish fires.

That allows it to detect a fire at a greater distance away from it and therefore mitigate the chance of actually having any loss of life or the drone actually crashing or anything like that, Heilemann said.

The project is a proof of concept, showing that the technology is possible. The students say the drone will eventually translate to a larger scale.

Although we dont see a large amount of human toll these days it is something that in the future if we can completely mitigate having any chance of a loss of life at something as simple as fighting fires it would just show leaps and bounds what we could do with this sort of technology going forward, Joshua Steil said.

The hard engineering work has paid off. Two of the students have already been hired by Sikorsky.
Venezuelan opposition protesters on Saturday confronted security forces on a main avenue in Caracas, venting their anger over a nationwide blackout, shortages of basic necessities and the government of President Nicolas Maduro.

Demonstrators on Avenida Victoria in the Venezuelan capital pushed against the shields of riot police, who later withdrew from the area.

Security forces have deployed in large numbers in the city ahead of planned rallies by supporters of opposition leader Juan Guaido. Police units and members of the National Guard gathered at several intersections, wearing helmets and carrying shields and other anti-riot gear. Several columns of security forces moved on motorcycles.

Meanwhile, Maduro's backers planned to hold a rival demonstration as power returned to many parts of Venezuela after the country's worst blackout, which started late Thursday and only started to ease about 24 hours later.

On Saturday morning, managers of the Caracas subway said they were waiting for the power supply to stabilize before resuming service.

The power and communications outage intensified Venezuela's economic and political crisis, endangering hospital patients and forcing schools and businesses to close.

Guaido attributed the blackout to alleged corruption and mismanagement under the government of Maduro, who said the outage was part of a U.S.-backed plot to force him from power.

The United States and about 50 other countries support Guaido's campaign to oust Maduro and hold elections.

Guaido, 35, is the leader of Venezuela's National Assembly.
Chevron will buy Anadarko Petroleum for $33 billion in a cash-and-stock, energizing its deep water exploration in the gulf and in the energy-rich southwest region of Texas called the Permian Basin.

The deal announced Friday comes with U.S. crude prices up 40% this year and vaults Chevron into a new league.

While the combined company will remain far behind Exxon Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. in market capitalization, it jumps from the fourth biggest producer among major drillers, to second, according to Wood Mackenzie.

"Chevron now joins the ranks of the UltraMajors - and the big three becomes the big four," wrote Roy Martin, senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, referring to Exxon, Shell and BP.

With the acquisition, Chevron gets access to Anadarko's liquid natural gas operations in Mozambique. The combined company will also control a 75-mile-wide corridor across the Delaware Basin, just beside the Permian Basin, a region bountiful with natural gas that has been exploited through shale drilling.

There has been some pressure in energy markets as OPEC tries to push prices higher through production cuts.

When the organization of oil-producing states released its monthly report this week, it revealed that energy output from OPEC had declined to levels not seen since early 2015.

That is largely being driven by the energy powerhouse Saudi Arabia, which last month removed another 324,000 barrels of oil per day from the market.

Still, U.S. crude was selling for less than $65 per barrel Friday. That's far from levels well above $100 per barrel reached just before the economic downturn in 2008, and there are signals that global economic growth is slowing.

The acquisition of Anadarko could give Chevron a little more breathing room when crude prices do fall.

With savings the companies plan to book and rising cash flow, Chevron said Friday that it will bump up annual stock buybacks to $5 billion, from $4 billion a year, once the transaction is complete.

Chevron plans to divest $15 billion to $20 billion in assets between 2020 and 2022, with proceeds used to lower debt and to return additional cash to shareholders, the company said.

"This transaction builds strength on strength for Chevron," said Chairman and CEO Michael Wirth. "The combination of Anadarko's premier, high-quality assets with our advantaged portfolio strengthens our leading position in the Permian, builds on our deepwater Gulf of Mexico capabilities and will grow our LNG business."

Anadarko shareholders will receive 0.3869 shares of Chevron and $16.25 in cash for each share they own, or $65 per share. Chevron will issue about 200 million shares and pay approximately $8 billion in cash. It will also assume about $15 billion in debt.

Chevron Corp. will keep its headquarters in San Ramon, California. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. is based in The Woodlands, Texas.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of the year. It still needs approval from shareholders of Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and regulators.

Shares of Anadarko jumped 32% at the opening bell Friday, while Chevron's stock fell 5.3%.
The number of young kids who went to U.S. emergency rooms because they swallowed toys, coins, batteries and other objects has more than doubled, a new study says.

In 2015, there were nearly 43,000 such visits among kids under 6, compared with 22,000 in 1995, according to the study published Friday in the journal Pediatrics. The rate jumped from almost 10 per 10,000 ER visits to 18 per 10,000.

The increase "rang some alarms," said Dr. Danielle Orsagh-Yentis, the lead author and a gastrointestinal physician at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.

Orsagh-Yentis noted that an increasing number of consumer products use potentially dangerous button-sized batteries, including TV remotes, digital thermometers and remote-controlled toys, which likely contributed to the increase.

She said her interest in studying the trend began during her training, "when we were all being called in in the middle of the night at odd hours to remove foreign bodies from either the esophagus or stomachs of children."

Her research team analyzed a nationwide database of non-fatal emergency room visits for children younger than age 6. Almost 800,000 children were treated during the study years after swallowing foreign objects. Coins, batteries and toys accounted for most of the visits.

While 90% of treated children were sent home without hospitalization, severe internal injuries and deaths have been reported. Batteries and small high-powered magnets often marketed as desk toys for adults are among the most dangerous objects.

When kids swallow more than one powerful magnet, the objects can attract each inside the intestines, boring holes into the abdomen that can lead to life-threatening blood poisoning.

In recent years, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued safety warnings and orders to stop sales of some magnets, citing dozens of hospitalizations and at least one toddler death.

The agency also has warned about dangers from button-sized batteries, which when swallowed can trigger a chemical reaction that can burn holes through tissue inside the throat.

Children who swallow batteries or magnets may vomit or complain of abdominal pain. They "should be brought to the emergency room as quickly as possible," Orsagh-Yentis said.

Morag Mackay of Safe Kids Worldwide, an injury prevention advocacy group, called for more research to understand why the incidents are on the rise. She said parents and caregivers need to be vigilant.

"Try to see the world from a child's point of view by getting on the floor so that you are at your child's eye level. Keep small objects such as coins, batteries, magnets, buttons or jewelry out of reach and sight," Mackay said.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Lauren Ybarra is still coping with the loss of her mom, Pam.

The mother of three was a huge Texas Rangers fan, enjoyed helping people and loved working for Target in Frisco.

"Target meant so much to her," said Ybarra. "Every time we went in to Target, we would always go check and see if mom was there."

But last summer, Pam was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and eventually went on long-term disability.

"My mom was really worried. She actually cried to my sister. She just wanted to leave us with something. My sister promised her all the paperwork was going to be done and everything would be fine and she had nothing to worry about," Ybarra explained.

She said they went to Target and met with someone in HR who assured them that their mothers life insurance policy was in place.

"A month or so after my mom passed, they told us everything was fine and wed be hearing from the insurance policy," Ybarra said.

But the family said they they never got a call, so they reached out to Target again.

They said that's when they were told their mother's life insurance policy had been canceled.

"I'm just shocked because we had gone through all this work to make sure that it's in place," she explained.

Ybarra said a life benefits agent told them that all Target employees lose their life insurance if they're out of work for more than 120 days, even those on long-term disability.

"I thought, that can't be right," she said. "We want to be honoring my mom's memory, not fighting over somebody over something that was one of her last wishes."

Ybarra and her sisters said they made sure their mother's policy was in tact before she died, and when they couldnt get Target to provide more answers, they called me.

"You've have had success helping people out with problems like this," she said. "I just wanted them to take care of her, to fulfill their promise to her."

I reached out to a Target spokesperson, who told me in part, "We worked with Target's benefits provider to thoroughly review this claim and found that the policy holder did not complete a necessary step to get the claim approved."

But Ybarra said Target's response is just an excuse.

"We kept getting the runaround, and not until you guys contacted them did they say anything about missing paperwork. That was the first they did anything of the sort," she said. "It felt like they were being dishonest."

But a week later, the family received a call from Target that changed everything.

"We get a call saying we're going to get a check and its going to be overnighted," she said.

They received a check from Target for more than $23,000.

"Mom was probably smiling down on us, glad she was able to leave us something," said Ybarra.

The loss of their mom is still hard, but the family is thankful to have this problem solved.

Target told me Pam's life insurance policy was within a grace period where their employees can make changes, and based on this, they were able to pay out the policy in full.

The daughters wondered why Target didn't just tell them about this grace period in the first place, but they're glad to have that $23,000 their mother worked so hard for.
World War II veterans from around North Texas will be honored in Dallas Friday before taking off to Washington D.C.

Forty-three veterans will board a 9 a.m. flight at Dallas Love Field Airport for the all-expenses paid trip, which was sponsored by Honor Flight, an organization that honors and celebrates WWII veterans.

The veterans on board will experience an entire week of connecting with one another and reflecting on the past. The spirit of gratitude is weaved throughout the trip.

"Im really excited," said Lynn Thrash who served in the military for 35 years. "I have met some of the veterans who are going on the trip a few days ago. I didnt think I would be interested in swapping stories, but after I met them and got to talking I couldnt stop. There wasnt enough time to tell all the stories."

Thrash served in WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. His military career began at 16 years old in the Merchant Marines.

Every veteran on the trip is special with unique stories, but there is only one veteran who can say they are a social celebrity.

Joe Cuba served in WWII and recently turned 100 years old. He posted a picture of himself on social media asking for 100 birthday cards for his birthday. His Facebook message was circulated around the world and he received thousands of letters, cards, pictures, gifts, and visitors.

The celebration continues this weekend. Go here for more about the Honor Flight DFW.
Southwest Airlines announced Thursday it's suspending Boeing 737 Max flights through much of the busy summer travel season.

The announcement grounds the planes until August 5, two months longer than initially planned.

In an update posted online, Southwest President Tom Nealon said the decision was made "to further increase the reliability of our schedule and reduce the amount of last-minute flight changes  especially during the upcoming summer travel season."

Nealon said customers booked on those trips are being notified so they can reschedule flights well ahead of their travel date.

Hours earlier, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg spoke at the Bush Institute Leadership Forum in Dallas.

He vowed to rebuild public trust amid one of the worst corporate crises in history.

"All of us feel the immense gravity of the events across our company and frankly, these last few weeks have been the most heart-wrenching of my career," Muilenburg said.

On March 13, both Southwest and American Airlines grounded all Boeing 737 Max planes, causing the cancellation of about 200 flights per day.

The FAA's decision came after the same model crashed twice, in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people.

In both cases, investigators said a damaged sensor sent bad data to a new system called MCAS. MCAS then pushed the noses of both planes down to pick up speed.

Denny Kelly was a flight captain for nearly 50 years.

"From the people that I know that are involved in this thing, they've got the fix. They know exactly what to do and they're fixing the airplanes. What they've got to do is to get the FAA to certify it," Kelly said.

A timeline for when the fleets can fly again remains unclear.

American Airlines still says its 24 Max planes will return to service June 5, a date Kelly expects to be also pushed back.

Southwest said the majority of customers itineraries are unaffected by the cancellations.

Still, travel experts are encouraging passenger taking a Max plane to contact the airline right away to get rebooked.
Authorities in Texas say they're taking action following social media posts about a Republican lawmaker who has come under fire for blocking an anti-abortion bill.

Republican State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano) said Thursday authorities were monitoring his home but declined further comment. He has refused to advance legislation that would make doctors who perform abortions and their patients potentially subject to the death penalty.

Sgt. Nick Bristow of the Collin County Sheriff's Department said they're "taking steps to address" social media posts. He wouldn't elaborate or give details about posts.

It's the second time Texas authorities have stepped in following the failure of bills pushed by conservative advocates.

Last week, House Speaker Dennis Bonnen said a gun-rights advocate drove to his family residence and was met by state troopers.

The bill in question, HB896, was filed by Tony Tinderholt (R-Arlington), and says that any living child, from the moment of fertilization, is entitled to the same rights, powers and privileges as any other human child and imposes criminal liability on the mother if the child dies from an abortion.

According to the Texas Tribune, Leach said HB896 will not make it out of the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence, which he chairs.
It was a far cry from "I love WikiLeaks!"

President Donald Trump declared that "I know nothing about WikiLeaks" after its disheveled founder Julian Assange was hauled out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to face charges, a stark contrast to how candidate Trump showered praise on Assange's hacking organization night after night during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Asked about Thursday's arrest, Trump said at the White House, "It's not my thing. I know there is something having to do with Julian Assange. I've been seeing what's happened with Assange and that will be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, who's doing an excellent job. So, he'll be making a determination . I know nothing really about him."

"It's not my deal in life."

But WikiLeaks was Trump's deal in 2016 as he welcomed the political boost his campaign got and cheered on the release of Clinton campaign emails.

On the same October day that the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, revealing that Trump had bragged in 2005 about groping women, WikiLeaks began releasing damaging emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta. Trump and his allies, facing a tough battle in the campaign's final month, seized on the illegal dumps and weaponized them.

"WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks," Trump said in Pennsylvania.

"This WikiLeaks is like a treasure trove," Trump said in Michigan.

"Boy, I love reading WikiLeaks," Trump said in Ohio.

All told, Trump extolled WikiLeaks more than 100 times, and a poster of Assange hung backstage at the Republican's debate war room. At no point from a rally stage did Trump express any misgivings about how WikiLeaks obtained the emails from the Clinton campaign or about the accusations of stealing sensitive U.S. government information, which led to the charges against Assange on Thursday.

Assange for years has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for WikiLeaks' role in publishing thousands of government secrets. He was an important figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe, as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Democratic groups.

When asked about Assange in 2017, Trump said he did not "support or unsupport" WikiLeaks' move to release hacked emails and that he would not be involved in any decision for the U.S. government to arrest Assange.

"I am not involved in that decision," whether or not to arrest Assange, Trump told The Associated Press then, "but if they want to do it, it's OK with me."

The Justice Department now has charged Assange with taking part in a computer hacking conspiracy, accusing him of scheming with Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, to break a password for a classified government computer.

The single charge of computer intrusion conspiracy carries up to five years in prison, though the Justice Department can add additional charges depending on the evidence it gathers. Manning was ordered jailed last month for refusing to testify before a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, suggesting that prosecutors are still at work.

It was unclear why the Assange charge, which was brought under seal last year, was made public at this time and why he was taken into custody now  weeks after Mueller's investigation had concluded. None of the allegations in the case relate to Russian election interference or WikiLeaks' role in publishing emails stolen from Democrats by Russian intelligence operatives.

An indictment against 12 Russians last year described WikiLeaks' role in publishing hacked emails in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Though the indictment said WikiLeaks had worked to coordinate the release of information, there was no allegation that the organization solicited the hacking of Democratic email accounts or worked with Russians.

Assange's arrest provoked passionate responses overseas, and from some who had expressed concern about whistleblower protections, but the initial bipartisan reaction in Washington was relief.

"I'm glad to see the wheels of justice are finally turning when it comes to Julian Assange," tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a Trump ally. "In my book, he has NEVER been a hero. His actions - releasing classified information - put our troops at risk and jeopardized the lives of those who helped us in Iraq and Afghanistan."

And Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, said he hoped the British courts would quickly transfer Assange to U.S. custody "so he can finally get the justice he deserves."

Assange's lawyer has previously said he planned to fight any U.S. charges against him. Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped. British police said Assange had been arrested Thursday for breaching his bail conditions and in relation to the U.S. arrest request.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed.
Health officials have issued a warning about a possible measles exposure in San Francisco.

The warning comes after an adult from Santa Clara County visited several locations in the city while contagious with the virus. San Francisco Department of Public Health officials said there is no measles outbreak and the risk to the general public is low.

Health officials said the person was not hospitalized and is recovering at home.

Below is a timeline of San Francisco locations the person with measles visited during the first week of April. Health officials said the risk of exposure was present only during the times and dates listed.

The San Francisco case is not tied to other possible measles exposures recently reported in the Bay Area.

San Francisco and Santa Clara public health departments are working together to investigate this incident.
From his eyes to his immune system, astronaut Scott Kelly's body sometimes reacted strangely to nearly a year in orbit, at least compared to his Earth-bound identical twin  but newly published research shows nothing that would cancel even longer space treks, like to Mars.

The good news: Kelly largely bounced back after returning home, say scientists who released final results from NASA's "twins study," a never-before opportunity to track the biological consequences of spaceflight in genetic doubles.

It marks "the dawn of human genomics in space," said Dr. Andrew Feinberg of Johns Hopkins University. He led one of 10 teams of researchers that scrutinized the twins' health down to the molecular level before, during and after Kelly's 340-day stay at the International Space Station.

More importantly, the study "represents more than one small step for mankind" by pointing out potential risks of longer-duration spaceflight that need study in more astronauts, said Markus Lobrich of Germany's Darmstadt University and Penny Jeggo of the University of Sussex, who weren't involved in the work.

The findings were published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, on some notable space anniversaries  when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space in 1961, and the first launch of the space shuttle in 1981.

KEY FINDINGS

NASA already knew some of the toll of space travel, such as bone loss that requires exercise to counter. This time, NASA-funded scientists looked for a gamut of physiologic and genomic changes that Scott Kelly experienced in space, comparing them to his DNA double on the ground, former astronaut Mark Kelly. Some results had been reported in February.

Possibly the weirdest finding had to do with something called telomeres, the protective ends of chromosomes. Those tips gradually shorten as we get older, and are thought to be linked to age-related diseases including some cancers.

But in space, Scott Kelly's telomeres got longer. "We were surprised," said Colorado State University telomere expert Susan Bailey. She can't explain it although it doesn't mean Kelly got younger. Back on Earth, his telomeres mostly returned to preflight average although he did have more short telomeres than before.

Next, Kelly's DNA wasn't mutated in space but the activity of many of his genes  how they switch on and off  did change, especially in the last half of the voyage, which ended in March 2016.

Immune system genes especially were affected, putting it "almost on high alert as a way to try and understand this new environment," said study co-author Christopher Mason, a Weill Cornell Medicine geneticist in New York.

Again, most gene expression returned to normal back home, but some of the immune-related genes were hyperactive six months later.

Other findings:

Some changes in the structure of Kelly's eye and thickening of his retina suggested that, like about 40% of astronauts, he experienced symptoms of "spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome." It may be caused by fluids shifting in the absence of gravity.

He experienced some chromosomal instability that might reflect radiation exposure in space.

A flu shot given in space worked as well as one on Earth.

Kelly aced cognitive tests in space but slowed down after his return, maybe as more things competed for his attention.

ULTRA LONG-DISTANCE TESTING

Researchers needed months' worth of blood, urine and fecal samples, along with cognitive and physical tests and ultrasound scans. That meant getting creative: Some blood samples required analysis so rapidly that Kelly would time collection so the blood could travel on Russian Soyuz capsules carrying other astronauts back to Earth.

That wouldn't be an option on a three-year trip to Mars. One of the study's technological advances: Portable DNA-sequencing equipment that will let astronauts run some of their own genomic analyses on future missions, said Weill Cornell's Mason.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Studying one pair of twins can't prove risks of spaceflight, researchers cautioned. And longer missions, to the moon or Mars, will mean greater stress and radiation exposure.

Colorado State's Bailey plans to study 10 additional astronauts on year-long missions, using the twin findings as a road map.

"We need to get outside of low-Earth orbit and we need for the astronauts to spend longer periods of time to really evaluate some of these health effects," she said.
A language professor has given a Hawaiian name  Powehi  to the black hole depicted in an image produced in a landmark experiment.

University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian Professor Larry Kimura named the cosmic object, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported Thursday.

The world's first image of a black hole revealed Wednesday was created using data from eight radio telescopes around the world.

Powehi means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation" and comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant. Po is a profound dark source of unending creation, while wehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the chant's descriptions of po, the newspaper reported.

"To have the privilege of giving a Hawaiian name to the very first scientific confirmation of a black hole is very meaningful to me and my Hawaiian lineage that comes from po," Kimura said in a news release.

A Hawaiian name was justified because the project included two Hawaii telescopes, astronomers said.

"As soon as he said it, I nearly fell off my chair," said Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea.

Dempsey was among 200 scientists who worked to capture an image of the massive black hole in the M87 galaxy nearly 54 million light-years from Earth.

Dempsey said Powehi is an excellent match for the scientific explanation provided to Kimura.

"We described what we had seen and that this black hole was illuminating and brightening the darkness around it, and that's when he came up with the name," she said.
An Israeli spacecraft attempting to make history by becoming the first privately funded craft to land on the moon suffered an engine failure during its descent and crashed onto the lunar surface, NBC News reported.

The Beresheet spacecraft was to have touched down on the moon between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. ET. But officials with SpaceIL, the Israeli nonprofit organization behind the mission, reported that they lost contact with the four-legged spacecraft as it neared the surface of the moon.

If successful, Israel would have become the fourth nation  after the United States, Russia and China  to land a spacecraft on the moon. The four-legged craft, about the size of a washing machine, would also have become the first privately funded spacecraft to settle on the lunar surface.
It has been a week and a half since NBC 5 Investigates revealed the lengthy traffic and criminal history of Dan Davies, a 44-year-old Calumet City man who police say drove the wrong way down Interstate 294 on March 30 and crashed head-on into Illinois State Trooper Gerald Ellis, killing them both.



At the time of the crash, Davies was out on bond after being charged with six felony DUIs with no license, the most recent in a decades-long series of charges and convictions for DUI, drugs and scores of traffic violations.

NBC 5 Investigates Phil Rogers immediately reached out to the Illinois States Attorneys office to try to find out how and why Davies was allowed free on bond when he had a driving record that state officials call one of the worst theyve seen.



Rogers spoke to the offices Chief Communications Officer Tandra Simonton and later sent her an email with additional info.



Below is NBC 5 Investigates correspondence with the Cook County States Attorneys Office, as we continue to try to get an answer to that question.

On Apr 2, 2019, at 1:01 PM, Rogers, Phil (NBCUniversal, WMAQ) wrote:

We have just been told by the Sec of States office that he never had an Illinois Drivers License.

Ever.

Simonton wrote right back:

From: TANDRA SIMONTON (States Attorney)

Sent: Tuesday, April 2, 2019 1:12 PM

To: Rogers, Phil (NBCUniversal, WMAQ)

Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: FYI



Wow! Im working on getting the bond details and will get back to you soon.

Simonton didnt get back to NBC 5 that day, so Phil Rogers followed up on Wednesday.



Tandra,

You never got back to me and our story aired yesterday. I would still like to know how someone with such an abhorrent record was never jailed. How did he get a $3000 I-bond? Did your office ever seek to keep him in custody. Did any Cook County prosecutor ever realize the extent of his record? Why did this man continue to drive a car? I dont think these are unfair questions and I would like to know exactly what prosecutors did in this case.

Thank you,

Phil Rogers

When there was still no answer by Thursday, an NBC 5 Investigates producer followed up:

Hi, Ms. Simonton 

Im Katy Smyser, an investigative producer who works with Phil Rogers. I am continuing to follow up on Phils questions to you from Tuesday, and his follow-up questions from yesterday:

Can you please provide me with specific information on how Dan Davies (dob 5/30/1974) was released on a $3,000.00 I-bond in case # 19-CR-02676  in which he was charged with six felony counts of aggravated DUI with no drivers license?

We need to understand the entire process by which this bond was agreed to, including:

 What prosecutor or prosecutors in the states attorneys office handled Davies case?

 In particular, what prosecutor or prosecutors in the states attorneys office handled the bond portion of Davies case?

 What did those prosecutors originally recommend as Davies bond (if any)? Did anyone recommend that he be jailed?

 What judge or judges handled the bond hearing and ultimate decision on bond?

 Who ultimately recommended the $3,000 I-bond? If it was recommended by the states attorneys office, please tell me who was involved.

 Even if it was not someone in the states attorneys office who ultimately recommended the $3,000 I-bond, please tell me who, in the states attorneys office, ultimately agreed to this bond; how the final decision was made; and how Davies criminal and traffic history may (or may not) have factored in to the granting of this bond.

 Was there any consideration of other options for Davies release, in addition to this bond  for example, electric monitoring or some other kind of monitoring?

Once we understand the process that was used to grant this most recent bond, we will have several follow-up questions about the states attorneys role in Davies past cases. For reference, here is a link to a summary we put together of his past history in Cook County Criminal and Traffic Courts: https://www.nbcchicago.com/investigations/investigates-trooper-ellis-crash-driver-decades-of-offenses-cook-county-508069771.html

Thank you in advance for helping Phil and me to understand the entire process of this particular case.

Katy Smyser

Producer, NBC5 Investigates

No response from Simonton that day. And no response the following day, on Friday.

On Monday, Rogers wrote to Simon again:

Tandra,

I have been disappointed that you have chosen to completely ignore our requests for information regarding the States Attorneys handling of the case of Dan Davies. We have asked for very basic information in this case. I am aware that your office has been challenged recently by a spate of difficult publicity surrounding the Jussie Smollet case. But the office still has to function. And this case has nothing to do with that one.

We are going to do a follow-up on this case very soon, and its extremely important that the States Attorneys Office is represented in some fashion in that story. I dont want that story to say something to the effect of, States Attorney Kim Foxxs office has refused all requests for information on how this case was handled. But its important that you know that I strongly believe that you write that line, not me.

Please. Please respond to the questions which first Katy Smyser, and then I sent you last week. Thank you very much.

Still no response from Simonton.

On Tuesday, NBC 5 Investigates sent yet another note to the States Attorneys media spokesperson:

Dear Ms. Simonton 

Can you please respond to either Phil Rogers or me concerning the questions weve had for the past week, concerning Cook County Case number 19-CR-02676, in which Dan Davies was allowed out on bond following six felony charges of DUI with no license?

Our main question continues to be how Davies was allowed out on a $3,000.00 bond, when his record shows such a lengthy history of criminal charges and traffic citations, including clear evidence (in the form of more than two dozen citations for no license) that Davies might get back in a car, if he were allowed out on bond?

At very, very least, can you let us know when you might have some information for us on the states attorneys role in Mr. Davies bond?

Thank you very much,

Katy Smyser

Producer, NBC5 Investigates

As of Wednesday at 4:45pm, there was still no response, so NBC 5 sent this:

Hi, Ms. Simonton 

Once again, Phil Rogers and I are still hoping to hear from you, since you are Chief Communications Officer for Cook County States Attorney Kimberly Foxx.

Unfortunately the information we are looking for  on how Dan Davies was allowed out on the streets, after being charged with multiple counts of DUI with no license, and despite a lengthy traffic and criminal record  is information that we can only get from you.

The public documents in this case give us some basic information, but our key questions  namely, what role the states attorneys office had in allowing Davies out in bond, or in trying to keep him behind bars  can only be answered by your office.

As you obviously know, this is all PUBLIC information. We are just trying to figure out how Davies was allowed out of jail and able to get in a car on Saturday, March 30th; drive the wrong way down I-294; and kill both himself and an innocent driver, Illinois State Trooper Gerald Ellis.

Since it has now been more than a week since weve heard anything from you, I am forwarding this correspondence to several other email addresses at your offices, as well, in the hopes that someone  finally  contacts me and Phil to discuss this case. Thank you.

Katy Smyser

Producer, NBC5 Investigates
Nearly 30 years after a Miami restaurant owner was shot to death during a robbery outside his eatery, authorities have arrested a man they believe was the gunman.

Alexis Avila, 49, was arrested Wednesday in Panama City on first-degree murder and armed robbery charges in the March 2, 1990 murder of 47-year-old Lucio Leon, according to an arrest warrant.

According to the warrant, Leon, who was the owner of Tuyo y Mio restaurant at 7124 Northwest 35th Avenue, was ambushed outside the restaurant by several suspects who were robbing him. Leon would cash checks for customers and area merchants on payday Fridays and had just withdrawn a large amount of money from a bank for that purpose, the warrant said.

During the robbery, Leon, who was shot multiple times, was able to return fire, wounding one of the suspects, the warrant said. Avila approached Leon and shot him multiple times at close range, then grabbed the money bag and the suspects fled the scene, the warrant said.

The getaway vehicle was discovered abandoned later that day and had multiple bullet holes throughout. There was also blood on the floorboard carpet, and a section of the carpet was kept for evidence.

In 2013, the Miami-Dade Police crime lab determined the DNA from the blood on the carpet matched Alexe Nodal, the warrant said. Nodal was arrested last year for his involvement in the robbery and killing of Leon, Miami-Dade Police said.

Along with confessing to his role in the killing, Nodal, now 50 years old, identified Avila as the man who planned the robbery and killed Leon, the warrant said. A witness to the crime also identified Avila as the person who shot and killed Leon, the warrant said.

Avila was extradited to Miami-Dade and booked into jail on Thursday, records showed. He was being held without bond Friday, and attorney information wasn't available.

Nodal was sentenced on a robbery charge in January and remains on probation until January 2029, according to Florida Department of Corrections records.
What to Know Officials from Ultra have said they would like to return while some commissioners have already said they oppose the new location.

By next month, concert goers will know if the annual Ultra Music Festival will be returning to its latest home on Virginia Key.

The Miami Herald reported that Miami city commissioners will hold a public hearing on Thursday, May 9th to make a decision about whether the three-day electronic music festival can stay for at least one more year  a move that took place after almost two decades in Downtown Miami.

Organizers and the city have entered into a two month time period where either side can revoke the agreement that allows two sites, Miami Marine Stadium and Virginia Key Beach Park, to be used for the event according to the paper.

Officials from Ultra have said they would like to return while some commissioners have already said they oppose the new location.

Key Biscayne council members reaffirmed their opposition to the event being held at its current location during a meeting this week.

The Miami Police Department released numbers last week, showing a total of 35 people had been charged with various crimes during Ultra. A total of 13 people were arrested for battery, trespassing or resisting arrest while another eight were charged with drug offenses.

While it's the first time in six years that the number of arrests has gone up - with 27 arrests during the 2018 event in Downtown Miami - it was equal to the number of arrest during the 2017 event and was still down nearly half from the 67 arrests in 2016.
What to Know Authorities in Dominican Republic are using photos of tattoos found on body thought to be of missing NY tourist in hopes of identifying it

Body found in Caribbean Sea on March 31 is believed to be that of Orlando Moore who went missing along with his girlfriend Portia Ravenelle

An unconscious and injured person who was found on the side of a Dominican highway and later died was later identified as Ravenelle

Two U.S. representatives from New York are calling for an FBI investigation into the deaths of a couple from Mount Vernon who apparently died on their way to the airport after a romantic getaway in the Caribbean.



Reps. Eliot Engel, who represents the 16th District, and Adriano Espaillat, who represents the 13th District and is from the Caribbean nation where the couple vanished in late March, met Wednesday with U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic Robin Bernstein about the case of Orlando Moore and Portia Ravanelle.



A letter the two wrote to FBI Director Christopher Wray dated the same day read: "The FBI must work quickly to conduct a thorough investigation regarding details of their reported deaths that raise questions for us. It is essential that this investigation be conducted expeditiously so that both families can receive the closure they deserve."



In that letter, Reps. Engel and Espaillat specifically asked for a full investigation followed by a summary brief, a complete timeline of events from the couple's arrival to the Dominican Republic through April 9, assistance to help get the rental car out of the ocean, which authorities have thus far been unable to do; and a detailed report on FBI cooperation with Dominican authorities.



They said the mayor of Mount Vernon had reached out to them out of concern. In a statement, Mayor Richard Thomas said Mount Vernon was "determined to get the full facts," citing "too many unanswered questions" and "suspicious circumstances surrounding the deaths of our citizens who vanished on vacation."



It wasn't immediately clear if Wray had responded to the letter as of Friday morning.



Moore, 41, and Ravanelle, 52, had flown out of Newark Liberty National Airport on March 23. They were supposed to return from their Dominican getaway four days later, but were never heard from again. Their phones were off, their car still parked at the airport in Newark. Dominican authorities later contended the got into some accident on the way to the airport to fly home March 27 and their rental vehicle plunged into the ocean. The same day they were supposed to fly home, a woman's badly injured body was found on the side of a highway.



She died a few days later -- and was identified through fingerprints as Ravenelle. A body thought to be Moore was found in the Caribbean Sea on March 31 inside of the vehicle Dominican officials believe was the car they had rented.



The body found in the sea has yet to be identified because of its condition, officials have said. Photos of tattoos were sent to Moore's brother in the U.S. in hopes of expediting an identification.
What to Know A Ventnor, New Jersey firefighter is the latest person to plead guilty in a long-running investigation of a prescription drug fraud scheme

Edward Sutor Jr. admitted in court that he made about $355K by submitting bogus claims for expensive prescriptions

The Linwood resident is one of about two dozen people who pleaded guilty; His lawyer said he has also resigned from his firefighting job

A Ventnor, New Jersey firefighter is the latest person to plead guilty in a long-running investigation of a prescription drug fraud scheme.

Edward Sutor Jr. admitted in court Friday that he made about $355,000 by submitting bogus claims for expensive prescriptions reimbursed through the state's health benefits plan.

The Linwood resident is one of about two dozen people who have pleaded guilty. His lawyer said he has also resigned from his firefighting job.

Prosecutors estimate nearly $3 million in claims were submitted for medications such as pain, scar, antifungal and libido creams.

Public employees submitted the claims, which often produced reimbursements of thousands of dollars per month per prescription.

An unnamed Louisiana-based compounding pharmacy allegedly received more than $50 million in reimbursements from the state in 2015 and 2016 and split that with some of the conspirators.
What to Know Murphy signed legislation Friday making NJ the 7th state to enact a law permitting terminally ill patients to seek life-ending medication

Murphy, a Democrat, signed the Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act in private

He earlier indicated he would support the bill, but in a personal statement, Murphy, a lifelong Catholic, revealed he wrestled with decision

Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday signed legislation making New Jersey the seventh state to enact a law permitting terminally ill patients to end their lives.

Murphy, a Democrat, signed the Medical Aid in Dying for the Terminally Ill Act in private. His office would not answer why the signing was not public. The law goes into effect in August.

He earlier indicated he would support the bill, but in a personal statement, Murphy - a lifelong Catholic - revealed that he wrestled with whether to sign the legislation. The state's Catholic Conference testified against the measure.

"I have concluded that, while my faith may lead me to a particular decision for myself, as a public official I cannot deny this alternative to those who may reach a different conclusion," Murphy wrote. "I believe this choice is a personal one and, therefore, signing this legislation is the decision that best respects the freedom and humanity of all New Jersey residents."

Patrick Brannigan, the executive director of New Jersey's Catholic Conference, disagreed. In a written statement, Brannigan said he understood the bill's supporters wanted to act out of compassion, but the measure fails that test.

"The finest expression of compassion is loving care that reduces or eliminates physical pain, psychological distress, depression and hopelessness - not providing someone with lethal drugs to end their life," he said.

Under New Jersey's law, only patients who are irreversibly terminally ill and have a prognosis of six months or less to live could acquire medication to end their lives.

Lawmakers have tried since at least 2012 to advance the legislation.

The effort got some attention in New Jersey in 2014 when a 29-year-old California woman drew news coverage after she and her husband moved to Portland, Oregon, so she could use that state's law to end her life on her own terms. Brittany Maynard, 29, was terminally ill with brain cancer.

Her husband, Dan Diaz, praised New Jersey on Friday, saying residents wouldn't have to leave their homes "to secure the option of a gentle dying process."

Oregon in 1997 was the first state to provide an end-of-life option. California's law went into effect in 2016.

The New Jersey legislation includes measures that legislators called "safeguards."

The law requires that two doctors sign off on the request, that the patient be deemed an adult resident of New Jersey, who can make such a decision and who voluntarily expresses a wish to die.

It requires patients to request the medication twice and says they must be given a chance to rescind the decision. At least one of the requests must be in writing and signed by two witnesses.

At least one witness cannot be a relative, entitled to any portion of the person's estate, the owner of the health care facility where the patient is getting treatment or a worker there, or be the patient's doctor.

Under the law, patients must administer the drug to themselves, and his or her attending physician would be required to offer other treatment options, including palliative care.

Supporters say the law lets qualified patients decide to end their lives in a dignified manner.

Opponents, including the state's Catholic Conference, say that the measure hurts the most vulnerable, and the state should instead work to improve its health care system.

"With the signing of this bill to legalize assisted suicide, many vulnerable New Jerseyans are now at risk of deadly harm through mistakes, coercion, and abuse," said Matt Valliere, executive director of the Patients Rights Action Fund, an advocacy group opposed to such legislation.

The measure passed the Democrat-led Assembly 41-33, with four abstentions. It cleared the Democrat-controlled Senate 21-16.

In addition to California and Oregon, Colorado, Hawaii, Vermont, Washington and the District of Columbia all have similar legislation. Montana does not have a law permitting medically assisted suicide for the terminally ill. However, a 2009 Montana Supreme Court ruling determined that nothing in state law prevented a physician from prescribing such a drug to terminally ill person.
What to Know The risk of being kidnapped or taken hostage has been added to the travel advisories issued by the U.S. State Department.

The new indicator, "K," denotes the risk of being kidnapped or held hostage -- it was assigned this week to 35 countries across the globe

It came days after the release of a California woman who had been held for a week after being kidnapped by gunmen in a Uganda national park

Criminals or terrorists in nearly three dozen countries have threatened to kidnap or hold people hostage -- or actually done so -- over some kind of ransom demand, and for the first time, the U.S. State Department is noting that risk.



Up until now, U.S. travel advisories have weighed the state of such crises as crime, civil unrest, health or the potential for terrorism to devise level-based threat levels -- the highest of which is Level 4, Do Not Travel -- for other countries. It added a new indicator, "K," to denote the risk of being kidnapped or held hostage -- and assigned it this week to 35 countries across the globe.



These are the 35 countries making the initial list:

Afghanistan

Mexico

Phillippines

Colombia

Lebanon

Mali

Burkina Faso

Libya

Haiti

Central African Republic

Iraq

Iran

Nigeria

Niger

Pakistan (Balochistan province and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) province, including the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)

Turkey (areas near the Syria and Iraq borders)

South Sudan

Democratic Republic of the Congo (North Kivu and Ituri provinces)

Sudan

Syria

Cameroon (North, Far North, Northwest and Southwest regions, and parts of East and Adamawa regions)

Somalia

Venezuela

Papua New Guinea

Kenya

Ukraine (eastern parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts)

Uganda

Ethiopia (Somali Regional State)

Trinidad and Tobago

Bangladesh (Southeast Bangladesh, including the Chittagong Hill Tracts)

Russia (the north Caucasus, including Chechnya and Mount Elbrus)

Yemen

Algeria (areas near the eastern and southern borders and areas in the Sahara Desert)

Malaysia (eastern area of Sabah State)

Angola (urban areas)

Check out an interactive map here.

The state department says the new category was added as part of an effort to give Americans comprehensive information about travel safety. It came days after the release of a California woman who had been held for a week after being kidnapped by gunmen in a national park in Uganda.
What to Know The owner of a Philadelphia auto repair shop was struck and killed by stray bullets while working on a car outside his business Thursday.

Police say an arrest was made in connection to the shooting.

It was one of three deadly shootings in a two-hour span in Philadelphia Thursday.

The owner of an auto repair shop in Philadelphia's Wissinoming neighborhood was struck and killed by stray bullets while working on a car outside his business, investigators said.

Michael Gleba, the 56-year-old owner of Northeast Speedometer Services on the 4800 block of Benner Street, was doing work on a vehicle Thursday around 3:15 p.m. when about four gunmen fired 15 shots at another group down the street. Gleba, who police say was not the intended target, was struck multiple times in the upper body.

He was taken to Frankford-Torresdale Hospital where he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Those who knew Gleba described him as a father who loved fishing and giving back to the neighborhood. He would fix kids' bicycles, give food to neighbors who didn't have any and helped out customers who didn't have enough money for car repairs.

"Mike looked out for my family when I lost my father," Paul Britton told NBC10. "My mom didn't have the money to get a truck fixed. Mike looked out for us, took care of my mom, fixed our truck for us. Didn't expect nothing back."

Family Photo, NBC10

One other person was shot in the arm during the shooting, which police say was related to an ongoing fight over drugs between two houses on the block.

At least two people were taken into custody in connection to the shooting though no charges have been filed. Police have not yet revealed the condition of the second victim.

Police also told NBC10 there was another drug-related shooting at the same location last week. During Thursday's shooting, children were outside.

The incident was one of three homicides that occurred within a two-hour span in Philadelphia Thursday afternoon.

The second shooting occurred inside a corner store on the 5500 block of Torresdale Avenue, less than a mile away from the auto repair shop. A gunman shot a 23-year-old man once in the head. The victim was taken to the hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:02 p.m.

The third shooting occurred in North Philadelphia at 4:50 p.m. A 29-year-old man was shot multiple times on the 800 block of W. Somerset Street. He was taken to Temple University Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 5:08 p.m.

No arrests have been made in the Somerset Street and Torresdale Avenue shootings.

Thursday's homicides follow a violent Saturday in which two people were killed and four hurt during four separate shootings in Philadelphia in an eight-hour span.

Prior to Thursday's deadly shootings, the city's total number of homicides was at 89, up 16% from the same time last year.

If you have information on any of the shootings, please call Philadelphia Police.
What to Know The former president of the Milwaukee Public Schools board of directors is accused in a bribery scheme involving a Philly-based company.

Michael Bonds allegedly accepted kickbacks from executives of Universal Companies, which operates charter schools in Philly and Milwaukee.

The company was co-founded by music legend Kenny Gamble. Gamble was not charged or implicated in the scheme.

The former president of the Milwaukee Public Schools board of directors is accused in a bribery scheme involving executives at a Philadelphia-based charter school company that was co-founded by famed music producer and songwriter Kenny Gamble.

Michael Bonds was indicted in federal court in Philadelphia Thursday on charges of bribery and conspiracy. He allegedly accepted kickbacks from executives of Universal Companies. Philly music legend Kenny Gamble helped launch the company, which operates eight charter schools in Philadelphia and three in Milwaukee.

The kickbacks were in return for votes beneficial to the company between 2014 and 2016, investigators said.

The complaint says executives used fake invoices to make payments totaling $6,000 to African-American Books and Gifts, a company purportedly created by Bonds. Authorities say Bonds received things of value, but did not elaborate.

Two executives of the company, former president and CEO Rahim Islam and chief financial officer and acting CEO Shahied Dawan, were both implicated in the scheme but not charged. Dawan was placed on administrative leave, a spokesperson with Universal Companies told NBC10.

Gamble was neither implicated nor charged.

Bonds could face up to ten years in prison if convicted. He also may be ordered to forfeit $18,000 in bribes.
The city of San Diego marked the 250th anniversary of the arrival of the Spanish sailing ship, San Antonio, into San Diego Bay with a special event involving the Kumeyaay Nation and a vessel from the San Diego Maritime Museum.

The first Spanish settlers arrived into San Diego on April 11, 1769 and a ship from the San Diego Maritime Museum was docked off of Embarcadero Marina Park North to symbolize the milestone.

The Port of San Diego gathered local officials as well as port commissioners and tribal leaders of the Kumeyaay Nation to commemorate the arrival of the Spanish.

It's important to recognize the region's first people as part of a yearlong effort to mark the 250th anniversary of the establishment of San Diego by the Spanish.

"We appreciate the opportunity to share our true history and look forward to creating a healing environment in which all the people of this region can come together for a bright future," Chairwoman Elliott Santos said in a written release.

Residents will see the San Salvador anchored offshore, representing the Spanish vessel the San Antonio.

Mission Basilica San Diego de Alcala is also holding special events all year to celebrate its establishment in 1769. According to the missions website, the site is known as "the birthplace of Christianity in the west coast of the United States" and also recognized by many as the "birthplace of San Diego."
Attorney General William Barr declared Wednesday he thinks "spying did occur" against Donald Trump's presidential campaign, suggesting the origins of the Russia investigation may have been mishandled in remarks that aligned him with the president at a time when Barr's independence is under scrutiny.

Barr, appearing before a Senate panel, did not say what "spying" may have taken place but seemed to be alluding to a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on a former Trump associate. He later said he wasn't sure there had been improper surveillance but wanted to make sure proper procedures were followed. Still, his remarks give a boost to Trump and his supporters who insist his 2016 campaign was unfairly targeted by the FBI.

Barr was testifying for a second day at congressional budget hearings that were dominated by questions about special counsel Robert Mueller's Trump-Russia investigation. His statements further inflamed Democrats already frustrated by Barr's handling of the Mueller report, including his release of a four-page summary letter last month that they say paints the special counsel's findings in an overly favorable way for the president. The attorney general said he expects to release a redacted version of Mueller's report on Russian interference in the campaign next week.

In an interview with The Associated Press , House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she didn't trust Barr and suggested his statements undermined his credibility as America's chief law enforcement officer.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler of New York tweeted that Barr's comments "directly contradict" what the Justice Department previously has said. And intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff of California said Barr's comments were sure to please Trump, but strike "another destructive blow to our democratic institutions."

Republicans, meanwhile, praised Barr's testimony. North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, a Trump confidant who has raised concerns about Justice Department conduct, tweeted that Barr's willingness to step in is "massive." The attorney general said he would investigate the origins and conduct of the early days of the Russia investigation, a probe separate from an existing inspector general inquiry.

At the Capitol hearing, senators appeared taken aback by his use of the word "spying." Asked by Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz if he wanted to rephrase his language, Barr said he simply wanted to make sure there was "no authorized surveillance."

"Is that more appropriate in your mind?" he asked the senator.

Barr is an experienced public figure who chooses his words carefully, and it's not clear if he realized what a political storm he'd create in using the word "spying." While the word could be used to describe lawful and necessary intelligence collection activities, for Trump and his supporters in this case it has an inherently negative meaning.

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said on Fox Business Network that "People were wiretapped. People were looked into and spied upon. That should be a serious question that the American people should demand answers for and quite frankly so should Congress."

Trump has repeatedly said the investigation of his campaign is an illegal "witch hunt."

On Wednesday he said, "It was started illegally. Everything about it was crooked. Every single thing about it. There were dirty cops."

Though Barr said at his January confirmation hearing that he didn't believe Mueller would be involved in a witch hunt, he struck a different tone Wednesday and said it "depends on where you're sitting."

"If you are somebody who's being falsely accused of something, you would tend to view the investigation as a witch hunt," he said.

The spying discussion started when Barr was asked by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, about his plans to review his department's actions in investigating Trump. A separate investigation is being conducted by the department's inspector general. Barr explained that he considered spying on a political campaign to be a "big deal," invoking the surveillance of civil rights protesters and then of anti-war protesters during the Vietnam War.

Asked by Shaheen if he was suggesting "spying" had occurred, Barr replied "spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated," meaning whether it was legally justified.

Barr later said that although he did not have specific evidence of wrongdoing, "I do have questions about it."

"I feel I have an obligation to make sure that government power was not abused," he said.

Asked again about spying at the end of the hearing, Barr tempered his tone. "I am not saying improper surveillance occurred. I am saying I am concerned about it, and I am looking into it," he said.

Barr may have been referring to a secret surveillance warrant that the FBI obtained in the fall of 2016 to monitor the communications of former Trump campaign aide Carter Page, who has not been charged with any wrongdoing. That warrant application included a reference to research by an ex-British spy that was funded by Democrats to examine Trump's ties to Russia.

Critics of the Russia investigation say the warrant was unjustified and have also seized on anti-Trump text messages sent and received by one of the lead agents involved in investigating whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Russia.

Barr's statement Wednesday that he expected to release a redacted version of Mueller's nearly 400-page report next week marked a slight change from the estimate he gave Tuesday, when he said the release would be within a week.

Though he said the document will be redacted to withhold negative information about peripheral figures in the investigation, he said that would not apply to Trump, an officeholder and someone central to the probe.

Meanwhile, Trump falsely claimed again Wednesday that the Mueller report had found "no obstruction." While Barr's letter said the special counsel did not find a criminal conspiracy between Russia and Trump associates during the 2016 election, it also said Mueller had presented evidence on both sides of the obstruction question and ultimately did not reach a conclusion on it.

Barr said he did not believe Mueller's evidence was sufficient to prove that Trump had obstructed justice.
With spring in full swing, the entire city is excited to get out and smell the flowers  Even amid some muggy weather and rain this weekend.

Emancipation Day is coming up on Tuesday, and that means a full celebration with fireworks and music

It's also the last weekend of reduced track work on Metro as the National Cherry Blossom Festival draws to a close with some of its best events.

Here's how to spend your weekend around the District, whether you're a blossom booer or flower fan:

All Weekend

Free Pick

Umbrella Pop-Up

April 12, 5 p.m. to April 14, 8 p.m.

2114 14th Street Northwest

Multiple galleries, art installations and special projects will take over this block near the U Street Corridor through the weekend, says organizer No Kings Collective.

It's free to attend, but you must register in advance.

The space was occupied by Martha's Table, but the social services organization recently moved over to Ward 8.

Washington Auto Show

Walter E. Washington Convention Center

April 5-14

The Washington Auto Show is back with a huge lineup of events, activities and guests. Drivers can test out an electric car or watch Jaguar Land Rovers and Jeeps take on obstacle courses. Families can enjoy a pet adoption center or meet costumed characters at the kids' zone.

Tickets are $12 for adults, $5 for kids 6-12 and free for children under 5. Students, active and veteran military members, metro riders and seniors can also get discounts.

Cherry Blossom Pop-Up Bar

Through April 21

1839 7th St. NW

Slurp down ramen and floral-themed drinks. The D.C. hot spot has hosted various other themed bars in the past, featuring Game of Thrones, Royal Wedding and Christmas themes.

"In Peak Bloom" at ARTECHOUSE

Through May 27

1238 Maryland Ave. SW

The larger-than-life main exhibit allows you to interact with a swirling cherry blossom cloud, while other rooms feature live plants that respond to your touch and augmented reality stories. Adult tickets start at $15.

Arlington Festival of the Arts

April 13th, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and April 14th 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

3003 Washington Blvd., Arlington, VA

The Arlington Festival of the Arts is back for its seventh year. This weekend, check out their outdoor arts fair, where you can buy goods made by local artisans. Admission is free.

Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge

April 12 to 14, times vary

D.C. Armory, 2001 E Capitol St. SE

Head to the D.C. Armory this weekend to watch 800 of the best CrossFit athletes compete in the Mid-Atlantic Crossfit Challenge. This is the first time that D.C. has hosted the competition. A spectator ticket also gives you access to the vendor village.

DC Comedy Festival

Various times and locations

The D.C. Comedy Festival is underway this weekend. Drafthouse Comedy hosts a showcase at 11 p.m. Friday and you can find more shows on their Twitter page.

Smithsonian Jazz Film Festival

Various times

Warner Bros. Theater at the National Museum of American History, Wallace H. Coulter Performance Plaza, 1 West

Smithsonian Jazz Film Festival

Various times

Warner Bros. Theater at the National Museum of American History, Wallace H. Coulter Performance Plaza, 1 West

See different jazz-themed movies, including "La La Land," "Whiplash" and more. Movies are playing until April 29. Tickets are $12 for adults and $10.50 for children, with discounts available.

Game of Homes: Name-Your-Price Adoption

Ends Sunday

Animal Welfare League of Arlington, 2650 South Arlington Mill Drive

Animal Welfare League of Arlington is offering a name-your-price adoption fee for all adoptable animals in the shelter throughout Sunday. Snuggle up with a new pet to watch the "Game of Thrones" season premiere.

For Saturday

Free Pick

Family Day at the NAS Building: DecisionTown in the World of Genomics

10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

2101 Constitution Avenue Northwest

The Natonal Academy of Sciences wants to invite Washington-area families to enjoy hands-on activities that show off everything they can do, from DNA testing to registering inventions to a laser show.

It's free to attend.

National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade

10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Constitution Avenue from 7th to 17th Streets Northwest

Watch giant balloons, floats, a marching band, celebrities and more at the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade, which travels along Constitution Avenue from 7th to 17th streets Northwest. Grandstand seating for the event is $20 per ticket, but standing along Constitution Avenue is free.

Sakura Matsuri Japanese Street Festival

10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest Between 3rd and 7th Streets

The Cherry Blossom Festival has roots in Japan, and this annual festival connects the District to the food, art, performances and culture of the country that gifted the first set of trees.

Regular tickets start online at $11.09 (which includes a free that goes towards planting cherry trees).

Free Pick

Emancipation Day Celebration

Freedom Plaza (Pennsylvania Avenue and 14th Street Northwest)

2 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

On April 16, 1862, slavery was abolished in the District and 3,100 people won their long-awaited freedom.

More than 150 years later, D.C. continues to commemorate Emancipation Day with joyful celebrations, fireworks, parades and a concert.

The parade kicks off at 2 p.m., followed by a concert starting at 3 p.m. Fireworks are scheduled to go off around 8:30 p.m.

Capitals' Game

3 p.m.

Capital One Arena, 601 F St. NW

The Capitals take on the Carolina Hurricanes this weekend at Capital One Arena. Go in-person or watch on NBC4.

D.C. Wine Fest

Times vary

Long View Gallery, 1234 9th St. NW

The D.C. Wine Fest promises great food, art exhibitions, live music and, of course, tastings of wine from all over the world. A ticket includes access to all wine tastings.

Free Pick

Potomac Watershed Cleanup

9 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Multiple locations

The 31st Annual Potomac Watershed Cleanup is this Saturday. Spend time volunteering at multiple locations in the D.C. area picking up litter. Last year, over 346,000 pounds of trash were collected.

For Sunday

Kingman Festival Preview Show

12 to 6 p.m.

2052 West Virginia Avenue Northeast #102

In preparation for the 10th Annual Kingman Island Bluegrass and Folk Festival next month, Atlas Brew Works is holding a preview show of some of the artists set to play the festival. At the event, enjoy performances by Hollertown and Split String Soup, as well as giveaways and raffles. The event is free to enter.

Cherry Blossom 5k Run

8 a.m.

The National Arboretum, 2400 R. St. NE

Friends of the National Arboretum are hosting a 5k run this weekend to conclude Cherry Blossom season. Registration is $35 but includes a free t-shirt.
Montgomery County Police Officer Katie Beard has done a lot of good work during her 19 years on the force, but perhaps none as rewarding as working in the community.

Beard finds creative ways to engage the community, meeting with senior citizens, collecting baby supplies for teenage mothers and visiting schools. She wants the schoolchildren she visits to know they have a friend in the police department.

Especially later in life when the kids start to go through adolescence and they start to go through peer pressure, they know that they always had that person that was there for them," she said.

Her dedication to the community is why Michelle James nominated her to be a Harris Hero.

Her whole day is filled with this, but she's really a blessing to Montgomery County, James said.

Beard goes above and beyond to make herself available.

She'll answer anybody's question anytime, James said.

She always wants to drive home that Montgomery County is her home, too

"I go to swim practice just like you, have lacrosse with your kids, and I try to get that human element out there, too, and I think that helps a lot with building relationships," Beard said.

"Its important for me to be out there and be visible and so people know they can ask me questions and they can come up and they can talk to me," she said.
Two hikers who were reported missing over the weekend in Southern California's San Gabriel Mountains were found alive Wednesday, family of one of the missing hikers told NBC4.

Gabrielle Wallace, 31, of Rancho Cucamonga and Eric Desplinter, 33, of Chino Hills were last seen in the Mount Baldy area around 10 a.m. Saturday and believed to be heading toward the 8,862-foot Cucamonga Peak.

A search team found two sets of footprints in Cucamonga Canyon, south of Mount Baldy, and followed them. A helicopter sent to the area spotted two people near a campfire, according to a statement from the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.

Once located, the hikers were to be flown to the Mount Baldy fire station to be reunited with their families.

"We just can't wait to see them and hug them and hold them," Karen Ziebarth, mother of one of the hikers, told NBC4. "We brought blankets in the car and we just want to huddle them up because this is the first night that they won't have to be cold."

Desplinter's family was confident the couple would survive because Desplinter is a formal National Guardsman who served in Afghanistan and described as an experienced hiker. The two were also carrying proper equipment for the icy conditions.

Search-and-rescue teams from San Bernardino, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego and Kern County volunteered to help comb some 30 square miles (77.7 square kilometers) of the mountains for four days straight looking for the hikers.

"We can't put into words what I feel," Ziebarth said, "I keep looking at this workers and I keep saying, 'Thank you, thank you,' and it's just words that come out of your mouth because I can't say anything for the amount of work they put in earlier."

Desplinter said they got lost on the trail and "had a little bit of a slip" going to Cucamonga Peak. "We decided we wouldn't go back up through the ice and snow, and decided to go through a valley but it was a lot more treacherous than we thought."

He explained the couple survived the four days by rationing their food, drinking water through a LifeStraw filter and staying as warm as possible. Desplinter also thanked all the volunteers that helped look for them.

"We're very grateful to be found tonight," he said, "I'm ready to go to bed and get some rest."
Two top 2020 Democratic presidential contenders have decided to get involved in the ongoing Stop & Shop employee strike.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined the striking workers on the picket line at the Stop & Shop on McGrath Highway in Somerville on Friday morning.

She told them she would fight for the "dignity of the working people."

"Those at the top think that they can just keep sucking out every bit of profit and leave nothing for the working people," she said, also shaking hands and taking selfies with sign-carrying workers asking customers not to cross the picket line.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker also issued a statement Thursday saying that he stands with the striking Stop & Shop workers and thinks they deserve a raise and better retirement and health care benefits.

"I urge Stop & Shop management to immediately work with labor and come to terms on a fair contract," he said in the statement. "As President, I will put working families first and expand workers rights across this country so that everyone has a livable wage, a secure retirement and access to health care as a fundamental right."\

Thousands of workers at 240 Stop & Shop locations in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island went on strike Thursday over what they say is an unfair contract offer. Their last contract expired in February.

Management at Quincy, Massachusetts-based Stop & Shop says the contract proposal is "reasonable" and includes across-the-board raises and health and pension benefits better than most food retailers. Stop & Shop is a subsidiary of Dutch supermarket giant Ahold Delhaize, with 415 stores across the Northeast. Workers at company stores in New York and New Jersey are not on strike.

"We are committed to good faith bargaining and hope to reach new contracts as quickly as possible that both recognize and reward the great work of our associates and enable Stop & Shop to compete effectively in the rapidly changing New England grocery market," spokeswoman Jennifer Brogan said in an emailed statement Friday.

The United Food & Commercial Workers union responded that the proposal would significantly increase health care costs and decrease take home pay, while ultimately hurting customers.

"While Stop & Shop continues to propose drastically cutting worker benefits, Ahold shareholders voted on April 10 to give themselves an 11.1 percent raise in dividends over the last year," the union said in an emailed statement.

Most Stop & Shop locations remained open under modified hours and staffed by temporary workers, the company said. All in-store pharmacies and banks remained open, even if the main store stayed closed.
A Rhode Island man is being held without bail after being accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend and breaking into the schools that she works in.

Tu Le, 43, of Woonsocket is accused of using GPS tracking devices on the woman's car and breaking into two schools. Police say Le was caught by custodians and on surveillance video multiple times over the past few weeks sneaking into the middle school and high school after hours.

She just wanted him to leave her alone, however the defendant was unable to control his behaviors, assistant district attorney Natasha Azevedo said.

Le is a medical researcher at Brown University School of Medicine.

His ex-girlfriend is a teacher at Qualters Middle School in Mansfield.

The defendant displayed a pattern of harassing behavior, Azevedo said.

Prosecutors say Le also followed his ex-girlfriend while she was hanging out with friends and even confronted her on dates.

Le's ex-girlfriend eventually found three GPS tracking devices on her car and turned them over to police.

They decide to take that GPS tracking device and go to a location to see if the defendant will show up, said Azevedo.

The device allegedly led Le to this Red Roof Inn, where he was arrested Saturday.

Police found that Le did have a record showing an eerily similar stalking allegation.

Azevedo said, He has the prior assault and battery in 2006 and the restraining order with the same victim.

Defense attorneys argued that that lifetime restraining order, although rare, showed their client would respect a similar order in this case.

Defense attorney James Ryan McNelis said, The nature of the charges are a serious enough nature that anybody would have concerns, that saidthe person has a restraining order from 2006 and has a 13 year period of never violating that order.

Teresa Murphy, the superintendent of Mansfield Public Schools, released a statement saying in part, This act highlighted a vulnerability which we take very seriously, and we have addressed it. We will be even more vigilant restricting access to sections of the building not in use during after-school hours and maintaining a higher level of door security.

Le is due back in court April 30.
What to Know Thousands of Stop & Shop employees are on strike in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut in protest of stalled negotiations.

Temporary employees may be called in to replace the workers who are on strike.

Even if grocery stores are closed, pharmacies and banks will operate at their normal schedules.

Thousands of Stop & Shop employees are on strike to protest stalled negotiations between the grocery store and the union, but what does that mean for you?

With employees in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island picketing, a few stores were temporarily closed on Thursday. Even the 24-hour Quincy, Massachusetts location was closed for several hours in wake of the strike.

Customers may have to face a choice when they show up at Stop & Shop stores. They may have to cross the picket line, as was the case in Somerville, Massachusetts. However, it is unclear which locations are participating in the strike.

There are 415 stores across the Northeast, but the strike only affects 240 locations in the three states.

The Boston Globe reports some locations will be getting temporary employees during the strike. Desk employees may be called in to replace stockers and cashiers, the Globe reports.

Even if the grocery store is closed, banks and pharmacies in each Stop & Shop location will reportedly still be open at regular hours.

Those who order their groceries online via Peapod may experience some delays, according to the Globe.

Contracts between the grocery store chain and the store employees, who are represented by five United Food & Commercial Workers unions, ended on Feb. 23. However, negotiations have been stalled for some time.

In late February, UFCW authorized the use of a strike. The union and grocery store have disputed over health insurance, pensions and vacation time.

Stop & Shop expressed disappointment in the strike.

"Additionally, this morning the company made several suggestions to the federal mediators to encourage further bargaining," the statement said. "The mediators gave those proposals to the locals late in the morning. The locals provided no counter proposals to the mediators and simply stated they were proceeding with their plans."

The strike has caught the eyes of two 2020 Democratic presidential contenders. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said she will join Somerville workers at the picket line on Friday. Meanwhile, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker issued a statement saying he is standing in solidarity with the workers.
Christian leader to speak at N Norfolk Filling Station

Jonathan Squirrell will be the speaker at the next meeting of the North Norfolk Filling Station on Easter Monday, April 22.

Together with his wife Paige, Jonathan is a Senior leader at Beacon Church in Bacton, and is a leader at the School of Supernatural Life, which is inspired by the school at Bethel Church in Redding, California. Jonathan and Paige also serve as joint regional consultants for The Filling Stations in East Anglia.



Jonathan loves to equip and release Gods people into all that the Father has for them, to see East Anglia renewed in every way. Our heart is to equip and release you into your God given purpose. It is really not complicated to understand how service comes from a place of worship, intimacy, identity and authority. This enables us to thrive and not just survive.



The Filling Station, which was born out of the Church of England in the West Country, has grown exponentially in terms of venues opening all over the United Kingdom and continues to serve and refresh both Church leaders, congregations and more importantly to open the eyes of those who are seeking answers to the meaning of life through the Christian faith. The Filling Station is helping to bring unity amongst believers from across the whole Church spectrum.



All are welcome at this meeting of The Filling Station for an evening of fellowship and wonderful worship followed by the main talk.



Coffee and cakes will be available from 7pm, with the main talk at 7.30pm. There will also be a prayer ministry time at the end of the evening.



Swanton Novers Village Hall, St Giles Road, Swanton Novers, Melton Constable, NR24 2RB.



For further information please email Tasha North at : nnfillingstation@gmail.com

or telephone 07825702360.



Do you have a news story or forthcoming event relating to Christians or a church in North Norfolk?
Solutions are needed to replace the archaic air-gapping of computers used to isolate and protect sensitive defense information, the U.S. Government has decided.

Air-gapping is the common practice of physically isolating data-storing computers from other systems, computers and networks so they theoretically cant be compromised because there is nothing connecting the machines.

However, many say air-gapping is no longer practical, as the cloud and internet take a hold of massive swaths of data and communications.

Keeping a system completely disconnected from all means of information transfer is an unrealistic security tactic, says Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on its website, announcing an initiative to develop completely new hardware and software that will allow defense communications to take place securely among myriad existing systems, networks and security protocols.

The Guaranteed Architecture for Physical Security (GAPS) program it is introducing will be split into three formal areas: hardware, software, and validation against Department of Defense (DoD) systems. A fourth realm is also promised, and thats the commercialization of the elements:

Commercializing the resulting technologies is also an objective, the publicly funded DARPA federal agency says. The GAPS program should create safer commercial systems that could be used for preserving proprietary information and protecting consumer privacy.

The GAPS program should create safer commercial systems that could be used for preserving proprietary information and protecting consumer privacy.

Commercializing something like a defense security architecture  the objective being to secure data as it moves between disparate systems  could ultimately help commerce in a similar way to how the government has assisted the internet by allowing a military-owned, watered-down GPS to be used by all. Getting funding also becomes easier.

Modern computing systems must be able to communicate with other systems, DARPA says of its plans. That includes those with different security requirements. Its saying cloud systems and the internet are here, aren't going away, and need to be dealt with, in other words.

The problem with air-gapping

Air-gapping does work. The problem with it, though, is its not only hard to implement and enforce (workers have gotten used to networks and cloud), but its expensive. Installing breaks between systems not only affects working collaborations, but its hard to setup due to overall complexity. And its equally difficult to administer: You cant just send patches across the network  there isnt one.

Interfaces to such air-gapped systems are typically added in after the fact and are exceedingly complex, placing undue burden on systems operators as they implement or manage them, DARPA explains.

A better solution, then, in today's environment is to accept that users need or want to share data and to figure out how to keep the important bits more private, particularly as the data crosses networks and systems, with all having varying levels of, and types of, security implementations and ownership.

The GAPS thrust will be in isolating the sensitive high-risk transactions and providing what the group calls physically provable guarantees or assurances. A new cross-network architecture, tracking, and data security will be developed that creates protections that can be physically enforced at system runtime.

How they intend to do that is still to be decided. Radical forms of VPNs  an encrypted pipe through the internet would be todays attempted solution. Whichever method they choose will be part of a $1.5 billion, five-year investment in government and defense electronics systems. And enterprise and the consumer may benefit.

As cloud systems proliferate, most people still have some information that they want to physically track, not just entrust to the ether, says Walter Weiss, DARPA program manager, in the release.
WASHINGTON  U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy says its time for Congress to reinvent the way colleges and universities are accredited to put the emphasis on the real world outcomes of their students.

The outcomes crisis in higher education is real and it threatens to bankrupt the students, families, and the American treasury if we dont get serious about expecting better results from schools, soon, he said, in a speech to the left-leaning Third Way policy organization on Thursday.

Murphy offered that the primary focus of accrediting non-profit and for-profit schools should be to make sure students and taxpayers are getting value for their investment  something the current system is not doing.

There are 100 schools in America today, where over 28 percent of the students who attended are so financially destitute that theyve gone into default, said Murphy, noting that many are students who graduate with a degree that simply doesnt lead to a job that pays enough to cover their high student loan debt.

This crisis isnt on the students. Its on us, he said. Weve established a convoluted, Byzantine incentive system for higher education in which schools are pushed to care about a million different inputs and outputs but very few of them have anything to do with the most important thing that we should be measuring and holding schools accountable  the outcomes of their students.

Rather than a hodgepodge of requirements  that includes everything from school signage to the number of library books  he says value should be measured by a handful of metrics such as graduation rates, student loan repayment rates and the percentage of low-income and minority students admitted who graduate.

And, he says the federal government  or an accrediting board  should provide schools technical assistance along the way so that they can avoid falling off the cliff  losing their accreditation and federal Title 4 funding  in one fell swoop.

Murphy, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said the time is now to consider revamping the system because Congress this year is considering reauthorizing the Higher Education Act. He also believes there is interest among Republicans and Democrats to address the issue as so many students graduate burdened by heavy student loan debt.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander of Tennessee wants to reauthorize the Higher Education Act and has signaled an interest in holding schools accountable for student outcomes. When I told him last week I was coming here to give this speech and was starting to flesh out more concrete ideas around accountability, his eyes lit up, Murphy said.

Murphy says the devil will be in the details but he expects Alexander can get his Republican colleagues to support a broad-based accountability system, though a major roadblock may be in whether there is the stomach to tackle higher education ahead of the 2020 elections.

If we want to get something done this Congress, and if Democrats can coalesce around broad-based accountability, I think theres a deal for the taking, Murphy said.

Murphy plans to press his colleagues to act now rather than wait.

We have this unique opportunity this Congress to reset the way that the federal government oversees colleges and I worry that if we dont make this change now, it may be too late by the time that we get around to the next reauthorization, he said.

Changing the oversight system will also go a long way to reshaping what a college education should look like.

If you are forced to think about outcomes more seriously then youre going to get more serious about the new models that will deliver that value to students, he said. It just makes no sense that we still require so many students to sit in classrooms for eight semesters to get a degree no matter how much they learned or how fast or what competencies they need in the professional world.

Murphy made similar points on Wednesday at a HELP Committee hearing on reauthorizing the Higher Education Act. Watch it below:
ANSONIA  Amid a battle over paying for the Pershing Drive sewer collapse, things have taken another downward plunge.

A 10-foot section of pipe about 8 feet below the surface collapsed on Woodlawn Avenue near Forest Street. Frank Pepe Construction of Derby was on the scene Thursday morning as the lowest of three emergency contract bidders, according to city officials.

This occurred in a residential area where most houses are higher than the pipe, Mayor David Cassetti said. We are unaware of any homes being impacted.

But with this being the fourth sewer line break since December, Cassetti said there whould be a capital project plan totaling about $16 million to inspect, reline and repair the sewer system throughout this city of about 6.2 square miles.

Im hoping we can find some federal and state money to help out, the mayor said. Its something that needs to be done.

Prior to the Pershing Drive sewer collapse in February, two lines broke during the reconstruction of Wakelee Avenue in December.

I warned the city about this in 2006 when my firm did the Inflow and Infiltration Study, said Cassetti, who previously owned Birm-1 Construction. We detected a lot of problems  not in the Hilltop but in the lower wards. Those pipes date back to the 1900s. They are probably all clay, which deteriorate over time, especially when roots grow into them.

But Nunzio Parente, the Water Pollution Control Authority chairman who has been at odds with his panel and the administration over paying the full costs of these breaks, said borrowing money is not the way to go.

Instead, his plan would be to designate a certain amount of WPCA money, about $250,000 a year, to identify and repair hot spots one at a time.

That would be a lesser burden on everyone, Parente said.

As for this latest break, Parente said the WPCA would help: We generally end up paying half.

Sheila OMalley, Ansonias economic director, said thats not good enough.

In a city with limited resources, we cant have departments acting like their own fiefdom, that its their money  its the taxpayers money, she said. I think in a lot of ways Pershing Drive defined the problems this city is facing  lack of cooperation between departments, old infrastructure breaking down and no planning mechanisms in place. Things havent been cared for or maintained. The mayor wants to change all that.

Corporation Counsel John Marini and Fifth Ward Alderman Joseph Jaumann claim the ordinance passed Tuesday night revising the Water Pollution Control Authority does that. The new ordinance, which will soon take effect, increases the board from seven to nine members, adds the words at least one alderman and two members of the Board of Public Works to the membership requirement and authorizes mandatory training every other year for all members.

Parente see this as the start of a power struggle.

He has claimed the WPCAs 3-2 March vote to pay the full cost of an expected $850,000 Pershing Drive bill was illegal because two aldermen  Charles Stowe and Domenico Filippone  voted in favor. He said the previous ordinance allowed only one alderman to sit on the board and that Filippones recent appointment was illegal.

If that wasnt the case, why did they all of a sudden add the words at least to the ordinance? Parente said.

Lorie Vacarro, who heads the Board of Aldermen, disagreed.

Were not here to build a kingdom, he said. Were trying to drive down costs by cooperation...This is a prime example of people not cooperating.

Parente, a Democrat appointed to the board, said he is not taking any advice from that party, which is gearing up for a November battle with the Republican-controlled administration.

I do what my conscience tells me to do, he said.

And if Parente was concerned about dealing with two members of the all-Republican Board of Alderman sitting on his WPCA board, things may have gotten a little more trying.

On Tuesday, the Alderman appointed a third member of their panel  First Ward Alderman Daniel King to fill the WPCA vacancy left by Ken Plavnickys move to Florida.

Stowe, whose battles with Parente over the Pershing Drive bill have dominated much of the last two WPCA meetings, warned his fellow Aldermen that the payment issue is not going away.

He maintains Parente will not pay that bill when it comes in and he believes it is illegal.

We didnt make a rash decision to just pillage some strong box, Stowe said of the 3-2 vote to pay the full Pershing Drive cost out of the WPCAs nearly $2 million surplus. We had an auditor on the same night that we voted say... $1 million would not affect anything with WPCA in a negative way. We made what I would call a rational decision.

Stowe, who commended Parentes service over the past two years, asked the aldermen to include in the new WPCA ordinance a requirement that an organizational meeting with a new election of officers take place when the two new members finally sit.

Chicago Rivers, a Fifth Ward alderman and Dave Blackwell Jr., a Seventh Ward alderman, agreed with Stowe. But Marini, the corporation counsel, said that would be up to the new board to vote on.

There was a concern this (the new ordinance) was a push to remove current members of the WPCA board, said Jaumann, who is a lawyer. Thats not what the intent was behind this. The intent was to add members also on Public Works.
New Milford Mayor Pete Bass will hold the next coffee with the mayor April 20 from 9:30 to 11 a.m. in the E. Paul Martin Meeting Room at Roger Sherman Town Hall at 10 Main St.

Residents are invited to come with ideas, questions or concerns, and general conversation.
LSTM's Senior Clinical Lecturer, Dr Shevin Jacob is corresponding author on a perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine calling for universal standards of care to be applied in relation to Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

The paper comes during an ongoing outbreak of EVD in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), its 10th since the disease was first described in 1976. Historically, response to EVD outbreaks has centered around a strategy to 'identify, isolate and track' patients with EVD as a means of curtailing its spread and eventually eliminating the disease. Dr Jacob and his colleagues explain that this approach, however, was often quite minimalistic when it came to supportive care for patients with EVD and occurred alongside a high mortality often fuelling community mistrust and resistance to broader outbreak control efforts.

Dr Jacob and his colleagues go on further to explain that while the clinical teams including national staff, the World Health Organization (WHO) clinical expert team, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) and other non-government organizations (NGOs) aimed to improve outcomes by administering more aggressive supportive care from the start of the 2013-16 West African outbreak, providing this level of care was not without challenges. As the epidemic progressed, factors such as the limited number of health workers available to treat EVD patients meant that such care could not be delivered consistently. This reality was in direct contrast to those cases that were treated in Europe or the United States, where aggressive supportive care could be delivered, and the overall mortality was much lower.

Dr Jacob suggests: "Supportive care for EVD patients continues to evolve and 'glimmers of hope' for improving standards of care for EVD patients can be seen in the context of the current outbreak in DRC." For instance, recent innovations such as The Alliance for International Medical Action's Cube System, a portable biosecure individual patient room, allow for more patient-centered care through continuous observation and improved accessibility. With these visible changes, the co-authors advocate that: "It should be no longer acceptable to have standards of care for EVD which depend on the setting, higher standards are no longer aspirational but possible and we should strive to provide people who are sick and suffering with the care that we ourselves would want to receive."
Income and social status have an increasing effect on life expectancy in Germany. On average, men with very low retirement pay die five years earlier than those who are much better off. Poverty shortens life. According to a study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, this correlation is also very clear for Germany. Their analysis shows that the gap between rich and poor in life expectancy has grown significantly over the past 20 years. And there are still differences between East and West.

Life expectancy of poor and rich people is diverging more and more in Germany. This can clearly be seen from pension entitlements and expected lifespan of older men. 65-year old men with very high retirement benefits can expect on average to live for another 19 years, while men in the lowest of five income groups will on average not live to see their 80th birthday. These men had only 15 years of life left at age 65, which is four years less than for the rich. In 1997 this gap was only three years, but by 2016 it had widened to more than five years.

This is the result of a new study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) that has been published by MPIDR scientists Georg Wenau, Pavel Grigoriev and Vladimir Shkolnikov in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

Using data from the German Pension Fund the researchers showed how much the gap in mean life expectancy for retired men in Germany has increased during the last 20 years.

"Especially for men at the bottom of social and economic hierarchy life expectancy at age 65 rose markedly slower during the more recent years. In West Germany it almost stopped increasing altogether since 2007," says Georg Wenau, the main author of the study.

Lifespan rises much quicker for the rich than for the poor

While life expectancy has been rising for all income levels, it increased by only 1.8 years in the lowest income group in West Germany from 1997 to 2016 and the highest income group gained almost twice as many years of life. During the same period in East Germany, gains for those in the highest benefit group were 4.7 years, versus the increase of only three years in the lowest group.

The biggest setbacks occurred in East Germany in the aftermath of the German reunification. Here the socioeconomic composition of the population in retirement changed dramatically. The share of men falling into the lowest status group almost doubled from 2005 to 2016.

For their study the scientists used data from the national German Pension Fund because it provides information about the remaining years of life after retirement, and also on the pension entitlement points, which determine the pension payment.

These pension entitlements were interpreted as a sort of lifetime earnings which reflects the social and economic status of a person within society.

The most comprehensive study of life expectancy trends by income in Germany

Despite their high relevance, studies on life expectancy and social criteria are rare for Germany since it is complicated to analyze the data of the public German Pension Fund. The new MPIDR study is the first to calculate such extensive values over the course of time.

The five income groups were divided not by income per se, but by pension entitlement at the beginning of retirement. While the share of pensioners per group changed little over time in West Germany, the low-income group grew considerably in East Germany, from one fifth of all pensioners in 2005 to 36 percent in 2016.

After German reunification many men approaching retirement age could gather only few additional pension entitlement points, as they had been unemployed long-term or took up low-paid jobs during the last years of their working life.

Shock of reunification affects East German life expectancy

"East German men aged 65 and over lose one potential year of life that they would have gained if the population's socioeconomic structure had not changed," says MPIDR researcher Georg Wenau. This is due to the small growth of life expectancy in the low-income group, but also because of the increased number of people this group now contains.

"The setback of the lowest income group in East Germany can largely be interpreted as a 'shock of the German reunification'," says Wenau. Even if the socioeconomic situation worsened only rather late in life this could considerably impact life expectancy, conclude Wenau and his colleagues.

However, Wenau emphasizes, small pension payments do not only mean little wealth after retirement, "They also mean an irregular working life history with periods of badly paid jobs and unemployment."

If the pension payments for a given entitlement were increased, this would make everyone wealthier in old age, but it would not take away the health burden of past personal histories of joblessness and low wages that still shorten the lives of those in the low status groups.

Fixed income group boundaries unveil social displacement

Occupational groups such as self-employed people and government officials, for which the pension entitlements with the public German Pension Fund did not appropriately mirror wealth and social status in old age, were excluded from the study.

Only men were included in the study, as women had a comparatively smaller labor market participation, and women's low pension payments were often compensated by a relatively higher income of the entire household.
Despite being home to a world-class medical center, renowned physicians and high-quality medical treatment, many communities in Houston experience significantly higher infant and maternal death rates. In some areas of Harris County, rates are nearly five times the national average, with black women and their babies at the greatest risk.

The University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work has received a $4,870,000 grant from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration to provide community-based and family-centered services and health education to residents in the 10 Houston-area ZIP codes with the highest rates of death and complications surrounding birth. That includes Houston's Third Ward.

Led by McClain Sampson, associate professor in the Graduate College of Social Work, the Healthy Start Initiative is the largest program in Houston designed to explicitly address these longstanding perinatal health disparities. While the services will be available to any woman who is pregnant or has just given birth, regardless of race or socio-economic status, the initiative will target black women, their partners, teenagers, infants and their families to promote preconception care, early prenatal care, longer intervals between pregnancies, fatherhood involvement and behaviors that can reduce risk.

"The major disparities in the number of mothers and infants who die or suffer major complications across racial and ethnic groups fueled my passion to lead this initiative. There's a major problem of inequity here," said Sampson. "By effectively implementing this program, the staff and I can work directly toward racial justice for expectant and pregnant mothers in Houston."

Houston's vast urban landscape and rapid growth present challenges for low- income residents, many of whom live in neighborhoods without convenient access to medical care. Demand for primary care has outpaced supply in many areas across Houston.

The targeted ZIP codes are: 77004, 77016, 77021, 77033, 77035, 77047, 77067, 77088,77091 and 77093. The rates of infant mortality, low birth weight and pre-term birth in these ZIP codes are at least 1.5 times the national average.

The program aims to reach 600 mothers and 100 fathers each year for the next five years. To help the parents navigate a fragmented healthcare system, case managers and community health workers will canvas neighborhoods to connect women with health insurance, transportation and timely, continuous and regular primary and preventive care at integrated health clinics, including the newly opened federally qualified health center on the UH campus.

"We have a history in this country of disconnected healthcare, and that can lead to very scary outcomes, especially for mothers and children," said Sampson. "Our case managers will connect them to integrated health centers where they can see the pediatrician, OB-GYN, primary care and behavioral health in the same location. It's a much more efficient way to take care of families."

Paula Myrick Short, UH senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, said Sampson's work is an example of the University's efforts to address health concerns in Houston and the state. "By addressing the issues surrounding infant and maternal mortality rates and planning a collaborative, intra-institutional approach to care, the Graduate College of Social Work is helping to direct the conversation on this issue."

Health education programs will provide families with information about managing stress and mental health, nutrition, sleep, sexual health and more. Sampson will also train doctors and nurses on implicit bias, or the idea that attitudes and stereotypes can unconsciously affect actions and decision-making.

"Research shows that implicit bias does occur in the health care setting," Sampson said. "Claims made to a provider by low-income minority patients, for example, can be dismissed more readily than those from a patient with more resources. The actions may be unconscious, but it needs to be addressed to achieve equity."

Started in 1991, the HRSA Healthy Start initiative currently funds 100 projects nationwide to improve the health of America's mothers and children before, during and beyond pregnancy. This is the first Healthy Start program in Houston since 2014.

Sampson will continue to work with the Houston Endowment Improving Maternal Health Steering Committee as well as building a larger network of stakeholders, including mothers at risk, to build capacity for change.
Leading an active lifestyle could help repair and regenerate damaged nerves of the spinal cord after an injury, according to new research. Early stage study results were published in the latest issue of the journal Science Translational Medicine.

dotshock | Shutterstock

Using mice and rat models, the international research team, led by scientists from Imperial College London, discovered that spinal cord injuries could be repaired after being damaged through exercise.

The team provided the lab animals with an exercise wheel and other activity toys along with mates. The test animals were also given extra space to roam around in.

In response, the animals became more active, and the scientists noticed that the damaged nerve cells within their spinal cords began to regenerate. They also used a drug to mimic the effects of an active lifestyle and found that this too could regenerate the damaged nerve cells.

It's almost as if the nerve cells are being primed for regeneration

The researchers agree that their work is still in preliminary stages but opens up a realistic pathway towards regeneration and repair of the damaged spinal cord tissues. The hope is that these results could soon be translatable to human patients as well.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that people with an active lifestyle may recover to a greater degree after spinal cord injury than those who are less active. Our studies support these findings. From what we have seen it's almost as if the nerve cells are being 'primed' for regeneration and growth, which add to this enhanced recovery. Professor Simone Di Giovanni, Lead Author

Exercising leads to changes in gene expression

The researchers explain that the spinal cord contains nerve fibres that have long axons or tails that stretch down the spine and when damaged can be severed. These then fail to carry signals from the body to the brain and vice versa. The damage in most cases is irreversible with most sufferers left paralyzed.

Professor Di Giovanni explained, We discovered that environmental enrichment such as housing mice in a larger cage than usual, with more mice in it, more toys, tunnels, swings, running wheels etc. increases the activity of neurons. This leads to changes in gene expression which make the nerve more likely to regenerate. Essentially, by increasing the activity of neurons that sense enriched environmental stimuli we have been able to promote the regenerative potential of nerves after spinal cord injury.

Further studies are needed before the treatment can be extended to humans

In principle, this kind of treatment is not very far from being tested in the clinic. Further studies are needed to show the drug is safe in humans, before it could be trialled. But in future it could potentially be combined with neurorehabilitation in clinical trials, Di Giovanni concluded.
The end of California's drought, announced last month amid one of the rainiest winters in memory, could offer a surprising benefit: reduced transmission of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus.

Longer term, however, more severe droughts associated with climate change could contribute to an increase in the number of infections in the state and nationally.

Drought is the most important weather-related factor that affects the rate of West Nile infection, researchers say. Even though mosquito eggs need water to hatch, dry conditions tend to spur greater transmission of the virus.

"Ironically, when we have drought conditions, that does seem to amplify the West Nile virus transmission cycle," said Vicki Kramer, chief of the Vector-Borne Disease Section at the California Department of Public Health.

West Nile is transmitted between mosquitoes and birds, and people can become infected if bitten by an infected mosquito. The illness is rarely transmitted from one person to another. According to one theory, when drought forces mosquitoes and birds into closer proximity around the few remaining sources of water, it increases the chance of infection.

Some researchers think another explanation for the link between drought and West Nile transmission could be that dry conditions tax birds' immune systems, leaving them more vulnerable to infection.

In 2015, amid California's worst drought in over 500 years, the number of severe West Nile infections  known as "neuroinvasive" cases  hit their highest level since the state began tracking the virus. Then, as the dry conditions eased, the number declined by 75% over the next three years, despite an uptick in 2017.

Researchers say neuroinvasive West Nile virus  cases accompanied by meningitis, encephalitis or a type of acute paralysis  is the best measure for comparing the prevalence of the virus from year to year. The total number of cases is a less reliable indicator, because people with only mild symptoms  the vast majority  are more likely to get tested in years when public concern about the disease is running high.

Fewer than 1% of those infected suffer severe symptoms.

Scientists and public health officials say that while drought plays a significant role in increasing the rate of infection, other factors  especially the extent of human immunity  are also important and can cut the other way, making it hard to predict infection rates from year to year. More people have immunity following years with high infection rates, and that can help reduce the number of new infections.

Last year, 10 people died in California from complications of West Nile virus, down from 44 in 2017.

Numerous states have higher rates of West Nile infection than California, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The states with the highest rates of West Nile virus last year were Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Mississippi.

Nationally, the number of severe West Nile cases in the U.S. increased slightly last year to 1,594, with 137 deaths.

Scientists fear that, in the long term, drought driven by climate change could generate much higher rates of West Nile infection around the country.

"Predictions suggest that on average there will be quite a bit more cases of West Nile virus nationally, and in high drought years it could be about three times as high as the current average," said Marm Kilpatrick, a disease ecologist at the University of California-Santa Cruz and co-author of a 2017 research paper published by the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Jeremy Wittie, president of the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California, noted that changes in the number of West Nile virus cases vary by region. Despite an overall drop in West Nile last year, a few places, including Sacramento, saw a higher number of cases.

State health officials and vector-control agencies monitor West Nile activity closely, with periodic testing of "sentinel chickens," dead birds and mosquito samples, which are tracked and published on the state's West Nile virus portal at westnile.ca.gov. California residents can report dead birds to the state's West Nile monitoring program via the same site. Testing them provides a key indicator for public health officials tracking West Nile activity.

This KHN story first published on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.
A new technique for the decontamination of organs before transplantation using ultraviolet and red light irradiation has been developed by Brazilian and Canadian researchers and is described in an article published in the journal Nature Communications.

The research is supported by Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP and has been partially conducted at the Optics and Photonics Research Center (CEPOF), hosted by the University of Sao Paulo (USP) at Sao Carlos in Sao Paulo State (Brazil).

"This biophotonic technique is revolutionary, as it helps avoid the transmission of diseases during organ transplantation," said Vanderlei Bagnato, Full Professor at the University of Sao Paulo, Director of its Sao Carlos Physics Institute (IFSC-USP), and principal investigator for CEPOF, one of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Centers (RIDCs) supported by FAPESP.

Bagnato's group partnered with researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada, which has the world's largest lung transplantation program, having performed 197 such surgeries in 2018 alone. According to the thoracic surgeon Marcelo Cypel, who heads the service, the number of transplants could be higher if organs could be decontaminated, especially when the prospective donor has a chronic viral infection such as hepatitis C.

"Ten patients have so far been tested [using the biophotonic therapy]," Cypel said. "The new technique significantly reduced transplant organ viral load in eight of these patients. The procedure all but eliminated the virus in two others."

The method described in the article ("Inactivating hepatitis C virus in donor lungs using light therapies during normothermic ex vivo lung perfusion") involves ultraviolet and red light irradiation to reduce viral and bacterial loads in infected organs to prevent the transmission of diseases such as hepatitis to transplant recipients.

In addition to FAPESP, the research was also funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation, and Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq).

According to Bagnato, the technique was initially developed to treat lungs but is being adapted for livers and kidneys. "This should greatly improve postoperative conditions for transplant recipients," he said. "It will also enable us to use organs that we must currently reject because of the level of contamination."

Two-step decontamination

Lungs are decontaminated before transplantation by having the blood replaced by a preservation liquid in a procedure known as perfusion that was developed in Canada by Cypel.

"Perfusion reduces the viral and bacterial loads but cannot eliminate them completely. As a result, the patient has to be treated with antibiotics and antivirals for three months after the transplant," Cypel explained.

"Thinking about ways to further reduce or eliminate the viral load in organs for transplantation, specifically hepatitis C virus, I considered the possibility of using ultraviolet light decontamination methods, which are commonly employed to decontaminate blood, for example. So about four years ago, we began partnering with Bagnato and his team at Sao Carlos. He and his colleagues came over to visit us and study the technique. Only a month later they sent us the first prototype of the ultraviolet irradiation decontamination machine."

"The biophotonic decontamination technique developed at our Sao Carlos laboratory consists of two specific procedures performed concurrently," said Cristina Kurachi, a professor at IFSC-USP and a participant in the project.

During perfusion, while the researchers make the liquid circulate in the lung to be transplanted, they add molecules to the lung tissue, and biophotonic decontamination takes place directly in the organ through irradiation with red light with a wavelength of 660 nanometers (nm) until photodynamic oxidation eliminates the microorganisms in the tissue.

At the same time, the viral load is flushed away by the circulating liquid, which is continuously decontaminated by ultraviolet irradiation with a wavelength of 254 nm.

"The ultraviolet irradiation directly destroys microorganisms by breaking down the molecules present in bacteria and viruses. The bacteria are killed, and the viruses are completely inactivated. Red light irradiation decontaminates indirectly via photosensitization," Kurachi said.

This biophotonic therapy involves the introduction of a photosensitizing drug into the perfusion liquid. Activation of the drug requires oxygen molecules (present in viruses) and red light irradiation at a specific wavelength (660 nm). When the photosensitizing drug is bathed in this red light, its molecules absorb energy, which is transferred to the oxygen molecules in the virus, making them highly oxidized. This causes irreversible damage to the membranes and genetic material of several viruses, including hepatitis C virus and HIV-1.

"The perfusion solution is special and very expensive," Bagnato said. "It's made in such a way as to preserve the organ. Because of the cost, as little as possible is used in the procedure. Thanks to the technique and equipment we've developed, a liter of the perfusate can be flushed through the organ hundreds of times to remove the contaminants completely."

The method was first tested on human lungs rejected for transplantation to determine whether the tissue viral load could be reduced by irradiation. According to Cypel, the viral load was found to have fallen drastically after the procedure.

"The next step was to subject pig lungs to the same procedure and then transplant them to see if the procedure caused any biochemical or morphological damage to tissue. It did not," Cypel said.

Finally, the technique was tested on patients. "In the first ten transplants we performed, the new technique eliminated hepatitis C virus from organs donated to two patients. In the other eight patients, viral load fell sharply after surgery but rose again seven days later, and the patients had to be given antiviral treatment for three months," he said.

"An important finding was that when the virus wasn't eliminated it reappeared in the patient's lab tests after seven days. With this information, we've since performed two other transplants where antiviral treatment concentrated in the first week after the operation. The virus was eliminated in both cases," Cypel said.

According to Bagnato, this biophotonic therapy will be refined to assure even sharper reductions in the viral and bacterial loads, increasing the chances of successful transplants. "Our aim is to have light-based therapy eliminate all viral and bacterial contaminants in organs to be transplanted. If so, it may even be possible to do without the perfusate," he said.

The clinical part of the project is being conducted by Cypel and his group in Toronto. The researchers at IFSC-USP designed the new biophotonic technique, developed the instruments, and are participating in the analysis of the results. In addition to Bagnato and Kurachi, the Brazilian team at IFSC-USP also includes Natalia Inada.

A patent application has been filed in Canada, and two multinationals have expressed an interest in studying the possibility of producing and marketing the equipment. The researchers are now working on the implementation of a liver and kidney decontamination program in Brazil.

"All this has only been possible thanks to the philosophy introduced by FAPESP's RIDC program, which encouraged us to collaborate internationally and at the same time produce practically relevant knowledge," Bagnato said.
File image of AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi. (PTI)



The election office on Thursday dismissed as "rumour" the allegations levelled by the BSP and the SP that some Dalit voters were prevented from casting ballots in a booth in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor Lok Sabha constituency. "These (reports) are only rumours," State Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) L Venkateshwarlu said. "We have spoken to all DMs (district magistrates) in this regard. Nothing of this type of incident has taken place. These are only rumours, as they are not mentioning any specific polling booth," he said.



Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi 'megalomaniac', Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that Congress manifesto is kaam ki baat (something concrete) and not a telecast of thoughts by a man obsessed with power. Addressing a rally in Theni, Gandhi further said, "PM Modi is the element of hate among Indians."



Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah today assured people that Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the "last BJP worker is alive". Condoling BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi's death in Dantewada attack, Shah called the Naxal ambush "political conspiracy". His comments came during an election rally in Chhattisgarh.



The BJP has approached the Election Commission as well as the Supreme Court against Rahul Gandhi, saying the Congress chief wrongly attributed his Chowkidar Chor Hai jibe against PM Narendra Modi to the top court. While Union ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi went to the Election Commission, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi sought contempt proceedings against Rahul Gandhi in the Supreme Court.



The Congress is, meanwhile, likely to announce its candidates for the seven Lok Sabha seats in Delhi. The list may see the return of former CM Sheila Dikshit to take on AAPs Atishi from East Delhi. Ajay Maken is likely to fight from New Delhi and Kapil Sibal from Chandni Chowk. Other probables include JP Aggarwal from North East, RK Chauhan from North West, Mahabal Mishra from West Delhi and Sushil Kumar from South Delhi.



In an interview to News18 Network, Lalu Prasad Yadavs wife and former Bihar CM Rabri Devi launched a scathing attack on strategist-turned-politician Prashant Kishor. Prashant Kishor met Lalu on five occasions. I even threw him out of the house. Hes a liar. He told us that Lalu and Nitish Kumar should come together, but we protested. We dont trust Nitish, she said.



Local poll authorities in Maharashtra, meanwhile, are learnt to have told the Election Commission that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks asking first-time voters to dedicate their vote to those who carried out the Balakot air strike, are prima facie violative of its orders, asking parties against using the armed forces in their campaigns. Addressing a rally in Ausa in Maharashtra's Latur on April 9, Modi had said, "Can your first vote be dedicated to those who carried out the air strike I want to tell the first-time voters: can your first vote be dedicated to the veer jawans (valiant soldiers) who carried out the air strike in Pakistan? Can your first vote be dedicated to the veer shaheed (brave martyrs) of Pulwama (terror attack)," Modi said.



The EC had sought the report in the context of an EC advisory issued last month asking parties to desist from indulging in political propaganda involving actions of the armed forces. "...parties/candidates are advised that their campaigners/candidates should desist, as part of their election campaigning, from indulging in any political propaganda involving activities of defence forces," the commission said on March 19.



In an unprecedented move, more than 150 veterans, including some former Army, Navy and Air Force chiefs, have written to the President of India against the politicisation of the armed forces in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.



The letter, titled From A Group of Veterans To Our Supreme Commander, registers strong objection to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanaths Modiji ki Sena remark.



Among the signatories of the letter are three former Army chiefs  Sunith Francis Rodrigues, Shankar Roychowdhury, Deepak Kapoor; four former Navy chiefs  Laxminarayan Ramdas, Vishnu Bhagwat, Arun Prakash, Suresh Mehta; and former Air Force chief NC Suri.
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All the new Star Wars comics, graphic novels, and collections arriving in 2021 and beyond

Feature Every single new Star Wars comic books arriving in the next few months that you need to get excited about
(Newser)  A coffee shop owner killed in a North Carolina gas line explosion was last seen in the doorway of his business after firefighters evacuated his customers and told him to leave, as well, the fire chief said Thursday. New details about what led to the death emerged as authorities raised the toll of people injured to 25, the AP reports, including nine firefighters. Durham Deputy Fire Chief Chris Iannuzzi said eight more firefighters were treated at a hospital, in addition to the one who underwent surgery. All were expected to be released Thursday. Police said Kong Lee, 61, was the only person killed in the blast that leveled the century-old building. His coffee shop, Kaffeinate, was on the ground floor. A gas leak had been reported about a half-hour before the blast Wednesday, and firefighters were working to get people out of nearby buildings. A police spokesman has said a contractor boring along a sidewalk hit a gas line and caused the leak, but authorities are still investigating what made it ignite.

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Fire Chief Bob Zoldos said firefighters told people in the shop to evacuate and got about 10 customers out, but Lee apparently lingered. Asked whether firefighters could have done more to persuade Lee to leave, Zoldos said time is short during an emergency and firefighters had to move on to other structures and make sure anyone in danger was told to evacuate. "We spoke with everyone inside his business, including him, and said that we were recommending evacuation of the structure, and we got everyone else out but him," he said. Describing evacuation procedures generally, Zoldos said: "With time of the essence, we don't make a major case for it. We go in and say: 'You need to evacuate the structure immediately' because of whatever the incident is. And that's what our people did." (A gas explosion in a Kansas City shopping district "felt like an earthquake."

(Read more explosion stories.)
(Newser)  The White House wanted to send a message to Democrats by sending buses of apprehended migrants to "sanctuary cities" that refuse to hand over undocumented immigrants for deportation, according to emails seen by the Washington Post. The move was apparently proposed at least twice in the last six months, including on Nov. 16, when a "caravan" of migrants was approaching the border. White House officials asked agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement whether detained migrants due to be released in border towns could be "bused to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities" instead. ICE officials told the White House that there would be liabilityand PRissues, and that paying money to transport migrants around the country would not be seen as a "justified expenditure."

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Sources say the White House continued to pressure agencies to implement the idea, though it backed off when Democrats agreed to extra funding for immigration detention beds. "This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion," a White House official said in a statement Thursday night. Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers say the White House proposed sending the migrants to districts represented by Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district, the New York Times reports. "The extent of this administrations cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne said Thursday, accusing the administration of using people "as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants." (Read more sanctuary cities stories.)
(Newser)  Herman Cain now appears highly unlikely to be raised to the Federal Reserve's board of governors. Administration officials say the former Godfather's Pizza CEO is still President Trump's preferred candidate, but four Republican senators have now spoken out against the potential nomination, the Washington Post reports. With the GOP holding 53 seats in the chamber, the only way Cain could be approved now is if Democrats decide to support him. Republican Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota became the fourth GOP senator to oppose Cain on Thursday, joining Sens. Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, and Cory Gardner. Cramer told reporters there was "no way" he could vote for Cain, citing the sexual harassment allegations that doomed the businessman's 2012 presidential campaign.

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It's hard for me to get over the harassment allegations from the past," Cramer said, per the Hill. "His showmanship doesn't bother me. His business experience, I think, is great. Simplifying the tax code is fine by me. But character still does matter." Trump said Wednesday that he still supports Cain, though he admitted that he might not make it through the nomination process. "As to how he's doing in the process, that I don't know," the president said. "You go through a process. But Herman is a great guy, and I hope he does well." Cain is currently being vetted by the FBI, but it's not clear whether the White House still plans to formally submit Cain's nomination. (Problems with Trump's other Fed pick include a large unpaid tax bill.)
(Newser)  Travel website Trivago might be looking for a new pitchman: Actor Tim Williams, who appeared as the rumpled "Trivago Guy" in numerous ads for the company, was arrested in Houston this week and charged with driving while intoxicated. Police say the 52-year-old failed a field sobriety test after officers found him passed out behind the wheel of his car with his foot on the brake, the Houston Chronicle reports. "At this stage, we do not have the full details of the situation, but we want to make clear that Trivago treats such incidents very seriously and strongly condemns drinking and driving which poses a risk to others and goes against the Trivago culture," the company said in a statement to CNN. (Read more drunk driving stories.)
(Newser)  A high school student in Florida was arrested this week after he was recorded raising his hands toward his principal's neck. "It shouldn't have been arrestable," a lawyer for 18-year-old Gianny Sosa of Miami Southridge Senior High School told a judge on Thursday, per the Miami Herald. Police disagree, claiming the gesture was the beginning of a wrestling slam called RKO made famous by the WWE's Randy Orton, in which the head is grabbed and pulled to the ground (see a demonstration). Indeed, Sosa is heard yelling "RKO!" in video of the hallway altercation. Principal Humberto Miret stopped the move quickly and subdued the teen.

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Police say Miret, named Miami-Dade County Public Schools' principal of the year in 2018, was "adamant" about pressing charges, reports WPLG. Released without bond, Sosa is charged with battery on a school official, though his lawyer says there was no intent to attack and his client was just horsing around. "Everyone knows wrestling is fake," Roy Ugarte told the judge, adding that the arrest report was "hands down one of the most insane" he'd read. The New York Post notes that Sosa "performs RKOs on random things" in videos on his Instagram page. The teen also posted a video in which he accuses the principal of punching him during the incident. (Read more Florida stories.)
(Newser)  Starchy and strange is the only way to describe what's been going on in one section of Jackson, Miss. Let Belhaven resident Michaela Lin put it into words. "As I walked out of my door my neighbor said, 'What is that on your mailbox?'" she tells WLBT. "And I said, 'Umm, it looks like a bowl of mashed potatoes.'" And Lin isn't the only local finding the smashed spuds: Other residents say they've found bowls of the stuff in their own mailboxes, on their doorsteps, on their cars, and even in their cars, leaving some laughing and some feeling "unsafe," per the Clarion Ledger.

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"It's definitely one of the weirdest things I've seen since living in Jackson," resident Jordan Lewis, who found a bowl of mashed on her car, tells WJTV. Locals haven't felt the need to drag the police into matters, preferring to muse on their own about why "victims" are being targeted; speculation runs the gamut from a simple prank to someone possibly trying to poison animals. One result of this tuber puzzle is that the world is now finding out a little more about the quirks of the people who live in the historic neighborhood. "We decorate road signs, we put Christmas trees in our potholes," Lewis says. "So the [mashed potatoes aren't] surprising at all. That's why I love this neighborhood, because they do so many strange things." (This Aussie may want to move to Belhaven.)
(Newser)  There may be more than one country looking to extradite Julian Assange now that he's in police custody. The US is already vying to get the WikiLeaks founder on its soil on hacking charges, but Sweden may also soon be in the mix if an investigation into a rape charge against Assange there is re-upped. The BBC reports that Swedish prosecutors are now looking into just that, based on a request from Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the alleged victim's lawyer, who says they're doing "everything we possibly can" to make that happen. That sexual assault charge is why Assange sought refuge in the first place in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London back in 2012, a stay that ended this week when Ecuador withdrew his asylum status. Sweden was apparently taken by surprise about Assange's arrest, per CNN. "This is news to us too," said Ingrid Isgren, Sweden's chief prosecutor.

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"What we have been waiting and hoping for since 2012 has now finally happened," Massi Fritz says, per the BBC. "No rape victim should have to wait nine years to see justice be served." Assange has continued to deny the allegation that he raped a woman in Stockholm in 2010, notes the Washington Post. One ex-Swedish prosecutor, however, doesn't think Assange will ever stand trial there. "I think it would be a very uphill task to reopen the investigation in Sweden," Sven-Erik Alhem tells the Swedish news agency TT, via the Guardian. "Testimony usually weakens with time," and it's now been almost a decade since the alleged assault. The statute of limitations on the case expires in 2020. (Meanwhile, folks are concerned about Assange's cat.)
(Newser)  Scary incident at the Mall of America in Minnesota on Friday: A 5-year-old boy fell from a third-floor balcony, and police are investigating witness accounts that a man pushed or threw him, reports CNN. "The child did suffer significant injuries," says Bloomington police chief Jeff Potts. Police detained the man suspected of deliberately causing the child to fall, and he remains in police custody.

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A mall-goer tells WCCO that a woman believed to be the boy's mother began yelling after he fell. She was screaming, Everyone pray, everyone pray. Oh my God, my baby, someone threw him over the edge.'" The boy remains hospitalized as police try to figure out exactly what happened. "At this time, we do not believe that there is a relationship between the child or the family of the child" and the suspect, says Potts. (Read more Mall of America stories.)
(Newser)  A passenger jumped from an airliner onto the tarmac after his flight landed in Phoenix, police say, after officers met the flight at the crew's request. The man, 25, had been disruptive on the Friday flight from Minneapolis, the Arizona Republic reports. He had been randomly touching the faces of other passengers, swearing at them, and spraying something from a bottle on them, police were told. A woman on the plane said that when the plane landed, the crew asked the 157 passengers to stay in their seats while law enforcement officers arrived. When the plane stopped at the gate at Sky Harbor Airport, she said, "he tried to make a run for it," hitting passengers on the way. Police said they don't know what was in the bottle. Charges are pending against the man, police said, who was taken to a hospital for treatment of injuries suffered when he jumped. (Read more airline passengers stories.)
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New Delhi:

Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) on Friday said its compact car Celerio sold 1,03,734 units in 2018-19, joining the club of companys models with sales of more than one lakh units in a year.

The model has cumulatively sold 4.7 lakh units since its launch in 2014, MSI said in a statement.

The sales of the model grew by 10 per cent in 2018-19, it added.

Celerio was the first car to democratise the two-pedal (auto gear shift) technology and the recent upgrade in its safety features has significantly enhanced its appeal as the perfect city car, MSI Senior Executive Director - Marketing and Sales R S Kalsi said.

Celerios 1-litre petrol engine delivers a fuel efficiency of 23.1 km/ltr for both Auto Gear Shift (AGS) and the manual transmission variants. The factory-fitted CNG Celerio offers a fuel-efficiency of 31.76 km/kg, MSI said.

The other Maruti Suzuki cars in the club of over one lakh annual sales include Vitara Brezza, Dzire, Baleno, Swift, WagonR and Alto.

Recently, the Indian automaker upgraded its hatchback Alto K10 with various safety features leading to a price increase of the model by up to Rs 23,000 in Delhi NCR.

The model now comes with various safety features like ABS (anti-lock braking system) with EBD (electronic brake force distribution), driver airbag, reverse parking sensor, seed alert system, driver and co-driver seat belt reminder.

"This will result in price increase in all variants of Alto K 10 model," MSI said in a regulatory filing.

Depending on features introduced across variants, the ex-showroom price in Delhi and NCR region shall vary from Rs 3,65,843 to Rs 4,44,777 and in rest of the country from Rs 3,75,843 to Rs 4,54,777, it added.

Industry sources said increase in Delhi/NCR ranges between Rs 15,000 to Rs 23,000 depending upon the variant. The new prices are effective immediately from Thursday, it added.
New Delhi:

The crisis in debt-ridden Jet Airways deepened on Friday with its fleet coming down to 11 aircraft on Friday, leaving passengers stranded at various domestic and international airports. The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations.

Soon after the carrier, facing the worst existential crisis in its over 25-year-old history, extended the suspension of its international operations till Monday, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) held an urgent meeting to discuss the situation.

According to sources, the meeting was called after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked secretary of the department Pradeep Singh Kharola to review issues concerning Jet Airways.

After participating in the meeting at the PMO, Kharola held a meeting - through video conference - with the management of Jet Airways.

Passengers were left stranded at airports as Jet Airways announced on Friday that it is suspending international operations till Monday. Moreover, its employees carried out a protest march in Mumbai, asking the airline to pay their pending salaries.

Kharola told reporters that Jet Airways flew 11 aircraft on Friday and will fly six to seven aircraft on both days this weekend on domestic routes.

When asked if the airline has enough funds to keep the operations going on till Monday, the secretary replied in affirmative.

He said that Jet Airways had a meeting with the bankers on Friday "wherein they put forth their demand" regarding interim funding. A consortium of lenders - leading with State Bank of India (SBI) - is currently handling the airline.

Kharola said that the bankers have asked the airline to "rework its proposal" regarding interim funding.

"Monday again, they (Jet Airways) will be approaching the bank. Depending on what the banks decide, the future course of action would be taken," he said.

"Till Monday afternoon, (six to) seven planes would be flying. After that how many would fly would depend on their interaction with bankers," he added.

The secretary clarified that while one aircraft that would be flying in the weekend would be Boeing 737, all other aircraft would be ATR. With less than 100 seats, an ATR is a much smaller aircraft than Boeing 737.

Meanwhile, sources said that Jet Airways founder Naresh Goyal has put his bid for buying stake in the crisis-hit airline. It couldn't be immediately ascertained whether he has partnered with any entity or airline for the bid. Friday was the last date for initial bids set by SBI Capital Markets.

Other than Goyal, the UAE carrier Etihad Airways, Air Canada and the country's national investment fund among others are reported to have submitted bids, according to media reports.

SBI Caps has the mandate for Jet Airways' sale on behalf of the SBI-led consortium of the domestic lenders to the debt-ridden private carrier. The bidding norms allow Goyal to participate in the sale process.

Last month, Goyal and his wife Anita Goyal stepped down from the board of the airline, which has more than Rs 8,000 crore debt.

Naresh Goyal owns 50.1 percent in the airline, most of which is pledged with the consortium of lenders. Goyal had last month agreed to pare down his stake to 25.5 percent for an emergency fund of Rs 1,500 crore from the lenders, and leave the board but the process is yet to be completed due to procedural delays.

Airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of 90 per cent of the 119-aircraft fleet of Jet Airways.

The airline on Thursday had suspended its operations to the eastern and northeastern cities of India "till further notice".

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

Union Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu on Friday directed civil aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola to review issues concerning Jet Airways, which has been operating with less than 10 planes. "Directed Secretary MoCA to review issues related to Jet Airways. Asked him to take necessary steps to minimise passenger inconvenience and ensure their safety," Prabhu tweeted in the morning. According to industry sources, Jet Airways will operate only nine planes -- two Boeing 737s and seven regional Jet ATRs -- on Friday.

A

Directed Secretary @MoCA_GoI to review issues related to #JetAirways. Asked him to take necessary steps to minimise passenger inconvenience and ensure their safety. a Chowkidar Suresh Prabhu (@sureshpprabhu) April 12, 2019

"Jet is operating only nine planes on Friday," a source said. Cash-strapped Jet Airways on Thursday grounded its services to and from the East and Northeast regions. It also suspended its international operations for a day. Consequently, many passengers were left stranded at the airports.

The sources said the airline now owes more than Rs 3,500 crore to passengers on account of flight cancellations alone. As of Thursday noon, the airline operated just 14 planes-- way down from 123 planes in operations at the peak. A

In the eventuality of Jet going down, it will be the seventh airline to shutter operations in the past five years as operators like Air Pegasus, Air Costa, Air Carnival, Air Odisha, Air Deccan, and Zoom Air went belly up. Moreover, the airline informed the exchanges late in the evening that it was forced to ground 10 more planes due to non-payment of lease rentals.

"Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled for April 12 are cancelled for operational reasons," said an airline source close to the development.

The airline will also not operate the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight on April 13, the source added. "All Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states are suspended till further notice.

Following this, there are no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region," a travel industry source told PTI.

When contacted, Jet said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stand cancelled till further notice due to "operational reasons." As of Thursday noon, the airline had just 14 planes -- way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back.

"Jet flight 9W 615 Mumbai to Kolkata and 9W 675 from Kolkata to Guwahati on April 12 are cancelled due to operational reasons. Similarly, 9W 676 from Dehradun-Kolkata-Guwahati service has also been cancelled until further notice," Jet said in a statement, adding passenger refunds are being processed.

With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet can continue to fly on international routes.

The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations. Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330--generally used for long-haul international operations.

For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Mumbai:

Bracing for a possible shuttering, Jet Airways Thursday grounded services across the Eastern and Northeastern markers and also suspended its international operations for a day, while 10 more planes were forced out of the fleet. In related developments, its board met in Mumbai and discussed "operational" issues, while airlines' strategic partner Etihad Airways submitted initial bids for higher stake in the crippled carrier.

However, founder Naresh Goyal, who had also planned to participate in the bids and was expected to put in bids Thursday, did not do so till late evening, the sources said. Goyal owns 50.1 percent in the airline, most of which is pledged with lenders. Goyal had last month agreed to pare down his stake to 25.5 percent for an emergency fund of Rs 1,500 crore from the lenders, and leave the board but the process is yet to be completed due to procedural delays.

The government has tried to rescue the airline, fearing job more losses ahead of the hustings, which has seen the banks led by state-run State Bank agreeing to bail out the career by acquiring majority stake.

In the eventuality of Jet going down, it will be the seventh airline to shutter operations in the past five years as operators like Air Pegasus, Air Costa, Air Carnival, Air Odisha, Air Deccan, and Zoom Air went belly up. Moreover, the airline informed the exchanges late in the evening that it was forced to ground 10 more planes due to non-payment of lease rentals.

"Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled for April 12 are cancelled for operational reasons," said an airline source close to the development.

The airline will also not operate the Bengaluru-Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight on April 13, the source added. "All Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states are suspended till further notice.

Following this, there are no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region," a travel industry source told PTI.

When contacted, Jet said its Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Guwahati and Dehradun-Guwahati-Kolkata flights stand cancelled till further notice due to "operational reasons." As of Thursday noon, the airline had just 14 planes -- way down from 123 planes in operations till a few months back.

"Jet flight 9W 615 Mumbai to Kolkata and 9W 675 from Kolkata to Guwahati on April 12 are cancelled due to operational reasons. Similarly, 9W 676 from Dehradun-Kolkata-Guwahati service has also been cancelled until further notice," Jet said in a statement, adding passenger refunds are being processed.

With just 14 aircraft left for operations, aviation secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola told PTI that the ministry was awaiting a report from the DGCA to decide whether Jet can continue to fly on international routes.

The government rules stipulate an airline must have at least 20 planes for operating international operations. Of the 14 aircraft that it operated till Thursday evening, eight were wide-body B777s (seven) and an A330--generally used for long-haul international operations.

The remaining six planes were, three B737s, which are largely used for flying on domestic routes besides on short-haul international destiantions and the rest three are regional ATRs.

The board held its meeting in the backdrop of a drastic reduction in operations due to the grounding of its almost entire fleet owing to default on rentals payment to lessors, the source said.

"The board, which was earlier scheduled to discuss a host of issues including the name of a former SBI chairman AK Purwar as the interim chairman, among others, could discuss only issues related to operations," the source said.

The meeting remained inconclusive, as "there did not seem to be any urgency on additional funding on the part of the bankers," the source said.

"Etihad Airways has also submitted bids for more stake purchase ahead of the April 12 deadline. However, Goyal, who was anticipated to put in his bid, did not do so," the source added.

SBI Caps, on behalf of the lenders, had issued the expressions of interest on April 8, and had Wednesday extended the deadline for submission of initial bids by two days to April 12.

The lenders are offering a minimum of 32.1 percent and a maximum of 75 percent equity in the carrier to any investor either individually or in consortium.

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London:

Even as he renewed an appeal against his extradition to India, embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya suffered another legal setback on Friday in a separate USD 40-million claims case brought by British liquor giant Diageo plc in the UK High Court. Justice Clare Moulder ruled against the 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss' application to seek a delay in the full hearing in the case scheduled for May 23 and additionally ordered him to pay legal costs of 34,000 pounds.

She was extremely critical of the "unexplained" delays by Mallya in clearing the unpaid invoices of his previous solicitors Greenwoods, which resulted in his new solicitors Joseph Hage Aaronson (JHA) finding themselves in "difficulty" and wanting to seek an unfair adjournment. "The delay is at best unexplained and arguably of the defendant's [Mallya] own making. In my view, the claimants [Diageo] are entitled to have their claim progressed expeditiously," Justice Moulder said, concluding that Mallya was the "author" of his "own misfortune".

"The claimants say that if the May hearing is adjourned they will suffer prejudice, there would be a race in relation to Mallya's assets which are subject to a number of competing claims; Mallya may be extradited and this will affect the ability to enforce the judgment against him," the judge noted, in reference to the extradition order and worldwide freezing order already in place against Mallya.

While the judge agreed to a short extension until April 23 for Mallya's new lawyers to submit their evidence to the court, having missed an April 5 deadline, she ordered that meanwhile the businessman must pay additional legal costs of 34,000 pounds for Diageo's lawyers within 28 days. Diageo, which had acquired Mallya's United Spirits nearly six years ago, is claiming USD 40 million paid to the liquor tycoon as part of an alleged breach of agreement.

The UK-based drinks giant is also claiming USD 141 million from Mallya, his son Sidhartha, and two companies linked to them for alleged questionable payments. The case, dating back to November 2017, is being contested by Mallya and will now go ahead for a full hearing at the Business and Property Courts of the UK High Court on May 23.

The three claimants in the case -- Diageo Plc, Diageo Holdings Netherlands BV and Diageo Finance Plc -- are seeking a total of USD 181 million from four defendants -- Vijay Mallya, his son Sidhartha, Watson Limited and Continental Administrative Services Limited (CASL). Mallya's counsel Barrister Daniel Margolin argued for more time to prepare for the full hearing because his firm JHA had received all the documents in the case, including nearly 1,750 electronic files, only towards the end of March.

He raised the worldwide freezing order against Mallya, confirmed by a UK High Court order in May 2018, as the reason for some delays in clearing overdue legal invoices. However, Diageo's counsel instructed by law firm Slaughter and May, Barrister Saul Lemer, argued that Mallya had "historically procrastinated" in the case and used the "same strategy time and again" of changing solicitors and seeking more time from the court.

Margolin assured the judge of no further delays and that Mallya was "acutely aware of the position" he was in. In his brief arguments on Friday, he also sought to highlight that Mallya himself would be liable for less than 1 per cent of the USD 141 million being sought by Diageo from the collective claimants, amounting to a "value of roughly USD 1 million", and that CASL is not an asset belonging to the businessman, as claimed by the drinks giant.

At the end of an hour-long hearing, the judge agreed that it would be "disproportionate" for her to deny the new lawyers any extra time at all and therefore allowed for a few extra days for the preparation and submission of evidence. However, she refused to change the May 23 date of the hearing because it risked a potential delay in the case until October due to the court's listings and holiday period time pressures.

The latest case marks a flurry of legal wrangles being tackled by Mallya in the UK courts at various stages of hearing. His extradition to India to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crores in unpaid loans by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, was ordered by Westminster Magistrates' Court in London last December and signed off by UK home secretary Sajid Javid in February this year.

Mallya is contesting that order and made a second attempt at appealing against his extradition this week. As per legal procedure in the UK, Mallya's first written "leave to appeal" application had been passed on Justice Davis, who was to make a decision on the basis of papers submitted and rejected that application "on papers".

A judge must now decide following an "oral consideration" in the coming weeks if his appeal can proceed to a full hearing. Meanwhile, in a separate case, a SBI led consortium of Indian banks are seeking to enforce a worldwide freezing order upheld by the UK High Court last year through a number of follow up court orders to try and recoup some of the 1.145 billion pounds owed to them.

Mallya also faces bankruptcy proceedings in the UK High Court in relation to that case, involving SBI, Bank of Baroda, Corporation bank, Federal Bank Ltd, IDBI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Jammu & Kashmir Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of Mysore, UCO Bank, United Bank of India and JM Financial Asset Reconstruction Co. Pvt Ltd.

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New Delhi:

Nearly a month after releasing the results for IIT JAM 2019, the IITs on Friday started the submision of application for admission to various Post Bachelor's (PG) Degree Programmes at various institutions across India. Candidates can visit the official website of JAM 2019, i.e, jam.iitkgp.ac.in to submit their applications for IIT PG programmes. While the last date for submission of application is April 25, the receipt of request for change of category will be accepted till April 29. However, candidates need to show proper documents in order to change their category in the application form.

Apart from various PG programmes, inclduing M.Sc. (Two Years), Joint M.Sc.-Ph.D., M.Sc.-Ph.D. Dual Degree, JAM 2019 scores can be also used for admissions to the Integrated Ph.D. Programme at the Indian Institute of Science or IISc and NITs and IISER programmes. A total of 2152 seats are allotted for PG courses in several IITs across the country through JAM 2019 score.



This year the IIT JAM 2019 exam took place on February 10. The prestigious online computer based test was conducted in two sessions i.e. Morning session starting from 9.30 am to 12.30 pm and the afternoon session between 2.30 pm and 5.30 pm.

The IIT Kharagpur will make the first, second and third admission list available on the official website of JAM 2019 from June 4, June 18, and June 28, 2019 respectively.

The payment of seat booking through online process for first, second and third admission list will be accepted till June 4, June 24, and July 2, 2019 respectively. The admission process through JAM 2019 will end on July 4, 2019.





At the time of admission into their respective PG programmes, candidates are required to carry all the essential documents like Class 10 and Class 12 certificates, qualifying date sheets and birth certificate among others. For more details candidates are advised to visit the official website of IIT JAM 2019 mentioned above.

About Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT)s:

IITs and IISc are institutions of national importance and are well known, the world over, for quality education in engineering, science AND technology and research in frontier areas. The aim of IITs and IISc is to build a sound foundation of knowledge, pursue excellence and enhance creativity in an intellectually stimulating environment. The vibrant academic ambience and well-equipped research infrastructure of IISc and IITs motivate the students to pursue Research and Development careers in frontier areas of basic sciences as well as interdisciplinary areas of science and technology.
New Delhi:

The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) has released the result of UPPSC Assistant Teacher 2018-19 written exam for commerce on Friday. Those candidates who have been appeared in the exam can check their result available on its official website--uppsc.up.nic.in.

It is to be noted that the written examination was held on July 29, 2018 in 39 districts. The Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission (UPPSC) examination was held to fill up 29 posts of assistant teachers, out of which three posts went to women.

How to check UPPSC Assistant Teacher (commerce) results 2018-19:

Step 1: First of all candidates will have to visit the official website i.e. uppsc.up.nic.in.

Step 2: Click on the result link available on the official website of the commission.

Step 3: A new window will open, which contains a PDF file. You can check the results there.
New Delhi:

BJP lawmaker Meenakshi Lekhi on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking contempt action against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for attributing his remarks on the recent Rafale verdict to the apex court. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it will hear the plea on April 15. Lekhi in her plea said Gandhi has attributed his personal remarks to the top court and tried to create prejudice. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Lekhi, told the bench that Congress president made a remark that the "Supreme Court has said, chowkidaar chor hai" in the verdict.

Gandhi had made the remark after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the review petition on basis of leaked documents. "The entire country is saying that chowkidar has committed theft. It is a day of celebration that the Supreme Court has talked about justice," Gandhi had said during a roadshow in Amethi.

In massive setback to the Centre, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear petitions for a review of its verdict in the Rafale jet deal on the basis of 'leaked' secret documents by dismissing its preliminary objections. The apex court in its verdict on December 14 rejected demands for a court-monitored probe into the Rafale deal and gave a clean chit to the Modi government on procurement of 36 fighter jets from French company Dassault Aviation, holding there was no irregularity in the decision-making process, pricing or selection of Indian Offset Partner. Dismissing the government's contention that sensitive documents accessed by the media on the Rafale deal can't be evidence by claiming privilege and that the petitions were not maintainable, the court Wednesday said it will examine the papers while reviewing on merits the review petitions.
New Delhi:

The Congress on Friday a new list of candidates for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections. The list includes seven names  three from Madhya Pradesh, two from Punjab and one each from Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir.

Putting an end to all rumours, the party had fielded former union minister Jyotiraditya Scindia from Guna Lok Sabha seat, while party spokesperson Manish Tewari will contest from Anandpur Sahib seat in Punjab.





Earlier there were reports that the Congress might shift Scindia from Guna to Indore. An influential section of Congress men, said to be belonging to the camp of veteran leader Digvijaya Singh, wanted the party field Scindia from a tough seat this time, instead of Guna.

In the 2014 LS polls, Congress could win only two seats, conceding the rest 27 seats to BJP.



With this, the Congress has so far announced names of 386 candidates for the Lok Sabha elections.

This is a breaking news story. More details will be added soon. Please refresh the page for the updated version.
New Delhi:

With 91 constituencies polling on Thursday, a total of 15 electronic voting machines (EVMs) were damaged due to vandalism in the first phase of the Lok Sabha election, the Election Commission said. The poll panel also said that action will be taken against those who damaged the EVMs under various sections of the Indian Penal Code.

There were reports of six EVM damage from Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh reported five matters, one each were from West Bengal and Bihar and two from Manipur. Senior Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha said action would be taken for damaging electoral material and various sections of the Indian Penal Code.

While EC said that such damages on a single day were not unprecedented", the development is important because one such case involved a candidate, Madhusudan Gupta of the Jana Sena Party, who was arrested for smashing an EVM in Guntakal. Gupta was arrested after he damaged the electronic voting machine at a polling booth in Andhra Pradeshs Anantapur on Thursday. Gupta smashed the EVM at a polling booth in Annatpurs Gooty area. It is totally bogus, Gupta was heard telling media persons after he damaged the EVM. Reports says that he was angry that candidates names weren't displayed properly. The leader of superstar Pawan Kalyans Party, Gupta was taken into police custody soon after the incident. The party has so far not issued any statement over the bizarre case.

Sources in Lower Siang HQ Likabali in Arunachal Pardesh said that the EVM machine at the Sogum polling station in the district was damaged with a hammer and other means by members of the BJP.

As per reports, there were also complaints by some voters about their names missing in the electoral rolls. When asked to respond to it, Kumar said the poll watchdog was running a number of programmes to verify electoral lists. As of Thursday, authorities had seized a607.32 crore in cash, liquor worth a198.71 crore, and drugs and narcotics wortha1,091.67 crore.

Earlier, the Election Commission announced that the assembly elections in four states  Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, Odisha and Arunachal Pradesh  will be held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls. Assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir will not be held along with the general elections.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will conduct public rallies in Maharashtra, Kerala and Karnataka today. BJP chief Amit Shah will hold rallies in Odisha and Chhattisgarh. On the other hand, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi will hold four rallies in Tamil Nadu.

Get all the LIVE updates here:

22:21 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

Robert Vadra: I think people of Amethi & Rae Bareli feel very happy that the family is with them & have been with them forever and the development is always on our minds. We always reach out & meet everyone. We will do all we can to further develop both Amethi and Rae Bareli. pic.twitter.com/5H9uZSGFrj

 ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019



20:20 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

#WATCH Union Minister Maneka Gandhi reacts on her remark during her speech before a gathering of Muslims in Sultanpur y'day. She says, "I had called a meeting of our minority cell...If you read my complete speech, channel is running that one sentence out of context & incomplete. pic.twitter.com/OaZ3h8VqTt

 ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) April 12, 2019



20:07 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Our opposition leaders are now heroes in Pakistan, where their speeches are quoted, their statements used freely by the leadership there to discredit India, says PM Modi

20:06 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In BJP presents an alternative ie. Inclusive, democratic and compassionate. We will serve each and every citizen": PM Modi at Vijaya Sangalp rally in Kozhikode.

20:03 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Right now, the entire nation is talking about Tughlak Road Election Scam. In Madhya Pradesh, crores of rupees, bags of cash have been found. Detailed probes revealed that the money trail reaches the house of a top Congress leader in Delhis Tughlak Road, says PM Modi in Calicut.

20:02 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Kerala is a land of peace & harmony but insensitive Communists & Congress have brought a culture of political violence Several patriotic RSS & BJP Karyakartas have been attacked and killed for serving the people, says PM Modi

19:30 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In If you read our manifesto, you'll find a line in her memory. The line says 'we will not impose NEET on the youngsters of this state.' It seems like a small line in the manifesto but it is actually an expression of the people of Tamil Nadu, says Rahul Gandhi in Madurai.

19:30 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

R Gandhi: Ppl appreciated our manifesto, said it represents voice of Indian ppl. In our discussions during manifesto building process, ppl told us about NEET, they don't like its imposition on Tamil ppl. They told us of a young Tamil girl Anitha who committed suicide due to this. pic.twitter.com/1gTrbJzaG3

 ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019



19:13 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Mr Narendra Modi feels that just because he can control the Chief Minister, he controls this state. We don't want to control this state, we want people of Tamil Nadu to control this state, says Rahul Gandhi.

19:06 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In We say power must be in the hands of the people, they say power must be in the hand of one man, says Rahul Gandhi in Madurai.

19:06 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Election of 2019 is a clash between two different visions of our country. Congress says all different ideas, perspectives, languages, histories, cultures must live happily together. All voices must be heard. RSS-BJP say only one idea should govern India, says Rahul Gandhi in Madurai, Tamil Nadu.

17:49 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In 2019 is an election between the nationalism and dynasty. Both the parties, Congress and JDS, are detached from people and attached to their own family. Their family is their only priority and their only mission is Commission, says Amit Shah.

17:45 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In On one hand, Modi govt builds hospitals with the money from mining and on the other hand, a Commission has found corruption in issuing of mining lease. The land of Odisha is rich in natural resources but the corruption has kept them poor, says Amit Shah.

17:43 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Navin Babu is the CM of Odisha for the last 19 years but the state still lacks in education and employment opportunities. The youth of people have to go to other states in search of livelihood. If we form govt, we'd ensure ample opportunities for people, says Amit Shah.

17:42 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Under District Mineral Fund, Rs. 1,600 crore has been allocated to this district. The hospital in sight is being built from the money sent by the Centre. It'll provide healthcare services. But Navin Babu hasn't spent a single penny on the hospital, says Amit Shah in Chhattisgarh.

17:35 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

Amit Shah in Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh: Bheema Mandavi's (BJP MLA who lost his life in a Naxal attack on April 9) death smells of a political conspiracy. I want to tell chief minister of Chhattisgarh if you have nothing to hide then order a CBI inquiry into Bheema Mandavi's death pic.twitter.com/aMl1WdlD1e

 ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019



17:18 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Naxal attack in which BJP MLA was killed a political conspiracy, says Amit Shah in Chhattisgarh.

16:15 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Modi dubs the Congress-JDS coalition in Karnataka as a "20

Per cent commission government.

16:14 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In In the first phase of election, the wave of BJP and its allies will sweep the opposition. The situation in West Bengal is chaotic. It's a sign of an imminent change, says PM Modi.

16:03 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Karnataka govt hasn't sent list of eligible farmers for sending financial assistance. When Modi govt again forms govt, all farmers of Karnataka will receive financial assistance, says PM Modi in Karnataka.

15:59 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Karnataka CM told that people who can't arrange two square meals join the forces. He has insulted the soldiers of our armed forces. They secure our borders facing adverse conditions. However, these people can't understand this, says PM Modi in Gangavathi, Karnataka.

15:58 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In The money seized from Tughlak road scam was meant for nutritious food for the poor children & pregnant women. Congress has committed a grave sin by depriving innocent children and women of their right. They will not be pardoned for it, says PM Modi in Gangavathi, Karnataka.

15:57 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In This is an election between Nation First or Family First. Congress and JDS are detached from people and attached to their own family, says PM Modi in Gangavathi, Karnataka.

15:57 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Deve Gowda's son has told that he would retire from politics if NDA again forms govt in the centre. Do you believe him? During 2014 election, Deve Gowda ji had said that if Modi becomes PM, he would retire. As expected, he didn't retire from politics, says PM Modi.

15:33 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

Gopal Rai, Aam Aadmi Party: AAP -Jananayak Janata Party (JJP) have entered into an alliance in Haryana for Lok Sabha elections. JJP will contest on 7 seats and AAP will contest on 3 seats in Haryana. pic.twitter.com/SeIAbuuw8a

 ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019



15:24 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Himachal Pradesh Power Minister Anil Sharma has tendered his resignation as minister.

14:22 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Congress General Secretary Priyanka Vadra to hold a public meeting at Ambaji, Banaskantha in Gujarat on April 17. She is expected to offer prayers at Ambaji temple before starting her campaign in Gujarat. This is for the first time she will campaign outside Uttar Pradesh.

14:18 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Rahul Gandhi is chief of gaali gang, says BJP over his Rafale remark, demands Election Commissions action against Congress chief.

13:22 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Krishnagiri: We will never ever let the people of Tamil Nadu be ruled by Nagpur. Tamil Nadu is going to be ruled from Tamil Nadu & MK Stalin is going to be the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.

13:04 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Gujarat: Re-elections to be held in Dwarka assembly after Gujarat HC today cancelled the assembly membership of BJP MLA Pabubha Manek. Congress candidate against Manek had raised an issue in Gujarat HC that Manek made mistakes in his nomination form for 2017 Gujarat Election.

12:57 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Gujarat High Court cancels 2017 Assembly Election of Devbhoomi Dwarka constituency. BJP leader Pabhubha Manek had won the poll.

12:21 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Goa CEO asks parties not to use religious events to woo voters.

12:19 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In People say India will progress only if Congress is banished: PM Modi.

12:15 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Does Pawar support demand for 2 PMs, one in Kashmir and one for rest of India: PM Modi

12:06 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Supreme Court allows former Trinamool Congress MP Saumitra Khan, facing criminal case, to enter Vishnupur constituency in West Bengal for filing nomination for Lok Sabha polls.

12:03 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In No terror attacks in India in last five years under Chowkidaar's rule: PM Modi

12:00 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In UPA govt remote-controlled, my govt strong, decisive: PM Modu in Ahmednagar.

11:59 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Are you happy with policy of killing terrorists in their dens?: PM Modi

11:58 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In 71.41% poll percentage recorded in Meghalaya yesterday. Poll percentage recorded in 2014 was 68% and in 2009 it was 63% .

11:30 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Congress' Priyanka Chaturdevi: A new serial is going to come, 'Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi'; Its opening line will be 'Qualifications ke bhi roop badalte hain, naye-naye sanche mein dhalte hain, ek degree aati hai, ek degree jaati hai, bante affidavit naye hain.

11:10 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Actor-turned-politician Urmila Matondkar, who is contesting the Lok Sabha election on a Congress ticket, says she isnt approaching politics as a star and would rather be known as peoples representative. I am not approaching this whole thing as a star with my star image. I am trying to get to grassroot and connect to people. I know it is going to be difficult."

11:08 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Supreme Court agrees to hear on April 15, a contempt petition of BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi against Congress President Rahul Gandhi.

11:07 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Makers of biopic 'PM Narendra Modi' move the Supreme Court against the stalling of the film's release. Supreme Court agrees to hear the case on April 15.

10:59 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In HD Kumaraswamy, Karnataka Chief Minister, during a public rally in Madduru, on Friday said, "Those who safeguard the borders are not children of rich people. They are children from poor families who can't afford two square meals. Here, is a PM who politicises their ultimate sacrifice."

10:50 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In In an interim order, Supreme Court asks political parties to give details of donors who donated through electoral bonds, amounts received from them, details of payment received on each bond etc. to the Election Commission by May 30.

10:50 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Supreme Court asks all political parties who have received donations through Electoral Bonds to submit in sealed cover to the Election Commission details of donations received.

10:38 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Tamil Nadu: More than 3,000 people form a human chain at Pamban Sea Bridge in Rameswaram to spread election awareness for 100% voter turnout in Ramanathapuram Lok Sabha constituency.







10:34 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In

The Kerala Christian Forum also expressed hope that Amit Shah and BJP tender apology to the nation and especially to the minority communities of the country, which has felt persecuted by the statement.



10:33 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Kerala Christian Forum observed unanimously that Amit Shah's statement on Friday, ''We'll ensure implementation of NRC in country.We'll remove every single infiltrator from country, except Buddha, Hindus & Sikhs," is direct attack on identity & integrity of the nation as a secular state.

09:52 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Uttarakhand: Case registered against 11 people including 4 BJP leaders for taking selfies inside polling booth on Friday.





08:37 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In 15 EVMs damaged in first phase of polling. The Election Commission has said strict action under IPC sections will be taken against culprits. Read here

08:38 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Polling was going on in over 300 booths late into Thursday night in different districts of Andhra Pradesh as faulty EVMs hampered voting in the day. Though the scheduled polling time ended at 6 pm, voters in the queue waiting outside the booths were being allowed to exercise their franchise. Read here

07:32 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Sanbor Shullai, BJP candidate from Shillong parliamentary seat: As long as I'm alive Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) will not be implemented. I will kill myself, I will suicide before Narendra Modi but I will not let CAB to be implemented.



Sanbor Shullai, BJP candidate from Shillong parliamentary seat: As long as I'm alive Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) will not be implemented. I will kill myself, I will suicide before Narendra Modi but I will not let CAB to be implemented. #Meghalaya (11/4/19) pic.twitter.com/UyR80lY9hF

 ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019



07:18 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In Congress chief Rahul Gandhi will hold four rallies in Tamil Nadu.

07:18 (IST) Facebook Twitter Whats app Linked In BJP chief Amit Shah will hold rallies in Odisha and Chhattisgarh.
Gangavathi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched an all-out offensive against Congress and its ally JD(S) in Karnataka, saying that the ensuing Lok Sabha election is a contest between Nation First or Family First.

Addressing an election rally in Karnatakas Gangavathi, PM Modi alleged that the Congress and JD(S) are detached from people of the state and attached to their own family.

Dubbing the Congress-JDS government as a 20 per cent commission government, he said the coalition's "only mission is commission", attacking it on the issue of corruption.

PM Modi branded the earlier government (Siddaramaiah's) as a "10 per cent commision" government, but now with Congress and JDS joining hands, it had become a "20 per cent commission government."

He asked whether the Lok Sabha elections was about "nation first orfamily first," as he attacked the dynasty politics of several anti-BJP parties.

PM Modi also asserted that there was a wave across the country favouring the return of his government.

In the first phase of Lok Sabha polls on Thursday, the opposition parties would not be able to sustain, PM Modi said.

"Phir Ek Bar...." PM Modi said, and the huge crowd roared in approval saying, "Modi Sarkar".

The Prime Minister also drew huge applause when he spoke in Kannada towards the end of his speech, hailing every strata of society and asking them to say Chowkidhar'.

Earlier in the day, addressing a rally in Maharashtras Ahmednagar, PM Modi asked voters to choose between "imaandar (honest) chowkidar' and 'bhrashtachari (corrupt) naamdar".

"You have to choose between imaandar chowkidar and bhrashtachari naamdar. You also have to choose between heroes of India and supporters of Pakistan," PM Modi said.

He expressed confidence that the "Modi sarkar" will be re-elected on May 23 when results of the ongoing Lok Sabha polls are declared.


New Delhi:

The BJP has amped up its attack against Congress president Rahul Gandhi over his remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the Supreme Courts Rafale verdict. The ruling party today reached the Election Commission headquarters and demanded action against Gandhi for spreading lies. Rahul Gandhi has crossed all limits by using such level of unparliamentary language for PM. He's chief of Congress's 'gaali gang.' Have demanded action be taken against his statements, which aren't based on facts, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi after BJP delegation met the poll panel in New Delhi on Friday.

The development comes after BJP lawmaker Meenakshi Lekhi moved the Supreme Court seeking contempt action against the Congress president. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it will hear the plea on April 15. Lekhi in her plea said Gandhi has attributed his personal remarks to the top court and tried to create prejudice. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for Lekhi, told the bench that Congress president made a remark that the "Supreme Court has said, chowkidaar chor hai" in the verdict.
New Delhi:

The Supreme Court has asked all political parties who have received donations through the Electoral Bonds to submit details of donations in sealed cover to the Election Commission. In an interim order, the top court asks political parties to give details of donors who donated through electoral bonds, amounts received from them, details of payment received on each bond etc to the Election Commission by May 30. Last week, the Supreme Court had refused to grant interim stay on the electoral bonds scheme and asked the petitioner NGO to file an appropriate application for it.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi had said the issue requires detailed hearing and, therefore, it will be taken up on April 10. Advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for NGO Associa1tion of Democratic Reforms (ADR), alleged that thousands of crore are anonymously being given to political parties. He alleged that 95 percent of electoral bonds are being given to the ruling party.

Attorney General KK Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, said the electoral bonds scheme was brought to check the flow of black money into political funding. He said Bhushan was giving an election speech that 95 percent of the electoral bonds have gone to ruling party.

The bench in lighter vein said: "It's election time. We will hear on April 10". ADR's application has sought stay on the Electoral Bond Scheme, 2018, which was notified by the Centre in January last year.

It said the amendments carried out in the relevant Acts have "opened the floodgates to unlimited corporate donations to political parties and anonymous financing by Indian as well as foreign companies, which can have serious repercussions on the Indian democracy".

The matter holds importance as the Centre and the Election Commission (EC) have taken contrary stands, with the former justifying the decision saying it would promote transparency in political funding while the latter maintaining that the changes made in the law would have "serious repercussions".

In its affidavit filed on one of the petitions filed by the CPI(M) and its general secretary Sitaram Yechury, the Centre defended its decision to issue electoral bonds, saying it aimed at ensuring "enhanced accountability" and pushing electoral reforms "to defeat the growing menace of black money".

The Centre said the bonds were introduced on January 2, 2018 to promote transparency in funding and donations received by political parties and that these can be encashed by an eligible political party only through their authorised bank accounts.

It said the bonds did not have the name of the donor or the receiving political party and only carried a unique hidden alphanumeric serial number as an in-built security feature. Only a political party registered under section 29A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 and which had secured not less than one per cent of the votes polled in the last election to the Lok Sabha or a legislative assembly, would be eligible to receive the bonds, the Centre had said.

On March 27, the poll panel had informed the apex court that it had written to the Centre saying that the changes made in several laws relating to political funding will have "serious repercussions" on transparency. It had also said that the changes in the FCRA, 2010 would allow unchecked foreign funding of political parties, which could lead to Indian policies being influenced by foreign companies.

The poll panel said on May 26, 2017, it had written to the Ministry of Law and Justice about its views that the changes made in the Income Tax Act, the Representation of the People Act and the Finance Act would be against the endeavour to have transparency in funding to political parties.

Referring to the EC's communication with the ministry, it said: "It is evident that any donation received by a political party through an electoral bond has been taken out of the ambit of reporting under the contribution report as prescribed under section 29C of the RP Act.

"In a situation where electoral bonds were not reported, it cannot be ascertained whether the political party has taken any donation from government companies and foreign sources."

On February 2 last year, the apex court had sought the Centre's response on a plea moved by the CPI(M), which had termed the issuance of electoral bonds by the government as "arbitrary" and "discriminatory".

(With agency inputs)
New Delhi:

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is trying hard to convince Union Minister Uma Bharti to contest Lok Sabha election 2019 from Bhopal parliamentary seat, sources said.

According to people privy to the development, BJP's organizational general secretary Ramlal has asked Bharti - who has decided not to contest the 2019 general elections - to meet him at the earliest.

Meanwhile, the BJP has replaced Bharti with Anurag Sharma as its nominee from Jhansi.

Bharti was appointed as BJP's national vice-president after she conveyed to the BJP leadership her wish to not contest the general elections.

The Hindutva leader has said she wants to go on a 18-month-long pilgrimage from May.

The Congress has already announced candidature of senior Congress leader and former chief minister Digvijaya Singh from Bhopal Lok Sabha seat, considered to be a BJP stronghold since the last three decades.

Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency, which was represented by Shankar Dayal Sharma in 1971-77 and 1980-1984, has been held by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 1989. Sharma had served as the President of India from 1992 to 1997.

The Congress had last won the Bhopal seat in 1984.

The constituency is currently being represented by BJP's Alok Sanjar, who had won the seat in 2014 by a margin of 3.70 lakh votes. BJP stalwarts like Sushil Chandra Verma, and Kailash Joshi had represented the seat in the past.
Mumbai:

Jim Sarbh, who has given critically-acclaimed performances in films such as "Neerja" and "Padmaavat", says he feels underwhelmed with the kind of scripts coming his way.

The actor caught the audience's attention as the antagonist in his 2016 debut, "Neerja". He has also starred in "Sanju" and was most recently seen in Amazon Prime Video's "Made in Heaven"

"Films have always been my first love but because I kept getting cast in plays or because the school I went to didn't have film acting course. It just had theatre studies -- I came from a theatrical tradition.

"I have spent the better part of my life reading some of the best plays in the world. I am spoilt. I imagine that each script I get should be as good as those plays and I am often sorely disappointed," the actor told PTI.

Having played some of the most iconic parts on stage, the longing to do good work in films has only increased, Sarbh, 31, says.

"I have had the opportunity of playing, in my opinion, some of the best characters ever written in a play, Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet', Jerry in 'Zoo Story' and I can keep going. I have been lucky (in theatre).

"(But) how will I get those parts (here)? I am waiting for an opportunity to sink my teeth into roles that are complicated, interesting as any of these."

The actor, however, found an opportunity where he could work and build his character while working on "Made in Heaven", created by filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti.

He is garnering praise for his role of a rich Delhi industrialist, Adil Khanna, a complicated man, torn between his current love interest and wife.

"In the beginning, my character was a little underwritten as compared to others, which was quite refreshing actually. You could get an interpretation reading the character that 'oh he is just a bad guy' but I was more interested in playing him as a person who fell in love, again," Sarbh says.

"Made in Heaven" is directed by Zoya, Nitya Mehra, Alankrita Shrivastava and Prashant Nair.

The makers recently announced season two of the series.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Clashes erupted in Karnal on Friday after a 20-year-old student was mowed down by a Haryana Roadways State Transport bus at ITI Chowk. The state police used batons and tear gas to disperse protesting students, who allegedly indulged in stone-pelting to protest the death of the student.A A

Police said the students were protesting the death of the student of an Industrial Training Institute, who came under the wheels of a bus on Thursday when he was trying to board it.

#WATCH Police baton charge on students while they were protesting over the death of a student in a road accident in Karnal. #Haryana pic.twitter.com/TUnFXUP4TS a ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Students charged that state transport bus drivers do not stop buses at designated stops forcing them to chase buses.A A A

Protesting students said that the boy was hit by the vehicle but the driver did not immediately bring the bus to a halt as a result of which the student was crushed to death.

Surender Bhoria, SP: Y'day a student had died in an accident in Karnal. Students gathered today to protest over his death. But there were some mischievous elements who provoked students to jam roads&spread lawlessness. Several police personnel injured in the incident. #Haryana pic.twitter.com/apyOCHQKVp a ANI (@ANI) April 12, 2019

Few policemen were injured when protesting students pelted stones at them forcing them to use batons and tear gas to quell the protests.



Karnal's Superintendent of Police Surinder Singh Bhoria, who was present at the spot, said the situation was now under control.

On Thursday evening, students of the ITI had created a ruckus and vandalised the bus after the incident. They had also blocked the national highway for some time.A

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New Delhi:

The viral letter purportedly written by over 150 military veterans has sparked a massive controversy as General SF Rodrigues, who is mentioned as the first signatory in the purported letter, has denied signing it. Another military veteran Air Chief Marshal NC Suri has said that, This is not Admiral Ramdas letter (purported letter written by armed forces veterans to President) and it has been done by some Major Chaudhary. He has written this & it was coming on WhatsApp and emails.

To put an end to it, I wrote that armed forces are apolitical and support the politically elected govt. And no, my consent has not been taken for any such letter. I dont agree with whatever has been written in that letter. We have been misquoted, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri added.

Earlier report had said that over 150 veterans including three former Army chiefs - General (retired) SF Rodrigues, General (retired) Shankar Roy Chowdhury and General (retired) Deepak Kapoor, four former Navy chiefs and former Air Force chief NC Suri wrote to President Ram Nath Kovind highlighting "unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and claiming the armed forces to be 'Modi ji ki Sena'". "...we write to bring to your attention, as the Supreme Commander of India's Armed Forces, some concerns which have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel of our Forces," the letter read.

We in the services have always done what the govt in power ordered us, we are an instrument of the state. We are apolitical. Anyone can say anything and then sell it as fake news, I don't know who this gentleman is who wrote this (purported letter to Pres), General Rodrigues was quoted as saying by ANI. Former Army Vice Chief Lt General ML Naidu ( who is mentioned at 20th in the list of armed forces veterans who purportedly wrote letter to President), no, my consent has not been taken for any such letter and neither have I written any such letter.

However, Major General Harsha Kakkar (who is 31st on the list of armed forces veterans who purportedly wrote letter to President) said that, Yes, I had given my consent for being a signatory to the letter. I had given my consent only after knowing the contents of it.

Meanwhile, the Congress has said Prime Minister Narendra Modi was trying to use soldiers for votes but India's armed forces were with the country and not the saffron party. The opposition party was reacting to a letter written by over 150 armed forces veterans to President and Commander-in-Chief Ram Nath Kovind, complaining about the manner in which political parties have been using armed forces for political gains ahead of the Lok Sabha election. Congress said that it was clear that the soldiers were with India.

"Modi may try to use soldiers for votes, but it's clear that soldiers stand with India and not the BJP. 156 Veterans of the Indian Armed Forces including 8 former Chiefs of Staff write to the President of India urging him to act against Modi for trying to use soldiers for votes," said a tweet from the Congress' official Twitter handle.

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been conferred with Order of St Andrew, Russiaas highest state honour, on Friday. He was decorated with the award for his exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russian and India.

aOn April 12, 2019, Indian PM Narendra Modi was decorated with Order of St Andrew the Apostle-highest state decoration of Russia -for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russian and India,a official Twitter account of the Embassy of the Russian Federation in the Republic of India tweeted.A

On April 12, @narendramodi was decorated with the Order of St Andrew the Apostle for exceptional services in promoting special & privileged strategic partnership between YY and YY and friendly relations between the Russian and Indian peoples.@mfa_russia @MEAIndia @IndEmbMoscow pic.twitter.com/jUFt5aawxw a Russia in India (@RusEmbIndia) April 12, 2019

A Russian official said the 'Order of St Andrew the Apostle' is awarded to prominent statesmen, public figures and those working in the fields of science, culture and arts in recognition of their exceptional services in promoting prosperity and glory of Russia.A

PM Modi was also awarded the United Arab Emirates' highest civilian award, the Order of Zayed, earlier this month for boosting bilateral relations between the two countries.

He has already been conferred with Saudi Arabia's highest civilian honour - the King Abdulaziz Sash.

The Order of St. Andrew was established as the first and highest order of chivalry of the Russian Empire in 1698. The award was abolished under the USSR before being re-established as the top Russian order in 1998.A The award ceremony is usually held at the St Andrew Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace.

The foreign awardees of the award included President of China Xi Jinping, President of the Republic of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev and President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Geydar Aliev.

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New Delhi:

India is busy celebrating Chaitra Navratri 2019 and will finally bid good bye to the much-sought after Hindu spring festival with the observance of Ram Navami. The festival marks the birth anniversary of Lord Rama, who is known to be the seventh avatar of Shri Vishnu. Lord Rama was born in the kingdom of Ayodhya to Queen Kausalya and King Dasharatha in 'Treta Yuga', the second age of mankind in the religion of Hinduism. Lord Rama, who is the central character of the ancient Hindu epic Ramayana, is also mentioned in texts of Jain and Buddhist scriptures. Every year, Ram Navami is being celebrated on the ninth day of the Shukhla Paksha (bright half) in the Hindu calendar month of Chaitra (typically in the month of March or April). This year it falls on Saturday, April 13.

Rama Navami timings:

According to drikpanchang.com, Rama Navami Puja Muhurata is from 11:13 am to 1:43 pm. The duration of the Puja Muhurta will be 2 hours and 30 minutes.Rama Navami Madhyahna moment will be 12:28 pm. Navami Tithi begins - 11:41 am on April 13; Navami Tithi ends - 09:35 am on April 14

Ram Navami celebration:

During this nine-day festival, a large number of devotees across the country worship different incarnations of Goddess Durga, observe a fast and seek blessings from Shri Rama. People also visit temples, where miniature idols of Lord Rama are bathed and clothed. The ceremony is also accompanied by worshiping Lord Lakshman, Lord Hanuman and Goddess Sita, owing to their relation with Shri Rama in Ramayana.

Like all other Hindu festivals, another essential part of Navratri celebration is eating specific dishes and food items. Devotees prepare several sweet dishes with utmost devotion and offer to Shri Rama as prasadam or naivedyam seeking victory of goodness over evil. Panakam, Coonut ladoos, Makhana kheer, Dates Halwa and Puri are some of the traditional dishes, that people cook during Ram Navami to offer to the deity and nine little girls, who are considered to be the nine avatars of Goddess Durga.

While each and everyday of Navratri has nine different colours and significance, the colour of the last day is green, which symbolises prosperity. On the 9th and final day, people also worship Goddess Siddhidatri, who is considered to be the possessor of 26 different wishes. The day also marks the beginning of Hindu New Year Vikram Samvat, calling for new beginnings and positive changes in the life of individuals.

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New Delhi:

Meghan Markle and her relationship with her father Thomas Markle has been one of a hush-hush topic. The relationship between the father-duo were heightened when reports claim that the Hollywood lighting director has not spoken to his famous daughter after it was reported that he sold photos of himself to paparazzi ahead of the royal wedding eventually ending to him being absent from the royal wedding last year. In a new explosive new preview for TLC documentary Meghan and Harry: A Royal Baby Story, which discusses the impending birth of the royal baby, a royal commentator has claimed that Thomas Markle will never see his grandchild.

Duncan Larcombe, author of Prince Harry: The Inside Story, admitted the that the chances of Meghan reuniting with her estranged father when they welcome their first royal baby this spring is slim, he claims.

I cant think for a moment that Thomas Markle will ever be able to meet his grandson or granddaughter, said Larcombe in a clip sent to Fox News.

Markles estranged half-sister Samantha Markle, who also participated in the special, added, You cant hurt people like this and then turn around and flip the script and play victim.

Meghan & Harry: A Royal Baby Story which aired on April 9, on TLC shed light on Markles first arrival royal baby into the monarchy. It features interviews with Grant Harrold, former butler to Harrys father Prince Charles, former royal protection officer Ken Wharfe, historian Kate Williams; and several other royal experts of the standing of Larcombe, who is the author of Prince Harry: The Inside Story.
New Delhi:

A proposal 30,000 ft above the sky, a well-choregraphed dance in the mall that erupts to a teary, happy ending or at the calm of the Prekestolen cliff in Norway, you name it proposals have come in all types of ideas. This Tokyo manas meticulous, months planned proposal for his ladylove however takes the icing on the cake. It also landed him a Guinness World Record for the largest GPS drawing in history.

In 2008, Yasushi aYassana Takahashi, a Tokyo resident Yassan knew he that his girlfriend was the one which is when he decided to plan this creative way of proposing using GPS art. A

He then planned a unique proposal plan that took him halfway across Japan just so that he can spell amarry mea on Google Earth. He travelledA from the island of Hokkaido to the shores of Kagoshima covering around 4,451 miles in six months to complete the trip for his wedding proposal eventually completing with a heart at the end.

And who in the right mind would say No to that, the girlfriend of course said yes!

It was a big surprise," she was quoted as saying byA South China Morning Post "I felt the greatest love in the worldaa she added.

Watch the video here:

For over 10 years, Tokyo resident Yasushi aYassana Takahashi has been creating GPS art with @googleearth and #StreetViewabut it was his very first drawing that was his biggest, in more ways than one a https://t.co/O9dYPHyauy pic.twitter.com/dEXmwp9suc a Google (@Google) April 10, 2019

Google even tweeted the touching proposal take of Yassan and since in just five hours the story of Yassan's grand proposal has been viewed over 17,000 times and garnered piles of heart-warming praises.

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Washington:

The US is currently undergoing a review of its assistance to Pakistan which is expected to be finalised soon, a top Trump administration official has told lawmakers. The relations between Pakistan and the US nosedived after US President Donald Trump last year accused Islamabad of giving nothing to Washington but "lies and deceit" and providing "safe haven" to terrorists. With Islamabad playing a crucial role in peace talks with the Taliban, which may ultimately result in the withdrawal of the 14,000 US troops from the war-torn Afghanistan, the Trump administration seems to be reviewing its aid policy to Pakistan.

"We're undergoing a review of our assistance in Pakistan that we hope will be finalised soon. And we'll then report to you in terms of what will be going forward," USAID Administrator Mark Green told members of House Foreign Affairs Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

In September, the Trump administration cancelled $300 million in military aid to Islamabad for not doing enough against terror groups like the Haqqani Network and Taliban active on its soil.

Trump also criticised Pakistan in a Twitter post back in November, saying Islamabad was not doing enough to stop terrorism.

"As with all of our programmes, we have the programme metrics that we use. One thing we're trying to do more of is to shift from outputs to outcomes. So, we have our roadmap with 17 objective metrics that help us measure capacity and commitment in each country where we work or want to work, like Pakistan," Green said in response to another question on Pakistan.

"So more and more we're trying to make sure that we're able to make a difference on the outcome side, hasting the capacity of our host country partners to take on these challenges themselves, although in Pakistan is daunting," he said, responding to a question from Congressman Brad Sherman.

US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad is spearheading efforts to strike a peace deal with the Taliban with the help of Pakistan to end the 17-year Afghan war, America's longest.

"In spite of our aid to Pakistan, conditions in the Sindh Province of South Pakistan continued to deteriorate in many areas. Schools and hospitals are getting worse in many areas as is water availability," Sherman said.

"We see the Hindu minorities subject to persecution to force conversions and forced marriages. What is USAID doing to ensure that assistance to Pakistan is improving the lives of ordinary people in Sindh?" he asked.

Sherman hoped that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will focus on the women and children and especially the minority religions in Pakistan's Sindh province.

"USAID has played an important role in Pakistan, particularly with its education system. Are there ways that charitable organisations can partner with USAID to support that work?" the Congressman asked.

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New Delhi:

India is concerned about the "threats" it faces in space, the Pentagon has said, defending the country for acquiring anti-satellite (ASAT) missile test capabilities. On March 27, India achieved a historic feat by shooting down its own low-orbit satellite with a ground-to-space missile, making the country a space power. The test made India the fourth country in the world after the US, Russia and China to have the ASAT capabilities. "The first lesson from the Indian ASAT is just the simple question of why did they do that. And the answer should be, I think to all the committee looking at it, is that they did that because they are concerned about threats to their nation from space," US Strategic Command Commander General John E Hyten told members of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

"And therefore, they feel they have to have a capability to defend themselves in space," Hyten told Senate Armed Services Committee while responding to a question from Senators on the need for India to do anti-satellite missile test, and the debris it generated in the space.

After India's test, NASA termed as a "terrible thing" the country's shooting down of one of its satellites, saying it created about 400 pieces of orbital debris, endangering the the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine had said about 60 pieces were tracked and out of which 24 are going above the apogee of the ISS.

Hyten advocated for the development of some kind of international norms of behaviour in space. "And where those norms of behaviour should begin, from my opinion, is with debris, because as the combatant commander responsible for space today, I don't want more debris," said the top Pentagon commander.

Raising the issue, Senator Tim Kaine said India announced last month that it had successfully conducted a test of an anti-satellite weapon.

"So, they had something in low earth orbit. They used an anti-satellite weapon to down, and it resulted in - the estimate's right now 400 pieces of debris, 24 which are large enough to potentially pose a threat to the International Space Station," he said.

"There have been other instances like this. There was a Chinese - a similar effort in 2007 that led to the catalogued 100,000 pieces of debris, many of which are still observing in debris fields that pose danger to other assets in space," he said.

There was a collision in '09 between a working US satellite and a sort of defunct Soviet era satellite that -kind of a fender bender that produced debris. Then this debris causes challenges, he added.

"If we think that space is going to be more of a traffic jam, more satellites for all kinds of purposes up there, what should we be thinking about as a Senate in this committee or in Foreign Relations about sort of the rules?" he asked.

"What should the rules environment be, and what should we be doing to try to promote rules? India is an ally. We're not talking about an adversary doing something. We're talking about them testing some capacity, but then that creates challenges for all kinds of uses of space. How should we be solving problems like that?" Kaine asked.

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New Delhi:

Sixteen people were killed and dozens injured in a blast at Quetta's Hazarganji sabzi mandi on Friday morning, authorities said. DIG Quetta Abdul Razaq Cheema confirmed that 16 people, including an Frontier Corps official, were killed in the blast. As many as 30 others were injured and were undergoing treatment, he added as reported by Geo TV. Eight of the dead belonged to the Hazara community, DIG Cheema said. The blast, which ripped through the Hazarganji sabzi mandi around 7:35 am, was caused by an improvised explosive device (IED) that had been hidden in the market, he informed. Quetta is the provincial capital of Balochistan. Four Frontier Corps personnel were also among the injured.

Some of the buildings in the vicinity were also damaged in the blast. The injured were rushed to the Bolan Medical College.

This is a breaking news story. More details will be added soon. Please refresh the page for the updated version.

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Khartoum:

Sudan's army ousted veteran president Omar al-Bashir Thursday, but protestors against his iron-fisted rule swiftly rejected a "coup" by the military and vowed to keep up their demonstrations. In a sombre televised address, Defence Minister Awad Ibnouf announced "the toppling of the regime" and said Bashir had been detained in "a secure place", bringing an end to his three-decade rule. A transitional military council will replace the president for two years, he said, adding that the country's borders and airspace would be shut until further notice.

But in a warning to protestors, he also imposed a night-time curfew from 10:00pm (2000 GMT) to 4:00 am (0200 GMT).

Bashir, who swept to power in a 1989 coup, was one of Africa's longest-serving presidents. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide and war crimes. But organisers of the protests, which first erupted in December, rejected the army's move and vowed to keep up their campaign until the whole regime was swept aside.

"The people do not want a transitional military council," said Alaa Salah, who became an icon of the protest movement after a video of her leading demonstrators' chants outside army headquarters went viral.

"Change will not happen with Bashir's entire regime hoodwinking Sudanese civilians through a military coup," she tweeted.

"We want a civilian council to head the transition." The protestors' Alliance for Freedom and Change said the regime had "conducted a military coup by bringing back the same faces and the same institutions which our people rose against." It urged people "to continue their sit-in in front of army headquarters and across all regions and in the streets."

Since early Thursday morning, huge crowds of jubilant Sudanese had filled squares across the centre of Khartoum as the army promised an "important announcement".

Chanting "the regime has fallen," they poured into the open ground outside army headquarters, where defiant protesters had braved tear gas and gunfire to keep up an unprecedented sit-in, now in its sixth day.

But the festive mood later soured, as protestors chanted: "We don't want Ibnouf!" "We are not leaving, we are not leaving. Just fall and that's all," they shouted.

The opposition Sudanese Congress Party called on the military council to dissolve itself and form "a joint military and civilian council to run the government for a four-year transition term".It also urged the army to give executive powers to civilians.

Adel, a protestor outside army headquarters, said Thursday's announcement meant "we have not achieved anything." "We will not stop our revolution. We are calling for the regime to step down, not only Bashir," he said. Army vehicles carrying troops were seen deploying across the centre of Khartoum from early Thursday.

Troops raided the offices of the Islamic Movement, the ideological wing of Bashir's ruling National Congress Party, witnesses told AFP. Martial music was played on state television as soldiers ordered the TV to halt its normal programming ahead of Ibnouf's announcement.

Outside army headquarters, dozens of joyful protesters early Thursday climbed on top of landcruisers and armoured vehicles that had been posted to protect them from intervention by other branches of the security forces.

Braving the searing 42 degree Celsius (108 degree Fahrenheit) heat, they hugged and kissed soldiers in the crowd.

The military council said it was declaring a ceasefire across the country, including in war-torn Darfur. Meanwhile, Sudan's feared intelligence service said it was freeing all the country's political prisoners, state media reported.

"The National Intelligence and Security Service has announced it is releasing all political detainees across the country," the official SUNA news agency said.

But in the eastern cities of Kasala and Port Sudan, the releases failed to materialise, prompting protesters to storm NISS buildings, witnesses said.

That came despite protest organisers urging demonstrators to refrain from attacking government figures or buildings. Demonstrators have spent five nights defiantly camped outside the sprawling army headquarters complex in Khartoum, which also houses Bashir's official residence and the defence ministry.

"We had enough of this regime -- 30 years of repression, corruption, rights abuses, it's enough," said one protester at the sit-in. The demonstrators have braved repeated volleys of tear gas from NISS members since they began camping outside the complex on Saturday, protest organisers say.

Officials say 49 people have died in protest-related violence since the demonstrations first erupted in December.

Neighbouring Egypt, where President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi came to power in similar circumstances, said Thursday it supported the Sudanese people and the army in their political transition.

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Kabul:

The International Committee of the Red Cross said that it had suspended work in Afghanistan after the Taliban announced a "ban" against the humanitarian group and the World Health Organisation. According to a Taliban statement, the ICRC had not "acted upon its agreements" with the Taliban. The insurgents, who control or influence about half of Afghanistan, also accused the WHO of "suspicious movements" during a vaccination campaign.

As a result, the Taliban has "decided to ban the operation of these two organisations across the country until further notice," the militants said, noting they would not guarantee health workers' safety.

ICRC spokesman Robin Waudo said the organisation had put its activities on hold in war-torn Afghanistan, where many in rural areas have scant access to health care and where polio rates are rising.

"We acknowledge this announcement and have suspended our activities in the country due to the withdrawal of security guarantees," Waudo told AFP.

"Therefore, we are now in the process of contacting the (Taliban) to initiate a bilateral and confidential dialogue in view of the statement."

The WHO did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The Taliban last August cancelled a "security agreement" with the ICRC, which suspended activities as a result.

According to the Taliban, the ICRC resumed its activities in October following talks.

The number of polio cases worldwide has fallen by more than 99 percent since 1988, but the WHO still considers Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan to be polio-endemic.

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London:

A UK court on Thursday found Julian Assange guilty on the charge of breaching his bail conditions after the WikiLeaks co-founder was arrested by Scotland Yard officers from his Ecuador Embassy hideout in London as the South American country withdrew the asylum granted to him. Assange, who has also been arrested on a provisional US extradition warrant, was produced before Westminster Magistrates Court in London where he pleaded not guilty to the charge of failing to surrender.

Describing his behaviour as that of a "narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest", District Judge Michael Snow ruled Assange was guilty for breaching bail and ordered him to appear via videolink on May 2 for an extradition hearing.

The court heard that during his arrest at the embassy after nearly seven years in hiding, the 47-year-old had to be restrained as he shouted: "This is unlawful, I am not leaving."

Scotland Yard said after his initial arrest on breach of bail conditions in the UK, Assange was further arrested on behalf of the US authorities after his arrival at a central London police station on an extradition warrant.

British Prime Minister Theresa May confirmed the arrest in Parliament, describing it as a "legal matter" as Assange now faces extradition proceedings to the US on "charges relating to computer offences".

"He has also been arrested in relation to an extradition request from the United States authorities," May told the Commons in a statement. "This goes to show that in the United Kingdom, no one is above the law," she said.

Assange, who was seen in public after many years as he was dragged out of the Ecuador Embassy, appeared visibly aged and sporting a long white beard. He waved a thumbs-up sign at the public gallery in court as he was produced in court. He now faces a 12-month sentence in the UK on the charge of failure to surrender and will remain in judicial custody until he is sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in London next month. According to details that emerged in court, his extradition to the US is sought on alleged conspiracy charges related to one of the largest leaks of government secrets.

Earlier on Thursday, the Metropolitan Police said its officers had executed a warrant against Assange dating back to June 29, 2012 for failing to surrender before a UK.

The Australian-born campaigner has been holed up in a back room of the Ecuador embassy in central London for nearly seven years since his arrest on sexual assault charges in Sweden.

He had claimed asylum on the grounds that he feared ultimate extradition to the US, where he claims to face a possible death sentence or torture for Wikileaks' alleged leak of American secrets.

Assange sought refuge at the Ecuador Embassy in Knightsbridge in June 2012, having lost an appeal against extradition to Sweden for questioning on allegations of rape and sexual assault that went up to the UK Supreme Court.

While the Swedish case has since been dropped, Assange was wanted by Scotland Yard for breach of bail and faced arrest the moment he stepped out of the diplomatically immune territory. But once that immunity was lifted, he was taken into custody.

The UK government welcomed the arrest, which it said was the result of extensive dialogue between the UK and Ecuador. A Downing Street spokesperson stressed that the UK did not lobby for his arrest in any way and the decision to revoke asylum was entirely made by Ecuador.

Ecuador's actions recognise that the UK's justice system is one in which rights are protected and in which, contrary to what Mr Assange and his supporters may claim, he and his legitimate interests will be protected, UK home secretary Sajid Javid said in a statement to Parliament.

UK foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, stressed in his statement that Assange was no hero as he had hidden from the truth for years. Ecuador's President, Lenin Moreno, said the country had withdrawn Assange's asylum after he repeatedly violated the conditions of his asylum.

WikiLeaks tweeted that Ecuador had acted illegally in terminating Assange's political asylum "in violation of international law".

The relationship between Assange and his host country had soured considerably in recent months, resulting in the WkiLeaks co-founder taking legal action against Ecuador last October for allegedly violating his fundamental rights and freedoms. He was placed under a new set of house rules and allowed only limited internet access.

The US authorities have never officially confirmed that they have charged Assange but the criminal charges related to the publication of classified documents were accidentally made public last year.

In December, 2017, Ecuador gave Assange citizenship, and was reportedly preparing to appoint him to a diplomatic post in Russia, but the British government made clear that if he left the embassy, he would be arrested.

Assange set up WikiLeaks in 2006 with the stated aim of obtaining and publishing confidential documents and images. The organisation hit the headlines four years later when it released footage of US soldiers killing civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.

The US Department of Justice said in a statement that the extradition request was in connection with federal charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, relating to the Chelsea Manning revelations. They carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

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BETHEL  Voters narrowly rejected Thursday the nearly $32 million municipal budget, but passed school and capital plans.

Residents voted against the town operations budget by a margin of 23 votes, with unofficial results coming in at 1,337 to 1,314, Tim Beeble, Republican registrar of voters said. He said a recount will not be held.

Voters approved the $46.4 million school plan 1,396 to 1,252 and the $1 million capital budget 1,580 to 1,057.

First Selectman Matt Knickerbocker said he was pleased the school and capital budgets passed, but was devastated with the town results, saying it would mean cuts to services.

Im deeply, deeply disappointed that the town side is going to be victimized, he said.

The finance board will revise the municipal budget at a meeting Tuesday evening, and another town meeting and referendum will be held to vote on it, but the school and capital plans will remain the same.

The overall $78.4 million town and school budget would have raised the tax rate by 2.24 percent, with the average homeowner seeing a $159 increase in taxes.

Increased demands on the schools and debt from construction projects helped drive up proposed town and school spending by just under 5 percent. This would have been the largest spending hike in years. A grand list growth of $1.1 million helped keep the proposed tax rate from rising further.

Bob Manfreda, chairman of the finance board, said he is not sure how much or where the board might cut.

We have to spend a little bit of time, talk to some people, get a little sense, he said. Twenty-three (votes) is close, so we want to make sure we hear folks.

The close results do not give the board a massive mandate for slash and burn, Knickerbocker said.

He added he wished the town was allowed to revise both the school and municipal budgets when one side failed. The Charter Revision Commission was asked to consider changing town rules to allow this.

This would prevent, in this case, the town budget from facing severe cuts in order to pass, Knickerbocker said.

This is several times now that the town side of the budget has gone down and there is nothing extravagant in it, he said.

Thursdays results were similar to the first referendum last year, when the municipal and capital budgets failed, but the school plan passed. The town and capital plans were approved on the second try, giving the town an overall municipal and school budget that decreased the tax rate by 0.03 percent and increased spending by 2.3 percent.

Next year, the town will need to start paying off loans for the new police station, which officers moved into in October, and the renovations to the elementary schools, where construction began Thursday. This is driving up debt service to $5.2 million, a 32.5 percent increase from the previous year.

Overall, town spending would have increased 4.64 percent under the proposed budget.

I dont know what the Board of Finance will cut to get (a town budget that passes), Knickerbocker said. Its out of my hands. ... Theyve got some tough choices to make. They're going to cut things that people arent going to like and thats the reality.

School spending will increase 2.8 percent, in part because of rising enrollment and state requirements. For example, the district needs to hire another world language teacher and a teacher for English-language learners at the high school.
A new hotel, bike lanes, electric car chargers, entry-level housing  these are some of the things town officials said have said they want included in Ridgefields roadmap for the future.

The final listening session on the 10-year rewrite of the Plan of Conservation and Development  this one focused on infrastructure  is scheduled for May 7. A public hearing will follow on June 4.

The plan has to be adopted by July 2020 otherwise the state can cut funding to the town, according Rebecca Mucchetti, chair of the Planning and Zoning Commission.

This months listening session focused on business and economic development.

Arnold Light, chairman of the Economic and Community Development Commission, said the town should encourage improvements to communications networks to attract new business and make Ridgefield a model community for our neighbors to emulate.

Also of importance to the ECDC chairman is the survival of retail shops in town, as more and more business is swallowed up by online retailers.

In addition to boutique shops, we need to encourage experiential retail and other Amazon-proof businesses ready to meet an ever-changing economy, Light said.

Allison Stockel, executive director for the Ridgefield Playhouse, echoed Lights comments that the town should focus on retail services that are as much about the experience as they are about buying something.

She pointed to Ally Bally Bee, an art shop next to Tusk and Cup on Route 7, as one example.

The shop is cooperatively-owned, and gives local artists a place to sell their work while covering a fraction of the cost of rent.

It gives local artists an opportunity to make money while at the same time having an experience, so that youre not just walking into a Gap, said Stockel.

Attracting business and visitors

To support those goals, Light said the town should add 100 new parking spaces within the next two years through completing existing plans.

It should also consider installing more chargers for electric cars in the village, which will meet the needs of charging automobiles and position Ridgefield as a forward-thinking community, he said.

Alternative transportation  including car-sharing services, self-driving cars, bicycle lanes, and better pedestrian access  should also be encouraged, Light said.

Jessica Wilmot, who co-chairs the Ridgefield Parking Authority, said the group is currently reviewing the number of private parking spaces owned by landlords that they manage through agreements with the town.

Some landlords have more parking than their tenants need, she said. There are many private lots that are not managed or patrolled by the parking authority  the result is a confusing hodgepodge of parking that does not enhance access to the village.

The first project she hopes will alleviate parking concerns is the expansion of the municipal parking lot on Governor Street, next to the RVNA.

She said many of the major new businesses opening downtown are restaurants and services, which require more parking for their patrons.

Light encouraged plans to build a hotel for 30-40 guests, and have the zoning commission revisit its home-sharing regulations  such as permitting AirBnB listings  to increase tourism and promote economic activity within our borders.

Similarly, the town should encourage communal and shared offices, where small businesses rent space.

These locations allow for incubation of new businesses, said Light. A handful of entrepreneurs can fine-tune an idea in a communal work setting before committing to a growth and hiring strategy that needs a formal office.

Housing

Several town officials said the plan should encourage affordable housing, and more entry-level housing to support workers.

Many people dont know that Fairfield County is growing, said Dave Goldenberg, a member of the towns newly-reformed Affordable Housing Committee.

The market will not create affordable housing, he said. Builders will not build affordable housing without some kind of incentive.

He acknowledged that people want Ridgefield to stay the way it is.

You cant not grow, he said. Its not NIMBY anymore, its BANANA  build absolutely nothing anywhere near anyone.

Goldenberg echoed another idea encouraged by the ECDC: The town should encourage second and third floor apartments above ground-floor businesses.

It should not be offices on the second floor.

Residencies will free up parking during the middle of the day, he said, because tenants will leave to go to work opposed to office workers who need all-day parking.

The arts

As for the Ridgefield Playhouse, Stockel said her challenge is getting people to come see a show during the day, rather than just the evening.

She said last year the Playhouse put on 220 live shows, as well as 24 education shows, and 26 Balshoi Ballet performances.

We draw in about 100,000 people annually, about 60 percent of them from out of town, Stockel said.

Rich Vazzana, a member of the board of directors for the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra, suggested the town may want to congregate all of the arts venues and organizations into one location  perhaps expanding to take over the entirety of the old high school building on Prospect Street.

He said finding a location that can fit the entire symphony on one stage has been a challenge  even the Playhouse cant support the full ensemble.

As a result, the RSO has been using the high school auditorium  a tougher sell to symphony-goers.

Try to get people from out of town to go to the high school auditorium to see a symphony  it looks like a high school auditorium, Vazzana said.
It has been 30 years since the General Assembly enacted Connecticuts Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). That law, in combination with the federal FMLA passed four years later, provides some Connecticut workers with the right to unpaid leave upon the birth or adoption of a child, in order to care for a seriously ill child, spouse or parent or because of the workers own serious health condition. When the law passed, supporters said no worker should have to choose between their job and their health, or the health of their family.

But the fact is that every year, many workers still face that impossible choice. In an economy in which too many are living paycheck to paycheck, workers caring for newborn children and parents with serious health problems must often keep working because they cannot afford to take leave.

The good news is that Gov. Ned Lamont and a majority of the legislature appear ready for Connecticut to join six other states and DC in enacting a Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML) program that can provide workers with the economic security to respond to health crises and the demands of family caregiving. The bad news is that the governor is considering contracting the program out to a private company.

The notion of privatizing public services is certainly not new. Our state government contracts out some commercial functions to private sector vendors when they have specialized expertise or capacity to deliver a particular product or service. But there are also certain responsibilities of government that are so intimately related to the public interest that we expect that they will be handled by accountable, trained public employees. A new form of social insurance funded by worker payroll taxes is exactly the kind of program that the public should expect  in fact, demand  be administered by an impartial government agency.

Legislators have thus far identified the state Department of Labor as the agency that would administer the new FMLI program, as other states have done.

Here are five reasons to stick with that choice:

Experience and expertise. A new FMLI program would bear many similarities to the unemployment insurance program operated for more than 80 years by the Labor Department. In each instance, the law provides benefits during periods of unemployment that help families remain economically afloat during trying times. Benefits are calculated based on past work and earnings histories and are funded by payroll taxes collected by the Department, while eligibility determinations are based on specific circumstances prescribed by law.

Economies of scale. Because the Department of Labor operates a system that handles hundreds of thousands of claims and pays out hundreds of millions in unemployment insurance annually, it already has an infrastructure which could provide a template for a new paid leave program. The department is the sole repository for employee wages reported quarterly for the states workforce, the most important component in calculating PFML benefits. Payment by debit card and direct deposit, as well as tax withholding and fraud prevention systems are all successful program features that could be readily adapted for a PFML system.

Worker Privacy. Wage information is confidential under state law and Department of Labor employees know that there are criminal penalties for unauthorized disclosure. In addition, the administration of a new FMLI program will require handling of sensitive medical information. Are we ready to put the personal wage and medical information of Connecticuts workers in the hands of the company that makes the lowest bid?

Enforcement track record. Since the early 1990s, the Labor Department has been enforcing the existing FMLA law that guarantees unpaid leave. The departments legal staff has resolved hundreds of disputes between employees and employers and formal decisions by the Labor Commissioner have been critical to interpreting the key provisions of the law that will underpin the new FMLI program.

Fairness and accountability. Family and medical leave insurance can be a critical economic stabilizer that will smooth the financial disruptions that so often wreak havoc with the budgets and well-being of families dealing with events as diverse as new life and critical health emergencies. But to make it work, we need to be sure that the law will be administered fairly and objectively by employees who are insulated from outside influence and are directly accountable to the public they serve, not to shareholders looking to make a profit.

By establishing paid family and medical leave insurance as a fundamental worker protection, Connecticut will be codifying its own family values. Lets make sure we do it right.

George Wentworth is senior counsel with the National Employment Law Project. For 35 years, he worked for the Connecticut Department of Labor where he oversaw legal policy.
ROCHESTER, NY -- Genesee Brewery, New Yorks oldest beer maker, is unveiling a new look for its cans of Genesee Beer and Genesee Light, while at the same time emphasizing the companys founding date of 1878.

The new look comes just a few months after the brewery introduced new packaging for its iconic Genesee Cream Ale.

But the redesign for the Cream Ale is different from the new Genny Beer and Light packaging, reflecting the brewerys effort to place it in a different market segment.

Genesee Cream Ales new look comes as the brewery attempts to push it into more of a higher end space on store shelves, along with a slight price increase.

New packaging introduced in early 2019 for Genesee Cream Ale.

Genesee Beer and Genesee Light, along with Genesee Ice, will remain in its traditional lower cost, or value segment of the market.

Our new cans (for Genny Beer, Light and Ice) pay homage to our heritage and reflect what we love most about Genesee," Janine Schoos, Genesees brand manager, said in a statement. "Our history is right there in your hands with our birthdate, the barley stalk, that classic oval logo and of course bright red and blue. Weve modernized the packaging with a fresh, new look to attract consumers.

As part of the new package design, the core beers will be available in 30-packs of 12-ounce cans, Schoos said.

The roll-out for the new look will take place later this month. Genesee also recently announced a new partnership as the official beer of the Watkins Glen International racetrack.

The new marketing for Genesee Cream Ale, meanwhile, is on a different path.

Cream Ale is a very unique and special, award-winning beer that has immediate opportunities to expand outside of its core, Schoos said. Because of that, we moved to a style-forward approach, that emphasizes the Cream Ale, to pique interest among beer drinkers who may not be familiar with Genesee.

These were the most recent packaging designs for Genesee Brewery's core beers -- before new design and marketing efforts began this year.Don Cazentre

The redesign of Genesees packaging and marketing follows the completion last year of a $48.5 million renovation and modernization project that transformed the old brewery on St. Paul Street in Rochester into one of the states most up-to-date.

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.
VICTOR, NY -- One of the worlds largest alcoholic beverage companies grew out of a small winery established on Canandaigua Lake in 1945.

Canandaigua Wine Co. became Constellation Brands in 2000, and has since become a global giant in wine, spirits and beer, with more than 100 brands in its portfolio and more than $8 billion in annual sales.

In a deal announced last week, the publicly held, Victor, N.Y.-based Constellation has agreed to sell 30 of its low end wine and spirits brands to the big California wine company, E&J Gallo. The price tag is $1.7 billion.

Constellation plans to concentrate on its higher end brands, like Robert Mondavi and Ruffino wines, Svedka vodka and High West whiskey, and Ballast Point and Funky Buddha beer, as well as Mexican beer imports Corona and Modelo.

It was easy to miss this part of the news: One of the wineries Constellation intends to sell is Canandaigua Wine, at 116 Buffalo St in the city of Canandaigua.

That, essentially, means Constellation is selling the piece of the company that gave it its start.

Gallo will acquire Canandaigua-based wine production facilities that employ about 200 workers. The sale includes established Canandaigua-produced brands like Richards Wild Irish Rose, Arbor Mist, J. Roget and Manischewitz. (Constellation will retain the high-end Finger Lakes brand 240 Days.)

Although it means Constellation is moving on from its legacy brands, it fits the companys long-term strategy, said Jim Trezise, the former head of the New York Wine & Grape Foundation and now the director of the Washington D.C.-based trade group, Wine America.

In my 37 years of watching this industry, I can say that Canandaigua / Constellation has always been about change, Trezise said. "They have always been one step ahead, always looking for whats on the cutting edge. So Im sure they will end up all right."

Gallo, in a company statement, pledged to keep production at Canandaigua and five other wineries across the country it acquired through the sale.

It is Gallos intent to offer employment to the majority of employees at all acquired locations, as long as all hiring criteria are met, the statement said. We are encouraging all interested Constellation employees to join the Gallo team.

The sale is expected to close in the first quarter of 2020.

Announcement of the sale comes just after a leadership change at Constellation Brands that saw the naming of the first CEO in company history who is not a member of the Sands family. Marvin Sands founded Canandaigua Wine Co. in 1945 as a seller of bulk wines. Marvin Sands was succeeded as CEO first by his son Richard, and then by another son, Rob.

Rob Sands stepped down on March 1, succeeded by Bill Newlands, who had been company president.

One of the hallmarks of our success over the years has been our ability to evolve and stay on the forefront of emerging consumer trends, Newlands said in a statement. This decision will help enhance organizational focus on a more premium set of wine and spirits brands that better position our company to drive accelerated growth and shareholder value."

Over the years, Constellation built its success largely through acquisitions of other brands and companies. In 2013, the company made one of biggest moves, buying the U.S. rights to the Mexican brewer Grupo Modelo and gaining control of its fast-growing brand Corona. That made it the third largest beer company in the United States.

Last year, it made a big move into the surging legal marijuana business. It has invested more than $4 billion in the Canadian cannabis company Canopy Growth, giving it almost 40 percent of that company.

Yet some of its moves are on a smaller scale. In February, it purchased a minority stake in Black Button Distilling, a small but growing craft spirits maker in Rochester.

In the sale to Gallo, Constellation is divesting itself of wine brands that are mostly on the low end of the market, like Clos du Bois, Black Box, Estancia, Mark West, Wild Horse, Franciscan, and Ravenswood. Most of those brands sell for less than $11 a bottle.

Some of the legacy Canandaigua Wine brands, particularly Richards Wild Irish Rose, have been considered bottom shelf -- sweet, fruity wines sold at relatively low prices.

Marvin Sands introduced Richards Wild Irish Rose to the Canandaigua lineup in 1954, and it quickly became a big seller.

Its mark in the Finger Lakes was recounted in a recent story in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle., which cited and earlier piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Richards Wild Irish Rose, while not an esteemed brand, has sentimental roots in the company, the Democrat & Chronicle reported. According to a 1998 story in the Wall Street Journal, the product was the result of a brainstorming meeting between Constellation Brands founder Marvin Sands and a sales manager of Irish descent in 1954. The rose was a more familiar take on the French term rose. .. The Richard in the name was Richard Sands, Marvins son, who was then a toddler and is now Constellations executive vice chair.

From 2013 to 2018, Constellations stock (STZ) grew by more than 255 percent. (It had become a publicly traded company in 1973.) In January, however, it reported slower sales, primarily in the lower priced end of its wine portfolio. It also reported some weakness due to the expense of the Canopy Growth cannabis investment.

In its statement, Gallo, which is family-owned, said it plans to promote its brands across the price spectrum.

We believe the additional brands as part of this acquisition will build upon our already diverse portfolio of wines and spirits and provides us with increased production capacity to fuel future growth, Gallo said. While we continue to invest in our premium and luxury business, we see a tremendous opportunity with this acquisition, to bring new consumers into the wine category. We will continue to provide our customers and consumers with quality products at every price point.

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.
MIDDLTOWN - The Common Council on Thursday took up the question of whether the city should go on record opposing Gov. Lamonts proposal to install tolls on state roads.

When the dust settled, the council wound up with a muddle, with a yes vote meaning no to tolls, and several councilors dismissing the entire exercise as a feel-good action with no real impact.

Five council members, led by Gerald E. Daley and Minority Leader Sebastian Giuliano, voted to approve the non-binding resolution - which means they voted to oppose the installation of tolls.

Five councilors, led by Majority Leader Mary Bartolotta and Councilor Philip J. Pessina, voted to abstain, saying they await the outcome of ongoing discussions on the issue by the General Assembly.

Councilor Rob Blanchard cast the lone no vote, which meant he was opposed to adopting the proposal.

There has been general grousing throughout the state about the issue to tolls.

But the council was moved to act, Daley said, after receiving an email from resident Todd Bogli, who asked the city to join other communities across the state in expressing their disapproval of the idea of tolls.

In introducing a resolution opposing the governors current proposal to implement tolling systems, Daley said he believed tolling may be part of a long-term approach to adequately address our future transportation infrastructure needs.

However, he said he was opposed to Lamonts proposal because of serious concerns about the effectiveness, fairness and transparency of the current approach.

Specifically, Daley said he objected to Lamonts proposal to remove $250 million in general obligation bonds from the current budget that was earmarked to transportation.

Whats more, he said the current tolling proposal could cost up to $300 million, take four years to construct and, critically, not to begin to show revenue until years 5 and 6.

What happens with our transportation structure while we are waiting 5 to 7 years for revenue from tolls to start? he asked.

He also lamented Lamonts proposal calls for eliminating the gift tax and extending the time for filing estate tax returns from six to nine months. Taken together, those two actions would reduce taxes on Connecticuts wealthiest individuals by $51.6 million over the next two years, he said.

Daley also criticized Lamonts proposal to eliminate the tax-free sales week in August and for a proposal to tax text books, bicycle helmets and child car seats.

Giuliano said he grew up with toll booths. But, he said residents who dont want to pay tolls will find ways around them, which will lead to congestion on local roads.

To say that is not going to have an impact is unrealistic, he said.

And that impact means the council is right to take up the issue, he said.

However, Pessina said the council should wait until it gets more information.

I think were moving too fast without all the facts, he said.

And that information should come from one group - Our delegates in Hartford.

Theyre the ones who are going to be directly responsible, he said.

Beyond that, Pessina said, Its about time the state of Connecticut looks at a bold plan and moves forward.

Bartolotta concurred.

Let our delegation do their job, she said.

I hear from a lot of people who dont want tolls, Councilor Grady L. Faulkner Jr. said. What I dont hear is a solution.

He urged the citys legislators convene a series of workshops to get the facts.

Beyond that, Faulkner said, One of the things we need to do at the state level is prioritizeabout the needs we do have to do and the things wed like to do.

This deep hole the state is in didnt happen overnight, and it wont be solved overnight, Faulkner said.

jmill@middletownpress.com
NEW HAVEN  The Stop & Shop at 112 Amity Road, which was open Friday but picketed by striking workers, offers a large selection of foods that are kosher for Passover because of the Jewish population in and near the Westville section, which isnt as large as it once was but still is sizable.

Im lucky in that I happen to have done a lot of my Passover shopping. To buy the rest I wont cross the picket line, said Rachel Bashevkin of Westville, who is on the board of Congregation Beth El-Keser Israel.

She said the Amity Stop & Shop offers both essential things and then really delicious desserts and sweet things, with a large segment of the store devoted to kosher foods. The have two rows the entire depth of the store and another table, Bashevkin said.

A woman who works for Congregation Beth El Fairfield, 1200 Fairfield Woods Road, said members tend to go to the Amity Stop & Shop because it carries a better selection of kosher foods than stores in Fairfield. She asked that she not be named. ShopRite in Fairfield also carries kosher foods.

Passover, the eight-day celebration of the Hebrews escape from Pharoah (seven days in Israel), begins at sundown Friday, April 19. Food that is kosher for Passover goes beyond normal kosher laws to forbid anything that might be made from or come in contact with leaven. The tradition is based on the story of the Exodus from Egypt, in which the Hebrew people, led by Moses, left so hastily that they couldnt wait for their bread to rise.

While produce and matzo can be purchased anywhere and kosher meats and dairy products are available at the Westville Kosher Market, Stop & Shop offers a lot of the items that make the Passover seder special.

They have all kinds of pastry to spare having to do that baking, which is tricky because of the prohibition on using anything containing yeast, or leaven, Bashevkin said. They also sell all kinds of chocolates, they sell herb teas from Israel and all kinds of pantry items but theyve got the marking for kosher.

Other kosher for Passover items at Stop & Shop have included sorbet, different matzos, such as whole wheat and egg, frozen foods and ground horseradish, which must be preserved in vinegar that is not made from wheat.

Bashevkin said the strike and the decision of whether to cross the picket line is especially significant for Jews approaching Passover, Pesach in Hebrew, because the holiday is about our rejoicing in freedom from enslavement but a message that we also need to free others and were eating this festival meal and we need to feed others.

The message of Passover is to me totally [that] you dont celebrate your holiday at the expense of other people, she said.

Rabbi Jon-Jay Tilsen of Beth El-Keser Israel said in an email, Any food purchased by crossing a picket line or from scab workers is not kosher for Passover. He said it is a matter of well-established Jewish law.

Elliott Croll of North Haven said the alternative to Stop & Shop has been ShopRite in West Haven, but that store has moved to Orange, and it never had as large a selection as the Amity supermarket.

Weve actually done most of our shopping already, Croll said. Typically we start four weeks before the holiday. Last week we did everything but produce and the final dairy.

Barbara Zalesch of Westville, on the other hand, is a last-minute kind of person so Ive been avoiding the Passover aisle because I dont want to get stuff yet. I need to do it systematically.

She said she almost bought some items this week but didnt, and now Im kicking myself for not getting some of the things I need and Im not sure what Im going to do. She said ShopRite is a possibility and that what she needs most is matzo meal and cake meal.

The Westville Kosher Market, close to Stop & Shop at 95 Amity Road, which sells kosher meat, and Abel Caterers at 70 Bradley Road in Woodbridge also are options, Zalesch said. Abel Caterers has prepared foods that you have to order in advance, she said.

Zalesch said she hopes the strike will be resolved quickly but, in any case, she wont cross the picket line. Im not going to walk past strikers so I can buy gefilte fish.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
Everything I need to know I learned in first grade, not kindergarten.

My mother was determined that her little George Washington was going to go to school at the earliest age possible, so he could begin his inevitable journey to the White House. Doesnt every mother feel that way?

In 1950 at age 5, I was eligible for first grade and since there were no school buses in Mt. Carmel, Conn. in 1950 and no hot lunch served at school, I had to walk the entire  mile journey with my tiny little feet four times a day: To school; home for hot lunch; back to school; and home at the end of the day.

My mother told me she would walk me to school for the first week, but that I would be on my own after that. She acquainted me with every friendly landmark along the way: The Catholic Church, the Convent (You can always ask the nuns if you need help she cheerfully told me); Pops gas station which had a candy counter I could stop and buy penny candy at, and funny gas pumps Pop had to wind up by hand to calculate the gallons pumped; Aunt Bessies house on a hill on the other side of Whitney Avenue; the post office; the library; and the traffic cop directing cars into Woodruff Street and Mt. Carmel School.

There was also Mr. D, the father of one of my classmates and a teacher at the high school. He was always waiting at the bus stop to go to work when I walked to school, one of the few men in my life who never drove and car and didnt want to. A few million people like those today could end climate change.

I had it all memorized. Today, I cannot believe a parent would allow their 5-year-old tiny tot to walk alone on a sidewalk 3 feet from a main highway (Whitney Avenue is U.S. Route 10) three miles every day (3/4 of a mile, times 4 a day ), but I made that trek after that first week, all by my self.

What my mother didnt know was that my first grade teacher Miss P would line kids up in front of class for a spelling quiz. If you spelled a word incorrectly Miss P would stand behind you and pull your hair. I cried. But that didnt stop her.

I cried at home and told my mother I wasnt going to go to school. She insisted and brought me to the corner of Norwood and Whitney. I can see her waving goodbye as my tiny 3-foot body shuffled down the sidewalk toward Mt. Carmel School, the loneliest first grader in the world.

On the way I lost my pencil and when got to the traffic cop who was directing cars into school I was crying. He asked me what was wrong. I told him I lost my pencil and I was afraid my teacher would pull my hair if I didnt have a pencil. He brought me into the post office and bought me a brand new pencil.

For the next 19 years I always looked upon uniformed officers as my friends because of that kindness  a powerful lesson for 5-year-old  until I went to graduate school in 1970 and saw uniformed officers behave differently. That school was Kent State University.

Week after week my mother would send me off on that sidewalk journey, and day after day Miss P. would pull my hair. Finally, I had had enough, five years old or not.

Half way up the  mile sidewalk journey one morning, I picked a branch off a forsythia bush. I was going to whip Miss P. if she pulled my hair. I chickened out, however, and instead, I hid in the shrubbery beside Whitney Avenue across from my Aunt Bessies house. I never arrived at school. The Lindbergh babys kidnapping was a big story back then so police, fire and adults mobilized to find me.

I learned a very important lesson. Parents could change things in the world for their children.

My father went to the superintendent and demanded that I be transferred to Centerville school, one mile on Whitney Avenue in the other direction, a mile, which I also had to walk.

There was a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant on the way, and on a good day, if you looked longingly enough, a worker would give you a freezing Pepsi right off the assembly line just before the cap was put on.

Needless to say, the disruption exacted a toll. I stayed back. I also became a perfect speller.

At age 40, I became an English teacher. And I never pulled hair.
NEW HAVEN  The New Haven Police Department soon will extend training on how to respond to people that have endured traumatic events to every officer in the department, as it continues a long-standing effort with the Yale Child Study Center.

By doing so, officials said, they hope officers can stand with people in their most trying moments, offering comfort, support and a path to lasting care and recovery.

New Haven police began working with the Yale Child Study Center more than 26 years ago, Interim Chief Otoniel Reyes said Friday.

Their partnership has become close, he said  mental health professionals from the center regularly ride along with officers to calls involving children and families exposed to violence.

Over the years, Reyes said their combined efforts have created a toolkit for how officers should respond to help people in these moments of crisis and pain, which will now  for the first time in any department nationwide  be handed down to every officer in the Police Department.

Dr. Steven Marans, director of the Childhood Violent Trauma Center at the Child Study Center, and Lt. Renee Dominguez said officers are educated about how the brain works and is impacted by trauma as part of the training, including the impairment of decision-making capacity, and how to help people in that moment.

Its about learning how to actually help both adults and kids bring down the somatic  the physical  reactions that occur when were overwhelmed, by teaching them very simple, but essential ways to help them slow their bodies down, said Marans. Its about helping officers to recognize what might be different for kids of different ages, and how does that govern how you talk to them, how you talk to their parents respectfully.

These skills include breathing exercises and a focus on providing information in a measured manner, Dominguez and Marans said  organizing it on behalf of the person whos been traumatized, alleviating that responsibility.

We see these children often  and we see them later on down in the life, said Dominguez. And, (with the training), were able to say, huh, something probably happened at a point in their life that put them on a trajectory to go in a negative way ... (and teach officers to) stop, take a minute, and maybe be that point where theyre able to change that trajectory.

Lt. Jason Rentowicz and Lt. Stephan Torquati, trained in the curriculum, said officers are taught to link people with services, check on people after they have recently experienced trauma and seek to make a connection with children in comfortable ways, from coloring to video games.

Rentowicz and Torquati, both members of the SWAT team, said the focus on mitigating trauma has been part of the departments mindset throughout the time theyve been on the force.

Torquati said he hopes the community, with this effort, can better come together and use the resources available to alleviate the stress brought about by traumatic events.

In taking this step, Reyes said the department will extend a focus on mitigating childhood trauma that has become an integral part of its character  an awareness, and focus, on being guardians, as well as warriors.

Part of that effort, he said, is working to change the association people have with a police uniform.

When we talk about the traumatic experience  the uniform has long been associated with that trauma. Our presence there, unbeknownst to us  but now we know  has been part of the trauma for children and families. What weve tried to do is change that optic, said Reyes. We want to be associated with the help; we want to be associated with the healing  and I think thats what this achieves.

Mayor Toni Harp praised the Police Department for taking this step, as well as the Yale Child Study Center for their efforts.

Im so proud of the New Haven Police Department for its willingness to move this city  and this nation  forward in this manner, said Harp. It is no longer enough to separate oppressor and the oppressed, and perhaps prosecute and incarcerate people for criminal behavior. There is collateral damage in many of these cases. Those indirect crime victims need attention and remedial care as well, and this training protocol now provides New Haven police officers with the tools they need to identify that and begin that remediation process.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
NEW HAVEN  Mayor Toni Harp has hired Edward Ed Corey to be her campaign manager as she seeks a fourth term in office.

Corey, a lifelong resident of Torrington, is an elected member of that citys Board of Education and previously served as deputy field director for Gov. Ned Lamonts campaign.

Harp campaign Chairman Jason Bartlett, in release, said Corey, 24, has also worked on several Democratic campaigns in Connecticut, as well as Westchester County, New York since 2012.

He said other experience of note includes being the campaign manager for Mike Khader, president of City Council in Yonkers, N.Y., which was a citywide race. Bartlett said Corey has been working on campaigns since he was 16.

I am truly proud, excited, and honored to have been afforded this opportunity to help lead the efforts in Mayor Harps re-election for her 4th term. When you think of strong, progressive leaders in Connecticut, one of the first names out of your mouth should be Toni Harp, Corey said in a statement.

I look forward to helping guide this campaign as we approach this competitive primary election. I am ready to roll up my sleeves, and work with the Mayors amazing supporters to re-elect a champion for education and the youth of New Haven. (Justin) Elicker will put up a strong challenge, and nothing screams democracy more than a healthy and fair debate, Corey said.

On Coreys first day, he was assisting the campaign with preparations for Harps official campaign kickoff on Saturday at Bears Smokehouse at the Stack at 470 James St., Bartlett announced.

Eds a great guy. He knows how to organize. When you talk to him, you dont just see his passion for organizing, providing opportunity for younger generations, and progressive idealism, you feel it. Its game on this season for the Harp team. Here we come, Bartlett said in a release.

Ed is a bright young man. I am excited to have him join our campaign as we truly begin this campaign in earnest. His background as an organizer, and Board of Education member truly struck a chord with me. Change is generational. Ed is the youngest member on Torringtons Board of Ed, and throughout my entire career, I have made it my personal commitment to be a champion for Connecticuts future, Harp said in the release.
CHESHIRE  Town police identified a woman found dead near the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail in February on Friday afternoon.

Lisa Charette, 49, was the woman found off of the trail, police said in a release.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has ruled the Manner of Death as suicide. The investigation has been closed and the incident has been deemed non-criminal, police said. Please respect the familys wishes and allow them privacy as they continue to grieve this unfortunate incident.

Cheshire police responded to the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail soon after 9:30 a.m. on Feb. 19, according to the release, then launched an investigation into an untimely death.

In her obituary, Charettes family said she was loved by many for her easy-going, fun-loving spirit.

She was always the first to help friends in need and could lighten up any difficult situation with her great sense of humor, said her family.

Instead of flowers, the family said at the time that donations could be made in Lisas memory to the Animal Alliance Welfare League of New Britain, Connecticut, P.O. Box 1775, New Britain, CT 06050.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
A man who police said stole an 86-year-old womans car at a gas station and ran over her hands with the car while he was driving away was actually an inmate who had escaped from the Oklahoma County Jail over the weekend, police officials confirmed Thursday.

According to police, the man, 23-year-old Paul Joshua Thompson, walked away from the Oklahoma County Jail on Saturday afternoon.
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How many of us notice while driving or walking past the New Haven County Courthouse across from the New Haven Green that weve got a majestic edifice fronted by classically robed stone figures?

And how many people who go inside that courthouse pay any attention to the marble fixtures and colorful paintings worthy of a museum?

I can still vividly recall walking around the Green in 1977 when I first moved here and being mighty impressed by those two sculpted figures who are seated in front of the gargantuan columns. It reminded me of the art I had seen in Europe and reassured me I had landed in a historic place.

But when I cover the criminal cases within, I rarely have time to focus on those paintings and other distinctive features. Like everybody else, I am too distracted by the stress and sadness of what is going on in the courtrooms.

Fortunately, the New Haven Preservation Trust last Wednesday gave its members (I am one of them) a chance to appreciate the courthouse and learn all about what it offers.

The Trust lined up a fabulous tour guide: Caroline Fargeorge, deputy chief clerk of the courthouse. Because she was raised in the Fair Haven neighborhood and her parents, Eugene and Jirina Fargeorge, were active in the preservation movement, she completely gets the historical greatness of where she works.

There are a lot of fancy courthouses in Connecticut, she told about 30 of us as we began the tour by sitting in or around the jury box of Courtroom E. But Im particularly partial to this one.

Fargeorge didnt say it, but lets face the sad truth: they dont build them like this anymore. It you took a short walk, one block up Church Street from this building, you would come across the newer New Haven County Courthouse, built in 1974, where the more serious criminal cases are heard and where people report for jury duty. Its an ugly concrete structure, strictly utilitarian and devoid of artistic touches. Yes, there are portraits of former New Haven Superior Court judges on the walls of some courtrooms but they cant begin to match the murals and lunettes of the older courthouse.

The original New Haven County Courthouse, rightfully listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built between 1909 and 1914 by New Haven architects William H. Allen and Richard Williams. They had a budget of $1.3 million, which in those days could let you do a lot. The building earned its designation of Beaux Art planning.

Fargeorge, who clearly had done plenty of research before the tour, told us the courthouse was a product of the City Beautiful Movement. This was guided by the belief that our governments leaders should spearhead the construction of buildings of grace and beauty that will inspire us as citizens.

Fargeorge named other New Haven gems that came out of this movement: the Taft Building, the Second National Bank, the U.S. Post Office and Courthouse (now used solely as a federal court) and Albert Arnold Sprague Memorial Hall.

Fargeorge informed us that architects Allen and Williams modeled the courthouse on St. Georges Hall in Liverpool, one of the finest Neoclassical buildings in Europe. They modeled the exterior on the Parthenon in Greece.

The interior design was based upon the Roman Baths of Caracella, with smaller rooms surrounding a central atrium. The walls are bathed in light from the vaulted central skylight.

Fargeorge led us out of Courtroom E and over to the Law Library on the third floor. Its not open to the general public, so I had never seen it. But we were able to marvel at the stained glass, oak shelves, massive doors and red rubber mosaic floor. As we gazed up at the carved ceiling and skylights, I heard someone gasp: Oh, wow!

Also on the third floor resides a full-length portrait of General Alfred Howe Terry, painted by Huc-Mazelot Luquiens. Fargeorge told us Terry was a New Havener who clerked for the city and then the court, going on to become a Civil War hero.

Above the library is one of the two lunettes painted by Thomas Gilbert White. The lunette by the library, The Laws, shows Moses, representing ancient law, leaning wearily over the Book of Life. Alongside Moses is a woman who symbolizes modern law.

Thats a nice feminist touch from 1914! Fargeorge remarked.

Across the hall, above the courtroom where the Connecticut Supreme Court justices once heard cases, sits Whites lunette The Administration of Law. The figure of Law is in the middle while Justice (again a woman) pleads the case of a shackled prisoner.

On the marble grand staircase leading down from the third floor, we gathered around to look up at two of the large murals that face each other, also painted by White. He was an American but lived in Paris, where he painted the courthouse murals. White entitled the pair The Epochs of Life. One is Childhood, depicting a beautiful female figure who symbolizes life and who oversees a toddler taking his first steps. The companion mural, Manhood, shows the child as a man, realizing a nearby phantom figure is Death. In the background is the sea of Life, with a ship at anchor.

White painted them in his Paris studio, rolled them up, put them on a ship and came to New Haven with them to oversee their installation, Fargeorge told us.

Through the years, cigarette smoke (when smoking was allowed inside public buildings) damaged the paintings and marble. But they were cleaned and restored.

One of the reasons why theyve lasted, Fargeorge said of the murals, is most of the people who walk in here dont notice them. And you cant touch them. (Theyre too high).

Then Fargeorge took us outside to the entrance. She noted that for years, until a restoration was completed in 2015, the buildings front and other exterior portions were covered by scaffolding. The marble had been deteriorating from acid rain and pollution.

Some scaffolding remains on the back of the building. Hopefully in phase two, theyll repair the roof, the skylights, the windows on three sides and the doors, Fargeorge said. All of this exterior work will cost up to about $19 million; phase one cost about $4 million.

Fargeorge pointed up to the tympanum at the top of the main entrance, where about a dozen sculpted figures look down at the passing tide. The sculptures, by John Massey Rhind, represent Justice, Victory, Precedence, Accuracy, Common Law, Statutory Law, Progress and Commerce. The central figure is the goddess of Justice, seated on a Greek throne.

Turning to those two seated sculpted figures (they weigh 11 tons each), Fargeorge said the man near the adjacent New Haven Free Public Library is The Lawmaker and the one near the Church Street corner is The Advocate, his hand extended toward us. His fingers have been damaged but Fargeorge said when the statues are restored the fingers will not be repaired because nobody knows their original appearance.

And heres something virtually nobody sees: three additional carved stone figures on the side of the courthouse facing the library. If you walk between the buildings you can behold Self-Denial, a female holding reins; Wisdom, a bearded man holding a large book; and Truth, a woman with her head slightly bowed on cupped hands.

Fargeorge laced her tour with fascinating facts, such as: 36 truckloads of marble were brought in from Vermont in order to erect this courthouse.

Were the busiest G.A. courthouse in the state, she said. For this building to still work is amazing. Its a testament to how well it was designed.

Contact Randall Beach at 203-680-9345 or randall.beach@hearstmediact.com.
SEYMOUR  The rich imagery of Mark Fitzpatricks poetry, along with the praise music of the Soul Satisfaction band, will help celebrate Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem this Sunday at Trinity Episcopal Church.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, leading up to the remembrance of Jesus crucifixion on Good Friday and his resurrection on Easter, this year on April 21.

Fitzpatrick, whose poetry has been published in journals and anthologies will intersperse his verse within the service, depicting episodes from the life of Christ leading up to the Passion and resurrection, he said. In addition to those two events, poems will depict exorcisms and miracles performed by Jesus.

Theres a different kind of twist on them  a different kind of take, said Fitzpatrick, Trinitys poet in residence, although his verse is still within an orthodox framework.

Mark is a really brilliant visual poet, said the Rev. Tricia Leonard-Pasley, who began as rector of Trinity in September. He makes us feel like were right there, on the banks of the Jordan or in Jerusalem when theyre saying, Crucify him! On Sunday, hes going to start to walk us through the story of Holy Week, she said.

The band is led by Fabian Ortiz, who designed the service with Fitzpatrick. Fabian and I have worked the service so its a whole, one thread, Fitzpatrick said. Ortiz, is a former music director at St. James.

In addition to Sunday services at 8 and 10 a.m., Trinity, the beacon on the hill at 91 Church St., holds its soul service weekly in collaboration with St. James Episcopal Church in New Haven, following a community brunch at 12:30 p.m. that is open to all. The drummer for Soul Satisfaction is the Rev. Barbara Cheney, missional priest at St. James.

This service is different.  Were trying to get out there and do different things, Leonard-Pasley said. For Palm Sunday, worshipers will experience this story through the lens of poetry as well as the different musical genres, she said. Those genres include jazz, African rhythms and gospel.

People can expect to be surprised and, hopefully, spiritually and aesthetically pleased, Fitzpatrick said. Hopefully theyll have something to take away.

Editors note: This story has been edited to correct an error. Fabian Ortiz is not music director at Church of the Good Shepherd in Orange.

edward.stannard@hearstmediact.com; 203-680-9382
Forget the famous warning of "Game of Thrones": In fact, summer is coming. Yay! If you're like us, you're already dreaming of turning on that "out of office" email notification and going on a well-deserved vacation. While some travelers still prefer to go the hotel route, it's increasingly common for people to use Airbnb instead, and book a stay in an actual home.

If you do opt to stay in a vacation rental home, you'll find that every place comes with its own set of rules and regulations. Some are fairly standard (e.g., no noise past 10 p.m., no smoking indoors, or turn off the heater after you leave). But for every handful of vacation rentals with reasonable rules there exist a few properties with very strictborderline strangedirections for their guests.

How strict? The renters below reveal the weirdest requirements they've encountered in vacation homes.

Picture-perfect

Napa wine country, in Northern California, brings to mind relaxed days sipping wine in sun-soaked vineyards. In other words, it's an ideal spot to kick backunless you stay in the same rental home as travel bloggers jme and Bryan of Travel With jme and Bryan.

"There were photos in the kitchen of everythingeach cupboard, drawer, and shelfbecause the dishes all had to go back exactly the way they were pictured," says jme.

The rooms also had pictures of exactly where the furniture should be and how the bed should be made. We don't even want to think about what would happen if the renters broke a dish!

Caught on candid camera

Kiedra Hinkle-Tyson, director of sales and marketing at B3 Face Forward Public Relations, recently stayed in a vacation rental in New York City with a client during a press event. The property, she says, was beautiful. But the owner? "A nightmare."

"We were not allowed to roll our bags," Hinkle-Tyson says. "Instead, we had to carefully lift up our bags and carry them."

The vacation rental rules also stated guests could have only up to eight people in the apartment.

"So we had four people renting the apartment, and one day, we had three friends visit," says Hinkle-Tyson. It turns out, the owner had an undisclosed camera in the home, and as soon as Hinkle-Tyson's friends came over, the owner called and said the guests had to leaveeven though there were only seven people in the house. Good times!

Don't miss curfew

Daphne Jouanneteau and her boyfriend thought they were in for an enjoyable weekend in New Hampshire. But upon arriving at their rental, the host informed them that quiet hours are from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m., and that guests were not permitted to come and go whenever they wanted. That's rightthey essentially had to adhere to a curfew.

"Needless to say, my boyfriend and I were both very surprised," says Jouanneteau. "We proceeded to leave her place at 6 a.m. the next day and find a hotel for the following night."

Counterintuitive

One of the main conveniencesand even pleasuresof renting an actual residence is having the ability to cook during your stay, but one home's rules made that particularly challenging.

A few years ago, Laura Orsini, an independent book publisher at Panoply Publishing, in Phoenix, was staying in Costa Mesa, CA, with her husband and sister. The apartment had wooden countertopsyou know, the kind used to make cutting boards. But the homeowners were not keen on anyone actually taking knives to the countertops.

"They had notes taped on every appliance and along the backsplash about every 6 inches that read, 'DO NOT CUT ON THE COUNTER. USE A CUTTING BOARD!'" says Orsini. Maybe installing a countertop that looks like a cutting surface wasn't the wisest choice for a vacation rental.

No check-ins after dark

Tamika Todd, a frequent traveler who is also a vacation rental manager and broker for Hidden Oasis, in Bermuda, thought she had her bases covered when she booked an Airbnb in Florence, Italy. She notified the host she'd need a late check-in time because her international flight arrived at night, and the owner approved her request.

"But upon arrival, the owner stated that their policy didn't permit check-ins after dark," says Todd. "We were stranded and exhausted!"

Todd and her companion had to walk to the nearby train station, flag a taxi, and stay the night in a subpar motel nearby. Luckily, Airbnb acknowledged their grievance and gave them a full refund, plus a small credit for their inconvenience.

Lobster limitations

When Jeanne Martinson rented a condo in the Canadian town of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, she was looking forward to cooking and eating lots of lobstera speciality of the island.

"But we were disappointed when we were toldafter we checked inthat we were not allowed to boil lobster in the condo," she says. "There was no reason given, just no lobsters."

The post The Weirdest Vacation Rental House Rules From Guests Who Experienced Them appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Japan Data

While stimulants are still the illegal drug that keeps Japans police busiest, cannabis usage is rising.

Japans police took action against 3,578 people related to cannabis offences in 2018. This is a year-on-year increase of 570, greatly surpassing the previous record set in 2017. The number of cannabis-related cases police handled also rose by 722, to 4,687 in total.

Overall drug cases in Japan for the year involved 13,862 people. Cases related to stimulants were the most common, involving 9,868 people, a slight decline from the previous year. Although only 197 people were involved in cocaine-related cases, this is more than triple the number in 2014.

Around 80% of the cannabis cases in 2018 involved possession, followed by dealing, cultivation, and receiving. Cultivation in particular has been on an upward trend, with 152 people apprehended in 2018, compared with 116 in 2014. A steadily growing proportion of these are cultivating marijuana for commercial purposes. Overall, 762 people, or 21.3%, were members of criminal organizations.

The number of people in their twenties apprehended for cannabis offenses in 2018 rose year-on-year by 347, to 1,521, accounting for 42.5% of the total. In a serious increase among minors, 429 people under 20 were apprehended in cannabis cases, a year-on-year rise of 132.

The overall number of those apprehended for cannabis offenses was 3.5 per 100,000 persons, an increase over the 3.0 rate in 2017. The rise for young Japanese people is particularly notable. While 5.0 per 100,000 persons in their twenties were involved in marijuana cases in 2014, this was 9.4 in 2017 and 12.2 in 2018. For those under 20, the rate rose from 1.1 in 2014 to 4.1 in 2017 and 6.0 in 2018.

(Translated from Japanese. Banner photo  Pixta.)
Edward Sutor Jr. earned just over $90,000 a year as a Ventnor firefighter, but he was also lining his pockets with hundreds of thousands more through a massive prescription fraud conspiracy that defrauded the state of $50 million.

Sutor, 36, of Linwood, pleaded guilty Friday to conspiring to defraud the state healthcare program in U.S. District Court in Camden. As part of his plea agreement, hell be ordered to pay restitution of $2.7 million.

In the scheme, public employees and pharmaceutical salespeople recruited government and school employees to seek unnecessary speciality medications for ailments including pain, scarring, fungal and libido problems. The medications, which were made to order at a compounding pharmacy that was in on the scheme, were extremely expensive. Some cost the state insurance program thousands of dollars for just a one-month supply, Judge Robert B. Kugler said in court Friday.

When the insurance program paid the money out, the conspirators were given kickbacks totaling millions. Sutor was a part owner in a company that got those kickbacks in exchange for finding teachers, cops and other public employees who would agree to having the prescriptions written for them by doctors who never even saw them.

He personally netted $335,552 for his role in the scheme between May of 2015 and February of 2016, the U.S. Attorneys Office said. His cousin, Corey Sutor, pleaded guilty to similar charges in December and has yet to be sentenced.

In court Friday, Sutor stood in a black suit before Kugler and admitted he recruited other public employees to join in the scheme, getting kickbacks every time they got a prescription for some unnecessary and expensive compounded prescription.

Asked by Kugler if he knew what he was doing was wrong and illegal, Sutor said, Yes, your honor.

Sutors attorney, John Zarych, said his client resigned from the Ventnor Fire Department Friday morning.

Hes here today because he wants to take responsibility for his actions, Zarych said.

Sutor agreed when he signed the plea agreement in January that he would pay restitution of nearly $2.7 million, and forfeit the amount he personally earned in the conspiracy.

Most of the defendants charged in the scheme are from Atlantic County. Seven of the alleged ringleaders, who allegedly help funnel the kickbacks from the compounding pharmacy in Louisiana, were charged in March.

Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A Bergen County developer admitted his role in a scheme to deceive regulators in order to receive millions in bank loans, a case linked to charges against a prominent North Jersey real estate magnate, officials said.

James Demetrakis, 79, pleaded guilty Friday in Newark federal court to one count of conspiracy to make false entries to deceive a financial institution and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, according to the U.S. Attorneys Office.

Demetrakis, 79, of Englewood, worked with his longtime business partner and fellow developer Fred Daibes to evade bank loan lending limits, according to federal authorities. Daibes, well known for his work in towns along the Hudson River known as the Gold Coast, was also the founder and chairman of Mariners Bank, which handled the loans.

Between January 2008 and December 2013, Demetrakis worked with Daibes to dodge the lending limits by having relatives designated as borrowers, authorities said. After obtaining the loans, Demetrakis and the others passed the money to Daibes.

Daibes, Demetrakis and others part of the scam did not disclose to Mariners Bank that Daibes would make interest and principal payments on the loans, according to the governments case.

When Daibes failed to give money to make payments on the loans, the FDIC launched an investigation, authorities said. Daibes, Demetrakis and others submitted a false, backdated sales contract to make it seem that Demetrakis obtained a $1.8 million loan from the bank to pay Daibes for his interest in a real estate project. The nominee loan scam secured more than $4 million in credit, authorities said.

Daibes and another man, Michael McManus, were indicted Oct. 30, 2018, on conspiracy and bank fraud charges. Those cases are pending.

Daibes attorney Lawrence S. Lustberg said Friday his client maintains his innocence.

Mr. Daibes continues to assert his innocence and is confident he will be vindicated when his matter is fully and fairly litigated, Lustberg said.

While he has not had the opportunity to review Mr. Demetrakis statements in Court earlier today, he categorically denies that he ever conspired with Mr. Demetrakis to break any law, Lustberg added. If Mr. Demetrakis said that he did, he admitted to a crime that never occurred, which would be sad, though we understand his temptation to do so, given his age, health and the burden and expense of trial.

For his part, Demetrakis faces a maximum five year prison term and maximum fine of $250,000.

Noah Cohen may be reached at ncohen@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @noahyc. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Owls are common in New Jersey, but police in Burlington County say it was an uncommon call for them.

Owl on the porch, is what a dispatcher radioed to Bordentown Township officers Friday morning.

The bird - later identified as a baby great-horned owl - was perched at a home in the Clifton Mill neighborhood.

Police Chief Brian Pesce admits he and his officers were not excited about this one. And we have guns, he joked.

Enter Nicole Bencivengo, the township animal control officer, who the chief said is fearless with wildlife. Shell approach anything.

She found the owls nest, but no sign of the parents.

(Bencivengo) then fashioned a makeshift nest in an adjacent tree where the baby will safely wait for mom and dad to return, under the watchful eye of the concerned residents who have been enjoying watching the little guy grow, police wrote in a Facebook post.

If the parents do not return, the baby owl will be taken to a local wildlife center for care, and an eventual release back to the wild, police said.

And one more thing, cops say: If you find a baby owl please notify animal control or your local wildlife center for further instruction. It is illegal to possess wildlife without a permit.

Bencivengo puts the baby owl in a makeshift nest to wait for its parents.

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Johnny Bobbitt, the homeless veteran once hailed a good Samaritan only to be revealed as a co-conspirator in a $400,000 GoFundMe scheme, was sentenced Friday to a five year special term in drug court.

Bobbitt must go through a long-term, in-patient drug program followed by special probation, Superior Court Judge Christopher Garrenger ruled during a hearing in Burlington County. The treatment and drug court term, as part of his plea agreement, will last five years, and requires him to eventually get a job and submit to frequent drug tests.

This is an opportunity that you should take advantage of, Garrenger said. We want you to be a success in our drug court program.

If he violates the terms of his probation, Bobbitt faces the possibility of five years in prison.

Bobbitt pleaded guilty March 9 to a second-degree charge of conspiracy to theft by deception just days after he entered a guilty plea to a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering in U.S. District Court in Camden. He has yet to be sentenced for that offense.

The formerly homeless veteran, along with New Jersey couple Kate McClure and Mark DAmico, gained international acclaim in late 2017 when their GoFundMe campaign went viral. They told a now-debunked story of how McClure had run out of gas while driving into Philadelphia on I-95, and Bobbitt had come to her rescue, spending his last $20 to fill up her tank.

The fundraiser, launched by McClure and DAmico, sought $10,000 to get Bobbitt off the street. But the story tugged on donors heart strings, leading them to open up their wallets and donate more than $400,000 to the veterans cause.

It looked like Bobbitts story might have a happy ending, until allegations surfaced that the couple had withheld the money and spent it on themselves. Bobbitt sued for his donations, but it turned out it was too late, and the accounts had already emptied.

As supporters rallied behind Bobbitt, it turned out another twist would emerge in November.

That feel good story, the whole thing, was too good to be true.

Bobbitt has since admitted that he never helped McClure, but instead met the couple while panhandling near a casino. He maintains that he did not play a role in setting up the GoFundMe, but did further the fraud by appearing on news shows and retelling the lie, making him a co-conspirator.

Large photos of the trio, as well as the original GoFundMe photo of Bobbitt and McClure, were blown up and displayed in the courtroom on Friday.

Johnny Bobbitt with Kate McClure and Mark DAmico in happier times.

In this Nov. 2017, file photo, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., left, Kate McClure, right, and McClure's boyfriend Mark D'Amico pose at a Citgo station in Philadelphia (Elizabeth Robertson/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

Assistant Prosecutor Andrew McDonnell said Bobbitt became the face of the campaign along with McClure by posing for the photos and participating in media interview. He said it would not have succeeded in defrauding so many donors without his active participation.

He noted that Bobbitts long-term drug addiction had fueled his criminal behavior, and that he had been discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps as a result.

This did not have to happen, McDonnell said. This is the appropriate resolution for Mr. Bobbitt.

McClure and DAmico, who are no longer together, have been charged in Burlington County as well.

There is no denying that Johnny Bobbitt has struggled with addiction, and that his addiction was a factor in his criminal conduct," Burlington County Prosecutor Scott Coffina said in a statement issued Friday afternoon. "The proposed agreed-upon sentence, in the States view, provides sufficient accountability to Johnny Bobbitt for his active role in this fraud through the vigorous standards of a drug court probation, with the certainty of a five-year state prison sentence if he does not adhere to those standards and take advantage of this opportunity. This sentence affords him the chance to turn his life around. We wish him well in the program.

Bobbitt has agreed to pay restitution, an amount that will later be determined. He has also agreed to testify against McClure and DAmico.

He is expected to be moved very soon to drug treatment, Garrenger said. Coffina would not say to what in-patient facility Bobbitt will go.

Mr. Bobbitt, we look forward to working with you, Garrenger said.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A 35-year-old employee at a Burlington County bank hid a cell phone in a work bathroom to record women, authorities announced.

Larry Tucker Jr., of Berlin, was arrested and charged with third-degree invasion of privacy, Evesham police announced Friday.

Police said Tucker placed a phone in an envelope, began recording and left it in a stall in the womens bathroom of a Citizens Bank branch on Route 70 on Dec. 27, 2018.

When a woman using the restroom noticed it and brought it the banks manager, Tucker snatched the phone away and ran from the bank, police said. Investigators obtained a search warrant to check Tuckers home and electronic devices and eventually arrested him.

Citizens Bank said Tucker is no longer employed by them.

Please be assured that Citizens takes these types of allegations seriously," a statement emailed to NJ Advance Media said. "As soon as we became aware of the situation, we took immediate action. This individual is no longer with the bank, and, as always, we are fully cooperating with law enforcement.

A police spokesman couldnt immediately be reached for information on when Tucker was arrested.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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UPDATE: Homeless veteran who admitted to massive GoFundMe scam gets last-chance drug treatment, probation

Johnny Bobbitt, the once homeless veteran who received a windfall of cash after helping a New Jersey couple advance a viral GoFundMe scheme, will be sentenced Friday for his role in the crime.

Bobbitt will appear in Burlington County Superior Court at 11:30 a.m. He entered a guilty plea March 9 to a second-degree charge of conspiracy to theft by deception in exchange for a five-year special probation sentence in drug court.

That was days after he pleaded guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, an offense for which he has yet to be sentenced.

Bobbitt, along with Kate McClure and Mark DAmico, gained international attention in late 2017 when their GoFundMe campaign went viral. It claimed McClure had run out of gas while driving into Philadelphia on I-95, and Bobbitt had come to her rescue, using his last $20 to buy her gas.

McClure and DAmico said they wanted to raise $10,000 to get Bobbitt off the street, but generous donors fueled by the story and holiday spirit sent just over $400,000 their way.

It turns out the story was too good to be true.

Bobbitt has since admitted that he never helped McClure, but instead met the couple while panhandling near a casino. He maintains that he did not play a role in setting up the GoFundMe, but did further the fraud by appearing on news shows and retelling the lie, making him a co-conspirator.

In this Nov. 2017, file photo, Johnny Bobbitt Jr., left, Kate McClure, right, and McClure's boyfriend Mark D'Amico pose at a Citgo station in Philadelphia (Elizabeth Robertson/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

The veteran was homeless at the time, and had struggled with addiction for several years. He, along with McClure and DAmico, were accused of burning through the money in just months. He was accused of spending thousands on drugs, while the former couple allegedly bought a car, designer bags and lavish vacations.

Bobbitts in-patient drug program, a condition of his drug court sentencing, is expected to last between three and nine months.

McClure and DAmico have been charged in Burlington County as well, and their cases ongoing.

Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A Cumberland County man faces a potential life sentence after a federal jury convicted him of robbing three South Jersey banks at gunpoint and firing on a customer in one incident, the U.S. Attorneys Office announced Friday.

Following a two-week trial, the jury deliberated for six hours before convicting Stephan Byrd, 44, of Vineland, on seven counts related to the 2014 robberies in which a total of more than $22,000 was stolen.

Byrd first robbed an Ocean City Home Bank in Mays Landing on June 7, 2014.

He was joined by another man, who previously pleaded guilty, when the pair robbed a Newfield National Bank branch in Vineland on July 19, 2014. Byrd vaulted bank counters to reach tellers and their cash drawers, authorities said. The $10,297 they took contained dye packs which exploded as the pair fled.

Byrd was solo again when he held up Newfield National Bank in Malaga on July 21, 2014, and made off with $6,139. In that incident, a customer followed him from the bank into a nearby wooded area in an effort to get identifying information. Byrd fired a shot in the customers direction, officials said. No one was injured.

Byrd was convicted on three counts of bank robbery, two counts of using a firearm in the furtherance of a bank robbery, one count of discharging a firearm during a bank robbery and a count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

He faces a mandatory minimum of 24 years in prison and a potential maximum of life behind bars when hes sentenced July 18.

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. Find NJ.com on Facebook. Have a tip? Tell us: nj.com/tips.

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A criminal investigation remains pending eight months after the death of an inmate who was in a straightjacket at the Essex County jail last year, according to a report.

Lucas Vieira, 41, of Newark, managed to hang himself even though he was restrained. Vieiras brother has filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

The pending criminal investigation was revealed in documents obtained by WNYC in an open public records request.

The suit filed by Vieiras family seeks damages in excess of $1 million for allegedly violating his civil rights. It alleges that the intake process and questionnaire was not thorough enough to identify the treatment needed for Vieira, who was addicted to heroin. The jail and health staff also failed to properly monitor Vieira before his suicide, the complaint says.

The suit, filed by Andre Vieira on Lucas behalf, names Essex County, ex-warden Charles Green and CFG Health Systems, which manages medical and behavioral healthcare at 15 correctional facilities in New Jersey including ECCF, according to its website.

Another inmate died at the jail last month. Jose Recoba-Morales, was being held in the facility on drug charges.

As WNYC reported last year, the number of jail suicides is difficult to count. But in 2014, the most recent year with available data from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 34 jail deaths (from all causes) across the state. In 2013, there were 23.

A spokeswoman for the Essex County Prosecutors Office couldnt immediately be reached by NJ Advance Media on Friday morning. She told WNYC that all deaths at the jail are investigated but declined to comment further because the probe remains ongoing.

NJ Advance Media staff writer Joe Brandt contributed to this report.

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A Belleville man who admitted to being on heroin before he crashed into and killed a pregnant woman took a plea deal that calls for him to spend 10 years in prison, a deal that a judge made official Friday in Superior Court in Essex County.

Anthony V. Casale Jr. was sentenced to seven years for vehicular homicide and a consecutive three-year term for assault by auto for the death of Megan Villanella, of Verona.

Casale Jr. was driving his mothers car on March 3, 2017, when he hit Villanella and her brother, Derek Longo, who were standing on a sidewalk in Verona waiting for a bus to take them into New York City, where they both worked.

Family of Megan Villanella

Not knowing his sister had been killed at the time, Longo woke up in a hospital with an assortment of internal injuries, broken bones, scrapes and a concussion.

"We got out of the car that morning and the last thing I remember is turning around and looking for Megan to come. I will be looking back, for Megan, to come, forever, Longo said in court Friday, before Essex County Judge Michael L. Ravin.

Longo said 10 years for Casale was not enough, and railed against a broken justice system.

Facing the possibility of this man walking free, a man who destroyed the future we envision and worked hard to obtain or sitting in a cell, I take the cell," Longo said.

Villanellas mother, Connie Longo, agreed with her son as for reasons why the family agreed with Essex County prosecutors decision to make the plea deal instead of taking the case to trial.

Since Casale was arrested at the scene of the accident, Villanellas family has attended every court appearance.

During the course of the case, Casale initially pleaded not guilty and disputed police reports that he was nodding off at the scene. Police also reported finding Casale at the scene with glassy eyes and a dried white substance on his lips.

Casales lawyer, David Bruno, said his client was praying at the crash scene.

Or was he praying for himself so he could live another day to take heroin again and continue his self-absorbed life?, Connie Longo asked in court. At the end of the day, it doesnt matter why he was praying. My daughter and granddaughter are gone and we will not see our daughter again or get to meet and hold our granddaughter.

Connie Longo also read a statement for Villanellas unborn child, who they named Adaline Grace Villanella.

She would have been James and Megan Villanellas second child.

In court, James Villanella talked about his wife, their nearly 10-year marriage and the relentless journey the two took to conceive their first child.

Is this justice? Of course not., he said.

"My wife and daughter are gone forever and the defendant will be free before his 40th birthday. Nothing is going to bring back Isabelles mother and the sister she never met, James Villanella in court.

While I supported Megan as she injected herself with good faith to create life, the defendants family enabled him as he injected heroin to ultimately destroy life," James Villanella said.

Taylor Tiamoyo Harris may be reached at tharris@njadvancemedia.com. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday signed into law the hard-fought Aid in Dying legislation that will give New Jersey adults with fewer than six months to live the right to request their doctor prescribe a lethal dose of medication to cut short weeks or even days of suffering.

After seven years of sorrowful and often bitter debate between medical professionals, religious leaders and advocates for the sick and people with disabilities, New Jersey joins California, Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington state, Hawaii and Montana with aid in dying laws. It is also legal in Washington D.C.

Murphy, a Democrat, signed the law (A1504) in a private ceremony with state Assemblyman John Burzichelli, D-Burlington, the bills prime sponsor and driving force, and some of the bills most vocal advocates.

Melissa Wilcox, who is living with terminal lung cancer, and her sister Laurie Wilcox, whose rheumatoid arthritis require she wear an oxygen tank most of the day, said they were thrilled to be invited to attend the emotional ceremony. The sisters, who both worked as nurses, said they became advocates after they watched their mother die very painfully from lung cancer five years ago.

We were at her bedside, and even as nurses, we could not provide her relief, said Laurie Wilcox of Clark.

She was gasping for breath the last eight days of her life, even with the oxygen, Melissa Wilcox of Bordentown said, adding, We find a lot of comfort there will be this law for us, and other people.

Murphy thanked Burzichelli for steering us down this long, difficult road," and legislators for their courage in passing the bill.

By signing this bill today, we are providing terminally ill patients and their families with the humanity, dignity, and respect that they so richly deserve at the most difficult times any of us will face, the governor said in a statement after the signing ceremony.

Murphy signed it a few weeks after Democratic-controlled state Legislature passed the measure.

With assistance from the national nonprofit organization that promotes aid in dying laws, Compassion and Choices, supporters convinced legislators that people wanted the right to decide how they would live their final days.

Opponents argued the law cheapens life and will make the sickest and frailest people feel obliged to give up in order to spare their loved ones a painful and expensive end. Avoiding pain is the sixth most common reason Oregonians cited for using law. The loss of autonomy, the ability to enjoy life and dignity were mentioned more often, according to that states annual report on its death with dignity law.

With the signing of this bill to legalize assisted suicide, many vulnerable New Jerseyans are now at risk of deadly harm through mistakes, coercion, and abuse," said Matt Valliere, executive director of the Patients Rights Action Fund, which works to block aid in dying laws. People with disabilities, the economically disadvantaged, and terminally ill patients are at greatest risk - dangerous public policies often ignore the voices of the vulnerable.

In New Jersey, the law applies to adults who have received a terminal diagnosis, defined as an incurable, irreversible and medically confirmed disease that will end the persons life within six months.

The legislation states disabilities are not considered terminal illnesses, addressing a worry that physically or mentally challenged people would be vulnerable to coercion. Anyone who coerces a patient into requesting or taking the medication would face up to three to five years in prison, a $15,000 or both.

Patients will have to verbally ask their doctor twice over the span of 15 days, during which time patients would also need to submit a request in writing, stating they had been fully informed of palliative care, pain control and other alternatives. A second physician would need to verify the diagnosis.

Either physician who is unsure about the patients mental capacity may refer the patient to a psychiatrist, psychologist or a clinical social worker, according to the bill. The patient would not receive the prescription unless the mental health professional wrote a letter verifying the patients mental capacity.

The written declaration would need to be witnessed by two people who attest the person is acting voluntarily. One of the two must not be a relative or entitled to any portion of the patients estate, or be the persons doctor or nursing home employee.

The law will take effect Aug. 1.

Also joining Murphy at the bill signing in Trenton was the widower of Brittany Maynard, whose decision to move from California to Oregon when she was dying from brain cancer called attention to death with dignity laws.

My wife spoke up so terminally ill New Jerseyans in her predicament would not have to leave their home like we did just to secure the option of a gentle dying process, said Dan Diaz, an advocate who works with Compassion and Choices. New Jersey becomes the fifth state in the five years since her death to pass this vitally important legislation. With immense pride in her legacy, I am very thankful to the New Jersey legislators who passed this law without excessive regulations that would prevent dying New Jerseyans from using this option.

Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio.
Perennial candidate Pat Waiters was certified to run against Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise in Junes Democratic primary after a petition challenge from the Hudson County Democratic Organization nearly got her thrown off the ballot.

Waiters, 56, told The Jersey Journal she smells desperation coming from the HCDO, which is chaired by DeGises daughter, Amy. The HCDO has endorsed Tom DeGise in the race. Waiters is his only challenger.

You know they're going to jump to his defense, Waiters said. I know the county. I know they play these games.

County Clerk E. Junior Maldonado said Waiters delivered dozens more signatures than the 100 she needed to win a spot on Junes ballot, but the HCDO challenge left her with only 97 valid signatures. On Thursday she provided documentation that three of the challenged signatures were valid, Maldonado said, so he certified her for Junes primary.

HCDO spokesman Phil Swibinski said Waiters petitions had numerous deficiencies and the party challenged them to protect to integrity of the electoral process.

Waiters, a security worker for Hobokens school district, said some of the challenged signatures were collected from people she knows are registered voters, like her son and nephew.

Tom DeGise, 68, is heavily favored to win in June (he is seeking a fifth full term in November against Republican Kennith Gonzalez). When he last ran for re-election in 2015, he faced no Democratic challenger and defeated his GOP opponent by winning 82 percent of the vote.

Asked if the petition challenge meant DeGises team is concerned about Waiters candidacy, Swibinski said, She is of course welcome to run for any office she chooses, and the county executive and his team are going to remain focused on delivering excellent results for Hudson County residents."

Citing DeGises fundraising prowess and his support from the countys political machine, Waiters said shes stunned the HCDO would try to get little old Pat Waiters booted from the ballot.

The people should have another option, she said. If you dont take out your garbage it's going to stink. We have to get them out of there.

Waiters lost races for Hobokens school board last year and in 2015. In 2017, she challenged Freeholder Anthony Romano in the Democratic primary and won 20 percent of the vote to Romanos 80 percent.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.
JERSEY CITY  The mother of a Jersey City high school student gunned down in a drive-by shooting sobbed as the two men charged with his murder were ordered detained through the course of their prosecution Friday.

The courtroom was packed with family members and Ferris High schoolmates of Jayden Fondeur, 17, as Isaiah Huggins, 19, and Rayquan Carmichael, 18, both of Jersey City, appeared before Hudson County Superior Court Judge Paul DePascale.

Sheriffs officers had to put some of those in court on Fondeurs behalf in the jury box because they had already filled all the courtroom benches behind the prosecution table. The victims mother sat at the far end of the jury box close to the judge and cried during the two hearings.

A 16-year-old has also been charged in the homicide and his defense attorney, James Lisa, said of his client that Its a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

While maintaining his clients innocence, Lisa sympathized with Fondeurs family. The young man who was killed lost everything he had and everything he would have. There are no words to describe the sense of loss the family is feeling.

At the hearing, the defense attorneys did not contest the states probable cause for the charges, nor did they contest the states motion to detain the defendants. The matter will now be presented to the grand jury.

Security video footage of the shooting shows a car passing on Old Bergen Road as more than a dozen people  some whom are standing in front of a store and others who are across the street  react to the gunfire. It is not clear where the gunfire is coming from in the video.

Jayden, who had just walked into the street and then back to the sidewalk, is seen ducking before falling to the ground. In the seconds afterward, two people can be seen jumping over his body as they fled the gunfire.

Huggins was acquitted of all charges, including murder, in January 2018 after being charged with fatally shooting 17-year-old Rondell Rush in April 2016.

Neither Huggins or Carmichael said anything during their brief detention hearings in the Hudson County Administration Building in Jersey City. All three defendants are charged with murder and gun offenses. Possible sentences in family court are far less than those in the criminal division.
An iconic New Jersey landmark has been spotted in an entry for United Airlines Her Art Here contest, which asked women artists to design an image that will appear on a United Boeing 757.

Clintons historic Red Mill, made an appearance in one of the design submissions, to the joy of area residents.

Oh, I was going for the previous one that showed the Statue of Liberty & Golden Gate Bridge. Then I scroll down & see The Red Mill in Clinton, NJ. Not known to the majority of people (nationally). But, that is the winner for me! one Facebook commenter posted.

Clinton Mayor Janice Kovach said she was very excited that the Red Mill is being recognized.

The Red Mill is a key piece of iconic New Jersey places, anything that represents not just the past but the future of the community is important. Kovach said.

Corinne A. is a New Jersey native who is studying illustration at Ringling College of Art and Design. Her design is a... Posted by United on Thursday, April 11, 2019

The artist, Corrine Antonelli, is a sophomore at Ringling College of Art and Design studying illustration, and is from Washington Township.

Corinne hopes it serves as an example to young girls around the world who are interested in a career in the arts that anything is possible, according to a post on Uniteds Facebook page.

The Red Mill has always been iconic to me. I grew up taking art classes at the Hunterdon Art Museum and saw it as an opportunity to pay tribute to the town," Antonelli said. Most people dont know New Jersey for its beauty so including it as a symbol for our state was key in the design.

Antonelli said she entered the contest to practice her design skills as if United was a client of hers, and never imagined she would make it this far in contest.

Seeing our town represented on this plane Im sure would make many happy, Antonelli said. She is excited to have the support of her college and everyone back home.

Uniteds contest is running through two regions, California and New York/New Jersey. The voting period for the contest ends April 19. A winner will be selected from each region, according to United.

The Red Mill Museum has a collection of 40,000 artifacts and hosts a wide variety of educational and outreach programs for the Hunterdon County area.

Go to hub.united.com/her-art-here-voting/ to cast your vote.

Olivia Rizzo may be reached at orizzo@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @LivRizz. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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A New Jersey man accused of sexually assaulting a teenage waitress at his own wedding in Pennsylvania last fall appeared in court Thursday with his wife.

A judge upheld charges of of false imprisonment, corruption of minors, indecent assault and indecent exposure against Matthew Aimers, 31, of Willingboro, according to court records.

Charges of harassment, terroristic threats, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness that followed an alleged fight at the conclusion of the reception have been withdrawn by prosecutors.

Aimers attorney told reporters outside court on Thursday his client is innocent of the charges.

If that young man committed a crime at his reception, Dr. Phil couldnt fix his marriage, attorney Louis Busico said. The fact that shes with him tells you hes an innocent man.

NBCNewYork.com reported the judge cleared the Bucks County courtroom in an attempt to protect the identity of the alleged victim. Earlier, Aimers and his wife were holding hands as they walked from the parking to to the courthouse.

The young server rejected Aimers repeated advances at the Nov. 25 wedding at Northampton Valley Country Club in Richboro, officials said. After asking her to go outside and make out, Aimers later allegedly offered her $100. Later, he followed her into the womens bathroom where he pulled her into an empty stall, exposed himself and sexually assaulted her, according to a criminal affidavit.

Aimers was also in the middle of a fight that broke out near the conclusion of the reception when an employee told him he couldnt bring alcohol outside, police said at the time. He punched the worker and then got into a scrum with police when he ignored an officers commands while attempting to board a shuttle bus, authorities said.

Matthew Aimers

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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New Jerseys eight-year-old law requiring public employees to live in the state is a failed experiment and it needs to be eliminated, according to the top Republican in the state Senate.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean Jr., R-Union, said he is pushing to lift all restrictions on where state employees  from public school teachers to state agency workers to local municipal employees -- can live.

I dont think the state should be building walls to keep people in, Kean said Friday.

The state law, called the New Jersey First Act," was signed in 2011 by Gov. Chris Christie. It requires that nearly all state, county, local and school district employees hired after 2011 live in New Jersey or move here within a year of being hired.

At the time, the law had broad support in the state Legislature. If you are being paid by New Jersey taxpayers, you should pay state and local taxes and be a state resident, Christie and other supporters said.

This will help to support our workforce, while at the same time keeping our tax dollars in the state. This is not only sound public policy, but it makes good economic sense, then-state Sen. Donald Norcross (D-Camden), one of the bills sponsors, said at the time.

However, an NJ Advance Media analysis of state records published Thursday found at least 2,310 public employees have bypassed the law and gotten a pass to live out of state because they successfully applied for exemptions.

The state Employee Residency Review Committee, a small board that meets in Trenton, has approved exemptions for the majority of public employees who have come before them asking to move out of New Jersey for health or financial reasons or because the worker had a letter from a boss saying they were critical in their workplace.

In most cases, the public workers asked to live in Pennsylvania or New York.

In 2012, the first full year the law was in effect, the committee voted to grant about 71 percent of applicants requests for exemptions, NJ Advance Medias analysis found. So far this year, the committee has voted to approve 90 percent of requests.

Kean said the review committees hearings, where public workers often burst into tears revealing the details of their personal lives to ask to move out of state, are a sign its time to take the law off the books.

Requiring people to publicly explain the complex details of their divorces, financial difficulties, family problems and health diagnoses in a public meeting before a bureaucratic committee in order to plead for permission to move across a river is an antiquated, almost barbaric way to treat modern workers, Kean said.

He said he is also worried the law is keeping good candidates for applying for teaching positions, state agency jobs and other public employee positions because the state would dictate where they must live.

A lot of people just dont apply, Kean said.

Keans bill (S508) calling for the elimination of the residency law was introduced last year, but has not moved forward in the state Senate. A companion bill, A3580, is also pending in the assembly.

Similar proposals to kill the New Jersey First Act have failed in the past.

Keans proposed legislation says the requirement for public employees to live in New Jersey should only apply to the governor, state lawmakers, the heads of state agencies and judges. Every other public employee would be free to live where they want.

There have been other successful challenges to the New Jersey First law. Last year, the residency rule was blamed as part of the reason NJ Transit had trouble hiring enough engineers to keep its trains running.

In September, the state Employee Residency Review Committee voted with the support of lawmakers to approve a blanket exemption for all NJ Transit employees in mission essential jobs, including train engineers, bus drivers, conductors and rail maintenance workers.

The law has also been cited in a lawsuit against Rutgers University challenging whether four appointed members of the Rutgers Board of Governors should lose their unpaid positions because they live outside of New Jersey. The case, which is still pending, has raised questions about whether the residency law should apply to volunteers, including those appointed to state boards, in addition to paid public employees.

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.

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Two men are wanted for questioning in connection with the massive forest fire that burned through over 11,000 acres of the Pine Barrens earlier this month.

The New Jersey State Police released a photo of two men standing next to Jeeps with a huge plume of smoke rising in the background and said they may have information about the fire.

Investigators have said the blaze, which began on March 30 in the Penn State Forest, was likely caused by human activity in an area of the forest known for illegal bonfires.

***PLEASE SHARE*** The New Jersey State Police is seeking the public's assistance with identifying two men wanted in... Posted by New Jersey State Police on Thursday, April 11, 2019

Officials have declined to say whether they thought the fire was intentional or accidental.

The fire was contained on April 1 after it scorched 11,638 acres and was one of the larger forest fires New Jersey has seen in recent years.

Anyone who could help identify the men was asked to contact New Jersey State Police Detective Sgt. First Class Shaun Georgeson of Tuckerton Station at 609-296-3132.

Chris Sheldon may be reached at csheldon@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrisrsheldon Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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Can Americans still have a sensible and friendly political discussion across the partisan divide? The answer is yes, and we intend to prove it. Julie Roginsky, a Democrat, and Mike DuHaime, a Republican, are consultants who have worked on opposite teams for their entire careers yet have remained friends throughout. Here, they discuss the weeks events, with prompts from Dave DAlessandro of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board.

Q. Rutgers/FDU released a poll this week, and our takeaway was how unopinionated New Jerseyans are. The percentage of respondents who have NO opinion of Gov. Murphy (17), Sen. Sweeney (46), Sen. Booker (20) and Sen. Menendez (29) seemed curiously high, and 1 in 5 dont even know who Sweeney is. Is this predictable, or should we rethink our career choices?

Roginsky: Are you talking about that moment at 3 AM when you are lying awake at night, wondering what life decision got you to this place? I can't help you with that. But I can tell you that it's notoriously difficult for any elected official to gain real name recognition in New Jersey. Our print media is decimated, New York and Philadelphia television stations do a poor job of covering us and President Trump is sucking all the energy out of every news cycle. These results are predictable, if somewhat depressing.

DuHaime: As Julie said, this is the nature of being the only state in America without its own major television media market. If you live in North or Central Jersey, you hear much more about Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio than you do about Gov. Murphy. The same is true in South Jersey regarding Philadelphia. The decline in circulation for New Jersey daily newspapers covering state politics has also hurt public awareness. This gives Democrats and incumbents a distinct advantage in statewide elections. It is very hard for a challenger to become known statewide without $15 million-plus to spend on paid advertising.

Q. Senator Booker introduced a bill that would create a commission that explores reparations for the descendants of slaves. Could that get any traction?

Roginsky: It is certainly getting traction on the left. I can't imagine that it would gain any traction in a Senate controlled by Mitch McConnell.

DuHaime: It seems to just be a reaction to whats being pushed on the campaign trail. It may get traction on the left, but it is unlikely to get any traction in the US Senate as Julie said.

Q. The President dumped another cabinet member, DHS Secretary Nielsen, apparently because she wasnt tough enough on border enforcement. How does that jibe with 92,000 migrants being detained in March (a 12-year high), and where does Trump immigration policy go from here?

Roginsky: I'm not a big believer in the afterlife but if one does exist, Nielsen will have a lot to answer for. On her watch, children were separated from their parents, who did nothing more than follow the law by presenting themselves at the border as asylum seekers. Toddlers had to appear on their own in court to plead their cases. Detained kids continue to be held under brutal conditions, which will affect them psychologically for the rest of their lives. And yet, she is still not radical enough for this president. Working together with Congress to reform immigration is not the point for this cabal. Cruelty is the point. One day, in the not too distant future, we will look back at this time with horror at how we have betrayed our ideals.

DuHaime: Well, if you accept the position of DHS Secretary, you better accept that immigration is perhaps the highest priority for this President, and he will expect fierce action. I disagree with the Presidents rhetoric on immigration and the policy choices outlined here. Also, I dont think firing by tweet is a good way to manage the cabinet. All that said, he is the President and has every right to bring in someone new to implement his policy choices if he feels shes not up to the job.

Q. William Barr, who once said the Uranium One deal deserved more scrutiny than Russian collusion, rolled a grenade into his Congressional hearing by suggesting that the FBI probably spied on the Trump campaign, but that he has no evidence to support it. What do you take from this?

Roginsky: The chief law enforcement officer of the United States is no better than a 4Chan conspiracy theorist. What next, is he going to investigate Sandy Hook parents for being paid actors? This is how much Donald Trump has debased every single institution in the United States. As I often say, Vladimir Putin must be laughing over his blinis every morning.

DuHaime: I just wish all the insinuation and speculation would stop. Lets release the report, see whats in it, yell at each other for a few weeks, and then move on.

Q. Were days away from the release of a smudged-out Mueller Report. Heres a riddle: Will the report contain more scandalous acts that arent prosecutable crimes, or more crimes that Americans wont find particularly scandalous?

Roginsky: I fear that we have become anesthetized to scandal under this administration. There is already plenty we know that would have sunk any other administration. I'm still waiting for this president to acknowledge the findings of the report that his attorney general did deign to make public: Russia meddled in our election and should be called out for it by our commander in chief. Sadly, he is too busy going after the media and others to take a stand on behalf of American democracy.

DuHaime: My guess is there will be incidents that may be embarrassing or political fodder, but not crimes. If they were, they would be prosecuted. Julie says the voters are numb, but I think they simply dont care about the soap opera any more. They care about jobs, taxes and issues that impact their everyday lives, not politicians yelling at each other.

Q. At a dinner where they served buffalo tongue, Gov. Christie called Gov. Murphy a joker for using rhetorical devices, claimed Murphy is not one of us because hes only lived in New Jersey for two decades, and suggested that Murphys geniality runs contrary to accomplishments for our state. The guy can defend his record, but is there a point to this ad-hominem stuff?

Roginsky: I guarantee you that Governor Christie made Governor Murphys day with these attacks. Here is a man with a 21% approval rating reminding New Jerseyans what the alternative to Governor Murphy can be. I hope he keeps it up all through the election. It will help Democrats pick up a few legislative seats along the way by reminding voters about all the ways Assembly Republicans were aligned with the least popular governor in a generation.

DuHaime: Gov. Christie won re-election with 61% of the vote. Thats the number that matters. As far as Gov. Murphy is concerned, he hasnt found a problem he cant blame on someone else  his own DOT commissioner for snow removal, some unnamed staffer for hiring scandals and his fellow Democrats in the Legislature for not raising enough taxes or legalizing pot. After years of attacks through the campaign and the first 15 months in office, Gov. Christie has a right to compare their records. Gov. Christie was a far more consequential and effective governor than Gov. Murphy is turning out to be. Even Sen. Weinberg, hardly a fan of Gov. Christie, said its time for the Murphy administration to stop shifting blame and start taking responsibility.

Roginsky: I am old enough to remember when Governor Christie blamed Governor Corzine for all his ills way into his second term. Governor Christie obviously has every right to defend himself  but if he is out to hurt Governor Murphy, injecting himself into the discussion only helps Governor Murphy contrast himself with an extremely unpopular predecessor.
William Barr, United States attorney general and Fred Flintstone cos-player, dropped a delightful little morsel of red meat for the froth-mouthed conspiracy junkies that occupy the far right of the Republican party. During testimony before a House committee, he stated that he believes Donald Trumps oft repeated, never substantiated claim that he was spied on during the campaign.

Trump says it was an Obama-led attempt to topple a potential Trump regime. Barr, who, it turns out, is not the adult in the room we hoped for but yet another flunky willing to trade his dignity for influence, fed the presidents delusion with his comments and an ensuing pledge to investigate wrongdoing in the U.S. Intelligence committee.

There was, in fact, an active investigation into the Trump campaign. We know this because everyone who worked for it has been convicted of a felony. Michael Flynn, Paul Mananfort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen and Geoerge Papadopoulos to name but a few. We also know that the presidents son and son in law were meeting with Russians who had promised to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton. Investigating, charging and convicting criminals committing crimes is not spying.

Of course, Barr offered no evidence, or the suggestion that evidence exists, to back up his belief. The same way he has not yet provided the actual Mueller report to back up his belief that no wrongdoing occurred. I have a baseless theory of my own: William Barr is QAnon.

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A 24-year-old man was killed in Patersons first shooting homicide of the year, which came during an outburst of gun violence that left at least three other people wounded in the states third largest city Thursday, according to officials and reports.

Police found the man, along with a 21-year-old man, shot around 3:30 p.m. near Circle Avenue and Temple Street, according to the Passaic County Prosecutors Office. Emergency crews rushed the city residents to Saint Josephs Regional Medical Center, where the older man died.

A shooting about two hours later on Rosa Parks Boulevard left two other people injured, according to NorthJersey.com. Officials did not immediately release information on that incident.

It was unclear if the two shootings were linked.
A special task force investigating New Jerseys troubled Economic Development Authority says it uncovered evidence of unregistered lobbying in connection with the states tax incentive program and has referred the matter to law enforcement.

A spokesman for the task force would not provide any details on the nature of the alleged offense, who was being investigated, or where the matter had been referred to for criminal investigation. The task forces special counsel said only that unregistered lobbying had materially affected the legislation and regulations governing New Jerseys tax incentives granted to businesses.

Attorney Jim Walden, who serves as special counsel to the task force, outlined the evidence of those potential criminal violations in a referral letter which was sent on Thursday.

How those state EDA grants are awarded, and the regulations governing eligibility, can mean significant financial benefits to companies that qualify for those tax credits. The EDA program has given out tax credit incentives worth $11 billion since its inception.

Meanwhile, one unnamed company that was the beneficiary of an EDA incentive grant has voluntarily come forward to admit it was not in compliance with program requirements, and agreed to repay the payments it has received, saving taxpayers $1.5 million, officials disclosed.

The task force was formed by Gov. Phil Murphy in the wake of an audit by the state comptroller in January, which sharply criticized the EDAs oversight of the states economic incentive program that hat offers lucrative tax credits to lure businesses to New Jersey, encourage them to stay or expand their operations.

But in that audit, the comptroller said the EDA may have improperly awarded, miscalculated, overstated and overpaid tax credits to a number of unidentified companies that it could not verify had created the jobs that were promised.

It also said the agency could not evaluate whether its inventive programs generated any economic benefits to the state. In fact, the audit said the EDA certified projects and released tax credits, in violation of the law, even when projects did not meet the requirements.

The task force last month began a series of public hearings into the EDA grants, which was highlighted by the testimony of a whistleblower. She claimed that the company she had worked for  later revealed to be Jackson Hewitt Tax Services  had been awarded a $2.67 million state grant after falsely claiming it was considering a move out of the state and planning to take those jobs to New York and Florida.

A 2015 lawsuit, meanwhile, revealed that political pressure was also put on the EDA by former Gov. Chris Christies administration to approve hundreds of millions in subsidies. In that lawsuit, another whistleblower claimed that he was ordered to change data to help companies obtain state tax breaks.

"We are going to follow the facts in a search for the truth, said Ronald Chen, chairman of the governors EDA task force, said in a statement. "Whether that means recertifying companies, seeking voluntary payments and terminations, or making referrals, we plan to be thorough, objective and efficient.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL. Facebook: @TedSherman.reporter. Find NJ.com on Facebook.

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While a 26-year-old man held police at bay for several hours during a January standoff in South Jersey, prosecutors say he tried to draw officers away from the scene by calling 911 and reporting a school shooting and a bomb threat.

Eric S. Smith, Jr., of Quinton Township, was indicted this week on charges including attempted murder after firing on police and barricading himself in an apartment in Salem on Jan. 23.

Members of the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force had come to his girlfriends East Broadway apartment looking for Smith over an incident from Jan. 7 when he allegedly smashed into a Salem police car and ran from a traffic stop.

That incident came hours before he was scheduled to face trial in another case on drug and weapons charged. He was also sought on a warrant for missing that court date.

As police entered the apartment, Smith climbed out a window and onto the roof, where he allegedly fired at an officer. The officer returned fire, but no one was struck. Smith then entered an adjoining apartment via another window and barricaded himself for three hours.

During that time, prosecutors allege in the 11-count indictment that Smith called 911 to report someone armed with a gun was at a nearby school and about to shoot 10 kids."

Hes also accused of making another call to report that he was at a Pats Pizzeria down the street from the standoff. Smith claimed he had a bomb on him which was about to blow and that everyone needs to back away from East Broadway, according to the indictment.

These attempted diversions failed and Smith eventually surrendered. Before doing so, prosecutors allege he hid a Glock 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun under the floorboards in the apartment.

Smith claimed he didnt have a gun and never fired on police.

To top it off, the indictment also states the gun was stolen from a Millville home in 2016.

In addition to the attempted murder charge, Smiths other charges include aggravated assault on police officers, resisting arrest, tampering with physical evidence, false public alarm, receiving stolen property and various weapons offenses.

He was also indicted last month on aggravated assault and eluding charges related to the Jan. 7 incident.

In that case, police stopped Smiths car at a Salem gas station for a tinted window violation. When an officer smelled marijuana in the vehicle, he called for backup. Officers say Smith then revved his engine, put his car in reverse and smashed into a police car and a gas pump before speeding off.

As he was being led out of the courtroom following a February detention hearing on his charges, Smith remarked I asked for justice, but the system is unjust."

Smith remains housed in Salem County Correctional Facility.

Eric S. Smith Jr., 26, of Quinton Township, appears before Superior Court Judge John Eastlack for a detention hearing on Friday, Feb. 8, 2019. Smith is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault and various weapons offenses.Joe Warner | For NJ Advance Media

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. 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.
Someone is burning vacant houses in a South Jersey town and officials hope a reward will help smoke out the culprit.

Since New Years Eve, Salem City firefighters have responded to six suspicious fires in vacant homes. City police are offering a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.

The first fire was on Walnut Street, followed by January fires on Thompson, Sinnickson and Union streets. The latest two were March 10 on Elm Street and March 30 at another house on Sinnickson. Some of the houses were dilapidated structures, while others were habitable, but unoccupied at the time.

No injuries have been reported.

One of the fires occurred in a duplex in which the other half was occupied, but that side suffered no damage, Salem Fire Chief Fred Ayars said.

Salem police, the Salem County Prosecutors Office and the state fire marshals office are investigating the incidents.

Law enforcement is deploying all resources and personnel to make arrests in these cases, Salem County Prosecutor John Lenahan said this week. Aside from the property destroyed, fortunately there has been no loss of life. Law enforcement will work continuously to arrest and convict those involved in the arsons.

If these fires continue, officials worry their luck may not hold out when it comes to injuries.

Eventually, someone is going to get hurt or worse, Ayars said.

Even though the buildings may be vacant, he said that firefighters responding to these scenes must still search them.

In Salem, we have homeless people who squat in some of these structures, Ayars said.

In addition to the dangers to residents, he pointed out the risks to emergency responders.

Firefighting is an ultra-hazardous occupation and when someone intentionally does this, and is putting my firefighters in harms way, its very upsetting, Ayars said. Its just an extremely upsetting situation to know there is a person or group of people that are doing this on purpose and intentionally putting us in harms way.

Officials didnt want to give away many details about the blazes, including any type of accelerant used, but Salem Police Chief John A. Pelura III asked anyone with information to contact authoirities.

Contact the departments detective unit at 856-935-0033 or submit an anonymous tip by calling 856-935-2TIP.

Salem firefighters battle a blaze at a vacant home on Dec. 31, 2018. (Photo by Karen L. Ayars)

Matt Gray may be reached at mgray@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattGraySJT. 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 former Hackettstown teacher may avoid prison after admitting he sexually assaulted a student over two years. But he will never teach in New Jersey again.

On Wednesday, almost four years after his arrest, 45-year-old Michael Martino, 45, of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty in Warren County to one count of second-degree sexual assault.

In exchange for the plea, prosecutors will recommend Martino, who taught math at Hackettstown High School, serve a five-year suspended sentence. That means that under the agreement, Martino will not go to state prison unless a psychological examination finds that his criminal behavior is repetitive and compulsive, the Warren County Prosecutors Office said in a news release Wednesday.

Regardless, Martino will register as a sex offender under Megans Law and be subject to parole supervision for the rest of his life.

Martino was removed from the Hackettstown school district midway through the 2014-15 school year and arrested that summer after months of investigation into reported abuse. Authorities determined the math teacher had had a sexual relationship with a student starting in 2009 when the girl was 16 and ending in 2011.

Martino was charged with one count each of sexual assault, endangering the welfare of a child and official misconduct, each of which could have carried a maximum 10-year sentence.

He denied any wrongdoing in his first court appearance, and he also argued against New Jerseys suspension of his teaching certification in 2017, saying that decision should have waited until the criminal case was resolved.

The objection is now moot. Under Wednesdays plea, Martino has agreed to forfeit all teaching licenses and is forever barred from working as an educator in New Jersey, the prosecutors office said.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveNovakLVL and Facebook. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Bed Bath & Beyond expects to close at least 40 stores this year, part of a plan to trim costs across its national footprint.

USA Today first reported the closure plans, which company leaders announced Wednesday (April 10) during an earnings call. In addition, Bed Bath & Beyond also expects to open 15 new stores. Its not yet clear whether any anticipated closures are in Louisiana. The company has yet to provide a detailed list of planned closures and openings.

During Wednesdays earnings call, Robyn DElia, Bed Bath & Beyonds chief financial officer, said the company has hired a third-party to review how much its paying to lease stores across its brands. Bed Bath & Beyond also owns Buy Buy Baby, Harmon Face Values and World Market.

As a result, DElia said the company expects to close a minimum of 40 stores in coming months, the majority of which will be Bed Bath & Beyond locations.

This number will grow unless we are able to negotiate more favorable lease terms with our landlords, DElia added.

Bed Bath & Beyond has 14 stores in Louisiana. Four are in the greater New Orleans area, including locations on Veterans Memorial Boulevard in Metairie, on Manhattan Boulevard in Harvey, on Northshore Boulevard in Slidell and off Highway 190 in Mandeville.

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The company operates about 1,500 stores total, including Bed Bath & Beyond, World Market and its other brands. About 990 of those are Bed Bath & Beyond stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada.

In its latest earnings report, Bed Bath & Beyond said sales for comparable periods were down 1.1 percent from 2017 to 2018. The company reported a net loss of $1.02 per share for last year. USA Today reports the retailer has seen some success in boosting sales at re-designed stores, which focused on improving the shopper experience.

Still, the retail closures continue. Citing a Coresight Research analysis, the USA Today report notes more than 6,500 retail stores are expected to close nationwide in 2019.

Read USA Todays full report.

Jennifer Larino covers residential real estate, retail, tourism and other consumer and business news for NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Reach her at jlarino@nola.com or 504-239-1424. Follow her on Twitter @jenlarino.
A Louisiana Alcohol and Tobacco Control official said the agency is concerned that its getting dragged into a property dispute between developer Sidney Torres and the nightclub tenant he wants to evict.

Vaso, at 500 Frenchmen St., was cited last month for serving alcohol to a minor. The agency has also opened an investigation into whether the business is in violation of liquor license rules requiring at least half of its revenue come from food sales. The two compliance checks  one for the food service issue and one for serving a minor alcohol  both stemmed from complaints Torres filed with the ATC.

Deputy ATC Commissioner Ernest Legier said in an email that the agency has received numerous complaints, written and verbal, and that each time, agents visited the restaurant and took appropriate action. Records provided to NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune show that an agent who visited the nightclub said that no food was located on the premises, even though the nightclub is licensed under a restaurant permit.

It will get bloody: Sidney Torres, Motwani family battle over Frenchmen real estate

ATC is now requiring Vaso to provide five months of invoices to determine whether the nightclub has been serving food. An attorney representing Vaso did not return a message seeking comment.

It is important to note with respect to Vaso that the property is the subject of an ownership dispute, Legier said in an email. In my opinion, city and state agencies are being used as weapons in this legal battle. The location has historically not been a problem location, and the recently cited violations are not consistent with a perpetual non-compliant permit holder.

Torres, who in October bought the building thats home to Vaso for $5.6 million, has installed cameras throughout the property and was alerted March 16 when ATC officials followed up on service to a minor violation. Torres said he began communicating with the agency about its enforcement, but he disputed the claim that hes weaponizing the agency in trying to evict Vaso.

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Musicians have concerns about Sidney Torres plans for Frenchmen Street nightclub

Using the ATC to get in the middle of a property dispute is a very unfair to say, Torres said. His main concern is Vaso losing its liquor license, Torres said, which could jeopardize his ability to rent to a future tenant.

As a business owner, if the location loses the license and it goes dormant for more than six months because were in litigation, then I lose the right to operate, Torres said. Then, the value of the property goes down.

Torres is battling on two fronts: He wants to evict Vaso so he can make improvements to the property and find a new tenant. But hes also in a dispute over Villavasos right of first refusal, which was part of the lease with the previous owner, Samantha and Kimberly Shankle.

Torres offer to the Shankles included an escalation clause that automatically allowed him to outbid anyone trying to acquire the property. He claims in court documents that Villavaso didnt submit required paperwork in time to exercise his lease rights.

After the sale, Torres claims in court papers that Villavaso attempted to get French Quarter real estate owners Kishore Mike and Aaron Motwani involved in an acquisition deal. Both the eviction and the lawsuit over Villavasos property rights are still tied up in Orleans Parish District Court, with a hearing date on summary judgment set for May 10.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referred to a follow-up inspection on a service to minors violation as a compliance check. Compliance checks refer only to a visit where the ATC checks whether servers are properly checking identification.
A bomb threat prompted the temporary evacuation of the Orleans Criminal District Courthouse Friday afternoon (April 12), authorities said.

The threat was made over the telephone, New Orleans police spokesman Aaron Looney said. NOPD had cleared the scene as of about 3:30 p.m., and deputies and other courthouse workers began filtering back inside.

Blake Arcuri, in-house counsel for OPSO, said shortly before 2:40 p.m. that the building on Tulane Avenue and Broad Street was in the process of being evacuated.

Shortly before 3 p.m., about a dozen sheriffs deputies, along with a couple of Clerk of Court employees, stood or sat on the steps the courthouse. About 15 minutes later., however, employees began to reenter the building.

The sheriffs office provides security for the court building.

No other information was immediately available.

Stay with NOLA.com for more information.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporter Heather Nolan contributed to this report.
The saga surrounding the Nanette Krentel murder on the North Shore has taken a strange turn, with the St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office now investigating the victims sister for trespassing Thursday (April 11) on the site where Krentel was found slain nearly two years ago.

Sheriffs spokesman Capt. Scott Lee confirmed Friday the department is investigating the matter involving Stephen Krentel and Wendy Watson.

Watson said she and a friend went to the location north of Lacombe where Krentel was found dead of a gunshot wound in the burned home she shared with husband and then-fire chief Stephen Krentel. She said she wanted to see a memorial that Stephen Krentel had erected at the site.

Watson admitted the two walked around a locked gate and past a surveillance camera to get onto the property north of Lacombe, but said other family members had been allowed on the property in the past. Because he (Stephen Krentel) doesnt live there. I didnt think it was a big deal, she said.

The two were on the property for about 12 minutes before leaving in a vehicle, Watson said, but they were intercepted by Krentel a short distance away. She said she told her friend to start hightailing it and that it led to a high-speed chase on Interstates 12 and 10 into Mississippi as they tried to elude Krentel.

Watson, who was staying at the Beau Rivage casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, said they no longer saw Krentel following in his pickup truck shortly after they entered Mississippi.

She said she texted Sheriff Randy Smith during the incident and later called a friend who works for the Sheriffs Office. The department later contacted her and told her to return to St. Tammany Parish and sign a misdemeanor summons for trespassing or face an arrest warrant, Watson said.

Instead, Watson consulted an attorney and returned to South Carolina, where she resides.

Stephen Krentel, who has been at odds with members of Nanette Krentels family since her unsolved death, declined Friday to talk about the details of the incident.

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I have nothing to say about it, he said. "Its nothing more than a simple incident of trespassing.

Capt. Lee said Friday afternoon the investigation was active and ongoing.

No arrest warrants have been obtained, he said.

Lee said the department did not receive any calls Thursday from motorists about a high-speed chase on the interstate.

The body of Nanette Krentel, 49, was found July 14, 2017, after fire destroyed the couples home. An autopsy later determined she died of a bullet wound to the head in what the coroners office ruled a homicide.

St. Tammany Parish Sheriffs Office ruled out Stephen Krentel, the former fire chief of St. Tammany Parishs Fire District 12, as a suspect in the case.

The department and State Fire Marshals Office continue to investigate the slaying.

Nanette Krentel remembered; North Shore slaying unsolved after 18 months
A New Orleans police officer who was shot on duty Thursday night has been released from the hospital, authorities said Friday morning (April 12).

He is now recovering at home, NOPD tweeted Friday at 9:30 a.m. Again, we want to thank everyone for your thoughts & prayers.

The officer was shot in the leg after responding to a call around 9:15 p.m. Thursday of a suspicious person at a Shell gas station in the 3300 block of Tulane Avenue in Mid-City. The officer was trying to pat down a man matching the description of the reported suspicious person, and was shot during a subsequent struggle, police said. A bullet lodged in his right calf, NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said.

The police officer has not been identified, but NOPD described him as a three-year veteran on the force and assigned to the NOPDs 1st District, which includes part of Mid-City.

The man arrested in the shooting was identified by police as 18-year-old Michael Baker. Baker was booked Friday morning on a charge of attempted murder of a police officer, according to court records.

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune reporters Laura McKnight and Diana Samuels contributed to this story.

Carlie Kollath Wells is a morning reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Have an early-bird tip? Send it to her: cwells@nola.com or Twitter @carlie_kollath.
Undergraduate students at Georgetown University have voted in support of a fee to benefit descendants of enslaved people sold by the university nearly 200 years ago, ABC News reports.

University records show Georgetown Jesuits initially kept 272 men, women and children on plantations in Maryland to sustain the university. Priests later sold those people for a total $115,000, or $3.3 million in todays dollars, to pay off the universitys debts as plantations became less profitable.

Georgetown students to vote on slavery reparations fund

Those sold in bondage to Louisiana residents Jesse Beatty and Henry Johnson were scattered across cotton and sugar plantations in Pointe Coupee, Iberville, and Ascension parishes. They went on to labor "under dreadful conditions," according to a September 2016 Georgetown report that called on university leaders to demand "reparative justice" for the institution's actions.

ABC reported the schools undergraduates voted Thursday (April 11) on a referendum to increase their $53,520 tuition by $27.20 per semester to create a fund benefiting descendants of the 272 enslaved people. Sixty-six percent of the 3,845 participating students voted yes, but the measure still must be approved by the university to go into effect.

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Todd Olson, vice president for student affairs at Georgetown, in a statement issued after the vote, lauded the engagement of their students, saying that they are making their voices heard and contributing to an important national conversation. Any student referendum provides a sense of the student bodys views on an issue. Student referendums help to express important student perspectives but do not create university policy and are not binding on the university.

Matt Hill, the universitys media relations manager, told ABC News in a statement the university has vowed to "carefully review the results of the referendum, and regardless of the outcome, will remain committed to engaging with students, Descendants, and the broader Georgetown community and addressing its historical relationship to slavery.

Read ABCs full story.

Georgetown enslaved her ancestors. Now she's an incoming student.

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
Loyola University New Orleans junior and West Bank resident Rana Thabata has been named a Truman Fellow, a distinguished honor awarded nationally each year to about 60 students pursuing careers in public service.

Thabata, a graduate of John Ehret High School in Marrero, is double majoring in economics and political science at Loyola, according to a university news release. She hopes one day to write educational policy for New Orleans public schools. She will be interning at the U.S. State Department in the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs this summer, according to the release.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, president of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, Thursday (April 11) announced the names of the 62 Truman Fellows from 58 colleges and universities nationwide, according to the Truman Foundation website. Truman Scholars receive a $30,000 graduate school scholarship and the opportunity to participate in professional development programming for public service leadership.

Need career inspiration? Here are 37 of the latest, unique programs at New Orleans universities

The foundation was created by Congress in 1975 to be the nations memorial to President Harry S. Truman. The award is considered one of the most prestigious national scholarships that supports the next generation of public service leaders.

Loyola stated Thabata is the fourth Loyola student and first woman Loyola student to win a Truman  and the first in 31 years. Notable figures among the last 3,260 Truman Scholars selected include Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, and Loyola President Tania Tetlow.

Tetlow Thursday surprised Thabata in class with the news and celebratory balloons. In a statement, Tetlow credited the scholarship for giving her the funds needed to afford Harvard Law School.

I am thrilled to see this award given to Rana Thabata, a Loyola student leader who continues to make a difference daily, according to Tetlow.

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Thabata is a Horatio Alger National Scholar, a Dell Scholar, and a B.A. Rudolph Undergraduate Public Service Scholar, Loyola stated. Shes a first-generation American and one of the 28 percent of first-generation college students at Loyola. Shes also a founding member and past president of Loyolas Multicultural Leadership Council.

New snake names honor Darwin, fire god, Loyola professor Bob Thomas

Thabata has also completed the Essentials Fellowship at the nonprofit 4.0 Schools, where she co-founded an after-school community to provide mentorship to low-income students seeking admission and scholarships to universities, Loyola stated.

I remember the frustration I felt as a student without an opportunity for input on my own education. Growing up without a venue for feedback, I want to prioritize listening to students from Jefferson and Orleans Parish school systems in order to make sure that their voices are heard, according to Thabata in a released statement.

Thabata was selected out of the 840 candidates nominated by 346 colleges, according to the Truman Foundation. She will receive her award in a ceremony at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence, Missouri, on May 26.

Saints owner Gayle Benson to give Loyola Universitys 2019 commencement speech

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
The Orleans Parish School Board administration wants to create an educational program for students who are expelled from middle school for the 2019-2020 school year beginning in August.

New Orleans has a total of five public alternative schools that enroll students who either participate there by choice after falling behind, or after being expelled from their home schools. Some of these programs, such as the Travis Hill School, enroll students in the juvenile justice system because students are awaiting trial or are convicted of a crime.

However, all of these programs only cater to high school-age children. Crescent Leadership Academy was the citys only alternative school for elementary and middle schoolers, but it closed in October 2018 due to difficulties in hiring, leadership, finances and enrollment.

New Orleans public school reforms increased expulsion rates: Tulane study

When we had the unfortunate collapse of CLA (Crescent Leadership Academy), we were able to have a salve mostly for our high school students, Amanda Aiken, OPSB's senior chief and portfolio officer, told OPSB members during a committee meeting Tuesday.

The OPSB last November had to revise its contract agreement with The NET alternative school to expand The NETs program to 8th graders of different ages who were given an alternative setting through the districts expulsion process.

However, according to OPSB spokeswoman Ambria Washington Wednesday (April 10), the district realized that in order to properly advance equity to all students, there needs to be a setting for middle school students in 7th and 8th grade, so the NET isnt just serving overage students.

After working with school leaders and parents, we have determined that a separate middle school alternative will be best moving forward for our system. The NET will continue to serve overage 8th (grade) students who need an alternative setting if it is determined that is the best fit, Washington stated.

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Black youth disproportionately fill Louisiana's alternative schools, report says

The district since January has convened meetings between leaders from 25 schools and OPSB staff to develop recommendations related to the best alternative programs for middle schoolers in need, Aiken said Tuesday. The group so far has determined the size of the program based on the number expelled students from the 2017-18 school year, which was 14 students in grade 7 and 21 students in grade 8, according to documents from the OPSBs accountability committee.

The district wants to host the students on one campus where students will receive academic and behavioral support that focuses on restorative approaches, rather than punitive action, and positive transitions into school, Aiken said.

The district plans to solicit proposals from nonprofits to find an operator for the program. The management contract will likely be similar to the one the OPSB signed with the national nonprofit Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings to manage Travis Hill.

The district is working to identify a funding source to cover a portion of the programs cost since the cost per day for each student will likely exceed the rate of Louisianas Minimum Foundation Program, the OPSB document stated. The Louisiana Department of Education uses the MFP formula to assign funding to school districts based on enrollment.

With this in mind, the OPSB plans to have the schools that expelled their students pay a per day rate for each student sent to the alternative site, the document stated. Pending approval of the OPSBs 2019-20 budget, Aiken said they will have $150,000 to support the program as well.

Grit and perseverance': Against all odds, 27 ReNEW students graduate from alternative school

Wilborn P. Nobles III is an education reporter based in New Orleans. He can be reached at wnobles@nola.com or on Twitter at @WilNobles.
John Callahan, surrounded by several longtime friends, stirred a large pot of boiling crawfish. His face reflected peace and contentment. The stresses of every day life were on hold, at least for a few hours.

This is a very relaxing day, Callahan said. Cooking crawfish, hanging out with your friends and seeing people you havent seen in a long time. Theres no stress. What more could you ask for?

Callahan and his friends were among the 28 teams, that averaged between five and seven members per team, who competed in St. Philip Neri Catholic Church and Schools 11th annual Crawfish Boil Cookoff on March 30.

The event was sponsored by the Mens Club and held at the church, which is located at 6500 Kawanee Ave. in Metairie. Proceeds from the event benefited the schools technology department.

Callahans team, Pulling Tails, and the other 27 teams boiled more than 10,000 pounds of crawfish, which was devoured by nearly 1,300 mudbug lovers.

Anthony Impastato was captain of Team Pulling Tails.

Several of us on the team went to school here (St. Philip Neri) and now have children who attend the school, he said. It brings people together, and its a good, wholesome positive event for both the school and community.

Added Jantz Theriot, also a member of Team Pulling Tails: This is a time when friends can get together and have fun. All the members of this team were in my wedding.

Scott Bairnsfather served as chairman of this years cookoff.

We do it for the kids and to help the school, he said. At the same time, it also strengthens friendships.

Added Rebecca Bairnsfather, Scotts wife: Those who participate in the crawfish boil are making lifelong friends.

The teams competed for first, second and third place in various categories, including best of boil, crawfish, potatoes, sausage and lagniappe. The winners were given gold, silver and bronze paddles.

The competition to win a paddle is keen every year among the teams.

Dan Rohlis team, Up The Creek, But We Got Paddles, won a gold paddle for first place in crawfish. Rohli participated in the inaugural cook off in 2008, and hes competed in every one since then. Rohlis teams have won more than 15 paddles in various categories.

Its fun to compete and see how your team does against the other teams, Rohli said. And its awesome to see so many people come together to support St. Philip Neri in a way that is so unique to our culture in south Louisiana.

Added Lenny Franz, a member of one of Rohlis teams for eight years: Weve won lots of paddles, but the best thing about the crawfish boil cookoff is the fellowship and fun we have.

Larry Falgoust, captain of Team Proto Hand Tools, is a longtime participant. His teams have also won several paddles.

Our kids went to school here, said Falgoust pointing to the other members of his team as they boiled crawfish. Our kids arent in school here now, but we still look forward to coming back here every year and participating. Its a way for us to stay together. Its like a reunion for us.

Added Jerry Wetzel, a member of Team Proto Hand Tools: Life can take you in different directions, but this brings us together every year.

That kind of camaraderie drew many other team members to the event.

Chad Terminie is a member of 3M Krawfish Krewe.

This is a time for great camaraderie, Terminie said. But whats really important is knowing that we are doing this for the kids and helping them get the best education possible.

Said Alan Stevens, also a member of 3M Krawfish Krewe: Ive made friends from all over by participating in this. You expand your universe when you get involved in something like this.

Added Troy Gardner, captain of 3M Krawfish Krewe: And it (crawfish boil) brings everybody together for a common good.

Mens clubs from other schools also participated in the event.

Justin Crow served as captain of the five-member team from St. Matthew the Apostle Church and School Mens Club.

This is awesome for the community, Crow said. And when we have our crawfish boil cookoff, members of the St. Philip Neri Mens Club will send a team to compete in it.

Theres also the satisfaction of seeing hundreds of crawfish lovers enjoying your crawfish.

I really like seeing people eating the crawfish we cooked, said Dace Camp, captain of The Crawdaddys. And when they make a point to come and tell you how much they enjoyed it, that makes you feel good.

Each team has its own special recipe.

Said Kevin Kliebert, captain of Team Kliebert Builders: Everybody has their own tricks when it comes to boiling crawfish. My recipe is one of a kind. I make my own seasoning, and I dont use a lot of salt.

Added Larry Falgoust, with Team Proto Hand Tools: We just follow the directions on the box. We dont make it too spicy. Some teams add things like Root Beer or pineapples ... we dont do that.

The Rev. Harry Bugler is pastor of St. Philip Neri Church.

This is a wonderful day for the church, school and community, Bugler said. Its a happy, delightful time for everybody. Hundreds of people are coming together to have a good time, and they are building good relationships and good will among themselves.

Earl Hodges writes about people and events in East Jefferson. He can be contacted at earlhodges@msn.com.
New Orleans police arrested a 16-year-old boy after he attempted to carjack a man Thursday evening (April 11), in one of several reported crimes that included an armed carjacking and four robberies, police indicated.

In the attempted carjacking, the victim told police that he had gone to a store near the 2100 block of Clouet Street to look for his daughter. As he was putting her in the car, he told a group of teenagers at the location to stay away from her, according to a preliminary police report.

One of the teenagers threatened him and said, Ill bust your head, the report said. Police said that as the man was getting into his car, the teen pulled out a handgun, pointed it at him and said, Ill carjack you and shoot you in the head.

The man was able to flee from the area and the teenager was arrested at the scene, NOPD indicated.

NOPD responded to a separate carjacking later that night in the 1300 block of N. Prieur St. involving two female victims. The women told police that they saw an unknown man get into their car through the passenger side. He pulled out a gun when one of the women approached the car, she told police.

The man then climbed over to the drivers side of the vehicle and fled going eastbound on N. Prieur Street.

Four separate robberies reported

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The four robberies reported Thursday spanned from New Orleans East to Gentilly and the French Quarter.

A woman told police Thursday morning that she was approached by a man she has under a protective order at her work in the 7700 block of Grant Street. The man stole her cellphone while she was trying to call 911 and fled on foot, she told police.

In the second robbery, a 16-year-olds cell phone was stolen at gunpoint as he was walking with a friend under the railroad crossing in the 3800 block of Gentilly Boulevard at around 6:28 p.m., according to police.

The victim told police he was walking toward the train tracks and passed by a man who appeared to be in his mid 20s, about 57 by a car wash on Gentilly Boulevard. The man was described to be of dark complexion and wearing a black hat, black shirt, and jean shorts. According to the victim, he was armed with a handgun with an extended clip.

The man followed the victim and the victims friend. When they passed under the railroad crossing the man grabbed the victims arm and pulled out a gun demanding his cell phone and pass code. The man fled up Gentilly Boulevard towards Old Gentilly, according to police.

Less than an hour later at around 7:15 p.m., police reported, a woman reported she was walking towards a restaurant in the 5700 block of Crowder Boulevard when her purse was stolen. The woman told police that she recognized the man who robbed her, who she said goes by the nickname Red.

Finally, at around midnight, a man told police he was approached by a man outside of a hotel in the 300 block of Dauphine Street, in the French Quarter, who was trying to sell him a red milk crate. The victim said the man followed him into the elevator of the hotel, pushed him and stole his wallet, according to police. The man then ran out of the hotel and fled on a bicycle down Dauphine Street towards Conti Street.
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell is expected to issue a proclamation Friday, April 12, apologizing on behalf of the city of New Orleans for a horrible act of mob violence in 1891 that claimed the lives of 11 Italians, eight of whom were American citizens. The men were arrested after Daniel Hennessey, the citys police chief, was ambushed in October 1890 and murdered. Before he died, he reportedly blamed Italians. So hundreds of Italians were rounded up, and 11 were tried. Not one of them was convicted. A jury acquitted eight and couldnt agree on guilt for the other three.

You might think that was proof that the case against the Italian suspects was weak. But a mob of white people  a New York newspaper would later describe Italians as a link connecting the white and black races  decided that the acquittals and hung juries meant that the court system had failed. A so-called vigilance committee placed an ad in The Times-Democrat calling for people of action to mobilize, and then those people stormed the jail. Jailers reportedly opened the cell doors and urged the prisoners to run, but the mob shot nine of them dead and hanged the other two.

How is the city of New Orleans implicated? According to The Italian Emigration of Modern Times by Patrizia Fama Stahle, An examination of the correspondence between the Italian consulate in New Orleans, the Italian embassy in Washington, the U.S. Department of State and the governor of Louisiana shows that the lynching of Italians occurred with the connivance of the New Orleans local authorities.

Its been 128 years since that massacre, but Michael Santo of the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy told the Associated Press, This has been a longstanding wound. A spokesperson for Cantrell said, Our office has worked with the Italian-American community on this issue and will be releasing a proclamation.

An apology is a powerful gesture, but it is exceedingly rare that we see the head of a government apologize for the sins of that government. In December 2016, Cantrells predecessor, Mitch Landrieu, apologized to the survivors of multiple police atrocities that occurred around the time of Hurricane Katrina. In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized to black men in Tuskegee, Ala., who had penicillin withheld from them so the United States Public Health Service could study how syphilis progressed. In 2008, the United States House of Representatives apologized for slavery.

Theres nothing philosophically problematic with the mayor of New Orleans apologizing to the Italian community for the citys murderous treatment of Italians. But who would have ever guessed that the mayor who would apologize for that lynching would be black, and, thus, a part of the subset of Americans who were lynched the most often?

Granted, Cantrell wont be issuing an apology for anything she did; shell be issuing an apology on behalf of what was done by the city she now leads. And its a sign of progress that a city that also had large-scale massacres of black people has  for most of the past 40 years  been led by a black person.

Those massacres of black people are one of the reasons that Cantrell would be wise to avoid claiming that the murders of the Italian prisoners count as our countrys deadliest lynching. An Associated Press story quotes the author of several books about lynching describing the 1891 crime as a horrific act of collective violence inspired by ethnic prejudice (that) has a claim to constituting the largest mass lynching in U.S. history, but it was hardly the largest act of collective violence in U.S. history or even Louisiana history.

What is the distinction between lynchings and large acts of collective violence, large acts of collective violence against people who are hated because of their identity? The 1891 mobbed stormed the jail. And there are some places that make that kind of behavior the essential element of a lynching. Until 2015, for example, California defined lynching as the taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer. In South Carolina, lynching can be two or more people committing a planned act of violence that results in injury, which has led to schoolyard fights being called lynchings.

But those definitions aside, lynching can be more broadly defined as a public act of violence intended to warn certain groups of people to stay in their place. And if we use that broader definition, then theres no way we can say that what happened to the 11 Italian victims is the countrys worst lynching. A white mob killed more than 200 Arkansas sharecroppers in 1919 who were trying to form a union.

Thats not to argue that Cantrell shouldnt apologize; it is to say that she shouldnt apologize in a way that minimizes bloodier massacres, including bloodier New Orleans massacres. In 1866, white Democrats killed 44 black Republicans attending a Louisiana constitutional convention. In 1900, at least a dozen black people were killed as the city tried to take out Robert Charles, a black man who fought back and shot back against police who harassed him.

Cantrell should make sure that after she apologizes that she doesnt have to apologize for the apology.

Jarvis DeBerry is a columnist on the Latitude team at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Latitude is a place to share opinions about the challenges facing Louisiana. Follow @LatitudeNOLA on Facebook and Twitter. Write Jarvis at jdeberry@nola.com or @jarvisdeberry.
After getting dropped by its first consultant, the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has settled on someone new to redraw the boundaries of its election districts  but not before a rancorous vote and mudslinging by the two consultants still in
The New Orleans Saints have added two more men to the Saintsations cheer and dance squad for the 2019 season.

One season after Jesse Hernandez made his celebrated debut with the squad that performs on the field before and during Saints games, the Saints added Dante from Vicksburg, Mississippi, and Dylon from Erath, according to a slideshow on the team website Friday (April 12).

The team posted the slideshow one day after the final round of auditions Thursday. The three men were previously shown on a group photo of the 55 finalists on the Saintsations Twitter page.

Hernandez, of Maurice, said last year he hoped his placement on the Saintsations would open the door for more men to seek a spot on the squad.

The first on-field performance for the 2019 Saintsations squad will come in the preseason opener sometime between Aug. 8-12 against the Minnesota Vikings.

Male Saintsation Jesse Hernandez breaks the mold, faces the backlash
Note: I-10 East reopened at 9:15 a.m. Friday, according to authorities. Read the updated story.

Interstate 10 is closed heading into New Orleans because of a multi-vehicle wreck on the bridge over the Bonnet Carre Spillway, traffic officials said Friday (April 12). A truck hauling frozen fish was involved in the crash and spilled boxes of fish onto the road, according to traffic information provider Total Traffic.

I-10 East remained closed to traffic at U.S. 51 in LaPlace as of 8:30 a.m, Louisiana DOTD said. An alternative route is U.S. 61 (Airline Highway), and heavy delays should be expected.

The wreck happened before 4 a.m. in the right lane of I-10 East at mile post 214 on the bridge over the spillway, DOTD said. More than one vehicle was involved and injuries have been reported, authorities said.

According to Total Traffic on Twitter, the crash involved an 18-wheeler hauling 40,000 pounds of frozen fish. Photos of the crash from Louisiana State Police show whole fish on the road, along with dozens of smashed boxes.

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The section of I-10 is closed so crews can clear the roadway, State Police said. Authorities didnt give an estimate for when the interstate would reopen.

It wasnt immediately clear what caused the crash.

Elsewhere in Louisiana, another 18-wheeler crashed Friday morning, spilling cans of soda across the road. State Police said the crash happened in Vernon Parish.

Carlie Kollath Wells is a morning reporter at NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune. Have an early-bird tip? Send it to her: cwells@nola.com or Twitter @carlie_kollath.
U.S. State Department officials reaffirmed the United States commitment to Taiwans security at a think tank seminar on April 9.

Ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) celebrated on April 10, the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, was invited to give remarks at the Washington think tanks video conference.

While celebrating the bilateral achievements of 40 years under the TRA, she stressed that Taiwans democratic way of life is facing unprecedented challenges from China.

Using economic incentives, control over sources of information, and political subversion, Chinas objective is to divide our society, erode trust in public institutions, and make people question our traditional alliances, President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, said. The United States, together with other like-minded countries, can help.

Tsai Ing-wen posted a link to the video conference on her twitter page.

In 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act opened a new chapter in Taiwan-U.S. relations, Ing-wen wrote. 40 years later, our ties have become a force for good, & Taiwan a beacon of democracy in the world.

In 1979, the Taiwan Relations Act opened a new chapter in #Taiwan#US relations. 40 years later, our ties have become a force for good, & Taiwan a beacon of democracy in the world. Here is my #TRA40 video address to commemorate the anniversary: https://t.co/eDQzExp9Yk   Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) April 10, 2019

Importance of Security

Patrick Murphy, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs, emphasized the importance of security at the seminar.

We consider Taiwans security essential to the security of the entire Indo-Pacific, Murphy said.

Murphy reiterated the United Statess commitment to Taiwans security. In response to the question of Chinese fighter jets recently crossing the median line of the Taiwan Strait, he expressed concern and criticized Beijing for upsetting the status quo.

We are deeply concerned about it, because it raises tensions, Murphy said. It goes just the opposite direction of what dialogue and adhering to the framework but its an example of the changing status quo. I think thats what the bottom line is, and qualitatively what shifted in recent years, certainly over the last two decades, is China changing the status quo.

Bilateral Relations

Forty years ago, the Carter administration broke diplomatic ties with Taiwan and recognized Beijing. The U.S. Congress, therefore, enacted the Taiwan Relations Act to maintain the unofficial relations between the United States and Taiwan to safeguard Taiwans security.

Looking forward, U.S. politicians and experts hope that the United States will continue to strengthen the bilateral relations in accordance with the spirit of the Taiwan Relations Act.

We have to keep on going along the route we are going, which is how do we build relations in the economic, the political, the security spheres, Jim Moriarty, chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan, told those in attendance on April 9. How do we meet on the U.S. side our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act, and how does Taiwan continue to be an international force for good.

Former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, spoke of freedom and sovereignty.

The 23.5 million people must be free from force, must be free from coercion, and must set their own path, he said.
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Purdue Pharmas sales force swept through New York State, visiting doctors and pharmacies nearly half a million times between 2006 and 2017 to promote OxyContin and other opioid painkillers. That is roughly 160 sales stops in the state each weekday during the height of the nations addiction crisis.

The companys flood-the-zone sales strategy was among the new disclosures contained in court papers filed on Thursday by Attorney General Letitia James of New York as part of the offices lawsuit against opioid manufacturers, distributors and eight members of the Sackler family, who control Purdue.

During that time the sales force had the most visits per capita, 11,881 per 100,000 people, to rural Herkimer County (2017 population: 62,240) in the Mohawk Valley, according to the papers. State data shows that the countys rate of emergency room visits involving opioids was nearly three times higher than New York Citys in 2017.

Sales reps made more than 250 visits that year to one pain-management facility with three locations in Central New York, the court papers said. That comes out to about one visit every weekday.
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Most employers in New York City would no longer be able to force job applicants to take drug tests for marijuana use, under a bill overwhelmingly approved this week by the City Council.

If the drug-screening law is enacted, it would put New York in relatively uncharted territory. Several drug policy and employment experts said that they did not know of similar laws on the books, even in states that have legalized marijuana.

In Maine, where voters approved legal recreational marijuana use, the law prevents employers from discriminating against people who have used cannabis, but it does not specifically regulate drug testing.

The Councils bill would affect public and private employers in New York City, including companies with headquarters elsewhere, according to Jumaane D. Williams, the citys public advocate and the bills sponsor. He said it was unclear exactly how many employers in the city screen employees for drugs and might be affected.
The arrest in London of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange ends one bizarre saga, but opens a legal drama that is likely to stretch over many years and could probe uncharted areas of press freedoms and national security in the United States in the digital era. There is good reason to be watchful as the case unfolds.

Mr. Assange, a 47-year-old Australian, had spent almost seven years holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy, initially to avoid arrest by Swedish authorities in a sexual assault investigation that has since been dropped , then British charges of skipping bail. But extradition to the United States was what Mr. Assange really feared, and what the cat-and-mouse game was always about.

It was in the United States that the materials posted on WikiLeaks created the greatest furor, first through the publication of a trove of classified documents supplied by an Army private, Chelsea Manning, and then by releasing material stolen from the computers of Hillary Clintons campaign.

The Obama administration was wary of pursuing Mr. Assange because WikiLeaks was essentially involved in investigative work common to a free press. But the Trump administration saw Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks as targets as soon as it took office. (Mr. Trump loved WikiLeaks in 2016 when it was embarrassing top officials of the Clinton campaign.) Two years ago , as director of the C.I.A., Mike Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a nonstate hostile intelligence service after it released a cache of C.I.A. hacking tools. Efforts got underway then to build a case against Mr. Assange. This was confirmed through an inadvertent mention in a federal court filing last November.
Suppose one night there is a knock on your door. You open it to find 100 bedraggled families shivering in your yard  exhausted, filthy, terrified. The first cry of your heart would be to take them in, but youd know there were too many.

But youd still do something. Youd rally your neighbors and the local authorities and put some system in place  some way to provide immediate care, figure out who these people were and how, within your means, you could lift them up.

And this is precisely what the U.S. has failed to do in handling the refugees who are flooding across the southern border. There is nothing remotely like an adequate system in place to handle the hundreds of thousands of people fleeing violence in Central America or seeking economic opportunity. And there is no prospect of a plan being put in place from either Republicans or Democrats.

And in that way the border crisis is paradigmatic of our politics right now. Both parties are content to adopt abstract ideological postures. Neither is interested in creating a functioning system that balances trade-offs and actually works. In the age of Trump, national politics is showbiz  self-righteous performance art to make the base feel good about itself.
One of my fondest memories of motherhood is of when my younger daughter, Phoebe, learned to read. It was bedtime, and her sister, her stepfather and I were settled in bed with our books. I kissed Phoebe good night and left the light on, and as I walked down the hall I heard her announce, I am part of the reading family now! (I felt good about my parenting, in a way I hadnt since the incident, a few weeks previously, when, on our way to a doctors appointment, my other kid looked up at me with a sunny smile and announced, Guess what I am not wearing today!)

As an author and a lifelong reader, a girl who found refuge in books, I am glad that my children are part of the reading family. Many Americans are not. According to the Pew Foundation, almost a quarter of Americans said they had not read a book in the previous 12 months.

My guess is that school is to blame. Somewhere along the way, between Beowulf and Chaucer, people learned that reading was a slog and that literature consisted of books about characters who looked and sounded nothing like them, living in worlds that were nothing like their own. Reading was a duty and not a pleasure. And so, as soon as no one was forcing them to do it, they stopped.

The list of books that most schools still consider required reading  the canon, still heavy on dead, white, male authors  doesnt help. Nor does the way some cultural gatekeepers, many of them proudly progressive and reflexively inclusive in other parts of their lives, seem invested in keeping the ranks of readers closed.
But the Justice Departments desire to nail Assange for publishing information leaked by Manning never went away. Miller said that both former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wanted to take a new look at the case. Its a relief that they found a way to make the case without a frontal assault on journalistic prerogatives. Still, if you read the indictment, a lot of things that journalists do routinely are part of Assanges alleged crime.

It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning took measures to conceal Manning as the source of the disclosure of classified records to WikiLeaks, says the indictment. Most if not all investigative journalists take such measures to protect their sources. The indictment says, It was part of the conspiracy that Assange encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and agencies of the United States. Journalists often do this when they urge whistle-blowers to come forward. It was part of the conspiracy that Assange and Manning used a special folder on a cloud drop box of WikiLeaks to transmit classified information, the indictment continues. Like many news organizations, The New York Times does something similar, soliciting tips through an encrypted submission system called SecureDrop.

For any of these actions to become part of a criminal conspiracy, there has to be a crime. But as Georgetown law professor David Super points out, We have right now a criminal code that is bursting at the seams with offenses, making it easy to break laws without realizing it.

A prosecutor, then, might be able to find a pretext for a similar conspiracy case if, for example, someone decides to leak the Mueller report, or Trumps tax returns. This pattern of behavior has already been turned against journalists in many parts of the world, Super said. Journalists get prosecuted for pretty mundane stuff, some of which they probably did, but they wouldnt have been charged for if they didnt make the regime unhappy.

Assange seems to have thought that, by helping elect Trump, he would improve his own situation. As Julia Ioffe reported in The Atlantic, in 2016 WikiLeaks suggested to Donald Trump Jr. that Trump should lean on Australia to have Assange, an Australian citizen, appointed ambassador to the United States. Roger Stone, a Trump adviser who was indicted in part for lying about his communications with WikiLeaks, reportedly told an associate that he was trying to get Assange a pre-emptive presidential pardon. Now Assange has discovered, as so many others have before him, that betting on Trump can ruin your life. Theres a certain dark satisfaction in that. But any legal theory that Trumps Justice Department uses against Assange can also be used against the rest of us.
In the slaughterhouses where pigs are reduced to their constituent parts, the disassembly lines carry about 1,100 pigs per hour  a new carcass every three seconds. For decades, the federal government has sought to prevent food-borne illnesses by stationing inspectors along the slaughter lines to eyeball the passing pigs for signs of disease and decay.

The Trump administration plans to overhaul this system, slashing the number of inspectors who work the lines and shifting some responsibility for food safety to the slaughterhouses.

The shift toward self-regulation of slaughterhouses is part of a broader trend . The Trump administration also has proposed letting oil companies assume greater responsibility for the safety of offshore drilling platforms, and it is considering letting employees of nuclear power plants conduct some safety inspections in the place of federal regulators.

The system of slaughterhouse regulation is out of date. The industry has succeeded over time in sharply reducing the kinds of problems visible from the slaughterhouse floor  the government says its health inspectors increasingly are policing aesthetic issues  but the incidence of some illnesses caused by pork consumption has stopped falling.
The attorney general of the United States has concerns about illegal government spying.

At a Senate hearing on Wednesday, William Barr confirmed that he will look into whether the Trump campaign was subject to unlawful surveillance in the run-up to the 2016 election. The Justice Departments inspector general, Michael Horowitz, is already investigating the matter, and Mr. Barr says the review is nearly done.

But instead of letting his watchdog finish his work, Mr. Barr would rather look into the matter himself. Yes, I think spying did occur, Mr. Barr said early in the hearing, later amending the record to clarify that he was not saying that improper surveillance occurred.

I am saying that I am concerned about it and looking into it. That is all, he added.

Before days end, Fox News was amplifying the attorney generals worries, which the president then shared on Twitter.

Whatever comes of Mr. Barrs review and the conspiracy theories that ensue, he would be wise to reflect on his own history with government surveillance that stretched the limits of the law. Just last month , Mr. Horowitzs office concluded that the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration failed to conduct a comprehensive legal analysis when the two agencies undertook a secret surveillance program in the 1990s that swept up records of Americans phone calls  the kind of bulk collection that the National Security Agency later engaged in after 9/11.
INTERNATIONAL

An article on Tuesday about a promise by Israels prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to annex part of the West Bank referred incorrectly to a passage in the Oslo accords, the 1993 agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians. The Oslo accords called for a negotiated settlement, but did not commit both sides to a two-state solution.

NATIONAL

An article on Thursday about two actresses involved in the college admissions scandal incorrectly described Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy as Oscar winners. They have both been Oscar nominees, but neither has been a winner.

BUSINESS

An article on Thursday about an economic plan laid out by the Turkish government misstated the exchange rate for the lira on Wednesday. It cost 5.7 lira to buy $1, not 1 lira to buy $5.70.

Errors are corrected during the press run whenever possible, so some errors noted here may not have appeared in all editions.
It is Lawyer 101: You do not steal your clients money.

NICOLA T. HANNA, a United States attorney, describing the lawyer Michael Avenattis business as a Ponzi scheme of sorts as she announced new charges that could mean more than 300 years in prison.
CHICAGO  The city of Chicago sued the actor Jussie Smollett on Thursday, seeking more than $130,000 to cover the cost of a police investigation into his claim that he had been the victim of a hate crime attack.

The lawsuit accused Mr. Smollett, who has a prominent role on the show Empire, of orchestrating a fake assault in January and repeatedly lying to members of the Chicago Police Department as they investigated the case. City lawyers repeated many of the claims that had been made by prosecutors before criminal charges against the actor were abruptly dropped last month.

Defendant made this report to the C.P.D. officers despite knowing that the purported attack was not for racist or homophobic motives and that his purported attackers were, in fact, his acquaintances, said the lawsuit, which was filed in state court.

On Thursday evening, a spokeswoman for Mr. Smolletts lawyers declined to comment on the citys lawsuit, but the actor has insisted that he told the truth when he reported being attacked. And Mr. Smolletts lawyer, Mark J. Geragos, previously rejected the citys request to pay for the cost of the investigation and had brushed aside the threat of a lawsuit.
So can people concerned about press freedoms rest easy?

Not quite. For now, the case significantly reduces such concerns because it is outside traditional investigative journalism to help sources try to break passcodes so they can illegally hack into government computers.

But some press freedom advocates say they remain concerned. For one thing, the Justice Department could file a superseding indictment, so there is no guarantee that Espionage Act charges will stay out of the case. Under extradition procedures, however, any additional charges would most likely have to come soon  before Britain decides whether to transfer custody of Mr. Assange.

For another, prosecutors cited details that expanded beyond a narrow focus on cracking the passcode and that sounded like typical activities of a journalist. For example, the indictment talks about efforts to conceal conversations by using a special chat service and deleting certain chat logs. It also says Mr. Assange took a step to help Ms. Manning send him the files, by making a special folder for her to upload files.

And it quotes a purported exchange midway through Ms. Mannings leaks in which she wrote, After this upload, thats all I really have got left, but Mr. Assange replied, Curious eyes never run dry in my experience. Several weeks later, according to the indictment, Ms. Manning copied and sent WikiLeaks the diplomatic cables.

The Justice Departments inclusion of those details as relevant to the case was cause for worry, said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

The indictment and the Justice Departments press release treat everyday journalistic practices as part of a criminal conspiracy, he said. Whether the government will be able to establish a violation of the hacking statute remains to be seen, but its very troubling that the indictment sweeps in activities that are not just lawful but essential to press freedom  activities like cultivating sources, protecting sources identities and communicating with sources securely.

Could Mr. Assange be charged later in connection with Russias election interference?

It would not be easy.

The Espionage Act does not cover the disclosure of unclassified emails like the Democratic messages, so prosecutors would have to come up with a theory in which publishing them violated some other law. Even if they could find one, a 2001 Supreme Court ruling held that the First Amendment did not permit prosecutors to charge people with crimes for publishing or broadcasting information so long as they broke no law in acquiring it  even if their sources had done something illegal to obtain it.
Ms. Davis suggested that migrants who had been apprehended and were slated to be released into border towns could instead be taken to one of several sanctuary cities, which limit how local law enforcement can cooperate with federal immigration officers.

The proponents of the idea inside the White House argued at the time that it would help with overcrowding at nonprofit shelters in border towns by transferring the migrants to cities that already embrace the idea of having more immigrants, one official said.

Once there, the migrants would be released onto the streets  potentially sending a message to the Democratic politicians who oppose Mr. Trumps immigration agenda and his demands for a wall along the border with Mexico.

The idea has been raised by one to two principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bused to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities, Ms. Davis wrote to the officials at the agencies. She added, There is not a White House decision on this.

Matthew Albence, the acting deputy director of ICE, objected to the idea, telling the White House that there would be liability issues if a migrant were injured during transport. He also raised concerns that the agencys budget had not been appropriated for that purpose.
Numerous significant questions are left unanswered, including what, if anything, Mr. Assange knew about the identity of Guccifer 2.0, a mysterious hacker who American intelligence and law enforcement officials have identified as a front for Russian military intelligence operatives.

Court documents have revealed that it was Russian intelligence  using the Guccifer persona  that provided Mr. Assange thousands of emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and the personal account of John D. Podesta, the chairman of the Clinton campaign.

Another question is whether Mr. Assange was a conduit between the Russian hackers and the Trump campaign. Mr. Assange exchanged emails with Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Trumps eldest son, during the campaign, and a Trump campaign official sent Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to the president, to get information about the hacked Democratic emails, according to a January indictment by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.

Mr. Mueller concluded his investigation without an indictment that directly connected WikiLeaks, the Russians and the Trump campaign, suggesting that prosecutors did not find sufficient evidence that Mr. Assange knowingly engaged in a conspiracy with Russia to help the Trump campaign.

But the report drafted by Mr. Muellers team, and expected to be released next week, could have additional details about the ties between the Trump campaign and Mr. Assange. Those details could be redacted by the Justice Department, however, if officials believe the material includes classified intelligence, said Carrie Cordero, a former official with the Justice Departments National Security Division and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
From the Sudanese food stall she runs in Aurora, Colo., Sara Hamid keeps her phone close to stay in touch with her two brothers who are among the protesters in Khartoum and send her photos. One is camped out. The other goes back and forth to take care of his young family. They are our voices, Ms. Hamid, 35, said.

She said she felt compelled to send money through an app to help buy bottled water for the protesters. Her husband, Nasr Ahmed, a dual Sudanese and American citizen, said the small contributions made from 6,000 miles away helped him feel connected to a movement he desperately wanted to join.

I wish I could fly to Sudan and be with those people, he said. But I have to be here. If Im not able to go, then this is the least thing I can do. To help them stay there as long as we can do to get this regime out of power.

Similar sentiments echoed across Sudanese-American communities. In Des Moines, which has a South Sudanese population of about 3,000, Francis Chan was running on no sleep on Thursday after spending the night following the news from Khartoum while his wife and five children slept.

After waiting for hours, he said he was crestfallen when Sudans defense minister  whom the United States has tied to killings and atrocities in the Darfur region  appeared in front of the cameras to make a statement.

The people were really looking for a civilian leader, not a military person; this is why the Sudanese people do not believe he will bring change, Mr. Chan said. This has happened before. This is not the change the Sudanese people are looking for.
The American Museum of Natural History says it is exploring its options after discovering that the honoree at a gala to which it rented space next month will be President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, whose environmental policies have come under fire.

In statements Thursday and Friday, the museum responded to criticism that an institution dedicated to nature and science would serve as a podium to honor someone who has proposed opening up more of the Amazon rain forest to mining and agribusiness.

The event is an annual gala honoring a Person of the Year Award organized by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit that promotes business and cultural ties between the United States and Brazil.

The museum said it had agreed to book the event this year before it learned who the nominee would be, and its remarks suggested it might be considering whether there is any way to back out of hosting the engagement.
COPENHAGEN  It was designed by Bjarke Ingels, the renowned Danish architect, and cost $24 million to build. It was inaugurated by Queen Margrethe II, Denmarks reigning monarch. And it now accommodates a celebrity couple with peculiar eating habits and an almost year-round animosity toward each other.

Welcome to Copenhagen Zoos new panda house.

Officials at the zoo estimate that the combination of adorable animal starpower and innovative Danish design will draw an additional 400,000 visitors per year.

For such an iconic animal, we needed an iconic setting, said Bengt Holst, the zoos director. You wouldnt put the Mona Lisa in an ugly frame.

But not everyone is a fan of the new house, a circular enclosure in the shape of the yin and yang symbol that cost $24 million to build and that has made front-page news in Denmark over the past weeks.
In 2015, Khaled Jarrar, a Palestinian artist and filmmaker living in Ramallah, read an ad in a local newspaper. It was an appeal for assistance placed by a refugee from the war in Syria who was stuck with her family in Istanbul  including the writers elderly mother, who was a refugee for the second time, having been forced to leave Nazareth for Syria during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

Moved by the story, Mr. Jarrar spent 31 days traveling with the family to Germany, living as a refugee and filming the journey. This experience inspired Where We Lost Our Shadows, a multimedia work for orchestra, video and three soloists that Mr. Jarrar created with the composer Du Yun. The American Composers Orchestra, which commissioned it with Carnegie Hall, played the premiere on Thursday at Zankel Hall.

Ms. Du and Mr. Jarrar decided to broaden the works focus to encompass timeless themes of human migration, exodus and refugee flights. Ms. Du, who won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for her 2016 opera Angels Bone, an allegory of human trafficking, turned to the heritage of ragas, a structure for melodic improvisation that itself migrated over centuries throughout Arab, Central Asian and Indo-Pakistani regions. Working with the Pakistani vocalist Ali Sethi, she chose ragas dealing with themes of water, rain and thunder; these raga-inspired passages were sung by Mr. Sethi on Thursday with both rawness and plaintive delicacy.

These elements are integrated into a score that shifts and heaves, qualities captured in the restless performance led by George Manahan. There are stretches of misty orchestral sonorities in which fidgety figurations get batted around over dense harmonies. Shayna Dunkelman, a dynamic percussionist, drove episodes of the piece with pummeling drum bursts one moment, tingling effects the next. The vocalist Helga Davis brought radiance to Ms. Dus tender, high-pitched setting of the Palestinian poet Ghassan Zaqtans Pillow.
Mahlers Sixth Symphony is difficult for conductors even on their best days.

So you can imagine the pressure on Simone Young, who, after not appearing with the New York Philharmonic since 1998, stepped in on short notice to replace the orchestras injured music director, Jaap van Zweden, on Thursday evening at David Geffen Hall. (The maestro will be fine but was ordered to rest after burning his shoulder with an ice pack last week.)

Thursdays imperfect but respectable concert, which featured only the 90-minute symphony, would have been opportunity to hear how Mr. van Zweden, still at the start of his directorship, is shaping the Philharmonics Mahler sound, typically a specialty of this orchestra. Instead, the evening ended up being a preview of Ms. Youngs scheduled return next season, when she will lead a program of Britten, Elgar and her Australian compatriot Brett Dean.

Mahler, however, might be the better composer to hear Ms. Young conduct, given what she is known for in her long-established career at opera houses and concert halls abroad. She is leading Wagner at the Bavarian State Opera next month, with Strauss coming soon after in Zurich. Her discography includes a lot of Bruckner and, yes, Mahler.
Slaughterhouse-Five

To the Editor:

I enjoyed reading Kevin Powerss essay Slaughterhouse-Five at 50 (March 24). As a fellow veteran who has just entered Veterans Administration treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder after 50 years of being unstuck in time, I feel a kinship with Billy Pilgrim. I was discharged from the locked ward of a naval hospital in 1968 after going AWOL from the Marines when I returned from Vietnam at 19. Like Kurt Vonnegut, I have raised my children to see beyond the self-deceptions and outright lies that keep our war machine in business. And I am also grateful that Slaughterhouse-Five is still in print. Vonneguts Mrs. OHare is right: We were all just babies in the war.

GERALD MCCARTHY

NYACK, N.Y.



To the Editor:

Reading the retrospective view of Slaughterhouse-Five, it is worth noting that the Tralfamadorian view of time (being able to see all moments in time at once) is a metaphor for memory. At any time, you can be hurtled by memory into a re-creation of the past: You can be sitting in your armchair and suddenly be jolted by a memory of an event, in this case the destruction of Dresden.

DENNIS POUPARD

NEW BRIGHTON, MINN.

Madame Fourcade

To the Editor:

Lynne Olsons Madame Fourcades Secret War, as reviewed by Kati Marton (March 17), has brought the heroic activities of Marie-Madeleine Fourcade to the wider audience they deserve. The only woman to lead a Resistance network in occupied France, she was never honored in Frances Pantheon, although two Frenchwomen resisters were belatedly honored in 2015. She headed a British-funded network, taking over a group of 3,000 agents when its leader was captured. Many months later, the British handlers discovered that Agent POZ 55, now its leader, was a woman.

Because, then as now, Frenchwomen had been largely absent from early postwar accounts of the Resistance, I undertook research and interviews to write a history of these womens indispensable contribution.
MAGICAL NEGRO

Poems

By Morgan Parker

How wide is the gulf between the realities of black lives and their representation in American popular culture, which overwhelmingly emphasizes white narratives? Privilege is asking other people / to look at you, Morgan Parker writes in her third poetry collection, Magical Negro, a work that explores the gap between black experience and the white imaginations version of it. In the popular canon the trope of the magical Negro is a black character who turns up exclusively to aid, often through uncanny wisdom, a white character. To say that Parker seeks to reclaim these characters oversimplifies the books tense negotiations of pop culture, systemic racism and black womanhood. Rather, Magical Negro highlights the white imaginations more subtle violences, especially those that wear a smile and extend a hand in the name of charity or diversity, all to depict white people as a tolerant majority.

Parker confronts this display of inclusionary rhetoric in a poem called Now More Than Ever, defining the title phrase as something whites say to express their surprise / and disapproval of social or political conditions which, / to the Negro, are devastatingly usual. The poem suggests that the phrase is used patronizingly, accompanied by a solicitation for unpaid / labor from the Negro:

often in the form of time, art,

or an intimate and lengthy explanation of the Negros

life experiences, likely not dissimilar to a narrative the

Negro has relayed before to dead ears.

Parker carries forward this concern about free labor and the commodification of minority experience from her previous collection, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonce, in which she wrote that art is nice but the question is how are you / making money are you for sale. Her audience here is not the white reader who seeks to experience  and therefore tokenize, exoticize and commodify  the other. Thats not to say white readers shouldnt read this collection; in fact, Id argue they should seek it out, if only to push whiteness to the edges of their reading lives. Its imperative, however, that we acknowledge the line between readership (who reads) and audience (for whom the text was written). While some of Parkers poems ironically posit themselves as guides to black culture, the collection, by and large, provides a space to celebrate black excellence and black joy as well as to commiserate about injustice.

My body is an argument I did not start, Parker writes, centering her particular experiences as a black woman in a way that calls to mind June Jordan or Robin Coste Lewis. Throughout Parkers collection, we see the paradoxical invisibility and hypervisibility of black women, as with Magical Negro #3: The Strong Black Woman, whose title character is sexualized to the point that the speaker suggests assaulting her, then says, She / wont feel nothing. The Strong Black Woman is hypervisible in her sexuality but invisible when someone abuses her.

I worry sometimes / I will only be allowed a death story, Parker confides later. This fear is charged by the accounts of racist violence and police brutality in other poems. Parker challenges us to be careful with our language, especially regarding the deaths of black people. In Magical Negro #84: The Black Body, she writes:

The body is a person.

The body is a person.

The body is a person.

The body is a person.

The body is a person.

So often the black body is used in shorthand to talk about the direct object of violence, but the phrase distorts, even erases the humanity of the victims and survivors. Through repetition, Parker rejects this erasure. (Elsewhere, she uses repetition to reflect unchanging history: Now More Than Ever ends with it would appear that the Negro must / live the life of the Negro, ever, now and ever before repeating and ever over 180 times.)
Six new paperbacks to check out this week.

I AM, I AM, I AM: Seventeen Brushes With Death, by Maggie OFarrell. (Vintage, $16.) A mugging, a near drowning, a nightmarish childbirth: The Northern Irish novelist shares her near-death experiences, what it means to know her life could have turned out very differently. The memoir is particularly strong on how her relationship to risk-taking evolved after becoming a mother, and her fears about not doing enough to protect her children.

THE OVERSTORY, by Richard Powers. (Norton, $18.95.) In this series of interconnected stories, the human characters are just the underbrush; the true protagonists are the trees that they encounter. Powers combines botany and storytelling in this majestic novel. Our reviewer, Barbara Kingsolver, praised the book, calling it delightfully choreographed, ultimately breathtaking.

ATOM LAND: A Guided Tour Through the Strange (and Impossibly Small) World of Particle Physics, by Jon Butterworth. (The Experiment, $14.95.) The author, a leading physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is an entertaining guide, and his book helps answer the question that has intrigued scientists for generations: What is the universe made of, really, when you get right down to it?

SPEAK NO EVIL, by Uzodinma Iweala. (Harper Perennial, $15.99.) The second book by Iweala, the author of Beasts of No Nation, follows a teenager in Washington, D.C., as he reconciles his coming-of-age with the expectations of his Nigerian parents and their church. Niru, the Harvard-bound protagonist, was raised in a loving home, but after his father discovers he is gay, their relationship becomes strained. The book skillfully deals with generational conflict and what it means to be a young black man in America.
1. President Trump recently promised to delay an order to close the southern border. A few days later, he urged an official to do it anyway.

The conversation with Kevin McAleenan, whom Mr. Trump was about to name acting secretary of Homeland Security, came last week on the heels of Kirstjen Nielsens refusal to move forward with the closure before she resigned as secretary. Mr. Trump also told Mr. McAleenan that he would pardon him if he encountered any legal problems as a result of taking the action. Above, an asylum seeker waits in Tijuana, Mexico.
What does standard get me?

For buyers looking for the $35,000 base model of the Model 3, the only way to get one without trekking to a store is to make a phone call.

When it announced the sales change, Tesla said the standard Model 3 was actually a software-limited version of the more expensive car you can buy online. That means the range of the car on a full charge is restricted, for example, not by battery physics but by software that aims to keep it that way.

A Tesla sales representative on Long Island explained this, too, and said a buyer could pay the difference for a more capable version at a later date and the car would be updated over the airwaves.

What if I dont like it?

For me, the biggest point of confusion had to do with test drives. Tesla says on its website that you can drive a car for a week, or less than 1,000 miles, and still return it. A sales representative in Westchester County repeated this.

He also said that if I did a test drive before buying Id have only one day to return the car, so I reasoned it was probably better to buy first, drive later.

What I was told, however, conflicted with the policy as Elon Musk, Teslas chief executive, recently stated it on Twitter: that returns were possible within one week regardless of a test drive.
Malaysia has been an important ally for China. Its prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, was among the first foreign leaders to sign up to its coming Belt and Road Summit, a lavish two-day affair. The United States said this month that it would not send high-level officials to the conference, on concerns about the financing behind the plan.

But even for Malaysia, the original price tag for the rail deal with China Communications Construction Company was too much to stomach. The new administration saw the splashy Chinese infrastructure projects like the East Coast Rail Link and a $2.5 billion gas pipeline deal as opportunities for corrupt senior politicians to plunder government coffers.

When Malaysia signed the agreement for the rail line, the Chinese state-backed company was under a World Bank ban for doing certain kinds of work because of a corruption scandal in the Philippines. Mr. Mahathir cited Sri Lankas experience to justify his decision to suspend the East Coast Rail Line project.

Mr. Mahathir, 93, came out of political retirement last year, riding a groundswell of opposition to the prime minister at the time, Najib Razak, amid allegations of large-scale corruption.

At the heart of the scandal was a state investment fund called 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB. Officials and prosecutors have called 1MDB a slush fund, alleging that Mr. Najib siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars at the expense of the Malaysian people. (He went to trial last week in what is expected to be the first of multiple corruption trials.)

After taking over from Mr. Najib last spring, Mr. Mahathirs administration discovered the country was in worse financial shape than previously understood. A $170 billion debt pile turned out to be closer to $250 billion, amounting to 80 percent of Malaysias gross domestic product at the time.

As the new government began to pare back the debt, Mr. Mahathir announced that the administration would halt the East Coast Rail Link project and the gas pipeline deal, citing the high costs.
Since 1997, the year of the Kyoto climate protocol, the number of climate laws and policies in the world has basically doubled every five years. There were more than 1,200 by early 2017, Mr. Hsu said. Those rules present legal-liability risk and the possibility of higher costs for companies, he said. The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

In stewarding the Hartford fund, Mr. Hsu can draw on insights from a research partnership that Wellington created last year with the Woods Hole Research Center, a nonprofit climate specialist in Falmouth, Mass. The two are merging market know-how and climate science to identify metrics that matter for investing. Wellington, which manages funds for other companies, including Vanguard, says the partnerships findings will inform all the portfolios it runs, not just the Hartford fund.

Jon F. Hale, global head of sustainability research for Morningstar, said he wasnt aware of another pairing like that between Wellington and Woods Hole  plenty of money managers have begun to talk about climate change, but none have so publicly allied themselves with an independent scientific expert. Mr. Hale predicted that other big investment companies would find themselves at a disadvantage if they didnt seek comparable means of assessing the investment implications of a warmer world.

They have to figure out the extent to which climate change poses a direct and immediate risk to their portfolios, he said.

An early line of inquiry in the Wellington-Woods Hole partnership is how higher temperatures may induce population migration, said Philip B. Duffy, Woods Holes president and executive director. Of all of the different hazards, drought seems to be one thats particularly powerful in inducing migration, he said. If theres not water, you cant live somewhere.

The financial implications of that could play out in surprising ways, said Christopher J. Goolgasian, Wellingtons director of climate research. Movable assets might become more valuable than stationary ones. You might think about cruise ships over theme parks and farm equipment over farms, he said.
When asked for the LinkedIn reference, I found out through past co-workers this person was abruptly removed from his V.P. position and is now out of work. I am hesitant to respond as there may be the potential that this person was let go for complicated reasons.

 Anonymous

This is exactly what email was made for: to make it easy to never respond. You owe no one in this world a reference, especially of the meaningless LinkedIn variety. Dont write back or say you are too busy at the moment. If this person doesnt get the hint, that is just another data point in favor of your impression that he has terrible judgment. And if this makes you feel guilty, remember that, contrary to the wishes of our collective unconscious and the dramatic finales of narratives of corporate greed, slimy operators like this guy usually end up just fine.

No Way Third Way

I work closely with two different teams at my company, and often my co-workers will go through me when they need something from the other team. (No part of my job description could be interpreted as being a liaison between teams.) It ends up wasting a lot of my time and, frankly, makes me uncomfortable. It feels like Im always the messenger in danger of getting shot. Is there a polite way to ask that I stop being treated as a middleman?

 New York City

Absolutely there is a polite way to ask that you stop being treated as the middleman, and you already know what it is. Schedule a meeting with the supervisors of both teams and say exactly what youve written here: It is exciting to be part of this collaboration between both of your teams, but being a liaison per se is not part of my job description. Can we set up a more direct channel between your two groups?

The key with this interaction, as in all interactions, is to be the opposite of defensive and keep all feelings out of it. What youre requesting is perfectly reasonable; now request it. And remember: Triangulation in politics might be an effective short-term strategy, but in the long run it mortgages your platform to special interests. Dont do it.

Infatuation Consultation

I work a student job on my campus where I set my own hours. I have been in love with one of my co-workers for, like, a year now, and he knows it. (Because I told him. While he still had a girlfriend.) Hes single now, but no moves have been made, and the outlook isnt good for the moment. A few other people know about the situation, but not everyone. If hes not telling anyone whats been going on, what proportion of the office is it appropriate for me to blab to? Luckily I graduate soon, so this whole mess will be over in a few months.

 N., California

My over-the-table advice is that, of course, you should immediately cease and desist in speaking about your feelings about this or anything else in the office. It is strictly unprofessional to do so.
Fisher-Price recalled all of its 4.7 million Rock n Play sleepers on Friday, days after a group of pediatricians urged its parent company, Mattel, to stop selling the product amid reports linking it to multiple infant deaths.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission said consumers should stop using the sleeper immediately and contact Fisher-Price for a refund or a voucher. Major retailers sell the product for $40 to $149, according to the agency.

The voluntary move by Fisher-Price was a reversal for the company, which issued a joint safety warning with the product safety commission last week after the commission said it was aware of 10 deaths since 2015 of children 3 months or older linked to the sleeper. In most cases, the children suffocated after rolling over in the sleeper from their back to their stomach or side while unrestrained.

[Some day cares used dangerous infant sleeper after it was recalled.]

Mattel said in a statement on Friday that it stood by the safety of its products but agreed to the voluntary recall due to reported incidents in which the product was used contrary to the safety warnings and instructions.
The Page 3 Girl, a feature of British tabloids for decades that allowed readers to turn the front page and stare at a topless woman over breakfast or on their commute to work, is getting covered up.

The Daily Star, the final holdout in the market, has been trying a nipple-free Page 3 since the beginning of this month  although women still figure prominently on that page.

The Daily Star is always looking to try new things and improve, Jonathan Clark, the editor, said in an emailed statement. In that spirit, weve listened to reader feedback and are currently trialling a covered-up version of Page 3.

Topless women on Page 3 have endured in British tabloids since the 1970s, and are associated with The Sun, the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper with a circulation of about 1.4 million. The Sun reveled in the controversy around the images. In the latter years of the feature, The Sun featured topless women with a small News in Briefs item quoting the young womans thoughts on current affairs.
Rite Aid, one of the countrys biggest pharmacy chains, will stop selling e-cigarettes and vaping products because of concern that they are fueling tobacco use among middle and high school students across the United States.

Rite Aid said Thursday that it would remove the products from its more than 2,400 stores over the next 90 days. The chain will continue to sell regular tobacco products, a decision that some public health advocates criticized.

Were concerned about some of the alarming statistics regarding the use of e-cigarettes and vaping products by children and teens, Bryan Everett, the chains chief operating officer, said on an earnings call. He added that while many feel these products are beneficial to those of legal age who are trying to quit the use of tobacco, the company had decided to stop selling them because of their growing popularity with young people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the use of tobacco products, a category that includes e-cigarettes and vaping products, jumped 38 percent last year among high school students and 29 percent among middle school students. The surge, driven by the growth of e-cigarettes, countered the declining use of such products among young people in previous years, the C.D.C. found.
The United States economy is still humming, if the performance of some of the countrys biggest banks is any indication.

JPMorgan Chase and PNC Financial Services Group both reported strong performances on Friday for the first three months of 2019, including revenue that was higher than Wall Street analysts had expected. The banks results suggested that events like the government shutdown in January and President Trumps trade war with China had little impact on large swaths of American businesses and consumers.

JPMorgan said its revenue from providing banking services to consumers and businesses was 15 percent higher than a year earlier. The growth stemmed in part from the banks credit card business.

The economys growth could go on for years, JPMorgans chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said on a conference call Friday. Theres no law that says it has to stop.
During a news briefing about the decision, Dr. Michael J. Ryan, deputy director of W.H.O.s health emergency program, said that the recent increase in cases actually reflected a positive development: By earning the trust of some communities, medical teams have gained access to areas they had been unable to enter before, and are finding more patients.

Fear and distrust of the government run deep in the region, and extend to the Ministry of Health and organizations thought to be associated with it, including aid groups and the W.H.O. Suspicion has led some people to avoid testing and treatment altogether, or to postpone it until they are too sick to be saved.

A particular concern is that many deaths have occurred in the community, rather than in treatment centers. Keeping the sick at home helps spread the virus, because the disease becomes more contagious as it progresses. It is spread by bodily fluids, so caregivers who lack protective gear are almost certain to become infected, as are those who prepare corpses for burial.

Some of the anger and distrust stem from the way aid groups have operated, said Dr. Natalie Roberts, the emergency operations director for Doctors Without Borders. She said people in the communities did not understand why those with potential Ebola symptoms like fever, even children, would be isolated for up to 48 hours while waiting for test results, and why those who tested negative might be released without a diagnosis or treatment for their fever, which might well be malaria.

Dr. Roberts said the group was changing the way it deals with patients, letting them wait at home for test results, and making sure to address their other health concerns and provide needed information. Her organization is also trying to give patients choices, and allow them to be treated in local health centers rather than Ebola treatment centers if that is their preference.

Other groups are also changing their approaches to bring them more into line with what communities need, Dr. Ryan said, though he added, We evolve the response, we dont change it.
Through spectrographic technology, we were able to examine erasures in Emilys letters. And I think the presence of shame around the feelings that Emily expressed in her letters of love would not just be there in a friendship. This was Puritan New England, where there was no way that they could talk about this. We have this story that she wanted her poems burned upon death when in reality shes an L.G.B.T.Q. hero. Shes a model for new wave feminism, which talks about equality for all. [Screams] It makes me want to start a riot.

The poems as you read them in the movie feel fresh.

Youre understanding that shes writing about her romantic life, which she was scared about initially when she was younger because shes writing erotic poems about a woman she loves. When you read them with that lens, you are hearing them differently. I think [her editors] were worried when she became so successful after her death that if the reading public found out that she was in love with a woman it might not be as interested in her. So there was collusion.

Emily got a lot of pushback from male mentors and editors, who seemed not quite to understand her writing. Have you experienced the same?

When I did first start Saturday Night Live, I was trying to get Mary Katherine Gallagher on television. I had done the character in my stage show for years and I knew  this works. But I went to different writers  men  and I said, I have this character, and I wrote up a sketch and  I dont want to say who it was  people would look at it on paper and go, That will never work. Id use my frustration and anger to fuel me forward. And then finally I did go to one guy, Steve Koren, who said, O.K., tell me what you do. He basically typed up a version that I did in my stage show and that was the first sketch.

I remember I was like, Im going to be physical, I want to be like those boys, I want to be like Chris Farley and Im going to fall into chairs and Im going to make my heart bleed and make them understand this. And when [the sketch] got on the air it was huge. And I was like, Yes!

The Other Two has an S.N.L. pedigree, with Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider as the creators and Lorne Michaels as an executive producer. Is that why you signed on?
Technically, this thriller from Luc Besson is a piece of original intellectual property, but it appears eerily reminiscent of the directors La Femme Nikita (1990) and Leon: The Professional (1994), which also both followed young women trained to be assassins. (In this case, the title role is played by Sasha Luss, a model raised in Moscow.) It also looks a lot like Hanna  the 2011 film directed by Joe Wright that Amazon recently turned into a series  not to mention the Jennifer Lawrence movie Red Sparrow and the Jennifer Garner TV drama Alias. In the trailer, Anna is compared to a Russian doll, and this similarly seems like a copy of a copy of a  you get the point.

The Addams Family (Oct. 11)
This week the City of New York declared a public health emergency because of a measles outbreak that had been escalating since the fall in ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and finally reached the point of crisis. In December the Health Department had made an effort to contain the disease, ordering yeshivas and child care centers in affected neighborhoods to keep all unvaccinated children from going to school or day care. Then, in January, at least one yeshiva in Williamsburg ignored the mandate. This failure of compliance led to an eruption of dozens of new cases.

Like well-off bohemians who might send their children to Waldorf schools, where an anti-vaccination culture is baked in the warm ovens of so many sprouted-wheat snacks, many among the ultra-Orthodox resist the incursions of modernity. A distrust of immunization had long ago taken hold in some sectors of the Hasidic community, but this year various religious neighborhoods in Brooklyn were hit with a propaganda campaign meant to breed even more skepticism and fear.

As it happens, 2019 is turning out to be a record year for measles outbreaks, with 465 cases reported in 19 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A vast majority of these have occurred in Brooklyn and in counties in upstate New York and New Jersey with substantial ultra-Orthodox populations. Approximately 115 cases, though, have been discovered in Michigan and Washington, among the 17 states in the country where it is possible to seek a personal belief exemption from otherwise mandatory vaccines for school-aged children, meaning that immunization essentially violates your parenting philosophy as if it were Fortnite or a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.

Where there are no such vague clauses in vaccination law, there are typically exemptions available to those who claim that they oppose vaccination on religious grounds; 47 states have these, including New York. They are problematic for a number of reasons. First, there is virtually no canonical basis for vaccine avoidance among the worlds major religions, most of which came into being before Edward Jenner developed the first widely used vaccine, against smallpox, at the end of the 18th century. Rabbis since then have repeatedly stressed the importance of protecting children through vaccination. Regardless, religious waivers provide cover to those who resist vaccines simply because they chose to question established science.
She was so depressed, said the brother, who took her side against the family. There was nothing she could do.

Ms. Zahan became resigned to her fate. After about a year, her husband returned to Bangladesh to fetch her. A party was held in their honor and this time she smiled for the camera. They left together for the United States.

He became so dominating

The couple landed at Kennedy International Airport in May 2018.

On their first night together in New York, Ms. Zahan expressed to her husband that they should get to know each other, she recalled. If he took her to watch Bollywood movies, or if they walked holding hands around the city, maybe shed be able to feel it, she told him. But he disagreed.

Her Bangladeshi husband could have seen it as his conjugal right. But for Ms. Zahan, it was something else altogether.

I was crying, but he didnt care, she said. She showed the self-harm marks still visible on her wrists from earlier that summer.

Ms. Zahan had been told that she would be deported if she tried to leave her husband, she said, adding that her passport had been taken from her upon arrival in New York. Promises to enroll her in school or let her work were not kept. I didnt have any money. I didnt have the keys to the house, she continued. He became so dominating.

In a recent phone call to Ms. Zahans husband, he denied any act of violence or abuse, and challenged that the marriage was forced. Asked about how he met his wife, he said it was through family, but did not respond to the question about the circumstances of the marriage.
Every Monday, the chef Daniela Mass shows up at Beth Fishers Upper East Side apartment with grocery bags full of ingredients like spaghetti squash, salmon, sweet potatoes and Swiss chard. In the Fishers kitchen, she prepares three four-person meals for Ms. Fisher and her husband, along with snacks. The weekly cost for a visit by Eat Well Food by Daniela, Ms. Masss service, is $300.

Ms. Fisher, 56, who is a marketing executive, also works with Laura Solin-Valdina, the owner of the wardrobe makeover company NYCStylist. For the past year, Ms. Solin-Valdina has organized and curated Ms. Fishers outfits at the rate of $350 per hour (with a 20-hour minimum).

She cleaned out my closet, updated my wardrobe and brought 10 department stores to my apartment, Ms. Fisher said. It was rack upon rack of clothing. It was transformative.

Ms. Fisher is trading time for money, and she is part of a growing number of people who invite human service providers into their homes to help them with time-consuming, errand-like tasks that require skill and focus. I dont want to spend my time shopping online or at the stores, she said. I would rather spend time connecting with family, staying fit, or reading. Having someone shop for you whether its clothing or food is very efficient and cost effective. And both do a better job than I could.
Donald M. Stewart, a career educator who was credited with reviving Spelman College, and who later, as president of the College Board, sought to maintain high academic standards for college applicants while helping minority students meet them, died on Sunday in Chicago. He was 80.

The cause was a heart attack, his son Carter said.

In 1976, Dr. Stewart, the first in his family to complete college, became the president of Spelman, the historically black womens college in Atlanta that was rich in tradition but short of funds. His appointment was opposed by students who had wanted the schools trustees to choose a black woman as president, and who briefly locked several trustees in a room in protest.

His tenure was successful despite the rocky start. When he retired from Spelman 10 years later  he was succeeded by the schools first black female president, Johnnetta B. Cole  the endowment had grown to more than $41 million from $9 million and enrollment had grown to 1,600 from 1,200. About half the colleges professors had doctorates when Dr. Stewart took over; the share was 74 percent when he left. And the average SAT scores of entering freshmen had surged by 100 points.

During Dr. Stewarts tenure, the college created a chemistry department, a comprehensive writing program and a Womens Research and Resource Center.
During the past decades, childrens textbooks have implied that todays inhabitants of Mexico are descended from indigenous people and not from the Spanish. The official narrative for more than a century now in Mexico is that it is the mestizo country par excellence. As the nameplate at the National Anthropology Museum and Tlatelolco Square , where the final defeat of the Aztecs occurred, proclaims, Neither a victory nor a defeat, here took place the painful birth of the mestizo people that today is Mexico.

T here can be no mestizaje without both civilizations  the Spanish and the original peoples  taking part in it. However violent their encounter may have been, and acknowledging the brutal nature of the conquest, Mexicans seem to prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. While racism against indigenous minorities in Mexico is undeniable, and the countrys European-origin tiny minority frequently resorts to racist attitudes toward mestizos, an overwhelming majority of the people of Mexico are mestizos today. There are myriad things to fix in Mexico, but discrimination by mestizos against mestizos is not one of them .

Mr. Lopez Obrador said in his letter to King Philip VI that he was not requesting reparations; the conquest cannot be repaired. The apology he demanded was immediately rejected by the government in Madrid, and in all likelihood, the entire affair will fade away. The Mexican presidents ploy was almost certainly demagogic in intent and motivation, invoking an anti-Spanish sentiment that he believes exists in Mexico, though polls suggest otherwise.

Mexico does not need an apology, because it has no conflict with Spain today. But beyond the Mexican populist gesture, and the debates in the United States, Europe and Canada, however, lies a conversation waiting to be held. There are challenges for other peoples and groups that require atonement or forgiveness in order to be addressed. In some cases, it can make an enormous difference, as with African-Americans, race and slavery in the United States. In others, it can disentangle complicated questions of national identity and victimization, as in Mexico. Reparations may be ultimately relevant only in some cases. But history is always relevant.

Jorge G. Castaneda, Mexicos foreign minister from 2000 to 2003, is a professor at New York University and the author of Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War.

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To the Editor:

Re Migrants Pour Into a System Thats on Fire (front page, April 11):

The challenges at our border are manageable and are caused neither by court rulings nor by  loopholes, as your article suggests.

The Trump administration chose cruel and illegal responses to a regional refugee and displacement crisis, stoking chaos rather than pursuing effective solutions.

Instead, it could have led a regional initiative to resolve the crisis and expand refugee hosting capacity across the region, something a future administration must do. To sharply reduce numbers fleeing to its border, the United States must counter the problems involved in pushing people to leave and work with other countries so more refugees can be received and protected in the region.

To manage our border, the Department of Homeland Security should restore orderly asylum processing at points of entry rather than encouraging crossings between points. And it must start a case management program to facilitate hearing appearances rather than pushing more detention for families with children.
My parents were caught in the middle. My father ran an English-language daily newspaper along with two veteran journalists. The Sudan Times was closed in the press crackdown in 1990, and my father was advised to leave if he wanted to avoid prison.

My family found sanctuary of a kind in Cairo, along with around a million other Sudanese who had also fled. Daily life was dominated by rumor and the horror stories brought by new arrivals: the professor made to recite the alphabet by former students who had become his torturers; an old newspapermans son who was hung from a ceiling fan and beaten until his back was broken.

Every story offered and then withdrew the possibility of return. I remember the look on my fathers face when a trusted friend from Khartoum explained that after nearly five years away it was still unsafe for him to go back.

By the end of that first decade the fog began to lift. Disillusionment with Islam as the great leveler began to set in. Insurgency spread in places like Darfur, the Red Sea area and Kordofan. Ethnic division continued to grow. For a time, a degree of pragmatism entered proceedings when Chinese and Malaysian interests were invited in.

The next 10 years witnessed an oil boom. Land prices rose. New buildings sprang up. Shiny new cars appeared on the streets.

Despite all the oil money, nothing of substance was achieved. Refineries and dams were built, but there was no long-term agricultural or economic strategy. Public services were left to decay. Doctors and teachers found their livelihoods whittled away. Seventy percent of the budget went to the military. Those close to Mr. al-Bashir managed to enrich themselves. Everyone else suffered.

When I departed in early 1990 I had no idea that it would be more than 16 years before I returned. By then my parents had passed away without seeing an end to the regime that had derailed their lives. My father stubbornly refused to return while they were still in power. We buried him in a cemetery in North London, where he had gone for medical treatment, choosing perpetual exile over compromise.
We know that slaveholders in the American South used Scripture to justify keeping their fellow humans in bondage. They could find no words from Christ on this, for there are no words from him. Just a line in the New Testament from mere mortals presuming to speak for him.

But perhaps it made those who tore apart families, who whipped insubordinates until they passed out, who sold children and cotton bales as similar commodities feel better to know that the monstrous crime of their daily enterprise could be a blessed act.

These days, no less an authority than Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said recently that God wanted Donald Trump to become president.

She offered no sourcing for this assertion, as is the case for vaporous claims that rise from the rot of the Trump presidency on a daily basis. But in blaming God for Trump, Sanders echoed a widespread Republican belief that the most outwardly amoral man ever to occupy the White House is an instrument of divine power. Hes part of the master plan.
The researchers analyzed nearly 30,000 cases where children under 6 had ingested foreign objects. They then estimated that more than 759,000 children had been evaluated in United States emergency departments for such ingestions during the two decades studied, and the number of estimated cases grew from more than 22,000 in 1995 to nearly 43,000 in 2015.

It was unclear how much of the increase could be attributed to improvements in case reporting over the years. But Dr. Orsagh-Yentis said she thought the rise was partly because of the proliferation of electronics with button batteries , which are found in a multitude of household items including thermometers, remote controls and toys.

As a whole, battery ingestions increased 150-fold during the study period, the researchers reported. Button batteries, which can be fatal if ingested, were found to be the most common type of battery that young children swallowed.

Theyre in everyones house, whether they realize it or not, Dr. Orsagh-Yentis said.

When a battery is swallowed, it can trigger a series of chemical reactions that could result in burns, causing significant tissue injury even within two hours, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, and potentially lead to perforation or hemorrhage.

The A.A.P. suggests giving two teaspoons of honey to children older than 1 year who have recently swallowed button batteries. Researchers have found that it can help protect the tissue near the battery and reduce injuries. But doctors warn not to delay medical treatment.
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Im Annie, one of the producers behind Wednesdays episode.

Tuesday morning, we gathered around our laptops in a windowless conference room, affectionately named the Bunker. We wanted to make an episode with Nick Casey about the current state of turmoil in Venezuela, which had just suffered a weeklong nationwide blackout. There was immense history at work here: corruption in the government, years of economic mismanagement and sanctions that led to a crumbling infrastructure. But the question was: How would we tell such a sprawling story in a single episode?

The first step is deciding which story to tell. When we plan an episode, we look for a single narrative to drive the episode along. It could be the story of one character or family, or the story of the reporters journey. But we pick a story with enough plot and tension to hold the listeners attention, and then we sneak the history and context in between plot points. The history is the medicine, the story is the spoonful of sugar. In this case, we landed on telling the story of how the blackout unfolded in one city, Maracaibo, as it deteriorated into apocalyptic horror.

To figure out how to weave this story with the historical context, I did an exercise my mentor Rebecca Skloot taught me. In one column, I wrote every beat of the story  the power goes out; it doesnt seem like a big deal at first; but then the food rots, and the looting begins. In another column, I wrote down the context we would need: the dueling presidents, the brushfire that brought down the countrys electrical grid, etc.
In the far reaches of the solar system, beyond Neptune, there is a minor planet orbiting the sun in a sea of icy debris.

Humans have known about the reddish, round object for more than a decade. Since 2007, scientists have estimated that it has a diameter of 775 miles  about half the size of Pluto  and most likely has methane on its surface.

But they still dont know what to call it.

This week, the astronomers who discovered the minor planet said they wanted the public to weigh in on the chosen name. Offering up three options to choose from, they invited anyone to vote on the name that they will eventually submit to the International Astronomical Union, which must approve the official name.

[Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar.]

Using data from the unions Minor Planet Center, the astronomers who discovered the minor planet, which is currently referred to as 2007 OR10, estimate that it is the largest unnamed world in our solar system. The group has designated a total of nearly 525,000 minor planets in our solar system.
MUMBAI, India  Jet Airways, which revolutionized Indian aviation after the government ended the monopoly of state-owned carriers, is now on the brink of shutting down, devastated by management missteps and the feisty low-cost airlines that followed in its footsteps.

Out of cash and desperate for a buyer, Jet is now operating just nine planes, according to the Press Trust of India, down from 123 at its peak. The company had grounded dozens of aircraft over the past few weeks as its finances deteriorated, and on Friday, it canceled its last remaining international flights through at least Monday, upsetting the plans of travelers in locations from London to Hong Kong.

The airlines management and its key stakeholders, including its consortium of lenders, continue to work closely towards resolving the current situation, the company said in a statement. Jet Airways regrets the inconvenience caused to its guests.

The outlook is grim.

I do not see that there is any way to revive it in this form, said Harsh Vardhan, chairman of Starair Consulting and a former chief executive of Vayudoot, a regional state-owned Indian airline that folded two decades ago. It has to die its own death before they may be able to get a strategic buyer.
Each week, we review the weeks news, offering analysis about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here.

Hi, Im Jamie Condliffe. Greetings from London. Heres a look at the weeks tech news:

Web regulators are getting into their groove. But are they going too quickly?

This past week, the British government proposed new powers to issue fines and make individual executives legally liable for harmful content on their platforms. My colleague Adam Satariano said it would be one of the worlds most aggressive actions to rein in the most corrosive online content.

Days earlier, Australia passed legislation that threatens fines for social media companies that fail to rapidly remove violent material. And theres a growing pipeline of other internet regulation, along with existing laws like the European Unions sweeping General Data Protection Regulation.

Were entering a new phase of hyper regulation, said Paul Fehlinger, the deputy executive director of the Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network, an organization established to understand how national laws affect the internet.
COTATI, Calif.  Ubers public stock offering next month will make a bunch of people remarkably rich. Peter Ashlock is not one of them, although he has toiled for the ride-hailing company almost since the beginning.

Mr. Ashlock, who will be 71 next week, has racked up more than 25,000 trips as an Uber driver since 2012. His Nissan Altima has 218,000 miles on it  nearly the distance to the moon. His passengers rate him 4.93 out of five stars. His favorite review: Dude drove like a cabdriver.

While he is an integral part of Ubers success, Mr. Ashlock is barely getting by. His 2018 tax return will show an adjusted gross income in the neighborhood of $40,000, better than 2016 and 2017. But he has maxed out his $3,200 credit limit at the local Midas car-repair shop and needs to come up with $5,000 to pay his taxes. He has Social Security but no savings to buy a new car that will let him keep working.

Silicon Valley has always been a lottery where immense wealth is secured by a few while everyone else must hope for better luck some other time. Rarely, however, has the disparity been on such stark display as with Uber. Its stock market value is expected to be about $100 billion, which would make it one of the richest Silicon Valley public offerings of all time.
But in recent seasons, European directors have rushed to rediscover Horvath, who chronicled the struggles of ordinary people during a time of political menace and social uncertainty that some have compared to our own. New York will soon get rare a taste of his writing, too.

Horvath, born in 1901 in a part of Austria-Hungary that is now Croatia, spent his early life crisscrossing the empire, from Budapest to Vienna to Bratislava. He later lived in Germany, which he fled for Austria after the Nazis took power in 1933. Following the Anschluss in 1938, he fled, again, this time to Paris. That same year he was killed during a storm by a falling tree branch. He was 36 years old.

Of all of Horvaths work, Youth Without God, about a young high school teacher who watches as his students slip into the brutal conformity of Nazi ideology, has acquired fresh relevance in our own age of anxiety. Horvaths morally astute observations have earned him comparisons to Brecht and Camus. His exploration of individual responsibility and agency inside systems of violence and repression have made him a go-to author for people struggling to make sense of a world under threat by resurgent nationalism, social atomization and environmental catastrophe.

Working from a new stage adaptation by the young Swiss writer Tina Muller, Mr. Erpulats production of Youth Without God shifts the perspective from the unnamed teacher  the books narrator  to the students, who speak about their values, desires, frustrations and fears.

In the novel, the teacher is denounced for telling his class that, contrary to what radio broadcasts have taught them, black people are human beings. In a particularly effective update, actors in the Gorkis production discuss an online portal set up last year by the far-right party Alternative for Germany, where students could rat out teachers who criticize it.
Nothing is yet final, but over all less than 5 percent of pledged delegates are set to be awarded by caucuses in the Democratic primary, down from 14 percent in 2016. About a third of those delegates will be decided by minor overseas contests in U.S. territories, like Guam and the Virgin Islands.

The remaining caucus states are also adopting rule changes that tend to increase turnout, like absentee or even online voting. It is hard to know how much these will dent the traditional advantages of candidates further to the left, but Mrs. Clinton was also stronger in higher-turnout caucus elections in 2016, winning key early races in Iowa (narrowly) and Nevada.

How much will it matter in 2020? Could it help an establishment-backed politician like Joe Biden if he joins the race?

The overall effect seems as if it will be pretty modest.

That might be something of a surprise. After all, the effect of having a caucus is substantial. In the last two Democratic primaries, Mrs. Clinton fared about a net 20 points worse in caucuses than primaries, even after controlling for their demographic characteristics.

In 2008, Texas had both a Democratic caucus and a primary, with the caucus awarding one-third of the states delegates and the primary awarding the rest. Mrs. Clinton won the Texas primary by 3.5 points, keeping her in the race, but she lost the Texas caucus by 12.5 points on the same day. As a result, Barack Obama, the insurgent candidate, won the most delegates from the state.

Despite the seemingly small overall effect, you could imagine that a state victory in 2020 caused by the switch could lift a campaign for a period, affecting public perceptions and the tenor of news coverage.

Still, caucuses were worth only a net three percentage points over all to Mr. Sanders (in 2016) and to Mr. Obama (2008) in the pledged delegate count (around a 20-point margin on 14 percent of delegates in each case).
As a student at Brigham Young University, Sidney Draughon committed two violations of the schools honor code, which prohibits everything from sexual activity to drinking coffee. First, officials faulted her for wearing clothing that they deemed indecent in a vacation photograph. Then, in December of her senior year, an ex-boyfriend confessed that the two had engaged in sexual touching, which led officials to put Ms. Draughon on probation, preventing her from graduating on time.

Those experiences inspired Ms. Draughon, after she had received her diploma last summer, to start a social media account sharing her concerns. It was so hurtful, and I felt so alone, she said. I kept thinking someone has to feel the same way.

Her effort has attracted many others with similar stories and grown into campuswide concern about the risks of the honor code being weaponized against students. At a sit-in last week and a large demonstration Friday on the Provo, Utah, campus, students called for changes to the system.

The very public and rare push comes as part of a broader effort within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns the university, to balance doctrine with the more mainstream views of many of its younger member s. It comes, too, on the heels of a decision earlier this month to allow children of same-sex couples to be baptized, reversing a contentious 2015 policy that declared church members in same-sex marriages were apostates and subject to excommunication  a major move that signaled attempts by the church to heal rifts within its ranks.
Mr. DeSantis has asked state officials to work with Jackson County on how to address the new findings, and more testing is needed to determine whether the anomalies are, indeed, unmarked graves. The county plans to develop an industrial center at the site as well as a training center for people with autism.

Almost from the moment the school opened as the Florida State Reform School in 1900, there was a steady stream of reports of abuse, indentured servitude, crowding and neglect. So many children  among them runaways and so-called incorrigibles  were sent to the institution that it became the largest in the country.

Despite continued allegations of mistreatment and harsh conditions, the school remained open until 2011, when the state shuttered it. Advocacy efforts by a group of men known as the White House Boys helped to reveal the horrors that took place at the school. A team of anthropologists from the University of South Florida used radar technology to search beneath the ground and discover dozens of unmarked graves.

The anthropology team has focused largely on Boot Hill, which during the segregation era was a documented cemetery on the African-American side of campus.

The latest findings only add to the catharsis for people like Jerry Cooper, who was at the school from 1960-61 and is president of the White House Boys, whose name is a nod to the small cinder-block building where they say they were viciously flogged for the slightest infraction.
The undergraduate student body voted to add a new fee of $27.20 per student per semester to their tuition bill, with the proceeds devoted to supporting education and health care programs in Louisiana and Maryland, where many of 4,000 known living descendants of the 272 enslaved people now reside.

A 2016 article in The New York Times described the 1838 sale by what was then Georgetown College, the premier Catholic institution of higher learning in America at the time.

The college relied on Jesuit-owned plantations in Maryland that were no longer producing a reliable income to support it, so the Jesuit priests who founded and ran Georgetown decided to raise cash by selling virtually all its slaves, receiving the equivalent of about $3.3 million in todays money.

The school wouldnt be here without them, said Shepard Thomas, a junior from New Orleans who is part of the campus group, Students for the GU272, that worked to hold the referendum. Mr. Thomas, a psychology major, is descended from slaves who were part of the 1838 sale.

Students here always talk about changing the world after they graduate, he said. Why not change the world when youre here?
Native American women and girls are facing an epidemic of violence that is hiding in plain sight. They are being killed or trafficked at rates far higher than the rest of the U.S. population ( on some reservations, women are 1 0 times as likely to be murdered as the national average , according to the Justice Department). Some simply disappear, presumably forced into sex trafficking .

These cases often go unsolved. Now, three senators are hoping to combat this epidemic.

The bipartisan bill, called the Not Invisible Act of 2019, was introduced last week by Lisa Murkowski, Republican from Alaska; Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat from Nevada; and Jon Tester, Democrat from Montana. It aims to change what the Indian Law Resource Center has called a lack of a diligent and adequate federal response to these crimes.

The bill would create an advisory committee of local, tribal and federal stakeholders to devise best practices to combat the problem and make recommendations to government  efforts that would include paving a way for federal agencies, law enforcement and elected tribal officials to collaborate more easily.

Cortez Masto told HuffPo that she believed the bill would help federal agencies improve and quicken their response by focusing on why these women and girls are disappearing and where those who are being trafficked are going  as well as on how to collect data and educate law enforcement on sex trafficking and start prosecuting offenders.

Data on the issue is scattershot at best, but heres some of what is known about the problem:

______

84 percent

Thats how many indigenous women have experienced physical, sexual or psychological violence in their lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice.
The makeup of the Supreme Court is probably the most conservative weve seen in a generation, and that certainly emboldens those of us who deeply desire that Roe v. Wade be overturned, said Jamieson Gordon, the spokeswoman for Ohio Right to Life, which opposes abortion.

Since John Kasich became governor of Ohio in 2011, the state has enacted more than 20 abortion restrictions and the number of full-service abortion clinics there has fallen to seven from 16, according to Kellie Copeland, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio, an abortion rights group that plans to fight the new law.

While the measure is the first major abortion restriction signed by Mr. DeWine, who took office in January, his support for the bill was hardly a surprise to abortion rights supporters given his role as attorney general under Mr. Kasich, a fellow Republican.

The reaction from our supporters has been exactly what we knew it would be, which is defiance, Ms. Copeland said. We are not accepting the barriers that these politicians are trying to put on our bodily autonomy.

Nationally, more than 300 abortion restrictions were introduced in the first three months of this year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which described the flurry of legislative activity as a surge. At the same time, though, some state lawmakers have sought to expand abortion rights.

In January, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, signed into law a bill that permits abortion after the 24th week of pregnancy as long as the fetus is not viable or the abortion is necessary to protect the mothers life or health.

The events of the last several months absolutely validate the decisive actions taken by New York to legally protect abortion  and more states must follow suit so that people can continue to access the care they need when they need it, Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, said in a statement.

Among the restrictions introduced this year was a bill in Texas that appeared to have stalled this week and would have criminalized abortions outright, potentially allowing women and physicians to receive the death penalty.
WASHINGTON  Republican leaders are sharpening and poll-testing lines of attack that portray Democratic policies on health care, the environment and abortion as far outside the norm, in hopes of arming President Trump with hyperbolic sound bites  some of them false  asserting that Democrats would cause long waits for doctors or make killing babies after birth legal.

The blunt messaging underscores one of the biggest challenges facing Democrats as they try to defeat the incumbent president: the need to define themselves and their ideas before Mr. Trump and his conservative allies do it for them.

The Republican National Committee has already begun polling in 16 states to assess ways to discredit ideas like Medicare for all, which Senator Bernie Sanders proposed in a bill this week, and build on the partys broader argument that Democratic candidates like Mr. Sanders are promoting an extreme socialist agenda. Social conservative leaders have met with White House officials to discuss calling attention to Democratic-sponsored legislation to loosen restrictions on abortion in the second and third trimesters, like one that passed recently in New York.

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The recent focus on health care and abortion follows well-coordinated attacks on policies like the Green New Deal, which reduced the far-reaching climate change proposal to a punch line with jokes about cow flatulence and putting farms out of business.
Judge Jackson said she was most disturbed by Mr. Pattens misstatements to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about his work in Ukraine and his purchase of the inaugural tickets. She also said his failure to register as a foreign lobbyist for Ukraine was not a mere technicality or an oversight, but a serious omission that deprived the American public, members of Congress and policymakers of information necessary to judge the motivations of those who seek to influence them.

People need the facts for democracy to work, she said.

Mr. Muellers prosecutors uncovered evidence of Mr. Pattens offenses while investigating Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman who was recently sentenced to seven and a half years in prison for financial fraud and conspiracy. Mr. Muellers team turned the case over to the United States attorneys office in Washington, D.C.

Although they did not recommend any specific sentence, the prosecutors argued for leniency, saying that Mr. Patten had quickly pleaded guilty and had cooperated with the government in several enforcement matters, including the prosecution of Mr. Manafort. Mr. Pattens lawyer asked for probation. The charges carried a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Judge Jackson said she had decided to spare Mr. Patten prison time because he moved quickly to admit his guilt, worked hard to help the special counsels investigation and seemed truly remorseful. You have done everything in your power to make amends, she said.

Both Mr. Manaforts and Mr. Pattens offenses were rooted in their work for pro-Russia billionaires in Ukraine, who paid tens of millions of dollars to western lobbyists and law firms to help shape their political partys message to the West. Mr. Patten essentially picked up where Mr. Manafort left off in 2014, when Viktor F. Yanukovych, a pro-Russian politician whom Mr. Manafort helped elevate to Ukraines presidency, was forced from power and fled to Moscow.
WASHINGTON  The dissent, tinged with anguish and filled with bitter accusations, was not ready until almost 3 a.m. It described a rupture in the carefully tended norms of civility at the Supreme Court. And it provided a rare glimpse into ordinarily secret deliberations.

In seven angry pages, Justice Stephen G. Breyer recounted how the conservative majority on the court had refused his request to delay the execution of an Alabama inmate for a few hours so he and the other justices could discuss the matter in person at their usual Friday morning conference.

Instead, by a 5-to-4 vote in the middle of the night, the court allowed the execution to proceed, with the conservative justices in the majority and the liberals in dissent. Although that division was not unusual, the way the court got there was.

Justice Breyers dissent reflects that things have quickly gotten ugly at the court since the replacement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was a moderating force in capital cases, with the more conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh.
President Trump last week privately urged Kevin McAleenan, the border enforcement official he was about to name as acting secretary of homeland security, to close the southwestern border to migrants despite having just said publicly that he was delaying a decision on the step for a year, according to three people briefed about the conversation.

It was not clear what Mr. Trump meant by his request or his additional comment to Mr. McAleenan that he would pardon him if he encountered any legal problems as a result of taking the action. Federal judges have already blocked the administrations attempts to limit asylum seekers who illegally enter the country, and it is not likely that Mr. McAleenan would have ended up in jail if he had followed the presidents directive.

One of the people briefed on the conversation said it was possible Mr. Trump had intended the comments to Mr. McAleenan as a joke. But the conversation, which took place during the presidents visit to the border town of Calexico, Calif., alarmed officials at the Department of Homeland Security who were told of it, according to the people familiar with the remarks.

It was another instance of the president trying to undo a decision and to stretch the boundaries of his power, even when told there were legal issues at stake. The same situation played out on Friday, when Mr. Trump said he was considering releasing asylum seekers into so-called sanctuary cities after administration officials told reporters the proposal was rejected because of legal issues.
Last year, Trump administration officials had floated the idea of transporting migrants to sanctuary cities, which do not strictly adhere to federal immigration laws, as a way to address the influx of migrants crossing the border with Mexico.

One of the highest-profile sanctuary cities is San Francisco, home to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is one of the presidents top political rivals and a thorn in his efforts to change American immigration laws. The White House raised the proposal again in February, suggesting it could punish Democrats for rejecting budget requests for border security.

Ms. Pelosis office condemned the Trump administration for the idea, which the Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday was ultimately rejected.

But Mr. Trumps tweets on Friday indicated it was not off the table, and the president appeared to revel in the Democratic outrage, saying, The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!

Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, a state with several sanctuary cities, criticized the presidents proposal.

Trumps plan to release migrants into enemy cities as if they are some kind of contagion is reprehensible, Mr. Markey tweeted. Trump is obsessed with the border and sanctuary cities because he only wins by dividing people.

There has been an influx of migrant families crossing the southern border into the United States, exceeding the staffing and resources available for immigration enforcement. And with a shortage of space in shelters and detention centers, immigration officials have been releasing migrants into the country as they wait to appear before an immigration court. Those courts are so backlogged with cases that it can be months or years before the migrants are called to appear before a judge.
WASHINGTON  Canadas top economic diplomat personally lobbied President Trumps advisers this week to remove American tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum imports and warned that the levies could jeopardize that countrys ratification of the rewritten North American Free Trade Agreement.

Bill Morneau, Canadas finance minister, said in an interview with The New York Times that the United States appeared unwilling to budge on the tariffs despite continued pleas to remove them. Canada has argued that the tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum are harmful to both countries economies and make little sense given the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement reached late last year.

We continue to advocate for the complete removal of the tariffs, Mr. Morneau said on Thursday afternoon on the sidelines of the annual spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

The United States and Canada have had continuing negotiations about the removal of the tariffs. One option that the United States has proposed is rolling back the tariffs in exchange for Canada agreeing to quotas on its steel and aluminum exports to the United States.
Good Friday morning. Here are some of the stories making news in Washington and politics today.

_____________________

 After seven years of hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was arrested on Thursday after Ecuador revoked his asylum status. Mr. Assange faces a charge in the United States of conspiring to hack a Pentagon computer as part of the 2010 release of secret American documents by Chelsea Manning.

 Mr. Assanges indictment makes no mention of the central role WikiLeaks played in the Russian campaign to undermine the 2016 presidential election. It remains unclear whether his arrest will be a key to unlocking any of the lingering mysteries surrounding Russia and the Trump campaign.

 At the tiny Ecuadorean Embassy, he ran WikiLeaks, held news conferences, rode his skateboard in the halls and hosted visitors like Pamela Anderson. Heres the story of Mr. Assanges seven years in isolation.
NAIROBI, Kenya  Two Cuban doctors were abducted near Kenyas border with Somalia on Friday, in a bold attack that left one police officer dead and that officials say was probably linked to the Shabab militant group.

The abduction took place early Friday when the doctors were on their way to work. They left their residence and were traveling to Mandera County Referral Hospital, less than two miles from the border, in a government vehicle with two police officers escorting them, when two vehicles boxed them in, the police said.

One police officer was shot and killed, and the attackers spirited the doctors across the border in their own vehicle. The car was later recovered, along with a driver, who was taken in for questioning, the police said.

A spokesman for the police, Charles Owino, said the attackers might be linked to the Shabab militant group, an Al Qaeda affiliate, but he left open the possibility that it could be another group.
Only one day after Sudans longtime autocratic ruler, President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, was ousted by his own defense minister  a close ally  the defense minister announced on state television that he was stepping down as head of the transitional government and would be replaced by yet another military leader.

The move was seen as an effort to assuage the thousands of protesters who have camped outside the countrys military headquarters in the capital, Khartoum, for the last seven days, demanding that a civilian government replace Mr. al-Bashir and his military coterie.

This was the second time in two days that the protesters had forced the departure of a ruler they found unacceptable. On Friday night, demonstrators in the streets reveled at their newfound potency, but many said they would not be satisfied until the country was in the hands of civilian leaders.

This news, its progress, but I cannot call it the progress we really want, said Prof. Muawia Shaddad, an astronomer and civil society activist who is on a committee helping to organize the protests. As he spoke by telephone from Khartoum, people could be heard cheering and beeping their car horns.
RIO DE JANEIRO  The assassination squad created by Argentinas military dictatorship to target dissidents during the 1970s had, like other state programs, its own bureaucratic rules: Employees punched in at 9:30 a.m. and were entitled to a two-hour lunch. They received a $1,000 clothing allowance during their first overseas mission. And they were required to submit expense reports.

Representatives of the ultrasecret directorate, which included intelligence officers from Chile and Uruguay, settled on their next victim through a majority vote.

These details of the assassination program, which pursued enemies in the region and in Europe as part of the Cold War intelligence alliance known as Operation Condor, have been found in a 1977 Central Intelligence Agency report, part of a trove of newly declassified United States government documents that shed new light on the repressive tactics of military regimes in South America and on American awareness of their actions.

The exchange of over 7,500 records  which the United States formally delivered to the Argentine government on Friday as part of a deal struck during the final months of the Obama administration  is one of the largest transfers of declassified documents from one government to another.
Worldwide, Brazil ranks 133 out of 193 countries in terms of female representation in legislative bodies, below Jordan and just above Bhutan, Chad and Egypt.

Taking advantage of resources aimed at promoting greater female representation has fueled anger even among the P.S.L. party faithful.

All of the embezzlement needs to be investigated, but I am particularly indignant about information that women were used, said Janaina Paschoal, an outspoken conservative who ran on the P.S.L. ticket in Sao Paulo and was elected a state legislator. Those possibly involved need to be removed from office.

Although several parties are under investigation by prosecutors, the P.S.L. has come under particular scrutiny because Mr. Bolsonaro is the president and ran as an alternative to the corrupt parties that had been in power.

The fact that the P.S.L. is falling back on old political tricks is not that surprising, said Monica de Bolle, a Brazilian economist who heads the Latin American studies program at Johns Hopkins University. But the female aspect is really important.

For Ms. Barbosa, it all started with an unexpected call from a politician from the presidents party, who asked if she wanted to run for office.

She drove 14 hours from her home in Governador Valadares to the capital, Brasilia. There she was greeted by the creme da la creme of the P.S.L., and formally invited to be a candidate by Marcelo Henrique Teixeira Dias, then the regional president of the party.
Mr. Carvajal is wanted for similar crimes himself, having been accused of taking money from a Colombian drug trafficker in an indictment that was unsealed in 2014. In 2008, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Mr. Carvajal, who was then head of the countrys military intelligence agency, for protecting drug shipments from seizure by Venezuelan authorities as well as providing weapons to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, then the countrys main rebel organization.

Image Hugo Carvajal, a former spy chief in Venezuela, was arrested in Spain on Friday. Credit... Fernando Llano/Associated Press

In the February interview, Mr. Carvajal denied the charges, saying he had been in touch with the rebels only to negotiate for the release of a Venezuelan businessman they had kidnapped. He had not been involved in drug trafficking, he said, but repeatedly reported suspicious cocaine shipments to top officials, who ignored them.

Mr. Carvajal, who goes by the nickname el Pollo, or the Chicken, in Venezuela, made a dramatic public defection from his government by video, urging his former military comrades to rise up against Mr. Maduro and support Juan Guaido, the leader of the opposition. Few followed his call, however, and Mr. Carvajals whereabouts have been unknown since.

His reappearance Friday in the hands of Spanish authorities may lead to his transfer to U.S. custody  and to prosecutors eager to interrogate him on the wrongdoing he has alleged by those in Mr. Maduros inner circle.

American authorities attempts to capture Mr. Carvajal have stretched on for years.

In 2014, after being appointed as the countrys general counsel to the Caribbean island of Aruba, officials there arrested him, raising hopes with their U.S. counterparts that he would soon be extradited. Aruba originally said that it never accepted his diplomatic post and that he was not protected by it from arrest.
The foreign minister of Brunei has defended his countrys new penal code  which made adultery and gay sex punishable by death from stoning, and allows for the amputation of limbs for theft  saying the laws are meant as a deterrent.

The United Nations and international rights groups have denounced the punishments, saying they amount to torture and a violation of human rights.

Erywan Yusof, Bruneis minister of foreign affairs, in a letter sent to several United Nations rights officials this week, outlined a detailed defense and said the penalties focus more on prevention than punishment.

Brunei, a tiny sultanate of about 430,000 on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo, has drawn condemnation and calls for boycotts over the laws. Its leaders say the punishments are in line with the countrys culture and religious tradition.
PARIS  The International Criminal Court abandoned a possible Afghanistan war-crimes investigation on Friday, saying the United States and others in the conflict would not cooperate.

The courts chief prosecutor had long sought permission to open a formal inquiry into civilian killings, torture and other abuses in the Afghanistan war, including possible crimes by American forces. But a panel of the courts judges decided that the difficulties of obtaining evidence and witness testimony outweighed the benefits of a prosecution, with a low prospect of any convictions.

The decision was welcomed by the Trump administration and came just weeks after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington would deny visas to the courts staff and judges involved in prosecuting or ruling on war crimes involving Americans. Last week the State Department confirmed that the United States visa of the courts chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, had been revoked.

[Read: The I.C.C. has allowed Afghanistan war crimes inquiry to proceed.]

But the decision by the judges, which took nearly 18 months to reach, troubled lawyers and stunned human rights activists, who said the court had capitulated to what they called Trump administration intimidation and pressure that had weakened the courts credibility.
SEOUL, South Korea  North Koreas leader, Kim Jong-un, said on Friday that he was willing to hold a third summit meeting with President Trump, but only if the United States changed its stance on enforcing sanctions by the end of this year, the countrys state media reported.

Mr. Kims remarks came a day after Mr. Trump said he was open to the idea of meeting Mr. Kim again, though their second round of talks, held in Hanoi, Vietnam, in late February, abruptly ended without a nuclear disarmament deal.

The Hanoi meeting collapsed after Mr. Kim demanded that Washington drop the most crippling sanctions imposed on his country in return for a partial dismantlement of the Norths nuclear program, an offer that Mr. Trump considered insufficient.

I am willing to accept if the United States proposes a third North Korea-United States summit on the condition that it has a right attitude and seeks a solution that we can share, Mr. Kim said in a speech to his countrys rubber-stamp legislature, the Supreme Peoples Assembly, on Friday.
KABUL, Afghanistan  The Taliban announced the beginning of their spring offensive on Friday, even as the United Nations lifted travel bans on 11 of their senior leaders to facilitate peace talks with the United States.

The announcements were a sign that though the peace talks are gaining momentum, with an Afghan delegation expected to meet with insurgents soon, fighting is likely to intensify all over the country.

[For more stories about Afghan peace negotiations, sign up for the weekly At War newsletter.]

Violence has gotten worse in recent weeks as the weather has warmed across Afghanistan, with each side killing dozens of the others forces every day. Last month, the government pre-empted the Taliban by announcing its own spring military offensive, amid Afghan leaders frustration over having been left out of the talks aimed at setting terms for an American troop withdrawal.

Two senior Western officials said the governments early announcement appeared to have been a mistake, with lower-ranking officials having released it without the leaderships approval. President Ashraf Ghani signed off on the security plan nearly two weeks after it was announced.
Using the law, regulators in France fined Google 50 million euros this year, in part for not making it clear how it uses peoples data to sell advertising.

 After the horrific shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Australian government rushed through a bill that would jail executives of social media and impose staggering fines if they fail to quickly remove abhorrent violent material. But my colleague Damien Cave, who also writes the Australia Letter, reported that Australias haste, with little in the way of consultations about the law, may leave it vulnerable to legal challenges.

In light of Australias actions, Damien also wrote a superb global overview on dealing with tech monoliths.

 On the same day that Ms. Gould spoke in Canada, a parliamentary committee in Britain released proposals for reining in social media companies, something that embattled Prime Minister Theresa May has said is a key priority.

 Singapore unveiled draft legislation this month to stop the spread of false information. Critics fear it may be used to stifle opponents of the government.

 In India, the government has proposed giving itself sweeping powers to remove internet content. Vindu Goel, one of my colleagues based there, found that many people are drawing comparisons with Chinas internet censorship.
LONDON  With the arrest in London of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and the news of a criminal case against him in the United States, anyone expecting him to appear in an American courtroom should be warned: Extraditing him will not be quick, and it will not be easy.

The American authorities made a preliminary extradition request on Thursday, soon after Mr. Assange was jailed for jumping bail, but that was just the first in a long series of legal filings, hearings, appeals and administrative decisions. And in the end, experts say, the result is far from certain.

The process is mostly up to the courts, but politicians will have a hand in it, too, and were already drawing battle lines over Mr. Assange. Complicating matters, prosecutors in Sweden could reopen a rape investigation involving Mr. Assange and request extradition to that country, forcing the British government to decide which case would take precedence.

Its not simple, and the defense will argue everything they can, said Rebecca Niblock, a partner at the British law firm Kingsley Napley who specializes in extradition law. I think it is going to be a long one. Id say minimum a year and a half, but if things get complicated, it could be much longer.
HELSINKI, Finland  When they really wanted to rile up conservative voters this spring, the politicians from Finlands nationalist party made a beeline for the rawest subject in this years general election.

No, not immigration. Climate.

[Read: Sanna Marin of Finland to become worlds youngest prime minister.]

As Finlands other parties competed with each other to offer ambitious climate goals ahead of Sundays general election, the Finns Party has seized on climate as a new front in the culture wars, warning its conservative, working-class supporters that they are being betrayed by urban elites.

Aggressive environmental measures will take the sausage from the mouths of laborers, warned a Finns Party politician, Matti Putkonen, in a recent televised debate. And, more important, from dogs and cats, whose food, he said, would increase in price by 20 to 40 percent.
The arrest of Julian Assange in London has raised a long list of serious questions about press freedom and the reaches of American justice.

But we wrote about those questions elsewhere. Whats left is a considerably more frivolous but widely asked question: What happened to his cat?

It is a concern of the tens of thousands of people who followed Embassy Cat on Twitter and Instagram, watching for more than a year as an indisputably adorable kitten crawled along Mr. Assanges shoulder and sat in on meetings with his visitors. No matter ones feelings about Mr. Assange, the cat, who had lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy with the WikiLeaks founder as he holed up to avoid capture, was a made-for-social-media star.
Back in the 2010 fiscal year, the agency automatically mailed out 155 million statements, the report noted.

Thats a huge discrepancy, Ms. Sherry said.

Asked whether the report raised concerns, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, Darren Lutz, said in an email that the shift to online statements was rooted in tighter agency budgets, along with an increasing preference by the public for doing business online. Currently, he said, 42 million people have instant access to statements through their online accounts.

The agency encourages everyone to create an online account, Mr. Lutz said, and suggests that people review their statements annually to verify that earnings posted are correct, to make sure their benefit estimates are accurate.

Theres also a reason besides retirement planning to review your Social Security statements: to check for signs of identity theft. Doing so is good identity hygiene, like checking your credit reports, said Charity Lacey, a spokeswoman for the Identity Theft Resource Center.

If, for instance, your reported earnings are much higher than your own records, it may be a red flag that someone is fraudulently using your Social Security number, said Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy with the nonprofit group Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.

Here are some questions and answers about checking your Social Security statement:

How do I create a my Social Security account?

You can register on the Social Security Administration website. Youll be asked to enter your Social Security number and birth date, and youll also be asked a series of questions  similar to those asked when you check your credit report online  to help confirm your identity. Then youll receive a code by either email or text, which you enter online to complete the process. If, for some reason, you cant set up the account online, you can visit a Social Security office. After you establish an account, youll get an annual email reminder to log on and review your statement.

If you have a security freeze on your credit report to help ward off fraud, you must lift it temporarily to set up your online Social Security account. Specifically, youll need to thaw the freeze at Equifax, the company the administration currently uses to help verify users identities.
I started making inquiries with both the Department of Education and FedLoan about a month ago. Since then, the story that FedLoan has told borrowers has started to change a bit: from a long estimated wait time, to a refusal to render a guess. I asked readers to take careful notes about their conversations.

Nicole Skrzyniarz, a physical therapist who lives in Medford, Mass., said she had been requesting a review since March 2018. But when she asks how long it will take, she gets different answers. Three months, six more weeks expedited, up to one year and, today, a long time; nobody should have given you a time frame, Ms. Skrzyniarz, who works at a nonprofit hospital, wrote in an email last week.

On Wednesday night, Katherine Cejda Bailey, who counsels children and families in a Memphis hospital, pressed a FedLoan phone worker for an updated timeline. She said the representative had told her that even expedited reviews are taking forever.

Kyle Stefano, a Sacramento social worker for the homeless, thought FedLoan had botched her initial inquiry. Then, she said, she was told that she shouldnt bother following up for now because FedLoan was prioritizing reviews for people who have already made 120 payments. The reason: increased media attention. The representative would not offer a timeline for her case. Its a mess, Ms. Stefano told me.

FedLoans own phone representatives seem to be losing patience, too, according to an email from Ms. Keller, the school counselor. During a call to FedLoan this week, she asked whether her account would just stay under review until she simply gave up. She said the rep had told her: That about sums it up. Its not O.K. how they are treating people.

I asked FedLoan and the Education Department about these problems. I heard back from the Education Department, which said it would speak for them both. Any excessive delay in customer service is unacceptable, the department said.

We understand the time it takes for borrower accounts to be reviewed is a problem, and we are working with our loan servicers to fix it, said the departments press secretary, Liz Hill.
At the site of a Bangladeshi town lost to devastating storms, locals make do by scavenging what remains.

Hunting for bricks on the flooded coastline of Bangladesh. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Standing sometimes waist-deep in seawater on the shores of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh, they work to find bricks, dig them out of the sludge and cart them to the side of the road to sell. The job is new, a result of devastating storm surges a little more than a decade ago. In 2007, and then again in 2009, cyclones battered the coastline just south of Kuakata, destroying homes and structures and drowning entire villages. The storms submerged forests of mangroves and left 99 local residents dead.

The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum survived. Now they scavenge, looking for debris. They wait until low tide, when the receding waves reveal the rubble. Once theyve wheeled bricks to the embankment, they break them into small, chestnut-size pieces. These shards are used in the foundations for homes in the new village, a mile up the shore.

Despite being responsible for only 0.3 percent of the emissions that cause global warming, Bangladesh is near the top of the Global Climate Risk Index, a ranking of 183 countries and territories most vulnerable to climate change. When scientists and researchers predict how global warming will affect populations, they usually use 20- and 50-year trajectories. For Bangladesh, the effects of climate change are happening now. Cyclones are growing stronger as temperatures rise and are occurring with more frequency.

[Read about new legal strategies to make the worlds biggest polluters pay for climate change.]

Researchers warn that within a few decades, Bangladesh may lose more than 10 percent of its land to sea-level rise, displacing as many as 18 million people. Decisions to leave coastal communities arent really decisions at all. Families leave because there are no other options. There is no work. There are no homes. Over the past decade, an average of 700,000 Bangladeshis a year migrated because of natural disasters, moving to Dhaka to live in sprawling slums as climate refugees. Kulsum and Komola have managed to forge opportunity from disaster; they will stay, for now. They will continue to collect bricks to build the new village, even if the new village will most likely meet the same fate as the old one.  Jaime Lowe

A gathering at Komola Begums home, from left: Her father, Abdul Latif Howlader; Komola; her son Nur-un-Nabi; her sister Kulsum Begum; and a neighbor. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Making a Living in the Ruins

The sisters Kulsum and Komola Begum make a living scavenging bricks, which they sell to construction workers for roughly $1.40 a sack.

During monsoon season, when currents are stronger and tides wash away the sand, the family can bag 60 to 70 sacks. Over all, they earn enough to send the children to school and buy uniforms and books.

A neighbor. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times Kulsum Begum and her granddaughter Marium. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Komola Begums sons sometimes help their mother collect the bricks. When I can earn, my children can eat. If I dont, they will starve, Komola said. I do this for my kids.

Nur-un-Nabi and Bellal Nabi. Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Her son Nur-un-Nabi plays outside his familys home, which is surrounded by fields of rice and grasses. When he is not at school, and not helping his mother on the shore, Nur-un-Nabi can often be found running on thin slippery dams, occasionally chasing a water snake slithering out of the flooded rice fields.

Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

The dozen miles of beach crowns the tourist town of Kuakata, roughly two hundred miles south of Dhaka. The beach is surrounded by forests of mangroves and palm plantations, which are falling victim to increasingly aggressive cyclones, tidal surges and rising seas. When we were young, the old people used to say that the sea was very far from here, Komola said. They packed up their meals and walked their way to the sea. But now you can reach it in no time.

Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Komola Begum loads bricks onto a cart that her son Bellal Nabi will pedal a few hundred yards along a path of hard-beaten earth up to an embankment where the bricks will be unloaded and broken into smaller chunks.

Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Nur-un-Nabi breaks bricks, while his aunt Kulsum does the same a short distance away. The piles of bricks rest on an embankment that was recently raised to make it more resistant to cyclones. The Begum families homes are about a hundred yards from the embankment  which the more pessimistic local residents expect will withstand just a few more cyclones before being washed away.

Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Komola and Kulsum Begum load a bag of brick for a client. A bag can be as heavy as 40 kilos, and the two sisters often help each other with the task. It is a good business so far, Komola said. Sometimes we get pre-orders, and this is good money.

Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

At each low tide, new scraps of bricks are revealed in the mud. A few decades ago, Komola Begum recalled, there were fishing villages here, and roads, rice fields and plantations.

Some bricks come from the fishing nets, where they are used as weights, she said. We dont know where the others come from. She assumes that many come from homes that have been swept away. Now everything is under the sea, she said from the beach, pointing toward the ocean.

Andrea Frazzetta/Institute, for The New York Times

Photo captions by Jacopo Pasotti.
France Takes Delivery of Fourth and Final BSAOM Ship



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An Italian man who went to great lengths to convince everyone that he had lost the ability to walk after being involved in a staged car accident 12 years ago was recently exposed as a fraud.

The incredible story of Roberto Guglielmi, an Italian con artist who managed to fool everyone, including doctors, neighbors and even the Pope, that he couldnt walk began over a decade ago. In 2007, he came up with a plan to pass himself off as a disabled person and collect the pension offered by the government, but he needed an accomplice to pull it off. At the time, he had someone living in his home who was behind on rent, so he proposed to forget about the payment he was owed if his housemate would pretend to hit him with the car while he was crossing the street. The man agreed and everything went smoothly. With the help of a false medical document, Guglielmi was able to become a paraplegic, even though he could walk like a normal person.

Whats most remarkable about this tale of deception is the extreme lengths that the Florentine went to in order to deceive doctors during mandatory visits to confirm his disability. According to prosecutors, he would inject lidocaine into his legs to numb his muscles, undergo traumatic therapies and use a wheelchair whenever he left his home. For over a decade, no one suspected that he was actually a healthy person with full use of his legs.

Photo: photo-graph/Pixabay

Con artists usually avoid attracting attention to themselves, but Guglielmi was so confident in his ability to fool people, that he actually sought attention. In 2013 he famously staged a protest accusing the Florentine Democratic Party of preventing him from exercising his constitutional right to vote in a local election, and in 2014 he wrote a touching letter to the Pope, who actually telephoned him and then invited him to the Vatican. A 2015 photo shows Roberto Guglielmi kissing Pope Francis hand.

Gugliemis intricate scam finally came crushing down on him last week, after returning from a vacation in Togo. A former caretaker noticed that something was off about the seemingly paraplegic man and notified authorities. A team of detectives launched an investigation and discovered the mans double life. Although he would always use a wheelchair in his home city of Firenze, whenever he went out of town, he walked like a normal person.

After capturing footage of Roberto Guglielmi walking on his own two legs, police finally arrested him upon his arrival at Firenze airport after a vacation in Togo. He had come down the airplane stairs on his own legs and was actually standing when they handcuffed him, although the Corriere newspaper reports that he did have his wheelchair waiting for him in a car at the airport.



Italian prosecutors are accusing Roberto Guglielmi of aggravated fraud against the state and deceiving public officials. They claimed that he unlawfully received over 137,000 euros ($155,000) both in collected invalidity pension and unnecessary healthcare.

Although his decade-long deception is impressive enough, it seems Guglielmi had long had a habit of passing himself off as someone else in order to obtain favors. After news of his arrest went viral in Italian media, several social media posts from people who interacted with him in the past revealed that he had posed as councilor, undersecretary, policeman and friend of a general.

Graziano Cioni, the former deputy mayor of Florence, wrote on Facebook that when he first met Roberto Guglielmi, in the early 2000s, he introduced himself as a captain of the carabinieri and the grandson of a general. Years later, when he saw him in a wheelchair, the conman claimed that he had been wounded in a firefight with criminals.



As impressive as it sounds, Guglielmis story still pales in comparison to that of fellow Italian conman Stefan Cernetic, who for years posed as a Prince of Montenegro, brushing shoulders with real royalty and celebrities.
Ron Thompson, a Zimbabwean hunter who killed over 5,000 elephants, hundreds of buffaloes and many more wild animals in his 50-year career, recently declared himself totally unrepentant about his resume, claiming that its conservationists who are the problem.

The 77-year-old retired hunter recently sat down with English newspaper The Independent and said that he was never driven by bloodlust, as many would assume, but by the knowledge that animal populations must be controlled to make sure they dont increase beyond the capacity of their habitat. He claimed that despite the fraudulent lies spread by so-called conservationists, to him shooting thousands of animals dead was only a job.

Photo: DKunert/Pixabay

I didnt have any sentiment, Thompson told The Independent. Im totally unrepentant, a hundred  ten thousand  times over for any of the hunting Ive done because thats not the problem. The problem is weve got a bunch of so-called experts from the West telling us what to do. Im a trained university ecologist  I must surely know something about this.

On his official website, Thompson boasts about killing 5,000 elephants, 800 buffaloes, 60 lions, 50 hippos, 40 leopards, and many more. Its clear that his main focus was hunting elephants, but the Zimbabwean claims that he didnt contribute to the declining number of the great African beast. In fact, he doesnt even consider to in danger of becoming extinct.

The African elephant is nowhere near extinct, Thompson said. People who say this are animal-right-ist NGOs who ask for money and tell lies to get it. When you have a healthy population you must ensure they dont increase beyond the capacity of their habitat.

It was a thrill to me, to be very honest, Ron Thompson admitted. Some people enjoy hunting just as much as other people abhor it. I happened to enjoy it.



According to the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, the number of African elephants has plummeted from over 1.3 million in the 1980s to around 400,000 today  a 70% drop in population. His theory about habitat capacity doesnt really hold up either, as the animals habitat is bound to get smaller as human activity expands across the continent. So were going to have to keep killing them as we encroach on their homes, I guess

Eduardo Goncalves, founder of the Campaign To Ban Trophy Hunting, claims that management culling is often used as a cover for trophy hunting in Africa and threatens to push endangered species like the elephant to the point of no return.


Michelle Giuda

The State Dept. has merged its domestic PA bureau with the international information programs (public diplomacy) unit to form a new global public affairs shop of about 300 staffers.

The Washington Post calls the revamp "the biggest structural change at the State Dept. in 20 years," and an effort to counter disinformation campaigns by China and Russia.

Michelle Giuda, acting under secretary for public policy and PA, engineered the overhaul, which had been contemplated for years but stymied by the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 that bars the government from targeting Americans with propaganda.

The Post noted that Smith-Mundt Act restrictions are less relevant in the digital age when US reporters report on State Dept. messaging overseas, and foreign journalists cover State Dept. briefings.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the restructuring marks a "critical change and evolution within our public diplomacy operation to ensure we deliver on that mission in the 21stcentury."

Prior to being sworn in at the State Dept. in February 2018, Giuda was deputy press secretary for Newt Gingrich and senior VP-global communications at Weber Shandwick.
Students from Scared Heart Tullamore and Banagher College were among the winners announced by Webwise at the Safer Internet Day Awards 2019. This was the competitions first awards ceremony, held at Microsofts dedicated innovation and education hub, DreamSpace.

Emily OBrien of Sacred Heart, Tullamore won the SID Ambassador Leadership Awards, while Banagher College were highly commended in the Best Video category.

Inspired by the work being done in schools around Ireland on internet safety, Webwise, the internet safety initiative of the Professional Development Services for Teachers, created the unique to celebrate achievements made by students, teachers and schools in raising awareness of online safety whilst also promoting healthy and creative uses of technology in their communities.

The competition continues to grow, with schools across Ireland submitting projects. Categories in this years competition included best use of technology, best campaign, best use of social media and more. The winning schools and students received their awards at an exclusive award ceremony with surprise gig with popular Irish band; Chasing Abbey in Microsofts dedication innovation and education hub, DreamSpace at the companys headquarters in Leopardstown.

Competition entries were peer-led, with young people tackling issues that are important to them. From this years projects emerged themes such as device-free campaigns, misinformation, media literacy, respectful communication, image-sharing and managing online well-being, among others.

Record numbers of students participate in Safer Internet Day 2019

Safer Internet Day 2019 saw 145,000 students across more than 550 schools in Ireland participate. This a record number of young people joining in Safer Internet Day in Ireland and marks more than a 30% increase, almost 45,000 more students, involved this year. The winners announced today represent the best in class for online safety initiatives and campaigns. Almost two hundred students from fifteen second-level schools across Ireland were awarded for their Safer Internet Day campaigns and initiatives.

Ciara ODonnell, National Director, Professional Development Service for Teachers, said, On behalf of PDSTs Webwise Initiative I would like to congratulate all the winning schools. These awards recognise the innovative work being done by students and teachers to raise awareness within school communities about online safety. It is a pleasure to welcome students here to Microsoft Ireland and celebrate these great online safety initiatives.

Kevin Marshall, Head of Education at Microsoft Ireland added, Were delighted to welcome the winners of the Safer Internet Day Awards to our educational hub, DreamSpace, a dedicated space where students are inspired to unbox their ambition, spark their creativity and supercharge their ideas. By educating young people about internet safety, we empower them to unlock new skills and create the workforce of the future. In Dreamspace, we encourage students to think differently, be creative and work together and we want to congratulate this years winners for showcasing these values.
U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-5 of Swarthmore, testified before the U.S. House Appropriations Committee Wednesday that the Boeing CH-47F Block II program is critically needed not only for thousands of jobs but also for national security.

I understand that the Army must make tough decisions, but delaying the production of the Block II program is not in the best interest of national security, she testified. There is no suitable replacement for the Chinook and I know I dont need to convince any of you on the utility of this critical aircraft. Delaying or ending this program without having a suitable replacement would have significant consequences both in terms of cost and military readiness.

The helicopters are manufactured at the Boeing plant in Ridley Township.

Last month, Scanlon sent a letter to the House Armed Services and Defense Appropriations committees that said delays in the Block II program would result in a loss of approximately 1,000 jobs while causing a $3.2 billion cost increase to the program.

In its FY20 budget request, the U.S. Army announced it was delaying planned upgrades for the Chinook as part of a broader effort to focus more on areas like technology and defense.

Built in Ridley since the 1960s, the twin-engine, tandem rotor, heavy-lift cargo helicopter has been the militarys workhorse. As additional armor had been added over time, the Chinook had become heavier and bulkier, resulting in lowered range and life ability. Block II upgrades were meant to improve with advanced rotor blades, redesigned fuel tanks, a sturdier fuselage and an improved drivetrain.

In her testimony Wednesday, Scanlon talked about noted the Delco workforce.

The production facility is home to more than 4,000 skilled men and women who build the finest heavy lift helicopter in the world  flown by the United States Army and 19 countries around the globe, she said. These men and women, and the dedicated supply chain across the nation, deliver the Chinook to the Army, on average, 53 days ahead of schedule.

In addition, the representative noted that the Chinook program supports more than 20,000 jobs and more than 200 suppliers in 38 states.

A good number of these suppliers are small businesses, Scanlon said, and if the program is delayed or cancelled, they face the very real risk of closure.

She spoke to the Armys own declaration of need for the helicopter.

In July 2017, after completing a detailed analysis, the Army formally certified to Congress that the CH-47F Block II program was a critical requirement for the Army, she testified. The Army told Congress that the upgrades provided by Block II are necessary to significantly advance its capability to lift more weight in terms of both personnel and cargo, fly at higher altitudes and fly in hotter temperatures.

Now, she continued, just 20 months after making that certification to the Congress, the Army seeks to delay F Block II production by five years and if the Under Secretary of the Armys statement is accurate, not procure additional CH-47F aircraft at all.

Mike Tolassi, president of United Aerospace Workers Union Local 1069 at Boeing, spoke of her testimony.

I would hope that she would support the Block II  and she does, he said, adding that many elected and company officials were involved in getting the program fully funded. He said his membership just finished a letter-writing campaign to generate awareness of their situation.

Even those not in office, including Republican Delaware County Council candidates Jim Raith, Kelly Colvin and Mike Morgan, wrote a letter to Scanlon to offer their suggestions  including having U.S. Rep. Donald Norcross, D-1 of New Jersey, chairman of the House Armed Services Committees Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee to host a field hearing at the Delco plant.

(T)his is not and should not be a partisan issue, they wrote. We are here to support your efforts in any way that we can.

In the meantime, Tolassi tried to tend to the concerns of his membership.

I get a lot of questions, he said. I try to assure everybody its not a done deal yet  Weve been getting good support. The companys working hard. Theres no final determination yet. Were staying positive.
Does a similar voting percentage of 2014 and 2019 suggest there wont be a regime change?

Debates

oi-Deepika S

The first phase of the Lok Sabha elections kicked off on Thursday as 91 Lok Sabha constituencies in 21 states went to polls in the first phase of elections. While no average polling percentage was available for the first phase in total, the highest polling percentage of 81 per cent was registered in West Bengal. The lowest voter turnout 50 per cent was in Bihar where four seats went to the hustings.

Though there were complaints of names missing from voter list and VVPAT malfunctioning, the numbers showed that the high-decibel poll campaign and sweeping issues ranging from nationalism, corruption, announcements of special doles to farmers sustained the interest of voters in the absence of any clear wave.

Will the high voter turnout decide whether the Modi wave is still a driving force that can help the party achieve its 2014 victory figure? What is your say? Does it suggests there won't be a regime change?

Please express your opinion below:
Air Pollution: You want to ban industries in Pakistan? Court asks UP govt

Are electoral bonds valid? SC order today

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, Apr 12: The Supreme Court will pronounce its order on a petition that challenged the validity of electoral bonds political funding.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi will pass the order on a plea filed by NGO, Association of Democratic Reforms (ADR).

The NGO, which has challenged the validity of the scheme, had sought interim relief including that either the issuance of electoral bonds be stayed or the names of the donors be made public to ensure transparency in the poll process.

SC fines Mamata govt for shadow ban on political satire, says can't silence speech for fear of mob

Attorney General K K Venugopal, appearing for the Centre, supported the scheme saying the purpose behind it is to eliminate the use of black money in elections.

"So far as the electoral bond scheme is concerned, it is the matter of policy decision of the government and no government can be faulted for taking policy decision," Venugopal said, adding the court can scrutinize the scheme after elections.
Election expenditure: How much did BJP, Congress, DMK, CPI, TMC, AIADMK receive funds and spent during polls?

Opposition front not possible without Congress: Shiv Sena leader Raut after meeting with Rahul Gandhi

Mamata Banerjee's TMC gives yet another jolt to Congress in Meghalaya; 11 members switch sides

Congress changes strategy on Robert Vadra

India

oi-Hardeep Singh Bedi

New Delhi, April 12: The Congress has changed its strategy on Robert Vadra, husband of party general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

Of late Gandhi family is facing the heat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over Robert Vadra, whose name has been involved in dubious land deals with realty major DLF. In February, Rajasthan High Court issued summons to Vadra and his mother Maureen in relation to a 2015 case of illegal land transactions in Kolayat area of Bikaner.

Day after SC verdict on Rafale deal, Congress demands Prasad, Sitharaman's resignation

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders have been targeting the Gandhi family by highlighting Vadra 's role in the land deals.

Despite all this, Vadra was present when Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi filed their nominations from Amethi and Raebareli.

A party insider tells OneIndia that Vadra's presence at political events is a part of the Congress strategy.

"When Priyanka was appointed Congress general secretary then the party decided to be offensive and not defensive over Vadra to send a message in the country that he is being targeted for being a relative of Gandhi family," the insider says.

"This was the reason that Priyanka on a couple of occasions dropped her husband at the investigating agencies' offices where he was summoned for questioning. The idea was to play a victim card. Since Priyanka has entered into active politics and she cannot dump her controversial husband, so Vadra is being presented proudly," adds the insider.

When Priyanka was not involved in active politics then the Congress leaders wouldn't comment on Vadra, even during off the record conversations with journalists. However, now they defend Vadra by saying that he is being harassed by the Modi government because he is the husband of Priyanka.

Congress writes to home ministry on life threat to Rahul, Centre denies

It has also been decided that Priyanka with her husband will continue to campaign for her brother and Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who is contesting from Amethi Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh.

Union Minister Smriti Irani, who is the BJP candidate against Rahul Gandhi, has been launching scathing attacks on Gandhi family and Vadra.

She told ANI on Wednesday in Amethi that Vadra's campaigning will definitely benefit the BJP and wherever Vadra will go, the farmers would come out to vote to save their land from him.

Despite Irani 's regular attacks on Vadra, the Congress has decided not to give a reply as the party doesn't want to give wings to this issue.
Jallianwala Bagh centenary: Naidu, Rahul to pay homage to martyrs today; Security up

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, April 13: 2019 marks the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by British forces. Though the Election Commission (EC) hasn't allowed observing the 100 years of Jallianwala Bagh massacre on a large scale, a programme commemorating the event will be held in Punjab on Saturday.

Only 12 families of those killed in the massacre have been invited for the programme because the state administration failed to trace the descendants of the remaining martyrs.

Meanwhile, on the eve of the centenary, Hundreds of people, including students, local residents and even visitors, held a candlelight march in Amritsar on Friday evening.

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, Governor V P Singh Badnore, Cabinet minister Om Prakash Soni and other leaders, including members of the families of those killed in the massacre, had joined the candlelight march. Tight security was observed by the Punjab Police during the event.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi and vice president Venkaiah Naidu are likely to arrive for the main function to commemorate the 100 years of the massacre.

[British PM Theresa May voices regret over Jallianwala Bagh massacre]

The Centre and the state government are organising separate events to pay tribute to those fell to the bullet of General Dyer on April 13, 1919.

The 100th anniversary of the killing of hundreds of unarmed, innocent Indians, including women and children, who were protesting peacefully against the Rowlatt Act of the British government, by British Indian forces led by Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, falls on April 13, 1919.

The massacre is one of the darkest chapters of India's freedom struggle to free the country from British occupation. It showed the brutal repression unleashed by the British on Indian subjects.

On April 10, British Prime Minister Theresa May had expressed regret over the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

May, however, did not issue a full apology. "We deeply regret what happened and the suffering caused," May had told the British parliament. On the other hand, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the main opposition Labour Party, had called for a full, clear and unequivocal apology.
JKSSB SI Recruitment 2021: Last date to apply for 800 Sub Inspector posts, direct link here

Jammu and Kashmir: Kishtwar under curfew for fourth day

India

oi-PTI

Jammu, Apr 12: Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar district remained under curfew for the fourth consecutive day on Friday amid strict vigilance by the Army, officials said.

Authorities are planning to relax the curfew for one hour from 4 pm on Friday, they said.

A senior RSS leader Chanderkant Sharma and his security guard were killed on Tuesday when a militant opened fire inside a health centre in Kishtwar town, prompting authorities to impose curfew and call the Army to maintain law and order in the communally sensitive region.

BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi moves SC against Rahul's remarks on Rafale

"The curfew continues to remain in force in Kishtwar for fourth consecutive day today. There is strict enforcement of curfew. Army continues to remain deployed," an official said.

He said there was no report of any untoward incident from anywhere in the district and strict vigilance is being maintained in all sensitive areas of the district.

According to an order issued by Kishtwar Deputy Commissioner A S Rana, the curfew will be relaxed from 4 pm to 5 pm in some areas and 4.30 pm to 5.30 pm in other areas of Kishtwar district.

Police had picked up several over ground workers (OGWs) for interrogation in connection with the killing of Sharma and his PSO by terrorists.

PTI
Jet's revival looks bleak as Anil Agarwal pulls out of race for acquiring cash-strapped airline

Jet Airways cancels all international flights till Monday; PMO holds urgent meeting

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Apr 12: Jet Airways, facing its worst existential crisis in its over 25-year-old history, on Friday extended suspension of its international operations till next Monday due to severe liquidity issues.

Jet Airways spokesperson said,''Jet Airways has cancelled its international operations from 12-15 April, 2019. It is working to minimise guest inconvenience using its 24x7 Contact Centre, Guest Relations & Social Media response teams, to handle schedule adjustments.''

''In parallel, the airline's management and its key stakeholders including its consortium of lenders, continue to work closely towards resolving the current situation,'' the spokesperson said.

Jet was the largest domestic carrier operating in the international sector with a hub in Amsterdam, where a cargo agent had taken possession of an aircraft this on Tuesday demanding bill payment. This led to the cancellation of the Amsterdam-Mumbai flight that day.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) held an urgent meeting to discuss the crisis in private airline Jet Airways, which is facing acute financial woes.

According to sources, the meeting has been called after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu asked the secretary of the department to review issues concerning Jet Airways. Crisis-hit Jet Airways is facing acute financial crunch and has grounded several of its flights and stopped international operations.

The drastic measure was announced after the airline informed the exchanges that it was forced to ground 10 more planes due to non-payment of rentals to the lessors.

The employee union had also sought to register FIRs against airlines' founder Naresh Goyal, chief executive Vinay Dube and SBI chairman Rajnish Kumar for non-payment of March salary, even as passengers continued to bear the brunt of last minute cancellations and missing refunds.

(with PTI inputs)
North-East got its respect only after advent of PM Modi's government in 2014: Smriti Irani

Politicians have no business talking about how people dress: Smriti Irani on CM's ripped jeans remarks

Parents of more than 600 children died due to COVID-19 from April to May 28: Government

Development not reached all families in Amethi despite Gandhis 'rule' for 5 decades: Smriti Irani

Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi: Cong mocks Smriti Irani over education qualification

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Apr 12: Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi on Friday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the issue of politicisation of the armed forces and Smriti Irani's qualifications.

"A new serial is going to come which is titled Kyunki Mantri Bhi Kabhi Graduate Thi," Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said in reference to Smriti Irani-starrer 'Kyunki Saan Bhi Kabhi Bahun Thi' on Friday (April 12).

In her affidavit filed during her nomination, Smriti Irani, who is contesting against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, said she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993.

Smriti Irani has assets over Rs 4.71 crore

Smriti Irani declared that she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce- a three-year degree course - from Delhi University's School of Open Learning in 1994.

Listing all the instances in which the BJP leaders have used the armed forces in their poll pitch, Chaturvedi said, "Political parties using armed forces is wrong."

In 2004 elections, Irani had declared that she had a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. "BA 1996 Delhi University (School of Correspondence)", she had written in the column which seeks details of university education and the year in which the course was completed.

Irani had also said at a media event in August 2014 that she has a degree from the prestigious Yale University in the US.
State vs national issues: Key lessons for the BJP to learn in Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Haryana

LS Election 2019 Phase 1 Polls updates: Less than 1 percent of voting machines replaced, says EC

India

oi-Vikas SV

New Delhi, Apr 11: The first phase of voting was held across 91 Lok Sabha constituencies on Thursday. Election 2019 kicked off to a troubled start with two people being killed in clashes in Andhra Pradesh, IED blasts in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh, reports of EVM glitches and multiple complaints from voters about their names not being on the electoral list.

As round one of the seven-phase Lok Sabha election began in 91 constituencies across the length and breadth of India, from the hills of Kashmir to the islands of Andaman and Nicobar, reports of unrest and irregularities cast shadows over the world's biggest poll process.

There were reports of violence from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh while the chiefs of several parties, including TDP's N Chandrababu Naidu, AAP's Arvind Kejriwal and PDP's Mehbooba Mufti, came forward to complain about administrative and other lapses.

More than 14 crore people were listed to vote in the first phase, held in 91 Lok Sabha constituencies spread across 18 states and two union territories. The votes for the election, being held over seven phases, will be counted on May 23.

The Election Commission said 0.73 % of the ballot units and 0.61 % of the control units of electronic voting machines had to be replaced. Also, the commission said 1.7 per cent of the VVPATs were replaced. This is the first Lok Sabha election where VVPATs have been attached to all voting machines.

Here are the Lok Sabha Election 2019 Phase 1 Voting Updates:
Rahul Gandhi in centre of Cong posters for Jaipur rally; call for him to become party chief again

MPs were not suspended by RS chairman or PM, but by power that wants to steal farmers income: Rahul

Lok Sabha Elections 2019 updates: Anti-BJP front gains momentum, Naidu meets Sonia Gandhi

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

New Delhi, May 19: Andhra Pradesh Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday met BSP chief Mayawati and Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav in Lucknow, continuing his efforts to put together a coalition to form the next government at the Centre. He reached Lucknow after meetings in New Delhi with Congress president Rahul Gandhi, CPI leaders G Sudhakar Reddy and D Raja, NCP chief Sharad Pawar and LJD leader Sharad Yadav. The Telugu Desam Party chief has already held several rounds of discussions with various opposition leaders, including TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal and CPI (M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his two-day visit to Uttarakhand today with a visit to Kedarnath shrine. The prime minister is also expected to offer prayers at Badrinath tomorrow before returning to Delhi in the afternoon. The prime minister's visit to the holy shrine came a day before the last phase of the marathon Lok Sabha elections.

Fifty nine parliamentary constituencies, including Varanasi, will go to polls in the seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha elections and the results will be announced four days later, on May 23.

Stay tuned for the Lok Sabha elections 2019 UPDATES:
State vs national issues: Key lessons for the BJP to learn in Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Haryana

Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Voter turnout in first phase same as in 2014

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Apr 12: The world's largest democratic exercise began on Thursday with crores of Indians coming out to vote to elect 91 parliamentarians in the first phase of over-a-month-long Lok Sabha polls.This was the first of the seven-phase election that will determine the next Lok Sabha.

Briefing newspersons after polling hours , Election Commission officials said the polls were largely peaceful barring a few sporadic incidents of violence and that the poll percentage recorded during the first phase of Lok Sabha elections was about the same as in the previous time.

The voter turnout was high at most places, while poll-related violence saw death of two persons in Andhra Pradesh and complaints poured in from various states about glitches in electronic voting machines and names missing from the voter lists.

81% in West Bengal

West Bengal recorded a polling percentage of 81 per cent, while Bihar recorded 50 per cent voter turnout in phase one of Lok Sabha elections.

Bihar recorded voter turnout of 50 per cent, the lowest among the 18 states and two union territories which went to polls on Thursday.

The two seats in Jammu and Kashmir Jammu and Baramulla recorded an overall percentage of 54.49 as compared to 57.19 in the 2014 general elections.

In Baramulla, the turnout was 35.01 per cent as compared to 38.5 per cent last time.

In Jammu, 72.16 per cent of voters turned up at the polling stations, as compared to 69.17 per cent last time.

Andhra Pradesh, where all seats went to polls in the first phase, recorded a turnout of 66 per cent as compared to 74.64 per cent in the last LS polls.

In Mizoram, where the entire state went to polls in a single phase, recorded a dip in turnout. While last time the turnout was 61.95 per cent, this time it was 60 per cent.

Similarly in Lakshadweep, the percentage this time was 66 as compared to 86 in 2014.

In Arunachal Pradesh, where both the constituencies went to polls, the turnout stood at 66 per cent as compared to 86 per cent in 2014.

The 91 Lok Sabha constituencies in the first phase, spread across 18 states and two union territories, have more than 14 crore voters about one-sixth of nearly 90 crore total electorate in India. Votes for all 543 seats would be counted on May 23 after end of the seven-phase polling on May 19.

An estimated 1.5 crore young voters in the age group of 18-19 years would vote for the first time across the seven phases.

In the last general elections in 2014, more than 55 crore Indians had voted (66.3 per cent) with the BJP emerging victorious with little over 30 per cent votes, giving a five-year mandate to a government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the first phase, the BJP is looking to defend 32 seats, including those being fought by senior party leader Nitin Gadkari and five other union ministers, and also expand its tally in states dominated by regional players last time.

The main opposition party Congress is hoping to defend seven seats it won in 2014, besides eyeing gains in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh.

OneIndia News (with inputs from agencies)
Army soldier in Siachen

Siachen: An army soldier casts his vote for the Lok Sabha elections as a Service voter, at Field Post Office in Siachen, Thursday, April 11, 2019. In a first-of-its-kind the Election Commission of India provided the facility to the troops deployed in far flung, remote and inhospitable terrain to download their ballot papers online, vote and forward the ballot papers to their respective Electoral Returning Officers through post. (PTI Photo)

Voting in Siachen

Siachen: Army soldiers queue up to cast their votes for the Lok Sabha elections as a Service voters, in Siachen, Thursday, April 11, 2019. In a first-of-its-kind the Election Commission of India provided the facility to the troops deployed in far flung, remote and inhospitable terrain to download their ballot papers online, vote and forward the ballot papers to their respective Electoral Returning Officers through post. (PTI Photo)

Telangana CM's daughter K Kavitha

Nizamabad: TRS candidate K Kavitha shows her ink marked finger after casting her vote at a polling station, during the first phase of Lok Sabha polls, in Nizamabad district, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

Centenarian voter in Sikkim

Sikkim: Sumitra Rai, 107, shows her voter ID after casting her vote during the first phase of general elections at Poklok Kamrang, South Sikkim, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

Chandrababu Naidu

Amaravati: TDP President and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and his family members show their finger marked with indelible ink after casting vote during the first phase of the general elections, in Amaravati, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao

Siddipet: Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao casts his vote during the first phase of the general elections, in Siddipet district, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

World's shortest woman

Nagpur: World's shortest woman Jyoti Amge (25), shows her finger marked with indelible ink after casting vote during the first phase of general elections, at a polling station in Nagpur, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

Chiranjeevi and his family

Hyderabad: Telugu film actor Chiranjeevi and his family members show their finger marked with indelible ink after casting vote during the first phase of the general elections, at Jubilee Hills in Hyderabad, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

Maharashtra Chief Minister

Nagpur: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis along with his family members show their finger marked with indelible ink, after casting their vote during the first phase of general elections, in Nagpur, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)

Voting in Muzaffarnagar

Muzaffarnagar: Women show their voter identity cards as they wait to cast their votes at a polling station, during the first phase of general elections, at Khalapaar in Muzaffarnagar, Thursday, April 11, 2019. (PTI Photo)
Maneka Gandhi's speech referring to Muslim voters in Sultanpur under EC lens

India

oi-Madhuri Adnal

New Delhi, Apr 13: Union Minister Maneka Gandhi got a show-cause notice by the District Magistrate of Sultanpur, from where she is contesting the Lok Sabha election 2019, and a report has been sent to the Election Commission (EC) after she was seen on camera telling a gathering of Muslims to vote for her or else she may not be inclined to be responsive to their requests.

"The EC has taken cognisance of the matter. District Magistrate, Sultanpur has issued a show-cause notice to her and a report has been sent to the poll body," BR Tiwari, Additional Chief Election Officer said.

[Did Maneka Gandhi threaten Muslims for votes?]

In a video clip that is being shared widely on social media, Maneka Gandhi is seen telling Muslim voters in Sultanpur, that they should vote for her or else she may not be responsive to their requests.

"I am winning. I am winning because of the love and support of people. But if my victory is without Muslims, I won't feel that good. Dil khatta ho jayega. (heart will become hard) Then when a Muslim comes to me for work, I think let it be, how does it matter? It is all give and take, isn't it? We are not all children of Mahatma Gandhi, are we?"

The BJP had complained about BSP supremo Mayawati asking for Muslim votes during the Deoband rally of ''mahagathbandhan.'' The Election Commission of India has sent her a notice.

Congress supporter and political analyst Tehseen Poonawala reacted on Twitter, "From Amit Shahji to Maneka Gandhi maam, Muslims are being threatened openly by the BJP. Never before in the history of independent India and her elections has this happened and the Election Commission of India continues to look way and not act."

Maneka Gandhi, the MP from Pilibhit, began her campaign from the Sultanpur seat about 10 days ago. The seat is currently held by her son Varun Gandhi. But this election, Varun has shifted back to Pilibhit, a seat he won in 2009. Maneka Gandhi has won the Pilibhit seat six times.
Mehbooba asks Shah to apologise to people of India

India

pti-PTI

Srinagar, Apr 12: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti on Friday accused BJP chief Amit Shah of shaking the country's foundations with his recent controversial statements, and asked him to apologise to the people. She was reportedly referring to Shah's speech at Raiganj in West Bengal on Thursday.

Calling illegal migrants from Bangladesh "termites", the BJP president had said that his party would throw them out after coming to power at the Centre for a second consecutive term.

"It is our commitment to bring in NRC across the country to chuck out each and every infiltrator. For us national security is supreme. We would ensure that each and every Hindu and Buddhist refugee gets citizenship of this country," Shah said.

[ Naxal attack political conspiracy, CBI should probe it: Amit Shah]

Talking to reporters at Kangan in central Kashmir's Ganderbal district, Mehbooba said, "It is not only for Hindus, Sikhs or Muslims, the country is for everyone. I think by such statements, they are trying to shake the foundations of the country.

"They have become a danger for the country. Such statements are an attack on the country's secularism," she said. The former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir said Shah should apologise as the foundation of the country has been laid on secularism.

"The language used by Amit Shah and his colleagues for garnering votes is wrong. J&K had decided to join India keeping in mind its secular culture. I think Amit Shah should apologise to people of this country because the foundation of this country has been laid on secularism," she said.

The PDP leader also termed as "wrong" the reported stopping of nomad population from transporting their cattle till elections were over. I have spoken to J&K Governor (S P Malik) and I hope he will take action and they will be allowed," she said.

PTI
Modi ran his govt for only 15 people in 5 years, says Rahul Gandhi in TN rally

India

oi-PTI

Krishnagiri, Apr 12: Congress chief Rahul Gandhi on Friday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging he ran his government for 15 of his friends and he wondered why no big-ticket defaulters of bank loans like Vijay Mallya were not in jail.

The Congress chief said the ones like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, after taking bank loans, failed to return it and ran away from the country.

"Not even a single one is in jail," he added. Gandhi said when his party is voted to power, no farmer "is going to be put in jail for not paying back his bank loan, it is not fair that the richest people do not go to jail but farmers go to jail for the same offence."

He alleged the Prime Minister gave Rs 35,0000 crore to Nirav Modi, Rs 35,000 crore to Mehul Choksi and Rs 10,000 crore to Vijay Mallya.

BJP's Meenakshi Lekhi moves SC against Rahul's remarks on Rafale

During the last five years, Modi ran a government for 15 people and you know the names, he said.

"These are Anil Ambani, Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and they are Modi's friends," he said addressing a poll rally here.

Focusing on his party's Minimum Income Support Scheme 'Nyay,' he said it would give purchasing power to the people and that in turn would propel factories in Tamil Nadu and the overall economy.

Textile and silk hubs of Tamil Nadu, Tirupur and Kancheepuram "will become live," again and provide employment opportunities to youngsters, he said.

Gandhi said his party and its allies will never allow Tamil Nadu people to be ruled by Nagpur (the RSS) and expressed confidence that DMK chief M K Stalin will soon be the chief minister of the State.

PTI
Producers of Modi biopic move SC, hearing on April 15

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Apr 12: The maker of biopic 'PM Narendra Modi', the biopic starring Vivek Oberoi have moved the Supreme Court against the stalling of the film's release. Ther court has agreed to hear the case on April 15.

The Election Commission has ordered a stay on the release of PM Narendra Modi, the biopic on the Indian Prime Minister.

The Election Commission order says, "The Election Commission of India has announced General elections 17th Lok Sabha 2019 on 10th March 2019 and from the date of announcement of the elections, the model code of conduct (MCC) has come into operation.

Modi Biopic ban order also applies to NaMo TV: Reports

In a communication to the three producers of the Narendra Modi biopic, the Election Commission, through Chief Election Officer, Maharashtra, said: "That any biopic material in the nature of biography/hagiography sub-serving the purposes of any political entity or any individual entity connected to it, which is intended to, or which has the potential to disturb the level playing field during the elections, should not be displayed in electronic media, including cinematograph, during the operation of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC)."

The film was initially supposed to release on April 5, but was later pushed to April 11.
PM Modi to host President Putin: What to expect from the bilateral

Hurdles cleared for AK 203 rifles deal with Russia; likely to be sealed next month during Putin's visit

PM Modi awarded Russias highest state honour

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Apr 12: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been conferred on the Order of St Andrew the Apostle highest state decoration of Russia for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russian and India.

"On April 12, 2019, Indian PM Narendra Modi was decorated with Order of St Andrew the Apostle-highest state decoration of Russia -for exceptional services in promoting special and privileged strategic partnership between Russian and India," tweeted Russian government.

The Order of St Andrew the Apostle the First-Called is the highest order of the Russian Federation. Established in 1698, the honour was the first and highest order of chivalry in Russian Empire. During the Soviet rule, the award was abolished. It was reinstated in 1998.

In 2017, Chinese president Xi Jinping was awarded the Order of St Andrew the Apostle.

Recently, PM Modi has been awarded the United Arab Emirates's top honour as well as of countries including South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Palestine and Afghanistan.
Farmers should be given rights, compensation, jobs: Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha

Rahul Gandhi in centre of Cong posters for Jaipur rally; call for him to become party chief again

MPs were not suspended by RS chairman or PM, but by power that wants to steal farmers income: Rahul

Parliament roundup: Key bills passed in RS, Oppn not allowed to raise issues, says Rahul

Rahul Gandhi gives adjournment notice in LS for discussing SIT report on Lakhimpur Kheri violence

Rahul Gandhi's chopper denied permission to land in Bengal

India

oi-Deepika S

Kolkata, Apr 12: Mamata Banerjee government in West Bengal has denied landing persmission for Congress president Rahul Gandhi's chopper. He is scheduled to address an election rally in Siliguri on April 14.

The Congress is yet to react over the latest attempt by Mamata to block Rahul Gandhi entry in her state.

The development comes a couple of days after Rahul Gandhi slammed Mamata Banerjee for saying that Congress was not fighting against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Lok Sabha elections.

Speaking at a rally in Karandighi The tension between Mamata Banerjee and the Congress boiled over on Wednesday, with the West Bengal Chief Minister accusing the grand old party of taking the help of RSS, the BJP's ideological mentor, on two seats. Gandhi hit back with a reminder.

Modi doesn't have family, nor does he considers people as his family: Mamata Banerjee

"Has Mamata Banerjee ever compromised with the BJP anywhere?" he said, hinting at her early on-again-off-again relation with the BJP during which she held ministerial berths at the centre.

"Don't give a single vote to the BJP and don't give a vote to the Congress. They are hand-in-glove with the BJP," Banerjee said at a rally.

The political brawl bittered between the two parties over the issue after the TMC supremo blocked permission to BJP President Amit Shah to land his chopper in Malda ahead of his rally.

In February, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath was first denied permission to land his chopper that was blocked by the TMC government from holding a public rally in Purulia.
Rashtrapati Bhavan denies receiving letter from Army veterans

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Apr 12: Hours after reports of a letter by the veterans to President Ram Nath Kovind against 'politicisation' of armed forces in the ongoing Lok Sabha Elections 2019 came out, Rashtrapati Bhavan has denied receiving any such letter.

Earlier it was reported that, eight former service chiefs and 148 other military veterans have written to President Ram Nath Kovind, expressing outrage over what they termed using the armed forces for political purposes.

The signatories of the letter included former Army chiefs General (retired) SF Rodrigues, General (retired) Shankar Roy Chowdhury and General (retired) Deepak Kapoor, former IAF chief Air Chief Marshal (retired) NC Suri.

Stop parties from using military for poll gains: Veterans urge President

"We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the armed forces to be 'Modi ji ki sena'," the letter said.

"It was a matter of considerable concern and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel that the armed forces are being used to pursue political agenda, it added.
Shillong BJP candidate threatens to kill himself if Citizenship Bill is implemented

India

oi-Deepika S

Shillong, Apr 12: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from Shillong Parliamentary constituency Sanbor Shullai has threatened to commit suicide before PM Narendra Modi if Citizenship (Amendment) Bill implemented in Meghalaya and other northeastern states.

"I would rather kill myself than allow the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill to be implemented in the northeastern states. I had earlier submitted a letter to PM Modi, BJP central leadership and NGOs that Meghalaya and northeastern states should be exempted from the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill," he said.

Shullai's statement came while he was speaking to the reporters in Shillong after casting his vote in the first phase of Lok Sabha Elections 2019 on Thursday.

In its poll manifesto, the BJP has promised to enact the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill if it comes to power at the Centre.

NYAY money will come from pockets of 'chor' businessmen you shielded: Rahul to Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said the BJP is committed to passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill once the NDA returns to power after the ongoing Lok Sabha polls.

The bill will be amended after proper consultation with all sections of the society and ensuring safety of the Assamese community, Mr. Modi told a poll rally in Silchar, his second of the day in Assam.

Protection to Assamese language, culture and identity will be ensured while considering the Bill again, he assured.

The Bill had been passed by the Lok Sabha by the Modi government on January 8 but was not introduced in the Rajya Sabha. The Bill is now set to lapse on June 3.
State vs national issues: Key lessons for the BJP to learn in Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Haryana

Stop parties from using military for poll gains: Veterans urge President

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, Apr 12: Expressing their disappointment, over 150 armed forces veterans, eight former service chiefs have written to President Ramnath Kovind about the use of the military and referring to a recent operation to garner votes in the Lok Sabha election 2019.

The Rashtrapati Bhavan has reportedly denied receiving any letter writer by military veterans over the 'politicisation' of the armed forces.

The letter, made public on April 11, urged President Ram Nath Kovind "to take all necessary steps to urgently direct all political parties that they must forthwith desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas."

"... we write to bring to your attention, as the Supreme Commander of India's Armed Forces, some concerns which have caused considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel of our Forces," the letter said.

"We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes," the letter added.

Lok Sabha Elections 2019: Voter turnout in first phase same as in 2014

The retired senior officers mentioned Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath referring to the armed forces as "Modiji ki Sena", or "Prime Minister Narendra Modi's army" at an election rally in Uttar Pradesh recently.

The veterans also expressed concern over photos of Indian Air Force pilot Abhinandan Varthaman seen at election campaigns. The Election Commission had asked political parties not to use the images of armed forces personnel in poll campaigns.

Among the signatories are three former Army chiefs (General SF Rodrigues, General Shankar Roy Chowdhury and General Deepak Kapoor), four former Navy chiefs and former Air Force chief NC Suri.

It may be recalled that Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari courted controversy for attending a party rally dressed in military fatigues.

Addressing a rally in Latur district of Maharashtra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday appeared treading on sensitive ground, as he asked first-time voters to dedicate their vote to those who carried out the air strike in Balakot.

"I want to tell the first-time voters: can your first vote be dedicated to the veer jawans (valiant soldiers) who carried out the air strike in Pakistan. Can your first vote be dedicated to the veer shaheed (brave martyrs) of Pulwama (terror attack)," Modi said.
How the MYD factor in Uttar Pradesh is likely to hurt the BJP

Modi is trying to play dirty politics over Alwar gangrape case, says Mayawati

3 Dalit leaders arrested for apprehension of breach of peace in UP

UP BJP chief to workers: Have tea with Dalits, make them understand votes are cast on nationalism, not caste

Were Dalits barred from voting in Uttar Pradesh?

India

oi-Oneindia Staff

By Anuj Cariappa

New Delhi, Apr 11: The election office here dismissed as "rumour" the allegations levelled by the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Samajwadi Party (SP) that some Dalit voters were prevented from casting ballots in a booth in Uttar Pradesh's Bijnor Lok Sabha constituency.

The BSP has alleged that they had received reports of Dalits being prevented from reaching polling booths in "various" places in the state.

Shyamagiri defies Naxals, high voter turnout recorded

Eight Lok Sabha seats in western Uttar Pradesh went to polls on Thursday. In total, polling was held in 91 seats in 18 states and two Union Territories.

"These (reports) are only rumours," state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) L Venkateshwarlu told PTI.

"We have spoken to all DMs (district magistrates) in this regard. Nothing of this type of incident has taken place. These are only rumours, as they are not mentioning any specific polling booth," he said.

BSP national general secretary Satish Chandra Misra has alleged that the party had received information that people, especially Dalits, were being prevented from exercising their franchise.

"We are receiving information from various polling stations that BSP voters, especially Dalits, are being stopped from reaching polling booths by use of force by the UP Police which is even going to the extent of using force of baton so that they may not be able to cast their votes," he claimed.

The BSP leader said that all this is apparently being done under the "diktats of higher-ups".

"Immediate intervention is required on this, otherwise no purpose of elections and advertisements of CEC to vote," Misra said.

He has mentioned Kasauli booth in Bijnor's Mirapur assembly segment.

SP president Akhilesh Yadav tweeted that it is a fundamental right of every person to vote and a crime to prevent Dalits from exercising their franchise.

2019 Elections: Here are some interesting details

"To stop anyone from voting is sin. Only voting can remove differences in society," Yadav said.

"Now, BJP people are openly saying that the country is not of everyone and creating hatred among people," he alleged.

On another allegation by the BSP that a voter had complained that votes were going to the BJP whichever button was pressed on an EVM, additional CEO B R Tiwari said, "A report was sought in the matter and it was found to be far from truth and is baseless."
Hillary Clinton says Julian Assange must 'answer for what he has done'

International

oi-PTI

New York, Apr 12: Newly arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange needs to "answer for what he has done," Hillary Clinton has said. The 2016 Democratic presidential nominee and former secretary of state weighed in on Assange while at a speaking event on Thursday with her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

Assange was arrested earlier on Thursday at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and the US has charged him with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon.

WikiLeaks' publication of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers during the 2016 election season hurt Clinton's presidential campaign.

US President Donald Trump, Clinton's Republican opponent, frequently showered praise on Assange during the final weeks of the campaign and cheered on the release of damaging emails from Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta.

Assange was arrested after Ecuador revoked the political asylum that had kept him holed up at the embassy for nearly seven years. The US is seeking Assange's extradition.

Clinton said Thursday, "The bottom line is that he has to answer for what he has done, at least as it has been charged."

In a tongue-in-cheek nod to Trump's travel ban on citizens from Muslim-majority nations, Clinton added, "I do think it's a little ironic that he's the only foreigner this administration would welcome to the United States."

PTI
Indian-origin man set off Diwali fireworks at 3 AM in Singapore

International

oi-PTI

Singapore, Apr 12: An Indian-origin man in Singapore has been jailed for three weeks and fined 5,000 dollars for setting off fireworks close to a housing complex during Diwali celebrations in the country last year.

Jeevan Arjoon, 29, bought the firecrackers from Little India shopping precinct and unlawfully lit them at 3.30 AM on Diwali night on November 6, 2018, The New Paper reported on Friday.

The fireworks, shot up to seven-storey, were loud enough to be heard from the neighbouring public housing estate of Yishun.

The display lasted for five minutes. No one was hurt and there was no damage to any property, according to the report.

Indian pleads guilty for attempted naturalisation fraud to obtain US citizenship

District Judge Marvin Bay said the court has to take a strict view of Jeevan's use and possession of fireworks, and sentenced him to three weeks' jail and 5,000 Singapore dollars (USD 3,685) on Thursday.

He said the detonation of fireworks can cause serious injuries and pose a risk of fire, noting that they were set off close to public housing.

The judge said that setting off fireworks at 3 AM could also cause considerable alarm to the public, particularly in this time of heightened concerns over possible acts of terrorism.

Jeevan, who was unrepresented, said in his mitigation that he was the sole breadwinner of his family and was taking care of his mother-in-law who was diabetic and blind.

The man, who had a record of giving false information to a public servant in 2017, was also convicted of giving false information to a police officer during investigation into the firework incident. He had tried to put the blame on someone else.

PTI

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, April 12, 2019, 12:13 [IST]
Stuck at Attari border for 70 days, Pakistani couple name their newborn 'Border'

Pakistan's top military brass express condolences over 'tragic death' of Gen Bipin Rawat, others

Is China the reason why Pakistan opted to skip Summit for Democracy hosted by Biden?

Pakistan: Cops find woman in deep sleep next to body parts of 70 year old man

Pakistan: 14 killed in bomb blast in Quetta

International

oi-PTI

Islamabad, Apr 12: A bomb blast ripped through a vegetable market in Pakistan's Quetta city early Friday, killing at least 14 people and injuring several others, media reports said.

At least seven of those killed in the bomb blast at Hazarganji area of Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan, belonged to the Hazara community. The security forces fear the death toll may rise.

Buildings located nearby were also damaged in the blast, police said.

At least 14 people were killed and several injured in the blast, rescue and hospital sources said

PTI

For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications

Story first published: Friday, April 12, 2019, 11:15 [IST]
Taliban announces annual spring offensive amid Afghan peace push

International

oi-PTI

Kabul, Apr 12: The Taliban on Friday announced their annual spring offensive, which comes as the US and Afghan politicians try to negotiate for a peace settlement with the Islamist militants.

Operation Fath -- which means "victory" in Arabic -- will be conducted across Afghanistan with the aim of "eradicating occupation" and "cleansing our Muslim homeland from invasion and corruption", the Taliban said in a statement.

The annual spring offensive traditionally marks the start of the so-called fighting season, though the announcement is largely symbolic as in recent winters the Taliban have continued fighting Afghan and US forces.

"Our Jihadi obligation has not yet ended," the Taliban said.

"Even as large parts of our homeland have been freed from the enemy, yet the foreign occupying forces continue exercising military and political influence in our Islamic country." Qais Mangal, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defence, said the Taliban's spring offensive is "mere propaganda." "The Taliban will not reach their vicious goals and their operations will be defeated like previous years," Mangal said.

Pakistan: 14 killed in bomb blast in Quetta

After suffering horrific bloodshed in 2018, Kabul has in recent weeks enjoyed something of a lull in violence. But on Monday three US Marines were killed in a Taliban attack at Bagram air base north of the city, and authorities in the capital are on high alert.

The administration of President Ashraf Ghani recently declared its own spring offensive, Operation Khalid, and the Taliban used that announcement as a justification for launching a new push.

It shows "the enemy still seeks to attain its malicious objectives through the use of force", the Taliban said. The US has held several rounds of talks with the Taliban in a bid to bring an end to the war against the insurgents.

Separately, Afghan politicians also have met with the Taliban in Moscow, and a fresh round of talks is expected to take place later this month between officials from the Kabul government and the Taliban in the Qatari capital Doha.

The US still has about 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, nearly 18 years after the US-led invasion to topple the Taliban. While Western forces quickly ousted the group, the insurgents have reclaimed much of Afghanistan over the years, primarily in rural areas.

In 2018 a record 10,993 civilians were wounded or killed in Afghanistan, according to UN figures. US President Donald Trump last year decided to slash the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan, though no such drawdown has happened yet.

PTI

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Story first published: Friday, April 12, 2019, 14:39 [IST]
Vijay Mallya fails to delay USD 40mn Diageo claim, legal costs mount in UK

International

pti-PTI

London, Apr 12: Even as he renewed an appeal against his extradition to India, embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya suffered another legal setback on Friday in a separate USD 40-million claims case brought by British liquor giant Diageo plc in the UK High Court.

Justice Clare Moulder ruled against the 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss' application to seek a delay in the full hearing in the case scheduled for May 23 and additionally ordered him to pay legal costs of 34,000 pounds. She was extremely critical of the "unexplained" delays by Mallya in clearing the unpaid invoices of his previous solicitors Greenwoods, which resulted in his new solicitors Joseph Hage Aaronson (JHA) finding themselves in difficulty and wanting to seek an unfair adjournment.

The delay is at best unexplained and arguably of the defendants [Mallya] own making. In my view, the claimants [Diageo] are entitled to have their claim progressed expeditiously, Justice Moulder said, concluding that Mallya was the author" of his "own misfortune". The claimants say that if the May hearing is adjourned they will suffer prejudicethere would be a race in relation to Mallyas assets which are subject to a number of competing claims; Mallya may be extradited and this will affect the ability to enforce the judgment against him, the judge noted, in reference to the extradition order and worldwide freezing order already in place against Mallya.

While the judge agreed to a short extension until April 23 for Mallyas new lawyers to submit their evidence to the court, having missed an April 5 deadline, she ordered that meanwhile the businessman must pay additional legal costs of 34,000 pounds for Diageos lawyers within 28 days. Diageo, which had acquired Mallyas United Spirits nearly six years ago, is claiming USD 40 million paid to the liquor tycoon as part of an alleged breach of agreement.

The UK-based drinks giant is also claiming USD 141 million from Mallya, his son Sidhartha, and two companies linked to them for alleged questionable payments. The case, dating back to November 2017, is being contested by Mallya and will now go ahead for a full hearing at the Business and Property Courts of the UK High Court on May 23.

The three claimants in the case -- Diageo Plc, Diageo Holdings Netherlands BV and Diageo Finance Plc -- are seeking a total of USD 181 million from four defendants  Vijay Mallya, his son Sidhartha, Watson Limited and Continental Administrative Services Limited (CASL). Mallyas counsel Barrister Daniel Margolin argued for more time to prepare for the full hearing because his firm JHA had received all the documents in the case, including nearly 1,750 electronic files, only towards the end of March.

He raised the worldwide freezing order against Mallya, confirmed by a UK High Court order in May 2018, as the reason for some delays in clearing overdue legal invoices. However, Diageos counsel instructed by law firm Slaughter and May, Barrister Saul Lemer, argued that Mallya had historically procrastinated in the case and used the same strategy time and again" of changing solicitors and seeking more time from the court. Margolin assured the judge of no further delays and that Mallya was acutely aware of the position he was in.

In his brief arguments on Friday, he also sought to highlight that Mallya himself would be liable for less than 1 per cent of the USD 141 million being sought by Diageo from the collective claimants, amounting to a "value of roughly USD 1 million", and that CASL is not an asset belonging to the businessman, as claimed by the drinks giant. At the end of an hour-long hearing, the judge agreed that it would be disproportionate for her to deny the new lawyers any extra time at all and therefore allowed for a few extra days for the preparation and submission of evidence. However, she refused to change the May 23 date of the hearing because it risked a potential delay in the case until October due to the courts listings and holiday period time pressures.

The latest case marks a flurry of legal wrangles being tackled by Mallya in the UK courts at various stages of hearing. His extradition to India to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crores in unpaid loans by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, was ordered by Westminster Magistrates' Court in London last December and signed off by UK home secretary Sajid Javid in February this year.

Mallya is contesting that order and made a second attempt at appealing against his extradition this week. As per legal procedure in the UK, Mallya's first written leave to appeal application had been passed on Justice Davis, who was to make a decision on the basis of papers submitted and rejected that application "on papers". A judge must now decide following an oral consideration in the coming weeks if his appeal can proceed to a full hearing.

Meanwhile, in a separate case, a SBI led consortium of Indian banks are seeking to enforce a worldwide freezing order upheld by the UK High Court last year through a number of follow up court orders to try and recoup some of the 1.145 billion pounds owed to them.

Mallya also faces bankruptcy proceedings in the UK High Court in relation to that case, involving SBI, Bank of Baroda, Corporation bank, Federal Bank Ltd, IDBI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Jammu & Kashmir Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of Mysore, UCO Bank, United Bank of India and JM Financial Asset Reconstruction Co. Pvt Ltd.

PTI
First International Forum for Innovation in Next Generation Synchrotron Radiation

In 2018, a coalition of five organisations were selected to establish Japan's first next-generation synchrotron radiation facility as part of a large-scale research complex at Tohoku University's Aobayama Campus.

Ahead of construction, Tohoku University will host the first International forum on next-generation synchrotron radiation on April 22.

April 21 - closed door stakeholders meeting, and then a welcome reception.

This forum will bring together researchers from top universities and research institutes around the world. The focus will be on promoting strategic research collaborations while hearing from experts in the field about how best to jointly utilize the facilities.

Event: 1st International Forum for Innovation in Next Generation Synchrotron Radiation

Date: April 22, 9 am - 5 pm

Venue: Westin Hotel Sendai (map: https:/ / www. the-westin-sendai. com/ )

Web resistration: http://www. slitj. tagen. tohoku. ac. jp/ next3gev_IF01/ regist. html

Fee: free

Banquet 10,000yen

This event is organized by Tohoku University, with help from the University of Tokyo, National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, and Photon Science Innovation Center (PhoSIC). It is also supported by NIMS, AIST, RIKEN and IMS.

Participants and speakers include:

Harald Reichert, ESRF

Jean Daillant, SOLEIL

Jerome Hastings, Stanford University

Tetsuya Ishikawa, RIKEN SPring-8 Center

Hitoshi Tanaka, QST

Kazuhiro Hono, NIMS

Kenji Kikuchi, Tohoku University

Kozaburo Nakaseko, Sumitomo Rubber Industries, Ltd.

Tadahiro Hayasaka, Tohoku University.

Yoshihisa Harada, University of Tokyo

Yukio Takahashi, Tohoku University

###

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Nacogdoches, TX (75965)

Today

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 66F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 66F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph.
Bailey McCann, Opalesque New York:

$1.4 billion hedge fund Kingstown Capital and Czech investment firm Investhold, have filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) suit against billionaire Radovan Vitek, a Czech real estate mogul with business interests throughout Europe, alleging that he used a series of shell companies to defraud investors of approximately $1 billion.

Vitek is the indirect owner of CPI PG a Czech real estate firm that manages a 7 billion portfolio throughout Europe. CPI PG is the largest commercial real estate landlord in Berlin, Germany and has a significant presence in the Czech Republic.

According to the complaint, after Kingstown Capital established a substantial interest in ORCO Property Group, Vitek "secretly took control of ORCO through a series of shell companies and straw owners." Individuals that are named as "straw owners" include ORCO's former Chief Executive Officer Jean-Francois Ott and Vitek's mother, Milada Mala. The indirect nature of the ownership, allegedly allowed Vitek to strip ORCO of "its most valuable real estate assets, using his effective control over the company to cause ORCO to sell real estate at distressed prices to other entities that Vitek secretly controlled." ORCO was eventually fully merged into CPI PG.

Vitek was aided by private Czech bank J&T Banka, which pr......................

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Tim Vanvaerenbergh B. G., Opalesque Geneva:

The market for alternative UCITS, the more hedge fund-type of UCITS funds, has doubled since 2008, but underwent its first outflow since then in 2018. According to LuxHedge's database, it now stands at 400bn ($452bn), with about 1,400 funds.

Despite the outflow, "the number of funds is relatively stable," Tim Vanvaerenbergh, CEO of LuxHedge, a Luxembourg-based investment research boutique, tells Opalesque. "Each month, 15 to 20 funds are launched and 10 to 15 funds are liquidated. So there is a growing trend in the number of funds but it is starting to slow down."

Average fund losing alpha

"Last year's outflows were due to disappointment in performance of the average fund," Vanvaerenbergh adds.

Furthermore, when comparing the MSCI Europe index to the LuxHedge Global Alt. UCITS index, one can see the average fund is losing alpha.

The average fund "is more about the average experience of the investors in this space," he notes. And this experience has been quite negative, as managers on average did not create alpha in 2018.

AuM: interesting reallocations

According to Vanvaerenbergh, some very interesting reallocations took place in 2018 in the shape of large inflows in discretionary macro, which mainly went to one successful manager.

There were also a lot of inflows in altern......................

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Single Screw Food Extruder Market 2019 | Global Industry Overview 2025 | Top Companies - Baker Perkins, Coperion, Buhler, AKRON TOOL and DIE, Groupe Legris Industries

Single Screw Food Extruder Market research report 2019-2025

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Single Screw Food Extruder Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period.Get Exclusive FREE Sample Copy Of this Report @UpMarketResearch offers a latest published report on Global Single Screw Food Extruder Market Analysis and Forecast 2019 - 2025 delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 96 pages which highly exhibit on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Single Screw Food Extruder Market global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 2019  2025.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The numerical data is backed up by statistical tools such as SWOT analysis, BCG matrix, SCOT analysis, PESTLE analysis and so on. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.For More Information On This Report, Please VisitThe generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Single Screw Food Extruder Market analysis & forecast 2019 - 2025 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.Region- wise Analysis covers: North America Europe China Japan India Southeast Asia Other regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)The Major players reported in the market include: Baker Perkins (UK) Coperion (Germany) Buhler (Switzerland) AKRON TOOL and DIE (US) Groupe Legris Industries (Belgium) Pavan SpA (Italy) Flexicon (US) Triott Group (Netherlands) The Bonnot Company (US) AMERICAN EXTRUSION INTERNATIONAL (US)Product Segment Analysis: Cold extrusion Hot extrusionApplication Segment Analysis: Savory Snacks Breakfast Cereals Bread Flours and Starches Textured Protein Functional Ingredients OthersMajor Topics Covered in this Report: Chapter 1 Study Coverage Chapter 2 Executive Summary Chapter 3 Market Size by Manufacturers Chapter 4 Production by Regions Chapter 5 Consumption by Regions Chapter 6 Market Size by Type Chapter 7 Market Size by Application Chapter 8 Manufacturers Profiles Chapter 9 Production Forecasts Chapter 10 Consumption Forecast Chapter 11 Upstream, Industry Chain and Downstream Customers Analysis Chapter 12 Opportunities & Challenges, Threat and Affecting Factors Chapter 13 Key Findings Chapter 14 AppendixGet Exclusive FREE Sample Copy Of this Report @Single Screw Food Extruder Market Analysis and Forecast 2019 - 2025 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. 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Our mission is singular and well- defined  we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States.
Pharmaceutical Excipients Market Paving the way for Low-cost Pharmaceuticals By Leading Players: Innophos Holdings Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, The Lubrizol Corporation, Wacker Chemie AG, and Ashland Inc., BASF SE

Pharmaceutical Excipients

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Demand for high-quality excipients is more in developed economies, while affordability is the key criteria considered for price sensitive emerging economies. China has emerged as the largest supplier of low-cost pharmaceutical API and excipients. India is the other fast emerging market to which production of excipients is outsourced owing to lower labor and production costs. North America and Europe lead the market for excipients as the number of excipient manufacturers are high in these regions. Moreover, high cost of manufactured excipients generates higher revenue for these regions compared to cost of material produced by manufacturers in Asia Pacific. However, growing pharmaceutical drug price pressure across the globe is expected to drive growth of the markets in China and India characterized by high supply of low cost excipients.Request Sample Copy Of This Report:Affordable healthcare is the primary objective of health regulators globally, something that is propagated by various such initiatives in place such as Obama Care Act and the actions of Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) in India. The DPCO has capped the prices of over 467 drugs to cater to unmet need of population with low income levels. According to the IMS Health 2015 data, average price of branded products has increased from US$ 71.91 in 2010 to US$ 91.92 in 2015. On the other hand, average price of generic products has declined from US$ 26.23 in 2010 to US$ 20.92 in 2015. Pricing pressure and high competition are major attributable factors to this decline. This has further contributed to wards the growth of pharmaceutical excipients market.Increasing demand for oral dosage forms is projected to propel the market growth for pharmaceutical excipients in oral application during the forecast period. Moreover, patent expiry of blockbuster drugs would fuel demand for pharmaceutical excipients in the near future. However, regular inspection of FDA approved manufacturing sites by local regulatory authorities is impacting supply of pharmaceutical excipients globally.Get Exclusive Discount on This Report:Development of new pharmaceutical product requires significant amount of time and effort along with high cost expenditure. However, product development in pharmaceutical excipients is economical as compared to drug or API development. Quality by design is a scientific method that involves risk-based approach at product concept stage. In 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) started an initiative for pharmaceutical companies called pharmaceutical current Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP), a risk-based approach for organizations involved in pharmaceutical product manufacturing to adopt management techniques to enhance quality in keeping with modern standards.Furthermore, key players in the market are focused towards expanding geographical presence by setting up new plants and manufacturing units worldwide. For instance, in 2016, Ashland Inc., established a new pharmaceutical excipients manufacturing unit in Nanjing, China to meet increasing demand and new quality regulations, which is a major stronghold for the company in the region.Request For Customization @Some of the major players are Innophos Holdings Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, The Lubrizol Corporation, Wacker Chemie AG, and Ashland Inc., BASF SE, and Evonik Industries AGAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.1001 4th Ave,, #3200, Seattle, WA 98154
Cloud-Based PLM Industry 2019-2025: Key Companies Analysis with Market Opportunities | Dassault Systemes, Siemens AG, PTC, Oracle, SAP SE, Autodesk, IBM Corporation, Accenture PLC, Hewlett-Packard etc.

Cloud-Based PLM Market

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Cloud-Based PLM Industry 2019 Global Market research report provides a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data, and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies.Get Sample Copy of This Report atMarket segment by Type, the product can be split intoOn-PremiseCAD/CAM/CAE (CAx)Numerical Control (NC)Simulation and Analysis (S&A)Electronic Design and Automation (EDA)Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC)Collaborative Product Definition Management (CPDM)Digital ManufacturingOthersMarket segment by Application, split intoAutomotive and TransportationAerospace and DefenseIndustrial Machinery and Heavy EquipmentElectronics and SemiconductorEnergy and UtilitiesConsumer Products and RetailMedical Devices and PharmaceuticalIT and TelecomOthersDevelopment policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions North America, Europe, Japan, China, and other regions (India, Southeast Asia, Central & South America, Middle East & Africa etc.)Inquire more or share questions if any before the purchase on this report @Key Companies Analyzed in this Report are: Dassault Systemes(France) Siemens AG(Germany) PTC Inc.(US) Oracle Corporation(US) SAP SE, Autodesk, Inc.(Germany) Autodesk Inc.(Canada) IBM Corporation(US) Accenture PLC(Germany) Hewlett-Packard Company Global Cloud-Based PLM Market report has been compiled through extensive primary research (through analytical research, market survey and observations) and secondary research. The report also features a complete focused on qualitative and quantitative assessment by analyzing data gathered from industry analysts and market participants across key points in the industrys value chain, growth aspects, utilization ratio and manufacturing capacity.Place a Direct Order Of this Report @Major Points Covered in Table of Contents:1 Report Overview2 Global Growth Trends3 Market Share by Key Players4 Breakdown Data by Type and Application5 United States6 Europe7 China8 Japan9 Southeast Asia10 India11 Central & South America12 International Players Profiles13 Market Forecast 2019-202514 Analyst's Viewpoints/Conclusions15 AppendixAbout UsOrian Research is one of the most comprehensive collections of market intelligence reports on The World Wide Web. Our reports repository boasts of over 500000+ industry and country research reports from over 100 top publishers. We continuously update our repository so as to provide our clients easy access to the world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, and products. We also specialize in custom research in situations where our syndicate research offerings do not meet the specific requirements of our esteemed clients.Contact UsRuwin MendezVice President  Global Sales & Partner RelationsOrian Research ConsultantsUS: +1 (415) 830-3727 | UK: +44 020 8144-71-27Email: info@orianresearch.com
Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market Revenue, Opportunity, Segment and Key Trends 2018-2024

Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market

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We have produced a new premium report Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market. The report covers the analysis of global as well as regional markets of Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment. The objective of the study is to identify market sizes of different segments & countries in recent years and to forecast the values for the next six years. The report also deep dives into the sub-segments of Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market by equipment type (portable x-ray systems, eod suits and blankets, eod robots, projected water disruptors, bomb containment chambers and projected water disruptors) and application (defense and law enforcement) through main geographies in the Global Market such as North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and RoW.The report covers market changing aspects including drivers, restraints, opportunities, and trends expected to encourage the expansion of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market during the said period. The report also provides market attractiveness analysis, by geography, and market share analysis, by key players respectively. Some of the prominent participants in the Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market are Northrop Grumman Corporation, Reamda Ltd., ScannaMsc Ltd, NABCO Inc, United Shield International Ltd., API Technologies Corp, Du Pont (E.I.) De Nemours, Cobham plc, iRobot Corporation and Safariland, LLC. the global explosive ordnance disposal equipment market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.1% over the forecast period of 2018-2024.For More Details Get Free Sample Pages of this Research Report@Growth in the EOD Equipment to Promote Growth in the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market Over 2018 to 2024Rising terrorist activities and instances of cross border conflicts in various regions across the world have led to increased usage of explosives across the border. This, in turn, is anticipated to be a major driving factor for the growth of the explosive ordnance disposal equipment market. Additionally, growth in the overall EOD equipment market includes modernization programs in various military and law enforcement agencies that are likely to fuel the growth of the market over the upcoming years. However, High cost of this equipments and heavy investments made by the leading governments that are not properly utilized to their full potential is anticipated to hamper the growth of the explosive ordnance disposal market over the forecast period.On the other hand, an increasing number of instances of terrorist attacks is also expected to boost the demand for explosive modernization disposal equipment globally. Furthermore, military enhancement activities have opened several doors of opportunities for the explosive ordnance disposal equipment market over the upcoming years. Moreover, the surge in technical advances in armor and containment have resulted in rising in popularity of the explosive ordnance disposal market worldwide.North America Region to Contribute to Growth in the Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market over the Upcoming YearsNorth America dominated the explosive ordnance disposal market in terms of revenue. Pooja Baragale a research analyst at Infinium Global Research quoted that North America is expected to establish high demand for the equipment such as portable X-rays and EOD robots. Portable X-ray systems are majorly designed for detecting hidden explosives. Pooja Baragale further quoted that North America has invested heavily in soldier modernization, including tough warfare training and the provision of advanced equipment, including explosive ordnance disposal equipment due to high importance given to defense and law enforcement activities by the U.S. government.New product Launches to Feature in the Global Explosive Ordnance Disposal Equipment Market Between 2018 and 2024Nomex and Kevlar are the products offered by du Pont that offers unique material combinations for EOD suit designs helping to allow for an appropriate balance of price and performance. In addition, DuPont has developed ballistic scaling rules that can help manufacturers design to specific threat requirements using ballistic elements made of Kevlar fiber.The prominent players identified in the explosive ordnance disposal market are Northrop Grumman Corporation, E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company and Armtrac Limited, Reamda Ltd., ScannaMsc Ltd., NABCO Inc., United Shield International Ltd., API Technologies Corp., Cobham plc, iRobot Corporation, and Safariland, LLC.Browse Detailed TOC, Description and Company Mentioned in this Premium Report@Report Highlights:The report provides deep insights on demand forecasts, market trends and micro and macro indicators. In addition, this report provides insights on the factors that are driving and restraining the global explosive ordnance disposal equipment market. Moreover, IGR-Growth Matrix analysis given in the report brings an insight on the investment areas that existing or new market players can consider. The report provides insights into the market using analytical tools such as Porter's five forces analysis and DRO analysis of explosive ordnance disposal equipment market. Moreover, the study highlights current market trends and provides forecast from 2018-2024. We also have highlighted future trends in the explosive ordnance disposal equipment market that will impact the demand during the forecast period. Moreover, the competitive analysis given in each regional market brings an insight on the market share of the leading players. This report will help manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of the explosive ordnance disposal equipment market to understand the present and future trends in this market and formulate their strategies accordingly.Infinium Global Research and Consulting Solutions is started with a single motto of being a business partner of the first choice. We at Infinium work on the strengths of our clients to ensure we help them consolidate their market position. We firmly believe in the fact that if you are able to develop newer opportunities then you find there is no dearth of opportunities for you. With our strategic research approaches and deep dive in the market segments, we try to find out new opportunities that our clients can encash with their existing resources. Our experts with over 100 years of cumulative experience in research offer the best in the industry services to our clients to ensure that they achieve their business goals.Infinium Global ResearchOffice No. 04, 06, Ganadhish Empire,Rahatani Corner, Pune, MH 411027Email: info@infiniumglobalresearch.comWebsite:
Synchronous Condenser Market | Siemens AG, Voith GmbH, ABB Ltd., Toshiba Corporation, Fuji Electric Co. Ltd., and Hyundai Ideal Electric Co

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A synchronous condenser, which is also known as synchronous compensator or synchronous capacitor is a device similar to a synchronous motor. It is designed such that its shafts spin freely. Its primary function does not include conversion of electric energy to mechanical energy or vice versa, but to regulate conditions on the electric power transmission grid. The field in synchronous condenser is controlled by a voltage regulator, which either absorbs or generates reactive power as required to adjust the voltage of the grid, or to enhance power factor. Its installation and operation are same as that of large electric motors and generators.Global Synchronous Condenser Market: Key TrendsThe growing reliance on renewable energy sources for power generation is stoking the growth of the global synchronous condenser market. The soaring need for power correction factor is also stimulating the growth of the market. An over-excited synchronous condenser has a leading power factor, rendering it useful for power factor correction of industrial loads. Moreover, the rising emphasis on long service life is boosting the demand for synchronous condensers.Get Brochure of the Report @On the flip side, the high costs of equipment and maintenance are impinging on the growth of the market. In addition, the availability of low-cost alternatives is exacerbating the problem, thereby hampering the growth of the market. However, the expanding high-voltage direct current (HVDC) network is likely to create lucrative opportunities for players in the market.Global Synchronous Condenser Market: Market PotentialOver the past decade, there has been an impressive rise in the uptake of renewable energy sources for power generation. Governments worldwide and several organizations are paying high attention to cost effective solutions for renewable energy production. This, in turn, is working in favor of the growth of the global synchronous condenser market. Synchronous condenser manufacturers are benefiting from contracts for large power projects, leaving a massive impact on the market. For instance, in June 2015, Voith Hydro and its consortium partner received the contract from Manitoba Hydro for the Riel Synchronous Condenser. The project includes the design, supply, installation, and commissioning of four synchronous condensers rated 250 MVAR. These condensers will support Manitoba Hydro grid in reactive power and will be sealed to allow for hydrogen cooling.Global Synchronous Condenser Market: Regional OutlookThe key segments studied in the report on the basis of geography are Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East and Africa. North America is expected to be a prominent destination for key players in the global market. Canada is witnessing a sharp rise in the demand for synchronous condensers, particularly new installations. In the U.S., the conversion of old power plants to synchronous condensers is driving the market. The operation of many thermal power plants is being shut down in the country to curtail pollution and encourage renewable power generation. This is also likely to create a staggering volume of demand for these condensers in the region. Asia Pacific is estimated to post a healthy CAGR during the forecast period, owing to the growing investments in the upgradation of existing power networks.Global Synchronous Condenser Market: Competitive LandscapeKey players in the global synchronous condenser market are striving to win contracts for new installments and for the refurbishment of old power plants in order to expand their businesses. Agreements and product innovation are also commonly adopted strategies by market participants to stay relevant. Some of the prominent companies operating in the market are General Electric, Eaton Co. Plc., Siemens AG, Voith GmbH, ABB Ltd., Toshiba Corporation, Fuji Electric Co. Ltd., and Hyundai Ideal Electric Co.Get TOC for Detailed Facts and Numbers @Highlights of the report:A detailed analysis of key segments of the marketRecent developments in the markets competitive landscapeDetailed analysis of market segments up to second or third level of segmentationHistorical, current, and projected future valuation of the market in terms of revenue and/or volumeKey business strategies adopted by influential market vendorsOutline of the regulatory framework surrounding and governing numerous aspects of the marketGrowth opportunities in emerging and established marketsRecommendations to market players to stay ahead of the competitionAbout Us:TMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Contact Us:Rohit BhiseyHead Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050
Food Traceability Market 2018-2028 | Honeywell International Inc., C.H. Robinson INC., DuPont Nutrition & Health, Intermec Inc.

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Global Food Traceability Market: OverviewFood traceability framework keeps up the record of the influx of products which are really implied for human utilization all through the creation procedure. Since food creation and the dissemination is an intricate procedure the organizations consider food traceability framework as the best apparatus to fathom all the food-related difficulties. Food traceability causes the organizations to make crisp food products accessible to their purchasers, along these lines helping in lessening food-borne illnesses.Get Brochure of the Report @This framework is basic for food examinations and is significant in global food exchange as multi fixing food incorporates materials from assortment of food chain and nations. It includes perceiving the inception of food and its goal, from where it will be conveyed to end clients.This report gives top to bottom analysis of the global food traceability market, focusing on opportunities and market restraints, alongside the most recent trends driving the market. The report sections the global food traceability market dependent on its end-user, technology, and region.Global Food Traceability Market: Trends and OpportunitiesFood traceability market in retailers are utilized to accomplish inward and outside traceability. Interior traceability enables the organization to finish the product the framework subsequent to getting the receipt from the provider while the outer traceability takes into consideration the association with prompt inventory network accomplice. Mechanical progressions and the expanding number of product reviews and follows pollution are the essential variables expected to increase the development of the global food traceability market in the following couple of years.A portion of the key innovations for food traceability utilized over the globe are RFID, scanner tag, biometrics, infrared, and GPS. These innovations have assorted applications in various sorts of food products and at various phases of the food development. At present, scanner tag is utilized broadly for packaged foods, though GPS and RFID are utilized generally for food including development of live feedstock.Factors impacting the food traceability market incorporate extra expense for traceability innovation and security issue for information security, since information the executives, information following and security of information is cost-arranged.Get TOC for Detailed Facts and Numbers @Global Food Traceability Market: Market PotentialFoodTrace is one of the projects in Europe that is intended to upgrade traceability methods between organizations. It requests the foundation of a characterized recognizable proof framework and a system of databases, so as to unify and share the data. The controls identified with food security are most stringent in Europe, when contrasted with some other region. Food and feed traceability has been mandatory in Europe, since 2002 for a wide range of food organizations in the area.Another common trend in the food following industry would be computerized store network in which advancements like prescient examination, better perceivability over the development of products and mechanical technology encourage the stockroom and dispersion focuses to follow food proficiently.Global Food Traceability Market: Regional OutlookIn contrast to North America and Europe, the adoption rate of food traceability frameworks is low in developing economies. All things considered, buyers in these creating countries have an expanded mindfulness for food wellbeing.Asia-Pacific is anticipated to be the quickest developing business sector for food traceability amid the survey time frame. This is driven by the mechanical headway and developing worry for food security among buyers in creating nations, for example, India and China.Global Food Traceability Market: Competitive LandscapeThe global food traceability market is at an incipient stage and holds enormous potential to develop in the following couple of years. Driving players in the market are expected to present new advances, accentuating on these difficulties so as to expand the development of the food traceability market over the globe.Honeywell International Inc., C.H. Robinson INC., DuPont Nutrition & Health, Intermec Inc., Motorola solutions, Inc., Cognex Corporation, MASS Group, Bio-Rad Laboratories, IBM Corp, and Zebra Technologies.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Contact:TMR Research,3739 Balboa St # 1097,San Francisco, CA 94121United StatesTel: +1-415-520-1050
Transdermal Drug Delivery Market Demand Analysis for Future & Key Players Antares Pharma Inc., Bayer AG, ANI Pharmaceuticals Inc., Novartis AG, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc.

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Global Transdermal Drug Delivery Market: Global Future Outlook (2016-2024) Demand Analysis & Opportunity EvaluationGlobal transdermal drug delivery market is segmented on the basis of application into cardiovascular, CNS, pain management, dermatology and others. Further, global cardiovascular transdermal drug delivery market is anticipated to reach USD 1,911.3 Million by the end of 2024. This growth of cardiovascular transdermal drug segment can be attributed to growing number of patients with cardiovascular disorders. This growth in cardiovascular segment is making headway for the expansion of the transdermal drug delivery market across all regions. Further, cardiovascular transdermal drug delivery segment is projected to achieve Y-o-Y growth rate of 9.9% in 2024 as compared to previous year.Global transdermal drug delivery market reached at remarkable revenue in 2016 by registering a notable CAGR across the globe. Moreover, the market is expected to garner USD 7,358.0 Million by the end of 2024. Moreover, the global market is projected to grow on the back of Factors such as growing pharmaceutical industry, increasing global population, rising number of chronic patients. Besides, high adoption rate of advance technologies in developed regions is also expected to impel the growth of transdermal drug delivery market across the globe.In application segment, cardiovascular segment has dominated the global transdermal drug delivery market with a market share of 23.5% in 2016 and anticipated to flourish at a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period. With growing number of patients with cardiovascular disorders, cardiovascular segment is making headway for the expansion of the transdermal drug delivery market.Get the Sample of this Report @Rising Prevalence of DiseasesFactors such as growth in chronic disease prevalence and increasing geriatric population across the globe are benefitting the growth of transdermal drug delivery market. Apart from this, growing spending on healthcare by the population is anticipated to positively impact the growth of the market.Wide Application PossibilitiesTransdermal drug delivery devices such as patch find their major application in insulin delivery to diabetic patients. Further, rising number of diabetic patients across the globe are likely to increase the consumption of transdermal drug delivery patch which in turn is expected to drive the growth of the market.However, side effects from transdermal drug delivery are anticipated to restrict the growth of transdermal drug delivery market. Further, skin irritation associated with the use of transdermal drug delivery is anticipated to restrain the growth of global transdermal drug delivery market.Request Full Report with TOC @The report titled Global Transdermal Drug Delivery Market: Global Future Outlook (2016-2024) Demand Analysis & Opportunity Evaluation delivers detailed overview of the global transdermal drug delivery market in terms of market segmentation by technology, by application, and by region.Further, for the in-depth analysis, the report encompasses the industry growth drivers, restraints, supply and demand risk, market attractiveness, BPS analysis and Porters five force model.This report also provides the existing competitive scenario of some of the key players of the global Transdermal Drug Delivery Market which includes company profiling of Antares Pharma Inc., Bayer AG, ANI Pharmaceuticals Inc., Novartis AG, Janssen Pharmaceuticals Inc. and other notable players. The profiling enfolds key information of the companies which encompasses business overview, products and services, key financials and recent news and developments. On the whole, the report depicts detailed overview of the global transdermal drug delivery market that will help industry consultants, equipment manufacturers, existing players searching for expansion opportunities, new players searching possibilities and other stakeholders to align their market centric strategies according to the ongoing and expected trends in the future.Get this Premium Report directly @About UsResearch Nester is a leading service provider for strategic market research and consulting. We aim to provide unbiased, unparalleled market insights and industry analysis to help industries, conglomerates and executives to take wise decisions for their future marketing strategy, expansion and investment etc. We believe every business can expand to its new horizon, provided a right guidance at a right time is available through strategic minds. Our out of box thinking helps our clients to take wise decision so as to avoid future uncertainties.Contact Us :Ajay DanielEmail: ajay.daniel@researchnester.comU.S. Phone: +1 646 586 9123U.K. Phone: +44 203 608 5919
Global Milking Hose Market Expected to Witness a Sustainable Growth over 2024 Top Key players like Top Key players like Trelleborg Group,Saint-Gobain,DeLaval,Inc.

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Market Research Report Store offers a latest published report on Milking Hose Market Analysis and Forecast 2019-2025 delivering key insights and providing a competitive advantage to clients through a detailed report. The report contains 91 pages which highly exhibit on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.Click to view the full report TOC, figure and tables:A milking hose or milk tube is a component of a modern dairy farm milking machinery, which is used for harvesting milk from the animals.The growth of this market is attributed to the increasing demand for consumption of dairy products and technological advancements in dairy processing equipment. The major drivers are the rising global consumer demand for dairy products, increasing dairy production, changing needs, taste & preferences among consumers, and growing demand for healthier and palatable dairy products.Europe occupied 45.25% of the sales market in 2017. It is followed by North America, which account for around 24.33% of the global total industry. Other countries have a smaller amount of sales.According to this study, over the next five years the Milking Hose market will register a 3.8% CAGR in terms of revenue, the global market size will reach US$ 300 million by 2024, from US$ 250 million in 2019. In particular, this report presents the global market share (sales and revenue) of key companies in Milking Hose business, shared in Chapter 3.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversTrelleborg GroupSaint-GobainDeLavalGEAREHAUBouMaticMILKRITESkellerupTerraflexFinger-Lakes ExtrusionLauren AgrisystemsKuriyamaTBL Performance PlasticsMarket Segment by Type, coversRubberSilicone & PVCMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoMilk TubeAir TubeFor More Information On This Report, Please Visit @Related Information:North America Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024United States Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024Asia-Pacific Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024Europe Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024EMEA Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024Global Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024China Milking Hose Market Growth 2019-2024Customization Service of the Report :Market Research Report Store provides customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About Us:Market Research Report Store (MRRS) is a professional organization related to market research reports in all directions .To provide customers with a variety of market research reports, MRRS cooperates with a large of famous market report publishers all over the world. Owing to our good service and the professional market reports in the wide range, MRRS enjoys a good reputation in the market. In pace with the development of MRRS, more and more customers and market report publishers choose to cooperate with us. As a specialized platform, MRRS upholds the supremacy of customers and aims to provide customers with better service and richer select.Contact USMarket Research Report StoreE-mail: info@marketresearchreportstore.comTel: +86-15521064060 00852-58197708(HK)Add: 17890 Castleton Street Suite 218 City of Industry CA 91748 United StatesWebsite:
Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Market- Global Insights By Top Key Players: IBM Corporation, Google, Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, iCarbonX, Next IT Corp., CloudMex Inc., Carescore, Atomwise Inc

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

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Increasing application of AI technologies, from pharma drug development to patient care is expected to support growth of artificial intelligence in healthcare market. Moreover, increasing number of collaborations among leading AI vendors and life sciences companies may help in rapid introduction of AI in medical devices and drug development. Pharmaceutical organizations can speed up the process of drug development, from drug discovery to commercialization, by using artificial intelligence. It can aid in development of personalized medicine. It is also increasingly being used for applications in advanced disease management such as cancer diagnosis and treatment, as studies have suggested that artificial intelligence may detect breast cancer spread to lymph nodes.Get a Request Sample of Research Report @For instance, Researchers from MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital collaborated to apply AI in detection and diagnosis of breast cancer. The model developed by these scientists correctly diagnosed 97% of the cases. Artificial intelligence holds major potential in medical imaging and diagnosis of the diseases. Therefore, government organizations are increasing research in this field. For instance, In October 2017, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer (NCRCC) in China signed a deal with the Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in order to use artificial intelligence in medical imaging.Increasing research and development by leading players in In AI for healthcare application is expected to support growth of the artificial intelligence in healthcare market. IBM Corporation partnered with University of California, in order to enhance quality of life through artificial intelligence in October 2017. Moreover, IBM Watson and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) collaborated for joint research in artificial intelligence in September 2017. Two Israel based startups  CLEW Medical and Viz.ai  launched predictive analytics platform and direct-to-intervention system to automatically analyze brain CTs respectively, in January 2018.Request for Customization of Research Report @Furthermore, Seegene, Inc. successfully developed molecular diagnostic assays by using artificial intelligence-based assay development system in January 2018. In May 2017, CJ Healthcare Corporation  a South Korea-based company  partnered with Syntekabio, Inc. to co-develop a new anticancer immunotherapy using artificial intelligence model.Key players in the market are focusing on partnership and new product launch strategies, in order to enhance their market share. For instance, in 2017, NVIDIA Corporation partnered with GE Healthcare and Nuance to integrate NVIDIAs deep learning platform with GE Healthcare medical imaging devices. Atomwise, Inc. launched a research program to accelerate drug discovery by using artificial intelligence in April 2017. Partners Connected Health and Hitachi Ltd. developed an artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which can predict hospital readmissions within 30 days for heart failure patients.Key players in the market are focusing on collaborations in order to expand its presence in the market. For instance, in 2017, Nvidia Corporation collaborated with GE Healthcare to speed up the adoption of AI in healthcare. As per agreement, Nvidia Corporation is expected to integrate its artificial intelligence (AI) to GE Healthcares 500,000 imaging devices, globally.Inquire about Discount on this Report @Some major players operating in the artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare market are IBM Corporation, Google, Inc., NVIDIA Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, iCarbonX, Next IT Corp., CloudMex Inc., Carescore, Atomwise Inc., Zephyr Health Inc., Deep Genomics Inc., Medtronic Plc., Koninkiljke Philips N.V., and Oncora Medical, Inc.About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.1001 4th Ave,, #3200, Seattle, WA 98154
Pediatric Nutrition Market Instruments, Consumables With Major Key Players Reckitt Benckiser Group, Nestle S.A., Abbott Laboratories, Groupe Danone, Royal FrieslandCampina, Baxter International, Fresenius Kabi

Pediatric Nutrition

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Pediatric nutrition refers to the nutritional products given to infants or children as a sole source of nutrition or supplement. These products support physical and mental growth of children, in turn supporting balanced growth in their formative years, from infancy to adolescence. The usage of these products is critical in cases of premature birth or babies suffering from severe allergies such as lactose intolerance. In premature birth, baby cant be directly breastfed and hence, these products are the sole source of nutrition till they get switched to breastfeeding. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2016, around 10% (1 in every 10) of births recorded were premature in the U.S. Moreover, globally, every year around 15 million births are premature, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Products are also being developed for infants suffering from certain inborn diseases such as maple syrup urine disease or phenylketonuria.Increasing demand for nutritional products in Asia Pacific is expected to boost growth of the pediatric nutrition marketAsia Pacific is home to two of the most populous countries in the world, India and China. Number of births in these countries is also among the highest, every year. Moreover, in October 2015, China abolished its one-child policy, which in turn is expected to increase the birth rate in China. According to World Bank, in India, crude birth rate (birth per 1,000 people) was recorded to be 19 in 2015, which was much higher as compared to developed economies such as the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, and Italy which recorded crude birth rate of 12, 12, 9, 12, and 8, respectively. Significant year-on-year increase in the crude birth rate in India, is expected to increase in the number of total births in the country in the near future.Request For Sample Copy:Furthermore, Companies such as Mead Johnson Nutrition have operated with very high gross margins accounting for 64.2%, 64.3%, and 61.4% in 2016, 2015, and 2014, respectively. This in turn, indicates lucrative opportunity for market players in this market, which in turn is increasing the entry of large players. Due to the high gross margins, new manufacturers are competing with leading players by selling their products at a reasonable but profitable price.The global pediatric nutrition market was valued at US$ 35,211.6 million in 2016 and is expected to witness a CAGR of 6.4% over the forecast period (2017  2025).Lactose intolerance, allergy to cows protein milk, maple syrup urine disease, phenylketonuria, and insulin resistance are some of the most common health complications faced by infants and children. These children require special nutrition, which can be provided by nutritional products. Mead Johnson Nutrition (acquired by Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc) developed a separate category of products specifically designed for children suffering from such diseases. These products include Mead Johnson BCAD, for children suffering from maple syrup urine disease and Mead Johnson PhenylFree, for children suffering from phenylketonuria. Other players such as Nestle S.A. and Abbott Laboratories also sell product for children with special needs. Increasing number of products to serve this special population coupled with increasing awareness about such diseases is expected to support growth of the global pediatric nutrition market. Furthermore, companies are focusing on development of products that may serve as nutrition enhancer or taste modifier, for the general population. Such products include ChocoMilk and Cal-C-Tose, which when added to milk enhance its nutritional value.The four leading players holding a dominant position in the market are Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc, Nestle S.A., Abbott Laboratories, and Groupe Danone, owing to a spree of market consolidation. Manufacturers are focusing on inorganic growth strategies such as mergers and acquisitions to strengthen their foothold in the global market. For instance, in 2012, Nestle S.A. acquired Pfizer Inc.s infant nutrition business. In June 2017, Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc acquired Mead Johnson Nutrition, a leading player in pediatric nutrition.Download the PDF brochure:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.1001 4th Ave
Coumatetralyl Solution Global Industry Report - History, Present and Future 2025

Coumatetralyl Solution Global Industry Report 2025

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The global market size of Coumatetralyl Solution is $XX million in 2017 with XX CAGR from 2013 to 2017, and it is expected to reach $XX million by the end of 2023 with a CAGR of XX% from 2018 to 2023.There are 3 key segments covered in this report: geography segment, end use/application segment and competitor segment.For geography segment, regional supply, application-wise and type-wise demand, major players, price is presented from 2013 to 2023. This report coverss following regions:*North America*South America*Asia & Pacific*Europe*MEA (Middle East and Africa)Access more details about this report at:The key countries in each region are taken into consideration as well, such as United States, China, Japan, India, Korea, ASEAN, Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain, CIS, and Brazil etc.For end use/application segment, this report focuses on the status and outlook for key applications. End users also can be listed.For competitor segment, the report includes global key players of Coumatetralyl Solution as well as some small players. The compnaies include:LGM Pharma, HBCChem, Alfa Chemistry, Toronto Research Chemicals, AccuStandard, AlliChem, Waterstone Technology, Kanto Chemical, J& K SCIENTIFIC, Hangzhou Yuhao Chemical Technology, Alta Scientific, Sh et al.Purchase a copy of this premium research report at:The information for each competitor includes:*Company Profile*Main Business Information*SWOT Analysis*Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin*Market ShareInquire further details about this report at:About Research 2 Reports:Research2Reports Market Research Company offers custom syndicated market research reports with market analysis, consulting services Market research reports by Research2Reports depends on survey analysis covers a magnitude of factors, industry research, market size, forecasts, financial growth, pricing trends, competitive insights of market segmentsContact Us:Organization: Research2reportsOffice No. 212/213, B Block 2nd Floor,Parmar Chambers,Sadhu Vaswani Road, Pune  411001Phone Number: 020 - 2612 6969Email: info@research2reports.comRead More Industry News:Research 2 Reports offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe.Office No. 212/213, B Block 2nd Floor,Parmar Chambers,Sadhu Vaswani Road, Pune  411001
Crop Micronutrients Market growth Analysis By Top Key players | Akzo Nobel N.V., Aries Agro Ltd., Baicor, L.C., BASF SE., Compass Minerals International, Inc., DowDuPont Inc.

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According to a new report published by Allied Market Research, titled, Crop Micronutrients Market by Form, Product Type, Crop Type, and Application: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2018-2025 the global crop micronutrients market was valued at $6,077.05 million in 2017, and is projected to reach $11,532.36 million by 2025, registering a CAGR of 8.3% from 2018 to 2025. In 2017, the soil application segment accounted for more than 50% share of the global crop micronutrients market in terms of value.Download sample copy of this report@Crop micronutrients are the essential nutrients that are required for the growth and balanced nutrition of plants and crops. Micronutrients help in improving the quality as well as the yield of the crops. These are the basic nutrients required in minor amounts to treat deficiency in plants and increase crop yield. Chlorosis, yellowing of leaves, gummosis, and rot are a few illnesses that are found in plants due to insufficiency of micronutrients. Boron, zinc, iron, molybdenum, manganese, copper, and chlorine are some of the major micronutrients that are required by crops and plants. Different applications, for example, fertigation, foliar, and seed treatment are expected to exhibit high demand in future.Micro-nutrients act as enzyme co-factors and building blocks that enable plants to build complete proteins and compounds. They also aid in the development of large, strong roots, and boost immunity of the plant. Growth in awareness about benefits of micronutrients among farmers & growers, increase in demand for healthy & nutritious food, surge in demand for biofuels fuel the global crop micronutrients market. However, factors such as lack of awareness among farmers in developing countries regarding dosage and proper application of micronutrients, mining of micronutrient reserves, and availability of cheap alternatives and counterfeit products are the major factor expected to restrain the global crop micronutrients market growth during the forecast period. Furthermore, the adoption of new methods of farming for enhancing profitability fuels the demand for micronutrient fortified products.Send Enquiry on this report @Key Findings of the Crop Micronutrients Market: The chelated micronutrients segment was the highest contributor to the crop micronutrients market in 2017, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 8.7%. The demand for fruits & vegetables is continuously increasing around the globe, especially in developing countries such as China, India, and Brazil, and is projected to grow at CAGR of 8.7% over the forecast period. Asia Pacific is projected to exhibit rapid growth in the crop micronutrients market, owing to growth in its economy with a large population base, and is projected to grow at the most astounding CAGR of 8.9% from 2018 to 2025. China accounted for the highest share accounting approximately 40% in the Asia-Pacific crop micronutrients market, in 2017. In 2017, the soil application segment accounted for 50% of the crop micronutrients market share and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.9%.In terms of value, Asia-Pacific and LAMEA collectively contributed xx share in the global crop micronutrients market in 2017. The key players operating in the crop micronutrients market are Akzo Nobel N.V., Aries Agro Ltd., Baicor, L.C., BASF SE., Compass Minerals International, Inc., DowDuPont Inc., The Mosaic Company, Nutrien Ltd., Western Nutrients Corporation, and Yara International.Buy Now this Report @Contact Us:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free: +1-800-792-5285UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1(855)550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:About usAllied Market Research, a market research and advisory company of Allied Analytics LLP,provides business insights and market research reports to large as well as small &medium enterprises. The company assists its clients to strategize business policies andachieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free: +1-800-792-5285UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1(855)550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:
Catheters Market Size Worth $56.5 Billion by 2025 | Industry Players: Abbott Laboratories, Becton, Dickson and Company, B. Braun Melsungen AG and Others

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According to a new report published by Polaris Market Research Global catheters market is anticipated to reach USD 56.5 billion by 2025. In 2017, by product type, cardiovascular catheter segment captures the largest market shares in terms of revenue and hold major share in the market. Regionally, North America accounted for the major share in the catheter market.Request for a sample of this research report @Catheters are thin tubes made up of plastic, nylon, polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and silicon rubber. Catheters are majorly used in catheterization while surgical procedures like angioplasty, and neurosurgery. The catheters market is primarily driven by continuous growth in the population suffering from cardiovascular disorders and diabetes. Presently, various countries showed the growth in number of patients suffering from hypertension and diabetes which is braced by factors such as smoking, drinking and sedentary lifestyle of the population. In addition, favorable reimbursement policies, increasing demand for minimal invasive surgeries, and technological advanced catheter with high effectiveness by its use would spur the global catheter market during the forecast period. on other hand, the wide application of catheter in various surgeries such as angioplasty would also push this market. The reimbursements by the Medicaid program that provide approximately 100 catheters per month to add the growth of catheter market in the future.The leading companies operating in this industry include Johnson & Johnson Inc., Abbott Laboratories, Becton, Dickson and Company, B. Braun Melsungen AG., Medtronic plc., Boston Scientific Corporation, Cook Group Incorporated, Teleflex Incorporated, Cardinal Health Inc., Smiths Medical, Arrow International Inc., Edward Life Science Corporation, and Coloplast.Make Inquiry about this report @Cardiovascular Catheters, holds a major share in the global catheter market. The cardiovascular catheter market is further segmented as PTCA balloon catheters, IVUS catheters, PTA balloon catheters, electrophysiological catheters, and others. The growth of cardiovascular catheters is majorly driven by the increasing incidences of cardiovascular diseases supporting the growth of cardiovascular interventional procedures. While, urological catheter holds the second largest segment with largest revenue. The factors contributing for the growth of urological market are continuous technological advancements, and increasing prevalence of urological diseases in the coming year.Geographically, North America holds a dominating position in the global catheter market followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. The growth in the North America catheter market is driven by the presence of refined health infrastructure, high volume of catheterization in medical procedures, high healthcare expenditure by the individuals, and high level of patient awareness about the use catheters. Whereas, Asia Pacific is expected to reach remarkable growth owning to the increased penetration rate of these devices in the developing countries, growing technological advancements pertaining the development of new-catheter devices, and improving healthcare expenditure would influence the catheter market in Asia Pacific during the forecast period.Check for discount:Key Findings from the study suggest products available in the market are continuously concentrating on the technological advancements that will reduce the side effects caused by the use of catheters. The leading companies while developing new products considers the factors such as increasing disposable income, and untapped market potential. North America is presumed to dominate the global catheter market over the forecast years and Asia Pacific region shows signs of high growth owing to the booming economies of India, and China.Catheter Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2025 by Product TypesCardiovascular Catheters PTCA Balloon Catheters IVUS Catheters PTA Balloon Catheters Electrophysiology catheters OthersUrological Catheters Foley Catheters Hemodialysis Catheters Peritoneal Catheters Intermittent Catheters External CathetersNeurovascular CatheterSpecialty Center Catheters Wound/Surgical Catheters Oximetry Catheters Thermodilution Catheters IUI Catheters OthersCatheters Market Size and Forecast, 2017-2025 by RegionNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeUKGermanyFranceItalySpainAsia-PacificChinaJapanIndiaAustraliaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoMiddle East & AfricaBrowse for full research summary:About Polaris Market ResearchPolaris Market Research is a global market research and consulting company. We provide unmatched quality of offerings to our clients present globally. The company specializes in providing exceptional market intelligence and in-depth business research services for our clientele spread across different enterprises. We at Polaris are obliged to serve our diverse customer base present across the industries of healthcare, technology, semi-conductors and chemicals among various other industries present around the world. We strive to provide our customers with updated information on innovative technologies, high growth markets, emerging business environments and latest business-centric applications, thereby helping them always to make informed decisions and leverage new opportunities.Contact us-Mr. RohitCorporate Sales, USAPolaris Market ResearchPhone: 1-646-568-9980Email: sales@polarismarketresearch.comWeb:
Oil and Gas Waste Heat Recovery Market Insights Research Report 2023 by Ormat Technologies, General Electric Company, China Energy Recovery, Bono Energia, HRS, Harbin Electric Company Ltd, Dongfang Electric Corp.

Oil and Gas Waste Heat Recovery Market

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Market AnalysisAs per Market Research Future (MRFR)s analysis, the global oil gas waste heat recovery market has been projected to reach new scaling heights at a robust CAGR of 7.5% during the forecast period. The study also highlights the markets valuation in the future as huge advancements are at its peak and the market predicts to show lucrative opportunities in the next couple of years.Oil gas waste heat recovery systems relate to increasing the overall efficiency of oil and gas exploration and production plant in a very cost-effective way while diminishing the demand for fuels at the same time. The method goes with reusing and capturing heat from streams of high energy produced during refining sequences in industrial areas. In recent times, industrial development continues to grow promptly, which is propelling large quantities of heat production. Its reuse and preservation have become an essential yet trouble of great anxiety for several industries.Several methods are being engaged on a grand scale in the industrial bodies from carbon emissions, greenhouse gas, operational costs, to reduce energy consumption. To overcome such issues, huge advancements are being made to cover up and convert it into electricity using Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC).Request Free Sample Copy @Oil Gas Waste Heat Recovery Market: Drivers & ConstraintsAt the same time, continuous evolution in industrialization across the globe has resulted in the generation of considerable waste energy as a by-product. The large-scale implementation of a waste heat recovery system in the oil & gas sector is expected to boost the industrial processes and substantially enhance their economic feasibility.The imminent factors for the growth of oil & gas waste heat recovery market are considered to be emerging economies due to the rising need for energy with exploration and production activities. Countries like the U.S, Canada, and Mexico are helping the market to grow substantially in the forecast period by investing a large share of the economy in converting oil & gas wastes into energy consumption solutions.With the tremendous high improvement in thermal equipment, the design has dominated the oil & gas waste heat recovery market throughout the forecast years. The enhancement in equipment design is predicted to generate high revenue. Also, power management solutions are also mounting owing to an industrial inclination towards it which is again expected to boost the growth of oil & gas waste heat recovery market with a higher CAGR in the years to come.Market SegmentationIn the reports by MRFR, Global oil and gas waste heat recovery market have been segmented based on sector, application, equipment, end-user, and region.Based on the sector, the market is segmented into upstream, midstream, and downstream. Among these, the downstream segment is projected to overshadow the oil and gas waste heat recovery market until 2023. Whereas, the downstream sector consists of refineries and petrochemical complex, which generate a massive amount of waste energy during its operations. Thus it is giving an extra advantage of utilizing waste energy.Based on application, the market is segmented into thermal, electric power generation, and others. Of these, the thermal segment dominated the market in 2016 and is projected to be the fastest growing application segment for oil and gas waste heat recovery market.Based on equipment, the market is segmented into heat exchangers, boilers, heat recovery steam generators, turbines, and others. The broad application of heat exchangers along end-user is expected to drive the equipment segment in waste heat recovery market over the forecast period.Based on the end-user, the market is segmented into commercial, residential, and others, where the residential segment holds the largest share in 2016, owing to the vast demand for energy.Regional OutlookRegionally, Asia Pacific has taken hold of the global oil and gas waste heat recovery market in 2016 owing to rapid industrialization coupled with an increasing prominence on sustainable energy in countries like China, India, Japan, and Southeast Asian Countries is likely to drive waste heat recovery system market growth throughout the forecast period. North America and Europe are expected to witness sizable increase throughout the forecast period which is primarily attributed to growing industrialization coupled with government initiatives regarding energy efficient solutions.Key PlayersThe key players of global oil and gas waste heat recovery market are ABB Ltd. (Switzerland), Ormat Technologies (U.S), General Electric Company (U.S), China Energy Recovery (China), Bono Energia (Italy), HRS (U.K), Harbin Electric Company Limited (China), Dongfang Electric Corporation (China), Amec Foster Wheeler (U.K), Siemens AG (Germany), Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (Japan), Echogen Power Systems Inc.(U.S), Econotherm Ltd (U.K), Thermax Limited (U.K), and Cool Energy, Inc. (U.S).Access Complete Research Report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: sales@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Business Intelligence Platform Market Analysis By Top Key Players | SAP, SAS, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Tibco Software and More 2019 - 2025

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The Business Intelligence Platform market size was million US$ and it is expected to reach million US$ by the end of 2025, with a CAGR of during 2019-2025.Request for sample@This report focuses on the global Business Intelligence Platform status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the Business Intelligence Platform development in United States, Europe and China.The key players covered in this study: SAP(Germany), SAS(Sweden), IBM(US), Oracle(US), Microsoft(US), Tibco Software(US), Microstrategy(US), Tableau(US), Qlik(US), Pentaho(US)Market segment by Type, the product can be split into: Cloud, On-PremiseMarket segment by Application, split into: Healthcare, Retail, Government, BFSI, Telecom & IT, OthersMarket segment by Regions/Countries, this report covers: United States, Europe, China, Japan, Southeast Asia, India, Central & South AmericaThe study objectives of this report are:To analyze global Business Intelligence Platform status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players.To present the Business Intelligence Platform development in United States, Europe and China.To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies.To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.In this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Business Intelligence Platform are as follows:History Year: 2014-2018Base Year: 2018Estimated Year: 2019Forecast Year 2019 to 2025For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2018 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Buy Single User Copy of This Report@Table of Contents1 Report Overview1.1 Study Scope1.2 Key Market Segments1.3 Players Covered1.4 Market Analysis by Type1.4.1 Global Business Intelligence Platform Market Size Growth Rate by Type (2014-2025)1.4.2 Cloud1.4.3 On-Premise1.5 Market by Application1.5.1 Global Business Intelligence Platform Market Share by Application (2014-2025)1.5.2 Healthcare1.5.3 Retail1.5.4 Government1.5.5 BFSI1.5.6 Telecom & IT1.5.7 Others1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered2 Global Growth Trends2.1 Business Intelligence Platform Market Size2.2 Business Intelligence Platform Growth Trends by Regions2.2.1 Business Intelligence Platform Market Size by Regions (2014-2025)2.2.2 Business Intelligence Platform Market Share by Regions (2014-2019)2.3 Industry Trends2.3.1 Market Top Trends2.3.2 Market Drivers2.3.3 Market Opportunities3 Market Share by Key Players3.1 Business Intelligence Platform Market Size by Manufacturers3.1.1 Global Business Intelligence Platform Revenue by Manufacturers (2014-2019)3.1.2 Global Business Intelligence Platform Revenue Market Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)3.1.3 Global Business Intelligence Platform Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI)3.2 Business Intelligence Platform Key Players Head office and Area Served3.3 Key Players Business Intelligence Platform Product/Solution/Service3.4 Date of Enter into Business Intelligence Platform Market3.5 Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans4 Breakdown Data by Type and Application4.1 Global Business Intelligence Platform Market Size by Type (2014-2019)4.2 Global Business Intelligence Platform Market Size by Application (2014-2019)Complete Report With TOC@.....Who we areResearch Trades has a team of experts who is working on a comprehensive analysis of market research. This estimate is based on a comprehensive study of the future and estimates of future estimates, which can be used by various organizations for growth purposes. We distribute customized reports that focus on meeting the customers specific requirement. Our company provides a large collection of high-quality reports obtained by customer-centered approaches, thus providing valuable research insights.Contact Us:Email: sales@researchtrades.comCall us: +1 6269994607 (USA), +91 7507349866 (IND)Web:Skype ID: researchtradescon
What's driving the Cold-pressed Juice Market growth? Key Players are: Naked Juice Company, Hain BluePrint Inc, Evolution Fresh, Suja Life LLC, Liquiteria

Cold-pressed Juice Market

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Up Market Research added a new Cold-pressed Juice Market research report for the period of 2019  2026. Report focuses on the major drivers and restraints providing analysis of the market share, segmentation, revenue forecasts and geographic regions of the market.Get Free Sample Copy Of This Report @The report contains 106 pages which highly exhibit on current market analysis scenario, upcoming as well as future opportunities, revenue growth, pricing and profitability.Cold-pressed Juice Market research report delivers a close watch on leading competitors with strategic analysis, micro and macro market trend and scenarios, pricing analysis and a holistic overview of the market situations in the forecast period. It is a professional and a detailed report focusing on primary and secondary drivers, market share, leading segments and geographical analysis. Further, key players, major collaborations, merger & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies are reviewed in the report. The report contains basic, secondary and advanced information pertaining to the Cold-pressed Juice Market global status and trend, market size, share, growth, trends analysis, segment and forecasts from 20192026.The scope of the report extends from market scenarios to comparative pricing between major players, cost and profit of the specified market regions. The statistics are represented in graphical format for a clear understanding on facts and figures.For More Information On This Report, Please VisitThe generated report is firmly based on primary research, interviews with top executives, news sources and information insiders. Secondary research techniques are implemented for better understanding and clarity for data analysis.The report for Cold-pressed Juice Market analysis & forecast 2019-2026 is segmented into Product Segment, Application Segment & Major players.Global Cold-pressed Juice Market Segmentation Includes:Region-wise Analysis covers:North AmericaEuropeChinaJapanIndiaSoutheast AsiaOther regions (Central & South America, Middle East & Africa)The Major players include:Naked Juice CompanyHain BluePrint Inc.Evolution FreshSuja Life, LLCLiquiteriaA. L. Hoogesteger Fresh SpecialistParker's Organic Juices Pty. Ltd.Florida Bottling Inc.Odwalla Inc.Juice GenerationPressed JuiceryRakyan Beverages Private LimitedVillage Juicery Inc.Organic Press Juices Co. LLCKuka Juice LLC.The Cold Pressed JuiceryGreenhouse Juice Co.Drink Daily Greens LLCNative Cold Pressed JuicesPlenish CleanseProduct Type Analysis:Organic JuicesConventional JuicesApplication Analysis:SupermarketBeverage ShopOnline SalesGet Free Sample Copy Of This Report @Cold-pressed Juice Market Analysis and Forecast 2019-2026 report helps the clients to take business decisions and to understand strategies of major players in the industry. The report also calls for market- driven results deriving feasibility studies for client needs. UpMarketResearch ensures qualified and verifiable aspects of market data operating in the real- time scenario. The analytical studies are conducted ensuring client needs with a thorough understanding of market capacities in the real- time scenario.Key Reasons to Purchase:- To gain insightful analysis of the market and have a comprehensive understanding of the Global Cold-pressed Juice Market and its commercial landscape.- Learn about the market strategies that are being adopted by your competitors and leading organizations.- To understand the future outlook and prospects for Cold-pressed Juice Market analysis and forecast 2019-2026.Avail Discount On This Report @Customization of the Report:UpMarketResearch provides free customization of reports as per your need. This report can be personalized to meet your requirements. Get in touch with our sales team, who will guarantee you to get a report that suits your necessities.About UpMarketResearch:The UpMarketResearch () is a leading distributor of market research report with more than 800+ global clients. As a market research company, we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well- defined  we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed, strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Contact Info:Name: Alex MathewsEmail: Alex@upmarketresearch.comOrganization: UpMarketResearchAddress: 500 East E Street, Ontario, CA 91764, United States.
Newborn Screening Market Future Technological Advancement and Top Players Agilent Technologies, AB SCIEX, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Covidien, GE Life Sciences, Masimo Corporation

Newborn Screening

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The global newborn screening market size was valued at US$ 561.5 million in 2018, and is expected to witness a CAGR of 12.4% over the forecast period (2018  2026).Newborn screening describes various tests that are performed during first few hours or days of an infants life. These tests have the potential for preventing severe health problems, including death. Newborn screening has evolved from a simple urine or blood screening test to a more comprehensive and complex screening system capable of detecting over 50 different conditions. Newborn screening tests measure a number of markers in infants blood that can be either decreased or increased if an infant has certain diseases. Currently, conditions such as cystic fibrosis (CF), congenital hypothyroidism, phenylketonuria (PKU), and around 22 other metabolic conditions that affect protein or fat metabolism can be diagnosed through newborn screening tests.Several governments are taking initiative in increasing awareness about newborn screening tests and are offering free screening services in some regions. For instance, in September 2018, the Florida Department of Health launched the Newborn Screening (NBS) Web Order Application. This statewide initiative has been developed to ensure efficiency and accuracy of newborn screening information submitted to the Bureau of Public Health Laboratories.Moreover, novel biomarkers and analytical technologies are driving the evolution of Newborn Screening (NBS) programs. For instance, a rapid and highly sensitive point-of-care testing device has been developed and commercialized for the diagnosis of Sickle Cell Disease (SCD). According to a BMC Medicine Journal study 2015, SCD test demonstrated 99% specificity and 99% sensitivity for the diagnosis of several hemoglobin (Hb) variants: sickle cell trait (Hb AS), sickle cell anemia (Hb SS), Hb AA, Hb AC, and Hb SC, and requires only 5 L of blood. Similarly, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies are expected to impact newborn screening in the near future.Request For Sample Copy:On the basis of region, the global newborn screening market is segmented into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa. By 2026, North America and Europe are expected to generate major revenue share in the global newborn screening market, owing to the presence of a better reimbursement structure, development of well-equipped healthcare infrastructure, and availability of trained medical professionals. According to the U.S. government, for the 2018 fiscal year, the Newborn Screening Quality Assurance Program at the CDC is funded at US$ 8.4 million and the Heritable Disorders program at Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) is funded at $13.88 million. The most common newborn screening tests in the U.S. include, hypothyrodism, galactosemia, PKU (phenylketonuria), and sickle cell disease. Increasing government funding in Europe for NBS within a national health service or a statutory health insurance, is expected to drive newborn screening market growth in Europe.Asia Pacific newborn screening market is expected to foresee highest growth rate during the forecast period, owing to increasing incidences of premature births, high birth rates in countries such as China and India, and increasing healthcare awareness among regional population. According to WHO, 2012 report, most neonatal deaths occur in Asia, which accounted for 40% of the global neonatal deaths. Moreover, in India, less than 1% of infants are screened and over 1.6 million infants are born with birth defects, annually. These factors are expected to propel growth of the global newborn screening market in the region.Key players operating in the global newborn screening market include, Agilent Technologies, AB SCIEX, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Covidien PLC, GE Life Sciences, Masimo Corporation, Natus Medical Inc., PerkinElmer Inc., and ZenTech S.A.Download the PDF brochure:About Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysis through various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.1001 4th Ave
Essential Oils Market Analysis by Top Key Players Young Living, Bio Landes, Flavex, Florihana, Lebermuth, Moksha Lifestyle, Frutarom, Flacon, Firmnich, Symrise

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Essential Oils Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global industry. The report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Essential Oils Market analysis is provided for the international market including development history, competitive landscape analysis, and major regions development statusUK essential oils industry share from food and beverage application may surpass 5.5 kilo tons by 2024, owing to its extensive usage in food sector. Clove, rosemary, peppermint, lemon, orange, black pepper and cinnamon oil are extensively used in this sector for cookery and flavoring. Beneficial regulations by agencies including FDA concerning support for usage of the product in food & beverage industry will positively impact product demand. These products are also used as natural preservatives in food owing to their antimicrobial and antioxidant properties. Growing product usage for extending product shelf life along with mounting consumer consciousness about benefits of natural preservatives may boost industry growth.Request a sample of this premium report at:Essential Oils Market may exceed USD 13 billion by 2024; according to a new research report.Increasing consumption natural ingredients including orange, lemon, clove and eucalyptus as potential replacement for synthetic drugs along with growing alertness for benefits of these products are major factors for essential oils market growth.Growing market of natural health treatments including aromatherapy may escalate essential oils market by 2024. It provides healing remedy for insomnia, digestion problems and respiratory diseases which will foster industry growth.China geranium oil market is projected to surpass USD 50 million by 2024. Geranium oil is widely used in aromatherapy owing to its health benefits. Its application as wrinkle reducer, muscle helper, infection fighter, skin enhancer and anti-inflammatory agent may propel essential oils market in forecast timeframe.U.S. essential oils market from pharmaceuticals applications may observe gains at over 8.5% in forecast timeframe. Essential oils and its volatile ingredients are used to avert and helps in treating diseases including cancer and cardiovascular diseases thrombosis & atherosclerosis, which may stimulate industry growth in projected timeframe. The product also has application in antioxidants, antiviral antidiabetic and antibacterial drug formulation along with usage as skin penetration enhancers for transdermal drug delivery will further propel product demand in the region.Italy essential oils market from cosmetics & toiletries applications may witness gains of over 10.5% in the predicted timeframe, owing to upgraded lifestyles of the individuals and focus towards natural and safe ingredients which is positively affecting essential oils market. These oils are extensively used in hair care, skin care products as natural preservatives and for their therapeutic application including antiaging, dandruff and hair fall control. Wide product usage in perfumes & fragrances and shifting consumer preference towards sustainable ingredients which has multifunctional features will stimulate essential oils market growth.Global essential oils market share is moderately fragmented as well as competitive. Major industry participants include Young Living, Bio Landes, Flavex, Florihana, Lebermuth, Moksha Lifestyle, Frutarom, Flacon, Firmnich, Symrise, BoInternational, and DoTerra, Companies are stressing on R&D to provide innovative and cost-effective products to consumer. Key importance is given to develop products for preservation application and aromatherapy along with enhancing extraction and new storing techniques to increase efficiency of oil.Request a discount on standard prices of this premium report at:Report ContentChapter 1 Methodology & Scope1.1 Methodology1.2 Market definitions1.3 Market estimation & forecast parameters1.4 Data Sources1.4.1 Primary1.4.2 Secondary1.4.2.1 Paid Sources1.4.2.2 Public SourcesChapter 2 Executive Summary2.1.1 Business trends2.1.2 Regional trends2.1.3 Product trends2.1.4 Application trendsChapter 3 Essential Oils Industry Insights3.1 Industry segmentation3.2 Industry landscape, 2013 - 20243.3 Industry ecosystem analysis3.4 Vendor Matrix3.4.1 Distribution channel analysis3.4.1.1 Collaborations/Partnerships3.4.1.2 Distributors3.5 Regulatory landscape3.5.1 U.S.3.5.2 Canada.3.5.2.1 Natural Health Product3.5.3 Europe3.6 Raw material analysis3.7 Technology landscape3.7.1 Essential oilsproduction by steam/hydro distillation process3.7.2 Essential oilsproduction by solvent extraction3.7.3 Essential oilsproduction by CO2 Extraction3.7.4 Essential oilsproduction by Maceration3.8 Cost Structure Analysis3.9 Pricing analysis3.10 Industry impact forces3.10.1 Growth driversAbout 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.com
Magnetic Sensor Market to Witness Substantial Growth from Healthcare Applications Over 2018  2024 | Key Players Are Sensoronix, Allegro Microsystems, Asahi Kasei Microsystems, Micoronas Semiconductors, and Bosh Sensortec.

Magnetic Sensor Market

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The report presenting a comprehensive exploration of the global Magnetic Sensor Market encloses the rate of growth of the market over the projected duration. Providing a concise synopsis, the report determines the valuation and size of the industry in the near future. It also includes the major contributing factors to the growth of the global Magnetic Sensor Market as well as the dominating players in the market coupled with their market share.Growing use of magnetic sensors in several healthcare applications such as ECG, thermometers, magnetometers, etc., is accelerating the magnetic sensor market growth in the medical sector. With the emergence of urbanization, the healthcare sector has a great demand for sensor technology and serves as one of the main drivers of the magnetic sensor industry. Several companies have started coming up with more smart and intelligent solutions for effective energy management, therefore contributing to the sustainable development of the environment. These sensors enable efficient energy conservation in appliances such as refrigerators and vacuum cleaners by sensing close/open door detection, fluid levels augmenting the magnetic sensor industry.Request for table of contents this Report @Magnetic Sensor Market is predicted to grow rapidly in the coming years due to its extensive use in automotive, consumer electronics, robotics, security & military applications, and healthcare sector. With the increasing penetration of the IoT technology, sensor technology has been in great demand by manufacturers, which will accelerate the growth of the magnetic sensor industry. With the emergence of new innovative technologies, people have become more tech-savvy, which is driving the consumer electronics market.Magnetic sensor market is majorly driven by the automotive sector. This sector is focusing on providing innovative features such as wireless technologies due to which sensor technology is being used in reverse parking, monitoring of side airbags, remote keyless entry, anti-lock brakes, diesel engines, ignition timings, fuel efficiency, convenience, and safety. It is one of the leading segments driving the magnetic sensor industry due to the increasing use of hybrid and electric cars to reduce environmental pollution.Request for customization this Report @The magnetic sensor market is segmented into analog and digital on the basis of product. Analog sensors produce outputs, which will detect the object, whereas digital sensors transmit, detect the object, and bring back the signal. Moreover, the demand for these components is driven by their extensive use in digital sensors. These are preferred over analog signals as these signals are prone to noisy environments and create errors in the output whereas digital signals are resistant to noise. Hall effect sensors are the most extensively used magnetic sensors in consumer & industrial electronics as well as the automotive industry.In this fastest growing digital era, data integrity and data security are the major factors required in building efficient and trustworthy electronic solutions. Several companies are adopting technologies,Which guarantee both security and performance for applications. Therefore, the magnetic sensor market is anticipated to witness a high demand in the security & military sector in the coming years.Browse Complete Report @Some of the major players manufacturing magnetic sensor are Sensoronix, Allegro Microsystems, Asahi Kasei Microsystems, Micoronas Semiconductors, and Bosh Sensortec. The magnetic sensor market is highly competitive with the major players introducing low costs, low power consumption, and high reliability for the products. Companies such as Allegro focus on bringing this unique silicon fabrication in Hall effect sensors to distinguish their products from the competitors. Micoronas introduced a new programming tool for Hall effect sensors in September 2018. A new generation of smart sensor hubs for mobile devices was recently launched by Bosh Sensortec, a leading manufacturer of Hall effect quadrature sensors. Bosch Sensortec introduced a new line of miniaturized Hall effect sensors in 2006. Owing to the high competition, these companies are constantly trying to emerge with innovative products to sustain in the magnetic sensor industry.About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:
Top Emerging Trends Impacting the Asphalt Pumps Market from 2019  2023 | Johnson Pump, Viking Pump, Rotan Pump, Shanggui Pumps, Yuandong Pump, Yongchang Pump, Bolong

Asphalt Pumps Market

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The Global Asphalt Pumps Market report 2019 covers each single key parameter, as an example, little bit of the final business, pay age, new things or showing systems of the restriction, most up-to-date R&D, and market knowledgeable remarks, on the subject of the contact knowledge, Key market structures, professional estimations, and a very curated surmise are all around melded into Global Asphalt Pumps Market report and gauges to 2023.Global Asphalt Pumps Market Overview:The report spread across a 125 pages is an outline of the Global Asphalt Pumps Market Report 2019. The Global Asphalt Pumps Market is projected to grow at a healthy rate of growth from 2019 to 2023 in keeping with new analysis. The study focuses on market trends, leading players, provide chain trends, technological innovations, key developments, and future methods.Accessible Exclusive Sample Copy of this Report @Top Industry News: The Specialty in Asphalt Pumps for Machinery & Equipments Company YUANDONG PUMP closed its fiscal year with a strong result. Recently, the YUANDONG PUMP is a release YJM series three-phase asynchronous motor which conforms to the IE3 standard won the "Chinese energy conservation product certificate" issued by China quality certification center, which makes company become a few leading high-end brand enterprise in the national level.The Global Asphalt Pumps Market report additionally covers segment information, including: Product Type System segment, Application: Industry segment, End User, Channel segment.According to the Product Type can be segmented into Gear Pump, Screw Pump and Rotary Vane Pump. A gear pump uses the meshing of gears to pump fluid by displacement. They are one of the most common types of pumps for hydraulic fluid power applications. As the gears rotate they separate on the intake side of the pump, creating a void and suction which is filled by fluid.According to on regions, Asia-Pacific holds a significant share in the global market, owing to rise in demand for food & beverage and portable water in the region. North America and Europe possess high growth potential, due to increase in demand for oil & gas as well as fresh drinking water.Top Leading Key Manufacturers are: Johnson Pump, Viking Pump, Rotan Pump, Shanggui Pumps, Yuandong Pump, Yongchang Pump, Bolong.This investigation answers to the underneath key inquiries:1 What will the market size be in 2023?2 What are the key factors driving the global Asphalt Pumps market?3 What are the challenges to market growth?4 Who are the key players in the Asphalt Pumps market?5 What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key players?Discount your report @Global Asphalt Pumps market 2019-2023: From crude materials to downstream purchasers of this industry will be investigated experimentally, the component of item dissemination and deals channel will be displayed too. In a word, this report will assist you with establishing a scene of mechanical improvement and qualities of the Asphalt Pumps market.Significant points in table of contents: Market Definition, Market Overview, Business Introduction, Segmentation (Region Level), Segmentation (Type Level), Segmentation (Industry Level), Segmentation (Channel Level), Market Forecast Year, Segmentation Type, Segmentation Industry, Market Cost Analysis, and Conclusion.About usBusinessindustryreports.com is digital database of comprehensive market reports for global industries. As a market research company we take pride in equipping our clients with insights and data that holds the power to truly make a difference to their business. Our mission is singular and well-defined  we want to help our clients envisage their business environment so that they are able to make informed strategic and therefore successful decisions for themselves.Media contactBusiness industry reportsPune  Indiasales@businessindustryreports.com+19376349940
Forklift Market Research Report 2019  2024 | Leading Players: KION Group, Jungheinrich group, Hyster-Yale Material handling Inc

Forklift Market

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Forklift Market in Asia Pacific dominated the accounting for over 40% of the industry share in 2015. China accounted for approximately 25% share in terms of volume, is anticipated to exhibit an exponential growth owing to factors such as presence of large number of production facilities, heavy logistics activities, economy growth and high adoption of technological advancements. This will lead to significant market growth of regional sector.Inadequacy of critical component suppliers and lack of skilled operators pose considerable threat to forklift market growth. OEMs are highly dependent on suppliers for critical components such as cockpit controls, tilt cylinders, overhead guards and load backrest used in these utilities. Owing to the regulatory compliances in imports, and difficulty in procuring of these components, cost of critical components is expected to increase in upcoming years.Request for a table of content of this report @Consumers have gained increased inclination towards hydrogen powered trucks owing to its cost effective and environment friendly characteristics. Trucks enabled with these fuel cell technologies are featured with benefits such as reduced needs for battery replacements, smooth operating at freezing temperatures and high speed. Moreover, hydrogen refueling approximately requires two minutes, however, traditional lead acid battery changing requires around 15 minutes, thus saving huge wastage of time in shift operations. Such advancements in fuel to save expenses are anticipated to present forklift market potential growth landscape over the forecast timeframe. For instance, in July 2006, Wal-Mart started using these hydrogen fuel forklift trucks in its distribution center in Washington Court House, Ohio.Based on class, the forklift market is segmented into class I, class II, class III, class IV and class V trucks. These include all types of electric motor rider, electric motor narrow aisle, electric motor hand truck, internal combustion engine (ICE), electric combustion engine tractors and rough terrain trucks. Class 3 type trucks are projected to witness highest CAGR over the forecast timeline owing to its major applications in warehouse & material handling departments and relatively higher efficiency than internal combustion forklifts. Largest share in terms of volume was held by trucks, with capacities less than 5 ton. These included Internal Combustion Engine(ICE) trucks and battery electric trucks, having the highest penetration in market segment.Based on end users, forklift market size is categorized into food, electrical, retail & wholesale, chemical, logistics and automotive. Wholesale & retail distribution segment is projected to witness high demands owing to increased transportation activities across different regions and surplus goods stocking generating the requirement for distributors to increasingly deploy forklifts. Battery operated trucks are highly used in retail segment due to its high efficiency.Make an Inquiry for Purchasing this Report @Europe forklift market share accounted for around 30% and is anticipated to witness significant growth opportunities over the forecast timeframe. Increased in demand for battery operated trucks and growth in warehouse segment are major contributors for market growth. Europe held the largest market share in wholesale & retail distribution segment owing to highest utilization of electric vehicles in the segment. North America is expected to witness stagnant growth over the coming few years owing to its steady economic recovery after recession. Lack of abundant workforce, emphasis on emission reduction are expected to present market potential growth opportunities over the forecast timeframe.Some forklift market players include: KION Group AG Toyota Industries Corporation Jungheinrich group Hyster-Yale Material handling Inc Mitsubishi Nichiyu Forklift Corporation.Major forklift market manufactures are focusing on extending product portfolios, acquisitions, and collaborations to capitalize on the growing opportunities across multiple end user verticals. For instance, KION acquired handling automation division of Egemin Group. This division will help the company to offer enhanced services for automatic guided vehicles, automated warehouse systems and in-floor chain conveyors. Hyster- Yale acquired installation and distribution business of Speedshield Tech. Pvt Ltd in the U.S. This acquisition was to extend the companys business activities outside Australia.Browse Report Summery @About Global Market Insights:Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.Contact Us:Arun HegdeCorporate Sales, USAGlobal Market Insights, Inc.Phone:1-302-846-7766Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688Email: sales@gminsights.comWeb:
Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Installations Market Growing at a CAGR of 17.4% :Trina Solar Ltd, Canadian Solar Inc, JA Solar, First Solar Inc, Jinko Solar Holding Company Ltd

Solar Photovoltaic PV

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Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Installations Market by Technology, Grid-Type and End-Use: Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2017-2023" the solar photovoltaic installations market was valued at $131,818 million in 2016, and is projected to reach $393,594 million by 2023, growing at a CAGR of 17.4% from 2017 to 2023. The crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic segment accounted for maximum share of total market share in 2016.Solar photovoltaics are power systems designed to supply usable power by means of photovoltaics, which includes the arrangement of certain solar panels that absorb and convert sunlight into electricity. Solar cells are tightly packed behind a glass sheet to protect them from the environment. Photovoltaic cells are internally connected together to form a photovoltaic module. The number of cells that are interconnected are dependent on the type of application. The solar trackers are deployed efficiently on the solar panel to improve the efficiency of the solar cell. The efficiency is improved by approximately 20% in winters and 50% in summers by deployment of solar tracker.At present, the global solar photovoltaic installations market witnesses numerous opportunities, owing to rapid increase in development of renewable power in Asia-Pacific and LAMEA to cope up with the increase in electricity demand. In addition, the market is driven by domestic content laws and rise in photovoltaic panel installation projects owing to expiration of federal investment tax credit (ITC). Moreover, in the developed economies such as the U.S., solar photovoltaic has proved to be an economic alternative at the time of peak power needs. In addition, the success of distributed solar and rapid reduction in cost has led some U.S. utilities to establish their own solar installations such as residential and community projects. However, the fall in PV module prices is expected to affect the operations of many solar companies. Therefore, lower PV prices leads PV manufacturers to reassess their business model or shut down certain factories. This in turn is expected to limit the market growth.Purchase Report Enquiry:Top Investment Pockets:China is expected to pose maximum opportunities for investment due to imminent feed-in-tariff rates, which encourage the key players to develop new energy sources, thereby reducing reliance on coal as well as reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. The surge in FIT rates is prompting key players for completion of pending solar projects. In addition, lower FiT subsidies also helps PV companies accelerate their R&D projects because of high market competition.The crystalline silicon solar photovoltaic segment accounted for the maximum share, in terms of volume, in 2016. Moreover, crystalline silicon is the widely used material in production of solar modules and witness strong demand in countries such as China and Japan owing to the strong development of the residential rooftop segment and increased demand for high-efficiency products. In addition, monocrystalline technology is expected to witness strong growth owing to technological advancements and greater solar efficiency.Flat 20% Discount on All License Type *Offer Valid Till 20th April 2019*Buy Now:Key Findings of the Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Installations Market: In terms of value, the mono-crystalline solar photovoltaic segment is anticipated to exhibit the highest growth rate of 18.3% during the analysis period. Asia-Pacific is anticipated to lead the market in 2023 and is projected to grow with a CAGR of 20.0%, in terms of value. The utility scale type segment occupied nearly half of the total market in 2016. Germany occupied nearly half of the total Europe solar photovoltaic installations market in 2016. In terms of value, Japan is expected to grow at a CAGR of 19.4% from 2017 to 2023. In 2016, Europe accounted for nearly half of the total solar photovoltaic installations market, and is expected to continue this trend, owing to rapid solar photovoltaic installations, specifically in developing countries.The major companies profiled in the report include Trina Solar Ltd, Canadian Solar Inc, JA Solar, First Solar Inc, Jinko Solar Holding Company Ltd, Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. Ltd, Renesola, Sun Power Corporation, Solar World AG, and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation.Download Sample Report:Allied Market Research, a market research and advisory company of Allied Analytics LLP, provides business insights and market research reports to large as well as small & medium enterprises. The company assists its clients to strategize business policies and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Allied Market Research provides one stop solution from the beginning of data collection to investment advice. The analysts at Allied Market Research dig out factors that help clients to understand the significance and impact of market dynamics. The company amplies clients insight on the factors, such as strategies, future estimations, growth or fall forecasting, opportunity analysis, and consumer surveys among others. As follows, the company offers consistent business intelligent support to aid the clients to turn into prominent business firm.Contact:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free (USA/Canada):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1?855?550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:
Decorated Apparel Market 2019 Sales Volume, Value, Recent Developments by Fruit of The Loom, Russel Brands, Gildan Activewear, Delta Apparel, Advance Printwear & more | Industry Set to Grow +13% CAGR by 2025

Decorated Apparel Market 2019

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The Global Decorated Apparel Market Report 2018-2025 revealed by Decision Market Reports furnishes acute information on each aspect of Side-by-Side Refrigerators which is requisite for making purposeful decisions and evolution in strategies.The global Decorated Apparel market is valued at million US$ in 2018 and will reach million US$ by the end of 2025, growing at a CAGR of +13% during 2019-2025. The objectives of this study are to define, segment, and project the size of the Decorated Apparel market based on company, product type, end user and key regions.Things Covered in Sample Report> Deep Dive Strategy & Competition> Deep Dive Data & Forecasting> Executive Summary & Core FindingsGet a Quick Sample report atThe following manufacturers are covered in this report, with sales, revenue, market share for each company:Gildan ActivewearRussel BrandsFruit of The LoomHanesbrandsDelta ApparelAdvance PrintwearDowntown Custom PrintwearMaster PrintwearNew England PrintwearLynka PrintwearThis research report categorizes the global Decorated Apparel market by top players/brands, region, type and end user. This report also studies the global Decorated Apparel market status, competition landscape, market share, growth rate, future trends, market drivers, opportunities and challenges, sales channels and distributors.Request Methodology @This report studies the global market size of Decorated Apparel in key regions like North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Central & South America and Middle East & Africa, focuses on the consumption of Decorated Apparel in these regions.Market size by ProductEmbroideryScreen PrintingDye SublimationDigital PrintingOtherMarket size by End UserMenWomenChildrenMarket size by RegionWorldwideThe study objectives of this report are:To study and analyze the global Decorated Apparel market size (value & volume) by company, key regions, products and end user, breakdown data from 2014 to 2018, and forecast to 2025.To understand the structure of Decorated Apparel market by identifying its various subsegments.To share detailed information about the key factors influencing the growth of the market (growth potential, opportunities, drivers, industry-specific challenges and risks).Focuses on the key global Decorated Apparel companies, to define, describe and analyze the sales volume, value, market share, market competition landscape and recent development.To project the value and sales volume of Decorated Apparel submarkets, with respect to key regions.To analyze competitive developments such as expansions, agreements, new product launches, and acquisitions in the market.Browse Complete Report with Table of Content atIn this study, the years considered to estimate the market size of Decorated Apparel are as follows:History Year: 2014-2018Base Year: 2018Estimated Year: 2019Forecast Year 2019 to 2025This report includes the estimation of market size for value (million US$) and volume (K Units). Both top-down and bottom-up approaches have been used to estimate and validate the market size of Decorated Apparel market, to estimate the size of various other dependent submarkets in the overall market. Key players in the market have been identified through secondary research, and their market shares have been determined through primary and secondary research. All percentage shares, splits, and breakdowns have been determined using secondary sources and verified primary sources.For the data information by region, company, type and application, 2018 is considered as the base year. Whenever data information was unavailable for the base year, the prior year has been considered.Table of Contents1 Study Coverage1.1 Decorated Apparel Product1.2 Market Segments1.3 Key Manufacturers Covered1.4 Market by Type1.4.1 Global Decorated Apparel Market Size Growth Rate by Product1.4.2 Embroidery1.4.3 Screen Printing1.4.4 Dye Sublimation1.4.5 Digital Printing1.4.6 Other1.5 Market by End User1.5.1 Global Decorated Apparel Market Size Growth Rate by End User1.5.2 Men1.5.3 Women1.5.4 Children1.6 Study Objectives1.7 Years Considered2 Executive Summary2.1 Global Decorated Apparel Market Size2.1.1 Global Decorated Apparel Revenue 2014-20252.1.2 Global Decorated Apparel Sales 2014-20252.2 Decorated Apparel Growth Rate by Regions2.2.1 Global Decorated Apparel Sales by Regions2.2.2 Global Decorated Apparel Revenue by Regions3 Breakdown Data by Manufacturers3.1 Decorated Apparel Sales by Manufacturers3.1.1 Decorated Apparel Sales by Manufacturers3.1.2 Decorated Apparel Sales Market Share by Manufacturers3.1.3 Global Decorated Apparel Market Concentration Ratio (CR5 and HHI)3.2 Decorated Apparel Revenue by Manufacturers3.2.1 Decorated Apparel Revenue by Manufacturers (2014-2019)3.2.2 Decorated Apparel Revenue Share by Manufacturers (2014-2019)3.3 Decorated Apparel Price by Manufacturers3.4 Decorated Apparel Manufacturing Base Distribution, Product Types3.4.1 Decorated Apparel Manufacturers Manufacturing Base Distribution, Headquarters3.4.2 Manufacturers Decorated Apparel Product Type3.4.3 Date of International Manufacturers Enter into Decorated Apparel Market3.5 Manufacturers Mergers & Acquisitions, Expansion Plans4 Breakdown Data by Product4.1 Global Decorated Apparel Sales by Product4.2 Global Decorated Apparel Revenue by Product4.3 Decorated Apparel Price by Product5 Breakdown Data by End User5.1 Overview5.2 Global Decorated Apparel Breakdown Data by End User...ContinuedRequest a In-depth Insights PDF Sample Brochure @About UsDecision Market Reports is a one-stop solution, covers market research studies of all the industries, companies and regions. DMR aims at providing quality research, and insights about every market to helps our clients in taking right decisions. Our repository consists of most trending industry reports, niche areas, and leading company profiles. A comprehensive collection of reports is updated daily to offer hassle-free access to our latest updated report databases.Contact UsGasper James304, S Jones Blvd,Las Vegas,NV 89107, USAUS Toll Free +1-866-605-1052Email: sales@decisionmarketreports.comWeb:
Single-mode Optical Fiber Market by 2025: Top Influencing Factors, Key Companies Analysis, Dominant Region, Forecast

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Implementation of 5G, high adoption rate of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity, and rapid technological advancements in optical fiber cable network infrastructure would propel the growth of the global single-mode optical fiber market."The report provides detailed analyses of the top winning strategies, growth factors & opportunities, market size & estimations, major market segments, and competitive landscape."According to the report, the global single-mode optical fiber market was pegged at $3.02 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $6.81 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 10.8% during the forecast period.High adoption rate of fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) connectivity and emergence of the internet of things (IoT) drive the growth of the global single-mode optical fiber market. However, high installation cost and growth in wireless communication systems hinder the market growth. On the contrary, rapid technological advancements in the fiber optic cable technology, implementation of 5G, and increasing investments in optical fiber cable (OFC) network infrastructure are expected to create lucrative opportunities for the market players in near future.Request Sample Report at:G.652 type optical fiber segment to dominate the market through 2025The G.652 type optical fiber segment held the largest share in 2017, contributing about 87% of the total market revenue, as they are majorly deployed in long-haul and metro-city networks. However, the G.657 type optical fiber segment is expected to register the highest CAGR of 19.8% during the forecast period, as they offer remarkable bend performance for FTTX and enterprise network. The other segments analyzed in the report include G.653, G.655, and G.656 type single-mode optical modes.Flat 20% Discount on this Report:* Offer Valid Till 20th April 2019CATV application segment to manifest fastest growth through 2025The CATV segment is projected to portray the fastest CAGR of 16.5% during the forecast period, owing to increase in broadband penetration and digitalization of CATV. However, the telecommunication & networking segment held the largest share, contributing about 59% of total market revenue, owing to rise in need for greater bandwidth and faster speed connections. The other segments considered in the scope of the study include data centers, factory automation & industrial networking, military, and others.Asia-Pacific region to retain lion's share through 2025The single-mode optical fiber market in the Asia-Pacific region dominated the global market in terms of revenue in 2017, contributing more than two-thirds share, owing to rise in demand for internet, increase in industrialization, and surge in awareness about benefits of the technology across developing countries. However, North America is expected to manifest the fastest CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period, owing to rise in investment in the defense sector and enhancement in security infrastructure.For Purchase Enquiry:Key market playersThe report analyzes various leading major market players including CommScope, FiberHome, Furukawa Electronic Co. Ltd., Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd., The Prysmian Group, Corning Inc., Fujikura Ltd., Nexans S.A., Cable Joint Stock Limited Company, Sterlite Technologies Ltd., and Yangtze Optical Fiber.About Us:Allied Market Research (AMR) is a full-service market research and business consulting wing of Allied Analytics LLP based in Portland, Oregon. Allied Market Research provides global enterprises as well as medium and small businesses with unmatched quality of "Market Research Reports" and "Business Intelligence Solutions." AMR has a targeted view to provide business insights and consulting to assist its clients to make strategic business decisions and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.We are in professional corporate relations with various companies and this helps us in digging out market data that helps us generate accurate research data tables and confirms utmost accuracy in our market forecasting. Each and every data presented in the reports published by us is extracted through primary interviews with top officials from leading companies of domain concerned. Our secondary data procurement methodology includes deep online and offline research and discussion with knowledgeable professionals and analysts in the industry.Contact:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free (USA/Canada):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1-855-550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:
Microgrid Market : Research Highlights Strategies to Implement to Gain the Wide Presence

Microgrid

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Allied Market Research announces a report on the global microgrid market. The report provides a detailed analysis of changing market trends, drivers & restraints, top-winning strategies, key segments, and competitive intelligence. The report is a valuable source of guidance for market players, investors, stakeholders, and new entrants to determine the current market status and opt necessary strategies on the basis of changing dynamics.New control technologies have been invented that can lower the costs and improves the penetration of renewables. Clean and distributed resources are coming into the picture of utility grids and the microgrids have been utilized for ensuring power stability. At the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, California, smart microgrid has been used for partly serving the electric load of nearly 3 MW. The microgrid system utilizes wind, solar, battery storage, and fuel cells for supplying power. Usually, expensive control components are used in microgrid in addition to site-specific commissioning. This is time-consuming and expensive. However, a huge plug-and-play setup is used in this system. The microgrid that can operate with the help of decentralized and autonomous control algorithms will be developed and deployed.Download Sample Report:The research provides a detailed analysis of drivers, restraints, and opportunities of the global microgrid market. A rise in demand for secure and reliable power supply, increase in industrialization opting for energy storage systems, and supportive government initiatives for lowering carbon footprint drive the growth in the market. However, the high cost of installation and maintenance hinder the market growth. On the other hand, a surge in electrification projects and an increase in demand in end-user industries such as military, healthcare, and government create new opportunities in the market. These insights would help in capitalizing on driving factors and derive strategies based on opportunities.KEY BENEFITS In-depth analysis of the microgrid market which would help stakeholders to better understand market behavior Based on the current market scenario and expected market trends, estimations through 2014-2020 are made to showcase the future prospects of the microgrid market The report provides information regarding key drivers, restraints and opportunities with impact analysis Analysis of the key strategies adopted by major players operating in the market is provided Porters Five Forces model and SWOT analysis would provide insights regarding current market conditions and important factors and thereby help stakeholders in making strategic decisions Market segmentation by product design and geography would enable a deeper understanding of the current market scenarioThe detailed segmentation of the global microgrid market is mentioned in the report. The report segments the market on the basis of technology, characteristics, application, and geography. The report further segments the technology segment into components trend and technology trend. Based on characteristics, the market is further classified into grid-connected, off-grid, and hybrid. On the basis of application, the market is sub-segmented into a commercial/industrial microgrid, institutional microgrid, and military microgrid. Geographically, the market is further segmented into North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and LAMEA. In addition, Porters Five Forces model and SWOT analysis are offered to outline the current status and help in making strategic decisions.Flat 20% Discount on All License Type *Offer Valid Till 20th April 2019*Buy Now:Leading market players in the global microgrid industry include Pareto Energy Ltd., Encorp Inc., Viridity Energy, and Power Analytics Corp. Expansions, collaborations, partnerships, joint ventures, mergers & acquisitions, and others are some of the strategies adopted by them to gain a strong position in the industry.Allied Market Research, a market research and advisory company of Allied Analytics LLP, provides business insights and market research reports to large as well as small & medium enterprises. The company assists its clients to strategize business policies and achieve sustainable growth in their respective market domain.Allied Market Research provides one stop solution from the beginning of data collection to investment advice. The analysts at Allied Market Research dig out factors that help clients to understand the significance and impact of market dynamics. The company amplies clients insight on the factors, such as strategies, future estimations, growth or fall forecasting, opportunity analysis, and consumer surveys among others. As follows, the company offers consistent business intelligent support to aid the clients to turn into prominent business firm.Contact:David Correa5933 NE Win Sivers Drive#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesToll Free (USA/Canada):+1-800-792-5285, +1-503-894-6022, +1-503-446-1141UK: +44-845-528-1300Hong Kong: +852-301-84916India (Pune): +91-20-66346060Fax: +1?855?550-5975help@alliedmarketresearch.comWeb:
3Rd Platforms Market 2019 with Top Key Players: IBM Corp., Cisco Systems, Inc., Amazon.com, Inc., Salesforce.Com, Inc., EMC Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Google, Inc.

3Rd Platforms Market

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Global 3Rd Platforms market outlook, business strategies utilized, competitive analysis by 3Rd Platforms Market Players, Deployment Models, Opportunities, Forecast, Value Chain, Major Player Profiles. The 3Rd Platforms Market report offers a complete guide to the size and share of the market at an international level.This report focuses on the global 3Rd Platformss status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. The study objectives are to present the 3Rd Platformss development in United States, Europe and China.Request for PDF Sample of this Research Report@The key players covered in this study IBM Corp. Cisco Systems, Inc. Amazon.com, Inc. Salesforce.Com, Inc. EMC Corporation Oracle Corporation Google, Inc. Citrix Systems Inc. Microsoft Corporation Rackspace Hosting, Inc.Market segment by Type, the product can be split into Social Technology Mobile Devices Analytics (Big Data) Cloud ServicesMarket segment by Application, split into Banking & Financial Services Industry Transportation Healthcare Telecom OtherThe study objectives of this report are: To analyze global 3Rd Platforms status, future forecast, growth opportunity, key market and key players. To present the 3Rd Platforms development in United States, Europe and China. To strategically profile the key players and comprehensively analyze their development plan and strategies. To define, describe and forecast the market by product type, market and key regions.Get Instant Discount on this Research Report@Table of Contents:Chapter 1: Report OverviewChapter 2: Global Growth TrendsChapter 3: Market Share by Key PlayersChapter 4: Breakdown Data by Type and ApplicationChapter 5: United StatesChapter 6: EuropeChapter 7: ChinaChapter 8: JapanChapter 9: Southeast AsiaChapter 10: Central & South AmericaChapter 11: International Players ProfilesTOC Continued!About Supply Demand Market Research(SDMR)We have a strong network of high powered and experienced global consultants who have about 10+ years of experience in the specific industry to deliver quality research and analysis.Having such an experienced network, our services not only cater to the client who wants the basic reference of market numbers and related high growth areas in the demand side, but also we provide detailed and granular information using which the client can definitely plan the strategies with respect to both supply and demand side.Canada Office:302-20 Misssisauga Valley Blvd, Missisauga, L5A 3S1, TorontoContact Usinfo@supplydemandmarketresearch.comGlobal Contact: +1-276-477-5910
Gin Market is Likely to Witness huge Growth - Major Key Players are Seagrams, Beefeater, Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire, and Gordons

Gin Market

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Gin is an alcoholic beverage deriving its flavor from juniper berries. Gin is produced by a two-step process by re-distillation of a neutral spirit. Botanicals and natural extracts are added to the neutral spirit to obtain the final product. The neutral spirit is derived from grains such as rye, wheat, corn or barley. The most commonly utilized botanicals include coriander seeds, angelica root, lemon peel, cassia, and orris roots among others.Gin is the favored drinks for cocktails and blends with other beverages. It is popularly consumed along with tonic water or blended into cocktails with other spirits. This has increased its popularity and it is among the fastest growing alcoholic spirits.Download PDF Brochure:Key Market Players and BrandsThe worlds largest selling gin brands by revenue include Larios, Seagrams, Beefeater, Tanqueray, Bombay Sapphire, and Gordons. According to Diageo plc, the companys gin brand, Tanqueray, witnessed growth in all regions. The brand exhibited a growth of 9% worldwide and double digit growth across Europe.Increasing demand for gin has resulted in adoption of strategies by key players such as mergers and acquisitions to enter new markets and seek to increase market share. For instance, Gruppo Campari in 2017, acquired premium gin manufacturer, Bulldog Gin, for US$ 58 million. In 2014, Davos Brands acquired Aviation American Gin. Organic growth strategies included new product launches. For instance, Diageo plc launched Gordons Premium Pink Gin in the U.S., Europe, and Australia in 2017 and early 2018. The product targets the young populace in the aforementioned regions.Major players operating in the global gin market include San Miguel Corporation, Pernod Ricard, Diageo plc, Bacardi Limited, William Grant & Sons Ltd., Gruppo Campari, and Beam Suntory, Inc.Market DynamicsIncreasing number of adults and young population and high disposable income of consumers are the major factors driving growth of the market. Innovation in products due to high demand for alcoholic beverages with changing taste and preferences is key factor for growth of the gin market. New gin products with unique botanicals has witnessed rising sales in recent times. Furthermore, advancements in distribution channels such as availability of separate counter for females, outlets on airports, online sales, and a growing tourism sector are some of the factors boosting growth of the gin market.Growing population of female alcohol consumers, rising number of bars and restaurants, and growing demand from emerging economies are key driving factors for the gin market. Additionally, with increasing number of millennials shifting from beer and to spirits, the market for gin is expected to witness a positive growth trend during the forecast period. According to the Distilled Spirits Council, gin supplier revenues in the U.S. rose by 2.2% during the period 2016-17.Request Sample:Market OutlookNorth America is gaining significant traction in the alcoholic beverage market, owing to increasing trend of alcohol consumption among young adults, which increases demand for high-quality alcoholic beverages. According to National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), in 2015, around 6.2% of adult population was reported to be consuming alcoholic beverages in the U.S. Furthermore, according to the Distilled Spirits Council, the gin sales volume in the U.S. was pegged at about 9.87 million 9 liter cases in 2017.Europe was the second-largest market for gin in 2016. Increasing alcohol consumption across Europe is projected to bolster the market growth for gin. Alcoholic beverages market in this region is led by France, followed by Germany, Italy, UK, and others. The high consumption rate of alcohol has also been recorded in the economies such as Estonia, Belarus, and Lithuania in this region. According to the World Bank Group, in 2015, Belarus consumed 17.1 liters per person per capita as compared to world average of 6.3 liters per person per capita. According to the Wine and Spirit Trade Association (WSTA), sales of gin in the U.K. was valued at US$ 1.9 billion in 2017.Market TaxonomyOn the basis of product type, the global gin market is segmented into:GeneverDistilled GinLondon DryOn the basis of distribution channel, the global gin market is segmented into:HypermarketsSupermarketsSpecialty StoresOnlineOthers (Convenience Stores etc.)On the basis of region, the global gin market is segmented into:North AmericaS.CanadaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoArgentinaRest of Latin AmericaEuropeK.GermanyFranceItalySpainRussiaRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaIndiaJapanASEANSouth KoreaAustraliaRest of Asia PacificMiddle EastGCCIsraelRest of Middle EastAfricaNorth AfricaCentral AfricaSouth AfricaAbout Coherent Market Insights:Coherent Market Insights is a prominent market research and consulting firm offering action-ready syndicated research reports, custom market analysis, consulting services, and competitive analysisthrough various recommendations related to emerging market trends, technologies, and potential absolute dollar opportunity.Contact Us:Mr. ShahCoherent Market Insights1001 4th Ave,#3200Seattle, WA 98154Tel: +1-206-701-6702Email: sales@coherentmarketinsights.com
Homeopathy Market: Industry Growth, Competitive Analysis, Future Prospects and Forecast 2025: Biologische Heilmittel Heel GmbH, A Nelson & Co Ltd, GMP Laboratories of America Inc, Standard Homeopathic Company (Hylands Inc)

Homeopathy Market

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The Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) report underlines a basic synopsis of the Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) market that entails classifications, definitions, industry chain structure, and applications. The report acknowledges that in these aggressive and speedily developing market settings, the latest marketing data are imperative to ascertain performance and make essential decisions for profitability and growth of the market.The research evaluated key market aspects, comprising capacity utilization rate, revenue, price, capacity, growth rate, gross, production, consumption, supply, export, market share, cost, import, gross margin, demand, and much more. The study also presents the segmentation of the worldwide Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) market on the basis of end-users, applications, geography, and technology.Get PDF Sample Copy of This Report:Leading Manufacturers in Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) Market:Boiron Group, Biologische Heilmittel Heel GmbH, A Nelson & Co Ltd, GMP Laboratories of America Inc, Standard Homeopathic Company (Hylands Inc), Washington Homeopathic Products Inc, Homeocan Inc, Hahnemann Laboratories Inc, Mediral International Inc, Ainsworths Ltd.Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East and AfricaSegmentation of Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) market by Types:Tincture, Dilutions, Biochemics, Ointments, TabletsSegmentation of Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) market by Applications:Analgesic & AntipyreticRespiratoryNeurologyImmunologyGastroenterologyDermatologyThe report helps to answer the following questions:-1. What are the current size and share of the Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) market worldwide?2. What are the threats might hit the major players over the coming years?3. What are the overall market and different product segments growing?4. What is the market predicted to develop in the future?5. What will be the Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) Market elements operate in the International Market?6. What will be Homeopathy (Homeopathic Medicine) market risk and market challenges in the Global Market?The report also covers in depth description, competitive scenario, wide product portfolio of prime players active in this market and business strategies adopted by competitors along with their SWOT analysis. The report also provides Porter analysis, PESTEL analysis and market attractiveness which helps to better understand the market scenario on macro and micro level. Side by side, it also explicitly provides information about mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, and all the other important activities occurred in the market during current and past few years.Table of Contents:1 Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Market Overview2 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region4 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region5 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type6 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Market Analysis by Application7 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis8 Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global Homeopathy(Homeopathic Medicine) Market Forecast (2018-2025)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14. AppendixReport Inquire Before Buy:About Us:Worldwide Market Reports is your one-stop repository of detailed and in-depth market research reports compiled by an extensive list of publishers from across the globe. We offer reports across virtually all domains and an exhaustive list of sub-domains under the sun. The in-depth market analysis by some of the most vastly experienced analysts provide our diverse range of clients from across all industries with vital decision making insights to plan and align their market strategies in line with current market trends. Worldwide Market Researchs well-researched inputs that encompass domains ranging from IT to healthcare enable our prized clients to capitalize upon key growth opportunities and shield against credible threats prevalent in the market in the current scenario and those expected in the near future.Mr. ShahWorldwide Market ReportsTel: +1 415 871 0703Email: sales@worldwidemarketreports.com
Note: This is the latest in our Portland Breweries Series as we search for the best of the best in Portlands beer scene. See previous stories at oregonlive.com/beer

* * *

Master brewer and industry consultant Tomas Sluiter was helping young entrepreneurs across the country open the doors and turn on the taps.

Then he thought, well, why not me?

And with that, Culmination Brewing was born. Since throwing his own doors open in 2014, Sluiter and Culmination have been drawing crowds to the Northeast Portland taproom with imaginative, refined beers, a small but mighty food menu, and a cozy neighborhood brewpub.

Thats what we envisioned from the get-go, Sluiter said during a recent interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive, discussing the brewery he and his wife, April Dudley Sluiter, set out to create about a half-decade ago. Hence the name Culmination. Its meant to be a culmination of everything that weve learned and we love, and bringing friends and family and community together.

The star is the beers. You wont find a straight-forward, limited lineup of IPA, pale, amber, brown, stout. Instead, well-crafted farmhouses, sours, German styles and barrel-aged beers regularly populate the tap list, in addition to unique twists on standard styles.

To name a few, this weeks tap list included Illusions of Grandeur breakfast stout, with vanilla and coffee; Tasty! Hoppy Belgian pale; Accidental Selfie IPA with sauvignon blanc grapes; Scales of Passion fruited sour; A Song for Summer tart farmhouse ale; and Casually Naughty biere de garde.

Those are in addition to the flagship Phaedrus IPA, a West Coast style thats not overly bitter, and perennial favorite Sour Flower, an ale with blackberry and hibiscus that delivers on the tart without puckering your gills.

The kitchen offers up a menu that describes itself as seasonally focused, locally driven and changing often. Brewpub staples like a pretzel, cheeseburger, soups and salads are complemented by tantalizing offerings such as candy bacon, meat and cheese boards and assorted grinders, such as the East Coast, featuring provolone, capicola, salami, giardiniera, lettuce and a red-wine vinaigrette.

Culminations Kerns neighborhood home is a small industrial complex near the now-closed Sunshine Dairy production facility between Sandy Boulevard and Interstate 84. But the vibe is anything but cold industrial. Wood-slatted walls, vibrant warm tones and an inviting outside picnic-table area make Culmination a must-see for any Portland beer trek.

Tucked in near The Jasmine Pearl Tea Co., Culmination is also walking distance from the Sandy Boulevard and Glisan Street dining and retail areas. And the area is a bit of a brewery mecca destination as well, with Migration and Coalition brewing both a short hop away, and Stammtisch German beer bar and restaurant nearby.

Sluiter is helping Culmination partner Mountains Walking Brewery get started in Bozeman, Montana, and is also involved with another affiliate brewery in Hong Kong. The Michigan native, who moved to Portland in 2000 and spent a decade as head brewer at Southwest Portlands Old Market Pub, has left the day-to-day operations at Culmination to head brewer Conrad Andrus, who got his start at Breakside Brewery and whose own creations have kept the bar high.

Culmination was the birthplace of acclaimed Ruse Brewing of Southeast Portland. Before opening their own brewpub last summer, brewers Shaun Kalis and Devin Benware began making Ruse beers at Culmination in partnership with the established brewery.

And while the Portland beer scene continues to spin ever larger, Culmination continues to set the pace. For Sluiter, staying fresh is the key.

Our business plan from the outset was to be able to do a lot of different, interesting beers, he said. That goes again to the name, Culmination. We want to bring together all of these ideas and styles that we have and make them a reality. I think that keeps us relevant.

Portland brewery series: Culmination Brewing Posted by The Oregonian on Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Culmination sampler

Why go: For innovation that will consistently wow you.

What to drink: The flagship Phaedrus, a West Coast IPA that backs off the IBUs slightly and delivers a full-bodied malt sweetness and rich hop aroma; the Multnomah County stout, rich, deep and sweet; the Kings Dead Hazy IPA, a fruity, well-balanced New England IPA; and a faultless Pilsner.

What to eat: Unless you are a vegetarian, do not pass on the candy bacon. And if you are a vegetarian, the vegan grinder is a taste delight with roasted mushrooms, black garlic aioli, and cherry bomb peppers. Two other grinders should not be missed, the Caprese, also a vegetarian delight, and the Italian-style East Coast, with capicola and salami.

Details: 2117 N.E. Oregon St.; culminationbrewing.com; 971-254-9114; open 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m. daily, till 10:30 p.m. Fri-Sat; minors welcome daily until 7 p.m., then 21 and over.

Check out my reviews of Culminations beers on Untappd and more content on Instagram.

-- Andre Meunier

More beer coverage:
Vancouver take-and-bake pizza chain Papa Murphys sold Thursday for $190 million in cash, a 32 percent premium on the companys closing share price Wednesday.

The buyer is MTY Food Group, a Canadian chain that owns 75 quick-service and casual dining chains including Baja Fresh, Cold Stone Creamery, TacoTime and TCBY Frozen Yogurt. It had 6,000 locations prior to the Papa Murphys deal.

MTY said it will retain Papa Murphys support center in Vancouver.

Papa Murphys has more than 1,400 locations in the U.S., Canada and the United Arab Emirates, nearly all of them franchised. Customers buy a premade pizza and bake it at home in their own oven.

Papa Murphys traces its roots to a Hillsboro chain, Papa Aldos, founded in 1981. It later combined with a California company, Murphys Pizza.

Papa Murphys went public in 2014 and its shares were trading north of $20 a year later. But the business has been under growing pressure as sales and its stock declined.

The Vancouver chain has systemwide sales of $808.7 million last year, with sales at comparable locations down 2.5 percent from 2017. Papa Murphys announced in November it would explore strategic alternatives for its business, a clear signal the company was looking for a buyer.

Papa Murphys stock rose 31 percent Thursday after it announced its deal with MTY, to $6.42 a share. Thats just below the $6.45 per share offer price.

-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699
The National Weather Service on Thursday afternoon dropped a flood watch for much of the Willamette Valley from Salem to Oregon City and the Portland metro area.

The Northern Willamette Valley had been under a flood watch through early Saturday morning as persistent rains and rising rivers in the basin were expected to potentially put rivers at or above flood stage.

But meteorologists now say the Willamette and Columbia Rivers arent expected to reach flood stage after all.

Theres not a ton more water to bring them up, said Amanda Bowen, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Portland. The weather agency was keeping close tabs on the Willamette at Oregon City, where waters are now expected to crest at 25.8 feet, well below the 27-foot flood stage. The Columbia River at Vancouver was last observed at 15.1 feet, below the flood stage level of 16 feet.

A flood warning remains in effect Thursday for a slice of the Willamette Valley south of Albany, but forecasters expect that to be lifted on Friday morning. And rivers across the region were gradually receding on Thursday.

Mid-Willamette Valley cities have borne the brunt of the flooding, with the Corvallis, Salem and Albany areas reporting high waters flowing into parks and low-lying highways. Brett Loomis, deputy chief of operations for Salem Fire Department, said crews responded to a homeless camp on the banks of the Willamette north of Wallace Marine Park in Polk County just outside of Salem and rescued five people. Twenty more people decided to stay at the camp against the advice of emergency responders, Loomis said.

Salem water rescue crews also assisted two people near Independence, he said.

Oregon 34 just east of Corvallis experienced significant high waters on Wednesday. Four people and two dogs were rescued by the Linn County Sheriffs Office amid the high waters. As of Thursday afternoon, a roughly three-mile stretch of the highway between the river and Colorado Lake Road remained closed. Waters were expected to continue to drop.

Bowen said that while the rivers may appear to be approaching flood stage levels, theres not enough water flowing from upstream to create an issue downstream.

The Willamette River logjam pictured in mid-April, 2019 after heavy rains [Grant Butler/Staff]

In the end, as the river rises, its also spreading out, horizontally, she said.

She said its not a 100 percent certainty that either river wont hit flood stage in coming days, but forecasters felt confident given the weather forecast and on-the-ground conditions.

Despite the flood watch being lifted, that doesnt mean residents wont notice fast-flowing, high and debris-laden rivers.

Near RiverPlace in Southwest Portland, dozens of large trees were slammed up against the dock and shore as a reminder of the debris traveling down river.

Bowen said people would continue to see debris for days to come and avoid the river if possible. Rivers are going to continue to run really noticeably high, she said.

-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen

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John Joseph Wallace Jr., a former Madras police officer who sexually molested an underage girl, was sentenced Thursday to six years in federal prison and ordered to register as a sex offender.

His victim, now 16, addressed the court, breaking down in tears while she talked. She said she suffers from depression and takes pills to help her sleep and block out the nightmares she cant shake.

I trusted him so much, she said, sitting beside her mother at the prosecution table while she read from a written statement. He broke me.  I loved him, and he hurt me.

Her mother said she couldnt believe what Wallace had done when she learned of her daughters sexual abuse. In his role as a police officer, Wallace would always disparage so-called cho-mos, his slang for child molesters, she said.

I still wonder how he can pass a psychological evaluation required to become a law enforcement officer, she said.

Under a plea agreement, Wallace, now 35, will spend six years in federal prison for sexual abuse and official misconduct charges filed in both federal and state court.

He pleaded guilty in federal court to three counts of abusive sexual contact with a child, which alleged the sexual abuse occurred between June 2016 and January 2018 at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation.

In state court earlier this year, he entered an Alford guilty plea to first-degree official misconduct and attempted first-degree sexual abuse. He will be formally sentenced on those charges Friday in Jefferson County Circuit Court. In an Alford plea, a defendant asserts his innocence but admits sufficient evidence exists to find him guilty.

Defense lawyer Thomas Price said alcohol was a contributing factor to Wallaces crimes.

Standing before U.S District Judge Anna J. Brown, Wallace apologized to the teenager and her family.

It should never have happened, he said. Not only did I hurt her and her family, but Ive also hurt my son.

Wallace turned back to look at his victim, who had joined other family members sitting in the front of the public gallery.

She trusted me, and I let her down, and I want to say sorry, Wallace said.

Tears streamed down the face of the 16-year-old girl as Wallace addressed her. Relatives, including an older sister, put their arms around her and whispered, Stay strong, stay strong.

The judge applauded the teenagers extraordinary amount of courage for not only writing out her statement but reading it in court in front of Wallace.

I see in you the courage and promise of recovery, Brown told her. No one can change the past, but you can change how you address the future.

Brown then turned to Wallace and reiterated how he breached the trust of a young girl and his law enforcement profession. She said she couldnt sentence Wallace to more time, based on the charges federal prosecutors filed against him. The maximum sentence is two years for each count of abusive sexual contact with a child.

The judge also urged Wallace to get treatment and help behind bars, to try to figure out what led to his impulses, noting that alcohol alone cant explain his horrendous actions.

Its just another example that every profession has human beings that can and do make mistakes, sometimes horrible ones, Brown said.

Wallace had worked as a Warm Springs police officer from 2010 through 2015 before he was hired to work as an officer for the Madras Police Department from March 16, 2015, until he was fired April 24, 2018.

Hes lost his police certification and will initially be placed on a lifetime of post-prison supervision when he completes his prison time. He was ordered to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on May 13 and is expected to serve his time at the low-security Englewood federal prison in Colorado. He also was ordered to have no contact with the victim or her family and not return to the reservation, without the permission of his probation officer.

-- Maxine Bernstein

Email at mbernstein@oregonian.com

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Aaron Wise knows what he must do Friday during his second round at the Masters. He needs to start fast.

The former Oregon Ducks star, who begins his second round at 8:48 a.m. PT, must post a much better score on Friday if he to avoid being on the wrong side of the cut line. Wise said he must play smarter than he did on Thursday, when he shot a 3-over par 75.

I need to go and attack some holes early, hopefully get a couple under par, get some of those back that I just lost and then just play smart, Wise told augusta.com after his round Thursday.

Wise is currently tied for 63rd in the tournament after the first round. He is nine shots behind leaders Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, who each shot a 6-under par 66 on Thursday.

Starting his first round with an early tee time, Wise was tied for the lead at 2-under par after he birdied the par-4 10th hole and remained at that number through 13 holes. His bogey on the par-4 14th was the beginning of a humbling closing stretch of holes in which he shot 5-over par in the final five holes.

Wise was particularly upset with his double-bogey 6 on the 17th.

It hit it in the trees, punched out and really what cost me there was a wedge shot, Wise told augusta.com. I had a pretty easy wedge shot from about 80 yards and dumped it to like 45 feet short and ended up three-putting from there so a lot of mistakes on that hole and it added up to a double.

While his first round score wasnt what he was hoping for, the 22-year-old Wise said he was thrilled to be playing in his first-ever Masters.

Im excited that Im in this tournament, Wise told augusta.com. "Today was a treat and that was pretty cool to play that first round for me.

-- Geoffrey C. Arnold | @geoffreyCarnold
Its been 10 years since Oregon lawmakers Sara Gelser and Arnie Roblan sat on the House Education Committee and ushered through a bill requiring the states school districts to draft rules addressing sexual misconduct by teachers.

The legislation was a response to a 2008 Oregonian investigation that found officials all too often let problem teachers slide, allowing them to resign from their jobs and move to other districts as complaints went uninvestigated.

Now members of the states upper chamber, Gelser and Roblan are shepherding a trio of bills to the Senate Committee on Rules in an effort to require more transparency and accountability for investigations into teacher sexual misconduct. As before, those efforts were prompted by an Oregonian/OregonLive expose.

Top officials at Portland Public Schools repeatedly fielded complaints from students who reported sexual misconduct by longtime district educator Mitch Whitehurst, the newspaper and an independent panel of investigators by the school board found.

No one in the district was disciplined for failing to take those complaints seriously. It wasnt until Whitehurst pleaded guilty to harassing a coworker in 2014 that the state licensing agency stumbled across allegations against him from the 1983-84 school year. Only then were both his accusers interviewed and Whitehurst stripped of his teaching license.

Those reports, Roblan said, were what prompted him to revisit legislation addressing teacher sexual misconduct in 2018 while he was the lame duck chair of the Senate Education committee.

It was clear, years later, that the bill had not done what we had hoped, Roblan said of 2009s House Bill 2062.

Gelser now sits on the Senate Education Committee, where shes worked to amend three proposed laws under consideration  Senate Bills 155, 156 and 960  to tackle loopholes in the bill passed by state lawmakers a decade ago.

One codifies into law the rules governing misconduct investigations by the state teachers licensing commission and allows the agency to fine teachers and administrators for noncompliance. It requires the state licensing agency to complete sex misconduct investigation within 90 days. It also bars districts from entering into union contracts with provisions that would suppress information about alleged or substantiated employee sexual misconduct.

Another bill establishes definitions of such terms as student, school employee and sexual conduct for the purposes of those investigations.

And the third requires Oregons departments of human services and education to launch investigations into reports of teacher sexual conduct.

It was Gelsers idea to roll them into one bill, both for the sake of expediency and because none of the bills could accomplish much alone if the other legislation didnt also pass.

Oregon state Sen. Arnie Roblan, D - Coos Bay, at the state Capitol on Jan. 14, 2019.Photo by Dave Killen/Staff

The move made sense, Roblan said, and the trio of proposed laws are heading to the Senate Committee on Rules, of which hes a member.

He anticipates the rules committee will begin gutting and stuffing Senate Bill 155 with provisions from the other two proposed laws as soon as late next week.

Once thats done, the finished product will move to the Joint Committee on Ways and Means before it goes to a vote of the full Legislature, Roblan said. None of the proposed laws originally carried a price tag, but the combined measure is now expected to cost $5 million over the next two-year budget cycle to hire more workers in the states child welfare and educator licensing agencies.

Its a reasonable sum for this important of an issue, Roblan said.

That money will pay for the state teachers licensing agency to hire two more full-time investigators to comply with a rule in the bill requiring investigations into sexual misconduct to wrap up within 90 days. Right now, the agency is facing a backlog that keeps cases in limbo for up to eight months.

Itll also pay for the staffing necessary for DHS to mount investigations of misconduct. If passed, the new law will require the agency to look into reports of misconduct and share those files with the licensing agency, Education Department and school districts.

Id say my feeling is that this has been a much more in-depth process than the previous one, Roblan said.

The problem with the legislation passed 10 years ago, both Gelser and Roblan said, is that it didnt clarify that departments outside of the state licensing agency should receive reports of alleged misconduct. The collaboration between state agencies and school districts, the senators said, should help ensure problem educators dont fall through the cracks.

Weve been better able to see where those missed connections take place, Gelser said.

The proposed law also requires those same agencies to share files pertaining to investigations into volunteers and contractors. Those provisions required meetings with several affected organizations since Senate Bill 155s introduction.

Despite some minor disagreements, Gelser said most of the folks coming to the table have been on the same page.

Thats the nice thing about those meetings, she said. Theres a real shared interest in getting this done now and getting it done right.
A jury Friday declined to award any money to a Portland protester who was 66 years old when a police officer singled her out of a crowd, shoved her face into the street and broke her nose while handcuffing her.

Jurors found 9-3 that Portland police Officer Adi Ramic and other officers didnt intentionally harm or cause offensive contact with Margaret Peggy Zebroski during a downtown protest on Feb. 20, 2017, over a fatal police shooting. Zebroski had asked for $200,000 -- $1,224 for her medical bills and the rest for pain and suffering.

After the verdict, Ramic and his city defense team exchanged smiles, hugs and pats on the back. Zebroski made eye contact and smiled at jurors as they left the room.

The ACLU of Oregon had highlighted Zebroskis case as one of unnecessary brute force -- another example, they said, of Portland police overreacting or infringing on the free speech rights of protesters.

The routine use of force by Portland police on peaceful protesters in Portland is retaliatory, unnecessary and has had a chilling effect on free speech and assembly in our city and in our state, said Mat dos Santos, ACLU legal director. Portland police must ends its disproportionate response to protests. ...We demand better from our police.

But attorneys for the city said police had probable cause to arrest Zebroski and that Ramic took his knee off Zebroski as soon as she was handcuffed. Attorneys said Ramic was sorry and felt bad that Zebroski had been hurt, but any injuries she suffered were accidental.

Margaret Zebroski was zip-tied by the wrists and escorted to a police van by police officers on Feb. 20, 2017. (Dave Killen / The Oregonian)

A juror who spoke to The Oregonian/OregonLive after the verdict said he voted with the majority but thought Zebroski deserved some money because she obviously suffered damages and police command staff made a poor decision to direct officers to rush into the crowd of protesters and start arresting them.

But the juror said he and others couldnt get past the first question posed to them by the court in deciding the case: Whether the officer intentionally harmed Zebroski or made offensive contact with her.

I think he would benefit from some more training, and I hope he received it after this incident, said the juror, who asked not to be named. He has a horrible job, but you still have to do whats in the interest of the public good. That was a lousy day. Bad decisions were made.

Juror Jamie Maggard, who was among the three jurors to vote in the minority, said she believed the officer did intentionally cause offensive contact with Zebroski by handling her as he did.

It was a stressful time in that moment, but I dont think you can assess that situation based on what happened yesterday or months before, said Maggard, referring to other protests. As a police officer, you need to look at the circumstances in that very moment and at that moment the crowd wasnt violent.

During the five-day trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court, Ramic testified that he arrested Zebroski because he thought he saw her try to pull away another protester who was being arrested by police.

I try not to hurt anybody, obviously, Ramic said. Again, she would be like the last person I would want to hurt or need to hurt. My intentions were simply to take her into custody.

Zebroski, now 68, testified that she didnt try to help anyone avoid arrest. When Ramic decided to take her into custody, he simply could have told her she was under arrest and she would have peacefully complied, she said.

Instead, Zebroski said she was pulled from her stance on the sidewalk, dragged into the street and knocked to the ground. Ramic dug his knee into her shoulder while pressing his shin on top of her head and face, in video that was posted to a TV stations website and shown to the jury.

One of her lawyers asked her to describe what she was thinking at that moment.

Ouch. Ouch, she said. Very surprised. Pain. Because I didnt think Id be a hard person to arrest. I didnt really get it.

Zebroski, a retired physician assistant and grandmother of four, was among a group of 40 or more demonstrators protesting the shooting death of African American teenager Quanice Hayes by Portland police 11 days earlier. Zebroski helped hold a large banner that read Dont Shoot Portland and was participating in a chant: Say his name! Quanice Hayes!

Margaret Zebroski can be seen here among the protesters holding a banner (second person from the left) near Southwest Third Avenue and Madison Street in downtown Portland on Feb. 20, 2017. (Dave Killen/The Oregonian)

The demonstrators had repeatedly been warned by police over a loudspeaker to get out of the street on Southwest Third Avenue near Madison Street because they were blocking traffic and they could be arrested if they didnt comply. Police specifically told Zebroski and the others holding the banner to stop defying police orders. Almost all protesters had squeezed onto the sidewalk just before police wearing riot gear rushed into the crowd and begin pulling protesters back out onto the street to arrest them.

Do you admit you could have been ticketed for being in the street? asked Michael Willes, one of Zebroskis lawyers.

Certainly, Zebroski said.

Arrested? Willes asked.

As announced on the audio truck, yes, Zebroski said.

Had an officer come up to you and said, Come with me, Ms. Zebroski. What would you have done? Willes asked.

Gone with the officer, Zebroski said.

Had an officer said, Place your hands behind your back. Youre under arrest? Willes asked.

Placed my hands behind my back, Zebroski said.

Ramic, the police officer, said when he grabbed Zebroski to arrest her, he wasnt angry even though protesters often try to incite officers by insulting them.

Unfortunately, during these protests people are really mean, he said. "And they try to hurt your feelings, and they try to piss you off.

In June 2017, the Multnomah County District Attorneys Office dropped its pursuit of criminal charges against Zebroski. She had faced second-degree disorderly conduct, interfering with a peace officer and resisting arrest allegations.

Deputy District Attorney Haley Rayburn watched videos of the protest and arrest provided by Zebroskis defense attorney. In the videos, Zebroski didnt appear to interfere with officers who were arresting another protester, Rayburn said, noting one of the reasons the prosecutors office dropped the case.

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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A convicted Canadian drug smuggler sailing near Newport was stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard on Tuesday and later arrested after authorities say they discovered 28 seven-gallon jugs filled with liquified drugs inside his boat.

A Coast Guard crew on a routine patrol stopped John P. Stirling aboard his boat, the Mandalay, more than 200 miles from Newport, according to a criminal complaint.

Stirling, 65, went below deck as guardsmen approached and would only speak to them through a marine VHF radio, the complaint said. When they boarded the boat, Stirling was alone and refused to provide an ID or documentation for the vessel, according to the court papers. Authorities later learned the boat was registered in the U.S. with a home port of Seattle.

As crew members questioned Stirling, he appeared to be overdosing on drugs, the complaint said. He was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Astoria. Authorities searched the Mandalay and found 28 liquid-filled seven-gallon jugs beneath a blue canvas tarp, the complaint said.

The liquid in two of the jugs were determined to be methamphetamine, the complaint said. It doesnt say in the court documents what authorities determined were in the other jugs, but Stirling is accused of saying he was transporting meth and fentanyl. He faces federal charges of possession with the intent to distribute methamphetamine.

Stirling told a nurse at the Astoria hospital that he had consumed a large amount of fentanyl, according to the court papers. He said he took the drugs as guardsmen boarded his boat because he was smuggling, the complaint said.

Stirling told another nurse at a Portland hospital where he was transferred that he was heading to Canada with a ton of meth and 10 loads of fentanyl, and that he didnt want to go to jail for the rest of his life, the complaint said.

Stirling has been caught transporting drugs by boat in the past.

He was stopped in 2001 with around 2,500 kilograms of cocaine and again in 2006 with an estimated $6.5 million worth of marijuana, according to The Vancouver Sun in Canada. He wasnt charged in the first instance but was charged in the second incident. That case was stayed, meaning the charges werent dismissed but the case did not proceed.

He was arrested five years later by the Coast Guard after authorities found him at sea with four other crew members near Colombia with about 380 kilograms  more than 800 pounds  of cocaine and a little more than 1 kilogram of heroin on their 64-foot Canadian-registered sailing boat, court records show. The crew was about 90 miles away from their destination, Jamaica, when they were stopped.

Stirling was eventually sentenced to 7 1/2 years in federal prison in the U.S. in 2013 after pleading guilty to importing cocaine.

According to a transcript from the plea and sentencing hearing in a Florida federal court, Stirling admitted to a judge that he told authorities there was nothing wrong with drug trafficking and that the United States should mind its own business. The transcript also said Stirling admitted to saying if taxes werent so high in Canada he could afford to get a legitimate job.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey

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An Arizona man was arrested Thursday in central Oregon after police say he crashed into an Oregon State Police trooper while driving drunk, causing the patrol car to overturn onto its side.

The trooper, who hasnt yet been identified, was driving south on South Highway 97 in Redmond while 42-year-old Christopher Luna was heading north and then turned left into a Motel 6 parking lot, Redmond police said. Luna crashed into the state trooper after making the turn, sending the patrol car into a nearby vacant parking lot, according to police.

The trooper and Luna survived the crash. The trooper was driven by colleagues to a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries, and Luna was treated by paramedics at the scene.

Luna was arrested. He is accused of driving under the influence of intoxicants, third-degree assault, reckless driving and reckless endangering.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey

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An Oregon inmate stripped off his jail uniform and set it on fire 15 minutes after guards locked him into a Springfield jail cell, police say.

Richard A. Rierson, 41, used a small lighter to start the fire, triggering a fire alarm at the Springfield Municipal Jail, according to Springfield Police Lt. Tom Rappe. The flames spread to a nearby mattress before staff extinguished the fire.

Rappe said its not yet clear where Rierson hid the lighter. He said the inmate was strip-searched before being left alone in the cell.

Weve narrowed it down to being in either one of two places, but were not quite sure where yet because we havent interviewed him, Rappe said. He wouldnt specify where those places were.

Rappe said it was the first time an inmate has started a fire at the 100-bed capacity municipal jail, which opened in 2010.

Rierson wasnt hurt but was hospitalized as a precaution. He was later booked into the Lane County Jail in Eugene on accusations of first-degree arson, second-degree criminal mischief, reckless endangering and supplying contraband.

He also still faces charges of second-degree disorderly conduct, second-degree criminal mischief and harassment, the charges on which he was booked into the Springfield jail earlier in the day.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey

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SEATTLE (AP)  A judge in southeastern Washington has been charged with rape and other crimes which authorities say took place in the Asotin County Courthouse, authorities said Thursday.

State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said his office charged Superior Court Judge Scott D. Gallina with second-degree rape, fourth-degree sexual assault and indecent liberties. Gallina, 55, was arrested Wednesday at the courthouse.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Michael Price on Thursday issued a sexual assault protective order for one alleged victim and ordered Gallina to turn in his keys to the courthouse, Ferguson said.

Gallina posted $50,000 bail Thursday, The Lewiston Tribune reported. Gallinas attorney Carl Oreskovich told The Associated Press his client adamantly denies the allegations and plans to enter not guilty pleas at his May 6 arraignment.

Its just incredulous that during a courtroom break when there are people in the courtroom and staff that come and go, that numerous incidents are alleged to have occurred in judges chambers. Hes looking forward to getting in the courtroom, cross-examining witnesses and exposing the truth, Oreskovich said.

Gallina began harassing and sexually assaulting one Asotin County Courthouse employee shortly after the person starting working there in May 2017 and it continued until Gallinas arrest, according to probable cause documents. All the charges are related to that employee although investigators interviewed a total of nine courthouse employees who reported varying degrees of sexual misconduct by Gallina over several years, documents said.

The woman told investigators that when Gallina would call her into his chambers, he would make sure the door was locked, court papers said. She said hed make inappropriate comments, hug her and rub her shoulders without her consent, documents said.

His actions progressed to him removing her clothes and touching her, kissing her and eventually the woman told investigators he put her in a chokehold and sexually assaulted her, only stopping when someone knocked on the door, documents said.

The woman told investigators she could sometimes see law enforcement officers through the window but was too afraid to alert them. She said she was afraid of losing her job if she reported the conduct and was also afraid her report would be questioned because Gallina was a judge and she was not, documents said.

She told investigators she spoke to Gallina about his actions and that he said he could not help it because he liked beautiful women.

She eventually told another employee last year, documents said, and the county started an investigation which led to the criminal investigation. Investigators said several other women reported criminal conduct but either couldnt remember details on what year alleged assaults happened or said the conduct had happened before April 2017, which is beyond a two-year statute of limitations for sexual assault charges.

Some of the women said they feared the judge and some said they had developed a safety plan that involved keeping each other from being alone with him, according to documents.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee appointed Gallina to the Superior Court bench in Asotin, Garfield and Columbia counties in 2014 when a predecessor retired. He was elected to a four-year term in 2016.

-- The Associated Press
SALEM  Oregon state lawmakers are questioning the states foster care agency about a report that a 9-year-old girl in the states care was sent to a Montana facility for six months and injected with Benadryl to control her behavior.

A legislative hearing Thursday focused on a report this week by Oregon Public Broadcasting that also revealed caseworkers didnt visit the girl for months. OPB learned of the case through the childs state-appointed lawyer.

Officials are working to bring the girl home amid growing concern over the state's foster care system.

Eighty-five children are currently living in out-of-state facilities -- a number that's more than doubled since 2017.

Oregon Child Welfare officials announced Thursday that they plan to stop sending children to facilities owned by the Montana facilitys parent company, Acadia Healthcare, an organization facing several accusations of neglect and abuse, although some children still remain there.

 AP
Did you know Eric Swalwell is running for president? Do you know who Eric Swalwell is? The little-known, 38-year-old California congressman announced his candidacy this week.

Also new to the race is Tim Ryan (no, not Republican former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan  Tim is a Democrat and a congressman from Ohio). Even 88-year-old Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska, has tossed his hat in the ring.

All of this brings the number of candidates chasing the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to ... well, its got to be close to infinity. (And thats not even including former Vice President Joe Biden, who hasnt officially announced his candidacy.)

So rather than try to figure out whos who in the ever-expanding Democratic field, lets take a look at the much simpler 2020 Republican-primary race. Theres Donald Trump  you know who he is. President of the United States. And theres William Weld, the former Massachusetts governor whos been testing the waters and says hell make a final decision on running in the next week.

Yes, Weld thinks the president is a corrupt "phony whos intent on causing chaos to keep voters distracted. My view, he said recently, is he is not doing anything for [Americans] except screaming and trying to make everyone upset and believe there is someone on the ladder below them trying to take their place. The worst kind of politics.

Duly noted. But what is Welds positive pitch for his likely candidacy?

For starters, the 73-year-old former federal prosecutor believes he would require very little on-the-job training upon his arrival in the Oval Office.

I think I could start Monday as president of the United States, and Ive thought that for 10 or 15 years, he told CNN this week.

OK, but about 90 percent of Republicans  the folks who will be voting in the Republican primaries  approve of the job Trump is doing, suggesting they believe the current president has mastered the White House learning curve.

That means a key part of Welds campaign strategy would be an effort to enlarge the voting pool  to bring back into the GOP the traditional Republicans who dropped out when Trump began to remake it into an anti-immigration, nationalist party.

Weld, who ran as the Libertarian Partys vice-presidential candidate in 2016 and has published three novels, might have some success with this effort. He believes in free trade and is a deficit hawk, two areas of economic policy where his differences with Trump are stark. He boasts that in the 1990s he was ranked the most fiscally conservative governor in the United States. This is music to the ears of many long-time Republicans who feel their party has abandoned its ideological moorings.

But then there are Welds views on social issues.

I was pro-choice when that was a minority view, early pro-gay and lesbian rights, by myself [in the Republican Party] for 20 years on that one, he recently told the Bangor Daily News. He also describes himself as an ardent environmentalist, and he favors gun control. And rather than slamming the door on economic migrants, he is seeking a more robust guest-worker program.

These positions are more problematic for a candidate running in the 2020 Republican primaries. But thats partly why Weld wants to run, he says. Trumps campaign slogan is Make America Great Again. Welds could be Make the Republican Party Great Again.

I like to think that I belong to the party of Lincoln and the party of Teddy Roosevelt and the party of Ronald Reagan and the party of Dwight Eisenhower, he told Newsweek. Thats the party I registered for when I was 18 years old.

Can he actually pull off what would be the mother of all political upsets by snatching the GOP nomination from the president?

It doesnt look promising. In New Hampshire, where Weld likely would have the best chance of making a needed early statement, hes currently polling at 3 percent. Hes trying to bring that number up the old-fashioned way, by shaking hands and talking to voters, as many as possible. At least one observer is impressed by his efforts so far.

His retail skills are excellent former New Hampshire Republican Party chairman Fergus Cullen said after attending Welds first house party in the Granite State. He took his time working the room, chatting with people. Hes clearly a natural.

-- Douglas Perry

@douglasmperry

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Oregons long delays in admitting criminal defendants in need of mental health treatment to the state psychiatric hospital  in violation of a federal court order  has spurred advocacy group Disability Rights Oregon to warn it may sue to enforce the order if wait times are not pared back.

These delays cannot continue, Sarah Radcliffe, the groups mental health attorney wrote in an April 9 letter to Allison Banwarth, an assistant attorney general, and other state officials. The Oregonian/OregonLive obtained the letter Friday.

Anyone charged with a crime has a right to be lucid enough to understand the charges and assist their defense. Cases are put on hold if a defendant is too mentally ill to proceed. Judges, in turn, may order defendants to the Oregon State Hospital for psychiatric treatment until they are healthy enough to stand trial.

The rate of that happening has skyrocketed in recent years as a crisis of mental illness and drug abuse has proliferated on Oregon streets and prosecutors have charged high numbers of homeless mentally ill people with crimes, many of them minor offenses.

A logjam of cases snaking through the courts, and judges orders that defendants receive psychiatric treatment, has caused a long waitlist for entry to the mental hospital. Until they are admitted, defendants remain locked in county jail cells.

If long waits continue, Radcliffe wrote, her organization will be required to enforce the federal court order establishing a seven-day deadline for granting entry to defendants ordered to the Oregon State Hospital for trial fitness treatment.

The order to which Radcliffe referred was issued in 2002 by the late Owen M. Panner, a federal district court judge in Oregon, who declared that lengthy jail stays for defendants as they await entry to the Oregon State Hospital for treatment are illegal.

This court concluded the indefinite imprisonment of persons deemed unfit to proceed and in need of treatment is unjust, Panner wrote in the order, saying there was no rationalization that passes constitutional muster for allowing defendants to languish in jails.

He set a strict seven-day deadline for the Oregon State Hospital to admit a defendant once under a judges order for treatment.

The state appealed Panners ruling. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it, rejecting the states arguments that it could not promptly grant entry to defendants. The court did so citing the undisputed harms that incapacitated criminal defendants suffer when they spend weeks or months in jail waiting for transfer.

As part of its coverage of mental illness and criminal justice, The Oregonian/OregonLive investigated compliance with Panners ruling. The newsroom discovered 202 defendants had been confined to jails beyond the seven-day timeline over 13 months  creating long jail stays the federal courts said were unjust.

None of the 202 had been convicted on their charges at the time of their unlawfully long jail stay. Many had been charged only with misdemeanors and would have otherwise faced little or no time behind bars if convicted.

[Read our investigation: Mentally ill languish in Oregon jails, in breach of federal court order]

That situation sparked Radcliffes letter this week. It was Disability Rights Oregon that originally sued the state on behalf of mentally ill defendants in a case that resulted in Panners ruling.

Radcliffe wrote the state said the psychiatric hospital was full and could not admit more patients. That was the precise defense the state offered to Panner, she said, and he soundly rejected it.

It is the hospitals responsibility to ensure that beds are made available, Radcliffe wrote.

Asked to comment on her letter, she issued a statement: Were very concerned about delays in accessing competency restoration services. Its an issue that were tracking closely. There is potential for reform through the legislative process. Theres also the potential for litigation.

Rebeka Gipson-King, a spokeswoman for the Oregon State Hospital, said via email, Our job is to provide the best care and treatment for some of the most vulnerable people in Oregon. In Oregon, we know the criminal justice system isnt the right place for people with mental illness to get the care they need. Thats why the Oregon Health Authority is working with the Legislature and counties to give more people with mental illness better treatment options close to home.

The state came close to being found in contempt of court Wednesday by Washington County Circuit Court Judge D. Charles Bailey for ignoring Baileys order to admit a defendant to the state hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Bailey had invoked Panners seven-day timeline in his order to promptly admit the defendant in the case, Carlos Zamora-Skaar, who has been charged with burglary and other crimes.

Oregon Department of Justice lawyers argued in response that the seven-day timeline did not apply and was unenforceable. They said that forced compliance would overload the psychiatric hospitals facilities and budget as defendants on the waitlist flood in as patients.

The judge did not ultimately hold the state in contempt, noting that the need for a psychiatric evaluation of Zamora-Skaar was no longer necessary because he had so obviously degenerated during his long wait in jail. Bailey instead ordered Zamora-Skaar to the state hospital for treatment.

Bailey left the door open to finding the state in contempt in the future, including if Zamora-Skaar is not admitted for treatment within seven days of Baileys new ruling.

-- Gordon R. Friedman

GFriedman@Oregonian.com
A 49-year-old man has been identified as the person killed in North Portland on Wednesday.

Gregory Isernhagen was found dead after someone requested police check on the welfare of a person around 8:35 p.m. in the 8100 block of North Jersey Street, the Portland Police Bureau said.

Logan N. Johannsen, 26, was later arrested in St. Helens in connection with the death. Johannsen is accused of murder, unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful use of a motor vehicle.

Police havent released any more details in the killing, including if the two men knew each other.

Portland police ask anyone with more information about Isernhagens death, Johannsen or Johannsens whereabouts for the past three days to contact Detective Travis Law, 503-823-0395, travis.law@portlandoregon.gov, or Detective Vince Cui, 503-823-0449, vince.cui@portlandoregon.gov.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey

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A Madison High School custodian was arrested in the campus parking lot Wednesday after authorities say he was linked to a child pornography investigation in which he is suspected of having more than 7,000 photos of abused kids.

Mitchell J. Grandlund, 34, was also found with methamphetamine during his arrest and had several pairs of childrens underwear in his car trunk, according to a probable cause affidavit. The court documents do not say where he obtained them.

According to the affidavit, Portland police and the FBI received information from Google in January that Grandlund was uploading child porn photos and videos through his Google Photos account. He was identified because his other uploads included pictures of himself, his ID and his resume.

Police obtained a search warrant for Grandlunds Google account on March 30 after receiving 15 separate tips since the beginning of the year about his activities and discovered the thousands of photos, the affidavit said. He was determined to be a janitor at Madison High School on April 5 and police moved to arrest him five days later after obtaining other search warrants, the court documents said.

Grandlund told investigators after his arrest that hed been saving child porn files he found on the Internet and claimed he looked at the images whenever he fantasizes about having sexual contact with children, the affidavit said. Photos of children found on his cellphone appeared to be between 4 and 12 years old, the court documents said.

Grandlund also admitted to using meth for a while, and that he smoked the drug every day, the affidavit said.

He remained held in the Multnomah County Detention Center on Thursday on suspicion of first- and second-degree encouraging child sexual abuse and unlawful possession of methamphetamine.

Court records show Grandlund has a 2008 conviction in Oregon for failing to appear in court, a 2006 conviction in Texas for failing to identify himself to authorities and a drug-related conviction as well as a criminal mischief conviction in 2011 and 2012 in Utah.

No Madison High School students have been identified as victims in the case, court records show. Portland police ask anyone with more information about Grandlund to contact the bureau at 503-823-0400.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com | 503-221-8343 |@EvertonBailey

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A 43-year-old man was arrested Thursday in Portland after urinating in public, locking himself in a port-a-potty and punching an officer in the head, police say.

Randall Hartwell is accused of numerous crimes, including assaulting a public safety officer and second-degree assault, records show. The officer who was punched showed signs of a head injury, was taken to a hospital for an evaluation and released, according to Portland police.

Police said they were patrolling on the Eastbank Esplanade with park rangers Thursday evening when they encountered Hartwell, who was urinating in public. Officers then tried to contact him so they could issue him a park exclusion, and he was immediately aggressive, according to police.

Hartwell retrieved a chain-lock weapon and menaced the officers, according to police, and locked himself in a port-a-potty when police distanced themselves from him.

Police said he later left the toilet and started swinging the weapon  described to a police spokesman as a smiley  at officers. A Taser failed to control him, and one of the officers tried to confront him directly, police said.

Hartwell dove to the ground, and the officer fell over him. Then Hartwell allegedly punched the officer in the side of the head.

The second officer helped take Hartwell into custody without further incident, according to police.

Hartwell is being held in the Multnomah County Detention Center on $274,000 bail, records show. Hes set to be arraigned Friday.

Records from another recent case show Hartwell suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and schizophrenia.

In that case, Hartwell twice punched a man who was helping him stow property in a storage container last month, according to court records. He also kicked an officer in the leg, records show. He pleaded guilty to attempted assault and resisting arrest and was sentenced to probation and 25 days in jail with credit for time served, according to records.

Two other charges were dismissed.

Records reference numerous other convictions.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

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Christine Mascal resigned from the board of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center Thursday, mere weeks after her aggressive cross-examination of Erica Naito-Campbell irked current and past members of the advocacy group.

On March 22, Charles McGee and Aubre Dickson were found not guilty of sexually assaulting Naito-Campbell at McGees home in 2012. Mascal represented McGee in the Multnomah Circuit Court trial and her unsparing questions frequently brought Naito-Campbell to tears.

After the verdict, Naito-Campbell said she would no longer support the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center because Mascal served on its board of directors.

You cannot be a victims advocate and a defense attorney engaging in heinous victim blaming at the same time, Naito-Campbell said on Twitter. It is a slap in the face to victims.

I am not, however, donating to the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center, which I supported last year. It has upon its board CMs lawyer. You cannot be a victims advocate and a defense attorney engaging in heinous victim blaming at the same time. It is a slap in the face to victims.  erica goode (@ScousePower8) April 5, 2019

That argument gained traction in a week in which the Law Center was celebrating 10 years of giving victims a voice in the criminal justice system. On Thursday morning, co-founder Steve Doell released the following statement:

Chris Mascal has submitted her resignation to the Board of the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center. She has been a valued member of our Board, having spent the great majority of her career working tirelessly for crime victims. We understand and appreciate that her decision to resign from our Board was based on her commitment to our organization."

Doell, the board president, said the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center would have no further comment.

Mascal would not agree to answer questions about her resignation.

In mid-March, Steve Houze, the attorney for Aubre Dickson, and Mascal spent more than three hours questioning Naito-Campbell and attacking her memory, truthfulness and motives.

Mascals website notes that during her 20 years as a Multnomah County prosecutor, Chris worked extensively with victims and their families. It was through these interactions that Chris gained insight into understanding how trauma affects everyone differently and how best to approach survivors concerns while guiding them through the legal process.

When she approached Naito-Campbell, it was to ask how loudly she said, No, and to wonder, You dont bring up threesomes with someone you just met, or is that who you are?

While many Oregon attorneys saw a contradiction between that zealous defense and Mascals obligation to the Oregon Crime Victims Law Center, only Josh Marquis was willing to be quoted.

It was clear what the defense strategy was: burn the victim to the ground, says Marquis, the long-time Clatsop County district attorney who retired at the end of last year. They chose to offer no alternative facts. There was no evidence. They simply attacked the victims claims that she was sexually assaulted because the claim was delayed for a few years.

Theres nothing morally reprehensible about her doing her job as a defense attorney, Marquis adds. But combining that with her board position? Thats like being on the local MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) Council while you routinely defend drunk drivers.

-- Steve Duin

stephen.b.duin@gmail.com
What's new for home viewing on Video on Demand and Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and other streaming services.

Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke in the final season of "Game of Thrones." (Helen Sloane/HBO)

Top streams for the week

Appointment TV becomes appointment streaming as the eighth and the final season of Game of Thrones begins Sunday night on all HBO services.

Nicole Kidman delivers a ferocious performance as a damaged police detective in Karyn Kusamas hard-edged Destroyer (2018, R), a neo-noir crime thriller with a sun-blasted look and a sleek narrative that jumps back in time to revisit the undercover case that haunts the drama. Streaming on Hulu.

Netflix launches a half-dozen new shows this week but I call your attention to "Special," a semi-autobiographical comedy created by and starring Ryan O'Connell as a young gay man with cerebral palsy (eight episodes under 15 minutes apiece), and "Huge in France" with Gad Elmaleh as a French comedy star (which in fact he is) who moves to Los Angeles and becomes an instant nobody. Elmaleh developed the Netflix Original Series for his English-language debut.

"Queens of Mystery" stars Olivia Vinall as a newly promoted police detective who gets unsolicited help from her three aunts (Sarah Woodward, Julie Graham and Siobhan Redmond), all successful crime writers eager to dive into real-life cases. The first two-part mystery is now streaming on Acorn TV and new mysteries debut each Monday through April 22.

The Criterion Channels relaunch spotlights American film noir classics from "Mildred Pierce" (1945) to "The Big Heat" (1954), plus a collection of films from David Lynch. The Criterion Channel is $10.99 a month or $99.99 a year (after a 14-day free trial) and is available via Roku, Amazon Fire and AppleTV as well as browsers and mobile devices.

Pay-Per-View/Video on Demand

Felicity Jones is Ruth Bader Ginsburg in "On the Basis of Sex" (2018, PG-13), which dramatizes her early career as an equal rights champion. Steve Carell stars in "Welcome to Marwen" (2018, PG-13), based on the true story of artist Mark Hogancamp, a hate-crime survivor. Both also on DVD and at Redbox. Also new:

Available same day as select theaters nationwide are "Crypto" (2019, R), a Wall Street cybercrime drama with Kurt Russell and Luke Hemsworth, and crime thriller "A Dark Place" (2019, not rated) with Andrew Scott.

Netflix

Kiernan Shipka is a deaf teenager and Stanley Tucci her father in a world invaded by creatures who hunt humans by sound in the Netflix Original film "The Silence" (2019, PG-13).

Zoe Lister-Jones and Adam Pally star in "Band Aid" (2017, R), a comedy about a married couple who start a band as a form of therapy.

Streaming TV: Jamie King stars a mother searching for her daughter in the new zombie drama "Black Summer: Season 1." Also new:

International affairs: A police detective searches for a missing migrant worker in the award-winning "A Land Imagined" (Singapore, 2018, not rated, with subtitles), which makes its U.S. debut on Netflix. Also new:

Kid stuff: "You vs. Wild: Season 1" is an interactive natural history series for tweens and adolescents. For younger kids there's "Mighty Little Bheem: Season 1," an animated series from India.

Also new:

 High school romantic comedy "The Perfect Date" (2019, not rated) costarring Camila Mendes of "Riverdale."

Werner Herzog's " Queen of the Desert " (2015, PG-13) starring Nicole Kidman as real-life early-20th century adventurer Gertrude Bell.

Franco Zeffirelli's " Hamlet " (1991, PG) with Mel Gibson and Glenn Close.

Amazon Prime Video

The landmark anthology series "Outer Limits: Season 1" (1963-1964) is a classic of science fiction TV. Amazon also streams the 1990s revival "The Outer Limits: Complete Series" (1995-1998).

The original "Cloverfield" (2008, PG-13), directed by Matt Reeves ("Dawn of the Planet of the Apes") from a screenplay by Drew Goddard ("The Martian"), is a 21st-century Godzilla movie for the camcorder generation.

International TV: Crime procedural "Spiral: Seasons 1-6" (France, 2005-2017, with subtitles) is the most celebrated crime drama on French TV. Also new:

 Modern fantasy drama "The Secret City: Complete Series" (Russia, 2014-2016, with subtitles) about a hidden civilization in Moscow.

 Crime thriller "Diablo Guardian: Season 2" (Mexico, with subtitles).

Nostalgia TV: "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp: Seasons 1-3" (1955-1958) presents over 100 episodes of the half-hour western starring Hugh O'Brien. Sitcom "The Joey Bishop Show: Complete Series" (1961-1965) features the stand-up comic as a TV talk show host.

Kid stuff: "Bug Diaries: Season 1" is an animated show for young children.

Also new:

 Heist drama "The Score" (2001, R) with Robert De Niro, Edward Norton and Marlon Brando.

Prime Video and Hulu

Imelda Staunton and Timothy Spall star in "Finding Your Feet" (2018, PG-13), a British comedy of starting over (Prime Video and Hulu). Also new is the micro-budget horror sequel "Paranormal Activity 2" (2010, R) (Prime Video and Hulu).

Hulu

Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish play a married couple in "The Oath" (2018, R), a comedy set at a politically polarized Thanksgiving family dinner.

Streaming TV: The final season of the TNT drama "The Last Ship" is now available.

HBO Now

The new screen adaptation of Richard Wright's "Native Son" (2019, TV-MA), starring Ashton Sanders as Bigger Thomas and updated to contemporary Chicago, comes straight to HBO from the Sundance Film Festival.

Kid stuff: The "Sesame Street" special "Julias Haircut" features Elmo and Abby.

Available Saturday night is the hit romantic comedy "Crazy Rich Asians" (2018).

Acorn TV

New this month are the classic courtroom drama "Rumpole of the Bailey: Series 1 & 2" (1978-1980) with Leo McKern (additional seasons roll out every couple of weeks) and the BBC documentary "Bollywood: The Worlds Largest Film Industry" (2018).

New on disc

"On the Basis of Sex," "Welcome to Marwen," "Holmes and Watson," "A Dog's Way Home," "Mirai"

Now at Redbox

Welcome to Marwen, On the Basis of Sex, Holmes and Watson, A Dogs Way Home
A spaghetti dinner and silent auction, both to raise money for Special Olympics in Midland County, will be held from 5-7 p.m. April 29 at Trinity Lutheran Church, 3701 Jefferson Ave., Midland.

Tickets will cost $10 for teens and adults and $5 for each child age 5-12 years. Children under age 5 will be admitted free.
After three years of changing the way law enforcement agencies in Midland County handle cases of domestic violence, partners of the Blueprint for Safety program took the time to review what they have done and what they will do during a Wednesday ceremony.

In October 2015, the Office on Violence Against Women awarded Shelterhouse a grant to go toward the local implementation of the nationwide Blueprint for Safety program. Shelterhouse's partners in the initiative were also included in the award, including the Midland County Sheriff's Office, the Midland County Prosecuting Attorney's office and Midland Police Department.

Midland County was one of five communities in the United States to receive the grant funding in 2015.

An official "launch party" recognizing the program's progress over the past three years took place on Wednesday at the Midland County Courthouse.

"As a result of the dedication of Shelterhouse and the multiple agencies worked together with the Blueprint for Safety program, huge strides have been made serving victims of domestic violence," said Midland County Sheriff Scott Stephenson. "This includes increased awareness of domestic and sexual assaults, and also holding offenders accountable for their actions."

Among the changes made to the sheriff department's policy through the Blueprint program were the elimination of costs associated with service of personal protection orders, and the introduction of a process to send new deputies to Shelterhouse as part of their orientation process in order to hear the personal testimonies of domestic violence victims.

Midland County Prosecuting Attorney J. Dee Brooks recalled how surprised people often are when he tells them Midland County courts authorize about 200 domestic-violence related charges per year.

"(Domestic violence) happens everywhere, and it happens to anybody," Brooks said. "It's not a certain race, or religion, or gender or gender preference or socioeconomic group -- it happens everywhere, including in Midland County."

Brooks said the one thing Midland County does do differently is that its agencies collaborate.

Midland Police Department Chief Clifford Block also spoke about the improvements made to the department through the program, including the sending of new officers to Shelterhouse as part of their orientation process and the implementation of the Blueprint for Safety "lethality" assessment questions during domestic violence cases.

The Blueprint for Safety was created by the City of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2010, and included representatives from the St. Paul Police Department, the St. Paul Intervention Project and Praxis International. The Office on Violence Against Women would later fund a nationwide adaptation demonstration initiative to test the adaptability of the model.
More than a decade after an explosion in Iraq left him with debilitating injuries to his back and right leg, a Saginaw man will finally be able to ride a bicycle with his baby daughter thanks to a donation from a statewide veteran-outreach organization.

Adam Morton, 33, along with his wife, Ann Morton, and 14-month-old daughter, Brinley Morton, visited Ray's Bike Shop location at 7814 Eastman Ave. on Wednesday to receive a recumbent bike ordered for him specifically by the Buddy to Buddy volunteer veteran program. The Fallen and Wounded Soldiers Fund covered the cost of the bike.

"(The bike) is awesome, and comfy too," Morton said.

Fred Honerkamp of Midland, Morton's Buddy to Buddy advocate and a veteran of the Vietnam War, negotiated the purchase of the bike from an online seller. Employees of Ray's Bike Shop offered to service the bike including a tuneup, repairing any broken parts and a wash, for free.

"(Ray's) has been more than gracious -- they just stepped up to the plate for a good cause," Honerkamp said.

Morton, was wounded by an explosion while he was serving in the U.S. Army in 2007. Nearly 12 years later, he still has three permanent fractures in his lower back.

Despite not riding a bike for decades beforehand, a breakthrough came when Morton rode a recumbent bike while in Houston, Texas, in March.

"The last time I rode a bike before Houston was in middle school," Morton said. "After I got hurt, it was hard to get on a regular bike and bend. It's hard to get up and exercise. I rode a recumbent bike in Houston and that didn't hurt my back at all."

Morton rode the bike for more than 40 miles across two days.

For Honerkamp, the Facebook post Morton made about his experience with the bike was his own breakthrough. Honerkamp saw the possibility of getting Morton his own recumbent bike as an opportunity to drastically improve his life and mitigate the stress brought about by his injuries.

"Having another vet that's been through the same life-threatening events as you have is really important," Honerkamp said. "We have the built-in trust that a stranger doesn't have."

Buddy to Buddy pairs veterans who call its hotline with other veterans, who serve as advocates. The program has volunteers throughout the state, and once a veteran reaches out, their case is handed off to a volunteer living near them.

"We're trained volunteers, and our job is to find the resource that will solve the problem that the veteran is having," Honerkamp said. "Sometimes it's homelessness, sometimes it's financial (problems). We contact people all over the state."

Morton said he plans on riding his new bike on a daily basis once he gets an attachment that allows his daughter to ride with him.

Service members and veterans in Michigan can contact a Buddy to Buddy representative by calling 1-888-822-8339, or by emailing buddytobuddyvvp@umich.edu.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriff's Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Mitchell Kukulka.

Tuesday, April 9

11:15 p.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to a Jerome Township roadway in reference to a suspicious situation. A 47-year-old man reported seeing someone shining flashlights into a ditch. The deputy was able to make contact with a 33-year-old man, who said they were checking the ditch for fish.

9:01 p.m. -- A 21-year-old Jerome Township woman called 9-1-1 in reference to the father of her baby refusing to return the child. She was advised to contact Midland County Friend of the Court. Deputies also performed a civil standby while she was given some of her belongings from the residence.

7:58 p.m. -- A 71-year-old Jasper Township man reported that an unused telephone wire was caught by a passing farm tractor and caused about $50 in damage to his siding. He said he did not wish to make a report, but wanted help contacting the farm owner and forwarding his insurance information. The farm owner said he would look into the incident.

4:34 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a crash resulting in an injury in Lincoln Township.

3 p.m. -- A 37-year-old Homer Township woman reported that a building had been broken into. Nothing appeared to be missing other than the lock, and the locking mechanism was damaged valued at about $15.

1:27 p.m. -- A 25-year-old Mount Pleasant man was arrested on eight warrants out of Mount Pleasant after a traffic stop in Warren Township. The man was transported to Oil City, where he was turned over to the Mount Pleasant Police Department.

Monday, April 8

10:53 p.m. -- A 35-year-old Jasper Township man advised he heard gunshots come from a property across the road and believes he heard bullets going through the woods near his house. The man said he also saw flashlights in the wooded area. The deputy checked the area and spoke to some nearby residents but could not locate the suspect(s) at the time.

9:44 p.m. -- A deputy responded to a Hope Township roadway in reference to a vehicle doing burnouts in the road. The deputy made contact with the 20-year-old Hope Township driver at his residence. The deputy explained the possible consequences of careless/reckless driving.

9:35 p.m. -- A 43-year-old Lee Township man reported that unknown suspect(s) broke into his garage. Nothing appeared to be missing at this time but the suspect(s) caused about $100 in damage to the door frame.

9:25 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a Geneva Township residence after a 48-year-old woman reported her 16-year-old daughter ran away from home. Deputies located the girl in Greendale Township and she was transported to the Midland Juvenile Care Center.

9:16 p.m. -- A 46-year-old Greendale Township man was arrested on a misdemeanor warrant out of Isabella County's 76th District Court after deputies made contact with him in reference to a juvenile complaint. The man was turned over to the Mount Pleasant Police Department.

5:52 p.m. -- Officers responded to a domestic assault in the 1900 block of Sylvan Lane.

3:47 p.m. -- Deputies responded to an Edenville Township residence for a report of possible harassment. The caller, a 34-year-old man, reported seeing two male subjects stop by the end of his driveway in a vehicle before doing a U-turn and slowly driving away. The man stated the driver of the vehicle had pressed larceny charges on him the previous week and thought he was out there to harass him or even set him up to violate his bond. The man was advised to call back if the vehicle returned or if he was contacted by the other party. Deputies did not observe any vehicles in the area near his residence upon their arrival.

3:26 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a two-vehicle property damage accident in Warren Township.

2:48 p.m. -- Officers responded to a hit-and-run in the 5300 block of Dublin Avenue.

2 p.m. -- Officers responded to a report of fraud in the 1800 block of Wyllys Street.

1:11 p.m. -- Deputies spoke with a 42-year-old Homer Township man at the Midland County Law Enforcement Center regarding a stolen trail camera. The value of the trail camera is $130. The man wanted a report filed but did not wish deputies to follow up

1 p.m. -- Officers responded to a report of fraud in the 1800 block of Lawrence Drive.

7:53 a.m. -- Deputies responded to a car-deer crash in Lee Township.
Paducah, KY (42003)

Today

Mostly cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low around 60F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies with a few showers after midnight. Low around 60F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 30%.
New York, US (PANA) - The democratic aspirations of the Sudanese people must be realised through an appropriate and inclusive transition process, UN chief Antonio Guterres said on Thursday following the overthrow and arrest of President Omar al-Bashir by order of the countrys new military governing council
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Attacks on the southern periphery of Tripoli killed 56 people and wounded 266 others in six days of fighting, the Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Thursday, warning against the depletion of medical resources in the region in case of extension of the clashes
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (PANA)  The African Union has asserted its solidarity with the citizens of Sudan following the ouster of President Omar El-Bashir after three decades in power, but warned that a military coup was not the appropriate response to the demands of the population
Bamako, Mali (PANA) - A two-day Mali-Turkey Business Forum will be held in Bamako, Mali, from April 17, bringing together economic operators from several sectors including energy, telecommunications and technology, equipment and construction, and military equipment
Nairobi, Kenya (PANA)  The Kenyan government has called for restraint following the immediate fall of President Omar El-Bashirs government after 30 years in power, to preserve political stability in Sudan, which is important for the region and the world
Nairobi, Kenya (PANA)  A Kenyan elephant conservationist, Jim Justus Nyamu, has been honoured in a film depicting his illustrious 15,411-km trek across eight countries to raise awareness on the need to conserve the African elephant, whose populations continue to dwindle as a result of illicit poaching
Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) Two Cuban doctors have been kidnapped and an armed Police bodyguard shot dead during an attack in Mandera, Northeastern Kenya region bordering Somalia, a government official said on Friday
Washington, US (PANA) - The World Bank unveiled a new plan on Thursday to help African countries strengthen their human capital
Three churches in Louisianas St. Landry Parish were set ablaze and destroyed over the course of 10 days: St. Mary Baptist Church on March 26, Greater Union Baptist Church on April 2 and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church on April 4. That these churches have predominantly black congregations is no coincidence.

Twenty-one-year-old Holden Matthews, son of a sheriffs deputy, was arrested Wednesday for three counts of simple arson following the revelation that all three of these fires [were] intentionally set, and all three of these fires are related, Louisiana State Fire Marshal Butch Browning told CNN. Matthews was linked to the crimes upon review of his purchasing history and the presence of a car matching the make and model of his own vehicle in the vicinity of two of the churches around the time of each fire.

As to his motivations, it appears quite clear that Matthews was acting out his own white supremacist beliefs. He was active on both pagan and black metal pages on Facebook, commenting on two memes about Varg Vikernes. Vikernes is a neo-Nazi and former metal musician who served time for murdering a fellow metal artist and burning churches in Norway. If youre unfamiliar with black metal, The Daily Beast has a fairly succinct explanation of its connection to neo-Nazism and white supremacy:

Neo-folk shares some of its musical DNA with black metal, another genre fighting a Nazi problem.

Across two days in late January, hundreds of black metal fans packed a Brooklyn music hall for a reckoning. Their scene was home to bands led by women, immigrants, people of color, and unapologetic anti-fascists. But a subgenre, often termed National Socialist Black Metal or NSBM, had become an unwanted presence in recent years, seeming to rise with white supremacist sentiment in the U.S.

Paganism by no means denotes hateful beliefs, but it can be popular with neo-Nazis. Matthews seemed particularly aligned with Norse pagan pantheon, according to activity on his Facebook page. In one Facebook post featuring a pagan figure with a design resembling a swastika on his belt, Matthews commented, well yea the belt gives him extra strength and power.. white power lmao jk jk I had to. This is awfully reminiscent of the joking-not-joking racist cadence of the shooter in Christchurch, New Zealand who targeted Muslims.

While mainstream media remains cautious about linking Matthews online history to his motivations, the nature of his hateful actions remain all-too familiar in this day and age. The NAACP declared the arsons domestic terrorism, CNN reports, adding that the spike in church burnings in Southern states is a reflection of the emboldened racial rhetoric and tension spreading across the country. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said that the fires were a reminder of a very dark past of intimidation and fear.

Neo-Nazis, racists, and their ilk may feel more at home in Trumps America, but our advocacy (not just mere thoughts and prayers) for vulnerable populations can drive out their hatred. Pastor Gerald Toussaint of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church told The Daily Beast, Even though weve lost our churchour building, our buildinglook whos been brought together. Our country has to find out that the God we serve does not look on the outside. He sees the heart.
According to a new report from India today, premium smartphones and electronic merchandise worth about Rs 5,000 crore (over US$700 million) from 10 tech companies including Apple, Samsung, Vivo, HP and Motorola are stranded with customs after the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) suspended their import permits for not complying with e-waste rules.

The government suspended the import permits of the 10 companies for violating Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) clauses  which are part of rules around management of e-waste  through a notification.

The Indian Cellular and Electronic Association (ICEA) has written to the secretary, requesting a review into the suspension of import permits. Apple, Vivo and Motorola are members of the ICEA.

The ICEA specifically noted that "We feel this is a huge overreach of e-waste management rules. Even though e-waste management rules do not gel with Indias trade environment, the legitimate industry has tried to comply," Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of ICEA.

Indian officials in the environment ministry told ET that violations werent as minor as these companies were making them out to be. For more on this, read the full Economic Times report here.

Patently Apple reported just yesterday that Apple had reduced its carbon footprint for the third consecutive year through the companys supplier Clean Energy Program. It's very difficult to believe that Apple, of all companies, would go out of their way to be non-compliant on e-waste.

Did India throw Apple into this circus so as to not show favoritism in the tech sector? Did Wistron or another Apple supplier try to hide their non-compliance with e-waste rules?

For now there are more questions than answers on Apple's true position here. The timing of this announcement after Apple's glowing clean energy program press release is a ding to their credibility if in fact they dragged their feet on this issue. It'll be interesting to hear from Apple directly on this, if they so choose to make a clarifying public statement.

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: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) state President Nityanand Rai, at a press conference in Patna on Friday, asked the Congress party to apologize to BJP national President Amit Shah for sullying his image in the Judge B H Loya death controversy.

"Congress leaders were hellbent on destroying the image of Amit Shah by wrongly linking him to the death of Judge Loya. Now that the Supreme Court has spoken in the issue, it is time for the Congress to issue a public apology to Mr. Shah," Rai said.

Continuing to demand apology from Congress leaders, Rai said that it was disgusting to see how some people, in their desperate attempt to malign Shah, were linking Shah to the death of the Judge whose own family had repeatedly said that he died of cardiac arrest.

"The petition filed in the court to investigate the death of Judge Loya was politically motivated. Now that the Supreme Court has spoken in this case, it is abundantly clear that this whole thing was part of a large conspiracy hatched by the Congress to smear the image of the BJP chief. Perhaps now the Congress would tender its apology to the BJP President, Rai said.

As recalled, Judge Loya was presiding over the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case that took place in Gujarat in 2005. Amit Shah, who was the Gujarat Home Minister at the time, was one of the accused in the case. Judge Loya, later died apparently of heart attack on December 1, 2014.

His death, however, opened a series of questions and conspiracy theories suggesting Shah and his henchmen were responsible for his sudden demise and also the murder and disappearances of many witnesses in the case.
Patna: Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and former Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar Tejaswi Yadav, speaking at the meeting of the non-NDA leaders hosted by senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Yashwant Sinha at the Sri Krishna Memorial Hall in Patna on Saturday, accused the Narendra Modi government at the Center of using intimidation and fear tactics to suppress the voice of the opposition.

Yadav, whose father and party chief Lalu Prasad Yadav is in prison following his conviction in a number of corruption cases, said that his father had rightly predicted in 2014 that if the BJP was allowed to come into power, the country will go to the dogs.

"Today things are worse than ever before in India. The nation is plagued by communal violence and the current government is pitching brothers against brothers for political gains. They use fear and intimidation tactics to crush the dissenting voices as they are doing with our family. Sometimes they order CBI raids at our homes and other times they issue notifications to us to vacate government bungalows. As the leader of the opposition, I enjoy the same rights as any minister in the Nitish government and yet I have been ordered to vacate my bungalow that was allotted to me when I became the Deputy Chief Minister of Bihar. I cannot understand why this same bungalow was allotted to Sushil Kumar Modi when it was still being occupied by me," Yadav, who also faces a number of cases involving acquisition of assets disproportionate to his known sources of income," said.

Speaking directly to Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal  U leader Nitish Kumar, Yadav said that he would like to advise his 'Nitish Chacha' to shun politics of self-serving and join hands with those who care about the future of Bihar and the nation.

Earlier, Yashwant Sinha, at the Rashtra Manch meeting in the presence of a number of anti-BJP leaders, announced his decision to quit the BJP to 'save the nation' from the Modi government.

Unlike him though, Shatrughan Sinha, also a fierce Modi critic and an ardent Lalu supporter, refused to resign from the party saying he did not join the BJP to quit from it.
Patna: Hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees in Patna and other parts of Bihar on Thursday evening offered the first 'arghya' on the third day of the 4-day Chaiti Chhath at various ghats of the Ganges amidst very tight security.



https://www.patnadaily.com/index.php/news/14247-evening-arghya-performed-on-the-third-day-of-chaiti-chhath.html#sigProIdce95f24d8f View the embedded image gallery online at:

After taking a dip in the Ganges, men and women offered prayer to the setting sun in the traditional way that Chhath in Bihar is known for. Tomorrow morning, they will be offering the second 'arghya' which will be followed by breaking the fast signaling the end of the four-day religious festival.

Heavy crowd was seen at Engineering College, or NIT Ghat as its called now, Collectorate Ghat, Digha Ghat, Bans Ghat, Darbhanga House, LCT Ghat, Law College, Rani Ghat, and Gai Ghat in Patna where devotees bathed in the holy river prior to offering prayer to the setting sun.

As always, volunteers and private organizations stepped up to clean the roads and by-lanes leading to the Ganges.
Patna: With threat of Maoist violence looming over everyones head, the first phase of Lok Sabha elections in the four Naxal-hit constituencies in Bihar passed off without any untoward incident though the voters turnout was relatively low at 53.06%, officials said.



https://www.patnadaily.com/index.php/news/14248-lok-sabha-polls-first-phase-ends-peacefully-53-voters-turnout.html#sigProId7c83fa72b3 View the embedded image gallery online at:

Despite low voter turnout, officials said it was slightly higher than the 2014 Parliamentary polls by nearly three percent. The highest turnout was recorded in Gaya with 56% while the lowest turnout was witnessed in Aurangabad at little under 50%.

Police had earlier recovered three live bombs from Gaya and Aurangabad that were successfully diffused by the members of the bomb squad.

Prominent among those whose fate is to be decided in the first phase of the seven-phased poll

include former Bihar Chief Minister and Hindustani Awam Morcha (HAM) leader Jitan Ram Manjhi (Gaya) and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) leader Chirag Paswan (Jamui)

Second phase of the Lok Sabha polls are to be held on April 18 at five constituencies in Bihar including Kishanganj, Katihar, Purnia, Bhagalpur, and Banka.
Patna: First time since switching party from BJP to Congress, former film star and politician Shatrughan Sinha arrived at Patna Airport on Friday amid warm welcome and chant of Shatrughan Sinha Zindabad by his supporters and Congress leaders.

Accompanied by Bihar Congress President Madan Mohan Jha, Sinha, from the airport, arrived at the Congress Bihar headquarters at Sadaqat Ashram in Kurji Area where he was greeted with garlands and sweets by a number of senior party leaders.

Later in the day, the former Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader who switched to Congress just a few days ago after his old party dropped him as a Lok Sabha candidate and instead named another Patnaite and senior BJP minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from Patna Saheb seat, visited the home of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and the leader of the opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejaswi Yadav Yadav.

Talking to the reporters, Sinha said that this was just a courtesy visit since he was an old friend of Lalu Prasad Yadav and his family members.

Though I wanted to join the RJD, I switched to Congress at the advice of Shri Lalu ji who said that I should contest from my old seat of Patna Saheb and since that seat belonged to the Congress, I followed Lalujis advice. I had always said that no matter what the situation may be, I was not contesting Lok Sabha election from anywhere but Patna Saheb, the Congress leader said.

On his former party-mate and now the rival Ravi Shankar Prasad, Sinha said that the union minister came from a great family and was his friend for a long time.

Ravi Shankar is my friend and our fight will also be friendly, he said.

The former Bollywood villain-turned-hero, while saying he would actively campaign for other Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) candidates, contrary to some reports in the media, his daughter and successful film star Sonakshi Sinha will not take part in the campaign.

Sinha also ruled out campaigning for him by other film stars saying he did not need their help as the people of Patna themselves were much bigger stars than any Bollywood star.

I did not ask any star to campaign for me in the 2014 elections and I wont do it so in this years election either. The fact is, some of the big names in my own party did not campaign for me in the last election and some even conspired to damage my candidacy, the man known as Bihari Babu said.

While it is true that Sinha did not ask any film star to stump for him in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, he did get some help from his friends in the Bollywood, including Hema Malini, also a BJP MP, who campaigned for him in the 2009 elections.

I have full faith in the people of Patna who will bless me so I emerge victorious in this election with record-breaking margin, he said.
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When you gotta go, you gotta go. But a woman with a full bladder gave new meaning to the expression.

The woman allegedly asked some Philadelphia city workers to pee between two of their parked work trucks. But she took off in one of the vehicles, instead, police say.

As NBC-10 in Philly reports, the woman, identified as Amanda Bonner, 33, approached some Philadelphia street department employees and explained her bladder distress.

Given her dilemma, the employees granted her permission to relieve her bladder in between two of their parked trucks, police say.

But as NBC-10 reports, at least one of the city-owned Ford F-350 pickup trucks was unoccupied with the engine running when the woman asked to use the area near it as an impromptu toilet.

The unusual request occurred at a job site on the 1200 block of Walnut Street, shortly after 8:30 p.m. Tuesday.

But instead of just going, the woman actually went, cops tell NBC-10.

Bonner allegedly entered the running pickup truck and drove off westbound on Walnut Street, police said.

The shocked city employees gave chase, one on foot and the others in another city truck.

(Story continues below)

A woman told a Philly employee and his co-workers that she had to go pee and was going to urinate in between their trucks, investigators said. She then went inside the pickup truck and drove off westbound on Walnut Street, police said. https://t.co/1BvcRjSHJa  NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) April 11, 2019

The employees caught up with Bonner and the stolen vehicle at a red light on 16th and Locust streets, NBC-10 reports.

By then, police arrived as well, and Bonner was then taken into custody.

Bonner faces theft and other related offenses for her alleged urge to just go.
Hunters wearing fluorescent orange is a universal concept in Pennsylvania today, but the idea faced a long and challenging road when it was first proposed in the 1960s.

The same year that Pennsylvania began requiring first-time hunters under age 16 to take a 4-hour hunter safety course, 1968, a bill to require big game hunters to wear at least 250 square inches of fluorescent orange was defeated in the Pennsylvania General Assembly.

At the time, most hunters in the winter hunting seasons wore the black-on-red plaid, wool hunting coats and matching pants known as the Pennsylvania Tuxedo that had been produced by Pennsylvania-based Woolrich since 1925.

They were far from ready for such a drastic change, regardless of claims that fluorescent orange would make hunters more visible and reduce hunting accidents in which hunters were shot in mistake for game or struck when they were mistakenly in the line of fire.

Finally, in 1980, after several more failed attempts, the General Assembly passed a bill requiring hunters to wear at least 100 square inches of fluorescent orange while hunting deer, bear and groundhog.

In 1992, after attempts at educating hunters to greater safety while turkey hunting failed to reduce accidents, the Pennsylvania Game Commission mandated 250 square inches on the head, chest and back during most fall hunting seasons and 100 square inches while moving through the woods during the spring gobbler season.

The ensuing flood of criticism included legislation that challenged the commissions authority to establish such regulations. But the impact of the orange regulations on hunting accidents was undeniable. From a high of 53 turkey hunters shot  3 fatally  in 1991 the number dropped to 14  none fatal  in 1992 and then to 11  none fatal  in 1993.

The requirement for spring gobbler season was removed in 2008.

After various other small tweaks over the past decade and before changes made earlier this week, hunters were required to wear at least 250 square inches of fluorescent orange during small game seasons; deer, bear and elk firearms seasons; and fall turkey season, while moving; and a hat or cap of fluorescent orange while hunting groundhog.

The Pennsylvania Board of Game Commissioners on Tuesday approved a measure that simplified requirements and eliminated the requirements while archery hunting for deer, bear or elk, and while hunting turkey in the fall.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump treated four World War II veterans to an Oval Office meeting Thursday, fulfilling a birthday wish for 95-year-old Allen Jones and giving three other veterans age 100 and older a day to remember.

One of the men, 101-year-old Floyd Wigfield, of Cumberland, Maryland, managed to win a promise from the president for a return flight on Air Force One following this June's ceremony marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day and the Battle of Normandy. "We'll work that out," Trump said. "You'll like Air Force One."

Trump had met Jones at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention last year and Jones, of Cranston, Rhode Island, asked to spend his birthday with the president. Trump looked happy to oblige, joking with the men and their families, and asking each one to say a few words. When one of the guests presented Trump with a hat and suggested he tweet about it, the president deadpanned: "I don't tweet that much."

Sidney Walton, 100, of San Diego, and a medic in the war, told the president he joined the Army to fight Hitler, prompting Trump to reply: "That was a good reason."

Walton is on what his family called the "No Regrets Tour," a personal mission to visit all 50 states and the White House to educate Americans about World War II veterans.

Paul Kriner, 103, of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, told the president he participated in 517 days of combat. The president told him he didnt look a day over 90.

Kriner and Wigfield are working with the Greatest Generations Foundation, which provides veterans with the chance to memorialize their stories and find closure by returning to visit where they served.

Trump described the men as great heroes, great warriors, highly respected.
A Lancaster County man who was 17 when he participated in the torture-murders of his adoptive mother and stepfather had his 80-year-to-life prison sentence upheld Friday by a state appeals court.

The Superior Court panel rejected Michael Lee Bourgeois claim that county Judge David Ashworth didnt fully consider his distinct youthful attributes when he resentenced Bourgeois in October 2017.

Bourgeois initially was sentenced to life in prison for the September 2001 slayings of Terry and Lucy Smith in the familys home. He pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder. His co-defendant, Landon May, was convicted by a jury and receive two death sentences.

Bourgeois had to be resentenced because of a 2012 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that bans automatic life without parole sentences for juvenile killers.

In the state court opinion denying Bourgeois appeal, Judge Carolyn H. Nichols noted that prosecutors wanted Ashworth to resentence Bourgeois to 100 years-to-life behind bars. She rejected Bourgeois argument Ashworth imposed an illegal de facto life prison term.

Nichols cited Ashworths observation that each of the murders was carried out in a dispassionate and calculated manner, each victim was tortured and mutilated, and each murder showed an exceptionally callous disregard for human suffering.

A forensic pathologist concluded Terry Smith had been stabbed 47 times, his neck was slashed at least five times, he was shot five times and then was asphyxiated. Lucy Smith was cut 51 times, was shot in the head, was beaten with a hammer and was finally smothered, the pathologist concluded.

Terry Smith was the president of a local company. Lucy Smith was an elementary school principal.

Bourgeois turns 35 next week. In his failed appeal he complained that Ashworths sentence will prevent him from becoming eligible for parole until hes 97. That, he said, is nearly 20 years past the average life expectancy for a man in Pennsylvania.
A man who was killed Wednesday in York County was shot after he broke into a home and assaulted a resident, according to the local district attorneys office.

The fatal shooting was a justifiable homicide, officials said.

Christian I. Gutierrez-Rosado died after being shot in the chest Wednesday morning at a home on the 700 block of West Princess Street in York, county Coroner Pam Gay announced earlier this week.

According to a Friday announcement from the District Attorneys office, investigators with York police were able to learn that Gutierrez-Rosado had broken into the home through an upstairs window.

Gutierrez-Rosado then assaulted a resident, investigators said. During that assault, the resident fired a single shot from a gun, which killed Gutierrez-Rosado, police said.

Authorities also pointed out that Gutierrez-Rosado had previously been charged with felony strangulation against one of the homes residents. Police said Gutierrez-Rosado was not allowed on the property.

In the Friday announcement, District Attorney Dave Sunday praised York police for their investigative work.

I would like to thank the York City Police Department for its quick work and determination in bringing this incident to a close," he said.
The Harrisburg School District is blocking efforts by the Pennsylvania Department of Education to audit the districts finances by refusing to provide access to financial information, according to a letter from the department obtained Friday by PennLive.

The state department announced the audit in October, after a series of financial scandals at the district. Those financial issues include a transportation supervisor accused of embezzling $180,000, the over-hiring of 37 teachers for unbudgeted positions and the continuation of health care coverage for 54 employees who had resigned from the district in recent years.

The audit was supposed to examine the district's accounting practices, budget projections and internal controls, among other things. The district is considered by the state to be in financial distress.

In a March 27 letter to Harrisburg Superintendent Sybil Knight-Burney, Pennsylvania Education Secretary Pedro Rivera wrote that the district must provide all information needed to investigate the Districts financial records without further delay.

As of Friday, more than two weeks after that letter was sent, the states auditors still havent been granted access to the financial records they need to complete the essential functions of the audit, according to the education department.

District officials told PennLive late Friday afternoon that they had complied with the audit but simply did not want to provide unfettered access to their confidential eFinancial system, because it contains sensitive employee data (i.e. bank routing numbers, social security numbers, etc.)

The district believes this request is beyond the scope of its legal obligation, said Bilal Hasan, the districts interim business manager, in an emailed response to PennLives questions.

Access denied

The audit by the Wessel & Company firm was supposed to start last month. But the effort soon ran into a brick wall when Hasan refused access to the districts electronic finance system, according to the education departments letter. PennLive obtained the letter Friday from the education department after filing a Right-to-Know request.

In order to obtain the necessary information, the audit firm requested access to the districts eFinance system, the letter from Rivera stated. Unfortunately, the request was denied through the districts interim business administrator."

This is what Hasan told the auditors on March 18, according to the PDE letter:

I have spoken with our legal counsel regarding whether your request constitutes a legal obligation or duty on our part and he has given me no indication that it does, Hasan reportedly wrote. If your company can identify a statutory or regulatory basis which requires us to comply with the request, we will reconsider it.

In the states letter to the district March 27, Rivera noted that the education department had already provided a legal basis for its request for financial documents from the district.

Previously you were advised that pursuant to Section 2410 of the public school code of 1949 the secretary of education may investigate the financial records of any school district in person or by his authorized representative, the letter said. Additionally, under the provisions of Article XXIV of the school code, the district has a legal duty to furnish those items that are necessary for an audit.

The education departments investigative authority includes the power to issue subpoenas to compel the attendance of school officers or other persons who they may deem necessary to examine as witnesses, and to compel the production of all books, records, vouchers, letters and papers, Rivera wrote.

But Hasan told PennLive that the references to state law in Riveras letter dont directly address this specific situation with electronic access.

Even Secretary Riveras letter confirms our view that the District is required to provide information to the auditors, but is silent as to any legal basis that requires the District to provide access to its confidential eFinancial system, he said. The District has asked the auditors to provide a legal basis which authorizes or obligates it to comply with this specific request. To date, the District has not received a response from the auditors and are seeking the advice of our solicitor.

The refusal to supply the original financial data comes amid a separate education department investigation into compliance issues, with Harrisburgs federal School Improvement Grant program. The state suspended a chunk of federal funds last month until it can review and approve how the Harrisburg School District was using the money.

The state also sent a letter to the district last year noting that Hasan did not have the proper qualifications to serve as Harrisburgs business manager and that the district needed to hire a full-time chief financial officer. But 10 months later, the district still hasnt hired a new business manager nor filled the long-vacant CFO position.

The states audit is the first of its kind under the administration of Gov. Tom Wolf, according to Eric Levis, an education department spokesman.

We were not notified

Several school board members were not provided a copy of the letter until the Chief Recovery Officer Janet Samuels emailed it to them Friday, about two hours before the letter was released by the education department to PennLive. The school board members are supposed to oversee the operations and approve the budget for the school district.

We were not notified in October about the request, said Board Member Carrie Fowler, and we did not know our business office refused to comply. We learned about it this morning from Dr. Janet Samuels.

It was unclear who provided the legal advice to Hasan that he did not have to comply with the auditors requests or how much that legal advice would cost the district in hourly billings. Hasan did not address those questions in his response to PennLive.

As a district in recovery, we should not be hiding our general ledger, or any operation functional from PDE, said Harrisburg resident Doug Thompson-Leader, who is running for a position on the school board, Instead of blocking PDE from helping our district, our interim business manager should be filing the first draft of our budget with the state instead of incurring fines as it would appear we are quite a bit late.

Thompson-Leader was referring to the fact that school districts are supposed to file draft budgets by Jan. 31 to be approved by the school board, but Harrisburg has not yet done so.

Jayne Buchwach, a member of a community group known as CATCH, said the school district needs to have a high standard of transparency and accountability.

The refusal of the Harrisburg School District administration to comply with a state agency directive is reckless and suspect, said Buchwach, who is also running for a school board seat. For far too long, Harrisburg has operated in secrecy and outright deception. It cannot continue to do so and expect anything but distrust and condemnation from citizens who demand better.

Editors Note: This article was updated with comments from Bilal Hasan.
Highmark this week laid off 239 employees, including 74 at its operation on Center Street in East Pennsboro Township in Cumberland County.

The employees who lost their jobs worked for HM Health Solutions, a Highmark unit that deals with information technology.

They had roles in platform and technology, portfolio management and customer service. Their jobs ended immediately, with some receiving severance packages, according to a written statement from Highmark. Some might be able to move into open positions within the company, Highmark said.

While this was a difficult decision, it was made with the best long-term interest of our employees and customers. It will position the company to continue its success in a very competitive market and advance our patient-centered mission in the most effective and efficient manner, the statement said.

Pittsburgh-based Highmark, which also owns a hospital system and assorted health care companies, employs about 43,000 people in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.

Its health insurance arm employs about 6,000. Following the layoffs of this week, HM Health Solutions employs about 3,200, which is more than in 2017, spokesman Leilyn Perri said.

Highmark in March laid off 49 people, including 19 at the East Pennsboro Township location.
Mayor Eric Papenfuse has ordered the flags at city hall will be flown at half-staff in honor of the Marines who have been killed in the line of duty.

The flags will be flown at half-staff until Sunday, according to a CrimeWatch post by the Harrisburg Bureau of Police.

On behalf of the city of Harrisburg and the Harrisburg Bureau of Police, we wish to extend our deepest condolences to the families of these fine soldiers that live in the city and within the region, the post reads.

Three U.S. Marines killed Monday in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb. Two of the three were deployed from a home station in Harrisburg.

One of the marines, Sgt. Ben Hines, was a graduate of Dallastown Area High School in York County.

For more coverage:
WILLIAMSPORT  Northumberland County has agreed to pay $363,400 to resolve a lawsuit in which the U.S. Department of Labor accused it of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by not properly calculating overtime pay for caseworkers.

Those 111 current and former employees will share $340,000 in back pay and liquidated damages. Each will receive damages in the amount of their back pay.

The county will pay the Labor Department $114,466 in each of three years to cover the wages, damages and interest plus a $20,000 civil penalty the third year.

Attorneys who represented the county in this matter recommended accepting the settlement, Commissioner Sam Schiccatano said.

The county had an exposure of more than $500,000 had the case gone to trial and it lost, added Commissioner Richard Shoch.

The suit sought damages equal to the lost wages from June 1, 2013, until 2016.

The county will have to find the money to pay the settlement because it is not covered by insurance and there is no money budgeted this year, according to the two commissioners who pointed out they rectified the pay issue after taking office in 2016.

The consent judgment filed Thursday in U.S. Middle District Court includes an injunction that requires the county to follow applicable law in paying employees, including time and a half for overtime.

The county also must keep adequate employee records and not retaliate against anyone who discloses alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The Labor Department suit, filed in 2016, accused the county of not properly calculating overtime pay for current and former social services caseworkers.

It claimed a 2015 investigation determined the county had failed since June 1, 2013, to include as it calculated the overtime rate the $325 or $350 lump sum paid weekly when a caseworker is required to be on standby. The higher amount comes into play when there is a holiday within the week.

When on standby, a caseworker is required to carry a pager, respond to telephone calls from clients, visit clients to address urgent care situations and complete paperwork.

A year ago, Judge Matthew W. Brann ruled in this case that the county failed to compensate on-call caseworkers for three county agencies for time spent on telephone calls and paperwork. He also found employee records were inadequate.

This was the third time the county had been warned it was in violation of overtime pay regulations.

It agreed in 2002 to pay back wages and following a 2011 investigation said it would comply with statutory and regulatory requirements.
A man and woman have been criminally charged after police said they sold the drugs that killed a 29-year-old man in York County last June.

Katherine C. Miller, 32, and Erick S. Mullins, 24, were both arraigned earlier this week on multiple felony charges, including drug delivery resulting in death, online court documents show.

Their charges stem from the June 21, death of Mark Grubb, 29, in Delta Borough, according to state police in York.

On that date, state police troopers were called to an apartment on the 300 block of Main Street in Delta Borough, where Grubb was found dead.

Police said they also found what appeared to be drugs and drug paraphernalia in the apartment.

During an investigation, police said they learned that Miller and Mullins had sold Grubb drugs and a used needle before his death.

Both Miller and Mullins were arrested earlier this week, police said.

Online court documents show that Miller faces felony charges of conspiracy, possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, drug delivery resulting in death, and criminal use of a communications facility.

Mullins faces felony charges of conspiracy, possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, drug delivery resulting in death and criminal use of a communications facility. He also faces misdemeanor charges of possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Both Miller and Mullins are scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing at 1:30 p.m. May 22.
The Jonas Brothers tried but their support couldnt help Penn State win Barstool Sports Best in Bar contest on Thursday evening.

The bracket-style contest came down to Penn States Champs bar in State College and East Carolinas Sup Dogs bar Greenville, North Carolina.

More than 41,000 votes were cast for for the final round, and the contest runners said Sup Dogs won by a little more than 400 votes.

Throughout the duration of the contest this week, Kevin, Nick and Joe Jonas who comprise the Jonas Brothers, have tweeted their support for Champs as it battled against Sup Dogs.

The group performed a surprise show at the bar on April 5.

Sup Dogs went into Thursday with a lead, and the contest runners tweeted that they had a lead of around 1000 votes until the last hour.

With 39,625 posts across 20,953 users (20,953 votes) @SupDogsECU/@barstoolecu held out a last-ditch effort by @ChampsPennState/@PSUBarstool and their 35,302 posts/20,534 users (20,534 votes). Sup Dogs had maintained an 1000 vote lead up until about the last hour. #BarstoolBestBar  5th Year (@5thYear) April 12, 2019

As the contest came to an end Thursday night, Joe Jonas tried to get fans to rally and win the contest.

Jonas alluded to something special being planned if Champs won.

Its the final countdown!!! @ChampsPennState #BarstoolBestBar #BarstoolChamps 30 mins left! POST YOUR OWN TWEET! HELP THEM WIN THIS! I GOT SOMETHING SPECIAL PLANNED IF THEY WIN!  J O E J O N A S (@joejonas) April 12, 2019

In the end, Penn State lost in what proved to be an incredibly close race, but Joe Jonas stuck by his Pennsylvania fans.
State regulators announced a plan Friday to begin testing some 300 drinking water supplies that are the likeliest to be contaminated with PFAS, a type of toxic chemical found in clothing, firefighting foam and nonstick cookware.

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have been linked to a variety of cancers, liver ailments and pregnancy complications. Despite those health risks, the federal Environmental Protection Agency does not formally regulate the man-made chemical and drinking water supplies are not routinely tested for it.

Fridays announcement marks one of the first steps toward the state Department of Environmental Protection acting to regulate the chemical.

DEP will not hesitate to step up when the federal government fails to, state Environmental Secretary Patrick McDonnell said, in a written statement.

Read the TAPPED OUT special investigation of drinking water.

Pennsylvania had already been monitoring 19 known contamination sources across the state, including the Harrisburg International Airport and the Letterkenny Army Depot in Chambersburg.

In March, a resident of Newberry Township in York County took the initiative to test their own tap water for the chemical.

That test returned combined PFAS/PFOA levels of 186 parts per trillion. Thats far beyond the 70 parts per trillion limit established in an EPA health advisory. Recent research, however, indicates that even much smaller concentrations than 70 parts per trillion can be dangerous.

Suez Water installed an additional treatment system, which are expected to be fully funfctional by Monday to address the issue. A spokesman told PennLive that the company plans to test its other water systems, including its facilities in Middletown near Harrisburg International Airport.

The map below shows the 19 monitoring sites and the community where a resident found elevated levels of the chemical. Click the pin for details about the site.

Erik Olsen, senior director of health and food at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said PFAS are so troubling because their chemical bonds dont break down in the environment, they are toxic to humans at very low levels and they spread quickly once theyre introduced into water.

They can cause really widespread contamination because its a toxic chemical that moves quickly and lasts forever, he said.

The DEP is still investigating the possible contamination in Newberry Township and has not yet pinpointed a source. However, the community is on the Susquehanna River, downstream from Harrisburg International Airport, which for decades housed a military base.

Olsen said its fairly common for communities downstream from a known source to see elevated PFAS levels in their drinking water. Thats happened in North Carolina and West Virginia, among other states.

The DEP plans to begin collecting data from roughly 300 at-risk water systems in May and will continue to do so over the course of the next year.

Those systems were identified based on their proximity to known or common sources of PFAS, including fire training sites, landfills, manufacturing facilities and military bases.

Pennsylvania would have to adopt a formal maximum contaminant level (MCL) in order to require all of Pennsylvanias 8,373 public water systems to test for PFAS chemicals. Private water well owners would have to test their own water.

The DEP has not identified which water systems it will be testing as part of this first phase but they include 145 individual wells in the south central region of the state and another 49 in the north central region.

Those systems will include a wide cross section, including both public and private wells, as well as large and small public water systems.

In 2012, the EPA collected samples from 175 systems across the state which helped identify potential sources of contamination. The test found elevated levels of PFAS in drinking water around the state, including--according to the DEP--at locations in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. But the EPA still hasnt moved to set formal regulations.

Gov. Tom Wolf established a PFAS Action Team late last year to begin moving toward state regulation.

Its next meeting will take place Monday at 6 p.m. at the Abington Senior High School at 900 Highland Avenue in Abington, Montgomery County.

The public can comment at the meeting or submit written comments via the DEPs eComment system. Those submitting written comments should look for the document title PFAS Public Input.

You can learn more about PFAS in this explainer video:

For more information about water contamination, read PennLives Tapped Out, an investigation of drinking water oversight in Pennsylvania.

Wallace McKelvey may be reached at wmckelvey@pennlive.com. Follow him on Twitter @wjmckelvey. Find PennLive on Facebook.
Few communities are strangers to religious strife but Pennsylvania, in particular, has of late been buffeted by a series of faith-based tragedies and controversies.

In October, Pittsburgh was site of one of the countrys most horrific anti-semitic acts of violence with the carnage at the Tree of Life synagogue, which left 11 dead, and scores more wounded.

A few months later, the Muslim community across the state joined in the worldwide mourning in the wake of the horror of the massacre at two mosques a world away in New Zealand.

And even as recent as a few weeks ago, a seemingly innocuous invocation offered up by a state legislator before a state House of Representatives session roiled the state in a contentious debate about separation of state and church, and religious intimidation.

All the while in the backdrop, the national debate over immigration, border control and refugees continues to color a conversation about tolerance and unity, and questions about how largely Christian-faith tenets square off with this national policy.

In response to the turmoil, faith leaders and their communities across the region have increasingly led the effort to abate what at times is a hateful and divisive rhetoric.

Earlier this week, faith and tolerance took center stage at two forums designed to promote and celebrate diversity in beliefs, unity and acceptance.

People in Harrisburg and the region are hungry for opportunities to sit together and to recognize and celebrate our diversity and our commonality, said Rabbi Eric Cytryn, of Harrisburgs Beth El Temple, which earlier in the week hosted a Freedom Forum ahead of Passover. The event was attended nearly 200 people, many of them representing a wide swath of faiths.

We are all created in Gods image. We all worship the same God, whatever we happen to call God. There is only one God, Cytryn said.

The seder coincided with a reader panel discussion hosted by PA Media Group at PennLives newsroom. The topic of that event, hosted by the news outlets opinion editor, Joyce Davis, centered around religious tolerance and understanding.

This is the best country in the world. The fairest country, but we can make this an even better place, said Samia Malik, a prominent representative of the Islamic community in Harrisburg, who participated in the forum.

A menorah is installed outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in preparation for a celebration service at sundown on the first night of Hanukkah, Sunday, Dec. 2, 2018 in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A gunman shot and killed 11 people while they worshipped Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018 at the temple. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)AP

A sold-out event, the Freedom Seder - entitled Welcoming the Stranger - was attended by a slew of faith-based leaders, and was co-sponsored by the Interdenominational Ministers Conference, the state Council of Churches, Market Square Presbyterian Church, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and the Cathedral Parish of St. Patrick.

The PennLive reader panel likewise was attended by members of the Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Baha'i Faith, as well as Buddhist and agnostics.

To be sure politics and its divisiveness underscored the discussion at both events.

The Rev. Thomas A. Sweet, of the Market Square Presbyterian Church in Harrisburg, explained that the theme of the seder resonated on a timely basis with the national discourse on immigration and refugees.

Many of the readings shared by the faith leaders evoked the central themes swirling around the debate of immigration and border control.

Indeed we all belong to God and keeping people out or away isnt in line with the intentions of God or any good religion, Sweet said.

Ayesha Ahmad, a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community, read several passages from the Koran evoking Muhammads teachings for how a person should treat a stranger.

The perspective on immigration is that you should always help your neighbor whether you know them or whether they are a stranger, said Ahmad, who, for instance, read Chapter 4 verse 37 of the Koran, calling the faithful to show kindness to parents, orphans, the needy, neighbor and the stranger.

She also shared the story of early Muslim immigrants fleeing persecution and given shelter, food and employment by an early Christian king.

Thats a love story of welcome and love, Ahmad said. Right away with the the stroke of brotherhood, he solved the problem of shelter, food and employment.

A vigil in memory of the 49 victims killed in two mosque shootings in New Zealand was held at the Pa. State Capitol, March 16, 2019. Vicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLiveVicki Vellios Briner | Special to PennLive

Members of the PennLive reader panel delved into far more piqued political discourse.

Corky Goldstein, an attorney, commented that anti-semitism and anti-Islamic rhetoric and actions seemed to have gotten worse in recent times.

He blames the Trump administration for reinvigorating the white nationalist movement.

Trump has brought people out of the shadows who generally wouldnt feel comfortable saying the things they are saying, Goldstein said. I m

worried about my children and grandchildren.

Azra Syed, who is Muslim, noted how religious intolerance had been a part of the fabric of the U.S. throughout history, but she agreed with Goldstein that the tenor had escalated in recent years.

When you have people in powerful places making statements such as Islam is a cancer, you cant expect anything better from the general public, she said.

The Rev. Rebecca Myers, of the Church of the Nativity & St. Stephen in Newport, explained that as a white faith leader, she had studied white supremacy against the Christian faith tradition to try to understand the intricacies of the current national discourse.

Unfortunately white supremacy has been closely aligned with Christianity, she said. I found it horrifying at times....Christianity was perverted to be oppressive and I have to understand that history so I dont keep replicating that pattern...thats not who Jesus Christ was.

Not everyone who attended the PennLive reader forum agreed that it was Christians to blame for hateful rhetoric.

Attorney Marc Scaringi, said that as a Christian, he was fearful every day of sending his children to school or entering a government building for fear of another Islamic extremist terrorist attack on America.

I and many people I know live in fear of another attack, he said. I leave here tonight with less hope than I entered tonight because I didnt hear any of my Muslim friends here condemn 9/11 or condemn other terrorist attacks as motivated by religious intolerance against Christian America.

Sweet, of Market Square Presbyterian, noted that such conversations are crucial if communities are going to overcome religious strife and violence.

The world seems like its getting smaller, he said. We have greater access to one another. Neighborhoods, cities are changing in many respects and people are more enlightened and seeing that we have more in common than we have in conflict. That hat we come from one source. Its not just learning to live together, its enjoying to live together that has to happen for a peaceful world.

This story was updated to correct Corky Goldsteins status as an attorney.
WILLIAMSPORT  A Sunbury man has been accused of taking pictures of a naked 6-year-old girl and sharing them on the Internet.

Christopher Suarez, 32, was indicted Thursday in U.S. Middle District Court on charges of production of child pornography and sexual exploitation of minors.

The allegations are similar to those iPennsylvania charges of aggravated indecent assault of a child, photographing a child sex act and corruption of a minor on which he was arrested March 6 and committed to the Northumberland County Prison in lieu of $150,000 bail.

The federal charges allege he induced a minor to engage in sexually explicit conduct and knowingly distributed a video of it.

The government is seeking forfeiture of an IPhone and any videos related to the criminal charges.

The affidavit in the state charges states Suarez admitted he possessed child pornography and recorded videos of himself touching the girls genitals.

He is alleged to have told investigators he had four encounters with the victim, the first two of which involved taking videos of her while she was naked.

He touched her private parts the other two times and videoed himself doing so on one occasion, the affidavit states. He admitted sending the video to adult males via the Internet, the charges state.

The state charges indicate the activity began Sept. 1 while the federal counts list dates of Oct. 8 and 9.

Suarez is awaiting arraignment in federal court and a preliminary hearing on the state charges.
A U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging report says older Americans lose about $2.9 billion a year to financial exploitation schemes and scams.

Senior citizens often fall for things like fake family members asking for money, threats of arrest or computer tech support promises that lead to loss of information, the report says.

Here are the top 10:

10. Identity Theft

Identity thieves do just that  steal someone elses identity, usually to drain bank accounts, make unauthorized credit card charges or defraud the government.

Fraudsters can also use stolen personal information, including Social Security numbers, to commit tax fraud or to fraudulently apply for jobs and earn wages.

The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging report indicates the Federal Trade Commission says identity theft was the second-most common type of consumer complaint in 2017, with a total of 371,061 complaints.

Tips to Help Secure Your Identity

9. Impending Lawsuit Scams

In impending lawsuit scams, consumers receive calls from individuals claiming to be from local, state or federal law enforcement agencies. Consumers are told that there is a warrant out for their arrest, and unless the person agrees to pay a fine, they will be arrested.

Often times, the caller says the arrest warrant was issued for failing to report for jury duty," according to the report. To give the calls more credibility, scammers will often spoof their call so caller-ID appears to show that the call is coming from a local sheriffs or police department.

The caller will also try to impose a deadline in which police will come for them unless they pay to resolve the issue.

8. Social Security Impersonation Scams

A new scam to make the top 10 list in 2018, individuals will call claiming to represent the Social Security Administration.

Scammers are out to do so Social Security numbers and will go to great lengths to obtain it, according to the report. Scammers will try to get your information by offering to help complete a disability application, apply for a piece of medical equipment, or obtain a new Medicare card.

The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging provided the following tips to help citizens secure their identity.

7. Romance Scams

While online dating services have become an increasingly popular way to potentially meet a spouse, so too is it a way for scammers to find their next mark.

In these instances, scammers will contact people through dating sites, chatrooms, social media or email. Sometimes, they will go so far as to call and chat on the phone to prove they are real.

Inevitably, con artists in these scams will ask their victims for money for a variety of things, according to the report. Often, con artists will ask for travel expenses so they can visit the victims in the United States. In other cases, they claim to need money for medical emergencies, hotel expenses, hospital bills for a child or relative, visas or other official documents, or losses from a temporary financial setback.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations Internet Crime Complaint Center received 15,372 complaints about romance scams that cost victims $211.4 million.

6. Grandparent Scams

As the title suggests, grandparent scams involve individuals who claim to be someones grandchild or claim to be holding someones grandchild.

The caller will claim the grandchild is in trouble and needs money to help with an emergency, such as getting out a jail, paying a hospital bill, or leaving a foreign country. After payment, the fraudster usually calls the person back, claiming there where is another legal fee.

"Scammers play on victims emotions and trick concerned grandparents into wiring money to them, according to the report. "

The Federal Trade Commission received 18,912 complaints of these schemes in 2017, and more than $42 million in losses from people who fell victim to them.

The U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging released findings on the top scams in the U.S., as well as Pennsylvania.

5. Elder Financial Abuse

Financial exploitation of older people is the illegal or improper use of their money, property or assets.

Older Americans are particularly vulnerable to financial exploitation because financial decision-making ability can decrease with age, according to the report. Perpetrators include family members, paid homecare workers, those with fiduciary responsibilities (such as financial advisers or legal guardians), or strangers who defraud older adults through mail, telephone, or Internet scams.

4. Computer Tech Support Scams

The Aging Committee started seeing a lot of computer tech support scams in 2015.

The basic scam involves con artists trying to gain the victims trust by pretending to be associated with a well-known technology company, such as Microsoft, Apple or Dell, according to the report. They then falsely claim that the victims computers have been infected with a virus. Con artists convince victims to give them remote access to their computers, personal information, and credit card and bank account number so that victims can be billed for fraudulent services to fix the virus."

Microsoft reported receiving more than 180,000 consumer complaints of fraud between May 2014 and October 2015, according to the report. The company estimates that 3.3 million Americans are duped by these scams with losses up about $1.5 billion per year.

3. Sweepstakes/Lottery Scams

Senior citizens who believe they won some sort of lottery or contest are continuously falling victims to these sort of scams.

In this scam, fraudsters generally contact victims by phone or through the mail to tell them that they have won or have been entered to win a prize, according to the report. Scammers then require the victims to pay a fee to either collect their supposed winnings or improve their odds of winning the prize.

The Federal Trade Commission found the number of sweepstakes scams increased by 45.8 percent between 2013 and 2017.

Lebanon Daily News reported about one of these scams in 2017, where an 82-year-old man lost $30,000 after paying taxes for $10.5 million he was told he won from Publishers Clearing House.

Another common scam is the Jamaican Lottery Scam. At its peak, callers from the country would make about 30,000 calls day to steal about $300 million a year from tens of thousands of people, according to the report.

Scammers tell victims that they have won the Jamaican lottery or a brand new car, and that in order for their winnings to be delivered, they must first wire a few hundred dollars to cover processing fees and taxes, according to the report. Of course, no such winnings are ever delivered, and the winners get nothing but more phone calls, sometimes 50 to 100 calls per day, from scammers demanding additional money.

2. Robocalls and Unsolicited Phone Calls

Despite Congress creating the national Do-Not-Call registry in 2003, telemarketers and scammers persist in pestering people.

The Federal Communications Commission says there are 2.4 billion robocalls made every month, according to the report. In 2018, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 3.8 million robocall complaints.

Robocalls help facilitate contact between scammers and potential victims, according to the report. Robocalls also often originate overseas. Robodialers can be used to distribute prerecorded messages or to connect the person who answers the call with a live person."

Callers will also use a fake caller ID to trick people and get them to answer the phone.

The Federal Communications Commission has published tips to help consumers avoid being duped by caller-ID spoofing.

1. IRS Impersonation Scams

The Treasure Inspector General for Tax Administration has called the IRS impersonation scam the largest, most pervasive impersonation scam in the history of the IRS.

More than 2.4 million Americans have been targeted by scammers impersonating IRS officials, according to the agency. More than 14,700 have lost a total of more than $72.8 million as a result of the scam. At the peak of the scam, there were between 20,000 and 40,000 people submitting complaints about the scam weekly.

While there are multiple variations of the IRS impersonation scam, criminals generally accuse victims of owing back taxes and penalties, according to the report. They then threaten retaliation, such as home foreclosure, arrest, and, in some cases, deportation if immediate payment is not made by certified check, credit card, electronic wire transfer, prepaid debit card or gift card.

Once a person makes an initial payment, they will often be told by the scammer that further review has revealed another discrepancy, and another payment is necessary.
After my first meeting with Doug Hollis in 1994, I walked away shaking my head.

Here was this man, once a ghetto kid from Philadelphia, who had killed someone in a purse-snatching in 1975. At 17, he had been sentenced to life in prison.

When I met him almost 20 years later, he had virtually no hope of leaving prison alive, and yet, there he was learning, studying, improving, enrolling in every course the prison offered, extending a helping hand to younger inmates.

He was a role model, the inmate that prison staff held up as a positive example.

Sure, I admired him. But, truth be told, a small part of me wondered why he tilted at windmills.

I saw Doug again the other day, sitting in his office on North Front Street with his co-workers and Vladimir R. Beaufils, his boss.

When I confessed how Id felt so long ago, Beaufils nicely summed up the long years Doug had spent in prison: He worked as if he were getting out when there was no hope of getting out.

Because life means life in Pennsylvania, commutation has been the only glimmer of hope. It is, at best, a drawn-out, frustrating process with very little chance of succeeding. In fact, one can count on one hand the number of commutations signed by any recent governor.

The prison door opened for Doug two years ago not by commutation, but through a U.S. Supreme Court decision that did away with mandatory life sentences for juveniles. A second ruling made the decision retroactive, and juvenile lifers were resentenced. For Doug, that brought a sentence of 30 years. Since he had served 42 years, he was released from SCI Mahanoy, although he will remain on parole for the rest of his life.

After his release, he went to work in a factory and set about adjusting to life with the help of a mentor at Sound Community Solutions, the nonprofit Beaufils runs. SCS, with contracts to work with recently released prisoners in numerous counties, has a thick menu of offerings from employment training to anger management.

People coming out of prison often have numerous issues. They have old friends they must avoid, and others, often family, with whom they wish to reconnect. Often they dont have a strong sense of who they are or know whom they can trust. Many need help with housing or finding jobs. Often they come from dysfunctional backgrounds and have to battle drug and alcohol issues.

Mentors aim to provide the help they need, offer a shoulder they can lean on and navigate a world that has changed while they were in prison.

Its brochure promises, We will meet you where you are. Our goal is to leave you at a better place than where you were when we met.

After years of improving himself in prison, Doug was in a pretty good place when he met SCS. He had his wife, Dianna, their home in Millersburg and all that education he had piled on in prison.

Once he completed its program, SCS offered Doug a job as a mentor. He is now, he said, officially blessed.

In many ways, his work with SCS is not unlike what Doug had done in prison. There, he was what inmates call an old head, a fellow whose years behind bars enabled him to offer advice to younger inmates.

Long ago, Doug told me: If prison is to be your home, it makes sense to create the best atmosphere possible while making yourself the best that you can be.

He believed then and believes now that theres positive in each and every one of us. You have to invest in you in a positive way.

This is the message he shares with those he mentors.

Doug remains deeply religious and credits his faith and Dianna, who married him 30-plus years ago in prison, for much of his success and the determination to keep tilting at those windmills.

There are so many people who invested in me, he said. I view where I am as a blessing from God.

NANCY ESHELMAN: columnist1@verizon.net
A 52-year-old grandfather walked into a Pittsburgh school last week, pulled out his belt and started beating his grandson. The eight-year-old must have been acting pretty badly, or the teacher would not have had to summon his grandfather to the school.

No worries, though. Grandpa took control of the situation. After about a dozen or so licks, he drags the boy out of the classroom, down the hall and a down a full flight of stairs.

That, to him, was discipline. And its not stretching the truth to say a lot of people agree with him, even in 2019.

Theres still significant debate in our country and in our Commonwealth about whether kids should be spanked.

Adrian Peterson, who rushed for more than 1,000 yards in 2018, signed a two-year deal worth up to $8 million to remain in Washington, according to a report.

Remember the hoopla when Minnesota Vikings halfback Adrian Peterson was accused of abusing his four-year-old son for taking a switch to his little legs after he had been a bad boy?

Grandpa also said he was aiming for his childs legs, but the rest of his body somehow ended up bruised and bloody.

Some parents intend to hurt their children when they beat them. Thats clearly child abuse. Others intend to help them, firmly believing spare the rod, spoil the child.

Whether they intend to hurt them or nurture them, thousands of children each year end up bloody and bruised some suffering broken bones, lacerated skulls and even internal bleeding  inflicted by loving parents.

Experts will confirm what we all know: many parents take a stick, belt or fist to their kids when theyre angry. They slap their beloved child in the face or throw it against the wall when theyre at the end of their rope . . . when theyre out of control and ready to, well, hurt somebody.

According to a recent poll conducted by the University of Chicagos National Opinion Research Center, 76 percent of men and 66 percent of women ages 18 to 65 agreed that a child sometimes should be spanked.

Hitting a child is not illegal in any state, although it is in at least one country  Scotland. Like in Pennsylvania, laws in many states focus on the intent and the injuries that result from beatings.

In Pennsylvania, parents and guardians can hit, push, even punch their children as long as it is not intended to cause "serious injury, disfigurement, extreme pain or emotional distress." But what happens when there is no intent to harm, but a child ends up in the emergency room or worse?

Parents who hit children when they are angry and out of control risk inflicting serious injury upon little ones they dearly love.

The real question is  why take the risk? Why risk killing your own child because you thought you would give him a good spanking, but lost control and bashed his head against the wall?

We dont know Grandpas intent, but he was arrested and jailed on charges of aggravated assault, simple assault and endangering the welfare of a child.

Volunteers and officials placed blue flags around the Capitol building to start off Child Abuse Prevention Month. Each blue flag represents a child who was abused in 2017.

Even if you dont kill your child, experts say youre doing other damage that will have long-lasting repercussion.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and many other child welfare organizations oppose any form or corporal punishment. After decades of studying, these doctors have concluded hitting children does more harm than good.

Corporal punishment can bring on a vicious cycle of escalating poor behavior and more severe punishment., the organization concluded in its 2018 policy report, Effective Discipline to Raise Healthy Children.

A large national cohort study conducted in the 20 largest U.S. cities noted that children who were spanked more than twice a month were more aggressive at subsequent surveys, the AAP states. Thus, each negative interaction reinforced previous negative interactions as part of a complex negative spiral.

Children who are constantly spanked become more aggressive, suffer increased mental health disorders, as well as behavioral problems, many experts warn.

Plus, children who live in constant fear of being hit suffer more health issues brought on by stress and fear, AAP says.

Petersons life and career were significantly impacted by spanking his child. He pled no contest to reckless assault, a lesser charge than child abuse, but still faced probation for two years. He also was fined $4000 and performed 80 hours of community service.

Did any of that change his mind about spanking? Heres what Peterson told the Bleacher Report only a few months ago:

I didn't let that change me . . . I had to discipline my son and spank him the other day with a belt.

Peterson and Grandpa aside, the question remains: are the perceived benefits of spanking really worth jail, injury and death? Is spanking really worth the risk of tragedy for both parent and child?
When religious rights and gay rights conflict, which should give way? Free expression or equal protection?

The Star Barn kerfufflea wedding-venue owner permitting only traditional marriages on his propertyis just the latest manifestation of this question. Courts around the country and indeed around the world have wrestled with it.

Results vary. The New Mexico Supreme Court, for example, compelled a Christian photographer to take pictures at same-sex ceremonies. An Oregon court went further, fining a bakery $135,000 for declining a wedding cake request and slapping a gag order on its owners, prohibiting them from speaking publicly about their unwillingness to participate in same-sex weddings.

Shortly thereafter, the business closed. In Washington State, a 75-year-old florist is currently facing the loss of her business and her home for the same kind of conscientious objection. Sadder still is that the plaintiff is a longtime friend whom the florist had served for years without incident.

On the flip side, a Kentucky tee-shirt maker successfully defended his decision not to outfit a gay pride parade. A baker in Ireland also won in court after refusing to emblazon a cake with Support Gay Marriage.

What does all that mean for The Star Barn?

Well, this is not evangelical Kentucky. Nor is it the Christocentric Emerald Isle. The Star Barn may not fare so well in pale-blue Pennsylvania, in or out of court.

We got a hint of that recently in Bloomsburg when the Christian owner of a bridal shop declined to sell wedding dresses to same-sex couples. With the Town Council poised to strong-arm her into compliance, and with mounting threats to burn down her business and shoot her in the head, she shuttered the place.

Who could blame her? She might as well live in Pyongyang.

The U.S. Supreme Court could have settled the issue in the much-anticipated Masterpiece Cakeshop case last term, but instead they punted, simply instructing lower courts to treat religious belief with the same respect as any other beliefs. They drew no legal lines and as such, erased no battle lines.

So whats a Commonwealth Christian capitalist to do?

For starters, dont fall into the trap that The Star Barn just did. Its the same trap that ensnared the photographer and the florist and the dressmaker.

Even if you think the Constitution says you should win, the moment you deny service, you lose. Relentless, well-funded advocacy groups and some willing accomplices in the media and government are eager to pounce on all things religious. Under pressure, customers may withdraw from you, as is happening with The Star Barn.

Vigilantes may begin posting bogus reviews about you on Yelp and Google, as is happening with The Star Barn. Anonymous thugs may begin to threaten you and your family, and lawyers from both sides will start knocking on your door.

Look it up for yourself. The script is the same almost every time.

Let me suggest a better way for you believers in business: Never deny service to anyone. Always, always, always say youll take the job  under one condition. Make it clear up frontideally on your website and in your other promotional materialsthat youll donate all the proceeds of such transactions to organizations that are fighting to restore traditional marriage.

Theres not even a whiff of illegality in that. But please hear me clearly. Im not advocating compromise; Im advocating cunning.

Chances are, if you create this disclaimer, youll avoid the dilemma. Once youve made your donation policy clear, customers who dont like the policy immediately find the door. Actually, if youre overt enough about it online, they never make it in the door. Theyll patronize one of their many other options instead.

Someday the U.S. Supreme Court may resolve this. Pundits think it might happen with the florist case. Well see. But rather than rely on the Justices direction, Christian business owners need to rely on Jesus direction to be shrewd as serpents and as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16).

Turn the dilemma on its head: Say yes to the business youll never have to take.

After all, no one wants to violate his or her conscience.

Michael Zigarelli is a resident of Mechanicsburg and a business professor at Messiah College.
On a Saturday night in October, 1973, President Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox who was closing in on the misdeeds of Watergate. Attorney General Elliott Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resigned in protest.

Cox spoke for all three of them when he said: Whether ours shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now up to the Congress and the American people.

While President Trump stopped short of firing Special Prosecutor Bob Mueller, it was not for lack of trying. He made his feelings known in countless tweets and in mutterings to White House and Justice personnel.

In the course of the investigation, Trump, like Nixon, did everything he could to stymie Muellers efforts. He stirred up his base with countless charges of a witch hunt, he fired his FBI Director and said on national TV that it was because of the Russia thing.

He publicly humiliated his own Attorney General until Jeff Sessions left with his tail between his legs. Then, upon release of the report, the President proceeded to take a victory lap based on an utterly false interpretation of what the report said.

The President now comes before the American people with his new, hand-picked Attorney General.

At first blush, William Barr seems to be an appropriate choice. His credentials are strong. He served several Presidents and enjoyed a reputation as a straight shooter.

Recent developments say otherwise.

Barr essentially auditioned for the position of Attorney General with a 19-page memo proclaiming that a President could not be indicted for obstruction of justice. In other words, he declared his bias against any alternate recommendation by Mueller before he was even confirmed.

Then, upon release of the Mueller report, Barr rushed out a 4-page summary of the 2-year, 400-page report designed to give the President his talking point of no collusion.

On the issue of obstruction, Barr substituted his own get out of jail free card despite the fact that Mueller clearly stated that he could not exonerate the President on that issue.

The Mueller team has complained about the limited amount of information that was released and the opportunity for false narrative that it handed to the President. Instead of taking a principled position on getting the full array of information to Congress and the American people, the Attorney General told the President what he wanted to hear.

Cox, Richardson, and Ruckelshaus sacrificed their careers rather than cut those corners.

But we are not done here. For Barr, there is the all-important matter of what happens next. Barr can redeem himself by releasing an un-redacted Mueller report to Congress. Yes, there are some grand jury and national security excisions that must be made. But, for the most part, the American public needs to know just what Mueller found out in his two-year investigation.

This is where Barr seems to be coming up short. In testimony before Congress, he has outlined four different categories of redactions that could result in a Sharpee festival of missing pages.

In addition, he has opined, without proof, that the FBI may have illegally spied in the 2016 elections and that an Inspector Generals review is underway. The President seized on this new development and took it to Trumpian levels.

The Russia probe, says Trump, was started illegally. Everything about it was crooked.

The New York Times brings this back to reality:

Current and former law enforcement officials have defended their handling of the Russia investigation, saying it was carefully handled based on available evidence, and they have firmly denied engaging in political spying. Those current and former officials have argued they were obligated to investigate allegations that Trump associates might be conspiring with Russians to interfere in the election.

Claiming that our own FBI illegally spied on their candidate may be music to the ears of the MAGA-hatters but it is exactly the wrong position for the nations top law enforcement official to take. Mr. Barr needs to be reminded that he is the peoples lawyer; not the Presidents defender. Laurence Tribe put it more succinctly: Barr has become a miserable excuse for a public servant. A pathetic porcine puppet for a puerile President.

George Santayana wrote, Those who cant remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Mr. Barr has one more chance to show that he is up to the ethical and historical demands of his office.

Release the Mueller report as completely as possible. Let it speak for itself.

Mark S. Singel served as the 27th lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, alongside Gov. Bob Casey. He was acting governor from June 14 to Dec. 13, 1993, when Casey became ill. This column serves as the liberal counterpart to Charlie Gerow as part of the Donkey & Elephants series of contrasting opinions.
DNR, rescue workers recover elk carcasses from Otsego County lake

Conservation officers and ice rescue personnel Wednesday worked to recover a dozen elk that died after falling through the ice of a private lake.
Boy Swallows Universe

By Trent Dalton

Harper. 464 pp. $26.99

Reviewed by Ellen Morton

Set in Australia, Boy Swallows Universe is a sprawling novel about a thoughtful boys premature journey into manhood. At age 12, Eli Bell has grasped the last idyllic strands of innocence. He is catapulted reluctantly out of his youth after he discovers the depth of his mom and stepdads involvement with local drug traffickers. The only option for Eli and his brother, August, is to move in with their estranged father, an alcoholic whose mind operates with as much order and predictability as the insides of our lounge room vinyl beanbag.

As a narrator, Eli is a casual philosopher who takes in the glory and consequence of the smallest quotidian details, and his acute observations are often refracted through his singular lens of farce and surrealism. When witnessing a neighborhood bully stab a local priests car with a samurai sword, for example, he sees an old warrior about to ritually end the life of his best friend, or his favourite Australian suburban getabout motorcar.

Any preteen might get up to such preposterous mischief, but Elis high jinks have much higher stakes and potentially catastrophic consequences. His first brush with the heroin trade sets him on an inescapable path, a nightmare that follows him to the edge of adulthood. As he turns 18, he dreams of becoming a journalist, he falls in love, he struggles to understand what it is to be a good man, and still the monsters of Elis childhood haunt him.

Eli keeps his sense of humor, but the years of his adolescence pass, and he gets battered by life and circumstance; inevitably, some of his fanciful whimsy gives way to anger and a bleak pragmatism. His loss of innocence comes in narrative sucker punches, plot turns that evoke stomach-clenching terror and sickening grief. What makes these experiences so affecting is they happen to Eli and August, two immensely and immediately lovable characters. Almost from the first page, Elis lolloping descriptions reveal each brothers stark individuality, but also a compelling fraternal devotion and understanding. They remain each others only constants throughout a young adulthood littered with traumas large and small.

Boy Swallows Universe hypnotizes you with wonder and then hammers you with heartbreak. The events of Elis life are often fatal and tragic, but fate and tragedy do not overpower the story. Elis remarkably poetic voice and his astonishingly open heart take the day. They enable him to carve out the best of whats possible from the worst of what is, which is the miracle that makes this novel marvelous.

Ellen Morton is a writer in Los Angeles. She wrote this review for the Washington Post.
The Other Americans

By Laila Lalami

Pantheon. 301 pp. $25.95.

Reviewed by Karen R. Long

Laila Lalami sets her fourth novel, The Other Americans, in a contemporary United States, a big departure for an artist who dazzled critics most recently by conjuring the voice of a 16th-century enslaved Moroccan, thought to be the first black explorer of the New World. The Moors Account deserved its berth as a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2015. The new story taps an altogether different literary vein: the genre in which a dead body drops on the first page.

The body belongs to Driss Guerraoui, 61, a Moroccan immigrant to California, killed by a speeding car on an early spring night in the Mojave Desert.

Whenever I think about that moment, these two contradictory images come to me: my father struggling for breath on the cracked asphalt, and me drinking champagne with my roommate Margo, begins narrator Nora, the daughter toasting her friend in an Oakland bistro when she receives the catastrophic news.

Nora is one of a Greek chorus of characters who take turns narrating this elegant, scalloping mystery. One voice belongs to Jeremy Gorecki, a veteran of the Iraq war nursing an old crush on Nora who hears of the hit-and-run as he reports to work as a deputy sheriff; another to Efrain Aceves, an undocumented laborer who pauses to fix his bicycle chain and sees the victim fall.

The widow Maryam has her piece, and the deceased himself speaks four times: to recall his departure with Maryam from the 1981 political unrest in Casablanca; to remember defending Nora from a pious 11-year-old boy who scolded for her uncovered teenage knees; to relate the social intricacies of running his desert town diner; and poignantly to narrate his last hours, proudly overseeing the installation of a new, better restaurant sign, with a lighted arrow proclaiming The Pantry.

The aging proprietor of an adjacent bowling alley continuously beefs with the Guerraouis over parking, and Driss pauses to ask an almost biblical question: What could I do with a neighbor like that? How could I prevent him from finding fault when fault was all he was looking for?

This deft, direct, and absorbing story benefits from the craft Lalami brings to the English language; a reader senses the scholar who earned a doctorate in linguistics at the University of Southern California. The Other Americans considers quotidian grievances and resentment, but it is blessedly free of the finger-wagging that creeps into too much contemporary immigrant fiction, such as Hala Alyans Salt Houses or Dina Nayeris Refuge.

Instead, Lalami brings subtlety to the interior lives of her two law enforcement narrators, Jeremy and police detective Erika Coleman, a transplant from Washington whose husband spouts bromides and whose lonely son keeps her distracted. Colemans only physical clue comes from three microscopic silver paint chips in the road. But the mystery will turn on her ability to construct one scenario, one story, and then pivot to another.

Meanwhile, Lalamis storytelling delivers quiet pleasure and glints of humor. Little Nora remembers: We had last names that the teacher always shortened to an initial. And grown Nora dodges Maryam asking, Are you wearing that to dinner? White isnt a good color on you, you know, it makes you look darker.

The novel isnt perfect. A few sentences veer into melodrama, and the ending lands a bit pat. But this haunting story also puts the reader in mind of Toni Morrisons prescient observation: Much of the alarm hovering at the borders, the gates, is stoked, it seems to me, by ... an uneasy relationship with our own foreignness, our own rapidly disintegrating sense of belonging.

This review originally appeared in Newsday.
Women Talking

By Miriam Toews

Bloomsbury. 240 pp. $24

Reviewed by Ron Charles

The true crime at the center of Miriam Toews novel is unspeakable. It sounds like something from the Middle Ages or a dystopia by Margaret Atwood.

But, in fact, these horrors took place only a decade ago in the Manitoba Mennonite colony in Bolivia. For several years, more than 100 women and girls woke up in the morning bruised and sore, lying in their own blood. Strictly isolated in this patriarchal religious community, the women were told they must be imagining things or that evil spirits were punishing them for their sins. But finally the truth came out: At least eight men had been using a veterinary sedative intended for cows to knock out whole families and then rape the women and girls  some as young as 3 years old.

The leaders of the Manitoba colony intended at first to handle this horrendous crime themselves, but the Bolivian government eventually became involved, and the rapists were sentenced to 25 years in prison.

Toews brings an unusual perspective to her fictional treatment of this atrocity. A Canadian author, she was raised by Mennonites, an experience that informed her brilliant 2004 novel, A Complicated Kindness. Although she has long since left the church, she understands the contours of the Mennonites exceptionally private faith, and she also knows the ills that can fester in such hermetically sealed communities.

But Toews has no interest in exploiting this crime for dramatic purposes. Crucially, Women Talking opens after the attacks have been exposed and outside authorities have become involved. The entire novel takes place during a brief two-day window when the leaders of the colony have taken their animals into town to raise money to bail out the rapists, whom they insist on referring to as unwelcome visitors. During this period, eight women gather in a hayloft to decide what they should do next. They are all victims  and mothers or daughters of victims  and they are all related in some way to the men who violated them.

The communitys leader has decreed that the women must forgive their attackers or forfeit their own salvation. For people who take religious authority and spiritual salvation seriously, this is a formidable challenge, which Toews conveys with all due solemnity. In the opening pages of the novel, her eight female characters have arrived at three options:

1. Do Nothing.

2. Stay and Fight.

3. Leave.

Of course, each of these choices is dangerous, as any victim of sexual assault knows, but the situation is particularly fraught for these women, who are illiterate, possess no property, and have no knowledge of the world outside their community. They know only farming and what they have been told is in the Bible. Is that enough to determine how they should respond to this extraordinary situation? They have roughly 24 hours before the men return and block their escape.

This is fiction as deliberation, and yet it feels packed with drama  and a deeply sympathetic understanding of the way women talk, a subject that has drawn the attention of scholars as diverse as Luce Irigaray and Deborah Tannen. We must love, one of the women insists, but how can that imperative be fulfilled in the face of such abuse?

Yes, these eight brave women disagree, even caustically sometimes, but they also listen and forgive and move on as they constantly circle around the question at hand, define their terms, and challenge their assumptions. Sitting in a barn as the light fades, they have taken on nothing less than deconstructing the patriarchal strictures of their church while somehow retaining their faith. It is literally a matter of life and death and afterlife.

As their conversation evolves, we get to know these eight women, particularly Salome, who announces she might shoot each man in the heart and bury them in a pit. That response is understandable but anathema to these pacifists, particularly Salomes sister, Ona, an otherworldly young woman ignored and dismissed for her strange personality. Ona challenges others in the group to create a revolutionary manifesto to lead them forward toward a new religion, extrapolated from the old but focused on love. To her peers, such a proposal sounds foolhardy or worse. Ona is thought to have lost her fear  which is akin, for colonists, to having lost ones moral compass and then transformed into a demon.

Though Toews remains frustratingly unknown in the United States, she has long been one of my favorite contemporary authors. The compressed structure of Women Talking makes it unlike her earlier novels, but once again she draws us into the lives of obscure people and makes their survival feel as crucial and precarious as our own.

Ron Charles reviews books for the Washington Post.
This image released by Lucasfilm shows Daisy Ridley as Rey in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi." The Skywalker saga may be coming to an end this December as the latest Star Wars trilogy finishes, but 8 months out from its release fans still know precious little about what director J.J. Abrams and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy have in store for Episode IX," which opens nationwide on Dec. 20. Read more

(Bloomberg)  Walt Disney Co. released a trailer and the name for its latest Star Wars film, aiming to reignite excitement for a franchise thats been showing signs of strain.

The movie  the ninth installment in the so-called Skywalker saga  is called Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

It will be the last Star Wars film for a while, Disney Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger said Thursday. The company plans to take a hiatus after the movies December release, he said.

We have not announced any specific plans for movies thereafter, Iger told Emily Chang on Bloomberg Television. There are movies in development, but we have not announced them.

Last years Solo: A Star Wars Story  a stand-alone film that wasnt part of the saga  was the lowest-grossing film in the four-decade history of the franchise. Star Wars toy sales also have suffered. They fell in 2018 for the second year in a row, according to NPD.

The upcoming film is slated for Dec. 20. Its the fifth Star Wars movie that Disney has released since acquiring Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4 billion in 2012.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nick Turner in Los Angeles at nturner7@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net

2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Lily Collins plays Fantine, a young woman who is abandoned by her lover and must make her way with her daughter, in the "Masterpiece" production of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," premiering Sunday. Read more

Game of Thrones. Maybe youve heard of this show? Its back for one final, six-episode season. 9 p.m. Sunday, April 14, HBO.

Les Miserables on Masterpiece. Theres more than one epic costume drama starting this weekend. If youve experienced Victor Hugos story only through the musical, you may be surprised by how much more of it there is when no one stops to sing. Dominic West stars as Jean Valjean, David Oyelowo as Inspector Javert, and Lily Collins as Fantine. 9 p.m. Sundays, April 14-May 19, WHYY12.

Frontline: Marcos Doesnt Live Here Anymore. David Sutherland (The Farmers Wife, Country Boys) directs this joint presentation with Independent Lens and Voces about Marine Corps veteran Elizabeth Perezs efforts to bring her family back together after the deportation of her husband to Mexico. 9 p.m. Monday, April 15, WHYY12.

Bless This Mess. More than 50 years after the debut of Green Acres, we get another comedy about city folk who think they can farm. This one, which stars Dax Shepard (Parenthood) and Lake Bell as New Yorkers who leave the rat race behind for a crumbling farmhouse in Nebraska, is about as subtle as a cow plop. But I like the cast, which also includes Pam Grier and Ed Begley Jr., and I want to believe it will get smarter. It wouldnt take much. 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 16, ABC.

There She Goes. David Tennant and Jessica Hynes play the parents of a daughter with developmental disabilities in a sharply executed comedy making its U.S. debut on the British-focused streaming service. Its based on the experiences of the shows creator, Shaun Pye, whose daughter has a so-far-unclassified chromosomal disorder. Lets just say it doesnt paint him as any kind of hero. Tuesday, April 16, BritBox.

Bosch. Phillys Titus Welliver returns for a fifth season as Michael Connellys iconic LAPD detective, with the story picking up 15 months after the events of the last, and Bosch working undercover. Friday, April 19, Amazon.

Ramy. Ramy Youssef cocreated and stars in this new streaming comedy about a young Muslim man living in New Jersey, navigating a secular world while trying to remain true to his faith. Friday, April 19, Hulu.
Messina Social Club, a gathering place and club for Italian immigrants since 1908 in Passyunk Square, is being revived this spring for a contemporary crowd.

Chef Jason Cichonski and Ampere Capital Group are behind the project, which has some elements common to the nearby Palizzi Social Club, which chef Joey Baldino revived in 2017.

That is, Messina will be open to members only and will honor the club charter, as a beneficial organization. But although Palizzi has cracked open its membership rolls from time to time to a wider potential audience, Cichonski plans to keep Messinas roster close to the vest. Prospective members have to be nominated by a member, and the website is password-protected. We want this to trickle through the grapevine, Cichonski said. We want to build a community.

Cichonski says the clubhouse, which needed extensive remodeling (unlike Palizzi, which was gently refurbished), will get a new look that he calls '50s, punk rock Parisian library. Kelly Fox, who works for Ampere Capital Group, is designing. Her work includes Attico in Center City, Liberty Kitchen in Kensington, Over Easy Breakfast Club in Fishtown.

Cichonski got to the property, at 1533 S. 10th St., while searching for a home for his Little Noodle Pasta Co. as he was closing his Queen Village restaurant, Ela. He met the owner but quickly determined that it was not the right location. But Cichonski learned that the spot was a club, with a club liquor license and saw the potential.

Cichonski is taking his time with the menu, which he said would embrace immigrant cuisines from all over the world. On a personal note, he promises pierogis.

He also said the club philosophy would hew to the original mission: helping its members by rollings dues and contributions into charitable donations. Members also will be able to use areas of the club as shared work space and for private parties.

To inquirer about memberships, ping Messina Social Club via its Instagram or email memberinfo@messinasocialclub.com.
The chronic illness seriously damaged Vivienne Weil's voice. The 8-year-old has blossomed recently after a new treatment restored it. Her mother says she is eagerly making new friends and has become "a happy, babbly little girl." Read more

Vivienne Weil was an unusually quiet baby.

She never cried loudly enough to bother us, recalled Natalia Weil of her daughter, who was born in 2011.

Although Vivienne babbled energetically in her early months, her vocalizing diminished about the time of her first birthday. So did the quality of her voice, which dwindled from normal to raspy to little more than a whisper. Vivienne also was a late talker: She didnt begin speaking until she was 2.

Her suburban Maryland pediatrician initially suspected that a respiratory infection was to blame for the toddlers hoarseness.

At first, Natalia, a statistician, and her husband, Jason, a photographer, were reassured by the pediatrician. Her explanation sounded logical: Toddlers get an average of seven or eight colds annually.

Weil, now 33, said the couple assumed Viviennes voice would return to normal  and didnt want to overreact.

We were first-time parents and we were worried, Weil said, but thought maybe we worried too much and should wait. We decided to give it time. We didnt know how much children were supposed to talk at the age of 1 or 2. ... We just did what the doctors told us.

But Viviennes paternal grandmother grew increasingly concerned. Because Vivienne was slow to talk, her grandmother wondered whether she might have a developmental delay or a speech problem and suggested an evaluation by a speech pathologist.

During a visit in September 2013, Viviennes pediatrician diagnosed acid reflux and prescribed a liquid antacid for the 2-year-old. The doctor also approved a referral to an ear, nose and throat specialist.

An ENT who saw Vivienne soon afterward diagnosed her with dysphonia  an impaired voice that can result from a problem with the vocal cords. He sent her to a pediatric otolaryngologist for a more complete evaluation.

The pediatric specialist listened to her breathe and talk and then scheduled a laryngoscopy. The test involves a visual inspection of the back of the throat. In some cases, doctors use a thin, flexible tube attached to a tiny fiber-optic camera that is threaded up the nose and down the throat.

The procedure, Weil recalled, was traumatic for Vivienne and her parents. The little girl, terrified by what was happening, began screaming and had to be held down by several nurses so the doctor could perform the test.

But its results were definitive  and explained the reason for Viviennes prolonged voicelessness.

Solution

She was suffering from a rare disease called recurrent respiratory papillomatosis (RRP), which is caused by two strains of the human papilloma virus (HPV), a sexually transmitted infection that can be acquired at or before birth. The disease is incurable; it can be treated by surgery to remove the tumors which temporarily restores the voice. The goal of treatment is to lengthen the interval between surgeries while preventing permanent damage to the delicate vocal cords.

HPV is ubiquitous; nearly all sexually active adults have been exposed to it. Most people clear the infection from their bodies without ever knowing they had it. But in some cases two strains, HPV 6 and 11, can cause genital warts: benign, sometimes cauliflower-shaped tumors known as papillomas. These warts can occur months or sometimes years after exposure.

In some cases, mothers with genital warts can pass the virus during childbirth, resulting in the development of papillomas in the childs respiratory tract, particularly the larynx. (Two other strains considered high risk  HPV 16 and 18  can cause cervical cancer.)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that two in every 100,000 children have RRP, which can be prevented by a vaccine called Gardasil. Federal health officials recommend administering the vaccine, first licensed in 2006, to children at 11 or 12 before they are sexually active.

The pediatric ENT told the Weils it was a good thing they hadnt waited longer to seek treatment. Viviennes tumors had grown so large that they were threatening her airway.

I was speechless, recalled Weil, who at the time was pregnant with her second daughter. I thought, I gave this to my baby.

Weil said that she had no idea she ever had genital warts or had been exposed to HPV.

Shortly before Viviennes first surgery in November 2013, Weil sought answers from her obstetrician. How, she asked, could HPV have been missed?

The doctor replied that Pap smears performed in 2009 and 2011 were normal.

It is possible that you had the virus and then your immune system cleared it so your test was negative in Dec. 2011  10 months after Viviennes birth, the doctor wrote.

Nor is it clear that a Caesarean delivery would have prevented the disease. Experts say that some cases appear to have been contracted in utero.

Because of her age, Weil was not included in the initial targeting efforts for the vaccine, which focused on preteen girls. (Federal health officials recently approved the latest version of the vaccine, Gardasil 9, which protects against nine strains of HPV, for adults up to age 45.)

Viviennes first surgery, performed under general anesthesia, involved debridement, a procedure that essentially shaves off the tumors.

Weil said she remembers walking into the recovery room with her husband to hear Vivienne crying loudly, she recalled. For us it was the best sound in the world.

But as is almost always the case, Viviennes voice faded to a whisper after a few months as the tumors grew back. For the next few years she underwent simultaneous debridement of both vocal cords every four to six months.

In March 2018 after her 11th operation, her voice did not return. No physical explanation could be found, and doctors suggested the cause might stem from psychological factors. For the next six months, Vivienne underwent hypnosis and saw speech therapists to no avail.

In desperation Weil posted a video of her daughter on Instagram. She hoped that someone  possibly another parent  might have some advice.

Within days, a California woman whose daughter has the disease suggested trying a different treatment. Instead of debridement, she recommended finding a doctor who uses a potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP) laser. Some specialists believe that use of the laser is superior, because it removes more tumor while minimizing damage to the vocal cords.

Weil found Simon Best, an otolaryngologist and researcher at Johns Hopkins who studies the disease and is an expert in laser treatment. He agreed to see Vivienne.

Best estimates that in his 13-year career he has treated about 100 people, mostly adults, who have RRP. Some developed the disease as children. In others, it arose in their 30s and 40s, a decade or so after HPV exposure.

It has a horrible propensity to just keep coming back, Best said. One of his patients had endured 300 operations by the time he was 20.

Best treats only one vocal cord at a time to prevent webbing, which occurs when the vocal cords grow together and can harm the voice.

I was pleasantly surprised that there wasnt a huge amount of scarring, said Best of Vivienne, whom he first saw in September 2018.

The first laser surgery on the second graders right vocal cord was performed in November 2018; her voice returned, but remained raspy. A second operation on the left vocal cord in January 2019 has had excellent results. In March, Vivienne underwent a successful repeat procedure on her right side.

In the last few months, Weil said, Vivienne has blossomed, eagerly making new friends and becoming a happy, babbly little girl.

She says that having a voice is even better than she thought it would be, Weil said. A year ago, she had told her mother that several classmates had excluded her from their game of cheerleader.

Best recommends that a voice problem that lasts longer than a month should prompt an examination by someone who can visualize the larynx.

Its difficult to predict how many surgeries Vivienne might need, he said. Its unlikely to be just three because recurrence is the rule.

The otolaryngologist remains a strong proponent of the HPV vaccine, which can prevent the disease. Weil said she plans to immunize her daughters and to get the vaccine herself, which could protect her against other strains of HPV.
Kerry Arnold, a full-time professor of behavioral health and human sciences, shouts during a rally supporting unionized faculty and staff at the Community College of Philadelphia before the recent tentative contract agreement was reached. Read more

The long-fought contract negotiations at Community College of Philadelphia are officially over.

Faculty and support staff this week ratified tentative agreements that grant workers raises ranging from 3 percent to 5 percent in the final three years of the six-year pact, said John Braxton, co-president of the 1,200-member union.

The agreement also struck compromises on health-insurance options and contributions and  perhaps the most contentious issue  the administrations attempt to increase faculty workload. The administration wanted new faculty to teach two more courses per year for a total of 10.

The new agreement says they will teach one with the option of more. Current faculty members will continue to have the option of teaching an additional course each semester for additional pay; about a third already do.

Under the new pact, the minimum salary for a full-time faculty member with a masters degree will rise to $52,089 this year and would reach $55,089 by year six, Braxton said. (New faculty who are required to teach the extra course would get $4,500 more.)

At the top of the scale, a full professor with a doctorate will earn $84,969 this year and $87,969 by year six, with the possibility of more for teaching additional courses.

The tentative agreement was reached this month after three years of difficult negotiations that almost led to a strike at the 27,800-student college.

It sure was a long haul, Braxton said. "Frankly, I think most of us in the faculty have mixed feelings about it."

Donald Guy Generals, college president, in a statement praised the pact and those who worked on it.

I applaud the faculty, staff, and administrators who worked closely, over some very long nights, to reach agreements that are fair to employees and provide quality education for students," he said.

Union leaders were pleased to see hourly wages for some of their lowest-paid support staff raised to $15 by 2020; they will go even higher in the subsequent years of the pact, Braxton said.

Any increase in faculty workload, even if it was less than what the administration had proposed and only affects new faculty, is difficult to accept, Braxton said. But union leaders were reluctant to go on strike, which could have been lengthy and would have hurt students, he said.

The contract is retroactive and runs through August 2022. Members are currently in the third year and will get a 5 percent raise retroactive to Sept. 1, he said. They will get 3 percent in the next two years and 3.5 percent in the final year.

Also this week, Arcadia University adjunct faculty got their first contract, a three-year agreement that runs through December 2021. The agreement covers about 200 part-time adjunct faculty at the Glenside school, where they unionized about two years ago. It includes raises in each year, matching contributions toward retirement, and access to health benefits, said Paul Dannenfelser, organizer for United Academics of Philadelphia, a professional labor organization that advocates for adjuncts.

Some also will get longer work contracts rather than just working semester to semester, he said.
Johnny Bobbitt stands in the courtroom before being sentenced to a drug treatment program and five years of probation after his involvement in what prosecutors say was a nationwide crowdfunding scam. Bobbitt's plea deal requires him to testify against alleged co-conspirators Kate McClure and Mark D'Amico. Read more

Johnny Bobbitt Jr. was sentenced Friday to five years on special probation and ordered to enroll in a long-term, live-in drug rehabilitation program after admitting to his role in a $402,706 GoFundMe scam.

Bobbitt and his coconspirators solicited funds from more than 14,000 donors across the country with a fraudulent Good Samaritan story, prosecutors said. He still faces federal charges in the scheme.

In 2017, prosecutors say, Bobbitt, then homeless, conspired with a Burlington County couple to create a false narrative that he used his last $20 to help Katelyn McClure when she ran out of a gas on a winter night on an I-95 off-ramp in Philadelphia. McClure and her then-boyfriend, Mark DAmico, started a GoFundMe campaign that touted his supposed kindness and promised to raise money to get him off the street.

At his sentencing on Friday in Superior Court in Mount Holly, Bobbitt, 36, said nothing other than answering, No, sir, when the judge asked if he had anything to say. Other than his lawyers, no one spoke on his behalf during the 15-minute hearing.

Bobbitt pleaded guilty in state court last month to a charge of conspiracy to commit theft by deception. He also admitted to a charge of conspiracy to commit money laundering, related to the fraud, in federal court in Camden, and is awaiting sentencing. He faces six to 30 months in prison under his federal plea agreement.

DAmico and McClure have also been charged by the Burlington County prosecutor and are awaiting a hearing. McClure also faced federal charges, and pleaded guilty to a count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

The GoFundMe campaign went viral, and Bobbitt appeared with the couple on national television to spread the story. As donations poured in, prosecutors say, McClure, 29, and DAmico, 39, spent the bulk of the money on vacations, casino excursions, a BMW, and luxury goods. They bought Bobbitt a camper, and he lived in it for a time on a property McClures family owned in Florence Township. They also gave him about $25,000, some of which he spent on drugs, prosecutors said.

Bobbitts plea agreement in state Drug Court calls for him to testify against DAmico and McClure and cooperate with state authorities. He also must participate in a drug program that will allow him to avoid prison if he remains drug-free.

If Bobbitt fails to complete the program, which offers intensive court-monitored treatment, he would have to serve five years in prison, including 18 months without parole, the judge said.

Judge Christopher J. Garrenger said the two-pronged sentence is appropriate because the fraud represents a breach of public trust. He also said there is a need to deter others from participating in conspiracies to defraud donors.

But the judge also said that Bobbitt has significant drug addiction issues and is particularly likely to respond to treatment. Garrenger wished Bobbitt success with the program, but warned that he will go to prison if he doesnt follow the rules of the program.

Bobbitt, wearing an orange jumpsuit, stared at the floor during most of the hearing. Occasionally, he raised his head and listened to the statements of Assistant Burlington County Prosecutor Andrew McDonnell and Public Defender John Keesler, but showed no emotion.

McDonnell said Bobbitt served 14 months in the Marine Corps and received a less than honorable discharge, and was never deployed overseas. Keesler, however, said Bobbitt was not dishonorably charged and has received military benefits.

McDonnell also said that DAmico and McClure were the architects of the scheme, but that Bobbitt became actively involved within a few days and the scheme would not have succeeded without Bobbitts participation. Not only were donors defrauded, but countless others may have stopped contributing to charitable causes after hearing of the fraud, which McDonnell said was designed to tug at the heartstrings of caring individuals. McDonnell said the scam rocks at the foundation of peoples confidence in charitable contributions.

U.S. District Judge Jerome Simandle had agreed to postpone sentencing on the federal charges until Bobbitt was sentenced in state court.

McClure pleaded guilty in federal court last month. She faces up to 33 months in prison when she is sentenced on June 19. She also faces charges of conspiracy and theft by deception charges filed by Burlington County prosecutors. That case is pending.

DAmico also faces theft by deception charges in the Burlington County case.

Prosecutor Scott Coffina declined comment on the pending cases against DAmico and McClure.

Matt Reilly, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, said he could not confirm or deny that his office is investigating DAmico.

In a statement after the sentencing, Coffina said: There is no denying that Johnny Bobbitt has struggled with addiction, and that his addiction was a factor in his criminal conduct. The proposed agreed-upon sentence, in the states view, provides sufficient accountability to Johnny Bobbitt for his active role in this fraud through the vigorous standards of a Drug Court probation, with the certainty of a five-year state prison sentence if he does not adhere to those standards and take advantage of this opportunity. This sentence affords him the chance to turn his life around.
The New Jersey State Police are seeking the public's assistance with identifying two men wanted in connection to the Spring Hill wildfire in Burlington County. Detectives believe that the two men pictured below may have information about the fire that began on March 30 and consumed more than 11,000 acres of forest in Washington and Woodland Townships. Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Sergeant First Class Shaun Georgeson of Tuckerton Station at 609-296-3132. Read more

New Jersey state police want to identify and talk to two men photographed near trucks late last month as 11,638 acres of Pinelands forest burned in the background.

Known as the Spring Hill wildfire, the blaze was the worst in recent memory, according to state Department of Environmental officials. The fire began March 30 in a remote part of the Penn State Forest in Burlington County, and scorched trees in Woodland and Washington Townships within the Pinelands National Reserve.

Detectives believe the men may have information, but are not identifying them as suspects. Detectives did not say how they obtained the picture.

The fire was first spotted last month from the Cedar Bridge and Apple Pie Hill fire towers. Fueled by high winds, it spread quickly over thousands of acres of state land in the Pine Barrens, a forested area of coastal plain that stretches for more than a million acres.

It took more than a day to contain the fire, and smoke plumes could be seen 40 miles away. The fire forced the temporary closure of part of Route 72, a main road for Pinelands access. No homes or business were threatened.

The New Jersey Forest Fire Service has been conducting prescribed burns for weeks as part of forest management, but state officials said the burns were not the cause of the blaze. Officials also ruled out lightning or power lines.

The worst fire in Pine Barrens history occurred in 1963 and burned 183,000 acres.

State police say anyone with information on the men in the picture can contact Detective Sgt. First Class Shaun Georgeson of the Tuckerton station at 609-296-3132. Callers can remain anonymous.
A Ventnor firefighter became the 24th person to plead guilty Friday in a vast conspiracy to use New Jersey public employee health benefits that spread $50 million among dozens of firefighters, drug salesmen, teachers, and police officers at the Shore.

Edward Sutor Jr., 36, of Linwood, pleaded guilty to his role in obtaining payments for prescriptions fraudulently obtained totaling $2.7 million, which he agreed to pay back in restitution. Prosecutors said he personally netted $335,551.81, an amount he agreed to forfeit as part of his guilty plea.

Sentencing was set for July 17. Sutor faces up to 10 years in prison on one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Sutors cousin Corey Sutor, also a Ventnor firefighter, pleaded guilty in December to a similar charge. The cousins were accused of creating a company, known as Company One, to market compound medications to state, local, and school employees whose benefit plans covered the medications, which were reimbursed at amounts up to $10,000 a month.

Edward Sutors attorney, John Zarych, said his client had resigned from the Ventnor Fire Department earlier on Friday. Zarych said he worked for the department for 5 years.

You knew what you were doing was wrong and against the law? U.S. District Judge Robert Kugler asked Sutor in court Friday afternoon. Yes, your honor, he responded.

Firefighters from Margate and Atlantic City have also pleaded guilty, as have school employees from Pleasantville. Sentencings are set to begin in July.

Last month, seven people were indicted in the scheme, including William Hickman, a mastermind alleged to have worked with the late accused murderer Dr. James Kauffman, and Brian Pugh, a co-owner of Tonys Baltimore Grill in Atlantic City. Two Margate firefighters and a Ventnor police officer were also indicted and have pleaded not guilty.

Sutors involvement in the scheme was dated between May 2015 and February 2016.

The Shore towns have been bracing for even further fallout as the cases proceed, and Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyner has said that he intends to move on lower-level cases once the federal cases are finished.
A Voorhees resident in favor of Chakrabarti's ashram speaks to the zoning board during a Thursday night meeting on April 12 in Voorhees, NJ. Read more

The fate of a self-made millionaires dream of creating an academic hub, or ashram, in Voorhees for scholars and scientists to study solutions to religious conflict was being debated late Thursday before the townships zoning board.

Paritosh Chakrabarti of Moorestown, who owns the multimillion-dollar chemical company PMC Group Inc. in Mount Laurel, wants to build such a center and others across the globe  but more than a hundred township residents are challenging him.

The scholars would stay at the facility free during five-year residencies that would give them access to a public library, living spaces, and communal areas for interaction and discussion.

But many residents of the 55-and-older community next door to the proposed site, Centennial Mill, are opposed to the project, which they say would increase noise and traffic. They also voiced concern about extremist attacks toward religious institutions during Marchs Zoning Board meeting.

Those worries, along with testimonies from attorneys, were aired Thursday night before the board, which would have to approve Chakrabartis plans.

The ashram would be built on seven acres of undeveloped land on Centennial Boulevard near Matlack Drive. The site is zoned for economic industrial business, so a zoning variance would be required.

Creigh Rahenkamp, attorney for Centennial Mill, argued that the ashram does not constitute an inherent benefit to the township, which is one of the arguments used by Chakrabartis attorneys to justify a variance. Rahenkamp pointed to Office One and Office Four zoning districts as possible locations.

Chakrabartis attorney, Donald Cofsky, challenged that arguments by asking, A think tank like this, which is dedicated to researching, writing, and disseminating information to heal the divide in our society, to going out into the community to discuss it and foster it  is that not a beneficial product to Voorhees?

Cofsky also said that the ashram is meant to be a 55-and-older community, similar to Centennial Mill, and that the two groups share similarities.

Id actually like to see some type of accommodation between the two parties, said Charles Frost, a resident of Centennial Mill. I think theres more to be gained by being hospitable than there is to be confrontational.

Marlene Kaplan, a Centennial Mill resident who is opposed to the plan, said, My concern is that youre bringing in people from all over the world. Theres different languages, different cultures, and how would they be able to consult with Voorhees police about Voorhees issues without knowing our culture?

If a variance is granted, Chakrabarti must seek formal site plan approval from the zoning board, as well as construction permits. And along the way, township officials say, there will be plenty more opportunity for public input.

Voorhees has a very open process to make sure that all residents, interested parties, and the applicant are heard, said Stuart Platt, attorney for the nine-member board. "Everybody has a chance to put in as much evidence as they possibly can, so we have a complete record and the board can make the most informed decision. Those decisions, of course, are subject to appeal.
In this screenshot, taken from surveillance footage from the New Hope Police department, Brian Riling is shot by an officer who officials say mistook his gun for a Taser. Read more

A New Hope police officer who shot a man in the stomach while he was in police custody will not face criminal charges, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said Friday, because the shooting was accidental.

The prosecutor said the shooting was neither criminal nor justified, but was excused.

The officer, who retired Wednesday and whose name was not released, shot Brian Riling, 38, during a scuffle inside a holding cell at the New Hope Police Department on March 3. As the officer struggled with Riling, he yelled Taser! as a warning but mistakenly drew his gun, Weintraub said.

Given the totality of circumstances, the officer would have been justified in using his Taser to regain control of Riling inside the holding cell, as the officer had a reasonable belief the scuffle posed a danger to his fellow officer, he said. Because the officer believed he was pointing a taser at Riling, Weintraub said, he did not possess the criminal mental state required to be guilty of a crime under state law.

Warning: This video depicts a shooting in violent detail and contains profanity.

Riling was in police custody after an arrest that day on intimidation charges, according to a law enforcement source. His longtime girlfriend told police Riling had sent her over 100 text messages, threatening to attack her, calling her a prostitute, and threatening to kill himself, according to the affidavit of probable cause for his arrest.

Riling wanted his girlfriend to recant her police report that Riling had used a crowbar to break into her house while she was sleeping to ask her why she wasnt returning his text messages, court records show.

When the woman finished her shift at a nearby restaurant on March 3, Riling was waiting for her, the affidavit said. He grabbed her by her throat and spit in her face, the woman told police. Riling was later arrested not far from the womans home in New Hope.

Riling was charged with felony witness intimidation, retaliation against a witness or victim, stalking, and related offenses, court records show. His attorney, Richard R. Fink, did not return a request for comment Friday. Efforts to reach Riling were unsuccessful.

After being taken into custody, Riling was placed in a holding cell and asked to remove his belt, according to surveillance footage provided by the District Attorneys Office.

As he did so, a small object fell to the floor, and Riling stepped on it to hide it from two officers standing nearby. Thinking it was drug paraphernalia, the officers tried to retrieve it, and the three men got into a struggle. Thats not mine, Riling yelled at one point.

During the fight, one officer pulled out a gun and yelled Taser before pulling the trigger, the video shows. Riling slumped to the floor and screamed in pain.

Was that a gun? he asked the officers. What are you doing? Did you shoot me with a gun?

Riling writhed on the floor, telling the officers that it hurts everywhere, and repeatedly asked for medical attention. Fully eight minutes went by before the officers pulled Riling from the cell.

Medics then took Riling to St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, where he remained in critical condition for several days, according to the District Attorneys Office. He was later released.

In his statement, Weintraub said the officer who shot Riling knew that Riling had been harassing his former girlfriend and accused of the burglary, and had himself heard threats of violence made by Riling during a phone call between the two.

The district attorney noted that the officer had holstered his Taser directly in front of his gun, both on his dominant side, his right. Authorities said that was a violation of department policy, which requires officers to keep Tasers holstered on their non-dominant sides.

It was not immediately clear Friday which model of Taser New Hope police officers carry. Generally, the devices operate in similar fashion to a gun and fire electrically charged prongs when a trigger is pulled.

In making his decision to excuse the shooting, Weintraub said he took into consideration the officers decades of exemplary service. The prosecutor did not say how long the officer had served in the department, but authorities said he had dozens of commendations and letters during his tenure.

New Hope Police Chief Michael Cummings did not return a request for comment.
Protestor Aurica Hurst pours out coffee in front of Starbucks at 18th and Spruce Streets on April 16, 2018, as protests continue outside the store where two black men were arrested. Read more

Its been a year since two black men were handcuffed and arrested by Philadelphia Police for sitting in a Rittenhouse Square Starbucks without purchasing something, sparking international outrage and a reckoning for one of the countrys most visible brands.

It was a moment seen round the world. After a video of the arrest of Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson went viral on Twitter, weeks of protests at the Starbucks location at 18th and Spruce Streets followed, as did an apology tour by Starbucks leadership and nationwide racial-bias training for the companys 175,000 employees.

Since then, a lot has happened in Philadelphia for the Seattle-based coffee giant.

Heres a look back at a year of problems, promises, and even some progress.

April 12, 2018

Melissa DePino posts a video of the arrest on Twitter, showing police arresting Nelson and Robinson. The video quickly gains traction on Twitter. (A year later, it has more than 11 million views.) The men are not charged with a crime.

April 14, 2018

International furor mounts. Mayor Jim Kenney releases a statement saying the incident "appears to exemplify what racial discrimination looks like in 2018. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross says on Facebook officers did not do anything wrong.

April 15, 2018

Prominent Philadelphia activist Asa Khalif leads a protest at the Starbucks location, demanding the person who called police be fired. The public later learns the manager who called police and the company parted ways.

April 17, 2018

While protests continue, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson comes to Philadelphia to meet with Nelson and Robinson. He tells The Inquirer that he also has spoken with Kenney and Ross, calling the incident that took place in the store reprehensible. Starbucks announces it will shut down its 8,000 U.S. stores on May 29 to conduct racial-bias education for 175,000 employees. Experts call the move unprecedented.

The same day, Philadelphia Police release the 911 call and police radio chatter that preceded the arrest.

April 19, 2018

Nelson and Robinson speak publicly, sitting for an interview with Good Morning America and calling for change.

Hours later, Ross apologizes to the men, saying he played a significant role in making it worse.

May 2, 2018

The City of Philadelphia announces it settled with Nelson and Robinson, saying it would pay each $1 and agreed to set aside $200,000 to fund a program for young entrepreneurs. Starbucks reaches an agreement with the men that includes a confidential financial settlement that will allow both sides to move forward and continue to talk and explore means of preventing similar occurrences at any Starbucks location.

May 20, 2018

Starbucks announces it has changed its policy to welcome everyone, including nonpaying guests, to sit in its stores and use its restrooms.

May 21, 2018

DePino and Michelle Saahene, who were both in the Starbucks when the arrest occurred, announce theyve created From Privilege to Progress, a project aimed at getting white people to share the experiences of people of color.

May 29, 2018

Starbucks closes all its stores for an afternoon so employees can undergo racial-bias training.

June 4, 2018

Amid rumors he may launch a bid for president, ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz steps down from his position as executive chairman at Starbucks and tells the New York Times: I intend to think about a range of options, and that could include public service.

June 8, 2018

Philadelphia Police announce a new policy laying out procedures for when officers should arrest a person accused of trespassing on private property. It stipulates the officer must witness the person refusing to leave and indicates an arrest cannot be made if the owner refuses to file a trespassing complaint.

July 2, 2018

The negative news for Starbucks in Philly continues. A man said a barista in West Philadelphia mocked him for his stuttering disorder, saying the employee mimicked him by saying OK, S-S-Sam and writing on his cup SSSam. The barista is later fired.

The same day, two experts who agreed to help Starbucks navigate the racial-bias controversy release a report outlining recommendations, including that the company conduct in-store tests and identify unequal hiring and payment practices. Starbucks agrees to the recommendations and promises to conduct further anti-bias training.

Oct. 4, 2018

Starbucks hosts a job fair at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia. The company wouldnt call it a consequence of the arrests, but said the unfortunate event" led the company to host in Philly a bit more quickly than it had planned.

Oct. 15, 2018

The Police Advisory Commission, a citizen oversight board, releases a report that recommends police undergo anti-racist training that emphasizes not only unconscious bias, but also the role systemic racism plays in perpetuating those biases. In a response to the report, Ross rejected the idea racism impacts police-citizen interactions. However, he wrote, we can agree that biases, whether implicit or explicit, may distort the fears and perception of some citizens who call the police to report crimes.

Nov. 8, 2018

News trickles out that a Starbucks location at Fourth and South Streets, one of the oldest in the area, will close. The Inquirer reported a rent increase was likely to blame.

Feb. 12, 2019

Schultz, acknowledging that hes considering a run for president as an independent, sparks outrage at a CNN Town Hall event: As somebody who grew up in a very diverse background as a young boy in the projects, I didnt see color as a young boy, and I honestly dont see color now. The color-blindness defense has been widely panned as denying the experiences of people of color.

Feb. 14, 2019

Schultz makes news again, this time during a book tour stop at the Central Library of the Free Library of Philadelphia. In discussing the incident in Philadelphia, he said the store manager acknowledged to him that she probably would not have called police if the two men had been white. Schultz said she called 911 after she felt a threat."

DePino, who attended the talk, interjected during a question-and-answer session, identifying herself and saying you are not describing the incident accurately, and the way you are describing it is perpetuating the problem."

Feb. 23, 2019

A new controversy begins when artist and Streets Dept. blogger Conrad Benner writes about plans to build a Starbucks kiosk in Dilworth Park. A petition he started gets thousands of signatures to protest the corporatization of the public park, which is run by the private Center City District. CCD President Paul Levy defends the kiosk as part of a larger strategy to create a quality public space without stressing the city budget.

March 5, 2019

The Inquirer publishes a story about a Starbucks location at Broad and Pine Streets that implemented a redesign, removing tables and chairs in favor of two high-top tables in a corner. Some saw the move as defensive design, or a way to deter people experiencing homelessness. The company said the store had been feeling crowded.

April 9, 2019

Benner and Levy pen a joint post on Streets Dept. indicating CCD is moving forward with the kiosk but that both parties agree excessive corporate branding in public spaces should be avoided.

With the Starbucks lease, CCD followed its standard public outreach and the formal public approval process, they wrote. However, it is clear in the wake of this controversy that we can do better, and moving forward, CCD plans to work at communicating in ways that increase transparency and inclusiveness about contemplated major, physical changes at Dilworth Park.
A deadlocked jury resulted in a mistrial Tuesday for Michael Rohana, the Delaware man who confessed to breaking the thumb off an ancient Chinese terracotta warrior statue at the Franklin Institute in 2017. Read more

As he crept past a roped-off stanchion, up a ramp and into a darkened room at the Franklin Institute, Michael Rohana knew he was somewhere he wasnt supposed to be.

He had slipped away from his friends while attending an after-hours, Ugly Sweater Christmas party at the museum. And using his cell phone as a flashlight, the inebriated 24-year-old began to scan the area around him.

Stern gray faces etched from clay leered out from the shadows  the visages of 10 life-size soldiers from a 2,000-year-old Chinese terra-cotta army.

Pretty cool, he thought, grabbing one of the figures in a side embrace and mugging for a selfie.

As he prepared to sneak back out, Rohana stopped to examine one more: an elaborately armored statue positioned next to a sculpted clay horse. Rohana reached toward the warriors hand, grasped its left thumb, and pulled.

That decision  one Rohana later described as a drunken, stupid mistake  would quickly ripple across the globe. It would spark an international incident with China, expose Pennsylvanias most popular museum to questions about its security failures, and eventually land Rohana in federal court.

It would also lead to an unusual trial in Philadelphia featuring testimony from a host of fine-art experts eager to challenge one anothers qualifications and, in the process, expose an inherent clash between the subjective world of art appraisals and the justice systems demand for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

And this week, that one thoughtless act left a jury in Philadelphia flummoxed, unable to reach a verdict after absorbing a weeks worth of testimony and evidence that for the first time revealed the full story behind the prank that grabbed headlines around the world.

But as he stood in the darkness two years ago with a broken clay thumb in his hand, Rohana couldnt have envisioned any of that.

He simply shoved the finger into his pocket and ran.

I still dont know why I did it, he would tell jurors more than a year later. I just dont know what I was thinking.

I started to hyperventilate

The morning after the Dec. 21, 2017 party, the seriousness of Rohanas actions began to sink in.

He woke up in his bedroom in his parents two-story brick home in Bear, Del., still wearing his jeans and the garish green sweater he had bought the previous day with his mom at a shopping mall. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the thumb.

Thats when a million things started going through my head, he would later explain. I started to hyperventilate. I was in my bedroom pacing back and forth. I was scared.

Shoving the digit in a desk drawer, he tried to convince himself the statue was a replica  that he hadnt defaced a piece of art nearly as old as Chinese civilization itself. He forced himself to go to work that day at his job as a department-store shoe salesman.

But Rohanas panic only grew.

As the weeks passed, he found himself constantly Googling Franklin Institute, terra-cotta warrior, and other search terms like stealing jail time  hoping they wouldnt turn up headlines.

His dread became too much to bear. One night, while watching TV with his mother, Michele, he leaned in, clutched her arm and told her everything.

They discussed returning the finger to the Franklin Institute. But how? Mail it? Sneak it back into the museum? Or could they anonymously leave it somewhere for institute staff to find?

Ultimately, they did nothing.

At the museum, a panic of a different sort had set in.

The Cavalryman

Two weeks after the Ugly Sweater party, Susannah Carroll, an assistant director of collections at the Franklin Institute, was making her daily rounds when, for the first time, she noticed the absent thumb.

The defaced statue  a piece known as The Cavalryman  was one of 10 on loan to the museum from China, each a prized relic fully restored from thousands of fragments unearthed from the tomb of the nations first emperor, Qin Shi Huang.

A dominant figure in Chinese history, he united the nation under his rule in the third century B.C. His tomb in central Shaanxi Province took 39 years and a labor force of up to 720,000 workers to complete and is considered one of the countrys most important historic sites.

The Chinese government strictly regulates display and restoration of the terra-cotta warriors housed inside and had spent years reviewing the Franklin Institutes security protocols and exhibit plans before agreeing to loan the works.

Carroll had been on the team the museum sent to China to escort the statues to the United States. She knew instantly that the fallout for its failure to protect them would be severe.

Within 24 hours, specialists from the FBI Art Crimes Team arrived. In consultation with institute staff, they reviewed ticket stubs, and pored over surveillance-camera footage from the night of the party. Days later, they narrowed in on their suspect.

On Jan. 13, 2018, a 3:30 a.m. phone call sent the Rohana household scrambling.

Agents had just visited the home of a friend who had also been at the museum party. They are on their way to your house, he warned.

Rohana ran to wake his parents; his mom fainted. Then, came the knock at the door.

Do you have anything you want to turn over to the FBI? the agents asked.

Rohana immediately pointed upstairs, led them to his bedroom, and fished the thumb out of the desk drawer where he had kept it for weeks.

Part of me was kind of relieved, he would later testify. It was like the pressure was finally taken off.

But that momentary relief proved fleeting.

After his arrest, China sent a delegation to assess the damage and retrieve The Cavalrymans thumb. Representatives were horrified by the damage. The director of the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center demanded severe punishment for the perpetrator.

Eager to assuage the upset Chinese, Philadelphias City Council that spring passed a unanimous resolution of apology, calling the incident an embarrassment and citing a failure of security at the museum.

Three months after the incident, a federal grand jury indicted Rohana on counts of theft and concealment of an object of cultural heritage  crimes each punishable by up to a decade in prison.

A charge fit for an art thief

The law under which Rohana was charged, known as the federal art theft statute, emerged from a 1994 bill sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Orrin Hatch in response to the audacious  and still unsolved  heist of artwork worth an estimated $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

U.S. District Judge Petrese B. Tucker, who was assigned to Rohanas case, had overseen one of the first cases prosecuted under the statute  a 2001 matter involving the misappropriation of a Civil War officers uniform by the former curator of Philadelphias Civil War Library and Museum.

It has been used fewer than 20 times in the years since to punish thieves whose loot included everything from gold bars and valuable coins from museums to historically significant maps.

But in each of those cases, the motive had been financial gain. Rohanas proceedings marked the first time the law was applied to a theft with no apparent motive besides the thrill of vandalism.

With their client potentially facing years behind bars, Rohanas lawyers, federal public defenders Catherine C. Henry and Nancy MacEoin, balked at what they saw as prosecutorial overreach.

This was a case, they thought, that they could fight and win. They dove into research on the statues history and consulted with art-world insiders, all the while counseling Rohana to hold his nerve and reject any pressure to plead guilty.

Being a drunk kid doing an act of vandalism was never meant to fit into the federal art theft statute, Henry would later argue in court. That just doesnt belong here.

As the trial opened this month, they highlighted another key element of the federal art crimes statute  a requirement that the stolen item be worth more than $5,000  and asked jurors to consider a question:

Just how do you measure the value of a Chinese relic considered by all accounts to be priceless?

Pegging the price of a finger

The Chinese government has forbidden the sale or purchase of the terra-cotta warriors from the Emperor Qin Shi Huangs tomb. And yet, a wide range of estimated values has been put forth over the years.

The U.N. valued them at $350,000 each when they were first displayed in 1985. Lloyds of London insured The Cavalryman at $4.5 million before it was shipped for exhibit to the Franklin Institute in 2017.

But those sums were for the whole statue. Rohanas case concerned only the value of the thumb he stole.

The only way I could appraise this is accept the $4.5 million insured value and then try to assess what percentage the thumb would represent, said Michael Cohn, an Asian-art appraiser called as an expert witness for the government.

Cohn ultimately concluded a hand would comprise roughly 20 percent and the thumb alone just 5 percent of the statues overall value. His appraisal: $150,000.

He justified that determination with a sweeping analysis that touched on everything from the importance of opposable thumbs in human evolution to the role fingers have played throughout art history, starting with the first ancient cave paintings and running through to Michelangelos masterwork The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Defense lawyers dismissed Cohns reasoning as preposterous, circular logic.

You placed a value of 20 percent on a hand and 5 percent on a finger? MacEoin challenged him in cross-examination. So, if a statue was missing five fingers, it would lose more value than if it was missing the whole hand?

Asian-art specialists called by the defense were equally dubious  though, they too, confidently produced wildly differing figures.

The thumb in question, I would characterize as a pottery shard, said Marley Rabstenek, who owns appraisal and art brokerage firms in New York and Hong Kong. Taken out of context  away from the warrior, away from the army  it loses all of its marketability. It just becomes a piece of pottery that really has no value.

Its value at an auction? Maybe $500  at most, she said

Jurors even got a dose of celebrity on the stand. Lark E. Mason, a bespectacled, bow-tied staple of PBSs Antiques Roadshow, suggested the value of The Cavalryman might actually increase once the broken thumb was restored.

Modern adhesives are more sophisticated and less noticeable than those used when the statue was first reassembled from more than 30 pieces in the 1970s and 80s, he said. Still, Mason estimated the thumbs price at $1,000, likening any value it might have on its own to the sentimental worth a collector might assign to a vial of dirt from Yankee Stadium or one brick from the Great Wall of China.

When youre talking about digit-sized elements, youre not talking about artistry at all, he testified. Youre talking about someone who wants a piece of the greater whole.

Challenged during his cross-examination with those vastly varying estimates and approaches, Cohn threw up his hands.

Appraisal practices are not set up in such a way that these things are set in stone, he said. Everything becomes a little bit subjective.

Deadlock

In the end, the inherent subjectivity in the various appraisals left jurors exasperated. For 11 hours over two days this week, they clustered in a room off the 16th-floor courtroom in Philadelphias federal courthouse, arguing over whether Rohanas crime  and more specifically the single clay digit he stole  fit the criteria of the federal art theft statute.

Finally they told the judge they were unable to agree.

In interviews afterward, six members of the panel described a seven-to-five vote to acquit  all because they couldnt conclude beyond a reasonable doubt how much The Cavalrymans thumb was worth.

We just didnt know what to make of any of that, said juror Pedro Padilla, a 62-year-old operations supervisor from Allentown. You had one person saying it was worth a couple hundred and another saying it was worth hundreds of thousands.

Prosecutors have not yet indicated whether they intend to retry Rohana. If the case does not proceed in federal court, its possible that he could face state charges such as criminal mischief or vandalism  crimes with much less severe penalties.

Either way, Assistant U.S. Attorney K.T. Newton said, some form of punishment is warranted.

Michael Rohana deliberately broke the thumb, she said in her final pitch to jurors last week. He took it out of the Franklin Institute, and he took it home. That is theft. That is stealing.

But as the judge declared a mistrial Tuesday, Rohana  who had spent much of the prior week with his brow knitted in anxiety, his face looking like he might vomit at any moment  cracked a first, wary smile.

He had been spared for now, at least, by the unknowable price of a thumb.
UberBlack drivers Ali Razak (left) and Kenan Sabani, two of the men suing Uber over how the company classifies its workers, stand next to a vehicle along Walnut Street near 17th Street in Center City. Read more

A lawsuit filed by three Philadelphia drivers could pose an existential threat to Uber, the tech giant stated in documents prepared in advance of its becoming a publicly traded company.

The suit from drivers for Ubers black car service in 2016 challenges one of the foundational principles of the ride-share business model  that drivers are independent contractors and not employees.

Judges havent decided the status of our employment, and if we end up expanding our class of UberBlack drivers, that will change the whole Uber model, and it will flip the IPO upside down, Ali Razak, one of the Philadelphia drivers suing Uber, said Thursday night.

>>READ MORE: Uber drivers win settlement over data breach but lose case over employee rights

Uber Technologies Inc. named the suit by Philadelphia UberBlack drivers Razak, Kenan Sabani, and Khaldoun Cherdoud as one of the pending legal actions that pose a risk to the company in documents filed Thursday morning for a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The documents describe Ubers financial position, strategy for growth, and risks to the company as a prelude to an initial public offering. Classifying drivers as employees, the company stated, would require us to fundamentally change our business model, and consequently have an adverse effect on our business and financial condition.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, has been unsuccessful so far. In April 2018, a judge issued a summary judgment in favor of Uber, saying Razak had not proved that Uber drivers are employees. The decision is under appeal.

The question of ride-share drivers status is deeply contested. Drivers nationwide have sought to be classified as employees, arguing in suits like Razaks that Uber exerts so much control over its drivers that it is an employer. The Philadelphia suit seeks compensation for overtime and the minimum wage. Drivers in Philadelphia have seethed over low wages and what they described as sudden changes in the terms of their work that they have no power to challenge or negotiate.

Since filing the suit, Razak and other UberBlack drivers are facing new frustrations, Razak has said. Uber recently introduced new ratings standards for drivers and age restrictions for UberBlack vehicles that will make some drivers cars unusable for the service in 2020.

>>READ MORE: Working harder and getting less: Good old days of ride-sharing are gone, Philly drivers say

Ubers 3.9 million drivers set their own hours, decide where they want to work, use their own vehicles, and arent required to work for Uber exclusively, the company stated in its SEC filing, which called the arrangement key to its financial health. If legislation or a court decision classified drivers as employees, the company stated, Uber would be responsible for paying the minimum wage and overtime, and such expenses as employee benefits, Social Security deductions, and additional taxes.

Ubers public offering is highly anticipated, but its ability to make a profit is uncertain. The company stated in its SEC filing that it predicts more losses to come and may never be profitable. Uber earned $11.3 billion in revenue last year, according to the documents, but reported a $1.8 billion net loss. Ubers chief competitor, Lyft, went public at the end of March at $72 a share. Its value was down to $61 on Thursday.
There is a lot of talk in Harrisburg, from Republicans and Democrats, about growing Pennsylvanias economy. They agree on some approaches such as infrastructure investment and workforce development, and diverge on others such as college affordability and higher wages. The end game is largely the same  bringing jobs and investments to the commonwealth and building wealth for Pennsylvania citizens.

Whether youre a Democrat or a Republican, one thing is clear: For Pennsylvania to prosper, its largest cities must thrive.

As school superintendents from the commonwealths largest urban areas, our 12 school districts are responsible for educating one in every seven children in Pennsylvanias public schools. That means one of every seven future workers, business owners, and entrepreneurs who graduate from Pennsylvanias public schools is in one of our classrooms today.

The success of Pennsylvanias pro-growth strategy  and its future  will be determined by the quality of education we provide, and the quality of education that Harrisburg is willing to invest in.

 READ MORE: Prominent Pa. CEOs: Inadequate school funding makes it harder for us to hire locally | Opinion

Our school funding system is badly in need of repair. The commonwealths share of education funding is just over a third, with local taxpayers providing the vast majority. This has resulted in deep inequities in resources. How can Pennsylvania hope to compete with states like New York or New Jersey, North Carolina or Washington, California or Indiana when they invest in their future workforce at higher rates than our commonwealth?

Pennsylvanias urban school districts serve a diverse population of students, each with tremendous potential and a wide range of educational needs to fully reach their potential. We are doing our part to help meet their needs. We are working hard to improve our schools and many are showing gains in achievement, college and career readiness and graduation rates. City governments have raised taxes locally again and again to help close the gap. But its not enough. We need more help from the commonwealth.

Our message is clear and we are taking it to Harrisburg: We have real and urgent needs that can and should be funded this year. Help us build the Pennsylvania of the future.

The education funding formula enacted in 2015 was a great first step, but in 2019 less than $1 of every $10 in basic education funding runs through the formula. The governor has proposed $166 million in new formula funding. The General Assembly should see that bet and raise it.

Children are learning 21st-century skills like coding and robotics in buildings that were built during the golden age of radio. Many contain immediate hazards that must be addressed to protect basic health and safety.

Lawmakers established a commission to thoroughly review Pennsylvanias school construction program, PLANCON. With that road map in place, the General Assembly should restore funding to the program to support school renovations, repairs, and new construction.

Lawmakers should act to ensure all of Pennsylvanias children are learning in healthy environments by providing a dedicated source of funding to address issues of lead, mold, and asbestos in our schools.

Its also time to stop kicking the can down the road on charter funding reform. Pennsylvanias charter law needs an overhaul, including setting the bar higher for charter operators. Its not about district schools vs. charter schools. Its about high-quality schools, period. The commonwealths charter funding model needs to reflect that.

 READ MORE: Pa.'s budget must address glaring inequities in school funding | Opinion

One example is the chronic underperformance of cyber charter schools, which are costly to taxpayers and fail to deliver for students. Thirteen of the commonwealths 14 cyber charter schools are on the list of the lowest-performing schools in Pennsylvania. School district-operated cyber charters perform better and operate at a fraction of the cost.

Another example is the special-education funding model for charters which does not differentiate based on the needs of the students served. Even more alarming is the fact that it does not require that those funds be used for their intended purpose. Something is fundamentally wrong when money designated to support some of our highest-need students can be diverted without accountability. The General Assembly should right this wrong when the special-education formula is updated this year.

Pennsylvanias cities were the hubs of technology and innovation 150 years ago and can help the commonwealth lead the nation once again. High-quality urban schools are the path to Pennsylvanias future. We are ready and willing to work with the General Assembly to make this possible.

This op-ed was co-authored by 12 of Pennsylvanias large, urban school superintendents: Dr. William R. Hite, the School District of Philadelphia; Thomas Parker, Allentown School District; Dr. Samuel Lee, Bensalem Township School District; Dr. Joseph Roy, Bethlehem Area School District; Dr. Juan R. Baughn, Chester Upland School District; Amy Arcurio, Greater Johnstown School District; Dr. Sybil Knight-Burney, Harrisburg School District; Dr. Damaris Rau, School District of Lancaster; Dr. Anthony Hamlet, Pittsburgh Public Schools; Stephen Rodriguez, Pottstown School District; Dr. Khalid Mumin, Reading School District; and Dr. Eric Holmes, School District of the City of York.
Rev. Jeffrey Jordan uses a bullhorn to get the crowd of protesters in front of the Starbucks at 18th and Spruce, to yell "I am somebody," on April 15, 2018, in protest to the two black men arrested there three days earlier. Read more

A year ago on April 12, 2018, two black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were arrested for trespassing at the Center City Starbucks on 18th and Spruce. They had been waiting for a business associate to arrive and Nelson went to the counter to ask for a bathroom code. Stating that the restrooms were only for paying customers, the manager declined to share the code, and shortly after approached the men to ask if they wanted a beverage. Nelson and Robinson said no. Within minutes, the same manager called the police, who made the arrests.

Starbucks pressed no charges, and within days the company claimed that the manager in question no longer worked at the Spruce store. But the effects of this incident  a clear case of racial profiling  lingered.

Video of the arrests went viral immediately. Protests ensued, and executives at the coffee chain ordered implicit bias training. I worked at Starbucks during the economic recession, when then-CEO Howard Schultz shut doors on Feb. 26, 2008, to retrain baristas on the art of espresso beverages. I sat with other coworkers at 1500 Market Street, reading from a module and practicing steaming milk. When Starbucks decided to devote a similar amount of time and seriousness to racial bias as it had to steamed milk, I figured it would be a stunt  mostly about optics, not substance.

My instincts were confirmed by my friend Charlie Raboteau, who is on sabbatical from his shift supervisor job at a Philly Starbucks and participated in the bias training, where employees were asked to discuss their own experiences with bias. It felt silly and disrespectful, Raboteau told me, to have to explain his encounters with racial bias, and justify them as such, to white employees, echoing sentiments from some nonwhite Starbucks employees who told Time magazine last May that they found the training lacking.

A few hours of corporate-mandated training are not the best way to educate folks about racism. But that education is needed, because racial profiling continues, and it can end lives. While Nelson and Robinson made it out alive, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, shot and killed in February of 2012, wasnt as lucky. Its time to define the profiling they all experienced by calling it what it is: racialized surveillance.

Violence toward black people can come from state-sanctioned authorities, like the police, as well as people like the Starbucks manager, who, deputized by privilege, seem determined to treat black people as threats. In his neighborhood watch capacity, George Zimmerman took this to an extreme, yet too common, degree: He spotted Martin, followed him, and ultimately shot him. Trayvon was making his way from purchasing Skittles, during a stay with his fathers fiancee. Walking and wandering, as young people do, through structures and streets to make his way home.

Zimmerman claimed he shot the teenager after Martin, who was carrying no weapons, attacked. He was acquitted for the murder of Martin on July 13, 2013. According to Mapping Police Violence, 99 percent of police-involved shootings in 2015 resulted in no convictions for officers. This database also reports that black people are three times more likely to be killed by police than white people, with 9 percent more black victims in 2015 known to have been unarmed, compared to white victims.

In and out of law enforcement, there are white vigilantes who see the racialized targeting and harassment of black people  sometimes resulting in their deaths  as their duty. Black people at a barbecue, asleep in a university library, or nonchalantly walking home enjoying snacks can become harassed or dead in moments.

A year after the Starbucks arrest, we must wrestle with how dangerous it still is to move your body through space as a black person. While white people explore spaces with impunity most of the time, black people think of safety planning and avoidance strategies to get from point a to point b.

The people of Philadelphia must do more to ensure that young black and brown people have sanctuary in this city. One-time training, like Starbucks offered, wont cut it. We need law enforcement policies to ensure black people in public are not constantly followed, or deemed suspicious for doing something as simple as sitting on a bench after dark. And we need others across the city to consider what might happen to a black Philadelphian if authorities are called to police that person.

Racialized policing must be put in its resting place, racist vigilantism must be seen as a form of terrorism, and anti-oppression training with concrete action plans  led by black people  should become an institutional practice for organizations that interact with the public.

Abdul-Aliy A. Muhammad was born and raised in West Philadelphia and currently organizes with the Black and Brown Workers Co-op.
As we approach the end of the school year, you can feel the excitement in the warm spring air. While children across the city eagerly anticipate summer break, many working parents are experiencing the opposite feeling  dread.

A few years ago, I too had this uneasy feeling about school ending. For me, in addition to childcare, I also had to make sure my newly diagnosed autistic child had opportunities for social interaction over the summer months. During the school year, he was enrolled in the tot time program at the Bridesburg Recreation Center. Fortunately for my family, I found that the Bridesburg center offered summer camp programs for children from ages 2 to 12.

I clearly remember the first day of big boy camp (as my son called it). My 5-year-old lugging his milk crate (campers storage) up the walkway, wearing his bathing suit, his skin glistening from the loads of sunscreen I had applied. I gripped his hand tightly as I scanned the scene, wondering if he would be properly supervised throughout the day (there are bigger kids, and they have a pool!).

I immediately sought out the camp director to introduce myself and explain my sons situation. I think I became teary-eyed during my introduction. With a warm smile, she asked for my number and promised to let me know immediately if something went wrong, speaking as if she didnt have 100 other kids and staff members to worry about. She sent my son to line up his crate and take his spot at the picnic table. After lingering far too long, I headed back to my car. That afternoon I received a text from an unknown number. It was a picture of my son holding hands with a little girl, with a note: This is what summer camp is all about.

Small gestures like this make a huge difference in a familys life. Both of my sons, now ages 7 and 4, are looking forward to the start of camp this summer at the Rec."

Bridesburg is one of 130 neighborhood summer day camps that parents like me rely on for safe, affordable, and high quality summer care that our kids enjoy. The average rec center summer camp costs about $60 a week, and prices range by center and programs.

New this year, Philadelphia Parks and Rec and the Mayors Office of Education are extending the citys summer day camp season, and starting two weeks early to align with the change to the Philadelphia School Districts calendar.

As part of its program, many Philadelphia Parks and Recreation summer camps serve breakfast and/or lunch to campers every day. This means the more than 7,000 kids across the city who take part in these camps get the nutrition they need after the school year ends.

Many rec center summer camps hire local teenagers to work as lifeguards and camp counselors. My sons love running into their old camp counselors in the neighborhood throughout the year, and the summer jobs keep teenagers busy and productive during the hot summer months.

At camp, my sons will have a summer filled with swimming, field trips, activities, and time with their friends. And my husband and I will be able to focus on our work and family without the additional stresses of worrying about costly or unreliable child care.

That one text from Bridesburg was all I needed to calm my nerves. One day at camp was all my son needed to become a fan. When he ages out, he has every intention of applying to be a camp counselor.

To find a summer program near you, visit phila.gov/parks and enter your zip code in the PPR Finder.

Marcella Lipski is a full-time mom and part-time marketing data specialist for HDR Architecture Inc., and lives in Bridesburg with her husband, Jeff, and their sons, Jack and Gabriel.
The city of Johnstown has lost 70.8 percent of its population since its peak. Read more

Fifteen years ago Philadelphia was yet another Rust Belt city wrestling with decline. Today, as the Pew Charitable Trusts latest State of the City report has shown, the city is on an upward trajectory, adding population in recent years for the first time since 1950, and adding jobs, too.

Philadelphia is starting to look like a city following the path of revival that places like Boston and the District of Columbia followed earlier.

In many ways the city has been ideally positioned for new economy success. The Philadelphia metro area is a very large region of 6.1 million people in an era in which larger cities have been growing faster.

Philadelphia has a highly educated population, with nearly 38 percent of people over the age of 25 in the region having a college degree. This is critical in a knowledge economy era, when biomedical research, high-tech and digital business, creative service, and health care are in high demand. While not quite at the most elite levels, Philadelphias share of adults with a college degree is significantly above the national average.

Philadelphia is also one of only a handful of cities with a major urban transit system and extensive commuter rail network. It has geographic proximity to much more expensive New York and Washington, and is well connected to them via rail. It has a strong local vernacular culture, and also stellar high culture institutions.

For people looking for a high quality, authentic urban experience at a reasonable price, Philadelphia is one of only a tiny number of places that qualify.

Yet so many other cities in Pennsylvania and the greater Northeast remain troubled. Can they, too, start a rebound, or will they continue to struggle for revival? By contrast, as I document in my new Manhattan Institute report How Stagnating Cities Can Prepare for the Future, many of the other struggling cities in Pennsylvania that might look to emulate Philadelphia tend to lack the same assets and attributes, which hobbles their ability to turn around in the current economic and cultural climate.

Consider Johnstown in the middle of the state. Its in a small region of only 133,000 people and its too remote for residents to easily commute to Pittsburgh. The city of Johnstown has lost 70.8 percent of its population since its peak. And only 21 percent of its adults have a college degree, far below the national average of 32 percent. It does not have a major research university or corporate headquarters.

Many other places face similar issues, including regions like Altoona, Reading, and Williamsport. They are joined by many more in other states, like Flint, Saginaw, and Youngstown and places many arent familiar with like Danville, Ill.

Many of these are smaller metropolitan regions with fewer than one million people. This itself can be a liability  the big exception being major college towns (think: State College, Pa.)  because they lack the scale to provide urban amenities, support a major airport, and other hallmarks of city living. They tend to lack elite research universities and Fortune 500 headquarters. These cities often have lower end economies and poor educational attainment. Its more difficult for them to recruit the increasing number of power couples in which both spouses have college degrees and a corporate career. These couples have increasingly concentrated in larger cities that can support both careers. Additionally, their demographic and economic challenges are frequently far greater than Philadelphias.

None of this means that we should give up on or write off Johnstown and other places like it. Rather, it means we must recognize that these places face a much tougher strategic situation than Philadelphia, and thus strategies that might benefit Philadelphia probably wont help them.

Philadelphia, for example, can invest in its greater Center City innovation district, or in improved rail connectivity to New York and Washington.

But smaller struggling cities should instead focus on fixing their finances, restructuring their governance, and rebuilding public services to create the preconditions for revival that may only come when and if larger macroeconomic and cultural trends change.

Philadelphias revival, then, may not provide a playbook for other cities. Instead, its a case of a place starting toward reclaiming its rightful place as one of Americas historically great cities.

Aaron Renn is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the recent report, How Stagnating Cities Can Prepare for the Future.
Marsha Levick, Chief Legal Officer of the Juvenile Law Center, speaks during a press conference along with Maura McInerney, center, and Michael McGinley, regarding a lawsuit against Glen Mills Schools and PA officials, citing abuse of children and deprivation of education, at the Juvenile Law Center office in Center City, Philadelphia on Thursday, April 11, 2019. Read more

A lawsuit filed against state departments, officials, and others on behalf of Glen Mills students suggests that the institution was not just a dangerous place for troubled young people to turn their lives around, it wasnt even a school.

The suit, filed Thursday by Juvenile Law Center, Education Law Center, and Dechert LLP, seeks financial damages on behalf of hundreds of young people who were sent to Glen Mills by the courts only to be physically abused and beaten. Notably, it also charges that students at Glen Mills were deprived of an education.

Instead of being the Harvard of reform schools, Glen Mills was a place where, according to a series of Inquirer reports, kids were physically harmed. They were further harmed by deficiencies in the education provided. The suit claims there was little in-person instruction or support from qualified teachers. High school education was relegated to students reviewing a GED book. The suit asks for educational compensation for students who were deprived.

The suit sends many messages, among them, that physical violence is horrific. But depriving a child of an education is another form of abuse.

The suit also is notable because it underscores that responsibility for the failure of Glen Mills, which was closed by the state earlier this week, falls not just to the administration or its employees, but to an entire system. The Pa. Department of Human Services (both its current and former secretary) is cited for failing in its oversight role, as is the office of Children, Youth and Families. The state Department of Education and its secretary are named for the failure to evaluate or consider the quality of education provided to the children at Glen Mills.

The obvious but meaningful message: When one institution is accused of failing children, we should look for a failed system.

An unasked  and unanswered  question is why do we often do such a lousy job of protecting children? Too many children who are part of closed and opaque cultures that can form in a school, a residential facility, or a church are at especially high risk for damage  from the very places where they should find safety.

Thats why serious reform of such centers as Glen Mills is overdue. So is reforming the approach we take when dealing with young people. And Glen Mills isnt the only place. A report by the Education Law Center recently indicts residential centers throughout the state that deal with both dependent and delinquent young people. The report, Unsafe and Uneducated, found a shocking lack of oversight and accounting in the states residential care system. When the state separates a child from his or her family, it has a singular responsibility to ensure the childs protection.

Many other states have started serious reform, especially when it comes to incarcerated youth. The Justice Lab at Columbia University this week launched Youth Correctional Leaders for Justice, which will advise state and cities on closing youth prisons. Pennsylvania should take note. Robbing our most vulnerable and troubled children of their dignity and their future should be considered a criminal act.
Former U.S. Army Sgt. Peter Farley at Boston Marathon with his Iraqi interpreter Wisam Al-Baidhani, now a U.S. citizen, whose parents have been trying for 8 years to obtain legal visas to USA Read more

Our country is full.

That claim by President Trump as he visited the southern border was directed at migrants seeking asylum. It was both false and foolish.

False because America is not full (although Trump capitalizes FULL in his tweets). False because Trumps message was clearly a trial balloon for his 2020 election campaign that had nothing to do with solving immigration problems.

And foolish because Trumps demonization of legal, as well as illegal, immigration sets the country for big economic problems in the future. It also undermines the values on which America was built.

Lets start with some facts.

First, America is not full, nor can it thrive without new immigrants, as demographer William H. Frey points out. Population growth has hit its lowest level since 1937, and would be declining even more quickly were it not for immigration. By 2035, there will be more seniors than children for the first time in the nations history, writes Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

What gives America an advantage over graying nations in Europe, Japan, and even China, is the population boost from immigrants. That youthful infusion is essential to provide workers whose taxes will support the aging U.S. citizenry.

Even now, the U.S. economy is experiencing a serious shortage of both skilled and unskilled workers.

As for where the immigrants should go, a sane immigration policy could direct some of them to where they were most needed, including the revival of smaller cities that are suffering from depopulation.

Instead, Trump has reportedly handed the reins on immigration policy over to aide Stephen Miller, the godfather of the Muslim ban who wants to revive the family separation policy at the border. Miller has made no secret of his desire to slash legal immigration.

This viewpoint is anti-American, without focusing on the central role immigration has played in the creation of this country, says Rep. Brendan Boyle (D, Pa.) whose father immigrated to America at 19 and worked as a janitor to support his family. When Trump and Miller talk about immigration in such a hateful way, it shows a tremendous ignorance of American history.

Moreover, the White House attack on legal immigration displays a shameful level of immorality. Nothing illustrates this better than my recent conversation with former Army Reserve Sgt. Peter Farley about an immigration injustice Ive followed for some time.

Farley has been trying for eight years to help obtain visas for the family of two Iraqi brothers, both translators he worked with in Iraq. The Al-Baidhani brothers risked their lives to work with the U.S. Army (one was later shot by an anti-American militia) and entered the U.S. on special visas for translators; they are now working, paying taxes, and well settled.

Their immediate family members, under death threat in Baghdad, are also entitled by U.S. law to visas. But the family is stuck due to the administrations attack on legal immigration, including visas for Iraqis and Afghans who helped Americans, as well as refugees, asylum seekers, and others. The Iraqi program has a backlog of more than 100,000 people, and, according to the State Department, only 48 were admitted in a ten-month period in fiscal year 2018.

The Baidhani case illustrates the bizarre, bureaucratic maze that the Trump administration has established to block legal immigration. After five years of security vetting, under the Obama administration , the family were granted visas nearly three years ago, only to be told the day before they left for America that they needed to undergo another security check. By then, they had sold all their possessions.

The family appealed, and in an almost unheard of reversal, immigration officials granted them conditional entry in June 2017. But by then, the Trump administration had tried to ban all Muslim immigrants, and made slashing immigration its signature issue. Despite backing by multiple congressional members and 135,000 signatures on a change.org petition, the Baidhanis have still heard nothing.

Meantime, constant rule changes and the massive turnover at the Department of Homeland Security, whose top officials Trump has just forced out, plus the decimation of State Department staff dealing with refugees, makes obtaining visas nearly impossible.

Just as a supportive congressman was set to send yet another letter to DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, she was fired. We didnt even know who to send it to, Farley told me. "This is not what our country was supposed to be like. Where are we living?

We are living in a country where Trumps constant labeling of immigrants as rapists and murderers makes it impossible to craft a rational immigration policy. Where Millers slashing the number of refugees (who get legal visas) puts America to shame.

The Senate passed a bipartisan immigration reform bill in 2013 but that will never be repeated so long as Trump plays the immigration card for political reasons. Nor will Peter Farley succeed in helping the Baidhanis get their visas so long as this obscene game goes on.
FBI agents arrested a Delaware man earlier this month for allegedly snapping off and stealing the thumb of a nearly 2,000-year-old terracotta warrior on loan to the Franklin Institute from China. Read more

Officials in China are giving the Franklin Institute two thumbs down for its handling of a party-goer who allegedly stole a digit off a 2,000-year-old terracotta warrior statue.

The director of the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center, a government-affiliated organization responsible for lending the statues, appeared Monday on CCTV, a Chinese TV network, accusing the institute of being "careless" with the artifact, the BBC reported.

"We ask that the U.S. severely punish the perpetrator," the organization's Wu Haiyun said, according to the BBC. "We have lodged a serious protest with them."

The center has offered to send its own experts to the institute to help repair the statue, but will file a "claim for compensation," according to news reports.

Stefanie Santo, a spokeswoman for the institute, said Monday that the organization has the "utmost respect" for the statues as well as "the rich Chinese cultural heritage they embody."

She said in a statement: "This was a deplorable act, and we share in the condemnation of this crime as expressed by our partners at the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center. The institute has been working with the FBI and the United States Attorney's Office to ensure that justice for the individual responsible is served. We will continue to cooperate fully with our partners in China to maintain and protect the warriors with the utmost care and reverence."

The uproar comes a week after the Inquirer and Daily News reported that federal agents arrested 24-year-old Michael Rohana of Delaware on suspicion of breaking off and stealing a thumb of The Cavalryman, one of the statues on display as part of the institute's "Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor" exhibit.

Officials said that incident happened in December, while Rohana was at the institute for an "Ugly Sweater Party." Wearing a green sweater and a Phillies hat, Rohana allegedly sneaked into the closed exhibit and snapped a few selfies with the terracotta statue, which is valued at $4.5 million.

That's when the statue's thumb went missing, though the institute didn't notice the disappearance until well after the event.

Federal officials later found the thumb in Rohana's desk drawer in his home. He was arrested on art theft charges and later released on bail.

An external security contractor did not follow "standard closing procedures" on the night of the party, Santo said last week.

"As a result of this incident, we have thoroughly reviewed our security protocol and procedures, and have taken appropriate action where needed," she said.
FBI agents arrested a Delaware man earlier this month for allegedly snapping off and stealing the thumb of a nearly 2,000-year-old terracotta warrior on loan to the Franklin Institute from China. Read more

More than a month after the defacing of an ancient piece of Chinese cultural heritage, federal agents in Philadelphia have finally fingered a suspect  a guy, you might say, they now have firmly under their thumb.

Prosecutors allege that Michael Rohana, 24, of Bear, Del., sneaked into the Franklin Institute's "Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor" special exhibit in December and snapped the thumb off one of the priceless statues inside.

With the filched finger shoved in his pocket, he left an after-hours "Ugly Sweater Party" he was attending at the museum that night and kept the clay digit in a desk drawer in his bedroom for more than three weeks.

Luckily, though  said FBI Art Crime Team investigator Jacob B. Archer in an affidavit filed in federal court  Rohana left his thumbprints all over this crime.

Surveillance video purportedly showed him  dressed in a fuzzy green sweater and Phillies cap  skulking into the closed exhibit with friends. He snapped selfies with his arms draped around the $4.5 million statue known as "The Cavalryman," and was sending Snapchat messages to friends with photos of the purloined digit the next morning.

By the time museum staff reported their thumbless warrior a week later, it took only a few days for the FBI to identify the alleged thief.

According to the affidavit, Rohana's friends said that they recalled him discussing the thumb on the way home from the party that night. And when agents showed up at the house where he lives with his parents Jan. 13, Rohana  much like brittle, fired clay  purportedly crumbled.

He confessed and led agents to the drawer where he was hiding the thumb.

Rohana was released on bail Friday on art theft charges. It was not immediately clear whether he had retained a lawyer.

Stefanie Santo, a spokeswoman for the Franklin Institute, said Wednesday that thumb and warrior will be reunited, and the statue repaired. The museum has since reviewed its security protocols and determined a contractor did not follow standard procedures the night the theft occurred.

"We thank our security and operations team for the internal investigation they took to provide the FBI with the information necessary to identify the suspect and retrieve the stolen artifact," she said in a statement. "We also thank the FBI for their swift action in this matter."

The Cavalryman is one of 10 terracotta figures discovered from the third-century mausoleum of China's first emperor that are on loan to the museum through March 4.
The Shady Dell Vintage Trailer Court in Bisbee, Ariz., has a fleet of a dozen restored travel trailers for guests. Read more

Youll know yours by the shine, said Shady Dell Vintage Trailer Court manager Brad Hardy. He was escorting me to my home for the night, a 1955 Airstream. Even though it was built during the Eisenhower era, its polished aluminum exterior gleamed like it had rolled off the factory floor yesterday.

This Airstream was the only model of its kind in what was then a fleet of 10 travel trailers, all dating from 1947 to 1959 and parked under trees and beside tiki statues at the resort in Bisbee, Ariz.

My overnight stay was the second of two visits to vintage travel trailer resorts. They cater to people who are captivated by quirky chic or midcentury design, who want to reminisce about bygone Americana, or who crave a nomadic lifestyle but dont have the budget or space for their own RV.

In a recent informal tally, I counted nearly 20 retro resorts in nine states from California to Tennessee, with more on the way. Some are rustic, with basic amenities, offbeat themes, and kitschy art. Higher-end retreats provide flat-panel TVs and luxury mattresses, linens, and toiletries. Many offer communal amenities: wine bars, pools, bathhouses, fire pits, and lawn games.

My first stop was at the Sou'wester Historic Lodge and Vintage Travel Trailer Resort in coastal Seaview, Wash., a couple of hours northwest of Portland, Ore. The resort boasts 25 trailers, from a compact Shasta that sleeps one to the African Queen, a tri-level colossus that sleeps eight. The resort also offers cabins, lodge suites, campsites, and bring-your-own RV hookups across its three-acre grounds.

My husband, Andrew, and I stayed in a 1950s Airstream that reminded me of a metal cocoon. Our trailer packed two twin beds, a kitchen, dining table and chairs, half-bathroom, and personality into its 30-foot length. Vibrant orange ceiling, walls, and floor enveloped the living area, and flower-flecked curtains framed its windows. An original stove promised convenient meal preparation, and wooden cabinets provided more storage than we needed. It felt spacious and supremely livable.

The Souwester resort makes deciding what to do spectacularly difficult. A tiny blue trailer named the Q-Tea houses an organic teahouse. Wellness activities include meditation, yoga, and lectures. Massage and quarterly art exhibitions are available in two trailers. There is a clothing-optional Finnish sauna. (We wore swimsuits, thank you very much, as did everyone else sitting shoulder to shoulder.) The beach is just over the dunes two blocks away.

Guests can take classes including writing workshops, waltz, and embroidery. The Souwester has hosted more than 500 artists-in-residence through a nonprofit organization that administers its arts, music, and wellness programs.

"We're more than a hotel," said Thandi Rosenbaum, who has owned the resort for seven years. "Our heart and soul is the quirkiness of the trailers and the other lodging, but our arts and wellness programs infuse life into what we're doing."

Sou'wester's honor-system thrift store is housed in a creamy white 1960s Kenskill trailer with panoramic windows. On the lodge's wraparound porch, we browsed another store that offers local art, handmade goods, and groceries.

The Souwester is meeting growing demand by rolling out two new additions, a 1969 Silver Streak Continental and a 43-foot-long Bluebird bus with a cedar-clad sunken tub. More than a dozen additional trailers await makeovers and deployment.

"At this point, we don't have to look for trailers. They find us," Rosenbaum said. "The restoration requires a master of all trades: mechanical, plumbing, electrical, woodwork, metalwork, and design."

After that one night in the Airstream last spring, I was infected with enthusiasm for renovated trailers. In late December, I took a solo trip to Arizonas Shady Dell, the countrys oldest travel trailer resort, which has been accommodating road-trippers since 1927. There, Hardy led me to my second Airstream, a 22-foot-long model. He pointed out its kitchen and new vintage-style refrigerator, then opened the door to a tiny nook that contained a toilet and sink.

Your bathroom is so small its almost comical, he said. But youll appreciate it in the middle of the night. (He was correct.)

The Western-themed trailer was filled with character. A cactus cookie jar adorned the four-burner gas stove. Mexican blankets covered the two twin beds. Cowboy tchotchkes decorated the shelves. A red velvet couch and record player underscored the vintage flair.

Crunching along a gravel path past the other trailers, I admired a bus parked next to its own tiki bar, and a permanently moored yacht, both built in 1947. I stepped onto the diners classic black-and-white tiles, and sat down on one of the 10 sparkly pink stools alongside a chrome-trimmed counter. The diner is available only for guests food preparation, but the Shady Dell plans to reopen it as a pop-up restaurant that showcases local and regional chefs.

Five minutes down historic state Highway 80, I walked through Bisbees downtown, nestled in a valley in Southeast Arizonas Mule Mountains, about 100 miles southwest of Tucson. Bisbee was once famous for mineral and copper mining; the Shady Dell sits across the highway from one of the old mines. I peered into window after window of art galleries, restaurants, and specialty shops, including a vegan general store.

By the time I returned to my trailer, the temperature had dropped to below freezing. I turned on a portable heater that warmed the space before I finished cooking dinner, then tucked myself into bed with a pile of blankets.

The next morning, I visited the Shady Dell's two newest acquisitions: a mammoth, 45-foot-long 1955 Kropf and a curvy, red 1950 Alma. Both awaited restoration.

When I spoke with the Shady Dells owner, Justin Luria, a few weeks later, the rejuvenated trailers were available for overnight stays.

The Kropf was a time capsule, Luria said. Everything was the original design. It sat in its first owners backyard for 70 years.

"We restore castoff trailers and keep them going instead of letting them go into the dump," Luria said. "And we preserve a piece of American highway history that might otherwise be lost."

Shady Dell Vintage Trailer Court, Bisbee, Ariz. Information: 520-432-3567 or theshadydell.com.

Souwester Historic Lodge and Vintage Travel Trailer Resort, Seaview, Wash. Information: 360-642-2542 or souwesterlodge.com.
It's hard to resist the holiday messaging to buy gifts - and lots of them - to make the season brighter and more fulfilling. However, supply chain disruptions may make this year's shopping stressful.
Wanna Flip for $1,200? A Live Cash Game Question

April 12, 2019 Lee Jones

After you play a lot of live poker, you think you've seen it all. That's when the universe shows you a new trick. The scene was a California $3/$5 no-limit hold'em game  I'll leave the exact location unspoken. When my tale is told, you'll understand why.

I was leaning against a post, waiting for my seat, when the under-the-gun player announced that he was all in. Thing is, he hadn't received his first card  the dealer was just getting ready to pitch it to him.

Dealer: "You're all in?"

UTG: "Yep."

Dealer shrugs (they have seen it all) and tosses the all-in button in front of him. He's got about $1,200. My immediate thought was, "Wow  if I were next to act, what would I need to call?" A couple of players around the table had $1K, and UTG (aka "RandomMan") had everybody covered.

It's interesting that this decision hinges on not only the math, but also on a player's risk tolerance and dollar utility.

If everybody folds to me in the big blind, it's a straightforward question: "What do I need to call $1,200 all-in?" The answer is equally straightforward: "The set of hands that are +EV against two random cards."

But suppose RandomMan shoves $1,200 blind and you're next to act? With what range of hands should you stick in your $1,200? You must have a stronger hand than "anything that's beating two random cards" because somebody may wake up with pocket jacks behind you and you will be stomped.

I spent some time on Pro Poker Tools and found a range of hands that will do well if somebody behind you jumps in. To simplify the search, I assumed that once you called RandomMan's shove, another player would require a "top 20%" hand to get in as well.

I put the results in a Google spreadsheet that you're welcome to review. But for those of you who want it pre-digested:

Any positive edge heads-up: A2s+ , K2s+ , Q3s+ , J6s+ , T7s+ , 98s , A2o+ , K2o+ , Q5o+ , J8o+ , T9o , 22+

, , , , , , , , , , , 55% edge heads-up (you expect to win about $120 if you and RandomMan each have $1,200): A2s+ , K4s+ , Q8s+ , J9s+ , A3o+ , K7o+ , Q9o+ , JTo , 44+

, , , , , , , , Any positive edge 3-way against RandomMan and a top 20% hand: A7s+, KTs+, QJs, ATo+, Kqo, 66+. Of course, if you stick to this range and nobody comes in behind you, you're destroying RandomMan  you'll have a 39% edge and expect to win $450 in a $2,400 heads-up pot.

It's interesting that this decision hinges on not only the math, but also on a player's risk tolerance and dollar utility. If you're Warren Buffett, then the money means nothing, but passing up a positive investment is too much to bear. If that $1,200 is your "case money," as the old gamblers used to call it, then (a) why do you have that money on the table? and (b) you'd better wait for a better situation, I guess.

Anyway, let's get our heads out of the spreadsheet and back to the table. When we left off, RandomMan had just shipped $1,200 from under the gun, completely blind.

Halfway around the table, the tightest player in the room called for $800. I thought, "That's a top 10% hand. RandomMan is in trouble." Then one of the action players called and the rest folded.

RandomMan squeezed out his hand, and discovered he had a monster  pocket nines. Tight guy had ace-queen. Board ran out clean, both tight guy and gambly guy mucked, and RandomMan scooped a $2,500 pot.

This crazy scenario is not likely to happen to you, but in case it does, check in with me at www.leejones.com/contact and let me know what your decision was and how it worked out.

Epilogue

Not 48 hours after writing "This crazy scenario is not likely to happen to you" I found myself in another $3/$5 game where a completely different guy was blind shoving $1K every other hand. I sat there thinking, "Bet I know correct calling ranges better than most here."

My grinder friends tell me this behavior is more common than one might expect, so now you're prepared.

If you want coaching on more mundane poker topics, Lee is the man. Check out his coaching site at leejones.com/coaching to get a free consultation and see if his coaching is right for you.
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NY State Sen. Brad Hoylman said that a bill could pass the legislature that would allow the state to get Trumps tax returns for Congress in a couple of weeks.

Holyman was asked on CBSN why he thinks that his legislation will be successful, Were not suggesting that the tax returns of any New Yorker be made public. Were providing them to Congress at their request under their mandate to be the check on the Executive and perform their important oversight responsibilities.

Rep. Holyman said that he hopes that this legislation will pass in the next couple of weeks, the governor will sign it and that they could very quickly move to get Donald Trumps tax returns.

Video:

State Sen. Brad Hoylman pushes for Pres. Trump's state tax returns: I hope we can pass this legislation in the next couple of weeks https://t.co/aYIcGo5zvO pic.twitter.com/yFpgavwKUl  CBS News (@CBSNews) April 11, 2019

The approach is novel because Democrats are going for a single piece of carefully crafted legislation. They arent exposing the tax information of New Yorkers to the public, but are simply making the tax returns available to Congress upon their request. The Treasury Department will already have their hands full with the request from the House Ways and Means Committee that looks to be on rock-solid ground involving Trumps tax returns.

There will be a legal remedy that will get Trumps tax returns released. He cant keep them hidden forever, and one or more of these maneuvers will be successful and the result will be that Congress will finally have Trumps tax returns.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden has expanded his lead over Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in two early-voting primary states, according to two polls released from Iowa and New Hampshire on Thursday.

According to Monmouth University, 27 percent of caucusgoers in Iowa support Biden, while Sanders has the support of 16 percent of Democrats in the state.

Bidens share of support among Iowa caucusgoers is particularly impressive given the number of candidates included in the poll  24 declared and undeclared.

The numbers indicate that the former vice presidents lead in the first caucus state is expanding, not shrinking. An Emerson poll released last month actually had Biden and Sanders in a virtual tie.

In New Hampshire, a state that should be more favorable ground for Sanders, Biden also has a lead. According to a St. Anselm poll, the former VP is ahead of Sanders 23 to 16 percent.

The polling is the clearest sign yet that the non-controversy surrounding Bidens physical style of retail politics hasnt really taken hold anywhere outside of cable news and the Twitter bubble.

If and when Joe Biden jumps into the 2020 race, he will be in a strong position. The question that remains is whether he can maintain that status as more candidates become widely introduced to voters.

Pete Buttigieg is surging  and he has room to keep climbing

One of those candidates who is already shaking up the primary race is South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. While Biden and Sanders typically sit atop most Democratic primary polls, Buttigieg is surging into third place for the first time.

In the Monmouth poll from Iowa, the mayor jumped over candidates like Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris to land just seven points behind Bernie Sanders for the second place slot.

In St. Anselms poll of New Hampshire, Buttigieg did the same thing, leaping to within five points of Sanders.

While this could be a temporary surge as more Democratic voters get to know him, there are also indications that Buttigiegs momentum could continue, particularly in Iowa.

Buttigiegs current standing in the horse race is impressive given that nearly half of likely Democratic caucusgoers have yet to form an opinion of him, said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. He has one of the best positive to negative ratios in the field. He could move up if he is able to maintain that rating as he introduces himself to more voters.

While its still too early to predict where these numbers will shake out once Democratic voters finally weigh in next year, one thing is for sure: Pete Buttigieg is no longer the longshot candidate he thought he would be.

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By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON (Reuters)  Greg Craig, who served as former President Barack Obamas top White House lawyer, was charged on Thursday with lying about work he performed in 2012 for Ukraine in a case that grew out of Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia investigation.

Craig, 74, faces up to 10 years in prison for charges of making false statements and violating a lobbying law, the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

He is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his work after he left the White House on a legal review that largely vindicated the prosecution of a political enemy of Viktor Yanukovych, the Russian-aligned president of Ukraine at the time.

Craig said in a statement he headed a team of lawyers that worked on an independent report for Ukraines justice ministry. After researching FARA requirements, they found they did not need to register as foreign agents under the law.

This prosecution is unprecedented and unjustified. I am confident that both the judge and the jury will agree with me, Craig said.

Craigs lawyers indicated he would plead not guilty. He is scheduled to appear in the U.S. District Court in Washington on Friday.

Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, the New York law firm that produced the report, agreed in January to turn over the $4.6 million it was paid and retroactively register as a foreign agent, as part of a settlement with the Justice Department.

Skadden produced the 187-page report at the behest of Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Donald Trumps presidential campaign who is currently serving a 7 1/2-year prison sentence for lobbying violations and financial crimes.

Manafort was apparently happy with Craigs work.

You are THE MAN,' he wrote Craig in an email after the report received favorable media coverage, according to the indictment.

The report was meant to be an objective review of the Ukrainian governments prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, the countrys former prime minister who was convicted in 2011 on corruption charges and sentenced to seven years in prison.

It criticized Tymoshenkos behavior during the trial and concluded that her due-process rights had not been violated, but also said that she had been improperly imprisoned during the trial.

The report was used by Yanukovychs government to justify Tymoshenkos pretrial detention to the European Court of Human Rights and influence U.S. lawmakers.

Yanukovych was one of Manaforts main lobbying clients.

FUNDED BY UKRAINIAN BILLIONAIRE

According to the indictment, Craig covered up aspects of his work in order to avoid registering as a foreign agent under FARA, a rarely enforced law that was enacted in 1938 to counter Nazi propaganda.

Had Craig complied with the law, he would have been forced to reveal that funding for the report largely came from Viktor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian billionaire. Pinchuk paid the firm $4 million for its work, according to Skadden filings made as part of its settlement.

The Ukrainian government only paid Skadden $12,000  an amount so low that it aroused suspicion in Ukrainian media.

Craig also failed to disclose that Skadden was simultaneously helping out with Tymoshenkos prosecution on other charges, prosecutors say.

That would do enormous damage to the credibility of the report, Craig wrote in an email to other Skadden attorneys, according to the indictment.

Craig privately had reservations about Tymoshenkos treatment but left them out of the report, the indictment said.

Evidence of criminal intent  i.e., that she intended to commit a crime  is virtually non-existent, he wrote in a memorandum that was not included in the report, according to the charges.

During his tenure as Obamas White House counsel from January 2009 to January 2010, Craig led the administrations unsuccessful effort to shut down the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also represented former President Bill Clinton during his 1998 Senate impeachment trial.

Another Skadden lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan, pleaded guilty last year to lying to investigators about the report.

Craigs case stems from Muellers 22-month investigation into whether Trumps presidential campaign worked with Russia to influence the 2016 election.

That probe led to charges against 34 people, including Russian agents and former key Trump allies, but Attorney General William Barr said last month that Mueller did not find enough evidence to charge Trump or others with criminal conspiracy.

Barr also said he decided there was not enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction of justice. He is expected to release a redacted version of Muellers final report to Congress next week.

(Additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Tim Ahmann, Nathan Layne and Mark Hosenball; editing by Lisa Shumaker, Bill Berkrot and Chris Reese)
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(Reuters)  North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum signed legislation on Wednesday making it a crime for doctors to perform a second-trimester abortion using instruments like forceps and clamps to remove the fetus from the womb.

The move came the same day that Ohios Republican-controlled legislature passed one of the nations most restrictive abortion bans  outlawing the procedure if a doctor can detect a heartbeat. The bill now goes to Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who is expected to sign it.

Georgias Republican-controlled legislature in March also passed a ban on abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected, which can often occur before a woman even realizes she is pregnant.

Activists on both sides of the issue say such laws, which are commonly blocked by court injunctions, are aimed at getting a case sent to the U.S. Supreme Court, where conservatives hold a 5-4 majority, to challenge Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

The North Dakota bill, which Burgums spokesman, Mike Nowatzki, confirmed in an email that the governor signed, followed similar laws in Mississippi and West Virginia.

Known as HB 1546, it outlaws the second-trimester abortion practice known in medical terms as dilation and evacuation, but which the legislation refers to as human dismemberment.

Under the North Dakota legislation, doctors performing the procedure would be charged with a felony but the woman having the abortion would not face charges.

Similar legislation exists in Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas, but is on hold because of litigation, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights group.

Abortion-rights groups challenging such bans argue they are unconstitutional as they obstruct private medical rights.

North Dakota has one abortion provider, the Red River Womens Clinic in Fargo. Clinic Director Tammi Kromenaker did not immediately respond to a request for comment. She previously said her clinic would wait for a decision in a case involving similar legislation in Arkansas before deciding on a possible legal challenge to HB 1546.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Bill Tarrant and Peter Cooney)
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The Russians targeted supporters of Bernie Sanders with a social media campaign that was designed to help Donald Trump win.

The Russians Targeted Sanders supporters

The Washington Post reported:

Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.

I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton, said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought.

The conventional wisdom that the Russians targeted Trump supporters in key swing states, while that is true, the Russian operation was bigger and more sophisticated than was previously realized.

The Russians Inflamed Democratic Divisions That Hurt Party Unity

The Russians would have used the supporters of any second finisher in the Democratic primary to divide the party. Their operation wasnt so much about Bernie Sanders, but weakening the Democratic Party so that Trump could win. The Russians continue to look for any weakness in Democratic unity as they try to split the party because Donald Trump cant win against a united Democratic Party.

It is early in the 2020 cycle, but there have been no public attacks from candidates on each other, and interestingly none of the Democrats are making their campaigns about attacking Trump.

There is a real debate of ideas happening in the early Democratic field, but the Russians are constantly looking for an opening to divide Democrats, and they will use the same tactics to try to weaken Democrats in 2020, which is why it is vital for Democrats to keep their eyes on the main goal of defeating Trump in 2020.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Trump promised the now acting head of Homeland Security a pardon if he would break immigration laws for him.

CNN reported:

During President Donald Trumps visit to the border at Calexico, California, a week ago, where he told border agents to block asylum seekers from entering the US contrary to US law, the President also told the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, that if he were sent to jail as a result of blocking those migrants from entering the US, the President would grant him a pardon, senior administration officials tell CNN.

Two officials briefed on the exchange say the President told McAleenan since named the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, that he would pardon him if he ever went to jail for denying US entry to migrants, as one of the officials paraphrased.

Trump is trying to draft people into his web of crime

Trumps promise to McAleenan came on the same trip where he told border agents to break the law and tell migrants that the country was full and that they couldnt come in.

The idea that Donald Trump was an innocent passive actor who just so happened to be surrounded by criminals is laughable. The CNN report is at least the third immigration criminal scheme that Trump has considered that made the news today. The president also tried to illegally use the military to construct and run migrant detention camps on US soil and wanted to dump migrants in sanctuary cities.

Now, Trump is offering pardons to anyone who will join him in his Oval Office crime spree.

Trump is the criminal force that is guiding this administration, and the crimes wont stop until this president is gone.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters)  A U.S. judge on Friday sentenced Republican political consultant Samuel Patten to 36 months of probation, 500 hours of community service and a $5,000 fine in a case spun out of U.S. Special Counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe.

Patten, 47, pleaded guilty in August to communicating with U.S. lawmakers and news media organizations on behalf of a Russia-aligned political party in Ukraine called the Opposition Bloc without disclosing that work to the Justice Department, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), among other offenses.

Patten is a former business partner of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian national indicted by Mueller and accused of having ties to Russian intelligence.

In Pattens guilty plea he also admitted to arranging for a U.S. citizen to act as a straw purchaser to pay $50,000 for four tickets to the inauguration of Republican President Donald Trump on behalf of a Ukrainian oligarch, who reimbursed Patten through a Cypriot account.

Patten, who spoke briefly at the hearing, said he was remorseful for his criminal conduct. I behaved as though the law didnt apply to me and that was wrong, he said.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she believed Pattens remorse was genuine and said she credited his substantial cooperation with the special counsels office.

Youve done everything in your power to make amends, she said, adding that doesnt happen everyday in this courtroom.

Berman Jackson said the acceptance of responsibility was one reason Patten received a much lighter sentence than former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Berman Jackson last month sentenced Manafort to 73 months in prison for two conspiracy charges arising from the Mueller probe  a sentence called unnecessary and hostile by a Manafort lawyer.

Pattens lawyer had asked for a sentence of probation, saying his case was unlike other FARA prosecutions, which have typically involved a lobbyist attempting to conceal the identity of the client and the source of funds.

Prosecutors had not suggested a specific sentence but said leniency was warranted given Pattens cooperation with the special counsels probe.

Federal prosecutors in Washington, who started investigating Patten after receiving a referral from Mueller, said in a court filing on Monday that Patten met or spoke with government investigators on the phone nine times.

He was also willing to serve as a witness in one of two cases against Manafort, who had also worked for the Opposition Bloc. Manafort ultimately pleaded guilty, obviating the need for a trial.

Pattens case has sparked interest in Washington amid a widening crackdown by the Justice Department on undisclosed lobbying.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Mohammad Zargham)
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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) kept up the pressure on William Barr by pointing out why the Attorney General has no credibility.

Sen. Van Hollen said on MSNBCs Andrea Mitchell Reports, I think when he used the political charge expression of spying, he lost whatever credibility he may have had. That was music to president trumps ears. Trump immediately tweets it out. He says that a boy attorney general Barr. If he was referring to the surveillance that we know took place pursuant to the FISA warrant and is currently being reviewed by the inspector general at doj, thats one thing. Spying in itself had negative connotations and suggest there was wrongdoing. He later tried to put the toothpaste back in the tube because he admitted at the hearing he had no evidence of wrongdoing that he would present to the committee. All he did was float this charge. The president loved it and in the process, the attorney general further undermined his credibility as an independent arbiter of justice.

Video:

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) kept up the pressure on William Barr by pointing out why the Attorney General has no credibility. https://t.co/KI2lpo70iM pic.twitter.com/xDMYLvypM5  PoliticusUSA (@politicususa) April 12, 2019

Democrats are shredding Barrs credibility before the release of the redacted Mueller report

William Barr was his own worst enemy during the two days of hearings on the Hill. The Attorney General made it clear with his refusal to answer whether or not he briefed Trump on the Mueller report, his admission that Mueller hasnt been involved in the report review process, and his floating of Trumps new favorite conspiracy theory, that he is a presidential lap dog.

Barr has no credibility, and people should have zero faith that they will get the whole truth or the answers that they desire when his redacted Mueller report is released next week. William Barr, like Donald Trump, has no credibility, which is why anything that comes under his name should be greeted with a skeptical eye.

For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.

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Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg's latest plan for slowing hotel growth on the peninsula will focus on "empowering" a board that makes key approvals for hotel projects, city officials said at a tourism forum this week.

The proposal, which could come before City Council before the end of the month, could also include establishing minimum and maximum room requirements and expanding the qualifications for a project to be considered "full service."

City planning director Jacob Lindsey presented an overview of ideas for the upcoming proposal during a public meeting Wednesday night at the Charleston Museum.

Dan Riccio, director of the Department of Livability and Tourism, led a presentation of the city's progress toward the goals laid out in the 2015 version of its tourism management plan.

Those accomplishments ranged from the completion of a major parking study this year to the addition of new tourism-related positions at City Hall, including one to oversee special events and another to monitor the carriage horse industry.

Lindsey wrapped up the presentations with a brief look at what Tecklenburg's next proposal related to hotel growth will likely include. This will be the mayor's fourth attempt at rallying support on Council for such a proposal.

This latest version will be similar to a deferred proposal that's been idle since August.

That proposal focused on the Board of Zoning Appeals, which reviews proposed hotel projects that don't meet the city's code and require special exceptions.

Right now, in a certain section of the upper King Street corridor, developers can seek an exception to the standard 50-room limit and build as many rooms that can fit on the site.

The board granted such an exception in February by approving a 252-room hotel at 431 Meeting St. That decision may have been "the straw that broke the camel's back" on this issue, Tecklenburg said.

An appeal by the Historic Charleston Foundation was voted down last week.

The proposed changes, Lindsey said Wednesday, could include new specifications for what defines a project as a "full-service" hotel.

To get around the city's 50-room limit in most areas of the peninsula, a development must include meeting space and a restaurant that's open every day. That full-service criteria, Lindsey said, could be expanded to include new requirements that benefit the general public.

The proposal would also seek to protect offices, housing and existing retail storefronts and strengthen the Board of Zoning Appeals' authority.

A new proposal could come before City Council as soon as the next meeting, Tecklenburg said. It will be "along the lines of" what was described on Wednesday, he said.

"I think that's the way to go at this point," he said.
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Hicks column: Medical marijuana hasn't been snuffed out yet, but some are trying hard
Thomas Novelly is a political reporter based in Charleston. He also covers the military community and veterans throughout South Carolina. Previously, he wrote for the Courier Journal in Kentucky. He is a fan of Southern rock, bourbon and horse racing.
A seventh boy has come forward with accusations of sexual misconduct against Marvin Gethers, a former North Charleston elementary school employee who died before his criminal case could go to trial.

The father of the latest accuser told North Charleston police in February that in 2013 and 2014, Gethers touched his then-8-year-old son inappropriately at Dunston Elementary School, according to an incident report.

Gethers worked as a student concern specialist and was promoted to the role of parent advocate in the fall of 2014.

The father told police that his son disclosed the alleged abuse after seeing a TV news report about Gethers in January.

Late last summer, the case drew scrutiny from the community over how the Charleston County School District and police handled the investigation into Gethers, who had maintained a reputation as a trusted mentor to struggling students.

Charleston County School District employees found evidence of child pornography on Gethers' district-issued laptop computer in January 2014. The district allowed him to stay on the job while a police investigation into the pornography lingered, and officials even promoted him to a higher-paying position.

Two years later, Gethers lost his job when police arrested him on a child pornography charge in January 2016.

Two children spoke to police shortly after Gethers' arrest, leading to additional charges of third-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. At least five additional children have since spoken with police or attorneys to make accusations against Gethers, and several lawsuits have been filed against the school district.

The boys have said that Gethers would pull them from class or corner them in the hallways and then coax them into his office or the bathroom. They said he would touch them inappropriately and take nude photos of them.

Gethers died of heart failure on June 13, 2017, with his criminal charges pending.

+6 How Charleston school officials let alleged child molester continue working with students For years, Marvin Gethers upheld a reputation as a beloved colleague and a trusted mentor to struggling students in one of North Charleston's poorest elementary schools. But while school leaders celebrated Gethers, a number of students say he was molesting them behind closed doors.

In April 2018, the school district settled with one of Gethers' accusers for $300,000.

The family of a child identified as John Doe sued the school district, the city of North Charleston and the Charleston County Sheriff's Office in January, claiming the district could have done more to protect the children.

Attorneys and state lawmakers have raised several questions about the handling of Gethers' case that have not yet been answered, including:

Who knew about the allegations of child pornography on Gethers' laptop when he returned to school shortly after suspicions arose in 2014?

Why did the school district take more than a month to turn Gethers' laptop over to North Charleston police?

And why, once police transferred the laptop to a Charleston County Sheriff's Office, did an investigator take 22 months to complete a forensic analysis of the computer?

The father of the child who filed the latest incident report said in a phone interview with The Post and Courier on Thursday that he wants all those questions answered, too.

"Ive been the bearer of sins that other people created, and Ive had enough," the father said.

The Post and Courier does not typically identify victims of alleged sexual crimes or their family members.
Gregory Yee covers the city of Charleston. He's a native Angeleno and previously covered crime and courts for the Press-Telegram in Long Beach, CA. He studied journalism and Spanish literature at the University of California, Irvine.
Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations.
Editorials represent the institutional view of the newspaper. They are written and edited by the editorial staff, which operates separately from the news department. Editorial writers are not involved in newsroom operations.
The Post and Courier provides a forum for our readers to share their opinions, and to hold up a mirror to our community. Publication does not imply endorsement by the newspaper; the editorial staff attempts to select a representative sample of letters because we believe its important to let our readers see the range of opinions their neighbors submit for publication.
Where did the $1 billion go?

A growing economy gave legislators about $1 billion additional to spend  half of that from surpluses meant for one-time expenses. Here's a look at where the bulk of that money goes:

New spending on ongoing expenses:

_$159 million to increase K-12 teachers' minimum pay by at least 4 percent

_$50 million to cover state employees' rising health care costs, so their insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays stay the same

_$50 million to maintain Medicaid patients' service

_$44 million split among all public colleges to freeze tuition costs for in-state students

_$41.4 million to increase state employees' salaries by 2 percent

_$32.4 million to cover state agencies' 1 percent pension increase, as mandated by a 2017 law

_$11 million to add to a rainy day fund, in case of a downturn, as required by the state constitution

_$10.4 million to increase hourly wages for the Department of Disabilities and Special Needs' direct-care workers by $1, to $13 an hour

_$10 million for inmates' hepatitis C treatment, as required by a lawsuit settlement

_$9.5 million to increase aid to local governments

_$6 million to increase state judges' salaries

_$5.5 million to expand eligibility for children's health insurance through Medicaid, covering an estimated 22,300 additional kids

_$2.2 million to hire 90 additional mental health counselors who can travel from school to school when needed

_$1.6 million additional aid to county libraries

_$1 million to increase salaries of DJJ's officers and community specialists

_$801,000 in pay raises for prosecutors and public defenders

Spending on one-time expenses:

_$112 million for public colleges' deferred maintenance needs

_$67 million for a $50 rebate to each tax filer ($61 million of that comes from the state's share of last October's Mega Millions jackpot)

_$40 million for a new statewide voting system

_$37 million for the state's match for three new veterans' nursing homes

_$29 million for Department of Social Services' child support enforcement system required by federal law

_$28 million for maintenance at state-owned buildings

_$27 million to add to the state's general reserves, as required by the constitution

_$25 million in relief to farmers for flooded crops

_$22 million, the state's match for Hurricane Florence federal emergency money

_$20 million to provide state employees making less than $70,001 a $600 one-time bonus

_$11 million to modernize the courts' online case management system

_$10 million for prison safety upgrades

_$8 million to the DOT to renovate rest areas

_$8 million for the Jasper County port project on the Savannah River

_$5.5 million to build a new National Guard armory in Summerville and pay for deferred maintenance at other armories

_$3 million for first-phase State Museum renovations

_$2.2 million to cover expenses for the 2020 presidential primaries

_$1.7 million to Patriots Point to clean up the USS Clamagore submarine and sink it to create an artificial reef

Source: South Carolina Senate Finance Committee
DODGE CENTER  Not long after the power went out for residents in Dodge Center, other community members were stepping up to help them.

Rev. Barb Streed, of Faith Lutheran Church in Dodge Center, said Friday that the power had been out for two days for residents in the southern section of Dodge Center, which is on the same part of the power grid as Hayfield. In that area, there are two apartment complexes and some town houses.

Although Faith Lutheran Church is not deemed an emergency shelter, people found their way there after the power outage on Thursday. In February during the blizzard conditions, the church housed around 15 people overnight who were stranded driving through Dodge Center.

"We just happen to always have an open door," said Streed. "And we always have food."

On Thursday evening, Streed said the church had some residents come who needed electricity for nebulizer treatments. Most of those individuals came back Friday morning.

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Streed fixed some pancakes and hot chocolate for one elderly woman who was still there on Friday afternoon.

The woman had fallen asleep on the churchs couch in the lobby.

"What I love is that Ive had more people text me to ask if we needed any help than people who came to get help," said Streed. "People just want to be able to help, however they can."

The pastor has been in Dodge Center for five years. She said she knew that a lot of the residents living in the section of Dodge Center without power were elderly, so she thought it would be a good idea to bring food to them. Streed called the manager at Heritage Estates in Dodge Center, who was able to round up residents into the community room.

Jackie Short, ministry assistant vicar, and Carol Johnson, secretary at Faith Lutheran, were in the kitchen Friday afternoon preparing food to take over to the apartment complex.

Short and Johnson prepared jambalaya, pulled pork sandwiches and spaghetti. United Methodist Church in Dodge County also supplied salad, and the Dodge Center Kwik Trip donated coffee for the residents at Heritage Estates.

"Everything just went black," said Heritage Estates resident Pat Guenthner, 85, who moved to the apartment complex from Arizona with her husband in 2014. Her husband has since passed away.

Guenthner said the power went out in her apartment around 7 a.m. Thursday. She said she got a voicemail from Xcel Energy not long after, saying the power should be restored in a couple of hours.

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She had candles and a flashlight to light her apartment, and she said residents were sharing lights with others who didnt have any.

"But the majority of us just stayed here," said Guenthner, whod been passing the time without power by reading mystery novels. "Were Minnesota people, we can handle anything."

She said there was one woman in Heritage Estates who relied on oxygen tanks. She had to be taken by ambulance on Thursday, after residents checked in on her, knowing she would need assistance without power.

Guenthner was pleased to find out the church was bringing in food Friday afternoon, as she had been making her way through food in her cupboards that didnt need to be prepared.

"We were trying to figure out what we could fix (for food)," said Guenthner. "Because we have no stove, no microwave  nothing works."

She said Xcel Energy has continued to update residents as utility crews work on restoring the power.

Gary Trelstad, member of the Dodge Center City Council, was at Heritage Estates on Friday visiting with residents. He said hed heard from Xcel Energy representatives that it could be two to four days until power is restored.

"Its just hard on the people who arent used to anything like this, or that are handicapped, or need a lot of help," said Trelstad.

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Trelstad said he couldnt recall power ever being out for this long in the past in Dodge Center. He said its kind of a wake-up call, because Dodge Center could use more generators and emergency lighting.

"The community should be thankful for the church, and people whove helped out and taken people in to make sure theyre safe," said Trelstad. "Thats very important, especially for the less fortunate ones."
Written by ACM

*Strasbourg/CoE/Angelo Marcopolo/- The new Armenian Prime Minister, Nicol Pashinyan, speaking to "Eurofora" at his 1st Visit to the CoE, vowed to go Straight Ahead with Erevan's original stance on seeking a similar position vis a vis Russia's Free Trade Area and EU's Common Markert, stressing his Hope that such a Strategic Policy will prove to be Succesfull, and well Conscious of the Fact that, in such a case, the move could have a much Wider, PanEuropean impact in the foreseable Future (See Infra).

-------------------------

Pashinyan spoke to "Eurofora" in front of a new Memorial of the Armenian Genocide, set up at CoE's main entrance, just Hours after French President Emmanuel Macron (the Next CoE's Chairman, for May-November 2019) had inked a paper officially establshing April 24 as Day of Remembrance. Turkey threatened France to face "Consequences", but, meanwhile, it's also Italy's Parliament which has just adopted a similar Resolution urging Rome's new Government to do like Paris...

--------------------

"Socialist" former EU Commissioner Fuhle, in charge of Enlargement and Eastern Partnership had Claimed in the Past, at a Speech to EU Parliament's plenary in Strasbourg, that there would be an InCombatibility between EU's and Russia's Trade Areas de facto, mainly because of probable Differend Policies on Taxes at Foreign Trade.

Coming at a Crucial moment, back on Autumn 2013, when Ukraine had to make Hard Choices in this regard, such Claims pushed Kiev towards the Bloody Crisis which followed with Brutal Clashes at Kiev, etc, from February 2014, provoking the still Deadly Ukranian Conflict, which Divides Europe since then : As a consequence, such a Sharp Divide Restricted Growth in Europe, as OECD's Head, Angel Gurria, had Warned, meanwhile, "Eurofora", (See f.ex.: ...), while Azerbaidjan was pushed towards squarely prefering the Russian-Kazakstan+ Trade Area, instead, (etc). German Chancellor Angie Merkel's initial Intention to Search for a workable Compromise, able to Link, instead of Dividing EU's and Russia's Free Trade Areas, as she had Vowed in her Press Conference at the December 2013 EU Summit in Brussels, (See relevant "Eurofora"s NewsReports from the spot), was brutaly Hindered when she suddenly faced an Unrecedented Painful Incident at a Popular Swiss ressort, Obliging her to walk only with 2 Crunches on January 2014, afer which, she was Bypassed and overtaken by Events in Kiev's Deadly Clashes, since February 2014, resulting in a sharply Divided Europe...

Armenia was, practically, the 1st relevant Country of EU's Eastern Partnership to claim that such painful Dillemas could have (and should have) been Avoided, by trying to Link Both to EU's and Russia's Free Trade Areas, in a way wich aimed at the progressive creation of a Big, PanEuropean+ Trade Area, from Portugal up to Vladivostok, (as several Key EU Leaders supported, including, f.ex., Austria's Sebastian Kurz, a ChristianDemocrat/EPP : Comp., among others, also, f.ex. Kurz's Replies to "Eurofora"s Questions on the sidelines of EU Summits in Brussels, etc), but with unclear and/or unknown yet results.

>>> So that the New Armenian President's Reply to a relevant "Eurofora"s Question Today, concerning that Original Strategic Direction of his Country, and whether he believed that this could really be Succesfull in practice, was of Key Importance nowadays :

- "Yes, we really do Hope so !", President Pashinyan clearly and Optimistically stressed in Reply to Our above mentioned Query.

=> Asked whether Armenia was Willing to Resolutely Pursue that Policy and Advance ahead in this original Direction also in the foreseable Future, he appeared Adamant, and without any doubt.

(Significantly, President Pashinyan Carefully asked "Eurofora" to Repeat our Questions, taking a Moment to Think before Reacting to them, so that this really seems too be what he, effectively, intends to do).

+ Finally, the new Armenian Leader, appeared clearly Conscious of the Fact that his Country's original position on this Key matter is of Strategic Importance for All Europe, and, therefore, it's Also several Other EU Member, Candidate, or otherwise Interested Countries who would be willing to keep clearly Informed on what is really happening about that Issue, so that it would, in fact, have a much Wider Impact throughout all Europe : President Pashiyan clearly showed that he Aknowledged that, and Agreed.

-----------------------------------------------



++ Indeed, just a few Hours Earlier, he had also declared so, in a Series of Replies to various MEPs' Questions in CoE's Plenary Debates, (Comp. Supra), also in relation with Various Other Relevant key Points :

- F.ex. : - "We must build a Constructive relationship with All our international partners and try to resolve the issues that arise", Pashinyan urged in Conclusion, as a matter of General Principle.

- "Are we pro-Europe or pro-Russia? When I was a member of the opposition, I declared that I did not accept that Armenia or any other country ought to be pro-Russia, pro-Europe, pro-America or whatever", he added.

=> So that, " We (Amenia) are Determined to develop our relations with All our International Partners", he stressed :

- Indeed, "Armenia is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union; we (even) currently have the Presidency of that organisation and will do whatever we can to make the EEU more effective. We have a Strategic relationship with Russia and we will do whatever it takes to Develop it. We are a member of the Collective Security Treaty Organization and we will do our best to make our participation in the organisation and the organisation itself more effective"

+ At the Same Time, "We currently have an Excellent relationship with the European Union", Panishyan added. F.ex., the "Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement" that we have Signed with the EU overlaps squarely with my Governments Reform Agenda", he pointed out, inter alia.

(../..)
Question: I see vehicles with straight pipes, motorcycles with straight pipes and hear many others that sound as if they have no muffler. If the law is there why is it not enforced?

Answer: Minnesota State Statute 169.69 states: "Every motor vehicle shall at all times be equipped with a muffler in good working order which blends the exhaust noise into the overall vehicle noise and is in constant operation to prevent excessive or unusual noise, and no person shall use a muffler cutout, bypass, or similar device upon a motor vehicle on a street or highway. The exhaust system shall not emit or produce a sharp popping or crackling sound. Every motor vehicle shall at all times be equipped with such parts and equipment so arranged and kept in such state of repair as to prevent carbon monoxide gas from entering the interior of the vehicle. No person shall have for sale, sell or offer for sale or use on any motor vehicle any muffler that fails to comply with the specifications as required by the commissioner of public safety."

The law does not specifically answer how loud a motorized vehicle can be, but it does say that a vehicle must have a good working muffler that prevents "excessive or unusual noise." So any cutouts or bypasses, straight pipes or rusted out mufflers and exhaust with holes are illegal. After market mufflers, sometimes called "glass packs" or "cherry bombs," can be an issue as they may produce "a sharp popping or crackling sound."

Many counties and cities have local noise ordinances. A noise ordinance defines which sounds are and are not acceptable at any given time. So depending on where you live, I would check with the local authorities on their ordinances.

This law is frequently enforced and we do our best to educate the public on traffic safety and equipment violations through education and enforcement.

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You can avoid a ticket  and a crash  if you simply buckle up, drive at safe speeds, pay attention and always drive sober. Help us drive Minnesota Toward Zero Deaths.
RED WING  A Red Wing man was shot Wednesday evening and called police before being rushed to the hospital with serious injuries.

The man, 20, called 911 at about 7:20 p.m. Wednesday and told Goodhue County Dispatch hed been shot at a home in the 100 block of East Fifth Street in Red Wing.

Police arrested a 23-year Red Wing man at around 3 p.m. Thursday, the day after the shooting. The man faces multiple felony and gross misdemeanor charges.

Red Wing Police Chief Roger Pohlman said police arrived within a couple of minutes.

"Officers arrived on scene and made sure the house was safe for paramedics to enter," Pohlman said in a written statement.

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The victim was found in the residence by officers and transported by Red Wing Fire Department Ambulance to Mayo Clinic Health SystemsRed Wing. Pohlman said the man was later transferred to Mayo Clinic Hospital-Saint Marys Campus in Rochester.

While Pohlman said there is "no expected threat or danger to the general public," police are investigating the shooting as a crime. The weapon used, he said, was a handgun, though he said no further information was available while the investigation is ongoing.

Pohlman said police are looking to talk to several individuals in connection with the shooting. "There are some people we identified later, after the fact, that were at the scene," Pohlman said. "There is a potential connection between these individuals that leads us to believe they arent out randomly doing things."

The Red Wing Police Department was assisted by the Goodhue County Sheriffs Office and the Red Wing Fire Department.

Anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact the Red Wing Police Department at 651-385-3155. Anonymous tips can be reported to Crime Stoppers of Minnesota via the website at www.crimestoppersmn.org or by calling 1-800-222-8477.
If there is $2.8 million in the Recycling Revolving Fund, why are there still aluminum cans on the roadside and in the trash cans? Read more
POTTSTOWN  The family whose West Street home was hit with more than a dozen bullets on March 24 has returned home in the wake of the Tuesday arrest of the two men charged with firing the shots.

The family has also retained a Philadelphia attorney who has confirmed that a lawsuit is being contemplated against the Pottstown School District in the belief that the shooting was linked to an ongoing dispute between their daughter and other eighth-grade girls at Pottstown Middle School  a dispute the family believes the district should have done more to quell.

We are looking at possible legal action, but we want to let the criminal process continue, said Thomas Kenny, the lawyer hired by the Samba family, whose home was hit by the bullets.

The most important thing now is that the entire family remain safe, thats paramount, said Kenny. All of the kids go to school in Pottstown, although not all attend the middle school. Theyre excited to go back to school, but theyre nervous. We want to make sure they remain safe, he said.

As for the second issue, were very happy these arrests were made and we want to let the criminal process play out. Were hopeful justice will be served, Kenny said.

He said the Samba family will likely wait until the criminal and court proceedings have concluded before deciding on whether to take legal action.

Well be keeping a careful eye out. Apparently alarms were sounding prior to this that seem to have gone unheeded, Kenny said.

Asked if he had been in touch with the school district to find out what measures the district had taken regarding the dispute, Kenny said he had not.

But my clients have been making complaints since November and if (the school district) did anything, it didnt seem to have worked, Kenny said.

In a March 29 interview with The Mercury, Pottstown Middle School Principal Brian Hostetler and Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez outlined the measures the district has taken to address longstanding complaints about behavior there.

It includes a number of in-school and after-school programs and a district-wide curriculum aimed at teaching students to resolve conflicts peacefully.

In that interview, Rodriguez addressed the issues involving Jasmin Samba in a general way and said that contrary to the narrative frequently repeated on social media, that the district did not do nothing in terms of the trying to resolve the dispute.

We have followed up multiple times to try to deal with this particular conflict, Rodriguez said.

That latest chapter in the conflict unfolded Tuesday when Pottstown Police announced the capture and arrest of Makael Bevins, 19, and Ahnile Fountain, 19.

After a week-long manhunt, the two were located in the west end of the borough at about 1:30 p.m. and taken into custody near Quinter and Glasgow streets after a short foot chase, according to Pottstown Police.

Following their capture, U.S. Marshals and the regions SWAT team were called in to serve a high-risk search warrant at a home five blocks away at 20 W. Vine St. in West Pottsgrove.

The high risk warrant on 20 W. Vine St. was a search for persons in relation to the two male subjects taken into custody earlier that day (Bevins and Fountain), West Pottsgrove Police Chief Matthew Stofflet told The Mercury.

They were seen leaving from 20 W. Vine St. and subsequent information revealed there could be other persons inside the residence, who could be part of the ongoing investigations being jointly conducted, Stofflet wrote.

The search, which spread to neighboring homes and attracted two Philadelphia news helicopters in addition to a throng of neighbors, produced no immediate arrests.

Maria Samba has said on social media that her daughter was the target of bullying, and that school and police officials did not act aggressively enough to protect her daughter, and that her daughter got in trouble for fighting back.

In March, Hostetler had informed Maria Samba that she is not allowed on middle school grounds without an appointment in the wake of two incidents there on Feb. 10 and March 22, The Mercury has learned.

In February, Maria Samba pursued an aggressive altercation with middle school students and police were called, according to the communication.

On March 22, in front of the middle school, staff heard you making inappropriate remarks and threatening comments about students and utilizing extensive profanity, read the letter, which was signed by Hostetler.

Failure to abide by this procedure will be considered defiant trespass and will be immediately reported to the Pottstown Police Department, Hostetler wrote.

Police records describe the conflict that led to the shooting as a months-long feud between two groups that had resulted in several fights. One group was comprised of three girls, including Bevins sister, and the other group, four adults and one juvenile girl, the Reading Eagle reported Wednesday.

The Eagle reported that police records indicate that on March 24, prior to the shooting, Bevins was contacted by his younger sister, who called him to say she had been struck by an adult male outside the West Street home where the shooting later took place.

Pottstown Police Capt. Robert Thomas told The Mercury on March 25 that police were investigating whether the shoots fired were related to an earlier dispute in front of the home that police had also responded to.

We are looking into the possibility that (the shooting incident) is related to a call less than an hour prior to the shots being fired. The prior call did involve middle school-age kids, he said.

Thirty minutes before the shots were fired, police had cleared a group ready to fight in the street from the same location, according to the Eagle.

Kenny confirmed he has spoken with his clients about this altercation that took place before the shots were fired, but said he has no comment to make about it.

Police allege in the affidavit of probable cause that Bevins and Fountain arrived outside the West Street home after the first altercation was cleared by police and fired more than a dozen shots into the home with a .40 caliber handgun, the Eagle reported.

Police responded around 8:30 p.m. after the shots were fired into the home. Four adults and five children were inside at the time, but no injuries were reported

Both Bevins and Fountain are being charged with attempted murder, firearms and related offenses. Police say Bevins has a second warrant for gun violations.

Anti-bullying rallies are planned for April 25 and April 28.

When I was a youngster in school, we got into fights, fist fights and then we were best friends 10 minutes later, said Kenny. I dont know how we got to this place as a society where we try to resolve these things with gunfire. Weve gone off a cliff.
Im still not done with my long road trip that is keeping me from new posts here, but not to worrythe Week in Pictures will appear tomorrow morning around 7:30 eastern time as always; also, on Tuesday I taped what I think is going to be one of our best podcasts ever, one of my origin story formats with William B. Allen. But before I rush off to todays wrestlemania at Berkeley I want to pass along news about our great friend Herbert Meyer.

As you may recall, Herb suffered a serious bicycle accident several months ago. This morning his son Tom passes along this update, and directs our attention to a terrific video of one of Herbs last speeches:

As some of you may know, we recently passed the six-month anniversary of Herb Meyers bicycle accident. The most important news is also the worst: Hes still unconscious and comatose. Though the doctors are adamant that they cannot make an accurate prognosis during the first year, the chances for (and likely quality of) recovery diminish with each passing month. Some hope remains  and we would appreciate your continued prayers for our family  but we are heartbroken. Dads non-neurological injuries have healed well. At present, his body is as healthy as one could expect for someone in his condition, though this could all change very quickly. His trauma care was superb and were satisfied with (but vigilant of) his continuing care. As far as the doctors can tell, he is not suffering or in pain, which is an enormous consolation.
I happily took the reserved Power Line seat for the first time yesterday at the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor. If Wednesdays testimony featured the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, as it mostly did, yesterdays featured the Minneapolis Police Department. The prosecution introduced bodycam and squad car video of MPD officers who arrived at the scene.

For good narrative accounts of yesterdays testimony and other evidence, please see the Star Tribune story by Chao Xiong and Libor Jany and the MPR report by Jon Collins and Riham Feshir.

Unfortunately, no video recorded what Noor had to say about the incident. Why? I dont know. Indeed, Noors escort officer following the incident advised him in no uncertain terms not to say nuthin. However, its not that he didnt have some splainin to do. As MPD homicide lieutenant Rick Zimmerman pungently testified regarding his reaction to the crime scene: I didnt see anything, and my first thought, frankly, was, What the fuck? Why isnt there something here?

Something, that is, that would explain what happened. Something like a weapon in the vicinity of the decedent  the barefoot young lady in her pajamas.

In total, four officers testified yesterday. The prosecution elicited testimony regarding the streetlight illumination of the crime scene from each of the officers. Lieutenant Zimmerman was particularly strong on this point. Everybody could see everybody else. No problem.

One more point I should have made yesterday. Noor shot Justine in the abdomen on her left side. The bullet traveled from front to back and lodged next to her spine at L5-L6. As I think about that, Justine must have been standing near the drivers side of the Harrity/Noor squad car at the time she was shot and facing it. For me. that makes the shooting even more difficult to understand.

The defense had yet to cross-examine Officer Jesse Lopez at the end of the day yesterday. He is tied up this morning and will return for cross-examination out of order.
We wrote here about the fact that Rep. Ilhan Omar was scheduled to give a speech in Woodland Hills, California, for CAIR, the terrorist-supporting unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation prosecution. Sure enough, Omars CAIR speech made news. Why? She described the September 11 attacks as some people did something so that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties. Its all about us, although what civil liberties were lost is, as always, unclear. Here is the clip, with more material afterward:

This is a common theme in Islamic and liberal circles: terrorist attacks are significant only insofar as they raise the specter of backlash against Muslims. One sometimes gets the impression that, save for such hypothetical backlashincessantly warned about, but rarely occurringsome would be content with the terrorist attacks.

Omars some people did something drew criticism, although not as much as it deserved. Congressman Dan Crenshaw weighed in, which brought Omars far-left ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into the fray:

You refuse to cosponsor the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, yet have the audacity to drum resentment towards Ilhan w/completely out-of-context quotes. In 2018, right-wing extremists were behind almost ALL US domestic terrorist killings. Why dont you go do something about that? https://t.co/rkb92IxkKX  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 11, 2019



It took me a while to figure out the code, but I finally realized that Democrats classify every murderer who did not actually volunteer for Bernie Sanders campaign as a right-wing extremist.

American Action News records much more of the Twitter skirmish. Ocasio-Cortez let loose this ignorant tweet:

Im not going to quote the NY Posts horrifying, hateful cover. Heres 1 fact: @IlhanMN is a cosponsor of the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund. Shes done more for 9/11 families than the GOP who wont even support healthcare for 1st responders- yet are happy to weaponize her faith.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 11, 2019



Here is the New York Post cover that was too horrifying and hateful to quote:

Apparently it is horrifying and hateful to be reminded that terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans in a single attack. If that is the position of the Kiddie Wing of the Democratic Party, it will soon be the position of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and the federal bureaucracy. If it isnt already.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has come in for some well-deserved abuse on Twitter, as recorded here. Her characteristic ignorance is again in evidence; Ryan Saavedra has led the charge. For example:

Furthermore, no one is weaponizing Omar's faith against her over her 9/11 remarks. They are outraged that she downplayed the horror of the attack by saying it was "some people did something"  Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 11, 2019



Much more at the link. The real story here is that the Democratic Party is moving away from even feigned sympathy with America, and Americans, who have been the victims of many terrorist attacks. Rather, it is all about the backlash that never seems to come. But the Democrats havent given up. They await it hopefully.
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Philanthropist and Global Business Leader Amina Oyagbola Will be a Guest Speaker at the Upcoming West African Conference Hosted by the Talent Agenda SeriesLAGOS, NIGERIA / ACCESSWIRE / April 12, 2019 / Founder of Women in Successful Careers, Amina Oyagbola is proud to announce that she will be a guest speaker in the upcoming June 25th and 26th Talent Agenda Series West Africa Conference located in Lagos, Nigeria.The workshop will be aimed at helping delegates from various industries recognize and further understand the values of diversity in the workplace - both from an individual and a business perspective. Additionally, attendees will learn how to create a more diverse and inclusive environment that improves the overall employee experience.Delegates in attendance can expect to:Understand how recognizing, celebrating and encouraging diversity can lead to success in both a business and an employee experience capacity.Learn how to improve the overall employee experience of diverse employees and create a welcoming and inclusive environment where diversity is valued.Learn the key steps that need to be considered in order to effectively operationalize diversity and inclusivity throughout your organization, including how to make it a key deliverable for everyone.Amina Oyagbola was responsible for moderating the March 29th, 2019 "Meet-a-WISCAR" event. This unique event showcases successful career women who share their career insights and life experiences with participants through an interview process. This 2019 women's month edition aimed to examine the conversation around achieving a more equitable, diverse and inclusive workplace that all genders can thrive in for development and the good of society.In addition to guest speaker Amina Oyagbola, lectures will be presented by professionals Pai Gamde, Austin Okere, and many more. Pai Gamde is the Chief Human Resource Officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, and Austin Okere is the Founder of CWG PLC and the Ausso Leadership Academy.To learn more about the Talent Agenda West Africa Conference and guest speakers please visit:2nd Annual West Africa ConferenceGuest SpeakersAbout Amina OyagbolaAmina Oyagbola is the current Managing Consultant of AKMS Consulting Limited, and she is also the founder of Women in Successful Careers (WISCAR). Additionally, she is a former executive at MTN Nigeria Communications, which under her leadership and vision earned MTN the coveted Investor in People Gold Standard - becoming the first company in Nigeria to be accredited with this accolade. Amina Oyagbola has also been nominated as the HR Person of the Year by HR People Magazine.Amina Oyagbola is also a philanthropist and published author of the "Women in the Nigerian Workplace" article in the Nigerian newspaper, Businessday Newspaper. She also recently appeared as a guest on the "Business Etiquette with Janet Adetu" radio programme.For more information on Amina Oyagbola please visit:Contact info:Amina Oyagbolaoyagbola@ yahoo.com SOURCE: Amina Oyagbola
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Worldwide sales of the controlled substances closed in on a valuation of US$ 67,000 Mn in 2018, and are projected to record a Y-o-Y growth at 3.5% in 2019, according to a new Fact.MR study. The study opines that depressants and stimulants have been top-selling class of drugs in the controlled substances market, however gains from marijuana are expected to record over 2X faster growth than all the other controlled substances in 2019 and beyond.Approval of medical marijuana has been on a significant uptick in various states of the US, trailed by the legalization in Canada for both recreational and medicinal use recently. This has tremendously contributed to the popularity of cannabis stocks, alongside efforts of leading controlled substance manufacturers toward eliminating legal barriers and attracting investor interest. The study estimates marijuana sales in 2019 to record a Y-o-Y growth at 9.3% over 2018.Request For Sample Report- https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=2032 The Schedule of Controlled Substances currently positions marijuana in Schedule 1  the most restrictive one reserved for high potential for abuse, lack of accepted safety and no accepted medical use drugs. Federal scheduling of marijuana has been a key concern among producers and medical patients alike, despite legalization of cannabis in the US and Canada. The US Drug Enforcement Administration has recently removed cannabidiol from Schedule 1, post-FDA approval of non-synthetic, cannabis-derived medicine. Marijuana businesses have cheered the DEAs action, as it alludes the beginning of regulatory relaxation to the cannabis industry, according to a lead analyst at Fact.MR Pain Management Remains Leading Application of Controlled SubstancesThe study opines that pain management will continue to account for over one-fourth share of the controlled substances market in 2018. Several regulatory norms being implemented in the prescription of controlled substances for pain management, such as in Georgia, Michigan, and Florida, have further triggered the preference and adoption of controlled substances to manage and treat chronic as well as acute pain. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and anxiety are other medical conditions wherein controlled substances are expected to witness promising future prospects, according to the study.Browse Full Report with TOC: https://www.factmr.com/report/2032/controlled-substances-market The entrance of pharmaceutical giants in the cannabis sector of Canada alludes the next significant trend in the controlled substances industry, offering additional credibility to the sector. Although the pharmaceutical part of the expression involves the missing link, an ongoing trend of M&A and entrance of these legacy industries is poised in 2019 and the foreseeable future. There has been a drought in direct investments from the pharmaceutical industries in the licensed medical marijuana producers, it is highly likely that the trend would change, as the US witnesses the federal legalization of cannabis. Big pharmaceutical companies that eye collaborations and partnerships with cannabis producers having competitive differentiation circling their R&D initiatives, commercialization efforts, and clinical trial programs, are likely to witness significant revenue generation in the near future.Ensuring effective and safe management of controlled drugs continues to remain an imperative agenda among pharmacists, which in turn has led the focus on fundamental changes including reviewing of liquid CD management and CD documentation to realize substantial improvements. The pharmacists are also adhering to the operational standards, completely aware about the way CDs are managed, along with identifying potential drawbacks and reporting concerns regarding non-conformance. This will result in adherence to appropriate steps that ensure apt prescription of quantities when dispensing controlled substances to patients.This Fact.MR report also offers an accurate forecast of the controlled substances market for the period between 2018 and 2028. The controlled substances market is envisaged to record a CAGR of 4% through 2028.Request Customization on this Report- https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=RC&rep_id=2032 About Fact.MR Fact.MR is a fast-growing market research firm that offers the most comprehensive suite of syndicated and customized market research reports. We believe transformative intelligence can educate and inspire businesses to make smarter decisions. We know the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach; that's why we publish multi-industry global, regional, and country-specific research reports.
The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application and industry.

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Growing need for the environment friendly insulators has led to an upsurge in demand for the cyclopentane products in the global market. In addition, increasing production of the refrigeration products is projected to impact the global market growth of cyclopentane positively. Fact.MR states that the global cyclopentane market is projected to reflect a CAGR of 5.9% over the forecast period.Factors Fuelling Global Market GrowthGrowth of the global cyclopentane market is mainly bound to micro-economic and macro-economic factors. As the need for storing stock of food products in a particular temperature arise, adoption of the refrigerators and freezers continue to remain high. In addition, growing need for storing range of medical devices and products in low temperature conditions will further continue to rev up demand for refrigeration products in the healthcare industry. Surge in adoption of refrigerators and freezers in the food and beverage, healthcare, and pharmaceutical industry will continue to boost sales of the insulators globally.Request Sample Report @ https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=371 Government in various countries have imposed regulations pertaining to adoption of environment friendly insulation materials. In order to offer environment friendly insulation options, manufacturers are witnessing robust demand for the cyclopentane products for manufacturing insulating materials. Unlike FCF and HCFC, cyclopentane possess low potential of ozone penetration attributes. As production of refrigerant products continues to increase in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, healthcare, and construction industry, demand for the cyclopentane products will continue to increase significantly.Surge in production of adhesives and coatings for packaging purposes will continue to rev up demand for resins globally. As demand for resins continues to increase for the production of fiberglass reinforcements, composite materials and carbon fiber, sales of cyclopentane is projected to increase globally. Growing production of composite materials, adhesives, carbon fiber and fiberglass reinforcement is further projected to contribute towards the global market growth of cyclopentane.Browse Full Report @ https://www.factmr.com/report/371/cyclopentane-market On the other hand, various factors will continue to inhibit the global market growth of cyclopentane significantly. Increasing ingestion of cyclopentane by the manufacturers during the process of production can result in nausea and vomiting attributed to the irritation in gastrointestinal tract. Exposure of central nervous system to cyclopentane is further likely to result in dizziness, excitement, unconsciousness, and lightheadedness. In addition, increasing exposure to the cyclopentane products can also be fatal attributed to the respiratory disorders. Such factors are projected to contribute towards the global market growth of cyclopentane over the forecast period.Residential Refrigerators to Represent Significant CAGRGrowing need for insulating materials for the production of refrigeration products has led to surge in demand for foam-blowing agents in the global market. In terms of volume, the foam-blowing agents segment is projected to represent the highest growth, recording more than 99,200 units by 2026-end. On the other hand, the foam-blowing agents product type segment is projected to reflect the fastest growth in the global market of cyclopentane throughout the forecast period.You can Buy This Report from Here @ https://www.factmr.com/checkout/371/S On the basis of application, the insulating construction material segment is projected to represent a significant growth in terms of volume, accounting for more than 18,300 units by 2017-end. However, the residential refrigerators application segment is projected to reflect a significant CAGR during the forecast period.Market PlayersMajor players in the global market of cyclopentane are Dymatic Chemicals, Inc., Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LLC, LG Chem, Ltd., Beijing Eastern Acrylic Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., Trecora Resources, Yeochun NCC Co. Ltd., Merck & Co. Ltd, INEOS Group Ltd., Haldia Petrochemicals Limited, Maruzen Petrochemical Co., Ltd., Exxon Mobil Corporation, HCS Group GmbH and ZEON Corporation.
PR-Inside.com: 2019-04-12 13:22:27

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SAN FRANCISCO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 12, 2019 / 2019 IEEE Industry Summit On Future Technology held from April 6th to 8th in Silicon Valley, USA. The summit focuses on IoT, big data, AI, and blockchain technology, bringing together city leaders, planners, professionals, and researchers from around the world.IEEE refers to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and it was established on January 1, 1963. IEEE is the world's largest association of technical professionals with more than 423,000 members in over 175 countries around the world. IEEE publishes a variety of magazines, journals, and books every year, holding at least 300 professional conferences.April 06, Dr. Qi Zhou, founder and CEO of QuarkChain, was invited to attend the summit. He delivered keynote speeches at blockchain break-out rooms. In the audience, there are researchers from industry including VMware, BMW, Equinix, and from top universities in US, Germany, Austria, Italy, UK, etc.Dr. Qi Zhou gave a presentation on "Boson Consensus: A Scalable Blockchain Sharding Consensus. Dr. Zhou introduced that with partitioned sub-states and the operations (transactions) to change the sub-states (including both in-shard transactions and cross-shard transactions), the next major question is how to implement an efficient system to store the sub-states and process the transactions. There are two native consensus algorithms to the sharded blockchain.Naive Consensus 1: Single Blockchain with Large BlocksizeHowever, large block size will take considerable time to propagate 1 GB block from one BP to the rest of BPs. Thus, the probability of forks can be dramatically increased. Further security issue and the waste of hashpower will also be resulted from Native Consensus 1 solution.Naive Consensus 2: Multiple Blockchains In ParallelHowever, the system will suffer from an issue we called hashpower dilution by adopting native consensus 2. PoSW consensus algorithm, exclusively developed by QuarkChain, enables the two layers of blockchains to achieve security, scalability, and decentralization simultaneously, storing the sub-states and processing the transactions.Boson consensus is a class of consensus algorithms based on the hash power distribution. The hash power adjustment mechanism enables the hash power to be distributed among the shards flexibly. Hashpower reuse technique is developed to protect the newly added shards where the hash power is limited in order to enhance the security of the whole network. Relying on Boson consensus, a system structure of root chain-shards is able to be successfully implemented. The root chain confirms all blocks from sharded blockchains and Boson consensus is responsible for distributing the hash power between the root chain and the shards.Additionally, Dr. Qi Zhou focused on discussing the incentive allocation of blockchain producers and fork-selection rules. He introduced a core solution called rootchain-first rule, i.e., based on Boson consensus algorithm to allocate hashpower so that more hashpower is allocated to root chain. The transaction is secured by the rootchain's proof. Newly added shards with limited hash power will also be protected by root chain immediately, while avoiding hash power attacks at their early stage.QuarkChain mainnet has accomplished various functions, including multi-native-tokens, various consensus algorithms, and different mining algorithms. More importantly, QuarkChain has successfully implemented state sharding technology that is considered as the most challenging technique among all sharding technologies. State sharding technology and innovative cluster design enable more storage space and computing resources to be saved in each node on shards, achieving high-efficiency of the whole network eventually.Currently, IEEE has a great impact on industry standards and academic leading-edge research. Dr. Qi Zhou's paper on the QuarkChain Boson Consensus has also been published by IEEE.On the same day, Dr. Qi Zhou also hosted a seminar on the future of blockchain industry. Dr. Zhou and other attendees discussed the future application and development of blockchain.Future blockchain applications will be developed around these two directions.The first direction is to rely on smart contract technology and low-cost credits extended by extremely low marginal costs, gradually covering more areas requiring low-cost credits, and providing assistance for the development of financial technology. This requires to address multiple issues, including real-time, high scalability, low latency, and high throughput. QuarkChain provides solutions to these problems by adopting state sharding technology. There will be more opportunities in the future.Secondly, with further penetration of blockchain technology, enterprises and industries in the fields of transaction information, logistics traceability, medical records, and identity verification are able to establish information security by relying on blockchain techniques to guarantee traceability and non-tamperability. In this way, the interoperability among various blockchain networks also becomes a new development trend in the future. QuarkChain's high flexibility enables compatibility with the existing public chains by adding new shards. We provide hash power protection for newly added shards and on-chain information mobility will be easily achieved by QuarkChain's two layered blockchains design: root chain and shards. It can be considered as an alternative solution for interoperability.QuarkChain and Ethereum conducted one training session, focusing on companies and academic researchers interested in blockchain industry, to talk about blockchain challenges and future solutions on April 7, 2019. The audience includes researchers from industry including VMware, BMW, Equinix, and from top universities in the US, Germany, Austria, Italy, UK, etc.FYIWebsiteTelegramhttps://t.me/quarkchainioTwitterMediumRedditFacebookContact:support@ quarkchain.org Company Website:SOURCE: QuarkChain
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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / April 12, 2019 / EVITRADE Health Systems Corp. (CSE: EVA, OTCQB: EVAHF). Dr. Ricardo E Rivera-Acevedo member of EViTRADE's scientific advisory board and renowned cannabinologist is leading the way for cannabis education in Canada.In a recent article published in El Nuevo Dia, one of Puerto Rico's most important newspapers, Dr. Ricardo-Acevedo discussed his passion for cannabis science and his support for the education of the general public. "One of my goals is to educate the people about the health benefits of the cannabis plant and the important role that our research will play in a greater understanding of how we treat and use this plant for the betterment of our health" commented Dr. Rivera-Acevedo.Dr. Rivera-Acevedo is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and consultant for various pharmaceutical companies around the world. In his spare time, he co-hosts the Cannabis Science Podcast and El Bus De Las 7 radio show on Vancouver Coop Radio 100.5 FM CFRO ( http://cannabisconciencia.org) Dr. Rivera-Acevedo's accomplishments also include playing key roles in establishing the first clinical trial on the use of cannabis to combat acute pain in conjunction with the Fundacion de Investigacion (FDI Clinical Research) and the creation of a laboratory for the investigation of cannabis and cannabinoids within the Department of Anesthesiology, Pharmacology & Therapeutics at the University of British Columbia.EviTrade continues to work toward developing CBD protocols and research that integrate with the mission of elevating the human condition through advanced medical solutions and effective health and wellness products.Contact:EVITRADE Health Systems Corp.(formerly Auxellence Health Corporation)Email info@ evahealthsystems.com or ceo@ auxellence.com Website http://www.evahealthsystems.com CSE Micro-site: http://thecse.com/en/listings/technology/evitrade-health-systems-corp US OTC Markets (OTCQB): http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/EVAHF/news About EVITRADE Health (CSE: EVA, OTCQB: EVAHF)EVITRADE Health Systems Corp. (formerly, Auxellence Health Corporation), is a technology company specializing in the Health and Life Sciences sector looking to deliver effective personalized health solutions with a higher degree of predictability and consistency.The Company is focused on the following areas to help improve health: personalized medical care (including CBD usage monitoring and effects on the cardiovascular system), molecular biology, nutraceutical solutions and genetic tailoring.Through its subsidiaries' focus on technologies involved in extracting and purifying CBD extracts for its personalized healthcare system, the Company may be the first to offer a complete quality assured vertically integrated "CBD Health System" for monitoring and recording the effects of CBD on your cardiovascular system.DisclaimersThis news release contains forward-looking statements based on assumptions and judgments of management regarding future events or results. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the forward-looking statements. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to revise or update such statements. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators and on the OTC Markets website which is posted on www.sedar.com http://thecse.com/en/listings/technology/evitrade-health-systems-corp , and http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/EVAHF/filings.This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein and accordingly undue reliance should not be put on such. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE or CNSX Markets), nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the CSE), or any other regulatory authority accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. The Company does not undertake to update this news release unless required by applicable law.This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities described herein in the United States. The securities described herein have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any state securities law and may not be offered or sold in the "United States", as such term is defined in Regulation S promulgated under the U.S. Securities Act, unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration requirements is available.SOURCE: EVITRADE Health Systems Corp.
PR-Inside.com: 2019-04-12 05:36:08

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Get Professional Guidance Finding Your Dream Colorado Home with Colorado Exclusive Buyer Agents Association. They Work Purely for the Home Buyer and Can Help People to Find the Best Deals.GREENWOOD VILLAGE, CO / ACCESSWIRE / April 11, 2019 / Colorado Exclusive Buyers Agents Association (CEBAA) has launched an updated site for anyone looking to buy a new home in the Colorado area. They are a not-for-profit trade association founded in 1999 with the aim of providing help and guidance for the buyer.For more information please visit the website here: http://homebuyerscolorado.org The agents that make up the Colorado Exclusive Buyers Agents Association are dedicated to protecting the interests of the buyer. They specialize in the buyer's side of the transaction, CEBAA helps a wide range of real estate buyers including first-time buyers, those seeking a retirement home, investors, or those dreaming of a ranch or resort property.Exclusive Buyers Agents can be a valuable asset when looking to buy a new home in the Colorado area. Not all real estate agents are the same when it comes to full representation of the buyer's best interests.For example, most real estate agents who take listings work for the seller and are actively trying to sell the home for the highest price and best terms for the seller. However, an exclusive buyer's agent works instead to help their buyer clients acquire their ideal home at the best price and terms.Property buyers can trust their agent to negotiate the best price for them because their goal isn't to get the most money from both sides of the transaction. Because they don't take listings, they can only ever make a commission on one side of the transaction, the buyer's side.Anyone looking for a new home in the Colorado area can get in touch with CEBAA. Both the site form and the live staff are available seven days a week to put them in touch with one or more agents in their chosen area. The web form provides immediate access to association members and affiliates who service the area. This allows real estate buyers to have a list of top agents who have already been vetted for their skills, experience and high-quality reviews. The buyer can contact them via email, text or phone call, with the confidence that no matter what choice they make, they are very likely to have a a smooth and satisfying home buying experience.The association manager of CEBAA states: ''Top buyers agents have these qualities: great listening skills, superior home evaluation skills, ability to clearly and patiently explain the home-buying process. They have knowledge of first time home buyer programs, and how to facilitate a combined sell and buy situation. This circumstance oftentimes occurs with senior down-sizers. The association staff will help the buyer with timelines to coordinate both the buy and sell transactions, and will also help provide access to ancillary services such as clean-up and moving services. CEBAA association members and affiliates have the skills to find and negotiate the very best property for their buyers at the very best price and terms.'' Working with a buyers agent can help to ensure that the client doesn't overpay for their dream home. It's simple to get the process rolling, and anyone can get in touch with a buyer's agent through CEBAA for any town in Colorado. To find exclusive buyer agents outside of Colorado, prospective home purchasers can visit http://buyeragentsearch.com/associations-and-real-estate-agents/ to view exclusive agents in all 50 states.Those wishing to find out more about buying property in Colorado can visit the Colorado Association website referenced above.Contact Info:Name: Kathleen ChirasOrganization: Colorado Exclusive Buyer Agents AssociationAddress: 6900 East Belleview Avenue, Greenwood Village, CO 80111, United StatesPhone: +1-303-679-1621Website: http://homebuyerscolorado.org SOURCE: Colorado Exclusive Buyer Agents Association
The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application and industry.

PR-Inside.com: 2019-04-12 11:24:16

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Office: Dublin 2Suite 988427 Upper Pembroke Street,Dublin 2, IrelandHead of Marketing+353-1-4434-232

Increasing demand for alternative energy sources has prompted the use of landfills containing biodegradable materials in production of combustible gases. A mixture of these gases, which is collectively identified as landfill gas, is used as a key source of supplying hydrocarbons in production of heat and other forms of energy. Governments from several parts of the world are adopting measures towards natural anaerobic decomposition of the collected organic waste in landfills. As a result of activities instrumented by microorganisms, a mixture of different gases being drawn from these landfills is finding an ideal replacement to fossil fuel components of natural gas. High in methane, the utilization of landfill gas continues to gain traction in domestic applications such as supplying power to homes in the form of natural gas. Easy procurement of landfill gas and low capital expenditure in production continues to relieve the stress on solar energy as the most exploited renewable energy resource.Request Sample Report @ https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=429 According to Fact.MR , the global landfill gas market is expected to expand at a moderate CAGR with respect to value during the period of forecast, 2017-2026. Increasing demand for methane will continue to drive the production of landfill gas in the foreseeable future. The report estimates that by the end of 2026, landfill gas market would reach an estimate of over US$ 1 Bn. Effectiveness of landfill gas in supplanting natural gas across wide range of applications will further boost the expansion of global landfill gas market through 2026.3 Key Insights from the ReportWith respect to region, the global landfill gas market growth is influenced by the adoption of landfill gas across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ). The North America landfill gas market is expected to reflect high market attractiveness and is the largest with a high market valuation. Moreover, Europe is poised to retain its second place and is the second largest region in the landfill gas market. APEJ landfill gas market is projected to rise at the highest value CAGR throughout the forecast periodBrowse Full Report @ https://www.factmr.com/report/429/landfill-gas-market China is the most lucrative regional market in APEJ that has extensively contributed to the growth of the landfill gas market in APEJ region. This growth can be attributed towards favorable government initiatives for environmental protection of harmful emissions as well as increasing direct use projects in China. In addition, India and Australia are also significant contributors to the growth of the landfill gas market in APEJUpgraded segment by application category is poised to grow at a noteworthy pace in the coming years. The upgraded segment is expected to register a steady CAGR of 5.0% in terms of value throughout the period of forecast, 2017-2026. However, direct use segment is the most attractive and is anticipated to cement its dominance in the global landfill gas market during the forecast periodYou can Buy This Report from Here @ https://www.factmr.com/checkout/429/S The report has identified the leading producers of landfill gas in the global market. These include, Waste Management, Inc., Covanta Holding Corporation, Veolia Environment S.A, Pennon Group Plc., SUEZ SA, Kohler Co., Inc., Aria Energy Corp, Granite Acquisition, Inc., Vectren Corporation, and Shanghai Chengtou Holding Co., Ltd. Majority of the landfill gas produced in the world will be procured from municipal solid waste. However, players in the global landfill gas market will continue to remain in distress for flouting environmental laws that curb the production of greenhouse gases such as methane, which are a key component of landfill gasses.
The research report presents a comprehensive assessment of the market and contains thoughtful insights, facts, historical data and statistically supported and industry-validated market data. It also contains projections using a suitable set of assumptions and methodologies. The research report provides analysis and information according to market segments such as geographies, application and industry.

PR-Inside.com: 2019-04-12 11:27:00

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Future of the electric grill market is likely to rely on meat thermometers and grill tongs of Millennials, as consumers between the age-group 25 and 35 are more likely to purchase grills, says a recent Fact.MR study. Grill and relevant accessories are set to perceive a rapid demand growth, with consumer preferences shifting toward high-end, feature-intensive grills. With the trend toward cookouts gaining popularity among young adults worldwide, grill sales are likely to surge significantly, thereby influencing the market for electric grill.Electric grills sales will also be affected from introduction of new products that feature Bluetooth or Wi-Fi connectivity and offer remote monitoring. Fact.MRs study estimates nearly 1,730,000 units of electric grills to be sold worldwide by 2028-end. Growth of the barbecuing and grills industry has remained steady over the past few years, post-recovery from weak economic impact on account of housing market collapse. However, with renewed growth of the residential sector, demand for grills will surge underpinned by rising GHDI of consumers in developed and developing nations.Request Sample Report @ https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=781 Portable Electric Grills Emerge as a Key TrendConsumers nowadays seek portable options in all kinds of products and accessories and cooking appliances are no exception. Portable electric grills are increasingly sought by consumers during their family outings and picnics. Manufacturers such as Weber have therefore produced electric grills that are durable and portable, thereby meeting current consumer lifestyle demands. Moreover, portable electric grills integrated with advanced technology are being offered by brands at reasonable costs have further complemented their penetration in the market.Electric Grill Market: Indoor Applications Continue to Spearhead with Bulk Value ShareIndoor application of electric grills will continue to spearhead the market with over three-fifth value share. As electric grills depend on electricity as their source for heating grill plate, restrictions pertaining to apartment barbecuing, such as in gas and charcoal grills, are alleviated. Indoor use devoid of smoke issues is a key advantage of electric grills which has been driving their demand among consumers since their emergence. In a bid to leverage the indoor applications dominance, electric grill manufacturers are offering various modalities such as countertop designs for permanent kitchen placement.Browse Full Report @ https://www.factmr.com/report/781/electric-grill-market North Americas Dominance Prevails, as Barbecuing Becomes Integral Part of Consumers LifestyleA promising future has been envisaged for the barbecuing and grilling industry in North America by Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association (HPBA). HPBA states approximately 30% consumers to utilize grills or smokers, which in turn has led grilling to gain immense traction as year-round passion in the region. Passion for taste and flavor in foods is likely to demonstrate rising vigour in North America, implying positive prospects for barbecuing & grilling industry. Barbecuing has become more of an inherent part of consumers lifestyle in the region.You can Buy This Report from Here @ https://www.factmr.com/checkout/781/S HPBA states that over one-third consumers in North America eye on purchasing new grill, with electric grills accounting for nearly 10% of the overall grill sales. Although holding a relatively lower share in the industry, electric grills are expected to witness increased demand in the near future in light of their indoor use convenience and energy-efficient attributes. This will significantly influence future growth of the electric grill market in North America.
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PR-Inside.com: 2019-04-12 14:10:25

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Magnesium nitrate hexahydrate continues to witness a significant surge in demand in light of its robust adoption as an efficacious dehydrating, oxidizing, and stabilizing agent across various industrial sectors. Its effectiveness in fertilizer production, particularly nitrogen fertilizers, has been expected to pose a proliferative impact on growth of the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market. Additionally, explosives and fireworks production involves extensive use of magnesium nitrate hexahydrate as a dehydrating agent as well as a catalyst.Get Free PDF For More Technical Insights @ https://www.factmr.com/connectus/sample?flag=S&rep_id=913 However, given the increasing concerns with regard to environmental protection policies that aim at curtailing pollution levels, regulatory bodies have imposed a ban on the use of fireworks. This is expected to keep growth of the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market in check. Nevertheless, remarkable adoption of magnesium nitrate hexahydrate in the petrochemical industry will offset the confined market growth prospects against the backdrop of fireworks prohibition.Increased government expenditure on the military & defense sector in North America will further underpin adoption of magnesium nitrate hexahydrate in the region, as the chemical witnessed extensive use as stabilizer and catalyst in explosives production. North Americas lead in the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market in comparison to Europe will be challenged by higher growth rate and opportunity in the latter during the forecast period, according to Fact.MR study. The study has estimated nearly 244,820 tons of magnesium nitrate hexahydrate sales in 2017.Growth of the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market in Europe will continue to be sustained by proliferation in use of nitrogen fertilizers, with the FAO estimating 39,484,000 tons of nitrogen fertilizers sales in the region by 2018-end. The European Union has imposed regulations on use of explosives, while delegating norms to add magnesium nitrate hexahydrate to the Annex 2 of EU regulation 98/2013 on the Use and Marketing of Explosives Precursors. This, coupled with the FAO prediction on the agricultural sectors significant rise in the near future, will continue to drive growth of the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market in Europe.Complete Report is Available @ https://www.factmr.com/report/913/magnesium-nitrate-hexahydrate-market Magnesium Nitrate Hexahydrate Market: Pre-eminence of Additives Application to PersistAdditives and explosives manufacturing have prevailed as the target application areas for magnesium nitrate hexahydrate. Demand for magnesium nitrate hexahydrate as additives has traditionally remained higher than in manufacturing explosives, and the status quo is likely to endure over the period of forecast.The study slates synthetic process and nitromagnesite as prominent manufacturing processes used by stakeholders in the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market. Albeit pervasiveness of synthetic processs dominance is set to prevail, nitromagnesite will witness a notably greater demand by manufacturers in the upcoming years.Various functionalities of the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate are being leveraged by end-use industries. Primary functions of magnesium nitrate hexahydrate as oxidizing agent and dehydrating agent will continue to lead the market, in terms of both value and volume. Catalyzing agent and reducing agent functions of magnesium nitrate hexahydrate are set to gain higher ground, with their sales rate forecast to remain greater than other functional uses of the chemical through 2028.Magnesium Nitrate Hexahydrate Market: Opportunities Abound in Latin AmericaAccording to the study, magnesium nitrate hexahydrate sales in Latin America will record a relatively faster growth rate over the period of forecast. This growth will be primarily driven by use of this quality chemical as a concrete additive in the regions rising construction industry. Governments of Latin American countries are implementing infrastructural development plans to promote construction of their commercial as well as residential structures.Government of Mexicos National Infrastructural Plan is a prime example of such development efforts. This, coupled with abundant availability of magnesite/magnesium carbonate in Brazil will continue to pave lucrative growth opportunities for growth of the magnesium nitrate hexahydrate market in Latin America, with magnesite being a key raw material for the chemicals production.
PR-Inside.com: 2019-04-12 16:02:02

Notice is given that the Annual General Meeting of Norsk Hydro ASA will be held at the company's office at Vker, Drammensveien 260, 0283 Oslo, on Tuesday 7 May 2019 at 14:00 (CEST).

The full notice, agenda and appendices are attached.

All relevant documents can be found on www.hydro.com/generalmeeting

Investor contact

Contact Stian Hasle

Cell +47 97736022

E-mail Stian.Hasle@hydro.com

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 the Norwegian Securities Trading Act

Attachments
The National Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) has set aside about N258.8 billion in the 2019 budget for the reimbursement of depositors who may be affected should any licensed bank be liquidated this year.

The Managing Director/Chief Executive of NDIC, Umaru Ibrahim, disclosed this to the House of Representatives Committee on Insurance and Actuarial Matters while defending the Corporations 2019 budget estimates.

Mr Ibrahim said a breakdown of the funds included about N109.686 billion provided for depositors of Deposit Money Banks (DMBs), while about N149.081 billion will go for depositors of Primary Mortgage Banks (PMBs) and Micro Finance Banks (MFBs).

The estimates, he said, were consistent with the Corporations mandate of providing financial guarantee to depositors of failed banks towards promoting public confidence in the banking sector.

He said the provision of the fund was critical to the sustenance of the stability of the entire financial system.

The NDIC boss said in fulfilment of the Corporations mandate to provide technical assistance to licensed banks, it collaborated with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to invest in the acquisition of a new software called the Integrated Regulatory Solution (IRS).

He said the software is to make for a more robust surveillance and supervision of insured financial institutions in the country.

According to Mr Ibrahim, the software would enable DMBs generate real time online data among themselves, help regulators to access data online from the DMBs.

Besides, he said the National Association of Microfinance Banks Unified Information Technology Platform (NAMBUIT) was introduced by CBN/NDIC and Association of MFBs to enhance the operational capacity of the MFBs.

He said the CBN/NDIC are financing the project in the ratio of 60:40 per cent respectively in view of the importance of the project to the growth of the MFB sub-sector.

On NDICs mandate of providing financial assistance to eligible licensed and insured banks, Mr Ibrahim said a total of N140 billion was provided for Deposit Money Banks.

Another N300 million was provided for Microfinance and Primary Mortgage Banks.

He urged the banks to take advantage of the opportunity to access the funds offered by the Corporation whenever they are required.

The Chairman of the committee, Olufemi Fakeye comm ended the Corporation for its pro-activeness in the prevention systemic crisis in the nations banking system.

He said the various mechanisms adopted by the Corporation since inception to resolve distress in banks had not only prevented the manifestation of crisis in the system, they also contributed immensely to the high level of public confidence experienced in the financial sector.

The Chairman acknowledged the critical role NDIC has to play towards maintaining financial system stability, saying this has carved a niche for itself as the leading Deposit Insurer in Africa.

Mr Fakeye recalled the special role played by the NDIC in the resolution of the defunct Skye Bank and the establishment of Polaris Bank Limited as a bridge bank.

He charged the NDIC to continue to be more pro-active in detecting and addressing distresses in banks as a way of sustaining public confidence in the countrys financial system.
Chevron Corporation, the parent company of Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL), on Friday announced a definitive agreement to acquire Anadarko Petroleum Corporation.

Chevron is one of the worlds biggest integrated energy companies with subsidiaries involved in virtually all facets of the energy industry.

They include oil and gas exploration and production, crude oil and natural gas transports; refining and products marketing and distribution; transportation fuels and lubricants; manufacturing and sale of petrochemicals and additives as well as power generation.

Anadarko Petroleum, reputed to be one of the worlds largest independent exploration and production companies, is involved in oil and gas exploration and production, acquisition and development of oil and natural gas resources vital to the worlds health and welfare.

Chevrons chairman and CEO, Michael Wirth, celebrated the agreement as a transaction that builds strength on strength for Chevron.

The combination of Anadarkos premier, high-quality assets with our advantaged portfolio strengthens our leading position in the Permian, builds on our deep-water Gulf of Mexico capabilities and will grow our LNG business.

It creates attractive growth opportunities in areas that play to Chevrons operational strengths and underscores our commitment to short-cycle, higher-return investments, Mr Wirth said.

He said the acquisition of Anadarko will significantly enhance Chevrons already advantaged upstream portfolio and further strengthen its leading positions in large, attractive shale, deep-water and natural gas resource basins.

This transaction will unlock significant value for shareholders, generating anticipated annual run-rate synergies of approximately $2 billion, and will be accretive to free cash flow and earnings one year after close, he added.

Anadarko chairman and CEO, Al Walker, also hailed the agreement as a great opportunity to look forward to.

The strategic combination of Chevron and Anadarko will form a stronger and better company with world-class assets, people and opportunities, he said.

Industry analysts say the new company will complement each partner, as Anadarkos assets will enhance Chevrons portfolio across a diverse set of asset classes in shale oil production, deep-water production, LNG, crude oil and gas production.

Under the new arrangement, Chevron plans to divest $15 to $20 billion of assets between 2020 and 2022.

The divestment proceeds are to be used to further reduce debt and return additional cash to shareholders.

Details show the acquisition is structured as 75 percent stock and 25 percent cash, providing an overall value of $65 per share based on the closing price of Chevron stock on April 11, 2019.

In aggregate, upon closing of the transaction, Chevron will issue approximately 200 million shares of stock and pay approximately $8 billion in cash.

Chevron says it will also assume estimated net debt of $15 billion, with total enterprise value of $50 billion, including the assumption of net debt and book value of non-controlling interest.

The transaction has already been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies and is expected to close in the second half of the year.

The acquisition is however subject to Anadarko shareholder approval and regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
The latest report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) ranking Nigeria as the worlds second worst user of sovereign wealth funds is fundamentally flawed, the Nigerian government says.

The managing director of the Nigeria Sovereign investment Authority (NSIA), Uche Orji, said the report was laughable.

The IMF in its Fiscal Monitor Report released on Tuesday as part of the ongoing IMF/World Bank Spring meetings in Washington said Qatar was the only country worse than Nigeria on the index.

According to the Fund, the index was compiled based on the corporate governance and transparency scores of the sovereign wealth funds and the size of assets as a percentage of 2016 gross domestic product of the affected countries.

The IMF blamed Nigerias poor ranking on pervasive corruption, saying out of the 33 oil-rich countries considered, Nigeria faired barely better than Sudan, with depleted Sovereign Wealth Fund.

Columbia, Ghana and Chile were ranked top three best performers several resource-rich countries, on average.

Nigeria fights back

But the NSIA has rejected the report.

There is something fundamentally wrong with the IMF report. What IMF is saying is that Nigeria and other countries using the sovereign wealth fund to provide infrastructure in their countries are not doing well, said the NSIA boss, Mr Orji.

From the IMF data, countries like Chile, Norway that do not invest in their domestic economies, because they do not have problems of infrastructure, are ranked highly. While countries with balanced mandate to invest both domestically and internationally, like Nigeria, UAE, Qatar, are ranked low, he said.

Mr Orji accused the IMF of having fundamental aversion for countries using their resources to invest in their country.

He said he disagreed fundamentally with IMF concern about what a sovereign wealth fund should be used for.

According to him, to expect people to put their money in foreign savings or reserves account to stabilise their economy, and not dabble into commercial investments was wrong.

The NSIA boss said he supported other opinions that sovereign countries, such as African countries, should use their own resources to invest in commercially viable infrastructure at home.

There are so many things wrong with the IMF report. But, the most fundamental thing is that they use other peoples data and hardly engages in details to understand how the system works before coming up with the report

The IMF has a fundamental aversion to the philosophy of people using their own money to invest in their domestic economy.

There is no point putting money in a foreign reserve account when you have clear needs to meet at home. Every country needs to develop its own ideology that serves its own purposes. The truth is, we (Nigeria) know our problems, and we are solving them directly, he said.

NSIA CONSISTENTLY PROFITABLE

On the performance of the NSIA, Mr Orji said the agency has recorded six consistent yields of profits on all three funds, with the latest to be published in its annual report next Monday

He said for four of the five years in a row, NSIA has run in the second quartile of performance in terms of performance, transparency and governance.

Apart ensuring the origin and use of the fund were explicitly provided, Mr Orji said other criteria for governance and transparency, including independent audit of the account and provision provide quarterly audited account were met.

He said the NSIA has invested in each of the three ring fenced funds  Stabilization, Future Generation and Nigeria Infrastructure, which have been consistently profitable in the last five years.

Investments are in healthcare, motorways, power, agriculture, and gas recertification.

With the many investment opportunities in the country, Mr Orji said NSIAs focus was to ensure the Funds are platforms to attract other investors into the country.

Despite argument in favour of investment in Stabilization alone to grow the economy, Mr Orji said the NSIA opted to invest in both Stabilization and infrastructure considering that the former is invested globally, while the later looks at local opportunities.

NSIA ADDING VALUE

The work of the NSIA, he said has actually added value to the economy, with investments in roads, healthcare and agriculture as well as other investments in 17 different countries.

Apart from managing the NSIA mandate, he said the agency is also managing some Presidential initiatives, like the fertilizer initiative, which has helped revive about 18 fertilizer blending plants that were not in operation two years ago.

Today, they are operating and employing thousands of Nigerians, while the fertilizer are delivered at 40 percent below market price. The government subsidy has collapsed from N60billion a year to less than N6billion a year, he said.

On roads, he said NSIA was involved in the construction of the second Niger Bridge, Kano-Abuja highway and the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, to be completed between 2021 and 2022

In healthcare, he said the agency commissioned the cancer treatment centre at the Lags University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), with similar facilities to be commissioned in Kano and Umuahia next month.

On the current balance sheet of the NSIA, he said the core equity of $1.5 billion, consisted of $1billion from the previous administration and $500million by the present administration, despite recession.

He said aggregate returns earned so far by NSIA is about $200 million.

In addition to this is about $75 milion from third party assets managed on behalf of other agencies of government like the Debt Management Office (DMO) and Presidential initiatives on infrastructure development fund, bringing the total to $2.53 billion.
Nigerians will soon be able to ascertain their HIV status from the comfort of their homes, the Minister of Health, Isaac Adewole, has said.

Mr Adewole, on Friday in Abuja, approved a new HIV self-testing kit called Alere HIV Combo (AHC) Rapid Test Kit, which can be used by an individual in the comfort of their homes.

The kit will provide accurate results in 20 minutes and can be run using blood gotten by pricking a finger or serum/plasma.

Mr Adewole said the kit is a new addition to the already existing laboratory and hospital modes of confirming HIV status within the country.

The minister also launched the evaluation report and operational guideline for HIV self-testing in Nigeria.

He said the launch of the Nigeria HIV/AIDs Indicator and Impact Survey (NAIIS) report showed that Nigeria still has a lot of work to do to suppress HIV in the country.

90-90-90 target

According to the report, Nigeria had made significant progress and is on course to meet the UNAIDS global 90-90-90 target.

The 90:90:90 targets 90 per cent of people who are infected to know their HIV status; it targets 90 per cent of those who know their status to start receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) and targets 90 per cent of those on ART to have their viral load suppressed.

However, the minister said HIV testing is very important in achieving the agenda.

He said the emergence of the self-test kit represents a step forward.

He said it is something everyone should be able to walk into a drug store to purchase.

Testing for HIV is the first knight; in other words, we cannot successfully implement HIV testing, prevention and management programme if we do not know our HIV status. We aim at improving the algorithm and making sure that we have convenient testing methodologies and this remains an essential component of our strategy, he said.

Myth

Mr Adewole said the myth about HIV remains one of the factors affecting peoples willingness to go to hospitals and laboratories to get tested.

There is so much fear and the need for confidentiality. As such, any test that can be done by an individual should be welcome. It reduces stigma; it reduces the embarrassment that usually goes with HIV testing.

Mr Adewole also expressed fears that people who test positive using the test kit might present themselves at the health facilities for treatment.

That for me is the greatest challenge. Because if you test positive and you do not move forward, then you have not helped the situation. That has created some challenges for many of us as to whether we should adopt self-testing or we should handle self-testing as one of those things that can be done but not deployed as republic health situation, he said.

Mr Adewole said so far, about 1.1 million people are undergoing treatment and about 800, 000 more people are still meant to be put on treatment.

What is also important is that we need to get to a situation where all Nigerians know their status. I think that should be the cardinal point and every Nigerian should desire to be in that point.

Test kit

Speaking on the evaluation of the self-test kit, the chairman of the test team, Ali Onoja, said rapid test kit evaluation is considered a critical aspect in the quality of test results.

He said at present, the available rapid test kits can only detect HIV infection after the window period.

The HIV window period is the time between potential exposure to HIV infection and the point when the test will give an accurate result.

This is usually a time frame of four weeks from the time of exposure.

During the window period, a person can be infected with HIV and be very infectious, but still test HIV negative.

Mr Onoja, however, said the manufacturers of Alere HIV Combo, however, claim the test kit detects both antibodies and the P24 (window period) antigen in the whole plasma or serum.

In addition to laboratory performance, characteristics like sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the test kit were evaluated to determine if the AHC can detect early infections that are antibody-negative by discovering the P24 antigens.

The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of AHC were 99.7 per cent, 98.7 per cent and 99.5 per cent respectively.

Limitation

The kit cannot, however, pick the virus during the window period, the team said.

The team was unable to establish that the test kit could pick the infection in the blood during the window period.

Picking the presence of the HIV antigen in the body during the window period can be of importance because it helps to place the infected person on early treatment.

Mr Onoja said the inability of the AHC to detect the P24 in the negative specimen might be because either the specimens were truly negative for HIV infection or that the test device cannot detect P24 in the Nigerian setting.
A judge has struck out a suit filed by the Minister of Communications, Adebayo Shittu, against the All Progressives Congress (APC).

The minister sued his party for excluding his name from the list of gubernatorial aspirants in the March 9 general elections.

Mr Shittu was excluded following an exclusive PREMIUM TIMES report that showed that he skipped the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.

The APC national chairman, Adams Oshiomhole, said then that the party considered Mr Shittus action of skipping the NYSC an offence that disqualifies him from contesting to be governor.

Despite the stance of the APC, President Muhammadu Buhari has continued to keep Mr Shittu as a minister.

Mr Shittu, who sought to govern Oyo State, filed the suit marked FHC/IB/CS/111/2018.

In her ruling, Ms Ajoku said that the case was struck out due to the fact that Mr Shittu did not file the case within the time stipulated by law.

I must first consider the provision of Section 285 of the constitution that makes it mandatory for all pre-election matters to be filed within 14 days of occurrence.

This particular case was not filed within 14 days, but outside the date.

Therefore, I will not bother going into the merit of the case.

Having failed to satisfy the dictates of the constitution, the matter is hereby, struck out, the judge ruled.

In his reaction to the ruling, the defence counsel, Adebayo Ojo, said that the law has taken its due course.

The judge acted by the 1999 constitution and it is a victory for democracy, Mr Ojo, a former commissioner for justice in Oyo State, said.

The plaintiffs counsel, Abdulhakeem Mustafa, had tendered a 38 paragraph affidavit and 13 exhibits to support his claims.

Mr Shittu had prayed the court to determine whether the action of his party to omit his name in the list of gubernatorial aspirants was lawful or a contravention of the constitution.

Joined as a respondent in the matter is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the minister, who is also a member of the APC, claimed that APCs national leadership omitted his name in the list of its gubernatorial aspirants for the primaries in Oyo State because he did not participate in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) scheme.

He, among all other things, urged the court to determine whether the ground for disqualifying his client was lawful or a contravention of the constitution.

Mr Mustafa argued that the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria required anyone seeking to be a state governor to possess a maximum of Senior Secondary School Certificate and not necessarily an NYSC certificate.

(NAN)
The Senate President, Bukola Saraki, and 51 other lawmakers on Friday forced an adjournment in the case seeking to declare their seats vacant. A civic group had asked that their seats be declared vacant due to their defection from the parties on which platforms they were elected.

An application brought by the counsel representing the lawmakers resulted in a further adjournment.

A group, the Legal Defence and Assistance Project (LEDAP), dragged Mr Saraki and the other lawmakers before the Abuja Division of the Federal High Court.

LEDAP in the suit filed on September 14 asked the court to order that the members of the National Assembly who defected should vacate their seats.

In July 2018, 37 members of the House of Representatives defected from the All Progressives Congress (APC). About 32 of them joined the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), four joined the African Democratic Congress (ADC) while one did not announce his new party at the time.

On the same day, 14 APC senators defected to the PDP.

A lawyer, Mahmoud Magaji, had appeared in court on Wednesday with an application which forced the court to suspend delivering judgement on the matter.

Following the application by Mr Magaji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the court presided over by Okon Abang adjourned till Friday to entertain arguments by parties.

But on Friday, another lawyer, Efut Okoy, asked the court for a further adjournment to allow the defence to regularise their processes.

In his reaction, Mr Abang said the defendants were not supposed to appear before his court with an oral application related to their stance regarding the jurisdiction of the court.

Mr Abang frowned at the application for adjournment, stressing that the law does not permit a court to grant a request for a postponement, just to allow a lawyer to bring in a fresh application.

The lead prosecution lawyer, Jibril Agbakoba, who was also in court, accused the defence team of acting with motives aimed at perverting the cause of justice.

In reaction, Mr Okoy said his team of lawyers was just beginning to appear in the matter, therefore their request for adjournment could not have been ill-motivated.

The court then adjourned the matter till April 18 for hearing of the application by the lawmakers after asking parties to file their processes.

Mr Abang warned that parties who fail to comply with the directives for the filing of their processes will have themselves to blame when the matter is called on April 18.
Fuel queues were witnessed in parts of Abuja, the Nigerian capital, on Friday.

As the queues surfaced, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), promptly released a statement urging Nigerians against panic buying of petrol.

The NNPC, which has been battling for months to contain a possible disruption of fuel supply as a result of a rising imbalance in the cost of fuel import and distribution, moved Friday afternoon to douse speculations about the scarcity of the product.

The fuel queues also surfaced says after Nigerias finance minister, Zainab Ahmed, said the federal government would consider a gradual removal of fuel subsidy.

On Thursday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director, Christine Lagarde, criticised the expenditure of $5.2 trillion in Nigeria and other countries on fuel subsidy since 2015.

Mrs Lagarde, who was speaking at a news conference at the ongoing joint annual World Bank/IMF spring meetings in Washington DC, urged governments, including Nigeria, to remove fuel subsidy and direct the money to the provision of social amenities.

According to the IMF official, with the low revenue Nigeria was generating, removal of fuel subsidy will save enough funds to provide the social needs of the people.

We believe removing fossil fuel subsidies is the right way to go. If you look at our numbers from 2015, it is no less than about $5.2 trillion that is spent on fuel subsidies.

As far as Nigeria is concerned, with the low revenue mobilisation that exists in the country in terms of tax to the gross domestic product (GDP), Nigeria is amongst the lowest. A real effort has to be done in order to maintain a good public finance situation for the country.

If that was to happen, then there would be more public spending available to build hospitals, roads, schools, and to support education and health for the people, she said.

Asked later to comment on the IMF MDs advice, the Minister of Finance, who was also attending the meeting, said the federal government was considering a gradual removal of fuel subsidy as part of strategies to boost revenue.

Its good advice. But, we have to implement it in a way that (it) will be successful as well as sustainable. We are not in the position to wake up one night and just remove subsidy. We have to educate people. We have to show Nigerian citizens what the replacement for this subsidy will be.

So, we have a lot of work to do because subsidy removal has to be gradual and the public has to be well-informed, Daily Post quoted the minister as saying at the sidelines of the meeting.

The federal government spends several billions of naira on a contentious cost recovery programme aimed at stabilising fuel supply.

The cost recovery is a term the Buhari administration uses to describe its subsidy on petrol, largely paid to the NNPC which is now the sole importer of the product.

Concerns about rising fuel subsidy have been on for several months. But, the government defended the action in the build-up to the last presidential election. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said at the vice presidential debate that the Buhari administration would not remove the subsidy because it would lead to a major increase in the prices of goods and services. He said the government could consider a gradual removal of the subsidy if re-elected.

Mr Buhari was re-elected president for a second term in February.

Dousing Tension

In a Friday statement urging consumers to discountenance the rumour about an impending fuel scarcity, the NNPC spokesperson, Ndu Ughamadu, urged Nigerians to disregard the rumour which he attributed to the purported refusal by some oil marketers to lift products from depots.

According to Mr Ughamadu, the tale about fuel scarcity was fabricated by mischief makers with intent to create undue panic in the prevailing sanity in the fuel supply and distribution matrix across the country.

He said the NNPC has over one billion litres of petrol in stock, while fuel imports of 48 vessels of 50 million litres each have been committed for the month of April 2019 alone.

There is no need for panic buying or hoarding of petroleum products in anticipation of a phantom scarcity, the NNPC spokesperson said.

The Trigger

However, PREMIUM TIMES investigations revealed that the fuel queues in Abuja may also have been triggered by the alleged inability of fuel marketers to lift products from the Suleja fuel depot, which services Abuja and environs.

For the most part of Thursday, tankers that were at the depot to lift products were unable to do so due to the Petroleum Equalisation Fund (PEF) server, which became faulty.

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The server is used at the depot to capture the records of all tankers and marketers that lift products.

Due to the faulty server, our reporter gathered that all the tankers that were at the depot to lift products were unable to do so.

However, normalcy was said to have returned gradually late on Friday after the officials at the depot decided to resort to manual method to load the tankers.

A source close to the depot confirmed normal lifting of petroleum products from the depot has since been restored, as the server was eventually repaired.

The source requested his name should not be disclosed, as he was not authorised to speak on the matter.
The All Progressives Congress (APC) has told the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja that the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the February 23 presidential poll, Atiku Abubakar, is not a Nigerian.

The party said based on that allegation, Mr Abubakar was not qualified to have contested the presidential election.

The party claimed that the PDP candidate was a Cameroonian and not a Nigerian citizen, adding that his petition against President Muhammadu Buhari should be dismissed for lack of merit.

The APC was replying to the petition of Mr Abubakar and the PDP, praying the tribunal to declare him as the lawful winner of the presidential election.

The party said the 11.1 million votes recorded in favor of the two petitioners should be voided and considered as wasted votes.

The APCs reply to the petition, filed by its lead counsel, Lateef Fagbemi, faulted the candidacy of Mr Abubakar in the election.

The party averred that Mr Abubakar was born on November 25, 1946 in Jada, Adamawa, in Northern Cameroon and was therefore a citizen of Cameroon and not a Nigerian by birth.

According to APC, contrary to the assertion of Mr Abubakar in his petition, he has no right to be voted for as a candidate in the election to the office of president of Nigeria.

Apart from the issue of the origin of Mr Abubakar, the APC asserted that most of the claims contained in his petition had become statute barred and that the tribunal was not the appropriate place to entertain such.

The APC specifically said that the issue of the educational qualification of Mr Buhari as raised by Mr Abubakar could not be treated by the tribunal.

The party said this was because the period for claims and objections on such issues had expired.

It maintained that the petitioners failed and neglected to use the appropriate period to challenge the validity of the educational qualification of Mr Buhari.

Mr Abubakar had in his petition to the tribunal, faulted the conduct of the February 23 Presidential Election on grounds of non-compliance with relevant electoral laws and other malpractices such as intimidation of voters.

The former vice president and PDP claimed to have scored the majority of the lawful votes in the election and prayed the tribunal to declare them as winners of the election.

In the alternative, he prayed for an order for the cancellation of the election and another order by the tribunal directing INEC to conduct a fresh election that would conform to relevant laws.

No date has, however, been fixed for hearing of the petition.

Nnamdi Kanu made similar allegations

The allegation that Mr Abuabakar was not a Nigerian was made popular by the fugitive separatist leader, Nnamdi Kanu.

Mr Kanu, leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), jumped a bail granted by an Abuja court where he is being prosecuted for treason.

From his hiding outside Nigeria, believed to be in Israel, Mr Kanu in February released broadcast in which he claimed Mr Abubakar was a Cameroonian.

A fact-check by PREMIUM TIMES later showed that while Mr Abubakar, Nigerias former vice president, was indeed born in a territory that was then not part of Nigeria, the territory and its people are all Nigerians now.
The Co-ordinator of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), Motunrayo Alaka, has been selected for the prestigious John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University in California, United States.

Mrs Alaka is one of seven fellows from Africa, Europe and South America selected into the 2019-2020 class of the programme.

In its official announcement on its website, the organisers said the fellows are leading collaborations to share investigative resources, stories and training; reshaping storytelling in organisations large and small; and championing press freedom in the midst of government attacks on the media.

Fellows selected in the programme include journalists and media practitioners from Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, Poland, the United Kingdom, Venezuela and Zimbabwe. They will be joined by the US members of the class, who will be named on May 1, said Dawn Garcia, director of the JSK Fellowships.

We are fortunate to have this group of terrific international journalists join the JSK community, Garcia said.

They are bringing their tremendous drive and passion for journalism to Stanford University, which will welcome and celebrate their diverse perspectives and experiences. We are eager to have them make use of the vast resources available at one of the worlds top universities, and we look forward to seeing their ideas thrive. We cant wait to learn from them and their families.

The announcement said that beginning in September, the JSK Class of 2019-2020 will spend 10 months at Stanford strengthening their leadership skills while working on projects that address some of the most urgent issues in journalism.

They and their spouses and partners will have the opportunity to sit in on Stanford classes and to access a diverse range of interdisciplinary experts and events at Stanford and across Silicon Valley, the statement said. The fellows will test ideas and perform experiments aligned with the primary objectives of the JSK Fellowships: challenging misinformation and disinformation; holding the powerful accountable; strengthening local news; and fighting bias, intolerance and injustice.

The JSK Class of 2019-2020 will include Joseph Poliszuk, editor and co-founder of Armando.info in Caracas, Venezuela, where journalists have been imprisoned, detained and assaulted amid the political and social turmoil that have engulfed the country. Mr Poliszuk, winner of the 2018 Knight International Journalism Award from the International Center for Journalists, will serve as a JSK Press Freedom Fellow.

Support for international journalists has always been a core part of the JSK Journalism Fellowships. More than 1,000 fellows from over 80 countries have been a part of the program since it was founded in 1966.

The members of the JSK Program Committee will meet with the JSK directors in late April to select the U.S. candidates who will join the Class of 2019-2020. JSK plans to announce the complete class on May 1, 2019.

Aside Mrs Alaka, the six other non-U.S. fellows are Omri Assenheim, investigative journalist and author; Divine Dube, editor-in-chief, The Citizen Bulletin, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe; Anna Gielewska, journalist and Vice President, Reporters Foundation, Warsaw.

Others are Alastair Leithead, Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya; Natalia Mazotte, Executive Director, Open Knowledge Foundation, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Mr Poliszuk, Editor and Co-founder, Armando.info, Caracas, Venezuela.
The United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF) has said more than 3,500 children, have been recruited and used by non-state armed groups in North-East Nigeria since 2013.

The UN organisation said most of children aged 13 to 17, were recruited by non-state armed groups between 2013 and 2017 and have been used in the ongoing armed conflict in north-east Nigeria.

The communication specialist of UNICEF, Eva Hinds, said this in a statement Friday morning.

Commemorating the fifth anniversary of the 2014 Chibok abduction, the UN childrens agency said these numbers are only those that have been verified, while the true figures are likely to be higher.

According to UNICEF, in addition to these children, 432 children were killed and maimed, 180 were abducted, and 43 girls were sexually abused in north-east Nigeria in 2018.

UNICEF said non-state armed groups in north-east Nigeria have recruited and used children as combatants and non-combatants, raped and forced girls to marry, and committed other grave violations against children since 2012.

Some of the girls become pregnant in captivity and give birth without any medical care or attention, the organisation said.

In 2017 and 2018, UNICEF and its partners provided community-based reintegration services to more than 9,800 people formerly associated with armed groups, as well as vulnerable children in communities, UNICEF said.

The UN organisation said these services help to trace childrens families, return them to their communities, and offer psychosocial support, education, vocational training, informal apprenticeships, and opportunities to improve livelihoods.

UNICEF also said more than 100 of the abducted Chibok girls remain missing.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how insurgents stormed the Government Secondary School, Chibok, and abducted over 200 girls on April 14, 2014.

Over 100 of the girls were later released through negotiation brokered between the Nigerian government and the terrorists by a third party, including the government of Switzerland.

But the belligerent insurgents re-enacted the Chibok seizure in February when they kidnapped 105 school girls in Dapchi in Yobe State, 75 kilometres south of the border with Niger Republic.

But the Nigerian government later secured the release of all but one of the Dapchi girls, although five others reportedly lost their lives while being taken away by the terrorists.

The anniversary of the Chibok abduction is marked April 14 yearly.

Similarly, the UNICEF representative, Mohamed Malick said the abduction of Chibok girls is a reminder that widespread abductions of children and grave violations of childrens rights continue to take place in the north-east.

He urged for the protection of childrens rights across the country.

Children should feel safe at home, in schools and on their playgrounds at all times, he said.

Mr Malick called on parties to the conflict to fulfil their obligations under international law to end violations against children and to stop targeting civilian infrastructure, including schools.

This is the only way we can begin to make lasting improvements in the lives of children in this devastated part of Nigeria, he said.

Child Rights Act

In 2003, Nigeria adopted the Child Rights Act to domesticate the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Although this law was passed at the Federal level, it is only effective if State assemblies also start it.

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The Childrens Rights Act 2003 (CRA) was created to serve as a legal documentation and protection of Children rights and responsibilities in Nigeria.

The law has three primary purposes: to incorporate the rights of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights into the national law, to provide the responsibilities of government agencies associated with the law and to integrate children-focused legislation into one comprehensive law.
President Muhammadu Buhari will depart Abuja Saturday for NDjamena, capital of Chad Republic, to participate in the Extraordinary Session of the Conference of Heads of State and Government of the Community of Sahel-Saharan States, CEN-SAD.

Created by the Treaty of Tripoli on February 4, 1998 with six founding members, Nigeria joined the current 29-member regional economic community in 2001 which seeks mainly to create a free trade area in Africa, as well as strengthen peace, security and stability, and achieve global economic and social development of its members.

Delegations from 22 member-nations are expected at the extraordinary meeting of CEN-SAD holding on Saturday at the Radisson Blu Hotel, NDjamena.

President Buhari and other regional leaders will join their host and current Chairperson of CEN-SAD Conference, President Idriss Deby, to deliberate among others on political and security issues, state of peace and ways to address multifaceted threats in CEN-SAD area especially Boko Haram and refugees; and make a declaration on the entry into force of CEN-SAD revised Treaty intended to fast track the realisation of the objectives of the body.

During the opening Session of the Conference, special awards will be given to Heads of State and military contingents in Mali, Sudan, Somalia, Central African Republic and in the Lake Chad Basin.

President Buhari will be accompanied to the CEN-SAD meeting by Governors Kashim Shettima, Akinwunmi Ambode and Adegboyega Oyetola of Borno, Lagos and Osun state respectively.

Others include Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama; Minister of Interior, Adulrahman Danbazau; Minister of Defence, Mansur Dan Ali; National Security Adviser, Mohammed Monguno; Director-General, National Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Rufai Abubakar; Comptroller-General of Immigration, Mohammed Babandede; and the Federal Commissioner for Refugees, Migrants and Internally Displaced Persons, Sadiya Umar Farouq.

The president will return to the country at the end of the conference on Saturday.

Garba Shehu
The police in Jigawa on Friday said they have arrested a former chairman of Kafin-Hausa Local Government Area, Jigawa State, Aliko Kwatalo, for allegedly having sex with a married woman.

The incident occurred on Tuesday at the NTA Quarters, along Garin Gabas road in Hadejia Local Government Area.

The husband of the woman, Danliti Abubakar, reported the case to the police.

He said he heard his wife making a phone call to the suspect detailing how they would meet as he was about to leave his home. This, he said, made him suspicious.

Both men are neighbours, the police said.

After I learnt about the deal, I pretended to be away while I hang around seeing Mr Kwatalo sneaking into my house. After some time, I locked the door from outside and I invited Hisbah (security agency), the police, including people around and he (suspect) was caught, he told reporters.

Police spokesperson, Audu Jinjiri, confirmed the report.

He said the suspects had been arrested and will be charged to court.

The police said the woman, in a desperate move to escape broke one of her legs.

The police officer identified the woman as 25-year-old Fatima Usman.

He said they were apprehended in a very compromising position adding that Messrs Kwatalo and Abubakar are neighbours.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been urged to seize a private jet owned by a former Nigerian minister of petroleum, Dan Etete.

Four international anti-corruption crusaders made the appeal Thursday in a joint petition sent from Italy calling for the retrieval and forfeiture of the jet by the Nigerian government.

The crusaders include the Chairman, Human Resource Development Centre (HEDA), Olanrewaju Suraju; Corner House Director, Nick Hildyard; Re:Common Director, Antonio Tricarico; and the Co-founder of Global witness, Simon Taylor. The anti-corruption crusaders attended court proceedings surrounding the controversial oil block in Milan recently.

According to the global corruption crusaders, the private jet owned by Mr Etete was purchased with illicit funds. The jet is said to be worth $56 million as at the time it was purchased.

Backstory

The Malabu scandal involved the transfer of about $1.1 billion by oil multinationals, Shell and ENI, through the Nigerian government to accounts controlled by Mr Etete.

From accounts controlled by Mr Etete, about half the money ($520 million) went to accounts of companies controlled by Abubakar Aliyu, popularly known in Nigeria as the owner of AA oil.

Anti-corruption investigators and activists suspect he fronted for top officials of the Goodluck Jonathan administration as well of officials of Shell and ENI.

The transaction was authorised in 2011 by Mr Jonathan through some of his cabinet ministers and the money was payment for OPL 245, one of Nigerias richest oil blocks.

Although Shell and ENI initially claimed they did not know the money would end up with Mr Etete and his cronies, evidence has shown that claim to be false.

Shell, Eni, Mr Etete, Mr Aliyu and several officials of the oil firms are being prosecuted in Italy for their roles in the scandal.

Last June, PREMIUM TIMES reported how Mr Etete acquired luxury properties in Dubai with funds believed to have been sourced from the controversial deal.

This newspapers London partner, Finance Uncovered, found evidence suggesting that Mr Etete bought two luxury properties in Dubai after he received more than $800 million from the deal he made with Shell and Eni.

One property is in the exclusive Emirates Hills, known as the Beverly Hills of Dubai  the postcode of choice for a host of notorious former presidents, including Robert Mugabe and his wife, Grace.

The link to OPL245 was established by an email address found in the property records and that was also in other files seen by Finance Uncovered in a separate investigation into Mr Etete last year.

A business associate of Mr Etete in Dubai also told Finance Uncovered that the former minister had brought millions into the Emirate via an informal money changer.

According to the new petition addressed to the Acting Chairman of the EFCC by Mr Suraju and other anti-corruption crusaders, Mr Etetes jet was purchased with proceeds of corruption relating to the fraudulent sales of OPL 245. The crusaders added that their position was strengthened by findings from the on-going international corruption case taking place at the Milan Court.

Prosecutors in Milan were told by a former Federal Bureau of Investigation, (FBI) agent, Debra LaPrevotte and Ten. Col. Alessandro Ferri, both involved in the investigations of the case, that $56 million of proceeds of corruption was used by Mr Etete for the purchase of a private jet in Oklahoma City, USA.

The specific tail registration number of the aircraft was given as M-MYNA.

What we heard from testimony in the court, confirmed the information enclosed in a table produced by the FBI, and already disclosed as a public document in the court case, Crown vs Malabu Oil and Gas, which was held at Southwark Crown Court in London, UK; namely that proceeds of the OPL 245 deal were used to purchase a Bombardier Global 6000 private jet with the registration number M-MYNA, they stated.

This aircraft is listed as registered to Tibit Limited (BVI) and registered in the Isle of Man. The FBI table notes that the aircraft purchase was made from Insured Aircraft Title Services, Oklahoma City, US.

We note that the company appeared in a 2010 investigation by the US Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee, Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations, regarding their role in the purchase of aircraft by PEPs.

The petitioners added that the individuals connected to Tibit Ltd, a BVI company involved in selling several Bombardier 6000 jets, have been the subject of a court case with the Australian Tax Office. They added that the report related to the Panama Papers has also raised questions about the bombardier sales.

The petition stated that the aircrafts most recent flight, according to public aircraft tracking websites, was from Paris to Dubai airport on the 7th June 2017. The aircraft appears to have remained in Dubai ever since, the petition said, adding that it could be frozen by competent authorities as possible proceeds of crime.

We kindly urge you to verify this information and take appropriate steps, including asset freezing and forfeiture, where possible, under the 2018 Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters between Nigeria and United Arab Emirate, the petitioners said.

Last week, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, Dayo Ayoade, told an Italian Court in Milan that the award of the controversial Malabu Oil Block (OPL 245) to Shell and ENI was illegal.

Mr Ayoade, a consultant hired by Italian prosecutors who also teaches oil law in UNILAG, spoke at the resumption of the long running case involving the two oil giants.
Members of the House of Representatives have resolved to engage President Muhammadu Buhari over his inability to end the recurrent killings and banditry across the country.

The lawmakers said the failure by the president to explain the issues raised by the house would confirm the opinion of some that the administration had failed in its responsibility to protect lives and property.

The lawmakers made this resolution at the plenary on Thursday after unanimously adopting a motion moved by Mark Gbilah (Benue, PDP).

Many states have witnessed several kidnappings and banditry in recent days.

The police recently launched an operation tagged Puff Adder, massively deploying personnel to troubled areas.

The operation was launched in Katari Bishin District, Abuja  Kaduna Expressway, where cases of kidnapping were reported throughout last week.

Dozens of motorists were feared kidnapped in a string of ambushes, including the one that held travelers to a standstill on Monday.

On Tuesday, travellers were attacked at the same portion of the dual carriageway, during which a top Nigerian Meteorological Agency official was seized.

Many of those kidnapped in both Monday and Tuesdays attacks had not been freed as of Thursday night, PREMIUM TIMES learnt.

Concerned lawmaker

The motion was tagged Resurgence of the incessant and annual massacre of innocent Nigerians across the country by alleged bandits and killer herdsmen, the gradual occupation of affected communities by these attackers and the lack of adequate rehabilitation and relief materials.

The lawmaker requested the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces to address the House and the entire nation within 48 hours.

He wants Mr Buhari to explain to Nigerians his inability and the inability of his administration, since inception, to declare the killer herdsmen as terrorists, to enable the Armed Forces to take commensurate action against them.

The inability of the Armed Forces under his watch to stop the recurring death of scores of innocent Nigerians annually from systemic attacks by killer herdsmen and alleged bandits, and the gradual occupation of the affected communities by these herdsmen despite countless assurances and statements by him, promising to stop these attacks.

The lawmaker accused the president of being selective in his responses to cases like this.

His selective and ineffective responses to the killing of Nigerians by herdsmen, especially when they occur in certain parts of the country like Benue State.

The immediate measures he intends to employ as the Commander-in-Chief to provide the Armed Forces, including the police, with the required resources (equipment and welfare, etc) to confront and dislodge the killer herdsmen from their known hideouts, establishment of permanent presence in immediate proximity to affected communities and provide a timeline within which these attacks by killer herdsmen and alleged bandits will be curtailed, so Nigerians can return to their ancestral homes and means of livelihood.

House resolution

The House resolved to constitute an ad hoc committee to interface with the presidency regarding the queries. It would also engage with the defence minister, Mansur Dan-Ali; service chiefs, state governments and others.

The engagement, the lawmakers resolved, would be done in a public hearing to determine permanent solutions to the killing of innocent Nigerians by killer herdsmen and alleged bandits, including the complicity of any Nigerian or group in the perpetration of these killings and land grabbing.

The House of Representatives in April 2018 resolved to summon President Buhari over similar spate of killings but with emphasis on Benue State and other parts of the country.

The 2018 decision was unanimously adopted by an overwhelming majority of members after a Kano lawmaker, Baballe Bashir (APC, Kano) moved for the amendment of a motion moved by Mr Gbilah.

However, after the last resolution, nothing was communicated to the president.

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A prosecution witness, Soridei Akene, in the ongoing trial of Tuoyo Omatsuli, a former Executive Director on Projects, Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and Francis Momoh on Friday told Justice Saliu Seidu of the Federal High Court in Ikoyi, Lagos how over N1 billion was moved from the commission to some private companies belonging to the defendants and other individuals.

The defendants, who were charged alongside their companies, Don Parker Properties Limited and Building Associates Limited respectively, were arraigned on November 10, 2018, on a 45-count charge bordering on conspiracy and money laundering to the tune of N3,6 billion.

The defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against them and were subsequently granted bail on November 16, 2018, in the sum of N100 million each with two sureties in like sum.

At Fridays proceedings, Mr Akene, a Compliance Officer with Heritage Bank Plc, told the court that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) sometime in January 2015, requested him to furnish it with the account opening documents and statements of accounts of four companies  College Pro Technology, Asiladrine Global Consultancy, Human Oil and Gas Limited and Starline Consultancy Services Limited, which he did.

The documents were tendered by the prosecution counsel, Ekene Iheanacho, and admitted in evidence by the court.

In his further testimony, Mr Akene, who is the third prosecution witness, PW3, told the court that over N1 billion was transferred from the NDDC into the companies accounts from 2014 to 2016.

Mr Akene further told the court that monies transferred into the accounts of these companies were further transferred into some individuals accounts and also to Building Associates Limited.

Mr Akene, during cross-examination by the defence, told the court that he had never met any of the defendants.

He also said that 90 per cent of the funds moved from the NDDC was transferred to Starline Consultancy Services Limited owned by one Ibinabo Michael West, who is also the sole signatory to the companys account.

Ibinabo Michael West received these monies and made several withdrawals, both cash and transfers, the witness said.

Mr Akene admitted that he made statements to the EFCC when he was invited by the commission.

He also admitted that none of the defendants was a director in any of the companies, where funds were moved into.

Justice Seidu adjourned the case to June 10, 11, 25 and 26, 2019 for the continuation of trial.
Zamfara States Council of Chiefs has expressed dismay over the statement credited to Minister of Defence, Mansur Ali, accusing traditional rulers of aiding bandits in the ongoing killings of innocent villagers in the affected areas.

In a press statement issued to journalists on Thursday, in Gusau, the states capital, after an emergency meeting of the council of chiefs, the spokesperson of the chiefs and Emir of Anka, Attahiru Ahmad, said the council challenges the Minister of Defence, Mr Ali to name any traditional ruler involved in aiding the bandits.

PREMIUM TIMES reported on Tuesday, how the Minister of Defence, Mr Ali, in a statement, said intelligence had exposed the complicity of some high-placed traditional rulers in the ongoing killings of Nigerians across some northern part of the country.

The emirs said they, as a matter of urgency, dare the minister to name the traditional rulers involved in the reprehensible activities for the government to take measures against them.

The chiefs opined that failure to name the traditional rulers would make Mr Alis statement false and an attempt to tarnish the good image of the traditional leaders.

The statement further said that over the years, traditional rulers have cooperated with government and security agents by providing necessary information about locations and names of the criminals.

It, however, said that the government failed to act up to expectations to address the situation.

The council noted that air strikes undertaken by the military did not hit the main target, as areas shelled were not actual hideouts of bandits and the victims were innocent civilians, the statement added.

Report from Mutu in Gusau the state capital and Tsafe Local Government Area, Tangaram in Anka Local Government Area and Dumburum in Zurmi Local Government Councils among others indicated that the areas shelled were not the actual bandits hideouts and the victims were innocent peasants.

However, the statement did not include the number of casualties hit by the misdirected air strikes in the affected areas.

The council of chiefs said effort to end banditry activities in Zamfara would only be achieved if the main camps of the bandits are taken over by security personnel stationed there for a considerable period of time.

This will deprive the criminals mobility and supply routes, thus securing all the affected areas.

The council therefore, urged the federal government to maintain its status in the fight against bandits in the state to end the killings and kidnapping of people, the statement highlighted.
Rivers State Police Command has deployed over 3,066 personnel to strategic areas for supplementary election in some parts of the state on Saturday.

The Commands Spokesperson, Nmandi Omoni, a deputy superintendent of police, made this known in a statement issued in Port Harcourt, the state capital on Friday.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had on March 21, announced plans to conduct supplementary elections in Abua/Odua, Ahoada West, Gokana and Opobo/Nkoro Local Government Areas of the state.

According to Mr Omoni, the police and sister security agencies are ready to provide adequate security to ensure hitch-free polls.

The Command has deployed a total of 3,066 personnel to be complemented by other sister security agencies to provide security and maintenance of law and order in the affected LGAs.

This was done to realise the full objectives of the supplementary election as well as engender a seamless exercise, he said.

Mr Omoni said restriction of movement in the affected local government areas would begin 11:59 a.m. on Friday and end 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Politicians are barred from going to the polling units with security details. This will not be tolerated.

The police and other security agencies will be on patrol to ensure strict compliance to this order and possibly make arrest of election violators, he warned.

The police spokesperson warned that any individual or group seen undermining the electoral process would be arrested and prosecuted in accordance with the Electoral Act.

(NAN)
The police in Lagos have arrested 33 suspects following a violence that erupted at the Fadeyi and Onipanu areas of the state on Wednesday.

Two people were killed, according to the police.

Bala Elkana, the police spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday that the violence caused by a fierce supremacy battle between cult groups in Onipanu, Alakara, Mushin, and Shomolu.

Mr Elkana said the police received a distress call that cult groups armed with killer weapons are engaged in a fierce fight and deployed patrol teams and operatives of the tactical unit to the scene.

As a result of the war, Tobi Kuti who was suspected to be one of the cultists and Samuel Geofrey, a worker at DTD Services, Apapa, were killed by the cultists.

The teams swiftly contained the situation and restored normalcy to the area.

33 suspects were arrested in connection with the incident and two locally made short guns with ten live cartridges and other dangerous weapons such as cutlasses, knives, etc were recovered, the statement said.

Mr Elkana said the command has deployed more resources to the affected areas for manhunt of other fleeing members of the gangs while the arrested suspects are being investigated.
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.




SAN RAMON, Calif., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CMG Financial, a well-capitalized, privately held mortgage-banking firm headquartered in San Ramon, California, congratulates eight of its leading originators for placing on the Scotsman Guide's Top Mortgage Originators 2018. Scotsman Guide, a leading mortgage industry trade publication, releases annually the most comprehensive list of the nation's top mortgage originators segmented by Top Mortgage Brokers (50), Top Dollar Volume (500), Most Loans Closed (300), Top Purchase Volume (75), Top Refinance Volume (75), Top FHA Volume (75), Top VA Volume (75), Top USDA Volume (25) and Top HELOC Volume (25).

CMG Financial 2018 Scotsman Guide Top Originators

Kory Kavanewsky placed in five Scotsman Guide categories, including #37 Top Dollar Volume, #134 Most Closed Loans, #35 Top Refinance Volume, #61 Top Purchase Volume and #11 Top VA Volume. Kory Kavanewsky is located in Coronado, California where he serves as the company's VP of Production Western Division and also as a Branch Manager and Loan Officer.

Carey Ann Cyr placed in four Scotsman Guide categories, including #39 Top Dollar Volume, #16 Most Closed Loans, #26 Top Purchase Volume and #3 Top FHA Volume. Carey Ann Cyr is located in Franklin, Tennessee where she serves the company as the Area Sales Manager for Middle Tennessee.

Chris Minjarez placed in two Scotsman Guide categories: #268 Top Dollar Volume and #169 Most Closed Loans. Chris Minjarez is located in Austin, Texas where he serves the company as the Area Sales Manager for Central Texas.

Jill Lyons placed in two Scotsman Guide categories, #467 Top Dollar Volume and #3 Top HELOC Volume. Jill Lyons is located in San Ramon, California where she serves the company as a Sales Manager.

Jennifer Buckholz placed in one Scotsman Guide category, #4 Top HELOC Volume. Jennifer Buckholz is located in Federal Way, Washington where she serves the company as a Senior Loan Officer.

Ryan Holford placed in one Scotsman Guide category, #7 Top HELOC Volume. Ryan Holford is located in San Ramon, California where he serves the company as a Senior Loan Officer.

John Klaess placed in one Scotsman Guide category, #11 Top HELOC Volume. John Klaess is located in Denver, Colorado where he serves the company as a Branch Manager.

Jeff Haag placed in one Scotsman Guide category, #14 Top HELOC volume. Jeff is located in Federal Way, Washington where he serves the company as a Branch Manager.

About CMG Financial

CMG Financial is a well-capitalized, privately held mortgage-banking firm, founded in 1993. The company makes its products and services available to the market through three distinct origination channels, including Retail Lending, Wholesale Lending and Correspondent Lending.

CMG Financial currently operates in all states, including the District of Columbia and holds federal agency lending approvals with HUD, VA, RHS, GNMA, FNMA and FHLMC. Throughout the mortgage banking and housing markets, CMG Financial is widely known for responsible lending practices, industry and consumer advocacy, product innovation and operational efficiency.

About Scotsman Guide

Scotsman Guide Media Inc. publishes a residential edition and a commercial edition of Scotsman Guide, in addition to Scotsman Guide News, Loan Post, Scotsman Guide Community and other platforms at ScotsmanGuide.com. Scotsman Guide, the leading resource for mortgage originators, releases an annual Top Originators ranking, in which top originators are ranked among entries from nearly 3,000 mortgage professionals across the country. To be eligible for initial consideration in Scotsman Guide's Top Originators rankings, originators must have had at least $40 million in loan volume or 100 closed home loans during the previous calendar year. After receiving submissions, Scotsman Guide required written verification of top entrants' volume data from a certified public accountant, the chief financial officer at the originator's company or a similar source. The list, which ranks the nation's top mortgage producers, recently appeared in Scotsman Guide's April 2018 residential edition; the rankings are available online at ScotsmanGuide.com/Top2018.

Media Contact:

Madelynn Graham

Phone: 443-455-1137

Email: [email protected]

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CMG Financial 2018 Scotsman Guide Top Originators

CMG Financial 2018 Scotsman Guide Top Originators

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SOURCE CMG Financial
SAN FRANCISCO and HERZLIYA, Israel, April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- 89bio LTD, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) and other liver and metabolic disorders, today announced that preclinical data of its investigational drug BIO89-100 were featured in a late-breaking poster presentation at The International Liver Congress 2019, the Annual Meeting of the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) in Vienna, Austria. BIO89-100 is a novel long-acting glycopegylated fibroblast growth factor 21 (FGF21) analogue in clinical development for the treatment of patients with NASH.

In this preclinical study in spontaneously diabetic obese cynomolgus monkeys, BIO89-100 demonstrated statistically significant pharmacodynamic effects on key metabolic and liver parameters associated with NASH following weekly and every 2-week subcutaneous dosing. In earlier preclinical studies, BIO89-100 was shown to improve liver-related and key metabolic parameters in 2 different mouse models of NASH as well as in a previous study in the same monkey model using a subcutaneous weekly dosing regimen.

"We are encouraged by these preclinical data that collectively demonstrate the potential of BIO89-100 to address the complex clinical condition of patients with NASH," said Hank Mansbach, M.D., chief medical officer, 89bio. "Furthermore, based on the effects seen in the every 2-week dosing groups, BIO89-100 may be well-suited for extended-interval dosing in patients."

All BIO89-100 treatment groups achieved statistically significant reductions in body weight, fasting plasma glucose, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and hemoglobin A1c compared to the vehicle group. Change in median alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels from baseline to Day 28 was between -15.4% to - 42.7% in the BIO89-100 treated groups versus +8.9% in the vehicle group. The exposure profile of the weekly and every 2-week dosing regimens was similar, except for higher trough levels on Day 14 and Day 28 with the weekly dose.

Dr. Mansbach added, "In addition to the preclinical evaluation of BIO89-100, we've made important progress advancing the clinical development of BIO89-100, which is currently being evaluated in a single ascending dose study in healthy volunteers."

About NASH

NASH is the most advanced stage of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). It is a complex metabolic disorder that causes fat buildup in the liver, as well as inflammation and eventually fibrosis, and it can worsen to cirrhosis and liver failure. NASH affects more than 16 million adults in the United States. The exact cause of NASH is unknown, but it is commonly found in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes. It is predicted that by 2020, NASH will surpass hepatitis C as the leading cause of liver transplant, and by 2030 its prevalence will increase by 63 percent. While there are currently no approved treatments, the biopharmaceutical industry is actively involved in addressing this unmet medical need.

About BIO89-100

BIO89-100 is a novel long-acting glycopegylated FGF21 analogue for the treatment of NASH. It was engineered using a proprietary glycopegylation technology to prolong the biological activity of native FGF21. In preclinical studies BIO89-100 demonstrated a long half-life, potentially enabling extended-interval dosing. BIO89-100 also showed significant improvements in liver fat, hepatic injury and fibrosis and metabolic biomarkers including triglycerides, cholesterol, body weight, and glycemic control parameters.

About 89bio

89bio is a privately held biopharmaceutical company building a pipeline of biologic and small molecule treatments for liver and metabolic disorders. The company's lead product candidate for the treatment of NASH is BIO89-100. Currently in Phase 1, BIO89-100 is a novel long-acting glycopegylated FGF21 analogue. 89bio is headquartered in San Francisco with R&D and operations in Herzliya, Israel. Visit 89bio.com for more information.

Media Contact:

Lori Rosen

LDR Communications

917-553-6808

[email protected]

SOURCE 89bio

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NEW YORK, April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --

BBC Music is the online home of BBC's original music reporting across radio, digital, and television

Includes videos from performance series BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, never before available in the U.S. through the BBC; Live Lounge has featured artists including Ariana Grande , Dua Lipa , Jay-Z, Taylor Swift , Foo Fighters, and many more

, , Jay-Z, , Foo Fighters, and many more BBC Music will also include original content produced in the U.S.

For over 50 years, the BBC has been creating cutting-edge music content. It's been among the first to showcase some of the biggest artists in the world, including Ed Sheeran and Adele, hosted live concerts from the most revolutionary and beloved artists of the 20th and 21st Centuries, and set the tone as a global music tastemaker.

Now, BBC Music is launching in the United States, sponsored by the global luxury automotive brand Genesis.

BBC Music will bring audiences a comprehensive program of in-depth music journalism for a U.S. audience, including artists to watch, playlists, global festival coverage, music news and more. It will also feature access to interviews and live performances, including BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge, never previously available through the BBC to audiences outside of the UK. It has featured performances with the biggest names in the world of music, including Ariana Grande, Dua Lipa, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Foo Fighters, and many more.

"BBC Music is all about connecting fans with music they love from their favourite artists, and music they're going to love from their next favourite," said U.S. Features Managing Editor Simon Frantz. "There's a huge amount of great music being produced in the U.S. right now, and we're excited to help connect those artists to our vast, music-hungry audience."

As part of BBC Global News, the BBC's international and commercial offering, BBC Music will also offer advertisers the opportunity to advertise around its content outside of the UK.

SOURCE BBC Music
SAN JOSE, Calif., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Calvac Paving, an asphalt and concrete maintenance company that is based in the Bay Area, is pleased to once again be part of the upcoming 2019 CAA Connect  Rental Housing Conference & Expo. Representatives from the company will be a trade exhibitor, located at booth #318, which will take place on Tuesday, April 16 at the Santa Clara Convention Center.

As a company spokesperson noted, the event, which will be hosted by the California Apartment Association, offers invaluable opportunities to network, get updates on market trends, learn from a variety of industry experts and visit the always-popular vendor expo. About 1,500 professionals are expected to attend the one-day event.

"Attendees can learn from experts in the rental housing industry, including tips and advice on how to increase your closing rates, resident retention and net operating income," the spokesperson noted, adding that everyone who attends will walk away with new tools and skills that they can start using right away.

The team from Calvac Paving will be meeting and greeting fellow attendees from their booth in the expo; people are welcome to come by at any time and say hello to the team, as well as enter to win a raffle. Like last year, anyone who takes a photo of Calvac Paving's booth and uses the hashtag #CAAConnectExpo when they post it on social media will automatically be entered to win a prize.

As always, representatives from Calvac Paving are looking forward to sponsoring the conference and expo, as well as meeting other vendors and business owners in the rental housing industry.

"Also, since we have been in the Bay Area now for well over 45 years, we are confident that we can answer just about any questions that attendees have about the asphalt and concrete industry, as well as provide guidance with their specialty 'ADA Barrier Removal,'" the spokesperson noted.

About Calvac Paving:

Calvac Paving is a full service asphalt and concrete maintenance company that has been serving the greater Bay Area since 1974. For more information, please visit https://www.calvacpaving.com/

Calvac Paving

2645 Pacer Ln

San Jose, CA 95111

(408) 837-9021

SOURCE Calvac Paving

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Approved by the State Council of the People's Republic of China, WNEVC 2019 will take place from July 1 to 3 in Boao, Hainan Province. The three-day event is expected to bring over 1,200 delegates from around the world, including domestic and foreign government officials, industry experts and scholars, and global business leaders.

The press conference for the World New Energy Vehicle Congress 2019 (WNEVC) was held by CAST in the China Hall of Science and Technology.

Mr. Guo Zhe, Director of the Research and Publicity Department of CAST, Mr. Zhang Jinhua, Executive Vice Chairman and Secretary General of SAE-China, and Secretary General of the Organizing Committee of WNEVC, and Mr. Lin Min, Deputy Director General of Hainan Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology attended the press conference.

Approved by the State Council, WNEVC 2019 will take place in Boao, Hainan Province from July 1 to 3, 2019. Hosted by CAST and Hainan Provincial People's Government, the Congress - in the theme of "New Era, New Revolution and New Industry" - will highlight the integrated development of electrification, intelligence, and shared mobility. It will focus on the integrated development of automobiles, energy, transport, and information and communication, along with the application scenarios of smart cities, which will play a leading role in the future new energy vehicle (NEV) development in China and globally.

WNEVC 2019's four significant aspects:

I. It is an important demonstration platform for China to fulfill its commitments under the Paris Agreement on climate change and publicize its achievements in low-carbon and green development to the world. With China's development of NEVs, its determination and actions in addressing global energy and environmental issues, as well as its efforts and outcomes as a responsible country in addressing common global challenges and the future are reflected, enhancing China's international image and status.

II. It is an important cooperation platform for China to gather global innovation resources and promote high-quality development of industries. As the product technologies of new energy vehicles are not yet mature, the performance and quality of new energy vehicles need to be further improved. The industrial chain of new energy vehicles is still relatively weak, and the international competitiveness of key links needs to be further enhanced. The infrastructure for such links as charging and hydrogenation is not perfect and has not formed a mature and sustainable commercial operation model. There is still a long way to go from improving the quality of product technology to that of the industrial development. Therefore, China is in urgent need to carry out wide and high-level global cooperation to jointly solve the challenges faced by the sustainable development of the new energy vehicle industry. Under the complex situation of the rise of global trade protectionism, the holding of the world congress reflects China's attitude of further opening up, promoting cooperation through opening up and promoting development through cooperation.

III. It is an important communication platform for China to explore cross-industry integration and lead industrial transformation and upgrading. The next wave of technological revolution is underway, represented by low-carbon energies, new materials, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies, which is having a significant, far-reaching impact on global economic and social development, thus the original product technology, industrial form and business model are undergoing significant changes. In this context, the automobile industry is at a tipping point of transformation and upgrading, toward a new era of electrification, intelligence, connectivity and shared mobility. To achieve this grand goal, China needs, in addition to global intelligence and more importantly, to have its voice heard globally and enhance its influence in major technical directions and in the choice of development paths.

IV. It serves as a catalytic agent and booster that fits the strategic positioning of Hainan's development for serving the industrial transformation and upgrading of Hainan, and promoting the high-quality development of local economy and society. Taking this Congress as an opportunity, the attention of the global vehicle industry is attracted to Hainan, and global automobile technological and industry elites will gather in Hainan to jointly learn the development blueprint and seek the development path of Hainan's new energy vehicle industry, playing an important promoting role in implementing the plan of Hainan's new energy vehicle industry and realizing the ambitious goal of taking the lead in electrification.

At the Press Conference, Zhang Jinhua emphasized that the new wave of technological revolution is underway - represented by new energies, novel materials and artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies, which will have a significant, far-reaching impact on today's global economy and social development. At this tipping point of the global automotive industry's transformation and upgrading, the integrated development of electrification, intelligence, and connection and shared mobility is increasingly prominent. As a critical breakthrough for China to pursue the strategic deployments including implementing innovation-driven development strategy, promoting the supply-side structural reform, and advancing the transition between new and old growth drivers, NEV, a guiding industry motivating the interactive development of new industries, new business forms and new economies, has also been an industry of strategic importance to foster new competitiveness in the near future. China will continue to accelerate the development of the NEV industry. Early this year, China has launched the planning and research in the NEV industry to usher in 2035, which have confirmed the general objective, direction and approach of the industrial development over the next 15 years, providing a blueprint for the industry.

Zhang Jinhua said that the Congress has rich content and diversified forms, which include three main sessions.

Conference and Summits: including one plenary session, nine summits, two parallel sessions, one closed-door session and one internal meeting. The event will discuss topics such as the energy revolution, environmental protection, and the green and innovative development and transformation and upgrading of automobile industry, cutting-edge technologies and development trends for NEV, and the cross-industry new integration trends for NEVs.

Confirmed key speakers include (alphabetical order)

Christian Zinglersen , Head of Clean Energy Ministerial Secretariat (CEM)

, Head of Clean Energy Ministerial Secretariat (CEM) Herbert Diess , Chairman of the Board of Management and CEO, Volkswagen Group

, Chairman of the Board of Management and CEO, Volkswagen Group H.C. Shin , President of LG Chem

, President of LG Chem Huai Jinpeng , Party Secretary of CAST, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

, Party Secretary of CAST, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Hubertus Troska , Chairman and CEO of Daimler Greater China Ltd.

, Chairman and CEO of Daimler Greater China Ltd. Jochen Goller , President & CEO of BMW Group Region China

, President & CEO of BMW Group Region China Klaus Frohlich , Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG with responsibility for Development

, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG with responsibility for Development Lee Hyuk Joon , General Manager of Hyundai Motor Group ( China ) Ltd.

, General Manager of Hyundai Motor Group ( ) Ltd. Li Jun , Chairman of China SAE, Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering

Chairman of China SAE, Academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering Ouyang Minggao , Executive Vice President of China EV100, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

, Executive Vice President of EV100, Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Sakamoto Hideyuki , President of Society of Automotive Engineers of Japan , Inc., Executive Vice President of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

, President of Society of Automotive Engineers of , Inc., Executive Vice President of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Shen Xiaoming , Deputy secretary of Hainan Provincial Party Committee, the Provincial Governor and Secretary of Party Committee

, Deputy secretary of Hainan Provincial Party Committee, the Provincial Governor and Secretary of Party Committee Wan Gang , Vice chairman of the CPPCC national committee, President of the CAST, President of WNEVC

, Vice chairman of the CPPCC national committee, President of the CAST, President of WNEVC Zhang Jinhua , Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of China SAE, Secretary-General of WNEVC

, Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of China SAE, Secretary-General of WNEVC Zhao Fuquan , Professor of Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, President of FISITA

, Professor of Department of Automotive Engineering, Tsinghua University, President of FISITA Zhu Huarong, President, Changan Automobile

Cutting-edge Technology Exhibition & Test Drive: Domestic and foreign OEMs, emerging automotive technology enterprises, and components manufacturers / suppliers will be invited to demonstrate cutting-edge NEV technologies within the 5,000m2 exhibition space, which will showcase the 13th Five-Year NEV Innovations, as well as experiential activities including tech demos and driving tests. Domestic and foreign vehicles enterprises, components manufacturers and related suppliers are actively engaging in the event registration.

Two Awards: WNEVC will organize the Global NEV Cutting-edge and Innovative Technologies Awards to accurately reflect the world's latest NEV developments in innovative technology applications and cutting-edge technology research. The award results will be released worldwide during the Congress. At present, the expert nomination for WNEVC Science and Technology Committee, public proposal collection and media recommendation are underway.

The World New Energy Vehicle Congress (WNEVC), is an important event for CAST to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. It serves as a strategic step to bridge Hainan to the world. The congress will pool global wisdom and emphasize industry-education integration and will facilitate the coordinated development of science, technology, engineering and industry for NEV. It will also display the significant effect in transforming local industry and the old and new growth drivers through the agreement among scientists and industry-education cross-field exchanges. WNEVC is destined to be an annual event for the transformation & upgrading and innovative development of the global automobile industry, and an annual summit for technological innovation and green development.

Looking forward to the success of international WNEVC 2019 with global influence in Boao, Hainan Province in July. For more details, please enter the official website: www.wnevc.com.

About WNEVC

Approved by the State Council of the People's Republic of China, WNEVC 2019, hosted by CAST and Hainan Provincial People's Government, will be held in Boao, Hainan Province from July 1 to 3, 2019. WNEVC, focusing on the transformation and upgrading of the automotive industry and ecological environment improvement, will bring together global experts and industry elites to share their insights and discuss development trends and innovations of NEVs, such as technology, industry ecosystems, government policies and business models. It also aims to build industry consensus, clarify growth direction, and identify an effective pathway for the integrated development of electrification, intelligence, connectivity and shared mobility.

Hosts

China Association for Science and Technology (CAST)

The People's Government of Hainan Province

Supporters

National Development and Reform Commission

Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of Chin a

Ministry of Transport of the People's Republic of China

Chinese Academy of Engineering

National Energy Administration

Organisers

China Society of Automotive Engineers (China SAE)

China EV100

EV100 Hainan Provincial Department of industry and information technology

Hainan Association for Science and Technology

Co-organisers

CEM (Clean Energy Ministerial)

UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization)

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme)

UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)

IEA (International Energy Agency)

GEF (Global Environment Facility)

FISITA (Federation Internationale des Societes d'Ingenieurs des Techniques de l'Automobile)

EVI (Electric Vehicles Initiative)

Press & Media Contact

Ms. Heather Wang, China SAE

Mobile: +86-135-1210-6951

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE China SAE
LONDON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ICIS (www.icis.com ), the leading provider of analytics and market intelligence for the global energy, chemicals and fertilizer sectors, today calls for entries for its 16th annual ICIS Innovation Awards (www.icis.com/awards), designed to recognise outstanding technological and business innovation in the chemical industry.

ICIS is pleased to announce that BASF (www.basf.com), one of the world's leading chemical producers, is once again the overall lead sponsor for the Awards.

"As the most innovative company in the chemical industry, BASF has long been developing solutions for the biggest challenges of our time, and has enjoyed great success in doing so," says Detlef Kratz, president of process research & chemical engineering at BASF.

"We are continuously working on many more innovations to improve people's day-to-day lives and we would like to share this spirit with those who work on innovations in the chemical industry.

"For this reason, we are honored to support the ICIS Innovation Awards again this year and acknowledge the teams and people behind contributions for a sustainable future. We are optimistic that brilliant minds will come up with outstanding ideas. We wish all of them great success," added Kratz.

US chemical distribution company Maroon Group (www.maroongroupllc.com), continues as a category sponsor, supporting the Innovation with Best Benefit for Environment and Sustainability category. Professional services company Accenture (www.accenture.com), will sponsor the Best Product Innovation category.

John Baker, ICIS Innovation Awards manager at ICIS, comments: "We are delighted to have the continued support of all three sponsors again, a sign that the Awards continue to be successful in their goal of highlighting the importance of innovation in the chemical industry.

"The awards continue to gain industry support and recognition and last year attracted a high level and quality of entries. We once again look forward to highlighting the very best of innovation in the chemical industry."

Celebrating success

The ICIS Innovation Awards enable companies to celebrate their success in innovation and the increasingly important areas of sustainability and environmental performance.

There are four categories to enter:

Best Product Innovation  sponsored by Accenture

sponsored by Accenture Best Process Innovation

Best Innovation by a Small or Medium-sized Enterprise (SME)

Innovation with Best Benefit for Environment and Sustainability  sponsored by Maroon Group.

The ICIS Innovation Awards are now open to entry, with a deadline for entries of 1 July 2019. The winners will be announced in October 2019.

For more information or to enter the awards, visit www.icis.com/awards.

For further information contact:

John Baker

Global editor, ICIS

Tel: + +44-20-8652-3153

Email: [email protected]

Web site: www.icis.com

ABOUT ICIS

ICIS is the world's largest petrochemical market information provider, with divisions spanning energy and fertilizers. Our aim is to give companies in global commodities markets a competitive advantage by delivering valuable information and analytics tools that enable our customers to identify and react to opportunities in markets that are constantly evolving.

We have more than 30 years' of experience in providing pricing intelligence and news, forecast data, market analytics and independent consulting to buyers, sellers and analysts.

With a global staff of more than 600, ICIS has employees based in London, Houston, New York, Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Mumbai, Tokyo, Karlsruhe, and Milan.

ICIS' team of journalists is engaged in reporting market prices and news, and ICIS is fully committed to upholding the highest journalistic principles of verification, corroboration and authentication. ICIS has a compliance framework that along with its methodologies and business processes adheres to the requirements of the IOSCO PRA Principles.

ICIS is a division of Reed Business Information, part of RELX.

About BASF

At BASF, we create chemistry for a sustainable future. We combine economic success with environmental protection and social responsibility. The approximately 122,000 employees in the BASF Group work on contributing to the success of our customers in nearly all sectors and almost every country in the world.

Our portfolio is organised into six segments: Chemicals, Materials, Industrial Solutions, Surface Technologies, Nutrition & Care, and Agricultural Solutions. BASF generated sales of around 63bn in 2018. BASF shares are traded on the stock exchange in Frankfurt (BAS) and as American Depositary Receipts (BASFY) in the US.

For further information contact:

Dr Kathrin Frosch

Tel: +49-621-6--42754

Email: [email protected]

Web site: www.basf.com

About Maroon Group LLC

Maroon Group is a world-class supplier of specialty chemicals and ingredients across North America focused on creating value for customers in a diverse range of end markets. Our business is structured to leverage an infrastructure of industry-leading technology, value-add services, global sourcing & logistics network, and a commitment to Creating Customer Success.

For further information, contact:

Mike McKenna

President/Chief Operating Officer

Maroon Group

Tel: +1-440-937-1000

Email: [email protected]

Web site: www.maroongroupllc.com

About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services and solutions in strategy, consulting, digital, technology and operations. Combining unmatched experience and specialised skills across more than 40 industries and all business functions  underpinned by the world's largest delivery network  Accenture works at the intersection of business and technology to help clients improve their performance and create sustainable value for their stakeholders. With 477,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, Accenture drives innovation to improve the way the world works and lives.

For further information, contact:

Guy Cantwell

Tel: +1-281-900-9089

Email: [email protected]

Web site: www.accenture.com

SOURCE ICIS
PORTLAND, Maine, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Place to Work and FORTUNE have honored Martin's Point Health Care as one of the 2019 Best Workplaces in Health Care and Biopharma. The ranking considered feedback representing almost 730,000 employees working at Great Place to Work-Certified organizations in the health care and biopharma industry. Great Place to Work, a global people analytics and consulting firm, evaluated more than 60 elements of team members' experience on the job. These included the extent to which employees trust leaders, the respect with which people are treated, the fairness of workplace decisions, and how much camaraderie there is among the team. Rankings are based on employees' feedback and reward companies who best include all employees, no matter who they are or what they do for the organization. Martin's Point Health Care took the No. #22 spot on the list.

Uniquely offering both direct primary care and Medicare and TRICARE health insurance plans, Martin's Point employs over 900 employees who serve over 176,000 patients and health plan members throughout the Northeast, most in southern Maine.

According to Martin's Point President and CEO, Dr. David Howes, one key to earning this accolade is the organization's culture of engagement. "Our employees take our mission to improve the health of our community very personally. Because we are local, the lives our employees touch in their day-to-day work are often those of their neighbors, friends, and family members. That close connection fosters a deep sense of purpose and boosts job satisfaction."

Teresa Nizza, Chief Human Resources Office at Martin's Point agrees. "Our culture of caring starts with how we treat our employees and extends to our patients and members and beyond. Employees especially appreciate our benefits that promote community engagementlike paid volunteer days and donations to charitable organizations they support. We've also expanded our Listening Toursproviding an organization-wide forum for leaders to hear the concerns and suggestions of ALL employees who wish to participate. We develop action plans based on emerging themes from employee feedback. Unique benefits and initiatives like these, along with high internal trust levels across the organization, help make Martin's Point a truly great place to work!"

The Best Workplaces in Health Care and Biopharma stand out for exceling in a competitive industry. "Health Care & Biopharma companies are exposed to increasingly complex and rapidly changing environments," said Michael Bush, CEO of Great Place to Work. "The Best Workplaces on this list stand out for cultivating agile workplaces with increasingly change-ready employees. People in these workplaces feel well-informed, encouraged to offer meaningful improvements, and are supported by leaders that are trustworthy, transparent and collaborative."

The Best Workplaces in Health Care and Biopharma is one of a series of rankings by Great Place to Work and FORTUNE based on employee feedback from Great Place to Work-Certified organizations.

About Martin's Point Health Care

Martin's Point Health Care is a progressive, not-for-profit organization providing primary health care and health insurance plans. They operate seven health care centers in Maine and New Hampshire and offer Generations Advantage Medicare plans in Maine and New Hampshire, and the US Family Health Plan (TRICARE Prime) in northern New England, New York, and Pennsylvania. Visit them at www.MartinsPoint.org

About Great Place to Work

Great Place to Work is a global people analytics and consulting firm that helps companies produce better business results by focusing on workplace culture. Powered by more than 30 years of research, Emprising, its SaaS-enabled survey and analytics platform, gives companies access to the assessments, data, and reporting needed to build a high-trust, high-performance culture.

SOURCE Martin's Point Health Care

Related Links

https://martinspoint.org


WASHINGTON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council (MJAC) conducted a series of high-level meetings in the nation's capital on combatting hate crimes and promoting civil discourse.

Council members met with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Eric Dreiband and other officials at the Department of Justice. They advocated for increased focus on the prevention and prosecution of hate crimes by building upon the Justice Department's existing efforts to train law enforcement, educate communities, and mobilize federal prosecutors across the country. Council members also discussed ways in which MJAC could help DOJ and local law enforcement engage more effectively with Muslim and Jewish communities throughout the country.

"We were encouraged to hear that Attorney General Barr has made combatting hate crimes a top priority for the Department of Justice," said MJAC Co-Chair Stanley Bergman. "Added resources and consistent messaging in the fight against prejudice and bigotry of all kinds will be essential."

Council members also met with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and aides to Senator Lindsay Graham, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. MJAC is actively supporting the introduction of legislation to improve the collection of hate crimes data and to confront threats of violence motivated by white supremacism and other forms of domestic extremism.

Earlier in the day, Council members visited the residence of New Zealand Ambassador to the United States Rosemary Banks to present letters of condolence to the people of New Zealand as well as to the two mosque communities attacked in Christchurch.

"Hate has no place in our world and we must fight bigotry and the violence it leads to whenever and wherever it emerges," states the MJAC letter. "No one can repair the harm that was caused or restore those who have been lost. However, we take this despicable crime as a call to action."

Ambassador Banks and MJAC leadership discussed the unique role of civil society in combatting bigotry and strategies for legislating against hate and violence in both countries.

"As American Muslims and Jews we stand with the people of New Zealand," said MJAC Co-Chair Farooq Kathwari. "Those who sow the seeds of hatred and violence must be stopped. When tragedy strikes, as it did in the Christchurch mosques, we must advocate, we must educate, and we must respond."

MJAC is a civil society coalition working at the forefront of confronting hatred and bigotry. Its national Council and eight regional affiliates represent leaders from business, non-profits, religious life, and public service sectors. MJAC works in a bi-partisan manner to protect the rights of religious minorities in the United States and to promote the achievements of Muslims and Jews across the U.S.

SOURCE The Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council
RALEIGH, N.C., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- For the first time since its debut 10 years ago, the Reelin' for Research fishing tournament is even bigger with the addition of inshore fishing. The one-day fishing tournament held in Morehead City, North Carolina, is the culmination of a year-long fundraising effort to benefit UNC Children's Hospital and childhood cancer research. To date, over $3 million has been raised to help LAND A CURE for childhood cancer.

Join WBBB 96.1's Madison and the staff of LeithCars.com as we visit UNC Children's Hospital to meet the children and families benefitting from Reelin' for Research charity funds, then talk to a long-time volunteer about how easy it is to get involved in this great cause - finding a cure for pediatric cancers.

For several years LeithCars.com has been a proud sponsor of Reelin' for Research, and that tradition certainly continues for 2019. Even more so this year with the addition of Leith Toyota to the other Leith yearly participants, including Leith Nissan, Autopark Honda, Leith VW Cary and Leith VW Raleigh. For every vehicle sold at participating Leith dealerships during the month of April, $100 will be donated to Reelin' for Research.

In advance of the annual Reelin' for Research charity fishing tournament on May 4, 2019, in Morehead City, North Carolina, LeithCars.com recently connected with fellow sponsor Curtis Media Group to feature WBBB 96.1's on-air personality Madison in a video highlighting how the money raised benefits UNC Children's Hospital. During the visit, there was the unique opportunity to meet one-on-one with children and families who benefit firsthand from the great works of Reelin' for Research. They also spoke with a longtime volunteer about how easy it is to get involved in this great cause.

The first Reelin' for Research tournament was held in 2009 in memory of Tony Montana who passed away from cancer in 2005. Tony had lived a long, full life and was an avid fisherman who remarked during his cancer battle that children with cancer were too often deprived of that chance. Tony's son Richard and friends wanted to honor Tony's memory by trying to change that outcome. A charity fishing tournament seemed to be the obvious choice, thus Reelin' for Research was born.

Since then, Reelin' for Research has grown into a year-round fundraising effort with $100,000 of the money raised going into the Tony Montana Fellowship Fund at UNC Children's Hospital in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where it's awarded to a physician specializing in childhood cancer research. Dr. Stuart Gold, director of Pediatric Oncology and Hematology at the hospital, helps select the fellowship recipients. The remainder of the funds are placed into an endowment with the purpose of eventually funding the fellowship into perpetuity.

LeithCars.com is one of the most recognized websites for consumers searching for new, used and Certified Pre-Owned cars, trucks and SUVs. Leith, Inc. is the parent company, operating over 30 automobile franchises in Raleigh, Cary, Wendell and Aberdeen, North Carolina, featuring 23 automotive brands.

Contact:

Amber T.

Leith Marketing

(919) 832-3232

[email protected]

Contact:

Heather Barber

Reelin' for Research

(919) 971-4600

[email protected]

SOURCE LeithCars.com

Related Links

http://www.leithcars.com


The five business plan jurors are successful entrepreneurs. Janet Lowe is co-founder of CPLEX, a software company that was eventually acquired, under the name ILOG, by IBM. Wendy Hummer owns EXL Media , a media buying and planning agency located on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe. Terrell Jones is an author and founder of Travelocity.com . Jim Steinmann is founder and President of Steinmann Facility Development Consultants . His extensive design/build projects list includes SNC's Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences and Prim Library. Finally, Richard Gire, SNC Tahoe faculty, is an author, publisher, and practicing member of the California Bar. Richard held executive positions with Columbia Pictures, MGM/UA, and taught Intellectual property law for Carnegie Mellon University. He also organized the first Business Plan Competition on the SNC Campus.

Founded in 1969, Sierra Nevada College provides instruction delivered by professionals who are experts in the fields they teach. Students gather in small classes and work in real-world settings. The interdisciplinary campus and curriculum creates entrepreneur artists, authors, and business persons of all stripes. Many Incline Village, Tahoe City, and South Lake ventures have roots at Sierra Nevada College.

With Jonathan Breiter as the Chair of the Entrepreneurship Program at SNC, the creation of its new immersive semester calendar, and induction of SNC Tahoe into the Sigma Nu Tau entrepreneurship honor society, Sierra Nevada College has doubled down on the immersive professional experience on its campus.

This year's competition will be held on April 23, 2019, in the Tahoe Center for Environmental Sciences, on the SNC Campus, 999 Tahoe Blvd, Incline Village Nevada, at 5:30pm.

Sierra Nevada College is Nevada's only accredited private non-profit four-year university. Sierra Nevada College is committed to using active learning that fosters a culture of competition guiding students to think on their feet, communicate persuasively, and acquire the higher-order thinking skills necessary to thrive in the real world.

SOURCE Sierra Nevada College
Fun and Games: Gifts with Purchase and Events at the Workshop Beginning tomorrow, April 12, Guests who visit any Build-A-Bear Workshop  location will receive a free Spring Surprise Scratch & Match card with the purchase of a furry friend, while supplies last. Upon receiving the card, participants can scratch to reveal a free-gift offer valid with a furry friend purchase. Surprises can include a free heartbeat, scent, furry-friend T-shirt or reusable drawstring backpack, while supplies last. Full details and a disclaimer for Spring Surprise Scratch & Match are available at buildabear.com/events .

Additionally, on weekends in April, families can hop into the Workshop for a free in-store Easter-egg token scavenger hunt, as well as a photo opportunity with the Build-A-Bear bunny mascot, Pawlette! Pawlette will be available for photos on Saturday, April 13 and Saturday, April 20 at 12 p.m. in all time zones.

More details on springtime events at the Workshop can be found at buildabear.com/events.

Egg-hunt Finds: Spring Furry Friends + New Scrambles by Build-A-Bear

For those on the hunt for Easter gifts to complete their basket, several new 16-inch bunny furry friends are available in stores and online at buildabear.com, as well as colorful coordinating outfits, accessories and pre-stuffed gift sets. New 8-to-9-inch springtime Build-A-Bear Buddies are the perfect furry friends for taking along on Easter-egg huntsand they fit right in the plush Easter Basket Accessory!

Gift-givers can mix up the Easter baskets this year with a slew of furry friends, plus the all-new Scrambles by Build-A-Bear! Available in stores only, Scrambles toy eggs come with a special, smiley 3-inch friend insidefrom a unicorn to a puppy to a bear or bunnyplus, separate hands, feet and accessories for mix 'n' match creations. Collectors can scramble the pieces from all their Scrambles eggs to make fun new friends each time.

For the perfect (sugar-free) spring treat, Guests can now make their own Dylan's Candy Bar Bear in Build-A-Bear Workshop stores and at buildabear.comand add colorful Dylan's Candy Bar outfits and fun accessories, such as a Dylan's Candy Bar Pajama Set or Dylan's Candy Bar Whirly Pop Wristie! This is the first time Build-A-Bear Workshop and Dylan's Candy Bar have teamed up to offer a collaborative collection that seeks to inspire creativity, heart, and the inner child in everyonewhich is central to the missions of both brands.

Hop in to Give "Hugs N' Hope" to Children in Need

To further the company's mission to add a little more heart to life, Build-A-Bear and Build-A-Bear Foundation are continuing to offer Guests the opportunity to help share comfort and hugs by making their own limited-edition Hugs N' Hope Bear in stores or online. For every Hugs N' Hope Bear soldwhile supplies lastBuild-A-Bear will donate one teddy bear to Build-A-Bear Foundation to be given to a child in need.

Fans can stay tuned to the brand's social media channels for Build-A-Bear Foundation updates, and visit buildabear.com/giving for more information on Build-A-Bear's charitable giving efforts.

About Build-A-Bear

Build-A-Bear is a global brand kids love and parents trust that seeks to add a little more heart to life. Build-A-Bear Workshop has over 450 stores worldwide where Guests can create customizable furry friends, including corporately-managed stores in the United States, Canada, China, Denmark, Ireland, Puerto Rico, and the United Kingdom, and franchise stores in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Mexico and the Middle East. Buildabear.com is the online destination for unique furry-friend gifts, featuring The-Bear-Builder, a shopping configurator that helps create customized gift options. Build-A-Bear Workshop, Inc. (NYSE: BBW) posted a total revenue of $336.6 million in fiscal 2018.

About Build-A-Bear Foundation

Build-A-Bear believes in the power of hugs and the simple comfort of having a furry friend by your side. Since 1997, Build-A-Bear and Build-A-Bear Foundation have donated more than $50 million to a variety of organizations and in a number of ways. The mission of Build-A-Bear Foundation is to add a little more heart to life by sharing hugs and making days a little bit brighter for those in need. The Foundation is committed to sharing teddy-bear hugs with nonprofit organizations and registered charities that support the well-being of children in areas where Build-A-Bear Guests and associates live, work and play. For more information, visit buildabear.com/giving.

About Dylan's Candy Bar

Bar Dylan's Candy Bar was founded in 2001 by Dylan Lauren with a mission to awaken the creative spirit and inner child in everyone. Renowned for merging the worlds of art, fashion and pop culture with candy, Dylan's Candy Bar is the pioneer in changing the way we see candy today. As the largest state-of-the-art sweets emporium and candy lifestyle brand, Dylan's Candy Bar is not your average "candy store." The modern day candy land is home to over 7,000 candies from around the world, making it the most popular destination for the ultimate sugar rush experience.

Dylan's Candy Bar freestanding stores are currently located in New York City at 60th Street and in Union Square; Chicago; Los Angeles; Miami and East Hampton. In addition to luxury boutiques in premier hotels, international airports and leading department stores, Dylan's Candy Bar plans to continue expanding in major cosmopolitan cities in the U.S. and worldwide.

For more information about Dylan's Candy Bar, visit www.DylansCandyBar.com. Follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest @DylansCandyBar

SOURCE Build-A-Bear

Related Links

http://www.buildabear.com


LumApps, a French provider of a social intranet for the enterprise, closed a $24M Series B funding round.

The round was led by Idinvest. Additionally, Etienne Droit (former EVP Sales at 3DS) and Damien Neyret (CEO of Letsignit) will be joining the companys board of directors.

The company intends to use the new capital to scale global sales and marketing and accelerate product innovation for the LumApps digital workplace suite.

Led by Sebastien Ricard, Founder and CEO, and Lionel Grivel, co-founder and COO, LumApps is a social and collaborative intranet, designed to inform and engage employees. The solution integrates with both G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Sharepoint. Accessible anytime, anywhere via mobile, the LumApps intranet serves as a central hub for personalized content, social communications, work tools and applications.

In 2018, the company continued to build its international presence with new offices and talent across the United States, Europe, Japan and Pacific-Asia. It also more than doubled its customer base with the addition of EA, G4S, Peach Aviation, Verizon Media (formerly Oath) to its growing roster.

LumApps has seven offices worldwide  Lyon, Paris, London, New York, Austin, San Francisco, and Tokyo  and serves some of the worlds most prominent companies, including Veolia, Valeo, Air Liquide, Colgate-Palmolive, The Economist, Schibsted, EA, Logitech.
FORT WORTH, Texas, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Sameer Bhargava, Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Caregiver, Inc., is leading the company's technological transformation to support Caregiver's core mission of caring for those who qualify as developmentally or intellectually disabled (IDD) or are impacted by related conditions in Texas, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee service areas.

Over an eight-month period, Caregiver migrated eight million records from paper to their Electronic Health Records (EHR) system. Approximately 1,500 users log into the EHR daily. Around 16,000 training courses have been completed by its service professional user base.

Such major changes are grounded in supporting the human element, according to Bhargava.

"Ultimately, our technology ecosystem reduces administrative burdens for our professionals," Bhargava stressed, "increasing the time staff can spend with individuals we serve. Our 'digital evolution' places individuals at the center of everything we do."

Recently, digital systems have become essential and often mandated for the IDD services industry. During Caregiver's expansion, Bhargava and his team designed a strategic digital evolution using a stability-driven, layered approach. The transition from paper to electronic systems and team tools, while challenging at times, yields better networks of services for group homes and day-habilitation centers; benefits for aspects teams manage  medical, social, work-life, community engagement, and custodial financial services; efficiencies for accounting and finance, compliance and regulation; and ease of audit and review.

"Technology can greatly improve the lives of the thousands of individuals we serve," said CEO Mark Lashley. "Our staff of 3500 in four states recognizes that such advancements are helping position Caregiver as a provider of choice and an employer of choice. They have embraced the changes."

ABOUT CAREGIVER, INC.

Caregiver, Inc., is a privately-held company with over 3500 employees within the headquarters support group and multiple branded affiliate organizations in four states. The company provides a wide range of intermediate, home and community care services to nearly 2800 individuals who qualify as developmentally or intellectually disabled or are impacted by related conditions. Caregiver, Inc. was formed in 2015. Company headquarters are at 4800 Overton Plaza, Suite 440, Fort Worth, Texas 76109. Phone is (800) 299-5161. They are on the web at cg-idd.com.

Contact: Anna Todd 682-707-2725 [email protected]

SOURCE Caregiver, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cg-idd.com


HANNOVER, Germany, April 4, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ZutaCore, a waterless, liquid cooing company unlocking the power of cooling in data centers, today announced the strategic integration of Intel Data Center Manager (DCM) into ZutaCore's software-defined-cooling (SDC) platform. Together, the companies are increasing SDC functionality by providing the opportunity to gain visibility into computing power assets to virtualize and optimize available resources. This addresses an increasing demand from data center operators for innovative opportunities to leverage software for resource optimization.

Intel has developed DCM to offer enterprises and service provides real-time power and thermal monitoring for servers, racks, and groups of servers in data centers. In addition, ISVs and system integrators can integrate DCM for health monitoring and utilization, increased rack density, high-value power management features, and more. ZutaCore's data center cooling platform enhanced with DCM's suite of tools will help data center operators to virtualize cooling resources and provide them with the capability to optimize applications across their assets. Ultimately, it can enable predictive cooling schemes for maximum utilization of resources at the highest power efficiencies.

"By equipping ZutaCore's HyperCool  with the underlying Intel DCM functionality, we have taken software-defined-cooling to a new level," said Udi Paret, President, ZutaCore. "Now, data center operators will benefit not only from ZutaCore's complete hardware system, enhanced by SDC, for cooling assets virtualization, predictive operations and optimization, but they can trust that it is built on a leading industry platform from Intel."

"Intel DCM's integration into ZutaCore's software-defined- cooling platform compliments our company's efforts to help data center operators monitor and manage the power consumption of their facilities," said Jeffrey Klaus, General Manager, Intel Data Center Management Solutions. "Ultimately, this will enable them to efficiently provision cooling resources and consume less power."

For more information about Intel Data Center Manager integration in ZutaCore's HyperCool2 software-defined-cooling platform please contact us at [email protected].

About ZutaCore

ZutaCore is a waterless, two-phase change, liquid cooling technology company, unlocking the power of cooling and revolutionizing data centers. The HyperCool2 technology platform alleviates cooling boundaries at the chip, server, rack, POD and data center levels. The HyperCool2 solution is a complete hardware system, enhanced by a software-defined-cooling platform, yields unparalleled heat dissipation at the chip level, triples computing densities on a fraction of the footprint and halves costs. Designed by a veteran team in Israel and enabled by 14 patent-pending innovations, HyperCool2 is a near plug-and-play system that delivers consistent results, in any climate. ZutaCore's R&D center is in Israel with HQ office in California. For more information, please visit http://www.zuta-core.com/.

Media Contacts

Nandita Geerdink, Resolution Communications for ZutaCore

415.269.4493

[email protected]

SOURCE ZutaCore

Related Links

http://www.zuta-core.com


DETROIT, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc. (AAM), (NYSE: AXL) will participate in the 2019 Bank of America Merrill Lynch Auto Summit on April 17. Starting at 10:25 a.m. ET, David C. Dauch, AAM's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, will discuss recent business developments.

A live audio webcast will be accessible through the Investor Relations page on AAM's website (www.aam.com). A replay of the webcast will be available following the event.

About AAM

AAM (NYSE:AXL) delivers POWER that moves the world. As a leading global tier 1 automotive supplier, AAM designs, engineers and manufactures driveline, metal forming and casting technologies that are making the next generation of vehicles smarter, lighter, safer and more efficient. Headquartered in Detroit, AAM has over 25,000 associates operating at nearly 90 facilities in 17 countries to support our customers on global and regional platforms with a focus on quality, operational excellence and technology leadership. To learn more, visit aam.com.

Our presentation may contain "forward-looking" statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties described in our most recent filings on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and actual results may differ materially. Our presentation also may include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding these non-GAAP measures, as well as a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial information, is available on AAM's website (www.aam.com).

For more information:

Investor Contact:

Jason P. Parsons

Director, Investor Relations

(313) 758-2404

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Christopher M. Son

Vice President, Marketing & Communications

(313) 758-4814

[email protected]

Or visit the AAM website at www.aam.com.

SOURCE American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.aam.com


SAN DIEGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Amplyx Pharmaceuticals, a company developing first-in-class products for life-threatening infections, announced today that three posters from the APX001 development program will be presented at the 29th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), being held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from April 13 to 16, 2019.

The Company and its collaborators will present data from its APX001 preclinical programs in both oral and poster presentations at the conference. APX001 is a broad-spectrum antifungal drug with a novel mechanism of action for the treatment of life-threatening, invasive fungal infections caused by Candida  including Candida auris  Aspergillus and by rare, hard-to-treat molds, including strains that are resistant to standard of care antifungal therapy. Currently, multiple Phase 2 proof of concept studies of APX001 are being conducted in patients with invasive candidiasis/candidemia, invasive aspergillosis and C. auris. Completed Phase 1 clinical trials have determined the safety, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of the intravenous and oral formulations of APX001.

The details for the data presentations at ECCMID are as follows:

Title: In vitro activity of APX001A and comparator agents against 1706 fungal isolates collected during an international surveillance programme (2017)

Date and time: Saturday, April 13 from 2:45  3:45 p.m. CEST

Session type: 1-Hour Oral Session

Location: Hall N

Presentation number: #O0269

Session: Novel approaches to fungal diseases

Title: APX001 protects immunosuppressed mice from scedosporiosis

Date and time: Monday, April 15 from 11:00  12:00 p.m. CEST

Session type: Mini-oral ePoster session

Location: Arena 2

Presentation number: #O0734

Session: Antifungals: novel drugs, novel dosing?

Title: In vivo pharmacodynamic evaluation of the novel antifungal agent APX001 in a murine model of invasive pulmonary aspergillosis against wild-type and Cyp51 mutant Aspergillus fumigatus strains

Date and time: Tuesday, April 16 from 11:00  12:00 p.m. CEST

Session type: Mini-oral ePoster session

Location: Arena 2

Presentation number: #O1066

Session: Defining exposure, efficacy and safety of new antimicrobial agents

Full abstracts can be found on the ECCMID website at www.eccmid.org.

About APX001

APX001A, the active moiety of APX001, inhibits the highly conserved fungal enzyme Gwt1, compromising growth of major fungal pathogens. In multiple nonclinical studies, APX001 has shown broad-spectrum activity against common species of Candida spp. and Aspergillus spp., including multi-drug resistant strains such as Candida auris and rare, hard-to-treat molds including Fusarium spp., Scedosporium spp., and fungi from the Mucorales order. APX001 is currently in Phase 2 clinical trials evaluating the efficacy and safety of both IV and oral APX001 for the first-line treatment of patients with fungal infections.

Invasive infections due to Aspergillus, Fusarium, Scedosporium and fungi from the Mucorales order are especially difficult to treat resulting in high mortality rates (50-80%), even when patients receive standard of care treatment. The frequency of fungi resistant to both the azole and echinocandin classes of drugs is increasing. Thus, there remains a significant unmet medical need for a new broad-spectrum antifungal to treat serious, invasive fungal infections and reduce the existing high morbidity and mortality.

About Amplyx Pharmaceuticals

Amplyx Pharmaceuticals is developing first-in-class products for life-threatening infections, with a near-term focus on deadly fungal pathogens in vulnerable patients. Amplyx's drug discovery and development efforts have been supported by significant venture investment and grants from the National Institutes of Health. For more information, please visit www.amplyx.com.

SOURCE Amplyx Pharmaceuticals

Related Links

http://www.amplyx.com


SAN DIEGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Shareholder rights law firm Johnson Fistel, LLP has launched an investigation into whether the board members of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: APC) ("Anadarko") breached their fiduciary duties in connection with the proposed sale of the Company to Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX)

On April 12, 2019, Anadarko announced that it had signed a definitive merger agreement with Chevron. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Anadarko shareholders will receive 0.3869 shares of Chevron and $16.25 in cash for each Anadarko share. Based on Chevron's closing price on April 11, 2019 the deal is valued at $65 per share. However, shareholders will be subject to the future price fluctuation of Chevron 's stock price.

The investigation concerns whether the Anadarko board failed to satisfy its duties to the Company shareholders, including whether the board adequately pursued alternatives to the acquisition and whether the board obtained the best price possible for Anadarko shares of common stock. Nationally recognized Johnson Fistel is investigating whether the proposed deal represents adequate consideration, especially given analysts' projections for future earnings growth, also one Wall Street analyst has a $80.00 price target on the stock.

If you are a shareholder of Anadarko and believe the proposed buyout price is too low or you're interested in learning more about the investigation or your legal rights and remedies, please contact lead analyst Jim Baker ( [email protected] ) at 619-814-4471. If emailing, please include a phone number.

Additionally, you can [Click here to join this action]. There is no cost or obligation to you.

About Johnson Fistel, LLP:

Johnson Fistel, LLP is a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm with offices in California, New York, and Georgia. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits. For more information about the firm and its attorneys, please visit https://www.johnsonfistel.com. Attorney advertising. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Contact:

Johnson Fistel, LLP

Jim Baker, 619-814-4471

[email protected]

[Click here to join this action]

SOURCE Johnson Fistel, LLP

Related Links

http://www.johnsonfistel.com


"Anita Hill exemplifies moral courage," said Paula A. Johnson, president of Wellesley College. "Throughout her career, she has spoken truth to power, reminding us of the impact that a single voice can have. As our graduates prepare to make their difference in the world, I have no doubt they will find both strength and inspiration in her words as in her life."

Hill, whose courage has inspired generations, is renowned for her work with civil and women's rights, in pursuit of social justice, and to combat sexual harassment. Her voice has been prominent in academia, politics, and the media regarding gender, race, and equality; the Washington Post has called her a "leading face" of the ongoing #MeToo movement.

"We are experiencing a watershed moment in which women are making their voices heard throughout society--in business, politics, higher education, and social movements," said Hill. "Wellesley women are known for standing up for justice, and the class of 2019 is graduating into a climate that is challenging, but offers so many possibilities for leadership. I am honored to mark this momentous occasion with the graduating seniors."

In her 1997 memoir, Speaking Truth to Power, Hill recounted her 1991 Congressional testimony against then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. "Women who accuse men, particularly powerful men, of harassment are often confronted with the reality of the men's sense that they are more important than women, as a group," she wrote.

This past September, when Christine Blasey Ford stepped forward to testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school, Hill penned a New York Times op-ed on the parallels to her own experiences: "With the current heightened awareness of sexual violence comes heightened accountability for our representatives. To do better, the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee must demonstrate a clear understanding that sexual violence is a social reality to which elected representatives must respond."

Hill's most recent book is Reimagining Equality: Stories of Gender, Race and Finding Home, published in 2011. She received this year's Courage Award from PEN America, a literary and human-rights organization that defends and celebrates free expression in the United States. Hill holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Oklahoma State University and a JD from Yale Law School as well as several honorary degrees.

It is a Wellesley tradition that each graduating class considers the visionaries who most inspire them as they prepare to select the commencement speaker. The class of 2019 announced that it had chosen Anita Hill on April 11 at the annual senior celebration.

"Given the events of this year regarding the Kavanaugh trial and the rise of the #MeToo movement, we wanted to choose a speaker who not only continues to advocate for racial and gender rights, but was also an integral part of the very start of this fight," Class Council co-presidents Alex Kew and Dominique Huang said in a statement. "As we transition to the next phases of our lives, this is the message we wanted to leave with our class of 2019: to transcend expectations, carve out our own paths, and speak our truths even in the face of adversity, just like Anita Hill."

About Wellesley College

Since 1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an outstanding liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to some 2,400 undergraduate students from 49 states and 58 countries.

Press Contact

Casey Bayer, Director of Media Relations: (781) 283-3321; [email protected]



This news release was issued on behalf of Newswise. For more information, visit http://www.newswise.com.

SOURCE Wellesley College

Related Links

https://www.wellesley.edu


METUCHEN, N.J., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MouthWatch, LLC a leader in innovative teledentistry solutions, digital case presentation tools and intraoral imaging devices, will be showcasing the first major new release of its TeleDent all-in-one teledentistry platform and its new TeleDent MobileOp teledentistry cart, during the 2019 National Oral Health Conference in Memphis.

TeleDent 2.0

TeleDent MobileOp (artist's rendition) showing optional equipment. Simulation of TeleDent's virtual communication and collaboration capability for care providers.

According to MouthWatch Founder and CEO Brant Herman, "We've been adding a lot of enhancements and new features to TeleDent since the last time we were at NOHC, and we're excited to demonstrate them at this year's conference." Here are some of the new features included in TeleDent 2.0 that are boosting its treatment planning and task management capabilities and optimizing TeleDent-enabled patient encounters in public health dentistry:

API Architecture - One of the most significant features included in TeleDent 2.0 is an API architecture that will enable easy connectivity and integration with practice management, digital imaging and EHR systems.

One of the most significant features included in TeleDent 2.0 is an API architecture that will enable easy connectivity and integration with practice management, digital imaging and EHR systems. Improved Scalability  TeleDent 2.0 supports more locations, larger referral networks plus better controls for internal and external users.

TeleDent 2.0 supports more locations, larger referral networks plus better controls for internal and external users. Integration Support - MouthWatch has created a TeleDent Integration Services Team to help its clients connect the TeleDent API with their existing practice management, digital imaging and EHR systems.

MouthWatch has created a TeleDent Integration Services Team to help its clients connect the TeleDent API with their existing practice management, digital imaging and EHR systems. Calendar Application Synchronization - One of the challenges of using teledentistry for live collaboration is that of accommodating the busy schedule of each clinician on the care team. TeleDent 2.0 now supports appointment management for teledentistry encounters.

TeleDent MobileOp

Developed in partnership with DNTLworks Equipment Corporation, TeleDent MobileOp is a fully-equipped mobile teledentistry cart that provides the public health sector with a customizable, modular teledentistry delivery unit of the highest degree of functionality and quality.

"One way to encourage teledentistry adoption is to make the technology easier to use in a real-world environment," explained Herman. "The ability to roll our TeleDent all-in-one teledentistry platform from operatory to operatory and making it easy to transport to off-site clinics ensures it will be used consistently."

TeleDent MobileOp will be sold on both the DNTLworks and MouthWatch web sites and have an estimated base price of $15,000.00 which includes the DNTLworks cart with locking drawers, MouthWatch intraoral camera and a Windows 10-equipped laptop.

The newly-released TeleDent 2.0 HIPAA-compliant, cloud-based software user licenses are sold separately. TeleDent MobileOp was designed to be a modular teledentistry solution and has several configuration options and price points for customized builds.

Stop by the MouthWatch table at NOHC for live demos of TeleDent 2.0 and TeleDent MobileOp.

About MouthWatch LLC

Headquartered in Metuchen, New Jersey, MouthWatch, LLC is a leader in innovative teledentistry solutions, digital case presentation tools and intraoral imaging devices. The company is dedicated to finding new ways to constantly improve the dental health experience for both patient and provider. For more information, visit www.mouthwatch.com.

Media Contact:

Michael Ventriello

(732) 458-3497

[email protected]

SOURCE MouthWatch, LLC

Related Links

https://www.mouthwatch.com


BEIJING, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Autohome Inc. (NYSE: ATHM) ("Autohome" or the "Company"), the leading online destination for automobile consumers in China, today announced it filed its annual report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2018 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on April 12, 2019. The annual report on Form 20-F, which contains the Company's audited consolidated financial statements, can be accessed on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov as well as through the Company's investor relations website at http://ir.autohome.com.cn.

The Company will provide a hard copy of its annual report containing the audited consolidated financial statements, free of charge, to its shareholders and ADS holders upon request. Requests should be directed to Investor Relations Department, Autohome Inc., 10th Floor Tower B, CEC Plaza, 3 Dan Ling Street, Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China.

About Autohome Inc.

Autohome Inc. (NYSE: ATHM) is the leading online destination for automobile consumers in China. Its mission is to enhance the car-buying and ownership experience for auto consumers in China. Autohome provides professionally produced and user-generated content, a comprehensive automobile library, and extensive automobile listing information to automobile consumers, covering the entire car purchase and ownership cycle. The ability to reach a large and engaged user base of automobile consumers has made Autohome a preferred platform for automakers and dealers to conduct their advertising campaigns. Further, the Company's dealer subscription and advertising services allow dealers to market their inventory and services through Autohome's platform, extending the reach of their physical showrooms to potentially millions of internet users in China and generating sales leads for them. The Company offers sales leads, data analysis, and marketing services to assist automakers and dealers with improving their efficiency and facilitating transactions. As a transaction-centric company, Autohome operates its "Autohome Mall," a full-service online transaction platform, to facilitate transactions for automakers and dealers. Further, through its websites and mobile applications, it also provides other value-added services, including auto financing, auto insurance, used car transactions, and aftermarket services. For further information, please visit www.autohome.com.cn.

For investor and media inquiries, please contact:

In China:

Autohome Inc.

Investor Relations

Aggie Zhao

Tel: +86-10-5985-7483

Email: [email protected]

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Xi Zhang

Tel: +86-10-5730-6200

E-mail: [email protected]

In the United States:

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Brandi Piacente

Tel: +1-212-481-2050

E-mail: [email protected]

SOURCE Autohome Inc.
PHILADELPHIA, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Axalta Coating Systems Ltd. (NYSE: AXTA) will host a conference call to review its first quarter 2019 financial results at 8:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, April 24, 2019. Robert Bryant, CEO, Sean Lannon, CFO, and Chris Mecray, VP of Investor Relations, will review the company's financial performance for the period.

The U.S. dial-in phone number for the conference call is 877-407-0784 and the international dial-in number is +1-201-689-8560. A live webcast of the conference call will also be available online at www.axaltacs.com/InvestorCall.

For those unable to participate in the call, a replay will be available through May 1, 2019. The U.S. replay dial-in number is 844-512-2921 and the international dial-in number is +1-412-317-6671. The replay passcode is 13689966.

About Axalta Coating Systems

Axalta is a leading global company focused solely on coatings and providing customers with innovative, colorful, beautiful and sustainable solutions. From light OEM vehicles, commercial vehicles and refinish applications to electric motors, buildings and pipelines, our coatings are designed to prevent corrosion, increase productivity and enable the materials we coat to last longer. With 150 years of experience in the coatings industry, the approximately 14,000 people of Axalta continue to find ways to serve our more than 100,000 customers in 130 countries better every day with the finest coatings, application systems and technology. For more information visit axalta.com and axalta.us and follow us @axalta on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Contact

Christopher Mecray

D +1 215 255 7970

[email protected]



SOURCE Axalta Coating Systems Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.axalta.com


MONTREAL, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - BCE Inc. (TSX: BCE) (NYSE: BCE) will hold its first-quarter 2019 results conference call with the financial community on Thursday, May 2, 2019 at 8:00 am eastern.

Participants will include George Cope, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Glen LeBlanc, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Media are welcome to participate on a listen-only basis.

To participate, please dial toll-free 1-800-478-9326 or 416-340-2219. A replay will be available until midnight June 6, 2019 by dialing 1-800-408-3053 or 905-694-9451 and entering passcode 7915771#.

A live audio webcast of the conference call will be available on BCE's website at BCE Q1-2019 conference call.

About BCE

BCE is Canada's largest communications company, providing advanced Bell broadband wireless, TV, Internet and business communications services alongside Canada's premier content creation and media assets from Bell Media. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca or BCE.ca.

The Bell Let's Talk initiative promotes Canadian mental health with national awareness and anti-stigma campaigns like Bell Let's Talk Day and significant Bell funding of community care and access, research and workplace leadership initiatives. To learn more, please visit Bell.ca/LetsTalk.

Media inquiries:

Marie-Eve Francoeur

514-391-5263

[email protected]

Investor inquiries:

Thane Fotopoulos

514-870-4619

[email protected]

SOURCE Bell Canada

Related Links

www.bell.ca


If you are a student of finance and want to pursue your studies in this area, then you definitely need to go for the best institutions out there.

You need an institution where you can get time to find finance homework help to advance your learning efforts. Creating a collaborative atmosphere of learners is one of the main objectives of top business and finance universities around the world. If you are looking for such, here are arguably the worlds best universities to choose from

MIT Sloan

This is the place to go for your Masters in Finance. Their masters program at MIT gets you thorough knowledge in finance and banking. As a learner, you will also get to connect with job opportunities in well-known institutions around the world. This is an active research centre around the globe on financial matters and will help you become a better finance professional. More than that, you will get exposure to finance theories and practices for careers in this industry.

London Business School

If you need to do masters of Science in Finance, the London Business School will help you achieve that. The course at this masters level is considered among the top universities offering banking and finance courses around the globe. It is a special program that is conducted through experts in the finance industry. You will get to know about emerging technics and methods in finance to understand current trends in the industry.

Imperial College Business School

This is yet another great university for finance students. The Imperial College London has been recognized as among the top institutions in Europe and beyond for a long time. The MBA programs in this institution handle issues to do with investments, decision analytics, risk management and corporate finance. Its location in London, expert faculty, practically informed courses and industry tie-ups are key in making this masters program a success.

HEC Paris

HEC Paris offers an MBA program in finance offering a consistent set of courses in finance. The program combines hands-on courses and academic courses taught by the best minds in HEC research department. These courses are aimed at advancing the knowledge of finance students particularly in financial analysis, financial credit, corporate valuation, sustainable investments and asset management.

Chicago Booth

If none of these universities in Europe interests you, you can try the University of Chicago, which is a private university that is ethically and culturally a diverse college of educational research. It is among the top universities offering masters in finance. The university has a finance curriculum that has finance and banking streams offering thorough knowledge on risk management, investments and corporate finance among other financial aspects. Students get important support to help them deal with continuing projects in organizations in order to understand how the finance industry works.

Final Remarks

Working with experts in finance can make your learning journey a lot easier if you can afford to get them rather than joining any kind of finance school. In case you need help, ace my paper professionals are there to help you join these worlds best universities in finance by providing helpful information.
BEIJING, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CCV's Founding Managing Partner Wei Zhou was interviewed by Bloomberg TV, on the topic of Uber's IPO and the profitability of the sharing economy. He talks about the trend of new generation of post-95s, and foresees huge opportunities for China's entrepreneurs to make profit. Besides, he believes the new technology like AI will solve the imbalance of supply and demand, which cannot be changed by the Internet. Online education is a good example of beneficiary of these two trends. Related link:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/company-news/video/china-creation-ventures-s-zhou-on-uber-ipo-sharing-economy-companies-chinese-startups~1658839

China Creation Ventures (CCV) Founding and Managing Partner Wei Zhou was selected as one of China's 20 Best Venture Capitalists in 2018, published by Forbes China, the Chinese-language edition of Forbes. Recently, Wei was also interviewed by Forbes China. He said that the changes in the new generation's consumer behavior have brought profit opportunities to many business models. Gen Z is different from the older generation in terms of payment behavior, habits and amount. According to this insight, CCV will concentrate on opportunities related to the new generation.

About Wei Zhou

Before starting CCV, Wei was Managing Partner at KPCB China and led its digital practice group in Greater China. 30% of Wei's portfolios became unicorns in the past decade. The companies that he backed include JD.com, CreditEase, Rong360, Ximalaya FM, Yixia.com, Tan Tan Mobile Social, Asia Innovation Group, VenusTech, KJY Water, ULUCU, JD Digits, and Wanka Online.

It's reported by Forbes China and 36Kr (China's TechCrunch) that Wei led KPCB China's TMT investment team back to the leading status, and shaped its professional and selected investment style. After managing the top venture capital for ten years, Wei and his TMT investment team of many years in KPCB China founded CCV, focusing on the investment of early-stage TMT sectors. One of their portfolios, Wanka Online, went public in December 2018, within 18 months after CCV's series B Round investment. Wei was also chosen as one of China's 30 Most Influential Investors by Fortune China.

How Wei invested in Ximalaya FM

Wei had his approach of how to identify potential unicorns. He summarized into three laws and one of them is the Red Light Law. "Doing startups is like racing. The point is to leave all your competitors behind when the light turns red. The red light equals the key competitive factor, which means it stops others, but you get through," Wei said. He regarded Ximalaya FM as an example of the Red Light Law. "When I invested in Ximalaya FM's A Round, it was not Top 3 in the marketplace in 2014, but they bought copyrights much earlier than other audio platforms and speculated that content copyright competition would be breaking out." Wei recalled, "They were already ahead before the red light."

The CEO of Ximalaya FM Jianjun Yu said that Zhou was not like other investors who kept questioning business models and user data. Instead, he was impressed by the cooperation with hundreds of content innovators. Ximalaya FM tried to produce audio content in all possible ways, by supporting sound studios, buying content copyrights, establishing an AI team for personalized recommendations, collecting user information big data and developing hardware.

"Since infrastructure in the audio industry is well-developed, the content will be the most valuable property. That's why I foresaw that Ximalaya FM would eventually become an industry leader," concluded Wei. Now Ximalaya FM is China's largest online audio platform, with approximately 470 million registered users. Wei led the A Round investment of it in KPCB China and made the additional investment after starting CCV.

Wei talks about new investment opportunities

From Wei's perspective, Ximalaya FM is also a beneficiary of the changes in the new generation's paying behavior. The 123 Festival is a 3-day promotion equal to Alibaba's Double 11. During the festival, Ximalaya FM's members get discounts when buying audio content. It's claimed that the revenue of 123 Festival reached 435 million RMB in 2018. Before that, it was respectively 196 million RMB in 2017 and 49 million RMB in 2016. Among which, over 70% of paying users are Gen Zs.

Besides, the innovation of technology in China is another investment opportunity. For instance, AI+ online education holds a massively big growing market. Wei invested in Dingdong Class, which provides "pseudo-live broadcasting classes" at much lower prices compared to traditional live broadcasting ones. It created a similar experience by using pre-recorded video clips and AI technology. The innovation breaks through the limitation of teacher resources and makes it possible to create a scalable learning opportunity.

"China has massive data and abundant business scenarios for AI startups to launch the technology quickly. That will be a competitive advantage, and education is just one good example," Wei said.

*Data from public reports.

For enquiries, please contact:

China Creation Ventures

[email protected]

SOURCE China Creation Ventures
HOUSTON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CARBO Ceramics Inc. (NYSE: CRR) announced today that it plans to release earnings results for the first quarter on Thursday, April 25, 2019, and will host a conference call at 10:30 a.m. Central Time (11:30 a.m. Eastern) that day. Gary Kolstad, President and CEO, and Ernesto Bautista, III, Vice President and CFO, will host the call.

Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120503/MM00528LOGO

Due to historical high call volume, the company is offering participants the opportunity to register in advance for the conference through the following link: http://dpregister.com/10130522.

Registered participants will immediately receive an email with a calendar reminder and a dial-in number and PIN that will allow them immediate access to the call on April 25, 2019.

Participants who do not wish to pre-register for the call may dial in using (877) 232-2832 (for U.S. callers), (855) 669-9657 (for Canadian callers) or (412) 542-4138 (for International callers) and ask for the "CARBO Ceramics" call. The conference call can also be accessed through the company's website, www.carboceramics.com.

A telephonic replay of the earnings conference call will be available until May 2, 2019 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time. To access the replay from the U.S., please dial (877) 344-7529 and Canada 855-669-9658; international callers outside North America should dial (412) 317-0088. Please reference conference number 10130522. Interested parties may also access the archived webcast of the earnings teleconference through the company's website approximately two hours after the end of the call.

About CARBO

CARBO (NYSE: CRR) is a global technology company that provides products and services to the oil and gas and industrial markets to enhance value for its clients. The Company has two reportable operating segments: 1) oilfield and industrial technologies and services and 2) environmental technologies and services.

CARBO Oilfield Technologies  is a leading provider of market-leading technologies to create engineered production enhancements solutions that help E&P operators to design, build and optimize the frac  increasing well production and estimated ultimate recovery, and lower finding and development cost per barrel of oil equivalent.

CARBO Industrial Technologies - is a leading provider of high-performance ceramic media and industrial technologies engineered to increase process efficiency, improve end-product quality and reduce operating cost. CARBO has world class manufacturing expertise. We bring new products to market faster to meet customer demands.

CARBO Environmental Technologies  is a leading provider of spill prevention and containment solutions that provide the highest level of protection for clients' assets and the environment in oil and gas and industrial applications. Our range of innovative products feature a proprietary polyurea coating technology that creates a seamless, impermeable, maintenance-free layer of protection.

For more information, please visit www.carboceramics.com.

Investor Contact:

Mark Thomas, Director, Investor Relations

(281) 921-6400

SOURCE CARBO

Related Links

http://www.carboceramics.com


STOCKHOLM, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --The board of directors of Cimco Marine AB (publ), reg. no 556889-7226 (the "Company") publishes convening notice for annual general meeting to be held on Tuesday 14 May 2019, at 2 pm, at Best Western Plus Hus 57, Ostergatan 57 in Angelholm. The board proposes, among other things, that the general meeting authorises the board issue new shares, warrants and/or convertibles.

The shareholders in the Company are hereby convened to the annual general meeting on Tuesday 14 May 2019, at 2 pm, at Best Western Plus Hus 57, Ostergatan 57 in Angelholm.

Notice etc.

Shareholders who wish to participate at the annual general meeting must:

on Wednesday 8 May 2019 , be registered in the share register kept by Euroclear

Sweden AB (" Euroclear "); and

, be registered in the share register kept by Euroclear Sweden AB (" "); and at the latest on Wednesday 8 May 2019 notify the intention to attend the general

meeting by e-mail to [email protected] or by post to

Advokatfirman Lindahl KB, att. Alexandra Niemela Ingvarsson, Box 11911, 404

39 Goteborg.

Such notification shall include the shareholder's name and should include personal identification number or corporate registration number (or similar), address and daytime telephone number, number of shares, details on advisors (no more than two), if any, and where applicable, details of representatives or proxies.

Nominee-registered shares

To be entitled to participate in the general meeting, shareholders whose shares are registered in the name of a nominee must temporarily re-register their shares in their own names in the share register maintained by Euroclear. Such registration must be duly effected (registered with Euroclear) in the share register on Wednesday 8 May 2019, and the shareholders must therefore advise their nominees well in advance of such date.

Proxy

Shareholders represented by proxy must submit a dated proxy. If the proxy is executed by a legal person, a copy of the registration certificate or equivalent must be attached. The proxy may not be valid for a period longer than five years from its issuance. The original proxy and certificate of registration should be submitted to Advokatfirman Lindahl KB by mail at the address mentioned above in due time prior to the general meeting. The Company provides a form of proxy at request and it is also available at the Company's website, www.oxe-diesel.com.

Proposed agenda

Opening of the general meeting and election of chairman of the general meeting Preparation and approval of the voting list Election of one or several persons to verify the minutes of the meeting Determination of whether the meeting has been duly convened Approval of the agenda Submission of the annual report and the auditor's report Resolutions on

a) the adoption of the income statement and the balance sheet;

b) allocation of the Company's result according to the adopted balance sheet; and

c) discharge from liability for each of the members of the board of directors and the managing director

Determination of remuneration to the board of directors and the auditor Election of board of directors Election of auditor Resolution on principles for appointment of nomination committee Resolution to amend the articles of association Resolution on authorisation for the board of directors to issue new shares, warrants and/or convertibles Resolution on introduction of incentive plan for employees Close of the general meeting

Proposals to resolutions

Item 1  Election of chairman of the general meeting

The nomination committee, consisting of Anders Berg in his capacity as chairman of the board and shareholders Per Lindberg, Tedde Jeansson and Jonas Wikstrom, proposes that Mikael Mellberg, Advokatfirman Lindahl KB, is elected as chairman of the general meeting.

Item 7b)  Allocation of the Company's result according to the adopted balance sheet

The board does not propose any dividends for the financial year 2018.

Item 811  Determination of remuneration to the board of directors and the auditor, election of board of directors and auditor and resolution on principles for appointment of nomination committee

The nomination committee will well in advance of the general meeting present its proposals for remuneration to the board of directors and the auditor, election of members of the board of directors and auditor, and principles for appointment of nomination committee for the annual general meeting 2020. The proposals will be held available at the Company's office with address Metallgatan 17 B in Angelholm and on the Company's website.

Item 12  Resolution to amend the articles of association

In order to enable new issues of shares in accordance with the authorisations proposed under items 13 and 14, the board of directors proposes that the articles of association are amended as follows.

Adjustment of limits for share capital

The limits for the Company's share capital in Section 4 of the articles of association are proposed to be amended as follows.

The share capital shall not be less than SEK 2,000,000 and not exceed SEK 8,000,000.

Adjustment of limits for number of shares

The limits for the Company's number of shares in Section 5 of the articles of association are proposed to be amended as follows.

The number of shares shall not be less than 75,000,000 and not more than 300,000,000.

Item 13  Resolution on authorisation for the board of directors to issue new shares, warrants and/or convertibles

The board of directors proposes that the general meeting resolves to authorise the board to, at one or several occasions during the time up until the next annual general meeting, resolve on new issues of shares, warrants and/or convertibles. The board shall have the right to resolve on new issues of shares, warrants and/or convertibles with deviation from the shareholders' pre-emption rights and/or with provisions on payment in kind, by set-off of claims or otherwise on such terms and conditions as referred to in Chapter 2, Section 5, second paragraph, points 13 and 5, of the Swedish Companies Act.

The total increase of shares that may be issued based on or as a result of this authorisation cannot in aggregate exceed 20 per cent of the number of outstanding shares in the Company at the time of the resolution on the issue. Issues based on the authorisation shall be made at market price, including market rate discount, if applicable.

The board shall have the right to set the terms and conditions for issues under this authorisation as well as to decide who shall have the right to subscribe for the new shares, warrants or convertibles. The reasons for the board to resolve on issues with deviation from the shareholders' pre-emption rights and/or with provisions on payment in kind, by set-off of claims or otherwise on such terms and conditions as referred to in Chapter 2, Section 5, second paragraph, points 13 and 5, of the Swedish Companies Act are to be able to carry out directed share issues to raise capital to the Company and/or to strengthen the Company's financial position.

Item 14  Resolution on introduction of incentive plan for employees

Some of the Company's largest shareholders propose that the general meeting resolves to introduce a share-related incentive plan for the Company's employees. The terms and conditions for the incentive plan is currently under preparation. The complete proposal will be held available at Company's office with address Metallgatan 17 B in Angelholm and on the Company's website not later than three weeks before the general meeting, i.e. not later than 23 April 2019.

Majority requirements

Resolution under items 12 and 13 above requires, for its validity, that a minimum of two thirds of the votes cast and the shares represented support the resolution.

Documentation

The annual report, the auditor's report, the board of directors' and some of the largest shareholders of the Company's complete proposals, as well as other documents according to the Swedish Companies Act will be held available at the Company's office with address Metallgatan 17 B in Angelholm and on the Company's website not later than three weeks before the general meeting, i.e. not later than 23 April 2019. The nomination committee's complete proposals under items 811 will be held available at the Company's office and the Company's website well in advance of the general meeting. The documents will also be sent, without charge, to shareholders who so request and inform the Company of their postal address. The documents will also be available and presented at the general meeting.

Processing of personal data

For information on the Company's processing of personal data in connection with the annual general meeting, please refer to https://www.euroclear.com/dam/ESw/Legal/Privacy-notice-bolagsstammor-engelska.pdf.

Angelholm in April 2019

Cimco Marine AB (publ)

The board of directors

Certified Adviser

Vastra Hamnen Corporate Finance AB is Certified Adviser for Cimco. Contact details to Vastra Hamnen Corporate Finance AB: tel. +46-40-20-02-50, e-mail [email protected].

For further information, please contact:

Anders Berg, Chairman, [email protected], +46-70-358-91-55

Andreas Blomdahl, CEO, [email protected], +46-431-44-98-99

Myron Mahendra, CFO and EvP in charge of Administration and HR, [email protected], +46-76-347-59-82

Cimco Marine AB (publ) is obligated to make this information public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact persons set out above, on 12 April 2019 at 10:35 am.

Cimco Marine AB (publ) has, after several years of development, constructed the OXE Diesel, the world's first diesel outboard engine in the high-power segment. Cimco's unique patented engine-to-propulsion power transmission solutions have led to high demand for the Company's engines worldwide.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/cimco-marine/r/cimco-marine-ab--publ--publishes-convening-notice-for-annual-general-meeting-and-proposes-issue-auth,c2787971

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/16067/2787971/1025160.pdf Cimco Marine AB Notice to attend general meeting

SOURCE Cimco Marine
NEW YORK, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) today announced that its Healthcare Finance unit arranged $14.8 million in financing for the acquisition of Greenville Medical Tower in Dallas, Texas.

The financing was arranged on behalf of a joint venture managed by Catalyst Healthcare Real Estate and Bain Capital Real Estate, which acquired the six-story medical office building, which is located across the street from the 857-bed Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas.

"The robust demand for healthcare services in the Greater Dallas-Fort Worth market means the Greenville Medical Tower will continue to play an important role in serving the community," said Catalyst Senior Vice President Alex Bell.

"We are pleased to provide financing in support of Catalyst and Bain Capital Real Estate's acquisition of this high-quality property," said William Douglass, managing director and group head for CIT's Healthcare Finance unit. "Our industry knowledge, experience and expertise are assets that we're proud to leverage to meet our clients' needs."

CIT's Healthcare Finance unit, part of the company's Commercial Finance division, provides comprehensive financing and banking solutions to middle market healthcare companies across the U.S. By using a client-focused and industry-centric model, Healthcare Finance can tailor its products and services to help clients meet their needs for growth capital.

About CIT

CIT is a leading national bank focused on empowering businesses and personal savers with the financial agility to navigate their goals. CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT) is a financial holding company with over a century of experience, approximately $50 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, 2018, and operates a principal bank subsidiary, CIT Bank, N.A. (Member FDIC, Equal Housing Lender). The company's commercial banking segment includes commercial financing, real estate financing, equipment financing, factoring and railcar financing. CIT's consumer banking segment includes its national online bank, CIT Bank, and a Southern California branch bank, OneWest Bank. Discover more at cit.com/about.

MEDIA RELATIONS:

John M. Moran

212-461-5507

[email protected]

SOURCE CIT Group Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cit.com


VANCOUVER, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- City Office REIT, Inc. (NYSE: CIO) ("City Office" or the "Company") announced today it will release its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2019, before the market opens on Friday, May 3, 2019.

City Office's management will hold a conference call at 11:00 am Eastern Time on May 3, 2019 to discuss the Company's financial results. Additionally, a supplemental financial package to accompany the discussion of the results will be posted on www.cityofficereit.com.

Webcast

Click on the webcast link under the "Investor Relations" section of the Company's website at www.cityofficereit.com.

Telephone Conference Call

Domestic: 1-866-262-0919

International: 1-412-902-4106

To listen to the call, participants can reference the City Office REIT First Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. Please dial in at least 10 minutes before the scheduled start time.

Conference Call Replay

Domestic: 1-877-344-7529

International: 1-412-317-0088

Passcode: 10130412

A replay of the call will be available later in the day on May 3, 2019, continuing through 11:59 pm Eastern Time on August 3, 2019. A replay will also be available at "Webcasts & Events" in the "Investor Relations" section of the Company's website.

About City Office REIT, Inc.

City Office REIT is an internally-managed real estate company focused on acquiring, owning and operating high-quality office properties located in leading 18-hour cities in the Southern and Western United States. City Office currently owns or has a controlling interest in 5.7 million square feet of office properties. The Company has elected to be taxed as a real estate investment trust for U.S. federal income tax purposes.

Contact

City Office REIT, Inc.

Anthony Maretic, CFO

+1-604-806-3366

[email protected]

SOURCE City Office REIT, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.cityofficereit.com


HONG KONG, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- CNOOC Limited (the "Company", SEHK: 00883,NYSE: CEO, TSX: CNU) announced today that its parent company, China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), has signed a production sharing contract (PSC) with Smart Oil Investment Ltd. (Smart Oil) for Bohai 09/17 Block (contract area).

Bohai 09/17 Block is located in the Qikou sag, Bohai Bay Basin in China. It covers a total area of 509.3 square kilometers with a water depth of 5-10 meters.

According to the terms of the PSC, Smart Oil shall act as the Operator during the exploration period and conduct exploration activities in the block mentioned above, in which all expenditures incurred will be borne by Smart Oil. Once entering the development phase, CNOOC has the right to participate in up to 51% of the participating interest in any commercial discoveries of the Bohai 09/17 Block. After signing the above-mentioned PSC, except for those relating to CNOOC's administrative functions, CNOOC will assign all of its rights and obligations under the PSC to CNOOC China Limited, a subsidiary of CNOOC Limited.

Notes to Editors:

More information about the Company is available at http://www.cnoocltd.com.

*** *** *** ***

This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding expected future events, business prospectus or financial results. The words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. These statements are based on assumptions and analyses made by the Company in light of its experience and its perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors the Company believes are appropriate under the circumstances. However, whether actual results and developments will meet the expectations and predictions of the Company depends on a number of risks and uncertainties which could cause the actual results, performance and financial condition to differ materially from the Company's expectations, including but not limited to those associated with fluctuations in crude oil and natural gas prices, the exploration or development activities, the capital expenditure requirements, the business strategy, whether the transactions entered into by the Group can complete on schedule pursuant to their terms and timetable or at all, the highly competitive nature of the oil and natural gas industries, the foreign operations, environmental liabilities and compliance requirements, and economic and political conditions in the People's Republic of China. For a description of these and other risks and uncertainties, please see the documents the Company files from time to time with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Annual Report on Form 20-F filed in April of the latest fiscal year.

Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company cannot assure that the results or developments anticipated will be realised or, even if substantially realised, that they will have the expected effect on the Company, its business or operations.

*** *** *** ***

For further enquiries, please contact:

Ms. Jing Liu

Manager, Media & Public Relations

CNOOC Limited

Tel: +86-10-8452-3404

Fax: +86-10-8452-1441

E-mail: [email protected]

Ms. Ada Leung

Hill+Knowlton Strategies Asia

Tel: +852-2894-6225

Fax: +852-2576-1990

E-mail: [email protected]

Logo - http://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20150819/8521505396LOGO

SOURCE CNOOC Limited

Related Links

http://www.cnoocltd.com


LOS ANGELES, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Consumer Watchdog said today that a California wildfire victims' relief fund could be important, but that the proposal put forth today by Governor Newsom, in legislative hands, threatens to take rights and dollars from wildfire victims, ratepayers and taxpayers without forcing PG&E to make tangible concessions.

"It's laudable that the governor is taking on fire prevention and emergency preparedness for wildfires, but when PG&E is the culprit, not global warming, as in the Campfire, the company, not the public, should pay for its negligence," said Jamie Court, President of Consumer Watchdog. Documents show PG&E failed to replace a 99 year old tower that should have been replaced 24 years earlier and sparked the Camp fire. "A PG&E bailout shouldn't be buried in the fine print of legislative action on the Governor's report."

The nonprofit group said that a legislative proposal to alleviate PG&E's legal responsibility would likely be influenced by the $14 million that the investor-owned utilities have given both political parties and state officials since 2011  taking from the public and giving too much to the utilities. The group called on legislators and state officials to give back all utility political contributions before embarking on any reform and, as a condition of any relief plan, curb the utilities' political activities. A full list of contributions can be view here: https://consumerwatchdog.org/ca-legislature

"A wildfire relief fund should provide relief to victims without caps on their recovery, but this fund looks like it could transfer risk from the investor-owned utilities to ratepayers, victims, insurance policyholders and taxpayers," said Jamie Court, President of Consumer Watchdog. "That would be a bailout for utilities that start fires and should be responsible, not a relief fund for their victims. Until PG&E is forced to stop starting fires, and its corporate culture changed, the public will be at risk and legislative proposals are likely to move the financial burden from PG&E to the rest of us without reforming the company that started the fires."

The Governor's report calls for creating a fund for fire safety and wildfire victim relief that could let investor-owned utilities shift the costs of the fires they cause onto ratepayers and taxpayers after the initial couple of millions of dollars are absorbed by the utilities. Victims could have a limit on their recovery and those who take less than their full losses would get quicker payouts. Utilities that use the fund and are negligent could take a slight hair-cut on their profits.

"Victims should not have to pay when PG&E starts fires," said Court. "PG&E is a six time convicted felon and wildfire victims who suffer because of its negligence should not have to give up the cost of rebuilding or the right to recover while the company refuses to prioritize safety, spends tens of millions on campaign contributions and lobbying, and avoids accountability in the courts," said Jamie Court, President of Consumer Watchdog. "This proposal could make victims, ratepayers and taxpayers pay and does not require PG&E to reform its previously proven criminal conduct and give up its lavish campaign contributions, lobbying blitzes, and exotic junkets."

"This report was created with industry stakeholders behind closed doors without consumer groups in the room, so not surprisingly it puts consumers' interests behind industry," said Court. "This could be a bailout that lets PG&E conduct business as usual. Rather than bail out the company, the Newsom Administration should focus on reforming the company or converting it to a regional utility. If a legitimate victims' relief fund is to be pursued, PG&E shareholders should be on the hook as well as the public."

Consumer Watchdog said any legislator who votes for a PG&E bailout should give back or donate their political contributions from PG&E and the other investor-owned utilities. Collectively the utilities have contributed over $14 million to state officials and state political parties since 2011. See a full list of those contributions to state elected officials and parties here: https://consumerwatchdog.org/ca-legislature

"Any elected official who votes for a bailout for PG&E and the utilities should donate or give back every contribution taken from the companies," said Court. "If the public if going to pay, PG&E and politicians need to give up something too. Following the electricity crisis, elected officials returned or donated their Enron contributions and this bailout may be worse because lives have been loss due to corporate negligence. Taking contributions from PG&E is taking blood money. In addition, the investor-owned utilities should have strict curbs on their lobbying and political activities, including junkets they sponsor, such as the recent Maui conference that utilities attended while the Woolsey fire and Camp fire burned to talk over a bailout for the wildfires."

"A vote on a utility bailout is an existential moment for politicians who have taken utility money, junkets and drinks," said Court. "They should vote very carefully because the public will remember those votes forever when the next fires happen and things go wrong."

Learn more about Consumer Watchdog at www.consumerwatchdog.org

SOURCE Consumer Watchdog

Related Links

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org


ANAHEIM, Calif., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ahead of the summer vacation season, Contiki  the social travel company for 18 to 35 year-olds, is launching one of the biggest sales in company history. Take 20% off all itineraries of 7 days or longer sitewide, including trips to Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America when booked now through April 30 for 2019 departures.

"Summer is here, and we want to jump start the fun with an incentive to get students, solo travelers, mates and newly marrieds out and into the world," said Contiki president Adam Cooper. "There's never going to be a better price or a better time to sip Bavarian beer, get face to face with the Pharaohs or check-out a moonlit Thai beach than right now."

The Contiki Best. Sale. Ever. summer travel deal is combinable with all other Contiki promotions in the marketplace and for 14+ day trips departing from London, includes a free 2-night "London Explorer" package, an easy way to hit the region's key sites like Westminster Abbey, Stonehenge, the Roman Baths, Windsor castle and more.

Contiki connects young, likeminded travelers to the time of their lives with passionately curated travel experiences that contribute positively to the people and places it visits. From in-destination transport and accommodations to most meals and local experts, Contiki makes it easy and affordable to tick off bucket list travel while making lifetime friends and memories.

For more information and to take advantage of the very short booking window, go to Contiki.com, dial 1-866-266-8454 or call your favorite travel advisor. https://www.contiki.com/us/en/activity/contiki-travel-tours

CONTACT:

The Decker Royal Agency

Kristin Sluyk

[email protected]

1-646-650-5560

SOURCE Contiki

Related Links

http://www.contiki.com


EL PASO, Texas, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Church's Chicken is celebrating the opening of its newest El Paso, TX location in the area loved by its former president of the Church's Independent Franchisee Association, David Newman, who passed away suddenly earlier this year. The Newman family is staying true to their patriarch's goal of extending the availability of the great taste of Church'salong with the community involvement the brand is known forto El Paso.

The official grand opening is set to take place on April 13th from 11 a.m. till 2 p.m. at 13296 Socorro Rd. San Elizario, TX 79849.

"It's always a pleasure to bring high-quality food to my community. Texas is where Church's was born, so it's no surprise we have such a demand for delicious down-home flavor right here in El Paso," said long-time zone director Victor Cortez, who now assists and operates the restaurants for the family.

The restaurant is located at 13296 Socorro Rd. Guests will find the restaurant bears the attractive STAR Image Design, which includes Church's latest interior seating options, new exterior design and color palettes, and contemporary lighting inside and out.

Church's is world-renowned for their freshly-prepared original and spicy chicken and fresh-baked Honey-Butter Biscuits made from scratch daily. "At Church's, we are dedicated to providing great chicken experiences for every guest who walks in our doors," said Peter Servold, Executive Vice President of US Operations at Church's Chicken.

About Church's Chicken

Founded in San Antonio, TX in 1952 by George W. Church, Church's Chicken is one of the largest quick service restaurant chicken chains in the world. Church's specializes in Original and Spicy Chicken freshly prepared throughout the day in small batches that are hand-battered and double-breaded, Tender Strips, Honey-Butter Biscuits made from scratch and freshly baked, and classic, home-style sides all for a great value. Church's (along with its sister brand Texas Chicken outside the Americas) has more than 1,500 locations in 23 countries and international territories and system-wide sales of more than $1 billion. For more information, visit www.churchs.com. Follow Church's on Facebook at www.facebook.com/churchschicken and Twitter at www.twitter.com/churchschicken.

Contact: Peyton Sadler

866.571.3449

[email protected]

SOURCE Church's Chicken

Related Links

http://www.churchs.com


HOUSTON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DiCentral, a leading global provider of supply chain integration solutions, today announced the unveiling of a newly enhanced website for SmartTurn, its cloud-based inventory and warehouse management system. The new site will provide a more intuitive and interactive user experience for customers, partners and those organizations researching inventory and warehouse management solutions for their entities.

Visitors can now trial SmartTurn Warehouse Management Software (WMS) for two weeks to determine its viability for their environment without any upfront financial commitment, operational risk or pressure to purchase using an easy-to-use signup process. The new interface makes it simple to explore available plans and packages to select the perfect option, then subscribe online in minutes.

In addition, a host of significant changes have been implemented to enhance the user experience, including a rich resource center and extensive demo and video libraries. By deploying these enhanced collaborative features and training materials to the website, SmartTurn further establishes itself as a trusted supply chain advisor and a leading cloud-based warehouse management solution provider to small medium size businesses (SMBs).

"Our goal is always to make the research and buying process as simple and stress-free as possible, and with the new SmartTurn site features, we've accomplished just that."  John Nguyen, DiCentral Chief Strategy Officer

About SmartTurn

SmartTurn is a leading cloud inventory and warehouse management system (WMS). SmartTurn increases the visibility and control of inventory. DiCentral's SmartTurn is the best fit for companies looking to streamline their supply chain operations, regardless of size or level of complexity.

Designed for quick implementation, ease-of-use, and real-time inventory accuracy, the SmartTurn solution is a true multi-tenant WMS delivered via the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. From multiple warehouse locations to individual stockrooms, we help companies maintain a competitive advantage by reducing inventory costs, improving productivity, and increasing customer satisfaction.

For more information, visit www.smartturn.com

About DiCentral

Founded in 2000, DiCentral is a leading global provider of B2Bi managed services. Headquartered in Houston, Texas, DiCentral has 11 offices worldwide supporting customers in over 35 countries. DiCentral's services and solutions are focused on B2B integration and are used by many Fortune 1000 companies, processing over $200 billion in transactions for over 30,000 organizations worldwide. The company's vertical expertise transcends through the automotive, retail, distribution, manufacturing, healthcare, energy and financial services. The company also develops and markets a complementary suite of supply chain applications.

For more information, visit: www.dicentral.com

SOURCE DiCentral

Related Links

http://www.dicentral.com


Yeondeunghoe, designated as Korea's National Intangible Cultural Property No. 122, has been held for around 1,200 years, and its traditional culture has been promulgated from generation to generation while promoting the community spirit. In particular, this year's festival will be held to pray for world peace and the Korean Peninsula to overcome various conflicts in the society with a spirit of mercy.

The Lantern Parade, the highlight of the festival, will take place on May 4, during which participants will put a wish message on their lanterns for well-beings of themselves, their families, neighbors and the society. Thousands of wish lanterns will become a wave of dreams for peace. More than 2,000 foreigners will also join the parade with International Dharma Instructors.

The Traditional Lantern Exhibitions will also attract the attention from citizens and visitors. The exhibitions, which run from May 3 to May 12 at the Ujeong Park next to the Jogyesa Temple, the Bongeunsa Temple and the Cheonggyecheon Stream. Displayed lanterns will shed light on the temple and the Cheonggyecheon Stream with the beauty of the lanterns' hanji, or Korean traditional paper.

This year's Cheonggyecheon Lantern Exhibition celebrated its 12th anniversary. It will be held from April 27 to May 12 with the theme of "A Flower of Peace Comes Out on the Korean Peninsula," combining people's aspirations for peace and unification.

The "Global Supporters for the Lantern Festival", consist of 60 young people from 26 countries, will carry out volunteer work during the festival. These Supporters, who are trained through templestay and traditional culture education, will provide guide and interpretation services for visitors, and perform flash mobs at the lighting ceremony, Traditional Cultural Events, and at the Tapgol Park during the lantern parade.

For more information, visit LLF.or.kr/eng

SOURCE Yeon Deung Hoe Preservation Committee

Related Links

http://LLF.or.kr/eng


CHICAGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "European Hemostats and Sealants Market by Brand Hemopatch (Baxter), Tachosil (Takeda), Veriset (Medtronic), Avitene (C.R Bard), Sangustop (B Braun) & Lyostypt (B Braun), Country (Germany, UK, France, Italy & Spain), Europe - Forecast to 2022", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Hemostats And Sealants (Focused Products) Market is projected to reach USD 77 million by 2022 from USD 59 million in 2018, at a CAGR of 7.0%.

Don't miss out on business opportunities in European Hemostats and Sealants Market

Based on focused products, the tachosil is projected to register the highest growth rate during the forecast period

Based on focused products, the market is segmented into Tachosil, Lyostypt, Sangustop, Veriset, Avitene and Hemopatch. The tachosil is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Major reason behind the high growth of the brand is increasing demand amongst the end-users

Browse in-depth TOC on "European Hemostats and Sealants Market"

8  Tables

6  Figures

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Germany commanded the largest share of the market during the forecast period

Based on region, the hemostats and sealants (focused products) market is segmented into Germany, UK, France, Italy and Spain. Germany dominated the hemostats and sealants market in 2017. This is mainly due to the large patient population in the country. The favorable reimbursement scenario for the usage of hemostats in various surgeries in Germany is also driving the growth of this market

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Key players operating in the hemostats and sealants (focused products) market include B. Braun (Germany), Medtronic (Ireland), C R Bard (US), Takeda (Japan), and Baxter (US).

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SALT LAKE CITY, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Extra Space Storage Inc. (the "Company") (NYSE: EXR) announced today it will release financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2019 on Tuesday, April 30, 2019 after the market closes. The Company will host a conference call at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday May 1, 2019 to discuss its financial results. Hosting the call will be Extra Space Storage's CEO, Joe Margolis. Joining him will be Scott Stubbs, Executive Vice President and CFO.

During the conference call, company officers will review operating performance, discuss recent events, and conduct a question-and-answer period. The question-and-answer period will be limited to registered financial analysts. All other participants will have listen-only capability.

To Participate in the Telephone Conference Call: Dial in at least five minutes prior to start time.

Domestic: 855-791-2026 International: 631-485-4899



Conference ID: 8052699





Conference Call Playback:

Domestic: 855-859-2056 International: 404-537-3406



Conference ID: 8052699



The playback can be accessed beginning on May 1, 2019 at 4:00 p.m. ET through May 6, 2019 at 4:00 p.m. ET.

The conference call will also be available on the Company's website under Investor Relations at www.extraspace.com. To listen to a live broadcast, go to the site at least 15 minutes prior to the scheduled start time in order to register, download and install any necessary audio software. A replay of the call will also be available for 30 days on the Company's website.

Full Text of the Earnings Report and Supplemental Data

The full text of the earnings report and supplemental data will be available at the Company's website at http://ir.extraspace.com immediately following the earnings release to the wire services after the market close on Tuesday, April 30, 2019.

For those without Internet access, the earnings release will be available by mail or fax, on request. To receive a copy, please call Extra Space Storage Investor Relations at (801) 365-1759.

About Extra Space Storage Inc.

Extra Space Storage Inc., headquartered in Salt Lake City, is a fully integrated, self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust, and a member of the S&P 500. As of December 31, 2018, the Company owned and/or operated 1,647 self-storage properties, which comprise approximately 1.2 million units and approximately 125.7 million square feet of rentable storage space offering customers conveniently located and secure storage units across the country, including boat storage, RV storage and business storage. The Company is the second largest owner and/or operator of self-storage properties in the United States and is the largest self-storage management company in the United States.

For more information, please visit www.extraspace.com.

SOURCE Extra Space Storage Inc.

Related Links

http://www.extraspace.com


Just in time for the spring convertible season, the FIAT brand announced today the new 2019 Fiat 124 Spider Urbana Edition.



The Urbana Edition will offer another option for Fiat 124 Spider customers to customize their roadster with dark exterior and interior accents that create a sporty appearance. This latest addition to the Fiat Urbana lineup will be on display this month at the New York International Auto Show.



"With the most powerful four-cylinder turbo engine in its class, our Italian-designed Fiat 124 Spider offers an authentic top-down roadster experience with fun-to-drive dynamics," said Steve Beahm, Head of Passenger Car Brands - Dodge, SRT, Chrysler and FIAT, FCA - North America. "The new Urbana Edition offers a head-turning, custom appearance for the Fiat 124 Spider."



Based off the Classica model, the Urbana Edition includes Black Diamond 17-inch aluminum wheels with performance tires, dual bright exhaust tips and Piano Black exterior accents, plus a Gloss Black finish on the front pillar bar bezel, seat-back pillar and mirror caps. The Urbana Edition also offers front fog lamps for enhanced visibility.



Interior features include matte gray accents, Urbana leather/microfiber seats along with a wrapped instrument cluster hood and instrument panel.



The Urbana Edition package is available for $995 on 2019 124 Spider Classica models, which start at $25,190 U.S. MSRP, excluding destination and is now available in FIAT studios. The Italian-designed, fun-to-drive Fiat 124 Spider is the most affordable roadster in its class. With the new Urbana Edition, this package now offers a unique look for just over $26,000 MSRP.

About the Fiat 124 Spider

The Fiat 124 Spider revives the storied nameplate, bringing its classic Italian styling and performance to a new generation. Paying homage to the original 124 Spider more than 50 years after its introduction, the Fiat 124 Spider delivers the ultimate Italian roadster experience with driving excitement, technology and safety combined with iconic Italian design.



The Fiat 124 Spider, designed at the Centro Stile center in Turin, Italy, borrows cues from the original Spider, widely considered one of Fiat's most beautiful cars of all time, and reinterprets them for today. The 124 Spider has a timeless low-slung presence, with a classically beautiful body side, well-balanced proportions and a sporty cabin-to-hood ratio.



For 2019, three new options have been added to the head-turning 124 Spider lineup. They include a new Record Monza Exhaust, a new Veleno Appearance Group and new custom center stripes.



The roadster comes standard with the proven 1.4-liter MultiAir Turbo four-cylinder engine, the engine's first application in a rear-wheel-drive vehicle. The engine delivers 164 horsepower and 184 lb.-ft. of torque on Abarth and is available with a six-speed manual transmission or a six-speed automatic transmission.



The 124 Spider's suspension uses a double-wishbone layout in front and a multi-link in the rear, specifically tuned for greater stability while braking and turning. Steering is light and responsive with the use of an electric power-assist (dual pinion) system. NVH enhancements, including an acoustic front windshield and insulation treatments, help deliver a refined, quiet ride.



The vehicle is available with an array of safety and security features, including full LED-adaptive front headlamps, Blind-spot Monitoring, Rear Cross Path detection and a ParkView rear backup camera.



Technology and convenience features include Keyless Enter 'n Go, Bluetooth connectivity, heated seats, available Bose premium nine-speaker audio system and FIAT Connect 7.0 with a 7-inch touchscreen display.

About FIAT Brand

Head-turning Italian design and the ultimate fun-to-drive factor come standard with every FIAT. That philosophy is embodied by the iconic Fiat 500 or Cinquecento  a small car that lives big. Born in Italy and rooted in a rich heritage, the 500 is now sold in more than 100 countries.



In North America, the Fiat 500 was introduced in March 2011 and was soon followed by the Fiat 500c (Cabrio), the high-performance Fiat 500 Abarth and Abarth Cabrio, the fully electric Fiat 500e, the five-passenger Fiat 500L and the all-wheel-drive Fiat 500X crossover. The FIAT brand continued its expansion with the introduction of the Fiat 124 Spider, a revival of the iconic roadster that combines Italian style, performance and engaging driving dynamics.



Follow Fiat brand and FCA US news and video on:

Company blog: http://blog.fcanorthamerica.com

Media website: http://media.fcanorthamerica.com

FIAT brand: www.fiatusa.com

FIAT blog: blog.fiatusa.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/fiatusa or https://www.facebook.com/FiatChrysler.NorthAmerica/

Instagram: www.instagram.com/fiatusa or www.instagram.com/FiatChrysler_NA

Twitter: www.twitter.com/fiatusa or www.twitter.com/FiatChrysler_NA

YouTube: www.youtube.com/fiatusa or www.youtube.com/fcanorthamerica

SOURCE FCA US LLC

Related Links

http://www.fcanorthamerica.com


FRANKFURT, Germany, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- FRA/gk  In the first three months of 2019, Frankfurt Airport (FRA) served almost 14.8 million passengers  an increase of 2.5 percent year-on-year. Aircraft movements rose by 3.0 percent to 116,581 takeoffs and landings. Accumulated maximum takeoff weights (MTOWs) climbed by 2.9 percent to some 7.3 million metric tons. Only cargo throughput (airfreight + airmail) declined by 2.3 percent to a total of 527,151 metric tons, reflecting the worldwide economic slowdown.

In March 2019, Frankfurt Airport recorded year-on-year traffic growth of 1.4 percent to about 5.6 million passengers. This increase was achieved despite the fact that, in March last year, traffic was additionally boosted by the earlier timing of the Easter school holidays, falling in April this year. Aircraft movements climbed by 2.1 percent to 42,056 takeoffs and landings, while accumulated MTOWs grew by 2.8 percent to about 2.6 million metric tons. Cargo throughput remained almost level compared to March 2018, rising by 0.2 percent to 202,452 metric tons.

Across the Group, the airports in Fraport's international portfolio largely performed well in the first quarter of 2019, even though the different timing of the Easter holidays had an impact on some airports serving tourist destinations. Ljubljana Airport (LJU) in Slovenia closed the January-to-March period with an increase of 4.0 percent to 342,636 passengers (March 2019: up 3.0 percent to 133,641 passengers). In Brazil, the two airports of Fortaleza (FOR) and Porto Alegre (POA), combined, welcomed some 3.9 million passengers, posting a gain of 11.9 percent (March 2019: up 8.3 percent to approximately 1.2 million passengers).

Fraport's 14 Greek regional airports served some 1.9 million passengers overall in the first quarter of the year  an increase of 8.2 percent (March 2019: up 1.1 percent to a total of 713,045 passengers). The busiest airports in Fraport's Greek portfolio included Thessaloniki (SKG) with around 1.2 million passengers (up 20.3 percent), Chania (CHQ) on the island of Crete with 153,225 passengers (down 0.4 percent), and Rhodes (RHO) with 151,493 passengers (down 18.1 percent).

Lima Airport (LIM) in Peru advanced by 3.7 percent to some 5.5 million passengers (March 2019: up 2.2 percent to about 1.8 million passengers). Combined traffic at the two airports of Varna (VAR) and Burgas (BOJ) on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast slipped by 5.8 percent to 203,606 passengers (March 2019: down 9.9 percent to 74,102 passengers). Antalya Airport (AYT) in Turkey posted a 5.8 percent gain to more than 2.7 million passengers (March 2019: down 0.1 percent to nearly 1.1 million passengers). St. Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport (LED) in Russia grew by 14.7 percent to about 3.6 million passengers (March 2019: up 16.3 percent to approximately 1.3 million passengers). Almost 11.3 million passengers passed through Xi'an Airport (XIY) in China in the first three months of the year, representing an increase of 8.0 percent (March 2019: up 3.7 percent to nearly 3.8 million passengers).

Print-quality photos of Fraport AG and Frankfurt Airport are available for free downloading via the photo library on the Fraport Web site. For TV news and information broadcasting purposes only, we also offer free footage material for downloading. If you wish to meet a member of our Media Relations team when at Frankfurt Airport, please do not hesitate to contact us. Our contact details are available here.

For further information about Fraport AG please click here.

Fraport Traffic Figures















March 2019

























































Fraport Group Airports1

March 2019





Year to Date (YTD) 2019









Fraport Passengers Cargo* Movements Passengers Cargo Movements Fully-consolidated airports share (%) Month  % Month  % Month  % YTD  % YTD  % YTD  % FRA Frankfurt Germany 100.00 5,592,322 1.4 198,700 0.5 42,056 2.1 14,798,334 2.5 519,028 -1.6 116,581 3.0 LJU Ljubljana Slovenia 100.00 133,641 3.0 1,012 -6.9 2,674 1.4 342,636 4.0 2,911 -4.0 7,600 3.9 Fraport Brasil 100.00 1,219,491 8.3 5,698 -19.7 11,044 -0.6 3,921,023 11.9 18,482 -2.1 34,438 4.4 FOR Fortaleza Brazil 100.00 580,423 24.8 2,689 -26.9 4,885 14.9 1,891,313 24.4 9,650 -2.9 15,667 19.2 POA Porto Alegre Brazil 100.00 639,068 -3.2 3,009 -11.9 6,159 -10.3 2,029,710 2.3 8,832 -1.1 18,771 -5.3 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece A+B 73.40 713,045 1.1 608 -12.2 7,232 1.9 1,919,461 8.2 1,731 1.4 20,169 9.3 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece A 73.40 530,592 1.9 478 -11.2 4,811 -2.4 1,450,569 10.2 1,352 10.3 13,640 7.7 CFU Kerkyra (Corfu) Greece 73.40 24,196 -25.2 15 -5.2 376 -25.2 64,702 -7.9 44 36.9 1,025 -17.0 CHQ Chania (Crete) Greece 73.40 54,615 -22.8 33 -16.0 485 -6.7 153,225 -0.4 102 10.8 1,412 25.6 EFL Kefalonia Greece 73.40 3,578 -26.2 0 n.a. 116 8.4 9,779 11.4 0 -1.6 316 20.2 KVA Kavala Greece 73.40 6,381 -71.1 8 99.8 133 -54.3 18,703 -76.9 23 > 100.0 360 -62.5 PVK Aktion/Preveza Greece 73.40 723 31.0 0 n.a. 69 -19.8 1,258 16.5 0 n.a. 183 -16.8 SKG Thessaloniki Greece 73.40 437,694 13.3 421 -12.0 3,520 7.2 1,194,143 20.3 1,179 8.0 10,044 18.3 ZTH Zakynthos Greece 73.40 3,405 -8.2 1 98.1 112 -20.6 8,759 -4.4 4 > 100.0 300 -19.6 Fraport Regional Airports of Greece B 73.40 182,453 -1.1 130 -15.8 2,421 11.9 468,892 2.6 379 -21.3 6,529 12.9 JMK Mykonos Greece 73.40 11,146 -15.1 4 54.2 187 0.0 24,614 13.7 10 > 100.0 453 17.7 JSI Skiathos Greece 73.40 1,173 -7.6 0 n.a. 46 -14.8 2,927 -4.5 0 n.a. 124 -8.8 JTR Santorini (Thira) Greece 73.40 56,938 6.1 13 6.1 484 0.8 129,219 12.9 35 5.3 1,211 15.1 KGS Kos Greece 73.40 19,597 > 100.0 21 85.8 346 100.0 54,425 36.6 61 25.1 996 28.0 MJT Mytilene (Lesvos) Greece 73.40 27,241 15.1 28 -25.6 479 44.3 72,694 15.4 83 -17.5 1,372 46.3 RHO Rhodes Greece 73.40 54,325 -25.6 45 -31.5 563 -19.1 151,493 -18.1 137 -40.4 1,525 -15.6 SMI Samos Greece 73.40 12,033 9.1 19 -23.4 316 30.6 33,520 12.3 53 -18.6 848 23.4 LIM Lima Peru 70.01 1,816,922 2.2 20,948 -10.0 16,161 0.5 5,513,759 3.7 62,530 -4.9 46,512 -1.7 Fraport Twin Star 60.00 74,102 -9.9 406 -51.9 681 -20.1 203,606 -5.8 1,362 -44.7 1,991 -14.1 BOJ Burgas Bulgaria 60.00 14,343 -2.8 394 -52.9 168 -8.7 35,965 -4.4 1,331 -45.5 496 -5.7 VAR Varna Bulgaria 60.00 59,759 -11.5 12 76.1 513 -23.2 167,641 -6.1 31 65.4 1,495 -16.6





























At equity consolidated airports

























AYT Antalya Turkey 51.00 1,073,548 -0.1 n.a. n.a. 7,453 1.5 2,716,777 5.8 n.a. n.a. 19,562 10.7 LED St. Petersburg Russia 25.00 1,331,310 16.3 n.a. n.a. 12,584 7.2 3,644,394 14.7 n.a. n.a. 36,048 8.9 XIY Xi'an China 24.50 3,780,668 3.7 28,530 30.1 27,824 3.3 11,283,674 8.0 73,115 13.3 82,426 6.0

































Frankfurt Airport2











March 2019 Month  % YTD 2019  % Passengers 5,592,516 1.4 14,799,048 2.5 Cargo (freight & mail) 202,452 0.2 527,151 -2.3 Aircraft movements 42,056 2.1 116,581 3.0 MTOW (in metric tons)3 2,649,601 2.8 7,303,886 2.9 PAX/PAX-flight4 143.1 -0.6 136.3 -0.4 Seat load factor (%) 78.0

74.6

Punctuality rate (%) 71.5

76.5











Frankfurt Airport PAX share  %5 PAX share  %5 Regional Split Month YTD Continental 63.0 1.8 61.8 2.7 Germany 11.5 -0.4 11.3 0.9 Europe (excl. GER) 51.5 2.3 50.5 3.1 Western Europe 42.8 1.6 41.8 2.3 Eastern Europe 8.7 5.9 8.7 6.9 Intercontinental 37.0 0.5 38.2 2.3 Africa 4.8 4.9 5.0 7.1 Middle East 5.8 -4.9 5.9 -3.8 North America 11.4 0.1 11.1 1.6 Central & South Amer. 4.2 7.2 4.5 7.1 Far East 10.9 -0.2 11.6 2.4 Australia 0.0 n.a. 0.0 n.a.











Definitions: 1 According to ACI definition: Passengers: commercial traffic only (arr+dep+transit counted once), Cargo: commercial and non-commercial traffic (arr+dep excluding transit, in metric tons), Movements: commercial and non-commercial traffic (arr+dep), preliminary figures; 2 Commercial and non-commercial traffic: Passengers (arr+dep+transit counted once, incl. general aviation), Cargo (arr+dep+transit counted once, in metric tons), Movements (arr+dep); 3 Inbound traffic only; 4 Scheduled and charter traffic; 5 absolute change vs. previous year in % ; *Cargo = Freight + mail

Fraport AG

Torben Beckmann Telephone: +49 69 690-70553 Corporate Communications E-mail: [email protected] Media Relations Internet: www.fraport.com 60547 Frankfurt, Germany Facebook: www.facebook.com/FrankfurtAirport

SOURCE Fraport AG

Related Links

fraport.com


WASHINGTON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- With the tax season filing deadline of April 15, 2019 just a few days away, the Free File Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of industry-leading tax software companies partnered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), today reminded taxpayers that free tax solutions are available to all Americans at www.IRS.gov/FreeFile.

Taxpayers with a 2018 Adjusted Gross Income of $66,000 or less can access free, industry-leading tax software to prepare, complete and e-file their federal tax returns at no cost. Free state return options are also available to everyone making $66,000 or less.

Taxpayers who have an AGI that exceeds $66,000 can e-file their federal tax returns using Free File Fillable Formsa service designed for taxpayers who are familiar with tax law and need no preparation assistance.

New is the ability to file your FREE federal return in Spanish/Espanol.

Need to file an extension? Anyone regardless of income can file an extension for free with the Free File Alliance, just go to IRS.gov.

"Taxes can be done in the comfort of one's own home, on travel and at all hours of the day and night. Every American taxpayer can and should take advantage of the Free File program," said Tim Hugo, executive director of the Free File Alliance. "Whether you need to e-file a tax return or an extension, Free File is the fast, safe and free way to tackle your taxes. Free File is also the only place where the industry's best tax software is available at one place and at no cost. Simply visit IRS.gov/freefile and choose the software offering that fits your tax needs."

Hugo also stated that taxpayers the can use their smart phones or tablets to electronically prepare and file their federal and state tax returns through the IRS/ Free File Alliance. This design allows for the use of desktops, laptops, mobile phones and tablets. It can be accessed using mobile devices in two ways: (1) Use the IRS app, IRS2Go, which has a link to the Free File Software Lookup Tool or (2) use the device's browser to go to www.IRS.gov/freefile to find the software product that matches your situation. The IRS2Go app is available for Android and iOS devices.

The Free File program has provided over $1.6 billion in free tax software over the last 16 years. Free File Alliance member companies have continually worked with the IRS to strengthen the Free File program, and taxpayers have consistently reported that it is user-friendly and efficient. Responding to an IRS survey, 96 percent of users said they found Free File easy to use, while 98 percent said they would recommend the program to others.

About the Free File Alliance

The Free File Alliance, a coalition of 12 industry-leading tax software companies, has partnered with the IRS since 2003 to help low and middle-income Americans prepare, complete and e-file their federal tax returns online. The Free File Alliance is committed to giving 70 percent of taxpayers free access to the industry's top online tax preparation software. More than 55 million returns have been filed through Free File since its inception. For more information, visit www.freefilealliance.org.

SOURCE Free File Alliance

Related Links

http://www.freefilealliance.org


THOMASVILLE, Ga., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation earlier today presented 29 awards recognizing the best of preservation in Georgia during its 42nd annual Preservation Awards ceremony.

Kehoe Iron Works in Savannah received the Marguerite Williams Award, presented annually to the project that has had the greatest impact on preservation in the state. The building also received an award for Excellence in Rehabilitation.

Kehoe Iron Works was recognized for the sheer scale and impact of its rehabilitation while overcoming significant challenges, including remediation of a brownfield site. Today the complex features 8,000 square feet for events and gatherings and an outdoor plaza and amphitheater featuring a commanding view of the Savannah River. This project is an excellent example of the vision and historic preservation ethic that has brought an important piece of the city's industrial, cultural and architectural history back to life.

Rebekah Hall at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga. received the Chairman's Award, presented by the chairman of The Georgia Trust to a person or project of great preservation significance. The building also received an award for Excellence in Sustainable Rehabilitation.

The Trust presented one award for Excellence in Restoration, seventeen awards for Excellence in Rehabilitation, one award for Excellence in Sustainable Rehabilitation, four awards for Excellence in Preservation, one award for Excellence in Preservation Service and one award for Excellence in Stewardship.

The Trust presented the Camille W. Yow Volunteer of the Year Award to Brandy Morrison of Atlanta. The Mary Gregory Jewett Award for Lifetime Preservation Service was given to Jack Pyburn, a prolific preservation architect who has worked on numerous projects throughout the state.

The Excellence in Restoration winner was the A.H. Stephens Observation Tower in Taliaferro County.

Excellence in Rehabilitation winners were: New Albany Hotel, Albany; Hotel Clermont, Atlanta; Sibley Mill Cotton Warehouse Building 4, Augusta; Zachariah Daniel House, Augusta; Sperry & Hutchinson Warehouse, East Point; Leesburg Train Depot, Leesburg; Mill Hill Community Arts Center, Macon; T.J. Ware House, Macon; Williams Manufacturing Company, Macon; Old Livery Stable, Madison; Empire Mills, Madison; Phi Gamma Hall at Oxford College at Emory, Oxford; Henry Ford Bakery, Richmond Hill; 12 West Oglethorpe Avenue, Savannah; Historic Thomasville Post Office, Thomasville; H.H. Tift Building & Agricultural Research Building at the Tifton Campus of the University of Georgia, Tifton; and the Coleman Talley Offices, Valdosta.

Excellence in Preservation winners were Manuel's Tavern, Atlanta; Sweetwater State Park Mill Ruins, Lithia Springs; Grand Opera House, Macon; and the McIntosh House at Georgia College & State University, Milledgeville.

Russell Hall at the University of Georgia in Athens received an award for Excellence in Sustainable Preservation.

The Excellence in Preservation Service winner was Richard "Dick" Tennyson of Jekyll Island.

Excellence in Stewardship winner was the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society for its long-term care and preservation of eight historic properties, including the Chief Van House in Spring Place. "This year's winners represent a tremendous dedication to restoring and revitalizing Georgia's historic buildings and communities," said Mark C. McDonald, president of The Georgia Trust. "We are proud to honor such deserving projects and individuals."

For more than 40 years, the Trust has recognized preservation projects and individuals throughout Georgia who have made significant contributions to the field of historic preservation. Awards are presented on the basis of the contributions of the person or project to the community and/or state and on compliance with the Secretary of the Interior's Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties.



Founded in 1973, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation is one of the country's leading statewide, nonprofit preservation organizations. The Trust works for the preservation and revitalization of Georgia's diverse historic resources and advocates their appreciation, protection and use.

The Georgia Trust generates community revitalization by finding buyers for endangered properties acquired by its Revolving Fund and raises awareness of other endangered historic resources through an annual listing of Georgia's "Places in Peril." The Trust recognizes preservation projects and individuals with its annual Preservation Awards and awards students and young professionals with academic scholarships, the Neel Reid Prize and Liz Lyon Fellowship. The Trust offers a variety of educational programs for adults and children, provides technical assistance to property owners and historic communities, advocates for funding, tax incentives and other laws aiding preservation efforts, and manages two house museums in Atlanta (Rhodes Hall) and Macon (Hay House).

To learn more about The Georgia Trust and the Preservation Awards, visit www.georgiatrust.org.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Hi-res images of the award-winning buildings as well as award recipients at the awards ceremony will be available Monday, April 15. Contact Traci Clark at [email protected] or 404-885-7802.

Contact:

Traci Clark

Sr. Director of Communications

404-885-7802

[email protected]

SOURCE The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation

Related Links

https://www.georgiatrust.org


NEW YORK, April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --



KEY FINDINGS

Driven by the recent boom in the automotive industry, and the emergence of electric and semi-autonomous vehicles, the global automotive head-up display (HUD) market is anticipated to exhibit a CAGR of 21.74% CAGR during the forecast period of 2019-2027 to capture a revenue of $5.54 billion by 2027.







Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05480901/?utm_source=PRN







MARKET INSIGHTS

The booming automotive industry, increased demand for connected vehicles, growing concerns & awareness about passenger & vehicle safety, increasing per capita income across geographies and the emergence of electric & semi-autonomous vehicles are primarily driving the global market.

But, with the increased adoption of Automotive Head-Up Display (HUD), newer challenges have been introduced into the market.The high cost of automotive HUD systems is the key challenge.



Due to the high cost of automotive head-up display systems, consumers opt for the alternative system which is available at lower costs. This is expected to hinder the demand and adoption of automotive HUDs.



REGIONAL INSIGHTS

Regionally, the market is segmented into Europe, Asia-Pacific, North America, and the remaining countries collectively forming the Rest of World segment.North America dominates the global market due to the growing disposable income of the population and the presence of global giants who are actively involved in the R&D for Automotive HUDs.



The presence of a pool of companies offering automotive head-up display system as a standard in vehicles and the positive government stance on autonomous cars is profitable for the regional market.

On the other hand, it is the Asia-Pacific market that is expected to register a very healthy CAGR by the end of the forecast period. The region is globally renowned for its production as well as the export of vehicles.



COMPETITIVE INSIGHTS

Market share analysis, key company analysis, key corporate strategies along with company profiles of the key companies are discussed in detail. Eminent market players like Garmin International Inc., Panasonic Corporation, BAE Systems Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, Harman International Incorporated, Texas Instruments Inc., Pioneer Corporation, LG Display Co. Ltd., Microvision Inc., Continental AG, Yazaki Corporation, Nippon Seiki Co. Ltd., Denso Corporation, and Visteon Corporation are competing in the global automotive HUD market.



Companies mentioned

1. BAE SYSTEMS INC.

2. CONTINENTAL AG

3. DENSO CORPORATION

4. GARMIN INTERNATIONAL INC.

5. HARMAN INTERNATIONAL INCORPORATED

6. LG DISPLAY CO. LTD.

7. MICROVISION INC.

8. NIPPON SEIKI CO. LTD.

9. PANASONIC CORPORATION

10. PIONEER CORPORATION

11. ROBERT BOSCH GMBH

12. TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC.

13. VISTEON CORPORATION

14. YAZAKI CORPORATION



Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05480901/?utm_source=PRN



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ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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PANAMA CITY, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Bank Corporation (the "Company" or "we") today announced the expiration and results of its previously announced cash tender offer (the "Tender Offer") for any and all of its outstanding 5.125% senior notes due 2019 (the "Notes").

The Tender Offer expired at 8:00 a.m., New York City time, on April 11, 2019 (such date and time, the "Expiration Date"). As of the Expiration Date, US$230,356,000, or approximately 41.88% of the aggregate principal amount of the Notes outstanding, have been validly tendered and not validly withdrawn pursuant to the Tender Offer, excluding Notes tendered through the guaranteed delivery procedures.

The Company has accepted for purchase all of the Notes validly tendered in the Tender Offer and not validly withdrawn on or prior to the Expiration Date. Upon the terms and subject to the conditions specified in the Offer to Purchase dated April 2, 2019 (the "Offer to Purchase"), the Company expects to make payment for the Notes, including Notes delivered in accordance with the guaranteed delivery procedures, in same-day funds on April 16, 2019 (the "Settlement Date").

Holders that validly tendered their Notes will receive US$1,010 for each US$1,000 principal amount of Notes, plus any accrued and unpaid interest up to, but excluding, the Settlement Date. The Company also announced that the Financing Condition (as defined in the Offer to Purchase) has been met.

All remaining Notes not purchased pursuant to the Tender Offer will be redeemed in accordance with the indenture, dated October 31, 2014, among the Company and Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, as trustee, pursuant to which the Notes were issued.

The Company has retained J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. to serve as the dealer managers for the Tender Offer. Questions regarding the Tender Offer may be directed to J.P. Morgan Securities LLC at Attn: Latin America Debt Capital Markets, (866) 846-2874 (toll-free), (212) 834-7279 (collect) and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. at Attn: Liability Management Group, (800) 558-3745 (toll-free), (212) 723-6106 (collect), [email protected].

The Company has retained Global Bondholder Services Corporation to serve as information agent and tender agent for the Tender Offer. Any questions regarding procedures for tendering Notes or requests for additional copies of this Offer to Purchase, the Letter of Transmittal and the Notice of Guaranteed Delivery should be directed to the information agent and tender agent at http://www.gbsc-usa.com/globalbank/ or by telephone at (212) 430-3774 (collect) or at (866) 470-3800 (toll-free).

This press release is for informational purposes only and is not an offer to purchase or a solicitation of an offer to purchase or sell the Notes or any other securities, nor shall there be any purchase of our Notes in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or purchase would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. The Tender Offer is being made solely pursuant to the Offer to Purchase, the related Letter of Transmittal and the Notice of Guaranteed Delivery, which set forth the complete terms of the Tender Offer.

The CUSIP and ISIN for the Notes are as follows:

Rule 144A: CUSIP No. 37954J AA4; ISIN No. US37954JAA43

Regulation S: CUSIP No. P47718 AA2; ISIN No. USP47718AA21

About Global Bank Corporation

Global Bank Corporation is the second largest Panamanian privately-owned bank (excluding banks controlled by the Panamanian government and foreign banks) in terms of total assets, domestic loans, and domestic deposits. As of December 31, 2018, we were the third largest provider of commercial loans in Panama, the third largest provider of consumer loans in Panama (excluding banks controlled by the Panamanian government) in terms of principal balance of total loans outstanding, which includes all consumer loans other than mortgages, the largest provider in agricultural loans in Panama, and the second largest provider of auto loans among banks in Panama in terms of outstanding balance.

Global Bank Tower

Santa Maria Business District

9th floor

Panama City, Panama

Telephone: (507) 206-2000

Fax no: (507) 264-3723

Attention: Carlos Mouynes

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the Securities Act. Such estimates and forward-looking statements are primarily based on current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends that affect, or may affect, our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects.

There are many significant risks, uncertainties and assumptions that might cause our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects to differ materially from those set out in our estimates and forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our or our officers' intent, belief or current expectations with respect to, among other things, our financing plans, trends affecting our business, the impact of competition, and future plans and strategies.

Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they were made, and neither we, the Dealer Managers nor the Information Agent and Tender Agent undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

SOURCE Global Bank Corporation
PUNE, India, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the new market research report "Gunshot Detection System Market by Application (Commercial, Defense), Installation (Fixed Installations, Vehicle Installations, Soldier Mounted), System (Indoor, Outdoor), Solution (Systems, SaaS) and Region - Global Forecast to 2024", published by MarketsandMarkets, the Gunshot Detection System Market is estimated at USD 564 million in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 1,008 million by 2024, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.30% from 2019 to 2024. Gunshot detection systems for homeland security were first used in the US. These systems are primarily used by law enforcement agencies. They are installed at a height of more than 30 feet above the ground at select locations of the coverage area. These include walls, poles, streetlights, and buildings, among others. Increase in the incidents of mass shootings in educational institutions is a prime concern. These systems installed at educational institutions places provide real-time updates on shooting events to security personnel, along with individuals inside these places on their electronic communication devices.



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The fixed installation segment to grow at a higher CAGR in the gunshot detection system market during the forecast period

The gunshot detection system market has been segmented and analyzed in terms of installation type, namely, fixed installation, soldier mounted, and vehicle installation. The market is dominated by the fixed installation segment and this segment is also projected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Fixed gunshot detection systems use the acoustic sensor node detection technology to detect a gunshot event. Fixed installations are installed at a specific height from the ground. High-security areas, such as restricted military infrastructure are high potential fixed installation sites for gunshot detection systems. Military installations use fixed installations on walls, poles, or border crossings. Fixed electro-optic systems are used by military personnel for enemy sniper localization.

Increasing investment in Subscription as a Service (SaaS) is expected to drive the gunshot detection system market during the forecast period

Based on solution, the SaaS segment of the gunshot detection system market is estimated to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The increasing demand for subscription-based services by public safety authorities is driving the market for this segment.

North America region shows the highest potential for implementation of gunshot detection

North America is expected to drive the growth of the gunshot detection system market in the coming years, and is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period, 2019 to 2024. The gunshot detection system market in North America is expected to witness growth, owing to the high number of firearm-related deaths in the region, especially in the US where firearm-related death rate is 25 times higher than other countries. Major US cities are planning to install indoor gunshot detection systems at universities, corporate office locations, and financial facilities, among others, over the next 5 years.

Browse in-depth TOC on "Gunshot Detection System Market"

105  Tables

35  Figures

145  Pages

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The major players in the gunshot detection system market include SST, Inc. (US), Raytheon (US), QinetiQ North America (US), Shooter Detection Systems, LLC. (US), Acoem Group (France), and Thales Group (France), among others. SST, Inc is one of the key market players engaged in securing contracts to increase the sale of gunshot detection systems.

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Ammunition Market by Application (Defense, Civil & Commercial), Caliber (Small, Medium, Large), Product (Bullets, Aerial Bombs, Grenades, Artillery Shells, Mortars), Component, Guidance, Lethality, Region - Global Forecast to 2025

C4ISR Market by Application (Communication, Command & Control, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance & Reconnaissance, and Electronic Warfare), Platform (Land, Naval, Airborne, and Space), Solution, End User, and Region - Global Forecast to 2022

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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.

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Research Insight: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/ResearchInsight/gunshot-detection-systems-market.asp

Visit Our Web Site: https://www.marketsandmarkets.com

SOURCE MarketsandMarkets
HONOLULU, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc. (the " Company ") announced today that HECO Capital Trust III (the " Trust ") (NYSE: HE-U) has issued a conditional notice of redemption to the holders of the Trust's outstanding 6.500% Cumulative Quarterly Income Trust Preferred Securities, Series 2004 (Liquidation Preference $25 per Preferred Security) (the " QUIPS "). The notice was delivered on behalf of the Trust by The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., as property trustee for the Trust (the " Property Trustee "), pursuant to the redemption provisions of the Trust's amended and restated trust agreement, and, subject to the condition referred to below, will result in the redemption in whole of the QUIPS on May 15, 2019 (the " Redemption Date "). If so redeemed, the redemption price for each QUIPS will be equal to the liquidation preference thereof, or $25 per QUIPS, plus accumulated and unpaid distributions thereon to the Redemption Date (the " Redemption Price "). The current aggregate liquidation preference of the QUIPS is $50,000,000 (representing 2,000,000 QUIPS outstanding).

The notice of redemption with respect to the QUIPS is conditioned upon the receipt by the Property Trustee of funds sufficient to pay the Redemption Price in full no later than the close of business on the business day before the Redemption Date.

Subject to the aforementioned condition, the QUIPS are being redeemed, along with the common securities issued by the Trust and held by the Company, as a result of the concurrent redemption in whole by the Company and its subsidiaries, Maui Electric Company, Limited and Hawaii Electric Light Company, Inc., of their respective series of junior subordinated deferrable interest debentures, which are held by the Trust and which underly the QUIPS. If so redeemed, the QUIPS should be surrendered to the Property Trustee on the Redemption Date as follows:

By mail:

The Bank of New York Mellon

P.O. Box 396

East Syracuse, New York 13057

By hand delivery or overnight mail:

The Bank of New York Mellon

111 Sanders Creek Parkway

East Syracuse, New York 13057

Questions regarding the redemption of the QUIPS should be directed to the Property Trustee by calling its Investor Relations Department at 1-800-254-2826.

About Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc. and its Operating Utility Subsidiaries

Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc. and its operating utility subsidiaries, Hawaii Electric Light Company, Inc. and Maui Electric Company, Limited, are regulated electric public utilities that provide essential electric service to approximately 95% of Hawaii's population through the operation of five separate grids that serve communities on the islands of Oahu, Hawaii, and Maui, Lanai and Molokai. The Company's mission is to provide innovative energy leadership for Hawaii, to meet the needs and expectations of customers and communities, and to empower them with affordable, reliable and clean energy. The goal is to create a modern, flexible and dynamic electric grid that enables an optimal mix of distributed energy resources (such as private rooftop solar and battery storage), demand response, and grid-scale resources to achieve the statutory goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. For more information, please visit https://www.hawaiianelectric.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release and other presentations made by the Company's parent company, Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc. (HEI), the Company and their subsidiaries contain "forward-looking statements," which include statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions and usually include words such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "plans," "believes," "predicts," "estimates" or similar expressions. In addition, any statements concerning future financial performance, ongoing business strategies or prospects or possible future actions are also forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and projections about future events and are subject to risks, uncertainties and the accuracy of assumptions concerning HEI and its subsidiaries, the performance of the industries in which they do business and economic, political and market factors, among other things. These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance.

SOURCE Hawaiian Electric Industries, Inc.

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"Since its launch, HinoStyle accessories have grown into a popular specialty product line for both Hino Conventional and COE trucks, which is why we are excited to introduce a new website and focus on this product. Our goal is to add convenience for owners that are looking to stylize the look of their trucks as well as provide more chrome options," said John Donato, Vice President of Parts Operations for Hino Trucks. "We are continually developing new designs for the latest models, expanding our market and offering new ways and approaches at enhancing the look and resale value of a vehicle."

HinoStyle accessories are exclusive to authorized Hino Truck dealerships. The current lineup of parts includes wheel accessories, interior and exterior accessories such as seat covers, floor mats, sun visors and steps to name a few. For a complete dealer listing and to view the HinoStyle accessories catalog, please visit www.hinostyle.com.

About Hino Trucks:

Hino Trucks, a Toyota Group Company, manufactures, sells, and services a lineup of Class 4-8 commercial trucks in the United States. Hino Trucks is the premier heavy & medium duty nameplate in the United States with a product lineup that offers fully connected vehicles with low total cost of ownership, superior fuel economy, unmatched reliability and maneuverability and the most comprehensive bundle of standard features in the market. Headquartered in Novi, Michigan, Hino has a network of over 230 dealers nationwide committed to achieving excellence in the ultimate ownership experience. Learn more about Hino Trucks at http://www.hino.com or follow us on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and YouTube.

SOURCE Hino Trucks

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BENGALURU, India, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- "We have completed the first year of our transformation journey with strong results on multiple dimensions including revenue growth, performance of our digital portfolio, large deal wins, and client metrics. This is a reflection of our increased client relevance stemming from our focus on digital, positioning, and long-standing client relationships," said Salil Parekh, CEO and MD. "Our planned investments have started yielding benefits. As we look ahead into fiscal 2020, we plan to deploy various measures of operational efficiencies across the business."

41.1% YoY

33.8% FY

Digital CC growth





11.7% YoY

9.0% FY

CC growth





21.5% Q4

22.8% FY

Operating margin





2.1% CC

2.4% Reported

QoQ growth



$1.57Bn Q4

$6.28Bn FY

Large deal signings

FY 19 revenues grew by 7.9% in USD; 9.0% in constant currency

FY 19 operating margin at 22.8%

Q4 19 revenues grew year-on-year by 9.1% in USD; 11.7% in constant currency

Q4 19 revenues grew sequentially by 2.4% in USD; 2.1% in constant currency

Q4 19 Digital revenues at $1,035 million (33.8% of total revenues), year-on-year growth of 41.1% and sequential growth of 9.7% in constant currency

(33.8% of total revenues), year-on-year growth of 41.1% and sequential growth of 9.7% in constant currency Announces final dividend of INR 10.50 per share

FY 20 revenue guidance in the range of 7.5%-9.5% in constant currency

FY 20 Operating margin guidance in the range of 21%-23%

1. Financial Highlights -Consolidated results under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

For the Quarter ended March 31, 2019

Revenues were $3,060 million, growth of 9.1% YoY and 2.4% QoQ



Operating profit was $658 million, decline of 5.1% YoY and 2.6% QoQ#



Basic EPS was $0.13, growth of 1.6% YoY and 15.5% QoQ

For the Year ended March 31, 2019

Revenues were $11,799 million, growth of 7.9% YoY



Operating profit was $2,696 million, growth of 1.4% YoY



Basic EPS was $0.51, decline of 8.2% YoY*@

# Includes additional depreciation and amortization expenses of $12 million for Panaya and Skava for the quarter ended December 31, 2018.

* Includes reduction in fair value and carrying value of Panaya and Skava, respectively which resulted in reduction in EPS by $0.02

@ Includes impact on account of conclusion of an APA with the US IRS which has led to increase in EPS of $0.05 for the year ended March 31, 2018.

"We had another quarter of over $1.5 bn large deal TCV in Q4, as a result of which FY 19 TCV doubled over FY 18. Realization per billed employee was steady which reflects increasing usage of automation in core services and faster growth in newer digital services," said Pravin Rao, COO. "Overall attrition remains high and we are continuing our focus on arresting the same."

"Cash generation in FY 19 was strong and Dividend Per Share increased by 4.5%. During the quarter, we completed the payout of special dividend in January and initiated the share buyback program," said Nilanjan Roy, CFO. "We had another quarter of forex gains thanks to our proactive hedging strategy."

2. Capital Allocation

During Q4 19, completed payment of special dividend of INR 4 per share announced in January, 2019.

Initiated buyback from March 20, 2019 after receiving all requisite approvals. Out of total buyback size of INR 8,260 crore , the company has bought back shares worth INR 1,546 crore so far.

after receiving all requisite approvals. Out of total buyback size of INR , the company has bought back shares worth INR so far. For the Financial Year 2019, the Board has recommended a final dividend of INR 10.50 per share ( $0.15 per ADR*). After including the interim dividend of INR7 per share, the total dividend for Financial Year 2019 will amount to INR17.50 per share.

*US$1 = INR 69.16 as at March 31, 2019

3. Client wins & Testimonials

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (SGRE), a world leader and a pioneer in the renewable energy industry, has signed a seven-year global partnership with Infosys to enable an end-to-end IT Transformation program towards a digital future and industry leadership.

Alan Feeley, SGRE CIO, said, "Infrastructure & applications outsourcing deals are the norm in our business worlds already today. When considering our (SGRE) desired IT operating model for the future, we were looking for a partner that brings a careful balance of innovation, operational excellence and sustainable commercial viability. With Infosys, we are very confident that these attributes were at the core of their operating culture. We are very excited to partner with Infosys on this journey of modernization and were impressed by Infosys Next Generation Application & Infrastructure Management Framework, their agility & focus on delivery excellence, and a clear understanding of our business strategy."

With a vision to provide safe and reliable utility services and improve the customer service of about 800,000 people in the Indianapolis area, Citizens will transform its customer service by leveraging 'Infosys Preconfigured Accelerator for Customer Experience (PACE)', an industry leading framework tuned for Oracle Utilities Customer to Meter (C2M) platform.

Curtis Popp, Vice President of Customer Operations at Citizens Energy Group, said, "At Citizens Energy Group, we're excited to be working with Infosys and Oracle to implement a new CIS and accomplish our strategic goals, including improved customer satisfaction and employee engagement. The experience and expertise of Infosys employees is paramount to the success of this complex project."

Kraft Heinz has selected Infosys to deliver rich digital experience for their recipes and brands to their consumers.

"Kraft Heinz has partnered with Infosys to launch new capabilities delivering rich consumer experience. We are becoming more relevant to our consumers by enabling capabilities like Shoppable Recipes, Rich Brand Experience, Personalized Recommendations, Seamless Social Media Integration. We are just getting started.," said, Leandro Balbinot, CIO Global Digital Growth, Kraft Heinz Company.

"Movement Mortgage is committed to providing loan officers, real estate agents and our borrowers with technology and a digital infrastructure that delivers an innovative, user-friendly experience on every platform and in every channel, both today and in the future. We're pleased to have selected Infosys as our strategic partner across these key business functions. Infosys' expertise in Digital Transformation, Cloud Technologies and Mortgage and Retail Lending will help Movement continue to spearhead industrywide transformation that improves the mortgage experience for everyone and makes the dream of homeownership more accessible than ever before," said Casey Crawford , CEO, Movement Mortgage



is committed to providing loan officers, real estate agents and our borrowers with technology and a digital infrastructure that delivers an innovative, user-friendly experience on every platform and in every channel, both today and in the future. We're pleased to have selected Infosys as our strategic partner across these key business functions. Infosys' expertise in Digital Transformation, Cloud Technologies and Mortgage and Retail Lending will help Movement continue to spearhead industrywide transformation that improves the mortgage experience for everyone and makes the dream of homeownership more accessible than ever before," "In partnership with Infosys, we are modernizing our collection processes with real-time insights into delinquency rates, better risk segmentations and customized contact & calling strategies." said Julie Signorille , Consumer Banking, Chief Operating Officer, Citizens Bank.

Recognition:

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Healthcare Services 2019

Infosys positioned as a leader in SAP HANA and S/4 HANA Services  NEAT 2019

Infosys positioned as a leader in RPA & AI in Banking  NEAT 2019

Infosys positioned in Customer Experience (CX) Shortlist (Constellation ShortList Global Customer Experience (CX) Services)

Infosys positioned as a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Professional and Managed Services, Worldwide

Infosys positioned as a leader in Advanced Digital Workplace Services  NEAT 2019

Infosys Lex Wingspan shortlisted in Constellation ShortList Learning Marketplaces for Q1 2019

Infosys positioned as a leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide IT Service Management Implementation Services 2019 Vendor Assessment

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 High-tech sector service providers

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Microsoft AI Services 2019

Infosys positioned in HFS Top 10 Enterprise Blockchain Services 2018

About Infosys

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in 45 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over three decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements mentioned in this release concerning our future growth prospects and our future business expectations are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, and unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2018. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the company unless it is required by law.

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Audited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet as at

(Dollars in millions except equity share data)



March 31, 2019 March 31, 2018 ASSETS



Current assets



Cash and cash equivalents 2,829 3,041 Current investments 958 982 Trade receivables 2,144 2,016 Unbilled revenue 777 654 Prepayments and other current assets 827 662 Income tax assets 61 - Derivative financial instruments 48 2

7,644 7,357 Assets held for sale(A3)(A4) - 316 Total current assets 7,644 7,673 Non-current assets



Property, plant and equipment 1,931 1,863 Goodwill 512 339 Intangible assets 100 38 Investment in associate - - Non-current investments 670 883 Deferred income tax assets 199 196 Income tax assets 914 931 Other non-current assets 282 332 Total non-current assets 4,608 4,582 Total assets 12,252 12,255 LIABILITIES AND EQUITY



Current liabilities



Trade payables 239 107 Derivative financial instruments 2 6 Current income tax liabilities 227 314 Client deposits 4 6 Unearned revenue 406 352 Employee benefit obligations 234 218 Provisions 83 75 Other current liabilities 1,498 1,036

2,693 2,114 Liabilities directly associated with assets held for sale(A3)(A4) - 50 Total current liabilities 2,693 2,164 Non-current liabilities



Deferred income tax liabilities 98 82 Employee benefit obligations 6 7 Other non-current liabilities 55 42 Total liabilities 2,852 2,295 Equity



Share capital- INR 5 ($0.16) par value 4,800,000,000 (2,400,000,000) equity shares authorized, issued and outstanding 4,335,954,462 (2,173,312,301), net of 20,324,982 (10,801,956) treasury shares as at March 31, 2019 (March 31, 2018), respectively 339 190 Share premium 277 247 Retained earnings 11,248 11,587 Cash flow hedge reserve 3 - Other reserves 384 244 Capital redemption reserve 10 9 Other components of equity (2,870) (2,317) Total equity attributable to equity holders of the company 9,391 9,960 Non-controlling interests 9 - Total equity 9,400 9,960 Total liabilities and equity 12,252 12,255

Infosys Limited and subsidiaries

Audited Condensed Consolidated Statement of Comprehensive Income for the



(Dollars in millions except equity share and per equity share data)



Three months ended March 31, 2019 Three months ended March 31, 2018 Year ended March 31, 2019 Year ended March 31, 2018 Revenues 3,060 2,805 11,799 10,939 Cost of sales 2,028 1,793 7,687 7,001 Gross profit 1,032 1,012 4,112 3,938 Operating expenses







Selling and marketing expenses 174 147 638 552 Administrative expenses 200 172 778 727 Total operating expenses 374 319 1,416 1,279 Operating profit 658 693 2,696 2,659 Other income, net(B3) 94 100 411 513 Reduction in the fair value of Disposal Group held for sale(A3) - (18) (39) (18) Adjustment in respect of excess of carrying amount over recoverable amount on reclassification from "Held for Sale"(A4) - - (65) - Share in net profit/(loss) of associate, including impairment(A2) - - - (11) Profit before income taxes 752 775 3,003 3,143 Income tax expense(A1)(B4) 171 204 803 657 Net profit 581 571 2,200 2,486 Other comprehensive income







Items that will not be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:







Re-measurements of the net defined benefit liability/asset, net - 6 (3) 9 Equity instruments through other comprehensive income, net - 1 10 1 Items that will be reclassified subsequently to profit or loss:







Fair valuation of investments, net 3 (2) - - Fair value changes on derivatives designated as cash flow hedge, net (2) - 3 (6) Foreign currency translation 74 (164) (560) 18 Total other comprehensive income/(loss), net of tax 75 (159) (550) 22 Total comprehensive income 656 412 1,650 2,508









Profit attributable to:







Owners of the Company 580 571 2,199 2,486 Non-controlling interests 1 - 1 -

581 571 2,200 2,486 Total comprehensive income attributable to:







Owners of the Company 655 412 1,649 2,508 Non-controlling interests 1 - 1 -

656 412 1,650 2,508 Earnings per equity share(A1) (A5)







Basic ($) 0.13 0.13 0.51 0.55 Diluted ($) 0.13 0.13 0.51 0.55 Weighted average equity shares used in computing earnings per equity share(A5)







Basic 4,347,129,592 4,346,554,120 4,347,130,157 4,510,664,644 Diluted 4,353,023,863 4,349,617,024 4,353,420,772 4,515,147,740

NOTES:

A. Notes pertaining to previous quarters / periods

During the quarter ended December 31, 2017 , on account of the conclusion of an Advance Pricing Agreement ("APA") with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service ("IRS"), the Company has reversed income tax expense provision of $225 million which pertains to previous periods. During the year ended March 31, 2018 , the Company has written down the entire carrying value of $11 million in its associate DWA Nova LLC. In the three months ended March 2018 , Kallidus and Skava (together referred to as "Skava") and Panaya, were classified as "Held for Sale" resulting in a reduction in the fair value amounting to $18 million and $39 million in respect of Panaya for the year ended March 31, 2018 and three months ended June 30, 2018 , respectively. During the three months ended December 31, 2018 , the Company declassified Panaya and Skava from "Held for Sale" and recognized an adjustment in respect of excess of carrying amount over recoverable amount of $65 million in respect of Skava during the year ended March 31, 2019 . Share numbers and EPS have been adjusted for September 2018 bonus issue.

B. Notes pertaining to the current quarter

The audited condensed consolidated Balance sheet and Statement of Comprehensive Income for the three months and year ended March 31, 2019 have been taken on record at the Board meeting held on April 12, 2019 . A Fact Sheet providing the operating metrics of the Company can be downloaded from www.infosys.com. Other income includes $7 million for each of the quarter and year ended March 31, 2019 , and $41 million for the year ended March 31, 2018 towards interest on income tax refund. During the quarter ended March 31, 2019 , on account of the conclusion of an Advance Pricing Agreement ("APA") in an overseas jurisdiction, the Company has reversed income tax expense provision of $14 million which pertains to previous periods.

IFRS-INR Press Release: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2018-2019/q4/Documents/IFRS-INR-press-release.pdf





Fact Sheet: https://www.infosys.com/investors/reports-filings/quarterly-results/2018-2019/q4/Documents/fact-sheet.pdf

SOURCE Infosys
SELBYVILLE, Del., April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Insulated Concrete Form Market revenue is set to exceed from USD 1 billion in 2018 to around USD 1.6 billion by 2025, according to a 2019 Global Market Insights, Inc. report. Increasing consumer awareness pertaining to high energy bills and necessity for resilient and energy efficient building techniques has stimulated the insulated concrete form market. Strong applications outlook across the industrial, infrastructure, residential as well as commercial buildings will support product demand. As per the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the houses build by ICF walls and roof can result in 8 percent to 19 percent energy savings, compared to the traditional wooden frame constructions.

Insulated Concrete Form Market size is estimated to surpass USD 1.6 billion by 2025, with 5.5 percent CAGR, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.

Government initiatives for reducing the carbon emissions with favorable policies and incentive-based schemes promoting the use of energy efficient materials in the building construction will surge the demand for ICF in coming years. For instance, in November 2018, the BRE Group and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced a partnership to work on developing strategies and solutions for promoting green building performance.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/725

Key benefits including lower insurance rates, quieter interiors, faster construction times, durability and energy efficiency are shifting the preference towards the construction of the houses using the ICF system. Furthermore, manufacturers are investing in new product development that offers higher durability and superior thermal resistance compared to the wood-based construction, this would further increase the industry expansion. Rising occurrence of earthquakes, tsunami, floods, heatwave, hurricanes, etc. across the tropical, subtropical and coastal environments has resulted in an increase in the construction of ICF based homes.

Strong growth in the construction industry to accommodate the increasing urban population is supporting the insulated concrete forms market advancement. The global construction sector is projected to cross USD 12 trillion by 2020, at over 3 percent CAGR. Countries including China, the U.S., and India are expected to dominate the global construction industry. Also, ICF can reduce the time for construction, thereby reducing labor costs. However, the product penetration is higher in developed countries of North America and Europe.

Browse key industry insights spread across 300 pages with 187 market data tables and 12 figures and charts from the report, "Insulated Concrete Form Market Size By Material (Polystyrene Foam, Polyurethane Foam, Cement Bonded Wood Fiber, Cement Bonded Polystyrene Beads, Cellular Concrete), By Application (Commercial, Industrial, Infrastructure, Residential), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Russia, China, India, Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2019  2025" in detail along with the table of contents:

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/insulated-concrete-form-market

Polystyrene foam holds a substantial share in the global ICF market, accounting for over USD 700 million in 2018. Polystyrene foam includes expanded polystyrene (EPS) and extruded polystyrene (XPS). Key aspects such as lightweight, higher impact resistance, and excellent thermal insulation will drive the polystyrene-based ICF demand. The product finds increasing application in building walls, floors, and building roofs. Superior fire resistance properties along with higher strength will generate new growth opportunities up to 2025.

Global ICF market from the commercial application will witness significant gains at over 6 percent from 2019 to 2025. Economic growth in developing countries, favorable FDI policies on commercial construction, and enhanced focus on energy conservation will surge the product demand. Growing government investments in infrastructural and hospitality sector will provide an impetus to the industry development. Proliferating population in the Asia Pacific region along with rapid development in industrial and infrastructural construction will support the business growth in the region. Asia Pacific and Latin America are the fastest growing commercial construction sector, majorly driven by China, India, Indonesia and Brazil.

North America dominates the global ICF market with over 35 percent of the industry share in 2018. Stringent regulations along with the positive influence of organizations such as USGBC is driving the product usage. Residential applications hold a substantial share in North America ICF market, however, increasing popularity for ICF in commercial projects including hotels, educational institutions, hospitals, retail outlets, and multi-story buildings will drive the industry share. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the total spending on commercial construction has significantly increased from USD 40 Billion in 2010 to USD 89.5 Billion in 2018.

Make an inquiry for purchasing this report @ https://www.gminsights.com/inquiry-before-buying/725

The global ICF market share in highly competitive with a large presence of multinational and regional players from North America and Europe. The major players include Quad-Lock Building Systems Ltd., Airlite (Fox Blocks), IntegraSpec ICF, Nudura Corporation, Logix Insulated Concrete Forms Ltd., Superform Products Ltd., BuildBlock Building Systems, Amvic and Plasti-Fab. New product developments, strategic mergers and acquisitions, and expansion of distribution network are among the key strategic observed in the industry. For instance, in July 2018, Logix Insulated Concrete Forms Ltd. announced to launch its new product range, Logix XP-1 for wall applications to enhance its industry share.

Browse Related Report:

1. Concrete Densification & Polishing Material Market Size By Product (Densifiers & Hardeners, Sealers & Crack Fillers, Conditioners), By End-User (Residential, Commercial, Institutional, Industrial), Concrete Densification & Polishing Equipment Market Size By Product (Hand Held, Walk Behind, Ride On), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, China, India, Japan, Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait), Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2019  2025

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/concrete-densification-and-polishing-material-market

2. Polymeric Sand Market Size By Product (Polymeric Sand, Polymeric Dust), By Application (Patios, Pool Deck, Pavements & Auxiliary Spaces, Parking Spaces), By End-use (Industrial, Residential, Commercial, Municipal, Industrial), Industry Analysis Report, Regional Outlook (U.S., Canada, Germany, UK, France, Poland, Italy, Russia, China, India, Japan, Oceania, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait), Application Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast, 2019  2025

https://www.gminsights.com/industry-analysis/polymeric-sand-market

About Global Market Insights

Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology.

Contact Us:

Arun Hegde

Corporate Sales, USA

Global Market Insights, Inc.

Phone: 1-302-846-7766

Toll Free: 1-888-689-0688

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.gminsights.com

News: http://constructioncu.com/category/construction-building-materials/

Related Images

insulated-concrete-form-market.png

Insulated Concrete Form Market size to exceed $1.6bn by 2025

Insulated Concrete Form Market size is estimated to surpass USD 1.6 billion by 2025, with 5.5 percent CAGR, according to a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc.

Related Links

Insulated Concrete Form Market

Asia Pacific Construction Equipment Market

SOURCE Global Market Insights, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.gminsights.com


DENVER, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - Intermap Technologies has been awarded its first contract for its new, high-resolution aviation terrain dataset announced in December. An international drone operator which delivers medical supplies has signed a multi-year contract in which Intermap will deliver its new Lido/SurfaceData NEXTView terrain dataset to improve flight efficiency, navigation and safety. Intermap's location data will enable payloads to be delivered within a landing zone of less than 5-meters in remote environments, where mountainous geography and poor road conditions make an aerial delivery system most efficient.

NEXTView, developed through a partnership with Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co KG, provides unprecedented global situational awareness for aviation applications. NEXTView combines high-resolution terrain, obstacle, and aerodrome information into a single coherent and uniform global dataset with military-grade acuity. NEXTView will be certified to relevant industry standards and covers 100% of Earth's land area with 3-meter vertical accuracy.

The NEXTView product is one of a suite of elevation-related software solutions based on the Intermap's very successful NEXTMap elevation terrain dataset. Intermap has been steadily building its portfolio of analytic solutions, including flood-risk mapping and telecommunications link planning, to expand into broader markets. According to Patrick Blott, Chairman and CEO, "NEXTView will help our customer shorten flight times and reduce the chance of crashes, while delivering emergency medical supplies to rural populations. In many austere environments, drones can substantially cut costs and save lives. This high-tech supply chain can be faster and more reliable than traditional aviation or motor vehicle means, and our NEXTView product is advancing its mission to improve situational awareness, efficiency, and save lives."

"After over a year working together with Intermap, we developed this unique terrain product specially designed for the needs of the aviation industry. We are very happy that after testing our dataset, an international drone operator was convinced that this solution would suit their specific needs and signed a contract for Lido/SurfaceData NEXTView," said Fabio Fornallaz, Product Owner for Lido/SurfaceData at Lufthansa Systems.

About Intermap Technologies

Headquartered in Denver, Colorado, Intermap (TSX: IMP) (ITMSF: BB) is an industry leader in geospatial intelligence solutions. These geospatial solutions are used in a wide range of applications including, but not limited to, location-based information, risk assessment, geographic information systems, engineering, utilities, global positioning systems, oil and gas, renewable energy, hydrology, environmental planning, land management, wireless communications, transportation, advertising, and 3D visualization. Intermap generates revenue from three primary business activities, comprised of i) data acquisition and collection, using proprietary, multi-frequency, radar sensor technologies, ii) value-added data products and services, which leverage the Company's proprietary NEXTMap database, together with proprietary software and fusion technologies, and iii) commercial applications and solutions, including a webstore and software sales targeting selected industry verticals that rely on accurate high resolution elevation data. The Company is a world leader in geospatial data management and processing, including fusion, analytics, and orthorectification, and has decades of experience aggregating data derived from a number of different sensor technologies and data sources. For more information please visit www.intermap.com.

About Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co KG

Lufthansa Systems GmbH & Co. KG is a leading airline IT provider. Based on long-term project experience, a deep understanding of complex business processes and strong technological know-how, the company provides consulting and IT services for the global aviation industry. Over 350 airlines worldwide rely on the know-how of IT specialists at Lufthansa Systems. Its portfolio covers innovative IT products and services which provide added value for its customers in terms of enhanced efficiency, reduced costs or increased profits. Headquartered in Raunheim near Frankfurt/Main, Germany, Lufthansa Systems has offices in 16 other countries.

Intermap Reader Advisory

Certain information provided in this news release, including statements in relation to the Company's product development and revenue-generating activities constitutes forward-looking statements. The words "anticipate", "expect", "project", "estimate", "forecast", "will be" and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Although Intermap believes that these statements are based on information and assumptions which are current, reasonable and complete, these statements are necessarily subject to a variety of known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Intermap's forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties pertaining to, among other things, cash available to fund operations, availability of capital, revenue fluctuations, nature of government contracts, economic conditions, loss of key customers, retention and availability of executive talent, competing technologies, common share price volatility, loss of proprietary information, software functionality, internet and system infrastructure functionality, information technology security, breakdown of strategic alliances, and international and political considerations, as well as those risks and uncertainties discussed Intermap's Annual Information Form and other securities filings. While the Company makes these forward-looking statements in good faith, should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary significantly from those expected. Accordingly, no assurances can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will transpire or occur, or if any of them do so, what benefits that the Company will derive therefrom. All subsequent forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, attributable to Intermap or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or to revise any of the forward-looking statements made herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required by applicable securities law.

SOURCE Intermap Technologies Corporation

Related Links

www.intermap.com


DALLAS, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Invitation Homes Inc. (NYSE: INVH) ("Invitation Homes" or the "Company") today announced that it will release its first quarter 2019 financial and operating results on Monday, May 6, 2019, after the market closes. The Company will host a conference call on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern time to review first quarter results, discuss recent events, and conduct a question-and-answer session.

The conference call will be available via webcast on the Invitation Homes Investor Relations website at www.invh.com.

To participate in the live telephone conference call:

Domestic Dial-in Number: 1-888-317-6003

International Dial-in Number: 1-412-317-6061

Passcode: 2381778

To access a telephone replay of the call:

Domestic Dial-in Number: 1-877-344-7529

International Dial-in Number: 1-412-317-0088

Passcode: 10130628

Date Accessible Through: June 7, 2019

About Invitation Homes:

Invitation Homes is a leading owner and operator of single-family homes for lease, offering residents high-quality homes across America. With more than 80,000 homes for lease in 17 markets across the country, Invitation Homes is meeting changing lifestyle demands by providing residents access to updated homes with features they value, such as close proximity to jobs and access to good schools. The company's mission, "Together with you, we make a house a home," reflects its commitment to high-touch service that continuously enhances residents' living experiences and provides homes where individuals and families can thrive.

Investor Relations Contact:

Greg Van Winkle

Phone: 844.456.INVH (4684)

Email: [email protected]

Media Relations Contact:

Kristi DesJarlais

Phone: 972.421.3587

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Invitation Homes

Related Links

https://www.invitationhomes.com/


CHANDLER, Ariz., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Isola Group's Travis Kelly, Executive Vice Chairman and CEO, and Global Chief Operating Officer of Cerberus Operations and Advisory Company (Cerberus Capital Management), discussed the recent changes at the company and his agenda for the remainder of the year with industry publication IConnect007.

About Isola

Isola Group, headquartered in Chandler, Arizona, is a global material sciences company focused on designing, developing, manufacturing and marketing copper-clad laminates and dielectric prepregs used to fabricate advanced multi-layer printed circuit boards (PCBs). Isola's high-performance materials are used in sophisticated electronic applications in the communications infrastructure, cloud computing, automotive, military, medical and aerospace markets. Isola has over 1600 employees with technical support, sales, manufacturing and R&D facilities in Asia, Europe and North America. For more information visit our website at http://www.isola-group.com/.

Please contact Dennis Flynn, Isola Group Director of Global Communications with any questions:

[email protected]

480-521-4511

WEBSITE: ( HTTPS://WWW.ISOLA-GROUP.COM/ )

PRODUCTS: ( HTTPS://WWW.ISOLA-GROUP.COM/PRODUCTS )

SERVICES AND SUPPORT: ( HTTPS://WWW.ISOLA-GROUP.COM/SERVICES-SUPPORT/ )

NEWS & RESOURCES: ( HTTPS://WWW.ISOLA-GROUP.COM/NEWS-RESOURCES/ )

ABOUT US: (HTTPS://WWW.ISOLA-GROUP.COM/ABOUT-US/)

SOURCE Isola Group

Related Links

https://www.isola-group.com


CHICAGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- STAR WARS CELEBRATION -- To open Star Wars Celebration, the LEGO Group marked 20 years of LEGO Star Wars by achieving a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title for largest display of LEGO Star Wars minifigures, kicking off a weekend-long experience. Two decades worth of products, content and collaboration between two of the world's most beloved brands will be showcased at booth #1616 at McCormick Place in downtown Chicago, giving fans of all ages the chance to relive their fandom and build excitement for what's to come this Fall.

Made up of 36,440 LEGO Star Wars stormtrooper minfigures, the record-setting display is arranged in the shape of the iconic stormtrooper helmet, measuring 20 feet tall by 20 feet wide. A team of 12 LEGO builders spent 16 hours assembling all of the minifigures, which were then shipped to Chicago to be arranged for display at Star Wars Celebration. Once assembled, the baseplates were transported to McCormick Place, where they were arranged for final evaluation by GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS Adjudicator, Christina Flounders Conlon.

The collaboration between the companies began 20 years ago when 13 LEGO Star Wars sets were introduced at the American International Toy Fair in New York in 1999. The line of licensed construction toys was the LEGO Group's first licensed property and has since remained one of the company's most popular, allowing fans across generations and geographies to come together in fun and challenging building exercises. Since the launch, over 700 different sets and more than 1,000 LEGO Star Wars cobranded minifigures have hit shelves. Notable LEGO Star Wars milestones include, the first modeled minifigure headpiece being introduced in 1999 with the Jar Jar Binks minifigure, while new short leg molds introduced in 2002 brought Ewoks and Yoda to life in minifigure form. Beyond construction sets, the collaboration has also produced five video games, several television and web series, and an abundance of other merchandise based on the endless stories, characters and vehicles of the beloved galaxy.

"Combining LEGO play and the Star Wars galaxy has been a dream collaboration for us, and we are so lucky to enjoy a partnership with Lucasfilm that enables us to retell their stories in brick form", said Michael McNally, senior director of brand relations for the LEGO Group. "This milestone is also a testament to the dedication from our loyal fans of all ages who have inspired us with their passion and creativity for two decades, which is why we're so happy to be able to present this epic model as a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS title holder and provide a memorable moment for our fans. Twenty years down and much, much more to come."

"Nothing short of a GUINNESS WORLD RECORDS could properly commemorate the long-standing and special partnership we have had with the LEGO Group," said Derek Stothard, vice president of licensing at Lucasfilm. "We are so proud of the past 20 years and the joy it has brought fans around the world who have the chance to interact with Star Wars via our LEGO sets in such a unique, personalized way. We look forward to the adventures that lie ahead."

Earlier this month, the LEGO Group released five special sets featuring iconic ships and exclusive throwback minifigures as another tribute to the LEGO Star Wars history. The new sets  which debuted on April 1  are a recreation of some of the most iconic and popular sets from the last 20 years, along with a new subtheme: Action Battle. The LEGO System in Play helps Star Wars devotees bring some of their most beloved scenes and characters to life  from Wookiees to Ewoks, Princess Leia to Han Solo and more  for even more intergalactic adventures.

Continuing the festivities, the LEGO Group will relive this collaboration and share some of what's to come in a panel at Star Wars Celebration titled, "20 years of the LEGO Star Wars Story  A Retrospective and Forward Look," on Friday, April 12 from 1:30-2:30 p.m. CT. For live stream of the panel, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsACfgOCoh8

For editorial images, visit: https://apimages.photoshelter.com/galleries/C0000UBsz7zLc.RA/G0000j6FKOnYGQ_Q/2019-04-11-LEGO-Star-Wars-Guinness-Book-World-Record-Build-Wire

About the LEGO Group

The LEGO Group is a privately held, family-owned company with headquarters in Billund, Denmark, and main offices in Enfield, USA, London, UK., Shanghai, China, and Singapore. Founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen, and based on the iconic LEGO brick, it is one of the world's leading manufacturers of play materials. Guided by the company spirit: "Only the best is good enough," the company is committed to the development of children and aims to inspire and develop the builders of tomorrow through creative play and learning. LEGO products are sold worldwide and can be virtually explored at www.LEGO.com.

LEGO, the LEGO logo, the Minifigure and the brick & knob configuration are trademarks and/or copyrights of the LEGO Group.  2019 the LEGO Group.

Lucasfilm, the Lucasfilm logo, STAR WARS and related properties are trademarks and/or copyrights, in the United States and other countries, of Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or its affiliates.  & TM Lucasfilm Ltd. All rights reserved.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Leah Barash, Flashpoint PR

415-317-2047 / [email protected]

SOURCE The LEGO Group

Related Links

http://www.LEGO.com


VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Lifestyle Delivery Systems Inc. (CSE: LDS), (OTCQX: LDSYF), (Frankfurt: LD6, WKN: A14XHT) ("LDS" or the "Company") announces its wholly-owned subsidiary, CSPA Group, Inc. ("CSPA"), entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (the "MOU") with MBioTeQ, LLC ("MBioTeQ") to supply a minimum of 120 liters of raw distillate per month.

Pursuant to the MOU, CSPA Group, Inc. will provide MBioTeQ with a minimum 120 liters of 85% THC raw distillate oil per month. CSPA Group will be responsible for securing the biomass, testing the distillate throughout the manufacturing process until it is ready for pick up by MBioTeQ. The price per liter may vary in the event of fluctuations in California's biomass inventory and prices of raw material increase. This structure permits profitability in an uncertain market.

Casey Fenwick, President of LDS, stated, "This is a great starting point for CSPA and MBioTeQ. We have already started procuring biomass for this contract and, once we have established a steady supply chain, it may pave the way for several other projects CSPA can work on with MBioTeQ."

The Company's CEO, Brad Eckenweiler, stated, "CSPA Group has been stockpiling both distillate and full spectrum cannabinoid oils for the production of CannaStrips, and we have now enough warehoused distillate and oils to meet the anticipated demand for all versions of the CannaStrips for the next several months. With plenty of raw products in our warehouse, we are happy to take on additional third party distillate production and sales."

The Company will continue to inform the market of corporate developments as they become available.

About CSPA Group Inc.

CSPA Group, Inc. 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 Columbia 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

http://www.lifestyledeliverysystem.com


NEW YORK, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- LumApps , the leading social intranet for the enterprise, today announced it has closed a 24M$ funding round led by Idinvest. The new capital will be used to scale global sales and marketing and accelerate product innovation for the LumApps digital workplace suite.

"When we first met the LumApps team, we immediately knew they were poised to become the leader in internal communications and collaboration," said Alban Wyniecki, Investment Director at Idinvest. "Everything from their digital workplace suite to the company's leadership and its technical team is unmatched. We are thrilled to have LumApps join our portfolio and look forward to playing a part in the company's mission to provide the premier social experience inside and outside the enterprise."

LumApps is a social and collaborative intranet, designed to inform and engage employees. The solution integrates with both G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft Sharepoint. Accessible anytime, anywhere via mobile, the LumApps intranet serves as a central hub for personalized content, social communications, work tools and applications.

The funding comes on the heels of significant momentum, marked by rapid growth. In 2018, LumApps continued to build its international presence with new offices and talent across the United States, Europe, Japan and Pacific-Asia. LumApps also more than doubled its customer base with the addition of EA, G4S, Peach Aviation, Verizon Media (formerly Oath) to its growing roster.

"Over the past year, we experienced tremendous growth with new companies across the globe adopting LumApps as their central hub for all internal and external communications," said Sebastien Ricard, Founder and CEO of LumApps. "This new investment will help us extend our leadership position by taking our go-to-market plans to new heights and will help drive product innovation so our customers can help their employees be more productive than ever."

Additionally, LumApps is announcing that Etienne Droit (former EVP Sales at 3DS) and Damien Neyret (CEO of Letsignit) will be joining the company's board of directors.

"We are excited that Etienne and Damien are joining our board," Lionel Grivel, co-founder and COO of LumApps. "Their combined expertise in the software editor space, most notably Microsoft, will be invaluable as we pursue our ambitious goal of becoming the global leader in enterprise communications and collaboration."

About LumApps

LumApps is the leading enterprise social intranet designed to connect, inform and engage employees. Our digital workplace helps organizations break down communication silos to build stronger, more collaborative relationships between individual employees and departments. LumApps integrates seamlessly with today's most popular productivity suites, including G Suite and Office 365, to centralize access to all corporate content, business applications and social features under a single platform. With seven offices worldwide  Lyon, Paris, London, New York, Austin, San Francisco, and Tokyo  LumApps serves some of the world's most prominent companies, including Veolia, Valeo, Air Liquide, Colgate-Palmolive, The Economist, Schibsted, EA, Logitech.

SOURCE LumApps

Related Links

https://www.lumapps.com


CANTON, Mich., April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Material Sciences Corporation (MSC) was named a 2019 Automotive News PACE Award winner at an awards ceremony on April 8 in Detroit. The prestigious award recognizes automotive suppliers for superior innovation, technological advancement and business performance.

MSC was recognized for its MSC Smart Steel, a new multilayer steel laminate engineered as a direct substitute for low carbon steel stamped vehicle body parts. Offering up to a 35% mass save compared with same-thickness standard steel, MSC Smart Steel is produced as a coil, stamped in conventional dies, spot welded with existing equipment and processed through standard electro-coat and paint systems  essentially compatible with existing manufacturing systems. This is the first ever spot-weldable, low-density composite laminate to be used in a body application.

"MSC is proud to be one of the elite thirteen 2019 PACE Award winners," said Matt Murphy, MSC vice president, Engineered Solutions. "We could not have earned this recognition without the vision and support of Ford Motor Company. After years of collaboration with MSC, Smart Steel will make its first appearance in the automotive industry as roof bows on the 2019 Lincoln Aviator. This is a perfect example of how innovative designs and lightweight materials are playing a significant role in delivering competitive vehicles that do not compromise performance."

The 25th annual PACE Awards were presented by Automotive News, and the Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association (APMA). The Government of Canada was a platinum sponsor. The competition was open to suppliers who contribute products, processes, materials or services directly to the manufacture of cars or trucks. The Automotive News PACE Award is accepted around the world as the industry benchmark for innovation.

Material Sciences Corporation earned an Automotive News PACE Award following an extensive review by an independent panel of judges including a comprehensive written application and a site visit.

Go to www.materialsciencescorp.com/products/smart-steel to learn more about MSC Smart Steel. For complete details of the Automotive News PACE Award, visit www.autonews.com/pace.

About Material Sciences Corporation

Material Sciences Corporation (MSC) provides advanced solutions in metals, metal products and metal processing across a diverse array of end-use markets. Specialties include electrogalvanizing, continuous coil-coating, laminating, acoustic composites and supply chain management. Headquartered in Canton, Michigan, Material Sciences Corporation has operations in Elk Grove Village, Illinois; East Chicago, Indiana; Walbridge, Ohio; Canfield, Ohio; and Toronto, Ontario. Visit www.materialsciencescorp.com for details regarding products and services.

SOURCE Material Sciences Corporation

Related Links

http://www.materialsciencescorp.com


INCLINE VILLAGE, Nev., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Jeff Rumburg, co-founder and managing partner of MetricNet, participated in Session 501, "Metrics Magic: Ask the Experts," at the Annual HDI Conference in Orlando, Florida. This marks the 27th consecutive year Mr. Rumburg has been selected as a speaker for the Annual HDI Conference & Expo.

Rae Ann Bruno, John Custy and Jeff Rumburg answered questions from attendees, focusing on a range of concepts, such as the linkage between metrics and business outcomes, metrics and continuous improvement, the cause-and-effect relationship of KPIs, metrics and accountability, and metrics as a diagnostic tool for continuous improvement.

"Despite all the data that IT service managers have at their fingertips, most cannot answer a very basic question: How is my support organization performing?" said Rumburg. "Perhaps worse, many IT managers are unaware of the critical role  beyond mere measurement  that Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can and should play in service and support. This includes the ability to track and trend performance, identify, diagnose and correct performance problems, establish performance goals and demonstrate the ROI of support."

Those interested in this presentation can find a copy of the slide deck on MetricNet's website. Mr. Rumburg also presented Session 205, "Radical Success: Managing Service and Support as a Business," on Wednesday, April 10, 2019. Additionally, he facilitated "Succeeding with Metrics," a new interactive, consultative HDI Training Workshop on Monday, April 8, 2019, and Tuesday, April 9, 2019.

Mr. Rumburg is the winner of the Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award, was named to HDI's Top 25 Thought Leaders list for three consecutive years and has served on HDI's Strategic Advisory Board. He is co-founder and managing partner of MetricNet LLC, where he is responsible for global strategy, product development and client engagement delivery. As a leading expert in benchmarking and re-engineering, Mr. Rumburg authored a best-selling book on benchmarking and has been retained as a benchmarking expert by such iconic companies as American Express, USAA, Coca Cola and Emory Healthcare.

For more information about benchmarking service and support functions, please visit http://www.metricnet.com or e-mail MetricNet at info(at)metricnet(dot)com.

About MetricNet

MetricNet is the global leader in IT service and support benchmarking. More than half of the FORTUNE 500 rely on MetricNet benchmarks to improve and optimize their performance. MetricNet is the first, and still the only, company to offer downloadable service desk and desktop support benchmarks from their website. With a global benchmarking database of nearly 4,000 IT service and support benchmarks, MetricNet has the most comprehensive database of process and performance metrics in the industry.

About HDI

For over 30 years, HDI has partnered with thousands of organizations to improve their customer service and service management performance by educating their people, elevating their processes and empowering their strategy. From C-level professionals to directors, managers and frontline staff, HDI is the definitive source of industry information, leadership and performance planning. Through events, certification and training, consulting, membership and industry resources, HDI aims to transform service and support organizations and reimagine their approach to delivering exceptional service and value. Learn more at www.ThinkHDI.com. HDI is organized by UBM, which in June 2018 combined with Informa PLC to become a leading B2B information services group and the largest B2B events organizer in the world.

To learn more and for the latest news and information, visit www.ubm.com and www.informa.com.

Related Images

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MetricNet Logo

SOURCE MetricNet LLC

Related Links

http://www.metricnet.com


"This agreement provides much more than renewable energy for Microsoft  it's an investment in new opportunities for communities in central Washington and the competitiveness of Washington state," said Shelley McKinley, general manager, Technology and Corporate Responsibility, Microsoft. "We're proud to be powering our Puget Sound operations in a way that reduces carbon emissions, supports the clean energy sector and supports efforts to expand connectivity. We look forward to working with Chelan PUD to achieve these goals."

Through the five-year power supply agreement, Microsoft will receive hydropower from Chelan PUD that meets the high bar for carbon-free and clean energy established in the direct access contract struck last year. It will also keep carbon-free power generated in Washington state within the state, delivering economic and environmental benefits for Chelan County, the greater Seattle area and the state.

The two organizations also signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on efforts to expand broadband service in the most challenging, most rural parts of Chelan County. Connectivity is a shared goal of the two organizations, as demonstrated by the PUD's success in currently providing broadband access to about three-quarters of the county, and Microsoft's Airband Initiative, which aims to bring broadband to three million people in rural America by 2022.

The power supply agreement directly enables this work, as revenues from the power sales will be used to fund hydropower reinvestment, broadband expansion and other benefits for Chelan County. Microsoft will bring technical assistance to this effort, supporting Chelan PUD's desire to expand technology access to remote parts of Chelan County.

"Today, innovative technology is pairing up with renewable hydropower to support our shared goals of a healthy environment and a strong, evolving economy," said General Manager Steve Wright, Chelan PUD. "The new partnership with Microsoft provides immediate economic value for Chelan County as well as long-term benefits in broadband connectivity. This deal displays hydropower's capability to support achieving 100% clean energy goals, while providing funding and access to expertise to help meet our objective of providing broadband access to 85% of county residents and hopefully more."

"This is an exciting day for the state of Washington and especially for residents of Chelan County," said Governor Jay Inslee. "This agreement between Microsoft and Chelan PUD is a perfect example of how Washington's renewable, reliable hydropower resources will continue to play a central role in driving innovation, supporting rural economic development and transitioning our economy to 100% clean energy."

Chelan County PUD has an all-renewable, carbon-free generation portfolio composed of more than 99% hydropower.

In addition, Microsoft is in the final stages of negotiating an additional renewable energy purchase agreement that would see the company contract for output of a new wind or solar resource in the state, expected to be sited and operational within the next five years.

No additional infrastructure is required in Chelan's service area to be able to send power from Chelan PUD to Microsoft. Chelan PUD will work with Powerex Corp., of Vancouver, B.C., which will provide real-time forecasting scheduling and transmission services to assist the PUD in transmitting its carbon-free power from Chelan County to Microsoft's headquarters.

About Chelan PUD

Chelan Public Utility District was created by a vote of the people in 1936 and delivered its first power in 1947. The PUD is governed by a locally elected five-member Board of Commissioners. The general manager uses the policies and guiding principles set by the commission to generate and deliver electricity from our three dams to utilities that serve customers across the Pacific Northwest as well as to more than 51,000 retail customers in the county. The PUD also provides water, sewer and wholesale telecommunications services.

About Microsoft

Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Its mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.
METUCHEN, N.J., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- MouthWatch, LLC a leader in innovative teledentistry solutions, digital case presentation tools and intraoral imaging devices, will be showcasing its all-in-one teledentistry platform, TeleDent 2.0 in booth #514 during the American Telemedicine Association Conference and Exhibition from April 14-16th in New Orleans.

Simulation of TeleDent's virtual communication and collaboration capability for care providers. Artist's rendition of TeleDent MobileOp showing optional equipment.

With recent research indicating that oral disease is linked to medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and certain types of cancer, dental and medical professionals need to collaborate in order to provide optimal care  especially in the case of medically-compromised patients.

According MouthWatch founder and CEO, Brant Herman, "Research regarding oral-systemic links and consumer awareness of these reports are changing the face of healthcare. Whether it's used for live consultation or in store and forward mode, TeleDent 2.0's cloud-based, open architecture makes it easier for secure, multi-disciplinary collaboration regardless of care provider location or EHR system. What's more, the MouthWatch intraoral camera, a component of TeleDent 2.0, can be integrated alone into existing telehealth platforms."

Here are just a few examples of how TeleDent 2.0 can be a catalyst for increased and improved dental-medical collaboration.

Co-Managed Patient Care: In this case, a dentist who diagnoses a medically-compromised patient with periodontal disease would alert the primary care physician or medical specialist to discuss the diagnosis, the treatment plan and co-management of the patient's health.

In this case, a dentist who diagnoses a medically-compromised patient with periodontal disease would alert the primary care physician or medical specialist to discuss the diagnosis, the treatment plan and co-management of the patient's health. ER Dental Triage: When a patient reports to the ER with dental trauma or an abscess, the ER team normally prescribes pain killers and antibiotics and releases the patient. A better alternative would be to use teledentistry to consult with an off-site dentist or oral surgeon to determine the immediate course of action and to schedule an appointment in a dental office.

When a patient reports to the ER with dental trauma or an abscess, the ER team normally prescribes pain killers and antibiotics and releases the patient. A better alternative would be to use teledentistry to consult with an off-site dentist or oral surgeon to determine the immediate course of action and to schedule an appointment in a dental office. School Oral Screenings: For many children, their only oral exam is conducted once a year by their school nurse. Caries is an example of an epidemic oral disease with dangerous health consequences. A live consultation, or store and forward sharing of intraoral photos, etc., with an off-site dentist can ensure that the child receives proper treatment in a dental office rather than falling through the cracks.

"We're continuously improving TeleDent to make collaboration and communication more efficient between internal dental teams and external care providers  including physicians, nurses and nurse practitioners," says Herman. "We look forward to demonstrating TeleDent 2.0 during the American Telemedicine Association Conference and Exhibition."

TeleDent 2.0 requires a MouthWatch intraoral camera for best results and can utilize virtually any Windows 10 tablet or laptop for local data collection and image capture. For more information about TeleDent 2.0, click here. (https://mouthwatch.co/TeleDent1sheet)

Special Note: During the ATA Annual Conference and Exposition, MouthWatch founder and CEO Brant Herman will be presenting a special session entitled. "Teledentistry: Trends, Challenges and Opportunities" on Tuesday, April 16th from 1:00 PM to 1:30 PM.

About MouthWatch LLC

Headquartered in Metuchen, New Jersey, MouthWatch, LLC is a leader in innovative teledentistry solutions, digital case presentation tools and intraoral imaging devices. The company is dedicated to finding new ways to constantly improve the dental health experience for both patient and provider. For more information, visit mouthwatch.com.

Media Contact:

Michael Ventriello

732-458-3497

[email protected]

SOURCE MouthWatch, LLC
STOCKHOLM, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ortoma has signed an exclusivity agreement under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a European company that has Chinese ownership interests. With the MoU, Ortoma undertakes not to initiate discussions or negotiations with other companies with headquarters in Asia until June 30, 2019. The agreement gives the counterparty the opportunity to continue evaluating Ortoma's technology and negotiating commercial terms with under a limited exclusivity.

At the beginning of the year, the companies evaluated the opportunities for collaboration to take the Ortoma Treatment Solution (OTS) to the market, not only in Asia but also in other parts of the world. The initial evaluation has been positive and the companies are now initiating in-depth evaluation of technology and commercial discussions.

Linus Bystrom, CEO, comments: "The initial discussions not only gave the potential partner the opportunity to evaluate OTS, but also gave us an understanding of the their vision for the future. We are impressed by their insights in the orthopedic market and their vision for continued development. The company has a strong focus on innovation and a unique solution for customized implants. To accurately position these implants with OTS would further strengthen them and us in the market. Our visions for the future correspond very well. They are constantly looking for innovations that are at the forefront and see opportunities to take OTS to a unique position for hip joint surgery and then develop it further into other areas."

Under MoU, Ortoma is free to continue discussions with companies that have headquarters outside Asia.

The Chinese market for orthopedic implants is young, and only about 20 hip implant surgeries per 100,000 inhabitants are carried out per year. The corresponding figure for Japan is about 60, and for Sweden about 350. In China, however, around 700 000 surgeries with hip and knee implants are already performed per year, and market growth is about 20%.

Ortoma Treatment Solution - careful planning and precise surgery.

Contact:

Ortomas CEO Linus Bystrom or Chairman of the board Gunnar Nemeth

mail: [email protected]

This information is such information as Ortoma AB (publ) is obliged to disclose in accordance with the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was provided through contact with the above contact person for publication on April 12th, 2019.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/ortoma/r/ortoma-signs-exclusivity-agreement,c2787550

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/11612/2787550/1025056.pdf Press release in PDF

SOURCE Ortoma
PHILADELPHIA, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania Society will award its coveted Gold Medal for Distinguished Achievement this December to University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann, PA Society President Robert J. Ciaruffoli Jr. announced today.

"The Council of the Pennsylvania Society unanimously selected Dr. Gutmann for her remarkable leadership in Pennsylvania, and her distinguished representation of Pennsylvania's ingenuity to the world," Ciaruffoli said.

Gutmann will receive the award at the Pennsylvania Society's 120th annual dinner in New York City Dec. 7. Tickets for the dinner can be purchased at pasociety.com.

Gutmann has been Penn's President since 2004. Her most recent contract extension will make her the longest-serving President in school history.

The University of Pennsylvania's academic, technology, healthcare and community enterprises all have grown under Dr. Gutmann's stewardship, making the university Pennsylvania's third-largest private employer, and the largest private employer in Philadelphia.

Dr. Gutmann has also focused her presidency on expanding access to the transformative powers of a Penn education. A first-generation, low-income college student herself, Dr. Gutmann has more than doubled the number of students from low-income, middle-income, and first-generation families attending Penn.

Dr. Gutmann also has continued her personal scholarship while leading Penn's vast enterprise; her 17th book is scheduled to be published this August.

Dr. Gutmann will be the 110th recipient of the Gold Medal. The Pennsylvania Society will donate $50,000 to a Pennsylvania charity of Dr. Gutmann's choice.

The Pennsylvania Society is a nonprofit, nonpartisan charitable organization that traces its roots to the 19th Century. The Society has more than 2,000 members.

Julien Scranton

[email protected]

215-233-2650

SOURCE The Pennsylvania Society

Related Links

http://pasociety.com


HARRISBURG, Pa., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Pennsylvania State Police announced today that troopers confiscated $14,190,683 worth of heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, and other prohibited drugs in the first quarter of 2019.

From January 1 through March 31, state police seized nearly 118 pounds of cocaine and 27 pounds of heroin. Troopers also confiscated more than 14 pounds of fentanyl. In its purest form, even a small amount of fentanyl can cause a severe and potentially deadly reaction, putting users, people close to them, and first responders at risk. The heroin and fentanyl have a combined street value of $956,460.

The Pennsylvania State Police remains an integral part of the Opioid Command Center, working to fight the heroin and opioid crisis as part of Governor Tom Wolf's disaster declaration. In April, the department marked the one-year anniversary of the Pennsylvania Overdose Information Network (ODIN).

ODIN is a centralized repository to track overdoses, naloxone administrations, and investigative drug information that allows police, public safety, and healthcare professionals to share all types of information related to opioid abuse in their communities. ODIN is now used by more than 1,300 agencies in all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, including 1,000 municipal police departments.

First Quarter Drug Seizure Totals Drug Total Seized Total Value of Amount Seized Cocaine 117.78 lbs. $2,120,040 Crack Cocaine 4.73 lbs. $212,850 Heroin 26.98 lbs. $728,460 Fentanyl 14.25 lbs. $228,000 LSD 506 doses $10,170 Marijuana THC  Liquid 29.89 pints $200,263 Marijuana THC  Solid 37.27 lbs. $186,350 Marijuana Plants 151 plants $24,915 Processed Marijuana 1,437 lbs. $4,311,060 Methamphetamines 68.40 lbs. $2,776,000 MDMA  Ecstasy 37.06 lbs. $1,226,840 MDMA  Pills 192 pills $2,880 Other Narcotics 687.99 lbs. $1,395,980 Other Narcotics (Pills) 30,667 pills $766,875

Total Value $14,190,683

For more information about the Pennsylvania State Police, visit www.psp.pa.gov.

MEDIA CONTACT: Ryan Tarkowski, 717-783-5556

SOURCE Pennsylvania State Police
SHANGHAI, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Held by CCPIT, Shanghai Sub-council and Shanghai Photographers' Association, organized by Shanghai International Exhibition Company, PHOTO & IMAGING SHANGHAI 2019 ("P&I SHANGHAI") will be held from July 10-13, 2019 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai). It is expected to gather 250 exhibitors from home and abroad with an exhibition scale of 25,000 square meters, and attract 50,000 trade buyers and visitors around the world.

As the leading imaging expo in China and Asia Pacific, under the theme of "image witness better life" in 2018, P&I SHANGHAI has grown into a one-stop platform displaying "professional video equipment, consumer photography equipment, photographic accessories, image output, post-production, and art framing" with its multifunctional roles of "product releases, exhibition displays, visitor experience, procurement and trade, cooperation and communication."

"Smartness + New Image Potential," Top brands to co-lead imaging future

In 2019, under the theme "Smartness + New Image Future," it will integrate "Smartness +" to product innovation, industry upgrades while focusing on new technology and multiple imaging and video carriers such as mobile internet - instant photography services, cloud storage for photography, as well as distribution and copyright trends. P&I SHANGHAI is devoted to open the new vision of the industry and spot new potential for development.

P&I SHANGHAI is committed to building a whole chain platform for the world-class "professional image input and output" industry. P&I SHANGHAI will provide a multi-level and comprehensive exhibition experience for visitors including trade buyers, photographers, photo studios and photography enthusiasts. Other concurrent events will be held to meet the various needs of visitors, including "Photography Display," "Photography Competition," "Photography Technique Lecture," and "Trade Fair."

China Wedding Expo will be held concurrently at NECC (Shanghai) with its four sub-exhibitions, Shanghai Wedding Theme Photography & Trip-shot Expo, Shanghai International Wedding Industry Trade Fair, Shanghai International Wedding Dress Makeup & Fashion Accessories Expo and Shanghai Wedding Photo Album, Frame & Consumable Material Expo. Another concurrent exhibition Shanghai International Baby Photo Expo 2019 and its many activities will be held at NECC (Shanghai).

Basic information:

Time: July 10-13, 2019

Exhibition Venue: National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai)

Address: No.333 Songze Avenue, Qingpu District, Shanghai (North Entrance)

No. 1888 Zhuguang Rd, Qingpu District, Shanghai (West Entrance)

Metro: Take Line 2 to East Xujing Station, Exit 4, 5, 6, (Near West Entrance)

Take Line 17 to East Zhuguang Road Station (Near North Entrance)

SOURCE Shanghai International Exhibition Co., Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.siec-ccpit.com


The rotating equipment repair market is expected to witness an increase in the demand for rotating equipment repair services from oil & gas and power generation industries. The report anticipates global market revenue to surpass the valuation of US$ 25 Bn by 2028 end.

Oil & Gas and Power Generation Applications to Account for over 55% of Total Market Value through 2028

Based on the type of equipment, the rotating equipment repair market has been segmented into pumps, centrifugal compressors, agitators & mixers, and turbines. Rotary equipment are used in numerous end-use industries such as oil & gas, power generation, mining, HVAC, water & wastewater treatment, general manufacturing and other industrial purposes. The growth of end-use industries is expected to boost the growth of the rotating equipment repair market during the forecast period.

Get PDF Brochure for Research Insights at: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/27712

The oil & gas industry has been growing at a healthy rate after the price downfall, and this growth is expected to create demand for high pressure pumps and other rotating equipment repair services for upstream, downstream and midstream operations. Furthermore, the ever-increasing demand for electricity from industries and the residential sector is expected to lay a strong base for the robust growth of the rotating equipment repair market during the forecast period. Both the industries will reportedly account for more than 55% share of the total market revenue by the end of projection period.

Repair, Refurnish, & Retrofit Continue to Witness Maximum Demand

On the basis of nature of service, the rotating equipment repair market has been segmented into condition monitoring & reliability services, reverse engineering & upgrade, repair, refurnish and retrofit, installation and commissioning and component & operating software upgrades. The repair, refurnish, and retrofit segment is expected to be a prominent segment in the global rotating equipment repair market and account for nearly a 37% share in the total absolute dollar opportunity created during the forecast period.

Request a TOC of Report: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/27712

Positive Outlook Forecast for South Asia, Europe, & Latin America

In 2018, South Asia registered a lucrative value share in the global rotating equipment repair market, which is anticipated grow at a healthy CAGR over the forecast period. The region is expected to register prominent growth in the rotating equipment repair market owing to increasing demand from power generation and manufacturing industries.

Latin America is projected to observe promising growth in the rotating equipment repair market during the forecast period. Furthermore, besides oil & gas industry, the growth of water & wastewater treatment industry  especially in Europe  is expected to supplement the growth of European rotating equipment repair market during the forecast period.

Request For Full Report Access: https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/checkout/27712

The Weir Group PLC, Flowserve Corporation, General Electric Company, Siemens AG, KSB SE & Co. KGaA, Ebara Corporation, Sulzer AG, John Wood Group PLC, Torishima Pump Mfg. Co., Ltd., MAN SE, Stork, Hydro Inc., Triple EEE, Amaru Giovanni S.R.L., Rainbow Mechanical Solutions LLC, De Pretto Industrie S.r.l., Maintenance Partners NV, CFATEC, TS&S, Basis Plant Services S.r.l., MEOS CO. LLC, S.T. Cotter Turbine Services, Inc. and Al-Rushaid Group are among the prominent players in the global rotating equipment repair market and are covered in depth, in the report

Browse Research Release at @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/market-research/rotating-equipment-repair-market.asp

Long-Term Outlook: The global rotating equipment repair market is projected to create a total absolute dollar opportunity worth US$ 9.4 Bn during the forecast period. The South Asia region is anticipated to register prominent growth in the rotating equipment repair market with a CAGR of 6.5% during the forecast period.

Browse More: Industrial Automation Research Report

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SOURCE Persistence Market Research Pvt. Ltd.
SHANGHAI, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Shanghai International Baby Photo Expo 2019 (Autumn), will take place from July 10-12, 2019 at the National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai). The show is expected to attract over 200 competitive exhibitors, including an increasing number of international brands, and 50,000 trade visitors, coming from 48 countries and regions, gathering at its 30,000 square meter exhibition space.

Held twice a year, the event is committed to building a global one-stop trading platform for the maternity, infant and children photography industry.

At the show, you will get inspired by the well-designed products, be immersed in the latest innovations and technologies, and meet your future business partners in the industry.

The event will showcase cutting-edge products and the latest trends in the industry, including baby- and family-themed photoshoots, baby photo clothes and accessories, maternity clothes and maternity photography, photo albums & frames, photographic and imaging output equipment, baby photography backdrop, etc.

The industry-leading event will also provide opportunities to build relationships and grow your business through various activities, including seminars, fashion shows and launch of new products and services. With the development of domestic and international industries, the event has seen rapid growth in recent years.

The event will be held concurrently with China Wedding Expo and Photo & Imaging Shanghai. We sincerely invite you to join us in July, 2019 in Shanghai!

Exhibition Venue: National Exhibition and Convention Center (Shanghai)

Address: No.333 Songze Avenue, Qingpu District, Shanghai (North Entrance)

No. 1888 Zhuguang Rd, Qingpu District, Shanghai (West Entrance)

Website: www.babyphotoexpo.com

SOURCE Shanghai International Exhibition Co., Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.siec-ccpit.com


NEW YORK, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- WeissLaw LLP is investigating possible breaches of fiduciary duty and other violations of law by the Board of Directors of AmeriGas Partners Inc. ("APU" or the "Company") (NYSE: APU) in connection with the proposed acquisition of the Company by UGI Corporation ("UGI) (NYSE: UGI). Under the terms of the agreement, shareholders of APU will be entitled to receive 0.50 shares of UGI and $7.63 in cash for each share of APU they own. This represents consideration of $33.29 per APU share, based on UGI's April 2 trading price.

If you own APU shares and wish to discuss this investigation or have any questions concerning this notice or your rights or interests, please contact:

Joshua Rubin, Esq.

WeissLaw LLP

1500 Broadway, 16th Floor

New York, NY 10036

(212) 682-3025

(888) 593-4771

[email protected]

Visit our website

http://www.weisslawllp.com/amerigas-partners-inc/

Or follow us on Twitter @MarketsAlert

WeissLaw is investigating whether APU's Board acted to maximize shareholder value prior to entering into the agreement. Notably, APU shares traded for $37.34, or $4.05 above the per share consideration, as recently as December. Additionally, the Company announced positive financial results in the first quarter. It reported adjusted EBITDA of $210.7 million, representing growth of $16.6 million year-over-year when compared to the $194.1 million reported in the same period of the previous year.

Given these facts, WeissLaw is concentrating its investigation on whether APU's Board conducted a fair process in agreeing to the proposed acquisition, whether the proposed acquisition undervalues the Company, and whether all material information related to the proposed acquisition is fully and fairly disclosed.

WeissLaw LLP has litigated hundreds of stockholder class and derivative actions for violations of corporate and fiduciary duties. We have recovered over a billion dollars for defrauded clients and obtained important corporate governance relief in many of these cases. If you have information or would like legal advice concerning possible corporate wrongdoing (including insider trading, waste of corporate assets, accounting fraud, or materially misleading information), consumer fraud (including false advertising, defective products, or other deceptive business practices), or anti-trust violations, please email us at [email protected].

SOURCE WeissLaw LLP

Related Links

http://weisslawllp.com


PANAMA CITY, Fla., April 11, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- As the Florida Panhandle marks six months after Michael made landfall as a devastating category 4 hurricane, Alley Cat Allies is continuing to offer its assistance and leadership to the recovery. The Alley Cat Allies Feline Frenzy on the Panhandle is making great progress in helping the community transform its ability to care for cats.

"As people are working to rebuild their lives, it's important to also remember that people consider their companion animals to be part of their family," said Becky Robinson, president and founder of Alley Cat Allies. "These animals are an important part of the community, so it's critical to ensure services are available to help them as the region rebuilds."

The goal of the Feline Frenzy is to help the community during its recovery by providing the foundation for sustained, long-term positive outcomes for cats. Feline Frenzy makes change through humane education, facilitating networking among animal groups and other key players, public outreach and no-cost veterinary services including spaying, neutering, vaccinating and microchipping that are being provided for cats throughout the Florida Panhandle. Many more cats will be helped because of the dramatic changes that are taking place.

After the first four of nine days in April for the Feline Frenzy, Alley Cat Allies and its partners at Operation Spay Bay in Panama City are well on their way to achieving the goal of helping 1,500 cats. Approximately 100 cats each day are being helped and for community cats, they are being returned to their habitat sporting their identification known as an "eartip." The Feline Frenzy campaign will continue in the Pensacola area in May.

People living in the Panhandle area can find details on how Feline Frenzy can benefit their cat at www.alleycat.org.

About Alley Cat Allies

Alley Cat Allies, headquartered in Bethesda, Md., is the global engine of change for cats. We protect and improve cats' lives through our innovative, cutting-edge programs. We are seen around the world as a champion for the humane treatment of all cats. Founded in 1990, today Alley Cat Allies has more than a half-million supporters and helps tens of thousands of individuals, communities and organizations save and improve the lives of millions of cats and kittens worldwide. Its website is www.alleycat.org, and Alley Cat Allies is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

SOURCE Alley Cat Allies

Related Links

http://www.alleycat.org


GOTHENBURG, Sweden, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The SKF Group's results for the first quarter will be published around 8:00 (CET) on 25 April 2019.

Investors, analysts and media are invited to join a conference call, which will be held in English, at 9:00 (CET).

To join the conference call, please dial-in at least 10 minutes before the start of the call:

International: +44(0)2071-928000

Sweden: +46(0)850692180

United States: +16315107495

The conference ID for the call is either SKF or 9198512

All information regarding the results will be made available on the Group's website: http://investors.skf.com/en/result-centre

Media: To book interviews with Alrik Danielson and Christian Johansson after the conference call, please contact Theo Kjellberg on [email protected] or +46-725-776576.

Aktiebolaget SKF

(publ)

For further information, please contact:

PRESS: Theo Kjellberg, Director, Press Relations

tel: +46-31-337-6576, mobile: +46-725-776576, e-mail: [email protected]

INVESTOR RELATIONS: Patrik Stenberg, Head of Investor Relations

Patrik Stenberg, +46-31-337-2104; +46-705-472-104; [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/skf/r/skf-to-publish-first-quarter-results-on-25-april,c2787540

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/637/2787540/1024787.pdf full release as pdf

SOURCE SKF
Understanding the utility of medical cannabis is increasingly of interest to older Canadians, especially its potential to displace less-desirable drugs for both pain and cognitive function. The appeal of Spectrum Cannabis, particularly with this demographic, is the simplification around strength and dosage by applying a colour-coded spectrum to categorize medical cannabis according to THC and CBD levels.

"This partnership with CARP, an organization dedicated to improving the lives of Canadians above the age of 45, will help to disseminate accurate information and quality products to a patient demographic that is highly engaged in learning more about how medical cannabis can improve their quality of life when conventional medicine just isn't enough," commented Mark Zekulin, President & Co-CEO, Canopy Growth.

"As this new therapeutic industry continues to blossom in Canada, inaccurate and misleading information can be very detrimental to patients' health and well-being, as is self-medication through the recreational system. Accordingly, Zoomers or Canadians that are 45+ are eager for knowledge and assistance regarding medical cannabis. After surveying the market carefully, we can confidently recommend the medical cannabis products offered by Spectrum Cannabis. Equally important, the company is not only devoted to the science based medical cannabis of today, but also does research & development into improved strains and delivery formats for the future," said CARP President and ZoomerMedia Founder, Moses Znaimer.

Spectrum Cannabis: Medical Cannabis. Simplified. TM

About CARP

CARP is Canada's largest advocacy association for Canadians As We Age. CARP has 320,000 members and a network of chapters across the country. Most CARP members also subscribe to Zoomer Magazine, watch ZoomerTelevision/VisionTV, and listen to Zoomer Radio (AM 740/96.7FM/ZoomerRadio.ca). For more information, please visit carp.ca.

About ZoomerMedia Limited (TSXV:ZUM)

Founded in 2008 by Moses Znaimer (Citytv, CP24, MuchMusic, Bravo! etc.), ZoomerMedia is Canada's only diversified multimedia company devoted to creating content, services and experiences for Canada's largest demographic - "Zoomers" or the 16.1 million Canadians aged 45plus - on all platforms: television, radio, print, digital, and live events. ZoomerMedia's television properties include VisionTV, Canada's only multi-faith specialty television service available in 9 million homes; ONETV: Get Fit, a 24-hour fitness and health channel with yoga and exercise programs viewers can do from home; JoyTV in Vancouver, Victoria, Surrey and the Fraser Valley; and FAITHTV, the Nation's Faith Station. ZoomerMedia's radio properties include The New Classical FM (96.3 FM in the Greater Toronto Area/103.1FM in Eastern Ontario/102.9FM in Southern Georgian Bay), English Canada's only commercial all-classical music radio service; and Zoomer Radio (AM740 and 96.7FM in Downtown Toronto), playing ZoomerHits - Music That Changed The World. ZoomerMedia also publishes ZOOMER Magazine, the largest paid circulation magazine in Canada for the mature market, everythingzoomer.com - Canada's leading provider of online content targeting the 45plus demographic, and On The Bay Magazine, a regional lifestyle magazine published quarterly for the 20 towns and villages of Southern Georgian Bay, Ontario. ZoomerMedia's tradeshow division operates The ZoomerShow in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada's largest annual lifestyle expos and consumer shows for the 45plus, and produces Moses Znaimer's ideaCity conference, the 3-day Toronto-based conference celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Both ZoomerMedia and CARP are located in The ZoomerPlex, a 2.6-acre state-of-the-art production and live event complex in Toronto's Liberty Village.

About Spectrum Cannabis

Spectrum Cannabis, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Canopy Growth, is dedicated to simplifying medical cannabis for patients and healthcare practitioners worldwide. Founded in Canada, Spectrum Cannabis operates in Australia, South America, Africa and across Europe. Spectrum Cannabis products are available in a wide range of potencies and formats designed to simplify the dialogue around strength and dosage by applying a colour-coded Spectrum to categorize medical cannabis according to THC and CBD levels. Its product lineup includes whole flower cannabis, oils and new innovations such as Softgels. Through product simplification, easy dosing formats, and ongoing education of healthcare professionals, Spectrum Cannabis is committed to improving the lives of medical cannabis patients around the globe.

About Canopy Growth

Canopy Growth is a world-leading diversified cannabis and hemp company, offering distinct brands and curated cannabis varieties in dried, oil and Softgel capsule forms. Canopy Growth offers medically approved vaporizers through the Company's subsidiary, Storz & Bickel GMbH & Co. KG. From product and process innovation to market execution, Canopy Growth is driven by a passion for leadership and a commitment to building a world-class cannabis company one product, site and country at a time. The Company has operations in over a dozen countries across five continents.

The Company is proudly dedicated to educating healthcare practitioners, conducting robust clinical research, and furthering the public's understanding of cannabis, and through its wholly owned subsidiary, Canopy Health Innovations ("Canopy Health"), has devoted millions of dollars toward cutting edge, commercializable research and IP development. Canopy Growth works with the Beckley Foundation and has launched Beckley Canopy Therapeutics to research and develop clinically validated cannabis-based medicines, with a strong focus on intellectual property protection. Canopy Growth acquired assets of leading hemp research company, ebbu, Inc. ("ebbu"). Intellectual Property ("IP") and R&D advancements achieved by ebbu's team apply directly to Canopy Growth's hemp and THC-rich cannabis genetic breeding program and its cannabis-infused beverage capabilities. Through partly owned subsidiary Canopy Rivers Corporation, the Company is providing resources and investment to new market entrants and building a portfolio of stable investments in the sector.

From our historic public listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange and New York Stock Exchange to our continued international expansion, pride in advancing shareholder value through leadership is engrained in all we do at Canopy Growth. Canopy Growth has established partnerships with leading sector names including cannabis icon Snoop Dogg, breeding legends DNA Genetics and Green House seeds, Battelle, the world's largest nonprofit research and development organization, and Fortune 500 alcohol leader Constellation Brands, to name but a few. Canopy Growth operates ten licensed cannabis production sites with over 4.3 million square feet of production capacity, including over one million square feet of GMP certified production space. The Company operates Tweed retail stores in Newfoundland and Manitoba and has entered into supply agreements with every Canadian province and territory. For more information visit www.canopygrowth.com.

Notice Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This news release 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. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements and information can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "estimates", "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 statements or information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Canopy Growth or its subsidiaries to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release. Examples of such statements include statements with respect to tailored educational initiatives. Risks, uncertainties and other factors involved with forward-looking information could cause actual events, results, performance, prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including discounted pricing, product availability and such risks contained in the Company's annual information form dated June 27, 2018 and filed with Canadian securities regulators available on the Company's issuer profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company believes that the assumptions and factors used in preparing the forward-looking information or forward-looking statements in this news release are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on such information and no assurance can be given that such events will occur in the disclosed time frames or at all. The forward-looking information and forward-looking statements included in this news release are made as of the date of this news release and the Company does not undertake an obligation to publicly update such forward-looking information or forward-looking information to reflect new information, subsequent events or otherwise unless required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Canopy Growth Corporation

Related Links

canopygrowth.com


HARRISBURG, Pa., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- A reception for the Creative Makers of the Pennsylvania Wilds Exhibit on March 27 provided an opportunity for state officials to celebrate rural creative makers and their impact on the Commonwealth's culture and economy. It was also a time to recognize the inclusion of the Wilds Cooperative of Pennsylvania as a model in the National Governors Association's 2019 "Rural Prosperity through the Arts & Creative Sector" report.

Displayed in the Pennsylvania Capitol East Wing Gallery, the exhibit featured members of the Wilds Cooperative of Pennsylvania, a network of artisans and businesses from the region known as the Pennsylvania Wilds. A project of the Pennsylvania Wilds Center for Entrepreneurship, Inc. (PA Wilds Center), the exhibit was supported financially by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA).

Karl Blischke, PCA executive director, said the exhibit "highlights numerous artisans and their skill and craft in making their authentic and genuine crafts." He applauded the PA Wilds Center's foresight in "recognizing the cultural and economic impact of Pennsylvania Wilds creative makers."

Blischke read a number of statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis's 2016 Arts and Cultural Production report to illustrate his point: the arts add $23 billion to the Commonwealth's economy, 175,000 jobs, and $11.2 billion in earned income.

Blischke pointed to the achievement of the Pennsylvania Wilds being cited in the National Governors Association's report, which is described as a new action guide that "offers research insights and lessons learned from states that are harnessing the power of the arts to drive rural prosperity." This was the second time in 2019 that the work of the PA Wilds Center was highlighted in a national study. In February, the Appalachian Regional Commission released its "Strengthening Economic Resilience in Appalachia" report, which looked at McKean County and the Pennsylvania Wilds as a case study "to understand how coal-impacted communities can transform and diversify their economies and build resilience against future economic shocks."

The PA Wilds Center is a nonprofit whose mission is to marry conservation and economic development in a way that inspires the region's rural communities. Many local partners are involved in the effort, including the Pennsylvania Departments of Conservation and Natural Resources and Community and Economic Development. Representatives from each agency spoke at the reception.

The Pennsylvania Wilds includes Cameron, northern Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Elk, Forest, Jefferson, Lycoming, McKean, Potter, Tioga and Warren counties.

SOURCE PA Wilds Center

Related Links

http://www.pawildscenter.org


TORONTO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ - The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc. ("Supreme Cannabis" or the "Company") (TSX: FIRE) (OTCQX: SPRWF) (FRA: 53S1) is pleased to announce the Company's participation at select capital markets conferences in April.

GMP Securities' Cannabis Conference, Toronto, ON

April 16, 2019: Navdeep Dhaliwal, Chief Executive Officer, to present to investors and attend 1-on-1 meetings.

Benzinga's Cannabis Capital Conference, Toronto, ON

April 17, 2019: Scott Walters, VP Corporate Development, to participate in a panel discussion: "LPs Navigate the Quickly-Changing Canadian Market"

April 18, 2019: Steve Chan, VP Investor Relations & Corporate Communications, to present to investors.

Jefferies' Cannabis Summit, New York, NY

April 17, 2019: Navdeep Dhaliwal, Chief Executive Officer, to attend 1-on-1 meetings.

About Supreme Cannabis

The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc., is a global diversified portfolio of distinct cannabis companies, products and brands. Since 2014, the Company has emerged as one of the world's fastest-growing, premium plant driven-lifestyle companies by effectively deploying capital, with an emphasis on disciplined growth and high-quality products.

Supreme Cannabis' portfolio includes 7ACRES, its wholly-owned subsidiary and multi-award-winning brand; Medigrow Lesotho, a cannabis oil producer located in southern Africa; and a brand partnership and licensing deal with Khalifa Kush Enterprises Canada.

Supreme trades as FIRE on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:FIRE), SPRWF on the OTC Exchange in the United States (OTCQX: SPRWF) and 53S1 on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (FRA: 53S1). Follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

We simply grow better.

SOURCE The Supreme Cannabis Company, Inc.
NEW YORK, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Sycamore Partners ("Sycamore"), a private equity firm based in New York specializing in consumer and retail investments, today announced that Rob Sweeney, formerly the Global Head of Consumer and Retail Investment Banking at Goldman Sachs, has been named President of the firm.

In his capacity as President, Mr. Sweeney will build upon Sycamore Partners' deep network of relationships with CEOs, Board members, and management teams of public and private consumer and retail companies.

During Mr. Sweeney's 22-year career at Goldman Sachs, he advised a range of consumer and retail clients including Applegate Farms, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Campbell's, Dollar General, Equinox, General Mills, IT Cosmetics, J. Crew, Lululemon, Target Corporation, Under Armour and Yum! Brands. As a trusted advisor to company founders and CEOs, Mr. Sweeney has led IPOs, sales and other transactions.

"We are thrilled to welcome Rob to Sycamore Partners in the newly created role of President, and we look forward to his immediate contributions as the firm continues to pursue its mission of partnering with management teams to improve the operating profitability and strategic value of their businesses," said Stefan Kaluzny, Managing Director of Sycamore Partners.

Mr. Sweeney said, "I have long admired Sycamore Partners and I look forward to applying my experience and relationships in the consumer and retail sectors to help identify future opportunities and to build on the firm's strong track record and reputation."

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Sweeney served as a submarine officer in the United States Navy. He is a trustee of the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation and previously served on the Board of Trustees of the Windward School. Mr. Sweeney earned a BS in 1989 and an MBA in 1997 from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded the Ford Fellowship and was designated a Palmer Scholar.

About Sycamore Partners

Sycamore Partners is a private equity firm based in New York. The firm specializes in consumer, distribution and retail-related investments and partners with management teams to improve the operating profitability and strategic value of their business. Sycamore has approximately $10 billion in assets under management. The firm's investment portfolio currently includes Belk, Coldwater Creek, CommerceHub, Hot Topic, MGF Sourcing, NBG Home, Pure Fishing, Staples, Inc., Staples United States Retail, Staples Canada, Talbots, The Limited and Torrid.

Contact:

Michael Freitag or Arielle Rothstein

Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher

(212) 355-4449

SOURCE Sycamore Partners
BUDAPEST, Hungary, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Investors have given a vote of confidence to another unicorn-to-be Hungarian start-up. Talentuno  a highly-disruptive, HR Tech firm - has reached an important milestone. In a Series A round led by Hiventures Ventures Fund Management Plc. and Bonitas Venture Capital Fund Management Ltd., the early-stage venture secured 4 million Euros of fresh equity capital. Besides accelerating the firm's geographic expansion  with Poland next in line -, the capital injection is aimed at further strengthening its cutting-edge technological and IT solutions.

The Hungarian early-stage venture will shake up the European recruitment industry. Through its innovative platform of Talentuno, users recommend their acquaintances for new jobs, and earn significant amounts of commission on successful recommendations. In this community recruitment model entirely created by Talentuno, anyone can become a so-called "MatchMaker"  a freelance recruiter. The Hungarian early-stage venture will be a cornerstone of the HR tech revolution with its business-model that significantly reduces time-to-hire and recruitment costs  and in the process democratising recruitment.

Talentuno was launched last September. The portal is rocketing in Hungary: more than 6,000 Matchmakers signed up so far, who recommended nearly 7,000 candidates. Nearly 1,500 application processes were managed and the ratio of successful placements is already higher than the industry benchmark. More than 100 companies already use the platform including well-known Fortune 500 companies, who have posted more than 500 positions on Talentuno.

Talentuno has paid commission to more than 100 MatchMakers already for successful recommendations, and hundreds of applications are currently in progress. For large companies, the average time of placement for a position ranges from 1.5 weeks to 3 months.

The success of Talentuno is based on 3 pillars: a truly international team, a highly-disruptive business model, and a deep and rapidly-growing HR market hungry for better solutions. The investment is used for speeding up and launching tech developments to enable Talentuno to offer more sophisticated solutions to users. After the local Hungarian market, Talentuno is targeting Poland. By December 2019 the goal is to have 20,000 Hungarian and 10,000 Polish MatchMakers  and more than 1,000 corporate clients across the region."

With immediate plans to launch Talentuno in Poland, management has also engaged in first discussions with London-based investors for its next round of c.15m Eur, which will fuel its UK expansion in 2020.

For further information please, contact: [email protected].

SOURCE Talentuno
CHICAGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (AAML), www.aaml.org, condemns the introduction of the Brunei revised penal code, which mandates the death penalty for offences including adultery and extramarital sexual relations and homosexual acts.

"The penal codes of states and countries should not criminalize sexual acts between consenting adults. The cruel and inhuman and degrading punishments contained in the Brunei legislation have no place in any modern legal system," said AAML President Peter Walzer, who is also founding partner of Los Angeles-area family law firm Walzer Melcher. "This legislation is an affront to international human rights. The AAML strongly condemns Brunei's penal code."

The AAML joins other international voices to urge the Brunei government to revisit this legislation and to remove these penalties from its laws.

The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers was founded in 1962 by highly regarded domestic relations attorneys. It provides leadership that promotes the highest degree of professionalism and excellence in the practice of family law. There are currently more than 1,600 fellows in 50 states.



The AAML reaffirms its support of efforts towards ensuring human dignity within all relationships, full equality of the LGBT community, ending domestic violence and strengthening and protecting marriage, families and the parent-child relationship.

For more information about AAML and to arrange an interview with Walzer, please contact Olivier Gibbons at [email protected]. He can also be reached at 212-300-5270.

Related Images

aaml-logo.jpg

AAML Logo

Logo of American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers

peter-walzer.jpg

Peter Walzer

American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers President

SOURCE American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers

Related Links

http://www.aaml.org


CHICAGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is pleased to announce that the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP) has selected the Ex Libris Alma library services platform, Primo discovery and delivery solution, and Leganto course resource list tool.

The UNCP vision is to create the university library of the future, one that blends a unified, integrated library system with powerful search technologies and a superior, affordable student experience. To this end, UNCP will use the Alma platform for managing library resources, the Primo solution for providing discovery and searching capabilities, and the Leganto tool to support the creation, dissemination, and use of course resource lists.

Through this combination of Ex Libris solutions, the university looks forward to maximizing the use of the library's collections, both physical and electronic; exposing students to the world of scholarly publications; and facilitating the compilation and management of course resource lists by faculty members.

Deploying a true enterprise solution, UNCP will integrate its systems with other campus systems, including purchasing, student accounts, and the learning management system. This integration will save UNCP time and money through the streamlining of processes at the university level. Furthermore, the Leganto resource list solution will draw attention to resources that the library owns and will enable each student to save hundreds of dollars on textbooks and other materials.

"Our library exists to empower our university community and provide access to critical resources supporting intellectual exploration," said Dennis Swanson, dean of the Livermore Library, UNCP. "Alma, Primo, and Leganto will give UNCP the agility and efficiency we need to continue carrying out our mission and be the library of the present and the future."

"Ex Libris is delighted to welcome the University of North Carolina at Pembroke to our Alma, Primo, and Leganto user communities," added Eric Hines, president of Ex Libris North America. "We look forward to the university's use of our higher-education platform to become a model library of the future."

About the University of North Carolina at Pembroke

The University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP) is a constituent institution of the University of North Carolina System. Founded in 1887 to train American Indian teachers in southeastern North Carolina, UNCP now proudly educates more than 7,100 students in 41 undergraduate and 17 graduate degree programs. Connect with us on social media or visit uncp.edu to find out how UNCP is Changing Lives Through Education.

About Ex Libris

Ex Libris, a ProQuest company, is a leading global provider of cloud-based solutions that enable institutions and their individual users to create, manage, and share knowledge. In close collaboration with its customers and the broader community, Ex Libris develops creative solutions that increase library productivity, maximize the impact of research activities, enhance teaching and learning, and drive student mobile engagement. Ex Libris serves over 7,500 customers in 90 countries. For more information, see our website and join us on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

SOURCE Ex Libris

Related Links

http://www.exlibrisgroup.com


Future residents, family members and associates are encouraged to visit the sales office, located in Newnan Crossing at 1053-A Bullsboro Drive to discover the difference in care, amenities and lifestyle offered at Watercrest Newnan. To schedule an evening or weekend appointment, contact Amy West, Community Relations Director, or Leisa Cawthon , Executive Director at 770-637-2207 or visit the sales office Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm.

"As part of our Watercrest Common Unity initiative, we look forward to fully engaging the Newnan community and cultivating partnerships which foster connection and enrichment opportunities for our residents, families and associates," says Marc Vorkapich, principal and CEO of Watercrest Senior Living Group.

Watercrest Newnan is a signature Watercrest product offering 75 assisted living and 32 memory care apartments with premium accommodations, resort-style amenities, and world-class care. Residents will enjoy pampering in elegant Spa W, savor private label Watercrest wines at the wine bistro, and relish the flavors of locally grown, seasonal ingredients and organic fare whether dining outdoors, bistro-style, or in the chef's private dining room.

The innovative design of Watercrest Newnan includes a stunning promenade, pool, fireplace, signature water wall, multiple dining venues, and children's play space. Watercrest's uniquely designed Market Street Plaza will showcase an 'outdoor' streetscape with salon and spa, bakery, post office, and numerous LifeBUILT programming touches; a highlight and crucial element of their multi-sensory memory care programming.

Watercrest Newnan is ideally situated on nine picturesque acres at 285 Summerlin Boulevard in Newnan, Georgia, southwest of Atlanta. Construction of the 92,000 square-foot community is on schedule by BL Harbert International, and operator, Watercrest Senior Living, will welcome residents this summer.

Watercrest Newnan is one of two joint venture development projects between Watercrest Senior Living Group and equity partner, Waypoint Residential. Their second project, Watercrest Fort Mill is currently under construction in Fort Mill, SC and scheduled to welcome residents in early 2020.

Waypoint Residential, LLC ("Waypoint") is a vertically integrated real estate investment firm specializing in rental housing. Waypoint acquires and develops conventional multifamily, student and senior housing properties throughout the United States. Visit www.waypointresidential.com.

Watercrest Senior Living Group was founded by Marc Vorkapich, CEO, and Joan Williams, CFO, to honor our mothers and fathers, aspiring to become a beacon for quality in senior living by surpassing standards of care, service and associate training. Watercrest communities are recognized for their luxury aesthetic, exceptional amenities, world-class care, and innovative memory care programming offering unparalleled service to seniors living with Alzheimer's and dementia.

A certified Great Place to Work, Watercrest Senior Living Group specializes in the development and operations of assisted living and memory care communities and the growth of servant leaders. Visit www.watercrestseniorliving.com.

SOURCE Watercrest Senior Living Group

Related Links

https://watercrestseniorliving.com


EXTON, Pa., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. (NYSE: WST), a global leader in innovative solutions for injectable drug administration, today announced the Company's recognition by the Philadelphia Business Journal as a 2019 Faces of Philanthropy award recipient. West received the honor for its ongoing support of Fox Chase Cancer Center during an awards breakfast on April 11, 2019.

Organized by the Philadelphia Business Journal, the Faces of Philanthropy awards recognize Philadelphia-based companies who, through philanthropic initiatives with a non-profit organization, have made a large impact on the Philadelphia community through monetary donations, social impact and community involvement.

"West's annual Fox Chase Campaign is a highlight of our West without Borders employee-led fundraising effort," said Annette Favorite, West's Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer. "We are extremely proud of our team members' ongoing commitment to Fox Chase Cancer Center, which helps this important institution advance their mission to prevail over cancer, and demonstrates the West commitment to giving back to the communities in which we live and work."

"Our partnership with West Pharmaceutical Services is more than professional; it is personal. This is because cancer is personal," said Richard I. Fisher, MD, President and CEO of Fox Chase Cancer Center. "The people of West have joined with us for many years to advance cancer research and care through their work as well as through their financial support. Their contributions are evident at every level of their organization; truly, philanthropy is a part of their culture. We congratulate everyone at West for this well-deserved honor as they are recognized for an undeniable commitment to philanthropy."

The Company's giving encompasses community support from corporate giving through West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.; the Herman O. West Foundation, an independently managed 501(c)(3) entity; and West without Borders, a team member-led giving program. Since the inception of West without Borders in 2004, team members at West's more than 27 sites have raised and donated millions of dollars for a variety of charities worldwide through this and other programs. West's recent annual Food Drive resulted in Exton team members donating 6,500 pounds of food, which was delivered to the Chester County Food Bank, and over 65,000 pounds of food donated to a variety of charities and food banks across the globe.

Additionally, West recently created an Employee Emergency Fund to assist West team members who are facing financial hardship as a result of a natural disaster or an unforeseen personal hardship. This new Fund kicked off with a global fundraising effort this year, and through company and team member giving, as well as a matching donation from the H.O. West Foundation, the over $350,000 raised is now supporting grants to West team members, helping in their greatest time of need.

Fox Chase Cancer Center, part of Temple University Health System, is committed to clinical excellence, research expertise, and community health. Their mission, to prevail over cancer, marshaling heart and mind in bold scientific discovery, pioneering prevention, and compassionate care, has earned them a National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation as one of the first comprehensive cancer centers in the country and one of only 49 in the nation to earn this full designation by the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training. For more information about Fox Chase Cancer Center visit www.foxchase.org.

About West

West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of packaging components and delivery systems for injectable drugs and healthcare products. Working by the side of its customers from concept to patient, West creates products that promote the efficiency, reliability and safety of the world's pharmaceutical drug supply. West is headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, and supports its customers from locations in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. West's 2017 net sales of $1.6 billion reflect the daily use of approximately 112 million of its components and devices, which are designed to improve the delivery of healthcare to patients around the world.

For more information about West and our commitment to Corporate Responsibility, please visit us online at www.westpharma.com.

West and the diamond logo and By your side for a healthier world are registered trademarks or trademarks of West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., in the United States and other jurisdictions.

West without Borders is not affiliated with Doctors Without Borders, which is a registered service mark of Bureau International de Medecins San Frontieres.

For more information about the Philadelphia Business Journal's 2019 Faces of Philanthropy Awards visit www.bizjournals.com/philadelphia.

Media Contact:

Eric Haman

Director, Global Corporate Communications

+1-610-594-3440

[email protected]

SOURCE West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.westpharma.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain and slider pioneer for 98 years, today announced it is offering the newly formulated Impossible Slider at all restaurants across the country. On April 12, 2018, White Castle became the first fast-food chain to offer the Impossible Slider, hailed as "one of the country's best fast-food burgers, period." One year later, the protein-packed slider made from plants is even juicier, beefier and tastier than before and is available for customers with all Cravings for just $1.99. White Castle has also begun experimenting with different flavor combinations to take the Impossible Slider to the next level.

White Castle's new Impossible Slider recipe is juicier, tastier and more Craveable than ever. Available at all restaurants across the country for $1.99.

White Castle and Impossible Foods, the company behind the Impossible Burger, first brought the Impossible Slider to Cravers one year ago when the slider made from plants was added to 140 White Castle menus in New York, New Jersey and Chicago. After exceeding projections and inciting a social media frenzy, the Impossible Slider was rolled out to all restaurants in September 2018.

"As a 98-year-old family-owned business, White Castle has a number of milestones that are very important to us," said Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle. "But the launch of the Impossible Slider is particularly special because of the immediate impact it had. Adding this burger made from plants has been a huge leap in establishing White Castle as a slider provider for all tastes and preferences."

The Impossible Slider's new recipe was unveiled at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, where the product won several awards including "Most Unexpected Product," "Most Impactful Product," and the show's most coveted "Best of the Best" award.

White Castle's Impossible Slider is now more delicious, more nutritious and more versatile than ever. The new recipe offers Cravers a source of high quality protein with even more taste that's nearly indistinguishable from traditional beef.

"Now that we've accomplished what many thought was impossible, we can't wait to see how customers respond to an even juicier, beefier and tastier version," said Richardson.

To celebrate the Impossible Slider's nationwide launch in 2018, White Castle and Impossible Foods teamed up with one of the most influential hip-hop groups of all time, the Wu-Tang Clan, to produce a four-part web series entitled, "Wu Tang in Space Eating Impossible Sliders." The series, available on Impossible Foods' website, features RZA, GZA and Ghostface Killah enjoying Impossible Sliders while answering fan-generated questions.

The series was recently selected as a finalist for the Tribeca Film Festival's Tribeca X Award, and will be screened along with the other finalists at the upcoming film festival in New York City.

To enjoy the new White Castle Impossible Slider at a restaurant near you, visit www.whitecastle.com.

About White Castle

White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain based in Columbus, Ohio, has been making Bold Moves as a family-owned business for more than 98 years. Cravers on-the-go can access sweet deals and place a pick-up order any time in the official White Castle app (iTunes App Store or Google Play) or in the frozen aisle at a grocery store near you. www.whitecastle.com

About Impossible Foods

Based in California's Silicon Valley, Impossible Foods makes delicious, nutritious meat and dairy products directly from plants  with a much smaller environmental footprint than meat from animals. The privately held company was founded in 2011 by Patrick O. Brown, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and a former Howard Hughes Medical Institution, investigator. Investors include Khosla Ventures, Bill Gates, Google Ventures, Horizons Ventures, UBS, Viking Global Investors, Temasek, Sailing Capital, and Open Philanthropy Project.

SOURCE White Castle

Related Links

http://www.whitecastle.com


Wuhan's Jiangxia District, known as China Guanggu, or China's "Optics Valley," has formed a health-centered industrial cluster of bio-pharmaceutical, diagnostic equipment, and drug manufacturers. The planned Guanggu Health Industrial Park will cover 98.1 square kilometers.

Compared with Wuhan Guanggu Bio-City, which brings in revenue in excess of 100 billion yuan, the park will focus on the research and development of cutting-edge technologies in the fields of life and health while incubating key healthcare enterprises.

The Health Industry Park is positioned as a "production-research interaction" space which integrates R&D and manufacturing activities in harmony. The park will partner with Guanggu Bio-City to facilitate active industrial collaboration.

Jiangxia District will offer a preferential policy support package to health industry enterprises interested in the area, which will include financial services and R&D incentives.

Zhang Li, Jiangxia District mayor, said that Optics Valley Nanda Health Industrial Park would provide preferential policies and financial support to enterprises interested in the area. The value of a single-item policy fund is over 100 million yuan, or around 15 million U.S. dollars.

The Wuhan Health Industry Development Plan specifies that Guanggu Nanda Health Industry Park intends to introduce 100 enterprises over the next 10 years in building a 100 billion yuan-level center of business. 50,000 employees are projected to participate in establishing the fifth national industrial park in Wuhan, reaching an important milestone for Wuhan's healthcare industry.

SOURCE Wuhan Jiangxia District Government
Earlier this week, Young Living Diamond members and executive staff, including Co-Founder and CEO Mary Young and President and COO Jared Turner, arrived in Seville for the company's annual Diamond Retreat. Young Living offered these top member-leaders the opportunity to experience the sights and sounds of Seville from above in hot air balloons.

During this retreat, Diamond members also toured Young Living's new Vida de Seville Partner Farm and Distillery in Almaden de la Plata, Seville, for a firsthand look at the roots Young Living is planting in Spain and around the world. In 2018, Vida de Seville joined the company as its newest partner farm. Young Living Essential Oils is focused on bold, world-changing goals, like the 55 Pledge. As part of this pledge, the company plans to launch five or more new corporate-owned or partner farmslike Vida de Sevilleeach year for the next five years.

Setting records is nothing new to Young Living. For 25 years, the company has led the industry by providing homes throughout the world with high-quality, pure essential oils. "From our Seed to Seal quality commitment to our 55 Pledge, our company is full of history-making moments," said Jared Turner, Young Living President and Chief Operating Officer. "What better way to kick off a record-setting year than with a record-setting event for our top leaders?"

Learn what it means to be a Young Living member by visiting YoungLiving.com.

About Young Living Essential Oils

Young Living Essential Oils, LC, based in Lehi, Utah, is the world leader in essential oils, offering the highest-quality oil-infused products available. Young Living takes its industry leadership seriously, setting the standard with its proprietary Seed to Seal quality commitment, which involves three critical pillars: Sourcing, Science, and Standards. These guiding principles help Young Living protect the planet and provide pure, authentic products that its members can feel confident about using and sharing with friends and family. Young Living's productswhich all come from corporate-owned farms, partner farms, and Seed to Seal-certified suppliersnot only support a healthy lifestyle but also provide opportunities for over 6 million global members to find a sense of purpose and whole-life wellness by aligning their work with their values and passions. For more information, visit YoungLiving.com, follow @younglivingeo on Twitter, or like us on Facebook.



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SOURCE Young Living Essential Oils

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New Delhi, April 11 : Calling BJP's manifesto as "Jumlafesto 2.0", Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi on Thursday attacked the Narendra Modi government for "failing to alleviate farm distress and generate jobs" as the country went to polls for the first phase.

"It will take 28 years to double farmers' incomes at this GDP growth rate. For farmers' income to double by 2022, it will have to grow by 12 per cent every year," Singhvi said in a statement commenting on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s promise to double farm incomes by 2022.

Listing down BJP's promises made in 2014 and in 2019, and stating how they were broken or were un-implementable, he said agriculture growth under the Modi government was abysmal at 2.9 per cent as against 4.2 per cent under the 10 years of UPA government.

After promising minimum support price (MSP) at 150 per cent of the cost of farm produce to farmers, the Modi government "shockingly" filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court on February 20, 2015, stating that it was not possible to pay that much MSP.

The BJP has repeated its promise of pension to farmers in 2019 as it failed to take steps on welfare measures of farmers above 60 years of age in the last five years despite making a promise in 2014, he said.

Further, PM Modi's farm insurance scheme for crop loss -- Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana -- only benefited the private insurance companies as they earned a profit of Rs 21,731 crore in the past four seasons, Singhvi said.

On economy and employment fronts, the Congress spokesperson said the government failed in carrying out banking reforms, encouraging household savings, reducing non-performing assets (NPAs) and creation of employment.

"Twenty-eight economic offenders like Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Vijay Mallya looted Indian banks of Rs 1 lakh crore and fled India under PM Modi's watch. Half of the public sector banks are under PCA framework, i.e. no new loans can be given," he said.

NPAs of scheduled commercial banks rose from Rs 2,51,054 crore as on March 31, 2014 to Rs 10,36,187 crore as on March 31, 2018 during the Modi government, he said, adding that experts are of the view that it will cross Rs 12 lakh crore by March 31, 2019.

Finally, Singhvi said the government failed to create 2 crore jobs per year and that there is no mention about employment generation in the 2019 manifesto. Citing the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), he said 4.7 crore jobs have been lost and that unemployment is at its highest in 45 years.

Three crore jobs of farm labourers have been lost, as per the NSSO, and 77 per cent of Indian workers will have vulnerable employment by 2019, according to the International Labour Organisation, he said.
Mumbai/New Delhi, April 11 : With its fleet size further shrinking to 14 aircraft, debt-ridden Jet Airways on Thursday suspended long-haul West-bound flight departures for one night and invited government scrutiny over the airline's regulatory compliance.

The development came after the once premier airline was left with only 14 aircraft from around 120 last year, triggering speculations over its survival as a lengthy stake sale process continued.

On Thursday, senior government officials said that they were closely monitoring the operational situation at Jet to ensure its compliance with overseas flying rules.

But by the end of the day, the airline itself cancelled long-haul West-bound international departures for one night.

According to airline insiders, only long-haul West-bound international departures have been called-off from Thursday night to Friday morning.

"Long-haul international departures have been called-off for one night. The situation is dynamic but majority of the current operations remain intact," an airline official told IANS in Mumbai.

Earlier in the day, official sources said that the airline was currently operating only about 14 aircraft -- down from 26 last week -- and this might lead to suspension of its international operations.

As per rules, an airline needs to have a minimum of 20 aircraft to be eligible to operate international flights.

Till recently, the airline operated 26 aircraft, including Airbus A330s, Boeing 777s, 737-800 and ATRs, to various destinations like London, Toronto, Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris, Bangkok and domestic sectors like Mumbai-Delhi, among others.

It apparently owns 16 out of these 26 aircraft.

In another development, some aircraft lessors on Thursday withdrew their de-registration request with the government.

If these aircraft came back to operation, aviation experts said that Jet could again have 21 aircraft in its fleet, the bare minimum required for overseas services.

On its part, the airline has cancelled operations to and from Singapore and its flights to Kolkata and the Northeast.

"#ADVISORY: @jetairways (9W) has suspended its services to and from Singapore until further notice. Passengers are advised to contact their booking agent or the airline directly (info@jetairways.com) for available options," the Changi Airport in Singapore tweeted.

Jet said in a statement: "Jet Airways' flight 9W 615 Mumbai to Kolkata and 9W 675 Kolkata to Guwahati of tomorrow April 12, 2019, has been cancelled due to operational reasons.

"Similarly, 9W 676 Dehradun to Kolkata via Guwahati has been cancelled on the same date until further notice. Guests have been duly informed and refunds are being processed. Jet Airways sincerely regrets inconvenience caused to its guests."

Jet Airways is in the midst of a severe liquidity crisis that has affected its operations and resulted in the grounding of several of its aircraft.

The latest development came a day after lenders of the debt-ridden airline tweaked the terms for stake sale and also extended the submission deadline for expression of interest (EoI) bids from prospective buyers.

At present, the airline owes over Rs 8,000 crore to a consortium of lenders led by the State Bank of India.

Last Tuesday, the airline was served a legal notice by a section of its pilots demanding payment of salaries, due since January 1, 2019, by April 14.

Subsequently, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vinay Dube said that the company is working with the lenders on the balance sheet restructuring plan and will inform the employees about the progress of the process by early next week.

Besides the employees, the airline's aircraft lessors too are upset with the current financial situation, with some of them requesting the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to de-register their aircraft leased to the company.

The de-registration request section on the DGCA's website on Thursday showed that lessors have applied to de-register 14 aircraft owing to unpaid dues. However, some lessors have also withdrawn their de-registration request.
New Delhi, April 11 : The Election Commission on Thursday issued notice to BSP chief Mayawati over her remarks exhorting the Muslim community to vote only for SP-BSP-RLD alliance candidates in Uttar Pradesh and said it violated the Model Code of Conduct.

The notice asked Mayawati to explain her stand about the remarks within 24 hours of the receipt of notice otherwise the Commission will take further decision.

The commission said that the Supreme Court has held that religion and caste cannot be used by anyone while making statement during electioneering or otherwise.

"The commission is prima facie of the opinion that you have violated the provisions of MCC and wilfully disobeyed order of the Supreme Court," the order said.

Mayawati had called upon the Muslim community during the first joint rally of Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Rashtriya Lok Dal at Deoband that they should not split their votes and vote for the alliance candidates to defeat the BJP. She had also said that Congress is not strong enough for a fight.
Gautam Buddh Nagar, April 11 : In the first phase of 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Gautam Buddh Nagar on Thursday saw enthusiastic polling with voters thronging polling booths since early morning.

An overall 60.15% voter turnout was recorded in Gautam Buddh Nagar, sources said.

Gautam Buddh Nagar parliamentary constituency comprises five assembly constituencies -- Noida, Dadri, Jewar, Sikandrabad and Khurja.

As per the data, the average voter turnout from Gautam Buddh Nagar was recorded at 62.7 per cent against 60.39 per cent in 2014.

The voting will decide the fate of 13 candidates.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Gautam Buddh Nagar had witnessed a turnout of 60 per cent, which was an improvement on the 2009 figure of 48 per cent, according to the statistics shared by the Election Commission.

The highest voter turnout of 68.4 per cent was recorded from Jewar area while Noida witnessed the lowest with 53.6 per cent.

The polling began at 7 a.m. and a brisk voting was recorded during the initial hours. It gained momentum during the evening with large number of people queuing up at polling booths.

Meanwhile, a few complaints of EVM malfunction and discrepancies in the voter list were reported from the constituency.

In some cases same ESIC number was found on multiple voter ID cards. Many families found their names missing from the voter list.

The Gautam Budh Nagar police booked a man for allegedly posting his pictures on social media purportedly showing the election candidate he was voting for, in violation of the poll guidelines, said a police officer.

The officer added that the man identified as Yug Sisodia, a resident of salarpur, posted a picture on his Facebook profile along with an Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) inside a booth.

Earlier in the day, a controversy erupted about food packets being written with 'Namo thali.' These plates were allegedly distributed among police officers on duty outside a polling station in Sector-15. The district administration later clarified that a Namo Food Pvt Ltd has its outlets all over India.

The company is registered with Registrar of companies in Pune and is functioning since 2010.

However, Uttar Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer has asked the GB Nagar district administration for its explanation on these food packets.
Washington, April 12 : US President Donald Trump said that it was possible for him to hold a third meeting with North Korea's top leader, Kim Jong-un.

Trump made the remarks on Thursday while addressing the media along with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting at the White House, Xinhua reported.

According to the full transcript provided by the White House, when asked by reporters if he plans to meet Kim for a third summit, Trump said that "it could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step."

"It's not a fast process; I've never said it would be. It's step by step," he said. "I enjoy the summits. I enjoy being with the Chairman. I think it's been very productive."

When asked if a three-way summit with Kim and Moon is also possible, Trump said "that could happen also."

For his part, Moon said that the personal diplomacy between Trump and Kim has brought "dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean Peninsula."

"Now peace has prevailed," he said. "Now we believe that you will be able to solve this problem through a dialogue."

Noting that "the Hanoi Summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement," Moon said that efforts need to be made so as to "maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook, regarding the third US-North Korea Summit, to the international community that this will be held in the near future."

After ending the summit in Vietnam's Hanoi on Feb. 28 without an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearising a "large portion" of the North Korea's nuclear programme, something the US could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, North Korea Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that North Korea only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the UN, said on Wednesday that for dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearisation and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronised steps as a package solution.
United Nations, April 12 : India has said that UN member countries should send more all-women units to peacekeeping operations instead of mixed units, as a sure means to increase female participation.

While the UN has set ambitious targets for increasing the number of women peacekeepers, the policy framework for this was being "diluted" to accommodate those countries that could not fulfil their commitments, a counsellor in India's UN Mission, Eenam Gambhir, told the Security Council on Thursday.

"If this is the approach, how can we possibly achieve the targets that we set for increasing women participation in peacekeeping.

"Instead of supporting a policy of mixed units, we believe that all-women units need to be incentivised to encourage greater participation... Priority should also be given to deploying from the pending pledges related to women peacekeepers," Gambhir added.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said: "A key priority is to increase the number of women in peacekeeping - both civilian and uniformed, which is where we need the most improvement. This is not just a question of numbers - but also of our effectiveness in fulfilling our mandates."

The targets for women's representation range from 15 per cent to 35 per cent by 2028 in various elements of the peacekeeping operations, he said.

Gambhir pledged at the Council's debate on women in peacekeeping that "India stands ready to make all efforts to fulfil these goals and strengthen both institutional capacities as well as international cooperation".

The first time the UN deployed an all-women peacekeeping unit was in 2007 when an Indian police unit made up of 105 women was stationed in Liberia.

As of February, there were only 42 women among the 6,453 Indian peacekeepers deployed in UN missions, according to the UN.

Gambhir said that India was sending a women's police unit to the UN Mission in South Sudan by the end of this year.

And by August, it was preparing to deploy a Female Engagement Team comprising 22 women officers and soldiers to the Rapidly Deployable Battalion in in the UN mission in Democratic Republic of Congo which is known by the French initials, MONUSCO.

The engagement teams operate at the frontlines of peackeeping operations, rather than in support or policing roles.

German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen, who presided over the session, said that women always broadened the skill-set of the missions and this diversity is strength.

She said that to increase the number of women in international peacekeeping missions, the effort has to start at the national level by getting more women into the national armed forces.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
New York, April 12 : Once hailed by the left as the champion of transparency and reviled by the right as a leaker of state secrets, Julian Assange is now trapped between them having played a role in the rise of a right-wing president and in the spread of hidden information embarrassing to the progressives.

As the founder of WikiLeaks, Assange, was among the first to demonstrate the tremendous power of the Internet and digital technology to pierce the secrecy of governments and impact politics and society.

The media fed off WikiLeaks data dump that he facilitated, even as it stayed a hands breadth away from legal complicity in obtaining the classified information for which others - and now Assange - paid the price.

Assange straddled the worlds of cyber activism and journalism as WikiLeaks is viewed as a media platform of which he had been the publisher.

Now the media is torn by his arrest, whether to defend him or to walk away, also has to calculate the impact on the profession.

Democratic Party Representative Tulsi Gabbard tweeted: "The arrest of Julian Assange is meant to send a message to all Americans and journalists: be quiet, behave, toe the line. Or you will pay the price."

A writer in the Columbia Journalism Review warned: "Going forward, journalists will need to be vigilant. Assange's case is specific, but the way the Justice Department responds to his arrest could have serious implications for all of us."

The American Civil Liberties Union also highlighted the threat to journalists. One of its project directors, Ben Wizner, said: "Any prosecution by the US of Assange for WikiLeaks' publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organisations."

So far, the US government has not charged him with espionage or aiding the enemy, which could directly involve the journalistic aspects of the leaks. He was charged in a federal court near Washington with only "conspiracy to commit computer intrusion" for allegedly helping the former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Elizabeth Manning crack passwords to ultra-secret computer networks that she used to get the information for him.

WikiLeaks and Assange became central to the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US elections and collusion with President Donald Trump that have dominated American politics since then.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated the allegations, found that Russia had meddled in the polls through the leak of embarrassing material about the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton, but he has absolved Trump of involvement.

This makes Assange less of a sympathetic character to the progressives and Democrats - and the media - because of Clinton's defeat.

Assange had first earned the wrath of the conservatives and the type of people forming Trump's base because of the government secrets he got from Manning, before she underwent sex-change and was then known as Bradley, in 2010. Of the more than 750,000 documents and other material she gave Assange in 2010, the most damaging to the US were videos of military action in Iraq involving civilians.

The Australian computer geek-turned-activist, Assange, shared them with media organisations producing hundreds of investigative stories around the world, not only on military affairs, but also diplomatic operations and internal political and economic affairs of many countries including India. These made enemies for him around the world.

But the trove of emails and documents purloined from Democratic party officials showing a bias in the party's leadership against Bernie Sanders, the leftist challenging Clinton, marked a turn of events. The disclosures led to the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other officials.

The upheaval that followed and the disenchantment of Sanders supporters is blamed for Clinton's defeat by President Donald Trump.

The Moscow's had was seen behind the leaks making Russia central to her defeat in the eyes of her supporters and Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate if Trump had colluded with Russians.

Although Assange denied he got them from the Russians, Mueller charged Russian hackers known as Guccifer 2.0 with the hack.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo exemplifies the dichotomy about Assange. On Thursday, he said about his arrest: "I don't have anything to say. There's a legal proceeding now."

But as the Central Intelligence Agency director in 2017, he called WikiLeaks "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia". He added that US intelligence had determined that the Russian military intelligence agency GRU had used WikiLeaks to release information it had gotten through hacks against the Democratic National Committee.

The WikiLeaks disclosures about India, mostly from US diplomatic cables going back several years, included material about contacts between politicians, public figures, journalists and civil society contacts with diplomats as well American diplomats' views of Indian developments right down to the microlevel of happenings in states.

Assange's accomplice in the court filings in the US, Manning was court martialed on 22 charges including aiding the enemy and was sentenced in 2013 to 35 years in a military prison. However, former President Barack Obama commuted to seven years before he left office and freed how.

But she is back in prison after a judge last month ordered her held indefinitely for refusing to testify before a court panel, known as a grand jury, investigating Assange and WikiLeaks.

Now in British custody, Assange like other fugitives such as Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, will try to fight the extradition to the US or Sweden using the British judicial system.

Trump, meanwhile, has refused to be drawn into a discussion of his arrest or role. "I don't really have an opinion. The Attorney General will be involved in that and he will make a decision," he said.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
New Delhi, April 12 : The Supreme Court on Friday in an interim order refused to stay the Electoral bonds scheme of the government and put up the matter for final disposal later.

The court said Electoral bonds will continue, and asked parties to submit details of donations to Election Commission by May 30.

The apex court was passing the order on the legality of the electoral bonds after completing hearing arguments of the Centre and petitioners earlier.

Petitioners have moved the court seeking either the stay on the scheme or some other transparent alternative for funding of political parties.
United Nations, April 12 : In the era of the fourth Industrial Revolution when automation looms, people's opportunities and well-being have to be re-examined, according to India's Deputy Permanent Representative K. Nagaraj Naidu.

"Anxiety about the impact of technology on the world of work is not new," he said on Thursday at a high-level meeting of the General Assembly to commemorate the centenary of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

While a large number of jobs could technically be automated, the ones where the automation technology is adopted will depend on a number of complex factors like labour protection policies, he said.

The other determining factors include the cost of labour, levels of education and skills required, legal frameworks for innovation, and the social and cultural norms that shape attitudes towards technological change, he said.

"The fourth Industrial Revolution characterised by its convergence of the physical, digital, and the biological worlds will add the dimension of unpredictability to the change factor," he said.

For a secure future of work with dignity, economic security and equality in a carbon-neutral digital age, the rights and the widening people's opportunities will need to be localized and re-examined, Naidu said.

The representative recalled that India was a founding member of the ILO - even before it became independent - and member of its governing council since 1922.

(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
New Delhi, April 12 : Seven out of every 10 individuals in India are vulnerable to data breach and privacy risks while disposing their old storage devices, according to a new report.

The residual data can easily fall into wrong hands, and can lead to identity thefts, financial frauds, personal security threats and user privacy issues, warned the report by Gurugram-headquartered data care expert Stellar Information Technology Pvt Ltd.

Businesses can be vulnerable to data theft and misuse of business-critical information like financial reports, trade agreements, intellectual property, business intelligence and trade secrets to name a few, said the "Stellar Second-Hand Electronic Device" study.

"This lack of awareness among customers at large can lead to an alarming rise in acts of cybercrime. It also underlines the acute importance of adoption of data sanitisation procedures by individuals and organisations as a safeguard at time of disposal of old IT assets," Manoj Dhingra, Co-founder and Director, Domestic Business, Stellar, said in a statement.

The study analysed over 300 used devices comprising hard drives, memory cards and mobile phones at Stellar's laboratory in the country.

The devices analysed in the study were procured from individuals, online portals and resellers across multiple locations.

The analysis revealed that 71 per cent of these devices contained personal data, personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive business information.

The study highlights the importance of using secure data wiping methods at the time of selling old storage devices.
Los Angeles, April 12 : Former US President Barack Obama paid tribute to the late rapper Nipsey Hussle.

"I'd never met Nipsey Hussle, but I'd heard some of his music through my daughters, and after his passing, I had the chance to learn more about his transformation and his community work," he said in a letter at his memorial service here.

"While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighbourhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets and despair, Nipsey saw potential. He saw hope. He saw a community that, even through its flaws, taught him to always keep going," Obama wrote in a letter.

The letter was read out by Hussle's friend Karen Civil during the public memorial service on Thursday, reported cnn.com.

Praising the "Double up" rapper, Obama said Hussle had lifted the "Eritrean-American community to set an example for young people to follow -- is a legacy worth of celebration".

"I hope his memory inspires more good work in Crenshaw and communities like it," he added.

Hussle was shot dead earlier this month while standing outside his store in South Los Angeles with two other men. He was 33.
Amaravati, April 12 : With about 77 per cent polling in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh, both the TDP and YSRCP on Friday exuded confidence of forming the next government in the state and winning a majority of Lok Sabha seats.

While the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) was confident of people giving it a massive mandate for another term, the main opposition YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) was equally sure of a landslide victory.

Violence and malfunctioning of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) marred the poll process on Thursday, resulting in the polling continuing in some booths till midnight.

The main contenders of power claimed that the high voting percentage will work in their favour. They also blamed each other for the violence that left two people dead and many injured.

Chief Minister and TDP President N. Chandrababu Naidu told party leaders during a video conference early on Friday that the polling trend made it clear that people were with the TDP.

He believes the enthusiasm shown by voters, especially women and the aged, was a clear indication of 'pro-incumbency'. Naidu said that TDP will win 130 seats in 175-member Assembly and will also bag 20-22 out of 25 Lok Sabha seats.

TDP leaders said the welfare schemes, especially pensions for the aged and widows and financial assistance provided to female self-help groups, would help them retain power.

The ruling party said despite the failure of the Election Commission in making proper arrangements for the polling and malfunctioning of a large number of EVMs, voters stood in long queues for hours to vote.

The YSRCP, on the other hand, claimed that the massive turnout reflected the strong anti-incumbency wave. It alleged that TDP tried to prevent high polling but people still came out in large numbers to exercise their franchise.

YSRCP President Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy told the media that going by the high polling percentage, the party was poised for a landslide win.

"Chandrababu has shown no grace in the retreat and tried his best to stall the voting percentage and levelled serious allegations against the Election Commission," he said.

YSRCP leaders say Jagan's state-wide 'padyatra' and the party's clear stand on the special category status for the state created positive vibes for the party and resulted in people in large numbers participating in the election process.

In 2014, the TDP won 102 Assembly seats while its then ally Bharatiya Janata Party bagged four seats. The YSRCP had won 67 seats.

In the Lok Sabha polls, the TDP-BJP combine won 17 seats (TDP 15, BJP 2) while YSRCP secured eight seats.

The difference of votes polled by TDP-BJP combine and YSRCP was just above 2 per cent in both the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls.
Mumbai, April 12 : Actor Shahid Kapoor and the team of "Kabir Singh" has completed the upcoming movie's shoot after days of filming in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Mumbai.

Actress Kiara Advani, who is playing the lead lady in the film, took to Instagram on Thursday to share pictures from the wrap-up party.

In one image, the team is seen cutting a cake on a beach.

The teaser of the film led to a Twitter storm, with fans and film fraternity members praising Shahid for his intense and rugged look.

On the character, Shahid on Thursday posted on Instagram: "As a star, one is so conditioned to showcasing oneself at one's best. But as an actor, one has to have the guts to show yourself at your worst. Kabir Singh in my blood. Hope you feel him too."

"Kabir Singh" is a remake of popular Telugu hit film "Arjun Reddy" that originally starred Vijay Deverakonda and Shalini Pandey.
Washington, April 12 : US President Donald Trump has announced he will visit Normandy, France, in June to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion.

Trump announced the trip on Thursday in a meeting with World War II veterans in the Oval Office, The Washington Post reported.

"I'll be there," he told a veteran who said he hoped the President would be present for the festivities in Normandy.

More than 9,000 Allied soldiers died or were wounded in the June 6, 1944 operation that marked a turning point in the war.

According to the Times of London, Trump is also expected to make a state visit to Britain around the same time.

"Downing Street officials have been in secret talks with their White House counterparts about the timing of the visit since late last year and are expected to make a joint announcement within days," the paper reported on Sunday.

The White House has not officially confirmed a potential visit and did not immediately respond to Trump's annoucement.
Krishnagiri : , April 12 (IANS) Tamil Nadu should be ruled by the people of Tamil Nadu and DMK President M.K. Stalin will become its next Chief Minister, Congress President Rahul Gandhi declared on Friday.

Addressing an election rally here, about 260 km from Chennai, Gandhi said: "Tamil Nadu should be ruled from Tamil Nadu. Stalin will be the Chief Minister."

The opposition parties in Tamil Nadu charge the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) with remote- controlling the AIADMK government in the state.

According to Gandhi, the state should not be ruled from Nagpur -- where the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's political mentor, is headquartered.

"We will not let the people of Tamil Nadu to be led by Nagpur," Gandhi said.

According to Gandhi, when the Congress comes to power at the centre, farmers will not be jailed for non-repayment of bank loans.

"It is not fair that rich businessmen are not jailed for non-repayment of bank loans while poor farmers go to jail for defaulting bank loans," Gandhi said.

"After 2019, no farmer will be put in jail for non-repayment of loan."

He said the Congress government will tell the farmers in advance the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other things so that they can plan their crops accordingly.

He promised the poor that Rs 72,000 per year will be paid into the bank account of women head of the poor family in the country under the Nyay scheme once the Congress comes to power.

"Once the money gets paid into the bank account, poor people will start consuming and the economy will kickstart again."

He said the textile industry in Tiruppur and the silk industry in Kancheepuram will start booming again after being affected by the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

According to him, the Congress, once if it comes to power, will fill up the 24 lakh vacant jobs in the government and 10 lakh job vacancies in Panchayats will be filled up.

Gandhi said the Congress will bring in reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha and state assemblies for women.

"Thirty-three percent of central government jobs will also be reserved for women," he added.

The Congress is fighting the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu as part of the DMK-led alliance.
Jammu, April 12 : Three civilians were injured on Friday in Pakistani shelling on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district.

Police said two girls, Shabina and Tasveer, and a youth identified as Muhammad Isaq were injured in the shelling in Chaprian village of Sawjian sector.

The injured persons have been shifted to a hospital, police said.

Indian and Pakistani armies traded heavy fire on the LoC on Friday in Poonch district, the Defence Ministry said.

"At about 8.30 a.m., Pakistan initiated unprovoked shelling using mortars and firing small arms along the LoC in Sawjian sector," Ministry spokesman Lt Col Devender Anand said.

The Indian Army retaliated "befittingly", he added.
Canberra, April 12 : WikiLeaks founder and Australian citizen Julian Assange, who was arrested in London on Thursday, will not be given any "special treatment" by his home country, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Friday.

Speaking to Australia's national broadcaster ABC News on Friday, Morrison said Assange "will get the same treatment as everybody else".

Assange, who's accused of one of the largest leaks of classified information in the US, was arrested and removed from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London on Thursday, where he had been living for nearly seven years after seeking asylum there.

He now faces potential extradition to the US, which has put in a request for him. The Justice Department announced a criminal charge against Assange, accusing him of conspiring with former American Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to hack into a classified US government computer.

He was also found guilty of skipping bail by a UK court.

"When Australians travel overseas and they find themselves in difficulties with the law, well, they face the judicial systems of those countries, it doesn't matter what particular crime it is they've alleged to have committed. That's the way the system works," Morrison told ABC.

"Assange will get the same support that any other Australian would ... he's not going to be given any special treatment."

Ecuador, which took Assange in when he was facing a Swedish rape investigation in 2012, said it was rescinding asylum because of his "discourteous and aggressive behaviour" and for violating the terms of his asylum.

Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson had said her client was "arrested not just for breach of bail conditions but also in relation to a US extradition request".

On Friday, she said the Australian government should do more to intervene in the case, according to SBS News.

"It is time for the Australian government to step up and do what it should have done in 2010 when we asked them to do the first time, which is to reach out to the US, our ally and ask this prosecution be closed.

"This is a matter of free speech. It is an Australian citizen who faces years, potentially decades or life in prison for having published material that the Walkley Awards gave him the most outstanding contribution to Australian journalism for."

She said the legal team will fight the extradition request "all the way", saying the move was a "dangerous precedent" and threat to free speech.

"This precedent if he is extradited means any media organisation, any journalist anywhere in the world, who publishes truthful information about the US could face extradition and prosecution there."
New Delhi, April 12 : Budget carrier IndiGo's Delhi-Mumbai flight had to perform a mid-air "turn back" manoeuvre due to excessive vibration from the aircraft's engine number two, industry insiders privy to the development said on Friday.

However, an airline official said that the aircraft had suffered a bird hit en-route from Delhi to Mumbai on Wednesday.

The A320 NEO aircraft operated by IndiGo has faced a series of problems earlier with engine vibration being one of them.

Industry sources said that at least 15 cases of mid-air engine problems have been reported in the A320 NEOs operated by IndiGo and GoAir since January.

Engine vibration resulting in mid-air turn backs has emerged as the most common and serious safety issue with the P&W engine powered NEOs of late.

The country's aviation regulator is said to be examining the incident.

Wednesday's incident comes days after the budget passenger carrier's Delhi-Istanbul flight had to be diverted to Kuwait.

The airline that time had said that an engine snag had hit its A320 NEO aircraft which was en-route from Delhi to Istanbul.
Lucknow, April 12 : Union Minister Maneka Gandhi on Friday kicked off a major controversy when she told Muslims in Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh to vote for her if they wanted jobs.

Addressing an election rally in Turab Khani village, she said that she would not give jobs to Muslims if they did not vote for her. She also said that she would not like it if she won without the support of Muslims.

"My feelings get hurt. If Muslims then come to me asking for work, then I will think let it be, how does it matter? Dil khatta hi jayega. After all, a job is a deal," she said, making it clear that Muslims should not expect jobs if they do not vote for her.

Gandhi further said that Muslim voters need to understand that it was a give and take relation.

"It is not that I will keep on giving without getting your support in return in elections. We are not children of Mahatma Gandhi," she said.

She further said: "I have already won the elections, but you will need me. This is your chance to lay the foundation. When the election comes and this booth throws up 100 votes or 50 votes, and then you come to me for work we will see...

"I don't see any divide, I see only pain, sadness and love. So it is up to you..."

She said: "You can ask anyone in Pilibhit about the kind of work I did there. If you feel I haven't done enough, you can decide not to vote for me."

Gandhi's three-minute speech went viral on social media and led to outrage for its blatant communal content.

The Congress has termed Gandhi's statement "scandalous".

Maneka Gandhi is contesting from Sultanpur, a seat won by her son Varun Gandhi in 2014. Varun Gandhi is contesting from his mother's seat Pilibhit.
Bhopal, April 12 : The Congress on Friday removed the party's RTI Cell president Ajay Dubey from his position for making controversial comments in the social media.

After ordering Dubey's removal from his post, state Congress Committee chief Chandra Prabhash Shekhar told reporters: "He has been posting anti-party and controversial content in his social media account for some time now. This is absolute indiscipline."
London, April 12 : A British woman who was arrested at an airport in Dubai for insulting her ex-husband's new wife by calling her a "horse" on Facebook has been released, said the campaign group which represents her.

Londoner Laleh Shahravesh, 55, was held after flying to the city to attend her ex-husband's funeral.

The case had been settled with a AED3,000 fine after a hearing, the BBC reported on Thursday, citing the Detained in Dubai group.

Shahravesh was facing up to two years in jail in Dubai and a fine of 50,000 pounds for the insult.

Under the cyber-crime laws in the United Arab Emirates, defamatory statements on social media can attract a fine or a jail term.

According to Detained in Dubai, Shahravesh was married to her ex-husband for 18 years, during which time she had stayed in the UAE for a few months.

While she returned to Britain with her daughter, her husband stayed back, and the couple got divorced.

When Shahravesh saw her ex-husband on Facebook with his new wife, she posted two comments in Farsi, including one that said: "I hope you go under the ground you idiot. Damn you. You left me for this horse."

Shahravesh was arrested when she went to Dubai to attend her former husband's funeral.

Shahravesh's ex-husband's new wife, who lives in Dubai, reported the comments, according to Detained in Dubai.

"We maintain that the case against Laleh should have been dismissed at the outset, and while we are pleased that her nightmare is over, her conviction on this absurd case sets a dangerous precedent," Radha Stirling, the Chief Executive of Detained in Dubai, was quoted as saying by the BBC.
April 12 : A film that has been backed up with a lot of anticipation and the director Selvaraghavan feels this will be one of the biggest blockbusters in Tamil cinema world. On April 12, 2019, they released the first single of the film and it has been titled as Thandalkaaran.

SR Prabhu took to Twitter to announce the great news and that has left Suriyas fans all frenzy.

The film has been produced by SR Prabhu along with Dream Warrior Pictures. Till date, this film will stand out to be the 36th film done by actor Suriya.

The film has a beautiful film cast that includes Suriya, Sai Pallavi and Rakul Preet Singh and this story revolves around a strong political atmosphere. The ladies hold the lead roles while Jagapathi Babu has taken the negative character slot.

Image Source: https://twitter.com/prabhu_sr

The people behind the screen are positive about its result. Suriya represents himself as an angry guy (the character name being Nandha Gopala Kumaran) and their teaser has let fans on their tip toes!

Movie experts anticipate that the song will shoot up the music charts quickly since their teaser wrapped up about more than 10 million views just on You Tube.

Apart from this, Suriya- the lead actor has Kaappaan and Suriya 38 up his sleeve and is currently busy with the shoot of both the films.
Bandar Seri Begawan, April 12 : Brunei has defended its move to implement Sharia law, saying it was "about prevention rather than punishment", after global condemnation of its decision to implement the strict Islamic code under which adultery and sex between men is punishable by stoning to death.

The kingdom said there would be a "high threshold" for evidence in these type of cases, suggesting punishment would be rare. The UN had called the punishments "cruel and inhuman".

In response to the UN criticism, Brunei's Foreign Minister Erywan Yusof in a statement on Thursday said that Sharia law "focuses more on prevention than punishment. Its aim is to educate, deter, rehabilitate and nurture rather than to punish", the BBC reported.

The statement also said that "Sharia does not criminalize based on sexual orientation or belief, including same-sex relations".

The criminalization of "adultery and sodomy is to safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage of individual Muslims, particularly women", according to the statement.

It said for the maximum punishments of amputation or death to be carried out in the case of certain crimes, at least two men of "high moral standing and piety" would have to bear witness.

"These men would have to live up to 'extremely high' standards, making it (extremely) difficult to find one in this day and age," it added.

UK Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt said on Thursday that he had spoken to the Bruneian Foreign Minister who had suggested that Sharia prosecutions were, in practice, "unlikely".

Under the second phase of Sharia law that was implemented on April 3, individuals accused of certain acts will be convicted if they confess or if there were witnesses present.

Offences such as rape, adultery, sodomy, robbery and insult or defamation of the Prophet Muhammad will carry the maximum penalty of death.

Lesbian sex carries a different penalty of 40 strokes of the cane and/or a maximum of 10 years in jail. The maximum punishment for theft is amputation.

The first phase of Sharia law was implemented in 2014.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Supreme Court on Friday restrained steel manufacturing giant Arcelor Mittal from acquiring Essar Steel India and ordered status quo on the March 8 order of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) approving Arcelor's bid for Essar.

The Arcelor's acquisition of Essar would have allowed Arcelor owner Lakshmi Mittal to begin its operations in the Indian steel market.

The tribunal had given its approval to the resolution plan offered by Arcelor Mittal for the acquisition of Essar Steel.

The Committee of Creditors (CoC), however, moved the apex court opposing higher payment to Standard Chartered Bank (SCB).

After the Friday's order, Arcelor Mittal cannot make payments to the lenders to buy Essar Steel.

A bench headed by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman directed the NCLT to expeditiously decide on appeals in the case.

As per the tribunal order, SCB was allotted only 1.7 per cent of its total admitted claims, while the financial creditors were recovering their claims close to 92 per cent.

The NCLT had directed that the distribution should be done on a pro-rata basis, and SCB should be awarded its share accordingly.

The apex court order is bound to delay Mittal's plan to buy the steel mill, which can produce 10 million metric tonne annually.

Post the acquisition, Arcelor will become the fourth-biggest player in the country. It plans to invest trillions of rupees in its infrastructure.

The NCLT had approved Arcelor's and Nippon Steel Corp offer to pay $6 billion to lenders and then invest about another $1.1 billion in the company.

The CoC opposed the NCLT decision asking a panel of lenders to consider higher payment to SCB, and contested the Tribunal's view that a substantial part of its Rs 35 billion ($505 million) dues would remain unpaid under Arcelor's plan. The CoC claimed that the distribution of money among the lender as per the plan is unfair.

The panel of lenders and the State Bank of India challenged the tribunal's direction in the top court.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Delhi High Court has dismissed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) seeking a ban on Kashmiri leaders Mehbooba Mufti, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah from participating in the Lok Sabha elections.

A division bench headed by Justice Ravindra Bhat asked petitioner and advocate Sanjjiiv Kkumar to approach the Election Commission.

Thereafter, the petitioner withdrew his plea.

The court on Thursday was hearing the petition which has sought a direction to the poll panel to ban the National Conference and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from taking part in the general elections as "the loyalties of the leaders of these parties lie elsewhere and not in the Indian Constitution".

The petition has also sought direction to book them on various charges including sedition.

In his plea, the petitioner said allowing these leaders to contest the elections would be a mockery of democracy as these people openly call for a division of "Mother India" on the basis of religion and are demanding two Prime Ministers -- one for Jammu and Kashmir and another for the rest of India.

The petitioner told the court that National Conference President Farooq Abdullah and his son Omar Abdullah's statements that they would demand revival of the post of Wazir-e-Azam and Sadar-e-Riyasat for Kashmir was unacceptable.

"Mehbooba Mufti, Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah's seditious, communal statements are against the Indian Constitution and hence the court/Election Commission should bar/impose conditions on their entry to a very constitutional House (Lok Sabha) as their loyalties lie somewhere else and not to the Indian Constitution," the plea said.
Thiruvananthapuram, April 12 : Congress President Rahul Gandhi, who arrives here on Monday night, will campaign across the state for two days, where he will also cover his constituency -Wayanad - on Wednesday.

Kerala goes to the polls on April 23 to elect 20 Lok Sabha members.

Releasing Gandhi's tour programme, the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee on Friday said he will arrive here on the night of April 15.

The following morning, he travels to Pathanapuram in Kollam district to address a party rally in the constituency where Kodikunnil Suresh, a former Union Minister and sitting member from the Mavelikera Lok Sabha constituency , is seeking re-election.

At 11.30 a.m. on Tuesday, Gandhi is scheduled to reach Pathanamthitta district - where the famed Sabarimala temple is located - to campaign for Anto Antony, who is seeking a hat-trick of victories from the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha constituency.

At 4 p.m., he will arrive in Alappuzha to campaign for Shanimol Usman, a former Mahila Congress Chairperson, from where he returns to the state capital to solicit votes for party candidate Shashi Tharoor.

Gandhi travels thereafter to Kannur in north Kerala, and the following day he will reache his constituency Wayanad.

His election campaign programme in Kerala concludes with a road show on Wednesday.

Of the total representation from Kerala in the outgoing Lok Sabha, the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) has 12 seats, while the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) has eight.

According to a few poll surveys, the UDF is expected to increase its tally to as many as 16 seats.
Kolkata, April 12 : Intensifying their protest against stray incidents of violence during and after elections in Cooch Behar, BJP leaders on Friday held a sit-in demonstration inside the chamber of West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), demanding deployment of central forces in all booths in the remaining phases of the Lok Sabha polls.

State Bharatiya Janata Party leaders initially commenced their protest demonstration in front of the CEO's office and later, they met CEO Aariz Aftab and squatted on the floor inside his chamber.

"You defer the elections, if you do not have adequate forces. Central forces must be deployed in all the booths," party leader Mukul Roy told Aftab during the protest.

Roy, who had jumped ship from the Trinamool to the BJP, demanded an order from Aftab's office regarding the deployment of central forces in all the polling booths by tonight. Otherwise he threatened to commence the protest in front of his house.

He had earlier said: "People's perception is that official of the CEO office have somehow or other been managed by local administration."

They alleged that a large number of voters including women were prevented from exercising their franchise by Trinamool Congress-backed miscreants, with the police remaining silent spectators.

They also accused the ruling party of rigging the north Bengal Lok Sabha seat during the first phase of polling in West Bengal on Thursday.

Sporadic incidents of violence were reported from the constituency in which an EVM was smashed and an opposition candidate was heckled and his car damaged.

The saffron party had urged the Election Commission to declare "all the polling booths in the state as super sensitive" and also to announce "Bengal a sensitive state".

However, there were no fatalities and nobody sustained any serious injury, with the special police observer describing polling as "peaceful and fair".

Cooch Behar's BJP candidate Nishit Pramanik held a protest in front of the District Magistrate's office on Thursday evening, demanding a re-poll in all the booths where central forces were not deployed.

Meanwhile, a delegation of the Left parties on Friday demanded a re-poll at 63 booths as they were captured, they alleged, by the Trinamool's goons.

"Sixty-three booths in Cooch Behar were captured by the Trinamool Congress goons and central forces were mostly deployed in Cooch Behar city which was not sensitive. Most sensitive booths were covered by the police personnel," All India Forward Bloc's leader Naren Chatterjee said after meeting the Election Commission officials.

"We demand re-poll in all 63 booths as the first phase election in the state was not free and fair," he said.
New Delhi, April 12 : A BJP delegation on Friday approached the Election Commission (EC) demanding re-polling in 297 booths in West Bengal's Cooch Behar Lok Sabha constituency that voted on Thursday in the first phase of polling.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delegation also urged the poll body to ensure deployment of central forces in all polling booths for free and fair elections.

The delegation, comprising Union Ministers Nirmala Sitharaman and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi and its media head Anil Baluni, submitted to the EC a memorandum, accusing the Trinamool Congress (TMC) of rigging during the first phase of polling.

"TMC goons prevented people from voting in West Bengal on Thursday. We demanded re-polling and stationing of two CAPF soldiers in every booth in the state," Naqvi told reporters.

Hitting out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, he said: "There were instances of rigging and booth capture... 'goondagardi' (hooliganism) was done by TMC's 'goondas' during the first phase of polling."

Cooch Behar's BJP candidate Nishit Pramanik had held a protest in front of the District Magistrate's office on Thursday evening, demanding a re-poll in all the booths where central forces were not deployed.
Dhaka, April 12 : At least eight people, including three children, were killed and 20 others injured when a passenger bus veered off the road and fell into a ditch in Bangladesh on Friday.

The accident took place in the country's Joypurhat district, 249 km northwest of Dhaka, in the afternoon, the Daily Star reported.

The bus fell into the ditch in Baniapara area on Bogur-Joypurhat highway after its driver lost control over the steering, said Masud Rana, a firefighter who was engaged in rescue operation at the spot.

The bus was heading towards Bogura from Joypurhat, he added.

District's police chief Rashidul Hasan confirmed the toll and said rescue operation was continuing.
Patna, April 12 : RJD chief Lalu Prasad's wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi on Friday made an emotional appeal to her elder son Tej Pratap Yadav to return home.

A day after voting for the first of the seven-phased Lok Sabha polls in Bihar, Rabri Devi, who is pained by Tej Pratap's decision to stay separately in the state capital, instead of living with the family, said in Hindi: "Bahut hua, laut aao beta" (Enough son, please return home).

Tej Pratap Yadav has not returned home since he visited his father Lalu Prasad in Ranchi last year, after filing a petition in court seeking divorce from his newly-wedded wife, family sources said. Tej Pratap Yadav got married in May last year to Aishwariya Rai, the daughter of a senior RJD leader.

Rabri Devi told media here that there is no truth in the reports of differences between her two sons Tej Pratap Yadav and Tejashwi Yadav.

"It is all a creation of vested interests," she said.

She said there have been attempts made to divide her family.

"Some people have been trying to instigate and mislead my son. It is possible that our rivals', BJP and JD-U, people may be behind it," Rabri said in a reference to Tej Pratap Yadav.

She also revealed that she telephoned her son daily to talk to him.

Tej Pratap has, however, repeatedly expressed his displeasure over younger brother Tejashwi's refusal to field a candidate of his choice from the Sheohar Lok Sabha constituency.

Rabri also expressed her serious concern about the absence of her husband, who has been undergoing treatment at a Ranchi hospital after being convicted in the fodder scam case.

"I miss Laluji...his absence is really painful. Without him everything is useless. Hope,he will come back soon," she said.
Amaravati, April 12 : A day after polling in Andhra Pradesh, which was marred by the malfunctioning of some EVMs, Chief Minister and TDP President N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday blasted the Election Commission for what he called "turning the elections into a big farce".

Declaring war on the poll panel, Naidu said its insistence on use of a non-reliable technology, refusal to count VVPAT slips, transfer of officials and its other moves at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised serious questions over its credibility.

At a news conference, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief said that he had never seen such an insensitive, irresponsible and useless Election Commission.

He said he was ready to go to any extent in his struggle to save democracy, which he said, was being endangered by relying on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) which can be manipulated.

Accusing the EC of bias, Naidu wondered why democracy should be at the mercy of machines.

Claiming that 35 per cent of the EVMs malfunctioned during the polling in the state on Thursday, Naidu said the voters had to suffer as some of them waited till the early hours of Friday to cast their votes.

"Polling at many booths started at 1 p.m. and ended at 6 p.m. Some people voted at 3.30 a.m. Do you have commitment towards the country. Do you care for democracy vote. The Election Commission should answer."

He took strong exception to Deputy Election Commissioner Umesh Sinha calling the EVM malfunctioning a small issue and said at one stage 4,600 EVMs were not functioning.

"Your own CEO (Chief Electoral Officer) could not vote. What about the common man. What do you say about this," Naidu asked.

The TDP leader also questioned the EC about the qualification and credibility of technicians it recruited to repair the EVMs. "Who are these people? How were they recruited. What is the guarantee that these people are not doing any manipulation in the EVMs," he asked.

Naidu said since the EVMs are 'manageable' and can be tampered with, 22 parties had urged the EC to revert to the system of paper ballot to bring transparency in the system. When the poll panel ruled this out, they demanded counting of all Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) slips.

The Chief Minister disputed the EC's claim that it will take six days to count VVPAT slips. "This can be done in six hours. I am ready to prove this. Remember, how long it was taking to count of ballot papers, maximum 24 hours."

The Supreme Court, while hearing a petition by these parties, had directed the EC on April 8 to increase the random matching of the VVPAT slips with the EVMs to five polling booths per Assembly segment, from one at present. The court, however, did not agree to the demand by the parties for matching at least 50 per cent of the VVPAT slips with the EVMs.

Naidu said he would visit Delhi on Saturday for filing a review petition in the Supreme Court for counting of at least 25 per cent of the VVPAT slips.

He slammed the EC for holding the elections in Andhra Pradesh in the first phase. "Last time, the elections were held in the last phase and this time in the first phase. What is the logic behind it. Did you have a jumbling system or a lottery system or did you consult the parties. What it indicates. You did it because, Modi wanted this," he said.

Naidu came down heavily on the poll panel for the transfer of officials including the Chief Secretary and alleged that it was all done to favour the YSR Congress Party. He reiterated that the EC shunted out the Kadapa Superintendent of Police as he was probing the murder of Y.S. Vivekananda Reddy, the uncle of YSRCP chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.

He pointed out that Vivekananda Reddy was murdered at home and the evidence on the crime was erased. "You did what the criminals wanted. Where will be the law and order," he asked alleging that the poll violence was pre-planned.

He also asked the EC why it failed to give to the state police the IP addresses of those who tried to delete 7 lakh votes under a conspiracy and alleged that the poll panel shielded the criminals.
Srinagar, April 12 : A Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) trooper was injured on Friday in a petrol bomb attack here.

Police said unidentified persons hurled the bomb at a CRPF bunker in Gojwara area of Srinagar's old city.

"One CRPF jawan sustained minor injuries and has been shifted to hospital," a police official said.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and the Civil Aviation Secretary are likely meet officials of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) ahead in the day to update the PMO about the situation in Jet Airways, informed sources said.

The move comes after Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu earlier in the day tweeted that he has directed the Secretary for Civil Aviation to review the issues concerning Jet Airways and take required steps to minimise passenger inconvenience.

The airline on Friday also announced the suspension of its international flights till the weekend.

The airline's decision to halt West-bound flights came after it was left with only 14 aircraft from around 120 last year, triggering speculations over its survival as a lengthy stake sale process continued.

The deadline for submission of Expression of Interest (EoI) for Jet Airways ends on Friday.
New Delhi, April 12 : The long-drawn resolution process of Essar Steel has hit yet another roadblock with the Supreme Court on Friday stopping ArcelorMittal from making payment to lenders to buy the insolvent steel entity, thereby stretching billionaire Lakshmi Mittal's wait to have a foothold in his home country.

World's largest steel maker emerged as the successful resolution applicant for Essar Steel following its Rs 42,000-crore bid. But the going has not been smooth ever since July 2017 when Essar Steel was referred to bankruptcy court. The resolution continues to face several challenges in the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT).

The Supreme Court's two-judge bench headed by Justice Rohinton F. Nariman on Friday ordered that status quo be maintained regarding Arcelor's plan to buy Essar Steel. The court also directed the NCLAT to expeditiously decide on appeals in the case.

The NCLAT on Tuesday asked the NRI billionaire Mittal-led firm to be ready for upfront payment of the promised amount without any further procrastination. It also hinted that it might ask ArcelorMittal to deposit the money with an escrow account of either the insolvency court (NCLT) or the appellate tribunal itself in the next hearing, scheduled on April 23.

But with Friday's apex court's order, the NCLAT would first have to dispose of all the appeals related to Essar Steel resolution before it could ask ArcelorMittal to pay the bid amount to lenders.

One of the challenges to Essar Steel resolution is coming from Standard Chartered Bank that last month moved the NCLAT against insufficient payout of its dues.

Under the Essar Steel resolution, StanChart gets only 1.7 per cent of its total dues to the insolvent steel maker, while other financial creditors, which are part of the CoC, are receiving over 85 per cent of their dues.

The State Bank of India (SBI) has also opposed NCLAT's recommendation to give StanChart a higher amount than what lenders had agreed to earlier. It has said that the private bank is not a secured creditor and thus not eligible to make any additional claim.

ArcelorMittal's resolution proposal provides financial creditors Rs 41,987 crore out of their total dues of Rs 49,395 crore. Operational creditors, under the plan, would get just Rs 214 crore against the outstanding of Rs 4,976 crore.

Hearing multiple petitions filed by operational creditors, the Gujarat state tax department and others, the NCLAT bench on Tuesday also directed the financial and operational creditors to Essar Steel to file within a week a one-page affidavit each giving details of their claims admitted by resolution professional and those approved by the CoC. It also asked the Gujarat tax department to file an affidavit over its claims.
Gardez : , April 12 (IANS) At least four Haqqani militants were killed in an airstrike in Afghanistan's Paktia province on Friday, officials said.

"Based on a confirmed tip-off, the airstrike was launched on outskirts of provincial capital Gardez on Friday morning. The sortie killed four militants of Haqqani terrorist group," according to a statement issued by the provincial government.

Security forces and civilians did'nt suffer any damage in the strike which was launched by the NATO-led coalition forces in coordination with Afghan security forces, the statement was cited as saying by Xinhua news agency.

A number of heavy and light weapons and ammunition were also destroyed in the raid.

Haqqani network, a Taliban-linked militant group, mostly operates in eastern provinces and capital Kabul and has been responsible for high-profile attacks on security forces.

The network, which was named as a terrorist group by the US in 2012, was yet to comment on the incident.

The Afghan security forces, backed by the NATO-led coalition troops, have increased ground and air offensives against militants within the past a few months as the fighting season is drawing near in the country.

Earlier in the day, the Taliban militant group announced the launch of a yearly rebel offensive against Afghan and coalition forces codenamed al-Fath.
Chandigarh, April 12 : Several people, including police personnel, were injured on Friday in a violent clash between students and the Haryana Police in Karnal town of Haryana, nearly 130 km from here.

Agitated students of the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) pelted the police with stones and bricks after a student was run over by a Haryana Roadways bus and killed.

The clash took place when the police tried to disperse the agitating students who were trying to block National Highway No. 44. Police resorted to cane charge and used teargas to disperse the protesters.

Police said that nearly 40 people, including 30 police personnel, were injured in the clash. The injured were taken to nearby hospitals.

The police chased students inside the ITI campus also. Nearly 100 students were rounded up following the protests.

The students started the the protest after a students of the ITI, Ankit, was killed after being crushed under a Haryana Roadways bus on Thursday evening.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) on Friday hailed the interim order of the Supreme Court on the electoral bond scheme, saying the court has "clearly stated (that) transparency is the basic principle of electoral funding".

A CPI-M statement said it noted "positively the interim order passed by the Supreme Court on the electoral bond scheme initiated by the Modi government".

It said the changes in the law which was rushed without a proper and comprehensive discussion in Parliament was aimed at removing the limits of corporate funding of political parties, particularly at the time of elections, while making it completely anonymous.

"The changes would have made the entire system prone to crony capitalism with a clear basis for quid pro quo with the ruling party," it added.

The government was opposed to making the funding transparent. The Attorney General told the Supreme Court: "It is not voters' concern to know where the money comes from. Transparency cannot be looked as a mantra of the country."

The CPI-M statement said: "Today's interim judgment has brought in some degree of accountability by making it mandatory for the political parties to place their collection from electoral bonds and the details thereof to the Election Commission by May 30.

"The interim order promised that the seriousness of the issue and its bearing on the very nature of our democracy warrants more in-depth examination.

"The court has clearly stated that transparency is the basic principle of electoral funding. People have the right to know which party has received how much and from whom."

The CPI-M said it was happy that the legal battle, in which it itself is a petitioner, "has yielded some positive result as of now" to make electoral funding completely transparent and free of corporate influence towards breaking the corporate-ruling party nexus.
New Delhi, April 12 : "I could hear shots being fired from my house near Jallianwala Bagh. I rushed there and saw heaps of bodies lying on top of each other. I sorted through them until I found my husband". Thus goes Ratan Devi's account, just one of the many hundreds who lost their loved ones in a heart-wrenching tragedy that still resonates a century down Indias timeline.

Housed in Delhi's Red Fort complex, the newly-opened Yaad-e-Jallian' museum remembers one of the most brutal injustices suffered by Indians at the hands of the British colonial rulers.

As one makes their way inside the museum, the reconstruction of events before, during and after the fateful day of April 13, 1919, chills one to the bone.

They hark back to the day when troops of the British Indian Army led by General Reginald Dyer caused mayhem by opening firing on an unsuspecting crowd of about 20,000 people - mostly Sikhs - for twenty minutes, causing many deaths and casualties. To this day, the Sikh holy city of Amritsar nurses its wounds.

For anyone even remotely connected to India, the massacre is not just registered in history, but also in their minds.

What one would recall from these oft-told tales is a water-filled well that people jumped into to escape the flying bullets, only to die within it. To commemorate that, the museum's curators have create a life-sized well that visitors see right when they enter, with the song "Aao Bachchon Tumhe Dikhaye" from the film "Jagriti" playing in the background.

A major attraction is the four sided flame-shaped obelisk in a room on whose walls are etched the names of those who died in the firing.

The museum, rich with information on the massacre, informs: "General Dyer had been summoned to Amritsar and the city was handed over to him to maintain law and order. He had put a ban on public meetings and gatherings but unaware of his proclamations, people were as usual gathering at Jallianwala Bagh to celebrate Baisakhi and to peacefully protest against the arrest of their leaders (Dr Satyapal and Dr Kitchlew)".

Thus, the sound of his armoured cars and the troops marching to the Bagh were lost amidst the cacophony of the celebrations. The sudden firing, with no warning, caused mass panic, leaving people helpless.

Punjab's Lt. Governor that time, Michael O'Dwyer, is widely cited as an endorser of the firing.

"Speaking with perhaps a more intimate knowledge of the then-situation that anyone else, I have no hesitation in saying that General Dyer's action that day was the decisive factor in crushing the rebellion," the museum quotes "a shameless O'Dwyer" as having said.

A panel also mentions a seven-member Hunter Committee that was established "under public pressure" by the British government to inquire into the events. A few steps down, a series of questions asked to Dyer by the committee, and his answers find space.

"When you got into the Jallianwala Bagh, what did you do?"

"I opened fire," said an unapologetic Dyer.

In its report, the Hunter Committee said that Dyer's conduct rested upon an "honest but mistaken conception of duty", while an Indian report called the slaughter "a calculated piece of inhumanity towards utterly innocent and unarmed men".

One of the end panels of the museum, curated by leading experimental marketing agency Tagbin and established by Archeological Survey of India, mentions revolutionary Udham Singh, who assassinated O'Dwyer 21 years after the 1919 massacre.

"I did it because I had a grudge against him. He deserved it. What greater honour could be bestowed on me than death for the sake of my motherland," were his last words before he was sentenced to death for murder.

Hosting a portion of Amritsar's historical struggle in Delhi, 'Yaad-e-Jallian' is a must-visit on the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

(Siddhi Jain can be contacted at siddhi.j@ians.in)
New Delhi, April 12 : The Delhi High Court on Friday asked the Centre to file its response on a plea by two former Army officials seeking to de-classify all official documents pertaining to the "Samba Spy" case. Justice Vibhu Bhakru also asked the Indian Army to file a reply on the plea and listed the matter for September 3.

The court was hearing a petition filed by former Captains Ashok Kumar Rana of 7 Jat Regiment and Ranbir Singh Rathaur of 11 Garhwal Rifles through their counsel Pranav Sachdeva.

The "Samba Spy" case dates back to 1975-1977 when two self-confessed spies Swaran Dass and Aya Singh, working as gunners in the artillery regiment of the Army, falsely named Captain Rana and Captain Rathaur as their accomplices.

The two officers were arrested and based on their statements at least 40 other Army men were implicated and summarily dismissed for allegedly spying for Pakistan during their posting in Samba sector of Jammu.

In 1979, Captain Rana and Captain Rathaur too were convicted by the General Court Martial and sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment for committing offences under the Army Act and the Official Secrets Act.

However, later it was found that their statements were taken under duress and torture. In 2000, the Delhi High Court described the case a gross miscarriage of justice.

The petitioners told the court that their fundamental rights were grievously violated as the government branded them Pakistani spies without sharing with them documents related to the case and which still remain "classified".

"The documents were not shown to the petitioners as that would have exposed the falsity and malafide behind the whole series of Samba cases thereby helping them establish their innocence," the petition said.

They have sought directions to the government to de-classify and put in public domain all the documents, as more than 40 years have elapsed and no claim of national security can now be raised as all court cases have also ended.

"In all the major democracies around the world including United State of America as well as several European countries, official documents have a fixed duration of classification and must be mandatorily declassified after a specified time or a specified event," the plea said.

The petitioners have also cited statements by former Intelligence Bureau Director T.V. Rajeswar and former Intelligence Bureau Deputy Director V.K. Kaul that the "Samba Spy" case was entirely fabricated and false.
Washington, April 12 : Gregory Craig, who was White House counsel under President Barack Obama, has been indicted on charges of lying and hiding information related to his work for Ukraine.

Craig, 74, was indicted by a grand jury in Washington on Thursday following an investigation that grew out of US special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He has denied any wrongdoing, the US media reported.

Craig faces up to five years in prison for each of the two counts. He is the first prominent Democrat to face criminal prosecution as a result of Mueller's probe, which led to the conviction of President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort for a series of financial crimes.

Craig was charged with giving false information during an October 19, 2017, interview with the special counsel's office which regulates work in the US by lobbyists, lawyers and other representatives of foreigners under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), according to CNBC.

He is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his work on a 2012 report aimed at justifying the prosecution of a political enemy of Ukraine's pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych, who was later ousted. Craig's lawyers declined to comment.

He was also charged with concealing details of his work from the same officials.

Craig's attorneys said that the charges were unfair and that prosecutors had chosen to omit evidence that was favourable to him. "Craig had no interest in misleading the FARA unit because he had not done anything that required his registration," they said.

"That is what this trial will be all about."

Craig worked in 2012 for Ukraine's Ministry of Justice while he was a partner at the prestigious law firm Skadden Arps. Manafort, meanwhile worked as a consultant to Yanukovych.

Prosecutors said on Thursday that, if convicted, Craig could also be fined up to $100,000 and $250,000 for the respective charges.
Aizawl, April 12 : Though outnumbered by women in Mizoram's electoral lists for the past many decades, 1.07 per cent more men cast their votes than women in Thursday's Lok Sabha polls in the northeastern state, a top official said on Friday.

Besides the election to the lone Lok Sabha seat, the bypoll for the Aizawl West-1 Assembly seat was also held on Thursday. The bypoll was necessitated after Zoram People's Movement's (ZPM) legislator Lalduhoma vacated it to retain his Serchhip constituency.

According to Chief Electoral Officer Ashish Kundra, 63.08 per cent of the 7,87,777 electorate cast their votes for the lone Lok Sabha seat in Mizoram, bordering Myanmar and Bangladesh. "In all, 63.60 per cent male and 62.53 per cent female voters cast their votes," he said.

Kundra said that the state's 4,04,169 women voters again outnumbered its 3,83,602 men voters. There were six third gender voters.

This was also the first time that a woman -- Independent candidate Lalthlamuani -- joined the race with five others to represent Mizoram in the lower house of Parliament. The state has seen only two women Ministers in the past 32 years -- in 1987 and 2014.

The CEO said that young voters in the 18-40 years age group, who constitute around 64 per cent of the total 787,777 electorate, dominate Mizoram's electoral politics.

With a population of 1,091,014 (according to the 2011 census), Mizoram is a closely knit society with a Christian majority (87 per cent).
Lucknow, April 12 : His website claims he is "the artist, the engineer, the designer, the sculptor, the architect, the academician".

It says he has executed more than 750 projects and most of them are "landmarks". The projects include Amar Jawan Jyoti in Jaipur and World Trade Park, among others. What the website does not, expectedly, say is that Anoop Bartaria is allegedly involved in several scams and had been booked by the CBI in 2017 in a cheating case for allegedly causing loss of Rs 209 crore to Syndicate Bank.

A complaint was lodged that the accused hatched a criminal conspiracy to avail home loans/credit facilities from the bank by submitting forged and fabricated documents.

The funds then disbursed by the bank's two branches were diverted and fraudulently siphoned to the companies owned by the accused, allegedly causing loss of approximately Rs 209 crore to the bank, sources said.

Anoop Bartaria, a tainted builder from Rajasthan, however, was given a red carpet welcome by the Yogi Adityanath government. He was assigned the task of developing the sacred Goverdhan Parikrama circuit in Vrindavan.

The beautification of 'Goverdhan Parvat' would include installation of a 300-ft statue of Lord Krishna and development of the 'parikrama' route.

Local residents raised protests over felling of trees in the region and beautification of the water bodies.

Though officials refused to divulge the details of the project, they admitted that it would "involve a few thousand crores".

An official of the Braj Foundation admitted that Anoop Bartaria had been "welcomed" into the project at the behest of some senior leaders in the BJP and RSS but was later taken off the project.

"When we have high-level recommendations, we normally do not dare to delve into the antecedents of the person, and this is what happened in this case too. We are now hearing stories of his scams," the official said, adding Anoop Bartaria is no longer involved in the project.

Anoop's website has a photo gallery that carries his photographs with former Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje.

None of the officials in the chief minister's secretariat in Lucknow were willing to comment on the subject of Anoop Bartaria. A senior officer, however, said Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was initially not aware of the real face of the "architect".

Principal Secretary information , Avanish Awasthi, also confirmed that Anoop Bartaria had been taken off the project. "He did give a presentation but the same was not accepted," he said.
Mumbai, April 12 : In a democracy, it's important to allow freedom of expression, says "PM Narendra Modi" producer Sandip Ssingh, urging the Supreme Court to view the film as an "inspiring story" rather than "political propaganda".

The Supreme Court will on Monday hear a petition filed by the producers of "PM Narendra Modi" against the ban imposed by the Election Commission (EC).

Ssingh said in a statement: "Every citizen of India has the right to appeal for justice and that's what I am doing as the producer. For me and the entire team, this film is special and we want the world to see it."

The film was due to release on April 11. Ssingh said they were "shocked to receive a notice from EC banning the release of the film just hours before the premiere on April 10".

"I am here to appeal to the highest court of the country to allow our film to be released. In a vibrant democracy like ours, it's even more important today to allow each and every one of us to enjoy the right to freedom of expression. Please allow us to exercise that right. Our film is not political propaganda. It's just an inspiring story. I request the honourable court to see it as one.

"Having said that whatever be the decision of the honourable court, we will adhere to it. We will abide by the rules and regulations. We are not going to go against the law and release the film," Ssingh added.

The film, directed by Omung Kumar and starring Vivek Anand Oberoi, narrates the story of Modi from his humble beginnings to becoming the Prime Minister of India.

The poll panel ruled that any material that disturbs a level-playing field should not be displayed.

The EC said any poster or publicity material concerning any such certified content, which either depicts a candidate for furtherance of electoral prospect directly or indirectly, shall not be put on display in the electronic media in the areas where the model code of conduct is in force, amid the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Congress said on Friday that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was backtracking from the seat-sharing "pact" between the two parties by seeking its extension outside Delhi, and that the party would fight all the seven seats in the national capital alone if no agreement was reached.

Talking to the media here, Congress leader P.C. Chacko said that AAP was keen on an alliance with the party in Delhi and so was Rahul Gandhi despite strong reservations of the party's Delhi unit as the objective was to defeat the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Chacko, who is also the Congress' Delhi in-charge, said that discussions were held between him and AAP leader Sanjay Singh and the two parties worked out a formula under which AAP was to fight four of the seven seats in Delhi while the remaining three seats were to be contested by the Congress.

"The policy of the Congress in the country today is to go for alliance with parties which aim to defeat the BJP and join us in this fight," he said.

Admitting that the Congress and the AAP had been fighting with each other and that there was bitterness between the two parties, Chacko said: "But we both understand that there is a political necessity and we should come together to defeat the BJP in Delhi."

He said the last election fought in Delhi was the municipal corporation polls in which the Congress had a vote share of 21 per cent and the AAP 27 per cent, which formed the basis of the seat-sharing agreement.

"Delhi has the ideal situation in which the Congress and the AAP can come together to defeat the BJP in all the seven seats. The seat-sharing discussions were held with this understanding. We also arrived at a pact. Then there was suggestion from the AAP that it wanted to also discuss Haryana and other seats," Chacko said.

He said the Congress was of the opinion that the political situation in one state was different from the other, and that it was not practical or feasible to have an understanding in Haryana and Punjab.

"We accepted the political necessity and arrived at a pact. But the AAP on Wednesday said it was not ready for a pact in Delhi," he said.

"We were willing and we are willing. But since they (AAP) have taken a difficult approach, the Congress is going to fight on its own," he said.

"Even today I want to say with full authority that the Congress is ready for an alliance with the AAP, provided it sticks to the discussions we had corresponding to our strength in Delhi. But if they (AAP) want to extend the pact to other states, it is not practical," the Congress leader said.

Chacko also said that with the AAP not taking "a practical view" of the matter, the Central Election Committee of the Congress has discussed the seven seats in Delhi and has almost decided candidates for four seats.

According to sources, the four likely Congress candidates are former Union Minister Kapil Sibal from Chandani Chowk, Ajay Maken from New Delhi, Raj Kumar Chauhan from North West Delhi and Jai Prakash Agarwal from North East Delhi.
Srinagar, April 12 : Senior separatist leader Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said on Friday that use of force will not make the separatist leadership change its stand on Jammu and Kashmir.

Delivering the Friday sermon at the Jamia Masjid in Srinagar's old city, Mirwaiz Umar said: "Our stand is based on truth. We will not change it because of the use of force as our stand is based on the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

"The leadership of India, Pakistan and Kashmir have to resolve the issue," he added.

"Elections will continue to be held and governments will come and go, but the Kashmir issue will remain there till it is resolved," Mirwaiz Umar said.

The separatists regard Jammu and Kashmir, which is divided between Pakistan and India, as a disputed territory and say the issue will have to be resolved by New Delhi and Islamabad along with the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

Mirwaiz Umar returned on Thursday to the Kashmir Valley from New Delhi where he was questioned for three days by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in connection with a terror funding case.
Islamabad, April 12 : At least 20 people were killed, almost half of them belonging to the Shia Hazara minority, and 48 injured when a bomb hidden in a sack of potatoes exploded in a crowded market in Pakistan's Quetta city on Friday.

According to Deputy Inspector General Abdul Razzaq Cheema, nine Hazara, one Frontier Corps (FC) soldier and two children were among the dead, Dawn online reported.

"The attack took place in a (green grocer's) shop (in Hazarganji area). An improvised explosive device (IED) was planted in a gunny sack filled with potatoes. We are yet to ascertain if it was timed or remote-controlled. An investigation is on," Cheema said.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast.

While Cheema said the blast targeted the Hazara ethnic community, Balochistan Home Minister Ziaullah Langove called it a suicide bombing and that it didn't target "a specific community".

"Our guess is that no specific community was targeted. Marri Baloch and FC personnel were among those killed as well. The numbers of the Hazara community were just greater," Langove said. He described the blast as a suicide attack.

Prime Minister Imran Khan tweeted: "Deeply saddened and have strongly condemned the terrorist attack in Hazarganji market area of Quetta targeting our innocent people. I have asked for an immediate inquiry and increased security for the people.

"Prayers go to the families of the victims and for early recovery of the injured."

President Arif Alvi and several politicians also condemned the bombing.

Initial police findings indicate the bomb had been planted before Hazara shoppers reached the market on Friday.

Nearly half a million Hazaras have settled in Quetta since fleeing Afghanistan to escape violence in their homeland during the past four decades. The city's Hazarganji area has been witness to similar attacks in the past.

Hazara shopkeepers are known to stock vegetables and fruits from the Hazarganji bazaar to sell at their own shops. They are provided security escorts to and from Hazarganji since they are constantly under threat of attack.

Cheema told Dawn that "people from the Hazara community come here daily in a convoy from Hazara town to buy vegetables. They are escorted by police and FC, and then they return there. It was the same today".

Following the blast, Qadir Nayil, a Hazara community leader, asked the Pakistan government to ensure better protection for them.

"Once again our people were the target... We demand more security from the government and all those involved in today's act of terrorism should be found and punished," he said.
New Delhi, April 12 : Since the first-ever general elections in 1952 when 37 independent candidates were elected to the Lok Sabha, out of the total 533 who contested, the number of such winning candidates has fallen drastically over the years. In 2014, only three out of the 3,234 independent candidates were elected to the lower house.

According to data shared by the Press Information Bureau, the percentage of independent candidates forfeiting their deposits has also gone up over the years, and over 99.5 per cent did so in the 2014 elections. In 1952, 360 out of the 533 independent candidates, or 67.54 per cent, lost their deposits.

The data shows that only three independent candidates were elected out of the 3,234 who contested in the 2014 polls. Some 3,218 candidates had to forfeit their deposit as they failed to secure even one-sixth of the total votes.

This is in contrast to 1952 when only 533 independent candidates were in the fray and 37 of them got elected, while 360 lost their deposits.

In the very next elections in 1957, the performance of independent candidates improved and 42 got elected out of the total 481 who were contesting. Some 324 (67.36 per cent) of them lost their security deposit.

However since then, the performance of independent candidates has been on a decline with 20 elected in 1962, 35 in 1967 and 14 in 1971.

For the next 11 elections -- barring 1989 when 12 independents won -- the number of winning independent candidates dropped to single digits.

In 1977 and 1980, nine such candidates got elected while in 1984 and 1991, only five made it to the Lok Sabha.

1996 was a special year in terms of independent candidates with a whopping 10,635 in the fray. Out of these, only nine won, while 10,604 lost their deposits.

In 1998 and 1999, six independent candidates won, while in 2004, five got elected and in 2009, nine made it.

In 2014, the number of independent MPs was the least so far, with only three registering a win.
Jakarta, April 12 : A powerful quake of 6.8 magnitude rocked off Indonesia's Central Sulawesi province on Friday, the country's meteorology and geophysics agency said, triggering a tsunami warning that forced panicked people to evacuate their homes.

The tsunami warning was later lifted as giant waves did not appear, but a warning was issued for the communities along the coastal lines to avoid the territories, authorities said.

Earlier the agency reported that the quake was gauged at a 6.9 magnitude before the revision, Bayu Pranata, the official in charge at the agency told Xinhua news agency.

"We have just terminated the tsunami warning as tsunami did not happen," Pranata said.

The quake struck at 18.40 p.m. Jakarta time (1140 GMT) with an epicentre at 85 km southwest of Banggai Kepulauan and 10 km under the sea bed.

One of the strongest intensities of the quake was felt at 4 MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) in Luwuk district, the official said.

The jolts triggered panic and forced people to evacuate in the Luwuk, Marowali and Kepulauan Banggai districts.

The National Disaster Management Agency didn't issue a preliminary report of damages or casualty, but risks assessment on the impact of the natural disaster was being carried out, said agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho.

The tremors were also felt in Taliabu of North Maluku province, forcing local people to evacuate to safer areas, said Sutopo.

Indonesia is prone to earthquakes as it lies on a vulnerable quake-hit zone called "the Pacific Ring of Fire". In December, a deadly tsunami triggered by a volcanic eruption in the middle of the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra islands killed over 400 people.
Amritsar: School students participate in a procession taken out to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in Amritsar on April 12, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Amritsar: People participate in a procession taken out to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre, in Amritsar on April 12, 2019. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Amritsar, April 12 : Hundreds of people, including students, local residents and even visitors, held a candlelight march in Amritsar on Friday evening on the eve of the 100th anniversary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by British Indian forces.

People carried candles in their hands and slowly walked the 1-km distance from the Town Hall building in Amritsar's walled city area towards the Jallianwala Bagh near the Golden Temple complex.

People could be seen carrying and waving scores of national flags with patriotic songs playing in the background.

The march ended at the Jallianwala Bagh where homage was paid to the martyrs.

The 100th anniversary of the killing of hundreds of unarmed, innocent Indians, including women and children, who were protesting peacefully against the Rowlatt Act of the British government, by British Indian forces led by Brigadier General Reginald Dyer, falls on April 13, 1919.

The massacre is one of the darkest chapters of India's freedom struggle to free the country from British occupation. It showed the brutal repression unleashed by the British on Indian subjects.

Punjab Governor V.P. Singh Badnore, state Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, cabinet minister Om Prakash Soni and other prominent people, including members of the families of those killed in the massacre, joined the candlelight march.

Tight security arrangements were made by the Punjab Police and security agencies for the event.

The British government, even after 100 years, has only regretted the massacre but stopped short of apologizing for the killing of so many innocent people.

Congress President Rahul Gandhi is expected to arrive here on Friday night and pay homage to the martyrs of Jallianwala Bagh on Saturday (April 13).

Vice President M. Venkaiah Naidu will arrive here on Saturday afternoon for the main function to commemorate the 100 years of the massacre.
New Delhi, April 12 : Delhi Police have arrested an interstate gunrunner from Madhya Pradesh with 21 illegal sophisticated semi-automatic pistols and 42 magazines, a police officer said on Friday.

Mohd. Israr, 28, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Etawah district, was arrested on Thursday after a Special Cell team raided his hideout near Fauji Dharam Khanta in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh.

"Israr was evading arrest for over six months and a reward of Rs 10,000 was declared on his arrest," Deputy Commissioner of Police Sanjeev Kumar Yadav said.

"On interrogation, Israr disclosed that he used to purchase arms from Burhanpur in Madhya Pradesh and supplied the illegal consignments of firearms to his contacts in Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana with the help of his carriers Vineet and Ram Kumar who were earlier arrested by the Delhi Police," Yadav added.

"Israr had been supplying illegal consignments of firearms for the last four years. After the arrest of his carriers, he escaped from his residence in a bid to evade arrest. He later along with six associates committed an armed dacoity in Ajmer," the DCP said.
Washington, April 12 : US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has privately urged Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the heir to the Saudi throne, to cut his ties to a close adviser whom Washington has sanctioned for his alleged role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

According to a Guardian report on Friday, Pompeo was understood to have raised his concerns about Saud al-Qahtani in private conversations with Mohammed bin Salman, also known as MBS, and his brother Khalid bin Salman.

The report said that US authorities believe that Qahtani, a former aide to the Crown Prince, oversaw the team that killed Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and a critic of the Crown Prince, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October.

He is thought to have remained a confidant of Prince Mohammed despite having a lower profile in recent months. He formerly served as the head of Saudi's cyber-unit.

The Guardian said that the advice to sideline Qahtani comes at a time when Pompeo's support for Saudi Arabia is facing intense scrutiny in Congress, where the Donald Trump administration has been criticized for not condemning Saudi Arabia strongly enough following Khashoggi's murder.

A US State Department spokesperson told the newspaper it would not discuss details of private diplomatic conversations.

Qahtani was publicly rebuked after the Khashoggi murder, when Saudi King Salman had his son's adviser removed from his role at the royal court, according to the daily.

But within months, reports emerged that Qahtani was still communicating with MBS and was actively participating in his crackdown against dissidents.

According to the Guardian, Qahtani is still actively engaged in a similar role within Prince Mohammed's private office.
New Delhi, April 12 : The grandson of shehnai maestro Ustad Bismillah Khan, Nasir Abbas Bismillah, wishes to be a proposer to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nomination from Varanasi, and blames the Congress for missing the opportunity to do so in 2014.

Saying that he regrets rejecting the 2014 offer, Bismillah stressed that was due to a idological division created among people by the Congress party.

"The offer Modi ji had given us in 2014 was rejected by our family, but it was not their fault. People from Congress had divided us," the Varanasi-based musician told IANS over phone.

The grandson of the Bharat Ratna recipient said: "It was a mistake on our part. My family and I regret it. This time, we hope to be a proposer to the nomination," said Bismillah.

"Our grandfather was a Congress supporter. He received many national-level awards under the Congress government. Then he received Bharat Ratna under Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He even went to Vajpayeeji's home. But he didn't refuse to take awards under a non-Congress rule."

In a letter to the Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters here on Thursday, Bismillah expressed his wish to be present when Prime Minister Narendra Modi files his nomination papers from Varanasi again.

He also mentioned presenting the late maestro's shehnai to Modi. The shehnai is now kept in Trade Facilitation Center And Craft Museum of Varanasi.
New Delhi, April 12 : A 23-year-old youth was arrested on Friday for allegedly trying to kill a murder accused who was taken to a hospital in west Delhi for medical examination, a police officer said.

The incident occurred at 1 p.m. when the accused, who has been identified as Prasanjit, entered the BSA Hospital in Rohini with a pistol.

"Prasanjit, a resident of Sagarpur in west Delhi, was arrested with a loaded pistol having six live rounds when he came to the BSA Hospital with an intention to shoot a criminal identified as Karanvir," said Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) S.D. Mishra.

Karanvir, who is accused in a murder case, was taken to the hospital for medical examination under police custody, Mishra said.

"Prima facie it appears to be a case of personal animosity, but we are interrogating Prasanjit to know why he was trying to kill Karanvir," the DCP added.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Supreme Court on Friday ordered a ban on mining and construction activities in Kaziranga National Park and animal corridors.

Mining activities were banned along the southern boundary of the Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve, and construction was ordered to be stopped on the routes that form nine animal corridors.

The bench of Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Deepak Gupta ordered the ban on the recommendations of the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) in its report.

The CEC report came in the wake of alleged large-scale illegal mining and stone crushing activities within the elephant corridor connecting the Kaziranga National Park and Karbi Anglong Hills.

This included the private forests falling in the Karbi Anglong Hills Council Area, and within the eco-sensitive zone.

Seeking a response from the head of the Karbi Anglong Hills Council Area on the report, and on the recommendation of the CEC, the court directed the Director General of Assam police to ensure that no mining activity takes place in the catchment area of the streams/rivers originating in the Karbi Anglong Hill ranges.

The court also directed the police to ensure that no transportation of illegally mined material from Karbi Anglong Hill took place.
Lucknow, April 12 : Union Minister Maneka Gandhi was on Friday issued a show-cause notice after she kicked off a major controversy when she told the Muslims in Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh to vote for her if they wanted her to get their work done after she wins from the constituency.

According to sources, Sultanpur's District Magistrate issued the notice after the Election Commission took cognisance of the matter and asked Gandhi to explain her remarks.

Addressing an election rally in Turab Khani village, the BJP leader said that she would not give jobs to Muslims if they did not vote for her. She also said that she would not like it if she won without the support of the Muslims.

Gandhi's three-minute speech went viral on social media, leading to outrage for its blatant communal content. The Congress has termed Gandhi's statement "scandalous".

However, Gandhi later maintained that her remarks were quoted out of context.

Gandhi is contesting from Sultanpur, a seat won by her son Varun Gandhi in 2014. Varun Gandhi is contesting from Pilibhit, from where his mother had won in 2014.
Kozhikode : , April 12 (IANS) Taking pot shots at his arch political rival without naming him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday warned people to beware of 'tax frauds' who come to Kerala.

Modi said this while addressing a mammoth Vijay Sankalp rally at the famed Kozhikode beach side, his first election rally in the state which goes to the polls on April 23 to elect 20 Lok Sabha candidates.

"The Congress and the Left have taken people here for granted. Beware of those who come to Kerala who say they come to save Kerala, but they come not to save you, but to save themselves. Tax frauds who are on bail come here to get political bail," said Modi.

These salvos were apparently fired at Congress President Rahul Gandhi who is contesting from the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency, about 80 km from Modi's rally venue.

"When their political leaders come seeking votes for 'them', people should ask them, what 'such' people have done in their constituencies," said Modi.

The Prime Minister arrived at the venue around 7 p.m. and after his address, left for Tamil Nadu, where he is slated to take part in election meetings on Saturday.
Hyderabad, April 12 : Telangana registered 62.69 per cent polling in the elections to all 17 Lok Sabha seats held on Thursday.

The office of Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on Friday announced the final polling figures. The officials had earlier put the turnout at 60.57 per cent.

Khammam recorded highest voter turnout of 75.28 per cent, while Hyderabad was the lowest at 44.75 per cent. In Secunderabad, 46.26 per cent cast their votes.

The figures for Secunderabad and Hyderabad were earlier reported to be 39.20 per cent and 39.49 per cent, respectively. Officials said the polling figures were revised after receipt of reports from all polling stations.

Five constituencies recorded over 70 per cent polling.

Nizamabad, which created a record with use of 12 electronic voting machines (EVMs) in each polling booth to accommodate 185 candidates, saw a turnout of 68.33 per cent. As many as 178 farmers entered the fray here to highlight their problems including lack of remunerative prices for their produce. Telangana Chief Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President K. Chandrashekhar Rao's daughter K. Kavitha is seeking re-election from Nizamabad.

Polling at all 46,120 polling stations was smooth and peaceful. Nearly 2.97 crore voters were eligible to cast their votes to decide the fortunes of 443 candidates, including 25 women.

The polling percentage has come down compared to Assembly elections. The turnout was 73.20 per cent in the Assembly polls held in December 2018. The turnout was 72.31 per cent in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.
Chennai, April 12 : Union Minister for Railways and Coal Piyush Goyal on Friday dismissed the need to scrap the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for medical college admissions as it would enable the private colleges to demand a huge capitation fee.

On Friday Congress President Rahul Gandhi in a series of election rallies in Tamil Nadu said the party's manifesto has promised scrapping of NEET, in line with the demands of Tamil Nadu people.

BJP's ally in Tamil Nadu, the ruling AIADMK in its manifesto has promised to secure temporary exemption for the state from NEET.

Speaking to reporters, Goyal said Congress wanted to re-introduce a system where private medical colleges can demand capitation fee. He said students belonging to weaker economic background should be able to pursue medical education, which, he said, is possible under NEET.

The BJP leader expressed confidence that Tamil Nadu would elect Prime Minister Narendra Modi again.

The BJP is part of the AIADMK-led alliance that includes PMK, DMDK, TMC, PT and others.
Kozhikode : , April 12 (IANS) Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched a broadside on his party's political rivals in Kerala and said it was time the people of the state gave Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a chance.

"For decades the Communist CPI-M and the communal Congress have failed Kerala. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) are different only in name as both have taken turns to loot the state. The BJP-led NDA presents an alternative which will serve each and every citizen," Modi told a mammoth Vijay Sankalp rally here.

This was the Prime Minister's first election rally in the state, after which he left for Tamil Nadu.

Attacking the Left and the Congress, Modi pointed out that both had double standards. "Look at their position on triple talaq. Those who are caught in the ice cream parlour case and the solar scam are speaking about women's empowerment," he said.

Referring to the Sabarimala temple issue, he said: "It's very bad that believers who protested were caned. Centuries-old tradition and faith will not be allowed to be destroyed. As long as the BJP is there, the force of the LDF and the farce of the UDF will not work. I assure you that our party will be there to protect our culture."

Modi also assured his party workers that their work will not go in vain. "Just look at what happened in Tripura. From a bare presence, we have now formed the government there and the same will happen in Kerala," he added.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Army Commanders' Conference being held in the national capital has comprehensively deliberated all aspects of extant security dynamics, emerging security scenarios, enhancing operational capability and enhancement of combat edge over potential adversaries, as per a statement.

An apex level biannual event, which formulates important policy decisions, is being held from April 8-13.

The conference is an important event in planning and execution process of Indian Army with an aim to ensure due diligence, decisions are taken through collegiate system comprising Army Commanders and senior officers.

"It has been emphasized in the conference that Indian Army is committed to peaceful security environment and shall holistically address emerging threats, challenges and ensure no room for terror," reads the statement.

"Reviews during the conference included readiness, tri-services synergy, military diplomacy, joint exercises that have created capacity and environment and supporting operational plans that have evolved. Defence cooperation has facilitated new vistas and these shall provide excellent opportunities for enhancing strategic engagements."

All future conflicts would be planned and executed jointly by the three services, it said.

"For developing deeper understanding and enhancing jointness, Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa, Chief of Air Staff addressed Army Commanders and Staff wherein he conveyed vision and high credibility of IAF missions and ideas for synergised application," as per the statement.

"Admiral Sunil Lanba, Chief of Naval Staff and Chairman, Chiefs of Staff Committee has also addressed the Army Commanders and focused on jointness and challenges in maritime domain."

Additionally, to promote indigenisation through 'Make in India', an exhibition of emerging and future defence technological innovations was held, in which 53 domestic companies participated, it said.

"This interaction of industry representatives with the senior leadership of the Army facilitated in obtaining a direct feedback regarding product development and enhancement keeping in view the requirements of Army," reads the statement.

With a focus on the welfare of the families of brave soldiers who made supreme sacrifice in the services of the nation, year 2019 has been declared as the year of 'Next of Kin'.
Mumbai, April 12 : The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) on Friday stepped in to assess Jet Airways' financial situation as the cash-strapped airline suspended its international operations till the weekend after further reduction in its fleet size.

The day's developments surrounding the financially challenged airline came after it cancelled even domestic flights, leaving passengers stranded at various airports.

Even the airline's unpaid employees were upset, which led to an employees' association asking the Mumbai Police to register a case against the company's founder and former Chairman Naresh Goyal, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vinay Dube and State Bank of India (SBI) Chairman Rajnish Kumar.

In New Delhi, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Civil Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola met PMO officials towards the evening to update them about the situation of the cash-strapped airline.

Kharola later told reporters that the government has advised the airline not to compromise on safety in any manner.

He said that currently Jet Airways is operating only 11 planes and has suspended its international operations till Monday afternoon.

Kharola further said that on Saturday, the airline will operate only six to seven aircraft.

According to the officer, Jet Airways will approach the lenders on Monday for interim funding.

"They (Jet) have suspended their international operations till Monday afternoon. They have approached them (banks) for interim funding and on Monday they will approach the banks again," Kharola said.

"Today only 11 planes are flying. Tomorrow it's going to be 6 or may be 7 planes," he said.

Earlier in the day, Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu had directed Kharola to review the issues concerning the airline and take required steps to minimise passenger inconvenience.

On its part, the airline said it has cancelled all international operations from April 12 to 15.

"...the airline's management and its key stakeholders, including its consortium of lenders, continue to work closely towards resolving the current situation," a Jet spokesperson said in a statement.

A day before, the airline decided to halt West-bound international departures after it was left with only 14 aircraft from around 120 last year, triggering speculations over its survival as a lengthy stake sale process continued.

The airline on Thursday operated only about 14 aircraft, down from 26 last week, inviting government scrutiny over Jet's regulatory compliance for international flying.

As per rules, an airline needs to have a minimum of 20 aircraft to be eligible to operate international flights.

Till recently, the airline operated 26 aircraft, including Airbus A330s, Boeing 777s, 737-800 and ATRs, to various destinations like London, Toronto, Singapore, Amsterdam, Paris, Bangkok and domestic sectors like Mumbai-Delhi, among others.

Jet owns 16 out of these 26 aircraft.

In another development, the employees' association of Jet Airways asked the Mumbai Police to register a case against the company's founder and former Chairman Naresh Goyal, CEO Vinay Dube and SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar.

The All India Jet Airways Officers & Staff Association in its letter to Mumbai Police said: "We call upon you to register offence under cheating, criminal breach of trust, misappropriation and other offences against the Chairman, the CEO, the representative of the State Bank of India (Bankers) as per specific provisions of Section 405 and 409 and other related Sections including 420 of the Indian Penal Code."

The association urged the Mumbai Police to investigate the matter on an urgent basis and said that the Jet Airways staff will be forced to express their solidarity through constitutional means, including "calling for a strike under the provisions of Industrial Disputes Act".

Besides the employees, the airline's aircraft lessors too are upset with the current financial situation, with some of them requesting the DGCA to de-register their aircraft leased to the company.

The de-registration request section on the DGCA website showed on Friday that lessors have applied to de-register 19 aircraft owing to unpaid dues. However, some lessors have also withdrawn their de-registration requests.

Jet Airways is in the midst of a severe liquidity crisis that has affected its operations and resulted in the grounding of several of its aircraft.

The latest developments came on a day when the submission deadline for expression of interest (EoI) bids from prospective buyers for a stake sale in Jet came to an end.

At present, the airline owes over Rs 8,000 crore to a consortium of lenders led by the SBI.
Kolkata, April 12 : Investment banker-turned-legislator Mahua Moitra, who is a Trinamool Congress candidate from West Bengal's Krishnanagar Lok Sabha constituency, has declared movable assets worth over Rs 2.64 crore, including bank deposits in the United Kingdom.

Moitra had shown more than Rs 2.5-crore movable assets in 2016, while contesting the Assembly elections from Karimpur in Nadia district.

In the latest affidavit filed before the Election Commission (EC), the 44-year-old MLA has declared Rs 5,000 cash and Rs 1.43 crore in banks deposits in India, besides a bank balance of over Rs 1.30 lakh in a branch of National Westminster Bank, commonly known as NatWest, in London.

Moitra, who has worked as a Vice President of JP Morgan in the UK, possesses a 3.2 carat diamond ring worth Rs 70 lakh, 150 grams of gold valued at Rs 5 lakh, various silver items including vase, tea and dinner set and others worth Rs 5.68 lakh, and art pieces valued at Rs 25 lakh, and a car, which she bought in 2016.

After leaving her cushy job, she joined politics in September 2008, when Rahul Gandhi drafted her in the Youth Congress as a state coordinator for his "Aam Aadmi Ka Sipahi" project. Two years later, she switched to the Trinamool Congress.

Moitra, a graduate in economics and mathematics from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, claims that she does not own any immovable property. According to her affidavit, she owes over Rs 6.71 lakh to a bank in a vehicle loan.

She has also declared that there is no pending criminal case against her.
New Delhi, April 12 : The Supreme Court Collegium on Friday recommended names of two judges for their appointment to the apex court.

Chief Justice of Jharkhand High Court Aniruddha Bose and Gauhati High Court Chief Justice of A.S. Bopanna have been recommended for elevation to the top court.

The Supreme Court has vacancies for four judges.

A press release uploaded in the apex court's website said: "While recommending the names of Mr. Justices Aniruddha Bose and A.S. Bopanna, the Collegium has taken into consideration, apart from their merit and integrity, combined seniority on all-India basis of Chief Justices and senior puisne Judges of High Courts. The Collegium has also kept in mind the desirability of giving due representation on the Bench of the Supreme Court, as far as possible, to all the High Courts."

Justice Aniruddha Bose in October 1985 enrolled with the Bar Council of West Bengal as an advocate. He was elevated to the Bench as the Judge of the Calcutta High Court on January 19, 2004. In August 2018, he was appointed the Chief Justice of Jharkhand High Court.

Justice Bopanna was enrolled as an advocate in November 1984. He had practised in civil, constitutional, company, service and labour matters in the Karnataka High Court. In October 2018, he was appointed as the Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court.
Bhopal, April 12 : Bhopal may need to brace for a heavy dose of polarisation if RSS has its way in the selection of a challenger for Digvijaya Singh in the Lok Sabha elections. Hardliners Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur and Union Minister and former chief minister Uma Bharti are among the candidates being considered. The BJP has been dithering over the issue since Digvijaya Singh entered the fray three weeks ago.

Pragya Singh Thakur, who came to limelight after her arrest for Malegaon blasts in 2008, is another option. But her candidature is suspect because the special NIA court is yet to discharge her in the case. Pragya is keen to jump into the fray for what she calls "Dharma Yuddha" or crusade.

Uma Bharti had led the BJP to spectacular victory over the Congress in 2003. Digvijaya who was forced into a 10-year exile from electoral politics, became a synonym for Congress' failures. Many felt he became a key reason for the BJP's decade-long tenure.

Bharti who had announced that she won't contest for 17th Lok Sabha, came back into contention after Digvijaya Singh was named by the Congress. The earlier move to present a Thakur candidate was also dropped after Union Minister Narendra Singh Tomar opted to contest from Morena.

With presence of almost 25 per cent Muslims among 18 lakh voters, the large Bhopal seat can be won only by polarisation, feels the BJP. The earlier choice of senior RSS leader, Vishnu Dutt Sharma, was also with the same idea.

The BJP has been projecting Digvijaya Singh as an anti-Hindu leader. He has been going around all pilgrimages and had covered 3000 km walk along the banks of the Narmada. His views on RSS and the Sangh Parivar are quite radical. But he had opposed withdrawal of security from the RSS headquarters in Bhopal.

Bharti is no stranger to Bhopal constituency. In 1999, she had defeated the Congress candidate and former Union Minister Suresh Pachouri with a huge margin of 1.68 lakh votes.

Pragya Thakur denies having been approached for the contest. But she says she would be glad to challenge an anti-Hindu leader like Digvijaya Singh.

Pragya, who holds a Master's degree in History, had been associated with Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and 'Durga Vahini' or women's wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). She is known for rabble rousing speeches.

Though the court dropped provisions of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) against her, she is being tried under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). She was granted bail by the Bombay High Court last year.

Six people were killed and over 100 injured when an explosive device strapped on a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in north Maharashtra, on September 29, 2008.

The Congress hasn't won Bhopal since 1989. The Bhopal constituency is a BJP citadel as the party has not lost the seat since 1989.

BJP's sitting MP Alok Sanjar had won the seat in 2014 with a margin of 3.7 lakh votes. But after Congress named Digvijaya Singh, the BJP went into a pause mode.

The Congress had won three out of eight assembly segments of Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency. In the remaining five seats, the BJP witnessed a slide in its margin.

The Bhopal constituency is spread over eight assembly segments, -- Berasia, Bhopal Uttar, Narela, Bhopal south west, Bhopal central, Govindpura, Huzur and Sehore.

Digvijay continues his temple-hopping possibly to erase his anti-Hindu image.

During campaigning on March 29 in Sehore district, the former chief minister had remarked that the prosecution and defence had come together. As a result those who were charged with terror were being let off by courts. He was referring to the acquittal of Swami Aseemanand and three others in the 2007 Samjhauta Express bomb blast case by a special NIA court.
Gangavathi : , April 12 (IANS) Slamming the alliance of the ruling Congress and Janata Dal-Secular (JD-S), Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the mission of the coalition government in Karnataka was to take 20 per cent commission in every deal-making.

"Both the defeated parties came together after the Assembly elections last year to form a 'milawat' (adulterated) government for keeping the BJP out of power and take 20 per cent commission in every contract or project," Modi said while addressing an election rally in Gangavathi, 370 km northwest of Bengaluru.

The Prime Minister said the previous Congress government head was a "10 per cent commission agent".

"With 10 per cent commission agent JD-S joining the Congress, the commission has doubled to 20 per cent for every deal. What can you expect from such parties, which fought for years but came together soon fearing the BJP will come to power," Modi said in his 35-minute speech in Hindi.

Dubbing Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi and British national Christian Michel as "uncles" of the Congress for being commission agents in defence deals, Modi alleged that the new Congress government in Madhya Pradesh diverted funds meant for mid-day meals in schools to the party's election expenses.

"Crores of rupees were found in the official residence of a Congress leader from Madhya Pradesh on Tugalak Road in New Delhi. The money was siphoned off from the treasury to fund the party's campaign," Modi said.

Exhorting the people to vote for the party's candidates by pressing the lotus button on the EVM, the Prime Minister said their votes would help him form a strong government at the Centre for the overall development of the country.

Modi was given a rousing welcome when he greeted the people in Kannada and lauded them for assembling on a hot summer day.

Claiming that a BJP wave was sweeping across the country, Modi said there was no doubt about the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) returning to power to serve the people for five more years.

State BJP President B.S. Yeddyurappa and the party's other leaders such as Jagadish Shettar and B.R. Sriramulu were present on the occasion.

The 28 Lok Sabha constituencies in Karnataka will go to the polls in the second and third phase on April 18 and April 23, respectively.
Krishnagiri/Salem/Theni/Madurai : , April 12 (IANS) Tamil Nadu should be ruled by the people of Tamil Nadu and DMK President M.K. Stalin will become its next Chief Minister, Congress President Rahul Gandhi declared on Friday.

Addressing an election rally here, about 260 km from Chennai, Gandhi said: "Tamil Nadu should be ruled from Tamil Nadu. Stalin will be the Chief Minister."

The opposition parties in Tamil Nadu charge the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with remote-controlling the AIADMK government in the state.

According to Gandhi, the state should not be ruled from Nagpur -- where the Rashtriya Swyamsevak Sangh (RSS), the BJP's political mentor, is headquartered.

"We will not let the people of Tamil Nadu to be led by Nagpur," Gandhi said, adding that the DMK-Congress combine will defend the spirit of the Tamil people.

According to Gandhi, when the Congress comes to power at the Centre, farmers will not be jailed for non-repayment of bank loans.

"It is not fair that rich businessmen are not jailed for non-repayment of bank loans while poor farmers go to jail for defaulting on bank loans," Gandhi said.

"After 2019, no farmer will be put in jail for non-repayment of loan."

He said the Congress government will tell the farmers in advance the Minimum Support Price (MSP) and other things so that they can plan their crops accordingly.

He alleged that PM Modi can be seen only with rich businessmen and not with poor farmer or small entrepreneurs.

The Congress chief said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi could not find time to speak with the Tamil Nadu farmers who had protested in New Delhi demanding farm loan waiver.

Gandhi said the Congress party has decided to carry out a surgical strike on poverty and promised to identity 20 per cent of the poorest in the country and transfer Rs 72,000 every year into the bank account of women head of the poor family under the proposed Nyay scheme.

"Once the money gets paid into the bank account, poor people will start consuming and the economy will kickstart again."

He said the textile industry in Tiruppur and the silk industry in Kancheepuram will start booming again after being affected by the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

Gandhi also promised a simple and single rate tax regime once the Congress comes to power.

According to him, the Congress, once it comes to power, will fill up the 24 lakh vacant jobs in the government and 10 lakh vacancies in Panchayats.

Gandhi said the Congress will bring in reservation of seats in the Lok Sabha, the Rajya Sabha and state assemblies for women.

"Thirty-three per cent of central government jobs will also be reserved for women," he added.

The Congress is fighting the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu as part of the DMK-led alliance.

Referring to the opposition to common entrance exam for medical college admissions in Tamil Nadu, Gandhi said in the Congress manifesto there is a line that states NEET (National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test) will not be imposed.

"It seems like a small line in the manifesto. But it is the expression of Tamil Nadu. Every line in our manifesto is the expression of somebody in the country," Gandhi said.

He said all sections of the society were discussed before coming out with our manifesto.

"It is not manki baath but our kaam ki baath," he said.
Mumbai/New Delhi, April 13 : The initial phase of Jet Airways stake sale programme came to a close on Friday as scrutiny of at least 5 EoIs (expression of interest) started, sources said on Friday.

According to industry insiders, SBI Capital Markets (SBI Cap) and the airline's lenders have received a lukewarm response with at least 5 prospective buyers sending in their EoIs.

"They are currently in the midst of evaluating the EoIs sent by various entities including airlines. Any official announcement on the selected entities will be made on Saturday," an industry insider told IANS in New Delhi.

It was not known whether Jet' former chairman Naresh Goyal submitted his initial bid. However, speculation is rife that state-run National Investment and Infrastructure Fund Limited (NIIFL), UAE-based Etihad Airways, some private venture funds have sent in their EoIs and were in touch with SBI Caps, the firm mandated to carry out the sale on behalf of the banks' consotorium.

On Wednesday, lenders of the debt-ridden airline tweaked the terms for stake sale and also extended the submission deadline for EoI bids from prospective buyers.

As per a clarification document issued by investment banking major SBI Capital Markets (SBI Cap) on Wednesday, prospective buyers can acquire the company or effect change in its management control.

The prospective buyers would also be required to furnish solvency certificates.

In another 'clarification' document, the last date for EoI submission was extended from 6 p.m. on Wednesday to 6 p.m. on April 12.

Further fund infusion into the airline also hangs in the balance, as the lenders will decide whether to pump in more capital based on their assessment of response to the EoI.

The consortium of banks has appointed SBI Caps to take out the EoI and conduct the process of their stake sale in the airline.

According to the document, the last date for submission of queries has also been extended to April 11.

"While all soft copies of the EoIs are required to submitted by the due date, the hard copies may be submitted by April 16, 2019," the document said.

The lenders have offered a stake from 31.2 to 75 per cent of the company on a fully diluted basis.

Currently, the airline owes Rs 8,000 crore to lenders, led by the SBI. On March 25, Goyal had stepped down from the board of the airline and ceded majority control to the SBI-led consortium.
New Delhi, April 13 : The Congress on Friday approached the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah for allegedly "dragging" the armed forces in politics repeatedly.

Congress leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Singh Surjewala also raised the issues of Union Minister Smriti Irani submitting "contradictory affidavits" to the Election Commission on her educational qualifications and also about a web series on Modi.

Talking to the media after meeting the EC, Singhvi said PM, the President of the ruling party and its other leaders are "shamelessly dragging the armed forces for cheap politics."

"Never in the history has this happened," he said, adding the web series on Modi is also a violation of the Model Code of Conduct as it is biographical in nature and it should be banned immediately.

"If the person makes another violation, he/she should be barred from two days of campaigning, similarly three and four days for the third and fourth violation," he said.

Speaking about Irani's qualification, Surjewala said the Congress is not commenting on her qualification, saying they believe that even the illiterate can also hold high positions.

"But the question is the people have been cheated and the Minister has lied to them about her qualifications."

The Congress has submitted a memorandum to the EC over Irani repeatedly lying about her qualifications.

"There is no information about the degree of the PM and also his favourite minister Irani. There are no classmates of the PM and Irani who are coming out. This is a very serious issue as the people have been cheated repeatedly."

Surjewala demanded that the EC should disqualify Irani for changing her qualifications multiple times.

He also said that there should be a strict action and sacking of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi for her Muslim remarks and for dividing people.

Addressing an election rally she had said that she would not give jobs to Muslims if they did not vote for her.

The party also urged the Election Commission to issue directions to all Chief Electoral Officers, booth level officers and other election officials to ensure proper functioning of EVMs during the Lok Sabha elections. It also sought immediate investigation into the malfunctioning of the EVMs and other issues reported from various parts of the country during the first phase of polls on April 11.

It said posters of Gen VK Singh were posted right outside a polling station. The party also alleged that BJP candidate from Tehri Garhwal parliamentary constituency "printed voter slips on her election pamphlet".

The party said it was making fifth request for "urgent and necessary" intervention against Modi's continued and brazen violation of the Model Code of Conduct and in particular the "hateful and divisive comments by him", Shah and UP Chief Minister Ajay Singh Bisht aka Yogi Adityanath in election rallies at Nanded, Nagpur and Meerut.

In its representation against Irani, Congress called for immediate action for filing "false affidavit", saying it attracts up to six months imprisonment or fine.
New Delhi, April 13 : A two-day meeting of 21st Asean-India Senior Officials concluded here on Friday after they discussed ways to impart impetus to connectivity and deepen cooperation on financial matters.

The meeting was co-chaired by Vijay Thakur Singh, Senior Officials' Meeting Leader (SOM) and Secretary (East) in the External Affairs Ministry and Busaya Mathelin, SOM Leader and Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Thailand.

India congratulated Thailand on its assuming the Chairmanship of Asean for 2019 and welcomed its role as country coordinator of the Asean-India dialogue parternship for the period 2018-2021.

An MEA release said that the meeting reviewed the Asean-India strategic partnership and its future direction.

"They made their assessment on the progress of cooperation under all three pillars - political-security, economic and socio-cultural. The SOM leaders also exchanged views on regional and international issues of interest," it said.

The release said they agreed to deepen maritime cooperation as decided at the Asean-India commemorative summit 2018. In this context, they proposed to undertake a variety of measures, including enhanced cooperation in blue economy.

"The meeting desired to impart impetus to Asean-India connectivity, in all its forms. It also welcomed the commissioning of the ERIA study on the trilateral highway and its extension to Lao PDR, Cambodia and Vietnam as well as the proposal on formation of digital villages in the Asean countries, under digital connectivity.

"They also discussed ways and means to further deepen cooperation on financial matters," the release said.

The meeting decided to impart urgency to cooperation in renewable energy and hold a conference in 2019.

The release said that Asean-India partnership is being implemented through the 'Plan of Action (2016-20)' and is making good progress along the 30 mechanisms to implement cooperation in the different sectors.
GUEST OBSERVATION

Over the next decade up to 40% of jobs could be replaced by automation. Thats according to a forecast from the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia.

OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Paper No. 202

Other estimates are less dire. A report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says only 14% of jobs across its member nations are highly automatable, though another 32% are likely to change significantly.

Despite this uncertainty about the exact number of human jobs that will disappear, it is certain the impacts of automation driven by artificial intelligence (AI) are potentially profound.

If the new jobs that emerge as a result are fewer and less rewarding than those lost, we face a period of social dislocation.

Yet there is little evidence of any strategic planning and forward thinking by Australias federal and state governments to minimise the potential downside. The recent federal budget, for example, was silent on this issue.

It is analogous to the lack of a strategic plan on climate change.

Our concern about the policy vacuum is based on an extensive search on government websites, the media and budget speeches, which disturbingly yielded very little.

We think AI should be an election issue, because there is virtually no job that wont be affected by AI-driven automation. Being ready for this technological and social revolution should be at the heart of any governments economic and educational reform agenda.

Workers that never rest

The activities at which AI is expected to outperform humans by 2030 include translating languages, writing high-school essays and driving trucks. By mid-century it is expected AI could be capable of writing a bestselling books or performing surgery.

Researchers believe there is a 50% chance AI will outperform humans in all tasks in 45 years and that almost all current human jobs can be automated in 120 years.

The World Economic Forum may argue that AI and automation is about empowering people, not the rise of the machines but there are good reasons to think some people will lose out.

Machines have many attractions to employers. They do not need rest, holidays or take sick leave. They will never complain about overtime or join a union.

A report published last month by management consultancy McKinsey Australia suggests, if proactive measures are not taken, the unemployment rate could increase by 2.5 percentage points, based on up to 46% of jobs being automated by 2030.

Australia Statistics, McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), ONED, BLS, Oxford Economics

Inequality will also increase, the report says. To what extent depends on how much Australia steps up its efforts to retrain and redeploy its surplus service, administrative and manual workers. Without large-scale retraining, Australias Gini coefficient (the standard measure of income inequality) could increase from 0.32 to 0.41.

Questions for policymakers

The stakes are high. Employment is so much more than just an income. A decent job provides purpose and dignity. It enables security, health and well-being. Joblessness hurts the individual, families and the wider community. If fewer people have work, and more people get paid less, the federal government will have to contend with falling income-tax revenue and rising welfare spending.

With intensifying global competition and rapid technological change, all governments need to be strategic. They need long-term policies to help business and workers gain the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to seize the opportunities and mitigate the threats.

There are three key questions for policy makers:

To what extent will AI-driven automation increase unemployment and underemployment?

How can governments and employers take advantage of AI and create the jobs of the future?

How can government, employers and educators equip employees and graduates with the skills to have jobs alongside robots, instead of competing with them?

The growth in AI and machine learning need not pose a threat to jobs and our standard of living, but without a strategic and shared effort, we will repeat the mistakes of previous technological revolutions, which imposed a terrible price on some in the name of progress.

The authors of this article are working towards a book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution: Implications for Managers in the Asia Pacific, due to be published in September. It will include chapters from colleagues in Taiwan, China, India, Mauritius, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. For the Australian chapter we need more information from leaders and managers in industry about the impact of AI and the preparation and planning that is, or is not, occurring. We invite you to complete a short survey as part of this study. You can do so confidentially here.

Alan Montague, Senior Lecturer/Program Director, masters program in human resources management, RMIT University

Alan Nankervis, Adjunct Professor of Management, RMIT University

John Burgess, Professor of Human Resource Management, RMIT University

Nuttawuth Muenjohn, Senior Lecturer, Business, RMIT University

Ros Cameron, Head of Discipline, Human Resources Management, Australian Institute of Business

Timothy Bartram, Professor, Management, RMIT University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
This year is our first year participating with the WSCM program, and its truly amazing to see how much work the students, teachers and manufacturers put into their projects to make this happen. says Ethan Sexton, Community Development Program Manager of NTRPDC.

Over 200 people attended the first Whats So Cool About Manufacturing? (WSCM) Northern Tier awards ceremony on April 11th. The ceremony was held at the Keystone Theatre in Towanda, Pa. and attendees celebrated the work of all the student teams, which combined for more than 10,000 online votes over a three-day period.

The three videos with the most votes received awards. This years awards are as follows:

Viewers Choice Award  Wellsboro Rock L. Butler Middle School  MetalKraft Industries, Inc.

1st Place: Middle School  Wellsboro Rock L. Butler Middle School  MetalKraft Industries, Inc.

2nd Place: Middle School  North Penn  Mansfield  Keystone North, Inc.

This year is our first year participating with the WSCM program, and its truly amazing to see how much work the students, teachers and manufacturers put into their projects to make this happen. says Ethan Sexton, Community Development Program Manager of Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission (NTRPDC). We cant wait to see how much next years contest will expand and grow.

The Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission (NTRPDC) presented the Student Video Contest: Whats So Cool About Manufacturing? (WSCM), originally created by Manufacturers Resource Center (MRC) in Pennsylvanias Lehigh Valley, which gives students in Bradford, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga & Wyoming Counties the opportunity to network with local manufacturers as well as gain new perspectives, record their experiences and present them in an educational and cool way through documentary video production. The contest was created to generate excitement that draws students towards considering manufacturing career paths to create a 21st century workforce.

For more information regarding the Whats So Cool About Manufacturing? Student Video Contest please visit http://www.WhatsSoCool.org, facebook.com/WSCMNT and Twitter @WSCMNT.

About Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission:

Since 1970, the Northern Tier Regional Planning and Development Commission has been providing resources to help our region succeed. Our board and staff are devoted to economic and workforce development across the five-county region which includes Bradford, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga and Wyoming counties.

Today's programs cover a wide range of services, including: business financing, export counseling, government contract assistance, internet and technology assistance, grant writing, transportation planning and workforce development.

About Whats So Cool About Manufacturing?:

Developed by Manufacturers Resource Center (MRC), the WSCM program is a video based educational tool that increases awareness of career paths in manufacturing. MRC developed this innovative career awareness program, which at its core is "peer marketing" (kids telling kids what's so cool about manufacturing jobs). The contest is showcased on the What's So Cool Website, https://www.whatssocool.org, and shared nationally through the Manufacturing Institute and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership platforms. The contest is expanding across the Commonwealth and the country. Inside Pennsylvania there will be 15 regions conducting contests this year. This contest gives students the opportunity to connect with local manufacturers, document their experiences and present them in an educational and cool way. The contest was created to generate excitement that draws students towards manufacturing career paths and STEM education.
The Land You Conquer First: an inspiring attempt to make Christian victors out of lifes victims, is the creation of published author Bishop Donnann Taylor, a mother, grandmother, and evangelist from Colorado. She has a musicians heart and an entrepreneurial spirit and has worked alongside her mother in the food industry as a cook all her life.

Bishop Taylor writes, We are called to be more than conquerors in Christ Jesus, that is to put away all unrighteousness. That we are no longer victims to our past, we walk according to the Spirit. This book will deal with confronting those things that have been hidden for years, that cause many that are called to the forefront to live with secrets. It is to conquer that which had conquered you, no longer living with guilt and no longer being ashamed. FOR WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Bishop Donnann Taylors new book is an enlightening and encouraging read that reminds believers that the Christ within them is greater than the challenges and obstacles they face in the world.

View a synopsis of The Land You Conquer First on YouTube.

Consumers can purchaseThe Land You Conquer First at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Land You Conquer First, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.


Bright Now! Dental

In Partnership with the Smiles for Everyone Foundation, Bright Now! Dental will provide free dental services for low-income, underinsured individuals at its Fresno, CA office on May 19th.

Dental services provided include same-day procedures such as exams and x-rays, fillings, cleanings and extractions. For more information, please visit the Bright Now! Dental website.

About Bright Now! Dental

Bright Now!  Dental provides general dentistry, childrens dentistry and, in select locations, specialty care services such as orthodontics, oral surgery, periodontics and endodontics at over 150 offices across Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and Washington. Bright Now! Dentals Fresno office is operated by Leng C. Haong, D.D.S., Inc., P.C. (the Group). The Group is affiliated with Smile Brands Inc., one of the largest providers of business support services to dental groups in the United States. Smile Brands Inc. provides comprehensive business support services through exclusive long-term service agreements with affiliated dental groups, so dentists can spend more time caring for their patients and less time on the administrative, marketing and financial aspects of operating a dental practice. Smile Brands is a portfolio company of Gryphon Investors (Gryphon), a leading middle-market private equity firm based in San Francisco, CA. For more information, visit http://www.smilebrands.com.

About the Smiles For Everyone Foundation

The Smiles for Everyone Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with the mission of delivering smiles for everyone by providing free dental care for those in need, both at home in the U.S. and around the world. Since 2011, the Smiles for Everyone Foundation has delivered over 20,000 smiles and nearly $16 million in donated dentistry. The foundation currently supports programs which provide free dental care to those in need in Cambodia, Ghana, Laos, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Thailand, and the United States. For more information or to make a donation, visit http://www.smilesforeveryone.org.

Contacts:

Bright Now! Dental

Jody Martin

PR(at)smilebrands.com

714.427.1299

Smiles for Everyone Foundation

Crystal Strait

crystal.strait(at)smilesforeveryone.org

714.824.5037
Our specialty is helping the family members navigate through a crisis time in their life.

Elder Placement Professionals, the San Luis Obispo assisted living specialists are now providing nationwide services. The California company helps seniors and their families find assisted living options for the best care.

With our knowledge of the industry, we can find the best assisted living options available, save you time and frustration, and help you negotiate the costs to fit your budget, said owner Nicole Pazdan.

The company helps families and individuals find the best services for senior care, including:



Residential care homes

Retirement communities

Alzheimers, Dementia, Parkinsons Care

Assisted living in San Luis Obispo and nationwide

Services start with an assessment of the clients Medical, Social and Financial needs. After the assessment, the staff helps to schedule a personalized tour of the appropriate facilities, helps with the paperwork, and provide guidance through the entire placement process.

There is no charge to the client.

Owner and principal, Nicole Pazdan, was drawn to senior citizens as a youth, becoming a volunteer Candy Striper at 16-years old and continuing to work in health care as an adult. Pazdan holds a degree in Business Administration, from Cal Poly State University and became a Certified Senior Adviser (CSA) in 2007.

Our specialty is helping the family members navigate through a crisis time in their life, said Pazdan. Oftentimes, they need to make an immediate decision on their loved ones health care without knowing the resources that are available.

Contact Elder Placement Professionals today to get all of your questions answered and start the process of finding just the right care facility.

Elder Placement Professionals

1119 Palm Street

San Luis Obispo, CA 93401

(805) 546-8777

This press release is by San Luis Obispo publicity firm, Access Publishing, 806 9th Street, #2D, Paso Robles, CA 93446. (805) 226-9890.
For all of these reasons, we gladly award Overstock with our highest ranking among retailers of Futons in 2019.

TopConsumerReviews.com recently gave their top rating to Overstock, an industry leader in the retail Futon market.

First hitting the market in the 1960s, Futons remain a popular way to maximize space in a bedroom, studio apartment, or dorm room. Typically constructed of a foldable frame, mattress, and cover, these versatile pieces of furniture can serve interchangeably as a sofa or as a bed. But, shoppers who are trying to furnish a small living space often dont have a large vehicle or truck to transport a Futon from a retail store to their home. Shopping online not only solves that dilemma, but also puts the worlds best selection of Futons in reach - often with free delivery right to the customers doorstep.

Overstock carries more than 2,000 options when it comes to Futons, described Brian Dolezal, of TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC. Their easy-to-use website allows customers to quickly search through the possibilities according to type, size, materials, customer ratings, and much more. Theres something for absolutely every need and budget, and Overstocks customer service reps are on hand via live chat, email, text, phone, and social media channels to answer any questions that come up. This retailer also enjoys a flawless A+ grade with the Better Business Bureau, along with ample praise from satisfied shoppers. For all of these reasons, we gladly award Overstock with our highest ranking among retailers of Futons in 2019.

To find out more about Overstock and other online retailers of Futons, including reviews and comparison rankings, please visit the Futons category of TopConsumerReviews.com at https://www.topconsumerreviews.com/futons/.

About Overstock

Overstock is an online retailer and technology company based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Its leading e-commerce website sells a broad range of new products at low prices, including furniture, decor, rugs, bedding, home improvement, and more. The online shopping site, which is visited by nearly 40 million customers a month, also features a marketplace providing customers access to millions of products from third-party sellers.

About TopConsumerReviews.com

TopConsumerReviews.com, LLC is a leading provider of reviews and rankings for thousands of consumer products and services. From Futons to Bunk Beds and Foam Mattresses, TopConsumerReviews.com delivers in-depth product evaluations in order to make purchasing decisions easier.


Gilbane Building Companys Rhode Island business unit has entered a memorandum of understanding with the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance Teams Medical Reserve Corp and its Naloxone and Overdose Prevention Education (NOPE-RI) program to equip all project sites throughout the state with Naloxone Rescue Kits.

Naloxone, commonly known as Narcan, reverses the effects of opioids, allowing an individual experiencing an overdose to breathe normally. Given early enough, along with other first aid tactics, Naloxone can reduce the morbidity and mortality related to an opioid overdose.

Instances of opioid overdose have reached epidemic levels in New England, as well as other parts of the country. In 40 states, including Rhode Island, opioid overdoses exceed motor vehicle accidents as the leading cause of accidental death among adults. The construction industry is disproportionately affected by this crisis. A recent study conducted by the Massachusetts Department of Public Heath found that construction workers accounted for more than 24 percent of opioid-related deaths and were six times more likely to die of an opioid overdose than the average Massachusetts worker.

Earlier this year, Gilbane personnel working in Rhode Island were trained by the RI Department of Healths Overdose Prevention Education Director, Erin McDonough, in the administration and usage of Naloxone, as well as to recognize the signs and symptoms of a potential overdose. Today, job sites throughout the state are equipped with this life-saving medication.

In addition to our non-negotiable safety protocols aimed at avoiding injuries all together, we are now focused on educating our teams on the risks associated with opioid prescription pain medications, said Dennis Mullen, safety director for Gilbanes New England division. Working to reduce the stigma of addiction and outfitting our first aid kits with Naloxone can help keep our employees, and those tradespeople who work on our job sites, alive if an overdose does occur on site.

Outlined within the memorandum of understanding between Gilbane and NOPE-RI is the agreement between entities to implement the Naloxone Rescue Kit program, which equips job sites with the necessary materials and training to successfully utilize the tool should the occasion arise. For their part, NOPE-RI have agreed to provide protocols for treatment and storage of the medication, as well as the proper training and education to allow the program to be successful.

Gilbane Building Company remains committed to the safety of our teams, our job sites, and the communities in which we live, work, and build. Through long-standing partnerships with the Rhode Island Building Trades Council, led by Michael Sabitoni, and UA Local 51 of RI, we continue our work to maintain safe project sites to proactively reduce the threat of injury. By providing Naloxone to aide a job site team member who may experience an opioid overdose while at work, we hope to confront this national crisis head on.

About Gilbane Building Company

Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services  from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, general contracting, design-build and facility management services  for clients across various markets. Founded in 1873 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 45 office locations worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com.


David J. Dykeman, patent attorney and co-chair of Greenberg Traurig, LLPs global Life Sciences & Medical Technology Group and Boston Intellectual Property & Technology (IP) Group, organized the Lifesciences Lchaim Networking Event hosted by Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) held April 4. He led a panel discussion on the latest trends in the life sciences and medical technology industries. Dykeman was a member of the event host committee, and Greenberg Traurig was an event sponsor.

The CJP event brought together senior executives, entrepreneurs, and investors from across the biotech, pharma, healthcare, medtech and diagnostics industries to strengthen business relationships within the Greater Boston Jewish community. Members of the Lifesciences L'chaim event host committee include:

Alan Crane, Polaris Partners

David Dykeman, Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Eli Goldberg, Novartis

Luba Greenwood, Google Life Sciences

Jeff Karp, Brigham and Womens Hospital

Geoff Meyerson, Locust Walk

Michal Preminger, Johnson & Johnson Innovation

Ilonna Rimm, Morninglight Healthcare Capital

About Greenberg Traurigs Life Sciences & Medical Technology Group: Greenberg Traurigs Life Sciences & Medical Technology Group advises clients ranging from start-ups to large multinational public companies to leading research institutions. The groups attorneys work closely with clients, providing innovative legal counsel to help them achieve their objectives  from discovery through commercialization and product marketing.

About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 39 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. GT has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, diversity, and innovation, and is consistently among the largest firms in the U.S. on the Law360 400 and among the Top 20 on the Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law
Much in the same way that Donald Trump wrestled much of the Midwest from the Democrats in 2016, he could do the same to Minnesota in 2020.

Hamline University professor David Schultz, noted expert on American politics and author of Presidential Swing States, argues in a recent Blog that Minnesota is a potential 2020 presidential swing state and that is why it makes sense for Donald Trump to visit the state on April 15.

In a recent Blog entitled Trump Visits Minnesota: Can he win the state in 2020? Schultz contends that there are many signs that Hillary Clintons narrow victory in 2016 over Donald Trump in Minnesota was not necessarily a fluke. Minnesota is the most reliable Democratic Party state in the country, with Nixon in 1972 the last time a Republican presidential candidate won the state. However, much in the same way that Donald Trump wrestled much of the Midwest from the Democrats in 2016, he could do the same to Minnesota in 2020, according to Schultz.

The Hamline University professor describes in his Blog and in his book several factors suggesting Minnesota is becoming a swing state, despite recent Democratic Party gains. Minnesota is the only state in the nation with split partisan control of its legislature, and recent voting patterns in the state suggest a sizeable electorate open to Trumps message, especially in rural and non-metro parts.

There are many themes, including immigration and manufacturing that appeal to Minnesotans, and it is not a pipedream that Trump could be competitive in this state in 2020. Even if he cannot win Minnesota, forcing Democrats to expend resources to defend a reliable state for them means money and time not expended elsewhere in 2020. Trump visiting Minnesota is strategically smart, says Schultz.

David Schultz is a professor of political science at Hamline University. He has taught classes on American government and constitutional law for nearly 30 years. A three-time Fulbright scholar and winner of the Leslie A. Whittington national award for excellence in public affairs teaching, David Schultz is the author and editor of 35 books and 200 articles on American politics and law, including Presidential Swing States 2e.

--End
"Learning should be fun, engaging and immersive. By integrating an augmented reality component into the pages of textbooks, difficult concepts will come to life with a 3D lesson and rise from the pages using a smartphone," said Kendall Hunt President Chad Chandlee.

Printed and digital textbooks will now come to life through the modern-day magic of augmented reality  an interactive experience of a real-world environment where objects that reside in the real-world are augmented by computer-generated perceptual information.

Chad Chandlee, President of Kendall Hunt, explained the integration of AR into textbooks: Learning should be fun, engaging and immersive. By integrating an augmented reality component into the pages of textbooks, difficult concepts will come to life with a 3D lesson and rise from the pages using a smartphone.

The partnership between Kendall Hunt and VictoryXR will give schools and parents the option to upgrade to an augmented reality layer taking some of the most difficult concepts within chapters and explain them through interactive 3D objects and hologram teachers. Students will only need to hold a smartphone over a page in a science book and with the use of a free app, interactive lessons will appear floating over the page.

Google and Apple have invested heavily so that all modern smartphones have augmented reality technology built into the device, explained Steve Grubbs, CEO of VictoryXR. This gives us new tools to teach and immerse students into learning like never before. We know students love their phones, now they can use them to learn in class or at home while studying.

The AR layer is expected to begin rolling out before the start of the next school year in August. The particular Kendall Hunt textbooks featuring the augmented reality technology have yet to be identified. Once in place, schools can try out the augmented reality technology by downloading the VictoryXR app free from the Google Play Store and - soon - the Apple App Store by searching VictoryXR App.

See the demo here: https://youtu.be/-uLqP6TAJKs

Fast facts about AR:



More than 1 billion phones worldwide are currently enabled to use augmented reality

Augmented reality is closely related to virtual reality, but does not require a full headset

The first augmented reality app to sweep the world was Pokemon Go

About VictoryXR

VictoryXR is the leading provider of AR/VR educational content. HTC Viveport awarded VictoryXR with the 2018 award for the best VR educational title in the world. Microsoft announced in January that it would be licensing VictoryXRs content to provide it to users of its platform. In addition, VictoryXR has an exclusive agreement with Oxford University Press to provide language instruction content to greater China. VictoryXR was previously VictoryVR. Visit VictoryXR.com.

About Kendall Hunt

Kendall Hunt is the premiere publisher of innovative, hands-on science, mathematics, gifted and virtual reality curricula for grades PreK-12. In conjunction with offering a variety of inquiry-based stand-alone PreK-12 products, ConstructEd, a division of Kendall Hunt, allows schools and/or teachers, to create made-to-order textbooks or digital products using existing products or creating their own. Visit http://k12.kendallhunt.com.
M3 gives us a significant advantage over our competition by enabling us to see all our hotels in real time, which has improved our efficiency and increased our profits, said Graydon Pearson, President and CEO of In-Group Hospitality.

M3, the leading cloud-based financial platform for the hospitality industry, has announced a partnership with In-Group Hospitality, a hotel management, development and consulting group with a growing portfolio of 27 properties across the U.S. In-Group Hospitality has implemented M3s Accounting Core and Business Intelligence tools with plans to expand their relationship with M3 as they install M3s Time Management tool within the next few weeks.

M3s entry point solution, Accounting Core is a monthly subscription based ERP solution that provides robust accounting and financial analysis to more than half of the top hotel management companies in the U.S. In addition to Accounting Core, M3 also offers Business Intelligence solutions for more transparent operations management. This back-office business analytics tool increases efficiencies and reduces expenses. M3s Time Management, collects punches and monitors daily labor costs with features like attendance tracking, labor management and labor productivity reporting.

M3 gives us a significant advantage over our competition by enabling us to see all our hotels in real time, which has improved our efficiency and increased our profits, said Graydon Pearson, President and CEO of In-Group Hospitality.

With M3 currently serving more than half of the top management companies in the U.S. and abroad in Canada and the Caribbean, In-Group joins the list of nearly 5,000 individual hoteliers who rely on M3 for all of their financial and accounting needs.

This strategic partnership with In-Group Hospitality supports our approach to continue growing our U.S. portfolio as we simultaneously expand M3s international reach, said Scott Watson, M3s Chief Sales Officer and Partner.

To learn more about M3 or to request a demo, visit http://www.m3as.com.

About M3

Built by hoteliers, exclusively for hoteliers, M3 is a powerful cloud-based financial platform and services company serving the hospitality industry that drives cost savings, revenue enhancement and business insight. With over 20 years in business without increasing prices, M3 touts a 98 percent customer retention rate without contracts. Used by management groups and hotels of all sizes, the platform works seamlessly with other key systems and tools in the hospitality industry and offers robust accounting and financial analysis across entire portfolios with optional operations and time management features. M3s professional services team provides on-demand support for hotels of any size by offering a full range of customized accounting solutions to scale with a hotels needs. Privately held and employee owned, M3 also includes a proprietary hotel benchmarking index that combines data from more than 3,500 properties into a single accessible data set to compare hotels. For more information, visit http://www.m3as.com.

Media Contacts

Hannah Buffington / Parker Butler

Lou Hammond Group

hannahb(at)louhammond.com / parkerb(at)louhammond.com
The precipitation trends this winter are putting us on track for an exceptional whitewater rafting season this year.

Morrisons Rogue Wilderness Adventures and Lodge are in full swing for the 2019 season and want to be clear that their tours and lodging are unaffected by last years wildfires in the area. Although last years Klondike and Taylor Creek fires impacted a number of local businesses and landowners, and made outdoor recreation in the area challenging at times, there is no current negative impact on Morrisons trips or lodging whatsoever.

It is estimated that the Klondike and Taylor Creek fires burned over 211,801 acres of forest land, however there is no fire damage is visible from Morrisons Lodge or from any vantage point on any of our multi-day hiking or rafting trips. As far as the outlook for this reason, recent winter storms are bringing unprecedented rain and snowpack. The Medford National Weather Service reports that rainfall for 2019 so far is nearly 3 inches above average. While the Statesman Journal reports snowpack levels are 117% of normal for this time of year.

General Manager Andrew Pratt encourages outdoor enthusiasts to book trips early to ensure availability. The precipitation trends this winter are putting us on track for an exceptional whitewater rafting season this year, says Pratt. More water in the winter means more fun to be had in the spring and summer. Were grateful and confident it will also have a positive effect on wildfires later this summer.

Morrisons Rogue Wilderness Adventures and Lodge offer a variety of guided hiking, rafting, and fishing trips on the Wild & Scenic stretch of the Rogue River. They also serve as a clearinghouse of information for campers and rafters planning their own trips on the Wild & Scenic Rogue River. Resources to support self-guided travelers can be found on their new website. There youll find geo-referenced campsite maps, trail maps, boaters guides, and information about equipment rentals to make your trip to the Rogue River easy and fun.

If youre looking for an opportunity to get some exercise and escape the busy-ness of the modern world this summer, Morrisons trips are the perfect fit.

About Morrisons Rogue Wilderness Adventures

Morrisons has been leading world-class rafting, fishing, and hiking trips on the Rogue River for over 50 years. They are Southern Oregons premier river adventure outfitter, working daily to protect and preserve the majesty of the Wild & Scenic Rogue River. To learn more about Morrisons Rogue Wilderness Adventures, please visit their website at https://rogueriverraft.com/. To access resources, tips, and tools for self-guided travelers visit their new website at https://wildrogue.com/.
Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City Lobby Sitting Area We believe in the importance of providing great hospitality from our hotel team to each and every person that walks through our door

The Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City has been recognized by Hilton with a Lighthouse Award. The award signifies the hotel as one of the top performing properties within the brand and is only presented to those hotels that have excelled in service and growing customer loyalty. Naples Hotel Group has been managing the hotel since it opened in March of 2017.

Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City was awarded the 2018 Lighthouse Award for ranking in the top five percent of all Hampton by Hilton franchises and the top-ranking Hampton by Hilton property in the state of Florida. The property will receive a brand trophy to display in their lobby.

We are thrilled to have received this honor on behalf of the team at Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City, said Cory Drew, general manager. We believe in the importance of providing great hospitality from our hotel team to each and every person that walks through our door. Our team works every day to ensure our customer service, cleanliness, and overall experience is exceptional for every guest.

Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City is located off I-4 along the growth corridor between Tampa and Orlando. The property features 89 guest rooms, 600 square feet of meeting space, a 24-hour TREATS shop, fitness room, on-site laundry, an outdoor pool and patio area. Plant City is known as the Winter Harvest Strawberry capital of the world and home to the iconic Florida Strawberry Festival.

Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City is part of Hilton Honors, the award-winning guest-loyalty program for Hiltons 17 distinct hotel 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 cant be found anywhere else and free standard WiFi. Members also enjoy popular digital tools available exclusively through the industry-leading Hilton Honors mobile app, where Hilton Honors members can check-in, choose their room and access their room using a Digital Key.

To make a reservation, visit Hampton Inn by Hilton Plant City or call +1-813-756-5600.

Read more about Hampton by Hilton at http://www.hampton.com and newsroom.hilton.com/hampton.

About Hampton by Hilton

As the number one ranked lodging franchise for the past 10 years, according to Entrepreneur, Hampton by Hilton, including Hampton Inn by Hilton and Hampton Inn & Suites by Hilton, serves value-conscious and quality-driven travelers at more than 2,430 properties with more than 250,000 rooms in 25 countries and territories. High-quality accommodations and amenities, such as complimentary WiFi, free hot breakfast, and On The RunTM breakfast bags, contribute to Hampton by Hilton ranking as a leader in its segment. Hampton by Hilton Team Members deliver friendly, authentic, caring and thoughtful service defined as Hamptonality, with guest happiness being the number one priority, backed by the 100% Hampton GuaranteeTM. Hilton Honors members who book directly through preferred Hilton channels have access to instant benefits. For more information about Hampton by Hilton, visit http://www.hampton.com or newsroom.hilton.com/hampton, and connect on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

About Naples Hotel Group

Naples Hotel Group is a leading hotel development and management company of franchised brands such as Marriott International, Hilton Worldwide, and InterContinental Hotel Group. NHG has achieved superior results and has a proven ability to enhance the performance of hotels using their experience, responsiveness, and extensive resources. With a hotel portfolio spanning the Southeast United States, NHG prides itself on building long-term relationships with quality people and organizations. To learn more visit, http://www.napleshotelgroup.com.
Sarah Boisvert, Founder, Fab Lab Hub Author, The New Collar Workforce There has never been such a focus on the shift that is happening across working and learning to prepare for the Future of Work, adds Jamai Blivin, CEO of Innovate+Educate.

The New Collar Workforce Summit: Reimagining Job Skills, Lifelong Learning and Workforce Readiness in the Era of Digital Transformation, will take place at La Fonda Hotel on the Plaza, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, June 9-11, 2019.

The invitational conference with interactive roundtable discussions will facilitate reimagining and enabling lifelong learning opportunities for the New Collar workforce that must possess 21st Century skills to drive the transition to Industry 4.0. Insights gathered from employers, educators and policy makers will generate post-conference materials to be used as an actionable upskilling resource for those organization on the digital transformation journey.

Featured keynotes and Fireside Chats include:



Dr. Julie Albright, a Digital Sociologist at the University of Southern Californias Dornsife Applied Psychology and Viterbi Engineering schools, and the author of Left to Their Own Devices: How Digital Natives Are Reshaping the American Dream

David Woessner, Executive Vice President, Corporate Development and Regulatory Affairs LM Industries Group Inc., developing Olli, the first 3D Printed, self-driving, electric shuttle

Jamai Blivin, Founder and CEO of Innovate+Educate, a non-profit she started in 2009 with a vision for an industry-led board focused on education and workforce strategies

Jeff Fullerton the Partnerships Manager for Meow Wolf, an immersive arts experience company

DXPlanet 4.0, a digital transformation industry leader, and the non-profit North American Digital Fabrication Alliances New Collar Network initiative are co-hosting the 2-day program in collaboration with Innovate+Educate, a non-profit organization disrupting education models nationwide.

DX Planet founder Bruce Taylor explains that moving into the future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution is impossible without the workforce to integrate new disruptive technologies like 3D Printing, machine learning, predictive analytics, AR/VR, Blockchain and more. The AI-enable IoT in the era of 5G mobile and wireless, plus cloud technologies are now driving massive changes in all industry sectors, says Taylor, While there will be great disruption to the workforce, there will also be a corresponding creation of new workforce needs that are not now being adequately addressed. This summit roundtable is to do just that with clear, definable, actionable goals.

The New Collar Networks founder, Sarah Boisvert reiterates: The nature of work is rapidly changing as 3D Printing, artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles, augmented and virtual reality, Blockchain, predictive analytics and technologies seemingly from science fiction, are adopted in a wide range of industries. Education models must change for todays students, career changers and veterans, who need affordable options that take advantage of new learning innovations. We hope to facilitate that process through co-creation of successful life-long learning programs by the key stakeholders from industry, education and government.

There has never been such a focus on the shift that is happening across working and learning to prepare for the Future of Work, adds Jamai Blivin, CEO of Innovate+Educate. We look forward to collaborating with New Collar Network for an outcome-oriented event as we address this disruption and inevitability of the rapid SHIFT.

Business executives worldwide unanimously agree that adoption of digital transformation is imperative to achieve competitive advantage for their companies. [Source: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd. and U.S. Council on Competitiveness, 2016 Global Manufacturing Competitiveness Index.] According to the World Economic Forum, 75 million workers could lose their jobs to automation by 2022. However, 133 million new jobs are predicted to be created by the same year if workers receive the necessary training in the necessary New Collar job skills.

Where are employers going to find these workers? How will educational institutions meet current employer needs, since the situation is an immediate problem? How will governments and policy makers remove barriers to innovation in training platforms and processes?

These questions form the basis of the New Collar Workforce Summit.

Roundtable-table-style format will build a knowledge base with keynotes, fireside chats and panel discussions from disruptive technology companies, digital transformation implementers, thought leaders on the Future of Work and education innovators.

From that starting point, participants from higher education, a wide range of industries, STEM education, federal, state and local governments, philanthropy and alternative learning innovators will add their own experience to the interactive roundtable conversations from which key takeaways will be documented.
ODU, a worldwide leader in designing and manufacturing high-performance connector solutions and cable assemblies is introducing to the US market new hermetically sealed Push-Pull connectors.

The ODU MINI-SNAP is an advanced circular connector solution with Push-Pull locking and robust metal housing ideal for a wide range of applications. Once mated, the ODU MINI-SNAP locks itself into the receptacle, so whether you are transferring power, signal or data the ODU MINI-SNAP Push-Pull principle reliability ensures that the connection is never released until desired.

The requirements for the sealing of electrical transmission interfaces are rapidly growing. Once only requiring the blockage of general dust and water tightness in industrial applications as well as high-pressure tightness underwater to now requiring an almost airtight seal  hermetic sealing.

The IEC 60068 distinguishes between three quality levels of hermetic sealing: fine, high and ultra-high vacuums. Hermetically sealed (tested helium leakage rate less than 1  10-9 mbar/s) , the new ODU MINI-SNAP receptacles not only meet the demanding requirements of the UHV- suitable interfaces but also comply with high-performance data transfer. Additional product features include: 5,000 mating cycles, up to 500 autoclaving cycles, rear panel installation, temperature range from 20 C to +120 C.

The new ODU MINI-SNAP receptacles offer a solution for various industrial, test and measurement and medical applications including, but not limited to semiconductor production equipment, vacuum sensors, and high-end endoscopes.

ODU Group: Global Representation with Perfect Connections

The ODU Group is one of the worlds leading suppliers of connector systems, employing 2,300 people around the world. In addition to its company headquarters in Muhldorf am Inn (Germany), ODU also has an international distribution network and production sites in Sibiu/Romania, Shanghai/China and Tijuana/Mexico. ODU combines all relevant areas of expertise and key technologies including design and development, machine tooling and special machine construction, injection, stamping, turning, surface technology, assembly and cable assembly. The ODU Group sells its products globally through its nine subsidiaries in Denmark, England, France, Italy, Sweden, the US, China, Korea and Japan, as well as through numerous international sales partners. ODU connectors ensure a reliable transmission of power, signals, data and media for a variety of demanding applications including medical technology, military and security, eMobility, energy, industrial electronics, and measurement and testing.
As overdose rates tragically continue to rise, we must do more to combat the opioid epidemic, said Senator Bush. The initiatives in the Overdose Prevention and Harm Reduction Act build on successful programs we have seen in Lake County and can make a real difference and save lives.

With support from across the political spectrum, the Illinois Senate has approved the Overdose Prevention and Harm Reduction Act, a critical measure needed to address the most devastating impacts of the opioid epidemic. Already the worst public health crisis of this generation, the opioid crisis has led to over 70,000 annual deaths nationwide, with Illinois experiencing almost 3,000 annual overdose deaths and the fastest rate of increase in overdose mortality in Midwest.

This legislation, sponsored by State Senator Melinda Bush (D-31) and supported by Heartland Alliance and other community advocates, seeks to address the worst effects of the opioid epidemic by legalizing needle exchange programs and promoting effective overdose prevention programs across the state.

As overdose rates tragically continue to rise, we must do more to combat the opioid epidemic, said Senator Bush. The initiatives in the Overdose Prevention and Harm Reduction Act build on successful programs we have seen in Lake County and can make a real difference and save lives.

A primary element of the bill is legalizing needle exchange programs statewide.

By joining 22 other states in authorizing needle exchange programs, said Dan Rabbitt, health policy leader at Heartland Alliance, Illinois will support a proven public health intervention to reduce the spread of blood borne illnesses like HIV, connect individuals to services, and prevent accidental overdose death. These services are desperately needed, particularly in suburban and rural areas that have historically had no access to community-based harm reduction programs.

See the attached press release for full details
Kendell Bachik I couldnt be more pleased to join Parker and be a part of the Universitys efforts to grow and educate the public through chiropractic, health and fitness and neurological research and patient care.

Parker University is excited to welcome Kendell Bachik as Director of Institutional Advancement. Her role will primarily be to introduce the University to the community and potential donors with an initial emphasis on the development of Parker Universitys Neuroscience Center.

Kendell was raised in Dallas and attended the University of Texas in Austin for two years before returning to Dallas and graduating from the University of Texas at Dallas with a Bachelors of Science degree in accounting. Upon graduating, Kendell moved to San Francisco in 2006 to intern for a global tax, audit and consulting firm. Following her internship, she earned her Masters in Accounting from Golden Gate University.

Kendell will work on behalf of the entire university when it comes to reaching out to the community and various partners as well as potential donors. Her personal story of inspiration and determination, however, do make her an exceptional fit for assisting with the development of Parkers newly developed Neuroscience Center.

Every 13 seconds someone in the U.S. suffers from a traumatic brain injury resulting in more than 2.5 million new brain injuries per year. Kendell adds, I couldnt be more pleased to join Parker and be a part of the Universitys efforts to grow and educate the public through chiropractic, health and fitness and neurological research and patient care.

On October 31, 2009, Kendell was involved in a serious car accident, severing her spinal cord rendering her paralyzed and a person with quadriplegia. Rather than listen to harsh realities echoed by doctors, Kendell stayed optimistically positive and sought to prove doubters wrong. After a year and a half, Kendell went from being dependent on family members helping her with every detail of life, to regaining her independence, living alone, and driving herself. She devoted much of her time after the accident to creating REACT, a non-profit organization so that she could share her experience and her life-changing program with more people who were impacted by traumatic neurological injuries.

Kendells spirit and dedication are sure to be a great asset to Parker University and the advancement of education and research. When Kendell is not representing Parker University, she, her husband, and daughter along with their two labs enjoy traveling to visit family in San Francisco, Denver, and Orlando.
A Complete Guide to Godly Wisdom: 17 Wisdom Precepts from the Perfect Father Proverbs 19: a much-needed guide for sound living, is the creation of published author Richard Van Yperen, a retired public and private school educator now running an educational consulting business out of his home office in Cumming, Georgia.

Van Yperen writes, In general the Old Testament book of Proverbs provides a compendium of seemingly random succinct universal truths about godly wisdom. However, chapters 19 offer a coherent curriculum that teaches the reader how to acquire wisdom and build ones life on a foundation of eternal values.

Ostensibly, this curriculum is taught by a father to his son over the course of the first nine chapters. Beginning his instruction by declaring The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. Solomon, the author of these chapters, introduces a father narrator who offers seventeen My son wisdom instructions to his son.

While these seventeen wisdom instructions involve a father instructing his son, they teach universal wisdom truths for attaining wisdom and discipline (Prov. 1:2a), that have intrigued readers of all ages for thousands of years.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Richard Van Yperens new book is a shining example of the desperately needed guidance and encouragement needed in a fallen and faithless world.

With this spiritual curriculum, Van Yperen offers every child of God encouragement in the right direction, so that, as in Scripture, when they are old, they will not depart from Gods life-sustaining precepts.

View a synopsis of A Complete Guide to Godly Wisdom: 17 Wisdom Precepts from the Perfect Father Proverbs 19 on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase A Complete Guide to Godly Wisdom: 17 Wisdom Precepts from the Perfect Father Proverbs 19 at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about A Complete Guide to Godly Wisdom: 17 Wisdom Precepts from the Perfect Father Proverbs 19, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
The Mekong River takes travellers to hidden corners of Vietnam and Cambodia. "Passengers explore Phnom Penh, the Mekong Delta, and many of the small communities that define the local flavours of Cambodia and Southern Vietnam."

Solo globetrotters who act fast can explore the hidden corners of the Mekong Delta, spot elusive Irrawaddy dolphins and visit the communities that define Cambodias Tonle Sap for less with Goway Travel. The companys destination experts are offering savings of up to US$750 per person on an 8-day Classic Mekong cruise, with private cabin accommodation available for solo travellers.

Goways Classic Mekong begins in either exhilarating Ho Chi Minh City, or Siem Reap, gateway to Cambodias awe-inspiring Angkor temples. Along the way, passengers explore Phnom Penh, the Mekong Delta, and many of the small communities that define the local flavours of Cambodia and Southern Vietnam. Highlights include the Mekongs famed silk island, Con Phuoc Island, the dolphin grounds of Kratie, and the Royal Palace of Phnom Penh.

This unique cruise package includes 7 nights private cabin accommodation, guided touring, entrance fees, all meals, crew gratuities, arrival and departure transfers and more. Departures are scheduled throughout 2019. Passengers must book by April 30, 2019 to be eligible for this saving. Goway can also assist with international flights, plus additions to the itinerary to suit the needs of individual travellers.

Since 1970, Goway has been providing unforgettable travel experiences to Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Central & South America, Idyllic Island destinations and Europe. Today Goway is recognized as one of North America's leading travel companies for individuals, families and groups to select exotic destinations around the globe. Goway has offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, and Sydney, Australia.

For reservations and information, visit http://www.goway.com, or call 1-800-387-8850.
The Junior League of Boston (JL Boston) announced that it raised over $24,000 from nearly 400 donors as part of its second year organizing the Little Black Dress Initiative (LBDI). The funds raised directly support the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center (BARCC), which works to end sexual violence for all people through healing and social change.

We are honored to support BARCC in raising awareness about the issue of sexual and domestic violence against women and girls in Boston," said Michelle Lentz, 2018- 2020 President of JL Boston. "Their mission is critical to making Boston a safer and stronger city, and we look forward to continuing to work together to make a positive change in the lives of those affected.

LBDI is an advocacy and fundraising campaign focused on educating community members about key issues in Greater Boston. This year advocates of the initiative wore the same black dress (or outfit) for five consecutive days at the end of February to highlight the effects sexual or domestic violence can have on a womans access to resources, her confidence, and professional activities. Sixty-three participants wore stickers that read, Ask Me About My Dress, to prompt conversations about these issues in the Greater Boston communities.

"The past year, while challenging, has also been inspiring as we watch new waves of people volunteering, donating, and taking action, said Gina Scaramella, Executive Director of BARCC. The Junior League of Boston is not just hoping for change, they are working to make it happen. Together we are blazing the trail ahead. Thank you."

In the weeks leading up to LBDI and during the campaign, JL Boston hosted eight supporting events, including a kickoff fundraiser, an educational workshop with Sarah Beaulieu from ConverQ, and a close out brunch with community partners to amplify LBDIs impact in Greater Boston. During one event, JL Boston members created 150 survivor care packages for BARCC. Those packages were distributed to BARCC Med Ads, who bring them on their calls to emergency rooms and inpatient units.

Im a strong believer that to drive change, you must start locally, said Lindsay Farrell, Co-Chair of JL Bostons 2019 LBDI. Im so proud to see how the reach of LBDI spread throughout our community here in Boston this year. The insights and practical skills built during LBDI week to talk about these challenging topics are something that doesnt end here, and advocates will always carry with them.

Caties Closet was also a community partner and beneficiary of this years LBDI campaign. Caties Closet works to improve school attendance by providing clothing and toiletries to children in need, right within their schools. To support their mission and community impact, JL Boston donated clothing items that were collected during the LBDI campaign to Caties Closet.

The LBDI campaign originated in London in 2014 and has since been adopted by over 80 different Junior League chapters in North America.

About the Junior League of Boston:

The Junior League of Boston is part of the Association of Junior Leagues International, an organization of 291 Junior League chapters in four countries. The organization is composed of dedicated and creative women from varying backgrounds and interests, who committed to promoting voluntarism, developing tomorrows healthy and confident women and leaders and improving communities through effective action and leadership.

To donate to JL Boston and help expand our impact, please visit http://www.jlboston.org.

###

Contact:

Lindsey Shepardson

External Communications

Junior League of Boston

externalrelations(at)jlboston.org
Industry and peer reviews put The QualiFind Group in the Top 20 of Forbes magazine's List of the Top 200 Search & Recruitment Firms in America Being ranked for service, capabilities and process metrics speaks to our reputation for delivering best-in-class managerial and executive talent in the US, Mexico and globally through our partnership with IRC.

The QualiFind Group, Inc. is proud to announce that Forbes magazine has ranked the firm among the Top 20 within their 2019 List of the Top 200 Executive Recruiting Firms in America. This is the third consecutive year that The QualiFind Group has been selected for the prestigious Forbes list.

The QualiFind Group moved from #31 in 2018 to #19 in 2019. At #19, The QualiFind Group is the highest ranked firm with expertise in the combined region of the US, Mexico and Latin America and the third highest ranked firm in California.

Ranking within the Forbes list is done in cooperation with the analytics and market research firm Statista. Statista surveyed more than 30,000 participants which included executive-level candidates / employees, human resources leaders and external recruiters (peers) who have worked with executive search firms during the past three years. Statista collected more than 17,000 nominations in order to produce the list of America's top firms.

"Forbes announced their selection just as we were celebrating our 20th anniversary delivering best-in-class talent for our clients," said Warren Carter, founder and senior managing partner of The QualiFind Group. "We made a conscious decision more than a decade ago to expand on our ability to be leaders at sourcing and securing standout talent both in the US/Mexico region as well as globally. When we joined the global search alliance - IRC Global Executive Search Partners in 2008, we made exponential gains on our ability to deliver talent when and where needed. We have also benefited from benchmarking ourselves with and against the collective brain trust of more than 350 executive search consultants who are our global partners in IRC. The fact that all US based IRC member firms were also ranked in the Forbes list is a testament to surrounding yourself with the best and brightest talent in whatever it is that you do."

Statista asked the 30,000+ survey participants to nominate up to 10 search firms filling positions with salaries above $100,000. External recruiters could not nominate themselves. Search firms were ranked according to those with the most favorable assessments and recommendations in the survey categories as follows:

EXECUTIVE-LEVEL CANDIDATES / EMPLOYEES



Quality & selection of offered positions

Quality of process (e.g. clear, reliable & timely)

Quality of communication (e.g. personal, professional)

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT



Quality & selection of offered candidates

Quality of service during and after the recruitment process

Price-performance ratio of offered services

EXTERNAL RECRUITERS

External recruiters were asked to nominate a peer search firm based on the case that they would not be able to provide a service or industry-focus themselves.

Statista collected and validated the recommendations from the participants in all three surveys as well as the assessments from executive candidates and human resources management.

We are particularly proud of this ranking due to Forbes measuring listed firms with more objective elements such as service delivery, capabilities and performance metrics versus elements such as annual revenue or number of employees.

ABOUT THE QUALIFIND GROUP, INC.

Since 1999, The QualiFind Group has been providing search and recruitment services throughout North America to include the US, Canada and Mexico and globally through an exclusive partnership with IRC Global Executive Search Partners. We have an extensive track record of verifiable success in securing middle management to c-suite executives as well as functional managers in such areas as accounting & finance, human resources, engineering, supply chain and regulatory compliance.

Our partnership with IRC extends our capabilities by more than 350 search consultants in 45 countries on 6 continents. Three other US-based IRC member firms joined us in the Top 20 segment of the Forbes list.

Our founder and senior managing partner - Warren Carter is a member of IRC's Executive Board of Directors and senior managing partner - Carlos Acosta is the America's Leader for IRC's Global Industrial / Manufacturing Practice Group.
Working with a claim adjuster is a challenge. Without sufficient documents, especially medical and car repair receipts, you will be offered a low sum of money as reimbursement, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

After being notified about the incident, the car insurance company will dispatch a team of experts to assess the damage, determine the reimbursement and settle the claim. When dealing with claim adjusters it is important to remember that following tips.

Find out more and get free car insurance quotes from https://carinsuranceplan.org/how-to-negotiate-with-an-auto-insurance-claims-adjuster



Have all the relevant documents ready. It is important to have everything organized and all papers ready for inspection. The policyholder must gather all medical records, medical bills and repair bills and provide them when asked by claim adjusters. Furthermore, get a copy of the police report. Adjusters will certainly ask for official documents.

Have an initial proposal ready. Consider a minimum settlement before negotiations. Figure out how much were the total medical and car repair expenses. Also take into consideration lost wages resulting from the accident.

Start negotiating first and offer your settlement to the adjuster. When negotiations start, back that sum of money with arguments. The policyholder must provide receipts, police reports, pictures, medical reports, etc. Anything that supports the claims helps.

Accepting the first offer is a mistake. Claim adjusters work for insurance companies. Its their job to minimize the financial losses of the company. So they will initially provide a very low offer. Do not accept it and ask for explanations and provide a counteroffer.

Keep calm and cooperate with the adjuster. Even though the initial offer was really low, stay calm and professional. Provide arguments and the settlement money will gradually increase. Provide extra documents and photos when required.

Carinsuranceplan.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.

For more information, please visit http://carinsuranceplan.org.
Wallarm, the company that delivers AI-powered application and API security, is launching a cryptocurrency security risk awareness campaign.... following research exposing the ongoing depth and frequency of crypto exchange security risks costing millions.

San Francisco. -- Wallarm, the company that delivers AI-powered application and API security, is launching a cryptocurrency security risk awareness campaign. Its well-timed. Recently, hackers stole another $19M USD from a cryptocurrency exchange, Bithump. The initiative launches following research exposing the ongoing depth and frequency of crypto exchange security risks. The direct losses (not including recovery efforts, bankruptcy filings, and litigation) have cost over $5.6 billion USD worldwide).

Coming crypto exchange security risk awareness efforts include:



Cryptocurrency Security Risks: At a Glance infographic and supporting articles, including a featured webpage. The company encourages individuals and organizations to freely share the educational image. (https://wallarm.com/cryptocurrency-security/)

Global Cryptocurrency Exchange Security webinar on April 17 at 4:00PM PST. The free webinar features Wallarm CEO and a white hat hacker, Ivan Novikov. The webinar covers the state of cryptocurrency security. Novikov then addresses the security risks built into exchange infrastructures and what investors and businesses can do to help limit risk.

Other efforts will continue over the coming months, including supporting articles on the companys website and external news sites as well as supporting other community events.

Wallarms community-focus welcomes interviews, commentary, events, and inquiries regarding the past, present, and future state of cryptocurrency exchange security and infrastructure.

The current initiative focused on transparency of the risks of local and distributed crypto exchanges come on the heels of the Transparent Security Initiative the company has launched earlier this year. Wallarm has launched the initiative to promote collaborative and transparent security into the shared community. The members of this initiative open the source code and architecture diagrams of their security solutions to their customers, enabling end users to audit for backdoors, vulnerabilities, and veracity of the claims vendors are making. Transparent Security Initiative is applicable to many markets with high exposure to the risk of cybercrime, including virtual coins and the relevant trading platforms.

ABOUT WALLARM

Wallarm is innovating the protection of websites, microservices and APIs running on public and private clouds. Its unique position as AI-powered, unified security platform delivers valuable expert insight to difficult security questions that broadly affect shared communities.

Focused on automation and enabling the cloud-native world, Wallarms mission is to protect todays enterprises from tomorrows threats. In keeping with this mission, Wallarm has an active partnership with the Linux Foundation and its sister organization, Cloud Native Computing Foundation. These non-profit communities share a dedication to promoting the sustainability and adoption of open source technology.
This curated list, annotated with editors comments whenever possible, offers a closer look at some of this years middle grade books that feature highly illustrated formats, or themes exploring neurodiversity and physical challenges, or LGBTQIA+ representation.

New Highly Illustrated Books

All the Greys on Greene Street by Laura Tucker, illus. by Kelly Murphy (Viking, June). Twelve-year-old Olympia is on the case when her artist dad disappears in the middle of the night in 1981 New York City, leaving only a cryptic note. One of [this books] greatest gifts is its ability to capture the magic of art, noted editor Kendra Levin. It simply but powerfully describes what it feels like to see the everydaya window, a fire escape, a catthrough the eyes of an artist. Kelly Murphys illustrations build on Laura Tuckers writing and add to the feeling that, as readers, we are peeking over the main character Olympias shoulder into her sketchbook and seeing the world of 1981 SoHo, full of artists lofts, galleries, and graffiti. I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, but every time I have read All the Greys on Greene Street as Ive worked on the book, it has left me feeling inspired to pick up a pencil or a paintbrush and lose myself in the pure enjoyment of making art, just like Olympia.

Anna Strong and the Revolutionary War Culper Spy Ring by Enigma Alberti and Laura Terry (Workman, Apr.) introduces a key member of the secret group led by George Washington to gather intelligence on the British during the Revolutionary War.

AstroNuts Mission 1: The Plant Planet by Jon Scieszka, illus. by Steven Weinberg (Chronicle, Sept.) begins a trilogy narrated by Earth herself as four characters are tasked with finding a new planet for Earthlings to move to when we can no longer sustain life on Earth, said Taylor Norman, editor at Chronicle Books. Its full-color throughout, so it will be a little different, she added. As we worked on the book, its been scarily relevant how timely it is coming to feel. In the two or three years since weve signed up the books, the reports from everywhere have only proven that Earth is definitely going through a significant change at this time because of human activity. The ultimate conclusion of the [trilogy] is going to be that there is no magic planet we can move towe have to fix Earth. As silly as the story is, the science in it is all real and important science thats going to have a major impact directly on the readers its targeted at.

Ben Braver and the Incredible Exploding Kid by Marcus Emerson (Roaring Brook, Mar.) is second in the series about Bens adventures at his secret middle school for kids with special abilities, from the creator of the Diary of a 6th Grade Ninja series.

Bigger, Badder, Nerdier by Obert Skye (Holt/Ottaviano, Apr.), continues the Geeked Out series set in a dystopian junior high where a group of geeky friends gain superpowers from a spider bite.

Cape: Book #1 of The League of Secret Heroes by Kate Hannigan, illus. by Patrick Spaziante (S&S/Aladdin, Aug.) I was lucky enough to jump on board with this trilogy after the acquiring editor, Amy Cloud, went to HMH, said editor Alyson Heller. When Amy brought it to our editorial meeting, the whole team fell in love with Kate Hannigans voice, and these three kick-butt girls who are all brave, resourceful, and incredibly smart. We loved that Kate drew inspiration from the Golden Age of comic book heroines and from real-life womenin particular, female computer programmers, the ENIAC Sixwho were instrumental during World War II. And, of course, in our current cultural zeitgeist, franchises such as Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel show that you cant spell hero without her. I hope young readers feel empowered after reading this.

DK Life Stories (DK, Jan.-Oct.). The first 12 titles launching this middle grade biography series employ graphics, full-color photos, and illustrations to illuminate the life stories of such figures as Anne Frank and Alexander Hamilton.

Diary of an Awesome Friendly Kid: Rowley Jeffersons Journal by Jeff Kinney (Amulet, Apr.) introduces a new series spun off from Kinneys mega-selling Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, featuring the musings of Greg Heffleys best pal, Rowley.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid #14 by Jeff Kinney (Amulet, Nov.) is next up in this groundbreaking illustrated series.

Emperor of the Universe by David Lubar (Starscape, July). This was basically my holy grail, said senior editor Susan Chang of the tale spotlighting a seventh-grader, his pet gerbil, and a package of ground beef aboard an alien space ship. I have loved Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy since I was a kid. I have wanted to do a middle grade Hitchhikers Guide and thats what David just happened to deliver. When the manuscript came in and was so funny and presented such opportunity for visual humor as well, we thought it would be great to illustrate it.

The Extremely High Tide (Secrets of Topsea) by Kir Fox and Shelley Coats, illus. by Rachel Sanson (Disney, Jan.), is next up in the series about young Talise, the best and only bathymetrist (ocean expert) in Topsea.

Katt vs. Dogg by James Patterson and Chris Grabenstein, illus. by Anuki Lopez (Little, Brown/Jimmy Patterson, Apr.) has a really fresh take on the age-old rivalry between cats and dogs that we all take for granted in a humorous way, said Jenny Bak, editorial director at Jimmy Patterson Books. Jim was able to explore some pretty timely themes about prejudice in a non-preachy, accessible way, and a way that I think kids can really understand and internalize. I like how the characters ultimately separate their thoughts from what theyve been taught by their families their whole lives and are able to stand up and think for themselves, which is a really great lesson for kids of this age to learn when theyre starting to explore their independence.

The Last Kids on Earth and the Midnight Blade by Max Brailler, illus. by Douglas Holgate (Viking, Sept.). Thirteen-year-old Jack and his friends face more danger, action, and adventure following the Monster Apocalypse in this fifth in the series.

Masters of Mischief (The Misadventures of Max Crumbly #3) by Rachel Renee Russell (S&S/Aladdin, June) features the middle school exploits of Max and his trusty sidekick Erin.

M Is for Movement by Innosanto Nagara (Triangle Square, Nov.) delivers a fictionalized memoir of the social movement that Nagara witnessed as a child growing up in Jakarta, and how it overturned the government of Indonesia.

Tank & Fizz: The Case of the Tentacle Terror (Orca, Mar.). The titular crime-solving monsters dive into a new mystery.

The Very, Very Far North by Dan Bar-El, illus. by Kelly Pousette (S&S/Atheneum, Sept.). Young polar bear Duane befriends a cast of arctic animal characters.

Weird Little Robots by Carolyn Crimi, illus. by Corinna Luyken (Candlewick, Oct.). Parents, librarians, and gatekeepers are going to love the top-notch writing, the STEAM-related content, the celebrated creators. Kids are going to love the engaging illustrations, complex relationships, and the sentient tiny robots, according to editor Katie Cunningham.

New Books Addressing Neurodiversity and Physical Differences

Dog Driven by Terry Lynn Johnson (HMH, Dec.). McKenna signs up for a dog race in the Canadian wilderness even though shes been hiding her failing eyesight for months. I love the way Terry Lynn Johnson captures the bond between her characters and dogs, love how she brings to life the thrill of dog sledding, and the tenacity of this capable 14-year-old girl musher. McKennas terrifying experience, the loss of her vision, made me connect with her even more, said editor Ann Rider. I felt Terry wrote about McKennas vision loss with authenticity, perhaps because she herself has suffered vision loss after contracting a terrible tick-borne illness.

The Good Hawk by Joseph Elliott (Walker Books US, Jan. 2020). Debut author Elliott spotlights a fantasy protagonist with Down syndrome. I was immediately drawn to Agatha, a main character in The Good Hawk who has Down syndrome, said Susan van Metre, executive editorial director of Walker Books US. She is so brave and good-hearted and loyal and funny but is living among some people who see her as a danger to her community; of course, having a heroic nature, she proves invaluable instead. Id never met a character like her in fantasy and yet she is exactly the sort of character I most like.

Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse by Susan Vaught (S&S/Wiseman, May) is a middle grade mystery featuring an autistic girl who begins sleuthing (with her beloved dog, and new friend at school by her side) when her father is wrongly accused of theft.

A Monster Like Me by Wendy S. Swore (Shadow Mountain, Mar.). In this #OwnVoices story, young Sophiea monster expertbelieves she must be a monster because of her facial deformity, which is caused by a blood tumor.

Normal by Magdalena and Nathaniel Newman, illus. by Neil Swaab (HMH, Jan. 2020) is a humorous memoir by a mother and son who share what its like to live with young Nathaniels severe craniofacial condition. I had the privilege of meeting Magda in person and was struck by the power of her familys story, what it has been like for her son Nathaniel to grow up with Treacher Collins syndrome, said editor Cat Onder. This is a family that has faced one life-threatening situation after another, and challenge after challenge, and yet they are a family forged in love and the everyday experiences of growing up, just like every family.

Over the Moon by Natalie Lloyd (Scholastic Press, Mar.). In this fantasy-adventure, a girl with a prosthetic arm bravely takes on a dangerous assignment training flying horses to earn money for her struggling mining-town family.

Planet Earth Is Blue by Nicole Panteleakos (Random/Lamb, May). In January 1986, 12-year-old astronomy enthusiast Nova, who is autistic and nonverbal, counts down the days until the space shuttle Challengers launch, as she tries to settle in with her new foster family and awaits the return of her runaway sister.

Roll with It by Jamie Sumner (S&S/Atheneum, Oct.). When Ellie and her mom move to a new town, Ellies not just the new kidshes the new kid with cerebral palsy, in a wheelchair. But she soon makes some true friends, which makes the transition a lot easier.

Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly (Delacorte, Feb.) introduces Iris, a 12-year-old Deaf girl, on her quest to communicate with a whale by creating a special song using the electronics expertise she has gained while repairing vintage radios.

New Books with LGBTQIA+ Representation

The Best at It by Maulik Pancholy (Balzer + Bray, Oct.). I hope kids will come to understand that they are perfect just as they are, said Alessandra Balzer, v-p and co-publisher of Balzer + Bray. That its okay to be different and, in fact, being different is your own personal superpower. The only thing you need to be the best at is at being yourself.

Freeing Finch by Ginny Rorby (Starscape, Oct.). Finch knows she is a girl even though she was born into a boys body. She wants to start trusting the people in her life while remaining true to herself. Whats important about this book is how universal it is. It has classic middle grade themes about a girl trying to find her place in the world and finding a family who loves her, and she happens to be transgender, said editor Susan Chang.

Ghost Cabin (Lumberjanes #4) by Mariko Tamaki, illus. by Brooklyn Allen (Amulet, Sept.). This middle grade series brings readers new stories about the characters and world originated in the bestselling Lumberjanes graphic novels. The series follows five spirited, passionate campers who go on magical adventures and solve problems using smarts, grit, and teamworkits about girl power and friendship and makes a natural fit for the middle grade category, according to senior editor Erica Finkel. The comics are so fun, and its amazing to see the world expanded in these novels, with readers learning more about the characters and their inner lives. Asked what she hopes readers might take away from the books, Finkel noted, That theres no wrong way to be a Hardcore Lady Type!

Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions by Henry Lien (Holt, Jan.). The second volume of this series finds Peasprout aiming to defend her title at Pearl Academy of Skate and Sword as a wu liu champion, mastering the sport that blends martial arts and figure skating. Within the fantasy-action tale, Lien addresses issues of gender and depicts a romance between two girls.

Queer Heroes by Arabelle Sicardi, illus. by Sarah Tanat-Jones (Wide-Eyed Editions, May) features biographical portraits of 52 LGBTQIA+ role models. We felt that LGBTQ+ people were underrepresented; there are hardly any books that celebrate the achievements of this community. So we wanted to make that right! said publisher Katie Cotton.

The Whispers by Greg Howard (Putnam, Jan.) follows 11-year-old Riley who embarks on a fantasy-inspired mission as he desperately searches for his missing mother, all the while struggling with guilt and shame he feels because he is attracted to boys. I recognize that there are middle grade kids who need and want to see a character like Riley who doesnt doubt himself even in the face of so much resistance to who he is, said Stacey Barney, editor at Putnam. Gay kids need and want to see themselves in the pages of books and theres a wonderful universal message in Rileys strength of certitude in knowing himself, even and especially at this age. We have a host of books in middle grade fiction where a boy has a crush on a girl or a girl has a crush on a boy, but not enough where a boy has a crush on a boy or a girl has a crush on a girl and its just another day in the neighborhood. I wanted to be part of changing that. Publishing books like The Whispers is what feeds the cultural shift in representation I can only hope were all looking for.
Childrens publishers near and far gathered in Italy for the 56th edition of the Bologna Childrens Book Fair, held April 14. Visitors to the fair totaled 28,946, an increase of 5% over last year, and there were 1,442 exhibitors from more than 80 countries and regions.

Sarah Kelleher, director of childrens scouting at Maria B. Campbell Associates, said of the fair: Everyone was in good spirits and excited to see an abundance of middle grade titles. As predicted, titles that garnered a lot of attention were those with Netflix or video game tie-ins, or books that have recently been optioned for film/TV. YA contemporary feel-good books, with a particular emphasis on the rom-com, are also on the rise.

The Bologna Fair announced a new collaboration with the Moscow International Book Fair, with the aim of launching a Russian International Childrens Book Fair in 2021. To help get things rolling, this years Moscow International Book Fair, which runs September 48, will host a fellowship program for childrens publishers and a program of events for children, dubbed Childrens Book on Stage. In 2020, the MIBF will also host the IBBY International Congress.
Did you know that in 2016 there were 1.4 billion visits to public libraries across the country? Or, that the nations academic libraries hold some 2.5 billion items in their collections? Or, that only 61% of school libraries have a full-time school librarian, despite numerous studies showing the positive impact librarians have on student performance? These are just some of the facts called out in the American Library Associations 2019 State of Americas Libraries Report, released this week in conjunction with National Library Week.

The 30-page report is a brief but interesting overview of the array of programming libraries now offer, as well as the challenges libraries face, with a good chunk of the report devoted to the annual Most Challenged Books listwhich this year points to a disturbing trend: the growing use of extreme tactics targeting LGBTQ materials.

These tactics range from an actual book burning in Iowa that targeted LGBTQIA+ books to lawsuits filed to halt libraries drag queen story hours, and to end community access to curated and authoritative research databases, the report states, adding that such tactics in some cases have proven successful "in chilling the willingness of schools and libraries to provide access to diverse information and ideas.

As we noted last week, the Top 10 Most Challenged books list this year list includes 11 titles, culled by the ALAs Office for Intellectual Freedom, which tracked 347 challenges involving some 483 books in 2018. This years list includes:

George by Alex Gino

Banned, challenged, and relocated because it was believed to encourage children to clear browser history and change their bodies using hormones, and for mentioning dirty magazines, describing male anatomy, creating confusion, and including a transgender character A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss, illustrated by EG Keller

Banned and challenged for including LGBTQIA+ content, and for political and religious viewpoints Captain Underpants series written and illustrated by Dav Pilkey

Series was challenged because it was perceived as encouraging disruptive behavior, while Captain Underpants and the Sensational Saga of Sir Stinks-A-Lot was challenged for including a same-sex couple The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Banned and challenged because it was deemed anti-cop, and for profanity, drug use, and sexual references Drama written and illustrated by Raina Telgemeier

Banned and challenged for including LGBTQIA+ characters and themes Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Banned, challenged, and restricted for addressing teen suicide This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki

Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references, and certain illustrations Skippyjon Jones series written and illustrated by Judy Schachner

Challenged for depicting stereotypes of Mexican culture The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Banned and challenged for sexual references, profanity, violence, gambling, and underage drinking, and for its religious viewpoint This Day in June by Gayle E. Pitman, illustrated by Kristyna Litten

Challenged and burned for including LGBTQIA+ content Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Challenged and burned for including LGBTQIA+ content

Eleven books were chosen this year instead of the usual 10, because numbers 10 and 11 in the list were tied for the final position. Both books were burned by a religious activist in Orange City, Iowa, in October to protest the citys OC Pride event. OIF expanded the list to include both, in order to spotlight the repressive intolerance exemplified by the act of book burning and to remember that 'he who destroys a good book kills reason itself' (John Milton, Areopagitica).

You can read the full The State of Americas Libraries report here.

Reserve Reading

A bit of good news to wrap up National Library Week: American Libraries reports on a strong response to the library community's "Dear Appropriator" letters, as the effort to firm up legislative support for federal library funding closed this week. "With the Institute of Museum and Library Services under threat of elimination from the White House for the third straight year, library advocates were called on to respond forcefully and quicklyand they did." writes ALA's Kevin Maher.

Vox has an interesting take on the the bid to restore net neutrality, after the House this week passed the Save the Internet Act of 2019 by a vote of 232-190. "Trump has said he will veto the bill should it make it to his desk. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the bill 'dead on arrival in the Senate."

Back to the subject of chilling speech, The New York Times reports that California Congressman Devin Nunes is suing McClatchy for $150 million over a May, 2018, story that appeared in his district's local paper, The Fresno Bee. "Lots of politicians seethe about the news media, but not many channel their frustrations through lawsuits," the Times notes. This is the second defamation lawsuit in a month for Nunes, who filed a $250 million lawsuit against Twitter last month.

And more from Greenville, S.C., where CBS 7 reports that more than 1,000 people have signed a petition asking the library to reinstate and apologize to two library employees pushed out of their jobs over a Drag Queen Story Hour. "Employee retaliation undermines the protection of important librarian rights, including the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the ALA Bill of Rights," the petition reads. "More worrisome in this context, it sets a precedent that a future patron viewed as provocative or unwanted by some in the community could be denied assistance or resources."

The Seattle Times reports that the ban on books being sent to inmates in Washington state correctional facilities has apparently been lifted. "Last Friday, after a week of uproar over the ban, DOC Secretary Stephen Sinclair announced the agency would make sure used books could still enter prisons in some fashion."

From The New York Times, this eye-opening look at the Wikipedia community. "It is a kind of social network where users debate the minutiae of history and modern life, climb the editorial hierarchy and even meet friends and romantic partners," the Times notes. "It is also a place where editors can experience relentless harassment."

Via American Libraries, the votes are in and congratulations to Julius C. Jefferson, Jr., section head of the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and your 2020/2021 ALA president.

CNET this week interviews Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden on her plans to "throw open the treasure chest" and make more of the Library of Congress's treasures available online. "We want to make these things accessible to people who could never come in person, so they can see our manuscripts division and see Thomas Jefferson's draft of the Declaration of Independence with footnotes or little side notes, with BF for Benjamin Franklin and JA for John Adams," Hayden says. You have to love how Hayden effortlessly speaks of rare treasures belonging to Thomas Jefferson and Captain Underpants in the same interview. A true librarian!

Also from CNET, how libraries are upping their social media game to attract users. From "pithy tweets to InstaNovels on Instagram, libraries around the world are using social media to entertain and reach their audiences."

On the subject of treasures, The Guardian reports on a major find: "The Libro de los Epitomes manuscript, which is more than a foot thick, contains more than 2,000 pages and summaries from the library of Hernando Colon, the illegitimate son of Christopher Columbus who made it his lifes work to create the biggest library the world had ever known in the early part of the 16th century. " Cambridge historian Edward Wilson-Lee, author of a recent biography of Colon, The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books says the discovery is important "not only because it contains so much information about how people read 500 years ago, but also, because it contains summaries of books that no longer exist."

On a more modern note, a great piece in The Atlantic from Dan Cohen, former head of the Digital Public Library of America and now Vice Provost for Information Collaboration at Northeastern University on why Barack Obama's presidential library is taking a digital approach, and why that's generating some friction. "The debate about the Obama library exhibits a fundamental confusion," Cohen writes. "Given its origins and composition, the Obama library is already largely digital. The vast majority of the record his presidency left behind consists not of evocative handwritten notes, printed cable transmissions, and black-and-white photographs, but email, Word documents, and JPEGs. The question now is how to leverage its digital nature to make it maximally useful and used."

The New York Public Library this week announced the finalists for its Young Lions Fiction Award. The award is given annually to an American writer age 35 or younger for either a novel or a collection of short stories. A panel of award judgeswhich this year includes 2018 winner Lesley Nneka Arimah will select the winner of this year's $10,000 prize. The winning writer will be awarded on June 13, 2019.

The University of California announced this week that it has signed a major "read and publish" open access deal with Cambridge University Press, "UCs first open access agreement with a major publisher, and Cambridges first such deal in the Americas." Under the agreement, UC will have "full and permanent access to the Presss entire collection of over 400 journals, and open access publishing in Cambridges journals will be available to authors across the UCs 10 campuses." This is the kind of deal UC has been seeking with leading for-profit publisher Elsevier, before walking away from the publisher earlier this year.

As for Cambridge University Press, they have been aggressively moving toward "read and publish" open access deals in Europe, with The Bookseller reporting another major agreement this week, this one with Germany's Max Planck Institute.

Hat tip to Gary Price at InfoDocket, meanwhile for pointing out this enlightening interview with eLife Editor, open access advocate, and U.C. researcher Michael Eisen, who shares his view of UC's decision to cut ties with Elsevier. "Maybe this will lead to what really needs to happen, which is for UC to go into these negotiations with an ironclad policy that says, 'We are never paying for subscriptions.' And more from Gary Price on how Elsevier's growing problem doesn't seem to be going away: the Louisiana State University is planning a vote on whether to cancel its Elsevier subscription. And, the University of Missouri system has formed a task force to explore its subscriptions and a move toward open access.

Harvard Magazine has a piece on the newly appointed Harvard University Librarian: "Martha Whitehead, Librarian of Queens University in Ontario since 2011 and vice provost there since 2014, has been appointed Harvard University librarian, vice president for the Harvard Library, and Larsen librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, effective in June. She succeeds Sarah Thomas, who retired at the end of 2018, concluding five years of service."

Again, these stories never get old: National Geographic offers a look at 23 of the worlds 'most enchanting' libraries, from "monasteries to royal reading rooms."
Chloe Schwenke has been named executive director of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) after nearly a year serving in the role in an interim position.

The news was announced to AWP members and "friends" in a e-missive from Robin Reagler, chair of the AWP's board of trustees. In her letter, Reagler said that this year's AWP Conference, held in Portland, Ore., late last month, "eclipsed all previous AWP Conference records, attracting nearly 15,000 attendees, 561 panels, 2,000 presenters, and 800 exhibitors." The news follows a lengthy nationwide search for a replacement for longtime AWP executive director David Fenza, who was dismissed last March.

"Over the past year, while she served as Interim Executive Director, AWP benefited from Chloes leadership and deep nonprofit management experience," Reagler wrote. "Under her watch, the Association transitioned to a new autonomous operational model, crafted a comprehensive new strategic plan, and attained stability and direction following a period of relocation and transition."

In addition, Diane Zinna has been promoted to deputy executive director and will, Reagler wrote, "manage staff in their day-to-day activities."

Schwenke comes to the AWPa nonprofit formerly associated with a handful of universities, but which, under her interim directorship, severed its ties with the University of Maryland and gone solo as an entitywith a background in senior level and management experience in nonprofit and for-profit organizations, academia, and government. Her memoir Self-ish: A Transgender Awakening, was published by Red Hen Press last year.
In Cannonball, Kelsey Wroten skillfully explores youth, ego, and the doomed pursuit of artistic purity in this story that follows Caroline Bertram, who's going nowhere fast: her hopes of being a professional fiction writer have stalled, her binge drinking is getting out of hand, and, despite flings and unrequited crushes, shes still not over the girl who broke her heart in high school. Caroline becomes fixated on a pro wrestler named Cannonball; as Caroline feverishly completes her young adult fantasy novel, Wroten stylistically blends ethereal dream sequences starring Cannonball with scenes from Carolines novel. Wroten picks 10 of her favorite graphic novels and graphic memoirs about queer women.

When I read a graphic novel that includes a queer narrative there are a few things that make it stand out to me. I want characters that feel sincere, not typecast. In short, characters I can see some of myself in. In the realm of indie comics, representation has taken great strides. A lot of publishers have taken an initiative to highlight heretofore underrepresented stories of queer women. Here are a few I think you shouldnt miss:

1. Love and Rockets: Locas Books 1-6 by Jaime Hernandez Love and Rockets is a profound and complex series written and illustrated by Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez. The series is daunting to begin, but fear not, Fantagraphics has been kind enough to collect them into bite size chunks. Enter the collected Locas books by Jaime Hernandez. I would be at a loss to discuss what indie comics with queer characters are today without mentioning these books. The narrative revolves around a rich cast of Latin-American characters, all from a place called Hoppers outside of Los Angeles. The central focus is often on Margarita Maggie Chascarrillo and Esperanza Hopey Glass. They are sometimes girlfriends, sometimes estranged, but always each other's closest confidant when the chips are down. They are chosen family when their own families often leave much to be desired. There is a lot to parse through here since the series is still going on, but it is well worth it. A good place to start is Locas Book 1, Maggie the Mechanic, to get a taste for what you can expect. What begins as a slice-of-life narrative with a lot of fantasy, action, and adventure, slowly matures into realistic fiction about a group of friends and enemies you cant help but feel are truly alive as you watch them age and grow through the years.

2. Skim by Mariko Tamaki, illustrated by Jillian Tamaki Set in an all-girls Catholic high school in Toronto in 1993, Skim is the story of the eponymous characters journey through her tumultuous junior year. She is a self-described outcast, Wiccan, and goth. When a popular girl named Katie Matthewss boyfriend commits suicide, the entire school goes into mourning and becomes hypervigilant to depressives (read: goths) leaving Skim in the crosshairs of a suicide prevention club that doesnt even attempt to understand her. The story is at once sardonic and tragic. Skims relationships with her best friend, her parents, and her understanding of her sexuality are simultaneously in turmoil. While Katie Matthewss grief is put on display without her permission, Skims private and even unspeakable grief over a complicated relationship with her female English teacher is kept secret. The two mourning girls find each other despite the chaos of the grief circus. The crux of Skim is loss, yes, but also growth. Mariko Tamakis writing is emotionally poignant, and Jillian Tamakis illustrations are mind-blowingly gorgeous.

3. My Favorite Thing Is Monsters by Emil Ferris My Favorite Thing Is Monsters follows the story of a young girl named Karen Reyes living in 1960s Chicago. Karen is obsessed with horror comics and creep shows. The story is told through her notebook, where she depicts herself as a wolfman. The plot of the first volume is very complex and beautifully constructed. Ferris tackles the Kennedy and King assassinations and their aftermath in the lives of the diverse people in Karens neighborhood. Karen is also an amateur detective, looking for obscure clues in paintings and tapes to discover the truth about the death of her neighbor and Holocaust survivor, Anka Silverberg. Horror, as a genre, has been described by many as inherently queer. This is especially true of the monster, beings that do not conform to the norms of society. Karen sees herself as different, singled out and persecuted by the M.O.B. (Mean, Ordinary & Boring) but her greatest fear is not being seen as a monster, but becoming one of the normal people. When she begins to have feelings for her best friend Missy (who sees herself as Count Dracula) she momentarily finds peace in the bleak reality Ferris depicts. The illustration in this book is unlike anything Ive ever seen. Drawn completely in Bic pen on notebook paper over the course of several years while Ferris was in recovery from the West Nile virus, the book is nothing short of an opus.

4. My Solo Exchange Diary by Kabi Nagata This book is the follow up to the popular My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness that came out in 2016. The autobiographical story continues to follow the events of Nagatas life. One of the things I find most striking about this series is the authors ability to examine her emotional state and relay it in a way that is not falsely positive or dishonest. She is not afraid to explore darker or more embarrassing emotions, and as you can tell by many of the selections in this list, that is something, in my view, that makes a work great. Sometimes dark moods feel like a sort of enchanted mist that leave you an amnesiac once you exit them, but not so for Nagata. Like its predecessor, this book gets heavy but is ultimately a rope-a-dope into Nagatas unrelenting optimism.

5. As the Crow Flies by Melanie Gillman Charlie is a queer African-American teen at an all-white Christian summer camp that she feels compelled to attend by a higher power that comes to her in the form of feathers from the sky. The plot revolves around a hiking trip to a mountaintop that proves to be very uncool and problematic for both Charlie and a transgender camper named Sydney. They soon find their camaraderie over the crappiness of the situation, budding into romance. Charlies communication with God throughout the story is something I found very special. Gillman looks at the cross-section of Christianity, youth, queerness, race, and feminism and takes us on a bittersweet and sometimes agonizing journey through it.

6. Honor Girl by Maggie Thrash Honor Girl also takes place at a summer camp in the South. Maggie is 15 and the year is 2000. Shes obsessed with boy bands, getting her DE certification and, most notably, a female camp counselor named Erin. Her feelings about Erin are refreshingly well observed by Thrash. Thrash recognizes and beautifully conveys the convergence of subtlety and power that go along with experiencing a gay crush for the first time. At once its so ethereal you feel if you talk about it itll disappear, especially at this conservative camp, but it also is the very axis of your emotional world.

7. The Pervert by Michelle Perez, illustrated by Remy Boydell The Pervert is a brutally honest work that details the desperation and elation experienced by Felina, a trans woman and sex worker in Seattle. Perez delivers the narrative with a dose of dark humor and sarcasm. However, Perez doesnt hold back. The writer drew from her own experiences, leaving the work feeling raw and powerful. Boydells character design is purposefully childlike, using dogs and cats and characters like Clifford the Big Red Dog as stand ins to mask the trauma of some of the heartbreaking moments the book covers. The story also follows Felinas romantic life and friendships. I was left with my jaw on the floor after reading this story and have since not read another like it. This book pulls no punches and I think that is not only extremely admirable but necessary.

8. Potential by Ariel Schrag This is book three from Ariel Schrags autobiographical High School Comic Chronicles, written while Schrag was in high school and living in Berkeley, Calif., in the late '90s. It's hard to fathom that a 17 year old would be able to be this frank and articulate about exploring her life and all its messiness, but Schrag was. Her voice is irreverent, often brash and never shies away from self-immolation. In this book, she falls in love for the first time with a mercurial girl named Sally and records the tilt-a-whirl of joy and agony that often comes along with that. What I find fascinating is that this series is essentially a diary, so its written as it is happening rather than recreating the story from memory as a memoir might do. I first read this book shortly after my senior year of high school and it was one of the reasons I started drawing comics. Schrags direct, sometimes crude, style was very thrilling to me as a teenager who hadnt had any artistic training. The other books in the series (Awkward, Definition, and Likewise) are also worth a look if this book appeals to you.

9. On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden Tillie Walden is a new and super young (only 22!) comics creator who is extremely prolific and has developed a unique style of storytelling that I think she can call her own. On a Sunbeam is a dramatic, cinemagraphic narrative that reminds me more of a Tarkovsky film than other comics Ive read. The book is part love story, and part soft, metaphoric, science fiction. The galactic landscape Walden creates is surreal, sparse, and poetically beautiful. An interesting touch to this book: there are no men to be found, like at all. Walden creates robust comics where nothing is explicitly told, just understood, through body language and context. I admire her storytelling to no end.
The Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which this year starts May 5 and runs through Eid al-Fitr, a celebration of the completion of Ramadan, on June 4, has become a significant book-shopping season for Muslims. For publishers such as Yosef Smyth, childrens commissioning editor at Kube Publishing in Nottingham, U.K., its not a time to slow down. Although staff at our small British publishing house will be fasting for 18 hours, often heading to the mosque at night, and sacrificing sleep to get in some extra calories, it is our busiest time of year, he says.

Ramadan, Smyth explains, is a time for Muslims to put worldly desires to one side and focus on developing their spiritual, faithful life. In many Muslim-majority countries it is considered a holiday, where charitable giving is recommended and family gatherings are commonplace.

Fasting from sunup until sundown is also customary. Children are exempt from the practice, but parents often look for other ways to connect them to their faith. And with 30 religiously significant days to fill, more than those in a Christian Advent calendar, parents are left to create activities to keep the children engaged, Smyth says, asking, Is it any wonder many parents are turning to books?

Kubes Ramadan sales have been especially strong in the U.S. and have been growing; titles such as The Ramadan Fasting Activity Book by Aysenur Gunes, illus. by Ercan Polat, and Hassan and Aneesa Celebrate Eid by Yasmeen Rahim, illus. by Omar Burgess, are proving especially popular. These titles are selling alongside other Ramadan-centric books from publishers such as Learning Roots and Muslim Childrens Books, both based in London. Other publishers, such as Maqbool Books from Lahore, Pakistan, have seen a bump in sales of their prayer books for children during the holiday month.

It seems many more traditional publishers have taken notice as well, Smyth says, noting Houghton Mifflin Harcourts publication of Its Ramadan, Curious George by H.A. Rey and Hena Khan in 2016 as a turning point of sorts. Not only did it sell well but retailers saw the potential of drawing new customers and are now more receptive to childrens books on Islam.

Little Simon and Albert Whitman recently released titles of their own: Ramadan by Hannah Eliot, illus. by Rashin, and The Gift of Ramadan by Rabiah York Lumbard, illus. by Laura K. Horton, respectively.

It is no surprise that publishers and, increasingly, retailers have noticed the market for Ramadan books. The Muslim population of America has risen from 2.4 million in 2007 to 3.5 million in 2017, according to a Pew Research study, and in Europe, the Muslim population has risen from 19.5 million in 2010 to 25.8 million in 2016.

KitaabWorld, an online childrens bookstore based in Menlo Park, Calif., is focused on offering hard-to-find books from South Asian countries and features a broad selection of titles related to Islam. I struggle to find books for my child to learn about Islamic tradition, and you start looking for those kinds of books during Ramadan, says KitaabWorld cofounder Sadaf Siddique. At the end of March, the retailer began promoting a selection of Ramadan-related titles, including board books, such as R Is for Ramadan by Greg Paprocki (Gibbs Smith); picture books such as Cresecent Moons and Minarets by Hena Khan, illus. by Mehrdokht Amini (Chronicle) and Lailahs Lunchbox by Reem Faruqi (Tillbury House); and novels, such as Aminas Voice by Hena Kahn (Simon & Schuster) and Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. by Medeia Sharif (Flux).

We got a pop in sales from the promotion, says Siddique, who is a particular fan of Drummer Girl (DayBreak) by Hiba Masood, illus. by Hoda Hadid, about a girl who becomes a musaharatia drummer who wakes people during Ramadan, a role traditionally reserved for menwhich she calls a sweet and empowering story.

Because the holiday falls during the school year this year, KitaabWorld has collaborated with the Muslim American Leadership Alliance to produce a guide for educators who want to host Ramadan-related events in their classrooms. Siddique says, One of the books we like to highlight in this context is The White Nights of Ramadan, by Maha Addasi (Boyds Mills), which is about the festival of Girgian, a time during Ramadan in which kids go door to door asking for sweets and candy. So, there is a nice parallel with Halloween that children can understand.

Overall, Siddique confirms the growing interest in childrens books about Ramadan and Islam in general. Though the books primarily come from small and independent publishers, both at home and abroad, she adds that there has been a notable uptick in interest from the Big Five publishers. The result is that the overall quality of books is going up, she notes. The visibility of the festival is increasing and the publishers are trying to represent.
BRET HART ATTACK CRIMINAL CASE UPDATE

Zachary Madsen's court appearance today in Kings Criminal Court in Brooklyn was continued until Tuesday 5/28.

Madsen has been charged with two counts of assault in the third degree as well as trespassing after hitting the ring that was being used as the stage for the acceptance speeches to tackle Bret Hart, taking down the WWE Hall of Famer and Natalya on Saturday 4/6. In New York, Assault in the third degree is an A misdemeanor and can be punishable in up to a year in jail per count, should Madsen be found guilty.

After tackling Hart, Madsen was immediately besieged by a number of pro wrestlers, including Harts nephew Davey Boy Smith Jr., New Day, Shane McMahon, Curtis Axel, Heath Slater and many others. Video of the incident clearly shows Dash Wilder drilling Madsen with an incredible punch as well After Madsen was dragged out of the Barclays Center, Drake Maverik, who had entered the fray, demanded that everyone ignore him and have Bret Hart continue his acceptance speech for the Hart Foundation, which Bret did to thunderous applause.

Hart and WWE security guard Thaddeus Jones were each examined after the incident at a local hospital but released. Hart was dealing with pain and stiffness in his hip after the incident.

Madsen allegedly told authorities "it felt like it was the right time" for him to attack Hart.

WWE issued the following statement following the incident: An over-exuberant fan surpassed our security at ringside and made his way briefly into the ring. The individual has been turned over to the proper authorities.

Madsens Twitter account features a number of strange tweets towards WWE personalities, including Triple H (demanding that women not headline Wrestlemania), Vince McMahon (featuring a photo of himself painted up as Batman foe the Joker and wearing the costume hat he wore when charging the ring last night) and others.

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AFRICA: A committee of experts from African finance, planning and economic development ministries has endorsed the adoption of the Luxembourg Rail Protocol to encourage private investment in railway assets across the continent.
Rantoul, IL (61866)

Today

Windy with rain developing after midnight. Low 47F. Winds SSW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..

Tonight

Windy with rain developing after midnight. Low 47F. Winds SSW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.
Professor McDougall's persuasive indictment of American foreign policy since the fall of communism examines the positive feedback loop between misguided strategy and ill-conceived institutional objectives.

NATO's expansion under the Clinton administration, he observes in his Liberty Forum essay, did not strengthen the alliance that brought down the Soviet Empire, but rather transformed it into something different. The 1999 war against Serbia, which the Clinton administration forced upon Serbia in emulation of the 1914 Austrian ultimatum, provided the chance to demonstrate NATO's new agenda and out of area' operations, as an instrument of the world's natural evolution towards a globalization [that] toppled all barriers to the flow of capital, goods, labor, and ideas, spreading democracy, human rights, peace and prosperity. Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan was NATO's second war. As McDougall observes, Unanimity in the face of Al Qaeda was squandered, however, when President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in a wider war that 70 to 80 percent of French and Germans opposed. It might even be said that the alliance fell into abeyance during the final six years of Bush's tenure.
In late October 1860, Mr Lincoln wrote a Tennessee lawyer: "I appreciate your motive when you suggest the propriety of my writing for the public something disclaiming all intention to interfere with slaves or slavery in the States; but in my judgment, it would do no good. I have already done this many  many, times; and it is in print, and open to all who will read. Those who will not read, or heed, what I have already publicly said, would not read, or heed, a repetition of it." Candidate Lincoln closed with a biblical injunction: "'If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.'"1

There was considerable pressure in late 1860 for Mr. Lincoln to speak out on the impending secession and his intentions regarding slavery. Historian Richard H. Sewell wrote "Although he refrained from public statements during the interregnum between his election and his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln left little doubt of his utter hostility to any trimming on the territorial question. Characteristic was his advice ('Private & confidential') to Illinois Congressman Elihu B. Washburne. 'Prevent, as far as possible, any of our friends from demoralizing themselves, and our cause, by entertaining propositions for compromise of any sort, on 'slavery extension,' he wrote in mid-December. 'There is no possible compromise upon it, but which puts us under again, and leaves all our work to do over again. Whether it be a Mo. Line, or Eli Thayer's Pop. Sov. It is all the same. Let either be done, & immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold firm, as with a chain of steel.'"2
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is headed to Paraguay this week to garner support for the Trump Administrations policy of maximum pressure against Venezuelas dictator, Nicolas Maduro. This is the first visit to Paraguay by such a high-ranking U.S. official since 1965, and Asuncion is already spinning it as a diplomatic coup. Yet Paraguay has a Hezbollah problem. Many of its top officials are in denial about Hezbollahs influence -- or worse, they have been bribed and co-opted. Major investigations have exposed the extent of the problem, but the resulting cases fail to move through the judicial system. Secretary Pompeo should disabuse Paraguays leaders of the notion that their support on Venezuela relieves Asuncion of the need to help Washingtons campaign against Iran and its proxy Hezbollah.

Paraguay is a major hub of illicit finance. The epicenter of Hezbollah activity in South America is the Tri-Border Area of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, which the just-released annual State Department International Narcotics Control Strategy Report describes as the center of a multi-billion-dollar illicit goods trade, including marijuana cultivation, the trafficking of Andean cocaine, and arms smuggling that facilitates significant money laundering in Paraguay. Hezbollah is running amok in Paraguays own backyard, yet its government refuses to acknowledge the groups presence, let alone take action.

U.S. authorities allege that a key figure in this giant scheme is Nader Mohamad Farhat, a Lebanese-Brazilian arrested in May 2018 by Paraguayan police at Washingtons behest. Since then, the U.S. Department of Justice has patiently waited for his extradition. Court records show that Farhat faces two separate indictments -- in Miami for drug trafficking, and in New Yorks Eastern District for money laundering. Farhats alleged co-conspirator Mahmoud Ali Barakat was arrested in June and extradited in November 2018. Farhat is still in Paraguay, and the former Israeli ambassador to Asuncion has now accused its government of protecting Farhat.

Farhat may be too big a fish to let go, both for Hezbollah and its Paraguayan accomplices. Court records show that the discovery process in Farhats New York case will initially include almost two terabytes of electronic evidence, including data seized during raids in Paraguay. The records also claim that numerous local companies relied on Farhats money-exchange business -- nominally owned by his wife, a Taiwanese-Brazilian dual national -- to conduct trade-based money laundering through sales of electronics.

Previous law enforcement actions have shown how Hezbollah funds itself through overseas illicit activities, yet when it comes to the Tri-Border Area, there remains considerable uncertainty about which local financial institutions Hezbollah uses; who its local enablers and facilitators are; who moves their cash; and who takes their bribes.

The Farhat evidence dump might shed important light, which is why numerous actors -- in Paraguay as well as Lebanon -- may not wish to ever let him face U.S. justice. Every additional day that Farhat spends in a Paraguayan prison increases the risk of an escape or a fatal accident. This has happened before in Hezbollah-related drug-trafficking cases. Two suspected Hezbollah drug traffickers that Paraguayan authorities arrested in February 2017 managed to escape from jail in December of that year. Paraguayan authorities waited for days to issue international arrest warrants. An associate of the escaped prisoners, arrested in April 2017 on a tip from U.S. authorities, was soon released, only to be found dead in his apartment last January. Police reports obtained by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies through confidential sources cite a heart attack as the cause of death. The large pool of dried blood on his kitchen floor that is clearly visible in police photos suggests otherwise.

Farhats is not the only case Pompeo should raise with his Paraguayan interlocutors. Megalavado, or mega-wash, is a giant scheme alleged to have laundered $1.2 billion, including at least a quarter through the United States.

Local media, citing leaked files from the investigation, claim that part of the scheme funded Hezbollah through used-car businesses in the United States. These are the same businesses that Project Cassandra, a decade-long operation run by the DEA through the Special Operations Division, identified in one of its most successful investigations, the 2011 Lebanese Canadian Bank case. The project busted important Hezbollah networks involved in laundering drug money from Colombian and Mexican cartels. It also tracked and disrupted cocaine shipments to Europe, which involved a vast global network run by the Hezbollah facilitator Ayman Joumaa to launder money for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels.

Paraguays prosecutors began to investigate Megalavado in 2014 and eventually seized key evidence in raids launched in November 2016. Paraguayan authorities have manipulated the system to delay indictments and convictions, thanks to a provision in their legal system that allows the defense to ask for -- and usually obtain -- the recusal of prosecutors. Paraguays Supreme Court has the final say on recusals -- and it has used this power repeatedly to shield influential players from justice. Megalavado prosecutors have been recused numerous times, and the case has limped and stalled indefinitely.

Pompeo needs to put all this at the top of his agenda and make clear there will be consequences if Asuncion refuses to get serious about Hezbollah, starting with Farhats extradition.

Specifically, the secretary should explain how the United States could leverage existing sanctions legislation, including the recently passed Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act Amendments Act, not just to disrupt Hezbollahs overseas networks, but also target those in Paraguay who facilitate Hezbollahs networks through complicity, collusion, corruption, and protection.

The legislation authorizes the application of enhanced due diligence measures for U.S. banks with respect to entire jurisdictions other than Lebanon -- at the federal, state, or municipal levels -- that expressly consent to, or with knowledge allow, the use of their territory by Hizballah to carry out terrorist activities, including training, financing, and recruitment. This means that if local politicians and bureaucrats in the Tri-Border Area know about and disregard Hezbollahs fundraising and recruitment in areas that they administer, the administration could subject the area itself to increased financial scrutiny.

Washington could also take a page from the Obama administration playbook in the aforementioned Lebanese-Canadian Bank case. Then, the Treasury Department designated the bank as an entity of primary money laundering concern under Section 311 of the Patriot Act. The combined blows of that designation and U.S. criminal prosecutions ultimately forced the bank out of business.

This, then, should be Pompeos message to Paraguay: Support on Venezuela deserves credit. It cannot come at the price of letting Hezbollah launder billions in the Tri-Border Area while shielding its financiers from U.S. justice.

Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The views expressed are the author's own.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 04/11/2019



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Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.

couple Steven Frend and Olga Koshimbetova will apparently be together in America by the end of April!Steven recently announced Olga will be flying to the United States with his son, Alex, very soon so they can start their lives together as a family in America.Steven revealed the news in an Instagram status update in which he revealed he had returned home alone after spending the last couple of months in Russia with his fiancAe and son."Sorry I've been on a [social media] break while I work on plans. I'm in the U.S. now, Olga will be here in a week or 2. She already has her Visa," Steven shared in an Instagram Story, referencing how Olga's K-1 visa application had been approved."Now we only need the plane tickets. I had to leave Russia without Olga early or I was going to lose my job."Steven left Maryland and flew to Russia in late January in order to spend some quality time with Olga and their baby boy."I am going to russia to be there with her during her interview. I have all of the correct paperwork they need for the interview. Then we come back to USA together!" Steven wrote on Instagram at the time.The cost of purchasing a plane ticket for Olga may also be part of the reason why Olga did not come to America with Steven, as he's admitted to having financial issues in the past.Steven, who reportedly installs fire sprinklers for his job, has reached out to fans for their support and generosity at times when he's found himself in a bind with money.Steven met Olga while she was visiting America for the summer in 2017, and after only a month-and-a-half of dating, the couple discovered Olga was pregnant. Steven said learning he was going to be a father was "a holy sh-t moment."Olga returned to Russia about a week after learning she was pregnant, but Steven proposed they get married and have her return to America on a K-1 visa.Steven told Olga he had applied for her K-1 visa shortly after her return to Russia but the visa application had been delayed, leaving her stuck overseas for the birth of their son, Richie Aleksandr Frend, on April 19, 2018.However, viewers saw Steven eventually admit to Olga on the show's December 23 episode he had been lying and didn't actually apply for the visa until after traveling to Russia to be with Olga for Richie's birth.Once Steven admitted the truth to Olga on Season 6 of the TLC reality series, she appeared to take the news surprisingly well and quickly forgive him.The couple has seemingly been together and happy ever since.
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Vinny Guadagnino and Paul "Pauly D" DelVeccio say their "Jersey Shore" co-star Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino has made a new friend in prison.

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The pair said on Wednesday's episode of "The Jenny McCarthy Show" that Sorrentino is happy and spending time with Fyre Festival co-founder Billy McFarland as he serves his prison sentence.

"We talk to him every day," Vinny told host Jenny McCarthy.

"[He's doing] so good," Pauly D added.

Vinny and Pauly D marveled at The Situation's positive outlook.

"He sends me positive vibes. He gets me through my day," Vinny said.

"He's in good spirits because he sees Lauren once a week, his wife, and he has so much to come home to," Pauly D explained.

"He's coming home to a job -- he'll be filming -- so he just wants to get it over with and do his time. He's happy."

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Vinny and Pauly D said The Situation befriended McFarland and one of the hackers who leaked nude photos of actress Jennifer Lawrence and other stars in 2014.

"They played Scrabble together," Pauly D said.

"Imagine what he's learning in there from all these guys," Vinny added.

The Situation was charged with tax evasion in April 2017 and sentenced to eight months in prison in October after pleading guilty. He entered prison in January, according to E! News.

The Situation came to fame on the MTV series "Jersey Shore."

He returned with Vinny, Pauly D and several other co-stars in "Jersey Shore: Family Vacation," which was renewed for a third season in December.
The incident on South Milledge has been classified as two apparent armed robberies of UGA students, according to a UGA Archnews alert sent at 10:08 a.m. One of the students has been hospitalized.
UGA Miracle celebrated raising over $1.1 million for Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta at their annual Dance Marathon, starting Saturday, Feb. 23 at 10 a.m. and ending Sunday, Feb. 24 at 10 a.m, with over 2,100 students in attendance.

Across the country, universities with Miracle programs host Dance Marathons as a celebration and fundraiser for local childrens hospitals affiliated with Childrens Miracle Network Hospitals, a nonprofit organization. Sponsored children and their families often attend.
he suspect was arrested on April 9 and booked in the Gwinnett County Jail. According to the press release, he was charged with two counts of concealing the death of another and two counts of participating in criminal gang activity.
The Jewish holiday of Passover, or Pesach, began in the evening on Friday, April 19, and continues for seven days until the evening of Saturda
Waldo has been hiding from readers around the world for 32 years in the famous Wheres Waldo? childrens book series, but this is only his eighth year coming to Athens. Avid Bookshop, a locally-owned indie bookstore, has been hosting Waldos annual July visit since 2012 when Candlewick Press, Waldos publisher, started the Find Waldo Local campaign, according to Avids operations director Rachel Watkins.
The University of Georgia is introducing an initiative to name the College of Education after Mary Frances Early, UGAs first African American graduate.

As a part of the universitys Commit to Georgia capital campaign, donations given through next year to the College of Education can be dedicated in honor of Mary Frances Early. These donations will then go into consideration for the proposed naming.
Terry College of Business students will be able to attend class in the Business Learning Community starting fall 2019, Greg Trevor said. This construction endeavor cost a total of $140 million, funded by both the state of Georgia and a number of private donors, and covers about 300,000 square feet.
For the past 10 years or more, the RBI has been turning down dozens of applications under the RTI Act that sought disclosing the list of wilful defaulters and the RBIs inspection reports.

In fact, it is the only organisation that has a granular and complete view of the heist that has been going on for 25 years at least.

But it has escaped any blame for the multiple rounds of bankruptcy and massive periodic recapitalisation of public sector banks caused by bad loans.

Perhaps they dont want anyone to know how incompetent and collusive they have been in handling bad loans, says Debashis Basu.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

Does the Reserve Bank of India understand the Right to Information Act far better than the central information commissioners, judges of high courts, and even those of the Supreme Court?

Since 2006, four RBI governors, dozens of deputy governors and time-serving minions below them seem to think so, to the utter astonishment and despair among citizens and jurists.

Will the ire of the Supreme Court end this supreme conceit?

Recently, the SC threatened the RBI with contempt proceedings for not disclosing annual inspection reports under the RTI Act.

Sadly, this unseemly tamasha has been going on for years.

For the past 10 years or more, the RBI has been turning down dozens of applications under the RTI Act that sought disclosing the list of wilful defaulters and the RBIs inspection reports.

Both the apex court as well as Central Information Commission had held the RBI could not refuse to put the annual inspection reports of banks in the public domain.

But the RBI has continued to be adamant. We, at Moneylife, are not surprised. There is a reason for this breathtaking arrogance.

For decades, the RBI has got away, no matter how egregious its bungling is.

Its antiquated systems and processes were the main reason behind the securities scam.

The governor and deputy governors who live in a rarefied zone were clueless about the functioning of the Public Debt Office and how brokers and bankers were running riot.

For 25 years, public sector banks have been looted by borrowers -- both big and small -- in collusion with bankers.

The RBI has nominees on the bank boards, has unrestricted access to the banks books, approves statutory auditors, gets banks to send reports every month, quarter and year, and has a hand in the appointment of chairmen and executive directors.

In fact, it is the only organisation that has a granular and complete view of the heist that has been going on for 25 years at least.

But it has escaped any blame for the multiple rounds of bankruptcy and massive periodic recapitalisation of public sector banks caused by bad loans.

Indeed, under successive erudite governors, including public intellectual Raghuram Rajan, the RBI has, in fact, helped ever-greening of bad loans through ingenious schemes like corporate debt restructuring (CDR), strategic debt restructuring, the Scheme for Sustainable Structuring of Stressed Assets, CDR2, and 5/25, which have all failed.

And even as the RBIs regulatory lapses pile up sky-high, it has instinctively sided with bankers in their anti-customer policies and actions.

When Moneylife Foundation filed a PIL petition in the Supreme Court on the loot of borrowers through the floating rate regime, the court asked the RBI to reply but the RBI has ignored the court directive.

Its response makes no reference to the issues raised in court.

Why has the RBIs legal insight on the RTI Act escaped even the judges of the SC?

The RBI argues the reports asked under the RTI are fiduciary information and, hence, cannot be placed in the public domain.

This is ridiculous. A regulator forces regulated entities to statutorily report certain information. How can that be a fiduciary relationship?

The RBI has no legal duty to maximise the benefit of any public sector or private sector bank and thus there is no relationship of trust between them, argued Prashant Bhushan in the SC.

Indeed, the SC has already ruled the RBI is not in any fiduciary relationship with any bank.

Is the end near? Maybe

The question is: How long will the RBI be allowed to be obdurate?

Way back in December 2015, the SC told the RBI the banking regulator could not withhold information citing fiduciary relations under the RTI Act.

Hearing a set of transferred cases, a division bench of Justice M Y Eqbal and Justice C Nagappan said, From the past we have also come across financial institutions which have tried to defraud the public.

"These acts are neither in the best interests of the country nor in the interests of citizens.

"To our surprise, the RBI as a watchdog should have been more dedicated towards disclosing information to the general public under the Right to Information Act.

"We also understand that the RBI cannot be put in a fix by making it accountable to every action taken by it.

"However, in the instant case the RBI is accountable and as such it has to provide information to the information seekers under Section 10(1) of the RTI Act.

Despite such a clear-cut order, more than three years later, even the SC is struggling to make the high and mighty RBI see sense.

Even in January 2019, the SC said, The RBI ought to act with transparency and not hide information that might embarrass individual banks.

"It is duty bound to comply with the provisions of the RTI Act and disclose the information sought.

Shockingly, the RBIs own circular DBOD No. BC/CIS/47/20.16.002/94, dated April 23, 1994, directed all banks to send a report on their defaulters, which it would share with all banks and financial institutions, To make public the names of the borrowers who have defaulted and against whom suits have been filed by banks/FIs.

Also, in Mardia Chemicals Ltd vs Union of India (decided on April 8, 2004), the SC observed that private transactions when large enough took the character of public interest, especially since banks and financial institutions utilised the money of the people in general namely, the depositors in the banks and public money.

It is impossible to believe that RBI officials dont get all this.

Perhaps they simply dont want anyone to know how incompetent and collusive they have been in handling bad loans.

Debashis Basu is the editor of www.moneylife.in
Diageo, which had acquired Mallya's United Spirits nearly six years ago, is claiming $40 million paid to the liquor tycoon as part of an alleged breach of agreement.

Even as he renewed an appeal against his extradition to India, embattled liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya suffered another legal setback on Friday in a separate $40-million claims case brought by British liquor giant Diageo plc in the UK high court.

Justice Clare Moulder ruled against the 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss' application to seek a delay in the full hearing in the case scheduled for May 23 and additionally ordered him to pay legal costs of 34,000 pounds.

She was extremely critical of the "unexplained" delays by Mallya in clearing the unpaid invoices of his previous solicitors Greenwoods, which resulted in his new solicitors Joseph Hage Aaronson (JHA) finding themselves in difficulty and wanting to seek an unfair adjournment.

The delay is at best unexplained and arguably of the defendant's (Mallya) own making. In my view, the claimants [Diageo] are entitled to have their claim progressed expeditiously, Justice Moulder said, concluding that Mallya was the author" of his "own misfortune".

The claimants say that if the May hearing is adjourned they will suffer prejudicethere would be a race in relation to Mallya's assets which are subject to a number of competing claims; Mallya may be extradited and this will affect the ability to enforce the judgment against him, the judge noted, in reference to the extradition order and worldwide freezing order already in place against Mallya.

While the judge agreed to a short extension until April 23 for Mallya's new lawyers to submit their evidence to the court, having missed an April 5 deadline, she ordered that meanwhile the businessman must pay additional legal costs of 34,000 pounds for Diageo's lawyers within 28 days.

Diageo, which had acquired Mallya's United Spirits nearly six years ago, is claiming $40 million paid to the liquor tycoon as part of an alleged breach of agreement.

The UK-based drinks giant is also claiming $141 million from Mallya, his son Sidhartha, and two companies linked to them for alleged questionable payments.

The case, dating back to November 2017, is being contested by Mallya and will now go ahead for a full hearing at the Business and Property Courts of the UK high court on May 23.

The three claimants in the case -- Diageo Plc, Diageo Holdings Netherlands BV and Diageo Finance Plc -- are seeking a total of $181 million from four defendants  Vijay Mallya, his son Sidhartha, Watson Limited and Continental Administrative Services Limited (CASL).

Mallya's counsel Barrister Daniel Margolin argued for more time to prepare for the full hearing because his firm JHA had received all the documents in the case, including nearly 1,750 electronic files, only towards the end of March.

He raised the worldwide freezing order against Mallya, confirmed by a UK high court order in May 2018, as the reason for some delays in clearing overdue legal invoices.

However, Diageo's counsel instructed by law firm Slaughter and May, Barrister Saul Lemer, argued that Mallya had historically procrastinated in the case and used the same strategy time and again" of changing solicitors and seeking more time from the court.

Margolin assured the judge of no further delays and that Mallya was acutely aware of the position he was in.

In his brief arguments on Friday, he also sought to highlight that Mallya himself would be liable for less than 1 per cent of the $141 million being sought by Diageo from the collective claimants, amounting to a "value of roughly $1 million", and that CASL is not an asset belonging to the businessman, as claimed by the drinks giant.

At the end of an hour-long hearing, the judge agreed that it would be disproportionate for her to deny the new lawyers any extra time at all and therefore allowed for a few extra days for the preparation and submission of evidence.

However, she refused to change the May 23 date of the hearing because it risked a potential delay in the case until October due to the court's listings and holiday period time pressures.

The latest case marks a flurry of legal wrangles being tackled by Mallya in the UK courts at various stages of hearing.

His extradition to India to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crore in unpaid loans by his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, was ordered by Westminster Magistrates' Court in London last December and signed off by UK home secretary Sajid Javid in February this year.

Mallya is contesting that order and made a second attempt at appealing against his extradition this week.

As per legal procedure in the UK, Mallya's first written leave to appeal application had been passed on Justice Davis, who was to make a decision on the basis of papers submitted and rejected that application "on papers".

A judge must now decide following an oral consideration in the coming weeks if his appeal can proceed to a full hearing.

Meanwhile, in a separate case, a SBI led consortium of Indian banks are seeking to enforce a worldwide freezing order upheld by the UK high court last year through a number of follow up court orders to try and recoup some of the 1.145 billion pounds owed to them.

Mallya also faces bankruptcy proceedings in the UK High court in relation to that case, involving SBI, Bank of Baroda, Corporation bank, Federal Bank Ltd, IDBI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Jammu & Kashmir Bank, Punjab & Sind Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of Mysore, UCO Bank, United Bank of India and JM Financial Asset Reconstruction Co.

Photograph: PTI Photo
'If you go by the essence of the Constitution of India, I don't see any problem in having a separate PM for J-K.'

IMAGE: A protest underway in the Kashmir valley. Photograph: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com

The Bharatiya Janata Party manifesto, in which it reiterated its commitment to repeal Article 370, conferring special status on Jammu and Kashmir, and annul Article 35A, has set off a storm in the border state.

Peoples Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti, who was chief minister till recently in alliance with the BJP, lashed out at the announcement, warning that if it was done, both Kashmir and India 'will burn'.

Shah Faesal, the 2010 batch UPSC topper, resigned from the Indian Administrative Service in January to protest against the violence in Kashmir and launched a new political party, the Jammu and Kashmir People's Movement.

"There is an atmosphere of freeze in the valley. I just hope something good happens after the election," Faesal, below, tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf.

The BJP has said in its Lok Sabha election manifesto that it will repeal Articles 370 and 35A.

The BJP has been talking of abrogating Article 370 for the last 70 years.

The BJP has nothing else to show.

Even if they do it (repeal Article 370), that would be wrong as this matter is sub-judice.

It would be contempt of court.

Article 370 is a bridge between the Union of India and the people of J-K.

We have said if the BJP abrogates Article 370, then as a mark of protest we will move our watch 15 minutes away from Indian Standard Time.

But what has Kashmir achieved with Article 370 as businesses from outside the state can't settle there? Don't you think Article 370 is bad for Jammu and Kashmir?

Article 370 has got nothing to do with outside people not coming to J-K.

Article 370 is like laws are in other states.

We in Kashmir are ready to lease our land for 90 years to business people.

I feel people must respect the promise of the prime minister of India (Jawaharlal Nehru) to the people of J-K.

That promise needs to be respected.

Let us talk about development.

It is wrong to say that Article 370 is the obstruction.

It is the only bridge which connects the people of J-K to the people of India.

Don't you think the trust between Jammu and Kashmir and the Union of India has already broken, even without the abrogation of Article 370?

It is because Article 370 is more of a hollow.

Its essence has been eroded.

The kind of federalism, which was envisaged earlier, that is not in action.

We have been seeing constant erosion of institutions.

J-K was expected to be a very unique state in the country where only three subjects matter: Communication, defence and external affairs, which would be managed by the Union of India.

It was a very unique federal arrangement, but it did not work and the people of J-K are not to be blamed for that.

It is the Union of India which has not been able to keep up its promise.

Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi has been criticising National Conference leader Omar Abdullah over his reported statement seeking a separate prime minister for Kashmir.

This concept went on till 20 years after Independence (Ghulam Mohammad Sadiq was the last prime minister of Kashmir in 1965 after which the postion was changed to chief minister).

So when the people of J-K say they want their prime minister, they are saying what the Constitution of India says.

Today some parties have reservations on this thought.

But if you go by the essence of the Constitution of India, I don't see any problem in having a separate PM for J-K.

There is an audio clip of the Hizbul Mujahideen doing the rounds of social media describing your entry into mainstream politics as an 'Indian camouflage to entrap Kashmiri voters'.

There has been a perception in J-K about politics as a lot of experimentation has been done in the past.

I don't mind what is being said about me.

I am clear about what I am doing and I will not mind whatever is being said about me.

I believe we need to revive the relationship between the people of India and people of J-K.

I believe in what the late prime minister of India Atal Bihari Vajpayee said, 'Kashmiriyat, jamhooriyat aur insanyat (Kashmir, democracy and humanity).'

Coming to the traffic ban, why did you challenge it in court? Don't you think the safety of the security forces is essential post the Pulwama attack?

In our writ petition, we have categorically stated that the security personnel have the right to safe movement.

We respect their right to life.

We believe that while making arrangements for their safe movement, the right to movement of indigenous people should not be infringed upon.

It is not that the state government did not have alternatives.

It is not that the security forces have not moved from Jammu and Kashmir or vice versa for the last 30 years.

It is not that elections have not been held before.

But this is an unprecedented step taken.

We believe it has been taken without considering the impact that it would have on the lives of ordinary people.

This highway is the only link which connects the Kashmir valley to the rest of the world.

What were the difficulties faced since this blockage started last week?

There is a blanket ban on civilian traffic.

This highway is the only connectivity between north and south Kashmir.

This is also the only connectivity between Kashmir-Ladakh and the rest of the world.

Now they say school buses are allowed.

But you have to understand only private schools have buses.

Government schools don't have buses.

Even if you allow buses of private schools (to ply), what about teachers?

How will teachers travel as they travel by private transport?

Patients have to go to hospitals in case of an emergency.

But they cannot go as the highway is shut.

They need permissions to go to hospital.

Does it mean that patients should first go to district authorities for permission and then go to hospital?

At checkpoints there are no doctors.

So how do you certify a patient at checkpoints?

Since the highway is closed on Wednesday, government employees are not able to travel.

So do you want Wednesday to be declared as a state holiday?

What happened to traders who use the national highway?

Their goods don't move.

So there are serious issues in implementing this order.

Are there any alternatives to the blockade?

On Sunday, the highway was closed and traffic was not allowed.

But even on Monday, there was (army) convoy movement.

So how can convoys be safe on Monday?

You can travel very early in the morning or have more security forces for the convoy.

There is another option, of the train.

Forces can travel by train from Qazigund to Baramulla.

We have said dedicate this train to security forces.

Let them use this as we will have roads free for others.

We also said that allow traffic movement during night.

Some midway has to be found.

IMAGE: The Jammu-Srinagar national highway with barbed wires placed on it to prevent movement.

Shah Faesal has filed a PIL in the Jammu and Kashmir high court against the decision to ban the movement of civilian traffic on National Highway 44 between Udhampur and Baramulla on Sundays and Wednesdays to allow safe passage of security force convoys. Photograph: Umar Ganie for Rediff.com

What will happen if accidentally some civilian cars travel on the highway on Wednesdays or Sundays?

People are being bullied and beaten up if you try to approach military convoys.

Security-wise, I feel this arrangement of army movement is more vulnerable.

If anybody has to attack an army convoy, he knows he has to attack on Wednesday or Sunday.

So I don't know what kind of logic has been put into this order.

Did you try to speak to Governor Satya Pal Malik or the army authorities?

We have filed a PIL in court.

We have come across a report that even the Indian Army is not happy with this arrangement.

It was implemented without their knowledge.

There is a lot of chaos on the streets and confusion in the civil secretariat.

We have filed the PIL and the honourable court is deciding the matter.

So it would be unfair for me to comment beyond that.

After the terrorist attack in Pulwama in which over 40 Central Reserve Police Force jawans were killed, how has the situation been in Kashmir?

The life of ordinary people in Kashmir has become miserable post the Pulwama attack.

We have seen unprecedented restrictions of Kashmiris on the national highways post the Pulwama attack.

It is very hard to travel now.

Earlier, if it used to take 1 hour for a journey pre-Pulwama attack, it now takes 4 hours because of security arrangements.

Things have become very bad.

There is an atmosphere of freeze in the valley.

I just hope something good happens after the election.
'This letter is not a complaint, it's more indignation, because we do not like being used as political tools by people of various parties.'

Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday, April 12, condemned the circulation of a letter written to President Ram Nath Kovind by veterans of the armed forces expressing displeasure over politicisation of the services, saying two senior officers whose names are mentioned in the letter have denied signing it.

The letter in question was purportedly written by a group of retired officers of the army, navy and air force to the President, the supreme commander of the armed forces, urging him to urgently direct all political parties to stop using the services to further their political agenda.

The 156 signatories include eight former service chiefs.

General Shankar Roy Chowdhury (retd), a former Indian Army chief and one of the signatories, says he was certainly in the loop on the decision to write to Rashtrapati Bhavan about the politicisation of the armed forces, agrees with the tone of the letter, and says he consented to his name being appended.

"We are indignant and annoyed that the good name of the defence forces is being used in a political context. It reflects on our izzat and we don't like it," the general told Rediff.com's Swarupa Dutt.

Three of the veterans whose names are appended in the letter sent to Rashtrapati Bhavan have denied signing it. In fact, one of them, General S F Rodrigues, has said it's a classic case of fake news.

I don't know about that. But I spoke to some of my friends and they said this politicisation of the armed forces is a bit too much, and I said, yes, it is and what are you going to do about it? And they said, 'let's write to the President'. So, I said in that case, sign me up.

I was sitting in Kolkata, so I'm not a signatory to a letter composed in Delhi, but I knew it was to be written and what its contents were and I gave my consent to my name being tagged on to it.

Who is the brainchild behind the letter?

An admiral who is a friend of ours. I will not name him, but his name is there in the letter.

How did it come about?

Veterans have always been apolitical. Always. And we did not like how the army's name was being misused and the air force's deeds were being doubted by a certain section of the political leadership depending upon their convenience.

So someone said, there is nobody else to write to, let's write to the President if he can get them (political parties and politicians) to exercise some restraint.

Rashtrapati Bhavan has denied receiving the letter.

Must be. But I know it's gone to the President and I agree with the tone of the letter.

Isn't this unprecedented? Do you ever remember the armed forces having to resort to something like this?

During service, they can't obviously. After leaving the service a letter on these lines was written about during the One Rank One Pension issue.

This letter is not a complaint, it's more indignation, because we do not like being used as political tools by people of various parties.

But this is not unprecedented in two senses -- firstly, OROP, and secondly, in 1971, when we had defeated the Pakistanis and created Bangladesh there was a slogan at the time, 'Indira is India and India is Indira' coined and put into circulation by Dev Kanta Barooah of the Congress.

This has been happening under all governments, if there is an occasion or event that is a feel-good factor, the government uses it.

This government (the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance) feels good about the Balakot air strikes and used it.

Don't forget, during the 1965 War, 'Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan' was launched. The political system has always been like that.

Has this discontent with the politicisation of the armed forces been brewing for a long time?

I wouldn't say discontent, it's more like indignation that the good name of the defence forces is being used in a political context. That's unacceptable to all of us and we are annoyed about it.

To use a very old fashioned word, it reflects on our izzat and we don't like that.

In your letter you say this is an unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations. What is the normal practice when cross-border strikes take place, for instance?

The normal practice is you win your war and you get on with it.

Who should take the credit for the Balakot air strike?

The military credit should go to the Indian Air Force.

And not the government?

The government in office makes the decision to go in for an air strike, so a share of the credit goes to them also.

In this case, not to fly the aircraft, but to go across the Line of Control, enter Pakistani air space and destroy the Jaish-e-Mohammed installation.

The credit for carrying it out goes to the air force, the credit for taking the decision to carry it out goes to the government of the time.

During the India-Pakistan War (1971) the credit for enabling the creation of Bangladesh should go to the government.

The debacle that was 1962 (the India-China War), the discredit for defeat, goes to the government at the time -- Pandit Nehru's government.

The letter states that the politicisation of the armed forces would adversely impinge the morale and fighting efficiency of the serving man or woman in uniform. How so?

Well, the fighting efficiency would not be adversely affected, but the man or woman in uniform would certainly say or think, 'What the hell is going on'!

They know the armed forces are totally apolitical and they would certainly be uneasy and wonder if things are changing. That could affect them.

Army chief General Bipin Rawat has made political statements in the past that Badruddin Ajmal's All India United Democratic Front has grown faster than the BJP to buttress his point about influx of Bangladeshis into the north east. He was never pulled up for this.

I will not comment on an army chief.

Is there any message you would like to send out?

The message is this: The army serves the government of the day. That is its mandate, that is practice and that's how it functions.

It functions on directives of the government of the day and it is totally apolitical and totally loyal and patriotic to the nation.
The Congress on Friday said its talks with the Aam Aadmi Party for an alliance has failed as the Arvind Kejriwal-led party took an 'impractical stand' of a tie-up in four states, but indicated that possibilities for an electoral understanding between the two were still alive for Delhi.

Congress in-charge for Delhi P C Chacko announced that the party will go alone, but maintained that it is still willing to have an alliance with the AAP provided the tie-up is restricted only to the national capital.

The AAP, however, said the tie-up can only be done on 33 Lok Sabha seats across four states and one Union Territory.

Soon after the Congress announcement, the AAP announced a tie-up with the Jannayak Janata Party for Haryana.

The JJP was launched by former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala's grandson Dushyant Chautala, following a power struggle in the state's main opposition Indian National Lok Dal last year.

Senior AAP leader Gopal Rai said the JJP will fight on seven seats and AAP on three seats.

Uncertainty over alliance between the AAP and the Congress has been continuing for weeks now with the former demanding an alliance on 33 seats of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana, Goa and Chandigarh.

The talks between the two sides derailed after they failed to reach an agreement over seat-sharing in Delhi and Haryana.

Chacko said the Congress will contest alone in Delhi since AAP has taken an 'impractical stand'.

"We are compelled to go on our own as AAP is going back on its stand," Chacko told reporters.

He, however, said, "We are still ready (for alliance) if AAP is willing to have an alliance in Delhi alone. We want to fight the BJP together."

"We are not able to form an alliance as they have taken a difficult and impractical proposition. Congress is going to fight the election in Delhi on its own," he said, adding that the party will come out with a candidate list in a day or two.

He said the Congress has adopted a policy to form alliances with parties to defeat the BJP and this policy was being followed all over the country.

The AAP, in response, said it is capable of defeating both the BJP and the Congress in the city and an alliance is possible with the grand old party only when it will be done on the 33 seats.

"We want alliance on all 33 seats with the Congress and not three seats in Delhi. We are capable of defeating the BJP and the Congress on our own in Delhi. If an alliance has to be there, it has to be on 33 seats," AAP's Gopal Rai said.

AAP's Rajya Sabha leader Sanjay Singh, who was holding alliance talks with the Congress, said, "Our sincerity to stop the BJP in Haryana is reflected by the fact that we became a junior partner to a four-month-old party (JJP) and agreed to contest only less than half of the seats in the state."

Singh said the AAP was eager for an alliance with the Congress in Haryana so that the BJP could be defeated on all the 10 seats.

"That's why we were prepared to give Congress three seats in Delhi. But they refused an alliance," he said.

Singh exuded confidence that the AAP would win all the seven seats on its own in Delhi.

However, sources said the AAP in a last-ditch attempt may offer a 5:2 seat sharing formula to the Congress in Delhi.

Earlier, the AAP was ready to give three seats to the Congress in Delhi but now it might consider giving it just two seats, the sources added.
IMAGE: Punjab CM Amarinder Singh and Governor V P Singh Badnore take part in a candle light march to commemorate the centenary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar on Friday. Photograph: Kind courtesy @capt_amarinder/Twitter

Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday termed as 'inadequate' the expression of regret by British Prime Minister Theresa May on Jallianwala Bagh massacre and said that nothing short of a formal apology from Britain will do.

On the eve of the centenary of the gruesome incident, Singh and Punjab Governor V P S Badnore led hundreds of people from all walks of life who took out a candle march to pay homage to the martyrs.

The march started from the historic Townhall and culminated at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial as slogans like 'Inquilab Zindabad' rent the air.

Amarinder Singh said that Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a heart-wrenching moment in India's history and the people of country want an 'unequivocal apology from Britain for the atrocity'.

Nothing short of a formal apology will do, the chief minister said.

The Punjab assembly had passed a resolution in this regard, he pointed out, adding that the tragedy was one of the most horrific examples of colonial excesses and a moral blot on the face of Britain.

Theresa May had on Wednesday described the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar as a 'shameful scar' on British Indian history as she marked the 100th anniversary of the tragic incident, but she stopped short of a formal apology.

The massacre took place in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on Baisakhi in April 1919 when troops of the British Indian Army under the command of Colonel Dyer opened fire on a crowd of people holding a pro-independence meeting, leaving hundreds of people dead and scores injured.

"The candles that were lit on Friday evening here have rekindled memories of the sad day and would serve as a reminder of the sacrifice which has inspired patriotism and nationalism among generations of Indians," Chief Minister Amarinder Singh said.

Amarinder, who will pay floral tributes on Saturday at the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial along with Congress President Rahul Gandhi, also met the families and descendants of some of the martyrs.

Several eminent personalities, political leaders and members of various social, religious and voluntary organisations also took part in the candle light march.

Prominent among those present on the occasion were All India Congress Committee Punjab Incharge Asha Kumari, president Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee Sunil Jakhar, cabinet ministers Sukhbinder Singh Sarkaria, O P Soni, MLAs Raj Kumar Verka and Inderbir Singh Bolaria.

Demanding apology from Britain, descendants of some of those killed have said mere regret would not do.

"My mama-ji (maternal uncle) Mela Ram was martyred at the age of 18 in the massacre," said 86-year-old Krishana Chohan, recounting how she grew up hearing tales about the incident.

"When the troops started indiscriminate firing on the peaceful gathering, everybody panicked, people started running helter-skelter without having any understating where to go.

"It was plain ground and there was only one exit, which was a narrow lane. As a result, there was a stampede and many fell upon each other and some fell inside the well in the ground," she told PTI.

She said her uncle was one of those who fell inside the well.

"His body bore bullet marks, I was told. Some freedom fighters who were addressing the gathering were also found dead," she said.

Chohan said the British government should apologise for the incident and a mere regret would not do.

Mahesh Behl, 73, recalled the killing of his grandfather Lala Hari Ram, an advocate, in the massacre.

"British government still hasn't offered apology over the carnage," Behl said.

He lamented that descendants like him even did not get the due honour from the central or the state governments.

"A few years ago, the Punjab government gave us freedom fighter card, but nobody recognises this card. Even the card is rejected at toll plazas. Our children didn't get any reservation on the basis of this card in any educational institution," he rued.

"Today after 100 years of the incident, the administration approached us to invite for the candle light march being organised by the state government on the centenary eve," he added.

Legislator and Punjabi Ekta Party chief Sukhpal Singh Khaira said thousands of Punjabis had sacrificed their lives for the freedom of the country and the massacre in Jallianwala Bagh is an unforgettable tragedy.

He said the Jallianwala Bagh memorial was a neglected place and reflects apathy of state and central governments.

He also demanded apology from the British government for the massacre.
IMAGE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi receives a memento at a campaign rally in Gangavathi, Karnataka on Friday. Photograph: PTI Photo

Launching a scathing attack on the Congress and other parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said the Opposition leaders are heroes in Pakistan and are being quoted there to 'discredit' India.

In an apparent reference to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, who is contesting from neighbouring Wayanad besides his traditional stronghold of Amethi, Modi asked the people of Kerala to be cautious of those who come to the state to 'save themselves'.

He also said the Communists and the Congress have taken the people of the state for granted.

"Beware of those people who come to Kerala not to serve you, but to save themselves. Those who are on bail for tax fraud are coming to Kerala for their own political bail out. When such leaders or their party members come to you for vote, ask them about their performances in their constituencies. They won't have anything to say," Modi said.

He lashed out at the Congress and its 'non-serious attitude' towards national security and said 'they were silent when they had to act'.

When the Congress was in power, the country saw many terror attacks, Modi said.

"Now our forces, successfully eliminate terrorists in their own home, the Congress and the Left question our forces.

"...Today the bare minimum they can do is to show support but they are questioning and insulting the defence forces," the prime minister said.

"Our opposition leaders are heroes in Pakistan where their speeches are being quoted by their leaders to discredit India," Modi said.

Addressing a massive rally, organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance, at the beach front here, he said electing the Congress and the Left Democratic Front was like giving licence to its leaders to engage in top-level corruption.

Slamming the Congress for indulging in corruption, Modi said the 'Tughlaq road election scam' has been the talk of the nation.

The money that was being looted was meant to be used to provide nutrition to women and children, he said.

"Imagine how shameless they are," Modi said at the Vijay Sankalp rally.

"Now the entire nation is talking about a very big national scam of the Congress. This is the Tughlaq road election scam.

In Madhya Pradesh, crores of rupees, bags of cash were found. Detailed probes revealed that the money trail reaches the house of a top Congress leader in Delhi's Tughlaq road," Modi said.

The prime minister claimed that the double standards of both the United Democratic Front and the LDF in the state were exposed in the matters of women empowerment and the triple talaq.

Attacking the ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led LDF and the Congress-headed Opposition, Modi said Communists and the Congress have blatant 'double standards' when it comes to women's empowerment.

He said the 'so-called defenders of women's rights' are the ones defending the 'brutal and barbaric' practice of triple talaq.

"But then the so-called liberals, activate their entire network of paid NGOs, paid civil society, groups, urban Naxals, tukde tukde gang to interfere in the faith and traditions of our land," Modi said.

They were trying to make Kerala a laboratory of their 'mischiefs'.

"They call themselves the champions of speech and expression. But deny the same for the people of Kerala."

Both the Fronts think they can destroy traditions, but are mistaken.

"Their lathis, their lies and their disgusting mischief will never be able to destroy our traditions," the prime minister said in an apparent reference to the Sabarimala protests.

The state witnessed frenzied protests after the Left government decided to implement the September 28 Supreme Court verdict allowing women of all age groups to offer prayers at Sabarimala.

Without mentioning Sabarimala in his first campaign speech in Kozhikode after the poll process was notified, Modi said the LDF and UDF will not be able to destroy the traditions.

"Now, in the name of the Supreme Court verdict, some forces have again attempted to destroy traditions for their selfish gains. The attack on our traditions will not be accepted.

"The use of lathis on innocent devotees will not be accepted. It is wrong that in one's own country, one has to face lathis to follow the ancient traditions," he said.

BJP would take all steps to place before the Supreme Court, Kerala's centuries-old traditions in detail. The Centre would also make efforts to provide constitutional protection for the state's faiths and beliefs, Modi said.

The BJP in its poll manifesto had made a mention of the Sabarimala controversy, saying it would 'endeavour to secure constitutional protection on issues related to faith and belief'.

He also took a dig at the Indian Union Muslim League and the Congress leaders and said 'those who have a track record in Ice-Cream Parlour case and the Solar case should not talk on women empowerment as it does not suit them'.

Modi, who arrived here after addressing campaign meetings at Ahmednagar in Maharashtra and Gangavathi in northern Karnataka, said the UDF and the LDF are different only in name but not in deeds.

"For decades, the communist LDF and the communal UDF have dominated the Kerala politics. But they have miserably failed the people of Kerala. BJP presents an alternative ie.inclusive, democratic and compassionate. We will serve each and every citizen," he said.

He said electing the Congress and the LDF was like giving licence for its leaders to engage in corruption.

Candidates from Kasaragod to Palakkad shared the dais with the prime minister at the rally.

Modi is expected to come to the state once more before the April 23 elections.

*****

Modi terms JD(S)-Cong coalition as 20% commission govt

Tearing into the Congress-Janata Dal (Secular) coalition in Karnataka over its alleged corruption and dynasty politics, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday dubbed it a '20 per cent government', saying their only mission was 'commission'.

Intensifying his campaign blitz in Karnataka, Modi also asserted there was a wave across the country for the return of the BJP-led NDA government in the Lok Sabha polls, which was between 'Rashtravad (nationalism) and Pariwarvad (dynasty)'.

He lashed out at the Deve Gowda family, targeting the JD-S supremo's son Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy over his reported remark that only those who cannot get two square meals a day seek jobs in the services, terming it an 'insult' to the armed forces.

He also hit out at Gowda's other son and minister H D Revanna, without naming him, for his remark that he would retire from politics if Modi was voted back to power.

The prime minister is addressing back to back rallies in Karnataka, where the BJP has targetted to win 22 of the 28 Lok Sabha seats, riding on what it perceives as a 'Modi wave'.

BJP is also hoping to cash in on mutual hostility between the ruling coalition partners at the grassroot level in several constituencies. The BJP won 17 seats in the 2014 polls.

The prime minister said the 2019 election is between Rashtrawad (nationalism) and parivarwad (dynasty).

"The election was between nation first or family first," he said.

"In Karnataka Congress and JD-S are signs of Parivarwad. Both parties that have lost touch with the people are that much connected to their families...Their only mission is commission," Modi said.

"When there was Congress government, there was Mr 10 per cent. Do you remember Mr 10 per cent? Now they have joined together 10 per cent is theirs and other 10 per cent of others. Now Karnataka is going on with 20 per cent," he said.

In his campaign during the May 2018 assembly polls, Modi had attacked the then Siddaramaiah dispensation as a '10 per cent commission' government.

The prime minister said he had seen media reports yesterday of Kumaraswamy saying that those who don't get food two times a day join the Army.

"What kind of thinking is this Kumaraswamy ji? You cannot escape by saying that your statement has been wrongly interpreted. You have said what is in your heart," Modi said.

"...is it not an insult to our brave soldiers and armed forces...will you seek vote on this? Those who serve the country and ready to sacrifice for it facing all odds...Such words for them, such thinking. Doob maro doob maro (die drowning), those who insult the country's army," he said.

Modi said such people could not understand the 'tapasya' of the Army as they were born with a silver spoon.

Those who have remained in power for three generations could never understand the poor and their dignity, Modi said.

"This is the thinking with Congress and JD-S and their mahamilavati (adulterated) dal ....(they) don't give importance to the country's security," the prime minister said.

Accusing Congress and JD-S of being against 'Rashtrawadis' and those protecting the country,Modi said they don't feel ashamed in standing with those shouting slogans 'Bharat tere tukde honge' and dream about it.

The prime minister said such people stand with those supporting the secession of Jammu Kashmir from the country.

"They have money for Sultan's utsav, but have shortage of money to remember Hampi's pride," Modi, said referring to the state government's controversial celebrations of 'Tipu Jayanti' on November 10 every year in memory of Tipu Sultan, the 18th century ruler of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom.

On Revanna's remarks that he would retire from politics if Modi came back to power, the prime minister said, "Do you believe them? Will these people speak the truth any time?"

He reminded the crowd that in the 2014 elections, Deve Gowda had himself said that if Modi won and became the prime minister, he would take 'sanyas'.

"Did he take sanyas? Did father (Deve Gowda) take sanyas? Will son take sanyas? Leave sanyas, they are giving tickets to those remaining in the family."

On the response to his rallies across the country and the surging crows at the meeting in Gangavathi, Modi said, "This scene shows which way the wind is blowing."

"Whereever I have had the opportunity to go across the country, phir rk baar..." Modi said, to which the public roared in unison 'Modi sarkar'.

"This is the voice of the people across the country.There is a wave that is going on. Your love is spoiling the sleep of those sitting in Delhi," he told the surging crowds.

Modi stopped his speech four or five times as the crowds continued to swell and surged forward chanting 'Modi, Modi'.

Referring to the first phase of voting on Thursday, the prime minister said the opposition would not be able to sustain and there was a complete wave of BJP and its allies.

"There is chaos (afra tafri) in West Bengal, they are indulging in killing... but people phir ek baar."

Meanwhile, Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy accused Modi of using the patriotism of soldiers for his gain, saying he has no development issues to talk about during the campaign.

'Despite clarifying on the false post by @BJP4Karnataka, PM @narendramodi still gets carried away by wrong inputs of state leaders.

'The PM is using the patriotism of soldiers for his gain. He rides on such emotional waves because there are no development issues to talk about,' Kumaraswamy tweeted.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi's proposed meeting at Siliguri has been cancelled after the Congress leadership was denied permission for his chopper to land at the police ground there.

Senior Congress leader and the party's Darjeeling Lok Sabha candidate Shankar Malakar said he had sought permission for Gandhi's chopper to land at the police ground on April 14 but it was denied by the police.

"We had to cancel the rally as we didn't get the permission," Malakar said.

Siliguri Police Commissioner B L Meena confirmed that the Congress had sought permission for landing a helicopter at police ground which was denied.

"We had denied permission for that specific ground. There are some rules due to which it was not allowed. But they didn't come up with any alternative venue," Meena said.

Amid the blame game, the infighting in Bengal Congress came out in open as state Congress president Somen Mitra said he was not aware of the rally of the All India Congress Committee chief.

"I can't say whether or not a rally is going to be held. Please don't ask me this question," Mitra said.

A senior state Congress leader said Mitra was miffed as Malakar who, without informing him, had sought permission for Gandhi's rally, on his own.

"We are all soldiers of Rahul Gandhi. There is no doubt about it. But some of our candidates without informing the PCC chief is announcing that they are planning to hold rallies of Rahul Gandhi, even without seeking permission from his office. This is not sending out the right message," a senior state Congress leader said.

Gandhi so far addressed two election rallies in the state -- one at Malda and another at Raiganj.
Despite its harmful effects, leaders and party workers consume khaini to keep them going during the election campaign.

M I Khan reports from Patna.

IMAGE: A man prepares chewing tobacco. Photograph: Jitendra Prakash/Reuters

With campaigning in full swing for the Lok Sabha elections in Bihar, leaders and workers of the ruling National Democratic Alliance and the Opposition Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) are in love with khaini (smokeless desi tobacco).

In Bihar, which has outlawed alcohol, khaini is the most sought after item during campaigning.

"Khaini is like an instant energy drink and leaders and workers consumer it more than tea and cold drinks," says Janata Dal-United leader Sunil Singh.

Khaini, chewed with a dash of lime, is the most popular tobacco product in Bihar with many adults addicted to it.

Several leaders of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the JD-U, the Lok Janshakti Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party are reportedly in habit of consuming khaini.

According to RJD leaders, party chief Lalu Prasad was known to consume khaini at regular intervals to de-stress during a poll campaign.

"Laluji used to consume khaini during election meetings or in transit," a RJD leader close to him says.

Lalu is missing from this election's campaign after being convicted in fodder scam cases.

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who is very conscious of his public image, consumes khaini with extra care, reveals a JD-U leader.

"During campaigning, Nitish Kumar likes to take small chunks of khaini at regular intervals" adds the JD-U leader.

One of Nitish Kumar's aides prepares fresh khaini and hands it over to him when he is either traveling or in his room, away from public view.

"Very few people are aware that Nitish Kumar consumes khaini because he never takes it in public," says a police officer who served on the CM's security team.

Neither Lok Janshakti Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan or Deputy Chief Minister Sushil Kumar Modi of the Bharatiya Janata Party consume the desi tobacco.

The Nitish Kumar government's plans to ban khaini last year was scuttled after angry protests.

Bihar is the sixth largest tobacco-producing state in the country.

More than half a dozen traders dealing in khaini indicated an increase in demand during this election campaign.

"Hundreds of packets of khaini are distributed daily among party workers," says trader Rajesh Prasad.

In Bihar, a kilogram of khaini is sold for Rs 500.
Don Rodriguez, CEO of the Boys & Girls Clubs, said Press-Telegram readers have been generous so far in donating 1,330 balls during the publications fourth annual Lets Play Ball campaign.
A New Haven-based worker training organization is getting $3.45 million in state funding to expand a program it launched late last year to expand the workforce in the manufacturing sector.

The grant being made to the Workforce Alliances Manufacturing Careers Partnership is part of $4.7 million in funding from the state Department of Labors Apprenticeship Connecticut initiative. The remaining $1.25 million is being awarded to the Waterbury-based Northwest Regional Workforce Investment Board.

The state funding will be used to build upon a program launched in February at Gateway Community College that took 19 unemployed and under-employed workers and provided them with an intensive, five-week training course. The program, Skill Up for Manufacturing, sent its first graduating class out into the workforce on March 15.

Every single one of them had a job before they graduated, said William Villano, president and chief executive officer of Workforce Alliance. This a good program for people that want to change careers or high school graduates who arent going to college.

The state Labor Department estimates that between 25,000 and 35,000 new manufacturing workers will be needed to meet the demand of Connecticut companies in the sector through 2028, according to Villano.

Under the programs model, Skill Ups manufacturing classes have enrollments that are limited to 20, Villano said.

We have six classes scheduled at Gateway and three that are being done through a partnership between Middlesex Community College and Vinal Technical High School, he said. Both schools are in Middletown.

Skill Up is a free program and participants complete 250 hours of training and pre-apprenticeship hours. They also get hands-on experience to begin careers in the manufacturing industry.

Members from the programs first graduating class included individuals from Branford, East Haven, Hamden, Shelton, Wallingford and West Haven.

State Labor Commissioner Kurt Westby said the strong growth in the states advanced manufacturing sector and the number of existing manufacturing workers nearing retirement age is creating a shortage of skilled employees.

Employers are looking for workers that can fill jobs in our aerospace, medical, and defense industries, Westby said in a statement. Apprenticeship pipelines have proven to be an excellent way to develop skills for good-paying careers in manufacturing, as well as jobs that require more than a high school diploma, but in many cases not a college degree.

Villano said submarine maker Electric Boat has enough work to keep it operating through 2037 and jet engine maker Pratt & Whitney has manufacturing contracts through 2034.

Theres not many jobs where you can walk in and have a career for 20 years if you want to, he said.

The next Skill Up training session is scheduled to begin May 6, Villano said, with classes held Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Support services are available to participants while in classroom training, including travel reimbursement and day care assistance as well as required books, tools and clothing.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
Theres lots of music on tap this weekend between two Justin Timberlake shows and a Friday night visit from Martha Davis and The Motels  the new wave band known for Suddenly Last Summer, Only the Lonely and more. The Motels will play your favs and share tunes from their latest album at Daryls House Club in Pawling, New York. Timberlake fans can expect a two-hour dance party when the star brings his Man of the Woods tour to Mohegan Sun Arena Friday and Saturday.

For family fun theres a unique adaptation of Snow White onstage at Bridgeports Downtown Cabaret Theatre Saturday and Sunday afternoon. You can also catch the Easter Bunny at the Danbury Railway Museum on either of those days. Visitors can ride in a vintage train through the historic railyard to meet him. Each child receives a small gift from you-know-who.
Contributed photo

Litchfield High Schools first ever Relay for Life will be at the school on April 27 from 5 to 9 p.m. Relay for Life events raise money for the American Cancer Society. Check out lhsrelay.blogspot.com for more information.
HAMDEN  Almost a year after a tornado devastated Sleeping Giant State Park, its reopening is on the horizon.

Officials arent promising Sleeping Giant will open by Memorial Day, but certainly by the start of summer, said Lee Sawyer, state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection spokesman.

Theres been hope that it could be open in the next few weeks, but all we can say for certain is it will be open by the start of summer, Sawyer said.

With the weather warming up, crews are back to work on a number of things.

Major mess

The May 15 tornado that tore through Hamden and other parts of the state last year wreaked havoc on homes, cars, roads and parks. It brought down trees and power lines onto buildings, and sections of forest were nearly leveled.

Sleeping Giant State Park was no exception. Standing at the parks entrance on Mount Carmel Avenue across from Quinnipiac University, one could see the trees around the parking lot and picnic area broken in half by forceful winds. Deep within the park, uprooted and fallen trees blocked trails.

Seeing the damage heaped on the park brought me to tears, said Gail Cameron, vice president of the park association and chairwoman of the Environmental Stewardship Committee.

Ive lived next door to the park my whole life and to see in 15 minutes what could happen, she said. I tell myself its a natural event and the forest will recover, but it will take many years.

The condition of Sleeping Giant made it too dangerous for anyone to enter the site, so its been closed ever since. But park officials are looking at a new horizon for Sleeping Giant as they plan to reopen the park by the end of June.

The landscape has been changed but were figuring out how to make best use of it, Sawyer said.

Several state parks were closed after the May 15 storm, including Wharton Brook State Park in Wallingford and Chatfield Hollow State Park in Killingworth, and all of them have reopened except for Sleeping Giant.

The Sleeping Giant Park Association has done a lot of work clearing the trails of fallen trees and its trail crew, who maintain the trails regularly, were largely responsible for removing the fallen trees on all the side trails, Park Supervisor Jill Scheinbenpflug said.

Thus far, the trail crew has cleared more thank 1,900 fallen trees from the 32 miles of trails, Cameron said. The state has only worked on the tower path that leads to the Giants summit, she said, so rehabilitating all the other trails has fallen to the volunteers.

The trail crew began clearing the paths a couple weeks after the storm, working four to five hours every Sunday until winter came, Cameron said.

Looking ahead

Like so many, Jim Sirch, an SGPA volunteer and past president of the Hamden Land Conservation Trust, has long enjoyed hiking the Giants trails and has led bird walks through its woods. Hes looking forward to doing that again when the park opens, but hes expecting the wildlife may be different.

Sawyer said the state will end up spending about $1 million to get the park back to operating condition.

Since the storm took down so many trees, more light has opened on the forest floor, which means there might be different birds nesting and new plants that are able to grow.

Some less common bird species in Connecticut  the worm eating warbler, ovenbird, wood thrush, scarlet tanager  that have made Sleeping Giants trees their home may not return, Sirch said, because the habitat has changed.

Like Cameron, Sirch said he had a sinking feeling observing the storm damage in the park.

I know that the ecology is going to change and its going to be 75 to 100 years to return to what it once was. But there can be some opportunities from this, he said.

Sirch said the open canopy might create more flowers for some pollinator species and it might be opportunity for the state to create pollinator meadows in the park, which he hopes for.

Another silver lining of the trees coming down is that park goers will be able to see the Sleeping Giant better, Scheinbenpflug said, and other views people probably couldnt before.

The hills of Sleeping Giant are known as a traprock ridge, which formed millions of years ago when magma made its way toward the Earths surface as the crust separated, Sirch said. The step-like appearance of the weathered rock faces distinguish these landscape features, creating mineral rich rock and soil that can support diverse flora and organisms, he said.

The tornado changed the parks landscape dramatically, especially at the entrance and picnic area.

The whole picnic area was pretty wiped out, Scheinbenpflug said, but DEEP is planning how the agency will rehabilitate those spaces by hiring a contractor to survey the land and develop a master plan for the park.

Scheinbenpflug said planting indigenous species in that area is the main goal for it, in addition to creating some meadows and picnic areas on the side. The storm damage isnt only negative, though, because it has created an opportunity to redesign some of the park, she said and theyve discussed putting in a visitor center near the entrance that would house artifacts and park history.

Additionally, Its an opportunity to watch what happens as the forest regenerates, Cameron said.

Other work to be completed is on the main trail. Rainstorms last fall eroded the tower trail leading to the summit where trees needed to be removed because of the grading damage, Sawyer said. However, trees will be replanted at there, which he expects will be finished soon.

The tower trail itself needs repair since it was widened for heavy trucks and machinery to remove dead trees, Scheinbenpflug said. Theyre working resurfacing the trail and installing new culverts, which allow water to flow under the trail and prevent erosion.

One of Scheinbenpflugs biggest concerns about reopening is having enough time to let the newly planted grass establish itself before people are let back in and risk trespassing on the grass. If it doesnt come up, the park will never look the same or theyd have to close the park again, she said, but the state is being pressured to open it.

Even though the park looks different, when visitors return there theyll find all the same opportunities for recreation and learning that make the park special, Cameron said. The SGPA will continue to operate its guided hikes when the park reopens and all the trail maintenance.

For recreational hiking, theres no place like it around here, Cameron said. Shes looking forward to hiking the unique trails again with her dogs, which she misses whenever she looks out at the park from her backyard.

Connecticuts parks also make an economic impact. A study done by UConns Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis showed that in 2010 outdoor activities on state lands made an economic impact of more than $1 billion a year, according to DEEP. This meant visitors to parks and forests spent $544 million in 2010 on general tourism activities in Connecticut such as lodging, meals, groceries, and other activities and goods during their stay.

Sirch said in the past 11 months since Sleeping Giant closed, he has missed the opportunity to experience Sleeping Giants rare plant and animal species.

It was amazing to be able to, in my neighborhood, go to a site where there were deep forest birds nesting that you dont see every day in your back yard, he said.

Theres something special about Sleeping Giant, Cameron said. Theres a lot of history and its so big and its an oasis. Theres not really anything else like that in this area.

When the state formalizes an opening date, she said the park association is planning an opening day celebration to gather people back to the park.

mdignan@hearstmediact.com
Women in Policing recruitment event set

MERIDEN  The Connecticut State Police Recruitment and Selection Unit are holding Women in Policing recruitment informational featuring women troopers assigned to various areas of the Connecticut State Police.

Women troopers assigned to patrol and specialized units (such as Major Crime, Firearms Training Unit, K9 Unit) will discuss their background, current assignment, challenges and experiences during recruit training, and life as a Connecticut State Trooper.

This informational session, featuring all women troopers and open to everyone, is geared toward women who have an interest in law enforcement and becoming a Connecticut State Trooper.

Guests will also have an opportunity to speak with troopers individually or in small groups after troopers formally introduce themselves and provide basic information demonstrating their varied backgrounds - what troopers did before becoming troopers.

Troopers invite guests to join them Wednesday, April 24, 6-8 p.m. at the Connecticut Police Academy, 285 Preston Ave, Meriden.

The Connecticut State Police will be accepting applications for the position of State Police Trooper Trainee beginning April 15. The application period closes May 31.

Interested candidates can only apply during the open application process, which will be conducted online only. Once available, the application can be found at www.jobapscloud.com/CT.

If interested, go to www.beaconnecticuttrooper.com and follow us on social media on Instagram: @ctstatepolice_academy or Facebook @CTStatePoliceRecruitment for additional information about our selection process, qualifications and hiring process updates.

Institute offers Wild Wolves program

Native American beliefs, symbols, and stories are passed down from generation to generation as part of a tribe's cultural heritage and their connection to all things in the natural world. Wolves are one of the most sacred and important animals because they are associated with courage, leadership, bravery, and loyalty.

The Institute for American Indian Studies on 38 Curtis Road in Washington Connecticut is hosting Wild Wolves of North America, on Saturday, April 20, 1-3 p.m. The program celebrates Earth Day, wolf conservation, and the heritage that Native Americans share with wolves.

Native Americans learned many important lessons from these highly intelligent pack animals. Wolves mate for life, have a strong and affectionate sense of family, hunt together, and die for each in order for the pack to survive. It is no wonder this noble animal is honored. The wolf is a totem or traditional spiritual animal guide of the Mohican, Ojibwa, and Abenaki; and is revered as part of their ancestry. In the creation story of the Ojibwa, wolves are described as family members.

The program begins with a traditional Native American story told by Professional Native American Storyteller and Education Coordinator of the Institute, Darlene Kascak, Schaghticoke. Afterward, participants will join staff from the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, New York, for a special presentation on North Americas wildest residents: wolves. Participants will learn about the history, ecology, biology, and the challenges of survival and recovery wolves face today. A program highlight is the live stream of wolves residing at the Conservation Center that adds to the excitement and a more meaningful understanding of these noble animals.

The cost of this presentation, including admission to the Institute for American Indian Studies is $10 for adults, $8 for seniors, $6 for Children, and free admission for members of the Institute. For questions call 860-868-0518 or email general@iaismuseum.org.

KidsPlay offers spring break programs

TORRINGTON  KidsPlay Childrens Museum is excited to power up the play with Spring Break Unplugged. The Museum will be open daily, 10 .m.-4 p.m. until April 20. Families can explore, create and have fun with old and new friends in KidsPlays 11,000+ square feet of interactive exhibits. Each day families will find fun alternatives to screen time, the museum will host programs that build skills and spike the imagination.

Monday, April 15 - Cookin @ KP: Feed the body, soul and mind. Cooking together connects math with literacy skills. Make yummy Chop and Simmer Applesauce at 11 am and Little Red Riding Hoods Healthy Cookies at 3 pm. Learn the exciting science behind ice cream and make your own at 1 p.m.

Tuesday, April 16 - Imagination Creation: Imagination is a building block of childhood development. Make magic wands and hats at 11 am, build fairy houses at 1 p.m. and become a superhero on stage at 3 p.m.

Wednesday, April 17: Extended Hours 10 am - 6 pm - Ooey Gooey Day

Getting messy is a FUNdamental part of growing up. Lets bring it back to the basics! Experiment with Sharpie tie dye at 11 am, finger paint a masterpiece at 1 pm, mix up an awesome bouncy ball at 3 pm and at 4 pm, build LEGO Brick boats and bridges.

Thursday, April 18 - Building Big: Lets encourage our children to take risks and build big. Test your limits and help build a giant box castle at 11 am and test your creativity with LEGO Brick building challenges at 1 pm.

Friday, April 19 - Lets Get Movin: CNN reports in the last 1.5 years children have spent 59% more time in front of screens. Take a break from the screens and get active. Run through an obstacle course at 11 a.m., test your balancing skills in a spoon egg race at 1 p.m. and show off your moves in an exciting dance party at 3 p.m.

The museum will post up-to-date activity schedules and announcements at www.kidsplaymuseum.org, and on the museums Facebook page. All programs are included in the daily museum admission of $8 per person. Members and children under 1 are admitted free.

KidsPlay is located at 61 Main St., Torrington. Learn more at www.kidsplaymuseum.org or call 860-618-7700.
Car and bicycle procession through Bonn : Graduating class of 2019 celebrate last school day

Bonn Its the last day of school today for German high school students expected to graduate this year. You might hear and see a parade of cars and bikes which will end with a big party on the Rigal'schen Wiese in Bad Godesberg. Exams are still ahead for the students.

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The streets around Rigal'schen Wiese in Bad Godesberg were full of future high school graduates from Bonn who traditionally celebrate their last day of school with a big party. When their lessons ended, they formed a procession, making their way to Bad Godesberg. Some of the students decided not to travel by car this year, keeping in step with the Fridays-for-Future demonstrations for climate protection. They came by bicycle instead.

In a letter to the students, Federal Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer welcomed the planned bicycle procession, saying the students were setting an example for climate protection, and showing a sense of responsibility. He also made reference to the current bicycle helmet campaign, And if you are wearing a helmet in the bike procession, then you are doing everything right! Because as you know: 'It looks like shit! But it saves my life!.

Police were on hand to escort the upcoming high school graduates and see that traffic rules were observed, and make sure that the young people did not drive drunk. The so-called Abi-Festival on the Rigal'schen Wiese was expected to end around 6pm. Abi comes from the word Abitur which is what German students who are going on to university aim to achieve when they sit their exams.

At 8 p.m. the final party for the students will take place in the Stadthalle in Bad Godesberg, where around 3,000 are expected. The 16-year-olds can officially join the party until 2 a.m. thanks to a special permit issued by the city of Bonn. According to the organizers, the final party in Bonn is one of the "most traditional and biggest Abiparties" in Germany.
NORTH HAVEN: Faith United Methodist Church, 81 Clintonville Road, North Haven, announces its services for Holy Week.

April 14, Palm / Passion Sunday: Sunday School breakfast, 9 a.m.; Worship with Passion Narrative, 10:30 a.m.

April 18, Maundy Thursday: Seder meal and worship, 7 p.m.

April 19, Good Friday: Walk with the Cross, North Haven Green to Faith United Methodist, 7 p.m .

April 20, Holy Saturday: Easter Vigil, Service in the Churchs Sanctuary, 8 p.m.

April 21, Easter Celebration: Easter Egg Hunt, 10 a.m,. Easter Worship, 10:30 a.m.

All are welcome to attend.

Maundy Thursday Service, meal

ANSONIA  Christ Episcopal Church, 56 S. Cliff Street, Ansonia will hold a Maundy Thursday service, Thursday at 6 p.m. A light meal will immediately follow in the Barrett Room. All are welcome.

Holy Week in Shelton

SHELTON  Trinity Lutheran Church, 182 Howe Avenue, Shelton, has announced its Holy Week services

Thursday, April 18, The Last Supper, 6 p.m., service, 7 p.m. RSVP to 203-924-4128 for dinner.

Friday, April 19, Good Friday Tenebrae service, 7 p.m.

Sunday, April 21, Continental breakfast, 9 a.m., Easter Egg Hunt, 9:15 a.m., Easter Morning Service, 10 a.m.

All are welcome! Call the church for more details at 203-924-4128.

Temple Beth David schedules events

CHESHIRE  Temple Beth David, 3 Main St., Cheshire, announces the following events and programs.

Passover Community Seder: All are welcome to participate in a community seder, Friday, April 19, 6 p.m. For more information about tickets and the menu, call the temple office at 203-272-0037.

Lunch & Learn with Rabbi Micah every Thursday at noon in the TBD social hall. Bring your own lunch;

Youth Shabbat Service: First Friday for youth, 6:30 p.m.

Shabbat service: First Friday, 7 p.m. In this musical Shabbat experience, sing though much of the service. Services are participatory, spiritual, and fun.

Torah study: Join Rabbi Micah and a group of adults for Torah Study on Saturdays beginning at 8:45 a.m. and enjoy coffee, bagels, and a discussion about the weekly parsha.

www.tbdcheshire.org

Holy Week services scheduled in Northford

NORTH BRANFORD  The Northford Congregational Church will hold a traditional Palm Sunday service at 10 a.m. April 14, followed by coffee hour in the social hall. All are welcome.

There will be an annual Maundy Thursday service with communion, April 18, 7 p.m. in the sanctuary, with a soup and bread dinner at 6 p.m. in the social hall.

A Good Friday service will be held April 19 at 7 p.m.

The traditional Easter Sunday service will be at Aril 21 at 10 a.m. Flowers will be added to a large wooden cross to welcome and represent the new life offered by the Easter promise. All are welcome.

The historic church is located at 4 Old Post Road at the corner of Route 22 and Route 17 in the Northford village in North Branford. Office hours are 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesday and other days by appointment. Visit www.northfordcongregational.church., email ncchurch@snet.net, or call 203-484-0795.

Seymour church selling pierogis

SEYMOUR  A Pierogi sale is being held at Seymour Congregational Church, 45 Broad St., Seuymou, Friday mornings, 9-11 a.m., Friday nights, 5-7 p.m .and Sunday mornings, 11 a.m.-12 p.m. until Good Friday.

Choose potato and cheese, sweet potato and cheese or sauerkraut and onion, for $6 a dozen. For information call Teresa at 203-881-2027.

Church plans Easter events

OXFORD  Immanuel Lutheran Church, 25 Great Hill Road, Oxford, has scheduled events for Easter. For information, call the church at 203-888-4713.

Easter Breakfast: 8:30 a.m. Sunday, April 21.

The Journey of Lent has begun in North Branford

NORTH BRANFORD The Journey Of Lent: North Branford Congregational Church, 1680 Foxon Road, North Branford. All are invited to these services and events during Lent.

April 14 - Palm Sunday, 10 a.m.; April 19 - Good Friday, 9 a.m., Zion Episcopal Church; April 21 -Easter Sunday. Sunrise Service At Lake Gallard, 5:45 a.m., and serice at North Branford Congregational Church, 10 a.m.

Flower, plant sale benefits church

NORTH BRANFORD  Northford Congregational Church, 4 Old Post Road, will have an Easter weekend flower/plant sale to benefit the church, April 19-20, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., and April 21, 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. The Easter Bunny will be helping.

In the event of inclement weather, the flowers/plants will be sold inside the church social hall downstairs. For information call 203-484-0795-or visit www.northfordcongregational.church.

First Great Awakening lecture set

BRANFORD  The Professor and the Preacher on the First Great Awakening will be held Sunday, April 28, 2:30 p.m. at the First Congregational Church of Branford.

Prof. Harry Stout, Jonathan Edwards Prof. American Religious History, Yale University, will give a lecture on the evangelical Christian revival period in the 1730s and 40s in America; Rev. Wayne Jacobson will present how the First Congregational Church of Branford reacted.

This is the second in a series of talks celebrating Branfords and the First Congregational Churchs 375 years. All are welcome. For details email 375@firstcongregationalbranford.org

Banner Planting at Christ Episcopal

ANSONIA  Christ Episcopal Church, 56 S Cliff Street, Ansonia is kicking off its 170th Anniversary celebration with the planting of our our banners on Sunday, April 28 following the 10 a.m. service.

The church is looking for stories and memories people wish to share, for a commemorative booklet that will be published this fall. Come to the planting and share stories. Submissions can be made to Nancy at nvbv@hotmail.com or mailed to 18 Farrell Dr, Ansonia CT 06401.

The church is holding events during the year that will culminate with a visit from Bishop Ian Douglas, 10 a.m., Sunday, Dec. 1, along with a celebration of our 2019 confirmands.

Learn more at www.christchurchansonia.org

Congregation Mishkan Israel holding major fundraiser

HAMDEN  Congregation Mishkan Israel will hold its major fundraising event, Cantor's Concert: Kehilah Kdosha, a performanceof Israeli songs, Broadway tunes, contemporary pop, jazz and Jewish cabaret by renowned Cantors Magda Fishman and Randy Herman, Saturday, April 27.

The program also includes a silent auction; light dinner, cocktails, desserts and coffee will be served.

For a menu of giving opportunities, including recognition and benefits, go to cmihamden.org. Both personal and business sponsors are welcome, as well as silent auction donations.

Congregation Mishkan Israel is located at 785 Ridge Road in Hamden. It is the 14th oldest congregation in the United States, and the oldest continuously operating one in New England. For more information, call the synagogue office at 203-288-3877 or visit www.cmihamden.org.

Bereavement group begins April 24

NORTH BRANFORD  North Branford Congregational church,1680 Foxon Road, presents a bereavement support group, From Sorrow into Light, starting April 24, 7 p.m., through May 29 at the church chapel.

This support group is intended to help anyone struggling with the loss of a loved one. Gerry Borgerson is the facilitator. For information, call 203-483-1116.

Poetry By the Sea is global conference

MADISON  Poetry by the Sea, a Global Conference, will be held the weekend of May 21-24 at Mercy by the Sea Retreat Center. Poetry by the Sea offers four days of immersion in the art form with some of the top poets writing and teaching today. National Book Award and MacArthur Foundation grant winner Terrance Hayes will deliver the keynote address. Alicia E. Stallings, National Book Critics Award finalist and director of the Athens, Greece Poetry Center, will give the annual conference lecture.

I Cant Talk About the Trees Without the Blood, collection author Tiana Clark, Milton Kessler Poetry Book Award finalist Sean Thomas Dougherty, Pushcart Prize winner and Stanford University Stegner Fellow Richie Hofmann, and National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Adrian Matejka will give featured readings.

Poetry by the Sea offers several attendance packages, with onsite and offsite housing rates. A limited number of scholarships are available. Evening attendance tickets are also available.

Rooms at the Mercy by the Sea Center are limited, but there are a variety of housing options available nearby, including Bed & Breakfasts and hotels.

To see the 2019 faculty, register, or for more information, click here, or go to the Poetry by the Sea website, http://www.poetrybytheseaconference.org/index.htm.

Congregation schedules events

WOODBRIDGE  Congregation Bnai Jacob, 75 Rimmon Road, has scheduled the following:

Weekday minion services are held at 7:45 a.m. and 6 p.m.

Friday night Shabbat Schmooze begins at 6 p.m., followed by a Shabbat service 6:30 p.m.

Saturdays, a Torah study begins at 9 a.m., followed by a Torah service 9:45 a.m.

Discussion series

for people 60-plus

OLD SAYBROOK  The New Adventures Team of St. Paul Lutheran Church, 56 Great Hammock Road, is sponsoring a new adventures series geared to people 60-plus.

Attendees dont need to be church members. RSVP to Charlotte Schlesselman at 520-560-0183 or chars1961@gmail.com. For more information, call St. Paul Church at 860-388-2398.

Ansonia church seeks

stories of memories

ANSONIA  Christ Episcopal Church is celebrating its 170th anniversary in 2019, and is collecting stories to mark the milestone.

The church will print residents memories of family, friends, celebrations and events that connect them to the church.

Submit information to Nancy Valentine at nvbv@hotmail.com using church as the subject line or mail to 18 Farrell Drive, Ansonia 06401. To tell a story in person, contact Valentine at 203-734-6945 for a home visit.

Worship services

scheduled

OLD SAYBROOK  First Church of Christ Congregational, 366 Main St., is offering the following:

 Early Bird worship, 8-8:30 a.m. in the Fireside Room, offers a more casual service with prayer, reflection, quiet music and communion.

 Soul Service, 9-9:30 a.m. in the sanctuary, offers a variety of music, centered around rhythm & blues and jazz, with time for prayer and Scripture message, all underscored by a live band.

 Faith Exploration for All, 9:40-10:20 a.m., with church school for pre-K-Grade 8, and workshops for adults and teens, including Bible study, spiritual practices, such as meditation and praying, and faith and health workshops.

 Traditional worship, 10:30-11:30 a.m. in the sanctuary, offers music, including the First Church Choir, singing, times for prayer and silent meditation, Scripture readings, a sermon, and an opportunity for giving.

Nursery care is available 9:30-11:30 a.m. for ages infant to 3 years.

For more information, contact 860-388-3008 or www.firstchurchsaybrook.org.

Holy Trinity School

adding preschool

WALLINGFORD  Applications are available for next years preschool classes and grades K-8 at Holy Trinity School, 11 N. Whittlesey Ave.

The preschool, new for 2019-20, will be for ages 3 and 4. Holy Trinity School, 105 years old, has students from Wallingford, North Haven, Meriden and Hamden.

For more information, visit www.hts-wallingford.org.

Tour of Ireland

slated for 2019

HAMDEN  A tour of Ireland will be held May 30-June 10, 2019, from Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.

It will include visits to the Cliffs of Moher, the Aran Islands, Knock Shrine, the Arigna Mining Experience, Derry City and the Titanic Museum.

For information: seancanning@sbcglobal.net, 203-288-8347, 203-435-8348.

Resting in God

prayer groups

MADISON  Resting in God, Two Centering Prayer Groups is held 6-7 p.m. Wednesdays and 9:30-11 a.m. Saturdays at Mercy by the Sea, 167 Neck Road.

Centering prayer is a method of entering silence in order to be still and know God. Free-will donation is accepted. For more information and to register, contact Claire at crusowicz@mercybythesea.org or 203-245-0401.

Introduction to Judaism, Hebrew

HAMDEN  Congregation Mishkan Israel, 785 Ridge Road, has two adult education classes that are open to the community.

 Rabbi Herbert Brockman teaches the introduction to Judaism class, which is on the basics of the Jewish tradition, its history, theology and observances, surrounding the life-cycle of a Jew and the yearly festivals. The class is held Sundays 10-11 a.m.

 Rabbi Steve Steinberg is teaching introduction to Hebrew, which can be taken alone or in concert with Brockmans class. It meets Sundays 11 a.m.-noon.

RSVP: Sarah at 203-288-3877 or slegassey@cmihamden.org.

Mosque opens

doors to visitors

MERIDEN  Baitul Aman House of Peace Mosque, 410 Main St., holds Coffee, Cake, & Conversation at 8 p.m. Fridays.

Information: www.TrueIslam.com, www.alislam.org, zahir.mannan@ahmadiyya.us, @zahirmannan, facebook.com/zahir.mannan.7, MuslimWritersGuild.

Bilingual service

added Sundays

NEW HAVEN  A landmark church on the Green is offering a bilingual, inclusive and progressively Pentecostal/charismatic, musical worship service at 12:30 p.m. Sundays in the Meeting House, 270 Temple St. at Elm Street.

It is in addition to the regular 10 a.m. service. It has been designed for those in the community who may appreciate a more non-traditional Christian experience, said the Rev. Dr. Bonnie Scott.

The worship is titled Feel the Spirit! (Siente El Espiritu!)

Deacon Edwin Perez, service leader, seeks to provide Love, Welcoming and Inclusion (De Amor, Bienvenida, e Inclusion) in a charismatic, bilingual worship service with music and signing.

For information, visit www.unitednewhaven.org or call 203-787-4195.

Volunteers sought

to help chaplains

WALLINGFORD  Masonicare Health Center, 22 Masonic Ave., seeks volunteers for its Lay Training in Geriatric Ministry.

Open to people of all faiths, the program has been teaching basic ministry skills to volunteers nearly 20 years.

Volunteers assist the chaplains with worship services, including vespers; programs that allow elders to explore and express their spirituality and faith through art, sacred circle dance and music; hymn singing; chanting and drumming; as well one-to one pastoral visits.

Other opportunities include transporting seniors to religious activities and instrumental accompaniment at worship services, vespers and hymn sings.

For more details, contact Chaplain Thayer Quoos at 203-679-6259 or tquoos@masonicare.org. For more about Masonicare: www.masonicare.org or 888-679-9997.

ASL interpreter

attends services

MILFORD  Once a month, Sunday worship services at United Church of Christ, 30 Ormond St., Devon, include an American Sign Language interpreter.

A grant for the interpreter was provided by the CT Concerned Citizens for People with Disabilities.

For more information, call 203-878-4685.

Free dropoff program

is for ages 3, 4 years

WOODBRIDGE  Congregation Bnai Jacob, 75 Rimmon Road, offers Gan Hayeled 9:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Sundays.

The free drop-off program for ages 3 and 4 will run every Sunday that religious school is in session.

Call Bnai Jacob at 203-389-2111 for details.

Meditation program

slated in area

GUILFORD  Meditation in Daily Life is offered 3-4 p.m. Sundays at Shoreline Center For Wholistic Health, 35 Boston St. No. 2. Classes are $12 each. No one turned away for lack of funds, according to a center press release.

Contact meditationinconnecticut.org, info@odiyana.org or 860-266-6041.

All-ages choir

rehearses in loft

MILFORD  The Choir of St. Marys is holding rehearsals in the choir loft. The all-ages choir is open to all the members of Precious Blood Parish. It sings at the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass, and for special services all year. There is no audition. Learn more at www.preciousbloodparishmilford.org/music/.

Donations, volunteers

sought for Pantry

HAMDEN  Donations and volunteers are sought for the Davenport-Dunbar Residence, a housing complex for the elderly at 125-135 Putnam Ave.

It has been receiving a nutrition boost from the weekend food supplement program, The Home Pantry, thanks to local UCC church volunteers. The Pantry seeks more volunteers, donations of foods and money donations for buying food from area supermarkets and the CT Food Bank.

Initiated by Dunbar United Church of Christ and the residence administration in March, the food pantry came about in response to a state and federal cutback in Elderly Nutrition Programs that eliminated Friday luncheons and the weekend brown bag meal at the housing complex. The Pantry has been in operation for six months. Many of the residents at Davenport-Dunbar have mobility issues, which curtail independent shopping in local stores and supermarkets, and are dependent on this free supplement for food security on weekends, and to some extent for the weekdays.

For more information: office.dunbar@gmail.com, the main office at 125-135 Putnam Ave., 203-248-8267 or www.dunbarchurch.com.
In a rare moment of internet equity Wednesday, social media joined forces to not hate on something.

The something in question is not the first-ever image of a black hole, which left some irascible folks unimpressed. It is instead a photograph of the person who helped develop the black hole imaging process  researcher Katie Bouman.

Shared on Bouman's Facebook page and later tweeted by an MIT research lab, the photograph shows Bouman reacting as she watches the black hole image being processed on her MacBook. Katie side-eyes the camera, holding her entwined hands up to her face in an Gioconda-like expression of bemusement, amazement and  lest we forget  excitement.

READ MORE: Astronomers reveal first image of black hole

More than 20,000 people have liked or retweeted the photo.

The black hole image was widely covered by the media today, but many reports left Bouman's name out of the text. The viral Facebook photo of Bouman might correct that.

It was not an intentional omission by most accounts. More than 200 researchers from across the world unveiled the image together on Wednesday, but the fruit of their collective efforts would not have been possible if not for Bouman.

The 29-year-old researcher developed an algorithm that was essential for devising the imaging methods, CNN reports. Working on the Event Horizon Telescope Project for the past few years, Bouman directed the selection of imaging parameters and the verification of images.

ALSO READ: Some of the most shocking discoveries made by NASA

Bouman's algorithm was not the only one used  rather the black hole photo was an amalgam of images generated by multiple algorithms, blended together.

"No one of us could've done it alone," Bouman told CNN. "It came together because of lots of different people from many backgrounds."

In the fall, Bouman will serve as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology.

Read Michelle Robertson's latest stories and send her news tips at michelle.robertson@sfgate.com.

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3 1 of 3 Washington County Sheriff's Office Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Washington County Sheriff's Office Show More Show Less 3 of 3





In what might be a warning to all household appliances considering a life of crime, police in Washington County, Ore., have released body-cam footage of the apprehension of Roomba.

The vacuuming machines's owners called 911 when they saw shadows moving underneath their locked bathroom door and thought a burglar had barricaded himself inside.
A former leader of the 2014 Occupy Central democracy movement in Hong Kong has launched a legal challenge to plans by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) to build a naval dock right next to the central business district.



Lester Shum has applied for a judicial review at the Hong Kong High Court following a zoning decision by the city's government that would see PLA warships berthed at the heart of the city, where the army has previously played a very low-key role.



The dock will be administered by the PLA and covered by military law.



Shum said the government had earlier promised the people of Hong Kong that the planned new harbor-front area would be solely for public use.



Planning authorities approved the application for rezoning in 2014, and rezoned a 150-meter-long open area measuring some 0.3 hectares along the Central waterfront for military purposes.



Shum said his review targeted both the planning decision and the official publication of that decision in a government gazette in February, which could result in a no-go area right at the heart of the city's busiest business and recreational areas.



"If the area is a military restricted zone under Garrison Law, it will be very hard to achieve the original purpose of the Central waterfront area, which was as a public space for public recreation," Shum told RFA.



The government's security bureau has said that just four buildings in the terminal will be restricted military zones, while the remaining areas will be open to the public, subject to defense needs.



But Shum says that once the land is handed over, the government will no longer have any say in how it is managed.



Potential for conflict



Albert Lai, chairman of The Professional Commons, an independent public policy think-tank and the Hong Kong Peoples Council for Sustainable Development, said Shum's legal challenge raises two important points.



"One is to win the public's trust that the government will honor the promises made to Hong Kong [ahead of the 1997 handover to China]," he said. "The second is that even if the public agrees that naval vessels can moor here, it is unnecessary to zone the land for military use most of the time."



Lai said there would be too much potential for conflict if Hong Kong residents using the area are unaware of its military nature, and that they aren't protected by the city's own laws while using it.



"Don't forget that this land is right in the middle of the waterfront recreational area, and many citizens, family members, and even children will be playing here," he told RFA. "You could mistakenly enter the restricted area, which is potentially a a criminal offense. What are the benefits of creating such a sensitive restricted area?"



Lai said the controversy echoes the row around the stationing of Chinese border police at the West Kowloon high-speed rail terminal to screen people for one-stop entry into mainland China, which has a separate legal jurisdiction and immigration regime from Hong Kong's.



The government plans to submit legislative amendments enabling the rezoning to the Legislative Council (LegCo), before formally handing over the land to the PLA.



Hong Kong Security Secretary John Lee defended the need for a military dock in Central in LegCo last week, saying that military attacks can happen at any time and that the PLA therefore needs to be on the alert, citing the 1941 attack by Japanese forces on Pearl Harbor during World War II.



Reported by Lee Wang-yam for RFA's Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Chinese authorities in the northern region of Inner Mongolia have tried an ethnic Mongolian writer in secret on "separatism" charges, a rights group said on .



Lhamjab A. Borjigin, 75, stood trial on on charges of "separatism" and "sabotaging national unity," the New York-based Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center (SMHRIC) reported.



"The trial started at 9:00 a.m. on and ended around 12:00 p.m. at the Shiliinhot Municipal Peoples Court," the group quoted a recorded audio message from Lhamjab as saying.



"None of my family members were allowed to attend," he said. "I was denied the right to bring my lawyer to defend myself."



A native of Heshigten Banner, a county-like division in Inner Mongolia, and a member of the state-backed Shiliingol League Literary Association, Lhamjab has been a prominent voice in ethnic Mongolian culture in China, as well as documenting the region's oral history.



He specializes in survivor testimonies of the political violence and social chaos of the Cultural Revolution, publishing his book "China's Cultural Revolution" in 2006.



Lhamjab said he had refused to speak Chinese during the court proceedings, and had "reluctantly" been allowed to bring an interpreter into the courtroom.



"It was a typical closed-door trial," Lhamjab said. "Only eight people, namely three judges, three procurators, myself and my interpreter were present in the small courtroom with the door tightly closed."



Lhamjab has rejected the charges pending against him, saying that he only wrote the historical truth.



Case directly ordered by regional government

The court has yet to announce its verdict in the case, which was brought under direct orders from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government, according to Lhamjab.



"When the [prosecutors] accused me of engaging in national separatism, sabotaging national unity and illegal publication and illegal distribution, I defended myself by asking whether those who committed the genocide in [Inner] Mongolia or the ones like myself who talked about this genocide should be considered [to be] sabotaging national unity'," he said.



"The [prosecutors] candidly told me that it is not up to them," Lhamjab said. "It was because the Autonomous Region Public Security Bureau and State Security Bureau are pressuring them to prosecute me on these charges.



Lhamjab said he had maintained his innocence throughout the trial, and refused to plead guilty to any of the charges.



"I am determined to appeal to the highest court because this is an unjust trial not only against me but also against our entire Southern Mongolians who have been subjected to a series of mass killing and political persecution but are not even allowed to speak of these atrocities.



For his book, Lhamjab gathered oral testimonies of survivors of violence against ethnic Mongolians during the Cultural Revolution, a task that took him 20 years.



The book accuses the ruling Chinese Communist Party of state-sponsored genocide in the region, detailing torture techniques and detentions in a brutal campaign that claimed the lives of at least 27,900 people and imprisoned and tortured 346,000.



Lhamjab published the book unofficially, at his own expense, after state-run Chinese publishing houses refused to publish it.



"The book became popular among Mongolians not only in [Inner] Mongolia, but also in the [neighboring] independent country of Mongolia," SMHRIC said.



Destroying nomadic civilization

Last year, an abridged audio version of the book went viral among ethnic Mongolians on Chinese social media platforms, especially WeChat, the group said.



The authorities began confiscating copies of the book and placed Lhamjab under house arrest on , 2018.



The writers' group PEN America has called on Beijing to drop the charges and release Lhamjab.



Ethnic Mongolians in exile have repeatedly also called on Chinese authorities to end human rights violations, systematic and institutionalized discrimination against ethnic Mongolians within China's borders, as well as longstanding policies aimed at ending their traditional, nomadic way of life.



In a submission to the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which is currently reviewing Beijing's record, SMHRIC called on the Chinese government to release all ethnic Mongolian prisoners of conscience, including members of herding communities who have been "arbitrarily arrested, detained, and imprisoned for defending their grazing land from illegal appropriation."



The group is calling for the immediate withdrawal of all "extractive industries, tourist companies and power plants that not only occupy and appropriate large tracts of Mongolian grazing lands, but also devastate the ecosystem, deplete the underground water and pollute the air and water."



It is also campaigning against the Chinese authorities "massive propaganda campaign to justify their destruction of nomadic civilization and ... the natural environment."



Chinese government policies, the group said, are "based on deep-seated discrimination that characterizes Mongolian pastoralism as 'backward, archaic, unscientific and uncivilized' way of life and advertises the Chinese way of life as 'advanced, civilized and scientific'."



The authorities should also prosecute "hate crimes and hate speech by Chinese individuals, private or public entities and government bodies against Mongolian language, customs, tradition, way of life and identity," it said.



Reported by Wu Jing for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Authorities in the northeastern Chinese province of Liaoning have postponed the trial of a detained human rights lawyer, who is suffering from multiple health problems after more than 18 months of pretrial detention.



Li Yuhan was scheduled to stand trial on charges of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble" on April 9, according to her brother Li Wensheng, who was only notified by the judge after making the trip from his home in the eastern province of Jiangsu to attend the trial.



Li told RFA he had tried to arrange a meeting with the judge after his arrival, but that the judge hadn't taken his calls.



"As for the specific reason, the judge said it was because the lawyer had requested that witnesses be allowed to appear in court," Li said.



"But when I asked the lawyer, he said that this request was made last year, that they were maybe just using this as an excuse [to delay the case]," he said.



"I will try contact the judge again, but I have been unable to contact him so far; he just says he's in a meeting."



Li Yuhan has been visited by her defense attorney in the Shenyang No. 1 Detention Center, and found to be in poor health. She has been hospitalized twice and given a number of medications, Li said.



Her lawyer has applied for her release on medical grounds.



"The judge said that it is possible the trial could happen after [April] 17, so I will wait another couple of days to see what happens," Li said.



"My sister is getting old ... and she is in poor mental and physical health, and she must be feeling the impact [of ongoing detention]," he said. "I think the lawyer will submit this as arguments [for house arrest instead of detention]."



Rights activist Yuan Shanshan said she had also traveled to Shenyang in the hope of supporting Li Yuhan at her trial, and called on fellow activists to send money and daily necessities to her in the detention center.



However, she said that detention center authorities have sometimes prevented her from receiving donations.



"Every time her lawyer visits, she tells him how she is doing, so we know that she is in very poor health," Yuan said. "A lot of people are very concerned about her case, but stability maintenance [security measures] is very tight, so ... there is no way for people to help."



"We hope to build up a little money in her account at the detention center and let her know that there are still many people outside paying attention to her situation," she said.



2017 detention



Li Yuhan went missing on Oct. 9, 2017, and is "at risk of torture and other ill-treatment" in the police-run No. 1 Detention Center, London-based Amnesty International has said.



Fellow activists said her detention came after she was particularly courageous in the wake of a nationwide police operation targeting rights lawyers, legal firms, and rights activists since July 2015.



Li Yuhan had acted as defense attorney to high profile Beijing rights lawyer Wang Yu, who was the first of a group of lawyers at the Beijing Fengrui law firm to be detained on the night of July 9-10, 2015, kicking off a nationwide police operation that detained or questioned more than 300 lawyers and their associates.



She was later forced to withdraw from the case after local authorities revoked her lawyer's business license.



Rights lawyers who accept politically sensitive cases, or who are publicly outspoken on behalf of vulnerable groups, have since been prevented from practicing law because their business licenses are being revoked during a newly instituted annual review process.



Lawyers who try to defend clients held on suspicion of crimes ostensibly linked to state security concerns are also denied permission to meet with their clients, or are replaced by government-appointed lawyers amid threats and pressure on the people who hired them.



Reported by Wen Yuqing for RFA's Cantonese Service, and by He Ping for the Mandarin Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
South Korean President Moon Jae-In and U.S. President Donald Trump agreed Thursday to keep up diplomacy with North Korea, including possible new summit talks with the Norths leader Kim Jong Un, but the allies disagreed on the level of economic sanctions needed to press Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

At their first meeting since Trumps failed Hanoi summit with Kim Jong Un in February, Trump argued for keeping in place sanctions designed to starve the Norths nuclear and missile programs of hard currency, while saying he was open to meeting Kim a third time.

"We want sanctions to remain in place," Trump said at the White House, according to U.S. media. "I think that sanctions right now are at a level that's a fair level."

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen," Trump said. "You could work out step-by-step pieces, but at this moment, we're talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons."

Moon did not mention sanctions directly in his White House appearance, but he has called for sanctions relief to coax North Korea to begin nuclear disarmament.

North Korea experts say that Moon, who wants to remove curbs on inter-Korean economic projects, would privately lobby Trump for a gesture to keep Kim engaged in the diplomacy.

The Vietnam summit ended in disagreement over how Kim might shed its nuclear arsenal, as Trump demands and the sanctions relief that Kim seeks as a reward for cooperating.

Trump, who also met Kim in Singapore last year, said: "I enjoy the summits, I enjoy being with the chairman."

Kim is "a person I've gotten to know very well, and respect and hopefully, and I really believe over a period of time, a lot of tremendous things will happen. I think North Korea has a tremendous potential," Trump told reporters before the talks.

Moon said he was hopeful that a third U.S.-North Korea summit would happen. His national security adviser said Thursday that Moon would also try to have another meeting with Kim.

Bruce Klingner, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington, told RFA that the disagreement about sanctions shows a rift between the U.S. and South Korea in terms of North Korea policy.

It showed two allies remain far apart on approach to North Korea. President Moon wants to reward North Korea even though there has been no movement in denuclearization. The U.S. said it has no interest in that approach, he said.

Richard Bush, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said, I give President Moon credit for trying to engage President Trump on [the North Korea] issue and trying to get closer alignment in our strategy toward North Korea. It appears that his attempt didnt make too much progress.

About one hour before the scheduled meeting, around 40 Korean-Americans gathered near the near the White House in a show of support for President Moon, chanting slogans like Peace maker president and We love Moon!

Meanwhile, a smaller group of 10 Korean-Americans chanted phrases in support of Trumps hard line on North Korea and accused Moon of being a North Korean spy.

Reported and Translated by RFAs Korean Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
A Christian service is held in a church in the Lao capital Vientiane in a file photo.

UPDATED at 7 P.M. EDT on 2019-04-12

Lao authorities have arrested three U.S. citizens in Luang Namtha provinces Sing district for distributing bibles and other evangelistic materials, a Christian organization in the United States told RFAs Lao Service on Friday.

Identified by their organization only by their given names, Wayne, Autumn and Joseph are believed to have been detained in a guesthouse since Monday, after visiting villages in northern Laos to hand out the materials.

It appears that the interrogations have been going slowly. [Police] brought them into a room and said they would be back in 10 minutes, then they were gone for 4-5 hours, said Eric Blievernicht, Operations Manager of Vision Beyond Borders in an interview with RFA.

Our concern now, if we dont get them released soon in the next day or so, is that they will be held over the New Year, he said, referring to the traditional New Year observed in Southeast Asia, which falls on April 13, with celebrations running for more days.

Blievernicht said he was aware that the U.S. embassy in Laos has been notified and has gotten involved. He also said that only the three Americans were detained and no Laotians were.

An official of the Luang Namtha police department confirmed that the three were arrested but denied they are being detained.

What we know about these three individuals is that they are not detained. Their passports have just been confiscated, said the official.

A Local Christian group is trying to help the three.

We just found out about this and were traveling to Luang Namtha province to help these three Americans, said the leader of a church in Vientiane Capital, requesting anonymity.

RFA contacted the U.S. Embassy in Laos but an official declined to comment on the matter.

But a State Department official said late on Friday that We can confirm the temporary detention and subsequent release of three U.S. citizens in Luang Namtha, Laos. We take seriously our responsibility to assist U.S. citizens abroad and are providing all appropriate consular services.

RFA also attempted to contact the press department of the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but phone calls went unanswered.

While the constitution of Communist-run Laos technically protects freedom of religion, conflicts between Christians and local authorities often flare up because authorities in the traditionally Buddhist nation consider Christianity a foreign religion.

In December, seven Lao Christians were arrested for attending an illegal church service. They were allowed to return home.

In a 2017 report, the U.S. State Department said that Lao local authorities often arrested or detained members of minority religions during the year, with a district-level official in Houaphan province expelling 26 Hmong Christians from their village, advising them they could return only if they renounced their faith.

Reported and translated by RFAs Lao Service. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Archaeologists want Myanmar forces to remove their artillery from a temple complex in a historically significant area of war-torn Rakhine states Mrauk-U township, saying that artillery shells fired from inside the zone have damaged ancient monuments.

Residents have reported that national troops have fired artillery from the archaeological zone towards areas where they believe that members of the rebel Arakan Army (AA) have been hiding since the two sides began fighting in the township more than a month ago.

Members of the Mrauk-U Archaeological Zone Protection Association sent a letter to Rakhine state Chief Minister Nyi Pu on April 9, objecting to the militarys shelling from the archaeological zone.

The letter mentioned that government troops placed artillery launchers on Sat Yone Mountain, in the Nga Pi Thel Ma and Nate Bu Zar Pagoda hills, in Amyint Taung fortress, on Shwe Taung and Yadanar Mann Aung Pagoda hills, and on other mountains where the Ye Hla Nga-Mann walls are located. It also said that the soldiers fired shells from these locations nearly every day.

The letter also asserted that some security forces stationed in the area dug up trenches and used stones from ancient monuments as bunkers.

They have placed the artillery in a row, said Khin Than, chairwoman of the Mrauk-U Heritage Trust. Residents from nearby neighborhoods could see they had used stones from monuments to build bunkers. This is not something hidden from view. All is in plain sight. All the residents of Mrauk-U can see where they are placing the huge guns.

Township archaeologists believe there could be damage to monuments in the eastern part of Mrauk-U as well, but they cannot visit the area for safety reasons, she added.

Colonel Win Zaw Oo, spokesman of the Myanmar military's Western Command responsible for Rakhine state, denied that government forces placed artillery launchers in the townships archaeological zone.

Where are they referring to? he asked. We never placed any launchers anywhere. We havent placed heavy artillery in any of the places [they] mentioned.

Kyaw Aye Thein, Rakhine states planning and finance minister who oversees the Mrauk-U archaeological zone, said government officials have reported the issue to military commanders on the front line through Colonel Phone Tint, the regional minister for border affairs and security.

We make all decisions as the Cabinet, Kyaw Aye Thein said. When we get the letter, we will make a decision and take action.

Cracks in ancient temple

Than Htike, director of Mrauk-Us Archaeological Research Department, told RFAs Myanmar Service on Friday that archaeologists found that the shelling caused cracks in Ko Thaung Temple, the townships largest temple whose name means shrine of the 90,000 images of the Buddha, a reference to the number of Buddha statues the massive 16th-century structure used to hold.

During field studies conducted by my staff, we found that there was some damage to ancient monuments due to vibrations in the surroundings of the Ko Thaung Temple, he said.

Archaeologists have yet to conduct assessments on how extensive the damage is, though they already have been informed by engineers that the fractures were caused by vibrations from the shelling, he added.

We have received the preliminary findings from the engineering team, he said. We havent done any detailed studies yet.

Khin Than said she has been working on a report on the cracks in the Ko Thaung Temple.

The militarys information committee said the shelling by its troops was in response to shooting by AA soldiers, who took cover among the ancient temples and pagodas.

Colonel Win Zaw Oo told RFA that claims by archaeologists that shelling by Myanmar forces damaged the ancient monuments are illogical, and he dismissed them as a pretext.

I would like to ask them why numerous ancient temples in [central Myanmars] Bagan still survive despite intense vibrations from two or three passenger planes landing daily in the area, he said, adding that the pressure and vibrations from shelling are not that great.

They are using it as an excuse to blame us, he said. This is not a reasonable claim.

The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations' cultural agency, UNESCO, will meet in late June and early July to decide on whether to grant World Heritage Site status for Myanmars ancient town of Bagan, known for its archaeological zone containing more than 2,000 Buddhist temples, pagodas, stupas, and ruins dating from between the 11th and 13th centuries.

About 200 temples and pagodas in the zone were damaged in August 2016 when a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck near the town of Chauk, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of Bagan in central Myanmars Magway region.

All are in plain sight

Mrauk-U archaeologists and residents say the clashes in their township have become an obstacle to efforts to have their archaeological zone listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2020.

Officials held a meeting on submitting the nomination for the Mrauk-U region to UNESCO on March 28, during which Khin Than said weapons fired by government troops in the archaeological zone produced vibrations of levels five to seven on the Richter scale, used to measure the magnitude of earthquakes.

Vibrations at those levels can damage ancient temples built some 500 years ago, she added.

Hundreds of ancient but well-preserved temples and pagodas that dot the township's hills are remnants of a powerful ethnic Rakhine coastal kingdom that existed in Mrauk-U from the 15th century to the late 18th century.

The empire ruled over what is now Rakhine state and the Chittagong division of neighboring Bangladesh, before it was taken over by the Burmese following an invasion.

AA releases relatives

In a development related to the fighting in Mrauk-U, the AA on Friday released seven family members of police officers, whom the ethnic military abducted earlier this week during a clash with Myanmar forces, AA spokesman Khine Thukha said.

Arakan fighters attacked a police battalion headquarters and residential unit on late Tuesday and early Wednesday, sparking a backlash from government troops who conducted an aerial assault.

AA soldiers said it took the seven women and children from the housing quarters with them as they retreated early Wednesday to save them from possibly being killed, though the wife of one police official was shot dead by ethnic forces.

The family members of the policemen were released at a location near Mrauk-U Hospital, Khine Thukha said, insisting that the AA rescued rather than kidnapped them.

We were not kidnapping them, he told RFA. When our troops were retreating, the Myanmar military was bombing the area with three fighter jets.  The women and children in the building were at risk, so we took them to a place of safety. Afterwards, we released them safely and in dignity.

But Major General Tun Tun Nyi from the militarys information team disagreed.

They attacked the police battalion compound and killed some people, he said. They abducted the polices family members as hostages, and now they are making up these stories as a pretext. They returned the victims because they feel bad about what they had done.

RFA as unable to contact the women and children for comment.

Fighting between Myanmar and Arakan forces intensified early this year after the AA carried out deadly attacks on police outposts in Rakhine in its quest for autonomy in Rakhine state. The assault prompted the Myanmar government to brand the AA a terrorist group and order its military to crush it.

Reported by Min Thein Aung and Htet Arkar for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A Myanmar court on Friday denied bail for a renowned filmmaker and human rights activist sued by a government military officer for allegedly insulting and defaming the armed forces in a Facebook post, sending him to Yangons notorious Insein Prison until his next court appearance in late April, his attorney said.

Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, who is the founder of Myanmars Human Rights, Human Dignity International Film Festival, has been charged under Section 505(a) of Myanmars Penal Code and Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Act for writing Facebook posts critical of the armed forces, specifically the political clout they are guaranteed by the countrys 2008 constitution written by a military junta.

Defense lawyer Robert San Aung told RFAs Myanmar Service that his client was refused bail during his first hearing at Insein Township Court.

The charge [under Section 505(a)] is not entitled to bail according to the Penal Code, said the prominent legal activist and human rights attorney. Thats why he was denied bail. He was taken to Insein Prison right away.

Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi should be granted bail because of poor health, he said, adding that he would discuss with his client whether an appeal should be submitted on medical grounds.

The filmmaker suffers from liver cancer, and had part of his liver removed three months ago, the online journal The Irrawaddy said.

Robert San Aung said that even though Section 505(a) is a non-bailable offense, the judge could exercise his freedom to decide whether to grant bail in this specific case.

Min Htin Ko Ko Gyis next hearing is scheduled for April 25, Robert San Aung said.

'Influence by the plaintiff'

Myint Kyaw, joint secretary of the Myanmar Press Council, said that the plaintiff could influence a decision for Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi to be denied bail despite his health issues, because he is a well-known critic of the government military.

Most cases under Section 505(a) usually are denied bail, but he has health issues, and denying bail could mean there might be some influence by the plaintiff, he told RFA. They might want to handle the case firmly. That could be the reason for denying bail.

Lieutenant Colonel Lin Tun from the Yangon Region Military Command filed a lawsuit against the filmmaker for defamation via social media under Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law in late March, followed by another case he filed days later under non-bailable Section 505(a) of Myanmars Penal Code.

Section 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law prohibits use of the telecom network to defame people. Section 505(a) criminalizes the circulation of statements and reports with the intent to cause officers or soldiers in the countrys armed forces to mutiny or otherwise disregard or fail in their duties. Both charges carry a maximum two-year jail sentence.

We can say that he is one of the critics of the Tatmataw [Myanmar military] and is on the watch list, Myint Kyaw said. What I mean is this is not an accidental case, and it looks like he was being watched on account of a mistake.

I view this as a threat

Myanmar journalist and political activist Thiha Thway said the courts refusal to grant bail does not bode well for those who work in Myanmars creative industries.

I view this as a threat, a restriction, and some kind of pressure on freedom of expression, not only for Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi, who is well known on social media for making political comments, but also for media personnel, he said.

Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi told RFA earlier that he had learned a new legal action had been brought by the military against him for defaming the army in his Facebook comments between Feb. 15 and March 22 just after he had given a statement at the police station on April 2 on a previous charge under Section 66(d).

There have been 53 cases filed under Section 66(d) and 31 cases filed under Section 505 in the past year, Myint Kyaw told RFA in early February.

Myanmar journalists and domestic and international rights groups have called on the civilian government of leader Aung San Suu Kyi to repeal vaguely worded laws such as Section 66(d), which have increasingly been used by those in power, including the military, during the current administration to silence their critics.

Reported by Thet Su Aung for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Nandar Chann. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
A Tibetan monk jailed for five years for opposing Chinese propaganda campaigns conducted in his monastery has died after years of ill health he suffered following his release, Tibetan sources say.



Yeshe Thubten, a monk at Tibets Phenpo Nalanda monastery before his 1995 arrest, passed away recently, though we are still unsure of the circumstances of his death, a Tibetan living in India told RFAs Tibetan Service, citing contacts in Tibet.



Anyway, it is not convenient to say much more about this, RFAs source Lhagyari Namgyal Dolkar said, using wording suggesting Thubtens family members are under close surveillance by police. It would not be appropriate to elaborate on this for fear of a backlash against surviving relatives.



We are sharing the news of his passing only so that Tibetans can pray for his departed soul, Dolkar said.



Also speaking to RFA, Dawa Tashi, a Tibetan living in Australia, described Thubten as patriotic, courageous, and loyal to this country and people.



His passing is a great loss, he said.



Fearing repercussions from the police, Thubtens family members and other relatives are not widely publicizing the former political prisoners death, Tashi said, adding, Besides, details are difficult to obtain from Tibet due to restrictions and clampdowns on information.



A resident of Lhundrub (in Chinese, Linzhou) county in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Thubten was taken into custody by Chinese police in March 1995 after protesting against patriotic reeducation campaigns carried out in his monastery by authorities, Dolkar told RFA.



He was held for two years at the Gutsa detention center in the regional capital Lhasa, where he endured great hardship both physically and mentally during interrogation, Dolkar said.



After that he was sentenced to three years in jail and was transferred to Drapchi prison in Lhasa. And due to torture and malnourishment in detention, he became chronically ill after his release in about 2000, he said.



Nun also dies



News of Thubtens death follows a report of the death of a 51-year-old Tibetan nun and former political prisoner, Ngawang Tsomo, who died in Lhundrub county on Jan. 27 after her health began to fail last year.



Tsomo was arrested in 1993 and held at the Gutsa detention center after taking part in a peaceful protest calling for an end to Chinese rule in Tibet. She was then sentenced to seven years in jail and moved to Drapchi, sources told RFA in earlier reports.



She was released in 2000 after serving her full sentence, but her time in jail took a serious toll on her health, and she became chronically ill due to the torture and suffering she endured while in detention, one source said.



More time in jail



RFA has also recently confirmed that a veteran protester and political prisoner who had already served more than 20 years in prison was sentenced to a further 18 years in prison in late 2018 for a video protest he released through the Voice of America in January of that year.



Lodroe Gyatso, also known as Sogkar Lodroe, described his protest on Jan. 28 in front of the Potala Palace in Lhasa as "a campaign for world peace" and said it was part of a long campaign of nonviolent Tibetan protests inspired by the teachings of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.



The 57-year-old Gyatso was immediately taken away police and the next day put in a prison in Sog county, his birthplace, local sources told RFA at the time.



Gyatso had previously been jailed for more than 20 years for homicide for killing a man in a fight and for engaging in political activism in prison. He was released in 2013, and jailed again in 2015 after another protest.



Commenting on his case on April 10, the International Campaign for Tibet called for Gyatsos immediate and unconditional release, saying he was imprisoned solely because of peacefully expressing his opinion.



In a statement issued from ICTs Washington office, the advocacy group also called for the release of Gyatsos wife, Gakyi, who is also believed to be in police custody.



Furthermore, the authorities must disclose the whereabouts of Lodoe and Gakyi and allow them to have access to legal representation and members of their family, as well as, if needed, appropriate medical care, the ICT statement said.



Reported by Tsewang Ngodup for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney.
Vietnams government on Friday dismissed as inaccurate reports about the verdict in a case filed by an ethnic Vietnamese man of Dutch citizenship after leaked documents showed he was awarded nearly U.S. $40 million in compensation for the seizure of his property more than 20 years ago.

In a statement, Vietnams Ministry of Justice acknowledged that the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitrage, a council founded under United Nations Commission on International Trade and Law's (UNCITRAL) arbitration rules, had come to a decision in a lawsuit brought by Trinh Vinh Binh against the government.

But it said that under the rules, both parties are obligated to keep the verdict a secret.

Since Wednesday, several media outlets have reported that Binh won the lawsuit and the Vietnamese government would be required to pay him a substantial amount in damages.

The ministry said information in the reports about the verdict inaccurately reflects the content and includes subjective interpretations and speculation, causing misunderstandings, without elaborating.

The ministry added that it is working with relevant agencies and the governments representative law firm to proceed.

But leaked documents of the verdict, copies of which were also obtained by RFAs Vietnamese Service, show that Vietnams government is required to pay Binh U.S. $37,518,596U.S. $27,518,596 of which is compensation for expropriation of the properties, including a loss of chance from developing said properties, and the remaining U.S. $10 million of which constitutes moral damages.

Vietnams government will also be required to compensate Binh nearly U.S. $800,000 for arbitration costs and more than U.S. $7 million as a portion of his legal fees, fees for expert witnesses, and related expenses, the Permanent Court of Arbitrage ruling says.

The amount of compensation will accrue interest at a rate of five percent, compounded annually, until it has been paid in full.

Binh became a Dutch national after the Vietnam War and returned to Vietnam in the early 1990s to invest in several projects in Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding provinces.

But in 1998, the Peoples Court of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province sentenced him to 11 years in prison for bribery and land management violations, fining him and seizing all of his assets in Vietnam. He was allowed to leave the country at the timelikely because the government took everything he owned.

After he returned to the Netherlands, Binh filed a lawsuit in 2003 against the Vietnamese government as an investor through an international court in Stockholm, saying he had been wrongfully convicted.

He withdrew the lawsuit after settling out of court, but sued again through the Permanent Court of Arbitrage in January 2015 for U.S. $1.25 billion, saying he had never received the agreed upon amount from the earlier settlement.

On Friday, Binh warned Vietnams government in an interview with RFA that it should be careful.

It is not easy to take peoples assets, he said, adding that there will be more lawsuits in the future, without providing details.

[The verdict] sets a precedent for other lawsuits in the future brought by people who have lost their land and assets to the government.

When asked about the Ministry of Justices statement, Binh said he hadnt read it and could not comment, but confirmed that I won, and said he was unable to disclose details of the compensation.

According to Vietnams government, foreign direct investment (FDI) into the country rose by 6.2 percent year-on-year to U.S. $4.12 billion in the first three months of 2019.

FDI pledges in the first quarter jumped 86.2 percent to U.S. $10.8 billion from a year earlier.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Viet Ha. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
At least 18 people were killed and 48 injured in a car bombing at an outdoor market in the city of Quetta in southwest Pakistan. Quetta's police chief told RFE/RL that explosives were packed in a car parked at the busy market. Two children were among the dead. The attack on April 12 was claimed by an affiliate of Pakistani Taliban militants and appeared to target members of the Shiite ethnic Hazara community.
Chinas prime minister is to meet with leaders from Central and Eastern Europe when he attends a conference in the Croatian coastal city of Dubrovnik.



Li Keqiang will on April 12 attend the eighth-annual 16+1 summit that Croatia is hosting to serve as a platform to discuss China's investments in the 16 countries of the region.



Eastern Europe plays a key role in Beijing's Belt and Road infrastructure and transportation project, which has been valued at up to $1 trillion and is aimed at building land and sea links to allow Chinese exports to move westward.



While in Croatia on April 11, Li visited a construction site where a major European Union-funded bridge is being constructed by a Chinese state-owned company.



The China Road and Bridge Corporation in 2018 won the right to build the 2.4-kilometer bridge through an international bid. The 420 million euro project is 85 percent financed by the EU, and is a rare Chinese project in Europe that went through a regular bidding process.



The Dubrovnik summit comes three days after an EU-China meeting in Brussels, where Li vowed to open Chinas economy and deepen ties with the bloc.



EU Council President Donald Tusk hailed Beijing's new commitments as a "breakthrough," and both sides in a document called for "broader and more facilitated, nondiscriminatory market access" -- wording Europeans saw as a concession by the Chinese.



The EU has complained that European markets are open to Chinese companies, while EU firms experience difficulties operating in the Chinese market.

Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and AP
Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig has pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements and concealing information about work he performed in 2012 for Ukraine in a case that originated in Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.



Craig entered the plea on April 12 in federal court in Washington a day after he was accused of hiding the details of his work for the Ukrainian government from the Justice Department.



The 74-year-old denies the charges and says the prosecution against him is "unprecedented and unjustified."



Craig, 74, is accused of lying to the Justice Department about his promotion of a 2012 report aimed at justifying the prosecution of Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine's former prime minister and a political enemy of Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-friendly president of the country at the time.



The scrutiny of Craig stems from an investigation of Paul Manafort, President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, and his work on behalf of Yanukovych's pro-Russia party.



Craig's attorneys have said his work was done in his capacity "as an independent expert on the rule of law, not as an advocate for the client," and that he had refused requests to participate in Manafort's lobbying in Yanukovych's favor.



Craig, a prominent Washington attorney who was the first White House counsel to Obama, faces up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.

Based on reporting by AP and Reuters


A former Estonian security agent who was once awarded a medal for his service to the small Baltic nation has been detained on suspicion of cooperating with Russian intelligence, the director of Estonias Internal Security Service (KAPO) said on April 12.



Vladimir Kulikov was detained on March 26, Arnold Sinisalu, KAPOs director general said, adding that the investigation was still in its early stages.



"An investigation is under way, so it is not possible to say exactly what charges he may face. Elements of high treason may be uncovered during the investigation," Sinisalu said.



Kulikov was once recognized as KAPO's best officer, receiving the Baltic nation's Medal of the Eagle Cross in 1998.



According to Sinisalu, Kulikov is suspected of cooperating with Russian intelligence after retiring in 2012.



In recent years, spying scandals have marred Estonian-Russian relations.



Occupied by the Soviet Union during World War II, Estonia regained its independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991 and is now a member of NATO and the European Union.

Based on reporting by Delfi and EER
KYIV -- After dramatic video challenges and livestreamed drug tests, Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelenskiy took their electoral sideshow to prime-time TV on April 11 with a linkup that ended with the challenger hanging up abruptly on the incumbent president.



It followed news that Poroshenko, head of state since a snap election followed a Russian invasion and the outbreak of military conflict in eastern Ukraine in early 2014, badly trails the comedian-turned-candidate Zelenskiy in national polling ahead of their presidential runoff on April 21.



A weeklong dispute over the timing and location of a possible debate resumed shortly after Poroshenko stepped onto the stage of the Right To Power TV program and Zelenskiy was patched through by telephone.



Poroshenko invited Zelenskiy down to the 1+1 studio for a debate on the spot, only to be told that the 41-year-old political novice was in France ahead of a scheduled April 12 meeting with President Emmanuel Macron -- with whom Poroshenko is also scheduled to meet after his visit earlier in the day to Germany to see Chancellor Angela Merkel.



The two men returned to a spirited if mostly petty back-and-forth that seemed to highlight the lack of high-politics discussions coming from the candidates since they beat out 37 other contenders in the first round on March 31.



Here's how the TV kerfuffle went down in the broadcast by the same 1+1 channel that airs many of Zelenskiy's comedy shows and is owned by self-exiled oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskiy, who publicly reviles Poroshenko.



"Petro Oleksiyovych is perfectly aware that I am visiting Paris, France, considering that the fine cars of the Ukrainian Security Service escorted me to the airport," Zelenskiy tells the show's host, using the president's patronymic.



Standing on center stage, Poroshenko quips back that he has no interest in Zelenskiy's movements before the two begin speaking over one another.



Fragments can be heard relating to their stadium debate challenge and recent name-calling and attack ads before Poroshenko asks, "Are you finished?"



Zelenskiy snaps back that "I'll finish in five years, and you'll finish on April 22," the day after the runoff, although the inauguration date for the next five-year presidential term is set for June 3.



After the 53-year-old Poroshenko urges his 41-year-old rival one more time to agree to an April 14 debate and Zelenskiy counters with April 19, Zelenskiy adds, "That's all, goodbye," and ends the call.



(View the full exchange on the Right to Power program at 23:17)



The exchange didn't sit well with some Ukrainians who voiced their frustration with both candidates on social media.



They included third-place presidential finisher and ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who responded with a video of her own.



In the argument between the candidates, she said, "I saw the destruction of the status of the president, I saw the humiliation of the Ukrainian state."



"I think, like me, millions of Ukrainians did not want to see this," she added.



Adding to the drama, 1+1 director Oleksandr Tkachenko on April 12 accused Poroshenko of having turned up uninvited to the show, where he "shamelessly burst onto the air...using his status as head of state."



Tkachenko added that the channel was considering a defamation lawsuit against the president, who threatened to sue 1+1 last month for "lies" and "defamation."

1+1 raised some eyebrows when it broadcast several Zelenskiy productions during the so-called "quiet" period on the eve of the first round of voting last month.
The International Criminal Court has turned down a request made by the ICC prosecutor to open a probe into possible war crimes committed during the conflict in Afghanistan.



In its decision issued on April 12, the judges cited a lack of evidence and a poor outlook on state cooperation.



"The chamber hereby decides that an investigation into the situation in Afghanistan at this stage would not serve the interests of justice and accordingly rejects the request," the decision said.



The United States welcomed the decision.



"This is a major international victory, not only for these patriots, but for the rule of law," U.S. President Donald Trump said in a statement, adding that the U.S. "holds American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards."



Trump reiterated U.S. reservations about the Hague-based ICC, saying it has "broad, unaccountable prosecutorial powers" and presents a threat to U.S. sovereignty.



"Any attempt to target American, Israeli, or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response," Trump warned.



"The United States will always protect Allied and American military and civilian personnel from living in fear from unjust prosecution for actions taken to defend our great nation," U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a separate statement.

Human rights groups warned that the decision would have repercussions well beyond Afghanistan.



It is "a devastating blow for victims who have suffered grave crimes without redress," said Param-Preet Singh, the international justice associate director of Human Rights Watch.



"This sends a dangerous message to perpetrators that they can put themselves beyond the reach of the law just by being uncooperative."



The American Civil Liberties Union said that the Trump administration had played "a dangerous game."

"It is outrageous that victims of war crimes are far less likely to get justice for well-documented atrocities because of the Trump administration's authoritarian efforts to sabotage an investigation before it even started," said Jamil Dakwar, director of the group's human rights program.

In November 2017, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda asked judges to open an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Afghan national security forces, Taliban and Haqqani network fighters, as well as U.S. forces and intelligence officials in Afghanistan since May 2003.



On April 5, Bensouda's office said in a written statement that U.S. authorities revoked her entry visa.



Pompeo said last month that Washington would revoke or deny visas to ICC staff seeking to investigate alleged war crimes and abuses committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan or elsewhere.



The United States is among dozens of countries that have not ratified the Rome treaty that established the ICC in 2002.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AP, dpa, and AFP
The troops of Libya's internationally recognized government continued to battle a militia commander's forces for control of the capital as the United Nations chief warned that the country faced a "very dangerous situation."



The UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on April 11 that at least 56 people have died and 266 others have been wounded in six days of fighting near the capital, Tripoli, with thousands of people fleeing the area.



UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed for a halt to hostilities, saying, "It's still time to stop."



"It's still time for a cease-fire to take place, for a cessation of hostilities to take place, and to avoid the worst, which would be a dramatic, bloody battle for Tripoli," he said.



A Reuters journalist on April 11 reported the sounds of occasional heavy gunfire and explosions near the capital and a disused former international airport as the forces of Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) battled with troops loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Serraj's government.



The militia commander's self-styled Libyan National Army in early April launched an offensive against Tripoli, which is controlled by militias that support Libyas UN-recognized government.



Haftar has since defied international calls to halt the advance that has killed dozens of people.



Russia has been a key supporter of the militia commander, along with Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.



The North African country has been torn by violence, political instability, and power struggles since longtime ruler Muammar Qaddafi was overthrown and killed in 2011.

Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and dpa
A Moscow court has extended until July 14 the house arrest of U.S. investor Michael Calvey, whose detention stunned the business community in Moscow and clouded the investment climate.



The Basmanny district court announced the ruling on April 12, a day after it ordered Calvey to be released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest instead.



The court rejected the request by Calvey's lawyers to release their client on bail or on condition that he not leave Moscow.



Another suspect in the high-profile case, Aleksei Kordichev, the former chief of Vostochny Bank, was also released from pretrial detention and placed under house arrest on April 11.



The court said that Kordichev pleaded guilty and testified against two other suspects in the case.



Calvey, 51, founded the Moscow-based private-equity firm Baring Vostok in 1994. He, Kordichev, and four others were detained in February and charged with financial fraud.



The arrests have underscored the dangers of doing business in Russia and deepened Western concerns about the rule of law.



Kremlin critics have called for the release of Calvey, who was confined to the Lefortovo jail in Moscow since shortly after his arrest.



Calvey's business partners -- Frenchman Philippe Delpal, Vagan Abgarian, Ivan Zyuzin, and Maksim Vladimirov -- remain in pretrial detention.



The charges against Calvey and his five associates stem from allegations of embezzlement involving the Vostochny Bank in which Baring Vostok has a controlling stake.



Calvey's arrests shocked the Moscow business community in part because he had avoided political controversy and was considered instrumental in helping develop Russian tech companies.

Based on reporting by Meduza and RIA Novosti


A court in Moscow has fined Facebook for failing to tell authorities where it stores Russian user data, a ruling that highlights wrangling between tech giants and Russia as it tightens Internet controls.



Judge Anton Kozyrev of the magistrate's court in the Tagansky district on April 12 ordered Facebook to pay 3,000 rubles ($46), the minimal fine envisioned by the law, for violating the legislation that requires social media companies to store user data on servers located in Russia.



The decision comes amid the Kremlin's efforts to expand government control over the Internet.



The legislation also requires online companies to inform authorities where they store Russian user data.



Facebook representatives did not attend the hearing, the court said.



On April 5, the same court fined Twitter the same amount for failing to supply information to Russias authorities on where it stores its Russian users personal data.



In January, Russia's communications watchdog Roskomnadzor launched administrative proceedings against Twitter and Facebook for failing to comply with legislation requiring them to store the personal data of Russian citizens on servers in Russia.



Earlier in December, Roskomnadzor head Aleksandr Zharov warned the companies that they were not in compliance with the law.



Under the administrative proceeding, the companies could be fined up to 5,000 rubles ($77) and given six months to one year to demonstrate their compliance with the law.



The law on personal data was adopted in September 2015 and requires domestic and foreign companies to store the personal data of Russian citizens on servers in Russia.

Based on reporting by TASS, Meduza, Reuters, and Interfax
Ukraines president and his electoral challenger for the office are in Western Europe to meet with key leaders ahead of the countrys April 21 runoff vote.



President Petro Poroshenko and challenger Volodymyr Zelenskiy are scheduled to meet separately on April 12 with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.



Poroshenko will also meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on the same day.



Germany, France, and Ukraine are part of the so-called "Normandy format" of countries seeking a resolution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-backed separatists are fighting against Kyiv government forces.



Russia is the fourth country in the format, which has not held talks in two years.



According to preelection surveys, Zelenskiy -- a comedian and political newcomer -- is the favorite to win the presidential runoff.



Zelenskiy won the first round by a wide margin over Poroshenko, but he did not receive enough support to avoid the runoff.

Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, and dpa
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Tasty Morsels



Vladimir Putin is sometimes portrayed as ravenous: a hungry wolf on the ragged edge of Europe, about to descend diagonally down the map and devour whats in his path.



But throughout his years in power, and particularly over the last few, some of Russias actions abroad suggest that despite a prodigious appetite, hes a picky eater. Or at least a wary one, usually trying not to bite off more than he can chew -- though not always succeeding.

He can also be something of a scavenger, nosing around for what he might call a tasty morsel -- words he used when he basically blamed the West for the Beslan school attack in 2004 -- and jumping when he sees an opening but backing off, if only to circle and wait for another chance when he senses that the price may be too high.



Parts of that approach can be seen in Syria, where Russia backed President Bashar al-Assad from the beginning of his war against rebels in 2011 and then stepped up its support in 2015, launching air strikes and deploying ground forces in a move that may have saved Assad from defeat and bolstered Moscows clout in the Middle East.



In Ukraine, Putin sent in troops, staged a referendum, and snaffled up Crimea when opportunity and motive aligned after the downfall of a Moscow-friendly president in Kyiv.



But after fomenting separatism and backing forces that seized control of parts of two provinces on the other side of its border, Moscow and the militants stopped short of seeking to push westward and establish control over or take a huge swath of Ukrainian territory that Putin briefly referred to as Novorossia, or New Russia.



Too Far Gone?



Even so, he may have taken too big a bite out of Ukraine. Russias economy has been harmed by Western sanctions imposed as a result of Russias actions there, and the Kremlin has pushed the prospects of a return to good relations with what Putin has called a brotherly nation into the future by years if not decades or more.



Meanwhile, polls show that the popularity surge he secured by taking Crimea has subsided and more Russians are questioning whether the move was a good thing for their country.



Further abroad, Putin has brought his appetite for greater global influence to bear in countries including, but not limited to, crisis-hit Venezuela, Libya, and Sudan.



In some cases, one chief goal is to ensure Russia gets a seat at the table, or retains one, and that the United States doesnt monopolize the conversation.



Venezuela, where its dispatch of military personnel has led to U.S. demands that it get out of the Latin American country, is ill-suited to even limited military operations in support of Russias interests, Moscow-based commentator Vladimir Frolov wrote in an opinion article in The Moscow Times.



Instead, he wrote, Moscow isengaged in great power resolve signaling  making it clear to Washington that it no longer has freedom to take military action in any part of the world against Russian objections.



Art Of The Possible



In other words, it seems, Moscow is trying to use a small force as a part of an effort to do as much as it thinks it can -- but no more -- in the showdown in Venezuela, where the United States has recognized Juan Guiado, leader of the opposition to Russian-backed leader Nicolas Maduro as the legitimate president.



On the world stage these days, Bloomberg Opinion columnist Leonid Bershidsky wrote in an April 8 article that Russias foreign policy is an exercise in the art of the possible: Take a gamble on those who are themselves willing to take a gamble on Moscows aggressiveness and the murky economic benefits it can offer.



The results are mixed.



In Venezuela, Maduro has held on so far. Not so in Sudan, where autocratic leader Omar al-Bashir was overthrown by the military on April 11 and the future remained uncertain as demonstrators -- at first jubilant -- called for the establishment of a civilian government.



In power in Sudan since before the Soviet Union collapsed, Bashir voiced high praise for the role that [Russia] plays in preparing Sudanese military personnel and thanked Putin for the experience Russia shares with our country in the areas of arms trade and military cooperation when they met in Russia in July for the second time in eight months.



Adaptable You



Russia made it clear that it will seek to retain its influence in Sudan -- where members of Russian private security companies are working, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in January -- as part of what observers say is a continuing effort by Moscow to stamp a larger footprint in Africa.



As events unfolded in Sudan and broadcasts showed a nightmare scenario for Putin -- tens of thousands of protesters in the streets of the capital -- his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin was monitoring this situation very carefully" and hoping that whatever the outcome, Russian-Sudanese relations" will be a priority for Khartoum.



Well see.



In Libya, meanwhile, Russia has been seeking to gain or regain influence and economic opportunities eight years after the ouster and death of Muammar Qaddafi, which followed NATO-nation air strikes made possible by a UN resolution that Putin -- with Russias decision to abstain, credited to Dmitry Medvedev, the tandem partner he had steered into the presidency as a placeholder -- likened to medieval calls for crusades.



Hedging Bets



Russias practical interest in Libya may be accompanied by hunger for revenge of sorts. Whatever the motives, Moscow has given substantial support to Khalifa Haftar, an eastern-based commander whose forces control much of the massive country and this month launched a campaign to seize the capital, Tripoli, where the UN-backed government is based.



The strong pushback against Haftars attempt to take Tripoli endangers one of...Putins risky bets, Bershidsky wrote.



But Russia has hedged its bets, maintaining connections with all sides of the political spectrum and engaging with different elements of the Libyan system, Tim Eaton, a research fellow with Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa program, told RFE/RL on April 10.



As a result, Eaton said, it looks like Russia will be able to adapt to developments on the ground.



In putting out multiple tendrils in Libya and declining to augment its backing for Haftar with public declarations of support, Russia may be hoping to avoid accusations of hypocrisy -- like those it often levels against Washington and the West -- given that its more customary role is champion of the longstanding government, regardless of that governments image or actions.



On a more practical level, helping one side while huddling with others could increase the probability that Russia will -- going forward -- have a meaningful say in shaping the situation in Libya even as it declares, as it always does, that the future must be decided by Libyans alone.



Russia has sought to capitalize on opportunities where it's found them rather than committing serious resources, Eaton told RFE/RL. And I think sometimes Libya is viewed as a place where Russia can have some leverage, but without having to commit too much in order to exert that leverage.



Investment Climate Change?



As for the Kremlins actions at home, art seems like the wrong word for the suppression of dissent, say, or politically-charged criminal cases. But Putin seems sometimes to be guided by a sense of the possible within Russias borders.



Few Russia-watchers, whether they are watching from inside or out, would be likely not to see the Kremlins hand in the release of theater director Kirill Serebrennikov from house arrest or the transfer of American investor Michael Calvey from jail to house arrest.



When things like that happen in such quick succession, its tempting to think of a thaw.



The advice from Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter who is now an analyst: dont.



"Putin sees politics in two dimensions; 'strength' and "weakness,' and a thaw for him is a synonym for 'weakness,'" Gallyamov told CBS News.



So instead, its more like an adjustment, a concession based on political and economic calculations.



Turn of the Screws



"The authorities want to balance it out," Gallyamov said. "The Kremlin understands that it can't tighten the screws all the time. It's not powerful enough to completely ignore the society's demand for democratization and dialogue."



He added: "There will be two more screws tightened for each one loosened."



And, of course, for a screw to be loosened, it must first be turned tight.



While it was obviously a positive thing that hes been released, the charges have not been dropped, Noah Sneider, Moscow correspondent for The Economist, tweeted after the ruling freeing the director from house arrest. That this small step back by the state is seen nowadays as a minor miracle speaks volumes.



Or as analyst Alex Nice put it wryly in a tweet after the court ruling the form of custody for Calvey: Invest in Russia -- youll only get house arrest.



Like Serebrennikov, Calvey is still charged, and he and his colleagues at private-equity firm Baring Vostok face up to 10 years in prison if convicted of large-scale financial fraud -- a charge they deny.



Four of them remain behind bars. Frenchman Philippe Delpal had the term of his pretrial detention -- jail, that is -- extended to July 14, Bastille Day in his home country, by a court earlier in the week.



In a separate case, Calveys countryman, Paul Whelan, is also still confined to Moscows Lefortovo prison -- more than three months after he was arrested and accused of espionage. Russian authorities claim he was caught red-handed, but U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman told RFE/RL that they have provided no evidence so far -- urging them to quit playing these games and release him.



And for some the release of Serebrennikov is a reminder of the plight of another director, Ukrainian Oleh Sentsov. He is serving a 20-year prison sentence in Russia after being convicted of terrorism, a charge he and supporters say was trumped up as punishment for his opposition to Moscows takeover of Crimea.



Sentsov survived a 145-day hunger strike last year.
PRAGUE -- The U.S. ambassador to Russia has urged Moscow to either produce evidence in the case of jailed U.S. citizen Paul Whelan or release him.



"If there's a case, I think the evidence would have been brought forward by now," Ambassador Jon Huntsman told RFE/RL's Russian Service in an exclusive interview in Prague on April 12. "So, for me, as the senior American official in Russia, I hope that he is released as quickly as possible."



"If there is no evidence, and the Russians have not shown that there is any evidence so far, then let's move on," Huntsman added. "Let's move on and quit playing these games."



The comments come at a time of high tension between Moscow and Washington over, among other things, Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and its military involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has left more than 10,300 people dead.



Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who holds U.S., Irish, Canadian, and British citizenship, was arrested in Moscow on December 2018 and has been charged with spying. He is currently being held in pretrial detention.

Whelan's family says that he was in Moscow to attend a wedding, and they deny the Russian allegations. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison.



Whelan's detention came weeks after a Russian woman, Maria Butina, pleaded guilty in a U.S. court to acting as an agent for the Kremlin.



The Kremlin has denied that Butina is a Russian agent and has organized a social-media campaign to secure her release.

In the past, Russia has arrested foreigners with the aim of trading prisoners with other countries.



Huntsman also said the April 11 decision by a Moscow court to release another American, investment banker Michael Calvey, to house arrest pending his trial on embezzlement charges was "a step in the right direction."



"We hope, as I know his family does, that this is resolved as quickly as possible," Huntsman said.

The full interview with Huntsman will be published on April 13.
TASHKENT -- The eldest daughter of Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev has been appointed deputy head of the newly established presidential Press and Information Agency that oversees communications and media regulation, the agency said on April 12.



According to the statement, the chief of the presidential office, Zainilobiddin Nizomiddinov, said at an official gathering in Tashkent that Saida Mirziyoeva will be responsible for promoting Uzbekistan's positive image abroad" and "coordination of state bodies' press services."



Mirziyoeva joins a cohort of offspring of Central Asian leaders given senior government posts.



Last month, former President Nursultan Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Darigha Nazarbaeva, was elected speaker of Kazakhstan's upper house of parliament a day after her father announced his resignation.



Mirziyoeva replaced a government official who was forced to take a leave of absence and was placed under police protection after she received death threats following an online post she made referring to polygamy and the Prophet Muhammad.



Mirziyoev established the Press and Information Agency in February, tasking it with coordinating communications by state bodies and safeguarding media freedoms.



The president has two daughters and a son.



Mirziyoev's second daughter, Shakhnoza, holds a midlevel post in the Preschool Education Ministry.



Little is known about Mirziyoev's son, Miralisher, other than that he is much younger than his sisters.



Mirziyoev took over leadership of Central Asia's most populous nation, with some 32 million people, in 2016 following the death of President Islam Karimov, who had run it for 27 years



His elder son-in-law, Oybek Tursunov, is a deputy head of the presidential administration's directorate and the second son-in-law, Otabek Shakhanov, is the head of the presidential security services.

With reporting by Reuters and Interfax
Eric (left) and David Thatcher pose with their dog Brutus in their home in Coventry. A fundraiser to support Eric in his search for a kidney donor will be held this weekend at the Manchester Hall in Coventry.
HANFORD, Calif., April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- San Joaquin Valley Homes (SJV Homes) and Presidio Residential Capital will hold a grand opening at Bonterra , a new community offering 143 single-family homes in northwest Hanford, on Saturday, April 13, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Lenders will be on hand to answer financing questions, and guests can tour three beautifully decorated model homes; enjoy music, donuts and tacos; and enter to win Carrie Underwood tickets, an iPad, Visa gift cards and Santa Cruz Boardwalk tickets.



Bonterra is a wonderful addition to the Hanford community, offering affordable homes with yards and a range of options to meet the needs of families, said Danny Garcia, vice president of sales at SJV Homes. These homes appeal to both first-time buyers and empty nesters, and we cant wait to show them off.

Bonterra is offering 143 detached homes in four new floor plans with garage access. The three- and four-bedroom, two-bath homes range in size from 1,342 to 1,788 square feet, on 6,600- to 15,444-square-foot lots. Prices start in the $250,000s.

The community is located in Hanford, about an hour from Fresno, 10 minutes from downtown Hanford and 25 minutes from the Lemoore Naval Air Station.

For more information, home buyers can call Roxanne Aragon at (559) 410-3936 or visit the sales office and model at 2251 Elizabeth Drive, Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday and Monday.

Bonterra is a joint venture project with Presidio Residential Capital , a San Diego-based real estate investment company that funds 100 percent of the projects and operations of SJV Homes.

About San Joaquin Valley Homes

San Joaquin Valley Homes (SJV Homes) is a local homebuilder with deep roots in and a strong commitment to the Central Valley. Founders Joe Leal, Jim Robinson and Randy Merrill share a vision to build quality new homes in carefully planned neighborhoods for people who love the Valley and want lasting value. In 2013, SJV Homes combined forces with Presidio Residential Capital, a real estate investment firm in San Diego. It has since closed almost 1,500 homes and is now one of the busiest homebuilders in the San Joaquin Valley. For more information, please visit www.sjvhomes.com .

About Presidio Residential Capital

Presidio Residential Capital is a real estate investment company focused on the residential housing sector. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the firm provides capital in the form of joint ventures for the entitlement, development and build-out of for-sale residential projects throughout the Western United States. Presidio has infused more than $1 billion into the economy to capitalize the housing industry. The firms goal is to invest in excess of $50 million in capital for home-building projects in the Western United States in the next 12 months. It currently has investments in Arizona, California, Nevada, Colorado, Washington and Idaho with current committed capital of $500 million focused on 75 projects. The firm is affiliated with a privately held registered investment advisor specializing in alternative investment strategies who has a long history of investing in the home-building sector. Current assets under management total more than $2.5 billion. Online and social media: www.presidioresidential.com , Facebook , Twitter and LinkedIn .

Media Contacts: Anton Communications

Ingrid Jones ijones@antonpr.com

Genevieve Anton ganton@antonpr.com
TORONTO, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Ontario governments budget commitment to fund dental care for low-income seniors, accelerate the introduction of new long-term care beds and eliminate the estate administration tax are good first steps but the budget was silent on adult vaccines.



CARP, Canadas largest advocacy organization for older adults, released its FACES of Canadas Seniors policy platform in 2018. In it, CARP called for affordable and accessible dental care for all seniors, including hygiene and restorative work. The Ontario governments budget commitment to provide dental care to low-income seniors is a good first start, but it must include restorative work. Oral health is critical to keeping seniors healthy and out of hospital. We look forward to learning more about the details of this program, said Laura Tamblyn Watts, Chief Public Policy Officer, CARP.

A 2018 survey of CARP members in Ontario revealed that 55 percent of respondents lost their dental benefits after they retired. Over 50 percent of our members in Ontario surveyed also said they neglect or delay dental care because they just cant afford it, explained Tamblyn Watts. As our population continues to live longer, we need to a better solution to keeping people healthy. And that includes access to affordable hygiene and restorative dental care for everyone.

CARP is also pleased to see the governments commitment to accelerating the creation of 15,000 new long term care beds over the next five years. CARP will continue to fight tirelessly for more funding for long-term and home care for older Ontarians.

CARP was disappointed to see no commitment to fund the newest, most effective adult vaccines. Investment in adult vaccines is the most cost effective and immediate investment this government can make to support seniors health. We will continue to fight for full funding for the most effective vaccines for shingles and pneumococcal, as well as broader distribution of the high dose flu shot, for all seniors, free of charge, said Ms. Tamblyn Watts.

The proposed elimination of the estate administration tax for estates of $50,000 or less will simplify the administration of estates. This reduces the impetus for family members to compel an older person into joint ownership of assets, which can lead to financial elder abuse.

The FACES of Canadas Seniors calls on governments at all levels to commit to specific, measurable improvements in five key areas that matter most to our members. The five areas for action are: Financial Security, Abuse Prevention, Caregiving and Housing Supports, Exceptional Healthcare and Social Inclusion

For more information: www.CARP.ca/faces

Media contact:

Laura Tamblyn Watts, Chief Public Policy Officer, CARP

(647) 969-6793 ltw@carp.ca
Uber still not authorized to offer services in Cancun

Cancun, Q.R.  With the new regulations of the Instituto de Movilidad de Quintana Roo, Uber has not been granted authorization to offer its services in Cancun.

After waiting months for a reply, Uber received a response to their application for authorization of operation that was presented before the Instituto de Movilidad de Quintana Roo at the beginning of year.

Saul Crespo, Communication Manager at Uber explained, that as there is no regulation, it does not find itself in the legal possibility of resolving its request for authorization for the mediation and / or promotion of contracting the transport service through digital platforms, despite the fact that the mobility platform has complied with what is established in the current regulation and with legal processes.

He added that the authorities insist on ignoring the processes that has been followed, benefiting certain minorities and particular interests.

We are firmly committed to complying with what the law says to re-operate in one of the main tourist centers of the country. We are ready to offer a mobility option for the citizens of Cancun and its visitors.

The absence of a regulation, or any other argument outside the Mobility Law, should not serve as a justification to harm its citizens by depriving the Quintana Roo people of a reliable and efficient transportation service, said Crespo.

Prior to the request for authorization, Uber filed an Amparo suit against the reform of the State Mobility Law published in June 2018, arguing its unconstitutional which resulted in Cancun Judge Ricardo Ruiz del Hoyo Chavez, ordering the delivery of a permit so they could return to Cancun.

However, Jorge Perez Perez, general director of the Instituto de Movilidad de Quintana Roo, says that at this time, they are not authorized to issue new concessions or authorizations, so they cannot operate in the state adding that Uber, in accordance with Chapter VII of the Mobility Law, requires authorization, not a concession.

The Mobility Institute says that it is not possible to grant authorization for the lack of regulation.

By law, we have time for the preparation of regulations, which must be completed in July of this year. It will be then when we will be able to authorize this and other requests for concessions and permits, but without regulation we cannot grant concessions or any permissions, explained Perez Perez.

Uber claims they want a permit, not a concession because they are not a public service in accordance with the original law issued in June and amended in July, he added.

We regret that once again, the authorities of the state ignore the requests made under the legal framework, as well as their citizens who have raised their voices to demand greater and better mobility options, noted Uber.
TORONTO, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Globalive Technology Inc. (TSX-V: LIVE) (the Company), a technology and software commercialization firm developing and investing in innovative solutions to disrupt traditional industries, including retail consumer finance and billing, today announced its financial and operational results for the financial year ending December 31, 2018.



We are excited about the unique opportunities we are pursuing in the retail consumer finance and billing spaces, said Anthony Lacavera, the Companys founder and Chief Executive Officer. These are industries that are ripe for disruption and we are well positioned to capitalize on the need for change and opportunities for future growth.

For a summary of the financial results, see the Selected Annual Financial Highlights set out below as well as the more detailed information contained in the Companys annual financial statements and related management discussion and analysis which, along with this press release, are available on the Companys SEDAR page at www.sedar.com .

SELECTED ANNUAL OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

Key milestones and operational developments for the Company in the period from March 1, 2018 to December 31, 2018 (the Financial Period) include:

Going-Public Transaction: The Company completed its going-public transaction on June 8, 2018 and was listed on the TSX Venture Exchange on June 13, 2018 under the symbol LIVE. The transaction was a reverse takeover of Corporate Catalyst Acquisition Inc., a capital pool company listed on the NEX Exchange. Concurrently with that transaction, the Company raised $34,864,684 in public and private equity financings during the Financial Period, offset by transaction expenses of approximately $3,175,632 (consisting of issuance expenses of approximately $2,091,468 and legal, accounting and other professional expenses relating to the reverse takeover transaction of approximately $1,084,164).





The Company completed its going-public transaction on June 8, 2018 and was listed on the TSX Venture Exchange on June 13, 2018 under the symbol LIVE. The transaction was a reverse takeover of Corporate Catalyst Acquisition Inc., a capital pool company listed on the NEX Exchange. Concurrently with that transaction, the Company raised $34,864,684 in public and private equity financings during the Financial Period, offset by transaction expenses of approximately $3,175,632 (consisting of issuance expenses of approximately $2,091,468 and legal, accounting and other professional expenses relating to the reverse takeover transaction of approximately $1,084,164). Interest in the Flexiti Group: The Company has taken steps during the Financial Period to position itself to potentially acquire control of Flexiti Financial Inc. (Flexiti) and its parent company FLX Holding Corp. (FLX and together with Flexiti and their subsidiaries, the Flexiti Group), including (i) the negotiation of a right of first refusal over the controlling shareholder of the Flexiti Group, which is a related party to the Company, (ii) negotiating put and call rights over the controlling shareholder of the Flexiti Group, (iii) acquiring $7.5 million senior secured convertible debentures of the controlling shareholder of the Flexiti Group, and (iv) working with the management of Flexiti Group to understand if and how the Company and the Flexiti Group can work together in the event an acquisition is consummated. A potential transaction to acquire a control position in the Flexiti Group remains highly conditional, and there can be no assurance at this time that the conditions necessary to complete such a transaction will be satisfied.





The Company has taken steps during the Financial Period to position itself to potentially acquire control of Flexiti Financial Inc. (Flexiti) and its parent company FLX Holding Corp. (FLX and together with Flexiti and their subsidiaries, the Flexiti Group), including (i) the negotiation of a right of first refusal over the controlling shareholder of the Flexiti Group, which is a related party to the Company, (ii) negotiating put and call rights over the controlling shareholder of the Flexiti Group, (iii) acquiring $7.5 million senior secured convertible debentures of the controlling shareholder of the Flexiti Group, and (iv) working with the management of Flexiti Group to understand if and how the Company and the Flexiti Group can work together in the event an acquisition is consummated. A potential transaction to acquire a control position in the Flexiti Group remains highly conditional, and there can be no assurance at this time that the conditions necessary to complete such a transaction will be satisfied. Credit AI Adjudication Platform: The Company is working directly with Flexiti under a technology stack agreement to prototype a credit lending adjudication engine which may be used to offer services in conjunction with Flexitis 3,500 merchant locations and one million customers.





The Company is working directly with Flexiti under a technology stack agreement to prototype a credit lending adjudication engine which may be used to offer services in conjunction with Flexitis 3,500 merchant locations and one million customers. Consolidated Billing Platform: The Company has established a business venture with Sponsor Energy Inc. (Sponsor) to develop a utility commerce management platform that bundles the billing for utility services and other similar household bills into a single consolidated invoicing and payment regime. The business venture, the viability of which is being assessed by the Company, is being carried out through a special purpose vehicle, Neighbor Billing Inc. (Neighbor"), which is owned equally by Sponsor and the Company, but controlled by the Company. Neighbor will own the intellectual property associated with the platform and will have the right to commercialize its use in utilities and related markets. The Company has been granted an exclusive, royalty-free license by Neighbor to commercialize the intellectual property in other markets.





The Company has established a business venture with Sponsor Energy Inc. (Sponsor) to develop a utility commerce management platform that bundles the billing for utility services and other similar household bills into a single consolidated invoicing and payment regime. The business venture, the viability of which is being assessed by the Company, is being carried out through a special purpose vehicle, Neighbor Billing Inc. (Neighbor"), which is owned equally by Sponsor and the Company, but controlled by the Company. Neighbor will own the intellectual property associated with the platform and will have the right to commercialize its use in utilities and related markets. The Company has been granted an exclusive, royalty-free license by Neighbor to commercialize the intellectual property in other markets. Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Business ventures: During the Financial Period the Company pursued and formed a number of business ventures with partners in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, including: (i) a business venture with HyperBlock Inc. to provide digital currency mining-as-a-service to retail customers, (ii) a business venture with Business Instincts Group Inc. to form an agile development and continuous delivery software development firm dedicated to launching innovative solutions in the blockchain space, and (iii) a business venture with Coinsquare Inc. to develop a multi-asset trading platform that was pursued but ultimately not formed. The blockchain and cryptocurrency markets declined significantly during the Financial Period and these business ventures have not performed to the Companys expectations. The Company does not expect that they will form a material part of its business going forward.





During the Financial Period the Company pursued and formed a number of business ventures with partners in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, including: (i) a business venture with HyperBlock Inc. to provide digital currency mining-as-a-service to retail customers, (ii) a business venture with Business Instincts Group Inc. to form an agile development and continuous delivery software development firm dedicated to launching innovative solutions in the blockchain space, and (iii) a business venture with Coinsquare Inc. to develop a multi-asset trading platform that was pursued but ultimately not formed. The blockchain and cryptocurrency markets declined significantly during the Financial Period and these business ventures have not performed to the Companys expectations. The Company does not expect that they will form a material part of its business going forward. Investments: The Company continues to make strategic investments in existing and potential future collaborators and other strategic partners. During the Financial Period, the Company acquired interests in: Timeplay Inc.; Flexiti and its parent company; Eigen Innovations Inc.; Civic Resource Group International Inc.; Civic Resource Group Exchange, Inc.; TouchBistro Inc.; Pitchpoint Solutions Inc.; FutureVault Inc.; HyperBlock Inc.; ACORN Biolabs Inc., XBL Investments Inc., FastForward Innovations Ltd. and the Creative Destruction Labs Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence Fund.

SELECTED ANNUAL FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

Key financial characteristics of the Company as at the end of the Financial Period and the previously completed financial year of its predecessor, Globalive Technology Partners Inc. (GTP), ended February 28, 2018 were:

December 31,

2018 February 28,

2018* Cash 13,436,845 1,408,779 Working capital** 13,546,228 1,197,686 Total Assets 38,311,011 12,479,875 Total Liabilities (1,046,334 ) (1,908,790 ) Change in unrealized gain (loss) from investments (10,598,541 ) 6,888,890 Net income (loss) before taxes for the period (24,610,730 ) 6,431,862 Deferred tax recovery (expense) 912,778 (912,778 ) Net income (loss) and comprehensive income (loss) attributable to the shareholders of the Company (22,450,560 ) 5,519,084

*Note that GTPs prior financial year ending February 28, 2018 was a short financial year, covering the period from its incorporation on December 7, 2017 to February 28, 2018.

** Note that working capital does not have any standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Working capital consists of current assets minus current investments minus current liabilities plus promissory notes. Working capital excludes investments.

ABOUT GLOBALIVE TECHNOLOGY

Globalive Technology is a next generation software company and venture partner that is developing and investing in innovative solutions to disrupt traditional industries, with a particular focus on the retail consumer finance and billing industries. The company forms partnerships with leading high growth companies to develop and commercialize software solutions using optimal technology stacks. It is controlled by Globalive Capital Inc., which has founded and co-founded 12 businesses over the past 20 years with six successful exits ranging from $10M to $1.3B USD, has made over 100 venture investments and has over 45 technology companies in its portfolio. For more information, visit www.globalivetech.com .

CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION

This news release contains forward-looking statements relating to the Company, its potential acquisition of a control position in the Flexiti Group, its software development projects and its business ventures and their future business plans. Such forward-looking statements are identified by terms such as will, to prototype, potential, conditional, in the event, may, begin the process, expect, continue and similar expressions. All statements, other than statements of historical fact included in this release, including those noted above, 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 changes to the Companys business focus or strategic plan; changes in market and industry conditions; unexpected operating gains or losses; managements assessment of the viability of different businesses and business partners; a breakdown in the Companys relationship with its existing or potential future business venture partners; changes in the Companys management and employees; the availability of future transactional opportunities; the satisfaction of the conditions precedent to completing any existing business or transactional opportunities, including the availability of adequate financing and regulatory, shareholder and third-party approvals; other parties seeking to acquire an interest in the Flexiti Group; difficulties combining the businesses of the Flexiti Group and the Company; difficulties or delays in the development of new technologies; technologies not functioning as expected; third parties not using technologies and services as expected; economic conditions making certain technologies or services less attractive than anticipated; competitors in the industry; and other risks as set out in the Companys Filing Statement available on its SEDAR page at www.sedar.com.

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 Company cannot guarantee that any of the forward-looking statements contained in this press release will occur as disclosed herein or at all. 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 only update or revise publicly the included forward-looking statements as expressly required by Canadian securities law.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:

For media inquiries:

Rob Moysey

Communications Manager, Globalive

Media@globalivetech.com

For investor inquiries:

Melanie Barbeau

Account Manager, Renmark Financial Communications

InvestorRelations@globalivetech.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
New York, NY, April 11, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- It is both deeply disappointing and disturbing to hear that Attorney General Barr has decided not to appeal the Michigan case against Jumana Nagarwala, a U.S. doctor who was charged in 2017 with performing Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) on nine girls, aged 7 to 13, from Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota, at a Detroit clinic. Prosecutors alleged that Dr.Nagarwala may have subjected up to 100 girls to the procedure over a 12 year period.





This was the first case to be brought under a federal anti-FGM law introduced by Congress in 1996. In November 2018, a federal judge in Detroit dismissed six of the eight charges on the grounds that the law was unconstitutional because Congress did not have the right to criminalize the practice.

In making its decision, the DOJ incorrectly relies on U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedmans ruling in the Eastern District of Michigan that Congress lacked authority, under the commerce clause, and the treaty clause, of the US constitution, to adopt the law and that the power to outlaw FGM resided with individual states.

However, Judge Friedman applied the wrong standard of review in determining whether FGM is an issue that can be subject to federal laws, and his decision demonstrates a clear lack of understanding about the nature of FGM, which is a form of gender-based violence and child abuse and an economic activity.

FGM involves the partial or complete removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. It has no health benefits and can have serious lifelong physical and mental health consequences including chronic infections; severe pain during urination, menstruation and sexual intercourse; psychological trauma; and increased risk of infertility, labor complications and newborn death. The procedure itself can also be fatal.

FGM occurs around the world and transcends religious, cultural, socioeconomic, and country lines. Regardless of the degree, severity, or motivation, it is a human rights violation linked to the oppression of women and girls, and there is no legitimate justification.

Judge Friedmans ruling failed to take into account the widespread occurrence of FGM in the United States, where an estimated 513,000 women and girls who have undergone or are at risk of being cut.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has indicated they agree with Judge Friedman that there is a problem with the current federal FGM law, and in compliance with the law (28 U.S. Code  530D), a letter has been sent to the U.S. Congress informing them of concerns.

It now sits with Congress to respond by either defending the existing legislation or addressing a perceived flaw in the way that is was passed.

We are convinced that Congress has both the authority and responsibility to enact the FGM law in compliance with its international human rights obligations and that the decision by the DOJ not to appeal is simply wrong.

However, if the DOJ will not implement it in its current form then we call on Congress to respond swiftly to make the required amendments to ensure the federal FGM law is valid under both the treaty clause and the commerce clause, recognizing that 29 states do not currently have laws against FGM.

It is worth noting that the DOJ issued a press release on February 6, 2019, for International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, stating:

Female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) is a federal crime, and any involvement in committing this crime is a serious human rights violation, which may result in imprisonment and potential removal from the United States. Individuals suspected of FGM/C, including sending girls overseas to be cut, may be investigated by the HRVWCC and prosecuted accordingly.

We wonder what has changed between then and now that would compel the DOJ not to challenge Judge Friedmans ruling.

In the aftermath of Nagarwala case, Jennifer, an American woman who was subjected to FGM as a child growing up in a conservative Christian community, realized there is no law banning FGM in her home state of Kentucky and has launched a Change.org petition calling for one to be introduced.

"It's also alarming because so many states don't have laws. I don't want Kentucky to be somewhere girls can be brought for FGM just because we don't have a law," she recently told Thomson Reuters when she shared her story publicly for the first time.

"FGM takes away any chance of having a 'normal' life. It takes away the ability to have intimacy or relationships. It just changes every part of you," Jennifer explained.

In collaboration with partner organizations campaigning to end FGM by 2030, womens rights organization Equality Now submitted an Amicus Brief in the Nagarwala case. Equality Now stands by these legal arguments and is committed to working tirelessly until all women and girls are protected from FGM in laws at both the federal and state level.

While the decision in the Nagarwala case applies only to the Eastern District of Michigan, by questioning the veracity of the federal law criminalizing FGM, the MoJ is placing thousands of girls at risk and is sending a damaging message to law enforcement, the courts and to the courageous survivors who are breaking the silence around FGM, both in the U.S. and across the international community.

America needs both federal and state laws and policies to effectively address FGM. This is not a single state issue. Girls are taken across state lines, as we saw in the Nagarwala case, or taken outside the country for purposes of FGM, and this requires a federal response. State laws and policies are needed for the prevention, education, and provision of services at the local level.





ENDS





Notes to Editor:

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Sr. Media Manager Tara Carey at tcarey@equalitynow.org at +44 (0)7971 556 340.







About Equality Now:

Equality Now is an international human rights organization that focuses on using the law to protect and promote the rights of women and girls around the world.

Equality Now combines grassroots activism with international, regional and national legal advocacy, and its global network of lawyers, activists, and supporters achieve legal and systemic change by holding governments responsible for enacting and enforcing laws and policies that end legal inequality, sex trafficking, sexual violence, and harmful practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation.















Attachment
AN EX-SERVICEMAN who was arrested at a funeral wake and assaulted two emergency workers has been fined and ordered to pay compensation.

Mark Gaughan (33), of Coleridge Road, East Dene, attacked PC Richard Revitt and a detention officer after attending his step-mothers wake at The Plough, Effingham Street, Rotherham, on March 14.

Police were called to a disturbance at the pub at 11.30pm, Mr David Marshall, prosecuting, told Sheffield Magistrates Court last Thursday.

Officers found the defendant being held back by some of his friends, Mr Marshall said.

There had been some incident inside the pub and it seems the defendant had some injuries to his head.

It looks like he had fallen  he had blood around his nose and hairline.

He was still acting aggressively, shouting; Dont hold me back, I can f*****g sort it.

Gaughan was arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

He refused treatment at Rotherham Hospital and was taken to Main Street Police Station.

At the police station he assaulted PC Richard Revitt, striking a blow to his jaw, causing pain but no lasting injuries, Mr Marshall said.

He then dropped to his knees in the corridor and spat at a detention officer.

The spit was mixed with blood and landed on the officers trousers.

In a statement read to the court, PC Revitt said that he had been trying to assist Gaughan and he had had sympathy with him for his loss, but did not expect to be assaulted.

Gaughan admitted to being drunk and disorderly, assault by beating of an emergency worker and common assault of an emergency worker.

Mitigating, Mr Matthew Hague said Gaughan had gone to his step-mothers funeral earlier that day.

Her life expectancy was supposed to be greater than it was, said Mr Hague.

It came as a bit of a shock.

Mr Hague said Gaughan had been drinking from the start of funeral until the incident at around 11.30pm.

He was drowning his sorrows to a point where he had little or no recollection of what happened, said Mr Hague.

Mr Hague said Gaughan had served in the Army for four years and now worked in the building trade as a dryliner.

It was a poisonous concoction of alcohol in difficult circumstances which led to his out-of-character behaviour, said Mr Hague.

Gaughan was fined 300, ordered to pay 50 compensation to each victim, and ordered to pay 85 costs.

Mr Peter Fanshaw, Chair of the Bench, said: In light of your record, this is a very sorry affair.

Its a serious matter, assaulting a police officer and an emergency worker.

I dont want to see you again.
PLANNERS approved a bottle tops factory beside Bluebell Wood Childrens Hospice  leading one elected member to ponder: Are we really a caring council?

The 18 million United Caps plant, off Todwick Road at Dinnington, will share a border with the charitys tranquil North Anston grounds.

The hospice was among several objectors but the proposals  creating 120 jobs  were passed by Rotherham Borough Councils planning board.

Cllr Simon Tweed said: We keep saying we are a caring council. Would a caring council put a big factory unit there that will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week?

Dinnington will be the first UK plant for United Caps, which makes tops for drinks and dairy cartons in several countries on mainland Europe.

The site (pictured above) will include production lines, offices and two dozen 16-metre silos for plastics storage.

Dinnington ward member Cllr John Vjestica said noise and fumes were among the main concerns as 40 HGVs a day will arrive at the plant.

He added: The neighbouring building is not another commercial, retail or industrial unit. Its a childrens hospice.

At present, its a serene and quiet place and an ideal site for families facing challenging and difficult circumstances.

Thats why the proximity is so crucial. The noise from the operation, with vehicles in and out, will affect the serenity.

Cllr Tweed, a planning board member who also represents Dinnington ward, said: We have a lot of industrial land in Dinnington thats empty. If this development was anywhere else on it, I would be putting two hands up and welcoming the 120 jobs.

Dinnington Town Council raised traffic concerns on the busy Todwick Road towards the Red Lion roundabout.

Chairman Cllr Dave Smith added: We want to register our disquiet at the fact that a press release was done in July 2018 and a statement made by the leader categorically stating that this would be built.

We didnt receive any notification of planning until November. I dont think its a good way of doing planning.

Board chairman Cllr Simon Sheppard responded: The decisions are made here. The planning board is where any proposal is approved or declined. Nothing is done outside of this room.

RMBC highways officer Ian Ferguson said: We are aware that the roundabout is subject to significant congestion. Obviously the development will add to that but, through transportation assessments, it has been concluded that the cumulative impact of the development traffic on that junction will not be severe.

A condition of the permission is for the factory not to exceed an increase of 5dB in background noise, as heard from Bluebell Wood.

Madeleine Oldale, the hospices head of communications, said: Bluebell Wood is a home from home for over 300 families facing the toughest of times, whether they have days, weeks, months or years with their precious child.

For many families, our hospice is the only place in South Yorkshire where they can receive the specialist care and support they need in a relaxing and homely environment.

It was the councils own regeneration arm RiDO which suggested the site to United Caps, which has amended its own plans to put the quieter office part nearest the hospice border.

Chris Dawkins, the firms agent, said: We acknowledged from the start that being close to the hospice does present a major constraint on the scheme.

The development can be done with minimum noise impact. We are completely committed to doing everything we can to avoid any negative impact.

Cllr Alan Atkin told last Thursdays meeting: No matter what goes there, there will be construction. Its inevitable. We cant bring in a helicopter and just drop it in.

Its just got to be done sensitively with these things. In an ideal world, we wouldnt put anything near a hospice but I think reluctantly we have to allow it to be built.

Fellow board member Cllr Bob Walsh added: It was always understood that the land behind was for industrial development. The problem that the hospice faces was always there.

Three decibels is an extremely low standard to work to and theres 120 jobs to be had. These days, we simply cant neglect that aspect of the proposal.

RMBC development manager Nigel Hancock said: The company has shown it can act as a good neighbour.

It recognises the sensitive use next door and is happy to accept very restrictive conditions.

The hospice is considering triple glazed windows and trustee Richard Worth said: We hope thats something that United Caps will help with.

It could be particularly useful in the construction phase. Thats one of the real potential worries.
This cannabis haul was found in East Dene

A MAN has been arrested after police found drugs worth around 2,000 and "considerably more cash" at a property in East Dene.

Police executed a warrant at a property on Dene Crescent yesterday afternoon (Thursday) and found cannabis with a street value of around 2,000 and cash.

Central Neighbourhoods have executed a warrant in East Dene earlier today. A large quantity of drugs and money has been seized with a suspect arrested. pic.twitter.com/JdruHZjXxa  RotherhamCentral NHP (@RothCentralNHP) April 11, 2019

"A 28 year old male was arrested and has since been released under investigation, following interview," said an officer from the Rotherham Central Neighbourhood Policing Team.
HEAD teacher Mark Young will be breathing a sigh of relief as his final school bell tolls this afternoon  but hes going out on a high.

The Eastwood executive headteacher (58) is bowing out of education after a 36-year career, during which he has turned around two schools and established another in Rotherhams most diverse neighbourhood.

The newly-formed 180-pupil Eastwood Village School is now rated good by Ofsted, along with its academy trust members Coleridge Primary and East Dene Primary.

But back in 2015, when Mark began working in Rotherham full-time with the three Central Learning Partnership Trust schools, two had been told to improve by Ofsted and the other hadnt been built properly yet.

Recalling the first day of term at the new Eastwood Village School, he says: We started off with 40 children and the building wasnt even ready yet.

We had to meet children and parents at the community centre and walk them up to East Dene (primary school).

At that time, 95 per cent of the pupils were Roma Slovak, a mobile population which means children are often moved around a lot and attendance can be poor.

But that walk to their temporary base would prove to be vital as it gave Mark the chance to speak directly  with the help of an interpreter  to parents about what was expected.

I told them that their child must come to school every single day, we would care for them and they were here to learn and better themselves, says Penistone-based Mark.

If they didnt come to school, I told them, I would be out there, knocking on their doors, something we carried out and still do now.

This is our fourth year and we got the national average of 96 per cent attendance last autumn  so people say it cant be done, but it can.

Now, Roma Slovak children make up around 80 per cent of the roll call and the rest is a mixture of British, African and Asian.

Around 15 languages are spoken in total by pupils.

Asked if heading up such a diverse school was challenging, Mark confidently replies: Not really, adding: If you consult with everybody about what you stand for in terms of respect for each other and you communicate it well at child, parent and community level, then people respect that.

Teaching has been adapted to be very visual to cope with the range of languages and new initiatives have been introduced by staff, including a summer school launched by inclusion manager Kath Beecham to ensure children practise their English during the holidays.

Mark began supporting the then-failing Coleridge and East Dene schools  than ranked among the countrys 200 worst performing  seven years ago when he was still headteacher at Sheffields outstanding-rated Birley Spa Primary School and had been made a national leader of education.

Parent support was top of Marks list of priorities, closely followed by ironing out key times of the day.

Breakfast club was madness and playtimes were not well organised, there were fights and too much skullduggery going on, he said, adding that he could now happily retire as the schools dont need me anymore and there is strong leadership in place, with no new executive head to be appointed.

Mark, meanwhile, said he had someone else who needed his support, adding: Ive got an eight-month old baby and so I want to spend more time with the family and gain more life experience.

Both my other kids, who are aged 27 and 29, have travelled more than me.

On my last day, I will be sad but relieved I got through it  36 years!

Im just happy for my next challenge, having a rest and going on holiday in term-time, when its cheaper.

Also stepping down from the Central Learning Partnership Trust at the end of term is Joyce Beighton (below, with Mark), who first joined as a teaching assistant at East Dene in 1992.

Joyce (63), of Moorgate, has worked in several roles within the schools and was most recently the clerk to the governing body.

She is now looking forward to spending time with her six-year-old granddaughter.
SELLING suspect supplements led to a pharmacist and his firm being handed a prescription for court fines and costs reaching almost 33,000.

Zulfkar Ahmad (65) - also known as Zulfkar Akram - pleaded guilty to five charges laid against him and Ultralife Nutrition Limited under the neglect of a director provisions of the Food Safety Act 1990 when he appeared before Sheffield Crown Court.

Ahmad and the company he was sole director of at the time, Ultralife Nutrition Limited, Wembley Works, Hemmingfield Road, Wombwell, Barnsley, were ordered to pay fines and costs of 32,770 for breaching food laws and selling food supplements with unclear allergen ingredients and misleading company name and address which could have impeded a recall of their products.

The court heard that the company had ceased trading since trading standards officers from Barnsley Councils Regulatory Services had visited in March 2018 and found problems with its food supplement labelling, prompting a national recall of its products.

At the hearing, the judge told the company its actions had fallen below acceptable standards and that it had not paid adequate attention to the law.

The judge reminded the defendant of the tragic potential consequence of providing inaccurate information on allergens.

The charges brought related to failure to properly declare allergenic ingredients including nuts - and providing labels with incorrect and misleading name and address details.

Ahmad and Ultralife Nutrition Limited had failed to carry out reasonable checks to make sure their labels were compliant with UK labelling law and clearly identify to their customers what allergens were contained in them, the court was told.

Further charges were brought by Barnsley Council when it was discovered that some of the product lines sold by Ultralife Nutrition from Wembley works misleadingly showed the names of dissolved companies and addresses in Buckinghamshire and Huddersfield.

This would have seriously delayed traceability if problems had arisen with the products and prevented customer correspondence and complaints being received by the company, the court was told.

The misleading products discovered were marketed under the brand name Ultralife.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi

Silchar (Assam), Apr 12: Prime Minister Narendra Modi Thursday said the BJP is committed to passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill once the NDA returns to power after the ongoing Lok Sabha polls. The bill will be amended after proper consultation with all sections of the society and ensuring safety of the Assamese community, Modi told a poll rally here, his second of the day in Assam.

Protection to Assamese language, culture and identity will be ensured while considering the Bill again, he assured. The Bill had been passed by the Lok Sabha by the Modi government on January 8 but was not introduced in the Rajya Sabha. The Bill is now set to lapse on June 3. Slamming the Congress, he said it did not think about the minorities in Pakistan while dividing the country during Independence.

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BJP committed to passing the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill

"The fundamentalists tortured our brothers and sisters in Pakistan. Is Congress not a culprit for this? People going to mandirs and gurudwaras in Bangladesh and Pakistan had to come to India. Congress sins made them foreigners in their own land ?" he added. "Our daughters are being tortured in Pakistan even nowadays," he alleged. On the triple talaq bill, Modi said his government will "strongly try" to pass the legislation after it comes to power at the Centre.

"Even if the Congress, AIUDF and mahamialvat (other opposition parties) try, they will be able to do nothing (to stop the triple talaq bill). Our daughters will get justice," he added. Referring to the ongoing first phase of Lok Sabha polls in the country, Modi said "As per information I have received so far a huge wave is seen for us in the polling being held today. "People have decided and it will be difficult for the opposition to survive ... In Assam, all five seats (where polling is being held in the first phase) will be won by BJP and the NDA.
TORONTO, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In accordance with ASX Listing Rule 3.13.2 and section 251AA(2) of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth), the following information is provided to the Australian Securities Exchange in relation to resolutions passed by members of Cardinal Resources Limited.



Resolution Decided

by a show

of hands

(S) or poll (P) Total number

of proxy

votes

exercisable by

proxies

validly appointed Total number of proxy votes in respect of which the

appointments specified that: - The proxy is

to vote for the

resolution The proxy is

to vote

against the

resolution The proxy is to

abstain/excluded

on the resolution The proxy

may vote at

the proxys

discretion 1 S 203,799,854 111,179,347 92,270,807 7,400,000 349,700 2 S 203,799,854 111,179,347 92,270,807 7,400,000 349,700

Note: Resolution numbers in this table refer to the resolution numbers in the Notice of General Meeting dated 5 March 2019.



Further details on the matters voted upon at the Meeting can be found in the Companys Meeting materials, including the management information circular dated 5 March 2019, which are accessible under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com . The Company has also filed a report of voting results on all resolutions voted on at the Meeting on SEDAR at www.sedar.com .

For further information contact:

Archie Koimtsidis Alec Rowlands CEO / MD IR / Corp Dev Cardinal Resources Limited Cardinal Resources Limited P: +61 8 6558 0573 P: +1 647 256 1922 Peta Baldwin / Andrew Rowell Cannings Purple E: pbaldwin@canningspurple.com.au P: +61 455 081 008 (PB) / +61 400 466 226 (AR)

Disclaimer

This ASX / TSX press release has been prepared by Cardinal Resources Limited (ABN: 56 147 325 620) ("Cardinal" or the "Company"). Neither the ASX or the TSX, nor their regulation service providers accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.

This press release contains summary information about Cardinal, its subsidiaries and their activities, which is current as at the date of this press release. The information in this press release is of a general nature and does not purport to be complete nor does it contain all the information, which a prospective investor may require in evaluating a possible investment in Cardinal.

By its very nature exploration for minerals is a highrisk business and is not suitable for certain investors. Cardinals securities are speculative. Potential investors should consult their stockbroker or financial advisor. There are a number of risks, both specific to Cardinal and of a general nature which may affect the future operating and financial performance of Cardinal and the value of an investment in Cardinal including but not limited to economic conditions, stock market fluctuations, gold price movements, regional infrastructure constraints, timing of approvals from relevant authorities, regulatory risks, operational risks and reliance on key personnel and foreign currency fluctuations.

Except for statutory liability which cannot be excluded and subject to applicable law, each of Cardinals officers, employees and advisors expressly disclaim any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the material contained in this press release and excludes all liability whatsoever (including in negligence) for any loss or damage which may be suffered by any person as a consequence of any information in this Announcement or any error or omission here from. Except as required by applicable law, the Company is under no obligation to update any person regarding any inaccuracy, omission or change in information in this press release or any other information made available to a person nor any obligation to furnish the person with any further information. Recipients of this press release should make their own independent assessment and determination as to the Companys prospects, its business, assets and liabilities as well as the matters covered in this press release.
The fleet utilisation rate in the first quarter of 2019 was 62.5 per cent (Q1 2018: 33.3 per cent).

Safe Scandinavia has been operating at Aker BPs Ula platform in Norway since 1 September 2018, and was in full operation throughout the quarter. On 7 February 2019, Aker BP exercised a one-month option. End of March 2019, Aker BP restructured the remaining seven one-month options to three one-week options, in which two options were subsequently exercised. The contract is now expected to be completed around mid-May 2019.

Safe Caledonia has been laid-up at Scapa Flow in the UK in the quarter. She is scheduled to commence work for a major oil and gas operator in the UK sector from mid-April 2019 with a firm duration of four months and up to two months of options.

Safe Notos has been operating on a three-year and 222-day contract for Petrobras in Brazil since 7 December 2016 and was fully contracted in the quarter.

Safe Boreas continued the contract with Equinor at the Mariner installation in the UK and was in full operation throughout the quarter. The contracts firm period has been extended through September 2019 as Equinor exercised three of six one-month options on 10 April 2019. There are three one-month options remaining.

Safe Zephyrus has been operating on a 12-month contract for Equinor at Johan Sverdrup in Norway since early May 2018 and was in full operation throughout the quarter. Following the completion of the contract, Safe Zephyrus will start a contract for BP at the Clair Ridge platform West of Shetland in the UK sector of the North Sea. The duration of the contract is five months with a one-month option, and is scheduled to commence mid-May 2019.

Safe Concordia has been operating on a 200-day contract for MODEC in Brazil since late October 2018 and was in full operation throughout the quarter.

Regalia was idle in the quarter. She is currently undergoing a five yearly special periodic survey (SPS) at a yard in Norway and being reactivated to perform a 60-day contract in the UK sector of the North Sea. The contract is scheduled to start around mid-May 2019 with a 30-day option after the firm period.

Safe Bristolia was idle in the quarter and is laid-up in Norway.

In January 2019, Prosafe was ranked first place in an online auction for the supply of safety and maintenance support vessels for a three-year contract in Brazil. The compliance evaluation process has been completed. Prosafe will commence mobilizing the Safe Eurus from the yard in China if a contract is formally awarded.

End of March 2019, Prosafe acting as commercial managers for the Axis Offshore owned Safe Swift won a contract to support activities in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Safe Swift will mobilise to conduct gangway connected accommodation duties for a period of five months commencing May 2019.

Prosafe is a leading owner and operator of semi-submersible accommodation vessels. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange with ticker code PRS. For more information, please refer to www.prosafe.com

Stavanger, 12 April 2019

Prosafe SE





For further information, please contact:

Jesper K. Andresen, CEO

Phone: +47 51 65 24 30 / +47 907 65 155

Stig Harry Christiansen, Deputy CEO and CFO

Phone: +47 51 64 25 17 / +47 478 07 813





This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to Section 5-12 the Norwegian Securities Trading Act
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR DISSEMINATION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- East Africa Metals Inc. (TSX-V: EAM) (the Company or East Africa or EAM) is pleased to announce that it has scheduled an Annual General and Special Meeting to be held on May 31, 2019, to seek shareholder approval for the sale of approximately 70% interest in the Companys Ethiopian assets (See Press Release dated February 8, 2019) to Tibet Huayu Mining Co. Ltd (Tibet Huayu). The Company also announces the closing of the non-brokered private placement.

The Company is seeking shareholder approval for the proposed transaction with Tibet Huayu (See press release dated February 11, 2019). The proposed transaction contemplates the transfer of 70% equity interest in its Ethiopian subsidiary companies to Tibet Huayu and the parties entering into Joint Venture Contracts for the purpose of development and operation of EAMs Ethiopian Mining Assets. EAM owns 70% of the Harvest Mining PLC (Harvest) and 100% of the Tigray Resources Incorporated PLC (TRI). Harvest holds the Terakimti oxide gold mining license. EAMs subsidiary, TRI hosts the Mato Bula and Da Tambuk deposits (Adyabo Property) which are in the final process of mine permitting (See press release dated: January 23, 2019).

The transaction includes terms that in exchange for 55% interest of Harvest and 70% interest in TRI, Tibet Huayu will:

Provide a cash payment of US$1.7M to EAM;

Finance, develop and operate the Terakimti, Da Tambuk and Mato Bula projects.

On completion of the proposed transaction:

Tibet Huayu will hold the rights (interest) to 55% post tax profits/Government distributions of Harvest and hold the rights (interest) to 70% of the post tax profits/Government distributions of TRI.

EAM will hold the rights (interest) to 15% post tax profits/Government distributions of Harvest and hold the rights (interest) to 30% of the post tax profits/Government distributions of TRI.

Closing conditions include: Required approvals including and not limited to Board, Regulatory, and Government approvals; Execution of the definitive agreement; and EAM has received the cash payment of US$1.7M.



The combined capital costs for the three Ethiopia projects for which Mining Licenses have been granted or grants are pending are US$120M based on 43-101 compliant Preliminary Economic Assessment (See Press Release dated April 30, 2018).

EAM will retain the mineral rights, and all exploration obligations for the prospective targets not incorporated in the three mining licenses (EAM Mineral Resources). EAM shall give Tibet Huayu a right of first refusal of reasonable duration to acquire EAMs Mineral Resources.

Private Placement

The Company also announces that it has closed the previously disclosed private placement (See Press Release: February 11, February 28 and March 27, 2019) for an aggregate gross proceeds of $2,511,360, pending TSX-V approval. This amount includes the first tranche closing of $2.3M. In connection with the closing, the Company issued a total of 15,696,000 Units for gross proceeds of $2.51M.

Each unit consists of one common share and one common share purchase warrant of the Company. Each warrant entitles the holder to purchase one common share at an exercise price of C$0.30 per share for a period of 24 months following the date of closing. All of the securities issued in connection with this Private Placement are subject to a hold period which expire four months and one day from closing.

Proceeds from the Private Placement will be used to conduct a diamond drilling campaign targeted to increase the existing global resource base of Ethiopian assets, by testing extensions to existing resources and high priority exploration targets, as well as general working capital.

Five insiders of the Company participated in the private placement and subscribed for an aggregate of 562,500 units representing an aggregate amount of $90,000. Participation of insiders in the private placement constitutes a related party transaction pursuant to Multilateral Instrument 61-101 Protection of Minority Shareholders in Special Transactions. The private placement is exempt from the formal valuation and minority shareholder approval requirements of such instrument and policy as neither the fair market value of securities being issued to insiders nor the consideration being paid by insiders exceed 25% of the Companys market capitalization. The Company did not file a material change report 21 days prior to the closing of the private placement as details of the participation of insiders of the Company were not confirmed until closing of the private placement.

The securities offered have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, United States persons absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

More information on the Company can be viewed at the Companys website: www.eastafricametals.com

On behalf of the Board of Directors:

Andrew Lee Smith, P.Geo., CEO

For further information contact:

Nick Watters, Business Development Telephone:

Email:

Website:

+1 (604) 488-0822

investors@eastafricametals.com

www.eastafricametals.com

Disclaimer and Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "expect", "intend", "estimate", "forecast", "project", "budget", "schedule", "may", "will", "could", "might", "should" or variations of such words or similar words or expressions. Forward-looking information is based on reasonable assumptions that have been made by East Africa as at the date of such information and is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of East Africa to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to statements relating to the expected use of proceeds from the Private Placement, and risks factors set out in East Africas managements discussion and analysis for the year end December 31, 2017 and for the nine months ended September 30, 2018, and East Africas listing application dated July 8, 2013. Forward-looking statements are based on assumptions management believes to be reasonable. Although East Africa 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. 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 information. The Company does not update or revise forward looking information even if new information becomes available unless legislation requires the Company do so. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information contained herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

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.
Whether you call them Egg Bennys or the more formal Eggs Benedict, with eggs poached oozy or firm, chances are you rate this ovo dish among the top staple brunch dishes. Long a standard on weekend menus, Eggs Benedict can range from the classic (with Canadian bacon, English muffin and hollandaise sauce) to the inventive.

While there is debate about the origin of the name, there are two prevailing theories. Some think the dish was named after Benedict Arnold, traitor of the Revolutionary War, and as such the mix of Canadian Bacon with the English muffin is a sign of traitorous behavior. Another school of thought is that there was a guy named Lemuel Benedict who ordered a similar dish to battle a hangover in 2894 at the Waldorf Hotel in New York City.

If all this Benedict talk has youre wondering where to get your next eggy fix, check out this variety of Bennys for your next few brunch adventures (all dishes listed include two poached eggs).

Death by Tequila

Utilizing locally-grown organic ingredients, Top Chef contestant Angelo Sosa brings a touch of the South to North County with Eggs Benedicto, featuring sweet corn cakes with country ham, and hollandaise sauce. Hungry diners can also add avocado, chicken, crab, smoked salmon or steak for a surcharge.

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569 S. Coast Hwy 101, Encinitas, 760.782.2240, deathbytequila.com

Eggs Benedict from Death by Tequila. (Courtesy photo)

Snooze, an A.M. Eatery

Proclaiming The Art of Hollandaise, this perpetually packed spot features six benedict choices, from the classic to the funky, and even allows half-and-half orders for those who are indecisive about their morning munchies. For vegetarians, opt for the Avocado Smash Benny with green chili, parmesan cheese, vine ripened tomatoes, and smoked cheddar hollandaise. Meat lovers will relish the Steak + Eggs Benny with poblano cheddar grit cakes, asparagus, roasted mushrooms, tomato, smoked cheddar hollandaise and gremolata. Go Mexican with the Chile Verde Benny, with green chili sauced tortillas, melted cheese, choice of slow cooked pulled pork or barbacoa style beef, green chili hollandaise, pico de gallo, and Cotija cheese. Or make it New York style with the Lox-N-Latke Benny, with homemade crispy latkes, Lox style salmon, cream cheese hollandaise, fried capers, pickled red onions, and pistou. Watch out for seasonal specials, too.

Hillcrest: 3940 Fifth Ave., 619.500.3344; La Jolla: 8861 Villa La Jolla Dr., #509, 858.483.5556; Del Mar: 3435 Del Mar Heights Rd., D3, 858.703.5300, snoozeeatery.com

Meze Greek Fusion

Try the Spanakopita Benedict, a Mediterranean twist on the classic, featuring spanakopita (a traditional Greek puff pastry filled with fresh spinach), leeks, feta cheese, mint and dill, along with an Avgolemono sauce. Or opt with a meatier Filet Mignon Benedict, with marinated and grilled filet mignon, English muffin, and hollandaise sauce.

345 Sixth Ave., Gaslamp, 619.550.1600, gaslampmeze.com

Prosciutto Benedict from The Morning After. (Courtesy photo)

Cafe 21

Serving up two benedict options daily, the restaurant offers Shrimp Corn Cakes Benedict, featuring Kennebec potato, wild shrimp, sweet corn, mozzarella, and cilantro cream sauce, or the Turkey Benedict, with spinach and feta bread pudding, turkey, cranberry, and hollandaise.

Downtown: 802 Fifth Ave., 619.795.0721; Normal Heights: 2736 Adams Ave., 619.640.2121, cafe-21.com

The Morning After

Taking the simple benedict up a gourmet notch, this Gaslamp locale offers a Prosciutto Benedict with prosciutto, herb goat cheese, warm spinach, lemon hollandaise and grilled asparagus.

531 F St., downtown, 619.542.9664, themorningaftersd.com

Spanakopita Benedict from Meze Greek Fusion. (Courtesy photo)

Bankers Hill Bar + Restaurant

Seafood lovers will enjoy the Smoked Salmon Benedict on the restaurants own house-made English muffins with spinach, tomato and chive hollandaise. Or purists can opt for the Signature Eggs Benedict, also on house-made English muffins, but with smoked ham and hollandaise.

2202 Fourth Ave., Bankers Hill, 619.231.0222, bankershillsd.com

Madison

Adding a bit of green to this version, the University Heights hotspot features the Skirt Steak Benedict with asparagus, spinach, and avocado sauce on rustic toast. (Side note: Dont miss one of the inventive mimosa offerings such as the Black Magic with activated charcoal or the Blue Dream with spirulina.)

4622 Park Blvd., University Heights, 619.269.6566, madisononpark.com

West Coast Tavern

Known for a range on the brunch menu from vegan to carnivore, the Short Rib Benny dish will please meat lovers with braised short rib, spinach, cilantro, and roasted poblano hollandaise. Dont forget the bottomless Bloody Marys, mimosas, and house rose from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

2895 University Ave., North Park, 619.295.1688, westcoasttavern.com

Theatre Box

Who says you cant brunch and watch a movie at the same time? For earlier shows, film lovers can dine at Sugar Factory American Brasserie and choose from the Manhattan Eggs Benedict, with wild Alaskan smoked salmon, grilled asparagus, and herb hollandaise, or the more classic Sugar Factory Eggs Benedict, with Canadian bacon, grilled asparagus, and house-made hollandaise.

701 Fifth Ave., Gaslamp, 619.814.2225, theatrebox.com
President Trumps new special envoy for combating anti-Semitism has issued a broad definition for the prejudice that targets Jews.

On Thursday, his first day on the job, Elan Carr suggested that any organized boycott of Israel was anti-Semitic.

He also tossed out decades of U.S. and international policy by saying he saw no distinction between the status of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Arab villages that sit alongside them.

Under international law, the settlements, built on land claimed by Palestinians for a future state, are considered illegal. U.S. administrations for decades discouraged settlement construction, saying ownership of the land must be determined through negotiations, but several Israeli governments ignored the entreaties.

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Refusal to buy products from a Jewish settlement while being willing to buy from the Arab villages is anti-Semitic, Carr said.

We are going to focus relentlessly on eradicating this false distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, Carr told reporters at the State Department shortly after he was sworn in.

His position is tasked with monitoring the growing scourge of hatred of Jews around the world.

Carr is a former prosecutor from Los Angeles who ran unsuccessfully for county supervisor in 2016 and for a congressional seat in 2014.

His comments came after he was asked about a prominent Palestinian activist who said he was denied entry to the United States despite having a valid visa.

Omar Barghouti, a co-founder of the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, was not allowed to board a plane Wednesday at the airport in Tel Aviv.

He was scheduled to speak at several U.S. venues, including Harvard University and a progressive synagogue in Chicago.

Carr said he could not comment on the Barghouti case, but he made clear he considers the BDS movement, as it is known, anti-Semitic because it aims to strangle the state of Israel.

The BDS website says its goal is to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and erode international support for Israels settler project.

Carr said criticizing a governments policies was acceptable, but if Israel is criticized in a way that no other country in a similar circumstance is criticized, yes, that is anti-Semitism.

Critics say the White House has frequently tilted in favor of Israel on key political issues, such as sovereignty over Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Several of the presidents senior aides have sought to put together a peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians, but have yet to publicly release it.

For more on international affairs, follow @TracyKWilkinson on Twitter
British citizens who go to designated conflict zones could face up to a decade in prison under a new law.

The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 is meant to address the threat of individuals who go overseas to take part in fighting. The measure wont allow prosecutions retrospectively, so those who fought with the so-called Islamic State group are exempt.

The law enacted Friday will allow exceptions for journalists, aid workers and others with a good reason, such as people who want to attend a funeral.

Home Secretary Sajid Javid says the law gives police the powers they need to disrupt terrorist plots earlier and ensure that those who seek to do us harm face just punishment.

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Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Ukraines beleaguered president traveled to Germany and France on Friday ahead of a presidential runoff in which he is trailing a comic actor who is a political novice. His rival headed to Paris only.

Polls show Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko behind by a wide margin ahead of the April 21 runoff against Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Germany and France, which have led diplomatic efforts for years trying to ease tensions between warring neighbors Ukraine and Russia, are following the election closely.

Macron successively met with Zelenskiy and Porochenko at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris.

We had a very constructive conversation, Zelenskiy was quoted as saying by Russias state news agency as saying after the talks. It was a pleasure to meet Mr. Macron.

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He would not elaborate.

After his meeting with the French president, Poroshenko later tweeted that he was happy to meet with a sincere friend of Ukraine.

Macron didnt make any comment to the press.

In Berlin, Merkel received only Poroshenko. Her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said a meeting with Zelenskiy is not planned at present.

At a joint news conference in the German capital, Merkel deflected a question about the impression that she favors Poroshenko, arguing that she is in permanent contact with the incumbent and its important to keep talking on those topics despite Ukraines election.

We have built very close relations in the last few years, Merkel said, adding that implementing democratic change is a complicated process ... Ukraine has made progress here, but certainly is not at the end of the road.

Germany and France brokered a 2015 peace accord with Kiev and Moscow to stop the fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed separatists, but the deal is far from fully implemented.

We must continue on this path, because it is the only one I can see on which we can really make progress, Merkel said, adding that she favors continuing four-way talks between Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France.

There have been successes in some areas, but a great deal of work remains to be done on many things, so Germany will continue  independently of the outcome of the election  to support the positive and good development of Ukraine, Merkel said.

Poroshenko said he would be prepared to hold a summit immediately after the election.

Zelenskiy, for his part, said his top priority would be holding talks with Russia on ending the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko has campaigned on promises to lead Ukraine on a path to join the European Union and NATO. On his initiative, the countrys parliament added that commitment to the constitution earlier this year.

The president has cast himself as a seasoned statesman capable of standing up to Russian pressure and sought to denigrate his rival as a rookie who would become easy prey for the Kremlin.

Zelenskiy, who has never held a political office, has argued instead that his lack of political experience is an advantage because he has no ties to Ukraines corruption-ridden political elite. He has also pledged to keep the country on track to join the EU and promised to call a referendum on whether Ukraine should become a NATO member.

___

Moulson reported from Berlin. Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to the story.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Pope Francis knelt and kissed the feet of South Sudans rival leaders Thursday, in an unprecedented act of humbleness to encourage them to strengthen the African countrys faltering peace process.

At the close a two-day retreat in the Vatican for the African leaders, the pope asked South Sudans president and opposition leader to proceed with the peace agreement despite growing difficulties. Then he got down on his knees and kissed the leaders feet one by one.

The pope usually holds a ritual washing of the feet with prisoners on Holy Thursday, but has never performed such a show of deference to political leaders.

I express my heartfelt hope that hostilities will finally cease, that the armistice will be respected, that political and ethnic divisions will be surmounted, and that there will be a lasting peace for the common good of all those citizens who dream of beginning to build the nation, the pope said of South Sudan in his closing statement.

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The spiritual retreat brought together President Salva Kiir and opposition head Riek Machar. Also present were Kiirs three vice presidents. The pope kissed the feet of all of them.

South Sudanese Vice President Rebecca Nyandeng Garang said Francis actions moved her profoundly.

I had never seen anything like that. Tears were flowing from my eyes, she said.

South Sudan, gained independence from Sudan in 2011 and in 2013, the country plunged into a bloody civil war, which left at least 400,000 people dead.

The two-day Vatican meeting was held a month before the end of the shaky peace deals pre-transition period. On May 12th, opposition leader Machar is expected to return to South Sudan and once again serve as Kiirs deputy.

However, the agreement, which was signed in September in Khartoum, the capital of neighboring Sudan, has been met with delays, missed deadlines and continued fighting with key aspects still not implemented.

A military coup in Sudan on Thursday fueled worries in South Sudan that the toppling of longtime President Omar al-Bashir could derail the already fragile peace deal.

Sudan has helped us with the peace deal. We hope that the new system will also focus on the agreement, ensuring that it will be implemented, said opposition leader Machar, who attended an evening prayer vigil for peace, held at Romes church of Santa Maria in Trastevere.

___

AP writer Sam Mednick in Juba, South Sudan contributed.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Mexican authorities said a group of about 350 migrants broke the locks on a gate at the Guatemalan border Friday and forced their way into southern Mexico to join a larger group of migrants trying to make their way toward the United States.

The National Immigration Institute did not identify the nationalities of the migrants, but they are usually from Central America.

A similar confrontation occurred on the same border bridge between Mexico and Guatemala last year.

The institute said the migrants were acting in a hostile and aggressive way, and accused them of also attacking local police in Metapa, a Mexican village that lies between the border and the nearby city of Tapachula.

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The group of 350 pushed past police guarding the bridge and joined a larger group of about 2,000 migrants who are walking toward Tapachula in the latest caravan to enter Mexico.

Claudia Jaqueline Sandoval, 43, from El Progreso, Honduras, was walking toward Tapachula with her 6-year-old daughter. Another son and a daughter are already in the United States.

I have been HIV positive for 16 years, said Sandoval, but her reason for going north was not just medical treatment. It has been two years since I heard from my son in the United States, and money is scarce, she said.

There are already several groups of migrants in the southern border state of Chiapas who have expressed frustration at Mexicos policy of slowing or stopping the process of handing out humanitarian and exit visas at the border.

A group of several hundred Cuban, African and Central American migrants have been waiting at the immigration offices in Tapachula for documents that would allow them to travel to the U.S. border, where most plan to request asylum.

Some members of that group have scuffled with immigration authorities and broken windows at the offices in recent days, accusing officials of making them wait too long for papers.

And another group of an estimated 2,500 Central American and Cuban migrants have been stuck for at least a week further west in the Chiapas town of Mapastepec, also waiting for papers.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The owner of a San Francisco Bay Area home adorned with fanciful Flintstones characters says meddlesome bureaucrats are the only ones concerned with her Barney and Betty Rubble sculptures and other people derive joy from them.

Florence Fang spoke to the media for the first time Thursday as she filed her response to the city that is seeking to force her to remove the unpermitted installations.

City of Hillsborough officials have sued, calling the display a public nuisance and eyesore.

Hillsborough attorney Mark Hudak says residents are required to get a permit before installing such sculptures, regardless of the theme.

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At the end of her news conference, Fang linked arms with her attorney and the homes original architect, exclaiming, Yabba dabba do!

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Company has Equity Stakes and Supply Agreements With Three Major Retail Partners

Budget Announced Major Expansion of Cannabis Retail Licences in Canadas Largest Province

TORONTO, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aleafia Health Inc. (TSX: ALEF, OTC: ALEAF, FRA: ARAH) (Aleafia Health or the Company), is applauding the Government of Ontarios commitment to significantly expand private retail cannabis licences in Canadas largest province.

ROBUST PRIVATE RETAIL FOOTPRINT

Aleafia Health boasts a robust private cannabis retail strategy with national reach including equity stakes and supply agreements with three major retailers;

Emblem Corp. which is wholly-owned by Aleafia Health signed a five-year supply and preferred vendor agreement with Compass Cannabis Clinics ( Compass ) for Starbuds Canada in addition to taking an equity stake in Compass ;

with Compass Cannabis Clinics ( ) for Starbuds Canada in addition to taking an equity stake in ; Additionally, Aleafia Health owns an equity stake in leading cannabis retailer Fire & Flower;

in leading cannabis retailer Fire & Flower; And the Company also owns a 10 per cent equity stake in the emerging One Plant (Retail) Corp. a cannabis retail joint-venture with Serruya Private Equity

By allowing the private sector to operate in a regulated environment, the Government of Ontario is improving consumer access, stifling the illicit market of unsafe cannabis and ultimately improving public safety, said Aleafia Health Chairman Julian Fantino. Increasing the number of retail locations will mean fewer illicit dispensaries selling unregulated products. The Budget sends a clear message that Ontario is Open for Business, but only to responsible business owners who play by the rules and prioritize public safety.

For Investor and Media Relations, please contact:

Nicholas Bergamini, VP, Public Affairs

416-860-5665

IR@AleafiaHealth.com

About Aleafia Health:

Aleafia Health is a leading, vertically integrated cannabis health and wellness company with four primary business units: Cannabis Cultivation & Products, Health & Wellness Clinics, Cannabis Education, and Consumer Experience with ecommerce, retail distribution and provincial supply agreements.

Aleafia Health owns three major cannabis product & cultivation, two of which are licensed and operational. The Company produces a diverse portfolio of commercially proven, high-margin derivative products including oils, capsules and sprays. Aleafia Health operates the largest national network of medical cannabis clinics and education centres staffed by MDs, nurse practitioners and educators.

Aleafia Health maintains a medical cannabis dataset with over 10 million data points to inform proprietary illness specific product development and treatment best practices. The Company is committed to creating sustainable shareholder value and has been named the 2019 top performing company of the year by the TSX Venture Exchange.

LEARN MORE: www.AleafiaHealth.com




Did Western media and government hypocrisy bring about Julian Assanges arrest, or was it his bad manners?

The dramatic end to Julian Assanges asylum has sparked curiosity about his seven-year stay inside Ecuadors embassy in London that officials there say was marked by his late-night skateboarding, the physical harassment of his caretakers and even the smearing of his own fecal matter on the walls of the diplomatic mission.

It wouldve tested the patience of any host. But for tiny Ecuador, which prides itself on its hospitality and spent almost $1 million a year protecting Assange, it was also seen as a national insult.

Weve ended the asylum of this spoiled brat, a visibly flustered President Lenin Moreno said Thursday in a fiery speech explaining his decision to withdraw protection of Assange and hand him over to British police. From now on well be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it, and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments.

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Others, including former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who granted Assange asylum in 2012, said that while Assange violated the terms of his asylum and was a burden on Ecuador thats no excuse for throwing him to the lions.

Ecuador emerged as a safe haven for the WikiLeaks founder in 2012 as his legal options to evade extradition to Sweden over sex crime accusations dried up in the United Kingdom. On a June day, he moved into the countrys embassy near the upscale Harrods department store for what most thought would be a short stay.

Instead, the cramped quarters, where a small office was converted into a bedroom, became a permanent address that some likened to a de facto jail.

As the asylum dragged on, his relations with his hosts soured and his behavior became more erratic. Embassy staff complained of him skateboarding at night, playing loud music and walking around in his underwear with no apparent concern for others in the tiny embassy.

One senior Ecuadorian official described his room as a sovereign territory within a sovereign territory that none of the staff at No. 3 Hans Crescent could enter. But the stench from going weeks without a shower, and dental problem born of poor hygiene, was a constant nuisance, according to the official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he isnt authorized to discuss details of Assanges behavior.

Then there was the issue of Assanges poop, which authorities said he spread across embassy walls on at least one occasion in an act of open defiance showing how little he thought of his hosts.

When youre given shelter, cared for and provided food, you dont denounce the owner of the house, Moreno said Thursday to applause.

Within months of taking office in 2017, Morenos government scolded Assange again for meddling in international affairs by voicing his support for Catalan secessionists from the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Relations grew so prickly that last year Ecuador increased its restrictions on his Internet access and required him to clean up after his cat James. The rules said that if the feline wasnt properly fed and cleaned up after, it would be sent to the pound.

Assange tried challenging the restrictions in Ecuadorian court, to no avail.

More recently, as the feuding became more public, Ecuadorian officials say he started physically and verbally harassing his caretakers, accusing them of being U.S. spies looking to exchange information on WikiLeaks in exchange for debt relief for Ecuador.

Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said audio recording a few months ago captured a moment when Assange threatened Ambassador Jaime Merchan with pressing some sort of panic button that he said would bring devastating consequences for the embassy in the event of his arrest. Although it wasnt clear what he meant by the threat, authorities shared their concerns with British authorities and in carrying out the raid Thursday were careful to prevent Assange from returning to his room to execute any possible emergency plans.

The final straw for Moreno was WikiLeaks decision to spread information about a purported offshore account controlled by the presidents brother. Personal photographs of Moreno lying in bed, as well as images of close family members dancing, were also leaked, further incensing him.

Correa, however, criticized a double standard by Western media and governments who he said have been quick to condemn Assange for publishing sensitive information about U.S. national security interests.

Although Julian Assange denounced war crimes, hes only the person supplying the information. Its The New York Times, the Guardian and El Pais publishing it. Why arent those journalists and media owners thrown in jail? he said in an interview in Brussels.

He said that if Assange had been a Chinese dissident exposing Russian secrets instead of facing arrest and extradition hed be receiving awards right now in the U.K. and U.S.

___

Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia, and Goodman from Caracas, Venezuela. AP writer Mike Corder contributed to this report from Brussels.

Follow APs coverage of the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange here: https://www.apnews.com/WikiLeaks

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Authorities say a Rhode Island police officer was injured when his cruiser flipped over.

Woonsocket Chief Thomas Oates says the SUV rolled onto its roof at about 4 a.m. Wednesday.

Oates says the officer, whose name was not released, was taken to the hospital with neck and back pain. Authorities say the officer was conscious and alert. No name was released.

The crash remains under investigation, but the preliminary investigation indicates the cruiser may have struck two parked cars before flipping. One of the parked cars was towed from the scene.

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Speed is not believed to be a factor.

Copyright 2019 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Pete Buttigieg was home recently, back in the Indiana city where he was born and serves as mayor. He was at the library on Main Street, at a book signing for his autobiography, and everything seemed familiar, the way its always been.

Only not.

People looked at me like I was some kind of celebrity, he said, and it was in South Bend, and I was thinking, You guys know me. Weve been in this very same room and youve been yelling at me about neighborhood stuff. It was like I was a different person.

Thats what it is like to be the breakout star of the 2020 presidential campaign and, for the moment, the hottest thing in American politics.

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The Democratic upstart with the inscrutable surname (pronounced BUDDHA-judge) and platinum resume  Rhodes scholar, business consulting background, Afghanistan war vet  has raised an impressive $7 million, begun climbing in polls and become the unlikely pace-setter for engagement on social media.

If Democrats think the way to beat President Trump is through contrast, Buttigieg offers a stark one.

There is, of course, his youth. He is 37. It will be 2054, he tells audiences, by the time he is as old as the president.

Theres his husband, Chasten, who has become a top campaign surrogate, with nearly a quarter of a million followers of his lively Twitter account.

Theres Buttigiegs distinctly unopulent upbringing as the son of Notre Dame professors, his Mr. Rogers haircut and Howdy Doody grin, and, perhaps more than anything, his brainy yet straightforward manner of speaking.

The obvious challenge for Buttigieg is thriving beyond what he himself calls this flavor of the month phase. He needs to rapidly grow his campaign, to compete against better established candidates with larger and more sophisticated operations. He must brace for harsher scrutiny from voters taking second or third looks, and a more thorough going-over by a less fawning media.

But consider where hes started and what hes attempting: If elected, Buttigieg would be the youngest president in U.S. history, the first openly gay chief executive and the first candidate ever to go directly from City Hall to the White House. Building on unexpectedly early success leaves little room for complaint.

Its a good problem to have, he said dryly.

::

As he prepares to formally declare his candidacy Sunday in South Bend, the two-term mayor has become ubiquitous on radio and TV, making it easier to list the shows Buttigieg has not appeared on, among them Sesame Street and Game of Thrones, than all he has.

The world has come to know his favorite books (which include Ulysses and The Little Prince), the fact he learned Norwegian to read a novel, as well as 10 things Buttigieg cant live without (durable wool socks and blue felt-tip pens are two of them).

If it all seems a bit over the top, he wouldnt disagree. Its weird, Buttigieg acknowledged, shortly before appearing at the art museum in Manchester, N.H., a much larger venue than originally planned but still too small for the 200 or so turned away.

He swept in on a tidal wave of hype, and before Buttigieg said a word, hundreds shouted his name  the Pete part, anyway  then renewed the whoops and cheers when he strode up a ramp to give the throng a better view.

Im probably not what you picture when youre thinking about your next president, Buttigieg said.

Yes, you are! a voice cried, and when the audience roared, Buttigieg responded with a happy bit of understatement.

Well, he said, were getting somewhere.

For Democrats, all paths run through the House of Sharpton 

::

Buttigieg doesnt shrink from attacking Trump and his administration. In a CNN town hall, the March appearance that launched his vertiginous ascent, Buttigieg was scathing in his criticism of Indianas devoutly Christian former governor, Vice President Mike Pence.

How could he allow himself to become the cheerleader of the porn-star presidency? Buttigieg gibed. Is it that he stopped believing in Scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump?

When he refers to Washington as a grotesque but mesmerizing spectacle, Democrats have no doubt who and what he means. We cant take our eye off that show, he said, and hundreds of partisans packed into a Concord, N.H., bookstore laughed knowingly.

But its a mistake, he suggests, to think that sort of bombardment will win back the White House.

What matters is our everyday life, he said, and our everyday life is subject to the decisions that are being made by people with power over our life, and thats what elections are all about.

He isnt bound at the feet by a history of Washington politics. I think thats a healthy thing for the country right now. Kathy Biberstein of Maine, on Pete Buttigieg

Buttigieg delivers a short and punchy stump speech, heavy on Democratic catechism  the sanctity of Medicare, support for universal healthcare and legalized abortion, fighting climate change, reining in corporate political influence  but one largely devoid of specifics, beyond eliminating the electoral college in favor of a popular vote for president.

The omission, he says, is purposeful, serving as an implicit rebuke of past Democratic nominees who often seemed to emphasize bloodless 14-point programs over personal connection. (He doesnt mention Hillary Clinton or Al Gore, but both come to mind.)

He rejects the idea that you experience an election through kind of an escalating series of policy papers, as Buttigieg put it during an interview at a Frenchified cafe in downtown Manchester. Especially in a party where  80% of our messages are going to converge.

So many other things matter, he said, especially having a sense of who you are and what you care about.

The fact Buttigieg is quite unlike anyone who has ever contended for the White House  definitely the only left-handed, Maltese American Episcopalian gay millennial war veteran in the race, he jokes  leaves him thoroughly unfazed.

::

It may be presumptuous to seek the presidency a bare two years above the minimum-age requirement, but the youngest candidate in the Democratic field suggests he has greater standing than most.

This is, after all, the generation thats going to be on the business end of climate change for as long as we live, he told his Manchester audience. This is the generation that contributed most of the troops in the conflicts after 9/11 and has the most at stake in our figuring out a way to put an end to endless war.

This generation, if nothing changes, could be the first in American history to earn less than our parents if we dont do something different. So lets do something different.

For all his newness, Buttigieg is not above falling back on an old trope, the attack on Washington and denizens of its two major parties.

Better the hands-on mayor of a mid-sized city, he says when questioned about his credentials, than some elder whos spent decades marinating inside the Beltway. Better a problem solver than someone who worries about winning the day in some committee hearing. (Might he refer to the many congressional lawmakers vying for the nomination?)

Being gay isnt the centerpiece of his campaign. Hes not running to make a statement or champion LGBTQ rights. But Buttigieg doesnt downplay his sexual orientation. He tells audiences his marriage was possible by the grace of one vote on the Supreme Court, an observation that makes a larger point about Washingtons impact on the day-to-day lives of voters.

No longer a political winner: Silicon Valley is a minefield for 2020 hopefuls 

The combination of freshness and Middle American pedigree was intriguing enough that Maine resident Kathy Biberstein drove nearly five hours round-trip to catch Buttigieg in Manchester. While its far too early to commit to a candidate, the 60-year-old retired corporate attorney said, she appreciated someone who could think through ideas, not just throw barbs back at Donald Trump.

I still dont know if he can win, she said. But he isnt bound at the feet by a history of Washington politics. I think thats a healthy thing for the country right now.

Inevitably, there are stirrings of a Buttigieg backlash.

Buttiegieg with his husband, Chasten, and their dogs, Truman and Buddy. (Joshua Lott / Washington Post)

Critics on the left have questioned his liberal credentials, while the right-leaning Wall Street Journal editorial page questions his moderation. Hes been forced to defend his past employment with the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm and to fend off accusations of racial insensitivity as mayor.

(He said he had nothing whatever to do with McKinseys complicity in the opioid crisis  my specialty was grocery prices, but I also worked on renewable energy  and expressed regret for having used the phrase all lives matter in a manner some perceived as denigrating the Black Lives Matter movement.)

Like a community theater troupe that suddenly finds itself on the big stage, Buttigiegs campaign has struggled to keep up with his new fame.

He showed up more than half an hour late for his appearance in Concord and prompted no small amount of grumbling when he spoke for barely 15 minutes, then posed for pictures.

A rushed speech, a photo line and no Q&A is not the way we do things around here, said Sarah Ovenden, 55, a travel consultant who drove an hour from Guilford, Vt., to share with Buttigieg her concerns about the national rail system. Thats very un-New Hampshire-ish.

A campaign spokeswoman said the cramped, overheated conditions were ill-suited to a prolonged appearance and promised Buttigieg would return often and answer many questions.

The biggest one: Can he quickly scale up to transform himself from curiosity into a serious contender for president?

We can now, Buttigieg told reporters, and we have to.

mark.barabak@latimes.com

@markzbarabak


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AEDAS Homes has entered into an agreement with funds managed by Ares Management to develop 500 units in Madrid to in a Build to Rent (BTR) scheme





AEDAS Homes has entered the BTR market through a strategic alliance for the turnkey development of 500 units for rent across the Madrid region

This strategic alliance is through a fund managed by an affiliate of Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES), a leading global alternative asset manager.

AEDAS Homes is the first Spanish listed homebuilder to sign an agreement under the BTR scheme. BTR is expected to capture a significant market share of the newly built housing market thanks to its strong benefits to developers and residential property platforms

In April 2019.- AEDAS Homes entered into a strategic alliance through a fund managed by an affiliate of Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) for the development of approximately 500 build to rent homes in 4 projects located in Madrid.

AEDAS Homes consolidates its positioning as a leading pure homebuilder player in the Spanish market, securing and de-risking its Business Plan by accessing untapped demand of renters with no commercial risk.

The agreement will result in a 20% increase in the number of units launched to the market in 2019, bringing forward the launch of these projects 3 years and improving AEDAS Homes cash flow, EBITDA visibility and overall de-risking AEDAS Business Plan. The Agreement will also improve the supply and demand dynamics of the Madrid rental residential market, favoring the rental housing offer of the municipalities where the projects will be developed..

David Martinez, the CEO of AEDAS Homes states that, we have finalised this agreement at a moment in which the market is questioning the capacity of some residential to achieve their targets. At AEDAS Homes, we want to take this opportunity to confirm our Business Plan. This initiative will allow us to increase the number of units we launch onto the market this year by 20%, demonstrating the strength of our land bank and our management capacity

Deloitte, Garrigues and CBRE have acted as advisors in the Transaction.

The first development

The first project signed that AEDAS Homes will develop as part of this strategic alliance will be built in Torrejon de Ardoz, one of the most active real estate markets in the Madrid region due to its large population and dynamic economy, forming part of the most significant logistics corridor in Spain. With planning permission already in place, the construction is scheduled to start next month, and the project is expected to be delivered in 2021.

A business opportunity

This initiative is in addition to the projects we are planning to launch this year - it will accelerate our ramp-up phase and in turn, generate greater value for our shareholders by increasing the rate at which we turn over our assets, David Martinez explained. He pointed out that these types of developments make accessing housing easier  mainly for for young people - while meeting a growing demand for rental units and leading to greater market professionalism.

The CEO concluded by saying that given the concentration and location of our excellent land bank, we will explore further opportunities in the Build to Rent sector as long as the conditions bring value to our company. Any potential projects should not only improve our asset turnover and financial returns, but also must have development margins in line to what we would require from any new investment.

About AEDAS Homes

The developer AEDAS Homes became a listed company in Madrid on October 20, 2017, with a market capitalization of over 1.5 billion and is a leader in the nations residential development industry. The company plays a key role in the new cycle of the Spanish real estate sector, which must be marked by professionalism and adherence to rigorous standards.

AEDAS Homes has the highest-quality land bank in Spain, according to analysts, since most of this land is classified as ready-to-build. The company has a portfolio with more than 1.8 million square meters to build over 15,000 homes in the nations key real estate markets and economic centres, and their surrounding areas: the Centre, Catalonia, the East & Balearic Islands, Andalucia and Costa del Sol.

For more information:

https://www.aedashomes.com/en

AEDAS Homes corporate video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyf0TgNmyY

About Ares Management Corporation

Ares Management Corporation is a publicly traded, leading global alternative asset manager with approximately $131 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2018 and 18 offices in the United States, Europe, Asia and Australia. Since its inception in 1997, Ares has adhered to a disciplined investment philosophy that focuses on delivering strong risk-adjusted investment returns throughout market cycles. Ares believes each of its three distinct but complementary investment groups in Credit, Private Equity and Real Estate is a market leader based on assets under management and investment performance. Ares was built upon the fundamental principle that each group benefits from being part of the greater whole. For more information, visit www.aresmgmt.com.

Contact information:

Tinkle Communications Agency

Sarah Estebanez

sestebanez@tinkle.es

office: +34 91 787 70 80

mobile: +34 636 62 80 41

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Ferrari N.V. (NYSE/MTA: RACE) announced today that all resolutions proposed to Shareholders at the Ferraris Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the AGM) held today in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, were passed.



The Shareholders approved the 2018 Annual Accounts and a dividend in cash1 of Euro 1.03 per outstanding common share, totalling approximately Euro 194 million. The outstanding common shares will be quoted ex-dividend from April 23, 2019. The record date for the dividend will be April 24, 2019 on both MTA and NYSE and the dividend on the outstanding common shares will be paid on May 2, 2019. Shareholders holding the Companys common shares on the record date that are traded on the NYSE will receive the dividend in U.S. dollars at the official European Central Bank EUR/USD exchange rate of April 17, 2019.

The Shareholders elected all nominees directors of Ferrari. John Elkann and Louis C. Camilleri were elected as executive directors of Ferrari. Piero Ferrari, Delphine Arnault, Giuseppina Capaldo, Eduardo H. Cue, Sergio Duca, Maria Patrizia Grieco, Adam Keswick and Elena Zambon were elected as non-executive directors of Ferrari.

The Shareholders appointed Ernst & Young Accountants LLP as Ferraris independent auditor until the 2020 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders.

The Shareholders delegated to the Board of Directors authority to purchase common shares in the capital of Ferrari up to a maximum of 10% of Ferraris issued common shares as of the date of the AGM. Pursuant to the authorization, which does not entail any obligation for Ferrari but is designed to provide additional flexibility, Ferrari may purchase shares of its own common stock from time to time in the 18 months following the AGM, at a purchase price per share between, on the one hand, an amount equal to the par value of the shares and, on the other hand, an amount equal to 110% of the market price of the shares on the New York Stock Exchange and/or the Mercato Telematico Azionario (as the case may be), the market price being the average of the highest price on each of the five days of trading prior to the date on which the acquisition is made, as shown in the Official Price List of the New York Stock Exchange and/or the Mercato Telematico Azionario (as the case may be).

The Shareholders approved to cancel all special voting shares in the share capital of the Company, currently held by the Company in treasury. The cancellation may be executed in one or more tranches, such to be determined by the Chief Executive Officer.

The Shareholders further approved the awards (and the metrics and targets applicable thereto) to the Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer under the Companys equity incentive plans.

Details of the resolutions submitted to the AGM are available on the Companys corporate website at http://corporate.ferrari.com .

Concurrently with the AGM, the Company published its 2018 Sustainability Report. This Report was prepared in accordance with the GRI Standards, the main international framework for reporting on governance, environmental and social themes.

To view the 2018 Sustainability Report online, please visit the following link: http://corporate.ferrari.com/en/investors/results/reports .







1 The coupon number of the dividend is 4 (four).





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UofSCs 10th Truman Scholar named

S.C. Honors College junior receives prestigious scholarship

When Bennett Lunn saw the whole culture of his high school shift after changes were implemented during his junior and senior years, he began to realize the importance of education policy.

Lunn says those policy changes at the local level put a lot of stress on staff, and during his senior year, the school lost close to 20 teachers. That sparked an interest in education reform, equity and equal access in public education that has guided his studies at the University of South Carolina and resulted in his being named a 2019 Truman Scholar, one of the most prestigious national scholarships in the United States. The scholarship, named for President Harry S. Truman, is awarded to students who plan careers in public service.

The Truman Scholarship will allow junior Bennett Lunn to pursue a career in public service with a focus on education policy.

With 91% of Americans enrolled in public schools, public education is a part of our national identity as the great equalizer. Its wrong for some students to be disadvantaged by circumstances outside of their control, says Lunn, a student in the South Carolina Honors College pursuing a BARSC degree, in which he is able to create his own curriculum focused on jurisprudence and education policy.

Recipients of the Truman Scholarship receive $30,000 toward graduate school and the opportunity to participate in professional development programming to help prepare them for careers in public service leadership.

The Truman Scholarship will allow me to continue my own education and address the financing hurdle that so many students face, Lunn says. Im thankful for that opportunity, and I hope to be able to give back in a way that allows others to overcome similar obstacles.

Highly competitive, the Truman Scholarship is awarded to about 60 juniors annually. Lunn, one of 62 recipients in 2019, is the 10th Truman Scholar in South Carolinas history and the third in four years.

We are extremely proud of Bennett Lunn for being named our universitys 10th Truman Scholar. Its clear he exemplifies the values of this prestigious national fellowship, which include a firm commitment to leadership and service, a stellar academic record and a passion to drive positive change, particularly through the lens of education policy and reform, said UofSC President Harris Pastides.

A graduate of South Aiken High School, Lunn says he was stunned when he found out he was awarded the scholarship and is grateful for the support he received during the process from his family, the university, the Office of Fellowships and Scholar Programs and the Truman Committee.

I have incredible gratitude to the many people who have done so much for me in my time at USC, Lunn says. And a special thank you to my father, Martin Lunn, whos nurtured my desire to pursue a career in public service since I was 8, and to my sister, Kelsey, who has provided inspiration and support every step of the way.

Bennetts particular interest is educational reform with a specific focus on equity and equal access. Growing up in a small town in South Carolina and attending public school, Bennett witnessed firsthand inequities in the educational system and very early on came to understand the ways future opportunities expand or retract according to educational preparation. We are thrilled at the news of his selection as a scholar, says David Simmons, chair of the South Carolina Truman Committee.

Lunns advice to other students who have interest in applying for a competitive award is to be strategic but genuine.

If youre investing time and energy in things youre not passionate about, youre doing yourself a disservice, he says. At some point in the competition process, youre going to be asked a question that catches you off guard, and you need to be able to fall back onto who you are and respond genuinely.

While at South Carolina, Lunn has followed his own advice to be strategic in how he spends his time and built his resume. He currently is interning in House Majority Whip James E. Clyburns office as part of the South Carolina Washington Semester Program. He has worked as an advocate for students through his roles as a resident mentor in the Carolina Mens Community, and as the secretary of Student Academics, he helped develop new programs to complement the student advising process. Lunn has also served as president and vice president of the Euphradian Society, a historic literary society focused on developing leadership, virtue and oratory. He is a recipient of South Carolinas Deans Scholarship and the Watson Brown Scholarship and the Hadden Scholarship and has received several essay-based scholarships.

Education is one of the most transformative factors in an individuals life, and I want to work to ensure that every child is receiving as good of an education as possible. Bennett Lunn, Truman scholar

Beyond campus, Lunn has worked with the South Carolina Senate Judiciary Committee, the South Carolina State Grand Jury and the Rule of Law Collaborative, where he has researched and supported various justice sector initiatives. This spring through his involvement with the Rule of Law Collaborative, Lunn played a major role in the development of a one-day conference on issues of justice systems abroad in collaboration with the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, U.S Department of State.

Ive found the greatest thing about the university to be its people. Whether it was my advisers, my professors or my internship supervisors, Ive had many excellent mentors. Theres such a wealth of knowledge and kindness at this university that can be so incredibly valuable if you seek it out. My experiences with all these people have made me a better person and student, and theyve given me a focus on what exactly I want to do after I graduate.

That focus has led to his interest in public education policy reform with a focus on inequity in public schools, a career goal that the Truman Scholarship will help him pursue.

Education is one of the most transformative factors in an individuals life, and I want to work to ensure that every child is receiving as good of an education as possible, he says.

3 Truman Scholars in 4 years

South Carolina has had 10 Truman Scholars, including Bennett Lunn in 2019, Casey Brayton in 2018, Jory Fleming in 2016, Asma Jaber in 2007, Thomas Scott in 2006, Jeremy Wolfe in 2004 and Lara Bratcher in 2003.

Students seeking national scholarships are assisted by the Office of Fellowships and Scholar Programs. Theyre incredibly supportive and dedicated to the students they work with. Theyre with you every step of the way, making sure youre getting the help you need, Lunn says. He added that assistance by the Truman Committee was invaluable with application review, practice interviews and insights.

For more information, visit the Office of Fellowships and Scholar Programs website or call 803-777-0958.

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Hundreds of different bacterial species are living inside your mouth. Some are highly abundant, while others are scarce. A few of these oral bacteria are known pathogens. Others are benign, or even beneficial.

Scientists know the genetic makeup of about 70 percent of oral bacteria. What they don't know is which species would live the longest without nutrients in a "battle royale" -- so they decided to find out. The results help explain how certain dangerous bacteria are able to persist in a sterile hospital environment and infect patients.

In a paper publishing later this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from the Forsyth Institute, the J. Craig Venter Institute, the University of Washington, and the University of California, Los Angeles, describe their discovery that three closely related species of bacteria belonging to the family Enterobacteriaceae outlived all other oral bacteria in long-term starvation or "doomsday" experiment.

"A number of species from that family are known to cause infections in hospitals," said Dr. Xuesong He, an Associate Member of Staff at the Forsyth Institute and co-author of the study.

To create a battle of bacteria, researchers placed hundreds of samples of oral bacteria from human saliva into test tubes. The bacteria, which are accustomed to living in the nutrient-rich mouth, were starved in their new environment. Each day, scientists checked the samples to see which bacteria were still alive.

Nearly every bacterial species died within the first couple of days. But three species -- Klebsiella pneumoniae, Klebsiella oxytoca, and Providencia alcalifaciens -- survived the longest, with Klebsiella pneumoniae and Klebsiella oxytoca surviving for more than 100 days.

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Researchers were surprised to find that Klebsiella were among the champions of this bacterial combat. In their natural environment of the oral cavity, Klebsiella are considered an underdog. They account for only about .1 percent of all microbes in the mouth. But in an extreme environment deprived of all nutrients, Klebsiella reigned supreme while the bugs normally found in high abundance rapidly died off.

How did Klebsiella pull off such a feat? To answer this question, scientists analyzed the genome of the bacteria on the first day of "battle" and then again on day 100.

"When we look at the genome content, it turns out that these Enterobacteriaceae species have larger genomes than other oral bacteria, giving them the capacity to tap into more diverse energy sources," said Dr. He. The researchers found that the Klebsiella had undergone genetic mutations that may have allowed them to survive and continue to function, even without a food source.

Scientists describe Klebsiella species as opportunistic pathogens. In healthy people, they live in the mouth peacefully, crowded by other microbes and unable to grow or cause trouble. But outside the mouth, where few other bacteria survive, Klebsiella is king. They persist on hospital surfaces, like sinks or tables. If a patient with a compromised immune system makes contact with Klebsiella, that patient could develop an infection.

"Oral fluids like saliva are a rich source of bacteria and viruses. We want to understand how pathogens, that are typically rare, can become dominant and then also persist for long periods outside the body to be later transmitted," explains co-author Dr. Jeff McLean, a Professor at the University of Washington.

Infections by Klebsiella can result in a number of dangerous conditions including pneumonia and meningitis. One of the reasons Klebsiella infections are so dangerous is that Klebsiella are particularly adept at developing resistance to antibiotics, as well as transferring this drug resistance to neighboring bacteria.

"The finding that these Klebsiella species survive longer than their more benign neighbors in mixtures of saliva is likely to have a great deal of clinical significance, as multiple virulent outbreaks of antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella have been traced back to hospital sinks and drains," said Dr. Jonathon L. Baker, Ph.D. Baker is the Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Fellow in the Department of Genomic Medicine at the J. Craig Venter Institute and lead author of the study.

This research also helps illuminate a key ecological dynamic of bacterial communities.

"From a big picture point of view, this is a huge step forward towards understanding microbial social structure and ecology," said Dr. Wenyuan Shi, CEO and Chief Scientific Officer at the Forsyth Institute. "This study begins to address a fundamental question in biology -- how, evolutionarily, was a microbial community built, and what takes place as the community dies?"
Men taking medicines to reduce the symptoms of prostate disease may be more likely to develop type 2 diabetes, a study led by the University of Edinburgh and UCL suggests. Researchers say patients should continue to take the drugs, which are commonly prescribed to older men, but warn they may need additional health checks.

Researchers say patients should continue to take the drugs, which are commonly prescribed to older men, but warn they may need additional health checks.

The team stressed that current treatment guidelines do not need to change, based on their study of patient health records.

Men with enlarged prostates are commonly prescribed drugs called 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors that reduce the production of hormones called androgens. These help treat symptoms such as reduced urinary flow.

Previous short-term studies had suggested these drugs, which include finasteride and dutasteride, might affect metabolism and could reduce the body's response to insulin, an early sign of type 2 diabetes.

A team led by the University of Edinburgh and UCL studied health records from around 55,000 men in the UK, who had been prescribed 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors over an 11-year period.

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They found the drugs were linked to an increase in risk of developing type 2 diabetes of about one third. This means that in a population of 500 men on this treatment for 20 years, 16 extra cases of diabetes are likely to develop.

A similar effect was seen when the team repeated the study with health records from a group of Taiwanese men.

The findings suggest men taking these medications may need additional health checks to monitor warning signs of diabetes so their prescriptions can be altered if necessary.

The research, published in the British Medical Journal, was funded by the Edinburgh and Lothians Health Foundation. Researchers from the Universities of Dundee and Newcastle and National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan also contributed to the study.

Professor Ruth Andrew, of the University/British Heart Foundation Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh, and senior author of the study said: "We found that commonly prescribed medications for prostate disease can increase risk of type 2 diabetes. These findings will be particularly important for health screening in older men who are already typically at a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. We will now continue our studies to better understand the long-term outcomes so we can better identify patients at greater risk."

Dr Li Wei, Associate Professor from UCL School of Pharmacy and the first author of the study said: "By studying real word data from different ethnic populations across the UK and Taiwan, we found that men being treated with dutasteride or finasteride for benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) have a roughly 30 per cent increased risk of developing diabetes. This demonstrates the importance of how routinely collected healthcare data can be used to identify significant clinical links. It is important that all patients are made aware of the risks and benefits of their medications. In this instance, men should be alerted to the increased risk of diabetes if they are taking these particular medicines for BPH, and should speak to their doctor if they are concerned."

Mr Laurence Stewart, a Consultant Urologist at Spire Murrayfield Hospital and honorary consultant at NHS Lothian, who was not directly involved in the study, said: "These findings should not be a major concern for men taking 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor medications. As doctors, we may need to review the way we monitor our patients to make sure we are extra vigilant for early signs of diabetes. Anyone with concerns should speak to their GP or Urologist for advice on alternative treatments."
One of the most promising clean energy technologies just got even better. Researchers from the University of Delaware have developed the most powerful, durable hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cell components on record, which they recently described in the journal Nature Energy. The key ingredient? Membranes made from poly(aryl piperidinium) polymers.

Fuel cells work by converting chemical energy into electricity, and they are a promising source of power for eco-friendly vehicles. A few fuel cell vehicles already exist on the market, including the Toyota Mirai, the Honda Clarity and the Hyundai Nexo, and more fuel cell cars are under development worldwide. The fuel cells in automobiles require the use of an expensive catalyst material, usually platinum, to hasten the chemical reactions inside. These are called proton membrane exchange fuel cells, and they contain membranes made of a fluorinated polymeric material.

For nearly two decades, Yushan Yan, Distinguished Engineering Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been working to develop fuel cells that don't require platinum catalysts and instead employ cheaper metals, such as silver or nickel. These fuel cells contain hydroxide exchange membranes, which shift the environment within fuel cells from acidic -- the current standard -- to alkaline. The membrane of the fuel cell is what determines the pH inside.

"We can make components much cheaper by switching from proton exchange membrane fuel cells to hydroxide exchange membrane fuel cells," said Yan. In order to make these membranes, Yan has been on a quest to develop optimal, scalable materials. For this project, Yan enlisted the expertise of another electrochemistry expert at UD -- Bingjun Xu, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

Hydroxide exchange polymers consist of a long chain, or backbone, and a side chain with a positively charged ion, or cation. In Yan's past work, the side chains used in hydroxide exchange membranes contained very large positively cations, which made them stable but hindered their conductivity. The backbone material, on the other hand, was inexpensive, but not sufficiently stable.

"The question was: how do you create a new polymer that is stable both for the organic cation and the backbone at the same time, with a small cation?" said Yan.

Using poly(aryl piperidinium) polymers, the team developed hydroxide exchange membranes and ionomers with favorable properties, including good ion conductivity, chemical stability, mechanical robustness, gas separation and selective solubility. When the team tested these materials in a system with only a very small amount of platinum, the fuel cells fed with air had a peak power density of 920 milliwatts per square centimeter and operated in a stable manner at a current density of 500 milliamperes per square centimeter for 300 hours in air at 95 degrees Celsius.

These are the best power and stability stats yet for a hydroxide exchange membrane at above 90 degrees Celsius and the closest anyone has come to the 5000 operating hours that would be required to use this technology in a car.

The team developed a family of polymers, making this technology versatile. "There are a lot of knobs we can turn to deliver different properties," said Yan. "This is a platform technology."

The paper's first author is research associate Junhua Wang, who has been working on this project since 2011. "For this discovery to be made, he had to be very patient," said Yan. "He is a wonderful scientist, very creative and diligent."

The UD team also included research associate Yun Zhao, postdoctoral associates Brian P. Setzler, Santiago Rojas-Carbonell, Lan Wang, Keda Hu; doctoral student Lin Shi and adjunct professor Shimshon Gottesfeld. They also collaborated with three colleagues from Elbit Systems Limited, a fuel cell company based in Israel.

The research is based on work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy under Award No. DE-AR00000771.
A study published online by the journal Science, looked into why the global commitment towards the expansion of protected areas has not delivered the expected conservation benefits. The researchers propose a new target and a set of indicators that can galvanize global conservation efforts and lead to positive biodiversity outcomes.

In 2010, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) committed themselves to the CBD Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets. By adopting the plan and its accompanying targets, the signatories promised to limit biodiversity loss by protecting natural habitats and expanding protected areas to 17% of the world's land and 10% of the oceans by 2020.

Although substantial advances were made in terms of expanding the number and size of protected areas globally, biodiversity continues to decline both within and outside these areas. In addition, the placement and resourcing of the majority of protected areas have been poor, with many new protected areas being established in locations, which are often unimportant for biodiversity or not immediately threatened, and therefore have little conservation value. This trend also extends to the oceans.

The study, which was published online by the journal Science on Thursday, 11 April 2019, looked into why the global commitment towards the expansion of protected areas has not delivered the expected conservation benefits, and what a new proposal to address the issues with the previous target should look like.

The findings point to several major issues with Aichi Target 11, which has a particular focus on protected areas. These include the use of percentage area targets that focus on the quantity rather than the quality of what is being protected, and the use of proxy measures for effective conservation to ensure that protected areas deliver positive outcomes, rather than embedding conservation outcomes in the target and indicators directly. It also has a narrow focus on habitat representation as a proxy for the representation of all biodiversity, a surrogacy that, according to the researchers, is not supported by evidence and has resulted in large gaps in species conservation. In addition, the current protected area target is not easily scalable from the global to the national and sub-national level and this has caused the sum of the national protected area networks to result in an inadequate, poorly connected, and ineffective global network of protected areas.

"We propose a new target based on biodiversity outcomes rather than inputs or outputs that addresses all these issues, namely: The value of all sites of global significance for biodiversity including key biodiversity areas is documented, retained and restored through protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures," explains Piero Visconti, now an IIASA researcher and lead author of the study.

The new target calls for systematic monitoring across all global sites of biodiversity significance such as the Key Biodiversity Areas, to determine whether prevailing management practices are effective in retaining or restoring an area's biodiversity value. The team suggests employing methods like remote sensing techniques to assess issues like deforestation and evaluate impacts on and threats to species. This approach can be complemented with systematic on-site monitoring approaches that can be applied across large networks of sites using available databases and historical data to establish baseline trends. In this way, the proposed target links area-based conservation measures with the biodiversity status and trends that they are meant to maintain and improve. According to the researchers, this will allow countries to act locally by setting national and regional targets while framing their actions within a global biodiversity agenda.

"Protected areas are the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation -- they work if they are appropriately located and managed. For this to happen, we require targets that measure the biodiversity status and trends within protected areas, rather than targets that merely measure the extent of these areas. We have suggested a target and set of indicators that can galvanize greater, more efficient, and more effective conservation efforts for nature and for ourselves," Visconti concludes.

The signatory nations to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity will establish a new Strategic Plan 2021-2030 at the 15th conference of the parties of the Convention, to be held in Beijing, China in October 2020. They are currently seeking input from scientists and stakeholders on the draft strategic plan. This paper provides clear guidance on what the next target for protected areas should be in order to maintain or restore biodiversity in a good conservation status by 2030.
It is well-established that, on average, men outperform women on a spatial reasoning task known as mental rotation -- imagining multi-dimensional objects from different points of view. Men are not, however, born with this advantage, suggests a major meta-analysis by psychologists at Emory University. Instead, males gain a slight advantage in mental-rotation performance during the first years of formal schooling, and this advantage slowly grows with age, tripling in size by the end of adolescence.

The Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association, is publishing the findings.

"Some researchers have argued that there is an intrinsic gender difference in spatial reasoning -- that boys are naturally better at it than girls," says lead author Jillian Lauer, who is set to graduate from Emory in May with a PhD in psychology. "While our results don't exclude any possibility that biological influences contribute to the gender gap, they suggest that other factors may be more important in driving the gender difference in spatial skills during childhood."

Co-authors of the paper include Stella Lourenco, associate professor of psychology at Emory, whose lab specializes in the development of spatial and numerical cognition. Co-author Eukyung Yhang worked on the paper as an Emory undergraduate, funded by the university's Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods. Yhang graduated in 2018 and is now at Yale University School of Medicine.

The meta-analysis included 128 studies of gender differences in spatial reasoning, combining statistics on more than 30,000 children and adolescents aged three to 18 years. The authors found no gender difference in mental-rotation skills among preschoolers, but a small male advantage emerged in children between the ages of six and eight.

While differences in verbal and mathematical abilities between men and women tend to be small or non-existent, twice as many men as women are top performers in mental rotation, making it one of the largest gender differences in cognition.

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Mental rotation is considered one of the hallmarks of spatial reasoning. "If you're packing your suitcase and trying to figure out how each item can fit within that space, or you're building furniture based on a diagram, you're likely engaged in mental rotation, imagining how different objects can rotate to fit together," Lauer explains.

Prior research has also shown that superior spatial skills predict success in male-dominated science, technology engineering and math (STEM) fields, and that the gender difference in spatial reasoning may contribute to the gender disparity in these STEM fields.

"We're interested in the origins of gender differences in spatial skills because of their potential role in the gender gap we see in math and science fields," Lauer says. "By determining when the gender difference can first be detected in childhood and how it changes with age, we may be able to develop ways to make educational systems more equitable."

It takes most of childhood and adolescence for the gender gap in spatial skills to reach the size of the difference seen in adulthood, Lauer says. She adds that the meta-analysis did not address causes for why the gender gap for mental rotation emerges and grows.

Lauer notes that previous research has shown that parents use more spatial language when they talk to preschool sons than daughters. Studies have also found that girls report more anxiety about having to perform spatial tasks than do boys by first grade, and that children are aware of gender stereotypes about spatial intelligence during elementary school.

"Now that we've characterized how gender differences in spatial reasoning skills develop in children over time we can start to hone in on the reasons for those differences," Lauer says.

Meanwhile, she adds, parents may want to be aware to encourage both their daughters and sons to play with blocks and other construction items that might help in the development of spatial reasoning skills, since evidence shows that these skills can be improved with training.

"Giving both girls and boys more opportunities to develop their spatial skills is something that parents and educators have the power to do," Lauer says.

Lauer has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship position at New York University. Her PhD advisor is Patricia Bauer, a professor of psychology at Emory focused on cognition and child development.
A Cornell researcher, who is a leader in developing a new type of gene editing CRISPR system, and colleagues have used the new method for the first time in human cells -- a major advance in the field.

The new system, called CRISPR-Cas3, can efficiently erase long stretches of DNA from a targeted site in the human genome, a capability not easily attainable in more traditional CRISPR-Cas9 systems. Though robust applications may be well in the future, the new system has the potential to seek out and erase such ectopic viruses as herpes simplex, Epstein-Barr, and hepatitis B, each of which is a major threat to public health.

"My lab spent the past ten years figuring out how CRISPR-Cas3 works. I am thrilled that my colleagues and I finally demonstrated its genome editing activity in human cells," said Ailong Ke, professor of molecular biology and genetics and a corresponding author of a paper published April 8 in the journal Molecular Cell. "Our tools can be made to target these viruses very specifically and then erase them very efficiently. In theory, it could provide a cure for these viral diseases."

The CRISPR-Cas3 technology also allows researchers to scan through the genome and detect non-coding genetic elements, which make up 98 percent of our genome but have not been well characterized. These elements act as regulators that control the expression of proteins in coding genes, and they've been found to be pivotal for cell differentiation and sex determination.

CRISPR-Cas3 could be used to efficiently screen for non-coding genetic elements and erase long sequences of DNA. Once erased, researchers may look to see what functions are missing in an organism, to determine the role of that genetic element.

Yan Zhang, assistant professor of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan, is also a corresponding author of the paper. First authors are Adam Dolan, a graduate student in Ke's lab, and Zhonggang Hou, a research lab specialist in Zhang's lab.

CRISPR-Cas9 systems use a bacterial RNA as a guide pairs with and recognizes a sequence of DNA. When a match is found, the guide RNA directs CRISPR-associated (Cas) proteins to that precise string of DNA. Once located, the Cas9 protein snips the target DNA at just the right place. CRISPR-Cas3 uses the same mechanism to locate a specific sequence of DNA, however, instead of snipping the DNA in half, its nuclease erases DNA continuously, for up to 100 kilobases.

For the first time, Ke, Zhang and colleagues successfully deleted sequences of up to 100 kilobases of targeted DNA in human embryonic stem cells and in another cell type called HAP1.

While CRISPR-Cas3 holds the potential for a more impactful genome-editing tool than CRISPR-Cas9, the researchers are working to control how long a section they delete. "We can't quite define the deletion boundaries precisely, and that is a shortcoming when it comes to therapeutics," Ke said.

Other contributors included Sara Howden, a researcher at the University of Melbourne, and Peter Freddolino, an assistant professor of biological chemistry and computational medicine and bioinformatics at the University of Michigan.

A patent application has been filed for this genome editing tool through the Center for Technology Licensing.

Ke is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Zhang is funded by both NIH and the University of Michigan.
AEDAS Homes strengthens its outlook on 2019 deliveries with construction works completion at 80% on average

In the first three months of 2019, the company broke ground on 520 new units

The home builder closed out March with construction permits in hand for 35% of its 2021 deliveries, or 846 of the 2,438 units scheduled for that year

David Martinez, CEO of AEDAS Homes: Our first quarter operational results confirm the strength of our Business Plan





April 2019  AEDAS Homes, a leading residential developer in Spains new real estate cycle, has reported its first quarter operating figures in the monthly Newsletter sent to the investor community.

The company shared the progress being made on construction works on the 1,055 units it plans to deliver this year, which are, on average, 80% complete across the home builders developments. David Martinez, CEO of AEDAS Homes, stressed that this figure is clear confirmation of the companys operating capacity. He then pointed out that the fact that construction works are so far along shows the level of effort and hands-on management approach that our team of professionals takes, so that we will reach  as we have so far  all of our targets for scheduled deliveries.

The significant progress on construction works for 2019 is precisely what has allowed the completion of 6 developments (Galera Sun, in Estepona, Costa del Sol; Hacienda del Mar II and Brisas, in Alicante; Nou Eixample Mar, in Vilanova i la Geltru, Barcelona; and the first phases of Jardines Hacienda Rosario, in Seville; and Villas del Arco Norte, in Dos Hermanas, Seville), for a total of 603 units. Overall, the developer closed out the first quarter with 3,407 units under construction, having broken ground on 520 new units in the first three months of 2019.

Visibility on its business

Moreover, the developer continues to offer a high level of visibility on its business targets, having already sold 83% of the 1,055 deliveries slated for 2019. Looking ahead to 2020, 100% of the 1,986 units scheduled for delivery are now under construction, and 55.3% have been sold. In just the first three months of 2019, the company closed 300 sales.

Added to all this is the fact that the company now has in hand construction permits for 35% of the homes it expects to deliver in 2021, that is, as of 31 March it had already secured planning permission for 846 of the 2,438 homes to be delivered throughout 2021.

Our first quarter operational results once again confirm the strength of our Business Plan and guarantee that we are on the right track towards the run-rate targets we committed to: 3,000 units launched onto the market each year, from 2020 onwards, and 3,000 units delivered annually, starting in 2022, David Martinez, CEO of AEDAS Homes, explained.

About AEDAS Homes

The developer AEDAS Homes became a listed company in Madrid on October 20, 2017, with a market capitalization of over 1.5 billion and is a leader in the nations residential development industry. The company plays a key role in the new cycle of the Spanish real estate sector, which must be marked by professionalism and adherence to rigorous standards.

AEDAS Homes has the highest-quality land bank in Spain, according to analysts, since most of this land is classified as ready-to-build. The company has a portfolio with more than 1.8 million square meters to build over 15,000 homes in the nations key real estate markets and economic centres, and their surrounding areas: the Centre, Catalonia, the East & Balearic Islands, Andalucia and Costa del Sol.

For more information:

https://www.aedashomes.com/en

AEDAS Homes corporate video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkyf0TgNmyY
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers, in collaboration with Cornell University and University of Kentucky, have developed an artificially intelligent (AI) agent that can automatically generate natural language explanations in real-time to convey the motivations behind its actions. The work is designed to give humans engaging with AI agents or robots confidence that the agent is performing the task correctly and can explain a mistake or errant behavior.

The agent also uses everyday language that non-experts can understand. The explanations, or "rationales" as the researchers call them, are designed to be relatable and inspire trust in those who might be in the workplace with AI machines or interact with them in social situations.

"If the power of AI is to be democratized, it needs to be accessible to anyone regardless of their technical abilities," said Upol Ehsan, Ph.D. student in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and lead researcher.

"As AI pervades all aspects of our lives, there is a distinct need for human-centered AI design that makes black-boxed AI systems explainable to everyday users. Our work takes a formative step toward understanding the role of language-based explanations and how humans perceive them."

The study was supported by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

Researchers developed a participant study to determine if their AI agent could offer rationales that mimicked human responses. Spectators watched the AI agent play the videogame Frogger and then ranked three on-screen rationales in order of how well each described the AI's game move.

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Of the three anonymized justifications for each move - a human-generated response, the AI-agent response, and a randomly generated response - the participants preferred the human-generated rationales first, but the AI-generated responses were a close second.

Frogger offered the researchers the chance to train an AI in a "sequential decision-making environment," which is a significant research challenge because decisions that the agent has already made influence future decisions. Therefore, explaining the chain of reasoning to experts is difficult, and even more so when communicating with non-experts, according to researchers.

The human spectators understood the goal of Frogger in getting the frog safely home without being hit by moving vehicles or drowned in the river. The simple game mechanics of moving up, down, left or right, allowed the participants to see what the AI was doing, and to evaluate if the rationales on the screen clearly justified the move.

The spectators judged the rationales based on:

Confidence - the person is confident in the AI to perform its task

Human-likeness - looks like it was made by a human

Adequate justification - adequately justifies the action taken

Understandability - helps the person understand the AI's behavior

AI-generated rationales that were ranked higher by participants were those that showed recognition of environmental conditions and adaptability, as well as those that communicated awareness of upcoming dangers and planned for them. Redundant information that just stated the obvious or mischaracterized the environment were found to have a negative impact.

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"This project is more about understanding human perceptions and preferences of these AI systems than it is about building new technologies," said Ehsan. "At the heart of explainability is sense making. We are trying to understand that human factor."

A second related study validated the researchers' decision to design their AI agent to be able to offer one of two distinct types of rationales:

Concise, "focused" rationales or

Holistic, "complete picture" rationales

In this second study, participants were only offered AI-generated rationales after watching the AI play Frogger. They were asked to select the answer that they preferred in a scenario where an AI made a mistake or behaved unexpectedly. They did not know the rationales were grouped into the two categories.

By a 3-to-1 margin, participants favored answers that were classified in the "complete picture" category. Responses showed that people appreciated the AI thinking about future steps rather than just what was in the moment, which might make them more prone to making another mistake. People also wanted to know more so that they might directly help the AI fix the errant behavior.

"The situated understanding of the perceptions and preferences of people working with AI machines give us a powerful set of actionable insights that can help us design better human-centered, rationale-generating, autonomous agents," said Mark Riedl, professor of Interactive Computing and lead faculty member on the project.

A possible future direction for the research will apply the findings to autonomous agents of various types, such as companion agents, and how they might respond based on the task at hand. Researchers will also look at how agents might respond in different scenarios, such as during an emergency response or when aiding teachers in the classroom.

The research was presented in March at the Association for Computing Machinery's Intelligent User Interfaces 2019 Conference. The paper is titled "Automated Rationale Generation: A Technique for Explainable AI and its Effects on Human Perceptions." Ehsan will present a position paper highlighting the design and evaluation challenges of human-centered Explainable AI systems at the upcoming Emerging Perspectives in Human-Centered Machine Learning workshop at the ACM CHI 2019 conference, May 4-9, in Glasgow, Scotland.
Smiling really can make people feel happier, according to a new paper published in Psychological Bulletin.

Coauthored by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and Texas A&M, the paper looked at nearly 50 years of data testing whether facial expressions can lead people to feel the emotions related to those expressions.

"Conventional wisdom tells us that we can feel a little happier if we simply smile. Or that we can get ourselves in a more serious mood if we scowl," said Nicholas Coles, UT PhD student in social psychology and lead researcher on the paper. "But psychologists have actually disagreed about this idea for over 100 years."

These disagreements became more pronounced in 2016, when 17 teams of researchers failed to replicate a well-known experiment demonstrating that the physical act of smiling can make people feel happier.

"Some studies have not found evidence that facial expressions can influence emotional feelings," Coles said. "But we can't focus on the results of any one study. Psychologists have been testing this idea since the early 1970s, so we wanted to look at all the evidence."

Using a statistical technique called meta-analysis, Coles and his team combined data from 138 studies testing more than 11,000 participants from all around the world. According to the results of the meta-analysis, facial expressions have a small impact on feelings. For example, smiling makes people feel happier, scowling makes them feel angrier, and frowning makes them feel sadder.

"We don't think that people can smile their way to happiness," Coles said. "But these findings are exciting because they provide a clue about how the mind and the body interact to shape our conscious experience of emotion. We still have a lot to learn about these facial feedback effects, but this meta-analysis put us a little closer to understanding how emotions work."
DALLAS, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via OTC PR WIRE -- Alternet Systems, Inc. (OTC: ALYI) (ALYI) today announced an online presentation scheduled next week, on Thursday, April 18th, 2019 to provide details on the companys plan to create over $50 million in value from its African strategy. The $50 million in value will be a combination of revenue generation and asset value. Management has been in Kenya this week working on a combination of business agreements that are all part of one strategy to advance the companys electric vehicle business in Africa. Earlier today, the company announced the execution of a Letter of Intent (LOI) for a ReVolt Electric Motorcycle assembly plant in Kenya that includes an initial $20 million order of 2,000 ReVolt Electric Motorcycles. The company also announced a second LOI agreement that leads to a potential contract where ALYI secures a leadership role in a global electric vehicle institution that is expected to contribute substantially to the ongoing advance of electric vehicle technology worldwide. The second LOI would also lead to substantial revenue generation in addition to the $20 million order for 2,000 ReVolt Electric Motorcycles. Check back next Thursday, April 18th to learn more about how the two LOIs fit into ALYIs overall plan to create over $50 million in value from its African strategy.



ALYI is focused on offering varied, environmentally sustainable, energy storage solutions for targeted markets, including consumer electric vehicles and military applications. The first product category is lithium battery-powered motorcycles, to be followed by motorbikes. ALYI also has an ongoing hemp energy storage initiative leading its current efforts to introduce an alternative to lithium batteries.

Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur.

For more information, please visit: http://www.alternetsystemsinc.com

Alternet Systems, Inc. Contact:

Randell Torno

info@lithiumip.com

+1-800-713-0297


Nashville, TENN, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Trivest Partners (Trivest) has tapped the talent and experience of notable 30-year industry veteran Dan Cooper to lead the day-to-day business of the rapidly-growing Managed IT and Print Services provider Novatech, Inc. continuing an expansion and succession plan underway for nearly two years. Founder Darren Metz will continue his ownership interest and will take a new role as Executive Chairman.

Dan, with his vast experience of leading innovative technology companies on a national level, is perfectly suited to take Novatech to the next stage in its growth. We congratulate Darren on his success and reaching this important milestone in his career, said Jorge Gross, Partner at Trivest Partners.

Cooper joined Xeroxs Global Imaging Systems (GIS) subsidiary, Electronic Systems (ESI), in 1999 and was appointed to the position of President in 2000. Under his leadership, ESI, an early pioneer in providing managed IT services, grew to into a dynamic company and one of the largest within the GIS portfolio. In 2005, Cooper was promoted to the HQ of GIS, where he was responsible for overseeing the operation of companies across the U.S. He retired from GIS as President in August 2018. Prior to joining ESI, he spent 10 years with Danka Industries, where he served as a regional general manager.

I want to honor the culture of bold entrepreneurism that has led Novatech since its founding. Darren Metz did an incredible job in growing this enterprise and achieving great success with customers in the marketplace. I am looking forward to continuing to build on this foundation and leading this organization into the future, Cooper stated.

Empowered by the capital support of private equity firm Trivest Partners, Novatech will continue its aggressive expansion plan across the United States to become a national leader of Managed IT and Print Services.

As the integration between software, solutions, equipment and networks into the managed office ecosystem continues, Cooper brings a vision and background to Novatech which will propel further expansion of its footprint. Companies that stop listening to their customers and their employees are the ones who falter. By listening to these key voices, we can provide incredible experiences for our customers, going above and beyond in customer satisfaction. Im ready to get to work on the next exciting chapter here at Novatech and take the companys IT and managed office services throughout the US.





###

About Novatech, Inc.:

Novatech is an award-winning, Managed IT and Print Services provider offering on-site and remote support of network infrastructure and peripherals. Founded in 1998, Novatech has been recognized 12 times by Inc Magazine for being one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States. For more information, visit Novatech.net. Follow @novatechnet on social media for all the latest news.
WILMINGTON, Del., April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rigrodsky & Long, P.A.:



Do you own shares of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (NYSE: APC )?

Did you purchase any of your shares prior to April 12, 2019?

Do you think the proposed merger is fair?

Do you want to discuss your rights?

Rigrodsky & Long, P.A. announces that it is investigating potential legal claims against the board of directors of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation (Anadarko or the Company) (NYSE: APC) regarding possible breaches of fiduciary duties and other violations of law related to the Companys entry into an agreement to be acquired by Chevron Corporation (Chevron) (NYSE: CVX) in a deal valued at approximately $33 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, shareholders of Anadarko will receive 0.3869 shares of Chevron and $16.25 in cash for each share of Anadarko common stock they own.

If you own common stock of Anadarko and purchased any shares before April 12, 2019, if you would like to learn more about this investigation, or if you have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests, please contact Seth D. Rigrodsky or Gina M. Serra at Rigrodsky & Long, P.A., 300 Delaware Avenue, Suite 1220, Wilmington, Delaware 19801, by telephone at (888) 969-4242, or by e-mail at info@rl-legal.com.

Rigrodsky & Long, P.A., with offices in Delaware, New York, and California, has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars on behalf of investors and achieved substantial corporate governance reforms in numerous cases nationwide, including federal securities fraud actions, shareholder class actions, and shareholder derivative actions.

Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia and JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Platinum Group Metals Ltd. (PTM:TSX; PLG:NYSE American) (Platinum Group PTM or the Company) reports the Companys financial results for the six months ended February 28, 2019 and provides a summary of recent events and outlook. For details of the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the six months ended February 28, 2019 (the Financial Statements) and Managements Discussion and Analysis for the six months ended February 28, 2019 please see the Companys filings on SEDAR ( www.sedar.com ) or on EDGAR ( www.sec.gov ). Shareholders are encouraged to visit the Companys website at www.platinumgroupmetals.net . Shareholders may receive a hard copy of the complete Financial Statements from the Company free of charge upon request.



All amounts herein are reported in United States dollars (USD) unless otherwise specified. The Company holds cash in Canadian dollars, United States dollars and South African Rand. Changes in exchange rates may create variances in the cash holdings or results reported.

The Company is focused on completing a Definitive Feasibility Study (DFS) for the large scale, palladium dominant and bulk mineable Waterberg Project in South Africa (the Waterberg Project). The strong price outlook for palladium along with DFS optimization work have helped the Company to better estimate the potential mine scale for the Waterberg Project. Optimization work has determined that higher extraction rates for mineralized material are achievable by using tailings as backfill. See more details below in Outlook.

A technical committee of Waterberg JV Resources Pty Ltd. (Waterberg JV Co.) is overseeing the DFS with participation from all partners. A formal Mining Right Application has been filed and community consultation is ongoing. Power and water planning for the project is advancing well including work under a regional water co-operation agreement with the Capricorn Municipality and engineering and permitting work with power utility Eskom.

Impala Platinum Holdings Ltd. (Implats) made a strategic investment of $30.0 million in November 2017 to purchase a 15% stake in the Waterberg Project, from which the Company received $17.2 million for its 8.6% project interest sold. Implats may elect to increase its stake to 50.01% by additional share purchases from Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation (JOGMEC) for an amount of $34.8 million and a commitment to spend $130 million for development of the Waterberg Project. Implats will also have a right of first refusal to smelt and refine Waterberg Project concentrate.

Recent Events

Prior to April 2, 2019 common share purchase warrants representing 968,670 shares at a price of $1.70 each were exercised by holders. Proceeds to the Company totalled $1,646,739. The Companys two largest shareholders exercised approximately 91% of these warrants.

On March 7, 2019, the Company reported the transfer of a 9.755% interest in Waterberg JV Co. to Hanwa Co. Ltd. (Hanwa) by JOGMEC. Prior to the transfer JOGMEC held a 21.95% interest in the Waterberg Project. Hanwa was the successful bidder in a public tender process for Japanese companies conducted by JOGMEC. Hanwa is a leading Japanese trading company supplying a broad spectrum of products, including steel, non-ferrous metals, metals and alloys, food, petroleum, chemicals, machinery, lumber and many other items, to a diverse range of global customers.

On January 11, 2019, the Company paid $8.0 million to Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC (LMM) in partial settlement of a secured loan facility due to LMM. The amount paid represented net proceeds from the sale of 4.52 million common shares of JSE listed Royal Bafokeng Platinum Ltd. received by the Company in April 2018 upon completion of stage two of the sale of the Maseve Mine.

On November 16, 2018, the Company filed a National Instrument 43-101 technical report for an updated independent mineral resource estimate for the Waterberg Project. The report, entitled Technical Report on the Mineral Resource Update for the Waterberg Project Located in the Bushveld Igneous Complex, South Africa is dated October 22, 2018 (with the effective date of the mineral resources being September 27, 2018) and was prepared by Charles J Muller, B. Sc. (Hons) (Geology), Pr. Sci. Nat., of CJM Consulting (Pty) Ltd. A copy of the report can be found at www.sedar.com , at www.sec.gov and on the Companys website.

On October 25, 2018, the Company published an updated independent mineral resource estimate for the Waterberg Project on a 100% basis totalling 26.34 million ounces of platinum, palladium, rhodium and gold (together known as 4E) (242.5 million tonnes at 3.38 g/t 4E comprised of 63.04% palladium, 29.16% platinum, 6.37% gold and 1.43% rhodium), with 6.26 million 4E ounces recognized in the higher confidence Measured category. The updated resource assessment forms the basis for mine design, scheduling and capital cost estimation as part of the DFS. The Waterberg deposit is dominated by palladium and also contains copper and nickel. Inferred mineral resources are estimated at 7.0 million 4E ounces (66.67 million tonnes at 3.26 g/t 4E). The T zone Measured and Indicated mineral resources increased in grade from 3.88 g/t 4E in 2016 to 4.51 g/t 4E in 2018. All of the preceding was estimated at a 2.5 g/t 4E cut-off grade, which is the preferred scenario for the project.

On October 10, 2018, the Company announced that a recent Mining Right Application for the Waterberg Project had been accepted by South Africas Department of Mineral Resources. The application is supported by the Company and all of the Waterberg Project partners including Implats, JOGMEC and Mnombo Wethu Consultants (Pty) Ltd. The process of consultation under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act, 2002 and current Environmental Assessment regulations has commenced. Many public meetings have already been completed. Significant feedback from the meetings has been considered in the DFS designs. Local training and employment are key components of the project to maximize the value of the project for all stakeholders.

Results For The Six Months Ended February 28, 2019

During the six months ended February 28, 2019 the Company incurred a net loss of $9.5 million (February 28, 2018  net loss of $26.9 million). General and administrative expenses during the six-month period were $2.9 million (February 28, 2018 - $3.1 million), losses on foreign exchange were $0.6 million (February 28, 2018  $3.2 million) due to the US Dollar increasing in value relative to the Companys functional currency of the Canadian Dollar.

At February 28, 2019, finance income consisting of interest earned and property rental fees in the period amounted to $0.3 million (February 28, 2018 - $0.4 million), while a gain on marketable securities of $0.6 million was recognized in the current period (February 28, 2018 - $Nil). Loss per share for the period amounted to $0.32 as compared to a loss of $1.65 per share for the six months ended February 28, 2018.

Accounts receivable at February 28, 2019 totalled $0.2 million (February 28, 2018 - $2.8 million) while accounts payable and accrued liabilities amounted to $3.7 million (February 28, 2018 - $10.8 million). Accounts receivable were comprised of mainly of amounts receivable for value added taxes repayable to the Company in South Africa and amounts due from joint venture partners and related parties. Accounts payable at February 28, 2019 related mostly to ongoing work at the Waterberg Project with the decrease as compared to February 28, 2018 being primarily due to settlement of payables related to mine closure costs.

Total expenditures on the Waterberg Project, before partner reimbursements, for the six-month period were approximately $5.1 million (February 28, 2018 - $3.9 million). At February 28, 2019, $36 million in accumulated net costs had been capitalized to the Waterberg Project. Total expenditures by all parties on the property since inception are approximately $67 million.

For more information on mineral properties, see Note 4 of the Financial Statements.

Outlook

The Companys key business objective is to advance the Waterberg Project to development. The Waterberg project is dominated by palladium at a time when palladium supply is estimated to be in deficit. Mines with palladium as their primary economic mineral are rare.

Waterberg JV Co. is advancing the Waterberg Project to completion of a DFS. The DFS is being managed by Platinum Group and a technical committee with comprehensive input at all levels from the Waterberg Project partners.

The positive long-term market outlook for platinum group elements and the value increase created by higher extraction per mining level supports the DFS design change to utilize backfill. Backfill utilizes tailings and concrete to fill in mined out stopes to allow the extraction of mineralized material that would otherwise be left as support pillars. The Company expects that the mining extraction of pillars in the DFS versus the PFS design will have a positive effect on tonnes and ounces for reserves. Ancillary benefits include a reduced tailings foot print, as tailings are put underground in backfill, and increased safety and certainty on the production profile. Two twin declines systems are now planned in the working DFS design rather than three in the PFS design.

The DFS owners team, including representatives from Impala Platinum, have visited Canadian bulk underground mining operations and have worked closely with the independent mining engineering team at Stantec.

As a result of the DFS design optimization described above, additional time and budget are required to complete the DFS. Waterberg JV Co. has approved a change order for Rand 21.5 million (approximately $1.51 million) to fund the required work. The DFS is now targeted for completion in August 2019. The additional time and investment are warranted to achieve the production profile improvements in the DFS that are indicated by the design optimizations described above.

An environmental authorization and mining right application are also being advanced. Public consultation has occurred in a positive climate of mutual respect. Local involvement and personnel training are a key part of the design for a modern, safe, responsible mine operating at world class standards. The DFS team is working with NORCAT, a Sudbury, Canada based global training specialist, to incorporate local skills development into the DFS.

We are also pleased to report advancement on our co-operation agreement with the Capricorn Municipality for the supply of water to the project and planned increases in water delivery to the local community as a component of the mine plan.

The Waterberg JV Co. team is working very well together with value-add contributions coming from all partners, including senior team members from Impala working with Platinum Group Metals as Manager of the DFS. We look forward to the finalization of the DFS.

In the near term, the Companys liquidity will be constrained until financing has been obtained to repay and discharge remaining amounts of secured debt and for working capital purposes. The Company remains focussed on completing the Waterberg DFS. At the same time the Company has started reviewing several new business opportunities focused on platinum group element metals, including extraction opportunities and potential new uses. The Company will continue to work closely with its major shareholders and lenders. The Company continues to actively assess corporate and strategic alternatives with advisor BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc.

Qualified Person

R. Michael Jones, P.Eng., the Companys President, Chief Executive Officer and a shareholder of the Company, is a non-independent qualified person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects and is responsible for preparing the technical information contained in this news release. He has verified the data by reviewing the detailed information of the geological and engineering staff and independent qualified person reports as well as visiting the Waterberg Project site regularly.

About Platinum Group Metals Ltd.

Platinum Group is the operator of the Waterberg Project, a bulk mineable underground palladium deposit in northern South Africa. Waterberg was discovered by the Company and has the potential to be a low-cost producer of palladium, platinum, rhodium and gold.

On behalf of the Board of

Platinum Group Metals Ltd.

Frank R. Hallam

CFO, Corporate Secretary and Director

For further information contact:

R. Michael Jones, President

or Kris Begic, VP, Corporate Development

Platinum Group Metals Ltd., Vancouver

Tel: (604) 899-5450 / Toll Free: (866) 899-5450

www.platinumgroupmetals.net

Disclosure

The Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE American have not reviewed and do not accept responsibility for the accuracy or adequacy of this news release, which has been prepared by management.

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws and forward-looking statements within the meaning of U.S. securities laws (collectively forward-looking statements). Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: believe, expect, anticipate, intend, estimate, plans, postulate and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. All statements that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, without limitation, statements regarding the completion of a DFS by approximately July 31, 2019; Waterberg Projects potential to be a bulk mineable, low cost, dominantly palladium mine producing platinum and palladium based on a fully mechanized mine plan; the potential for the Company to obtain financing to repay and discharge remaining amounts of secured debt and for working capital purposes; new business opportunities; and corporate and strategic alternatives. Mineral resource and reserve estimates are also forward-looking statements because such estimates involve estimates of mineralization that may be encountered in the future if a production decision is made, as well as estimates of future costs and values. Although the Company believes the forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, it can give no assurance that the expectations and assumptions in such statements will prove to be correct. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including the Companys inability to generate sufficient cash flow or raise sufficient additional capital to make payment on its indebtedness, and to comply with the terms of such indebtedness; additional financing requirements; the Companys credit facility (the LMM Facility) with Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC (LMM) is, and any new indebtedness may be, secured and the Company has pledged its shares of Platinum Group Metals (RSA) Proprietary Limited (PTM RSA), and PTM RSA has pledged its shares of Waterberg JV Resources (Pty) Limited (Waterberg JV Co.) to Liberty Metals & Mining Holdings, LLC, a subsidiary of LMM, under the LMM Facility, which potentially could result in the loss of the Companys interest in PTM RSA and the Waterberg Project in the event of a default under the LMM Facility or any new secured indebtedness; the Companys history of losses and negative cash flow; the Companys ability to continue as a going concern; the Companys properties may not be brought into a state of commercial production; uncertainty of estimated production, development plans and cost estimates for the Waterberg Project; discrepancies between actual and estimated mineral reserves and mineral resources, between actual and estimated development and operating costs, between actual and estimated metallurgical recoveries and between estimated and actual production; fluctuations in the relative values of the U.S. Dollar, the Rand and the Canadian Dollar; volatility in metals prices; the failure of the Company or the other shareholders to fund their pro rata share of funding obligations for the Waterberg Project; any disputes or disagreements with the other shareholders of Waterberg JV Co., Mnombo Wethu Consultants (Pty) Ltd. or Maseve; completion of a DFS for the Waterberg Project is subject to economic analysis requirements; the ability of the Company to retain its key management employees and skilled and experienced personnel; conflicts of interest; litigation or other administrative proceedings brought against the Company; actual or alleged breaches of governance processes or instances of fraud, bribery or corruption; the Company may become subject to the U.S. Investment Company Act; exploration, development and mining risks and the inherently dangerous nature of the mining industry, and the risk of inadequate insurance or inability to obtain insurance to cover these risks and other risks and uncertainties; property and mineral title risks including defective title to mineral claims or property; changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls, regulations and political or economic developments in Canada and South Africa; equipment shortages and the ability of the Company to acquire necessary access rights and infrastructure for its mineral properties; environmental regulations and the ability to obtain and maintain necessary permits, including environmental authorizations and water use licences; extreme competition in the mineral exploration industry; delays in obtaining, or a failure to obtain, permits necessary for current or future operations or failures to comply with the terms of such permits; risks of doing business in South Africa, including but not limited to, labour, economic and political instability and potential changes to and failures to comply with legislation; the Companys common shares may be delisted from the NYSE American or the TSX if it cannot maintain or regain compliance with the applicable listing requirements; and other risk factors described in the Companys most recent Form 20-F annual report, annual information form and other filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators, which may be viewed at www.sec.gov and www.sedar.com, respectively. Proposed changes in the mineral law in South Africa if implemented as proposed would have a material adverse effect on the Companys business and potential interest in projects. Any forward-looking statement 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 statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise.

Estimates of mineralization and other technical information included herein have been prepared in accordance with National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects (NI 43-101). The definitions of proven and probable 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 Industry Guide 7. In addition, the terms mineral resource and measured 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 historically have not been permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC pursuant to SEC Industry Guide 7. 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. Accordingly, descriptions of the Companys mineral deposits in this press release may not be comparable to similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of SEC Industry Guide 7.
LOS ANGELES, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Schall Law Firm , a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces the filing of a class action lawsuit against Mobile TeleSystems 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.



Investors who purchased the Company's shares between March 19, 2014 and March 7, 2019, inclusive (the ''Class Period''), are encouraged to contact the firm before May 20, 2019.

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 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 brian@schallfirm.com .

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.

According to the Complaint, the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. Mobile TeleSystems and a subsidiary engaged in a scheme to pay $420 million in bribes to officials in Uzbekistan. The Company disclosed in 2014 that it was the target of an investigation by the SEC and DOJ for its operations in Uzbekistan, and knew or should have known it would be subject to fines based on its business practices there. The Company was eventually forced to pay approximately $850 million in criminal penalties related to the bribery scheme. Based on these facts, the Companys public statements were false and materially misleading. When the market learned the truth about Mobile TeleSystems, investors suffered damages.

Join the case to recover your losses.

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.

CONTACT:

The Schall Law Firm

Brian Schall, Esq.,

Sherin Mahdavian, Esq.,

www.schallfirm.com

Office: 310-301-3335

Cell: 424-303-1964

info@schallfirm.com

SOURCE:

The Schall Law Firm
TORONTO, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Wayland Group (CSE:WAYL) (FRANKFURT: 75M) (OTCQB:MRRCF) (Wayland or the Company) today announced that it has completed the drawdown of the fifth facility under its previously-announced subscription agreement with Alpha Blue and has issued the corresponding Convertible Debenture and Facility Warrants. Please refer to the Companys news release of February 20, 2019 for further details.



About Wayland Group



Wayland is a vertically integrated cultivator and processor of cannabis. The Company was founded in 2013 and is based in Burlington, Ontario, Canada and Munich, Germany, with production facilities in Langton, Ontario where it operates a cannabis cultivation, extraction, formulation, and distribution business under federal licenses from the Government of Canada. The Company also has production operations in Dresden, Saxony, Germany, Regensdorf, Switzerland and, Allesandria, Piedmont, Italy. Wayland will continue to pursue new opportunities globally, including the consummation of its previously announced transactions in the United Kingdom, Australia, Colombia, and Argentina, in its effort to enhance lives through cannabis.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release

For more information about Wayland, please visit our website at www.waylandgroup.com

Contact Information:

Investor Relations

Graham Farrell

VP, Communications

Graham.Farrell@waylandgroup.com

647-643-7665

Media Inquiries: media@waylandgroup.com

Corporate Headquarters (Canada)

Wayland Group Corp. (Toronto)

845 Harrington Court, Unit 3

Burlington Ontario L7N 3P3

Canada

289-288-6274

European Headquarters (Germany)

Wayland (Deutschland) GmbH

c/o Wayland

Max Joseph Str. 7

80333 Munich
San Francisco Mayor London Breed had come to the Embarcadero to explain to a largely hostile crowd why she wanted to locate a Navigation Center for the homeless in the neighborhood. Just before she was shouted down, there was a telling moment.

Straining to be heard over cries of, Build it somewhere else! Build it at City Hall!, Breed replied, Im sorry this issue has divided this community.

That may have been an understatement.

The proposal to build the citys largest Navigation Center on a 2.3-acre parking lot across from Piers 30-32 has inspired a bitter backlash from waterfront residents who fear the plan will turn their neighborhood into a dirty, dangerous place.

Now Playing: Mayor Breed addresses media after tense community meeting Video: San Francisco Chronicle

Their opposition has been met with raw antipathy across the city, including from other waterfront residents who see the center as a moral imperative. Addressing San Franciscos homelessness crisis, they say, requires using any viable site to shelter people.

The issue has accentuated long-standing divisions within District Six, a piece of San Francisco that can be defined by its stark differences  a place where shimmering new condominiums and office towers cast long shadows over some of the citys poorest and neediest residents.

District Six is just lines on a map. This neighborhood has almost nothing to do with the Tenderloin, said Matt Carson, who supports the Navigation Center, which would be built a block from his home in Rincon Hill.

The district is home to what is by far the citys largest population of homeless people and the biggest concentration of homeless shelters and services. Thats become a major point of contention in the debate over the Embarcadero Navigation Center, and one that spurred District Six Supervisor Matt Haneys plan to introduce legislation this week to compel the other board members to open shelters and Navigation Centers in their districts over the next 30 months.

Many waterfront residents argue that since District Six has already shouldered more than its fair share of homeless shelters and services, city officials ought to build the center elsewhere. For that, they have been slapped with whats become one of the most disparaging labels in San Franciscos current political climate: NIMBY  short for not in my backyard.

Were not NIMBYs. Were compassionate, but weve been the dumping ground, said Robert Rossi, who opposes placing a Navigation Center on the parking lot at Seawall Lot 330 in his neighborhood.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

That argument doesnt sit well with Mike Sizemore, who lives just over a mile away from Seawall Lot 330 and kitty-corner from another District Six Navigation Center at Fifth and Bryant streets. Sizemore also wants to see homeless services spread across the city, but said the waterfront opponents were using the districts boundaries to launder a revulsion at having a shelter so close to home.

It frustrates me so much that they take ownership of fights that they would never fight, he said. This idea that theyre champions of homelessness services is just complete hypocrisy. Do you think any of these people are going to be in the middle of the Tenderloin, saying Glide (Memorial Church) should get more funding?

If were actually concerned about homelessness, we should be talking about how we start, not stop projects.

Sizemore credits the Navigation Center near his home with creating a stabilizing presence in the neighborhood.

People say, Oh, Its going to bring crime and people loitering. I see in real time how well that thing is managed. If youre concerned about safety, this is not the thing to be worried about, he said.

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle

At the Civic Center Hotel, a Navigation Center on 12th Street, a light breeze on Friday afternoon stirred up small cyclones of trash. Jason Woods, who works at a paratransit organization perhaps 100 yards from the shelter, agreed the street could be cleaner but said hes never had a problem with the centers residents.

They dont bother anybody, he said. Theyre actually pretty nice. If you talk to them theyll make conversation with you.

Trei Johnson, who works at a general contracting firm next door to the center, said hes never felt unsafe, but added that tents tend to mushroom on both sides of 12th Street, particularly on the weekends.

Travel 2 miles east and the environment and attitudes change drastically. A community coalition called Safe Embarcadero has sprung up to protest the waterfront Navigation Center  their slogan is stop the mega-shelter. The group has raised more than $100,000 to fund legal action against the city if the center is built. A rival campaign to support the center has raised $175,000.

The opponents argue that the Embarcadero neighborhood, teeming with tourists, families and seniors, is ill-suited for a shelter. Many are also worried about public safety, and that the centers homeless residents will bring crime, drug use and trash to the community.

Assurances from city officials, including the Police Department, that the center will be kept safe and clean meet pushback from residents stories of harrowing altercations with people they believed to be homeless.

Jana Asenbrennerova / Special to The Chronicle

Jeff Kositsky, executive director of the citys Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, has said repeatedly that Navigation Centers have generally made neighborhoods safer and that crime and mental health issues shouldnt be conflated with homelessness.

Many critics also say they felt ambushed by the mayors proposal and wished her administration had done more outreach before announcing a plan to build the center. Breeds administration and Haney have conducted dozens of community meetings, large and small, over the past month.

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There are better places and there are worse places, and its hard to imagine a worse place to build (a Navigation Center) than on the Embarcadero, in a residential area, said Wallace Lee, a waterfront resident affiliated with Safe Embarcadero.

Weve been called NIMBYs, or that we dont care about the homeless. There have been all these moral judgments. I want to stress, its not about that, Lee said. This is a concern about crime, public safety and drug use. When you see the police drive by drug users in the city and not doing anything, you wonder, whats the point?

Gabrielle Lurie / The Chronicle 2018

The vigorous opposition  including the threat of a legal fight to block the center  and Haneys proposal also raise questions about future fights around homelessness services.

We need to have a more equitable distribution of services and shelter and housing in this city, said Haney, who supports the Embarcadero shelter even though his district already has five adult shelters and two Navigation Centers. The difficulty of finding viable spaces for shelters  officials turn down spaces for all kinds of reasons, including cost and safety concerns  make his plan an audacious one.

If my friend, (District Two Supervisor) Catherine Stefani finds a site on Lombard, and she can go out there and say, This is going to be put here, and I support it. But its part of a larger plan, and all of my colleagues on the board are a part of this ... I think that would help her, and make everyone feel like they werent targeted, Haney said. Theyll feel there was some reason behind it.

Breed has set a goal of 1,000 new shelter beds by the end of 2020. So far, shes opened 212. Homelessness officials estimate there are more than 4,000 people living on San Francisco streets; more than 1,100 are on the citys shelter waiting list each night. One recent count on the waterfront found 179 people sleeping outdoors, according to Kositsky.

Breed wants the Embarcadero center built by this summer and plans to have it operate for four years. She and her staff say theyre willing to negotiate over the length of the lease and, to an extent, the size of the center. The lot is owned by the Port of San Francisco, which means Breed needs the Port Commissions approval to lease the land and build the center.

Nearly two months of consternation over the center will come to a head on April 23 at San Franciscos Ferry Building. Thats when the Port Commission, whose five members are appointed by the mayor, will vote on leasing the lot.

At least three commissioners appear poised to give the go-ahead: President Kimberly Brandon, Vice President Willie Adams and Commissioner Victor Makras. Makras said hell support the center, but wants the city to have alternative locations at the ready should the port receive a money-making proposal for the site, long the target for developers.

Breed has signaled her willingness to confront controversy and weather backlash over her policies on homelessness, which, she says, she was elected to curb.

Building this Navigation Center ... is an important part of our work to address homelessness, which we know is the number one challenge facing our city, she said in a statement. If we are going to make a difference on homelessness in our city, we need solutions to help people off our streets and into housing and services.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
Two California business interest groups and an anti-tax organization have banded together to oppose San Franciscos Proposition C, the November ballot measure that taxes the citys biggest corporations to fund housing and homelessness services.

The California Business Roundtable, the California Business Properties Association and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association have filed court documents arguing that San Francisco officials shouldnt have allowed the measure to pass with a simple majority vote, which they argue violates the state Constitution.

Prop. C passed in November with more than 61 percent of the vote, thanks to a broad coalition of supporters and a major jolt of publicity  plus financial backing  from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who called the measure a moral imperative for addressing the citys homelessness crisis.

But for decades, special taxes like the one Prop. C created  funds that are dedicated to a specific purpose  required a two-thirds supermajority to pass. The Howard Jarvis Association played an integral role in passing the two amendments to the state Constitution that set that standard: Propositions 13 and 218.

There is no ambiguity in Props. 13 and 218. Voters clearly intended to require super-majority support for special taxes passed at the local level. Rex Hime, president of the California Business Properties Association, said in a joint statement from the three organizations. Prop. C is an illegal tax that violates decades of constitutionally protected taxpayer rights in California.

But in 2017, a pivotal memo from the San Francisco city attorneys office lowered the bar. The memo interpreted a state Supreme Court ruling from that same year to mean that ballot initiatives to raise taxes brought to the ballot by citizens  not government officials  required only a simple majority to pass.

At the heart of the courts ruling in whats known as the City of Upland case is the notion that ballot measures generated by citizens arent subject to the same constraints as those generated by local governments.

In San Francisco, three ballot measures to levy special taxes  including Prop. C  have been passed with a simple majority since the June 2018 election. All are facing legal challenges over the citys use of that lower threshold.

In total, the measures will bring in up to $500 million annually for child care, teacher pay raises and homelessness services. But until the courts decide whether the city passed the measures legally, which is expected to take years, all of that money will be held in reserve: The city will collect the taxes, but none of it will be spent.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera has been steadfast in saying that his office will prevail in all three of the legal battles it now faces over the ballot measures and the threshold used to pass them.

The Howard Jarvis association is also leading the lawsuit against Junes Proposition C, which raises taxes on commercial rents to pay for child care services and early education. Proposition G, also from the June ballot, levies a $298 parcel tax for teacher pay raises. That measure is being challenged by Wayne Nowak, a San Francisco resident, with the backing of the multinational corporate law firm Greenberg Traurig.

We are confident that when voters act through the initiative process, a simple majority vote is required, said Herrera spokesman John Cote. We look forward to defending San Francisco voters right to direct democracy and self-government.

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Novembers Prop. C imposes an average of roughly 0.5 percent in gross receipts tax on corporate revenue above $50 million, impacting between 300 and 400 of the citys biggest businesses. Hearst Corp., the parent company of The Chronicle, is subject to the tax. Its estimated the measure will bring in between $250 million and $300 million annually for supportive housing, new shelters, mental health treatment and other services.

The measure inspired a fierce debate in San Francisco in the run-up to the November election. Opponents include Mayor London Breed, state Sen. Scott Wiener and Assemblyman David Chiu, who said the measure lacked the proper safeguards to ensure the money would be spent effectively. Prop. Cs supporters maintained that those politicians were bowing to the powerful business interests who railed against the measure.

Leaders of several San Francisco tech companies that would be subject to the tax came out against it, including Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison.

No companies appear to have signed on to the legal proceedings directly, according to court documents. The California Business Roundtables membership, however, includes major companies like Wells Fargo, Chevron and Comcast. Both the business roundtable and the California Business Properties Association are also parties in the lawsuit against the city over Junes Prop. C.

San Franciscans are ready to see visible progress and real solutions to our homelessness crisis, said Christin Evans, one of the main proponents of Novembers Prop. C and a small-business owner in the city. A legal challenge, she added, only delays real solutions, endangers lives and opposes the will of a majority of San Franciscans.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
By their ninth day aboard the Viking Sky cruise ship, Dawn and Peter Schurman had seen the Northern Lights twice and gone dog-sledding in the Arctic Circle. The Tiburon couples next stop was supposed to be the picturesque city of Bod in northern Norway.

But on Friday, March 22, an announcement from the ships captain piped over the intercom. To avoid dangerously rough waters, he would instead steer the ship toward Stavanger, in the south of Norway in the calmer North Sea.

They wouldnt make it to either port of call.

Their vacation was about to take a harrowing turn, ending with international headlines describing how punishing waves battered the ship, took out its engines and stranded the 1,373 passengers and crew members in the Norwegian Sea. The Viking Sky nearly drifted into the rocky shore, and some passengers worried they were on a modern-day Titanic  until their dramatic rescue.

We still have nightmares, Peter, 69, told The Chronicle in the couples first interview.

The night of the captains announcement, Peter and Dawn, who is 72, woke up three times, jarred by the ships rocking over big waves. The next morning, though, the couple was confident enough to start their day with a Scandinavian bathing ritual, heading to a spa called the snow grotto  filled with man-made snow  for a sauna and steam.

Around 2 p.m. that afternoon, Dawn and Peter visited the seventh deck for lunch at their favorite poolside bar and grill. At one point, water splashed out of the pool, and later the ship lurched so violently that Peter, who weighs 240 pounds, was thrown into a wall  along with his chair and the table at which they were sitting.

The bottles and all the glasses start crashing down onto the floor of the bar, Dawn said. The steam table and the buffet crashed over. Everything was sliding all over the deck. We could barely walk to get out of there.

The trouble was only just beginning. By the time the couple returned to their cabin, everything had fallen onto the floor. Then an alarm went off. The ship had lost power and the engines werent working, stranding them near Hustadvika Bay, a treacherous stretch of water off the west coast of Norway.

The Norwegian government had announced plans in 2017 to build the worlds first ship tunnel so vessels could sail through the area more safely. The Schurmans would learn later that the ship, operated by Switzerland-based Viking Ocean Cruises, was 100 feet from running aground.

A cruise officials voice came over the intercom and told passengers to report to their muster stations  assigned places to gather during an emergency.

Now it was late afternoon. The Schurmans grabbed their wallets and coats and, with about 100 other people walked to a restaurant on the second deck.The captain had sent out a mayday call. Helicopters and tug boats were on their way, he told passengers.

I had a sense like, This isnt real. This only happens in movies. Its not happening here, to us, Peter said.

It was then that a 40-foot wave crashed onto the deck above them, sending water gushing from the ceiling and inundating everyone in 6 feet of water. When the ship rolled in the other direction, the water receded, but Dawns leg got trapped under a table as a fellow passenger sought to help her.

Once she pried herself loose, Dawn and Peter walked to another muster station, at which time she noticed blood dripping down her leg. Medics wrapped the limb, but she was bleeding so badly that she needed new bandages four times. She would learn later that she had torn ligaments in her knee and hip, had suffered hypothermia, and had sustained a cut on the inside of her right calf severe enough to need stitches.

During the pandemonium, the Schurmans said they were shocked at how well the crew and passengers responded and stuck together. When their room attendant saw Dawn soaking wet, she gave her some of her own clothes. Passengers who were EMTs or doctors tended to the injured and asked if people needed prescription medication from their rooms.

For the next 13 hours, the Schurmans sat aboard the rocking ship. The captain made announcements every 30 minutes  and eventually, every 15 minutes  to inform passengers that helicopters and tug boats were still on their way. Staff members fed passengers sandwiches and whatever else they could find in the kitchens.

The ship was rocking severely back and forth. Each time it would go so far over to one side I thought it was going to tip over, Dawn said. We didnt think we were going to make it.

Dawns phone had washed away when the first big wave crashed over them, and Peters phone sustained too much water damage to work. So Dawn asked another woman to send a message to their daughter, letting her know they were alive.

Around 4 a.m. on Sunday, March 24, the couple got a tap on the shoulder that they were next to be airlifted. Along with about eight other people, they went up to the top deck, where a helicopter was hovering above the ship.

Dawn closed her eyes as a Norwegian coast guardsman wrapped a rope around her waist and she was raised into the helicopter, where 20 other people were jammed like sardines, she said. Peter was hoisted up a few minutes later.

Youre swinging 100 feet over the water in the middle of the night in this storm, Peter said. I would not recommend this be put on anybodys bucket list, because it is truly frightening.

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Fifteen minutes later, they were on the ground in Molde, a city on the west coast of Norway. Officials gathered all the passengers into a gymnasium where Red Cross workers and volunteers provided blankets, food, coffee and crisis counseling.

Of the 915 passengers, 479 were airlifted from the vessel and the remaining 436 got off the ship when it docked, assisted by tugboats.

After the couple had regained their composure, they loaded onto a bus to a hotel.

We were dozing on the bus, and every time the bus went around a curve or over a bump wed startle awake, because we felt like we were on the ship again, Dawn said.

They stayed in Molde for a few days before flying to London, which had been the cruises original destination. The Schurmans had already reserved a hotel stay for the end of their trip and decided to keep their plans so they could recover, Dawn said.

They returned to Tiburon on March 30. Since then, theyve been seeing crisis counselors.

I can still feel the sheer terror of all of a sudden being engulfed in 6 feet of water and getting sloshed around, Peter said. But its had a positive effect for us. We have more bonding now in our relationship than weve had in years. Things will get better.

Viking Ocean Cruises has been in contact with the couple, they said, and sent Dawn a bouquet of flowers and a get-well note. The company also refunded all of their expenses and gifted them a voucher for another trip.

I dont think Ill opt to go across the North Sea in the middle of winter again, Peter said.

Dawn added, I think Im done with ocean cruising.

Ashley McBride is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ashley.mcbride@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ashleynmcb
As a record number of Central American asylum seekers descends on the U.S.-Mexico border, President Trump is pushing to keep them from entering the United States. He threatens to shut down the border and cut off aid to Central American countries and suggests the government get rid of the whole asylum system. His efforts to crack down on this growing wave of migrants targets a system already overwhelmed by an immense case backlog. Heres what you need to know:

When did the U.S. establish asylum protections?

The U.S. established federal protections for asylum seekers in 1967, when it signed an international treaty that said people shouldnt be forced to return to nations where they face violence or persecution. The U.S. system requires that they convince U.S. authorities they have credible fear of such consequences.

The U.S. Refugee Act, established in 1980 under President Jimmy Carter, cemented those protections, creating a permanent system for refugees fleeing persecution. An amendment of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Migration and Refugee Assistance Act, the policy raised the annual ceiling for refugees from 17,400 to 50,000.

Refugees or asylum seekers? Whats the difference?

Refugees apply for asylum while theyre outside of the U.S. Asylum seekers ask for these protections when theyre already in the country or seeking entry at the border. The vast majority of asylum seekers from Central America petition for asylum at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border.

What does asylum look like in California?

The state has one of the largest populations of asylum seekers in the U.S. In 2016, 44% of the individuals granted asylum by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services lived in California, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security. In fiscal year 2018, 12,400 migrants petitioned for asylum at ports of entry in the San Diego region  a 187% increase from the previous year.

What is happening at the border now?

The number of asylum seekers at ports of entry along the southern border ballooned from 17,284 in fiscal 2017 to 38,269 in fiscal 2018, stretching U.S. courts ability to process them. The backlog of total immigration cases has grown to more than 820,000, and it takes several months to process each one.

Under federal law, the U.S. releases asylum seekers after apprehending them, as they await their day in court, a process that critics have dubbed catch and release.

Family units accounted for more than half of the 361,087 people apprehended at the southwest border from October to March, according to data from Customs and Border Protection. Last year, the administration introduced a short-lived program to criminally prosecute anyone who crossed the border illegally, a move that separated thousands of children from their parents.

Jacquelyn Martin / Associated Press

Why is President Trump cracking down?

Trump has long been a critic of the countrys asylum system, saying it allows immigrants to remain in the U.S. illegally as they await their cases.

The president has accused some migrants of faking credible fear interviews and criticized those who support asylum seekers.

Oh, give him asylum  hes afraid, hes afraid! Trump said. We dont love the fact that hes got tattoos on his face; thats not a good sign. We dont love the fact that hes carrying the flag of Honduras or Guatemala or El Salvador, only to say hes petrified to be in his country.

Who are they?

The vast majority of asylum seekers are from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, known as the Northern Triangle in Central America, a region plagued by corruption, drug trafficking and gang violence. Many say they are fleeing that violence and extreme poverty, according to attorneys and advocates.

How do people file for asylum?

To win an asylum claim, individuals must prove they face persecution based on race, religion or political affiliations, among other factors. Foreigners must also pass a credible fear interview as immigration officials investigate their cases.

Many Central American migrants turn themselves in to federal authorities once they step onto U.S. soil, as the law allows. If an asylum officer determines they have a legitimate fear of persecution in their home countries, the individual is granted a hearing before an immigration judge.

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People who are granted asylum are given green cards and a pathway to citizenship.

Are there other ideas for fixing the problem?

Trump has threatened detention and tougher screening in hopes that it will stop more migrants from showing up at the border.

But while Trump and other officials have urged Congress to change current asylum law to crack down on a failing system, others have said shutting the door on asylum seekers isnt the answer.

Some advocates and researchers say the government needs to drastically improve processing times for asylum claims and address each case with fairness to establish trust between the government and asylum seekers.

Democratic leaders have been wary of engaging with Trump on the asylum issue and say comprehensive immigration reform is needed. In the short term, Democrats have called for more judges and humanitarian aid to reduce the backlog and help those arriving at the border.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is taking a different approach. He traveled to El Salvador this week in a fact-finding trip to explore why Central American migrants are fleeing their home countries.

Whats next?

A U.S. district judge in San Francisco blocked a Trump administration policy requiring asylum seekers to live in Mexico as they await court hearings in the U.S. The administration appealed the ruling and is planning even tougher screening of asylum seekers that would make it much more difficult to win protection in the U.S., the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Tatiana Sanchez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tatiana.sanchez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TatianaYSanchez
A plan to transport and release immigrant detainees to the streets of sanctuary cities such as San Francisco is very much alive, President Trump tweeted Friday, saying that the Radical Left should welcome the idea.

The White House tried twice over the past six months to push federal immigration authorities into implementing the plan, according to a Washington Post report published Thursday that was based on interviews with Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages obtained by the Post.

In response to the story, the White House released a statement that the proposal was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected. Both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security implied that the proposal was no longer being considered.

However, Trump tweeted Friday that due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only.

The president added, The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!

California immigrant rights advocates blasted the idea as political payback.

This was just another attempt to demonize and dehumanize immigrants as part of Trumps hate-filled agenda, Jon Rodney, a spokesman for the California Immigrant Policy Center, said after initial reports of the plan came out. But people arent buying it. Sanctuary cities really are on the right side of history. Its about upholding our values of compassion and common humanity.

The Rev. Deborah Lee, executive director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity in Oakland and an immigrant rights leader, said Thursday evening that a proposal to use people as political pawns is really loathsome.

But anything that would support getting people out of immigration detention and back into communities and into livable and humane situations  we would actually encourage that, Lee said. We would welcome their release, and we would welcome them here.

The Post reported that the plan focused on sending immigration detainees to Democratic fortresses including San Francisco, the home district of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is one of President Trumps most vocal opponents. Her office quickly struck back at the White House after the story was published online.

The extent of this administrations cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated, Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne said in a statement. Using human beings  including little children  as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable and, in some cases, criminal.

On Friday, Pelosi said, Its just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespect for the challenges that we face as a country as a people, to address who we are as a nation of immigrants.

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After Trump sent out his tweets, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said, Democrats say we must have open borders and that illegal immigrants have a right to be in this country at all costs, so they should be working with the administration to find the best ways to transport those illegal aliens that are already set for release, into communities in their districts and states.

San Francisco is one of the countrys oldest sanctuary cities, a label applied to communities where local law enforcement authorities are told not to aid federal immigration officials in most cases. There are now more than 500 sanctuary cities and counties in the United States.

But San Franciscos policy in particular came under attack by Trump during his campaign for the presidency, and his administration has repeatedly criticized it.

According to the Post report, the White House first advanced the idea of sending detainees to sanctuary cities in November. At the time, Trump administration officials said the goal was to create more space in overcrowded detention centers, but according to emails, the White House also hoped to send a message to Democrats.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials balked at the plan, according to the report. When the Trump administration resurrected the proposal in February, ICE legal officials rejected it outright.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @erinallday
Spending time inside the decrepit concrete box that is San Franciscos Hall of Justice is never pleasant, but a hearing there Tuesday was particularly stomach-churning.

The perfunctory meeting in the bland courtroom lasted just a few minutes, but the reason for it couldnt have been more important. Would a man held over for trial on eight felony counts of pimping and sex trafficking underage girls, and engaging in unlawful sex with a 15-year-old, be released as he awaited trial?

San Francisco Superior Court judges have a reputation for being too lenient in this liberal, live-and-let-live city, where its easy to see crimes happen before your eyes. In broad daylight. On crowded streets. With seemingly no repercussions. Think drug dealing, breaking into cars, shoplifting and chopping up stolen bicycles, to name just a few.

But this was worse. So much worse.

San Francisco Police Department

This was the case of 24-year-old Randall Roy Stovall, who had professed to wanting to turn his life around, if only he could be released from jail to attend a treatment facility for alcoholics while he waited for his trial to begin.

At a hearing April 5, Judge Kay Tsenin indicated she was open to releasing him. Despite the fact shed presided over his December preliminary hearing, which was full of graphic, devastating testimony about his treatment of teenage girls. Despite the fact she had ordered him to stand trial on all the charges. Despite the fact that if he is found guilty at trial, he could face 25 years or more in state prison. Despite him not showing up for past court dates.

Gee, what could happen if she released him?

Tsenin said Stovall would have to wear a GPS monitoring device on his ankle.

But, according to Assistant District Attorney Asha Jameson, who vehemently fought Stovalls release, the Sheriffs Department has just two deputies to monitor the 190 people currently wearing monitoring devices. And the deputies can monitor only where the defendants are, not if theyre committing crimes. And guess whos responsible for keeping the monitors charged? The defendants!

Jason Doiy / Recorder 2007

Tsenin set Tuesdays hearing to iron out one final detail: how Stovall would be transported to the alcohol treatment facility. Because clearly that was the most important detail of this sordid affair.

And boy, is it sordid.

Reading court transcripts from Stovalls December preliminary hearing was an eye-opener about the subculture of pimping and sex trafficking. (The former term is used to describe a consensual business relationship, while the latter describes a coercive one.)

The FBI calls San Francisco one of the worlds major sex trafficking hubs, yet its easy to live here and never think much about it.

Its a lot more common than people realize, said Kim Sandoval, a human trafficking investigative analyst for the district attorneys office. Arrests are elusive. Prosecutions are hard to get because of the dangers to victims and their families.

The Mission District and massage parlors throughout the city are centers of sex trafficking, Sandoval said. The crime is more widespread than the drug trade because, in the case of paid sex, the same product can be sold over and over again.

Girls and young women ages 16 to 22 are the most common victims, and theyre often foster youth or runaways who can be lured into sex work with gifts as simple as clothing, food and shelter, Sandoval said.

San Francisco has three tracks, or blades, the slang used to describe the city blocks prostitutes frequent. According to police who testified at the preliminary hearing, theyre Geary Street between Powell and Taylor streets; Polk Street between Post and California streets; and the busiest, Capp and Shotwell streets between 18th and 22nd streets.

Sgt. Randy Ly testified about his interview with a 15-year-old girl, whod called police in January 2016 to report that Stovall was was trafficking her. The girl did not testify at the preliminary hearing.

She told police about being recruited in Oakland by a prostitute who worked for Stovall. The woman even brought food from Jack in the Box to her during lunchtime at her East Bay high school, where she was in her sophomore year.

The girl agreed to meet Stovall, and he drove her into San Francisco and gave her marijuana and cocaine in the car. She reported to police that Stovall told her rich people were arriving in the city for the Super Bowl, and there was a lot of money to be made.

Lowlights of the girls long story include multiple nights of walking the track in the Mission, Stovall initiating oral and vaginal sex with her at a Motel 6 in Oakland, and him firing a gun three times at another car during a road-rage incident while she was in the vehicle.

So, you know, a real stand-up guy.

Eventually, the girl called her father from the Mission track, telling him she wanted out. He told her to call 911, and the dispatcher directed her to the Mission Police Station.

Stovall was arrested at Shotwell and 18th streets and charged with human trafficking, pimping and statutory rape. Bail was set at $250,000, and Stovall posted it and was released.

In April 2016, he was arrested in Oakland during an undercover prostitution sting. In May 2016, he was detained in Santa Clara County after leaving a motel room with two 16-year-old runaways and an 18-year-old prostitute. He failed to appear in court in either case.

In August 2017, he was arrested for attempted robbery and assault of a San Francisco Muni driver. He again posted bail and was released. He again failed to appear in court.

A 17-year-old girl then reported to police that Stovall had trafficked her in early 2018, posting pictures of her in her underwear in online sex ads and arranging for men to meet her at a Travelodge hotel in the city. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and he was picked up in June  he had young prostitutes in his car.

Finally, Superior Court Judge Victor Hwang refused to set bail, and Stovall has been in custody ever since.

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Tsenin presided over the preliminary hearing in December, during which the 17-year-old girl testified. The judge ordered Stovall to stand trial on eight felony charges. In our incredibly slow criminal justice system  some cases at the Hall of Justice have been dragging on for more than six years  theres no telling when Stovalls trial will start.

Trials in which defendants are in custody tend to start more quickly. Those for defendants who are not in custody can take longer to schedule, and victims memories and willingness to testify can fade.

At the hearing Tuesday, Stovalls father sat in the front row, alternately closing his eyes, shaking his head and pursing his lips when his sons transgressions were described.

Stovalls public defender, Carmen Aguirre, said some of the crimes had happened when Stovall was just 21 years old, when his brain wasnt fully formed. (Imagine how confusing it was for the 15-year-old girl!)

There are some redeeming qualities in Mr. Stovall, Aguirre told the judge, adding he didnt use violence or force with the girls.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Jameson wasnt buying the contention that Stovall would live a good, peaceful life while out of custody waiting for trial.

Every single time the defendant has been arrested, weve accumulated more victims, she said. Any release of Mr. Stovall would be an incredible public safety risk.

Perhaps the smartest thing Jameson did was alert advocates for victims of sex trafficking, a few of whom showed up to the hearing. I was there too. Tsenin, whose last day on the job before retiring happened to be Tuesday, ended up making the right decision.

My job is to protect society, so Im going to deny your motion, Tsenin said. Sorry.

Dont be sorry, judge.

Stovalls dad formed his hand into a phone shape, held it up to his ear and mouthed call me to his son before quickly leaving the courtroom.

The bailiff put handcuffs on Stovall and led him out of the courtroom, back to his holding cell. Exactly where he belongs.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf
LOS ANGELES, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hightimes Holding Corporation, the most well-known brand in cannabis, today announced that it will be presenting at the 3 rd Annual Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference, held on April 17-18 at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, Canada.



Hightimes Holding Corp. is the owner of the legendary enthusiast publication High Times, the worlds premiere marijuana competition, the Cannabis Cup, as well as many other media and event properties such as Dope Magazine, Culture Magazine, Green Rush Daily and the DOPE Cup.

Adam Levin, Hightimes Holding Corp.s Executive Chairman, will deliver a corporate presentation and discuss recent highlights of the holding company on Thursday, April 18 at 3:00PM ET in the British Columbia Room.

High Times is also in the process of conducting a Reg A+ IPO. The offering has already generated over 20,000 investors, and is believed to be the largest equity crowdfunding in history. Additionally, High Times converted $28.6 million of debt to equity earlier this year. The Company has also launched a new platform for rich media consumption, High Times TV (HTTV), which has been billed as the Netflix of cannabis in press.

About High Times

For more than 44 years High Times has been the worlds most well-known cannabis brand - championing the lifestyle and educating the masses on the benefits of this natural flower. From humble beginnings as a counterculture lifestyle publication, High Times has evolved into hosting industry-leading events like the Cannabis Cup and the High Times Business Summits, while providing digital TV and social networks, globally distributed merchandise, international licensing deals, and millions of fans and supporters across the globe. In the world of Cannabis, High Times is the arbiter of quality.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release may contain information about Hightimes Holding Corp.s view of its future expectations, plans and prospects that constitute forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from historical results or those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of a variety of factors including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties associated with its ability to maintain and grow its business, variability of operating results, its development and introduction of new products and services, marketing and other business development initiatives, among other things. For further information about Hightimes, Hightimes encourages you to review its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 1-A Offering Circular dated July 26, 2018 and all subsequent filings, including its Current Reports on Form 1-U.

For more information on High Times visit http://www.hightimes.com .

For Hightimes financial information visit http://www.hightimes.com/invest .

Media Contacts

Mediateam@hightimes.com
Whats more important than to reassure the Vallejo residents who live in fear of police officers sworn to serve and protect them?

Apparently, to the Vallejo City Council members, its to reassure Vallejo Police Chief Andrew Bidou that they have full confidence in his leadership of the department.

Bidou, who took over the Police Department in October 2014, announced his retirement in March amid growing criticism following the Feb. 9 fatal shooting of Willie McCoy by six Vallejo police officers in a Taco Bell drive-through.

Bidou, who turned 50 last month, didnt give his employer much advance notice of his retirement. Chiefs typically announce their retirements months in advance, giving their cities time to kick-start a months-long hiring process for a new chief.

Bidou is retiring on April 30. And get this: he can start collecting his pension of about $19,000 a month from the California Public Employees Retirement System, or CalPERS; and then, on May 1, he starts his new job in the city of Vallejo: interim police chief.

If he works full time, hed collect about $20,000 a month from Vallejo.

No, this isnt a joke. Bidou could collect double the pay for doing a job he isnt even good at.

Vallejo Police Department

Remember, this is the chief who allowed his officers to hold a news conference in 2015 to essentially call kidnap-rape victim Denise Huskins and then-fiance Aaron Quinn liars and humiliate them  an utterly stupid act that cost city taxpayers $2.5 million in an out-of-court settlement.

But in the blinded eyes of the Vallejo City Council, Bidou is a savior.

On Tuesday, at the first Vallejo City Council meeting since the release of the body cam video of McCoys death, the council voted unanimously to appoint Bidou as interim chief while the city searches for a new department leader.

In making the appointment, the city cited a state law that allows retirees to sign a contract to fill a vacant position during recruitment for a permanent appointment. Bidous appointment is effective May 1. His time as interim chief cant exceed 960 hours  or about four months.

During the council meeting, Councilman Robert McConnell acknowledged there are deep problems in Vallejo Police Department. But, he believes the problems arent with the departments command staff  and he thinks Bidou should play a role in fixing the department.

I believe that Chief Bidou, with the type of person he is, is not going to want to leave this organization with this as his ending curtain call, McConnell said at the meeting.

Even as city leaders  finally!  acknowledged publicly that they have concerns about the behavior of Vallejo police officers, that wasnt enough for them to refrain from handing Bidou an opportunity to rewrite his legacy.

This is how Vallejo operates. The council is why police arent held accountable.

I think its really important not to shake the department up right now, Greg Nyhoff, Vallejos city manager, said during his remarks explaining why he recommended Bidou as interim chief.

It needs to be shook up, blurted Lisa Davis, a Vallejo resident who sat next to me.

She wore a T-shirt with Let us live written on the front and stylized as a social media hashtag. Pass AB392 was written on the sleeve. Its a reference to a state Assembly bill that seeks to restrict police officers from opening fire on people until all nonlethal options have been exhausted.

Davis, a labor and delivery nurse who has lived in Vallejo for four years, told me before the council meeting that police keep getting rewarded. She mentioned the new police headquarters the council approved days after McCoys death.

There is no other job description that I can think of that rewards you for doing a horrible job, she said. The weatherman, he dont have to be right. But at least he aint killing nobody.

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.

Sarahbeth Maney / Special to The Chronicle 2019

Bidous tenure has been marked by the controversial fatal shootings of Angel Ramos, Ronell Foster and McCoy. There have also been the disturbing videos that have gone viral on social media. In 2017, Dejuan Hall was chased and beaten by an officer who also aimed his gun at onlookers. On Jan. 22, Adrian Burrell says, he was slammed against a wall just for using his cell phone to record an officer detaining his cousin in Burrells driveway.

Vallejoans who have spoken out about what they say is aggressive and unnecessary force by police have told me theyve been intimidated by Vallejo police officers.

The police have repeatedly declined my requests to interview Bidou and command staff.

As more than a dozen people criticized police at the meeting, Bidou stood in the back next to Capt. Joseph Iacono and Sgt. Jeff Tai. He walked out of the council chamber as Dejuana McCoy, Willie McCoys niece, shouted at the officers.

During the meeting, Nyhoff said he recommended Bidou as interim chief for continuity and leadership, saying Bidou will bridge a gap until a new chief is hired through a nationwide search. He said selecting an interim chief from one of the departments three captains would strain the leadership capacity and provide less leadership and less oversight than what we currently have. Nyhoff didnt respond to an interview request.

Nyhoff and council members talked glowingly about their relationship with Bidou. Perhaps city leaders need to be reminded that the problem facing them isnt the relationship they have with the police. Its the tenuous relationship police have with the community the council represents.

Im really disappointed tonight that they all voted to continue on with something thats obviously not working, Gary Wettstein, a Vallejo resident for two decades, told me after the vote. People are not happy. I see (Bidous) tenure here as mediocre at best, but more importantly I dont think he really stepped up to the plate and really went to bat for the citizens of Vallejo.

Neither has the council. Its time for Vallejoans to start considering new leadership in City Hall.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr
Mark Humphrey / Associated Press 2017

PG&E Corp. has seated its new board of directors and decided that its incoming chief executives first day on the job will be in about two and a half weeks.

The 13-member board, all but three of whom are new to their roles as PG&E directors, appointed Nora Mead Brownell from its ranks to serve as chairwoman of PG&E Corp., the company announced Thursday. Brownell, a former member of the Federal Energy Commission, is one of the new directors.
Some U.S. border agents have quietly begun refusing to process work visas for Canadians already working in the country, a change that is confounding immigration lawyers and could pose problems for big Silicon Valley employers that frequently move tech workers between Canada and the U.S.

Canadians seeking to renew documents used for intracompany transfers have until recently applied at airports and border stations staffed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The border agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is now directing Canadians to file renewals for L-1 visas with a different agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, in a far more cumbersome process, according to an email sent by a border officer in Toronto obtained by The Chronicle.

Its just the latest change that appears to throw bureaucratic obstacles in the way of bringing high-skilled workers to the United States.

Attorneys for those workers from north of the border say they are scrambling to make sense of the change, in the absence of a memo from the agency, and adjust their strategies for landing the transfer visas.

Welcome to our nightmare. All of a sudden, they dont like Canadians, said Lisa Spiegel, an attorney at Duane Morris in San Francisco and head of the firms immigration practice group.

A spokesman for Customs and Border Protection did not respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for the immigration agency referred The Chronicle to the border agency.

People who lead a team of employees as an executive or a manager at a company based in the U.S., but who are working remotely at an affiliate office, may apply for an L-1A visa after one year of work. Others who bring some specialized knowledge to the business are eligible for a similar visa known as the L-1B.

The L-1 visas are commonly used by big tech companies to bring in sales and engineering leaders from their offices abroad. HP, Google, Cisco and Apple were among the top sponsors of L-1 visa holders in fiscal year 2017.

Canadians have been able to apply for L-1 status at the border  in an international airport or at a road crossing  without having to file a petition with the immigration agency, which handles visas more broadly than the border agency.

Filing a petition can take several months, but a Canadian who qualifies for L-1 status can, for example, arrive for a flight from Toronto to San Francisco a few hours early, meet with a border officer, and get the visa status squared away.

For years, it didnt matter whether the person was applying for the first time or nearing an expiration date and filing for renewal, said immigration attorney Ron Matten.

There was always this little quirk: You dont call it an extension, Matten said. Theyll just go visit Canada and on their way back in, say, Heres my application for a new period of time.

That started to change a couple months ago, according to Matten, who is also chairman of the American Immigration Lawyers Associations Canada chapter.

There were reports out of Calgary that people were being turned away because they were told, This was not a new application. This is a renewal. We dont process this. Which is basically wrong, Matten said.

As the Trump administration has pushed a Buy American, Hire American campaign, immigration officials have raised other hurdles for those seeking permission to work in the United States in recent years.

For example, applications for the H-1B visa commonly used for high-skilled workers have been receiving more requests for evidence seeking further proof of their eligibility. The H-1B process has been revamped to give preference to applicants with masters degrees or doctorates from U.S. universities. And immigration attorneys say border officials are more closely scrutinizing petitions for the TN visa, a work permit for citizens of Canada and Mexico.

Justin Parsons, managing director of the Erickson Immigration Group in Arlington, Va., said two of his clients, both high-level managers working for a financial services company in the U.S., traveled to Vancouver a month ago to file new applications. Their L-1 status was set to expire within a few weeks.

They werent denied, but they were sent away, Parsons said.

The clients were still allowed to enter the country on their previous status and then worked with Parsons to renew by mail. Still, Parsons and other immigration attorneys say they avoid going through the immigration agency when possible, saying they worry it will issue unnecessary requests for evidence. Little more than half of applicants are granted L-1 visas after receiving a request for evidence.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

Data show that immigration officials approved 74 percent of L-1 petitions in the first quarter of 2019, down from 85 percent in fiscal year 2016, an analysis by immigration firm Fragomen found.

Clients also have the option of making an appointment at a U.S. consulate in Canada instead of applying by mail. Theres typically a wait time of a couple weeks, Parsons said, followed by a week or two of processing time.

The change is more of an inconvenience, immigration attorneys said.

Still, Parsons and other attorneys said the change could hamstring travel between the two countries for L-1 status workers.

Any sort of delay to get back to their job is a huge issue for them and for us, Parsons said. Very rarely do our clients not have a place to be.

Spiegel, the immigration attorney in San Francisco, is more concerned about how the change was rolled out.

It would have been nice to have been told there was a policy change. But since the new administration came into effect, theyve stopped a lot of the liaison meetings, she said, referring to meetings between immigration attorneys and immigration program officers.

Parsons said he no longer counts on Homeland Security to alert the public to policy changes.

Its the nature of the current administration, he said. They dont tell you why. They dont tell you when. They dont tell you the legal reason for it. They just do it.

Melia Russell is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: melia.russell@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meliarobin
The Yountville Veterans Home, Northern Californias largest skilled nursing home for veterans, has received state approval to design a new $300 million, 240-bed skilled nursing facility, to be completed by 2024.

The state of California would pay $105 million for the proposed building, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would pay $195 million. The Yountville skilled nursing home is the second largest in the states veterans home system  which provides long-term care to elderly and disabled veterans and their spouses  after West Los Angeles 312-bed home.

The project, reported earlier in the Napa Valley Register, will require roughly 330 residents in three buildings on the Yountville campus to relocate. About 225 who currently receive 24-hour skilled nursing care, including memory care for Alzheimers and dementia, will continue receiving that level of care in the new building. The remaining 105 who currently receive intermediate care are expected to be sent to other buildings where they will receive residential care services.

Skilled nursing facilities have registered nurses on duty 24 hours a day, whereas residential care has certified nurse assistants and some registered nurses.

No residents will be displaced, said Joshua Kiser, public information officer for the Yountville Veterans Home. Construction is scheduled to begin in 2021.

The new building will be about 275,000 square feet, and 80 to 100 more people will be hired to staff it.

Of the $300 million in estimated costs, $7 million has been appropriated by the state. The California Department of Veterans Affairs, or CalVet, plans to request additional state funding in the 2020 fiscal year; it has also applied for a $195 million grant from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Air Quality Tracker Check levels down to the neighborhood Ratings for the Bay Area and California, updated every 10 minutes

About 850 veterans and spouses live on the Yountville veterans campus, most of whom live independently. The 615-acre site, built in 1884, is the oldest and largest of Californias eight veterans homes.

The Yountville location is where an Army veteran fatally shot three workers and then himself in March 2018 at the Pathway Home. That facility, which provided mental health and employment services for veterans, has been shut down. It was not run by CalVet, but by a separate nonprofit organization that leased space at the Yountville site.

Catherine Ho is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cho@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @Cat_Ho
A former Sonoma County sheriffs deputy resigned in 2017 after an investigation revealed that he kissed a female inmate, fondled her body and watched her undress in her cell at the Sonoma County jail, newly released records show.

In March 2017, Garrett Paulson began the inappropriate sexual relationship with an inmate while he was making rounds as a correctional deputy at the jail, according to documents released this week. He resigned in August 2017 following an internal affairs investigation by the Sheriffs Office. Investigators referred the case to the Sonoma County district attorneys office, which did not pursue charges because the victim would not cooperate, the records said.

The records were released in accordance with SB1421, the police transparency law that went into effect Jan. 1. The law unseals records relating to sustained investigations of dishonesty, sexual assault, police shootings and use-of-force incidents. News organizations around the state, including The Chronicle, joined a collaborative called the California Reporting Project to file hundreds of public records requests with law enforcement agencies around the state.

Paulson, 24, joined the Sheriffs Office on March 1, 2016. In March 2017, he was assigned to a unit at Sonoma Countys Main Adult Detention Facility that housed about 50 men and women who were not allowed to mix with the jails general population.

An investigation into Paulsons actions began March 15, 2017, when a female inmate reported that she had observed Paulson acting creepy with another inmate earlier that week and standing for 10 to 15 minutes at that inmates cell while making his rounds. She observed Paulson propping open a closet door next to the cell to obstruct views into the cell and she said she heard him moaning, according to records. The inmate also said she had seen Paulson treat the other inmate differently and let her out of her cell more often than others.

In an interview with a detective on March 16, 2017, Paulson admitted that he would sometimes open inmates cell doors to talk to them about their lives. On the evening of March 12, 2017, Paulson was making his hourly walk around the unit when one female inmate began making provocative comments to him and asked him to open her door, he said. Before opening her cell door, he propped open a closet door next to it. They kissed, she touched his chest and he touched her breasts and buttocks, he told investigators.

When the kiss stopped, records show, Paulson closed the inmates cell door and said, Why dont you just show me something? The inmate undressed herself for about 45 seconds while he watched from outside her cell. Paulson was adamant that he didnt receive oral sex or masturbate while watching the inmate, according to the report.

On March 17, 2017, Paulson was placed on administrative leave and the case was forwarded to the district attorneys office, which is standard for all investigations relating to sexual activity between correctional deputies and inmates.

In two interviews with a detective on March 16 and March 22, the inmate repeatedly stated that she initiated the contact with Paulson and did not want him to get in trouble or lose his job. She also threatened to sue the county if she was moved to another unit or if Paulson went to jail.

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On May 22, the district attorneys office announced it would not pursue charges against Paulson because of a lack of victim cooperation, records said.

Then-Sheriff Steve Freitas proposed terminating Paulson in a letter dated June 22, 2017. Instead, Paulson submitted his resignation Aug. 3, 2017. He cited personal reasons.

The Sonoma County Sheriffs Office and district attorneys office did not respond to requests for comment.

Ashley McBride is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: ashley.mcbride@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ashleynmcb
Just days after BART kicked off a security blitz aimed at curbing fare evaders, the family of a woman killed last year on an Oakland station platform has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the transit agency, saying its latest efforts are too little, too late.

The suit alleges that heightened security could have spared the life of Nia Wilson, an 18-year-old woman who was fatally stabbed in the neck at the MacArthur BART Station. Her alleged killer, John Lee Cowell, 28, was a serial fare evader and should have never gained entry, the familys attorneys say.

Plaintiffs contend that had BART taken adequate measures to prevent fare evaders from entering BARTs stations, platforms or trains, Nia Wilson would not have died, the suit states.

Wilsons family is asking for not only monetary relief but a judges order to compel systemwide safety measures that BART has embraced sporadically and in select locations.

The measures laid out in the lawsuit would include consistent staffing and policies to block fare evaders at all BART stations, as well as a Nia Wilson Crime Statistics Notice, which would display crime metrics for the last four years at each specific station.

At about 9:30 p.m. on July 22, Wilson and her sisters Letifah and Tashiya Wilson were exiting a train at the MacArthur Station and headed to board a train bound for Warm Springs.

As the sisters were boarding the car, police said, Cowell attacked both Nia and Letifah Wilson  slashing Nia across the neck and stabbing Letifah in her neck. Letifah Wilson survived the attack, while her younger sister bled out on the platform.

Cowell, a transient who was recently released from prison, was arrested the following day after a massive regionwide manhunt. He is currently charged with murder and attempted murder. His attorney has argued that he is incompetent to stand trial.

Letifah and Tashiya Wilson, as well as Nia Wilsons parents, father Ansar El Muhammad and mother Alicia Grayson, are alleging common carrier liability, negligence and dangerous condition of public property, among other claims.

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.

Since Wilsons death, BART officials have boosted security measures by locking some swing gates, building taller walls around some paid areas of stations and enlisting more civilian fare enforcement officers. They also put out concerted patrols for several days in August and starting again this week in efforts to curb fare evaders.

Fridays lawsuit claims that BART officials knew about the link between fare evasion and crime, and the agency shouldnt have waited until after Wilsons death to implement changes.

This lawsuit is part of Nia Wilsons familys commitment to hold BART accountable for cleaning up its system, family attorneys Robert Arns and Jonathan Davis said in a statement. No one else should have to suffer because of BARTs failure to protect its riders.

In a statement, BART spokesman James K. Allison said agency officials continue to express our deepest condolences to the friends and family of Nia Wilson. However, we do not comment on potential or pending litigation.

Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy
Richmond police officers shot and killed a man as he was slashing family members with a knife early Thursday morning, police said.

A family member called 911 at about 2:34 a.m. and told dispatchers their father, Luc Ciel, 55, had broken into the family home on the 900 block of Wilson Avenue, according to the Richmond Police Department.

The caller reported that the family was trapped inside the residence and couldnt escape, police said. Its unclear how many people were in the home at the time.

Responding officers approached Ciel near the homes rear patio door, where police say he was attacking a family member. Police said they commanded him to stop the assault and opened fire when he ignored their commands and instead advanced on officers.

Ciel died at the scene. Its unclear how many bullets struck him, or how many officers opened fire. Police did not release the names of the involved officers.

A woman with a laceration on her stomach and a male juvenile with a cut on his face were taken to a local hospital. They were treated for non-life-threatening injuries on Thursday. No one else was injured in the incident.

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.

Police said Ciel had an active domestic violence restraining order at the time of the early-morning attack. He was previously contacted by law enforcement relating to other domestic violence-related incidents in the past, police said.

Officials with Richmond police and the Contra Costa County District Attorneys Office are coordinating a joint investigation.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LaurenPorFavor
After falling in love with a bar in Oaxaca, Nate Valentine and Jamal Blake-Williams wanted to bring a similar vibe to San Francisco.

They linked up with their business partner Rob Kashian to open Peacekeeper, which debuts today at 5 p.m. in Lower Nob Hill. Its a follow-up to the groups Polk Street cocktail bar Harper & Rye.

Valentine recruited his cousin Britt Hull of Tide Design Co., who also designed Harper & Rye, to transform the formerly dark, cavernous space  most recently belonging to dive bar Bacchus Kirk  into something bright and airy. Now, there are tall, vaulted ceilings and a huge skylight, giving it an open-air feel. Plus, 60 plants.

Its a nod to that moment we spent in Oaxaca, Valentine said.

The cocktails are loosely inspired by that trip too, with an emphasis on mezcal and Tequila. But vodka, whiskey and other spirits are represented, too.

Guests can munch on chips and salsa or bring in their own food. We just want a good neighborhood bar thats beautiful and open to everyone, Valentine said.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Peacekeeper: 925 Bush St., San Francisco. Opens today at 5 p.m. Starting Friday, regular hours will be Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. and weekends from noon to 2 a.m.

A previous version of this story misstated the name of Nate Valentine. The story has been altered to reflect this change.
The distinctive, circular building along Highway 1 called Coast has long functioned as a combination art gallery and cafe, but now it has fresh vision from Bar Tartine alumni.

Philanthropists Peter and Merle Mullin recently bought Coast and brought in celebrated chef Nick Balla to run the cafe. They all met while Balla was still running Bar Tartine, and fittingly, Balla recruited fellow Bar Tartine alumni Tyler and Andrea Rue as partners. Tyler serves as general manager and wine director while Andrea manages the cafe and events.

The new Coast menu should feel familiar to lovers of Ballas short-lived Mission restaurant, Duna, and dip pop-up, Smokebread, with foods designed to would work well on hikes and picnics. There are about 15 dips and spreads, like English pea with tahini and mint, sprouted pea hummus and central European cheese spread, ready to be paired with pickles and breads like pumpernickel, sprouted seed and Japanese milk. Marinated spoon salads, also a staple from the Duna days, are also part of the lineup.

Starting next week, Balla plans to start merging those spreads and breads  specifically, a potato sourdough  into sandwiches. While some fish and cured meat will make an appearance, the cafe is focused on seasonal, vegetable-forward dishes.

Were getting super hippie-dippy with some of it, Balla said.

The cafe also serves espresso drinks with Verve Coffee, pastries and fun plays on classics like coffee cake and banana bread, finished with fruit purees and seasonal sauces.

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle

Tyler plans to only stock wine from the Central Coast. Balla also intends to start a larder program, selling fermented harissa and other fun condiments to use at home.

While there is an emphasis on to-go-friendly food in compostable packaging, guests can also linger in Coasts 2,000-square-foot cafe, which connects to a retail shop full of gifty items like locally made ceramics. There are about 50 seats in the cafe, and a leafy courtyard and terrace overlooking the ocean provide other potential dining areas.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Balla has been busy since walking away from Bar Tartine in 2016. Hes opened and closed Motze and Duna, started and stopped Smokebread in pop-up form and consulted on other restaurants like Berber in Russian Hill. Last fall, he announced plans to open a zero-waste restaurant. He continues to live in San Francisco, commuting down to Big Sur a few days a week.

Im getting myself organized, Ball said. I plan to stay as a part of [Coast] in the future but Im very much still plotting my food waste business.

This story has been updated to reflect that the cafe serves wine from the Central Coast, rather than from within a 100-mile radius.

Coast: 49901 Highway 1, Big Sur. Hours are Wednesday through Monday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. with plans to extend them to later in the evenings and daily starting in May. www.coastbigsur.com

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Dallas (SMU), April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Doug Parker, chairman and chief executive officer of American Airlines Group Inc. and its subsidiary, American Airlines, will be the featured speaker during SMUs May Commencement Convocation at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 18, in Moody Coliseum.



We talk about entrepreneurial spirit quite a bit here on the Hilltop, and Doug Parker lives it, said SMU President R. Gerald Turner. He is a world changer, and I know his remarks will provide our graduating students with information that will serve them well after SMU.

SMUs commencement ceremony, including Parkers remarks, will be live-streamed at https://www.smu.edu/live.

Parker is a strong supporter of the people who make up the airline industry, and is invested in creating a culture that empowers his team to create new ideas. His leadership was key to the successful integration of American Airlines and US Airways following their merger in 2013. American has produced record financial results in recent years, allowing the airline to make unprecedented investments in its team members and product while returning money to shareholders.

American is the worlds largest airline and is headquartered in Fort Worth. American has more than 130,000 team members around the globe and serves more than 200 million passengers annually, with nearly 60 million of them flying through DFW airport.

Parker previously served as the chairman and CEO of US Airways. Under his leadership US Airways achieved record revenue growth, operational performance and profit margins that outpaced most industry peers. Before the merger of US Airways and American West Airlines in 2005, Parker served as CEO at American West where he led the carrier through the Sept. 11, 2001 crisis.

Parker serves as the chairman of the Airlines for America Board of Governors and oneworld Governing Board. He is also a member of the Vanderbilt University Board of Trust and the SMU Cox School of Business Executive Board. He received his B.A. in economics from Albion College and his M.B.A. from Vanderbilt University.

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMUs alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

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Crimes committed in the air have to be prosecuted on the ground  and, according to a divided federal appeals court, the proper ground is the one the plane was flying over at the time.

In a 2-1 ruling Thursday, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco overturned the misdemeanor assault conviction of an airline passenger for slapping another passenger in the face during a flight from Minneapolis to Los Angeles in July 2015.

Monique Lozoya said she wanted to sleep during the flight but the man sitting behind her, Oded Wolff, kept jostling her seat. Wolff denied it, the two argued, and Lozoya hit him in the face. She said she was trying to push him away in self-defense, but Wolff and his wife both said she slapped him without provocation and caused his nose to bleed.

Lozoya was tried in Los Angeles, convicted by a federal magistrate who described the incident as an unfortunate situation borne out of a misunderstanding, and fined $750. But the appeals court said she was prosecuted in the wrong place.

The Constitution explicitly requires all crimes to be tried in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed, Judge Milan Smith said in the majority opinion. Citing the courts previous ruling that a federal court district includes the navigable airspace above (that) district, he said the incident in this case clearly occurred before the plane had entered the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles.

Figuring out where it took place might be a challenge, Smith acknowledged, but the planes speed and flight path were recorded, the lead flight attendant said he got word of an assault at least an hour after takeoff, and the flight data should make it possible to determine where Lozoya should be retried.

But dissenting Judge John Owens said the courts standard could make it impossible to prosecute some violent crimes on airplanes  a murder whose time cannot be determined, for example, or the sexual assault of a child or another traumatized victim unable to recall exactly when it took place.

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Limiting venue to a flyover state, where the defendant and potential witnesses have no ties, makes no sense, Owens said. He said the court should have followed the example of two other appeals courts, which allowed airborne crimes to be prosecuted at either the takeoff or the landing site, as allowed by a 1961 federal law on crimes involving transportation in interstate or foreign commerce.

Smith, however, said the events in this case had nothing to do with interstate commerce, so the 1961 law did not apply.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko
Word of the forthcoming indictment of Julian Assange sent shudders through many journalists and their advocates. If the founder of WikiLeaks could be prosecuted for publishing government secrets, what about the New York Times, or The Chronicle?

Those fears may have been dispelled somewhat on Thursday when the Justice Department released the indictment it had obtained from a federal grand jury in March 2018. Assange was not charged with espionage for publishing state secrets, but with conspiring to obtain those secrets by allegedly trying to help Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning hack into government computers.

In March 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password in Defense Department computers that would have made it harder for investigators to identify her, the indictment said. While he may not have succeeded in that effort  he allegedly told Manning two days later that he had had no luck so far  he is not directly charged with violating national security by obtaining secrets and distributing them to news media worldwide.

Im relieved the indictment does not allege the act of publication was a criminal offense, said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a media advocacy organization based in San Rafael. I think press advocates are, to some degree, breathing a sigh of relief that they didnt try to charge Assange under the Espionage Act.

Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge, said the indictments central allegation  that Assange conspired with Manning to obtain and publish secrets  distinguishes the case from those in which one person illegally acquires information and passes it on to the press without any other involvement by the press.

He noted the Supreme Courts 2001 ruling that dismissed a wiretapping suit against a radio station for broadcasting a tape of a conversation that had been illegally recorded by an anonymous source. Because the station had not obtained the information illegally, it did not violate any law, the court said in a 6-3 ruling.

Another legal analyst was not reassured.

The governments essentially indicted Assange for publishing, said Matt Coles, a law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco. The indictment admits that tons of the information he published had nothing to do with the supposed attempt to help (Manning) crack into the computer, and he didnt succeed. Publication is part of the conspiracy.

Coles noted that much of the indictment focused on the information Assange had sought and received from Manning. The indictment said the main purpose of their conspiracy was to facilitate Mannings acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defense of the United States so that WikiLeaks could publicly disseminate the information on its website.

The two acted, the indictment said, with reason to believe that such information so obtained cold be used to the injury of the United States and the advantage of any foreign nation language taken directly from the Espionage Act of 1917, under which Manning was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was pardoned by President Barack Obama and released in 2017 after serving seven years, but is now in jail for refusing to testify against Assange.

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Assange faces up to five years in prison if convicted under the anti-hacking law.

Prosecution for publishing is content-based regulation of speech, Coles said, and the Supreme Court should not allow it.

Snyder, of the First Amendment Coalition, said the indictment appeared to be narrowly drawn but was still troubling. He noted that the Obama administration, in office at the time of the alleged conspiracy, had the same information about Assange but apparently decided not to indict him.

The hacking law in the indictment is broadly worded and could be used nefariously against journalists, Snyder said. I wouldnt trust the government to distinguish between WikiLeaks and the New York Times.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko
The man who fell to his death earlier this month at the Grand Canyon was identified Friday by National Park Service officials as a Santa Rosa resident.

Michael Obritsch, 67, was visiting the park on April 3 when he fell over the canyon rim east of Yavapai Geology Museum in Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, authorities said. His body was recovered from 400 feet below the rim.

John Quinley, a park spokesman, said Obritschs death was the third in eight days at the Grand Canyon, but he was the first over the edge fatality in the park this year. Investigators have concluded his death was accidental, Quinley said. A park visitor reported seeing Obritsch falling but there were apparently no witnesses or indications of what caused the plunge.

The first of the string of recent deaths occurred on March 26 near the South Rim and remains under investigation, Quinley said. In the other fatality, a tourist accidentally fell near the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a horseshoe-shaped, glass-floor observation deck outside the park on the canyons western end.

Park officials advise visitors to have a safe visit by staying on designated trails and walkways, always keeping a safe distance from the edge of the rim and staying behind railings and fences at overlooks.

An obituary placed on the Legacy.com website said Obritsch was a retired computer analyst for Pacific Bell in San Ramon who grew up in Santa Rosa but later moved back. After his retirement, he worked part-time for a pool service. He was a graduate of Piner High School in Santa Rosa, and had a degree in mathematics from UC Davis.

His warm, friendly personality, intelligence, dedication, kindness, and his sense of fun will be greatly missed, the obituary 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.

He is survived by a sister, Nicolette Hinch. A memorial service is planned later this month, according to the obituary, and memorial donations can be made to the Sonoma County Humane Society.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
On Thursday, in the morning, at Government House, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC received the Clerk of the Parliament, Mr Neil Laurie, for the presentation of five Bills for Assent.

Following, at the Queensland Museum, South Brisbane, His Excellency and Mrs Kaye de Jersey viewed the Anzac Legacy Gallery.

In the afternoon, at Government House, His Excellency and Mrs de Jersey hosted an Investiture Ceremony for recipients of Australian honours and awards announced in the Australia Day 2019 Honours List, and the Governor addressed guests.

Following, at Government House, His Excellency presided at a special meeting of the Executive Council and issued the writ and proclamation for the election, to be held on 18 May 2019, of one half of the Senators from Queensland to serve in the Senate of Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia.
WASHINGTON - White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of "sanctuary cities" to retaliate against President Donald Trump's political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months - once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump's border wall.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.

White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused "to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities," places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of jail space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that "there are PR risks as well."

After the White House pressed again in February, ICE's legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

A White House official and a spokesman for the DHS sent nearly identical statements to The Post on Thursday, indicating that the proposal is no longer under consideration.

"This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion," the White House statement said.

Pelosi's office criticized the plan.

"The extent of this administration's cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne. "Using human beings - including little children - as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable."

Trump has made immigration a central aspect of his administration, and he has grown increasingly frustrated at the influx of migrants from Central America. He often casts them as killers and criminals who threaten U.S. security, pointing to cases in which immigrants have killed U.S. citizens - including a notable case on a San Francisco pier in 2015. And he has railed against liberal sanctuary city policies, saying they endanger Americans.

"These outrageous sanctuary cities are grave threats to public safety and national security," Trump said on Dec. 7, in a speech to the Safe Neighborhoods Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, less than a month after the White House asked ICE about moving detainees to such cities. "Each year, sanctuary cities release thousands of known criminal aliens from their custody and right back into the community. So they put them in, and they have them, and they let them go, and it drives you people a little bit crazy, doesn't it, huh?"

More for you Opinion: The latest Stephen Miller revelations require a tougher Democratic response

The White House believed it could punish Democrats - including Pelosi - by busing ICE detainees into their districts before their release, according to two DHS whistleblowers who independently reported the busing plan to Congress. One of the whistleblowers spoke with The Post, and several DHS officials confirmed the accounts. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller discussed the proposal with ICE, according to two DHS officials. Matthew Albence, who is ICE's acting deputy director, immediately questioned the proposal in November and later circulated the idea within his agency when it resurfaced in February, seeking the legal review that ultimately doomed the proposal. Miller and Albence declined to comment Thursday.

Miller's name did not appear on any of the documents reviewed by The Post. But as White House senior adviser on immigration policy, officials at ICE understood that he was pressing the plan.

Trump has been demanding aggressive action to deal with the surge of migrants, and many of his administration's proposals have been blocked in federal court or, like the family separation policy last year, backfired as public relations disasters.

Homeland Security officials said the sanctuary city request was unnerving, and it underscores the political pressure Trump and Miller have put on ICE and other DHS agencies at a time when the president is furious about the biggest border surge in more than a decade.

"It was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out," said one congressional investigator who has spoken to one of the whistleblowers. "What happened here is that Stephen Miller called people at ICE, said if they're going to cut funding you've got to make sure you're releasing people in Pelosi's district and other congressional districts."

The idea of releasing immigrants into sanctuary cities was not presented to Ronald Vitiello, the agency's acting director, according to one DHS official familiar with the plan. Last week the White House rescinded Vitiello's nomination to lead ICE, giving no explanation, and Vitiello submitted his resignation Wednesday, ending his 30-year-career.

Trump told reporters the following day he wanted to put someone "tougher" at ICE. DHS officials said they do not know whether ICE's refusal to adopt the White House's plan contributed to Vitiello's removal. His departure puts Albence in charge of the agency as of Friday.

The White House proposal reached ICE first in November as a highly publicized migrant caravan was approaching the United States. May Davis, deputy assistant to the president and deputy White House policy coordinator, wrote to officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the Department of Homeland Security with the subject line: "Sanctuary City Proposal."

"The idea has been raised by 1-2 principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bussed to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities," Davis wrote, seeking responses to its operational and legal viability. "There is NOT a White House decision on this."

Albence replied that such a plan "would create an unnecessary operational burden" on an already strained organization and raised concerns about its appropriateness, writing: "Not sure how paying to transport aliens to another location to release them - when they can released on the spot - is a justified expenditure. Not to mention the liability should there be an accident along the way."

The White House pushed the issue a second time in the midst of the budget standoff in mid-February, according to DHS officials, and on the heels of a bitterly partisan 35-day government shutdown over Trump's border wall plan. The White House discussed the immigrant release idea as a way to punish Democrats standing in the way of funding additional detention beds.

ICE detainees with violent criminal records are not typically released on bond or other "alternatives to detention" while they await a hearing with an immigration judge, but there have been instances of such detainees being released.

The White House urged ICE to channel releases to sanctuary districts, regardless of whether immigrants had any ties to those places.

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"It was retaliation, to show them, 'Your lack of cooperation has impacts,' " said one of the DHS officials, summarizing the rationale. "I think they thought it would put pressure on those communities to understand, I guess, a different perspective on why you need more immigration money for detention beds."

Senior officials at ICE did not take the proposal seriously at first, but as the White House exerted pressure, ICE's legal advisers were asked to weigh in, DHS officials said.

A formal legal review was never completed, according to two DHS officials familiar with the events, and senior ICE attorneys told Albence and others that the plan was inappropriate and lacked a legal basis.

"If we would have done that, we would have had to expend transportation resources, and make a decision that we're going to use buses, planes, etc. to send these aliens to a place for whatever reason," a senior DHS official said. "We had to come up with a reason, and we did not have one."

The proposal faded when House Democrats ultimately relented on their demand for a decrease in the number of detention beds, a final sticking point in budget talks between the White House and House Democrats.

The number of immigrant detainees in ICE custody has approached 50,000 in recent months, an all-time high that has further strained the agency's budget. Those include immigrants arrested in the U.S. interior, as well as recent border-crossers transferred from Border Patrol. With unauthorized migration at a 12-year-high, the vast majority of recent migrants - and especially those with children - are quickly processed and released with a notice to appear in court, a system that Trump has derided as "catch and release."

The process has left Trump seething, convinced that immigration officials and the DHS more broadly should adopt a harsher approach.

Vitiello's removal from ICE last week was followed Sunday by the ouster of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who lost favor with Trump and Miller by repeatedly warning the White House that the administration's policy ideas were unworkable and likely to be blocked by federal courts.

The sanctuary city proposal ran contrary to ICE policy guidelines, as well as legal counsel. ICE officials balked at the notion of moving migrants to detention facilities in different areas, insisting that Congress only authorizes the agency to deport immigrants, not relocate them internally, according to DHS officials.

The plan to retaliate against sanctuary cities came just after Trump agreed to reopen the government in late January, following a five-week shutdown over wall funding. The president gave lawmakers three weeks to come up with a plan to secure the border before a second fiscal deadline in mid-February.

During the talks, Republicans and Democrats sparred over the number of detention beds, with House Democrats pressing for a lower number amid pressure from their left flank.

It was during that mid-February standoff that one whistleblower came to Congress alleging that the White House was considering a plan to punish Democrats if they did not relent on ICE funding for beds. A second official independently came forward after that.

According to both, there were at least two versions of the plan being considered. One was to move migrants who were already in ICE detention to the districts of Democratic opponents. The second option was to bus migrants apprehended at the border to sanctuary cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco.

- - -

The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.
Description

GIS  12 April, 2019: The Duke of Edinburgh Award programme, aiming to enhance the skills and aptitudes of 198 firefighters, was launched today by the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Local Government and Outer Islands, Minister of Gender Equality, Child Development and Family Welfare, Mrs Fazila Jeewa-Daureeawoo, at the Coromandel Fire Station.

In her address, the Vice-Prime Minister pointed out that this programme will contribute significantly to the character-building of firefighters as their duties require courage, hard work and determination. The Duke of Edinburgh programme, she said, will help these young people foster growth, personal discovery, perseverance and service to the community.

Moreover, Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo lauded the challenging work of firefighters and emphasised that Government is committed in ensuring that the Mauritius Fire Rescue Service (MFRS) delivers efficient services and in improving the conditions for firefighters to perform their duties in a safe and efficient manner. On this score, she highlighted that a budget of some Rs 570 million has been allocated to the MFRS and underscored from 2015 till date some 476 firefighters have been recruited to serve Mauritius.

The Vice-Prime Minister indicated that different units have been created to reinforce the MFRS. They are: a Rope and Rescue Unit launched in 2016; a Swift Water Rescue Unit in 2017; a Fire Investigation Unit in October 2017; and, an Enforcement Unit created in January 2018 to reinforce inspections in buildings.

Moreover, Mrs Jeewa-Daureeawoo underlined that significant changes have been brought in the system of issuing fire certificates, whereby these certificates have now a validity period of one to three years depending on the risks level of the buildings. The need for the elaboration of a Fire Code in ensuring the safety and prevention of any fire outbreak in buildings, was also highlighted by the Vice-Prime Minister .

Duke of Edinburgh Award Programme

The Duke of Edinburghs Award Programme is offered by the Ministry of Youth and Sports to young Mauritians aged between 14 to 24 years for 50 years now. The programme, in line with its mission of equipping participants with the necessary aptitudes to succeed in life, presents young people with a set of balanced and non-competitive voluntary activities. They are guided by Award Leaders, Assessors or other Award volunteers in this endeavour.
Description

GIS  12 April, 2019: The High Commissioner of India to Mauritius, Mr Tanmaya Lal, accompanied by an Indian delegation from the Indian Chamber of Commerce from Kolkata, paid, today, a courtesy call on the Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, External Communications and National Development Unit, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth , at the New Treasury Building, in Port-Louis.

In his statement, the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Sumantrana Management Consultants LLP, Mr Roopen Roy, who is part of the delegation highlighted that discussions with the Prime Minister focused mostly on fostering collaboration between India and Mauritius. Mauritius, he underlined, is poised to become the gateway for Indian investors to do business in African countries given that the country has a strong cultural link with India as well as favourable conditions for doing business.

India, Mr Roy mentioned, wants to invest and create sustainable business partnerships and alliances with Mauritius in several fields namely: innovation and technology, business start-ups, manufacturing, wellness, and education.

Also present, the Coordinator for the Honorary Consul, Honorary Consulate of the Republic of Mauritius in Kolkata, Mr KapilKaul, underlined that the issue of direct flights from Mauritius to Kolkata was also discussed with the Mauritian Prime Minister.
New Zealand is banning most semi-automatic weapons less than a month after a horrific massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers. The decisive action came about with little objection as the stunned country moved swiftly to limit military-style firearms.

Nothing close to that quick sweeping action will happen in Washington, where serious gun control heats up after mass killings and soon dissipates. In California, which has some of the most restrictive laws in the country, a defiant strain remains just below the surface.

A federal judges ruling on March 29 allowed sales of high-capacity ammo magazines after gun-rights advocates went to court to protest a voter-endorsed ban. Within days, dealers were swamped by eager buyers for the spring-loaded clips that can hold more than 10 rounds. It was only a week-long window that closed when the judges ruling was stayed by an appeals court.

The magazines are popular with gun enthusiasts who dont have to reload as often. But that same advantage allows killers to keep firing during deadly rampages, making such episodes even more lethal. That spectre led voters in 2016 to pass Proposition 63 that banned outsized magazines.

The judges ruling brought on a mad rush to buy the devices that can hold up to 30 rounds. Potential purchasers were urged to buy quickly before the legal appeal took hold and halted sales.

The issue is now in the hands of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where judges should reconsider the daft and disturbing opinion of trial court Judge Roger Benitez. His ruling leaned heavily on Second Amendment gun ownership arguments and a belief that personal safety and home defense shouldnt be curtailed by limiting the size of magazines.

That view shouldnt be the last word in an age where high-powered weaponry too easily ends up in the wrong hands. New Zealand endured a tragedy and took steps to prevent another. California should do the same with magazines.

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.
Description

GIS  12 April, 2019: This State Visit will set the tone for an even more intensive and vibrant collaboration between our two countries which already share strong political and economic ties, and consolidate the brotherly relations. The stage is now set for closer economic partnership and for the development of new areas of synergies for our mutual benefit and for realising the African Dream. Another area where cooperation will be crucial and can be another game changer for regional economic integration is the Regional Maritime Service for which Mauritius is prepared to take the lead.

The Prime Minister, Minister of Home Affairs, External Communications and National Development Unit, Minister of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, was speaking this morning at the Mauritius-Kenya Business Forum which focused on the theme An economic corridor promoting intra-African Trade and Investment. The President of the Republic of Kenya, Mr Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, the Chairman of the Economic Development Board (EDB), Mr Charles Cartier, the CEO of Kenya Private Sector Alliance, Chairperson, Special Economic Zones Authority, Kenya, Ms Carole Kariuki, were present.

The Business Forum, organised by the EDB, was held at the Intercontinental Mauritius Resort, in Balaclava. Two Memoranda of Understanding were signed on that occasion, namely: MoU between the EDB and the KEPSA; and MoU between the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the KEPSA.

In his address, Prime Minister Jugnauth underscored the common traits of the economies of Mauritius and Kenya that make them natural partners in development as well as their shared transformative journey in adapting the fourth industrial revolution with a focus on the development of the financial services sector. Our economies are market-based and open to the rest of the world through liberalised external trade systems and are committed to improve the ease-of-doing business for local as well as foreign investors, while being mindful that a key node in the development of Africa in the future will be the ability to substantially increase intra-trade, he said.

Stressing on the need for a Regional Maritime Service for the Indian Ocean Commission and East African countries as already discussed with the President of Mozambique and the President of Madagascar, the Prime Minister underscored that this endeavour would get a major spur if supported by Kenya. As it is, he said, both parties have during bilateral sessions, agreed to look at ways and means, in a collaborative manner, to harness the opportunities that the Blue and Ocean sector offer in their respective national economies.

Moreover, Prime Minister Jugnauth dwelt on Mauritius New Africa Partnership policy which is centered on accelerating outward investments in African countries for which the Mauritius-Africa Fund to spearhead Mauritian investment on the continent and to execute project has been established. Mauritius, he recalled, is developing Special Economic Zones in Senegal, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Madagascar in partnership with the respective Governments. An International Industrial Park has already been set up in Senegal and Government is facilitating the development of a Technology Park in Ivory Coast and a Business and Technology Park in Greater Accra in Ghana.

The Prime Minister emphasised that it is in that same spirit that Mauritius wants to nurture the Kenya-Mauritius relationship. Over the last few years more than 10 billion shillings have been invested into the Kenyan economy mostly in the financial services and sugar sectors.

According to Prime Minister Jugnauth, where multilateral efforts are weak, bilateral arrangements can be a game changer, hence the reason why Mauritius is focusing on bilateral cooperation with key African countries such as Kenya which is one of the leading economies in East Africa. In the last five years, he indicated, our domestic exports of goods to Kenya increased by about 13 times, that is, from Rs 96 million to Rs 1.3 billion. Speaking about the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) that came into force last week, and which is projected to become the largest Free Trade Area in the future, he underlined that it will eliminate high tariffs, generate employment especially for the growing young workforce and harmonise the operations of Africas Regional Economic Communities.

As for the President Kenyatta, he reiterated his Governments commitment to continue working closely with the Government of Mauritius for the successful implementation of all commitments, goals and objectives of strengthening bilateral cooperation between our two fraternal countries. The forum, he underlined, will provide a platform for the two business fraternities, to freely interact and agree on how to enhance trade and investment cooperation.

According to the Kenyan President, the enhanced partnership will ensure that our two nations move up the economic value chain, create sustainable economies by accessing international markets and also attracting Foreign Direct Investments. On that note, he urged the Mauritian business community to take up the opportunities offered through business fora and bilateral meetings to increase trade and investments.

Furthermore, President Kenyatta observed that the African Continental Free Trade Agreement will help to create a single continental market with free movement of people, goods and services and generate employment, and enable economic development, business integration and increased market access, for advancing Africas socioeconomic development and towards the attainment of the African Unions Agenda 2063.

As for the EDBs Chairman, Mr Cartier, he highlighted that Kenya has maintained strong economic fundamentals and positive growth and its economy is on the move offering numerous business opportunities, and is hence leading the way in Africa. Mauritius and Kenya, he pointed out, share nearly five decades of bilateral economic relations in areas of trade and investment and have been supporting each other in their respective economic growth, with Mauritius having a total domestic export to Kenya of nearly Rs 2 billion and imports amounting to Rs 1.4 billion of goods in 2018.

In addition, Mr Cartier underlined that the political commitment expressed by the two countries leaders during the course of the State Visit, through the signature of Agreements, gives the business community from both sides enormous confidence. It certainly paves the way for a robust and enriching Mauritius-Kenya economic corridor that will further enhance trade of good and services and capture more capital flows and investment, he said.

For her part, the CEO Kariuki, spoke of the continuous improvement in Kenyas business climate through policies, legislations and regulations that have simplified market access and increased business opportunities.

According to Ms Kariuki, the recently signed MoUs with the KEPSA will enable both countries build ties as members of the COMESA and put the countries in an advantageous position to leverage on intra-African trade. Through this joint venture, both parties will move forward together to resolve challenges, tap in human and resources while promoting the best interests of the respective countries. On that score, she welcomed Mauritian investors to take advantage of the highly-skilled manpower, financial sector, and conducive work environment of Kenya.
What could funky Santa Cruz, tiny Angels Camp and snooty Beverly Hills have in common? Their elected leaders all suffer from the common California delusion that every community is a fortress to be defended from pernicious outside influences like the free market and state law. Theyre among the 25 local governments suing regulators for allowing home delivery of marijuana, the failed prohibition of which the people of the state wisely ended 2 years ago  or at least we thought we did.

The lawsuit was filed recently against Californias Bureau of Cannabis Control for affirming that licensed marijuana sellers may deliver statewide regardless of local sensibilities. The clarification, through regulations approved in January, provoked an uproar among the states local governments, about two-thirds of which have banned dispensaries and other cannabis-related businesses  and many of which believe they should be able to dictate what legal commodities their residents may have delivered to their homes.

Most of the jurisdictions behind the lawsuit are among those that prohibit local cannabis sales. Lest their policies be mistaken for anything other than moralist, they also want to ensure that no resident imports the demon weed with the likes of Eaze, the Los Angeles-based delivery service known as the Uber of marijuana. The plaintiffs range from Bay Area cities such as San Pablo and Dixon through Central Valley and foothill towns to wealthy Southern California enclaves.

The outlier is Santa Cruz County, which given its bohemian reputation is an unlikely member of the bogart brigade. It turns out that while the county welcomed legal cannabis cultivation and sales, its waging a taxpayer-funded fight to shield local retailers from out-of-town competition.

Whether the plaintiffs want to engage in President Trump-style protectionism or prohibition by other means, the lawsuit is in the very spirit of over-regulation that is strangling Californias nascent cannabis industry and keeping the illegal trade thriving. Tax revenues during the first year of legal recreational sales fell far short of expectations, growers were put out of business by bureaucratic hurdles and costs, and thousands more face the same fate without legislative intervention. Policymakers mistakes have been numerous and varied, but the fact that sales of the drug remain effectively illegal in most of the state contributes to market dysfunction and undermines legalization.

In such an environment, the independent Legislative Analysts Office noted recently, the black market arguably flourishes, especially where cannabis may be obtained neither through storefront retailers (nor) delivery.

The original sin here is the Legislatures habit of abdicating state policy questions to the states more than 500 local governments, which given sheer probability is bound to yield nonsensical answers. The 2015 legislation that belatedly instituted a licensing and regulatory scheme for medical marijuana  some two decades after voters legalized it for that purpose  made the fateful mistake of allowing cities and counties to maintain prohibition of the drug within their borders even by delivery. The consequent mess is still being unraveled.

The 2016 voter initiative legalizing recreational marijuana and the subsequent implementing legislation attempted to address the resulting patchwork by declaring that the just-say-no cities shall not prevent delivery of cannabis or cannabis products on public roads. Undeterred, local officials maintained that the provision allowed cannabis to be carted through their towns but not to end its long, strange trip within them.

The struggle continued. A bill to clarify that cannabis can indeed be delivered throughout California died in the state Senate last year. Then came the administrative regulation expressly allowing legal delivery to any jurisdiction within the state. On Tuesday, a bill to overturn the rule and restore local prohibition narrowly failed in an Assembly committee, leaving legal delivery in place pending the outcome of the lawsuit.

The marijuana morass mirrors the states long-standing approach to housing, another subject on which the Legislature long pretended to make policy while practically delegating the most important questions to local politicians and bureaucrats. Just as California allowed its cities not only to plan and zone but to forbid residential development, precipitating a dire housing shortage, it gave local governments leave not only to regulate marijuana but to prolong prohibition, subverting the law and the will of voters.

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.
New Medicare for All legislation (House Resolution 1384) reached the floor of Congress with 107 congressional co-sponsors, and has since added one more. Immediately, a widespread counterattack against Medicare was launched, incessantly calling it idealist, leftist, pie-in-the-sky, outrageously costly and guaranteed to increase your taxes, raise the national debt, take away your right to private insurance, cut doctors incomes and, in short, branding it as nothing but disastrous socialism. The anti-Medicare campaign originates with conservative think tanks such as Heritage and American Enterprise (policy foundations attached to insurers and Big Pharma), some policy gurus in academia defending private insurers and politicians receiving lobbying support from insurers.

They aim to block the one practical solution to the health care crisis Americans face.

None of these arguments is new, as health policy researchers Drs. Steffie Woolhandler and David Himmelstein document in their essay, Medicare for All and its rivals, in the April 2 issue of Annals of Internal Medicine.

Its the same story weve heard repeatedly since Medicare began in 1965 coming from ideologues protecting hugely profitable insurers on Wall Street. Their cause is misanthropic; people suffer. They leveled the same attack against LBJ, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and now against Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Here are the facts:

In a socialist health care model (similar to much of our Department of Veterans Affairs services), medical doctors are salaried government employees.

Medicare, in contrast, leaves the private-health-care-system intact, eliminating only the profit-driven insurance companies, which are self-serving and restrict care. Simplifying financing provides everyone 100 percent full access, plus dental, vision and long-term care. A Medicare credit card bills Medicare, not the patient.

The talk that Canadians are not happy with their Medicare is anecdotal fraudulence. Repeated surveys reveal that Canadians are far happier with their Medicare than are Americans with our chaotic system. With a half-million personal bankruptcies yearly in the United States from health debt, and early deaths from denied care, thats not surprising.

When Medicare was proposed by President Lyndon Johnson, he wanted everyone covered but could only get coverage for seniors because of fierce resistance. Despite repeated attempts to undermine and privatize Medicare, its done a better job for seniors than the private insurers could or would. For example, my familys supplementary private insurance would not allow my wife to go to the best reputed surgeon performing parathyroid surgery because he was not on its panel. We decided to go to that specialist in San Francisco anyway and pay 20 percent of the cost, knowing that Medicare pays the other 80 percent of the bill. And, because Medicare determines how much the surgery is worth, our 20 percent was far less costly than if Medicare was not involved (our cost share was in the hundreds, rather than thousands, of dollars).

Under HR1384, Medicare would be improved, broadening coverage and eliminating the 20 percent share payment. Everything is paid for. But how?

If it worries you that you might have to pay a payroll tax, consider this: Medicare for seniors is funded by a payroll tax.

And because care for seniors (who need more care than younger patients) is funded that way, any added payroll tax would add less than what you pay right now in Medicare payroll tax and any other taxes that are implemented. (In return, we would have the right to go anywhere we want for care  to stay with our familiar doctors, clinics, hospitals or not.)

But where does the claim of prohibitive costs to the economy come in? In a word, its a ruse.

We now pay more than twice as much per capita for health care as other rich countries (and yet our health outcomes are worse). In a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United States ranks 29th among all nations for access to and quality of health care (after most of Europe, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea).

U.S. government spending alone on health care (Medicare, Medi-caid and other programs) could fund the entire health care systems of almost all countries in the world. That means Medicare for All, which will lower health care costs, wont inflate the deficit nor cost individuals more than they currently pay.

The main issue is how to best capture the money currently spent on health care and direct it into one Medicare fund. It wont be hard.

Marc Sapir is a retired East Bay primary care physician and the former medical director of the Center for Elders Independence. A long time member of the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP.org), he currently serves on the steering committee of the organizations California division.
With crumbling sea walls, rising seas and effective federal action still up in the air, its no wonder that climate change is a growing topic of concern for San Franciscans.

Sea-level rise is expected to submerge 6% of the city by the end of the century, threatening property damage in the millions of dollars in some of the most vital residential areas of the city.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

These significant climate threats to highly populated urban areas of San Francisco require immediate action. Ecosystem-based adaptation needs to be prioritized as the cheapest, most effective and most resilient strategy to protect the city from the quickly worsening impacts of climate change.

Paul Chinn / The Chronicle 2018

Ecosystem-based adaptation is the technique of using natural processes to buffer specific areas against the negative impacts of a changing climate. This kind of adaptation has been used fairly extensively in nonurban areas, such as mangrove planting efforts in Southeast Asia and wetland restoration right here in the San Francisco Bay, but it has not yet garnered significant support for urban implementation.

Michael Macor / The Chronicle October 2016

So-called hard-adaptation efforts, such as sea walls and levees, are already in use in some of our countrys most vulnerable areas, including in San Francisco.

These methods, however, have drawbacks: They are costly, inflexible, and a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

Ecosystem-based adaptation takes many forms, but is most effective when it expands on the natural ecosystem challenges and opportunities of a region, focusing on specific areas where these benefits are most needed.

Liz Hafalia / The Chronicle 2015

In its 2016 Sea Level Rise Action Plan, the San Francisco Department of Public Works includes some plans for ecosystem-based adaptation, but these attempts focus mostly on expanding habitat restoration efforts in some of the least-populated areas of the city. They will have a minimal impact on the residents who will be most affected by a changing climate.

The city needs to focus its adaptation efforts on wetland and seagrass bed construction efforts in the more populated areas of the city. These are the regions that will suffer the most if storm surge or another flooding event forces thousands out of their homes and onto the streets. The sea wall in place at the Embarcadero is a vital component in protecting the city against uniform sea-level rise, but will not be enough to defend against the massive storm surges predicted to occur over the next few decades.

Ecosytem-based implementation in highly populated areas of San Francisco would also have positive side effects, such as urban beautification and air purification through wetland construction and restoration, sea grass beds, and urban forestry. While large-scale efforts are surely more difficult to implement in areas where land is as scarce as it is in San Francisco, inaction on this issue will only lead to more loss of land to sea-level rise by the end of the century.

Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle

San Francisco needs to invest more resources in ecosystem-based adaptation efforts in the most vulnerable areas of the city before it is too late. These nature-focused efforts are growing in popularity in other cities around the world, and San Franciscans can be an inspiration to others to adopt this affordable, adaptable and long-term mediation strategy while the option is still open.

Jacqueline Vogel is a student at Stanford University, studying Earth systems with a focus on climate change and oceans.
WASHINGTON  President Trump says his administration is seriously considering releasing undocumented immigrants from detention into sanctuary cities, but experts say the plan would be on shaky legal footing if actually implemented.

Trump tweeted Friday that the Radical Left should be happy with the plan, which the White House had earlier said was a suggestion that was floated and rejected. The Washington Post initially reported that Trump officials raised the idea in November and February as a way to alleviate crowding in detention space and punish political enemies  including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose home base, San Francisco, was one of the first jurisdictions in the nation to declare itself a sanctuary city.

Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only, Trump tweeted. The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!

Trump later answered a question from reporters about what he meant.

California certainly is always saying, Oh, we want more people, he said. And they want more people in their sanctuary cities. Well, well give them more people. We can give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply. And lets see if theyre so happy.

The White House responded to an inquiry about Trumps tweets by describing the suggestion as a call for cooperation.

Democrats say we must have open borders and that illegal immigrants have a right to be in this country at all costs, so they should be working with the administration to find the best ways to transport those illegal aliens that are already set for release, into communities in their districts and states, spokesman Hogan Gidley said.

The presidents tweets were met with a mix of outrage, confusion and shrugs among his critics. Some, including Pelosi, called the idea of using immigrants as political pawns cruel. Others said immigrants remain welcome in their cities.

Some immigration experts predicted that the administration would have difficulty defending such a policy in court. And others said the policy would probably be impossible to put into practice and be self-defeating for a president who has repeatedly said he wants to end catch and release of immigrants into the U.S. while they await court proceedings.

Its nonsensical on so many levels, said Leon Rodriguez, who was director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Department of Homeland Security under former President Barack Obama.

He said the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency technically has the power to transport undocumented immigrants in detention to another jurisdiction, then release them.

But Rodriguez said there were several potential legal problems with the idea. Immigrants advocates or attorneys could argue that officials were enforcing the law in different ways in different parts of the country, or that they were using the law for political purposes, he said.

Also, the government appears to have no legal authority to order immigrants to stay in the location where theyre released, other than through assigning their cases to a particular immigration court, Rodriguez said.

Insane idea, said John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE and general counsel of the Homeland Security Department under Obama. A tremendous waste of resources, and it undoubtedly violates multiple laws. Its insane to propose diverting law enforcement and border security resources for political activities.

Ur Jaddou, a former counsel with Citizen and Immigration Services, noted that the Hatch Act bars federal employees from engaging in political activity, which this idea could be construed as in the context of the presidents tweets. It could also run afoul of laws governing the use of federal funds, which Congress controls.

Federal law requires that immigrants who pose a public safety threat or a flight risk be detained, and many are subject to expedited deportation proceedings. But immigrants who dont fall into those categories and seek to stay in the U.S. under asylum or on other humanitarian grounds can be released on parole. Many stay free for years as their cases work through the immigration courts.

ICEs capacity to hold immigrants is limited  it has enough beds for about 50,000 people. The immigration courts have more than 800,000 cases pending.

If I were the ICE general counsel, I would find it problematic to create a scheme where I enforce the law in a very different way in one part of the country than in another part of the country, based purely on political motives, Rodriguez said. Its government by slogan, basically.

Politicians representing San Francisco, one of the first cities to declare that it would not help the federal government enforce immigration laws, reacted with a mix of criticism for Trumps idea and a welcome message to immigrants.

Its just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful to challenges that we face as a country as a people, to address who we are, a nation of immigrants, Pelosi said at a news conference Friday.

Like so many issues we are forced to talk about during this presidency, this isnt a real idea or a real proposal, its just another scare tactic, Mayor London Breed said in a statement.

Yes, immigration is an important issue and we need legislative reform, but thats not what this president is talking about, the mayor added.

We welcome immigrants to San Francisco with open arms, state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said in a statement. Given that immigrants built this country, make our communities better places and are coming here to work hard, start businesses and raise their families, this temper tantrum by the president isnt a punishment  its a benefit.

Its possible that Trumps plan could result in fewer immigrants being deported rather than more, as he wishes.

ICE has recently been releasing immigrants en masse from border detention centers to nonprofit groups, which typically help them find a place to stay or connect them with family members. Keeping immigrants in detention, however, is more likely to move their cases quickly and more likely to result in deportation.

Many of the nations largest cities have sanctuary policies, and also have numerous resources to help immigrants with their legal cases. Immigration courts in those cities have some of the highest rates of granting asylum in the country, according to data maintained by Syracuse Universitys TRAC program of immigration data and reports.

The plan could also be expensive. A single Greyhound bus ticket from San Antonio, Texas, to San Francisco can cost more than $200.

One immigration law expert said Trumps idea might actually be welcome among those who work with undocumented immigrants, though thats not the presidents intention.

The fundamental principle is that families arriving at the border seeking protection should be treated humanely and not be used as political pawns, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the pro-immigration American Immigration Council. That being said, there is nothing wrong with releasing asylum seekers from detention. The vast majority of asylum seekers pose no harm to anyone and have no criminal record, and most of them will appear in court, so releasing them from detention is often the best thing for them, for their children and often for their cases.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan
WASHINGTON  Attorney General William Barr is making his first major moves on immigration policy since his confirmation, setting up big changes for the courts that decide whether immigrants will stay in the U.S. or be deported.

The Justice Department is on the verge of issuing rule changes that would make it easier for a handful of appellate immigration judges to declare their rulings binding on the entire immigration system, The Chronicle has learned. The changes could also expand the use of single-judge, cursory decisions at the appellate level  all at the same time as a hiring spree that could reshape the court.

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The Trump administration bills the moves as efficiency measures to help fix a delay-plagued immigration court system, at a time it is being inundated by asylum seekers at the southern border. Asylum cases can take years to complete, even those that are relatively straightforward.

But advocates for immigrants and attorneys who work in the system fear the efficiency tools could be used to dramatically reshape immigration law to fit President Trumps political goals.

Trump has repeatedly railed against the immigration court system and suggested doing away with it entirely.

Congress has to ... get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesnt work, Trump said this month. And frankly, we should get rid of judges. You cant have a court case every time somebody steps their foot on our ground.

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions frequently cited the immigration-case backlog as dire and made reducing it a central focus of his tenure, though it grew by more than 100,000 cases in that time to its current total of more than 800,000. Recently ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen complained that migrants with weak asylum cases were clogging the system, slowing immigration judges from handling legitimate claims.

Last week, the Justice Department revived a proposed regulation originally initiated during the George W. Bush administration to allow the 21-judge appeals court system that hears immigration cases more latitude to issue cursory opinions without explanation. It would also allow the court to set precedents with only a small minority of appeals judges participating, which could sharply accelerate the administrations ability to make changes to immigration law that wouldnt require congressional action.

The proposed regulation has been sent to the White House for review before being made final, according to a government database. The Justice Department declined to comment other than to confirm that it hopes to finalize the rule this year.

The administrations moves are raising concerns among groups representing immigration judges, attorneys and advocates, following a series of earlier moves that Sessions undertook to overhaul the courts.

All of these pieces add up to taking away due process and speeding people through to their deportation in some sort of assembly line substitute for justice, said Jeffrey Chase, a former immigration judge and former senior legal adviser to the immigration appeals court.

The immigration courts operate under the Justice Department and are separate from the U.S. federal court system. The attorney general hires the judges who hear immigrants cases and their appeals, and he serves as a one-man Supreme Court with the authority to overturn any decision.

The proposed Justice Department regulation change has two main parts. First, it would allow the immigration courts appellate arm, the Board of Immigration Appeals, to more easily issue affirmances without opinion. Those affirmances are when a single appeals judge, rather than a three-judge panel, upholds a lower courts deportation decision without issuing an explanation.

The appeals board would be allowed to consider limited resources  such as a shortage of staff or a crush of cases  to issue such cursory affirmances, something it cannot do now.

Second, the regulation would change the way the appeals board can make its decisions public  the step that gives those decisions the force of binding precedent for all 400 immigration judges and the appeals court itself. In the past, those decisions have dictated what types of gang violence or domestic violence cases qualify for asylum, for example, or what constitutes a vulnerable population in need of protection.

Currently, the appeals board can declare a binding precedent only if a majority of all permanent sitting judges vote to do so. The regulation would do away with that requirement and allow a two-judge majority of any three-judge panel that decides a case to declare it a precedent. It would also give the attorney general that power  allowing him to set as precedent any three-judge panels decision he chooses.

At the moment, the appeals court has 15 permanent judges and six temporary fill-ins to decide those cases. The Justice Department has posted job listings to fill those six seats permanently, but would make two key changes from the current system: Appeals judges could serve simultaneously as lower-court immigration judges, and they would not have to relocate to the Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C.

The administration has not explained why previous job postings for these appellate openings have not resulted in hires or why they decided to make the changes to the job description.

The new listings would allow the department to recruit appeals judges without forcing them to move to the Washington area. Critics familiar with the inner workings of the Justice Department fear that officials will handpick appeals appellate judges from the ranks of lower-court judges with the highest deportation rates.

Officials are barred by federal law from considering politics or ideology in picking immigration judges, but the administration has been accused of such motivations. Civil servant Dorothea Lay went public with her allegations when her offer of an appeals board judgeship by the Obama administration was rescinded after Trump took office, on the grounds of lack of commitment. She has filed a complaint with federal watchdogs.

Taken together, the hiring of new appeals immigration judges and greater ability to pump out decisions could accelerate the Trump administrations reshaping of immigration law in the U.S., all without needing Congress to act.

Trump has pointed to the immigration case backlog as a major contributor to illegal immigration to the U.S. Immigrants often have to wait years for their cases to be heard, sometimes disappear before that date, and in the meantime may receive work permits and put down roots in the U.S.

Sessions took several steps to accelerate the process and make it harder for immigrants to qualify for asylum, though the backlog has still grown. Sessions used his authority as the quasi-Supreme Court of the immigration system to rule that most victims of domestic and gang violence dont qualify for asylum. A federal judge has blocked the application of that decision to asylum screenings at the border.

Sessions also set case-completion quotas for immigration judges, over the objection of the judges union and immigration lawyer associations, and limited their discretion to close or postpone cases.

Art Arthur, a former immigration judge and fellow at the immigration reduction advocacy group Center for Immigration Studies, who has written in favor of most of the Justice Departments immigration court moves, downplayed the significance of the latest proposed changes.

He argued it made sense for appeals judges to have experience in the lower immigration courts  which is not a job requirement  and that it was important for the system to have flexibility to manage its caseload.

Will there be complaints? There were complaints in the past, about Bush-era streamlining efforts, including from federal courts, Arthur said. But I hope that (the Justice Department) has learned from the issues that it had in the past, when it was doing affirmances without opinion, how to do it correctly. With respect to having flexibility as it relates to board members, I dont have any problem with that at all, so long as its clear that an appellate immigration judge is not able to review a decision that that appellate immigration judge issued.

The union that represents lower-court immigration judges said it was concerned that the Justice Department has not consulted it about the proposed changes. The group, the National Association of Immigration Judges, has been critical of Sessions unilateral efforts to expedite the immigration legal process as jeopardizing immigrants rights to fair proceedings.

Its yet another example where the professionals in the field are not consulted, said union President Emerita Dana Leigh Marks, an immigration judge in San Francisco. And thats just where the immigration judges get frustrated, because we dont know exactly what it means. It may be terrific, but one would still like to be brought into the decision-making process and have the pros and cons discussed.

The union, the American Bar Association and the American Association of Immigration Lawyers have all called for removing the immigration court system from the Justice Department and making it an independent legal institution, like the Bankruptcy Courts.

The policy change really is a reflection of showing how DOJ management can rewrite immigration laws and policies on a whim, said Laura Lynch, the immigration lawyers associations senior policy counsel. Efforts to improve efficiency, theyre important. But they cant be implemented at the expense of fundamental principles of due process and fairness in the court system.

One former Justice Department official who worked on the immigration courts noted that any changes in immigration law that result from the court changes are likely to stay in place for years.

Precedent decisions live on forever, and so once they have that, theyre going to work on issuing precedent decisions, as many as they possibly can, said Rena Cutlip-Mason, who now works at Tahirih Justice Center, an organization that defends immigrant women and children fleeing gender-based violence. Theres going to be a lot more precedents, and its hard to say what those precedents will be.

Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicles Washington correspondent. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan
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The first steps on the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail can be exhilarating: The 32.8-mile trail actually begins heading downhill.

From Skyline, at an elevation of 3,000 feet at Castle Rock State Park, the trail descends most of the way through Big Basin Redwoods and beyond down along Waddell Creek to Rancho del Oso and the coast at Highway 1. Along the way, youll see sweeping views of Monterey Bay, trek past the remote headwaters of the San Lorenzo River, through giant redwoods and drop-dead beautiful waterfalls, and then along a pretty coastal creek with tons of wildflowers.

Skyline-to-the-Sea provides a wilderness opportunity when the Sierra Nevada, Cascade and Shasta-Siskiyou ranges are locked up with a snowpack 163 percent of normal. (After this winters barrage of snow, it will likely be well into July until most of the John Muir Trail and the High Sierra becomes accessible.) Unlike high-country expeditions, this trail isnt a physical test, and you shouldnt have trouble finding a campsite.

The best move is to break up the journey into three legs of 9.8 miles, 9.5 miles and 13.5 miles per day (including a 2-mile side trip to see waterfalls) and camp along the way for two nights at Waterman Gap and Jay Camp.

April and May is the best season of the year to do it, when the waterfalls are flush and the wildflowers are blooming. I try to complete a major part of it every April as a birthday present to myself. Note: Until temporary bridges are installed over Waddell Creek, an annual event that usually occurs by the last Saturday of April, you have to ford the creek about six miles from the end of the trip. Before the bridges go in, this is usually an easy but wet crossing (and well get to that).

4 steps to prepare

1. Reserve your dates. The reservation system has been simplified by a new proprietary state park website for trail camps in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where you can review campsite availability by date. This is not the mainstream reservation service for state park camping.

2. Assemble your gear. Prepare like you would for an expedition in the High Sierra, where you carry all your gear on your back. Bring a backpacking stove, water filtration system and whatever it takes (tent, pad, sleeping bag, air pillow) to stay dry and warm and get a good nights sleep. No campfires are permitted at the trail camps.

3. Check the trail conditions. Newcomers unfamiliar with the nuances of the route can buy trail maps from the Sempervirens Fund. In addition, for a section of trail closed by storm damage at Big Basin Redwoods, a detour is available. This is the wilderness. In other words, treat the landscape like natures church, and leave city behavior far behind. For much of the trail, cell phones are inoperable.

4. Leave a shuttle car. Unless youre planning on hiking all the way back up the hill to the start, youll want to have a car waiting for you at the end. Drop your shuttle car at Rancho del Oso hikers parking lot on Highway 1. Register and pay the fee. Then drive to Castle Rock, park and saddle up, as we call it.

Know the trail

Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2011

From Castle Rock State Park, you start on the Saratoga Gap Trail (which leads a short distance to a spur on the left to King Creek Falls). The trail is routed past honeycombed sandstone and the foot of Goat Rock, where the views to the west of Monterey Bay are spectacular. The trail passes Castle Rock Trail Camp and then drops down into far-less-traveled terrain. In deep forest, you pass the headwaters of the San Lorenzo River and crumbling foundations and structures from a historic ranch. You emerge at Waterman Gap (not far from Highway 9) for your first nights camp. We make this trip during the week and have always had this camp to ourselves. 9.8 miles.

The next morning crosses through some of the regions most accessible, and shortly later, most remote landscapes. The trail picks up where you cross Highway 9 and parallel twisty narrow Highway 236 (a road into Big Basin) before crossing China Grade and breaking into wildlands. At one point, you cross this sandstone face, where your boots grip like on sandpaper, with a pretty view across a sea of redwoods. The route eventually turns left and follows along a forested, knife-edge ridge, as remote as it gets, and then leads down into the basin floor. Camp at Jay Camp, reserved for trail hikers. 9.5 miles (mileage includes a jog off main trail to reach campground).

Waterfall side trip

Scott Peden

Out of Jay Camp near Big Basin headquarters, a short detour is required around a section of the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail closed by a slide and downed trees. This route rises through old-growth redwoods, then tops the Big Basin Rim and descends to Kelly Creek. Its then an easy walk in redwoods to the spur on the right that leads to Berry Creek Falls, the 70-foot free fall. Its another mile up the canyon to 60-foot Silver Falls, which is fed by the Golden Cascade. One of my single favorite spots anywhere is the brink of Silver Falls, where you can reach out from the cable rail and touch the water, then turn to your right, take two steps and see the final chute of the Golden Cascade.

Back on the main trail, its about a mile to the stream crossing of Waddell Creek. The temporary bridges usually go in at the end of April. To ford the stream, take off your socks and walk across with your bare feet in your boots, with a stick for support; then dry your feet and put your dry socks back on for hiking. If you are new to fording creeks, or feel anything but safe and comfortable making a crossing, delay your trip to when the bridges are installed.

The final stretch of the trail becomes a service road along Waddell Creek. It is routed amid forest and meadows, easy and light. As you near the coast, the flora often includes excellent wildflower blooms that peak in late April through mid-May. The final day is 11.5 miles, plus another 2 miles up and back to see the waterfalls, for 13.5.

When you arrive at your vehicle, a moment of exhilaration will take over you, just as you felt at the start. After all, you have just finished the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail. Some will head over to Waddell Beach to dip their toes in the sea.

For April and May, there is no better multiday backpacking trek in California.

If you go: Detour route

Storm damage closed a section of the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail near headquarters from Big Basin Redwoods State Park. A detour is available: From headquarters at the amphitheater, connect with the short trail along Opal Creek. Turn right and walk a short distance to a bridge, cross over the creek and walk upstream for a minute to the Sunset Trail. Turn left on the Sunset Trail and hike through forest, cross Middle Ridge Fire Road and down a short distance to the Sunset Connector Trail. Turn left. This trail descends past Kelly Creek and you then reconnect with the Skyline-to-the-Sea Trail.

Tom Stienstra is The Chronicles outdoor writer. Email: tstienstra@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @StienstraTom Facebook: www.facebook.com/tomstienstraoutdoors
Chevron positioned itself to become the dominant oil producer in the field that is driving the U.S. shale revolution when it said Friday that it was buying Anadarko Petroleum for $33 billion.

The acquisition is the largest takeover in the global oil industry in three years and signals that shale drilling, which was once dominated by small and nimble independent companies, has now become a battleground for oil giants. It also demonstrates that the largest oil companies believe that they can profitably drill in shale fields even when crude oil prices are much lower than they were a decade ago.

In buying Anadarko, San Ramons Chevron is picking up major oil and natural gas projects in the Gulf of Mexico, Colorado, Mozambique, Algeria and Ghana. But most of all, it is building on its position in the Permian Basin of West Texas and New Mexico, which recently passed Saudi Arabias Ghawar field as the worlds most productive oil field.

More than a dozen oil and gas pipelines serving the Permian are expected to be completed by the middle of 2020, potentially increasing exports from the Gulf of Mexico region to 8 million from 2 million barrels a day.

Anadarko and Chevron have a 75-mile stretch of contiguous acreage in the Permian, which should help the companies reduce production and transportation costs. About a third of total U.S. oil production comes from the basin, which is largely responsible for the production and export boom of recent years.

This is a compelling transaction, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth told analysts. We intend to accelerate activity in Anadarkos Permian acreage.

Chevron is the worlds 10th largest company producing oil and gas, and Anadarko ranks 41st, according to Rystad Energy, a consulting firm. Once the merger is completed by the end of the year, Chevron will climb to seventh place, vaulting ahead of Royal Dutch Shell and BP. It will still trail Exxon Mobil, Saudi Aramco and four other national oil companies.

Anadarkos Permian assets are among the most lucrative in the United States. The company has identified 10,000 drilling locations on its acreage, according to a recent Morningstar report.

Per Magnus Nysveen, who heads research at Rystad, said that the deal would help Chevron emerge as the clear leader among all Permian players, both in terms of production growth and as a cost leader. He estimated that by 2025, the merged companies would produce as much as 1.6 million barrels of oil a day in the Permian alone  more than the total current production of Algeria, a leading member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

The acquisition continues a trend toward more concentration of Permian production in the hands of giant oil companies, which in recent years had fallen behind dozens of smaller and more nimble independents like Anadarko.

Chevrons move is the third major acquisition in the Permian over the last three years and there have been many smaller ones. Exxon Mobil made a $6.6 billion acquisition of 275,000 acres in Permian fields in New Mexico in 2017, making it the most active driller in the basin until now. Last year Concho Resources bought RSP Permian for $9.5 billion, transforming two companies little known outside of Texas into a big new player.

Share prices of other small and medium size Permian-based oil companies soared on the news of the deal, with speculation that another major oil company, particularly Royal Dutch Shell, would move to increase its holdings. Parsley Energy and Pioneer Natural Resources rose by more than 11% on Friday afternoon.

Over the last four years, the annual capital investment in the Permian by the three big oil companies  Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Shell  climbed to more than $8 billion from less than $2 billion, according to IHS Markit, the energy consultancy. Adding BP, which gained a foothold in the Permian last year, the oil giants are expected to invest more than $10 billion in that field this year.

The biggest oil companies accounted for just 6% of total industry investment in 2014. This year, they are on track to increase their share to more than 15%.

The bottom line is that the Permian is delivering for the majors, and they will keep pressing on that gas pedal, said Raoul LeBlanc, IHS Markits executive director for energy. Boundless capital allows them to invest heavily even as lower prices force smaller companies to retrench.

The Permian produces roughly 4 million barrels of oil a day, slightly more than Ghawar. Saudi Aramco recently revealed in documents released as part of a bond sale that the daily production from that field was smaller than many people in the industry had estimated.

IHS Markit predicts Permian production will climb to 5.4 million barrels a day in 2023, more than any OPEC member with the exception of Saudi Arabia.

In addition to the Permian, Anadarko has been a leader in discovering and developing natural gas in Mozambique. Chevron engineers reviewed Anadarkos project, and executives say they will keep Anadarko personnel there.

Chevron said the acquisition would complement its already growing global trade in liquefied natural gas.

But the companys increased investment in African natural gas comes as growing global supplies have pushed down prices. Big new discoveries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Africa could further depress prices in the coming years unless there is a big increase in demand. That demand would depend on more countries switching to gas from coal, which is the most widely used fuel in the power sector.

Chevron and Anadarko also have large stakes in deepwater projects in the Gulf of Mexico that are close to one another. And the two companies have worked together on some projects there.

The deal plays to Chevrons strengths, said Roy Martin, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie, a consulting firm. It diversifies their growth options.

Chevron said it would pay $65 in cash and stock for each Anadarko share, a 39% premium over Thursdays closing price. The deal is the largest in the energy industry since Shells acquisition of BG Group, the Britain-based oil and gas producer, for about $50 billion in 2016.

After the deal is completed, Chevron said it planned to sell more than $15 billion in assets by 2022, to reduce debt and return cash to shareholders.

Chevrons share price declined by nearly 5% on Friday while Anadarko shares soared by more than 30%.

Clifford Krauss is a New York Times writer.
For one, the entire section has undergone a huge revamp. Photo: Peter Meehan

When former Lucky Peach editor Peter Meehan joined the Los Angeles Times in October 2018, he did so as a contributing editor who would guide editorial direction and expansion of The Times food and dining coverage in the wake of the sudden death of longtime food critic Jonathan Gold. But in February, the L.A. paper dropped the contributing part, deciding to make Meehan the official editor of the section. By that point, I had started bossing people around so much, Meehan says. I became invested enough in the process and the vision that it became something I wanted to do. Yesterday, the fruit of Meehan and his teams labors came to life in the form of the first stand-alone food section to appear in the L.A. Times since 2012. Grub caught up with Meehan as he boarded a flight back to New York, where his family still lives, to talk about his plans for the revitalized food section.

How did Jonathan Golds passing play a role in your coming to the L.A. Times?

Well, he had been talking to me about coming to L.A. and editing the section for a while. But I never took it all that seriously. And then he got sick really fast this past summer and I think Jonathan was a big part of why [the papers new owner,] Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong bought the paper. I think he was one of the marquee people at the L.A. Times. And so suddenly they had these new owners who were ready to put a lot of money and support into food and they had lost the guy who could show them the way.

What was the run-up like before yesterdays launch?

They had also hired a bunch of new people since I joined. Before, food was only two and a half pages on Saturdays. I was like, we need more real estate. We need a stand-alone food section. There is a desire to reinvent and reinvigorate the L.A. Times and there was no pushback. They were just like, Okay. How soon do you want to do it? And thats an incredible thing in any media environment, particularly this one. Im very proud of the first section and what we made and whats in it, but I see it as the first step towards something new that we will be making and I think theres just a lot of processes and interdepartmental collaboration that [havent] necessarily been part of the process at the L.A. Times, especially during that Tronc bad-ownership period. I think if we made a product that people want to see, they want to look at, they want to own, they want to hold, they want to subscribe to, its going to require some formal invention alongside producing the best journalism we can.

Youre currently splitting your time between L.A. and New York. How are you making that work?

Its nice to be in the same room, but its also not imperative. And I think Id see my family less if we all lived here because the commute is long. The way it works with New York is I can take my young children to school and still be online before anybody. My dinnertime is their lunch-break time. Its working out surprisingly well so far.

The folding of Lucky Peach caught many people off guard. What happened?

I think that Dave [Chang] and I just grew apart. We worked together for a long time and we made a lot of stuff together that had been fairly cool. And then at a certain point, I think he wanted one thing and I wanted another. I dont feel comfortable speaking to what he wanted, but what I wanted was what Lucky Peach was. I was happy with the direction and the growth and identity of Lucky Peach and he wasnt. And he owned more of the company than I did. We couldnt find a way for me to buy the company. He didnt want to sell the company to me. So, it closed. The staff stayed on for a couple issues even though everyone knew they were going to lose their jobs, so it was a long funerary death march of five months of making the last two issues. And the show that we had sold as The Lucky Peach Show became Ugly Delicious. I loved the team and I loved what we had built and I thought there were great things headed for the future, but (a) dying young and leaving a good-looking corpse is always fun, and (b) if that hadnt happened, I wouldnt have [had] the chance to do this. I fought as hard as I could to keep the magazine and the brand alive and that was, unfortunately, not possible.

Do you think you would have come over to the L.A. Times if it was still owned by Tronc (now Tribune Publishing)?

No, I dont think I would have. If Jonathan was still here, maybe.

With the new critics at the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and now your new team, Californias food scene has never been given more coverage. Why do you think its happening at this moment in time?

The idea that California is better now than it was five years ago, I think is false. But I think that the recognition might ultimately have to do with the recognition of Jonathan. Because Jonathan was writing better restaurant reviews than everybody for a long time. He wasnt God on high until the last few years, but I think that might have helped. In any case, L.A. has been an amazing eating city for a really long time. Maybe people are just now noticing on a national level.

That touches on a parody piece by Lucas Kwan Peterson that the L.A. Times ran on April Fools Day entitled, For cramped New York, an expanding dining scene. How did that piece come together?

Lucas brought it up in like November. Like, roasting an article about L.A. discovering bread when Nancy Silverton literally invented bread herself. She took a rib out and it was a baguette. And so we talked about it every few weeks and I think he was just sharpening the knife for a really long time because we knew it had to be perfect or it would fall flat. Hes got a great sense for things and proposed that we run it on April 1. I feel like it was a good piece of commentary as well as a piece of satire. Overall, the idea of competition in media is very tired to me. But I also published an issue of Lucky Peach using Bon Appetits font. I mean, obviously, its fun to fuck around with stuff like that. I like funny beef, but no true beef.

It felt a little bit like, Shots fired. The L.A. Times has outlined how you plan to push into video. Youve built a new test kitchen. And there have been a lot of hires, especially of people whove previously written about and worked in New York City food. Is your hope to build something that can rival the New York Times food section?

No. I mean, Im friends with a bunch of people at the New York Times food section and I think their cooking app is light-years ahead of any digital product I have up my sleeve. I think that the success of their food section is great.

Having spent so much time in New York, has there been a learning curve in working on this food section dedicated to L.A.?

I mean, I lived here 20 years ago. I have family on the West Coast. We did a Los Angeles issue of Lucky Peach. And in the last seven years, I spent a lot of time in the trenches with Jonathan, who was a walking history lesson. With that said, Im not writing about Los Angeles a lot. Im editing a section, Ill be editing my writers. I have reporters and reviewers who are on the ground doing the thing. And Im supporting and organizing their efforts more than Im positioning myself as an authority on L.A. But I have made food media before and Im there to hopefully make some telling and fun stories around food.

What can people who dont live in L.A. look forward to in this new section?

I think were gonna get better at recipes; were gonna have better photos of recipes. Were going to be an L.A. food section. Were going to talk about Southern California a lot, but I have [cookbook author] Anissa Helou on the run sheet writing stuff for us. Im hoping to get [On Food and Cooking author] Harold McGee back into the mix. I want us to have a national reach and resonance. And I want to do a lot more on Mexico, considering the fact that Los Angeles is the second biggest city in Mexico, and thats meaningful. Im hoping, much in the way that the New York Times is not seen as a local food section, that in a year we can get to the point where were writing stories that have national resonance as well as covering our region as well as or better than anybody else. I do honestly want to make it more fun as well and try to do things in the section that havent been done before in the way that we used to do at Lucky Peach a bit. Just keep it interesting.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
San Jose council members debated an unusual plan for the opening of a Chick-fil-A headed to San Jose International Airport next month: hanging a bunch of flags signaling LGBT and transgender solidarity around it, according to the Mercury News.

The fried chicken company's ownership and foundation has been criticized, as recently as last month, for donating to groups who take anti-LGBT positions, leading some cities around the country to halt plans to open new franchises.

RELATED: Concord city staff to recommend against zoning change for Chick-fil-A

Members of the LGBT community around San Jose have been similarly vocal about the opening, leading Mayor Sam Liccardo to say he "simply didn't think enough" about the controversy. He also noted the city cannot block a business from opening based solely on an owner's political views. San Jose is already home to two Chil-fil-A locations.

Now, some local leaders are attempting to find a solution to the ordeal by adding, well, lots of rainbows.

Former county Supervisor Ken Yeager, a member of San Jose State University's political science department who heads the LGBTQ-focused political action committee and was the city's first openly gay councilman, said Tuesday he'd like to see flags placed near the storefront "as a counter-signal to the discrimination supported by Chick-fil-A."

RELATED: Buttigieg likes Chick-fil-A's chicken but not its politics

But Councilman Raul Peralez suggested going further, by hiring LGBT workers to make it the "gayest Chick-fil-A in the country."

The city council broadly supported the ideas  in particular, they endorsed adding flags near the store  but in the end, this Chick-fil-A location may be short-lived anyway. City organizers voted to withhold a proposed two-year contract extension from 2026 to 2028 for airport vendors that do not open every day. That would directly affect Chick-fil-A; the company is famously not open on Sundays.

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGATE staff writer. Email her at apereira@sfchronicle.com or find her on Twitter at @alyspereira.


A crash shut down all northbound lanes of Interstate 880 Friday afternoon.

As of 3:38 p.m., all lanes were blocked at Alvarado Niles Road in Union City, according to 511.

An injury was reported in the crash, though details were not immediately available.

A video taken from the KNTV helicopter over the scene showed lanes reopening just before 4 p.m., but SFGate's traffic map showed traffic backed up for miles during the afternoon rush hour. Traffic was heaviest through the Newark and Fremont areas.

Officials advise drivers to avoid the area and find an alternate route.

Read Alix Martichoux's latest stories and send her news tips at alix.martichoux@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.
WASHINGTON  On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg blasts Vice President Mike Pences cultural and religious conservatism. But as the mayor of Indianas fourth largest city, his tone toward the states Republican former governor was more muted.

During the four years in which they overlapped in Indiana politics, Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor, had a cordial relationship with Pence. The two collaborated on economic development issues. Buttigieg presented Pence with a South Bend promotional T-shirt that said I (heart) SB. And at ceremonial events, Pence would lavish Buttigieg with praise.

The relationship between the two men has come under scrutiny as Buttigiegs campaign becomes a surprise hit, raking in $7 million during the first quarter. As he formally launches his White House campaign on Sunday, the gay mayor has emerged as a celebrated voice for LGBT equality and religious tolerance. And Buttigieg has hardened his rhetoric toward Pence, using the vice president as a foil representing an oppressive opposition.

At a recent LGBT event, Buttigieg spoke of the importance of his marriage to his husband, Chasten, and framed his sexuality in religious terms.

If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade, Buttigieg said. And thats the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if youve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.

He has previously called Pences religious conservatism a fanatical ideology.

By Buttigiegs own admission in his campaign memoir, his relationship with Pence is complicated. In an interview with CNBC that aired on Thursday, Pence said they had a great working relationship and criticized the mayors characterization of his religious beliefs.

Buttigieg publicly came out as gay about three months after Pence signed a religious freedom law in 2015 that was criticized as anti-LGBT. In his book, Buttigieg acknowledged that he passed up the chance to urge Pence to veto the measure.

I wish I could say I made a good effort to talk him out of it, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind, he wrote.

As mayor, Buttigiegs allies argue he had to maintain a cordial relationship with a governor who held sway over money sorely needed in South Bend.

It doesnt help your city if you have an adversarial relationship with the sitting governor, said Greg Goodnight, the Democratic mayor of Kokomo, Ind., who supports Buttigiegs White House ambitions.

Brian Slodysko and Michelle R. Smith are Associated Press writers.
CHICAGO  The city of Chicago has sued actor Jussie Smollett seeking more than $130,000 to cover the cost of a police investigation into his claim that he had been the victim of a hate crime attack.

The lawsuit accused Smollett, who has a prominent role on the show Empire, of orchestrating a fake assault in January and repeatedly lying to members of the Chicago Police Department as they investigated the case. City lawyers repeated many of the claims that had been made by prosecutors before criminal charges against the actor were abruptly dropped in March.
WASHINGTON  Newly elected Rep. Sharice Davids is most proud of setting up a congressional office in part of her Kansas district she said hadnt seen one for years. For Georgia Rep. Lucy McBath, her biggest victory was passing the gun background checks legislation she advocated after her sons shooting death. And for New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her top achievement was the introduction of the landmark Green New Deal.

As the Democratic freshmen lawmakers round the first 100 days of their new majority in the House, theyre taking stock of their accomplishments, noting the stumbles and marking their place as a front line of resistance to President Trump.

When I came here, I said the days of business as usual in the Congress are done, and I think thats what weve seen, said Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., a nurse and former Obama administration official, who took over a GOP-held seat in the Chicago suburbs.

The first 100 days is often a milestone for a new Congress, and this year its even more noteworthy because of the historic nature of the freshmen class. It is two-thirds Democrat, with more women than men on that side of the aisle. Its also the most diverse ever, with many newbies swept into office in a blue wave that followed two years of Trump.

House Democrats set out an ambitious agenda with legislation on the kitchen table priorities that helped them win the majority  protecting the Affordable Care Act, imposing new ethics rules  while engaging in aggressive oversight of the Trump administration. Their investigations extend well beyond special counsel Robert Muellers probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election as they dig into the presidents business dealings and push for Trumps tax returns.

But with the spotlight come high-profile setbacks. Democrats splintered over Ocasio-Cortezs climate change proposal and exposed party divisions over Israels treatment of Palestinians. One new lawmaker, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, stunned some when, on Day One, she told supporters  using an expletive  that the new majority would impeach Trump.

Moreover, few of their bills will ever be signed into law. Most are simply resolutions that are being panned by the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is providing a brake on the measures with his Republican majority.

House Republicans gathered this week on the Capitol steps for their own 100-day event, ridiculing the new majority for catering to the liberal left and failing to keep their campaign promises.

I have one question for the Democrats after their first 100 days: What have you accomplished? said Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield.

Lisa Mascaro and Padmananda Rama are Associated Press writers.
Word of the forthcoming indictment of Julian Assange sent shudders through many journalists and their advocates. If the founder of WikiLeaks could be prosecuted for publishing government secrets, what about the New York Times, or The Chronicle?

Those fears may have been dispelled somewhat on Thursday when the Justice Department released the indictment it had obtained from a federal grand jury in March 2018. Assange was not charged with espionage for publishing state secrets, but with conspiring to obtain those secrets by allegedly trying to help Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning hack into government computers.

In March 2010, Assange agreed to assist Manning in cracking a password in Defense Department computers that would have made it harder for investigators to identify her, the indictment said. While he may not have succeeded in that effort  he allegedly told Manning two days later that he had had no luck so far  he is not directly charged with violating national security by obtaining secrets and distributing them to news media worldwide.

Im relieved the indictment does not allege the act of publication was a criminal offense, said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a media advocacy organization based in San Rafael. I think press advocates are, to some degree, breathing a sigh of relief that they didnt try to charge Assange under the Espionage Act.

Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and former federal appeals court judge, said the indictments central allegation  that Assange conspired with Manning to obtain and publish secrets  distinguishes the case from those in which one person illegally acquires information and passes it on to the press without any other involvement by the press.

He noted the Supreme Courts 2001 ruling that dismissed a wiretapping suit against a radio station for broadcasting a tape of a conversation that had been illegally recorded by an anonymous source. Because the station had not obtained the information illegally, it did not violate any law, the court said in a 6-3 ruling.

Another legal analyst was not reassured.

The governments essentially indicted Assange for publishing, said Matt Coles, a law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco. The indictment admits that tons of the information he published had nothing to do with the supposed attempt to help (Manning) crack into the computer, and he didnt succeed. Publication is part of the conspiracy.

Coles noted that much of the indictment focused on the information Assange had sought and received from Manning. The indictment said the main purpose of their conspiracy was to facilitate Mannings acquisition and transmission of classified information related to the national defense of the United States so that WikiLeaks could publicly disseminate the information on its website.

The two acted, the indictment said, with reason to believe that such information so obtained cold be used to the injury of the United States and the advantage of any foreign nation language taken directly from the Espionage Act of 1917, under which Manning was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. She was pardoned by President Barack Obama and released in 2017 after serving seven years, but is now in jail for refusing to testify against Assange.

Assange faces up to five years in prison if convicted under the anti-hacking law.

Prosecution for publishing is content-based regulation of speech, Coles said, and the Supreme Court should not allow it.

Snyder, of the First Amendment Coalition, said the indictment appeared to be narrowly drawn but was still troubling. He noted that the Obama administration, in office at the time of the alleged conspiracy, had the same information about Assange but apparently decided not to indict him.

The hacking law in the indictment is broadly worded and could be used nefariously against journalists, Snyder said. I wouldnt trust the government to distinguish between WikiLeaks and the New York Times.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@BobEgelko
The man who fell to his death earlier this month at the Grand Canyon was identified Friday by National Park Service officials as a Santa Rosa resident.

Michael Obritsch, 67, was visiting the park on April 3 when he fell over the canyon rim east of Yavapai Geology Museum in Grand Canyon Village on the South Rim, authorities said. His body was recovered from 400 feet below the rim.

John Quinley, a park spokesman, said Obritschs death was the third in eight days at the Grand Canyon, but he was the first over the edge fatality in the park this year. Investigators have concluded his death was accidental, Quinley said. A park visitor reported seeing Obritsch falling but there were apparently no witnesses or indications of what caused the plunge.

The first of the string of recent deaths occurred on March 26 near the South Rim and remains under investigation, Quinley said. In the other fatality, a tourist accidentally fell near the Grand Canyon Skywalk, a horseshoe-shaped, glass-floor observation deck outside the park on the canyons western end.

Park officials advise visitors to have a safe visit by staying on designated trails and walkways, always keeping a safe distance from the edge of the rim and staying behind railings and fences at overlooks.

An obituary placed on the Legacy.com website said Obritsch was a retired computer analyst for Pacific Bell in San Ramon who grew up in Santa Rosa but later moved back. After his retirement, he worked part-time for a pool service. He was a graduate of Piner High School in Santa Rosa, and had a degree in mathematics from UC Davis.

His warm, friendly personality, intelligence, dedication, kindness, and his sense of fun will be greatly missed, the obituary said.

He is survived by a sister, Nicolette Hinch. A memorial service is planned later this month, according to the obituary, and memorial donations can be made to the Sonoma County Humane Society.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
When Karson Humiston was nearing graduation from St. Lawrence University, she attended a cannabis trade show in Denver. Jobs were on her mind; what kinds were available, what were their requirements. And in talking to the vendors there, she learned that cannabis companies have trouble filling open positions. Why? Because traditional job boards wouldnt run their ads and recruiting firms wouldnt take their business.

A lightbulb went off in my head, she says. Humiston happened to be uniquely positioned to solve the problem. At the time, she was running a company out of her dorm room that booked travel for students -- and shed researched their career aspirations. I had a big network of students and recent grads looking for jobs in the cannabis industry, she says.

Related: Small Businesses Face 6 Challenges in the Weed Market

So that night, Humiston decided to seize the opportunity. She created a company named Gradujuana -- a name, she figured, that would perfectly broadcast the service she could provide. Then, after school ended, she moved into a Denver hotel and gave herself two months to find clients.

Nobody returned her calls. Confused, she asked around and found out why. People didnt take a company named Gradujuana seriously.

Humiston had inadvertently stumbled into a common, early startup problem: picking a name that communicated the wrong thing. Shed wanted it to be fun -- but that doesnt work in an industry where careers are on the line. Its specificity also boxed her in. Staffing services thrive on placing high-paid executives, not entry-level workers. But no CEO from Big Pharma was going to return a call from Gradujuana, and no cannabis company would trust it to place a CEO. I would reach out and say, Hey, were Gradujuana, a full-service recruiting agency, and the company would say, We dont need any recent grads,  she says.

Humiston wasnt sure what to do, so she hired a marketing agency and went in for a brainstorming session. The team threw around cannabis-themed names like Cannext and Higher High. About an hour into the meeting, I remember thinking, Wow, this isnt going well. All these names are terrible, Humiston recalls. Then someone threw out the idea of doing something around the word catch, since we were catching top talent.

Related: 7 Reasons Legal Cannabis Is a Recession-Proof Industry

It felt like a revelation: The company name didnt have to play off cannabis.

Soon the team was searching for the word catch in other languages, and ended up landing on Vangst, which is catch in Dutch. Humiston is part Dutch, and she liked the word as soon as she heard it.

The name didnt immediately win people over, though. The initial reaction from my clients wasnt great, Humiston admits. They wondered why she didnt choose a name that incorporated the idea of cannabis -- an especially frustrating reaction after all that shed gone through. But now people took her calls. And so, Humiston was finally able to get to work -- placing executives, earning money, and growing her reputation. Once clients realized we werent just placing interns and recent graduates, we immediately started picking up clients who had previously rejected us, she says.

Related: Gary Vaynerchuk Is Very (Long-Term) Bullish on Cannabis

Growth has been steady ever since. Vangst now employs more than 60 people and has placed 10,000-plus candidates in cannabis-related jobs. And, she says, she now sees the name as a path to scalability. If we want to pivot into other industries, were not pigeonholed, she says. In January, for example, the company secured funding from Snoop Doggs venture capital fund to build Vangst Gigs, an online platform akin to Uber for those seeking temporary employment, such as bud trimmers or budtenders.

And even though Vangst isnt as immediately playful as Gradujuana, shes discovered she can still have fun with it. Every time we place a candidate, she says, we mail them a welcome box that reads, Damn, it feels good to be a Vangster. 

Related:

The Recruitment Platform Gradujuana Was Failing... Until It Changed Its Name to Vangst

How Startups Can Get in and Stay Competitive in Scaling Industries

4 European Cities That Are Hotbeds for Untapped Talent



Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
SAN JOSE (BCN)



A pedestrian was killed early Thursday morning in a hit-and-run collision in San Jose, police said.



Officers responded at 5:39 a.m. after someone called to report a body in the road near Nieman Boulevard and Laddie Way. Police arrived and discovered a woman there.



Police said their preliminary investigation suggests the woman was crossing east across Nieman Boulevard, north of Laddie Way, when a light-colored 2000 Toyota 4Runner traveling north on Nieman struck her.



Police said the driver, identified as 65-year-old San Jose resident Delilah Paray, stopped, got out of her Toyota and approached the woman who was still alive.



Police said then Paray got back in her Toyota and drove away without providing identification or calling for help.



Additional vehicles probably ran over the victim and the drivers of those vehicles may not have realized it, according to police.



Paray was located parked on a nearby street and she was arrested and taken to the county jail on suspicion of felony hit-and-run.



The death is the city's 13th fatal collision and 10th fatal vehicle versus pedestrian collision this year.



Anyone with information about the collision is asked to call Detective Matt Templeman of the Police Department's traffic investigation unit at (408) 277-4654.



People wishing to stay anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at (408) 947-7867. Persons providing information that leads to an arrest and conviction of a suspect may be eligible for a cash reward.





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)



San Francisco police arrested 24 people Thursday evening during a protest outside of City Hall, attended by thousands of city workers amid contract negotiations with their employer.



The more than two-thousand city workers, backed by the Service Employees International Union 1021 and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 among other unions, marched from City Hall to the nearby headquarters of ride sharing company Uber.



According to the workers, by keeping as many as 15 percent of city workers as temporary employees and failing to pay what they say are fair wages, the city is mirroring how ride-sharing companies like Uber use 'gig' workers -- workers who don't typically receive protections afforded to full-time employees.



Additionally, the city employees said big businesses like Uber, which are given tax breaks, don't pay enough taxes, further driving income inequality in the city.



"People need fair wages, people need benefits and we absolutely need big business in the city to pay its fair share in taxes," said Jennifer Esteen, a nurse at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and a SEIU 1021 member. "Right now we've got Uber and Lyft with their IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and we've got huge valuations... and we still have homeless people, tent encampments and people who can't afford to live in this city, who work here every single day. Like myself, I've worked here for ten years and can't afford to live in this city," she said. "I just want to see this city continue to prosper.



"We all want the same thing: to be able to provide services for the people who live here in this city and people who visit this city and we just want to earn a living while we're doing it," she said.



Delivering a message to Mayor London Breed, Department of Public Health employee and SEIU 1021 member Michelle Pollard said, "We want the mayor to see that we're all out here, that we're in unison and solidarity with other unions, we have a lot of support, not just from union and labor but the community as well."



Pollard, involved in the contract negotiations, said currently the city and the unions are in the arbitration process.



"We've passed several proposals across the table for fair wages, to eliminate temporary workers and make them permanent and to stop discriminating against city workers and we're waiting to hear back," she said.



Last week, during a hearing at the supervisor's Government Audit and Oversight Committee, it was revealed that as much as 15 percent of the city's workforce is made up of temporary employees. Because of their status, union members said, those employees could be subjected to layoffs without warning and may be dissuaded from speaking out against harassment, discrimination and other types of misconduct.



After marching to Uber's headquarters during Thursday's protest, the large group returned to City Hall, blocking Market and Polk streets in the process.



Once at City Hall, 24 of the protesters participated in an act of civil disobedience to draw to attention to their cause by sitting in the middle of Polk Street, just outside of City Hall and refusing to move.



Officers arrested all the protesters and reportedly transferred them to the Police Department's Northern Station for processing. It was not immediately clear if the protesters were cited and released.





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Bay Area political leaders rebuked President Donald Trump on Friday after he suggested transporting undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities as punishment for Democrats' opposition to his immigration policies.



"Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only," Trump posted on Twitter Friday morning.



He followed it up by saying, "The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy - so this should make them very happy!"



Mayors of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose pushed back both on the idea that undocumented immigrants could be used a pawns, and that their presence could be considered a penalty.



"In San Jose and Silicon Valley, we happily welcome any families willing to endure such extraordinary hardship and to take such tremendous risk to endeavor to be part of our great country," Mayor Sam Liccardo said in a statement.



Mayor London Breed said San Francisco is a proud sanctuary city, but Trump's words serve only to distract from more serious problems facing the country.



"Yes, immigration is an important issue and we need legislative reform, but that's not what this president is talking about," she said in a statement. "Like so many issues we are forced to talk about during this presidency, this isn't a real idea or a real proposal, it's just another scare tactic."



Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf called the potential policy "an outrageous abuse of power," and said Trump was describing using human beings to "settle a political score" and punish those who seek sanctuary, as well as those who provide it.



San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon pointed out that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens, and that sanctuary cities and counties are safer than those without protections. He called Trump's tweet a political stunt, and said it was an effort to gain re-election in 2020 "on the back of racist rhetoric and policies intended to divide us."



U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, who is also pursuing a presidential run in 2020, called Trump's tweet "reprehensible."



Trump's administration considered the idea before rejecting the policy last November, according to a Thursday report in the New York Times, but Trump's tweet the next morning reignited speculation.



The president has long been locked in a battle with Democrats over strict immigration policies. When Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, was sworn in as House Speaker in January, one of her first actions was to end a government shutdown brought about by Trump's demands to fund a wall at the country's southwestern border. She did not publicly respond to Trump's comments on Friday.



State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said his city welcomes immigrants with open arms, and called Trump's tweet a "temper tantrum."



"Given that immigrants built this country, make our communities better places, and are coming here to work hard, start businesses, and raise their families, this temper tantrum by the President isn't a punishment-it's a benefit," he said in a statement.









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BERKELEY (BCN)



A 75-year-old bicyclist who was injured when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver in Berkeley last month has died, according to the Alameda County coroner's bureau.



However, a coroner's spokeswoman said the cause of Julian Curran's death at his home in Berkeley last Friday has not yet been determined and the office is looking into whether it was related to the injuries he suffered in the collision at Ashby Avenue and Fulton Street on March 2.



Berkeley police spokesman Officer Byron White said Curran was biking south on Fulton when a driver crashed into him, leaving him with a severely broken leg.



The driver fled about five blocks down Ashby, abandoning the car on Otis Street, according to White.



Police are still investigating the collision and haven't made any arrests, White said on Thursday.



Curran was the owner of Curran Construction LLC in Berkeley.



According to the firm's website, it specializes in preventing and mitigating water intrusion, residential remodels, additions, custom carpentry and restoration.



The website describes Curran as "one of the fortunate few who truly love their work."



It says he "approaches his projects with the curiosity and exuberance of a young carpenter, combined with the skill and pragmatic problem solving that only comes with extensive and varied experience."



The company site says Curran was a native of Berkeley and at one point settled on the Sonoma County coast after stints in the U.S. Air Force, the Danish Merchant Navy and extensive travel through Europe and the Middle East.





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VACAVILLE (BCN)



Police in Vacaville released surveillance photos of four women suspected of assaulting an employee and stealing sunglasses worth thousands of dollars on Thursday at business in the Vacaville Premium Outlets mall.



The theft was reported about 1:30 p.m. at the shopping center, located at 321 Nut Tree Road.



The suspects were fleeing the store when the staffer was assaulted and injured, police said. The four women left in a rental car.



No arrests have been made. Anyone who recognizes the suspects is asked to call Vacaville police Officer K. Cardona at (707)410-6086.





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OAKLAND (BCN)



Oakland Fire Chief Darin White announced this week that after a nationwide search he has hired Orlando Arriola to be the department's new fire marshal and oversee its Fire Prevention Bureau.



Arriola previously served as a firefighter, peace officer and fire marshal in El Paso, Texas, and as a fire chief in New Mexico, according to White.



Arriola currently is a risk manager and emergency management coordinator and safety officer for a state hospital in Texas and liaisons with that state's Office of Risk Management, White said.



Arriola will begin his new post in Oakland on April 22.



"Orlando comes prepared to perform all aspects of the position and will directly contribute to the safety and well-being of all Oaklanders," White said in a statement.



White said, "He is prepared to drive innovative community risk reduction strategies and implement key performance measurement metrics to ensure the department is accountable to all residents and businesses."



As the fire marshal Arriola will lead the Fire Prevention Bureau, which is responsible for fire safety education, inspection of high-hazard occupancies, fire code enforcement, and vegetation management.



Among his duties will be establishing priorities for annual state-mandated inspections and new construction plan review and inspections.



Arriola will report directly to White and work closely with William Gilchrist, Oakland's Director of Planning and Building.



"My approach is focused on empowering others and using consensus-building to make quality decisions, build trust, and form effective relationships with staff and the community," Arriola said in a statement.



Arriola said, "I look forward to getting to know the talented men and women of the Oakland Fire Department and working closely with the community-based organizations, volunteers, and others who have a vested interest in our fire prevention and education programs."





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SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)



A pedestrian struck by a vehicle last week struck back by punching the driver after the collision, San Francisco police said Thursday.



According to police, the punch left the driver in life-threatening condition and sent the suspect John Mixon to jail.



Mixon, 25, of San Francisco, was arrested on suspicion of assault, aggravated with force, elder abuse and two robberies after police recognized him as a robbery suspect.



The collision occurred April 3 in the area of Geneva Avenue and London Street. Mixon allegedly punch the driver after the driver got out to check on Mixon's condition. The driver fell and went unconscious after being punched, police said.



Mixon was apparently in a crosswalk when he was struck, and told officers that he got upset and struck the driver, according to police.



Mixon was taken to a hospital for an evaluation.



Police said the investigation is ongoing. Anyone with information about the case can provide a tip anonymously by calling either the 24-hour police tip line at (415) 575-4444 or texting a tip to TIP 411 and begin the message with SFPD.





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BERKELEY (BCN)



Police at UC Berkeley were investigating after reports early Friday of 10 gunshots heard near the campus in three different locations.



Gunfire was first reported at 1:37 a.m., when six shots were reported in the 2500 block of Durant Avenue.



Witnesses told police they saw a male suspect wearing a gray hoodie firing a gun, but it wasn't known if he was intentionally firing at someone or something, UC police said.



The suspect left in a black Mazda sedan driven by a female driver, headed southbound on Bowditch Street from Durant Avenue, police said.



When officers from the UC and Berkeley police responded to the area, they didn't find anyone injured.



Less than an hour later, about 2:10 a.m., police received a similar report. This time, three gunshots were reported in the 2300 block of Piedmont Avenue.



Following that, at 2:17 a.m., police received a report of a single gunshot in the 2500 block of Warring Street.



Officers responding to the second and third reports found no suspects or victims in the area.



Anyone with information is asked to call UC police criminal investigation bureau at (510) 642-0472 during business hours and (510) 642-6760 at all other times.





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PITTSBURG (BCN)



Tesoro Refining and Marketing has asked the city of Pittsburg for permission to remove a World War II era marine terminal in the New York Slough near the Suisun Bay, and the city council is hosting a public hearing on the matter Monday evening.



The facility was constructed in 1942, and sits about 600 feet north of E. Third and Harbor streets. Tesoro acquired it from Ultramar in 2003 and used it as a coke-loading facility, but discontinued that use in 2010 and has since sold the property to the Richmond-based charter school Making Waves Academy.



The dock's 45,000 square foot platform was built with about 600 creosote-treated timber piles with various boards and beams as well as concrete. The plan to deconstruct it calls for debris barges and other barges with cranes to remove that material, according to an environmental document posted to the city's website at https://bit.ly/2KrzIHv.



Tesoro owns the nearby land, but the marine portion of the facility is owned by the state and managed by the city, so the oil company needs the city council to accept the 169-page "Initial Study/Proposed Mitigated Negative Declaration," rather than requiring a "Environmental Impact Report" under the California Environmental Quality Act, and to authorize a mutual release agreement.



With the council's permission Tesoro hopes to do the work this year and finish the project by December.



The hearing is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. May 6 in the council chambers at City Hall at 65 Civic Ave. For more information go to https://bit.ly/2UKdYKU.





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RICHMOND (BCN)



Richmond police fatally shot a man who broke into a home and was attacking family members with a knife early Thursday morning, police said.



Officers responded to a call at 2:34 a.m. to the home at 930 Wilson Ave., according to police.



The caller said their father, who has been identified as Luc Ciel, had broken a window to get into the house, where three members of the family lived, and was attacking them with a knife.



When officers arrived they found Ciel, 55, attacking a boy at a patio in the back of the house, according to police.



"They interrupted a physical assault on a family member," Richmond police Lt. Matt Stonebraker said. "The suspect ignored their commands and the juvenile was able to break free from the suspect and the suspect was able to get up and advance on the officers."



At least one of the officers then shot Ciel, who was pronounced dead at the scene.



"A member of the public was in jeopardy of great bodily injury," Stonebraker said.



A woman at the home suffered a cut to her stomach and the boy suffered a cut to his face. They were taken to a hospital, where they were treated and released, police said.



No officers were injured.



Ciel did not live at the home and there was an active domestic violence restraining order against him, according to police.



While the exact history of his behavior toward his family was not released, Ciel had several contacts with Richmond officers involving accusations of domestic violence, Stonebraker said.



The Contra Costa County District Attorney's Office and Richmond police are investigating the shooting, which is the second officer-involved shooting in the city this year.



The four officers involved will be interviewed and placed on a short administrative leave, Stonebraker said.





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(HedgeCo.Net) The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two former directors of investments at Woodbridge Group of Companies LLC for their roles in its massive Ponzi scheme. The defendants, California-based Ivan Acevedo and Dane R. Roseman, were separately arrested and charged by criminal authorities, along with Woodbridge owner Robert H. Shapiro.

The SEC previously charged Woodbridge and Shapiro, and Woodbridges highest-earning unregistered brokers. In January, a federal court in Florida ordered Woodbridge, related companies, and Shapiro together to pay $1 billion for operating this Ponzi scheme.

According to the SECs complaint, although Acevedo and Roseman were not registered in any capacity with the SEC, they were responsible for fraudulently raising at least $1.2 billion from more than 8,400 retail investors, many of them seniors, and together received more than $3 million in transaction-based and other compensation.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that Acevedo oversaw Woodbridges fundraising for Woodbridges securities from 2012 until his departure in 2015, when he was succeeded by Roseman. According to the complaint, the defendants were responsible for hiring and training Woodbridges sales force, approved fraudulent marketing materials and sales scripts, and helped create the false appearance that Woodbridge was a legitimate operation when in reality it was a Ponzi scheme that used money from new investors to pay existing investors.

Instead of telling investors the truth  that Woodbridges third-party lending business was a sham almost from inception  we allege that Acevedo and Roseman worked diligently to perpetuate this sham by preparing and disseminating false marketing materials to induce more investments, keeping this massive Ponzi scheme afloat, said Eric I. Bustillo, Director of the SECs Miami Regional Office. The SEC is committed to continue to hold responsible parties accountable in this far-reaching scheme.

The SECs complaint charges Acevedo and Roseman with violating the securities registration, broker-dealer registration, and anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws, and seeks disgorgement of allegedly ill-gotten gains, with interest, and financial penalties.
YLE on Thursday asked the chairpersons of eight other parties to raise their hand if they would refuse to enter into a ruling coalition with the Finns Party. The chairpersons who raised their hands were Antti Rinne (SDP), Petteri Orpo (NCP), Pekka Haavisto (Greens), Li Andersson (Left Alliance) and Anna-Maja Henriksson (SFP).

A NUMBER of Finnish party leaders have reiterated their reservations about forming a coalition government with the Finns Party.

Rinne immediately clarified that if he found himself leading the coalition formation process, he would send the same questions to all parties and determine based on their answers which parties are capable of co-operating with the Social Democrats.

Andersson, in turn, called attention to the role of the populist party in the government of Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre).

The Finns Party has participated in the policy making that has increased inequalities, as a result of which almost 40,000 people have fallen below the poverty line. When you combine with an immigration policy stance that aims to stop all forms of humanitarian immigration to Finland [], I think its very unlikely were able to find common ground, she stated.

Jussi Halla-aho, the chairperson of the Finns Party, estimated that other parties are sending mixed messages about the possibility of forming a ruling coalition with the Finns Party.

On the one hand, we should show responsibility and seek a place in the government, but, on the other, other parties are rejecting the possibility of coalition co-operation with the Finns Party, he lamented.

YLE also reported yesterday that popular support for the right-wing opposition party has risen by 1.2 percentage points to 16.3 per cent, making it the second most popular party in the country ahead of the National Coalition.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Source: Uusi Suomi
No one in the cities has been bouncing off the walls in protest because the country has been active in the field of coastal and rural policy. Now that were talking about cities seriously for the first time, its confusing how people want to stigmatise it, he commented on Friday.

JAN VAPAAVUORI (NCP), the Mayor of Helsinki, has expressed his bewilderment with the desire to pit urban and rural policy-making against one another in Finland.

The sneakiest way to juxtapose in my opinion is to claim the other party is guilty of juxtaposing.

Major Finnish cities have expressed their hope that the next government  unlike its predecessors, which have effectively ignored urban policy in their government programmes  will adopt a modern approach to urban policy-making in Finland.

Vapaavuori on Friday told that urban policy is first and foremost about taking into consideration the characteristics that distinguish cities clearly from the rest of the country.

But this is way too generic of a definition, he added promptly. First, cities should be provided with as broad an environment as possible in which to operate. Second, urban policy should be done in partnership with the state. Third, it should be taken into consideration that there are different kinds of cities.

Cities 21 (C21), a network of the largest cities in Finland, has stated that its members should be able to discuss various projects with the central administration as partners. One example of such partnerships are the agreements between municipalities and the central administration on construction, transport and land use, according to Vapaavuori.

Under the agreements, the central administration has committed to supporting transport projects in exchange for promises from municipalities to increase zoning for residential development.

Vapaavuori added that outside the scope of such partnerships, the central administration should assume a secondary role in urban policy-making.

At a Slush event many years ago, one influential person was asked what the state can do for you. Stay out of the way, was the answer, he told. Its a bit arrogant and I wouldnt put it like that. But half of it is true. We dont need patronising from the state, we need partnerships.

This, he confirmed, was the reason for his resolute opposition to the social, health care and regional government reform devised by the government of Prime Minister Juha Sipila (Centre).

Were practical operators dealing with woeful and cumbersome problems such as segregation and inequality. Everyone who has followed this debate even a bit understands that the solutions are necessarily based on early-childhood education, education, housing policy, zoning, integration, youth work, and social and health care.

Municipalities are naturally responsible for all these tasks. Of course, it alone doesnt guarantee that the policies will be smart, but were better equipped to succeed when everything is in the same hands.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Source: Uusi Suomi
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says rounding up immigrants and shipping them to sanctuary cities is "disrespectful" to the nation's challenges.

The California Democrat was asked Friday for her thoughts on reports that the White House had considered sending immigrants to places like New York and Pelosi's San Francisco that don't cooperate with federal immigration officials. Pelosi says the idea is "just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges we face."
When a famous architect builds his own personal residence, it winds up being a distinctive dwelling. Such is the case with this striking home in Dallas designed by architect, artist, and sculptor Jonathan Bailey.

It's now on the market for $3,520,000for the first time since Bailey finished it in 1999.

Bailey mostly specializes in health care facilities and is known for building children's hospitals around the world. But when it came time to build his own home in the posh Turtle Creek neighborhood, he said he wanted it to be a warm work of art on a more intimate, residential scale.

The house has no visible means of support, Bailey told D Magazine. Its a play on the image of structure, much more in the international style of architecture. Bauhaus reinterpreted. But I didnt want the house to be uncomfortable. Its my home.

Architect, artist, and sculptor Jonathan Bailey's Dallas home realtor.com

Living room realtor.com

The three-bedroom, three-bathroom, 3,037-square-foot house has been lauded in the architectural community, as well as by local press. D Magazine not only named it the Home of the Year in 2000, it also named it one of the 10 Most Beautiful Homes in Dallas in 2008.

Bedroom realtor.com

The home is a "glass jewel that rises out of a white stone box," the magazine noted.

Bailey stood the house on steel beams, with much of the second story cantilevered. The glass and steel allowed the trees and natural light to move through the house," said Bailey.

House made of glass and steel realtor.com

The interior is designed to reflect the light coming in from the numerous glass walls. In addition to the glass walls, the home features polished slate flooring and some rusticated stone walls.

Walls of stone and glass realtor.com

Some of the home's unique design features include bathroom walls lined with rough copper slate, staircases with bowed steel banisters topped with a rail of natural maple, and a stone fireplace set into a wall of glass.

Staircases with bowed steel banisters topped with a rail of natural maple realtor.com

Bathroom walls lined with rough copper slate realtor.com

Stone fireplace set into a wall of glass realtor.com

Since Bailey is also an artist, he created plenty of wall space where he could exhibit his own work. In the evening, when the home is fully lit from the inside, many passers-by say it resembles a modern art museum.

Bailey bought the property when it was just an empty lot with a multilevel parking garage on one side, and mature trees, among them crepe myrtles and pecans, surrounding it. The popular Katy Trail, used by hikers and cyclists, passes above and behind the site.

"The parking garage serves as a kind of matte. The trees in back are the frame. All the site needed was a piece of art," Bailey told D Magazine. Consider it done!

The post Award-Winning, Bauhaus-Style Home Made of Glass and Steel Dazzles in Dallas appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
DMX is a rapper. But his sordid real estate saga sounds more like the blues.

The 48-year-old, who was born Earl Simmons, appears to be close to a sale of his home in Mount Kisco, NY, in a short sale. The home's status is currently listed as pending sale. The home's owner is listed as ET Properties 1 LLCa corporate entity linked to the rapper.

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom abode contains 3,600 square feet and is described in the listing details as a diamond in the rough.

The gravel-voiced Ruff Ryder picked up the property at the height of his powers in 2000 and paid $649,000. While Mount Kisco doesn't have the same hip-hop cachet as Queensbridge, Westchester County has spawned its fair share of rap legends.

Located about an hour outside Manhattan, the enclave in northern Westchester has attracted urbanites who appreciate that the village is affordable, walkable, and multicultural, as the New York Times put it.

Mount Kisco home realtor.com

We're not sure if those neighborly attributes steered the rapper to this residence, but we do know legal troubles began to plague DMX in the early 2000s. After falling behind in his mortgage payments, he almost lost his home to foreclosure at least twice.

The bank filed a lawsuit against DMX and his wife, but DMX managed to pay back the $250,000 loan in full in 2014, fending off creditors.

But that respite appears to have been short-lived. In 2016, the musician filed for bankruptcy, on the grounds that he was drowning in debt. He claimed to owe $2 million to creditors and listed his Mount Kisco home as one of his assets. He reportedly hoped to save the home from foreclosure.



Miami Residents Blame Pitbull for Neighborhood Eyesore



But the legal troubles continued. In 2017, the rapper pleaded guilty to not paying $1.7 million in taxes. Placing the home on the market is likely to help pay off the debt he owes the IRS.

By the way, this isnt the first time DMX has run into problems with a property, after a long saga with a Harlem town house he purchased in 2001 for $750,000. The Yonkers native ran into a myriad of issues during an attempted renovation that turned into a money pit. He eventually put the place on the market for $1.9 million in 2006.

But with no buyers, the Harlem home showed up at auction in 2008. The partially renovated building reportedly sold for a shockingly low $120,000, plus money owed on the mortgage and tax liens, over $400,000. Another not very happy ending.

DMX became an international star with his 1999 best-selling album "And Then There Was X," and the 2003 hit "X Gon' Give It to Ya."

The post Is DMX Facing a Short Sale of His Nearly Foreclosed New York Home? appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
As we approach Easter it's time to start considering late spring and summer travel plans. In case you and your wallet are not prepared, get ready: I predict that this will be one of the busiest and most expensive spring and summer travel seasons we've seen in years.

Why?

Gas prices are already on the rise, topping $4 in California this week. Hotel consolidation is pushing up rates across the board (the Starwood-Marriott monolith now has 7,000 hotels around the world). The Boeing 737 MAX grounding is pulling planes out of the sky, and when you reduce supply, prices rise.

We've seen a host of low-fare carriers in Europe fold (WOW Air among them), which puts upward pressure on prices. Norwegian Air has stated that it's now focused on profitability over growth, which is another way of saying that it wants to raise fares. On top of all that, the economy keeps humming along, and when consumers feel confident, they travel, which pushes up demand with prices following suit.

With all that said, you can still find a few bargains out there. You just have to know where and when to look.

First, let's look at the April-June window for spring travel:

The downside of a late Easter (April 21) is that there will be a much shorter "shoulder season" when demand dips along with prices. Shoulder season this year will run a short 6-7 weeks from late April until mid-June when peak summer pricing and crowds kick in.

Shoulder season is not as cheap as the winter's "dead weeks," but it's not anywhere near the painful peak of what you'll pay from mid-June until mid-August. Springtime is probably the very best time of year to travel to Europe because the weather is getting warmer and summer crowds have not arrived. It's also a good time to be in Mexico before the summer heat kicks in.

While there is rarely a "slow" season in Hawaii, April-May and October are when demand dips a little-- and right now there are still a few last-minute $330 or so fares between the West Coast and the islands. But most of the deep discounting due to the "Southwest Effect" is over now.

With low fare carriers like Norwegian Air, and new entrants like TAP Air Portugal and Air Italy forcing all airlines to get competitive on fares, spring is a nice, cheap time to visit Europe. Flowers are blooming and locals are in a much better mood! Air Italy landed at SFO this week, and TAP Air Portugal is coming in June. United's new nonstops to Amsterdam started last week.

The bad news for bargain hunters is that WOW Air recently shut down-- and it was a leader when it came to rock-bottom fares. Good news for the UK-bound is that with Brexit worries put off for six months, we likely won't see any wild gyrations in US-UK exchange rates. (Currently 1 pound is about $1.31; 1 euro is at about $1.13.)

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Domestically, American, Southwest and United are wrestling with their schedules to make up for losing their Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. While MAX jets only comprise a fraction of these carriers' enormous fleets, during the busy summer season, every seat counts. And this week, Southwest Airlines announced that it was pulling the MAX from its schedules through August 5, cutting deep into the peak summer travel season. (Update: American Airlines has pulled its MAX aircraft off schedules through August 19.)

Now let's look at the summer peak season from June-August:

The "peak of the peak" summer season does not start until mid-June, so you'll find significantly lower prices in in late May and early June compared to later in the month. (Just beware of price spikes around Memorial Day weekend, May 24-28.)

Prices begin to soar in mid-June, especially on and around July the 4th and stay high until mid- to late August, then drop precipitously. Fridays and Saturdays in late July and early August are typically the busiest days of the year at major hub airports-- even busier than Thanksgiving!

Note that with kids going back to school so much earlier these days, you'll start to see airfare deals pop in mid to late August. They'll soar again for Labor Day weekend (Aug 30-Sept 3), and then tumble after that.

Will you take a spring or summer trip this year? If so, where'ya headed? Tell us in the comments.

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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.
ZAMBOANGA, Philippines  Philippine troops killed 12 Abu Sayyaf militants in clashes as they pressed an offensive in a southern province where the extremists have been blamed for the deadly bombing of a Roman Catholic cathedral, the military said Friday.

The 12 militants were killed in four separate clashes Thursday in mountainous Patikul town in Sulu province. The bodies of two of the slain militants were retrieved and several army scout rangers were wounded, the militarys Western Mindanao Command said.
CAIRO  The Sudanese military on Friday rejected calls that it hand over ousted President Omar el-Bashir to the International Criminal Court where he faces genocide charges for his deadly campaign in the western Darfur region and said he would be put on trial at home.

Meanwhile, Gen. Awad ibn Ouf, who was name de facto leader after el-Bashirs ouster on Thursday, announced he was stepping down as transitional leader and another general would take his place.

The developments point to the sensitivity of the case of the Darfur conflict for the military council that has taken power after removing and arresting el-Bashir amid mounting protests against his 30-year rule.

Ibn Ouf was head of military intelligence during the brutal campaign to suppress the Darfur insurgency in the 2000s. The United States has imposed sanctions on him since 2007, saying he armed and directed pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed, accused of widespread atrocities against civilians and rapes during the conflict.

Ibn Ouf said he would be replaced by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, general inspector of the armed forces, as head of the transitional council. He said he was stepping aside to preserve unity of the armed forces.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese protesters have been rallying in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum, against the military takeover of power after ousting el-Bashir, chanting slogans calling for ibn Ouf to be removed.

Earlier Friday, another top general, Omar Zein Abedeen said that 75-year-old el-Bashir would not be extradited to the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, saying doing so would be an ugly mark on Sudan.

Zein Abedeen said Sudanese courts would hold el-Bashir accountable, but did not specify what charges he could be prosecuted on. In ousting the president, the military denounced him and his government for corruption, maladministration and lack of justice.

In the Darfur conflict, rebels among the territorys ethnic Central African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of discrimination and oppression by the Arab-dominated Khartoum government. The government responded with a scorched earth assault of aerial bombings and unleashed the Janjaweed. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million driven from their homes.

Maggie Michael is an Associated Press writer.
KABUL  The Taliban announced the beginning of their spring offensive Friday, even as the insurgents said the United Nations had lifted travel bans on 15 of their senior leaders to facilitate peace talks with the United States.

The announcements were a sign that though the peace talks are gaining momentum, with an Afghan delegation expected to meet with insurgents soon, fighting is likely to intensify all over the country.
LONDON  Bearded and shouting, Julian Assange was pulled from the Ecuadoran Embassy in London and hauled into court Thursday, the start of an extradition battle for the WikiLeaks founder who faces U.S. charges related to the publication of tens of thousands of secret government documents.

Police arrested Assange after the South American nation revoked the political asylum that had given him sanctuary for almost seven years. Ecuadors President Lenin Moreno said he took the action due to repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols.

In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department accused Assange of conspiring with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon. The charge was announced after Assange was taken into custody.

His lawyer said 47-year-old Assange would fight extradition to the U.S.

Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped. He refused to leave the embassy, fearing arrest and extradition to the U.S. for publishing classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

Manning, who served several years in prison for leaking troves of classified documents before her sentence was commuted by then-President Barack Obama, is again in custody in Alexandria, Va., for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.

Over the years, Assange used Ecuadors embassy as a staging post to keep his name before the public, frequently making appearances on its tiny balcony, posing for pictures and reading statements. Even his cat became famous.

Video posted online by Ruptly, a news service of Russia Today, showed several men in suits pulling handcuffed Assange out of the embassy and loading him into a police van while uniformed British police formed a passageway.

He later appeared in Westminster Magistrates Court, where District Judge Michael Snow wasted no time in finding him guilty of breaching his bail conditions, flatly rejecting his assertion that he had not had a fair hearing and a reasonable excuse for not appearing.

Mr. Assanges behavior is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests, Snow said. He hasnt come close to establishing reasonable excuse.

Danica Kirka is an Associated Press writer.
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Determined athlete Jaan Roose, who is based in Estonia, landed what is thought to be the world's first double backflip on a slackline.



After numerous failed attempts, Roose manages to compose himself after backflipping twice and stay on the slackline.



The talented slackliner told Newsflare: "I've been slacklining for 9 years already and it took me six years to do the most wanted trick in slacklining. No one else was able to successfully land this since 'tricklining' existed."



Upon landing the spectacular trick in the Estonia village of Vihtra earlier this month, Roose and his friend can both be heard letting out a cry of celebration. "Did it happen? I got it?" he asks incredulously in his native Estonian.



The professional slackliner has worked as a performer during Madonna's "MDNA" tour. Roose has also worked as a stunt double for the movie "Assasin's Creed."
This was the scene as a stranded whale shark was saved after getting stuck in a fishing net in shallow water off the coast of the central Philippines.



The massive creature appeared in distress after it washed up near the beach in Antique, the Philippines on Wednesday morning (April 10), apparently trapped in fishing nets laid out from shore.



Local fisherman noticed the immense fish thrashing around as it rolled onto its back and held its flippers in the airs.



Villagers from the coast gathered round as the whale and carefully freed it from the net and ushered back into the depths.



Resident Erica Yanson said: It was such a big whale. We helped it to go back safely into the deeper part of the ocean.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Several furry pets are up for adoption this weekend.

The devoted volunteer animal rescue groups listed below have dozens of animals in their care just waiting for forever families like you to rescue them.

Remember, its not all about cute pups and kitties: There are senior and disabled pets who really need your love and attention, too.

Upcoming pet events are listed below. Click through the photos above to meet the adorable dogs and cats up for adoption this weekend.

APRIL 13

 ACC of NYC, located at 3139 Veterans Road West. Adoption hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

 Louies Legacy will be at PetSmart, 1525 Forest Ave., from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

 Mama Chris Animal Rescue. Adoptable pets can be viewed from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the new Petco in Bricktown Commons, 165 Bricktown Way, Suite 1C, across from Michaels and Ulta.

 P.L.U.T.O. will be at the new Petco in Bricktown Commons, 165 Bricktown Way, Suite 1C, across from Michaels and Ulta, from noon to 3 p.m. with adoptable pets.

 SICAW will be at Petsmart Adoption Center, 1525 Forest Ave., with cats from 2 to 5 p.m.

 Staten Island Hope Animal Rescue will be at Petco, 2795 Richmond Ave., from noon to 4 p.m.

APRIL 14

 ACC of NYC, located at 3139 Veterans Road West. Adoption hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

 Happy Homes Animal Rescues adoptable cats and kittens can be seen at the new Petco in Bricktown Commons, 165 Bricktown Way, Suite 1C, across from Michaels and Ulta, from 1 to 4 p.m.

 Louies Legacy will be at PetSmart, 1525 Forest Ave., from noon to 3 p.m.

 Mama Chris Animal Rescue. Adoptable pets can be viewed from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Petco in Bricktown Commons, 165 Bricktown Way, Suite 1C, across from Michaels and Ulta.

 SICAW will be at the Petco in Bricktown Commons, 165 Bricktown Way, Suite 1C, across from Michaels and Ulta, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

APRIL 13

 Easter egg hunt and adoption event hosted by Fur Friends in Need at Coffee Corral, 177 Drs James Parker Blvd., Red Bank, N.J., from noon to 3 p.m. (the rain date is Sunday, April 14). Meet adoptable dogs and sip coffee while children hunt for Easter eggs. Theres something for everyone. For more information, visit facebook.com/FurFriendsinNeed/.

 Louies Legacy will participate in the second annual Mutt-i-grees Walk at 9 a.m., rain or shine, at Bernstein Intermediate School, 1270 Huguenot Ave. in the Irvington Avenue side schoolyard. Participants are invited to walk with their leashed, people-friendly pet. There will be adoptions and vendors in the schoolyard afterward. Participating students will earn service credit and help save animals. Mutt-i-grees is an innovative pre-K through 12th grade curriculum that develops calm, confident, caring kids and creates a more humane future for all through social-emotional learning. For more information, visit education.muttigrees.org.

APRIL 27

Fur Friends in Need fundraiser Painting with a Purpose at Painting With A Twist, 2145 NJ Route 35 in Kohls Plaza, intersection of Union Avenue, Holmdel, N.J. The cost is $50 per seat and youll paint on an extra long canvas, 10-inch-by-30-inch. Arrive by 6:30 p.m.; painting is from 7 to 9 p.m. For more information, call Joe at 732-226-2665. For reservations, visit Facebook.com/FurFriendsinNeed/.

APRIL 30

The seventh annual NYC Re-tails & Sales Pet Expo is a one-of-a-kind boutique trade show.

Pet professionals or those in the pet industry will be in attendance from 1 to 6 p.m. The event will feature new products for 2019 and is hosted by Nancy Hassel of American Pet Professionals and Dana Humphrey of Whitegate PR.

If you are not a pet professional or not in the pet industry, your hours to attend with a paid ticket are from 4 to 6 p.m. Pet parents will be able to shop and attend the panel session about CBD and holistic pet products at Home Studios Inc., 873 Broadway, near Union Square Park at 18th Street in Manhattan.

Well-behaved pets in strollers or with six-foot non-retractable leashes are welcome. You will also need to sign a waiver when arriving with your pet.

Vendors will showcase the latest and greatest innovative pet products. They also will celebrate National Pets Month and Week at the event. Pet celebrities will be in attendance as well as retailers from Boston, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York City and Long Island to see and shop for products for their stores.

For more information about the expo, to purchase tickets or to become a vendor, visit RetailsandSalesPetExpo.com.

MAY 5

Walk with your best furry friend during the Gateway Rotary Club Foundations fourth annual dog walk in memory of New Dorp resident SSG. Michael Ollis, who sacrificed his life in Afghanistan.

The half-mile or one-mile leashed-dog walk starts at 9:30 a.m. in Wolfes Pond Park, 420 Cornelia Ave.

It will benefit Americas VetDogs, a not-for-profit that provides guide and service dogs to disabled veterans at no cost, as well as other Staten Island charities.

Fun dog contests will follow the walk.

The online early discounted registration is $15 for one dog and $25 for two dogs. Race-day registration starts at 8 a.m. and the fee is $20 for one dog and $30 for two dogs. Theres a limit of two dogs per walker/handler and all dogs should be well-behaved, sociable and non-aggressive. Per city Parks Department, leashes that are no longer than six feet and non-retractable are required. For more info, visit www.eventbrite.com/d/ny--new-york/dog-events/.

MAY 19

Would you like to see hometown heroes, police officers, firefighters, active/retired military and other community leaders escort adorable, adoptable rescue dogs down a 25-foot runway in the hopes of landing them a forever home?

Then join Mr. Bones & Co. at its seventh annual Rescue the Runway event in the famed beer hall, Bergn, 899 Bergen St., Brooklyn. VIP doors open at 1:30 p.m. with general admission at 2 p.m.

This unique, interactive animal welfare event benefits One Lucky Pup rescue rehabilitation and adoption program, as well as Brooklyn Badass Animal Rescue, Rebound Hounds and one more organization to be announced.

Guests will enjoy a premium bar, tasting selections from three resident food vendors, VIP runway show seating, a large silent auction, fun raffles, prize wheel, a pit bull kissing booth and more.

The event ends at 5 p.m. For additional information or to purchase tickets, visit mrbonesandco.org.

JUNE 1 and 2

Mark your calendars for the World Dog Expo. This dog-friendly event will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. June 1 and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 2 in the Meadowlands Exposition Center, 355 Plaza Drive, Secaucus, N.J. Admission varies; tickets start at $15.

This weekend event will celebrate dogs everywhere in a large-scale, cutting-edge multimedia format. With multiple stages attendees will enjoy events such as dock diving, disc dog, lure coursing, weight pulling and schutzhund to name a few.

The World Dog Experience will provide opportunities for dogs and their owner to participate together in sports, education, training and other bonding experiences. Also, the show will work to promote dog rescue, fostering and adoption.

The main attraction of World Dog Expo will be the notable trade show event, featuring a huge array of dog-centered products. Attendees will be able to find the newest and best products for their canine companions. Participating vendors will benefit from the unprecedented exposure created for the event. For more info, visit worldexpo.dog.

JUNE 22

NYC Parks invites you to the pet-friendly Pawz & Clawz Adoption and Information Fair from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Midland Beach Splaza, Capodanno Boulevard and Seaview Avenue. The event includes pet adoption opportunities, local veterinarians, obedience trainers, groomers and more.

Interested organizations can register online at ceanbreezenyc.org/2019PawzClawz.

For accessibility and event information, contact Kate Rzucidlo at Kate.Rzucidlo@parks.nyc.gov or 718-351-7923.

Remember: NYC Parks requires all animals be on a six-foot leash while in the parks. They ask that all participants bringing a pet to please abide by these rules and regulations.

HOW TO CONTACT LOCAL RESCUE GROUPS

Animal Care Centers of NYC; 212-788-4000, nycacc.org ; located at 3139 Veterans Road West. Adoption hours: Monday-Friday, noon to 8 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

furfriendsinneed.com. Fur Friends in Need, New Jersey-based group with Staten Island members and adoption events on the Island; 732-829-1426, imavegge@aol.com

happyhomesinc.org. Happy Homes Animal Rescue, New Jersey-based group with Staten Island adoption events; 914-393-8292, elaine@ happyhomesinc.org, tinad225@gmail.com;

louieslegacy.org. Louies Legacy; 646-397-LLAR (5527), newyork@louieslegacy.org

mamachrisrescue.org. Mama Chris Animal Rescue Inc.; 347-983-2240, mamachrisrescue@gmail.com

nybullycrew.org. New York Bully Crew; 844-633-NYBC (6922), nybcapp@gmail.com,

plutorescue.org. P.L.U.T.O. Rescue of Staten Island; 718-227-0553, plutorescue@aol.com

Staten Island Council for Animal Welfare (SICAW); 718-948-5623, sicaw.petfinder.com

Staten Island Hope Animal Rescue; info@statenislandhoperescue.org statenislandhopeanimalrescue.org , 800-477-9168.

victory4thevoicelessanimalrescue.com. Victory for the Voiceless Animal Rescue; 718-442-1625, AdoptVictory4theVoiceless@gmail.com

PET STORES RELOCATED

1. Petco is at Bricktown Commons, 165 Bricktown Way, Suite 1C (across from Michaels and Ulta). It was previously located at 2752 Veterans Road West.

2. PetSmart is at 1525 Forest Ave. It was previously located at 1520 Forest Ave.

PET POISON HELPLINES

If you think your pet may have ingested a potentially poisonous substance, contact the Pet Poison hotline at 855-764-7661 or petpoisonhelpline.com, or contact the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at 888-426-4435 or aspca.org.

TO REPORT ANIMAL CRUELTY

To report an incident of animal abuse, call Crime Stoppers at 800-577-TIPS or visit www.nypdcrimestoppers.com.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION

To contact an environmental conservation police officer or report suspected violations, contact the DEC Law Enforcement Dispatch Center at 844-DEC-ECOs (844-332-3267) or dec.ny.gov/.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.-- I dont see anyone running for the door so thats a good sign.

Those were the first words Vinny Guadagnino said when he was greeted by a room of contestants competing for his and DJ Pauly Ds love on the new MTV dating show Double Shot at Love. The show premiered on Thursday evening with a Bachelor inspired concept, except the ladies didnt get roses when they were invited to stay another week -- they were given Pauly and Vinnys phone to add their number in.

Im 31 but Im also a mommas boy, Vinny said during the show. It would be nice to have what my mom gives me but in a significant other.

Vinny and Pauly hatched a plan to prank the contestants before they got to the house. (If youre a veteran Jersey Shore fan, you know this is a mainstay of their shtick.) Since the contestants are meeting them in two groups of 10, Vinny and Pauly make one group think theyre competing only for Pauly Ds love and the other are competing for Vinnys.

Its not until the guys host a major pool party at the end of the episode that the ladies realize there are 20 contestants all together and both Pauly and Vinny have their choice of the contestants.

BTW: Pauly kept a case for his watches and chains on his bedside while Vinny had keto snacks and a photo of him and his mom -- talk about night and day. The first episode of the series was about getting to know the contestants through mini challenges and solo talks. So far, four ladies have been eliminated.

HOW DID CATE FROM STATEN ISLAND FARE?

Cate LaPera, a Great Kills native, came in strong wearing a leopard print dress, smokey eye makeup and a half updo. She came in and immediately started connecting with the other contestants.

I usually try to not be jealous but if you go near my man, I will slap you upside your head," Cate said during her introduction interview on the show.

During her solo talk with Pauly, he said he can relate to her a lot (A DJ and a bartender hitting it off? No way!) and was interested in getting to know her more. While she was open to introducing herself to the other contestants, Cate got emotional throughout the evening saying Pauly didnt like her and she wasnt the right one for him. She excused herself to the bathroom and decided she wanted to leave the show shortly after.

When asked why she wanted to leave, Cate simply said Im just not feeling good which prompted Pauly to call her a cab. Cates time on the show was short, just like MTVs Made in Staten Island season. Coincidence? Lets hope not.

MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT

While Pauly was making his rounds talking to the first half of contestants, Cate was hanging on the side of the jacuzzi and accidentally fell in. While some of the girls laughed and others questioned her sanity, Vinny rolled his eyes as he watched from cameras in another room.

I hate Staten Island girls, he said. She probably went in there to pee.

It seems like this show is about to get interesting. Double Shot at Love airs on MTV every Thursday at 8 p.m. For more information, visit Mtv.com/shows/double-shot-at-love
Editors note: Updated Saturday, April 13 to reflect new information obtained by the Advance.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The NYPD is asking for the publics help to identify a man sought for questioning in the alleged theft of a wallet that a 92-year-old man dropped in a Stapleton store.

The 92-year-old man was making a purchase when he accidentally dropped his wallet on the floor of a pharmacy at 173 Broad St. on April 3 at about 5:55 p.m., according to a statement from the NYPDs Deputy Commissioner of Public Information.

An unidentified man who also was inside the store at the time saw the victim drop the wallet and picked the billfold up without returning it to the 92-year-old man. The suspect left in an unknown direction, the police statement said.

After initial publication of this story on April 12, the head of a North Shore nonprofit organization contacted the Advance with the identity of a man who they say is pictured in the surveillance photo.

The source called the incident a misunderstanding, and said the man, who does nonprofit work in the community, attempted to return the wallet by leaving it in the mailbox at the address on the ID in the wallet.

On Friday, police said that no one had yet come forward in the incident, and on Saturday police continued to call the incident open, and said the investigation is ongoing.

The wallet contained about $17 and several bank and credit cards, the police statement said.

The NYPD released surveillance video of the man sought for questioning, taken from the store.

Police described the person of interest as a black man wearing a white Adidas jacket, dark jeans and black and white Adidas sneakers.

People with information are urged to contact the NYPDs Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-8477 (TIPS) or 1-888-577-4782 (PISTA) for Spanish. The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then entering TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- When David and Maureen Roshetars daughter overdosed and was declared brain dead, they made the painstaking decision to donate her organs.

Kate Roschetar died of a fentanyl overdose at the age of 30, according to the medical examiners report.

David and Maureen talked about their daughters life and the decision to donate her organs at Staten Island University Hospital (SIUH) on Friday to mark Donate Life Month.

Three people received organs from Kate so far  both of her kidneys and her liver.

MORE DONORS NEEDED

According to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), 36,500 organ transplants were performed nationwide in 2018.

Thirteen percent of all organ donations in the United States now come from donors who fatally overdosed on opioids.

Dawn Barbieri, nurse manager of the critical care unit and co-chair of the organ donation committee, said that only half of those who have expressed a willingness to donate are registered donors.

Data shows that New York has the lowest amount of registered donors in the country.

Dr. Theodore Strange, vice president of medical operations at SIUH, explained that even with drug use, organs are still viable for donation as long as there is no severe damage and/or diseases that cannot be treated.

Regardless of the drug or the drug addiction or overdose that you may have succumbed to, its a matter of the life support that is sustained, Strange said. As long as the organs are profused, or the blood continues to flow through the organ, and the organ doesnt show sign of failure, they can be procured.

Hepatitis C, one of the most common diseases among intravenous drug users, can be cured 99 percent of the time through the use of direct-acting antiviral medications.

The team, Live On, is very aware of how to preserve organs. Theyre the frontline team and thats very important. Theyre critical in terms of assessing and saving, and once theyre in place they can address any issues, he said.

SHE WOULD HAVE WANTED THIS

Kate struggled with addiction since her teenage years but, David said, when she fell down, she got back up.

She had been in an all-womens rehab facility in Manhattan and was doing well for several months. Out on a day pass, she purchased what she believed to be heroin, David said.

She held on to the drugs for several days before deciding to use them on Feb. 7, 2018 -- a decision that cost her life but gave hope to others.

Paramedics were able to restart her heart, however, she never regained brain function.

On February 16, 2018, she was taken to the operating room at SIUH in Princes Bay.

I wondered why she didnt go right away, why the paramedics were able to restart her heart. But now I know why  there was a purpose for that, David said.

And we found out she was an organ donor all along. Knowing she would have wanted this done anyway made it easier, he said.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- For victims injured in a dog attack, the bite is only the beginning.

Irwin Ruderman, the medical director of VCA Staten Island Animal Hospital in Willowbrook, said that dogs can suffer pretty severe mental trauma as a result of a dog-on-dog attack, and those who dont can still be on a long road to recovery due to a variety of bacteria transferred during a bite.

At the puppy stage theyre most impressionable, Ruderman explained, and a young dog may be traumatized and become afraid of bigger dogs as a result of a harrowing attack.

Even the bite itself can become a complicated nightmare for a dog and its owner.

If a bite wound penetrates through the skin and brings enough germs into that area, those germs can spread into that layer, Ruderman said.

Once germs find their way past the dogs skin, they will take the path of least resistance and could move anywhere within that layer, Ruderman explained.

If the germs do spread, bacteria will have to be opened up and drained," but the draining could occur anywhere on the injured dog. Thats why you may see a little puncture wound over the shoulder and all of a sudden your vet is opening up a spot under the elbow, Ruderman said.

The process is invasive Ruderman explained, as dogs are required to be sedated during the process.

And, if enough tissue is damaged by bacteria, necrotic tissue could develop. The only way this irreparably damaged tissue can be fixed is through removal via surgery, Ruderman commented.

RABIES

With a litany of issues to attend to following a dog attack on a human or their pet, the most concerning, according to Ruderman, is the question of vaccines.

The most pressing vaccine? Rabies.

The worry is if a dog bites another dog, is that dog harboring rabies," Ruderman said. Thats the only real virus concern.

While the aforementioned bacteria is a larger issue, Ruderman said that the nature of dog-bite attacks against humans and their pets leaves the possibility of rabies up in the air for victims.

As long as the dog is current on its vaccines, everything is fine, he said, but if an owner is avoiding you," the cause for worry rapidly increases.

You worry that theyre overdue on vaccines (for rabies), he said, which would be a violation of New York State law.

If an attacking dog is not current on their vaccines, and a dog owner is bitten while attempting to defend his or her pet, rabies could become a harsh reality. While there is a strikingly low amount of humans killed by rabies, with between one and three cases reported annually, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, if a dog is not vaccinated, the issue could become life-threatening.

Ruderman said that the Department of Health commonly calls him to gather information regarding individual cases, specifically to see if dogs are up to date on their vaccines.

But, if the owner of an attacking dog is not forthcoming on their pets vaccines, seeing if a virus has been transferred could be arduous.

There are no easy tests (for rabies), Ruderman said. "The ideal test is youre testing some tissues from the brain of that dog, which is not an option for living pets.

A COMMON PROBLEM

As a director of the animal hospital, Ruderman said that dog bites are a common occurrence.

Every vet sees dogs that have been brought in dead and dogs that have had some pretty severe life-threatening injuries, he said.

The injuries can range from a little cut or scrape to broken bones and internal damage to, unfortunately, death.

While superficial injuries can be easily treated with antibiotics, a bite wound in the chest area may need X-rays to make sure it didnt puncture the lungs," Ruderman said.

In other instances, blood tests could be required to see if a dog can handle anesthesia, along with IV fluids during recovery; antibiotics and pain medicine could be needed in some cases, and the aforementioned infections could create headaches for dog owners, Ruderman said.

Its an involved thing that could have easily been prevented, he said.

Often, Ruderman said that irresponsible owners let their dogs run loose, drastically raising the possibility of a dog bite to occur.

If theyre all on leashes, that would prevent the problem, he said.

RELATED COVERAGE:
(Island Government is a periodic roundup of Staten Island political and civic events.)

CITY HALL -- Councilman Joe Borelli (R-South Shore) plans to introduce a resolution in the City Council to denounce controversial remarks recently made by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) about the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack.

Far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and frankly, Im tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it," Omar was quoted by NPR as saying at a recent speech discussing how terrorism has led to a rise in Islamophobia. [The Council on American-Islamic Relations] was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

Omars description of the terrorist attack ignited a wave a controversy from critics who compared her latest remarks to ones she made about Israel.

Borelli said he hopes to get his City Council colleagues to co-sponsor his resolution.

"Some people" were terrorists, and they sure "did something" when they killed 2,996 innocent humans, including 274 Staten Islanders. Not to mention, illnesses from ground zero have killed more than 2,000 New Yorkers, and continue to affect countless more. I wish all New Yorkers speak as one against this sentiment, Borelli said.

Borelli has also started a petition condemning the congresswomans remarks.

ODDO, DOE TO HOST MARITIME FORUM APRIL 15

Borough President James Oddo and the the Department of Education will host a Maritime Forum April 15 for students participating in the Billion Oyster Project.

The event will be held from 4 - 5:30pm at the Michael J. Petrides School in the Borough Presidents Hall of Science, located in Building A Room 218.

During the event, about 60 students will make one-on-one presentations explaining their field work with the Billion Oyster Project. Oddo and education and business leaders will attend the event as well as faculty and students from the Governors Island-based Urban Assembly New York Harbor School and Billion Oyster Project.

CUSICK HELPS PASS LEGISLATION EXPANDING OFFICE OF VICTIM SERVICES

The state assembly this week passed a legislative package with the support of Assemblyman Michael Cusick (D-Staten Island) that will expand the Office of Victim Services ability to help victims of domestic abuse and other sexual crimes.

Victims of crime deserve to be supported by our institutions, Cusick said. The legislation we passed this week will go a long way towards ensuring victims are treated with respect and compassion.

The legislative package of bills will help victims recover, protect victims of human trafficking and broaden the definition of rape.

It will also provide funding from antitrust fines to the Office of Victim Services for victim assistance and award programs; offer awards from the Office of Victim Services to the victims of unlawful surveillance; allow the domestic partners of murder victims to be eligible for crime victim compensation and counseling support; and give children who witness or endure certain crimes access to funding to cover counseling, transportation for court dates, or other necessary expenses.

MALLIOTAKIS VISITS P.S. 8 WITH NYPD K-9 UNIT

Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/South Brooklyn), NYPD officers and K-9 paid a visit to P.S. 8 Friday.

During their visit, students learned about the NYPDs K-9 unit and operations and gave them the opportunity to learn about the training the dogs undergo and the role they plan in helping police officers.

The NYPD K-9 Unit is a remarkable program. Each year, I hope this demonstration gives the children an understanding and appreciation for our police officers and their working dogs, as I find it important to teach children at an early age to respect our police officers and be kind to animals, said Malliotakis.
Baby Animals opens Saturday, April 13, at Hancock Shaker Village.

Berkshire County School Vacation Activities Abound

Looking for something to do with the kids during April school vacation? Look no further!

Single Events

Wednesday, April 17: The Family Center will host its annual Touch A Truck celebration from 10 to 11:30 a.m. in the parking lot behind the Hasins Center on 210 State St., North Adams. Touch a Truck is an annual free, fun community event for the whole family. Featuring big trucks and vehicles to explore. Children will have a chance to see and learn about a fire truck, police car and ambulance. Other vehicles to explore will be a school bus, tractors and construction vehicles.

Wednesday, April 17: The Nutshell Playhouse will present Saving Jazzy at The Whitney Center for the Arts, 42 Wendell Ave., at 10 a.m. Can Mambo and Nemonee save the beautiful but endangered Floratius Serendipitus? Follow them on their hilarious adventures around the globe as they look for the special ingredients that will do the trick. Featuring masks, movement, live music and puppetry, this original performance provides a wonderful chance to awaken young children to earths mysteries and the delicate balance of nature. Performed by actors Alexia Trainer and Stefanie Weber, with live musical accompaniment by Don Jordan.

Wednesday, April 17: Mariah, outreach coordinator from the Berkshire Natural Resources Council, will present an "All About Insects" storytime, including a reading of "Fly Guy Presents: Insects" by Ted Arnold accompanied by a lesson about beneficial insects at the North Adams Public Library at 2 p.m. Each child will make a bug hotel to take home. The lesson is geared toward first- through fourth-graders, but any interested youth are welcome.

Thursday, April 18: Williamstown author Ali Benjamin will celebrate the release of her new book "The Next Great Paulie Fink" at the Williams Bookstore at 81 Spring St. in Williamstown at 7 p.m. There will be beverages for kids and adults and a brief reading by the author.

Thursday, April 18: Instructor Amy will facilitate a Family Yoga Class at the North Adams Public Library from 1 to 2 p.m. This kid-friendly class will include, music, games, mindfulness activities, a story and poses. Best suited for children ages 3 1/2 to 8 years old; siblings welcome. Bring a yoga mat if you have one; some mats will be available at the program.

Week-long events

Clark Art Institute: A school-vacation program on "The Art of Improv" will introduce upper-grade elementary students to improvisational comedy ("improv"). The four workshop sessions - April 16-19 from 2 to 4 p.m., with a 2 p.m. performance on April 20 - will include engaging with art in the galleries, playing classic improv games and developing original scenes inspired by the Clark collection, with a culminating performance for friends and loved ones. The program will be led by Amanda Bell Goldmakher, Clark art educator and a graduate of the Peoples Improv Theatre in New York City. All materials and a daily snack will be provided. Enrollment is limited to eight children. Reserve online.



Greylock Federal Credit Union: Greylock Federal Credit Union is celebrating National Credit Union Youth Month by hosting a series of activities for members of its Youth Club. The theme is The Magic of Saving and features free access to local activities and giveaways for making a deposit as well as an opportunity to secure a special 15-month Youth Club Certificate of Deposit at a special rate. Starting on Monday, April 15, Youth Club members can stop by any Greylock branch, make a deposit, and ask for a "Magic of Saving" giveaway and tickets for special events on Wednesday through Friday.



On Monday, stop by the West Street location and meet Dale the Wizard of Savings and pick up a free movie pass for the special Tuesday afternoon showing of "Dumbo" at the Beacon Cinema. Wednesday is Berkshire Museum day, where kids can explore the many interesting exhibits at the museum between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. On Thursday, the Greylock Youth Club will go bowling between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. at the following locations: Valley Park Bowling Alley, 1274 Curran Highway, North Adams; Kens Bowl, 495 Dalton Ave., Pittsfield; and Cove Bowling Lanes, 109 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington. Ticket includes two games and shoe rental for kids when accompanied by an adult. Friday the club will explore the exciting world of Modern Magic at 2 p.m. with Doug Eash at the Salvation Army, 298 West Street, Pittsfield.

Hancock Shaker Village: Baby Animals at Hancock Shaker Village kicks off with a non-denominational blessing of the animals with Rev. Mark Longhurst of Williamstown Congregational Church and Shaker singing with Warren Dews of Price Memorial AME Zion Church at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, April 13. Baby Animals continues daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through April 28. Info online.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis is calling for increased police presence on the R subway line after a man was videoed exposing himself and masturbating in front of multiple female passengers Tuesday morning.

I am writing to express my concerns regarding the safety of my constituents who travel the R train every day, Malliotakis wrote in a letter to Andy Byford, president of the New York City Transit Authority. And, am requesting that a plan be developed between the MTA, MTA police and NYPD transit to ensure that commuters receive the protection they need to feel safe on their way to and from their homes and place of work.

The video, which shows a man exposing himself and masturbating on the R train, was filmed by Kristen Vasquez, a Dongan Hills native who noticed the man following her onto the subway.

The latest CompStat statistics show that transit crimes in Brooklyn South are up 17.6% so far this year, Malliotakis wrote. In the past few months, we have seen commuters robbed, beaten, sexually assaulted, and stabbed while riding the subway. In the past month, over six disturbing crimes have been reported just on the R train alone.

Malliotakis said: Commuters on the R train continue to express fear and feel unsafe when riding the subway in the early mornings and late at night.

The most recent incident, which Malliotakis references in the letter, took place after Vasquez entered the subway at the 86th Street station in Bay Ridge.

I noticed from the corner of my eye some movements, Vasquez said of the encounter. And, when I finally looked up, he was completely exposed.

Vasquez said she realized the man was inching towards a woman and recorded it on her phone to gather evidence to provide to the police.

I dont know who that woman was, Vasquez said, but I made eye contact with her so she didnt feel she was alone.

Inside the narrow confines of a subway car, Vasquez said she felt trapped," and thought that recording the indecency would be the safest option.

Stories such as theirs are becoming all too common and we need to increase the number of MTA Police, NYPD, and undercover police, specifically in and around the stations where crime has increased, Malliotakis wrote in her letter.

For many, subways are the only viable method to travel around our city and if we want more commuters to use public transit to reduce congestion, we must make them feel safe, Malliotakis said.

Crime on the subway is at historical lows and the vast majority of our more than five million daily riders use the subway every day without incident," a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. For any individual, any single incident is one too many, so we work closely with the NYPD to ensure safety in the subway. Safety is our number-one priority and we will be in touch with Assembly Member Malliotakis on this matter.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Police in upstate New York are warning of a dangerous fentanyl-laced marijuana combination that was recently confiscated in a Walmart parking lot.

According to an Associated Press report, the Sullivan County Sheriffs Office confiscated the marijuana in the town of Thompson and it tested positive for fentanyl.

It is the first time fentanyl was found in marijuana in the area, the report says.

In a separate incident on Thursday in Albany County, Sheriff Craig Apple says first responders revived three people who had overdosed in a car in the middle of a road. Another driver came upon the car in the town of Knox and called 911.
LONG ISLAND -- President Obama? Sure. But President Trump? No way.

Thats the message a student and her parents are taking from a Long Island teacher, who apparently told the 11-year-old that President Trump was off-limits for a class project about students heroes.

Donald Trump is my hero, Bella Moscato told Long Islands Channel 12. She said I wasnt allowed to do Donald Trump because he spreads negativity and says bad things about women.

She added: The thing I didnt get, she was OK with someone doing Barack Obama, but not OK with Donald Trump? Thats what got me angry.

Moscatos parents described the Samoset Middle School teachers comments toward their sixth-grade daughter as an act of intimidation" and censorship. The parents want an apology from the educator.

Sachem Central School District Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Graham issued a statement, according to News 12: It is not accurate that this student was told that they were not allowed to conduct research or report on any individual for a school assignment, including President Trump. To the best of our knowledge, by choice the student is still conducting their project of President Trump.

The girls family knocked the statement, adding that it claims the Moscatos are lying about the incident.

Staten Islanders saw another school incident involving Trump unfold locally two years ago, when a sixth-grade teacher put an anti-Trump question into a homework assignment. The city Department of Education disciplined the instructor for using poor judgment.
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Jewish Custom Is Very Dear and Sacred to Me

The Fellowship | April 12, 2019

Henrietta Szold

Lived: December 21, 1860  February 13, 1945

Why you should know her: A Jewish Zionist leader, Ms. Szold founded Hadassah, the Womens Zionist Organization of America

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, the eldest of eight girls, Henrietta Szold was a rabbis daughter. After high school, Henrietta taught at a Jewish school, while also teaching the Bible and history to adults. Editing Professor Marcus Jastrows Talmudic Dictionary, Henrietta also furthered her own education at Johns Hopkins University and the Peabody Institute.

Henrietta founded the first night school in the United States, where she provided English language lessons and vocational skills to Jewish immigrants. She also worked as the editor of the Jewish Publication Society for more than 23 years, while helping compile the Jewish Encyclopedia. She also took classes at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where the president, Solomon Schechter, allowed her to study with rabbis if she did not seek ordination herself.

Henriettas commitment to Zionism grew when she at last visited the Holy Land in 1909. This visit inspired her to found Hadassah in 1912, which she presided over until 1926.

She then made aliyah (immigrated to the Holy Land) herself in 1933. There, she helped run Youth Aliyah, which rescued 30,000 Jewish children from the Nazis.

Szolds life mission was the health, education, and welfare of the Jewish community of the Holy Land. Her group funded hospitals, a medical school, dental facilities, x-ray clinics, welfare for infants, and soup kitchens. Her reasoning was that such practical programs were necessary for Jewish survival in the years before Israel gained its independence.

Henrietta died before she could see the establishment of the modern state of Israel. She passed away in the same Hadassah Hospital she helped build in the Holy City of Jerusalem. Henrietta was buried in the Mount of Olives, which was cut off from the rest of the Holy City until 1967. When Israel regained the Old City after the Six-Day War, a group of rabbis found that her grave had been paved over by the Jordanians. Her grave was later rebuilt and marked with a new stone marker, one of many commemorations for this woman who played such a big role in preparing the Holy Land for the modern state of Israel.
Extending Volvos safety influence in the new automotive age is their Project E.V.A. initiative.

Put simply, the Swedish manufacturers Accident Research Team has gathered crash data since the 1970s to ascertain what happens during a collision. Women and men appear equally in their data but most automakers produce their data from male crash test dummies.

Volvo are a little different. They use crash test dummies based on the average male and the average female, which is rare in the industry. This means their data is equal, and their safety innovations are designed with the anatomy of men and women in mind.

Volvo has been collecting data from accidents in Sweden for almost 50 years, and now it is making its research accessible to all. Credit:Volvo.

How does this translate into vehicle safety design? For starters, womens neck muscles are different to mens. They also usually sit closer to the wheel, and a little lower. With Volvo, all these factors affect the design of safety innovation.

According to Dr. Lotta Jakobsson, a senior technical specialist at Volvo Cars Safety Centre, by collecting real-world data for a long time, it has been possible to identify what injuries arise in different accidents for men, women, and children.

This follows on from the announcement this year that Volvo will be electronically limiting its new vehicles to a top speed of 180km/h from 2020.

The upshot has been Volvo making their cars safer for everyone, every year.

Safety to a new level

As it is an initiative designed to make driving safer for everyone, Volvo are following their own example of 1959, and intend sharing their innovations and 40 years of collision data with everyone. Their hope is by making the Project E.V.A. research more accessible, it will encourage other automakers to put people first regardless of size, gender or body shape.

The initiative builds on the newer active safety measures designed this century to prevent crashes before they happen. Carrying on from the advances of the 1980s and 1990s such as airbags, the new generation of safety measures run in the background and constantly monitor the vehicle and space around it for potential hazards.

The Volvo Accident Research Team investigates about 35-50 crashes in-person every year in Sweden. Credit:Volvo.

They include: electronic stability control, and rear-view video systems, automatic emergency braking and blind-spot detection. Most of them have been led or pioneered by the European automotive manufacturers and many of them have taken us further down the self-driving path.

According to the Society of Automotive Engineers International (SAE International), the automotive experience has passed through numerous stages and we are rapidly approaching full automation. SAE Internationals current Levels of Driving Automation standard is divided into six stages of automation.

At Level zero, the driver is in complete control of the vehicle but there are safety features in place to ensure automatic emergency braking and blind-spot warning. By the time you reach Level two of the standard, drivers receive brake and acceleration support with features such as lane centring and adaptive cruise control.

Move up to Level three and automated driving features are engaged but they must be disengaged when requested - so the level of automation is limited. At this level, the self-driving capability is only available in certain conditions. The leap to Level five and full automation where the vehicle can drive in all conditions without intervention is huge.

While the SAE scale takes into account a raft of game-changing safety innovations, the real challenge for the future of automotive safety is, over the next couple of decades, the roads are going to fill with cars ranging from Levels zero to five. How they all mix with different levels of safety features and driver control will make for an exciting but no doubt slightly bumpy ride.

We have a word in Swedish  omtanke  that means care and consideration. Its the lens through which we at Volvo view the world. But a caring, considered approach does more than just inspire us to build better cars; it shapes how we see everything. Omtanke allows us to solve problems of all shapes and sizes, from safety in cars to electrification, ocean pollution and more. It drives innovations that make life more effortless. More considerate. More sustainable. We welcome you to try it. volvocars.com.au
The Age newspaper is moving from Spencer Street for the first time in 50 years.

The Age and the Australian Financial Review are shifting in June from the custom-built Media House at 655 Collins Street and into level seven of Nines home at 717 Bourke Street. Nine merged with Fairfax Media last year.

While the masthead will no longer loom over the busy thoroughfare, Nine will retain control over the flashing billboard opposite Southern Cross railway station.

The newspaper first moved to Spencer Street in 1969, from Collins Street, into a Brutalist brown brick building on the corner of Lonsdale Street. Long gone, it sold to developers in 2007 for $66.1 million and is now a forest of apartment towers.
Uber has 91 million users, but growth is slowing and it may never make a profit, the ride-hailing company said on Thursday in its initial public offering filing.

The document gave the first comprehensive financial picture of the decade-old company which was started after its founders struggled to get a cab on a snowy night and has changed the way much of the world travels.

The S-1 filing underscores the rapid growth of Uber's business in the last three years but also how a string of public scandals and increased competition from rivals have weighed on its plans to attract and retain riders.

The disclosure also highlighted how far Uber remains from turning a profit, with the company cautioning it expects operating expenses to "increase significantly in the foreseeable future" and it "may not achieve profitability." Uber lost $US3.03 billion in 2018 from operations.
Simplification and red tape are the two things small businesses are championing in the lead-up to the May 18 election but more complicated tax policies may be coming down the line instead.

Tax experts warn policies including negative gearing and the future of so-called 'Division 7A' business loans are complex and could spell uncertainty for smaller operators wanting to grow.

William Buck's Greg Travers.

Small businesses have been championing simplified policies in the weeks before the election is called. The Council of Small Business Organisations Australia launched a campaign to create "small business policies that are sensible and easy to navigate".

A survey of more than 1,200 small businesses for Scottish Pacific released on Thursday revealed 20 per cent of SMEs want their new government to "reduce their administrative and regulatory burden".
TOUCH OF EVIL (108 minutes) M Orson Welles pulled out all the stops in this one-of-a-kind 1958 film noir, with Charlton Heston as the straight-arrow Mexican hero and Welles himself as a corrupt, morbidly obese cop patrolling the US border. A great film  moody, comic, violent, perversely romantic, and from shot to shot, always dazzling. Digitally projected. Astor, Sunday, April 14, 4pm. Orson Welles as Hank Quinlan in his 1958 film A Touch of Evil. Credit:OCTOBER FILMS THE LAST MOVIE (108 minutes) Unrated 18+ Made in the wake of the smash hit Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper's trippy 1971 second feature as writer-director-star remains one of the most radical films backed by a major Hollywood studio. Hopper stars as a stuntman working on a western shot in Peru, the collapse of which becomes a symbol for the broader failures of American foreign policy. New restoration, digitally projected. ACMI, Saturday, April 13, 6.15pm.

TRANSIT (101 minutes) M German director Christian Petzold (Barbara) returns with another economically told tale of masquerade under life-or-death circumstances, this one centred on a German refugee (Franz Rogowski) on the run. Literally, it's a story that belongs both to today and yesterday, set in a version of mid-20th-century Europe that looks uncannily like the present. ACMI, Saturday, April 13, and Sunday, April 14 (check online for session times). HERE I AM (87 minutes) M Beck Cole's 2011 first feature follows a young Indigenous woman (Shai Pittman) recently released from prison and battling to rebuild her life, including her difficult relationship with her mother (Marcia Langton). Carrying an emotional impact that belies its seeming modesty, this is one of the more underrated Australian films of recent years. Digitally projected. ACMI, Sunday, April 14, 1pm. ARTIST FILM WORKSHOP: SELECTED WORKS 2009-2019 (81 minutes) Unrated
Labor has escalated a political fight over claims of a $387 billion tax burden under its election policies, prompting Treasury secretary Phil Gaetjens to say the government's economic officials did not cost Labor policies.

Labor shadow treasurer Chris Bowen wrote to Mr Gaetjens on Friday to demand an explanation for the government's use of "Treasury costings" to attack the Labor policies.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen asked the Treasury Secretary why the department was costing Labor Party policies. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Gaetjens replied with confirmation the department prepared the cost estimates, but he made it clear these were based on instructions from the government, without being told they were Labor policies.

"We were not asked to cost another party's policies and would not do so if the request was made specifically to 'cost Party X's policy'," Mr Gaetjens wrote to Mr Bowen.
After more than two years, grand plans and community backlash, Waverley Council's latest $26.7 million proposal to restore the Bondi Pavilion aims to keep the existing heritage building "intact".

The renewal of the pavilion fronting Bondi Beach is a step closer after the council lodged a development application for what will largely be a restoration project that retains the heritage features of the landmark 1920s building.

The development application includes plans to open up the pavilion's internal courtyard. Credit:Waverley Council

"The idea was to preserve the pavilion intact," Waverley mayor John Wakefield said. "Our aim was to restore and conserve, not to fundamentally change the pavilion. We believe it works."

Revised plans for the pavilion will include upgrades to internal rooms, new seating in the theatre, improved pedestrian access through the building and conservation of the beach-front facade.
Delays to a controversial tower block that stalled when the Berejiklian government paused development in north-west Sydney are costing billionaire developer Harry Triguboff's company $50,000 a day, a court has been told.

Meriton's construction arm, Karimbla Constructions, launched legal action in the NSW Land and Environment Court against Premier Gladys Berejiklian, the Greater Sydney Commission and senior planning officials in an attempt to win approval for the residential development topping 42 storeys at Macquarie Park.

The original plan from property group Meriton that included a 63-storey tower was rejected by Ryde Council. The latest plans are for a 42-storey tower. Credit:Ryde Council

The tower, which became a lightning rod for political concerns about development in Sydney, was rejected by the City of Ryde last year, but could still proceed if approved by the NSW government.

Meriton's move to sue the government, days before the March poll returned Ms Berejiklian to power, set the stage for a courtroom showdown over whether the development should remain locked in limbo.
The conventional wisdom was clear: if Scott Morrison wanted to do the right thing by the Liberal Party in NSW, he should have called a federal election before the state poll. Voters might have seized the early opportunity to express their disgust at the Prime Ministers indulgent Canberra claque. So salved, voters would have then felt free to return the solid ol' Berejiklian administration in NSW.

But events might put another spin on this wisdom. It turns out Gladys Berejiklian was not disadvantaged too severely by going first. Far from being punished for the sins of Morrison et al, Berejiklian emerged triumphant in her own right.

Basking in Berejiklian's afterglow? Scott Morrison with the NSW Premier on the night of her election victory last month. Credit:AAP

And now, what if the momentum created by her victory  a third in a row for the Coalition in NSW  in turn carries Morrison to an unlikely win himself? Like the canny cyclist riding up the Alp, Morrison might have planned it this way all along: sitting behind someone else doing the hard work into the hard wind, he will have saved his legs for the opportunistic sprint at the end.

In some respects the pressure is off Sydney and NSW at this election. From the "Howard Battlers" days, the perceived cultural biases of the western Sydney voter have weighed heavily on national democratic exercises. John Howard might have lent his name to the nomenclature, but the fascination with what might have been important to Sydney suburbia did not end with his prime ministership.
A former guard in one of Australias most notorious prisons has been arrested for killing three young travellers in remote bushland near Mount Isa four decades ago.

Bruce John Preston, 63, has been charged with three counts of murder more than 40 years after his alleged victims' bodies were found at Spear Creek in outback Queensland. He will appear in Brisbane Magistrate's Court on Saturday.

Mr Preston, then an unemployed diesel mechanic, was a suspect early on in the investigation.

Bruce Preston being driven into the Brisbane Watchhouse on Friday afternoon. Credit:Lydia Lynch

Mr Preston, who had since worked at the supermax Goulburn jail, had been awarded a commendation for brave conduct by the NSW commissioner of corrective services in 2002.
Today, almost every adult in the country has some assets to pass on after they die  even if it is only the balance in their superannuation account which also typically includes some amount of default insurance.

Many Australians will also have considerable assets such as their home, shares or an investment property. In addition to this, changes to the superannuation rules have forced members with bigger super balances to review their estate plans and make any necessary changes.

It doesnt matter how old you are, make the time now to get your affairs in order so that you can later "rest in peace".

Having an appropriate estate plan, of which preparation of a will is just a part, is essential for the comfort and wellbeing of surviving relatives, or even a cherished friend if that is your choice of beneficiary.

An illustration of the importance of this can be found in the case of a 25-year-old who died without a will.
[This] human source comes on board that could potentially solve a bunch of ... murders or prevent others ... and this glittering prize ... sometimes diverts you from the necessary steps, he told IBAC. The inquiry, by former judge Murray Kellam, found force command approved using Ms Gobbo as an informer, disseminated her information and were briefed about the arrest and prosecutions of her clients as a result of her information from 2005 to 2009. Mr Overland, who as police commissioner oversaw Ms Gobbo's use, told IBAC he thought she had "personality and attachment disorders" and was "pathologically incapable of acting in [her own] best interests". Ms Gobbo, Mr Kellam wrote, was ringing handlers up to nine times a day at all hours, socialising with both police and criminals and consuming significant amounts of medication. Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton. Credit:Justin McManus

"On balance, it is highly likely that the prospect of 'the glittering prize' distracted all concerned

from the obvious steps that were required to be taken to mitigate the risks," Mr Kellam said. Though Ms Gobbo was registered as an informer in 1995 and 1999, the most fraught period of her informing was from 2005 until 2009, when she gave police information about her clients, including drug boss Tony Mokbel. The police use of this information has put a number of convictions in doubt and is the subject of an ongoing royal commission. The actions of both Mr Overland, now chief executive of the Whittlesea Council, and Mr Ashton are under scrutiny before the commission. The documents released on Friday confirm Mr Overland led the push to turn Ms Gobbo into a witness against drug squad detective Paul Dale, who was a suspect in the murder of another police informer, Terence Hodson, and his wife Christine.

Ms Gobbo herself described it as the moment that "everything fell apart" and set off a chain of events that would reveal her status as an informer and endanger her life. One of her handlers wrote in a note that then-deputy commissioner Overland wanted Ms Gobbo as a witness and was aware of the consequences. "D/C OVERLAND wants 2958 as a witness, conveyed this message to Operative 3 last night and OVERLAND says he is aware of consequences. With respect, this handler does not believe this." Mr Ashton and Mr Overland were on the steering committee that was overseeing the investigation into the Hodson murders that ultimately led to Ms Gobbo wearing a wire and taping a conversation with Mr Dale. Nicola Gobbo. Credit:ABC News

Their use of Ms Gobbo in this instance did not pay off when the case against Mr Dale collapsed after the murder in prison of underworld kingpin Carl Williams, who was also giving evidence against him. The royal commission heard the force did not obtain legal advice until 2011 and that advice warned that criminals, including Mokbel, could challenge their convictions because the information was improperly obtained. Mr Overland told the IBAC inquiry that though there were "various discussions" about Ms Gobbo's professional ethics, it was left up to her to manage them. "Mr Overland gave evidence to the inquiry that he 'was very clear with [his] investigators and [the source's managers] that [the source] could not provide information or be tasked in relation to current clients, or to provide information obtained in a solicitor/client relationship," Mr Kellam wrote.
A former Malaysia Airlines flight attendant who smuggled more than 2.5kg of heroin into Melbourne in a "clumsily executed" fashion has been jailed for at least three years.

Cabin crew member Fariq Aqbal Omar, 34, walked through Melbourne Airport with rectangular bulges showing through the pants and vest of his airline uniform in May 2018.

The bulges turned out to be 10 packages of pure heroin, with a street value of more than $3 million.

He cleared Customs after the flight from Kuala Lumpur but was seen on CCTV footage entering a bathroom with his suitcase, subsequently transferring the packages into his luggage.

Aqbal Omar was caught after Australian Border Force noticed his behaviour and requested he and colleagues return from their bus to the baggage area.
Julian Assanges father has attended a Melbourne rally calling for the release of the WikiLeaks founder from custody after he was removed from the Ecuadorian embassy by London police.

John Shipton joined a crowd of about 100 people outside the State Library of Victoria from 4pm on Friday.

John Shipton at the Free Julian Assange Rally in support of his son at the State Library of Victoria on Friday afternoon. Credit:Joe Armao

Mr Shipton applauded each of the speakers at the rally but was generally restrained.

He did not address the rally and declined to comment to The Age, on the advice of his lawyers.
WorkSafe has seized control of a series of warehouses illegally stockpiled with up to 11 million litres of highly-flammable toxic chemicals that are linked to the same operator of the Campbellfield factory that erupted into a massive industrial blaze last week.

The move comes as the arson squad and Victorias coroner begin investigating the circumstances surrounding the huge April 5 fire at the Bradbury Industrial Services warehouse on Thornycroft Street.

It took nearly 200 firefighters several days to control the Campbellfield blaze, which sent plumes of smoke across the city, and forced the closure of schools and businesses.

The toxic blaze in Campbellfield. Credit:Nine News

Bradbury Industrial Services, which had its license suspended for serious breaches of environment laws in March, has since been linked to three illicit stockpiles in warehouses in Craigieburn and one in Campbellfield packed with steel drums and plastic bins.
A retired teacher has been jailed for at least four years for sexually abusing young boys, including one who was violated up to 100 times.

Former Dandenong High School teacher Timothy Richardson, 82, was on Friday sentenced to eight years in prison and must serve at least four years and nine months before being eligible for parole.

"They were children and as children they demanded your protection. Quite simply you betrayed them," County Court judge Paul Higham said.

The six victims were aged between 11 and 15 when they were abused at Richardson's farm in Harkaway, southeast of Melbourne.

The science teacher had invited them to spend the weekend at the farm and in the evening he coerced or persuaded them to sleep in the same bed as him.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was forced to defend the Coalition's policy on the Adani coal mine at a forum attended by hundreds of people who peppered six candidates running in the seat of Kooyong with questions about climate change.

The candidates - Mr Frydenberg, Labors Jana Stewart, the Greens Julian Burnside, and independents Oliver Yates, Bill Chandler and Angelina Zubac - took questions from 600 attendees, many of them about the controversial coal mine which has emerged as a key issue in the blue ribbon Melbourne seat.

Josh Frydenberg spent the first day of the election campaign being grilled on his party's climate change policy. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Speaking at the forum hosted by the local environment group Lighter Footprints, Mr Frydenberg said the Adani project still had to pass nine more approvals, including the most fundamental one with the Queensland Labor government.

[Adani] has been subject to more conditions and more scrutiny than any other mine. Its about half the size of what was previously put forward. Australia has a major resource sector - we have both coal, iron ore and other resources," Mr Frydenberg told the forum.
The Great Barrier Reef shark control program will be restarted after a Federal Court judge decided to issue a stay on a contentious tribunal ruling.

It comes after Humane Society International won a ruling in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which ordered sharks found alive on a drumline on the Great Barrier Reef must be released unless euthanasia was warranted on animal welfare grounds and contractors must attend to all caught sharks within 24 hours.

Fisheries Minister Mark Furner announced hooks would be removed from the Great Barrier Reef's shark control program following the tribunal's decision. Credit:Blue Planet II

Tiger sharks, great whites and bull sharks were also to be tagged and relocated offshore.

It prompted the state government to suspend its Great Barrier Reef shark control program, removing hooks from drumlines, while it appealed the tribunal decision.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Theres nothing quite like an Indian general election. The mass rallies held in searing heat  a trademark of India's electioneering  are something to behold. There's always a lively cast of political characters and a staggering array of parties. But it's the sheer scale that really sets this ballot apart. This years poll, which launched on April 11 and ends with the announcement of the result later today, has been the largest democratic exercise in history. About 900 million people are eligible to take part  thats about one-eighth of the worlds population. The next-largest constituency, which elects the European Parliament, is less than half that size. Over the past five weeks, nearly 4 million election officials and millions more security personnel have managed 1 million polling stations during Indias seven-phase democratic marvel. About two-thirds of voters cast ballots, even though voting is not compulsory. And there were predictions that more women would vote than men for the first time in a general election. Indian nationals living in Australia were able to register as overseas electors but they could only cast a vote in the general election at a polling booth in India.

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A man shows his support for Narendra Modi's party at a mass rally in Kolkata in April. Credit:Alamy How does India's political system work? India has a Westminster-style government. A simple first-past-the-post system is used to elect the 543 members of the Lok Sabha, the name for Indias lower house. (Most members of the 245-seat upper house, the Rajya Sabha, are elected by the parliaments of the 29 states and the seven union territories.) In Australia, an average 100,000 voters live in each federal electorate. In India the typical lower-house MP represents an average of about 1.6 million voters; Malakajgiri, near Hyderabad, boasted 3.182 million electors at the last election  that's just voters, not constituents. A party or coalition with a majority in the Lok Sabha will form the government. Cutouts of Modi before a rally in Kolkata. Credit:Alamy The many moods of Modi: will he prevail again? The election has been cast as a referendum on the incumbent Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. According to exit polls, it's a referendum he has won.

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Five years ago Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian Peoples Party) and its allies to a historic victory. It was the first time in three decades that a single party had won an absolute majority. A gifted orator, Modi promised development and an end to corruption. He also appealed to the majority Hindu population with a brand of pro-Hindu nationalism. Modis humble beginnings have been an electoral asset in a nation where GDP per person is less than $2780 a year. Modis humble beginnings  his father owned a tea stall  have been an electoral asset in a nation where GDP per person is less than $US2000 a year ($A2780). Hes got a very relatable story to tell and hes told it brilliantly, says Professor Robin Jeffrey, a leading India scholar at the National University of Singapore. Modis success has come despite a contentious political career. In 2002, when he was chief minister of Gujarat, hundreds of Muslims across the state died in riots. The rampage was in retaliation to the deaths of 59 Hindus killed in an attack. Modi has been accused of being slow to stop the bloodshed although he denies these allegations and none have ever been proved. Modi takes a selfie with his party's lotus symbol before his election win in 2014. Credit:AP

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There have been missteps during his five-year tenure. A scheme to combat corruption by withdrawing all high-value bank notes from circulation overnight in 2016 caused huge disruption. The introduction of a goods and services tax also came at a political cost. While economic growth has been healthy, the rate of jobs growth has been lacklustre. Modi is the campaign. Without him the whole thing would fall apart. Critics also allege the BJPs strident Hindu nationalism is dividing the nation and fraying its secular, democratic traditions. Dr Manisha Priyam, a Delhi-based political analyst, said Modis political narrative is different to when he won office in 2014. He came to power with the promise of jobs and a pro-people development agenda but now he is mainly talking about national security and a place for India as a world power, she says. It has to be seen if people will forget the old promises.

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Modi, 68, remains a central figure in the BJPs re-election bid. Modi is the campaign, says Jeffrey. Without him the whole thing would fall apart. The BJPs electoral pitch was set to be boosted by a dash of Bollywood  a big-budget biopic favourably depicting Modis life in politics was due to be released ahead of polling. But Indias election commission banned the movie during the election period amid claims it would serve as propaganda. Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi in March. Credit:Bloomberg The return of the Gandhis Modi's key challenger is Rahul Gandhi, leader of the Indian National Congress party, which has governed for much of the time since independence in 1947. Gandhis political pedigree is unmatched: his father Rajiv, grandmother Indira and great-grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru were all prime ministers. His mother, Sonia, was a dominant figure in the Congress-led government that ruled between 2004 and 2014. The party was trounced at the last general election but its prospects appeared to improve late last year when the Congress beat incumbent BJP governments in a clutch of state elections.

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London: If you want to understand why Assange now faces extradition to the US on a criminal charge, check out a 2017 speech by current US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Pompeo was, in April 2017, a few months into his stint as director of the CIA, the US foreign spy agency, and these were his first public remarks in that role.

In his long speech he hammered a repeated claim: WikiLeaks was putting lives at risk and damaging national security.

President Donald Trump speaks with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in 2018. Credit:AP

We at the CIA find the celebration of entities like WikiLeaks to be both perplexing and deeply troubling, he said. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organisations.
Athens: Greek police are investigating an alleged meeting between murdered Sydney gangster John Macris and former Australian bikie boss Amad "Jay" Malkoun in Athens a few weeks before Macris' assassination in October last year.

Police sources close to the investigation have revealed claims that Macris, who was shot dead by an alleged professional hitman outside his home, had previously met with Malkoun in front of witnesses.

Amad 'Jay' Malkoun was injured when his car exploded in the upmarket suburb of Glyfada, Athens. Credit:AP

Macris, a 46-year-old Sydney businessman with links to organised crime, was shot dead in his car in the ritzy Athens seaside suburb of Glyfada on October 31.

Police believe it was a contract killing ordered by an unknown underworld figure.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after Ecuador withdrew the asylum that had allowed him to take refuge in its embassy in London for the past seven years. The computer hacker now faces the prospect of extradition to the United States. He was also found guilty in a British court on Thursday of breaking bail terms dating back to 2012. Julian Assange is carried from the Ecuadoran embassy on Thursday. Credit:Ruptly Who is Julian Assange? The 47-year-old, born in Townsville, founded WikiLeaks, an organisation that publishes secret information and news leaks, in 2006. His initial recruitment invitation reportedly said his primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West who wish to reveal illegal or immoral behaviour in their own governments and corporations. Wikileaks did indeed proceed to publish secret official information  a lot. This including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, infuriating the United States and other countries. Wikileaks has now published more than 10 million documents and pieces of analysis, it says on its website, quoting Assange describing it as a giant library of the world's most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.

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Assange's supporters see him as a hero who challenges censorship and champions free speech. Others say he risked security by revealing secret documents. Assange makes a statement from the Ecuador embassy in 2012. Credit:AP Why was he in Ecuador's embassy in London? Back in November 2011, London's High Court said Assange should be extradited to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes after accusations by two former WikiLeaks volunteers in 2010. After losing an appeal, Assange took refuge in Ecuador's embassy in June 2012 to avoid being extradited. He was granted political asylum by the anti-American, left-wing former Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa. Fearing the United States wanted to prosecute him, Assange remained in the embassy after Sweden dropped the investigation against him in 2017. Sweden's then-chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny, said in 2017 that the Swedish probe could be reopened should the situation change.

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Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny. Credit:Reuters Why did Ecuador change its mind about Assange? In 2017 elections, Correa was replaced as Ecuadorean president by Lenin Moreno who has since moved Ecuador's foreign policy to a more US-friendly stance. He has been openly critical of Assange in recent months, calling him an inherited problem and accusing him of violating the rules of his asylum. What secrets did Wikileaks reveal? In July 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 91,000 documents, most of them secret US military reports about the war in Afghanistan. In October of that year, it released another 400,000 classified military files chronicling the war in Iraq from 2004 to 2009. Supporters of Assange outside court in London this week. Credit:AP What charges does Assange face in the United States?

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After years of speculation that Assange was a wanted man in the US, prosecutors there announced charges against him following his arrest on Thursday, accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer. Assange, for now at least, faces a single count of computer intrusion conspiracy. The charges relate to Assange allegedly conspiring with Manning to crack a password that would give her higher-level access to classified computer networks. Prosecutors say Assange and Manning tried to conceal Manning's role as a source by deleting chat logs and removing usernames from sensitive records that were shared. They used a special folder to transmit classified and national defence information, the indictment says. Assange ultimately requested more information related to the password, telling Manning that while he had tried to crack it, he "had no luck so far". Assange's arrest has paved the way for his possible extradition to the United States. Assange would face up to five years in prison on the US charge. Chelsea Manning in Montreal last year. Credit:AP Who is Chelsea Manning? Now aged 31 and known as an activist and whistleblower, Manning was Private First Class Bradley Manning when she worked as an intelligence analyst at Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad.

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Manning had been browsing two classified networks used by the US Department of Defense and the State Department and found material he found incredible, awful that he thought needed to be made public. He smuggled files out on writeable CDs labelled Lady Gaga. He later confessed to passing vast archives of military and diplomatic files to WikiLeaks, saying he wanted to spark a debate about foreign policy and believed the world would be a better place if states did not make secret deals with each other. The former solider, who has since announced that she is transgender and changed her name from Bradley to Chelsea, spent seven years in jail for the leaks. She was jailed again in March for contempt of court after she refused to testify before a grand jury in Virginia. Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno. Credit:AP What has Ecuador said since the arrest? Ecuador's Moreno said the South American country had complied with its duties to Assange under international law and he accused Wikileaks of repeatedly violating the rules of his asylum, including a provision which was meant to stop him intervening in the internal matters of other countries. A leak of Vatican documents in 2019 was the most recent example of Assange violating that policy, Moreno said in a video posted on Twitter.

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Tripoli: At least 56 people have been killed in six days of fighting near the Libyan capital of Tripoli, the UN World Health Organisation said on Thursday, warning against a prolonged conflict in the area.

The dead included an ambulance driver and two medical doctors, the WHO said in an online statement. It did not say if there were other civilians among the rest of the fatalities.

The fighting also left at least 266 others injured, according to the statement.

Libyan militia commander General Khalifa Haftar. Credit:AP

Last week, Khalifa Haftar, the commander of the self-styled Libyan National Army, or LNA, ordered his forces to seize Tripoli from a rival government backed by the UN.
Feasibility Study&Project Finance Updates

Posted by Publisher Internet

Cardinal Resources Limited (ASX/TSX: CDV  http://www.commodity-tv.net/c/search_adv/?v=298772) is pleased to announce an update to our Feasibility Study (?FS?) and Project Finance (?PF?) activities in respect of the Company?s Ore Reserve at the Namdini Gold Project in Ghana (ASX/TSX release dated 3 April 2019).

The Namdini Gold Project Feasibility Study is progressing rapidly and is now expected to be delivered this quarter, one quarter ahead of schedule

Cardinal?s Project Finance Advisor, Cutfield Freeman (London), is assessing term sheets for project finance which have been received from banks and other project financiers

Strong interest shown from a number and variety of different potential project financiers

Independent Experts appointed to minimise delays with due diligence

Cardinal?s Chief Executive Officer / Managing Director, Archie Koimtsidis stated:

?The entire Feasibility Study team has been performing an exceptional job of bringing together the Feasibility Study for Cardinal?s Namdini Gold Project well ahead of its original planned completion of Q3 CY2019.

?Finalisation of the Feasibility Study within this quarter will be a significant step forward for the Company as it continues to substantiate the significant value inherent in the Namdini Gold Project for investors.

?The Pre-Feasibility Study has already demonstrated the robust nature of our Namdini Gold Project, and provides a strong body of work which has been leveraged off for the Feasibility Study. The Feasibility Study will factor an optimisation study that has recently been undertaken on the Namdini Gold Ore Reserve, to ensure the optimal Stage 1 pit design to accelerate capital payback and maximise returns for shareholders.

?Study Manager Lycopodium, continues to accelerate the full integration of all project disciplines and to coordinate the efforts of our other study partners including Golder Associates and Knight Piesold.

?Lycopodium are a highly respected mining services company that has over 25 years? Global experience in the minerals industry, designing and building large-scale mines, processing plants and associated infrastructure, particularly in Africa and West Africa.?

Project Finance Update

Project Finance Advisers, Cutfield Freeman, have been working closely with Cardinal to ensure that Cardinal is well positioned to execute project finance for the Namdini Gold Project as swiftly as possible following completion of the Feasibility Study.

There has been very strong interest received from a range of potential financiers, providing the Company with a strong degree of confidence that it will be capable of securing the required project funding package on favourable terms.

Cardinal?s Project Finance team is continuing to evaluate Indicative Term Sheets from a number of project financiers  traditional senior debt lenders to possible corporate scenarios.

ABOUT CARDINAL

Cardinal Resources Limited (ASX/TSX: CDV) is a West African gold?focused exploration and development Company that holds interests in tenements within Ghana, West Africa.

The Company is focused on the development of the Namdini Project with a gold Ore Reserve of 5.1Moz (0.2 Moz Proved and 4.9 Moz Probable) and a soon to be completed Feasibility Study.

Exploration programmes are also underway at the Company?s Bolgatanga (Northern Ghana) and Subranum (Southern Ghana) Projects.

Cardinal confirms that it is not aware of any new information or data that materially affects the information included in its announcement of the Ore Reserve of 3 April 2019. All material assumptions and technical parameters underpinning this estimate continue to apply and have not materially changed.

Please follow the link to view entire original news in English:

https://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20190410/pdf/4446bwpzhdl36m.pdf
Hong Kong: SJ visits Paris, Luxembourg

Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng visited Paris and Luxembourg over the past two days to promote Hong Kong as a deal-making and dispute resolution services centre.

Upon her arrival in Paris yesterday, Ms Cheng met members of the National Assembly of France and attended a business luncheon organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council.

She also attended a conference co-organised by the Department of Justice and the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre to promote Hong Kong as deal maker and dispute resolver.

The Secretary for Justice then joined a cocktail reception hosted by Invest Hong Kong to meet the legal and business sectors in Paris.

Ms Cheng departed for Luxembourg today to visit the European Union Court of Justice where she met Judge Christopher Vajda, Judge Bay Larsen and Advocate General Eleanor Sharpston.

She said the principle of "one country, two systems", the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary have been upheld under the Basic Law since Hong Kong's return to the Motherland.

Ms Cheng will return to Paris to continue her itinerary in the French capital until April 15 when she will proceed to The Hague.

This story has been published on: 2019-04-12. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Why cellular connectivity is the smart choice for CCTV deployments

Businesses large and small rely on their CCTV systems to deter intruders and provide recorded evidence of security incidents. Overtime, CCTV has evolved to offer real-time intrusion detection and monitoring, and businesses now expect easy, secure and anytime access to cameras, and data. For that, they need connected CCTV systems. These modern installations can benefit from cellular connectivity, helping businesses protect their sites, while also supporting enhanced capabilities for CCTV to deliver more. Widespread use of CCTV systems So widespread is the use of CCTV cameras now that London, United Kingdom has over 600,000 cameras, according to Surfshark, while IHS Markit expects over a billion to be operating around the world, by the end of 2021. CCTV often sits at the heart of a business on-site security arrangements CCTV often sits at the heart of a business on-site security arrangements. Yet, despite this, traditional set-ups fail, to take advantage of the full capability, such physical security can provide. Real-time feeds with anytime access Nominated personnel must physically go to premises to access CCTV video, when it is recorded and kept only on-site. This causes loss of valuable time, when a potential crime must be reported and investigated. Whats more, it can put those who arrive first at the site at risk, if intruders are still present. Nowadays, CCTV installations can take full advantage of connected capabilities. They can provide real-time feeds, which authorised users can access securely from anywhere. That expands the security credentials of CCTV systems, beyond just recording. Detected intrusions can trigger alerts and provide a real-time visual of whats happening, so that required action can be taken. Of course, to realise these CCTV capabilities, systems must be connected and use the right type of connectivity at that. Connectivity must be resilient, so that it provides a continuous feed, even if a primary connection is lost, secure for authorised users, scalable and cost-effective. Traditionally, connectivity has come from wired connections and WiFi, but now cellular connectivity provides an attractive alternative. The benefits of cellular connectivity There are a number of reasons for this. To start with, fixed line connectivity isnt always available in all locations. If the infrastructure isnt there, particularly at remote sites, cables have to be laid. Thats expensive and takes time. CCTV towers in the construction and building industry, for example, require CCTV that can be rapidly deployed in areas that most likely dont have fixed line connectivity. A cellular connection can be quickly arranged to get a CCTV system up and running in the shortest possible time. Relying on third-party infrastructure, such as fixed line networks, can also be an issue for CCTV solution providers, because any policy changes can make integration difficult. Issues that may require changes from the third-party network administrator can take longer to resolve and if the fixed line network goes down, there is usually no backup. Cellular connectivity offers end-to-end control Cellular connectivity, delivered by a solution provider, gives end-to-end control of the connectivity Cellular connectivity, delivered by a solution provider, gives end-to-end control of the connectivity. In the rare event that something goes wrong, the solution provider can manage a resolution quickly. Where a number of sites are involved, cellular connectivity can provide a single solution, simplifying overall management of the complete installed CCTV system and reducing total cost of ownership for connectivity. Single connectivity management platform Through a single connectivity management platform, businesses can oversee an entire security installation, viewing and managing data usage, and using the information to assist decision making, as security needs evolve. This brings us to the fourth benefit - The ability to easily scale up. This might be because additional cameras are needed at a site or additional sites need to be catered for. It could even be because the CCTV installation is being enhanced to support additional capabilities. Simple plug-and-play to get cameras online securely Whatever the reason, being able to roll out connections rapidly, to a range of locations will be critical to existing and new installations. Ideally, connectivity should be possible within a matter of days and end users should be able to simply plug-and-play to get their cameras online securely. Resilience is the next factor to consider. Pre-configured routers, or embedded SIM cards in cameras, can reconnect to the most readily available alternative cellular network in the event of a network outage. In this way, cellular connectivity can form part of business continuity options. In some cases, it can work together with fixed line connections, as part of robust installations, which have mitigation built-in, should primary connections fail. Expanding CCTV capabilities 4G and now 5G too, allows for easy access and remote monitoring for CCTV applications 4G and now 5G too, allows for easy access and remote monitoring for CCTV applications. It can be deployed rapidly, supports an always on approach and can stream high volumes of data and imagery. Live video feeds can be viewed by authorised users on any device and they can receive alerts, and notifications direct to their mobiles too. The high speed, high bandwidth and lower latency of 5G connectivity also provides the opportunity for enhanced CCTV system capabilities, such as live feed analytics. This is ideal because it helps businesses build on the primary function of security with, for example, occupancy monitoring. This has very much come to the fore, over the past 18 months+, as businesses have had to concern themselves more than ever with occupancy levels in their buildings. ANPR in crime detection and traffic enforcement Retailers, meanwhile, have built on the real-time nature of CCTV technology, to monitor customer numbers in their stores, in line with social distancing guidelines. Another CCTV application can be found with automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) in crime detection and traffic enforcement. Combined with software, the feed from CCTV cameras is used to help find and track vehicles for law enforcement or traffic monitoring. For most CCTV applications, the speed and functionality that comes from 4G is more than sufficient. However, it is likely 5G will drive new applications and ways to expand CCTV capabilities to the benefit of businesses. CCTV systems offer remote monitoring and high quality visuals Once a single application installation, CCTV use to provide only on-site recording capabilities. Now, CCTV systems can support remote monitoring and higher quality visuals. They can deliver alerts, and back them up with access to real-time video feeds, so that authorised users can assess a situation and take action rapidly. These additional capabilities support enhanced use cases for CCTV. The data that CCTV systems generate is valuable to businesses. Businesses that capture and analyse the data can fully capitalise on its potential. Cellular connectivity provides a resilient and scalable way of connecting single or multiple sites. Through a connectivity management platform, businesses can consolidate CCTV connectivity, managing connections across networks and deployments.
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This was the last photo that the Beresheet spacecraft captured before it crashed into the lunar surface on April 12, 2019.

Beresheet, the Israeli spacecraft that crashed into the moon during a landing attempt yesterday (April 11), was having problems with its main engine during its descent that left it unable to slow down in time before it smashed into the lunar surface.

"A technical glitch in one of Beresheet's components triggered the chain of events yesterday that caused the main engine of the spacecraft to malfunction," engineers with SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the teams that built and operated the spacecraft, said in a statement today (April 12).

Engineers at the mission control center in Yehud, Israel, did manage to restart the engine before the crash, but "by that time, its velocity was too high to slow down and the landing could not be completed as planned," SpaceIL officials said in the statement.

Related: Israel's 1st Moon Lander: The SpaceIL Beresheet Lunar Mission in Pictures

The engine problems started when Beresheet was about 8.7 miles (14 kilometers) from the surface of the moon. Beresheet beamed back one last photo of the lunar surface before it lost communication with Earth and slammed into the lunar soil. The final image arrived at SpaceIL's mission control room when Beresheet was 4.7 miles (7.5 kilometers) above the surface of the moon.

Mission controllers lost contact with the spacecraft when it was at an altitude of 492 feet (150 meters) and barreling downward at a speed of 310 mph (500 km/h). "We seem to have a problem with our main engine," SpaceIL's commentator said during a live webcast of the landing operations. "We are resetting the spacecraft to try to enable the engine." A few seconds later, he announced that the main engine was back on  but it was already too late.

Israel's Beresheet moon landing captured this self-portrait from 14 miles (22 kilometers) above the lunar surface. (Image credit: SpaceIL/IAI)

Israel may not have succeeded in a soft landing on the moon, but the tiny country is not giving up on its lunar ambitions just yet. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who watched the landing attempt from the mission control room, said Israel will try to land on the moon again in the next two to three years.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  Australia's space agency is teaming up with Boeing to boost the budding space industry in the land Down Under.

Australia didn't have a national space agency until about nine months ago, and it has one of the youngest space agencies in the world. Now, Boeing is going to help the country get its space program off the ground.

To seal the deal, officials with Boeing and the Australian Space Agency signed a "statement of strategic intent" here at the 35th Space Symposium on Tuesday (April 9).

Related: Fireball Streaks Over Australia, and the Videos and Photos Will Amaze You

Under the new agreement, the Chicago-based aerospace company will invest in research and development, innovation, education and other government programs that will help give Australia's space industry a boost. The country hopes to grow its space market from about $2.8 billion to $8.6 billion by 2030 while doubling the workforce of its space industry, Boeing officials said in the statement .

"It means a lot that we've signed this agreement during a year when the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, when both Boeing and Australia played important roles in that historic achievement," Jim Chilton, senior vice president for space and launch at Boeing, said in the statement. Chilton was referring to a tracking station that Australia built to help NASA communicate with astronauts during the Apollo missions.

Boeing has also built several satellites for Australia's military, and the company works with multiple research partners in Australia, such as the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the University of Queensland.

"This Statement of Strategic Intent highlights Boeings existing collaboration with CSIRO, universities and industry in broad areas such as space debris monitoring, advanced manufacturing and fuel production in space, on-orbit imaging, VR and remote spacecraft operation," Megan Clark, head of the Australian Space Agency, said in the statement. "This partnership opens the doors for Australian innovators to participate in the global supply chain of the space sector."

The Australian Space Agency plans to focus on developing GPS and navigation technology, Earth-observing satellites, communications, space situational awareness, robotics and automation. Not only will Boeing help Australia develop those technologies, but the company will also work to inspire the next generation of Australian rocket scientists to help ensure that the agency has a bright future ahead.
When I received my first telescope as a young boy, the very first thing that I wanted to look at was the moon. I have a feeling that is pretty much the way it is with anyone who gets a telescope for a gift . I must also tell you that your first view of our natural satellite will stay with you for the rest of your life; I always enjoy "showing off" the moon to those who have never seen it up close before, as there are always exclamations of astonishment. Even binoculars are well suited for identifying the moon's major surface features.

In his autobiography, "Starlight Nights  The Adventures of a Star-Gazer" (Harper & Row, 1965), astronomer Leslie Peltier wrote of his initial impressions when he began studying the moon through a simple spyglass:

"Throughout these nights of discovery and exploration of the moon one question kept recurring to my mind. Why had I been denied all this until my school years were nearly spent? Why had it not been made a part of the growing up of every youth? I had been taught the rivers, the seas, the mountains of every continent on earth. And all this time, right above me, the 'geography' of a whole new world had been turning, page by nightly page."

Related: How to Choose Binoculars for Astronomy and Skywatching

Exploring the moon

The moon's landscape is, of course, marked by the jagged, sharp lines of gaunt mountains, great craters and deep cracks that have probably looked the same for millions or billions of years. Mapping the face of the moon , astronomers have found lofty mountain ranges and many single peaks reaching thousands of feet above the surface. They have noted regions that appear to be dark gray and are shaped like rough circles; they are the largest features we see on the moon. Together, they cover almost half of the moon's visible surface. To early astronomers, these dark plains resembled bodies of water. That's why the Latin names they were given all start with "mare," meaning sea. (The plural of mare is "maria," pronounced MAH-ria). The major maria were named by Giovanni Riccioli in 1651 for various aspects of Earthly climate that the moon was imagined to influence, and they've stuck ever since.

Then there are several hundred great clefts in the surface of the moon, resembling crooked cracks, many of them more than a mile deep and tens of miles long.

But the most eye-catching features of the moon are its ring-shaped craters . Its largest ones range between 60 and 140 miles (100 and 230 kilometers) in diameter  far bigger than any craters known on Earth. In addition, the moon's surface is pocked with tiny craters too numerous to count.

When you first look at the moon through binoculars or a small telescope, there will be so much to see that you may think it hopeless to try and tell one crater from another. But if you look for several nights running and have a map beside you, you will soon learn how to find your way around. The line that separates night and day is known as the terminator and is a region of changing shadows, where craters and mountain ranges stand out in stark relief. Since the position of the terminator changes noticeably, even over a period of a few hours, the appearance of the moon seems to change, too.

Best and worst times to look

In fact, contrary to popular belief, the absolute worst time to observe the moon is when it's full. Not only are there no shadows, but also the lunar disk appears flat and one-dimensional, and its brightness can appear almost blinding to the eye.

Conversely, your very best views of the moon are during the interval running from around first quarter to a few days before full phase  a time frame that we are looking at during these next several nights. It's a good idea to make up your mind to identify three or four new craters or lunar features every night. It is, of course, best to start with the maria, which are easily recognized, even at full.

And if you stay with it, you can become not only well informed about the moon but also personally acquainted with its surface features, as Leslie Peltier did a century ago; you will come to know it as a world which, in a manner of speaking, you have personally explored.

These next several nights will be "prime times" for lunar viewing. Below is a night-by-night schedule for 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time; 8 p.m. Pacific.

Friday evening, April 12

The moon is nearly eight days past new phase and just hours past first quarter or "half" phase (54% illuminated). Standing out on its illuminated or right side is that feature that many of us take for the left eye of the man in the moon, composed of four lunar "seas": Mare Serenitatis (Sea of Serenity), Mare Fecunditatis (Sea of Fertility), Mare Nectaris (Sea of Nectar) and, probably the most famous of all, Mare Tranquillitatis (Sea of Tranquility), an irregular dark plain 400 by 500 miles (650 by 800 km) wide where Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin set their lunar module Eagle down on July 20, 1969. Near the moon's upper-right rim is a feature that might be considered an eyebrow, Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). Across the upper half of the moon, you can see a rugged chain of mountains that curves diagonally to the left into the terminator, the Apennine mountain range, whose tallest crater, Mount Huygens, rises to an altitude of 17,300 feet.

Saturday evening, April 13

The moon is now 65% illuminated and a new lunar sea has been completely revealed above the center of its disk, Mare Vaporum (Sea of Vapors), while two others are partially revealed: the enormous, round Mare Imbrium (Sea of Rains) occupies the upper left part of the moon's face, perhaps marking his right eye; and down toward where we might envision a mouth is Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).

But the most obvious feature tonight is evident right on the terminator: the so-called Monarch of the moon, the crater Copernicus. It is a lunar feature of relatively "recent" origin, having been formed by the impact of a meteoroid within the last 1.1 billion years. Measuring 58 miles (93 km) wide, a close-up view of it was obtained by Lunar Orbiter 2 in 1966, which was subsequently called the "Picture of the Century."

Related: Exploring the Moon by Hand with Mobile Astronomy Apps

Sunday evening, April 14

Tonight, more than three-quarters of the moon (76%) is now in sunlight. In the far north of the moon, we can see Mare Frigoris (Sea of Cold). Tucked in between it and the northeastern shore of Mare Imbrium we see a dark, lava-filled impact crater bearing the name of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Farther to the south, Copernicus is now bathed in full sunlight. The crater Tycho is also becoming more prominent down toward the moon's lower limb, and it's beginning to show off its prominent ray system. More on this tomorrow night.

Monday evening, April 15

With 85% of the moon illuminated by the sun, it now appears quite dazzling to the eye. Just outside the terminator, in the upper-left corner of the moon's gibbous disk, we can see a crescent-shaped domain of beauty: Sinus Iridum (Bay of Rainbows), considered to be one of the most delightful regions to explore with binoculars or a small telescope. What really stands out now are the ray systems surrounding Copernicus and Tycho. With some careful inspection, you will see in the case of the latter that some of these rays stretch all the way from one edge of the moon to the other. When a comet or asteroid formed Tycho, it gouged out a part of the moon some 50 miles (80 km) across, sending rocks streaking across the lunar landscape to form these rays. All craters had ray systems when they were first formed, but the loose material does not survive the billions of years of micrometeorite hits and other subtle effects that erode the surface.

Tuesday through Thursday evenings, April 16-18

As you can see, compared to previous nights, the moon is now dazzling to the eye, and the shadows that made the various lunar features stand out in bold relief are now all but gone. On the evening of the 16th, just outside of the terminator, you'll see the crater Aristarchus, 25 miles (40 km) wide and deeper than the Grand Canyon. It is bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, and displays unusually bright features when viewed through a large telescope.

Finally, on the evening of the 18th, just hours before attaining full phase, look toward the lower left rim of the moon for Grimaldi, a large basin resembling a dimple on the moon's face. It has had a history of mysterious sightings including flashes of light, patches of color and occasional gaseous emissions.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  The private aerospace company Lockheed Martin unveiled new details about its proposed architecture for landing NASA astronauts on the moon in 2024, making the announcement here at the 35th Space Symposium on Wednesday (April 10).

Vice President Mike Pence, who is head of the National Space Council, directed NASA to speed up its plans to land humans on the moon and to target a human moon landing in 2024, or four years earlier than NASA had been planning. Now, the agency's commercial partners, who are providing much of the components for NASA's moon plans, must also scramble to meet the agency's new goal.

NASA has already contracted Lockheed Martin to build the Orion Multipurpose Crew Vehicle, a spacecraft that is scheduled to launch astronauts into orbit for the first time in June 2020. That mission, known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), will be the first step in Lockheed's path to achieving a moon landing for NASA. During EM-1, the uncrewed Orion spacecraft will fly around the moon in a weeklong round trip.

Related: Take a Look Inside Lockheed Martin's Proposed Lunar 'Gateway' Habitat for Astronauts

Lockheed Martin's "early Gateway" would help NASA get to the moon on a faster timeline by including only the components that are essential for a landing in 2024. (Image credit: Lockheed Martin)

The second phase of Lockheed's moon program involves launching what the company calls an "early Gateway," or a bare-bones version of NASA's proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway , a lunar space station that will serve as sort of a home base for astronauts traveling to and from the moon. The early Gateway would include only the elements that are critical to a 2024 moon landing: a propulsion module and a docking port.

In a speech here at the Space Symposium on Tuesday (April 9), NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said that to achieve the landing in 2024, the agency would need to not only speed up its original plans for a landing in 2028, but also get rid of parts of its human exploration program that don't directly contribute to a landing in 2024.

Once the early Gateway is in orbit around the moon, then come the "meat and potatoes" of the mission: the lander elements that would bring astronauts down to the surface. That would happen in 2022, Lockheed Martin Director of Human Space Exploration Strategy Rob Chambers said in the news conference. The lander elements include an ascent stage, a descent stage and a command deck. Before any astronauts visit the Gateway and land on the moon, the lander's components will already be flight-proven.

Lockheed Martin's proposed lunar lander could bring NASA astronauts to the surface of the moon in 2024. (Image credit: Lockheed Martin)

The next step in Lockheed's plan to land on the moon will come with Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2), the first crewed test flight of Orion, which is scheduled for 2022 or 2023, Chambers said. If all goes according to plan, Exploration Mission-3 could launch on a mission to put astronauts on the moon in 2023 or 2024.

Because NASA and Lockheed are working on an accelerated schedule now, they need to find a way to put astronauts on the surface of the moon as quickly as possible without compromising their safety. "Our priority is to preserve safety," Chambers said, adding that Lockheed's lunar lander uses a lot of the same technology as the company's Orion spacecraft, which will have already flown five times before astronauts finally take it to the moon.

Lockheed officials could not yet comment on the cost of their new moon-mission architecture, because NASA has not yet contracted the company to build it. And the agency may request changes that would affect the project's price. If NASA decides to go with Lockheed's plan, the company will "need to be bending metal" by 2020, Chambers said. "I hope somebody ordered a bunch of aluminum!"
Updated on April 11 at 4:40 p.m. ET.

This week, Earthlings first laid eyes on an actual image of a black hole  turning what lived only in our collective imaginations into concrete reality.

The image depicts an orange-toned lopsided ring circling the dark shadow of a black hole that gobbles up matter 55 million light-years away at the center of a galaxy known as Virgo A (Messier 87).

This blurry first look is enough to confirm that Einstein's theory of relativity works even at the boundary of this giant abyss  an extreme location where some thought his equations would break down. But this elusive image raises lots of questions. Here are some of your questions answered.

What is a black hole?

Black holes are extremely dense objects that nothing, not even light, can escape. As they eat nearby matter, they grow in size. Black holes usually form when a large star dies and collapses onto itself.

Supermassive black holes, which are millions or billions of times as massive as the sun, are thought to lie in the center of almost every galaxy, including our own. Our's is called Sagittarius A*.

Why haven't we seen an image of a black hole before?

Black holes, even supermassive ones, aren't that big. For instance, taking an image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, which is thought to be around 4 million times as massive as the sun, would be like taking a picture of a DVD on the surface of the moon, Dimitrios Psaltis, an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona, told Vox. Also, black holes are typically shrouded by material that can obscure the light surrounding the black hole, they wrote.

Before this image, how did we know black holes existed?

Einstein's theory of relativity first predicted that when a massive star died, it left behind a dense core. If this core was over three times as massive as the sun, his equations showed that the force of gravity produced a black hole, according to NASA.

But until yesterday (April 10), scientists couldn't photograph or directly observe black holes. Rather, they relied on indirect evidence  behavior or signals coming from other objects nearby. For example, a black hole gobbles up stars that veer too close to it. This process heats the stars, causing them to emit X-ray signals that are detectable by telescopes. Sometimes black holes also spit out giant bursts of charged particles, which is, again, detectable by our instruments.

Scientists also sometimes study the movement of objects  if they seem to be pulled weirdly, a black hole could be the culprit.

What are we seeing in the image?

Black holes themselves emit too little radiation to be detected, but as Einstein predicted, a black hole's outline and its event horizon  the boundary beyond which light can't escape  can be seen.

It turns out, that's true. The dark circle in the middle is the "shadow" of the black hole that is revealed by the glowing gas that sits at the event horizon around it. (The extreme gravitational pull of the black hole superheats the gas, causing it to emit radiation or "glow"). But the gas in the event horizon isn't really orange  rather the astronomers involved in the project chose to color radio-wave signals orange to depict how bright the emissions are.

The yellow tones represent the most intense emissions, while red depicts lower intensity and black represents little or no emissions. In the visible spectrum, the color of the emissions would probably be seen with the naked eye as white, perhaps slightly tainted with blue or red.

You can read more in this Live Science article.

Why is the image blurry?

With current technology, that's the highest resolution achievable. The resolution of the Event Horizon Telescope is about 20 microarcseconds. (One microarcsecond is about the size of a period at the end of a sentence if you were looking at it from Earth and that period was in a leaflet left on the moon, according to the Journal of the Amateur Astronomers Association of New York.)

If you take an ordinary photo that contains millions of pixels, blow it up a few thousand times and smooth it out, you'll see about the same resolution as seen in the black hole image, according to Geoffrey Crew, the vice chair of the Event Horizon Telescope. But considering they are imaging a black hole 55 million light-years away, that's incredibly impressive.

Why is the ring so irregular in shape?

The mission scientists don't yet know. "Good question, and one we hope to answer in the future," Crew said. "For the moment, it's what M87 has shown us."

How did scientists capture this image?

Over 200 astronomers around the world took the measurements using eight ground-based radio telescopes collectively known as the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). These telescopes are typically located at high-altitude sites such as volcanoes in Hawaii and Mexico, mountains in Arizona and the Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Atacama Desert and Antarctica, according to a statement from the National Science Foundation.

In April 2017, the astronomers synchronized all the telescopes to take measurements of radio waves being emitted from the event horizon of the black hole, all at the same time. Synchronizing the telescopes was akin to creating an Earth-size telescope with an impressive resolution of 20 microarcseconds  enough to read a newspaper in the hands of a New Yorker all the way from a cafe in Paris, according to the statement. (In comparison, the black hole they imaged is about 42 microarcseconds across).

They then took all these raw measurements, analyzed them and combined them into the image that you see.

Why did the scientists measure radio waves rather than visible light to capture the image?

They could get better resolution by using radio waves than if they used visible light. "Radio waves currently offer the highest angular resolution of any technique at present," Crew said. Angular resolution refers to how well (the smallest angle) a telescope can discern between two seperate objects.

Is this an actual photograph?

No, not in the traditional sense. "It is difficult to make an image with radio waves," Crew said. The mission scientists measured radio waves being emitted from the black hole's event horizon and then processed that information with a computer to make the image that you see.

Does this image yet again prove Einstein's theory of relativity?

Yep. Einstein's theory of relativity predicted that black holes exist and that they have event horizons. The equations also predict that the event horizon should be somewhat circular and the size should be directly related to the black hole's mass.

Lo and behold: a somewhat circular event horizon and the inferred mass of the black hole matches estimates of what it should be based on the movement of stars farther away from it.

You can read more on Space.com.

Why didn't they capture an image of our own galaxy's black hole, instead choosing one far away?

M87 was the first black hole researchers measured so they first analyzed that, Shep Doeleman, the Event Horizon Telescope's director, said during a news conference. But it was also an easier one to image in comparison with Sagittarius A*, which sits at the center of our galaxy, he added. That is because it's so far away that it doesn't "move" much during the course of an evening of taking measurements. Sagittarius A* is much closer, so it's not as "fixed" in the sky. In any case, "we're very excited to work on Sag A*," Doeleman said. "We're not promising anything, but we hope to get that very soon."

Originally published on Live Science.
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.  SpaceX's Falcon Heavy successfully launched its first operational mission today (April 11), sticking a triple-rocket landing more than a year after its demo mission catapulted a cherry-red Tesla and a dummy nicknamed Starman into space.

The megarocket, dubbed the most powerful launcher in operation, blasted off at 6:35 p.m. EDT (2235 GMT). It lifted off here from the same site that once hosted NASA's Apollo moon missions and its fleet of space shuttles: historic Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. About 34 minutes later, the rocket deployed Arabsat-6A, an advanced communications satellite that will provide internet and communications services to residents of the Middle East, Africa and parts of Europe.

Falcon Heavy's second flight went off without a hitch at the beginning of a 2-hour window after high upper level winds thwarted SpaceX's second launch attempt. A day earlier, Falcon Heavy faced a 24-hour delay due to poor weather at the launch pad. A dismal weather forecast for Tuesday (April 9) convinced launch officials to issue a delay rather than face just a 30% chance of favorable weather.

Related: In Photos: SpaceX's 1st Falcon Heavy Rocket Test Launch Success!

Image 1 of 4 SpaceX's second Falcon Heavy megarocket launches the Arabsat-6A communications satellite into space from Pad 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on April 11, 2019. (Image credit: SpaceX) Image 2 of 4 The twin Falcon Heavy side boosters make a simultaneous landings at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida after launching the Arabsat-6A satellite into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 11, 2019. (Image credit: SpaceX) Image 3 of 4 The center core of SpaceX's second Falcon Heavy rocket sits atop the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. The rocket landed successfully, completing a triple landing for SpaceX during the Arabsat 6A satellite launch on April 11, 2019. (Image credit: SpaceX) Image 4 of 4 The communications satellite Arabsat 6A separates from the second stage of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket during its April 11, 2019 launch, ending a successful liftoff and trip to orbit. (Image credit: SpaceX)

Today's flight was the first of a Falcon Heavy launch featuring souped-up Block 5 versions of its component rockets. (A Falcon Heavy rocket is built of three Falcon 9 first stages, which are combined to form the 27-engine megarocket .) As the rocket's first-stage engines roared to life, they fired in unison and spewed smoke and fire around the launch pad.

SpaceX made the transition to Block 5 for its Falcon 9 flights in May, after the demo flight of Falcon Heavy in February 2018. Today's Falcon Heavy boasted more than 5 million lbs. of thrust, a 10% increase over its predecessor.

In addition to the added thrust, the Block 5 Falcon 9 now features a plethora of upgrades, all of which are designed to facilitate reusability. Previous versions of the Falcon 9 were meant to fly only two to three times; however, Musk says the Block 5 is capable of flying as many as 10 times with virtually no refurbishment between flights.

People watch as the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket lifts off from launch pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 2019 in Titusville, Florida. The rocket is carrying a communications satellite built by Lockheed Martin into orbit. (Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

To achieve that goal, engineers developed a suite of upgrades for the company's flagship rocket. The design changes  including improved engines, a more durable interstage (the piece that connects the rocket's two stages), titanium grid fins and a new thermal protection system  were developed to help the rocket better handle the stresses of launch. These technological advances have enabled the company to establish a growing fleet of flight-proven rockets.

Falcon Heavy now has two spaceflights under its belt. Its first mission launched on Feb. 6, 2018, ferrying Elon Musk's cherry-red Tesla Roadster  with a spacesuit-wearing test dummy named Starman sitting in the driver's seat  into orbit. The nearly flawless first launch, which included successful landings by two of the Falcon Heavy's three first-stage boosters, earned SpaceX major accolades .

Related: Out-of-This-World Photos from Falcon Heavy's Historic Debut Flight

The enthusiasm carried over into today's flight, as thousands of onlookers gathered in the area to watch the Falcon Heavy fly.

Sonic booms echoed through the sky as the rocket's two side boosters touched down in unison at SpaceX's nearby landing sites. The third landed on SpaceX's drone ship landing pad "Of Course I Still Love You," stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. (That represents an improvement over the rocket's first flight, when the core stage missed the drone ship and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean after two of three engines did not fire during the descent.)

Two of the boosters are seen as they land at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station after the launch of SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from launch pad 39A at NASAs Kennedy Space Center on April 11, 2019 in Titusville, Florida. The rocket is carrying a communications satellite built by Lockheed Martin into orbit. (Image credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

With its first operational Heavy flight in the books, SpaceX is ready to forge ahead with a steady schedule of launches. The next Falcon Heavy flight, due to launch this year, will carry the Space Test Program 2 mission for the U.S. Air Force and a solar-sail mission for The Planetary Society.

Falcon Heavy fetches a base price of $90 million per launch . Last June, SpaceX snagged a highly coveted military mission for the rocket  a $130 million deal to launch an Air Force Space Command satellite sometime in 2020.

SpaceX first announced plans for the Falcon Heavy in April 2011 , predicting that its first flight could occur two years later. But that deadline came and went, and it was ultimately seven years before Falcon Heavy got off the ground. Before last year's launch, Musk estimated that SpaceX invested about $500 million to develop the rocket.

The Falcon Heavy is part of a growing list of SpaceX launch services and ongoing projects, which could include launching astronauts to the space station later this year during Crew Dragon 's first crewed test flight. But Falcon Heavy won't be the most powerful rocket in SpaceX's arsenal for long. SpaceX is in the early stages of developing a launch system even larger than the Falcon Heavy .

Just days before today's launch, on April 5, the company hit the end of its tether on Starhopper , a test prototype for that massive rocket. That's an initial stage of the company's Starship program to design a fully reusable deep-space launcher for missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. The program already has its first passenger: SpaceX announced last September that Japanese entrepreneur Yusaku Maezawa has booked a trip around the moon that's slated to fly no earlier than 2023.

SpaceX's next launch from the Cape is currently scheduled for April 26 , when a Falcon 9 rocket will ferry a Dragon cargo capsule to the International Space Station.
Spoilers ahead

The last time we saw "The Orville," Lt. Gordon Malloy (Scott Grimes) experienced life in 2015 after a time capsule was discovered and Lt. Cmdr. Bortus (Peter Macon) became addicted to cigarettes in the episode " Lasting Impressions ."

With the occasional exception, each installment of "The Orville" tends to focus on one particular member of the main crew and one thing that hasn't done the show any favors this season is the running order of episodes. We've had a couple that focus on Bortus close together and then, after waiting 22 episodes for just one that focuses on Malloy, two came along in succession.

Moreover, this latest installment, entitled "Sanctuary," is yet another that focuses heavily on the all-male Moclan culture; that's four episodes this season, out of 12 so far. This uneven distribution needs to be addressed for Season 3.

Related: Inside That Spectacular Space Battle in 'The Orville'

All that aside, it's good to see the crew of the USS Orville on our screens once again after its three-week break. If only there were more than two episodes left in this season.

We find the USS Orville is undergoing a weapons upgrade and has picked up two Moclan engineers who want to be taken to another nearby planet. If this sounds a little familiar, a similar series of events happened just five episodes ago in " Deflectors " (S02, E07). Then, the passenger turned out to be an ex-boyfriend of Bortus  with a culturally taboo secret  which caused more than a little friction between Bortus and his mate, Klyden (Chad L. Coleman).

This time, Toren (Shawn Andrew) and his mate Korick (Regi Davis) temporarily join the Orville crew. However, once Lt. Talla Keyali (Jessica Szohr) has shown the newcomers to their quarters it quickly becomes clear that not all is as it seems. Again. They appear to have smuggled something on board, and as they open the large container, away from the camera, both Moclans are bathed in the glow of whatever it contains.

What could it be? A primetime Emmy? The soul of Seth MacFarlane? The Ark of the Covenant? At which point the opening credits roll, so we'll just have to wait a little bit longer to find out.

The Orville and a Moclan battlecruiser stand off against each other in the episode 'Sanctuary.' (Image credit: Fox)

We cut to the small, scaled-down school on the Orville, where "Star Trek: The Next Generation" alumna Marina Sirtis is teaching the very young children. It's great to hear her talking in something more closely resembling her native north London accent, rather than the ghastly one she had to use in "Star Trek." Funnily enough, this episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes  Sirtis' on-and-off love interest in "The Next Generation"  so one can only imagine the shenanigans that took place off-camera while making this episode.

Topa (Blesson Yates), the son of Bortus and Klyden, seems to have rapidly grown. In the space of what can only be a year and a half of elapsed time in the show, he seems to be about 8 or 9 years old in Earth time now. He's also developed something of an attitude: We see him bullying a smaller, female, pupil. It seems Klyden has been instructing young Topa that females are inferior, as is the Moclan way, much to the disgust of Bortus  and so the main story arc of this episode is set up.

Isaac (Mark Jackson) detects a large energy drain coming from the quarters of the Moclan guests, so Bortus is sent to investigate. He is shown the container and its precious cargo  it's a Moclan baby girl, in stasis. Toren and Korick are attempting to smuggle her away from Moclus and they beg Bortus not to reveal anything. He agrees: Based on his own experiences and the subsequent trial involving his own child seen in "About a Girl" (S01, E03), he is sympathetic to their situation.

In an effort to change his son's prejudices, he later brings Topa to their quarters to show him that Moclans, too, can be born as girls. This is a shockingly bad decision, which is shockingly obvious. Still, you can't blame Bortus for trying to do the right thing. Despite promising not to say anything, Topa naturally tells Klyden what he's seen, but, thankfully, not before Toren and Korick depart the Orville on their scheduled shuttlecraft flight.

Related: The 25 Greatest Spaceships of Science Fiction

Nonetheless, once news of what's happened reaches Capt. Ed Mercer (Seth MacFarlane) and Cmdr. Kelly Grayson (Adrianne Palicki), it escalates to an official Planetary Union matter. The Orville sets off to track the shuttlecraft, which brings the crew to a small star system, hidden inside a nebula.

Orbiting this star is a habitable world where an exiled colony of some 6,000 female Moclans lives, led by Heveena (Rena Owen), the legendary Moclan woman we were first introduced to in "About a Girl." She explains that the Moclan government is lying about the number of women born: There are many more than officially recorded, but only a few are able to escape to this sanctuary.

Naturally, this creates a serious diplomatic situation. Heveena asks Mercer for asylum and asks that he bring this case before the representatives of the Planetary Union. However, the Moclan government is not at all happy and insists these females are fugitives that need to be taken into custody immediately.

The issue becomes political because the Planetary Union relies on Moclan-designed weaponry, which is more important than ever following the Kaylon attack a few episodes prior. Moreover, the Moclans threaten to withdraw from the Planetary Union should the colony be granted sovereignty. Mercer returns to Earth with Heveena to join Adm. Halsey (Victor Garber) in addressing the members of the Planetary Union  imagine the senate in the "Star Wars" prequels meets "A Few Good Men." There's a great cameo by F. Murray Abraham here as the Chairman of the Union.

During her visit, Heveena discovers Dolly Parton and dubs her "a great Earth poet" in the vein of typical MacFarlane humor and this episode's only real comic relief.

Meanwhile, back in the nebula, a Moclan battlecruiser has arrived, prompting a brief stand-off with the Orville. But soon, the Moclans break the impasse by launching three shuttlecraft to apprehend the so-called fugitives.

Cmdr. Grayson (Adrianne Palicki) and Lt. Cmdr. Bortus (Peter Macon) ready themselves to defend the exiled colony of Moclan women. (Image credit: Fox)

This starts a simultaneous three-way fight: one on the surface of the planet, one between the Orville and the Mochlan ship in orbit, and one in the giant council chambers of the Planetary Union. There's some well-written dialogue as Mercer and the admirals of the Union contemplate every angle of the dilemma.

"If we don't stand up for the values that this union was founded on, what exactly are we defending?" Mercer asks.

Our only minor quibble is that all the Union admirals in this scene are human; it would've been nice to see at least one alien admiral involved in this high-ranking decision-making.

Grayson requests advice on how to proceed and is told officially to stand down, but unofficially to get down to the planet's surface and get involved. Bortus insists on coming with her and what follows is an entertaining sequence with the two of them running around blasting Moclan troops (weapons set to stun, naturally) as Dolly Parton's anthem to the workplace grind, "Nine to Five," plays.

This is more or less what happens in the beginning of "Deadpool 2," which raises the question, is this a respectful homage, or a surreptitious steal? When does one become the other? Perhaps Frakes didn't see that movie. There is, however, a brief-but-brilliant, Christopher Nolan-style visual effects shot from the point of view of one of the main guns on the Moclan battlecruiser firing at the Orville. More of that creative camera work, please.

Related: The 'Star Trek' Holodeck: From Science Fiction to a New Reality

After a stirring speech by Heveena  including an interesting interpretation of the lyrics of "Nine to Five"  the Planetary Union decides that the colony will be granted protection, but not sovereignty. This means the 6,000 or so Moclan women are safe, for the time being, but that the secret underground routes which they used to escape Moclus without detection have been compromised.

It's not a victory, but it's not a failure. The episode offers a commentary on the issues of cultural tolerance and moral responsibility, as well as personal freedom and contemporary awareness. Heveena remains optimistic and vows to continue the struggle.

While "Sanctuary" acts as a sequel-of-sorts to the events of "About a Girl," it is also in essence going over the same ground  and ground we will no doubt return to in Season 3. The continuing theme will undoubtedly polarize viewers, with some heralding this as a follow-up and others saying it's simply repeating what's already been said.

You may remember, we learned in " Primal Urges " (S02, E02) that the Moclan method of beginning divorce proceedings is to murder your mate. Fingers crossed, then, that Bortus plunges a dagger deep into the chest of Klyden before the end of the second season. He's got two episodes left to do it.

Season 2 of "The Orville" is on Thursdays at 9 p.m. EDT on Fox in the U.S. It can be watched on demand on Fox Now and Hulu. It's also available on Fox.com in the U.S. In the U.K., it's on Thursdays at 9 p.m. GMT on Fox. The first season of "The Orville" is available to buy on DVD and a season pass can also be purchased from Amazon .
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.  Three new commercial rockets are on track to make their first test flights in 2021. But they may not all make it to the launch pad, depending on who wins a competition for a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense.

The U.S. Air Force is about to decide which two companies will receive contracts to launch 25 military satellites between 2022 and 2026. In the running are Northrop Grumman's OmegA rocket, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan Centaur rocket and Blue Origin's reusable New Glenn heavy-lift rocket. SpaceX is also eligible for the award, even though that company did not receive a Launch Service Agreement (LSA) award along with the other three contestants in October. If SpaceX wins, it would use its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to launch the national security missions.

"We are very confident that we will be flying in 2021," ULA Chief Executive Tory Bruno said about the company's Vulcan rocket in a news conference here at the 35th Space Symposium on Monday (April 8). That same day, Northrop Grumman Vice President for Strategic Programs (and former NASA astronaut) Kent Rominger said that progress on the OmegA rocket has exceeded the company's expectations. Blue Origin did not provide any updates on New Glenn at Space Symposium, but the company has already expressed some confidence in its timeline by signing contracts to launch commercial satellites starting in 2021.

Related: The World's Tallest Rockets: How They Stack Up

Blue Origin's New Glenn is a reusable heavy-lift rocket that is designed to make upright landings, much like SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets. In January, Blue Origin revealed a new digital mock-up of the company's newly redesigned New Glenn rocket . The two-stage rocket stands 270 feet (82 m) tall and is powered by seven BE-4 engines.

The Vulcan's first test flight is currently slated for April 2021. Until then, ULA plans to test some technology for the company's new Vulcan rocket by flying that tech on the Atlas V , a reliable rocket that ULA has been launching since 2002, Bruno said. So, the Vulcan would have flight-proven hardware even on its first test flight. Two BE-4 rocket engines provided by Blue Origin will power the rocket's first-stage booster, and the Vulcan's upgraded Centaur upper stage will use RL10 cryogenic engines built by Aerojet Rocketdyne .

An artist's rendering of Northrop Grumman's OmegA rocket, which is scheduled to make its first test launch in 2021. (Image credit: Northrop Grumman)

Like ULA, Northrop Grumman is also targeting the first flight of its rocket, the OmegA, for sometime in 2021. The company is planning to conduct a test-fire of the OmegA rocket's first stage on May 31, followed by a test of the rocket's upper stage in August, Rominger said. Northrop Grumman will first launch its intermediate-class version of the rocket in 2021, followed by a test launch of the heavy-lift version in 2024. Although this 196-foot (60 meters) rocket is designed to launch payloads into Earth orbit, it will be powerful enough to also launch missions into lunar orbit, Rominger said.

While SpaceX's three competitors are making brand-new rockets, SpaceX is the only company that would be launching the military satellites on flight-proven rockets: the Falcon 9 , which already has nearly 70 missions under its belt, and the Falcon Heavy, which launched its first commercial mission on April 11. So, while SpaceX doesn't need to develop a new kind of rocket for this competition, the company's three competitors are hard at work to get their new launch vehicles ready for liftoff by 2021 with the hopes of being contracted to start launching military satellites in 2022.

An artist's rendering of the Vulcan Centaur rocket, the United Launch Alliance's next-generation launch vehicle that is expected to launch on its first test flight in 2021. (Image credit: United Launch Alliance)

Northrop Grumman, ULA and Blue Origin received a combined $2 billion in funding from the U.S. Air Force in October to help pay for the development of next-generation rockets designed to launch intermediate- and heavy-class military satellites. For Phase 2 of the selection process, known as Launch Service Procurement (LSP), contestants will submit their proposals to the Air Force this spring, with the winners announced in 2020.

The two winners of the competition will be contracted to launch a total of 25 military satellites between 2022 and 2026. One of the companies will launch 15 of those missions, and the other will launch 10. Along with those launch contracts, the Air Force will award funding for the continued development of the new rockets.

If awarded the contract, Blue Origin would receive $500 million for New Glenn, Northrop Grumman would receive $792 million for OmegA and ULA would receive $967 million for the Vulcan Centaur, according to the LSA contracts the companies won in October. Because SpaceX did not receive a LSA award, we won't know how much the Department of Defense will offer that company until (or if) it is selected in the LSP competition in 2020.

If Northrop Grumman does not win an LSP award next year, it's unclear whether the company will be able to continue developing the OmegA rocket. There is a chance that work on OmegA would be discontinued without funding from the Air Force, Rominger told SpaceNews .

On the other hand, Blue Origin  whose founder and CEO is the richest person in the world  may be better-poised to fund the development of its own rocket if the company does not win the Air Force contract. ULA appears to be in a pretty good position to win the contract. The company has the longest track record of military launches of any launch provider in the United States, and it held a monopoly on that service until SpaceX won its first contract with the Department of Defense in 2016. Blue Origin has argued that ULA has an unfair advantage given the short timeline for developing these new rockets and has asked the Air Force to extend its deadlines to level out the playing field. So far, the Air Force hasn't delayed the competition.

Even though the three companies that won LSA awards say they are on track to launch in 2021, whether they launch on time (or at all) may depend on if they continue to receive funding from the Department of Defense. The companies that aren't selected to launch those 25 military satellites will be cut off from the funding they have been receiving as part of those LSA awards.

If the companies that don't make the cut are able to continue developing their rockets without that extra funding, those rockets may not be used to launch any military satellites, but they could still launch commercial payloads into orbit around the Earth and possibly even to the moon. According to Rominger, Northrop Grumman's OmegA rocket is powerful enough to launch a 20,000-lb. (9,000 kilograms) payload into orbit, even though that's not what the rocket was designed to do. Rominger said Northrop Grumman would be open to more possibilities for OmegA in the future, but for now, the company is focused on national security missions.

Whatever happens with the Air Force's selection process over the coming months, one thing is certain  2021 is going to be a historic year for commercial and military space launches. May the best rockets win!
When it comes to a mass strike like the one at Stop & Shop involving 31,000 workers in New England, elected officials cant do much more than anyone else. That means moral support for the most part, and were seeing it from quite a few Democrats.

We have no sightings of Republicans on picket lines or even issuing statements in support of the striking workers. Thats a bit of a surprise since, unlike public employee labor issues, the grocery strike isnt strongly partisan. Call me naive.

Just a sampling here:

Sen. Will Haskell walked the picket line Friday morning in Wilton, part of his district.

Income equality is not just a national problem - its a local problem here in Fairfield County. If you work in our community, I will stand by your side in the fight for affordable health care and wages, he said in a written release.

Also Friday, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz headed out to Hamden to join strikers, and in New Haven, Mayor Toni Harp, seeking re-election, hit the picketing pavement.

Bysiewicz posted an Instagram photo of herself with strikers and Sen. Richard Blumenthal on the scene.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren made a show of her support on the line in her home state of Massachusetts on Friday.

Attorney General William Tong was on the line in Southington on the way home Thursday. Not to be outdone by his ubiquitous father, Rep. Matt Blumenthal posted a picture of himself on the line in Stamford. And Sen. Saud Anwar, D-South Windsor, joined workers in East Hartford. Anwar also said Friday he'll join nursing home workers on Monday at the state Capitol, ahead of a strike  which lawmakers can affect with a bill mandating staffing.

The Stop & Shop Tweetstorm is full-blown.

Sen. Matt Lesser, D-Middletown, Tweeted, if you see a picket line #StopDontShop @StopandShop.

And Sen. Bob Duff, the Senate majority leader from Norwalk, Tweeted, I stand in solidarity with @UFCW workers.We support you, your families and will be shopping elsewhere until there is an agreement.

From Washington, U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney Tweeted, To my brothers & sisters w/ @UFCW.know that you have lots of support from folks like me in Congress. By folks, he means Democrats, or else the House would raise the federal minimum wage  which has been at the sub-poverty level of $7.25 an hour for a decade now.
NAIROBI, Kenya - After 30 years with one president, Sudan has had two new heads of state in just two days.

On Thursday, following four months of the biggest street protests in a generation, the country's defense minister and vice president, Awad Ibn Auf, took to state radio to announce the arrest of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and his own supremacy over a two-year military-led transitional government.

Just a day later, he stepped down, giving way to Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, another high-ranking military officer, demonstrating the tumult underlying Bashir's ouster.

Both Ibn Auf and Burhan were members of Bashir's inner circle, though Ibn Auf was more directly associated with the military campaign in Sudan's Darfur region that led to allegations of war crimes and genocide against Bashir.

Burhan is also a career military man. Until recently, he served as the head of the military's ground forces and was instrumental in sending Sudanese troops to Yemen's civil war to fight on the side of the Saudi-backed government.

Ibn Auf was not a man of the people like Bashir once was, no matter how despised he became. The 65-year-old was a career military man in a country where the military is mostly known for repression and atrocities.

"I, the defense minister, chairman of the High Security Committee, announce the uprooting of the regime and placing its head under custody in a safe location after arresting" Bashir, he said Thursday, without a quiver in his voice as he announced a two-year transitional military government.

His handover to Burhan was equally direct. "I am confident he will steer the ship to safe shores," Ibn Auf said of Burhan, according to the Associated Press, adding that he was stepping aside to "preserve unity" of the armed forces.

Some protesters celebrated the handover, according to witnesses in the capital, Khartoum, but others vowed to continue their sit-in until a civilian-led government was put in place.

In a tweet, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, Tibor Nagy, urged authorities to respect the Sudanese people's call for "an inclusive and representative civilian-led government now."

On Friday, Ibn Auf announced Bashir would not be handed over to the International Criminal Court, where he is charged with committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Sudan's western region of Darfur more than a decade ago. Instead, he said, Bashir might be tried within Sudan. Most analysts say the military establishment's ties to the atrocities in Darfur mean a fair prosecution of Bashir in Sudan is improbable.

Ibn Auf rose to a high rank just as Bashir's government was gearing up for its campaign against a raggedy band of rebels in Darfur, which borders Chad.

There, Ibn Auf, by then chief of military intelligence and security, liaised with the Janjaweed - a collection of ethnic Arab militias that brutally raped, pillaged and killed their way through the region, burning much of it to the ground and forcing millions of people to flee.

In 2006, he was sanctioned by the U.S. government for his role in Darfur, and he remains on the sanctions list today. He is one of just a handful of world leaders on this list, which includes North Korea's Kim Jong Un, Syria's Bashar Assad and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro.

The ICC did not indict Ibn Auf. Pending further investigation, however, he still could be prosecuted by an international court.

"Because he could still face prosecution for war crimes, he would not have been taken off the [sanctions] list, so that he could not use assets or financial resources to aid in avoiding said prosecution," said Neil Bhatiya, a sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security.

Bashir appointed Ibn Auf as vice president in February, as protests rocked Sudan.

As the protests morphed into a vast sit-in in Khartoum this week, Ibn Auf told a group of military chiefs that "Sudan's armed forces understand the reasons for the demonstrations and are not against the demands and aspirations of the citizens, but will not allow the country to fall into chaos," according to local media.

In his speech Thursday upon assuming power, Ibn Auf declared a curfew, which many protesters saw as an attempt to shut down the round-the-clock sit-in.

Thursday night, however, the military did not enforce the curfew. And on Friday morning, Ibn Auf's political chief, Omar Zenalabdin, said in a televised address that the military council was "the protector of the demands of the people" and that the two-year transition could be shortened if matters are handled "without chaos."

He added that the military council plans to hold a dialogue with protesters.

"They need to come to the middle, of course, otherwise these protests won't go away," said Magdi el-Gizouli, a Sudanese analyst at the Rift Valley Institute. "But we can be sure they will at least try to remain sovereign as a guarantee of their own ultimate power."
Today, women veterans comprise 17 percent of the post-9/11 veteran population and are the fastest-growing sub-population of the veteran community, according to data from the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF).

These veterans are also increasingly starting and growing businesses, even in the previously male-dominated STEM (science, technology, engineer, mathematics) fields. In fact, women veterans are twice as likely to pursue STEM-related occupations as their civilian counterparts.

Related: This Veterans Day, Let's Focus on Helping Ex-Military Become Entrepreneurs

IVMF research we've collaborated on also shows that high-performing entrepreneurs tend to demonstrate solid decision-making and high levels of confidence, independence and high self-efficacy, even within chaotic environments. Considering their military service background and exposure to multiple, often dangerous environments, veterans are well known to possess these skills.

Still, veteran entrepreneurs encounter challenges. In an IVMF/Syracuse University study, over 83 percent of women veterans surveyed cited obstacles in starting their own businesses, some unique to their status as veterans. That's why taking advantage of the right resources can help them overcome barriers. Those resources include:

Funding from non-traditional sources

Research from the National Women's Business Council (NWBC) has generally shown that women, both historically and in the present, experience challenges in accessing capital -- especially in STEM fields, even if those seeking an investment aren't asking for as much funding as their male counterparts. This often leads to insufficient capital for female-owned businesses. Further NWBC data points to the fact that women-owned businesses raise smaller amounts and rely on personal funds, as opposed to external networks, as a primary source of financing.

Takeway: It's critical that women veteran entrepreneurs educate themselves on what is available beyond bank loans. Group funding or crowd-source platforms like GoFundMe can be transformational for businesses in the earliest stages. Additional nontraditional sources of capital can also help kickstart a venture: These include business-plan competitions and community fund development initiatives .

While those approaches are appropriate for businesses in their infancy, they can also propel an entrepreneur to the next phase of growth, since banks are more likely to fund companies possessing initial capital.

Supportive networks

Another challenge that military-connected women pursing STEM-based entrepreneurship reporting face is access to a supportive network of peers and mentors. While this is challenge to many business owners, those in STEM industries who are also female veterans are a subgroup, and as such, often lack a network. Research reported in Small Business Economics has shown that compared to male networks in these fields, networks for women lack essential ties to many resources, including financial capital.

Related: The 5 Best Financing Options for Veterans

Further, women in the above report said that even when they had established connections, they didn't see them as as strong as those available to men.

The takeaway: Growing a network requires time and strategy. Often, business owners run in the same circles, attending only one type of event. So, to cultivate a variety of connections, women veteran entrepreneurs should commit to attending an array of events such as industry-specific conferences, customer-focused sessions and women in business-focused programs, among others.

Additionally, they should be mindful that networking events are not just about pitching your business or yourself. They're opportunties to listen to others and glean advice from the conversation. Creating a two-way street yields meaningful connections that will grow into a meaningful network.

Help with navigating resources

Another challenge that military-connected women in STEM face, according to the research cited, is navigating the often-obscure sea of resources. In fact, numerous programs are targeted toward veteran entrepreneurs, women entrepreneurs -- even those interested in STEM businesses specifically. However, these services are often disjointed and don't address the unique needs of a subgroup like women veteran entrepreneurs, leaving them confused as to where to begin.

The key to navigating resources is being humble and honest about what stage your business is in, and what challenges you face. Remember that your needs will change as your business grows: A startup needs a completely different set of resources than does a more established venture.

Of course, at the local level, most communities have small business development centers that can refer fledgling business owners to appropriate resources. Working with such organizations not only builds an owner's network of fellow entrepreneurs and possible funders, but also allows for the exploration of options to make informed decisions on how to grow a venture.

The takeaway: Women veteran entrepreneurs should definitely use these local resources. But, as a self-contained demographic, they should also turn to programs meant specifically for them. The IVMF, for instance, offers Veteran Women Igniting the Spirit of Entrepreneurship (V-WISE) program to women veterans, active duty women service members and women military spouses. Three phases of premier training in entrepreneurship and small business management are all available free of charge.

Related: 5 Veterans Share Their Tips for Successfully Transitioning From Service to Entrepreneurship

So is the support of other women who have been through the losses and experiences unique to military service and who can help one another adjust to this new phase called civilian life.

Related:

Women Veterans Are Starting More and More STEM Businesses: Here Are the Resources They Need

60-Second Video: Check Out the FedEX for Space

This Veterans Day, Let's Focus on Helping Ex-Military Become Entrepreneurs



Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
These days, most startup companies understand the value of content marketing for driving revenue and generating sales leads. According to the Content Marketing Institute, the tactic can result in three times as many leads compared to search advertising -- and cost far less.

Related: 5 Steps to Take to Start Your Small Business Blog Today

Content marketing is, after all, less intrusive, more educational and often more authentic than advertising or a cold hard sales pitch. No wonder its so effective.

But content marketing in a slightly different form -- often euphemistically called thought leadership -- can also be extremely useful for small-company executives. It can help them build their personal and company brands; connect to potential customers and partners; and promote their business interests in a subtle, backdoor way.

The problem: Most executives are going about thought leadership all wrong, if theyre doing it at all. How's that? First, many busy startup CEOs and other top executives dont or wont make the time to develop thought-leadership content. They view all content as the province of their data-driven marketing department and find it difficult to see value in creating collateral that is not directly driving sales.

When they do take up a more-general content project, they use overtly promotional language and focus on their company, their product and their hot market.

This is, of course, the wrong mindset. Thought leadership is not meant to be promotional; its meant to spark conversations and add to an industry dialogue. Done right, this type of marketing allows you to share timely insights and anecdotes with your audience to educate them about a topic and your particular point of view.

Thought leadership can pay big dividends. These range from making you a go-to expert on a particular issue -- ideally one sought after by the press and industry leaders for comment -- to someone who actually influences public policy. You might be asked to speak at a major economic conference, for example, or named to lead an industry group or task force as a result of your expertise.

Your increased visibility on a certain topic could attract a new board member to your company or get you in the door of a hard-to-reach customer.

Finally, with traditional, startup PR harder and harder to get these days -- owing to the rapidly declining number of reporters and the continued erosion of journalisms business model --thought leadership has become a much more critical communications channel for small companies. It may be the only way your company ever gets its name in certain publications.

Related: The 7 Deadly Sins of Business Blogging

So, how do you do thought leadership right? Here are four tips:

Be timely.

One of the reasons executives often fail in thought leadership is that theyre too busy to do it at the right time. But with this type of content creation, timing is everything. If Congress, say, passes little-noticed legislation that would impact your market or business, the time to get your thoughts on the issue out there is when this is happening -- usually within days. On-the-spot action will dramatically increase readership. Thats just the reality of todays lightning-fast news cycle.

An example: Stephane Kasriel, a prolific blogger and the CEO of freelancer network UpWork, made a timely move last spring, when news of tech giant Amazons search for a second corporate headquarters was picking up steam in the press.

Kasriel very quickly wrote a piece, published on CNBC.com, positing that all the hubbub over HQ2 was actually misplaced. Cities would soon realize that massive, centralized corporate campuses weren't actually worth the money and effort, Kasriel argued. More companies would use distributed workforces and freelancers.

And this wasn't an isolated move by the CEO: Two years ago, he fired off a post riffing on a then-just-announced policy by IBM to crack down on remote working arrangements for employees.

Be provocative.

Executives have a lot of important constituencies to think about: customers, investors, employees and business partners, to name a few. So, execs are generally quite careful about what they say publicly. They dont want to offend anyone and adversely impact their business.

Thats why its so hard for many executives to stake out a contrarian and provocative point of view in a blog post. But, to do thought leadership right, they have to. No one wants to read a boring essay listing the pros and cons of a particular issue, and no real journalistic publication will run it.

Thought leaders need to feel strongly about their topic and have something interesting and different to say about it. If they dont, its just not worth writing -- and no one will remember it anyway.

An example: Dharmesh Thakker, a partner at my venture capital firm, is actually great at stirring the pot. Last year he wrote a blog post comparing the new, low-commitment world of enterprise IT to dating app Tinder (the post was Swipe Right for a Cloud Instance.) In other pieces, Thakker has pulled no punches in predicting that big, legacy tech players like IBM, Dell and H-P will suffer if they dont latch on to new computing trends quickly enough.

Get to the point.

Despite what we all learned in high school English class about writing a strong thesis statement, many successful people still have trouble doing exactly that when they blog. Perhaps theyre afraid of saying anything too controversial; but in any case, many CEOs meander when they write, not stating their main point until the end of their piece -- as if theyre afraid to even say it.

In the news business, editors have no patience for this: When I was a reporter, we talked openly about stories needing a who cares statement near the top of the piece. In other words, clearly articulate your point up high in your post -- why a reader should care. Then, concisely expand on that point with well-organized, supporting material. And remember: Cut, cut, cut words and sentences when you edit. In writing, less is always more.

Show, dont tell.

In business, facts often tell the story. But in writing, stories and anecdotes almost always do a better job of getting a point across. If you read long feature stories about business issues in the Wall Street Journal, or Forbes or Fortune, youll notice how often those stories begin with a personal anecdote, a story that relates the point the author is trying to make.

Telling a specific story about how an executive made a tough decision, or turned a business around, is far more interesting than just reciting numbers or facts. You should do this, too, when you blog.

An example: Consider the work of serial entrepreneur Hiten Shah. Shah wrote a lengthy blog post in October 2017, explaining in great detail why he felt collaboration-software company Trello, whose technology helps teams plan and organize projects, missed the boat with its business model. (Trello was bought by Atlassian for $425 million but, Shah argued, could have been the next $1 billion SaaS application.)

Shah's post was fairly wonky stuff. But he started it with a short anecdote, putting readers in a specific time and place by recalling exactly how Trellos co-founder first introduced the product at a big tech conference back in 2011, unveiling a product that looked like a white board filled with sticky notes. Similarly, Shah wrote a separate post about growth-hacking, by leading with an anecdote about drinking mint juleps and beers at a bar called Memphis in Southern California.

Related: Why Your Small Business Must Start a Blog

Obviously no one expects you, a busy startup CEO, to write like William Faulkner. But, if youre serious about thought leadership, you should make a commitment to doing it right -- both by allocating the time and trying to punch up your posts to make them readable, interesting and timely. The rewards for you, and your company, will definitely make up for the extra effort.

Related:



Copyright 2019 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
There was always a surreal edge to Julian Assange's long sojourn in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London - a Monty Python-esque oddity to having a figure so strange, so central to so many of the rich world's most urgent debates, camping out in an embassy belonging to a distant developing country he had never actually set foot in. In the person of Assange, the domestic politics of a distant corner of South America collided with big-time geopolitics and various U.S. neuroses in a way neither side seemed quite prepared to handle.

After he skipped on his bail back in 2012, Assange seemed to be looking for a few different things. He wanted to seek refuge on a reliable anti-U.S. diplomatic outpost, the kind of place ruled by people who wouldn't merely accept a move to incense the United States but would actively relish it. But he didn't want to sully his brand by siding with a straight-up dictatorship, either - the Russias, Irans and Cubas of this world were too off-brand for the founder of WikiLeaks.

Ecuador, for its part, was in the Goldilocks zone. Under the leadership of President Rafael Correa, it had staked out a niche on the farthest fringes of rhetorical anti-Americanism alongside countries such as Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Correa couldn't exactly be called a dictator: For all his obvious disdain for democratic decision-making and accountability, his country preserved spaces for liberty that kept its brand viable worldwide.

What Assange doesn't seem to have calculated is that these two elements that attracted him to Ecuador were at cross-purposes with each other. If Ecuador remained a democracy, then Correa's grip on power couldn't be guaranteed. And if Correa's tenure wasn't secure, neither was Assange's extended stay at the London embassy.

Assange probably breathed a sigh of relief on April 2, 2017, when Correa's handpicked successor, Lenin Moreno, was narrowly elected to succeed him in the presidency. Moreno had been Correa's first vice president and was a reliable ally - or so everyone thought. What no one in Quito (or London) could foresee was that Moreno would decisively turn on his mentor, taking Ecuador in a much more moderate, if still left-wing, direction and dismantling the creeping authoritarian infrastructure Correa had spent a decade building.

Under Moreno, Ecuador decisively broke with the hard-left block of countries led by Cuba and Venezuela. He left behind the stridently anti-American path of his mentor and launched a much more cooperative relationship with Washington. The moves incensed Correa - and Assange.

It appears Assange badly misjudged the mood in Quito in the months leading up to his arrest. The Ecuadorans claim that Assange routinely flouted the agreement the country had reached with him as a condition of his asylum - in particular, refraining from meddling in other countries' politics.

Explaining his decision to revoke the asylum in a videotaped speech, Moreno accused Assange of mistreating embassy guards, saying Assange "installed electronic and distortion equipment," "blocked the security cameras" and "accessed the security files of our embassy without permission." He also said WikiLeaks threatened the Ecuadoran government, seemingly referencing leaked documents linking Moreno to a corruption scandal. It was a badly misjudged move that seems to have tipped Moreno over the edge.

In the hours after Assange's arrest, the usual festival of ironies played out across Latin America's airwaves. As president, Correa systematically hounded journalists and approved a restrictive law that effectively shut down corruption investigations. But faced with Assange's arrest, he has transformed into a champion of free speech, slamming his successor for silencing a fearless whistleblower.

Farther south, Bolivia's stridently anti-American leader, Evo Morales, joined the chorus of the faux-outraged, decrying Assange's arrest on freedom of speech grounds. As former Bolivian president and Morales critic Jorge Quiroga told me, the president "demands, for an Australian in the U.K., the respect for press freedoms that he never respected in his own country."

The reality is that Latin America's far-left regimes support press freedom only when doing so gives them a chance to give the United States a bloody nose. It is this dogged determination to prize hurting the United States above all other values that they have in common with Assange. The only difference is that Assange has been vastly more effective at it than them.

After all, he got Donald Trump elected.

- - -

Toro is Chief Content Officer of the Group of 50 and a contributing columnist for Post Opinions.
STAMFORD  A valet at Stamford Hospital helped police arrest a man with a knife on hospital property Thursday morning, police said.

Capt. Diedrich Hohn said officers were called to the main entrance of the hospital just past 8 a.m. on a report of a man with a knife, who was being followed by security officers on West Broad Street. Officers quickly found the man near the Goodwill store and identified him as Devante Derisier, 23.

Hohn said officers found a knife on him and secured it while other officers went to the hospital to speak with security. They were told that the valet was parking cars when he spotted Deriser walking around the complex. They talked and the valet said Derisier was off and angry and at some point showed the valet his knife.

The valet then told him to leave the hospital property and Derisier walked off on foot.

The valet gave police a sworn statement and video from the hospital was obtained of Derisier.

Derisier, of Crystal Street, was charged with breach of peace, threatening and carrying a dangerous weapon.

jnickerson@stamfordadvocate.com
A Russian billionaire at the centre of Britains costliest divorce battle is seeking damages from a London-listed litigation financier backed by veteran fund manager Neil Woodford.

AIM-listed Burford Capital has been named in a 65 million damages lawsuit linked to a 330 million superyacht seized as part of divorce proceedings between businessman Farkhad Akhmedov and his ex-wife Tatiana Akhmedova.

The Luna vessel was impounded in Dubai last year after Akhmedova won a freezing order on her ex-husbands assets when the oligarch refused to pay part of his fortune following their split.

But, last month a Dubai court overruled a decision to seize the ship.

Akhmedovs family trust the Straight Trust said papers have been filed in a Dubai court setting out a claim for damages. The claim is issued against Akhmedova and Burford, which is working to enforce the 453 million divorce settlement against Akhmedov, who is contesting the payment.

Burford declined to comment.

A spokesman for Akhmedova today said: We have not seen this claim nor had any formal notification of its filing. The claim as reported in the media is a PR stunt which simply ignores the fact that the UK Courts have already ruled that the Luna belongs to Ms Akhmedova. The court process in Dubai is ongoing and we are confident that the Dubai Court will find Mr Akhmedovs claim to be without any merit. Any suggestion that Mr Akhmedovs position is justified by an alleged divorce in Russia in 2000 is pure fabrication. 
H eres one thing everyone can agree on about Julian Assange: you wouldnt want him as a house guest.

The stories of his rants against Ecuadorian embassy staff during the seven years he was holed up with them, and his dubious personal hygiene, have ensured theres a consensus about that at least. But beyond that, the case of Mr WikiLeaks provokes a fierce division of opinion that reflects the complex mosaic of our cultural wars.

Many see Mr Assange as at best a narcissistic fraud and at worse an enemy of democracy, conniving with hostile foreign agents.

Every state needs to keep things secret, and by releasing stolen intelligence WikiLeaks put at risk the lives of the soldiers we train to keep us safe. Thats a view the Evening Standard sympathises with.

But for others, Mr Assange is the champion of a free press who exposed the truth about illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Its why Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott, who may well be our prime minister and home secretary by the end of the year, warned today that Mr Assange must not be extradited to the US.

The Right-wing press will take this as further evidence of their unsuitability for high office; but Mr Corbyn is deliberately tapping into a swirling mass of conspiracy theories and anti-American sentiment that is more widespread than they credit, not least because they helped stir it up for years.

Remember the great newspaper campaigns in the past against extraditing eccentric hackers to the US?

It is an example of why this is not a simple case of Left versus Right. That is especially the case since Mr Assange also faced allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, a case that has since been dropped, but which led many of the liberal aristocracy who originally flocked to his cause to back away.

The queen of that aristocracy, Hillary Clinton, says he should answer for what he has done. She has every reason for revenge.

It was Mr Assange who released her private emails, possibly passed to him by Russian intelligence.

She believes that cost her the presidency, as the scandal reignited in the final weeks of that close contest.

Donald Trump didnt disguise his delight when he said simply: I love WikiLeaks.

So is he Corbyns hero or Trumps? Is he a criminal or a victim? Whatever our courts decide, many in our divided society will not agree.

Bridges falling down

The good news is that west London has just gained a scenic pedestrian walkway. The bad news is that its Hammersmith Bridge.

The local council has suddenly blocked cars and buses from using the crossing after it failed structural tests. Its another closure of a vital route that has already spent years under repair.

Its hard to overstate the impact long-term closure will have on business. But it wont just be those adjacent to the bridge who will be affected; this is an important north-south river conduit and displaced traffic will cause disruption elsewhere.

There is a wider warning for London, too, in the mess.

First, we dont have enough river crossings, especially in the east. Crossrail, when it finally comes, will help but its still years before the planned Silvertown road tunnel opens.

Meanwhile, we are largely dependent on Victorian tunnels and bridges Hammersmith Bridge was built in the 1880s and London has only built one new road bridge since the Second World War.

Second, theres a reason our roads are decaying. Transport for London needs a better way to pay for them.

At the moment, a lot of its cash comes from things such as Tube fares. But why should passengers be paying for fixing potholes and keeping routes over the Thames running?

It is preposterous that a major road and river crossing should be dependent on Tube fares.

Hammersmith Bridge straddles two boroughs and neither has the money to pay for the investment needed. This is, then, a matter for the Mayor.

One of the biggest areas of mayoral responsibility is transport, which should obviously be addressed on a city-wide basis.

The funding problem is for him to deal with, and he had better find a way of addressing it quickly in the run-up to next years mayoral elections.
A third of 2019 has not yet passed but it is hard to think that there will be another contender for the image of the year: a young woman, dressed in white, standing on the roof of a car outside the presidential compound and army headquarters in Khartoum, Sudan. With her arm raised  like the Statue of Liberty  the evening sun catching her gold earrings and surrounded by a crowd of protesters, she is demanding the resignation of President Omar al-Bashir .

The woman, Alaa Salah, chanted lines during the demonstration on Monday that inspired those around her to respond with the same, simple word each time as a refrain: thawra  revolution.

This has been a time, not just in Sudan but also in Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets to force the countrys long-time ruler, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, to stand down  a goal that was finally achieved last week. Little wonder, then, that many commentators have been talking about a second chapter to the Arab Spring, the series of anti-government protests that spread across large parts of North Africa and the Middle East in 2011.

As protesters found then, securing long-term change is not easy. In Sudan, for example, a military council has taken over following al-Bashirs departure  an outcome that Ms Salah and others indignantly derided as a coup by the army to take control of the country. We want a civilian council to head the transition, she said. Getting rid of corrupt, despised and repressive rulers who have held back social, economic and political development of countries such as Algeria and Sudan is not easy, but taking the next steps towards the freedom the crowds in Khartoum have called for is also complex  as Egypt, Libya and Syria have each shown in the past decade.

Global impact: architecture student Alaa Salahs call for revolution in Sudan went viral / Lana Haroun

The events in Sudan and Algeria  as well as in Libya, where the capital Tripoli is under pressure from an assault led by warlord Khalifa Haftar  are part of a wider moment of remarkable change and expansion across Africa. According to a report released by the International Monetary Fund this week, six of the worlds 10 fastest-growing economies are in Africa, with Ghana forecast to see the most dramatic rise at almost nine per cent in the coming year.

Peter Frankopan / Getty Images

Data from elsewhere likewise paints a positive picture of growth, with a World Bank statement about Africas Pulse suggesting that although there are wide and many differences between the countries, peoples, distribution of resources and political governance of sub-Saharan Africa, economic growth across this region as a whole is likely to strengthen significantly in the coming two years.

Africas obvious potential in terms of its growing population, its mineral and agricultural wealth, and its rising strategic importance in a world that is going through a period of intensive globalisation, has led to a sharp rise in the engagement of outsiders in what is going on across the continent. There are more named US military operations in Africa than there are in the Middle East, according to Brigadier General Donald Bolduc, the former commander of Special Operations Command Africa for the US Army. He also noted that operations were under-resourced, given their scope and objectives.

The construction of a new base in Djibouti was described in 2016 by the then US ambassador, Tom Kelly, as the biggest active military construction project in the entire world. It is just one of a series of installations being built in the Horn of Africa not only by the United States but by Russia, Turkey, the UAE and China.

Africas rising strategic importance and growth has led to a sharp rise in the engagement of outsiders

Chinas engagement across swathes of Africa has been accelerating in recent years, partly as a result of the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious if controversial web of investments, usually in the form of loans, in the construction of infrastructure projects not only in Asia but in Africa and even in Europe. Some target resources, notably cobalt in Africa  the Democratic Republic of Congo holds the worlds largest deposits of a metal that is crucial in the production of lithium-ion batteries powering everything from laptops to electric cars.

Chinas rising involvement has set off alarm bells in Washington, where a paper published just before Christmas sharply criticised the Chinese regime for the way it uses bribes, opaque agreements and the strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijings wishes and demands.

Conspicuous by its absence was the alternative proposed by Washington, where rather than increase commercial or development investment in Africa, it was also announced that the United States will no longer provide indiscriminate assistance across the entire continent as what mattered most was having something to show for Americans hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

China is not the only outside power involved across Africa, with rising numbers of Russian troop deployments, as well as military and economic advisers active in the Central African Republic, Libya and also in Angola and Mozambique.

Then there are the interests of the new imperialists from digital empires who see Africa has offering potential whose time has come to be untapped, with Facebook reported to be considering building underwater cables around thousands of miles of coastline as part of plans to increase internet access, currently available to an estimated 27 per cent of Africas population. What the company is interested in extracting in return, of course, is data  the digital gold of the present and future.

With such change taking place in Africa and around the world in the 21st century, heres to the hope that Alaa Salah, her compatriots and others elsewhere also get the three simple things they are calling for: freedom, peace and justice. Revolution  thawra  is in the air.
A growing movement of people want to work a four-day week and research suggests we could be happier and healthier as a result.

In a report published earlier this year, campaigners argued people should work a maximum of 32 hours a week and get paid for five. We are making the case for a reduction in working time without a reduction in pay, Aidan Harper of the New Economics Foundation told New Scientist as part of an in-depth feature.

"At the New Economics Foundation we have long called for a shorter working week to tackle many of the societal problems we face  from gender inequality to overwork and stress," Alice Martin, head of Work and Pay at the New Economics Foundation wrote in the report.

"Today we recognise it as an attractive strategy for industries in transition, whether due to technological change, declining high-carbon industries or changes in international markets," she said.

A poll from January this year revealed that 60 per cent of people in the UK support the four-day week in some form / PA

Their report suggested that working long hours  between 50 to 60 per week  is bad for mental and physical health. Research from the Australian National University showed that people can work for 40 hours a week before it has a damaging effect on their mental health.

Other studies have shown people would emit less carbon if they worked less. Scientists from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden found that introducing a four-day week could cut emissions by 16 per cent.

"At a time when wealthy countries must achieve rapid reductions in carbon emissions, there is no better way to supplement energy policy with a new approach to worktime," Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at the University of Boston wrote in the report.

"Reduced hours are highly correlated with lower emissions, and they also yield improvements in worker well-being, gender equity, and productivity," she said.

However, the main reason people would emit less carbon is because they would be poorer and therefore consume less. Scientists found that a reduction in emissions only works if people's salaries drop. One in three of UK workers say they want to work fewer hours but only nine per cent of them would accept lower pay.

However, some of the economically strongest countries in Europe  such as Germany and the Netherlands  work the fewest hours (although not four-day weeks).
T he National Portrait Gallery is inviting visitors to guess the inspiration behind its latest exhibition.

Artist Nina Mae Fowler sketched nine leading British directors while watching their favourite films, but is staying tight-lipped about the titles, asking visitors to seek the answers in their faces.

Fowler, whose black-and-white sketches of Hollywood legends have gained her A-list fans including Jude Law, invited the directors to choose a film and sketched them while playing it on a projector.

She said: The beauty of these sittings was twofold. Firstly, the directors lost any sense of being watched or portrayed as they were too engrossed in the film. Secondly, we experienced the film together, which created conversation, laughter and an immediate bond between strangers. I want the viewer to wonder what film the directors are watching and to seek the answers in their faces.

The only clues the viewer has are their reactions, the exact frame documented in the titles and the light thrown on them by the films.

Scott, whose films include Blade Runner and Gladiator, has previously praised Australian comedy Muriels Wedding as his favourite film, while Greengrass is a confirmed fan of the Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane.

Also pictured is actress-turned-director Amma Asante, whose list of favourite films includes Love Actually, and Wallace And Gromit creator Nick Park, who said his career was inspired by One Million Years BC with Raquel Welch.

Scott admitted he was not keen on sitting for the portrait at first, but added: She sent me a book on her work, and I was blown away.

In my case, she wanted me to watch the first film I ever saw.

Asante, whose costume drama Belle was a critical and commercial hit, said of Fowler: Her work somehow captures what a photograph cannot. There is a mystique that I find utterly compelling and beautiful.

Greengrass said: Ive never sat for a portrait, so it was a strange experience to say the least.

The gallerys director Dr Nicholas Cullinan said the unique commission helped strengthen its representation of the talent and diversity within the film industry in the UK today.

Luminary Drawings: Portraits of Film Directors by Nina Mae Fowler opens today and runs to October 1.
Rain or shine, day or night, Anna Wintour loves a pair of big dark glasses. The Vogue editor-in-chief, 69, wears them on the front row at fashion week - even while chatting with the Queen - at the Oscars , and at most public events, other than last years Met Gala , which she attended sans sunnies.

Speaking to CNN, Wintour explained why she likes to hide her eyes. [Sunglasses are] incredibly useful because you avoid people knowing what youre thinking about, she said.

Wintour has been the editor-in-chief at Vogue since 1988, and her eyewear and smooth bob cut have barely altered in that time.

They help me when Im feeling a bit tired or sleepy, she said, and maybe theyve just become a crutch and part of who I am.

Wintour also discussed her success as editor of Vogue in a digital age. "If you go back to when I was a young girl growing up in Britain, and I went for my first job, it was considered a great thing if we reached an audience of 90,000 people with a monthly magazine, Wintour said, Now we have, I believe, 22 million followers on Instagram alone at Vogue U.S. So we are talking to men and women all over the world in so many different ways, in a way that we couldnt possibly have imagined even 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

And given the round-the-clock work that goes into running the world's most high profile fashion magazine, the shades also come in handy for hiding when she's under the weather. Ill be brutally frank" she said, "I have been unbelievably ill all week. And, plus, I just had eye surgery, so those are the real reasons Im wearing them today."
From fitted kitchens and sleek teapots to glass office towers and housing estates, the legacy of the Bauhaus is all around us. Founded in Weimar in 1919, it was the provincial German art school that changed the world. Teachers included artists such as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, and architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe were two of its directors. The Bauhaus was the cradle for Modern Movement design despite not having its own architecture course for the first six years and being forced to close in 1933 by the Nazis.

Just opened, as part of a frenzy of centenary celebrations, is the Bauhaus Museum Weimar, a 27 million project led by architect Heike Hanada. Years were spent arguing about which was the right site before the foundations were dug. The result is a massive concrete monolith that aims to straddle the gulf between Classicism and modernity.

The Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach is the mouse that roared. Its neoclassical capital of Weimar, all pleasantly plump and smug villas, was the home or workplace for Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Liszt and Nietzsche. Under its hated last grand duke, William Ernest, Art Nouveau was banned from the old town centre. But the aftermath of the First World War brought the Weimar Republic, radical ideas and the establishment of the Bauhaus, with its experimental environment for the men and women of the machine age.

Theres only one truly Bauhaus building in the city (the experimental Haus am Horn) and the rise of the far-Right in the early Twenties meant the Bauhaus was soon chased out of town,  first to Dessau in 1925, where a second museum is now under construction, and thence to Berlin in 1932, where the main Bauhaus archive is also being rebuilt.

Weimar became a Nazi stronghold and the Gauforum, the local party headquarters, was built with slave labour north of the centre. With its colonnades and classical massing, the building was a hub of repression containing a symbolic parade ground once known as Adolf Hitler Platz. The site for the new Bauhaus museum lies next door. Conscious of this legacy so nearby, the job of the museum is not simply to display 1,000 Bauhaus items from a collection of 13,000 but to answer a question posed by Bauhaus director Walter Gropius: how do we want to live together?

Modernism lives: one of the museum galleries

For Hanada, this meant using the new building to mediate between the Gauforum and a Twenties peoples park in a nearby wooded hollow. Its language is a synthesis of Modernism and Classicism, with its incised poured concrete facade resembling coursed stone. Insets are lined with LED strips, and instead of stone architraves to doors and windows there are extruded concrete frames to the asymmetrically placed openings. The huge cube-shaped structure is built into a slope, wth a glazed cafe terrace to the park at its lower level. It now forms part of a cultural quarter that includes the refurbished Neues Museum and a conference centre, as well as a new exhibition in the Gauforum exploring the history of forced labour.

The biggest question was to define a new identity for the area with only one new building, says Hanada. To define space and heal a fragmented situation. In spite of the negative experience of Fascism, we as architects should start to rethink our relationship to classical architecture and monumentality. In Germany we have been frightened to talk about monumentality because it has a negative spirit. But it has been a disaster for urban development  we need a method to place public buildings, to define a hierarchy of what is important and whats not.

The famous Wassily chair by Marcel Breuer designed at the Bauhaus / Fremdbesitz!

Classicism developed over centuries, she argues, but has been thrown away because of its associations as the house style of totalitarianism. She under-standably sniffs at an alternative simplistic formulation that glass = transparency = democracy.

Inside the new museum, however, it is largely Modernism that holds sway across five floors (cafe, foyer, and three exhibition and workshop levels) which are linked by a series of staircases. These run in slots through double-height spaces overlooked by internal windows and balconies.

The palette is white painted walls, grey or cream terrazzo floors, with slender concrete beams above. The volumes are huge compared with the displays they contain: Hanada says she was inspired by the industrial spaces and robust materials favoured by contemporary art museums such as Tate Modern. Shes also a fan of the London practice Caruso St John, and this building brings to mind some aspects of its design for the New Art Gallery Walsall. But the Weimar project has none of the Walsall buildings domestic warmth and gentleness. Where concrete frames to doors are absent, junctions are harsh. And the minimum of external windows means that the white interior looks grey and generic in the dim light.

Peter Kelers cradle designed at the Bauhaus / Fremdbesitz!

Despite the splendid exhibits of furniture, textiles and ceramics, the interior falls flat, conjuring the Bauhaus at its dour worst rather than its colourful best. Practicalities such as lifts and loos are hopelessly inadequate.

At the museums opening press conference officials and politicians made veiled references to the rise of the intolerant Right, speaking of healing rifts. The old Bauhaus display space in a nearby square is, for instance, in the midst of being transformed into a centre for democratic debate  with glazed walls, of course, serving that tired transparency metaphor.

Externally, the new museum cleverly creates a series of open spaces between itself and adjacent buildings. But in seeking to heal the rift between Modernism and Classicism it serves to rehabilitate the ponderous architectural language of the Gauforums stolid state incarnation of the Classical rather than deny it. As a totality, the museums form has uncomfortable echoes of the coursed stone of the Gauforums bell tower  it has menace rather than the charm of Weimars otherwise decorous take on Classicism.

On the top floor of the museum is a display of angled walls dedicated to the Bauhauss second director, Hannes Meyer. Projected film engages visitors with his ideas, which are set out in a series of quotes, the opening offering being that the community prevails over the individual. Its chilling.

In the distance through a window can be seen the hillside memorial to those who died in Buchenwald concentration camp. Its a deliberate framing, and serves as a useful reminder of one outcome of Meyers kind of thinking. But the window is at the head of a tremendous staircase that descends precipitously a full four floors through a towering narrow void. Theres a fascistic resonance to the awe this arrangement inspires  it overwhelms.

Unhappily, the Bauhaus Museum in its forcefulness projects the opposite of the sincere efforts behind its design. Healing faultlines using this kind of hybrid architectural language  and Hanada has succeed on her own terms in creating that fusion  also means an accommodation with something that just shouldnt be accommodated.
C hristopher Kane has designed a brightly coloured t-shirt for Heart Research UK.

The designer, whose boundary pushing silhouettes have been worn by everyone from Florence Welch to Michelle Obama, has turned his hand to t-shirt creating for a good cause.

Kane has designed the collection to raise awareness for the charity, after his brother died from a heart attack last year.

The Glaswegian is particularly vocal about changing attitudes towards heart disease in his native Scotland. Coronary heart disease is Scotlands single biggest killer, accounting for 27 per cent of all deaths.

The t-shirt designed by Christopher Kane / Christopher Kane and Heart Research UK

Growing up in Scotland in a working class environment, heart disease was always prevalent. So many of my parents family and friends passed at an early age from heart attacks and no one blinked an eye."

The Heart of Scotland campaign is supported by roster of politicians and celebrities including Nicola Sturgon and the Secretary of State for Scotland David Mundell, who said: It is a sobering thought that today, just here in Scotland, 41 people will die because of a heart condition. And tomorrow, another 41. And the next day, and every subsequent day, the same.

The poignant t-shirt also comes in white / Christopher Kane and Heart Research UK

The t-shirt comes in black and white and features a multi coloured diagram of a human heart, emblazoned with the words Help, Care, Love, Brave, Life, Heart.

All sustainably manufactured in Hertfordshire, the quality of the t-shirts was of the utmost importance to Kane. Speaking to Vogue, he said: People are buying a little piece of Christopher Kane, so the quality has to be good.

Christopher Kane and Heart Research UK
C ounter-terror police have arrested four men at Luton Airport suspected of membership of a proscribed organisation contrary to the Terrorism Act

The group, who are all Sri Lankan nationals, were arrested on Thursday after arriving into the UK on an international flight the previous evening.

The men remain in custody at a police station in Bedfordshire while police investigate.

A Met Police spokesman said: Detectives from the Met Police Counter Terrorism Command are investigating after four men at Luton Airport were arrested on suspicion of membership of a proscribed organisation, contrary to section 11 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The men, who are all Sri Lankan nationals, arrived on an international flight on the evening of Wednesday, 10 April.

Police at the airport were made aware of the men the next day, Thursday, 11 April and subsequently stopped them under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

The men were then each arrested under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, between approximately 21.30hrs and 23:40hrs.
A former care home manager has been jailed for sexually abusing young boys in childrens homes in London and Wales over more than a decade.

Patrick Grant, 69, indecently assaulted three victims who lived in the Fircroft childrens home in Kingston, Rowan House  a Shirley Oaks childrens home in South Norwood  and Walker House in Cardiff.

Grant carried out a campaign of abuse on victims as young as 11 at the council-run facilities between 1976 and 1989.

One victim, who was repeatedly molested in a bathroom, was slapped when he begged for the abuse to stop and told he would be made to disappear if he said anything.

During sentencing yesterday, Inner London Crown Court heard the victims had suffered nightmares and deep despair.

Jailing Grant for eight years Judge Usha Karu said: The distress and trauma the victims have suffered is quite apparent. [The abuse] has caused deep anguish and upset.

The court heard Grant, from Cardiff, was first arrested in 1978 for abusing children after his work in the Kingston and Shirley Oaks homes, but was acquitted after a short trial.

Shirley Oaks facilities were at the centre of one of the worst child abuse scandals the capital has seen.

A report by the Shirley Oaks Survivors Association outlined abuse on an industrial scale.

After his original acquittal, Grant moved to Wales and continued to work in childrens homes and assaulted another child under his care.

He was found guilty of eight counts of indecent assault earlier this year.

He stood trial alongside Philip Collins, a former Surrey special police constable and care home manager, who was also found guilty of five counts of indecent assault on a victim at Fircroft. Collins will be sentenced at a later date.

Patricia Strobino, from the CPS, said: Grant committed the ultimate abuse of position. He was supposed to provide care for some of the most vulnerable children, including those with special needs and others who had no family support.
J ulian Assange could face decades in jail for espionage if further charges are brought against him following his dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

The WikiLeaks founder, 47, spent his first night in custody since being convicted of breaching bail after being dragged from the embassy in Knightsbridge on Thursday.

Assange was arrested by Met Police officers after Ecuador abruptly withdrew his asylum, which had lasted almost seven years. Extraordinary footage showed him ranting and struggling as he was carried out to a waiting van.

He is facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer. On conviction, this could attract a maximum jail sentence of five years, the US Department of Justice said.

But Assange is expected to face dozens more charges once he arrives in the country, including espionage, which can carry a 20-year sentence.

Arrested: Julian Assange faces US extradition / Getty Images

WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson expressed concern over the more serious charges that could await Assange.

He said: "We believe this indictment presented in the extradition request is only a part of the story - that there will be more later, that will be added on, more charges.

"It probably adds to the likelihood that he will be extradited from the UK if it's on relatively smaller charges."

He said the Grand Jury investigation included charges which could lead to decades in prison or even the death penalty under the Espionage Act 1917.

Julian Assange: Sajid Javid thanks Ecuadorian President

As an Australian citizen, Assange will have the country's consular assistance available to him but will not get "special treatment", the nations prime minister Scott Morrison said.

"Mr Assange will get the same support that any Australian would in these circumstances, he's not going to be given any special treatment," he told ABC News.

"He will get the same treatment as everyone else, he will get the same support as everyone else."

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno said the UK Government had given him a written assurance that Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty.

While Theresa May and a number of ministers welcomed the arrest, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on the Government to oppose extradition.

Julian Assange - In pictures 1 /30 Julian Assange - In pictures 2019 Julian Assange on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates court on April 11 Jack Taylor/Getty Images 2019 Julian Assange made a defiant gesture with his fist as he arrived at court AFP/Getty Images 2017 Julian Assange puts his fist in the air as he steps out to speak to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador Getty Images 2012 Protesters gather outside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks is staying Getty Images 2012 Masked supporters of Julian Assange outside the Embassy of Ecuador in Knightsbridge Dominic Lipinski/PA 2010 Photographers hold cameras to the windows of a Serco prison van believed to be carrying WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Reuters 2016 ulian Assange's cat, is adorned with a tie and collar inside the window of the Ecuadorian Embassy PA 2016 Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Julian Assange at Embassy of Ecuador Getty Images 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is pictured through the heavily tinted windows of a police vehicle as he arrives at Westminster magistrates court in London AFP/Getty Images 2010 Jemima Kahn leaves the City of Westminster Magistrates Court after offering to stand as surety for Julian Assange Getty Images 2010 Julian Assange of the WikiLeaks website speaks to reporters in front of a Don McCullin Vietnam war photograph at The Front Line Club in London Getty Images 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange gestures inside a prison van with red windows as he arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice Getty Images 2011 WikiLeaks website founder Julian Assange arrives at The High Court Getty Images 2011 Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, shakes the hand of a supporter as he leaves Trafalgar Square after addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition Getty Images 2011 Journalist John Pilger and Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, chat before addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square Getty Images 2012 Placards are left by supporters of Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowing website, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy Getty Images 2015 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Reverend Jesse Jackson outside the Embassy of Ecuador in London PA 2016 People attend a video conference of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the International Center for Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America (CIESPAL) auditorium in Quito AFP/Getty Images 2016 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up his new kitten at the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London WikiLeaks 2017 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a press conference from inside the Ecuadorian embassy AP 2018 Supporters of Julian Assange outside Westminster Magistrates Court, London where a court decision is due on whether a UK arrest warrant against the WikiLeaks founder is still valid PA 2018 British hacker Lauri Love and his girlfriend Sylvia Mann are surrounded by media after visiting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on 6th February 2018 AFP/Getty Images 2018 A cat named 'James' wearing a collar and tie yawns by the window of the Ecuadorian Embassy where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been for over five years on 6th February 2018 AFP/Getty Images

He tweeted: "The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British government."

He was retweeted by Pamela Anderson, one of Assange's most famous supporters, who has previously described Mr Corbyn as "clearly a decent and fair man".

The US accuses Assange of assisting Chelsea Manning, a former US intelligence analyst, in breaking a password that helped her infiltrate Pentagon computers.

Julian Assange: Key moments for WikiLeaks founder

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said Assange was in the "cross-hairs of the US administration" over his whistle-blowing activities, and claimed this was the reason he faced being extradited to the US.

A suited Assange, with grey hair tied into a pony tail and sporting a long beard, was described by a judge at a packed Westminster Magistrates' Court as behaving like a "narcissist", as he advised him to "get over to the US" and "get on with your life".

Assange spent almost seven years in the embassy and sought political asylum in 2012 when he failed in his legal battle against extradition to Sweden, where he was wanted over two separate allegations, one of rape and one of molestation.

Julian assange could spend decades behind bars / Reuters

In May 2017, Sweden's top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest on Thursday prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

Prosecutors in Sweden have since confirmed that while the investigation has not been resumed, they are looking into the case.

The Ecuadorian government had historically been sympathetic to Assange's cause but a regime change two years ago heralded a less supportive approach and, after 2,487 days in the embassy building in the shadow of Harrods, he was finally removed - shouting and gesticulating.

Julian Assange arrives at court after almost seven-year stay in Ecuadorian embassy

The Ecuadorian ambassador to the UK, Jaime Marchan, said that in the time Assange had remained in the embassy he had been disrespectful, "continually a problem" and interfered in elections, politics and the internal affairs of other countries.

Mr Marchan added: "He has said that we were spying on him, he has said we were lying, we were agents of the United States."

WikiLeaks said Ecuador had acted illegally in terminating Assange's political asylum "in violation of international law".

Mr Hrafnsson said Assange had been thrown "overboard" by Ecuador, adding: "I thought it was horrible to treat an individual like that. I thought it was disgraceful the Ecuadorians would go back on their word."

Julian Assange's Cat - In pictures 1 /20 Julian Assange's Cat - In pictures AFP/Getty Images PA AFP/Getty Images PA PA EPA AP EPA EPA Julian Assange's cat sits at the window of Ecuador's embassy Reuters Reuters AFP/Getty Images Alex Lentati Jamie Wiseman for the Daily Mail PA

Home Secretary Sajid Javid said the decision to finally eject Assange reflected improvements in the UK's relationship with Ecuador under the country's new leadership.

Australian Assange came to prominence after WikiLeaks began releasing hundreds of thousands of classified US diplomatic cables.

Donald Trump, who had declared "I love WikiLeaks" during his 2016 campaign when the website released damaging emails concerning rival candidate Hillary Clinton, said following Assange's arrest: "I know nothing about WikiLeaks."

Speaking outside court, Assange's lawyer Jennifer Robinson said her client's arrest "sets a dangerous precedent for all journalist and media organisations in Europe and around the world".

Assange faces a jail term of up to 12 months for the bail breach when he is sentenced at a later date at crown court.

He will next appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on May 2 by prison video-link in relation to the extradition.
P olice have released CCTV of a man they are hoping to trace after two people were stabbed in north London earlier this week.

Two men were attacked near Kilburn High Road in the early hours of Tuesday, with detectives now saying they are confident that the incidents were linked.

Police were initially called at 1.19am, when a 63-year-old man was found with a stab wound to the back.

He was taken to a central London hospital for treatment before being discharged, Scotland Yard said in a statement.

Just over an hour later, a 39-year-old man was stabbed in the abdomen.

He remains in hospital but his condition has been deemed as not life-threatening.

Police are looking for this man in relation to the stabbings / Metropolitan Police

Detective Sergeant Mark Johnson, from North West Area's CID, said: "Following a thorough investigation, including analysis of CCTV, we are confident that the same person is responsible for both of the attacks that occurred in the early hours of Tuesday, 9 April.

"We have released images of a man we want to trace and speak to - do you recognise him? If so, please get in contact with police immediately.

"Since these two incidents, we have increased our presence in and around the Kilburn High Road area and, at this time, we are not aware of any further, linked offences.

However, we need to identify and apprehend the person responsible for these attacks so I would ask anyone who has information that could assist this investigation, or who recognises this person, to contact us now.

"While our investigation remains ongoing, I would reiterate our message to those out and about in Kilburn High Street and the surrounding area - please remain vigilant, be aware of your surroundings and, if you see anything suspicious, call police immediately on 999."
A British mother held in Dubai over Facebook posts calling her ex-husband's wife a "horse" has described her ordeal as "the most horrendous period of my life".

Laleh Shahravesh, who has now been told she can return home, said the experience had been "very traumatic" during an emotional phone call with her 14-year-old daughter Paris.

The 55-year-old, from Richmond, south-west London, was detained under Dubai's strict cyber-crime laws when she visited the country with her daughter in March for the funeral of ex-husband Pedro Correia Dos Santos.

Authorities had received a complaint over posts made three years ago and Ms Shahravesh was warned she faced prosecution and up to two years in prison.

The Facebook comments were made 18 months before Laleh travelled to Dubai / Laleh Sharavesh

But during a court appearance on Thursday, a judge ordered that her passport was to be returned if she paid a fine of 3,000 UAE Dirham (624).

Speaking to Sky News, who were present for the call with Paris, she said: "It's been the most horrendous period of my life. I've never been separated from Paris in this way and every day part of me was dying from being away from her, during a time when I knew she needed me the most. So yes, it's been very traumatic."

The pair had travelled to the United Arab Emirates on March 10 for the funeral of her ex-husband, who was also Paris' father.

After discovering he had remarried in 2016, Ms Shahravesh called his new wife, Samah Al Hammadi, from Tunisia, a "horse" on Facebook.

The Detained in Dubai campaign group welcomed the conclusion of Ms Shahravesh's case, but cautioned that "serious concerns remain regarding the many risks for foreigners in the UAE".

Radha Stirling, the campaign group's chief executive, said: "We maintain that the case against Laleh should have been dismissed at the outset, and while we are pleased that her nightmare is over, her conviction on this absurd case sets a dangerous precedent.
C limate change activists brought Oxford Circus to a standstill this evening for a demonstration against "disposable" fashion.

Members of Extinction Rebellions Fashion Action group staged a "catwalk" in the middle of the busy junction on Friday to highlight the fashion industrys role in climate change.

The group rolled out a long pink carpet across the intersection, blocking traffic, before parading clothing, some of which featured plastic bags and anti-fracking slogans.

Clothing production is set to consume a quarter of the worlds carbon budget by 2050.

Models and performers take part in Extinction Rebellion's Fashion: Circus of Excess catwalk in Oxford Circus / PA

In a statement, Extinction Rebellion said the protest was intended to disrupt the language and symbols of the fashion industry.

Dr Eleanor Roberts, from London, who talk part on the catwalk said the protest aimed to show people they can choose not to consume "disposable fashion".

The show highlighted the environmental impact of the fashion industry / PA

The 49-year-old said: "It's such an easy, small way but millions of people can make a difference. Look at what happened with plastic straws.

"It's just trying to bring awareness to very specific actions that people can take.

A huge crowd gathered at the busy intersection on Friday evening / PA

"I feel a lot of people feel very powerless when it comes to climate change."

Ramon Salgado-Touzon, one of the organisers, said: There are enough clothes already on this planet to dress us all, we need to stop consuming that which we dont need.

We are being manipulated everyday into buying more and more, so we want to shift the public consciousness to urge people to realise that we have enough and that this continual consumption is unsustainable and unhealthy. We must heal our minds in order to heal the planet.

The group added that they aimed to highlight how the "wasteful and disposable nature" of the fashion industry impacts on the world's climate.

Traffic was brought to a halt as the show was held in the street / PA

As the protest continued, songs were sung through megaphones and a man dressed in an outfit covered in leaves recited a poem.

"Saving the world is not too hard, you've just got to start in your own back yard," he said.

Nearby, a man wearing Union flag-themed ski goggles and tie rode a bike with inflated cloud-shaped balloons tied to it and a sign reading: "Leave oil in the ground."

Protester Florent Bidois, 32, originally from France, said the fashion industry created "waste" and "pollution".

Models wore face masks while brandishing bags with the group's distinctive logo / PA

He added: "People don't seem to know about it, how terrible people are with consumerism and fast fashion, disposable clothing, things that don't last."

Some of the leading cutting edge designers of Londons sustainable fashion scene were set to participate in the protest.

The action was supported by Fair Trades Safia Minney MBE FARS, Traids Maria Chenoweth, Katharine Hamnett CBE and Dame Vivienne Westwood.

Fridays protest came ahead of the groups International Rebellion starting on Monday, when thousands of people are expected to bring London to a standstill during a week of action.

The group added: Extinction Rebellion would like to extend our sincere apologies to members of the public who are affected, and remind them that this relatively minor inconvenience could save us all from catastrophic consequences in years to come.

We have informed the police, and will, of course, allow emergency vehicles to pass.
T housands of bikers flooded the streets of central London to protest against the prosecution of a soldier who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Organisers claim as many as 11,000 bikers met on Park Lane on Friday, before riding through London to Parliament Square and on to Trafalgar Square.

The protesters, many of whom are armed forces veterans themselves, oppose the prosecution of an unnamed soldier, known only as Soldier F.

Soldier F is to be charged with murdering two people after troops opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in January 1972, on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

Rolling Thunder ride protest in London 1 /24 Rolling Thunder ride protest in London Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest cross Westminster Bridge in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA One of the motorcyclists taking part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London wearing a jacket adorned in medals and badges. The ride is to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest pass the Cenotaph in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday. PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest arrive in Parliament Square, London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists at the Stormont buildings in Belfast take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest to support of Soldier F, who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest arrive in Parliament Square, London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA Motorcyclists take part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London, to support of Soldier F who is facing prosecution over Bloody Sunday PA

Some relatives of the 13 killed have campaigned for their prosecution, while others argue that Soldier F should not face trial.

The protest, which also saw around 80 bikers ride to the Stormont parliament building in Belfast, was conceived in March when Harry Wragg, 56, posted a video on Facebook, calling for Soldier F not to be prosecuted.

Bikers have descended on London in protest over the prosecution of an unnamed soldier who served in Northern Ireland during the Troubles / PA

He claimed a form of immunity was given to paramilitaries as a result of the peace process - concessions he insisted should be extended to British soldiers who served.

A number of biker groups from around the UK welcomed Mr Wragg's suggestion of a procession of motorbikes in London to protest against Soldier F's prosecution.

The group rode through Parliament Square / PA

The protesters wore leather jackets with patches that showed their biker group, and many veterans bore the insignia of their former regiments.

Bikers came from across the UK on Friday morning, with some travelling to London from Newcastle, South Wales, Leicester and Kent. They brought flags that read: 'We stand with Soldier F'.

Park Lane was blocked on Friday afternoon by riders queuing to take part in the procession.

The bikers' engine revving attracted a crowd to watch the ride begin, at 1.30pm.

The protest passes the Cenotaph / PA

The protest travelled from Park Lane through Victoria, across Vauxhall Bridge, back across the Thames at Westminster Bridge and into Parliament Square.

Protesters then rode along Parliament Street and Whitehall and passed the Cenotaph, finishing in Trafalgar Square.

Speaking to the Press Association, Mr Wragg said: "I had a bit of a rant on Facebook saying how disgusting it was really, over Soldier F.

"I made a statement saying 'what about a few of us riding to London, to make a noisy protest?'

The bikers also protested in Belfast, riding toward the Stormont buildings / PA

"There are 11,000-plus bikes. We've just come together. And the best thing for me is that it's combined services.

"There's loads of banter between the RAF, the Navy, the Army and the Marines, and we've turned up as one. I've been truly moved this week."

Alan Coates, 47, who owns a motorcycle shop in Hull, joined the protest against the prosecution, which he said was "bang out of order".

"I don't know the guy, I don't know his name, I've never served in the armed forces," he said.

One of the motorcyclists taking part in the Rolling Thunder ride protest in London wearing a jacket adorned in medals and badges / PA

"I've shut my business for the day, come all the way down from Hull purely to show my support.

"There's no greater thing a man can do than lay his life on the line for his country, for people he doesn't know.

"So people who don't know him now are down here essentially showing him that he has our support and the Government are bang out of order.

"All these people here are here to support this man who has done nothing wrong in the eyes of the people. He did his job, as many others did, yet he's being persecuted for what they call a crime."

Soldier F 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 O'Donnell.

The Ministry of Defence said the charges have been brought by the Northern Ireland Public Prosecution Service, which is independent of the Government.

A Government spokesman said: "We are indebted to the soldiers who served with courage and distinction to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
T heresa May came under increasingly heavy fire from Conservative Brexiteers today as she reopened negotiations with Labour on a possible customs union.

A top-level list of ministers and shadow ministers were taking part in the renewed discussions at the Cabinet Office including Environment Secretary Michael Gove, deputy premier David Lidington and shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Mrs Mays push for a deal came as one of the countrys most respected election experts said the Tories would do badly if polls for the European Parliament go ahead on May 23  a prospect that the Prime Minister hopes to avert by striking a Brexit breakthrough with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Professor Sir John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, predicted that Ukip and Nigel Farages new Brexit Party could double their vote share from eight to 16 per cent or more at the expense of Mrs Mays party. Its the Conservative Party, inevitably, who have most to worry about that, he said. It was less clear that Mr Corbyns rivals, the new Change UK and the Liberal Democrats, would put on votes. To that extent, the Labour Party has somewhat less to worry about, he told BBC Radio 4s Today.

Nigel Farage was launching his new Brexit Party today / Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images

European Research Group member Andrew Bridgen warned Mrs May that she would completely split the Tories if she strikes a deal with Mr Corbyn for a customs union. There would be far more Conservatives voting against a customs union than voting in favour of it, he told the Standard. She would need the support of all the Labour Party to get it through and it would split the Conservative Party completely.

Labour are due to re-enter talks with the Tories on Brexit / Sky News

Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin accused Mrs May of constantly caving in to pro-EU MPs and European leaders. Speaking on Sky, he branded the extension of Brexit to October as water torture and went on: This represents a massive U-turn on the part of the Prime Minister. She was only as recently as March 20 saying we are going to leave on June 30 at the very latest.

TODO: define component type apester

She has constantly caved in to remainers in the Cabinet, remainers in Parliament and remainers in the European Commission.

Mrs May alarmed Tory MPs by telling the Commons yesterday there was actually more agreement between Downing Street and Labour over a customs union than it appeared.
T he Chancellor has said the idea of a second Brexit referendum is "very likely" to be put before Parliament again.

Philip Hammond said on Friday that he hoped MPs would pass a deal by the end of June, breaking the Brexit deadlock.

He added that there was a "good chance" of a breakthrough in talks with the Labour party.

"I remain optimistic that over the next couple of months we will get a deal done," Mr Hammond told reporters in Washington where he is attending meetings at the International Monetary Fund.

Chancellor Philip Hammond said a second referendum will 'likely' be put to Parliament / AP

However the chancellor could not rule out a second vote on Brexit.

"It's a proposition that could and, on all the evidence, is very likely to be put to Parliament at some stage," Mr Hammond said.

Theresa May has so far failed to get majority backing for the Brexit divorce deal she agreed with other European Union leaders last year, forcing her to ask the bloc for a delay and to start talks with the oppositing about how to break the impasse in parliament.

Chancellor Philip Hammond arrives for a G-20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors' meeting at the IMF and World Bank's 2019 Annual Spring Meetings, in Washington, on Friday / REUTERS

Many Labour MPs are pressing leader Jeremy Corbyn to demand a new referendum in talks with the Government.

Mr Hammond said that while the Government was opposed to a new public vote, other Labour demands - such as a customs union with the EU - were up for debate.

Under pressure: Theresa May / AFP/Getty Images

He said that around six months would be needed to hold a referendum, so if Parliament voted in a couple of months time to approve a deal there would not be enough time before Britain is due to leave the EU on October 31.

The chancellor was keen for MPs to pass a deal in the coming months.

Speaking to the BBC, Mr Hammond said it was time to get Brexit "off the table" so the UK can focus on other issues.

"I would like us to spend more of our bandwidth focused on growing our economy," he told the BBC's economics correspondent Dharshini David. "Until a deal is done we cannot make decisions about the spending review."

TODO: define component type apester

Parliament has previously rejected the idea of a new referendum and other possible solutions the Brexit impasse.

Mr Hammond said the risk of a no-deal Brexit had been reduced but not averted by this week's delay of Britain's exit and such an outcome would be felt in the global economy.

Ending the uncertainty would "unleash the very large stock of potential investment that is hanging over the UK economy in suspended animation," he said.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Thursday that Brexit had pushed business uncertainty "through the roof".

Mr Carney is due to step down at the end of January, having delayed his departure twice to help Brexit preparations.

Mr Hammond said Brexit could put off some qualified candidates in the search for the next BoE governor which was now underway.

"There may be some candidates who might be deterred from an application because of the political debate around Brexit, which inevitably the governor of the Bank of England can't avoid being part of," he said.

Supporters of Brexit have often accused Mr Carney of giving over-gloomy assessments of the costs of leaving the EU.

Hammond also said the Brexit delay was hampering government efforts to improve economic productivity and could throw off course a planned multi-year budget for government departments due late this year.
T he storm over the arrest of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange intensified today as Diane Abbott claimed there could be human rights grounds not to extradite him to the US.

The shadow home secretary said he had been arrested for revealing embarrassing information about the activities of the American military.

Assange spent his first night in custody after being convicted of breaching bail following his dramatic arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London yesterday. He could be sentenced to up to 12 months in prison.

Assange is also facing extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer, a crime which attracts a maximum jail sentence of five years.

Australian-born Assange, 47, sought refuge in the embassy in Knightsbridge seven years ago to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault charges that were eventually shelved.

Julian Assange in the back of a police van on Thursday / EPA

The Swedish authorities are now considering whether to reopen their investigation. Assange denies the claims.

Today the political row over Assanges future grew, with Ms Abbott defending his role in releasing secret US military and security cables as in the public interest.

Asked three times about sexual offence claims against him by two Swedish women, she said the charges were never brought.

Julian Assange - In pictures 1 /23 Julian Assange - In pictures 2019 Julian Assange on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates court on April 11 Jack Taylor/Getty Images 2019 Julian Assange made a defiant gesture with his fist as he arrived at court AFP/Getty Images 2017 Julian Assange puts his fist in the air as he steps out to speak to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador Getty Images 2012 Protesters gather outside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks is staying Getty Images 2012 Masked supporters of Julian Assange outside the Embassy of Ecuador in Knightsbridge Dominic Lipinski/PA 2010 Photographers hold cameras to the windows of a Serco prison van believed to be carrying WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Reuters 2016 ulian Assange's cat, is adorned with a tie and collar inside the window of the Ecuadorian Embassy PA 2016 Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Julian Assange at Embassy of Ecuador Getty Images 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is pictured through the heavily tinted windows of a police vehicle as he arrives at Westminster magistrates court in London AFP/Getty Images 2010 Jemima Kahn leaves the City of Westminster Magistrates Court after offering to stand as surety for Julian Assange Getty Images 2010 Julian Assange of the WikiLeaks website speaks to reporters in front of a Don McCullin Vietnam war photograph at The Front Line Club in London Getty Images 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange gestures inside a prison van with red windows as he arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice Getty Images 2011 WikiLeaks website founder Julian Assange arrives at The High Court Getty Images 2011 Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, shakes the hand of a supporter as he leaves Trafalgar Square after addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition Getty Images 2011 Journalist John Pilger and Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, chat before addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square Getty Images 2012 Placards are left by supporters of Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowing website, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy Getty Images 2015 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Reverend Jesse Jackson outside the Embassy of Ecuador in London PA 2016 People attend a video conference of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the International Center for Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America (CIESPAL) auditorium in Quito AFP/Getty Images 2016 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up his new kitten at the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London WikiLeaks 2017 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a press conference from inside the Ecuadorian embassy AP 2018 Supporters of Julian Assange outside Westminster Magistrates Court, London where a court decision is due on whether a UK arrest warrant against the WikiLeaks founder is still valid PA 2018 British hacker Lauri Love and his girlfriend Sylvia Mann are surrounded by media after visiting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on 6th February 2018 AFP/Getty Images 2018 A cat named 'James' wearing a collar and tie yawns by the window of the Ecuadorian Embassy where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been for over five years on 6th February 2018 AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to Radio 4s Today programme this morning, Ms Abbott added: We all know what this is about. Its not the rape charges, serious as they are, it is about the Wikileaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities the American military and security services made public.

She also said: We think there may be human rights grounds in relation to Assange.

Ms Abbotts remarks sparked anger with critics saying Assange had tried to escape justice by hiding in the embassy.

Anna Soubry, MP Change UK, tweeted: Shame on you @HackneyAbbott your pal #Assange holed up in an Embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape & sexual assault.

Hes no hero & the failure of @jeremycorbyn & #DianeAbbott to stand by the women who have made those allegations is disgraceful.

Julian Assange winks and sticks his thumb up for the cameras / Getty Images

Conservative deputy chairman James Cleverly tweeted: Is the message to victims of sexual violence you will be believed, unless it involves a left-wing icon? I really hope not.

Victoria Atkins MP, minister for women, said: Diane Abbotts dismissal of rape charges speaks volumes about Jeremy Corbyns Labour Party.

Thousands of secret cables were released by Wikileaks in 2010, including unredacted names of personnel which the US claims puts lives at risk.

Ms Abbott and Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn have said they do not want Assange to be extradited. They fear charges against him could be expanded and he could end up facing decades in prison. Mr Corbyn said the extradition of Mr Assange to the US for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British Government.

Ms Abbott told the BBC: If the Swedish government wants to come forward with those charges I believe that Assange should face the criminal justice system.

But if youre talking about the American extradition attempt which is less about the threat he poses to security in America and more about the embarrassment of the things he has revealed about the American military and security services.

Labour MPs are also concerned that the sexual offence claims against Mr Assange risk being dismissed or played down.

Jess Phillips MP, a member of the Commons women and equalities committee, tweeted: The fact that Assange has evaded charges of sexual violence and skipped bail should be opposed by the Labour Party. Im sure it is, Id like to hear it.

And London-based QC Daphne Romney tweeted: "It is no good parroting "no charges were brought" because the Swedish system works differently to ours.

"Had he gone back to Sweden, he would have been charged. He may well have been acquitted. But we can't know that because he hid."

Assange was dragged out of the embassy by police yesterday after Ecuador abruptly withdrew its asylum. His aggressive attitude and poor personal hygiene was said to have antagonised embassy

His mother defended her son on Twitter, saying he was sick and in pain from prolonged detention and torture.

She also launched a furious attack on Theresa May and the judge who branded the Wikileaks founder a narcissist in a stream of tweets demanding her son is released.
T he pro-Remain campaign Led by Donkeys has claimed a key website domain in a bid to frustrate Nigel Farage as he launches his new Brexit Party's European election campaign.

URL thebrexitparty.com was registered by Led By Donkeys, the group famous for putting up giant billboards across the UK showing inconsistencies in politicians' statements about Brexit.

Led By Donkeys tweeted a link to the URL on Friday morning, writing: "Big day ahead for @Nigel_Farage and his new Brexit Party as he launches his European election campaign.

"Shame he forgot to register the website."

Mr Farage begins campaigning for the European elections today with his Brexit Party, which he claims will have the same policies as Ukip but untainted by growing revelations about his former party's links to the far right.

He this week vowed to lead a "fightback" against Theresa May and the Conservatives, which he said have betrayed the country over Brexit. His party's official website can be found under a .org domain.

But visitors to the obvious domain choice for the political party can now only find a website calling for voters to reject Mr Farage at the ballot box.

"It's time to stop Farage," the website says

It argues that even if "hardly any of us cared" about the European Parliament in the past, it is now important for Europe's future to take part in the polls.

"Nigel Farage wants to register a huge victory in the European elections, but he can't even register his own website," the website reads.

"Seven times hes failed to get elected to Westminster. But he did get himself a seat in the European Parliament because at the time hardly any of us cared.

"Well we do now," it adds, then urges readers to click a link to register by May 7 to vote in the European polls which will take place from May 23 to 26.

An activist from Led By Donkeys identifying himself as "Richard" told the Standard the group registered the domain a few weeks ago.

A billboard by campaign group Led By Donkeys addressed to Jeremy Corbyn / Led by Donkeys

"It was around the time Farage was saying the Brexit Party was 'just a website at the moment' and we thought, 'Oh really?' " said Richard.

It turned out that it wasn't even a website and the group "couldn't resist", he added.

"Our project more generally is about presenting the truth about these figures to the British public, by posting their historic quotes on billboards.

"This website was a bit of a sideline for us, but still intended to tell the true story about Farage," he added.

Mr Farage told the Today programme that Ukip had become tainted by its links to extremists and that his new Brexit Party will serve as a fresh start.

More than 1,000 "high calibre" people applied to be candidates for the European elections for the new group, he claimed.

"Ukip did struggle to get enough good people into it but unfortunately what it's chosen to do is allow the far right to join it and take it over and I'm afraid the brand is now tarnished."

When asked about former Brexit Party leader Catherine Blaiklock, who quit after journalists revealed she had sent racist posts and retweeted those of far-right figures before joining the Brexit Party, he said she was "an administrator".
New York, Apr 12 (IBNS): The first global estimates of their kind suggest that more than one in ten childhood asthma cases could be linked to traffic-related air pollution every year, according to a health impact assessment of children in 194 countries and 125 major cities worldwide, published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

With 92% of cases developing in areas that have traffic pollution levels below the WHO guideline level, the authors suggest that this limit may need to be reviewed.

Nitrogen dioxide pollution appears to be a substantial risk factor for childhood asthma incidence in both developed and developing countries, especially in urban areas, says senior author Dr Susan Anenberg, George Washington University, USA. Our findings suggest that the World Health Organization guideline for annual average NO2 concentrations might need to be revisited, and that traffic emissions should be a target to mitigate exposure.

Lead author Ploy Achakulwisut, George Washington University, USA, adds: Our study indicates that policy initiatives to alleviate traffic-related air pollution can lead to improvements in childrens health and also reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Recent examples include Shenzhens electrification of its entire bus fleet and Londons Ultra-Low Emission Zone congestion charges.

Globally, asthma is the most common non-communicable disease among children, and, according to the WHO, prevalence has increased dramatically since the 1950s. The reasons for this are multiple.

Traffic-related air pollution may result in asthma development as pollutants may cause damage to the airways, leading to inflammation that triggers asthma in genetically predisposed children. Although it is not yet clear which specific pollutant within the traffic-related air pollution mixture is the source of asthma development, reviews by the US Environmental Protection Agency and Health Canada suggest that a causal relationship is likely to exist between long-term nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exposure and childhood asthma development.

In the new study, the authors used NO2 as a surrogate for the traffic pollution mixture to focus specifically on the effects of traffic pollution on childhood asthma development. NO2 is a pollutant formed mainly from fossil fuel combustion, and traffic emissions can contribute up to 80% of ambient NO2 in cities. NO2 is just one component of air pollution, which is made up of many pollutants (including particulate matter, ozone, carbon monoxide), which are known to have numerous adverse effects on health.

The authors combined a global dataset of ambient NO2 (modelled from ground-level monitors, satellite data, and land use variables such as road networks) with data on population distribution and asthma incidence to estimate the number of new traffic pollution-related asthma cases in children aged 1-18 years.

Globally, the estimates suggest that there are 170 new cases of traffic pollution-related asthma per 100,000 children every year, and 13% of childhood asthma cases diagnosed each year are linked to traffic pollution.

The country with the highest rate of traffic pollution-related childhood asthma was Kuwait (550 cases per 100,000 children each year), followed by the United Arab Emirates (460 per 100,000), and Canada (450 per 100,000). Of the 125 cities studied, there was a large variation in the estimated rate of traffic pollution-related childhood asthma  from 83 cases per 100,000 children every year in Orlu, Nigeria, to 690 cases per 100,000 children in Lima, Peru. These rates of traffic pollution-related asthma are influenced by asthma rates overall, as well as pollution levels, and may underestimate true levels in many low- and middle-income countries. This is because asthma cases often go undiagnosed in these regions.

The largest number of cases of traffic pollution-related asthma were estimated for China (760,000 cases), which is likely a result of China having the second largest population of children and the third highest concentrations of NO2. Although less than half the size of Chinas burden, India had the next largest number of cases (350,000) due to its large population of children. The USA (240,000), Indonesia (160,000) and Brazil (140,000) had the next largest burdens, with the USA having the highest pollution levels of these three countries, while Indonesia had the highest underlying asthma rates.

The country with the highest percentage of traffic pollution-attributable childhood asthma incidence was South Korea (31%), followed Kuwait (30%), Qatar (30%), United Arab Emirates (30%), and Bahrain (26%). The UK ranked 24th out of 194 countries, the US 25th, China 19th, and India 58th. The authors explain that India ranks below other countries for this metric because, although levels of other pollutants (particularly PM2.5) in India are among the highest in the world, NO2 levels from 2010-2012 in Indian cities appear to be lower than or comparable to levels in European and US cities.

Two-thirds of traffic pollution-related asthma cases occurred in urban centres globally, and when suburbs were included this proportion increased to 90% of cases.

The percentage of new asthma cases attributable to traffic pollution by city ranged from 6% in Orlu, Nigeria, to 48% in Shanghai, China, and largely reflected the variations in NO2 exposures within each region. Of the ten cities with the highest proportion of traffic pollution-related asthma cases, eight were in China (Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, Shenyang, Xian, Taiyuan, Zhengzhou, and Harbin) alongside Moscow, Russia, and Seoul, South Korea  all of which had high urban NO2 concentrations. Paris ranked 21st (33%), New York ranked 29th (32%), London 35th (29%), and New Delhi 38th (28%).

The authors note some limitations, including that studies linking traffic pollution and asthma, and NO2 monitoring data are largely from North America, Europe and east Asia, and NO2 ground-level monitors are mostly in urban areas, so could overestimate pollution levels in rural areas.

Due to limited data availability, the NO2 levels used in this study are for 2010-2012, whereas the population and asthma incidence rates are for 2015. Given recent global changes in NO2 levels (decreases in US and European cities, and increases in Asia), the estimates may not be exact and further research with the latest NO2 levels is needed.

Writing in a linked Comment, Professor Rajen N Naidoo, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, says: An important outcome from this study is the further evidence that the existing WHO standards are not protective against childhood asthma. Achakulwisut and colleagues estimated that approximately 92% of the childhood asthma incidence attributable to NO2 exposure was in areas with NO2 concentrations below the values of the WHO annual average guidelines. This strengthens the case for the downward revision of these global standards and for stronger national policy initiatives in countries without air quality standards. Furthermore, these findings not only support the association of NO2 exposure with childhood asthma incidence, but also, because this pollutant serves as an important proxy for broader traffic related air pollutants, highlight that urgent intervention is necessary to protect the health of those most vulnerable in society: children, particularly those with pre-existing respiratory disease.
N igel Farage returned to haunt the Tory Party today as he launched his new Brexit Party by unveiling a number of defectors.

Jacob Rees-Moggs sister Annunziata will be among candidates standing for the former Ukip leaders new party in European parliament elections, due on May 23.

We can again start to put the fear of God into our Members of Parliament in Westminster, boasted Mr Farage at a launch rally in Coventry. They deserve nothing less than that after the way theyve treated us over this betrayal.

An elections expert predicted that Mr Farages party and his old Ukip stablemates would do well against a half-hearted campaign by Conservatives divided over Brexit.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage shakes hands with Annunziata Rees-Mogg / AFP/Getty Images

Professor Sir John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, predicted that Ukip and Mr Farages new party could double their vote share from eight to 16 per cent or more, and added: Its the Conservative Party, inevitably, who have most to worry about that.

The forecast suggests the Tories will be back to the low point they hit five years ago when Mr Farage claimed victory in Euro-elections ahead of the 2016 referendum that triggered Brexit.

Under pressure: Theresa May / AFP/Getty Images

Ms Rees-Mogg who has previously stood as a Tory candidate, will contest the May 23 elections. She told the rally in Coventry that the Conservatives, which she claimed she joined aged five in 1984, had betrayed Brexit.

I stuck with them through thick and thin, she said. But at the point at which our Prime Minister will not listen, not only to her membership, but will not listen to the people of her country, 17.4 million of them... I cant sit by and let her do it. Its our fight and we must fight to win. Another defector was Richard Tice, who last year was on the list of contenders to become Conservative candidate for Mayor of London.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage shakes hands with Annunziata Rees-Mogg / AFP/Getty Images

Mr Farage said: Not only are our leaders weak, not only have they wilfully betrayed this result, but they are also pretty much incompetent. They are not actually very good at what they do, they are not very good at anything.

He claimed: Weve got to rescue our democracy, we have got to show that the people of this country have a say in how we are run. That the politicians are not our masters  they are to do our bidding. The Prime Minister also came under increasingly heavy fire from Tory Brexiteers today as she reopened negotiations with Labour on a possible customs union. A top-level list of ministers and shadow ministers were taking part in the renewed discussions at the Cabinet Office, including Environment Secretary Michael Gove, deputy premier David Lidington and shadow chancellor John McDonnell.

Annunziata Rees-Mogg / Getty Images

He arrived at the Cabinet Office just before 11am. Asked if he was expecting progress, he said: I hope so.

European Research Group member Andrew Bridgen warned Mrs May that she would completely split the Tories if she strikes a deal with Jeremy Corbyn for a customs union. He said: She would need the support of all the Labour Party to get it through and it would split the Conservative Party completely.
A nnunziata Rees-Mogg, sister of Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, is the first candidate to be announced for Nigel Farage's Brexit Party in the upcoming European elections.

Mr Farage introduced Ms Rees-Mogg on stage at a launch event for the party in Coventry, saying she would vie to become an MEP in May.

She said of her decision to stand: "I'm here today in sadness. Our democracy has been so betrayed that I have felt the need to be here."

Ms Rees-Mogg will form part of what the former Ukip leader calls his "fightback" against a "two-party system ... unfit for purpose".

Here's everything you need to know about the Brexit Party's first candidate.

REUTERS

Who is Annunziata Rees-Mogg?

A freelance journalist, Ms Rees-Mogg has written for The Daily Telegraph and edited the European Journal, a magazine owned by Eurosceptic think tank the European Foundation owned by Tory MP Bill Cash.

She's the younger sister of Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg and daughter of William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times.

Nigel Farage said his new crop of candidates were 'very capable and able' / AFP/Getty Images

She joined the Conservative Party in 1984 when she was five years old and claims she was out canvassing for the party by age eight.

Ms Rees-Mogg worked in a series of jobs including finance before becoming a journalist while carving a niche as a Tory party activist.

She stood unsuccessfully as a parliamentary candidate in the 2005 general election in Aberavon, South Wales, and lost again in 2010 in Somerton and Frome.

She had been thought a shoe-in by some after David Cameron put her on his A-list of parliamentary candidates.

Why is she now standing for the Brexit Party?

It comes as no surprise that, as one of the Brexit Party's first candidates, Ms Rees-Mogg's top priority is Brexit.

At the event in Coventry, Ms Rees-Mogg said she had remained loyal to the Conservative Party "through thick and thin" but that Britain's failure to leave the EU was the last straw.

She said: "The point at which our Prime Minister will not listen, not only to her membership, but will not listen to the people of her country... I can't sit by and let her do it."

Annunziata Rees-Mogg claims to have joined the Conversatives aged five but recently became disaffected over Brexit / Getty Images

"We've got to rescue our democracy, we have got to show that the people of this country have a say in how we are run.

"That the politicians are not our masters - they are to do our bidding."

What do people say about her?

Jacob Rees-Mogg tweeted of his sister: "Annunciata is my Brexit conscience who ensures I do not go soft.

"As I cannot even persuade her to spell her name correctly the chance of brainwashing her is slim."

Jacob Rees-Mogg, brother of Annunziata, said he'd tried to convince her to change her name / AFP/Getty Images

It seems her brother wasn't the only person to encourage her to change her name to increase her electoral chances.
T his was the emotional scene as a British mother detained in Dubai for allegedly calling her ex-husband's new partner a horse was reunited with her teenage daughter.

Laleh Shahravesh and her 14-year-old daughter, Paris, were reunited on Friday morning after the 55-year-old was fined and released by Dubai officials on Thursday.

The family of the London mother were said to be "ecstatic" after a court appearance in which a judge ordered her passport to be returned and that she was free to go once she had paid a fine.

Well-wishers and supporters of Ms Shahravesh greeted her with bouquets of flowers at Heathrow Airport.

Laleh Shahravesh arrives at Heathrow Airport with her daughter and sister / Jeremy Selwyn

Ms Shahravesh was greeted by her daughter and sister early on Friday morning at the London Airport, after she was granted release. The pair were in tears as they hugged each other.

Paris told the Standard: I definitely think people should be made more aware of the laws and regulations of another country. I think there was not enough information given to my mum.

Her aunt Ladan Perry, 45, said: Travel agents dont warn people, especially about strict countries that have these rules. When something like this disaster happens it totally destroys your life.

Tearful reunion: Laleh Shahravesh with her daughter Paris / Jeremy Selwyn

Ms Perry added: Its fantastic news for us that shes coming home because this nightmare has ended now. Her daughter has suffered a lot through this ordeal. Im just happy its come to a conclusion. Why it went so long I have no idea. Were just so happy shes come home.

Paris said she has made her mother a card and hoped to celebrate her release with her by relaxing at home.

She added: Im lost for words. Im so over the moon shes finally back... I dont know how Ive managed the last month without her because Im so close to her. Shes the person Im closest to in my life. Radha Stirling, chief executive of Detained in Dubai, said: We maintain that tThe case should have been dismissed at the outset.

Ms Shahravesh arriving to the airport on Friday morning / Jeremy Selwyn

The Detained in Dubai group said: "After an emotional but anti-climactic court hearing, in which the judge adjourned Laleh's case until a later date, Detained in Dubai received the welcome news that the judge has ordered Laleh to pay a fine of 3,000 UAE Dirham (624), and that her passport should be returned.

Ms Shahravesh, from Richmond, had been detained under strict cybercrime laws when she visited the country with her daughter Paris, 14, three years after writing the posts.

She was arrested when she travelled to the United Arab Emirates on March 10 for her ex-husbands funeral after his death from a heart attack. Authorities had received a complaint over posts made three years ago and Ms Shahravesh was warned she faced prosecution and up to two years in prison.

Speaking to reporters as she landed, Ms Shahravesh thanked her lawyers "who did everything in their power" to get her passport returned.

She also thanked Radha Stirling, the campaign group's chief executive, for "working tirelessly to get me home".

When asked about her ordeal previously, Ms Shahravesh said it had been "the most horrendous period of my life".

The Richmond mother arrived into Heathrow Airport on Friday morning / Jeremy Selwyn

She added: "I've never been separated from Paris in this way and every day part of my was dying from being away from her, during a time when I knew she needed me the most. So yes, it's been very traumatic".

Ms Stirling said: "We maintain that the case against Laleh should have been dismissed at the outset, and while we are pleased that her nightmare is over, her conviction on this absurd case sets a dangerous precedent.
Youths demonstrate with banners and placards during the "Fridays For Future" movement on a global day of student protests aiming to spark world leaders into action on climate change on March 15, 2019 in Vienna, Austria. - The worldwide protests were inspired by Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, who camped out in front of parliament in Stockholm last year to demand action from world leaders on global warming.

AFP/Getty Images
P ressure is mounting on the Home Secretary to allow action that would allow Julian Assange to be extradited to Sweden.

More than 70 MPs and peers have reportedly written to Sajid Javid and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, urging them to consider earlier Swedish investigations into rape and sexual assault allegations against Assange.

In a letter led by Labour's Stella Creasy and Jess Phillips, the MPs declare: We do not presume guilt, of course, but we believe due process should be followed and the [Swedish] complainant should see justice be done.

The group calls on Mr Javid and Ms Abbot to "champion action" to ensure that extradition is a possibility for the Swedish authorities, the Guardian reports.

Other signatories includes the 11 members of the Independent Group of MPs.

Julian Assange - In pictures 1 /30 Julian Assange - In pictures 2019 Julian Assange on his arrival at Westminster Magistrates court on April 11 Jack Taylor/Getty Images 2019 Julian Assange made a defiant gesture with his fist as he arrived at court AFP/Getty Images 2017 Julian Assange puts his fist in the air as he steps out to speak to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador Getty Images 2012 Protesters gather outside the Ecuadorian Embassy, where Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks is staying Getty Images 2012 Masked supporters of Julian Assange outside the Embassy of Ecuador in Knightsbridge Dominic Lipinski/PA 2010 Photographers hold cameras to the windows of a Serco prison van believed to be carrying WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Reuters 2016 ulian Assange's cat, is adorned with a tie and collar inside the window of the Ecuadorian Embassy PA 2016 Pamela Anderson delivers lunch to Julian Assange at Embassy of Ecuador Getty Images 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is pictured through the heavily tinted windows of a police vehicle as he arrives at Westminster magistrates court in London AFP/Getty Images 2010 Jemima Kahn leaves the City of Westminster Magistrates Court after offering to stand as surety for Julian Assange Getty Images 2010 Julian Assange of the WikiLeaks website speaks to reporters in front of a Don McCullin Vietnam war photograph at The Front Line Club in London Getty Images 2010 Wikileaks founder Julian Assange gestures inside a prison van with red windows as he arrives at the Royal Courts of Justice Getty Images 2011 WikiLeaks website founder Julian Assange arrives at The High Court Getty Images 2011 Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, shakes the hand of a supporter as he leaves Trafalgar Square after addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition Getty Images 2011 Journalist John Pilger and Julian Assange, founder of the WikiLeaks website, chat before addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square Getty Images 2012 Placards are left by supporters of Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks whistle-blowing website, outside the Ecuadorian Embassy Getty Images 2015 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with Reverend Jesse Jackson outside the Embassy of Ecuador in London PA 2016 People attend a video conference of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the International Center for Advanced Communication Studies for Latin America (CIESPAL) auditorium in Quito AFP/Getty Images 2016 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange holds up his new kitten at the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London WikiLeaks 2017 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during a press conference from inside the Ecuadorian embassy AP 2018 Supporters of Julian Assange outside Westminster Magistrates Court, London where a court decision is due on whether a UK arrest warrant against the WikiLeaks founder is still valid PA 2018 British hacker Lauri Love and his girlfriend Sylvia Mann are surrounded by media after visiting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London on 6th February 2018 AFP/Getty Images 2018 A cat named 'James' wearing a collar and tie yawns by the window of the Ecuadorian Embassy where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been for over five years on 6th February 2018 AFP/Getty Images

Meanwhile shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry on Friday told BBC Radio 4: "I think that what should happen is that he should be extradited to Sweden.

"And then the Americans can make a further application to have him extradited from Sweden."

PA

The developments come amid a political row over the Labour leadership's support of Assange.

Jeremy Corbyn has called on the Government to intervene to stop Assange's extradition to the US, while Ms Abbott also leapt to his defence.

Police outside the Ecuadorian embassy / PA

Speaking in the Commons after Assange's arrest on Thursday, she said he was in the "cross-hairs of the US administration" over his whistle-blowing activities.

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Ms Abbott then appeared to play down rape and sexual assault allegations against Assange, during an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme on Friday morning, saying three times that the charges were never brought.

She said: "The allegations were made but the charges were never brought. And we all know what this is about - it's not correct charges, serious as they are, it is about the WikiLeaks and all of that embarrassing information about the activities of the American military and security services that was made public."

When it was explained that charges could not be brought under Swedish law against a person in their absence, Ms Abbott said: "If the Swedish government wants to come forward with charges, I believe that Assange should face the criminal justice system."

Diane Abbott, the Shadow Home Secretary / PA

But her comments sparked an angry response among some MPs.

Minister for Women Vicky Atkins said: "Diane Abbott's dismissal of rape charges speaks volumes about Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party.

"It's astonishing that the party which prides itself on fighting for women's rights is so willing to ignore allegations of sexual violence.

"Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott need to realise that not even their heroes are above the law."

Anna Soubry, who left the Tories to joint the Independent Group, tweeted: "Shame on you @HackneyAbbott your pal Assange holed up in an Embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden to face allegations of rape & sexual assault. He's no hero & the failure of @jeremycorbyn & DianeAbbott to stand by the women who have made those allegations is disgraceful."

Another member of the group, Angela Smith, a former Labour MP, said on Twitter: "Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party seems to think it can make judgements on claims of sexual misconduct. That's a matter for the courts. Its support of @assange beggars belief and undermines all those campaigning on the issue."

Even some Labour MPs questioned their leader's response, including Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips.

"The fact that Assange has evaded charges of sexual violence and skipped bail should be opposed by the Labour Party. I'm sure it is, I'd like to hear it," she tweeted.

Bridget Phillipson, MP for Houghton and Sunderland South, said on Twitter: "Assange is not the victim in all this. Those who run from justice should face the consequences.

"This is about the rule of law, not the politics of the accused."

In May 2017, Sweden's top prosecutor dropped the long-running inquiry into a rape claim against Assange, which he has always denied.

But his arrest prompted the lawyer for a Swedish woman who alleged she was raped by Assange during a visit to Stockholm in 2010 to say they wanted the case reopened.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, who represents the unnamed woman, said news of Assange's arrest was "a shock to my client" and something "we have been waiting and hoping for since 2012".

Ms Massi Fritz said in a text message sent to the Associated Press that "we are going to do everything" to have the Swedish case reopened "so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted for rape".

She added that "no rape victim should have to wait nine years to see justice be served".
H undreds of students descended on Parliament Square today as part of the huge international youth campaign demanding action on climate change.

Eager young people handed out leaflets and newspapers for the Youth Strike 4 Climate movement as up to 800 people gathered before 11.30am on Friday to take part in a march.

Throngs of children held up colourful signs reading "Expect resistance!" and "Save our planet" at what was one of several UK-wide events in major cities including Sheffield, Leeds, Manchester and Brighton.

Organisers led spirited chants, including "We want, we want, justice" to the tune of the Queen song We Will Rock You.

The students then made their way past Downing Street chanting: "Theresa May, hear us say, climate change is here to stay."

Protestors want the Government to declare a state of climate emergency / PA

It is the third mass student climate walkout in as many months.

Protesters are demanding that the Government declare a state of climate emergency as well as reforming the schools curriculum "to address climate change as an educational priority".

Hundreds gathered in Parliament Square on Friday / Getty Images

Families were among those joining the demonstration. Beth McLaughlin, 38, a psychologist from London, brought her children to the event to learn about how individuals can contribute to change.

Her son had been on all the Fridays for the Future school strikes so far.

Speaking in Parliament Square, she said: "I'd rather that they didn't have to miss school, but it makes more of a point and is more likely to effect change.

Scores of students filled the streets of Central London / Getty Images

"Climate change is the most important issue there is, it makes all the other issues irrelevant really."

Nova Levy-Rapoport, 17, from London, an organiser for the UK Student Climate Network, said the strikes were "really the only platform that young people have".

It is the third strike of its kind in as many months / AFP/Getty Images

The sixth former said: "There is so little time that we have left before we enter such a volatile future and if I was not here today it would be a literal betrayal to myself, my family, my friends and my future."

People also posted about their experiences on social media, saying it was a powerful and moving event.

One Friends of the Earth campaigner wrote that the event "restored my faith in humanity".

The protest appears to have been mostly peaceful, with the Met Police saying there had been no arrests.

As well as calling for curriculum reform, the group also wants the voting age to be lowered to 16.

Campaigners on the march / PA

Their strikes follow a UN report which warned that limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which climate impacts become increasingly severe, requires unprecedented action.

That includes cutting global carbon dioxide emissions by almost half within 12 years.
B runei has said new laws to punish gay sex by stoning to death are meant to help citizens and would rarely be used in practice.

Responding to the UN which called the measures "cruel and inhuman", Brunei's foreign ministry said in a letter that Sharia law "focuses more on prevention than punishment".

"Its aim is to educate, deter, rehabilitate and nurture rather than to punish," the letter added.

The small, oil-rich South East Asian nation has faced global backlash after rolling out a harsh range of capital punishments also including death by stoning for adultery and amputation for theft.

Brunei's sultan had called for Islamic teachings in the country to be strengthened / AFP/Getty Images

The UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights warned Brunei in a letter earlier this month that implementing them would violate the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by Brunei in 2006.

Foreign minister Erywan Yusof insisted in the response dated April 7 that Brunei has a "strong commitment" to human rights.

Criminalising "adultery and sodomy" will benefit Muslims and particularly women, he suggested, writing that it would "safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage".

The laws will only apply to Muslims, and anybody accused will get a "just and fair trial".

The minister also noted that the punishments of stoning to death and amputation, known as hadd, have "extremely high evidentiary threshold, requiring no less than two to four men of high moral standing and piety as witnesses".

These are almost impossible to find, he claimed, hinting that the laws would in practice hardly ever be used.

Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah addresses the public / AFP/Getty Images

"The standards of piety of the male witness is extremely high that it is extremely difficult to find one in this day and age, to the extent that convictions of hadd may solely rest on confessions of the offender," wrote Yusof.

The punitive new codes are part of Brunei's years-long programme to incorporate Sharia into official legal practice alongside common law.

The first phase was implemented in 2014, and saw fines and prison sentences imposed for particular offences.

The second came into force at the start of April after years of delays, and was passed despite outcry from politicians, human rights groups and celebrities including actor George Clooney.
C hinese scientists have created super-intelligent monkeys by injecting them with human DNA.

Researchers transferred a gene linked to brain development, called MCPH1, into rhesus monkey embryos.

Once they were born, the monkeys were found to have better memories, reaction times and processing abilities than their untouched peers.

"This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model," said Bing Su, a geneticist at Kunming Institute of Zoology in China.

The research was conducted by Dr Sus team at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and University of North Carolina in the US.

Our findings demonstrated that nonhuman primates (excluding ape species) have the potential to provide important  and potentially unique  insights into basic questions of what actually makes human unique, the authors wrote in the study.

The authors explained that the rhesus monkey had been chosen because it is genetically closer to humans than rodents  which are normally used in testing  but still distant enough to reduce ethical concerns.

Other scientists and animal activists criticised the experiment.

Wild Guides- See Sri Lanka from a locals perspective

You just go to the Planet of the Apes immediately in the popular imagination, Jacqueline Glover, a University of Colorado bioethicist MIT Technology Review.

To humanise them is to cause harm. Where would they live and what would they do? Do not create a being that cant have a meaningful life in any context, she added.

Animal rights group PETA described the study as vile.

"Macaque monkeys are highly intelligent fellow primates who form intricate social relationships, experience every emotion humans do and can suffer just as much as we can.

In this vile study, female monkeys were cut open and artificially fertilised - and many pregnancies failed," Anna Van Der Zalm, of PETA UK, told Tech Times.
D octors in Papua New Guinea have urged men to stop injecting substances into their penises in misguided attempts to enlarge them.

Hundreds of men have disfigured or injured themselves by pumping silicone, coconut oil, baby oil or cooking oil into their genitals, according to a report by the Guardian.

Akule Danlop, a surgeon at Port Moresby General Hospital, told the newspaper: "I have seen five new cases every week for the past two years and these are the ones that have come forward for treatment."

Nobody knows the true number of cases, added the doctor, who is the only surgeon in the nation's capital qualified to operate on deformities caused by the practice.

Men come to the clinic suffering ulcers and lumpy masses on their penises, which can be permanent, he said.

Some patients struggle to urinate "because the foreskin is so swollen it cannot contract".

Even after surgery, a few patients are left with damage to their erectile muscle which renders them unable to have sex.

The men who come to the clinic are usually - but not always - aged 18 to 40, said the doctor, and come from all walks of life and backgrounds.

The harmful injections have often been performed by health professionals, according to another medic spoken to by the Guardian.

"Its male nurses mainly I think," Glen Mola, professor of reproductive health, obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of PNG, told the newspaper. "These people are doing it off licence of course."

The patients have been "conned" into the enlargement treatments in the hopes of increasing their penis size to improve sex with their partners, he added.
T he mighty black hole pictured in a world first photograph has been named Powehi.

A language professor gave the Hawaiian name to the cosmic entity, named the cosmic object, which was photographed with the help of two telescopes from the US state.

University of Hawaii-Hilo Hawaiian Professor Larry Kimura said it was a "privilege" to decide the entity's monicker, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported.

Powehi means "the adorned fathomless dark creation" or "embellished dark source of unending creation".

The word comes from the Kumulipo, an 18th century Hawaiian creation chant.

The image was released on Wednesday / @ehtelescope

Po is a profound dark source of unending creation and wehi, honored with embellishments, is one of the chant's descriptions of po, the newspaper reported.

"To have the privilege of giving a Hawaiian name to the very first scientific confirmation of a black hole is very meaningful to me and my Hawaiian lineage that comes from po," Professor Kimura said in a news release.

Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, said she "nearly fell off her chair" when Professor Kimura told her the name.

She was among 200 scientists who worked to capture an image of the massive black hole in the M87 galaxy nearly 54 million light-years from Earth.

"We described what we had seen and that this black hole was illuminating and brightening the darkness around it, and that's when he came up with the name," she said.

The first ever photo of a black hole was revealed after years of research by an international team of scientists.
April 11, 2019 " Information Clearing House "

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The Trump administration seems to care very little about international consensus and international law on the status of the occupied territories. Instead, it has sabotaged the American governments standing as an honest broker and effectively encouraged support for the continuation of Israeli colonization of Arab land.

Until now, no country had recognized Israels act of plunder in the Golan Heights. Following the Six Day war in 1967, Israel expelled 130,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights. 14 years later, in 1981, Israel annexed the territory  in violation of international law. The United Nations member states, including the U.S., immediately declared Israeli efforts to change the Golan Heights status null and void. A small population of Syrian Druze are the only survivors of that ethnic cleansing operation.

Greg Shupak, author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, argues that American foreign policy and Israeli settler-colonial capitalism shape what happens across historic Palestine.

We recently saw this unfold when Trump issued his Jerusalem decree to recognize the city as the Israeli capital, which goes against the international communitys consensus of Jerusalem as a final status issue in negotiations and, again, violates international law. While the U.S. Embassy was moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on May 15, Israeli snipers were massacring 60 Palestinians protesters in the Great March of Return at the Gaza fence.

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This is not the first time we have seen U.S. foreign policy and Israeli settler-colonial enterprise interfered with the international communitys consensus on Palestinian-Israeli affairs. The Jerusalem Basic Law of 1980 and the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 were highly controversial because of their timing and their political and legal implications, according to Michael Zank, a professor at Boston University.

Both laws were enacted during times when the international coalition was making progress with the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations. U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat had signed the Camp David Accords, a peace treaty with Israel and Egypt in 1979; consequently, the Jerusalem Basic Law endangered the peace process and negatively impacted the ongoing negotiations.

The Jerusalem Embassy Act was signed into law shortly after the Oslo Accords were concluded and greatly affected the final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that were held at Camp David in 2000. Both these legislative acts created a binding relationship between Israel and the U.S which ultimately changed the status quo.

But to fully conceptualize the U.S.-Israel special relationship we need to unpack the the preferential arms trade agreements that allows for this relationship to continue at the expense of the indigenous population in the occupied territories.

Max Ajl, a PhD candidate in development sociology at Cornell University, writes: U.S. military assistance, more accurately understood as a circular flow through which U.S. weapons firms profit off the colonization of Palestinian land and Israeli destabilization of the surrounding states, is a long-term structuring element of the U.S.-Israel special relationship.

U.S. military loans started arriving in Israel in November 1971, when the Nixon administration signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel to build up its domestic industrial-arms sector through technical and manufacturing assistance. Grants started to replace loans in 1974.

The U.S. government shortly afterwards started to permit Israel to spend 26% of the annual military grant on purchases in Israel  a unique arrangement, since by U.S. law recipient countries must spend all of their foreign military financing in the U.S.

According to Ajl, the Israeli military industry often relies on U.S. technological inputs, and the U.S. forbids Israel from manufacturing crucial heavy weaponry, such as fighter jets, in order to maintain control over Israel.

U.S. military grants to Israel were often quid pro quo, as Israel increasingly took on the work for which the U.S. could not publicly take responsibility, given popular unease in the States over aid to fascist dictatorships.

As the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network noted in their report, Israels Worldwide Role in Repression, in the 1970s, Israel armed the brutal military regime of the Argentinian junta that imposed seven years of state terrorism on the population. Israel also provided most of the arms that Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Tachito Somoza used in the last year of his dictatorship to oppose the revolution, a conflict that killed tens of thousands of Nicaraguans in the 1970s.

By the 2000s, the Israeli military-industrial complex had produced an industry capable of competing in small-arms and high-end security technology on a worldwide scale. Israel started to export arms that have been refined through high-technology colonial policing of the Palestinian population, especially in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In recent years, Israel has risen to one of the top 10 arms exporters in the world.

Last May Haaretz reported, Israels defense-related exports in 2017 totalled $9.2 billion, an all-time record and whooping 40% increase over 2016  when defense-related transactions totaled $6.5 billion.

The Obama administration adjustments to Israels military aid package came amidst a shifting geopolitical environment, both within the U.S. and Israel. There was a shift in original MOU that would slowly phase out the provisions through which Israel could spend up to 26% of its funding package within Israel, to Israel spending more of this funding on the advanced military capabilities that only the United States can provide  as much as $1.2 billion per year, according to Ajl.

In addition, this MOU locked in $500 million annually for missile defense.The MOU mandates Israel update its fighter aircraft fleet, which is a direct investment into the U.S. military-industrial complex, given that fighter-jet factories are exclusively based in the United States.

Not only does U.S. foreign policy and Israeli-settler colonialism shape what happens across historic Palestine, it also shapes what happens across the Middle East region.

The firm establishment of Israels military defense industry also provides an excuse to sell ever-more-sophisticated weapons to other regional U.S. allies, especially Saudi Arabia. As long as Israel has the latest U.S. technology, other countries can buy older models, again to the great profit of the U.S. defense industry. Israel thus is the spark plug for an entire region-wide weapons bazaar, while also providing such countries the means to destroy and dismantle even poorer countries like Yemen.

This keeps the entire region aflame, oppressed and desperate, and thus unlikely to upset hierarchical regional and international social structures. Ajl suggests that one of reasons the United States pushed through this MOU before Obama left office is the rising discontent within the U.S. population over ongoing support for Israeli colonization of historic Palestine and the surrounding region.

Frida Berrigan, author of Made in the U.S.A.: American Military Aid to Israel, writes that a major barrier to any shift in American policy towards Palestine-Israel is financial pressures from a U.S military industrial complex accustomed to billions of dollars in sales to Israel and other Middle Eastern nations locked in a seemingly perpetual arms race with each other by all buying American and using Foreign Military Financing (FMF) to pay the bills.

The United States is the primary source of Israels far superior arsenal. Israels dependence on the U.S. for aid and arms means that the Israeli military relies on spare parts and technical assistance from the U.S. to maintain optimum performance in battle.

During the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel had actually received more in U.S. military aid than it has in U.S. arms deliveries. Over this time period, Israel received $10.5 billion in FMF  the Pentagons biggest military aid program  and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries. According to Berrigan, the most prominent of those deals was a $4.5 billion sale of 102 Lockheed Martin F-16s to Israel.

Unlike other countries, Israel receives its Economic Support Funds in one lump sum early in the fiscal year rather than in four quarterly installments. While other countries primarily deal with the Department of Defense when arranging to purchase military hardware from U.S. companies, Israel deals directly with U.S. companies for the vast majority of its military purchases in the United States. Other countries have a $100,000 minimum purchase amount per contract, but Israel is allowed to purchase military items for far less, according to Berrigan.

Today, Israel has been the beneficiary of approximately $125 billion in U.S. aid. An unimaginable sum, more than any other country since World War II.

U.S. aid is projected to further increase to $165 billion by the end of the new 10-year package, in 2029, according to Charles D. Freilich, a former Israeli deputy national security adviser. U.S. aid constitutes some 3% of Israels total state budget and about 1% of its GDP, a highly significant sum. Moreover, U.S. aid constitutes some 20% of the total defense budget, 40% of the budget of the Israel Defense Forces, and almost the entire procurement budget, according to Freilich.

Israels dependence on the U.S. is not limited to financial aid and weapons sales. According to Freilich, the U.S. provides technologies for the development of unique weapons systems that Israel needs, such as the Iron Dome and the Arrow rocket and missile defense systems. It mans the radar deployed in Israel, which is linked to the global American satellite system.

Fredilich writes, There is simply no alternative to American weapons, and our dependence on the United States is almost complete; the bitter truth is that without the United States, the IDF would be an empty shell. The United States is Israels largest trading partner, at least partially due to their bilateral free trade agreement, the first the United States signed with any country.

The U.S.-Israel special relationship is rooted in preferential arms trade agreements as a way to subsidize the U.S. military industry and reinforce support for Israeli colonialism. This special relationship is locked into an arms trade cycle where both the Israeli and American elite class benefits, at the expense of the indigenous population.

The U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over occupied territories provides a boost for Israeli colonialism. We must ask ourselves, If Trump has consented to Israeli illegal seizure of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem, why not also the West Bank?

Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to annex Israeli settlements in the West Bank if he is re-elected, which will likely be considered as the final blow to the so called possibility of a two-state solution. The Trump administration is expected to announce his ultimate deal following the Israeli elections and after a new government is formed.

It is only a matter of time till the Trump administration decides to follow suit and recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank, which will drive the final nail into the coffin of the Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations and solidify Israeli apartheid.

Anna Badillo is a research analyst at Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East based in Montreal, Quebec. She holds an M.Phil from Trinity College Dublin, in International Peace Studies.



Anna is a social justice activist and human rights advocate with a focuses on Palestinian-Israeli affairs and international law.

This article was originally published by " Defense Post " -

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Peace and joy
A sheriff's deputy helped arrest his own son who is charged with setting three black community churches on fire in rural Louisiana.

Holden Matthews, 21, was being held without bail on arson charges after the blazes in and around the town of Opelousas evoked memories of civil rights era violence.

This community is safe again, fire chief Butch Browning told a news conference yesterday. We are extremely, unequivocally confident that we have the person who is responsible for these tragic crimes.

Police used surveillance cameras, mobile phone tracking and a Walmart supermarket receipt for a gas canister to help identify Matthews, who was arrested late on Wednesday because officers feared other crimes were imminent.

Local sheriff Bobby Guidroz confirmed that the suspect was the son of deputy Roy Matthews, and said he was heartbroken when he was arrested.

He broke down... it was hard, said Sheriff Guidroz. He said Deputy Matthews arranged for his son to leave home and go to a place where he could be arrested without incident.

Remains of the Greater Union Baptist Church / AP

Matthews was said to be a fan of black metal music, which has been linked to satanism and neo-Nazi groups. He faces up to 15 years in jail on each charge if found guilty.

The first blaze was on March 26 at St Mary Baptist Church in Port Barre, a town just outside Opelousas. Days later the Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, 140 miles from New Orleans, were burned. They were both more than 100 years old. The churches were empty and no-one was injured.

Matthews credit card was used to buy a gas canister found near one fire, his mobile phone was used in all three locations, and a pickup truck similar to one belonging to his father was seen on CCTV around the churches.
T he head of Sudan military council has stepped down as transitional leader a day after leader Omar al-Bashir was ousted in a coup.

Defence minister Awad Ibn Auf announced his decision on state television on Friday.

Lieutenant General Abdel-Fattah Burhan will be the new head of the transitional military council, Mr Ibn Auf said in a speech.

He said: "I, the head of the military council, announce I am giving up the post."

File photo: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir / EPA

Mr Ibn Auf added that he had taken the decision to preserve unity of the armed forces.

Tens of thousands of Sudanese protesters have been rallying in front of the military headquarters in Khartoum, against the military takeover of power on Thursday.

Awad Ibn Auf, the Sudanese Defence Minister / EPA

The country's millitary has rejected calls to hand the ousted President to the International Criminal Court, where he faces genocide charges for his deadly campaign in the western Darfur region, and said he would be put on trial at home.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Mr Ibn Auf since 2007, saying he armed and directed pro-government militias known as the Janjaweed, accused of widespread atrocities against civilians and rapes during the conflict.

He was head of military intelligence during the brutal campaign to suppress the Darfur insurgency in the 2000s.

Protesters have taken to the streets of the capital Khartoum / AFP/Getty Images

Burhan's record appears to be cleaner than the rest of al-Bashir's generals, and he is not known to be implicated in war crimes or wanted by international courts. He was one of the generals who met with protesters earlier Friday to try to persuade them to end their campaign.

Celebrations erupted in the streets of Khartoum after Mr Ibn Auf announced he was stepping down, with protesters clapping and chanting "revolutionaries, we will continue our path."

Tens of thousands have been rallying in front of the military headquarters to protest the military takeover of power after al-Bashir's ouster.

Along with al-Bashir, the ICC has indicted two other senior figures in his regime - Abdel-Rahim Muhammad Hussein, who was interior and defence minister during much of the conflict, and Ahmed Haroun, a senior security chief at the time who last month was named by al-Bashir to run the ruling National Congress Party.

Both were among those reported by the Sudanese media to have been arrested Thursday in a sweep by the military against al-Bashir's inner circle. Zein Abedeen confirmed the media reports Friday without specifying the two men.
A tourist in South Africa nearly had his arm ripped off after putting it through the fence of a lion enclosure to pet a lioness, saying: Come here, lovey, let daddy stroke you.

Pieter Nortje, 55, was being given a guided tour at a game lodge to celebrate his wedding anniversary.

Video footage showed him first stroking an adult males back and tickling it behind his ear as he quipped to wife Ilze on camera: If you bite me, then Im going to bite you back.

A young lioness then approached the fence at the Tikwe River Lodge, but Mr Nortje left his arm waving dangerously in the air.

The lioness locked her jaws on his right forearm, her teeth penetrating to the bone. His wife shouted: Its biting him its biting him!

Pieter Nortje pokes his arm through the lioness enclosure at the South African game lodge

The predator held on to his arm for about five seconds and clawed at him before Mr Nortje managed to pull himself free.

Last night the South African was said to be in the Pelonomi Hospital in Bloemfontein in a serious condition and suffering septic shock.

A spokesman for park, which has 30 lodges overlooking the Sand River, said they had been running lion enclosure tours for six years without any incidents.

They denied any responsibility for the mauling and said: There are warning signs everywhere. Mr Nortje stuck his hand through the electric fence to touch the lions and was bitten.

Pieter Nortje recovers in hospital

Netwerk24 newspaper reported that Mr Nortje had been spending the weekend at the luxury game lodge in Virginia, Free State province, to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary.

A South African game ranger at another park who saw the video said: The man was lucky that the lioness was probably not hungry or not used to killing live prey outside in the wild. Lions are pack animals and hunt as a team so others in the enclosure could easily have joined in.

Some people never learn that where wild animals are concerned keep a distance between them and you.

Mr Nortje who works as a mechanic at SA Truck Bodies in Bloemfontein and his receptionist wife were unavailable for comment.

In May last year Mike Hodge, 72, owner of the Marakele Predator Centre in Thabazimbi, north of South African capital Pretoria, was attacked by a lion when he entered its enclosure.
B ritish engineers have created a seed-planting drone which could help restore the worlds forests.

Biocarbon Engineering, a start-up based in Oxford, designed the drones to fire seed missiles across fields, planting hundreds of potential trees in a matter of minutes.

In September 2018, the drones were deployed in a field just south of Yangon, Myanmar.

The seeds they sowed have since grown into tiny mangrove saplings, about 20-inches tall.

Irnia Fedorenko, co-founder of Biocarbon Engineering, told Fast Company: We now have a case confirmed of what species we can plant and in what conditions.

We are now ready to scale up our planting and replicate this success.

Stunning drone footage of an ice formation in Maine

Around half of the worlds mangrove forests have been lost. The trees, which grow along coastlines, can store more carbon than trees on land.

Mangrove deforestation is responsible for 24 million tons of CO2 emissions each year, according to a 2018 study.

Biocarbon Engineering is collaborating on the project with Myanmar non-profit the Worldview International Foundation, which has been planting trees by hand across the country since 2012.

The Foundation works with local villagers, who have helped plant more than six million trees in the past seven years. But human-only methods are time-consuming, and the non-profit has turned to the Oxford engineers for help.

Obviously, planting a billion trees will take a long time without the help of drones, Bremley Lyngdoh, a partner on the project, told Fast Company.

Roughly 350,000 hectares of coastal forest need to be restored, which translates to more than a billion trees.

Ten drones, operated by two operators, can plant 400,000 trees a day.

Biocarbon Engineering

The drones work by flying across a specified area, collecting data about soil conditions and determining the prime locations for planting.

They then fire biodegradable pods, filled with a germinated seed and nutrients, into the ground.

Organisers say the project benefits both the environment and local communities, by helping provide new economic opportunities.

Its all about creating livelihoods, said Mr Lyngdoh.
A ssange could face decades behind bars

Julian Assange could face decades in jail if convicted of espionage following his arrest at the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

The WikiLeaks founder, 47, spent his first night in custody since being convicted of breaching bail yesterday.

He was dragged from Ecuadors embassy in Knightsbridge, where he has spent almost seven years before his asylum was withdrawn.

He faces extradition to the US on charges of conspiring to break into a classified government computer.

On conviction this carries a maximum jail term of five years, but he is expected to face dozens more charges, including espionage.

Upskirting becomes criminal offence

Upskirting is now a criminal offence in England and Wales following a campaign by a woman targeted at a music festival.

Offenders will face up to two years in prison for taking an image or video under somebody's clothing.

It comes as official figures revealed children as young as seven were among the growing number of upskirting victims last year.

Israeli spacecraft fails to land safely on moon

An Israeli spacecraft has failed in its bid to successfully land on the moon.

The SpaceIL's Beresheet lost contact with Earth late yesterday just moments before it was to land on the lunar surface.

Students set for third climate strike

Hundreds of students are expected to join nationwide protests today for a third time in as many months.

Youth Strike 4 Climate organisers said "sizeable events" are to take place in major towns and cities in the UK.

They are demanding a state of climate emergency is declared and reform the curriculum "to address climate change as priority".

And in sport

Aaron Ramsey inspired Arsenal to a 2-0 home win over Napoli in their Europa League quarter-final clash last night.

The midfielder put Unai Emery's men ahead at the Emirates Stadium in the 15th minute of the first-leg at the Emirates.

Lucas Torreira's effort just 10 minutes later deflected off Kalidou Koulibaly and into the net.

Marcos Alonso was the hero for Chelsea as his late header secured a crucial 1-0 win over Slavia Prague in their quarter final tie at the Eden Arena.

On this day...

1606: The Union Flag became England's official flag.

1709: The Tatler was first published.

1838: English settlers in South Africa defeated the Zulus at the Battle of Tugela.

1861: The American Civil War began with the siege of Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

1945: US President Franklin D Roosevelt died of a brain haemorrhage less than a month before the surrender of Germany to the Allies.

1954: Bill Haley recorded Rock Around The Clock, the first record to sell a million in Britain alone.
B TS fans were left stunned after the K-pop superstars casually released an Ed Sheeran collaboration as part of their new album Map of the Soul: Persona.

The track, titled Make It Right, appeared on their latest release which dropped on Friday.

Sheeran described the project as an honour after revealing he helped write the song in an Instagram post.

Sharing a screenshot of the album cover, the Happier hit maker wrote: This is the first K pop song Ive had the honour of helping write. Check out the rest of the project too. Well done @bts.bighitofficial.

Fans were left in bits over the collaboration, with many thanking Sheeran for his work.

One user wrote: WAIT I STILL CANT BELIEVE ED SHEERAN CO-PRODUCED BTS' 'MAKE IT RIGHT' ITS A WHOLE BOP.

Make It Right. This is so beautiful!

A third added: LIKE WTF, ED SHEERAN AND BTS?????!!!! the f*** my faves in one song, literally the cause of my death. [sic]

BTS: The seven-piece group are taking over the world / Getty Images

Meanwhile a fourth declared: I will never stop talking about Ed Sheeran and BTS collab. Its legendary. Ed Sheeran and BTS collab is legendary. Ed Sheeran.

Sheeran is not the only artist to collaborate with the seven-piece group on the album.

Who are BTS?

Earlier this week BTS teased a look at their new music video for Boy With Luv, featuring Halsey.

The 46-second teaser clip showed a flame-haired Halsey finishing her shift at the Persona cinema whilst the group sat outside on a sofa in hot-pink outfits.

BTS: The world's biggest boyband - In pictures 1 /46 BTS: The world's biggest boyband - In pictures November 19, 2017



BTS perform during the 2017 American Music Awards Getty Images March 19, 2014



BTS attend the 100th episode of MBC Show Champion 2014 in Seoul AFP/Getty Images December 31, 2017



BTS performs onstage during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2018 in Los Angeles, CA, USA Getty Images for dcp January 15, 2020



Ariana Grande shares a picture of her with BTS Instagram August 10, 2014



BTS attends the Mnet America show Danny From LA KCON 2014 - Day 2 in Los Angeles, CA, USA Getty Images August 10, 2014



K-pop group BTS arrive on the red carpet during the K-CON 2014 in Los Angeles, CA, USA AFP/Getty Images January 22, 2015



BTS arrive for the 24th Seoul Music Awards n Seoul, South Korea Getty Images January 28, 2015



BTS arrive for the 4th Gaon Chart K-POP Awards 2015 at the Olympic Park in Seoul Getty Images May 21, 2017



BTS accepts the Top Social Artist award onstage during the 2017 Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, NV, USA Getty Images November 19, 2017



BTS perform during the 2017 American Music Awards Getty Images November 19, 2017



BTS pose in the press room at the 2017 American Music Awards Invision/AP November 19, 2017



V and Jungkook of BTS perform during the 2017 American Music Awards Getty Images November 19, 2017



BTS perform during the 2017 American Music Awards Getty Images December 31, 2017



BTS attends Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2018 in Los Angeles, CA, USA Getty Images for dcp December 31, 2017



BTS performs onstage during Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2018 in Los Angeles, CA, USA Getty Images for dcp May 20, 2018



BTS perfrom during the 2018 Billboard Music Awards Getty Images May 20, 2018



BTS attend the 2018 Billboard Music Awards Getty Images May 20, 2018



BTS perfrom during the 2018 Billboard Music Awards Getty Images May 20, 2018



Tyra Banks with BTS attending the 2018 Billboard Music Awards Getty Images May 20, 2018



BTS accepts the Top Social Artist award during the 2018 Billboard Music Awards Getty Images October 14, 2018



BTS performs during a Korean cultural event as part of South Korean President official visit in France AFP/Getty Images October 14, 2018



BTS performs during a Korean cultural event as part of South Korean President official visit in France AFP/Getty Images October 14, 2018



BTS members stand on scene after they performed during a Korean cultural event as part of South Korean President official visit in France AFP/Getty Images October 14, 2018



BTS performs during a Korean cultural event as part of South Korean president official visit to France AFP/Getty Images October 14, 2018



South Korean President Moon Jae-in greets the members of South Korean pop group BTS during a Korean cultural event as part of South Korean President official visit in France AFP/Getty Images December 14, 2018



V, Suga, Jin, JungKook, Jimin, J-Hope and RM of BTS attend the 2018 Mnet Music Awards in Hong Kong Getty Images January 15, 2019



BTS attend the Seoul Music Awards Getty Images May 1, 2019



BTS perform onstage during the 2019 Billboard Music Awards Getty Images May 15, 2019



Kim Tae-hyung, Park Ji-min, Jungkook, Suga, Kim Seok-jin, RM and J-Hope of BTS perform on "Good Morning America" Getty Images May 1, 2019



South Korean boy band BTS poses in the press room with their awards during the 2019 Billboard Music Awards AFP/Getty Images December 6, 2019



BTS attends 102.7 KIIS FM's Jingle Ball 2019 Presented by Capital One at the Forum on December 6, 2019 in Los Angeles Getty Images December 31, 2019



BTS performs during the Times Square New Year's Eve 2020 Celebration in New York Getty Images January 26, 2020



BTS attends the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards Getty Images for The Recording A January 26, 2020



BTS perform with Lil Nax X AT the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards Getty Images Jan 29, 2020



South Korean boy band BTS with James Corden on The Late Late Shaw

BTS have since released the full video alongside their album drop, with the promo receiving mass approval from fans over its retro vibes.

The new album comes after the group concluded their three-year Love Yourself trilogy last August.
S tand-up comedian Ian Cognito has died after reportedly suffering a heart attack on stage in Oxfordshire.

Tributes poured in for the London-born star after his sad death was announced on Friday, the day after he died during a gig in Bicester.

Comedian Rufus Hound paid tribute to the late comic on Twitter, referring to him as one of the greats.

Ian Cognito has died, he wrote. That might not mean much to you if your knowledge of stand-up only extends to a screen but for anyone who ever sat down in a comedy club and saw him on a stage - this is a hard one.

He added: Puck grew up and now Puck is dead. We have lost one of the greats. S***.

Funnyman Jimmy Carr also paid tribute to Cognito as he told fans about the kindness he showed as he started his stand-up career.

Carr said: Veteran stand-up comedian Ian Cognito has died on-stage - literally. The audience thought it was part of the act. Died with his boots on. Thats commitment to comedy.

Ill never forget his kindness when I started out & how god d*** funny he was.

Other stars to send messages of condolences included Shappi Khorsandi who described the news as a sad shock.

Audience members told the BBC that he sat on a chair and laid back for five minutes with them thinking the silence was part of the act.
T hese days, there is no escaping superhero content. And why would you want to?

From the newly-released Captain Marvel (starring the pretty wonderful Brie Larson as the titular lead) to the action-packed trailer for Avengers: Endgame, fans of the Marvel franchise are far from short of big-screen excitement.

But the fun doesnt have to stop when you get home from the cinema, with plenty of content ready and waiting on Netflix for all superfans to watch from the comfort of their own home (or somebody elses homeor the tubeor a planeyou get it).

Here are the eight Marvel-lous shows and films to get stuck into

Daredevil: Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock / Nicole Rivelli/Netflix

Daredevil

Daredevil - Trailer - Netflix

Daredevil, based on the fictional superhero of the same name, first hit the platform back in 2015 and follows Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a blind lawyer who fights crime as a masked vigilante by night on the mean streets of New York Citys Hells Kitchen. Matt must soon learn how to balance both of his strong personas, using his powers for good but in two very different ways.

The good news? There are three whole seasons (30 episodes) on Netflix to watch. The bad news? It was cancelled last November.

Iron Fist

Iron Fist - Trailer - Netflix

After being reported missing, presumed dead, for 15 years, Danny Rand (Finn Jones) crops up again on the streets of New York City, determined to reclaim his familys business from Harold Meachum and his children Ward and Joy. When faced with adversity, Rand, who has a penchant for martial arts, has to choose between his allegiances to his family and his duties as superhero Iron Fist.

Despite being wildly popular with viewers (criticsnot so much), the show met an untimely end after season two when Netflix pulled the plug on it last October.

Jessica Jones

Marvel's Jessica Jones Trailer

Krysten Ritter leads Marvels female superhero drama, playing the titular role of a former superhero determined to make a life as a private investigator working for other humans with supernatural abilities. However, not every case presented to Jessica is one she wants to face, because some force her to confront who she really is and the demons in her past.

Its also worth noting that the programme deals sensitively with very prevalent issues, including attitudes to female sexuality, rape and mental health  specifically post-traumatic stress disorder.

A third series is set to air this year  but bad news (again) folks, it will be the last season because Netflix took the decision to cancel the show last month.

Luke Cage

Luke Cage - Trailer - Netflix

Luke Cage, played by Mike Colter, spawned his own show after his character was introduced in Jessica Jones. But this time, with him in the spotlight, Cages character appeared slightly different as he took charge of his surroundings. His superpower? Astonishing strength and unbreakable skin. But he soon has to learn how to draw the line between local hero and local villain when a threat faces him head on.

The show was cancelled in October 2018, one of the first of the Marvel clan to be booted off by Netflix.

The Defenders

Marvels The Defenders - Official Trailer 3 - Netflix

The miniseries stars the four Defenders, who form the eponymous superhero team. Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist and Daredevil are all on hand throughout New York City to fight crime and save the mean streets.

Because it was a limited series, it all dropped at once in August 2017  and couldnt get cancelled, as there was never any more to come.

The Punisher

TODO: define component type brightcove

Frank Castle, played by Jon Bernthal, is The Punisher  a vigilante aiming to fight evil and right wrongs in the criminal underworld who specifically seeks revenge on those responsible for the death of his family. Frank is faced with working out what he really wants in life when drawn into a murder mystery in the second series.

Alas, the show  which itself was a spin-off from Daredevil  was, you guessed it, cancelled in February 2019, a month after the second series dropped.

Wait a minute....

Before we get to the films to round off, well address the cancellation-shaped elephant in the room. While we dont know anything at all for sure, Netflix and Marvel Cinematic Universe are in the process of divorcing  lets call it Mexit  because MCUs owners, Disney, are parting ways with the streaming giants. This could be in anticipation of their own streaming service titled Disney+ due to land sometime this year.

The greatest ever moments from the Marvel franchise 1 /13 The greatest ever moments from the Marvel franchise 10. Nick Fury's offer This was the moment that proved Marvel fans should never walk out of the cinema until the very final credits have rolled  Samuel L Jackson appears in one final scene in 2008s Iron Man, proving an indication of what was to come in the franchise. You think you're the only superhero in the world? Mr. Stark, you've become part of a bigger universe. You just don't know it yet, Fury says, hinting at the universe Stark, and the viewer, were about to enter into. Its one of the shortest, but most significant scenes in the series. 9. Thor vs. Hulk Director Taika Waititi brought great energy, humour and vivacity to Thor: Ragnarok, creating one of the most enjoyable Marvel movies to date and proving the age old theory that a little Jeff Goldblum goes a long, long way. Its most compelling moment came during the arena clash between Thor and the Hulk. "We know each other. He's a friend from work," Thor says, before the pair proceed to smash seven shades out of each other. All you need to know about the movies humour, flair and epic scale is contained within the scene. Unmissable stuff. 8. Puny God The biggest mic-drop moment in the series comes from Mark Ruffalos Hulk, who silences Loki with incredible style during the Avengers. You are all of you beneath me. I am a god, you dull creature! Loki screams, before being picked up and flung to the ground. Puny god, the Hulk adds. Seeing Tom Hiddlestons villainous character thrown around like a rag doll was one of the most satisfying shots in the movie and one that fans arent likely to forget in a hurry. 7. Groot's Sacrifice Marvel might be known for its action and superhero bad-assery, but it knows how to deliver a knockout emotional blow too. The moment Groot selflessly sacrifices himself to shelter his friends in Guardians of the Galaxy is one of the most hard-hitting the studio has ever produced. The shot of smouldering ash and burned out twigs in the aftermath of the explosion is one of the most touching in all of the Marvel movies too. Many viewers found themselves welling up over the demise of a CGI tree voiced by Vin Diesel  something no other franchise could ever dream of achieving. Marvel 6. Killmonger Vs T-Challa This, the main showdown in Black Panther, helped make the film such a success, mixing gripping, claustrophobic combat with emotive performances. The sheer physicality of Michael B Jordans Erik Killmonger is pretty staggering, while Chadwick Bosemans T-Challa hides behind a shield and can not hope to match him. Forest Whitakers sacrifice allows Boseman to eventually survive, take leadership of Wakanda and fulfil his destiny as Black Panther. 5. Elevator escape While most of the Marvel series is epic in its scale, bringing expansive set piece after expansive set piece to life on screen, one of the best moments actually happened in the most constricted of spaces. This incredible scene from Captain America: The Winter Soldier sees Chris Evans hero take down assailants surrounding him in an elevator. The tension builds as the elevator descends, before Hydra members attempt to capture him to no avail. The tightly-choreographed sequence remains one of Evans finest moments. Marvel 4. Air Force One rescue This thrilling sequence from Iron Man 3 is a perfect example of the grand action sequences that Marvel does so well. As movie fans will remember, Iron Man pulls of this incredible mid air rescue operation after 13 passengers are flung out of Air Force One following an explosion. Using his "barrel of monkeys" technique, Robert Downey Jrs hero plucks them out of the air one by one, forming one of the highlights of the film. The scene showcases not only the filmmaker's vast creativity to conceive such thrilling set pieces, but also the execution to do them justice. 3. Avengers assemble Comic enthusiasts across the world let out a collective, involuntary squeal of joy back in 2012, when some of the most high-profile superheroes of all time came together to fight the Chitauri in Avengers Assemble. Black Widow, the Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and Hawkeye gather together in one incredible, sweeping shot, leaving an indelible image in fans memories forever. 2. Captain America vs Iron Man The showdown of all showdowns takes place in 2016s Captain America: Civil War. Friends become sworn enemies as the group splinters, leaving Captain America, Iron Man and Bucky to slug it out in one of the franchises most gripping sequences. Every punch is loaded with pathos and everything is seen with the knowledge of the heroes past experiences together, elevating this far above the majority of fight sequences in the series. 1. Airport battle Fans were bombarded with action in Captain America: Civil War, which brought together a huge group of superheroes more coherently than ever before. Captain America, Winter Soldier, Falcon, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Ant-Man, Iron Man, War Machine, Black Widow, Black Panther, Vision and Spider-Man all take part in the incredible series of set-pieces, proving that more is more, when done correctly. Team Cap and Team Tony go head to head in the breathtaking sequence, which delivered unforgettable moments, managed to do all characters on screen justice and form the highlight of the franchise to date. AP

We absolutely dont know if this is the reason Netflix are culling Marvel shows, but its a popular guess  and one that has softened the blow for many fans, who are sure the series will find a new home on the new platform. Rumours this could happen have been heightened in the last few days with reports that Marvel is already producing an animated show for Disney+ based on the What If? series.

Last December, Disney+ executive Kevin Mayer told The Hollywood Reporter that the possibility of the new platform reviving the axed content wasn't completely off the table. "They are very high-quality shows. We haven't yet discussed that, but I would say that's a possibility," he told the publication.

However, other reports have suggested that it was Netflix's decision to start cutting Marvel content because the streaming giant never actually owned a stake in the shows  it only paid a hefty price to license them.

Right, back to the binge.

Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange - Trailer

Well-respected neurosurgeon Stephen Strange, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is changed forever by a car accident which leaves him on a path of healing and with a gritty determination to fix his broken hands.

As he goes on this new journey, he discovers magic powers and the ability to tap into alternate dimensions. But his quest leads him to become embroiled with sorcerer Kaecilius and the mystical Ancient One text, which takes him on a completely different journey.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age Of Ultron - Trailer 2

The hit flick followed the Avengers crew  Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye  and so many more to fight against artificial intelligence Ultron who is determined to destroy humanity.
By The Saker

April 11, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - Ever since Mr. MAGA made it to the White House, I have been awed by the level of sheer stupidity and, frankly, the immorality of this administration. Obama was almost as incompetent and evil, but Trump truly brought about a qualitative change in what we could loosely refer to as the average White House IQ. The best thing I can honestly say about Trump is that stupid can be good. Alas, it can also be extremely dangerous, and that is what is happening now. Just check out these recent headlines:

I have to admit that this last one is my favorite, really! How cool is that? The US threatens a NATO member state with war (that is what devastating/serious consequences means in diplotalk).

Pompeo (surely one of the most evil and delusional idiots in the Trump Administration) was probably trying to emulate the role-model of this entire Administration, Bibi Netanyahu, who once even threatened *New Zealand* with war (well, kinda, I know, they did not really mean real war, but they did use war language, which, for a politician, is irresponsible at best).

This would all be very funny if not for the fact that it is pretty obvious that the USA is already engaged in a covert military/terrorist campaign against Venezuela and that the fact that the Maduro government has successfully foiled the Guaido revolution (at least so far) only further enrages the likes of Pompeo. Besides, the fact that the US military does not appear to have the stomach for a ground invasion does not at all mean that they cannot trigger a Kosovo or Libya type of bombing and missile campaign against Venezuela.

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Will the covert war against Venezuela soon turn into an overt one?

Those who now claim that three Russian S-300 air defense battalions (equipped with the export version of the S-300VM  the Antey-2500) or even thousands of Russian-made MANPADS can stop the USA simply dont understand warfare in general and air-defense operations specifically. What these folks do is to take a few figures about, in this case, the theoretical capabilities of the Venezuelan S-300s and then compute how many aircraft/missiles these systems could shoot down. That is not how air defenses work.

[Sidebar: I wont write a detailed explanation about this topic here. My friend Andrei Martyanov can do that much better than I, but I will just say that to be truly effective, any air defense system has to be 1) multi-level and 2) integrated. Furthermore, such pseudo-analyses as mentioned above always overlooks the importance of all other factors besides the number and characteristics of the missiles themselves. But in reality, electronic warfare, network integration, signal processing, combat management systems, etc. play an absolutely crucial role in air defenses. Even deceptive measures (such as inflatable tanks or wooden aircraft) can play a central role in the outcome (as it did in Kosovo and Iraq). The same goes for offensive air operations, of course. Thus no evaluation of a possible US air attack on Venezuela can be made without analyzing US capabilities, training, procedures, etc. The truth is that what military experts call bean counting is what only pretend-experts engage in. From a military point of view this is entirely useless and futile]

The sad truth is that absent a multi-level integrated air defense system like Russia has, air defense operations typically turn into a simple numbers game: X number of defensive missiles vs. Y number of attackers. Keep in mind that effective EW (especially SEAD) will *dramatically* reduce the effectiveness of any air defenses. The same applies to whatever number of Su-30 or even Su-35s Russia might deliver to Venezuela.

Now, look at a map and see for yourself: Venezuela is literally in the USAs backyard (at least in military terms), and the US can bring HUGE numbers of whatever it wants (missiles, bombs, SEAD aircraft, etc.) to the fight. Not only that, but the Venezuelans lack any real counter-attack options, which means that Uncle Shmuel can fire off as many missiles as he wants for weeks and months without ever having to worry about a counter-strike.

It is only political factors protecting Venezuela from an overt US attack, not military factors. The latter are not irrelevant, of course, and I discussed them here. In military terms, Venezuela is a sitting duck which might be able to deter a ground operation, but which can do nothing against US standoff striking capabilities, at least not against a determined US effort. Against a pretend-strike, like what the Israelis and the USA did in Syria, the Venezuelans could probably meaningfully degrade the number of US bombs/missiles reaching their targets. But that is all they can reasonably hope for.

What about Syria?

Well, the AngloZionists sure lost the first phase of this war, but they remain unwilling to come to terms with that fact. So now they have defined-down their objectives from a new Middle-East or the animal Assad must go to we will never allow peace to break out in Syria. Not much of a strategy, but thats is good enough for the Israelis, and thats all that really matters to Trump or his masters. I dont want to cover Syria in detail right now, but the simple fact that Pompeo is issuing threats against Turkey really says it all. The Turkish reaction was quite predictable: Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay declared that The United States must choose. Does it want to remain Turkeys ally or risk our friendship by joining forces with terrorists to undermine its NATO allys defense against its enemies?

Feel the love?!

Yes, these are only words, and Turkey remains under NATO/CENTCOM occupation (CENTCOM, which the Iranians have  quite logically- just declared a terrorist organization!). Still, between the S-400 vs. F-35, the Kurdish issue, the CIA continuous support for Fethullah Gulen or the fact that the (US-controlled) EU never accepted Turkey, all create a potentially explosive background which even a small spark could ignite.

It is equally clear that both the US and Israel will continue to conduct airstrikes, assassinations, support for Takfiri terrorist groups, etc., in Syria for the foreseeable future. Trumps famous withdrawal from Syria will end up like all his promises: tossed down the memory hole. As for the Israelis, it is absolutely vital (for psychological and ideological reasons) for them to continue to subvert not only Syria but the entire Middle-East. Furthermore, we should *never* forget the Israeli end-goal: to use the USA to destroy any country daring to resist Israeli aggression. On top of that list, there is, of course, Iran.

Simply put: there will be no peace in the Middle-East as long as Palestine is occupied by a gang of racist thugs whose contempt for international law or even basic norms of civilized behavior is as total as their total reliance on deception and violence to subjugate the region and, eventually, our entire planet. Of course, Russia and China will help, as will Iran, but that is unlikely to be enough to achieve a lasting peace (if anything, the latest Israeli statements about annexing even more of Palestine are an indicator of more bad things to come).

The truth is that while the Empire does not have the power to break the will of the Syrian people, it has plenty enough strength left to prevent peace from breaking out in Syria.

Or Iran?

Who knows? It is possible to predict the actions of a rational actor. Rational implies a minimal degree of intelligence and sanity. The problem is that we cannot be sure about the intelligence of the folks currently remaining on duty at the Pentagon while we can be absolutely sure that the Israelis are completely insane and delusional (as racists always are). So far, the Israelis have failed to get the US to attack Iran. Clearly, there were some intelligent and sane people at the Pentagon (in the tradition of Admiral Fallon) but how sure can we be that by now they have not all been purged (or corrupted) by the Neocon regime?

[Sidebar: when I speak of the stupidity of the US leaders, I dont mean that as an insult. I mean that in a diagnostic sense: these folks are simply not very bright. Check out Dmitry Orlovs excellent Is the USS Ship of Fools Taking on Water? for a very good discussion of the increasingly important role stupidity is playing in the actions of the Empire. And Orlov is not the only one thinking this. By now most Russians are pretty convinced that stupidity and gross incompetence is what best characterizes US decision-making. If it wasnt for the very real risks of war, the Russians would spend their time laughing at the cluelessness of the indispensable nations leaders]

When I look at the fact that, at least so far, the US has not dared overt military aggression against Venezuela, I cannot imagine anybody at the Pentagon or CENTCOM having the stomach for a war against Iran. But, again, I am assuming intelligence and sanity, which applies neither to Mr. MAGA nor to the Israelis.

The DPRK? The Ukraine? Libya? Country X?

In strategic analysis, one should never say never, but I submit that the chances of a full-scale US military attack on the DPRK, in the Ukraine, in Libya or against Country X (replace X with whatever country you like) are slim. Frankly, that train has already left the station. Of course, Country X is vague enough to remain a possibility at least in theory (maybe some new tiny Grenada can be identified to, in Michael Ledeens immortal words throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business (after all, that is what this great American hero  Reagan  did after the US had to run from Lebanon), but unless the Trump Administration reaches a new level of incompetence, arrogance, and insanity, I dont see where Uncle Shmuel might decide to restore democracy next.

Conclusion: Venezuela still in the cross-hairs or already under attack?

When dealing with a terminally dysfunctional administration like the Trump Administration (just look at how often people get sacked or resign from it! Check here for the latest case), we have to assume that it is capable of the worst, most illogical, and even catastrophically self-defeating actions. An overt attack on Venezuela would undoubtedly fall into this category. We, therefore, need to set aside all the many statements made by various US officials (whether threatening or appeasing) and look at what the US is actually already doing. When we do that, we see that the US is already engaged in warfare against Venezuela, even if this warfare is mostly covert. Furthermore, this covert warfare has failed, at least so far. However, and even more worrisome, the US has paid very little, if any, political price for its completely illegal aggression against Venezuela. So the real question is not whether the US will decide to launch a full-scale overt military aggression against Venezuela but whether there are any factors which would inhibit the US from crossing the deniability threshold?

I can think of at least one such factor: the inevitable blow-back against any Yankee military intervention in the Latin American public opinion and the subsequent and potentially severe consequences for US puppets (a la Bolsonaro for example) and various comprador regimes (in Colombia for example) on the continent. Other than that, my biggest hope is that the debacle in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere will be sufficient to persuade US officials that one more military disaster would not yield any benefits to their interests.

The clock is running and the Neocon gang in the White House has to decide either way  blame it all on somebody else (the Venezuelan people, the Russians, the Chinese, Hezbollah, Iran, Martian extraterrestrials, etc.) and leave or try an overt military intervention and hope that things go better than they always do.

What do you think? Will the Trump Administration go to war and, if yes, where?

The Saker

PS: quick Ukrainian update: neither Poroshenko nor Zelenskii have anything resembling a real program (albeit Zelenskii just released a 10-point plan which is simply silly, no point in discussing it now). Since both of them will be US puppets, this is not a big problem: the course of the Ukraine will not change as a result of this election anyway. Poroshenkos campaign in weak, he is trying to cater to the Russian speaking population (he even goes as far as sometimes speaking in Russian, which is technically illegal for him!), but that is way too late by now: everybody hates him and the regime he represents. Zelenskii, in contrast, has a very dynamic and effective campaign  mostly videos  in which he says stuff which Poroshenko could never say. Most observers, including myself, think that since the 2nd round of voting is a competition of anti-ratings (negative perception) Zelenskii will win. Time is running out for Poroshenko, he better come up with something dramatic, or he needs to run. As for Yulia Vladimirovna, she clearly is in discussions with the Zelenskii people to see if they can form a political coalition in the Rada. I believe that these negotiations will be kept secret until the 2nd tour, at which point a coalition of Zelenskii supporting factions will be created in the Rada.

This article was originally published by " The Saker " -

==See Also==

Rand Paul to Pompeo: You do not have permission for war with Iran

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April 11, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - EXIT NATO! was the glaring title on a huge screen greeting the several hundred participants of the Anti-NATO Conference in Florence, Italy, on 7 April 2019. Officially it was called The International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, sponsored by Global Research of Canada and the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). I had the privilege to attend this important forum.

Following the EXIT NATO poster, was another huge slide decorating the conference wall proclaiming that NATO, as a reward for all their work for Peace, should be rewarded with the Peace Nobel Prize. No doubt, nuclear armament and eventually nuclear wars to be fought by NATO  by whom else  will make the world a safer place. Wars are actually good for Peace. They are also good for economics, but they are particularly good for Peace.

Im not kidding you  these are declarations one can read  and has been able to read since practically 9/11, in such prominent Truth News papers like the Washington Post and the NYT. So, why not the Peace Prize to NATO? It wouldnt make much difference. Considering the track record of the Nobel Prize Committee, it would fall right into place.

Other than that, the conference basically outlined the atrocities committed by NATO, its associate and crony terrorist armies, ISIS, Al Qada, Al Nusra and so on, changing names for revolving terrorists, recruited and trained by the CIA and funded by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, and, of course the US directly or through her many State Department funded and subsidiary NGOs, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and many others. And, of course, not to forget a prominent funder of terrorism, Turkey, who is now trying to make a smiling face to Russia and the east, even flirting with the idea of entering the club of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); on the one hand purchasing Russian military defense systems  the S-400  and at the same time US fighter planes F35, dancing on as many weddings simultaneously as they can. Who would trust Turkey under Erdogan? Turkey also still hosts one of the most strategic and most dangerous nuclear-equipped NATO bases literally between east and west.

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The Conference recalled the Cold War. By now everybody knows  really?  well, for those who dont  that the so-called Cold War was one of the best propagated and fakest news of the 20th Century. Its a brilliant idea that sprung out of the McCarthy Nazi-era  like NATO itself  to arm the US to the teeth, maximizing profits of the military industrial complex, under the pretext of halting the advancement of the Soviet Union into just liberated western Europe, just liberated from Hitlers Nazi-Germany. Never mind that western Europe has been saved by the Soviet Union who lost 25-30 million people and basically their transport and production infrastructure. Yes, it was not the so-called allies  US, UK and France  they came in last, when the bulk of the job was already done by what is today Russia. But, of course, no western history book would tell you the truth. In fact, it must be said here too that the US funded Hitlers war against the Soviet Union with money channeled from the FED, through Wall Street banks, and eventually through the Rothschild dominated Bank for International Settlement (BIS), located in Basel, Switzerland, right at the border to Germany, from where it was easy to pass the money on to the Reichsbank  Hitlers Central Bank. Yes- thats how the US was already then dancing on various fiestas at the same time; on the one hand bombing Germany and, on the other, financing Germanys war against what the US already then perceived as an archenemy  The Red Scare  the Soviet Union. Well, these acts of treason then were the precursors of NATO today.

Anything socialist is evil for the US, still today. Trump, himself, and his minion clowns  Pompeo, Bolton and Pence  are lambasting Venezuela and Cuba for being evil and destructive socialist countries and that socialism will not be tolerated anywhere by the falling empire  sorry, falling it is  of the United States of America.

The other purpose of the Cold War farce was to make the Europeans believe that they were under a constant threat of a Soviet invasion, that they had to arm themselves also to the teeth  imagine war-recovering Europe having to spend their money on arms for no use!  and, of course, most of these weapons had to be bought  yes, you guessed it  from the US military industrial complex meaning more profit for the war oligarchs. The Anglo-media giants even created a virtual barrier between western free Europe and the bad-bad Red Scare, the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain. Yes, the Iron Curtain; children in school were indoctrinated to be aware that the enemy is hiding behind the Iron Curtain, and that the enemy always comes from the East. Hilarious, when you think back. At that time (almost) everybody believed it.

And the third, or perhaps first objective of the Cold War, was to block the Soviet Union from developing a viable and autonomous economy with which they could thrive, as most socialist countries do, until they are boycotted, punished and financially sanctioned into suffocation by the west. These illegal financial manipulations with and within sovereign countries economies, are, of course, illegal by any standards of international laws, laws that have become meaningless in the light of US / NATO power, scary nuclear power. These acts of financial and human rights high crimes are only possible because of the all dominating, fraudulent US-imposed  and NATO-protected  western monetary system.

The NATO-driven Cold War, a constant nuclear threat towards the Soviet Union, was intended to force Russia also to arm for their defense, instead of being able to use their economys added value to rebuild their devastated country. The USSR was never a threat to Europe. There was never an intention of the Soviet Union to invade western Europe. The same today, we are being made believe that Russia wants to invade Europe. Thats why NATO needs to build all these military bases at the door step to Russia. Russia is by far the largest country, territory-wise, in the world, they dont need to add more land. Historically, neither Russia or China have a record of expansionism.

In the end, the NATO-led Cold War managed to dismantle the Soviet Union by buying some corrupt Soviet leaders, so that the new Russia, whose socialist system just was made to collapse, unprepared with legislation for what was to come  privatization by fire-sale of their entire economy. Like vultures, the financial institutions, IMF, World Bank, agents of the FED, descended on Moscow to literally steel by indebting whatever had any value. This misery still has not entirely abetted, as the Russian Central Bank was restructured, following the image of the FED  today, under President Putin, much has changed and was reformed; however, the financial sector is still heavily invaded by the Atlantists  or what you may also call the Fifth Columnists. And, of course, even those are protected by NATO as NATO issues threats, nobody knows from where they come, but you know who executes them, in case of

The Florence Anti-NATO Conference also recalled some of the most abject killing sprees of NATO in its 70 years of existence, the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine  the Maidan massacre followed by the so-called Ukrainian civil war  and the crowning of sorts, the ten-year war on Yugoslavia, the total destruction of Yugoslavia, with the final blow 1999, the merciless bombing of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. Why Yugoslavia? Lets dwell just a moment on this war of cruel destruction and killing because it is so typical for Pentagon-driven wars of annihilation. Yugoslavia, a socialist country, in the 1970s and 80s under Maoist President Tito, had a prosperous economy, much more so than the rest of Europe. The US-dominated west cannot let a socialist economy flourish. Other countries, especially stagnating western Europe, could get ideas.

Remember, socialism is evil. So, with what is today called the Balkanization  cut into pieces  of Yugoslavia was the old-old tactic of divide to conquer, as well as by creating internal chaos, the western powers kept control of the people, and eventually NATO was able to advance closer and ever closer to the Russian border, by occupying former Yugoslav republics with NATO bases (Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Kosovo is waiting in the wings), in addition to the further expansion east to Romania, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, not to mention the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

This expansion east, ever closer to Moscow, is a flagrant breach of a promise made by the allied forces. In 1991, then German Foreign Minister Genscher promised Russian President Gorbachev that NATO would not move one inch further east than Germany. In fact, he assured Gorbachev that NATO would not move into what before the German unification was Eastern Germany. This promise was unfortunately never recorded in writing, and Gorbachev was miserably betrayed. As we know by now, a betrayal by the west is very normal.In the meantime,12 more NATO bases east of Germany, including in former East-Germany, were built.

In their 70 years of existence, US-NATO, allied and proxy forces, as well as mercenaries, have killed between 20 and 25 million people around the globe, in wars and conflicts  in the eternal war against terror  that was justified by self-inflicted 9/11, the start to the final phase of the PNAC  Plan for a New American Century  to reach Full Spectrum Dominance.

Wars have a cost  a financial, economic and a social cost. The US official military budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 is US$ 700 billion; for FY 2019 Trump proposes US$ 750. If approved it would be a 40% increase in the last 9 years. But thats not all. This is just the officially published figure. The real cost for the war, defense and security apparatus to which also the opaque CIA and associated secret services count is well over a trillion dollars, perhaps as much as US$1.5 trillion per year.

The US has currently about one million military personnel stationed in 175 countries around the globe. The Pentagon maintains about a thousand military bases in more than 100 countries. The war cost, in currently seven war theatres, is prohibitive  medical costs for veterans, for social services to returning veterans  and we are not talking about the cost of off-battle ground lives; i.e., by ever-mounting suicide rates. The Veteran Administration released a study that covered suicides from 1999 to 2010, showing that roughly 22 veterans were dying by suicide per day, or one every 65 minutes.

The reality is most likely a much higher figure  and the despair and human depression from anxieties related to the never-ending wars has increased exponentially in the last 9 years  more suicides, more desperation, more broken families, entire generations of kids with fathers at war. This cost cannot be put in figures of dollars and cents. Its a social cost that bears its toll in years, perhaps generations from now.

The US spends per capita ten times more than the rest of the world together on military / war expenses. President Trump requests European NATO countries to increase their military budget by contributing more to NATO, first up to 2% of GDP, threatening he may decide to withdraw NATO from Europe, if Europe does not comply with his request, still making believe that NATO is a defensive force protecting Europe  from what and from whom? Good-bye NATO. This is the moment to call Trumps bluff.

But NATO  the Trans-Atlantic Treaty Organization  has also gone overseas to Latin America. NATO has since 2013 a Cooperation Agreement with Colombia, where the US has 5 military bases which will automatically convert into NATO bases. NATO is also negotiating with Brazils new Nazi-leader, Bolsonaro, to enter Brazil, and, as such being a threat and a potential attack force to topple the Venezuelan democratically elected socialist government. Washington makes no secret  they want Venezuelas hydrocarbon resources, the worlds largest reserves, gold and other minerals of which Venezuela is rich. NATO is perfect to do the dirty job.

But it gets worse, this Trump clown or the masters behind him, had recently the audacity to ask for a European military budget increase to 4% of GDP  or else. Yes. Lets decide for else. Good riddens, NATO.

The overall NATO budget is well over a trillion dollars per year  yes, per year. And that is  people of Europe, people of the world!  that is to finance a killing machine that bulldozes countries into the ground with bombs and tanks, that kill indiscriminately civilians and other countries defensive military, countries that have never done any harm to the United States, nor to Europe which follows the Washington mandate like a bunch of vassals, what Europe has become.

Imagine what could be done with more than a trillion dollars or euros per year in terms of building up education, health services, public infrastructure, and other social services and expand these services to developing countries, to those very countries that are now bombarded mercilessly by NATO! This, dear People of Europe, is your tax money. Do you want it to be spent killing people around the world for Washingtons world hegemony? NATO does not protect you. NATO has been designed as an aggressive force. You were just never told. But look out of the window, the window of your safe space, and you will see the squandering of your tax money.

NATO is invading the space of Russia and China, countries that are seeking friendly relations with the rest of the world, they are seeking a multi-polar world, but encounter instead a response of aggression. NATO is preventing the natural, namely friendly relations and trading as equals within the huge Continent Eurasia, of which Europe has been artificially separated as a continent. This tremendous landmass Eurasia, includes also the entire Middle East and connects to Africa. This enormous mass of land and people and resources does not need the west, the west called America.

Wouldnt it be wise for countries and people of Eurasia to just live sovereign lives, with friendly interactions, trading as equals not with a one-upmanship as is currently the norm for trading between the rich OECD nations dominating the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the rest of the world- which depends on trade but is always on the losing end?

One more point that needs to be understood. Europe, the European Union as it was conceived and is limping along today, has never been the idea of Europeans, but was born during WWII in the heads of the CIA, then transplanted into some willing European heads and then defended by NATO  the unifying force. Europe has no Constitution, only a number of non-binding accords, like Maastricht and Lisbon  but no Constitution that holds it together, that outlines a common vision in defense, in economic development, in monetary policy. The European Union results in a bunch of countries, some even hostile to each other. They have a common currency, the Euro, without even having a common economic base and development objective. This currency, forged as the little brother of the US-dollar, equally is nothing but fiat money, no backing whatsoever; this currency is not sustainable. So, the currency barely 20 years old, will eventually collapse or fade, and so will the European Union. It hasnt happened yet, because NATO is holding it together, because Brussels is nothing but a puppet of the Pentagon. It is Washington through the Pentagon, and through NATO that is running Europe.

People of Europe, is it that what you want? Your tax money spent killing people and destroying countries around the globe, and having lost all independence, autonomy as a country, as well as monetary sovereignty  by being run by a military killing machine, called NATO?

Its time to kill NATO, rather than being killed by NATO. Exit NATO now. Its time for NEXIT.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. - He is the author of

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Welcoming the delegation, PM Phuc said Vietnam pays special attention to the environment and considers this a big issue in national development. The aspects mentioned by the delegation during this visit are practical for Vietnam, he said, expressing his hope that their trip will help strengthen the friendship and cooperation between the two countries.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) receives Tadashi Yamamura, who leads the delegation of Japanese environmental experts, in Hanoi on April 11th (Photo: VNA)

Dr. Tadashi Yamamura, an environmental specialist of the United Nations who leads the delegation, highlighted the Japanese side plans to install modern equipment using bio-nanotechnology on the bed of the To Lich River in Hanoi to help clean up this waterway.

He added they have made consideration in two years before proposing this idea, voicing his belief that the technology will usefully assist Vietnam in wastewater treatment.

Valuing the Japanese sides technology, PM Phuc said the two countries are strategic partners in many fields with bilateral relations flourishing in multiple spheres, and wastewater treatment is a highly potential cooperation area.

He welcomed the Japanese sides proposal of sponsoring the pilot treatment of water pollution on part of the To Lich River and the West Lake by using new technologies, and described this as a good idea that matches the Vietnamese Party and Governments policy on promoting environmental protection in the national industrialisation and modernisation.

The Government leader also appreciated their mobilisation of funding from private sources for this ideas realisation.

He asked the Japanese experts and the Japan-Vietnam environmental improvement joint stock company (JVE) to work with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment and the Hanoi Peoples Committee to decide on the implementation.

PM Phuc expressed his belief that with its experience, the Japanese side will be successful in the wastewater treatment in Hanoi, adding that it will be a good example in this field for other localities to follow./.
By Caitlin Johnstone

April 12, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - Julian Assange sits in a jail cell today after being betrayed by the Ecuadorian government and his home country of Australia. A British judge named Michael Snow has found the WikiLeaks founder guilty of violating bail conditions, inserting himself into the annals of history by labeling Assange a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interest. So that tells you how much of a fair and impartial legal proceeding we can expect to see from the British judicial process on this matter.

But the real reason that Assange has been surrendered by the Ecuadorian government, imprisoned by the British government, and ignored by the Australian government is not directly related to any of those governments, but to that of the United States of America. An unsealed indictment from the Trump administrations District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, accompanied by an extradition request, charges Assange with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer during Chelsea Mannings 2010 leak of government documents exposing US war crimes.

This charge is premised on a fraudulent and manipulative distortion of reality, and you may be one hundred percent certain of it. Let me explain.

You can be absolutely certain that this charge is bogus because it isnt based on any new information. The facts of the case have not changed, the information hasnt changed, only the narrative has changed. In 2010 the United States opened a secret grand jury in Virginia to investigate whether Assange and WikiLeaks could be prosecuted for the publication of the Manning leaks, and then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Obama administration was conducting an active, ongoing criminal investigation into the matter. The Trump administration has not turned up any new evidence that the Obama administration was unable to find in this active, ongoing criminal investigation (US government surveillance has surely acquired some new tricks since 2010, but time travel isnt one of them), and indeed it does not claim to have turned up any new evidence.

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There's a huge myth being misreported about today's indictment of Assange. The claim that Assange tried to help Manning circumvent a password to cover her tracks isn't new. The Obama DOJ knew about it since 2011, but chose not to prosecute him. Story on this soon.  Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 11, 2019

Theres a huge myth being misreported about todays indictment of Assange, journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted today. The claim that Assange tried to help Manning circumvent a password to cover her tracks isnt new. The Obama DOJ knew about it since 2011, but chose not to prosecute him. Story on this soon.

Holder chose not to prosecute Assange based on the same info Trump DOJ cited, Greenwald added.

The weakness of the US charge against Assange is shocking, tweeted NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The allegation he tried (and failed?) to help crack a password during their world-famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade: it is the count Obamas DOJ refused to charge, saying it endangered journalism.

This is all information that the Obama administration had access to (journalist Tim Shorrock observed that the alleged 2010 correspondence between Assange and Manning looks like it came straight from NSA surveillance of the two), yet it chose not to do what the Trump administration is currently doing because it would endanger press freedoms. This means that nothing has changed since that time besides (A) the fact that there is now a more overtly tyrannical administration in place, and (B) the fact that the public has been paced into accepting the prosecution of Assange by years of establishment propaganda.

Last year, after it was revealed that the Trump administration was seeking Assanges arrest, Greenwald wrote the following:

The Obama DOJ  despite launching notoriously aggressive attacks on press freedoms  recognized this critical principle when it came to WikiLeaks. It spent years exploring whether it could criminally charge Assange and WikiLeaks for publishing classified information. It ultimately decided it would not do so, and could not do so, consistent with the press freedom guarantee of the First Amendment. After all, the Obama DOJ concluded, such a prosecution would pose a severe threat to press freedom because there would be no way to prosecute Assange for publishing classified documents without also prosecuting the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian and others for doing exactly the same thing.

The weakness of the US charge against Assange is shocking. The allegation he tried (and failed?) to help crack a password during their world-famous reporting has been public for nearly a decade: it is the count Obama's DOJ refused to charge, saying it endangered journalism. https://t.co/xdTQ8xauB0  Edward Snowden (@Snowden) April 11, 2019

Nothing has changed since 2010 apart from a more thoroughly propagandized populace and a more depraved US government, which means that this new charge that the Trump administration issued in December 2017 is based on nothing other than a diminished respect for press freedoms and an increased willingness to crush them. This makes it fraudulent and illegitimate, and the precedent that is being set by it should be rejected and opposed by everyone in the world who claims to support the existence of a free press which is capable of holding power to account.

So what are we left with? Were left with the US government filing criminal charges against a journalist (and Assange is indisputably a journalist) for protecting his source and encouraging his source to obtain more material, both of which are things that journalists do all the time.

While the indictment against Julian Assange disclosed today charges a conspiracy to commit computer crimes, the factual allegations against Mr. Assange boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source, said Assange lawyer Barry J Pollack in a statement today. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.

There are parts of the indictment that are clearly designed to criminalize things journalists routinely do, Greenwald told CNN. Part of the accusation is that [Assange] encouraged Chelsea Manning to provide him with more documents than the original batch that she gave him, which is something that as a journalist Ive done many times with my sources, that journalists do every day. They say Oh thanks for this document, maybe you could get me this? They also say that he helped her to essentially cover her tracks by giving her advice about how to get this information without being detected. The only thing in the indictment, and its very vague, is a suggestion that he tried to help her circumvent a password; it didnt seem to be successful, but its unclear whether that was designed to get documents or to simply help her cover her tracks. But either way its clearly a threat to the First Amendment, because it criminalizes core journalistic functions.

In an article for Rolling Stone titled Why the Assange Arrest Should Scare Reporters, journalist Matt Taibbi writes that The meatier parts of the indictment speak more to normal journalistic practices.

Reporters have extremely complicated relationships with sources, especially whistleblower types like Manning, who are often under extreme stress and emotionally vulnerable, Taibbi writes. At different times, you might counsel the same person both for and against disclosure. Its proper to work through all the reasons for action in any direction, including weighing the publics interest, the effect on the sources conscience and mental health, and personal and professional consequences. For this reason, placing criminal penalties on a prosecutors interpretation of such interactions will likely put a scare into anyone involved with national security reporting going forward.

Why the Assange arrest should scare reporters: column https://t.co/V99gBokkXz  Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 11, 2019

The Espionage Act has not at this time been employed to prosecute Assange as many have speculated it might, and the computer crimes hes been charged with carry a maximum sentence of five years. But this does not mean that further far more serious charges cannot be added once Assange is imprisoned on American soil, especially after his guilt in the Manning leaks has been made official government dogma following the conspiracy conviction.

In my opinion this charging Assange with a lower-level crime (not espionage) is a trick that would allow the UK to extradite him to the US with no threat of capital punishment only to have US prosecutors do what they always do: pile on charges, tweeted Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Liberty Report, referring to assurances sought by the UK and Ecuador that Assange would not face the death penalty if extradited to the United States for the conspiracy charge.

Either way, this is a cataclysmic threat to press freedoms, and the time to act is now. The US governments arbitrarily gifting itself the right to use fraudulent distortions to imprison anyone in the world who publishes facts about it will chill any attempts to do so in the future, and poses a far greater threat to press freedoms than anything weve seen in our lives. Anyone who sits idly by while this happens is signing over the sovereign right of every human being on this planet to hold power to account, and anyone calling themselves a journalist who does anything other than unequivocally oppose this move is confessing that they are a state propagandist. This is an intolerable plunge toward Orwellian dystopia, and is an assault on human dignity itself.

Its time to shake the earth and refuse to let them cross this line. Enough is enough.

Roar, humans. Roar.

Help Julian NOW! 1) FOLLOW/share widely@Wikileaks@DefendAssange 2) RALLY

*UK court hearings

*Global Rallies 5) PRESSURE Politicians

*No US Extradition

*Abide by @UN Decision 6) MONITOR Media

Correct disinfo with FACTS 7) DONATE Legal DefenceFundhttps://t.co/xTZ8dgPjzS  Mrs. Christine Assange (@AssangeMrs) April 11, 2019

Caitlin's articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast, throwing some money into her hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying her book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. https://caitlinjohnstone.com

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Will Junta-Mastermind, John Brennan, Ever Face the Music? By Mike Whitney April 12, 2019 " Information Clearing House " - The Great Russia Deception all began with John Brennan. It was Brennan who reported contacts between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign, just as it was Brennan who first referred the case to former FBI Director James Comey. It was also Brennan who hand-picked the analysts who stitched together the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that Putin and the Russian government aspired to helpTrumps election chances.) And it was Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation. At every turn, Brennan was there. He got the ball rolling, he pulled all the right strings, he whipped up a mood of public hysteria, and he excoriated the president at every opportunity. For those who want to know where Russiagate began, look no further than John Brennan. Heres a bit of what Brennan told the House Intelligence Committee during his testimony in 2017: We were uncovering information and intelligence about interactions and contacts between U.S. persons and the Russians. And as we came upon that, we would share it with the bureau. Brennans statement clarifies his role in the operation, he was providing the raw intelligence to Comey and Comey was reluctantly following up with surveillance, wiretaps, leaks to the media, and the placing of confidential informants in the Trump campaign. It was a tag-team combo, but Brennan was the primary instigator, theres no doubt about that. And lets not forget that Comey didnt really want to participate in Brennans hairbrain scheme to smear candidate Trump. At first he balked, which is why Brennan leaned on Senate Majority leader Harry Reid to twist Comeys arm. Heres a little background from Tom Fitton at artvoice.com: Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? Get our FREE Daily Newsletter Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly believed then-Obama CIA Director Brennan was feeding him information about alleged links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in order to make public accusations: According to Russian Roulette, by Yahoo! News chief investigative correspondent Michael Isikoff and David Corn Brennan contacted Reid on Aug. 25, 2016, to brief him on the state of Russias interference in the presidential campaign. Brennan briefed other members of the so-called Gang of Eight, but Reid is the only who took direct action. Two days after the briefing, Reid wrote a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey asserting that evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trumps presidential campaign continues to mount. Reid called on Comey to investigate the links thoroughly and in a timely fashion. Reid saw Brennans outreach as a sign of urgency, Isikoff and Corn wrote in the book. Reid also had the impression that Brennan had an ulterior motive. He concluded the CIA chief believed the public needed to know about the Russian operation, including the information about the possible links to the Trump campaign. According to the book, Brennan told Reid that the intelligence community had determined that the Russian government was behind the hack and leak of Democratic emails and that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind it. Brennan also told Reid that there was evidence that Russian operatives were attempting to tamper with election results. Indeed, on August 27, 2016, Reid wrote a letter to Comey accusing President Trumps campaign of colluding with the Russian government. (The John Brennan-Harry Reid Collusion to Get Trump, artvoice.com) So Brennan fed Reid a load of malarkey and the credulous senator swallowed it hook, line and sinker. It may sound incredible now, given the results of the Mueller report, but thats what happened. Heres more of Brennans testimony to Congress: I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals and it raised questions in my mind, again, whether or not the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals. Okay, so Brennan says he gathered information and intelligence that revealed contacts between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign. What information? What intelligence? What officials? Brennan has never identified anyone and never produced a lick of evidence to back up any of his claims, and yet, his testimony was taken as gospel truth. Why? Why would anyone in their right mind trust anything Brennan has to say? Hasnt Brennan lied to Congress in the past? Didnt the CIAs inspector general find that Brennans agents improperly spied on US Senate staffers? Hasnt Brennan defended the use of torture and promoted Obamas homicidal drone program? Hasnt Brennan revealed his personal animus and vitriolic hatred for Donald Trump many, many times before. So why would anyone trust what he has to say? It makes no sense. The man has a major credibility problem which is a polite way of saying hes a serial liar. Heres more from Brennan: I dont know whether or not such collusion  and thats your term, such collusion existed. I dont know. But I know that there was a sufficient basis of information and intelligence that required further investigation by the bureau to determine whether or not U.S. persons were actively conspiring, colluding with Russian officials. Got that? So Brennan had zero hard evidence of anything, but he thought that a few scratchy phone intercepts were sufficient for the FBI to hector, harass and spy on the GOP nominee for president of the United States. Can you see how ridiculous this is? No one elected John Brennan to anything, and yet, he arbitrarily decided that he had the right to sex up the intelligence so Comey and Clapper would do his bidding and try to bring down Trump. This is the type of thing youd expect to see in a police state not America. We are told by the Guardian that: GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBIs Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the principal whistleblower. (Guardian) This might be true, but I seriously doubt it. I suspect the Guardian is just covering for Brennan because they know that his ridiculous claims of contacts between Russian officials and persons in the Trump campaign are complete, utter nonsense. There were no contacts between Russian officials and the Trump campaign becauseas the Mueller report states there was no coordination, no cooperation, and no collusion. In other words, Brennan just made it up to pursue his own personal vendetta against Trump which is what youd expect from the most partisan CIA chief in history. Heres more from the same article: The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trumps team and Moscow ahead of the US election. This was in part due to US law that prohibits US agencies from examining the private communications of American citizens without warrants. They are trained not to do this, the source stressed. (Guardian) The extensive nature of contacts between Trumps team and Moscow??? There were no extensive contacts nor were there any illegal, unethical or improper contacts. If there were, AG Barr would have highlighted them in the 4-page Mueller report summary released last weekend. But he didnt, because they dont exist. The Democrats are now clinging to the feint hope that their flimsy obstruction case can be pulled from the ash-heap, but thats not going to happen. Its impossible to obstruct a case when you already know the case is is a fraud. Trump did not break the law. Its that simple. As for Brennan, well, he was providing classified briefings to ranking members of Congress (expressing his belief that Moscow was helping Trump win the election) as early as August 2016. The date seems particularly relevant given that Trump did not become the GOPs official presidential nominee until July 21, 2016. Was that just a coincidence or did it suddenly dawn on Brennan that Trump must be a Kremlin mole shortly after he clinched the top spot on the ticket? Funny how that works, isnt it? Trump nabs the nomination and all of a sudden Brennan shifts into high gear digging up all kinds of fictional intercepts from Estonia and god-knows where else. Is this the looniest story youve ever heard or what? Theres really no part of Brennans implausible storyline that holds water. Even his flagship Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which was supposed to provide iron-clad proof of Trumps culpability, fizzled out like a Roman candle in a summer downpour. Brennan of course hit all the cable news stations shortly after the ICA was released touting its wishy-washy findings as rock-solid proof of wrongdoing but, strangely enough, the report undermined its own credibility by providing a sweeping disclaimer that cautions readers against drawing any rash conclusions from the analysts observations. Heres the money-quote from the report: Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. Nice, eh? So, while Brennan continues to insist that the Kremlin meddled in our elections, his own analysts suggest that any such judgements should be taken with a very large grain of salt. Nothing is certain, information is incomplete or fragmentary, and the entire report is based on what-amounts-to educated guesswork. Its a wonder why anyone took the report seriously to begin with. Theres no way to get around the fact that Brennan was glitzing up the intelligence to persuade Comey into hounding Trump. Thats the bottom line here. The unelected agents in the bureaucracy decided to use their considerable power to try to sabotage the election, prevent the normalisation of relations with Russia, and pave the way for impeachment proceedings. Only they got caught with their pants down, so someones going to have to take the fall. Who is responsible for placing spies in the Trump campaign? Thats what we want to know. Who is Stefan Halper and who did he work for? Why did he cozy up to Trump campaign advisers Carter Page, Sam Clovis and George Papadopoulos? Was it all part of an entrapment scheme? How many other spies were assigned to the Trump campaign? What was their purpose and who did they work for? Who signed off on the FISA applications that were improperly obtained? How was the Steele dossier used to build the case against Trump? Who authorized or participated in the leaks to the media? Who approved the wiretapping of Trump advisors? Was Trump wiretapped too? What was Obamas role in all of this? How much did he know and how much did he authorize? How has Brennan escaped blame for the political firestorm he started? (According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the Trump-Russia connection.. but ..Former CIA Director John Brennan  was the one who got the ball rolling.) The only way the American people are going to find out what really happened is by interrogating the people who know. Putting John Brennan in the docket would be a good place to start. Mike lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com. Do you agree or disagree? Post your comment here ==See Also== Watch: Ukraine officials offer evidence of election meddling in favor of Hillary Clinton to Trump's DOJ Note To ICH Community We ask that you assist us in dissemination of the article published by ICH to your social media accounts and post links to the article from other websites. Thank you for your support. Peace and joy The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
Chairman of Save Romania Union (USR) Dan Barna told on Thursday a press conference in Pitesti that the citizens' initiative 'No Convicts in Public Office' will necessarily lead to the amendment of the Constitution.

Read also: Censure motion by Liberal party, after the EP election

"This citizens' initiative, supported by USR with all its energy, mandatorily amends the Constitution. It is not a consultative referendum, such as the one that the President will organize on May 26 (...). This referendum, just as the one for the 300 MPs is advisory, the citizens say 'yes, I would like it to be so', after which Parliament should adopt a law. And this is not the case for the 300 MPs for which Romania voted. In the case of the citizens' initiative to amend the Constitution, going through the steps, get through the Constitutional Court, follows a vote in Parliament, a referendum that automatically puts that article in the Constitution, and that is why this fight is worth taking forward," Barna said in Pitesti.

The USR leader added that the bill for the amendment of the Constitution would enter Parliament's agenda, at worst after the next legislative elections.

"USR and the USR-PLUS [Party of Liberty, Unity and Solidarity. ed.n.] Alliance have exactly that in their governing program, that by 2020 at the latest, when we get to govern, this constitutional amendment be put on the agenda of Parliament," said Dan Barna.

The 'No Convicts in Public Office' initiative proposes that Article 37 of the Constitution, which regulates the right to be elected, should be completed with a new paragraph, with the following content: "Citizens permanently convicted of deprivation of liberty for intentional crimes cannot be elected in the bodies of the local public administration, in the Chamber of Deputies, in the Senate and as President of Romania until a situation that removes the consequences of the conviction intervenes."

The Constitutional Court of Romania decided on Tuesday that the citizen's legislative initiative to review the Fundamental Law, which requires that the persons with final convictions can no longer occupy public positions, meets the constitutional provisions.

AGERPRES .
Minister of National Defence Gabriel Les, on the Distinguished Visitors' Day of the Vigorous Warrior 19 drill on Friday, at the "National Joint Training Centre "Getica" in Cincu, Brasov County, said that NATO proves it is ready to deal with any challenges in the increasingly complex security environment.

"I watched today a part of the largest medical exercise in the history of the Alliance, co-organised by the NATO Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine, the General Staff of Defence and the Medical Directorate of Romania's Defence Ministry. There were simulated various actions and specific activities in the military medicine field, involving more than 2,000 Romania and foreign troops from 39 allied and partner states of NATO. The exercise covered all the three military sectors and I mean here, of course, the aerial, land and maritime sectors. More than that, the scenario of this exercises also included a quite substantial civil component, with 10 different organisations participating with staff and state of the art medical techniques. The exercise, which was planned as part of the Programme for Training and Exercises and also part of the Combined Joint Enhanced Training Initiative of NATO - is the only multinational medical exercise of NATO, organised every two years by the Centre of Excellence for Military Medicine of NATO together with a volunteering host country. Today, and this year, Romania is the host (...). The North-Atlantic Alliances grants a great importance to the joint training activities and to the Vigorous Warrior 2019, which allows the development of inter-operability between the medical and civil structures in the member states, as part of complex and realistic scenarios. NATO also proves, through concrete actions, that it is an Alliance ready to deal with any challenges in an, unfortunately, increasingly complex security environment," stated Minister Gabriel Les.

The Minister of National Defence showed it's a great honour for Romania to organise this exercise, of such magnitude, which is also an excellent opportunity for preparing and assessing the medical capabilities of both the Romanian medical system and the integrated system of the Alliance.

According to the Defence Minister, the essential purpose of the North-Atlantic Alliance is to ensure the freedom and security of all its members, through a mutual cooperation commitment between allies, based on the indivisibility of its security.

"The collective defence commitment, based on the Article 5 of the Treaty, under which an attack against a country is considered an attack against all, it is and it will remain the firm commitment of NATO," said Les.

Vigorous Warrior 19 - VW19, the largest medical exercise in the history of the North-Atlantic Alliance, is carried out over April 1-15 in several units of the Romanian Army, covering the three components - land (with activities being mostly carried out at the Cincu-based National Joint Training Centre "Getica"), aerial (taking place at the 71st Airbase in Campia Turzii) and maritime (in the Constanta and Black Sea area). Also, Bucharest will the host of several parts of the exercise.
The cooperation between the European Union and Turkey in terms of combating organised crime represented one of the main topics of the discussions carried out on Friday by Interior Minister Carmen Dan with Turkey's Ambassador in Bucharest Fusun Aramaz, who paid her first visit to the Interior Ministry (MAI).

"We discussed about the cooperation between Romania and Turkey in terms of home affairs, with an emphasis on combating organised crime, illegal migration, terrorism, but also the management of borders and emergency situations. Moreover, the cooperation between the European Union and Turkey represented one of the topics of our dialogue, taking into account Romania's capacity as the acting holder of the EU Council Presidency. It was a great pleasure to notice that Mrs Fusun Aramaz knows our country well, the Turkish-Tatar community, taking into account the collaboration that she had with the Romanian authorities when she hold the consul office," Carmen Dan wrote on her Facebook page.

On this occasion, it was reiterated the invitation for Turkey's Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu to pay an official visit this year to Romania, occasion on which, the cooperation priorities between the two relevant ministers be established at bilateral and regional level, the Interior Minister also wrote.
Deputy Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Social Democrat Eugen Nicolicea said on Friday that Parliament will endorse President Klaus Iohannis's request regarding the May 26 referendum.

"As regards the referendum, I said this also in my capacity as House Deputy Speaker, just as it issued Opinion No. 5/2017, Parliament will endorse the President's request to call a consultative referendum that has no decisional effects, with the recommendations made there, which were nothing else but excerpts from the Constitution, the Court's rulings and the recommendations of the Venice Commission, leaving it to the President to start the referendum, word the question and take responsibility for this action; Parliament has no effective power whatsoever in this referendum," Nicolicea said after consultations with the head of state at the Cotroceni Palace.

Klaus Iohannis this Friday consulted with the PSD delegation on the situation in justice. The delegation of the Social Democratic Party was made of Eugen Nicolicea and former political prisoners Marin Iancu and Ioan Muntean, who served time at Aiud; Marin Iancu is also a revolutionary.

Nicolicea presented the two proposals for referendum questions: "Fellow Romanians, is it moral, legal and constitutional, that 30 years after the bloody anti-communist December 1989 Revolution former torturers be tolerated in high-ranking positions of authority? Is it normal that, 30 years after the fall of the communist oppressive regime, former torturers be promoted to gigantic leadership positions?."

Ioan Muntean said that at the end of the meeting he asked President Iohannis to sign the decree to remove from office Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar. He mentioned that Lazar was one of those who twice postponed his release from the Aiud Penitentiary.

"I asked the President to sign the decree to remove him from office and the President answered that he would see," the former political prisoner said.

In his turn, Marin Iancu said that until his appearance on television he didn't know who the prosecutor who had rejected his petition for release from prison was, but depicted him as a servant who cold-heartedly signed a four-year extension of his jail time.

President Iohannis also had a separate discussion with the two former political prisoners.
Romania's Prime Minister Viorica Dancila on Friday participated in the opening of a business and trade forum in Dubrovnik, Croatia, on the side-lines of a summit of the heads of government of the Central and Eastern Europe - China 16 + 1 co-operation format, where a website of the 16+1 SME management co-ordination mechanism managed by Croatia was inaugurated.

According to a press statement released by the Romanian Government, Deputy Prime Minister Viorel Stefan, coordinator of Romania's Inter-Ministerial Committee on Economic Co-operation with the People's Republic of China, and Minister for the Business, Commerce and Entrepreneurship Environment Stefan-Radu Oprea also attended the forum.

"This year's business and trade forum brought together more than 900 representatives from the 16 + 1 participating countries. From Romania, there were economic operators in the fields of energy, IT&C, oil, tourism, education, as well as representatives of the local public administrations and non-governmental organisations with an economic profile. Their presence in the forum is part of a wider effort to stimulate Romanian companies' involvement in the 16+1 co-operation format, given the opportunities offered by this mechanism aimed at developing connectivity between Asia and Europe," reads the statement.

The forum attendees had the opportunity to present their product and service offerings and to discuss with current and potential partners. Both producers and suppliers, as well as purchasers, product developers and investors, were present.

"The business forum was aimed at promoting direct interaction as well as strengthening relationships among partners, suppliers, consumers and investors, identifying new business opportunities with products and services, exchanging information on recent economic and trade developments. At the forum, a website of the 16+1 SME management co-ordination mechanism managed by Croatia was inaugurated," the release reads.

According to the statement, the heads of the delegation then visited an exhibition on education co-operation between Central and Eastern European Countries and China, attended the unveiling of a Global Partnership Centre memorial plaque and met business people that took part in the B2B meetings of the forum.

On the side-lines of the 16+1 summit, a co-operation initiative in support of the development of small and medium-sized enterprises under a China-Central and Eastern Europe inter-banking association agreement was adopted.

"Romania supports economic, social and territorial co-operation among the participating countries, promoting projects in which to participate in the 16 + 1 co-operation format, which will strengthen regional co-operation with the People's Republic of China."
Romania's President Klaus Iohannis will open next Wednesday an international conference called "Strengthening NATO's Eastern Flank: Challenges and Strategies for Baltic-Black Sea Coherence," to be hosted by the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.

According to a Presidential Administration's press statement, officials, experts, analysts and representatives of the defence industry from Romania, the United States of America and the Black Sea region will take part in the event to be hosted by the Romanians Presidential Administration and organised by the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) to discuss consistency on NATO's Eastern Flank, with emphasis on challenges to the security of the region and concrete ways of countering them.

At the same time, the debate aims to highlight Romania's contribution to and expectations from security on NATO's Eastern Flank, including in the Black Sea region.

Also addressing the conference will be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Boyse; CEPA Chairman Peter Doran, and Lieutenant-General Ben Hodges, former commanding general, United States Army Europe (USAREUR), currently a CEPA expert.

The conference will be preceded by a seminar organized by CEPA at the level of security and defence experts dedicated to an in-depth debate on NATO's Eastern Flank, to be held on Tuesday April 16.

The Presidential Administration has so far hosted two more events organised by CEPA :"Romania's Security Leadership in South East Europe" (June 2016) and the seminar "Reshaping the Security Environment in Southeastern Europe - A View from Bucharest" (April 2018).

The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) is a non-profit, non-partisan, public policy research institute dedicated to the study of Central and Eastern Europe. Founded in 2005, CEPA is the only American think-tank whose focus is solely on European countries and societies.
Chairman of the ruling Social Democratic party (PSD) Liviu Dragnea said on Thursday that the decision of the European socialists to freeze relations with the Romanian Social-Democrats has "99pct electoral motivation", announcing that he would answer his "colleagues" in PES after the elections to the European Parliament.

Read also: Citizenship initiative 'No Convicts in Public Office' mandatorily amends the Constitution (USR's Barna)

"I have seen my so-called colleagues from PES, the Party of European Socialists, saying with their muscles tensed they were freezing the relations with the PSD. In the PES statute there is no such provision, for an ordinance that does not exist. They have not been able to say so far - and there have been meetings, there have been talks - we have the following requests: to change this, to change that, to eliminate that article. In my opinion, here there is about a 99pct electoral motivation," Liviu Dragnea told Antena 3 private broadcaster.

Asked what interest PES representatives would have to make such a decision, the PSD leader replied: "A lot of my colleagues from the European Parliament who have acquaintances in the European Parliament say that after the European People's Party (EPP) took the decision to freeze the relations with Hungary's FIDESZ, they also pressed the PES, the European socialists, to do the same with a party and they chose the PSD. I also saw Verhofstadt from the ALDE [the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, ed.n.] scolding Mr Tariceanu and the ALDE here."

"No one understood why we would need a stamp on a membership card so that we could exist as a Social-Democratic party, a party, however, with a history of 120 and some years. I am not going to answer them, I will answer them after the elections and only if these European officials talk about the great cases of huge corruption in some Western countries, we are talking about a huge, proven published bribe, serious corruption cases of some multinationals. (...) When I see that they will also be extremely concerned that in a country member of the EU there were secret protocols between the intelligence services and the High Court of Cassation, so the Supreme Court of a country, the Prosecutor General 's Office, the National Anticorruption Directorate, the DIICOT [the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism, ed.n] and so on. And under these conditions, how can a citizen in Romania in the right mind trust that he/she is fairly investigated or, moreover, has a fair trial," Liviu Dragnea added.

AGERPRES .
Assange Arrest Impossible Without Trump Foreign Policy

Candidate Trump would admire Assanges boldness and doing what needs to be done in spite of the swamp. President has to keep the military industrial complex, CIA any may others appeased.

The inevitable finally happened. Julian Assange bearded, tired and seven years older has been allowed to be drug from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and will almost surely be extradited to the United States. The man who is arguably the worlds most famous advocate for government transparency will be put on trial and likely convicted of publishing government secrets related to bloody accidents and conscious atrocities committed by US/NATO forces overseas.

But the question that we must often ask ourselves in regards to big time politics is why now?. After seven years of being trapped in a small embassy, why is this happening now? Although motivations are impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt we can see that there is a growing shift in Washingtons power and influence over the world shifting towards Latin America including Ecuador.

The relatively new Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno says that Assange violated the terms of asylum, and that is why they allowed the British to nab him. However

his predecessor Ex-President Correa accuses Morreno of being the Greatest traitor in Ecuadorian history over this issue. Who is a traitor and who is a patriot is up to debate but Correa stood up for Assange in the face of the most powerful nation on Earth for many years, he risked his entire career (and possibly life) to do so, so we can see why he feels personally betrayed. However, we must understand that giving up on Assange is not the action of one lone gunman but the result of a massive shift across Latin America.

Trumps Fortress America policy is readily changing from theory to fact as we can see conflicts and ambitions in the Old World going stagnant while the New World is getting riled up with political change.

Ukraine is as as hard and stale as last weeks bread and despite Washingtons might, Kiev has not been able to smash militia forces in the east. Even the mainstream media is starting to question Bidens role in profiting from the color revolution. One could say that this is just to darken his candidacy, but massive photo galleries of him inappropriately touching children should be more than enough bad PR for the task.

Syria has drawn down to a halt from a US perspective as Assad is now playing clean up with his now victorious army. Iraq and Afghanistan are still quagmires remaining in permanent stasis and not even bothering to constantly obey Washingtons interests. Haftars forces in Libya seem to be making massive gains against Washington backed groups and may just win one of the most pointless wars in history in start to restore Libya. In terms of color revolutions the Old World also seems to be very quiet indeed under Trump.

But lets not go too far. The US is not running for cover or closing bases just yet, but overall, the outwardly aggressive posture of the late 90s/early 2000s (Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan) is gone. For all the conspiracy theorists who think that Washington is merely interested in wars to create chaos for no other reason than the sake of chaos itself we can see that they are doing a terrible job in their mission. They are not launching new traditional wars. Washington is either unable or unwilling to start up a new Iraq, when just two decades ago this was an easily affordable slam dunk.

The whole Venezuelan crisis, the Ecuadorian political shift that crushed Assange and the possibly (probably) aided rise of Bolsonaro in Brazil ousting the previous Russia-friendly President are all signs that the shift to Latin America is really happening. We may be seeing an actual move back to some sort of Monroe Doctrine 2.0 where Washington focuses on controlling the satellites that it knows that it can control. Dealing with a rising Russia and a risen China is much easier in ones own hemisphere, where not only are the distances massive for China and Russia, but also the political will from them is not strong enough to do anything in particular other that try to maintain the status quo in Venezuela and maybe Cuba.

Assange is the victim of this shift. If Hillary had won the election, whether there was money in the coffers to do it or not, US foreign policy would still be focussed very globally and so much so that tiny upstarts like Ecuador could stay under the pressure radar. If Washington is going to focus its massive energies on just two continents primarily then all of Latin America is going to feel the clamp down as much more attention can be paid to what is going on there. This is bad for Assange clearly, but the effects of this massive shift that seems to be happening are hard to predict with absolute clarity.

It will give Russia and China more breathing room, while at the same time it may prevent the Fall of the American Empire that so many bloggers in the 2nd and 3rd world dream of. It will also force the US to develop Latin America more to serve its interests which could in some ways work out for the masses in those nations. Of course sovereignty would be best, but having someone else develop your economy to serve them is much better than old timey colonization.

So although Assange is a bright spark of the downside to the biggest foreign policy shift in history it will probably wind up being a net gain for the worlds major powers.

Lastly Trumps personal reaction to this issue was not surprising. Candidate Trump would admire Assanges boldness and doing what needs to be done in spite of the swamp. President has to keep the military industrial complex, CIA any may others appeased so he just said I know nothing about Wikileaks. He officially washed his hands of this and guaranteed that Assange will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Apple has no plans to introduce 5G to iPhones until at least 2020 or later. Samsung, however, was the first company to jump on the bandwagon and released the 5G variant of the Galaxy S10 in South Korea earlier this month. Ironically though, the Galaxy S10 5G is having issues connecting to 5G networks itself.

A number of Galaxy S10 5G customers in Korea have been complaining about mobile data connectivity issues on their phone. Users complain that their phone loses mobile data connectivity when it switches from 5G to LTE. In areas where 5G signals are non-existent, the S10 5G should automatically connect to an LTE network. However, instead of doing that, the phone continues to search for a non-existent 5G network. Users end up having to reboot their devices multiple times to ensure it is able to connect to the network again.

The issue is happening with all three major carriers in South Korea  SK Telecom, LG U+, and KT.

Whats worse is that both Samsung and the three network operators are refusing to take charge of the situation and look into solving the problem. Samsung, on its part, rolled out a software update to ensure the Galaxy S10 5G connects to a base station more quickly but that did not seem to help much. SK Telecom and LG U+ also rolled out updates for their base stations just a couple of days before the Galaxy S10 5G launch to address some issues with their 5G networks.

We cannot rule out the possibility of terminals failure to smoothly switch from one service mode to another, said an official of a telecom company. But Samsung Electronics said it has already provided all software updates that it could do.

Our Take

It looks like there is still some optimization and tweaking left on the part of Korean carriers and Samsung which is leading to such issues. Nonetheless, this clearly highlights that 5G is far from ready for the mainstream and there are going to be plenty of such issues. Unlike other smartphone OEMs, Apple is known to adopt a tech only when it is mature enough and 5G connectivity is far from that. Thus, by not offering a 5G iPhone until 2020 or even 2021, Apple is just sparing customers from such teething troubles.

[Via Business Korea
Theresa May Is Never Going to Deliver Brexit. But That Doesnt Mean It Cant Happen

The European institutions ideally want to drag out the Brexit ambiguity as long as possible as the pressure for May  or whoever follows her  increases to do one of two things: either abandon Brexit altogether or call for a second referendum.

The European Union  or rather leaders of EU countries  met on April 10th and agreed to give the UK an extension to its Brexit conundrum of six months, which for many was a welcome reprieve to avert what some believe would have been a disaster if Britain had crashed out of the EU.

Germany and France reached a compromise over how long Theresa May should have to attempt to get agreement from MPs on her draft withdrawal agreement, which, in reality is a worse scenario for the UK to be in than its present status as full EU member state. It was meant to be as thats precisely what the EU wanted and a naive May swallowed it as the real deal.

But May is not only a weak prime minister and one whose heart was never in Britain leaving (she was always campaigning for UK to remain), but she is also a lousy negotiator which has resulted in this stalemate now which Britain has with the EU. Yet many now are questioning her integrity as a Brexit negotiator as, for the moment, the EU has not only done itself a favour by averting a crisis for itself, but politically May has bought herself a little time with her own campaign which is simply to survive as PM. The date for Britain to get a deal agreed is by October 31st, which is interesting for many reasons. The Halloween deadline is timed just before new EU chiefs are elected by MEPs so, in theory, if the UK left the EU there would be no British MEPs taking part in that process. But it is also just a matter of a couple of weeks, when, under UK parliamentary rules, her own party can call for a second no confidence vote in her as leader of her own party.

Few people in the conservative party now are deluding themselves about Mays strategy to stay relevant, which will give the Brexiteers in her party some zeal as they eye the leadership. From her strategy in Brussels, it is clear now that the entire EU is not united on how long the UK should continue with the endless hanging on, with ambiguity about whether the country is in or out. Frances Macron believes a real deadline, which could result in a no deal Brexit, must be enforced but the compromise reached between his camp among EU leaders and Germanys, showed that Macron is punching below his weight.

For May, this worked to her advantage as she can continue with the disingenuous claims that the Brexit process is out of her hands both at home and in Brussels  due to what the EU is asking for, in terms of a withdrawal which respects citizens rights and Northern Ireland as basic principles which are non negotiable.

What we are witnessing is EU leaders hoping they can speed up a process which will help the UK and protect EU countries from fallout, in particular Frances; from the EU executive itself there is a darker side though to the timetable which highlights a slight, but important division between Brussels and EU leaders. The European institutions ideally want to drag out the Brexit ambiguity as long as possible as the pressure for May  or whoever follows her  increases to do one of two things: either abandon Brexit altogether or call for a second referendum. In classic EU thinking, member states should have as many referendums as possible until the one which suits Brussels comes about, as it is not Brexit itself which will damage the UK economy, but rather Brexit uncertainty.

But May will not call a second referendum and will not call for Article 50 to be revoked. She will simply do nothing for as long as possible as dithering now seems to be an effective strategy for her own political legacy for the simple reason that few envy the next conservative leader to take her post and make that stark choice. A hard core Brexiteer leader like Boris Johnson or Jacob Rees-Mogg may well offer a third option, which is the no deal Brexit, which in reality would be a formidable way to garner some respect from the EU to hammer out a proper deal, rather than the worst international treaty in Britains history which is presently on the table, which is really nothing more than a suicide pill for the country.

The question now is how much humiliation can May take from the sketch writers and political satirists as with key ministers and aides leaving her may lead her to resign. This is what could be a major game changer now as it is clear that Brexit is very far from the British people now and may well be indefinitely delayed. She is drowning in her own piss pool of irony and self deprecating farce though in a country which has 17.4m people now boiling with rage as they feel their vote in 2016 has been betrayed. Never, since John Major signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, has a British leader sold their own country out more than May in Brussels. Ironically the Leave campaign was all about taking back control and May seems determined to make this the greatest parody in the history of Britains EU membership as Britains destiny to be in or out of the EU is no longer even in the hands of the British people. Theresa May actually made the EU look, briefly, like a superpower which doesnt have a financial crisis and is not facing a political Armageddon at the ballot box in just a few weeks. Quite a feat.
Trumps belated rhetoric hailing the benefits of arms controls is contradicted by relentless US moves to undermine existing treaties, as well as by Trumps ramping up of American military spending  which is already multiples of what China or Russia expends.

US President Donald Trump surprised many observers when he recently lamented excessive military spending by the US, Russia and China.

He reportedly wants all three nations to scale back military budgets and renew arms controls for world peace and security. Trump made his comments while hosting Chinas Vice Premier Liu He in the Oval Office last week amid ongoing wrangling over bilateral trade relations.

As you know China is spending a lot of money on military, so are we, so is Russia and those three countries I think can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that maybe are more productive towards long-term peace, Trump said.

It think its much better if we all got together and we didnt make these weapons, he added. His remarks were endorsed by the Chinese dignitary.

However, Trumps belated rhetoric hailing the benefits of arms controls is contradicted by relentless US moves to undermine existing treaties, as well as by Trumps ramping up of American military spending  which is already multiples of what China or Russia expends.

US military spending has been substantially increased during Trumps past two years in office, from an already colossal level, to well over $700 billion annually. This figure is some three times what China spends and more than 10 times what Russia allocates for its military budget. Indeed, the US military budget alone is equivalent to the next 14 biggest military nations combined, including China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea and India.

Trumps purported concern about excessive military spending is well placed. The total global allocation is estimated to be around $1.7 trillion annually. That figure is more than enough to solve problems of world hunger, drinking-water and sanitation needs, supply of life-saving medicines and education for every child on the planet  if the resources were redirected.

The objective financial data shows that it is the US upon which the onus lies to drastically reduce military spending. Arguably, it is because of Americas gargantuan arms industry and arsenal of weapons that the rest of the globe is obliged to follow suit out of nations concern to maintain a commensurate level of defense. If the globe is wasting crucial resources on war machines and armies it is largely because of the US and its distorted, inordinate build-up of weaponry. The excessive American military forces are bound to be seen by the other nations, including supposed allies, as a latent threat of aggression.

So Trumps lamenting of excessive military financing is, on the face of it, laudable  but such lamenting is superficial, if not cynical. The president needs to put his money where his mouth is, and show true global leadership by, first and foremost, slashing US military profligacy. If Washington were to take that step, then all other nations would likely follow suit and begin scaling back their expenditures on defense. The world would hence be a lot safer and more secure too.

Of course, Trumps aspirations for peace are somewhat naive. The entire American corporate capitalist economy is addicted to monstrous military splurging. The Pentagons military-industrial complex has since the Second World War become a chronic fix for propping up the US economy, which would otherwise tank if not for the annual subsidizing through byzantine military contracts.

Trump may, in a moment of seeming clarity, bemoan the chronic spending, but he perhaps does not understand that what he is bemoaning is the systematic, pernicious nature of American capitalism. In other words, if the world were to scale back military spending and redirect to more productive, humane projects, the shift would require a new paradigm for the American economy  one that is arguably more democratic and rational, rather than the chronic militarism that has prevailed for more than seven decades.

Another illustration of Trumps naivety, or facile understanding, is that the US has in recent years steadfastly refused to enter into normal diplomatic negotiations with Russia and China validating arms controls.

Anatoly Antonov, Russias ambassador to the US, recently remarked on how Washington has rebuffed all attempts by Moscow to engage in constructive dialogue to restore the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. It was under the Trump administration that the US has now cancelled the INF based on dubious claims of Russia violating the pact. The third remaining arms control treaty, the New START is due to expire in 2021, and so far the US has shown no sign of reciprocating with Russia to maintain that accord.

The US has thus unilaterally spurned dialogue with Russia in upholding arms controls. It has unilaterally acted aggressively towards Moscow and Beijing with relentless build-up of military forces around each country. Indeed, it is Washington that is inciting a new arms races globally and, in doing so, gravely putting world peace and security at risk.

The American president may therefore pronounce words of peace, security and arms reductions. But his words are rather meaningless given the systematic and insatiable militaristic condition of American capitalism and its concomitant conduct of aggression. Actions speak louder than words.
ATLANTIC OCEAN (April 9, 2019) An F/A-18E Super Hornet assigned to the "Gunslingers" of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 105 lands on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) during flight operations in the Atlantic Ocean, April 9, 2019. Dwight D. Eisenhower is underway conducting flight deck certification during the basic phase of the Optimized Fleet Response Plan (OFRP). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Zach Sleeper)

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Source: Streetwise Reports (4/12/19)

Two recent events that could impact this firm significantly are covered in this Pareto Securities report.



In an April 8 research note, Pareto Securities analyst Tom Erik Kristiansen reported that Questerre Energy Corp. (QEC:TSX) contracted with the Quebec-based investment firm Industrial Alliance to help secure strategic investors to support development of Questerre's natural gas resources also located in that province.

"If successful," he added, "this would be an important milestone to progress the project" and help the company gain social acceptability.

Regarding Questerre's goal of developing such a project in Quebec, the provincial government asked the company to take two actions. One is to postpone the hearing on its case questioning the prohibition on fracking. The second is to instead submit to the Ministry of Environment, for potential approval, a detailed development plan in accordance with Quebec's Clean Gas Initiative.

Questerre indicated it will do as asked and deliver the requested documents later this year. Should its application be denied, the company will then consider again pursuing legal recourse.

Kristiansen concluded, "While several milestones remain before Questerre potentially can commence a commercial development of its large natural gas resources in Quebec and uncertainty still is high, we view today's development as an important step in the right direction and expect a significant positive share price reaction."

[NLINSERT]

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Biosecurity New Zealand is looking for help from the public to name one of its new detector puppies.

Specially bred to sniff out fruit and other unwanted biosecurity items carried by international passenngers at airports and ports, the male beagle was born to working dogs Gale and Gina on March 5, along with six siblings.

Were looking for a name beginning with M, as the puppy is part of the M-litter  the 36th beagle little weve produced under Biosecurity NZs detector dog breeding programme, says detection technology manager for Biosecurity NZ, says Brett Hickman.

Brett says the programme produces sniffer dogs ideally suited for biosecurity.

Our beagles can detect a wide range of odours and they have a strong drive to find risk items. This makes them a valuable biosecurity tool, although by no means the only thing we use to protect New Zealands borders from invasive pests and diseases.

The public has until April 19 to send in their name suggestions through Biosecurity NZs detector dog Facebook page.
A commercial fishing company formerly owned by the Hawke's Bay D'Esposito family has been banned from fishing for three years and fined $62,000 after failing to report more than 200 kilograms of crayfish.

Esplanade No.3 was sentenced yesterday following a reserved judgment released in the Wellington District Court after a lengthy investigation by the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI).

Guilty pleas had been entered earlier to four representative charges, two of failing to keep or provide Catch Effort Landing Returns under the Fisheries Act and the Crimes Act, and two of making a false or misleading statement in Catch Effort Landing Returns, also under the Fisheries Act and the Crimes Act.

The offending was detected after MPI began looking into the activities of the company in 2014. The Ministry used specialised investigative techniques involving the use of an undercover officer to confirm that the skipper and crew of the Nimrod 1 were fishing illegally.

MPI Manager of Compliance Investigations Gary Orr says it was discovered that crayfish were not reported on 36 fishing trips over a period of ten months.

That added up to a total of 204kg of unreported crayfish.

This sort of illegal fishing activity is extremely disappointing. Accurate reporting of commercial catches is critical to maintaining the integrity of New Zealands Quota Management System. The data obtained is crucial to MPIs assessment of the health of a fishery.

Misreporting of commercial catches can undermine the ability of Fisheries New Zealand to ensure sustainable use of fisheries and the fixing of appropriate catch settings.

"Furthermore, the misreporting of catches may impact on the reputation of New Zealands fisheries management regime.

Gary says commercial fishing companies cant avoid their responsibilities as a company and need to be actively monitoring the compliance of all staff.

This is a fishery that was scientifically assessed in 2016, finding that stock levels were 25% lower than desired with a projected further decline of six per cent over the following four years. The unrecorded removal of fish had the potential to significantly impact the work being done by MPI and legitimate users of the resource to restore stock levels.

In February 2019, Hawkes Bay Seafoods and its personnel were fined more than $1 million for the sustained under-reporting 27 tonnes of Bluenose.

In 1991, Nino and Joe DEsposito and the companies they were directors of, Harbour Inn Seafood Export Limited and Harbour City Seafoods Limited, were collectively fined close to $1m for misreporting fish landings that included 574 tonnes of orange roughy.
Visitors who stay at holiday parks across the country are spending large, with the latest research showing close to $1.2 billion annually can be attributed to domestic and international visitors who spend their nights at holiday parks.

Research by Angus & Associates was commissioned by Holiday Parks New Zealand to examine the expenditure of holiday park visitors across a range of regions and by a variety of visitor types.

The peak study season finds visitors spend an average of $144.59 per night while staying in holiday parks, with $127.71 attributed to domestic visitors and $168.68 to visitors from overseas.

The study also reveals domestic travel remains strong, with approximately $702 million (59%) of holiday park visitor expenditure is spent by domestic visitors. $484 million (41%) was spent by international visitors, and expenditure by international visitors contributes directly to New Zealands export earnings.

Holiday Parks New Zealand Chief Executive Fergus Brown says he is pleased the research shows 66 per cent of holiday park night guests are domestic visitors.

Its positive to see that New Zealanders still choose to stay in our holiday parks on their travels throughout the regions of New Zealand. Its a Kiwi tradition, and our communities benefit so much from our holiday parks continuing to host visitors.

An additional benefit of domestic visitors is they tend to stay longer in one place, and they are very likely to come back to the same destination year after year, says Fergus.

Visitor expenditure per person per day in 2018/2019 remained consistent with the 2016/2017 season, however when breaking down expenditure by visitor origin, the research shows domestic visitor expenditure per person per day increased by 12%, while international visitor expenditure per person per day fell 11%.

Angus & Associates research also examined what holiday park visitors were spending their money on. A quarter of their expenditure can be attributed to accommodation costs (around $301 million annually) followed by snacks/groceries and activity/admission fees.

The research also found interesting differences in the way that international and domestic visitors spend their money.

International visitors tend to spend significantly more on activities and attractions and transport, while domestic visitors spend slightly more on accommodation and goods, such as snacks and groceries. International visitors on average stay 22 nights a trip in holiday parks while travelling around New Zealand, double the domestic visitor average of 11 nights.

This highlights the importance of international visitors to the economy with their higher average daily spend per person and longer travel period, Fergus says.

The research also found holiday park visitors spend on a very wide range of items, meaning the economic benefit of a holiday park for its host community is well spread. For example, the 2018/2019 expenditure included gifts, clothing and footwear, books, model planes, a snoring guard and vacuum hire.

Fergus says while it is gratifying to see the huge value of the holiday park sector to New Zealands economy, hes most proud of the economic contribution each park makes to the community and region it operates in.

Holiday parks directly benefit their community because they employ locals, purchase supplies from local vendors, spend money on services like facility maintenance, and marketing, says Fergus.

Holiday parks also indirectly contribute to the region. For example, the dairy that employs an extra person over summer to cope with the business generated by holiday parks, or the boating store that places additional radio advertising to attract purchases from holiday park visitors. Holiday parks share the profits and are valuable community hubs.

High value visitors to holiday parks include those staying in campervans or motorhomes, with campervan travellers spending an average of $166.52 per person per day while staying at holiday parks. This is over $20 more than the average of all visitors. Two thirds (69%) of international visitors to holiday parks during the period of the research were staying in a campervan.

In the context of other New Zealand sectors, the $1.2 billion direct economic contribution attributable to holiday park visitors is similar to that of the New Zealand racing industry ($1.2 billion in 2017) and greater than the cruise industry ($434 million in 2018).
Toi Te Ora Public Health say five cases of measles have been confirmed in the Bay of Plenty region in the past month.

Medical Officer of Health for Toi Te Ora Public Health Doctor Jim Miller says the most recent measles case does not appear to be linked to the group of cases related to the Mount Maunganui area.

GPs and residents are now on the alert so we have also received four other reports of possible measles which we are currently investigating, says Jim.

Immunisation is the best protection from measles, the vaccine that protects against measles is the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine.

Its important that parents ensure that their children receive their free routine MMR immunisations on time at 15 months and 4 years of age, says Jim.

It is advised if you have never had a dose of the MMR vaccine, now is the time to get one. After one dose of MMR vaccine about 95% of people are protected from measles, and 99% of people who have had both doses are protected from measles.

It is also advised to check your immunity if you are planning an overseas trip. The Ministry of Health recently highlighted that since 2012, all cases of measles in New Zealand came from travellers bringing the disease from overseas and that there are significant measles outbreaks in many countries.

People born before January 1, 1969 are likely to be immune as measles were rather common, therefore this older age group does not need measles immunisation.

If you think you or someone in your family may have measles, stay at home and phone your doctor to alert them of your symptoms and allow them to make arrangements to assess you safely and without infecting other people, or call Healthline on 0800 611 116 for advice.

For more information:

 Toi Te Ora Public Health website: www.toiteora.govt.nz/measles

 Immunisation Advisory Centre free phone: 0800 IMMUNE (0800 466 863)

 Immunisation Advisory Centre website: www.immune.org.nz

 Ministry of Health 2019 measles outbreak information: www.health.govt.nz/your-health/conditions-and-treatments/diseases-and-illnesses/measles/2019-measles-outbreak-information
Update, Friday: The city has reopened the street.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Falling concrete from a railroad bridge forced the city to close part of South Geddes Street Thursday.

Several drivers called the Onondaga County 911 dispatch center at 10:16 p.m. to report the concrete falling from the railroad bridge.

The city closed South Geddes Street, between Erie Boulevard West and West Fayette Street, to pedestrian and vehicle traffic after the calls, according to a release from the City of Syracuse.

No injuries were reported, the city said.

The Syracuse Police Department, Syracuse Fire Department and a city engineer inspected the bridge and saw no additional concrete falling from the bridge, the release said.

There was no visible concrete in the road just after 11 p.m.

We are in contact with engineers for New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway, said Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, who also responded to the road closure. We have requested that the railroad discontinue rail service until further inspections can be completed."

In July 2018, a railroad bridge owned by New York, Susquehanna and Western Railway suffered a partial bridge collapse near Gifford and South Clinton streets.

At the time of the collapse, Walsh called the inspection reports done by the company woefully inadequate and questioned their reliability. The piece of bridge that fell was described as fair to good" in the inspection report.
SYRACUSE, N.Y.  Kevin Hicks and Nancy Ruff Chappell share a bond they wish wasnt there - the murder of their sons.

Hicks and Chappell plan to talk Monday about their sons and the pain of losing them at the sentencing of William Wood, the man who killed them at the Chilis Bar and Grill restaurant in DeWitt this past fall.

"There is just such a great feeling of loss,'' Hicks said in an interview with Syracuse.com | The Post Standard. I also feel anger and so much more. Without my familys support, it would be even harder than it is. There are tears every day.

Kristopher Hicks, 29, and Stephen Gudknecht, 37, were shot to death as they finished their shifts at the Chilis restaurant around 1 a.m. Sept. 15, 2018. Gudknecht was a manager at the restaurant; Hicks worked as a cook and a server.

William Wood, 33, of Syracuse, a former Chilis employee, has admitted he fatally shot both men in the head during the robbery, pleading guilty in March to first-degree murder and nine other charges.

Wood is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without parole on Monday. Federal authorities are deciding whether to pursue a death penalty case.

Kevin Hicks will travel from the Hudson Valley to Syracuse to deliver a victim impact statement in court. He said he will speak about his son and the hole his murder has left in his familys lives at the sentencing.

"September 15 will live in my memory forever,'' he said. "The fear and the terror that Kris must have gone through in his head. He lived for 45 minutes, and died on his way to the hospital.

What was he thinking, what was he feeling?" Kevin Hicks said. Was he thinking about his girlfriend, was he thinking about me? These questions will haunt me every day forever.

Kristopher Hicks, left, was one of the two Chili's employees shot to death on Saturday, Sept. 15, 2018, at the DeWitt restaurant. This photo shows Kris with his girlfriend, Elaine Pelletier.Provided

Chappell said she and her family feel the loss of her son, Stephen Gudknecht, every single day.

Chappell, along with Gudknechts 14-year-old daughter, Adrianna, plan to present victim impact statements at Woods sentencing. Gudknecht also left behind a son, Nikolaus, 9.

Chappell, who lives in the Syracuse area, said in an interview with Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard that she believes Wood is evil and deserves the death penalty, but she and her granddaughter will focus on telling the judge what kind of a person Gudknecht was - and how much he is missed.

"Stephen was a wonderful person - he was kind, giving, friendly - and his children meant everything and were the world to him,'' Chappell said. We want to tell the judge about the man Stephen was when he was murdered. We want him to know exactly what was taken away from us.

- Steve Gudknecht was "always there" for his children, 9-year-old Nikolaus and 14-year-old Adrianna. Provided photoProvided photo

Gudknechts daughter wrote her statement herself, and it focuses on her special memories with her dad, and whats been taken from her and her future.

Other family members also have submitted written statements to the court, Chappell said.

Kevin Hicks and Chappell have spoken several times, Chappell said.

They both said they want Wood to get the death penalty.

The U.S. Attorneys Office has said it plans to make a case for the death penalty, which means the U.S. Department of Justice Capital Case Review Process will consider it. U.S. Attorney General William Barr would have to sign off before prosecutors could pursue the death penalty.

Life in prison without parole isnt enough for me, Kevin Hicks said. We all need justice - and he is evil. He had it all planned out and he knew everyone there and planned on killing anyone and everyone. He was going to blow everyone away.

Its just unfathomable." he said.

Two other Chilis workers survived after Woods gun jammed, authorities have said.

Kevin Hicks said hes expressed his feelings on the death penalty to the federal prosecutor and Barr.

Chappell said she also wants Wood to get the death penalty, but realizes that decision is out of her hands.

He made his choices,'' she said. The sooner off he stops breathing, the better off we all we be.
FULTON, N.Y. -- As Michael Simpson tried to land his plane on North 4th Street in Fulton, according to police, Donald Hamilton Sr. tried to help his son fix his car less than a quarter-mile down the road.

Car jacks hoisted Donald Hamilton Jr.'s rusted out Volkswagen Passat as he drilled into the radiator. Recently, Hamilton Jr. fixed the exhaust pipe, but he hit a raccoon on the way home, which caused his radiator problems.

All of a sudden, I heard a loud bang, Hamilton Sr. said.

He looked down the hill toward an auto shop, near where Simpsons plane had clipped a telephone pole and crashed. The wires drooping from pole to pole quivered for four blocks, so Hamilton Sr. started walking toward the crash.

The plane had flipped after hitting the telephone pole. It had been flying south, but its nose pointed north. First responders quickly moved Simpson from the plane to a gurney and an ambulance took him to Upstate University Hospital.

The call for the crash came into Oswego County 911 at 3:24 p.m. on Thursday. While its unclear why the plane crashed, reports came in that Simpsons plane lost power in the air before he tried to make a crash landing, according to Fulton police chief Orlo Green.

Very lucky man, Green said at the scene. At this point, hes being transported to check out the extent of his injuries, but he was conscious when he left the scene. Very lucky gentlemen.

Hamilton Jr. stayed by his Passat as he saw police cars speeding down North 4th Street.

The cars raced to the same call Tom Tryniski heard as he sat in the attic of his detached garage at 309 S. 4th St. listening to his police scanner. Unlike the Hamiltons, who were a half mile closer to the crash, Tryniski never heard the bang.

When I heard airplane crash, it perked my ears right up because that doesnt happen everyday, Tryniski said.

He grabbed his camera and drove to the scene. Police cars and an ambulance were already there, but they hadnt cordoned off a perimeter.

Tryniski walked up and down North 4th Street and snapped pictures of the wreck. He got within several yards of the plane.

The plane was loaded onto a flatbed tow truck and taken away not long after the crash.Courtesy of Tom Tryniski

Close to 100 people, including first responders and bystanders, descended onto the scene, Tryniski said.

Hamilton Sr. started directing traffic at an intersection near the plane crash once he recognized what had happened. Cars drove by, some drivers and passengers gawking at the crash down the hill.

Several hours after the crash, Fulton police, FAA investigators and a handful of officials were still on the scene. The crowd that gathered immediately after the crash had dissipated.

A flatbed tow truck backed into the scene and the officials still there helped clean plane debris from the street before they hauled the plane onto the back of the flatbed.

Throughout the crash and its aftermath, Hamilton Jr. stayed with the Passat. He and a friend tightened parts behind the headlights, fixed the radiator and checked to make sure the car would withstand a move to North Carolina.

I looked down the street, I thought it was a truck down there because I saw the broken telephone pole, Hamilton Jr. said.

Even as he saw people pass him, he didnt think much about the bang his father heard. He remained unaware of what happened until a few kids riding bikes ventured down the hill to see what happened.

They come up here tellin us it was a plane crash, Hamilton said. "I was laughing about it 'cause I didnt think it was true.

I thought he was messin with me.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The pilot of a plane that crashed Thursday in Fulton said he feels blessed and grateful.

Michael Simpson, 50, was in good condition at Upstate University Hospital this morning and was later released, according to a spokesman for the hospital.

Simpson, of Chateaugay in Franklin County, was flying his Cessna Model 150G Thursday afternoon in Oswego County when the small plane struck a utility pole and crashed onto a street in Fulton.

Simpson said in a statement issued by the hospital for him Friday that he was grateful for the first responders.

I would like to thank first responders and the medical team at Upstate University Hospital for their help," Simpson said. "I feel blessed and grateful for everyone involved in my rescue. I have been treated with nothing but the utmost professionalism throughout, and I appreciate our entire communitys outpouring of support and concern.

The crash occurred almost in front of the Menter | Oswego County Ambulance building, 404 Ontario St. The plane crashed about two miles southwest of Oswego County Airport.

Simpson was transported to the hospital with some injuries, but he was conscious when he left the scene, said Fulton Police Chief Orlo Green.

Hes very lucky, Green said Thursday. Very lucky man.

Green said its unclear why the aircraft crashed, but that there were reports that the plane lost power and the pilot was trying to make an emergency landing on the street.

Looks like he may have tried to land on the highway and he caught the telephone pole with the wing of the plane, the police chief said.

Fulton Mayor Ronald Woodward Sr. said police told him rescue workers got the pilot out of the wreckage quickly. No one else was aboard the plane, and no one on the ground was hurt, he said.

The plane left the Malone airport and was en route to the Oswego County Airport, Green said.

The plane, a Cessna Model 150G manufactured in 1966, is registered to Simpson, according to FAA records.

Simpson is the director of sponsored research and programs at SUNY Plattsburgh.

The FAA is conducting an investigation, officials said.
"Hello there, people of Syracuse. How you doing tonight? Ryan Montbleau said while finger-picking a Western-sounding riff.

Montbleau and his band stopped for a show at The Westcott Theater on Thursday, April 11. He got the crowd dancing at this date of his East Coast spring tour, playing a set that lasted more than two hours and featured two encores.

Local blues rock group Blackwell Band started off the night with an ordinary performance made memorable with a cover of Jimi Hendrixs Voodoo Child (Slight Return). Not only was it an ambitious choice that could have easily flopped in that songs legacy, but the band made it their own by jamming on their own, keeping the signature guitar riff.

Then Mike Dillon came on.

His band played xylophone- and bass guitar-heavy jams with him. When he stepped out from behind his percussion setup, he yell-sang, channeling The Offspring 1998.

Were gonna turn the whole club into a tiki bird-whistle bar. I need to hear some bird whistles ladies and gentlemen, he said, launching into a tropical xylo-jam, cawing and screeching into the mic. Hed yell for bird calls throughout the song and for the rest of the show.

His energy was raw and manic. He talked fast. He licked the inside of his shirt and rubbed it inside a large tin can, making a chimpanzee-like ooh ooh aah ahh sound. He yelled C section when playing the C part of a song, which probably left anyone unfamiliar with music theory wondering why he would say that on stage. He stood on his xylophone for the last song. He made me wonder what activities and/or substances frequent his pre-show ritual. It was certainly different, and the audience seemed to enjoy it, but definitely not as much as they enjoyed Ryan Montbleau.

As Montbleau played, the crowd buzzed with movement, and the 700-capacity venue was comfortably packed. He alternated between acoustic and electric, blending blues, folk, hippie rock and a dash of 50s rock n roll into an All-American music smoothie.

In contrast with Dillon, Montbleau was very casual onstage. When someone lost their phone and security handed him the phone to try and find the owner. He read off the persons notifications, including a text from someone named Jim Rice. He joked that he hoped it was the famous former Boston Red Sox left fielder. Perhaps the shoutout came through a moment of #BostonStrong  Montbleau made a name for himself playing at coffee shops, folk venues and the House of Blues in Boston.

He did take a minute to congratulate a fan on her marriage. He said he received numerous Instagram DMs ahead of April 11 saying that Sarah Kendrick, a Syracuse Montbleau fan, would be having her bachelorette party at the concert. Even Montbleaus tour manager let him know.

Happy bachelorette party, Sarah! Much love, he said. Im gonna give you a hug. He jumped offstage to hug her in the front row.

A cover of Eric Claptons Lay Down Sally was particularly electric, especially as his set crept past 11:30 p.m.

I came here to play a lot of songs tonight, he said with seven minutes to midnight.

Though about the quarter of the shows peak crowd had filtered out by 12:15 a.m., those who remained were treated with a cover of The Beatles Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, a welcome change after Montbleaus original music started to sound the same.

You always rock, Syracuse, you always do, Montbleau said, coming back out for a two-song encore, including a solo-acoustic version of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman, then a full-band version of his song, Cue the Majesty.

Syracuse loved Montbleau so much that when he tried to end his set and the Westcott turned on the house lights to cue everyone to leave, Montbleau relented to particularly loud cries for one more song. He played the first notes of Stairway to Heaven, said he was kidding, and played two more of his own songs.

Ill see you soon, told the crowd as he left the stage at 12:46 a.m. Peace and love thank you for coming to spend the night with us.
OSWEGO  The Oswego County Health Department is warning residents about a rapid skunk that was found in the county.

The skunk was caught in the city of Oswego last week and has tested positive for the rabies virus by the New York State Department of Health.

Oswego County Public Health Director Jiancheng Huang is reminding people to be especially wary of wild animals acting out of the ordinary.

With spring in the air, people are getting outside and enjoying the warmer weather, Haung said in a news release. "They should be alert to animal behavior that is not normal. Wild animals that would normally flee from encounters with humans or domestic animals should always be avoided. No matter how gentle and tame a wild animal may appear, do not go near it.

Rabies is almost always fatal to mammals once the symptoms appear. Mammals that are aggressive or tame, show no fear of humans, wander aimlessly, are disoriented, or appear to be sick or paralyzed should be avoided because they could be infected with rabies or other diseases.

Vaccinated pets serve as a buffer between potentially rabid wildlife and humans, Huang said. When you vaccinate your pets, you reduce your familys risk of exposure to rabies as well.

New York State law requires that dogs, cats and ferrets receive rabies vaccinations.

Haung said any time a person or pet encounters a potentially rabid animal, including a bat, the incident should be reported immediately to the local health department. Health experts will investigate to determine if treatment is necessary.
To the Editor:

As the founders of Plowz & Mowz, Sidearm Sports, Spincar and TCGplayer, four of the fastest-growing technology companies in Central New York, were committed to the growth of downtown Syracuse. This commitment is evident in the significant investments we have made to establish new headquarters downtown and in the creation of hundreds of local jobs. As we continue to grow our companies, it is critical that we support the development of a vibrant community that offers mixed-use spaces, is walkable rather than car-centric, and is attractive to our workforce. Recent hires prefer to live and work in an urban, 21st century community that is connected and thriving. Thats why were confident that the community grid is the best choice for the future of Syracuse.

With the future of Interstate 81 before us, we believe that the community grid would allow us to take the revitalization, momentum and energy we have helped create along Warren Street and link it to the incredible innovation, talent and tech centers of the University Hill. The community grid is necessary for us to make this vision a reality as it is inclusive, cost-effective and offers a long-term approach to unify our city and create future growth.

Currently, I-81 divides the two fastest growing business districts in Central New York and limits downtown businesses ability to connect with students at local colleges and universities. Tearing down the highway will allow people to safely and easily move between the downtown and university neighborhoods, which will help locally owned downtown businesses thrive. The grid will also provide space to redevelop an entire corridor while creating diverse neighborhoods that serve everyone in the community.

We recognize that the community grid wont solve all the challenges the city faces, but as members of the business community who want to grow and create desirable employment opportunities, we plan to do our part to support needed changes. The tech community is a willing partner to help craft solutions around modern transit, efficient lighting and enhanced tech-driven infrastructure.

Community leaders have been researching this decision for a decade, and studies from the Onondaga Citizens League, Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council and New York Department of Transportation all show that the community grid is the best solution for Syracuse.

As we look to creating a stronger future for Central New York we must advance a solution that is future-focused and supports the next generation of workers. We invite other locally owned businesses to join us in speaking out in support of the community grid to help us plan for a bright future together.

Chedy Hampson, CEO of TCGplayer

Devin Daly, CEO of Spincar

Jeff Rubin, CEO of Sidearm Sports

Wills Mahoney, CEO of Plowz & Mowz

Syracuse
WASHINGTON  U.S. Rep. Anthony Brindisi didnt waste any time reloading on campaign cash this year after winning New Yorks most expensive race for Congress in 2018.

Brindisi, D-Utica, raised more than $450,000 for his campaign in the first quarter of 2019, a healthy total for a House freshman who refuses to accept donations from corporate interests.

He ended the quarter from Jan. 1 through March 31 with $390,000 cash on hand, according to a quarterly report his campaign plans to file with the Federal Election Commission by Mondays deadline.

About 85 percent of Brindisis contributions during the quarter were from small-dollar donors who gave less than $200, said Sarah Russell, finance director of Brindisis campaign.

Brindisi defeated Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-New Hartford, in November in one of the most competitive and expensive House races in the nation. He won by 1% after a count of absentee ballots.

All told, the candidates and special-interest groups spent about $24 million on the campaign, making it the most expensive race among New Yorks 27 House districts last year.

Independent political groups from outside of the 22nd Congressional District spent about $16 million of the total, ranking in the top 10 in the nation for independent expenditures out of 435 House seats.

One Republican has publicly announced plans to seek the GOP nomination and challenge Brindisi in 2020.

George Phillips, of Endwell in Broome County, said last month that he will make his fourth bid for Congress. He lost a three-way Republican primary to Tenney in 2016. Tenney, who served for one term, has not ruled out seeking a rematch against Brindisi in 2020.

The 22nd Congressional District covers all of Madison, Oneida, Cortland and Chenango counties and portions of Oswego, Broome, Herkimer, and Tioga counties.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong led a delegation of the Party Central Committee to the funeral. (Photo: VNA)



Many delegations came to pay their last respects to the general, who passed away at the age of 96 on April 4th after a period of serious illness.

Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and President of the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) Central Committee Tran Thanh Man led the respective delegations of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, the Government, the National Assembly and the VFF Central Committee to pay homage to the late officer.

Other mourners included former Party General Secretary Nong Duc Manh, former President Truong Tan Sang, former Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, former NA Chairmen Nguyen Van An and Nguyen Sinh Hung, and other incumbent and former leaders of the Party and State, and veteran revolutionaries.

Former Party General Secretary Le Kha Phieu and former Presidents Tran Duc Luong and Nguyen Minh Triet sent wreaths to the event.

Joining the line of mourners were delegations of the Party Central Committees Commission for Information and Education, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security, the Defence Ministry, the Central Military Commission, the Party Central Committees Commission for Internal Affairs, and the Party Central Committees Commission for Mass Mobilisation.

Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong led a delegation of the Party Central Committee to the funeral. (Photo: VnExpress)

Representatives of the Party Committee, Peoples Committee, Peoples Council and Fatherland Front Committee of the central province of Quang Binh  Dong Sy Nguyens homeland - along with many leaders of ministries, agencies and organisations at both central and local levels also came to pay tribute to him.

Writing in the funeral guest book, Party General Secretary and President Nguyen Phu Trong expressed his deep grief over the death of the prestigious leader of the Party, State and people.

He praised Dong Sy Nguyen as a loyal and creative communist soldier who made great contributions to the cause of national liberation and reunification, as well as to the national construction and defence.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc wrote, With more than 80 years of Party membership, comrade Dong Sy Nguyen has devoted his entire life to the revolutionary cause of the Party and the nation.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc led a delegation of the Government to the funeral. (Photo: VnExpress)

The comrade always excellently fulfilled the tasks entrusted by the Party, State, Army and People in any position. His name and career was especially associated with the legendary Ho Chi Minh Trail, he added.

National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan expressed her deep sorrow at the death of comrade Dong Sy Nguyen, who remarkably contributed to the NA during the first tenure term over 70 years ago.

The same day, the memorial service and burial ceremony for general Dong Sy Nguyen took place at the Vinh Hang Cemetery in Ha Noi's Ba Vi district.

Dong Sy Nguyen (birth name Nguyen Huu Vu, alias Nguyen Van Dong) was born on March 1st, 1923 in Quang Trung commune of Quang Trach district, the central province of Quang Binh.

He began participating in revolutionary activities in 1938 and was admitted to the Party in December 1939. Nguyen served as a member of the Party Central Committee in the fourth, fifth, and sixth tenures; an alternate member of the Politburo in the fifth tenure; and a member of the Politburo in the sixth tenure.

National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan gave her regards to Lieut. Gen. Dong Sy Nguyens family members. (Photo: VnExpress)

He was former Commander of High Command 559 which opened and operated the Ho Chi Minh Trail during the war; Political Commissar and Secretary of the High Command 559s Party Committee; Secretary of the Party Committee of the advisors group and Commander of volunteer soldiers in the central and lower Laos; Deputy Minister of National Defence; Minister of Construction; Minister of Transport; Vice Chairman of the Ministers Council (a position now titled as Deputy Prime Minister); and a deputy of the National Assembly in the first, sixth, seventh, and eighth tenures.

During the more than 80 years of his revolutionary activities, he rendered numerous contributions to the revolutionary cause of the Party and the nation. He was honoured with the Gold Star Order, the first-class Military Exploit Order, the 80-year Party membership badge, and many other noble orders and medals by the Party and State./.
Democrat Dana Balter, who last year gave Rep. John Katko his toughest election battle to date, plans to announce next week whether shell seek a rematch next year in the 24th Congressional District.

Balter, 43, of Syracuse, plans to make an announcement at an event open to the public 6 p.m. Tuesday at the PressRoom Pub, 220 Herald Place, Syracuse.

Balters campaign said in a notice to reporters and on Facebook that she would make a special announcement regarding her plans for 2020.

Balter and her campaign did not elaborate or respond to requests for an interview Thursday afternoon. She has remained active in Central New York politics since losing to Katko by about 5 percentage points in last years election.

Last week, Balter spoke to more than 100 college students at the opening night of the College Democrats of New York convention in Syracuse. She has also campaigned for Democrats seeking seats on the Onondaga County Legislature.

In February, Balter started a Syracuse nonprofit  Enter the Public Square  that encourages civic engagement in politics and government.

If Balter decides to run for Congress, she will have competition for the Democratic nomination.

Navy veteran Roger Misso, 31, of Syracuse, decided to return to Central New York last month to run for Congress. He is a native of Red Creek in Wayne County.

Misso filed paperwork declaring his candidacy April 3 with the Federal Election Commission, allowing him to begin raising money as a candidate.

Katko, R-Camillus, will seek his fourth term in office in 2020 to represent a district that covers all of Onondaga, Cayuga and Wayne counties, and the western half of Oswego County.

Balter received more votes on the Democratic line (115,902) than Katko did on the Republican line (113,538) in November, but she lost the election by about 13,000 votes based on Katkos strength on the Conservative line.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
WASHINGTON - White House officials have tried to pressure U.S. immigration authorities to release detainees onto the streets of "sanctuary cities" to retaliate against President Donald Trump's political adversaries, according to Department of Homeland Security officials and email messages reviewed by The Washington Post.

Trump administration officials have proposed transporting detained immigrants to sanctuary cities at least twice in the past six months - once in November, as a migrant caravan approached the U.S. southern border, and again in February, amid a standoff with Democrats over funding for Trump's border wall.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district in San Francisco was among those the White House wanted to target, according to DHS officials. The administration also considered releasing detainees in other Democratic strongholds.

White House officials first broached the plan in a Nov. 16 email, asking officials at several agencies whether members of the caravan could be arrested at the border and then bused "to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities," places where local authorities have refused to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

The White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of jail space but also served to send a message to Democrats. The attempt at political retribution raised alarm within ICE, with a top official responding that it was rife with budgetary and liability concerns, and noting that "there are PR risks as well."

After the White House pressed again in February, ICE's legal department rejected the idea as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

A White House official and a spokesman for the DHS sent nearly identical statements to The Post on Thursday, indicating that the proposal is no longer under consideration.

"This was just a suggestion that was floated and rejected, which ended any further discussion," the White House statement said.

Pelosi's office criticized the plan.

"The extent of this administration's cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated," said Pelosi spokeswoman Ashley Etienne. "Using human beings - including little children - as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable."

Trump has made immigration a central aspect of his administration, and he has grown increasingly frustrated at the influx of migrants from Central America. He often casts them as killers and criminals who threaten U.S. security, pointing to cases in which immigrants have killed U.S. citizens - including a notable case on a San Francisco pier in 2015. And he has railed against liberal sanctuary city policies, saying they endanger Americans.

"These outrageous sanctuary cities are grave threats to public safety and national security," Trump said on Dec. 7, in a speech to the Safe Neighborhoods Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, less than a month after the White House asked ICE about moving detainees to such cities. "Each year, sanctuary cities release thousands of known criminal aliens from their custody and right back into the community. So they put them in, and they have them, and they let them go, and it drives you people a little bit crazy, doesn't it, huh?"

The White House believed it could punish Democrats - including Pelosi - by busing ICE detainees into their districts before their release, according to two DHS whistleblowers who independently reported the busing plan to Congress. One of the whistleblowers spoke with The Post, and several DHS officials confirmed the accounts. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller discussed the proposal with ICE, according to two DHS officials. Matthew Albence, who is ICE's acting deputy director, immediately questioned the proposal in November and later circulated the idea within his agency when it resurfaced in February, seeking the legal review that ultimately doomed the proposal. Miller and Albence declined to comment Thursday.

Miller's name did not appear on any of the documents reviewed by The Post. But as White House senior adviser on immigration policy, officials at ICE understood that he was pressing the plan.

Trump has been demanding aggressive action to deal with the surge of migrants, and many of his administration's proposals have been blocked in federal court or, like the family separation policy last year, backfired as public relations disasters.

Homeland Security officials said the sanctuary city request was unnerving, and it underscores the political pressure Trump and Miller have put on ICE and other DHS agencies at a time when the president is furious about the biggest border surge in more than a decade.

"It was basically an idea that Miller wanted that nobody else wanted to carry out," said one congressional investigator who has spoken to one of the whistleblowers. "What happened here is that Stephen Miller called people at ICE, said if they're going to cut funding you've got to make sure you're releasing people in Pelosi's district and other congressional districts."

The idea of releasing immigrants into sanctuary cities was not presented to Ronald Vitiello, the agency's acting director, according to one DHS official familiar with the plan. Last week the White House rescinded Vitiello's nomination to lead ICE, giving no explanation, and Vitiello submitted his resignation Wednesday, ending his 30-year-career.

Trump told reporters the following day he wanted to put someone "tougher" at ICE. DHS officials said they do not know whether ICE's refusal to adopt the White House's plan contributed to Vitiello's removal. His departure puts Albence in charge of the agency as of Friday.

The White House proposal reached ICE first in November as a highly publicized migrant caravan was approaching the United States. May Davis, deputy assistant to the president and deputy White House policy coordinator, wrote to officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the Department of Homeland Security with the subject line: "Sanctuary City Proposal."

"The idea has been raised by 1-2 principals that, if we are unable to build sufficient temporary housing, that caravan members be bussed to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities," Davis wrote, seeking responses to its operational and legal viability. "There is NOT a White House decision on this."

Albence replied that such a plan "would create an unnecessary operational burden" on an already strained organization and raised concerns about its appropriateness, writing: "Not sure how paying to transport aliens to another location to release them - when they can released on the spot - is a justified expenditure. Not to mention the liability should there be an accident along the way."

The White House pushed the issue a second time in the midst of the budget standoff in mid-February, according to DHS officials, and on the heels of a bitterly partisan 35-day government shutdown over Trump's border wall plan. The White House discussed the immigrant release idea as a way to punish Democrats standing in the way of funding additional detention beds.

ICE detainees with violent criminal records are not typically released on bond or other "alternatives to detention" while they await a hearing with an immigration judge, but there have been instances of such detainees being released.

The White House urged ICE to channel releases to sanctuary districts, regardless of whether immigrants had any ties to those places.

"It was retaliation, to show them, 'Your lack of cooperation has impacts,' " said one of the DHS officials, summarizing the rationale. "I think they thought it would put pressure on those communities to understand, I guess, a different perspective on why you need more immigration money for detention beds."

Senior officials at ICE did not take the proposal seriously at first, but as the White House exerted pressure, ICE's legal advisers were asked to weigh in, DHS officials said.

A formal legal review was never completed, according to two DHS officials familiar with the events, and senior ICE attorneys told Albence and others that the plan was inappropriate and lacked a legal basis.

"If we would have done that, we would have had to expend transportation resources, and make a decision that we're going to use buses, planes, etc. to send these aliens to a place for whatever reason," a senior DHS official said. "We had to come up with a reason, and we did not have one."

The proposal faded when House Democrats ultimately relented on their demand for a decrease in the number of detention beds, a final sticking point in budget talks between the White House and House Democrats.

The number of immigrant detainees in ICE custody has approached 50,000 in recent months, an all-time high that has further strained the agency's budget. Those include immigrants arrested in the U.S. interior, as well as recent border-crossers transferred from Border Patrol. With unauthorized migration at a 12-year-high, the vast majority of recent migrants - and especially those with children - are quickly processed and released with a notice to appear in court, a system that Trump has derided as "catch and release."

The process has left Trump seething, convinced that immigration officials and the DHS more broadly should adopt a harsher approach.

Vitiello's removal from ICE last week was followed Sunday by the ouster of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who lost favor with Trump and Miller by repeatedly warning the White House that the administration's policy ideas were unworkable and likely to be blocked by federal courts.

The sanctuary city proposal ran contrary to ICE policy guidelines, as well as legal counsel. ICE officials balked at the notion of moving migrants to detention facilities in different areas, insisting that Congress only authorizes the agency to deport immigrants, not relocate them internally, according to DHS officials.

The plan to retaliate against sanctuary cities came just after Trump agreed to reopen the government in late January, following a five-week shutdown over wall funding. The president gave lawmakers three weeks to come up with a plan to secure the border before a second fiscal deadline in mid-February.

During the talks, Republicans and Democrats sparred over the number of detention beds, with House Democrats pressing for a lower number amid pressure from their left flank.

It was during that mid-February standoff that one whistleblower came to Congress alleging that the White House was considering a plan to punish Democrats if they did not relent on ICE funding for beds. A second official independently came forward after that.

According to both, there were at least two versions of the plan being considered. One was to move migrants who were already in ICE detention to the districts of Democratic opponents. The second option was to bus migrants apprehended at the border to sanctuary cities, such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump said Friday he may send detained migrants from the southern border to sanctuary cities to punish his political foes for inaction on border security.

What does that mean for Syracuse?

Its unlikely that Trump and the Department of Homeland Security would target Syracuse and Onondaga County, even though former mayor Stephanie Miner often touted that Syracuse was a sanctuary city that welcomes migrants.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials considers sanctuary cities to be places where local authorities do not cooperate with ICE, denying information or resources to help detain or deport people who entered the country illegally.

Since Syracuse does not operate its own jail, decisions about complying with ICE detention orders fall to Onondaga County Sheriff Gene Conway.

Conway, who oversees the Onondaga County Justice Center jail in Syracuse, has made it his policy to comply with ICE detainer requests.

It has always been my purpose to cooperate with law enforcement, whether it is local, state or federal, Conway said.

Trump, in a series of tweets Friday, contradicted his own White House and Homeland Security officials who said the idea of sending migrants to sanctuary cities had been considered and immediately rejected.

The president also made it clear he wanted to punish congressional districts represented by Democrats who had opposed his plans on border security.

Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only, Trump tweeted.

Rep. John Katko, a Republican, represents Syracuse as part of the four-county 24th Congressional District. The district covers all of Onondaga, Cayuga and Wayne counties and half of Oswego County.

Earlier Friday, the Washington Post reported that the idea of sending migrants only to sanctuary cities raised alarm within ICE, where the legal department said the idea was inappropriate.

Contact Mark Weiner: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
CAYUGA, N.Y. - Cindy Gernert grew up in Florida and loves being on the water. Her husband George, however, has family in Central NY and Gernert said she would give Upstate NY living a try. The home they found at 5405 State Route 90 in Cayuga had the waterfront access Gernert desired.

The family room is Gernerts favorite room of the home.

There is a fireplace and windows overlooking the lake in the family room. You can sit there and peacefully look out on the water. It is just a beautiful view here, said Gernert.

The home is on almost two acres. Gernert said there is a nice sized back yard for kids to play and a huge back deck for parties.

There is plenty of space for outdoor activities, said Gernert. Its a great house for people who like to be outside and want to be on the lake.

The outdoor space and deck are what make this house stand out from other homes in the neighborhood. Most other homes have smaller yardage, according Gernert.

Just about all of the homes on the stretch of road that the Gernerts live on have seasonal residents. Even in the summertime, Gernert said their neighbors, who are wonderful, are rarely there. The community is peaceful and quiet.

We love the peace and quiet. We hear the birds, see the eagles that show up; its a real bird sanctuary with Montezuma Audubon Center being so close. We enjoy it and I really will miss it," said Gernert.

Gernert said there is a lot she loves about this home.

I will miss the lake the most. I will miss the views, and the peace and quiet. The sunsets in summer and fall are absolutely gorgeous, said Gernert.

Gernert and her husband will be leaving the Finger Lakes and heading back to Texas.

I am just not a cold weather person. I was stationed with the military in Texas and I love the heat, said Gernert.

There will be an open house on April 14 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

THE DETAILS

Address: 5405 State Route 90, Cayuga, N.Y. 13034

Price: $885,000

Size: 4,700 square feet

Acreage: 1.94 acres

Monthly Mortgage: $4,707 (based on this weeks national average rate of 4.08 percent, according to Freddie Mac, for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a 20 percent down payment. Fees and points not included.)

Total taxes: $11,966 (Based on assessed value of $10,900)

Built: 1987

School District: Union Springs

Kitchen: The kitchen has a large center island and granite countertops. There is also a breakfast nook and walk-in pantry.

Bedrooms: This home has five bedrooms. On the top floor there are three bedrooms, including the master suite. The first floor has a bedroom which is currently being used as an office. In the finished lower level, there is a bedroom in a full mother-in-law suite. The master suite has a window seat and a walk-in closet.

Bathrooms: There are three full bathrooms in this home. The master bathroom includes a large glass shower, a door to the commode, and a large vanity area. There are full bathrooms on both the first floor and in the finished basement.

Living areas: This home has a family room with fireplace and lots of windows overlooking the lake. There is also a dining room, wet bar, and first floor laundry. The finished lower level could be used as an in-law suite or as an apartment with its living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom.

Outdoors: The home has almost two acres and 129 feet of water frontage. Large glass sliders walk out from the family room onto an enormous deck, which includes a hot-tub/infrared sauna enclosure. There is an attached garage and two additional detached garages. The yard is sizably larger than other homes in the neighborhood.

Agent: Sharon Dailey

Kirnan Real Estate, Inc.

Address: 300 Old Liverpool Rd., Liverpool, N.Y. 13088

Phone: 315-708-1069

Email: dailey@kirnan.com

To nominate a listing for House of the Week, send an email to home@syracuse.com
WASHINGTON  U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to transfer at least 300 officers next month from the nations airports and northern border to southern border outposts overwhelmed with incoming asylum-seekers, a prospective move thats already raising concerns that it could leave U.S-Canada border crossings short-staffed at the start of the heavy summer travel season.

Customs officials revealed their plans Thursday in a conference call with institutions that would be affected by the move.

Two sources familiar with the agency's plans told The Buffalo News after the call that the agency said it plans to temporarily shift at least 300 officers southward in May to deal with the crush of newcomers entering the U.S. from Mexico.

The customs officials did not specify which border crossings or airports would lose personnel because of the move, the sources said.

But Rep. Brian Higgins, the head of the Peace Bridge Authority and the president of the union that represents Buffalo-area customs officers all expressed worries that the agency would send officers from Buffalo to the Rio Grande Valley region in Texas where most undocumented immigrants arrive.

Higgins said any transfer of customs agents from the Buffalo area to the southern border could lead to backups at the local bridges into Canada. That being the case, he wrote a letter Thursday to Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, to protest any move of personnel away from the northern border.

"Rather than addressing border challenges in a responsible way, this move expands them," Higgins wrote.

Higgins is by no means alone in that concern.

"That would clearly have an impact on us, particularly as we move into the busy summer season," said Ron Rienas, general manager of the Peace Bridge Authority. "Really it couldn't come at a worse time for us, because the traffic picks up in May, and it's busy from May to October."

Customs and Border Protection spokespeople in Washington declined to answer questions about the pending mandatory shift in personnel, which agency officials laid out only two days after they said in a media conference call that they would be asking customs officers to volunteer to go to the southern border.

"To address the Border Patrols urgent need we are soliciting CBP Officer volunteers from our CBP airport operations and our northern border to continue to support the Southwest border Border Patrol," said Randy J. Howe, executive director of operations for the customs agency.

The customs agency's union contract requires it to first seek volunteers for such transfers before actually forcing officers to accept 90-day assignments far away from home.

Any officer temporarily transferred to the southern border can expect to endure "horrible" conditions, said Paul Kwiatkowski, president of National Treasury Employees Union Local 154, which represents hundreds of customs officers based in Western New York.

"I've seen pictures of the conditions that these guys are forced to stay in," Kwiatkowski said. "They're being forced into old military bases, into buildings that the military themselves won't even stay in. They're littered with cockroaches. They're disgusting."

Customs officers will be helping out the U.S. Border Patrol, which finds itself overwhelmed with asylum-seekers, said Brian Hastings, chief of law enforcement operations at the Border Patrol.

"The Border Patrol is facing an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis," Hastings said on the Tuesday conference call with reporters. "We're seeing record numbers of apprehensions, large groups and high numbers in custody. And we've arrived at the breaking point."

The Border Patrol apprehended 92,000 people at the southern border in March, up 35 percent from February, Hastings said.

The recent influx of undocumented immigrants is the largest the nation has seen in a dozen years, and it's decidedly different than earlier influxes in one important way.

This influx doesn't consist primarily of single travelers whom the U.S. can simply deport. More than 58 percent of those who crossed the border illegally in March came as part of families, most of them fleeing three troubled Central American countries: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. These families arrive in the U.S. seeking asylum  and as such, under U.S. law, they can't immediately be deported.

"As more and more adults with children are released into the U.S. pending their immigration proceedings, word of mouth and social media have spread news and more immigrants are emboldened to make the dangerous journey," Hastings said.

President Trump has railed against the influx of asylum-seekers, citing it as evidence that the U.S. needs to build a wall at the Mexican border.

More immediately, though, Customs and Border Protection officials said they need more officers working at the southern border simply to handle the heavy caseload. Some 545 customs officers from Texas and California have already been reassigned to help the Border Patrol, thereby creating border backups in El Paso and Laredo, Texas, as well as in San Diego.

As a result, travelers and shippers are experiencing increased wait times as they approach the border along the Southwest border for all modes of traffic including pedestrian, vehicles and commercial trucks, Howe, the customs official, said.

-- By Jerry Zremski, The Buffalo News
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. (AP)  A 38-year-old upstate New York woman has admitted killing her infant son before hiding his body behind her residence.

Heaven Puleski pleaded guilty Thursday in Schenectady County Court to first-degree manslaughter with a promised sentence of 15 years in state prison. She was originally charged with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum penalty of 25 years to life in prison.

The decomposed body of 4-month-old Rayen was found behind Puleskis Schenectady apartment on Aug. 9. A cause of death could not be determined, although the indictment said Puleski had violently shaken and thrown him.

The baby was last seen on July 17. Mother and child were reported missing by family, but Puleski was found soon afterward.

Sentencing is scheduled on June 5.
Syracuse, N.Y  Heavy rainstorms are becoming more common in the Northeast, including Upstate New York, says a new study by University at Albany researchers.

The study found that rainstorms dumping at least 2 inches of rain are happening much more often since 1979, and that could be a symptom of climate change.

Rainfall events that can cause significant flooding are increasing in frequency and in magnitude, said Macy Howarth, lead author of the paper, to be published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.

Howarth, who conducted the study as a University at Albany graduate student, examined data for Northeast storms that dropped at least 2, 4 and 6 inches of rain from 1979 to 2014. Those years were chosen because data before 1979 wasnt reliable enough, she said.

Rainstorms of at least 2 inches increased by 26 percent from the first to second half of the study period. While 2 inches doesnt sound like much, Howarth said, its in the top 1 percent of rainfalls and is enough to cause damaging floods.

The biggest percentage increase was seen in storms that dropped at least 6 inches of rain. The number of those massive storms quadrupled, from six in the first half of the study period to 25 in the second. While the number of storms is small, Howarth said, they have devastating impacts on communities.

Those are catastrophic rainfall events, with significant flooding and disruptions that pose threats to property and life, she said. Those are the Irenes.

Hurricane Irene dropped more than 12 inches of rain in August 2011 and killed 40 people in the U.S., including eight in New York. Irene also caused $16 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Howarths paper said the biggest increase in heavy rainfall came from hurricanes and other storms that drag in tropical moisture. The paper did not explicitly study the reasons for the increase, but suggested that a warming planet could be to blame.

The warmer air gets, the more water it can hold, Howarth said. If youre getting the air to hold more moisture, youre going to get bigger rainfalls.

Howarths paper follows many others that came to similar conclusions: The Northeast is getting wetter and enduring heavier storms. The number of severe rainstorms - those that drop more than 1 inch in 24 hours - has increased by 74 percent in the Northeast, more than in any other region of the country, according to the National Climate Assessment.

Syracuse.com found in 2014 that Central New York is being pummeled by intense rainstorms twice as often in the past 25 years than it did before. The analysis of weather data also found that the number of days per year in which 1 inch or more or precipitation falls has increased about 36 percent.

One region in Howarths study, however, saw a drop in severe rainstorms: Western New York. Howarth speculated that might also be a symptom of global warming, as a warmer Lake Erie would tend to weaken the strength of thunderstorms, the major source of heavy rainfall for Western New York. The region gets less rain than areas to the east from coastal storms, which accounted for the biggest increases in rainfall in the Northeast.

Howarth, now an analyst for the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, said her study suggests the trend of more intense storms will continue as the planet warms.

Were going to get more of these storms, she said, and theyre going to be bigger when they happen.
Pakistan International Public School PIPS Mansehra Jobs 2019

Latest Pakistan International Public School PIPS Teaching Posts Mansehra 2021 Pakistan International Public School PIPS Mansehra, Pakistan are requires experienced candidates for the posts of Coordinator, Teacher, English Teacher, Urdu Teacher, SST Teacher, Physics Teacher.

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Apply as per details in job advertisement. In some cases, you may apply online at vacancies after registering at https://www.jobz.pk online.

Note: Beware of Fraudulent Recruiting Activities. If an employer asks to pay money for any purpose, do not pay at all and report us at contact us form. Apply as per instuctions & dates mentioned in official job ad. Govt jobs may not be applied online here. Human typing error is possible. Error & omissions excepted.
In context: Eight radio telescopes trained at the center of the Messier 87 galaxy each recorded 350TB of data per day for one week. That provided the scientists with five petabytes of data stored on high-performance helium-filled hard drives to process. An amazing cache by anyone's standards.

On Wednesday, we reported that scientists had taken the first image ever of a black hole. It was big news in the astronomy community. It was also apparently big news in the data-hoarding community as well.

Subreddit DataHoarder was buzzing after one of the scientists working on the black hole project tweeted a picture of his colleague, Katie Bouman, posing with some of the hard drives that held the image data.

She stood behind eight towers that appeared to hold eight drives each. Presumably, this was just one cache as 64 HDDs could only hold 5PB if they were 80TB capacity, something drive makers have not achieved yet.

The Black Hole photo is very impressive, but I'm more interested in where they got these 80TB drives, said one Redditor.

This is her with the hard drives containing the image data for the Black Hole. pic.twitter.com/unOud3msk2  Muhammad Karim (@mkarim) April 10, 2019

Another poster posited that they used 12TB drives and that this was only one-eighth of the data.

"Well that makes sense as the data was captured across 8 different telescopes, so this is 1/8th of the whole setup," said ThomasTheSpider.

The black hole image was put together using data from eight radio telescopes from around the world. Each telescope gathered massive amounts of information on its own. All totaled the scientists were dealing with more than five petabytes of data  enough to store 5,000 years worth of MP3s.

Or as one data hoarder put it, Black holes are cool, I guess, but imagine all the [lossless Blu-Ray files] you could store on those bad boys, in RAID 1 no less.

Regardless of how many drives were used, there is a logistical problem with sharing this much information. Obviously, it cant be sent via the internet. Instead, the drives were crated and flown to Boston and Germany for processing.

The data was then pieced together by an algorithm written by Katie Bouman. Blank spots were filled in by the software. Bouman, who is an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology explained the process back in 2016 when she was still an MIT student (above).

If we want to see the black hole, we need a telescope the size of the Earth [like a disco ball], Bouman said. In other words, mirrors covering the entire planet, or at least a hemisphere.

However, having only eight mirrors limits what can be seen. So data was collected from each telescope every day throughout the day for an entire week.

As the Earth rotates, we get to see other new measurements, she continued. In other words, as the disco ball spins, those mirrors change locations, and we get to observe different parts of the image. The imaging algorithms we developed fill in the missing gaps of the disco ball in order to reconstruct the underlying black hole image.

This is why the image took up five petabytes of data. Could you imagine the data involved if it were possible to cover the Earth with mirrors to "see" the whole image?
New York City declares a state of public health emergency in Brooklyn as the measles outbreak has reached at least 285 cases.

Mayor Bill de Blasio issued mandatory measles vaccination to people living in or near Williamsburg. Those who refused to get immunized within 48 hours will risk receiving violation tickets or incurring fines of $1,000.

Most Notorious Outbreak

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported at least 465 individual cases of measles in 19 states in the past three and a half months. This outbreak has the second greatest number of infected individuals since measles was eradicated in the country in the 2000s.

In March, state health officials banned unvaccinated children from attending schools, visiting shopping malls, and even occupying public places in Rockland County.

The NYC Health Department recently issued an order banning all unvaccinated members of the Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg from entering yeshivas and day care programs. Non-compliant schools could be subject to closure.

"We stand with the majority of people in this community who have worked hard to protect their children and those at risk," said Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot from the NYC Health Department. "We've seen a large increase in the number of people vaccinated in these neighborhoods, but as Passover approaches, we need to do all we can to ensure more people get the vaccine."

In February, the department increased the recommended MMR vaccine dose for children between ages 6 months and 11 months who live in Williamsburg and Borough Park. Infants are advised to get immunized prior to international travel.

Unvaccinated individuals may dial 311 to get a list of providers that offer MMR vaccines with minimal to low cost.

Currently, New York's MMR vaccination rate is at 91.1 percent, below the 94 percent requirement to achieve herd immunity.

Non-Medical Exemptions

An analysis published in PLOS Medicine indicated that non-medical exemptions increased in 12 out of 17 states with relaxed laws on immunization. Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Utah gave leeway for philosophical beliefs as a basis to refuse the vaccine.

Measles hot spots were gearing toward tighter policies. Fewer students in California skipped their shots and statewide vaccination rates rose to 94 percent as a result of discarding its personal-belief exemptions.

Authorities said they are now reviewing a bill to ensure that only patients with a qualified medical history like chemotherapy or organ transplantation will be given an exemption.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Scientists are now looking for inspiration in nature to further improve patients' healing process. The future might see doctors using porcupine quills as surgical staples.

To stitch up a physical wound, doctors usually use staples and sutures, methods that haven't changed decades ago. Although they are effective, staples have some minor side effects researchers would like to eradicate.

Current surgical staples are often used by surgeons because it's faster than using a needle and thread. However, staples, when bent inside the tissue, cause more damage, and the opening of the puncture can be a breeding ground for bacteria.

That's why currently, scientists and surgeons alike are looking for newer and safer ways to stitch up wounds using minimally invasive procedures.

Microstructured Porcupine Barbs

Scientists are now looking at porcupines, whose self-defense mechanism is by slapping a predator with its spiky tail filled with sharp quills. Although the quills are not poisonous, they're incredibly sharper than a hypodermic needle, and each tip has microstructured barbs.

These barbs are so much nuisance to predators, as they are backward-facing. Pulling the quill in the opposite direction flares out the barbs, making the effort harder and more painful.

Animal predators who make the mistake of disturbing porcupines usually learn this lesson the hard way. There are many times when researchers find embedded porcupine quills in a deceased mountain lion's snout.

Surgical Quill Staple

According to Jeff Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, he and his team are currently looking to replicate the porcupine's barbs to create a much safer and less-invasive surgical staple.

Karp and his team did a series of experiments to measure the similarities between a barbed and barbless quill. They've discovered that a barbed quill has more functions than that without, since barbed quills can deliver easier penetration in the flesh with an increased pullout force.

Results also show that barbed quills do less damage in the tissue because of its ability to create a perfect hole. Unlike a surgical staple, barbed quills have minimal damage on tissue. It also does not need to be bent because of the barbs' gripping power.

New Medical Staple

Karp is now looking forward to creating a prototype of a new medical staple using the technology inspired by porcupine barbs. Karp is determined to make the staple out of a biodegradable material in order to eliminate the need for a follow-up checkup because the staples would just dissolve over time.

He's positive that if the right technologies become available within the next two to five years, they would be able to make the prototype.

The findings of this study is published at The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Amazon employees have recently signed an open letter urging Jeff Bezos and other leaders of the company to do more about climate change.

The letter went live on Wednesday, April 10, and over 4,200 workers signed the petition. The employees signed with their full names, an infrequent move for tech employee activists.

Shipment Zero

According to the letter, Amazon employees are urging the Amazon leaders to "disclose a company-wide plan to reach zero carbon emissions within the timeline required by science."

Although Amazon announced "Shipment Zero" in 2014, an initiative to make all shipments net zero carbon, employees argue that Shipment Zero doesn't really have an effect in emissions reduction from the current levels. Apparently, Amazon's plan to commit to 100 percent renewable energy doesn't have an exact deadline.

Sam Kennedy, an Amazon spokesperson, stated that Amazon is actually working on addressing climate change in many ways, including Shipment Zero.

"Earlier this year, we announced that we will share our company wide carbon footprint, along with related goals and programs," said Kennedy in a statement. "We also announced Shipment Zero, our vision to make all Amazon shipments net-zero carbon, with 50 percent of all shipments net zero by 2030."

Largest Climate-Focused Campaign

Amazon employees' campaign to address climate change is the largest move made by tech workers to date. The letter also states that Amazon should stop donating to legislators who vote against climate-delaying legislation, something that Amazon did last year. In 2018, the tech company donated to 68 members of the Congress who vote for climate-delaying legislations 100 percent of the time.

Amazon workers are very specific in their plan stated in the letter. They said that Amazon's obsession with customer service also equates to climate obsession.

Employees state that the company should immediately implement a company-wide plan that addresses a couple of principles that help combat climate change. This includes a complete conversion from fossil fuels, making business decisions with climate impact in their first agenda, and stopping the company's support from Congress members who don't advocate for action in climate change.

The letter also states that in case of extreme weather events and climate disruptions that make workplaces inaccessible or unsafe, Amazon shouldn't penalize, withhold pay, or terminate the affected employees, especially the contractual or hourly workers.

Climate change is something they should think about whenever a business decision is being made," said Ranjit Iftikhar, a software engineer in Amazon's retail business. "We want to make Amazon a better company. It is a natural extension of that."

The open letter was first posted on the online publishing platform Medium.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A new study from researchers in Japan confirms that cats can recognize the names that their human owners have carefully chosen for them.

Previous studies have shown that cats are intelligent enough to recognize hand gestures, facial expressions, vocal cues, and their owner's voices. However, whether they can actually distinguish their names from other words has not been scientifically explored until now.

What Is In A Name

Researchers tested and observed a total of 78 cats in cat cafes, a coffee shop where multiple cats live and interact with customers, and at home. The team went to the individual homes of the cats, played the recorded voices of their owners, who were not present during the experiment, calling their names to see if the felines would respond. The researchers also played audio of the owners saying other words.

The experiment is based on habituation, a technique in which the subject would respond less and less to the stimulus presented repeatedly. In the experiment, if the cat could not recognize its name, it would show a decrease in interest to the audio presented to them.

The researchers found that when presented with non-name words emitted by the owners, the cats demonstrated signs of waning interest. When they heard their owners say their names, the cats showed increased reaction by moving their ears, heads, and tails or through vocalizations. This was also true when presented with audio of strangers saying the cats' names.

The findings, however, varied among cats in cat cafes. The study found that these cats were really bad at discerning their own names from the names of other cat cafes cats.

The researchers claim that the study is the first "experimental evidence showing cats' ability to understand human verbal utterance." They published the study in the journal Scientific Reports.

Only Some Cats Recognize Their Names

Mikel Delgado from the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine warned that while the paper was interesting, the number of cats that actually responded to their names was quite small. She also expressed doubt over how the data was interpreted by the researchers.

"Generally, only one-third to half of cats show an increased response to their name-which isn't exactly mind-blowing," she told Gizmodo.

The findings confirm that at least some cats have the cognitive ability to recognize their names from other human words. Whether they would respond is an entirely different matter.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Donald Greene Sr. from Illinois and his son Donald Greene II have been charged in a probe over diseased body parts sold for research and education.

Cadavers Tested Positive For Infectious Diseases

Federal prosecutors said researchers paid to use the cadavers not knowing these tested positive for infectious diseases.

Prosecutors, for instance, alleged that in 2013, Greene Sr. sold remains that tested positive for hepatitis to Detroit Medical Center.

The charge states that the goal of the scheme is to profit from customers who were not aware they received remains that either tested positive for the serious infectious disease or were not tested for these diseases.

The older Greene is charged with wire fraud, while his son is charged for his failure to report the scheme. The charges were filed last week as a criminal information, so a guilty plea is expected.

Arthur Rathburn Case

The charges are related to the case of Arthur Rathburn who was sentenced to nine years in prison in May 2018. The 64-year-old Detroit man, who supplied cadavers and body parts for medical training, failed to disclose that these were infected with hepatitis or HIV.

Evidence collected from Rathburn's case led federal investigators to Greene Sr. and his namesake.

Body Brokers

"Body brokers" earn by charging institutions to have access to donated bodies for scientific purposes.

While most people are buried or cremated when they died, some bodies are donated to science. Whole-body donations though need to be authorized by the donor before death or by relatives after death.

One reason why the bodies are turned over to body brokers and not to states or universities is the cost. It allows relatives to save several hundred dollars.

"Brokers often offer donors to pick up the body and transport and cremate it for free in return for body donation," Reuters reported in 2017.

"Another reason is marketing. Brokers advertise online and work with funeral homes, hospitals, nursing homes and hospices to solicit bodies from the dying and their families."

It is not illegal to dismember and broker body parts. What is illegal is to knowingly sell remains that tested for infectious diseases, like what was allegedly done by the Greenes from 2008 to 2014.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Chinese scientists have put genes of human brains into transgenic rhesus monkeys to make them smarter.

A new study reveals the details of the experiment conducted by bioscientists from the Kunming Institute of Zoology in China, which added a human gene responsible for brain growth to the genome of monkeys.

Gene-Editing Technique

Using gene-editing techniques, the researchers added a human gene called microcephalin or MCPH1 to the genome of several rhesus monkeys to learn more about human brain development and brain evolution.

MCPH1, which is expressed during the fetal stage of the human brain's development, has been linked to brain size. Babies with damaged microcephalin are said to be born with tiny heads.

"This was the first attempt to understand the evolution of human cognition using a transgenic monkey model," said Bing Su, a geneticist at Kunming Institute of Zoology.

To mesh the human gene into the monkey genomes, the scientists injected viruses carrying the MCPH1 gene into monkey embryos and then allowed the monkeys to develop naturally. Each monkeys have between two to nine copies of the human gene in their bodies.

Eleven monkeys with the edited genome were born, but only five survived. Those that survived had their brains measured in MRI machines and were studied to see what impact the human gene had on their development and abilities.

Although the monkeys did not develop a larger-than-usual brain size, they appeared to be better than average in memory tests and processing abilities. The gene-hacked monkeys showed better reaction times and enhanced short-term memories compared to their unaltered peers.

A Controversial Experiment

Su's research is said to be probing the Darwinian selection and the development of the brain. Other scientists questioned and rasied animal rights concerns about his works involving modified primates.

Other scientists regarded Su's latest experiment as reckless, as they questioned the ethics of genetically modifying primates.

"The use of transgenic monkeys to study human genes linked to brain evolution is a very risky road to take," according to James Sikela of the University of Colorado.

Animal rights group PETA also did not favor the experiment, saying that genetic engineering is absolutely unethical and only increases animal suffering.

"Macaque monkeys are highly intelligent fellow primates who form intricate social relationships, experience every emotion humans do and can suffer just as much as we can. In this vile study, female monkeys were cut open and artificially fertilized  and many pregnancies failed," said PETA UK's Anna Van Der Zalm.

Experiments using primates is difficult to conduct in the Europe and the United States, but in China, scientists are using the latest DNA editing tools on the animals.

The study is published in the Beijing-based National Science Review.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The Diocese of Lafayette released on Friday a list of clergy members with credible abuse accusations.

+5 Lafayette Diocese releases list of clergy members with credible abuse accusations The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette on Friday released the names of clergymen  priests and deacons  accused of sexually abusing children

By releasing the list the diocese joins others across the state and country.

Dioceses in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Houma-Thibodaux and Alexandria have all released their own lists, while Shreveport Diocesan leaders said they received no allegations since the diocese was created in 1986 from part of the Diocese of Alexandria. The Lake Charles Diocese released information on 12 accused clergymen Thursday, several of whom also served in the Diocese of Lafayette.

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"Sexual abuse is a scourge that has occured in all segments of society," Bishop Douglas Deshotel said in a video message released earlier this week. "It has occured in families, schools, organizations and most sadly in the church. It is most heinous when men consecrated for God's work have betrayed a sacred trust to protect and serve innocent children."

"The church's response, especially in earlier days, was inadequate and wrong," Deshotel continued. Rather than listening to survivors of abuse, helping them to heal and removing offenders, efforts were directed to protecting the institution. That has changed."

Read the full letter from the bishop here.

In order to determine if accusations of wrongdoing were credible, bishops previously handled the claims, but would also sometimes involve lay committees. After 2002, however, the accusations were presented to the Sexual Abuse Review Board according to the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People.

Information on how to report abuse, status of well-known cases and other frequently asked questions are answered in an attached document from the diocese here.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette on Friday released the names of clergymen  priests and deacons  accused of sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults, becoming the last Louisiana diocese to disclose the identities of those deemed to have been credibly accused.

Here, where the first case of priest sex abuse of children came to light in the 1980s, the diocese released few details about those on its list. Absent are the dates the priests served at various churches, when and where the alleged abuse took place, descriptions of the allegations, whether there were multiple allegations, whether criminal charges were filed, whether the diocese was sued and whether its insurers paid out settlements to victims.

Unlike other dioceses across the state and the country, Lafayette only released the priest's name, the year they were born, the date they were ordained, churches where they served and their current status.

Also absent are the names of nuns and lay people, such as choir directors and religion teachers, who were credibly accused of abuse.

"I think it outrageous that the bishop is not including nuns, and religious order priests (Jesuits, Salesians, Franciscans, etc)," said Tim Lennon, president of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP. "All have to be incardinated in the diocese. All have to 'kiss the ring' of the bishop. By not including nuns ... brothers, and religious order priests the bishop is committing another form of cover-up."

Luke Johnson of the Facebook group Catholics of Acadiana for Church Reform said the diocese needs to release details and documentation that show what happened over the decades with abusive priests and how the bishops and other church leaders covered it up.

"They're not going to give that up unless they're forced to," he said Friday.

The group, Johnson said, consists of faithful, church-attending Catholics who want the church's reputation restored. The best way to do that, he said, is with a full investigation by the attorney general's office.

See the full list released Friday by the Lafayette Diocese here.

The Acadiana Advocate previously published a list of 16 priests who had have had serious, credible allegations made against them. Thirteen of those priests are on the Diocese of Lafayette list released Friday. Three  Gil Dutel, Kenneth Morvant and Joseph Pelletieri  are not.

The disclosure by the Lafayette diocese is particularly relevant because this is where the the first widely-known case of priest sexual abuse of minors became public in the 1980s, rocking the devout Catholic communities of South Louisiana and foreshadowing a widespread priest sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.

Long before the priest abuse scandals in Boston and Philadelphia, the Catholic Church in South Louisiana became "ground zero" when the family of one abused boy refused to quietly accept a settlement payment from the diocese as others did. The boy testified in court, detailing the sexual abuse he suffered by priest Gilbert Gauthe. His family was awarded $1 million, and the church for the first time could not hide its dirty secret with a payout.

Gauthe, who told a psychologist he abused more than 300 children, would eventually admit to 34 criminal counts of molesting children in the 1970s and 1980s across Acadiana. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison but only served 10.

The diocese's insurers paid out millions in settlements to more than 40 of Gauthe's victims and the victims of other priests. But the monetary details of those settlements almost always are kept secret from the more than 270,000 Catholics in the diocese that stretches from Vermilion Parish to the Atchafalaya River in St. Mary Parish.

The Gauthe case was an awakening for many Catholics who revered their priests and revealed for the first time a pattern repeated across the country where priests accused of abusing minors were transferred by their bishops to another church in the diocese or even to another state, where they often repeated the abuse on children whose parents were unaware of their pasts.

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Under pressure to release the names

Dioceses in Louisiana and across the nation have been been under growing pressure to release the names of clergy credibly accused of abusing minors. That pressure resulted from a sweeping Pennsylvania Attorney General report last year on accused priests in that state, as well as local scandals.

Dioceses in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Houma-Thibodaux, Lake Charles and Alexandria have all released their own lists, while Shreveport Diocesan leaders said they received no allegations since the diocese was created in 1986 from part of the Diocese of Alexandria. The Lake Charles Diocese released information on 12 accused clergymen Thursday, several of whom also served in the Diocese of Lafayette.

The Lafayette Diocese has resisted calls to release a list since at least 2004, when court filings revealed the diocese had paid $24.4 million in legal settlements to 123 accusers. The accusers implicated 15 church employees, but the bishop at the time, Michael Jarrell, refused to disclose the identities of the accused, and the diocese has not wavered from that stance until now.

Bishop Douglas Deshotel, who replaced Jarrell in 2016, was noncommittal during a June 2018 news conference when asked repeatedly if he would release the list of priests associated with the legal settlements.

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I dont know that information, Deshotel said. I do know that no priest who has been credibly accused is practicing as a priest in the Diocese of Lafayette or moved to practice anywhere else.

Deshotel changed course four months later, after New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond announced that his diocese was committed to releasing a list of credibly accused offenders. Deshotel followed with a statement saying that disclosure is a good idea to foster healing and provide assurance that no one accused of abuse is currently serving in the ministry.

Not everyone agrees a list of names will, by itself, provide full accountability, however.

Ray Mouton, a lawyer who initially defended Gauthe at the request of the diocese before working as a victim advocate, said the public is entitled to know the number of complaints against each priest, the nature of the complaints and what actions the diocese took in response to the allegations.

A list of names is meaningless, Mouton, who now lives in France, said in an email. Only by a release of all documentation relating to clergy sex abuse will there ever be full transparency and will the truth be known.

Deshotel said in a pastoral letter released Wednesday that he has been asked about releasing a list since his tenure as bishop began in August 2016, and that he decided to do so after consulting with the laity, clergy and the community at large.

My promise from the outset was that if previously unknown or unclear allegations were now identified as credible, I would not fail to remove the offending cleric from ministry, Deshotel wrote.

Disclosing the identities of abusers helps victims feel validated, Lennon said. But the release should have happened long ago, he added.

The church now in Lafayette is not releasing names because of a moral compass that it is the right thing to do, Lennon said. They were compelled by the Pennsylvania grand jury report that shows that sexual abuse happens in every diocese.

How the latest cases were handled

Deshotel has placed at least three clergymen on leave over the past year, during which several new and old cases have surfaced and resurfaced.

The first in the recent string of allegations was against the Rev. Michael Guidry of St. Peter Church in Morrow, who was accused of molesting a 16-year-old altar boy in 2015. Guidry has since pleaded guilty. Deshotel announced the allegation in a June press conference, when he was pressed on his stance on releasing a list.

While Deshotel at that time would not commit to releasing the list, he did encourage other victims to come forward. Allegations against two other clergymen, Rev. Jody Simoneaux and Monsignor Robie Robichaux, surfaced in the weeks following the June press conference. Simoneaux and Robichaux were both placed on leave, but not until the dioceses Sexual Abuse Review Board determined the allegations to be credible.

Robichaux was placed on leave in October, three weeks after Deshotel said he learned of the allegation. Simoneaux was disciplined in November, a little more than two months after an accuser came forward.

Robichauxs accuser, who was a teenage girl when the abuse occurred around 1980, tried on multiple occasions to get the diocese to discipline Robichaux, starting with her initial allegation in 1994. She then submitted a notarized statement in 2004 requesting Robichauxs removal, based on church-wide policies adopted in 2002.

Robichaux avoided discipline because former Bishop Michael Jarrell determined the victim was an adult under church law at the time of abuse, but Deshotel specified in a news conference that she was a minor under state law. He also said Jarrell should have referred the allegation to the Sexual Abuse Review Board.

Deshotel did not take questions at that June 2018 news conference. Left unanswered was the reason Jarrell did not, or whether the former bishop took any further action at all. A second woman accused Robichaux of abusing her while she was a teenager one week after Deshotel announced the first allegations.

The dioceses standard of credibility is not technical in nature, hinging on whether an average person (would) consider the allegation believable, according to Deshotels pastoral letter released Wednesday. The bishop makes that determination in consultation with the review board, which comprises a racially diverse set of professionals in the fields of law enforcement, psychology and education, according to the diocese.

To prepare the list, Deshotel said he asked a panel of lay leaders to identify any credible accusations made since the diocese was formed in 1918. The Diocesan Review Board, he said, spent more than 700 hours reviewing 300,000 pages of material, including diocese files on 802 clerics, 623 priests and 179 deacons.

No document was off limits, including restricted files, Deshotel said.

While, as Deshotel said, the average person standard is a lower threshold than what law enforcement uses, Lennon, the SNAP president, said internal diocese investigations are not adequate. Law enforcement tools such as subpoena power and testimony under oath would help ensure the integrity of any inquiry into clergy abuse, Lennon said.

It should not be up to church officials to investigate, or to decide themselves, Lennon said.

See the full list released Friday by the Lafayette Diocese at diolaf.org/.
Gerard Smit

Age: Born in 1924

Position: Priest and parochial vicar in Diocese of Lafayette (First affiliated with Diocese of Lafayette beginning in 1958 and Diocese of Lake Charles in 1980)

Served: St. Joseph, Iota; St. Anne, Youngsville; Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Bosco (Mire); Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Chataignier; Our Lady Queen of Heaven, Lake Charles; St. John Berchmans, Cankton; Our Lady of the Lake, Lake Arthur; St. Raphael, Iowa.

Ordained: 1950 Diocese of Nijmejen, Holland

Estimated time of abuse: 1965-70 Diocese of Lafayette; 1950s and 1960s Diocese of Lake Charles.

Allegation received: 1982, 1986, 1996, 2002 (same victim in 1982 and 1996)

Removed from ministry: Retired in 1986. Removed in 2002.

Details: Complaint filed with Louisiana State Police 2015. In 1982 victim told Lafayette deputies about sexual abuse 1965-70 in Youngsville but was told it was beyond the statute of limitations. Smit received treatment after bishop received complaint in 1986 regarding sexual abuse of girls at Our Lady Queen of Heaven. Sentenced to a life of prayer and penance in 2013 and is residing in Pennsylvania.

*Also on Diocese of Lake Charles list
Chevron Corp.'s Jack/St. Malo project operates in deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Chevron is buying Noble Energy and with it proven reserves and cash-generating offshore assets in Israel, strengthening the company's position in the Mediterranean. Noble's portfolio will also add to Chevrons U.S. acreage in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico and in Colorados DJ Basin.
An internal investigation into allegations of physical abuse and academic fraud at the T.M. Landry College Prep school was released Friday, with glowing findings.

That means the schools co-founder and lead teacher, Michael Landry  who has previously pleaded guilty to beating a student and now faces a minimum of 11 additional similar allegations  will continue working at the school.

Investigators said they were not able to speak to anyone with pending allegations. They also did not speak with or seek the case file of a student who in 2012 claimed Landry choked, whipped, slapped and slammed him to the floor when he was 12 years old. Landry pleaded guilty in that case and was sentenced to probation.

Louisiana State Police are investigating the current allegations, which arose after The New York Times published an article Nov. 30 in which students, parents and former teachers portrayed a culture of psychological and physical abuse. They also alleged that Michael Landry, along with his wife and school co-founder Tracey Landry, encouraged them to lie on college applications and falsified transcripts.

The school does not take public funding nor submit its curriculum to state education authorities, who do not recognize the schools diplomas. Prior to The New York Times article, the school enjoyed a national reputation for successfully placing disadvantaged students into elite universities. Enrollment has dropped from 110 to 63 since the article came out, according to Greg Davis, the schools chairman.

The investigative report, compiled by Couhig Partners, a New Orleans law firm, concludes that T.M. Landry appears to have been a genuine incubator for success, particularly for self-reliant students willing to put faith in a non-traditional education model.

Davis, the chairman, has said he does not believe The Times article reflects the reality at T.M. Landry, but he and the schools board hired Couhig Partners to investigate. The firm tapped a former state superintendent of education, Paul Pastorek, to lead the investigation.

Pastorek said at a news conference that there was no evidence of systemic abuse, and he praised what he described as Landrys innovative approach to education. His written summary of the Couhig Partners underlying report said corporal punishment was arguably limited to one spanking incident, apparently referring to the 2012 case.

The investigative report acknowledges that Landry pled guilty to charges of spanking a student in 2012, without acknowledging the more severe physical punishment described in a St. Martin Parish Sheriffs Office report. Witnesses supported the victim's contention, according to the Sheriffs Office report, with one witness saying Landry pushed students against a wall by their necks.

Pastorek said he did not speak to the victim in the 2012 case and did not submit a public records request to see the Sheriffs Office report.

Thats what the evidence that we found said it was, Pastorek said at the news conference, referring to the characterization of the 2012 incident as a spanking. Im not drawing conclusions about that incident and what all occurred. Im reporting what the facts were that enlisted from the people we spoke to.

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At the same time, Pastorek noted that the account of a student who accused Landry of choking him in early 2017 differed from the one provided by Landry.

What we have learned is there is one statement one way, apparently from the student, which is what The New York Times reported, and another statement we have received from Mr. Landry, Pastorek said.

The investigation consisted of interviews with five senior-age students, two alumni and staff members. No parents were interviewed. A school employee individually transported the participating students to an off-site interview location, Pastorek said.

The interviews portrayed a a school that offered a sense of community, acceptance, and selflessness that was genuinely unique, the report states.

Pastoreks written first-person summary parrots the underlying investigative report, including verbatim passages.

I was impressed by the educational model used at T.M. Landry, Pastorek wrote. The passion and capabilities of the Landrys were outstanding.

Pastorek said he was not able to speak with those interviewed in The Times article because a lawyer representing many of them, Ashlee McFarlane, would not allow it. McFarlane said Friday her clients elected to cooperate exclusively with law enforcement. Pastorek said law enforcement would not discuss pending cases with him.

Because they are cooperating with law enforcement at this point in time, we are putting our full faith and trust in law enforcement to fully investigate these allegations, McFarlane said. We saw no need to have additional investigators who were representing T.M. Landry.

McFarlane noted that The Times spoke with 46 people, not all of whom are on her client roster.

Its not for me to say what the efficacy of the report is, Pastorek said at the news conference. I think the facts that we found are valid. I think people can judge for themselves how these facts weigh against other facts that may be reported.
City Pork Deli & Charcuterie will be seeking another location with the upcoming closure of its Perkins Road Overpass restaurant, which will be occupied in May by Chow Yum Phat, a popular tenant at the White Star Market.

Stephen Hightower, managing partner for City Group Hospitality Co., said hes actively looking for another location in the Perkins Road neighborhood.

Were very confident this is a case of See you soon, he said. Were optimistic we can find a location with better parking thats more stable.

Hightower said he decided to close the restaurant at 2363 Hollydale Ave. on April 20 because his lease is up for renewal and theres so much uncertainty about leasing space near the Perkins Road Overpass.

+2 I-10 widening to dramatically improve traffic, but impact 17 homes, 4 shops, officials say The $360 million widening of Interstate 10 in Baton Rouge means the state will buy at least 17 homes, add up to nine new sections of sound wal

The state has plans to widen Interstate 10 from the Mississippi River bridge to the I-10/I-12 split and is looking to buy homes and businesses in the path of the work. One of the businesses that will be affected is The Overpass Merchant restaurant at 2904 Perkins, across the street from City Pork. City Pork leases property from the state under I-10 for parking; Hightower said hes concerned he could lose that space because of the construction. Its really something we have to think about, he said.

City Pork Deli opened in late 2013. Since then, the chain has grown to three other locations in Baton Rouge: the City Pork Brasserie & Bar at 7327 Jefferson Highway, City Pork LSU in the schools Design Building and City Pork Catering at 2921 Government St. Each serves the sandwiches and barbecue that originated in the City Pork Deli and have made the restaurant a favorite with Baton Rouge diners.

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Hightower said he recently opened City Pork Catering, which is less than 2 miles from the deli, because he was afraid what could happen with the I-10 widening work. Were lucky to have other platforms, he said.

+3 City Pork owners bringing new restaurant to Perkins Rowe in former Applebee's spot The owners of the popular City Pork and City Slice restaurants are opening a new eatery in Perkins Rowe in a long-vacant space that had been o

The plan is to move the 12 employees at the deli to other City Pork locations. Hightower also operates City Slice Pints & Pizza at LSUs North Gates and is developing Rouj Creole, a Creole-inspired restaurant set to open in Perkins Rowe next month.

Jordan Ramirez, who co-owns Chow Yum Phat with Vu Le, said the restaurant will take over the space May 1. The goal is to open a second Chow Yum Phat by mid-June and keep the restaurant in White Star Market open, along with its sister restaurant, Yuzu.

Ramirez said there were some concerns about opening up a restaurant in the middle of what will be a construction zone. But he and Le talked to the buildings landlord and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development. Theyre going to make this as easy as possible for us, he said. They will allow us to have parking. Were putting our faith in them.

Moving into a bigger space means Chow Yum Phat will expand its menu beyond ramen, steamed buns, poke and sushi. The new restaurant will have a full bar, which will allow for drink pairings with meals, Ramirez said.
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Though Louisiana State Police exonerated West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes in an inmate labor investigation, the initial findings of a separate and ongoing Department of Corrections probe show there were some problems.

State Police concluded in its report that no probable cause exists to criminally charge Cazes in an incident involving Department of Corrections inmate Elmer Castillo.

State Police investigating West Baton Rouge Sheriff for allegedly using inmate for yard work State Police is now the second state agency to have launched an investigation into allegations that West Baton Rouge Sheriff Mike Cazes allowe

But the report also cites the concurrent Department of Corrections investigation that concludes Cazes violated a law concerning private contractors using inmate labor, as well as some DOC standard operating procedures.

The agencies have been investigating allegations from WAFB-TV that Cazes had enlisted Castillo to work at his home in Port Allen at least one day in March.

Castillo, who is serving time for sexual battery, was housed at the West Baton Rouge Parish Jail's work release center under a common agreement between parishes and the state in which DOC pays local entities for beds at their jails. As a convicted sex offender, Castillo was not a work-release inmate.

Scott Stassi, the first assistant district attorney for the 18th Judicial District, said that because the State Police investigation produced a finding of no criminal wrongdoing, there is nothing for his office to prosecute. He added that State Police sent their findings to the District Attorneys Office.

DOC spokesman Ken Pastorick confirmed that they began their investigation into Cazes and his facility after the allegation surfaced.

We handed over our initial investigation to Louisiana State Police that includes information that we found that might be of legal concern, Pastorick said. We are continuing to look at the facility to make sure that the basic jail guidelines are being adhered to.

He added that the DOC investigation continues into the facility as a whole, but because the probe is ongoing, he could not release more details.

The State Police report says DOC Deputy Warden Ronald Moore relayed his findings to State Police investigator Bill Cox to assist him in the State Police inquiry.

Though Cox used Moores extensive interviews of both Cazes and Castillo in the course of his review, he arrived at a different conclusion.

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Cazes told DOC that Castillo had sought him out to ask about ways he could make some money, the State Police report says. Cazes explained that, in response, he had specifically chosen Castillo to assist him on the morning of March 8.

That morning, the sheriff picked up Castillo in a West Baton Rouge Parish Prison cargo van and drove to a store, where Cazes had Castillo load a baby crib into the van. When they arrived at Cazes home, he directed Castillo in arranging furniture to make room for the crib and then to assemble the crib in the new space, the State Police report says.

At some point while Castillo was putting the crib together, Cazes left for lunch, leaving Castillo alone with the sheriff's wife for about half an hour. It was only later, when Castillo took the crib packaging outside, he spotted the WAFB cameras and alerted Cazes, the report says.

Cazes admitted he shepherded Castillo through a back gate to be picked up in the West Baton Rouge Parish Prison van on a street behind his house. For his efforts, Castillo received 35 or 40 dollars, the report says.

Castillos bilingual interview  conducted by DOC in both English and Spanish on separate days  confirms most of the details of Cazes story, according to the State Police report.

While Cox, the State Police investigator, acknowledged in the report that the facts of the case are clear, he said his goal was not to confirm or deny that an incident happened: He needed to determine if Cazes broke the law.

After parsing the legal details, Cox concluded in the report that Cazes is neither classified as a private contractor, nor did he act with criminal intent.

The report speaks for itself and the District Attorney supports our findings, State Police Capt. J.B. Slaton via text when asked for comment.

Department of Corrections investigating after reports West Baton Rouge Sheriff used inmate for personal work The state Department of Corrections has launched an investigation into whether West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes used a state inmate 

Thomas Damico, Cazes attorney, noted that the DOC is neither a prosecuting nor investigative agency, and so it passed on its findings to the State Police, which is equipped for such an investigation. Damico added that he and Cazes cooperated completely with the investigation.

Mike Cazes did nothing wrong, Damico said. There may have been some issues; there was never any intent. He didnt violate the law itself.
A prosecutor and a defense lawyer put much different spins Friday on allegations that Max Gruver drank excessively and smoked marijuana in the four weeks leading up to his fatal 2017 alcohol-related hazing.

An attorney for a former LSU student charged in the 18-year-old fraternity pledges death described the allegations as habit evidence" while a prosecutor described them as victim shaming.

In the end, a state judge called them inadmissible character evidence and said an East Baton Rouge Parish jury wont hear those statements when Matthew Naquin stands trial July 8 on negligent homicide.

Naquins lead lawyer, John McLindon, said hell ask the state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal to reverse District Judge Beau Higginbothams ruling.

Gruver, of Roswell, Georgia, died Sept. 14, 2017, of alcohol poisoning following a hazing ritual dubbed Bible study, in which Phi Delta Theta pledges were required to chug hard liquor if they gave wrong answers to questions about the fraternity.

An autopsy showed his blood-alcohol level was 0.495 percent, which is more than six times the legal limit to drive in Louisiana. The autopsy also detected the chemical found in marijuana, THC, in his system.

McLindon filed a motion in late February that quotes fraternity members who described Gruver as a party animal who drank alcohol and smoked marijuana on a daily basis in the month he was on LSUs campus and showed up high to the ill-fated September 2017 hazing ritual.

+4 Court docs label Max Gruver a 'party animal' who excessively drank, smoked pot before LSU hazing death The defense lawyer for a former LSU student accused in the 2017 alcohol-related hazing death of Max Gruver portrayed the fraternity pledge in 

Gruver's roommate stated in an interview that Gruver, who was on the LSU campus about 30 days, was "sober for maybe five of those nights," the court filing says. Another witness told the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorneys Office it was commonplace for him to see Gruver drunk, so he did not think much of it when Max was laid out on the couch following the hazing ritual, the filing states.

The motion asked Higginbotham to declare those statements admissible evidence at Naquins trial.

At the hearing on that motion, McLindon argued Friday that the statements made by fraternity members, Gruvers friends and Naquins co-defendants show it is less probable that Gruver was forced, coerced or pressured to drink alcohol the night he died. The lawyer noted that alcohol and marijuana are addictive.

You get into the habit, and its a bad habit, he told the judge. He didnt do it to impress anybody. He did it regularly.

East Baton Rouge Parish Assistant District Attorney Morgan Johnson said Naquin and his defense team had to stoop to the level of victim-shaming because they are desperate.

This is desperation, she argued, adding that Gruver cant defend himself against the allegations. The defendant is on trial, not the victim.

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Johnson alleged that Naquin didnt want Gruver in Phi Delta Theta, so he targeted the freshman pledge and he ended up dead.

+5 In fatal LSU hazing case, jury can hear that defendant didn't want victim in fraternity, judge says A jury will be allowed to hear testimony that a former LSU student charged in the fatal 2017 alcohol-related hazing of Phi Delta Theta pledge 

She also argued that drinking in social settings such as at tailgating events or in Tigerland is completely different than at a hazing.

This is unfortunately a tactic of victim-shaming at its finest, Johnson added.

McLindon denied that accusation and said, We didnt generate these statements.

He added that the jury needs to be presented the whole picture.

Let them weigh it and decide what they think about it, he said.

Higginbotham, however, said a 30-day period is not sufficient to demonstrate Gruver had a substance abuse habit.

Naquin, 21, of Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas, faces up to five years in prison if convicted of negligent homicide.

Court documents filed previously in the case claim Naquin was warned by members of the fraternity  just days before Gruver died  to tone down his interactions with pledges. He was told his actions with pledges were extreme and dangerous, the documents allege. Higginbotham has ruled that prosecutors can use that evidence at Naquins trial.

Naquin's ex-roommate at LSU, Ryan Matthew Isto, 19, of Butte, Montana, and former LSU student Sean-Paul Gott, 22, of Lafayette, pleaded "no contest" last fall to misdemeanor hazing in the Gruver case and agreed to testify at Naquin's trial. Another ex-LSU student charged with hazing, Patrick Andrew Forde, 21, of Westwood, Massachusetts, has promised to cooperate with prosecutors and testify at the trial. Prosecutors have said theyll decide later whether to prosecute Forde.

Phi Delta Theta has been banned from the LSU campus until at least 2033.
U.S. Sen. John Kennedy brought the "duplication of benefits" trap, which has kept thousands of homeowners affected by historic flooding in 2016, directly to President Donald Trump during a private lunch meeting on Friday.

I made my case. I made my best arguments," Kennedy, R-Madisonville, said in a call with reporters after the meeting.

Kennedy wouldn't disclose where Trump stands on the issue, but strongly hinted that the president could intervene on Louisiana's behalf, opening up the Restore Louisiana program to people who have been denied because they previously applied for SBA loans.

The president was very frank. Hes not scared to make a decision. I have a pretty good feeling about what hes going to do, Kennedy said. Thats about as much as I feel comfortable saying.

I will say lets declare victory when the first Louisianan gets a check," he added.

If the issue isnt soon resolved, Kennedy said he is considering joining a lawsuit that has been filed against the federal government over the matter.

Im hopeful and optimistic that its not going to get to that, he said.

Sens. Cassidy, Kennedy keep pushing on 'duplication of benefits' issue affecting flood victims Thousands of Louisiana residents who were affected by severe floods in 2016 and remain in a "duplication of benefits" trap likely wont see a 

Louisiana received more than $1.7 billion from Congress to aid recovery from the catastrophic 2016 floods. The bulk of the money, about $1.3 billion, has been designated to go toward homeowner rebuilding assistance, but a federal rule initially prevented those who received Small Business Administration loans from reaping the full benefits of the program.

Louisiana's congressional delegation, spearheaded by U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, a Republican whose Baton Rouge-based district was heavily affected by the floods, got a law passed that would eliminate that rule, but the Trump administration's Office of Management and Budget still has not signed off on the change.

Members of the bureaucracy have refused to implement the law as passed by the United States Congress, Kennedy said.

As in previous disasters, affected homeowners who sought SBA loans have been unable to tap into grant dollars that duplicated whatever loan amount they were deemed eligible to receive  even if they never accepted the loan money.

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What's the latest on the 'duplication of benefits' trap that's still affecting Louisiana flood victims? Louisiana officials are hoping that a meeting next week will be the final push needed to break through the federal government logjam that has 

For example, a homeowner with an estimated $25,000 in damage who qualified for a $20,000 SBA loan would be eligible for only $5,000 in grant money, which doesnt have to be repaid. Meanwhile, a homeowner who took on the same value of damage  $25,000  but didnt apply for an SBA loan could potentially receive for the full $25,000 grant if all other qualifications were met. In many cases, SBA loan awards were larger than the value of total damage, leaving homeowners without an opportunity for any grant assistance.

Im tired of my people being screwed with, Kennedy said.

Kennedy and U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy have had several meetings with key members of the Trump administration to try to loosen the bureaucratic chokehold in recent months.

Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, has described OMBs reservations as being over whether the change could drive up future disaster recovery costs if people wait for grants, instead of seeking loans that they will repay.

Officials have repeatedly said the duplication of benefits issue has created the biggest problems for homeowners and spawned the most complaints about the states efforts to rebuild from the August 2016 floods in the Baton Rouge area and other parts of southern Louisiana and the March 2016 floods in north Louisiana.

It remains unclear when affected homeowners might be able to tap into the money.

OMB agreed to give the Louisiana senators an answer by Tuesday.

Kennedy said he was invited to the one-on-one meeting with Trump at the White House to discuss a wide range of topics, including trade with China, securing the southern border, the federal budget and the deficit, and he took the opportunity to prompt a discussion on the duplication of benefits issue.

He knew exactly what I was talking about, he knew the background, Kennedy said. He really does love Louisiana."

During the presidential campaign, Trump came to Louisiana to view the flood damage first-hand before then-President Barack Obama toured areas hit hardest by the floods. Trumps Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, said she would also visit but never made the trip.

Trump received more than 58 percent of the vote in Louisiana and more individual votes than any other candidate in the states history. A month after winning the presidential election, Trump returned to Louisiana to rally for Kennedys campaign for the Senate.
LGBT teens in New Orleans will have the chance to dance to Big Freedia and participate in a catwalk at the Pride Prom Fri., May 10, free of charge  for the second year in a row.

We have several people respond to us that [last years prom] was the most fun that they've ever had, said organizer Leslie Ellis, who is a member of the Hyatt Regency hotel's LGBT employee-networking group, HyPride. To see how amazing of an event it was, we all were immediately on board to do it again.

The second annual event for LGBT youth ages 16-20 will take place at the Hyatt Regency (601 Loyola Ave) from 8 p.m. to midnight.

The nights lineup includes classic prom portraits and a strut-off where attendees can walk the runway in a friendly competition to win non-gender specific crowns. Hyatt and local restaurants will provide free food  including a sushi bar  and non-alcoholic beverages.

Marc Behar, a local chiropractor and member of Jewish Pride NOLA, originally came to HyPride with the idea for the Pride Prom. They teamed up with PFLAG New Orleans, health care clinic CrescentCare and the Louisiana chapter of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) to turn the event into a reality last year. Freedia also performed at the inaugural prom.

We had a bunch of participants in all of our organizations that have gotten feedback that there are still high school students that can't attend prom, Ellis said. Because New Orleans is such a private-school community and Catholic-school community, there are still kids that can't go to prom with their date.

Local LGBT organizations also will attend to offer resources and giveaways to attendees. PFLAG will provide information to students looking to attend college about scholarships they offer, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.

Ellis said last years attendance exceeded expectations and they are expecting it to be higher this year. Organizers had expected 75 students to come, but around 250 showed up. With more sponsors and community recognition, theyre expecting between 350-500 attendees for the 2019 prom.

Reservations are required and can be made online.

'Pride Prom' May 11 celebrates LGBT youth Bounce royalty Big Freedia will headline a free Pride Prom for LGBT teens and young adults at Hyatt Regency's Celestin Ballroom May 11.
Mother Nature made amends to Bruce Daigrepont on opening day of the 2019 French Quarter Festival.

Last year, the Cajun bandleaders performance at the festival was one of dozens canceled by stormy weather.

But on Thursday afternoon, Daigrepont, wielding a button-key accordion decorated with a crawfish, led his band at the Chevron Stage on Decatur Street under a blazing sun. The only meteorological challenge was an occasionally stiff breeze, hazardous to hats and unsecured sheet music.

Its fantastic, Daigrepont said of the weather, just before he went onstage. Were lucky.

The 36th edition of the French Quarter Festival, billed as the worlds largest free showcase of South Louisiana music, eased into its long weekend with a soft, but not quiet, opening. Only six stages were up and running on Thursday. That number will double on Friday, then double again for the remainder of the weekend.

Even with only six stages, there was more than enough music and food to entertain the thousands of tourists and locals who took the day off. Lines formed for iced tea and cold beer; the Key West Hat Co. in the 400 block of Decatur did a brisk business in straw hats.

Hours after he led the festivals opening parade through the French Quarter, Darryl Dancing Man 504 Young, still sporting a red sash and red-and-white shoes, worked his way between the rows of chair-sitters in Woldenberg Riverfront Park, greeting well-wishers.

I tell them, Just cause youre sittin down doesnt mean you cant throw down,  he said.

Its the first day of the French Quarter Festival, the first real festival. I love the smaller festivals, and I appreciate them. But when you got the French Quarter Festival, you got a festival. It's 1,700 musicians, spreading it out, full of love.

On the Abita Beer Stage, trumpeter Kermit Ruffins acknowledged the weather with Johnny Nashs I Can See Clearly Now" and its refrain of Its gonna be a bright, sun-shiny day, as well as On the Sunny Side of the Street.

In Louis Armstrongs version of the latter, Armstrong sings, If I never have another cent, Id be as rich as Rockefeller. Onstage, Ruffins cheekily updated the reference to a fellow New Orleans musician: If I never get another cent, Ill be as rich as Trombone Shorty.

How successive generations of New Orleans musicians influence one another was evident throughout the day.

As the festival's first act at the GE Stage behind the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas, Darcy Malone & the Tangle concluded with a cover of My Darling New Orleans, the signature song of the fondly remembered local rock-funk band Lil Queenie & the Percolators. Leigh Lil Queenie Harris is under hospice care in North Carolina as she battles cancer.

Ive been doing that song as a tribute to her, Malone said after the show. Shes my muse.

As the Natchez paddlewheeler and a Coast Guard patrol boat passed behind the riverfront Tropical Isle Hand Grenade Stage, Juju Child & the Hypnotic Roots Band grooved on Droppin It. Its an original composition, but it could easily pass for a lost track from one of the legendary New Orleans funk band the Meters late-career albums .

Back at the Abita Beer Stage minutes later, Cha Wa deployed horns, organ, electric guitar and two vocalists in full Mardi Gras Indian regalia for a version of Fire on the Bayou very much inspired by the Neville Brothers.

Lead vocalist JWan Boudreaux, in defiance of temperatures that crept into the lower 80s, wore a headdress of pink and orange feathers and matching gloves.

As a member of Evan Christophers Clarinet Road at the Hilton Stage inside Jackson Square, Don Vappie deployed a 1921 Vega banjo that Christopher said once belonged to Danny Barker, the famed New Orleans jazz man and storyteller.

Were being authentic today, Christopher said before they launched into Salee Dame, a Creole jazz standard that translates to Salty Woman.

Any salty women out there? Christopher asked.

There were, if for no other reason than the sweat.
Gianna, the next restaurant from chef Donald Link's company, is now slated to open Saturday, April 20. The restaurant will serve lunch and dinner daily and has begun taking reservations online.

Gianna (700 Magazine St., 504-399-0816) joins a cluster of restaurants from Link and his partner chefs in downtown New Orleans, with Herbsaint, Cochon, Butcher and Peche Seafood Grill all within just a few blocks of each other. Gianna draws its influence from Italy, especially the experiences its chefs have shared while exploring its different regions.

The menu (see below) will have dishes like tortellini in brodo, roasted pork shoulder, immense steak Florentine (to share) and tummala, a baked rice dish layered with chicken and sausage and cheeses, like a rice lasagna. Gianna also plans to serve "feed me" style meals with multiple tastes of changing specials and shared dishes.

Gianna's kitchen is led by Rebecca Wilcomb, who was previously chef de cuisine of Herbsaint and who won a 2017 James Beard Award for her work there. Stepping into an expanding role with Link's company, she is both executive chef and a partner at the new restaurant. Gianna is named for her grandmother, Giannina, who lives in Italy, in the Veneto region.

"She taught me how to cook but also how to eat," Wilcomb said in an earlier interview about the project. "I want people to have experiences here the way I've experienced food in Italy."

The new restaurant has taken shape in a grandly-conceived new building at the corner of Magazine and Girod streets called the Kalorama. This five-story, block-long building, with a mix of condos and retail, is part of a wave of new development now reshaping downtown New Orleans.

Heather Lolley, the companys long time operations manager, is also a partner in Gianna, as are chefs Stephen Strjewski and Ryan Prewitt.

The restaurant looks out to the corner of Magazine and Girod streets through walls of windows, with the federal courthouse complex just down the street and Lafayette Square nearby. Inside, there's a large central bar dividing the space into a mix of lounge up front, open tables, deep booths and a flexible floor plan intended to accommodate larger groups, perhaps for those feed me meals.

It has an open kitchen, with a wood-burning oven and a pasta making station visible from the dining room. It will have outdoor seating under the broad overhang over the gallery above.

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The building has been being developed by William B. Reily IV, scion of a family food business, on the site that was once a company garage and a weekly home to the Crescent City Farmers Market (which relocated a few blocks away). It is part of a wave of new construction and renovation that is filling downtown New Orleans with residential complexes and more ground-level retail, and restaurants.

Gianna is the first new restaurant in New Orleans for Links group since opening Peche in 2013 just a block down Magazine Street. In addition to Herbsaint and Peche, the company includes Cochon, Butcher, the event space Calcasieu and La Boulangerie, the longtime Uptown bakery and cafe the company bought in 2015.

Gianna

700 Magazine St., 504-399-0816

Sun.-Thu. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri., Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

Slated to open April 20, 2019
For the second time in a week, a man has come forward with new claims that he was molested decades ago by a New Orleans-area Catholic priest who was only publicly identified as a suspected child abuser last year.

A lawsuit filed Thursday by an unnamed plaintiff in Orleans Parish Civil District Court accused Lawrence Hecker, 87, of fondling a group of boys who were attending St. Joseph School in Gretna in 1968, 10 years after his ordination.

The suit against Hecker joins a string of other cases that have been filed against Catholic Church officials in New Orleans following Archbishop Gregory Aymonds disclosure on Nov. 2 of a list of clerics who were the subject of credible allegations of sexually abusing children.

Hecker appeared on that list and now joins other still living but defrocked clerics to be confronted by accusers who had not come forward before the release of the roster.

According to the new 19-page suit, the plaintiff was in middle school at St. Joseph when Hecker took him and other boys at the school behind the altar at the church. The lawsuit accused Hecker of lining the boys up shoulder-to-shoulder, ordering them to drop their pants and showing them what it was like to get a hernia exam by groping the boys' genitals.

Reveal of 57 New Orleans clergy credibly accused of sexual abuse a major step for Catholic officials New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond on Friday released the names of 57 former clergy members credibly accused of sexually abusing minors  t

The lawsuit says a separate allegation of child sexual abuse disclosed in 1996 led the church to remove Hecker from ministry in 2002.

Prepared by attorneys Soren Gisleson, Jed Cain, John Denenea and Richard Trahant, the lawsuit accuses church officials of failing to protect the plaintiff from harm. It also contends that Catholic leaders for years covered up their knowledge that Hecker had been the subject of credible allegations of child sex abuse; if true, that fact would prevent the church from arguing that the defendant waited too long under the law to file suit.

The suit seeks damages from Hecker, the Archdiocese of New Orleans and two insurance companies.

In a statement, the plaintiffs legal team said, Our research has revealed that most victims have lived their lives believing that they were the only ones abused by the particular priests who abused them, but once they realize they are not alone, they are empowered to courageously bring these claims.

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These victims do become empowered when they can tell their stories, and finally attempt to control the direction of their lives, rather than being permanently silenced by their abusers and the church.

During a brief phone conversation Friday, Hecker said the allegations are not true. He said he was unaware he had been sued until a reporter contacted him.

The archdiocese declined comment on the case. Archdiocesan officials have previously said that the insurance coverage cited in the suit is only available for claims over incidents that occurred in more recent years, after the companies were founded.

Gisleson, Cain, Denenea and Trahant also represent other clients with similar pending claims.

One new local lawsuit they were not involved in was filed April 5. In it, an unnamed plaintiff said he was molested in about 1969 by a now-deceased Jesuit priest named Edward DeRussy, who had been included on a Dec. 7 roster of Jesuits credibly accused of sexually abusing minors.

+4 Washington man makes previously undisclosed claims of Jesuit High abuse in 1960s A 64-year-old man from Washington state has come forward with previously undisclosed claims that he was molested by a priest decades ago while

Lists like the one issued by Aymond have since been released by various other Louisiana dioceses and religious orders as Catholic leaders try to win back the trust of parishioners disgusted by the long-running clergy abuse crisis.

Hecker also appeared on the list released in late January by the Diocese of Baton Rouge, where he served at St. Mary in New Roads.

Nearly a year ago, Hecker and other clerics who were defrocked as a result of sex abuse allegations appeared on a list of retired priests for whom the New Orleans archdiocese was collecting money.

The archdiocese has said that removal from ministry, or defrocking, is not a full-fledged exile from the church, which is legally obligated to pay priests what they are due under their pension plan if they contributed to it before retiring.
The New Orleans Police Departments director of analytics  who is credited with building a tech-driven crime analysis team within the city's previously low-tech police force  is stepping down from his post and headed to the private sector. It is the latest of several recent high-profile departures from the department.

Benjamin Horwitz recently informed his supervisors that he is going into business with crime analyst Jeff Asher, now a City Hall public safety consultant, who previously worked for the NOPD and the Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office.

Asher and Horwitz on Wednesday formed a company named AH Datalytics, state business records show.

Horwitz, 34, said his exit from the NOPD is motivated by a desire to bring some of his work there to other organizations across the region and country.

"It's been an honor and a privilege to work for the New Orleans Police Department and be a part of an incredible transformation" associated with a 2013 federal consent decree that mandated sweeping reforms, Horwitz said. "I love New Orleans and am committed to improving our community ... with this next step."

With a masters degree in public policy, information systems and management from Carnegie Mellon University, Horwitz joined the NOPD in 2014 as a civilian employee tasked with helping implement the consent decree.

Heading the data analysis unit since 2016, Horwitz oversaw the creation of a vastly upgraded computer system to measure police performance and built a team that helped use digital analysis tools to catch violent criminals.

The computer system, known as Management Analytics for Excellence, or MAX, measured the performance of officers and supervisors in a way that couldnt be done before; police said it has been key to improving the selection of department leaders.

Meanwhile, Horwitz's crime data analysts collaborated closely with investigators across the NOPD, including those on a specialized squad known as the TIGER team that focused on working long-term cases to arrest repeat violent offenders.

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The TIGER team initially focused on serial armed robber and carjackers but has since targeted suspected killers. The department highlighted that units work as an important factor in the sharp drop in violent crimes in 2018, which saw a 47-year low in murders in New Orleans.

Part of the MAX tool NOPD implemented under Horwitz is available for public uses. Citizens can go online and see how many officers are on the streets, how long it is taking them to respond to 911 calls, and how many crimes have been reported, among other things. All of that fulfilled or even exceeded the consent decree's requirements for transparency and public accountability.

Horwitzs April 26 departure will be at least the third time that a top civilian official at NOPD has left the force since last month.

Danny Murphy, the deputy superintendent in charge of overseeing compliance with the consent decree, and Deputy Chief of Staff Eric Melancon have both gone to work for former NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison, who recently became the top cop in Baltimore.

Replacements for Murphy and Melancon were announced during a wave of command-staff changes unveiled in late March.

Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said Thursday it is natural for employees to secure new opportunities for themselves after helping the NOPD implement the consent decree and, in the process, burnish the forces reputation. But he said he is sure the department will maintain the progress of the last several years despite the departures.

Culture-wise, we have people that can step up, said Ferguson, who took over as superintendent in January. The rest of the team is still there.

The NOPD is already advertising the vacancy at the head of the analytics unit. Ferguson said he is confident there are both internal and external candidates who can pick up where Horwitz left off and expand the units capabilities.

We wish Ben well, but this creates opportunities for others, said Ferguson.
The board of directors overseeing New Beginnings Schools Foundation, an embattled charter network that has come under fire after recent allegations of grade-fixing and falsifying public records, voted Thursday night to change bus companies before the end of the school year.

The board voted unanimously at a special meeting to replace Scholars First, a company that has come under scrutiny after the Louisiana insurance commissioner cited it for lacking insurance on its buses and falsifying insurance documents.

Michelle Blouin-Williams, the recently suspended CEO of the charter organization, had been accused of signing a million-dollar contract with Scholars First without seeking prior approval from the board, and then doctoring meeting minutes a year after the fact to make it appear that the board had voted in favor of the move.

Before the vote on the new bus provider Thursday night, board President Raphael Gang wouldn't say what company the charter organization will enter into a contract with, only that it has a "proven track record."

"As you all have heard, there have been some allegations made against our current bus operator, and we felt the prudent thing to do was to secure a new contractor until the end of the year," Gang said.

He said the board used an emergency provision in its charter to sidestep a public bidding process and have a new company in place "as soon as possible" for students.

Earlier this week, the Einstein Group, another charter school network, voted to switch from Scholars First to A&S Transportation, starting April 17.

Einstein charter schools to replace Scholars First bus company following fraud investigation The Einstein Group, a charter network that operates four schools in New Orleans East, announced Monday that it will cut its ties with Scholars

WWL-TV first reported that Scholars First had issued fraudulent insurance documents to New Beginnings, Einstein Charter Schools and Success Prep.

"The recklessness of this action by parties who are charged with the care of children is inexcusable," Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said.

Donelon told WWL that he passed his findings on to criminal investigators with the Louisiana Insurance Fraud Task Force, a partnership between the State Police, Attorney General's Office and Insurance Department.

Anyone found guilty of forging insurance documents can face up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The New Beginnings board also held a closed-door meeting Thursday to talk about an investigation into the allegations against Blouin-Williams, but it took no action afterward regarding her.

Two weeks ago, the board placed her on paid leave while hiring the law firm Adams and Reese LLP to investigate the charges against her.

Blouin-Williams, who has an annual salary of $175,000, plus $45,792 in insurance and retirement benefits, held top administrative positions in the Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish school systems before being hired to run New Beginnings in 2016.

She served as chief administrative officer under Orleans schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. for a year. Before that, she held various positions over a 25-year career with Jefferson schools, ultimately being appointed interim superintendent but then being passed over for the permanent position.

In addition to accusations of grade-fixing and doctoring public records, Blouin-Williams and New Beginnings have faced other problems in recent years, records show.

An audit from the 2017-18 school year, released in January, showed numerous problems in management. The schools operated with a $4.9 million deficit, wrong salaries and class sizes were reported to the state, and officials were missing receipts for multiple transactions.

And last year, officials with the Louisiana Department of Education voided 144 exams at John F. Kennedy High School, one of New Beginnings' schools, after students were given the wrong version of a U.S. history exam, according to a state report on testing irregularities first reported by The Lens.

In addition to Kennedy, New Beginnings operates Pierre A. Capdau and Gentilly Terrace charter schools.
Commonwealth Bank has reiterated the need to keep a tight rein on costs but described reports that its workforce could be slashed by a quarter as "misleading" and "unnecessarily alarming".

CBA shares rose 2 per cent to $71.63 on Friday after a newspaper report that the bank had considered a plan to cut more than 10,000 jobs in the coming years.

CBA did not comment directly on the prospect of its 45,000-strong workforce being slashed by a quarter over several years. Credit:Michael Clayton Jones

Responding to a query from the Finance Sector Union, CBA said the news report was "misleading and unnecessarily alarming" but also noted that the bank remained focused on managing its costs. It did not comment directly on the prospect of its 45,000-strong workforce being slashed by a quarter over several years.

However, it is possible that the total number of CBA employees could fall by several thousand over the coming years, due to the pending sale of its businesses in life insurance, funds management, and the plan to eventually sell out of wealth management and mortgage broking. Natural attrition of employees, and targeted redundancy programs, are also often used by banks to cut costs.
Life at the top On a cloudless day in back in 2013, James Packer was on a hot streak and on top of the world. Ahead of an interview on Channel Seven's Sunday Night, he was being filmed on a balcony above Sydney Harbour, looking into the middle distance, over postcard views and passing ferries. Packer was 45, lean and fit, and looked like a different man. People familiar with him at the time describe him as brimming with ambition and a "what's next" attitude. James Douglas Packer  "Australia's $6 billion dollar man" as interviewer Mike Willesee described him on air  had been rolling the dice and betting big. Since divesting his family's media assets in 2007, he had been focusing on growing his majority-owned Crown Resorts ever larger into what he believed could emerge as a truly global gambling empire. James Packer at the opening ceremony of Crown Macau in 2007. Credit:AP In a short space of time, he'd opened a major casino in Macau, snapped up a large stake in gaming giant Caesars, and acquired a site on the world-famous Las Vegas Boulevard that he was planning to develop. Next, Packer had his sights on even loftier ambitions  a Crown expansion into one of the world's largest untapped gambling markets, Japan, which was lifting a ban on casinos.

"It was all spend, spend, spend," as one casino executive recently put it. "And then it was a complete 180-degree switch." Loading Taking a step back By 2017, Packer had pulled back almost entirely, aggressively selling off the bulk of his overseas assets, in a near-total exit from gaming markets outside Australia. At a shareholder meeting in October that year, he was forced to concede Crown "didn't succeed" in a global strategy. And this week, news emerged that he is considering selling off the last piece of the famous Packer family dynasty: his 47 per cent shareholding in Crown. Within hours of details of takeover talks appearing in The Australian Financial Review on Tuesday morning, the ASX-listed Crown revealed to the stock market it was weighing a $10 billion offer. It was in "confidential discussions" with Las Vegas-based casino giant Wynn Resorts, which had made the cash-and-share bid to buy Crown.

Crown's stock price went through the roof  rocketing 20 per cent in a day. But within hours, Wynn, which owns casinos in the US and Macau, abruptly ended talks, apparently aggrieved at what it called the "premature disclosure of preliminary discussions". "Wynn Resorts has terminated all discussions with Crown Resorts concerning any transaction, the company said in a terse statement. Crown 'in play' According to gaming analysts, however, this is the beginning rather than the end. Packer's Crown Resorts is now squarely "in play", they say, and it is no longer a matter of if - but when - Packer and Crown will field further bids. Investors seem to agree. Following the 20 per cent rise on Tuesday, the market sent Crown's stock back down just 9 per cent the following day after news of the Wynn talks' collapse. Crown Casino under construction at Sydney's Barangaroo. Credit:David Porter "For Crown Resorts shareholders," said David Fabris, of Macquarie Research, "the biggest question is whether another suitor or Wynn may come back to the table."

Among Packer's inner circle, the prospect of a sale is hardly a bolt from the blue. Those who know him well say he has been growing increasingly "disengaged" from his ownership of Crown and had made it known to casino operators that he was prepared to sell his stake. Crown insisted this week that it was Wynn Resorts that made the first approach. But Crown declined to respond to a series of questions including about any takeover discussions with other gaming giants. Either way, what now seems certain is that Packer is interested in getting out. And Australia might be witnessing the end of an era. A powerful dynasty The long and powerful Packer family dynasty  headed by Frank, Kerry and now James  has been at the top of corporate Australia for a century. Since Sir Frank's launch of The Australian Womens Weekly in 1933 and the airing of Australias first television broadcast in 1956, the Packer clan has wielded almost unparalleled commercial and political influence, pioneering and dominating businesses across television, newspapers, magazine publishing and casinos. As such, the Packers have always been the subject of public scrutiny. And today few business figures in Australia generate as much interest as James; from his latest romantic flings, including a relationship with pop star Mariah Carey, to his decadent yacht parties entertaining Hollywood celebrities, to his public punch-on with friend David Gyngell on the streets of Bondi.

Loading As is the case with many things Packer, the Crown takeover speculation has been in overdrive. The question this time: Why does he want to sell? To friends and colleagues, Packer has been open about seeking a "lower-profile" life. In past interviews, he has been commendably forthcoming about suffering depression, becoming a recluse and putting on weight following the collapse of his telco business One.Tel in 2001, during the global financial crisis, and his break-up with first wife, Jodhi Meares. "I became depressed and I was emotionally exhausted and my marriage had broken up," he told Willesee in 2013. "I felt isolated, I felt like a failure ... it was not a great time in my life." In March last year, just months after rejoining the Crown board, Packer made the shock decision to resign again, and stepped down from a governance role at his private family group, Consolidated Press Holdings. He withdrew from public corporate life entirely, citing the need to look after his mental health. Days after leaving Crown, he checked into a psychiatric hospital in Boston.

"He definitely wants an easier life, and a less-stress life," a colleague said this week, "no doubt about that." "His brain is not turning off, but he is slower," said a friend. "The medication keeps him on a railway track  no lows and no highs." Kerry Packer and son James in 2004. Credit:AP A complex story Others who are close to Packer and Crown, however, suggest his "fragile" state of mind may be only part of the story. Packer, ever a shrewd businessman, recognised the "structural challenges" facing Channel Nine and ACP Magazines before he successfully sold out in 2007, just before the traditional media went into a steep decline. Perhaps he recognises a similar challenges emerging in the gambling sector, and knows a good time to leave.

And few casino moguls have had as much first-hand exposure as Packer to the biggest of these challenges: the uncertainty and volatility surrounding their business of catering for super-rich Chinese punters. In 2016, Crown was rocked when 19 of its staff were arrested and jailed for illegally promoting gambling on mainland China, where gambling is illegal. It was part of a large-scale Chinese government crackdown that prompted casinos to pull out of the region and sparked a huge drop in tourism and gambling spending by wealthy Chinese punters all over the world. International VIP gambling turnover at some casinos was nearly halved, putting a huge dent in profits. Worldwide, gambling operators have since been gripped by uncertainty about the fortunes of their lucrative high-roller programs, where mainly Chinese gamblers, who often play baccarat, can turn over hundreds of thousands of dollars a hand, and millions of dollars an hour. While influential business leaders like Packer command great sway in Australian politics, they are all but impotent in regards to government decisions in China, where policy changes can have serious business consequences.

The problem of volatile Chinese high-roller volumes presents a particularly unique problem for Packer's Crown Resorts and the prospects of its soon-to-be-opened Barangaroo complex. Billed as a VIP-only casino and due for completion in 2021, its fortunes will be closely tied to foreign high-roller spending. "The Australian VIP market recovery has potentially stalled. Now you have a macro headwind providing a bit of conservatism for material growth," says Donald Carducci, a gaming analyst with investment bank JP Morgan. "It makes the business case for Barangaroo less attractive." One Packer confidant points out that he has "always been a trader of assets" and is someone who "sees beyond the horizon" when assessing commercial decisions. "He hasnt had a huge amount of sentimentality in terms of building a business and selling a business when the time is right," the source says. "But Crown is different because he does have that sentimentality. He has worked so hard to build the business from very little, and he is proud of it." According to some Crown insiders, there were specific details of the cash-and-shares deal on offer from Wynn that Packer found particularly attractive. As Crown's 46 per cent shareholder, Packer would have ended up with $2 billion cash and a 10 per cent shareholding, making him the biggest investor in the US and Macau casino giant, which, if Wynn were to combine with Crown, would be one of the most geographically expansive gambling empires in the world.

"The beauty of the offer was it would allow him to take some cash out of the business while at the same time still being involved," said the source, who indicated the parties were also discussing whether Crown's branding could remain at its Australian casinos. "Some people would say its a pretty good offer." James Packer leaves the Crown Resorts annual general meeting at the Crown Casino in Melbourne in 2017. Credit:AAP In a rare interview recently with The Australian journalist and author Damon Kitney, Packer conceded he had previously considered dumping Crown to reduce his debt, saying he was "coming to the end of a chapter". "It has been a clean-up, debt-reduction chapter," he said. "My next chapter is Crown Sydney, which is going to be a very big deal. But it is 3 years away. I need to work out what to do with myself for that period." Packer, who is currently residing in Aspen, Colorado, has often divulged his feelings about his "funny relationship with Sydney", wondering if the city will ever feel like home again.
There has been a lot of talk lately about the state of falling yields across non-residential property in many metropolitan markets in the nations major capitals. However, it is important to look at this in relation to comparable investment options.

Last month, Australian 10-year bond yields fell to record lows on the back of rising uncertainties about global growth and growing geopolitical tensions.

Not only is the cost of borrowing significantly lower, but the relative value story is now even more pronounced.

A slowdown in the residential sector is having a positive impact on Sydney's metropolitan commercial market. Credit:

While metropolitan freestanding commercial buildings traded at equated market yields of between 3.5 per cent and 5 per cent, long-term bond yields were recorded at 1.76 per cent. Taking a midpoint of 4.25 per cent, this means that the standard metropolitan commercial property is trading at a premium of nearly 250 basis points to the 10-year bond rate.
A prominent proxy advisor has given qualified support to Lynas directors who were buying shares ahead of a takeover offer by Wesfarmers, after the corporate regulator raised questions about when discussion about the bid started.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission raised questions last week about when the rare earths miner and the $40 billion conglomerate Wesfarmers were in communication about a takeover.

Lynas rejected Wesfarmers' takeover offer. Credit:Bloomberg

The two companies had been in contact since August last year, initially about a potential joint venture. The Herald and the Age revealed on Friday that Wesfarmers' managing director Rob Scott discussed a potential full takeover bid with Lynas on two occasions in early February.

Wesfarmers announced to the Australian Securities Exchange on March 26 that it had made a $2.25 a share indicative offer for Lynas.
Wallabies star Israel Folau will have a legal defence on the grounds of alleged religious discrimination under national employment law if Rugby Australia terminates his contract.

Expert views on his legal position emerged as Folau fronted Rugby Australia at its Sydney headquarters on Friday less than a day after the sport's governing body had threatened to sack him.

Israel Folau at a cafe on Friday before fronting Rugby Australia at its Sydney headquarters. Credit:Nine News

The controversy erupted after he posted a warning on social media saying that "Hell waits" drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators unless they repent. Folau made a similar comment a year ago.

Rugby Australia's threat to terminate Folau's multimillion-dollar four-year contract came less than a week after he became Super Rugbys record top try-scorer. Corporate sponsor Qantas publicly condemned his latest comments saying they did not "reflect the spirit of inclusion and diversity" it supports.
Fiction: Metropolis



By Philip Kerr

Kerr's posthumous prequel, Metropolis.

The thriller writer David Baldacci once argued crime fiction is so popular because it presents a kind of escapist moral fantasy. "Evil is punished and the good guys mostly win after solving the puzzle," he said. God knows what Baldacci would make of my obsession with Bernie Gunther, the macho, Goethe-quoting Berlin detective created by the late British author Philip Kerr. In the Gunther novels, which are set in and around Nazi Germany, evil is almost always rewarded and justice mocked, even when our hero gets his man.

The series follows Bernie (after 14 books, I think we're on first-name terms) during war and peace, across Europe and as far afield as South America as he tries to stay alive, meeting an unlikely cast of historical characters and solving the odd crime. The novels are at their best when they deal with the moral compromises people make under totalitarianism.
After winning the Man Booker, did that change things? What did you do with the 50,000 prize money? I saved it, like a good, responsible man. [Laughs] It's a lot of money, but it's not as if I could go buy a house. When you win a prize, are you relieved a readership is guaranteed, or weighed down by expectations? Somewhere in between. It's great to reach out to another audience  and not just the British Commonwealth and English-speaking countries, but in translation. A Brief History of Seven Killings was translated into nearly 30 languages because of the Booker Prize. In terms of pressure, I'm a big believer in writing the book that's in your head, regardless of what it is. If you start listening to everyone else, you start to write by committee or public opinion. It also helps that at the time I won the Booker, I was already deep in research for Black Leopard, Red Wolf.

Loading You saved your Booker winnings, but was there one thing you splurged on to congratulate yourself? My friends did dare me to do one outrageous thing if I won. So I bought this thing called a Moooi Horse Lamp. It's almost impossible to describe. You have to google it. POLITICS You're a Jamaican citizen living in the US. What's the lay of the land of American politics as you see it?

It's ridiculous. Those of us who come from the so-called Third World had no idea we were going to walk right into Third World politics. It's partisan in ways in which gang leaders in Jamaica would have never dreamed of. At the same time, the centre likes to take on this idea they're morally superior to everyone because they're rational. They're not rational; they're intellectually lazy. Because now in the US, we have a right-wing government that is almost a cartoon idea of a right-wing government. Andrew Gillum, who ran as the Democratic nominee for Florida governor in 2018, said it best: "I'm not saying he's [Trump's] racist  but racists think he's racist." It's what I'd say about his government, too: "I'm not saying you're KKK [Ku Klux Klan]  but the KKK thinks you're KKK." Looking back, where have your politics come from? Books. Media; everything from Rolling Stone to The Economist  I was reading across all sides. But also realising very early on that I was different. I was queer; I was a nerd. Certain forces were working against me, so why would I be part of them? It's still a shock to me to come across conservative homosexuals. We call them the "Vichy Gays". [Laughs] If you were a US citizen and could vote, what big issues would inform your vote at the ballot box? Fixing gerrymandering: the practice of "redistricting" US electoral boundaries on racial lines to weaken the political power of minority voters. Taxes: it's one thing to ask what's a fair tax rate for the rich but "zero" is not an answer. And once and for all, this bullshit about a wall.

BODIES Writers are creatures of the mind. What's your relationship with your body like? When I was young, I wanted to be white. Really? Where did that come from? From a huge sense of shame. From only being exposed to Hollywood. In Jamaica, we have huge colour racism, and I'm pretty dark. So I grew up with a sense my skin tone wasn't desirable. People would say, "Man, you're dark. You're not as black as that guy, but you're black." It's always hilarious hearing black people come up with degrees of blackness. Coming to terms with that, and accepting things like having knock knees and gap teeth; it all took a while. I had bad self-esteem for a long time.

It's interesting to hear you say you had anxieties about your skin colour. I naively assumed if you grew up in a country where you're part of the ethnic majority, you wouldn't. Of course, there's racism within race. Oh, you don't need white people to practise white supremacy. When my dad became a lawyer, he won, like, five cases in one week. People paid huge attention. He had a visit from other lawyers, who said, "You could be a big thing, you could be a super-successful person in this country. It's time to get a lighter-skinned wife and have lighter-skinned children." It was crazy. You're comfortable in your own skin now. What changed? One simple thing: getting older. Not caring as much. Accepting my queerness and my nerdiness. Having friends who are affirming. Reading people like Toni Morrison; [her book] Sula did more for me than prayer. It took a while. And getting to the gym didn't hurt. diceytopics@goodweekend.com.au
About five years ago, Victoria Broackes thought the world seemed a relatively stable place. Back then, she was thinking about mounting an exhibition exploring the exciting culture of revolution and social activism that had erupted in the 1960s. Songs such as The Beatles' 1968 hit Revolution probably riffed through her head.

By the time her exhibition You Say You Want a Revolution?: Records and Rebels 1966-1970 was on show, things were flipping out: Brexit, Trump, populism and heightened climate alarm were exploding.

Vietnam Moratorium badge, 1970-1971. Credit:Augier Jon

Now, as a version of that exhibition arrives in Melbourne, revolution, it seems, might again be on the cards, thanks to the likes of Sweden's teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg and her growing armies of student strikers around the world. Change, they are hoping, can be possible with enough loud voices.

That was certainly the case in the 1960s, says Broackes. A senior curator at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, she had begun thinking about the revolution idea after co-curating the V&A's highly successful global touring exhibition David Bowie Is, which came to Melbourne's ACMI in 2015. People loved the 1960s element of that show so much that Broackes wanted to revisit the tumultuous period to explore some of its most ardent themes  especially the way it seemed to foment ideas about resistance and counter-culture, giving the common people a voice.
Winx might be a safe bet in Saturday's Queen Elizabeth Stakes, but the bookies are almost as confident of a Labor victory at next month's federal election.

Bill Shorten was paying $1.19 on Friday to become Australia's next prime minister, as both leaders took to the hustings in Sydney on the first full day of the election campaign.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten boards his campaign bus after visiting a diagnostic imaging centre in Sydney. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Scott Morrison is expected to stay in town to attend Winx's final race and mark the end of a fairytale story he says epitomises the notion of "a fair go for those who have a go".

The Prime Minister hit the ground in a trot rather than a gallop on Friday, visiting an oil and lubricant factory in the highly marginal Labor-held seat of Lindsay.
Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has doubled down on comments suggesting his Labor opponent, who lost a leg in a car accident, was using her disability as an "excuse" not to move into the Brisbane electorate they are fighting to represent.

In comments that Labor believes may backfire and suggest the 2019 campaign may be one of the nastiest on record, the minister on Friday stood by his claims against ALP candidate Ali France that there were complaints across the electorate about her failure to move into ultra-marginal Dickson.

Ali France and Peter Dutton are facing off in the seat of Dickson.

"A lot of people have raised this with me. I think they are quite angry that Ms France is using her disability as an excuse for not moving into our electorate," Mr Dutton told News Corp.

It prompted Bill Shorten to claim that Mr Dutton was running scared while Ms France accused him of struggling to understand the day-to-day battles most of his constituents face.
As a woman in sport, I know exactly how it feels to be trolled on social media. It happens to a lot of us. When I saw what AFLW player Tayla Harris was going through with the comments on that photo last month, it resonated.

Unfortunately, whatever your code, being harassed by strangers online is something a lot of us can all relate to in womens footy.

Amelia Kuk in action on the field.

When I joined the Papua New Guinea Orchids in 2017 ahead of the World Cup, a film crew was making a documentary about the teams inaugural journey and the impact of womens rugby league on lives and attitudes in Papua New Guinea. My story became part of the film.

Despite rugby league being the national sport in Papua New Guinea, not everyone was willing to get behind the countrys first female representative rugby league team. One of the biggest issues was the abuse we faced on social media.
Yuki Tanaka, 69, is a retired professor of Japanese wartime history. His daughter Alisa Tanaka-King, 30, is a Melbourne-based contemporary artist. She learnt much about the struggles of women in society from her father.

Alisa: "Yuki is passionate about womens rights  Our whole upbringing has been feminist." Credit:Darrian Traynor

YUKI: I came to Melbourne from Japan in 1979 as a PhD student. A few months later, I met my Australian wife-to-be, Jo. We married two years later. I was teaching Japanese studies in Adelaide in 1988 when our second daughter, Alisa, was born.

Alisa's middle name is Noe, after Noe Ito, the 1920s Japanese anarchist and feminist. Her older sister, Mika, has the middle name Simone, as she was born the day after Simone de Beauvoir died. Alisa was an active child. If she wanted our attention, she threw her dummy from the cot and laughed.

When Alisa was about five, I took leave from my job teaching Japanese politics at Melbourne University. We moved to Honshu in Japan and were based in Yokohama, where Alisa went to kindergarten. One time, she didn't attend for a few days. When she returned, a boy gave her a love letter. She was a very popular girl.
Confidence in the Inspector-General of Taxation and its relationship with the Australian Taxation Office has been called into question.

It follows an uncomfortable grilling of IGTs Andrew McLoughlin at a Senate committee hearing in parliament this week, which resulted in McLoughlin invoking public interest immunity and the committee considering referring the IGT for a parliamentary inquiry into its performance.

Independent Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick says he has huge confidence issues with the IGTs handling of an investigation into garnishee notices. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

It comes days after the Coalition announced the appointment of a new head of the IGT, Karen Payne, who will take the role next month.

Trouble began when independent Centre Alliance Senator Rex Patrick said he had huge confidence issues with the IGTs handling of an investigation into garnishee notices, which was instigated after a tax whistleblower, Richard Boyle, alleged inappropriate use of garnishee notices by the ATO on small businesses.
Shed never do it, Bobbie Viney told her mum when she first mentioned it. It was disgusting. There is no way in hell Im doing that, she thought.

Four years later, as her ulcerative colitis  inflammation of the bowel  became more and more painful and other treatments failed, things changed.

'I need your poo': Scott and Bobbie Viney.

You get so desperate, you will do anything, she says. So I was like: give me all the poo  all the poo.

Ms Viney is on the front line of a new therapy that is progressing from clinical trial to medical practice: faecal microbiota transplantation.
For a lucky country, Australia sure has some depressing place names: Mount Hopeless in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, Melancholy Waterhole in Queensland, Tasmania's Misery Island, Mount Buggery in Victoria, the Doubtful Islands off Western Australia, the village of Broke in the NSW Hunter region, the forest reserve of Dismal Swamp in Tasmania's Tarkine, Foul Bay on the Yorke Peninsula and Coffin Bay on the Eyre Peninsula.

This village in Durham, England, is just one example of the globes many gloomy place names. Credit:Alamy

Once you've had enough of the Edge of the World, a reserve on Tasmania's north-west coast, you may as well head off for Nowhere Else, west of Launceston.

But look on the bright side: if you were in the US, your car could have broken down at the junction of Desperation Drive and Solitude Way in northern California, you could be struggling up Bloody Dick Peak in Montana, or be in a state of existential angst at Point No Point in Newark, New Jersey.
A Brisbane jury has found a couple guilty of offences in relation to "importing" a Fijian woman into the country and forcing her to work for them for eight years.

Civil engineer Isikeli Feleatoua Pulini was found guilty in Brisbane District Court on Friday of a forced labour offence and not guilty of human trafficking.

Malavine Pulini (left) and Isikeli Feleatoua Pulini (right) are seen leaving the Brisbane District Court on Thursday. Credit:AAP

He had pleaded guilty to two counts of harbouring an unlawful non-citizen before the trial began on Monday.

Public servant Malavine Pulini was found guilty of a human trafficking offence, a forced labour offence and earlier this week pleaded guilty to two counts of harbouring an unlawful non-citizen.
A man who was abusing epilepsy medication prescribed after he was twice struck by lightning has been jailed for bashing a Richmond resident with a tin of food in front of the victim's two children.

Jal Myaker, 20, was on Friday sentenced to 2 years in prison, with a non-parole period of 15 months, for assaulting a Richmond resident who had filmed Myaker and a 17-year-old speeding down his street.

Myaker was a passenger in the car and attacked the resident as one of his children whimpered "are you going to die, daddy? Please don't die, daddy," County Court judge Christopher Ryan said.

The father-of-two was walking home with his children on July 13, 2018 when he saw a car speeding down the street.

He began filming the car with the intention of making a complaint to the local council when the car turned around and made its way back to the man.
The same day, media asked Gobbo to do a paid interview about Mokbel. She sought advice about this from her police handlers but decided of her own accord not to go ahead. Four days later Gobbo received a call from Mokbel on a mobile phone that he had somehow got possession of inside his Greek cell. Nicola Gobbo outside the Supreme Court in 2004 before applying for bail for her client Tony Mokbel. Credit:Vince Caligiuri After his apologies he too pressed her on which of his crew have been arrested. Mokbel told Gobbo he would consider talking to police, if she managed the exchange. The drug kingpin said he could divulge information about corrupt police, but emphasised he didn't want to "roll on them" personally. In the 40-minute phone call, Mokbel claimed that he was relieved to have been arrested, that he wanted Gobbo to get on a plane to Greece to fight his extradition and told her to engage media monitors to track all the journalism being published in Australia in the hope it could be used in his legal fight in the Greek courts.

Danielle McGuire in 2011 Credit:Angela Wylie Gobbo again spoke to her police handlers about the possibility of her acting for Mokbel and they warned her of the potential complications. Two days after that, she spoke to McGuire again, who told her to get Mokbel the Lewis Moran murder brief. After this call, Gobbo told police she was considering stopping being an informer and set out her options: working just for the police, working just for Mokbel or working for both. Police again told the barrister she should not act for Mokbel, according to the sealed documents released by the Supreme Court on Friday. She responded that she felt it was her responsibility to bring Mokbel home.

Gobbo, who has claimed through her evidence to various courts that she informed on her clients out of altruism, then appeared to contradict herself. She asked whether police had considered giving her some of the $1 million reward offered for information leading to Mokbel's arrest and pointed out she tipped them off about a Mokbel associate who police used to track down the drug lord. Gobbo reminded police that she'd told them to "follow [the associate] and he'll lead you to Mokbel". Three days later, on June 15, Gobbo appeared to have done a complete backflip, asking police: "How can I represent [Mokbel] and charge him money for my services when I am talking to police and I am largely responsible for him being where he is?" Police asked her if the ethical issue was only about money.

"Sure it's more than just about money," she responded and talked about her lawyer-client privilege. She added that she had no obligation to report crimes told to her, that it was only a moral issue. On June 18, Mokbel rang Gobbo again and was "very nice to her". Gobbo said she knew Mokbel was a con artist who had "ripped her off in the past" but said it was natural he wanted her to act for him because she knew everything about his history. Gobbo made it clear that she would not work for him unless he had funds. Police said they again reminded Gobbo she should not act as Mokbel's lawyer. She said she understood and won't.
Warning: This story contains an image which may distress some readers.

A factory worker has spoken of his desperate struggle after an exploding chemical drum left him with serious burns before sparking a toxic inferno in suburban Melbourne.

Vignesh Varatharaja is still in shock after last week's fire. Credit:AAP

After starting his 6am shift last Friday, Vignesh Varatharaja filled a chemical drum with solvent when it blew up in his face at the Campbellfield factory.

"I just turned right and the drum hit my shoulder and face heavily and my body caught fire and my clothes started burning," Mr Varatharaja said on Friday.
The mother at the centre of a police stand-off in Perth's south east has told Nine News Perth the whole ordeal was a "big misunderstanding".

Rachel Annakin, 33, was charged with drug possession and police are continuing their search for her partner after Tactical Response Group officers responded to reports of gunshots at the property on Thursday.

The scene was cleared after about two hours. Credit:ninevms

"What I can tell you is that it's all been a misunderstanding," she said.

"It's a load of crap. There were no rifles here and there were no shots or anything."
Work on a construction site south of Perth has been put on hold after nearby residents complained their children were experiencing health issues because of dust, the local government claimed.

The concept plan that went out for consultation in 2016. Credit:CY OConnor Foundation Centre of Excellence

The Shire of Murray issued a works suspension order to Buckby Contracting earlier this week over ongoing dust issues at the CY OConnor Foundation Research Centre work site in North Dandalup.

Its believed earthworks, underground construction and roadworks caused a significant amount of dust to blow into nearby properties.

Last month, resident Elish Tohu told the Mandurah Mail her four children had woken up covered in sand and dust despite the windows and doors of her home being shut.
"I went and talked to Kerryn to understand her experience," Ms Steggall, a barrister and former Olympian skier, said.

Kerryn Phelps and Zali Steggall, independent candidates for Wentworth and Warringah, have combined forces as they attempt to beat the odds in Liberal heartlands. Credit:Edwina Pickles

Only months before, independent Kerryn Phelps had won a blue ribbon Liberal seat on the opposite side of the harbour in the Wentworth byelection.

Before Zali Steggall announced she would run as an independent in Tony Abbott's harbourside seat of Warringah, she went to see perhaps the only person who could tell her what it would really be like.

Dr Phelps' said her advice to her Warringah counterpart was simple: "it was really about being true to herself". The Sydney GP added she and Ms Steggall plan to speak regularly throughout the federal election campaign, particularly as neither have the support or infrastructure of a major party behind them.

"It's picking up the phone, it's someone to talk to," Dr Phelps said, noting that during her 2018 byelection campaign, crossbenchers Cathy McGowan and Rebekha Sharkie provided moral support and campaigning tips.

"There is solidarity amongst the independents," said Ms Steggall, who has also been in contact with other independent candidates including Rob Oakeshott, who is running in the northern New South Wales seat of Cowper and Julia Banks, who is contesting the Mornington Peninsula seat of Flinders.

Apart from advice about the practical aspects of running a campaign, Ms Steggall said fellow independents have helped her "dissociate" from personal attacks on the trail. Knowing that other candidates have similar experiences has shown Ms Steggall "this isn't personal, it's just tactics".

On the policy front, Ms Steggall and Dr Phelps are also united in their call for stronger action on climate change. "The Coalition are just completely lacking in commitment to real climate change policy," Ms Steggall said.
Vast swathes of regional Victoria are about to be sized up to see how much natural gas lies beneath the ground and if it can be tapped as a new energy source.

Onshore gas extraction was shut down in Victoria in 2014 following anti-fracking campaigning by farming and environment groups, but the Andrews government will consider lifting the moratorium on conventional gas exploration in June next year.

A moratorium on onshore gas exploration in Victoria could end next year.

Fracking has been permanently banned in Victoria.

The move to potentially revive onshore gas production follows a recent 10-year high in the wholesale price of gas on the Victorian spot market and a warning from the Australian Energy Market Operator that the state faces winter shortfalls in gas by 2024.
Beijing: The Chinese government has rejected claims it interferes in Australia's domestic politics and accused Australian media outlets of "colluding with a heretical cult Falun Gong".

In its first detailed response to a joint investigation by Four Corners and The Age and Sydney Morning Herald that alleged Chinese government interference in local councils, Beijing defended the actions of the Chinese consulate in Sydney.

Falun Gong practitioners demonstrate outside Australia's Parliament House in Canberra in 2016. Credit:AP

The consulate had repeatedly warned Georges River Council in Sydney not to accept sponsorship for its Lunar New Year's festival from Vision China Times, an independent Chinese-language newspaper.

At a Foreign Ministry press conference in Beijing on Thursday, the newspaper was described as "Falun Gong-backed media".
A Hanover councillor had strong words for the City of Steinbach yesterday over its opposition to amendments proposed in Hanovers development and zoning bylaws.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/4/2019 (978 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Hanover councillor had strong words for the City of Steinbach yesterday over its opposition to amendments proposed in Hanovers development and zoning bylaws.

During a Wednesday morning public hearing in Hanover, Councillor Bob Brandt spoke about Steinbachs recent unwillingness to cooperate with neighbouring municipalities when it comes to allowing for development near the citys border.

"Im looking forward to the day when the City of Steinbach will work together with their neighbours instead of opposing them," Brandt said. "Theyre doing this to the RM of La Broquerie and now theyre doing this to the RM of Hanover."

"Its time that they learn to think regionally."

Hanover council approved an amendment to its existing development and zoning bylaws that would allow for a piece of land west of Homestead Crescent to be re-designated from agricultural to rural residential.

The change will still have to be approved by the Municipal Board before it can go forward.

Developer Abe Bergen is proposing to create a housing development on the land.

Bergen spoke during the hearing, and said he has been surprised by the battle that has occurred over his plans.

"When I started this plan over a year ago I had no idea that piece of land would become such a battleground of policy," Bergen told council.

"The application process and media coverage have made this an interesting journey."

Bergen told council the land as it currently sits has no agricultural value calling it "too close to residents for intensive agriculture, and not suitable for cattle grazing, manure management or forage."

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"In other words it really has no agricultural value other than serving as a buffer. Practically speaking this land hasnt seen a cow for decades," Bergen said.

Bergen also said the land in recent years has been used as a place for teenagers to "hang out and party."

"I think the neighbours would prefer new neighbours rather than partiers," Bergen told council.

Bergen also claimed he has tried to work with and "be collaborative" with the City of Steinbach, and concerns were raised on Wednesday as both Bergen and Hanover councillors refuted a recent media report that neither Bergen nor the municipality have had any consultations with Steinbach about the plan.

"I met with Steinbachs Mayor Earl Funk on November 30 and had a follow-up conversation a week later to share with him the plans that I had developed, so contrary to what has been reported in the media there has actually been numerous documented points of consultation with the city," Bergen said.

Steinbach has also recently objected to development bylaw plans proposed in the RM of La Broquerie.
Ohio governor Mike DeWine. Photo: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

On the evening of May 30, Louisiana became the eighth state to sign into law a draconian bill outlawing all abortions after a so-called fetal heartbeat can be detected  long before most women even realize theyre pregnant.

Anti-abortion groups refer to such bills as heartbeat bills because they ban all or most abortions once cardiac activity can be detected  which is usually at the embryonic stage, around five or six weeks. By design, they severely restrict the usual, legal threshold at which states can ban abortion, which is considered to be when a fetus is viable outside the womb (around 24 weeks). Such bills, in effect, prohibit nearly all abortions, because they leave women with such a small window in which to confirm they are pregnant, and then have the procedure done.

None of these laws have actually been enacted  they either havent taken effect yet or have been blocked from taking effect by a judge, meaning that abortion after six weeks is still legal in all states. Still, they pose a legitimate threat: They are part of a larger effort to eventually overturn Roe at the level of the Supreme Court, and a growing push against womens reproductive rights in the United States.

Here is a closer look at what has happened with these bans in each state.

Louisiana

When is it set to take effect? The law will only take effect if the similar abortion ban in Mississippi, which was blocked by a judge on May 24, is upheld by a federal appeals court.

What legal challenges does it face? The bill, which Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law on May 30, and includes no exceptions for rape or incest, does not yet face any legal challenges of its own. But still, in a statement to CNN, Louisiana American Civil Liberties Union executive director Alanah Odoms Hebert said, The ACLU of Louisiana and our partners are committed to making sure women in Louisiana and across the country have access to safe, legal abortion care.

Missouri

When is it set to take effect? August 28, 2019.

What legal challenges does it face? After Missouri passed the bill in mid-May, the ACLU indicated their intent to sue over the legislation, writing on Twitter, Missouris law will be stopped by the courts  just like Georgia, Ohio, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabamas. We all have a constitutional right to abortion and we will fight for it.

Missouris bill, which bans abortion after eight weeks, does not include any exceptions for instances of rape, incest, or human trafficking; it does, however, allow for the procedure in cases of medical emergency.

The state is also facing another, more immediate threat to abortion rights: The possibility that its only remaining abortion clinic could stop providing the procedure as early as May 31. Per Planned Parenthood, the states health department is refusing to renew its license unless doctors agree to follow a number of extreme regulations, such as providing medically unnecessary pelvic exams on their patients.

Georgia

When is it set to take effect? January 2020

What legal challenges does it face? The ACLU and the Center for Reproductive Rights have vowed to challenge it in court. (This past week, Netflix announced that it would fight the bill alongside the ACLU.)

In addition to banning abortions after six weeks, Georgias HB481, or the Living Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, also redefines natural persons, expanding the term to include an unborn child. This new definition would potentially make women who receive abortions and doctors who administer them open to criminal prosecution  or, in other words, could make getting or providing an abortion punishable by life in prison.

WATCH LIVE: Georgia's Republican Gov. Kemp signs abortion ban: https://t.co/vCksIjHpv5  WTVC NewsChannel 9 (@newschannelnine) May 7, 2019

In a statement following Kemps signing on Tuesday, chief counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, Elisabeth Smith called the law bafflingly unconstitutional, and added, Bans like this have always been blocked by courts.

We will be suing Georgia to make sure this law has the same fate.

Ohio

When is it set to take effect? July 2019

What legal challenges does it face? Shortly after the bill was signed, the ACLU announced it is filing a lawsuit challenging the bill.

Ohios fetal heartbeat bill was shut down twice before, by former governor John Kasich. Ohios current governor, however, Mike DeWine, signed it back in April, shortly after it passed the legislature.

BREAKING: Gov. DeWine just signed the Ohio law that virtually bans all abortion care. We'll see you in court.  ACLU (@ACLU) April 11, 2019

This legislation is blatantly unconstitutional and we will fight to the bitter end to ensure that this bill is permanently blocked, said Freda Levenson, legal director at the ACLU of Ohio.

Mississippi

Blocked (temporarily): On May 24, Judge Carlton Reeves temporarily blocked the ban from going into effect in July, writing in a preliminary injunction that the law threatens immediate harm to womens rights, especially considering most women do not seek abortions services until after six weeks.

Mississippi governor signs 'heartbeat' abortion ban https://t.co/bYf2mU9GSd pic.twitter.com/4yVoygnWFG  Reuters Top News (@Reuters) March 21, 2019

In March, immediately after Governor Phil Bryant signed into law the bill, reproductive-rights groups vowed to challenge the legislation. The legislation, which was set to go into effect on July 1, banned all abortions after a heartbeat could be detected; the only exception was if the mothers life was endangered.

Kentucky

Blocked (temporarily): Days before the Mississippi legislature passed their six-week abortion ban, the Kentucky legislature passed their own, which was signed into law by Kentuckys Republican governor Matt Bevin on Friday, March 15. The law was supposed to go into effect immediately, but the ACLU filed an immediate challenge, and Judge David J. Hale of the Western District of Kentucky ruled that the law was potentially unconstitutional, and prevented it from taking effect until he could hold a hearing.

BREAKING: The Kentucky legislature just passed a bill that will ban abortion across the state.



We are representing the last remaining clinic in the state and suing IMMEDIATELY to stop this ban from going into effect. pic.twitter.com/D7R33cLek8  ACLU (@ACLU) March 15, 2019

Iowa

Blocked (permanently): In May 2018, Iowa lawmakers passed a bill banning most abortions after six weeks, except in cases of rape or incest. It was quickly struck down as unconstitutional. In his ruling, District Court Judge Michael Huppert wrote, It is undisputed that such cardiac activity is detectable well in advance of the fetus becoming viable.

Republican state senator Rick Bertand of Sioux City told Reuters when the law first passed. We created an opportunity to take a run at Roe v. Wade  100 percent.

While the six-week abortion ban did not take effect, Iowa already has severe abortion restrictions in place, like requiring that the parents of a minor be notified before she obtains an abortion, forcing women to undergo ultrasounds before each abortion, and requiring the governor to personally approve each Medicaid-funded abortion, even in cases of life endangerment, rape, incest, or fetal anomaly.

North Dakota

Blocked (permanently): When it was enacted in 2013, North Dakotas fetal heartbeat law was the strictest abortion ban in the nation. It was blocked from taking effect by lower courts, and in 2016, the Supreme Court refused to review a lower courts ruling, thus blocking it permanently.

This post has been updated. We will continue to update it as more states continue their assault against the reproductive rights of women.

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A performance of Lao traditional dance at the event (Photo: VNA)



Guests at the event included Tran Quoc Vuong, Politburo member and standing member of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committees Secretariat; Tong Thi Phong, Politburo member and Standing Vice Chairwoman of the National Assembly; and Hoang Binh Quan, member of the Party Central Committee and head of the Party Central Committees Commission for External Relations.

Addressing the event, Lao Ambassador to Vietnam Thongsavanh Phomvihane reviewed the great accomplishments made by the Lao people in the past year. He stressed that those achievements are made possible with the cooperation and the valuable and heartfelt support of the Vietnamese Party, State and people.

In reply, NA Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong said the Vietnamese Party, State and people always treasure the special ties with Laos, which has been fostered with efforts and sacrifice and many generations of leaders, armed forces and people of both countries.

Delegates join the event. (Photo: TDO)

She affirmed that Vietnam will continue to join hands with Laos to preserve and develop the traditional solidarity and special friendship between the two countries, while promoting the bilateral comprehensive cooperation to a new high, thus meeting the aspiration and trust of their people and contributing to peace, stability, cooperation and prosperity in the region and the world.

The Bunpimay, one of the biggest traditional festivals of Laos, takes place from April 14th to 16th every year. During the festival, people splash water on each other to wish for luck in the new year./.
The site of Dozier School in Florida, closed since 2011. (Screenshot/Googlemaps)

27 Suspected Unmarked Graves Found in Florida Reform School With Dark History

Contractors stumbled across what they suspect are 27 clandestine graves at a Florida reform school with a dark history of abuse.

The Dozier School for Boys was shut down in 2011 after a hundred-year history of suspected physical and sexual abuse of the students.

The following year, more than 40 unidentified remains were identified on the 14,000-acre school grounds in Mariana.

Now a company doing pollution cleanup has discovered 27 further anomalies consistent with unmarked graves, using ground penetrating radar.

Contractor Geosyntec revealed the findings in a report to the Department of Environmental Protection on March 26, obtained by the Tampa Bay Times.

The possible graves do not follow any obvious pattern, like a formal cemetery.

This randomness might be expected in a clandestine or informal cemetery, where graves were excavated haphazardly and left unmarked, the report states.

Former residents of the school said the discovery comes as no surprise.

Weve been trying to tell the state of Florida that theres more bodies out there for a long time, Bryant Middleton, who was sent to the school for incorrigibility in 1959, told the Times. Im in possession of a list of 130 some odd boys who died at the school or disappeared and whose last known resting place we cant find.

Another former student, Terry Burns, told Action News, If they would scan that whole ground of that school, I guarantee they will find another 200 to 300 dead boys buried on them grounds.

Burns is part of a group of former students known as the White House Boys, who pushed for the school to close.

It was a concentration camp for boys. Bradenton man relives haunting memories at the Old Dozier School for Boys. This as the state is now investigating even more possible human remains found near the shuttered school. TUNE IN @ 11 on @abcactionnews: pic.twitter.com/3YEwvVdWLy  Ryan Smith (@RyanReports) April 12, 2019

The group got their name from white cinder-block building where they were beaten with a weighted leather strap.

It was a concentration camp for kids, thats what it comes down to, said Burns.

More graves may be unearthed at Dozier School for Boys https://t.co/XWXZR1756c pic.twitter.com/BW1dU57O05  Orlando Sentinel (@orlandosentinel) April 12, 2019

An investigation in 2010 found no tangible evidence of the multiple allegations of rapes and other sexual assaults made by former students.

However, the report found that corporal punishment including paddling and beating were common. According to the report, one student was beaten so violently, pieces of their underwear were embedded into their buttocks and had to be surgically removed.

The school was eventually shut in 2011 after an investigation revealed ongoing excessive force, among other failings.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, there had also been reports of a number of suspicious deaths.

The school had been dogged by critical reports since it was founded in 1897.

In 1903, an investigative committee reported that children as young as 6 were locked in irons, just as common criminals, according to the Times. We have no hesitancy in saying, under its present management it is nothing more nor less than a prison, said the report.



The White House Boys were not among the 34 claims bill filed by lawmakers for the 2018 legislative session. Posted by Tallahassee Democrat on Wednesday, August 2, 2017

A 2016 report by the University of South Florida found that over 100 boys had died at the school between 1900 and 1973. The investigation found the school underreported deaths, including those from gunshot wounds and blunt trauma.

The report did not confirm any criminal findings but raised suspicious details regarding the boys remains.

Mark my words: there are more bodies out there, Jerry Cooper, 74, of Cape Coral, who said he received 135 lashes by guards as punishment one night in 1961.
The Fox Owns the HenhouseWhen Public Safety is Governed by Private Profit

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

 Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

A couple of days ago I stumbled upon a radio interview where the topic was safety and government oversight. I had tuned in at the exact moment when the interviewee said the following:

Well, my experience of 30 years in Washington, D.C. is the same Ronald Reagan hadyou know, trust but verify. And when bad things happen, you need to verify if what he is saying is correct. I certainly question that theres not a cozy relationship. All anyone has to do is look at the revolving door in Washington, D.C., and this agency and the industry to realize that there is a cozy relationship. Now the question is, is that cozy relationship having an adverse impact on the safety decisions being made?

The American public would be surprised, and maybe even concerned, if they knew how widespread the practice of self-regulation was.

Before I could ascertain what they were discussing in the interview, my mind began to race. Could it be clean water, Round Up pesticide lawsuits, climate change, vaccine safety, the opioid crisis? My question was quickly answered. The forum was an interview on National Public Radio (NPR) with former National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chairman, James Hall, on the investigation into the recent tragedy of two Boeing 737 MAX airline crashes. Upon a rewind of the interview, I kept hearing references to revolving doors and cozy relationships.

David Greene, host of the show, asked,

But are you saying there are documents that Boeing has showing that theyrethat the company and, potentially the FAA, knew that there were some problems, some of the very problems that may have caused these accidents, and that they certified the aircraft anyway?

Mr. Hall responded,

the process that we presently have is a self-certification process by the manufacturer of the safety of the aircraft what has happened is that these decisions have been made in commissions and rulemakings dominated by the industry in Washington, D.C.

As reported by NPR, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) left the safety testing of the plane to the manufacturing company (Boeing) and that this practice could be found a lot in the federal government. James Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform stated, The American public would be surprised, and maybe even concerned, if they knew how widespread the practice of self-regulation was. I wondered what implications this example might carry for aviation safety, agriculture, vaccine safety, and generally for the future of government oversight and scientific inquiry.

Toward the end of the interview, Mr. Greene from NPR stated that recently he had asked FAA head, Dan Elwell, some of the same questions. In one answer, Mr. Elwell responded, the FAA is an agency that is based on data, and they very much make their decisions, including keeping those planes in the air, based on data. Dan Elwell, is a former Vice President of the Aerospace Industries Association, representing the most powerful aerospace industry companies. There remain some very tough questions to be answered by the manufacturers of the airline industry, like Boeing, and the cozy relationship it and other industry members enjoy with the government agencies responsible for regulating its operations and overseeing its compliance with public safety. But, lets move on from that thread of public air safety and pause for an overview of the opioid crisis facing the United States.

Public Air Safety to the Opioid Crisis

Earlier in March, the 13th to be precise, I saved a copy of the transcript from an interview between David Greene and Brian Mann, an NPR associate, who has been following developments in some of the lawsuits around the nations opioid crisis. In its introduction to the interview, NPR reported,

The opioid epidemic claimed 70,000 lives in 2017. To put that in perspective, that is more than the number of people who died annually at the height of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. And the pharmaceutical industry is going to spend much of this year answering some hard questions. Many blame pharma for our countrys opioid crisis. And this year, big drug makers, as well as pharmacy chains, are facing more than 1,500 lawsuits filed by state and local governments. Billions of dollars are at stake, and so are reputations. Johnson & Johnson, Purdue Pharma, CVSthose are just some of the companies targeted in these lawsuits.

The following are excerpts from the interview:

Greene: I mean that there are internal company documents that are being made public, and some of them have been controversial, youve been finding. Mann: Purdue executives, for example, can be seen secretly acknowledging that their prescription opioids were far more addictive and dangerous than they were telling doctors. At the same time, company directives kept pushing sales, pushing the salespeople incredibly hard to get more opioids into the hands of vulnerable people, including seniors and military veterans.Weve also learned that Purdue Pharma executives developed a secret plan they called Project Tango, which they allegedly hoped might help them profit again from the growing wave of opioid addiction. The idea here was to sell addiction treatment services to some of the same people addicted to products like their own OxyContin Which means for more than a decade, no one in the wider public knew how serious the allegations against Purdue and these other drug companies were. But this time, states and cities suing these companies seem eager to sort of pull back the curtain the drug industry has fought these disclosures at every turn. They describe the information in these documents as proprietary, basically arguing its corporate property. But as more and more information comes out, its making people angry.

On a related topic, Mr. Mann expressed:

But according to the drug companys own documents, firms including Johnson & Johnson pushed unscientific theories about drug addiction. They did so allegedly to convince doctors to prescribe even more opioids after patients showed signs of dependency. David Armstrong, the reporter with ProPublica, says this kind of disclosure is making it harder for the industry to protect its image.

 tobacco science; i.e. Science done on behalf of an interest defending its profits, like the science conducted by a cigarette company showing that cigarettes are safe.

Government Agency Collusion

Government agency collusion with different industries, to me, represented nothing short of corruption. I was reminded of the tobacco industry and how the Phillip Morris tobacco company organized its Boca Raton Action Plan in 1988, in an effort to diffuse and re-orient the voices and initiatives of those fighting tobacco in favor of public health. Also, how the World Health Organization (WHO) itself colluded with legal experts and doctors in the United States in favor of the tobacco industry and against public health. From this fiasco was coined the expression tobacco science; i.e. Science done on behalf of an interest defending its profits, like the science conducted by a cigarette company showing that cigarettes are safe.

And speaking of the WHO, I was also reminded of the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. In the spring of 2010, the Council of Europe was investigating the role of the WHO in declaring the H1N1 pandemic. Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, an epidemiologist who at one time was head of the Health Committee of the Council of Europe, expressed concerns that the contracts for the vaccine were mostly confidential arrangements between the WHO, individual member states and the companies producing the vaccine. In fact, numerous countries, including Germany, France, Italy, and Great Britain, entered into contracts with the vaccine manufacturing companies prior to the WHOs declaration of an H1N1 pandemic. The contracts obligated these countries to purchase swine flu vaccinations under one condition: that the WHO issue a pandemic flu alert.

 undermined by the transformation of the relationship between scientists at universities, private industries with their scientists, and the cozy relationships that exist between the two.

Transformed Relationships

In his farewell speech to the citizenry, U. S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower poignantly expressed his concern regarding the future of science and its partnership with government, and government with industry, when he said:

the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of researchThe prospect of domination of the nations scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

I kept wondering about the revolving doors, the collusion, industrial interests, and the science that was supposed to provide a foundation upon which to rest our confidence, our trust. How did we get here? The short answer, and quite possibly the simplest, might be the privatization of knowledge, or as some have called it, the selling of science. Or, maybe its the troubled matrimony of science and technology, where an applied and economic gain becomes the foundational rationale for present and future scientific endeavor. Such an environment raises serious questions as to the future of knowledge, the advancement of the sciences, and potential impacts on our economic, social, and public health.

Aristotle reminded us that knowledge is virtue. It has a value unto itself; a purpose that serves no particular master other than the rational development of inquiry and respective methods for the development of that knowledge. Here resided the principles of the classic universities, places where questions were explored, answered, and questioned again. This was the meaning of sciencenever settledbut forever moving toward a better, safer, healthier, and more advanced state of human affairs. But what happens to science when the scientist is tied to private industry, where the principle objective of private industry is defined by its stockholders interests, investments, and profits, where the same industry that manufactures the product for profit is also the industry responsible for generating the science determining the efficacy, effectiveness, and safety of its product?

In his book, Science in the Private Interest, Dr. Sheldon Krimsky writes,

The responsibility of the scientist begins with discovery and ends with commercial applications. Universities exist mainly to provide labor for industry and to help industry turn knowledge into technology; technology into productivity; and productivity into profits.

What Dr. Krimsky refers to as public interest science as a model of knowledge for human welfare, has been redefined, or more crudely speaking, undermined by the transformation of the relationship between scientists at universities, private industries with their scientists, and the cozy relationships that exist between the two. In the book To Profit or Not To Profit, authors Walter Powell and Jason Owens-Smith state,

The changes underway at universities are the result of multiple forces: a transformation in of the nature policymakers and key constituents. These trends are so potent that there is little chance for reversing them-nor necessarily a rationale for doing so.

These changes have been referred to as characteristic of the scientist as entrepreneur, or parts of what Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie explore in their book Academic Capitalism. In it, they write:

We would expect that faculty as professionals participating in academic capitalism would begin to move away from values such as altruism and public service, toward market values.

Under the current science-to-market model, government oversight of any number of products, from airplanes, to drugs, to tobacco, and more, continues to demonstrate a complacency that favors market-driven profits over public safety.

The Transformation of Science and Scientists

The transformation of science and scientists that are lured into and seek financial support from private industry for any number of research-to-market projects has become an all too familiar scenario with potentially devastating consequences.

Most recently, the parents of one of the victims of the Egyptian Boeing airline, filed suit against Boeing and the Rosemont airline parts manufacturing industry. Reuters report states that:

Thursdays complaint accuses Boeing of putting profits over safety and said the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration must also be held accountable for certifying the 737 MAX.

However, reports Reuters: Legal experts say these cases face high hurdles since government officials and agencies are generally immune from civil lawsuits.

Under the current science-to-market model, government oversight of any number of products, from airplanes, to drugs, to tobacco, and more, continues to demonstrate a complacency that favors market-driven profits over public safety. This reality should alarm anyone and all. What if, as some of the legal experts above claim, a U.S. citizen has no right to hold industry responsible for assurances of safety because those industries are tied to government agencies, or because those agencies derive profits or benefits from the cozy relationships? If you believe that the FAA and the FDA need to come clean regarding the revolving door and cozy relationships that experts have indicated exist between both agencies and private industry, why would we not consider the same for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)?

Arguably, a profoundly vivid parallel is seen in the policies and practices of mandatory vaccination and informed consent. Over the many years studying vaccination theory and practice, I discovered a disturbing similar patternthe revolving door between the CDC and private pharmaceutical manufacturing companies, the conflicts of interest where different committees and their members are given waivers protecting conflicts of interest, payoffs to doctors for administering vaccines, fast-tracking of vaccines and safety studies with no use of double-blind placebo studies, and the very cozy relationship between members of Congress, big pharma, the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

If you believe that the FAA and the FDA need to come clean regarding the revolving door and cozy relationships that experts have indicated exist between both agencies and private industry, why would we not consider the same for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)?

In 1986, Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA). For years families had been suing vaccine manufacturers for injuries their children suffered at the hands of vaccines. Threatening to discontinue vaccine production, the vaccine manufacturers asked for government assurances that their products would go forward unhindered. The 1986 law took all liability away from the manufacturers of vaccines, making it impossible to sue the industry. The same law stipulated that every two years the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would submit a report to Congress on the state of vaccine safety. It was during this time that the numbers and doses of vaccines began a dramatic increase.

In 2017 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Del Bigtree of the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) filed a suit before the U.S. Federal Court for the Southern District of New York. On July 27, 2018, HHS admitted the following before the court:

The [Department]s searches for records did not locate any records responsive to your request. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Immediate Office of the Secretary (IOS) conducted a thorough search of its document tracking systems. The department also conducted a comprehensive review of all relevant indexes of HHS secretarial correspondence records maintained at Federal record centers that remain in the custody of HHS. These searches did not locate records responsive to your request, or indications that records responsive to your request and in the custody of HHS are located at Federal record centers.

Today in the United States, political, medical, and mass media leadership, infused by the interests of vaccine manufacturers, are currently engaged in a massive campaign to silence dialogue, ban books and websites, avoid debates, and impose that vaccines become mandatory for all with no respect to informed consent, religious beliefs, medical conditions, or personal conscience. Writing on a recent measles outbreak in Rockland County, New York, Celeste McGovern remarks,

People, like those in Rockland County, dont avoid vaccines because they are misled by fake news and Facebookbut because of the real stories of corporate greed and political cover-up and vaccine-injured children that are shared on those platforms. The data bears them out. There are millions of them.

How is it possible that censorship becomes a principle upon which public policy and social interaction are defined in a democracy? Will the violation of the right to informed consent become the new paradigm applied to air travel, medications, vaccination, food, and more?

The very thought that censorship would become an instrument of intimidation, humiliation, a threat, and a practice violating human rights, should make anyone shiver. But maybe more importantly, the unbridled and crass censorship we are witnessing today on the topic of mandatory vaccination, its effectiveness, and safety, should leave us asking: How is it possible that censorship becomes a principle upon which public policy and social interaction are defined in a democracy? Will the violation of the right to informed consent become the new paradigm applied to air travel, medications, vaccination, food, and more?

Personally, and professionally, I see nothing edifying and positive coming from the censorship of those that question. Boeing has explaining to do, as does the FAA. Furthermore, Johnson & Johnson, Purdue, CVS, and the FDA, owe the people an explanation. Likewise, the HHS, CDC, and pharma owe the people many explanations about the safety of vaccines.

This is no time for silence.

Jose Solis, Ph.D., is a guest contributor for the Childrens Health Defense. Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Childrens Health Defense. CHD is planning many strategies, including legal, in an effort to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those already injured. Your support is essential to CHDs successful mission.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
8 Everyday Cancer-Causing Chemicals Hiding at Home That You May Have Overlooked

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Jody Loomis was murdered in August 1972. More than 46 years later, police arrested the man they say killed her. (Snohomish County Sheriff)

A Cold Case Killing From 1972 Was Cracked With the Help of Genetic Genealogy

Thanks to the same DNA technology that caught the Golden State Killer suspect, authorities in Washington state arrested a 77-year-old man in the 1972 killing of 20-year-old Jody Loomis, the Snohomish County Sheriffs Office said.

After more than 46 years of searching for her killer, we finally have some answers for Jodys family, said Sheriff Ty Trenary. Thanks to the relentless persistence of our cold case team and new DNA technology, we are one step closer to justice for Jody.

The case dates to August 1972, when Loomis, 20, left her home and rode her bicycle toward a stable to ride her horse. Her body was found disrobed and shot in the head in the woods, authorities said.

Just received these photos from the Snohomish Co. Sheriffs Office that are believed to have been taken of suspect Terrence Miller around the time of Jody Loomis murder in 1972. Miller has been charged with 1st degree premeditated murder. Hes expected in court today. pic.twitter.com/jJEmjno5o6  Steve McCarron KOMO (@SteveTVNews) April 11, 2019

The case was unsolved until the recent emergence of genetic genealogy, which is a combination of traditional DNA evidence with the type of genealogic analysis made famous by companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.

Previously, DNA evidence from the crime scene could only be compared to a specific suspect or put into limited national databases to find direct matches.

But with genetic genealogy, that same DNA evidence can be put into the free website GEDMatch, which then shows a list of extended family members who are related to the perpetrator. That allows investigators to begin zeroing in on those who may have had close contact with the victim based on other public information.

Judge grants request to move arraignment hearing for Terrence Miller to Monday. Attorney says she hasnt had a chance to meet with him yet. She says hes being held in maximum security. Miller was arrested yesterday in connection with 1972 murder of Jody Loomis. pic.twitter.com/FsWocAlsQn  Steve McCarron KOMO (@SteveTVNews) April 11, 2019

The field has allowed law enforcement to crack cases that had long frustrated investigators, like that of the Golden State Killer.

Indeed, that appears to be just what happened in Loomis case. With the help of Parabon NanoLabs and genetic genealogist Deb Stone, investigators took evidence collected from the victim, turned it into a digital file containing DNA genotype data, and uploaded that to GEDmatch, police said.

https://t.co/izuJ4Zcxuy is the link to watch the 9am news conference about the arrest of a 77yo Edmonds man, suspected of murdering 20yo Jody Loomis in 1972. MW, the cold case murder of Sarah Yarborough remains unsolved https://t.co/UPIpLSRToI @KIRO7Seattle pic.twitter.com/X5IHTUePV1  AMY CLANCY (@ClancyKIRO7) April 11, 2019

The website showed several promising matches for a few of the suspects relatives, and the genealogist identified the parents of possible suspects based on the family tree, police said.

Police said they then got a DNA sample from an abandoned cup the suspect had used, and the crime lab confirmed that the suspects DNA matched DNA from the crime scene.

On Wednesday, Terrence Miller of Edmonds, Washington, was arrested at his house without incident and charged with first-degree murder in her killing. He is being held in the Snohomish County jail on $1 million bail, police said.

Police said they believe Miller was living about five miles from where Loomis body was found at the time of the murder.

The public defenders office said no attorney has yet been assigned to Miller.

This is the second arrest in a Snohomish County cold homicide case using results from genetic genealogy, the sheriffs office said in its statement.
Audrey Hepburns Secret Life as Spy During WWII Revealed in New Book

Audrey Hepburn, known for her roles in the classic Hollywood films Breakfast at Tiffanys and Roman Holiday, also played a more dangerous role as a teenager: a Resistance spy against the Nazis.

The icon, who died in 1993, kept most of her life quiet, despite the fame. Throughout the years, she hinted about her involvement with the Dutch Resistance during World War II.

In a new book, Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II author Robert Matzen sheds light onto the little-known areas of her life during that period.

For all that she would becomeAcademy Award-winning actress, Givenchy fashion plate, and international jet setter so at home on the Riviera or in Rome or Paristhe war years remained all too close, Matzen wrote, according to the New York Post.

Her work as a spy with the Dutch Resistance against the Nazis may come as a surprise since her parents were Nazi sympathizers.

Despite being born into an upper-class family in 1929, Hepburn grew up rather poor. Even with her mothers status as Dutch noblewoman, Hepburn said, My mother didnt have a dime.

On top of that, her parents divorced when she was 10, which was hard on her.

It tortures a child beyond measure. They dont know what the problem was. Children need two parents for their [emotional] equilibrium in life, she said, according to the New York Post.

That was the year World War II broke out.

When German troops invaded the Netherlands in 1940, Hepburn recalled, The first few months, we didnt know quite what had happened  I just went to school.

Despite the town being overrun with German signs and swastikas, the only thing that Hepburn noticed were the contents of lessons, according to the New York Post.

In the schools, the children learned their lessons in arithmetic with problems like this: If 1,000 English bombers attack Berlin and 900 are shot down, how many will return to England?' Hepburn recalled.

During that time, dance became Hepburns escape.

The turning point came in 1942 with the death of her uncle, Otto van Limburg Stirum, according to the New York Post. Hepburns uncle was captured, forced to dig his own grave, tied to a stake, and then executed.

His death caused Hepburns mother to turn against the Nazis and switch her allegiance to the Resistance.

Dancing was one of the ways Hepburn helped when she joined Dr. Hendrik Visser t Hoofts underground Resistance in 1944, where she would perform at illegal events to raise funds for the cause.

In addition to dancing, Hepburn also delivered a newspaper by the resistance, known as the Oranjekrant. It was about the size of a paper napkin, as paper was in short supply, according to the New York Post.

Hepburn was able to avoid suspicion, as she was just a teenager.

Having been educated in England when she was young, Hepburn also spoke English. Because of that, she also carried messages and food to Allied pilots who had been shot down.

When she was 15, Hepburns family even harbored a downed English pilot, hiding him in their house, much like Anne Frank, according to the New York Post.

The Allied troops liberated her town when the war ended. However, when Hepburn and her mother rushed out of their home, they were met with guns pointed at them.

Hepburn quickly called out in English. The troops lowered their guns and cheered, with one soldier crying out, Not only have we liberated a town, we have liberated an English girl!

According to the New York Post, her son said, The war was very, very important to her. It made her who she was.
An aerial view shows damaged buildings after an explosion at a chemical plant in Yancheng in China's eastern Jiangsu province early on March 22, 2019.(STR/AFP/Getty Images)

Authorities to Shut Down Chinese Chemical Industrial Park After Deadly Blast

Local authorities have decided to shut down a chemical industrial park in Jiangsu Province, eastern China, after 78 people were killed by a chemical explosion at one of the parks onsite factories on March 21, one of the worst industrial accidents to occur in the country in recent years.

According to Chinese media, the municipal government of Yancheng, where the industrial park is located, made the announcement on April 4.

Following a string of chemical explosions this month, the Jiangsu provincial government also announced that it would slash the number of chemical plants operating in the following three years, with a target of a 50 percent reduction by 2020, and a 80 percent reduction by 2022. As one of the top chemical production bases in China, presently there are more than 5,000 chemical plants in Jiangsu. By 2022, the number is expected to reduce to less than 1,000.

According to statistics kept by the Ministry of Emergency Management, there have been 620 chemical plant accidents across the country during a three-year period between 2016 to 2018, resulting in 728 deaths.

What is the Real Death Toll?

Analystsand oftentimes, netizensdoubt the official casualty figures released by Chinese authorities, as they have a history of hiding true numbers during natural and manmade disasters. In fact, local authorities usually have a death toll allowance in order to protect against public criticism about their incompetence in preventing or responding to disasters.

For example, on August 12, 2015, a deadly explosion occurred at the Tianjin Port. Chinese authorities final report stated that the explosion caused 165 deaths, 8 people were missing, and 798 people were injured. However, several media reports published prior to the final government announcements revealed that the death toll reached more than 1,000.

The explosion destroyed more than 30 tall buildings in the area, razing them to the ground. A big pit at the center of explosion was clearly visible from satellite images.

Similar to the explosion site in Tianjin, the Jiangsu plant was located in an area with a high density of factory buildings. Aerial pictures of the explosion site published by Chinese media also looked very similar to those taken after the Tianjin explosion in 2015.

The shock wave generated from the Jiangsu explosion was equivalent to a magnitude 3.0 earthquake, according to Chinas earthquake bureaumore powerful than the biggest shock wave generated by the 2015 explosion in Tianjin. The Tianjin explosion was said to be equivalent to 21 tons of TNT detonating,or approximately 46 Tomahawk missile explosions, according to Chinese media.

Many netizens, skeptical of the government figures after seeing the images of the most recent explosion, have taken it upon themselves to analyze the actual impact of the blast.

Authorities Restrict Media Coverage

In the aftermath of many explosion incidents, local authorities have continuously prevented reporters from covering the true situation unfolding.

Li Runwen, a reporter from the state-run China Youth Daily, revealed in a Jan. 2008 article posted on his blog that shortly after the 2007 explosion at the Chenjiagang Chemical Industrial Park, many reporters went to Xiangshui County in Jiangsu Province to conduct interviews and report on the scene, including Li himself.

After the accident, local authorities immediately launched a series of emergency plans forbidding reporters to interview, and they did not hesitate to intimidate reporters with physical force, house arrests, or to bribe reporters with money and women, Li wrote.

Li was able to dig out some exclusive information from his on-site interviews. Local residents told him that the number of deaths in the accident exceeded 100, and that factory authorities had been secretly removing the corpses from the accident site using big trucks.

This time after the March 21 explosion, local authorities again focused on battling the reporters. According to a tweet by Radio Free Asia, many media reporters brought drones to take pictures and videos. However, local authorities launched anti-drone devices to interfere with their devices. One of the drones crashed onto the ground as a result.

Families of the victims were sent to hotels in neighboring counties and were placed under surveillance. Reporters who came to the industrial park were being monitored as well.

In addition, authorities deleted all internet posts complaining about the pollution from the industrial park waste, which local residents had been writing about online for the past several years.
President Donald Trump meets with World War II veterans including Paul Kriner (2nd L) and Floyd Wigfield (3rd L) in the Oval Office of the White House in Wash., DC., on April 11, 2019. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Beautiful Afternoon in the Oval OfficePresident Trump Keeps His Promise to 95-Year-Old WWII Vet

President Donald Trump hosted four World War II veterans at the White House on Thursday, keeping a promise made to 95-year-old Allen Jones last June.

Beautiful afternoon in the Oval Office today with a few great American HEROES! Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon, along with a video showing his June conversation with Jones.

Beautiful afternoon in the Oval Office today with a few great American HEROES! pic.twitter.com/HYEI83NVrm  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2019

Im going to be 95 years of age on April 11 of next year, the retired sergeant told the president while appearing with him at a Kansas City VFW event in June. Hopefully, you will allow me to bring my family into the Oval Office to meet you.

The president responded with an enthusiastic Yes!

Fast forward to Thursday, April 11, and Jones joined centenarians Floyd Wigfield, Sidney Walton and Paul Kriner inside the Oval Office for a visit with Trump. Wigfield even reportedly won a promise from Trump for a ride aboard Air Force One back to the United States after Junes annual D-Day ceremony.

Well work that out, the president told Wigfield. Youll like Air Force One.

(RELATED: Trump Honors Normandy Vets In SOTU  Gets HUGE Thumbs-Up)

President Trump said the veterans were great heroes, great warriors, highly respected, from a time when we knew how to win wars.

That was a great victory, Pres Trump said of World War II. We knew how to win wars, he told the veterans. This is a special moment, he said of the veterans visit. pic.twitter.com/8Fb5Uhaenm  Mark Knoller (@markknoller) April 11, 2019

The @WhiteHouse media pool summoned to the Oval Office for what had been scheduled as a closed meeting between @POTUS and several centenarian WW2 veterans.  Steve Herman (@W7VOA) April 11, 2019

By Scott Morefield | Reporter

Follow Scott on Twitter
Candace Owens appears before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on hate crimes and white nationalism, in Washington, on April 9, 2019. (screenshot via CNN)

Candace Owens Says Congressional Hearing Was A Hoax, Democrats Want Black People to Fail

Conservative commentator Candace Owens said that Democrats want black people to fail in an appearance on Fox News a day after she tore into the left during a congressional hearing on white nationalism and hate crimes.

Owens said at the April 9 hearing that she regularly speaks in front of conservative groups and has not encountered bigotry from any of them.

Conservatives are patriots, the president is a patriot, and Im a patriot, and there is no skin color in patriotism, Owens said. I am willing to fall on a sword a thousand times for [black Americans] to wake up and realize that we are being lied to, abused, and used by the Democrat Party.

She also got into a tense exchange with Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) after the former played a video from an appearance during which Owens discussed Adolf Hitler and his claim to be a nationalist, while he was actually a national socialist.

I do not believe we should be characterizing Hitler as a nationalist, Owens said. He was a homicidal, psychopathic maniac that killed his own people. A nationalist would not kill their own people.  That was unbelievably dishonest, and he did not allow me to respond to it.

Candace Owens: I think its pretty apparent that Mr. Lieu believes that black people are stupid and will not pursue the full clipThat was unbelievably dishonestIm deeply offended by the insinuation of revealing that clip without the question that was asked of me. pic.twitter.com/UioMSZK93d  CSPAN (@cspan) April 9, 2019

Videos of Owenss comments garnered millions of views, including a C-Span clip that got over 4 million views in 24 hours.

Reacting to the heavy criticism shes faced from some on the left, Owens, communications director for Turning Point USA, told Laura Ingraham that white nationalism is not a widespread problem in America compared to other issues, such as the high rates of black-on-black crime.

The entire hearing, in my opinion, was a hoax, Owens said in her first interview after the hearing. The continued hoax on black America which comes to us from Democrats who want us ultimately to fail by focusing on something that is not harming us when you look at all of the other issues that we are facing.

I think in many ways people on the Right felt vindicated. I know there are a lot of moderate people that came over and realized that what I was talking about were actually real issues in black America, Owens said.

Civil rights attorney Leo Terrell, who was also brought on the show, said that Owens was assuming that all Democrats want black people to fail.

He also noted that while Owens said no Democrats were at the opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem, the majority of Jews voted for Democrats in the 2016 election. He added that he thought Owens was playing the victim.

You know deep down inside that just because you disagree with the Democrats, you cannot assume that Democrats want black people to fail, Terrell said.

Ingraham said that she agreed that white nationalism wasnt that big of a problem and asked Terrell to focus on the problems in black communities.

Owens later said that one of the major problems is the absence of black fathers.

Leo, you got your truth out, Candace got her truth out, Ingraham concluded at the end of the exchange, which saw both Owens and Terrell try to talk over each other multiple times. She said that they should both go to Chicago with her and have a debate and try to figure out solutions to the high crime there.

From NTD News
Chinas Largest Stock Image Provider Shuts Website After Criticism

SHANGHAIVisual China Group, Chinas largest stock images provider, on April 12 shut its website to make changes and apologized after it was criticized online and by regulators for selling images which it did not hold the ownership rights to.

The company, sometimes likened to U.S. photo agency Getty Images which it also partners with, apologized in a post on its official Weibo account, saying the incident revealed its weak management and that it was cooperating with authorities.

500px acquired by Chinese licensing giant Visual China Group, the so-called Getty Images of China https://t.co/gSBIwWZLGl pic.twitter.com/zwW8tNpE9L  DPReview (@dpreview) February 26, 2018

A new distribution partnership with Visual China Group provides exclusive access to Corbis content at Getty Images: https://t.co/2SvrqEDlqb  Getty Images (@GettyImages) January 22, 2016

State news agency Xinhua said the company had been asked to meet the Tianjin City branch of Chinas internet watchdog on Thursday evening and ordered to rectify its website.

Shares in the company slumped by their maximum 10 percent in early morning trading.

The topic Visual China apologizes was the most read one on Chinas Twitter-like Weibo platform on Friday, with over 250 million views. According to its website, Visual China has over 40 million editorial images and 1.25 million videos.

Criticism of the company mounted on social media earlier this week after Weibo users posted that Visual China had indicated that it held the copyright for the first photo of a black hole, the result of research conducted by the Event Horizon Telescope project.

Other users later questioned its marketing of images of Chinas national emblems like the flag.

The Visual China website, as reported by netizen, has issues with non-compliant pictures such as national flags and national emblems, the company said in the Weibo statement, adding that such photos had been provided by contractors.

The company will learn from these lessons, seriously make rectifications, and voluntarily accept how the Tianjin Internet Information Office chooses to deal with the firm.

How will Visual China Group (new owner of Corbis) treat sensitive photos? Globalized censorship over images ? https://t.co/jH0tWPFhg0  Ursula Gauthier (@ugauthier) January 23, 2016

Political control of the internet has tightened in recent times, with demands that companies tighten oversight of harmful information which could range from vulgar to politically sensitive content.

Bill Gates sells massive photo firm to Chinese company https://t.co/FqqvgFihTa who is behind visual china group?  Bill Bishop (@niubi) January 23, 2016

Elliot Papageorgiou, the Shanghai-based head of the IP practice at law firm Clyde & Co., said Visual Chinas use of the black hole image was embarrassing due to the photos high profile.

By Brenda Goh. The Epoch Times contributed to this report.
Chris Watts, who admitted to killing his pregnant wife and daughters in Aug. 2018. (Colorado Bureau of Investigation)

Chris Watts Has Pictures of His Victims in His Prison Cell, a Petition Wants to Change That

A petition demands the Wisconsin Department of Corrections remove photos that convicted murder Chris Watts put up in his cell of his victims.

The photos are of his pregnant wife and two young children.

As taxpayers and members of the public, we are outraged that Chris Watts was allowed to have a photograph of the victims he was convicted of murdering, including his two minor children, the petion, found on Change.org, reads.

Should Chris Watts be allowed to keep photos of his murdered family in his prison cell?

An online petition argues the prison is allowing a murderer to keep a trophy of his victims.https://t.co/sLmHZQBQyu @DillonMThomas pic.twitter.com/NBAYv61TU2  Anica Padilla (@AnicaPadilla) April 8, 2019

Allowing a murderer to keep a trophy of his victims goes against the purpose and mission statement of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, which emphasizes public safety and victim advocacy.

We, the public and taxpayers, demand that any pictures of Watts murder victims are confiscated and that he does not receive favorable treatment due to the publicity of his criminal case.

Learned About Pictures Through an Interview

In August, Watts killed his wife, Shanann, 34, and their two children, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, before disposing of their bodies at a secluded oil field where he worked.

He pleaded guilty to the killings last last year and is serving five life sentences after prosecutors and Shanann Watts family agreed to drop the possibility of the death penalty.

The revelation about the prison cell photos came after the Colorado Bureau of Investigation released notes from an interview its agents had conducted with Watts earlier this year.

He has pictures of his wife and daughters in his prison cell and he talks to them every morning and every night, reads the document, in which Watts gives a detailed account of the killings.

The petition, which so far has amassed more than 5,000 signatures, wants the photos returned to the victims family.

Convicted murderer Chris Watts has pictures of his victims in his prison cell. A petition wants to change that. https://t.co/ZEf48oPC5G #KMOV pic.twitter.com/gg8H2iyYue  KMOV (@KMOV) April 11, 2019

The family has no comment at this time on the petition, Steven Lambert, attorney for Shanann Watts family, said.

Shanann Watts Shortly Before Death

Its 1:48 a.m. and a pregnant Shanann Watts is arriving home from a business trip to Phoenix.

Front-door video at her Frederick, Colorado, home captures the moment a friend drops Watts from the airport on August 13, 2018. She can be seen carrying her suitcase up the driveway and to the door.

The short video clip is believed to be the last time Shanann Watts, who was 15 weeks pregnant, is seen to be alive. Within hourspossibly even minutesShanann was slain, authorities have said.

Her husband, Chris Watts, pleaded guilty in November to first-degree murder and other charges in the death of his wife and young daughters. He was sentenced to five life sentences with no possibility of parole.

HLN obtained the new video through an open record request with the Weld County District Attorneys Office. Prosecutors had not previously released the footage.
A Japan Air Self-Defense Force's F-35A stealth fighter jet, which Kyodo says is the same plane that crashed during an exercise on April 9, 2019. (Kyodo/via Reuters)

Crashed Japanese F-35 Wreckage Found in Pacific, Pilot Still Missing

TOKYOSearch and rescue teams found wreckage from a crashed Japanese F-35 stealth fighter in the Pacific Ocean close to northern Japan, and are scouring the waters for the missing pilot, authorities said on April 10.

The aircraft, less than a year old, was the first F-35 assembled in Japan and was aloft for only 28 minutes on April 9 before contact was lost, a defense official said. The plane had logged a total of 280 hours in the air, he added.

It was only the second F-35 to crash since the aircrafts first flight in 2006 and could reignite concern about the F-35 having only one engine.

Manufacturer Lockheed Martin is competing for orders in Finland and Switzerland against the twin-engined Eurofighter Typhoon and Boeing F/A-18E/F jet.

The accident could influence Switzerlands decision, but Finland could still pick the F-35 as it is close to Russia, said Justin Bronk, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London.

I would be surprised if there was a common catastrophic fault hidden away in the F-35A, he added. Its pretty unlikely given the large number of flight hours already completed.

Cause Unkown

The advanced, single-seat jet disappeared in good weather about 135 km (84 miles) east of the Misawa air base in Aomori prefecture, the Air Self Defense Force said.

We recovered the wreckage and determined it was from the F-35, a spokesman said.

Eight ships and seven aircraft, including a U.S. Navy P-8 Orion maritime patrol plane, joined the search and rescue effort.

The aircraft was leading three F-35s on training maneuvers when it sent an aborting practice signal and disappeared from radar, Defence Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters.

The pilot, who had 3,200 hours of flying time, but had spent only 60 hours in the F-35, gave no other indication he was in trouble, the ASDF spokesman said.

Well need to cooperate with the U.S. forces and I believe arrangements are being made, Iwaya said, adding that the cause of the incident would have to be determined.

The crashed aircraft was the fifth delivered to the ASDF, but the first assembled by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan, a second ASDF official told Reuters. Japans 12 remaining F-35s are grounded for now, he added.

The previous four were used for training in the United States before being brought to Japan, the defense official said.

No other countries operating the F-35 have grounded their stealth aircraft.

The Pentagon said on April 10 that it was not grounding its fleet of more than 250 U.S. F-35 fighter jets but was monitoring the situation.

A spokesman for South Koreas defense ministry said there was no plan to ground that countrys newly delivered F-35s, as there were no recommendations from the United States to do so.

Britain said it was reviewing the status of its 17 F-35B fighters for now.

The Italian Air Force said they were reviewing the status of the Italian F-35A closely with the Joint Program Office, but at the moment there was no evidence the crash was due to technical problems and the fleet was flying regularly.

A representative for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd said it had no immediate comment. The company assembles the aircraft at a plant near Nagoya in central Japan. The lost aircraft cost 14 billion yen ($126 million), several million more than one bought directly from the United States.

The aircraft crashed in waters whose depth reaches about 1,500 meters (4,920 ft), making recovery, particularly of its flight data recorder, or black box, difficult, the official said.

Without the device, investigators could study the aircrafts classified communications and data sharing system for clues, an industry source said on condition of anonymity.

Only Second F35 to Crash

The ASDF received the aircraft, designed to penetrate enemy defenses by evading radar detection, last May, its spokesman said.

Japans first squadron of F-35s has just become operational at Misawa, and the government plans to buy 87 of the stealth fighters to modernize its air defenses as neighboring China and Russia upgrade their military forces.

Lockheed said it was standing by to support the Japanese Air Self Defense Force as needed.

The crash was the first of the A variant of the fifth-generation fighter. A U.S. Marine Corps short take-off and landing (STOVL) F-35B version crashed near the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort in South Carolina in September, prompting a temporary grounding of the aircraft. Lockheed also makes a C version of the fighter designed to operate off carriers.

Japans new F-35s include 18 STOVL B planes it plans to deploy on its islands along the edge of the East China Sea.

By Tim Kelly
Dad Rescues Family Dogs Stuffed Bear and Turns It into an Epic Story for His Daughter

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An image taken by Israel spacecraft, Beresheet, upon its landing on the moon, obtained by Reuters from Space IL on April 11, 2019. (Space IL/Handout/Reuters)

Doomed Israeli Spacecraft Captures Photo Right Before Crash

The doomed Israeli Beresheet spacecraft captured a photo just moments before crashing on the Moon on April 11.

The craft suffered an engine problem right before it was slated to land on the lunar surface. It was several hundred feet away when Israeli officials lost control of the probe.

Preliminary data supplied by the engineering teams of SpaceIL and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) suggests a technical glitch in one of Beresheets components triggered the chain of events yesterday that caused the main engine of the spacecraft to malfunction, state-owned Israel Aerospace Industries and SpaceIL said in a joint statement obtained by the Daily Mail.

Without the main engine working properly, it was impossible to stop Beresheets velocity. Beresheet overcame the issue by restarting the engine. However, by that time, its velocity was too high to slow down and the landing could not be completed as planned, the statement read.

Reports noted that it would have been the first private spacecraft to reach the moon.

According to the BBC, the final telemetry reading from the probe showed it was about 500 feet above the surface of the moon and was moving at around 300 mph, making a crash inevitable.

Its not clear what caused the crash.

A preliminary investigation said the main engine wasnt the source of the problem. The BBC reported it was built in the United Kingdom.

The NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) might be able to take a photo of the crash site. More tests are slated for next week.

If successful, Israel would have been the fourth country after the United States, Russia, and China to send a craft to the moon. In the late 1950s, the Soviet Union was the first to put a spacecraft on the moon, which was followed by NASAs Ranger 4. China last month became the first to land on the dark side of the moon.

The spacecraft was launched about two months ago from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

We thought its about time for a change, and we want to get little Israel all the way to the moon, Yonatan Winetraub, co-founder of Israels SpaceIL, a nonprofit organization behind the effort, told The Associated Press in February.

Well keep analyzing the data, but the bottom line is we entered the very exclusive group of countries that have launched a spacecraft to the moon, added Yigal Harel, who is the head of SpaceILs spacecraft program.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu watched the launch from the Israeli control center in Yehud close to Tel Aviv. This is a big step for Israel, but a giant step for Israeli technology, he said.

Meanwhile, despite the April 11 crash, SpaceIL will get a $1 million award from the XPRIZE Foundation, the Jerusalem Post reported.

The legacy SpaceIL will have on the future of the space industry is significant. This teams ability to build a lunar lander for $100 million and less than 50 engineers is remarkable, a leap forward towards affordable and accessible space exploration. Congratulations to Morris Kahn, their primary benefactor, and the entire SpaceIL team for all their accomplishments  we are so proud, the foundation said in a statement.
Pope Benedict XVI finishes his last general audience in St Peter's Square at the Vatican on Feb. 27, 2013. REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi/File Photo

Ex-pope Says Sexual Revolution Led to Abuse Crisis, Sparking Debate

VATICAN CITYFormer Pope Benedict has blamed the Catholic Churchs sexual abuse scandal on the effects of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, homosexual cliques in seminaries and what he called a general collapse in morality.

In a rare essay, he said the Churchs legal system had at times been overly protective of accused clerics, citing what he called judicial guarantees that were extended to such an extent that convictions were hardly possible.

The 91-year-old, who in 2013 became the first pope in six centuries to resign, argued that the sexual revolution had led some to believe pedophilia and pornography were acceptable. He also said that an openly gay culture in some Catholic seminaries meant they had failed to train priests properly.

It could be said that in the 20 years from 1960 to 1980, the previously normative standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely, and a new normalcy arose that has by now been the subject of laborious attempts at disruption, Benedict wrote.

Benedict was head of the Vaticans doctrinal office when the first wave of abuse cases were exposed in Boston in 2002. Later, as pope, he took action against some pedophiles that had been blocked during the reign of his predecessor, John Paul.

Abuse scandals in Ireland, Chile, Australia, France, the United States, Poland, Germany, and elsewhere have forced the Church to pay out billions of dollars in damages to victims and close parishes. Many cases date back decades before the 1960s.

Revelations that predatory priests were often moved from parish to parish rather than expelled or criminally prosecuted as bishops covered up the abuse have shaken the church globally and undermined its authority.

Stunning

Benedict offered his evaluations in a long essay in Klerusblatt, a monthly Church magazine in Bavaria, his native region of Germany. A Vatican official confirmed the authenticity of the essay.

Benedict said the impetus for the essay, titled The Church and the Scandal of Sexual Abuse, was a summit of senior bishops that Francis, his successor as pope, held in February to discuss the crisis.

Among the freedoms that the Revolution of 1968 sought to fight for was this all-out sexual freedom, one which no longer conceded any norms, Benedict wrote, according to an English translation published by several Catholic websites.

He said the spread of explicit sex education for young schoolchildren and nudity in advertising had contributed to a loosening of moral bearings and an absence of God.

By Philip Pullella
A model of the Tiangong-1 space lab module (L), the Shenzhou-9 manned spacecraft (R) and three Chinese astronauts is displayed during a news conference at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, in Gansu province, China June 15, 2012. (Reuters/Jason Lee/File Photo)

For China, Space Is About Politics and War

Commentary

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wants to become a major space power by 2030, and a global leader in space equipment and technology by 2045.

It seems the regime is well on its way to achieving this goal, which could give it significant leverage in business, politics, and military power.

A report on the CCPs pursuit of space power, and what it means for the United States, was released by the U.S.China Economic Security Review Commission on April 11. It states that although the CCP currently trails the United States in space power, its putting significant efforts into catching up fast.

It says, U.S. policymakers should not expect Chinas space program to remain significantly behind the United States indefinitely, especially as its programs serve both military and civilian purposes, with the deeper goal of leapfrogging the United States.

Included in the CCPs space programs are an alternative to GPS, a new Chinese international space station, dreams of a lunar base, and other goals. For the CCP, the uses of these go beyond science and exploration.

When U.S. government funding for the International Space Station (ISS) ends in 2024, the report notes, China may be the only country to have an active space station. That would give the CCP an upper hand in diplomacy, since while it says UN member countries may be able to use it, this access could be determined by political stance.

In the same light, the CCPs replacement for GPS has significant importance for military power. The U.S. GPS system is used not just for civilian products such as smartphones and apps, but also for military navigation and weapons targeting. If a war broke out between major countries, or if a rogue state was using this technology to commit atrocities, the United States could deny it access to GPSshutting it off from key military capabilities.

The CCP, on the other hand, has a permissive stance on government tyranny. Part of the China model is a do as thou wilt stance that keeps the CCP supporting rogue regimes such as Iran and North Korea, regardless of sanctions.

For the CCP, this means both military strength and diplomatic power. And according to the report, this is a key trait of the regimes space goals:

Compared to the U.S. space program, Chinas program is also more connected to the levers of power, meaning its goals more often draw support from top leaders and are interconnected with the overall priorities of Chinas industrial and foreign policies.

Among these key levers of power is the CCP military, which the report says plays an important role in organizing and overseeing Chinas space activities, meaning most of Chinas ostensibly civilian space activities have dual-use applications.

When it comes to media coverage and public statements about actions in space, the CCP tries to maintain a peaceful veneer, but its actions say otherwise.

The CCP recently criticized India for testing an anti-satellite weapon, and followed that with lofty sounding talk of peace. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman declared that Outer space is shared by the entire mankind. Every country has the right to make peaceful exploration and use of outer space.

Yet, behind the scenes, the CCP has been testing anti-satellite weapons since at least 2005. Its use of a missile to destroy its Feng Yun 1-C weather satellite in 2007, sending more than 3,000 pieces of debris into low-earth orbit, is what got the CCP barred from working with NASA.

A retired Indian Army colonel, Vinayak Bhat, also revealed satellite imagery showing secret space weapons facilities in China, including anti-satellite laser systems, as well as electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generators.

The CCPs military strategy for a war with the United States would rely heavily on weapons like this, under its so-called Assassins Mace or Trump Card program. This would include the use of anti-satellite weapons and other key technologies to destroy the systems that enable core technologies of the U.S. military.

These modern Trump Card and Assassins Mace weapons will permit Chinas low-technology forces to prevail over U.S. high-technology forces in a localized conflict, states a 2011 report from the National Ground Intelligence Center.

And as the new report notes, one of the key CCP agencies in charge of its space programs, the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp., also plans and oversees Chinas direct-ascent anti-satellite weapons programs.

Joshua Philipp is a senior investigative reporter for The Epoch Times.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Historic Image of Black Hole Said to Prove Einsteins Theory of Relativity

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The six Falun Dafa practitioners from Changchun who successfully intercepted the citys state-controlled cable television to broadcast the true story behind the communist regimes senseless persecution campaign against adherents of the meditation practice. (Faluninfo.net)

How the Daring Airwave Six Exposed the Chinese Regimes Self-Immolation Hoax

Remembering the heroes who hijacked cable TV airwaves in 2001 to clarify the truth to the Chinese people fooled by propaganda

As the persecution against Falun Gong intensified across China in the early 2000s fueled by a massive hate propaganda campaign, Liang Zhenxing racked his brain for an effective way to let people know that the meditation practice was not the evil cult the Chinese Communist Party had labeled it.

Fearful of Falun Gongs immense popularitythe practice had 70-100 million adherents by the late 1990s then-Party leader Jiang Zemin initiated the persecution in an attempt to wipe it out.

On July 20, 1999, the regime issued the order for nationwide arrests and a relentless propaganda campaign was launched to attack Falun Gong (also called Falun Dafa) and slander the traditional practice that teaches truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. The propaganda was taken to new heights the following January, when a self-immolation was staged on Tiananmen Square in which five people posing as Falun Gong practitioners set themselves on fire, acting under state orders.

Liang and his friends knew that the self-immolation, in which one person died, was an elaborate hoax staged by the Party in order to portray Falun Gong as dangerous and justify their brutal campaign of arbitrary arrest, torture, and killing. But the incident and the following propaganda blitz had the intended effectFalun Gong was now well and truly demonized in the eyes of the Chinese people.

Later, Liang was able to watch False Fire, a documentary that analyses footage of the incident and other evidence and lays bare the numerous, gaping holes in the self-immolation. It told the truth that people needed to know. But how to get that truth out there?

He finally found what he was looking for after reading an article on Minghui, a website based in the West that compiles information on the persecution, which covered broadcast interruption and how to tap into a TV network and broadcast a video with a VCD player.

Liang knew this would be far more impactful than handing out flyers or putting up banners at nightthe approach practitioners in China take to raise awareness about the persecution, known in the Falun Gong community as clarifying the truth.

Now all he needed was a team to bring about this high-tech effort.

Forming a Team, Building a Strategy

Liang had already been imprisoned in his home city of Changchun for going to Beijing to appeal for an end to the persecution campaign. While there, he befriended fellow practitioners Liu Chengjun and Liu Haibo who, like Liang, remained steadfast in not renouncing Falun Gong no matter how badly they were beaten or tortured.

Now that they were all released, Liang recruited them for the task he had in mind, along with more than a dozen others who had the various technical and electrical skills needed. The core team consisted of six people, complete with nicknames: Lei Little Brother Ming, Liu Great Sea Haibo, Liu Big Truck Chengjun, Hou The Monkey Mingkai, Zhou The Cook Runjun (the only woman), and Liang.

The team rented a house to use as a base and began to develop their strategy.

They acquired lineman hooks and learned how to climb poles at night in local neighborhoods. By day, they practiced on an abandoned electronic hub they found in a junkyard. Liu Haibo and Hou figured out a way to splice wires in advance, which meant just a quick adjustment would be needed when the time came.

Things were progressing well, when out of the blue Liang was arrested. Somehow word had reached the police that he was up to something. The others knew the police would torture Liang for information and were waiting for that ominous knock on the door, but it never came. As always, Liang was rock-solid and withstood the abuse.

The team knew they had to act fast, and by the end of February 2002, with Liu Chengjun now in the role of leader, almost everything was ready.

The plan was that four sub-teams, wearing official-looking clothes and using bicycles and cabs to get around, would tap into eight cable channels in Changchun and nearby Songyuan City and broadcast Falun Gong truth-clarification videos simultaneously.

Zhou Runjuns job was to get everything moved out of the house, leaving no trace that they had ever been there.

You Falun Gong Are So Amazing

On March 5, 2002, 50 minutes of programming that reported the facts about the persecution campaign against Falun Gong was broadcast simultaneously on eight channels to 300,000 cable subscribers in Changchun. Nearly 100,000 households were able to watch Self-immolation or Hoax? and Falun Dafa Spreads Worldwide. Tens of thousands of cable subscribers in Songyuan City saw the same programs.

In his feature article Into Thin Airwaves, author and China expert Ethan Gutmann described the reaction after the programs were aired, with many who saw them believing the persecution campaign had ended.

In some neighborhoods, local Party officials grew desperate and cut the power, plunging streets into darkness. In others, such as those near Cultural Square, people spilled into the streets to celebrate. The ban is over! Falun Gong is rehabilitated! Gutmann wrote.

A few practitioners emerged from factories and hideouts, openly handing out literature.

Neighbors, children, random strangers, even the old ladies with the red armbands approached them, everyone talking at once, bubbling over, laughing, slapping them playfully, congratulating them. A few suspected it had not been a government broadcast, but still they smiled broadly and whispered: How did you do it? You Falun Gong are so amazing!

After Liu returned to Changchun from Songuan City, he went out into the streets to see for himself what was going on. The next day, with tears in his eyes, he told every member of the team, It was a big success!! Thank you, everyone!

People are talking about the truth of Falun Gong everywhere, even out in public, like on buses. The broadcast lasted more than 20 minutes on one branch and 30 minutes on the other! The videos played to the end, and people learned the truth. The whole city is in shock, he said, according to Minghui.

Rounds of Mass Arrests

But the jubilation was short-lived. Furious and in a panic, the authorities dispatched every policeman in the city to search for those who had tapped into the cable network and broadcast the videos. Martial law was enacted. Liu Jing, the then vice public security minister, flew to Changchun to supervise the massive rounds of searches and arrests.

In the first round of mass arrests, over 5,000 Falun Gong practitioners were detained. The interrogations and tortures began immediately to track down those involved in the cable television hijacking.

Lei Ming was the first to be picked up. He was beaten at the police department, then taken to a basement room equipped with all kinds of torture devices: a tiger-bench, electric batons, plastic bags to cover the head, a red-hot iron rod, etc. After being tortured for four days and nights, he was all but dead. Sentenced to 17 years in prison, Lei was released early with severe spinal injuries, which lead to his death in 2006.

Liu Chengjun was arrested at his home, handcuffed, and beaten with wooden clubs, while his family and other villagers looked on. His uncle, aunt, and cousin were held at a detention center for 11 days, where the uncle and cousin were beaten severely. Liu was later sentenced to 19 years in prison, where he died of torture in 2003. He was only 32.

Liu Haibo was arrested on the night of March 10 and died a few hours later while in custody. According to Minghui, the police inserted an electric baton into Lius rectum to shock his internal organs. He died in a few minutes.

Hou Mingkai was arrested on Aug. 20, 2002, with three other practitioners. He was beaten to death that night.

Zhou Runjun was sentenced to 20 years but is believed to be dead.

Liang Zhenxing died on May 1, 2010, after enduring eight years of imprisonment and torture.

In September 2002, 15 people were tried in the Changchun Intermediate Court for the broadcasts and given sentences of to up to 20 years in prison. At the time, the jail terms were the longest handed down to Falun Gong practitioners since the persecution began in July 1999.

The Mountain Had Moved

But the sacrifice made by the groupwhich became known as the Airwave Sixto clarify the truth in such a daring way wasnt in vain. Not only did the effort conquer, however briefly, the overwhelming volume of state propaganda, but the teams work pioneered a new era of raising awareness about the persecution. The effort motivated practitioners living overseas to work on developing internet anti-blockade software, which was able to get past the Chinese regimes Golden Shield.

Gutmann wrote: The mountain had moved. With names like FreeGate, UltraSurf, and Dynaweb, small cells of practitioners, operating out of offices in northern California and living rooms in North Carolina, began the process of climbing over the great Chinese firewall and forging a permanent Internet connection to China from the West.

In 2006, practitioners formed the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, a U.S.-based alliance of organizations that have contributed significantlythrough deploying anti-censorship technologies for Internet users in oppressive regimesto the advancement of information freedom in China, Iran, Burma, and other closed societies.

No wonder Gutmann described Liang as the man whose ingenuity spurred Falun Gongs work on internet freedom.
Members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) hold a rally at the Richard J. Daley Center plaza in Chicago, Ill., on Feb. 26, 2018. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

How the Janus Decision Affected Union Workers in California

Last Junes landmark Supreme Court decision, Janus v. AFSCME, which barred public sector unions from mandating the collection of dues from members, has been cutting into California public sector union funds.

In the eight months following the Janus decision in June, 48,598 California government employees stopped paying their union dues, according to a California Public Records request. However, if these teachers are no longer required to pay their dues, why are they not leaving in larger numbers? And how did the Supreme Court decision affect Californias unions in general?

The Epoch Times spoke with Rebecca Friedrichs, a former public school teacher and charter school advocate, based in Orange County, who was one of the leading plaintiffs in the Janus decision, along with Mark Janus himself. She was also the lead plaintiff in the Janus decisions predecessor case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association in 2016. This case was indefinitely postponed due to the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, leaving the court equally divided. The Janus decision eventually brought her case back to the limelight.

The Janus decision found: The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from non-consenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them. Accordingly, neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.

When asked about the effects the decision had on Orange County public sector unions, Friedrichs noted, The unions that are getting the most opt-outs are from employees who arent bullied every day from union reps and coworkers.

She noted that these are primarily workers who arent in an office environment where there is consistent interaction with co-workers, such as home health care workers.

Friedrichs pointed out that while there have been a significant amount of union workers no longer paying dues, when people opt out, they raise dues on existing members.

Got to love brave women. https://t.co/7FiuyweMRh  Thomas C.Mariani (@neastas) April 4, 2019

She further added that thousands of teachers across the state are pressured to stay in their unions. She pointed out that most teachers tend to be fond of their local union and dont want to leave, even if they dont share the same fondness for their union at the state and national level.

When a teacher opts out of the state or national union, she points out, they are forced to leave their local union as well. This often leads to them being ostracized and alienated by their coworkers.

Friedrichs also shed light on another factor that explains why teachers arent opting out in larger numbers. Their unions tell them that they need liability insurance in the case they are sued on the job.

What is not told to them, she says, is that private insurers have cheaper rates and offer $2 million coverage, double the $1 million that unions offer. Additionally, Friedrichs adds, unions are selective about when they defend teachers in lawsuits.

Many private insurers will defend teachers in the case of being sued or a workplace incident. This information, however, isnt provided to teachers and is intentionally covered up in order to make teachers believe that the unions are their only solace, she added.

Friedrichs described the environment for freethinking teachers as a culture of fear, intimidation, isolation, and ignorance.

In her personal experience, Friedrichs says that as a teacher she was pressured by her union to phone bank to defeat voucher propositions. When she declined to do so, she was isolated for the entire school year.

Union representatives made sure no one associated with me, she added.

Friedrichs described the amount of money that the two largest teachers unions in the nation, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), raise on an annual basis.

According to Friedrichs, the AFT takes in $1.7 billion and the NEA $3 billion annually from union dues, totaling out to $4.7 billion between the two organizations. The average teacher pays around $1,000 a year to the union in dues. A large quantity of this money is used for political fundraising of largely Democratic Party candidates and initiatives.

The AFT spent $20 million on supporting political initiatives nationwide in 2018. In total, the AFT spent $2,103,889 on Democratic candidates and $6,500 on Republican candidates for the 2018 midterm election cycle.

The NEA spent $20.8 million on supporting political initiatives nationwide in 2018. In total, the NEA spent $1,894,482 on Democratic candidates and $125,700 on Republican candidates.

Coinciding with Friedrichs argument, a disproportionate amount of the two largest teachers unions political contributions support Democratic Party candidates, organizations and initiatives.

Friedrichs concluded by saying that Most teachers dont have the time to read the news and are isolated from information because of their busy schedules. On top of this, unions have monopoly control over email and mailboxes at the workplace and, therefore, control the information that teachers have access to.

As the Janus decision is still less than one year old, the effects of the fallout from the case are still preliminary. It will take time to see whether the removal of mandatory union dues from public sector unions will have a significant effect on their ability to project power politically or whether their tactics to maintain member loyalty will be strong enough to prevent a mass exodus.

Friedrichs also heads For Kids and Country, an educational non-profit aimed at Uniting, Educating, Engaging and Empowering Parents, Teachers, Students, Faith Leaders, and Citizens in the fight to restore Americas schools and culture. Friedrich and her associates have been advocates for charter schools and voucher systems. She has authored a book on exposing teachers unions intimidation methods titled Standing Up to Goliath.
Hundreds See Veteran Kill Himself in VA Waiting Room: Reports

A veteran in Austin, Texas, shot and killed himself in front of hundreds of people at a Veterans Affairs clinic, according to local reports.

KWTX reported that many people in the building were unaware that he killed himself for some time later.

A therapy class occurred for about an hour after the shooting, the report said.

All of a sudden, over the intercom, they have this statement about everyone must clear the building including staff, so it was a little surprising, veteran Ken Walker told a local news outlet.

Witnesses reported hundreds of people were inside the room when a man shot and killed himself. Posted by KWTX News 10 on Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Veterans were later asked to leave the building, triggering mass confusion. The clinic was shut down amid an investigation.

When he found out he couldnt get the help he needed there, he chose to take his own life, McLennan County Veterans Service Officer Steve Hernandez said.

He said that the unnamed veteran was enrolled in the Phoenix program with the Olin E. Teague Veterans Medical Center in Temple, Texas, and was discharged. His case was transferred to Austin, the report said.

Another death, this time inside a VA clinic. Posted by Army Times on Thursday, April 11, 2019

Hernandez said there are problems with the VA system in that there is no facility in the state or in the country dedicated to serving veterans with mental health issues.

Whats going on is concerning and the actions undertaken so far speak for themselves, Hernandez continued. He said there was a Waco campus that served veterans with those needs.

Reddit user Diane_Kirkendall shared a photo that was taken in the waiting room of the suicide.

Veteran takes his life in front of large American flag. The news wont post this, they would rather sweep it under the rug and pretend Vet suicide doesnt happen. There are hundreds of us vets who will never forget what happened yesterday at noon. RIP young brother, said the user on Reddit.

Guns are prohibited in VA hospitals and clinics, but the Austin facility doesnt have metal detectors, KWTX reported.

The Military Times, meanwhile reported that many clinics use randomized bag searches to detect the presence of weapons.

Between October 2017 and November 2018, the Times noted, some 19 veterans died via suicide at medical facilities.

Marine Col. Jim Turner put on his service uniform and went to the Bay Pines Department of Veterans Affairs and killed himself in December 2018, the Times noted.

I bet if you look at the 22 suicides a day you will see VA screwed up in 90 percent, his note, which was placed next to his body, said.

According to officials, statistics show there were 530 suicides by Texas veterans in 2016, reported KRIS-TV.

Poll: Majority of US Veterans Approve of Trump

Most military veterans have positive views of President Donald Trump and his job performance, signaling continued support for the man who vowed during his 2016 presidential campaign to fix the problems faced by veterans.

Overall, 56 percent of veteransboth current and former service membersapprove of Trumps performance as president, while 43 percent disapprove, according to a nationwide Associated Press survey of more than 115,000 midterm voters, including more than 4,000 current and former service members.

Continuing on that trend, almost 6 in 10 military veterans voted for Republican candidates during the November midterm elections.

Fifty-one percent of veterans also believe the Trump administration has made the country safer from terrorism. A majority of current service members polled, 59 percent, said Trump is a strong leader. The president acknowledged the polls results on Twitter, thanking his veteran base.

Suicide Hotlines

In Australia, the suicide prevention telephone hotline at Lifeline is 13 11 14. You can also visit the Lifeline website at lifeline.org.au. Youth can contact the Kids Helpline by phoning 1800 551 800 or visiting headspace.org.au/yarn-safe

If you are in an emergency in the U.S. or Canada, please call 911. You can phone the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1 800 273 8255. Youth can call the Kids Help Phone on 1800 668 6868.

Epoch Times reporter Bowen Xiao contributed to this report.
An image taken by Israel spacecraft, Beresheet, upon its landing on the moon, obtained by Reuters from Space IL on April 11, 2019. (Space IL/Handout/Reuters)

Israeli Spacecraft Crashes Onto Moon After Technical Failures

YEHUD, IsraelIsraeli spacecraft Beresheet crashed onto the moon on April 11 after a series of technical failures during its final descent, shattering hopes of a historic controlled landing on the lunar surface.

The unmanned robotic lander suffered periodic engine and communications failures during the landing sequence, which lasted around 21 minutes, the support team said.

Here is the Youtube Live broadcast for the Moon landing. #Beresheet will start the landing process at approximately 22:05 Israeli time (UTC+03:00), which will take around 25 minutes. https://t.co/vnCsVpauAs#IsraelToTheMoon #SpaceIL  Israel To The Moon (@TeamSpaceIL) April 11, 2019

An image taken by Israel spacecraft, Beresheet, upon its landing on the moon, obtained by Reuters from Space IL on April 11, 2019. (Space IL/Handout/Reuters)

Beresheet, whose name is Hebrew for the biblical phrase In the beginning, had traveled through space for seven weeks in a series of expanding orbits around Earth before crossing into the moons gravity last week.

The final maneuver on Wednesday brought it into a tight elliptical orbit around the moon, around 15 km (9 miles) from the surface at its closest. From there it was a short, nail-biting and ultimately disappointing conclusion.

MISSION FAILED: Israels Beresheet spacecraft was unable to land on the moon, ending SpaceILs bid to be the first private organization to accomplish the feat pic.twitter.com/v1XNU8r3Ih  TicToc by Bloomberg (@tictoc) April 11, 2019





It seems that a failure in our inertial measurements unit caused a chain of events in the spacecraft avionics which cut off the engines and caused us to lose the mission, said Opher Doron, general manager of the space division at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI).

Members of Israeli non-profit group SpaceIL and representatives from Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) do a selfie in front of a model of Beresheet spacecraft, near the control room, in Yahud, Israel April 11, 2019 (Amir Cohen/Reuters)

So far, only three nations have succeeded in carrying out a soft, or controlled, landing on the lunar surface: the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.

Beresheet would have been the first craft to land on the moon that was not the product of a government program. It was built by state-owned IAI and Israeli non-profit space venture SpaceIL with $100 million funded almost entirely by private donors.

Members of the Israel spacecraft, Beresheet, are seen in the control room in Yahud, Israel April 11, 2019. (Space IL/Handout/Reuters)

Still, the spacecraft achieved some milestones.

It is by far the smallest, the cheapest spacecraft ever to get to the moon, said Doron. Its been an amazing journey, I hope we get a chance for another one.

People react as they observe Israeli spacecraft, Beresheets landing on the moon, outside the control room at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) site in Yehud, Israel, April 11, 2019.(Amir Cohen/Reuters)

Shaped like a round table with four carbon-fiber legs, Beresheet stood about 4.9 feet (1.5 meters) tall. It blasted off from Floridas Cape Canaveral on Feb. 21 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and entered Earths orbit about 34 minutes after launch.

People react as they observe Israeli spacecraft, Beresheets landing on the moon, outside the control room at Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) site in Yehud, Israel, April 11, 2019.(Amir Cohen/Reuters)

Its circuitous flight path was around 4 million miles (6.5 million kilometers). A direct route from the Earth to the moon covers roughly 240,000 miles (386,000 kilometers).

By Ari Rabinovitch
A logo of the New York City Police Department in Brooklyn, New York on Feb. 17, 2019. (Mimi Nguyen Ly/ NTD News)

Man Walked Into NY Police Station and Told Officers He Had Strangled Girlfriend: Reports

A 23-year-old man walked into a police station in New York and, using an interpreter, allegedly told officers he had killed his girlfriend.

Local reports said that Angel Esteban Feliz Rodriguez told officers he had strangled Indira Ramirez-Rivera, 21, to death on March 10 at their basement apartment in the Bronx.

He gave the keys of the apartment to the police at the 48th Precinct and granted them permission to enter.

They found Rameriz-Rivera, still alive, but unconscious and unresponsive, according to WABC. with signs of trauma to her neck.

Police found her strangled on a bed, sources said. Posted by New York Post on Thursday, April 11, 2019

Police said that EMS responded but pronounced her dead on the scene, according to PIX11.

He said in his confession that he was angry because she had stayed out overnight, according to police sources cited by the New York Post.

Feliz-Rodriguez told police he choked her after they got into an argument, according to a criminal complaint cited by NBC.

Rodriguez now faces murder and manslaughter charges.

He walked into a police stationhouse and confessed to killing his girlfriend. He then gave cops permission to search his home  where they found her body. Posted by New York Daily News on Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Rodriguez was prone to fits of violent jealousy, neighbors and friends told the New York Daily News. They said that police were regularly called to the apartment.

Her friend, Andy Rodriguez, told the Daily News that Indira Rodriguez had gone back to the apartment to pack up her things and leave him.

He was very jealous. She was very sexy and he didnt like the way she dressed on the street, said neighbor Kenia Miniera.

Both worked at bars in the Bronx, according to neighbors.

They seemed lovable but then they argued and it was heated, neighbor Smily Rodriguez (no relation), told the Post.

Neighbors told the Post she had just returned from the Dominican Republic, where she had plastic surgery.

BREAKING- The boyfriend of a Bronx woman has just been charged with her murder. Get overnight details on the death of Indira Ramirez-Rivera @NBCNewYork starting at 4am #nbc4ny pic.twitter.com/unYdgGO815  Tracie Strahan (@tstrahan4NY) April 11, 2019

The 48th precinct, where Rameriz-Rivera was allegedly killed, has one of the highest murder rates in the city.

New Yorks murder rate has dropped steadily over the past few decades, although the Bronx experienced a mysterious uptick in the murder rate last year.

In 1990, there were 653 murders in the Bronx alone, according to official crime statistics. By 2018, that number had dropped to 91.

The murder rate for New York as a whole sits at 3.4 murders per 100,000, almost 20 times lower than the U.S. city with the highest murder rate, St Louis.

The brutal murder of a woman out jogging in a New York park made the national papers last month when the accused was found guilty during a rare second trial.

Chanel Lewis, 22, was found guilty on April 1 of strangling killing 30-year-old Karina Vetrano to death in August 2016.

This was a horrifying case, Chief Assistant District Attorney John Ryan said in a statement. She was pulled from a park pathway, sexually assaulted, and in her last moments of life she gasped for air as the defendants hands tightened around her neck.

According to trial testimony cited by the district attorneys office, Vetrano was jogging alone in Spring Creek Park in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens County on the evening of Aug. 2, 2016.

Lewis, angered by a neighbor playing loud music, also entered the park.

Without saying a word, he attacked her, hitting her in the face and sexually assaulting her.

Lewis pressed his knees into her torso as he straddled her and clasped his hands around her neck. With two teeth broken, Vetrano continued to fight back but in the end was strangled to death and her body dumped on park land.

On April 1, a jury found Lewis guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree intentional murder, second-degree felony murder, and first-degree sexual abuse.

Lewis had been retried after a previous jury could not agree on a verdict.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump walk off Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, on March 31, 2019 in Washington, D.C. (Tasos Katopodis/Pool/Getty Images)

Melania Trump Spokeswoman Responds to Vogues Anna Wintour: Been There, Done That

A spokeswoman for First Lady Melania Trump said she isnt worried about being on the next cover of Vogue magazine.

To be on the cover of Vogue doesnt define Mrs. Trump, shes been there, done that long before she was first lady, Melania Trumps spokeswoman Stephanie Grisham told Fox News on April 12.

The comment comes after Vogue editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour, who was a vocal supporter of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, suggested that Melania wouldnt be featured in the fashion magazine.

Her role as first lady of the United States and all that she does is much more important than some superficial photo shoot and cover, Grisham told Fox.

She said that Wintours comments show how biased the fashion magazine industry is, and shows how insecure and small-minded the Vogue editor really is.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Trump is used to this kind of divisive behavior, Grisham added.

Wintour was recently asked by CNN why the magazine features female leaders and first ladies on its fashion covers. However, Melania hasnt been featured once on the magazine since she began residing at the White House in January 2017. Clinton and Michelle Obama, former first ladies, have been featured several times with glowing coverage.

You have to stand up for what you believe in and you have to take a point of view, Wintour told the outlet. We profile women in the magazine that we believe in the stand that theyre taking on issues we support them, we feel that they are leaders.

If youre talking about the first lady [Michelle Obama] or Senator [Kamala] Harris, obviously these are women that we feel are icons and inspiring to women from a global perspective, Wintour also said. I also feel even more strongly now that this is not a time to try  and I think one has to be fair, one has to look at all sides  but I dont think its a moment not to take a stand.

Check out Vogue Magazine (March 2009) Michelle Obama  Mint https://t.co/2x9bluPrGk @eBay  BookSeller (@BookSel94585141) April 9, 2019

In the interview, she again lauded Obama, who was featured three times on the cover of the magazine.

She added that people who work at Vogue parent company Conde Nast believe that you have to stand up for what you believe in and you have to take a point of view.

#FSOFashionFact December, 1998: Hillary Clinton becomes the first American first lady to grace Vogues cover. pic.twitter.com/aKTIP5pUbx  F S O (@fsokentstate) October 7, 2016

Vogue has decided they dont want @FLOTUS on the cover of their magazine ever again due to the fact that they profile women in the magazine that we believe in the stand that they are taking on issues. RT and tag them in this image to piss them off @voguemagazine pic.twitter.com/mpu232NLH0  Jon Yahraus (@jonisnotameme) April 11, 2019

Conde Nast, owned by Advance Publications, is the parent company of The New Yorker, Wired, Vanity Fair, Pitchfork, GQ, Glamour, Bon Appetit, Ars Technica, Allure, and Reddit.

Melania was featured on Vogues cover in 2005 when she married Donald Trump.
Gianny Sosa was arrested on April 11, 2019 in Miami, Fla., and faces a battery charge after seeming to attempt a potentially dangerous wrestling move on his high school principal. (Miami-Dade Police Department)

Miami Student Charged After Allegedly Trying Wrestling Move on School Principal

A Florida student was placed in police custody after allegedly trying a potentially dangerous wrestling move on his high school principal, according to reports.

The high school senior, Gianny Sosa, was arrested on Wednesday, April 11, at Miami Southridge Senior High School, according to an NBC report, citing Miami-Dade Police sources.

A Miami Southridge Senior High School student has been charged after officials said he attempted to take down his principal by performing a wrestling move. STORY: https://t.co/SWHOjbeI2d pic.twitter.com/STYpuIuYPm  WSVN 7 News (@wsvn) April 11, 2019

Sosa made a court appearance on Thursday, during which the teens defense lawyer called the arrest report hands down one of the most insane he had ever seen, the Miami Herald reported.

The 18-year-old left jail on Friday after posting a $750-dollar bond, according to NBC.

The RKO

In a bizarre incident caught on camera, Sosa allegedly put his arm around the neck of Principal Humberto Miret in a wrestling move known as an RKO.

The movemade famous by WWE wrestler Ortoninvolves looping an arm around the neck of an opponent and driving their face into the ground.

Video appears to show Sosa going for an RKO on the principal, who ducks out of the attempted move and instead seems to put the student in a chokehold and then shove him.

What I did, it wasnt intentional. I wasnt trying to hurt nobody, Sosa said after his release from jail Friday, according to NBC.

I understand he had to use some force cause he might be worried, the teenager told the news outlet, adding, but the situation escalated when he took me into a private classroom with no cameras and continued to use force.

Sosa posted video footage from inside the classroom on his Instagram account.

It shows Miret speaking into a walkie talkie, keeping Sosa at bay with his outstretched arm, while the teenager complains about being touched.

Oh, now that Im recording, you dont want to touch me? You dont want to hit me now? Sosa asks the principal, the video shows. Its crazy, aint it? Now that the camera has your face, you dont want to hit me. Now that the superintendent might see this, you dont want to touch me.

Miret is heard in the video telling Sosa to Put the phone down and You dont have the right to record me.

Im recording myself. Dont touch me, though, Sosa is heard saying.

Miami teen tries RKO wrestling move on principal, gets charged with battery https://t.co/eDL4jdomXj  Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) April 11, 2019

The teenager reportedly told NBC he had joked around with the principal before. His Instagram account shows him pulling off a range of stunts that include climbing onto a shelving unit at a Walmart and diving into a silo with inflatable balls.

In one post filmed in what appears to be a mall, Sosa is seen leaping into an artificial wildlife enclosure, grabbing a plastic alligator and slamming it down, yelling, RKO!

A voice behind the camera says Pin that boy!

Joke Gone Wrong?

Sosas family told NBC Thursday that he was joking around with the principal and didnt intend any harm.

School officials said in a statement that they were treating the incident seriously.

Its unfortunate that anyone would instigate a situation for self-promotion that could bring harm to others. Instances of disruptive and threatening behavior will be handled swiftly and result in severe consequences, Miami-Dade County Public Schools said in a statement obtained by NBC. In addition to an arrest, the students lack of judgment will result in disciplinary actions in accordance with our Code of Student Conduct.

Sosa was charged with battery on a school official and interference with an educational institution, according to WPLG.
Derrick Ruff and Joshua Jackson, both 25, were last seen traveling in a Ford Expedition, on Dec. 18, 2018. (Courtesy of Gwinnett County Police Department)

Missing Men Derrick Ruff and Joshua Jackson Found Dead From Gunshot Wounds

The bodies of two young men who went missing on Dec. 21, 2018, have been found months later with gunshot wounds.

Gwinnett County Police Department confirmed Joshua Jackson and Derrick Ruff, both 25, were located inside a storage unit at the Extra Space Storage in Lawrenceville, Georgia, on March 17.

After the investigators assigned to the Homicide Unit opened the units garage door, the victims were found. It appears that they died of gunshot wounds, police said in a public statement. The bodies have been preliminarily identified as Derrick D. Ruff (age 25) and Joshua L. Jackson (age 25). Notification has been made to the victims families.

The bodies of Derrick Ruff & Joshua Jackson were discovered in a storage unit off Lawrenceville Hwy on Sunday. The men were reported missing through Athens Clarke County Police. Were seeking tips in the whereabouts of suspect Robert Carlisle. 404-577-8477 @StopCrimeATL pic.twitter.com/BTQJhS4mTB  Gwinnett Police Dept (@GwinnettPd) March 19, 2019

The departments Corporal Michele Pihera is now leading the double homicide investigation with assistance from the Federal Bureau of Investigations Safe Streets Task Force and Athens-Clarke County Police Department (ACCPD) team led by Criminal Investigation Bureau Captain Jerry Saulters.

Jackson and Ruff were last seen in a Ford Expedition at about 10 p.m. on Dec. 18 last year. Police found the abandoned vehicle three days later in a neighborhood off Monfort Road in Lawrenceville.

Family, friends and police continue to search for Joshua Jackson and Derrick Ruff who disappeared on Dec. 20. SPREAD THE WORD and lets help bring them home. #MissingPersons https://t.co/6BdnkgpZ6U  FOX 46 Charlotte (@FOX46News) January 4, 2019

The pair were discovered with the help of cadaver dogs from Alpha Team K9 Search and Rescue while patrolling the Lawrenceville Highway near Clearwater Place. The canines alerted police to a storage unit in the Extra Space Storage facility.

Four suspects have been identified and their motives appear to be gang-related. They include Robert Carlisle, 32, Justin Davis, 29, Lesley Green, 30, and Shabbazz Guidry, 24.

The investigators are in the process of identifying all the suspects in this case. As of now, two people have been charged in relation to this crime, police said.

#BREAKING @GwinnettPd have identified another suspect in the deaths of Derrick Ruff & Joshua Jackson. Police are searching for Justin Davis for conspiracy to commit a crime. Robert Carlisle is also still on the run. The victims bodies were found in a storage unit. #fox5atl pic.twitter.com/41KR3EvLC0  FOX 5 Atlanta (@FOX5Atlanta) March 27, 2019

Green, who is from Stone Mountain, is being held at Gwinnett County Jail, charged with two counts of concealing the death of another.

Although Carlisle, from Lithonia, has two active warrants for concealing the death of another he was not in police custody at the time of publication.

As more suspects are identified, additional people could be charged, police said. Green and Carlisle could face more criminal charges.

Fourth Suspect Arrested After Bodies of Two Missing Men Are Found in George Storage Unit https://t.co/peyGwdLlix pic.twitter.com/LkEGBciB7P  BCNN1 (@bcnn1) April 11, 2019

Detectives are trying to determine the link between the storage facility unit, suspects, and victims.

The renters of the storage unit have been cooperative with this investigation, police said.

A cash reward is being offered for information leading to an arrest and indictment in this case.

Jackson  Ruff Press Conference On Sunday, March 17, 2019, the bodies of Joshua Jackson and Derrick Ruff were located in Gwinnett County. Today, the Gwinnett County Police Department and the ACCPD held a press conference about the search for Derrick and Joshua and the Homicide investigation being led by GCPD. Cpl. Michele Pihera, Public Information Officer from GCPD, and ACCPD Criminal Investigation Bureau Captain Jerry Saulters participated in the press conference. Posted by Athens-Clarke County Police Department on Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Anyone with information is asked to contact Gwinnett County Police Department by phoning 770 513 5300. Anonymous reports can be made by phoning Crime Stoppers at 404 577 8477 or visiting www.stopcrimeatl.com.
Alabama Woman Kills Alleged Rapist, and Faces Life in Prison: Reports

A mother in Alabama shot and killed a man who allegedly raped her and was initially found unfit to stand trial. However, she still reportedly faces life in prison after she was indicted last year.

Brittany Smith was charged last year for the murder of Joshua Todd Smith, reported The Appeal, which added that Brittany claimed she was raped by Smith at her home in Stevenson, Alabama.

It reported that she allegedly shot him after Smith got into a fight with her brother, Chris McCallie, who reportedly came to her aid after the alleged assault took place.

Mom Todd has tried to kill me literally. Dont act like anything is wronghe will kill me if he knows, she had texted her mother on Jan. 16, 2018, reported the news outlet. Her mother, Ramona, then tried to call her son, Chris.

Brittany was charged with murder despite Alabama's 'Stand Your Ground' law, which allows use of lethal force in several circumstances Posted by MEAWW on Thursday, April 11, 2019

When Chris arrived, according to the report, he told Todd Smith to leave, and he refused before placing Chris in a headlock. Chris, who entered the home while armed, put the gun on a counter before the altercation.

Brittany then ran to the kitchen, took Chriss gun, and warned Todd, she told police. Todd didnt back off, and she shot him once before firing again when he attacked her brother. She fired several times before he dropped to the ground, the report stated. It said he suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

She called 911 before Todd was taken to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.

Before the shooting, she told police, Todd raped her twice and beat her up, the website reported, and it also cited a rape crisis center report that said she had 33 wounds on her body. Meanwhile, a toxicology report found methamphetamine and alcohol in her assailants body.

Following the incident, Brittany was charged with murder, according to reports. After her arrested, she also allegedly had a mental breakdown and was held at a county jail for about a month before she was transferred to a psychiatric hospital.

She is still facing murder charges after having been declared by a judge that she is unfit to stand trial, The Appeal said.

According to The Clarion, Based on a mental health evaluation entered into court records on February 4, 2019, Jackson County Circuit Judge Jenifer Holt ordered Smith be taken into custody by the Jackson County Sheriffs office from the courtroom and transported to the custody of the Alabama Department of Mental Health. She required detoxification and mental health treatment, and at the time, officials believed she would be restored to competency within 90 days, it reported.

In December 2018, she underwent another psychiatric evaluation, which found that Brittany Smith is mentally ill or has a mental defect; that as a consequence of such mental illness or defect, poses a real threat of substantial harm to himself or herself or others, The Appeal reported.

Victor Revill, an Alabama attorney, told the news website that Brittanys case should fall under self-defense and the states Stand Your Ground law.

That is Stand Your Ground all day, he told outlet.

That situation is one of the reasons why this law is in place. If her brother was saving her from her kidnapper or her rapist and then kidnapper is trying to fight her brother, in her situation you have the right to defend yourself and you have the right to defend the other person as well.

Smith said she knew Todd Smith while in high school and spoke to him years later in December 2017 when she was looking for a dog. Smith, at the time, was breeding pit bulls, CrimeOnline reported.

She alleged that he made romantic advances toward her, which she spurned. However, she met up with him to buy a dog.

Her mother also recently described the familys heartache.

They want to make it out that Brittany had a relationship with him and she just shot him, Ramona McCallie told the outlet, adding that a doctor has to see about 160 patients before her daughter. I feel like this is a long nightmare that I wish my whole family could wake up from.
Shadow, a 4-year-old pit bull at the Middletown Humane Society on May 4, 2016. (Holly Kellum/Epoch Times)

Pack of Seven Dogs Attack Five People In Georgia

Police were forced to shoot two dogs out of a seven-strong pack that attacked five people in Georgia.

Cobb County Police were cited by Fox5 as saying that in the morning hours of April 10, a pack of seven dogs escaped from a home and attacked an elderly woman.

The victims son and others chased the dogs away, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The dogs continued their rampage, targeting other area residents, according to the police.

Multiple Victims

Cobb police spokesman Sgt. Wayne Delk told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that a total of five people suffered injuries in the attack. Two women were rushed by ambulance to the hospital for treatment, others arranged their own medical care, Delk said.

Raymond Patton, the son of an 82-year-old victim hospitalized for her injuries, told WSB-TV that five pit bulls attacked his mother.

Developing: Five pitbulls maul 82-year old great grandmother. Dogs attacked other neighbors, too. Victims son walks me through how he saved her life. Live starting at 5. @wsbtv pic.twitter.com/1S7VsaxyBz  Chris Jose (@ChrisJoseWSB) April 11, 2019

Patton said she was at the doorstep of her home when the dogs attacked.

God was with me, Patton told WSB-TV. Because somehow, I got that door open, got her. Kicking dogs. Thats my moms blood on my boots, Patton said.

After he pulled his mother to safety, he called 911.

Police said the dogs attacked four other people.

One of the victims was a woman inside the house where the dogs lived. Deputies opened fire on two of the dogs, injuring one and killing the other, WSB-TV reported, before pulling the woman to safety.

My Dogs Are Gone

Cobb County Animal Services took the remaining dogs into custody, Fox5 reported.

Reporter Chris Jose of WSB-TV confronted the owner of the dogs, who expressed regret about the incident.

My dogs are gone and theyre about to be dead, said the woman, who was not identified by name. Im so sorry about what happened. Theyre gone. Im sorry.

The investigation continues.

Dog Trainer Found Dead With Bite Marks

In related news, a 66-year-old dog trainers body was discovered in the backyard of her Texas home covered in bite marks, according to police.

Elaine Richman was found dead early February by authorities conducting a welfare check, news station KPRC reported.

Houston police were dispatched to Richmans home after it was reported she had missed two dog training classes.

Deputies found Alief Doberman trainer Elaine Richman dead with dog bites in her backyard on Friday. Autopsy report shows she died from sharp force injuries. #KHOU11 pic.twitter.com/mQ6ARWoUCP  Matt Dougherty (@MattKHOU) February 11, 2019

Richman died of sharp force injuries, according to the Houston Chronicle, and officials have called her death accidental.

Authorities said responding officers found two full-grown Doberman Pinschers inside the womans home. Police did not say if those dogs were responsible for the bites on the womans body or played a role in her death.

Both dogs were confiscated by authorities, according to KTRK, and were said to have been remanded to the City of Houstons Animal Control.

Extremely Unusual

Houston Kennel Club president, Tom Pincus, told the Chronicle its rare a dog would cause its owners death.

That is extremely unusual, that a person is attacked by their personal dogs, Pincus told the publication. I would not believe that for a second until I heard that from a coroners report.

Theresa Nail, who handled one of Richmans Dobermanns in competitions, told the Chronicle that Richmans dogs were champions that were very well-behaved and sweet.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did a study in the mid-90s into dog bite-related deaths, which placed Dobermans in the top 10 of dog-bite deaths by breed.

According to the Chronicle, Richman had a sign on her fence that said, Beware of dog.
Vice President Mike Pence delivers remarks at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters in Washington on July 6, 2018. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Pence Condemns Democrats for Blocking Iowa Disaster Relief

Vice President Mike Pence lambasted a number of high-profile Democratsall of them 2020 presidential contendersin a string of Twitter posts on April 12 as he toured areas in Iowa and Nebraska that were devastated during last months flooding. Democrats failed to pass a recent disaster relief bill meant for the state.

Pence specifically called out Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

The next time @ewarren, @BernieSanders, @CoryBooker, @amyklobuchar or @SenGillibrand come to Iowa asking Iowans for their support  Iowans should ask them why they all voted AGAINST disaster assistance for Iowa! he said on Twitter. Iowa is still flooded, families need help. Congress must act NOW!

The next time @ewarren, @BernieSanders, @CoryBooker, @amyklobuchar or @SenGillibrand come to Iowa asking Iowans for their support  Iowans should ask them why they all voted AGAINST disaster assistance for Iowa! Iowa is still flooded, families need help. Congress must act NOW!  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) April 12, 2019

Senate Republican legislation provided a $13.45 billion bill for disaster relief from recent floods, hurricanes, and wildfires on April 8 but it was blocked by Senate Democrats. The Democrats argued that the more than $600 million provided to Puerto Rico was not nearly enough.

Congress is currently in a standoff over the issue.

In another post, Pence noted the damage caused by the flooding in Iowa. He said that President Donald Trump has tried to help Iowans, while Democrats have chosen to obstruct.

Flooding has caused some $1.6 billion in damage across Iowa, Pence wrote. To start addressing the recovery, @POTUS approved Iowas request for a disaster declaration. But some in the U.S. Senate have chosen to block that additional disaster relief intended for the people of Iowa.

Flooding has caused some $1.6 billion in damage across Iowa. To start addressing the recovery, @POTUS approved Iowas request for a disaster declaration. But some in the U.S. Senate have chosen to block that additional disaster relief intended for the people of Iowa. pic.twitter.com/iBBO30KuOV  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) April 12, 2019

A 60-vote supermajority needed for the disaster relief bill to proceed to final consideration was voted down by a vote of 44 to 49.

I have never been more frustrated as a United States Senator than I am right now. This is pure partisan politics, Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) said on Twitter after the vote. Perdue sponsored the legislation.

Pence was joined by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst in touring an area around Pacific Junction, a community in southwest Iowa where floodwaters still prevent some residents from returning home more than three weeks after the flooding began.

I have never been more frustrated as a United States Senator than I am right now. This is pure partisan politics. https://t.co/tXSSsJFkqJ  David Perdue (@sendavidperdue) April 1, 2019

Pence last month toured areas swamped by floodwaters in Nebraska, where state officials estimate nearly $1.4 billion in damage and losses.

Earlier in the day, he said that huge portions of the Midwest have been impacted by historic flooding, and noted that he and the president are committed to helping those impacted by the disasters.

Later in the afternoon the Vice President specifically made mention of an Iowan family that was struggling in the aftermath and called on Congress to act now. He accompanied his post with photos of the family members and their damaged property

Senate Democrats voted AGAINST Iowans like Dennis Lincoln, he said. The Lincolns home was flooded, crops destroyed, and their entire lives have been uprooted. Iowans deserve better. Its time for Congress to do its job!

Senate Democrats voted AGAINST Iowans like Dennis Lincoln. The Lincolns home was flooded, crops destroyed, and their entire lives have been uprooted. Iowans deserve better. Its time for Congress to do its job! pic.twitter.com/RBQRJ8ZHtA  Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) April 12, 2019

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Portia Ravenelle and Cheryl Freeman spent a day together sighseeing with their partners. (Cheryl Freeman via CNN)

Police Confirm That a Woman Who Died After 8 Days in a Dominican Republic ICU Was a Missing New York Tourist

Authorities have confirmed that the body of a woman found in the Dominican Republic is indeed one of the two American tourists who had been missing for two weeks.

Portia Ravenelle was identified using fingerprints, National Police Col. Frank Felix Duran Mejia said.

The National Police believe the car Ravenelle, 52, and Orlando Moore, 40, were in plunged into the ocean in the early hours of March 27, not long after the pair left for the airport to catch a flight home to New York.

Detectives spoke to fishermen who said they heard a loud noise coming from about 11.8 miles (19 kilometers) away from the freeway of Las Americas, Santo Domingo Este early that morning, the National Police said in a news release on Tuesday.

The fishermen said they found a woman who was seriously injured and not carrying any identification, the news release said.

She was taken by ambulance to the hospital with severe trauma and contusions to the head, hospital spokesman Dario Manon said. Ravenelle died on April 4, before she was in a condition in which hospital officials could take her photo and share it with the media, he said.

Manon told CNN that no family or friends had called the hospital looking for Ravenelle.

The fishermen also reported seeing a vehicle at the bottom of the sea, but because of rough conditions, divers have not been able to identify the vehicle, Duran Mejia said.

Moores Body Yet to be Identified

Police are still working to identify the body they believe is Moores, but they say they are sure both bodies of the missing pair have been found.

On March 31, the body of a man fitting the description of Moore was found at sea near Sans Souci, Duran Mejia said.

Authorities are hoping Moores brother can identify him by photographs of his tattoos. One tattoo, authorities said, is a right arm tattoo that reads Milan.

Moores friend Francesca Figueroa told CNN she confirmed to the police on Tuesday that Moore has a tattoo with his daughters name, Milan, on his arm.

Everybody is devastated. Everybody is devastated, Figueroa said. His daughter is devastated, everybody is devastated, as I am, as my husband, as the mayor, as everybody in this town is because hes well known in this town. You go on the corner, and everybody knows Orlando.

What Might Have Happened

Moore and Ravenelle were friends who worked together and decided to take a trip to the Dominican Republic, Figueroa said. They arrived in the country March 24.

Cheryl Freeman said she and her boyfriend spent time with Moore and Ravenelle while on vacation in the resort town of Samana. Freeman said Moore and Ravenelle had a 2 a.m. flight and were driving a rental car to the airport.

Body found in Dominican Republic confirmed as missing NY tourist https://t.co/kBrdBRsc8m pic.twitter.com/mc6VvZJRnk  New York Post (@nypost) April 10, 2019

Ravenelle repeatedly asked Moore if he was sure they had enough gas to make it to the airport, Freeman said. She kept checking to make sure their phones were charged enough to use the GPS, Freeman said.

The two were due back in New York on March 27, but airport surveillance shows they never made it into the airport building.

Police now believe an accident caused them to drive off the freeway and into the ocean. Authorities said there was no evidence of foul play.

The Case is Still Open

The case has not been closed, and Duran Mejia said there are still many unanswered questions around the circumstances of the accident.

The car the pair were in still must be examined, he said.

Traffic police investigators are conducting a review of the area around of the accident site, Duran Mejia said. No police report was filed with respect to the location and there is no indication the pairs vehicle hit another vehicle there, he said.

Autopsies of both bodies are underway, with results expected next week, Duran Mejia said.
A U.S. Marine Corps carry team moves a transfer case containing the remains of Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman at Dover Air Force Base, Del., on April 11, 2019. (Patrick Semansky via AP)

Remains of 3 Marines Killed in Afghanistan Returned to US

DOVER, DelawareThe remains of three Marines killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan have been returned to the U.S., arriving Thursday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Staff Sgt. Christopher K.A. Slutman, 43, of Newark, Delaware; Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, of York, Pennsylvania, and Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, New York, were killed on Monday when a bomb struck their vehicle near Bagram Air Base north of Kabul, the Pentagon said.

Honoring U.S. Marines killed in suicide car bomb attack in Afghanistan Monday: Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, Locust Valley, N.Y.; Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, York, Pa,; Staff Sgt. Christopher K.A. Slutman, 43, Newark, Del. First U.S. Marines killed in combat in more than 3 years. pic.twitter.com/imW1uknfNK  Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) April 10, 2019

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

The three were assigned to 25th Marine Regiment, a Massachusetts-based Marine Reserve unit.

Slutman was a 15-year veteran of the New York Fire Department. He grew up in Maryland and lived in Delaware and New York.

An aunt of Hendriks, Lorraine Caliendo, told Newsday that his brother Joseph, also a Marine, will be escorting Hendricks remains back home.

The fatalities brought to seven the number of U.S. troops killed this year in Afghanistan, underscoring the difficulties in bringing peace to the war-wrecked country even as Washington has stepped up efforts to find a way to end the 17-year conflict.

Relatives of the deceased Marines were invited to witness what the military calls a dignified transfer in which the cases containing the remains are transferred to a vehicle from the aircraft that ferried them to the United States.

Media access to the transfer event is allowed if agreed by the family of the fallen service member, under a policy initiated in March 2009.

Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan

The Pentagon has identified two soldiers killed Friday, March 22, in Kunduz Province in Afghanistan as a result of what it said were wounds sustained while engaged in combat.

The two soldiers were identified as Sgt. 1st Class Will Lindsay, 33, of Cortez, Colorado, and Spc. Joseph Collette of Lancaster, Ohio, 29.

????The #Pentagon has released the identities of two #US soldiers who died in an operation in northern #Afghanistan on Friday. Sgt. 1st Class Will D. Lindsay, 33, and Spc. Joseph P. Collette, 29, died from wounds sustained during combat operations in #Kunduz province. pic.twitter.com/3DUwazZFLY  Melisa (@cmellaniac) March 24, 2019

Collette was assigned to the 242nd Ordnance Battalion, 71st Explosive Ordnance Group in Fort Carson, Colorado, and Lindsay was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 10th Special Forces Group (Airborne) out of Fort Carson.

SFC Will Lindsay conducting convoy operations in Iraq. Will served multiple tours in Iraq in addition to two tours in Afghanistan. Posted by 10th Special Forces Group  Airborne on Saturday, March 23, 2019

According to Army spokesman Lt. Col. Loren Bymer, Lindsay enlisted in the Army in 2004 and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart Medal, among other awards. His deployments include a handful of tours in Iraq, as well as tours in Tajikistan and Afghanistan.

Col. Lawrence Ferguson, commander of the 10th Special Forces group, of which Lindsay was a member, said in a statement that his fellow soldiers are deeply saddened by his loss.

Will was one of the best in our formation, with more than a decade of service in the Regiment at all levels of noncommissioned officer leadership. We will focus now on supporting his Family and honoring his legacy and sacrifice, Ferguson said.

SFC Will Lindsay in Iraq. Will spent six years of his Special Forces career as a senior weapons sergeant. Posted by 10th Special Forces Group  Airborne on Saturday, March 23, 2019

NTD News reporter Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Rod Rosenstein Defends Barrs Handling of Special Counsel Report

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in an interview on April 11 defended the Justice Departments handling of the final report by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Hes being as forthcoming as he can, and so this notion that hes trying to mislead people, I think is just completely bizarre, Rosenstein told The Wall Street Journal.

Rosensteins approval is significant because he appointed Mueller to the special counsel post, drafted the scope letters for the investigation, and oversaw the special counsels office for 18 of the 22 months it took to complete the probe.

The deputy attorney generals approval came on the heels of two House of Representatives committee hearings during which Democrats criticized Attorney General William Barr for taking too long to release the report. Democrats also alleged that Barr was too quick to release a summary of Muellers findings.

Barr told lawmakers on April 10 that he expects to release the special counsels final report within a week. The Justice Department is working directly with Mueller to identify information to redact, including grand jury testimony, areas which impact ongoing investigations, the identities of intelligence sources, as well as damaging information on people who were not charged with a crime.

It would be one thing if you put out a letter and said, Im not going to give you the report,  Rosenstein said. What he said is, Look, its going to take a while to process the report. In the meantime, people really want to know whats in it. Im going to give you the top-line conclusions. Thats all he was trying to do.

Muellers team investigated allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. The special counsel found no evidence of collusion. Mueller did not reach a conclusion on the obstruction of justice charges. Barr and Rosenstein decided there wasnt sufficient evidence to bring a case.

Former FBI Director James Comey triggered the appointment of a special counsel in May 2017 by leaking memoranda describing his interactions with the president. Comey did so after Trump fired him on the recommendation of Rosenstein, who wrote a scathing memo (pdf) on Comey titled Restoring public confidence in the FBI.

Rosenstein said he stands by the memo and has few regrets about his 30 years at the Department of Justice.

If you put something in writing, put your name on it and be prepared to stand behind it, Rosenstein said. Thats been a theme of my career.

Rosensteins remarks come one day after Barr told lawmakers he thinks that the Trump campaign was spied on before the 2016 election. Rosenstein signed the fourth and final Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to monitor former Trump-campaign associate Carter Page.

The core of the warrant application to surveil Page consisted of information pulled from an unverified opposition research dossier funded by the Clinton campaign and compiled by a British ex-spy who gathered information by paying sources with ties to the Kremlin. Rosenstein signed the warrant in mid-2017 when Mueller was already running the Russia investigation.

The full scope of Muellers investigation, outlined in a letter by Rosenstein, remains classified.
Secret Service: Man Tries to Set Himself on Fire Outside the White House

A man who tried to set himself on fire outside the White House on April 12 has been arrested.

The Secret Service said the suspect, who has not been identified, was operating an electronic wheelchair-type scooter when he lit his outer jacket on fire while sitting along Pennsylvania Ave, outside the North Fence Line. Uniformed Division Officers then respondedimmediately, extinguishing the fire and providing first aid.

UPDATE: A male subject operating an electronic wheelchair-type scooter lit his outer jacket on fire while sitting along Pennsylvania Ave. outside the North Fence Line. Uniformed Division Officers immediately responded, extinguished the fire and rendered first aid.  U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) April 12, 2019

In a follow-up tweet, the agencies said, the male subject has been transported to a local hospital with what appears to be non-life threatening injuries.

Earlier they tweeted that they were responding to a police or medical incident on Pennsylvania Ave.

ALERT: Secret Service personnel are responding to a police/medical incident on Pennsylvania Ave. along the @WhiteHouse North Fence Line.  U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) April 12, 2019

UPDATE: Pennsylvania Ave. is closed to pedestrian traffic, 17th street between H and G is closed to vehicular traffic.  U.S. Secret Service (@SecretService) April 12, 2019

The Fire Department also responded to the scene to provide first aid, reported Washington Examiner.

Eyewitness videos posted by White House correspondent Mark Irons of EWTN Global Catholic Network, show authorities clearing the park outside the White House and agents apprehending the suspect.

HAPPENING NOW: @SecretService just apprehended man who tried to set himself on fire outside @WhiteHouse agent tells us pic.twitter.com/GvPYEZ8Cnm  Mark Irons (@MarkIronsMedia) April 12, 2019

Initial video: Right after incident occurred, @SecretService surrounded man, and continued clearing out park in front of @WhiteHouse. pic.twitter.com/bqCHUbaQS3  Mark Irons (@MarkIronsMedia) April 12, 2019

Washington Examiner reporter Steven Nelson said on Twitter that reporters were just sternly ordered away from Pennsylvania Ave. fence, including out of TV tents in response to the incident.

White House reporters were just sternly ordered away from Pennsylvania Ave. fence, including out of TV tents Theres a major incident response here now. Talk is someone set themselves on fire, but I did not see it pic.twitter.com/YOdMAeZ6ei  Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) April 12, 2019

White House reporters now are being shooed back inside the West Wing, though some are being escorted out southern exit pic.twitter.com/prt5FfraQr  Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) April 12, 2019

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Secret Siblings: Mom of Adopted Children Discovers Their Biological Connection

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ATLANTAHank Dean was instantly drawn to the ladies with flowing dresses that glided across the stage when he went to see Shen Yun Performing Arts.

The way they dance, they flow, I mean its just like, its almost unreal. Theyre so smooth and graceful, I mean all of them, theyre really good! Dean said.

Dean experienced the traditional dance and music performance at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 11. The New York-based company is in the midst of touring the world with the mission to bring back genuine traditional culture to the modern world.

Dean, who was a CEO for several companies throughout his career before retiring, said Shen Yuns mission is important.

You dont want to lose all your heritage, he said.

Heritage is good, it gives you roots and where youre from and gives you strength, he said.

Lifes not always easy and sometimes its good to have a heritage and be able to draw upon that and get more strength to do better things for your families and whoever you work for.

So I think these things add to making people more productive and people getting along better, he added.

Harmony

Dean said his key takeaway after experiencing Shen Yun is that people need to live harmoniously while working together.

You [can] feel the harmony off of [Shen Yun], I dont know, its hard to describe but you [can] feel like its very mellow and harmonious, he said. Theres a lot of harmony [in the performance] and you think, with the world as it is noweverywhere in the worldeverybody could use harmony.

Harmony is one of the many universal values and themes the performance depicts through its dances and stories. Many of Shen Yuns stories showcase historical events, myths and legends passed down generation after generation, and modern day pieces including those portraying todays real-life human rights abuses in China.

They portray themes like spiritual devotion, the benevolence of gods, good and evil retribution, and the search for the meaning of life, according to the companys website. Such values are foundational to traditional Chinese culture and are not political in nature.

Unable to Perform in China

Dean said he was also sad to learn that Shen Yun is unable to perform in China, adding that hopefully, that could change one day.

Although Shen Yun showcases Chinese culture, it has been barred from performing in communist China. In fact, their performances have repeatedly faced interference from the Chinese embassy wherever they perform.

This is because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees traditional Chinese culture, which is deeply rooted in Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism, as its greatest rivalit is also something Shen Yun is trying to revive.

Instead of preserving the culture, the CCP has launched many movements aimed at dismantling Chinas 5,000 years of civilization and traditional culture. From cultural sites and temples to ancient relics and peoples beliefs, much of Chinas history and spirit were destroyed after the communist regime seized power.

This is why Shen Yun is determined to bring back everything that truly defined the Chinese people.

Dean said the company is doing a great job at achieving that. He said, I hope it keeps going and doing this, because its a wonderful play and it really, its a beauty to anybody that sees it.

With reporting by NTD Television.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time and has covered audience reactions since the companys inception in 2006.
Independent MP Jane Philpott arrives at the West block of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa, on April 9, 2019. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

Speaker Says Philpotts Caucus Ejection Not a Matter of MP Privilege

OTTAWAJane Philpotts parliamentary privileges were not violated when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau booted her and fellow former Cabinet Minister Jody WilsonRaybould out of the Liberal caucus last week, the speaker of the House of Commons ruled on April 11.

Geoff Regan said he has no role in deciding how caucuses should conduct themselves.

Moreover, he said the Parliament of Canada Act expressly bars the courts from intervening in such matters.

This leaves caucuses alone with the authority to govern their internal operations, Regan told the Commons.

With the full authority given to caucuses themselves in such unequivocal terms, it is clear that the chair has no role in the interpretation or enforcement of the statute, even when members feel rudderless without what they feel would be clearly stated and understood rules, he continued.

Philpott argued Tuesday, April 9, that Trudeau did not follow reforms made to the Parliament of Canada Act in 2015 that were supposed to give MPs more power over caucus decisionsincluding whether to expel membersrather than leave them entirely up to party leaders.

The reforms required each party caucus to hold recorded votes at their first meeting following an election on whether to adopt the new rules.

The Liberals never had such a vote, deciding in 2015 to defer the matter to a party convention instead. But they ultimately informed the speaker that they had implicitly chosen not to use the new rules.

Trudeau has said he made the decision to turf Philpott and WilsonRaybould only after extensive consultations showed overwhelming caucus support for kicking the pair out of the Liberal fold.

The two former ministers have been at the centre of a political storm that has engulfed the Trudeau government for more than two months.

WilsonRaybould alleges she was improperly pressured last fall by the Prime Ministers Office and others to intervene and stop the criminal prosecution of SNCLavalin. She believes she was moved out of the prestigious justice portfolio to Veterans Affairs in a mid-January Cabinet shuffle as punishment for refusing to override the director of public prosecutions, who had decided not to invite the Montreal engineering giant to negotiate a remediation agreement, a kind of plea bargain in corporate corruption cases.

WilsonRaybould resigned from Cabinet in mid-February. Philpott followed suit a few weeks later, saying she had lost confidence in the governments handling of the SNCLavalin case.

The last straw for Liberal MPs was the revelation that WilsonRaybould surreptitiously recorded a December phone conversation with Michael Wernick, the clerk of the Privy Council, to bolster her claim of improper pressure. Many said they no longer felt they could trust the former ministers.

The pair now sit as independents in the Commons and will not be allowed to run as Liberals in this falls election.
(R-L) AIT Chairman James Moriarty, TAITRA Vice Chairman Chuang Suo-Hang, and SFTECO Director General Joseph Ma meet the press before the SFBATCC annual event in Union City, Calif., on March 30, 2019. (Nathan Su/The Epoch Times)

Taiwan Urges US to Sign New Trade Deal

News Analysis

UNION CITY, Calif.Taiwanese trade official Chuang Suo-Hang called for a new trade agreement between the United States and Taiwan in a speech at a banquet on March 30.

The banquet took place while James Francis Moriarty, chairman of the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), was visiting California. The AIT is the de facto embassy of the United States in Taiwan.

Moriartys visit to California was an important part of a series of events celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act, which was signed into law in April 1979.

Economic stability is national security; economic stability is regional security, said Chuang, who is vice chairman of the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA), in his March 30 speech at the annual banquet held by the San Francisco Bay Area Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce (SFBATCC).

Chuang said that the Taiwanese government encourages Taiwanese businesses to invest and to create jobs in the United States, and an agreement to secure closer bilateral trading relations will serve the best interests of both countries.

Stability in the Taiwan Strait is essential to the goal of peace in the Indo-Pacific region, Moriarty said at the banquet.

He said that a trade agreement could be accomplished through Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) negotiations by both sides. TIFA is a program managed by the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

There is no better time to celebrate the U.S. and Taiwan relationship than now, because this year marks the 40th anniversary of passage of [the] Taiwan Relations Act, said Joseph Ma, director-general of the San Francisco Taipei Economic and Cultural Office, at the banquet.

Ma said the Taiwan Relations Act has not only secured the relations between the United States and Taiwan, but also functioned as a cornerstone in maintaining peace and stability of the Indo-Pacific region.

More than 400 Taiwanese business and community leaders from California attended the SFBATCCs annual event.

Defending Democracy

Moriartys visit to California took place about two weeks after the United States and Taiwan launched a joint platform called the Indo-Pacific Democratic Governance Consultation.

The new platform aims to defend the common values of freedom, democracy, and human rights shared by the democratic countries in the region.

The Indo-Pacific region generally covers India, the United States, and major Asian democracies in the region, especially Japan and Australia.

Since China became the worlds second largest economy by GDP in 2010, Asian countries surrounding China have increasingly expressed concerns about Chinas economic growth without a political system of checks and balances.

China started opening its doors to the world in 1979. Beijings regime invited investments from the Western world to go to China, mostly because Chinas 30-year practice of a centrally planned socialist economy had come to the edge of collapse.

In the 40 years since China opened up to the West, the worlds democratic nations have granted China many advantages when it came to trade and investment, hoping China would eventually change for the better.

Widespread wishful thinking about changing China with investment from the West included the hope that making China a WTO member would change the regime.

Well be able to export products [to China] without exporting jobs, said President Bill Clinton on March 9, 2000, in a speech on the China [WTO] Trade Bill at the Johns Hopkins University.

In the same speech, Clinton also predicted that letting China join the WTO would bring peace and security to Asia and greater prosperity to the United States.

Clintons predictions were not unusual, but represented the optimistic views of many think tanks at that time in the West.

In 2015, China superseded Canada and became the largest trading partner of the United States. The U.S. trade deficit to China exceeded $400 billion in 2018, based on statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Marketwatch published a report in May 2018 titled China really is to blame for millions of lost U.S. manufacturing jobs, new study finds. The report stated that there were some 6 million lost jobs from 1999 to 2010one-third of all U.S. manufacturing employment.

China is Taiwans largest trading partner. Many people in Taiwanese society have felt a clear and present economic and security threat from the Chinese regime.

In June 2013, Taiwans government signed the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement (CSSTA) with China. The agreement was criticized by some of Taiwans society leaders, who said it was the last guinea pig on trading with China.

The agreement provoked the Sunflower Movement, in which students protested against the CSSTA by occupying Taiwans congress for 24 days from March 18 to April 10, 2014. As a result, the agreement has been shelved ever since.

As Chinas economic power rose from being the tenth largest in the world by GDP in 1979 to being the second largest in 2010, the kinds of changes expected by the West and Taiwan have seemed to be out of reach.

Taiwans cyber security department revealed that some 20 to 40 million cyberattacks came from China in 2017, and 360 of these attacks succeeded.

Chinas saber-rattling antics against its democratic neighbor Taiwan reached an unprecedented level on March 31, when two Chinese fighter jets intentionally crossed a maritime border separating China and Taiwan.

Chinas economic growth has enabled the communist regimes power to reach far beyond Taiwan and countries directly bordering China.

Stanford University recently published a report summarizing Chinas penetration into American media, universities, think tanks, politics, and other parts of American civil society.

The 200-page report, titled Chinese Influence and American Interests, states in its afterword: Once largely a form of economic competition, Chinas recent turn to military and political rivalry with the United States has changed the whole equation of the bilateral relationship.

While a democratic China is currently beyond reach, Taiwan and the Western world have common interests in building stability and defending their shared values in the Pacific region.

We have shown the world that democracy is a better path for any country, Chuang said at the annual SFBATCC event. We have never given up our pursuit [of] freedom and democracy, and we never will.

Chuang Encourages Agreement

Chuang also said in his speech that Taiwanese businesses support 322,000 jobs in the United States, and that the Trump administrations corporate tax cut from 35 percent to 21 percent has made the U.S. an irresistible investment destination for Taiwanese business.

Chuang said that Taiwan wants to be a responsible trading partner, following fair, free, and reciprocal trade principles.

Lets go forward with our united strength. Lets sign a BTA [bilateral trade agreement]. Lets connect [the] U.S.A. and upgrade Taiwan, he said.
Su Jia-chyuan, the president of Taiwans legislature, enjoyed Shen Yun at the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei on April 10, 2019. (Chen Po-chou/The Epoch Times)

TAIPEI, TaiwanShen Yun Performing Arts arrived at the second stop of its six-city tour in Taiwan on April 10, when it took to the stage to a sold-out performance at the National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei. Among those in the attendance was one of the highest-ranked Taiwanese politicians.

Su Jia-chyuan, the president of Taiwans legislature, also known as the Legislative Yuan, returned to see Shen Yun on April 10, after having seen it for the first time two years ago.

I feel like I have been powered up by positive energy for two hours. I hope everyone will come to enjoy such energy, Su said, adding It was an energy of compassion.

Su said he enjoyed the different programs this year, which were different from what he saw two years ago.

Shen Yun, founded in 2006, is a classical Chinese dance and music company based in New York. And every year since, the company has toured the world with an entirely new productionincluding all new choreography, music, and costumes.

The group effort behind these programs, the tempo with these programs, and the synchronized movement [of the dancers] all made the performance like a delicately-crafted, exquisite piece of artwork, Su said.

He added that the backdrop, how dancers were seemingly walking in and out of it, really added to the whole performance.

The backdrop that Su referred to is Shen Yuns unique digital backdrop, which brings the audience on a visual tour of Chinas geography, society, regions, and dynasties. According to Shen Yuns website, the backdrop can transport the audience to a world where heaven and earth are one.

Su added that he enjoyed the story dances, how even though not a word was spoken, he could understand and appreciate the meanings behind these dances.

Through these story dances, which are like excerpts of the 5,000 years of Chinese history, Shen Yun is reviving an ancient past that is lost in modern-day China. According to Shen Yuns website, every story dance embodies and celebrates virtues, such as courage and piety, that were at the heart of Chinese civilization for thousands of years.

Su stated that he especially enjoyed a story dance about good versus evil. He elaborated: Shen Yun tells us what is being good, and what is being bad. And it also tells us how we should walk the path of being good, and then what kind of result awaits us. This is wonderful.

With reporting by Dai Deman and Frank Fang.

The Epoch Times considers Shen Yun Performing Arts the significant cultural event of our time and has covered audience reactions since the companys inception in 2006.
Shenandoah, IA (51601)

Today

Partly cloudy. Windy this evening. Low 27F. W winds at 25 to 40 mph, decreasing to 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Windy this evening. Low 27F. W winds at 25 to 40 mph, decreasing to 15 to 25 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.
Teen Wearing MAGA Gear for Schools America Day Asked to Cover Up

A high school freshman in Epping, New Hampshire, decided to don herself with Make America Great Again gear, a red cap and T-shirt, during her schools America Day on April 8, only to be quickly asked to conceal what she wore.

On the day of the event, Ciretta Mackenzie was asked by her schools principal to cover up her shirt. The principal told her that it violated the schools dress code. The student complied with the principals order and borrowed a friends sweatshirt.

The American Pride Day event was part of the schools spirit month, Mackenzie said she had no idea her gear would cause any issues. Mackenzie later told Boston25 News that she doesnt believe her outfit violated any dress code policies and believes her rights were violated.

Epping High School freshman Ciretta Mackenzie chose to wear her MAGA gear on America Day at school. She was asked to cover up her shirt by the principal, she feels she did not violate the dress code policy and believes her rights were violated @boston25 pic.twitter.com/aPTRbjXsuY  Julie Leonardi (@JulieLeonardiTV) April 12, 2019

Its just a shirt, and it only says Trump make America great again, it doesnt say anything like build a wall, so I dont get how it could be offensive, how it could be disrespectful, she told Boston25 News.

Cirreta said that after looking through the schools policies on clothing, there was actually no policy or code that barred political clothing.

If it said no political gear, I could understand why it was dress coded but it didnt say that, so I feel like Im obligated to have my own opinion and other people can have theirs, she said. We dont have to agree, thats fine.

She told the outlet she feels her First Amendment rights were violated.

Her father backed up Mackenzies choice. He said he believes political topics should be open to discussion.

We dont want politics to be totally removed from school, it needs to be in schoolthe way they went about it was remove everything, you dont want that, he said.

Mackenzie added that due to the cover-up incident, some of her classmates have been empowered to berate her about it. She said she felt ashamed by what the principal told her to do.

Some kids are making [me] feel like Im uneducated and a bad kid for believing what I want to believe and thats not right, she said.

In response to the incident, Epping High School superintendent said that two other students were also asked to change what they were wearing.

Recent Attacks on Trump Supporters

One of the latest incidents involving supporters being harassed for donning pro-Trump gear took place in California.

Paloma Zuniga, a businesswoman, said that she was in line to mail a package at a post office in San Diego on April 5 when the woman ahead of her line said, You should be ashamed of yourself for wearing that hat, you stupid [expletive].

That was when Zuniga switched on her camera.

Attacked by a liberal for my hat! Posted by Paloma for TRUMP on Saturday, April 6, 2019

A music shop accountant was fired after she harassed an elderly man wearing a Make America Great Again hat inside a Palo Alto Starbucks, tried to post his personal information online, and incited others to intimidate him into not wearing his hat again.

In another similar case just last month, a man claimed that he was forced to leave a New York City bar for wearing a Trump MAGA hat and says hes considering seeking legal action.
President Tsai Ing-wen of the Republic of China (Taiwan) addresses the crowd via webcam at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on April 9, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

To Hold Onto Their Democracy, the People of Taiwan Need to Choose Well

Commentary

Concern about Taiwan is growing. The tiny nation of around 23 million people has been a democratic success story, showing, to the shame of the giant nation on the mainland, that they can indeed govern themselves.

And while governing themselves, the Taiwanese have stood firm, facing down the giant military of the Peoples Republic of China that has regularly threatened invasion.

But now, observers agree, the danger to Taiwan may now come less in the form of brute force, and more by turning the nations ballot box against itself, as subversion by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) threatens to change the character of Taiwan and undo its proud legacy of freedom.

Unprecedented Challenge

In a speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen said that Taiwan is faced with unprecedented challenge, and called for a U.S. commitment based on shared values.

Addressing a full house at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington via video footage on April 9, Tsai said, Because of the Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. has played a crucial role to help [Taiwan] reject coercion.

Tsai praised the Taiwan Relations Act for helping Taiwan go through the darkest time in their history, and is proud of the fact that Taiwan has become one of the freest countries in the world.

In terms of security, [the act] laid out a framework to not only provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character but also to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States, she said.

When asked about one wish she wanted to make, Tsai said it would be for the young generations in Taiwan to know democracy as the only way of living.

However, this way of life is under unprecedented challenge. Using economic incentives, control over sources of information, and political subversion, Chinas objective is to divide our society, erode trust in public institutions, and make people question our traditional alliances. The U.S., together with other like-minded countries, can help.

Tsai hopes the United States can express to China at a very senior level that it considers the security of Taiwan vital to the defense of democracy, both here and around the world. And similarly, it considers any threat to Taiwans freedom, democracy, and our way of life, of critical concern to the United States.

Tsai also used the opportunity to push her agenda for a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States, an agreement that is based on our values and ideas.

Today, Taiwan, a country of 23 million people, is United States 11th-largest trading partner, she said. Its a complementary relationship, not a competitive one.

Tsai said that she could not agree more with U.S. President Donald Trumps view that economic security is national security. She believes Taiwan is part of that, as Taiwan has the capacity to expand its economic relationship with the United States.

Tsai said that Taiwan and the United States have the potential to work together in crafting an agreement that can become the model for the rest of Indo-Pacific region.

Chinas influence campaigns are primarily undertaken using economic apparatus. By relying on ourselves, with the United States and other free-market countries, we can reduce our economic reliance on China, and their capacity to interfere in our media, politics, and security.

Tsai said that Taiwan is a crucial link in the global high-tech supply chain, which the U.S. and other like-minded countries are looking at more closely in terms of its integrity, and data security.

Tsai said this is particularly relevant in the case of Huawei, and the battle over the control of the 5G networks.

We need to shape the flow of the supply chain, so that critical technologies, infrastructures, and assets do not fall into the wrong hands, she said.

Tsai praised the Trump administration for having shown that it has the capacity to be creative when it comes to trade, and hopes that they can apply the same principle when it comes to discussion with Taiwan.

Tsai said that Taiwan is committed to defending itself from Chinas military threat, and has made more investment in defense.

Referring to Trumps approval of $1.4 billion in arms sales in 2017 that included advanced missiles and torpedoes, followed by a second arms package worth $330 million in 2018, she said, Cooperation between our two countries has continued to fulfill the spirit of these articles. Already, a steady drumbeat of arms sales have been announced by the current U.S. administration, and we have more in the pipeline.

Tsai ended her speech by again stressing the shared values of the United States and Taiwan.

At this critical moment, it is more important than ever to ensure that the letter and the spirit of the TRA prevail, and that the values we share continue to shape the future of our region, she said.

Our shared vision has made two countries even closer than ever before. And together, with your support, we will continue to remind the world that Taiwan is an irreplaceable force for good in the world.

Hybrid Warfare Tactics

While Tsai sounded more optimistic and hopeful toward what is in store for Taiwan, China experts and observers are more concerned.

Here in Taiwan, its China that dominates every discussion. Beijings malign influence is apparent everywhere, while the United States is seen as largely absent. Washington must wake up to the danger of Chinas massive effort to infiltrate, undermine and eventually abolish Taiwans democracy, Josh Rogin, a columnist for The Washington Post wrote in an opinion article.

Rogin wrote, Following its successful interference effort in last Novembers local elections, Beijing is now focused intensely on ousting Tsai and her Democratic Peoples Party in next Januarys presidential contest.

He said that a Chinese military invasion is no longer the scenario Taiwanese fear most. Chinas strategy to take over Taiwan is focused now on the hybrid warfare tactics authoritarian regimes increasingly deploy in free societies.

Interference

Frank Tian Xie, a business professor at the University of South CarolinaAiken, agrees that, although military threat is one of the major challenges for Taiwan, the most dangerous challenge is the CCPs infiltration.

Xie thinks the possibility of the CCP waging a war against Taiwan is low, as a war could trigger fiercer internal struggles in the CCP and objections from the Chinese public, as well as the United States military intervention.

By influencing elections, deploying spies, and buying out the media and elites in the political and business communities, Xie said, the CCP has raised its interference to a dangerous level. The media and compromised elites have become representatives of the CCP.

Xie said that even some Taiwanese-founded Chinese-language newspapers in the United States have now become mouthpieces for the CCP, such as the World Journal and The China Press.

Xie said Taiwan should adopt a law similar to the United States Foreign Agents Registration Act, and require those media that actually represent the CCP to register as foreign agents so the Taiwanese public would not be misled by these outlets fake news that harms Taiwan.

The third threat Taiwan is facing, Xie said, is its economic dependence on China. In 2017, Xie was invited to National Taiwan University to conduct research on the trade relationships and interdependence between Taiwan and China.

After analyzing economic and trade figures for the past 20 years, Xie and his co-researcher found that Taiwans economic dependence on China was 10 times Chinas dependence on Taiwan.

Xie said this was an alarming figure, and Taiwan should realize the grave danger.

He said a bilateral free trade agreement between the United States and Taiwan is a very good initiative. Given the Trump administrations strong support for Taiwan, Xie said the opportunity is ripe for Taiwan to start direct talks with the United States.

Free Trade

Chinese political and economic analyst Qin Peng told The Epoch Times that a bilateral free trade agreement between the United States and Taiwan would not only enhance U.S. national security and offer Taiwan more protection by reducing Taiwans dependence on China, but also will benefit China by encouraging healthy development there.

Qin said, as part of the global high-tech supply chain, Taiwan plays a critical role in global information security, including the security of the United States and the Indo-Pacific region.

If a free trade agreement can be achieved, given that the United States has started to restrict the transfer of high-tech to China, more Taiwanese high-tech companies would choose to move back to Taiwan. This can in turn prevent the CCPs forced technology transfer, theft, and potential compromise of critical parts of the supply chain.

Qin said a free and safe Taiwan is the beacon for many mainland Chinese who long for democracy. Taiwans development and safety can give Chinese people hope and more incentive to strive for freedom and democracy, and to contain the CCPs predatory expansion.

Tang Baiqiao, former 1989 Tiananmen Square-uprising student leader and president of Democracy Academy of China, said a free trade agreement would bring U.S.Taiwan relations to another height, and make the United States feel more secure about Taiwans attitude. If Taiwan becomes too close with the CCP, there is little the United States can to do intervene, even when the CCP tries to suffocate free institutions in Taiwan.

Tang said a trade agreement with the United States can also set an example for other countries, encouraging them to improve trade relations with Taiwan, and he hopes that Taiwan can seize the opportunity.

Support Chinese Democracy

Cao Ji (alias on Twitter), a former professor at a university in Shanghai who now lives in Taiwan, said that whether or not the status quo between Taiwan and China can be maintained depends on Chinas economic status in the coming years.

If Chinas current financial stimulus policy cannot save Chinas economy, the CCP could use Taiwan independence as an excuse to create and intensify tensions at the Taiwan Strait to distract attention from its own crisis. Both Taiwan and the United States should prepare for this possibility in advance, he said.

Cao said, faced with the CCPs aggressive pressure on all fronts, Taiwan should cooperate more with the United States in politics, the economy, diplomacy, and the military.

At the same time, the Taiwanese government should be more proactive in supporting the Chinese peoples fight against the CCPs tyranny, as well as their struggle to gain freedom and democracy.

Taiwan should be more involved in international human rights and the activities by NGOs to expose the CCPs atrocities.

Cao said that Taiwan is an important base for the semiconductor industry, and has the responsibility to ensure that sensitive technology will not fall into the CCPs hands. Taiwan and the United States should cooperate in law enforcement to punish Taiwanese businesses and individuals who secretly transfer U.S. technology and patents to the CCP, to prevent further damage.

US Attitude

He Qinglian, a China scholar, wrote in a commentary in Chinese that among the new Romance of Three Kingdoms of the United States, China, and Taiwan, the U.S. attitude is an important force to balance the relationship across the Taiwan Strait.

However, the main function of the TRA is to ensure that the United States will ensure Taiwans safety if, and only if, the CCP tries to unify Taiwan with force. The TRA cannot and will not protect Taiwan from CCPs peaceful infiltration.

That is why the United States has never tried to intervene with Taiwans affairs, even when Taiwan was about to pass the Cross-Strait Service Trade Agreement, which was thought to be a building block for peaceful unification.

In this sense, He argued, the TRA does not have the function of protecting Taiwans democracy, as many Taiwanese have wished.

Therefore, the greatest challenge for people in Taiwan, who have somehow taken free elections for granted, is how to select the next president in 2020, who can fight against the CCPs red influence, and develop Taiwans economy at the same time, while finding the fine line to balance its relationships with the two superpowers: the United States and China.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the media prior to his departure from the White House April 10, 2019 in Washington. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Trump Considers Placing Illegal Aliens Exclusively in Sanctuary Cities

President Donald Trump on April 12 said he is considering a plan to transport aliens who are apprehended after illegally crossing the southwest border exclusively to sanctuary cities.

Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only, Trump wrote on Twitter.

.The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!

The presidents message confirmed anonymously sourced reports that the White House is considering the measure. Sanctuary cities are locales which have enacted measures to prevent local officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities. There are eight states and hundreds of cities across the United States which are officially sanctuaries for illegal aliens.

The Washington Post first reported the story two days prior to Trumps message.

San Francisco, the hometown of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is a sanctuary city. Pelosi told reports on April 12 she was not aware of the report.

Its just another notion that is unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face, as a country, as a people, to address who we are, a nation of immigrants, Pelosi said.

Pelosi was in Leesburg, Virginia, where House Democrats were wrapping up a three-day retreat.

California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and Vermont are sanctuary states.

Trumps message arrived as the White House is reshuffling the leadership atop the immigration agencies as part of a strategy to get tougher on immigration.

In addition to the sanctuary plan, the Trump administration is also considering restricting remittances to Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Another policy under consideration would be to let illegal alien family units who claim asylum choose to either go into long-term detention as a family or to send their children to government shelters until their asylum claim is adjudicated.

Officials are also mulling whether to start detaining illegal aliens minors for a period longer than the court-imposed 20-day maximum in order to trigger a legal battle they hope could result in a fix to the asylum loophole.

The Post, which reviewed emails on the issue and spoke to unnamed officials at the Department of Homeland Security, said the White House proposed the measure at least twice in the past six months.

Trump administration officials proposed the measure in November as a caravan traveled through Mexico with mostly migrants from Central American countries toward the southern U.S. border. The proposal emerged again in February during a standoff with Democrats over funding the president sought to build a wall on the border, one of the signature issues of his 2016 election campaign and presidency.

The Post said a Nov. 16 email broached the proposal, asking officials at different agencies whether members of the migrant caravan could be detained at the border, then bused to small- and mid-sized sanctuary cities, where local officials refuse to hand over illegal immigrants for deportation.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Trump Criticizes The New York Times for Burying News of Obama White House Lawyer Indictment

President Donald Trump once again took aim at The New York Times newspaper, criticizing it for only printing on page 16 the story about the indictment of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig.

President Obamas top White House lawyer, Gregory B. Craig, was indicted yesterday on very serious charges, Trump said in an April 12 tweet. This is a really big story, but the Fake News New York Times didnt even put it on page one, rather page 16.

The president then commented that The Washington Post was not much better, as it only printed a tiny page one story about the indictment.

Corrupt News! Trump said.

President Obamas top White House lawyer, Gregory B. Craig, was indicted yesterday on very serious charges. This is a really big story, but the Fake News New York Times didnt even put it on page one, rather page 16. @washingtonpost not much better, tiny page one. Corrupt News!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

The New York Times didnt respond to a request for comment. The Washington Post declined to comment.

Craigs Charges

Laying out charges of making false statements, prosecutors said Craig, 74, lied to both his law firm and government investigators about his contacts with the media in connection to a report he prepared on Ukraine.

They allege Craig did so to avoid registering as a foreign agent, which would undermine the perception of independence of both the report and Craig and impair the ability of Craig and others at the law firm to later return to government positions.

Craigs lawyers rejected the charges.

His former law firm has paid over $4.6 million and acknowledged that it failed to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine. The civil settlement with the firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP, laid much of the blame for the violations on Craig.

Craig was the first White House counsel to former President Barack Obama. In private practice, his clients have included former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who was investigated and charged for leaking classified information.

The charges against him stemmed from the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Network Response

The legacy newspapers werent the only ones seemingly skimming over the Craig indictment.

The three major news broadcasters ABC, CBS, and NBC collectively gave the story just over a minute in their April 11 evening newscasts, according to a review by the right-leaning watchdog Media Research Center.

Both ABCs World News Tonight and CBS Evening News sprinted past the story with 16 and 17 seconds respectively, the MRC said in an April 11 report. NBC Nightly News offered a little bit more time (42 seconds) but it was still under a minute.

The treatment of the Craig indictment in legacy media contrasted with the intense attention the media gave to other Mueller cases.

Following Muellers indictments of Paul Manafort and deputy chair Rick Gates, the networks evening programs dedicated over 33 minutes to related news60 percent of their total evening news airtime, MRC reported in 2017.

Foreign Lobbying Crackdown

The Justice Department is reportedly cracking down on violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a decades-old law meant to allow Americans to know when foreign entities are trying to influence public opinion or policymakers. The statute had been seldom enforced in the past.

Manafort, veteran political operative and short-lived chair of Trumps 2016 campaign, was sentenced in March to 7 1/2 years in prison for illicit foreign lobbying and other violations as part of Muellers Russia investigation.

Mueller concluded his probe in March, finding that neither President Donald Trump nor anyone in his campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. Attorney General William Barr is expected to release Muellers final report within a week.

Epoch Times staff writer Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
A moose saunters across the Snake River Oct. 4, 2012, in the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GettyImages)

Washington Hunter Sets World Record for Shiras Moose

A hunter in Washington state set a world record after bagging a moose in November 2018.

Jim Hall from Buckley was hunting on Nov. 28 when he spotted a Shiras moose, according to The Spokesman-Review, which reported that he had been applying for a moose hunting license for 30 years.

Im not paying attention to its horns, Hall told the paper in April of hunting the moose.

Im trying to get it down as quickly and ethically as possible, he said.

When he shot the moose, he realized how large it really was.

Im just in awe, he told the Spokesman-Review, adding that he thought it may have been around 700 pounds.

He added: Im texting pictures to people and all my friends are freaking out.

Its not clear how much the animal weighed. Also unclear is the ruminants age.

They killed the moose in Ferry County near Republic, Washington. According to the Spokesman-Review, the moose set a new Safari Club International world record for a Shiras moose.

It was really foggy, Hall said of the conditions. We were thinking this is done because you couldnt see any more than 150 yards.

On April 4, he learned it broke a record for a Shiras moose, adding that the bull mooses antlers had 242 inches and scored 504 7/8 inches, the report said.

Hall said he gave the meat to his hunting partners and kept about a fourth of it.

Its somewhere between a Michelin and a Firestone in texture, Hall said of the taste. It was really tough meat. But it didnt have bad taste.

Proponents of animal rights have blasted Hall.

Washington hunter bags world-record moose in Ferry County. Hes very proud of his Safari Club award, as he hunted that moose for 2 months. He complained the meat was tough and gave most of it away. Why cant they just use a camera?? wrote a page called Justice for Cecil the Lion, which included sad emojis. The commenters launched profanity-laced tirades against Hall.

It appears that Hall has since taken down the photos that he posted on Facebook.

Zombie Deer Disease

The latest update from U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that chronic wasting disease, sometimes called zombie deer disease in the media, has spread to 24 American states and two Canadian provinces.

States to have reported the disease, known as CWD, include New York, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Kansas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia.

Nearly every county in Wyoming has reported instances of CWD. A number of counties in Colorado have also experienced the disease.

In January 2019,  there were 251 counties in 24 states with reported CWD in free-ranging cervids, the agency said.

The illness attacks the brain, spinal cord, and other tissues in elk, deer, and moose. The disease eventually leads to the animals death, but it first makes them lose weight and slows their coordination. The animals also then turn aggressive, the agency said.

There is no evidence that the disease can affect humans, but some experts have said that it could possibly spread in the future.
A woman cries and is comforted by a demonstrator after she was refused entry into a planned speech by Richard Spencer, a white nationalist who popularized the term 'alt-right', at the University of Florida campus on October 19, 2017 in Gainesville, Florida. Brian Blanco/Getty Images

Words Are Not Violence

Commentary

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never harm me. The saying conveys to a child who feels hurt an ancient distinction between physical and emotional injury.

The point, common to Stoic philosophy, Buddhism, and modern Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, isnt the literal one that words can never harm you. Words may, in given circumstances, damage your reputation, raise your blood pressure to harmful levels, and so on. But except for well-known cases, such as shouting fire! in a crowded theater, they usually dont lead immediately to physical injury.

Words are not violence, even if they do harm you. The point of the sticks and stones saying is to comfort children and give them a way to respond, mentally and verbally, to insults, taunts, and put-downs. It teaches the important life lesson that such slights are part of life. Our dignity does not depend on what others think of us, as we show by not overreacting to such behaviorwhether intentionally upsetting or not.

As we grow in virtue and maturity, we develop perspective. We learn, in the words of attorney Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, not to view disagreements, unintentional slights, or even direct insults as threats to our dignity that must always be met with a response.

Victimhood Culture

In their recent, important book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Lukianoff and Haidt thus distinguish the dignity culture, in which young people learn to deal with slights without overreacting to them from the older honor culture, where a small insult may lead to a duel.

Their main argument, though, is about the victimhood culture that has risen to precedence on college campuses and beyond with the iGeneration (iGen) or Generation Z, those born in and after 1995. In this case, they argue, paranoid overreaction by helicopter parents with exaggerated fears for the childrens safety, reinforced by educational administrators and a bureaucracy of safetyism, is among the factors creating a victimhood culture in this generation.

Safety once meant physical safety. Now, theres a language of emotional safety, in which students expect to feel safe from upsetting ideas or views with which they disagree, even from ancient literature and myths that might trigger emotional distressor trauma where that word, too, has expanded from the physical, as in blunt-force trauma, to the emotional or mental.

To keep todays more sensitive, psychologically vulnerable students feeling safe, even from unintended slights now labeled microaggressions, administrators erect a whole bureaucratic apparatus of trigger warnings, safe spaces, and disciplinary processes. Systems for anonymous reporting of fellow students, faculty, and staff, elicit intervention by bias response teams. Teaching evaluations ask students to assess their instructors sensitivity and inclusiveness, and so on.

In such ways, the ever-expanding academic bureaucracy supports students in ways that make them less resilient and more anxious, depressed, morally dependent on their elders. Students come to rely on authorities to resolve problems, and, as Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning explain in the journal Comparative Sociology, as people come to depend on law alone, their willingness or ability to use other forms of conflict management may atrophy.

This is the condition of grade school children who, when teased, immediately go to an adult, crying, Make him stop! Wise adults teach the child the sticks and stones saying. They encourage children, where possible, to sort out their differences and conflicts on their own so that the young can grow in resilience, problem-solving, and maturity.

Violence is a key term in the victimhood culture. Like trauma and safety, it has expanded its meaning to include non-physical affronts or harms.

Actual physical violence, say in physically preventing an invited speaker from giving a lecture on campus, is now routinely defended as self-defense against the violence of the speakers ascribed position on something, even when its not the subject of the intended presentation. The harm attributed to targeted speakers and their positions is wildly inflated.

Heather Mac Donald, a political essayist and attorney, argued that the Black Lives Matter movement with its relentless criticism and surveillance of police, has had the paradoxical and unintended side effect of making black neighborhoods less safe. It made police less willing to enter and actively engage in minority neighborhoods, thereby leaving the people in those neighborhoods less protected and more vulnerable to crime, according to Lukianoff and Haidt.

Claiming Victimhood to Justify Violence

In 2017, rather than join the lively national debate about Mac Donalds thesis, student activists at Pomona College in California sought to make it undiscussable, condemning Mac Donald as a racist and fascist when she came to give a talk at the college. Allowing her to present her thesis would be allowing violence on campus. Engaging with her, a white supremacist fascist supporter of the police state, asserted three of the students in response to a statement about free speech by their college president, is a form of violence.

This strategy of denouncing peaceful expression of disapproved opinions as a form of violenceand justifying the use of violence to shut it downisnt new to campus radicals. The question of free speech for fascists was a contentious one on the Berkeley campus where the Free Speech Movement formed in the 1960s. The movement demanded free speech, uncontrolled by the university administration, not its restriction by the authorities to those holding approved views.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) took a strong position in support of free speech for those expressing unpopular minority opinions, however obnoxious it found those views. The ACLU came in for strong criticism from the defenders of free speech for radicals on campus. The latter, those who opposed free speech for fascists, however, did not call on the state or the university authorities to suppress the fascists, but sought to confront them physically themselves. (They recognized that granting the state or the administration enhanced powers to suppress the expression of unpopular views could as easily be used to silence them in the future.)

Like todays activists, they also argued that speech could be a form of violence that required a physically violent response to suppress. They even saw disparities of life expectancy between classes or races as a form of institutionalized violence that justified revolutionary violence against the system. But they did not look to a paternalistic administration or police power to silence the fascists or racists, real or imagined, whom they sought to stifle.

In the victimhood culture of todays iGen, on the other hand, activists use their hurt feelings and fears as weapons to shame and silence those who offend them in any way, however slight. Often some of the most privileged young people in the world and students at the most liberal and elite universities, they demand that the administration fire such miscreants, often themselves well-meaning lifetime liberals.

Lukianoff and Haidt provide many telling examples of such student outrage and of the spineless failure of administrations to defend their faculty. These iGen radicals may seem coddled and immature, like overprotected children, and they are often denounced as such.

But they do real harm to those they attack, to the learning environment of other students, and to themselves.

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.
DANBURY  Uncle Sam wants you  to visit his new home at the Danbury Railway Museum on White Street.

I think its a real good spot for Uncle Sam, Mayor Mark Boughton said. I think hell really pop in that area.

Crews were in the museum parking lot Thursday preparing the site where Uncle Sam will stand. The mayor said the statue should be standing by mid-May.

The city initially wanted to put the 38-foot-tall statue along Interstate 84.

We had one spot on Mill Plain with good visibility, but we got concerned about safety ... and we werent sure that wed be able to make sure it doesnt get vandalized out there  so we sort of abandoned that idea and started looking for spots downtown, Boughton said.

The city decided to put Uncle Sam on the railway museum property for more than one reason  primarily because the museum property is city-owned.

They lease that from us, and theres (an area) thats not in their lease where were going to put Uncle Sam, Boughton said, adding Uncle Sam may draw people to the museum.

The location is near Leahys Fuels  founder John W. Leahy was the last owner and general manager of the Great Danbury State Fair. Boughton said Leahy was one of the fairs original stockholders.

Boughton said Danburys statue is the largest Uncle Sam statue in the world.

There is an Uncle Sam in Wisconsin that people claim is the bigger, but that Uncle Sam is on a 15-foot-high platform, he said. When I say largest statue, Im counting just the Uncle Sam  not the base or anything like that.

Boughton said he is trying to have signs placed on the highway encouraging the public to come visit the worlds largest Uncle Sam.

Uncle Sam statue returned home to Danbury in December, after more than 35 years at the Magic Forest Amusement Park in Lake George, N.Y. Magic Forest adopted more than 600 figures from the Danbury Fair after it closed in 1981.

Upon its homecoming, the statue was stored in a hanger at Danbury Municipal Airport.

In February, Uncle Sam was on the move again  this time to Harwinton for restoration.

The restoration was funded with money raised through corporate partners and service organizations, Boughton said in February.

kendra.baker@hearst.com
WESTPORT  The search for a new Staples High School principal is on, and will include input from staff and the community.

This follows a turbulent month for Westport Public Schools that saw the resignation of both the superintendent and high school principal.

In an email to parents Friday, Acting Superintendent of Schools Anthony Buono said the district hired JE Consulting to conduct the search to replace current Staples Principal James DAmico, who announced in March he plans to leave at the end of the year for a job as principal at New Fairfield High School  his alma mater.

The position will be posted this week. Concurrently, we will organize focus groups for staff members, parents, and students to discuss and identify the important characteristics of an exceptional high school principal, Buono wrote.

Once an ideal candidate profile is developed, a school-based committee will review applications and interview candidates at the beginning of June.

The Board of Education will then conduct interview with finalists and appoint a new principal by the end of June if all goes well, Buono wrote.

The search for a new principal signals a move forward after a difficult year in Westport schools, as the district grappled with the sudden closure of Coleytown Middle School in September due to mold issues.

The past moth was especially tumultuous and began with the resignation of DAmico on March 8, followed a week later by the announcement Superintendent Colleen Palmer would be leaving the district.

In light of these events, parent and school advocate Robert Harrington said the opportunities for community involvement are necessary in the search for a new Staples principal.

Its time to focus on a new principal search, fixing Coleytown the right way, providing support for Bedford Middle School as it takes in more students in August and announcing an interim superintendent, Harrington said. Its time to end the drama and division in the school district heading into a crucial funding vote for Coleytown in June. No more distractions and divisions.

svaughan@hearstmediact.com; 203-842-2638; @SophieCVaughan1
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, the latest Democrat to formally enter the presidential race, wants to not only modernize the nations manufacturing base, but he also has an aggressive plan to restore the family farm as the base of the nations agricultural production.

Ryan, a nine-term U.S. House member from Ohios 13th Congressional District, discussed in detail his plan to move the nation toward "regional and sustainable farming," and ultimately toward eating healthier food.

Ryan is a native Ohioan who received a law degree from the former Franklin Pierce Law Center, which is now the University of New Hampshire School of Law. He is basing much of his candidacy on what he views as his ability to restore the nations manufacturing dominance.

But he has also worked on the agricultural issue, authoring a 2015 book titled, The Real Food Revolution: Healthy Eating, Green Groceries, and the Return of the American Family Farm.

The book focuses on making the nations food supply healthier by creating a new kind of food system -- the family farm, 21st century-style.

We have to have agricultural policies that move to regional and sustainable farming because its better for the environment. It produces real food, not crops that go into really highly processed foods," he told New Hampshire voters during an appearance on Thursday.

I think we need to reward farmers for growing real food, growing real produce. Pay them for the transition out of where they are, and were going to save the money in health care costs in the long run.

Ryan has said that billions of dollars spent by the federal government on crops that are ultimately turned into substances found in processed foods should instead be spent on family farmers to encourage them to grow fresh fruits and vegetables.

He said that encouraging farmers to grow more fresh crops would also help the environment because they dont use all the pesticides.

We have algae blooms in the middle of the Great Lakes, he said. Theres a dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River because of all the chemicals running down and going into the Gulf of Mexico. Were destroying our environment.

We need to pay farmers to sequester carbon, Ryan said. Farmers can be a big part of reversing climate change because they can help with some regenerative agricultural techniques, such as no-till farming, cover crops.

No-tillage farming is a technique that reduces erosion and cover crops are planted to also manage soil erosion, fertility and quality.

All these methods can actually, in the long run, help us put more carbon into the soil, and we should pay farmers to do that, as well, Ryan said.

He said children will be healthier, have better cognitive functions. Our kids will be more focused and concentrating, which is what we need them to do.

Ryan, 45, began his career in politics as an aide to late U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant before serving in the Ohio Senate and then being elected to the U.S. House.

He is a member of the House Appropriations Committee, co-chair of the Congressional Addiction Treatment and Recovery Caucus, a member of the Bipartisan Task Force to Combat the Heroin Epidemic and co-chair of the Congressional Manufacturing Caucus.

I can win. I can beat Donald Trump," Ryan said. He noted that he was reelected in 2016 while Trump won in three counties in his congressional district.

He said that as his party's presidential nominee, he would move key states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin, back into the Democratic column.

I really understand the old economy because I come from the old Rust Belt, Ryan said. Ive seen it unwind over the past 30 years. He said he also understands the future economy.

He said the next president must have "a big vision" for the country.

We just lost 1,700 jobs at a General Motors facility, while Trump is race-baiting, starting culture wars, Ryan said. We dont need a superstar. We dont need a reality TV star. We need a grinder.
ALTON  Cameron Matlock, of Alton could be facing a minimum of 45 years in prison after a jury Thursday found him guilty of first-degree murder of Derrance Taylor on May 14, 2017.

He stalked him, robbed him, shot him and left him for dead, Assistant States Attorney Kerri Davis said during her closing argument.

The jury reached a decision after several associates of Matlock testified that Matlock implicated himself after tussling with Taylor because he was said to have $1,000 in his pockets.

However, the jury found Matlock not guilty of armed robbery, but they found that the state proved that he used a gun in the murder, which would add 25 years to his sentence. The sentencing range for first-degree murder is between 20 and 60 years. Judges also consider a persons criminal history when pronouncing sentence.

Matlock has a record dating to 2009 when he was convicted of mob action and placed on probation. Less than a year later, he was convicted of probation violation. He was convicted of possession of a stolen firearm and sentenced to prison. He was on probation when he shot Taylor.

Defense attorney Cleveland Tyson Jr. argued that the witnesses who saw the tussle and identified Matlock as on of the two men involved were lying. He said some details they related to police did not match their court testimony.

He noted that no empty shell casings were found at the scene. Davis argued that the casings could have jammed in the gun.

Tyson said no one saw Matlock shoot a gun. Witnesses testified they saw the two together and heard gunshots. A pathologist testified that the deadly entrance wound was a contact wound.

The shot didnt come from a house; it didnt come from a car, Davis said in her closing argument. She noted that Matlock went missing for 10 days after the murder.

Circuit Judge Kyle Napp revoked Matlocks bond and ordered him back to the Madison County Jail to await sentence.

I want to offer my continued condolences and prayers to the family of Derrance Taylor, Gibbons said. Hopefully, with the justice this verdict provides for our community, we can also give his loved ones and friends a measure of peace and closure.

Once again, the outstanding professionalism of the Alton Police Department, Major Case Squad and U.S. marshals have brought a violent criminal to justice. With their excellent investigative work, our trial team from the Violent Crimes Unit was able to secure the guilty verdict on first-degree murder with a firearm enhancement, which will allow us to remove this dangerous individual from our community for up to 85 years.

Assistant States Attorneys Kerri Davis and Tara Steele prosecuted the case.
The Meredosia Village Board has decided to raise water bill rates $1.07 a month, from $9.93 to $11.

Board member John Petri suggested the rate hike because the water fund is low on money.

Meredosia also has lower water rates than many surrounding communities, board member Steve Staake said.

In other business, interim police Chief Josh Weber told board members he has contacted some residents about their unkempt properties.

Weber also asked board members about the towns burn-barrel policy. He was told that citizens cannot own burn barrels unless they have painted them to hold their trash.

The village will remove burn barrels for older residents and those who, because of health issues, cannot do it themselves, board member Ernie Gregory said.

Mayor David Werries asked Weber to speak to a resident who is keeping goats in town. The goats have been escaping their pen and neighbors are complaining about the animals being in their yards.

The village is going to finish installing new water meters on the north side of town.

Staake also presented board members with changes made to the employee handbook to be presented to the village attorney.
Over the decades, Chicago police have labeled at least 134,000 people as gang members using byzantine data collection that had little or no oversight and put many of the people at risk of a severe sentence, high bond, deportation or a lost job.

These are among the key findings of a report by Chicagos inspector general released Thursday that gives the most detailed analysis yet of the Police Departments broken gang classification system.

The departments gang database has been widely criticized over the past year  by community groups, lawsuits and the news media  as racially biased and unconstitutional, with African-Americans and Latinos making up the vast majority of those placed on the list.

Inspector General Joseph Fergusons 117-page report provides troubling new details about how bloated, unchecked and  according to Chicago police officers themselves  unreliable the data is.

The impact it has on these individuals extends far beyond the intended law enforcement purpose, Ferguson said at a City Hall news conference announcing the findings.

For the first time, the report explains how the vast gang information is collected and widely shared, revealing a complicated process in which data is gathered in at least 18 different forms, records or systems of records and made available to 500 outside agencies, including federal immigration authorities and the FBI.

CPD was unable to definitely account for all such (gang) information in its possession and control, the report said.

In a response included in the inspector generals report, the Police Department acknowledged it has built separate data systems and silos of gang information on top of each other.

The varying structure of these systems impeded CPDs ability to keep the most updated and relevant gang information readily available to the police officers who protect and serve Chicagos communities, the department acknowledged.

The department has pledged to create a new gang database that would be regularly audited and purged, but it has not announced any plans to remove information from its old system and ignored a recommendation from Ferguson to hold community hearings on the value of collecting gang data at all.

It goes without saying that criminal street gangs in Chicago pose a real, substantial and ongoing threat of violence, the department said in its response in the report. The ability to understand how these criminal networks operate, organize and potentially conflict with one another is essential to reduce violent crime.

For years, the police department has collected the data by tracking gang membership from a variety of sources, including arrests and street stops.

Officers are allowed to use broad discretion in documenting known gang affiliation. Anything from distinctive tattoos or other markings, intelligence from informants or admissions by those arrested or stopped could lead to people being listed as gang members, according to departmental general orders.

The inspector generals audit focused on data collected in the departments gang arrest cards because that information is generally considered more reliable.

The audit found many questionable entries, including one person first designated as a gang member a decade ago at age 75 and records of some 90 gang members born before 1901. In addition, some 15,000 people in the database were listed only as being affiliated with gangs. No specific gang was mentioned.

A stunningly high 88 percent of the people in the database admitted during an arrest to being in a gang. No other proof was collected.

More troubling, nearly half of the arrests that produced gang cards were for low-level crimes, calling into question whether the departments gang information offers any true intelligence about the citys most serious street crimes.
In the American criminal justice system prosecutors, unlike criminal defense lawyers, are public officials who have a duty to do justice rather than simply to win trials. This means they have the authority to drop even provable cases if, for example, they believe the crime is not too serious and the arrest is sufficient to deter the defendant from future criminal activity; or because the victim has compassion for the defendant and does not want to ruin his life; or because the financial cost of fully litigating the matter outweighs the benefit to be gained from a conviction. There are a myriad of reasons why prosecutors choose to pursue or drop any particular case. It is therefore vitally important that prosecutors use their enormous power wisely to promote the public interest.

The Office of the Cook County Illinois States Attorney recently eschewed the prosecution of Jussie Smollett, the 36-year-old black gay actor who was charged in a 16-count felony indictment with falsely reporting a hate crime in Chicago. The prosecutors dropped the charges even though they said they have more than enough evidence to convict Smollett.

Kim Foxx is the elected States Attorney for Cook County, which includes the City of Chicago. She approved the decision to let Smollett off the hook because she says it is in the interest of justice to do so and is consistent with the way other prosecutors across the country handle similar cases. According to Foxx, the decision is justified because Smollett is a first-time felony offender, has performed 16 hours of community service, has forfeited his $10,000 bond, and would probably avoid incarceration even if he were convicted after trial.

There are many who applaud Foxxs decision because it gives a second chance to someone who committed a relatively low-level offense. They argue that Smollett did not cause serious harm to anyone and should be permitted to move on with his life.

Those in opposition, however, say the decision looks like a corrupt act designed to absolve a rich and politically connected celebrity. They offer several reasons for this opinion. First, they point out that Michelle Obamas former aid, Tina Tchen, facilitated a phone call between Foxx and a Smollett family member shortly before the charge was dropped; second, they argue that Smollett strongly denies any wrongdoing and is unrepentant; third, they observe that the bond Smollett forfeited does not come close to covering the $130,000 in costs incurred by the city in investigating the bogus hate crime; and the finally, they suggest police wasted their valuable time investigating the Smollett hoax instead of preventing violent criminals from brutalizing real Chicago crime victims .

Whether or not one believes Foxxs office acted properly, there is a risk that the public may now look at the exercise of prosecutorial discretion to pursue or drop criminal charges with a jaundiced eye, especially whenever the defendant is rich, famous, or has politically powerful contacts.

Criminal defendants who have lots of money, celebrity, or friends in high places should not be treated any better or worse in our criminal justice system than the great unwashed masses. Yes, prosecutors must be careful to hold criminals accountable and protect victims. At the same time, there are instances in which the unmitigated use of prosecutorial muscle against someone charged with a crime can be counterproductive. Prosecutors must have broad discretion to do what justice requires and need not always try to win cases.

If prosecutors want to increase public confidence, they must clearly explain why they use their control of the criminal justice machinery in the way they do. The criminal justice system itself, or perhaps the voters of Cook County, will ultimately determine whether Foxxs office abused its authority in regard to Smollett or acted appropriately to protect the public interest.

Gary White is a Stamford state Superior Court judge.
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Linkedin Muhammad Asad (The Jakarta Post) Jombang, East Java  Fri, April 12, 2019 13:22 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa873295028 3 Opinion Twitter,humor,Nahdlatul-ulama,NU,religion,Islam,religious-beliefs Free

In the past years, we have seen many incidents of intolerance throughout our country, especially hatred on social media on religious identities. The case of the Saracen syndicate being paid for hateful online content a few years ago is one piece of evidence. Even though some of its members were arrested, expressions of hostility regarding religious identity continue.

Although former Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, who now goes by BTP, is free after serving out his two-year sentence for blasphemy, hatred against him and his supporters remains. Slogans of "do not vote for the party or president who supports the blasphemer of religion" still crop up ahead of the April presidential and legislative elections.

Fortunately, Twitter has several accounts that tweet funny things about our religiosity, the practices or even our fanaticism to certain belief or believers. One is NU Garis Lucu (@NUgarislucu) or NUfunny path, which joined Twitter in May 2015.

The name suggests it is related to Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesias largest Islamic organization, which emerged almost as the same time with NU Garis Lurus (true path NU), a conservative group within NU that denounces liberalism.

However, NU Garis Lucu does not seem to want to react too seriously to different interpretations of religion. Instead, it tries to loosen up our serious religious discourse with laughter and humor, following the famed character of its former leader, the late president Abdurrahman Gus Dur Wahid.

Take one of its tweets: "to be Indonesian, you have to be funny." This was a reaction to rampant labeling of clerics as heretical for having different opinions compared to "celebrity ustadz" (Islamic teacher) airing more conservative views. This tweet was clearly teasing the many "repentant" celebrities who have turned into influential ustadz especially thanks to cyberspace. The real clerics who have studied religion for most of their lives seem to lose touch, lacking equal star power.

Other tweets of course are about today's political tensions and our tendency to use our mobile phones to share hoax information or attacking electoral candidates or his/her supporters. One account tweeted: Your smartphone is your gun. Use it to the max by making people laugh so that they forget their disagreement. Takbir (God is great)!! Such tweets can make your day after a long stressful week.

Dulu, kalau lagi ngobrol terus ketemu kalimat asyik selalu ada yg bilang "eh, itu ada lagunya loh" lalu nyanyi bareng.



Sekarang, pas asyik ngobrol belum selesai, ada saja yg bilang "eh, itu ada hadistnya loh..." spontan semua tunduk terdiam.  NU Garis Lucu (@NUgarislucu) April 8, 2019

An item in the Huffington Post on July 27, 2017, cited studies showing that a religious discourse or criticism explained with humor can break through prejudice. Humor can build social ties and bond different people with diverse points of view. Indeed NU Garis Lucu helps break our prejudice, especially against those of different religious identity or interpretations.

Finger wagging believers need to note that humor is permissible in Islam as long as it does not provoke conflict with others. The humor tradition within the vast NU circle is strong. Gus Dur was known for his love of jokes, which his followers have collected into a book, and one of his ever-popular statements is gitu aja repot (why worry over a trivial thing).

Interestingly, the creation of Twitter account NU Garis Lucu is now followed by others such as Muhammadiyah Garis Lucu (@MuhammadiyahGL) that represents the second largest Islamic organization.

In social media followers of both organizations often interact with each other. As the two biggest Islamic organizations differ on some religious issues, their tweets usually discuss their differences humorously. When I was a child, I sensed the tension among their respective followers, merely triggered, for instance, by their differing dates for the beginning of the Ramadhan fasting month and consequently the following Idul Fitri celebrations. Now I can laugh a lot reading how they treat their differences with humor and jokes.

"Lebaran ini sdah gak bisa sungkem ibu. Rasanya nyesel gak dengerin kata2 beliau"



"Mmg apa kata2 beliau?"



"Ya gak tau, orang gak denger"  NU Garis Lucu (@NUgarislucu) July 13, 2016

Other similar accounts have emerged. Two of them are Gontor Garis Lucu (@GontorGarisLucu) and Hizbut Tahrir Garis Lucu (@HizbutTahrirGL). They respectively represent the well-known Gontor modern Islamic boarding school, and the banned Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI) respectively. Although formally banned, its supporters seem to continue to campaign their ideal of a caliphate or Islamic state including through humorous ways.

Nevertheless its a relief that social media has not only been used not only for spreading hoax information or hatred in the name of religion to attack others. Fortunately many also use the platforms to illuminate and amuse our friends or even adversaries. As stated by NU Garis Lucu: speak the truth even though it is funny.

***

The writer is a lecturer at the University of Hasyim Asyari, Pondok Pesantren (Islamic boarding school) Tebuireng, Jombang, East Java.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Will Dunham (Reuters) Washington, United States  Fri, April 12, 2019 09:01 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa87328438e 2 Art & Culture fossil,Philippines,human,archeology Free

Thirteen fossil bones and teeth excavated in a cave in the Philippines represent an enigmatic previously unknown human species, probably small in stature and possessing an unexpected mix of archaic and modern traits, scientists said on Wednesday.

The discovery of remains of at least three individuals from this species, named Homo luzonensis, in Callao Cave on the northern part of the island of Luzon marked the second time in the 21st century that a bygone member of the human family has been found on southeast Asian islands.

The researchers were unable to extract DNA but did determine that one of the individuals lived 67,000 years ago and the other 50,000 years ago.

In 2003, fossils of another island-dwelling species - Homo floresiensis, dubbed the "Hobbit" due to its diminutive size - were unearthed in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, some 1,800 miles (3,000 km) from the Luzon site. There is no indication the two species interacted or were closely related.

Homo luzonensis was a contemporary not only of the Hobbit but of our own species, Homo sapiens, which emerged in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago.

The scientists said they could not rule out the possibility that the arrival of our species in the region contributed to the demise of Homo luzonensis. The Hobbit also disappeared about 50,000 years ago at the same time Homo sapiens was spreading through the region.

The Luzon and Flores discoveries demonstrate that the story of human evolution is more complicated than previously understood, with Asia offering up surprises, potentially with more to come, the researchers said.

Read also: Understanding flo the 'hobbit' of Liang Bua

How big were they?

The researchers were circumspect in describing the physical appearance and lifestyle of Homo luzonensis, known only from a sparse assemblage of hand and foot bones, and teeth from two adults and one juvenile, with no skull fossils. Based on tooth size in particular, it appears it might have been much smaller than Homo sapiens, but it is unclear whether it was as little as the Hobbit, which was roughly 3-1/2 feet (1 meter) tall.

"We have to stay cautious about it, especially because people will immediately have Homo floresiensis in mind as a 'model' for the physical appearance of Homo luzonensis, which was certainly not the case," said paleoanthropologist Florent Detroit of the Musee de l'Homme-Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris.

"We can only speculate but it might be only in the range of a pygmy Homo sapiens," added archaeologist Armand Mijares, leader of the Callao Archaeological Project.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

Based on animal bones with butchering marks found at the site, it appears these people ate meat and may have used stone tools, Detroit said.

The fossils from the seven-chamber cave, situated in the foothills of Luzon's northern Sierra Madre mountains, boasted a combination of anatomical features setting it apart from other human species.

Some characteristics were similar to Homo sapiens as well as the Hobbit. Other traits were so archaic that they resembled Australopithecus, an earlier member of the human evolutionary lineage that died out roughly 2 million years ago, as well as the ancient human species Homo habilis and Homo erectus.

"For years - and until less than 20 years ago - human evolution in Asia was seen as very simple, with Homo erectus going out of Africa, settling in east and southeast Asia, and then nothing happened until the arrival of Homo sapiens at around 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and its 'conquest' of every region on Earth," Detroit said.

"With the discoveries made on the field - fossils - and in the lab, for instance genetics, we now know that it was a much more complex evolutionary history, with several distinct species contemporaneous with Homo sapiens, interbreeding events, extinctions, et cetera," Detroit added. "Homo sapiens was definitely not alone on Earth."

Topics : fossil Philippines human archeology
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Rome, Italy  Fri, April 12, 2019 10:07 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732870bf 2 Art & Culture Italy,architect,Fiat,Fiat-500,Internet,Giovanna-Parascandolo Free

At 23, Giovanna Parascandolo is less than half the age of the Fiat 500 she has just completely restored, thanks simply to books and what she calls "1990s-style" Internet forums.

"I picked up the passion by chance," the Italian architect told AFP, recounting how she got into a friend's Fiat 500 and fell in love "with the minimalist dashboard, the buttons, the switches".

The classic Fiat 500 is today much sought after, and Parascandolo sold her motorbike to buy a decrepit 1967 model for 2,000 euros ($2,250).

"It was completely rusted, didn't start, didn't brake," she said in the vast warehouse where she has installed "Nanna's Garage" and now works on her second Fiat 500.

"I took the motor to my bedroom... and when I had a moment I took it apart and restored it," she said.

Read also: 1,200 Fiat 500s mass for iconic car's 60th birthday

She spent a year on Internet forums and reading books about how to restore the car. She only asked a retired professional for help with the bodywork.

"Cutting up the rusted parts, welding... without someone to teach me, I couldn't do it," she said.

She now plans to become a bodywork apprentice to learn the necessary skills for her second car.

"I love taking them apart, understanding them, restoring them," Parascandolo says.

"The Fiat 500 was my first love, the perfect car to learn on, the height of simplicity but I do want to move onto bigger, more expensive cars."
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Oslo, Norway  Fri, April 12, 2019 05:08 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa87327f90b 2 Environment Norway,animals,fur Free

Norway's government on Wednesday detailed plans to ban fur farms by 2025, offering financial compensation to farmers who blasted it as a "historic betrayal".

A bill presented to parliament would render it illegal after 2025 to possess animals for the purpose of killing them "for the sale or any other use of their fur".

The proposed ban is the result of an agreement reached in January 2018 when the right-wing government expanded to include the small Liberal Party, which insisted on the measure.

While the fur sector has largely come to terms with the idea of a gradual dismantling of their industry, it was critical of the compensation the government was offering farmers, calling it a "historic betrayal".

"We're being offered a few kroner, which is far from compensating for the planned dismantling of farms," Guri Wormdahl, a spokeswoman for the fur farmers' organisation Norges Pelsdyralslag, told AFP.

Read also: French fashion giant Jean Paul Gaultier goes fur-free

"The way it has been designed, it will lead farmers straight to bankruptcy," she said.

The government has estimated it will have to pay farmers around 500 million kroner ($54 million) in compensation for either the dismantling or reconversion of their businesses.

According to Norges Pelsdyralslag, the country's fur farming industry employs around 500 people and has annual sales of 300 million kroner.

Norway accounts for around one percent of global mink fur production and between two and three percent of fox fur production.

Topics : Norway animals fur
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Vienna, Austria  Fri, April 12, 2019 07:04 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa873280b8f 2 Art & Culture Austria,ballet,children,Vienna,abuse,investigation Free

The ballet academy at Vienna's renowned State Opera was hit Wednesday by allegations of serious physical and mental abuse against its students, as well as sexual assault.

The weekly Falter newspaper published findings of a detailed investigation which it said exposed "19th century" methods inflicted on students, illustrating the piece with a photo of the bloodied feet of a student after a day's training.

Created in 1771, and currently with 110 pupils aged between 10 and 18, the academy is one of Europe's most prestigious and attracts applicants from across the world.

Falter reported that the allegations are being investigated by prosecutors responsible for child protection.

The State Opera's French director Dominique Meyer told Austria's ORF TV station that he wanted a "full explanation of everything that has gone wrong in this school".

He said that the teacher targeted by most of the allegations had been fired in January.

The teacher, whose name was not published, was of Russian origin and had practiced "sadistic" methods on her students, according to Falter.

A former star dancer, Gabriele Haslinger, told the paper that the teacher in question had brought "Soviet drills and Tsarist teaching methods" to the State Opera.

Read also: Male ballet dancer hopes to break stereotypes in Jordan

Allegedly hit, scratched

The investigation alleges students were hit, scratched until they bled, pulled by their hair and humiliated over their physiques, with some developing anorexia.

It says students were offered no support to ensure their psychological or nutritional well-being.

Meyer told ORF that the teacher at the center of the row had been verbally warned about her conduct two years ago.

"For a few months things were better but then she fell back into her old habits," Meyer said, adding he blamed himself for not firing the teacher sooner.

One student also brought an accusation of sexual assault against another teacher, who has been suspended while an investigation takes place.

On its internet site the State Opera's ballet academy says that it takes "particular care over students' physical and emotional well-being" and says it offers a "positive learning environment".

The academy boasts alumni who dance for some of the world's most famous companies, including London's Royal Ballet, St Petersburg's Mariinsky and New York's American Ballet Theatre.

The scandal will tarnish Meyer's record at the head of the State Opera, which he is due to leave next year after 10 years as director.

He is one of the candidates to become the next director of the Paris Opera.

Topics : Austria ballet children Vienna abuse investigation
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Linkedin Jan Hennop (Agence France-Presse) Amsterdam  Fri, April 12, 2019 18:07 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732aea43 2 Lifestyle photographer,photography,World-Press-Photo,John-Moore,crying-toddler Free

The haunting image of a little girl crying helplessly as she and her mother are taken into custody by US border officials Thursday won the prestigious World Press Photo Award.

1/3 Just announced: the World Press Photo of the Year is Crying Girl on the Border by John Moore (USA) (@jbmoorephoto), Getty Images: https://t.co/0P9mFlraG2 #WPPh2019 pic.twitter.com/7P2lOoN9I2  World Press Photo (@WorldPressPhoto) April 11, 2019

Judges said veteran Getty photographer John Moore's picture taken after Honduran mother Sandra Sanchez and her daughter Yanela illegally crossed the US-Mexico border last year showed "a different kind of violence that is psychological".

The picture of the wailing toddler was published worldwide and caused a public outcry about Washington's controversial policy to separate thousands of migrants and their children.

US Customs and Border Protection officials later said Yanela and her mom were not among those separated, but the public furore "resulted in President Donald Trump reversing the policy in June last year," the judges said.

'Fear on their faces'

Moore was taking pictures of US Border Patrol agents on a moonless night in the Rio Grande Valley on June 12 last year when they came across a group of people who tried to cross the border.

"I could see the fear on their faces, in their eyes," Moore told the US-based National Public Radio broadcaster in an interview shortly afterwards.

As officials took their names, Moore said he spotted Sandra Sanchez and her toddler who started wailing when her mom put her down to be searched.

"I took a knee and had very few frames of that moment before it was over," said Moore, who had been covering the US-Mexico border for a decade.

At the awards ceremony in Amsterdam, Moore told AFP: "I wanted to tell a different story."

"For me it was a chance to show a view of humanity that is often only related in statistics," the 51-year-old photographer said.

"I think an issue like this, immigration issues, resonates not just in the United States, but around the world," Moore also told several hundred guests at the awards.

Migrant caravan

The sensitive issue of immigration was further highlighted at Thursday's awards.

Judges chose Dutch-Swedish photographer Pieter Ten Hoopen's images of the 2018 mass-migrant caravan to the US border as its winner in the "World Press Photo Story of the Year Award".

Ten Hoopen's pictures, which show families and children as they made their way from Honduras in mid-October to the US border "showed a high sense of dignity," one of the judges said.

Ten Hoopen thanked the migrant families, saying without them his award would not have been possible.

Trump said Tuesday he won't resume separating children of undocumented migrants, but insisted that the policy did prevent people from illegal border crossings like a trip to "Disneyland".

His words came after he announced the departure Sunday of the official in charge of fighting illegal immigration -- Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

According to US media reports, Trump's reshuffle could herald even harsher measures on the southern border.

Judges selected this year's winners from 78,801 images entered by 4,738 photographers worldwide, the Amsterdam-based organisers said.

Three lensmen from AFP, John Wessels, Brendan Smialowski and Pedro Pardo were handed one second place and three third places overall in the various categories.

Based in Kinshasa, Wessels' series of pictures of last year's Congolese elections took second prize in the General News-Stories category, while his series of images about an Ebola outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo came third in the same category.

Smialowski and Pardo came third in their respective categories with a picture of Trump leading French President Emmanuel Macron by the hand and immigrants climbing over the US-Mexico border fence respectively.

Last year AFP's Ronaldo Schemidt took top honours in the 2018 competition, winning the World Press Photo Award with a fiery image of a masked Venezuelan protester in flames.
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Linkedin (Reuters) Sydney, Australia  Fri, April 12, 2019 14:08 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa873299366 2 Entertainment Geoffrey-Rush,defamation,Australia,News-Corp Free

Oscar-winner Geoffrey Rush on Thursday won initial damages of A$850,000 ($609,000) after a court ruled that the Australian arm of News Corp defamed him by saying he behaved inappropriately toward a co-star in a production of King Lear.

The Federal Court, which found News Corp's Nationwide arm and reporter Jonathon Moran's articles in the Daily Telegraph had failed to prove their allegations were true, will determine further damages later.

"This was in all the circumstances a recklessly irresponsible piece of sensationalist journalism of the worst kind, the very worst kind," Judge Michael Wigney said in a decision read to a packed courtroom in Sydney.

News Corp had no immediate comment.

Rush, 67, and a star of Australian theater, sued News Corp's Sydney tabloid over a series of articles that said he was the subject of a complaint to the Sydney Theatre Company regarding the 2015 King Lear production.

Read also: Geoffrey Rush faces fresh claims of inappropriate behavior

Under the headline "KING LEER," and in later articles, the paper said the actor, in the title role, had been accused by a co-star of unspecified inappropriate conduct.

Rush, who won the Best Actor Oscar in 1997 for Shine and has since appeared in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, said the stories implied he was a major pervert, or guilty of major depravity, and his lawyer sought "very substantial" damages.

"There are no winners in this case," Rush told reporters outside the court. "It's been extremely distressing for everyone involved."

He thanked his wife and children for their support "during this harrowing time".
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Linkedin (Reuters) Los Angeles, United States  Fri, April 12, 2019 23:08 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732c0079 2 People Pamela-Anderson,Julian-Assange,ecuador,Britain,united-states,Donald-Trump,Wikileaks Free

Former Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson attacked the British and Ecuadorean governments following the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday, and called Donald Trump a "toxic coward of a President".

Anderson, who blogged about Assange and made numerous trips to the Ecuadorean embassy in London during Assange's seven-year stay there, called him a "hero" in a series of Twitter posts.

"I am in shock," the 51-year-old actress, former Playboy model and animal rights campaigner tweeted as news broke that Ecuador had revoked Assange's asylum, paving the way for his extradition to the United States on charges related to one of the biggest-ever leaks of classified information.

"How could you Equador? ... How could you UK? " she wrote, adding, "you need a diversion from your idiotic Brexit bullshit."

"And the USA?" Anderson tweeted. "This toxic coward of a President, He needs to rally his base? - You are selfish and cruel."

Read also: Pamela Anderson gets behind bars in Paris protest against farm animal abuse

Trump on Thursday told reporters he had no opinion on the charges against Assange. In 2016, during the presidential election campaign, Trump had said "I love WikiLeaks" after it released emails that US authorities have said were hacked by Russia to harm Trump's Democratic election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Photographers had snapped Anderson, often carrying take-out food, making numerous visits to the Ecuadorean embassy in London in 2017. Assange's visitors were restricted in October 2018.

There was no word on Thursday from Lady Gaga, who was also a prominent early supporter of Assange, or from British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood.

Westwood last week posted a photo on Twitter of herself wearing a T-shirt carrying the message "I'm Julian Assange," and tweeted: "Julian's been imprisoned on a phoney claim of jumping bail. The issue is freedom of speech."
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) New York, United States  Fri, April 12, 2019 10:33 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa873287a62 2 Science & Tech black-hole,Science,Katie-Bouman,computer-algorithm Free

Anonymous to the public just days ago, a US computer scientist named Katie Bouman has become an overnight sensation due to her role in developing a computer algorithm that allowed researchers to take the world's first image of a black hole.

"I'm so excited that we finally get to share what we have been working on for the past year!" the 29 year-old Bouman, a postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, gushed on her Facebook account Wednesday after the image was published.

The term "black hole" refers to a point in space where matter is so compressed that it creates a gravity field from which even light cannot escape. The massive black hole in the photo released Wednesday is 50 million light years away at the center of a galaxy known as M87.

While the existence of black holes have been long known, the phenomenon proved impossible to witness.

In 2016, Bouman developed an algorithm named CHIRP to sift through a true mountain of data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope project from telescopes around the world to create an image.

The volume of data -- four petabytes (4 million billion bytes) -- was contained in a mountain of computer hard drives weighing several hundred pounds that had to be physically transported to the Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts, operated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

To guarantee the accuracy of the image, the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center, operated by Harvard University, gave the data to four different teams. Each team independently used the algorithm to obtain an image.

After a month of work, the four groups presented their results to the other teams.

I hope more young girls pursue career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), not just beauty vloggers.



How to take a picture of a black hole (Katie Bouman | TEDxBeaconStreet) https://t.co/5Zv12V4TMU via @TEDTalks  Henry Manampiring (@newsplatter) April 11, 2019

Read also: Black hole, flat earth and our petty quibble

"That was the happiest moment I've ever had [when] I saw all the other teams had images that were very similar, with the lower half brighter than the top half. It was amazing to see everyone got that," Bouman told The Wall Street Journal.

"No one algorithm or person made this image," wrote Bouman, who in the fall will begin work as an assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).

"It required the amazing talent of a team of scientists from around the globe and years of hard work to develop the instrument, data processing, imaging methods, and analysis techniques that were necessary to pull off this seemingly impossible feat," she said on Facebook.

"It has been truly an honor, and I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with you all."
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse) Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States  Fri, April 12, 2019 21:03 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732bd003 2 Science & Tech SpaceX,space,rocket Free

SpaceX carried out its first commercial launch on Thursday with its Falcon Heavy rocket easing a Saudi telecoms satellite into orbit.

The bright white rocket rose with a roar and spewed thick gray smoke on the ground as it made its way up into clear blue skies over Cape Canaveral, Florida, trailing a long plume of orange fire.

About 34 minutes after liftoff, the shiny silver satellite was successfully deployed. Staff in the control room cheered and clapped.

Earlier, boisterous spectators chanted along with the launch announcer who counted down the final 10 seconds before liftoff.

The Falcon Heavy rocket exerts 5.1 million pounds of thrust -- that of more than a dozen jetliners, SpaceX said.

The rocket carried a Saudi Arabian satellite operated by Arabsat, a year after sending SpaceX founder Elon Musk's slick red Tesla roadster into orbit as a test.

The Falcon Heavy had been scheduled to lift off from the Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday but that was delayed because of strong winds in the upper atmosphere.

The job was to place the six-ton Arabsat-6A satellite into geostationary orbit about 22,500 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the Earth. It went off without a hitch.

The satellite is designed to provide television, internet, telephone, and secure communications to customers in the Middle East.

Less than 10 minutes into the flight, the rocket's three boosters detached from the Falcon Heavy on schedule.

Read also: Indonesia launches first internet-only satellite with SpaceX rocket

Two of them, as planned, landed safely back on pads at Cape Canaveral, to a roar of approval from the crowd. It was quite a spectacle, with the boosters coming down gently, and vertically, fiery end first.

A third landed, also as planned, on a barge out in the Atlantic.

"Three for three boosters today," a SpaceX webcast commentator said.

SpaceX has two operational rockets: the Falcon 9, which with 21 launches in 2018 dominates the US market, and the Falcon Heavy, which as its name suggests is designed to lift much heavier payloads into more distant orbits.

It consists of the equivalent of three Falcon 9 rockets combined, tripling its thrust.

In Falcon Heavy's first launch, in February 2018, a dummy dubbed Starman was placed behind the wheel of Musk's roadster, which is currently orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars.

Since then, the US military and private clients have signed contracts for Falcon Heavy launches, and NASA has raised the possibility it may use the rocket for its planned missions to the Moon.

Topics : SpaceX space rocket
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Linkedin Chantal Valery (Agence France-Presse) Athens, Greece  Fri, April 12, 2019 17:00 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732a43da 2 Science & Tech baby,birth,three-person-baby,medical-revolution,fertility Free

A team of Greek and Spanish doctors announced Thursday the birth of a baby using DNA from three people after a controversial fertility treatment that has provoked intense ethical debate.

The team used an egg from the infertile mother, the father's sperm and another woman's egg to conceive the baby boy, transferring genetic material with chromosomes from the mother to the egg of a donor whose own genetic material had been removed in a process its creators hailed as a medical "revolution".

A similar DNA-switching technique was used in Mexico in 2016 to avoid transmission of a mother's hereditary illness to her child.

But the case in Greece is the first time an IVF (in vitro fertilisation) technique using DNA from three people has been deployed to allow a mother otherwise unable to conceive to have a child.

The baby, born Thursday and weighing in at 2.96 kilos (6.5 pounds), was delivered by a 32-year-old Greek woman who had undergone several unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilisation, Greece's Institute of Life said in a statement.

Institute of Life president Dr Panagiotis Psathas, stated: "Today, for the first time in the world, a woman's inalienable right to become a mother with her own genetic material became a reality.

"As Greek scientists, we are very proud to announce an international innovation in assisted reproduction, and we are now in a position to make it possible for women with multiple IVF failures or rare mitochondrial genetic diseases to have a healthy child."

Dr Psathas added: "Our commitment is to continue to help even more couples facing fertility issues to have children with their own DNA, without having recourse to egg donors."

Read also: Mini miracle: 'Record-breaking' preemie leaves Tokyo hospital

'Will help countless women'

His scientific collaborator of the Institute of Life, Dr Nuno Costa-Borges, also hailed the news.

"The completely successful and safe implementation of the Maternal Spindle Transfer method - for the first time in medical history - is a revolution in assisted reproduction," Dr Costa-Borges said.

He added that "this exceptional result will help countless women to realise their dream of becoming mothers with their own genetic material."

In the Mexican case, the mother had been suffering from Leigh syndrome, a rare illness which affects the developing nervous system and can be fatal. In her case, the disorder had previously caused the deaths of two of her children.

Using the triple DNA technique to aid in infertility cases raises complex ethical issues, however.

Tim Child, Oxford University professor and medical director of the Fertility Partnership, expressed his concern.

"I'm concerned that there's no proven need for the patient to have her genetic material removed from her eggs and transferred into the eggs of a donor.

"The risks of the technique aren't entirely known, though may be considered acceptable if being used to treat mitochondrial disease, but not in this situation," said Child.
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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse)  Sat, April 13, 2019 01:01 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732c1038 2 Entertainment trailer,studio-ghibli,Ni-no-Kuni,Animated-films Free

With roots in a game co-developed by "Spirited Away" and "Ponyo" house Studio Ghibli, "Ni no Kuni" is being prepared for theatrical release mid-2019.

Based on a game series inspired by the films of Studio Ghibli, "Ni no Kuni" tells the story of two high schoolers trying to save a childhood friend both in this world and another one.

After a near-death experience, Yuu and Haru gain access to a parallel fantasy world, finding that another pal, Kotona, is endangered in both realms.

Studio Ghibli, well known for a cadre of animated features that include the award-winning "Spirited Away," "My Neighbor Totoro," "Ponyo" and "The Wind Rises," had assisted video game developer Level-5 in making 2010's Nintendo DS game "Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn" and 2011 PlayStation 3 equivalent "Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch."

Read also: Disney's 'Lion King' remake roars to life with new trailer

Both were extremely well received for their excellence as role-playing adventures and skill in blending video game elements with anime form and charm, the latter especially so after gaining international release.

Ghibli was not formally involved with "Ni no Kuni II," released worldwide on PlayStation 4 and Windows PC in 2018, but several senior creatives led key aspects of development.

With this feature film's story original to the franchise, dealing with similar concepts while set in the same dual worlds, Ghibli's Yoshiyuki Momose, Akihiro Hino, and Joe Hisaishi remain in place, reprising their roles as director, writer and composer respectively.

However, instead of Ghibli, it's fellow Japanese studio OLM that's overseeing the film's production, having worked on a host of high-profile games adaptations including shows and movies based on the "Pokemon," "Yo-Kai Watch," and "Tamagotchi" series.

A Japanese theatrical debut is set for sometime over Summer 2019, with news to follow of any international release plans.

Japanese actor and model Kento Yamazaki, who had a co-starring role in a 2015 adaptation of "Death Note" and the Japanese version of K-drama "Good Doctor," is to voice Yuu, per social media announcements accompanying the trailer.
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Linkedin Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019

India and Indonesia are hosting general elections this month, with more than 1 billion eligible voters between them headed to the polls  arguably some of the worlds largest fetes of democracy by two of the three largest democracies in the world.

In India, some 900 million eligible voters are beginning to descend upon the more than 1 million voting booths erected in all 20 states to exercise their civic rights in seven phases, beginning Wednesday and ending on May 19.

While both countries face the challenge of scale, Indonesia faces the additional challenge of complexity, as an estimated 192 million people will cast their votes to elect a presidential and vice presidential candidate, as well as members of the House of Representatives, the Peoples Consultative Assembly and the Regional Legislative Councils, all in one sitting next Wednesday.

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Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Denpasar  Fri, April 12, 2019 18:48 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732b1c57 1 National Bulgaria,bali,skimming,arrest,ATM Free

Four Bulgarians have been arrested in Bali for skimming bank cards. They allegedly stole card data at ATMs and withdrew money from their victims' bank accounts. The four Bulgarians are identified as Kalayon Kirilov Spasov, 38, Lyubomir Todorov Bogdanov, 33, Nikolay Valentinov Dinev, 39 and Valentin Chavdarov Galchev, 31.

We arrested all the suspects [red-handed] in Pecatu, South Kuta, Bali Police general crime director Sr. Comr. Andi Fairan told a press conference on Friday.

Andi explained that at the time of the arrest, the perpetrators had just withdrawn some money from an ATM. We seized Rp 2 million [US$141.70] in cash from the suspect. They withdrew the money from the victim's bank account through the ATM, Andi said.

The suspects put a hidden camera inside the ATM to record PIN numbers. They put a fake PIN keypad cover in the ATM, which has been attached with a hidden camera. Once they make a fake card using data they steal, they can withdraw money using the PIN number, Andi said.

The suspects face a potential prison sentence of more than five years as the police will charge them under the Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) Law and the Criminal Code.

Andi alleged that the suspects were related to a previous arrest. Earlier this year, Bali Police arrested five other Bulgarians in a similar case. They are from the same syndicate. Further investigations into this case are still ongoing, Andi said.

Topics : Bulgaria bali skimming arrest ATM
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Linkedin Vela Andapita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019

Ahead of next weeks general election, a number of prominent religious figures have called on all Indonesians, voters and candidates alike, to uphold humanity above all other interests.

At the discussion Forum Titik Temu (Meeting Point Forum), held in Jakarta on Wednesday, speakers representing all six recognized religions in Indonesia took turns expressing their take on faith, nationalism and peace. The forum was held in response to heightened tensions during the campaign period, sparked by political, religious and ethnic differences and the prospect of conflicts after the elections.

Among those who spoke at the forum were former first lady and women rights activist Shinta Nuriyah Wahid, Muslim intellectual Ahmad Syafii Maarif and the wife of late Muslim scholar Nurcholis Madjid, Omi Komariah.

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Linkedin Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019 17:45 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732ab99f 1 World Foreign-Ministry,Abu-Sayyaf,Indonesia,Malaysia,Philippines,Sulu,hostage-escapees,trilateral-patrols Free

Heri Ardiansyah, an Indonesian fisherman recently freed from months of abduction by a notorious Philippines-based armed group, was unable to stay composed as his glance fell on the blue hijab-wearing woman approaching him.

There was a lull in the crowd of onlookers just before Heri made his devastation clear.

I am sorry, Bu. I really am sorry, said the 18-year-old man in a quavering voice, during a ceremonial affair at the Foreign Ministry complex in Jakarta this week.

This woman, alongside a few other people assembling around Heri  including Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi  burst into tears as they hugged him in turn.

Nurhaida was the wife of Heris friend, 45-year-old Hariadin, who along with him and Malaysian national Jari Abdullah was abducted on Dec. 5 last year by the Abu Sayyaf group as they sailed through the Kinabatangan River in Sandakan, Malaysia  just a short distance from the Philippines Tawi-Tawi islands.

Heri and Hariadin resolved to escape the clutches of their captors when last Thursday, clashes erupted between the armed group and Philippine security forces around Simisa Island in the southern island chain of Sulu.

They swam away, initially aiming to reach the nearest islet, Bangalao, but were only found in the water 22 hours later by Philippine officials.

Heri was rescued, but his friend did not make it alive, having drowned in their escape attempt.

Malaysian national Jari, who was airlifted for his gunshot wounds after the clash, also perished.

Heri and the late Hariadin were the last two Indonesian hostages to have been held by the Abu Sayyaf group.

Indonesias coastal fishermen had been easy targets for the group since 2016. In March of that year, 10 Indonesians were abducted near the border area, and in response to that, Jakarta initiated what eventually became the INDOMALPHI trilateral maritime patrols.

The patrol, aimed at maintaining security in the Sulu-Sulawesi waters, started out successfully but after a 21-month stretch of calm, two Indonesian fishermen were kidnapped near Malaysias Gaya Island off the east coast of Sabah on Sept. 11, 2018.

Within that three-year period, a total of 36 Indonesian fishermen were kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf group and its various splinter cells. Of that figure, all but one was safely rescued.

At Thursdays event, minister Retno symbolically handed over Heri and Hariadins remains to their respective families and called on Indonesian fishermen to be wary of the Sulu waters, where the abduction of foreign seamen still occurs.

"The activities of armed groups in the southern Philippines still continue. Because of this, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia continue to carry out trilateral cooperation to maintain security in the Sulu waters and its surroundings," she said.

Earlier this year, during her annual press statement, Retno conceded that the flurry of kidnappings in the Sulu region was one of the main challenges facing Southeast Asian nations.

Deka Anwar, an analyst with the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict (IPAC), said the three countries must involve other maritime law enforcement agencies to ensure the security of the Sulu-Sulawesi seas, as the role remains exclusively held by military forces.

He said agencies like the water police unit (Polair), the coast guard and port security had yet to be involved.

In particular, regarding the Abu Sayyaf group, inter-police cooperation must be strengthened, especially in sharing information regarding the investigation of the groups caught members to systematically understand the kidnap-for-ransom network in the Sulu archipelago and Sabah, he told The Jakarta Post recently.

Earlier this year, IPAC released a report in which it called on countries to go beyond military solutions in maintaining peace and stability in the waters.

To address both kidnapping and terrorism, it said, the related parties should work on good intelligence by, among other things, arresting kidnappers alive and debriefing them as they are hoped to reveal information about networks and syndicates.
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Linkedin Made Anthony Iswara (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019

After waiting for an answer for nearly three days, Tangerang resident Rusman Hia was caught off guard on Wednesday when district officials declined his A5 form request to cast his vote outside of his electoral district in Bunaken, South Sulawesi.

I didnt know that they had stopped processing A5 form registrations. Its a shame because I think it's important for everyone to vote, said Rusman, who had to fly to Surabaya a few days before the deadline.

The case was different for Ade Kania Pramesty, 21, who failed to register her application as she was struck by dengue fever a day before registration closed. As a Depok resident who now studies at a university in Semarang, Central Java, she expressed hope that her local polling station would allow her to vote.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019 14:01 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa873298629 4 Business manufacturing-industry,economic-growth,industrialization,Kadin,indef Free

GDP growth that has been hovering around 5 percent in recent years has become a tool for presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto to attack incumbent Jokowi Jokowi Widodo, who promised 7 percent growth in his campaign five years ago.

However, analysts see that it is not easy to achieve 6 to 7 percent growth, particularly if the country struggles to escape sluggish growth in manufacturing.

Institute for the Development of Economics and Finance (Indef) economist Andry Satrio Nugroho said Indonesia was not alone in the slowdown in manufacturing. He said 20 countries in which manufacturing contributed the most to economic growth had also experienced similar slowdowns.

He, however, said Indonesia had experienced a more serious slowdown compared to its peers in Southeast Asia. He said in the last 10 years the contribution of manufacturing to GDP growth had decreased 7 percent.

The contribution of manufacturing to GDP growth in Thailand and Malaysia has also decreased, but it was only about 4 percent, he said on Tuesday as quoted by kontan.co.id.

Andry pointed out the impacts of deindustrialization.

First, it would reduce tax revenue. He noted that as of February, revenue from manufacturing contracted to 11.3 percent of total tax revenue year-on-year (yoy) or Rp 36.87 trillion (US$2.6 billion). Over the same period last year, tax revenue from the sector grew 13.2 percent yoy.

Second, it would lower employment. In Indonesia, manufacturing employs 14.05 percent of the workforce, he said.

Another Indef economist, Fadhil Hasan, added that deindustrialization had also forced more workers to rely on the informal sector.

Many agricultural workers have shifted to the service sector, with the informal service sector taking on more workers, he said, referring to ride-hailing app drivers.

He said GDP growth could not be increased significantly if manufacturing was weak.

Since the economic crisis in 1998, manufacturing growth has always been lower than GDP growth. Last year, GDP grew 5.17 percent, while manufacturing grew 4 percent.

Andry said foreign investment was focused on services and the digital economy rather than manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry deputy chairman for monetary, fiscal and public policy Raden Pardede stressed that the government should boost manufacturing through the simplification of licensing.

We have to lift barriers for doing business as well as eliminate [unnecessary] costs, he said as quoted by kontan.co.id, adding it was more important than offering incentives to potential investors.

He also suggested Indonesia needed to open the door for raw material imports, adding that boosting the export-oriented manufacturing sector would help the country's GDP to grow faster. (bbn)
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Linkedin Kharishar Kahfi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12 2019

The government has said it will not accept any out-of-court settlement with Thai-based oil company PTT Exploration and Production (PTTEP) Australasia over the 2009 oil spill in the Timor Sea as talks between the two collapsed.

It has been roughly 10 years since an explosion rocked a rig operated by PTTEP Australasia, a subsidiary of the Thai oil production company PTT, causing hundreds of thousand of barrels of oil and gas to spill into the sea.

The Australian Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism estimated that more than 2,000 barrels of oil had leaked into the surrounding water each day, until the oil company succeeded in capping the well three months later.

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Linkedin Rizal Harahap (The Jakarta Post) Pekanbaru  Fri, April 12, 2019 17:33 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732ab8fe 1 National Riau,crocodile Free

A man identified as Subli, 35, a worker at PT Riau Sakti United Plantations (RSUP) in Indragiri Hilir regency, Riau, was killed in a suspected crocodile attack while fishing in a canal at a coconut farm owned by the company.

Subli, who was a resident of Pulau Burung village in Pekanbaru, Riau, had decided to go fishing with his coworker, Agus Riyanto, on Wednesday afternoon. They traveled for an hour on a motorcycle to reach the fishing site.

At around 10 p.m., Subli left Agus to wash his hands in the canal, which was only 10 meters away, before eating his packed dinner. That was the last time Agus saw Subli.

Not long afterward, Agus heard a noise, like something falling into the water  it was quite loud. Subli had disappeared, Pulau Burung Police chief, First Insp. Erizal, told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

Agus then went to where he last saw Subli washing his hands. Using his torch, he inspected the water and reportedly saw air bubbles floating to the surface then moving from the edge of the water to the middle of the pond.

Fearing that a crocodile had attacked Subli, Agus rushed home and told an RSUP security guard about what had happened.

The incident was then reported to the local security guards and the police, Erizal said.

A group of residents and police and military personnel soon began searching for Subli, whose body was found the next day, some 3 kilometers from where he and Agus were fishing.

After an autopsy was performed by the Teluk Belengkong community health center, the victims body was immediately transferred to the home of his siblings in Teluk Bakau village, Pengaliran district, Erizal added.

Several crocodile attacks have occurred within the RSUP compound. In January last year, a freelance worker of the company identified as Tulus, 40, was attacked by a crocodile as he was resting at the edge of the same canal in which Subli disappeared.

His body was found a few hours later, 5 m away from where he was last seen.

Topics : Riau crocodile
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Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya and N. Adri (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta/Balikpapan  Fri, April 12 2019

Resource-rich Kalimantan is among the most diverse regions in the country. With a direct border with Malaysia in the north, the Indonesian part of Borneo Island hosts communities of multiple races, ethnicities and religions.

The Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and the Golkar Party have traditionally dominated Kalimantan, resulting in the victory of PDI-P member Joko Jokowi Widodo as president and Jusuf Kalla as vice president in 2014.

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Linkedin A. Muh. Ibnu Aqil (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019

Siti Aisah and Olvialine Takayeitouw were among the women who had never spoken up, let alone addressed an audience. But the women respectively from West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and Papua came to believe they not only had the right and ability to speak up but also assist neighbors to access public services, handle domestic violence cases and sit on local forums making important decisions for their communities.

The efforts of Siti Aisah, 47, and other locals even led to a village rule in Dasan Cermen, Sandubaya in Mataram and later a gubernatorial decree on preventing child marriage in NTB, a province with a high number of child marriages.

The women attributed their self-confidence to paralegal training held by local chapters of the Legal Aid Foundation of Indonesian Women's Association for Justice (LBH APIK). The organization launched on Tuesday its APIK Gender Justice Index, aimed at measuring gender parity in diverse categories including political power.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019 18:40 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732b1090 1 National #news-portal,fake-news,hoax,journalist,journalistic-code-ethics,Press-Council,Communications-and-Information-Ministry,task-force Free

A special task force authorized to take down all non-credible news portals was officially established on Friday after a long-standing plan. The task force is formed jointly by the Communications and Information Ministry and the Press Council.

The ministry conveyed the idea in 2017 but the plan did not materialize until Friday.

The task force will take down all news portals that fail to disclose their company name, organizational structure, legal entity and address as required by the 1999 law on press.

The task force will simplify our work to block all news portals not registered with the Press Council, Semuel A. Pangerapan, the ministry's information applications director general, said in a press conference at the ministrys building in Central Jakarta.

According to the Press Council, there are currently around 47,000 news portals operating in the country and only around 2,400 that are registered.

This partnership is aimed at returning the pride of true journalists that have been affected by widespread hoaxes from non-credible media, Yosep Stanley Adi Prasetyo, the council chief, said.

Stanley said further that some uncertified media not only spread fake news but also extorted money from government officials. The secretary to the Tambrauw regency in West Papua was among those reported to have been blackmailed.

Journalists from some local media outlets demanded [the regional secretary] pay them Rp 10 million [US$706] for personal advertising that was never asked for, he said. (das)
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Linkedin Gemma Holliani Cahya and Ruslan Sangaji (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta and Luwuk  Fri, April 12, 2019 19:28 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732bbcd8 1 National tsunami-warning,BMKG,earthquake,central-sulawesi,Central-Sulawesi-earthquake Free

Indonesias Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) lifted a tsunami warning it had released earlier after a 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck Morowali, Central Sulawesi, on Friday at around 6:40 p.m.

The earthquake epicenter was located 85 kilometers southwest of Banggai Islands, Central Sulawesi. (iwa)
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Linkedin Nurni Sulaiman and Apriadi Gunawan (The Jakarta Post) Medan  Fri, April 12, 2019 14:30 978 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa87329964a 1 National explosion,Medan,North-Sumatra,fatalities Free

Two siblings, identified only as Javier, 10 and Eren, 2, have died in a gas explosion that occurred at a shellfish satay stall in Sekip subdistrict, Medan, North Sumatra at 6:45 p.m. on Thursday.

Eight adults were also severely injured, including the owner of the stall Rahmat Efendi and his wife, Nurmala Dewi, who suffered from severe burns. Other victims were identified as Tria, Forina Wati, Fransiska Natalia and Natalia. All of them are currently being treated at Royal Prima Hospital and Advent Hospital.

The explosion also caused damage to four shops near Rahmats stall, which was in the middle of a souvenir center on Jl. Kruing.

Medan Police chief Sr. Comr. Dadang Hartanto said the forensic team was investigating the cause of the explosion.

We still do not know what caused the explosion that killed the two children, Dadang told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

One of the witnesses, the stalls worker Irma, said the stall's gas system had experienced problems since Thursday morning.

Head of sales of state-owned gas company Perusahaan Gas Negara (PGN) in Medan, Syaiful Hadi, said he had deployed a team to verify the cause of the explosion.

Syaiful said their investigation showed that the explosion was allegedly caused by a gas canister leak.

"In Rahmats stall we found a 12-kilogram and four 3-kilogram liquefied petroleum gas canisters. One was allegedly leaking. That seemed to be the reason. So, it was not because of PGNs natural gas, he said.
Photo taken on Oct. 22, 2017 shows a snow leopard with its cub at Three-river-source National Park in northwest China's Qinghai Province. Li Yuhan can still vividly remember when she encountered snow leopards two years ago at Sanjiangyuan, meaning "source for three rivers," in northwest China's Qinghai Province. "I was with a scientific survey team, and we were heading toward a mountain top in Namsel Township of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture," said Li, a student of Peking University. "I saw seven snow leopards on that single day." Li said it was a cloudy day, and the grassland was quite slippery. "We saw a snow leopard hiding behind a huge rock, feasting on a blue sheep," she recalled. When nighttime came as the group returned, they saw a female leopard and her two babies climbing up the mountain top right across where they were walking. "The snow leopards' eyes were sparkling in green lights," Li said. "We were very excited because it was the first time that we saw snow leopards in the wild." The township of Namsel has an average altitude of more than 4,000 meters above sea level and forms part of the Sanjiangyuan National Park or the Three-River-Source National Park. Sanjiangyuan is home to the headwaters of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers and many rare wildlife species. It has been dubbed "Asia's water tower."

Snow leopards have been thriving in the Sanjiangyuan area thanks to government efforts to protect the wild animals and a crackdown on poaching. The latest figures show that more than 1,000 snow leopards have been found in the area. Tashi Dongdre, Communist Party chief of Namsel Township, said the township has more than 181,667 hectares of land, but the population there was just 8,471. So far, more than 100 infrared cameras have been installed in the township, with more than 80 local herdsmen joining hands with scientists in observing the wild leopards. "We have so far observed 40 snow leopards, and footage of the animals living, hunting, or mating have been collected for scientific research," Tashi said. Authorities are building the Sanjiangyuan National Park to better protect wildlife there, including the snow leopards. The park, under construction since 2016, is set to open in 2020. "Building the park will help protect the biodiversity, and better protect the rare species here," said Jiu Xie, with the management bureau of the park. Since 2016, the population of wild animals such as snow leopards, brown bears and yaks in the area has been recovering, Jiu said. Snow leopards are a Class A protected animal in China and are classified as "vulnerable" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They live in the Himalayas in central and south Asia at an altitude of 2,500 to 4,500 meters. (Xinhua)

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Linkedin Andi Hajramurni (The Jakarta Post) Makassar  Fri, April 12, 2019 09:37 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa873285aca 1 National drug-dealer,Indonesia,crime,murder-case,death-sentence,Makassar Free

Two members of a drug gang in Makassar, South Sulawesi, were sentenced to death after being found guilty of murdering a family of six.

The defendants cried after hearing the verdict, which was read out by presiding judge Supriyadi at the Makassar District Court on Thursday.

In August last year, the defendants -- M. Ilho Ilham, 23, and Sulkifli Ramma Amir, 22 -- burned down a house where 24-year-old Ahmad Fahri stayed because Fahri owed Rp 10 million (US$706) to Akbar Daeng Ampu, an inmate in Gunungsari, Makassar, who was in jail for drug offenses. The money was meant to buy a packet of crystal methamphetamine.

Akbar ordered the men to kill Fahri, who was hiding at his grandfathers house in Tallo, Makassar. Ilham and Sulkifli proceeded to burn the house down, killing Fahri, his grandparents, aunt and cousins who were all sleeping at the time. The victims were identified as Sanusi, 70, Bondeng, 65, Musdalifah, 40, Namira Ramadina, 21, and Hijaz, 5.

Akbar was found dead in an isolation cell in Makassar prison on Oct. 23 last year.

The police ruled out suicide due to the fact that they had found a bruise on his neck, which was caused by a chain. Prior to his death, Akbar was sentenced to an additional 10 years for the murders.

On Thursday, the judges found Ilham and Sulkifli guilty of committing premeditated murder.

The defendants are guilty of premeditated murder as stipulated in the Criminal Code and are subject to the death penalty, said Supriyadi on Thursday.

The sentence was what the prosecutors had demanded.

It is very clear that the perpetrators planned the murders since it was conducted during the night when everyone was asleep. We also have to consider the fact that the perpetrators also bought the gasoline to burn down the house, Tabrani said as quoted by kompas.com on Apr. 4.

One of the defendants lawyers, Sriwahyuni, said she was still considering whether to appeal the courts ruling.

I will talk about this with the defendants as well as with the other lawyers to see if we will appeal the ruling, Sriwahyuni told The Jakarta Post.
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Linkedin Karina M. Tehusijarana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, April 12, 2019

Despite the many political and electoral reforms enacted after the New Order era, Indonesias elections are still marred by a seemingly intractable problem: vote buying.

The recent arrest of Golkar Party lawmaker Bowo Sidik Pangarso for suspected graft is a stark example of this. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) confiscated dozens of cardboard boxes containing thousands of cash-filled envelopes that were reportedly to be used in buying votes on election day.

Burhanuddin Muhtadi, a political observer and executive director of Jakarta-based pollster Indikator Politik Indonesia, wrote in his 2018 doctoral thesis that 33 percent of all voters received money or other goods in exchange for their votes in the 2014 legislative election.

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Linkedin Karina M. Tehusijarana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, April 13 2019

Backup plan: A worker checks a power generator at the General Elections Commission (KPU) office on Friday. State-owned electricity company PLN has formed a special task force to ensure there will be no power disruption in the area on April 17.(JP/Dhoni Setiawan)

Despite the many political and electoral reforms enacted after the New Order era, Indonesias elections are still marred by a seemingly intractable problem: vote buying.

The recent arrest of Golkar Party lawmaker Bowo Sidik Pangarso for suspected graft is a stark example of this. The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) confiscated dozens of cardboard boxes containing thousands of cash-filled envelopes that were reportedly to be used in buying votes on election day.

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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) -  Fri, April 12, 2019 10:43 979 db1d47cf6ffbed4060cffaa8732880b3 1 News Marine-Diving-Fair-Tokyo,tourism,marine-tourism,travel,#travel Free

The Tourism Ministry participated in the Marine Diving Fair (MDF) in Japan to promote the marine tourism sector worldwide. The event took place at the Sunshine City Convention Center in Tokyo from April 5 to 7.

The ministry's participation in this event is to promote Indonesia as one of the favorite marine tourism destinations, especially for diving, Ardi Hermawan, assistant deputy of marketing development region II, said in a press release.

The promotional effort is expected to increase the number of tourists, thus achieving the target of 20 million international tourists by 2019.

The event, which began in 1993, is the biggest and most popular diving tourism fair in Japan. It attracted 50,598 people in 2018, 82 percent of whom are divers and another 18 percent of whom represent resorts.

The Indonesian pavilion at the event features 15 companies from eight provinces. Most of them are diving locations such as North Sulawesi Travel from North Sulawesi, PT. Indonesia Kaktus Wisata Tirta (Poni Divers Bali) from Bali, Lembeh Resort from North Sulawesi, Noah Maratua Resort from East Kalimantan, PT. Putra Papua Baru from West Papua, PT. Bali Ocean Adventure (Blue Season Bali) from Bali, Ena Dive Travel & Marine Adventure from Bali and Cocotinos Hotels & Resorts from North Sulawesi.

Also at the event are Sangalaki Resort from North Kalimantan, Grand Komodo Raja Ampat Dive Lodge from Bali, Siladen Island Resort & Spa from North Sulawesi, Pearl of Papua Indonesia from Central Java, Doberai Private Island from West Papua, Dive Dream from Bali as well as Garuda Indonesia, according to Ardi.

Apart from exhibitions, presentations on the main stage by Indonesian diving experts, spa services and cultural performances were offered by the Indonesian pavilion, as well as business and consumer meetings and a tourist information service.

Furthermore, Indonesias world-renowned coffee will also be served.

Read also: 2019 Sail Nias launched in Jakarta, expected to boost marine tourism

Tourist Minister Arief Yahya describes the MDF as a great opportunity to promote Indonesias marine tourism to diving enthusiasts in Japan, which would boost the national tourism industry.

If we discuss marine tourism, I have no doubt Indonesia is the champion. Indonesias coastline is the longest after Canada. Moreover, two thirds of the worlds best reefs are located here. If you want to dive and snorkel, then go to Indonesia. This is what we are offering at the MDF this year, the minister said. (sop/mut)




Union workers from card firms hold a protest rally against the strengthened regulation to cut card transaction fee in Yeouido, Seoul in March. Korea Time file
Hanwha Life Insurance Vice Chairman and CEO Cha Nam-gyu, second from left, and Hanwha Life Vietnam President Baek Jong-guk, first from left, pose with this year's best Hanwha Life Vietnam planner, center, during the 10th anniversary event for the insurer's entry to the Vietnamese market in Danang, Vietnam, Thursday. / Courtesy of Hanwha Life Insurance.

By Jhoo Dong-chan



Hanwha Life Insurance celebrated the 10th anniversary of its entry into the Vietnamese market.



As Korea's first insurer entering the market, Hanwha Life managed to grow tenfold in operating profit over the past ten years. It has now become the Southeast Asian country's eighth-largest life insurer.



Hanwha Life Insurance said Friday it held its 10th anniversary event in Danang, a coastal city in central Vietnam, Thursday. The insurer's Vice Chairman and CEO Cha Nam-gyu also participated in the event to celebrate its successful business over the past ten years while awarding the best local life planner.



"Hanwha Life has been the fastest growing life insurer in Vietnam over the past ten years," Cha said during the event.



"Thanks to its employees and life planners' relentless efforts, Hanwha Life's corporate body in Vietnam has successfully demonstrated its business quality. Under the Hanwha Group's motto of 'further together,' it will grow into a life insurer leading the Southeast Asian region."



In April 2009, Hanwha Life established its corporate body in Vietnam by financing 100 percent shares on its own. It first started with only 450 life planners in five branches, but has now grown into a life insurer with 14,319 planners in 106 branches across the country.



Hanwha Life said its success in the country is attributed to its localization strategy. Expect for President Baek Jong-guk and two other Korean workers, the all 305 Hanwha Life Insurance Vietnam staff are Vietnamese.



"Baek and the Korean workers have done their best to strengthen ties with Vietnamese workers for better performance," a Hanwha Life official said in a press release.



"Their bond is now solid. Many life planners also fully trust and follow the Korean staff."



Hanwha Life Vietnam posted a 121.5 billion won ($106.6 million) operating profit last year, more than tenfold its 2009 figure of 11.6 billion won.



Despite its external growth, the insurer is also facing hurdles.



It posted 500 million won worth of net profit for the first time in 2016 since it entered the Vietnamese market but has since marked a loss for the next two years.



Hanwha Life Vietnam posted a 13.9 billion won net loss in 2017 and another 7.9 billion won net loss last year.



In a bid to strengthen its global businesses, Hanwha Life appointed Hanwha Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn's second son Dong-won as the head of the insurer's overseas operations.


The U.S. version of the smiley face emoji, left, comes from a "toothy" smile, whereas the Japanese emoji features smiling "eyes," according to a Japanese scholar. Korea Times graphic by Cho Sang-won



'Culture Code' delves into way of thinking behind country-specific phenomena



By Kang Hyun-kyung



In the digital age, emoticons or emojis are an essential part of life for Koreans. They are used extensively in emails, text messages and online and mobile messenger apps.



According to free mobile instant messaging app KakaoTalk, emoticons were used 2 billion times per month in 2018 and the frequency has surged in recent years. In 2012, for example, emoticons were used 400 million times every month.



Kim Sae-won, author of "A Glimpse of Globe Through Culture Code" published by Person and Idea publishing house, says Koreans are educated not to reveal their emotions openly, particularly in working relationships, and their extensive use of emoticons in private communications with their friends or family appears to have something to do with this upbringing.



"Unlike Western people, Asians, particularly Koreans and Japanese, are taught not to show their emotions openly to others," the book reads. "In a culture where revealing one's emotions is natural, however, people don't hide their feelings. They reveal their emotions freely in various ways. Smiley faces, grins, ridiculous looks, gestures and other various types of facial expressions are common in their daily communication. Contrary to such an open culture, in a society where people have to show restraint, people don't reveal their emotions through facial expressions."





Kim Sae-won's "A Glimpse of Globe Through Culture Code" published by Person and Idea publishing house



"Culture Code" delves into the way of thinking behind certain cultural phenomena. The author focuses on 27 country-specific phenomena across the globe and explains how local cultures are intertwined behind them.



Kim, also an invited professor at Konkuk University Graduate School of Public Administration and director of the Institute for Branding Global Culture, says culture codes appeared to have played a part in the stark differences in the use of emoticons between the East and the West.



Emoticons are popular in Korea and Japan, whereas people using chatting apps created in the West, such as Whatsapp, use relatively fewer emoticons than East Asians.



Kim says culture also has affected the forms of emoticons. Citing the 2007 research conducted by Masaki Yuki, a professor at Hokkaido University School of Humanities and Human Sciences, Kim says different cultures create different emoticons for the same feelings.



Yuki focused on two emoticons representing smiley faces that are used in the United States and Japan. Americans use :), whereas the Japanese version of a smiley face is ^-^ .



The Japanese scholar was quoted as saying that the U.S. version of the smiley face emoji comes from a "toothy" smile whereas the Japanese emoji features smiling "eyes."



Many Koreans use the same smiling emoji that the Japanese use.



Older Koreans say, "If you want to know whether your counterpart is telling the truth or not, you should look at their eyes." This cultural thinking seems to be behind Koreans' use of the smiling eyes emoticon.





Kim Sae-won, an invited professor at Konkuk University Graduate School of Public Administration and director of the Institute for Branding Global Culture / Courtesy of Kim Sae-won
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his wife Kim Jung-sook in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, early April 12. AP-Yonhap



By Kim Yoo-chul



President Moon Jae-in's "urgent plea" to U.S. President Donald Trump to support limited and minor sanctions relief that affects the lives of North Korean citizens is bringing results as Trump signaled he remains open to an incremental deal with North Korea.



"We are discussing certain humanitarian things right now and I am okay with that, to be honest, and you have to be okay with that. South Korea is doing certain things to help out with food and various things with North Korea," Trump told reporters at the start of a bilateral meeting with President Moon in the Oval Office, early on April 12 (KST).



U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met recently with the head of the U.N. food agency and discussed possible ways for providing relevant assistance. Pyongyang is running short on food and oil reserves that wouldn't last for a year, reports said. North Korea's ambassador to the U.N. Kim Song sent letters to international organizations last month appealing for food donations.



Asked if the United States would accept a "smaller deal" over the North's nuclear disarmament, a phased approach preferred by the Koreas with Washington offering some incentives based on the progress of nuclear disarmament, Trump responded; "There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen."



But he said Washington has no imminent plans for easing economic sanctions on the impoverished North Korea.



"We want sanctions to remain in place," Trump said, stressing it's "not the right time" for discussions of the possibility for an early reopening of frozen inter-Korean economic projects in the North such as the Gaeseong Industrial Complex and tourism to Mount Geumgang.





President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook wave before returning to a military air base in Seongnam near Seoul from Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., after holding a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House,early on April 12 (KST). Yonhap




Armed drug suspect arrested, 4k meth pills seized

PHUKET: Two men have been arrested for drugs, with one of the men found carrying a .357 revolver, Phuket Provincial Police have announced.

drugscrimepolice

By Eakkapop Thongtub

Friday 12 April 2019, 11:24AM

Teerasak Lek Kulchawa, 32, was arrested in Moo 7, Srisoonthorn, Thalang after he was found in possession of 4,000 methamphetamine pills (ya bah) and 172.59 grams of crystal meth (ya ice) as well as a .357 handgun and 12 bullets, and two digital weighing machines.

Teersak was taken to Thalang Police Station and charged with possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.

The second person announced as arrested was Pattanapong Toh Jeerathumsoonthorn, 28, who was arrested in Talad Yai, Phuket Town.

He was found in possession of 483.8g of crystal meth and a digital weighing machine.

Pattanapong wastaken to Phuket Provincial Police Station and charged with possession of a Category 1 drug with intent to sell.

The report noted no other details of the two mens arrests.
Mayor invites people see sand pagodas on Patong Beach

PHUKET: Patong Mayor Chalermluck Kebsup has invited locals and tourists to Patong Beach to see the miniature pagodas that were built yesterday as part of a cultural competition for Songkran festivities.

culturepatongtourism

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Friday 12 April 2019, 03:06PM

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The sand pagodas on Patong Beach will be on display until Sunday (Apr 14). Photo: Patong Municipality

The pagodas will be on display until they are taken down on Sunday (Apr 14).

The competition involved several talented teams that each built a pagoda out of sand on Patong Beach yesterday (Apr 11) from 8am until 5pm.

The results of the competition were announced by Mayor Chalermluck on the main stage on Patong Beach yesterday evening at 6:30pm.

First place was awarded to the Phuket Wittayalai School team who were given B30,000 prize money. In second place was the Duangjitt Resort & Spa team with a prize of B20,000. Third place was awarded to the Loma Patong team who received B10,000.

There were also honourable mentions: Muang Thalang team, Dek Sang Jedi team and Phuket Vocational College team who each received B5,000. All teams received a trophy for their creative efforts.

Mayor Chalermluck told The Phuket News today, The mini pagoda competition on Patong Beach is part of Songkran traditions and tourists can enjoy the structures and take great photos.

Traditionally we take sand into the grounds of temples and create the sand pagodas there. It is a way of making merit, the mayor explained.

In the Buddhist faith, as people leave the temple, they take away the sand that was there with their feet. During Songkran, sand is returned to the temple as a way of making merit. she added.
Songkran festivities face water restrictions as reservoirs hit record lows

PHUKET: Official Songkran Thai New Year celebrations at three of the islands main areas for festivities this weekend will have little or no water provided by local councils in their bids to conserve water as the long dry spell this year continues and the islands three main reservoirs hit record lows.

tourismculturenatural-resources

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Friday 12 April 2019, 02:35PM

People celebrating Songkran in Phuket this year are being urged to conserve water, and in most areas across the island will have to provide their own water for the festivities. Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Patong Municipality will be providing water only at Bangla Rd, while in Phuket Town no water will be provided for the huge water fights held at Saphan Hin. Revellers will have to bring their own water, Phuket Town Mayor Somjai Suwansupana said plainly this week.

Rawai Municipality, which also includes the Nai Harn area, has yet to figure out if they have enough water to provide for water play, Rawai Mayor Aroon Solos told The Phuket News.

If we do, it will be limited, Mayor Aroon said.

Patong Mayor Chalermluck Kebsup explained, We know that there is not much water right now, but everyone wants to enjoy water splashing together this one time of the year. I cant ban them from water playing, but we will provide free water at Bangla Rd only.

She also urged people to be wary of how much water they use during the festivities.

Please save water. Use small water pistols and please do not use kan containers for splashing people, that wastes too much water, she said.

Mayor Chalermluck said that she had faith that people will try to use water more sparingly than in previous years.

The water pressure has been reduced so much there is a lot less water supplied to the Patong area that people in Patong know well what they have to do. They will use their common sense and converse water, and if they want to play outside the Bangla water-play zone, they must provide the water themselves, she said.

In Phuket Town, lack of rain has seen water supply reserves fall to 20% capacity, noted Phuket City Mayor Somjai Suwansupana.

This year we will not be providing water outside of Saphan Hin, like we have done in years past, she said.

Even at Saphan Hin, the traditional focal point for water play for a huge number of Phuket Town residents, the municipality will have just one water truck available on Saturday (Apr 13), and that one water truck will deliver only two loads of water for people to play with, Mayor Somjai explained.

We limited the space for water playing at Sapan Hin, and the water festival event will be from 7am to 1pm only, she added.

We strongly encourage that water be sprinkled on people, not splashed, she said.

Mayor Somjai was simple in her advice for people wanting to revel in water fights.

Please bring your own water, especially if you want to play outside Saphan Hin this year, she said.

Mayor Somjai repeated her call for all people to conserve as much water as they can until the annual rains return to replenish the reservoirs.
Zero deaths reported in Phuket on first day of Seven Days of Danger

PHUKET: Phuket has escaped the first day of Seven Days of Danger road-safety campaign for the Songkran holidays with zero deaths from midnight Wednesday (Apr 10) to midnight Thursday (Apr 11).

accidentsalcoholcrimedeathtransporttourismpolice

By Tanyaluk Sakoot

Friday 12 April 2019, 10:59AM

Police inspect motorists on Phukets roads on the first day of the Seven Days of Danger (Apr 11). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Police inspect motorists on Phukets roads on the first day of the Seven Days of Danger (Apr 11). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

Police inspect motorists on Phukets roads on the first day of the Seven Days of Danger (Apr 11). Photo: Eakkapop Thongtub

However, five people were injured in four accidents, the Phuket office of the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation DDPM-Phuket) reported this morning.

Among the five were three foreigners. At about 4:45pm yesterday (Apr 11) 24-year-old Chinese tourist, Yan Ye lost control of his motorbike on the coastal road between Kamala and Patong, causing him a broken bone hip, and his passenger, Zhang Chunli, 38, a broken bone  details of which were not disclosed. Both were taken to Patong Hospital for treatment.

Elsewhere on the island, a Swedish man, Eric Mahlberg, 57, collided with a car in Thalang yesterday as he was ghost driving (driving opposite traffic flow) on a motorbike along the road to the Bang Pae Waterall. He was admitted to Thalang Hospital with complaints of dizziness, head pain and a swollen leg.

Meanwhile, Phuket police reported issuing 1,200 fines for moving violations during the 24-hour period, as follows:

42 fined for operating an unsafe/illegally modified motorcycle

83 fined for not wearing seatbelts

405 fined for driving without a licence

13 fined for speeding

76 fined for ignoring traffic signals

51 fined for ghost driving

20 fined for dangerously cutting off other motorists in traffic

38 fined for using mobile phones while driving.

27 people were arrested for drunk driving during the period.

445 people fined for not wearing helmets

Across Thailand, a total of 75 people were killed and 2,562 injured on the first of the Seven Days of Danger yesterday (April 11), according to the website for the national road-safety agency ThaiRSC.

Bangkok recorded the highest injured number in accidents with 291 people while Nakhon Ratchasima recorded 123, Lopburi 112 and Chiang Mai province 102.

Ubon Ratchathani had a nation-leading five deaths on Thursday (April 11).
Protesters urge the Constitutional Court to rule against abortion ban in front of the top court in Jongno, Seoul, Thursday. / Yonhap



By Kim Jae-heun



Although the Constitutional Court ruled against the country's 66-year-old abortion ban, Thursday, there still seems to be a long way to go before a law revision is made by next year.



The top court ordered the National Assembly to amend related laws by Dec. 31, 2020, but many possible issues are emerging such as how many weeks into pregnancy abortion will be allowed and whether the national health insurance will cover it.



For the next 20 months, terminating a pregnancy is still illegal and people can be punished for having the procedure.



Prosecutors will postpone their investigations and indictments over abortion charges and the courts will delay rulings to wait for the law revision.



Above all, the biggest controversy will be up to how late into a pregnancy abortions will be allowed. France and Germany allow abortion until 12 weeks, Australia 20 weeks and England 24 weeks.






Who's who in South Dakota conservation?

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Tens of millions of people use smart speakers and their voice software to play games, find music or trawl for trivia. Millions more are reluctant to invite the devices and their powerful microphones into their homes out of concern that someone might be listening.

Sometimes, someone is.

Amazon.com employs thousands of people around the world to help improve the Alexa digital assistant powering its line of Echo speakers. The team listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners homes and offices. The recordings are transcribed, annotated and then fed back into the software as part of an effort to eliminate gaps in Alexas understanding of human speech and help it better respond to commands.

The Alexa voice review process, described by seven people who have worked on the program, highlights the often-overlooked human role in training software algorithms. In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter. But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching.

The team comprises a mix of contractors and full-time Amazon employees who work in outposts from Boston to Costa Rica, India and Romania, according to the people, who signed nondisclosure agreements barring them from speaking publicly about the program.

They work nine hours a day, with each reviewer parsing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift, according to two workers based at Amazons Bucharest office, which takes up the top three floors of the Globalworth building in the Romanian capitals up-and-coming Pipera district. The modern facility stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure and bears no exterior sign advertising Amazons presence.

The work is mostly mundane. One worker in Boston said he mined accumulated voice data for specific utterances such as Taylor Swift and annotated them to indicate the searcher meant the musical artist.

Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word  or come across an amusing recording.

Sometimes they hear recordings they find upsetting, or possibly criminal. Two of the workers said they picked up what they believe was a sexual assault.

When something like that happens, they may share the experience in the internal chat room as a way of relieving stress. Amazon says it has procedures in place for workers to follow when they hear something distressing, but two Romania-based employees said that, after requesting guidance for such cases, they were told it wasnt Amazons job to interfere.

We take the security and privacy of our customers personal information seriously, an Amazon spokesman said in an emailed statement. We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order [to] improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone.

We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero-tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it.

Amazon, in its marketing and privacy policy materials, doesnt explicitly say humans are listening to recordings of some conversations picked up by Alexa.

We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, the company says in a list of frequently asked questions.

In Alexas privacy settings, Amazon gives users the option of disabling the use of their voice recordings for the development of new features. The company says people who opt out of that program might still have their recordings analyzed by hand over the regular course of the review process.

A screenshot reviewed by Bloomberg shows that the recordings sent to the Alexa reviewers dont provide a users full name and address but are associated with an account number, as well as the users first name and the devices serial number.

The Intercept reported earlier this year that employees of Amazon-owned Ring manually identify vehicles and people in videos captured by the companys doorbell cameras, an effort to better train the software to do that work itself.

You dont necessarily think of another human listening to what youre telling your smart speaker in the intimacy of your home, said Florian Schaub, a professor at the University of Michigan who has researched privacy issues related to smart speakers. I think weve been conditioned to the [assumption] that these machines are just doing magic machine learning. But the fact is there is still manual processing involved.

Whether thats a privacy concern or not depends on how cautious Amazon and other companies are in what type of information they have manually annotated, and how they present that information to someone, he added.

When the Echo debuted in 2014, Amazons cylindrical smart speaker quickly popularized the use of voice software in the home. Before long, Alphabet launched its own version, called Google Home, followed by Apples HomePod. Various companies also sell their own devices in China. Globally, consumers bought 78 million smart speakers last year, according to researcher Canalys. Millions more use voice software to interact with digital assistants on their smartphones.

Alexa software is designed to continuously record snatches of audio, listening for a wake word. Thats Alexa by default, but people can change it to Echo or computer. When the wake word is detected, the light ring at the top of the Echo turns blue, indicating the device is recording and beaming a command to Amazon servers.

Most modern speech-recognition systems rely on neural networks patterned on the human brain. The software learns as it goes, by spotting patterns amid vast amounts of data. The algorithms powering the Echo and other smart speakers use models of probability to make educated guesses. If someone asks Alexa if theres a Greek place nearby, the algorithms know the user is probably looking for a restaurant, not a church or community centre.

But sometimes Alexa gets it wrong  especially when grappling with new slang, regional colloquialisms or languages other than English. In French, avec sa, with his or with her, can confuse the software into thinking someone is using the Alexa wake word. Hecho, Spanish for a fact or deed, is sometimes misinterpreted as Echo. And so on.

Thats why Amazon recruited human helpers to fill in the gaps missed by the algorithms.

Apples Siri also has human helpers, who work to gauge whether the digital assistants interpretation of requests lines up with what the person said. The recordings they review lack personally identifiable information and are stored for six months tied to a random identifier, according to an Apple security white paper. After that, the data is stripped of its random identification information but may be stored for longer periods to improve Siris voice recognition.

At Google, some reviewers can access some audio snippets from its Assistant to help train and improve the product, but its not associated with any personally identifiable information and the audio is distorted, the company says.

A recent Amazon job posting, seeking a quality assurance manager for Alexa Data Services in Bucharest, describes the role humans play: Every day she [Alexa] listens to thousands of people talking to her about different topics and different languages, and she needs our help to make sense of it all. The want ad continues: This is big data handling like youve never seen it. Were creating, labelling, curating and analyzing vast quantities of speech on a daily basis.

Amazons review process for speech data begins when Alexa pulls a random, small sampling of customer voice recordings and sends the audio files to the far-flung employees and contractors, according to a person familiar with the programs design.

Some Alexa reviewers are tasked with transcribing users commands, comparing the recordings to Alexas automated transcript, say, or annotating the interaction between user and machine. What did the person ask? Did Alexa provide an effective response?

Others note everything the speaker picks up, including background conversations  even when children are speaking. Sometimes listeners hear users discussing private details such as names or bank details; in such cases, theyre supposed to tick a dialogue box denoting critical data. They then move on to the next audio file.

According to Amazons website, no audio is stored unless Echo detects the wake word or is activated by pressing a button. But sometimes Alexa appears to begin recording without any prompt at all, and the audio files start with a blaring television or unintelligible noise.

Whether or not the activation is mistaken, the reviewers are required to transcribe it. One of the people said the auditors each transcribe as many as 100 recordings a day when Alexa receives no wake command or is triggered by accident.

In homes around the world, Echo owners frequently speculate about who might be listening, according to two of the reviewers. Do you work for the NSA? they ask. Alexa, is someone else listening to us?

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When will it be over?

That was the collective response from many British businesses on Thursday after the European Union extended the deadline for the countrys departure from the bloc until Oct. 31, warding off a chaotic crash on Friday.

The extension, giving the government an additional six months to come to an agreement over the terms of its divorce, puts off the prospect of a no-deal Brexit and the expected devastating hit to the economy.

But even as the immediate pressure abated, businesses pleaded with politicians to come to an agreement swiftly and avoid being in the same position six months down the line.

Despite the uncertainty, the British economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the three months ending in February, according to numbers from the Office for National Statistics released this week. But some of the activity may have been a result of frantic preparations to leave the EU, and economists warned that Brexit could slow growth further.

For many of the larger businesses, Brexit has already happened. Banks have already set up shop overseas to continue serving their customers on the Continent. Carmakers have scrapped plans to develop more cars within the country.

And those who could afford to prepare for a no-deal separation will continue to do so, said the Confederation of British Industry, a business organization representing about 190,000 companies.

Food retailers will be focused on how to get perishable food into the country if Britain does leave at the end of October. Britain imports a higher proportion of its food in the cooler months, so the new date would come as sales of homegrown food would be slowing and imports ramping up in anticipation of Christmas.

The end of October presents many of the same challenges that we had in March in terms of importing foods and a high reliance on the EU at that point, Tom Holder, a spokesman for the British Retail Consortium, said.

Many companies, particularly small ones, have not had the spare cash or staffing to prepare for a potential overnight change in operating conditions, and have been simply hoping that a catastrophic no-deal would not happen. Now that the worst-case scenario has been put off, businesses of all sizes are still pleading for Parliament to give them clarity before the economy slows.

An extension to the negotiations comes with costs and uncertainty, Josh Hardie, the deputy director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, said in an interview. Businesses place their bets on other countries if Britain is no longer perceived as a gateway to Europe.

Thats already happening, its not something that will just happen with Brexit, he said.

Roni Savage, the director at Jomas Associates, an engineering consulting firm with 15 employees, has already seen the knock-on effect of the Brexit impasse.

Her firm surveys ground conditions for construction companies. Half of her construction clients, she said, have started slowing new projects, like housing, because it is not clear whether demand will hold up after Brexit.

We get affected very quickly by issues with the economy, and Brexit is a huge one, Savage said.

Its a nightmare, she added. Im really saddened by having another extension, having to wait for longer. Well all be hoping to get this over soon.

Farmers expressed the same concerns.

We have crops and livestock in fields, with farmers and growers still in the dark about what trading environment they will be operating in, whether they will have access to a sufficient workforce to carry out essential roles this season, or what the U.K.s future domestic agricultural policy will look like, Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers Union, said in a statement.

Even an extension and a withdrawal agreement would be only the beginning of negotiations over Britains future relationship with the European Union, said Tim Durrant, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government, a think tank. Were in the long haul for Brexit, Im afraid.

The Federation of Small Businesses was blunt in its assessment of this prospect on Thursday: Unless we get a political consensus, all a further extension does is create even more uncertainty, which is driving small firms to despair, Mike Cherry, the national chairman, said in a statement.

About 60 per cent of employees at private companies in Britain work at small and medium-sized firms, or those with up to 250 employees.

Lots of small businesses are in wait-and-see mode, and its not sustainable for that to go on indefinitely, Alan Soady, a federation spokesman, said in an interview. They will need time to adapt to whatever future trading conditions will be, he added.

In southwest London, Lars Andersen, the chief executive of My Nametags, a company of about 15 people that prints labels for childrens belongings, may have to open an office in the Netherlands if he is to maintain sales, 40 per cent of which go to the European Union.

Like others, he was momentarily relieved, but he fretted about the prospect of waiting another six months to know whether he might have to set up shop in another country. We just have to be ready to jump and thats a bit scary, he said.

He had been grappling with the issue for so long, he added, that Brexit was starting to feel a bit like when you go to the dentist for a long operation.

Initially, you have all this adrenalin, and then you just hope it will finish.
In the 22 months that Boeings 737 Max flew commercially before it was grounded, the jet became the companys flagship as well as an integral part of the global aviation system, and the U.S. economy.

Airlines around the world sped the plane into service, eager to capitalize on its efficient engines. Some low-cost carriers built new routes around the Max, which could travel farther on less fuel than its predecessor. Boeings stock soared thanks to strong demand for the jet.

But with the Max grounded following two deadly crashes in five months, Boeing and the airlines that rely on its planes are scrambling to adjust, and the costs are mounting.

Major airlines, including Southwest, American and United, have cancelled thousands of flights. Boeing has slowed production of the Max and stopped deliveries, stockpiling the finished planes in Seattle. And with no timetable for the return of the Max, Boeing is facing escalating bills, numerous legal threats and a crisis of confidence.

Having two crashes in rapid succession with no survivors is really unprecedented in modern aviation industry, said Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the retired pilot who landed a jet in the Hudson River. This is going to be a huge hit to Boeing. What they need to do now is to behave in a way that proves themselves worthy of the publics trust.

An aerospace behemoth with more than 140,000 employees, Boeing has annual sales of some $101 billion. It is the largest manufacturing exporter in the United States and is the largest component of the Dow Jones industrial average. When Boeing does well, it can lift the fortunes of U.S. industry and thousands of staff. But when the company hits turbulence, the effects quickly ripple across the globe.

American Airlines, which operates 24 Max planes and has 76 more on order, cancelled about 1,200 flights in March. With no sign that the Max will be flying again anytime soon, American said it was extending cancellations through June 5. The airline also said it was lowering its estimated quarterly revenues, in part owing to the grounding of the Max.

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Boeing, which will report earnings this month, will undoubtedly take a financial hit this quarter, and most likely for the rest of the year.

Boeing revenue, profit and margins for 2019 are in jeopardy after the grounding of its 737 Max, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence, which estimated that the cost of lawsuits and reimbursements could total $1.9 billion in just six months.

And while Boeing has already taken orders for more than 4,600 additional Max jets, representing the vast majority of its total backlog and billions of dollars in future sales, it may find new orders in short supply. On Tuesday, it said there were just 32 new orders for the jet in the first three months of the year, compared with 122 a year earlier. Boeing this week slowed its production of 737 planes to 42 a month, from 52, with most of those being the Max model.

It is difficult to expect a 737 Max order at the upcoming Paris Air Show, Noah Poponak, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, wrote in a recent note, referring to the annual event where many commercial airline deals are sealed.

Already, some airlines are expressing reservations about continuing to fly the Max, including the national airlines of Indonesia and Ethiopia, the two countries where the Max crashed. Garuda Indonesia has asked to cancel its order for 49 Max planes. And Ethiopian Airlines is reportedly reconsidering its order for 25 additional Max planes because of the stigma surrounding the aircraft.

We continue to assess the financial impact, including working capital, of our production decisions and pause in deliveries, Boeing said in a statement. The 737 Max return-to-service timeline, as well as future rate decisions, will influence the cash receipts profile, including both delivery and predelivery payments.

Boeing is likely to need to compensate airlines for the cost of cancelled flights, leasing replacement aircraft and higher fuel costs on less efficient planes needed to pick up slack for the grounded Maxes.

It is quite obvious that we will not take the cost, Bjorn Kjos, the chief executive of Norwegian Air, which operates 18 Max jets, said in March. We will send this bill to those who produced this aircraft.

Those costs could amount to about $115 million a month for Boeing, or perhaps much more, according to J.P. Morgan analyst Seth Seifman.

Richard Aboulafia, vice president for analysis at the Teal Group, an aviation consulting firm, said, The company is big and incredibly profitable, but a billion or two here and there stings.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear when regulators will clear the planes to fly again. Boeing had been hoping to submit a software update to the Federal Aviation Administration soon, but last week said work on the fix had been delayed by several weeks.

Once the new software is submitted, it must be approved by the FAA and other international regulators. And before the Max can fly again, all the planes will have to be updated and pilots retrained. Seifman predicted a return between August and November.

Scrutiny from lawmakers over the FAAs certification process could mean further delays, Seifman said in a note. For the FAA, various investigations into its independence will likely result in a high degree of caution and the need for an extensive and compelling paper trail to back the decision, he wrote.

International regulators, which have traditionally followed the FAAs lead, are already signalling they may take longer to approve the planes to fly in their airspace.

After the update, we will take a few months to check things to be careful that everything is OK before we allow the Max to fly again, said Polana Pramesti, the head of Indonesias Civil Aviation Authority.

Analysts also believe that regulators in China could drag their feet to reduce overall U.S. exports.

This seems to have fractured the international trust that has existed for decades, Sullenberger said. Now it seems like each nation is prepared to go it alone.

In the meantime, airlines continue to cancel flights with the plane grounded. Southwest Airlines, which has 34 Max jetliners and was operating about 140 flights a day with the plane before the grounding, has adjusted its schedule through early August. United, which has 14 Max planes, said it was working to manage the disruption and expected 130 related cancellations this month.

Air Canada, which has 24 Max jets, said it had adjusted its schedule through May 31, but was minimizing cancellations through a series of mitigation measures, schedule changes and temporary route suspensions.

And when the Max is approved to fly again, it remains unclear whether passengers will feel comfortable on the planes. In the days after the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 in March, before the Max was grounded, the travel booking website Kayak.com added a filter that allowed customers to filter by plane type.

Yet for all the uncertainty facing Boeing today, analysts believe there is little long-term risk to the company. Boeing and its European rival Airbus are the only significant manufacturers of commercial aircraft. And the 737 Max, for all its problems, remains one of two mid-size fuel-efficient passenger jets on the market, along with the Airbus A320neo.

Boeings best protection is that this is a supply-constrained industry, Aboulafia said. There are only two modern airplanes that offer fuel savings. The risk of defection is minimal because of that.

Nor is there much risk that airlines that have already placed orders with Boeing will walk away, analysts said. With Airbus also backlogged, airlines looking for new planes have no real alternatives.

Boeings ability to modify the aircraft effectively, the duopoly structure of the aircraft market, the large installed base of 737s, and Boeings deep and long-term relationships with its customers mean that demand for the Max will not change dramatically, Seifman wrote.

Even if Boeing weathers the immediate financial storm, it faces other unknowns. The families of passengers and crew members killed in the Ethiopian Airlines crash and the crash of Lion Air Flight 610 in October have hired lawyers to pursue legal claims against the company.

The Transportation Departments inspector general and the Justice Department are investigating the design, manufacturing and certification of the Max. And it may be months or even years before Boeing wins back the publics confidence.

The general flying public seems to be asking more questions about the airplane than they have with prior fleet groundings, Poponak, the Goldman Sachs analyst, wrote in a recent note. We see a risk that lasts in the order book moving forward over the next few years.

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It took a real team to pull that off.

Im quoting Shelbyville Mayor Tom DeBaun, who was interviewed by The Shelbyville News upon the announcement that Maple Leaf Foods Inc. is set to build North Americas largest plant-based protein facility right near the intersection of Interstate 74 and State Road 44.

In Indiana.

In a conference call with analysts this week, Maple Leaf CEO Michael McCain expanded on his vision to be the most sustainable protein company on earth. Plant-based protein is foundational to that vision, he said. Maple Leafs newly created and wholly owned subsidiary, Greenleaf Foods, will oversee the military march on the exploding plant protein market.

From Chicago.

Perhaps Im too much of a Pollyanna to have imagined that a Canadian-based facility processing Canadian-grown yellow peas into Canadian-made just-like-meat burger patties by fairly-paid Canadian labour for global export would have been a good moment for Canadian business.

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Perhaps I am too irked by the fact that Indiana is a right-to-work state, effective at lowering worker incomes, increasing owner incomes and reducing unionization. I certainly took note of the fact that the backdrop to the Maple Leaf/Greenleaf groundbreaking ceremony was an egg yolk-yellow Caterpillar dozer. Seven years ago, Caterpillar packed in its Electro-Motive rail operations in London, Ont., moving to  thats right, Indiana. Readers may recall the brutal London lockout the winter of 2012 and the corporate push to slash wages by as much as 50 per cent.

Those jobs are long gone.

On the bright side, Ontario Premier Doug Ford okayed a $34.5-million grant  yes, grant  to Maple Leaf last year to build a new poultry plant in London that the premier promised would create 1,450 to 1,500 full-time jobs. But wait: it was noted at the time that the concurrent closing of three other Maple Leaf plants meant that the job numbers would remain virtually flat, once the construction phase is completed. The federal government has also invested $20 million in the new plant through the Strategic Innovation Fund, an investment that Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said would help to keep Canada competitive in the global market and create new middle class jobs.

New jobs? It doesnt look that way.

The global market? Dont forget that poultry production in Canada is governed by a supply management system.

Bains, of course, is the standard bearer for the five superclusters named by the federal government a little more than a year ago. The Prairie-based Protein Industries Supercluster will make Canada a leading source for plant proteins and, ultimately, feed the world, the government announced.

One might have thought that Maple Leaf would be an anchor for that.

The company has made some smart strategic moves. Its purchase of Lightlife Foods Holding Inc., based in Massachusetts, and the Field Roast Grain Meat Co. in Seattle, Wash., provided a platform from which to launch its meat-free assault. Lightlife  described by Greenleaf CEO Dan Curtin as the brain child of two hippies who started making tempeh  has been producing vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes for 40 years.

Recognizing the rise of the flexitarian food trend, Maple Leaf purchased Lightlife two years ago and in January launched the Lightlife Burger and sausages to compete against the Beyond Meat burger and other offerings that are appealing to meat-eating consumers looking to diversify their protein options. Curtin has promised a retail rollout of the Lightlife burger this spring.

The new facility in Shelbyville will double existing production capacity and, the company stated in a release, support a rich pipeline of innovation. Perhaps the kind of innovation Canadas protein supercluster hopes to accomplish.

Youve got to give Mayor DeBaun credit. Shelbyville city council took the lead in purchasing four parcels of land from two owners totalling more than 170 acres, later drawing the support of county council and the redevelopment commission. The purchase price: $3.9 million (U.S.). Greenleaf has acknowledged that single-owner land control was key to advancing the deal. Greenleaf will pay $1.5 million (U.S.) for 57 acres. The purchase is set to close by the end of next month. Expansion is hoped for: Greenleaf has an option to purchase additional acreage. This is not a one and done, Curtin said this week.

In its announcement, Maple Leaf Foods said the $310-million (U.S.) facility, which will employ about 450 people, will be supported by approximately $50 million (U.S.) in government and utility grants and incentives.

At a press conference before the groundbreaking ceremony Curtin promised that the jobs would come with good wages and good benefits, and gave a shout-out to all the supporting partners, from the state governor to Duke Energy to Indiana Water.

Maple Leaf did not respond to a query as to whether any Canadian sites were considered for turning Maple Leaf, described by Curtin as a small company up in Canada, into Greenleaf. The two U.S.-based predecessor facilities, the 10-times population, the strength of the transportation hub (Shelbyville is 50 kilometres southeast of Indianapolis) would have factored into the decision.

Ultimately, it was, as Mayor DeBaun said, a team effort. After the groundbreaking he credited land control, the city pitch and the confidence we had in ourselves in landing the plant. Should all go according to plan, a groundbreaking plant protein innovation hub will take root.

In Indiana.

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Between politicians who fog the truth and the ones just in a fog, Chris Ragan wants to fan fresh air into a carbon tax debate that is clouding Alberta's provincial election and drifting into an upcoming federal campaign.

"It's pretty clear this issue is warming up politically," said Ragan, head of Canada's Ecofiscal Commission, a non-partisan group of academics and business leaders focused on economic and environmental solutions.

"We have been sorry to see that there's a bunch of stuff out there that is either misunderstanding or poorly explained. There are a bunch of myths out there."

The commission has just published a report on carbon tax misconceptions.

The worst, Ragan said, is that a carbon tax doesn't work.

"If you look at B.C., if you look at California, if you look at the U.K, if you look at Quebec, these policies do work. What they don't do is work overnight."

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At least five different published studies have found British Columbia's carbon tax, introduced in 2008, has cut overall emissions, reduced per capita gasoline use by seven per cent, improved average vehicle efficiency by four per cent, cut residential natural gas use by seven per cent and diesel use by more than three per cent.

Meanwhile, the province enjoyed about three per cent annual economic growth between 2012 and 2017.

Other jurisdictions that have successfully used carbon taxes to reduce emissions include Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, several U.S. states, the U.K. and the European Union.

Three separate studies found B.C.'s tax either didn't affect jobs or added them. A fourth found a small decrease in jobs for less-educated workers. Studies in the U.S. or the U.K. found little or no impact on job numbers.

The commission's report finds that far from hurting families, 70 per cent of Canadian households will receive more in carbon tax rebates than they pay.

Energy economists such as Mark Jaccard at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University argue that regulations get faster, bigger results and are politically easier to enact. The big cuts to Canada's carbon emissions, he said, have come from closing coal-fired power plants and clean fuel rules.

"Some people will tell you have to have carbon pricing," he said on a recent podcast. "That's not true. You could do it all through regulations."

You could, concedes Ragan. But that would cost the economy more. Besides, he said, bringing in carbon taxes gives governments an opportunity to cut other levies such as income tax.

Albertans who believe the province could escape a carbon tax by rescinding provincial legislation may also be mistaken.

Martin Olszynski, a University of Calgary law professor, said all Ottawa would have to do is pass an order in council to bring Alberta under the same federal tax that recently came into effect in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario and New Brunswick. None of those provinces had its own tax.

"It's a matter of getting cabinet together and writing the order," Olszynski said.

Looking to the courts to block Ottawa's tax is an iffy bet, he suggested.

In court hearings on Saskatchewan's anti-tax constitutional challenge, Olszynski said, judges asked if allowing Ottawa to regulate greenhouse gases as a matter of "national concern" would impede provincial efforts to do the same.

"If you recognize this matter as a matter of national concern, you would strip away the provincial ability to regulate these things," he summarized.

But Olszynski notes that courts have recognized that many issues  especially environmental ones  are best managed jointly between national and provincial governments.

Other federal arguments in favour of a national carbon tax are backed by decades of case law, Olszynski added.

Ragan said the debate over carbon taxes is as important to Canada's future as debates over the GST or free trade with the United States.

"It's a big policy issue and it's appropriate that we're talking about it now."

Ragan just wishes the debate wasn't so mythical.

"We live in a democratic society where people play partisan politics. Those political debates don't always stick to the facts."

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The federal government wont have to comply immediately with a court decision that limited solitary confinement to 15 consecutive days, the Supreme Court of Canada has decided.

In granting Ottawas urgent request for an interim interim stay, the countrys top court said the government had met all three needed conditions. Those factors, the court said, include whether there was a serious issue to be tried and whether it would cause the government irreparable harm if not granted.

I am satisfied that these factors have been met for the purpose of the interim interim stay only, Justice Suzanne Cote said. This order will remain in effect until the determination of the motion for an interim stay, which shall be dealt with on an expedited basis.

In a ruling last month, the Ontario Court of Appeal said placing prisoners deemed a risk to themselves or others in segregation for more than 15 days amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and was therefore unconstitutional. The court gave correctional authorities 15 days  until Friday  to comply and end the practice.

The federal government sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, along with a request to put the lower-court decision on hold pending the outcome. However, because the request for an interim stay would only be heard well after Fridays deadline to comply with the ruling, Ottawa sought the interim interim stay.

In support of its request, the federal government said the lower court did not take into account the consequences of capping administrative segregation, and warned that imposing a hard limit in all cases could be dangerous.

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There is currently no alternative recourse to address these situations, placing the safety and security of all federal institutions, the inmates and the staff at high risk, the government said in its notice of leave to appeal.

Critics of isolation say studies indicate that depriving inmates of meaningful human contact for much of their day can cause long-term, even permanent, psychological damage.

The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which has pursued the case, called it deeply disappointing that the government was seeking to appeal.

It opposed the interim interim stay request, calling it highly unusual for courts to allow practices deemed to violate the charter because they amount to cruel and unusual treatment to continue.

Canada asks this court to prolong a dangerous practice that is harmful and offside responsible medical opinion, the association said in its filing. The impact on those affected is real and serious.

Having granted the interim interim stay, Cote gave the association until April 23 to respond to the request for an interim stay, and Ottawa a further two days to reply. Its not clear when the Supreme Court will decide on the stay motion or whether it will hear the governments appeal.
A popular Canadian political Facebook page that promotes the far-right Jewish Defence League uses a deceptive technique that evades Facebooks content bans and drives traffic to anti-Muslim websites.

Never Again Canada, which has nearly 235,000 followers, posts dozens of images, videos and articles every day. The page says it is a platform to combat anti-Semitism, though its posts also stray into unrelated Canadian political topics, like the carbon tax.

Between the Facebook page and Never Again Canadas Twitter feed, the group has a large platform to push out political messaging  and amplifies that message through synchronized posting with dozens of other anti-Muslim Facebook pages.

The trouble is people can never be sure about what theyre clicking on.

For months, the Never Again Canada page has been sharing links that appear to send users to sites hosted on Googles Blogspot blogging platform, such as fpf-blog.blogspot.com. Once they click, the reader is redirected to sites such as freepressfront.com or speech-point.net. These obscure domains are filled with articles that twist and torque the news, or fabricate headlines, such as Canadian minister calls to criminalize criticism of Islam or Canadian PM calls on Canadians to welcome ISIS terrorists If we welcome them, they wont attack us.

As part of an ongoing series looking at the impact of online misinformation on the federal election campaign, the Star and BuzzFeed News identified 23 distinct Blogspot domains posted by Never Again Canada that redirect to other websites, six of which are still active.

What were seeing here raises two questions, said Fenwick McKelvey, an assistant professor of information and technology policy at Concordia University. One, do people know what theyre clicking on? And two, are these redirects being used to get around Facebooks rules and standards?

McKelvey, who researches political messaging online, says redirection can be a harmless way to fix broken links, but it can also be used to deceive people about who theyre interacting with.

Link redirection is a common technique used to share domains on Facebook that would otherwise be blocked by the platform. There are online tutorials that describe how to use a Blogspot to redirect to an otherwise blocked domain.

The practice violates Facebooks community standards, which ban misrepresentation, including posting links with a URL that does not match the destination URL.

Never Again Canada also promotes events, including a recent recruitment campaign for the Canadian chapter of the Jewish Defence League (JDL).

In the United States, the FBI considers the league a violent extremist Jewish organization and deemed it a right-wing terrorist group. In Canada, JDL has hosted a far-right speaker, published anti-Muslim rhetoric and worked with the white nationalist group Soldiers of Odin, which was banned from Facebook this month.

Avi Shomer, Never Again Canadas founder, did not respond to written questions about link redirection. In an emailed statement, he said he cant be held responsible for all the content on the page because he is simply one of 34 administrators and doesnt know all of the others.

The NAC Facebook page has no group meetings or plans or anyone who could be considered as its leader  There is no administrator who takes on the responsibility of monitoring or reviewing the thousands of daily comments that get posted on the page, Shomer said in a statement through his lawyer.

I was the guy who got it started, that does not mean that I now own or control it. Since it has grown, it has spiralled out of my hands, Shomers statement said.

Shomer declined to put the Star and BuzzFeed News in touch with any of the other administrators. The pages information tab lists the other administrators as living in Israel, the United States, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Spain. The page was created in 2014 and at one point was named Palestinian Lies Exposed.

Helping amplify Never Again Canadas message are at least 25 other Facebook pages that collectively have more than 1.5 million followers. These pages, including United American Infidels Against Tyranny, Obama Enemies, and Deport the Grand Mufti, post the same misleading Blogspot links as Never Again Canada within seconds of each other, in what appears to be a co-ordinated effort to ensure they reach the maximum number of Facebook users.

The Star and BuzzFeed News observed these pages boosting the same content, all using the Blogspot redirecting tactic. The articles they post are not exclusively on Canadian issues. Some target foreign politicians and international organizations.

Shomer said he is not aware of any effort to co-ordinate with other Facebook pages.

I dont know those sites. What I do know is that an administrator can post a series of articles on the Facebook page and then post the same articles elsewhere as well  (but) I dont think the other administrators have any knowledge about who is exactly posting what and where either, Shomer wrote.

You just dont appreciate how decentralized a Facebook page with multiple administrators can be.

Joshua Braun, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who studies online news, says Blogspot links are unlikely to be blocked because of the large number of legitimate blogs hosted there.

It could be a strategy to avoid getting themselves blacklisted, Braun said in an interview. Its like if you have a problematic YouTube channel. Theyre not going to block all of YouTube.

Facebook Canada could not respond by Friday evening to a detailed list of questions about whether Never Again Canada violated its terms of service and community standards.

We are continually reviewing activity on our platform for potential violation of our policies and will take action in line with our community standards as warranted, the spokesperson said.

Two statements posted on Never Again Canadas website denounce hate speech and the general disparagement of Muslims, yet many posts on the Facebook page cross the line into Islamophobic rhetoric.

The Star and Buzzfeed also found ties between Never Again Canada and the Jewish Defence League. Facebook removed the JDL from its platform in 2017, according to the Canadian Jewish News, calling it a dangerous organization that violates its community standards. Never Again is the JDLs official slogan.

A statement on Never Again Canadas website states the group isnt associated with the JDL, and neither comprise a formal network nor affiliate with one another in any other fashion.

But the online store BuyIsrael.ca, which sells Never Again Canada T-shirts and accepts donations for the group, has identical privacy and refund policies as the Jewish Defence Leagues online store. The two also use the same address in Thornhill and the same email address for inquiries.

Shomer, who runs a web marketing business, says he has done work for many organizations in the Jewish community and sometimes in setting them up pages, common addresses may be used as well as common merchant policy templates.

Shomer cautioned against trying to establish links in order to suggest something (is) more sinister than it is.

Karen Mock, the president of JSpaceCanada, said that even the Canadian branch of the JDL is seen as an extreme fringe group  but one with an extensive mailing list and network.

(Most) people in the Jewish community would not agree with their approaches of sending out what really amounts to hate mail and these memes that are so anti-Muslim, said Mock, the former head the League for Human Rights of Bnai Brith Canada, in an interview Friday.

When they hobnob with people, organizations like the Soldiers of Odin and other horrific white supremacist groups  Making common cause with neo-Nazi groups, white supremacist hate groups, is not the way to fight anti-Semitism.

Last October, Never Again Canada endorsed white supremacist Faith Goldy when she ran for mayor of Toronto, writing Make sure you Vote for FAITH  We need strong Leadership in Toronto to Save it from the Corrupt Liberals and the Creeping Sharia Law (sic).

Goldy, along with other groups and public figures who spread hate, attack or call for the exclusion of others, was banned from Facebook last week.

Shomer said that not all the administrators of Never Again Canada are Jewish. He also said the page brings together people from all faith backgrounds to fight anti-Semitism.

Though NAC cannot police all the comments that are posted on this page, we want Muslim Canadians to feel they are welcome here, that they, too, have a place to come and to contribute their voices in the common fight against anti-Jewish incitement, reads a post on the page.

With files from Ishmael N. Daro

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The province needs to ensure that new regulations around alcohol are rolled out in a way that protects public safety, including additional resources for enforcement and regulation and perhaps a public information campaign, says the legal director of MADD Canada.

If youre going to change the rules, you need to inform people that while the rules are changing the consequences remain the same. Just because you can drink at a tailgate party, doesnt mean the consequences for driving while impaired are any different, Eric Dumschat said Friday.

The PC provincial budget, tabled Thursday, loosened restrictions around the sale and consumption of alcohol. Municipalities were given the authority to allow drinking in parks and recreation arenas. Licensed establishments will be permitted to serve alcohol from 9 a.m. Earlier in the week, the government announced it would permit drinking in parking lots outside sports events at so-called tailgate parties.

Many have praised the changes, including those in the hospitality industry.

City of Toronto spokesperson Tammy Robbinson said its too soon to say how the city will decide whether to allow drinking in its parks, and if so, how the new policy would be rolled out and regulated.

There are too many unknowns at this stage to provide a clear answer, said Robbinson.

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Mayor John Tory has said that drinking in parks is something that has to be considered carefully by council, but, I do think it is time ... that we assume that adults can be adults and conduct themselves properly.

Councillor Joe Cressy, (Ward 10 Spadina Fort-York), was critical of the Ford government for tossing out so many alcohol consumption reforms  including the buck-a-beer Ford promised voters during the election campaign.

Have your say

When it comes to alcohol, policy has to be carefully thought through. You cannot make alcohol public policy on the basis of slogans. So buck-a-beer, and drinking in parks and tailgating with a tall can, does not make for thoughtful and sensible public policy, said Cressy, who chairs the board of health.

Evidence has shown that increasing the availability of alcohol is associated with increased alcohol consumption and increased health and social harms, according to a recent report from Torontos medical officer of health.

While the proportion of Ontario adults consuming alcohol has remained stable over the past two decades  with four out of five Ontario adults reporting they consume alcohol  the amount of alcohol consumed per person has increased significantly.

The average weekly number of drinks consumed by those who consume alcohol increased to 4.9 drinks per week in 2017, up from 3.3 drinks per week in 1996. The increase has been particularly pronounced among women, who now consume 3.6 drinks per week compared to 1.9 in 1996, a jump of 90 per cent.

The report pointed to an increase in access to alcohol as the driving factor.

Wine and cider are now sold at local farmers markets, alcohol (beer, cider, wine) is sold in over 350 grocery stores, and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario continues to enhance its online retail presence, according to the report.

It called for a provincial alcohol strategy for Ontario, based on prevention, harm reduction, treatment and enforcement.

Increasing access to alcohol has been shown to increase harm. This has been demonstrated in extensive international and national research over many decades, said Norman Giesbrecht, the chair of the Alcohol Working Group, Toronto Cancer Prevention Coalition, and Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

In a presentation to Torontos board of health this week, he pointed out that alcohol is a known carcinogen.

Allowing the sale of alcohol starting at 9 a.m. normalizes the idea of drinking in the morning and may indeed normalize practices of drinking alcohol earlier in the day and in greater quantities, he wrote in a letter to the board.
One of the godfathers of artificial intelligence is calling on the City of Toronto to sign a declaration for the responsible use of AI amidst concerns over data privacy, police surveillance and Sidewalk Labs waterfront smart neighbourhood.

With the ability of sensors to harvest massive amounts of data, and the increasing power of artificial intelligence to derive insights and predictions from that data, city services like public transportation, waste collection and snow removal can all be optimized, says Yoshua Bengio, a computer scientist at the Universite de Montreal.

This would be great. The concern is that measuring all that data has to be done in a way that is consistent with issues of privacy, control and democracy. Thats why we want to put in these principles, and make sure that civil servants understand them and dont deploy things that go against these principles.

Bengio was one of the computer scientists whose research on a type of machine learning called neural networks led to unprecedented breakthroughs in the ability of computers to carry out tasks like image and speech recognition. Those advances underpin modern AI, from virtual assistants that recognize verbal commands to social networks that automatically label faces. Last month, Bengio shared the 2018 Turing Award, sometimes called the Nobel Prize of computer science, with two other neural net pioneers, Geoffrey Hinton of Google, the Vector Institute and the University of Toronto, and Yann LeCun of Facebook and New York University.

Last December Bengio helped organize the Montreal Declaration, an ethical framework for the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. The declaration identifies a set of values and priorities to guide AI, from the protection of privacy and democracy to the maintenance of social and cultural diversity. The City of Montreal is one of 41 organizational signatories; 1,178 individuals have also added their names. Bengio believes the City of Toronto should sign on, too.

A spokesperson for Toronto Mayor John Tory said the mayor has asked city staff to review the declaration and report back on the implications of signing it.

As Toronto continues to grow its innovation and technology sector, it is critical for the City to work with leaders in the industry to learn and adopt best practices, Don Peat added in an email.

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Bengio, who was in Toronto for a panel discussion on ethical AI, believes Canada should be a natural leader in this area because of its values.

We want Canada to be united behind the goal of an ethical AI, says Bengio. Every sign we send to the world that we stand strongly behind these values is going to help, both internally and externally: Internally, because we are telling our citizens, our companies, that we take these concerns seriously, and externally, because we have a chance to influence in which direction the world is going with the use of AI.

Artificial intelligence, if deployed with care, can be a major social boon, Bengio says. Computers have already demonstrated the ability to quickly and accurately analyze medical images, he notes, and his lab is using neural networks to tackle climate change and create novel molecules for drug development.

But the risks are great too, he says. He worries about the development of autonomous weapons, like a drone that is authorized to kill if it recognizes the right face. Profit-driven companies can use data derived from social networks to influence your behaviour, or worse, your vote. He believes the social safety net needs to be strengthened for workers who will be made redundant by algorithms, and that too much power is being concentrated on the campuses of a few technology companies. (He dismisses fears about the oft-cited singularity, in which a supercomputer becomes more intelligent than humans and destroys us, noting that machine-learning algorithms still lag far behind the general intelligence of any 2-year-old.)

In the context of cities, Bengio recently co-signed a letter to Amazon asking the company to stop selling a facial recognition software to law enforcement. The software had much higher error rates when identifying darker-skinned women compared to lighter-skinned men, raising the risk of police misidentifying racialized women as suspects.

In Toronto specifically, police recently acquired cellphone surveillance technology that captures data on hundreds or thousands of bystanders mobile devices in addition to that of criminal suspects. Bengio believes we need to be extra careful to guard against privacy violations with the data police collect, and that the decisions to use new technology should go through public scrutiny. (Toronto police have cited a non-disclosure agreement in declining to answer questions about the technology.)

Bengio also says he understands critics concerns about Sidewalk Toronto, the parcel of waterfront property that Google parent company Alphabets Sidewalk Labs is designing as a smart neighbourhood. Concerns have been raised about control of the data collected in that project.

I understand the concerns, and I think we should be careful and make sure that it doesnt happen behind closed doors  that the city or a representative of the people have a clear view of whats going on, some transparency.

A Sidewalk Labs spokesperson said they have reviewed the AI declaration and agree with its principles.
Refugees and newcomers are being warned of an escalating telephone scam with those behind it using the publicly available names and numbers of government officials on caller ID to make the calls appear legitimate.

The federal government and the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre have been warning of such scams for years, but the latest twist in tactics targeting newcomers recently prompted the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to issue a new alert about fraudulent calls.

Victims have reported receiving telephone calls from persons claiming to be representatives of the IRB and being told they are under investigation and owe money. In some cases, these calls seem to be coming from the IRB or the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the IRB warning says.

An earlier warning by the board said some of the targeted people actually had asylum hearings before it, but officials told the Star they have no idea how the callers tracked down the information, which is not public.

In 2018 alone, more than 22,000 people received extortion calls from fraudsters claiming to be from the immigration department, the refugee board or the Canada Revenue Agency, with almost 1,500 falling victim to the phone scams and forking over $6.4 million, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, which is jointly managed by the RCMP, the Competition Bureau and the OPP.

IRB spokesperson Anna Pape said the tactics involved in the scams targeting immigrants and refugees keep evolving and are becoming more sophisticated.

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We received a report from someone saying they had been called by numbers appearing to be from the refugee board, another government department, and their local police service, all in a row. No suspects have been identified as of yet and it is an ongoing investigation, she said.

The board is continuing to work with law enforcement agencies, government partners, stakeholders and, of course, the media to raise awareness and prevent more victims of this scam.

Pape said scam artists are spoofing info on call display so that the name and number of a legitimate refugee board staffer would appear as the source of the call telling victims they were under investigation and owed money. The fraudsters would then demand payment in cash, bitcoin and even iTunes cards. The IRB has recently been getting as many as 17 reports a day from people saying they have been targeted.

The callers usually demand $1,000, said Pape, adding some unsuspecting individuals have ended up making the payments.

These types of fraud are not just random and there is a degree of sophistication that requires some sort of organized criminal group or element in order to commit these frauds, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre told the Star in an email.

While we dont know the specific technologies fraudsters are using, we know that they rely on the ability to spoof a number which in turn makes that call more believable to a potential victim.

Advocates said refugees and newcomers are particularly vulnerable to these scams because they are new to the country and unfamiliar with the way things work.

When they get a call from somebody of authority about immigration, they know its going to be a big decision because these officials hold a lot of power. It puts them at higher risk, said Jenn McIntyre, director of Romero House, a Toronto refugee shelter. This is a very common type of scam you and I are used to, we would just hang up.

As a refugee, Isabel Velosa is no stranger to frightening situations, having fled violence in her native Colombia for the safety of Canada.

But the Toronto mother of three found herself reduced to tears when she received a threatening phone call from a woman claiming to be from the Canada Revenue Agency and demanding she fork over $5,000 or face jail.

She spoke in an authoritative voice. She knew my name. She had my number, recalled a still-shaken Velosa, who left Colombia six years ago. She said if I dont pay, they would send someone to my place to arrest me and I must stay on the line and cant tell anybody.

Velosa said she spent 30 minutes on the phone pleading with the caller not to apprehend her, telling her truthfully she only had $30 in the bank. Velosas sobbing  and likely, her lack of funds  ultimately helped her avoid becoming a victim of the scam when she was targeted last spring.

Debbie Hill-Corrigan, executive director of Sojourn House, said the Toronto refugee shelter has publicized the refugee board warning on its website and on social media.

Theres a lot to be concerned about. How do these guys know a person is a refugee? Where did they get the contact information? Hill-Corrigan asked. The best we can do is make a concerted effort to inform and educate our clients.

Pape said the refugee board would never ask people for money or payment of any kind and recipients of these calls should immediately hang up and contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre at 1-888-495-8501.

Extortion calls from fraudulent tax and immigration agents:

2014: 1,559 reports, 136 victims, $302,890 in losses;

2015: 15,647 reports, 765 victims, $2.4M in losses;

2016: 23,919 reports, 1,195 victims, $3.6M in losses;

2017: 12,284 reports, 812 victims, $3M in losses;

2018: 22,419 reports, 1,490 victims, $6.4M in losses;

Jan. 1 to March 31, 2019: 1,160 reports, 154 victims, $600,000 in losses.

Source: Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre

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Most people know it as razor wire.

It coils atop the walls and fences that divide the U.S. and Mexico, snaking through weeds and past traffic signs, splintering the sunlight with its shiny knifelike barbs.

The U.S. military prefers a less menacing name: concertina wire.

Troops on the southern border have installed hundreds of miles of the wire during the last few months as part of President Donald Trumps effort to stop caravans of Central American migrants from entering the country.

Barbed wire, used properly, can be a beautiful sight, Trump said to cheers at a rally in Montana in November.

But many U.S. communities along the border strongly disagree. Border city leaders and other officials argue that the wire is better suited to war zones and prisons and that any benefit is not worth the damage it is doing to their images or the threat it poses to wildlife, livestock and people.

We dont like to see concertina wire anywhere unless theres imminent danger, said Laredo, Texas, Mayor Pete Saenz.

The troops, which were deployed to the southwest border in October, unfurled about a mile of the wire near two bridges in Laredo in anticipation of a migrant caravan that never arrived.

It makes you wonder, Saenz said. Are we overreacting?

At the citys request, the Border Patrol instructed the troops to take down the wire.

They left some coils of wire behind, Saenz said, in the event theres another caravan.

In December, Texas Congressman Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat whose district includes part of the Rio Grande Valley, complained in a letter to the Border Patrol commissioner that the wire had contributed to the militarization of our border.

The Border Patrol said in a statement Friday that the wire has been used along the border in the past and is working now.

In places where the wire was recently installed, the number of migrants caught crossing the border has dropped dramatically, the statement said.

Officials have already seen the effectiveness of the additional strands of wire, it said, touting the benefits of placing several strands of razor wire side by side.

Previously, criminal organizations posted individuals on the Mexican side of the border to scout and cut wire installed on the top tier of the fence, the statement said. Once removed in sections, human smugglers would exploit the opening and send individuals over illegally into the U.S. The new multi-layered wire prevents individuals from using this tactic.

The Border Patrol does not track wire-related injuries, but the agency said the wire deters people from trying to scale border barriers, which is a common cause of broken ankles and other injuries.

The wire supplied by Allied Tube and Conduit of Hebron, Ohio, under a $41-million contract with the Department of Defense is also popular with conservative groups that lobby for increased border enforcement.

Its another barrier, another thing in the way to slow people down, said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.

Vaughan said the wire could be used to quickly fortify weak spots along outdated border fences and that it deterred deportees trying to sneak back into the country as opposed to migrant families seeking asylum at the border.

Its not a silver bullet, but it does help, she said.

The Border Patrol has asked the military to install 210 miles of wire. The troops have a few miles to go, according to Maj. Mark Lazane, a spokesman for U.S. Northern Command.

Of the 4,000 troops now on the border, 1,850 are involved in the effort, which is currently limited to Arizona and California, Lazane said.

Once emplaced, the concertina wire barrier becomes the property of (Border Patrol), including any decision to move or remove it, he said.

The Border Patrol said it has no plans to remove wire that has been erected in recent months. But pressure has been growing to do just that.

Jesus Jesse Morales, the fire chief in Naco, Ariz., worried that his 16 volunteer firefighters, including three paramedics, could get hurt rescuing someone from the concertina wire.

Were just waiting for something to happen, he said. To me, its a ticking time bomb.

About four years ago in Naco, a young girl fell off a 14-foot-high border fence, landed on a pile of wire and was cut so badly she had to be taken to a hospital in Tucson, Morales said.

Last month, residents of the 14,000-person town gathered at the border crossing to protest the wire and demand its removal.

Other opponents of the wire expressed concern that animals could get caught up in it.

The Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson has documented spots in the Rio Grande Valley where wire was spread through brushland.

Theres not a single document that weve turned up and weve done a lot of research that shows any strategy, any consideration for wildlife, said Laiken Jordahl, a campaigner with the group.

We saw it just staked into the ground in places where its near irrigation canals or the river where the environmental impacts are potentially severe, he said. It can ensnare wildlife.

In McAllen, Texas, Mayor Jim Darling said the city deemed some of the newly placed wire unnecessary and took it upon itself to remove it. Were secure, he said. Our cities are safe.

In some places, troops strung wire perpendicular to the Rio Grande, the meandering line between Mexico and the U.S.

In fairness to the military, its hard to tell where the border is, Darling said.

But the wire made things more confusing.

We didnt know if they were trying to fence people in or out, he said.

In the Arizona border city of Nogales, Mayor Arturo Garino demanded a meeting with Border Patrol officials last month after troops started posting concertina wire along the sides of the fence through downtown.

They didnt want to talk to me, he said.

Garino met with local police and fire chiefs, who didnt like the concertina wire either.

They were concerned about the first responders having to go if someone was to fall into it, one of the citizens on our side or somebody trying to jump over, Garino said.

A week later, he and the chiefs met the local Border Patrol chief, who told them the wire was meant to fortify the area.

When Garino asked why, he said, the Border Patrol commander told him: Because were having rapists, murderers and child molesters jump over the wall.

The mayor walked out of the meeting. I couldnt believe that was their explanation, he said.

The Border Patrol said in its statement that it has taken various measures to protect people from the wire around Nogales. Those include adding fences and warning signs and not posting the wire near the ground where there is high pedestrian activity.

Among the mayors worries is that the wire will hurt his citys trade and tourism with Mexico.

Last month, the Nogales City Council passed a resolution calling for the Border Patrol to remove the lethal wire, designed to entangle its victim as the razors slice/cut deeply into the flesh.

The cities of Bisbee and Tucson passed resolutions supporting Nogales.

In their latest move, Nogales officials have threatened to sue the federal government for violating their zoning laws, which restrict concertina wire to industrial areas.

This is not our city. It looks like a prison, the mayor said. If that wire stays around, its going to hurt us.

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(c)2019 Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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PHOTOS (for help with images, contact 312-222-4194): BORDER-CONCERTINA-WIRE
The arrest of Julian Assange in London has raised a long list of serious questions about press freedom and the reaches of American justice.

But The New York Times wrote about those questions elsewhere. Whats left is a considerably more frivolous but widely asked question: What happened to his cat?

It is a concern of the tens of thousands of people who followed Embassy Cat on Twitter and Instagram, watching for more than a year as an indisputably adorable kitten crawled along Assanges shoulder and sat in on meetings with his visitors. No matter ones feelings about Assange, the cat, who had lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy with the WikiLeaks founder as he holed up to avoid capture, was a made-for-social-media star.

Sure, the cats social media accounts were an extension of Assanges politics, promoting his causes and deployed to sell T-shirts for a man deeply schooled in celebrity and internet culture. But if the cats purpose was to put a cute face on the thorny politics of an international fugitive, it largely worked. Social media was full of people asking about the cats fate on Thursday.

Little is known about the cats whereabouts now, or if we can follow it on Instagram. The Ecuadorean Embassy in London did not return an email seeking information on what happened to the cat. But several published reports in recent months suggest the cat had left the embassy months ago.

La Repubblica, an Italian newspaper, reported in November that Assange had given the cat up to spare the cat an isolation which has become unbearable and allow it a healthier life.

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Sputnik, a Russian state-run news source, wrote on Thursday that the cat was taken by an associate of Assange and had not been at the embassy since September.

It is not here, the newspaper quoted a representative as saying. We are not a pet store, so we do not keep pets here.

The Ecuadorean government, among a set of new rules delivered to Assange last year, requested that he do a better job looking after his cat, threatening to send the cat to an animal shelter if Assange did not comply.

The cat was largely known as Embassy Cat, but Assange said in a 2017 interview with The New Yorker that he called the cat Michi or Cat-stro.

Since its first post in May 2016, the account has not been able to resist a cat pun, though it does not stray far from the basics. It wished followers a good Meow-ning, drank Meow-lk and demanded action immeowdiately. It sought purrfection and was interested in counter-purrveillance.

The Instagram account has not uploaded a new photo since March 2017, while the Twitter account has not been active since March 2018.

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RABAT, Morocco - A Swiss man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Moroccan terrorism court for links to Islamic extremists who allegedly killed two Nordic tourists last year.

The man, 33, was convicted of charges including deliberately helping perpetrators of terrorist acts and training terrorists, according to state news agency MAP. The verdict was Thursday but reported Friday.

The online advertising technician, who was arrested in December, has a Moroccan wife, according to a lawyer representing another Swiss suspect in the case.

Moroccan prosecutors have filed terrorism charges against 25 individuals suspected of links to the killings.

The women tourists, one from Denmark and one from Norway, were found dead in their tent in the Atlas Mountains Dec. 17. Authorities blamed followers of the Islamic State group.
ALGIERS, Algeria - The Latest on the protests in Algeria (all times local):

8 p.m.

Police have moved in at several points around the Algerian capital, firing intense volleys of tear gas as a massive anti-government protest is drawing to an end.

Friday was the eighth straight of demonstrations against Algerias interim leadership, and the protest was marked by a surge of violence with bottles and rocks thrown at security forces, who responded with tear gas.

The protest comes over the temporary leadership put in place after Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down as president on April 2.

Fridays protest had been overwhelmingly peaceful until the day drew to an end. Clashes erupted in the central post offices square after police fired tear gas in other parts of central Algiers. Two helicopters were seen flying above the acrid smoke.

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5 p.m.

Police have moved in on a crowd in a small square in the Algerian capital, firing tear gas and what appeared to be rubber bullets after some demonstrators tossed bottles and rocks at them.

Tension mounted on the eighth straight Friday of demonstrations against Algerias interim leadership, put in place after Abdelaziz Bouteflika was forced to step down as president on April 2.

Protesters have prided themselves for holding peaceful demonstrations nationwide.

An AP team saw people in Audin Square, a centre for weekly protests, throwing rocks and bottles at police, who responded with tear gas then what appeared to be rubber bullets, emptying the square.

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1:55 p.m.

Algerian police are firing water cannon at protesters in the capital as tensions mount on the eighth week of protests against the countrys leadership.

The protest movement has been overwhelmingly peaceful but police were out in larger than usual numbers Friday.

Reporters from The Associated Press saw police spraying water repeatedly on a huge crowd on Didouche Mourad Street in Algiers, on the route toward the central post office that has become a symbol of the movement.

It was unclear whether something prompted the police to act.

The street was packed with protesters waving Algerian flags. Protesters shouted Authorities - Assassins! and surrounded the water cannon truck, with some appearing to hit it.

The protesters pushed out longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika last week but now want other top officials to step down too.

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10:05 a.m.

Police are deployed around Algerias capital to deter protesters arriving for an eighth straight Friday of demonstrations against the countrys leadership.

Protest organizers are encouraging Algerians to come out in Algiers or other cities to show that theyre not satisfied with the departure of longtime President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, and want wholesale political change.

Anger is mounting over military chief Gen. Ahmed Gaid Salah, who was instrumental in Bouteflikas departure but then threw his support behind interim President Abdelkader Bensalah, seen as part of the old regime.

Bensalah was named interim president this week and announced new elections for July 4. Protest appeals online call for both Bensalah and the military chief to step down.

Police are lining plazas and checking all vehicles entering Algiers.
MEXICO CITY - Police in northern Mexico said Thursday they raided a lab producing the synthetic opioid fentanyl, the second such lab detected in Mexico in the last four months.

Police in the northern state of Sinaloa said the lab was discovered in a house in a middle-class neighbourhood of the state capital, Culiacan.

Carlos Hernandez Leyva, the states assistant public safety secretary, said police were patrolling in an armoured truck when they came under fire. Officers chased the assailants into the house, but they escaped through a back door, he said. Police requested a search warrant and founds tubs of chemicals.

In December, Mexican federal agents arrested four people in a raid on a fentanyl lab in Mexico City.

And in November 2017, soldiers found dozens of kilograms of chemical ingredients for making fentanyl at another lab on the outskirts of Culiacan.

Much U.S. fentanyl originates in China, but is often smuggled through Mexico, where it is often pressed into pills. Because of inexpert mixing, authorities have found deadly inconsistencies in the doses of fentanyl contained in the same batch of pills. Mexican cartels also produce the drug from precursor chemicals, mainly imported from China.

Fentanyl is 50 times more powerful than heroin and can be lethal even in small amounts. Music superstar Prince died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl in 2016, and that year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated the drug and its analogues killed more than 20,000 Americans.
NEW DELHI - The Dalai Lama was released from an Indian hospital on Friday, saying he felt normal, almost normal after being treated for a chest infection.

The 83-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader looked pale but strong and spoke cheerfully to The Associated Press as he walked out of the New Delhi hospital after being discharged.

The Dalai Lama was hospitalized on Tuesday after coming to the capital to consult with doctors.

He is likely to return this week to the north Indian hill town of Dharmsala, which has been his headquarters since he fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama usually spends several months a year travelling the world to teach Buddhism and highlight Tibetans struggle for greater freedom in China. But he has cut down on travel in the past year in order to take care of his health.

China doesnt recognize the Tibetan government-in-exile and accuses the Dalai Lama of seeking to separate Tibet from China.

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, center, leaves from a hospital, in New Delhi, India, Friday, April 12, 2019. The Dalai Lama has been discharged from a New Delhi hospital after recovering from a chest infection. The 83-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader says he is feeling ''normal, almost normal.'' The Dalai Lama was hospitalized on Tuesday.







The Dalai Lama denies being a separatist and says he merely advocates for substantial autonomy and protection of the regions native Buddhist culture.

At an event with educators in New Delhi earlier this month, the Dalai Lama said he was not seeking independence for Tibet, but rather a reunion with China under mutually acceptable terms.

The Dalai Lama also predicted that the political impasse with China could change if he lived for at least another decade.
QUETTA, Pakistan - A suicide bomber targeted an open-air market in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta on Friday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens of others, police and hospital officials said.

Shortly after the bombing, struck near a Shiite residential area, dozens of angry Shiite youths rallied in Quetta, demanding more security from the authorities and the arrest of those behind the attacks.

They also denounced the violence by Sunni extremists who have killed hundreds in similar attacks over the past years in Baluchistan province, where Quetta is the capital.

It seems people from the (Shiite) Hazara community were the target, said senior police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema, adding that some of the victims were in critical condition.

Mir Ziaullah Langau, the provincial home minister, said the suicide bomber had walked up to the marketplace and killed both Shiites and Sunnis.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which took place in the Hazarganji neighbourhood, but Sunni militant groups have claimed similar bombings in the past against Shiites, whom they view as apostates deserving of death.

Cheema, the police chief said at least eight Shiites were among the dead, as well as a paramilitary soldier and seven other people. Four paramilitary troops, who were guarding the open-air fruit and vegetable market, were among the wounded.

Local TV footage showed several damaged shops and at least one paramilitary vehicle. A wounded man told reporters from his hospital bed how he had heard a loud explosion before he was struck down.

Qadir Nayil, a leader of the Hazara community, asked the government to provide better protection for the Shiites.

Once again our people were the target and once again we will have to bury our dear ones, he said. We demand more security from the government and all those involved in todays act of terrorism should be found and punished.

Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and President Arif Alvi issued statements condemning the attack and adding that it would not weaken the resolve of the nation in the fight against terrorism.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed shock at the Quetta attack and strongly condemned this cowardly act, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The United Nations expresses its fully solidarity with the Government of Pakistan in its fight against terrorism and violent extremism, Dujarric said.

Jam Kamal Khan, the chief minister of Baluchistan province, also condemned the attack, saying the enemy of humanity is to blame.

Hours after the attack in Quetta, a roadside bomb exploded outside a shop in the southwestern border town of Chama, killing one person and wounding 10 others, police and hospitals officials said.

Several militant groups operate in Baluchistan, which is also the scene of a low-level insurgency by separatists demanding more autonomy and a greater share in the regions natural resources such as gas and oil.

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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed
TOKYO - The Latest on the arrest of former auto industry leader Carlos Ghosn (all times local):

5:10 p.m.

The new board of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance is holding its first meeting to plot out the groups future without jailed former boss Carlos Ghosn.

The board is meant to replace a Ghosn-driven, Netherlands-based leadership structure that has come under scrutiny since Ghosns first arrest in November. He has been repeatedly arrested on allegations of financial misconduct that he vigorously denies.

Renault Chairman Jean-Dominique Senard leads the new board, which includes the CEOs of all three carmakers and met Friday in Paris. It will oversee shared projects such as developing batteries and more autonomous driving functions in their cars.

Without the hard-driving, attention-getting Ghosn at the helm, some have expressed concern about the viability of the alliance. Meanwhile, the scandal around the alleged financial wrongdoing remains a major distraction for all three carmakers.

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4:00 p.m.

The detention of Nissans former Chairman Carlos Ghosn on suspicion of financial misconduct has been approved through April 22.

Ghosn was arrested in November, released on bail last month but re-arrested last week on fresh allegations. The Tokyo District Court on Friday approved prosecutors request to continue to hold Ghosn at Tokyo Detention Center.

He has been charged with falsifying financial documents in under-reporting his compensation and with breach of trust in using Nissan Motor Co. money for dubious payments.

Ghosn led the Japanese automaker for two decades and says he is innocent of the accusations that led to his downfall.
Japanese newspapers report about the World Trade Organization's decision in favor of Korea's import restrictions on Japanese seafood. Yonhap



South Korea on Friday welcomed the World Trade Organization's decision to rule in favor of Seoul's import restrictions on Japanese seafood in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and said it would keep the ban in place going forward.

The WTO appellate body overturned several points of the 2018 verdict earlier in the day, saying the Seoul government's measures are not unfair trade restrictions and do not fall into the category of arbitrary discrimination.

The appellate body, however, sided with Japan on one point, saying that Seoul has not provided enough information to Tokyo in terms of the import ban measures.

"The government has been making all-out efforts to follow the principle of making the health and safety of the people a priority, and the government highly appraises the WTO's decision," the Ministry of Trade, Investment and Energy said in a statement.

The South Korean government said it hopes that there would be no further trade dispute with Japan.

In 2015, Japan officially lodged a complaint at the WTO to challenge South Korea's import bans and additional testing requirements on fish caught after 2013. Tokyo argued that radioactive levels of its fishery product were lower than those from a number of other nations.

The WTO's dispute settlement body ruled in favor of Japan in February 2018.

South Korea has been placing import restrictions on 28 kinds of fish caught from eight prefectures near Fukushima since the nuclear power plant accident.

The South Korean government said it will keep the existing import ban on all seafood from the eight prefectures. All Japanese seafood companies will be required to hand in safety certificates when any traces of radiation are found, it added.

About 50 countries have maintained bans on imports since the nuclear disaster, but Japan has complained to the WTO about only one country -- South Korea.

"Currently, 19 more countries have implemented an import ban (on Japanese seafood) at different levels," said Yoon Chang-yul, the head of the social policy coordination office under the Office for Government Policy Coordination.

South Korea, meanwhile, has been replacing its imports of Japanese pollack and mackerel with supplies from Russia and Norway respectively, the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries said.

"In the past, (South Korea) imported around 20,000 to 40,000 tons of pollack and mackerel from Japan. Now the volume is below 3,000 tons," an official from the ocean ministry said.

"It is a sovereign country's right to implement an appropriate level of protection," an official from the ministry said. "All countries have different standards, and they cannot be judged under the same standard. The Fukushima crisis broke out in a neighboring country, and we needed to review our protection level in a more strict and thorough manner." (Yonhap)
SOFIA, Bulgaria - Protests against the Roma community have taken place in the northern Bulgarian city of Gabrovo, sparked by an alleged attack by Roma men on a shopkeeper.

Nine people were arrested and three reported injured Thursday evening during the latest clashes between protesters and police.

Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev, a former Gabrovo mayor, visited the city to appeal for calm, but was booed by the crowd.

Some Roma parents are keeping their children out of school, fearing for their safety if they leave their neighbourhood.

Donchev said ethnic tensions in Gabrovo have existed for years. A decision was made recently to demolish derelict houses, often used illegally by Roma.

Roma, or Gypsies, make up around 5-9% of Bulgarias population of 7 million and are among the most disadvantaged groups in the country.
WARSAW, Poland - Countries in the western Balkans aspiring to join the European Union, such as Serbia and Kosovo, should be given a clear pathway to membership provided they solve their differences, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said Friday.

At a conference of foreign ministers of the so-called Berlin Process, which brings together those aspiring states and some EU members, Maas said it was very important to offer the countries in that region a clear perspective of membership. provided any differences including any lingering from the wars of the 1990s are resolved.

The meeting in Warsaw was held in preparation for a summit on EU enlargement scheduled in Poland in July.

Our hand remains extended and that means that offering a European perspective to western Balkans is meant not only as a promise to the countries in the region, but it is also in the interest of the European Union, Maas told a news conference later.

The Berlin Process, initiated by Germany, is a platform for bringing closer to the EU the aspiring states: Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Serbia.

On an invitation from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, Berlin is also to host a meeting of western Balkan and EU high representatives April 29.

Maas encouraged western Balkan nations to find solutions to difficult issues in the region and pointed to the example of North Macedonia, which recently changed its name to settle a conflict with Greece, as a case of good will that brings success.

He said those who do not seek reconciliation with neighbours will remain stuck in their past, also in the area of economy and social welfare.

Internal conflicts in the Balkans and a split between those supporting ties with the EU and those opting for Russian links have stalled the EU enlargement process.
VALLETTA, Malta - Ending another European standoff over immigration, Malta on Saturday announced a deal to distribute 64 migrants rescued at sea off Libya 10 days ago among four European Union nations.

The migrants, who will be distributed among Germany, France, Portugal and Luxembourg, were transferred to Maltese army boats from the ship that saved them and were brought into Vallettas port on Saturday afternoon.

However, Malta said the German-flagged aid ship carrying them, the Alan Kurdi, would still not be allowed to enter its ports and none of the migrants will remain permanently in Malta.

Once again, the smallest member of the European Union was put under unnecessary pressure being asked to resolve a case which was neither its responsibility nor its remit, the government said. A solution was found in order not to let the situation deteriorate further while making it clear Malta cannot keep shouldering this burden.

Malta has argued it cannot open its ports to humanitarian rescue ships because their activities off the coast of lawless Libya have encouraged human traffickers.

The German aid group Sea-Eye, which had rescued the 64 migrants, had complained for days about worsening conditions on the Alan Kurdi, which was not designed to handle so many people. Two migrants were evacuated due to health issues.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, who has repeatedly rejected calls to let the ship enter Italian ports, hailed the deal.

Excellent news! he tweeted after the deal was announced. He praised Malta for doing the right thing by denouncing the dangerous and undue pressures exerted by the NGOs.

Salvini, leader of Italys far-right League party, is sticking to a hard-line approach to migration, insisting that Italian ports should be closed to migrants rescued by aid groups in the Mediterranean Sea in a bid to force other EU states to take them in.

The 64 migrants were originally rescued off the Libyan coast, so Italy and Malta claimed that Libya should have taken them in. However, parts of Libya have seen escalating fighting in the last week as one military faction seeks to take over the capital of Tripoli.

A total of 356 people have died or gone missing while crossing the Mediterranean to Europe this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
PARIS - Ukraines beleaguered president travelled to Germany and France on Friday ahead of a presidential runoff in which he is trailing a comic actor who is a political novice. His rival headed to Paris only.

Polls show Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko behind by a wide margin ahead of the April 21 runoff against Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Germany and France, which have led diplomatic efforts for years trying to ease tensions between warring neighbours Ukraine and Russia, are following the election closely.

Macron successively met with Zelenskiy and Porochenko at the Elysee presidential palace in Paris.

We had a very constructive conversation, Zelenskiy was quoted as saying by Russias state news agency as saying after the talks. It was a pleasure to meet Mr. Macron.

He would not elaborate.

After his meeting with the French president, Poroshenko later tweeted that he was happy to meet with a sincere friend of Ukraine.

Macron didnt make any comment to the press.

In Berlin, Merkel received only Poroshenko. Her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said a meeting with Zelenskiy is not planned at present.

At a joint news conference in the German capital, Merkel deflected a question about the impression that she favours Poroshenko, arguing that she is in permanent contact with the incumbent and its important to keep talking on those topics despite Ukraines election.

We have built very close relations in the last few years, Merkel said, adding that implementing democratic change is a complicated process ... Ukraine has made progress here, but certainly is not at the end of the road.

Germany and France brokered a 2015 peace accord with Kyiv and Moscow to stop the fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and Russia-backed separatists, but the deal is far from fully implemented.

We must continue on this path, because it is the only one I can see on which we can really make progress, Merkel said, adding that she favours continuing four-way talks between Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France.

There have been successes in some areas, but a great deal of work remains to be done on many things, so Germany will continue  independently of the outcome of the election  to support the positive and good development of Ukraine, Merkel said.

Poroshenko said he would be prepared to hold a summit immediately after the election.

Zelenskiy, for his part, said his top priority would be holding talks with Russia on ending the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko has campaigned on promises to lead Ukraine on a path to join the European Union and NATO. On his initiative, the countrys parliament added that commitment to the constitution earlier this year.

The president has cast himself as a seasoned statesman capable of standing up to Russian pressure and sought to denigrate his rival as a rookie who would become easy prey for the Kremlin.

Zelenskiy, who has never held a political office, has argued instead that his lack of political experience is an advantage because he has no ties to Ukraines corruption-ridden political elite. He has also pledged to keep the country on track to join the EU and promised to call a referendum on whether Ukraine should become a NATO member.

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Moulson reported from Berlin. Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to the story.
BERLIN - An Austrian music festival is apologizing to British grime artist Stormzy, who pulled out of an appearance after accusing security staff of racial profiling.

Snowbombing festival organizers said security responded Wednesday night to a report that an individual at the show in Mayrhofen had a weapon, and a small number of people, including Stormzys manager, were searched.

Stormzy said on Instagram his friends were racially profiled, targeted and aggressively handled ... despite no one fitting the description.

Stormzy offered his sincerest apologies to disappointed fans but said if these are the drastic steps that I need to take to make a point against racism and racial profiling, then trust me Im taking it.

Snowbombing said Thursday they wholeheartedly apologize to Stormzys team and will take steps to ensure it doesnt happen again.
LONDONThe plush neighbourhood of Knightsbridge, a high-rent hub of fancy retail and discreet diplomats, awoke Friday with one international curiosity fewer in its midst.

Julian Assange, the Australian bad boy and founder of WikiLeaks, had been dragged Thursday from the Ecuadoran Embassy, where he had entertained the likes of Lady Gaga and Pamela Anderson in the Victorian red-brick building a stones throw from Harrods, the luxury department store. He was arrested to face a hacking charge in the United States.

We heard the helicopter overhead, said James Smith, a local real estate agent. The scene outside the embassy was the dramatic climax of a seven-year diplomatic stalemate, as Ecuador revoked the anti-secrecy crusaders asylum and turned him over to British authorities.

Gone now are the demonstrators with Free Assange banners. But life goes on in Knightsbridge, Smith said. It is not as if residents saw their notorious neighbour, holed up in the embassy since 2012. From his corner room, where he lived with his Internet-star cat and used a treadmill to stay in shape, Assange had become a fading fascination.

But his coming legal battle puts him back in the spotlight.

Half of Britons had no opinion on Ecuadors decision to get rid of him, according to a YouGov poll. More than a third supported the move, and only one in seven wanted him to stay.

Read more:

Hillary Clinton: Assange must answer for what he has done

I know nothing  Trump changes his tune on WikiLeaks

Journalism or not? WikiLeaks status in media world complex

Now that Assange has lost his bolt-hole in Knightsbridge, the 47-year-old will battle extradition from a British jail. After his arrest, he was swiftly convicted Thursday of skipping bail in 2012, and he faces up to a year in prison for that offence.

U.S. prosecutors seek his extradition to face a federal charge of conspiring to hack into a Defense Department computer network in 2010. His attorney, Jennifer Robinson, warned that his arrest sets a dangerous precedent for press freedoms.

There are many questions. How long will the extradition process take? Likely years. Will Assange remain in prison as his case proceeds? Almost certainly. He will first be sentenced  probably six months to one year  for jumping bail. Finally, what about the cat? The Ecuadoran Embassy has not revealed what happened to the pet. An Italian newspaper suggested it was given to a friend months ago.

The issue of Assanges extradition instantly exposed divisions within British politics, already riven by the countrys exit from the European Union, known as Brexit.

Prime Minister Theresa May said his arrest showed that no one is above the law, while Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the government should oppose Assanges extradition. The left-wing leader said Assange was being targeted for exposing evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Labours spokeswoman for domestic affairs, Diane Abbott, said the request should be blocked on human rights grounds. She told the BBC that the U.S. governments true motivation for prosecuting Assange was its embarrassment of the things hes revealed about the American military and security services.

Right-wing politician Nigel Farage, an ideological ally of President Trump, told the broadcaster on Friday he had visited Assange once in the embassy, swatting away the suggestion that he was a conduit between Trump and WikiLeaks. The American president, who once said he loved WikiLeaks, professed Thursday to know nothing about the group.

Hes going to be extradited, and thats the end of it, Farage said.

Assanges fight against extradition could keep him jailed in Britain for years, as the case winds its way through legal challenges in multiple courts, experts said.

Because of the seriousness of the charge and the fact that Assange has already skipped bail once  when Sweden sought his extradition to answer allegations of sex crimes during a visit there  he is likely do battle from a prison cell.

His new life will not be as comfortable as the previous years in the Ecuadoran Embassy, where he was free to drink wine, skateboard down the halls and receive guests. Until his exasperated hosts cut off his Internet, Assange was all over social media. In British prisons, mobile phones are prohibited and Internet access highly restricted.

Assanges lawyers vow they will fight the extradition order, from the Magistrates Court to the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court  and possibly to the European Court of Human Rights.

Even if Britain manages to leave the European Union, Brexit will almost certainly include a lengthy transition period, which could put Assange in front of EU judges.

It will be some years before a final decision is reached  at least a year and probably longer, said Amy Jeffress, a former Justice Department legal attache in London. My over and under would be three years.

She said, These cases can become very political in the U.K.

One high-profile terrorism case dragged on for 13 years before the defendant was finally extradited to the United States. Assanges previous battle against extradition to Sweden took 18 months.

Daniel Sternberg, a barrister specializing in extradition law at Temple Gardens Chambers in London, said he expects Assange to mount a vigorous challenge, pressing every conceivable point.

He said the most relevant arguments would contest the forum of prosecution  reasoning that Assanges physical location when he engaged in the conduct of which he stands accused is more relevant than the country targeted by his activities.

Sternberg also said Assanges legal team is likely raise fears of human rights violations, should the WikiLeaks founder be destined for a federal supermax prison, where some inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in a 7-by-12-foot concrete cell.

Although this indictment is relatively limited, his lawyers might argue that there could be other charges waiting in the wings, Sternberg said.

Before the extradition order can move forward, Assange must first serve the sentence he was handed for failing to surrender to British authorities. His legal team could choose to expedite the extradition proceedings, but experts said that was unlikely.

From his British prison cell, Assange would have limited use of a landline telephone, on which he would be able to call previously approved numbers, Sternberg said. If he were given access to the Internet, it would be highly supervised, he said.

The world will have to get used to hearing less of Assange, filtered by people who see him in prison or his lawyers, Sternberg said.

Opponents of extradition point to a decision in 2012 by May, who was home secretary at the time, to refuse to hand over Scottish computer hacker Gary McKinnon to the American criminal justice system. May cited medical reports indicating that McKinnon risked becoming a danger to himself if he stood trial in the United States.

But the current home secretary suggested his thinking about Assanges case was different. In the House of Commons on Thursday, Sajid Javid excoriated the Labour Party for defending Assange and echoed the prime ministers judgement. Theres no one in this country that is above the law, he said.

Moreover, the solicitor who represented McKinnon, Karen Todner, said May moved to limit the discretion of the home secretary to refuse to carry out extradition orders at the very same time that she refused to hand over her client, meaning Assanges fate is likely to rest entirely in the courts. Todner also represented Lauri Love, a British hacker whose extradition was blocked last year by the High Court of Justice, which found that conditions in a U.S. jail would be oppressive and that Britain was the rightful forum for his prosecution.

Todner said she thinks Assanges lawyers have a strong case to make that the request from U.S. prosecutors rests on political offences, which are barred as grounds for surrendering an alleged criminal under many extradition treaties, including the one between Britain and the United States.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in Sweden said Thursday that they have received a request to reopen an investigation into Assanges conduct from an attorney for a woman who accuses him of rape.

Swedish prosecutors said they had not been alerted to Assanges arrest and learned of the developments in his case from media reports.

Swedens director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, closed the probe two years ago, saying she could not proceed while Assange enjoyed safe haven in the Ecuadoran Embassy, but she noted that it would be possible to resume if he were expelled.

The investigation involves a 2010 complaint from a woman who says she met Assange at a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm. She alleges he engaged in nonconsensual unprotected sex with her  an accusation he denies.

If Sweden asks for Assanges extradition, it will be up to Britain to decide in which order it heeds the requests, if at all, from the United States and Sweden.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the attorney for Assanges accuser, said in a statement to The Washington Post that she hopes Britain would send the WikiLeaks founder to the Scandinavian country first, if prosecutors there bring charges. Her clients case is more pressing than U.S. demands, she said, because the statute of limitations for the rape allegation expires in August 2020.

Im fighting for her rights to be remembered, Fritz said. Getting justice and restitution is of utmost importance for her to be able to move on with her life.

Read more about:
COPENHAGEN - When Julian Assange sought asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012, he was fleeing from sexual assault accusations against him in Sweden. Swedish authorities could still go after the WikiLeaks founder, who was arrested Thursday after Ecuador withdrew its protection and allowed British police to drag him out of the embassy. A closer look at the case:

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WHAT WERE THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST ASSANGE IN SWEDEN?

Swedish prosecutors opened an investigation into Assange after two women accused him of sexual offences during a 2010 visit to Sweden.

Assange denied the claims. He left for Britain in September of that year, and in November, a Stockholm court approved a request to detain Assange for questioning. Swedish police issued an international arrest warrant for him.

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WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE ACCUSERS?

Assange met both women in connection with a lecture on Aug. 14, 2010, in Stockholm. One was involved in organizing an event for Swedens centre-left Social Democratic Party and offered to host Assange at her apartment. The other was in the audience. After Assange had sex with both within a week, they went to police together to seek advice. A police officer who heard their accounts decided there was reason to suspect they were victims of sex crimes and handed the case to a prosecutor.

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WHEN AND WHY WAS THE SWEDISH CASE CLOSED?

In June 2012, Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid arrest, fearing extradition to the United States. In 2015, Swedish prosecutors dropped a case of alleged sexual misconduct when the statute of limitations ran out. That left a rape allegation. Two years later, prosecutors dropped the probe into the rape claim, saying there was no way to detain or charge Assange in the foreseeable future because of his protected status inside the embassy. Authorities said it was no longer proportionate to maintain the European arrest warrant.

After Sweden dropped the case, Assange remained inside the embassy because he was still subject to arrest in Britain for jumping bail.

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CAN SWEDEN REOPEN THE CASE?

Yes. Swedish prosecutors have said the case could be reopened before the statute of limitations for the rape claim ends in August 2020. After Assanges arrest on Thursday, the prosecutions deputy director, Eva-Marie Persson, was tapped to look into a request from a lawyer for one of the accusers to find out whether the case can be reopened.

Elisabeth Massi Fritz, the lawyer for the woman who reported being raped by Assange, told The Associated Press that she would do everything to have the Swedish case reopened so Assange can be extradited to Sweden and prosecuted.

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WHAT IS SWEDENS DEFINITION OF RAPE?

Under the Swedish criminal code, rape is defined as forced sexual intercourse initiated by one or more people without consent but also intercourse and comparable sexual acts against someone incapable of giving consent (fear or unconsciousness, for instance.) In 2018, Sweden passed a new law that criminalizes sex without consent as rape, even when there are no threats, coercion or violence involved.

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CAN SWEDEN REQUEST HIS EXTRADITION?

Yes. Ove Bring, professor emeritus of international law at Stockholm University, said a new European arrest warrant for Assange could be issued, but we are not there yet. Persson said the case would be reviewed, but that no investigation has resumed and no timetable set.

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IF SENT TO SWEDEN, DOES ASSANGE RISK EXTRADITION TO THE UNITED STATES?

Bring concluded that an extradition to the U.S. is completely unthinkable if the person is wanted for political reasons. The decision would be up to the Swedish government, with input from the prosecution and a veto right given to Swedens Supreme Court in cases where the requested person does not accept to be extradited.
GENEVA - The Latest on Ebola outbreak in Congo (all times local):

7:20 p.m.

The World Health Organization says that while the ongoing Ebola outbreak in Congo is of deep concern the situation does not yet warrant being declared a global emergency.

Following a meeting of its expert committee on Friday, the U.N. health agency says it remains very worried about the recent spike in Ebola cases and the potential risk of the virus affecting other countries.

Congos health ministry on Thursday reported 1,206 confirmed and probable cases, including 764 deaths, since the outbreak was declared on Aug. 1. The outbreak is occurring close to the borders of Uganda and Rwanda, with South Sudan not far away.

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1:40 p.m.

A top Red Cross official says hes more concerned than I have ever been about the possible regional spread of the Ebola virus in Congo after a recent spike in cases.

Emanuele Capobianco spoke by phone ahead of a key World Health Organization meeting in Geneva later Friday about whether to declare the Ebola outbreak in northeastern Congo an international health emergency.

Capobianco, head of health and care at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, cited Congolese health ministry statistics announced on Thursday showing 40 new cases over two days this week.

He called that rate unprecedented in the current eight-month outbreak.

He cites lack of trust about Ebola treatment in the community and insecurity caused by rebel groups that has hurt aid efforts.
BEIRUT - Its Arab Spring, season II, and hes one of the few holdovers. The last man standing among a crop of Arab autocrats, after a new wave of protests forced the removal of the Algerian and Sudanese leaders from the posts they held for decades.

Syrias President Bashar Assad has survived an uprising, a years-long ruinous war and an Islamic caliphate established over parts of his broken country. As the Syrian conflict enters its ninth year, the 53-year-old leader appears more secure and confident than at any time since the revolt against his rule began in 2011.

But the war for Syria is not over yet, and the path ahead is strewn with difficulties.

The back-to-back ouster of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after two decades of rule and Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir after three, has been dubbed a second Arab Spring, after the 2011 wave of protests that shook the Middle East and deposed longtime dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Social media has been filled with pictures of leaders at past Arab summits, noting almost all of them were now deposed except for Assad. Some pointed out ironically that al-Bashirs last trip outside of Sudan in December was to Damascus, where he met with the Syrian leader.

In most countries of the Arab Spring, the faces of the old order were removed, but either the ruling elite that had been behind them stayed in place or chaos ensued.

In Syria, Assad and his inner circle have kept their lock on power and managed to survive eight bloody years of chaos. That resilience may keep him in power for years to come even with a multitude of challenges, including a rapidly degenerating economy and a persisting insurgency in the northwest.

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WHAT IS ASSADS STAYING POWER?

Assad has survived through a mix of factors unique to him. His is a minority rule, and he has benefited from a strong support base and the unwavering loyalty of his Alawite sect, which fears for its future should he be deposed.

That support stretched beyond his base to other minority sects in Syria and some middle- and upper-class Sunnis who regard his family rule as a bulwark of stability in the face of Islamic radicals. Despite significant defections early in the conflict, the security services and military have not shown significant cracks. Loyal militias grew and became a power of their own.

Even as vast parts of his country fell from his control or turned into killing fields, Assad kept his core regime in place.

Perhaps Assads largest asset is Syrias position as a geographic linchpin on the Mediterranean and in the heart of the Arab world. That attracted foreign intervention, particularly from Russia and Iran, whose crucial political and military assistance propped up Assad and turned the tide of the war in his favour.

The unwavering backing from powerful friends is in sharp contrast to the muddled response by the U.S. administration, and something none of the other Arab leaders benefited from in their own struggle against their opponents.

Is he completely out of the woods?

For now, Assad appears to be secure. With the help of Russia and Iran, he has restored control over key parts of the country, and the world appears to have accepted his continued rule, at least until presidential elections scheduled for 2021.

Gulf countries reopened embassies after years of boycott. Delegations from Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan have visited in recent months, discussing restarting trade, resuming commercial agreements and releasing prisoners. Although the Arab League said it was not yet time to restore Syrias membership to the 22-member organization, the issue was discussed at their annual summit for the first time since the country was deprived of its seat eight years ago.

Much of what happens next depends on Assads ability to keep a lid on rising discontent as living standards deteriorate, and whether he is able to preserve Russia and Irans support.

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AN ECONOMY IN SHAMBLES

After years of war and ever-tightening U.S. sanctions, Syrias economic pinch is becoming more painful. The governments coffers are reeling from lack of resources, and the U.N. estimates that eight out 10 people live below poverty line.

Gas and fuel shortages were rampant in Damascus, Latakia and Aleppo this winter. Social media groups held competitions over which city had the longest lines at gas stations, forcing the issue to be debated in parliament.

This week, the government imposed gas rationing, limiting motorists to 20 litres every 48 hours. The crisis was worsened when reports spread about an impending price hike, prompting lines of hundreds of cars to stretch for miles outside gas stations. Oil Minister Ali Ghanem denied plans for a hike, warning of a war of rumours that is more severe than the political war.

The governments inability to cope with rising needs has fueled criticism and anger even among its support base. Still, its unlikely the discontent will set off another wave of protests. Most Syrians by now will put up with anything to avoid another slide back to violence.

Still, the United Nations describes the level of need in the country as staggering, with 11.7 million Syrians requiring assistance, nearly 65 per cent of the estimated 18 million people who remain in the country, millions of whom are displaced from their homes. Another more than 5 million fled abroad during the war.

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GOING FULL CIRCLE?

Demonstrations reminiscent of the early years of the conflict have resurfaced.

In Daraa, where the revolt started, hundreds took to the streets recently, offended by the governments plan to erect a statue of the presidents father, the late Hafez Assad. Further protests took place in some former opposition areas recaptured by the government after authorities moved to enforce military conscription there despite promises to hold off.

Arrests and detentions continue to be reported in recaptured areas, fueling fear that so-called reconciliation deals between authorities and residents of former opposition areas are only facades for continued repression and exclusion.

In eastern Ghouta, which the government recaptured last year after a siege, the government has been arresting former protest leaders and anti-government groups despite reconciliation deals, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Militarily, the defeat of the Islamic State groups caliphate last month closed one brutal chapter of the war but opens the door to an array of potential other conflicts. The militant groups defeat sets the stage for President Donald Trump to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria, a drawdown thats expected to set off a race to fill the vacuum.

The focus also pivots to Idlib, the last remaining rebel bastion in Syria where an estimated 3 million people live, under control of al-Qaida-linked militants.
SANAA, Yemen - Yemeni government officials say President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has returned home from Saudi Arabia to attend a rare session of parliament and elect a speaker.

The officials say Hadis presidential plane departed from Riyadh and landed in the eastern Yemeni city of Sayoun on Friday, where the House of Representatives is due to convene on Saturday for the first time since the war started.

The war pits Houthi rebels against Hadis government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition. Parliament has been divided into three blocs: One with Houthis, a second with Hadi, and a third in opposition to the two.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they werent authorized to speak to the press.

The 301-member parliament was last elected in 2009. Its six-year term has already expired.




A South Korean worker in Nigeria died earlier this week, days after suffering a gunshot from a local security guard, Seoul's foreign ministry said Friday.







The 49-year-old employee at a South Korean firm in the largest Nigerian city of Lagos was seriously wounded when the private security guard shot him Monday (local time).







He died Thursday, while being treated at a local hospital, the ministry said. The suspect was arrested earlier.







The South Korean Embassy in Nigeria has requested police there to conduct a speedy and fair investigation into the case and take measures to prevent the recurrence of a similar case, it added.







The embassy plans to offer all necessary consular support needed for his funeral, keeping close tabs on the probe. (Yonhap)


BETHEL, Alaska - An Alaska city has declared a public holiday honouring the hometown champion of this years Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

The Bethel City Council on Tuesday declared March 13 as Pete Kaiser Day in honour of the 2019 winner of the most celebrated event in sled dog racing, KYUK-AM reported Wednesday.

The 31-year-old won the 1,000-mile (1,600-kilometre) race across Alaskas wilderness when he and his team of dogs crossed the finish line in Nome on March 13 after beating back a challenge from defending champion Joar Ulsom of Norway.

Kaiser was present for the declaration in the central Alaska community, the station reported.

This is quite an honour and very special, and very proud to call Bethel my home. Look forward to calling it my home, my familys home, for many more years, and were more than willing and happy to share this victory with the whole community and everyone up and down the river, Kaiser said.

Bethel has supported Kaiser since his childhood, when he raced in local fun runs, through his four victories in the Kuskokwim 300 race, according to KYUK.

Petes success story proves that with passion and determination it is possible to achieve monumental things, said council member Mitchell Forbes.

Kaiser is the second Bethel resident to have a local commemorative holiday named for him, following the late Orutsararmiut Native Council Chief Eddie Hoffman, the station reported.

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Information from: KYUK-AM, http://www.kyuk.org
PARADISE, Calif. - The sky was turning orange and the embers were flying from the Camp Fire when Oney and Donna Carrell and Donnas father sped away from their Paradise home.

I thought, Oh, well, the house is done, Oney Carrell said.

A few days later, they learned otherwise. The Carrells home survived the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history with a couple of warped window frames, a partially charred down spout and a stubborn smoky smell inside.

Most of their neighbourhood was destroyed. A guest house in their backyard, where Donnas father lived, was reduced to ashes, along with a couple of sheds. Yet their beautifully restored 1940 Studebaker sat untouched in the garage.

The arc of destruction the Camp Fire carved through Paradise was seemingly random: Why were some houses saved and others incinerated? As millions of Californians brace for another wildfire season , a McClatchy analysis of fire and property records shows the answer might be found in something as simple as the roofs over their heads  and the year their house was built.

A landmark 2008 building code designed for Californias fire-prone regions  requiring fire-resistant roofs, siding and other safeguards  appears to have protected the Carrells home and dozens of others like it from the Camp Fire. That year marks a pivotal moment in the states deadly and expensive history of destructive natural disasters.

All told, about 51 per cent of the 350 single-family homes built after 2008 in the path of the Camp Fire were undamaged, according to McClatchys analysis of Cal Fire data and Butte County property records. By contrast, only 18 per cent of the 12,100 homes built prior to 2008 escaped damage. Those figures dont include mobile homes, which burned in nearly equal measure regardless of age.

These are great standards; they work, said senior engineer Robert Raymer of the California Building Industry Association, who consulted with state officials on the building code.

Yet despite this lesson, California may end up falling short in its effort to protect homes from the next wildfire.

Mushrooming cities such as Folsom, where an 11,000-home development is springing up, have the ability to bypass the states safety standards in spite of considerable fire risks. The state, which offers cash incentives to bolster old homes against earthquakes, so far has done nothing to get Californians to retrofit homes built before 2008 for fire safety.

It hasnt helped that housing construction went into a deep dive in 2008 and has been slow to recover. Raymer said only 860,000 homes and apartments have been built statewide since the code went into effect. Thats just 6 per cent of the states housing stock.

According to Cal Fire, as many as 3 million homes lie within the various fire hazard severity zones around the state. Dave Sapsis, a Cal Fire wildland fire scientist, said theres no way to know definitively how many of those homes were built before 2008, but he believes its the preponderance of them, the majority.

The situation is worse in rural California, where housing construction lags but the fire hazards are among the worst in the state, Raymer said. Fewer than 3 per cent of the homes in the path of the Camp Fire were built after 2008.

Most of our inventory that was here prior to the fire was (built) between the 40s and the 70s, said Paradise Town Councilman Michael Zuccolillo, a real estate agent. The average home here was from the 70s.

That leaves thousands of homes at risk from the next inferno across California, their wood-shake shingles waiting to ignite.

What are we going to do about the existing housing stock thats been built in these places? said Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist at UC Santa Barbara. For the existing housing stock thats out there, that isnt built to these codes, we have a massive retrofitting issue on our hands. They have structure ignition vulnerabilities that are built into the situation, theyre baked into the problem.

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THE WEAKEST LINK

The Carrells, now living in a rental in Roseville, designed their Paradise home and did much of the interior work themselves; they knew that home was built with fire safety in mind.

I knew we were in the middle of the forest, Oney Carrell said during a recent visit to Paradise. Why wouldnt you do everything you could to make it last?

But even hes amazed that their home made it. Stepping over a blackened patio drain just a few feet from the back of the house, he wondered aloud: I dont know why it stopped here.

Its almost impossible to say for certain why some homes are still standing in Paradise, while others were ruined. Landscaping surely played a role ; fire experts say homes buffered by so-called defensible space probably did better than those wrapped in shrubs. Luck was a big factor, too, as homes were no doubt spared by last-second shifts in the winds.

Nevertheless, experts say, McClatchys analysis reinforces their belief that Californias fire-safe building code can make a difference in an era of increasing vulnerability. Daniel Gorham, a former firefighter and U.S. Forest Service researcher who works for the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety in South Carolina, said the California code is becoming a model for other fire-prone states.

California is leaps and bounds ahead of other parts of the country, Gorham said. California is on the forefront.

Advocates say fire-resistant building materials arent particularly expensive. A study last fall by Headwater Economics, a consulting firm in Bozeman, Mont., found that a new home built to wildfire-resistant codes can be constructed for roughly the same cost as a typical home.

But getting Californians to retrofit homes built before 2008 is an enormous task. The state requires property owners in fire zones who replace at least half their roof to install fire-retardant materials on the entire roof. Other than that, however, theres nothing forcing Californians to safeguard their existing homes against fire hazards.

A few California cities have taken matters into their own hands. In 2008, the City Council in Big Bear Lake, a community of 5,200 in San Bernardino County, passed an ordinance declaring wood shake shingle roofs a severe fire hazard and danger and ordered homeowners to replace them by 2012. Armed with state and federal grants, it offered cash incentives of up to $4,500 apiece for new roofs.

Although the grant program has run out, I cant think of the last time I saw a shake roof in Big Bear, said Patrick Johnston, the citys chief building official.

Most Californians, however, are on their own when it comes to spending the tens of thousands of dollars needed to replace a roof or install fire-resistant siding. The state offers no financial incentives for fire safety the way it does, say, for earthquakes  homeowners in quake zones can get up to $3,000 apiece from the state to gird their homes against seismic disaster.

There are signs, however, that the state is beginning to get more serious about retrofitting homes for fire safety.

A law signed last year by former Gov. Jerry Brown requires the state fire marshal to develop a suggested list of low-cost retrofits by January 2020. The state would then promote these retrofits in its education and outreach efforts.

California also might start throwing cash at the problem.

A new bill, AB 38, introduced earlier this year by Democratic Assemblyman Jim Wood of Santa Rosa, would create a $1 billion fire hardened homes revolving loan fund to help homeowners retrofit their properties.

The issue is personal for Wood, a dentist who spent weeks helping identify victims from the Camp Fire and the wine country fires of October 2017. Although eligibility terms havent been spelled out, the bill would offer low-interest and no-interest loans to help those who otherwise couldnt pay for new roofs or other safeguards.

A lot of these small towns are not as well off financially, he said. We need to find a way to help them, especially if theyre poorer.

The fund might not be nearly enough to go around  not with hundreds of thousands of homes in need of retrofits, and a new roof alone costing $10,000 or more. The $1 billion, indeed, thats not enough to rehab every home, said the Building Industry Associations Raymer. But he said its an absolutely excellent way to kick things off.

Wood said state officials would have to figure out a plan for parceling out the money to where its needed most  probably starting with lower-income areas near forests.

Obviously we want to affect the areas with the highest risk first, the assemblyman said. A lot of these small towns are not as well off financially. We need to find a way to help them, especially if theyre poorer.

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MAPPING SEVERITY ZONES

The fire-safe building code had its origins in two significant fires from a generation ago  the Panorama Fire of 1980, which spilled out of the mountains into the city of San Bernardino; and the monstrous Oakland Hills Fire of 1991, which wiped out 2,500 homes and killed 25 people.

In response, the Legislature ordered the Department of Fire Protection and Forestry to start mapping major fire risks in California, in the hinterlands as well as urban areas. The result was a collection of maps of the states fire hazard severity zones, encompassing more than one-third of Californias land mass.

Based on factors such as terrain, vegetation and weather patterns, the zones represent Cal Fires attempt to predict the probability of a fire starting and the likelihood that it could become significant, said Cal Fires Sapsis.

The maps spawned tighter building standards. The Legislature mandated fire-resistant roofs in these fire-prone areas. Then in 2008 the state laid out a more comprehensive scheme. The California Building Standards Commission rolled out a suite of regulations, known as Chapter 7A, that set strict rules for roofing materials, siding, windows, decks and other elements of a home built in 2008 or later  right down to the minimum specs for the wire mesh that must be installed on attic vents to keep embers out (no more than a quarter-inch of space between the wires).

Experts said the regulations seem to be particularly effective at protecting structures from the types of wildfires that are increasingly common in California, where wind gusts can blow embers a mile or two ahead of the main wall of flames and do some of the worst damage.

A window breaks, a vent breaks, the fire gets into your home and youve got an interior structure fire, said Joe Poire, the city of Santa Barbaras fire marshal.

Enforcement of the building code carries a few wrinkles. In the mainly rural areas where Cal Fire is in charge of fire protection, the Chapter 7A code is automatically enforced in any region that Cal Fire has designated as a severity zone  moderate, high or very high.

In urban areas that have their own fire departments, the code is generally used only in spots where Cal Fire says the threat is very high. Local governments have the discretion of rejecting the Cal Fire designation, and Sapsis said some city councils have been squeamish about the states maps because of fears that the Chapter 7A code will inflate construction costs, or for other reasons.

Yet interviews with local officials throughout California by McClatchy indicate that the vast majority of cities and towns go along with Cal Fires recommendations. Santa Barbara city officials extended the building code to coastal areas that had been overlooked by Cal Fires mappers. The map omits small portions of Paradise, but the building code is enforced across the entire town, said Paradise public information officer Colette Curtis.

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DANGER IN SANTA ROSA, FOLSOM?

Nevertheless, there are places where local officials are reluctant to impose strict building codes  even where fire has caused catastrophe.

Before Paradise exploded, Santa Rosas Coffey Park was the poster child for recent California wildfire disasters: Five people died and 1,321 homes were destroyed by the Tubbs Fire in October 2017.

Coffey Park wasnt subject to Californias Chapter 7A building code. It still isnt.

Unlike some areas of Santa Rosa, the neighbourhood hasnt been designated a very high fire hazard zone by Cal Fire. City officials are OK with that. Although developers rebuilding Coffey Park are being urged to consider fire-resistant materials, city spokeswoman Adriane Mertens said the city doesnt see any reason to impose the 7A code in the neighbourhood.

There were very, very high winds that night, Mertens said. There were embers that were blown across the (Highway 101) freeway, across six lanes of freeway, into Coffey Park.

Jack Cohen, a fire scientist in Montana who helped develop the 7A code, said he thinks Santa Rosa is committing an error in judgment by rebuilding without the safeguards.

In any event, Cal Fire is updating its fire hazard maps over the next year or so, taking into account more sophisticated data on wind and other climate factors, and Sapsis said spots such as Coffey Park could wind up designated as high-risk areas. Once the maps are done, any region placed inside Cal Fires very high fire zone will have no choice but to comply, under a bill signed into law by Brown last year.

But there will still be ways for cities to skirt the state building code.

Look at Folsom, widely considered one of the most vulnerable places in greater Sacramento to fire. The countys hazard mitigation plan says 44,000 residents of Folsom are already at moderate or higher wildfire risk.

Now the suburb is building a development called Folsom Ranch, eventually to be home to 25,000 people, on a parcel south of Highway 50.

The development is on land that used to be subject to the strict state building code. Now it isnt.

How did that happen? Years ago, the land was outside Folsoms city limits and Cal Fire was responsible for its safety. Cal Fires maps put the land in the moderate risk zone  a threat level high enough that, under the states regulations, the fire-safe building code took effect. As it happened, no construction took place during that time, city officials say.

The situation changed when the city annexed the land to forge ahead with Folsom Ranch. Because the land has never been in the states very high risk zone, the city feels comfortable letting Folsom Ranch develop without the Chapter 7A building code.

Fire Chief Felipe Rodriguez said Folsom officials are still open to the possibility of strengthening, hardening, our future homes. But for now, the city is only requiring homeowners associations to implement a vegetation management plan and install fire-resistant fencing around properties that abut open space areas, Rodriguez said.

Is Folsom courting danger? Rodriguez doesnt think so. The city will build two fire stations in the development and will be able to suppress a fire during its early stages, he said.

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STICKS IN A FIREPLACE

The hundreds of thousands of older homes in fire zones arent just more vulnerable in their own right.

Experts say they spread danger to new homes built to stricter standards.

One little house built to a new standard, surrounded by a bunch of older stuff, is likely to get swamped, Sapsis said.

Paradise provided a grim reminder of that problem. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 80 per cent of the 4,100 mobile homes in its path, whether they were built to the new code or not, according to McClatchys data analysis. That isnt surprising, Sapsis said, given that many of Paradises mobile homes were jammed alongside one another in mobile home parks.

Theyre stacked so close together, theyre like sticks in a fireplace, Sapsis said.

Sapsis and others say the lesson is that strong building codes arent enough. In particular, experts say communities must pay more attention to how they lay out their neighbourhoods, allowing for firebreaks and enough space between houses.

In the name of affordable housing, were moving housing closer and closer to one another, said Chris Dicus, a forestry and fire expert at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. That serves to have house-to-house-to-house ignition.

The problem isnt limited to densely-packed urban areas. I live in a rural community, and I have got six feet basically separating me from my neighbour, said Dicus, who lives outside of Morro Bay.

In addition, experts say California is struggling to enforce the state law regarding defensible space around properties.

The law requires that property owners maintain as much as 100 feet of defensible space around homes and other buildings in and around a mountainous area, forest-covered lands, brush-covered lands, grass-covered lands, or land that is covered with flammable material. That means keeping trees and shrubs pruned and spaced far apart. Within five feet of the building, property owners are supposed to remove anything that could catch fire: mulch, plants, woodpiles and so on.

In practice, however, enforcement of the defensible space law has been spotty at best. Raymer, of the California Building Industry Association, said most property owners dont understand how to maintain their yards. The state doesnt impose penalties for non-compliance, and only a few local governments have chosen to do so, Raymer said.

Legislation could change that. SB 190, by Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, would require the state fire marshal to develop a model defensible space program, including penalties, that local governments could adopt.

The problem extends beyond homeowners property lines. Gov. Gavin Newsom, finding some rare common ground with the Trump administration, is advocating for more aggressive management of forested lands.

A thinned forest northeast of Paradise provided one of the rare victories of the Camp Fire. As the fire raged out of the tiny community of Pulga, it essentially spared the northern part of Magalia. The reason was a series of forest-thinning projects conducted in recent years and overseen by the U.S. Forest Service, Sierra Pacific Industries and the volunteer Butte County Fire Safe Council. The council also worked diligently with area residents to clear brush from their property.

All that work did exactly what we hoped it would do, said Calli-Jane DeAnda, executive director of the council, which secured $1 million in grants to remove fuels from forested areas. This investment of public money is so worth the effort.

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THE PARADISE LAB EXPERIMENT

The rebuilding of Paradise means thousands of homes are going to be constructed in the coming years to the stricter standards promulgated by the state in 2008. It represents the single largest test of the effectiveness of the building code.

That is an absolute lab experiment for us, Sapsis said.

On the streets of Paradise, though, community leaders are taking a more measured view. Zuccolillo, the town councilman, said asphalt roofs and stucco siding might give us more of a chance but he doubts they will guarantee Paradises safety.

I saw metal buildings, metal and stucco buildings, burn to the ground, he said.

Still, theres plenty of evidence, all over Paradise, that the states building code can protect property.

The other day, Sean Herr pulled into his driveway on the west side of Paradise, where he and his wife Dawn were raising their two young children.

The first thing he did was bring out the ultimate symbol of resiliency: an American flag, the same one that flew on his front porch the day of the Camp Fire.

Like the flag, the house is still standing. The Herrs home, built in 2010, suffered a bit of scorching and some interior smoke damage  the smoke is bad enough that theyre still temporarily living in Chico and arent certain theyll move back.

Still, they marvel at what a close call they had. A Ford Excursion and a boat parked in the front yard, just a few feet from their porch, were destroyed. Five motorcycles locked in a shed behind the house got ruined. Most of their neighbourhood is gone.

The Herrs believe their attention to defensible space  the house is mostly encircled in gravel  and the strictness of the building code probably made the difference.

Our yard and the construction of the house saved it for sure, Dawn Herr said, gesturing to a small scorch mark by the side of the house. You can see it tried to catch on fire.

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Ryan Sabalow of The Sacramento Bee and Steve Schoonover of the Chico Enterprise-Record contributed to this report.
MODESTO, Calif. - A man suspected of being in the country illegally has pleaded not guilty to killing a Northern California police officer during a traffic stop in a case that has rekindled a debate over Californias sanctuary law that limits law enforcements co-operation with federal immigration authorities.

An attorney for Paulo Virgen Mendoza entered the not guilty plea to a murder charge in Stanislaus Superior Court, the Modesto Bee reported Thursday. Mendoza is charged with fatally shooting Newman Police Officer Cpl. Ronil Singh on Dec. 26.

Investigators say Singh suspected Mendoza of drunken driving.

Authorities say Mendoza was in the country illegally and was fleeing back to his native Mexico when he was arrested two days after Singhs killing near Bakersfield.

President Donald Trump seized on the case to call for tougher border security amid a fight with congressional Democrats over funding for a border wall, which has forced a partial government shutdown.

The sheriff leading the investigation blamed Californias sanctuary law for preventing local authorities from reporting Gustavo Perez Arriaga to U.S. immigration officials for two previous drunken driving arrests. If he had been deported, Stanislaus County Sheriff Adam Christianson said, Cpl. Ronil Singh of the tiny Newman Police Department would still be alive.

The case was put on hold in January to determine if Mendoza was mentally fit to stand trial. On Thursday, a judge determined he was competent to stand trial after Mendoza was examined by a psychiatrist.

Mendoza is still identified in Stanislaus County jail records as Gustavo Perez Arriaga, an alias that he used when arrested. But hes referred to in court by his given name.

Prosecutors say Mendoza is eligible for the death penalty.

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Information from: The Modesto Bee, http://www.modbee.com
DELAND, Fla. - Florida deputies fatally shot a carjacking suspect who shot and grazed the head of a sheriffs sergeant.

Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood told a news conference the shooting happened Thursday afternoon near DeLand following a chase across the county.

Authorities say the unidentified suspect stole a womans pickup truck at gunpoint in Deltona. Chitwood says the man brandished a gun as deputies chased him and tried to flee on foot after they destroyed the trucks tires with stop sticks.

A group of deputies eventually surrounded the man. Chitwood says Sgt. Tommy Dane and four other deputies exchanged gunfire with him. Dane was grazed and the carjacking suspect was shot multiple times.

Police didnt release the races of the deputies or the carjacking suspect.

Chitwood says Dane was awake and alert after the shooting.
CLINTON, S.C. - The Latest on two shootings in two days in South Carolina hospitals (all times local):

9:15 p.m.

Authorities have charged a 27-year-old man with attempted murder and kidnapping in a shooting that wounded a police officer in a South Carolina emergency room.

An arrest warrant says Kevin Boyce Patterson dragged his father at gunpoint across the waiting room at Laurens County Hospital around 2 a.m. Thursday.

Authorities say a Greenville Health Authority Police Department officer confronted and was shot by Patterson.

Investigators say the officer fired back, hitting Patterson in the arm.

The hospital said in a statement the officer was treated and released. His name has not been made public.

The State Law Enforcement Division said in a statement Patterson has been booked in the Laurens County jail. Records did not indicate if he had a lawyer who could comment.

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2:50 p.m.

Authorities say a police officer shot while confronting a man in a hospital emergency room in South Carolina has been treated and released.

Prisma Health spokeswoman Sarah Moore said the armed man was visiting the Laurens County Hospital emergency room around 2 a.m. Thursday when a Greenville Health Authority Police Department officer and a state trooper tried to talk to him.

Moore said in a statement that the incident report about the shooting says the man fired at the police officer, who fired back and wounded the man in the arm. His condition was not released.

It is the second hospital shooting in South Carolina in two days. Authorities say a nurse was shot Wednesday at Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg by a man who had come to the hospital a day before to seek mental health treatment.

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7:05 a.m.

Police in South Carolina say a shooting inside a hospital has left a police officer and a suspected gunman injured - the second hospital shooting to take place in the state in two days.

A spokesman for the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division says the suspect was being treated early Thursday at the Laurens County Memorial Hospital in Clinton when he shot the hospitals police officer and tried to flee.

The Greenville Health Authority Police Department officer returned fire, striking the suspect. Both were receiving treatment at the hospital for injuries. Their conditions were not immediately available.

Authorities say that on Tuesday, an armed man seeking mental health treatment was turned away from the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg and disarmed. His girlfriend was told to bring him back Friday for treatment. Instead, he showed up with another gun Wednesday and opened fire in the emergency room, injuring a nurse.

The nurse was taken into surgery after the shooting and was in critical condition Wednesday afternoon.

Authorities identified the gunman in that incident as 23-year-old Abrian Dayquan Sabb. Affidavits provided by the Orangeburg County Sheriffs Office say Sabb has been charged with attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of violent crime.
MINNEAPOLIS - A 5-year-old boy plummeted three floors Friday after being pushed or thrown from a balcony at the Mall of America, according to witnesses, and police said a 24-year-old man was in custody.

Bloomington Police Chief Jeffrey Potts said police dont think there is any relationship between the man and the family of the child, who suffered life-threatening injuries. He was being treated at a hospital, but no details on his condition were immediately available.

Witnesses told police that the child may have been pushed or thrown from the malls third level to the first floor, Potts said. He said the suspect immediately took off running but was quickly found and arrested at the mall.

A witness said a woman screamed that her child was thrown from the balcony.

Brian Johnson told WCCO-TV the woman was screaming, Everybody pray, everybody pray. Oh my God, my baby, someone threw him over the edge.

Police said Emmanuel Deshawn Aranda, of Minneapolis, was being held on suspicion of attempted homicide.

Arandas criminal record includes two convictions in 2015 for obstruction of the legal process/interfering with a peace officer, as well as convictions for fifth-degree assault, trespassing and damage to property.

It wasnt immediately clear if Aranda had an attorney.

Police dont have an idea about possible motive, Potts said.

At this point we believe this is an isolated incident, the chief said. Were actively trying to figure out why this occurred.

No details were immediately available about the childs condition.

The 4.2-million-square-foot Mall of America is in Bloomington, about 10 miles south of Minneapolis. The mall, which opened in 1992, has more than 520 stores and is visited by 40 million visitors annually, according to its website . Attractions include Nickelodeon Universe indoor amusement park and Sea Life Minnesota Aquarium .

It has occasionally been the scene of crimes or disruptive protests, and the malls website touts extensive security training for its officers.

In 2015, the al-Shabab extremist group called for an attack on the Mall of America and other shopping centres in a video. Al-Shabab fighters attacked an upscale Kenyan mall in 2013 in a siege that left 67 people dead. In response, the Mall of America said it was tightening security, and that some of the extra precautions would be noticeable to guests and others would not be.

A Minneapolis man was sentenced to 15 years in prison last year for attacking two brothers at the Macys department store at the mall. The man said he was inspired by the Islamic State when he stabbed the brothers in a dressing room area in November 2017.

A teenage brawl erupted at the mall the day after Christmas in 2011. The melee was caught on YouTube, but police concluded the brawl  the worst case of violence at the mall in more than 15 years  was not organized through social media as initially feared. Ten people were arrested for disorderly conduct, including four juveniles.

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Associated Press writers Amy Forliti and Doug Glass contributed. News researcher Jennifer Farrar contributed to this report from New York.
SAN ANTONIO - Hundreds of airmen will line the main entrance of an Air Force base in Texas to salute as the family of the last of the 80 Doolittle Tokyo Raiders arrives for his memorial service.

Retired Lt. Col. Richard Dick Cole died Tuesday in San Antonio at the age of 103. The Air Force on Friday released details for a memorial being held on April 18 at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph.

The memorial is being held on the 77th anniversary of the Doolittle Raid during World War II.

On April 18, 1942, Cole was mission commander Jimmy Doolittles co-pilot in the U.S. attack on Japan less than five months after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Cole, an Ohio native, will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. - Shelter dogs hoping to find families had been allowed to visit a Tennessee courthouse, but the pooches arent allowed in anymore due to allergy worries.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press reports Hamilton County commissioners reversed their decision to let shelter dogs from McKamey Animal Center and the Humane Educational Society visit the clerk and masters office.

Commissioners voted last week to let in the dogs, then voted 9-0 Wednesday to end the policy.

Anne Fricker, county chief probate deputy, had proposed the idea. She defended it, saying two service dogs were already in the office this week.

Commissioner Greg Martin said its not in the countys best interest to have non-service animals there. He assured the vote wasnt a stance about disliking dogs.

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Information from: Chattanooga Times Free Press, http://www.timesfreepress.com
NEW YORK - Hembert Figueroa just wanted a taco.

So he was surprised to learn the dollar bills in his pocket were no good at Dos Toros Taqueria in Manhattan, one of a small but growing number of establishments across the U.S. where customers can only pay by card or smartphone.

Cash-free stores are generating a backlash among some activists and liberal-leaning policymakers who say the practice discriminates against people like Figueroa, who either lack bank accounts or rely on cash for many transactions.

Figueroa, an ironworker, had to stand to the side, holding his taco, until a sympathetic cashier helped him find another customer willing to pay for his meal with a card in exchange for cash.

I had money and I couldnt pay, he said.

The issue got some high-profile attention this week when retail giant Amazon bowed to pressure from activists and agreed to accept cash at more than 30 cashless stores, including its Amazon Go convenience stores, which have no cashiers, and its book shops. Amazon declined to say when the change would happen.

There is no federal law that requires stores to accept cash, so lawmakers are working on the issue at the state and city level.

Earlier this year, Philadelphia became the first city to ban cashless stores, despite efforts by Amazon to dissuade it. New Jersey passed a statewide ban soon after, and a similar ban is working its way through the New York City Council. Before this year there was only one jurisdiction that required businesses to accept cash: Massachusetts, which passed a law nearly 40 years ago.

The potential societal cost of a cashless economy I think outweighs the potential benefits for businesses, said Ritchie Torres, a New York City councilman for the South Bronx who introduced the bill.

Policymakers argue that while cashless stores and restaurants arent widespread now, the practice could expand to more services, including some that cater to lower-income customers.

Walmart-owned Sams Club opened its first cashier-less store in Dallas last year, using technology that allows customers to scan and pay for items with their smartphones. Kroger has installed similar technology in about 400 stores nationwide.

Stadiums in Tampa Bay, Florida, and Atlanta have started to go cashless, or nearly cashless, and the Barclays Center, where the Brooklyn Nets play, is now effectively cashless as well.

I wanted to stop this before it became an everyday thing, said William Greenlee, a Philadelphia councilman who introduced that citys bill.

Advocates for cashless bans worry technology is moving too fast for the 6.5% of American households  8.4 million  that do not have a bank account, according to figures from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Figueroa is among the much larger group considered underbanked, meaning they have a primary bank account but regularly rely on alternative financial services like check cashers. More than 24 million U.S. households are underbanked, according to the FDIC.

The issue disproportionately affects African-American and Hispanic communities. About 17% of African-American and 14% of Hispanic households have no bank accounts, compared to just 3% of white households, according to the FDIC.

Figueroa, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, only opened a credit union account two years ago. It took another year to build up enough funds to use his debit card regularly.

He still occasionally relies on a check casher if he needs money quickly, and much of his income comes in cash from his weekend job as a busboy. He has no credit card and no apps on his phone and has only shopped online three times.

Business owners who go cashless say they are following the lead of the majority of customers who are abandoning cash payments. Retailers are under pressure to cater to customers with heightened expectations for fast and seamless service, driven by companies like Amazon, Uber and Grubhub.

Leo Kremer, co-owner of Dos Toros, the taqueria where Figueroa tried to use cash, said the volume of cash transactions at his stores fell from about 50% a decade ago to 15% last year. That made the cost and logistics of handling cash especially onerous. Before going cashless, Dos Toros locations were robbed twice.

Still, Kremer said the company would adjust if legally required to accept cash.

There are no bad guys on this issue. Everyone is trying to do the right thing and make sure there are no unintended consequences, he said.

Critics say banning cash-free stores is an over-reaction.

There are no overall estimates of how many stores in the U.S. have gone cashless, but it remains a rarity. In New York City, the trend appears to be gaining traction mostly with fast casual dining establishments like Dos Toros. Far more common are stores that require a minimum purchase for non-cash payments.

To call this a trend is a bit of an exaggeration. There are a handful of retailers trying this in certain situations here and there, but its not something the average customer would expect to see at every store at the mall any time soon, said J. Craig Shearman, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation in Washington.

Even among the wider U.S. population, cash is still used in roughly 30 per cent of all transactions, according to a 2018 Federal Reserve study. The study found that most consumers prefer cash for transactions under $10.

Indeed, Shake Shack abandoned plans to open cashier-less locations after its first such store in Manhattan triggered a customer backlash. The burger chain is instead keeping cashiers while installing order-taking kiosks at more stores.

In testimony to a New York City Council committee, Kremer argued that businesses that consistently serve the unbanked and underbanked population arent going to go cashless. It wouldnt make sense for them.

But financial experts who work with low-income people caution against making assumptions about the shopping preferences or buying power of those who rely on cash.

Im uncomfortable with the idea that certain people dont shop here so its fine to exclude them, said Justine Zinkin, CEO of Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners, a financial counsellingnon-profit affiliated with the credit union where Figueroa banks.

Like many New Yorkers, Figueroa regularly spends $10 to $15 a day on lunch. He says he would return to Dos Toros with his debit card now that he knows about the cashless policy.

It was a good taco, he said.

Around him, commerce is quickly moving online and cash-free. Card-only Uber is eviscerating the yellow cabs he hails once or twice a month. He does most of his shopping at corner shops and drugstores, and has never availed himself of the home-delivery services that chains like Walgreens and CVS are introducing to keep Amazon at bay.

Even services like Citi Bike, the bicycle-sharing company, require a debit or credit card. The service, which is affordable and even offers a $5 monthly program for low-income New York City residents, directs those with no debit or credit card to open an account at a credit union.

Beyond targeting cashless stores, Zinkin said the greater urgency in the digital era is finding ways to better include low-income people in the banking system, such as compelling banks to offer no-fee starter accounts and encouraging banks to open branches in underserved areas. In the Bronx, where Figueroa lives, the borough has the lowest concentration of bank branches per household of anywhere in the nation , according to a 2015 report by the New York City Comptrollers office, while check cashers are common. Nearly one-fifth of households in the Bronx have no bank accounts, and one-third are underbanked, according to 2013 figures cited in an Urban Institute study.

We hope the spotlight shifts from punishing small businesses to the financial services market, Zinkin said. We dont want to be scared of technology, and hoping that technology goes away.

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AP Retail Writer Joe Pisani contributed to this report from New York.
ST. JOSEPH, Mo. - The parents of a Missouri man with autism who was shocked several times with a Taser during a confrontation that began when he stopped to tie his shoe lost their lawsuit over how his arrest was conducted.

A federal grand jury on Thursday did not award damages to Ernest and Ellas Kramer, who sued the city of Maryville and two police officers after their son, Christopher, was arrested in Maryville in 2016. They sought $2 million in damages for wrongful detention and excessive use of force.

The Kramers attorney, Arthur Benson, said he was considering filing a motion for a new trial, Kansas City radio station KCUR reported.

In closing arguments Wednesday, Benson said police had no reason to detain Christopher, who was 18 at the time, even after he ran from them.

Its not criminal to go on someones lawn, to be in someones yard, Benson said. There was no criminal activity whatsoever.

The officers attorney, David S. Baker, acknowledged Kramer ran and tried to avoid arrest because of his autism.

But its also not the officers fault because they didnt know about his disability, he said.

The lawsuit alleged that Kramer was walking home from school when he stopped on the edge of Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper Jim David Farmers yard to tie his shoelace.

Farmer approached Kramer, who ran away. Farmer then called Maryville police because he said Kramer was walking toward his front door.

Two officers arrived and began chasing Kramer. A third officer then arrived and tackled Kramer.

Police body cam video introduced during the trial showed two officers ordering Kramer to stop resisting as he wailed and screamed that he wanted to go home. Kramer was shot with the Taser several times and one of the officers struck him with a baton as he continued to struggle and cry. A fourth officer arrived and stunned Kramer two more times before he was subdued and handcuffed.

The lawsuit originally named all four officers, but the two officers who arrived on the scene later were dismissed from the case. U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. instructed the jury not to consider the parents claims against the city of Maryville, but he did not explain why he did so.

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Information from: KCUR-FM, http://www.kcur.org
Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho's funeral service began at Sinchon Severance Hospital in Seoul, Friday. Yonhap



By Kim Hyun-bin



The body of Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho arrived from Los Angeles on a Korean Air flight early Friday morning and his funeral is being held for five days at Yonsei University's Severance Hospital in western Seoul.



Cho's son, Korean Air President Cho Won-tae, and youngest daughter Cho Hyun-min  a former vice president of Jin Air  escorted their father's casket from Incheon International Airport to the funeral service area.



"I have a heavy heart; I was beside him at his deathbed. My family will discuss future matters together," Cho Won-tae told reporters at the airport.



Asked about the chairman's will, he said his father's last request was to "cooperate with family and handle matters in peace."



Cho's wife Lee Myung-hee and eldest daughter Cho Hyun-ah flew in earlier this week to organize funeral procedures.



According to Hanjin Group, the chairman's funeral at Severance Hospital will be held for five days starting noon Friday and ending Tuesday at 6 p.m. in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.



Many believe Cho made a major contribution to Korea's aviation industry, as he has improved the nation's first full-service carrier to be able to compete with the world's best, receiving scores of prestigious global awards.



Cho was also at the forefront of establishing SkyTeam in 2000. At the time it consisted of just four carriers  Korean Air, Delta Air Lines, Air France and Aero Mexico  but has since expanded to 19 airlines from five continents.



Despite these achievements, the last days of his career were marred by many scandals, which cost him the Korean Air chairmanship.



At a March meeting, shareholders voted 64.1 percent in favor of his reappointment but fell short of the necessary two-thirds threshold by 2.5 percent because 35.9 percent voted against him.



It was the first time shareholders had voted to strip a founding family member of a Korean conglomerate of a board seat.



After surgery for chronic lung disease, Cho had been treated at a hospital in Los Angeles since December. It is said his condition worsened rapidly due to the extreme stress from a prosecution investigation into the scandals and his axing from the board. He died on Monday.



Due to his death, all criminal allegations against him have been dropped.



Cho faced charges of embezzling more than 27 billion won ($23.7 million) and breach of trust, involving excessive commissions from Korean Air suppliers.


NEW LONDON, Conn. - The Coast Guard has turned over more than 1,000 pages of documents in response to a congressional inquiry of how the service has handled complaints of harassment and bullying at the Coast Guard Academy.

The Day of New London, Connecticut, reports that the heads of two House committees and other congressional lawmakers had indicated they were prepared to issue a subpoena if the documents werent produced by Tuesday. The Coast Guard complied with the deadline.

The request for documents dates to last summer when members of Congress sent a letter to the Coast Guard commandant. They were troubled by an institutional assessment showing disparities for minority students at the New London academy and the removal of a department head for bullying.

The academy has about 1,000 students.

___

Information from: The Day, http://www.theday.com
WASHINGTON - On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg blasts Vice-President Mike Pences cultural and religious conservatism. But as the mayor of Indianas fourth largest city, his tone toward the states Republican former governor was more muted.

During the four years in which they overlapped in Indiana politics, Buttigieg, the South Bend mayor, had a cordial relationship with Pence. The two collaborated on economic development issues . Buttigieg presented Pence with a South Bend promotional T-shirt that said I (heart) SB. And at ceremonial events, Pence would lavish Buttigieg with praise.

The relationship between the two men has come under scrutiny as Buttigiegs campaign becomes a surprise hit, raking in $7 million during the first quarter. As he formally launches his White House campaign on Sunday, the gay mayor has emerged as a celebrated voice for LGBT equality and religious tolerance. And Buttigieg has hardened his rhetoric toward Pence, using President Donald Trumps vice-president as a foil representing an oppressive opposition.

At a recent LGBT event, Buttigieg spoke of the importance of his marriage to his husband, Chasten, and framed his sexuality in religious terms.

If me being gay was a choice, it was a choice that was made far, far above my pay grade, Buttigieg said. And thats the thing I wish the Mike Pences of the world would understand: that if youve got a problem with who I am, your problem is not with me. Your quarrel, sir, is with my creator.

He has previously called Pences religious conservatism a fanatical ideology.

By Buttigiegs own admission in his campaign memoir, his relationship with Pence is complicated. In an interview with CNBC that aired on Thursday, Pence said they had a great working relationship and criticized the mayors characterization of his religious beliefs.

He knows better, Pence said. He knows me.

The complex dynamic between Buttigieg and Pence reflects a connection born of political necessity between two men on the cusp of unlikely political and personal paths. And to some fellow Indiana Democrats, it was frustrating.

In a state with few influential Democrats, some hoped to tap into Buttigiegs burgeoning political celebrity to help them rebut Pence and his policies, according to two party strategists who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal debate. But they found he was often reluctant to take on the then-governor directly or forcefully.

In early 2015, Pence was grappling with an HIV outbreak in southern Indiana and facing calls from political leaders, including some fellow Republicans, to respond by approving a needle exchange program. Buttigieg, who was months away from publicly coming out as gay, was largely absent from that debate.

Pence caused a national uproar that year by signing a religious freedom law criticized as anti-LGBT. Republicans including the mayor of Indianapolis demanded that the governor and the GOP legislature fix this law and do so immediately. Buttigieg criticized Statehouse politicians for the most embarrassing incident and tweeted he was disappointed Pence signed the bill.

But several weeks later, as the controversy raged, Buttigieg attended a Pence event in South Bend. The mayor told the South Bend Tribune, Im focused on how we can work together across city limits and across the aisle.

With respect to Pences worst blunder, his most difficult controversy, Mayor Pete was not leading the charge against him, said Robert Dion, a political science professor at the University of Evansville in southern Indiana. If youre a Democratic mayor in a Republican state and you rely on friendly relations with the General Assembly, you dont necessarily want to be lobbing bombs all the time. But that should not preclude someone from speaking out forcefully on a pressing civil rights issue.

Buttigieg publicly came out as gay about three months after Pence signed the religious freedom law. In his book, Buttigieg acknowledged that he passed up the chance to urge Pence in person to veto the measure.

I wish I could say I made a good effort to talk him out of it, but it was clear from the look in his eyes that he had made up his mind, he wrote, referring to a meeting in which Pence told Buttigieg and other mayors he planned to sign the legislation.

As mayor, Buttigiegs allies argue he had to maintain a cordial relationship with a governor who held sway over money sorely needed in South Bend.

It doesnt help your city if you have an adversarial relationship with the sitting governor, and Mayor Buttigieg recognized that, said Greg Goodnight, the Democratic mayor of Kokomo, Indiana, who supports Buttigiegs White House ambitions.

For example, one of Pences last major policy achievements as governor was a program that awarded funding to several regions for redevelopment, including $42 million for the greater South Bend area . During a ceremonial 2016 groundbreaking at a long-shuttered Studebaker factory, Buttigieg and Pence stood side by side and shook hands after scooping dirt with their shovels.

Where they agreed on issues, like economic development, the mayor worked with then-Gov. Pence for the good of his constituents and his city, Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith said. Where they disagreed, the mayor stood up to him, like when Pence embarrassed the state of Indiana with anti-LGBTQ laws, or when he wanted to turn away refugees from the state, or when Pences policies hurt South Bends workers.

Still, some wish Buttigieg would play it less safe, particularly now that hes on a national stage. Tony Flora, president of the North Central Indiana AFL-CIO chapter, said the mayor says the right things but should expend more political capital.

I would look to Pete Buttigieg to be a louder voice and be more forceful, Flora said. He came to our rallies, signed petitions and did make public remarks, but he could have been a bit more substantive instead of just making speeches  taking some action and being more supportive.

Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker, who is a lesbian, said she sympathized with the complicated situation Buttigieg was in as mayor, especially when he dealt with Pence.

The answer that I came to, and Im assuming Pete did as well, is that first and foremost, you are the mayor, said Parker, who is now the president and CEO of Victory Fund, a group that works to elect LGBT candidates. You are not an activist. You are the mayor. And every time you speak, it has an impact on your city  for good or ill. And its something you have to navigate.

___

Smith reported from Providence, Rhode Island.
After Bernie Sanders lost his primary campaign for president against Hillary Clinton in 2016, a Twitter account called Red Louisiana News reached out to his supporters to help sway the general election. Conscious Bernie Sanders supporters already moving toward the best candidate Trump! #Feel the Bern #Vote Trump 2016, the account tweeted.

The tweet was not actually from Louisiana, according to an analysis by Clemson University researchers. Instead, it was one of thousands of accounts identified as based in Russia, part of a cloaked effort to persuade supporters of the Vermont senator to elect Trump. Bernie Sanders says his message resonates with Republicans, said another Russian tweet.

While much attention has focused on the question of whether the Trump campaign encouraged or conspired with Russia, the effort to target Sanders supporters has been a lesser-noted part of the story. Special counsel Robert Mueller, in a case filed last year against 13 Russians accused of interfering in the U.S. presidential campaign, said workers at a St. Petersburg facility called the internet Research Agency were instructed to write social media posts in opposition to Clinton but to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.

That strategy could receive new attention with the release of Muellers report, expected within days.

Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that one of his campaign workers figured out what was going on, alerted the Clinton campaign and told them, I think these guys are Russians. But Sanders said he never knew, and he later backed off his suggestion that his staff did. A spokesman referred questions to 2016 campaign manager Jeff Weaver, who said in an interview that Sanders misspoke a little bit and conflated a few of the facts ... He did not know, I did not know, none of us knew that Russia was behind the efforts.

Read more:

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Only recently, with the latest analysis of Twitter data, has the extent of the Russian disinformation campaign been documented on that social media platform.

A pair of Clemson University researchers, at the request of the Washington Post, examined English-language tweets identified as coming from Russia, many of which were designed to influence the election. It is impossible to say how many were targeted at Sanders supporters because many dont include his name. Some 9,000 of the Russian tweets used the word Bernie, which were liked 59,281 times and retweeted 61,804 times.

But that was only one element of the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters, the researchers said. Many thousands of other tweets, with no direct reference to Sanders, were also designed to appeal to his backers, urging them to do anything but vote for Clinton in the general election.

I think there is no question that Sanders was central to their strategy. He was clearly used as a mechanism to decrease voter turnout for Hillary Clinton, said one of the Clemson researchers, Darren Linvill, associate professor of communications. The tweets examined in the new analysis give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought.

The Russian social-media strategy underscores a challenge that Sanders faces as he once again seeks the Democratic presidential nomination, this time in a crowded field. Many Sanders supporters believe he was treated unfairly by the Democratic Party and Clinton, a point the Russians sought to capitalize on as they worked to undermine Clinton in the November election.

Although Sanders later denounced the Kremlins efforts and campaigned for Clinton, some Democrats believe he could have done more to smooth over tensions and encourage his supporters to support his one-time opponent. A former senior Clinton campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid publicly criticizing Sanders ahead of the 2020 primaries, said that there remains bitterness over the way Sanders repeatedly said the system was tilted against him.

Sanders said in May 2016 that party rules enabling Clinton to collect superdelegates did not meet the definition of rigged, but he called it a dumb process which certainly has disadvantaged our campaign.

The effort to promote Sanders as a way to influence the U.S. election began shortly after he declared his candidacy in spring 2015, according to Muellers indictment of the Russians. Russias aim was to defeat or weaken Clinton, who had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin when she had been secretary of state.

One reason that Sanders was on Russias radar has been little noted: he, like Trump, opposed trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Russian President Vladimir Putin had been critical of the TPP, saying it was secretive and hardly facilitates sustainable development of Asia Pacific.

During the primaries, Sanders gave at least three interviews to a Russia-controlled television network, RT, in which his trade stance was highlighted. The network in February 2016 criticized MSNBC for breaking away from Sanders after he said he was helping to lead the opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The network posted a story headlined, Bernie Sanders censored by MSNBC while criticizing trade deal.

Around the same time that Sanders was featured on RT, Russian employees at the internet Research Agency were given a document explaining how to influence the U.S. election. The workers were told to use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump  we support them), according to Muellers indictment of the Russians.

The Twitter database shows the impact. The tweets sent from Russia, cloaked to look as though they came from Americans, included: Bernie Sanders looks to black voters to boost his underdog campaign; Hillary Clintons summer of drama creates openings for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden; and Im for Bernie all the way!

Then, in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee that suggested the party machinery was tilted against Sanders. The DNC computers were later revealed to have been hacked by Russia. The hack prompted Trump to stoke the divide among Democrats. Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders, Trump tweeted July 23, 2016.  ... Online from Wikileakes [sic], really vicious. RIGGED!

Russian trolls significantly increased their effort to persuade Sanders supporters to oppose Clinton in the general election. One of their methods was to try to convince African Americans that they couldnt trust her.

#BlackMenForBernie Leader Switches to Trump! I will Never Vote for Hillary, Welcome aboard the Trump Train, said a tweet from an account that was said to come from Texas and was identified as Southern. Conservative Pro God. Anti Racism. The account, actually operated by a Russian, had 72,121 followers. The message was liked 260 times and retweeted 295 times, according to the Clemson database.

Linvill, the Clemson researcher, said Sanders was seen as just a tool to the Russians. He is a wedge to drive into the Democratic Party, resulting in lower turnout for Clinton, he said. The tweets suggested either voting for Trump or a third-party candidate such as Green Party nominee Jill Stein, or writing in Sanderss name.

While it is impossible to show a direct correlation between a Russian-based tweet and someones vote in the United States, a Post-election survey conducted for Ohio State University documented how false stories spread on social media may have caused a decline in turnout for Clinton. Only 77 per cent of those surveyed who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 supported Clinton in 2016; 10 per cent backed Trump, 4 per cent voted for third-party candidates, and 8 per cent did not vote, according to the YouGov survey.

In an effort to demonstrate how inaccurate information makes its way into the mainstream, the survey asked respondents about three demonstrably false articles that had been widely distributed. A quarter of respondents believed the false story that Clinton was in very poor health, 10 per cent believed that Trump had been endorsed by the pope, and 35 per cent (including 20 per cent of Obama supporters) believed that Clinton had approved weapons sales to Islamic jihadists, including ISIS (Daesh).

The Ohio State team concluded in a soon-to-be published final version of its report that belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters. Obama voters who recognized all three stories as false voted for Clinton at a rate of 89 per cent, while 61 per cent who believed one of the stories was false voted for her, and 17 per cent of those who believed two of the false stories supported Clinton.

Yoel Roth, Twitters head of site integrity, said Twitter had studied what happened during the presidential election and will apply those lessons as the 2020 campaign unfolds.

Protecting the integrity of public conversation around elections is core to Twitters mission, Roth said in a statement to the Post. Since 2016, weve launched new policies, significantly scaled our enforcement against malicious automation, built strong partnerships within the industry and with government entities, and opened the largest public archive of potential information operations online, including thousands of Russian-linked accounts we have removed.

Sanders told Vermont Public Radio last year that the Russians were playing a really disgusting role because they dont believe in anything. And all they want to do is sow division in this country, bring people against each other. So what they were saying is  in so many words  is Bernie Sanders is not going to win, so if you are a Bernie Sanders supporter, let me tell you, Hillary Clinton is a criminal, a murderer, a terrible person ... crazy, all of these disgusting things.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said the Russians will strike again. As a result, he said, it is imperative for everyone else, especially Democratic candidates, to work together and support each other to defend against these threats.

Read more about:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - A judge has denied a request from the suspect in last years Florida high school massacre to seal the identities of jail visitors from prosecutors and the public.

Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer said the logs are subject to release under the Public Records Act, without exemptions for defence experts visiting inmates.

Nikolas Cruzs attorneys said prosecutors will learn their strategy if they learn which mental health experts are examining him.

Scherers Friday ruling said only the identities are disclosed, and the mere potential speculation about visitors will not compromise Cruzs right to a fair trial.

The Associated Press and other news outlets argued for the jail records release.

The 20-year-old Cruz faces the death penalty if convicted in the shooting that killed 17 people in February 2018 in Parkland.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved Kentuckys plan to meet federal air pollutant and visibility requirements around Mammoth Cave National Park.

EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler visited Kentucky on Friday to announce the approval of the states regional haze plan. States develop plans in order to comply with a portion of the Clean Air Act that requires states to work toward reducing air pollution problems at national parks and wilderness areas.

The new approval replaces a federally imposed plan on Kentuckys haze requirements that dates back to 2012.

EPA is removing burdensome, top-down federal requirements and approving the Commonwealths own plan for clean air and visibility, Wheeler said.

A major factor in the reduction of haze has been the retirement of coal-fired power plants in recent years and the installation of pollution scrubbers at other coal plants in Kentucky.

Kentucky officials say emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide from Kentucky power plants are down 78% and 40% over the last 10 years.

Since 2015, more than a dozen coal-fired electric units in Kentucky have been retired, replaced by gas-burning units or are scheduled to close.

Because of the number of closures as well as the shift to gas-fired electricity, you are seeing a reduction in the short and long range transport of pollutants that are involved with haze, said Tom Fitzgerald, who heads the Kentucky Resources Council, an environmental advocacy group.

Mammoth Cave National Park has also seen a reduction in pollution over the last decade. According to figures posted on the National Parks website, Mammoth Cave has had a 65 per cent reduction in sulfate deposits in rain, snow and smog between 2006 and 2015.

Wheeler also announced a $1.1 million EPA grant to the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection to help clean up petroleum contamination from commercial underground storage tanks.
SALT LAKE CITY - A man has pleaded guilty to a felony terroristic threat charge after authorities said he threating to target women in a mass shooting because he couldnt get a girlfriend.

Utah prosecutor Chad Grunander tells the Deseret News that 27-year-old Christopher W. Cleary of Denver was in court on Thursday.

Police said Cleary wrote on Facebook he was planning to become a mass shooter because he was still a virgin and wanted to kill as many women as possible.

He was arrested during a trip to Provo, Utah, on January 19, the same day womens marches were held around the country. Colorado authorities have said he was on probation after stalking and threatening women there.

His attorney Dustin Parmley did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
ORONO, Minn. - A prominent businessman who once held a stake in the Minnesota Vikings apparently fatally shot his wife before killing himself.

The Hennepin County Medical Examiner issued a report Friday that concluded 77-year-old Alexandra Light Jacobs died of multiple gunshot wounds. The medical examiner says 77-year-old Irwin Lawrence Jacobs died of multiple self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Police say their bodies were found Wednesday morning in bed with a gun at their lakefront home in Orono. The family has scheduled a memorial service Monday afternoon at the Lafayette Club on Lake Minnetonka.

Irwin Jacobs was part-owner of the Vikings in the 1980s and also owned household products company J.R. Watkins Co.
MINNEAPOLIS - A former Minneapolis second-grade teacher accused of spanking and slapping his students has been banned from teaching in Minnesota.

The Star Tribune reports that the Minnesota Professional Educator and Licensing Standard Board voted Friday to revoke Hernandez Cortez Evans teaching license. He had taught briefly at Bethune Community School in north Minneapolis in 2017

A teacher and principal and other witnesses testified at an earlier administrative law hearing that students reported Evans hitting, spanking, slapping and grabbing them. He also was accused of lifting students, carrying them into the hall and locking them out of the classroom unsupervised.

Evans said the case against him amounted to institutional racism against a nurturing, loving black man. He admitted he had restrained students by holding their wrists and by using basket holds, but denied abuse.
MISSOULA, Mont. - A Montana judge sentenced a man and a woman Friday to life in prison after they pleaded guilty to stabbing two people to death, including a teenager, and trying to dissolve their bodies in tubs filled with chemicals.

District Judge James Wheelis gave both Augustus Standingrock and Tiffanie Pierce life terms with the possibility of parole for the 2017 deaths of Jackson Wiles, 24, and Marilyn Pickett, 15.

The sentences are in line with the recommendations prosecutors made in plea agreements. Standingrock pleaded guilty to deliberate homicide and accountability to deliberate homicide, while Pierce pleaded guilty to attempted deliberate homicide and accountability to deliberate homicide.

Pierces plea to attempted deliberate homicide was from a separate attack in which she entered a Missoula home and stabbed a woman eight times, injuring her.

Pierce wept and Standingrock sat silently as relatives and friends of Wiles and Pickett testified for about 90 minutes about the pain they suffered after the killings, Missoula news station KGVO-AM reported .

Pierces former roommate told police he was awakened by a womans screams in their Missoula home in August 2017, according to court records. He said he found Pierce and Standingrock in the bathroom washing off blood and that Pierce told him there was a dead woman in the basement.

Police found Wiles and Picketts bodies dismembered and partially dissolved in the basement.

Prosecutors previously said Standingrock believed Wiles had sexually abused a young girl close to him.

Given the chance to speak in court, Standingrock said: I apologize. Theres nothing I can say or do to bring anything back, he said.

The roommate told investigators that Pierce said Standingrock brought over a couple of people and that he took them to the basement and attacked one while Pierce attacked the other.

Pierce said she never intended to cause anyones death.

Especially someone so young and beautiful and with as much potential as Marilyn, she said. There is not a day that goes by that I dont wish I could trade places with her.

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Information from: KGVO-AM, http://www.kgvo1290.com
NEW HOPE, Pa. - A Pennsylvania police officer who mistakenly pulled his weapon rather than his stun gun wont face charges for shooting a man in police custody.

Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub says last months shooting was an accident.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports the officer, who retired Wednesday and whose name was not released, shot 38-year-old Brian Riling during a scuffle inside a holding cell at the New Hope Police Department on March 3.

Weintraub says as the officer struggled with Riling, he yelled Taser! as a warning, but mistakenly drew his gun and shot him in the stomach. Riling was in critical condition but has been released from the hospital.

Riling was in police custody after an arrest earlier that day on intimidation charges.

His attorney Richard Fink says he has no comment.

___

Information from: The Philadelphia Inquirer, http://www.inquirer.com
Photo taken on April 12, 2019 shows the scene of the opening ceremony of Area Studies Towards the 21st Century: Global Experiences and China Paradigms at Peking University in Beijing, capital of China. The opening ceremony of Area Studies Towards the 21st Century: Global Experiences and China Paradigms hosted by the Institute of Area Studies Peking University was held at Peking University in Beijing, capital of China, April 12, 2019. The forum will last from April 12 to 13. (Photo by Zhang Zhou/ Guangming Online)

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[ Editor: WPY ]
President Moon Jae-In, left, meets with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday (local time) in Washington, D.C. AP-Yonhap



By Jung Da-min



U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington is in talks with Seoul on their cost-sharing agreement for the stationing of U.S. troops in South Korea for the "long term" rather than "short term," unlike earlier announcements.



Asked whether the United States is considering a long-term agreement on defense cost-sharing instead of the current deal which must be renewed each year, President Trump said Washington and Seoul are "talking about long term." Washington is always "thinking in terms of long term with Seoul," Trump told reporters at the start of his summit with President Moon in the Oval Office of the White House, early Friday (KST) .



"South Korea buys a great deal of equipment from us, especially military equipment. We have just recently completed a new and very, very large trade deal with South Korea, and it's just now going into effect. President Moon and South Korea have agreed to purchase a tremendous amount of our military equipment, from jet fighters to missiles, to lots of other things," Trump said.



But it's unclear whether Trump indicated to extend the period of the next Washington-Seoul defense agreement. In February, the two allies agreed "in principle" on a military cost-sharing deal. At the time of the deal, U.S. officials said the deal was "one year" over a five-year agreement.



The new Special Measures Agreement is calling for Seoul to pay 8.2 percent more for South Korea's share of defense spending, rising to some 1 trillion won, or about $920 million, to support some 28,500 U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) personnel.



Military experts didn't weigh much on the remarks by Trump as there was nothing peculiarly new given Trump's similar messages on South Korea's past military purchase a couple of years ago.



"But if there was any new deal that would ever come into effect as Trump said, it could be the additional purchase of F-35As, radar-evading stealth fighter jets produced by the U.S. aerospace and defense giant Lockheed Martin," Shin Jong-woo, a senior analyst at the Korea Defense and Security Forum, said Friday.



The Republic of Korea Air Force signed a deal with Lockheed Martin on the purchase of 40 F-35As in 2014. Among them, the first two had arrived late last month at a military base in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province.



"Considering the budget scale of the project, that new deal could indicate the additional purchase of F-35As," Shin said referring to the possibility raised in the industry recently that the South Korean government was planning to buy 20 more of the stealth jets.



Shin, however, said he does not expect any special new deal would come into effect considering that the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said it had no plans to increase its budget.



He said Trump's remarks seemed to come as Trump was promoting his American-first policy to his own people that he would impose as much expense as he could to allied countries on defense costs.



Speaking at the start of his summit with Moon, Trump repeatedly said he especially appreciated South Korea's military equipment purchases.



South Korea has been the third-largest country in purchase of military equipment from the U.S. for the past 10 years, buying about 7.6 trillion won of weapons, and is reviewing the introduction of new weapons from the U.S. including the U.S. Navy's SM-3 missiles and MH-60R Seahawk multi-mission helicopters.



The ROK Navy deployed eight AW159 Wildcats of Italy's aerospace firm Leonardo in 2017 and was planning on buying a second batch of 12 more anti-submarine helicopters, but DAPA threw a curveball last November, deciding to accept a U.S. proposal for an alternate option and begin the competitive bidding process from scratch.



Leonardo and Lockheed Martin would compete for the bid.




CHICAGO - The Cook County states attorney said Friday that she has asked the countys inspector general to review how her office handled Empire actor Jussie Smolletts criminal case.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and others have criticized the decision by Kim Foxxs office to drop charges against Smollett accusing him of filing a false report to police that he was the victim of a racist, anti-gay attack in January.

Ensuring that I and my office have the communitys trust and confidence is paramount to me, which is why I invited an independent review of this matter, Foxx said in a statement. I welcome this investigation and pledge my full co-operation and the co-operation of my office.

A grand jury indicted the actor on 16 counts in early March. Foxxs office dropped the charges about three weeks later, giving no detailed explanation for why the case was abandoned. Smollett has maintained his innocence and insisted he was attacked.

The Chicago Tribune first reported Foxxs request Friday and reported Cook County Independent Inspector General Patrick Blanchard set a letter to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle and other county leaders informing them of Foxxs request.

Blanchard wrote that Foxx asked for a review of the circumstances surrounding the resolution of criminal charges formerly pending against Jussie Smollett. He wrote that his office would proceed with the review.

The city of Chicago filed a civil lawsuit Thursday in Cook County court against Smollett, who is black and gay, in a bid to recoup the costs of investigating his claim that masked men beat him Jan. 29 in Chicago, shouted slurs and wrapped a rope around his neck.

The suit comes after Smollett refused the citys demand that he repay it $130,106. A spokeswoman for Smolletts legal team said they had no comment on the lawsuit or Foxxs request for the inspector general review.

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Check out the APs complete coverage of the Jussie Smollett case.
DALLAS - Southwest Airlines customers relaxing on Thursday evening got an email that may mean their summer vacation could be more stressful and expensive than they planned.

Southwest, the biggest operator of Boeing jets, is removing the grounded 737 Max from its schedule until at least Aug. 5, well past the peak of the summer high season.

Company President Tom Nealon wrote in his email that the airline is taking the Max out of its schedule two months longer than previously planned to reduce the need for last-minute changes during the summer travel season. The decision, he wrote, would make the schedule more reliable.

Other airlines are likely to follow Southwests example, putting pressure on Boeing to finish fixing software on an anti-stall system implicated in two deadly crashes.

Last month, Boeing and federal officials said privately that the company would finish its work before the end of March. Instead, it was delayed by an unexpected problem that Boeing hasnt fully described, and the company is now aiming to complete its work by late April.

Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said the companys pilots have flown 96 test flights totalling 160 hours with the new software and will operate more in the coming weeks to prove that the fix works.

The changes must be submitted to the Federal Aviation Administration for approval. Foreign regulators including those in Europe and China will then do their own reviews  significant because foreign airlines account for about 85% of Max orders, according to analysts for financial services firm Cowen.

It remains uncertain how willing passengers will be to board the Max after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia killed all 346 people on board.

The general flying public seems to be asking more questions about the airplane than they have with prior fleet groundings, said Goldman Sachs analyst Noah Poponak, referring to the 2013 grounding of Boeing 787s because of overheating lithium-ion battery packs. The 787 survived and became a hit with airlines and passengers.

FAA officials including acting chief Daniel Elwell met in Washington with representatives from Southwest, American and United and their pilot unions. An FAA spokesman said they went over the early findings from the two crash investigations, upcoming changes in the Max software, and pilot training for those changes. Elwell promised that the agency would be transparent about decisions to clear the plane to fly.

American Airlines 737 pilot Dennis Tajer, who was in the meeting, said unions pushed for a stronger pilot-training program including troubleshooting items only indirectly related to the anti-stall software. He said FAA seemed receptive.

This will not be a minimum-training event to just get by, he said.

The longer the Max planes sit on the ground, the more money airlines lose. Southwest already figures that just the first three weeks the Max had been grounded, along with other setbacks, cut the airlines first-quarter revenue by $150 million.

Southwest has been cancelling about 90 flights a day because its 34 Max jets have been grounded since mid-March. Spokesman Chris Mainz said the new schedule eliminates about 160 daily flights to assure customers that it will operate the flights they booked.

That is 4% of Southwests 4,000 daily flights during summer. Still, unless the airline finds replacement planes quickly  and that can be a complicated process  Southwest will scrap about 10,000 flights that could have carried nearly 1.8 million people between now and early August.

American Airlines doesnt expect its 24 Max jets to be flying before June 5, and it too is cancelling about 90 flights a day.

United Airlines, with 14 Max planes, says it is shuffling its fleet and mostly covering flights that were scheduled with the Max in mind.

Without those planes, travellers will have fewer flights to choose from, and fewer planes to carry passengers whose flights are cancelled for other reasons such as bad weather. There could also be fewer fare sales.

Travelers who have not already booked their summer reservations may end up paying a slightly higher airfare, said Henry Harteveldt, a travel-industry analyst with Atmosphere Research Group, but its not going to be the summer from hell.

Harteveldt said he expects airlines that dont have Max jets  a list that includes Delta, JetBlue, Alaska and Spirit  will court travellers with price-cutting.

The cost of the Max crisis to Boeing also rises the longer the plane is grounded and jets coming off the assembly line pile up around Seattle.

With aircraft orders booming, Boeing shares have soared for more than two years, although they dropped about 14% from March 1 through Fridays close. Most of Wall Street has expressed confidence that Boeing can fix the Max quickly and regain momentum.

Poponak, the Goldman Sachs analyst, said however there is a risk that Boeing orders could suffer for the next few years. He said some airlines seemed to view the Airbus competitor, the A320neo series, as superior, and some aircraft-leasing companies faced a challenge to place the Max with airline customers.

Since its launch in 2017, the Max had emerged as Boeings bestselling jet. Fewer than 400 have been delivered, but about 4,600 are on order.

However, the company took no new orders for the Max in March  not even before the March 10 crash in Ethiopia  and only 10 in the first three months of the year, down from 112 in the same period last year. It could be that airlines interested in the plane had already placed orders.

Boeing stopped deliveries and announced last week that it was cutting production of 737s from 52 to 42 a month.

Airlines in China and Norway have said they want compensation for their grounded planes. While other airlines have kept silent, analysts expect Boeing will make concessions that could total hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Chicago-based company also faces a growing number of lawsuits by families of the crash victims.

Boeing hasnt provided numbers on the financial impact from the Max crisis.

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David Koenig can be reached at http://twitter.com/airlinewriter
PROVO, Utah - Several hundred students at Mormon-owned Brigham Young University chanted If God forgives me, why cant you? during a protest Friday aimed at pushing college officials to be more compassionate with punishments for violators of rules banning things that are commonplace at other colleges  including drinking, premarital sex, beards and piercings.

The demonstration was part of an informal campaign that started with an Instagram account created earlier this year by a former student who had a negative experience with the colleges honour code office. That led to a flood of stories from other students claiming they had negative experiences over transgressions and punishments.

People held signs such as Stop playing God and Practice compassion on the campus in Provo, south of Salt Lake City. Riley Mabry, a 21-year-old student from Memphis, Tennessee, carried one with a picture of Jesus and the words, The only big brother I need watching me.

We shouldnt live in fear of messing up, said Mabry, who is bisexual. That doesnt align with the teachings of the church. One of the biggest tenets is that we are capable of repentance and forgiveness.

Some students want parts of the honour code changed and others want punishments reduced, saying they agreed to adhere to the code when choosing to attend BYU, which is owned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nearly all students are members of the faith. Current punishments for violations range from discipline to suspension and expulsion.

The Restore Honor group that organized the protest wants the honour code office to be more forgiving and less judgmental and more transparent, said freshman Grant Frazier.

He said students who are investigated and punished by the honour code office often end up unhappy with BYU and have their spiritual growth stunted.

I love BYU and I love the gospel, said Frazier. But we just think that our university can be doing a little better.

This is the latest unwanted attention for BYUs honour code, which was criticized in 2016 by female students who spoke out against the school opening honour-code investigations of students who reported sexual abuses to police. The college changed the policy to ensure that students who report sexual abuse would no longer be investigated for honour code violations.

University spokeswoman Carri Jenkins said Friday in a statement that BYU wants all students to have a positive experience and are monitoring the conversations on social media and arranging meetings with students and the director of the honour code office, Kevin Utt.

The university posted a Q&A with Utt earlier this week in which he said the rules exist to protect the interests of the community and guide those whose behaviour is not in accordance with its policies. He said 10-15 students are expelled due to honour code violations each year with the rest remaining enrolled. The college has about 33,000 students.

Actions taken against violators are intended to develop students moral and ethical decision-making, Utt said. There is no firm set of punishments, he said, because decisions are based on context, motivation, intent and openness.

BYU graduate Brayden Smith said he was suspended after he turned himself for something that happened with his girlfriend, declining to provide specifics because he did not feel comfortable doing so. Smith said he was left spiritually damaged after he was required to perform 35 hours of community service each month and was banned from using social media or dating apps.

Theres gigantic dark mark on my collegiate experience, said Smith.

The code has a section dedicated to homosexual behaviour, which echoes the religions belief that being gay isnt a sin, but engaging in same-sex intimacy is. It includes a clause stating that all forms of physical intimacy that that give expression to homosexual feelings is prohibited.

Amy Jacobs, a lesbian student, said the rules should be the same for gay and heterosexual couples, who are allowed to hold hands and kiss.

The senior history major said she has lived in fear that someone would report her for an innocuous hug with another woman.

She held a sign that said, Report me, Im gay, a sarcastic nod to a common complaint among students that a culture of tattle-telling exists at the university since the honour code accepts reports of violations from other students.

Im afraid of the honour code office, said Jacobs, 21, of Kaysville, Utah. I kind of hate myself here.

Jacobs said she has thought about transferring to another college but stayed at BYU because she had dedicated so much time to her studies toward a history degree and had good mentoring professors.

BYU is a good education and I want to love it, but I just dont, said Jacobs, who will graduate this spring. If I stayed a BYU any longer, it would kill me.
POINT COMFORT, Texas - A Texas court has dismissed a local newspapers lawsuit claiming a state port authority broke a public meetings law when it hired a former congressman who left the House of Representatives last year amid sexual harassment allegations.

An appeals court ruled Thursday that the Victoria Advocates suit against the Calhoun Port Authority was rendered moot when Blake Farenthold quit his lucrative lobbying job with the port in January. The paper claimed the port authority did not give proper public notice of the Republican politicians hiring.

An attorney for the Victoria paper, John Griffin, says it views Farentholds resignation from lobbying as a win, but would have liked the court to address the alleged open meetings violation.

The port authoritys director and lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
WASHINGTON - The Latest on court appearances of two political consultants in foreign lobbying cases that grew out of the Russia probe (all times local):

1:50 p.m.

Former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig has pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements and concealing information in a federal foreign lobbying investigation spun off from the Russia probe.

Craig entered the plea Friday in federal court in Washington a day after he was accused of hiding the details of his work for the Ukrainian government from the Justice Department.

The 74-year-old denies the charges and says the prosecution against him is unprecedented and unjustified.

The case intersected with special counsel Robert Muellers probe because former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was involved in the financing of a report Craig authored for the Ukrainian government. The document sought to legitimize the prosecution of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

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10:49 a.m.

A Washington political consultant initially entangled in the Russia investigation was sentenced to three years of probation for illegal lobbying and skirting the ban on foreign donations to President Donald Trumps inaugural committee.

W. Samuel Patten and prosecutors had asked for leniency citing his co-operation in special counsel Robert Muellers investigation and other ongoing probes.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson imposed the sentence Friday as Mueller has concluded his investigation but federal prosecutors in New York continue to investigate foreign donations to the inaugural committee.

Patten has said he wasnt part of a larger scheme to funnel money to the committee.

He pleaded guilty to violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act for lobbying on behalf of a Ukrainian political party. He also lied to the Senate intelligence committee.
OPELOUSAS, La. - The Latest on the arrest of a suspect in recent arson fires at black churches in Louisiana (all times local):

3 p.m.

A bond hearing has been set for the suspect in three recent arson fires at African American churches in Louisiana.

The clerk of courts office in St. Landry Parish says the bond hearing for 21-year-old Holden Matthews is set for 9 a.m. Monday before Judge James Doherty.

Matthews is the son of a St. Landry sheriffs deputy. He was arrested Wednesday on charges of arson of a religious building. Authorities suspect him of torching three black churches in 10 days. His attorney did not return a call for comment Friday.

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6 a.m.

No known criminal record. No known history of violence. One friend called him an introverted animal lover. Another said he was a very sweet guy with a racially diverse group of friends.

But 21-year-old Holden Matthews is now the lone suspect in the torching of three African American churches in and around Opelousas, Louisiana.

The arrest of the son of a local sheriffs deputy shocked two friends who spoke to The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, pastors of the churches expressed relief that the mystery had apparently been solved.

___

McGill reported from New Orleans and Opelousas. Associated Press writers Stacey Plaisance in Opelousas, and Michael Kunzelman in College Park, Maryland, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump says the U.S. wants to keep economic sanctions in place to pressure North Korea to give up nuclear weapons, but isnt ruling out a third summit with Kim Jong Un or taking steps to ease food or other shortages in the repressive nation.

We want sanctions to remain in place, Trump said Thursday at the White House during a meeting with South Korea President Moon Jae-in. I think that sanctions right now are at a level thats a fair level.

Moon, for his part, has called for an easing of sanctions, including those holding back joint economic projects between North and South Korea. Trump said he would favour easing those sanctions at the right time but added: This isnt the right time.

He said he was open to discussing smaller steps, such as helping to ease North Koreas humanitarian problems, but that, in general, the U.S. wants sanctions to remain.

There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen, Trump said.

You could work out step-by-step pieces, but at this moment, were talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons.

Negotiations on Pyongyangs nuclear program appear to be stalled, and there is uncertainty over whether Kim is considering backing out of talks or restarting nuclear and missile tests. The Korean Central News Agency on Thursday said that at a party meeting on Wednesday, Kim stressed self-reliance in his country to deal a telling blow to the hostile forces that go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring North Korea to its knees.

Moon said its important to maintain the momentum of dialogue and express a positive outlook to the international community that a third U.S.-North Korea summit will be held.

Id like to express my high regard for how you have continued to express your trust towards Chairman Kim, Moon said. And also, you have made sure that North Korea does not deviate from the dialogue track.

The United States and North Korea have accused each other of causing the Hanoi summits breakdown. But they havent formally abandoned diplomacy. Moon, a liberal who facilitated U.S.-North Korea diplomacy last year, told Trump that he would push for an inter-Korean summit with Kim, according to Moons office. Moon met Kim three times last year.

At the White House, Moon did not publicly address the issue of sanctions. But several North Korea watchers, including Sue Mi Terry, a North Korean expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Asia analyst at the CIA, said Moon is trying to persuade Trump to agree to ease some sanctions to keep the talks alive.

While Trump didnt rule out a third summit with Kim following his earlier two meetings with him in Singapore and Hanoi, Victor Cha, a North Korea expert from the Bush administration, wasnt as hopeful.

With Trump already campaigning for re-election, Cha said, Its hard for me to think Trump will risk a third summit.

Trump walked away from making a deal with Kim at their meeting in late February. Trump said Kim was asking for sanctions relief without wanting to fully dismantle all his nuclear weapons programs. There is ongoing debate over whether harsh sanctions can pressure Kim to denuclearize or will keep him away from the negotiating table.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday that the administration was fully engaged in efforts to negotiate a resolution to the nuclear standoff.

We are going to keep at it, he said. But there have been no public accounts of any progress since the Hanoi summit.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., assessed the denuclearization talks as stuck on first base. Merkley said the North Koreans had continued developing their missile program and were finding ways to circumvent economic sanctions strangling its economy. He cited a U.N. panel of experts that warned on March 5 that there has been a massive increase in illegal ship-to-ship transfers of petroleum products and coal rendering the latest U.N. sanctions ineffective.

A senior administration official said Thursday that the U.S. and the international community had clearly defined the scope of North Koreas weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs, have a shared understanding of what final, fully verified denuclearization entails and what meaningful progress toward that goal looks like. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations, said the North Korean position, so far, has fallen short of that understanding.

North Koreas Deputy Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui said last month that Kim would soon make clear his post-Hanoi position. She said her country might pull out of the nuclear negotiations with the United States, citing a lack of corresponding steps to some disarmament measures North Korea took last year. She also hinted that Kim was considering whether to continue the talks and his moratorium on nuclear and missile tests.
RALEIGH, N.C. - The police chief at North Carolinas flagship public university is retiring after an investigation found campus police were unprepared for demonstrators who tore down a Confederate memorial last summer.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said in a statement Friday that Jeff McCracken will leave his position in July after 26 years with the force and 12 years as top law enforcement officer.

A report commissioned by state university system officials found that because of miscommunication between police and top administrators, officers failed to install barriers around the Confederate statute nicknamed Silent Sam to keep protesters away.

The February report found no evidence of a conspiracy to enable the monuments toppling.

Opponents called the statue a racist symbol. Supporters considered it a marker of North Carolina and Southern heritage.
DETROIT - The U.S. Justice Department said a federal ban on genital mutilation should be rewritten to protect it from constitutional challenges after a judge in Detroit threw out charges against members of a Muslim sect.

The government recently withdrew an appeal of a decision by U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman in the first such federal prosecution in the country. In a letter Wednesday to Congress, Solicitor General Noel Francisco called genital mutilation an especially heinous practice but said the law needs to be changed to mesh with U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that half a million women and girls in the United States have already suffered FGM or are at risk for being subjected to FGM in the future, Francisco said.

Genital mutilation, also known as female circumcision or cutting, has been condemned by the United Nations. The World Health Organization says the procedure carries no health benefits and can cause health problems.

Dr. Jumana Nagarwala was charged with performing it on nine girls at a suburban Detroit clinic, while others were charged with assisting her. She denies any crime and says she performed a religious custom for members of the India-based Dawoodi Bohra. The girls were from Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.

In November, Friedman said the ban was unconstitutional . He found that Congress lacked authority to attack the practice under the Commerce Clause because the procedure is not a commercial activity. The judge said states could step in with their own laws or prosecute the practice under sexual battery and abuse.

No state offers refuge to those who harm children, Friedman wrote.

Francisco said he believes the federal law can be fixed by making genital mutilation a crime if someone crosses state lines to engage in it, among other steps.

Nagarwalas attorney, Shannon Smith, said shes pleased that the governments appeal has been dropped. The doctor, who was arrested in 2017, and three other people still face additional charges, including conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement.

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Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwhiteap
PACIFIC JUNCTION, Iowa - Vice-President Mike Pence is touring areas in Iowa and Nebraska devastated during last months flooding.

Pence was joined by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and U.S. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst in touring an area around Pacific Junction, a community in southwest Iowa where floodwaters still prevent some residents from returning home more than three weeks after the flooding began.

Iowa officials have estimated the March flooding caused $1.6 billion in damage in the state. Pence last month toured areas swamped by floodwaters in Nebraska , where state officials estimate nearly $1.4 billion in damage and losses.

Democratic presidential candidate and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee also was in southwest Iowa on Friday. He toured the flooded town of Hamburg.




By Kang Seung-woo







A male nurse has been found dead with a syringe in his body in a restroom at a shopping mall in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, according to police, Friday, raising speculation the man, 28, was a drug addict.







However, there were no visible injuries and he left no note.







The body was on the first floor of Starfield Goyang.







Police have asked the National Forensic Service to analyze what was in the syringe. They are also investigating how the hospital where the man worked managed drugs there.







"There is no sign of homicide and an autopsy could not find a specific cause of death," a police officer said.







"It is highly possible that he died from drug overdose, so we are now probing details of the incident."







Starfield Goyang is a four-story building with two underground floors covering 364,000 square meters. The building opened in August 2017.














FORT WAYNE, Ind. - A judge has sentenced an Indiana woman to 30 years in prison for placing a plastic bag over her ex-husbands head and beating him with a hammer.

Forty-one-year-old Shannon D. Labrosse of Fort Wayne was sentenced Friday. She pleaded guilty to attempted murder for the February 2017 attack on Thomas Labrosse, who has multiple sclerosis. He suffered broken ribs, cuts to his head and other injuries when attacked while sitting in a recliner at his home.

During the Friday sentencing hearing in Allen Superior Court, Shannon Labrosse was asked if she had anything she wanted to say. She turned to her ex-husband in the courtroom and said, Tom, Im sorry.

She earlier pleaded guilty to misdemeanour battery for striking him repeatedly with a hammer in 2011 when they were still married.
Few will miss the Soldiers of Odin, Aryan Strikeforce, Kevin Goudreau, Faith Goldy and other such purveyors of white nationalist ideology on Facebook. Good riddance to them all.

It was good to see Facebook finally grow a spine this past week and kick some of the most egregious supporters of what it labels organized hate off its platforms.

It was even more welcome to hear Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould make clear that the federal government is prepared to take action if the social media giants dont clean up their act.

Thats a significant change in the Trudeau governments attitude toward the tech companies that have come to dominate so much of our lives.

Until now, Ottawa has seemed paralyzed in the face of the multiple challenges posed by Facebook, Google, Apple and the rest. While other governments, especially in Europe, have been grappling with their impact in areas like privacy, copyright and inequality, our own government has been tiptoeing around this new reality.

Now it has become too big, and too serious, to ignore. No longer can the social media companies wash their hands of the effects of hate content on their platforms. And governments that havent taken it seriously are finally waking up. The massacre of 50 Muslim worshippers in New Zealand by a self-proclaimed white supremacist inspired by online hate settled that.

Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, of all people, is joining the call for governments and regulators to play a more active role in setting rules for the internet. After enduring a year of attacks for violating users privacy and allowing noxious content to flourish, hes now urging stricter regulation of harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

Its easy to see Zuckerbergs conversion to the cause of internet regulation as blatantly self-serving, and in many ways it is.

As long as his company and the other tech giants resisted attempts to regulate them, they ended up carrying the blame when their platforms were used to spread blatant lies or manipulate elections. But if governments set the rules, Facebook et al can always say they were just following the law when things go wrong  as surely they will.

But self-serving or not, the fact that even Zuckerberg acknowledges the need for some kind of official oversight of whats going on across the internet shifts the conversation.

Its no longer possible to pretend we can outsource crucial discussions about public discourse, democracy and privacy to a handful of online behemoths. The stakes are nothing less than the health of democracy, and these are debates we need to have through our public institutions.

All of which makes it even more important to get the balance right. Until now, most countries (Canada among them) have taken an essentially hands-off approach to overseeing online content.

Thats partly because of the enormity of the task. Millions of messages and conversations are exchanged every day and monitoring, let alone regulating them, seemed impossible. A much better reason, though, is obvious: any attempt to deal with noxious speech risks compromising freedom of expression itself, a bedrock value of Canadian and many other societies.

This isnt theoretical. Authoritarian governments everywhere are eager to crack down on free speech, often in the name of outlawing so-called fake news; witness the enormous efforts by the Chinese government to police what its citizens say and think. The last thing we should want to do is trade in the dominance of social-media giants for an even more overbearing surveillance state.

But the danger of over-shooting doesnt mean we should do nothing, as is being acknowledged at long last. The internet and especially social media have allowed what was once kept on the fringe  including deliberate disinformation, hate and extreme bullying  to flourish. This a real problem that demands solutions.

Our government should not set itself up as a regulator of content. But it should set some rules of the road that would make it clear how online publishers must regulate themselves or face penalties if they fail in their duty.

What ought to be covered? A report from the Public Policy Forum last year included some valuable suggestions, including these: Content publishers should identify themselves and not hide behind a cloak of anonymity. Obligations imposed on traditional publishers, such as fairness doctrines, should be extended to digital platforms.

Further: Online advertising should be made transparent. Anonymous bots on social media platforms should be removed. Algorithms that determine who sees what and when should be subject to periodic audits. And, importantly, a mechanism short of criminal penalties to counter outright hate speech should be introduced.

At the same time, the authors rightly noted that it is incumbent in a free society that the bar for action against any kind of speech be set extremely high. Speech that is simply contentious or makes people uncomfortable should certainly not be banned.

Of course, this is easy to say and hard to do. In practice, some will try to expand the boundaries of hate speech to include speech that falls well short of that but could arguably be considered harmful in some respects.

The bar should indeed be set high in these situations. But the difficulty of the task does not mean the effort should not be made. The danger of not acting has become all too clear.

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The boy in short pants just got pantsed. Again.

Under the old premier, the mayor of Canadas largest city complained he felt like a schoolboy going begging to the headmaster in his dealings with Queens Park. But the new guy in charge up at the top of University Ave. is less like a stingy administrator and more a campus bully, stealing the citys lunch money, delivering atomic wedgies and leaving us dangling from a hook stuffed inside a locker.

Case in point: Thursdays provincial budget eliminated more than a billion dollars in gas tax money the city was supposed to get from the province over the next 10 years. Thats money  a lot of money by municipal standards  that the city needs and has been counting on to keep buses running, repair broken escalators, rebuild subway tracks. Its money (not enough of it, even still) that would keep the transit system running.

Former Premier Kathleen Wynne promised that money to the city when she spiked Mayor John Torys proposed road toll plan. That inspired one of those short pants complaints. But cash in hand, the city was able to plan, at least (and did, to the tune of planned spending of half that money  over $500 million  over the next few years).

I think its important to note that on the campaign trail, now-Premier Doug Ford explicitly and specifically promised to maintain that funding. But as many of us have long noted, Ford says a lot of things that turn out not to be true. And, surprise, surprise, this turns out to be yet another of those.

So, what is the city supposed to do? Fords finance minister, Vic Fedeli, suggested on CBCs Metro Morning on Friday that the city should find efficiencies in its budget to make up the difference.

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Oh my.

For those not fluent in the language of this government, that translates loosely as, Why are you hitting yourself, Nerdlinger? Stop hitting yourself and pull your pants up!

Its not just that Ford has an epic, entirely fictional history with that word efficiency that has fouled up Toronto city halls business. Its also that he and Fedeli and their party, when they were campaigning, explicitly, specifically promised that they would be the ones finding efficiencies. They said there would be no job losses  not at all, Ford said  and no service cuts. They were going to cut spending purely by finding efficiencies.

Ford mocked a reporter who questioned him on the likelihood of this panning out. Its funny, Robyn, Ive got to ask you this question. Do you think theres not four cents on the dollar of savings in the bloated government of Ontario? the Ottawa Citizen quoted him as saying to a CBC reporter. Ford then suggested that people at his events broke out laughing at the prospect of finding only four cents. He was gonna find those efficiencies and no jobs would be lost, and hed protect education and health services, and transit would be better than ever, he said.

FORD: Just watch me do it.

NARRATOR: He didnt do it.

I imagine he and his people are laughing all the harder now. Job cuts, and service cuts, in education and health care. Decreased student aid to low income students and cuts to university funding. Slashed funding for legal aid. $1 billion less in funding for children and social services. And  ha ha!  Toronto and other cities get absolutely shafted on desperately needed funding to keep their transit systems operational.

This miserable failure of Ford and Fedeli to deliver on the promise of finding efficiencies is such a great setup for the punchline of telling those responsible for delivering services that its no big deal because they can just find efficiencies to make up the difference.

Doug Fords pants are on fire, but what else is new. Meanwhile, those of us in Toronto have ours around our ankles, which is going to make it even harder to get around when our bus, streetcar and subway system falls apart.

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OTTAWAEvery Canadian in every province now pays for carbon emissions that cause climate change.

That is the fraught, politically-charged reality since April 1, when Ottawa imposed its carbon tax backstop in four provinces that refused to match the federal minimum of $20 per tonne of emissions.

Federal Conservatives and their ideological companions at Queens Park argue this hurts the economy and isnt necessary to reduce emissions. New Democrats and the Green party contend Canada is lagging on climate action and should, among other things, eliminate federal subsidies to the oil and gas industry.

But Canadas price, even as it climbs to $50 per tonne in 2022, is smaller than similar taxes in some of the 24 other countries that have set national carbon prices. Swedens tax is roughly $189 per tonne. In France, its $83 per tonne. And in its landmark report from October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global carbon prices may need to be as high as several thousand dollars per tonne in 2030 if the world is to keep warming below 1.5 degrees C by the end of the century.

This week, Liberal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna attended the Carbon Pricing Leadership Coalition in Washington, D.C., a summit of governments and private industry on the sidelines of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund governors meetings.

She spoke with the Star before leaving the U.S. capital.

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What message did you hope to send by attending this conference?

The purpose of this group is to talk about carbon pricing, to see whats going on, also to share lessons learned. And there was a lot of interest in what Canada is doing, how were returning the revenues directly back into not only the province, but also to people. And thats by law: 90 per cent of the revenues go back to individuals through taxes. Theyre very interested in that, because how you use your revenues can help or hurt politically Ours is using carbon pricing because its the most efficient way to reduce emissions, but also to make life affordable for folks. They have choices to save more money if they want by taking measures in their homes or how they get to work, transportation, to reduce emissions. Or not. But they will get the money back.

The IPCC report from October (says) if were going to keep warming to 1.5 degrees, the carbon tax  should be anywhere between $135 (US) to $5,500 (US) per tonne (by 2030). Do you agree that the carbon price that were going to have in 2022 will need to go up?

Weve always said that pricing is only one of the tools in our tool box. So, weve got the price on pollution, but were also making historic investments in public transportation, and phasing out coal, and investing in renewables and investing in energy efficiency and clean-tech companies and innovation. So, I mean, weve taken an across the board approach. And our focus is really, OK, whats effective, what is practical, and how do we do this in a way that ensures that life is affordable and youre also creating good jobs and innovation in Canada.

But beyond 2022, is the carbon tax going to go up? Assuming, as we hear all the time, its the best, most efficient way to incentivize people away from pollution, wouldnt it have to go up if were going to close the gap and hit our targets?

Were committed to meeting our Paris Agreement target (to cut emissions to 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030). Weve been clear about that, and were taking an across-the-board approach. The commitment is only to 2022, and thats when we meet with provinces and territories to do a review (of Canadas climate change framework). But theres no intention to go up now.

It seems theres a disconnect between the action experts say is needed to prevent the worst consequences of climate change, and the action that is politically possible for governments to do. What do you think about that?

Look, weve done a lot and we know we need to do more. We came in (to government), there was 10 years of inaction. We helped negotiate the Paris Agreement, then we negotiated with provinces and territories. Were two thirds of the way to our target and were 11 years out One of the challenges, of course, is when you have provinces like Ontario that backtrack. They do less, so they increase the challenge. But we are committed to it.

Why do think there is so much resistance, with Jason Kenney maybe on the cusp of winning in Alberta, what Doug Ford is doing in Ontario, other provinces that are skeptical of the efficacy of carbon pricing, or carbon taxes  why do think theres an audience for that?

I think theyre skeptical of climate action overall. They seem to be skeptical of the science that says the enormity of the challenge and how we need to act now. We have our climate change report that says Canada is warming at double the international average, and they arent making decisions based on policy and evidence. We know that carbon pricing works. We know that we need to take action. We know you can do it in an affordable way by giving the money back. But this generation of Conservative politicians wants to do less and less on climate change when the risks and the costs are enormous.

Assuming the polls are right and Kenney becomes Premier of Alberta, cancels the carbon tax in Alberta and lifts the cap on oilsands emissions, what can the Liberal government in Ottawa do? Wouldnt that tear up the chance of Canada hitting its targets?

Im not going to speculate on the Alberta electionWe will deal with things as they come, but were going to continue to push. And thats what weve found that, unfortunately, provinces didnt step up  some provinces, led by Conservative politicians, didnt step up and they made it free to pollute. And we stepped in, put a price on pollution, but also did it in an affordable way.

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The sound coming out of Conservative backrooms on Parliament Hill in the hours following the presentation of this weeks Ontario budget was that of a collective sigh of relief.

From Conservative Party Leader Andrew Scheers perspective, his party dodged a pre-election bullet on Thursday.

By all indications, Premier Doug Fords fiscal plan will provide the Trudeau Liberals with less lethal ammunition to use against their Conservative rivals in the upcoming federal campaign than they had hoped for.

Yes, the fact that Ontario will remain in the red beyond Fords current term in office is liable to blunt Conservative Party of Canada attacks on the ruling Liberals for accumulating deficit upon deficit since they have taken power.

But it will also make it more difficult for Trudeau to turn the tables on Scheer and predict that the election of a Conservative government would result in a fiscal bloodbath.

And yes, the course charted in Thursdays budget will  over time  impoverish Ontarios social services. The plan to keep the growth in program spending below the rate of inflation for the next five years cannot but result in a thinner social safety net. The provinces most vulnerable constituencies stand to be the first and the hardest hit.

Read more:

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But the full impact on most Ontarians of the measures sketched out on Thursday will not have been felt by the time Scheer and his Conservatives go door-knocking next fall.

In the immediate, the first batch of post-budget media analysis has left federal Conservative strategists with an embarrassment of riches to counter the Liberals post-budget apocalyptic scenarios.

Take this summation by my columnist colleague Martin Regg Cohn: There are no savage cuts in the first Ford-Fedeli budget, which could easily have been delivered by former premier Dalton McGuinty back when he belatedly discovered austerity.

Or this one from Globe and Mail columnist Tim Kiladze: If anything, it looks more like something that would come from the Liberals he replaced  the ones he swore had been reckless with the provinces finances.

Those comments were not written to complement the Ford Tories but to highlight the gap between their rhetoric and their actual budget.

It is hard to find in the rather sunny outlook upon which Fords government has based its first budget much evidence of the premiers gloomy contentions that the provincial Liberals have left the province on the fiscal brink or that the federal carbon tax will plunge Ontario into a recession.

The contrast between Fords talk and his governments budget walk will likely displease many fiscal conservatives. They had been given cause to expect a dramatic departure from the fiscal policy of the previous Liberal governments. But from Scheers electoral perspective, it comes as close as it could have to a do-no-harm budget.

In the lead-up to Thursday, the Trudeau Liberals had all but telegraphed their strategy of coming out swinging against the Ontario budget.

They even took the rare step of dispatching two MPs to Queens Park so as to have boots on the ground as soon as the budget fight got underway.

On Friday, the Liberals doubled down with a Parliament Hill news conference featuring four Ontario MPs  including three ministers. Labour Minister Patti Hajdu alleged the Ford budget was inspired by the politics of cruelty.

Such a federal deployment on the occasion of a provincial budget is more than unusual; it is just about unprecedented.

Just a few weeks ago the first Coalition Avenir Quebec budget came and went with nary a peep from Parliament Hill.

The introduction of Quebecs contentious Bill 21  and the attending CAQ decision to override both the Canadian and Quebec charters on the way to removing the right of some public servants to wear religious symbols  was also greeted with a lot more federal restraint.

Mind you, it is hard to think of circumstances under which the sight of Liberal MPs lurking in the hallways of the Quebec national assembly in wait of delivering a hit on a major provincial policy announcement would not backfire.

Ford was always expected to be front and centre in the election narrative of the Trudeau Liberals.

There is a reason why the latter have been relatively restrained in the face of Alberta Conservative Leader Jason Kenneys strategy of consistently associating outgoing NDP Premier Rachel Notley with the prime minister the better to score hits on his main rival on the provincial campaign trail.

Trudeaus team is poised to similarly link Scheer with Ford on the hustings next fall. At this juncture the Ontario premier is both less popular and more polarizing than the federal Conservative leader.

In Ontario, the SNC-Lavalin crisis has cost Trudeau his pre-election edge on the Conservatives.

If the Liberals were to lose Canadas largest province next fall, they would lose the election.

A take-no-prisoner battle is in the offing.

But from the strategic perspective of the federal Liberals, Thursdays Ontario budget was a disappointment.

Chantal Hebert is a columnist based in Ottawa covering politics. Follow her on Twitter: @ChantalHbert

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By Kim Yoo-chul







Three anti-corruption agencies have formed an alliance to prepare for the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC), the largest global anti-corruption event, to be held in Seoul, June 2020.







In a statement, the Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission of Korea (ACRC) said it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Transparency International (TI) and the International Anti-Corruption Council (IAC) for the upcoming event.







The conference is the biggest global anti-corruption forum that brings together around 2,000 anti-corruption practitioners including minister-level senior public officials from about 140 countries worldwide, as well as civil and international organizations, said the ACRC.







"The parties to the MOU will fulfill their respective roles and responsibilities stated for the success of the event. South Korea could share its anti-corruption experiences and lessons learned



with the world, strengthening global cooperation in the anti-corruption area and taking a lead in global integrity efforts," ACRC Chairperson Pak Un-jong said in the statement.







The conference will consist of five plenary sessions and 50 workshops where each government and civil organization shares experiences on building a corruption-free nation and seeking ways to root out corruption, according to the statement.







There will also be various side events that could engage young participants in their 20s and 30s such as anti-corruption film festivals, anti-corruption music concert and anti-corruption youth activities, which could enhance young people's understanding of corruption issues.


American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan

By Matt Farwell and Michael Ames

Penguin Press. 388 pp. $28

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In the years since Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl walked off his platoon's base in eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of June 30, 2009, he has become many things to many people, from a conscience-driven whistleblower to a traitorous Taliban collaborator. What would compel a 23-year-old soldier to leave his weapon behind and wander off into hostile territory with nothing more than some water, food, a compass and $300 in cash? The compelling new book "American Cipher: Bowe Bergdahl and the U.S. Tragedy in Afghanistan" by Matt Farwell and Michael Ames attempts to answer these questions or at least to place a framework around them.

In "American Cipher," Farwell and Ames tell Bergdahl's story alongside a history of the Afghan war. A deft move, as it is impossible to understand Bergdahl's actions outside a deeper contextualization of that conflict, with its many contradictions. That is because the arc of Bergdahl's story draws such strong parallels with the American experience in Afghanistan. Which leads to the bitterest irony of all - particularly among many veterans - that the most iconic figure of the war in Afghanistan, a war deserted by many Americans, is in fact a deserter himself.

Within a month of arriving in Afghanistan, Bergdahl had become disillusioned. "The war he had been sold was a lie, he thought, a con spun from the desire in the American heart to spread freedom and liberate the tyrannized peoples of the world," the authors write. "This wasn't the war story Bergdahl had written for himself, so he decided to write his own." Having chosen to take matters into his own hands, Bergdahl became convinced that he needed to address his grievances to at least a general officer.

His plan - as claimed by him - was to walk 18 miles from his small combat outpost to the nearest large base, where, after having instigated the crisis of a soldier "missing in action," he would become his command's savior by appearing and, thus, be granted the audience he desired. "They might think he was crazy," Farwell and Ames write, parsing Bergdahl's logic, "but they would respect what he'd done and hear his concerns." But instead Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban and held in captivity for five years. After his release, he said of his mental state when he walked away from his platoon's base: "Happily with my ignorance, from a young man's mind and my imagination, I came up with a fantastic plan."

Delusion factors heavily into Bergdahl's understanding of his actions. At his court-martial, his defense team diagnosed him as schizotypal. Unlike schizophrenics, schizotypal patients don't suffer from complete breaks with reality but often become lost in their own fantasies. If Bergdahl suffered the delusion of believing he could become a savior by solving a crisis of his own making, the case is artfully made in "American Cipher" that America itself is a schizotypal, that we became lost in our own fantasies for Afghanistan, in which we could become the savior, delivering the Afghan people from a crisis of our own creation.

In "American Cipher" the specific facts of Bergdahl's case are elevated to the allegorical, and this is where Farwell and Ames' storytelling really shines. The U.S. government's interdepartmental dysfunction when negotiating with the Haqqani network, which was holding Bergdahl, mirrors the government's dysfunction in nascent Taliban peace talks brokered by then-special envoy Richard Holbrooke. The dysfunctional recruiting process of an overextended U.S. military mirrors the specifics of Bergdahl's recruitment into the Army, even though the government knew of his psychological issues. And when Bergdahl deserts, the dysfunction of the military's counterinsurgency strategy mirrors the dysfunction of U.S. attempts to elicit intelligence about Bergdahl from a distrustful Afghan population.

The parallels go depressingly on. Farwell and Ames convincingly show that so many of the reasons we've been fighting in Afghanistan for 18 years - bureaucratic inertia, partisan dysfunction, domestic indifference - are the same reasons that, even when Bergdahl's captors eagerly hoped to broker his release, it took so long to recover him.

And when we did recover Bergdahl, the cost of his actions, particularly for his former comrades and those sent to search for him, became acutely evident. Some of the most moving pages in the book recount the testimony of Shannon Allen, whose husband, Mark, was shot in the head when he was sent to a remote part of eastern Afghanistan to track down information on Bergdahl. Mark Allen remains largely in a vegetative state despite at times responding to prompts from Shannon and their young daughter. On the witness stand Shannon said, "Instead of a wife, I am a caretaker," at which point the prosecution showed a video of the Allens' daily routine, in which Mark is fed through a tube and wears a percussion vest to prevent fluid from collecting in his lungs, and Shannon crushes pills for his 80-odd prescriptions. Watching the video, Shannon concluded through tears that at least Mark was back home, "where he's safe."

Following Shannon Allen's testimony, Bergdahl took the stand. He read a prepared apology in which he said: "I made a horrible mistake. ... People went through things that they never should have. I was trying to help, and the fact that I did not breaks my heart."

On rebuttal, the lead prosecutor, Maj. Justin Oshana, challenged Bergdahl's choice of words. "It wasn't a mistake," he said. "It was a crime."

Whether Bergdahl's actions were a mistake or a crime is the central question of "American Cipher." In light of the amount of suffering his actions caused, it's a fair question to ask of Bergdahl. And in light of our nearly 20-year misadventure in Afghanistan, it is also a fair question to be asking of ourselves.

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Ackerman is the author of several novels. His memoir, "Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning," will be published in June.
Finding My Voice: My Journey to the West Wing and the Path Forward

By Valerie Jarrett

Viking. 305 pp. $30

---

Valerie Jarrett was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama during both his terms; is a close friend to Michelle Obama; directed an important real estate firm; and has served as chair of the Chicago Transit Authority Board, chair of the Chicago Stock Exchange and chair of the board of trustees of the University of Chicago Medical Center. She chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls and co-chaired the White House Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault. She sits on the boards of directors of Ariel Investments and Lyft and is a distinguished senior fellow at the University of Chicago Law School. Jarrett is, in short, a big deal.

In "Finding My Voice," she recounts her journey to the White House and beyond. She writes that her memoir stemmed from an interview for a Story Corps oral history conducted by her daughter, who asked her mom to advise a younger version of herself. "It turns out I had a lot to say," Jarrett declares, "and not just to a thirty-year-old me, but to women and men of all ages."

"Finding My Voice" can be divided into three sections. In the first, Jarrett describes her remarkable family and unusual childhood.

Her great-grandfather Robert Robinson Taylor, the first black student to attend MIT, graduating in the class of 1892, became the country's first black architect. He designed many of the buildings that constitute the campus of Tuskegee Institute. Her grandfather Robert Rochon Taylor, a prominent business and civic leader, became the chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. Her father, James E. Bowman, distinguished himself as a pathologist and geneticist. Barred by racial prejudice from medical positions in the United States that would facilitate and reward his advanced research, he accepted a post abroad at a hospital in Shiraz, Iran, where Valerie Jarrett was born in 1956. She writes that all her parents knew about that "exotic place was that it was willing to give a black doctor an opportunity far better than any available to him in the country where he was born."

Jarrett spent the first five years of her life in Iran, accompanying her parents on adventures around the world - Ghana, Egypt, the Soviet Union. Homesick, they returned to Chicago, where Jarrett's accent, shyness and light complexion attracted unwanted attention from African American neighborhood bullies. For the most part, however, she seems to have had a healthy, fun, love-filled childhood. She had momentary scrapes with white racists. She recalls a white "friend" at a sleep-away camp saying to her: "You know, I thought you were a n----- when I first met you. I'm really sorry." But she seems to have negotiated well a privileged upbringing in which she was exposed to and comfortable around a wide assortment of people. The daughter of college graduates, she too attained higher education, attending Stanford and the University of Michigan Law School.

The second section of her book focuses on Jarrett's efforts to create a suitable career and household. Both fronts proved difficult. She was bored by corporate law practice. Worse, she married a surgeon who, in her telling, quickly showed himself to be selfish and unreliable. Notwithstanding her doubts, she had a child with him, only to find herself and her baby cruelly abandoned. Things turned around for her dramatically, however, when she left her private-sector job to work for the administration of Harold Washington, the Windy City's first black mayor, and after she obtained a divorce. By dint of poise and perseverance, connections and luck, she climbed the municipal bureaucratic ladder, becoming a significant figure in Chicago civic affairs.

The third section of her book is dominated by the extraordinary events that have stemmed from her affiliation with the Obamas. When Jarrett was deputy chief of staff to Mayor Richard M. Daley, she hired and befriended a young lawyer, Michelle Robinson, who introduced her to the man Michelle would soon marry, Barack Obama. Jarrett developed a close bond with the young couple, supported their ambitions, and moved upward with them as they conquered the Democratic Party and then captured the White House.

Jarrett seems to be, in many of the most important respects, a thoroughly admirable person. She appreciates her parents. She adores her daughter (an excellent television commentator on legal affairs). She boosts the careers of capable people who, absent her intervention, might have been overlooked because of their race or gender. She situates herself in a grand tradition of liberal, reformist politics in which "we fight as hard as we can to change the system, showing up to vote, marching in the streets, and pushing relentlessly in the courts." There are times, she laments, when the status quo refuses to change. When that happens, she counsels, you carefully pick your battles, "you figure out a way to maneuver within the system as it exists in order to make progress. You find the cracks and the loopholes and you slip through them to get where you need to go."

Jarrett abhors social misery and celebrates collective action aimed at alleviating avoidable suffering. She believes in using governmental authority to expand opportunities for those who have been shortchanged by misfortune or injustice. But she also respects democratic limits on governmental power, accepting with grace electoral outcomes she loathes, hopeful that, over time, the electorate will find its way to better choices.

Alas, "Finding My Voice" is keenly disappointing. It suffers from faintness of voice. Jarrett's diffidence precludes the self-revelation that a reader rightly expects of a memoir. One will not find here candid, surprising, ruminative unveilings. She does describe the unraveling of her marriage, which she portrays as the single biggest pratfall in her otherwise blessed life. But even in that portrayal, she pictures herself guilty only of naivete; the husband was an apparently good catch who proved to be rotten. What about subsequent romantic companionship? Was she open to that? Or did she forswear such relationships? Did she seek but not find? Or did the demands of being a single parent in high-powered positions impede her efforts to create new romantic intimacies? "Finding My Voice" is mute on these questions, though the difficulty of creating an equitable, fun, fulfilling domestic life with another person is a compelling subject of major personal and political concern that has special layers of complication for women of color.

Jarrett's account of her doings in the White House is similarly wan. A major reason some observers will be drawn to Jarrett's memoir is her well-publicized closeness to the Obamas. She discloses nothing about them, however, that is remotely striking. She is monotonously flattering. She momentarily expresses regret about perceiving too slowly during her White House years that, with respect to certain projects, she should have attempted to work more intently with governors and mayors instead of the Republican-dominated obstructionist Congress. For the most part, though, she offers superficial accounts that avoid self-criticism or engagement with controversy. She says not one word about the politics of abortion. And she says little in response to criticism that the Obama administration was too easy on Wall Street, insufficiently attentive to homeowners facing foreclosure, evasive about racial conflict or insufficiently alarmist about Russian interference in the presidential election of 2016. Jarrett offers no opinion regarding the extent, if any, to which the administration bears responsibility for the ascendancy of Trumpism.

Jarrett depicts herself as a race woman, self-consciously concerned with advancing the fortunes of black Americans. But she largely overlooks the intra-racial debates that vex politically self-aware black Americans. She says nothing, for example, that discloses her thinking on the extent, if any, to which blacks of her station - i.e., those who have "made it" - should affirmatively support historically black institutions, particularly colleges and universities. Nor does she reveal whether the racial makeup of her child's companions matters to her. Some affluent blacks who are situated in predominantly white settings go out of their way to make sure their children are exposed to other African Americans. Jarrett's memoir offers not even a hint as to her thinking regarding this issue. One suspects that she might have interesting things to say; her determined quietude is perplexing.

Jarrett alone, of course, is ultimately responsible for her book. But perhaps a source of its flabbiness is the condition under which it was written. Finding a voice is a difficult enterprise that requires singularity of effort. In her acknowledgments, Jarrett thanks an entourage. She praises the "team" behind her at the publishing house and thanks as well "my collaborators Rebecca Paley and Tanner Colby [who] embraced my story and helped me ensure my memoir reflected my voice." Colby, author of "Some of My Best Friends Are Black," has also written biographies of the entertainers Chris Farley and John Belushi. Paley is a co-author of several memoirs, including "Troublemaker" by the actress Leah Remini and "I'll Drink to That" by the Bergdorf Goodman personal shopper Betty Halbreich. There is reason to suspect that collaboration of this sort is inimical to originality, insight and authenticity.

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Kennedy is the Michael R. Klein professor of law at Harvard Law School.
Yoon Chang-ryeol of the Office for Government Policy Coordination speaks during a press conference at the Government Complex in Sejong, on a WTO ruling supporting Korea's import ban on seafood from Japan's Fukushima prefecture and seven nearby regions, Friday. Yonhap

Japan slams decision "extremely regrettable"



By Nam Hyun-woo



The government on Friday welcomed a WTO decision to uphold Korea's import ban on seafood from Japan's Fukushima prefecture and seven nearby regions following the 2011 nuclear disaster.



"The government highly appreciates the WTO ruling and welcomes the decision," Yoon Chang-ryeol of the Office for Government Policy Coordination said in a press briefing. "The government will continue make the best efforts in inspecting imported foods so that only safe foods can be provided to the public."



He added that the government will maintain the import ban on all seafood products from the region.



The remark came after the WTO appellate body overturned almost every disputed point of a 2018 WTO dispute panel ruling, which sided with Japan in three out of four disputed points.



In the wake of the nuclear disaster, Korea has placed a blanket import ban on seafood from the eight prefectures in 2013, to which Japan registered a complaint with the WTO in 2015. In the complaint, Japan raised claims that Korea's ban on 28 fishery products is unfair.



In February last year, the dispute panel ruled in favor of Japan, saying Korea's ban was inconsistent with the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures in three categories of discrimination, trade restriction and transparency.



In the appeals ruling, however, the appellate body said the panel's decision is "moot and of no legal effect," overturning all of those verdicts, except for Korea's unclear publication of information related to its ban.



Over the decision, Japan expressed its "extreme regret" on the WTO decision.



"Even though the ruling did not acknowledge that Korea's measures comply with the WTO rules, it is extremely regrettable that Japan's argument was not approved," Japan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono said in a statement.



"There is no change in Japan's position of demanding Korea lift all the restriction measures, and we will pursue this via talks with Korea."



Despite Japan's strong stance, Yoon said the seafood row will not spread into a trade conflict between the two countries.



"As the WTO officially ruled Korea's import ban was a justifiable measure, there is no problem with the ban," Yoon said. "The foreign minister's remark is interpreted as Japan will make efforts inside of the country. There's no need to stretch the meaning of the remark."



According to the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, Korea imported 84,222 tons of Japanese seafood in 2010. The volume went down to 53,386 tons in 2013 when the blanket import ban went into effect, and declined further to 34,904 tons last year.


NEW YORK - The bridal wear designer Amsale Aberra was among the first to give women a sleek, restrained alternative to a wedding dress as a sugary confection.

A year ago this month, Aberra died of uterine cancer. The 64-year-old left behind her daughter Rachel, a handpicked design team, and her husband and business partner, Neil Brown, who together are aiming to carry on Aberra's creative legacy. But even more ambitiously, they are looking to upend the entire bridal wear industry, which typically measures innovation by gradations of off-white to ivory to blush.

Brown wants to change the way brides purchase wedding gowns, transforming the enterprise from a "Say Yes to the Dress" field trip - in which it takes a village to choose between an Empire waist or a trumpet hem - into an luxury online experience.

"I see the company transitioning from a fashion company to a fashion technology company," Brown said one afternoon last fall.

Gathered around a conference table in the brand's headquarters in New York's Garment District, he and the Amsale team were explaining their next steps. One wall was covered in a hodgepodge of sticky notes, each one marked with a nugget from a brainstorming session about what brides want and when they want it. Brown, with the help of business and technology consultants, was considering how best to move forward in a time of e-commerce, customer impatience, an emphasis on personalized experiences and the ominous reality that David's Bridal - the country's largest bridal gown retailer - had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, from which it has since emerged.

"So many in this industry see technology as a support function for what we do, but it's really a place of creativity that's complementary to what we do," Brown said.

Several months later - after layoffs and the launch of Amsale e-commerce, which Brown said has grown rapidly - the company is launching Amsale x You.

Shoppers can go online and design their own wedding dresses - within the tasteful confines of the Amsale aesthetic. "We're not just decorating a sneaker," Brown said during a recent demonstration of the site. "We're inviting the bride into our design room and sharing our intellectual property with her so she can express her own design impulses."

A bride can select her dress's bodice and skirt and add a wisp of a belt. She can pick from size 0 to 24, mixing and matching different-size tops and bottoms for an optimum fit. It won't matter if a customer chooses tulle or silk faille, long sleeves or strapless - the cost is a flat fee of $5,000, which counts as a bargain in Designerville, since custom gowns ordered through Amsale's Madison Avenue salon would start at around $10,000. The dress is made-to-order and shipped out in four weeks.

The site officially launched Friday, as the brand debuts its spring 2020 bridal collection on the runway here.

It all sounds wildly efficient and stress free - except for that part about imagining what the dress will look like in real life, worrying that the dress won't be as flattering as you thought or coming to grips with the reality that contrary to what you have firmly believed since, well, forever - you actually hate tulle. What on earth possessed you to buy a custom tulle wedding dress that night you were sitting at home alone with a glass of wine and your wildest fantasies? What were you thinking?

In other words: The proposition has a few hurdles.

Eventually shoppers will be able to create a personalized avatar with their exact measurements. More bodices and skirts from the company's vast pattern archive will be added for even more dress possibilities - but really, even today, while silhouettes and beading may vary, it's still all about a traditional white dress.

Some stats: According to the American Wedding Survey by Brides magazine, 83 percent of brides in 2018 chose a dress that was white or off-white and 76 percent wore a veil. The survey also noted that 66 percent of brides shop for their dress in specialty salons and they spend an average of $2,260.

Brown said that about 25 percent of brides were responsible for about 75 percent of wedding spending and the Amsale customer is firmly within that category. He figures, if shoppers are willing to go to websites such as Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa and Matches and spend $4,000 and $5,000 on designer dresses, surely they will be willing to do the samefor their wedding. Perhaps. Probably.

Amsale would not be the first to offer custom-made gowns online, but it would be at the top of the price range and offer a singular design point of view. At the website Anomalie, a team of designers helps shoppers through a months-long process that offers wide aesthetic latitude and a liberal return policy, and the site advertises that most dresses cost $1,000 to $1,500. Others offering such services include Bluethread and a host of Etsy entrepreneurs.

But a wedding dress is not a gala gown or a cocktail frock. It's a singularly symbolic garment that speaks of girl squads and multigenerational bonding. The dress sets the tone of the wedding as much as the location and even more than the flowers, the cake, the everything else. The bride-in-the-dress serves as the day's big reveal, the moment of anticipation, the embodiment of overflowing emotion.

Shopping for the dress is a social outing that includes the bride, her mother, her friends and anyone else she considers part of her inner circle - or simply in possession of good taste. The dress is not a solo event; it's a shared experience, both fraught and celebratory. It's an adventure to be documented on Instagram.

Thus, Brown doesn't just want to change the way Amsale dresses are sold; he wants to change the cultural perception of the wedding dress itself, which is akin to changing the way in which brides - and women - see themselves individually and in relation to each other. That point of view has remained stubbornly static over the years: Have you picked out your dress? What are you going to wear? Let's discuss.

The seed for the Amsale brand was planted more than 30 years ago. Aberra, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, sketched her own wedding dress in 1985 as a matter of necessity. The kind of restrained, sophisticated gown she wanted didn't readily exist; wedding dresses had a fairy-tale princess complex. Aberra's dress, elegant with a chiffon bodice, was the foundation on which she and Brown built their company, and its aesthetic signified a shift in thinking: A woman did not have to redefine herself just because she was a bride. Instead, her dress could reflect the woman she had always been.

Amsale gowns, at their best, exude special-occasion joyfulness but with a grown-up, refined air. They are crafted with strong lines and judicious embellishments, rather than an over-abundance of ruffles, crystals and beading. They are the equivalent of a perfectly calibrated martini rather than sweet cocktails.

Amsale opened the door for brands such as Vera Wang and Monique L'Huillier. Their designers ultimately eclipsed Aberra in name recognition thanks to their ready-to-wear collections, which regularly appeared on the red carpet.

Can the company lead another shift?

Today, brides have an endless supply of Pinterest design inspiration. Finding a dress - or a jumpsuit or a suit - that reflects their personality is not the high hurdle it once was. The challenge is doing so conveniently, at a reasonable price and in a multitude of sizes.

According to WeddingWire.com, 80 percent of wedding planning is done online and 35 percent of millennials are pre-gaming wedding attire online before they even get engaged. And plenty of women skip the designated bridal gowns and simply buy a great party dress with the click of a button because they're more excited about their destination wedding (1 in 4 count as such) than Swarovski crystals on silk organza.

There are plans for Amsale x You to include an option for an online group shopping experience - a kind of e-commerce meets Google Docs meets FaceTime. But a virtual gaggle is not quite the same as giving a bunch of sample dresses a real-life spin in front of an audience of besties sipping champagne.

To take advantage of a full, online shopping experience means, ultimately, going it alone.

That's not necessarily bad. Many brides might prefer it. They may have been dreading the tradition of dress shopping by committee.

Just as it was something of a revolution when women shunned the wedding gown frippery, it may be a 21st century revolution to declare one's shopping independence. To refuse the groupthink and the solicitous sales representative. Solitary contemplation in front of a laptop may be its own special joy.
EDWARDSVILLE  Several Madison County Board members are again pushing for a exit plan for facility operations at a former Wood River hospital, which would force the relocation of 90 jobs currently housed there, if implemented.

Board Members Phil Chapman, R-Highland brought up the issue, with support from Chris Hankins, D-Pontoon Beach.

The Facilities Committee has been dealing with concerns over the building, which houses Emergency Management, Employment Training, Health and other departments and agencies, and also serves as the County Morgue.

The former Wood River Township Hospital closed in 2000 and the county purchased the building shortly after that. Today about half of its 186,000 square feet of usable space is occupied, with the remainder completely vacant or being used as storage.

Committee members have been discussing the issue for months. At one point last year there was discussion about renovating the building and making it available to other public agencies or nonprofits, which would bring revenue from rent. However the cost is prohibitive at about $20 million, with the end result being a building worth far less than that.

Most recently discussion has been on getting rid of or demolishing most of the existing structure.

The sooner we get out of that hospital the better, Chapman said.

He presented a letter that outlined some of his and Hankins concerns.

According to Chapman, they need to move toward divestiture of the Wood River facility and move the approximately 90 employees working in the building out as soon as possible.

Instead, he said they should consolidate operations into unused or better used space in the courthouse and Administration Building, and at the underused Hillsboro building.

We have to get this under control and have an exit plan, Hankins said.

He said the entire building is facing a similar situation the courthouse was  with outdated electrical switching mechanisms that are becoming unreliable and cannot be replaced easily.

Its just one (power) spike, one storm away from having an issue that could shut down a section of the building, he said.

No action was taken, but it was noted that Facilities Director Rob Schmidt is still working on a master building space utilization plan.

The committee also discussed several issues that could save the county substantial amounts of money.

Facilities Director Rob Schmidt said switching gas and electric providers could save a large amount of money.

He said the county is under contract through April 2020 with Mid-America Electric Inc., and paying approximately $91,000 more than would be charged by other sources. However, buying out the contract would cost $40,000.

Its still $51,000 to the plus, Schmidt said.

He said they could also save money by switching gas service, which is under an expired contract.

Board Member Ray Wesley, R-Godfrey, suggested they get an opinion from the States Attorneys Office on the possibility of simply breaking the electrical contract, and how much that might cost.

Schmidt said he is going to move forward with this and get back to the committee.

The county is also moving forward with a plan to replace approximately 12,000 light bulbs with LED bulbs, saving approximately $67,900 annually.

Schmidt said the county will do it through Ameren Illinois Energy Efficiency Program at no cost to the county.

Jarvis Electric, Inc. of Swansea will perform the work on April 29. The replacement of light bulbs will take approximately 30 days at 15 of the counties 26 facilities/buildings.

The remaining buildings are not served by Ameren and do not qualify.

Schmidt said that four years ago the county took part in Amerens program to replace its T12 bulbs with T8, which reduced the countys electric bills. Lighting accounts for 20 percent to 50 percent of the average business electricity consumption.

Schmidt said LEDs are one of the most energy-efficient types of lighting, using a fraction of power compared to other types of lights. LEDs also typically have a longer life span, which should reduce long-term maintenance of the lights.

These lights will have a 5-year warranty, he said.

Reach reporter Scott Cousins at 618-208-6447.




South Korea's Constitutional Court on Thursday overturned a ban on abortion that has stood for more than 65 years, saying in a landmark ruling that current law unconstitutionally curbs women's rights. Francesca Lynagh reports.

South Korea is now set to legalize abortion, in a landmark court ruling that will lift a ban in place since 1953.

South Korea's Constitutional Court said on Thursday (April 11) that the law criminalising abortion was unconstitutional.

SOUTH KOREA'S LAWYER REPRESENTING THE PLAINTIFF, KIM SU-JUNG, SAYING:

"Honestly I am very pleased. One of the many chains restricting women is gone with this ruling. We hope lawmakers respect the constitutional court's decision and try their best to legislate in accordance with the rights of women.''

The current law allows abortions in some exceptional cases.

Namely, within 24 weeks of becoming pregnant in the case of hereditary diseases, in a pregnancy that could harm the mother, or in the case of pregnancy through rape.

In all those cases, a spouse's permission is required.

Doctors have been liable to criminal charges for abortions carried out with the women's consent.

Thursday's ruling marks a big victory for Korean pro-choice supporters.

But the court says the current law would remain in effect until the end of next year.

The court had previously chosen to uphold the abortion law in 2012. (Reuters)





Pro-life demonstrators hold banners near a police officer during a rally supporting South Korea's anti-abortion regulations outside of the Constitutional Court in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, April 11, 2019. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul






Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond said the British government and the main opposition party agree on the fundamentals of Brexit and stand a good chance of making a breakthrough in the "next few weeks."

Talks with Labour aimed at finding a new Brexit consensus will continue next week, while Parliament is in recess, and the government hasn't set red lines for these negotiations, Hammond said.

There have been disagreements about the priorities and approach, but "we agree on the fundamentals," Hammond told reporters in Washington. "We're in with a good chance of being able to reach an agreement on a way forward over the next few weeks."

However, Hammond also warned that if the two sides can't find a compromise, he may need to cut short a three-year spending review -- due to start in the summer -- aimed at ending austerity.

"If we don't have a deal done, the level of uncertainty that will remain probably makes it inappropriate to do a long-term spending review," he said.

Hammond has promised a boost for cash-strapped departments, but only if he can release money kept back in case of a no-deal Brexit. He's projected to have a 26.6 billion pound ($35 billion) buffer against his fiscal mandate next year, which could be used to increase budgets for education, health care and policing -- if the U.K. leaves the EU with an agreement.

The government has promised to end almost a decade of spending cuts that boosted support for the anti-austerity Labour Party, costing the ruling Conservatives their parliamentary majority at the 2017 general election.

Prime Minister Theresa May was forced to open the door to Brexit negotiations with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after Parliament repeatedly rejected the divorce terms she negotiated with Brussels.

She hinted in Parliament on Thursday that staying in a customs union was a possible compromise, as she said the two sides agreed on more than it often appeared. She has previously ruled out staying in a the EU's customs regime as it would prevent the U.K. having its own independent trade policy.

Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29, but has twice had to ask the bloc's other 27 leaders for an extension. The latest plan, agreed this week at a summit in Brussels, is for the U.K. to depart the bloc by Oct. 31.

Though he has described a second Brexit referendum as a "coherent proposition," he said Friday he was skeptical the new date gave enough time to hold one because it would take about six months to organize. He played down reports the EU set the deadline with another plebiscite in mind.

"If that had been your motive, you would have given longer than October because that looks very tight," he said.

Hammond lamented that the political uncertainty over Brexit had damaged Britain's reputation "as a bastion of democracy." As well as delaying business investment, he said some prospective candidates to replace Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who is due to step down in January 2020, would be deterred by the fact Brexit hasn't been resolved.

"We've got a bit of work to do to recover our reputation as cool, calm and collected," Hammond said.
JERUSALEM - Israel was hoping on Thursday to become the fourth nation ever to land a spacecraft on the moon, but the lunar mission, which was broadcast live on Israeli TV and on social media, went awry as the main engine appeared to go into failure and the control center suddenly lost communication with the craft a few minutes before it was to touch down.

"We've landed, but not in the way we wanted to," Opher Doron, general manager of Israel Aerospace Industries, which assisted in building the vessel, informed a crowd of onlookers, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The newly reelected leader told the team of scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs gathered at the control center in Yehud, in central Israel, that they should not be disappointed and that it was still a great achievement. Israel, he said, would try again soon to reach the moon and land properly.

"We've reached the moon, but we want to land more comfortably, and there will be another attempt. The very experience is a tremendous achievement, and we will become the fourth country to land on the moon if we persevere," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, the eagle has landed, the state of Israel is taking off - next time even better."

Earlier he had said that for the unmanned spacecraft, named Beresheet, the Hebrew word for Genesis, the first book of the Bible, to make such a journey "was a great step for mankind and a huge leap for Israel."

Morris Kahn, president of SpaceIL, which spearheaded the complicated and ambitious project, said: "Israel made it to the moon. Beresheet's journey hasn't ended. I expect Israel's next generation to complete the mission for us."

The $100 million initiative was almost entirely funded by Jewish donors and foundations from around the world, though some government agencies offered support. Kahn, a South African-born millionaire, "gifted" the project to Israel and declared it a national project. He said he was hopeful that the initiative would contribute significantly to future space exploration and also to inspire a new generation of Israeli children to embrace science and realize that anything is possible.

Measuring 1.5 meters in height and two meters in diameter, Beresheet was the smallest and least expensive spacecraft ever to attempt the journey from Earth to the moon, said those behind the project.

Departing the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 21, the spacecraft initially hitched a ride on a Falcon 9 commercial rocket belonging to Elon Musk's SpaceX from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Over the past seven weeks, Beresheet covered a total distance of about 4 million miles, circling Earth several times before reaching the moon's orbit on April 4. The craft had began preparing to land on a flatter part of the moon's rocky surface, and right before it crashed managed to capture an image of the moon showing how close it had been to completing its mission.

Seven countries have attempted to land on the moon, but only three have succeeded so far - the first unmanned landing was by the former Soviet Union in 1966, then American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reached the moon in 1969, and in 2013 there was an unmanned landing by China. All were government-sponsored endeavors.

The idea for Beresheet began in 2010, when three young Israeli entrepreneurs signed up to compete for the now defunct Google Lunar X Prize. Yariv Bash, Kfir Damari and Yonatan Weintraub hoped to win the $20 million prize by landing an Israeli-built unmanned spaceship on the moon. Though they failed to win the prize - no one did - they went on to create SpaceIL.

The project not only gained financial backing from private investors, it also got support from Israeli government agencies such as Israel Aerospace Industries and the Israel Space Agency. It was these connections that last summer helped facilitate agreements with NASA and Musk's SpaceX.

Israelis have already experienced their share of disappointment and tragedy when it comes to space travel. Israel's only astronaut, Ilan Ramon, was among the seven-member crew of the space shuttle Columbia when it disintegrated upon reentry into the Earth's atmosphere in 2003.
GODFREY  The L&C Veterans Club will host an American Red Cross Blood Drive from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., April 24 in The Commons.

We are proud to be working again with the American Red Cross on this great campus and community blood drive, said L&C Director of Career and Veteran Services Terry Lane. By taking part in this opportunity to help others, you just might save a life. Please make an effort to attend and please share this information with your family and friends.
Erin Brown | Sun Times (AP)

A federal grand jury has subpoenaed emails and mileage reimbursement records of former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Sam McCann, according to a Chicago Sun-Times report.

The subpoena filed in January in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois sought tax records and records of payments made to McCann from 2011 to 2018, the newspaper reported.
SPRINGFIELD  Illinois is one step closer to requiring presidential or vice-presidential candidates to release their tax returns in order to appear on the states election ballots  if such a measure is even constitutional.

State Sen. Tony Munozs Senate Bill 145 passed the Senate by a 36-19 vote Thursday. It would require the release of tax returns for those running for the nations executive branch, but not for U.S. senators or representatives or any statewide elected officials such as the governor.

Why arent any of those people in this? state Sen. Dale Righter, R-Mattoon, asked.

Munoz, a Chicago Democrat, said he is open to expanding the elected officials included in the bill upon negotiation in the House.

Righter called the bill an embarrassing waste of the Senates time, citing two U.S. Supreme Court cases which say the Constitution lays out ballot qualifications and states cannot make them more strict.

Munoz said the bill does not add qualifications, but simply requires release of another document.

Theyre doing this in 25 states whether you agree with it or not, Munoz said, adding If you have nothing to hide, you shouldnt worry about anything.

The bill would require the release of five years of tax returns to the secretary of state, whose office would redact sensitive information.

It will now move to the House for further consideration.

Alcohol delivery standards set in bill passed by Senate

SPRINGFIELD  A bill which passed the Illinois Senate on Thursday would set a statewide standard for alcohol delivery from retailers such as grocery stores.

More and more people are ordering their groceries online, state Sen. Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) said. We want to keep up with this modern way of shopping and make sure that any retailers who want to provide this service to their customers are confident that they will be able to deliver anywhere in the state.

Senate Bill 54 would allow for home delivery of alcohol from grocery stores and other licensed retailers if certain conditions, including age verification and training, are met.

The bill passed the Senate without opposition and heads to the House, where Harmon said he is continuing to meet with working groups to finalize the legislation.

In other action Thursday, the Senate also passed the following bills to the House for further action:

Senate Bill 75: Requires hotels, motels and casinos to provide employees working in isolated spaces safety devices for use if they are sexually assaulted. It also requires such businesses to adopt sexual harassment policies. Vote: 51-3

Senate Bill 24: Requires freight trains and rail carriers to have an operating crew of at least two individuals. Gives the Illinois Commerce Commission the power to conduct hearings and issue and enforce orders such as sanctions, with respect to crew size. Vote: 35-19

Senate Bill 161: Gives the Illinois Attorney Generals office statutory authority to enforce violations of wage theft and workplace rights violations. The bill is similar to previous bills carried by now-Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who was previously a state senator. Vote: 57-0

Senate Bill 222: An initiative of the Illinois State Treasurers office, making it illegal to offer consumers a rebate in the form of a card which charges dormancy fees or other post-issuance fees. A similar bill passed in a previous General Assembly and was vetoed by Gov. Bruce Rauner. Vote: 40-17

Senate Bill 455: Allows a school nurse or administrator to administer or supervise self-administration of medical cannabis-infused products to a student who is a registered patient of the medical cannabis pilot program. The bill outlines requirements for product storage and parental notification. The bill will be further negotiated in the House. Vote: 52-0

Senate Bill 516: Allows all existing riverboat casinos to move to land-based facilities. The bill provides that an application for an owners license shall include an additional fee of $100,000 to the Illinois Gaming Board, and that a fee for renewal of an owners license is $100,000. The bill will not interfere with future gambling legislation. Vote: 44-5

Senate Bill 637: Requires the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to reimburse a patient for custom prosthetic and orthotic devices at the Medicaid rate minus 6 percent. It also prohibits HFS and managed care organizations from providing less favorable coverage than applies to all medical and surgical benefits provided under the fee-for-service medical assistance program or the Medicaid managed care plan. Vote: 42-4-2

Senate Bill 946: Allows the Department of Human Services to issue pediatric cancer awareness decals for license plates. Provides fees for the decals will go to the Pediatric Cancer Awareness Fund to go to the University of Illinois Cancer Center for pediatric cancer treatment and research. Vote: 56-0

Senate Bill 1226: Abolishes the Illinois State Charter School Commission, removing the ability of any state entity to overturn a local school boards decision to deny a charter school application. Creates a charter school application process where only local school boards and communities can decide if a charter school will be allowed. Places existing charter schools under authority of the Illinois State Board of Education. Vote: 40-11-1

Senate Bill 1255: Allows Illinois veterans education grants to be transferred to qualifying dependents between the ages of 18 and 26. Vote: 55-0

Senate Bill 1473: Allows the secretary of state to remove the suspension of an individuals drivers license that was revoked for nonpayment of child support if the individual has arranged for payment in a manner satisfactory to the court or the Department of Healthcare and Family Services. Vote: 44-10

Senate Bill 1828: Aims to combat the opioid epidemic in Illinois and provides that the Department of Human Services report on drug overdose trends statewide shall provide information on the current substance use disorder treatment capacity within the state. Increases access to drug safety testing and clean needles. Vote: 46-3

Senate Bill 1829: Omnibus, compromise package which strengthens sexual harassment and discrimination laws and gives more protections to private-sector workers who experience sexual harassment and discrimination. Vote: 56-0

Senate Bill 1909: Calls on the state to improve health care for pregnant and postpartum individuals. Requires certain group health insurance policies and other specified policies to provide coverage of medically necessary treatment for postpartum complications as determined by the womans treating physician. Extends post-pregnancy Medicaid coverage to 12 months from 60 days. Vote: 55-1

Senate Bill 2075: Lowers the compulsory school age from 6 to 5 beginning with the 2020-2021 school year. Requires each district to establish kindergarten for 5-year-old children. Vote: 39-16

Senate Bill 1536: Provides that term limits enacted by referendum, ordinance or otherwise must be prospective and shall not prohibit a person otherwise eligible from running for or holding elective office in that municipality. Provides that imposition of term limits shall apply only to terms for the same office. For example, a person hitting aldermanic term limits could still run for mayor. Initial Vote failed: 29-19; it was voted on again hours later on postponed consideration, passing 31-19.
Efforts to crack down on money laundering across the Nordic and Baltic states took a more aggressive turn on Friday.

Estonia's state prosecutor is expanding an investigation into Danske Bank to include Swedbank of Sweden. Meanwhile, the accounting firms Ernst & Young and KPMG were both reported to the police in Denmark amid allegations they failed to respond to red flags tied to possible money laundering.

The development comes as officials across both regions struggle to reset their public image against a backdrop of spiraling dirty-money scandals in their backyards. A picture has formed in which criminals from the Soviet Union often sought out the Baltic units of Nordic banks to channel their funds into the West.

Since it was revealed last year, Danske's $230 billion Estonian laundering saga has exploded to engulf multiple other firms. Swedbank, which from its base in Stockholm dominates the financial markets of the Baltics, is the latest bank to find itself the target of probes which investors fear will lead to hefty fines.

Estonia's state prosecutor may decide to open a separate investigation into Swedbank, depending on what it finds through the current probe, according to spokeswoman Olja Kivistik.

The prosecutor based its decision on information in a criminal complaint from Hermitage Capital Management co-founder Bill Browder. The financier, who's made a career of chasing money launderers, says that roughly $1 trillion in questionable Russian funds is either already inside the European Union, or trying to get in, much of it via the Baltic region.

The investigations "probably should be tied together because some of the money flowed from Danske Bank to Swedbank," Browder said. "Many of the banks in Estonia were sending money to one another, and so it's quite logical to combine these cases."

Swedbank, which is Sweden's oldest lender, had long tried to play down allegations against it. But it was forced to backtrack earlier this year after Sweden's main broadcaster, SVT, published a series of bombshell allegations, including claims that Swedbank may have handled more than $100 billion in suspicious flows between 2010 and 2016 alone.

Swedbank has since fired its chief executive officer, Birgitte Bonnesen, and parted ways with the chairman who had backed her, Lars Idermark. But investors have signaled those measures might not be enough.

Meanwhile, a separate probe by the Swedish Economic Crime Authority is under way amid concerns Swedbank may have misled the public. The lender is also accused of misleading the Department of Financial Services in New York, which has started its own investigation.

In an email on Friday, Swedbank's head of communications, Gabriel Francke Rodau, said that the bank "cooperates with all relevant authorities. And we have no further comments at this point of time." The bank is due to publish its first-quarter results on April 25.

After money laundering allegations against Swedbank first surfaced in Swedish media in February, the bank's share price dropped about 30 percent through late March.

Sweden's prosecutor has said it won't pursue a criminal complaint by Browder, citing a statute of limitations, a decision that the London-based investor has appealed.

"The Swedbank case deserves very serious attention from law enforcement in the Baltics and in Sweden," he said.

In Denmark, Business Minister Rasmus Jarlov is going out of his way to push some of Europe's toughest anti-money laundering laws. Lawmakers agreed last month to rules that would ban an accounting firm from doing business if it doesn't do its job properly. Denmark has also empowered its financial regulator, giving it the freedom to impose fines as high as $4.5 billion without going via the courts.

Ernst & Young is being investigated for its audit of Danske's accounts in 2014. KPMG is on the hook for its 2017 audit of Kobenhavns Andelskasse, a local bank that was shut down last year amid concerns it was systematically used for money laundering.

- - -

Bloomberg's Christian Wienberg contribuited.


By Andrew Hammond





In Wednesday night's EU summit, European presidents and prime ministers expressed satisfaction with the unexpected agreements at Tuesday's EU-China meetings. The two sides, led by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, reached an unexpected joint statement that saw significant 11th-hour compromises from Beijing in a show of unity in the face of both side's tensions with the Trump team.



Key measures agreed include a commitment from China to address EU concerns over state subsidies to businesses creating unfair global competition, plus the promise of key measures soon to liberalize its market to try to reach a bilateral investment agreement by 2020. Beijing also agreed to a dialogue around reforming the World Trade Organization which is an EU priority.



The multi-page joint statement, reached after last-ditch negotiations since the start of April, was by no means assured amid a backdrop of previously growing bilateral angst. Europe is becoming increasingly important for Chinese foreign policy and this is fueling concerns in Brussels that Beijing is "dividing and ruling" to undermine the continent's collective interests.



Take the example of Chinese President Xi Jinping's trip last month to Italy where he signed a landmark memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Brussels has long had reservations about BRI, not least given frustrations over Beijing's perceived slowness to open up its own economy, and a wave of Chinese takeovers of European firms in key industries.



Italy's decision is only the latest one which has underlined Beijing's growing influence across the continent, which EU officials are increasingly conscious of. Another example is the so-called annual "16+1" meeting initiative of China and key countries in Eastern and Central Europe.



The 16+1 format is an initiative by Beijing aimed at intensifying and expanding cooperation in the fields of investment, transport, finance, science, education, and culture with 11 EU member states and five Balkan countries. The new 16+1 meeting started Friday in Croatia.



Key trends are increasingly apparent in China's external interventions in Europe. For instance, it is becoming increasingly clear that Beijing is tailoring its approach around bespoke needs of individual states or blocs of countries  such as 16+1. Further, Chinese overtures to Europe are coming with a clear quid pro quo as underlined by Italy's signing up to BRI in exchange for Beijing's investment.



In this context, Tuesday's summit was an opportunity for both sides to stress multiple areas of common interest and cooperation at a time when both have major tensions with the Trump administration. Here the EU co-hosts, Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, alongside Li Keqiang, stressed a range of issues from the importance of an open, multilateral international order, to tackling climate change.



Global warming, for instance, is a topic where both sides have long had a fruitful bilateral dialogue. Under the terms of the 2015 EU-China climate change declaration, which was re-affirmed on Tuesday, both parties cooperate on developing a cost-effective low carbon economy which is especially important in light of the Trump team's abdication of the climate agenda.



Collectively, the EU and China account for around one third of global greenhouse emissions  which grows to one half when the United States is added into the picture. And the 2015 bilateral climate change declaration was one of the key drivers, along with the Obama administration's diplomacy, of the Paris deal.



The reason why EU-China discussions on climate change are so generally cooperative is that, fundamentally, both share a vision of a prosperous, energy-secure future in a stable climate and recognize the need for bilateral collaboration to realize this agenda. Their 2015 agreement, for instance, agreed to intensify cooperation in domestic mitigation policies, carbon markets, low-carbon cities, greenhouse gas emissions from the aviation and maritime industries, and hydrofluorocarbons.



China's planned investment in the green economy is huge, a fact that the EU is increasingly recognizing. This investment is buttressed by Beijing's policy commitments on the climate, clean air and energy agendas. In recent Five-Year Plans, for instance, a strategic direction has been set for the economy with determination to change the country's development model from low-grade labor-intensive manufacturing toward a greater emphasis on services and innovation.



Another signal of the seriousness of Beijing's climate ambitions is the fact that it is using the experience of its sub-national pilot trading schemes to inform development of its future national model. Here, Beijing is proving open and willing to learn from the pioneering European Emissions Trading System, while adapting this experience to China's domestic circumstances.



To be clear, there is still a way to go before China has a fully-fledged carbon market, and both parties have yet to develop new low carbon standards in key industrial sectors. However, the direction of travel is clear: Cooperation could build low carbon industries in a range of sectors, and also align Europe more closely to the world's future largest economy.



Taken overall, despite lingering tensions over issues such as BRI, it is clear that the EU and China have much to potentially gain from a deeper partnership on issues from international trade to climate change. Yet the window of opportunity to collaborate may not remain open indefinitely. Now is thus the time to intensify cooperation to bolster growth, and help define the landscape of international relations in 21st century alongside the United States.





Andrew Hammond (andrewkorea@outlook.com) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.


In at least 25 different rulings, federal courts have blocked virtually every move President Donald Trump has taken on immigration, with some judges admonishing the administration and saying the president's fury over the tide of migrants flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border does not give him the right to skirt acts of Congress or the U.S. Constitution.

The latest defeat came Friday at the hands of U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Francisco, who blocked Trump's plan to require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while U.S. authorities determine their fate. Trump has been on the losing end of at least four other challenges to stem the flow of asylum seekers.

He's sustained four adverse rulings to termination of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and at least three to his efforts to end the legal status of immigrants in the United States under temporary protected status due to catastrophes in their home countries.

At least seven courts across the nation have condemned as illegal the administration's attempt to cut off funds to jurisdictions, dubbed "sanctuary cities," it deems insufficiently cooperative with the efforts of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain undocumented immigrants.

Noting all those setbacks regarding sanctuary cities as she listened to a government lawyer's appeal in Chicago on Wednesday, Judge Ilana Rovner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit despaired.

"Where does this end?" she asked.

Most likely, it doesn't.

Not since Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to preserve his New Deal programs, perhaps, has a president invested so much in battling the courts on a single issue.

And the administration remains unbowed. It signaled with its shake-up of the Department of Homeland Security that it's going to get tougher, with Trump reportedly considering another move that would split up families at the border. He also threatened to close the border with Mexico entirely, even as he faces at least seven lawsuits against his attempt to spend unappropriated money for a border wall through his declaration of a national emergency.

The message Trump is taking from his string of losses - none of which is final - is not that his administration should rethink its legal strategy, but that the Supreme Court will come to his rescue.

"It's a court system that never, ever rules for us," he said after his latest loss. But in February, as he discussed his border wall's fate in the courts, he was confident that "we'll possibly get a bad ruling, and then we'll get another bad ruling, and then we'll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we will get a fair shake."

The gap between the makeup of the lower courts, still with a majority of Democratic appointees, and the Supreme Court has rarely been so wide.

"I would distinguish between lower courts, where the Trump administration has lost multiple times, and the Supreme Court, where the most recent rulings on immigration upheld the travel ban and took an expansive view of when noncitizens can be detained without bail hearings" in a recent ruling in Nielsen v. Preap, said Emma Kaufman, a University of Chicago law school scholar who specializes in immigration.

And even if the justices don't come through as Trump expects, he can blame the judiciary in the 2020 campaign for all that he has not accomplished.

The source of Trump's discontent on immigration is Congress' unwillingness to change the laws that he says are permitting migrants to come across the border. He's been particularly critical of asylum laws, which he claims allow migrants to "con" the government with bogus claims of persecution in their home countries and then hang around for years in the United States while their cases are adjudicated.

Trump reacted as President Barack Obama did when faced with congressional inaction on immigration. Obama unilaterally deferred deportation for some 4 million law-abiding adults in the country illegally. Obama, too, lost in the courts.

The uniform message from the courts to the administration on asylum is the same as it has been in the cases involving sanctuary cities. The Constitution vests legislative power in Congress, not the president - even when it comes to immigration.

"He's really pushing the legal edges of what he's allowed to do," said Fatma Marouf, a Texas A&M law professor. "Things that are protected by statute, like the right to apply for asylum, Congress has created them, and he can't just adopt policies that contradict them. . . . There are checks on his power."

That's a relatively new development in immigration law, Kaufman said.

"As a whole," she said, "the lower-court rulings send the message that immigration law is unexceptional - that is, that normal legal rules apply. That's notable in an area of law that courts have, at least historically, been reluctant to police."

While it's hard to match the resources of the Justice Department, Trump's legal opponents have done it.

The plaintiffs in the cases are migrants, but the organizations running the cases have included coalitions of attorneys general in blue states, big-city legal departments, major universities, the American Civil Liberties Union and other public interest groups, often aided by litigators from major private firms working pro bono.

They've achieved success with judges who don't fit the caricature of "liberal activist" as tweeted earlier this week by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders "

The judge from the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit who warned of Trump's "end-run around Congress" on asylum, for example, was Jay Bybee, a President George W. Bush appointee who headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel when it issued the "torture memos" during that Bush administration.

Ilana Rovner, who asked "where will it end" in the sanctuary cities case - and added that the issues of separation of powers Trump's actions raise haunt her dreams each night - was appointed to a district court by President Ronald Reagan and was elevated by President George H.W. Bush.

The judges ruling against Trump sit in courts across the country - not just in California, which is often singled out for criticism by the president. Of the 25 immigration-related decisions adverse to Trump, 11 have come from the courts in the vilified 9th Circuit. Eight, by a Washington Post count, have come from the federal courts in the District of Columbia; the others from Pennsylvania, Illinois, New York, Maryland and Massachusetts.

And it was Chief Justice John Roberts who in December declined to join conservatives on the court wishing to lift a lower-court stay of Trump's policy of denying asylum to those who illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border. The order stands today as a result.
'We have seen what we thought was unseeable," the astronomer said, like someone who knows history's ear is pressed against the door. He stood in the hushed attention of the room in Washington as he called up the image on the screen behind him. You know it by now: a smoke ring, an orange doughnut, a blurry circlet of light closed around a profound darkness. By the end of the day, it would be familiar to millions of people as the first photo ever taken of a black hole.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT), a collaboration of eight radio telescopes around the world, pieced together this picture from observations made from Antarctica and Arizona. Because no single telescope is powerful enough to distinguish a detail as relatively small as a 55 million-light-year-distant black hole, scientists harnessed these eight observatories together to simulate a much greater instrument, one as large as the Earth itself. It took two years and more than 200 people sifting and refining the data gathered on four days in April 2017 to bring the final famous image into focus.

Watching the story echo across the news on Wednesday, I was struck by the profound simplicity of this image, obtained through such complex means. Puzzled out through algorithms and vectors, the photo is not an artist's rendering or a model - our previous stabs at picturing a black hole - but it is still a construction. The radio waves collected by the telescopes and assembled into the picture are translated into color for our benefit. You can't pick up a telescope, even one the size of the Earth, and see it for yourself. And yet, over the course of the day, I heard one line repeated again and again: We are seeing a black hole. Not "detecting" it by its radio signature, not digging up more evidence of its existence - actually seeing it.

Far greater than its scientific value - besides its pure technological achievement, the experiment is perhaps most remarkable for not overturning the established rules of relativity - the picture seems to matter to us because it is a picture. Our certainty, rendered in undeniable orange and black, has a new heft.

We didn't lack proof that black holes existed. Ever since Albert Einstein reluctantly predicted them with his theory of relativity in 1916, we've been gathering evidence. In 1935, physicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar hypothesized that a star might become so massive it would collapse under its own gravity. Then in 1969, Donald Lynden-Bell suggested that supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies could be responsible for the huge energy signatures detected there, far beyond what stars alone could generate. In 2015, near-definitive proof arrived with the cosmic "zing!" that was the sound of two black holes colliding, a billion light-years away. For most scientists, the detection of gravity waves cinched it: Black holes were out there, churning up spacetime, even if we never saw them.

Yet images of outer space have an uncanny power over us: These are sights so supernatural that they never quite fit our understanding. Naked, our eyes perceive the night sky as a cosmic swirl of dust and diamonds, hints of a greater complexity. In the early 1600s, Galileo and others pointed the first telescopes into the sky to describe the mountainous face of the moon, the dark-splotched sun turning slowly on its axis, the three gleaming moons of Jupiter wobbling in their distant orbits. Sight gave us irrefutable proof of the vastness of the universe, its chaotic, balletic physics. And, seeing all this for the first time, we believed in it.

I grew up under these cosmic visions. I remember napping beneath posters of the Pillars of Creation and the Cats Eye Galaxy at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, while my mom sorted through data and proofread grant proposals at her desk. When I was a little older, I would entertain myself by launching a toy propeller in the hallway, to watch it drift along the currents shifting above my head. My mom told me that looking into space with a telescope was like looking back in time. Nothing ever disappeared from the universe, she said, it just got farther away. I understood this to mean that everything could be known, if we could just see far enough.

Our telescopes are bigger and more powerful than ever. They are mirrors tilting at the sky from mountaintops and deserts, or drifting in orbit like huge insects on their stiff solar-cell wings. They swallow light, not only the visible spectrum of blues and reds but also the X-rays and radio waves we are blind to, revealing the intricate structures of distant galaxies and misty Technicolor nebulas. These are landscapes we could never see for ourselves, but, in seeing their images, they become real to us.

Even so, black holes had eluded us. They are the definition of unseeable: mass and volume turning inside out, cosmic sinkholes from whose irresistible gravity nothing can escape - not a single lousy photon.

But light has always helped us understand what we couldn't see: T.S. Eliot wrote of the "visible reminder of invisible light," tracing the seen and the unseen both. Early astronomers inferred the invisible presence of gravity by the arcs of stars around their pivots. Modern ones use the oscillating brightness of stars to guess at the planets that may orbit them, tugging these distant suns off balance. And Hubble's observations of an expanding universe, rippling with distorted light, have revealed the presence of dark matter, an idea so strange and slippery it's difficult to get purchase on it.

At the Space Telescope Science Institute, my mom studied black holes, too, the ones that scientists were beginning to understand sat at the center of most galaxies, spinning their skirts of stars around them like dervishes. We couldn't see them, but we could see the radiant clouds of light and energy surrounding them. The paradox of the black hole is that, while no light can escape its limits, the regions just beyond the event horizon are some of the most energetic and bright places in the universe. From her, I saw how you could follow the trail of the visible, hunting for signs of the invisible.

Behind the image of the halo at the center of Messier 87, one of two galaxies in the EHT's crosshairs, is a reminder of the challenges we face when looking for these unseeable objects. The second target of the EHT, Sagittarius A*, is the black hole at the center of our own galaxy. Though much closer to us than M87, it is also smaller and therefore more prone to shifting out of focus, like a fidgety student on picture day.

But, unseen, it makes itself known. In the brightly lit hub of the Milky Way, stars slingshot in tight orbits around a massive and invisible object, accelerating with each brush past the engine spinning there, then slowing again at the zenith before turning back again. We can see them clearly. We can discern, by their dance, what holds them in thrall. We cannot see it yet. But we know it's there.




The picture shows row after row of north-facing graves in the Cemetery for North Korean and Chinese Soldiers in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. The gravesite is informally called the "Enemy Cemetery" for the soldiers fallen in the 1950-53 Korean War. Courtesy of Richard Pennington



By Richard Pennington





Not long ago, my friend Audrey and I got into her metallic blue Volkswagen and headed north to Paju's Jeokseong township  coming within five kilometers of the Demilitarized Zone. The highway on which we drove is known to locals as Jayu-ro, or Freedom Road.



Our destination was the Cemetery for North Korean and Chinese Soldiers. It, too, has an informal name  Enemy Cemetery. It was created in 1996 partly because so many bodies had been recovered from the Korean War.



South Korean soldiers got full military honors at the national cemeteries in Seoul and Daejeon, and those of their allies were repatriated with gratitude on both sides. What, though, of the North Koreans and Chinese? Somewhere between 400,000 and 530,000 of them died in the war.



Only a fraction were ever brought to Paju; at one time, it held the remains of 770 men, but that was cut by more than 50 percent in 2014 when all 437 Chinese bodies were exhumed and taken to the Resist America and Aid Korea Martyrs Cemetery  I swear that's the name  in Shenyang.



None of the North Koreans have been repatriated on the basis of the DPRK's claim that it is the rightful government of the entire peninsula.



The cemetery does not only hold the remains of North Koreans who fought in the war. Also buried are 29 of the commandos who, in 1968, tried to storm the Blue House (one was taken alive, and one made his way back north).



It is the resting place for Kim Sung-il, partially responsible for the bombing of Korean Air flight 858 in 1987  killing 115 people. Also buried there are nine sailors who died in 1998 in a murder-suicide in the confines of a mini-submarine after they failed to infiltrate the South.



We were not far outside of Seoul before we began to see barbed wire, watchtowers and other signs of military preparedness. This would be my ninth visit to the DMZ area.



There are no road signs for the Enemy Cemetery, and no reference could be found on the map we secured at a public office in Paju. This is where Audrey  Korea born and raised proved to be a real heroine. She told the man we wanted to see bukhangun/junggukgun myoji je 1 myoyeok.



He did a bit of research and gave her directions. We followed them but did not find the place, so we stopped and asked a lady at a fruit stand. She, too, gave directions, aided by a male farmer. No go. We stopped at a police station and tried again.



Two other times, Audrey spoke with people who seemed to know of the cemetery's existence and location. We were close, of that we were sure. Finally, one of them pointed and said, "It's right over there." We turned and saw rows of graves and knew our search was over.





A sign greets rare visitors to the Cemetery for North Korean and Chinese Soldiers in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. There are two sites: The site on the left side is exclusively for North Korean soldiers and the other on the right side is for both North Korean and Chinese soldiers. Courtesy of Richard Pennington
Can another inter-Korean summit bring breakthrough?



President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump held their summit in Washington, D.C., Thursday. They reaffirmed their shared goal: the complete denuclearization of North Korea and establishment of a permanent peace regime.



Yet the two leaders showed differences over details on how to achieve the goal and when to ease or lift international sanctions against North Korea. This indicates that it is difficult to expect any quick breakthroughs in nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang which have been stalled since the breakdown of the Feb. 28 Hanoi summit.



Moon and Trump discussed ways of holding a third U.S.-North Korea summit. However, it is still unclear when Trump can meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un again. Given the deadlocked negotiations, the U.S. president made it clear he would not rush to have another summit with Kim.



The two leaders only concurred on the need to maintain the momentum for U.S.-North Korea dialogue. They also stressed the importance of the ongoing top-down approach toward finding a peaceful and negotiated solution to the nuclear showdown.



Moon must have founded it much harder than ever to play as a mediator or facilitator to help make progress in the North's denuclearization and bring peace to the peninsula. He appeared to have failed to persuade Trump to accept his proposal for a comprehensive deal with the North which demands a step-by-step implementation of nuclear disarmament.



But Trump reconfirmed that sanctions remain in place until the North achieves a final, fully verified denuclearization. He said there is no change in the firm U.S. position for a "big deal" formula which calls for complete denuclearization first and sanctions relief later.



For his part, Kim is not ready to soften his position that the U.S. should take corresponding measures such as sanctions relief in return for the North's dismantlement of the Yongbyon nuclear facility. However, the U.S. wants the North to do more to scrap plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities, long-range missiles and other weapons of mass destruction.



Against this backdrop, Moon had to return home with much difficult homework to do as a mediator. He raised the idea of holing a fourth summit with Kim. Moon has boasted of his track record of brokering talks between Kim and Trump and breaking the deadlock whenever Pyongyang and Washington met hurdles.



But now Moon faces a greater challenge of persuading Kim into returning to the negotiating table to solve the problem through dialogue and compromise. That is why the President should double down on exercising his leadership and diplomatic skills to convince Kim that North Korea can enjoy peace and prosperity only when it gives up its nuclear and missile programs completely.



Few Koreans want to see Moon stuck between a too-demanding Trump administration and the recalcitrant Kim regime. We hope he will once again find a way out of the impasse and help the U.S. and the North make real progress in denuclearization.






The InternationalSchool of Uganda (ISU) is a non-profit, co-educational day school, establishedin 1967, offering an international education program for students 3 to 19 yearsold. The International School of Uganda ( ISU ) is dedicated to providingworld-class, holistic education in a multi-cultural setting, inspiring andequipping students to be life-long learners, to reach their full potential andto be responsible global citizens active in shaping the future.
An increasing number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies utilize artificial intelligence technology in developing new drugs. / Getty Images Bank



By Jun Ji-hye



Daewoong Pharmaceutical, Hanmi Pharmaceutical and other Korean drug companies are rushing to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to develop new medicines as the technology significantly shortens the time required for their development, officials said Friday.



They said it usually takes more than 10 years to go through the process to develop new drugs. It also requires large-scale funding, but the success rate is low.



Once a company succeeds in developing a new drug after passing the laborious process, it creates an enormous amount of profits.



Companies have recently started increasing their investments into R&D and utilizing AI as the technology contributes to reducing the time required for collecting and analyzing clinical data and carrying out a feasibility study.



"Most pharmaceutical companies here spare no expense to make investments into R&D and expand manufacturing facilities to explore future growth engines," an official from a Seoul-based pharmaceutical company said.



She said AI can search for and analyze hundreds of research papers and various data in a day.



Daewoong Pharmaceutical has operated an AI research team tasked with exploring candidate drugs for certain health problems since 2014.



Last year, the firm formed an industry-university collaboration with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in a bid to apply big data and AI technology to the new drug development system.





Daewoong Pharmaceutical CEO Jeon Seng-ho, left, and Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology President Jung Moo-young pose for a photo after signing an MOU for mutual cooperation at the university in Ulsan, Nov. 16. / Courtesy of Daewoong Pharmaceutical
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Cloudy. Periods of light rain early. Low around 50F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Cloudy. Periods of light rain early. Low around 50F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Reckitt Benckiser has been dragged deeper into the Indivior scandal after two of its bosses were accused of making 'fraudulent' claims about opioid addiction drugs.

Current Reckitt chief Rakesh Kapoor and predecessor Bart Becht  two of the highest-paid executives ever at British companies  both made false claims about the safety of Suboxone, according to American prosecutors.

The explosive allegations are contained in a 47-page indictment published by the US Department of Justice, which accuses former Reckitt subsidiary Indivior of using shaky evidence to drive up sales of Suboxone.

Current Reckitt chief Rakesh Kapoor and predecessor Bart Becht both made false claims about the safety of Suboxone, according to American prosecutors

No charges have been brought against Reckitt, Kapoor or Becht. The two bosses are only referred to by their corporate titles in the document and Reckitt is dubbed 'Company A'.

But the charges lay bare what prosecutors say was a desperate attempt by Reckitt and Indivior bosses to defend their stranglehold on sales of opioid addiction treatments in the US.

They are accused of making fraudulent claims that the film version of Suboxone was safer than an older tablet variety  despite there being little evidence to support this.

Shaun Thaxter, the current chief executive of London-listed Indivior, which was spun off from Reckitt in 2014, is also accused of making misleading statements but has not been charged.

Prosecutors say Indivior was worried about its Suboxone tablets being copied by rivals when a patent ran out in 2009, so it developed a film version of the drug and tried to persuade regulators it was safer. It claimed the film was less likely to be abused or mistakenly taken by children.

The drug was approved but regulators rejected assertions it was safer. Despite this, in August 2010, Thaxter told Reckitt executives including Becht that the company was launching a 'full blitz campaign' to promote Suboxone film which would stress safety benefits.

Days later, Becht emailed Indivior bosses urging them to 'convert [patients] from tablets to films, thereby protecting our net revenues in the USA'.

He then 'materially, falsely, and fraudulently' claimed Suboxone film posed less of a risk to children in Reckitt's annual report in March 2011, the indictment says.

And as Kapoor succeeded him as boss, Reckitt and Indivior ramped up their safety claims, prosecutors allege. As sales of tablets suffered, Suboxone film went on to take 70 per cent of the market.

Reckitt and Indivior both declined to comment on the specifics of the claims.

Becht did not respond to a request for comment.
Barclays has unleashed a furious broadside against the corporate raider seeking a seat on its board  branding him disruptive, inexperienced and damaging.

In a brutal takedown released last night to the stock market, Barclays said activist investor Edward Bramson did not understand how banks work and could wreak havoc.

Bramson  who controls a 5.51 per cent stake in the lender through his fund Sherborne Investors  is campaigning for investors to vote him on to the board at Barclays' annual meeting next month.

In a brutal takedown released last night to the stock market, Barclays said activist investor Edward Bramson, pictured, did not understand how banks work and could wreak havoc

He has been critical of the company's prized investment bank and is thought to favour deep cutbacks.

The outcome of the power struggle could determine the future of one of Britain's largest banks with 24m UK customers and 30,000 UK staff. Its shares are held in the pension funds and Isas of millions of savers.

Hitting back against Bramson's proposals, Barclays said:

His criticisms were based on 'a flawed understanding of complex banking organisations'.

The raider had conducted his campaign in a secretive and confrontational way which should bar him from the board.

He would work against shareholders' long-term interests.

Further cuts would be a distraction that could send shares plummeting.

Barclays admitted that its share price  down 25 per cent in the past year  is lower than hoped, but said that boss Jes Staley's strategy of boosting the investment bank in the UK and US was starting to bear fruit.

It said: 'Another strategic overhaul is not what Barclays needs right now.'

Laying into Bramson it said: 'He would be a disruptive and uncollaborative influence on the board. He also does not possess the banking experience and skills that we are seeking.'

The comments were a response to a letter sent by Sherborne to investors earlier this week.

Recovery? Barclays said that boss Jes Staley's strategy of boosting the investment bank in the UK and US was starting to bear fruit

In it, Bramson compared Barclays to ailing German lender Deutsche Bank and said its unprofitable investment arm is holding it back.

Barclays said his analysis was 'both unclear and based on multiple factual errors'. The bank also criticised the way Bramson has behaved during his year-long campaign, saying he has been secretive and unwilling to engage.

Barclays said the 68-year-old has refused to set out detailed plans during meetings with the board  telling incoming chairman Nigel Higgins that he was not prepared to share any views with him.

The bank dismissed Bramson's plan for cuts as no more than 'a vague concept'.

It said: 'He fails to provide any details of what that might entail.

'The presence on the board of Mr Bramson, or any other person that conducts himself or herself in this manner, would have a negative impact.' Bramson was also criticised for holding his stake through a complicated system which includes some short-sold shares  meaning he would make money on these if the lender's share price falls.

This arrangement  designed to protect Bramson's investment from a drop in the stock's value  makes Sherborne different from other investors, who will only make money if the shares go up.

The bank is widely expected to fend off Bramson's bid for a board seat, but chairman John McFarlane, who bows out at next month's annual meeting, said: 'Shareholders need to appreciate how damaging this could be.'
Sir Philip Green has installed two restructuring experts on the board of his Arcadia retail empire

Sir Philip Green has installed two restructuring experts on the board of his Arcadia retail empire as he presses ahead with plans to shut a raft of stores.

Jamie Drummond Smith, a former partner at Deloitte and restructuring officer at high interest lender Cattles, has stepped in as interim chairman.

He replaces former chairman Karren Brady, who resigned following a string of allegations of harassment and bullying made by staff against Green.

Brady was one of Greens closest business associates and had been with the company since 2010.

Arcadia, which owns brands including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Burton and has 570 stores, also recruited Peter Bloxham, who worked as a restructuring and insolvency partner at magic circle law firm Freshfields until 2006.

Drummond Smith said: Arcadia and Topshop/Topman have faced unprecedented market conditions on the UK High Street.

We will be supporting the boards as they progress the restructuring options for the businesses.

The appointments come just days after Leonard Green abandoned its 25 per cent stake in Topshop, which it snapped up seven years ago for 350million.

Green, 67, is embarking on a major cost-cutting drive as his High Street shops struggle to compete with online retailers such as Asos and Boohoo.

The tycoon is preparing to close stores and is seeking to halve annual payments to Arcadias pension pot to 25million.
The FRC is investigating Grant Thornton's sign off of Interserve's financial statements in 2015, 2016 and 2017

Grant Thornton faces yet another probe into the quality of its audit work following the collapse of contractor Interserve.

In a fresh embarrassment for the UKs fifth biggest beancounter, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) is investigating Grant Thorntons sign-off of Interserves financial statements in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The accountant is already under scrutiny over its audit of bakery chain Patisserie Valerie, which folded in January after a 40million black hole was discovered in its parent companys accounts.

It was also criticised for its role in serial bankrupt Dominic Chappells purchase of BHS from Sir Philip Green for 1 in 2015.

Interserve collapsed into administration last month after shareholders rejected a proposed rescue deal that would have relieved the firm of a 650million debt mountain but wiped out existing investors.

A swift pre-pack administration transferred ownership to lenders including banks and private equity firms.

Interserve had warned it would run out of money to pay its staff and suppliers within weeks if it did not get a huge injection of cash.

The company, which did everything from building roads to cleaning Government departments, had 68,000 staff worldwide including 45,000 in the UK.

A spokesman for Grant Thornton said it had been contacted by the FRC, and added: We will of course fully co-operate with them in this matter.

Interserve ran into trouble after it took on a series of projects to build energy-from-waste plants, which triggered a debt spiral.

Last May the Financial Conduct Authority said it was investigating Interserve over the accuracy of its financial reporting between July 2016 and February 2017.

Interserve declined to comment on the FRC probe.
Savings rates in Britain are frequently disparaged.

News of new products or tiny upticks in rates are greeted with cynicism from members of the public despondent about the pitiful returns they receive on hard-earned savings.

Yet, it turns out things could actually be much worse. According to pan-European savings platform Raisin, Britain has the fifth best average savings rate out of all 28 EU member states in January 2019  behind Poland, Romania, Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

Savings rates across the 28 countries in the EU vary from just 0.03% in Ireland to 1.77% in Poland, but the UK sits in fifth and compares decently to many European neighbours

The UK's average savings rate two months ago according to Raisin was 1.03 per cent, while Poland's was 1.77 per cent.

Romania's average was 1.6 per cent, Czech Republic's 1.37 per cent and the Netherlands' 1.15 per cent.

Of the five, the Netherlands is the only country which uses the euro.

At the other end of the scale, Ireland has the lowest savings rate in the EU, with savers being paid an average of just 0.03 per cent.

The other countries coming in the bottom five were Spain, whose average rate was just 0.01 percentage points higher higher, Sweden, which offered savers an average of 0.09 per cent, Portugal and Bulgaria  who both paid 0.14 per cent  and Slovenia, which paid an average rate of 0.16 per cent.

Of those six, Bulgaria and Sweden have their own currency, while the other four are all part of the EU's monetary union.

EU countries with the best savings rates Country Average savings rate Poland 1.77% Romania 1.60% Czechia 1.37% Netherlands 1.15% United Kingdom 1.03% Source: Raisin

Eurozone giants France and Germany also both lagged behind the UK, with the average rate paid to savers 0.91 per cent in France, and just 0.28 per cent in Europe's largest economy.

And if you think that coverage of Goldman Sachs' Marcus savings account, paying 1.5 per cent, was a little over exuberant, spare a thought for Luxembourg.

The country saw its average savings rate rise 360 per cent between January 2018 and January 2019, yet it still offers savers just 0.23 per cent.

Those with the worst Country Average savings rate Ireland 0.03% Spain 0.04% Sweden 0.09% Portugal/Bulgaria 0.14% Slovenia 0.16% Source: Raisin

Meanwhile the UK's largest banks, often maligned for paying poor rates compared to newer or smaller providers, also fare well in comparison to their European equivalents.

According to Raisin, the UK comes out third best when it comes to the average rate of a one-year deposit offered by European nations' three largest banks.

It worked out the largest banks based on balance sheet size, then determined the average of the best savings rates offered a country's three biggest lenders.

Biggest isn't always best, and it certainly isn't the case when it comes to savings rates. Across Europe, the rates offered by the big three banks lag far behind the best offers

The average rate offered by Barclays, HSBC and RBS was 0.77 per cent, third behind Norway, paying 1.42 per cent, and Poland, offering 0.9 per cent.

The worst average rate offered by a big three was in Denmark, where Danske Bank, Nykredit and Nordea offered just 0.02 per cent to savers.

Interestingly, Danske and Nordea were two of Raisin's big three in Norway along with DNB  meaning Norwegian savers are potentially being offered rates 70 times their Danish neighbours from the same banks.

Rocket-fueled rates: Two countries saw their savings rates increase massively in percentage terms between January 2018 and January 2019. Luxembourg's average went up 360% while Czech Republic's increased by 180%. While Czech Rep sits in third place paying savers an average of 1.37%, almost quadrupling rates in a year isn't enough for savers in Luxembourg to get a return of more than 0.23% on average.

German giants Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank and HypoVereinsbank weren't much better, offering an average rate of just 0.03 per cent, while France's big three BNP Paribas, Credit Mutuel and Societe Generale offered a slightly better 0.28 per cent.

However, one thing that European savers do have in common is that big is never best when it comes to rates.

The average interest paid by the top three offers, rather than the three biggest banks, is 2.78 per cent in Poland and 2.19 per cent in Norway.

This is Money worked out the UK once again comes in third; with the average rate offered by our top three of Gatehouse Bank, Shawbrook Bank and OakNorth Bank paying 1.96 per cent on a one-year fixed-rate deposit.

In Denmark and Germany, savers could be offered returns 34 and 33 times the big three by choosing the best rates, respectively, while an average of the top three in France pays 1.03 per cent.

Once again though Ireland comes out bottom, with the average of its top three offers paying savers just 0.68 per cent over one-year.
An assembly line of Renault Samsung's Busan plant is stopped amid its union's strike in this undated photo. Courtesy of Renault Samsung



Prolonged standoff to jeopardize bid to win XM3 production



By Nam Hyun-woo



Renault Samsung's plant in Busan will halt opearations for five days as the carmaker lost orders for 42,000 cars, due to output disruptions caused by workers' strikes, company officials said Friday.



Industry officials said the union's stubborn stance in wage negotiation and continued strikes has undermined the company's competitiveness, which will negatively affect Renault Samsung's bid to win the manufacturing rights of Renault XM3 for global sales.



According to the company, it will give employees "flexibility premium leave" for four days from April 29 to May 3. Since May 1 is Labor Day, the plant will stop for five days.



The company explained it decided to give them the leave because of declined orders for the Nissan Rogue from its headquarters of RenaultNissanMitsubishi Alliance.



The Korean unit produced 102,000 Rogues for export last year, but the headquarters recently allocated 60,000 for this year.



Under a 2014 MOU with the headquarters, Renault Samsung was promised to produce an average of 80,000 Rogues annually for five years. Since then, the company has been producing more than 100,000 Rogues annually, accounting for nearly half of the company's total manufacturing volume.



The MOU will expire in September this year, meaning Renault Samsung has to find another vehicle to keep its plant running.



A Renault Samsung official said 24,000 out of 42,000 went to a Nissan plant in Japan, due to "various reasons" including the conflict against its union.



Renault Samsung union has staged more than 50 four-hour strikes since October last year to demand hikes in base pay in last year's wage agreement.



After their 20th round of talks failed to reach an agreement on March 8, both the management and union have not been engaging in negotiations, with the official saying "no further schedule is determined."





Renault's XM3 Inspire show car / Courtesy of Renault Samsung
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iShares MSCI Netherlands ETF's stock was trading at $27.57 on March 11th, 2020 when COVID-19 reached pandemic status according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Since then, EWN shares have increased by 77.2% and is now trading at $48.86.

View which stocks have been most impacted by COVID-19.
U.S. President Donald Trump (L) shakes hands with South Korean President Moon Jae-in during their meeting at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on April 11, 2019. Trump said on Thursday that it was possible for him to hold a third meeting with the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Un. Trump made the remarks while speaking to the media together with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting at the White House. (Xinhua/Ting Shen)

WASHINGTON, April 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said on Thursday that it was possible for him to hold a third meeting with the top leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong Un.

Trump made the remarks while speaking to the media together with his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in before their bilateral meeting at the White House.

According to the full transcript provided by the White House, when asked by reporters if he plans to meet Kim for a third summit, Trump said that "it could happen. A third summit could happen. And it's step by step."

"It's not a fast process; I've never said it would be. It's step by step," he said. "I enjoy the summits. I enjoy being with the Chairman. I think it's been very productive."

When asked if a three-way summit with Kim and Moon is also possible, Trump said "that could happen also."

For his part, Moon said that the personal diplomacy between Trump and Kim has brought "dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean Peninsula."

"Now peace has prevailed," he said. "Now we believe that you will be able to solve this problem through a dialogue."

Noting that "the Hanoi Summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement," Moon said that efforts need to be made so as to "maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook, regarding the third U.S.-North Korea Summit, to the international community that this will be held in the near future."

After ending the summit in Vietnam's Hanoi on Feb. 28 without an agreement, Trump told a press conference that Kim demanded relief from sanctions against Pyongyang "in their entirety" in exchange for denuclearizing a "large portion" of the DPRK's nuclear program, something the United States could not agree to.

Dismissing Trump's claim, DPRK Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho has said that the DPRK only proposed partial removal of the sanctions, wanting those impeding the livelihood of their people to be removed first.

Wu Haitao, China's deputy permanent representative to the United Nations, said on Wednesday that for dialogue to continue and make headway, the key is to address the legitimate concerns of the parties concerned in a balanced manner, and advance denuclearization and the establishment of a peace mechanism for the peninsula by following a phased approach with synchronized steps as a package solution.

5

1

[ Editor: Zhang Zhou ]
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is greeted by supporters of his Likud party as he arrives to speak following the announcement of exit polls in Israel's parliamentary election at the party headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 10. Reuters



A final count of election ballots on Thursday granted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party an additional seat in parliament, making it the largest faction in the Knesset and punctuating the Israeli leader's victory.



The results released by Israel's central election commission showed Likud capturing a total of 36 seats in the 120-seat Knesset, compared to 35 seats for its main rival, the centrist Blue and White party. An earlier count had the two parties deadlocked.



Altogether, Likud and its traditional Jewish ultra-Orthodox and nationalist allies command a 65-55 majority in parliament, putting Netanyahu in position to head the next coalition government. On Wednesday, Blue and White's leaders conceded defeat.



The final count showed another nationalist faction, the New Right party of Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, falling just short of the necessary 3.25% of the votes needed to get into parliament.



Although the ballot count is complete, commission head Hanan Melzer said the results were not official and still subject to review. He said final certified results are to be handed to the country's president next Wednesday.



New Right, which fell just a few hundred votes short of entering parliament, said it would challenge the count.



The results presented late Thursday did not significantly alter earlier results from Tuesday's election. They included a count of votes of soldiers, diplomats, prisoners and hospital patients who vote in unusual circumstances.



The only shift was that Likud picked up one seat from one of its traditional allies, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism.



The New Right had one of the most disappointing performances of the election. The pair of popular pro-settler ministers split from their religious-nationalist Jewish Home party and sought greater power by appealing to new secular voters. The maneuver backfired.



Netanyahu still managed to cruise to a relatively easy victory that secures him a fourth consecutive term in office, and fifth overall.



One of the major factors hastening Netanyahu's victory was the low voter turnout among Israel's Arab residents, which was below 50 percent.



Netanyahu's campaign against Arab politicians, together with a new alliance with anti-Arab extremists and the passage last year of a contentious nation-state law that enshrined Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people alone, deepened calls for an election boycott in Arab communities.



Arab leaders accused Netanyahu of demonizing their sector throughout the campaign. Only a big push in the final hours of voting secured the survival of the two primary Arab parties. Still, they saw their representation dip.



On election day, the predominantly Arab Hadash party filed a complaint that hundreds of Likud activists were monitoring Arab polling stations with hidden cameras.



Israel's elections committee swiftly banned the cameras, but Arab leaders accused Likud of intimidating voters. Netanyahu defended the practice, saying cameras helped guarantee a ''legitimate'' vote.



On Thursday, a public relations firm said it orchestrated the operation on Likud's behalf, distributing 1,200 hidden cameras, and claiming to have played a role in the suppressed vote.



''We put together an operation that contributed crucially to one of the most important achievements of the right-wing bloc: keeping the Arab vote legal,'' the PR company, Kaizler Inbar, wrote in a Facebook post, accompanied by a picture of firm executives alongside Netanyahu and his wife Sara. ''Thanks to us placing observers in every polling station we managed to lower the voter turnout to under 50 percent, the lowest in recent years!''



Lucy Aharish, a prominent Arab media personality, said it definitely played a role and was ''insulting'' that the ruling party would spy on the voting of its own citizens. (AP)


ROME  On the way to Mass the week before Good Friday, I passed the Roman Colosseum. Its hard to have things put in better perspective. Christians were once fed to the lions there, and now its the background to many a tourist selfie.

Mass that morning was at the Basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo al Monte Celio, which the top review on TripAdvisor that same morning declared as a Slightly off the beaten track  lovely, quiet church full of horror. The horror no doubt refers to the frescoes of Christian martyrdom that line the ancient circular structure. Does it become less horrific when you see the serene smiles if not outright joy on some of the faces of the martyrs? It depends if you believe the martyr is in for a new beginning or not.

Santo Stefano is a station church for the fifth week of Lent, part of a tradition that dates back to the fourth century. Though, I confess, when you dont walk the whole path like the millennial seminarians at the Pontifical North American College do, but take a taxi, its also a tremendous way to visit some of the churches of Rome, and to do so before the tourists are awake. Its a way to drink in the breadth and depth of the martyrs, remembering the importance of faith  what that faith may call for, if one truly believes, and is truly tested. If we are really paying attention, it is a reminder that testing takes many forms.

Im in the Eternal City for friendship, fellowship, prayer and what research and reporting there can be had. While over here, the pope emeritus, Benedict XVI, has had some thoughts published on the origins and solutions for the sex scandals in the Church. It makes a whole lot of sense that he would do so, given his lifetime of service and deep wells of wisdom. Its subject rife with all kinds of controversy and spin. But the most important line of his comments is this: Only obedience and love for our Lord Jesus Christ can point the way. Those seem the most appropriate words to highlight as we are set to mark the holiest season on the Christian calendar yet again.

Benedict wrote: Martyrdom is a basic category of Christian existence. So, it would further follow that the very essence of Christianity is at stake here if martyrdom is not a part of our lives. And martyrs do, of course, exist in the world today. A priest killed while celebrating Mass in France comes to mind. As do Coptic Christians and Iraqi Christians slaughtered by the so-called Islamic State.

A world without God, Benedict writes, can only be a world without meaning.  Only if things have a spiritual reason, are intended and conceived  only if there is a Creator God who is good and wants the good  can the life of man also have meaning.

He states the all-important obvious: Yes, there is sin in the Church, and evil. But even today there is the Holy Church  there are many people who humbly believe, suffer and love, in whom the real God, the loving God, shows Himself to us. He says that if we look around and listen with an attentive heart, we can find witnesses of God everywhere, from the lowest ranks of the society to the highest echelons of the church. Our job is to recognize them, and, more than that, to help them in their struggle to make the world a better, kinder place, to enact Gods will in the world.

As I joined seminarians at the North American Pontifical College and others in the 7 a.m. Masses around Rome for the penultimate week of Lent, I prayed I was among martyrs  people willing to sacrifice with joy for the love of God. They are the antidote to the evil and confusion in the world, which will suffocate us without the gift of clarity that the martyrs demonstrate. They give their lives to God, even when they are not subject to the sword  they seek to be poured out in love to others for love of Him. It doesnt get more counter-selfie-culture than that.

(Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online and founding director of Catholic Voices USA. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.)
SCHENECTADY  The shooting over the summer of a woman and her two children inside a Union Street apartment started with an ominous promise from her boyfriend months earlier, according to a prosecutor.

"It you leave me, I will kill you, I will kill the kids, and I will kill myself," Assistant District Attorney Christina Tremante-Pelham told jurors Thursday during opening statements in the attempted murder trial of 49-year-old DuShawn Howard.

She repeated those words several times during her speech.

But defense attorney Mark Sacco countered in his opening remarks that the gunfire was the result of a struggle between Howard and Aishah Goodwin over the .38 caliber weapon on July 10, 2018.

"They were fighting in the house, there was a struggle for the weapon, and four people were shot," Sacco said. "Mr. Howard did not walk around that apartment trying to execute anyone that day."

He also said ballistics evidence presented at the trial will bolster their version that the shooting was an accidental. Howard is expected to testify.

Sacco argued that Goodwin and Howard were in an "explosive relationship" exacerbated by poverty, addiction and bad choices each of them made.

Tremante-Pelham said Goodwin, 35, let Howard back into the apartment in violation of a full stay away order of protection against him after he punched her in the face during an argument in April 2018 that it left swelling and a knot.

The trial before Visiting Schenectady County Court Judge Kate Hogan also covers criminal charges related to that attack.

The prosecutor described in chilling detail how Howard shot Goodwin in her head and neck as she tended to their 1-year-old son then turned the gun on his then 16-year-old stepdaughter and 7-year-old stepson in a bloody scene inside the second floor apartment at 1373 Union Street.

Tremante-Pelham said the gun clicked when he pointed it at his 1-year-old biological son.

She was it was unclear if it jammed or he was out of bullets.

It fired later, she said, when he put it in on his chin and pulled the trigger.

As police descended on the home, a bloody Howard made it out the back.

Clad in a hooded sweatshirt, calmly flagged down a female motorist on nearby Rugby Road who he told he had been stabbed, said the prosecutor.

Unsure if Howard remained in the home, police without the proper tactical gear went inside the home to rescue the toddler after learning he from a frantic Goodwin that he was still inside, said the prosecutor.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter.

Howard managed to convince the driver to take him to his friend on Summit Avenue where police later found him after the woman called for help and told a dispatcher above what she believed was a gunshot wound.

"The witnesses, the evidence will tell you what the defendant did with the gun that day," said Tremante-Pelham. "Every witness in that house will tell you that Dushawn Howard pointed the gun at them and shot them."

The weapon was never found.

She also told the jury that while behind bars Howard wrote a letter to Goodwin asking her to tell the authorities that she and the children were wounded while the two of them were fighting over the gun so he can come home and they would be millionaires, an apparent reference to a possible windfall from legal action.

The story is similar to one Howard told the Times Union during a jailhouse interview.

Goodwin, who also sat down with the Times Union, tells a starkly different story about how Howard shot her as got their son dressed.

Besides four attempted murder offenses, Howard also faces assault, weapons, attempted assault, reckless endangerment, aggravated criminal contempt, tampering with physical evidence and menacing charges.
Dallas

Boeing's CEO says crews have made 96 flights to test a software update for its troubled 737 Max jet and will make more in coming weeks as the company attempts to convince regulators to let the plane fly again.

Dennis Muilenburg also said Thursday that the company has met with pilots and airline officials in the U.S. and abroad, holding flight-simulator sessions to demonstrate the software changes.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which will consider whether the plane can resume flying in the U.S., plans to meet Friday with safety officials and pilots from American, Southwest and United, the three U.S. carriers that were using the Max jet.

An FAA spokesman said the agency wants to hear from the airlines and pilots before deciding what Boeing must do before the plane is allowed to fly.

Regulators around the world grounded the Max last month after deadly crashes involving the plane in Indonesia and Ethiopia.

In both cases, faulty information from a sensor caused anti-stall automation to kick in when it wasn't needed and push the plane's nose down. Pilots struggled to counter the plane's actions but were unable to avoid crashing.

Regulators in Europe and China are conducting their own reviews of the plane, and company insiders and analysts expect foreign regulators to take longer than the FAA to approve the Max's return to service.

Boeing representatives have visited the United Kingdom, Singapore and China to discuss its work on the Max with pilots and airline officials, including demonstrating the software update in flight simulators, Muilenburg.

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter.

The Boeing CEO spoke during a leadership forum at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, as the former president sat in the front row. Muilenburg did not take any questions, and left immediately after his remarks.

Separately, Sen. Edward Markey and other Senate Democrats introduced a bill that would require aircraft makers to provide airlines with all safety equipment now considered optional and to do it at no extra charge.

The planes that crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia did not have two optional displays that might have alerted the pilots to the malfunctioning sensors suspected of playing a role in the crashes. Markey said if they had been installed, the crashes might have been avoided.

The Air Line Pilots Association endorsed the legislation.

A Boeing spokesman said the company's planes are equipped with "all critical features" necessary for safety. Boeing has said it will provide the two displays free of charge in the future.
Miami

A federal judge has threatened to temporarily block Carnival Corp. from docking cruise ships at ports in the United States as punishment for a possible probation violation.

The Miami Herald reports U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said Wednesday that she'll make a decision in June, and she wants company chairman Micky Arison and president Donald Arnold in her courtroom for the hearing.

"The people at the top are treating this as a gnat," Seitz said. "If I could, I would give all the members of the executive committee a visit to the detention center for a couple of days. It's amazing how that helps people come to focus on reality."

Miami-based Carnival has been on probation for two years as part of a $40 million settlement for illegally dumping oil into the ocean from its Princess Cruises ships and lying about the scheme, according to court filings.

Despite this, prosecutors say ships have dumped grey water into Alaska's Glacier Bay National Park, prepared ships in advance of court-ordered audits to avoid unfavorable findings, falsified records and dumped plastic garbage into the ocean. The company has acknowledged these incidents in court filings.

In a statement after the hearing, Carnival said "It appears there were some mischaracterizations made by others to the court. We intend to fully address the issues raised at today's court conference."

Carnival's Chief Communications Officer Roger Frizzell said "our environmental responsibility has been and continues to be a top priority for the company."

The five-year probation began in April 2017 and requires a third-party auditor to inspect ships belonging to Carnival and its subsidiaries. Carnival owns nine cruise brands and has 102 ships.

The court filings say that during 2017 Carnival had a program in place to prepare ships in advance of the audits to avoid negative findings. Seitz ordered the company to stop in December 2017, and it stopped. But federal prosecutors said the practice continued in 2018.

Prosecutors said internal emails shared among Carnival's subsidiaries discussed the practice. An email from Carnival's German-based cruise line AIDA Cruises said, "It would be really important to go onboard on August 12 for one week in order to have time to manage issues before the audits and avoid findings."

Sign up for The Knick  Get the latest news and some area history with our afternoon newsletter.

They said a similar email from Carnival's Seattle-based Holland America Line mentioned "prevent audit findings" as a goal in early 2018.

The court filings said the monitor found that Carnival and its subsidiaries repeatedly falsified records, as recently as September 2018, when an engineer on Holland America's Westerdam ship falsified maintenance records to make it appear he had cleaned and tested equipment when he had not. The same ship, according to court filings, dumped 26,000 gallons of grey water into Glacier Bay National Park in September 2018.

Monitors also found that the Carnival Elation ship dumped plastic garbage overboard during an audit in December. The plastic wasn't being separated from food, court filings said.

The judge on Wednesday mentioned a 45-minute presentation she received as a guest onboard Carnival Corp.'s ultra-luxury cruise line Seabourn about how plastic straws are damaging the marine environment.

"I was thinking to myself, 'I'm impressed,'" she said. "Obviously they talk the talk, but they aren't walking the walk."
William Han is a 16-year-old student at Shenendehowa High School who immigrated with his family from Taiwan five years ago. He's soft spoken and a bit hesitant in conversation, which is surely a reflection of his still-growing facility with the English language. Listening to him, it seems as if his mind is working faster than he can find the words. Yet it's probably not just about language and speech. As with many teens, there may be a lot more brewing inside Han than gets let out.

Also an accomplished cellist, Han is this year's winner of the Lois Lyman Concerto Competition of the Empire State Youth Orchestra, which performs Sunday afternoon at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. His chosen piece, Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1, opens with a torrent of fast but weighty notes in toiling phrases. Throughout its 27-minute duration, the piece demands extraordinary musicianship and also a pouring out of emotional expression that's often driven and enraged.

Cello concertos by Haydn, Saints-Saens and Schumann are equally showy but not nearly so severe. They're the more obvious choice for young virtuosos, instead of the Shostakovich, which was written in 1959 when the Russian composer was struggling under Soviet oppression.

Besides putting in months of hard practice, Han also read Shostakovich's memoir, "Testimony," and he understands how the composer's plight comes through in the music. "He wants to say something but he can't because he'll get arrested. It's full of anger," says the cellist.

Han came across the piece in his dad's CD collection. He's listened to performances by Mstislav Rostropovich, Shostakovich's compatriot for whom it was written, and also by Yo-Yo Ma, who's performed the piece frequently at SPAC. Han leans toward emulating Rostropovich's approach, which is more lean and gutsy. "It's more straight, the tempo more strict. The main theme is like a march that keeps going," says Han.

The young cellist has obviously found an outlet in the piece. But he skillfully dodges a question about what in his own life makes him angry. Instead, he lists some things that cause him stress, including standardized tests, college applications and important concerts. Sunday's performance will be his first performance as a soloist with an orchestra.

Apparently, another stressor is too much Shostakovich.

"After practice you need to take some time off from Shostakovich, to get relief from those feelings," says Han. "You can't bring that anger into the rest of your life."

For cellists, there's no better serenity than the solo suites of J.S. Bach. So far Han has learned four of the six. His favorite section is the saraband of the third suite. "It's not depressed or sad. It's dancing. A nice contrast to the Shostakovich," he says.

Han has been learning the Bach suites with his principal teacher, Andre O'Neil, a Capital Region native who performs regularly with the Capitol Chamber Artists and Bennington Baroque. Since he's a specialist in early music practice, O'Neil suggested that Han also get some instruction from Wendy Suttor, a former member of the Bang on a Can All Stars. For the last couple of years, Han has taken weekly lessons from both teachers. "They are friends and they communicate how my lessons are going," he says.

Han has been a member of ESYO for four years now. He's currently second chair in the cello section and was one of about 17 members who auditioned for the concerto competition. According to music director Carlos Agreda, the number of applicants during the previous few years was as high as 25 to 30. The decline is simply a reflection of a big membership change, with a lot of seniors leaving the ensemble last spring.

Agreda, who assumed his post this past fall, describes the big exodus from the orchestra as part of a normal generational change. He says it's also eased his arrival, after the 16-year tenure of his predecessor Helen Cha-Pyo.

"She passing me the baton was a very difficult thing for the community," says Agreda. "That half of the orchestra didn't know her cushions the impact."

The maestro admits that he's still discovering things about ESYO. It was only after he began in the job and started perusing the archives that he learned of some of his distinguished predecessors. Among the past music directors are Eiji Oue and Paavo Jarvi, both of whom have prominent international careers.

Something else that's new for Agreda is the Lyman Concerto Competition, named after a music teacher and founding member of the organization. "I didn't have any worries but I also didn't know what to expect," he says. "The level of the repertoire they chose is very high, so I was curious if they played up to the level it deserves or were just playing hard pieces because they're hard. I was very happy they all did so well."

Agreda believes that the Shostakovich concerto taps into an important part of Han  his artistry.

"The character of the concerto is loud and extroverted, like a hero speaking and crying," says Agreda. "William has that inside him and that's what makes a great artist, the ability to be expressive. It doesn't matter if his personality or way of speaking is shy and introverted."

The Shostakovich concerto, by the way, isn't one long tirade. It includes beauty and tenderness, which makes the fury all the more intense. There's also the crying that Agreda refers to. It arrives in the second movement and Han describes it well: "The melodies kind of come from heaven. The whole world is crying about the violence."

The Empire State Youth Orchestra performs at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Troy Savings Bank Music Hall, 30 Second St., Troy. Also on the program is a dance by Guarnieri and Tchaikovsky's Fourth Symphony. Tickets: $20. Call (518) 273-0038, or visit: troymusichall.org.

Joseph Dalton is a freelance writer based in Troy.
ALBANY  Liveried servants answer the door. They usher each guest into the drawing room, formally announcing newcomers to those already gathered. Mini quiches and sparkling wine await. There are tea and cucumber sandwiches at intermission. Take a sip of seltzer and hock before moving to another room for the final act, knowing that the white-wine spritzer is just what would have been served in a wealthy family's home in late-Victorian London. If it is necessary to inquire about a ticket reservation, a plummily accented servant will say, in a low voice normally reserved for discussing indiscretions or illness, that, yes, it was received via "the anachronistic email."

NorthEast Theatre Ensemble's dedication to furthering the illusion of time and place for its productions would seem mere affectation if the acting, directing and costumes weren't so good. When they're complemented by a just-right period setting, the result is marvelous theater. The company, which staged Chekhov's "The Seagull" in a Rotterdam Junction barn last year, returns to Ten Broeck Mansion, where it performed "The Little Foxes" in 2017, for a captivating production of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband." As directed by Krysta Dennis and with outstanding costumes by Charlie Barnett, it is superb.

Wilde's masterpiece, "The Importance of Being Earnest," opened in London just a month after "An Ideal Husband" in 1895, largely eclipsing the earlier play. But in its own right "An Ideal Husband" is a hugely rewarding work, and its intrigues and machinations among the mostly idle rich have more contemporary relevance than the epigram-encrusted exquisiteness of "Earnest."

There are bon mots aplenty in "An Ideal Husband," and with rare exception they are delivered with the requisite airy elegance and speed. The actors playing the central characters  high-society folks who treat money and politics as amusements, despite monumental consequences  bat the lines around Ten Broeck Mansion's rooms as if they're playing indoor badminton with poisoned shuttlecocks.

The best of them are Tony Pallone and Janet Hurley Kimlicko as the antagonists at the core of the story, and Dennis Schebetta, who excels at the unenviable task of playing Lord Goring. A thinly veiled version of Wilde, Goring's indolence is exceeded by his insouciance and eloquence. For Goring, only insincerity is worth taking seriously, and he tells everyone all about it in lines that float and shimmer like bubbles.

Pallone and Kimlicko have both been excellent in previous NorthEast Theatre Ensemble shows, but Schebetta, a new addition to the Skidmore College theater faculty, is every bit their equal. Each has masterful vocal control and delivery; they understand every one of the many words coming out of their mouths, and their faces and inflections convey all of the many more words beneath what is being said.

Pallone plays a governmental undersecretary who, as a young man, made a large fortune by unethical means but has built a public reputation, and a marriage, on being of unimpeachable moral character. Kimlicko's schemer, herself wealthy and well regarded in international diplomatic circles, threatens to expose him, setting off a series of negotiations, arguments, misdirected letters, mistaken identities and misunderstandings. Wilde exploits the conceits of his era's melodramas with an expert hand, and Dennis, while grounding the story in genuine emotion, keeps the production so fleet that it only rarely feels as long as it is, running nearly two and a half hours. (I've never seen a poor production of "An Ideal Husband," but it surely would be agony.)

It's hard to overstate how much of a privilege it is to see acting of this quality in such an intimate setting. The audience totals less than two dozen, and the actors are often mere feet away, sometimes closer. It's like watching movie acting without the separation of a screen, heightening the feeling of voyeurism. "An Ideal Husband" really is a gem.

NorthEast Theatre Ensemble's next production will be Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire." It will be performed in late June and early July in Albany Distilling Co.'s tasting room and bottle shop  a bar, in other words. This sounds perfect. Tickets go on sale May 1. Make a note of it, and grab a seat. Given the size of the space and the growing awareness of the theater troupe's excellence, it's sure to be a deserved sellout.

sbarnes@timesunion.com  518-454-5489  blog.timesunion.com/tablehopping  @Tablehopping  facebook.com/SteveBarnesFoodCritic
(image from Youth FX Facebook page)

Youth FX, the award-winning youth media program based in Albany, will host its annual World Premiere Shorts Screening debuting new works from its student filmmakers at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 18, at Landmark Spectrum 8 Theatres.

In addition, an encore screening has been scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 23, also at the Spectrum.
Do you enjoy travel planning? Are you exhilarated by spending weeks or months scrutinizing every possible hotel, restaurant, tour, train schedule and other specifics of your vacation?

If so, this story is not for you.

For me, the endless options and litany of tasks are stressful, and even after extensive research, I still manage to usually end up with so-so (or worse) meals, in just OK accommodations, getting lost on the way to some humdrum tour.

So when my husband, Ron, and I decided to visit Italy last spring to meet up with our daughter Samantha, a college junior on a study abroad program, I thought it might be time to try a different approach. Instead of agonizing over the particulars or turning over planning duties to my mate, who is not so finicky, I called on The Roman Guy, a group- and private-tour operator in Italy. The company had recently added trip-planning services to its offerings.

The Roman Guy charged 99 euros a day (about $112; minimum fee 495 euros) to plot an entire holiday, everything from suggesting destinations and sights to booking transportation, hotel rooms, restaurant reservations, tours and activities. The company will take care of other tasks, too, like getting you an Italian SIM card for your phone. The daily fee covers the planning; vacationers still foot the bill for their expenses. (Since my trip, the travel-planning part of the company operates under the name Finelli & Shaw, but the services and fees remain the same. Plans are in the works to expand to Paris as well.)

"We take care of everything, so you don't have to worry about anything," co-owner Brandon Shaw says.

The first step was a phone call with our Rome-based guide, Filippo, who asked what cities were on our must-see list (Rome), whether we preferred tours of famous sites or off-the-beaten-path activities (both), if we might like museums and food and wine tours (yes, yes and yes) and how we'd like to get around (private drivers, trains, vans with small groups, buses, water taxis and gondolas all got the green light).

We had just a few requirements: We needed to meet Samantha on a specific date, and we requested hotel rooms with two separate sleeping areas, so we could enjoy some privacy. We booked the flights and left almost everything else in their hands.

Filippo suggested starting in the north of the country, spending three days in Venice before heading south for two days each in Florence and Montalcino, a small Tuscan hill town where the renowned Brunello di Montalcino wine is produced. Next would be four days in Rome with the final three in Praiano, a seaside village on the Amalfi Coast

A few days after our call, a 17-page personalized document landed in my inbox with a tentative itinerary accompanied by descriptions and photos of recommended sites, hotels, transfers between cities, tours and eateries with times already booked.

Much of what he proposed sounded wonderful  but not everything. A couple of his hotel choices were too expensive for us or otherwise unappealing. A few of the restaurants didn't look appetizing, and a tour or two weren't to our liking.

I felt like I was driving Filippo nuts with my numerous emailed questions and revisions, but he remained genuinely patient and helpful as he cheerfully made alternative arrangements to accommodate my tweaks.

Our final itinerary encompassed many major highlights, including St. Mark's Basilica and a tour along the waterways of Venice; the iconic David statue and famous pieces in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; the ancient Colosseum in Rome where gladiators once battled; Michelangelo's ceiling and other masterpieces in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City; and a boat ride to Capri, where we browsed the ritzy shops and hopped a ride on the funicular, the cable car/railway that runs up and down a hill.

The company sent along detailed instructions with maps and photos of tour meeting spots  directions so complete, they included how many stops to go on the bus, plus a private concierge phone number in case we ran into problems.

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We followed The Roman Guy's dining advice and sampled assorted versions of prosecco spritz, the ubiquitous fizzy, boozy drink; different types of cicchetti, little bites of snack food (loved the pesto spread accompanied by roasted tomato, hated the baccala mantecato, a pureed cod mousse topped with anchovy); pasta dishes galore; and, of course, gelato.

Filippo and the rest of the team we worked with sent us to places I likely wouldn't have found on my own, places that were new to Samantha, as well, despite her extensive travels throughout the country.

Many of them turned out to be favorites, like the cooking class we took at Locanda Demetra in Montalcino, where we scarfed down eggplant Parmesan and pasta we'd made from scratch. Another highlight was our visit to the Venetian Ghetto, the 1500s-era quarters where Venice's Jewish population was forced to live and where five synagogues from the period still stand.

Without their guidance, we wouldn't have visited Civita di Bagnoregio, a tiny village we could only access via a lengthy walk up a steep bridge, or Orvieto, a hidden gem in Umbria where we stumbled upon a lesser-known but still stunning cathedral.

Having a trip planner was a relief; we could focus on the moment without worrying about every upcoming detail. But we also could be spontaneous because we knew they would handle rearranging plans when we made last-minute changes, like ditching dinner reservations in favor of fried artichokes at Samantha's favorite place in Rome's Trastevere neighborhood or canceling a scheduled day trip to Pompeii when we knew we were too pooped to enjoy it.

Ron and I still can  and will  plan future trips on our own, but the process won't be as easy and stress-free as using a planner.

Worse yet, we'll have no one else to blame when we find ourselves sleeping on a bad mattress.
Sausalito, Calif.

Former FBI Director James Comey said Thursday that he knew of no electronic surveillance aimed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election, defending the bureau after Attorney General William Barr asserted a day earlier that the bureau spied on the campaign as part of the Russia investigation.

"When I hear that kind of language used, it's concerning because the FBI, the Department of Justice conduct court-ordered electronic surveillance," said Comey, who oversaw the inquiry until President Donald Trump abruptly fired him in May 2017. "I have never thought of that as spying."

Barr said in congressional testimony Wednesday that the bureau might have taken improper measures while investigating links between Trump's campaign and Russia, describing the FBI's conduct as "spying," a term typically associated with unlawful surveillance.

"I think spying did occur," Barr said. "The question is whether it was adequately predicated. And I'm not suggesting that it wasn't adequately predicated. But I need to explore that."

Barr's statement lined up with that long-standing talking point used by Trump and his allies. A person who has discussed the matter with Barr said he did not mean to imply that the measures had been improper, but Barr never released a statement clarifying his remarks.

Trump said again Thursday that he believed "there was absolutely spying into my campaign."

"I'll go a step further: In my opinion, it was illegal spying, unprecedented spying, and something that should never be allowed to happen in our country again," Trump said. "And I think his answer was actually a very accurate one."

Democrats on Capitol Hill accused Barr of imparting the authority of his office onto right-wing conspiracy theories favored by the president and his allies that American authorities illegally monitored the Trump campaign. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, echoing members of his party, said the attorney general had lost all credibility.

"Barr's comments yesterday have just destroyed the scintilla of credibility he had left in terms of being a fair and impartial person," Schumer told reporters, while accusing Barr of behaving like "the press secretary to the president."

In 2016, the FBI sent an informant, a typical investigative step, to speak to two Trump campaign advisers after agents uncovered evidence that both had suspicious contacts linked to Russia during the campaign. When the role of the informant gained attention last year, the president seized on it to accuse law enforcement officials of illegally infiltrating his campaign.

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Comey is familiar with the issue. In March 2017, Trump accused the FBI and Obama administration in a tweet of illegally wiretapping Trump Tower during the campaign. The tweet angered Comey, who knew the claim was false and pushed the Justice Department to refute it. The Justice Department never released a statement, but Comey later said publicly that Trump's claim had no merit.

"If the attorney general has come to the belief that that should be called spying, wow," Comey said at a cybersecurity conference outside San Francisco. "That's going to require a whole lot of conversations inside the Department of Justice. But I don't know what he meant."

Comey said that regardless of what the special counsel, Robert Mueller, found during his investigation into Trump and his campaign, Barr revealed, in his letter to Congress last month, that the investigation had uncovered important facts about Russia's interference in the 2016 election.

"It tells us even without even reading the Mueller report that the Russia thing was not a hoax," Comey said. "That it was real and that it is backed  that assessment is backed by hard evidence. It is true that the Russians came after us. They are going to come again because they exceeded their wildest hopes."

Despite Barr's claims about spying, Comey said he would give Barr the benefit of the doubt that he would put following the facts and law above protecting the president.

"Maybe the only thing I can say generally is I think his career has earned him a presumption that he will be one of the grayer Trump Cabinet members who will stand up for things like truth and facts and institutional values. So I still think he's entitled to that presumption," Comey said. "Language like this makes it harder, but I still think he's entitled to that presumption because I don't understand what the heck he's talking about  that's all I can say."
Albany

Sister Marilyn Lacey, executive director of Mercy Beyond Borders, will be the featured speaker at Maria Colleges 57th commencement st 3 p.m. May 19 in the Empire State Plaza Convention Center.

Albany Roman Catholic Diocese Bishop Emeritus Howard J. Hubbard will congratulate and bless the graduates and perform a rite of commissioning to graduates.

Since 1981, Sister Lacey has worked with displaced people, both in refugee camps overseas and in resettlement programs in the U.S.

She has dedicated her life to helping make the world a more welcoming place for persons forced to leave their homelands. In 2008, she founded Mercy Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, to help alleviate the extreme poverty of women and girls in South Sudan, Haiti, and Uganda.

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Sister Lacey earned a masters degree in social welfare from the University of California at Berkeley. In 2001, for her lifes work, she was personally honored by the Dalai Lama as an, unsung hero of compassion. Ave Maria Press published her memoir, This Flowing Toward Me: A Story of God Arriving in Strangers in 2009. In 2017, she received a $1 million global award from The Opus Prize Foundation for her faith-filled leadership of Mercy Beyond Borders. Also in 2017, she was named AARPs Purpose Prize Fellow for her courage and creativity in founding Mercy Beyond Borders.
Did you buy PICS fudge bars recently? You might want to check.

Price Chopper and Market 32 Supermarkets are issuing a voluntary manufacturer recall by Fieldbrook Foods Corporation on 30-ounce PICS fudge bars with UPC 41735 09250.

The manufacturer is recalling the products due to positive test results for Listeria in the production environment.

Fieldbrook is headquartered in Chautauqua County, and operates three manufacturing facilities, including a 25,000-square-foot facility in Gloversville. It's unclear which production environment tested positive for Listeria.

Listeria is a bacteria found in soil and water and some animals, including poultry and cattle. It can be present in raw milk and foods made from raw milk. It can also live in food processing plants and contaminate a variety of processed meats.

Listeriosis, an infection caused by Listeria, can pose major risks for certain populations. Symptoms include fever, stiff neck, confusion, weakness, vomiting, sometimes preceded by diarrhea, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Customers who have an affected product may return it to their local Price Chopper/Market 32 for a full refund.

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The supermarket chain said many of the customers who purchased the bars have already been contacted through its SoundBite notification program, which uses purchase data and consumer phone numbers on file through its AdvantEdge (loyalty) card to alert households.

For more information, customers can visit fieldbrookfoods.com or call 800-333-0805.
TROY  Rensselaer County District Attorney Mary Pat Donnelly says that when she and her staff began sifting through the paperwork left behind by her predecessor, Joel Abelove, they found the office failed to collect more than $100,000 in forfeiture money.

It was a simple step that wasn't taken. A form had to be sent to the police department that seized the money and it would be released from the evidence room to be distributed.

The overdue funds come from years of prosecutions, and the failure to apply for the money seems to stretch through Abelove's four-year tenure and into a prior period when Arthur Glass served as the acting district attorney before Abelove's 2014 election, she said.

The funds were part of money and property seized in criminal cases handled by local police, the State Police and other local and federal agencies. Local law enforcement agencies can claim funds forfeited in criminal cases and use them for operating expenses and other costs.

"It is shocking. It's money on the table  it's money that could be spent for prevention in the community, for assisting law enforcement, and for the office," Donnelly said a recent interview at her third-floor office in the county courthouse.

The failure to collect the forfeited funds is the latest example of the missed opportunities triggered by poor record-keeping that plagued Abelove's office. During a tenure that ended with his defeat by Donnelly last year, Abelove and his prosecutors failed to present hundreds of felony cases to a grand jury, and inaction led to the dismissal of 40 percent of the cases when they were returned to local municipal courts.

Abelove did not respond for a request for comment.

Donnelly campaigned on a pledge to end mismanagement of the office, reduce the backlog of cases and improve operations to prevent cases from being lost. She said the excavation of old cases is well under way.

"I think it was to a certain extent what we expected. There is a backlog. We have attempted to not only address that but to prevent the same going forward," Donnelly said.

Donnelly said her office is in the process of claiming the forfeited funds.

So, its predating the prior administration. Most of it was in the last four years obviously. We found files with the forfeitures agreements set forth, Donnelly said. Its just a lack of doing your job.

Since taking office in January, Donnelly said she has given her assistant district attorneys greater freedom to handle cases. The prosecutors, she said, no longer have to get her consent to resolve cases in local courts.

The office, she said, is keeping better track of cases and prosecutors are regularly comparing the evidence gather by police with the charges lodged against suspects to make sure the cases will withstand the scrutiny of judges.

Donnelly has met with the leaders of the countys police departments and with local judges. She is visiting each court.

Troy Police Chief Brian Owens and North Greenbush Police Chief David Keevern said improved communications with Donnelly's staff have changed everything. Cases are coordinated and discussed, they said.

The assistant district attorneys stay in touch and the department is kept abreast of what is developing in the way cases are prosecuted, Keevern said. The department is informed about what's needed for grand jury presentations of cases, he said.

"We're not waiting for case to go to grand jury," said Keevern.

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Owens said there's an effort to ensure prosecutors and detectives are tracking cases. "Workflow is improving," Owens said. "We have email groups."

When we get a felony case, were going to evaluate that case so that these cases dont languish, so they dont come in as felonies and sit, as we know has happened in the past, and get lost in the shuffle after being waived up to a grand jury, Donnelly said.

When cases arent scrutinized and tracked, they can fizzle out, Donnelly said. Then you dont only go from a felony to a misdemeanor, but you go from a felony to a dismissal.

Donnelly kept on nearly every assistant district attorney when she took office, and has hired others. Her primary addition was Chief Assistant District Attorney Matthew Hauf, who assumed responsibility for several high-profile cases, including prosecution of two men accused of killing two women and two children in a Lansingburgh home in late 2017. One of the defendants has pleaded guilty to murder and the other man goes on trial at the end of the month.

Evaluating old cases has resulted in both hard decisions and unexpected situations, Donnelly said.

The discovery of a sticky note that read DO NOT DISCLOSE on a file in the case of Eulogio "Lewis" Cruz, who was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 100 years behind bars for a sex crime, is an example.

Donnelly agreed to a plea bargain that ended Cruz's prison term after 13 years amid concern about the note, and the possibility the long-forgotten file contained evidence that could have led to Cruz' exoneration.

Donnelly said she doesnt have the resources to pursue an internal investigation of how the case was originally handled, noting she had little to go on beyond the sticky note.
TROY  The city will release documents Friday outlining what it is seeking from a qualified development partner to lead a public-private partnership in support of a fresh start to redeveloping the vacant 1 Monument Square site, officials said Thursday.

This is the citys fifth attempt to get something built on the 1.2-acre site where City Hall stood before it was ordered torn down to spur new development. It's most recently been used as a staging area for equipment deployed to rebuild the city seawall. The city is working with the Troy Local Development Corp. on the project.

It was expected the city issue a request for qualifications last fall, but this was delayed as city officials reviewed the outcome of a public design workshop. Conceptual plans released in November projected a vast public plaza surrounded by three buildings and a tall clock tower set atop a 160-space parking garage being built.

Were excited to move forward with the development phase of our community-driven approach to shaping the Monument Square site. This fresh start provides a unique opportunity for interested developers to help shape the future of Troy's waterfront and downtown, Mayor Patrick Madden said in a late Thursday afternoon release.

Workshop participants helped identify prominent public space, uses and design components  including two levels of parking covered by a grand plaza, and connections to Riverfront Park and the Hudson River waterfront  to guide the development phase of the project moving forward, the city said.

This time around, the city wants to make sure there is public involvement in the project. In some previous attempts, the public and business community members strongly opposed the proposals after they were announced and were proceeding through the planning review process.

The city was also accused by developers at failing to properly disclose difficulties with the site, including the location of utility lines. The selected developer will have to work within that constraint along with the site at the southern end of Riverfront Park, which means parkland cannot be encroached upon along the Hudson River.

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The city is working with the Troy Local Development Corp. on the project.

The site overlooks the Hudson River and is between the river and River Street with Front Street running through it. The city razed the government offices in 2011. The cost of developing the site has yet to be set, although past proposals ranged from about $20 million to $30 million.

Copies of the Monument Square RFQ will be available from the city purchasing department on Friday. The deadline for submitting a proposal is 4 p.m. May 10.
Washington

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would be open to a third summit meeting with North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, suggesting he is keen to revive a high-stakes engagement that was abruptly suspended six weeks ago after the two leaders failed to strike a nuclear disarmament deal in Vietnam.

Speaking before an Oval Office meeting with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, Trump also opened the door to a series of smaller deals with North Korea  a piecemeal approach that could allow the two leaders to resuscitate negotiations that had foundered on their inability to seal a blockbuster agreement.

"There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen," Trump told reporters as a smiling Moon looked on. "Things could happen. You can work out step-by-step pieces, but at this point we are talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons."

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Trump drew the line at easing sanctions on North Korea for anything short of a commitment to give up its entire nuclear arsenal. But he also said he had decided not to impose additional sanctions on Pyongyang  a testament, he said, to his good relationship with Kim.
London

British police on Thursday hauled a bearded and shouting Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he was holed up for nearly seven years, and the U.S. charged the WikiLeaks founder with conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to get their hands on government secrets.

Police arrested Assange after the South American nation revoked the political asylum that had protected him in the embassy, and he was brought before a British court  the first step in an extradition battle that he has vowed to fight.

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno said he decided to evict the 47-year-old Assange from the embassy after "repeated violations to international conventions and daily-life protocols," and he later lashed out at him during a speech in Quito, calling the Australian native a "spoiled brat" who treated his hosts with disrespect.

In Washington, the U.S. Justice Department accused Assange of conspiring with Manning to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon. The charge was announced after Assange was taken into custody.

Assange took refuge in the embassy in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations that have since been dropped. He refused to leave the embassy, fearing arrest and extradition to the U.S. for publishing classified military and diplomatic cables through WikiLeaks.

Manning, who served several years in prison for leaking troves of classified documents before her sentence was commuted by then-President Barack Obama, is again in custody in Alexandria, Virginia, for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning's legal team said the indictment against Assange showed prosecutors didn't need her testimony and called for her to be released, saying her continued detention would be "purely punitive."

Over the years, Assange used Ecuador's embassy as a platform to keep his name before the public, frequently making appearances on its tiny balcony, posing for pictures and reading statements. Even his cat became famous.

But his presence was an embarrassment to U.K. authorities, who for years kept a police presence around the clock outside the embassy, costing taxpayers millions in police overtime. Such surveillance was removed in 2015, but the embassy remained a focal point for his activities.

Video posted online by Ruptly, a news service of Russia Today, showed several men in suits pulling a handcuffed Assange out of the embassy and loading him into a police van while uniformed British police formed a passageway. Assange, who shouted and gestured as he was removed, sported a full beard and slicked-back gray hair.

He later appeared in Westminster Magistrates' Court, where District Judge Michael Snow wasted no time in finding him guilty of breaching his bail conditions, flatly rejecting his assertion that he had not had a fair hearing and a reasonable excuse for not appearing.

"Mr. Assange's behavior is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests," Snow said. "He hasn't come close to establishing 'reasonable excuse.'"

Assange waved to the packed public gallery as he was taken to the cells. His next appearance was set for May 2 via prison video-link in relation to the extradition case.

Assange's attorney, Jennifer Robinson, said he will fight any extradition to the U.S.

"This sets a dangerous precedent for all journalist and media organizations in Europe and around the world," she said. "This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the United States for having published truthful information about the United States."

Asked at the White House about the arrest, President Donald Trump declared, "It's not my thing," and "I know nothing about WikiLeaks," despite praising the anti-secrecy organization dozens of times during his 2016 campaign.

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Assange has been under U.S. Justice Department scrutiny for years for WikiLeaks' role in publishing government secrets. He was an important figure in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe as investigators examined how WikiLeaks obtained emails that were stolen from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and Democratic groups.

WikiLeaks quickly drew attention to U.S. interest in Assange and said that Ecuador had illegally terminated Assange's political asylum "in violation of international law."

"Powerful actors, including CIA, are engaged in a sophisticated effort to de-humanise, de-legitimize and imprison him," the group said in a tweet over a photo of Assange's smiling face.

But in Assange's native Australia, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Australian Broadcasting Corp. the charge was a "matter for the United States" and had nothing to do with Australia.

Ecuadorian officials suggested that Assange's own behavior was to blame.

Interior Minister Maria Paula Romo said Assange's mental and physical health worsened while he was holed up, and he began to act aggressively toward his hosts, including smearing feces on the walls of the embassy.

In a fiery speech in Ecuador, Moreno called him an ungrateful and "miserable hacker" who treated embassy officials poorly.

"When you're given shelter, cared for and provided food, you don't denounce the owner of the house," Moreno said to applause at an event outside Quito.

"From now on we'll be more careful in giving asylum to people who are really worth it and not miserable hackers whose only goal is to destabilize governments," he added. "We are tolerant, calm people, but we're not stupid."

Other Ecuadorian officials in Quito accused supporters of WikiLeaks and two Russian hackers of trying to destabilize the country as the standoff with Assange intensified recently.
[April 12, 2019] Alliance Data Provides Card Services Performance Update For March 2019

PLANO, Texas, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE: ADS), a leading global provider of data-driven marketing and loyalty solutions, today provided an update on its Card Services segment. In conjunction with the release of the Company's Master Trust Monthly Noteholder's Statement, the Company is releasing similar metrics for the overall total managed portfolio. The Master Trust data represents a subset of the Company's total managed portfolio, and the Company believes the information presented below provides a more complete view of the Card Services segment.











For the month ended March 31, 2019

For the three months ended March 31, 2019

(dollars in thousands) Average receivables $ 16,536,153

$ 16,850,214 Year over year change in average receivables

(5)%



(5)% Net charge-offs $ 86,383

$ 269,289 Net charge-offs as a percentage of average receivables (1)

6.3%



6.4%











Active clients - average receivables (2) $ 16,513,642

$ 16,829,892 Year over year change in active clients - average receivables (2)

11%



11%









(1) Compares to 6.3% and 6.7% for the month and three months ended March 31, 2018, respectively. (2) Excludes non-strategic clients.

As of March 31, 2019

As of March 31, 2018

(dollars in thousands) 30 days + delinquencies - principal $ 836,662

$ 905,669 Period ended receivables - principal $ 15,938,669

$ 16,940,144 Delinquency rate

5.2%



5.3%













About Alliance Data Alliance Data (NYSE: ADS) is a leading global provider of data-driven marketing and loyalty solutions serving large, consumer-based industries. The Company creates and deploys customized solutions, enhancing the critical customer marketing experience; the result is measurably changing consumer behavior while driving business growth and profitability for some of today's most recognizable brands. Alliance Data helps its clients create and increase customer loyalty through solutions that engage millions of customers each day across multiple touch points using traditional, digital, mobile and emerging technologies. An S&P 500, FORTUNE 500 and FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For company headquartered in Plano, Texas, Alliance Data consists of three businesses that together employ approximately 20,000 associates at more than 100 locations worldwide. Alliance Data's card services business is a provider of market-leading private label, co-brand, and business credit card programs. Epsilon is a leading provider of multichannel, data-driven technologies and marketing services, and also includes Conversant, a leader in personalized digital marketing. LoyaltyOne owns and operates the AIR MILES Reward Program, Canada's most recognized loyalty program, and Netherlands-based BrandLoyalty, a global provider of tailor-made loyalty programs for grocers. Follow Alliance Data on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube. Forward-Looking Statements This release contains 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. Forward-looking statements give our expectations or forecasts of future events and can generally be identified by the use of words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "project," "plan," "likely," "may," "should" or other words or phrases of similar import. Similarly, statements that describe our business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions or goals also are forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements we make regarding our expected operating results, future economic conditions including currency exchange rates and the guidance we give with respect to our anticipated financial performance. We believe that our expectations are based on reasonable assumptions. Forward-looking statements, however, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections, anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this release, and no assurances can be given that our expectations will prove to have been correct. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, factors set forth in the Risk Factors section in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year, which may be updated in Item 1A of, or elsewhere in, our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed for periods subsequent to such Form 10-K. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and we undertake no obligation, other than as required by applicable law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, subsequent events, anticipated or unanticipated circumstances or otherwise. Contact: Investors/Analysts

Tiffany Louder

Alliance Data

214-494-3048

[email protected]





Media

Annabelle Baxter

Alliance Data

214-494-3818

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alliance-data-provides-card-services-performance-update-for-march-2019-300831187.html SOURCE Alliance Data Systems Corporation

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[April 12, 2019] Artificial Intelligence Chipsets Market : Top players are Google, Samsung Electronics, Microsoft, Micron Technology, Qualcomm Technologies

Global Artificial Intelligence Chipsets Market: Overview In the recent times, the global artificial intelligence chipsets market has reported a considerable upswing in its size and valuation, thanks to the continual advancements in technology. With the advent of smart devices and the high demand for latest technology, the global market is likely to remain registering a high rise over the next few years.







This research study on the worldwide artificial intelligence chipsets market offers an in-depth and unbiased assessment of this market on the basis of its previous and current performance. Researchers have also examined the most prominent trends and the growth prospects of this market in a bid to predict its future status in this market study.



Global Artificial Intelligence Chipsets Market: Trends and Opportunities The global artificial intelligence chipsets market is significantly driven by the augmenting need for artificial intelligence due to increasing volume of large and complex dataset. The rising uptake of artificial intelligence for improving consumer services and decreasing operational costs, increasing number of AI applications, and the enhancing power of computing and reducing cost of hardware are also supporting the global artificial intelligence market. However, the dearth of skilled workforce and the absence of standards and protocols may hamper the global market from growing smoothly in the near future.





The increasing focus of companies on developing human-aware artificial intelligence systems and bringing artificial intelligence to edge devices may also restrict the growth of this market over the forthcoming years. Apart from this, the low return on investments and limited structured training data are also projected to act as impeding factors for the markets growth in the years to come.



Brochure With Latest Advancements and Application @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=B&rep_id=44757 Global Artificial Intelligence Chipsets Market: Regional Outlook In terms of the geography, the worldwide artificial intelligence chipsets market registers its presence mainly across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East and Africa. The U.S. and Canada have surfaced as the key regional markets in North America. Latin America is led by Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina. China, Japan, and India acquired the leading position in Asia Pacific market for artificial intelligence chipsets and the Middle East and Africa market is dominated by GCC, North Africa, and Southern Africa. The U.K., France, and Germany are considered as the key domestic markets in Europe.



Global Artificial Intelligence Chipsets Market: Competitive Analysis The global artificial intelligence chipsets market is highly competitive, thanks to the presence of a large pool of participants. Google, Samsung Electronics, Microsoft, Micron Technology, Qualcomm Technologies, Intel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, Nvidia, and Xilinx are some of the leading vendors of artificial intelligence chipsets across the world. Huawei Technologies, Mythic, Adapteva, Koniku, Mellanox Technologies, AMD, General Vision, Fujitsu, Wave Computing, Tenstorrent, and Graphcore are some other prominent players in this market.



Download Report TOC for in-depth analysis @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=T&rep_id=44757 The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications. As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments.

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[April 12, 2019] Discover Extends Relationship with Global Payments to Increase Acceptance in Hong Kong and Taiwan

Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN), a leading worldwide provider of payment technology and software solutions, and Discover Financial Services, a leading direct bank and payments services company, announced today that Global Payments is now an acquirer for all cards on the Discover Global Network in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This includes Discover, Diners Club International and affiliate partner cards. Discover and Global Payments have been working together since 2006 with Discover Global Network card acceptance in place in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada. This relationship will now be extended at major hotels, luxury brands, food and beverage merchants and other businesses in Hong Kong and Taiwan. "Hong Kong and Taiwan are the top destinations for tourists and business travelers, especially for our Discover Global Network issuing partners in Asia Pacific," said Amy Parsons (News - Alert), senior vice president global acceptance at Discover. "We continue to look at ways to open up additional acceptance in these key markets to provide the best customer experience for our cardholders when they are traveling." "Global Payments is proud to extend our regional expertise in Diners Club and Discover card acceptance to additional markets across Asia Pacific," said Konrad Chan, President Global Payments Asia Pacific. "Diners Club and Discover are exciting additions to our extensive product and service offerings. This new partnership reaffirms our continued commitment to leading payments technology across te globe by offering another form of payment acceptance and enhancing a seamless customer experience."



The Discover Global Network includes Discover Network, Diners Club International, PULSE and affiliate networks. It has more than 44 million merchant acceptance locations and 2 million ATM cash access locations around the world. About Global Payments

Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) is a leading worldwide provider of payment technology and software solutions delivering innovative services to our customers globally. Our technologies, services and employee expertise enable us to provide a broad range of solutions that allow our customers to accept all payment types and operate their businesses more efficiently across a variety of distribution channels in many markets around the world. Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with approximately 11,000 employees worldwide, Global Payments is a member of the S&P 500 with customers and partners in 31 countries throughout North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and Brazil. For more information about Global Payments, our Service. Driven. Commerce brand and our technologies, please visit www.globalpaymentsinc.com. About Discover Discover Financial Services (NYSE: DFS) is a direct banking and payment services company with one of the most recognized brands in U.S. financial services. Since its inception in 1986, the company has become one of the largest card issuers in the United States. The company issues the Discover card, America's cash rewards pioneer, and offers private student loans, personal loans, home equity loans, checking and savings accounts and certificates of deposit through its direct banking business. It operates the Discover Global Network comprised of Discover Network, with millions of merchant and cash access locations; PULSE, one of the nation's leading ATM/debit networks; and Diners Club International, a global payments network with acceptance around the world. For more information, visit www.discover.com/company. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005059/en/

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[April 12, 2019] FinDev Canada builds partnerships to tackle poverty through private sector investments

During the World Bank Spring Meetings, FinDev Canada signed a series of agreements with peers and partners and hosted a session to bring together the technology and development worlds towards a single goal: achieving sustainable development WASHINGTON, April 12, 2019 /CNW Telbec/ -Technology and collaboration were at the core of FinDev Canada's participation at the World Bank Spring Meetings, with the signature of several agreements with peers and partners, and a fruitful discussion around the use of technology to advance development impact and help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). On the margins of the meetings, FinDev Canada signed a series of agreements, including a Memorandum of Understanding with the DFI Alliance, a group of 17 development finance institutions and international financial institutions, to collaborate towards financing sustainable projects in developing countries. For Paul Lamontagne, Managing Director of FinDev Canada, "the DFI Alliance is responding to the urgent call for much needed aligned leadership by development finance institutions to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030." Lamontagne reminds that "although progress has been made, we need to mobilize the private sector to achieve the SDGs and ensure nobody is left behind." FinDev Canada also joined 60 impact investors in signing the Operating Principles for Impact Management , a market standard for international investing in which signatories seek to generate positive impact for society alongside financial returns in a disciplined and transparent way. "As an imact-focused organization, FinDev Canada is proud to commit to these principles, and contribute to growing the level of investments targeting positive social and environmental outcomes," said Stephanie Emond, Director, Impact, at FinDev Canada. "We have established an end-to-end process to ensure that impact considerations are at the core of our investment decisions, and we welcome the opportunity to standardize these processes throughout the impact investing community."



Partnerships for business in Latin America, the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa FinDev Canada signed a Memorandum of Understanding to further collaboration with the Inter-American Development Bank, IDB Invest and IDB Lab.

The agreement includes co-financing of projects, co-investments in funds and businesses, technical assistance and knowledge-sharing. FinDev Canada shares with IDB, IDB Invest and IDB Lab a geographical focus in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as an aim to promote innovation, green growth and women's economic empowerment. "IDB has a solid track record in Latin America, and we are look forward to sharing innovative approaches to private sector financing in the region" said Suzanne Gaboury, Chief Investment Officer of FinDev Canada. "This partnership will help identify highly impactful private sector ventures that will improve the lives of thousands of people." In the same spirit, FinDev Canada and the Association of European Development Finance Institutions (EDFI) agreed to further their collaboration through periodic meetings, expert networking groups, knowledge-sharing and co-operation in bilateral and multilateral development activities, blended finance and development impact assessment. Through the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding, the association of bilateral European development finance institutions and the Canadian DFI agreed to evaluate, develop and promote best-practices in the development finance space. FinDev Canada also advanced its partnership with Proparco, co-participant of the 2X Challenge, through an agreement that will allow for further cooperation in the funding of ventures that favour women's economic empowerment and climate change mitigation in developing countries. About this partnership, Gregory Clemente, Managing Director of Proparco, declared: "We share with FinDev Canada common priorities and goals. I'm glad to see our institutions commit to work even closer, particularly on climate and gender equality, two main priorities in our activities" About FinDev Canada The Development Finance Institute Canada Inc., operating under the FinDev Canada brand, is a Canadian institution dedicated to providing financial services to the private sector in developing countries with the aim of combating poverty through economic growth by focusing on three main themes: economic development through job creation, women economic empowerment, and climate change mitigation. The Development Finance Institute Canada Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Export Development Canada (EDC). Find out more about FinDev Canada here. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/findev-canada-builds-partnerships-to-tackle-poverty-through-private-sector-investments-300831410.html SOURCE FinDev Canada

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[April 12, 2019] Hitachi Vantara Unveils State-of-the-Art Global Headquarters, Welcomes New Executive Leaders

SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hitachi Vantara , a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), today announced its brand-new, state-of-the-art global headquarters at Hitachi Santa Clara Square, which will also house offices of Hitachi America, Ltd., the regional headquarters of Hitachi Group in North America, and Hitachis Global Center for Social Innovation. The company also introduced two new senior leaders joining the companys executive team: Chief Marketing Officer Jonathan Martin and Chief Human Resources Officer Kristin Machacek Leary.

Hitachi Vantaras investments are a significant and symbolic milestone in the companys transformation to a digital business that is increasing operational efficiencies, driving long-term commercial growth and continuing to help customers unlock the power of their data. From our headquarters in Silicon Valley, Hitachi Vantara has been disrupting the technology industry for nearly 30 years, said Scott Kelly, COO and chief transformation officer at Hitachi Vantara. The next chapter for Hitachi Vantara starts today with the opening of our new Santa Clara Headquarters, which demonstrates our commitment to building a world-class organization focused on accelerating customers digital transformation. With upgraded facilities, strengthened leadership and a robust product portfolio, Hitachi Vantara is entering a new era to deliver the best outcomes for our customers. Hitachi Vantara Unveils New Global Headquarters

Hitachi Santa Clara Square houses Hitachi Vantaras new global headquarters along with the regional headquarters of Hitachi America, Ltd. Leveraging Hitachi technology to support data, voice and video connections, the campus features the Hitachi Insight Center, a state-of-the-art executive briefing center, and Hitachi Global Center for Social Innovation, a lab serving as Hitachis global R&D headquarters for collaborative creation with strategic partners in industry and academia. These cutting-edge facilities provide a showcase for customers and partners to experience a broad range of technologies from across Hitachi Group companies while expanding the reach of Hitachis Social Innovation Business. The six-story building is on a modern Silicon Valley campus featuring the latest technologies and amenities for todays workforce. As part of Hitachi Vantaras transformation strategy, the new headquarters is designed for growth and represents the companys unrelenting focus to inspire employees, attract top talent and help customers achieve outcomes that drive forward both business and society as a whole. Desined by renowned architectural firm, Pei Cobb Freed & Partners, the 1.7-million-square-foot Santa Clara Square workplace community features sleek, modern architecture, floor-to-ceiling glass for superior natural light and efficient floor plans for maximum flexibility  all designed to encourage intelligent innovation and collaboration in a number of different environments. On-site amenities include The Commons, an open-air gathering place featuring casual workspaces, the Commons Cafe, an outdoor living room and complimentary Wi-Fi, and KINETIC, a state-of-the-art fitness and wellness center. Santa Clara Square is developed and managed by Irvine Company.



Hitachi Vantara Welcomes New Leadership in 2019 To Support Customers Data-First Business Strategies

Jonathan Martin is CMO of Hitachi Vantara, bringing over 18 years of executive marketing experience from some of the industrys top technology companies. Most recently, Martin served as CMO for Pure Storage, Dell EMC and HP Software and has held senior marketing positions at Salesforce and Veritas. As CMO, Martin will lead Hitachi Vantaras worldwide marketing strategy, demand generation, digital and customer experience, brand and corporate communications, competitive and market intelligence, marketing operations and global learning teams. Kristin Machacek Leary is CHRO of Hitachi Vantara, bringing more than 25 years of progressive leadership and human resources experience. Leary joins Hitachi Vantara from global cybersecurity leader Forcepoint where she served as vice president and CHRO. As a member of Forcepoints executive leadership team, Leary led the companys HR organization and championed its global talent, culture and workforce development programs. Previously, Leary held HR leadership roles at Alphatec Spine, Quintiles, HP and Boston Scientific.

Martin and Leary report to Hitachi Vantara Chief Operating Officer and Chief Transformation Officer Scott Kelly. About Hitachi Vantara

Hitachi Vantara, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., helps data-driven leaders find and use the value in their data to innovate intelligently and reach outcomes that matter for business and society. We combine technology, intellectual property and industry knowledge to deliver data-managing solutions that help enterprises improve their customers experiences, develop new revenue streams, and lower the costs of business. Only Hitachi Vantara elevates your innovation advantage by combining deep information technology (IT), operational technology (OT) and domain expertise. We work with organizations everywhere to drive data to meaningful outcomes. Visit us at www.HitachiVantara.com .

Connect with Hitachi Vantara Twitter

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Facebook About Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi, Ltd. (TSE: 6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, delivers innovations that answer societys challenges, combining its operational technology, information technology, and products/systems. The companys consolidated revenues for fiscal 2017 (ended March 31, 2018) totaled 9,368.6 billion yen ($88.4 billion). The Hitachi Group is an innovation partner for the IoT era, and it has approximately 307,000 employees worldwide. Through collaborative creation with customers, Hitachi is deploying Social Innovation Business using digital technologies in a broad range of sectors, including Power/Energy, Industry/Distribution/Water, Urban Development, and Finance/Social Infrastructure/Healthcare. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com . MEDIA CONTACTS

Amanda Lennon

Hitachi Vantara

[email protected]

+1 650.703.7610 Ashley Paula

Weber Shandwick for Hitachi Vantara

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+1 415.262.5975 HITACHI is a trademark or registered trademark of Hitachi, Ltd. All other trademarks, service marks, and company names are properties of their respective owners.

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[April 12, 2019] InterSystems Releases Certified InterSystems IRIS Data Platform Connector for Microsoft Power BI

InterSystems, a global leader in information technology platforms for health, business, and government applications, today announced the availability of the InterSystems IRIS data platform connector for Microsoft (News - Alert) Power BI users. The InterSystems IRIS connector offers Power BI users seamless and high-performance access to the InterSystems IRIS data platform, which allows them to enhance development and accelerate digital transformation initiatives. InterSystems (News - Alert) IRIS is the company's flagship product for rapidly building data-driven applications, featuring powerful integration, multi-model and multi-workload database management, and embedded analytics capabilities to speed and simplify digital transformation initiatives. In addition to serving up relational tables through InterSystems ODBC driver, Power BI users now can also access InterSystems IRIS business intelligence (BI) cubes, leveraging the measures and dimensions defined in the data platform. This enables users to combine best-in-class data visualization capabilities of Power BI with the high performance of InterSystems' multidimensional online analytical processing (OLAP) capabilities. "In today's competitive nvironment, it's more important than ever for organizations to be agile and flexible when deploying applications that help them keep pace with evolving market demands," said Jeff Fried, director of product management for InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. "I'm thrilled that we can expand our integration with Microsoft by combining Power BI's data visualization capabilities with our cloud-native platform, enabling our partners and customers to rapidly develop data-driven applications that inform innovative business decisions."



Power BI Desktop, which now includes the InterSystems IRIS data platform connector, can be downloaded here. InterSystems IRIS is also available on Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Docker. About InterSystems

InterSystems is the information engine that powers some of the world's most important applications. In healthcare, finance, government, and other sectors where lives and livelihoods are at stake, InterSystems has been a strategic technology provider since 1978. InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts (USA), with offices worldwide, and its software products are used daily by millions of people in more than 80 countries. For more information, please visit http://www.intersystems.com/.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005084/en/

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[April 12, 2019] Lavu Gives Employees a Stake in the Company

Lavu, an industry leader in restaurant management technology platforms, announced its implementation of an employee stock option plan to grant stock options to its growing workforce. In announcing the stock option plan to staff, Saleem S. Khatri, CEO of Lavu, noted that "Lavu is at an inflection point and this is a great time for the company to thank those employees who have helped us get to where we are today. Our Lavuers have built and shaped this company into what it is - a rocket ship." Lavu's continued growth in the restaurant management technology space has resulted in a steady expansion of its workforce in Lavu's Albuquerque, New Mexico headquarters as well as its offices in Miami, Florida and Hyderabad, India. All qualified U.S.-based employees will be offered an opportunity to participate in Lavu's employee stock option plan. For many start-ups that see rapid growth, the retention of valuable employees is a defining element of success. Lavu's decision to allow employees t obtain equity in the company will deepen the already strong commitment that Lavuers have to the company.



"Lavu is a great example of a local company fostering growth for their employees. The value for local workers and the strength of the local economy when homegrown companies grow and succeed is so important for Albuquerque-it's a focus of our economic development strategy," stated Mayor Tim Keller. Albuquerque's job market is growing as is its tech scene. Lavu was founded in Albuquerque in 2010, and its decision to retain and expand its headquarters in New Mexico sends a strong message to other technology start-ups about the attractiveness of Albuquerque. Lavu is located in the heart of downtown Albuquerque, where an influx of jobs and funding are rejuvenating the area.

About Lavu: Lavu is the world's leading mobile point-of-sale system for restaurants and bars. Used in food service establishments in more than 90 countries, Lavu is a full-featured iPad-based POS system. Lavu was the first iPad point of sale in the Apple (News - Alert) App Store and continues to offer the latest in features and functionalities. Offering flexible payment-processing solutions, an intuitive interface, and a proprietary business management suite, Lavu's restaurant management platform is ideal for all food and drink establishments. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005437/en/

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[April 12, 2019] Smart Labels Market: Ireland Product Intelligence, Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast to 2024

Our latest research report on Smart Labels Market in Ireland provides a comprehensive and deep insight into the market dynamics and growth of smart labels market in Ireland. Latest information on market risks, industry chain structure, smart labels cost structure and opportunities are studied in this report. A wide range of applications and smart labels types are also studied with the help of primary and secondary research methodologies. The past, present and forecast market information will lead to investment feasibility by studying the crucial smart labels growth factors.







For More Details Get FREE Sample Pages of this Premium Country [email protected] https://www.infiniumglobalresearch.com/reports/sample-request/4264 A complete view of smart labels industry is provided based on definitions, product classification, applications, major players driving Ireland smart labels market share and revenue. The information in the form of graphs, pie charts will lead to an easy analysis of an industry. The market share of top leading players, their plans and business policies, growth factors will help other players in gaining useful business tactics.



The forecast for Ireland smart labels market information is based on the present market situation, growth opportunities, development factors, and opinion of the industry experts. An in-depth analysis of the company profiles, smart labels market revenue at the country level and its applications is conducted. The analysis of downstream buyers, sales channel, raw materials, and industry verticals is offered in this report.





Segments Covered in this Premium Report: The report on Ireland smart labels the market provides a detailed analysis of segments in the market based on technology, application, and end-user.



Segmentation based on Technology RFID Electronic Article Surveillance Labels (EAS) Sensing Labels NFC Tags Dynamic Display Labels Segmentation based on Application Retail Inventory Perishable Goods Pallets Tracking Electronic & IT Assets Equipments Others Segmentation based on End-User Retail FMCG Logistics Automotive Manufacturing Aerospace Healthcare Postal Services Construction Browse Complete Country Report and Detailed TOC: https://www.infiniumglobalresearch.com/ireland/ireland-smart-labels-market Highlights of the report The report provides detailed insights into: 1] Demand and supply conditions of the smart labels market 2] Factor affecting the smart labels market in the short run and the long run 3] The dynamics including drivers, restraints, opportunities, political, socioeconomic factors, and technological factors 4] Key trends and future prospects 5] Leading companies operating in smart labels market and their competitive position in Ireland.



6] The dealers/distributors profiles provide basic information of the top 10 dealers & distributors operating in [Ireland] smart labels market 7] IGR Matrix: to position the product types 8] Market estimates up to 2024 The report answers questions such as: 1] What is the market size of the smart labels market in Ireland? 2] What are the factors that affect the growth in smart labels market over the forecast period? 3] What is the competitive position in Ireland smart labels market? 4] What are the opportunities in Ireland smart labels market? 5] What are the modes of entering Ireland smart labels market? As a community-building service, TMCnet allows user submitted content which is not always proofed by TMCnet editors. If you feel this entry is of inferior quality or wish to report it for some reason, please forward the URL to "webedit [AT] tmcnet [DOT] com" with your comments.

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[April 11, 2019] Ad-Supported OTT Video Network Dooya TV Picks dotstudioPRO's SAAS Distribution Platform

Dooya Media Group, Inc., (DMG) an internet video content syndicator and Over-the-Top (OTT) network for consumers, today announced that it has signed a multi-year deal with dotstudioPRO to handle its advertising supported video on demand (AVOD) streaming offering, Dooya TV. After researching other options in the marketplace, Dooya chose dotstudioPRO for its intelligent cloud-based distribution and monetization platform that allows Dooya TV to launch a variety of features and provides flexibility in combining multiple business models. "We did our homework, and are thankful that we've ended up with dotstudioPRO," said Dooya CEO John T. Wells. "They have terrific tools. Our proprietary method extends metadata fields, optimizing our catalogue for search and discovery to give Dooya videos an extra boost, which in turn amplifies our content partners' ad revenues. dotstudioPRO's system links seamlessly to our process and powers our video forward, managing every step. The team is great and it's the right match." Consumers access Dooya content: on demand via app Ad-supported Video On Demand (AVOD); streaming channels; Television On Demand (TVOD); Subscription VOD; including the Roku Channel and Amazon Prime. The company has secured relationships all the top streaming platforms: Roku TV, Fire TV, Android, iOS, Apple (News - Alert) TV. These preferred deals give Dooya an advantage in ensuring its library sits "at the top of the VIP line" in the major universal search databases. "dotstudioPRO is excited to support Dooya in achieving their network goals. We're proud to have been chosen as the most suitable OTT solution to fit their business model's needs," said Joe Pascual, CEO of dotstudioPRO. "Amids a lot of noise in the space, we feel incredibly confident that Dooya will be a winner."



Dooya made the announcement at the 2019 National Association of Broadcasters expo, where dotstudioPRO launches its content syndication service with 30 plus partner syndication points. The technology company also showcases its new owned-and-operated hybrid monetization model, including AVOD, TVOD and multi-tier SVOD for VOD and linear content, all from one robust backend solution. "dotstudioPRO has quietly gained adoption in the space as the go-to solution for OTT," noted Dooya's Wells. "The platform's ability to correctly index OTT content on each streaming device puts us in the driver's seat regardless of where our audience decides to consume our video content."

That flexibility helps Dooya reinforce its mission to transform languishing or underused broadcast quality content into a revenue source, serving it up to a global audience, including underserved communities. Thus the company welcomes not only huge hits, but also actively seeks and curates hidden gems, high quality fact-based shows, and specialty programming. About Dooya Dooya Media Group, Inc. is an ad supported internet video content syndication and distribution network that leverages metadata for advanced search and discovery to amplify monetization. The company's proprietary optimization and packaging process has the support of major media players, ensuring superior content, easier search, and more relevant discovery. Its approach yields far better reach for advertisers and higher revenue for content creators. Dooya's mission is to deliver a stellar premium streaming television experience, delivering high quality fun, informative, profound, and useful video programming to consumers on TVs, smartphones and tablets. About dotstudioPRO dotstudioPRO is the next generation Online Video SaaS (News - Alert) Platform. Powering clients' multi-device streaming services, dotstudioPRO enables content owners to monetize premium content and syndicate it everywhere, making it easy for them to find an audience in a highly fragmented online video ecosystem. dotstudioPRO's CMS launches clients, across Web, iOS, Android (News - Alert), Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV in less than 8 weeks. The platform also offers player-less video syndication feeds to over 30+ platforms like VEWD and XUMO, just to name a few. dotstudioPRO's clients include Minnesota Vikings, Washington Redskins, American Beauty Star (Lifetime), Pocket Watch (Kids MCN), All Def Digital (MCN). To find out more visit us at the NAB Show this week in the South Hall (Upper) - SU11112 or www.dotstudioPRO.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190411005920/en/

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[April 11, 2019] BLAZE protocol introduces multi-dimensional ledger to solve blockchain's scalability dilemma

SINGAPORE, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Blaze, a first of its kind block-lattice protocol designed for the ever-expanding needs of the digital economy, is commencing its private token sales and has already attracted interest from notable crypto-funds such as CRC Capital. Blaze was founded by several technopreneurs including CEO Ankur Maheshwari, who is also Founder/CEO Deqode, a prominent blockchain development firm with 200 developers and counts big names in the blockchain space as clients. Jeremy Khoo, Managing Partner CRC Capital and Group CEO IFG Group also comes on board as Chief Product Officer. Blaze's unique infrastructure offers three advantages: making the governance effortless, improving the transaction processing speed and reducing blockchain bloat. The protocol has been designed to be robust and secure to support mission-critical applications. At the same time, it is flexible and resilient to keepup with the ever-changing needs of the industry.



"Having built and supported countless blockchain projects, it always comes down to how scalable versus decentralised the blockchain layer is, which is never answered convincingly," says Ankur Maheshwari, "We therefore endeavoured to solve this complex problem, and believe we have the solution now." Blaze also provides a blockchain-as-a-service platform where businesses can set up their own isolated ecosystem without worrying about the security or a need to code. With features like lightweight smart contracts, smart transactions, built-in voting, messaging and more - Blaze ensures that the businesses transition fluently into the next era of technology.

With the token sales, Blaze looks to expand on its already substantial developer base and onboard high volume clients seeking the benefits of the blockchain as well as a highly scalable solution. Blaze will also commence building an open, permissionless e-commerce ecosystem that promises to be fast, scalable and register lowest fees. With a seasoned blockchain entrepreneurial team in the fintech, IT development and e-commerce spaces, the Blaze community can look forward to major partnerships and utility on the tokens from a network as well as transactional commerce perspective. "Blaze has been in active development for a while now, and has registered major interest from its fundraising activity," says Jeremy Khoo, "From an e-commerce angle, IFG Group is glad to partner up and believe that we have finally found a solution to build an open commerce system for millions of users." Blaze is supported by a strong technical team of more than 200 active developers. The Blaze protocol has been patented on its block-lattice technology and is built in collaboration with the Institute of Engineering and Technology, India. More information on the Token Sales can be found at http://blazeprotocol.io Logo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190411/2433350-1logo SOURCE Blaze

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[April 12, 2019] Basilea reports isavuconazole (Cresemba) and ceftobiprole (Zevtera) presentations at European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID)

Basel, Switzerland, April 12, 2019  Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. (SIX: BSLN) announced today that a broad range of posters and presentations on the antifungal isavuconazole (Cresemba) and the antibiotic ceftobiprole (Zevtera) will be presented at the 29th European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID), held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, from April 13 to 16, 2019. One of the oral presentations with isavuconazole will report data from a phase 1 study in pediatric patients. The study is part of the pediatric investigation plan that was agreed with the U.S. and European regulatory authorities, FDA and EMA. Upon completion of this plan, isavuconazole may receive an additional two years of market exclusivity in the European Union and six months in the U.S. Another oral presentation will report on an open-label trial of isavuconazole prophylaxis against invasive fungal infection in adult patients undergoing allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The details of the presentations are as follows: Isavuconazole at ECCMID 2019



Saturday, 13 April 2019  10:00-12:00 CEST, Hall H

Oral Session OS017 Issues in antifungal treatment



A single-centre, open-label trial of isavuconazole prophylaxis against invasive fungal infection in patients undergoing allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation A. Stern, Y. Bogler, S. Seo, M. Perales, Y. J. Lee, G. Papanicolaou; O0107

An open-label, phase I, multi-centre study to evaluate the pharmacokinetic, safety and tolerability profile of intravenous isavuconazonium sulfate in paediatric patients  A. Arrieta, H. Frangoul, W. Steinbach, W. Muller, P. Sue, D. Yin, L. Danziger-Isakov, J. Chu, S. Rheingold, V. Statler, T. Chen, K. Hamed, C. Lademacher, A. Desai, J. Akin, D. L. Phillips, L. Kovanda, T. J. Walsh; O0110 Saturday, 13 April 2019  15:30-16:30 CEST, Paper Poster Arena

Paper Poster Session PS007  Clinical pharmacokinetics, treatment strategies and prescribing of antifungals



Isavuconazole clearance during in vitro and in vivo continuous renal replacement therapy  D. Butler, M. Biagi, S. Qasmieh, X. Tan, E. Wenzler; P0120 Monday, 15 April 2019  11:00-12:00 CEST, Arena 2

Mini-oral ePoster Session OE151  Antifungals: novel drugs, novel dosing?



Isavuconazole kinetic exploration for clinical practice L. Darnaud, F. Lamoureux, C. Godet, S. Pontier, A. Debard, N. Venisse, P. Martins, D. Concordet, P. Gandia; O0737

Comparative evaluation of isavuconazonium sulfate, voriconazole, and posaconazole for the management of invasive fungal infections in an academic medical centre  E. Van Matre, S. Evans, S. Mueller, R. MacLaren, D. Fish, T. Kiser; O0739 Monday, 15 April 2019  12:30-13:30 CEST, Paper Poster Arena

Paper Poster Session PS099  MIC testing various species



EUCAST susceptibility testing of isavuconazole: MIC data for contemporary Danish clinical mould isolates  K. M. Jrgensen, R. K. Hare, K. M. T Astvad, M. C. Arendrup; P1767 Monday, 15 April 2019  13:30-14:30 CEST, Paper Poster Arena

Paper Poster Session PS114  Current issues in clinical pharmacokinetics



Achievement of clinical isavuconazole serum and plasma trough concentrations in seven patients with isavuconazonium capsules administered via an enteral feeding tube  E. McCreary, M.-H. Nguyen, L. Sacha, J. Borlagdan, R. Shields, R. Marini, R. Rivosecchi, F. Silveira, D. Andes, A. Lepak; P1984 Tuesday, 16 April 2019  12:30-13:30 CEST, Paper Poster Arena





Paper Poster Session PS126  Conventional approaches in fungal diagnostics Comparison of azoles and amphotericin B MICs against Mucorales obtained after visual inspection or by spectrophotometric reading according to EUCAST 9.3.1.  P. Escribano, S. Lopez1, J. Diaz-Garcia, P. Munoz, E. Bouza Santiago, J. Guinea Ortega; P2216

Ceftobiprole at ECCMID 2019





Monday,15 April 2019, 13:30-14:30 CEST, Paper Poster Arena

Paper Poster Session PS107 In vitro activity of newer antibacterial agents



In vitro activity of ceftobiprole against Gram-positive isolates from clinical samples from a tertiary hospital  F. J. Candel, C. Rico-Luna, I. Diaz De La Torre, A. Ruedas, B. Laguna, J. Martinez, C. Visiedo, M. Penuelas Martinez, A. Arribi, A. Suarez; P1863

In vitro activity of ceftobiprole against isolates of common involved pathogens in nosocomial pneumonia from a tertiary hospital  F. J. Candel, I. Diaz De La Torre, A. Ruedas, C. Rico-Luna, C. Lejarraga, T. Emilov, C. Visiedo, J. Martinez, J. M. Vinuela-Prieto, A. Arribi, A. Suarez; P1864

Susceptibility of ceftobiprole and other beta-lactams against Gram-negative pathogens from hospital-acquired pneumonia in the UK and Ireland since 2011  B. Ritz, N. Redder, N. Dunkel; P1865

Susceptibility of ceftobiprole and comparators against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus from respiratory tract infections  S. Hawser, N. Kothari, M. Gueni, S. Magnet, T. Wiktorovicz, K. Hamed, I. Morrissey; P1866

Activity of ceftaroline and ceftobiprole against staphylococci and Streptococcus pneumoniae in the UK and Ireland  C. Horner. S. Mushtaq, D. Livermore; P1867 Paper Poster Session PS110  Clinical efficacy studies for antimicrobial agents



18 months of real-life use of ceftobiprole: clinical experience in an internal medicine ward  G. Russo, F. Casu, R. Franceschini; P1911 Tuesday,16 April 2019, 12:30-13:30 CEST, Paper Poster Arena

Paper Poster Session PS161  Resistance mechanisms in Gram-positive cocci PBP2a mutations do not affect bactericidal activity to ceftaroline and ceftobiprole in clinical MDR-MRSA isolates  F. Campanile, G. Mongelli, D. Bongiorno, M. Rizzo, S. Stefani; P2849 For further information please visit www.eccmid.org. About isavuconazole (Cresemba) Isavuconazole is an intravenous (i.v.) and oral azole antifungal, commercialized under the trade name Cresemba. In the 28 European Union member states, as well as in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, isavuconazole is approved for the treatment of adult patients with invasive aspergillosis and for the treatment of adult patients with mucormycosis for whom amphotericin B is inappropriate.1 Cresemba is also approved in the United States and several additional countries in and outside of Europe. It has U.S. and European orphan drug designation for its approved indications. Basilea has entered into several license and distribution agreements for isavuconazole covering the United States, Europe, China, Japan, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, Canada, Russia, Turkey and Israel.2 About ceftobiprole (Zevtera) Ceftobiprole is a cephalosporin antibiotic for intravenous administration with rapid bactericidal activity against a wide range of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria, including methicillin-susceptible and resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MSSA, MRSA) and susceptible Pseudomonas spp.3 Ceftobiprole is approved in major European countries and several non-European countries for the treatment of adult patients with community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and hospital-acquired pneumonia (HAP), excluding ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).3 It is commercialized under the trade names Zevtera and Mabelio. Basilea has entered into license and distribution agreements for the brand in Europe, Latin America, China, Canada, Israel, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Ceftobiprole is currently in a phase 3 clinical program for registration in the U.S. About Basilea Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is a commercial stage biopharmaceutical company, focused on the development of products that address the medical challenges in the therapeutic areas of oncology and anti-infectives. With two commercialized drugs, the company is committed to discovering, developing and commercializing innovative pharmaceutical products to meet the medical needs of patients with serious and life-threatening conditions. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange (SIX: BSLN). Additional information can be found at Basilea's website www.basilea.com. Disclaimer This communication expressly or implicitly contains certain forward-looking statements, such as "believe", "assume", "expect", "forecast", "project", "may", "could", "might", "will" or similar expressions concerning Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. and its business, including with respect to the progress, timing and completion of research, development and clinical studies for product candidates. Such statements involve certain known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Basilea Pharmaceutica Ltd. is providing this communication as of this date and does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements contained herein as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For further information, please contact: Peer Nils Schroder, PhD

Head of Corporate Communications & Investor Relations

+41 61 606 1102

[email protected]

[email protected] This press release can be downloaded from www.basilea.com. References 1 European Public Assessment Report (EPAR) Cresemba: http://www.ema.europa.eu

[Accessed: April 11, 2019] 2 The registration status and approved indications may vary from country to country. 3 U.K. Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) Zevtera: http://www.mhra.gov.uk/

[Accessed: April 11, 2019] Attachment Press release (PDF)

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[April 12, 2019] Ortoma Signs Exclusivity Agreement

STOCKHOLM, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ortoma has signed an exclusivity agreement under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with a European company that has Chinese ownership interests. With the MoU, Ortoma undertakes not to initiate discussions or negotiations with other companies with headquarters in Asia until June 30, 2019. The agreement gives the counterparty the opportunity to continue evaluating Ortoma's technology and negotiating commercial terms with under a limited exclusivity. At the beginning of the year, the companies evaluated the opportunities for collaboration to take the Ortoma Treatment Solution (OTS) to the market, not only in Asia but also in other parts of the world. The initial evaluation has been positive and the companies are now initiating in-depth evaluation of technology and commercial discussions. Linus Bystrom, CEO, comments: "The initial discussions not only gave the potential partner the opportunity to evaluate OTS, but also gave us an understanding of the their vision for the future. We are impressed by their insights in the orthopedic market and their vision for continued development. The company has a strong focus on innovation and a unique solution for customized implants. To accurately position these implants with OTS would further strengthen them and us in the market. Our visions for the future correspond very well. They are constantly looking for innovations that are at the forefront and see opportunities to take OTS to a unique position for hip joint surgery and then develop it further into other areas." Under MoU, Ortoma is free to continue discussions with companies that have headquarters outside Asia. The Chinese market for orthopedic implants is young, and only about 20 hip implant surgeries per 100,000 inhabitants are carried out per year. The corresponding figure for Japan is about 60, and for Sweden about 350. In China, however, around 700 000 surgeries with hip and knee implants are already performed per year, and market growth is about 20%. Ortoma Treatment Solution - careful planning and precise surgery. Contact:

Ortomas CEO Linus Bystrom or Chairman of the board Gunnar Nemeth

mail: [email protected] This information is such information as Ortoma AB (publ) is obliged to disclose in accordance with the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was provided through contact with the above contact person for publication on April 12th, 2019. This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com https://news.cision.com/ortoma/r/ortoma-signs-exclusivity-agreement,c2787550 The following files are available for download:







https://mb.cision.com/Main/11612/2787550/1025056.pdf Press release in PDF

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ortoma-signs-exclusivity-agreement-300831264.html SOURCE Ortoma

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[April 12, 2019]

NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Asteroid Redirect Test Mission

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- NASA has selected SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, to provide launch services for the agency's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, the first-ever mission to demonstrate the capability to deflect an asteroid by colliding a spacecraft with it at high speed  a technique known as a kinetic impactor.

The total cost for NASA to launch DART is approximately $69 million, which includes the launch service and other mission reated costs.







The DART mission currently is targeted to launch in June 2021 on a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. By using solar electric propulsion, DART will intercept the asteroid Didymos' small moon in October 2022, when the asteroid will be within 11 million kilometers of Earth.

NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service. The DART Project office is located at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office in Washington.

For more information about NASA programs and missions, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-awards-launch-services-contract-for-asteroid-redirect-test-mission-300831286.html

SOURCE NASA
[April 12, 2019] Panopto announces video integration with Blackboard Learn Ultra

SEATTLE, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Panopto, the leading video platform for universities and businesses, today announced the release of the company's new integration for the Blackboard Learn Ultra learning management system. Panopto's seamless integration with Blackboard Learn Ultra makes it easier than ever for customers of Blackboard and Panopto to create, share and view learning and lecture capture videos within any courses in the Blackboard Learn Ultra experience. Panopto's new integration with Blackboard Learn Ultra features two-way single sign-on, rolling permissions sync to ensure permissions stay current, access sync to enable students to see all the videos they have access to, and SCORM support. With the integration, Blackboard users can easily embed videos, playlists, and even a complete Panopto video library directly within Ultra. Panopto's easy-to-use, all-in-one video platform provides faculty, administrators, and students with everything they need for success with video-based learning, including flexible options for recording, lecture capture, video management, quizzing, editing, analytics, note-taking, and discussions. "From day one, we've built Panoptoto seamlessly integrate into the interface and infrastructure of learning management systems," said Eric Burns, co-founder and CEO of Panopto. "With today's announcement, we're bringing that seamless integration to Ultra, providing faculty and students with the industry's best support for academic video in their courses."



"We're pleased to count Panopto as part of the Blackboard Learn Ultra environment. As one of our recognized partners, Panopto has been making video easy for our Blackboard community for more than a decade," said Jim Chalex, Vice President of Teaching & Learning Product Management at Blackboard. "The number of clients adopting Blackboard Learn Ultra continues to grow steadily, and having partners like Panopto bringing Ultra compatible integrations allows us to jointly deliver the best experience for our users." Panopto customers using Blackboard Learn Ultra can contact their Panopto account team to learn more about the integration. Organizations interested in using Panopto as part of their Blackboard Learn Ultra experience can contact Panopto sales at [email protected] to learn how they can qualify for a free 30-day trial of Panopto.

About Panopto

Panopto helps universities and businesses create searchable video libraries of their institutional knowledge. Since 2007, the company has been a pioneer in video content management systems, video capture software, and inside-video search technology. Today, Panopto's video platform is the largest repository of expert learning videos in the world. Headquartered in Seattle, with offices in Pittsburgh, London, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Sydney, Panopto has received industry recognition for its innovation, rapid growth, and company culture. For more information, visit www.panopto.com . View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/panopto-announces-video-integration-with-blackboard-learn-ultra-300831148.html SOURCE Panopto

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[April 12, 2019] Rotunda Capital Partners Sells Munch's Supply to Ridgemont Equity Partners

Rotunda Capital Partners, LLC ("Rotunda"), a private equity firm focused on lower middle market and family-owned holdings, announces the sale of Munch's Supply, a leading wholesale HVAC distributor, to Ridgemont Equity Partners. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Munch's Supply, based in New Lenox, Illinois, serves residential and commercial customers in the Midwest, Great Plains and Mountain states, distributing products from more than 100 trusted HVAC equipment, parts and supplies manufacturers, including Trane (News - Alert), American Standard, Rheem and Mitsubishi. Rotunda acquired a majority stake in Munch's in 2015. Since Rotunda's investment, Munch's tripled in revenues, completed four acquisitions, and expanded from seven locations in one state to 27 locations in nine states. "On the first day of our investment in Munch's, we set a goal with the Munch's leadership team to become the acquirer of choice in the HVAC distribution industry," said Corey Whisner, partner at Rotunda Capital Partners. "With four acquisitions under their belt, I believe the Munch's team has achieved that goal and is poised for future growth." "Rotunda was a true partner to Munch's, providing valuable strategic insight while investing in people and resources to help us achieve our goals," said Bob Munch, CEO of Munch's Supply. "We are a significantly larger, stronger, and better organization because of our partnership with Rotunda." Rotunda Partner Dan Lipson credits Munch's historically strong company culture and customer-sevice focus, which have not wavered during the company's rapid growth. "The Munch's management has done an outstanding job investing in its people and infrastructure to maintain its commitment to best-in-class service, while substantially expanding the organization," said Lipson.



Ridgemont Equity Partners, a middle market private equity investor, looks to continue Munch's growth trajectory in partnership with existing management through further investment and increased M&A initiatives. The transaction closed on April 11, 2019. Lincoln International acted as financial advisor to Munch's and Benesch Friedlander served as legal counsel.

About Munch's Supply Munch's Supply is a leading wholesale distributor of HVAC equipment, parts and supplies to residential and commercial customers in the Midwest, Great Plains and Mountain states. The Company distributes products from more than 100 leading HVAC equipment, parts and supplies manufacturers, including Trane, American Standard, Rheem and Mitsubishi (News - Alert). Munch's Supply was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in New Lenox, Illinois. www.munchsupply.com About Rotunda Capital Partners Rotunda Capital Partners is a private equity firm that invests equity capital in established and profitable lower middle-market companies. As an independent deal sponsor, Rotunda Capital raises and invests the capital of its principals, institutions, family offices and high net worth individuals on a deal-by-deal basis. The firm uses a rigorous approach to identify market-leading companies with identifiable growth opportunities and capable management teams in targeted sectors, including distribution, logistics, financial services and business services. Rotunda Capital partners with industry-leading operating executives to grow each portfolio company. Since 2009, Rotunda Capital has completed 12 platform investments and realized four exits. The partners of Rotunda Capital actively provide guidance and draw on deep industry and financial relationships to contribute to the successful execution of Rotunda's companies' strategic plans. For more, visit www.rotundacapital.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005042/en/

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[April 12, 2019]

Juno Markets Launches Customer Support Through All Major Mobile Communications Apps

PORT VILA, Vanuatu, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Enhancing its customer support experience, Juno Markets is now offering clients the ability to contact support through several communication apps such as Whatsapp, Wechat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Line, and Telegram. Clients can reach Juno Markets directly from their app of choice through an integrated widget on the company's website.

Tung Ng, Juno Markets' head of client services, states "People have become less dependent on email and desktop chat services and expect to have real time feedback when dealing with companies. Therefore we're providing a mobile friendly experience for all of our clients using the apps that they most often already use."

Visit https://www.junomarkets.com/ o contact us directly.







About Juno Markets

Juno Markets is a leading online forex and CFDs trading service provider. Starting in Asia Pacific, the firm was established by industry veterans who believe in bringing an exceptional trading experience to traders through use of the latest technology and localized support and services. Juno Markets aims to become the premier broker for both clients and IBs through low cost spreads, reliable execution, and unique trading resources. For more information on the Company, its products and services, please visit https://www.junomarkets.com.

For further enquiries, please contact [email protected]

Leon Choi

+61 290524945

View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/juno-markets-launches-customer-support-through-all-major-mobile-communications-apps-300831048.html

SOURCE Juno Markets
[April 12, 2019] HRG Robotics Showcases Golden Partner Position and Robot Services at Automate 2019

CHICAGO, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- HIT Robot Group (HRG Robotics or "the Group"), one of China's leading robot manufactures, has presented its golden partner position to tap into the Chinese market at Automate 2019 in Chicago, a major event in North America devoted to automation industry trends. The Group has also showcased its latest lineup of robotic products. China is in the midst of a booming market for robotic products, and companies have urgent needs for an automation upgrade that remain unmet. Many manufacturers think that automation will take the form of just robots in the production process. However, only robot makers with cross-sector capabilities will be able to integrate robotics in a cohesively and smart way while adapting to various kinds of devices and communication protocols. To meet such needs, HRG Robotics has teams of professional engineers and project managers to ensure a smoother application of its robotic products. To ease the pain points the industry has faced, HRG's booth at Automate highlights its latest technological breakthroughs and services that position it to be a "Golden Partner" to companis looking to enter the Chinese market. The Group has also brought three of its star products to the event:



HRG Cloud Robotics Platform: The Chinese robot market lacks a platform for remote monitoring, error warning and diagnosis, and smart operation and maintenance. This platform syncs to HRG's cloud service as it collects and analyzes real-time data on production lines, enabling operators to monitor, control and resolve issues swiftly. Transforma Robotics, a Singaporean construction robot maker, uses HRG Robotics' cloud service to help it monitor task status with real-time displays powered by big data and AI technology, and to leverage a smarter arrangement and management system.

Bang Bang Smart Manufacturing Service: Chinese companies generally don't have much knowledge about smart automation and can't easily find suitable third-party system integrators. Bang Bang is seeking international experts and quality system integrators to tackle this issue. The platform can help American companies find suitable Chinese partners with an annual production value exceeding RMB 500 million . Bang Bang integrates resources including information on government policies, industry trends, manufacturing campuses and funds to help match industry players and stakeholders in China and the U.S. to further expand their businesses. Bang Bang serves HRG Robotics' mission of being a " Golden Partner " for overseas companies by helping U.S. clients lower their operational risk in China and find suitable partners.

. Bang Bang integrates resources including information on government policies, industry trends, manufacturing campuses and funds to help match industry players and stakeholders in and the U.S. to further expand their businesses. Bang Bang serves HRG Robotics' mission of being a " " for overseas companies by helping U.S. clients lower their operational risk in and find suitable partners. Mountain Power: To solve the research and development and resource shortages faced by Chinese technology and manufacturing enterprises, this online platform is designed to help companies connect with hundreds of thousands of industrial robotic experts. Users can post their projects and conduct public bidding to find the most suitable partners to help solve technical issues and problems in project development. HRG is looking to cooperate with investors, companies with an engineering force, and experts with an engineering background. About HIT Robot Group Established in 2014, HIT Robot Group (HRG) is a Chinese technology company focusing on robotics and artificial intelligence technology innovation and commercialization. Its functions include research and development, productization, startup incubation, business operation as well as many other activities to bring new technology to market. Now HRG is a system that encourages innovation, entrepreneurship and industry development achieved by its business network made up of one headquarters, four business centers, dozens of industry bases and overseas offices.

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20190411/2433436-1 SOURCE HIT Robot Group

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[April 12, 2019] Wildflower Featured in CannabisNewsAudio Broadcast on Growing Acceptance, Soaring Sales in CBD Market

NEW YORK, April 12, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via CannabisNewsAudio  Wildflower Brands Inc. (OTCQB:WLDFF) (CSE:SUN) announces the availability of a CannabisNewsAudio Publication titled,  Increasing Growth, Acceptance Move CBD Market Toward Mainstream .

To hear the CannabisNewsAudio version, visit: http://cnw.fm/gbS9W To read the full editorial, visit: http://cnw.fm/yIc4m If the past few years have been fruitful, the future looks even brighter for CBD. Soaring sales, growing acceptance within mainstream sports, and the recognized influence of some of the major players within the broader cannabis industry all point to positive movement forward for CBD. And as companies overcome the challenges offered by distributing a previously obscure product to a broad market, the industry looks set to soar. Of course, all this expansion comes with significant challenges. As the market grows and evolves, CBD companies must find ways to distribute products to a sector that didnt exist a decade ago. The infrastructure most other industries take for granted is being built from scratch. Fortunately, the companies moving into this space are willing to adapt and move quickly to support their expansion. This involves forging alliances with other players within the cannabis sector to increase teir combined reach. Wildflower has recently done this through a delivery fulfillment agreement with HelloMD , a leading digital healthcare platform for cannabis doctors, consumers and brands. The deal will allow Wildflower to potentially reach more customers through HelloMDs expansive e-commerce platform.



About Wildflower Brands Wildflower Brands is a company headquartered in Vancouver building reputable brands and quality products that incorporate the synergistic effects of plants and their extracts. For more information, visit the companys website at www.WildflowerBrands.co

About CannabisNewsWire (CNW) CannabisNewsWire (CNW) is a specialized information service that (1) aggregates cannabis news, (2) provides CannabisNewsBreaks that quickly updates investors in the space, (3) enhances corporate press releases, (4) helps companies with distribution and optimization of social media, and (5) delivers comprehensive corporate communication solutions. CNW is uniquely positioned in the cannabis market with a strong team of journalists and writers who can help private and public companies reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public through our ever-growing dissemination network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets. CNW is bringing unparalleled visibility, recognition and content to the cannabis industry. For more information please visit https://www.CannabisNewsWire.com Please see full terms of use and disclaimers on the CannabisNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by CNW, wherever published or re-published: http://CNW.fm/Disclaimer Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Corporate Communications: CannabisNewsWire (CNW)

Denver, Colorado

www.CannabisNewsWire.com

303.498.7722 Office

[email protected]

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[April 12, 2019] ILTA Announces the Next Era of ILTACON

The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) announces today it will expand the ILTACON legal technology conference to feature two global destinations annually. In 2019, the 43rd annual ILTACON conference will be held in Orlando, Florida US Aug 18-22, 2019, and the ILTACON Europe conference will grow into a two-day event Nov 13-14, 2019, in London, England. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005283/en/ Andrew Powell, Joy Heath Rush, Tony McKenna - photo credit: Russ Gostelow Celebrating its 14th year this year, ILTACON Europe (formerly INSIGHT) will move from its previous etc.venues home to the recently opened and larger etc.venues 133 Houndsditch. ILTA's International Program Planning Council co-chairs Tony McKenna, IT Director, Gowling WLG (UK) LLP, and Andrew Powell, Director of IT, Macfarlanes LLP, joined ILTA CEO, Joy Heath Rush, to tour the new space and collaborate on the unique and targeted education, supplier demonstration, and networking opportunities for this year's ILTACON Europe delegates. "Our premier UK event, known for many years as INSIGHT, now transitions into ILTACON Europe, to align with ILTA's overall premier education and peer networking focus," said Joy Heath Rush, ILTA CEO. "This reflects not only ILTA's dedication to the growing UK and European legal tech communities, but my personal belief that the legal technology markets in Europe and the UK would vastly benefit from the types of events only ILTA delivers. The quality of the peer-driven education, supplier discussions, and unique networking time with peers doing similar work, will mke ILTACON Europe an unparalleled experience and destination for those in legal tech supporting the practice of law."



As part of their entity-based, global membership model, ILTA develops rich educational content for professionals at in-house law departments, law firms, government law departments, and academia, delivered via in-person conferences, roadshows and local meetings, virtual webinars, blogs, and publications. A formidable group of UK-based ILTA thought leaders and futurists, spanning business and legal technology expertise, will lead the strategic education direction of ILTACON Europe in 2019. Additionally, ILTA recently hired Mercedes Brown, UK Community Engagement Manager, ILTA's first full-time staff member outside of North America. Mercedes Brown, is located in London and comes to ILTA with a law background and experience working with legal tech suppliers and community organizations.

The two-day format of ILTACON Europe will provide delegates a new evening event experience Wednesday evening, beyond the historically brief cocktail reception, where further networking and peer discussions can happen more casual and festive environment. "I am so pleased to be leading ILTA at this time as we expand our footprint across the UK and Europe," said Joy Heath Rush. "ILTACON has always served as a unique, in-person, destination for the global legal technology community to reap the benefits only ILTA can provide. I am thrilled to showcase ILTACON Europe to our new and growing communities this November." About ILTACON ILTACON is the premier legal technology conference for professionals undertaking initiatives in support of the practice of law. The 4-day conference will bring together leaders, managers and decision-making legal technologists from small to large-sized law firms, corporate and government law departments, academia and the G100 firms to discover and evolve successful legal operation strategies for today's transforming legal industry. ILTACON will be held in Orlando, Florida US, August 18-22, 2019. About ILTACON Europe (formerly INSIGHT) ILTACON Europe expands to a two-day conference in 2019, and focuses on educational content designed and delivered by UK and European law firm and legal tech professionals. This premier legal technology conference will bring together leaders, managers and decision-making legal technologists across Europe and the UK from small to large-sized law firms, corporate law departments, including the Magic Circle and G100 firms, to discover and evolve successful legal operation strategies for today's transforming legal industry. ILTACON Europe will take place in London on 13-14 November 2019. About ILTA The International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) serves the professional needs of more than 24,000 international legal technology professionals, their member firms and in-house organizations. Our core values-respect, commitment to members, sharing of information, diversity and inclusion, and promoting lifelong learning-drive all we do to support the peer-driven organization that is ILTA. Since its founding in 1980, the association's focus is to achieve results for our membership and the legal technology profession at large. ILTA provides membership programs throughout the year, including virtual and local meetings, authored content, publications, conferences and events, (ILTACON and ILTACON Europe, LegalSEC Summit, Women Who Lead, Young Professionals, ILTAVATION). Much of the value we provide as an association occurs through the coordinated efforts with our global volunteer membership teams to develop this programming and education throughout the year. ILTA membership is entity-based - employees of eligible member organizations can access ILTA benefits and programs under their employer's umbrella membership. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005283/en/

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[April 12, 2019] Frontline Education Launches Section 504 Video Series: "The Core Concepts of Section 504"

MALVERN, Pa., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Frontline Education, a leading provider of school administration software for the K-12 education community, is excited to announce the launch of a seven-episode video series detailing key aspects of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act as a resource for administrators and educators supporting students with disabilities. The series aims to build understanding and awareness around complex 504 regulations, to help school districts ensure equitable instructional access, improve the quality of 504 Plans and enhance compliance, to mitigate risks to the district. The series features leading school law practitioner, John Comegno. "Section 504 is not about expanding rights. It's not about changing student experience. It's not about creating educational rights. It's about protecting education rights," said John Comegno, founder and president of The Comegno Law Group. "Understanding the criteria of Section 504 is crucial to compliant delivery and implementation of the mandate for students." The videos include: "Introduction to Core Concepts of Section 504" : Examines the origins of Section 504, looking at the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act to discuss the intention of the laws and their evolution as a result of important cases and events. Learn three guiding principles to strengthen your 504 processes.





: Examines the origins of Section 504, looking at the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act to discuss the intention of the laws and their evolution as a result of important cases and events. Learn three guiding principles to strengthen your 504 processes. "Understanding the Section 504 Eligibility Criteria": Aims to help educators make informed decisions based on specific criteria in the Americans with Disabilities Act, and understand what is needed to gather high-quality Section 504 eligibility data. This episode defines the terms "physical impairment," "mental impairment" and "major life activity" with regard to 504 eligibility.





Aims to help educators make informed decisions based on specific criteria in the Americans with Disabilities Act, and understand what is needed to gather high-quality Section 504 eligibility data. This episode defines the terms "physical impairment," "mental impairment" and "major life activity" with regard to 504 eligibility. "Unraveling the Key Concept of "Otherwise Qualified" and its Implications": Addresses the challenges education organizations face when defining this term and defending 504-eligibilitydecisions by looking at important cases that bring the regulation into focus. The episode also walks you through the legal definition of "substantially limit" and identifies specific data to consider when determining whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity.









Addresses the challenges education organizations face when defining this term and defending 504-eligibilitydecisions by looking at important cases that bring the regulation into focus. The episode also walks you through the legal definition of "substantially limit" and identifies specific data to consider when determining whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity. "Are We Just Talking About Medical Diagnosis? Using Data in Section 504 Decision-Making": Discusses how to use student data to ensure access and fulfill 504's mandate: thou shall not discriminate. The episode identifies specific data that education organizations should consider when determining whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity. Several cases are reviewed to shed light on the use of practical data in 504 decision-making.





Discusses how to use student data to ensure access and fulfill 504's mandate: thou shall not discriminate. The episode identifies specific data that education organizations should consider when determining whether an impairment substantially limits a major life activity. Several cases are reviewed to shed light on the use of practical data in 504 decision-making. "When are 504 Plans for Students Exiting Special Education Appropriate?": Reviews best practices for considering 504 eligibility when a student is no longer eligible for special education. The episode outlines specific student data that needs to be plugged in to inform a compliant decision-making process. John also clarifies intent of IEPs and 504 Plans and identifies the legal differences between the two classifications.







Reviews best practices for considering 504 eligibility when a student is no longer eligible for special education. The episode outlines specific student data that needs to be plugged in to inform a compliant decision-making process. John also clarifies intent of IEPs and 504 Plans and identifies the legal differences between the two classifications. "What About Behaviors? Do our 504 Students Receive "Extra" Due Process ? ": Answers common legal questions that arise around a district's due process related to behavioral intervention plans and behavior management plans for students that fall under Section 504. The episode reviews how the integrity of your district's data and 504 processes is critical for compliance management and plan implementation. John also outlines specific disciplinary consequences related to 504.





? Answers common legal questions that arise around a district's due process related to behavioral intervention plans and behavior management plans for students that fall under Section 504. The episode reviews how the integrity of your district's data and 504 processes is critical for compliance management and plan implementation. John also outlines specific disciplinary consequences related to 504. "Best Practices in Drafting Section 504 Plans: The Need for Consistency": Outlines the many different types of data needed to make legally sound eligibility determinations and ensure that educators are capturing the necessary information for each student. In addition, the series concludes by sharing specific best practices for 504 procedural safeguards and accommodation review. Who should be at your 504-decision-making table? What should your process and plans look like? New episodes will launch each Thursday between April 11 and May 23. For more information and to watch the series please visit the Frontline Education blog. About Frontline Education:? Frontline Education is the leading provider of school administration software, empowering strategic K-12 leaders with the right tools, data and insights to proactively manage human capital, business operations and special education. Educational organizations representing over 80,000 schools?and millions of educators, administrators and support personnel have partnered with Frontline Education in their efforts to develop the next generation of learners. Frontline is dedicated to driving engagement across K-12 school systems and supporting the continuous improvement of employee effectiveness and efficiency with solutions for proactive recruiting and hiring, absence and time, professional growth, student information systems, special education and interventions, payroll, benefits and financial management. Frontline Education corporate headquarters are in Malvern, Pennsylvania, with offices in Andover, Massachusetts; Rockville Centre, New York; and Austin, TX. Learn more at?www.FrontlineEducation.com View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/frontline-education-launches-section-504-video-series-the-core-concepts-of-section-504-300831364.html SOURCE Frontline Education

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[April 12, 2019] Navy Federal Recognized for the Best Reputation in Financial Services

Navy Federal Credit Union has been named the most reputable company in financial services by Reputation Institute's 2019 US RepTrak 100. The US RepTrak 100, in its 12th year, measures the public perception of companies in the US. The study uses seven key elements of reputation to evaluate companies: This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005315/en/







 Products/Services  Workplace  Citizenship  Performance  Innovation  Governance  Leadership

Navy Federal posted high scores in all seven elements of its reputation. In addition to owning the top spot in financial services, Navy Federal is listed as having the 11th best reputation across all 2,200 companies included in the study. "Our credit union's reputation is built on 85 years of serving the military and their families," said Pam Piligian, senior vice president of marketing and communications at Navy Federal. "That means helping our members reach their goals. It means being an active member in our communities. It means taking care of our employees and business partners. This recognition is evidence of our commitment in those areas." Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, chief reputation officer at Reputation Institute, said, "Navy Federal shines as a leader in reputation management. Companies across all industries, in particular financial services, should take note. The sky is the limit when you're doing the right thing by your customers, communities and stakeholders." Navy Federal is continuously recognized for its reputation as a leader by various organizations. Most recently, FORTUNE ranked the credit union 29th overall in its "100 Best Companies to Work For" in 2019. In 2018, Javelin Strategy & Research gave Navy Federal top honors in its 2018 Trust in Banking Awards and Forrester Research (News - Alert) named the credit union as the top "Best-in-Class" Brand in Customer Experience. For more information about Navy Federal's awards and recognition, visit our newsroom. About Navy Federal Credit Union: Established in 1933 with only seven members, Navy Federal now has the distinct honor of serving over 8 million members globally and is the world's largest credit union. As a member-owned and not-for-profit organization, Navy Federal always puts the financial needs of its members first. Membership is open to all Department of Defense and Coast Guard Active Duty, veterans, civilian and contractor personnel, and their families. Dedicated to its mission of service, Navy Federal employs a workforce of over 18,000 and has a global network of 329 branches. For more information about Navy Federal Credit Union, visit navyfederal.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005315/en/

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[April 12, 2019] ManpowerGroup Named a Top Workplace by Employees for Job Satisfaction for the Second Consecutive Year

MILWAUKEE, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- ManpowerGroup (NYSE:MAN) has been named a 2019 Top Workplace in Southeast Wisconsin by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The award is based solely on employee feedback and recognizes ManpowerGroup for the second year for the strength of its workplace culture including its commitment to diversity and inclusion, attracting and developing talent and employee engagement. "Putting hundreds of thousands of people to work every year across Wisconsin and the U.S. is only possible because we are committed to cultivating a work environment where people can be their true selves and feel empowered to reach their potential," said Becky Frankiewicz, President, ManpowerGroup North America. "It's important to us that we take responsibility to broaden the capabilities of our people, nurture a culture of learnability and develop the skills needed for jobs today and tomorrow. That's why this award is even more of an honor because our own people are telling us ManpowerGroup is a place they want to work, feel supported and can thrive." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Top Workplace Awards facilitated by research firm Energage survey Southeast Wisconsin's leading small, medium and large employers to measure work environments. To learn more about ManpowerGroup's commitment to connecting people to meaningful and sustainable employment, visit https://doingwellbydoinggood.manpowergroup.com/.



ABOUT MANPOWERGROUP ManpowerGroup (NYSE: MAN), the leading global workforce solutions company, helps organizations transform in a fast-changing world of work by sourcing, assessing, developing and managing the talent that enables them to win. We develop innovative solutions for hundreds of thousands of organizations every year, providing them with skilled talent while finding meaningful, sustainable employment for millions of people across a wide range of industries and skills. Our expert family of brands  Manpower, Experis, Right Management and ManpowerGroup Solutions  creates substantially more value for candidates and clients across 80 countries and territories and has done so for over 70 years. In 2019, ManpowerGroup was named one of Fortune's Most Admired Companies for the seventeenth year and one of the World's Most Ethical Companies for the tenth year, confirming our position as the most trusted brand in the industry. See how ManpowerGroup is powering the future of work: www.manpowergroup.com.

ABOUT ENERGAGE, LLC Headquartered in Exton, Pa., Energage (formerly known as WorkplaceDynamics) is a leading provider of technology-based employee engagement tools that help leaders to unlock potential, inspire performance, and achieve amazing results within their organizations. The research partner behind the Top Workplaces program, Energage has surveyed more than 47,000 organizations representing well over 16 million employees in the United States. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/manpowergroup-named-a-top-workplace-by-employees-for-job-satisfaction-for-the-second-consecutive-year-300831372.html SOURCE ManpowerGroup

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[April 12, 2019] Carbon Yield Fund Wins 2019 Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge

Morgan Stanley's Institute for Sustainable Investing and Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management in the U.S. today announced that Carbon Yield Fund was named the winner of the 2019 Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge. The team was one of 12 finalists competing in the Challenge at Morgan Stanley's Hong Kong offices on Friday. The team proposed a solution to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions by increasing organic farming practices. The Carbon Yield Fund would provide loans to Midwestern farms in the United States that begin the organic certification process, then monetize emissions reductions associated with regenerative organic agriculture through an aggregated carbon offset program, documenting and marketing credits on behalf of the farmers. This additional revenue would help offset transition costs for farms and return capital to the fund's investors. Now in its ninth year, the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge is an annual global competition designed to inspire future leaders to develop innovative financial vehicles to help address environmental, social and governance challenges. The 12 finalist teams were selected from 365 students, hailing from 50 countries. They represent 80 graduate schools and their projects targeted impact in 31 countries. "We continue to be inspired by the level of creativity and passion embedded in these student proposals that aim to help solve some of the most complex issues facing the world today and in the future," said Matthew Slovik, Head of Global Sustainable Finance at Morgan Stanley. "The impressive proposal articulated by the Carbon Yield Fund demonstrates that by bringing creativity to finance, we can make meaningful progress on pressing social and environmental challenges." The winning team consisted of Tom Fields, David Mallett, Claire Pluard and Sam Schiller from the United States. This year's runner-up was the Grey to Green Fund, who proposed a solution to help reduce hotels' water consumption throughout the United States. They designed a multi-asset fund that would act as a market aggregator for hotel greywater infrastructure. "One of my favorite parts about the challenge is seeing the diverse set of solutions that are brought to the table by these future leaders," said Dave Chen, Principal & CEO, Equilibrium Capital and Adjunct Professor of Finance, Kellogg School of Management. "We want to congratulate the 12 finalist teams, our winners and each of the 365 students that entered the Kellogg-Morgan Stanley Sustainable Investing Challenge. They challenged themselves to create investment strategies that can help deliver positive impact." The Challenge seeks to inspire the next generation of sustainable investing practitioners, connect emerging leader with industry professionals, and foster greater emphasis on sustainable finance at graduate schools around the world. More information on this year's finalists and winner can be found on Morgan Stanley's website. You can also follow the conversation on social media with #SIChallenge.



About Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) is a leading global financial services firm providing investment banking, securities, wealth management and investment management services. With offices in more than 41 countries, the Firm's employees serve clients worldwide including corporations, governments, institutions and individuals. For more information about Morgan Stanley, please visit www.morganstanley.com.

About The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing The Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing builds scalable finance solutions that seek to deliver competitive market rate returns while driving positive environmental and social impact. The Institute creates innovative financial products, thoughtful insights and capacity building programs that help maximize capital to create a more sustainable future. For more information about the Morgan Stanley Institute for Sustainable Investing, visit www.morganstanley.com/sustainableinvesting. About Kellogg School of Management The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University develops brave leaders who inspire growth in people, organizations and markets. Based just outside of Chicago, the school is a global leader in management education, renowned for its distinctive thought leadership and pioneering approach to learning. Kellogg offers an innovative portfolio of programs: four Full-Time MBA programs including leading one-year program and joint degree programs with the engineering, law and medical schools; a Part-Time MBA Program; the premier Executive MBA global network; and extensive non-degree Executive Education programs. To learn more about Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, please visit http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu. This material was published on April 12, 2019 and has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any security or other financial instrument or to participate in any trading strategy. This material was not prepared by the Morgan Stanley Research Department and is not a Research Report as defined under FINRA regulations. This material does not provide individually tailored investment advice. It has been prepared without regard to the individual financial circumstances and objectives of persons who receive it. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC (collectively, "Morgan Stanley"), Members SIPC, recommend that recipients should determine, in consultation with their own investment, legal, tax, regulatory and accounting advisors, the economic risks and merits, as well as the legal, tax, regulatory and accounting characteristics and consequences, of the transaction. The appropriateness of a particular investment or strategy will depend on an investor's individual circumstances and objectives. This material contains forward-looking statements and there can be no guarantee that they will come to pass. Information contained herein is based on data from multiple sources and Morgan Stanley makes no representation as to the accuracy or completeness of data from sources outside of Morgan Stanley. References to third parties contained herein should not be considered a solicitation on behalf of or an endorsement of those entities by Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley, its affiliates and Morgan Stanley Financial Advisors do not provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Individuals should consult their tax advisor for matters involving taxation and tax planning and their attorney for matters involving legal matters.  2019 Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Members SIPC. All rights reserved. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005324/en/

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[April 12, 2019] Graybar Announces Leadership Changes

ST. LOUIS, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Graybar, a leading distributor of electrical, communications and data networking products and provider of related supply chain management and logistics services, has announced the election of Randall R. Harwood to Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer and Scott S. Clifford to Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, effective June 1, 2019. Harwood currently serves as Graybar's Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, a position he has held since 2013. Harwood has more than 40 years with Graybar and has a strong track record of leadership in both field and corporate executive roles. In his new assignment, he will lead the execution of Graybar's long-term strategy, including strategic planning, innovation and enterprise project management. Clifford currently serves as Senior Vice President - Supply Chain Management, a position he has held since 2015. In his 25 years with Graybar, Clifford has successfully held senior leadership roles in finance, IT, strategy and supply chain management. As he moves into his new position as Chief Financial Officer, he will continue to lead Graybar's IT and supply chai organizations. Both Harwood and Clifford also serve on Graybar's board of directors.



"Randy and Scott are both highly respected leaders who have already made significant contributions to Graybar's success," said Graybar's Chairman, President and CEO Kathleen M. Mazzarella. "As we strive to transform our company for the future, I am confident they have the strategic vision to accelerate our progress and position Graybar for continued growth." Graybar, a Fortune 500 corporation and one of the largest employee-owned companies in North America, is a leader in the distribution of high quality electrical, communications and data networking products, and specializes in related supply chain management and logistics services. Through its network of 289 North American distribution facilities, it stocks and sells products from thousands of manufacturers, helping its customers power, network and secure their facilities with speed, intelligence and efficiency. For more information, visit www.graybar.com or call 1-800-GRAYBAR.

Media Contact:

Tim Sommer

(314) 578-7672

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/graybar-announces-leadership-changes-300831458.html SOURCE Graybar

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[April 12, 2019] NASA Invites You to "Picture Earth" for Earth Day

WASHINGTON, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Our magnificent planet is always ready for its close-up. On Earth Day, April 22, NASA wants to see your take. NASA invites you to celebrate the planet we call home with our #PictureEarth social media event. Post a close-up photo on social media of your favorite natural features, such as crashing waves, ancient trees, blooming flowers, or stunning sunsets. Use the hashtag #PictureEarth and upload the photo on April 22. Be sure to include the location where the photo was taken in the text of your social media post. On Earth Day, we will share some of NASA's most stunning images of Earth from space to inspire you. We'll check Instagram, Twitter and our NASA Earth Facebook event page to find your images and select photos from around the world to showcase later in videos and composite images. NASA satellite and airborne instruments picture Earth every day to increase our knowledge of our home and improve lives. These images, shared with scientists and the public worldwide may use visible light, like a photographer's camera, or peer into infrared, microwave and radio wavelengths that are invisible to human eyes.



Scientists use data from all of our instruments, and Earth-observing spacecraft from other nations, to build a picture of the planet that grows more and more complete over time. On April 26, our next addition to our Earth-observing fleet, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 3, is set to launch to the International Space Station. The new knowledge made possible by this fleet helps create solutions to important global issues such as changing freshwater availability, food security and human health. For more information about NASA's #PictureEarth, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/earth/picture-earth-for-earth-day-2019 or https://www.nasa.gov/earth/retrata-la-tierra-para-el-d-a-de-la-tierra-2019 For more information about NASA's Earth science programs, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/earth View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nasa-invites-you-to-picture-earth-for-earth-day-300831515.html SOURCE NASA

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[April 12, 2019] Shegerian & Associates: Activision Blizzard Pregnancy Apps Sharing Employee Data With Employers

NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Activision Blizzard is now facing scrutiny after it was discovered the company paid pregnant employees for access to the data from their Ovia Health app. Ovia Health provides a suite of apps for family planning and wellness. With the app Ovia, users input their personal information, and the app tracks conception efforts as well as how to maintain a healthy pregnancy. Once the child is born, the app will document its health. Ovia employees were also encouraged to use the app, receiving a $1 gift card for each day the app was used. It has been revealed however, that the Ovia Health has been providing data to employers  for a price. Employers who pay Ovia Health can offer employees a specialized version of the app that relays their health data  in an "anonymized" form  to an internal employer website that is accessible to human resource personnel. It has been claimed that the data sharing has benefitted companies by minimizing healthcare costs, and employees are discovering medical issues and are better able to plan ahead. Not everyone agrees. Despite repeated claims of privacy, data can still be gleaed from person-to-person interaction, and thus have an adverse effect on an employee's health insurance. Insurance companies could potentially use the data to increase premiums or deny coverage. Health and privacy advocates say that women using the apps face possible discrimination, as employers may evaluate an employee's performance against that employee's next steps in family planning. In addition, there are concerns regarding security risks such as a data breach.



Ovia claims that when a woman signs up for their app, they agree to its "Terms and Use." This grants Ovia a "royalty-free, perpetual, and irrevocable license, throughout the universe" to "utilize and exploit" their de-identified personal information for scientific research and "external and internal marketing purposes." Ovia maintains the right to "sell, lease or lend aggregated Personal Information to third parties." Anthony Nguyen, shareholder of employee rights law firm Shegerian & Associates, has weighed in on the issue.

"Even if the argument can be made that such practice conforms with privacy laws, it sets up additional information that employers may use to make discriminatory decisions in the workplace," Nguyen says. About Shegerian & Associates:

Shegerian & Associates has won clients over $300 million in employment-based disputes and maintains a 98% success rate. We have offices in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside and New York. Media Contact:

Pace Public Relations

Kara Ryan

[email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/shegerian--associates-activision-blizzard-pregnancy-apps-sharing-employee-data-with-employers-300831530.html SOURCE Shegerian & Associates

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[April 12, 2019] Parsons Corporation Files Registration Statement for Proposed Initial Public Offering

CENTREVILLE, Va., April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Parsons Corporation ("Parsons"), a provider of technology-driven solutions in the defense, intelligence and critical infrastructure markets, today announced that it has filed a registration statement on Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") relating to the proposed initial public offering of its common stock. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. Parsons has applied to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "PSN." Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, BofA Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley are serving as joint lead book-running managers for the proposed offering. Jefferies and Wells Fargo Securities are serving as Senior Co-Managers and Cowen, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, MUFG and Scotiabank are serving as Co-Managers for the proposed offering. The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. A copy of the preliminary prospectus relating to this offering, when available, may be obtained from any of the following sources: Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department,200 West Street, New York, New York 10282, via telephone: 1-866-471-2526, or via email: [email protected] ;









10282, via telephone: 1-866-471-2526, or via email: ; BofA Merrill Lynch, NC1-004-03-43, 200 North College Street, 3rd Floor, Charlotte, NC 28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department or via email: [email protected] ; or





28255-0001, Attention: Prospectus Department or via email: ; or Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attention: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014. A registration statement on Form S-1 relating to these securities has been filed with the SEC but has not yet become effective. These securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy these securities be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. 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 these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

About Parsons Corporation Parsons is a leading provider of technology-driven solutions focused on the defense, intelligence and critical infrastructure markets. With nearly 75 years of experience, Parsons provides technical design and engineering services and software to address our customers' challenges. Parsons has differentiated capabilities in cybersecurity, intelligence, defense, military training, connected communities, physical infrastructure and mobility solutions. Parsons' combination of talented professionals and advanced technology enables a safer, smarter and more interconnected world. Media Contact:

Brian Schaffer

Prosek Partners

[email protected] View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/parsons-corporation-files-registration-statement-for-proposed-initial-public-offering-300831531.html SOURCE Parsons Corporation

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[April 12, 2019] StartUps and their Impact on Smart Buildings 2019 Report - 2018 has Proved to be a Record Year for Investment in the Global Smart Buildings Sector, with Over $2.4 Billion Invested in StartUps

DUBLIN, April 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The "StartUps and their Impact on Smart Buildings 2019" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. A Comprehensive Evaluation of StartUp Companies in the Smart Building Space This Report is a New 2019 Definitive Resource for Evaluating Startup Companies in the Smart Buildings space. The publisher has identified 482 private companies founded between 2009 and 2018 in the smart buildings sector, which comply with their definition of being a Startup. In addition to this, the researchers have identified 109 startups that have been acquired and 13 firms that filed for an IPO since 2009, amounting to over 600 active new entrants in the smart commercial buildings sector. 2018 has proved to be a record year for investment in the global smart buildings sector, with over $2.4 billion invested in startups; showing increased confidence by investors in the sector and indicating the positive response companies are receiving for their products and services in the market. The researcher's definition of a Startup is A private company formed no earlier than 2009 that is focused on the commercial and industrial buildings market, is not a subsidiary or an acquisition of a larger company and is often financed by venture capital or private equity funding. What Will This Report Tell You? The first Unicorn in the smart buildings space was created by the massive $1.1 billion investment in View Glass by Softbank Vision Fund. Even discounting the View investment, 2018 attracted total funding of over $1.3 billion in the commercial and industrial buildings space, still a record level of investment to date.

investment in View Glass by Softbank Vision Fund. Even discounting the View investment, 2018 attracted total funding of over in the commercial and industrial buildings space, still a record level of investment to date. The number of funding rounds has risen to 184 in 2018. The capital invested in the global smart buildings sector has increased more than 6 times since 2012 with the sector attracting around $6.8 billion during this period.

during this period. The publisher identified 109 acquisitions of startup companies over the last 7 years. 2018 accounted for over 37% of these emerging player deals confirming the consolidation trend and increasing recognition by potential acquirers of the benefits of closer collaboration with startups. The information and analysis in this report are based on research and interviews with emerging players in the Smart Building Space.



It demonstrates the critical contribution that Startups are making to the introduction of innovation in the Smart Buildings space.



Within its 255 Pages and 64 Charts and Tables, The Report Sieves out all the Key Facts and Draws Conclusions, so you can Understand how StartUp Companies are Shaping the Future of the Smart Building Industry Overall this report demonstrates how the core smart buildings market is being heavily impacted by adjacent markets, particularly the PropTech phenomenon in the commercial real estate sector, but also by Smart developments in the Grid, the Home and Cities.

Interactions between major players and early-stage startups have continued to increase in the past 2 years, through accelerator and incubator programs and direct collaboration. Utility companies and energy services providers have been particularly focused on building relationships with new entrants in the energy sector

Over the course of the last 7 years, the publisher has tracked a total of 824 venture funding investments relating to startup companies in the smart buildings space. The investments range from seed and angel investments to debt financing and Series A to Series E rounds. Funding ranged in value from under $1 million to $1.1 billion . This report provides valuable information into how StartUp companies are developing their businesses through Acquisitions, Partnerships and Alliances.

Key Topics Covered:

Preface

Executive Summary



1. Introduction, Scope and Definitions

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Scope and Definitions

1.3 Focus and Categorization of Startups



2. Overview of New Entrants

2.1 Distribution of Startup Companies by Primary Category

2.2 Distribution of Startup Companies by Region



3. Smart Building Applications

3.1 The Building Internet of Things (BIoT)

3.1.1 Platforms

3.1.2 Enablement Hardware and Neworking & Connectivity







3.1.4 Cyber Security

3.2 Building Energy Management

3.2.1 Application Layer

3.2.2 Analytics Layer

3.2.3 Energy Services

3.3 Proptech

3.3.1 The Influence of PropTech on the Smart Buildings Space

3.3.2 Workplace Management and Space Utilization

3.3.3 Indoor Mapping, Location Services and People Counting

3.3.4 Asset and Maintenance Management

3.3.5 Occupant Engagement Platforms

3.3.6 BIM and Digitization of Buildings

3.3.7 Smart Water Management

3.3.8 Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM)

3.3.9 Drones & Robotics

3.4 Building to Grid (B2G)

3.4.1 Distributed Energy Storage

3.4.2 Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS)

3.4.3 Microgrids

3.4.4 Demand Response

3.4.5 Virtual Power Plants (VPP)

3.5 Physical Security

3.5.1 Access Control, Perimeter Protection and PIAM

3.5.2 Electronic Locking

3.5.3 Video Surveillance, Video Management Software and Video Analytics

3.5.4 Biometrics and Facial Recognition

3.5.5 Mass Notification and Critical Incident Management

3.5.6 Drones & Robotics

3.6 Building Fabric

3.6.1 Smart Glass and Dynamic Windows

3.6.2 Smart Roofing

3.6.3 Smart Flooring and Walls



4. The Global BIoT Market - Size and Growth Projections

4.1 The BIoT Market





5. Trends Reshaping the Smart Buildings Marketplace

5.1 The Journey Towards Data-Driven Buildings

5.2 Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

5.2.1 Predictive Analytics in Smart Operations and Maintenance

5.3 Occupant-Centric Buildings, Wellness and Productivity

5.3.1 Occupant-Centricity

5.3.2 Wellness & Productivity

5.4 Blockchain and Decentralized Ledger Technology

5.4.1 Distributed Energy Trading

5.4.2 Identity Verification

5.4.3 Video Surveillance

5.4.4 BIM

5.4.5 Smart Building Data Notarization

5.5 As-a-Service Business Models

5.6 Trends in Vertical Markets and Building Types

5.6.1 Co-Working and Flexible Offices

5.6.2 Retail

5.6.3 Hospitality

5.6.4 Healthcare

5.6.5 Multiple Occupancy Residential



6. Venture Capital and Private Equity Funding

6.1 Analysis of Funding Rounds and Investments

6.2 Top Startups by Total Funding

6.3 Range of Investors

6.3.1 Venture Capital and Private Equity

6.3.2 Corporate Venture Capital

6.3.3 Honeywell Ventures

6.3.4 Schneider Electric Ventures and Aster Capital

6.3.5 Siemens Venture Capital and next47

6.3.6 JLL Spark Fund and JLL Technology Ventures

6.3.7 JCI Ventures

6.3.8 Investors from the Insurance Sector

6.3.9 Investors from the Utilities Sector

6.4 Accelerators and Incubators



7. Acquisitions of Emerging Players

7.1.1 PropTech

7.1.2 Building Energy Management

7.1.3 BIoT



8. Partnerships and Alliances

8.1 Collaboration between Startups and Incumbent Players

8.2 Building Systems Players

8.2.1 Honeywell

8.2.2 Johnson Controls

8.2.3 Schneider Electric

8.2.4 Siemens



9. Gaining Traction and Scaling Up

9.1 Exits and IPOs

9.1.1 Recent IPOs

9.1.2 Forthcoming IPOs

9.2 Disappearing and Inactive Startups

9.3 Startups to Watch in 2019

9.3.1 Apana

9.3.2 Aquicore

9.3.3 Carbon Lighthouse

9.3.4 Civic Technologies

9.3.5 CriticalArc

9.3.6 Disruptive Technologies

9.3.7 Igor

9.3.8 Invicara

9.3.9 IoTium

9.3.10 Jibestream

9.3.11 Mapiq

9.3.12 Reactive Technologies

9.3.13 Sensoro

9.3.14 Shepherd

9.3.15 Smarten Spaces

Companies Mentioned

75F

1Aim

1Energy Systems

720 Degrees

Accruent

Accuware

Actility

Activation Energy

Acuity Brands

Acutrace

Adesto Technologies

Adlatus Robotics

ADT

Advanced Microgrid Solutions

Agentis

AisleLabs

Alert Labs

AlertMedia

AllThings

Altair

Altuity Solutions

Amazon

Amenify

AnyVision

Apana

Aptonomy

Aquicore

Arjo Systems

Assa Abloy

Asset Mapping

Augury

Autogrid

Axiom Exergy

b-Secur

BetterSpace

BetterView

bGrid

BIManywhere

BIMChain

BIMObject

BioConnect

BIPVCo

Bixby

Blink Identity

Blippar

Blue Pillar

Blueprint Power

Bluvision

BriefCam

Bueno Systems

Build.Science

Building Intelligence

Building Robotics

BuildingDNA

BuildingIQ

Buildings IOT

Buildingsense

BuildPulse

Builtspace Technologies

C3 IOT

Callida Energy

Camio

CANDI Controls

Canon

Cape Analytics

Carbon Lighthouse

CBRE

Centrica

Cisco

ClearVue Technologies

CloudFloor

CONNIT

Convene

CopperTree Analytics

Cortex

Building Intelligence

CoWork.io

Coworkr

CPower

CriticalArc

CrowdComfort

Cylance

Cylon Controls

Digital Lumens

Disruptive Technologies

Eagle Eye Networks

Echelon

Ecorithm

Electric Imp

EnerNOC

Enertiv

Engie

Enlighted

enModus

Entic

Entouch

Entronix

Entuit

Envio Systems

Estimote

Everbridge

Faceter

Facilio

Fagerhult

Fifth Wall Ventures

FirstFuel Software

Floored

Flywheel Building Intelligence

Foghorn Systems

Geli

Gooee

Gridium

Healthy Workers

HID Global

Honeywell

IdentyTech Solutions

Igor

Indoo.rs

IntelliHot

Invicara

IOTAS

ioTium

Isotera

J2 Innovations

Jibestream

JLL

Johnson Controls

Jooxter

Kiwi Power

Kiwi.ki

Knightscope

Levaux

LO3 Energy

Locatee

Logical Buildings

Lone Rooftop

Lutron Electronics

Mapiq

MCS Solutions

Measurabl

Microsoft

Modcam

Morphean

Munich Re

Naava

NavVis

Nuuka Solutions

Nuvolo

Openpath Security

OpenSensors

Optigo Networks

Optio3

Optix

Origami Energy

Osram

PassiveLogic

Pavegen

Pear.ai

Petasense

Pointgrab

Predikto

Prescriptive Data

Presenso

Princeton Identity

Prism Skylabs

Proximi.io

pureLiFi

Razberi Technologies

Reactive Technologies

Relogix

RENEW Energy Partners

REstore

Rhombus Systems

Rifiniti

Riptide IO

Robin

Salto Systems

Schneider Electric

SecuriThings

SecurityMatters

Senion

Sense Labs

Senseware

Sensewhere

Sensible Building Science

Sensing Labs

SensorFlow

Sensoro

Shepherd Network

Siemens

Sigfox

Site 1001

SpaceConnect

SpaceIQ

SpaceOS

Spatial DNA

SPICA Technologies

SpotterRF

Stem

Switch Automation

Teem

Tendril Networks

Ubiqisense

United Technologies

Universal mCloud

Urjanet

Verdigris Technologies

VergeSense

Veridium

Verkada

Viakoo

Vidsys

View

Vigilent

Viridity Energy

Virtual Power Solutions

Wattsense

Waygum

Wegowise

WeWork

Xtralis

Yanzi Networks

Yardi

ZingBox

Zwipe For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/vhx3do Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research. Media Contact:

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Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/startups-and-their-impact-on-smart-buildings-2019-report---2018-has-proved-to-be-a-record-year-for-investment-in-the-global-smart-buildings-sector-with-over-2-4-billion-invested-in-startups-300831455.html SOURCE Research and Markets

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$10K Grant from FHLB Dallas Helps Provide New Home for North Texas Veteran

Retired U.S. Army Specialist Charlotte Ferris will receive the keys to her new home at a home dedication ceremony on Friday, April 19. A $10,000 Housing Assistance for Veterans (HAVEN) grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) provided funding for a home built by Operation FINALLY HOME, a nonprofit dedicated to providing American veterans with custom-built homes mortgage free.

The media is invited to the home dedication ceremony at 9:45 a.m. on Friday, April 19 at 1852 Town Creek Circle in Weatherford.

HAVEN is a unique grant program offered by FHLB Dallas, through its member institutions. The grants assist veterans and active-duty service members, who have been disabled in the line of duty since September 11, 2001 (9/11), with home repairs, modifications and new construction costs. Funds may also be awarded to Gold Star families, who have lost an immediate family member in service since 9/11. HAVEN provides grants up to $10,000 per household. To qualify, veterans must also meet income eligibility requirements.

To learn more about HAVEN, visit fhlb.com/haven.







WHAT: Home Dedication WHEN: 9:45 a.m., Friday, April 19, 2019 WHO: Rusty Carroll, Executive Director, Operation FINALLY HOME Charlotte Ferris Denise Schmitt, Community Investment Operations Manager, FHLB Dallas WHERE: Town Creek 1852 Town Creek Circle Weatherford, Texas 76086

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190412005468/en/
[April 12, 2019] Residents of Whitehorse to benefit from improved public infrastructure

WHITEHORSE, April 12, 2019 /CNW/ - A thriving economy needs strategic investments in modern transportation and green infrastructure to improve the lives of citizens while limiting impacts on the local environment. Investing in modern transportation infrastructure also helps create jobs and improve the quality of life of Northerners. Larry Bagnell, Member of Parliament for Yukon, on behalf of the Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities; the Honourable John Streicker, Yukon Minister of Community Services; and His Worship Dan Curtis, Mayor of the City of Whitehorse, today announced funding for three infrastructure projects in the City of Whitehorse. The first project will improve and revitalise roads in the city, repaving over 22 km of road surface and repainting road markings. This project will create safer, smoother roads for residents and visitors, while reducing the need for future road repair. Funding will also support the renovation and expansion of the City of Whitehorse services building to increase energy efficiency, improve public services, and support the long-term sustainability of this multipurpose facility. Finally, a third project will upgrade the heating, ventilation, electrical, and mechanical systems of Whitehorse City Hall to make the building more energy efficient. The Government of Canada is contributing up to $17.4 million towards these projects through the Small Communities Fund (SCF), and the Rural and Northern Infrastructure Stream (RNIS) of the Investing in Canada infrastructure plan. The Government of Yukon is providing over $5.8 million, with the City of Whitehorse contributing $300,000. Quotes "Improved roads and modern, green buildings are the foundation of strong and resilient communities. These projects in Whitehorse will support the safe and efficient movement of people and goods through the community, and create energy efficient facilities that contribute to the territory's economic, social and environmental wellbeing." The Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities "Investing in high-quality infrastructure is an essential part of building livable, modern communities. As we face challenges from climate change, we need to find opportunities to adapt technology and provide innovative solutions to every day issues. This funding does just that by providing safer roads and more energy efficient facilities. It is an excellent example of what Yukoners can do when we work together at all levels of government to build stronger, more connected communities." The Honourable Larry Bagnell, Member of Parliament for Yukon "We are delighted to invest in Yukon communities and to partner with the City of Whitehorse and the Government of Canada. These three projects are direct investments to provide better roads and more efficient infrastructure for residents of the Yukon's capital city. The Government of Yukon is proud to support projects like these, which help both citizens and municipalities build modern, healthy, thriving communities." The Honourable John Streicker, Yukon Minister of Community Services "We are constantly working to improve our city's aging infrastructure and the funding for these projects really benefits our community as a whole. We value and appreciate the funding we receive from senior governments, and we continue to work hand-in-hand with our territorial and federal funding partners. Without this funding, we wouldn't be able to move forward on important community projects." His Worship Dan Curtis, Mayor of the City of Whitehorse Quick facts Through the Investing in Canada infrastructure plan, the Government of Canada is investing more than $180 billion over 12 years in public transit projects, green infrastructure, social infrastructure, trade and transportation routes, and Canada's rural and northern communities.

infrastructure plan, the Government of is investing more than over 12 years in public transit projects, green infrastructure, social infrastructure, trade and transportation routes, and rural and northern communities. $2 billion of this funding is supporting infrastructure projects that meet the unique needs of rural and northern communities like facilities to support food security, local access roads and enhanced broadband connectivity. In addition, $400 million is being delivered through the Arctic Energy Fund to advance energy security in the territories.

is being delivered through the Arctic Energy Fund to advance energy security in the territories. $4 billion of this funding is supporting infrastructure projects in Indigenous communities. Associated links Investing in Canada Plan Project Map: http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/map Federal infrastructure investments in Yukon: https://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/investments-2002-investissements/yt-eng.html Investing in Canada: Canada's Long-Term Infrastructure Plan: http://www.infrastructure.gc.ca/plan/icp-publication-pic-eng.html Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Web: Infrastructure Canada Backgrounder Residents of Whitehorse to benefit from improved public infrastructure Joint federal-territorial-municipal funding through the Small Communities Fund (SCF), and the Rural and Northern Infrastructure Stream (RNIS) of the Investing in Canada infrastructure plan will support infrastructure projects in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. The governments of Canada and Yukon are contributing over $23.3 million total towards these three projects. The City of Whitehorse will provide $300,000. Project Information:







Fund Location Project Name Federal Funding Territorial Funding Municipal Funding RNIS Whitehorse Whitehorse Asphalt Overlay $5,710,500 $1,903,500 $300,000 SCF Whitehorse Whitehorse Services Building $8,025,000 $2,675,000 $0 SCF Whitehorse Whitehorse City Hall Energy Upgrade $3,750,000 $1,250,000 $0

SOURCE Infrastructure Canada

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The AT&T 5G network has grown in the past year, with testing firms hailing its speeds. But with rivals T-Mobile and Verizon both making splashy 5G moves at the start of 2021, the question is whether AT&T can keep up as the year goes on.

For now, AT&T's focus appears to be on continuing the progress it made throughout 2020  efforts that included launching a nationwide 5G service to augment its high-speed deployments in three dozen cities and adding more 5G devices to its phone lineup.

The best 5G phones you can get right now

5G vs 4G: Speeds compared

Speed up your connection with a fast VPN

While AT&T's 5G network currently reaches more than 230 million people in 14,000 cities and towns across the U.S., it still trails T-Mobile, which covers 287 million people with its 5G setup. Verizon also covers 230 million people, even though its nationwide network launched after AT&T's.

In other words, AT&T still has a long way to go in building out 5G coverage. Here's where the network stands as we approach the halfway mark of 2021.

AT&T 5G bands

First off, its critical to explain how AT&T splits its 5G service up. Theres the nationwide sub-6GHz service mentioned above, which offers speeds about as fast, if not slightly better than 4G LTE. In spite of AT&Ts nationwide banner, this isnt available everywhere yet, though its much more common to find than AT&Ts 5G Plus network, which involves a completely different kind of technology.

5G Plus is AT&Ts name for its millimeter-wave (mmWave) 5G infrastructure. When you hear carriers advertise data speeds in excess of 1 Gbps or downloading entire movies or seasons of TV shows in a minute, this is the kind of 5G theyre referring to. But while millimeter-wave 5G offers exponentially faster speeds than sub-6GHz 5G or 4G LTE, it is exponentially more limited in terms of range, which is why its only available in cities or high-traffic indoor spaces.

AT&T 5G cities and coverage map

(Image credit: AT&T)

AT&Ts 5G Plus can only be found in 38 cities in 19 states at the time of this writing. (A 20th state  Colorado  boasts an AT&T 5G Plus installment in its sports arena.) California has the most 5G Plus-supported cities by far, claiming nine of the total 38. You can find a comprehensive list on AT&Ts website.

AT&T is also focusing on getting 5G Plus into arenas, stadiums and convention centers. It currently reaches 20 of those venues, with plans to reach 35 or so by year's end.

AT&Ts long-range 5G service now reaches 230 million Americans, according to the latest figures from the carrier. That's short of what T-Mobile's 5G covers, though both networks are actively growing all the time.

AT&T 5G speeds

AT&Ts 5G infrastructure has made significant strides over the past two years. Initially, the carriers 5G Plus service topped out at 400 Mbps. In February 2019, AT&T reported that had improved to a peak throughput of 2 Gbps on its commercial network in Atlanta. That is fast enough to download a 2-hour HD film in 10 seconds.

Unfortunately, we didnt quite see that kind of performance when we conducted hands-on testing of AT&Ts 5G Plus service in Las Vegas in the summer of 2019. At that time, we recorded peak speeds just shy of 1 Gbps  far better than LTE, of course, but a good sight off the 1.5 Gbps average speed claims the carrier had made at the time. Additionally, it was very difficult to track down a signal in our experience, owing to 5G Plus limited range.

AT&Ts standard 5G service, built on sub-6GHz infrastructure, is far easier to locate, in exchange for speeds a fraction as fast. As a point of comparison, T-Mobile's 5G network is built on the same low-band spectrum AT&T uses for its nationwide network (that is, not 5G Plus), and the speeds we've seen there are at best only slightly faster than what we get from LTE.

To be fair, speeds have improved since our initial testing, and AT&T can point to some good recent results from third party network testing. Ookla declared AT&T 5G to be the fastest of the major carriers as of the end of last year, overtaking previous speed champ Verizon. (That may have been the result of Verizon launching its nationwide network and seeing those slower speeds drop its average from the lofty heights achieved by millimeter wave-based 5G.) A report from RootMetrics gives AT&T the nod for the fastest 5G speeds, and while Opensignal thinks T-Mobile has the faster 5G, it noted that AT&T's 5G footprint had grown considerably through the latter half of 2020.

AT&T 5G phones and devices

You'll find both the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and the iPhone 12 Pro Max among AT&T's 5G phones. (Image credit: Future)

Most new 2020 flagship phones supported AT&Ts 5G network, though the type of 5G they work with differed on a case-by-case basis. Some handsets, like last year's Samsung Galaxy S20, only offered sub-6GHz connectivity and skip out on millimeter-wave signals. Other phones, like the Galaxy S20 Plus and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, supported both 5G configurations, for the fastest possible speeds in any condition.

You may have noticed a theme there. Indeed, the vast majority of 5G handsets available last year through AT&T were Samsung devices. But that finally changed with October's iPhone 12 launch.

All four iPhone 12 models work on the full range of AT&T's 5G deployment, across sub-6GHz and mmWave. They are even said to support a new type of 5G infrastructure called C-band, which will provide AT&T users with the sort of mid-band service that offers higher speeds than LTE with a slight hit to coverage, like T-Mobile currently has.

Currently, AT&T offers a pretty compelling range of 5G phones at various price points. Here's an updated list of what's available through AT&T:

AT&T 5G hotspots

AT&T's first 5G-compatible product was actually the Netgear Nighthawk, a hotspot that could pull in a 5G signal and blast it to your supported devices over Wi-Fi. This device was ultimately discontinued, but now AT&T has replaced that with a successor, called the Netgear Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot Pro. You'll find it among the best mobile hotspots currently available.

The new Nighthawk model, available for $509, supports Wi-Fi 6, meaning you'll lose as little speed as possible from that 5G connection when tethering. It also can service up to 32 devices.

AT&Ts Unlimited Extra and Unlimited Elite plans include hotspot data. But the allotment of hotspot data  30GB for Elite and 15GB for Extra  runs at 4G speeds.

AT&T 5G plans: What youll pay

Heres the good news: AT&T doesnt charge extra for 5G service across its three unlimited plans. However, depending on how much you spend and what tier you select, youll get more or less full-speed data before AT&T starts throttling you or deprioritizing your service behind that of other users.

The base $65/month Unlimited Starter plan slows your service at any time when AT&Ts network is stressed. That means that although it includes 5G service, the consistency of that service may be in flux from moment to moment. To get the best possible data speeds, youll want to at least choose the $75/month Unlimited Extra plan, which allots 50GB of full-speed data, whether youre on 4G or 5G. The $85/month Unlimited Elite plan doubles that allotment to 100GB before you run the risk of being slowed. See how AT&T's pricing compares in our look at the best unlimited data plan for each wireless carrier.

More customers are now able to access AT&T 5G. In addition to the current unlimited plans, AT&T said in March that it would access to both 5G and 5G Plus to customers with older unlimited plans. Prepaid customers can get 5G coverage through AT&T's $75-a-month unlimited data plan. (Auto-pay enrollment drops that cost down to $60.)

AT&T 5G outlook

More than two years since AT&T launched its first 5G Plus market, the carriers 5G deployment has finally reaching a point where many of its customers can take advantage of it. Thats thanks to the launch of the carriers nationwide sub-6GHz network as well as the rash of 5G-capable phones that have been dropping throughout the past year.

AT&T customers living in an urban area covered by both the carriers regular and 5G Plus services have the unique opportunity to take advantage of both faster speeds and more extensive coverage. And that will only continue in the coming months, as AT&T expands the reach of both types of 5G infrastructure.

AT&T hopes to add 5G Plus coverage in 17 more venues by year's end. After adding 5G Plus to the airport in Tampa, Fla., the carrier wants to bring high-speed 5G to seven additional airports.

As for its nationwide network, AT&T plans to begin rolling out its C-band spectrum by the end of 2021, with more deployment for the year after that. Such a move would complement the existing low-band network, bringing faster mid-band speeds similar to what T-Mobile is doing with its own 5G efforts.

Of course, more than 100 million people already have access to that mid-band coverage in T-Mobile's network. Once again, AT&T finds itself with plenty of 5G ground to make up in the year ahead.
(Image credit: Emmanuel Dunland/Contributor/Getty Images)

ASML, the largest maker of lithography systems said on Thursday that it was a victim of corporate espionage in 2015, involving employees from both China and South Korea. The company rejected the idea that the Chinese government had any relation with the espionage operations.

ASML Admits to Being Victim of Corporate Espionage

According to Reuters, ASML said attackers stole large files via USB sticks from its Silicon Valley software subsidiary, which develops software for machine optimization. The company said it has since taken action to prevent this type of theft in the future.

The Dutch daily newspaper Financieele Dagblad (FD) originally published the story on the ASML theft, labeling it as Chinese espionage. ASML CEO Peter Wennink, however, in a statement ASML released on Thursday, denied that there was any "national conspiracy" to steal information from his company.

We resent any suggestion that this event should have any implication for ASML conducting business in China. Some of the individuals happened to be Chinese nationals, but individuals from other nations were also involved. We do protect our proprietary knowledge carefully and are very sensitive to information security. We believe we can serve all our customers, including our Chinese customers, and help them build their businesses. We are encouraged by the recent constructive talks and agreements between the European Union and China that China will step up its efforts to respect and protect corporate intellectual property of non-Chinese companies, including effective enforcement actions. We will be even more encouraged when we see these materialize in Chinese law and jurisprudence, Wennink said.

The ASML CEO welcomed the new deal made by the European Union with China, in which China promised not to coerce companies to share sensitive intellectual property anymore if they want to develop their businesses in the Asian country.

ASMLs sales in China more than doubled to 1.8 billion euros ($2 billion) in 2018, which now account for about one-sixth of the companys global sales, Reuters reported.

California Case Involving ASML Theft

The Dutch paper's story was based on both ASML sources, as well as documents from a California Superior Court case that revealed that six former ASML employees with Chinese names shared sensitive information with XTAL Inc. The Dutch FD reported that XTAL is a subsidiary of a China-based company called Dongfang Jingyuan. The parent company is said to have ties to the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

In the lawsuit, ASML said XTAL's funding came from both China and South Korea and that the stolen data was supposed to be handed over to one of ASML's main customers, which includes Samsung, TSMC and Intel.

Over the past few years, the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD has issued warnings that the Chinese government is targeting Dutch companies through espionage operations but refused to comment on this particular case.
(Image credit: Christophe Morin/IP3/Contributor/Getty Images)

Regulators realized that fining tech companies hundreds of thousands of dollars--or even several million dollars--isn't enough to stop them from breaking the law. Russia appears to have missed that memo, though, because a court in Moscow today issued a 3,000 ruble fine to Facebook over violating data privacy laws that require companies to store data about their Russian users on servers located in the country. That's about $50.

This might be the rare case where it's easier to side with Facebook than a regulator when it comes to privacy concerns. Protecting the privacy of Russian citizens from foreign spying might be part of the reason why these laws are in effect. But it's possible the Russian government simply wants to be able to access information about its citizens without international scrutiny.

Breaking the law for a good reason is still breaking the law, though, so it shouldn't be too detrimental to take this fine at face value. (At least not on a tech news site--determining the morals of this particular rule or Facebook's breaking of it is above our pay grade.) That's where a $50 fine on a company with a $511 billion market cap and whose share price is $179.10 at time of writing, seems like either a typo or a bad joke.

Just consider some of the other fines recently levied against tech companies. Facebook was fined 500,000 (roughly $642,000) in October 2018 over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and the fine was only that low because the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) had to rely on an old law instead of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enacted last year. Google was fined a record 1.5 billion (about $1.7 billion) in March.

For comparison: Russia would have to issue its $50 fine another 34 million times for it to match Google's recent fine. That might seem laughable, but that's only because the case isn't really about the fine. ZDNet noted that this is just the beginning of a process that could eventually block Facebook from Russia entirely, and regardless of how one feels about the service, good things don't usually follow efforts to block communication tools.

The idea that this is about more than a symbolic fine meant to convince Facebook the Russian government means business is supported by the fact that Russia issued the same fine to Twitter last week. Russia blocked LinkedIn in 2016, and Google+ is finally dead, so Facebook and Twitter are the two main Western social media platforms allowed in the country.
1 injured during protest at event at UMKC KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) - One person was injured during a protest that happened at an event on UMKC's campus on Thursday night. The disturbance happened during an event at Royall Hall. According to UMKC's website, the event was called "A Night with Michael Knowles." The incident happened at about 8:15 p.m.

Not a lot of deets on the event or "the incident" but here's a look at city college students taking to the street against a self-described right-wing troll . . . Checkit:
Adios To Kansas City Tradition

Mama Tio's closing after 40 years in Kansas City A beloved Mexican restaurant in Kansas City is closing its doors after 40 years. KMBC 9 stopped by Mama Tio's to find out what lead to the difficult decision.During the lunch rush at Mama Tio's, owner Mike McCoy stays busy. "I've got three servers counting me," he said as he took calls and handed over carry-out orders during our interview.

Double Mugs Posted In The Dotte

Arrest warrants issued for 2 out of Wyandotte County WYANDOTTE COUNTY, KS (KCTV) - Arrest warrants have been issued for two people in connection with an aggravated robbery and battery that happened on March 1. The incidents happened in the 700 block of N. 8th St. Arrest warrants have been issued for 26-year-old Resha Lashon Spearman and 27-year-old Dreyon Natez Hughes.

Happy Rock Hit & Run Suspect

Help Find This Local Lady

KCPD looking for missing, endangered woman KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The Kansas City, Missouri Police Department is looking for a missing and endangered woman. Marisela Higuerey-Rodriguez, 46, was last seen in the area of Cambridge Avenue and Front Street on March 16. She is 5 feet, 2 inches tall and weighs 100 pounds.

KCMO Homicide Follow-Up

Man charged after woman is fatally stabbed inside her apartment in KC JACKSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) - A 27-year-old man has been charged in connection with a fatal stabbing that happened around March 15. Keyon D. Patterson, 27, has been charged with second-degree murder and armed criminal action. The victim, Ladajah Oliver, was found dead inside her apartment in the 6400 block of Manchester in Kansas City after being fatally stabbed.

Facebook Frenemies Hate You

Seg. 1: Moderatism & Social Media | Seg. 2: What Are G's? Segment 1: Moderatism and social media. It seems everywhere on the news there's talk about a political divide in America. But is it possible that claim is over exaggerated by social media? In this conversation, we find out why a recent study from the University of Missouri says this might be the case.

Spring Stalls In Kansas City

Cooler trend continues into the weekend Our cooler temperatures will continue Friday and into the weekend. It will still be windy on Friday, too.

Kansas City #TBT continues as we check some of the top stories from the news cycle today. Checkit:And this is thefor right now . . .
More Deets: Another Lesson On Deserved Cash Bump For Keeping KCPS Afloat

BOE grants 40K raise for Kansas City school superintendent Breaking News Kansas City public schools superintendent Dr. Mark Bedell has signed a three-year extension to his contract that includes a raise of $40,000 per year. Bedell described himself as "extremely excited" about the opportunity to stay with the district for another three years and finally regain full accreditation.

Cowtown Dumper Pix

Authorities asking for help to identify suspects in four cases of illegal dumping Kansas City authorities are asking for help to identify individuals believed to be involved in four separate cases of illegal dumping in one area neighborhood. Investigators said all four incidents happened in the area of 29th Street and Poplar Avenue -- just off I-70.

Golden Ghetto Accusation From This Low-Rent Source That It KILLS ME To Reference

Highlands area shooting suspect Dylan Ruffin makes first in-person court appearance Dylan Ruffin, the Fairway man charged with multiple crimes related to the shooting incidents near Highlands Elementary in March, made his first in-person court appearance Wednesday morning at the Johnson County Courthouse. Ruffin appeared in front of Judge Sara Welch in Division 19 as part of his scheduling conference.

Urban Core Infrastructure SHAME

Manhole left uncovered for days at busy KC intersection in Old Northeast KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It's been a puzzling and potentially dangerous safety hazard for days at a busy intersection in the Old Northeast area in Kansas City. "Yeah, they should at least fix it," neighbor Anthony Cordon said. He's scratching his head.

Kansas City To Iowa Cutoff

IDOT says Interstate 29 will not fully reopen until June KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- People headed from the metro to Iowa may have to find an alternative route to if they had previously planned on using Interstate 29. According to the Iowa Department of Transportation I-29 will not fully reopen until June. The area impacted includes US Highway 34 south to the Missouri border.

Best Write-Up On Local Legend

Winter Coming To Kansas City Again

FORECAST: Kansas City to get another taste of winter before warmer weather returns Kansas City will get another taste of winter this weekend before warmer weather returns early next week.

From across the metro but focused on KC proper, here's a glimpse of MSM news links that matter right now. Take a look:And this is anotherfor right now . . .
Produced since 1994, the S6 is Audis go-faster version of the A6, slotting in under the even-faster RS6 variants. Previously offered as the fourth-generation C7, Audi just unveiled the latest fifth-gen S6, following up on the fifth-gen A6 that debuted at the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show. Once again offered in a long-roof Avant wagon body style, the latest S6 comes with fresh and sporty styling, oodles of comfort in the cabin, and a new mild-hybrid diesel powertrain under the hood. Read on for everything else this performance wagon is bringing to the table (beyond the groceries, obviously).

2019 Audi S6 Avant Exterior Styling

Looks sharp and futuristic

Darkend trim

20-inch wheels as standard, 21-inchers available

Quad exhaust tips

Integrated rear spoiler

Outside, the 2019 Audi S6 Avant brings the usual Four-Ring aesthetic update, which basically equates to a few nips and tucks added here and there. The new look falls in line with the latest C8 generational changeover, and while on balance it isnt terribly different from anything weve seen from Audi in the past, the new S6 Avant definitely does look a bit sharper and slightly more futuristic than it did before.

That also includes a hearty dose of aggression thats unique to Audis S model line, which helps the S6 standout from the standard A6.

Standard spec includes dark chrome trim and aluminum bits added from front to back, as well as purposeful aero upgrades.

Viewed head on, the 2019 Audi S6 definitely looks the part of a low and wide performance machine.

Front and center is Audis traditional Singleframe grille design. While this primary intake is definitely big, it actually looks a little smaller than the taller grille found on the outgoing S6. Under the grille is a prominent chin spoiler, while the lower corners ditch the older models fog lights in favor of technical air blade elements. Higher up, the horizontal headlight housings are sharper and more pointed for the 2019 model year, and come with revised daytime running light graphics. The net result is a nose that looks wider and lower than before.

Its a theme we see continued into the profile, where the S6 rocks a lowered ride height compared to standard A6 lineup.

The new S6 also comes with revised character lines that enhance the visual width of the front and rear fenders, under which Audi mounts standard 20-inch alloy wheels. Larger 21-inch wheels are offered as an available option. Up top, youll find blacked-out roof rails, while the angle of the roofline reminds us of the Porsche Panamera. The Avants tail section also extends outwards to accommodate extra cargo room.

Finally, we have the S6 Avants tail section, which features a rear diffuser with a dark chrome matte finish. Theres also four exhaust pipes compared to the standard twin outlets on the A6, plus an integrated roof spoiler. A single dark character line connects the taillight housings and adds further visual width.

Compared to its chief rivals, which include the Mercedes-AMG E 43 4Matic Estate and BMW 540i xDrive M Sport Touring, we think the S6 Avant is definitely the best-looking option out there.

The sharp styling elements play well with the long, sleek body style, whereas the Merc and Bimmer look much chunkier and even slightly bloated from certain angles. We think the Audis dark trim pieces also work much better with the performance theme than the polished chrome of its rivals. And while the look doesnt really change much year to year, were not all that bothered - this thing looks good regardless, and thats enough to make us forget Audis slow styling evolution.

2020 Audi S6 Avant Exterior Specifications (in inches) Width w/o mirrors 74.25 With w/ mirrors 83.07 Front Track 63.77 Rear Track 63.11 Length 195.03 Wheelbase 111.33

2019 Audi S6 Avant Interior Design

Takes layout from new A6 sedan

New digital screens in the dash

Virtual Cockpit is now standard

Optional flat-bottom steering wheel

Leather/Alcantara upholstery standard, full leather optional

Take a step inside, and youll find the 2019 Audi S6 Avant once again takes its cues from the new C8-generation A6, with a cabin layout thats essentially identical between the two models.

Compared to the previous generation, the new-gen brings new digital gauges, dual infotainment screens in the dash, a simplified array of hard buttons on the central tunnel, and wide climate control vents along the upper portion of the dash, plus a number of geometric styling elements throughout.

All told, we definitely prefer this latest cabin style to that of the older model. We think the simplified, streamlined aesthetic plays perfectly to the S6s luxury aspirations, and it also incorporates the sportier elements of the S line quite nicely.

Side by side with rivals from Mercedes and BMW, the S6 feels modern, yet mature.

While the huge screens, copious glossy trim, and ample ambient lighting in the AMG E 43 definitely give the Merc that extra wow factor, it also feels a little gimmicky next to the more elegant Audi. Whats more, the stand-up infotainment screen and button-stuffed center console in the 540i M Sport feel dated next to the twin-screen setup in the S6.

Moving on, the 2019 S6 Avant comes with all the usual S-line bits and pieces, including S badging throughout, a black and silver color palette, and contrasting stitching.

Standard spec includes a three-spoke multifunction steering wheel, but a sportier flat-bottom option is also offered. Lower in the cockpit, youll find stainless steel pedals and illuminated aluminum sill trim.

As in years past, Audi is once again offering a decent number of customization options for the S6 heading into the 2019 model year.

Standouts include a selection of leather and Alcantara upholstery as standard, or Valcona leather as an available upgrade. Color schemes include black, rotor gray, or arras red. Brushed aluminum trim is standard, while fine grain ash trim is optional.

The S6 Avant also gets a set of standard sport seats embossed with the S logo in the seat backs. More lateral support is offered with upgraded sport seats and integrated head restrains, or you can add extra comfort with multi-adjusting sitters outfitted with both ventilation and massage functions. Four-zone automatic air conditioning is standard.

On the infotainment front, Audi replaced the older models standard analogue/digital gauge combo with its branded Virtual Cockpit system as standard. Featuring a large 12.3-inch display mounted just behind the steering wheel, the Virtual Cockpit comes with several configurations. MMI navigation is included as standard.

Its worth mentioning that the Mercedes E-Class also offers a large 12.3-inch digital gauge display, which actually stretches across the dash to meet with a 10.25-inch screen above the center console, creating what appears to be a single cohesive display unit. While certainly striking to look at, we prefer the Audis segmented screen layout, which we think looks more orderly and cleaner than Mercs display setup.

Meanwhile, BMW offers a smaller 8.8-inch Dynamic Digital Instrument Cluster as standard with the current 5 Series, but the spec will see an upgrade soon when BMW updates to the 7.0 infotainment system and Live Cockpit feature.

Back to the Audi, Ingolstadt has yet to provide us with a breakdown of the 2019 S6 Avants safety tech spec, but we expect it to include optional upgrades like automatic braking, adaptive cruise control, automatic high-beam assist, and lane-keep assist.

Finally, the wagon-bodied S6 Avant provides ample cargo capacity, with as much as 1,680 liters (59.3 cubic-feet) available with the rear seat down. Thats about on par with the BMW 5 Series 60 cubic-feet, but a bit under the 64 cubic-feet you get with the Mercedes-Benz E-Class.

2020 Audi S6 Avant Interior Specifications (in inches) Front Headroom 41.53 Rear Headroom 39.33 Front Hip room 60.11 Rear Hip Room 59.09 Front Shoulder Room 57.75 Rear Shoulder Room 56.53 Boot Width 41.33 Boot Length to Rear Seats 46.29 Boot Length Seats Folded 77.87

2019 Audi S6 Avant Drivetrain And Performance

No more petrol power

Mild-hybrid 3.0-liter diesel

Sharper throttle response, lots of low-end torque

349 horsepower

0 to 60 mph in 5.1 seconds

155 mph top speed

36.2 mpg combined

Eight-speed automatic transmission

Quattro all-wheel drive is standard

Four-wheel steering optional

Optional carbon ceramic brake package

One of the 2019 Audi S6 Avants biggest upgrades can be found under the hood, where the outgoing models petrol-powered 4.0-liter V-8 was replaced with a 3.0-liter V-6 diesel.

Rumored had it Audi was leaning towards a performance oil-burner for this generational changeover, and now that rumor is confirmed, as the gas-option is officially off the table.

Even more interesting is that the six also comes with 48-volt electric assistance, otherwise known as a mild-hybrid setup. Its a setup thats similar to the recently released SQ5 TDI, boosting both power and efficiency without the complexity of a full hybrid system thanks to a belt alternator starter and lithium-ion battery pack under the vehicle floor.

Essentially, the system works like an electric supercharger, juicing the compressor with 8 kW of power for a quicker boost spool. Audi says the system fires up in less than 250 milliseconds and can spin at 70,000 rpm.

Its a pretty slick setup, and even though it keeps emissions and fuel efficiency high, you still get the sharp throttle response of a large-displacement engine.

In addition to the electric compressor, the S6 also gets a traditional exhaust-driven turbocharger, which by itself pumps out a heady 2.4 bar (34.8 psi) of boost.

All said and done, the new diesel-powered S6 doles out 349 horsepower. That aint bad for a wagon, but the truly impressive figure is the torque, which is rated 516 pound-feet, coming online at just 2,500 rpm.

Properly motivated, the 2019 S6 Avant will accelerate to 100 km/h (62.1 mph) is just 5.1 seconds. Top speed is limited at 155 mph.

Unfortunately, that 0-to-60 mph time is about half a second slower than the outgoing model, but its still on target for the segment. For example, the Mercedes-AMG E 43 4Matic makes 396 horsepower and 348 pound-feet of torque from a twin-turbo 3.0-liter V-6, good enough for a run to 60 mph in 4.6 seconds. Meanwhile, the BMW 540i xDrive M Sport Touring makes 335 horsepower and 332 pound-feet of torque thanks to a 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder, with the run to 60 mph requiring 5 seconds dead. Both models top out at an Audi-matching 155 mph.

Lined up side by side, the S6 Avant is slower than the Merc and about even with the Bimmer in terms of acceleration. However, the S6 Avant stands out for two very clear reasons - not only is it a diesel, but its also got mild-hybrid electric assistance, which combine to create gobs of low-end torque. Rest assured, thats something thats definitely noticeable on the street. This thing is sure to be a superstar when it comes to quick-passing maneuvers.

As previously mentioned, the electric compressor also helps with overall efficiency, and will even enable the car to coast for as long as 40 seconds with the internal combustion engine turned off. Audi says the S6 Avant posts a combined mpg of 36.2 mpg, which is a big jump from the outgoing models 30 mpg. It also bests the Mercs 32.8 combined mpg, but falls just shy of the Bimmers 37.6 combined mpg.

The rest of the S6s drivetrain includes an eight-speed tiptronic automatic transmission and quattro all-wheel drive as standard.

The setup distributes torque in a 40/60 ratio front to back, with a maximum split of either 70 percent in front or 85 percent in the rear depending on available grip levels. Standard spec includes a self-locking center differential, plus the option for a rear sport differential.

The smaller V-6 in the engine bay means less weight over the front axle, which definitely works to improve the handling. Further agility comes with standard S sport suspension with damping control, which lowers the ride height by 20 mm (0.8 inches) compared to the standard A6s suspension setup.

You can also get an adaptive air suspension system with adjustable dampening force, which Audi offers as a comfort-oriented alternative. The air setup comes with three mode settings, including one with a higher ride height for rough roads, an automatic mode that lowers the body by 10 mm (0.4 inches) when traveling over 120 km/h (74.6 mph), and a dynamic mode that keeps the body close to the ground at all times.

Theres also a wheel-selective torque control system, or torque vectoring, which will apply the brakes to the S6s inside wheels while cornering for better grip. A sport steering setup points the wagon where desired, with a ratio that varies between 9.5:1 to 16.5:1.

Headlining the list of updates for the 2019 model year is an optional all-wheel steering system, a first for the S6.

Opt into this, and youll get a separate rear-axle steering system complete with a spindle drive and track rods. The system can turn the rear wheels by as much as 5 degrees in the opposite direction as the front wheels at speeds up to 60 km/h (37.3 mph), while over 60 km/h, the system will turn the rear wheels by as much 2 degrees in the same direction as the front wheels. The ultimate result is more agility at low speeds, and greater stability at high speeds.

Running it all is an electronic chassis management system, which harmonizes all the electronic bits by collecting data from various sensors and calculating the appropriate settings. This extends to the all-wheel steering system and sport differential, when equipped.

Throwing the anchor are six-pot aluminum calipers, which are painted in black and come with the option for a red finish. These large calipers clamp onto equally large 400 mm (15.7-inch) discs in front and 350 mm (13.8-inch) discs in back. If you intend on doing some performance driving every so often, make sure to grab the optional carbon ceramic brakes, which come with 400 mm (15.7-inch) front discs and 370 mm (14.6-inch) rear discs that cut overall unsprung weight by 9 kg (19.8 pounds).

Finally, the standard tire sizing is set at 255/40R20. Audi also offers an optional sport tire compound if desired.

As for those interested buyers residing here in the U.S., the new S6 will come with a 2.9-liter TFSI engine, which replaces the current models 4.0-liter V-8. Its the same powerplant found in the RS4 Avant and RS5 Sportback, and it too comes with a 48-volt mild-hybrid system. Output is rated at 450 horsepower and 443 pound-feet of torque. No word on acceleration figures, but the current models 450-horsepower V-8 can send the U.S.-spec S6 to 60 mph in 4.4 seconds.

2020 Audi S6 Avant Drivetrain Specifications

2020 Audi S6 Avant Drivetrian Specifications Engine 3.0-liter V-6 Transmission Eight-Speed Automatic Driveline Quattro AWD Fuel Diesel Electrical 48-Volt Drivetrian Mild-Hybrid Horsepower 349 Torque 516 @ 2,500 RPM 0-60 MPH 5.1 Top Speed 155 MPH

2019 Audi S6 Avant Prices

The 2019 Audi S6 Avant is headed to the European market in the summer of 2019. Pricing starts at 79,000 euros in Germany.

No word on whether or not Audi will offer the S6 Avant here in the U.S., but its unlikely, despite relatively recent tweets that Audi might finally bring the long-roof Sixer to these shores.

2019 Audi S6 Avant Competition

Those of our readers living in Europe have all manner of fast, five-door wagons to play with, including this bruiser from Mercedes-AMG. Situated just below its even-faster sibling, the E 63, the E 43 arrives to the party rocking a turbocharged 3.0-liter V-6 under the hood, which doles out as much as 396 horsepower and 348 pound-feet of torque through a nine-speed automatic transmission. Grip is provided by the 4Matic all-wheel drive system, which biases torque towards the rear axle for extra lively handling. The interior is also a rather nice place to be.

Read our full review of the 2017 Mercedes-AMG E43 4Matic Estate.

The Bavarians also play in this space, offering up the 5 Series to compete against Audis line of 6s and Mercs line of Es. Going head-to-head with the S6 Avant will be the 540i xDrive M Sport Touring, a mouthful of a name that adds all-wheel-drive grip and extra M Division speed to the mix. It looks great with its kidney grille up front and aggressive proportions in the flanks, while a decent wallop under the hood is provided by a turbocharged powerplant. Its also got oodles of room in the interior and plenty of gadgets to boot.

Read our full review on the 2017 BMW 5 Series.

Final Thoughts

While a slower, diesel-powered S6 might not look all that great on paper, the devil is in the details with this one.

Lets start with that mild-hybrid oil burner under the hood. While its definitely a bit slower in the sprint to 60 mph, the latest S6 Avant makes up for that with improved efficiency and, critically, a lot more torque. The net result is that driving this thing around town will feel much more rewarding than the outgoing models petrol-powered predecessor, with oodles of twist on demand making short work of passing maneuvers.

Indeed, while mixing speed, comfort, and practicality isnt always an easy thing to do, the 2019 S6 Avant pulls it off, finding the right balance between all three. While there are faster, more comfortable, and more practical options out there, there are few models that mix each characteristic so well, and in such equal proportions.

Love it Looks aggressive Practical, quick, and comfortable Mild-hybrid diesel powertrain finds a nice balance between power and efficiency Diesel actually makes sense

Leave it No more V-8 rumble Not sold in the U.S. Slower than the petrol-powered predecessor



Further Reading

Read our full review on the 2019 Audi A6 Avant.

Read our full review on the 2018 Audi A6 sedan.

Read our full review on the 2016 Audi S6.

Top Selling Model: Audi A4

Read more Audi news.
But others consider it a good opportunity to reevaluate agricultural practices.

This past February, a group of environmental activists and concerned citizens from Toledo, Ohio, managed to get a Bill of Rights passed on behalf of Lake Erie. The lake has a right to "exist, flourish, and naturally evolve," the document states.

The bill was inspired by a crisis that occurred in 2014, when Toledo's water supply became contaminated by microcystins, a blue-green algae that was blooming in the southwest corner of the lake. Civil Eats reports, "If it comes in contact with the skin, microcystin causes rashes; if ingested, it can also cause vomiting and liver damage." Eventually it was determined that the algae blooms were caused, at least in part, by agricultural runoff.

The Bill of Rights was created preserve water quality and ensure such contamination never recurs, but it has enraged farmers throughout the region who view it as a threat to their livelihoods. As described by Nicole Rasul in Civil Eats, the months following the bill's passing have consisted of lawsuits against the city, calling the bill "vague, unconstitutional, and unlawful," and resulting in the city agreeing on March 18 to hold off temporarily from enforcing it.

Agriculture is prominent in the area. There are 17 counties in the Maumee watershed, which covers 4 million acres and is the biggest watershed in the Great Lakes. More than 70 percent of this land is used for farming.

Animal feeding operations throughout the watershed have expanded rapidly over the past 15 years, from 9 million animals in 2005 to 20.4 in 2018. But, as the Environmental Working Group states, only operations above a certain size are subject to regulation by government agencies, which means there's little reliable information on where and how many of these facilities exist, and the amount of manure and phosphorus they produce.

Data for permitted facilities in the state reveals that 900,000 solid tons of manure and 1.5 billion gallons of liquid manure were produced in 2017. Rasul writes, "In the western Lake Erie watershed, the 64 permitted operations alone produced nearly a quarter of the solid manure in the state and almost half of the liquid manure."

Much of this manure is sold to farmers who use it to fertilize croplands, both in solid and liquid form. This is contentious for a few reasons. First, some argue there's too much manure in the region for it to be applied to farmland at "an agronomic rate" and an alternative means of disposal needs to be found. Second, farmers shouldn't be spraying liquid manure and should focus on spreading solid instead, as it's not so prone to runoff.

All of this goes to show that the fight between the two sides is fierce and there is a lot at stake. Some believe it's not all or nothing, that there are ways of farming  and even applying fertilizer  that don't threaten the lake. Joe Logan, a farmer and president of the Ohio Farmers Union, does acknowledge that Lake Erie's pollution problem is driven by agriculture runoff:

"He tells producers who feel threatened by the Bill of Rights that their livelihoods are not in jeopardy if they arent over-fertilizing their fields or applying manure haphazardly. 'We [didnt] get into the situation with the phosphorus levels we have right now without having a few bad actors,' he says."



It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but one thing is for sure: we can't have our meat and eat it too. This problem is driven by consumption habits and we, as consumers, need to take responsibility for the food choices we make that have a direct impact on the health of our waterways.

It's no longer business as usual. The world is changing, we're more aware of what's going on behind closed barn doors, and the pressure is only going to mount on governments to implement stricter environmental regulations and oversight.

In the meantime, the people behind the Lake Erie Bill of Rights have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from other communities and countries. Clearly it's something to which many people can relate.
To cap off a week of black hole fever, the cosmic object has now been named by a language professor in Hawaii.

This week was one for the history books: The first-ever image of a black hole was released, a seemingly impossible feat that was achieved thanks to a massive undertaking of scientists across the globe who have been working on the project for years. The image has captured the imagination and admiration of people everywhere; a cosmic object larger than our solar system has become the world's little darling.

And now it has a name: Powehi.

Astronomers worked with University of Hawaii at Hilo (UH) Hawaiian language professor and cultural practitioner Larry Kimura for the name, according to a statement from UH. The Hawaiian connection came about because two of the eight telescopes used to capture the image are located in Hawaii.

The new moniker comes from the Kumulipo, the sacred creation chant explaining the origin of the Hawaiian universe. Po, means the "profound dark source of unending creation," while "wehi," means honored with embellishments, and is one of many descriptions of po in the chant. So, an embellished profound dark source of unending creation.

As soon as he said it, I nearly fell off my chair, Jessica Dempsey, deputy director of the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on Mauna Kea, told the Honolulu Star Advertiser. I had just spent 10 minutes explaining what this object was in science language. And in just this one word, he describes that, she said.

The name is a big word; it's strong, poetic, and vastly profound in its meaning. It's everything that a name for the fist black hole seen by us mere humans should be.

It is awesome that we, as Hawaiians today, are able to connect to an identity from long ago, as chanted in the 2,102 lines of the Kumulipo, and bring forward this precious inheritance for our lives today, said Kimura. To have the privilege of giving a Hawaiian name to the very first scientific confirmation of a black hole is very meaningful to me and my Hawaiian lineage that comes from po."
The exports mainly comprised frozen tra fillet, the most high-priced item at US$5.3 per kilogramme.

Frozen tra fish steak exported to the UK also fetched high prices of US$4.3-4.7 this quarter.

The UK, the second largest market for Vietnams tra fish, is expected to remain a major buyer in Europe this year, according to VASEP.

Its demand is expected to grow steadily and prices are likely to remain high this year, making it an attractive market for Vietnamese exporters.

Vietnam is the sixth largest supplier of white meat to the UK after Iceland, China, Norway, Russia, and the Faroe Islands.
editorial@tribune.com

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 11

As India prepares to commemorate the centenary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, descendants of martyrs are discouraged by the attitude of the Britain government yet again. British Prime Minister Theresa May though expressed regret for the massacre by British troops in 1919, but fell short of a formal apology in the British Parliament.

Identical was the scenario in February 2013, when Britains serving Prime Minister David Cameroon and his delegation paid tribute to the martyrs at the Jallianwala Bagh, but didnt submit official apology.

In 1997, Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, visited the massacre site and laid wreaths at the Flame of Liberty memorial, but they too remained silent.

Mahesh Behl, whose grandfather Lala Hari Ram (then 36), an advocate, was killed in the massacre, said English came to India for trading, but ended up committing atrocities on Indians by making them their slaves. Ironically, the British admit it to be a shameful act, but their egoistic attitude refrain them from apologising. Earlier, Queen Elizabeth came to pay tributes to martyrs at Jallianwala Bagh but couldnt write even a single word of apology while jotting down her remarks on visitors book. This was followed by another meaningless visit of former PM David Camroon who also didnt submit atonement for the most barbaric incident of the colonial oppression. Now, May too adopted the same practice, which was disheartening, he added.

Surinder Singh, grandson of famous fresco painter Gian Singh, who lost his 17-year-old talented son Sunder Singh, said General Dyre was a butcher who ruined families. Had the British PM tendered apology in Parliament, it could have brought some solace to the aggrieved families of the martyrs, but the British government remained thick skinned and didnt shun its insensitive attitude, he said.

Sunil Kapoor, great grandson of Lala Wasoo Mal (in his 40s then) who died six days after receiving bullet injuries, said the tragedy changed the fortune of the victims families. As this massacre entered 100th anniversary, we expected at least the admission of guilt officially by the Britain government, but it was again not to be, he said.

Kapoor showed his resentment towards the Indian government too. What to talk of British government, our own country too is hesitant to award martyr status to those who were killed on that fateful day. We were struggling to get the Centre and the state government convince for the past so many decades, but remained unsuccessful, he added.
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

New Delhi: The Department of Telecom has given approval for the merger of Tata Teleservices with Airtel, subject to the condition that the Sunil Bharti Mittal-led firm furnishes Rs 7,200 crore worth bank guarantee, a government official said. On April 9, Telecom Minister Manoj Sinha gave a conditional nod for the merger, the official said. Subsequent to the ministers approval, the official said the DoT has asked Airtel to furnish a bank guarantee worth Rs 7,200 crore. Both companies also need to submit undertaking on matter related to court cases before merger is taken on record, the official said. PTI
vermaajay1968@gmail.com

New Delhi, April 11

The Supreme Court today reserved its order on a contempt plea filed by Japanese pharma company Daiichi Sankyo against the Ranbaxys Singh brothers over non-payment of Rs 3,500 crore in an international arbitration award. The Bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it will decide on the issue of contempt of court only.

Senior advocate Fali Nariman appearing for Daiichi told the SC that former Ranbaxy promoter Malvinder Singh had given an undertaking in the Delhi High Court that the value of their unencumbered assets was Rs 452 crore.

Nariman said the Delhi HC-appointed valuer had prepared two reports. Counsel for Malvinder Singh told the court that the enforcement proceedings against them are still pending before the HC, and that all the bank accounts have already been frozen by the court. His counsel said it is a civil contempt case, and Malvinder hasnt violated any court order.

Shivinder Singh, brother of Malvinder, through his counsel, told the court the current contempt emerges for not following an interim order. During the hearing, Malvinder presenting his point regarding the allegations of violating restraint on dealing with Fortis shares, said: I didnt violate restraint on dealing with Fortis shares, Indiabulls did that. On March 14, the apex court had asked the two to submit a concrete plan for repaying the Japanese firm in consultation with their accountants and financial/legal advisors and then inform the court on April 5. But, the bench noticed that no payback plan has been put in place.

Malvinders counsel had told the court that they have been duped and nearly Rs 6,300 crore has been siphoned. IANS
monicakchauhan@gmail.com

New Delhi, April 12

SpiceJet on Friday announced it will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease to bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline's international and domestic presence.

The announcement comes at a time when airfares have been on an upswing across India for the last few weeks due to sharp decline in number of flights primarily caused by grounding of around 90 per cent of cash-strapped Jet Airways' 119-aircraft fleet.

The availability of flights was also hit by pulling out of SpiceJet's 12 "737 Max" aircraft in March over safety concerns following an Ethiopian Airlines plane crash on March 10.

SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft," the airline said.

Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet fleet in the next ten days," it added.

The airline said the new inductions will not just bring down flight cancellations to nil but also help in SpiceJet's aggressive international and domestic expansion plans.

Under dry lease, the lessor provides the airline with the aircraft but without any crew member, while under wet lease, the lessor provides the aircraft along with complete crew.

Ajay Singh, Chairman and Managing Director, SpiceJet said this is the first lot of Boeing 737s that the airline is inducting in its fleet.

"The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience," he said.

Earlier this week, Indian aviation watchdog DGCA had asked all airlines to come out with individual medium-term plan by Wednesday on enhancing availability of domestic flights, a move aimed at curbing rising airfares.

In its fleet, SpiceJet had 12 "737 Max" aircraft. On March 12, the DGCA announced its decision to "immediately" ground the Boeing 737 Max aircraft that were being used by airlines in India.

A 737 Max aircraft operated by the Ethiopian Airlines crashed near Addis Ababa on March 10, killing 157 people, including four Indians.

This was the second such crash involving the 737 Max aircraft in less than five months. PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 11

A 36-year-old man reportedly committed suicide by shooting himself with a country-made pistol at Dadu Majra Colony this afternoon.

The victim, identified as Ravi Sonkar, fired on his chest with the pistol at his house. The victims wife, Rajni (34), was giving a bath to her child at the time of the incident.

Sources said Rajni rushed to the room on hearing the gunshot and found her husband lying in a pool of blood.

The police were informed and the victim was rushed to the PGI, where he later succumbed to the gunshot injury. The police said the relations between the victim and his wife were not cordial, which was suspected to be the reason behind the suicide. The victim worked at a meat shop in Chandigarh.

Police officials said the victim had recently gone to stay with his sister in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, and it was suspected that he purchased the pistol there. The victim has no criminal past, said a police official, who is investigating the matter.

Inquest proceedings have been initiated into the matter at the Maloya police station. The body has been shifted to the mortuary.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Panchkula, April 11

Sleuths of the static surveillance team and the flying squad, along with the local police, seized Rs 7.5 lakh from a vehicle at a police barricade set up in Sector 17 here this afternoon.

The district administration and the police had set up special teams to check the transportation of illegal liquor and money in vehicles in view of the Lok Sabha elections. A barricade had been set up in Sector 17 for checking vehicles. When an Innova, bearing a registration number of Delhi, arrived, the team directed the driver to stop. During a search of the vehicle, a bag containing Rs 7.5 lakh was found.

The driver of the vehicle, Imtiaz, alias Yuvraj, said he had brought the money from Zirakpur and the money belonged to his employer, a railway contractor. He said he was carrying the money to pay salaries to employees.

The team told the driver to ask his employer to bring documents or bank details, but the employer failed to turn up.

The team informed SDM Pankaj Setia after which the driver and the Innova were taken to the Sector 16 police chowki. The police have seized the money and impounded the vehicle.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 11

White Activa-borne miscreants struck again in Sector 22 this morning and snatched a purse from a girl. The same miscreants are suspected to be involved in at least two other snatchings reported from Sector 22 in the past few days.

Sources said the white Activa-borne miscreants snatched a purse from Kamaljit Kaur. The incident was reported around 7.40 am. The police said the purse contained Rs 1,000 and documents.

The police rushed to the spot and scrutinised CCTV cameras installed near the spot. The victim failed to note down the registration number of the scooter, said a police official.

The sources said police teams were on the lookout for the white Activa-borne snatchers, suspected to be involved in several snatching incidents.

UT SSP Nilambari Jagdale said efforts were being made to arrests the miscreants.

On April 10, white Activa-borne miscreants had snatched a mobile phone from a woman near a private school in Sector 22.

613 Activa scooters checked

In a bid to trace the Activa-borne snatchers, the UT police checked 613 Activa scooters on April 10 across the city of which eight were impounded and 11 challaned for traffic violations.
editorial@tribune.com

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, April 11

While the Labour Department of the UT Administration has started the online registration of shops and has made it mandatory, initial glitches in the software has left traders harassed, who have failed to upload the required documents.

As per rules, the traders have to renew the registration every year by April. However, due to the technical glitch in the software, a large number of traders are yet to get their registration renewed.

Failure to the get the registration renewed invites a penalty.

Traders met Deputy Commissioner Mandip Singh Brar, who directed NIC officials to simplify the procedure at the earliest. The Administration had started the online facility on April 1 for traders so that they could register their shops without having to visit the office concerned. The move was aimed at not only saving time of businessmen, but also at curbing corruption.

Shopping malls, hotels, hospitals, nursing homes, banks, insurance companies, service stations, medical laboratories, restaurants and several other categories of shops are required to register under the Punjab Shops and Commercial Establishments Act, 1958, every year.

Jagdish Pal Singh Kalra, a Sector 17 trader, while hailing the decision for starting the facility for online registration, said the department should make the procedure simple.

Subhash Kataria, another trader, said traders in the city were facing problems in uploading PDF files for registration/renewal of the shop licence. The portal only accepts PDF files for uploading documents, while the scanner scans the document in the BMB, JPEG, JPG format. It is not easy to convert the files into the PDF format. The PDF file convertor is a paid service and Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 has to be paid for it per year. This will be an additional burden on the traders.

LC Arora, another trader, said a professional agency should be appointed to help the traders in completing the formalities.

He demanded that the grace period for submitting details for registration/renewal should be extended by three months.

Kalra said sufficient time should be given to traders after the snag in the software was rectified.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Singapore, April 12

An Indian-origin man in Singapore has been jailed for three weeks and fined 5,000 dollars for setting off fireworks close to a housing complex during Diwali celebrations in the country last year.

Jeevan Arjoon, 29, bought the firecrackers from Little India shopping precinct and unlawfully lit them at 3.30 am as Diwali night stunt on November 6, 2018, The New Paper reported on Friday.

The fireworks, shot up to seven-storey, were loud enough to be heard from the neighbouring public housing estate of Yishun.

The display lasted for five minutes. No one was hurt and there was no damage to any property, according to the report.

District Judge Marvin Bay said the court had to take a strict view of Jeevans use and possession of fireworks, and sentenced him to three weeks jail and 5,000 Singapore dollars (USD 3,685) on Thursday.

He said the detonation of fireworks could cause serious injuries and posed a risk of fire, noting that they were set off close to public housing.

The judge said that setting off fireworks at 3 am could also cause considerable alarm to the public, particularly in this time of heightened concerns over possible acts of terrorism.

Jeevan, who was unrepresented, said in his mitigation that he was the sole breadwinner of his family and was taking care of his mother-in-law who was diabetic and blind.

The man, who had a record of giving false information to a public servant in 2017, was also convicted of giving false information to a police officer during investigation into the firework incident. He had tried to put the blame on someone else. PTI
shalender@tribune.com

IN Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, the BJP has found an unlikely  and unwanted  star campaigner. Not long ago, when Imran said that talks with India were possible only after the new government took charge, he was obviously not foreseeing a second term for the saffron party. Now, he is singing a different tune. He apparently believes that there may be a better chance of peace and settlement of the Kashmir issue if the ruling party wins the General Election  as if the Pulwama and Balakot incidents never happened. His left-handed compliment has given fresh fodder to the Congress and other Opposition parties to target Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After all, the PM has been saying that Pakistan (and militants) does not want the BJP to win.

The timing of Imrans remarks is of vital importance. Coming ahead of the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections, his words reek of mischief. In the guise of extending the olive branch, he is out to blunt the BJPs anti-Pakistan rant and cause confusion in the minds of Indian voters. Clearly, it is none of Pakistan PMs business to do crystal-gazing when it comes to the neighbouring countrys elections.

In any case, Imrans recent statements and moves do not inspire confidence. He has repeatedly failed to convince the Indian government and the public at large that the Kartarpur corridor will not be misused for the radicalisation of devotees or for other nefarious designs. He has been talking about peace and communal harmony on the one hand and showing a soft spot for Khalistan sympathisers on the other. The purported crackdown on militant outfits after the Pulwama terror attack has also come a cropper, even as the perfunctory probe has not managed to nail the usual suspects. Rising above affiliations, our political parties and voters should see through Imrans disruptive tactics and not let him provoke us, especially at this critical juncture when the country is deciding who will be its ruler for the next five years.
shalender@tribune.com

Just when the BJP thought it could breathe long and easy on the Rafale row, which has clung to it like the Bofors stuck to the Congress, the Supreme Court has dismissed the governments objections against taking cognisance of stolen documents while deciding a review petition. The highest court of the land will go ahead with it, despite national security concerns raised by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) that the review would tantamount to putting classified information in the public domain. Firm, the court declared that the test of admissibility of evidence lay in its relevance and there was no provision in the Official Secrets Act (OSA) or any other statute by which Parliament had vested power in the executive arm of the government to restrain publication of papers marked as secret, or placing them before a court of law.

Earlier, in December, the SC had dismissed the petition, ruling out commercial favouritism. Irregularities had been alleged in the Rs 59,000-crore deal sealed by the NDA government in 2016 with France for buying 36 fighter jets. The revelation of three missing documents, however, necessitated a review plea. These include an eight-page dissent note by three members of the negotiating team and two MoD documents, alluding to parallel negotiations by the PMO. The Attorney Generals contention that it was a crime under the OSA drew the courts rebuttal that a public authority is justified in allowing access to information if public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm sought to be protected.

The SC is determined to get to the bottom of it. The government can no longer hide behind gossamer pretexts of privilege, immunity and violation of the secrets Act. Probity in defence deals is not optional. If there was, indeed, transparency, there should be no jitters over what may emerge. Getting hands on sensitive papers is no crime, especially if mala fide is not proven. If at all, it exposes the chinks in the security network, in a fashion that makes it a class act of journalism.
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

New Delhi, April 12

The Delhi government on Friday opposed in the high court former Haryana Chief Minister O.P. Chautalas plea for parole for a period of three months as his wife is critically ill and admitted in a hospital.

The governments standing counsel Rahul Mehra told the court that Chautala is seeking parole for political purposes and he should not be granted relief considering the general elections.

The government also said that there are other family members who can take care of Chautalas wife.

Mehra said that Chautala had earlier abused the liberty granted to him and will do so again.

Justice Sangeeta Dhingra Sehgal fixed April 25 as the next date for hearing further arguments.

Chautalas counsel N. Hariharan and lawyer Amit Sahni told the court that as per the Parole and Furlough Guidelines, Delhi Prison Rules, a convict is entitled to avail parole twice a year for eight weeks and as Chautala has not availed any parole for more than one year, he is entitled for the same.

Chautala and his elder son Ajay were convicted in the JBT (junior basic teacher) recruitment scam in January 2013. Both were sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Delhi.  IANS
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Mukesh Tandon

Tribune News Service

Panipat, April 11

Untreated industrial waste is polluting the Yamuna in Yamunanagar, Panipat and Sonepat districts, says a report of the Yamuna Pollution Monitoring Committee constituted on the directions of the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

Acting on the report, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has ordered the Haryana State Pollution Control Board (HSPCB) to identify and shut erring units in Yamunanagar, Panipat and Kundli in Sonepat district with immediate effect for not complying with the norms prescribed under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974.

A joint team of the CPCB and the Central Council for Industrial Research (CSIR)-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) had inspected the quality of Yamuna water at various locations in all three districts and found that industrial waste was being directly released into the river without treatment.

The team monitored water quality at Wazirabad in Delhi, Palla village in Sonepat, Panipat, Yamunanagar besides drains  Ditch drain, Panipat drain, drain No. 8 at Sonepat and drain No. 2 at Panipat  from December 24 to 27 last year without informing HSPCB officials.

The teams assessed and identified the sources of pollution during the period and prepared the report, said the sources.

The team observed that the Yamunanagar drain, Panipat drain and drain Nos. 2, 6 and 8 carried untreated waste water of various industrial units located in the three districts.

The river water failed to meet the primary criterion  bathing water quality standard  at all monitored locations, said the sources.

Following the report, the CPCB Chairman has directed the HSPCB to identify and shut non-complying industrial units in the three districts with immediate effect.

It has also directed the HSPCB to submit a compliance report to the CPCB within two months.

Around 400 registered dyeing units are operational in Panipat, of which 300 alone are in Sector 29 part-2. Another 200 dyeing units are being run illegally in the district. As per HSPCB officials, 350 units are registered under the red category, 220 under orange and 25 under green category.

The maximum number of erring units falls in Sanoli and Bapoli areas that directly release industrial water into the Yamuna, say sources. The CPCB had issued closure notices to 70 industrial units in Panipat under the Environmental Protection Act last year.

Samples from Sonepat, panipat, Yamunanagar
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Karnal, April 11

A 20-year-old student of an ITI was on Thursday crushed to death under the wheels of a Haryana Roadways bus at the ITI chowk on the National Highway-44 here. The deceased was identified as Anikit, a resident of Rindal village in the district.

Students of the ITI created a ruckus and vandalised the bus after the incident. They blocked the highway and did not allow the police to take the body for postmortem examination.

The students alleged that due to non-cooperative attitude of roadways drivers, they had to face difficulties. They said drivers did not stop buses at stops, forcing them to chase the vehicles, which resulted in fatal accidents.

DSP Baljinder Singh reached the spot and pacified the students, following which they lifted the blockade and allowed the body to be sent for postmortem examination.

The incident took place when Anikit tried to board the bus. He fell and got crushed to death under the wheels of the bus, said an eyewitness.

An ITI student said the driver could not control the speed, resulting in the accident. The driver and the conductor of the bus fled after the incident. The DSP said a case was registered.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Karnal, April 11

Hundreds of sugarcane growers of Piccadily Sugar Mill on Thursday blocked the road near Baidsal village in the Nilokheri block.

They were heading towards NH-44 to block it but a heavy police force stopped them from reaching there.

The farmers alleged the district authorities and the government had failed to find a solution for selling their remaining sugarcane crop after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) ordered closure of the mill. They threatened to continue the stir till the fulfillment of their demand. Tense situation prevailed till the filing of this news as heavy police force was deployed to maintain law and order. SDM Indri Sumit Sihag, along with three DSPs, tried to pacify the farmers, but the former remained adamant on their demand. On the orders of the NGT, the Haryana State Pollution Control Board had sealed the distillery situated inside the mill. After four days, the board authorities reached the mill to seal it as well but farmers forced the authorities not to do so. The board authorities then sealed the mill on April 10. Rampal Chahal, president, Ganna Sangharsh Samiti, said farmers had been protesting since April 2 demanding relaxation of a month to crush the remaining sugarcane which is left in the fields, but neither the authorities nor the government did anything.

We approached the DC as well as the Minister of State for Food and Supplies Karan Dev Kamboj, but nothing has been done so far, forcing us to block the road. We have also requested for a meeting with the CM so that we can raise our issues, but to no avail, he said. Later, the farmers lifted the blockade around 10 pm after an assurance by the Deputy Commissioner of resolving the issue by Friday.

NGT directions

On the orders of the NGT, the Haryana State Pollution Control Board had sealed the distillery situated inside the mill. After four days, the board authorities reached the mill to seal it as well but farmers stopped the authorities from doing so. The board authorities then sealed the mill on April 10.
editorial@tribune.com

Our Correspondent

Una, April 11

BJP state president Satpal Singh Satti on Thursday blamed the Congress for bringing in Article 370 in the Constitution, thereby alienating Jammu and Kashmir from the rest of India.

He was addressing a gathering during a nook meeting at Nangran village of the Una Assembly segment as part of an election campaign in favour of BJP candidate for the Lok Sabha elections Anurag Thakur. Satti alleged that leaders such as Mehbooba Mufti and Farooq Abdullah, who had opposed the withdrawal of Article 370, were doing so at the incitement of the Congress.

After Independence, the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had sown the seeds of two different centres of powers in the country  by way of autonomy and special provisions to the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The BJP leader said the Congress was continuing with the same ideology even today, which was detrimental to the unity and integrity of the nation. He said the BJP had promised to abolish Article 370 from the Constitution, adding that residents of J&K were Indian citizens like people from all other states of the country.

Satti called upon the party workers to mobilise people for a meeting of the BJP Scheduled Caste Morcha scheduled for April 15.
editorial@tribune.com

Dinesh Manhotra

Chaladi (Samba), April 11

Uncertainty always looms large over dwellers of this small border hamlet, situated just a stones throw from Pakistan, as heavy shelling from across the border is a routine affair here.

But today, the whole village celebrated the festival of democracy as long queues of voters were witnessed since morning. While many villagers, attired in new dresses, stood in long queues to cast their votes, tea-sellers near the polling booths did a brisk business by selling tea and pakodas.

The polling day had virtually turned into a festival for the inhabitants of this border belt of Samba district, which is part of the Jammu-Poonch seat.

At Chak Nazar village, situated just 500 m from Pakistan, scores of people had lined up to cast their votes. There is no fear among people, said Mohan Singh, ex-sarpanch of this village.

Enthusiasm among voters was beyond expectations. Polling started at 7 am and till 12 noon, almost 60 per cent of the voters had exercised their right to franchise at a polling station.

Voters appreciated the election authorities for streamlining the voting system and creating awareness among voters to cast their votes. Earlier, electoral rolls were full of discrepancies, but this time 80 per cent of the voting lists were accurate which encouraged people to cast their votes, Mohan Singh, told The Tribune.

Women outnumber men

In the small border hamlet of Chak Nazar in the Ramgarh sector of Samba district, which is part of the Vijaypur Assembly segment, women outnumbered men in casting votes as enthusiasm was high among females. It is really encouraging to see women come out in large numbers, beating men in exercising their right to vote, especially in border areas, Mohan Singh said.

While in many polling stations of border areas, womenfolk beat men in casting votes, in the Vijaypur Assembly constituency, out of the total 86,961 votes cast, 43,785 were cast by women and 43,176 by men. Same was the situation in the Akhnoor Assembly segment, where out of the total 78,069 voters, 39,289 were females and 38,780 men.
Entertainment Thunder over Louisville live stream & TV broadcast coverage

Thunder over Louisville live

12.04.2019 16:30:33 - Watch live streaming from Waterfront Park for the Thunder over Louisville airshow and fireworks display. Live stream & TV schedule.



(live-PR.com) - The Thunder over Louisville aerial display show and accompanying spectacular fireworks display returns once again this weekend, bringing large crowds to Waterfront Park to watch the spectacle.



To watch the live stream of Thunder over Louisville:



www.myworldevents.com/lifestyle/thunder-over-louisville.html



Event background



The live stream online coverage and associated television broadcast has helped to bring this local event to a much wider audience in recent years.



Thunder Over - The Thunder over Louisville aerial display show and accompanying spectacular fireworks display returns once again this weekend, bringing large crowds to Waterfront Park to watch the spectacle.To watch the live stream of Thunder over Louisville:Event backgroundThe live stream online coverage and associated television broadcast has helped to bring this local event to a much wider audience in recent years.Thunder Over Louisville, the annual kickoff event of the Kentucky Derby Festival, is an airshow and fireworks display in Louisville, Kentucky. It is generally held each April, about two weeks before the first Saturday in May, or Derby Day. In years where Easter Sunday falls on the usually scheduled weekend, Thunder is moved a week earlier. It is the largest annual fireworks display in North America and began as part of an opening ceremonies event in 1989 with daytime fireworks. 1990 brought the first nighttime fireworks event. It officially began in its current location along the Ohio River in 1991 with fireworks, and an annual air show was added in 1992.



Thunder generally starts in the afternoon with an air show, followed by the fireworks show starting at 9:30 PM, along with a synchronized soundtrack through PA and radio. An average of 625,000 people have attended each year since 1997, lining the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville, and across the river in Jeffersonville and Clarksville, Indiana. Some also watch from the river on boats, docked in positions auctioned off for charity.



Eight 400-foot barges launch the fireworks, provided by Zambelli Fireworks Internationale, from both sides of the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge (Second Street Bridge), and more fireworks are launched from the bridge itself. In the twenty-first century the estimated attendance at Thunder has usually been approximately five times that of the main attraction, the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs.



Thunder Over Louisville has been televised locally since its first year. The 2007 show was the first to be broadcast entirely in HDTV. Previously, two or three HDTV cameras supplemented the broadcast. TV coverage of the fireworks received record ratings in 2006 due to cold temperatures which made many people choose to watch the show from home.



In 2005, The Kentucky Derby Festival started rotating the broadcast rights each year between 3 of the major Louisville network affiliates (WAVE-TV, WDRB, and WLKY). After airing the coverage exclusively from 1991-2003, WHAS-TV chose not to participate in the rotation for several years after this agreement was made. They have since entered the rotation. The show is traditionally rebroadcast on the 4th of July, on the U.S. military's American Forces Network.



Thunder Over Louisville began as a concept at a Kentucky Derby Festival workshop in the summer of 1988, after a decision had been made to have opening ceremonies for the first time.



The first opening ceremonies were held in 1989 at the Chow Wagon on the river and broadcast live to the They're Off! Luncheon crowd at the Galt House East. Organized by multimedia producer Wayne Hettinger, owner of Visual Presentations, they featured a live stage show to introduce the festival theme song and the release of about 20,000 multicolored balloons  followed by daytime fireworks. Attendance was estimated at 10,000.

Louisville, the annual kickoff event of the Kentucky Derby Festival, is an airshow and fireworks display in Louisville, Kentucky. It is generally held each April, about two weeks before the first Saturday in May, or Derby Day. In years where Easter Sunday falls on the usually scheduled weekend, Thunder is moved a week earlier. It is the largest annual fireworks display in North America and began as part of an opening ceremonies event in 1989 with daytime fireworks. 1990 brought the first nighttime fireworks event. It officially began in its current location along the Ohio River in 1991 with fireworks, and an annual air show was added in 1992.Thunder generally starts in the afternoon with an air show, followed by the fireworks show starting at 9:30 PM, along with a synchronized soundtrack through PA and radio. An average of 625,000 people have attended each year since 1997, lining the banks of the Ohio River in Louisville, and across the river in Jeffersonville and Clarksville, Indiana. Some also watch from the river on boats, docked in positions auctioned off for charity.Eight 400-foot barges launch the fireworks, provided by Zambelli Fireworks Internationale, from both sides of the George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge (Second Street Bridge), and more fireworks are launched from the bridge itself. In the twenty-first century the estimated attendance at Thunder has usually been approximately five times that of the main attraction, the Kentucky Derby horse race at Churchill Downs.Thunder Over Louisville has been televised locally since its first year. The 2007 show was the first to be broadcast entirely in HDTV. Previously, two or three HDTV cameras supplemented the broadcast. TV coverage of the fireworks received record ratings in 2006 due to cold temperatures which made many people choose to watch the show from home.In 2005, The Kentucky Derby Festival started rotating the broadcast rights each year between 3 of the major Louisville network affiliates (WAVE-TV, WDRB, and WLKY). After airing the coverage exclusively from 1991-2003, WHAS-TV chose not to participate in the rotation for several years after this agreement was made. They have since entered the rotation. The show is traditionally rebroadcast on the 4th of July, on the U.S. military's American Forces Network.Thunder Over Louisville began as a concept at a Kentucky Derby Festival workshop in the summer of 1988, after a decision had been made to have opening ceremonies for the first time.The first opening ceremonies were held in 1989 at the Chow Wagon on the river and broadcast live to the They're Off! Luncheon crowd at the Galt House East. Organized by multimedia producer Wayne Hettinger, owner of Visual Presentations, they featured a live stage show to introduce the festival theme song and the release of about 20,000 multicolored balloons  followed by daytime fireworks. Attendance was estimated at 10,000. Author:

Martin Kerrigan

e-mail

Web: http://www.myworldevents.com

Phone: 0035799813173 12.04.2019 16:30:33 -

Disclaimer: If you have any questions regarding information in this article please contact the author. Please do not contact Live-PR.com. We are not able to assist you. Live-PR.com disclaims content contained in this article. Live-PR.com is not authorized to give any information about content and not responsible for content posted by third party.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Jammu, April 12

The Indian and Pakistani armies traded heavy fire on the Line of Control (LoC) on Friday in Jammu and Kashmirs Poonch district, the Defence Ministry said.

At about 8.30 am, Pakistan initiated unprovoked shelling using mortars and firing small arms along the LoC in Sawjian sector, Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Devender Anand said.

The Army retaliated befittingly, he added.

Intermittent firing exchanges were still going on. IANS
vinaymishra188@gmail.com

Actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and her husband Nick Jonas have been announced as part of the Met Gala Host Committee, which includes such names as Lena Waithe, Katy Perry, Jared Leto, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez. Priyanka took to Instagram to reveal that she and Nick are on the committee for this years Met Ball, in a post looking back on their journey from when they met.

From walking the prestigious carpet for the first time, to meeting my husband and many friends for life, the 36-year-old actress captioned the post, revealing their involvement in the affair.

Nick and I are honored to be on the Benefit Committee for this years Met Gala. Looking forward to the first Monday in May, she added of the May 6 event.

The couple walked the Met Gala red carpet together just two years ago, and it had set the pace for more buzz around their relationship. Other celebrities on this years committee for the event include Bradley Cooper, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyongo.

The Metropolitan Museum of Arts annual Met Gala is New Yorks most glamorous benefit of the year.  IANS
rajivbhatia82@gmail.com

Gurnaaz Kaur

The second installment in the Manje Bistre series is also set up in the backdrop of a traditional wedding; just, this time the scene shifts to Canada and so does the madness. It may be categorised as a romantic comedy but it is a pantomime in every sense. Right from the word go there are hardly dialogues but slapstick humour. This can be a plus point for those who watch a movie for its jocularity but those who seek a storyline may feel disappointed.

The wedding in this one takes place in Canada because Ganda wants to get married in the country he was born. He does face opposition by his grandfather who wants him to get married in Punjab as thats where all the rituals are followed. The two reach a consensus as Ganda promises all the Punjabi traditions and rituals will be done in Canada, thus bringing an entire family of witty characters together.

In the hurly-burly of wedding preparations, Sukhi (played by Gippy Grewal), Gandas cousin, falls in love with Rano (Simi Chahal).

More than traditions, the film exhibits the lifestyle of Punjabis, which unlike reality, is a lot about desi daru, murga and bhang. In the villages of Punjab the house that hosts a wedding follows the ritual of collecting beds and beddings from neighbourhood.

This is from where the film gets its title and the Punjabi family brings the practice to Canada with much pride. Karamjit Anmol plays a nagging Baapu Ji really well. Gippy and Simi look good together, even though their romance is spread here and there in the film. The other supporting actors have also done a good job. As a group, its their comic timing, which is the plus and minus of this film. While Canada gets painted in the vibrant colours of big fat Punjabi wedding, the viewers may feel the previous Manje Bistre was a better show.

gurnaaz@tribunemail.com
rajivbhatia82@gmail.com

Nonika Singh

Be a seeker of truth, not a conspiracy theorist. Sagacious words, indeed. But does the director Vivek Agnihotri follow the advice he proffers? Not quite. The film turns the needle of suspicion towards powers, both in the country and abroad. As it raises some inconvenient questions about the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indias second Prime Minister, he brings to the table what is already in the public domain. The book Your Prime Minister is Dead by Anuj Dhar has documented these murmurs.

The narrative steered by a fledgling journalist Ragini (Shweta Basu Prasad) in search of a scoop begins with a question, who killed Shastri and calls out foul on many counts. However, Agnihotri too does not play by the rules. To be fair at some points in the film you do get a feeling that the maker is giving us a balanced point of view. The constitution of the committee that is set up to look into the mysterious death of Shastri in 1966 has members of all political and social hues.

It even has a right winger played by unassailable Pankaj Tripathi who tells us how secularism is what has let us down. No doubt the maker condemns him and others too. He also doesnt spare the opposition leader for whom every issue is politically motivated and a chunaavi mudda. But once it gives the mike in the hands of Ragini, her shrill utterances, especially who wrote on Indias forehead it is for sale, sound no more than cinematic equivalent of filibuster. Pretences go down and Agnihotris political leanings, titling towards a particular political party, are all too clear.

To bring out facts and then take shelter in cinematic liberties has become a decoy for most filmmakers. Only Agnihotri goes one step further. He not only uses actual footage of Shastri, whom the film righty hails as a true leader who would have put India on real path of progress, but also grabs of real interviews. Besides, Shastris grandson there is veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar, who was Shastris press secretary and was in Tashkent on the fateful day. To lend further authenticity to the film we are both read out and shown passages from books/documents such as Mitrokhin archives.

With references to many more writings we are led into believing that the maker has done his homework. Writing, however, whether its wisecracks spoken by Naseeruddin Shah or Mithun Chakraborty (fine performance) of the film is sharp. Politics is all about precision, goes the one-liner. But what exactly is film-making about? Indeed, asking discomfiting questions is every citizens right. But do makers have a right to distort and present verified and unverified data to malign a particular political party?

Sadly, that is the bigger question that you carry home, more pressing than the mystery surrounding the death of one of Indias most loved leaders. A pity, for the film could just have been the right moment to reinforce the greatness of the political stalwart who by the way Mr Agnihotri we all know shares his birth date with the Father of the Nation. Just as the film keeps wondering what would have been the future of India had Shastri not died suddenly in foreign soil, we too cant help but wonder what the film, touted as political espionage, could have been if only Agnihotri had shed his political bias. As it stands, it is no more than politics of convenience.

nonikasingh@tribunemail.com
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 11

Vice Admiral Bimal Verma today filed a statutory complaint with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) contesting the appointment of Vice Admiral Karambir Singh as the next Chief of the Indian Navy.

The application has been filed, sources confirmed today. The application has to be responded to within a specified time period. This is an internal remedy to address any grievance.

This comes after the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT), on Tuesday, asked Vice Admiral Verma to explore all remedies before filing a plea before the AFT. He had withdrawn his plea from the AFT and the statutory complaint has been filed with MoD.

Admiral Verma is the commander-in-chief of the Andaman and Nicobar Command. He has asked why he was overlooked as the next Navy chief despite being the senior-most in the line of command. The government last month named Vice Admiral Karambir Singh as next chief of the naval staff, succeeding Admiral Sunil Lanba who retires on May 31.
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 11

The festival of democracy in India got underway today with fate of 1,239 candidates, including Union Ministers and prominent political leaders across the spectrum, sealed in electronic voting machines across 91 seats in 20 states and Union Territories at the end of the first phase of polling.

The Election Commission described the process of polling as by and large peaceful barring sporadic incidents, including efforts by Left-wing extremists in Chhattisgarh to prevent voting by causing an IED blast near Narayanpur or putting up a roadblock that did not deter the voters as the turnout was around 56 per cent.

The heartening feature was the 77 per cent polling in Chhattisgarhs Shyamgiri where a blast this Tuesday killed five persons, including BJP MLA Bheema Mandavi. However, in Maharashtras Gadhchiroli-Chimur constituency, polling could not be held at four stations, fresh date for which will be announced later, the EC said. Yet, the contest whose result will be awaited on May 23 from this phase will be that of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, who was challenged in Nagpur constituency by former BJP MP Nana Patole, now with the Congress.

Of the states that went to the polls, Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim simultaneously voted for their Assemblies as well as to the Lok Sabha in a single phase. The Assembly elections were held in Odisha too along with the first of the three-part parliamentary polls.

In the four Bihar constituencies, the poll percentage stood at 50, lowest among all states, sealing the fate of Lok Janshakti Party sitting MP Chirag Paswan among others. On the other hand, West Bengal, which voted for two seats, recorded the highest turnout at 81 per cent. The TMC, which had won both Cooch Behar and Alipurduar seats, is being challenged primarily by the BJP.

Telangana too completed voting for its 17 Parliament seats with over 60 per cent turnout. The state also entered into record books with Nizamabad constituency witnessing voting with 12 EVMs at each of its polling stations to allow the voters to select from among 185 candidates, including sitting MP K Kavitha, daughter of party founder K Chandrashekar Rao.

In Uttar Pradesh, where eight seats in the western part went to the polls, the turnout was an impressive 63.69 per cent till 5.00 pm with Union Ministers Gen VK Singh (Retd), Mahesh Sharma, Satya Pal Singh and former Minister Sanjeev Balyan in contest along with challengers Ajit Singh and his son Jayant Chaudhary as candidates of the SP-BSP-RLD combine.

Uttarakhand completed polls to elect its five MPs, recording a 57.85 per cent turnout till 5.00 pm as against 62.15 per cent in 2014, amid a direct contest between the BJP and the Congress.

Besides Arunachal and Sikkim, voting in the Northeast was held for the Lok Sabha polls in Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura with the turnout varying from 60 per cent to 80 per cent.
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Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 12

BJP MP from Delhi and advocate Meenakshi Lekhi on Friday filed a contempt petition in the Supreme Court against Congress president Rahul Gandhi for allegedly attributing his remarks on the recent Rafale verdict to the top court.

A Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said it will take up the matter on Monday after senior counsel Mukul Rohatgi, representing Lekhi, said the Congress president reportedly made a remark that the Supreme Court said chowkidaar chor hai in the verdict.

Lekhi, who represents New Delhi Lok Sabha constituency, accused Gandhi of attributing his personal remarks to the top court and creating prejudice.

The Congress president had on April 10 claimed that the apex court has made it clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed a theft. He had made the statement while interacting with journalists in Amethi after filing his nomination papers. He is contesting against BJP leader and Union Minister Smriti Irani.

Gandhi had also recalled a recent interview by the Prime Minister, in which Modi had said the Supreme Court had given a clean chit to his government on the Rafale deal.

Now the SC has made it clear that chowkidarji (watchman) has committed a theft, Gandhi had told reporters after filing his nomination from the Amethi Lok Sabha constituency.

He had claimed that the apex court has accepted that there is some corruption in Rafale.

The apex court, which had earlier cleared the Modi government of accusations of corruption over the Rafale deal with France, had said it will hear a review petition on the basis of the new documents, referred to by the petitioners.

It had allowed the plea of petitioners relying on leaked documents for seeking review of its Rafale judgment and dismissed the governments preliminary objections claiming privilege over them.

I am happy and I have been saying so for months that Hindustans PM has given the air force money to (industrialist) Anil Ambani, and the SC has accepted it. The SC is going to investigate it, Gandhi had said.

I want to thank the SC. Its a very happy day. The SC has talked about justice. Justice has prevailed, he had added.
shalender@tribune.com

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 11

As the 17th General Election got underway today with the first phase of polling, the Congress hoped for winds of change to blow and for history to repeat itself.

Do not forget 2004, UPA chairperson and former Congress President Sonia Gandhi said today when asked if she thinks Prime Minister Narendra Modi is invincible.

Not at all, dont forget 2004, she said as Congress president Rahul Gandhi began his day with an appeal to the voters to vote wisely, for the soul of India and for the countrys future.

The Congress for its part does not have much to defend in the first phase of elections except seven Lok Sabha segments  two in Telangana, one each in Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur and Mizoram.

But the party is hoping for the grand alliance of BSP-SP and RLD to make gains in the politically significant western UP belt where the BJP holds all eight seats that went to polls in the first phase today.

The BJP is in for surprises, said a senior Congress leader hoping that the less than impressive poll percentages today could cut any which way. This could be the result of voter disenchantment. The PM had issued multiple appeals for people to turn out and vote in large numbers. The percentages so far look fair, not extraordinary, said a Congress leader.

The party hopes to improve its electoral base in Andhra Pradesh where it drew a blank in the last Lok Sabha elections. Of the 25 Andhra parliamentary seats, the TDP holds 17, the Congress none. Along with LS, Andhra Assembly polls also took place today with the Congress hoping for a presence in the Assembly. The party has still not recovered from the post Andhra Pradesh bifurcation shock which decimated it in both Andhra and newly created Telangana.

We hope to make gains now considering this election has taken place for the first time since reorganisation and Congress president is committed to a special category status to Andhra as promised by the former PM Manmohan Singh, says MM Pallam Raju, Congress leader in Andhra.

The Congress may also look for seats that witnessed polls in Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Meghalaya and west UP today. In Uttarakhand, all five LS seats are with the BJP and the lone Chhattisgarh seat of Bastar where polling concluded today is also with the BJP.

Congress hopes that BJPs losses in todays polls will translate into direct or indirect gains for the Opposition. That explains Sonia Gandhis 2004 pitch when the coalition of anti-BJP parties she stitched successfully formed a government at the Centre as the BJP harped in India Shining.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 12

The now-on, now-off parliamentary poll alliance between the Congress and AAP finally fell apart on Friday with the Congress leadership blaming the AAP for the breakdown of talks and for raising impractical conditions for the Delhi alliance.

Congress in-charge of Delhi PC Chacko said the AAP was making an impractical suggestion of extending the Delhi alliance to Punjab and Haryana and other states so the Delhi alliance may not be possible now.

The Congress said it was still ready for a Delhi-centric alliance with the AAP for the Lok Sabha polls but didnt agree with the AAPs idea of having a similar alliance in Punjab, Haryana and Goa.

The situation in other states is not the same as in Delhi; therefore, we cannot have an alliance in the other states. The AAP has compelled us to go it alone in Delhi, said Chacko.

He said the Congress Central Election Committee on Thursday discussed all seven Lok Sabha nominees of Delhi and would release the candidates list in a day or two.

Chacko said, In spite of the reservations our state leadership had about the Delhi alliance we wanted the alliance in national interest. The AAP and Congress alliance was ideal in Delhi. We also arrived at a pact. There were proposals from the AAP to discuss Haryana, Punjab and Goa and we thought its not feasible to have pacts in other states as in Delhi. Subsequently, on Wednesday the statement came from the AAP that the pact is not possible.

"It was only on the instructions of the Congress president that we tried an understanding with the AAP. Even today we are ready with an alliance provided they stick to the discussion we had in Delhi as per our strength. Alliance is not feasible in other states.

He said since the AAP is not taking a practical decision on the alliance, the Congress is being compelled to go it on its own and fight all seats in Delhi.

We wanted to clarify that we were and are willing but the AAP is going back after discussing with us and its not practical to extend the understanding in Delhi to other states. We are going to fight all seven seats on our own, Chacko said.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

New Delhi, April 12

Dubbing Union Minister Smriti Irani a serial liar, the Congress on Friday alleged that she has falsified records of her educational qualifications and submitted contradictory affidavits to the Election Commission for which she should be disqualified.

In a stinging attack on Irani, Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi, at a press conference, also sang the title track of the popular soap opera, Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, by changing the lyrics to qualification ke roop badalte hain...(qualification keeps changing).

The sharp attack came a day after the BJP candidate from Amethi Lok Sabha seat submitted to the Election Commission that she did not complete her graduation from Delhi University.

Union Minister Smriti Irani, who had been rubbishing Oppositions claim that she is not a graduate, yesterday accepted that she enrolled for an undergraduate course in Delhi University but did not complete it, Chaturvedi said.

She should step down and also be disqualified from contesting the polls for misleading the public through her affidavits on educational qualification, Chaturvedi said.

We have no issue with the fact that Smriti Irani is not a graduate. The issue here is that she has lied repeatedly on oath and to the courts. People of India will see through these lies and give a befitting political reply to a serial liar, she said.

It is clear that she has not only falsified records but has submitted contradictory affidavits to the EC for which she is guilty of offence under Section 125A read with Section 33 of the Representation of Peoples Act, Chaturvedi said.

There was no immediate reaction from the BJP over the issue.

She is also guilty of hiding information in Delhi University and misusing her influence and power as a Union Minister. Constitutionally, legally and morally, it would be best if she steps down as the Union Minister and by publicly accepting these lies, Chaturvedi said.

She also listed the various affidavits submitted by the BJP leader since 2004 to highlight the contradiction and falsification of educational qualifications.

In 2004, Irani submitted an affidavit to the ECI as Lok Sabha candidate from Chandni Chowk, Delhi, stating that her educational qualification as Bachelor of Arts in 1996 from Delhi University, School of Correspondence, Chaturvedi said.

Irani in 2011 submitted an affidavit to the ECI as Rajya Sabha candidate from Gujarat stating her educational qualification as B.Com. Part-I in 1994 from Delhi University, School of Correspondence, she said.

Then in 2014, Irani submitted an affidavit to the ECI as Lok Sabha candidate from Amethi, UP, stating that her educational qualification as B.Com. Part-I in 1994 from School of Open Learning, Delhi University.

Chaturvedi said Irani was also quoted at a media event in August 2014 that she has a degree from the prestigious Yale University in the US.

In her affidavit filed on Thursday during her nomination, Irani, who is contesting against Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, said she passed secondary school examination in 1991 and senior secondary school examination in 1993.

She has said she did not complete her Bachelor of Commerce (Part-I)  a three-year degree course  from Delhi Universitys School of Open Learning in 1994.

The party also issued a statement that began with the mock lyrics qualification ke roop badalte hain...kyunki mantri bhi kabhi graduate thi.

Irani, an actor-turned-politician, had essayed the lead role in Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi (Because a mother-in-law was once a daughter-in-law too). PTI
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New Delhi, April 12

Prime Minister Narendra Modis remarks asking first-time voters to dedicate their vote to those who carried out the Balakot air strike continue to be under the examination of the Election Commission to ascertain whether they violate its directive to political parties against using the armed forces in their campaign, sources said on Friday.

The Commission is understood to have sought certain details from poll authorities in Maharashtra in this regard.

Local poll authorities are learnt to have told the EC here that Modis remarks are prima facie violative of its orders on armed forces.

Addressing a rally in Ausa in Maharashtras Latur on April 9, Modi said, Can your first vote be dedicated to those who carried out the air strike.

I want to tell the first-time voters: can your first vote be dedicated to the veer jawans (valiant soldiers) who carried out the air strike in Pakistan. Can your first vote be dedicated to the veer shaheed (brave martyrs) of Pulwama (terror attack), Modi said.

The EC had sought the report in the context of an advisory issued last month asking parties to desist from indulging in political propaganda involving actions of the armed forces.

...parties/candidates are advised that their campaigners/candidates should desist, as part of their election campaigning, from indulging in any political propaganda involving activities of defence forces, the Commission had said on March 19.  PTI
uttara@tribuneindia.com

Patna, April 12

Former Bihar chief minister Rabri Devi on Friday claimed that poll strategist Prashant Kishor had met her husband Lalu Prasad with the proposal to merge Rashtriya Janata Dal and Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal (United) together.

She said Kishor, previously the poll strategist for Bharatiya Janata Party and now the national vice-president of JD (U), said that the new party formed by merging the two together could then declare its "prime ministerial candidate" ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.

"I was furious. I asked him to go away as I had no trust left in Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar following his betrayal," the RJD national vice-president, who is also the leader of the opposition in the legislative council, told a regional news channel here.

If Kishor denies having met Prasad with such a proposal, he would be a "blatant lie", she said.

Kumar had walked out of the Grand Allianceformed in partnership with the RJD and the Congress during assembly elections in Bihar in 2015 in 2017 to rejoin the NDA, an alliance he left in 2014 after his objection to Narendra Modi.

"All our staff and security personnel deployed here are witnesses. He called on us at least five times, mostly here (her 10, Circular Road residence), and one or two times at paanch number (5, Deshratna Marg - the bungalow allotted to her younger son Tejashwi Yadav)," Rabri Devi said.

"Kishor was sent by Nitish Kumar with the proposal: 'Let us merge both parties and declare a prime ministerial candidate'. He came in broad daylight and not clandestinely in the dark of night," she asserted.

Expressing displeasure over Kumar's claim that the RJD supremo keeps talking to Kishor from jail, she said: "Even we, (family members), do not get an opportunity for a telephonic talk with him (Lalu Prasad). And what about the claim by Anant Singh that while he was in jail, Lalan Singh (minister) used to arrange his telephonic talks with Nitish".

A mafia don-turned-politician who represents Mokama assembly segment, Anant Singh was earlier considered close to the Bihar chief minister, but fell out with him before the 2015 assembly polls.

His wife Neelam Devi is contesting the Lok Sabha polls as a Congress candidate from Munger, where she is pitted against JD(U)'s Lalan Singha state minister and close aide of the chief minister.

Anant Singh made the claim in a recent interview to a local news portal.

Notably, in his recently-published autobiography, Prasad had claimed that Kishor had met him as an emissary of Nitish Kumar with the proposal that the chief minister's party be re-inducted into the Grand Alliance.

Kishor, who became a full-time member of the JD(U) in September last year, took to Twitter admitting that he had met Prasad "many times" before joining the party, but added, "If I were to tell what all was discussed, he (Lalu) would be quite embarrassed". PTI
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Ajay Banerjee

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 12

A letter written by a group of retired military veterans, purportedly endorsed by eight former chiefs of the armed forces, to President Ram Nath Kovind has taken a new turn. Two of the former chiefs have denied having endorsed the letter or having signed it.

Gen SF Rodrigues and Air Chief Marshal NC Suri have distanced themselves from it saying they never signed any such letter. Gen Rodrigues was quoted by news agency ANI saying he was not aware of any such letter. Air Chief Marshal Suri said he had been misquoted and did not agree to whatever is written in the letter.

Maj Priyadarshi Chowdhary (retd) who had put out the letter in the public domain responded on Twitter saying We have proof of their (Rodriguess and Suris) endorsement (of the letter).

He said a Major General-rank officer was coordinating with the generals and senior officers. Consent was there. We are an apolitical pressure group of veterans working on the issues affecting the forces.

The letter expresses concern at the use of military operations for electoral or political purposes. Maj Chowdhary so far has not responded to the claims by the two former chiefs.

The letter appeals to the President to ensure that the secular and apolitical character of the armed forces is preserved.

Also read: Dedicate vote to airstrike men: PM to first-time voters

Reacting to the development, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said, Fake petitions are being signed. It is absolutely condemnable.

Other signatories are claimed to have endorsed the letter.

The President is the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

The letter was sent on Thursday night to the official email ID of the Rashtrapati Bhawan with copies to the Election Commission.

The letter has the names of more than 150 signatories, including three former chiefs of the Army--Gen SF Rodrigues, Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury and Gen Deepak Kapoor besides four former chiefs of the Navy--Admiral Laxminarayan Ramdas, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, Admiral Arun Prakash and Admiral Sureesh Mehta.

It also has former Indian Air Force chief, Air Chief Marshal NC Suri as a signatory.

Besides, the signatories include retired Army Commander-level officers, gallantry awardees and former fighter pilots, among others.

The recent developments have caused some concern and considerable alarm and disquiet among both the serving and retired personnel of our forces, says the letter.

They referred to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes, and even going so far as to claim the armed forces to be Modiji ki Sena.

This is in addition to media pictures of election platforms and campaigns in which party workers are seen wearing military uniforms; and posters with pictures of soldiers, especially of IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, on them.

Such misuse of the armed forces established under the Constitution and under the supreme command of the President, impinge adversely on the morale and fighting efficiency of the serving man or woman in uniform. It could, therefore, directly affect national security and national integrity, the signatories have warned.

The letter urges the President to take necessary steps and asks all political parties to desist from using the military, military uniforms or symbols, and any actions by military formations or personnel, for political purposes or to further their political agendas.

The soldiers, sailors and airmen owed allegiance to the Constitution, of which you, as President, are the legal custodian, the letter says.
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Rajnandgaon (Chhattisgarh), April 12

BJP president Amit Shah on Friday described the recent Naxal attack in Dantewada, wherein a Chhattisgarh BJP MLA was killed, as a political conspiracy and sought a CBI probe into it.

Addressing an election rally in Dongargaon town in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency, he also sought to know whether Congress chief Rahul Gandhi supported National Conference leader Omar Abdullahs demand for having a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir.

Our MLA Bheema Mandavi was killed in the Naxal attack. I pay my tribute to him and pray that the departed soul rests in peace. It was not a normal incident and it seems to be a political conspiracy, Shah said.

Mandavis wife has demanded a CBI probe into the attack. If the Chief Minister (Bhupesh Baghel) does not want to hide anything, then he should get the incident probed by the central agency. A neutral probe should be carried out into the attack, he said.

On April 9, Mandavi, an MLA from Dantewada, and four police personnel were killed when Naxals blew up their vehicle with an IED near Shyamgiri village in the district.

Shah also targeted Baghel for banning the CBI from investigating any fresh cases in the state without seeking the state governments consent.

Why is Bhupesh Baghel so afraid of the CBI? The Raman Singh government had never banned the CBI, he said.

The BJP chief also alleged that Naxals are rising after the Congress government was formed in the state and said Congress government has decided to practice politics along with Naxals in future.

Slamming Omar Abdullah over his demand for a separate PM for Jammu and Kashmir, the BJP chief said Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker was alive.

Omar Abdullah has advocated for a prime minister in Kashmir. Do you think it is possible that a country can have two PMs? They wanted to separate Kashmir from India.

Rahul Gandhi is silent over it. He should clarify whether he supports or opposes Abdullahs statement, Shah said, adding that Kashmir cannot be separated from India till the last BJP worker is alive.

Taking a dig at the Congress, the BJP leader claimed that sadness gripped the grand old party and Pakistan following the air strikes over terror camps in Balakot in retaliation to the Pulwama terror attack.

During the 10 years of UPA rule, when terror attacks happened, no reply was given. But when Pulwama terror attack took place, the Indian Air Force carried out air strike and demolished the terror camps inside Pakistan, he said.

At a time when the entire country celebrated the air strike, there was grief in Pakistan and in the office of Congress, Shah claimed.

Guru of Rahul Gandhi, Sam Pitroda, says talks should be held with them (Pakistan)...But reply of bullets will be given with shells. Vote bank cannot be bigger than the nations security, he said.

Highlighting Modi governments various welfare schemes, Shah said, What the Modi government has done in 55 months, was not done even in the 55 years of the Congress rule. The 10-year rule of the UPA was dipped in corruption and scams to tune of 12 lakh crore was committed during that time.

Now, the Congress is claiming that it will carry out the development of the country. Although their (Gandhi familys) four generations ruled the country, no development took place. In five years, the Modi government worked to uplift the poor, he said.

Growth does not take place by raising development slogans, but when there is compassion for poor in the heart, he said.

The BJP had won 10 seats of the 11 Lok Sabha seats in Chhattisgarh in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Shah said, and exuded confidence that the party would emerge victorious in all the 11 seats this time.

In the last three Lok Sabha polls  in 2004, 2009 and 2014  after the formation of Chhattisgarh, the BJP had fared well by winning 10 out of 11 seats all the three times.

The BJP denied tickets to its all 10 sitting MPs in the state this time after suffering a massive defeat in last Assembly polls.

The saffron party has fielded its state general secretary Santosh Pandey in Rajnandgaon Lok Sabha constituency which will go to polls in the second phase on April 18. PTI
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Keonjhar (Odisha), April 12

Hitting out at Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for his silence on ally Omar Abdullahs pitch for a separate prime minister for Jammu and Kashmir, BJP president Amit Shah on Friday asserted no one can make India part with the state as long as the BJP exists.

Shah also alleged that the Congress and other opposition parties are unhappy with the success of the Indian Air Forces strike on terrorist camps at Balakot in Pakistan in retaliation for the Pulwama terror attack.

Omar Abdullah has suggested appointing a separate prime minister for Kashmir. Is it possible to have two PMs in a country? Can there be a second PM in Kashmir?

Rahul Baba (Gandhi) is silent on his poll ally Abdullahs suggestion (separate PM for Kashmir)...He has not uttered a word, Shah told an election rally here.

Asserting that Kashmir is an inseparable and inalienable part of India, the BJP chief said, No one can take away Kashmir from us. As long as the BJP exists, Kashmir will continue to be an integral part of India.

Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah recently advocated a separate prime minister for his state, triggering angry reactions from BJP leaders.

Shah said barely 13 days after 40 CRPF personnel were killed in Kashmirs Pulwama in a terror attack, air strikes were carried out targeting a terrorist haven inside Pakistan and the whole nation rejoiced.

But Rahul Baba did not like it. There was mourning in Gandhis party and his alliance, he alleged.

Lashing out at Gandhi familys close aide Sam Pitroda, who advocated talks with terrorists, the BJP president asked, Tell me whether we should hold a dialogue with terrorists or bomb them?

If we get bullets from Pakistan, we will retaliate with more lethal ammunition, he declared.

Maintaining that a Modi wave is sweeping across the country once again, he claimed, From Kashmir to Kanyakumari and from Odisha to Gujarat we hear the chants of Modi, Modi everywhere.

Shah claimed it is the BJP alone that can safeguard peoples interests.

Slamming Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik for his poor command over Odia language, Shah said despite ruling the state for 19 years he cannot talk to people in their language.

Odisha, he said, is rich in natural resources but its people are still poor because of the wrong policies of the BJD government.

The 19-year BJD rule has been marked by misgovernance and corruption. The youth are forced to migrate to other states to earn livelihood as Odisha lacks job opportunities.

Shah also shared his plans for the development of this tribal-dominated district.

The BJP government will set up a steel plant and a medical college in Keonjhar district if re-elected at the Centre. All forest produce will be procured at Minimum Support Price from the tribals, while no GST will be levied on tendu leaves, he said.

Under the District Mineral Foundation (DMF) funds, an additional Rs 1,600 crore has already been allocated to Keonjhar, the BJP chief said.

Unlike the Congress, which did nothing to eradicate poverty during its 70-year rule in the country, the Modi government has been working sincerely for the welfare of the poor, farmers, youth, tribals, Dalits and the weaker sections, Shah claimed.

Polling in Keonjhar, where the BJP has fielded Ananta Nayak as its Lok Sabha candidate, is slated to be held in the third phase on April 23.  PTI
shalender@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Patna, April 11

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today attacked the Opposition asserting that the mahamilawati gang (grand alliance) appeared scared of its existence as its shops of corruption and dynastic politics would shut down if he was voted back to power.

In a veiled attack on the RJD, an ally of mahagathbandhan, Modi said: Some politicians constructed houses and farmhouses for their own but our government (NDA) constructed houses and brought cooking gas for the poor.

Addressing a rally at airport ground in Bhagalpur of Bihar, Modi said: Mahamilawati (mahagathbandhan) leaders have strived hard to scare people that there would be no election or reservation if Modi is voted back to power. After election the fragmented gang (grand alliance) would disperse. Ask them to make it clear whether they are with our brave soldiers or terrorists. The NDA has a clear policy on the countrys armed forces. We have given them a free hand to deal with terrorism and Naxalism but the Opposition is likely to strip the forces of their special powers.

Modi claimed that his government discouraged VIP culture. Your chowkidar has removed all red beacons and got houses of the poor illuminated, he said.

Namo food packs trigger row
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 12

Russia has conferred its highest civilian award to Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his efforts in advancing the Indo-Russian strategic partnership, a Kremlin press release announced on Friday.

The decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin said it had awarded PM Modi with the Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle which in the past has been conferred on Presidents of China, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, all close political allies of Moscow.

The award was a Tsar-era decoration that was scrapped after the 1917 Russian Revolution but was brought back by the Church in the dying days of the Soviet Union and officially resurrected by then Russian President Boris Yeltsin a year before he demitted office in 1999.

PM Modi was awarded the Zayed award by the United Arab Emirates earlier this month for his initiative in opening a new page in Indo-UAE ties.

Why the award?

India has risked US opprobrium by inking three major defence deals with Russia.

The deals are for an advanced missile defence system, a nuclear submarine and setting up a Kalashnikov factory in India.

The defence hardware contracts dilute US efforts to curb Russian arms exports.

The Modi Government believes it should diversify its arms dependence and has given lucrative contracts to US companies as well.

In the offing is an ambitious plan for a gas\oil pipeline from Russia traversing through Kazakshtan.

India is also poised for major forays in the hitherto unexplored Arctic region in close partnership with Russia.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Krishnagiri (TN), April 12

Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Friday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleging that he ran his government for 15 of his friends and he wondered why no big-ticket defaulters of bank loans like Vijay Mallya were in jail.

The Congress chief said the ones like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, after taking bank loans, failed to return them, and ran away from the country.

Not even a single one is in jail, he added.

Gandhi said when his party is voted to power, no farmer is going to be put in jail for not paying back his bank loan; it is not fair that the rich do not go to jail but farmers go to jail for the same offence.

He alleged that the Prime Minister gave Rs 35,000 crore to Nirav Modi, Rs 35,000 crore to Mehul Choksi and Rs 10,000 crore to Vijay Mallya.

During the last five years, Modi ran a government for 15 people and you know the names, he said.

These are Anil Ambani, Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi and they are Modis friends, he said addressing a poll rally here.

Focusing on his partys Minimum Income Support Scheme Nyay, he said it would give purchasing power to the people and that in turn would propel factories in Tamil Nadu and the overall economy.

Textile and silk hubs of Tamil Nadu, Tirupur and Kancheepuram will become live, again and provide employment opportunities to youngsters, he said.

Gandhi said his party and its allies would never allow the Tamil Nadu people to be ruled by Nagpur (the RSS) and expressed confidence that DMK chief MK Stalin would soon be the chief minister of the state. PTI
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Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 12

The Supreme Court on Friday refuses to stay the electoral bonds but ordered all political parties to submit in sealed covers details of donations received by them through the scheme to the Election Commission.

In an interim order, a Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi asked them to forthwith furnish names of donors, the amount received through Electoral Bonds till date along with their bank accounts to the poll panel. Details of electoral bonds received by them up to May 15 will have to be submitted to the poll panel by May 30, it said.

The sealed covers will remain in the custody of the Election Commission of India and will abide by such orders as may be passed by the court, it added.

The top court said it would examine in detail the validity of changes made in lawsincome tax, electoral and bankingthrough Finance Act, 2017, to bring them in consonance with the electoral bond scheme later.

the rival contentions give rise to weighty issues which have a tremendous bearing on the sanctity of the electoral process in the country. Such weighty issues would require an in-depth hearing which cannot be concluded and the issues answered within the limited time that is available before the process of funding through the electoral bonds comes to a closure, the Bench said.

The court, therefore, has to ensure that any interim arrangement that may be made would not tilt the balance in favour of either of the parties but that the same ensures adequate safeguards against the competing claims of the parties which are yet to be adjudicated, it noted.

The order came on PILs filed by the Association for Democratic Reforms and two others challenging validity of the electoral bond scheme introduced through Finance Act, 2017.

The Centre had on Thursday defended before the Supreme Court donors anonymity under the electoral bond scheme, saying the new method political funding was a policy decision even as the Election Commission questioned it for lack of transparency.

Attorney General KK Venugopal had argued that the purpose behind the electoral bonds was to eliminate use of black money in elections.

So far, as the electoral bond scheme is concerned, it is the matter of policy decision of the government and no government can be faulted for taking policy decision, Venugopal had said. The court can scrutinise it after polls, he had added.

Referring to the extent of the role of black money in Indian politics, Venugopal had referred to a report of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which reported high levels of unauthorised funding of elections in India and said electoral bonds were aimed at doing away with the menace.

Venugopal had earlier told the Bench, We have no policy of state funding of elections. Funds are received from supporters, affluent persons and companies. They all want their political party to win. If their party does not win, then they apprehend some repercussions and hence secrecy or anonymity is required.

Venugopals submissions were contested by senior advocate Rakesh Dwivedi, representing the EC, who had said secrecy in the electoral bond scheme legalised anonymity. Anonymity must go. We want transparency. We want reforms. We cannot go one step forward and two steps backwards. We want free and fair polls, Dwivedi had said.

He, however, had clarified that the EC was not against the scheme as such, but it had opposed anonymity in it.

ADR counsel Prashant Bhushan had termed it a retrograde step as it was against the concept of free and transparent elections. Electoral bonds may be the kick backs to the ruling political parties and referred to the replies of the poll panel underlining that the changes made in the law will have serious repercussions on the transparent funding of political parties, he had said.

The petitioner has questioned the validity of various amendments made through Finance Act 2017 and Finance Act 2016 in Companies Act, Income Tax Act, Representation of People Act, Reserve Bank of India Act and Foreign Contribution Regulations Act.
shalender@tribune.com

Kalimpong/ Raiganj, April 11

The BJP will scrap Article 370 of the Constitution that grants special status to Jammu and Kashmir and introduce National Register for Citizens (NRC) across the country if voted to power again, BJP chief Amit Shah said today, raking up the two hugely disputed issues.

On the campaign trail in West Bengals Kalimpong in Darjeeling LS seat and Raiganj seat in North Dinajpur, he also accused TMC chief Mamata Banerjee of questioning the airstrikes to appease her minority vote bank, and demanded that she clarify whether she too favoured a separate PM for J&K like her ally National Conference leader Omar Abdullah.

We will remove Article 370 from Kashmir after forming the next BJP government at the Centre, Shah told an election rally at Kalimpong in Darjeeling LS constituency where the party has fielded industrialist Raju Singh Bisht.

Calling illegal migrants from Bangladesh termites, Shah said at another rally in Raiganj that his party would throw them out after coming to power.

Shah alleged that Banerjee, who is vehemently opposed to the contentious NRC that is currently restricted to Assam, was misleading people. It is our commitment to bring in NRC across the country to chuck out each and every infiltrator. Unlike Banerjee, we dont treat infiltrators as our vote bank. For us, national security is supreme. We will ensure that each and every Hindu and Buddhist refugee gets citizenship, he said.

Illegal migrants are like termites. They are eating our foodgrains that should go to the poor, they are taking away our jobs. The T of the TMC stands for Tushtikaran, M for mafia and C for chitfund (scams), Shah said.  PTI
shalender@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, April 11

Denying invincibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, UPA president Sonia Gandhi today reminded the people of 2004 when the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was thought to be invincible, yet the UPA won.

Speaking to reporters after filing her nomination from Rae Bareli for the fifth consecutive term, Sonia Gandhi expressed confidence in the love of the people of Rae Bareli.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi, who was with his mother, once again attacked Prime Minister Modi.

He said: There have been many people in Indian history that had the arrogance to believe that they are invincible and bigger than the people of the country. Modi ji has done nothing for the people in the past five years and his invincibility will be there for all to see after the elections.

Responding to a question about PM Modi threatening to send him to jail, Rahul Gandhi said he was ready to face anything, but before that Modi ji should agree to answer his questions regarding the Rafael deal. For that, he was ready to go over to Race Course road if Modi ji wanted, he said.

Earlier Sonia Gandhi participated in a road show. Due to her frail health, she did not travel in an open truck, but preferred to be in an SUV. Thousands of supporters thronged the streets cheering Sonia Gandhi and the Gandhi-Vadra family, showering flower petals as the cavalcade inched towards the collectorate.

Besides Rahul, she was accompanied by daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, son-in-law Robert Vadra and grandchildren Rehan and Miraya. Before filing her nomination, Sonia Gandhi, along with her family, performed a havan at the residence of Gandhi familys guru Gayaprasad Shukla.

After filing her nomination papers, Sonia Gandhi followed the tradition of visiting the ancestral home of Islamic scholar late Maulana Ali Miyan. She also held a meeting with party workers.

Declares assets worth Rs 11.82 cr
editorial@tribune.com

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune News Service

Sangrur, April 11

Four years after the acquisition of their fertile lands for the widening of the national highway (NH) between Bhawanigarh and Barnala, the owners of 67,988.81 sq yards are still awaiting their payments. Though the government has already released their payments of Rs 32.12 crore around three years ago, their personal disputes have delayed the release of their money.

As per sources, in the first phase the National Highways Authority of India in January 2014 had acquired 9,09,141.71 sq yards from 3,000 persons. The authorities released all Rs 459 crore within five months of the acquisition. But of the total amount released, around Rs 20 crore is still lying in the account of the Sangrur administration as Fixed Deposit Receipts (FDR) after disputes cropped up between owners of 47,614.74 sq yards over the distribution of payment made by the state government for the acquisition of their land.

We are three brothers and two sisters. Initially our sisters had said they did not need any share from our ancestral land. But after the acquisition of land when they got to know that we would receive lakhs of rupees, they started demanding their share and lodged their objection and our case was sent to court. Officers are not at fault and they are cooperating with us, said a local.

In the second supplementary purchase of land in July 2016, for which all payment of Rs 212.88 crore was released to the Sangrur administration by the Punjab government in September 2016, the National Highway Authority of India acquired 3,15,964.53 sq yards from 3,000 residents. But out of total acquired land, the payment of Rs 12.17 crore is still lying as FDRs after differences cropped up between the owners of 20,374.07 sq yards.

Officers of the SDM office are calling us repeatedly to release our payment. We are trying to settle the things, said another land owner. Sangrur SDM Avikesh Gupta said out of total Rs 671-crore payment, Rs 32.17 crore was lying in their account as FDRs.

Many have settled their disputes after our intervention, but all are not ready to accept our mediation. We have referred only disputed cases to court and owners will get interest also on their total payment after settling their disputes, said SDM Gupta.
editorial@tribune.com

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 11

BJP leader Manoranjan Kalia, former minister of the state, has written to President Ram Nath Kovind, demanding a civil honour posthumously for British journalist Benjamin Guy Horniman (1873-1948) to mark the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.

Horniman, editor of newspaper "The Bombay Chronicle", was among those who sided with the oppressed and narrated the truth of the massacre by defying the brutal British Censorship in 1919. He had to undergo a two-year RI.

The paper had to suspend its publication and Horniman was deported to Britain. Horniman successfully smuggled photographs of the massacre and its aftermath and broke stories in the Daily Herald in Britain to tell the truth of the massacre to the British people.

BJP leader, daughter dedicate song

Jalandhar: Taking to a novel way of observing the centenary of Jallianwala Bagh massacre, BJP state ex-president Kamal Sharma and his daughter Shubhra Sharma have sung a duet patriotic song which will be released tomorrow at Chandigarh. The father and daughter first got the song titled 'Jallianwale Bagh da Saka' recorded with background music and sounds of bullets in the backdrop and even shot a video of the same yesterday at the massacre site. Kamal Sharma said, "As the centenary is drawing near, it struck me that we can sing a duet and get it recorded. Finally, we also got a video shot . TNS
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

Vishav Bharti

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 11

It was Baisakhi. Ratan Devi had prepared kheer, her husband Hari Ram Behals favourite sweet dish. But he was in tearing haste that day. I will be back in a couple of hours, he told her as he left the house. A couple of hours later, his body was brought home. It had two bullets  one in the stomach and another in the leg. He was No 19 on the list of Jallianwala Bagh massacre victims.

Ratan Devi lived with regret all through her life. Each time she recalled that fateful day, she would break into tears. A hundred years have passed since then. Neither is kheer cooked, nor sweets brought home by Hari Rams children during the month of April. We dont attend weddings or buy new clothes either, says Mahesh Behal, one of the grandsons.

A petition writer, who understood the legal implications of the Rowlatt Act, Hari Ram joined the campaign against the legislation on Mahatma Gandhis call. He was a staunch follower of the Arya Samaj and an untiring activist. Mahesh points at a large framed photograph of his grandfather. How could a man who knew how to use the pen even in those times remain silent on such a draconian law? he observes.

Jallianwala Bagh is not too far from Chowk Passian where the Behals have been living for generations. Mahesh recalls his grandmother telling him that the family could hear the sound of bullets that day. She feared the worst. Suddenly, somebody rushed to inform her that her husband had been hit by bullets. My grandmothers brother, accompanied by two persons, brought my grandfather home. He was bleeding profusely and asked for water. My grandmother poured water into his mouth, but it was of no help. A wailing Ratan Devi laid her two young sons besides her husband. Take them along too. How will I raise them alone? she kept muttering. It was already dark and curfew had been imposed. Neither could Hari Ram be taken to hospital, nor was any doctor willing to take the risk of defying the curfew. He died at home without any medical help.

Mahesh says freedom fighter Madan Mohan Malviya visited the family a few days after his grandfathers death. Those who have lost a bread-winner alone can understand the agony of the family he leaves behind, he says, sounding bitter. Hari Rams wards had to do odd jobs at shops to fend for themselves.

A shocked Ratan Devi, along with other women, would frequently gather outside the house of a policeman residing nearby, whom she saw as a symbol of British oppression. My grandmother was a strong woman. Bit by bit, she began piecing together her broken life. Ratan Devis children grew up and entered the business of minerals in the mid-thirties. But the pain she carried refused to go. As long as she lived, she did not allow her children or grandchildren anywhere near Jallianwala Bagh.

Mahesh visited the site almost 10 years after the demise of his grandmother. I was elected president of the student council of DAV College, Jalandhar, in 1965, and the college principal asked me to accompany him to pay tribute to the martyrs on April 13. I was reluctant and told him about my grandfather. The principal hugged me and said it was a matter of pride for him to visit Jallianwala Bagh with the grandson of a martyr, Mahesh recalls.

Tomorrow

One of the worst outrages in history
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Lahore, April 12

Over 2,200 Sikh pilgrims from India arrived here on Friday to celebrate Baisakhi festival at Gurdwara Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal city of Pakistans Punjab province.

The pilgrims, who arrived at Wagah railway station by two special trains, were received by Secretary of the Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) Tariq Khan and Pakistan Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee president Sardar Tara Singh.

The ETPB looks after the holy places of the minority community in the country.

Gurdwara Panja Sahib has a handprint of the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak Dev, on a boulder of the shrine.

A total 2,206 Sikh pilgrims have arrived here from India on two special trains. After immigration they left for Gurdwara Punja Sahib in Hasan Abdal in Attock district, about 40 km from Rawalpindi, ETPB spokesman Amir Hashmi told PTI.

Baisakhi is celebrated to mark the beginning of a new harvest season. Under the framework of the Pakistan-India Protocol on Visits to Religious Shrines of 1974. Every year, a large number of Sikh pilgrims from India visit Pakistan to observe various religious festivals and occasions.

He said special security arrangements have been made for them and elite force and rangers are deployed along with them for their security.

Hasmi said the pilgrims will also visit other gurdwaras in Punjab province, including Gurdwara Janamasthan Nankana Sahib, during their 10-day stay here.

They will leave for India on April 21, he added.

Talking to reporters, leader of the Indian delegation Sardar Varmindar Singh Khalsa expressed the hope that the government will issue visas to a large number of Indian Sikh pilgrims on the occasion of 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev.

We are anxiously awaiting that occasion and hope the government will issue maximum number of visas to the pilgrims, he said, stressing that people-to-people contact between the two countries would help in improving ties between the neighbours.

India and Pakistan have announced opening the Kartarpur Corridor on the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak Dev. PTI
editorial@tribune.com

Jaiswar

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 11

Preparations are in full swing to commemorate the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Heavy police force has been deployed for the security arrangements. Huge pandals have been erected for the visitors coming to the holy city for paying tributes to those who attained martyrdom in the massacre.

Thousands of people from across Punjab and a number of organisations have prepared plans to pay homage to the martyrs on April 13. Being Baisakhi on the day, a huge number of devotees is expected to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple also. This has posed a great challenge for the police force.

Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu, AICC president Rahul Gandhi, Punjab Governor VP Badnore and CM Capt Amarinder Singh are among the dignitaries who would be visiting the Jallianwala Bagh on April 13. On the eve of the event, being organised by the Central government at the Jallianwala Bagh, a candle march, led by Capt Amarinder Singh, would be held.

In view of the huge gatherings and VVIPs visiting the memorial on Saturday, the police have urged the people to reach there in a controlled manner. Elaborate security arrangements are being made considering the visits of the Vice-President, Punjab Chief Minister and Governor, besides the AICC president. We are expecting huge rush on the day. Many organisations had also announced to pay tributes to the martyrs at the memorial on the day. Therefore, we are urging the people to come in controlled manner so that nobody is inconvenienced, said Police Commissioner SS Srivastava.

A temporary divider has been erected in the middle of Heritage Street for the smooth movement of thousand of devotees coming to pay obeisance at the Golden Temple and VVIP movement towards the Jallianwala Bagh.

Three-day photo exhibition

A three-day photo exhibition on freedom struggle at the historic garden commenced here today. Regional Outreach Bureau, Chandigarh, under the Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, has organised the exhibition.
rchopra@tribunemail.com

Karachi, April 12

At least 21 people were killed and 50 others injured in a suicide bombing at a crowded market in Pakistans restive Balochistan province on Friday, in an attack believed to be targeting the Shiite Hazara ethnic minority community.

Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and ordered an inquiry.

The explosion at around 7:35 am took place in the busy wholesale market area of Hazarganj in Quetta where Hazaras and other traders come daily to buy fruits and vegetables to later sell at their shops in other parts of the city.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that the blast, which occurred when the vegetable and fruit sacks were being loaded onto trucks by the traders, targeted the Hazara ethnic community.

However, Home Minister Ziaullah Langove, in a press conference, said that the blast was not targeting a specific community.

Our guess is that no specific community was targeted. Marri Baloch and Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were among those killed as well. The numbers of the Hazara community were just greater, Langove said.

He also described the blast as a suicide attack.

Officials said that 21 people have been killed and 50 others injured in the blast.

An Edhi welfare trust rescue official at the scene of the blast said he had counted around 21 bodies being taken to hospitals.

At least eight of those killed in the bomb blast are from the Hazara community, Cheema said.

The security forces fear the death toll may rise, GEO News reported.

Buildings located nearby were also damaged in the blast, police said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Cheema said that due to the blast, security has been provided to shopkeepers and traders at the market.

Traders who come from other parts of the city to buy fruits and vegetables at the market are escorted by police and Frontier Corp personnel, the officer said.

Cheema said around 70 traders had come to the market in different vehicles and were escorted by the FC and Police.

He said that the police and FC personnel had put up blocks at the entrance and exit of the market.

The security forces are here, police are here. What more can we do? We secure them (the community) and travel back and forth with them. If something is hidden in a shop, then the shopkeepers will need to be probed, the officer said.

Hazaras make up a significant minority group in Pakistan and most of them live in Quetta.

This is not the first time that the Hazara community has been targeted by militants in the province.

Qadir Nayil, a Hazara community leader, asked the government to ensure better protection.

Once again our people were the target and once again we will have to bury our dear ones, he said.

There have been similar terror attacks in the Hazarganj area of Quetta in the past. The market serves as a wholesale market for fruits and vegetables.

Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Kamal condemned the attack and assured that the elements involved in the attack and those leading them would be proceeded against.

People who have an extremist mindset are a menace to the society. We must foil the conspiracy to disrupt peace, he said.

Nearly half-a-million Hazaras have settled in Balochistan, many of them after fleeing war-torn Afghanistan.

The National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) last year stated that 509 members of the Hazara community were killed and 627 injured in various incidents of terrorism in Quetta from January 2012 to December 2017.

NCHR official Fazeela Alyani earlier said that all these lives were lost in Quetta.

According to the NCHR, targeted killings, suicide attacks and bomb blasts have inflicted harm to daily life, education, and business activities of ethnic Hazara community members in Balochistans largest city Quetta.

Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistans largest and poorest province, rife with ethnic, sectarian and separatist insurgencies. PTI
ROBINSINGH@TRIBUNE.COM

London, April 11

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was arrested by British police on Thursday after Ecuador withdrew its asylum which had allowed him to take refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London for the last seven years.

The computer hacker faces the prospect of extradition to the US. He was also found guilty in a British court on Thursday of breaking bail terms dating back to 2012. The 47 year-old Australian-born Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 and it published secret official information including hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, infuriating the US and other countries.

Assanges supporters see him as a hero who challenges censorship and champions free speech. Others say he risked security by revealing secret documents. In November 2011, Londons High Court said Assange should be extradited to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes after accusations by two former WikiLeaks volunteers in 2010.

After losing an appeal, Assange took refuge in Ecuadors embassy in June 2012 to avoid being extradited. He was granted political asylum by the anti-American left-wing former Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa.

Assange remained in the embassy after Sweden dropped the investigation against him in 2017, fearing the United States wanted to prosecute him.

In 2017 elections, Correa was replaced as Ecuadorean president by Lenin Moreno who has since moved Ecuadors foreign policy to a more U.S.-friendly stance. He has been openly critical of Assange in recent months, calling him an inherited problem and accusing him of violating the rules of his asylum.

In July 2010, WikiLeaks released more than 91,000 documents, most of them secret U.S. military reports about the war in Afghanistan. In October of that year, it released another 400,000 classified military files chronicling the war in Iraq from 2004 to 2009. After years of speculation that Assange was a wanted man in the United States, US prosecutors announced charges against him after his arrest on Thursday, accusing him of conspiring with former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to gain access to a government computer.  Reuters

lawyer: dangerous precedent for media

The arrest sets a dangerous precedent for the media. This precedent means that any journalist can be extradited for prosecution in the US for having published truthful information about the US.  Jennifer Robinson, Assange Lawyer
pardeepdhull@gmail.com

Dubai, April 12

Thousands of Iranians carrying signs reading Im a Guard too and Down with USA marched on Friday to protest against the US designation of the elite Revolutionary Guards as a foreign terrorist organisation.

State television showed crowds shouting Whats America thinking? Iran is full of Guards after leaving Friday prayers at Tehran University on their way to a rally in a nearby square.

Similar state-sponsored protests were held across Iran, it said.

Iranian officials have condemned US President Donald Trumps decision on Monday to blacklist the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a step is likely to raise tensions in the Middle East.

Tehran retaliated by naming the regional United States Central Command (CENTCOM) as a terrorist organisation.

Americans should know that this is a self-inflicted blow, meaning that they are jeopardising the security of their own troops in CENTCOM and across the world, General Kioumars Heydari, head of the regular armys ground forces, was quoted as saying on Friday by the semi-official ISNA news agency.

The estimated 1,25,000-strong Revolutionary Guards also command the volunteer paramilitary Basij and control Irans ballistic missile programme. The Guards overseas Quds forces have fought Irans proxy wars in the region.

The United States has already blacklisted dozens of entities and people for affiliations with the IRGC, but had not previously targeted the organisation as a whole.

Today, it has been proven to the people of the world and of this region in particular that America is the mother of all terrorism, said Tehran Friday prayers leader Ayatollah Mohammadali Movahedi Kermani, clad in a Revolutionary Guards uniform, state media reported.

The long-tense relations between Tehran and Washington took a turn for the worse last May when Trump pulled out of a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, reached before he took office, and reimposed sanctions.

Revolutionary Guards commanders have repeatedly said that US bases in the Middle East and US aircraft carriers in the Gulf are within range of Iranian missiles.

Tehran has also threatened to disrupt oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf if the United States tries to strangle Irans economy by halting its oil exports. Reuters
editorial@tribune.com

Khartoum, April 11

President Omar al-Bashir, who ruled Sudan with an iron fist for 30 years, was on Thursday overthrown in a coup by the armed forces, which announced a two-year period of military rule to be followed by elections.

In an address on state television, Defence Minister Awad Mohamed Ahmed Ibn Auf said Bashir (75), was under arrest in a "safe place" and a military council was now running the country.

Seated on a gold-upholstered armchair, Auf announced a three-month state of emergency, a nationwide ceasefire and the suspension of the constitution. He also said Sudan's air space would be closed for 24 hours and border crossings shut until further notice.

Sudanese sources said Bashir was at the presidential residence under "heavy guard". A son of Sadiq al-Mahdi, the head of the country's main opposition Umma Party, told al-Hadath TV that Bashir was being held with "a number of leaders of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood group".

Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and is facing an arrest warrant over allegations of genocide in the Sudans Darfur region during an insurgency that began in 2003 and led to death of an estimated 300,000 people. The downfall of Bashir follows the toppling this month of Algerian strongman Abdelaziz Bouteflika, also following mass protests after three decades in power.  Agencies

Three decades under him

1989: In June army brigadier Bashir and a group of officers seize power in a coup backed by Islamists, toppling elected government

2003: A rebellion erupts in 2003 in the western region of Darfur, which complains of economic and political marginalisation. The conflict goes on to kill 300,000 persons and displace nearly 2.5 million, according to UN figures, before diminishing

2009: The International Criminal Court indicts Bashir for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, and a year later for genocide. He denies the charges

2010: Bashir is elected in the first multiparty elections since 1986, but voting is boycotted by the opposition and criticised abroad. He is re-elected in 2015

2017: In October , the United States ends its 20-year-old trade embargo against Sudan, imposed over alleged support for Islamist militants

2018: In August the ruling party nominates Bashir as its candidate for the 2020 presidential election, despite the constitution's two-term limit

2019: On February 22 Bashir declares a state of emergency and dissolves the government.On April 11 the army announces it has ousted Bashir and put him under arrest
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Washington, April 12

US President Donald Trump has said he is considering a potential third nuclear summit with North Korea's leader.

We will be discussing that and potential meetings, further meetings with North Korea and Kim Jong Un, Trump said in the Oval Office at the start of talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday.

A third summit would follow on Trump's historic breakthrough last year, when he met Kim in Singapore, and a follow-up this February in Hanoi that ended without progress in getting North Korea to give up nuclear weapons.

Both Trump and Moon are heavily invested in bringing North Korea out of the cold. But the unsuccessful summit in Vietnam was a setback for the two allies that has yet to be resolved.

At the White House, Trump insisted that a peaceful resolution of the North Korea standoff remains within reach, and that he continues to place considerable hope in his personal brand of diplomacy.

"I enjoy the summits, I enjoy being with the chairman," he said.

Kim is "a person I've gotten to know very well, and respect and hopefully, and I really believe over a period of time, a lot of tremendous things will happen. I think North Korea has a tremendous potential," Trump said.

The Vietnam summit ended without Trump being able to extract major concessions from Kim on the country's nuclear arsenal or Kim getting the reduction he wanted in heavy economic sanctions brought to pressure him into cooperating.

Despite the sanctions, Trump said Thursday that he supports unspecified South Korean moves to bring humanitarian relief.

"We are discussing certain humanitarian things right now. I'm OK with that, to be honest," he said.

Although the broader sanctions should "remain in place," he said he opposes any further tightening and noted that he had stopped planned new measures.

There was "the option of significantly increasing them..., but I didn't want to do that," he said.

Trump has emerged as an unlikely peacemaker in the Korean peninsula, reversing his initially bellicose approach with a determined effort to put Washington and Pyongyang on a historic path to reconciliation.

But the Hanoi meeting was a letdown. The two leaders cut their talks short, skipping a scheduled final lunch and the expected issuing of a joint statement.

In Washington, that outcome brought Trump praise from Republican legislators who'd worried he would give too much away in pursuit of big headlines.

Trump continues to face criticism that he is out of his depth in talks with Kim, and that sitting down with the dictator has yet to bring much benefit.

But he insists that while he retains an unusually good personal relationship with Kim, he will maintain a tough negotiating line.

Sometimes, you have to walk, Trump said, slipping into his real estate dealer's lingo, after the Hanoi meeting.

For Moon, the aftermath has been even more complicated.

In his talks with Trump, he insisted that the summits have produced important results, especially "the dramatic, significant reduction of military tension on the Korean peninsula."

In this sense, I believe that the Hanoi summit is not actually -- was not a source of disappointment, but it is actually the part of a bigger process that will lead us to a bigger agreement.

But Moon has staked his presidency on concrete engagement with isolated North Korea, pushing for a resumption of South Korean tourism to the North's Mount Kumgang and operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, where companies from the South used to be staffed by workers from the North.

Plans to unveil details of such projects on March 1, right after the Hanoi summit, had to be shelved and he is under pressure from opponents on the right. One lawmaker branded him the North Korean's "top spokesman." Kim himself has used the impasse to speak out against international sanctions and warn in colorful, defiant terms that his country will not bow to pressure.

The state-led economy will "deal a telling blow to the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring the DPRK to its knees," a state media report quoted him as saying on Thursday, using the acronym for the North's official name.

Shortly after the Hanoi summit, a series of satellite images emerged suggesting increased activity at the North's Sohae rocket site, triggering international alarm that the nuclear-armed state might be preparing a long-range or space launch. AFP
Nearly two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, the origin of the virus tormenting the world remains shrouded in mystery.

Most scientists believe it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. Others theorise it escaped from a Chinese lab.
The Supermarket Association of Trinidad and Tobago (SATT) said that its members will not be 
- Sakaja said it was high time for Uhuru to make good his threats and deal decisively with the corrupt

- The youthful politician noted graft was endangering the future of the nation

- The Jubilee legislator asked the Head of State to use the powers he exercised when appointing the officials to fire them

Nairobi Senator Johnson Sakaja has called on President Uhuru Kenyatta to make good his threats and fire all government officials implicated in corruption.

The Senator noted graft was threatening the future generation and it was high the president cracks the whip and save Kenyans from the menace.

READ ALSO: Tanzania MP hilariously asks Kenya to give Lupita Nyong'o in exchange for rain

Nairobi Senator Sakaja Johnson asks Uhuru to sack corrupt persons in his government.Photo:Johnson Sakaja/Facebbok Source:UGC

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: ODM's Ugenya mini-poll loser Chris Karan shifts blame to police officers

Sakaja who was contributing on a motion in the Senate on Thursday, April 11, said Uhuru should use the same powers he exercised while appointing the officials to fire them.

"When you appointed them no one asked us, so in the same way get rid of them, Kenyans are suffering in this country, Kenyans are feeling their own lack of personal opportunities is because of the of corrupt few fire them," he said.

The lawmaker regretted that the Head of State was issuing empty threats as millions of Kenyans continue to suffer under a corrupt government.

The youthful legislator pleaded with Uhuru not to sit in Cabinet with people who were implicated in graft.

READ ALSO: Ex-Jubilee chairman David Murathe accuses Ruto of inflating tenders in Kenya

Sakaja also dismissed a narrative by some politicians claiming the war on the vice had been skewed to target communities, arguing the crackdown was targeting corrupt individuals and not their tribes.

"If you are a thief you run scared but if youre honest in your dealings in public life, please support this fight because we're snatching away the future from our own children," said the senator.

Referring to Uhuru's sentiment that he would not bow to public pressure to engage in vigilante prosecution of suspects, the Jubilee legislator challenged the Head of State to use intelligence reports to get rid of thieves.

"You have intelligence, you know someone should not serve in your government, you know for sure they are stealing and the thieves you know them just fire them," he added.

Do you have an inspirational story you would like us to publish? Please reach us through news@tuko.co.ke or WhatsApp: 0732482690 and Telegram: Tuko news.

The vegetable vendor who made it to Parliament I Tuko TV

Source: Tuko Newspaper
Do Xuan Hung, chief financial officer of Tinh Loi, whose garment products are all exported, did not conceal his expectations when the CPTPP comes into force. He said that the company had been watching the trade agreement negotiations closely and noted that, with significant tariff cuts, Vietnams garment sector will enjoy great opportunities to increase its exports to the markets of the CPTPP members.

For example, Canada, which has yet to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam, has pledged to eliminate tariffs on Vietnamese garments over several years. Specifically, 42.9% of garments exported to Canada will enjoy tariffs of 0% in the first year and tariffs on the remaining 57.1% will be removed in the fourth year.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Trade, when the CPTPP comes into effect, import duties on garments originating from Vietnam will be eliminated when exported to CPTPP economies. Such a market opening is highly significant because tariffs on garments are usually much higher than other industrial goods. This is a truly tremendous opportunity for Vietnam.

But Thang frankly admitted that many Vietnamese garment makers will find it hard to meet the rules of origin. That is because, in order to enjoy preferences, garment products must meet the yarn-forward rule, meaning they must be produced in CPTPP countries from yarn forward. Meanwhile most of Vietnamese garments are produced to foreign orders with imported materials.

At present it would be nearly impossible for Vietnam to meet the rules of origin for such products as knitted clothes, trousers and shirts. For other products such as winter coats, and sportswear, the ratio of contents from CPTPP countries is also low.

According to Trinh Thi Thu Hien at the MOITs Department of Export-Import, unlike other previous trade deals when the rules of origin for garments only applied to 1-2 production processes, under the CPTPP, the rules will apply to all production processes and finishing operations.

The rules of origin will ensure a balance between trade facilitation and trade fraud prevention. When meeting the rules of origin, goods will be granted certificates of origin, which are their passports, the most legal guarantee for their producers to enjoy tax preferences.

But Hien added that, although the CPTPPs rules of origin are stricter than other trade agreements, the CPTPP also allows the import of materials not available in member countries of the pact.

Despite the challenges, Hung stated that this is a chance for domestic garment companies to develop their supply chains because many large companies specialising in garment materials have shifted their operations to Vietnam. Many Vietnamese companies are also pouring investments into producing materials. This is a good sign so that domestic enterprises will be able to secure materials that meet the CPTPPs rules of origin.

TNG, for example, has doubled its cotton production capacity to meet its demand and supply for other garment makers in Vietnam. For the fabric stage, the company also purchases materials from local partners instead of importing them from non-CPTPP countries.

According to experts, Vietnams garment sector is facing a number of bottlenecks which have been in existence for years, namely a shortage of materials and imports from foreign countries. Therefore, the community of domestic garment makers need to have a vision of building a linkage chain in order to benefit from the CPTPP.

In addition, they should also pay attention to technological development, especially in material production, so that Vietnams garment sector can enjoy sustainable development and enhance its competitiveness.

Besides the efforts of enterprises, Hung also expressed his expectations that the government will provide training and guidance so that they can understand the requirements and benefits of the CPTPP and work out a road map to take advantage of opportunities from this trade agreement.
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
The number of illegal migrants detained for illegal crossing of Ukraine's border has increased by 26% compared to last year, Deputy Head of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine Artur Pimenov has said.

He said this at a visiting interagency meeting, according to a report posted on the website of the State Border Guard Service.

"Some 4,646 people were refused entry into Ukraine in 2018, including 95% at air border crossing points. Joint preventive measures or operations helped identify more than 2,000 foreigners who violated the terms of stay in Ukraine," Pimenov said.

He added that the number of detained illegal migrants had grown by 26% due to the illegal crossing of the border due to a 24% increase in the number of detained illegal migrants, in particular, citizens of Vietnam, Bangladesh, Turkey, Iraq and India, on the border with the EU, especially on the Ukrainian-Polish, Romanian and Slovak sections of the border.

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WASHINGTON, DC  The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) signed a five-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) today to accelerate progress towards sustainable development in Asia and the Pacific.

The MOU was signed by ADB President Mr. Takehiko Nakao and UNDP Administrator Mr. Achim Steiner in Washington, DC. The agreement builds on an ongoing partnership between ADB and UNDP and sets the stage for greater collaboration at the country and regional levels, and stronger cooperation in accelerating progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Asia and the Pacific.

ADB and UNDP have had a long-standing and productive partnership to support development progress in Asia and the Pacific, said Mr. Nakao. UNDPs support to countries on policy dialogue and technical capacity building can complement ADBs project implementation. Through the MOU, we will work together to realize a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific.

Under the MOU, priority areas for collaboration will be based on the needs and priorities of countries in the region and focus on supporting progress towards the SDGs. Forms of collaboration will include joint knowledge creation, exchange and dialogue, direct technical assistance, and project implementation in such areas as SDG implementation, innovative financing for the SDGs, disaster risk reduction, access to clean and affordable energy for all, and the promotion of regional cooperation and integration.

We are pleased to renew UNDPs partnership with the Asian Development Bank. It signals our commitment to expand our collaboration on the ground in numerous countries in Asia and the Pacific, Central Asia, and the South Caucasus, said Mr. Steiner. This partnership will reinforce our joint engagement with countries to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals in these regions.

The MOU will supersede a 2007 agreement between ADB and UNDP, which was extended in 2014 and expires in 2019. Under that agreement, ADB and UNDP have been collaborating extensively at the country level throughout the region.

In Bangladesh, for example, ADB and UNDP have been collaborating to provide skills training to indigenous people under the ADB Second Chittagong Hill Tracts Rural Development Project. In addition, ADB and UNDP have been working to coordinate external support for projects in Coxs Bazaar and strengthen effective donor coordination in response to the Rohingya situation.

In addition, ADB and UNDP have been providing joint technical assistance to the government in Kazakhstan to establish institutions to coordinate SDG implementation, including a strategy for achieving the SDGs.

ADB and UNDP are also partnering in the implementation of off-grid mini-hydro and mini-grid projects under the South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation Power System Expansion Project. This initiative is aimed at expanding access to electricity in remote parts of Nepal.

Finally, UNDP and ADB have been collaborating to review SDG implementation in ADB developing member countries. The insights from this collaboration can inform ADBs country partnership strategies, and support Asia and the Pacific in making progress on the SDGs.

ADB is committed to achieving a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable Asia and the Pacific, while sustaining its efforts to eradicate extreme poverty. In 2018, it made commitments of new loans and grants amounting to $21.6 billion. Established in 1966, it is owned by 68 members49 from the region.

UNDP partners with people at all levels of society to help build nations that can withstand crisis, and drive and sustain the kind of growth that improves the quality of life for everyone. On the ground in nearly 170 countries and territories, it offers global perspective and local insight to help empower lives and build resilient nations. www.undp.org @UNDP
UNHCR relocated 150 vulnerable refugees from the Ain Zara detention centre to the Gathering and Departure Facility in Tripoli, Libya on April 9.  UNHCR/Noor Elshin

In light of the dramatically worsening security situation in Libyas capital, Tripoli, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is urgently calling for the immediate release of refugees and migrants from places of detention. Many of these facilities are in areas where there is ongoing fighting.

Since the escalation of the conflict in Libya last week, more than 9,500 people have been forced to flee their homes. However, more than 1,500 refugees and migrants are believed to be trapped in detention centres where hostilities are raging.

These are people in the most vulnerable and dangerous of circumstances. They have fled conflict or persecution in their own countries only to be trapped as conflict engulfs them again, said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

The risks to their lives are growing by the hour. They must be urgently brought to safety. Simply put, this is a matter of life or death.

Detention centres that are in proximity to the fighting include the Ain Zara, Qasr Bin Ghasheer and the Abu Sleim facilities, all located south of Tripoli.

This week, UNHCR has been trying to secure the transfer of vulnerable detained refugees from these centres to safer locations, including to our Gathering and Departure Facility (GDF) in the centre of Tripoli.

To date, only one UNHCR-facilitated relocation of 150 vulnerable refugees from the Ain Zara detention centre to the GDF has been possible.

UNHCRs efforts to secure additional transfers of vulnerable refugees from other detention centres have been frustrated by access and security challenges.

Fighting is hampering movements while the volatile security situation means it is difficult to access refugees in conflict-affected facilities, as well as to arrange their transportation to safer locations.

As a last resort and a life-saving measure, short of successfully advocating for the release of detainees, UNHCR, in coordination with partners, attempted yesterday to relocate all 728 refugees and migrants detained in the Qasr Bin Ghasheer facility to the Zintan detention centre away from the clashes.

Although the Zintan centre is far from suitable, it is in a safer location and is accessible from Qasr Bin Ghasheer. UNHCRs medical partner, IMC, also has an on-site clinic to rapidly assist refugees and migrants.

However, refugees and migrants refused the transfer, asking instead to be evacuated out of Libya. Currently, evacuation possibilities from Libya are extremely limited.

We call upon the international community to advocate with all parties to the conflict to respect international legal obligations and to support measures to put an end to detention, while also providing solutions for people trapped in Libya, including humanitarian corridors to evacuate those most vulnerable out of the country.

Current conditions in Libya continue to underscore the fact that Libya is a dangerous place for refugees and migrants, and that those rescued and intercepted at sea should not be returned there. UNHCR has repeatedly called for an end to detention for refugees and migrants.

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Cheese exports from Ukraine shrink by 14% in Q1

Cheese imports into Ukraine in the three months of 2019 increased by 43%, to 4,040 tonnes.

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Poland assesses migrant workers' remittances to Ukraine

In 2018, migrant workers wired to Ukraine a total of $11 billion.

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According to Wilson, one of Kyiv's districts, Podil, is similar to New York's Brooklyn with its composure and excellent places for recreation.

Famous American travel blogger and journalist from Forbes Breanna Wilson has visited the Ukrainian city of Kyiv and called it "Eastern Europe's diamond."

"Between the recent revolutions, ongoing conflicts with Russia and  I'll be honest  brutally cold weather, it was a place that, as intriguing as all of this was to me as a journalist, it just wasn't a place I was sure that I wanted to visit, let alone promote that someone else visit," she wrote on Forbes' website.

Read alsoKyiv authorities plan to extend pedestrian-only zone on Khreshchatyk to Bessarabska Square

Wilson noted the city's art and social projects, including the Urban Space 500 restaurant, which was funded by 500 backers, whose profits go back into social projects and start-ups helping to develop the city.

"And at The Naked Room Gallery, a space that's promoting local artists, giving them a voice  and a place  to showcase their work. The gallery also doubles as a coffee shop during the day and a hidden wine bar at night, so there's never been a better excuse to spend time getting into the local art scene," the journalist said.

According to Wilson, one of Kyiv's districts, Podil, is similar to New York's Brooklyn with its composure and excellent places for recreation.

"Podil is the city's trendiest neighborhood, and for good reason. And speaking of Bursa Hotel, it also happens to sit directly in the epicenter of all things cool in Kyiv's trendiest neighborhood, Podil. Sitting in what locals refer to as 'old town,' far away from the hustle and bustle of Khreshchatyk  the main street that travelers are usually most drawn to  and at the footsteps of St. Andrew's Church, Podil is like the Brooklyn of the city  laid back, full of great spots everywhere you look and a well-dressed, cool crowd. Basically, its where you want to be in the city," she added.

"The cocktail scene in Kyiv is one of the most exciting Ive seen in a while," the journalist said.

"Rumor also has it that there's even a secret 'bartenders-only bar' (as told to me by a bartender from another city) that opens at 2 am and only locals who work in the city's bar industry are allowed in. I can neither confirm, nor deny, this rumor, but I like the idea, and the mystery, of it," she wrote.
Manger reportedly appeared in the office in the morning.

Chairman of Kherson Regional Council Vladyslav Manger who is suspected of ordering the assassination of local activist Kateryna Handziuk is said to have returned to work.

According to a source, Manger appeared in the office in the morning and received visitors. At the same time, according to his lawyers, Manger was in an intensive care unit just the day before yesterday, the local Most [Bridge] online edition reported.

This week, the court was unable to consider a motion for Manger's suspension from office, and the lawyers asked to postpone the court hearing since he was in intensive care.

Read alsoPoroshenko accepts Kherson Governor Gordeev's resignation

As UNIAN reported earlier, on February 15, a court decided to arrest Manger until March 3, simultaneously setting UAH 2.5 million bail (about US$92,000). Manger was released on bail on the same day.

The Prosecutor General's Office appealed against the court's ruling.

Since February 20, Manger had been wearing an ankle monitor, being restricted in his movement within Kherson city borders. He had to ask an SBU detective's permission to travel outside the city.

On March 6, Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky district court suspended Manger from the post of chairman of Kherson Regional Council for one month. On the same day, the law enforcers removed the ankle monitor from Manger and returned his foreign passport.

Kyiv's Shevchenkivsky district court on April 3 again ruled to put an ankle monitor on Manger. The court also ordered him to hand over his travel documents. The preventive measure will last for 60 days, until June 1.

UNIAN memo. Kherson activist, adviser to the Mayor of Kherson and acting manager of affairs at Kherson City Council's executive committee Kateryna Handziuk, 33, on July 31, 2018, survived an act of acid throwing. She suffered burns to more than 35% of her body and underwent 11 operations in Kyiv to treat her horrific injuries. Handziuk died on November 4, 2018. The immediate cause of her death was given as a severed blood clot resulting from the acid attack.

Police originally qualified the attack as an attempted murder committed with extreme cruelty, then its status was changed to completed murder. Six suspects were detained, one of whom, Mykola Novikov, was later released from custody as charges against him were dropped. The alleged participant in the assassination, Serhiy Torbin, and Mykyta Hrabchuk, another suspect in the case, are in custody. Three other suspects  Vyacheslav Vishnevsky, Volodymyr Vasyanovych, and Viktor Horbunov  were placed under house arrest.

On November 5, the media reported that Torbin had allegedly received money for the attack on Handziuk from Ihor Pavlovsky, an assistant to Member of Parliament from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction Mykola Palamarchuk. Palamarchuk in turn dismissed any accusations of his possible involvement in the assassination attempt on the activist. He also said he had dismissed Pavlovsky. On November 12, a court ruled to detain Pavlovsky. According to the SBU Security Service, he is suspected of complicity in the Handziuk murder.

Chief Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko announced on December 3 that the investigators had identified all the individuals who had ordered the assassination. He also named Oleksiy Levin (his real second name is Moskalenko) who later was placed on the international wanted list on December 10, 2018, on suspicion of involvement in the Handziuk assassination.

On January 31, 2019, Chairman of Kherson Regional Council Vladyslav Manger announced the suspension of his membership in Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna Party for the period of the investigation of the Handziuk murder case. On February 11, Manger was served with charge papers as an organizer of the assassination of Kherson activist Kateryna Handziuk.
The Chancellor explained why she chose to receive only one Ukrainian presidential candidate, the incumbent head of state, rather than also meet Volodymyr Zelensky.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she finds important her dialogue with Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko.

At a joint press conference with Poroshenko in Berlin on Friday, April 12, Merkel was asked what she would say if someone claimed she supported the incumbent Ukrainian president in the light of the fact that French leader Emmanuel Macron was set to meet both election rivals  Petro Poroshenko and Volodymyr Zelensky  while the German Chancellor opted for a meeting with just Poroshenko, according to an UNIAn correspondent.

Read alsoKlimkin at Munich Security Conference: International community unaware of how to handle Russia

Responding to the question, Merkel said: "I decided to invite Mister President. I've been in constant contact with him, we recently met at a Munich Security Conference. We meet regularly, we have a constant exchange of information, constant meetings. And also, in times where we have elections, I also decided to invite him because dialogue with him is very important to me."

As UNIAN reported earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday, April 12, will receive Ukraine's presidential candidates Volodymyr Zelensky and Petro Poroshenko.

The two will clash in the presidential election runoff scheduled for April 21.

In the first round, Zelensky secured a landslide win with 30.24% of the votes against Poroshenko's 15.95%.
New Delhi : Eight former service chiefs and 148 other military veterans have written to President Ram Nath Kovind, expressing outrage over what they termed using the armed forces for political purposes. The signatories of the letter included former Army chiefs General (retired) SF Rodrigues, General (retired) Shankar Roy Chowdhury and General (retired) Deepak Kapoor, former IAF chief Air Chief Marshal (retired) NC Suri.



Three former Navy chiefs Admiral (retired) L Ramdas, Admiral (retired) Arun Prakash, Admiral (retired) Mehta and Admiral (retired) Vishnu Bhagwat also signed the letter, which was sent to Kovind on Thursday.



"We refer, Sir, to the unusual and completely unacceptable practice of political leaders taking credit for military operations like cross-border strikes and even going so far as to claim the armed forces to be 'Modi ji ki sena'," the veterans wrote. The military veterans said it was a matter of considerable concern and disquiet among both the serving and the retired personnel that the armed forces are being used to pursue political agenda.

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The United States, European Commission, and United Nations are among the largest donors.

The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine in 2019 expects to receive US$615.8 million worth of international technical assistance from a number of donors.

The ministry says among the largest donors there is the United States ($204.44 million), the European Commission ($213.04 million), and the United Nations ($105.2 million).

The list of donors also includes the European Investment Bank, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the OSCE, NEFCO, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark.

Read alsoIMF forecasts weakening of Ukraine's hryvnia

UNIAN memo. The volume of Ukraine's public and publicly-guaranteed debt over 2018 rose by 2.6% in dollar terms, to $78.32 billion, but at the same time it decreased from 72% to 64% in 2017.

According to the latest estimates of the finance ministry, the volume of payments on public and publicly guaranteed debt for 2019 will amount to $461 billion.
Also, the German Chancellor stressed the need to ensure free navigation through the Kerch Strait.

During their meeting in Berlin on Friday, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel coordinated actions on the possibility of the prompt return of 24 Ukrainian sailors who had been captured by Russia in the Black Sea neutral waters near the Kerch Strait in November 2018.

"You heard Mrs. Chancellor's position that we firmly demand the immediate release of Ukrainian seamen, noting that Russia does not have any jurisdiction under the Geneva Convention over the Ukrainian soldiers who have the status of prisoners of war," Petro Poroshenko stressed during a joint presser, according to the presidential administration.

"We are confident that the situation in Crimea with the suppression of human rights by FSB employees is also gaining momentum. We would like to draw the attention of the world community to a drastic deterioration of the human rights situation in the occupied territories," he added.

Read alsoRussian officials publicly threaten Ukraine with military conflict

"I sometimes ask myself with regret: how much more could we have done for the development of our state, if it wasnt for the war, the annexation of Crimea, the illegal occupation? How much further would we advance in the path of reforms, in overcoming poverty and increasing the welfare of every Ukrainian family? I know for sure that the success we have today, which is recognized in the world as the greatest in all years of Ukraine's independence, would hardly have been reached without a friendly and effective support - both advisory and financial - from our partners in the EU and from our partners in Germany," Petro Poroshenko said.

In turn, Angela Merkel also underscored the need for the release of Ukrainian sailors captured in the Kerch Strait. "I once again demand the release of these soldiers, these sailors, as well as free navigation of Ukrainian ships through the Kerch Strait. Mariupol is an important city for the prosperity of Ukraine, it must be accessible," the German Chancellor noted.
French media write that Paris sought to learn more about Zelenskys views, therefore the meeting offer was accepted.

Ukrainian presidential election hopeful Volodymyr Zelensky shared his impressions following his Friday meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

The atmosphere of communication was friendly, while the parties discussed issues important for Ukraine, according to Mr Zelensky

"There was a very cool, warm atmosphere. I saw before me a real leader of a united Europe," TSN quotes Zelensky as saying.

According to the candidate, the parties "discussed issues most important for Ukrainian society," in particular, ending the war in Donbas.

Read alsoMerkel says dialogue with Poroshenko "very important"

Local publications, meanwhile, write that the French authorities wanted to learn more about Zelenskys views, and therefore accepted the offer of a meeting.

The press service of the Elysee Palace said that there would be no official comments.

Informally, it was noted that there had been an initiative of Ukrainian politicians  a request for a meeting, so Paris decided to accept the proposal, taking into account the importance of Ukraine for Europe.

Earlier it was reported that French President Emmanuel Macron met with Ukrainian presidential candidate Volodymyr Zelensky at the Elysee Palace on April 12

On the same day, another presidential candidate, incumbent head of state Petro Poroshenko, also met with the French leader.
The event was organized by the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, supported by the Save Oleg Sentsov campaign and the Ukrainian Diaspora.

Students of the Ukrainian Leadership Academy staged a street performance in Paris, France, on April 11 in support of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who has illegally been convicted and imprisoned in Russia.

Read alsoCreators of "Mr Jones" biopic speak up for Oleh Sentsov at Berlinale

"On April 11, students held a 'Missing Director' street event on the Place de la Republique to support film director Oleh Sentsov and all the Ukrainian political prisoners. On April 11 and April 12, such events are to be held in Berlin, The Hague, Bratislava, Brussels, and Prague. Students reminded the French people that May 10 is the 5th anniversary of Ukrainian director Oleh Sentsov's illegal imprisonment in Russia," the Ukrainian Leadership Academy wrote on Facebook on April 11.

In the center of Paris, students set up a film location  they prepared a camera, sound systems, lighting, the production team and actors to shoot a film. To start filming, the assistant director went up to the camera, opened the clapper board but everybody stopped moving. The filming stopped because the main figure on the site  the director  was absent.

"All the participants in the event were standing still for two minutes to show that the artist cannot be a terrorist. Without the artist the process stops. We thus call on the French authorities to help Oleh Sentsov and other political prisoners return home," said Nikita Mekenzin, the main organizer of the event.

The event was organized by the Ukrainian Leadership Academy, supported by the Save Oleg Sentsov campaign and the Ukrainian Diaspora.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Sentsov was arrested in the Russian-occupied Crimea in spring 2014 together with Oleksandr Kolchenko. In August 2015, the North Caucasus District Military Court in Russia's Rostov-on-Don sentenced Sentsov to 20 years in a high-security penal colony. Kolchenko was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Both men pleaded not guilty.

Sentsov has been serving his term in a penal colony in the town of Labytnangi, Russia's Yamal. He went on hunger strike on May 14, demanding that Russia free all Ukrainian political prisoners. On October 5, the Russian penitentiary agency reported that Sentsov declared an end to the hunger strike starting October 6. Sentsov noted that, had he moved on with the strike, he would have been force-fed due to his critical condition.
Nine invaders were killed and another eight were wounded on Thursday, intelligence reports say.

Russia's hybrid military forces on April 11 mounted 20 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action and another eight as wounded in action.

Read alsoGaining ground: Ukraine Army advances in Donbas "gray zone"

"One Ukrainian soldier was killed in action and another eight were wounded in the past day. According to intelligence reports, nine invaders were killed and another eight were wounded," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation said in an update posted on Facebook as of 07:00 Kyiv time on April 12, 2019.

Russian occupation forces opened fire from 120mm and 82mm mortars, anti-tank missile systems, weapons installed on infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, and small arms. Under attack were Ukrainian positions in the town of Avdiyivka, as well as in the villages of Lebedynske, Pavlopil, Novotroyitske, Novoselivka, Hnutove, Vodiane, and Katerynivka.

"Since Friday midnight, Russia-led forces have attacked Ukrainian positions near the villages of Pyshchevyk and Chermalyk, using grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns and small arms. There have been no casualties among the Ukrainian military," the report said.
He was going to turn 30 this summer.

Commander of a squad of an air assault platoon, private first class of the 79th air assault brigade Roman Chibineev was killed during a combat mission in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, on April 11.

Read alsoUkrainian troops boast of another successful strike on enemy position in Donbas

"He was going to turn 30 this summer. The command and personnel of the military unit express deep condolences to the relatives and friends, words of support to his brother  former member of the brigade, Hero of Ukraine Valeriy Chibineev," the brigade's press service wrote on Facebook on April 12.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Russia's hybrid military forces on April 11 mounted 20 attacks on Ukrainian army positions in Donbas, with one Ukrainian soldier reported as killed in action and another eight as wounded in action.
The findings of the UK Forensic Explosives Laboratory confirmed those of the Polish Sub-Commission on the Investigation of the Smolensk Plane Crash, where on April 10, 2010, President of Poland Lech Kaczynski and about a hundred high-ranking Polish officials died. Head of the Sub-Commission, Antoni Macierewicz, citing the study's findings, says the cause of the crash was a series of explosions as traces of TNT were discovered.

After the new circumstances of the Smolensk plane crash were studied, certain consequences could be expected, first of all, in the political sphere

After the new circumstances of the Smolensk plane crash were studied, certain consequences could be expected, first of all, in the political sphere. Polish authorities today have rather tense relations with the Russian Federation anyway- there is no mutual understanding between the parties. And now, most likely, these relations will become even more acute and worsen further.

For Ukraine, this is probably not a bad thing. Because such circumstances give more grounds (among the already existing ones) for more mutual understanding, cooperation, and mutual assistance in Ukrainian-Polish relations.

Much will depend on Poland, precisely, whether Warsaw seeks to punish the perpetrators, in particular, if it is proved, to bring Russia to justice. That's because Polish foreign policy is quite pragmatic. Poles are able to assess things clearly. But how much will Poland really need this? Will they be able to achieve anything in litigation against Russia? And if they do achieve something, can this ever be realized? For now, these are all questions with no answers.

We can only observe the further developments and decisions of the Poles. Because now it is still not clear whether the Poles want to go to courts. After all, the conclusions of laboratories in such a case are not enough. More information is needed about the cause of those explosions, the explosives, and how they got there in the first place...

Russia keeps rejecting the version of the blasts and insists that the crash was a result of the crew's error

Of course, it is suspicious that the Russians failed to notice all these facts and circumstances during their own investigation. But, given that this plane was flying from Warsaw, much more information, evidence and facts are needed to put the blame on Russia.

Russia keeps rejecting the version of the blasts and insists that the crash was a result of the crew's error as the pilots moved on with approaching the landing site despite low visibility conditions and failed to react to the early warning system. In particular, following the statement by Macierewicz, official representative of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Svetlana Petrenko, called it "a poor attempt to question the obvious."

If Russia is really responsible for these explosions, it's clear that Moscow will be lying. If not, they will still be lying because, for some reason, they failed to notice the traces of explosions during their investigation or did not want to talk about them earlier.

So now Russia has found itself in the already traditional situation: they lose either way, whatever they say. Therefore, Russians, as a rule, go for the most primitive and easiest option - to deny and reject everything, realizing that no one can put pressure on them.

Such behavior is quite expected from Russia. This is a traditional style on the part of Moscow to reject anything that does not suit the Russian version of truth.

In any case, it is too early to say that Russia is responsible for something in this case. It's just that questions are mounting, and it's Russia which is to be asked.

But if we talk about the theoretical scheme of bringing Russia to responsibility for its actions, Ukraine already knows that this is very hypothetical...

Bohdan Yaremenko is a Ukrainian diplomat, head of the "Maidan of Foreign Affairs" Foundation
Fluocaril and Parogencyl are well-known therapeutics brands sold in the Pharmacy channel, primarily in France and Spain, with a product portfolio that enjoys strong endorsement from health professionals. Fluocaril offers oral care solutions specialising in protection against cavities. Parogencyl tackles gum issues.

The acquisition will give Unilever a leading position in oral care within the French pharmacy channel as well as strong positions in Spain. With their powerful brand heritage, high awareness and sound reputation amongst dentists, these brands are a great complement to Unilevers existing oral care portfolio.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to close in Q2 2019.
Ahmednagar : Seeking to make the Lok Sabha polls a contest between him and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi Friday asked voters to chose between 'imaandar chowkidar' and 'bhrashtachari naamdar'. Gandhi has been hurling the "chowkidar chor hai" jibe at Modi to claim irregularities in Rafale deal, while the PM has been calling the Congress chief as 'naamdar' (dynast).

At a rally here to campaign for BJP-Shiv Sena alliance candidates of Ahmednagar and Shirdi Lok Sabha constituencies respectively, Modi said, "You have to decide the country's future and which direction will it take in this election.

"You have to chose between imaandar chowkidar and bhrashtachari naamdar. You also have to choose between heroes of India and supporters of Pakistan," he said. Modi said in the last five years, people have seen that his government is a strong regime which takes decisions.

"You have seen Chowkidar's government which is strong and takes decisions. Scams and decision-making delays were the order of the day during the remote-controlled government (UPA) earlier," Modi said. PTI
Natural Gas Continues To Offer Opportunities for Longs

Historically, April has been a pretty consistent upside opportunity in Natural Gas for over 20 years. Over the past 24+ years, the upside opportunity in Natural Gas has been accurate over 68% of the time with the average upside potential ranging from $0.60 to $0.85. With Natural Gas sitting down near recent lows and seeing as though we are still fairly early in the month of April, our researchers believe the opportunity still exists for some quick profits in UNG with an upside move from below $23.95 to a target level of $26 to $28 (roughly +9 to +18%).

The downside risk is rather limited with clear support visible below the recent lows (near $22.75) and a historical likelihood of any further downside price swing being below 33%. Our research team believes an opportunity to establish new longs in UNG below the current Daily price gap (below $23.50) would be ideal.

Historical data mining shows that average upside rallies at this time of the year are typically ranging just below $1. Thus, the upside potential for this move being about +9 to +12% should be sufficient for quick profits. Skilled traders can hold a small portion of the trade for any potential run beyond these initial target levels, but we caution traders that $28.50 to $29.00 is an area of strong resistance. Our last trade in natural gas with subscribers netted us 30% profit in UGAZ within 10 days back in February.

Our research team is still waiting for the Daily Upside Gap to fill with prices below $23.50 before we look to enter any new trades. We have been patiently waiting for the bottom in Natural Gas to form knowing that we have this trade setup with a relatively high success rate. Keep an eye on Natural Gas and look for any good entries below $23.50 in UNG  the deeper the better. Our Fibonacci modeling systems are already suggesting a bottom has set up and any upside price move above $24.30 will likely prompt a bigger rally towards $26 to $28.

Are you ready for this next move? Want to know how we can help you find and execute better trades? 55 years of combined experience in researching and trading makes analyzing the complex and ever-changing financial markets a natural process. We have a simple and highly effective way to provide our customers with the most convenient, accurate, and timely market forecasts available today. Our stock and ETF trading alerts are readily available through our exclusive membership service via email and SMS text. Our newsletter, Technical Trading Mastery book, and Trading Courses are designed for both traders and investors. Also, some of our strategies have been fully automated for the ultimate trading experience.

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. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report has been paid by Cardiff Energy Corp. In addition, the author owns shares of Cardiff Energy Corp. and would also benefit from volume and price appreciation of its stock. The information provided here within should not be construed as a financial analysis but rather as an advertisement. The authors views and opinions regarding the companies featured in reports are his own views and are based on information that he has researched independently and has received, which the author assumes to be reliable. Technical Traders Ltd. and the author of this report do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any content of this report, nor its fitness for any particular purpose. Lastly, the author does not guarantee that any of the companies mentioned in the reports will perform as expected, and any comparisons made to other companies may not be valid or come into effect.

Chris Vermeulen Archive

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




April 12 2019

This issue of Urban Realm is all about expanding horizons as we journey around the globe in search of exemplary projects from which we can draw parallels with work closer to home.



The journey begins with a trip to Saudi Arabia and a desert concert venue which proves isolation need be no barrier to design. The setting may be radically different, but the same pressures of audience comfort, acoustics and identity can be found at the remodel of Aberdeen Music Hall by BDP. We chat to the team behind it to see what can be achieved on a relatively tight budget.



Staying in the Middle East architect Jaromir Gasiorek returns from Turkey to give us the lowdown on how the country is making the best of a bad situation by drawing upon energy efficiency expertise gained in Edinburgh for the restoration of historic buildings amid regional instability.



Problems closer to home command the attention of Brian Evans, Glasgows newly appointed City Urbanist. We catch up with a look at his vision for an arc of prosperity spanning the River Clyde.

For every two steps forward, Glasgow seems to take one step back, as Sean Kinnear finds when paying a visit to Sauchiehall Street. With the once, grand ABC Cinema reduced to a pile of rubble we ask what can be done to stop the rot.

Urban Realms spring edition is available to subscribers now.
(@FahadShabbir)

The Chinese and Lao ministries for culture and tourism and Chinese embassy in Laos have opened a five-day exhibition at the Lao National Museum themed Chinese Style 2019-Special Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Artists' Painting and Calligraphy from Monday to Friday

VIENTIANE, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 11th Apr, 2019 ) :The Chinese and Lao ministries for culture and tourism and Chinese embassy in Laos have opened a five-day exhibition at the Lao National Museum themed Chinese Style 2019-Special Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Artists' Painting and Calligraphy from Monday to Friday.

A wide range of creative items are on display, including paintings, drawings, acrylic paintings, Chinese brush paintings and carvings.

The exhibition is taking place as part of Visit China-Laos Year 2019 and aims to strengthen the relationship between China and Laos by providing an insight in Chinese culture for Lao people.

The opening ceremony was chaired by Lao Deputy Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism, Ounthuang Khaophan, and the Ambassador of China to Laos, Jiang Zaidong, and attended by invited guests, artists, teachers and students on Monday.

Speaking at the ceremony, Deputy Minister Ounthuang said the exhibition was important in helping to promote Visit Laos-China Year 2019 and raise the profile of China.

"The exhibition will strengthen the relationship and the understanding of the traditional culture and lifestyle of the Chinese people," local daily Vientiane Times on Thursday quoted the deputy minister as saying.

Ambassador Jiang said the exhibition would serve to promote art and culture and showcase the heritage of China among Lao people and foreign visitors.

"The objective of the exhibition is to expand the minds of academics and artists and inspire a love for the art and culture of both Laos and China," he said on the occasion.

The exhibition features over 70 pieces created by seven popular Chinese artists including painters and carvers. The artists have created many outstanding works that showcase their skills and allow members of the public to appreciate the creativity of Chinese artists.

More than 800,000 tourists came from China in 2018, an increase of 26 percent compared to 2017. This year, the Lao government projected that more than one million Chinese will visit Laos. The Visit China-Laos Year 2019 was launched here on January. Based on the working plan, Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism and Lao Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism will organize projects throughout the year, such as tourism promotion, forums, cultural performances and food introduction.

In addition, both ministries will set up dialogue platforms for tourism authorities and enterprises of the two countries, jointly design tourist routes, promote tourism brands of Laos and increase two-way tourist arrivals.
CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 13th April, 2019) Moldovan President Igor Dodon believes that early parliamentary elections in the country may take place in October-November 2019 if coalition is not formed by June.

"If the parliament does not elect a speaker by June 21, no law will be approved. In this case, I appeal to the Constitutional Court, a response will be received by mid-July and I can issue a decree on snap elections. In this case, election campaign could be held from August 1 to October 1 or [we can] give people a rest and start from September 1 and then finish by November 1," Dodon told the RTR Moldova tv channel on Friday.

Dodon noted that it was almost impossible to hold snap elections earlier. The situation is complicated by the fact that local elections in Moldova were expected to be held this summer, but their date is usually set by the parliament.

The president expressed concern that there could be no local elections in Moldova in 2019.

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 the 101-member Moldovan parliament, a new coalition must be formed in order to create a new government.
The annual multinational military exercise called Furious Hammer, involving about 500 troops, start in Latvia on Friday, according to the Defense Ministry of the Baltic country

RIGA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th April, 2019) The annual multinational military exercise called Furious Hammer, involving about 500 troops, start in Latvia on Friday, according to the Defense Ministry of the Baltic country.

"The general exercise of the Latvian National Armed Forces and foreign armed forces Furious Hammer will be taking place in Latvia from April 12 to May 5," the statement read.

It is the tactical field exercise, which involves about 500 troops, including Estonian soldiers and troops from the Estonia-based NATO battle group, according to the statement.

Latvia, as well as two other Baltic countries - Lithuania and Estonia - joined NATO in 2004.
(@FahadShabbir)

UNITED NATIONS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 11th April, 2019) The Nepalese Guard Unit will stay in Tripoli to continue assisting the UN Support Mission in Libya (UNMISL) despite reports of its withdrawal, the Office of the Spokesperson for United Nations Secretary-General said in a statement on Thursday.

"We are in touch with Nepali officials. Contrary to reports, there's no plan to withdraw the Nepalese Guard Unit," the statement said. "It continues its mission in Tripoli with UNMISL."

Earlier on Thursday, media reported that Nepal plans to withdraw its forces stationed in Tripoli under UNSMIL as a result of the worsening conditions in Libya.

The situation escalated last week, when the Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by Khalifa Haftar began an offensive to oust what he called are terrorist forces in the country's capital.

In response, forces loyal to the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord started a military operation against the LNA on Sunday.

Libya has been torn by sectarian unrest since 2011, when its long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed by Islamists supported by the United States and its allies.
(@ChaudhryMAli88)

Sudan's transitional military council will allow the country's former ruling party, the National Congress, to continue political activities, head of the council's political committee Omar Zain al-Abidin said Friday

DAMASCUS (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th April, 2019) Sudan's transitional military council will allow the country's former ruling party, the National Congress, to continue political activities, head of the council's political committee Omar Zain al-Abidin said Friday.

"We will not move anyone away from political activities as long as they behave rationally," al-Abidin said at a press conference when asked whether the activities of the National Congress would be allowed. The conference was broadcast by Arab tv channels.

He said the term of the Sudanese military council's work may be cut to one month from the current two years if the situation in the country stabilizes.
A Mozambican man in front of his damaged house in the village of Cheia, near Beira

Pope Francis will visit flood-ravaged Mozambique during a three-nation apostolic journey in September. With the help of a local journalist we shine the spotlight on some of the issues the country is dealing with.

By Linda Bordoni

Mozambique, in the southeast of the African continent, is struggling to begin a recovery and reconstruction process after the devastating Cyclone Idai and ensuing floods in March that killed more than 800 people and displaced at least one and a half million.



Despite the nations abundance of natural resources and fertile land, it remains one of the poorest countries in Africa with at least 65 % of its population living below the poverty line.



Corruption, poor governance, and political and religious strife continue to impoverish the country and create division.



These are realties that Pope Francis is well aware of, as demonstrated by his gift to President Filipe Nyusi when he visited the Vatican in September 2017: a split medallion held together by an olive tree and engraved with the words Look for what unites, overcome what divides.



Sheila Pires, who was born in Mozambique but works as a journalist and radio presenter at South Africas Radio Veritas, told Linda Bordoni that the people of Mozambique are in urgent need of the Popes message of love and unity.

She also revealed that Francis friendship and solidarity have already made a big difference to the country.

Listen to the interview with Sheila Pires

Sheila Pires explained that when Mozambique was struck by flooding in the year 2000, Jorge Bergoglio was the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

He is a close friend of our Cardinal Emeritus, Julio Langa, who at the time was Archbishop of Xai-Xai she said. Thanks to this great friendship he was able to fundraise enough money to restore the city of Xai-Xai; he was able to help that city rebuild because it was under water and everything was lost.

Pope Francis, she continued, has always done a lot for Mozambique: recently, again, he has made a huge donation to the countries affected by the cyclone.

So, she said, for Mozambique his visit is a blessing; it will also help with the tensions.





A divided nation

Pires explained that the country is divided and in the throes of political instability, pointing out that the ruling FRELIMO Party has always clashed with opposition RENAMO militants, both over charges of state corruption and the disputed results of the 2014 General Election.

She recalled Pope St. John Paul IIs visit to Mozambique in 1988 shortly after the peace agreement where he witnessed, first-hand, the devastation wrought by the country's long civil war.

Now, Pope Francis is the second Pope to visit the country, and people are looking towards him that he will bring this sense of unity, she said.

Pires noted that Cyclone Idai destroyed the bridge that joins the South and the North of the country.

Emblematically, she said, the conflicts and divisions in the country are between the South and the North. The collapse of that bridge is a sign that it is time for people to stop looking at all the divisions and actually be one, be united, be together again to rebuild the country and love one another, putting an end to all these divisions and conflicts.

Marginalization and Corruption

For many years, she said, the North has felt marginalized by political leaders, and this fact, together with widespread allegations of corruption, results in divisions.

Pires said that the fact that the North is rich in mineral resources has ended up creating more division because, all of a sudden, the government has its eyes on the North.

But who is it benefiting? Is it benefiting the people of the North or just a handful of elite? she observed.

Hopefully, Pires said, Pope Francis will instill the thought of lets do the right thing, if we are going to invest in the North, let it benefit the people of Mozambique not just a handful of elite people.

She also noted that with the arrival of large amounts of funds to sustain the country as it faces the humanitarian crisis caused by Cyclone Idai, again corruption is coming to the fore!

Certain individuals are taking this money into their pockets, she said.

So, Pires concluded, theres a lot to be done: Hopefully Pope Francis will be able to sit down with our government, with the people of Mozambique, and help us come back to that sense of common sense, let us do the right thing for the country.


To celebrate Mothers Day, Andiamo Italian Steakhouse will host a special brunch on Sunday, May 12. Located inside the D Las Vegas, guests can honor the moms in their lives with a deluxe spread that will include a robust prix fixe menu and bottomless mimosas for $45.

Known for its award-winning cuisine, highlights of Andiamos Mothers Day brunch include the following:

For Starters  To kick off the delicious meal, guests can enjoy a selection of Seasonal Fruits, Fresh Danishes and Pastries, Shrimp Cocktail and Smoked Salmon Avocado Toast.

To kick off the delicious meal, guests can enjoy a selection of Seasonal Fruits, Fresh Danishes and Pastries, Shrimp Cocktail and Smoked Salmon Avocado Toast. The Main Event  The main course itself will feature freshly prepared Cinnamon-Apple Stuffed French Toast with Creme Anglaise, Salmon Benedict, Short Rib Hash and Wild Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breast with Porcini Butter Sauce. An Omelette and Egg station also will be available for diners to customize their breakfast preferences.

The main course itself will feature freshly prepared Cinnamon-Apple Stuffed French Toast with Creme Anglaise, Salmon Benedict, Short Rib Hash and Wild Mushroom Stuffed Chicken Breast with Porcini Butter Sauce. An Omelette and Egg station also will be available for diners to customize their breakfast preferences. Sides on Sides  To compliment the main courses, Beet Salad with Tarragon Dressing, Lyonnaise Potatoes, Applewood Smoked Bacon and Chicken Sausage will be served.

To compliment the main courses, Beet Salad with Tarragon Dressing, Lyonnaise Potatoes, Applewood Smoked Bacon and Chicken Sausage will be served. Mimosas for Mom  Brunch is not the same without mimosas! The restaurant will be pouring up refreshing bottomless breakfast beverages to the get the day started right.

Andiamo has become synonymous for its robust Italian menu that features notable homemade pastas, breads, classic tableside Caesar salad and more.
(Photo by Steve Mellon / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

My name is Ralph C Lincoln and I am honored to be an 11th generation Lincoln. Who also shares the same Great-Grandfather as one of Americas greatest Presidents. If you visit Fayette County in Pennsylvania, you will find a small, obscure cemetery where members of the Lincoln family are buried, including Abraham Lincolns great uncle Mordecai, who served in the revolutionary war, and his son Benjamin. Mordecai Lincoln is my 5th generation great grandfather, which makes me a third cousin of the President.



I have continued to live and work in the ancestral home of Southwestern Pennsylvania where, as a Lincoln Presenter, I can pay tribute to these great men in my family who have shaped the history of our country



I am proud member of organizations dedicated to bringing Abraham Lincoln to life, to educate, entertain, inspire and honor his words and works.

Ralph C. Lincoln, the assistant manager at Vitamin World in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, looks strikingly similar to a very famous American  the 16th U.S. President  Abraham Lincoln. Many people have told him you look just like Abe. He smiles and replies, Which one? There are several Abrahams in the family.Meet Ralph C. Lincoln from Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 11th generation Lincoln, 3rd cousin of Abraham Lincoln.Can you see the resemblance?Ralph C. Lincoln writes on his website
A corner of Da Nang City by the Han River. A new plan aims to develop the city into a start-up and innovative hub in the central region, said director of the citys IT Department Nguyen Quang Thanh. - VNA/VNS Photo Tran Le Lam

Director of the citys IT Department Nguyen Quang Thanh said at the launch of the citys plan towards 2030 with a vision to 2045 yesterday that it would be built in three phases with total investment of VND2.14 trillion (US$95 million), of which 30 per cent would come from the State budget.

Thanh said the city had approved the framework the plan in 2018 with information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and database.

It will include smart management, smart economy, smart environment, smart living, smart citizens and smart traffic to connect the city to the 126 ASEAN smart city network, Thanh said.

The plan will help develop Da Nang as a start-up and innovative city in creating a driving force for socio-economic growth for the central region of Vietnam.

Da Nang was the first city in Vietnam to launch an e-Government system in 2014, and transferred the system to 16 cities and provinces in 2016.

According to a report, Da Nangs e-Government system had been used by 225 agencies and 4,000 users.

Da Nang had provided 1,200 online administration procedures, including one-stop shops, residential management, public transport and water supervision through the e-Government system, while free wireless internet services offer a maximum of 20,000 connections in public places, according to the citys information and communications department.

Thanh also said the plan would raise funds from partners including the Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT) Group; Software giant FPT, Viettel Group, the World Bank, Vietinbank and KOICA and other ODA.

Nguyen Thanh Phuc from Ministry of Information and Communications said the plan would save VND1 trillion ($44.2 million) and 20 per cent of other costs for human resources in the city.

Phuc said the plan would also help promote transparency, while improving administrative reform.

He said residents would have easy access to clear information on land, administrative procedure, planning, social services, disaster warnings, healthcare and education online.

The citys IT infrastructure was available for smart connections for air control, water, garbage, meteorology and energy agencies. It could also provide earthquake and tsunami warnings, and data on flooding, erosion, sewage management and food safety.

Last year, Da Nangs information technology and communications industry earned $1.23 billion in revenue, of which 68 per cent was from the IT and electronics manufacturing sectors, contributing 5.5 per cent to Da Nangs Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP).

The citys software exports grew in 2018 to $78 million.

There were 3,000 IT businesses with 25,000 jobs, of which 43 per cent were in software services and IT outsourcing.

According to the department, Japan and the US were seen as the two key markets for Da Nangs software exports, accounting for 72 per cent of export turnover in 2018.

The city has launched the first stage of the 341ha Da Nang Information Technology Park (DITP)  central Vietnams Silicon Valley - with total investment of $278 million.

The park will create revenue of $1.5 billion each year with 25,000 jobs and a satellite city of 100,000 people.

Da Nangs software park has been recognised as a centralised information technology centre, the third in Vietnam after Hanoi and HCM City.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde says the IMF is working to collect data on the rising amount of loans to developing countries, including from China. (AFP/MANDEL NGAN)

The global development lenders, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, are calling for more transparency about loan amounts and terms, and cautioning governments against relying too much on debt.

At the Spring meetings of the institutions on Thursday (Apr 11), newly-installed World Bank President David Malpass warned that "17 African countries are already at high risk of debt distress, and that number is just growing as the new contracts come in and aren't sufficiently transparent."

IMF chief Christine Lagarde said the high debt levels and number of lenders, who do not all conform to international norms, also complicate any future efforts to restructure a country's debt.

"Both the bank and the IMF are working together in order to bring about more transparency and be better able to identify debt out there, terms and conditions, volumes and maturities," she said at a news briefing.

"We are constantly encouraging both borrowers and lenders to align as much as possible with the debt principles" set by international organisations such as the Paris Club and Group of 20.

An IMF report issued this week warned that rising debt levels around the world - government and corporate borrowing - poses a risk to the global economy.

An IMF report issued this week warned that rising debt levels around the world - government and corporate borrowing - poses a risk to the global economy.

China has been lending throughout the developing world as part of its "belt and road" initiative, especially focusing on resource-rich nations.

DEBT DRAGS DOWN ECONOMIES

But the loans have come under increasing scrutiny. Mozambique has been engulfed in scandal over US$2 billion in fraudulent loans that were hidden from the public.

And Lagarde said, "It's clear that any debt restructuring programmes going forward in the years to come will be more complicated than debt restructuring programs that were conducted 10 years ago, simply because of the multiplicity of lenders, and the fact that not all public debt is offered by members of the Paris Club."

Malpass acknowledged that lending can help economies grow "but if it's not done in a transparent way, with good outcome from the build-up of debt, then you end up having it be a drag on economies."

He cautioned that "history is full of those situations where too much debt dragged down economies."

The G20 has called on the two Washington-based lenders to collect data on debt to get a better handle on the amounts and loan conditions.

"I'll be reporting to the G20 on the progress during our meetings coming up this week, and the keys are to have transparent disclosure of the debt as it is being created, and also then have the focus on good outcomes in terms of quality projects," Malpass said.

"This is critical for poor countries as they try to move forward to have the projects associated with good quality programmes and full disclosure of the debt."

China also has a growing role as a donor to the World Bank fund that provides low-cost loans to the poorest countries.
Many countries have already lifted the ban on seafood from Fukushima. (Photo: AFP)

The WTO's highest court overturned an earlier judgement from 2018, handing Seoul a final victory in a legal battle that has dragged on for years.

"Even though the ruling did not acknowledge that South Korea's measures comply with the WTO rules, it is extremely regrettable that Japan's argument was not approved," said the foreign ministry in Tokyo.

"There is no change in Japan's position of demanding South Korea lift all the restriction measures, and we will pursue this via talks with South Korea," added the ministry in a statement.

Foreign Minister Taro Kono urged South Korea to "correct its policy" but acknowledged that Japan had now run out of legal recourse.

Fearing radioactive contamination, Seoul imposed a partial ban on seafood imports from the region after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant.

Tokyo first took the row to the WTO in May 2015, requesting consultations - the first step under the global trade body's settlement system.

But talks broke down, prompting Japan to seek a WTO ruling in August 2015.

The WTO panel ruled in 2018 that South Korea should lift its ban but the so-called appellate court quashed this, the final word on the subject.

According to Fukushima authorities, four countries and regions - China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau - have maintained a ban on importing a broad range of locally-produced foods.

South Korea, Singapore, the United States and the Philippines have partial bans in place.

But the majority of other countries and regions - including the European Union - have lifted bans on imports or allow imports on condition that a certificate of inspection is attached.
Rubber latex processing line at the factory of Chu Pah Rubber Co Ltd in central highlands province of Gia Lai.-VNA/VNS Photo Vu Sinh

Tai told the conference that international trade had seen the establishment of global value chains with active participation of not only developed countries but also developing ones and emerging economies.

With developing countries like Vietnam, global value chains help them gradually join the production network and take advantage of trade, thus accelerating the industrialisation process. Taking part in the chains helps firms gain a foothold in the global market, he added.

Vietnams economy in general and its industrial sector in particular has seen positive changes in the past few years. According to a report from the General Statistics Office (GSO), the countrys GDP in 2018 rose by 7.08 per cent from the previous year. This was the highest growth since 2008. The industrial sector maintained a growth rate of 8.79 per cent, accounting for 28 per cent of GDP.

The index of industrial production (IIP) in 2018 posted a 10.2 per cent year-on-year increase. Manufacturing and processing continued to be the main momentum for the industrial sectors growth.

He said both local and foreign investors had put their trust on the stability of Vietnams marco-economy and continue their strong investment into industrial sector.

Some big projects include the Vinfast automobile manufacturing complex with total investment of VND35 trillion (US$1.5 billion) and the $1.2 billion LG Innitek Hai Phong plant.

GSO figures showed that last year, the processing and manufacturing sector attracted the highest FDI capital of $9.06 billion, accounting for half of total registered investment.

The presence of many big multinational companies in Vietnam such as Samsung and LG would create opportunities for Vietnamese firms to join the global value chain.

Samsung Vietnam needed 500 suppliers by 2020, showing the potential for local firms to join the global value chain.

However, Truong Thi Chi Binh, vice chairwoman cum general secretary of the Vietnam Association for Support Industry (VASI), said Vietnams electronics sector had shortcomings such as high input costs including taxes, fees and bulky production. In addition, many small-and-medium sized enterprises had been unable to serve big orders due to a lack of completed production process.

The Government should prioritise policies to call for both domestic and foreign investments into production.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since seeking refuge there in 2012 AFP/Justin TALLIS

Here are key developments in the affair:

2010: LEAKS, ARREST WARRANT

- July to October 2010: WikiLeaks releases about 470,000 classified military documents concerning American diplomacy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It later releases a further tranche of more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables.

- November 2010: a Swedish prosecutor issues a European arrest warrant for Assange over sexual assault allegations involving two Swedish women. Assange denies the claims, saying the women consented.

- December 2010: he turns himself in to police in London and is placed in custody pending a ruling on the Swedish extradition request. He is later released on bail and calls the Swedish allegations a smear campaign.

2011: EXTRADITION RULING

- February 2011: a British judge rules that Assange can be extradited to Sweden. Assange fears Sweden will hand him over to US authorities who could prosecute him for publishing the documents.

2012: REFUGE AT EMBASSY

- June 2012: he takes refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy in London. He requests, and is later granted, political asylum.

- October 2013: Ecuador asks Britain in vain to allow Assange to fly to Quito.

2016: UN APPEAL

- January 2016: Quito rejects an offer by Swedish prosecutors to question Assange in London.

- February 2016: the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention says Assange has been "arbitrarily detained" and should be able to claim compensation from Britain and Sweden. Britain and Sweden rebuff the non-binding ruling.

2017: SEX CASE CLOSED

- January 2017: WikiLeaks says Assange could travel to the United States to face investigation if his rights are "guaranteed". It comes after one of the site's main sources of leaked documents, military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, is given clemency.

- May 2017: Swedish prosecutors say they have closed their seven-year sex assault investigation into Assange. British police say they would still arrest him if he leaves the embassy as he breached the terms of his bail in 2012.

- December 2017: Quito grants Assange Ecuadoran nationality. Britain refuses Ecuador's request to accord Assange diplomatic status, which would allow him to leave the embassy without being arrested.

2018: ECUADOR SEEKS A SOLUTION

- January 2018: Ecuador says it is seeking a mediator to resolve Assange's "untenable" situation.

- February 2018: he loses a bid to have his British arrest warrant cancelled on health grounds.

- March 2018: Ecuador cuts off Assange's communications alleging he broke an agreement on interfering in other countries' affairs.

- October 2018: it imposes new conditions on Assange in the embassy, warning that breaching them could lead to the "end of asylum".

- November 2018: US prosecutors inadvertently disclose the existence of a sealed indictment against Assange.

2019: ECUADOR COMPLAINT

- April 2019: Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno says Assange has "repeatedly violated" the conditions of his asylum at the embassy.

An independent rights expert was due to visit Assange at the embassy on April 25 to assess whether the violation allegations merit investigation.

- April 11: British police say they have arrested Assange at the embassy after his asylum was withdrawn.
Bui Vien Street in Ho Chi Minh City, a location frequented by foreigners (Photo: VNA)

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Director of the department Bui Ta Hoang Vu said several promotion programmes are offered at the four-day event.

Nearly 70,000 domestic and overseas tour packages are introduced at 150 booths of more than 40 travel companies with discounts from 20 to 50 percent.

Some airlines such as Vietnam Airlines and Bamboo Airways also offer discounted tickets for routes departing from the city.

Other sidelines activities will be held at the festival such as a forum on Vietnams tourism human resources, a ceremony to honour 100 leading tourism brands and an exchange programme on high-tech application in tourism.

The Ho Chi Minh City tourism festival is held annually in April, creating an excellent opportunity for travel companies to promote tours among visitors in the city and neighbouring localities.

In 2018, Ho Chi Minh City welcomed 36.5 million visitors, including 7.5 million foreigners, a year-on-year rise of 17.83 percent. The city aims to serve 8.5 foreign visitors in 2019, up 14 percent against the previous year.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has moved to strengthen its operations against transnational crime through a new agreement with the Cambodian Police.

FBI Director Christopher Wray signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to create a task force for cooperation and training with Cambodias national police chief Neth Savoeun and director of immigration Kirth Chantharith in Washington last week.

The FBI is proud to have a longstanding relationship with our law enforcement partners in Cambodia, said FBI spokeswoman Kelsey Pietranton in an e-mail to VOA Khmer. This Memorandum of Understanding between the FBI, the Cambodian National Police, and the General Department of Immigration codifies our existing cooperation around a host of issues of mutual assistanceincluding crimes against children, cybercrime, financial crimes, and the apprehension of fugitivesand further enhances the FBIs commitment to supporting Cambodia in their effort to defend all human rights.

Chantharith said: Through this MOU it will enable us to cooperate in combating transborder crimes to ensure the security of both countries, and protect the interest of the people of the two countries.

This is the first such agreement the FBI has signed with a foreign country, according to Lieutenant General Pov Salideth, deputy chief of staff for the Cambodian police, who attended the signing ceremony.

This means that theyve picked Cambodia as an example for others in law enforcement, he said.

The FBI Legal Attache Office in Cambodia focuses on coordinating international investigations, international leads for domestic U.S. investigations, and FBI training classes for police in the areas on counterterrorism and cybercrime, forensic techniques, human trafficking, and human rights.

With the help of the FBI, Cambodian police have arrested US fugitives hiding in Cambodia and collaborated in a crackdown on criminal cases.

Cambodia is also a source, transit and destination country for illegal drugs. Many foreigners, including US citizens, are imprisoned in Cambodia in connection with drug taking, trafficking, and distribution.

So far both the General Commissariat of National Police and General Department of Immigration have cooperated well with US law enforcement institutions, especially their representative at the embassy, said Chantharith. We have done a lot of things in collaboration with each other and from this, the US sees that having this MOU would make our cooperation more effective.
A Kampong Speu sugar industry representative has called on the government and European Union to seek to preserve Cambodias trade rights under the EUs Everything But Arms scheme.

The EU is currently assessing Cambodias membership of the scheme following a deterioration in human rights and democratic standards.

The EU recognized Kampong Speu palm sugar as a protected commodity earlier this month.

Som Saroeun, president of Kampong Speu Palm Sugar Promotion Association, said he hoped politicians could understand the harsh realities facing business in the event Cambodia was expelled from the scheme.

We have asked the relevant stakeholders to not say anything unreasonable. Cambodians are waiting expectantly, he said.

Hym Piseth, deputy director at sugar producer Confirel, said he believed the government would do all it could to retain its trade privileges.

Seang Thay, the commerce spokesman, said Cambodia would still be a competitive exporter if the EBA was withdrawn and the government was taking steps to reform its economy to prepare for a worst-case scenario.

With [the EU recognition of Cambodian products, they can sell at high price, meaning that they make a profit from exports from Cambodia. So, if there is no EBA, they still have the energy to compete. But if there is EBA, the profit will be bigger, he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump is hosting South Korean President Moon Jae-in for talks Thursday at the White House focused on the goal of both nations to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
Nhan said the visit of the German states leader in the context of positive developments in Vietnam-Germany ties will open up new opportunities for cooperation between localities of the two countries.

He went on to say that HCM City is also eager to work with Thuringia in such areas as transport infrastructure, and AI solutions to solve problems in urban development.

Bodo Ramelow told his guest that the participation of representatives from 70 firms, universities and research institutes in Thuringia in his visit demonstrated their interest in cooperation with Vietnam, including HCM City.

He noted that the two sides could also work together in high technology, water management, trade and SMEs.

According to the official, there are 240 Vietnamese students in Thuringia, and the state hopes to receive more students from Vietnam.

The Minister-President of Thuringia is making an eight-day working visit to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City from April 6, at the invitation of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh.
Firefighters on Friday dug through rubble in search of survivors after two small buildings collapsed in Rio de Janeiro, killing at least two people and leaving another two injured.



The collapse of the two four-story buildings underscored the shoddy infrastructure that plagues Latin America's largest nation and put a spotlight on illegal militias that control large swaths of Rio, including the area where the buildings collapsed.



A statement from the office of Rio Mayor Marcelo Crivella said the area was run by militias and the buildings did not have permits. Authorities were only able to reach the area while being accompanied by police in November, when they condemned the buildings, according to the statement.

Militias, made up of former firefighters, police and soldiers, charge residents for basic services in areas they control.



The incident took place in a part of the city that also was particularly hard hit by heavy rains this week that caused massive flooding and killed at least 10 people. Mud from the flooding still lined the streets near where the buildings collapsed.



A spokesman for firefighters told The Associated Press that two bodies had been recovered from the collapsed buildings and the area was being cordoned off to search. In keeping with agency protocol, the spokesman asked his name not be used.



It wasn't immediately clear how many people were inside when the buildings collapsed.



Collapsing structures are common in Brazil, which suffers from poor infrastructure in many areas. Corruption and spotty oversight can exacerbate the problem, as many buildings are constructed illegally.
As the Czech Republic moves to boost its arms spending under a proposed defense accord with Washington, its ambassador in Washington says his government hopes U.S. defense contractors will bid aggressively for his country's business.



"Obviously, our American friends are [submitting] some tenders for what we intend to buy in the next year. I wish them success," Hynek Kmonicek told VOA in an interview this week.



"Nobody says how the tender will end up, but we definitely have the intention to bring as many American military partners to our tenders as possible, because the more competitors you have, the better price you get at the end," he said.



Kmonicek said the defense agreement under negotiation is likely to resemble a pact signed several days ago between the United States and Hungary. The U.S. State Department said the Hungary deal "will facilitate greater partnerships to address shared threats and global challenges."



The Czech Republic, Kmonicek said, is a nation of just 10 million people, strategically located "on the way from Western Europe to Russia and back."



"If you look at our history, it's not an easy history; everybody liked us, everybody occupied us," he said in explaining his country's reasons for pursuing the bilateral defense agreement.

WATCH: Czech Ambassador: Our Main Defense Partner Is US

"We need friends who understand why we are who we are" and who are willing to form an alliance, he said, adding that the majority of his fellow citizens see NATO as a "seal" of their defense.



Kmonicek said the Czech Republic has committed to doubling its current defense expenditures in order to reach the NATO benchmark of 2% of GDP by 2024  a significant increase but one that enjoys popular support in his country.



"If you look at the opinion of the man in the street, he knows that times have changed, that we're not living in a world as safe as it was 20 or 25 years ago," he said.

WATCH: Czech Ambassador: 'These Are Our Sons'

Ultimately, "what we want to know is whatever we buy for our army" provides the best protection available. "These are our sons," and ensuring their safety is the government's obligation, Kmonicek said.



A second component of the proposed defense accord calls for the Czech Republic to work toward "full compatibility with all the other NATO equipment because you need to synchronize with your partners," Kmonicek said.



"The main defense partner for the Czech Republic is the United States, so anything new which will come in that respect is more than welcome."



The ambassador said a defense dialogue takes place between the United States and the Czech Republic once a year. He said the new bilateral agreement could be in sight by the time the next round takes place a year from now.
VOA's Tibetan Service contributed to this report.

The Dalai Lama was released from a New Delhi hospital Friday after three days of treatment for a chest infection.

"I received the necessary medical treatments and now feel kind of normal," the Nobel Peace laureate said in a video recorded by VOA's Tibetan Service as he left Max Hospital.

The 83-year-old Buddhist monk is expected to return this week to the northern Indian town of Dharmsala, where has been based since he fled Tibet in 1959 after an unsuccessful revolt against the Chinese government. He established the Tibetan government-in-exile there and embarked on an effort to reclaim Tibet, which eventually evolved into a quest for more autonomy.

China has refused to recognize the government-in-exile and has not held talks with the Dalai Lama or his representatives since 2010. Branding him as a "wolf in a monk's robe," China contends he is trying to separate Tibet from China. The Dalai Lama denies the charge, maintaining he is simply advocating for considerable autonomy and protection of the region's native Buddhist culture.

His reputation as a purveyor of world peace has grown after decades of interactions with global leaders and celebrities, drawing comparisons to visionaries like Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Spanish police on Friday arrested Hugo Carvajal, a former general and close ally of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, on drug trafficking charges on an arrest warrant issued by the United States, a police spokeswoman said.

The spokeswoman would not provide further details about the charges against Carvajal. In 2008, the U.S. Treasury sanctioned Carvajal for "materially assisting the narcotics trafficking activities" of Colombia's FARC rebel group.

A court spokesman said Carvajal would appear before Spain's High Court on Saturday. The court needs to decide within 24 hours of his arrest whether he will be jailed pending a decision on his extradition or if he will be set free.

The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Carvajal, head of military intelligence from 2004 to 2008,denounced Chavez' successor Nicolas Maduro in February and gave his support to Juan Guaido, who in January invoked the constitution to become Venezuela's interim president. Guaido was later recognized by the United States and dozens of governments, but Maduro remains in office with support of the military and has denounced Guaido as a U.S. puppet.

The U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), in its 2008 statement, said Carvajal's assistance to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia included protecting drug shipments from seizure by Venezuelan anti-narcotics authorities and providing them with weapons.

Carvajal also provided FARC with official Venezuelan government identification documents that allowed its members to travel to and from Venezuela, OFAC said.

In 2014, Carvajal was arrested on the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba on a U.S. drug trafficking warrant, but the Dutch government accepted Venezuela's argument that he had diplomatic immunity because he had been nominated consul to Aruba.

In an interview with the New York Times published in February, Carvajal said any dealings he had with drug traffickers resulted from his role investigating them as intelligence chief.

Carvajal said he had met with FARC members in 2001 to engage them as a government negotiator in the kidnapping of a Venezuelan businessman, a trip that had been approved by presidents in both Venezuela and Colombia.
Guatemalan presidential hopeful known for taking on high-profile corruption cases as attorney general said on Thursday she was detained at an airport in Honduras before abruptly leaving the country shortly afterward.

Thelma Aldana, Guatemala's former chief prosecutor, is among the front-runners in next month's election but faces an arrest warrant back home that she dismisses as the work of her political opponents.

Aldana said in a post on her Twitter page she was "arbitrarily detained" in Honduras and lashed out at what she dubbed a "pact of the corrupt" in which she included Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

The Honduran migration institute confirmed in a statement that Aldana landed at the main airport in the capital on Thursday morning on a flight from neighboring El Salvador, was processed, and "voluntarily" left the country nearly three hours later and returned to El Salvador.

The statement noted twice that Aldana was traveling in a private plane.

The Honduran national police said in a separate statement Aldana was never detained and that there are no restrictions on her travel in the country.

A senior campaign aide said security officials questioned Aldana without identifying themselves.

"Thelma was taken to an office where she was interrogated several times and questioned about personal matters and security issues that put her at risk due to the information they were seeking," campaign strategist Jose Carlos Marroquin told Reuters.

Aldana, 63, served as attorney general from 2014 to 2018 and helped topple a former president on corruption charges. She also investigated current President Jimmy Morales.

A Guatemalan judge issued a warrant for Aldana's arrest last month on charges including embezzlement and tax fraud. She has dismissed the order as politically motivated, along with a separate ruling last week by Guatemala's electoral tribunal that revoked her candidacy citing irregularities during her tenure as attorney general.

She has appealed against the electoral tribunal's ruling to the constitutional court, Guatemala's top court.

Aldana led the field of presidential candidates with 28 percent in a recent poll before the June 16 election, ahead of Zury Rios, the daughter of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, and former First Lady Sandra Torres.

Running on a platform of efficient and transparent government, Aldana has pledged to expand the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG.

Morales' government announced in January it would not renew the CICIG's mandate and expelled the anti-corruption body's leader.
The International Criminal Court has announced it will not pursue an investigation into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops and allies in Afghanistan.

On Friday, a panel of ICC judges rejected a request by the court's prosecutor to investigate war crimes alleged to have been in Afghanistan by the U.S. military and intelligence services.

U.S. President Donald Trump praised the decision.

"This is a major international victory, not only for these patriots, but for the rule of law," he said in a statement.

Trump noted the United States has "consistently declined" to join the court because of the court's "broad, unaccountable prosecutorial powers" and "the threat it poses to American sovereignty," as well as other factors that the White House considers "deficiencies that render it illegitimate."

"Any attempt to target American, Israeli, or allied personnel for prosecution will be met with a swift and vigorous response," the U.S. president said.

In a separate statement Friday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said such an investigation "would not serve the interests of justice." He called it "a victory for the rule of law and the integrity of the ICC as an institution, given that the United States is not subject to the ICC's jurisdiction."

Washington signed, but never ratified, the Rome Statute that founded the tribunal in 2002. While the United States worked with the ICC under the Obama administration to bring Ugandan militants to justice, the Trump administration has been strongly critical of the organization.
Editor's note: We want you to know what's happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team:ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com.

Trump personally confirms he sought to release immigrants in sanctuary cities

President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that his administration had considered  and is still considering  transporting and releasing detained immigrants in "democratic strongholds" which have local policies in place that aim to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation  aka, "sanctuary cities."



The comments followed a bombshell report by The Washington Post that the administration had twice sought retribution against political rivals who were unwilling to support Trumps request for border wall funding. According to the report, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements legal department had rejected the proposal.

US Homeland Security gets a sudden makeover

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen is out. So is DHS undersecretary Claire Grady. So is the Secret Service director.

It was a shake-up that caught the department by surprise, just as it was preparing to release March data on southwest border apprehensions  the highest figures to date under the Trump administration.

As VOA reported this week, the moves suggest broader changes are in order for the department. The announced appointment of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan to replace Nielsen as acting DHS secretary suggests a doubling down on policies may already be underway.

UNHCR: Boko Haram is increasingly targeting civilians in attacks

The U.N. refugee agency said 88 civilians were killed by Boko Haram in Nigers border areas in February. The spike in deadly attacks against civilians is increasing in frequency and intensity, UNHCR said, forcing more than 18,000 people to flee their homes. VOA reported that women and children in particular were experiencing extreme trauma as a result.

A wall to honor immigrants, old and new

On Ellis Island, the names of 775,000 immigrants are engraved across 770 stainless steel panels  including recent arrivals from Central America and Southeast Asia who never set foot on the former processing station.

"Everybody wants to be honored," Stephen Briganti, president and CEO of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, told VOA. "...In a small way, that's what we can do here."
The Tokyo District Court said Friday that it had extended former Nissans board chairman Carlos Ghosn's detention until April 22 to allow prosecutors time to bring formal charges against him or let him free.

Ghosn was initially detained in November on suspicion of conspiring to understate his Nissan income by about 50 percent between 2010 and 2015.

He was released on bail in early March and then re-arrested last week in connection with new allegations that some $35 million was diverted from Nissan to an Oman dealership.

Japanese media have reported that some of the money from the Oman dealership may have gone to a company, Beauty Yachts, run by Ghosn's wife Carole, while other money may have gone to a U.S.-based startup called Shogun, owned by Ghosn's son.



On Thursday, Carole Ghosn, who had been in France, returned to Tokyo for questioning.

Long detention and multiple arrests are common in Japan, but re-arresting a person who cleared bail is rare.

Ghosns lawyers have protested his detention as unfair.

Last week, Nissan ousted Ghosn from the board and appointed French partner Renault SA's chairman Jean-Dominique Senard to replace Ghosn. Renault owns 43 percent of Nissan.




In one of the biggest leadership shake-ups in years, North Korea named a new nominal head of state and a new premier, and gave leader Kim Jong Un a new title, state media reported Friday, moves analysts said solidify Kims grip on power.

In an expected move, Kim Jong Un was re-elected as chairman of the State Affairs Commission at a session of North Koreas rubber-stamp legislature that took place Thursday, Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

For the first time, however, state media referred to Kim as supreme representative of all the Korean people. That title was approved by special decree in February, according to the Associated Press, but has not been used publicly until Friday.

Its unclear whether the changes will be codified in the constitution, but analysts said the shake-up shows Kim has fully come into his own, eight years after he inherited rule from his father, Kim Jong Il.

Power consolidated

The transition and power consolidation of the Kim Jong Un regime is complete, said Michael Madden, a nonresident North Korea leadership expert with the Stimson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

This is probably the largest party-government shake-up in many years, he said.

Since early 2018 Kim has embarked on a push for economic development and international engagement, including historic summits with the leaders of the United States, China and South Korea.

In a message congratulating Kim on his re-election as chairman, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China highly values its friendship with North Korea and is willing to push forward the bilateral relations, Chinas official Xinhua news agency reported Friday.

Nominal head of state

Choe Ryong Hae was named President of the Presidium of the Supreme Peoples Assembly of North Korea, replacing Kim Yong Nam.

The person holding that position is constitutionally considered North Koreas head of state and usually represents the country at diplomatic events, though experts say real power remains concentrated in Kim Jong Uns hands.

Kim Yong Nam, who was born in 1928, has been one of the longest serving senior officials, having held the position since it was created for him in 1998, Madden said.

His replacement, Choe, was subjected to political re-education in the past, but in recent years appeared to be gaining more influence since he was promoted in October 2017 to the partys powerful Central Military Commission, South Korean intelligence officials previously said.

Choe was one of the three officials sanctioned by the United States in December over allegations of rights abuses.

On Thursday U.S. President Donald Trump, who has had two summits with Kim to discuss North Korean denuclearization and has expressed his willingness for a third, said Washington would leave sanctions in place.

Several officials who have played leading roles in negotiations with the United States, including Choe Son Hui and Kim Yong Chol, were also promoted.

Economic reforms

North Korea also replaced the premier of its cabinet, an official at the center of efforts to jumpstart the economy.

Leader Kim Jong Un has made economic development the centerpiece of his strategy and told officials this week that building a self-supporting economy would be a blow to the hostile forces that have imposed sanctions on the North Korea.

Pak Pong Ju had served his current post as premier since 2013.

According to analysts at NK News, a website that monitors North Korea, Pak helped oversee a process of radical reform in the economy that enabled it to survive sanctions.

Among those reforms were loosing control of state-run enterprises, allowing them to operate more freely in the market and to seek private investment, according to a 2017 profile of Pak in NK News.

Some of those reforms earned the ire of Kim Jong Uns father, Kim Jong Il, who led North Korea at the time. But the younger Kim has more openly embraced many of those market changes, and North Korea has sought to ease sanctions and attract more private investment.

Pak will now serve as a vice chairman of the ruling party, meaning that those economic reforms are still being embraced, said Hong Min, senior researcher of Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

It means Pak Pong Ju-nomics, or Pak Pong Ju-style economic reform is continuing, he said.

There is little known about Paks replacement, Kim Jae Ryong, who has been serving as a party leader in Jagang Province, a mountainous area home to some munitions factories.

The province is known within North Korea, however, for having a spirit of overcoming hardship, which may fit with Kim Jong Uns message of persevering under sanctions, Hong said.
Key figures in Britain's opposition Labour Party said Friday the government should oppose the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States on charges of conspiring to break into a Pentagon computer.

Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a tweet that the U.S. is trying to have Assange extradited because he exposed evidence of atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Diane Abbott, Labour's spokeswoman for domestic affairs, said the government should block the extradition on human rights grounds. She said the U.S. case against Assange is about the embarrassment of the things he's revealed about the American military and security services.

The politicization of Assange's case reflects the wide interest in the legal future of a man hailed by some as a heroic whistleblower standing up to governments, and condemned by others as a willing stooge who helped the Russians boost the campaign chances of President Donald Trump, who had showered praise on WikiLeaks in 2016 and welcomed its release of Hilary Clinton's campaign emails.

Assange faces what is likely to be a titanic struggle to fend off extradition to the U.S.  and possibly a second extradition request from Sweden on rape allegations.

Police arrested the WikiLeaks founder Thursday at the Ecuadorian embassy in London after Ecuador withdrew his asylum. He is in British custody awaiting sentencing for jumping bail in 2012.

U.S. Justice Department officials seek to put Assange on trial for allegedly conspiring to break into a classified government computer at the Pentagon. The charge was announced after Assange was taken into custody. If found guilty, Assange faces a maximum five years in prison.

It is also possible that Assange, 47, will face an extradition request from Sweden if prosecutors there decide to pursue allegations of rape and sexual misconduct against him.

Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012 after he was released on bail in Britain while facing extradition to Sweden on the allegations. He had stayed inside the embassy building for nearly seven years.

Swedish prosecutors dropped the case against Assange in 2017, saying at the time there was no prospect of bringing him to Sweden because of his protected status inside the embassy. The allegations by two women have not been tested in court and Assange has denied wrongdoing.

Assange received a verbal rebuke in his first London court appearance Thursday afternoon when District Judge Michael Snow found him guilty of breaching his bail conditions.

Mr. Assange's behavior is that of a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests, Snow said.

Assange's next court appearance was set for May 2 via prison video-link in relation to the extradition case, a process that involves several layers of appeal that could take several years.

Extradition lawyer Ben Keith said the court will not assess the evidence against Assange in an effort to determine his guilt or innocence, but will scrutinize whether the offense he is accused of in the U.S. would be a crime in Britain.

The most likely outcome is that he will be extracted to the United States, he said.

Britain is bound by law not to extradite a suspect to a country where he or she could face execution for the crime, but this is not an issue at the moment because the crime Assange faces does not put him at risk of capital punishment, he said.

In rare cases where U.S. law would allow the death penalty, such as first-degree murder or terrorism, U.S. officials typically facilitate extradition by providing assurances to Britain that capital punishment would not be sought, Keith added.

If Sweden also makes an extradition request, it would be up to Britain's Home Secretary to determine which would take priority. Typically the first request made  in this case from U.S. officials  would be acted on first, but officials have some leeway.
In a twist, China has announced that it has persuaded Malaysia to resume a canceled rail project worth $10.7 billion. The sudden about-face by Kuala Lumpur, which had earlier rejected the Chinese-funded project, will be a big boost for China ahead of a Belt and Road Forum in Beijing later this month, say analysts.



China is hosting its second annual Belt and Road Forum from April 25 to 27 in Beijing. The event is likely to include the heads of state and governments of 40 different countries and officials from 60 others as Beijing tries to win more support for the trillion-dollar infrastructure and investment plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI.



In recent months, the initiative has faced tough challenges as Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Malaysia canceled or reduced the size of previously negotiated deals. Although Malaysia is back on board, it has forced China to accept a 30 percent reduction in the price of the project.



The reworked deal with Malaysia highlights how China is trying to face up to widespread criticism about the financing costs of its projects and concerns expressed by experts and government leaders around the world that the projects are nothing but diplomacy debt traps.



I think China is trying to make changes. But it is trying to do too much too quickly and with too much skepticism facing it. No wonder it's having a torrid time, said Kerry Brown, director of the Lau China Institute at King's College London.

Analysts said it is likely that the forum will be mostly about optics, but some real deals could be finalized. Given the heavy criticism about the projects, there will be high expectations from participants, which Beijing has said will include 40 heads of states and governments.



"They will presumably want something more than mere protocol. Even the promise of deals is better than none at all, Brown said.



Analysts add that, despite the criticism of the plan, which has been loud at times, the BRI has been able to attract dozens of foreign governments and has been backed by institutions like the World Bank because it is offering to build much-needed infrastructure and help foot the cost.



The reason so many countries are interested in BRI is because China is offering something no one else is and there is genuine demand for what BRI represents, said Paul Haenle, director of the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy in Beijing.



Still, it has not been easy for Chinese leaders to wade through the skepticism and sometimes strong opposition to the program from the United States' and Chinas neighbor, India. Critics see BRI as Chinas attempt to impose financial imperialism on economically weak but strategically located countries. Many have also raised questions because of the lack of transparency surrounding the projects.



Recently however, there have been signs China is modifying the program to suit the needs of its customers, particularly those like Malaysia and Italy, which are not as desperately in need of Beijings financial largesse and deep pockets. Italy recently joined the BRI bandwagon after visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping provided the kind of assurances Rome sought.

Chinese regulators realize they need to be pragmatic if these projects are to be successful, especially where there is local pushback on political and societal levels, said Andrew Polk, partner at Beijing-based consultancy firm Trivium China.



There are still serious questions about the kind of changes that Beijing is ready to make. Some analysts believe that China might offer better financial terms and stop its practice of flooding foreign projects with Chinese workers; however, they say Beijing is unlikely to make changes in crucial areas like the transparency of deals and Chinese companies involved in overseas projects.



Beijing could make the terms of deals public, which would be a major signal of change, but no indications of that happening soon, said Jonathan Hillman, director of the Reconnecting Asia Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.



Greater transparency would constrain Beijings ability to funnel cash through BRI projects to its friends in high places, he said.



There have been problems even in places where Chinese projects have proven to be successful in terms of implementation. For instance, Chinese companies have ensured the commercial success of the Greek port city of Piraeus. But its political impact is mixed. Greeks might welcome Chinese investment, but they dont want Chinas environmental or labor practices, Hillman said.



The U.S. recently described BRI as a vanity project and announced it would not send a high-level delegation to the forum. Analysts are wondering if the U.S. will stay away from the meeting altogether.



The U.S. has made its position clear. It opposes the BRI. Attendance under the current circumstances with the trade war unresolved would be odd, Brown said.



Haenle said he believes the U.S. should engage with the BRI along with its friends and partners.



The U.S. is right to point out the flaws in the Belt and Road Initiative, but if it wishes to see them corrected, it must also put forward its own alternatives and refrain from knee-jerk reactions, he said.
With Nigerias population growing at more than 3% a year, Nigerian authorities are offering free family planning methods and advice to Nigerian families in an effort to slow population growth.

It can be difficult to provide for a large family. Thirty-year-old Esther Ndubisi is a mother of seven children. Her youngest child is about 8 months old.

She says her partner, a painter, barely makes enough to feed the family of nine and cannot afford to send all their children to school.

To pay their school fees sometimes it brings problems for me and my husband, she said.

WATCH: Nigeria Tries to Slow its Population Growth

Largest in Africa

Nigeria has the largest population in Africa, and it is growing at 3.2% a year. The U.S. Census Bureau says that at that rate, there will be an estimated 402 million people in Nigeria in 2050.

The major triggers for population increase include early marriages, high birth rates and lack of family planning access. But cultural and religious contributors are also impacting significantly.

Family planning activists such as Ejike Orji worry about uncontrolled population growth.

The number of people we are producing every year is faster than our developmental rate, Orji said. And that is why Nigeria has become the No. 1 country with the highest number of poor people.

Family planning, advice

But that could change. A project by the nonprofit Planned Parenthood Federation of Nigeria in collaboration with the Nigerian government is providing family planning methods and advice across the country.

Program officer Ada Iluno says it is making an impact.

When we go for outreaches, we seek out rural areas where we know that the uptake is quite low and the need is very high. ... Based on our operations we have seen quite a lot of results where you see high turnout of women, Iluno said.

The average family size in Nigeria is 5.6 people, but many families are larger, especially in the north where polygamy is common.

The government is trying to encourage smaller family sizes in order to secure Nigerias financial future.

But experts say until social structures like education and health are improved, the odds are that Nigerias population will continue to increase and may even surpass the 2050 projection.
North Korea might begin turning away from South Korean President Moon Jae-in after he failed to secure sanctions relief from U.S. President Donald Trump during his visit to the White House, experts said Thursday.

We want sanctions to remain in place, said Trump while in the Oval Office with Moon. Frankly, I had the option of significantly increasing them. I didnt want to do that because of my relationship with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un.

Moon, who has made improving ties with North Korea and resuming inter-Korean projects central elements of his presidency, met with Trump in an attempt to reinvigorate denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang, which have been deadlocked since the breakdown of the Hanoi summit held between Trump and Kim in February. On Thursday, Trump said he wanted his dialogue with Kim to continue, and that a third summit could happen.

The important task that I face right now, Moon said, is to maintain the momentum of dialogue and also express the positive outlook, regarding the third U.S.-North Korea summit.

Ken Gause, director of the International Affairs Group at the Center for Naval Analyses, said failing to move the U.S. position on sanctions could cost Moon his credibility with Kim.

[The North Koreans] now probably are going to lose faith that President Moon can have any sort of influence inside Washington, Gause said. And if thats the case, then North Korea will begin to turn its back on South Korea.

Caught in between

Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said, Obviously Trump does not want to surrender leverage over the North by offering sanctions relief. He continued, Moon is left caught in between.

In Hanoi, Washington and Pyongyang failed to reach a deal on denuclearization. Kim asked Trump to lift sanctions imposed on North Korea in exchange for its offer to dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear facility, but Trump refused Kims demand and, in turn, asked him for complete denuclearization if he wanted all the sanctions removed.

Moon has been under pressure from North Korea to play a mediators role in brokering the talks between Washington and Pyongyang, which looked to him to influence Trump to relax sanctions.

If South Korea is truly interested in North-South cooperation, it should tell the U.S. what it should be told, said North Koreas website Uriminzokkiri on Tuesday, according to Yonhap, the South Korean news agency.

Pyongyangs official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported Thursday that Kim urged his officials from the ruling Workers Party of Korea during a plenary session Wednesday to double their efforts at self-reliance to stand against the hostile forces who go with bloodshot eyes miscalculating that sanctions can bring [North Korea] to its knees.

Moon, who has been South Koreas president since 2017, has been pushing for the resumption of inter-Korean economic projects, which include tourism to the fabled Mount Kumgang and manufacturing at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, since his first summit with Kim in April of last year. South Korean business owners who operated factories in the Kaesong complex from its opening in 2004 until it shut down in 2016 have been anticipating the opening of the industrial park.

I think keeping sanctions in place sets real limits on the trajectory of North-South reconciliation, leaving reopening Kaesong Industrial Zone and Mount Kumgang tourist project off the table for now, said Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

With his popularity sinking and the clock ticking on his presidential term, I think [Moons] hope for a grand legacy is up in the air, he added.

Economic engagement

Before the Hanoi summit, Moon told Trump that he is willing to begin economic engagement with North Korea as a concession if it would help in negotiating a denuclearization deal with Kim.

Trump said at his summit with Moon on Thursday that this isnt the right time to support South Koreas engagement and concessions to North Korea.

At the right time, I would have great support, he said.

When the right deal is made, and when the nuclear weapons are gone, I just think that North Korea has potential as great as anything Ive ever seen in terms of potential, Trump continued.

Trump reaffirmed the U.S. position on pursuing the big deal, which calls for full denuclearization of North Korea before the sanctions are lifted, although he said smaller deals could be discussed. Moon is a proponent of a good enough deal that would agree to a small step in the denuclearization process, such as North Korea dismantling Yongbyon in exchange for the U.S. declaring the end of the Korean War or opening a liaison office in Pyongyang.

There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen, Trump added. You can work out, step-by-step pieces. But at this moment, were talking about the big deal. The big deal is we have to get rid of the nuclear weapons.

But the Atlantic Councils Manning wonders.

I see no sign that they have done anything to break the diplomatic impasse, he said. There is no evidence that anything has changed since the Hanoi summit.

Trump did not rule out having another summit with Kim and said that South Korea is absolutely on the same page when it comes to the end state of the complete denuclearization of North Korea.
It may surprise no one to see names like "The Russo Family" from Sicily, Italy, or Anton Ivanovich Malygin from St. Petersburg, Russia, inscribed on Ellis Island's American Immigrant Wall of Honor  a manifestation of common migration patterns to the United States from Europe more than a century ago.



But on a nearby panel, reflecting the Upper New York Bay and the shapes of visitors in its stainless steel, are the names "Topiltzin and Angela Martinez Family" from Honduras; "Teresa and Rosa E. Lopez" from Puerto Barrios, Guatemala; and "Jaime F. Hernandez" from El Salvador  immigrants who did not disembark on Ellis Island, but are memorialized for posterity nonetheless.



"Everybody wants to be honored," said Stephen Briganti, president and CEO of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. "They want to be remembered. They want their moment of arrival in America to be something that is memorialized. And in a small way, that's what we can do here."

Outside the Great Hall at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, 775,000 names are inscribed on 770 panels, formed in a semicircle wall facing New York's Lower Manhattan skyline.



It's not the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation that decides who is engraved, but immigrants and descendants of immigrants, old and new.



At its onset, a price tag of $100 earned you an individual slot.



"We could get million-dollar gifts from corporations, but this was an island of people. And generally, it was an island where poor people came. So, we wanted to make it possible for them or their descendants to honor them," Briganti said.



Message to recent arrivals



What began in 1987 as a fundraising tool to restore and maintain Ellis Island, including the Wall of Honor, became a sensation across coastal cities and industrial hubs where the descendants of Ellis Island-era immigrants had largely settled.



As immigration patterns changed, so did the surnames on the wall itself. In the years since its creation, nearly every nationality is represented, including American Indian settlers and "those who endured forced migration from slavery," according to the foundation's website.

Chicago native Erin Josen's late great-grandparents from Russia and Lithuania are among the 12 million immigrants who underwent vetting in the Registry Room at Ellis Island.



Visiting the wall where they are also honored, she said the difficulties that earlier immigrants faced should serve as a beacon of hope to recent arrivals.



"If I were a first- or second-generation [American], I would feel, like, 'Wow, these people can go through all this adversity, and all this hardship  with the screenings, being judged, being told, "We don't want you here," but yet they are able to grow families and have third-, fourth-, fifth-generation families,' " Josen said.



"I think that does give hope that they can have families that grow and do the same."



'Populating of America'



From 1892 until 1931  the processing station's peak years  4.4 million passengers traveled to Ellis Island from Italy and Russia alone. In the modern immigration wave, 1965 to the present, more than three-quarters of new immigrants come from Latin America and South and East Asia.

Visiting from southern France, Ramundxo Noblea and Celine Uhart look to the Wall of Honor as a documented reminder of the constant struggles faced by new Americans, escaping dictatorship and other hardships.



"In France, it's rare that immigrants are celebrated," Noblea said. "From my perspective, it's the same in the U.S. It's a young country, so no one is a native of anywhere."



"This is the story of the populating of America," Briganti said. "You can't underestimate the importance of people wanting to honor their arrival."
A court in Islamabad on Thursday has ruled that two Hindu sisters from Sindh province, who were allegedly abducted and forced to marry Muslim men, voluntarily converted to Islam.

The court also states the women, Nadia, 18, and Asia, 19, who were formerly known as Reena and Raveena, respectively, are adults and free to make informed decisions for themselves according to Pakistani law.

The ruling came as the result of an investigation by a five-member commission that was formed after the women filed a petition to seek protection from their family. The sisters claimed they had been harassed and threatened for converting to Islam and marrying Muslim men.

This was a sensitive matter, and we have investigated it thoroughly. I have personally met with the girls and their husbands, and it doesnt seem the girls were abducted or forcibly converted, Khawar Mumtaz, chairperson of National Commission on the Status of Women and a member of the newly formed commission, told the court, as reported by the local newspaper, Express Tribune.

Before Thursdays ruling, the court instructed the government to take the sisters into protective custody until a decision was made.

Videos

News of their alleged abduction and conversion made headlines and became controversial in the majority-Muslim country last month when Hari Lal, the womens father, appeared in a video condemning his daughters disappearance.

In another video that surfaced on various social media sites days later, Nadia and Asia are seen sitting with their husbands and a Muslim cleric, who claimed the women had accepted Islam freely and had not been forced to convert.

The videos prompted Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to conduct an investigation. Authorities arrested several people belonging to the grooms families for their alleged involvement.

Authorities have not said anything about the fate of the arrested family members, but they could be freed following the court ruling.

Forced conversions

Hindus, a religious minority who make up about 4% of Pakistans population of 200 million and largely live in the countrys Sindh and Punjab provinces, have long been concerned about the abduction of their teenage girls by Islamists.

They charge that so-called voluntary conversions and marriages are in fact legal cover for the kidnappers, whose young victims fear for their lives and their families if they speak the truth publicly.

Ramesh Kumar Vankwani, a member of the Pakistan Hindu Council who was present in the court Thursday, told VOA that legislation is needed to ban forced conversion of religious minorities in Pakistan.

Most of the cases are about Hindu girls of marriageable ages. You would not hear stories of older women being abducted, Vankwani said. Madrassas (Islamic seminaries) and Islamic clerics play a critical role. These girls are abducted and taken to the mosques directly where they are asked to embrace Islam and then married to Muslim men right away. This has been going on for quite some time in Sindh.

Every year, about 1,000 young girls are forcibly converted to Islam across Pakistan, according to local rights groups and activists.

The Hindu community says almost 1,000 girls in Pakistan are converted to Islam every year. We cannot verify the figure independently, but it does depict the problem this community has faced for so long, Zohra Yusuf, a Pakistan-based rights activist, told VOA.

Local officials, however, charge that the girls often elope with affluent Muslim men to evade poverty, and convert to Islam because a marriage between a Muslim and Hindu is not permissible in Islam.

Persecuted minority

Pakistans Hindu population has significantly decreased in recent years, with many migrating to India to seek refugee status, citing religious persecution in Pakistan.

They have long complained of prejudice against them both from the government and society. A majority of them live in poverty in the Sindh and South Punjab regions of Pakistan.

Laws in Pakistan and the prejudices in the society have contributed toward the persecution of minorities. Their rights are violated regularly, and they have little or no support from the law or the society, Yusuf said. When you do not provide protection and discriminate (against) them on the basis of religion, what other options are they left with?
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is scheduled to travel to the Colombian border town of Cucuta on Sunday where he will meet with Venezuelan refugees. Cucuta has taken in many Venezuelans fleeing hunger and violence in their home country.

Pompeo has made several stops in South America in recent days to gain support for U.S. President Donald Trumps stance against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his regime.

In Peru Saturday, Pompeo met with the countrys president, Martin Vizcarra, as well as Foreign Minister Nestor Popolizio. Pompeo praised the people of Peru who generously host almost three-quarters of a million refugees from Venezuela.

Earlier in Asuncion, Pompeo met with the president of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benitez, for a discussion focusing on Venezuela, human rights, transnational crime, and strengthening democracy in the region.

While visiting Paraguay Saturday, the top U.S. diplomat spoke with the Voice of America about the United States approach to the Venezuela, which is in a leadership crisis. Pompeo called the election that Maduro claims to have won a sham, and he noted that 54 nations have recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as the countrys true president.

Maduro and his henchmen have destroyed this nation, Pompeo said, speaking of Venezuela. Criticizing Maduros use of Russian and Cuban resources, the secretary added, Hes handed over all his power to the Cubans and to the Russians.

WATCH: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Talks to VOA

Questioned about whether Iran has some presence in Latin America, Pompeo said, "There's no doubt. Iranian money remains in South America... supporting Hezbollah, supporting transnational criminal organizations, supporting efforts at terrorism throughout the region." He added, "We see Iran for what it is: the world's largest state sponsor of terror. That's a global threat."

Pompeo clarified earlier statements about Chinese involvement in South America, saying, We want China to thrive and prosper. Heres what we dont want, especially in South America. We dont want China to just show up with bags full of money and bribe officials. ... we dont want corrupt activity.

Explaining the Trump administrations decision to cut funding for Central American countries Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, Pompeo said, We saw that those countries werent doing what needed to be done to prevent this enormous migration challenge, this crisis that the United States has at its southern border. He said that when those countries develop systems to keep their citizens from journeying to the United States border, Washington would reconsider.

Nicaragua's future

And regarding Nicaragua, which is also embroiled in turmoil, Pompeo said, "We want the Nicaraguan people to have all the great things that they're entitled to, that they so desperately want, and [President Daniel] Ortega and his wife both need to change their ways in order to give Nicaragua that very opportunity."



Earlier, Pompeo met with the president of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benitez, for a discussion focusing on Venezuela, human rights, transnational crime and strengthening democracy in the region.

Paraguay's Foreign Minister Luis Castiglioni spoke with reporters Saturday about the meeting between Pompeo and Benitez.

Pompeo also spoke by telephone with Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo Saturday. U.S. State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a statement that the two reaffirmed the close friendship between the United States and Brazil and pledged to continue working together to address the political, economic, and humanitarian crises in Venezuela, their effects on Venezuelas neighbors, and the need for outside actors, including Cuba, Russia and China, to stop propping up Nicolas Maduro.

Friday, Pompeo urged the people of South America to resist offers of investment and aid from U.S. economic competitors China and Russia, saying the United States is a better friend and investment partner to its regional neighbors.

Speaking Friday in Santiago, Chile, Pompeo said the United States believes this is a time of opportunity for South America to cement a future of democracy, prosperity, and peace for this hemisphere. ... The chance is ours to seize or squander.

Pompeo warned that China and Russia, both of whom have invested in South American countries, bring corrosion and corruption to the economy, pointing out a dam project in Ecuador, financed by Chinese money, that has not been successful.

The dam was supposed to solve Ecuadors energy needs and help lift the country out of poverty, he said. But now the dam runs at half-capacity. ... Nearly every top official involved in the dams construction is either imprisoned or sentenced on bribery charges.

He accused Russia of escalating unrest in Venezuela by propping up the regime of Nicolas Maduro and sending soldiers to establish a training center. "We shouldn't stand for Russia escalating an already precarious situation in these ways," he said.

He also said Russia has sold arms and opened a police training center in Nicaragua. "The results of Russia's involvement in Nicaragua, to put it mildly, aren't good," Pompeo said.

In contrast, Pompeo said the United States is establishing fair trade agreements with South American nations, facilitating regional cooperation, and supporting Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is fighting for control of the nation.



"We'll continue to isolate Maduro," Pompeo said. "Just this week the Organization of American States voted to give Juan Guaido's ambassador a seat at the table. This is good news."



Pompeo said in a television interview with Chile's Mega TV Friday that a U.S. military intervention in Venezuela remains an option.

"We will restore democracy," he said. "Juan Guaido is the proper leader of his country. And we'll be with him today, we'll be with him the day that Maduro leaves, and we'll be with him in the days thereafter to begin to rebuild Venezuela."



Earlier, Pompeo met with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera to discuss bilateral cooperation, regional investment, and the political situations in Venezuela and Nicaragua. Pompeo told reporters the United States will work with Chile and other partners like it to stand up to the Nicaraguan regime.



Regarding Venezuela, Pompeo said the U.S. and its allies, such as Chile, "will not quit this fight." He said they will continue to stand up for democracy.
By meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, South Korean President Moon Jae-in had hoped he could rescue faltering nuclear talks with North Korea. But it appears no breakthrough emerged from the two leaders' meeting Thursday. As VOA's Bill Gallo reports from Seoul, that leaves Moon in a tricky position.
The Taliban disclosed Thursday that the United Nations has temporarily removed sanctions against its senior leaders who are negotiating a deal with the United States for ending the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.



The disclosure by the insurgent group comes as the American reconciliation envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, and his team are expected to enter a new round of meetings with Taliban interlocutors in Qatar this month. Both sides say the dialogue, which started late last summer, has made steady progress.



Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA that the names of all 14 members on their negotiating team and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who heads the group's informal "political office" in Doha, Qatar, have been taken off the U.N. blacklist. Those on the list are subject to financial sanctions, a travel ban and an arms embargo by all member nations.



There was no immediate U.N. or U.S. reaction to the announcement by the Taliban, nor has the Afghan government commented.

Obstacle to peace efforts



The insurgent group has long viewed U.N sanctions on its leaders as a major obstacle to the peace and reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. Taliban officials say Khalilzad had promised in the last round of discussions in March that he would look into the Taliban's demand of getting the sanctions temporarily removed.



The U.S. and the Taliban are trying to seal a deal on a withdrawal timeline for all foreign forces in Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban guarantees that they would not allow international terrorists to use the country again for attacks against other nations.



Khalilzad, however, has repeatedly stated he wants a comprehensive Taliban cease-fire and the insurgent group's engagement in an intra-Afghan peace dialogue before Washington concludes an agreement.

Intra-Afghan talks in Qatar



Before their next meeting with the U.S. negotiating team in late April, Taliban representatives are scheduled to host an informal two-day interaction in Qatar on April 19 with politicians inside and outside the Afghan government, tribal elders, civil society, youth and women representatives.



Taliban officials have clarified there will be no official representatives of the Afghan government, and participants at the intra-Afghan meeting will attend it in their personal capacity to express personal views during the discussions.



The insurgents refuse to engage in any talks with the Kabul government, dismissing it as an illegal entity and a product of U.S. "occupation" of Afghanistan.



The informal intra-Afghan meeting will be the second such conference. Moscow hosted the inaugural gathering in February.



The peace overtures come at a time of intensified violence in Afghanistan where both government forces and the Taliban claim to have inflicted massive battlefield casualties on each other in recent days.
The Taliban announced Friday its annual spring offensive in Afghanistan amid a U.S.-led push for a negotiated settlement to the 18-year-old war with the Islamist insurgency.

The offensive dubbed Al-Fath, which means victory in Arabic, commenced throughout the country early Friday morning with an objective to establish an Islamic system in an Afghanistan cleansed from American occupation, said a Taliban statement.

Observers, however, say the announcement is largely symbolic because insurgents in recent years have not eased battlefield activities during winter and have staged major attacks against Afghan forces as well as their U.S.-led NATO partners.

Afghan Defense Ministry officials swiftly rejected the insurgent offensive as mere propaganda, saying the government resolved to defeat it through ongoing spring operations.

More than 200 killed

Within the past week alone, fighting and Taliban bomb attacks across several provinces have killed more than 200 people, including three U.S. soldiers, and wounded many more.

The Taliban is believed to be controlling or contesting half of Afghanistans 407 districts.

Our Jihadi obligation has not yet ended. Even as large parts of our homeland have been freed from the enemy yet the foreign occupying forces continue exercising military and political influence in our Islamic country, the Taliban said in its Fridays declaration.

Washingtons envoy for Afghan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, has been leading bilateral peace talks with Taliban representatives in Qatar since late last summer amid expectations the process would lead to a reduction in insurgent hostilities this year.

Taliban negotiators freed from UN sanctions

U.S. and Taliban negotiators are set to resume meetings in late April to try to conclude discussions on a preliminary draft agreement about a timeline for foreign forces to exit Afghanistan in exchange for insurgent assurances they would disallow terrorists from using the Afghan soil for attacks against other countries.

In a significant development Thursday to further the Afghan peace effort, a Taliban spokesman confirmed to VOA that all 15 insurgent leaders who are based in Qatar and are negotiating peace with U.S. interlocutors have been temporarily removed from a United Nations sanctions list. Zabihullah Mujahid said the sanctions have been suspended for nine months.

The insurgent group has long maintained the international financial and travel restrictions hamper its efforts to engage with Afghans and officials in foreign countries to discuss a political way out of the war.

Taliban officials said the U.S. envoy had promised in a recent round of talks that he would request an easing of U.N. sanctions against the insurgent negotiating team. There was no immediate U.S. or U.N reaction, nor any Afghan government comment.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he was considering sending detained illegal migrants to so-called sanctuary cities, which oppose his tough immigration policies.



Trump made the announcement hours after White House and Homeland Security officials insisted the idea had been rejected.



He told reporters at the White House that his administration was "strongly looking at the possibly."



Earlier Friday, he tweeted, "Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities."



"The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy  so this should make them very happy!" he added.



Sanctuary cities are local jurisdictions  often run by Democrats  that have refused to hand over illegal immigrants to federal authorities for possible deportation.

Offer of pardon?

In another development Friday, CNN reported that Trump told the head of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, that he would pardon him if he were sent to jail for denying U.S. entry to migrants. CNN cited two unnamed officials who said Trump made the offer during a visit to the border town of Calexico, California.

Trump has since named McAleenan the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, following the resignation of Kirstjen Nielsen.

A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Friday: "At no time has the president indicated, asked, directed or pressured the acting secretary to do anything illegal. Nor would the Acting Secretary take actions that are not in accordance with our responsibility to enforce the law."

Sending a message

The White House proposal to send undocumented immigrants to sanctuary cities was first reported by The Washington Post.

According to the Post, the White House told Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the plan would alleviate a shortage of detention space, as well as send a message to Democrats.



The Post said a White House official and a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said the proposal was no longer under consideration.



Revelation of the proposal drew criticism from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as other Democrats.



In remarks to reporters Friday, Pelosi called the idea "unworthy of the presidency of the United States and disrespectful of the challenges that we face as a country, as a people, to address who we are  a nation of immigrants."



Pelosi's hometown of San Francisco is a sanctuary city.

Mayors of several sanctuary cities said Friday they would accept undocumented migrants.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement, "While the Trump administration's proposal shows their disdain to basic human dignity, the City (Philadelphia) would be prepared to welcome these immigrants just as we have embraced our immigrant communities for decades."

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, "We would welcome these migrants with open arms, just as we welcomed Syrian refugees, just as we welcomed Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria and just as we welcome Rohingya refugees fleeing genocide in Myanmar."
U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he has no knowledge of the website WikiLeaks, after the whistleblowing sites founder, Julian Assange, was arrested in Britain.

The 47-year-old Australian national had been living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London since 2012, but was ejected Thursday and taken into custody by British police.

Ecuador said Assange had broken asylum conventions by continuing to interfere in other countries affairs through the publishing of confidential information.

WATCH: Trump Denies Knowledge of WikiLeaks

Trump was questioned by reporters on the arrest Thursday.

I know nothing about WikiLeaks. Its not my thing, Trump said. I know there is something to do with Julian Assange, and Ive been seeing whats happened to Assange. And that would be a determination, I would imagine, mostly by the attorney general, whos doing an excellent job. So, hell be making a determination.

On the campaign trail in 2016, Trump repeatedly referred to WikiLeaks after it published hacked emails from the Democrat National Committee. He once declared, WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks, at a rally in Pennsylvania.

In 2010, WikiLeaks published a cache of more than 700,000 documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan, obtained by former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning. They detailed civilian casualties, along with details of suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Manning was prosecuted under the Espionage Act and jailed in 2010. She was released in 2017, but was jailed again in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about WikiLeaks.

Asylum in embassy

Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy after facing rape charges in Sweden, which have since been dropped. He predicted then that he would face extradition to the United States.

As WikiLeaks stands under threat, so does the freedom of expression and the health of all our societies, Assange told a crowd of supporters from the balcony of the embassy.

The United States accuses Assange of conspiring with Manning to access classified information on Department of Defense computers and has requested his extradition from Britain.

Freedom of the Press

Freedom of the press is protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, so the precise charges against Assange will be key, said legal analyst Caroline Mala Corbin of the University of Miami School of Law.

If you break the law while you gather information, that is not protected by the free speech clause. If, however, you publish information  even if someone else has illegally obtained it  the free speech clause does come into play, she told VOA.

Assange supporter and prominent human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said Assange must be afforded the rights of other journalists.

It smacks of double standards, and it has the whiff of a vendetta against WikiLeaks and against Julian Assange, he said.

British judges will now decide whether to fulfill the U.S. extradition request.

Geoffrey Robertson, an attorney who has represented Assange in the past, said Assange could face up to 40 years in prison if he is extradited to the United States.

I have faith in the British justice system, and I think he will argue that this is a breach of his right of freedom of speech, Robertson said.

Assange will first face sentencing for failing to surrender to authorities on sexual assault charges in 2012.

Meanwhile, one of the Swedish women who accused Assange of rape has requested the case be reopened, further complicating the legal case against him.
In retaliation for Democrats failure to support his plans to build a southern border wall, U.S. President Donald Trump proposed twice, in November and February, that government agencies transport and release detained immigrants in so-called sanctuary cites, according to an account first reported by The Washington Post.

Sanctuary cities are municipalities where local laws protect undocumented immigrants from deportation or prosecution, despite federal immigration law.

CNN reported that a source had confirmed to them that the Trump administration pressured the Department of Homeland Security to release immigrants detained at the southern border in the sanctuary cities.

The Post report said in retribution for lawmakers unwillingness to authorize money to build the wall, the White House wanted to release detained immigrants in Democratic strongholds, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosis home district in San Francisco, California.

According to the account, the White House told U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security that the plan was intended to alleviate a shortage of detention space but also served to send a message to Democrats.

The newspaper reports that ICE lawyers rejected the White House plan as inappropriate and rebuffed the administration.

Both agencies have told The Post that the plan is no longer under consideration.

Ashley Etienne, a Pelosi spokeswoman, told the newspaper, The extent of this administrations cynicism and cruelty cannot be overstated.She added, Using human beings, including little children, as pawns in their warped game to perpetuate fear and demonize immigrants is despicable.
Al-Shabab militants are suspected in the abduction of two Cuban doctors working in Mandera, a Kenyan town on the border with Somalia. Kenyan police say the two were abducted at 9 a.m. Friday and taken into Somali territory.

Kenyas police spokesperson Charles Owino told reporters that the two doctors, Assel Herera Correa and Landy Rodriguez, along with their security escorts, were on their way to work at the Mandera referral hospital when they were kidnapped.



Under the escort of two police officers, one officer from administration police and the other one from Kenya police service, respectively, along the way they were blocked by two Probox cars. Unfortunately the administration police officer was shot and fatally wounded. The criminals commandeered the car and the occupants across the border to Somalia.



The two doctors are part of a group of 100 Cuban physicians who came to Kenya last year under a bilateral agreement aimed at improving health services in the country.



Herera and Rodriguez were posted to Mandera County, an area that is considered insecure because of its close proximity to Somalia and its record of multiple al-Shabab attacks, often directed toward non-locals.



The two doctors had 24-hour security protection.



This is the second abduction of a foreigner in Kenya in a span of six months.



In November last year, Italian volunteer Silvia Romano was abducted by gunmen in Malindi, Kilifi County. Somalia-based Islamists are thought to have been behind the abduction.



Al-Shabab militants continue to wage a war against Somalias foreign-backed government and have carried out numerous attacks in Kenya.



The latest was on January 15 when the terror group claimed responsibility for an attack on a Nairobi office complex in which at least 21 people were killed.



As for the Cuban doctors, Kenyan authorities said Friday that all security agencies had been mobilized and they are pursuing the assailants.



The doctors driver was being held for questioning.




Margaret Besheer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

ISLAMABAD  The United Nations recently granted a waiver to senior Taliban leaders, allowing them to travel and take part in peace talks with the United States to end the 18-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The U.N. Security Council sanctions committee that deals with the Taliban says the nine-month exemption period beginning on April 1 is meant to allow the men to participate in Afghan peace and reconciliation talks in a range of countries.

"Individual itineraries will depend on the location of peace discussions. The Committee has also decided to grant a limited asset freeze exemption only for financing exempted travels," it said.

American reconciliation envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, and his team are expected to enter a new round of meetings with Taliban interlocutors in Qatar later this month. Both sides say the dialogue process, which started late last summer, has since made steady progress.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told VOA that the names of all 14 members on their negotiating team and Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who heads the group's informal "political office" in the Qatari capital of Doha, have been taken off the U.N. blacklist. Those on the list are subject to financial sanctions, travel ban and arms embargo by all member nations.

The insurgent group has long viewed U.N. sanctions on its leaders as a major obstacle to the peace and reconciliation efforts in Afghanistan. Taliban officials say Khalilzad had promised in the last round of discussions in March that he would look into the Taliban's demand of getting the sanctions temporarily removed.



The U.S. and the Taliban are trying to seal a deal on a withdrawal timeline for all foreign forces in Afghanistan in exchange for Taliban guarantees it would not allow international terrorists to use the country again for attacks against other nations.



Khalilzad, however, has repeatedly stated he wants a comprehensive Taliban cease-fire and the insurgent group's engagement in an intra-Afghan peace dialogue before Washington concludes a final agreement.



Intra-Afghan talks in Qatar

Before their next meeting with the U.S. negotiating team in late April, Taliban representatives are scheduled to host an informal two-day interaction in Qatar on April 19 with politicians inside and outside of the Afghan government, tribal elders, civil society, youth and women representatives.

Taliban officials have clarified there will be no official representatives of the Afghan government, and participants at the intra-Afghan meeting will attend it in their personal capacity to express personal views during the course of discussions.

The insurgents refuse to engage in any talks with the Kabul government, dismissing it as an illegal entity and a product of U.S. "occupation" of Afghanistan.

The informal intra-Afghan meeting will be the second such conference after Moscow hosted the inaugural gathering in February.



The peace overtures come at a time of intensified violence in Afghanistan, where both government forces and the Taliban have claimed inflicting massive battlefield casualties on each other in recent days.
This month, Rwanda marks 25 years since more than 800,000 mostly ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were massacred in a vicious, three-month killing spree by extremist Hutus, following the downing of the president's airplane. At the United Nations, the international community paused Friday to commemorate the genocide and pay tribute to both the dead and the survivors.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, along with two survivors, lit candles in the General Assembly hall. The U.N. chief said there were lessons to be learned from that dark moment in history.

'Dangerous trends'



"We must take a hard look at the present," he said. "As we renew our resolve to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again, we are seeing dangerous trends of rising xenophobia, racism and intolerance in many parts of the world. Particularly troubling is the current widespread proliferation of hate speech and incitement to violence."

During the 1994 genocide, massacres were often preceded by hate-filled speeches or radio broadcasts inciting violence.

Kagame said the act of remembrance also was an act of prevention.

"When genocide is dormant, it takes the form of denial and trivialization," he said. "Denial is an ideological foundation of genocide. Countering denial is essential for breaking the cycle and preventing any recurrence."

Revisionist efforts



He said efforts to rewrite the history of the genocide are "relentless" and increasingly mainstream.



The genocide is a stain on the history of the United Nations, which failed to act when warned it was imminent and pulled back peacekeepers as the situation escalated.



But the main message of Friday's commemoration was reconciliation and resilience.



Marcel Uwineza lost his father, two brothers, a sister and other relatives in the violence. He barely survived himself. Today he is a Jesuit Catholic priest.



"Later, I met the killer of my two brothers and sister," he said. "When I saw him I thought he was coming to kill me. As if in a movie, he knelt before me and asked [me] to forgive him. ... I took him, embraced him, and when finally I said, 'I forgive you,' I felt free."

A society reborn

Survivor Esther Mujawayo-Keiner said Rwandan society had to be reconstructed after the genocide because it had been broken.

And Rwandans have succeeded. Today, the country has one of the fastest-growing economies in central Africa, it is a regional leader in environmental sustainability, and more than 60% of its parliament seats are occupied by women.

Perhaps most significantly, no one is identified as Tutsi or a Hutu  they are all simply Rwandan.
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet is urging Sudan's new rulers to uphold the constitution and take heed of human rights as they try to move the country forward after the toppling of president Omar al-Bashir.

Many things worry the high commissioner about what she considers is a volatile and uncertain moment in Sudans future.

Bachelet notes the crisis in Sudan has its roots in human rights grievances. She says the solution to the crisis also must be grounded in human rights.

Bachelets spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, says the high commissioner fears the ousting of longtime president Omar al-Bashir by the army will not result in a more democratic rule-based society.

She says Bachelet is disturbed by the military councils announcement Thursday saying it would suspend the constitution and take charge of running the country during a two-year political transitional period.

We are very concerned about this. The constitution of Sudan needs to be upheld. There are important human rights protections that are contained within that constitution. We also understand that the announcement that was made yesterday did not indicate any possibility for people to participate in this transition, Shamdasani said.

Bachelet is calling on the authorities to ensure the inclusion of civil society and dissenting voices in charting a way forward.

The International Criminal Court has issued a statement demanding Sudans deposed president appear before the court to face justice. Al-Bashir is wanted by the ICC for alleged crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide committed in Sudan's Darfur region.

Shamdasani told VOA her office is encouraging the government of Sudan to fully cooperate with the ICC.

We are also calling for full accountability, including for the use of excessive force that has taken place since December this year. And, we are calling for full respect for the rule of law, Shamdasani said.

Between 40 and 70 people reportedly have been killed and hundreds arrested since peaceful protests against the government of Omar al-Bashir began in mid-December. Bachelet is calling for an investigation into the killings and for the release of all those detained.
The Trump administration says Vietnams decision to ban herbicides with an ingredient suspected of causing cancer will hurt, not help farmers.

Glyphosate is a chief ingredient in the best-selling herbicide Roundup. Vietnam says it will stop importing Roundup and all other weed killers with the chemical in June.

U.S. agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue says he is disappointed in Vietnams decision, saying it will have devastating impacts.

If were going to feed 10 billion people by 2050, farmers worldwide need all the tools and technologies at our disposal, he said Thursday.

The World Health Organization has classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to humans and thousands in the U.S. are suing Bayer, Roundups manufacturer, alleging it causes cancer.

Perdue added that U.S. regulators have determined that glyphosate is unlikely to cause cancer in humans and that banning it means farmers could turn to other herbicides that are unregulated, illegal, and maybe dangerous.

Perdue accused Vietnam of ignoring what he said is its obligation to inform the World Trade Organization that it will no longer import such chemicals.

But a Vietnamese agriculture official says the decision is in accordance with the current law, international regulations, and in line with Vietnams social-economic conditions.

Bayer issued a statement Thursday saying 40 years of science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide back the safety of glyphosate-based herbicides.
The U.S. military is returning to the era of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policies, said troops and LGBT+ groups, as new rules that will ban most openly transgender people from serving came into effect on Friday.

They said the new policy would force trans military members to choose between transition and their job and result in increased stigma and mental health issues.

"With the implementation of this transgender military ban, our nation is once again shamefully forcing brave American heroes to hide who they are in order to serve," said Ashley Broadway-Mack, president of the American Military Partner Association.

"By dragging us backward into the dark days of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' the Trump-Pence administration is inflicting tremendous harm on our service members, their families, and the military as a whole.

The Department of Defense said not all trans military members would be affected.

"The military provides all necessary medical care to protect the health of our service members, including those who are in the process of being separated," a spokeswoman added.

Rule changes

More than 10,000 transgender people may be serving in the U.S. military across active service and reserves, according to a 2016 study by the RAND Corporation, a think tank.

But they have rarely been able to be open about their identity or transition while serving.

While the official "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prevented sexual minorities from serving openly was brought to an end in 2011, it was only in 2016 that former President Barack Obama lifted restrictions barring trans people.

That policy was reversed by the current commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump, on the basis that trans people cause "tremendous medical costs and disruption" to the military.

The new policy bars those who have transitioned or are openly transgender from enlisting after Friday, while troops who come out as trans while serving after that day will be discharged.

But it allows members of the armed forces who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria during the Obama policy to remain in the military and serve according to their gender identity.

Thousands affected

Kara Corcoran, a captain in the U.S. Army, disclosed that she was trans last year, under pressure from the incoming rules that would have forced her to stay in the closet indefinitely.

"I cannot explain to you how much more mentally sound and even more physically fit I am today than I was a year ago," she said of the decision.

She feared that many other troops who were not yet ready to come out would suffer, saying she had personally recently spoken to a colleague who had decided to keep his identity a secret.

"He's like 'I'll hold out and hopefully they will change the policy back,' and it's hurtful because I know that he will eventually get to a point where he can't suppress it like I did for so many years," she said.

Studies suggest there are likely to be thousands of trans troops who have not disclosed their identity and will be forced to choose between their career and living openly, said Blake Dremann, of the SPART*A organization for trans military members.

The rules will have an impact on the mental health of trans troops, said Jillian Scheer, a postdoctoral research fellow at Yale University.

"The president stating these messages reinforces this notion that trans people are different, and therefore should be stigmatized, that they are not fit to serve," she said.

The policy was likely to cause increased anxiety, depression and suicidal feelings among trans service members, she said, and could also lead to a spike in stigma and abuse of trans people in wider society.

Legal battle

LGBT+ organizations are fighting the new rules in the courts, arguing they violate trans Americans' constitutional rights including equal protection under the law, due process and freedom of expression.

The courts have allowed the administration to put the policy into effect, but they have not yet ruled on the wider issues of whether it is legal.

"When this policy is examined closely there is no justification that could possibly explain what the government is doing," said Peter Renn, of law firm Lambda Legal, the lead attorney in one of the cases fighting against the new rules.

"We are positive that when we put forward all the facts... the courts will see it as baseless, irrational discrimination.

He said, however, that it could be months before the court process is completed and a final judgment issued.

Meanwhile, trans military groups said they would continue to support those forced to hide their gender identity as a result of the changes.

"It's living as two different people," said Dremann.

"That type of thing is untenable - a lot of people can do it for a certain amount of time but eventually they are going to have to transition.

"And no one should have to choose between getting care that they need and being able to serve their country.
With Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirming his commitment to buy Russian missiles in the face of renewed warnings from NATO ally the United States about sanctions, Ankara and Washington remain on a collision course. Analysts warn that with a July date looming for Ankara to take delivery of the missiles, time is running out to avert a rupture in bilateral ties.

"Turkey must choose  does it want to remain a critical partner in the most successful military alliance in history?" said David Satterfield, the U.S. nominee to be the ambassador to Turkey, speaking at a confirmation hearing Thursday before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "Or does it want to risk the security of that partnership by making such reckless decisions that undermine our alliance?"

"We tell them [journalists], 'This is a job done, all is ready,' " said Erdogan. He confirmed the purchase of the S-400 missiles as he spoke to Turkish reporters Monday, while returning from Moscow after his third meeting this year with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"It's like a slow-motion car crash. It's even difficult now to call Turkey and the U.S. allies, so I am not very optimistic about the relationship," said former senior Turkish diplomat Aydin Selcen, who served in Washington.

Washington claims the S-400 missiles will compromise U.S.-made military defense systems used by Turkey, in particular the F-35 fighter jet. The Pentagon has warned that delivery of the F-35 planes to Turkey, which is a co-producer of the aircraft, is in jeopardy with any deployment of the Russian missiles.

The U.S. Congress is also warning that Ankara's procurement of Russian weapons would open the door to financial sanctions, under CAATSA  the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. Under the 2017 legislation, Turkish institutions and individuals can be targeted by hefty fines.

Any U.S. fine could rock Turkey's economy, which is in recession after last year's collapse of the lira, triggered by the Trump administration's decision to impose sanctions on Turkey over the detention in Turkey of American pastor Andrew Brunson, who has since been released.

"I don't think market participants have a very good handle on how high the stakes are," said analyst Atilla Yesilada of Global Source Partners, "in the bad-case scenario of Turkey-U.S. brinkmanship in the S-400 drama."

On Friday, the lira fell sharply amid growing investor concerns about U.S.-Turkish tensions and reports of a steep fall in Turkey's foreign currency reserves. "I fear Erdogan has not been told by his advisers how little foreign reserves Turkey has left," said an analyst for a foreign bank, speaking anonymously. "Turkey has very little room and time to maneuver now."

Some analysts suggest Turkey is too important for the U.S. to crack down on. "I was speaking to American diplomats. I told them, 'It's America's choice  do they want to hit Turkey with sanctions that will make an unstable Turkey, that will destabilize the rest of the region?' " asked international relations professor Huseyin Bagci, of Ankara's Middle East Technical University.

Bagci says a lack of clarity by Washington about its intentions exacerbates the current tensions.

"The Americans are confused. What we hear from the American Pentagon, the State Department, is it [the S-400 sale] will create troubles and reduce trust and cause sanctions. But the American president has said nothing," said Bagci.

"If [U.S. President Donald] Trump says don't buy [the S-400 missiles]," he added, "it will carry much more political weight. However, as long as there is no statement from the American president, there will probably be no return from this deal."

The Turkish president's advisers routinely maintain that the only voice that counts in Washington is that of Trump. They allege dark forces are operating around the U.S. president, seeking to sour ties with Ankara.

Analysts warn that any strategy by Ankara of relying on Erdogan's relationship with Trump is risky. "There is a danger for Ankara in miscalculating U.S. intentions," said Selcen. "But the [U.S.] intentions are there, clearly stated, it is also true, Trump did not come out publicly on these issues."

Berat Albayrak, Turkey's economy czar and Erdogan's son-in-law, is due in Washington in the coming days for a series of meetings and conferences. According to Turkish media reports, Albayrak is expected to meet high-level U.S. officials including Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser. The two men reportedly have developed a close working relationship.

"It remains to be seen whether those parties at the Pentagon [and] White House will use this visit by Mr. Albayrak as a last measure to convey once again America's message on these issues concerning Turkey's national security," said Selcen. "But time is ticking, and we're in the middle of April, and the S-400 is due to be delivered to Turkey in July. So there is not much time."

Some analysts warn that Washington has already run out of time. "The S-400s will be delivered; the question is not delivery," said Bagci. "But the question is: Is it going to be used? It could be deployed to Turkish Cyprus, so it's not in Turkey. In Turkey, every home has a guest room. So the S-400 could be like a vase in the guest room, not used."
This week on #VOAOurVoices - Lights, Camera, Action! Join Hadiza, Auriane and Hayde on set, and Ayen at the American Film Institute Silver Theatre and Cultural Center as the team discusses African women behind the camera. African women are writing narratives, directing films, telling their stories which are igniting conversations around the world. Ayen sits down with VOA correspondent Arzouma Kompaore to discuss the importance of African woman directors in the realm of film.
In 2014, when Badeeah Hassan "Baazi" Ahmed was kidnapped by Islamic State terrorists from the village of Kocho in Iraq's Sinjar province and taken to Aleppo, Syria, she pretended her baby nephew was her son.



The Yazidi teenager's status as a "married woman" may have initially protected her in IS's sex slave market.



"They called us by name in the evening. They would tell the girls to be prepared. Someone would come in the morning and take them. They took all of them, but left my nephew and me," Ahmed said.



When she was eventually taken by an American named Abu Abdullah al-Ameriki, she was initially expected to cook and clean.



The Yazidis  a Kurdish-speaking minority with its own non-Muslim faith  play an outsized role in IS's legacy of terror. Ahmed's village suffered greatly.



"Evidence suggests that hundreds of villagers from Kojo [Kocho]  men, adolescent boys and women perceived to be past childbearing age  were murdered by ISIL fighters in August 2014, while more than 700 women and children were abducted," according to the United Nations.



Working with the U.N., the Iraqi government began exhuming the first mass grave in Kocho on March 15. Sixty-nine mass graves have been discovered in Sinjar province, where 600,000 Yazidis lived before IS swept through.



But the numbers don't really tell the horrific story the way Ahmed and other Kocho survivors can. Their devastating personal histories are contained in the VOA documentary Hell and Hope.



They are among the relatively few villagers who escaped from IS, and are part of an even smaller group that was taken to Germany in a program called Air Bridge Iraq.



The home ministry of the German state of Baden Wurttemberg brought more than 1,100 Iraqi survivors to Germany, hoping to give them, including some Yazidis, a better life.



"We took only those that couldn't be helped there. If they were in good condition or if their family structure was intact, then of course we said, 'Stay there.' We only took the most severe cases," Dr. Michael Blume, the state's Minorities Division director, told documentary maker Amish Srivastava.



Ahmed's four brothers were killed by IS on the day she was kidnapped, including the father of her nephew, Evin. Her mother placed Evin in Ahmed's care just before being taken away by IS. Her fate is unknown.



Al-Ameriki



Ahmed learned from al-Ameriki that he had been a teacher in the United States. Though he claimed not to have a family, one day she caught him talking to his American wife via Skype.



His family did not stop him from announcing he was going to marry Ahmed.



"I cried and refused. I told him I had a son, and I was married, and this should not happen," Ahmed said. "He told me all the girls would get married, except for the pregnant ones."



When Ahmed claimed to be pregnant, al-Ameriki took her to a doctor.



"After a few days, he told me that I lied. He took me to his room by force and raped me."



A first escape attempt failed when Ahmed and Evin inadvertently sought help at an IS headquarters. They were returned to al-Ameriki, who beat them and separated them for a week. But then, another opportunity arose.



"One evening, he came and asked if we needed anything because he was going to fight a war in Kobani. Later, we broke the door with a hammer and waited until morning, when we went out," Ahmed said.



Dressed in black, they found a pay phone and called Ahmed's relatives, who sent someone to get them.



Five years later in Turbingen, Germany, Ahmed has only recently stopped seeing a psychiatrist every week.



'We will not forget'



Hell and Hope features several stories as heart-rending as Ahmed's.



Salwa Khalaf struggled with suicide:



"They came from time to time to buy some of the girls. Every time they came, we knew that some of our sisters or friends would be taken. ... We held each other's hands, but they separated our hands by hitting us with wood sticks and pulling our hair."



Salina Haji Bashar was forcibly separated from her sister, Lamiya:



"The man who chose Lamiya refused to take me. They left me there. I cried and ran after her, but it did not help. They took her. Lamiya was doing the same, saying, 'I am not leaving without [my] sister.' But they dragged her by her hair [and] closed the door."



Jilan Ismail was 12 when she was kidnapped:



"The sheikh took me to his family for about a week. Whenever he wanted, he came and did what he wanted to do with me in front of his family."

Poignantly, she added, "What he took from me, I am sure I will not get it back."



Yet for these girls, a good life is still possible. They are finding their way in Germany.



Ahmed is preparing for her wedding. She has a book coming out and is studying to be a nurse.



Many others are still missing.
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Farmers, state officials and observers have expressed mixed reactions over the Zimbabwean governments announcement this week that it will compensate about 4,500 white farmers whose land was forcibly grabbed and redistributed to almost 300,000 indigenous blacks in an attempt to redress what it called imbalances of the colonial era.

This followed years of debate over whether or not to compensate the farmers who lost productive land under the agrarian reforms, which started in 2000.

In a joint statement issued Monday by the ministries of Finance and Economic Development and Ministry of Lands and Agriculture, the government announced that it is committed to finalize compensation to all former farm owners who were affected by the Land Reform Programme, as per the countrys constitution, with the process of registration and list of farmers to receive compensation to be completed by end of April, 2019.

The issue of compensation has been a controversial issue in Zimbabwe, with some believing that the farmers should not be compensated since many did not pay for the land in the first place, arguing that they too forcibly took over the land from the indigenous blacks.

Right or wrong however, the chair of the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority and former president of the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce, Callisto Jokonya, said the government has a constitutional obligation to compensate the farmers, as stipulated in Chapter 16 of the 2013 Constitution, Section 295 pertaining to the Compensation for acquisition of previously-acquired agricultural land.

Its non-implementation of it does not mean to say they are no longer entitled to compensation, because its something that is already in the law of the land, said Jokonya. So now what is being done is a question of executing what is in the law. So there is nothing one can send back. Its already agreed to. Whether its fair or unfair, its immaterial, because its in the constitution, he added.

In its 2019 budget, the government allocated $53 million in its local Real Time Gross Settlement or RTGS currency - which, at the current exchange rate of RTGS$1 to US$3,0675, is equivalent to about US$17 million.

Some of the 4,000 white farmers affected by the land grabs, have embraced governments efforts as a first step in showing goodwill, but say the amount is a pittance to what the government should be paying, which some farmers have placed as high as S$10 billion.

Ben Gilpen, president of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) which assisted government in the compensation process, said What government has entered into is an interim payment which basically means that those that are struggling financially, you know, so that will be shared to them on a sort of self-select basis. Thats you might say a sweetner to the bigger picture which is dealing with the overall compensation.

Zimbabwes Permanent Secretary of Information, Nick Mangwana, says the governments allocation is based on compensation for improvements to the land, not the land itself.

Our constitution and law is very clear that what government is compensating for are the improvements, and developments that were on the farm, not for the land itself, Mangwana said.

Zimbabweans paying reverse reparations to Rhodesian farmers?

But Associate Professor of African History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Mhoze Chikowore like firebrand South African opposition leader Julius Malema is not buying the government argument. Chikowore says, "Our governments repeated stance that we are paying only for improvements and not the land itself does not make sense, either."

He adds, "What are improvements on stolen property that the thieves proceeded to extensively exploit for over 120 years, utilizing chibharo (raped labour) to grow commercial crops using destructive pesticides and fertilizers that have polluted underground and overland water sources, vegetation, animal life, and denuded the soil? Is such undeserved gain not a debt to the generations of owners of the land that the Rhodesian farmers must pay, not the other way round?  And we have to pay them reverse reparations for cannibalizing us thus? In 2000, Zimbabwe took the bold stance to actually decolonize our economy and it became a model that South Africa, Namibia and the other countries still strangled by the legacy of settler colonialism are following. What are we telling them now with this cowardly move? That it is OK to foreground the humanity of colonists and enslavers over their victims--from Haiti to West African (former) French colonies and now in Zimbabwe?"

LAW SUITS

While the initial smaller allocation of compensation may appease some of the farmers who lost everything following the forced removals and are willing to settle, some white farmers who claim they lost billions, are promising to push harder for larger compensation.

Among them is former commercial farmer and human rights activist, Ben Freeth, who applauded the governments efforts, as a small step in the right direction, but said the allocated amount of US$17 million doesnt come close to what the government knows it will have to pay.

Freeth cited the case of German national Bernard von Pezold and eight of his family members who successfully sued Zimbabwe in 2015 and were awarded close to U$200 million, by the Washington-based International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), which in addition ordered Zimbabwe to also return the land titles to von Pezold.

When they took his properties, he went to international arbitration and in Washington DC he got an international arbitration award, where the Zimbabwe government put in its case and he put his case, for around US$200 million. So this $53 million RTGS will take about 10 years, if that is the amount they are going to put forward each year, it will take about 10 years just to pay off that one German national, explained Freeth.

The Zimbabwe government challenged the ruling in favor of von Pezold, but in 2018 the ICSID annulled Zimbabwes application in its entirety, and ordered that The Applicant shall bear in full the costs incurred by ICSID in these annulment proceedings, including the fees and expenses of the members of the ad hoc Committee, in the amount of US$359,711.12.

Another white farmer and former legislator for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Ian Kay, said the governments biggest challenge will be to establish what to pay farmers, given the lapse in time.

I think its very ambitious for the government to say its going to evaluate the farms, and that number, the number of farms we are talking about for that number of farms and to do it two decades later nearly, it is going to be a very difficult task to perform and I would think its not possible, to tell you the truth, said Kay.

While admitting that the initial compensation might be too little, finance minister Professor Mthuli Ncube assured the farmers that government and farmers are still assessing the amount to be paid for improvements made on the farms.

Kay says the compensation process might be complicated by Zimbabwes unstable currency but he says he had made his own evaluation.

We had professional evaluators do the task, as did many farmers at the time. So we do have that evaluation in place, and it was done both in the currency of the time and hard currency, so that has been done. So whatever is done subsequently, it will be difficult for them to do it now, like I said, 20 years later, but when the evaluations were done the farm was productive so its a real value of what we left behind, Kay said.

Concurring with Kay, CFU president Ben Gilpen, said most farmers evaluated the worth of their farms, and know their worth. Further, argued Gilpen, while government is only prepared to pay for improvements on the farms, some farmers actually bought their farms and wanted that factored into the overall compensation.

The constitution provides for payment for improvements, it doesnt cover land, but our farms were purchased basically land and improvements, we are yet to find a way forward. We are not looking for consequential payment which would make the bill much much higher, but I guess US$9 and a half billion is what the composite figure for land and improvement has been done by professional evaluators on our side, said Gilpen.

LAND IN LIEU OF CASH

In trying to accommodate the governments challenges in coming up with enough money to compensate all the farmers, Freeth, whose father-in-law died from injuries sustained during a take-over of their farm in 2008, are proposing that Harare consider resettling farmers on farms that are being underutilized in lieu of the compensation.

Our view really is that many of these farms are lying idle at this point and time, there are still a lot of skills in Zimbabwe that could be utilized to get those farms up and running again. Why not do a restitution program where some farmers who want to come back  Let them go back when their farms are not being used at the moment, said Freeth.

Former finance minister and opposition MDC legislator, Tendai Biti supported the proposal, and argued it could save the government from spending what it does not have.

Our land is derelict, its not being used by the new farmers, 20 years after the land reform program. And to be honest, right now we cant feed ourselves. We used to be the breadbasket of the region, now we are the basket case of the region, so allowing some farmers to get land as compensation, is very good because it will increase productivity apart from lessening burden of compensation, Biti said.

Editor of the private weekly Zimbabwe Independent newspaper, Dumisani Muleya, said though paying the white farmers is a controversial and divisive issue among Zimbabweans, if done correctly, it could help normalize ties with the West and ultimately revive the economy.

They have to do it, if they are interested in resolving these problems fundamentally. Because not doing it, you will be continued to be viewed by those, particularly the western countries, that you need to do business with, that you need to restore relations with, you need to trade with, you will continue to be viewed as a state that is founded on the pillars of lawlessness, so you cant afford that, said Muleya.

Muleya urged Harare to appeal to the international community for funds to settle the huge farmers debt.

Zimbabwe needs to have a conversation with interested parties. United States in this case, obviously in view of the ZIDERA (Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act) laws, Britain in particular, and some European Union states who have farmers in Zimbabwe whose land was seized, and we still have farmers in Zimbabwe at the moment. And if you recall, in 1987, sometime in May, the United Nations Development Program, wanted to fund the land reform program, as long as it was done in an orderly and systematic manner. So those are some of the possible sources of funding that the Zimbabwean government can explore, said Muleya.

Gilpen too agreed.

We know that theyve been approaching international lenders, international financial institutions, and Im sure if they come up with a package that is attractive and proves the ability to repay, they will be able to source that money to finance this, said Gilpen.

OPAQUE OPERATION

With plans to proceed with the compensation of white Zimbabwe farmers well underway, former finance minister and current chair of the parliamentary oversight committee on public finance, Tendai Biti said parliament should be involved in the process so as to ensure transparency.

The question that any right thinking Zimbabwean would be saying, is what are the people that are to be compensated, what is the compensation for? Is it for land, or is it for improvement? If its for improvements, who valued those improvements? Two, what kind of land? Is this land protected by BIPA, the Bilateral Investment Protection Agreements, in respect of which then farmers from the Netherlands would be covered, or its none BIPA land? Thirdly, what is the role of parliament? Because all these monies are coming from the consolidated revenue, so parliament has to get involved.

COMMAND AGRICULTURE

In the 2016/17 season, Zimbabwe launched a Cuba-style command agriculture scheme to subsidize newly-resettled black farmers, to reclaim its status as the regional bread basket. But despite pouring billions of dollars into the program, the United Nations estimated that about 5,3 million Zimbabweans are food insecure.

Finance minister Ncube has indicated a willingness to scale back on the program that the opposition alleged had been abused by senior government officials.

According to treasury data, expenditure on agriculture has been one of the major components driving the southern African countrys unsustainable budget deficit. Expenditure on the agriculture sector reached US$1,1 billion as of August 2018, against an annual budget target of US$401 million.

Of this, US$238 million went towards command agriculture, US$263 million towards vulnerable input support scheme and US$505 million to grain procurement.

At a recent press briefing in Harare, Minister Ncube said they plan to tap the private sector to ease the burden on the government.

There is no question that it (command agriculture) has improved the food security situation in Zimbabwe. It has been a success, but what we are saying is that there are players that have been missing in the financing of command agriculture. It is the private sector banks who should begin to fund command agriculture, Ncube said.

According to agricultural experts, at independence in 1980, white farmers owned more than 70% of the most fertile land in Zimbabwe, which caused friction with the majority blacks who constituted almost 80% of the population.
He was haunted by the thought of a small child's skull, unburied and lost in the debris of a cyclone that had claimed hundreds of lives.

Stephen Fonseca stood in a field of ruined maize where a tiny spine had been found, and he wanted to find the rest of the body. But in every direction were scattered kernels and stalks bleached by the sun. At a glance, much of the landscape looked like bones.



The stark scene brought home the overwhelming challenge faced by Fonseca, the only body recovery specialist to search the rural Mozambique region struck by Cyclone Idai, since he waded into the devastation nearly a month ago.



If a final death toll ever emerges  it is now more than 600 in Mozambique alone  it will be strongly informed by Fonseca's work in the field, and the quest to name the missing and the dead.



The storm tore apart frightened families and swept whole villages away, with floodwaters as high as treetops rushing toward the sea. Parents lost their grip on children. Exhausted people clinging to branches for days fell into the waters and drowned.



For days on end, Fonseca followed the accounts of villagers who spoke of seeing the dead floating by.



As the waters began to recede, he walked for miles through mud so thick it sucked boots off feet. Crocodiles, hippos and snakes posed threats but hungry dogs and pigs were a bigger concern. Fonseca needed to find the bodies before they did, and bury them well.



His search was guided by smell, and animal tracks, and flies. It was uncomfortable but necessary work, as bare bones are far more difficult to find, and time was running out.



"This is our one good opportunity to get as much as possible," said Fonseca, the South Africa-based forensic coordinator for Africa with the International Committee of the Red Cross.



As he pushed through the rural farmland he met local people who were just as concerned about the dignity of the dead. Desperate for news of their missing family members, some communities sent out search teams.

Bodies that were found were given a quick but respectful burial, even when they were strangers. Some of the dead wore the uniforms of neighboring Zimbabwe's security forces, having been swept down mountainsides some 60 miles (100 kilometers) away by the raging waters.



Burials were difficult work. Shovels, like homes, had been lost. Some people dug with their bare hands, then watched the holes fill with water from the still-sodden ground.



"They take the time because one day our time will come as well," Fonseca said. He found the community burials comforting, with people even pausing from handing out badly needed humanitarian aid to take turns digging.



And yet he knew the burials almost certainly went unreported to authorities, meaning they would not be counted in the official death toll and families might never know their loved ones' fates.

Shallow graves were precarious, too, vulnerable to animals and further floods, the possible scattering of bones.



"You bury who you can but not always well," said Ibrahim Ismail, a local farm manager. "So he's helping."



Fonseca offered to do exhumations and reburials but only with permission. One family that had tracked down and buried two relatives near a termite mound, a natural marker, decided to let them be. In their culture a person should not be dug up and moved, they said.



"I appreciate what he's doing. It's life-saving for some of us," said Manuel Joaquim Makanije, a community member who nevertheless understood the family's decision.



Relatives long for closure, but the bodies could be anywhere.

Fonseca came across the corpse of a young girl tangled high in a tree. A local man scrambled up the trunk and slowly lowered her to the ground, while children watched.



On another long hike Fonseca saw a boatman ferry a woman to a body found on an island. The face was missing, but the woman wept, certain it was her missing relative.



With forensic methods such as DNA tests, fingerprinting and dental records almost impossible in rural Mozambique, Fonseca respects what he called "cultural identification." Clothing, location and other signs were considered in the interest of grieving relatives' peace of mind.

Without a mandate from Mozambique's government to issue death certificates or compile official figures, Fonseca instead gave community leaders guidance on handling the dead. He distributed wooden grave markers, body tags, gloves.

It reflected his wider work in Africa helping to strengthen forensics awareness on a continent where people increasingly seek accountability, and answers, over the dead.



Fonseca's time in Mozambique was ending and he would soon head home to South Africa. The work, in very challenging conditions, takes a toll, colleague Neil Morris said. "Stephen knew when he needed to return."



In one last try, Fonseca gravitated back to the maize field where nine members of a single family had died.



Soon farmers would burn the fields to plant a short-term crop to help avoid months of hunger, as the cyclone had struck just before the annual harvest. The fires would further complicate identifying the dead.



As people picked their way through the field salvaging maize kernels, resuming their lives, Fonseca resumed his search for what he knew were now bare bones.



The farmers shouldn't have to discover them, he said. "They've been through enough trauma."



He searched slowly. It took hours. "There's a little cranium somewhere here," he said, half to himself, thinking of the child. "Someone's going to find it."



Finally he stopped and tied a blue latex glove to a stalk of maize, as a marker.



He had found a small shin bone, not much larger than a pencil.

The bone likely belonged to the same child whose spine had been found not far away. In the end, the bones would be buried together.



There were no child-sized body bags. Fonseca improvised one using duct tape.



"Some people think it gets easier. I think it gets harder," he said of his work. "Now I'm a parent. I start to relate to some degree how absolutely devastating it is to lose a child. But I will never say I fully understand what they are going through."



He and a local chief, Moises Mukoto, went to the burial site, a short walk through tall grass. Fonseca, sweating in the hot sun, dug open a small grave as the chief wrote the time of day in a notebook, and waited.



The bag with the shin bone was gently laid in the hole alongside the tiny spine, which had been buried there earlier. Then the chief quickly hoed the earth back in place.



"Even one bone is important," Fonseca said. "It represents someone special."



The wooden grave marker, written in permanent ink, said: "Don't touch. The body of a child."



It will take months, even years, to discover the cyclone's dead, Fonseca said.



Not everyone will be found.
Photo: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Greenwich Film

Speaking at the Women in the World summit, Ashley Judd explained her very personal connection to the fight for womens reproductive autonomy in Georgia. Im a three-time rape survivor. And one of the times I was raped, there was conception, she told moderator Katie Couric. And Im very thankful I was able to access safe and legal abortion. Judd explained that both she and her rapist were from Kentucky, and that she lived in Tennessee. In both of those states, unconvicted rapists still have paternity rights. I wouldve had to co-parent with my rapist, she said.

Judd is one of dozens of actors and writers who vowed to challenge productions filming in Georgia if the states so-called heartbeat bill is passed. The bill has passed both Georgias house and senate, and the governor has until May 10 to sign it into law. The bill bans abortion after six weeks, or two weeks after a missed period. Georgia is a key shooting location for films and TV today. If a boycott results, it could mean millions lost in business for the state. Democracy starts with our skin, Judd told the audience. Were not supposed to regulate what we choose to do with our insides.
For 60 days pilgrims in Rome can climb original marble stairs on their knees.

Rome's Scala Santa or Holy Stairs - a sacred staircase which Christ is said to have ascended to be sentenced to crucifixion by Pontius Pilate - has been restored to its original state after almost 300 years.

The marble steps have been exposed for the first time since being encased in wood in the early 18th century and can be ascended by pilgrims on their knees, until 9 June, the feast of Pentecost.

Pilgrims ascend the newly-uncovered Holy Stairs. Photo Vatican News.

The Holy Stairs are believed by the faithful to be those which led to the praetorium of Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. According to tradition, the steps were brought to Rome in 326 AD by St Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine.

The stairs, located opposite the Archbasilica of St John Lateran in Piazza di S. Giovanni in Laterano, have been closed off for more than a year during the Vatican's restoration of the 16th-century frescoes surrounding the 28 steps.

Before being removed from the stairs, the walnut wood casings had square holes cut out to allow pilgrims to touch the marble beneath, once the timber is resinstalled in June.

Blessing of the Holy Stairs on 11 April. Photo The Telegraph.

The staircase leads to a chapel known as the Sancta Sanctorum, or Holiest of Holies, the anicent private chapel of popes.

The steps were first opened to the public by Pope Sixtus V in the late 1580s but in 1724 they were encased in wood to protect their detoriating condition. Over time the steps had been worn down significantly by pilgrims' knees, feet and hands, in some cases leaving grooves up to 15-cm deep.

Each year the Holy Stairs attracts around half a million pilgrims who must ascend the steps on their knees, praying along the way.

Cover image: Adnkronos
Tailors from west Africa and cooks from Syria build new lives in Rome through dignified employment in fashion and food.

There was goodness in the air as visitors thronged the Christmas market at St Paul's Within-the-Walls, the American Episcopalian Church of Rome, on the first day in December. The annual market is a firm fixture on the city's expat calendar, with proceeds going to support the work of the Joel Nafuma Refugee Center (JNRC), located in the crypt below the neo-gothic landmark on Via Nazionale.

Designed by George Edmund Street, the Victorian-era church has been a bastion of Rome's English-speaking community since it opened in 1880. Today St Paul's and the JNRC  founded in 1982  play an increasingly vital role in providing friendship and support to refugees who make their difficult way to Rome.

Rev. Austin K. Rios, rector of St Paul's, welcomed guests to the Christmas fair as warm chatter filled the church's lofty ceilings. Children sold homemade cake and cookies; other stands included more exotic fare, from ethnic cuisine to ornate jewellery, with a thoroughly international mix of stall-holders and browsers.

The event provided an opportunity to highlight the work of the church's day centre for refugees and asylum seekers, which each day welcomes up to 250 people, half of them homeless. In addition to offering hospitality, a central part of the JNRC mission is to provide a support network and to encourage and empower refugees to build new lives.

The Sewing Cooperative

One of the market stalls offered a selection of brightly-coloured cushion covers, table cloths and bags, the work of Rome's Sewing Cooperative, established in 2017 by Lydia Witt, a professional dressmaker originally from Ohio.

After a decade working for Broadway and the New York City Ballet, Witt secured a Fulbright scholarship in 2016 and made the life-changing decision to travel to Rome. She volunteered at the JNRC where she taught professional-level dressmaking, as well as interviewing refugees at the Baobab mobile refugee centre near Tiburtina station.

She soon became aware of how displaced people longed for the sense of normality provided by employment and using their existing skills. After securing funds from a church in Kentucky and the US embassy in Italy, Witt purchased six sewing machines and launched The Sewing Cooperative, originally based at the JNRC. She discovered that aside from the satisfaction of learning new skills, many tailors found a therapeutic joy in the familiar act of being able to sew once again.

Sala 1

Witt was also given a helping hand from Rome's Galleria Sala 1 whose owner, American Mary Angela Schroth, offered her gallery as a place to work last summer. Witt repaid the gesture by holding an interactive installation, allowing visitors to ask questions and observe the tailors as they created garments made predominantly from colourful west African wax print.

Lassina with Lydia Witt of the Sewing Cooperative

At the St Paul's fair Witt was joined by Lassina, who has been a member of the Sewing Cooperative for more than four months. From Koulikoro in western Mali, Lassina arrived in Sicily on a migrant boat from Libya in 2016. Now aged 20, he began tailoring in Mali when he was 14 and, after a couple of years away from his trade, he is happy to be once again cutting and stitching in Rome.

Esquilino

The Sewing Cooperative is based in a third-floor studio overlooking the Mercato Centrale food emporium on Via Giolitti, in the multi-ethnic Esquilino district. Lassina is the newest member of the team whose original member is Daouda, aged 26, from the Ivory Coast.Daouda is softly-spoken and earnest with a gentle manner and obviously takes pride in his work. He arrived in Italy in 2016 after fleeing ethnic tensions in his country, travelling through Libya before making the perilous journey across the Mediterranean on a rubber dinghy. Daouda is joined at The Sewing Cooperative by several other tailors, two compatriots  Abou and Bamba  and another two, less frequently, from Senegal and Gambia.

Lydia and Daouda of the Sewing Cooperative

The team works with clients who co-design their made-to-measure clothes before setting off to the nearby markets around Piazza Vittorio to choose their fabric. Finished items vary in price from 35 to 100 and are ready for collection or shipping within 48 hours.

This fast turnaround favours the bulk of customers who are on vacation from the US.Many clients arrive after subscribing to a three-hour fashion experience, advertised through Airbnb, which involves meeting the refugee tailors and learning about sustainable fashion. However, Witt is keen to point out that it is not a refugee tour, rather a chance for exchange and dialogue with the cooperative's professional tailors.

Delicacies by Hummustown

The international flavour at the St Paul's Christmas market was further enriched by the enticing aroma from the stand operated by Hummustown, another refugee success story in Rome. Founded in March 2017, this catering start-up gives Syrian refugees economic independence, social inclusion and dignity through cooking their native cuisine. The driving force behind the project is a dynamic duo of sisters, Shaza and Loma Saker, both of whom were born in Damascus but were raised in Rome from early childhood.

Humanitarian concern

The Saker sisters are clearly passionate about the project, mixing their considerable organisational, business and media skills with a genuine humanitarian concern. The 15 refugees at Hummustown come from a range of backgrounds, and organisers stress that the project is open to all Syrians, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

Some of the Hummstown team, with Shaza Saker (in yellow). Photo Articolo 21.

The team, which ranges in age from early 20s to 50, comprises five women and 13 men, including a husband and wife. They came to Hummustown through word of mouth. The women are the principal cooks, while the role of the men varies from food preparation to packaging and distribution.

Integration

In addition to offering financial independence and stability, a core tenet of the Hummustown philosophy is assisting Syrian refugees to integrate by helping them with the difficulties of the Italian language and Rome's bureaucracy.

All fled devastating scenes of war and death, making their way to Italy either by boat or by foot, in some cases moving on to northern Europe before being sent back to Rome. One of the younger members, 26-year-old university degree graduate Sadam from Daraa in southwest Syria, lost his entire family in the conflict, and briefly lived rough in Rome before being welcomed into Hummustown.

Sadam of Hummustown cooking falafel

Several weeks after the St Pauls' Christmas fair, Hummustown opened its first industrial kitchen in the Tuscolana area of the city, following a recent fundraising drive. This is where the bulk of its food for distribution and catering is produced, having previously used private kitchens hosted by the project's patrons. Fundraising continues however, with donors invited to choose from a wish-list ranging from new dishwashers and refrigerators to used pots and pans, via the project's GoFundMe page on its website.

Catering

In addition to catering for events, Hummustown has weekly appointments around the capital, including the World Food Programme (WFP) 09.30-14.00 every Tuesday and Thursday, and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) every other Friday 09.30-14.00, as well as its Aventino Lunches, enjoyed primarily by employees of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), at nearby Lele and Marta Caffe 57 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Hummustown cuisine. Photo John Cabot University.

Organisers are keen to point out  particularly to Italians  that Syria's refined cuisine uses many of the same Mediterranean ingredients as Italian food. In addition to hummus and falafel, Hummustown offers lesser-known specialties such as muhammara (fresh red peppers, melagrane molasses, ground walnuts, breadcrumbs and olive oil) and mutabbal (smoked eggplant, yoghurt, sesame paste, salt, olive oil).

Life of dignity

The JNRC fundraiser and programme coordinator Annika Milisic-Stanley says: In different ways, Hummustown and The Sewing Cooperative both achieve the JNRC goals of serving the needs and aspirations of refugees and asylum seekers, adding that the JNRC is happy to collaborate with any initiative that helps refugees and aspirational migrants to integrate, become self-sufficient and live a life of dignity in Rome.

By Andy Devane

This article was published in the January 2019 edition of Wanted in Rome magazine.

Contacts: The Sewing Cooperative is on Instagram. For an appointment with the tailors contact lydia.witt@gmail.com.

To find out more about Hummustown and to donate see website.

Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, Via Napoli 58 (corner Via Nazionale), tel. 064883339. The JNRC welcomes donations and volunteers, for details see website.
There are others I might add to suggest that the kids are all right  Angela Flournoy, Nathaniel Rich, Yaa Gyasi. But even as I keep extending the list, that attention problem shows up again: None of these writers are household names, not in the way a David Foster Wallace or a Donna Tartt became when they released their signature works in the 90s. And regardless of how you come down on the merits of these millennial novels, none of their authors fit the mold of generational spokesperson. That has little to do with selfie selfishness  Luiselli is as expansive, outward-thinking a writer as they come  but with how culture has changed, we just no longer have room for a novelist whos a generational spokesperson anymore. The idea of a literary celebrity, once a part of Americas establishment in the 60s and 70s, became a mildly ironic concept in the 80s and 90s. Today its an oxymoron.
I can see why Wang and Stuart felt the need to say this. But I also wish we could move beyond the kind of moral vanity, failed imagination and forced infantilism that demands this kind of hand-holding. Its as if the idea of different cultures having different mores, and indeed the existence of history itself  which, lets face it, is one long litany of injustice  were too much for people to get their heads around.
These outrageous sanctuary cities are grave threats to public safety and national security, Trump said in a speech to the Safe Neighborhoods Conference in Kansas City, Mo., on Dec. 7, less than a month after the White House asked ICE about moving detainees to such cities. Each year, sanctuary cities release thousands of known criminal aliens from their custody and right back into the community. So they put them in, and they have them, and they let them go, and it drives you people a little bit crazy, doesnt it, huh?
But WikiLeaks did finally win the admiration of Trump, who was then in the process of taking over the national Republican Party. As Aaron Blake wrote this week in The Washington Post: Trump mentioned WikiLeaks more than 100 times in just the final month of the 2016 campaign, according to Factba.se. Many of those times, he expressed admiration for its work. This WikiLeaks stuff is unbelievable, he said once. Boy, I love reading those WikiLeaks, he said another time. Yet another time: Oh, we love WikiLeaks. Boy, they have really  WikiLeaks! They have revealed a lot. 
Gathered around a conference table in the brands headquarters in New Yorks Garment District, he and the Amsale team were explaining their next steps. One wall was covered in a hodgepodge of sticky notes, each one marked with a nugget from a brainstorming session about what brides want and when they want it. Brown, with the help of business and technology consultants, was considering how best to move forward in a time of e-commerce, customer impatience, an emphasis on personalized experiences and the ominous reality that Davids Bridal  the countrys largest bridal gown retailer  had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, from which it has since emerged.
Sgamma, Leach and I were unable to fool the first pod of fish we encountered, but around the next bend our luck changed. Groups of fish were dimpling the water on either side of the boat. Sgamma decided wed both fish. He tied a tiny mayfly imitation on Leachs tippet and he began casting to the right. Lets show them something different, he said, tying a purple and black Chubby Chernobyl on my line  a much larger fly that bore no resemblance to any insects on the water. Leach was soon fast to a feisty 16-inch rainbow that leaped three times before coming to the net. I cast a few feet above where a fish had just dimpled the surface. A largemouth parted the water and line hissed off my reel. Thats a good one, Sgamma said. The fish tried to part ways with me by tangling in aquatic plants along the river bottom, but the tippet held and Sgamma deftly netted the fish. He measured it  just a hair under 22 inches  and gently returned it to the river. (All angling on the Henrys Fork is catch and release.)
Rwanda is developing a reputation as the Switzerland of Africa, not just because of its rolling and landlocked geography but also its safeness and economic growth. The government has encouraged entrepreneurs by facilitating business registration. (It takes just six hours.) And the Made in Rwanda strategy, launched in 2016, has reduced the trade deficit while increasing exports. Along these lines, were smitten with the handicrafts and find lovely boutiques like Abraham Konga Collections, brimming with the colorful baskets found in trendy American stores. Gahaya Links, a handicraft company dedicated to womens economic empowerment, has a beautiful showroom and its goods are also found at Macys. (Much of the population still lives in extreme poverty, and companies such as Gahaya Links have a profound social impact.)
People believe in all of you to make sure that you have the experiences that you need to go out in this world and thrive, Hutchings told the youngsters. We want to have a pipeline that goes from elementary to middle into our high school out into a career or a college.
The Abolitionist Bucket: It includes Abraham Lincoln and the Blair family of Maryland. If you wanted to free black slaves, then youre okay. But if you dive into some serious history books on the subject, these folks were white supremacists and downright racist in their beliefs about people of African descent. The Blairs, particularly Lincolns postmaster general Montgomery Blair, were huge supporters of colonization for slaves  sending them off to Africa or the West Indies. Why? They believed that the United States should be a white nation. The colonization movement led to the creation in 1847 of the African nation of Liberia, where I served in the Peace Corps.
Sears noted his clients past work promoting democracy abroad and his promising start as a political consultant. Without a doubt, Mr. Patten earned his felony conviction in this case, the attorney said, but also earned a non-incarceration sentence. He had a choice to make in this case, between his career and assisting the government. He chose his country . . . He sacrificed his career . . . in order to help the government and cooperate in this case.